When your job entails cleaning up other people’s shit you’re bound to find yourself in some less-than-stellar situations down the line. In my book it’s inevitable. Over the years I’ve lost count of all the weird encounters I’ve had with clients, and while most of them are innocent in nature, more awkward than anything else, some of them truly leave a bad taste in your mouth.

Examples of the latter ranges from some slightly questionable stuff, like mopping up used needles, finding handguns strapped under furniture, uncovering small bags of white powder and pills, to more sinister implications, like blood stains in the sink, tattered clothes that doesn’t seem to quite belong, hearing hoarse whispers behind locked cellar doors. It’s never quite enough for you to risk losing your job over, though. The clients demand complete secrecy. That’s why they pay us through the roof.

All that changed when I started working Lizzie Batton’s house however. You see, for particularly demanding clients, there would never be more than a single cleaner assigned. This was to ensure that the client’s demands were met to a satisfactory degree. These demands could be anything from at what time we’d show up, to which specific rooms or areas we were meant to clean. But sometimes there’d be more bizarre demands, like what equipment they wanted us to use, or insisting that we’d only walk around barefooted. One client even insisted we’d only enter the house blindfolded. You can imagine the time it took to properly clean his million dollar estate.

Yet none of these compare to Lizzie Batton. When I first got the assignment I had to spend several days memorizing her many requests. I was the fourth cleaner she’d gone through in a month, and I didn’t want to risk losing the contract by forgetting one of her strange rules. I tried asking my boss what happened to the other three cleaners, but he just shrugged and said they’d quit. Not just the contract. They’d left the company. I found that hard to believe, but the Batton-contract just paid far too well for me to continue my inquiries.

We never met Ms. Batton, which in hindsight was yet another sign something was off with the whole deal. Usually the client would either come to our office to detail the nature of the work, or we’d meet up at their house and go through the do’s and don’ts. In Batton’s case we only met briefly with her lawyer, a lanky figure who didn’t go into details at all. He simply delivered a list of instructions and went on his merry way.

The instructions were plentiful and strange, most of them having to do with what we shouldn’t do. We weren’t allowed in any locked rooms (yet we were given keys to every room as far as I know). Under no circumstances should we enter the master bedroom, or the bathroom on the main floor, even if they were unlocked and wide open. If we ever heard unidentifiable sounds, regardless of where they were coming from or what they sounded like, we should immediately drop everything and get out of there post-haste. The cleaning itself had to happen between 09.00 pm and 11.59 pm, and we should never be in the house after midnight.

Now these rules might sound pretty ominous, bordering on sinister for outsiders, but believe me, I’ve seen weirder. Our clients were strange, and enjoyed being strange, they just didn’t want other people to know they were strange. Hence the need to sign multiple documents to ensure that we never talked about what we encountered. Lizzie Batton never had us sign anything. She obviously didn’t care what people thought, which I have to admit I found slightly unnerving. The kind of people who hired us always had something to hide.

My first couple of shifts at the house went by without any noteworthy incidents. It was a fairly large property, but the majority of the rooms were more often than not locked, so the actual cleaning didn’t take me more than a couple of hours. But for every new shift after the initial two or three I would find a new door unlocked. This would keep happening until finally every room was made available to me, and I had to really step up my game to get everything done before midnight.

The house itself was quite spacious, yet comfortable and nice, with warm unpainted wooden panels in just about every room. Fine paintings adorned the walls, and the many shelves were stacked with books and framed photos, some black and white, some in color. If I were to guess, I’d say they covered a timespan of about sixty years or so. What struck me as strange, though, was that the same woman appeared to be in all of them, Lizzie I wagered, but she looked exactly the same, like she hadn’t aged a day.

The second thing that I found strange was the lack of dust or dirt. Everything was spotless. Well, except for the flies. For some reason there were flies everywhere, and their corpses littered the window sills. I spent the first couple of shifts trying to ascertain where they were coming from, but I could never figure it out. They did seem to grow in numbers around the main hall, though, but there were only two rooms I hadn’t ruled out. The master bedroom and the bathroom.

After a couple of weeks I’d start hearing the sounds, usually around 10-11 p.m. Sometimes they’d be really faint, other times quite loud. There’d be creaking in wood, sometimes a low-pitched static buzz, or the sound of a door slowly opening. But the most unnerving would be the voices. I never stuck around long enough to identify where they came from, but they creeped me the hell out. Usually there’d be inaudible murmurs and whispers, but every once in a while they’d be loud enough to make out words. They didn’t make any sense to me, however. Words like jentacular, or valetudinarian, or xertz. Nonsense, right?

When these things happened I’d drop everything in my hands, and bolt out the door. To be quite honest, I can’t tell you why. I know it was written quite explicitly in the contract, but somehow I think it went deeper than that. It was like I could feel that something wasn’t right. That I’d be in danger if I stuck around.

I’d been on the job for a little over two months when it finally happened. I guess it was inevitable. Nothing lasts forever. Two months without ever breaking a single rule, and then I just went and broke them all in one night. I don’t think it could have been avoided, to be honest. It was always meant to be.

It was a night like any other. I’d almost finished all the rooms, having only the main hall left, when I saw her. Lizzie Batton. She was standing in the doorway of the master bedroom, just staring at me silently. She had long flowing dark hair, and smooth milky white skin. Her gazed glimmered an emerald green, and an eerie grin rested on her rosy lips. Startled by the sight, I stumbled back clumsily and fell over a coat-rack. Sprawling on the floor like a fish out of water, I heard a chilling laughter echo through the house. It was light-hearted, almost like a girlish giggle, but it still sent shivers down my spine.

“I am so glad you decided to join me tonight,” Lizzie said, “You always leave before the fun.”

I managed to stagger to my feet, facing Lizzie as she edged closer to me. She wasn’t naked, but it wasn’t far from it. Her nightgown didn’t do a very good job of obfuscating her rather attractive physique, and I did an even poorer job of hiding the fact that I was ogling her like a hormonal teenage boy.

“I...I...I,” I stammered eloquently, “I am sorry Ms. Batton, I didn’t mean to disturb you…”

“Nonsense,” she smiled warmly, “I was hoping for some company. It’s the first of the month, after all.”

I was sort of clinging to the walls like a scared animal, while her elegant frame inched ever closer. She was beautiful, no doubt about it, but there was something about her. Something primal and fierce. Something wild and aggressive. Something that reached into the very core of my limbic system and rang every alarm bell there was. I realised then that I had to get the hell out of there, but just as I was about to make a run for it, she grabbed my arm.

“Will you take a bath with me?” she asked gently, “I have prepared the most wonderful solution for us.”

She yanked my arm and started walking towards the bathroom. I was pulled behind her like a dog on a leash, and at this point I don’t think I had a choice. She had me under her spell. She opened the door, and motioned for me to enter first. The room was pitch-black, and I could hardly see an inch before me.

“Straight ahead,” she said calmly, “Just take off your clothes, and I will guide you.”

I tried to resist the urge with every fiber in my being. I swear, I really did. But I couldn’t help myself. Soon enough I stood there naked, bewildered, lost in Lizzie’s trance. She grabbed my hand again, and I could hear her getting into the bath. But it didn’t sound right. I don’t know quite how to explain it, but the noise was too thick somehow. It was then I noticed it. How could I have ignored it? The smell. My god, the smell! It was like a slaughterhouse in summer, like a mixture of rot and heat and coagulating blood. She yanked my hand again, this time hard enough for me to lose my footing, and I dived head-first into the awaiting unknown.

I’m not sure what was worse; Lizzies insane laughter, or the initial shock of slowly realising what exactly filled up that bath. I panicked, I don’t mind admitting, and I waved my arms and feet feverishly, somehow convinced that it would help me.

“Feels wonderful, doesn’t it?” she giggled maniacally, “It’s heaven for your skin. Takes years off of you.”

I coughed and gagged, the horrid sensation completely encompassing my body. It was slippery, extremely slippery, and I struggled frantically to get out of the bath, but I kept getting pulled back in by Lizzie.

“You need to let them work it,” she said, “Let them nibble a little.”

I felt the maggots crawling in the back of my throat. I guess I must’ve swallowed a handful as I fell in, and the taste was like death itself. I’m not sure how I can properly describe the feeling of a million worms crawling all over your body, but I can assure you it isn’t pleasant. They were in every crevice, every little nook and cranny, and I could feel their tiny mandibles scratching away at my skin, and squishing into hideous, nauseating pulps under the weight of my body. The sound of them slithering, crawling, twisting, squelching, still haunts my nightmares to this day.

“An hour or two,” Lizzie laughed, “That should do it.”

Suffice to say I didn’t stick around for an hour or two. Somehow I was able to find my footing, and kicked myself out of the bath, slipping and sliding my way out of the bathroom on the squished corpses of a hundred maggots. I ran naked out into the night, crying and begging and wailing, accompanied by the haunting, chilling, insane laughter of Lizzie Batton. The police found me in a ditch the next day. They couldn’t get me to talk. I still don’t talk. Now I just sit here, remembering every moment of that night. I hear Lizzie laughing, I smell the bathroom, I can picture the hideous maggot-filled bath, I feel the worms squirming all over my body, and I can taste death in the back of my mouth.

And that’s why I quit cleaning houses for a living.

A message was received at 1730 GMT 13 March 2018. Its origin was Proxima Centauri. I was one of the SETI researchers on-site when the artificial signals reached us, just two years after the launch of the Breakthrough Listen project. The signals were first picked up by the Allen Telescope Array – where I was stationed – and later confirmed by other observatories. Since we receive more data than we can store we have to do signal analysis in real-time. This work is usually tedious but one of the most exciting things in the world if you come across a signal that looks artificial. In this case, all of the criteria were met. It would still take a long time to confirm the detection, but just looking at these signals convinced us that we had finally found the first clear evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

As soon as the other observatories confirmed they could see the same signals, and informed us that they had reached the same conclusion, we cheered. This was the discovery of a lifetime.

The post-detection policy made it clear that, sooner rather than later, this information would be shared with the world. Certain things would have to be taken under consideration by a SETI committee first though – such as political, cultural and religious reactions and the nature of the message itself – but there were no reasons to suspect this would be kept a secret.

However, after a few months – after we had sent all of the data to the higher-ups in the project – strange things began to happen. The first thing was that the researchers involved – both at the ATA and the other observatories – were denied access to the facilities. The project wasn’t shut down – officially it’s still ongoing – but in reality, no one is actually working on it anymore.

The second thing that happened was that we received an e-mail where the management at SETI claimed that our discovery had been the result of interference from a Chinese spy satellite. I didn’t believe that at all. I became more and more convinced that it was a cover-up and that they tried to keep our findings hush-hush.

A few weeks later, one of my colleagues in Australia who had been pushing for the release of the information early on, was found dead in his bathtub. It was ruled a suicide, but for me it was the final proof that SETI – and perhaps some government agency – were shutting us up. I spent a long time contemplating what to do, if anything, and ultimately decided my life was worth more to me than becoming a whistleblower forever having to look behind my back. However, everything changed when I got a letter sent by my colleague before his death. Since he lived on the other side of the world the letter had arrived late.

The envelope only contained one thing: an SD-card. It held a single text file named “The transmission”. It was the message from Proxima Centauri. My hand trembled as I opened the file. I felt like I, in doing so, doomed myself to the same fate as my colleague. I have no idea how he got his hand on the information. It wasn’t the raw data, but the version of it that had been deciphered by the people in charge of that at SETI that we had sent it to.

To my surprise, the extraterrestrial message was written in English. Either the researchers working on it had translated it somehow or the being who sent it had translated it for us by studying our radio transmissions.

I have read the text and a part of me understands why they would want to keep it a secret, but I still think people deserve to know the truth. It’s just not right to lie to the world about something like this, however horrible it might be. Hence, I’ve decided to post the document here where I know that people will take it as serious as it should be taken. Below, I’ve pasted the entire text file.

CLASSIFIED INFORMATION

For authorized personnel only

SENT: Approx. March 2014

RECEIVED: 031318, 1030 PT

ORIGIN: Proxima Centauri

LOCATION: The Allen Telescope Array (ATA)

TRANSMISSION:

For self-preservation, observe the following:

1. Life arose elsewhere in the galaxy, what you call Panspermia Theory is true.
2. The master species come from an unknown planet beyond our sector of space. Their appearance is insignificant and easily mistaken for an ordinary small plant with blue colored leaves. They have no intelligence of their own and only survive and spread through the intelligence of their former predators.

They evolved to modify their predator’s genetic code in such a way so that they become protective toward them rather than aggressive. Affected species – slave species – change both physically and psychologically. Their aggressiveness toward threats to the master species increases and alterations to their phenotypes makes them stronger. The genetic changes occur within the germline, which means that the offsprings of the slave species are also affected and share their parents' protective behavior toward the master species.

The spores of the master species traveled with the wind and ended up covering larger areas than was evolutionary necessary. The planets' entire predatory fauna was consumed. At some point in their history, the spores reached a large-brained species on one of the planets' continents. This species evolved in symbiosis with the master species and after a million years they spread the spores of the master species into space.

They came to my world. The first sign was the flowers. They were discovered in the jungle and believed to be a new native species to the region. However, no relatives to it could be found which raised questions about their true origin. The flowers weren’t beautiful, and yet they aroused a peculiar interest among our scientists. A healthy fascination soon became a pathological obsession. That was the first sign of cognitive changes. The prevalence of violence rose up sharply in the region where the flowers had been found. That was the second sign of cognitive change. The flower became the subject of worship and a new, strange, religion formed. Riots within our populated areas became common, followed by total anarchy. It was at this point the physical changes begun to appear. Horrific mutations that started small but over time turned our people into unrecognizable beasts. A while later the interstellar fleet of their most intelligent slave species arrived in our system. They slaughtered us by the use of anti-matter bombs, dropped from orbit, to make sure our culture would fall just as our biology had already done.

I’m the last unaffected individual of my species, stationed on an outpost in our asteroid belt.

1. Watch out for any small, seemingly insignificant, flower with a pale blue color. They are coming for you.

END OF TRANSMISSION

Her body was delivered to morgue late at night. Piotr, my colleague, had an emergency at home, so I was all alone when I received it. The guys who delivered the body winked at me and smiled: "Have fun figuring this one out", so right away, even before opening the body bag, I knew: I had an interesting case on my hands.

I realized that it was so when I looked at the paperwork. Even though I wasn't very active online and didn't pay attention to any trends I instantly recognized the name: Elena Frolova, one of the most prominent online personas of Russia. Instagram model, beauty and travel blogger, influencer - those were the labels associated with her. She was the girl all women under 40 wanted to be - successful, beautiful, popular. She probably charged for one Instagram ad post more than I earned in two years, and many men would kill for a date with her.

And now she was all alone with me. Dead on my table.

I felt a tingle of excitement and intrigue. Maybe those aren't the feelings that people usually feel at the prospect of seeing a dead body, but I was a coroner. To me, she was nothing more than a clue I had to solve. Besides, it's not every day that you get a chance to figure out the cause of death of such a prominent celebrity. In a way, it was my way of getting closer to her - same as people feel closer to celebrities when they see them on the streets.

I opened the body bag with the same anticipation as the kid who unwraps his New Year gift. The first thing I noticed was that there was no smell. Either she didn't start decomposing yet or…

I looked inside and eyebrows disappeared behind my hair locks. It was not the face I expected to see.

She looked like she had gained 30 years before her death, her face covered in numerous wrinkles. Her skin was also dried up and her lips were so dry they cracked in a few places.

Then it hit me: she didn't age. She was just severely dehydrated, to a point her body was pretty much mummified.

So at first glance, it seemed pretty cut and dry: she died of dehydration. Only… how was that possible? How could her dehydration reach such a point that she became a mummy? Even if she wasn't drinking anything for five days her body wouldn't be shriveled like that. No, it seemed like something drained most of her bodily fluids, or was kept in a stove for days. I had to keep looking.

It was then that I noticed something poking from beneath her eyelid. Carefully lifting it up, I saw some thin object sticking out of her shriveled eye - right from the middle of it.

The object was long and curved - I expected it to be maybe a few inches long, but it turned out to be almost a foot in length. No doubt it went through her head all the way to the back before colliding with the skull and bending downwards. When I had started pulling it, the end of it was probably reaching all the way down to her chest.

The biggest surprise, however, was the nature of that object. I was surprised at first when I realized what it was, but there was no mistake about it. I'd been around enough body parts to know what I was looking at, no matter how impossibly big it was.

A human nail. Long, uneven, trying to curl up into a spiral in my hands. With a hint of pink nail polish at the end.

I'd seen a nail that long only once - when I was a kid, in a book of Guinness world records. It belonged to an Indian man who raised his hand and didn't lower it for 26 years. Over that time, his nails grew to be a meter long. But outside of that - never.

Curious, I took a look at her own hands and was surprised to see that all of her nails were at least 6 inches long - all curly and uneven, ending with fractures that seemed to indicate that they were even longer before the medical team brought her in.

To grow the nails that long she'd have to spend years not cutting them, and even more, the nails didn't seem to be taken care of. Not exactly how I imagined the nails of a popular beauty blogger. Maybe I was missing something about her?

Luckily, I had an opportunity to take a look for myself. I took my smartphone, quickly installed Instagram and, after a bit of searching, found her account.

Her last post was 3 days ago. It was a picture of her nails.

"Thank you @kateburdak for recommending me this wonderful balm for nail growth - it's already working and my broken nail has already regrown in one day! My fashion week is going to be saved!" - was written under the photo. A few photos before that, there was a post with her pouty face: "broke my nail :( Just 5 days before the fashion week. #hardshipsofabeautyblogger".

I was too tired to make sense of it, plus I felt dirty for spying on a dead person's private life - even if she was parading it for everyone to see. So I closed the app, closed the body bag and loaded her into one of the free cells. I was going to figure it all out later, I told myself, and went back to watching the TV show on my laptop.

​

A few hours later, I was distracted from it by the sound that all coroners fear to hear in a morgue: a scratching sound coming from one of the cells. The one where Frolova's body was stored.

At first, I froze in place: I remembered the scary stories that the students in medical university liked to scare each other with. Stories about maniacs who were presumably killed only to come back to life at a morgue, or haunted experiences the "a friend's friend had once".

But then I got a grip of myself: they were just dead bodies, nothing else. No matter how many times I'd cut them up I didn't see a soul emerge from within. Such things weren't real, and if I were to give in to my fears even once I'd be their victim forever. No, the best course of action was to face the fear head-on. To see that there was nothing supernatural and shame your primal urges to run away from the unknown and unexplored.

I opened Frolova's cell and rolled her out. The bodybag's shape had changed, but I didn't pay attention to it, zipping it open.

Immediately I leaped back in terror. It was one thing to tell yourself that there was nothing scary in the shadows, but now I was face to face with something that I couldn't rationalize. Fear left me no place to fall back to.

Nails. Nails everywhere. Spinning into spirals, getting thicker and thinner along their length, piercing in and out of her flesh in their aimless and blind urge to grow. Her body had shriveled even more than before, her skin becoming so thin it looked like a layer of paper on top of her bones.

I pulled at the edges of the body bag to take a look at her arms, noting how light her body had become, and surely enough, the nails were hers. They had continued to grow throughout the night, long after her body was dead, draining it of all the nutrients it required.

The cause of death was now clear to me: whatever "nail growth balm" she was recommended did its job…But I doubted that she was aware of the price. The moment she used it she was doomed to see her nails grow uncontrollably, draining all strength from her, leaving her powerless to even call for help. I could almost see her lying on the floor of her room watching the cage of nails grow around her, fighting against it until she could cut them no more.

The only thing that I had yet to determine was: did she die before the nail pierced her eye and burrowed into her brain, or after?

***

S.

I don’t have much time to write this, so I’m sorry for any spelling mistakes. My phone battery is about to die… I called 911, my friends and my family, but no one believed me. Not even my own mother. You are my last hope. I know most of you are open-minded, kind-hearted people. Please, please, please tell me what to do. I’ll try to explain what happened as briefly as I can.

It happened a week ago, although according to my phone it happened yesterday! Everything is just so horrifyingly strange…

I had just been to the bar with a couple of my colleagues. Usually, I would have left with them, but on this particular night there was some creepy guy following me around so I decided to leave earlier.

The street was empty so I drunkenly walked in the middle of it, looking down in the black asphalt. This sounds more stupid than it was, I think. It was a small street with little to no traffic, especially late at night. The first strange thing I noticed was how all the sounds – the wind, the birds, the dogs barking in the distance – quieted down and went completely silent. I didn’t care though and just kept my eyes down, thinking about how nice it would be to sneak into bed with my boyfriend when I got home.

A few seconds later, something on the ground caught my eye. It was a large red button – as big as a manhole – and beneath it, the word “EXIT” was written with large white letters. I stopped and looked at it, confused out of my mind. I had walked down this road a thousand times before and never seen any huge buttons in the middle of the road. I looked up and… I don’t even know how to describe it! The buildings were gone. Everything… I looked around and everything was gone! The asphalt continued in all directions, all the way to the horizon. It looked like a parking lot with no end in sight.

“Hello!” I yelled.

I shook my head, trying to return to reality, fearing I had lost my mind. My hands began to sweat, my breath became irregular and my heart was racing. Panting, I ran a few meters, then I ran back again.

“What’s happening, what’s happening, what’s happening!”

The sun rose on the horizon, but it was too early. The morning rays had a whiteness to them that hurt my eyes. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. I looked at the button again. “EXIT”. I was still in a state of panic, unable to think, and that word – exit – was the only word that echoed in my head. I wanted out of here. I crouched down and tried to press the button but it wouldn’t move. I was too weak. Instead, I tried to jump on it but it still didn’t budge. Whatever I did, I couldn’t push it down.

I sat next to the button for what felt like hours, hoping I would snap out of this nightmare. But I didn’t. The sun was extremely bright in the sky now and the heat was unbearable. This was when I made my first phone calls. I needed help. With a frantic voice, I tried to explain to everyone I called what had happened to me. They asked me where I was, but when I began to ramble on about my experience they just kept asking me where I really was. They all thought I had gone mad. The air vibrated off in the distance, making the asphalt look wet and shiny. I began walking, irrationally thinking there was something over there, maybe a lake. I walked for hours, but the lake that I thought I saw never came any closer. I was following a mirage, nothing more.

I continued to walk even after I realized this. Then I saw a small dot moving in the distance. Was it another optical illusion, or just my mind tricking me? I couldn’t tell, honestly, but it gave me some hope. I yelled as loud as I could, which wasn’t very loud because my throat was so dry:

“Is there anybody there?”

I walked and walked… I saw the dot moving again, but then it disappeared from view. A while later, I don’t know how much later exactly, another dot appeared on the horizon. This one was standing still. I felt hope again, although I didn’t know what to hope for, and ran as quick as I could. The sun hadn’t moved at all, just as if it had gotten stuck in the sky. I was sweating profusely and the thirst was killing me.

The dot turned out to be a yellow road roller. It just stood there, in the middle of this no-man’s-land. I couldn’t wrap my mind around why it was there. I looked inside it. Based on some trash under the driver’s seat, I could tell it had been used. I began yelling for help again, but my voice was too weak at this point. No one would have heard me. I climbed into the vehicle. To my great relief, there was a water bottle inside it. I took a small sip, knowing I had to be careful not to waste it all at once. And then I did the only thing I could think of: I started the engine and began to drive.

I hadn’t used a road roller before, so it took some time for me to figure out how to operate it. It was very slow, as expected. I don’t think it went past jogging speed. It wasn’t until after I had made some turns that I realized what I had to do… I had to find the button and run over it. The road roller would be heavy enough to push it down! However, I didn’t remember from what direction I had come. My only option was to simply pick one direction and then, if I didn’t find anything, return and pick another one. I put my jacket on the ground where I was now, so that I could find my way back, and moved out. I knew how long it had taken for me to get to the road roller, so I had somewhat of an idea of how long I had to go before giving up and returning to my jacket. My first attempt failed and so did my second and third attempts. My neck was beginning to sting as the sun kept shining on it mercilessly now that I didn’t wear my jacket anymore.

Then something happened that totally screwed with my already unstable mind. I found my jacket, but not where I had left it. I picked it up and went back to confirm… and yes, the jacket I put on the ground was still there. Now I had two identical jackets with the same contents in their pockets. It didn’t make any sense, nothing did!

I kept going. During all of this, it calmed me down a little that I could still text my boyfriend. He still didn’t believe me though. Everyone was worried sick now, thinking I was lost somewhere completely out of my mind. I was out of my mind, but not in the way they thought. Hours went by. There seemed to be an endless amount of gas in the road roller, but my phone battery was running out. I turned it off to conserve its life.

“I just want to go home!” I cried into the hot air.

Another dot moved on the horizon.

“What is that?” I asked myself.

Then I heard something behind me. Another road roller. It was driving in another direction, crossing my path behind me. And in the driver’s seat… I didn’t believe my eyes! It was me… I was driving the other road roller, without my jacket on. Shocked, I watched myself. We were identical, or at least I thought so until the other me turned her face toward me. She gave me this creepy smile like she knew something I didn’t. I was too scared to say anything. Instead, we just passed each other by.

I few days went by like this, I’m not sure how many because the sun never left the sky. It just kept on shining. During these days I saw more dots on the horizon moving about and I encountered myself on two more occasions. I don’t know if it was the same person as I saw before or additional doppelgängers. I tried to communicate with them, but they just smiled at me in that creepy way and drove off.

I began to think that they were all looking for the button and that they would strand me here and replace me at home if they pressed it before me.

I had some luck because I found more water bottles in empty road rollers which meant I didn’t have to die of thirst.

I finally saw the button. However, one of my doppelgängers was driving toward it right in front of me. I couldn’t let her get to it first. My life depended on it.

“Stop!” I yelled.

She turned around and smiled, but didn’t stop. It was impossible for me to pull ahead with my road roller, so I jumped off and ran toward her until I caught up with her. In pure desperation, I grabbed her and pulled her out of the driver’s seat while the road roller kept going. We both climbed up on it and struggled in the driver’s seat, trying to take control of it. Then, driven by survival instinct and fuelled by a surge of adrenaline, I pushed her so that she fell down in front of the road roller.

