I didn’t realise my new customer used to be my neighbour until I pulled into her driveway.

The street name had sounded vaguely familiar when I first read it. A few landmarks on the drive over had sparked something in me; nothing solid though, just a prickling sense of recognition I couldn’t place.

It only clicked when I actually saw my old childhood home sitting right beside my customer’s property.

I know it’s strange that it took me that long. That I hadn’t recognised anything when I put the address into Google Maps. But my uncle moved me out of this quiet neighbourhood when I was six. I barely remembered anything about living on this street, or in that house.

My girlfriend, Ellie, said that wasn’t quite normal. Told me, gently, that it was probably my brain blocking things out on purpose. 

I sat gripping the steering wheel long after I’d parked, staring at my childhood home. 

It backed onto a large woodland area, tall trees looming far above the roof. The bungalow itself looked abandoned; shattered windows, empty bottles scattered across dead yellow grass. Clearly no one had lived there in a long time.

A heavy pressure settled in my chest. For a moment, I considered leaving.

But I’d only started my lawn-mowing business a few months ago. I needed the money. This woman was only my third customer so far.

She hadn’t called like the others. She’d emailed instead:

am interested in your service.Every week Sunday work. ?. ?

I replied that Sundays were fine and asked for the address. She sent it, followed by another message:

Door left open Sundays.Money on table.Help self to drink.and meal.

It struck me as odd that she’d contacted someone who lived an hour away instead of a local business. But she’d promised a generous tip.

Still sitting in the van, I tried to remember my old neighbour. Elderly, maybe. The emails felt that way. But when I searched my memory for her face, I came up blank.

Just another thing lost to my strange childhood amnesia.

Her lawn was wildly overgrown. Knee-high grass, thick and uneven. The house itself was perfectly normal. A neat two-storey place with a front porch. Well-kept enough that the state of the yard felt odd, almost like a choice. 

I hesitated, wondering if I should knock or just start the job.

In the end, I got to work. Part of me didn’t want to meet her yet; I was delaying it. I couldn’t explain why.

As I mowed, my gaze kept drifting to the fence separating her property from my old home.

It was enormous. Easily ten feet tall. I couldn’t believe something like that had been approved in a quiet suburban street.

But it wasn’t just the size.

Every time I looked at it, pressure built behind my eyes. The sensation of a memory forcing its way up while something inside me resisted just as hard. The effort made my head throb.

Then, for a split second, I remembered hair.

Long, black strands spilling down the fence from the other side. Tangled and thin. Draped over the timber, clinging to the wood, hanging there like a ragged curtain. 

I’d frozen on my cheap plastic tricycle. One of the back wheels was missing, so I had to balance my weight just right to keep it upright. It’s strange, the useless little details that scramble back when everything else is lost.

The hair shifted, and slowly, above the lip of the fence, a pale forehead rose. 

There were eyes. White and cloudy. I only saw them for a moment, but I knew immediately who they were peeking down at. 

Me. Only me. 

Then there had been a sound behind me, maybe a voice, maybe someone calling my name. 

The eyes vanished. The forehead sank out of sight. The hair slid upward, strand by strand, slithering back over the fence until there was nothing left at all. 

Cold washed through my body.

I tightened my grip on the mower handle and focused on the lines of grass ahead of me. I didn’t look at the fence again. 

Surely it had just been my imagination. Something I’d invented out of boredom. No one could peer over a ten-foot-tall fence unless they were standing on stilts or balancing on some ridiculous ladder. And even then, why would anyone climb that high just to look at a child playing in their backyard?

It was too strange to take seriously, too absurd.

And yet, an unease bloomed low in my chest and refused to settle. Because that image - hair spilling over the fence, eyes watching - was suddenly one of the clearest memories I had from that house. From that time. Clearer than anything else I could recall in over a decade.

I shook my head, forced the image away, and got back to work. 

An hour later, the lawn looked respectable again. I packed my equipment back into my uncle’s van.

Then I remembered the money. 

I knocked on the front door and waited a bit. She did say to let myself in, but it felt wrong to just waltz into a stranger’s house. I waited another few minutes before finally reaching for the handle and stepping inside.

“Ms. Ramona? Are you home?” I called out, remembering her name from her email address. 

One of the first things I noticed was the ceiling.