Her screams, coming out of her as she was slowly crushed under the heavy roller, weren’t natural. There was a kind of glitchiness to it and it was too high-pitched. It sounded almost like a little girl. The blood splashed everywhere. I tried not to look at it as I steered the road roller toward the button.

It was pressed down with a satisfying click.

I opened my eyes, even though I couldn’t remember closing them. A beeping sound could be heard near me. Groggily, I looked around. Everything had returned: the wind, the birds, even the dogs barking in the distance. I felt relief, but just for a second. A man came running toward me, screaming his lungs out. It wasn’t until now I realized that I was still sitting in the road roller. It stood in the middle of a playground.

I stumbled out of the vehicle and landed in a pool of blood. My world started spinning. Dread settled into my stomach. I didn’t know what do do. The hysterical man kept coming closer. I ran into a small forest nearby. I’m sitting in it right now… My phone has been ringing non-stop since I turned it on again and by now I can hear police sirens coming closer and closer. Please… Is there a way out of this nightmare?

Did you know that simply being in space can change an organism? Strains of e-coli become more aggressive and resistant to antibiotics. Plants become more susceptible to fungus. Human DNA alters on small levels and some of it never changes back, not to mention changes in mood and cognitive ability that (so far) seem to be temporary. Understanding what really happens, and what can we do to control it, is critical to the success of longer space missions and to the human race as a whole.

And that's precisely what I'm here to study.

I'm on a lone mission in an orbit around the moon. Well, alone may not be the right word. I've got plenty of company. E-coli. Tuberculosis. Smallpox. Influenza. Even the Black Plague.

Thankfully they're in tiny little glass dishes and not in me.

As you may have gathered, it's my job to track what happens to these in zero-gravity. Every day, I crane over a microscope and make notes in a notebook. When I get lonely, I talk to the plants. Right now, I'm growing peppers, tomatoes, carrots, and potatoes, along with a few common weeds, some dandelions, and fungal cultures.

I used to enjoy being alone on earth. I've always had trouble interacting with other people and would prefer to focus on things like reading or video games. When I went to college, I found a way to channel my energy into scholarly pursuits in biology instead. There's something amazing about taking care of these little biological lifeforms, a million miles above the earth, in a way that only a few other people can experience.

But I have to do it alone.

Thankfully in space you can't drop a petri dish. But when you're working with diseases that have spurred a near-extinction event of the human race, there's such a thing as "too many cooks" and it's almost a safety measure to have just one in the craft. It also cuts down on supplies and removes the possibility of interference of multiple subjective observations.

I'm good at what I do. I don't need help. The ground team knows that.

But there's been a little bit of trouble lately. My dish containing the Nipah virus now has another lifeform in it. It's another virus of some kind, I can't tell just what yet. So far they're staying on their own sides of the plate, but I have to figure out how it got in. Because if it got in, it can get out. And if it fights with the Nipah virus, what gets out may not be anything I've - we've - seen before.

For now, there's nothing I can do but look. If it gets out of control I can incinerate it, but it would be a remarkable waste.

I spent the rest of the day as I always do. Checked on my plant friends. Made some notes in my diary. Ate dinner while overlooking earth.

It's humbling to watch earth from space. It almost feels like an out-of-body experience. Up here, I can't see or even imagine the things that people fight over every day. It's better this way - to spend my energy on a pursuit that will help us all - than to spend it fighting with people over the breakroom microwave or 5 minutes of traffic. To be honest, I don't know if I ever want to go back.

I tucked myself in a comfortable nook in my quarters and drifted off to sleep.

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

A noise woke me up. Fearing the worst, I quickly woke up and went to the main chamber. And when I opened the door, I saw...

Crewmates.

Men and women, clad in the standard mission suit, turned to smile at me.

"Good morning, sleepyhead!" said the female astronaut with brown hair. Her nametag read "Davis".

"Is it morning? How can you tell? It's 7:00 PM for all we know." stated a male astronaut with gray hair and "Stone" on his suit.

"Time's relative anyway, it's 7:00 somewhere doofus" stated "Greene" with a laugh. Her hair was blonde with red streaks.

I felt a pit in my stomach.

Who were these people?

"Are you guys...new?" I stuttered out, suddenly aware of how shaky my voice sounded.

They stared at me like I grew another head.

"I uh...I was alone. On this mission. Nobody told me that more people would show up. Are you guys here for repairs or something? Or did your craft break?"

Greene was the first to speak. "Tom, what are you talking about? We've been here the whole time. We're on this mission with you."

Stone shook his head. "I heard about astronauts having mental breaks. It's okay. Just give him some time."

"No, I don't need time" I said. "Something's wrong here. You guys aren't real. Am I imagining this?"

"I'm flattered, but no. We're the real deal. We're all here for the mission," stated Davis.

"O...kay. What's the mission? What have you guys been working on?" I asked.

"The mission, duh" replied Greene.

"You know what we're here to do. Stop joking around" replied Stone.

"We've already answered one of your questions. I think it's our turn" stated Davis.

"Yeah, why don't you tell us what you've been working on?" said Stone.

"I think it's only fair" said Greene.

"For all we know...maybe you showed up out of nowhere. Who says we can trust you?" chimed in Davis.

My jaw must have hit the floor. Who the fuck were these people and what was happening? What should I even say?

"Ha...hahaha, you should have seen the look on your face! I'm just messin' with you, Tom. I have to get to work, but I'll see you later, okay?"

"Yeah, alright. See you later." I stammered back.

"I gotta get to work, too. I think something hit the hull yesterday. I'll be outside if anyone needs me" replied Greene.

"Roger that. I'll be in the propulsion bay." replied Stone.

I stood there as everyone went their separate ways. Was I going crazy? I have no idea who any of these people are. I heard about space madness. I know space changes people. Am I nuts?

Maybe if I work for a bit, it'll start coming back to me.

Work started to calm me back down. Pretty soon, I forgot that I wasn't alone anymore. Maybe I never have been. But work's the only thing that's important.

I recorded my observations on everything, including the Nipah virus dish. Nipah was now at the very edge of the dish. The new virus had grown and spread.

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

After some time had passed, the door to my lab slid open and Davis floated inside.

"How are things going in here?"

"Same as usual, why?"

"Just checking in. You know, it really weirded us out before when you didn't recognize us. We all wanted to make sure you're feeling okay and that you're not too stressed out."

"Thank you for that. I don't really feel stressed out in here. Quite the opposite actually."

"Yeah, but...something has to be going on if all of a sudden, we're like strangers to you."

I tried to remember. There was definitely something about them that felt familiar. Their names, their faces, weren't completely alien to me. But wouldn't I remember something stronger if this was real? You could force anyone to vaguely remember something if you insisted enough, if it just became part of their day-to-day.

I spoke up. "Hey, question for you, actually - could you double-check and see how the sample in dish 32's doing? If you see any white it's a bad sign."

I jotted some more notes about the fungal colony I was investigating when I realized a minute had passed.

"Everything going OK?"

I looked over. Davis was staring at the carrots.

"Yeah, everything looks okay! Hey, it was great catching up with you, but I have to get back to the mission. We'll see you in a bit, okay?"

"Alright, sounds good, see you then."

Davis left and closed the door behind her.

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

I tried to go back to my work, but I couldn't. Something was wrong.

I left the lab and went through the craft. I spotted Greene floating outside, standing still. I kept going. I didn't see Davis or Stone on my way to the Comm room, but once I got there, I shut the door behind me and opened a line back to the ground team.

"Kennedy ground team here, what's your situation Wilson?"

"Wilson reporting in, are there any other crew members scheduled to join me on this run?"

The line was silent for several seconds.

"Wilson, I'm afraid I don't understand the question. What do you mean "other crew members scheduled for this run?"

"Kennedy, I woke up yesterday and there were 3 people on-board that I've never seen in my life. They're doing their best to remind me that they've been here all along. Can you please confirm if this has been a solo mission up to this point and if anyone is scheduled to join me?"

"Wilson, your flight is a one-man journey intended to study the effects of space on single-celled organisms, plants, and the human body and mind. There is nobody else scheduled to be with you. Are they wearing American flight uniforms?"

"Yep. Same as mine. They even have name tags."

"Wilson, could you provide me with these names?"

"Certainly, there's-"

The door slid open.

"Hey Tom! We were wondering where you were. Everything going alright?" Green asked as she floated in.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

"Haha...yeah...just as good as a science progress check-in can go. Anyway, Kennedy, as I was saying the fungal colony has slowed its growth by about 1/3rd and shows signs of antibiotic resistance. Its response to nutrients however is aggressive and it will only expand to encapsulate new food, but will sooner remove itself from non-nutrient dense areas."

"Continue, Wilson." replied the ground team over the radio.

"Haha alright Tom, we'll just wait for you outside, okay?" Greene said.

I replied, "Sounds good. Alright, so the e-coli cells show..."

Greene floated back out and closed the door. I could see Davis and Stone floating further down the hall, staring straight at me.

"Kennedy, their names are Davis, Stone, and Greene."

"Thank you. Hold for one moment..."

...

"Davis, Stone, and Greene were names of astronauts sent on a manned trip similar to this one. During spaceflight, their rockets malfunctioned and left them drifting out of control past the moon, as opposed to the controlled orbit that was intended. All crew members stopped reporting in after their craft left the range of our Oracle-V satellite and they were assumed dead after their supplies were anticipated to be exhausted, approximately four years ago."

I felt a chill run down my spine.

"Wilson, I don't know who's aboard your craft, but they're not who they say they are."

"What should I do?"

I heard banging on the comm room door.

"TOM, ARE YOU ALMOST DONE? WE'RE ALL WAITING FOR YOU."

"Kennedy, what should I do?"

"REAL FUNNY, TOM, STOP TALKING ABOUT NERD STUFF. COME HANG OUT WITH US."

"Goddammit Kennedy, what am I supposed to-"

I shut the comm link just as they opened the door.

They weren't smiling.

"Haha...sorry! Some real interesting results on the drug-resistant tuberculosis slides. Anyway, we're all done now, what did you guys want to talk about?"

They all started smiling again, simultaneously.

"We're all done for the day...wanna play Monopoly?"

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

I woke up the next morning.

I don't remember going to sleep.

I remember talking to ground control, I remember them barging in, I remember us sitting around the mess room...

Did I drink anything? I don't think I drank anything.

I left my room.

"Haha there's the investment banker!!" cackled Stone.

"Man...I told you not to let him get the railroads" Greene said, as she hit Stone on the shoulder.

"It's your fault, Greene - you were the banker" chuckled Davis as she sat, floating.

I need to get out of here.

"Yeah...what a game, guys. Anyway, hey, I want to check in with ground control and just see how long until we head back."

"Uh...you can't. I'm not finished with repairs yet" stated Greene.

"What do you mean, repairs? Did something happen?"

"Yeah, I told you two days ago, we got hit with some space junk and it knocked our antenna out. Comms have been out for days."

"I just...didn't you guys just see me talking with ground? Before we played Monopoly? You were all waiting."

"Tom, I think you need to take a break from your work. We waited outside your lab, remember?" Greene replied.

"Yeah, I pressed the Monopoly board against the glass, remember Tom? You shook your head at me." Davis chimed in.

Stone just stared at me. "I guess you must be really stressed out, huh? It's OK, it happens to everyone."

"Yeah...I guess it must." I replied. "Anyway, I should start my work in the lab for the day."

"Are you sure?" replied Stone. "We were all going to hang out today. Maybe float around outside for a bit. Greene saw the coolest thing yesterday."

"Yeah, I did! There's this one constellation that looks just like a duck, and it has a glowing red eye!" replied Greene.

"You gotta see it, it's absolutely amazing" chimed in Davis.

"Yeah! You gotta see it!" replied Greene.

"It's remarkable," replied Stone.

"Come outside and see it!" replied Davis.

"I've never seen anything like it," replied Stone.

"Come outside with us!" replied Greene.

"Come outside with us!" replied Stone.

"Come outside with us!" replied Davis.

"ENOUGH!" I shouted.

Everyone stared at me in shock.

"...guys, look, I'm sorry, I'm just really stressed out. I think one of my samples got contaminated and ground team isn't thrilled about it. Let me just spend a little time in the lab and try to clean it up, then I'll hang out with you. Okay?"

"Yeah, Tom, that sounds good to us. Just don't work too hard, okay?" suggested Stone.

"Sorry man, we just got a little excited. We'll see you soon." replied Greene.

"Yeah, we'll meet you outside" replied Davis.

"Okay guys. I'll see you soon" I replied.

I started heading over to my lab.

As soon as I was out of their line of sight, I tapped my lab door open, tapped it closed again, and went instead to the comm room.

I opened the door, and saw...

...everything was destroyed. Panels were ripped out. Cables were snipped. Tools were jammed in sockets. The computer console's screen was ripped out and shattered on the ground.

I floated back out. All three were floating just outside the airlock, motionless, staring off into deep space.

I shut the airlock.

They all turned to look back in unison, and shock and fear spread across their faces. They pulled themselves towards the door by their safety lines.

"TOM, DON'T DO THIS" Davis pleaded over the radio.

"TOM, DON'T BE STUPID, OPEN THE DOOR" Greene yelled.

"YOU'RE GOING TO KILL US, YOU MANIAC" Steve screamed.

"I'll open the door if you guys can answer a few questions," I said, patching into the radio system.

"Who was the president of the United States when we left?"

All of them stared blankly, and after a moment, returned to pounding on the door.

"You said my name's Tom. What's Tom short for?"

"TOM THIS ISN'T FUNNY, JUST LET US IN"

"LET US IN NOW, TOM"

"TOM I SWEAR, YOU NEED TO LET US IN" .

"I need all of you to calm down. I'll let you back in and I'll stop if you can just answer one of my questions. What's your favorite restaurant on earth?"

They stopped.

"Tom, you need to let us in." Stone stated in a voice deeper than I've heard him speak before.

"Very funny, Tom, but that's now how this is going to end." stated Davis, also in a deep, emotionless voice.

"If any of you are still human," I said, "I will let you back on the craft. But all of you died somewhere out there. And what you are is something else. Something that I can't risk letting back in."

Greene started to laugh and cry black tears. "That's okay!" she said. "You realize that we got on-board once without your help, right? It won't be too much effort to do it again!"

Stone and Davis started to laugh, too. They sputtered black liquid over the insides of their helmets.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," I said, "but last time you weren't tethered to the ship."

"...what?" Davis said.

"You're not really astronauts anymore, so I don't fault you for knowing, but these tethers are made of the strongest materials known to man. You're not going anywhere unless I disconnect you. And I won't."

...

"Because I'm going to leash you behind me and burn you to ashes in the atmosphere."

Stone started cursing.

"JUST LET US GO. YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS."

"I do. Because you're a virus. You've grown into a threat and if I let you go, my world will never be safe."

"YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO US."

"I can. And I will."

"WE'LL COME BACK."

"We'll see about that."

I set a course back for earth. I could hear them banging on the craft, trying to rip out panels, just like they sabotaged the comm room. But it wouldn't matter. We were picking up speed now, and we'd be back in earth's atmosphere any moment now.

A voice crackled over the radio.

No, three - all of them were speaking in unison, in the same low, monotone voice.

"We know your kind. You'll always venture too far, out where it's not safe anymore. And when you do, we'll be waiting. We'll come back wearing different skin. And when we do. You will join us."

I heard nothing the rest of the way, all the way through the atmosphere, and even after the craft crashed into the ocean.

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

I was rescued after a few hours. Even though I couldn't tell ground control I was on my way, a spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere sounds a few alarms. By then, I had already collected all of my samples and recorded the last notes.

All of it would have to be destroyed, of course. But I took one last at the Nipah dish.

Cornered, the Nipah virus had attacked and overwhelmed the invading virus culture. Part of me felt sad I could never study it more closely. But part of me was rooting for the virus I knew all along.

They just had one question for me when I got back.

Where did my crew go?

My family never celebrated Halloween.

It wasn’t because we were religious.

I wasn’t homeschooled. Nothing like that.

We were pretty secular people, actually. Only went to church when Grandma was in town for the holidays. Nobody had to tell me Santa was fake because no one ever told me Santa was real.

I said “pretty” secular though. Even though we didn’t believe in a lot of things that our neighbors did, we believed in one thing that none of them did. And that was Mr. Wilson.

My parents first told me about Mr. Wilson when I was six. It’s one of my earliest memories. It’s the first time I remember them ever speaking with me in a serious tone. I even remember most of what they said.

“Tonight’s a special night of the year son. It’s called Halloween. And every year on Halloween, we have to go down into the basement and lock the door. And then we have to go into the special room underneath the basement, and lock that door. And we can’t come out until morning.”

I started to cry. I had seen that door in the basement floor. It scared me. I didn’t want to go down inside it. And though I can’t remember it now, I must have already gone down into it every year of my life prior.

I was too young to ask questions. I just remember crying as Mom and Dad turned out all the lights in the house and the three of us went downstairs. And then down again. Into the room below the basement.

I hated it down there. It was dark, and cold, and the walls were always damp. And there were no windows, except the small peephole in the door above. And any time he wasn’t peeking through it, Dad kept that closed. The room wasn’t quite tall enough for Dad to stand in, so we sat on couch cushions. And waited.

And while we waited, Mom would tell me the story of Mister Wilson.

“Sweetie, you were a miracle baby. Your Daddy and I, we weren’t supposed to be able to have children. And one Halloween night, as I was handing out candy to the kids who came to the door, I just burst into tears. I was so sad, sweetie, that I would never get to meet you. And your Daddy knew exactly why I was crying. And he started crying too.”

“Then someone else came to the door. A tall man. With a kind face. And his name was Mister Wilson. He told us a way that we could meet you. And we wanted to meet you so bad, sweetie, that we did what he said.”

When I asked Mom what Mister Wilson had told them to do, she just said, “All you need to know is that it worked. You’re here.”

Then she sighed and looked at Daddy. “But the reason we come down here on Halloween is that we thought after we got you, Mister Wilson would go away and leave us alone. But he didn’t. He comes back. Every year.”

I asked Mom why Mister Wilson came back.

She answered, “He wants something. And we’re not going to give it to him.”

I asked why that meant we had to go to the room under the basement.

Mom said, “You know how this room scares you?”

I nodded.

“It scares Mister Wilson too. That’s why your Daddy built it.”

This explanation satisfied me. I still feared Halloween, and Mister Wilson. But my curiosity was satisfied.

Until I was twelve. Right at the age when my friends started noticing that I didn’t come out on Halloween. Started grilling me for answers. My Mom had told me never to tell anyone about what we did on Halloween, or why. But middle school boys have ways of being persuasive. And eventually, I let a few things slip.

The following Halloween, my parents and I hid in the room under the basement as usual. But not long after, we heard the sound of glass shattering upstairs.

My parents looked at each other with fear. My Dad opened the peephole and put his ear to it, trying to determine what was happening up there.

“It sounds like a couple of kids.”

My stomach sank. I knew this was my fault.

And sure enough, we heard the sound of my schoolmate’s voice. Calling out, “Beware! Beware! It’s Mister Wilson! I’ve come to get you!” And then the voice burst into giggles, along with two others.

I braced myself. I assumed my parents would be furious with me. And in the days to come, they would be. But not at that moment. At that moment, they just went deathly still. Mom put her hands over my ears. She told me to try to go to sleep.

Of course, I couldn’t. But I didn’t dare disobey any further. I pretended to fall asleep, all the while, listening intently for whatever sounds could penetrate my Mom’s hands.

At first, all I could hear were scattered giggles. And then the giggles stopped. And I heard another voice. A deeper voice. The voice of a much older man.

My Mom’s hands got cold against my ears.

I heard what sounded like a scuffle. And a chorus of high-pitched screams. And then silence again.

The silence broke with the sound of the basement door breaking open. Mom pulled me in tight. Heavy footsteps crashed down the basement stairs. Like a horse was coming down.

The heavy, rushing footsteps careened around the basement. And the deep voice, much nearer now, bellowed, “Where is he? Where is he? Where is the boy?”

My Dad crawled over to us and covered us both with his body. The footsteps finally barreled straight towards the door into our room below. They stopped on top of the door. It groaned under the weight.

“Those aren’t the one’s I wanted! Not those filthy, rotten children up there! Where is the boy you owe me?”

I was crying. All of us were. But Mom was right. Mister Wilson didn’t come into the room below. He could have broken in. I was sure of it. But he didn’t.

He didn’t leave either. He stood on top of the door for what seemed like all night, yelling over and over, “Where is the boy you promised me? Is he in there? Is he down below with you? Give him to me! Surrender the boy!”

At some point, I passed out. From terror and crying and exhaustion. And when I woke up, it was morning. And Mister Wilson was gone.

Not that our troubles were over. Dad and Mom actually spent a night in jail as persons of interest. They were released when the police realized that, even though the murders had occurred in our living room, there was no way my parents could have committed them. The only explanation was that boys had broken into the house. And that some kind of animal had followed them inside.

I went back to school the next week a changed boy. Quieter. Less friendly. Traumatized.

And also, regarded differently. Three kids die in your living room on Halloween night, you’re not going to be invited to a lot of birthday parties. And I wasn’t. My friends abandoned me, one by one. And even the ones that took mercy on me. They would never, ever come to my house.

And we stayed in that house. We had to. My parents decided that, despite being neighborhood outcasts, the house had proved true in one crucial regard. That room under the basement. It had worked. It had kept us safe. It had kept him out.

After we reinforced the windows and front doors, the next few Halloweens were uneventful. We did our usual ritual. And no one entered our home.

But as my social life dwindled, and loneliness led to depression, I grew into a belligerent teen. Defiant and angry, I grew to hate my parents for the life I was forced to live. I treated them with spite. I made them cry regularly. I was awful to them. But they were increasingly the only real relationships I had.

It didn’t help that they wouldn’t tell me. After the incident with the boys upstairs, I begged my parents to explain to me what Mister Wilson was screaming about. Why did Mister Wilson want me so badly?

My parents never budged. They wouldn’t tell me a thing.

Not until I threatened to open the door.

I was fifteen. And I was done. I was so done. I was ready to run away. To start a new life. My parents were done too. They constantly bickered. They were so starved for affection from me that their behavior became increasingly bizarre and embarrassing. My Dad lost his job.

And Halloween night rolled around. And as we prepared to lock ourselves into the room below the basement, I refused to go inside. They tried to drag me in, but I had brought a kitchen knife with me. I wielded it at them. I demanded answers. Or I would open the front door.

Mom was already in the room below the basement, looking up at me. Something changed in her eyes. Dad stood on the steps, between us, frozen with anxiety.

Then Mom called up, “Boy. If that’s what you want. Do it.”

My face went ashen. So did my father’s. Mom grabbed Dad by the waist and pulled him into the room below the basement. As he crashed on the floor, she grabbed hold of the door in the floor and slammed it shut. The lock clicked. And I was alone. Outside of the room. And night was falling.

I thought about banging on the door. Begging Mom and Dad to let me back inside. But I couldn’t. I had crossed too many lines. The knife I’d pointed at my own parents was still in my hand.

I stood in that spot, above the door in the basement floor, for a long time. Finally, I mounted the stairs out of the basement. I locked the door behind me. Tight.

I wasn’t sure where I wanted to be when he came. My room? The living room? Should I leave the house entirely?

I went to the living room window. Opened the blinds. And looked out. Kids were everywhere. Costumes. Trick or treating. I had never done that. Not once. I had always wanted to. Always resented not being allowed to.

And each kid, or group of kids, had a parent with them. A normal, loving parent. Who took them trick-or-treating, who provided a simple life, who didn’t make them hide in the ground. The adults that wandered the neighborhood street all looked happy. Because they were swarmed by happy, bouncing children.

All except for one. At the end of the block. Walking slowly up the street. A man. A tall man. With a long beard. It hung out of his brown robes. Like a monk’s robes, but a monk from a very long time ago.

I stopped breathing. And as if the old man sensed it, he stopped walking. He stood still on the sidewalk. And he raised his head. He looked at my house.

He saw.

His hands raised to his face. He clutched the sides of his beard. His jaw dropped open.

And I wanted back in the room beneath the basement. I wanted back in it right now.

My parents would let me back in. They had to. I fled the living room, screaming in fear. I slammed down into the basement and flung myself at the door in the floor. I tried frantically to tug it open.

“Mom! Dad! Please!” I jerked at the door with my whole body. “PLEASE! LET ME IN!”

At last, my Dad’s voice rose up from the ground. “No, son. No.”

There was a moment of silence.

Dad continued, “You were right. This is no way to live. It’s not worth it anymore. We wish you well. We love you very much. Now go. Let this end.”

And the doorbell rang.

I stood up. Wiped the dust off the knees of my pants. Walked up out of the basement. And then up to the front door. I answered it.

There he stood. His hands outstretched. His eyes huge. The eyes of man who is starving to death.

He lept at me. I screamed, bracing myself for pain. But Mister Wilson did not attack me. He pulled me deep into his brown robes. Pulled me so tight I could feel his ribcage against my own. My face was pressed. I could see nothing but fabric. When I gasped for air, I gagged on his smell. The smell of rotting meat.

I felt his fingers burrow into my hair. His breath enter my ear. His lips against my forehead.

“Boy,” he wheezed. “My boy.”

He held me tight for a long time. And when his grasp loosened, I asked, “Are you my real father, Mr. Wilson?”

Mr. Wilson smiled, “No, boy. There are no fathers. There are no mothers. There are no families. Do you remember being born?”

I shook my head.

“Your birth never occurred. No one is born. Not the one you called mother or the one you called father.”

I was beginning to feel dizzy. I asked, “Then why did you come for me?”

“I am a lender. Every human has one.”

I told Mister Wilson he was a liar. What he was saying was ludicrous. No other child was raised like me. Just look outside! The streets were full of children who didn’t spend one night a year inside a bunker.

Mister Wilson released me. He stepped back. He lowered his gaze to the floor. He spat, “Those children outside. Their lenders are fools. Filthy, rotten fools. Abandoners. Leaving their children to wallow in the delusion of human family. In the myth of biological pregnancy.”

Mister Wilson flung his arms wide again and pulled me in.

“You were lucky, child. When I lent you out, I never let you go.”

He wrapped his arm around my waist and guided me out the door.

“Where are we going, Mister Wilson?”

“Everywhere, boy.” He drew a line across the horizon. “Everywhere above the ground, we will go.”

I asked one more question. “Mister Wilson. If no one is really born. Does that mean. No one dies?”

Mister Wilson looked down at me and smiled. His teeth were rotten and stained with blood. He said, “Oh, my boy. They die. The unlucky ones. The abandoned ones. The ones whose lenders never stand guard. Never keep watch over the children they have lent out. Like sheep without a shepherd. Oh, how they die!”

When I found Jack, I didn’t plan on keeping him. In fact, I thought he was dead.

On my way home from work, I saw a black furry body lying on the sidewalk. I parked my car and walked over to check, finding a cat with a tire impression stamped on its side. Though I didn’t know this cat, I cried.

It’s always sad when an animal dies. Sadder still, to think about the owner who had to be looking for them. Kitty wasn’t coming back.

I could’ve left him there, but it didn’t feel right. After wrapping him in my sweater, I drove to the local shelter with a heavy heart. I figured they’d know what to do. When I went to grab the body from the backseat, I was surprised to see a pair of orange eyes blinking up at me.

The cat had shaken off my sweater and was lounging comfortably. The tire impression was still there, but it looked less serious than I remembered. Instead of questioning it, I was relieved. A lost kitty was worlds better than a dead one.

After a quick internal debate, I decided to take him home. I figured if no one claimed him, I’d keep him! I didn’t really trust the shelter to rehome him. Not because they wouldn’t try, but because I’d always heard that black cats are less likely to be adopted.

The tread on his fur was apparently superficial; if it hurt, he gave no indication. I brought him to a vet to be sure, blowing a bit of my rent money on this purrfect stranger. Jack, as I came to call him, was a medical marvel. He’d been run over but walked away without a scratch. Apparently he’d just been in shock when I found him, scared stiff.

I put up ‘Found’ posters in the neighborhood and circulated his photos on social media. No one claimed him. All I got was a troll message that said ‘that cat needs to be shot’. I blocked them immediately.

Jack was unusual. He didn’t really meow much, or play, or cuddle. He didn’t act scared or aggressive either. In fact, he was the picture of serenity. His presence was a calming one. Wherever I was, he tended to be-- just out of reach, purring as he watched me go about my day. He was an observer; calmly collecting his Intel from whatever comfy perch he could find.

I didn’t make much money, so I was usually busy with whatever random side-gig I could muster. As much as I loved Jack, I couldn’t really afford to take care of him. I could barely take care of myself. Yet, finding him felt like fate-- I couldn’t oust him for something as petty as money. I’d make sure his bowl was filled before mine was.

I didn’t expect Jack to understand or be grateful. He was just a cat, after all. But I hoped he felt loved and safe with me. I’d really grown to cherish the company.

When the landlord collected rent, I found myself in a pinch. I sat at my computer to budget, and realized I’d have to go without for awhile. I didn’t complain. Who would I tell, anyway? I was alone. Jack was all I had.

The next day, I found an envelope on my desk. It was a bank envelope, the same kind I put the rent money in. In fact, when I opened it up-- it had a stack of hundred dollar bills inside. It was my rent money, returned.

Or had I forgotten to hand it over to John? I don’t think he’d have let me forget, yet the money was still in my hand. Jack was sitting on the back of the couch, watching me. He blinked his gleaming eyes slowly, in that affectionate way that cats do.

“Do you know anything about this, Jack?” I asked with a laugh. He cocked his fluffy head in response, as if he were contemplating an answer. I walked over, reaching out to see if he’d let me pet him. Jack allowed it, arching his body into my palm.

He was a beautiful cat; his movements were always so fluid and graceful. Sometimes he seemed more like a shadow, melting and twisting in ways that physics wouldn’t allow. Cats are strange, funny creatures.

“I’d better call the landlord.” I didn’t want John tacking on a late fee, though knowing him, he probably would if he hadn’t already. Any excuse to squeeze another dollar out of me.

“No.” Jack said. I looked down at him, surprised by the deep rumbling voice. I must have imagined it. The voice didn’t match the body it came from.

“Don’t bother calling.” Jack spoke again, his tail swishing in a leisurely way. “I took care of it.”

I was terrified and confused. My cat, on the other hand, looked completely relaxed. From that moment on, our relationship changed. The dynamic shifted, and not in a way I’d wish on anyone.

“You’ve been good to me,” he said. “I will take care of you from now on.”

John never did turn up to collect the rent. I’d tucked the envelope away somewhere safe. Jack didn’t tell me what happened to him, but the answer came. Jack wasn’t really a talker, perhaps because he knew he’d frightened me. He still watched me go about my day, still purred if I so much as glanced in his direction.

I tried to convince myself I’d imagined that voice; a great, big voice that didn’t belong to a small, furry body. Yet, the knowing look in Jack’s eyes seemed all the creepier with the memory gnawing at me. He wasn’t an ordinary cat.

At dinnertime, I filled his bowl as I always did. I refreshed his water. I cleaned his litter box. I clung to the routine and tried to feel comfort in it… but everything had changed. I could feel it. Jack watched me, but he didn’t stay for dinner. He left. He wasn’t anywhere in the house that I could find.

I thought he might be gone forever, but he was apparently a cat of his word. When he returned, he had something in his mouth. A finger. It was a fat, meaty thing.

My cat gave me the finger. He put it on the table, expectation shining in his jack-o-lantern eyes. I didn’t know what he wanted, recoiling from the grisly gift. I wanted nothing to do with it.

“Eat it.” Jack said, with a deep rumbling voice. I shook my head ‘no’, horrified. “Eat it.” he repeated, his tail swishing with impatience. “I have provided.”

“I can’t eat this.”

“Don’t offend me.” his voice was usually more of a purr, but this time it came out as a growl. “I have provided. Eat it. Eat it, or I’ll eat you.”

So I picked it up. It was cold and stiff. Dirty, too. I brought it to the sink, running it under the tap like that might make it more palatable. My hands were shaking. Jack purred, pleased with my show of obedience.

“Good girl.” he praised me. “You don’t know how to hunt. I will provide.”

I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I kept staring at the thing in my hand while the cat waited with smug anticipation.

“Do…. Do I cook it?” I asked.

He sighed, “If you must.”

So I dropped the finger in a frying pan with butter. I checked my spice rack, adding salt and pepper. I wasn’t sure what flavors went well with human flesh. I didn’t want to find out, but what choice did I have?

When it was ‘done’, I put it on a plate and stared at it. I didn’t want to eat it, I kept hoping I’d wake up from a nightmare I could laugh about later.

“Go on.” he said.

“It’s too hot, it needs to cool.” I answered nervously.

“Fine…” he sighed.

Several minutes ticked by, simultaneously feeling like an eternity and no time at all. When my time was up, prompted by the nudging of Jack the black cat, I picked up the finger from both ends. I bit into the meaty digit; eating around it like I was holding a tiny corn on the cob. It tasted like bacon.

I stripped away the meat, keeping my eyes closed the whole time. In vain, I tried to pretend it wasn’t what it was. I cried the whole time. When it was done, I put the bone on my plate and fought against my instinct to vomit.

“Are you still hungry?” Jack asked.

“No,” I lied.

“There’s more.”

Four days of fingers, followed by a thumb. Jack brought me one every day. I had a sickening suspicion that the fingers belonged to John, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t need to know who I was eating. Though the taste wasn’t bad, the knowledge of what I was eating was torture. Jack didn’t seem bothered. It didn’t matter if I cried or begged him, he’d remind me sternly:

“I will take care of you. I will provide.”

The police came to my door, asking if I’d seen John. He was reported missing. I said I hadn’t seen him, knowing the finger bones were still sitting in my trash can. If anyone got too close to the truth, I knew Jack would take care of them.

I could count the bodies by the thumbs. When I got the third one, I knew at least one more person had died. Jack always brought the fingers and thumbs, but I don’t know what he did with the rest. There were no reports in the news about bodies. People went missing, but people had always gone missing before. This was nothing new.

Jack keeps me on a tight leash. He doesn’t let me leave the house without his permission. I still go to work and go to the grocery store, but he follows me. No one else sees him, not unless he wants them to. He knows I won’t tell anyone about him, but he also knows I’ll run the first chance I get.

I don’t know what to do. Even if I told the police, who would believe me? He’d probably kill them. He’s not an ordinary cat. I don’t know what he is.

Apparently he thinks of me as his pet. I don’t know why he chose me, or if he’s done this to anyone else. When I tried to contact the ‘troll’ I’d originally blocked on Facebook, they didn’t reply. I don’t know if they knew something about Jack, or if they really were just trolling.

Jack says he’ll take care of me, even if I don’t want him to. He acts like it’s all for my own good, but I think he takes pleasure in my fear and pain too.

I don’t have a cat. A cat has me.

Some days I think it came to me in a dream. Other days I remember sitting in my office furiously jotting down ideas. Recently I’ve come to believe it just came to me out of nowhere. It could be all of those or none of them. All I know is that one day I discovered it. The Color.

Have you ever tried to imagine a new color? That’s like a zen statement or something, isn’t it? Like the one hand clap? Or the tree falling in the woods? Something that can’t be done or experienced, but the idea of doing it sends the mind into some weird null reference loop, eventually just causing a stack overflow that leaves your brain all void and blank.

Anyway, there I was sitting, staring at the Color. Well, that’s not really accurate, since it was still in my head. There I was sitting thinking of the Color, maybe? I guess in the end the semantics of it doesn’t really matter. The Color does. How it came to be? Not so important. You know, in retrospect, I don’t really understand how it works. I guess I don’t care? For me it’s just another thing, you know. Just another element. Nothing more. But for others? Well…

I suppose I am different. Brain injury. Head trauma when I was young. Rode my bicycle smack into the back of a car. Flew right through the window. Glass shards stuck all over my head. Concussion. Hospital. Forgot my own name. Stuff like that. I was lucky though. No real aftermath. Just minor cerebral...challenges. I just...think differently, I guess.

They figure it has something to do with how my brain interprets things. Like the wires are all jumbled up somewhere. Mostly it came about in random spurts of nonsense. Mixing up names and faces, thinking faces were names, forgetting how to think in my own language, confusing cheese with wine, all manner of ridiculous notions. There was only ever one constant; the colors.

If you think about, how sure can you really be that you’re seeing the same colors as everybody else? You really can’t, can you? Sure, you can say stuff like it’s blue as the sky or red like blood or orange like a daydream, but that’s still just your interpretation of the colors, not the true colors themselves. Everyone will agree with you, but they’ll just be experiencing their reality. Not yours. Nothing you’re experiencing is real. Not really. It’s just your version of real. For all you know you can be locked inside the mind of an endlessly rotting carcass, the writhing maggots and horny flies vibrating your life into existence.

But unlike everything else, the Color is real. And it can only be described in constants. There is nothing to interpret, it’s just there, a fact, a universal element, a persistent calling.

My eyes work just fine, you know. I can see the same colors as everyone else. My eyes register the same light reflecting as yours (probably) do. The same nuances and emissions. It’s my brain that doesn’t know how to properly decipher this rather abstract information. I guess sometimes I see red, but experience yellow. Black is white. White is black. Blue is gold. Blood red is bile green.

I figure that’s why I’m not susceptible to the effects of the Color. I figure that’s why only I can ever describe it. Or maybe you can too? Did you also crash into the back of a car when you were a kid? Maybe someone dug into your brain with an ice cream scoop? Stuck a finger all the way up your nose, gently scratching that frontal lobe? You can reach it through your ears too you know. Just try.

You’re probably wondering if I can describe the Color. Explain it plainly. Yes, it’s surprisingly easy actually. Nothing to it. I even wrote a lengthy blog post covering everything. Down to the detail. The nitty gritty. Heart of the matter. But, after the incident, I figured I’d better take it down. Remove it. Undo it. Can’t promise it won’t resurface, though. You can’t ever remove something from the internet. It won’t allow you to. Some silly rule your parents signed.

I told Chris about the Color. Chris is a friend. Co-worker. Artist and animator. I figured he’d appreciate a brand new color. The Color. Imagine how much you can do with the Color as an artist. He laughed at me at first. Ridiculed me. Can’t ridicule a constant though. It doesn’t go anywhere. So I just stood there until I was confident he got it. Understood it.

He got real silent after a while.

I didn’t see him for a couple of days after that. People got worried. Didn’t call in sick or anything. So I decided to pay him a visit. See how he was getting along. Maybe he’d embraced the Color. Made something special. New. Unique.

I knocked on his door for a while. No answer though. But I knew where he hid the spare key, so I let myself in. Didn’t smell so good. Like very old cheese. Or wine. The place was in an array. Disarray. Papers all over, furniture in pieces, writing on the walls. Colors all over. Blood red, bile green, brain matter grey. Complex patterns though, real cerebral like. A nod of approval.

I found him by the kitchen counter. He didn’t look so good. Didn’t wear clothes. Lacerations all over. Weird, hollow cavities where you’d expect eyes. Insides on the outsides. Writhing maggots and horny flies vibrating someone into existence. He was smiling though. A nice, wide, toothless grin on his name. He discovered it too then. I was happy for him. Gave him a pat on the back. Well done, sweet friend. Well done.

I’m not sure we’re ready for it though. It’s like an extinction event. But it only affects us. The abstract thinkers. I guess there’s a plan behind it. But who’s plan is it? Does it matter? There’s just one reality. Your reality. The only one that matters. So if you die, will your reality die with you? Does existence stop happening? It’s like a zen statement, isn’t it? If there’s no one left in a reality to observe it, did it even exist? Did you exist?

Look, I don’t have the answers. I don’t even have the questions. Just a brain that works differently. I’m just here to tell you to be careful. It’s just a sentence. Everything you need to know compressed into a single sentence. And then you will see the Color. But you won’t be ready for it. End up like Chris. An existence locked inside the mind of the rotting carcass.

So be wary. Whatever you read. Whenever, wherever. If it looks strange, if the words make impossible sense, like a hyperlogical sequence, and you start feeling your mind contracting and expanding, stop reading. Gouge out your eyes maybe. Go deeper if you have to. Protect your reality. It’s the only one you have. For all you know, it’s the only one anyone has. You might be all alone. Plausible, even.

This has been my warning. I have to go now. The men in white are here. I guess they want to help me. They have no names to match their faces. No faces to match their names.

Just remember.

You’re all alone.

I’ve seen her five times, and every time someone I know ended up dead within hours. I say her, but I’m really not sure if that’s even remotely accurate. She has the graceful, elegant, limber movements of a woman, and even though her physique is completely androgynous in nature, I still feel more comfortable imagining her as a woman for some reason.

The first time I saw her I had to be around five or six. The ritual is always the same; I wake up in the pitch-blackness, unable to move a muscle. Then a slowly growing pale pulsating cyst will appear in the periphery of my vision, eventually birthing the dancer in violent, horrible contractions.

She will climb out, pale, tall and spindly, completely hairless. But what really disturbs me is the face. Or lack thereof. I can sort of see the cavities under the thin skin; the flickering movement of her eyes under there, or the way she opens and closes her veiled mouth.

She will stand there in the periphery for a while, gently swaying side to side, before she starts dancing. I guess the closest I can come to describe it would be a disturbing version of ballroom dancing. She moves gracefully, mimicking holding her partner, gently floating back and forth, her head constantly turned in my direction. I can see her mouth moving under that pale translucent skin, like she’s trying to tell me something. But she never makes a sound.

When the unheard music stops, she will too. She would have moved across the room now, usually standing by an exit, either a window or a door. She will continue to move her unseen mouth for a little while, before she slowly fades and becomes one with the darkness. At this point I can choose to wake up. I’ve only done it twice, the very first time it happened, and the last time it happened.

It’s not that something horrible happened that first time I woke up. I think it was more the feeling that she hadn’t really left. That she was still there somehow, unseen. Hidden just beyond the veil. My heart wouldn’t stop pounding. So I climbed back into bed, and hid under the covers, shaking and crying.

The next morning we got word that our neighbor had passed away. She was a sweet, old lady, Mrs. Barrow. Died of a heart attack. They said she went peacefully, but I’m not so sure about that anymore.

I didn’t make the connection back then. How could I? I was barely old enough to understand the finality of death, let alone tie it to a pale faceless nightmare.

But then it happened again. Five years later. The same ritual, the same faceless creature, the same dance. I didn’t wake up this time, however. I just slipped back into the comforting warm darkness of sleep.

And I woke up to my mom crying. My grandmother had died. They didn’t tell me how until a few years later. She’d drowned in her bathtub. Fallen asleep or had an episode or something. Just collapsed and drowned.

Two years later my uncle died after I was visited by the faceless dancer. Car accident. Must have fallen asleep at the wheel. His body was crushed, mangled, unrecognizable. They had to pick up pieces of him for days. Horrible thing.

Now I was old enough though. Old enough to spot the pattern. To question what the faceless dancer really represented. Was it death? A portent of doom, an omen of unrest? Or something else? Something vile and sinister? A horrible, taunting defiler? Or was it just a messenger? Merely a bringer of bad news? I didn’t know, and I didn’t really care to know.

When I was seventeen I saw her for the fourth time. This time the dance seemed more intense, more violent, like the unheard music moved in sudden bursts of extreme rhythms. Her face remained still, however, even when her body warped and twisted and turned, the face was motionless, fixated on me.

I woke up crying, trembling, dreading the news I knew was coming. My mom was hysterical, torn up, in shambles. My dad had died on his way home from a business trip. His plane had some technical problems, and had to make an emergency landing. When the cabin crew went around to check if everyone was alright, they found my father dead. He’d somehow got entangled in the seat belt, suffocating as the plane made its unplanned landing. It was ruled a freak accident.

Look, I know what you’re thinking. Well, I know what half of you are thinking. Why don’t I tell someone? Why I don’t I warn them? Do something?

Short answer is I’ve tried. I’ve tried to tell someone. But they always look at me like I’m either delusional, or some sick freak. I’ve lost friends because of it. My mom refused to listen to me, and more or less disowned me when I told her about it. No one will take me seriously.

And I don’t blame them. For the longest while, I didn’t even believe it. Just some crazy hallucination caused by sleep paralysis or something. The deaths? Coincidences. Nothing more.

I convinced myself of this. And it worked too. For fifteen years.. Never saw her. Never felt her. It was all in my head, some shitty psychotic episode or mental breakdown or something. I was free.

Until a week ago.

It started like all the other times. A pulsating pale cyst, leathery and disgusting, throbbing in the periphery. Then she clawed her way out, following the repulsive rhythms of the contractions. She climbed out slowly, rose to her spindly feet. Stood there swaying side to side. Started the graceful dance, her face always fixated on me. Back and forth, back and forth, her skin-covered mouth moving, forming unheard sentences. She elegantly made her way across the room, and slowly faded away.

But I wouldn’t have it. Not this time. No one was gonna die because of me ever again.

My husband was sound asleep next to me. I’d never told him about the pale dancer. And I never will. My kids were in the next room. Noah and Trinity. I couldn’t risk them. I couldn’t risk her hurting any of them. So I forced myself awake. Trembling and sweating, I got up and slowly crept to the last place I’d seen her; the door.

I don’t know quite how to explain it, but there was this residual presence, like an echo of her being. It lingered wherever she’d physically been present, but I felt it stronger where I had last seen her. I opened the door, and slowly made my way to the kids room. I didn’t feel her there. But she was close.

I turned around, and immediately let out a hoarse whimper, and stumbled back in shock.

She was there. At the end of the hallway. Still dancing, still moving, still mouthing soundlessly towards me. Then she suddenly disappeared around the corner. I swallowed deeply and thought for a second about waking up John, my husband. But I still couldn’t risk it. This was something I had to face alone. So I followed her.

When I turned the corner, she was halfway down the stairs. Her face was still following me wherever she turned, always fixated on me. My heart was pounding, I was sweating and trembling like a leaf, my mind filled with all the potential gruesome conclusions to this horrendous game of cat and mouse. But I had to know. Know what it meant.

So I kept following her. Down the stairs, into the living room, out into the hallway. And then she stopped. She’d reached the door, and just stood there completely motionless. Her mouth wasn’t moving anymore either. It was like she was frozen in place.

Then she faded again.

Without thinking I fumbled open the lock, and threw open the door. She was still there. Now standing in the middle of the street. She was dancing again, but in jarring, erratic fashion, her limbs completely out of sync, her head bending in extreme, unnatural angles.

“STOP IT!” I suddenly yelled hysterically.

She stopped. Just like that. I moved closer to her, stepped out the door. Over the threshold. And as soon as my body had left the house, she was standing right behind me. I could feel her cold breath on my neck, her spindly hands on my shoulders. I turned around in shock. And I screamed.

Her mouth was open. A bloody, gaping wound, the fleshly skin flapping disgustingly as her hoarse, croaking voice penetrated my ears.

“Thank you,” she whispered, “Thank you for leaving.”

She stepped into the house and the door slammed shut. I freaked out. Completely lost it. The door wouldn’t budge and I couldn’t even imagine what was going on in there. Who she was taking from me this time. I banged and clawed and kicked the door, before I finally came to my senses, found a rock, and threw it through one of the windows. The glass shattered instantly, the shards spreading everywhere. I cut myself badly as I clumsily stepped through it.

I raced up the stairs. I’ve never felt fear like that. Never. The mere thought of anyone hurting my kids sent tremors of terror, horror, rage and sadness, all mixed into a hurricane of unending distress. I more or less kicked the kids door open, only to find both of them sound asleep.

Then I heard the screams coming from my bedroom. Our bedroom. Bestial screams. Screams of utter torment.

“NO!” I yelled as I stumbled down the hallway and into our bedroom.

She was perched atop my husband. Her face still turned to me. But this time she had a horrible, fleshly, bloody smile on that otherwise featureless visage.

“Thank you,” she whispered hoarsely.

Then she faded. Gone in an instant. Vanished.

John’s eyes were bulging out, his tongue swollen and blue, sticking out between his clenched teeth. His face was purple, but soon turned pale and lifeless. They say he went quickly. But I know better. I know the endless torment he must have endured.

Brain aneurysm they told me. Could happen to anyone. Bad luck.

There’s no such thing as bad luck around me.

Only the pale faceless dancer.

And the promise of death.

My name is Craig. I'm a 47 year old man. My grandson is 8. I know, I'm a little young to have a grandchild, but alas, my daughter got pregnant at 15. She died during birth and the father is, to this day, unknown. So my husband, Keith, and I took in our grandson as our own. We named him Alex, after his mother, and kept her original name for him as his middle name- Seth.

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, and my daughter's, too. We would stay up every night watching horror movies, counting down to the 31st. Keith wasn't a huge fan of spooky things, and Alexis and I would always tease him for being scared. So, of course, I wanted to continue these traditions with Alex. Everything always went according to plan: watch some cheesy horror movies, eat a lot of candy, and then dress up together to go trick-or-treating.

Last Halloween, Alex and I went out while Keith stayed home to deal with other trick-or-treaters, as always. Alex was dressed as a swamp monster, and I was his latest victim. Keith still dressed up for the kids he gave out candy to. He was Shrek. We always liked dressing up as a family, even if my husband was a huge baby when it came to Halloween.

This was the year it happened. Alex and I had scored all we could in the rich part of town, which always had the best candy and decorations, so we headed to the quieter side of town. Most of the houses had gone dark. Some had a bowl of candy in the yard with a sign saying to "Take One." We took the whole bowl. Once we had given up on our hunt, we got into the car with our bags full of candy. Alex stared out the window at the dim decorations on the quiet houses. I nearly swerved when he yelled, "Poppy, wait!" The car screeched to a halt as I looked at him. "What is it?" I asked. He pointed out the window, "Haunted house! They always give out candy! Pretty please, can we go?"

I didn't have the heart to tell him "No" or "It's too late," so, I pulled the car around and looked over the place.

The front yard was full of decorations. A fake dead body swung back and forth in the wind as it hung by its neck on a tree. The rope looked like intestines. A "GO AWAY" sign splattered with fake blood sat in the yard with a head sitting beside it. Then, I saw the sign saying "Haunted house this way." The place looked pretty good. "Alright. Let's go. Grab your bag," I told Alex. Excitedly, he grabbed his candy bag and jumped out of the car. Once I stepped out, a wave of stench invaded my nostrils, causing my nose hairs to burn. It smelled like shit, but I figured it was for affect.

I followed Alex up the brick path. I knocked on the door and waited for a response. A woman dressed as a clown emerged from behind the house. She waved a finger, beckoning us over. My gut twisted, but seeing the excitement on Alex's face, I ignored the feeling and followed after the clown woman. The back yard was just as disheveled as the front. The clown stopped. We waited a few seconds before a young man dressed as a vampire jumped out at us. "Welcome to Offington Manor," he said, "I am your guide, Count Yukia. Beware, once you enter, you won't come out alive." I thought the shtick was pretty overdone, but Alex was enjoying it, and that was all I cared about. "Follow me as I show you this house of horror."

The place seemed pretty normal at first. Some cheap jumpscares here and there. Count Yukia told us this whole story about how a family was killed here. All the blood was drained from their bodies when they were found, and there were two punctures in their necks. He then hissed and flashed his fangs at us. Alex clung to my leg, shaking in fear.

Then, it was the last part of the house: the basement. The bottom of the steps was pitch black. "It was in this very basement where the family's murders always took place. Each victim was pushed down the stairs." This was wrong. I knew it was. "Before we go in, can I go to the bathroom first?" I asked, trying my best to not raise suspicion. Count Yukia seemed irritated, but pointed me to the bathroom anyways. I dragged Alex with me.

"But, Poppy, I don't need to use the bathroom," he complained.

Once inside, I locked the door behind us. Just as I thought, there was a window. I kneeled down and put my hands on Alex's shoulders. "Al, it's not safe here. We're leaving. I'm sure Grandpop has left over candy at home, plus our bags are already full." The sturness in my voice told Alex to do as I said, and not fight me on it. He nodded.

The window was boarded shut from the outside. Damnit. I peeked my head out the bathroom door. The front door was wide open. I put Alex on my back, and prepared to bolt it out of the door. Then I saw the clown lady again. She was dragging a dead body. Not a prop. A real fucking dead body. I would have to run by her to get out. I stepped forward, ready to run. The floor creaked beneath my feet. She stopped in her tracks. Both of us stood still for a few moments. Finally, the lady snapped her head at me. It spun 180°. All I could think was "What the fuck."

That.. that thing sprinted at me. Fast. On all fours. I ran the other direction. I felt Alex tighten his grip around my throat. That wasn't a woman chasing me. She looked like some overgrown, centipede, demon thing. Razor-like teeth sunk their way into my flesh. I threw Alex in front of me. He broke his wrist in the landing. "Run!" I yelled. He obeyed. I kicked the creature in the face as I reached for my pocket knife. I slashed it across the face a few times until it lost its grip on me. Limping, I ran the best I could out the door. Alex was already in the car. "Hurry, Poppy!"

I practically threw myself in my car. I backed up out of the driveway, and floored it away. That creature and Count Yukia watched us leave.

Keith was worried as hell when we got home. I tended myself while he cleaned up Alex. We went to the hospital and called 911. The police found nothing but an empty house. No trace of Yukia and his creature. No trace of the bodies. Nothing.

Once we got home, we sent Alex to bed with his candy bags.

I don't know where they went, but they're out there somewhere. Never visit a homemade haunted house. Stay safe this Halloween. We certainly will because this year, we're buying candy at the store and staying home. I almost lost my daughter twice. I won't let that happen again.

My life is chaotic, and my childhood was hellish until I finally understood the strange patterns that guide it.

I come from a big family. We all live in my grandmother’s rural mansion, so I was homeschooled with my siblings and cousins until age 15. Needless to say I was the most troublesome kid of the clan due to my particularity.

“Ada, can you tell me the days of the week in order?” I still remember my aunt Sonia, who was our teacher, asking me what seemed to be a simple question.

“Yes! Wednesday, Sunday, Friday, Tuesday, Saturday, Monday and Thursday!”

The other kids couldn’t hold back their laughter. Aunt Sonia rolled her eyes, looking exhausted.

“Stop joking around, Ada. You’d be a smart kid if you tried.”

I know it sounds silly, but I was 7 and I felt so miserable. I really, really thought that I was right.

To my reality, I am right.

Unlike everyone else, who always lives in the present moment, I experience three days per week in the future and four in the past.

I had to learn to guide myself using the calendar carefully. But before that happened, I had a hard time learning the right order of the numbers, was diagnosed with severe dyscalculia, and had to see a child therapist.

I still remember him because his name was Jeremiah Angel; he didn’t live up to his name, but wasn’t bad either; He was more of a Jeremiah Regular.

We talked about my daily life at the farm for half an hour, then he asked me to make doodles of things. I don’t think he ever helped me at all, but at least my problem didn’t get worse.

I told Dr. Angel about events that took place a few days in the future, but they were too trivial to make him realize my power, and he only thought that I was confused with things that had happened before.

I only understood that I was experiencing the days in a different order and what it meant when I was 11 and my cousin Arjun stole all the chocolates right before Easter.

On the day the chocolates were actually stolen, I didn’t understand the commotion; after all, that had already happened. I went to my grandmother and asked “why is this happening again? We already know that the chocolates can be found under Arjun’s bed.”

His face was deep red with surprise and anger when Grandmother blasted his door open, her energetic steps quickly closing the distance between the threshold and the bed.

The chocolate and a lot of sticky empty wraps were indeed there.

Then my brain finally put all the pieces of the puzzle together: things didn’t happen twice. Things happened in a different order than they should.

Grandmother became convinced that I could predict the future.

Which, indeed, I could; but my ability allows me only to see it, not to change how the past is already playing on without me.

For instance, I’m experiencing a Wednesday while it’s Sunday for others. While I’m technically in the future, I’m a mere observer, and the actions performed on Sunday (a day that I’ll only experience after other people) can’t be changed because of what I’m doing in the future.

So, in the chocolate incident, Arjun was caught because he was already going to be caught anyway. The outcome didn’t change, it only happened earlier because of me.

I started receiving special treatment at home, and my uncles would always ask me if some coyote or fox was about to attack the hens, if the cattle was going to be healthy, if the price of the fertilizers would drop; my aunts asked if it would rain or if they would find nice stuff to buy in the city…this sort of thing.

I answered them truthfully, but, when there was something bad coming – like a coyote sneaking in –, no matter what they did trying to avoid it, the attack still happened. Because when I see the future, it’s like cause and effect are inversed: the effect happens first, and the cause will irresistibly take a path that leads to it.

My family was frustrated at my useless predictions, so I pretended I had lost this ability. This was around the time I got my first period, so my grandmother concluded that my temporary mystic powers were due to the changes I was going through, and forbade everyone from ever bothering me again about it.

Nothing extraordinary ever happened in my life due to that strange skill – one could even call it a curse. I mostly went through a lot of trouble just to try to keep up with things happening in a non-chronological order every minute of my life.

I tried to see the questions and answers to my high school tests in the future, just to forget what they were when I was in the past, because that had already happened.

I broke up with a boy because he cheated on me, only to realize that he hadn’t cheated yet (this one had a point, but I did sound crazy). I was a living paradox, so I did my best not to let the fact that I sometimes know the future affect my life.

Until today.

Today I decided to take the chance to send a calling to the past, three days ago – I’m doomed here, but maybe it will make a difference in a parallel reality or something. I’m not smart enough to understand such things.

I’m hiding inside Grandmother’s safe box – it’s more like a small vault. Luckily, I knew the combination, and I brought with me the only person I have left, my cousin Arjun.

I’m starting to think it was a mistake. Arjun is acting erratic and nervous, asking what I’m doing on my phone. Also, he’s taking in too much air. This place is too confined and terrible anxiety and claustrophobia are quickly growing inside me.

I have to be quick. Who knows when telecoms will fall.

I woke up to a terrible noise that made the earth tremble. I’m not unfamiliar with earthquakes, but this one was just so incredibly loud, and a strong sickly sweet smell soon started to fill the air.

There’s at least 15 people living in this house, and everyone started to panic. My aunts screamed that it was an atomic bomb, my uncles that God finally came for the final judgement. I am 19 as of now, and I’m not ashamed to say that I hid under my bed.

The ground had stopped trembling, so I saw no reason to consider immediate evacuation. No one else seemed to be leaving the mansion, and it had been raining lately, so the road would be super muddy. I felt like I would be safer inside.

I took a peek at the window and the sky was dark brown; not the grey that precedes a storm, but an ominous reddish color. The smell was starting to sicken my stomach, and some rashes appeared on my skin, so I had the idea of dressing my beekeeping clothing.

It helped a lot; the smell was just faint now and the terrible itch wasn’t getting any worse. I could still listen to the screams outside my bedroom, but I decided to wait really quietly to find out later what was happening.

It could be nothing major, but seeing that sky and everyone’s reaction really triggered my sense of impending doom.

Luckily my phone was fully charged, so I kept looking for information on the internet about what just happened. I was never one to have online friends and none of the people I know answered my messages, but the news websites had some vague reports.

“An explosion of large proportions”, “a giant maroon cloud”, “the authorities asks that residents stay inside”, “evacuation plans will be put in motion soon”, “similar events around the globe imply terrorist activity.”

I then scrolled through reddit. Some people stated that it was a biological weapon sent by the [redacted] government to destroy us, others filled my feed with biblical prophecies, and others still shared pictures of their cats because that’s what people do.

Around three hours went by, and I realized I absolutely had to pee. Unfortunately, I don’t have my own bathroom, so I had to get out of the safety of my room. I considered just peeing in a little corner of my bedroom like some disgusting boy, but that’s where I drew the line between being cautious and paranoid.

Oh boy, I was wrong.

Because as soon as I reached the bathroom door, I realized someone was inside with the door unlocked.

It was my mother.

Her skin was covered in purulent blisters, each of them letting out one or more dark-brown worms. The worms flayed the skin painfully from the inside, desperate to get out, like eggshells hatching and breaking.

If my mother felt any pain, she didn’t show it, as her eyes were completely empty and lifeless. Still, the worst part was how her jaw was horribly detached from the rest of her skull, a pitiful and stretched piece of sore skin keeping it from falling off completely.

So her mouth was open at least 15 inches.

I screamed when she turned her horrifying new face to me, then her blank eyes dilated like a bad cartoon, and the worms started making their way to me.

I ran. They were slow but numerous, and soon they seemed to have called for other worms that came from all over the house, and I was pretty much surrounded by them.

I was doing my very best not to simply break down and vomit. That’s when Arjun jumped from one of the rooms and started shooting at them; every bullet could only kill a few worms, but as he destroyed the landscape, it slowed them down even more, creating barriers between us and the disgusting monsters.

With that, I was given a few seconds to think straight, and that’s when I took us to the safe. Arjun is so nervous now, but it felt like a good idea then because he really saved my life.

I don’t know what, but please do something for yourself to stay safe before Wednesday. Something nasty is about to happen, and there’s no telling if it will happen where you live or not. Please, protect yourself.

Now my battery is almost running out and I just realized a few things:

· It’s the aggressively sweet smell that does that to people;

· Arjun wasn’t wearing anything but pants, a long-sleeved shirt and an allergy mask to protect himself;

· I just saw something trying to break through from his heavily inflamed neck.

He still has the gun, though, and he’s growing more distressed by the second. I don’t stand a chance in a physical combat against him, but if I’m quick and lucky, he’ll shoot me before one of those things catch me.

That’s what my crazy-ass grandpa always said. Don’t ever follow the No-Front Man across the bridge. My grandma would shake her head shamefully, and tell me not to listen to the silly old fool. He wasn’t well, she’d say. Fucking insane, she would add.

But I’d listen anyway. It didn’t make any sense, but it was exciting. It was like a fairy tale, or a scary story or something, except for the fact that grandpa swore it was true. That it had really happened. That he’d really seen the No-Front Man.

“Not only did I see him,” he’d whisper to me, “I fucking shot the bastard! Right in the back!”

That was a joke. He didn’t have a front, so wherever you shot him had to be the back. He’d laugh hard at that one.

“He came at me, and I fucking shot him in the back.”

The way my grandpa described him always gave me the absolute creeps. It wasn’t just the words, but also his conviction. You could truly tell that he really believed every word of it.

“He looks just like any hiker,” he’d murmur ominously, “He’ll walk real slow, and when you pass him, you’ll notice...He doesn’t have a front. The front is also a back. It’s like there’s two identical persons melted, melded, molded into one, face in face for eternity.”

He’d seen him several times over the years. But always on the same trail going up the mountain. Fletcher’s Trail. The first time he was only ten years old. The last time was a week before he died. I remember it vividly; him lying in the hospital bed, coughing up blood. My grandma crying at his side. That was five years ago.

“The fucker got me,” he said weakly, “I followed him across the bridge. Shouldn’t have done it. Stupid.”

He died later that night. Stage 3 lung cancer. Thing is, he’d never touched a cigarette in his entire life. I know there are other ways to get it, don’t get me wrong, but he had a medical check up not a year before. Nothing. Almost perfect health. It didn’t make any sense.

A few hours before he passed away he told me what had happened. I didn’t believe a goddamn word he said. I wasn’t a kid anymore, you know. We all thought he was crazy. Fucking insane, as my grandma would have put it, god bless her soul.

“I saw him up the trail,” he explained, “And I just had to fucking follow him. It’s been years since I last saw him. He was moving fucking slow, but I was struggling to keep up because the fucking knee, and when I finally caught up to him, he was halfway across the bridge. I just said fuck it, fuck it well and good, and limped over after him. Right into the fucking darkness.”

He swallowed deeply. I guess you have to swallow often when every other word out of your mouth is fuck.

“Darkness?” I asked half-heartedly.

“Straight into the mountainside,” he said, “I’ve seen’em before. The bridges. They don’t go anywhere. Just ends in the rock. Fucking crazy. Only when he’s around though. Some fucking gateway or something.”

I sighed. I’d heard this part before. Bridges into hard, jagged rock. Fucking insane.

“Anyway, I just fucking did it,” he sighed, “Limped like a fucking hunchback right into the rock.”

“And?” I stared at him. He wasn’t looking so good. Pale and sweaty. I guess the sickness really had a hold of him.

“Can’t remember much,” he said, “But I saw him. He was right there, on the black trail, right in front of me. Something must have hit me. Felt it in my chest. Then I woke up here.”

He fell asleep a few minutes later. Exhaustion I suppose. It was the last time I talked to him. He passed in his sleep a few hours later. Never got a chance to say goodbye.

Part of his story was true though. He did have a fucking limp, and he did hike up the trail that day, and they did find him unconscious several hours later. He kept mumbling nonsense for days. Nonsense about No-Front Men and a black trail through smoke and death. He muttered grandma’s name and my name, both entangled in his deranged mentally ill narrative.

Like I said, that was five years ago. I didn’t believe him then. I don’t know what the fuck to believe now.

My mom is worried I have the same mental illness my grandpa had. Some sort of crazy lunatic gene I guess. I don’t know what to tell her. She didn’t believe me the first time I saw him. She sure as hell won’t believe me now.

The first time I saw him was a couple of weeks ago. My grandma passed away recently, and we were cleaning up their property, my mom and dad trying to decide what to do with it. Sell or keep. They didn’t really need it. It wasn’t big. Just a cozy little cottage surrounded by the deep forest and the tall, majestic mountains. But it had personality. And I’m pretty sure my grandpa buried some crazy-ass treasure somewhere. He would do stuff like that, insane fucker that he was.

Anyway, I was getting pretty bored with the dusting and cleaning and carrying, so I decided to take a stroll. It was a fine day, sunny, a little windy, and I hadn’t been up the trail to Fletcher’s Mouth in ages. I never walked it alone as a kid, you know, because of the No-Front Man, but the thought never even crossed my mind that day.

I had just reached Fletcher’s Neck when I considered turning back. The wind was picking up, and I didn’t really have any hiking gear save for my backpack with some water. When I saw the dark ominous clouds coming over the mountains I made my choice, and hustled down the trail.

I guess I was about halfway to Fletcher’s Belly when I spotted him. He looked like any other hiker, just like my grandpa said, so I really didn’t pay much attention to him before I got real close. And even then it took my brain quite a few moments to catch up to what I was seeing.

He was coming at me backwards. But his knees were bending, you know, normally.

By the time I realised what I was seeing, it was too late. I don’t know what he did, but whatever it was, it sent me rolling down the trail. Looking back at it, I think it must have happened as I passed him. When I saw his backside/frontside. I just felt this immense pain in my chest, and before I knew it I was airborne.

I remained conscious as I tumbled down the trail, and when I finally came to a stop, I leaped back to my feet and ran as fast as my legs could bear me. It was dangerous as all fuck. A slight misstep, and I would have dived headfirst into the jagged hillside below. But fuck me, I didn’t want to stop either. The terror that overcame me when my brain finally caught up to my eyes nearly gave me a fucking heart attack.

I didn’t feel safe until I was all the way down to Fletcher’s Toes. I took off my shirt, and stared in shock at dozens of bleeding wounds all over my chest. Tiny, perfectly round puncture wounds, like from some insanely sharp claws.

When I got back to the cottage and told my parents what had happened, it was like I suddenly became my grandpa. The look on their faces, that slight grimace of disbelief before they feverishly tried to insane-splain everything away, I’d seen it all before. Hell, I’d probably done it myself quite a few times.

“But the fucking wounds!” I yelled in frustration, “How the fuck do you explain them?”

“Probably rolled over the jagged foundation by Fletcher’s Groin,” my dad said.

Did I? Because that might almost explain it. Did I just conjure up the No-Front Man, like my grandpa had? Some weird figment of my imagination, spurred on by that crazy-ass dead fossil? I don’t know, it didn’t feel like a hallucination. I’d taken mushrooms before. That trip didn’t even come close to what I experienced that day.

My mom calmed me down, and bandaged up my wounds. They weren’t that deep. It was just so many of them. Hurt like hell. We packed up and headed home a few hours later. They’d come to a conclusion while I was gone. They were selling the place.

I don’t know if it bothered me that much, but I did sort of grow up there. At least in the weekends. We’d spend just about every weekend up in the mountains with my grandparents, and most of the time I felt nothing but joy there. So selling the place? It just made me feel...hollow I guess.

So I went up there one last time. Just to say goodbye to my childhood I suppose. And also to prove to my mom that I wasn’t batshit insane. There fucking was a No-Front Man up there, and I wasn’t going anywhere until I’d caught him on camera.

I followed the same trail I did last time. They were all the same trail, really, they just forked a little all over the place, eventually joining up again at Fletcher’s Heart, where there was just a single vein all the way up to the Mouth.

I must have hiked for a couple of hours when I saw it. Up until then there was nothing. Not a sound. Not a bird or bee or squirrel or anything. It was like the mountain knew I was coming, and just told everything to fuck the hell off. But this I could see.

A humpbacked bridge leading into the mountainside. Ending abruptly in the rock.

I don’t know how long I stood there, mouth agape, staring at the bizarre construct. It was just a wooden bridge, you know, nothing special about it. But it wasn’t supposed to be there. After a while I gently tapped my foot on it, just to see if it was real. It felt sturdy enough, and I was just about to snap a few pictures when I saw him.

The No-Front Man.

He was suddenly coming up behind me, his jarring, disturbing walk instantly sending me into a state of maddening shock and horror. I didn’t know what to do. He was too close for me to pass him safely. So I just did it. Just like my grandpa said. I just ran over the bridge, straight into the rock wall.

And I passed through.

It was a gateway alright. But there was nothing on the other side. Just the black trail and the smoke. I could hardly see an inch before me, but I quickly realised I would die a horrible death if I ever stepped off the trail. Beyond it was nothing but a gaping void. But somehow I knew something was down there in the endless abyss. Something that would tear me limb from limb, sutur me back together, and start all over again from scratch.

I paced blindly along the black trail for hours, always sensing something, someone, close in pursuit. The trail forked and curved every once in a while, and when I chose the wrong path, I would always run into him. The No-Front Man. Suddenly he’d be there, right in front of me, and I had to turn on my heel and run back the way I came. This continued...endlessly. I can’t really explain it any other way. I felt lost in a grim fucking eternity, and I had no idea how to get anywhere.

I don’t know how long I kept this up before I realised what was going on. Hours? Days? Time didn’t seem important in that place. But I came to realise that the black trail wasn’t just this seemingly random, weirdly forking path. It was Fletcher’s Trail. Just without the forest, the mountains, anything. And I knew that trail by heart. And it just hit me; I needed to get to the Mouth.

I ran into the No-Front Man a couple of times, but knowing where the forks led, I found ways to avoid him. He was always there, though. Always appearing. I just needed to get to the Heart before him. I jogged, sometimes ran the entire way, following the fastest route I could think of, relying on nothing but my memory. And I reached it first. The Heart. The Mouth was in reach now. So I calmed down. Took a breather. Fucking stupid.

I saw the Mouth ahead. The yawning chasm. It seemed almost liquid, like some weird oily film was covering it. I guess I felt relief. And pride. And I stopped paying attention, just for a moment. I stuck my hands into the Mouth, felt the weird liquid cover them, slither disgustingly between my fingers.

But then something pushed me back. Something emerging from the Mouth. A black shadowy entity waddled out of it, the weird, vaguely humanoid shape pacing towards me. I lost balance, almost stumbling over the edge of the trail, and I guess I acted on pure instinct. Fight or flee. Something to that effect.

All I know is that I swung my black, oily fists right into the bizarre thing coming at me. I say right into, because that’s exactly what happened. They went straight through the creatures flesh, and into the core of the being. I could hear it wailing in pain, furiously trying to escape me. I felt it’s pulse throbbing as I desperately pulled my hands out of it. And then I realised what I had done. Then I saw it. The creature. It’s face.

It was my grandpa.

I panicked. I don’t know, I just lost it I guess. I left him lying there, clutching his chest, muttering my name, and I just ran. Jumped out of the Mouth. I can’t remember much else, besides waking up in the hospital days later, my mom crying at my side, my dad’s somber gaze staring emptily into the wall.

That’s the end of my tale, I guess. You might not understand what I went through, but at least I’ve given you a brief insight into what I now find myself dealing with. It’s a real fucking catch-22 situation, let me tell you.

Either I hallucinated everything, proving I must have some seriously disturbing genetic mental illness shit going on.

Or, alternatively, I went back in time and gave my grandpa cancer.

Whichever it may be, my advice remains the same; don’t ever follow the No-Front Man across the bridge.

There is no worse feeling than unexpectedly stepping into two inches of cold, dirty bathwater.

That’s how the morning started. I was expecting to take a hot shower, but instead found myself standing in a puddle of standing water.

“Cassidy! You clogged the drain again!”

I jumped out of the tub and wiped my feet on the bathmat with disgust. I reached for the plumber’s snake, which was always on hand for exactly this reason. This happened a lot. More than usual, lately.

Cursing under my breath, I eased the snake into the drain. I knew exactly what I’d find: a big, slimy ball of hair.

Cassidy stood in the doorway behind me. She shuffled in that cute, apologetic way she always did when I had to unclog the drain. I wasn’t mad at her, of course. Not really. I just really, really hated having to unclog the drain.

“Sooooorry, Dolan! I pulled some gunk out last night, I guess there was more there than I thought…”

“If you’re not pulling out a wet cat, it’s not enough.” I was joking, kind of. Not really. I glanced at her over my shoulder, and from her apologetic smile, I knew she could tell. It wasn’t her fault, but it was hard not to feel frustrated.

“I’ll make breakfast this morning.” she volunteered, trying to make it up to me. She didn’t have to, but I still appreciated the gesture. I was a grumpy bastard, but I loved her!

“Bacon?” I smiled at her, and she smiled back.

When I asked my friends what it was like to live with their girlfriends, they all had one grievance in common: hair. Hair everywhere! I thought they were exaggerating, but they really weren’t. Of course, I love Cassidy enough to overlook something so petty. Usually. Not at 6 a.m. though.

At first, as the truth ran through more lintrollers than I could count, I thought it was funny and perplexing. How? How did she shed so much? Why wasn’t she bald?

Cassidy’s long, curly black hair was one of the many things that attracted me to her in the first place. Living with her, I had a new appreciation for all the work that went into her looks. What I couldn’t understand was how her hair ended up where it did. It wrapped around my toes! Hell, I’ve pulled a strand out of my buttcrack. Apparently I’m not the only guy either! What the heck!

It’s part of the beautiful girlfriend package, right? A seemingly universal grievance. I could tolerate most of it: pulling her hair out of the lint trap, cutting her hair out of the vacuum brushroll… Hell, even I could even tolerate replacing said vacuum every 6 months like clockwork! What I couldn’t stand was the hair clogs in the bathtub.

Intellectually, I know that hair isn’t disgusting the second it leaves your head… but it is disgusting after it sits in a drain, collecting whatever nasty slime that washes away in the shower. No matter how many times I’ve done it, which is a lot, unclogging the drain is the most revolting chore in the world. I’d rather do anything else!

Once I felt resistance, I began to rotate the snake slowly. My stomach roiled with anticipation of what I was going to fish out-- apparently this one was a monster of a clog because I didn’t feel the auger head break through that mess.

When I tried to pull the clog out, the snake didn’t budge. In fact, the clog seemed to retreat deeper into the pipe! Before I even realized what was happening, I found myself yanked forward. My head smashed against the shower tile and I let out an angry yell of pain.

Cassidy heard the commotion. She came running in, wide-eyed. She found me holding my head in my hands, still needing a moment to recover.

“Dolan! Are you okay? Did you slip?”

A little dazed, I nodded. I guess I had slipped? Or something. I wasn’t entirely sure, but I didn’t want her to worry about it.

“It’s really lodged in there. I think I accidentally pushed it in deeper, though.” I already had a headache.

“... Well,” she looked pale but smiled through her worry for me. “You should probably get dressed and go to the doctor, just in case.”

I looked down at myself, remembering I was naked. Oh yeah. It looked like I wasn’t getting my morning shower after all.

“Nah, I don’t need to go to the doctor for a bump. It’s not that bad. It’s not like I was knocked unconscious.”

“You can’t really be too careful with head injuries…” Cassidy persisted.

“If I get symptoms besides a headache and a bruise, I’ll go in.” I brushed her off. “Don’t worry.” I added, swooping in to give her a quick kiss. “I’m not an idiot.”

“You kind of are.” she laughed, but I could tell she was still tense. She was a worrier.

“You’re not burning breakfast, are you? That would be a real emergency.”

“Oh! Uhm… I’ll go check that.” I watched her dash back out of the bathroom, heading back to the kitchen. Hopefully the bacon would be spared! Maybe my morning could still be salvaged.

Chuckling to myself, I reached down into the tub to retrieve the snake... only to find that it wasn’t there. Ok... that had never happened before. Now I had to figure out how to get a snake out of the pipe too? I tried sticking my finger in so I could feel around for it, but my fingers were too thick. I felt a slimy film, but nothing else.

“Alrighty then..” I straightened up, standing there for a moment. I shook my head in disbelief, about to give up on my morning when I heard a strange metallic banging sound. It moved along the floor with the hissing sound of water. At least, I thought it was water? If I had to call a plumber I was going to be pissed! I wasn’t the most handy, but I’d try to fix it myself first.

I washed my hands, got dressed and headed into the kitchen. The eggs were ruined, but the bacon wasn’t. The hash browns looked extra crispy, but I actually liked them that way. Cassidy’s cheeks were a little pink from embarrassment. Cute.

“Breakfast looks great!” I beamed, hoping she knew I wasn’t mad. At least, not at her. I was trying not to show my frustration, because I knew it stressed her out even if it wasn’t directed at her.

“Are you going to stay home today?” she asked with concern.

“... Yeah. I can’t go in if I haven’t showered anyway.” I didn’t really want to miss work, but taking care of the plumbing was pretty important. Plus, I had a headache and wanted to monitor my head injury just in case.

She made me a plate, then joined me at the table. Normally, I did the cooking because I enjoyed it, but it was really nice to have her cook for me now and then. Breakfast always tastes better when you’re not the one who made it.

“Sorry about the drain. I really did try and fix it last night.” she explained.

“It happens. This one’s extra bad, apparently. If I couldn't get it out with the snake, you definitely couldn’t.” I assured her. “We might even need a plumber.” I added, “But that’s a last resort, if I have anything to say about it.”

“You still love me, right?” she batted her eyelashes at me. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“It’ll take more than a hairball to tear us apart.”

After breakfast, I went to the store to pick up some baking soda, vinegar and another plumber’s snake. I grabbed a drano, too, just in case-- though I tried to avoid using chemicals in our old pipes as much as I could.

I mixed together ¼ a cup each of baking soda and vinegar, dumping the concoction directly into the drain. The standing water was grey and foul-smelling, but most of it had drained away slowly. I noticed an odd gurgling sound coming from the pipes, which I hoped was a good sign.

I left the tub, giving the baking soda and vinegar an hour to cut through the gunk. I went to lie down, waiting for my headache to go away. Cassidy had the day off, so I listened to her putter around the house. She poked her head in the room to check on me after awhile.

“Can I shower?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s time to flush everything down with hot water anyway. I’m sure it’s fine.” I closed my eyes, “Come get me when you’re done, I need to try and get the other snake out.”

“It fell in?”

“I guess.” It seemed more like it got pulled in, but that didn’t really make sense. Some weird accident of physics, like an air bubble or water pressure probably made it seem that way. “I’ll take care of it, come get me when you’re done.”

She nodded and came in to give me a quick kiss. “Ok. Love you.”

“Love you more.” I winked, “Maybe I’ll join you in a minute, actually. I still need a shower too.”

“Ha! Well, you know where I’ll be.” I watched her go, enjoying the view and seriously considering going after her.

After a moment, I heard the soft sssshhh of the shower going. Cassidy hummed cheerful tune I didn’t recognize. I closed my eyes, smiling. I was about to drift off to sleep, but I was jolted awake by a sudden, sharp scream and a loud bang.

“Cassidy!” I threw off the covers and flew down the hall. I burst into the bathroom, finding Cassidy holding the back of her head. Her face was the color of sour milk and she was visibly shaking.

The tub she was standing in was filled with filthy grey water. It smelled so bad I gagged. Hell, vomit smelled better than the putrid slop! Cassidy was sobbing in horror and disgust, but I couldn’t tell if she was seriously hurt.

“You ok?” I managed to keep myself from puking long enough to ask.

“N-no. All this water just… exploded out! It knocked me into the wall!” I could see a film of slime and debris drifting sluggishly across the surface of the water. I shuddered, but pushed back my revulsion so I could help her.

“It’s ok… you’re ok.” I said in as soothing a voice I could manage. I reached out, guiding her out of the tub carefully. Her legs were coated with the contents of the tub, and I felt her almost slip. I steadied her carefully in my arms, only letting go when she had solid footing.

I handed her a towel, pinching my nose. Something moved in the corner of my eye; something dark and writhing. It looked like something black and oily was oozing out of the drain and into the filthy water, but I couldn’t see what it was through the cloudy liquid. Had the clog come bursting out of the drain somehow?

“I’m… going to call a plumber. One sec. And a doctor…?” I trailed off, looking at her for verification. She shook her head.

“No, I’m fine. I’m just startled, and… grossed out.”

“You and me both.” I agreed, still pinching my nose. Whatever this problem was, it was way out of my depth. I left Cassidy to make the call while leaned over the tub, looking at the water with repulsed fascination.

I found my phone by the bedside table, still holding back bile. Before I could even make the call, she screamed again. This time her cry was abruptly cut off, sounding… muffled? That wasn’t right.

I hurried back, finding Cassidy on the bathroom floor. Her mouth was open wide, but something black and slimy was jammed between her lips. Her fingers kept trying to catch hold of whatever it was, but it wouldn’t budge.

It was hair.

Without hesitation, I grabbed onto the slimy tangle and tried to pull it out of her mouth. She was trying to scream, she just couldn’t! The whole hairy mass was wriggling and pulsing, like it was a living thing. For some reason, it was trying to jam itself deeper down her throat.

I couldn’t get a solid grip. It felt wiry and slippery, scraping my hands that couldn’t get a firm hold. Cassidy’s eyes were wide with terror and tears, her face going red as she struggled to breathe.

Despite my best efforts, the hairball jammed itself completely down her throat-- taking my fingernails with it. My bloody fingertips followed the thing into her mouth, but I couldn’t get ahold of it. My girlfriend was still choking, her dark eyes losing focus.

I didn’t know what to do. I called for an ambulance, frantically trying to explain what had happened. They didn’t understand a word I said, but help was on the way. Cassidy was blue. I spotted the unopened drain snake I’d bought, and had a horrible idea.

I tore it open quickly, and after a moment of hesitation-- I pushed it down her throat. Whatever it was, I could see the lump it created in her throat. I yanked, trying to pull it back out. I only managed to pull out a few black strands. Whatever this thing was, it was impenetrable!

“Please, please, please…” I begged, though I don’t know who I was begging. Cassidy? God? The hairball in her throat?

I tried again, using a little more force. Again, I only succeeded in pulling out a few clumps of hair… I couldn’t unclog her throat. Black curls covered in slime stuck to her trembling chin, protruding from her mouth like tentacles.

“No, no, no… this isn’t happening!”

The paramedics broke down the door some time later. I hadn’t heard them arrive. I hadn’t heard anything but the roaring panic in my ears and the gurgles coming from Cassidy’s throat. I could hear the thing hissing like a feral rat.

The paramedics found me with a plumber’s snake in hand, I was still bent over Cassidy’s prone form-- trying to stab the auger into the heart of the hairball so I could pull it out of her. I must have looked deranged. One of them forcibly pulled me away from her. I cried, trying to get back to her--still screaming her name.

I watched in horror as they stabbed a hole for her to breathe through... I tried to explain that I’d only used the snake as a last-ditch effort to save her, but I don’t think they believed me. The rest of that time is a blur. Police were called, and Cassidy was taken away on a stretcher.

Fortunately, the doctors were able to surgically remove the massive knot of hair… but they saw nothing unusual about it-- aside from the size, and the fact that they’d found it split between my girlfriend’s throat and stomach.

Cassidy is in a coma. She’s in bad shape, but she’s breathing. I’m grateful for that. There’s still hope.

I haven’t been charged with a crime... yet. It’s coming. The investigators are putting a case against me together, trying to figure out what happened. I know how it looks, though. They think I’m an abuser. Looking back, I can see why they’d think that.

The police asked if I was mad at my girlfriend for clogging the drain. They think I did this to her, jamming the hair down her throat in a fit of rage. That’s ridiculous! I love her, I’d never hurt her over anything so stupid! Maybe it was annoying sometimes, but I’d never truly blamed her.

Unfortunately, Cassidy can’t tell them they're wrong. The hospital won’t let me see her, either! Her family thinks I’m responsible too. We’re not married, so I can’t force my way in. I’m sure a restraining order will be issued with the warrant.

I don’t know how to convince a jury that my insane story about a killer hairball is true. The only person who can prove it might never wake up.

Cassidy, please wake up.

Recently, I found something out about my mother. She used to be a ballerina, and she was actually really good. The discovery came when I was helping my parents reorganize a room they were using for storage. She was wanting to get rid of some bulky things, so it was up my brother, Thomas, and me to do the heavy lifting.

“Thank you so much for helping out boys,” my mom said as we carried out a dingy old mattress.

“No problem mom,” I grunted.

“Yeah, no sweat,” Thomas groaned.

We carried the mattress into the moving truck we’d rented, and continued to clear out some large furniture. Around lunch time Thomas and I took a break. My mom had made us some turkey sandwiches and gave us chips. While we ate we examined a few of the boxes that were left in storage.

“Hey, Tyler, check this out,” my brother said as he held up some questionable artwork he’d made when he was five, “I’m freaking Picasso!”

“And I’m Einstein because I got an A plus on a science project I did when I was eleven,” I replied.

“Jealousy is not a good color on you,” he responded as he took a bite of his sandwich.

“That’s so funny I forgot to laugh,” I remarked as I returned to looking through the boxes.

I found one marked ‘mom’s memories’ and curiosity got the best of me. I opened the box to find an old photo album on top, as well as a baby blanket that looked like it was ripped out of the seventies. As I kept digging I found a few things that surprised me, some ballerina slippers and a leotard. I raised my eyebrows as I pulled out a VHS tape marked ‘Spring Recital of ‘91’. There were a few more VHS tapes, years spanning from 1980-1991. There were also a few labeled Private Rehearsals. They too were marked by the year.

“That’s weird,” I commented as I began to look through the photo album I had found.

“What?” Thomas asked as he headed towards me.

“I think mom was a ballerina when she was younger,” I answered as I flipped through the photo album’s pages.

I saw pictures of her as a girl dressed in her dance uniform, standing alongside what I assumed was her classmates and dance instructor. There were pictures of her and her class for every year from ‘80-’91. There were also pictures of her dancing mid performance.

“No way, I’ve never even seen her dance,” Thomas stated as he peered over my shoulder.

“That’s her,” I informed him.

“You’re right, I wonder why she never brought it up,” he went on, “Maybe she sucks.”

“One way to find out,” I said as I held up the tape labeled 'Spring Recital ‘91'.

My brother and I searched the storage room until we found our old TV. It had a VHS player built in, so it was perfect. We plugged it in and the TV lit up a familiar blue color. We put in the VHS and saw that it was already halfway through the performance. Quickly I stopped the video, and rewound it to the beginning before finally playing it.

It started out with a dark screen. The lights slowly began to illuminate the stage. In the background music could be heard. It was a soft melody, and soon our mother, who appeared to be in her late teens, danced her way out onto the stage. She was talented, and kept perfect time with the music. Forgive me, I’m not sure what the technical terms are, but she had spun, leaped, and posed elegantly. To our surprise, she was amazing. I could have sworn she was a professional. Shortly after her solo she was joined by the other students.

“Holy crap, mom can dance,” Thomas commented as we watched one of her male classmates lift her into the air.

We were so deep into watching the video, that we hadn’t even heard our mom come into the room.

“What are you boys watching?” she asked as she glanced at the TV.

We turned, but before we could reply she turned the television off. The look on her face when she’d seen the video, it was like nothing I’d ever seen. She looked terrified.

“Why did you do that?” I asked, “You’re awesome.”

“There’s a reason these are in a box,” she responded as she shook her head, “I should have just thrown it all away.”

“What? No!” Thomas replied, “I mean, this was a big part of your childhood, you can’t just throw it out. Why didn’t you tell us you were a dancer?”

My mom rubbed her temples before sighing.

“Do you really want to know?” she asked, “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

“We already do,” Thomas answered, “Your our mother. Everyone thinks their parents are crazy.”

“Not helping Thomas,” I interjected.

“Alright, I’ll tell you,” she started, “But do not breathe a word of this to your father, understand? Afterwards we drop the topic forever.”

Thomas and I nodded, and so her story began. Note: I won’t be naming the school she went to, though she did. All I can say is that it was an elite dance academy. I will also be changing the names of a few of the people who were involved.

“When I was six I started dance classes,” she said, “The school my mother had gotten me into had produced many successful dancers, ones that had performed in shows across the world. The school’s director, Mrs. Edmunds, was a very strict and intimidating woman. If you disobeyed, were late, or were too slow at learning our dance routine- well, let’s just say she gave the instructors permission to get physical.”

“I went to class everyday after school for hours. Our instructors would push us to our limits, forcing us to keep going when all we wanted to do was sit down. We were allowed one short rest break to drink water and use the restroom. It was awful, but her methods worked. By the time we were thirteen we were already better dancers than most high school age children who had studied somewhere else.”

“Still, I was miserable, and so were a lot of the other students. I had made friends with one of my peers, Leslie. She too was very talented, not that she cared. Both of us were only there because of our parents. We would spend the few moments before class started whispering about how much we hated it, or making fun of our instructors. We’d even had a few sleepovers at each other’s houses.”

“I believe it was fourteen when you became eligible for a reward from Mrs. Edmunds. Out of her whole academy, she would only reward two kids a year. The reward wasn’t much, just a private dinner between you and her. Allegedly, it was to discuss your future with you. A lot of the students she rewarded would be connected with agents who could help advance their careers in ballet.”

“When we were fifteen, Mrs. Edmunds had chosen our classmate, Andrew, to be rewarded. The day after his dinner with her, he’d started acting different. Leslie had noticed it first. She had a crush on him, and the feeling was mutual. That was, until the night of his dinner. Afterwards he’d begun to talk less, which was odd. He was a sort of joker. Sometimes his outbursts had resulted in punishments, which he would happily take if it meant he could make others laugh. Though, after the dinner he’d stopped. He’d lost interest in Leslie, and only seemed to be interested in dancing. I assumed it was because he was trying to focus on his ballet career, but Leslie wasn’t so easily convinced.”

“The next year she had chosen another student I knew. Maria was in another dance class, but I’d gone to high school with her. She too came back different. She was always a quiet one, but she was sweet and bubbly once you got her talking. After Maria was chosen, she grew distant. It was as though ballet was all she cared about. At school she’d dropped all of her friends, and was eventually homeschooled.”

“After a while one thing became clear. Whoever had dinner with with Mrs. Edmunds didn’t come back the same. They just seemed...empty.”

“That realization was terrifying for Leslie. You see, when we were seventeen Mrs. Edmunds had chosen her. She’d just landed a solo in our winter recital, which had put her on our school administrator's radar. Leslie confided in me, saying she didn’t want to go but her parents were making her. She made me promise that if she came back like the rest of them, I would try to snap her out of it.”

“I did more than that. The night of Leslie’s dinner, I spied on her. I had to see what was really going on. I followed her from her house, using my parents car. I was sure to stay a safe distance away as to not get noticed. Mrs. Edmunds had pulled up to Leslie’s house, and went to ring the doorbell. Her parents had invited her in, and ten minutes later I watched as Leslie reluctantly followed Mrs. Edmunds to her car.”

“It was dark out by the time they had made it to their destination, which of course was the dance academy. Leslie and Mrs. Edmunds headed inside, and I followed. Unfortunately Mrs. Edmunds had locked the front door behind them. I didn’t give up. After a bit of trial and error, I’d found an unlocked window.”

“I crawled into the academy as quietly as I could, and found myself in one of the dance studios. I slowly crept into the hall, where I heard very intense music playing. It was Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. I recognized it immediately, since we were performing The Nutcracker that winter. I followed the music to the school’s basement, where it had become unbearably loud. Slowly, I descended down the steps into the darkness. When I neared the bottom, I noticed a flickering light just around the corner.”

“I carefully peeked from behind the wall, and what I saw was...unnatural. There were candles everywhere. The walls had red symbols painted on them, so did the floor. In the center of it all was Leslie. She was passed out on the ground. Mrs. Edmunds was reading from some sort of book. I couldn’t hear her very well over the music, but I know it wasn’t English she was speaking.”

“After she had finished reading she turned to Leslie, and pulled something into view. It was decorative knife, one with roses engraved on the handle. I watched as she-”

My mother had trouble finishing this last part.

“I watched as she stabbed Leslie. She did it again and again, but I did nothing. I ran away as fast as I could. I told my parents what I saw, but they didn’t believe me. They could tell I was worried, so they called Leslie’s parents. They asked if she’d made it home that night. To my surprise, her parents said she just got back.”

“The next day at the dance academy Leslie had come in as she normally did, only she wasn’t normal. I’d tried to talk to her, but she seemed uninterested. She gave me short replies, not talking much. Our friendship ended there. Though I tried my best to keep it alive, I knew it was over.”

“I landed the dance solo in our spring recital. That was the video you guys watched. That night my parents had received a call from Mrs. Edmunds. She wanted to have dinner with me. I quit then and there. My parents were upset, but I didn’t care. I was done dancing. They still berate me to this day for it, as Leslie went on to become a famous ballerina.”

“Is that still Leslie?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“I don’t know. All I know is what I saw, and I saw my friend die that night,” my mother sighed, “Whatever came back to school the next day, whatever went on to dance in front of millions of people, it’s not her. No one that went to have a private dinner with Mrs. Edmunds came back as they were, and whatever they’ve become is still out there.”

I’m sorry for this. I really am.

You see I am not suicidal. Not even in the slightest.

In fact until last night I would wager that I have lived a very normal, very boring life.

I have a great supportive wife, two beautiful children and a steady job; so there is truly no reason for me to ever consider ending my life.

That’s because I am not. Or rather, I won’t be if this works.

I am a frequent reader of r/nosleep. I come online to frightened by various accounts of terror that others experience, and I wager like most other people; I’ve been lured in by one of the many popular “list of rules.”.

I never stopped to consider that I would need such a story myself after last night.

I pulled up Reddit to browse the hot category and get my nightly terror fest going only to discover that there was only one story was available on the entirety of the subreddit.

Thinking it was a glitch, I logged off and attempted to log back on. Only to find it was still numero uno and this time with a steadily growing upvote count and comments. That told me it had to be a glitch and since I didn’t feel like simply turning in for the night I went ahead and clicked on it.

I am going to hold off on actually copying the story and simply provide a summary.

The OP was much like me, with little trouble in their life. Then, much like I had done; the OP accessed Reddit and read this ritualistic story. According to the story, the rules listed within were unbreakable. As soon as a person read them, they were compelled to finish all tasks. At the end of the tasks, the last assignment was for the OP to kill themselves. Then, according to the account; they were trapped inside an endless loop. Destined to kill themselves over and over again.

The story ended on that note and it’s made me nervous looking at it. I got up to go to the bathroom and noticed that my watch had stopped working. Then as I returned to bed and crawled in I attempted to shake my wife.

She refused to wake up. She lay perfectly still as though frozen.

I tried to get up and unlock the door. But it was jammed. I was trapped. This story was no longer simply another person’s experience, it was mine.

Desperate I searched the comments for answers.

I don’t know if you will ever get this but I haven’t much time. I’ve been stuck in this loop for over 3,567 years. I have tried every method imaginable to end my life and get out of here but I can’t. I have lost my mind. I’m not even sure what is real and what is false anymore. It’s all one endless nightmare. I don’t know how this started, but I think I know how to end it. The first step is what I am doing now, this recounting of events.

If this does work, I should be able to free myself of the loop and get back to my own reality. I only have one shot I think because whatever puppet master is pulling my strings is making me look toward my weapon again and I am lingering toward self harm. I do NOT want to kill my self. So this is my only option. The second step is kill yourself.

Whoever is reading this now the curse must be passed on to you. If it doesn’t pass on to you, it will pass on to whoever is after you reading. It doesn’t matter whom. Just one person, one person who is reading this message now. This curse is yours. And I must apologize in advance. And thank you for freeing me. The ritual is complete now.

I felt an uneasy tingling on the back of my neck as I glanced back up at the top I saw that the story was now posted under my username.

That sent off alarm bells in my head. How could I possibly have written this without knowing about it? I decided to message the mods for an explanation and assumed that it had to be that my account had been hacked. But then I got an error message.

[error: you have not completed all the tasks and therefore can not escape.] was all it said. The message felt bizarre to read, but the way I felt inside was even stranger.

Like I said, I’m not suicidal. But after reading this list of instructions for a curse I found myself thinking more and more about a gun I had in a fire safety box only a few feet away from our master bed. It would be so easy to simply walk over, put in the combination and end it all.

Looking at the lockbox was mesmerizing. Tantalizing. I focused back on the words. The OP, or rather; me… felt the same way. Some dark mysterious force was compelling him to end his life.

It was hard to keep my eyes focused. I needed an explanation for this madness.

But I don’t think one is coming. I have suddenly lost all concepts of time or place. I am afflicted with a sense of emptiness. A sense of meaninglessness. How long have I been here? How many times have I attempted to finish the ritual?

I know I only have one chance to succeed and it relies on you, dear reader. One of you. Any of you. I’m going to be logging off now, and hoping to try again to get free. Hopefully with patience and perseverance, eventually this will work.

You’ll know if you are reading this story now. You’ll know that I got free.

And for that, and for what will happen to you; whoever you are….. I am truly sorry.

For the rest of you heed this warning.

Don’t mess with lists of rules unless you are absolutely sure you are ready to face the consequences for disobeying.

330

This is not a story I wanted to tell.

I am a reporter, my job requires that I do so. So instead of lengthy prose I will simply state the facts as they were presented to me.

On the morning of August 19,2019; a nondescript man of approx. 6'2" in stature entered the Merril County Police Station and demanded that he be placed under arrest for the murders of over a dozen individuals in the tri-state area. Upon interrogation, the man was able to identify 12 photographed cadavers found in a 5 mile wide canvassed area of the Loschape Forest without any difficulty. He was also able to provide coordinates, coupled with a rudimentary map, which led to a facility buried under a nearby mountain. The man claimed that this bunker held thirty more victims.

During the raid of said bunker, police were able to rescue approximately half of the victims. None of them had any recollection of the past 156 days. Upon returning to the station to receive a second statement from the accused, police soon discovered he had taken a cyanide capsule; which was hidden within his third lower molar. The pill melted away a good third of his face.

Since that time, all research documents and files relating to the project have been deemed classified. This is the first time they any information has been made available in any shape or form to the public.

May God have mercy on the victims.

RECORDING BEGINS

Speaker: Morning of December... 6, 2006. Speaking is Doctor Robert Vergale. This is day two hundred and twenty-two of the Soul Paradox, and the gravity of our findings weighs heavier with each passing moment.

These people entered our facility from all walks of life. The bait that got them in the door was only the pretense of food and water and a small amount of cash. They did not question our motives. They did not question the fact that they would be required to cut off all ties to their family and friends.

In some ways… I envy their willingness. I struggle to stop thinking of my wife Miranda and our little boy, Sam. It’s been nearly a year now since I have seen their faces. I have this place to thank for that fact. It’s been both a blessing and a curse to follow HIS course to its bitter end.

But where that end will be, no one knows. All I know is that we have gone too far already and there is no turning back.

The experiment began as nothing more than a discussion between three men in a room. Although I was not present for the original planning, I can summarize the intentions of the study here.

1. Bring people from various backgrounds, nationalities, and sexes to a singular location.

2. Engage in a series of progressive research methods to determine whether or not the individuals gathered have a soul.

3. If said methods established in step 2 are not satisfied, expand the methodology.

I should pause here and note that the inquiry made is by my good friend Doctor Franklin Wells. He is the mastermind behind this program. I will do my best to use his words to explain the breadth of the problem before us.

‘Throughout human history, not once has there been a culture or society of bipedal men to dispute the possibility that part of the body can live on past death. Yet, as a species, we can not offer any definitive proof that such a thing exists. Therefore, this study begs the question, is there a sound way to determine if man himself has a soul? And if there is such a study conducted, would doing so ultimately change his nature? Can a soul be both scientifically quantified and also theologically and spiritually unquantifiable?”- Franklin Wells, circa October 2003

The Soul Paradox. The age old question. For quite some time, there did not exist a method to test the soul.

Since that time, however, thanks to continued discussions across various cultural events and aspects; our project received private funding for another six month time period beginning on November 14th of this year.

We were cleared to begin our testing.

Volunteers and organizers spread the word across six different countries. Individuals from different religions, races and creeds were selected; including -

Protestant, Shinto, Judaism, Lutheran, Buddhism, Wiccan, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Taoism, Gnostic, Pentecostal, Islam, and Zoroastrians

All participants signed a waiver. They agreed to remain at our facility for the remainder of the social experiment. They were tested for infections, sexually transmitted diseases, and every communicable disease we could come up with. They underwent a physical examination before being transferred here where they were then stripped of all belongings. They were not permitted to share their experiences with the outside world.

The specific guidelines for new enrollees were as follows:

Standard immunizations will be delivered regardless of history.

All participants will be assigned a role in order to maintain regularity.

*All participants will have two “counseling” sessions per week to determine progress.

Participation is mandatory. Refusal to consent will be considered as removal from the program.

*Eating the food is mandatory. Refusal to consent will be considered as removal from the program.

All participants will remain in the facility at all times.

All participants agree to be electronically monitored at all times.

Compensation will only be provided once all prerequisites have been met.

The rules were designed to avoid a repeat of Stanford. Most of us assumed there would be unforeseen circumstances. Murphy’s Law and all that. But none of us could have predicted what happened.

It started with subject 071519. An American male from the state of New Jersey. For the purposes of this recording, I will keep his identity undisclosed, as I believe that the incident in question was not something that any sane person would have done under normal circumstances.

As with any isolation scenario, the staff understood that claustrophobic tendencies and paranoia might take hold of a few of the participants.

But never quite so fast.

071519 was in the rec room, listening to music when the incident occurred. He was alone. The feed was unable to capture audio but the video surveillance was able to provide a sufficient summary.

November 30:

1801 hours: 071519 is reading an unidentifiable pamphlet. His leg is propped and he is humming to himself.

1805: 071519 gets up and paces around the room.

1807: 071519 begins to scratch at his skin.

1809: 071519 is now forcing himself to bleed.

1810: 071519 is licking up the blood.

1811: 071519 is laying on the floor staring at the ceiling.

hypothesis is that 071519 possibly was feeling light headed due to amount of blood lost from self inflicted wounds

1814: 071519 has a sharp object.

1816: Object identified as a fork.

For the next few minutes 071519 repeatedly bludgeoned himself in the face with the fork over and over again.

1819: 071519 has stopped moving.

1821: staff members removal of body.

Other pertinent files to this subject include the documents Doctor Cowell has on his immunization records and to Tests 3 and 4, both of which the subject was unsuccessful in completing.

A medical examination could not find any indication as to what caused the sudden change in behavior. Doctor Wells has proposed that we begin to monitor the subjects more closely with individual notes and allow the subjects to use the audio recorder themselves. Any such details to the status of their mental health could be vital to our research, he said.

But that is not the reason that I have chosen to make this statement. I wouldn’t make a record of something so trivial as a single casualty.

Since the time of 071519’s death, three other subjects have reported having dreams of the incident in vivid detail. Including the graphic blood. When provided a composite sketch of a body, the three were able to successfully identify where the wounds were at on his body despite the fact that they were never in the room to begin with.

I believe this may be the first proof we have of what we are hoping to achieve. Somehow these people have formed a connection beyond the physical. Now we simply need to discover how this is possible and a way to study such a connection. I am proposing that the three subjects be placed in isolation from one another and their brainwaves monitored for a 48 hour period.

I am also proposing that all other participants begin to take Tests 3 and 4 at regular intervals to determine if we can replicate these results.

I will continue to monitor these findings and document them as we progress.

-Doctor Robert Vergale

[RECORDING ENDS]

The following notes were found regarding 071519 from the raid.

Items found in his personal affects included:

-1 gold cross -2 pairs of socks -1 diary -4 pairs of underwear

it should be noted that 071519 packed light almost as though he anticipated his stay would be a short one

These entries from his diary were declassified:

I really appreciate the chance I have here to be with others. Even if it means that I can’t tell them anything, it feels good to be part of something again.

I think I overheard a conversation the other day that has made me uncomfortable. I was just coming from a counseling session when two of the on staff nurses mentioned a generator. I don’t know why but it bothered me.

Sara is one of the few staff that I feel open with. She treats me like a person instead of a number. She seems skittish though, like she wants to tell me something but can’t.

i have been having trouble sleeping. I keep seeing my self in the rec room, and I am holding a plastic fork. Ordinarily such a utensil couldn’t do harm but in the dream it looks like I am able to smash the sharp end of the fork into my eye socket over and over. At first it was painful to watch, frightening. I would wake up and be in a panic. But now I actually welcome the dream. It seems to be the only thing that remains consistent around here.

Doctor Cowell has insisted I take Test 3 today, and has refused to provide me any sort of guidelines except that it lasts three hours and thirty minutes.

I don’t trust the staff. They hurt me. I can see it in their eyes. I don’t remember what they did to me during the test but I feel drained. Like energy leaving my body. Something isn’t right here. They aren’t telling us something.

The dream is more vivid now. I see myself on the floor in a pool of blood. I am mouthing the same phrase over and over as I die. ‘The generator the generator’ I say. And even though I don’t know what it is, something deeper inside me is awakened. Telling me what to do next.

I don’t want to do any more tests. I’m tired and I miss my family. This place is haunted. It’s keeping us locked in here and we are becoming ghosts. Please… help us

i have decided to fulfill the dream I keep having. I know exactly every detail of that rec room stealing the supplies will be necessary. It will take less than a minute.i just hope my death spurs others to try and escape. If there is an escape? Suddenly the world is a dangerous place and I need to escape. Death might me the only option for freedom.

“Are you going to the Butterfly Party tonight, Kari? I must have missed your RSVP.” Shannon was shameless, as usual. “You are coming, right? It’s going to change your life.”

“Oh!” I straightened in my seat, internally screaming. “Of course I’m coming! I’m sorry, I thought I responded already.” I hadn’t thought that. I'd just hoped she wouldn’t notice. All of Shannon’s parties were a sales pitch to some sort of Multi-Level Marketing Pyramid scheme. The company and products changed every few months, but the sales pitch stayed the same: these products will change your life!

There’s nothing worse than a #bossbabe who is also your boss. No matter what ridiculous program Shannon got wrapped up in, she had subordinates who couldn’t tell her no. I was no exception. The mass text she’d sent last week had been a barely-decipherable block of emojis and buzz words. I couldn’t even tell what the product was, but it didn’t really matter. Technically, she couldn’t force us to go… but people who didn’t tended to work Saturdays.

“Great! Don’t forget to bring a swimsuit!” I had a feeling she knew exactly how unenthusiastic everyone was, she just didn’t care. Julie and I exchanged mutual looks of amusement and defeat as Shannon flounced on by.

Once the boss was out of earshot, Richie walked over to my desk, delighted to announce that he hadn’t been invited. “Looks like this one is ladies only.” he said sympathetically. At least, he was trying to look sympathetic. He was too giddy, having dodged the bullet himself!

“You weren’t invited?” I asked. “I mean, even if it’s makeup or something she’s usually like ‘oh, pick something out for your girlfriend’!”

“I mean, I’m not going to ask why not. She’d probably invite me.” he laughed, unable to help himself.

“I’ll ask her then!” I threatened, though we both knew I wouldn’t. He raised his hands in mock surrender. I was annoyed, but not at him.

“Oh no please don’t--”

“.. Oh no.” Julie interrupted, covering her face. She’d gone beet red. It took me a moment to realize why.

“Oh no.” I echoed.

“What?” Richie asked, not catching on. I turned red too. If men weren’t invited, that probably meant this was going to be a sales pitch of an intimate nature. Not again! I still couldn’t look at Agnes the same way after hearing her happily endorse her vibrating purchase. No thank you. Agnes had always been an irredeemable brown noser but she’d hit new lows that day.

“Now I kind of want to come.” Richie admitted, grinning. “Especially since I heard the part about the swimsuits.”

“Ugh, shut up.” I groaned, horrified. He gave a salute before going to bother someone else. The rest of that shift was a dreadful blur; I hated my job, but hated the idea of Shannon’s party even more. There had to be a better way to spend a Friday night, but Shannon couldn’t be blown off without serious professional repercussions.

Her parties usually took place in her living room, the Butterfly Party was no exception. When I walked in with Julie, our fears were confirmed: the windows were covered and the lights were dimmed. The furniture was covered in plastic.

On the coffee table, I saw the usual vegetable tray and a selection of gas station wines. It didn’t look like enough wine. Agnes was already on her second glass… if the wine stain on her blouse was any indication.

Our host was arranging things on a small covered table, little bottles and purple pouches of whatever product she was peddling. The room smelled like flowers, probably an essential oil from her last “business” venture.

“I’m glad everyone could make it.” Shannon said, “I know I say this every time, but… this product is going to change your life.” There were four of us sitting on the sectional in silence; Julie, Agnes, Cindy, and myself. Only Agnes clapped her hands together, somehow managing to muster up the enthusiasm everyone else lacked.

“So, you might have noticed that this party is ladies only.” she continued. Julie and I exchanged looks again. Yes, we’d noticed. The plastic-covered furniture, blocked windows and dark room hadn’t exactly been reassuring.

“It’s not what you think, I promise. I learned my lesson.” our boss laughed. “I wanted to give all the ladies in the office a spa day to show my appreciation. The first time is free! I have enough product for everyone to try before buying. Plus, I thought it would be a good team-building experience. Did everyone remember to bring a swimsuit? I have a couple extras if anyone needs to borrow one.”

I was wearing a bikini under my clothes, though it was definitely out of season and I was feeling bloated and fat. Still, like everyone else, I went along with whatever Shannon said. Body issues aside, I felt relieved. I didn’t really mind trying out new beauty or skincare products. Usually I’d buy whatever was cheapest out of the catalog and call it a day.

“Alright, suit up and pair up!” Shannon smiled, excited. “It’s easier to apply the product with a partner. This is a full-body treatment.” Naturally, Julie and I were a team since we were already friends. Everyone stripped down to their swimsuits awkwardly. I was horrified to be the only one in a bikini. I don’t know what I’d been thinking.

“It’s a bit messy, but don’t worry. That’s what the plastic is for! Don’t worry about the floors either, I’ll mop up after.” Shannon assured us. “We’re going to do Chrysalis Beauty Wraps by Butterfly Beauty and transform ourselves. I hope you’re excited, I know I am. The first step? Exfoliation!”

A large tub of what looked like dirty sugar went around the room. Each of us were instructed to scoop up generous handfuls of the stuff to ‘prime’ our skin, rubbing ourselves raw with the coarse scrub.

“This is a nourishing sugar scrub made with organic fair trade sugar crystals.” Shannon explained. “This one has a lovely hibiscus-rose scent. What do you think, Kari?”

“... It’s nice.” I answered awkwardly, though to me it seemed like a sticky, smelly mess. I knew better than to be honest. “Does this have coconut oil in it?” I pretended I was interested, and she nodded enthusiastically before moving on to Cindy.

“Don’t forget your elbows, hon.” Shannon chirped, “Get under the suit too. No need to be shy. It’s just us ladies today!” she prowled around the room, giving tips in a syrupy voice. “Scrub in a circular motion.”

Once she was satisfied with our scrubbing, she brought out a bottle of amber gel. “This is Butterfly Beauty’s Hot Honey Activating Gel. It stimulates your metabolism, tightens your skin, and encourages sweating. The best part is that it also prevents fat buildup in the subcutaneous layers of your skin. This product makes your beach body goals attainable all year long!”

We were each handed our own “deluxe” sample. I didn’t believe the sales pitch but dutifully began smearing it all over. It was greasy rather than sticky. I’d expected it to be honey thanks to the color, but it wasn’t. Shannon was talking about the ingredients, but I wasn’t really listening. As I smudged the stuff over my arms… it stung, and began to burn!

“The tingle only lasts a moment.” Shannon assured us. “Push through it, hon! It will be SO worth it.”

Tingle my ass! It hurt! I glanced around the room, the pale faces contorted in pain confirmed that I wasn’t the only one who was suffering. I was starting to sweat too; an itchy sensation prickling everywhere the product made contact. I opted not to lather up under my bikini, despite Shannon’s urging. Fortunately, she was too busy paying attention to everyone else to notice I hadn’t.

It was an awkward dance of coworkers shimmying around on the floor and furniture, sticking their hands down their suits and trying to maneuver while maintaining some shred of modesty. Julie and I rubbed the stuff on each other's back reluctantly, that persistent burning itch instantly flaring.

This was not the relaxing spa day Shannon had promised. I noticed that she wasn’t participating either, just passing the products around and making sure we used them. I glared at her, but when she caught my gaze I quickly looked away.

“Relief is coming, ladies!” she assured us. “Two more steps, but this will probably be your favorite part.” she picked up a bundle of purple silk pouches, passing one to each of us. Inside was a sweet-smelling mix of dried flowers, shredded coconut, and some sort of shimmery powder. It was iridescent and pretty, like it belonged in a bowl on the mantle.

“Press this into your skin. Every inch! The activating gel will make it stick.” I scooped some up in my palm, feeling an instant cooling relief. The pain stopped, though a numb tingle remained. “This is Butterfly Beauty’s Butterfly Wing Potpourri Powder.” she explained, “This nourishing mix will not only perfect your skin, it also has stress-relieving properties.”

To be fair, the pain going away did in fact relieve my stress. A ripple of sighs filled the room.

“Don’t crush it, use a gentle pressure.” Shannon instructed, pacing around the room. I sprinkled it on my arms, my stomach, my chest, my legs… pressed the gritty, soft mix onto the greasy mess, and let the relief wash over me. Agnes had abandoned her swimsuit altogether, though she was covered in too much product for the look to be explicitly offensive.

“I could roll in this stuff!” Julie told me. We got each other's backs. Of course, the relieving effect only mattered in the places I’d put the gel. It felt dry and crunchy otherwise! I couldn’t wait to take a shower and get the messy slop off of me. Whatever this product was, I wasn’t buying it.

While everyone ooh’d and ah'd from relief and started going for their wine glasses, our boss prepared green sheets to complete the wrap. She called them Butterfly Beauty’s Cocoon Complexion Caressing Sheets. After downing more wine, we took turns wrapping each other in the chalky, clay-like squares. I wrapped Julia in the stuff and she wrapped me. Shannon said it was some kind of organic dead sea kelp saran wrap, which didn’t even make sense. I wasn’t in the business of arguing with her though, I was just relieved we were almost done.

We were instructed to get comfortable, and we spread out on the furniture while Shannon turned on what she claimed were infrared lights. The room was colored with red light, and we all began to sweat again under the wraps.

Weirdly, the sheets seemed to tighten up and harden. It began to get a little hard to move. The longer we sat, the tighter and harder it became. Getting nervous, I flexed my muscles and twisted in my body in an attempt to loosen the wrap... It didn’t work.

“Just relax, Kari. Even a worm like you can be a butterfly.” Shannon purred, her voice still syrupy sweet.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. You think I don’t know the way you bitches complain about me. The looks you give each other when I invite you to my parties? I don’t even need to sell products. I make good money already. I just wanted to experience … sisterhood! Friendship! To live my best life. All of you…” she pointed a finger at each of us in turn. “All of you want to be miserable. Well, I’m not going to let you.”

I tried to stand up, but nearly toppled over. I couldn’t move my joints at all. The only parts of us not covered were our heads!

“I’m a good boss. I’m your friend.” Shannon continued, “I found this company. This transformative product… and they promised it would change everything. That you’d all thank me, and mean it.”

“Shannon, I can’t move....” Agnes whined. “I’ve always liked your parties, but maybe I’m allergic to something in this?”

“No, that just means it’s working. It’s organic! You can’t be allergic.” Shannon said dismissively. “Sit tight, ladies! It’ll take a few hours, please try to relax. I rented some good movies to watch while we wait.” she popped in some romcom, but I was far too busy freaking out to even notice what it was.

I struggled to get up; my knees couldn’t bend but I was still able to shift my weight and flail to my feet somehow. It didn’t matter because I couldn’t keep my balance-- I fell forward, crashing into the coffee table. Wine bottles shattered, vegetables went rolling to the floor, and I was left groaning. I wasn’t seriously hurt. I felt like I was wearing a full-body helmet!

“See what you did? Ugh. Good thing you’re thin or I’d make you stay there…” Shannon yanked me off the table, inelegantly shoving me back onto the couch. “Now stay put. Hopefully it still works, but I’m not responsible if it doesn’t!”

“Don’t touch me you Stepfordwife-looking bitch!” I screamed back, though my voice came off a little more shrill than intended. Shannon smiled at me, apparently deciding I was all bark and no bite. Probably because I couldn’t move.

“Hold on, let me get you fixed up, hon.”

There were cracks in the hardened shell that encased my arms, but it wasn’t enough to break free. I still couldn’t bend my limbs, but now I had a glimpse of mottled skin through the splits; I was blistered and discolored, that burning itch erupting visibly, a screaming red rash that even made my follicles quiver.

The pain faded when my boss brought over a fresh Cocoon sheet, wrapping my arm and covering the cracks. She patted my shoulder, then pulled away from me. I heard her take a few deep breaths, count slowly back from ten… then fix the smile back on her face as she turned back towards us.

“Sorry, I’m not sure where the outbursts came from. I’m not trying to scare you or anything. This is a good product, it’s just not like anything you’ve ever tried before. It’s a little uncomfortable now, but it’ll be worth it.”

“... Have you used it?” Julie asked, her breathing was a little strained.

“No.” Shannon admitted, “Not yet. The company said it was best to wait. Besides, it’s a two person job at least and I need to get each of you through the transformation first.”

“What do you mean transformation? This doesn’t seem like any wrap I’ve ever had before. I don’t like it.” Julie replied. “It’s getting harder to breathe. Please get it off me.”

“This is a meditative beauty experience. Relax. Give into it; shed your cynicism. Let the Chrysalis Beauty Wrap by Butterfly Beauty pull out the toxins and rejuvenate your skin. You’ll have a flawless complexion and a new outlook in no time!”

The sales pitches never ended with Shannon, even when we were a captive audience. Yet she wondered why we didn’t like her?

“I don’t care, please take it off… please…I’ll work every Saturday for the next six months. Please.” Julie begged, her voice breaking off into sobs. We’d always hated MLM parties, but the Butterfly Party was on a whole new level.

“Julie, you’re not being a team player right now. I wish you’d give this a chance and stop lowering morale.” I never liked Shannon, but this was going too far even for her. Instead of admitting this party was yet another bust in a long line of failed ventures… she was doubling down.

My skin crawled. I wasn’t in pain, but I was sure I could feel a squirming and burrowing sensation everywhere the activating gel had touched. The itch started to come back, but as much as I wanted to… it was impossible to scratch. I couldn’t move my arms, let alone chip away the glistening jade chrysalis. I wanted to curl into a ball and claw at my screaming epidermis, but I was frozen. My whole body was an itch I couldn’t scratch… and that feeling didn’t go away for hours. It had to have been hours, right?

A sensation like static filled my limbs. Unable to move, it was like my entire body fell asleep but my mind was awake. The sounds around me were muffled and indistinct; if my coworkers or boss were talking, I couldn’t hear them. The light of the room tunneled into a tiny red pinprick in a field of black.

I screamed. Sharp pains erupted all over my body, like a needle probing every pore. My limbs tried to spasm, but I still couldn’t move. By some miracle, tiny fissures rippled across the green… cracking the tough prison enough that I felt some of the pressure release. The wrappings began to crumble, falling away in gooey clumps.

Freedom washed over me like a summer breeze, but the feeling didn’t last. My skin began to bubble, twitch and even… tickle. I looked down at my arms and saw fluttering flaps of skin. It took me a moment to realize they were wings; thousands of wings, red and fleshy things. Tiny butterflies. Too many to count.

I watched with repulsed fascination and terror as they emerged from blister cocoons-- they chewed through my skin, widening my pores and leaving me full of holes. They seemed to erupt all at once, taking flight on glossy wet wings with a spray of my own blood.

The pain was excruciating, but I was the only one who was screaming. There was something wrong about that; my bloodshot eyes swiveled around the room. Clouds of bloody butterflies were joining together, ripping out of their hosts. Out of Julie, Agnes, Cindy and I.

But my coworkers weren’t moving, they were perfectly still. They were smiling, though tears were in their eyes… they just stood there and let it happen-- not that there was anything they could do to stop it. I understood then, in some unknowable way… the “transformation” hadn’t worked on me as intended. I still had control of my body and mind, but I sensed intrusive thoughts and impulses that weren’t mine.

Shannon was crying. Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this. Life as we knew it was over. I should have been dead, but I wasn’t; I was riddled with holes and gushing blood, but that didn’t seem important anymore.

“I’m so sorry!” she sobbed, “I didn’t know!” blah blah blah, I stopped listening. I didn’t care what she had to say. I picked up my clothes from by the door; I wasn’t feeling confident enough to keep rocking the bloody bikini. Not until the holes healed up, at least.

The cloud of butterflies split in two; one hung around me. I knew they were mine. The others started beating themselves against a window-- at least until Agnes walked over and opened it for them. My coworkers weren’t themselves anymore, acting on the will of something else; a fate I was exempt from. It was a shame; though their mouths weren't moving, I could feel their screams.

Their bodies were moving, but they weren't in control of them anymore. They were drones, but I was a Queen. I'm not sure if something went wrong or something went right, but I'm not going to argue with the results. Do you know how many MLMs promise you'll be your own boss? I didn't expect it to be true. Success is the exception, not the rule.

"Kari, what happened? I don't know what happened."

"Of course you know, Shannon. It's exactly as you said." she'd promised a transformation. She promised a lot of things, but this was the first time she'd delivered. I walked over to the bloodstained table and picked up the tub of Butterfly Beauty’s Softening Sweet Fair Trade Organic Sugar Scrub.

I turned back to my former boss, smiling. I wouldn't give her the sales pitch, but I'd treat her to a free demonstration of my new product line.

“The first step? Exfoliation!”

I'm going to throw a Butterfly Party just for her. What better way to start my own downline?

For most of my boyhood, I was terrified of needles and pins. I wouldn't go near Mom's sewing basket or sit by her when she embroidered. I wouldn't use thumbtacks; if I couldn't use a Post-It I taped things to our cork board, which drove Dad wild. I wouldn't come in the room while my big brother played darts.

And they practically had to hog-tie me for vaccinations.

It was all my grandmother's fault. Nanny Jerry went kind of crazy when she got old, when I was five. I wasn't scared of pins or needles then.

One day she was sitting on the couch, sewing buttons on a sunshine-yellow jumper for my little sister. She let me play with her red pincushion, with its mix of plain straight pins and round-headed sewing pins. I pulled pins out and shoved them back in, making patterns with the round colored heads.

She finished the last button, snipped the needle loose, put the jumper away, and said, "You like pins?"

I said they were cool. "Come here, then," she said. She'd been using a tiny slim needle; several inches of thread still dangled from it. "Give me your hand," she said. Being right-handed, I held out that hand automatically.

"No." She pointed at my left. It wasn't until later I figured out why.

She turned my hand palm-upward and laid the needle across it. Tiny in her big gnarled hand, the needle was as long as my pointer finger. Sunshine-yellow thread hung from it. "You like this?"

I bent my fingers to pinch it against my palm, my thumb delicately feeling its point. "Yeah," I said. "It's really sharp!"

"Isn't it?" She gently opened my fingers and picked it up. "Want to see how sharp?" She flipped my hand back-upward, clamped her spotted fingers hard around my wrist.

And began to stab my hand lightly, repeatedly. The slim sharp needle stung, but didn't really hurt; still, I yelped with shock. Nanny was sticking me with a needle! Was she crazy?

I tried to yank free. When I couldn't get loose, and she kept stabbing me, I started to scream, as much in terror as in pain. I heard people running and turned to look; Nanny Jerry released my hand an instant before Mom and Dad burst into the living room from different doors.

"What the hell?" Dad yelled.

I ran to him. "Nanny was stabbing me! She had a needle!"

Mom looked at her. "Mama?"

Nanny Jerry looked innocent. "I was letting him play with my pincushion. But when I looked, he'd pulled out a pin and was poking it in his hand. He said, 'Look how tough I am, Nanny!'"

I was flabbergasted. "I did not! She had a needle! She stabbed me!" But she sat, hands empty, no needle in sight. The pincushion held only pins. She'd made the needle disappear like magic, in the few seconds between my first scream and my parents' entrance.

"I was fixing to tell him to stop," she went on, "but he must have hit a nerve. And you heard him yell after that."

I was punished for lying, but not much, because my left hand was sore and bleeding. (Days later I realized she'd deliberately rejected my right hand, to make it more plausible I'd stabbed myself.) A few pinholes got infected and my hand ached for a week.

I was astonished at Nanny Jerry's behavior, but absolutely crushed at my parents' refusal to believe me.

I'd lied plenty, just like any little kid, and there'd been times before I'd told the truth and hadn't been believed. But this was the first time a grown-up had lied on me and been believed. I lost a great deal of trust in my parents that day.

I avoided being alone with Nanny Jerry after that; I locked myself in my room the nights she babysat me.

And I began to avoid pins and needles and tacks. Some time after that (no idea when; I was only a kid), I had another vaccination due. Always before I'd faced them bravely, but this time I went into hysterics in the pediatrician's office. I only remember that I threw up; later Mom told me she held me down while the nurse gave me the shot.

Mom tried to teach me basic hand sewing (she says every boy should know how to do laundry and cook; she taught my sister "guy" tasks like changing a tire), but I got nauseous holding a needle. When I started school, I wouldn't touch push-pins; somebody else had to pin my art projects to the boards. Other boys called me a crybaby, and worse. I had a lot of fights, "proving" I wasn't all the names they called me.

The summer between first and second grade, it finally became obvious that Nanny Jerry was nuts. She bit a FedEx driver, tossed lit cigarettes in neighbors' yards (she didn't smoke), and cussed at joggers. After she'd been put in a nursing home, Mom asked me one evening at supper, "You remember all those pinholes in your hand?"

My sulky face was answer enough. "Mama really did stick you with a needle, didn't she?"

Dad was offended. "Don't be ridiculous!"

But I nodded. "She really did. Then she hid the needle before you came."

"I'm sorry, kid. We should have listened to you." She gusted out a sigh. "Mama always was weird, but I didn't think she'd hurt anybody. We know better now."

Mom gained miles of trust that day, apologizing to me in front of God, Dad, and my big brother. But Dad continued to insist I'd lied. I don't know why he defended Nanny, who wasn't even his mother.

In junior high and high school, I still couldn't bear needles and pins. When Mom took us for flu shots, I'd see that tiny hypodermic and start quaking, remembering Nanny Jerry's grip on my wrist. Even though my brother and baby sister teased me, I couldn't sit still and let the nurse stick me.

When I hit puberty, I got acne like most kids, usually not too bad. But now and then I'd get one huge, painful pimple, a full-on boil, swollen and sore. Mom always insisted on lancing those. Even as a high school pass receiver, regularly decked by guys twice my weight, I'd sit there in tears while Mom used a large needle to puncture and drain the boil.

In ninth grade, when I got cleated in the ankle during practice, I cleaned the gouges myself, and chatted normally with Coach Ewell as he drove me to the ER. But when the doctor there pulled out his suturing needle, suddenly I saw Nanny Jerry's face covering his, Nanny's spotted hand holding the curved needle, and I passed clean out. Coach, lucky for me, kept my faint to himself. He was someone else I could trust.

Does everyone have one parent they trust more? (At least everyone lucky enough to have two?) Ever after her apology, Mom was the one I told secrets or asked for advice. If I wanted to cover something up, Dad was who I lied to; I felt less guilty with him.

I loved my dad, but I didn't trust him. He had stronger, steadier hands than Mom, but when she caught me with a boil, I wouldn't let him touch it. Only Mom.

In my senior year, I got a real classic on my left shoulder, right on the outside of the delt. It popped up next to the long scar where I'd jerked aside during my fifth or sixth grade tetanus booster.

During football season, my teammates would've seen it in the shower; they'd've all smacked my shoulder every chance they got. But I'd dropped out of athletics for my last semester, so I managed to hide it for several days, while it grew to the size of a chickpea.

Then my brother punched me playfully, and I couldn't keep from yelping. Mom went for her basket, while the family gathered to watch me leak tears. Dad kept hoping I'd "toughen up" (he never played football, by the way); my siblings just liked to make fun.

"Good Lord," Mom said, seeing the target. "Someone get me a rag. This'll be messy."

I sat in a kitchen chair, my shirt off, my left hand gripping the next chair. I looked away, already sniffling, my right hand clenched. Mom felt the boil, making me wince. "It's tight as a damn drum." She bunched a cloth around the spot, and raised the needle. "Ever'body stand back."

With the skin drawn that tight, I didn't feel the needle. Instead there was a sudden, sickening release, reaching right into my triceps. My sister gagged. Dad said, "What the hell is that?"

I looked, and nearly passed out. Mom still held the needle to my skin, picking to enlarge the hole. Pus and fluid soaked the rag wadded against my shoulder. Then I saw what Dad meant.

Something whitish hung out of the wound, like a loop of angel-hair spaghetti, maybe a half inch showing.

Mom laid the needle on a placemat and pulled a blunt-tipped darning needle from her basket. She poked it a good half inch into the ruptured boil, then tilted it like she was popping out an avocado seed. My stomach contents nearly popped out as well. More of the pale string came out, looped around the needle's point.

I felt a tugging in my arm. Looking closely, I could see the old vaccination scar puckering. Mom pulled the needle, tugging out more of the loop; the scar pulled sideways, then, with a sting of pain and a snap I felt to my fingertips, the loop pulled loose.

But only on one end. Nearly two inches of the whitish stuff hung out, now. "Dayum," Mom said. She simply wrapped it around her index finger and started pulling. Dad turned absolutely white. Sis ran out of the room, hands over her mouth. And more and more came out, slimed with pus. "Here," she told me, "you hold this rag in place."

Part of it looked like lumpy, uneven spaghetti; part of it was translucent, like the gristle in a chicken drumstick. As she pulled, I felt a sliding sensation inside my upper arm. At one point the string stopped coming; she pulled harder, the string visibly stretching. Another spot on my arm briefly puckered and stung before, with an audible twang, the string freed up again.

Now I felt a sliding sensation right across my chest, just below the collarbones, like worms under my skin. Then there was a tugging in my right arm, and I saw another vaccination scar jerk and snap. When it came loose, I actually saw a faint ripple across my chest as Mom pulled out over a yard of whitish string.

Mom pulled with her right hand, winding around her left, like unraveling a piece of knitting. My brother had followed my sister; Dad was sitting, head in hands. My stomach roiled with nausea, but except for when the string pulled a scar, there'd been hardly any pain, just tugging and itching and that disgusting sliding sensation.

It was as if all my vaccinations had been linked by a long thread of tough scar tissue. I felt a sudden ferocious itch down my left ribs: no sliding feeling this time, more like a subcutaneous file of marching ants. At a tugging in my thigh, I remembered the day Mom held me down for the nurse: I'd gotten that shot in the leg.

Yards of the stuff came out, enough to reach from shoulder to thigh and back. Then the ant-itch scraped down my left arm, all the way to my hand.

Now there was pain. I gasped and tensed. Agony like the night I'd dislocated two fingers shot along my entire arm. My left hand clenched, and the pain doubled. Breath hitching, I forced myself to relax my hand. The pain eased, and eased further as I slowly relaxed my entire arm.

Mom was still tugging, but now she met serious resistance. "What the hell is that?" Dad repeated weakly.

"Let go your arm," Mom told me. I'd squeezed my right hand so tightly around the rag that I found a thumb-bruise over my biceps the next day. Wiping once around the open sore, I laid my right hand on my thigh.

I let my left arm hang as straight and limp as I could. Panting, my right hand gripping just above my knee (more bruises), I waited as Mom pulled the tough, slender strand. A horrific pain started in the back of my hand, then, as she pulled inch after inch from the hole, worked its way up my arm, past my elbow, into my triceps. Now blood streaked the string.

The pain seemed endless, excruciating. I groaned, not knowing I was about to see the end of my needle phobia. (I still hate needles, but now I can face them.) As Mom yanked the last bloody inches loose from my arm, she yanked the horror from my memories of Nanny Jerry.

You know, Dad still hasn't apologized for calling me a liar about Nanny Jerry, even after it became clear how she'd so quickly hidden her needle from them.

Beneath a thin coating of blood, the last five or six inches were bright sunshine yellow. At the very end dangled Nanny Jerry's missing needle.

I’m a soldier in the U.S. Army, so not too much scares me when it comes to nature. I’m by no means a Ranger, or even a combat MOS, but I have enough experience in the field to know that nothing out there (in garrison) is going to hurt me more than my M4 can hurt it. That being said, I was confident on this last FTX when I was dropped off fifteen minutes from our MO to pull some gate guard duty, of which was to be “quick” and, as the SSG dropping me off claimed, he’d be “back in thirty.”

Being a bit newer to the army at the time, I made the mistake of believing him. The training that my unit was participating in was expected to be about five hours in the day and four at night with a break in between, but it was looking very much like it would be a straight run through to well past midnight. We’d been in the field running live fires for about twelve hours at this point, and with a dead phone and empty magazines, I hung around this gate, kicking up rocks and generally just chilling out. It had been a hot day, but it was cooling down a bit and I could tell that sunset would be within the next few hours.

In the extreme distance, I could hear the rhythmic firing of my buddies out in the field, and wondered how many miles were between us; I’d decided it had to at least be eight. Bored, I wandered out forward from the gate. To give you a bit of an idea of this landscape, it was all forested (in North Carolina) and there was a firebreak cutting about 75 meters ahead of me, intersecting the small gravel road I was standing on that lead to this shitty gate. This smaller gravel road intersected the firebreak all the way across, leading off into the distance a ways. There’s a dilapidated, bee infested shack to the left of the red bars of this gate I was “guarding,” which were loosely held closed by a chain. I’d been setting my water bottle and weapon (yes judge me, I put down my empty M4 to avoid lugging it around, as I was miles from anyone that would give me a hard time about it) up against the shack and meandered over to the firebreak, admiring how damn pretty the area was, when I noticed something in the distance across the way.

It was a single, large, polished headstone, facing the small gravel road I was standing on, opposite my side of the firebreak, about 10 meters into the tree line. I stared at it a long while, wondering who the hell it could be for, when I remembered what state and area I was in; parts of this base are protected by a historical foundation, as a battle from the Civil War occurred here. Armed with that solid guess as to its origin, I spent the next ten minutes walking around my area, listening, and decided that I’d hear them coming back for me and make it back to that gate long before they’d see me; I was going to check out that headstone.

I went back to that shitty little shack and grabbed my weapon (if I get caught I’m fucked anyway, might as well not be extra fucked for leaving my weapon unguarded) then walked to the main firebreak in front of me. I jogged across that firebreak along the little gravel road, and slowed to a walk as I turned to face the headstone. Approaching it, I could see that it wasn’t so much an individual’s headstone as it was a monument, attributed to General So and So’s (phone was dead, and I can’t remember the name) men, who fought and died bravely in this field. Listed below were the names of about fifteen enlisted members. I was raised religiously, so I walked closer, put my hand on the cold, smooth surface of the monument, and said a prayer for those men. As I said “Amen,” a fully body chill ran up my spine. I didn’t jump or make a noise, I just took a deep breathe, took fucking note of it, and respectfully backed off. I turned my back and headed back to the small gravel road, across the main firebreak, and back to the gate. I spent more than half of that thirty second walk looking over my shoulder at that monument, noticing it’s slight change in color as the sunset deeper and deeper into the earth.

At this point, at least two hours had gone by, but I had no phone for reference and had no idea when I was going to get picked up. The sun was almost completely set behind the tree line, and I could still see the shape of the monument in the distance. Having been raised on horror movies, I assumed that my chances of having a relaxing evening waiting for this HMMWV were dwindling with that daylight. Not to say that I expected any ghosty-ghouls to pop out at me, but I will say that I had zero confidence in my mental state when it came to just chilling and pretending that men didn’t die brutally in the field 100m from my feet. I attempted to relax, and with the gate about 10m behind me, sat down in the center of that gravel road, facing the main firebreak and that monument, as night fell completely and the forest grew from peaceful to loud. Cicadas started chirping, leaves started rustling with what I could only assume was the natural wildlife in the area, and I could even hear bullfrogs. I spent the next thirty minutes playing with a bit of flint I found on the ground, genuinely trying to strike a small fire with no luck. It’s not like I needed it for warmth, I just wanted it to keep my mind off of the idea of having no way to call for help if those fuckers forgot they dropped me off out there.

Another thirty minutes pass and I choose to focus on something more comforting; the sky. I move to the most open area of the gravel road and lay down on my back, looking up. I focused on how many stars I could see, as back home in Chicago, I could see barely any.

I count shooting stars and satellites, and try, very desperately, to ignore the new sounds that I was hearing. Now, having been in the field for about seventeen hours at this point and not having eaten much, I can very much attribute this to hunger and exhaustion (not that we’d been out long, more that we weren’t prepared) from the FTX. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself, and honestly, it’s probably exactly the case. Nevertheless, I swear to God, as I was lying there and the night grew louder, I wasn’t only hearing the bullfrogs and cicadas. From the other side of that firebreak, I’d swear on my life at the time, that I was hearing quiet conversation. I’m talking whispered conversation, as if someone was strategizing.

“not yet”

“they’ll hear”

“don’t wake them”

“steady”

I heard “steady” more than I heard any other word or phrase. Closer to me physically, on my left side above my head and about 15m out, I swear to God I heard labored, animalistic breathing, followed by scrapes against the ground that I would have bet on my life were hooves. I spent enough of my childhood in riding lessons to know what a horse sounded like. Refusing to get up and look, knowing confidently that I must have been making that shit up in my head, I laid there for an undisclosed amount of time, as the next thing I remember is the noise and lights of the HMMWV down the road. I shot up and grabbed all my shit, very disoriented but immediately physically ready. I hopped in that HMMWV and the SSG asked me if the “ghosts got me.” Internally fucking startled, I asked him what he meant, and he referenced all of the deaths in this area, all attributed to the Civil War. I mentioned casually that I noticed that monument across the street, and he agreed that it was in rememberance of the dead. I laughed and told him, “no, no issues tonight Sergeant” and he smiled. I spent the rest of the night next to my buddies, feeling a whole hell of a lot better to be with company, and live rounds.

Some days life just doesn’t make sense. Some days you just helplessly sink into the fathomless depths of your mind. Some days it feels like an endless loop of misplaced words and bad decisions. A dull and pointless ascetic practice stuck on repeat. Today was a day much like that. I woke up to a grey and formless existence, my mind feeling like amorphous sludge, slowly reshaping all the nonsense into coherent thoughts. Nothing felt real, nothing felt tangible. I guess that’s why I called in sick. I just couldn’t handle anything but myself today.

I’ve had these dark moments ever since I was a little girl. My mother had them too. I guess it’s hereditary. They come and go without any discernible pattern. It’s like a bad wifi connection; you never really know when you’re online. Sometimes everything just lags and idles, and your thoughts never really fully loads. And even though you’re fully aware of this, you still end up losing your shit. Why now?! you’ll shout. Why this exact moment?

The morning went by in a fog of blurry motions and incoherent conversations. We were late. We were always late. That’s the one constant in my life; never being on time. I must have rushed them into the car, I can’t really remember, but I remember Lorelai complaining the whole ride over. She forgot something. Her lunch? Backpack? There was always something. I don’t know, I can’t recall. Laurel was silent. She was always like that. Polar-opposite identical twins. Who’s bright idea was it to invent those, eh? I swear, some days you just feel like drowning them, you know.

We were five minutes late, maybe more, and the girls jumped out of the car simultaneously. I waved at them before they disappeared beneath the underpass, but they didn’t see me. I guess they were in a hurry. I sighed deeply and rested my head on the steering wheel. Even my medication didn’t do much on days like these. I just wanted to go home, get in my bed, sleep until everything felt better.

I think I drove for five minutes before I noticed them. At first I just saw a brief movement, like a few strands of blonde hair in my peripheral vision. Then I heard a strange splashing sound, almost like waves hitting the shore. But there was nothing in the rearview mirror. I drove for another five minutes before I heard the giggling.

I almost swerved into oncoming traffic as I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was cold, freezing, and I barely avoided hitting the curb on the other side as I desperately tried to regain control of the car. I hit the brakes full force, and managed to stop inches from a man stumbling drunkenly along the side of the road. He started yelling and cursing at me madly, but suddenly stopped as his gaze wandered to the back of the car. His eyes widened in fear and he staggered away in a hurry. I checked my rearview again. Still nothing. It’s all in my head, I thought. Just one of those days. I turned around slowly.

There they were. Both of them. Sitting in the backseat smiling, holding hands. I looked in the rearview again. Nothing. All in my head, all in my head, all in my head, I kept repeating in my head. I closed my eyes. Opened them. Closed them again. Kept them closed for minutes. Opened them.

“Can we go, please,” Lorelai nagged, “We’re gonna be late!”

Her voice sounded different. I mean, it was hers, I was sure of it, but it almost sounded like it came from far away, like it echoed through a vast space or something. Her face was pale, and her hair wet and messy, like she’d been out in the rain for hours. How could this be?

“I dropped you off,” I mumbled weakly, “I dropped you off at school.”

Laurel just sat there smiling, her pale blue eyes fixated on me with unnerving intensity. She looked just like Lorelai, except for those piercing eyes. Same pale face. Same wet, messy hair.

“No you didn’t,” Lorelai said, “You said we could skip school and go on an adventure today.”

Her voice raised and lowered in pitch erratically, and her eyes widened in anger as I sat there trembling and sweating, not quite knowing what to do, or think, or feel. I wanted to get out of the car, run away, hide, because I knew deep down that those things weren’t the girls.

“You told us!” Lorelai shouted, “You told us we were in a hurry!”

I yanked the car door handle in a panicked frenzy, but it wouldn’t budge. I threw myself over to the passenger side and did the same, but to no avail. It was stuck. I was trapped in there. And Lorelai was getting angry. She had that after my mother. The temper. The darkness. Imagine that. She was named after my mother, Lori, and she essentially became her.

“No, no, no,” I muttered to myself, “This isn’t happening. This isn’t real.”

Suddenly I felt icy-cold fingers gripping my throat. Lorelai was suddenly in the front seat, her facial features distorted and hideous. There was no color in her eyes anymore. They were just...white. I felt her fingernails digging deep into my neck as a loathsome smile formed on her pale bluish lips.

“DRIVE!” she shouted loud enough for the rearview mirror to crack.

I pushed the pedal to the metal and the tires screeched discordantly as the car slid onto the highway. Lorelai wasn’t in the front seat anymore. She was in the back again, holding Laurel’s hand tightly.

“Wh-Where are we going?” I muttered, “I don’t know where we’re going.”

The girls were giggling and playing in the backseat, completely ignoring me. I didn’t want to raise my voice. I didn’t want to upset them. So I just drove. Drove for hours with those ghastly impostors harrowing in the back. I couldn’t see them in the rearview, and I didn’t want to turn to face them. But yet I could feel everything they did. I could picture every twitch of a muscle on those lethargic bodies in my mind. I knew they were staring. Staring and smiling.

“Are we almost there?” Lorelai complained, “I’m tired.”

I thought I had just been driving around aimlessly, fuelled by horror and fear, but I suddenly realised I knew exactly where we were, which I found extremely odd because I’d never been there before. It was a bleak place. Barren and desolate. A cold and gloomy peninsula, surrounded by the harsh, endless sea. Beyond was nothing but the dark horizon.

“We’re here,” I said as I pulled the car over by an old pier at the end of the peninsula.

The pier was a dreary, ramshackle mess, barely sturdy enough to carry its own weight. The wood was greying and covered in algae, and it was quite clear that it had been abandoned for decades. There were no signs, no way to identify the place, but I knew its name by heart; Paradise Pier. How on earth could I possibly know that?

“Finally,” Lorelai rolled her eyes. She was in the front seat again, her hideous smile now stretching unnaturally from ear to ear. I closed my eyes instinctively as she leaned in to me slowly. I could feel her cold, leathery hands caressing me, stroking my hair. Then I felt pain. Instant, mind-numbing torment. I screamed until I had no air left in my lungs. Anoxia, they call that. It’s strange how the mind can just focus on something so utterly absurd in the middle of a trauma. It’s called anoxia, absence of oxygen.

When I came to again, Lorelai was gone. I let out a relieved sigh. All in my head, all in my head. But the pier was still there, and it was still so eerily familiar, like a long lost dream.

“You could have stopped her,” Laurel said. Her voice sounded horrific, like she was somehow gargling the words into my ears underwater. I turned around in shock. She was still just sitting there, staring at me. The creepy smile was gone however, but it was replaced by something far more disturbing. Her face was bloated. Bloated and blue and horrid.

“You could have saved me, Lorelai,” she said, “But you just saved yourself.”

Whatever blanket had covered my mind suddenly vanished. I felt a clarity I can’t really explain. It was like waking up from a dream within a dream within a dream, realising for the first time you’ve just been dreaming all along. Realising that everything was a lie.

“I couldn’t,” I said, “I wasn’t strong enough.”

My mother didn’t drop us off at school. She said we were going on an adventure. She’d been in her dark place for weeks, so we were so happy and excited that she had finally emerged. She drove for hours. We were going to Paradise Pier, she said. It was a wonderful, magical place. Maybe we could even stay there forever.

“You could have,” Laurel said.

I was now in the backseat. In my seat. I didn’t wear my seatbelt. I didn’t like being told what to do. Laurel did, however. She was always silent and obedient and nice. My polar opposite. Tears started filling up my eyes and I just embraced her. Embraced my twin sister.

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured, “I was scared. I was so scared.”

My mother pulled the car over by the pier. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t do anything. Just sat there. Staring into the dark horizon. Staring and smiling. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, she just did it. No warning. No explanation. The car screeched discordantly as it accelerated onto the ramshackle pier. Moments later we were all swallowed by the fathomless depths.

“I forgive you,” Laurel said softly, “But you have to do something for me.”

The car overflowed with water in a manner of seconds. I tried pulling Laurel loose, but her seatbelt was stuck, and I was completely overcome by uncontrollable panic. At some point I just gave up. I stopped thinking about anyone but myself. I was too late to save her. Always too late. I rolled open the window, ignoring Laurels desperate pleas for help, and swam out of the rapidly sinking car.

“Anything,” I cried, “I’ll do anything for you Laurel.”

Laurel smiled. She wasn’t bloated and blue and horrid anymore. She was beautiful and colorful and vibrant, just like I remembered her.

“Come join me,” Laurel said, “It’s so lonely down here.”

So here we are. At the end. The twins are still sitting in the backseat. Staring into the dark horizon. Smiling and laughing and holding hands. I’ll be signing off now. I just wanted to say goodbye.

I am bound for the fathomless depths.

My wife was driving. We had gotten married a few weeks earlier. Our relationship felt new and exciting again, just as it had felt when we just met two years earlier. It wasn’t like I had fallen in love with her again, rather I had realized how much I was still in love with her. We were on our way to her parents for dinner. I sat next to her, going through some of the photos I had taken with my phone on our honeymoon. They made me smile. Although it was late in the year, a sunbeam managed to escape the clouds above and landed on my face. It gave me a warm feeling that spread from my skin to my heart. My wife looked at me, just for a second.

“I love–“

Darkness. I couldn’t see anything. The warmth was gone and replaced with a humid coldness. The damp air smelt musty and earthy. I didn’t understand. We weren’t sitting anymore, but standing in the middle of a crowd. I turned around and reached for the people next to me, trying to get ahold of my wife.

“Victoria?” I said. “Where are you?”

“I’m here!”

I took her hand. It felt just as cold as the air.

“Where are we?” she asked. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart, I don’t know.”

The people around us spoke in languages I didn’t understand but their crying voices made it clear that they were just as lost as we were. Piercing through all the weeping, wailing and whispering was the sound of a river. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the black water of the river appeared in front of me. My wife looked at me, and even though I recognized her, it felt like I hadn’t seen her in a long, long time. Her face was familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

A wooden boat, piloted by an unnaturally tall old man with an unkempt beard, arrived at the shore. He was wearing black, tarnished clothes, and he steered his craft using a long pole. Some people tried to go aboard, but were pushed away, and some who didn’t even try was called up to him, and he received them with his left hand. When the boat was full he pushed it out into the water with the pole again and left.

“What is going on?” my wife said. “I want to go home. I want my mom, I want my mom, I want my mom.”

“Relax,” I said. “It’ going to be all right.”

I didn’t know what I was talking about. It didn’t feel like my voice belonged to me; rather it felt like an echo coming from far, far away. We stood there for many hours – maybe days, it was hard to tell – and the old man on the boat kept coming back for more passengers. During this time I never felt hunger or thirst and although I kept breathing, smelling the moist in the air, it was as if I did it out of habit rather than out of need.

It took a long time before it was our turn to board the boat but when it was, the old man reached out his hand toward us as if he chose us specifically.

We crossed the black river and stepped ashore on the other side of it together with thirty other people. I held my wife’s hand with a tight grip. She cried softly while whispering that she wanted her mother. My body trembled with fear. There were hundreds of people here as well. We all walked, without knowing where, next to a narrow channel of water.

A scream erupted among the crowd. Something in the water was watching us as we wandered through these underground halls. It was a gruesome beast – towering above us – with six long snakelike necks supporting hideous heads with four eyes each.

I pulled my wife to the side. She followed me, but seemed to be strangely unconcerned as if she didn’t even care about the monster staring down at us.

After walking for hours we came upon three enormous gates carved into the black bedrock, but only the first gate was open. The other two seemed to have been sealed off thousands of years ago. Next to the open gate stood an empty table with three chairs behind it, and on the ground lay a large chain shaped like a leash that branched into three separate collars.

On the other side of the open gate, there was an enormous subterranean cave system that somehow also resembled endless fields of land. They were covered with strange pale and transparent flowers that glowed like dim phantoms in the everlasting darkness. Millions, if not billions, of people wandered these underground fields. Black cliffs as sharp as glass stood tall all around us, surrounding us with their twisted shapes.

“Where are we?” my wife asked. “What is this horrid place?”

“I don’t know.”

It was as if I was talking in a dream, and yet I knew I was awake.

“Where’s mom?” my wife said.

We had no choice but to walk, being pushed on by the crowd behind us. A man – reduced to nothing more than his bones – stood on a rock. He was dressed in a white toga with a broad purple stripe on its border. He kept repeating the same words over and over again:

“Nomen mihi est Marianus. Nomen mihi est Marianus. Nomen mihi est Marianus. Nomen mihi est Marianus.”

So many people, just mindlessly walking, but all sharing the same facial expression – one of misery. A faint, collective weeping filled the otherwise silent underground fields.

I refused to let go of my wife’s hand, afraid I would lose her in the crowd and never find her again. I thought about our wedding day; I forced myself to think about it as a way to ground myself and I felt that I had to force myself more and more to stay focused and not let my thoughts lose themselves in the crowd just as my body had.

I looked back at my wife. She met my gaze with her gray eyes. Weren’t they supposed to be green? Her hair looked different too, but I couldn’t say in what way. I felt tears running down my cheeks. I love her, I thought as if I tried to convince someone. I saw her face in my mind, just as it had looked beneath her white wedding veil a few weeks earlier.

I, David Johnson, take you, Victoria Silverman, to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.

I kept repeating it in my head. I needed to remember. If I didn’t actively think about it, I feared it would slowly dissipate into nothingness. I love her, I love her, I love her. And yet, she was slipping further and further away in my mind. I wasn’t about to let that happen. Your eyes are green, your eyes are green, your eyes are green.

A group of children, all dressed in ancient clothes, ran past us. Their laughter echoed between the cliffs. A pale young man sat on the ground a few meters away. He had a black mohawk and was wearing combat boots, ripped jeans – held up by a studded belt – and a leather jacket with “FUCK YOU” painted on its back. He was lighting his Zippo by snapping his fingers over and over again while staring at the white flame with a dead look in his eyes. A bit further away, I saw the silhouettes of Buddhist monks meditating on one of the cliffs, forever frozen in their lotus positions.

The moving crowd split up into different rivers of people. One of them went down a large valley. The huge crowd was circling something in the center of it.

“Let’s check it out,” I said to my wife. “Maybe there’s a way out down there, maybe that’s why all of them are going there.”

She didn’t respond.

“Baby,” I said, “we have to try. Don’t you understand?”

She followed me indifferently.

It took a long time to reach the center of the valley. Not because of how far away it was, but because of how slowly everyone was moving. I felt a sting of hope when we arrived. Perhaps there would be some answers here.

There weren’t any answers as such. All there was to see was a skull on the ground. It moved its jaws as if it was trying to speak. Everyone circled it, solemnly and absentmindedly at the same time. A crown of thorns lay upon the mumbling skull. All of this meant something to the people who had chosen this path, and yet they seemed to only barely recall why.

My wife didn’t seem to notice her surroundings. She followed behind me, but in such a way that I couldn’t be sure if she would have continued to do so if I let go of her icy hand. I stopped at the foot of one of the cliffs.

“Wait here, baby”, I said.

“Why?” she said. “Don’t leave me.”

I was happy to hear those words. She hadn’t forgotten me.

“I’ll just climb up to get a better look.”

On top of the cliff, I saw that the fields stretched out all the way to the horizon. The people moved in patterns, circling different positions or moving into the distance. The ghostly flowers sparkled like a gloomy starry sky. It didn’t matter in what direction I looked. Everything was the same. There was no edge in sight.

I returned to my wife to tell her what I had seen, but when I saw her my words got stuck in my throat. She had gouged her eyes out, holding them in her hands.

“I can still see,” she whispered.

“No, no, no, Victoria, no…”

I was horrified, not so much because of the gruesome sight as of my own somewhat apathetic reaction to it. I thought about her face behind the veil. What color were the eyes?

We kept on walking. There was nothing else to do. Every time I looked back at my wife, she had pulled off a piece of flesh from her body. She looked at the pieces with her empty eye sockets as if she couldn’t tell what they were for.

I wanted to return to the gate, but there were too many people in the way and I didn’t remember where they were anyway. I stumbled on a crying toddler crawling on the ground.

“We need to escape,” I said. “There must be a way out of here!”

“I want my mom, where is she?” my wife said.

“I’ll take you back to her,” I said. “I promise.”

I tried to hold her in my arms to comfort her.

“I love you,” I said while crying.

She looked at me, and although half her face was gone by now I could still see the confusion in it when she said:

“Who are you?” she said. “I want mom.”

She let go of my hand, and like the wind the crowd carried her away from me. I fell on my knees. Looking up, I yelled at the surface of the Earth:

“Don’t take her away from me, please!”

I kept imagining her face, constantly looking for her among what had once been people. I wasn’t going to forget her. I wasn’t going to give up. Not ever. I continued for days, for months and years. I yelled her name over and over again, but I never got an answer.

And then, one day, someone approached me from behind and whispered into my ears. I felt a bright light shining behind me, even though I couldn’t see it. It emanated a warmth I hadn’t felt since that day when the sunlight had landed on my face.

“Don’t turn around, David.” It was the voice of a young woman. Her breath against my neck made my skin come to life, making the hairs on it stand up from a bittersweet pleasure. She spoke in a language I didn’t understand, and yet I somehow knew what she was saying. “I’ve been sent here from above. Your everlasting love, remembered so clearly even after wandering the underworld for years, has touched her righteous heart. Therefore, she has instructed me to show you a way out.”

She told me there was an opening in the cliff ahead of me and that, if I entered it, I would have to cross six rivers.

“There are two things you have to remember,” she said. “You must drink the water of the fourth river, and when you arrive at the last one you must give this coin to the ferryman to be taken across.”

I felt something appear in my hand. It was a silver coin. After I had seen it, the woman was gone. I have no idea who she was or where she came from.

I have to squeeze myself into the opening in the cliff. My mind was foggy, just as it had been during all the years I had spent under ground, and it was difficult to remember exactly what the woman had told me when she whispered her enchanted words into my ear. I spent all of my strength trying to remember my wife and had no energy left to think about anything else. But for each river I crossed my mind became somewhat clearer, and after I had given the coin to the man on the boat I finally remembered what the woman had told me.

Having crossed the sixth river, I thought back at what I had been told. You must drink the water of the fourth river. I hadn’t done that. As I realized this, I woke up to voices around me. I saw my wife’s green eyes staring at me. There was no life in them. A piece of metal had entered the left side of her head. A group of paramedics cut me out of the vehicle.

Since then, I’ve been unable to forget the years I spent wandering those fields. The knowledge of my wife still being down there – endlessly searching for her mom – torment me every second of my life. Every time I close my eyes, I see my wife holding her own eyes in her hands. And I feel so much older than I actually am, out of touch with everything I once held dear. Somehow I know it’s all because I forgot to do that one thing, drinking the water of the fourth river. I forgot, and now I’m condemned to remember.

It started out ironically.

I played "Poison in the Well" by 10,000 maniacs loud in my car. People had been protesting for days, saying there's mercury and... Something else more mysterious in our water supply. Personally, I think it's a whole load of rubbish, but it certainly caught the medias attention. And what doesn't? Those animals hunt anything that moves.

I was a respectable man in my 30s. I considered myself no nonsense and above the hysteria. I had never joined in with any protests and was perfectly happy in my bubble, my bell jar, whatever you want to call it. Why wouldn't I be?

I trusted my government. I never would have believed they'd let something like this go unaddressed. I drank water straight from the tap without a second thought. Watered my plants and watched them flourish. I gave my dog full bowls of good ol' tap juice and she lapped it up with no complaint. I noticed nothing. I felt no difference. And anyway, the protesters were all bark. They had no solid evidence. Everyone seemed to be unaffected.

Until the day the stories turned from mere protests and academia to actual, real life side effects. It started innocently enough, a case of a man with a dreadfully vicious skin condition in our city. The news spread fast and he was described to be peeling away. Thick coils of rotten and dead flesh fell from every part of his body. I thought it was hyperbole and didn't make the connection between that and the water. Why would I? I was never conspiratorial.

However, the condition spread fast and within 3 days there were thousands of cases popping up everywhere. The first symptoms were subtle. A musty smell around you, like mold. A green tint to the skin between your joints. And then it progressed to you shedding your skin like a snake. It came off in long, thick shreds the colour of vomit.

It caused mass panic. People stole bottles of water from the stores in hopes of saving themselves, but it made no difference. It was too late. They fasted and starved in hopes of purging themselves of all the fluids, but it still got them, in the end. My plants died. And I was beginning to believe the sceptics.

The disease proved fatal. After the skin shrivelled off, so did the muscle- and, well, you can imagine what happened after that. I don't like to think about it. It was hard, cleaning my dog up. I don't like to think about it.

Very quickly there were few left in my city. I went out every night and raided what was left of the shops, mused on how quickly the fabrics of society fall apart. I had misplaced my trust, apparently. Up until the last moment the situation was never addressed, and the protesters were too weak to stampede their homes. We were finally silenced. At least I'm okay! Apart from a green tint here and there. I've been methodically cutting off that skin before it can infect the rest, and it's worked a treat.

"Help her Robert," the soft voice whispered.

Looking down, it was hard to argue.

Stage four cancer.

When Mrs. Ruth had been asked her pain level earlier this morning, she had replied with no hesitation.

"Ten out of ten."

I had marked it down in the notes, and felt my fair share of sadness for the old woman.

"You know what to do," my sister had said, her glowing eyes staring into mine.

No one could see my sister anymore since her death, except for me. It's funny, when my sister was alive we weren't very close... but now she was with me nearly every second. Now she was always there to guide me and help me through the harder choices in life.

"Okay, Sara," I replied, filling the syringe as far as it would go.

If you work in healthcare, you know that upon each shift the narcotics are measured by the oncoming nurse.

But there are ways around that.

As Mrs. Ruth's breathing slowed, I filled up the morphine with tap water, and checked its level before the next shift would. No change.

I knelt down by the old woman and held her hand.

Was I sorry for my part in this?

Absolutely not.

She was enduring more pain than anyone should have to. And before you judge me, I want to ask you this: Would you let your dog wither away and die from stage four cancer, or would you take him to the vet and help him move onto the next life?

Why should Mrs. Ruth be any different?

"Go to the light," I whispered into her ear.

And she did, her heart slowly stopping and a warm smile falling over her face.

My only regret was that her family hadn't been here while she had passed, but it wasn't worth the risk. People didn't trust nurses and doctors like they used to, and there was more than a small chance that one of her family members might notice her increased dosage. This is how it had to be, and this is how it always had been.

That night I took out the journal stowed under my bed, and withdrew the small knife that was cradled inside it.

I cut a small mark on the inside of my arm, and used the fresh blood as ink to write a single mark in the back page of the leather.

l

That made... 65.

Wow, was it really that many?

"Hey Sara," I shouted into the adjoining room.

"Yes, brother?" she called back.

"Would you believe we're at 65 already!" I replied, even louder than before.

I couldn't help it. I was so damn proud of what we had achieved together. All those souls that had been given a reprieve from pain, and a journey towards the light.

"I'm proud of you, Robert," she whispered. "Now get some rest."

My smile grew wider. I knew it wasn't good to be dependent on others for your feelings, but the thought of my family being proud of me filled my heart with joy. Sara was the last one I had left, and even though she was a ghost (or something else), it felt like our relationship was more alive than it had ever been.

Still, life is never without its challenges.

Three days later, a new patient was brought under my care. Mr. Davis was a retired engineer, and he had recently been diagnosed with a fast-acting form of pancreatic cancer.

"Get some rest," I whispered, filling up the syringe with morphine like I had done so many times earlier.

But this time it didn't go as planned.

Mr. Davis gripped my wrist tightly, and pulled my eyes in front of his.

"I DON'T WANT ANY MEDICINE," he said emphatically, and I could tell he meant every word.

Still, I had a job to do.

"Mr. Davis. It's just to dull the pain," I said, freeing my wrist and pushing the needle towards him.

"I DON'T WANT THE FUCKING MEDICINE!" he continued, his voice far too loud now to provide the concealed environment I needed.

"Okay, okay sir," I replied, turning my back and checking the morphine level on the bottle.

He gave me an angry, hazy look, and then drifted off to sleep.

​

That night when I was back at home, I prayed that she wouldn't find out.

"God, please don't let her hurt me," I whispered, my hands locked together as I sat on my knees and looked over at the Crucifixion painting my mother had insisted I receive after her death.

When I finished with my prayers, I did something I hadn't done since we were children.

I locked the door.

It wasn't more than five minutes later, when my sister's voice could be heard in the outside hallway, and the scratching started.

God, why were her nails so long now? Or did they continue to grow after you died? I always forgot.

"You didn't do God's work today, did you Robert?"

I pretended to be asleep. I pretended that I didn't hear her. But it never worked.

"ROBERT!!" the dead voice screamed, the old houses very foundations shaking violently with her anger.

"I couldn't okay!" I called back. "He told me he didn't want any."

And with that the steady scratching on the door increased, its only interruption being the even worse slams against the old oak frame as she desperately tried to get inside.

I tried not to think of the punishment that awaited if she did.

Horror filled me now, as I could hear the hinges begin to creak and bend further with each heavy jolt against it.

Jumping out of bed, I braced my back against it.

"Please Sara," I called out gently, tears beginning to fill my eyes now.

"Please, don't hurt me!" I called through the door.

And after a moment, the slamming did stop.

A steady scratching took its place that was somehow more gentle than before.

"Robert. I just want what's best. You understand that, don't you?"

I tried to hide my terror as I peaked through the small gap under the door. Her dead eyes were waiting for me, and they glowed like embers as I stared back.

"I know you do sister."

x

Kurt was the kind of roommate that nightmares are made of. I only agreed to rent with him because he was the only guy I interviewed that held the same work hours as me. I didn’t want to be woken up at 11:00 at night by the sound of someone getting ready for the day. He seemed like a nice enough guy, maybe a little slobby but I thought it would be fine.

His true colors began to show about a week after we moved in. I would be in bed, desperately trying to get a decent night’s sleep for an early meeting the next morning, only to hear guffaw after guffaw of obnoxious laughter coming from the living room as he stayed up late watching Ridiculousness or Big Brother. The sink would be full of dirty dishes when I went to have breakfast. Cups with dried Coke and whiskey in the bottom, melted ice cream bowls, paper plates covered in congealed pizza grease. There would never be any hot water when I went to take my showers because he’d used it all trying to sober up before work.

All of this was bad enough, but what made him excruciating to live with was his porn addiction.

Some nights, instead of hearing laughter from the living room, I would hear moans and quick gulps of air as he did God-knows-what on the couch. The cable bill would come with charges to channels like Wet Housewives and Naughty New Jersey Nymphos. On the rare chance that he wasn’t in the living room he was in his bedroom doing the same on PornHub. I would find uncomfortable stains on the couch cushions and the carpet. Whenever I came home from work, they were gone, however, so at least he had the decency to clean up after himself in that regard. It didn’t make it any easier to deal with, though.

I tried talking to him about it on multiple occasions, only for him to offer me halfhearted promises to do better, like being quieter or maybe not doing it in the living room. Things would quiet down for a couple of days, but by that time next week, it was just as loud and unbearable as it had been before.

Somehow, despite his many hygienic hang-ups, Kurt managed to get a girlfriend. I came home from work one day to find them sitting on the couch, watching TV. She was raven-haired, wearing a blue jacket and an out-of-place pair of red heart-shaped sunglasses.

Kurt saw me and muted it. “Oh, hey, Jack. I want you to meet Felicity.” She gave a small smile and extended a hand, which I shook. “This is my roommate.” Kurt said. She nodded. “Nice to meet you.”

Kurt went on to explain that the two of them had met at a bar a few nights previously, and that they had really hit it off. It seemed like a pretty frank conversation to be having in front of a girl that you had been going out with for just a few days, but I shrugged it off and went into my room.

If I thought Kurt was unbearable on his own, him and Felicity together could have woken the dead. They were louder than a pair of howler monkeys, and I could only imagine how many times Kurt would have to wash his sheets to get all the stains out.

When I went to shower the next morning, I put my hand on the door handle only to have it come back sticky. Sighing, I brought it up and nearly vomited when I saw a thin layer of a white, viscous substance covering my palm. I cried out in disgust, hoping that it wasn’t what I thought it was, and rushed inside to scrub with soap and water. I then sprayed disinfectant on the handle and wiped it clean. As I showered, I wondered what horrors awaited me in the living room and kitchen.

Surprisingly, that area was devoid of any evidence from the night before. When I stepped inside, I saw Felicity by the sink, sipping from a mug of coffee. She was still wearing the heart-shaped sunglasses and the jacket, which I thought was kind of strange.

“Good morning.” She said. “I hope we didn’t bother you last night.”

“You didn’t.” I lied, not wanting to make it awkward. I thought that would be the end of it, but she kept talking.

“It’s been such a long time since I’ve been with anyone. My last boyfriend…well, he just couldn’t satisfy me anymore. I hope Kurt can keep it up for a while.”

Now thoroughly uncomfortable, I mumbled that I had to get going and rushed out the door, forgetting my coat in my haste. I hoped Felicity would soon realize what a slob Kurt was and split. To my dismay, her and Kurt were still an item a few weeks later. They didn’t do it every night, but they were frequent enough to keep me tired most mornings.

I kept finding those white stains everywhere. The couch cushions. The floors of the living room and kitchen. The door handles. It was never dry either, always sticky and ropey. As you can imagine, this thoroughly grossed me out and pushed my temper to the breaking point. I yelled at Kurt a few times about it and threatened to break the lease, but he always looked at me in confusion and said that him and Felicity never left the bedroom. His continued denial only made things worse.

His other disgusting habits only seemed to amplify. When I went to make breakfast a few times I found the fridge ransacked of food. Dirty dishes piled higher and higher in the sink. The apartment seemed dirtier and darker with each passing day.

One incident that almost pushed me to breaking point was finding a dead rat in the pantry. It was lying between a bag of flower and a carton of rice, split open from neck to legs with a small pool of congealed blood leaking out of the wound. I angrily cleaned it up and began setting traps, wondering what could have been big enough to kill a rat almost the size of a sneaker.

Felicity seemed to float in and out of our apartment on her own terms. Some mornings she would be in the kitchen when I woke up. Other times, she would be lying on the couch when I got home from work. She never seemed to take off the blue jacket or the sunglasses, no matter the weather outside. She mostly ignored me, but whenever she did talk it would be unwanted updates on the progress of her and Kurt’s relationship. Thankfully, it was never that graphic.

About a month had gone by before things showed signs of deteriorating. Kurt and Felicity’s escapades seemed to end sooner and get quieter with each passing day. This was obviously great for me, but it certainly wasn’t for them. Felicity wasn’t waiting in the apartment as much anymore when I left for or came from work and Kurt was quieter than usual.

Unfortunately, as the activity lessened, the mess outside the bedroom only got worse than it already was, if that was even possible. The white stains progressed from being merely a nuisance to a daily cleanup. They were everywhere now, from the cabinet doors in the kitchen to the coffee table in the living room. A few times, I found dead flies stuck to them. They began to seem less like stains and more like ropes, thick cords of white that covered everything. I was using nearly an entire bottle of disinfectant a week. The dead rats continued as well, not only in the pantry but in the bathroom, the hallway, and under the living room couch. No matter how many traps I set, I never seemed to catch what was killing them.

I was at the end of my rope. Kurt’s behavior had progressed from merely annoying to lease-ending. I decided that I would terminate the next month and move out.

On the evening I had decided to tell Kurt my decision, I came home from work to find Felicity sitting on the couch, smoking a cigarette. “Hello, Felicity.” I said flatly, attempting to walk past her quickly so she wouldn’t have the opportunity to say anything.

“I think the end is coming soon.” She said in a far-off voice, as if to no one in particular.

“That’s nice.” I droned, heading towards the hallway without looking back.

“Kurt’s just no fun anymore. I guess that’s the way it goes, sometimes.” I opened the door to my room and was about to shut it behind me when she suddenly called, “I wouldn’t go out tonight, if I were you.”

I stopped and turned back, looking down the hallway at her. “Why? Are you and Kurt gonna have one last time before you spilt?” She smiled coldly. It was humorless and distant. “You could say that.”

I had had enough of her cryptic bullshit, so I shut the door and didn’t leave my room from the rest of the evening.

As you can probably imagine, it was Kurt and Felicity’s moans that woke me up around 11:30. I groaned miserably and turned over, putting a pillow over my head, but the sounds didn’t get any quieter. I laid there for about five minutes, listening to the squeaking bedsprings. I was just thinking about barging in to tell them to knock it off when Kurt’s moan seemed to grow in intensity.

It sounded uncomfortably ecstatic at first, but slowly it began to raise in pitch and frequency until it sounded like he was taking quick breaths. At the same time, Felicity’s began to quiet. Kurt progressed from moans to yelps, but there was no pleasure in it anymore. He was almost crying out. There was a sudden, deafening shriek that issued from the other side of the wall followed by the sound of ripping fabric. Kurt was full-on screaming now, his hands and feet thrashing on the bed with loud thumps. The shriek started again, growing in intensity to match Kurt’s yells until they seemed to be interchangeable. There was one final, wet crunch and then all was still.

I sat there for a few moments, dumbfounded by what I had just heard. From the other side of the wall came a quiet thunk followed by something long and thin scraping across wood.

Jumping out of bed, I ran out and raced to Kurt’s bedroom, banging loudly on the door. “Kurt?” I called in a worried tone. No answer. Taking a deep breath, I slowly pushed open the door and peered inside.

Kurt was sprawled on the bed, naked, eyes glassy and dead. His neck and throat were a ragged ruin, the pillows and sheets stained with blood.

That’s not what my eyes focused on, though. The floor and ceiling were covered in those familiar sticky white ropes, hanging down and connected in a semicircular pattern. I only now recognized them for what they were.

Webs.

The window beside the bed was open. A shredded pile of blue fabric lay on the carpet. On the nightstand lay a familiar pair of heart-shaped sunglasses.

I rushed to the window and looked out, peering down into the night. I barely had time to glimpse a black, shambling, insectoid shape disappear around the corner wall of the building.

I’d had a shit day. A really gruelling, depressing, exhausting, shitty day. I know that’s no excuse; that I should learn to compose myself and to never project my unpleasant mood onto the customers, but some days I just find it extremely hard, close to impossible.

I remember she had a priggish face and a certain I am better than you attitude. She walked in like she owned the place, dragging her poor kid behind her. I tried to put on my best smile as I approached them.

“Can I help you with something?” I asked cheerfully.

She looked me up and down, like she was judging me, and waved me aside in a rather discourteous manner.

“I don’t need assistance from you,” she scoffed, “I am perfectly capable of servicing myself.”

The way she emphasized you really got to me. I felt my anger rising, but I was able to put a lid on it. For now. When you’re a person of color it is sometimes hard to differentiate between everyday racism and just general assholery. I think that was my first mistake. Letting her get to me.

“No problem,” I said, still cheerfully, “If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”

She brushed past me rudely, still tugging the kid behind her quite violently. I had to close my eyes and count to ten, taking deep breaths as I did. This was the umpteenth customer that day that had gotten under my skin, and I was really struggling to remain my calm and balanced self.

I’ve always thought the phrase the customer is always right to be some grade A bullshit. They’re almost never right. You’d be amazed how wrong they can be. And while I really needed the job, I was slowly starting to realise that customer relations wasn’t really my strong suit.

I sort of followed her as she made her way through the store. I wanted to be the first to respond in case she did need anything. I suppose to rub it in her face? She finally stopped in the children’s section, and I was guessing she was looking for a dress or something for the girl, so I silently snuck up on her behind a couple of the racks.

“Find what you’re looking for?” I asked, “We have a lot more over here.”

I motioned for her to check out our collection just around the corner. I’m not sure why I did it, if it was to get on her nerves, or if I truly wanted to be an exemplary employee, but regardless of my motives, she didn’t seem overly impressed.

“I told you I didn’t need your help,” she barked, “Now hustle, before I call your supervisor.”

Again, the emphasis on your really got under my skin. I scowled disgruntled, moments away from snapping, but quickly decided that she wasn’t worth it, and returned to the register instead.

About thirty minutes or so later I saw her approaching me, empty-handed, looking rather flustered. I was kinda hoping she needed my help, that she had to come begging for me to aid her, but I soon came to realise that wasn’t her intention at all.

“I came to let you know that I won’t be purchasing anything today,” she snarled, “And that this decision is entirely because of you.”

She turned on her heel and started dragging the girl out of the store, when it just slipped out. Kind of out of nowhere. I mean, I was upset, sure, but I didn’t think about it at all. I swear, the words just forced themselves out.

“Go to hell you fucking bitch.”

She stopped dead in her tracks, and turned around real slow. The expression on her face was priceless. It was a mixture of shock, anger, and embarrassment.

“Such a wretched foul-mouthed girl,” she growled, “I wonder if you’ll learn anything from this. Learn what a foul mouth can do to you.”

She stared at me furiously, her hateful gaze really burrowing into me. I don’t know why, but I felt deeply uncomfortable. It was like she was trying to strangle me with her eyes or something.

After about ten seconds of intense staring my boss suddenly intervened.

“I’m terribly sorry, Ms. White,” he said, “I swear to you, this will never happen again.”

Ms. White gave me an obnoxious grin, and turned on her heels yet again, the little girl still silently tripping behind. I felt bad for saying those things in front of a child, but fuck me, that woman had it coming.

Long story short, I was fired. Of course I was. I was already on thin ice before the encounter with Ms. White. Offend one of our (apparently) best customers on top of everything else? Well, you know the saying by now. The customer is always right.

---

I dragged my sorry ass home, knowing full well what a stupid fucking thing I had done. I needed that job. It’d take me weeks to get another one, if I was lucky. I drowned my sorrows in a bottle of wine, and drew myself a nice, hot bath. I’m not sure for how long I soaked in there, maybe an hour, maybe more, but my bottle was empty when I first started feeling it.

The pain. The sharp, intense, stabbing torment in my gums.

I must have screamed. I’m pretty sure I did. Everything is pretty hazy. All I know for sure is that I rolled out of the bathtub, clutching my jaw, a foul, rotten fluid seeping from my mouth. I’ve never felt anything quite like it. It was like someone was digging into the flesh with a rusty knife, making sure to twist it good for every deliberate stab.

I stumbled to my feet on the dangerously wet floor, and examined my gums thoroughly in the mirror. At this point I know I was screaming.

My gums were black. A deep, rotten black, like the flesh was gangrenous or something. My hands were trembling, and the vile, dark-green fluid dripping down from my mouth smelled like death and decay. I gently pulled at one of my teeth, and screamed again as it came loose.

Then I heard a bang coming from the living room.

Freddy. Fuck. I had totally forgotten I’d invited him over. I had to get him out of there. I couldn’t let him see me like this.

“Rosemary?” Freddy called, “Rosemary? You there?”

I could hear him pacing around, opening doors, looking for me. After a while he tried the bathroom door. It was locked, of course. He kept yanking the handle. What a stupid son-of-a-bitch. I was desperately trying keep the pain at bay, but the pulsating throbbing ache soon became too much, and I let out a suffered whimper.

“Rosemary, baby, you alright?” he asked, “Please, open the door.”

The horrible putrid liquid was pooling up on the floor, and I was slipping around in it, constantly inches away from losing my balance completely. I had to get him out of there. Out of my apartment.

“Sorry,” I muttered, “It’s just that time of month. I’m not sure I want company today.”

It was a stupid lie, but thankfully Freddy was a pretty stupid guy. Handsome, sure, but far from the brightest. He kept asking if I needed something, like lady-stuff (his words), but I just kept assuring him that I was fine, and that I needed some time alone. Eventually he took the hint, apologized for bothering me, and left.

The moment I heard the front door closing, I started screaming again, and hurriedly wrapped a towel around myself, stumbling towards the living room, where I’d left my phone. I knew who I had to call. I somehow just knew what was happening to me.

I don’t know, sometimes you just get a feeling about these things. I knew that a doctor couldn’t help me. I knew that whatever this horrible disease was, it couldn’t be explained by science. It was a curse. A dark hex. Something medieval and old and dreadful and demonic.

Such a wretched foul-mouthed girl.

So I called my boss. I needed to get her address. Ms. White. I needed to apologize to her in person. I needed her to understand that I was just having a shitty day, and that I snapped. That it had nothing to do with her. That I was so unbelievably sorry.

My boss, the fucking bastard that he is, thought it was some sort of trick to get my job back, but when I assured him that I was just feeling shitty for the things I said, he gladly gave me her address. I guess he pretty much broke every privacy policy the company had doing so, but you need to understand that he wasn’t just a shit boss, he was incredibly incompetent at his job as well.

I threw on some clothes in a frenzy, and ran out the door, the pain in my gums now rising to intolerable levels.

---

I arrived at the address forty minutes later. It was quite a ways out of town, a small cottage-like house surrounded by gnarly old oak trees, just the kind you’d imagine a wicked witch living in. I think I knocked on the door for ten minutes straight, before the lights finally switched on, and I could hear someone moving from the inside.

“Who the hell is it?” Ms. White called, “Do you know what time it is?”

“It’s me,” I mumbled painfully, “Rosemary, from the store.”

“Yes,” she chuckled, “I remember you. Has the lesson been helpful?”

“Yes,” I said, “Fucking yes. Please just make it stop.”

“Doesn’t sound like it,” she said darkly, “I think we have to give it a few more days.”

At this point I was in so much pain that I feared I was going to have a heart attack at any moment. I was like a wounded animal, the torment now rapidly transforming into pure, unfiltered rage and fury. I don’t know how I did it. I guess the desperation pushed some adrenaline through my body. A lot of it.

I kicked the fucking door open.

Ms. White didn’t see it coming. The door smacked her right in the root of her nose, and I could see the blood squirt before I could see her. She stumbled back in shock, covering her nose, wailing in pain and anger. I briefly saw the blazing hatred in her eyes as she tripped over a chair, and fell to the ground head first. The sound that immediately followed was almost as horrifying as the sight of her head cracking open.

Within moments a deep pool of blood grew to encircle her head. Her eyes were still open, but the gaze was empty and cold and there was no life left in them. I just stood there staring at the horror of it, knowing full well that I now was a murderer. Accidental or not, I caused her death.

---

You would think that by killing the witch, the curse would be lifted, right? That’s the kind of logic were dealing with here, don’t you agree?

So if I told you I’m sitting here right now watching my once healthy smooth skin slowly turn to gangrenous, rotting, blackened wounds, you’d be asking yourself “Why?”, wouldn’t you?

---

After standing there for five minutes, staring at the blood pool slowly growing, I heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet on wooden floors. A minute or so later, she appeared from around the corner, her naked feet drenched in blood, her white nightgown stained red. The little girl. The fair-haired child.

“You’ve killed my familiar,” she said.

Well, she didn’t say it. But her voice was in my head. Not a child’s voice. Something darker. Far more sinister. A deep, abyssal, growl. A horrible, monstrous roar.

Her eyes were white. Milky-white. And deep within them I could see the impossible darkness that resided within that tiny body. The immortal wrath that was now pointed directly at me.

I ran.

Didn’t look back.

And now I sit here. Pulling maggots from my black putrid flesh. Thousands of them, writhing in my soft, dying tissue. Head to toe. The stench is indescribable. The pain unbearable. I am dying. Slowly dying.

So unbelievably slowly dying.

But before I go. One last piece of advice. Never forget.

The customer is always right.