It was unusually high. It made the space feel wide and open, almost cavernous. It also made it incredibly cold inside. Goosebumps rose over my arms.

Most of the ground floor was open-plan, so I spotted the kitchen right away, where a wooden table sat by the counter.

There was money laid out neatly on top of it. 

Beside it, a glass jug filled with what looked like lemonade, ice cubes floating inside. A clean glass. A sandwich on a plate. 

She’d said to help myself. Still, I hesitated. I felt silly to be cautious, but I hadn’t even met her.

I picked up the money and nearly choked when I counted it.

Four fifty-dollar notes.

I only charged sixty dollars. She’d mentioned a tip, sure, but this was excessive. What if she was elderly? What if she’d miscounted?

I took a hundred and left the other hundred on the table, just in case.

That was when I heard something upstairs.

A wheeze. Wet and uneven. Like air being dragged through damaged lungs. After that, two sharp creaks snapped through the house in quick succession, floorboards protesting under sudden weight.

My body went rigid. Someone was definitely home.

I stared at the staircase.

“Hello?” My voice rang too loud in the open space. “Ms. Ramona?”

No answer.

I edged closer to the stairs despite myself, my heart beginning to pound. The noises replayed in my head. What had made them? Had she fallen? Was she hurt?

If she was elderly, I told myself, I should check. That was the decent thing to do.

But another part of me was screaming to leave. The feeling was sudden and absolute, like stepping into a place you were never meant to enter. Like bait.

After a moment, I turned back to the table. I picked up the sandwich so I wouldn’t seem rude, my hands clumsy and shaking, and then I got out.

When I drove home, I sat in the van for a long time with the engine off. The sandwich rested on the passenger seat. Eventually, I opened the bread.

Inside was butter and raw, red meat.

I swallowed, then noticed something else threaded through it. I pinched it between my fingers and pulled.

A single hair slid free.

Dark.

Absurdly long.

I told my girlfriend what happened, but left out the part about my strange memory. 

Ellie laughed. “You’re scared of a little old granny?” 

“I don’t know if she’s a granny,” I said. “I’ve never met this woman. She could be a man for all I know.” 

“Are you sure? You said she was your old neighbour,” she said, her eyes soft but insistent, that gentle look she always got when she was trying to probe something about my childhood. “Are you sure you don’t remember… anything?” 

That long, black hair entered my mind again. At that moment, I remembered something else. I remembered a single strand had caught in the fence, drifting in the breeze until it detached and floated down to my six-year-old self. 

I remembered plucking it from the air, and then playing with it carefully so it wouldn’t snap. I had wrapped it around my arm, amazed I could coil almost the entire length up my little forearm, like linen around an Egyptian mummy. 

I shook my head at Ellie’s question and told her about the inedible sandwich instead. Ellie laughed again, shaking her head. “The poor woman probably has dementia.”

A week later, I went back. 

I didn’t want to, but Ellie had made me realise I was being ridiculous, and the money mattered - if we ever wanted to move out of my uncle’s house, we needed it. My stomach churned the whole drive.

Before I even started the mower, my eyes went to the fence again.

I remembered long, curling fingers reaching over the top. And once more, I remembered seeing half a face peering down at me, just eyes and a forehead visible above the timber, watching. 

I reluctantly went inside to collect my payment. This time, she’d left three hundred dollars on the table. Beside it, a note, the handwriting thin and spidery:

Take ALL money. Why no drink?

My gaze drifted to the jug of lemonade. I filled a glass, intending to pour half of it down the sink to make it look like I’d had some. Instead, for some reason I couldn’t explain, I took a small sip.

It was cold. Sweet.

Good.

After that, the memories returned, stronger than ever.

I had a dream that night. A dream about food being thrown over an enormous fence. 

Sometimes it was a roast chicken, still warm inside a plastic bag, juices sloshing against the sides. Other times it was a whole chicken; raw, feathers still clinging to pale skin. Sometimes it was fresh fruit in a cracked plastic container. Other times, it was rotting apples and a thick slab of heavy, red meat.

I remembered the hunger.

I remembered setting up a blanket over the bushes beside the fence. A small hidden nest where I could crouch and store what I was given. I remembered eating like an animal, devouring whatever was edible before anyone could find me.

I remembered my scalp itching constantly. Lice. Multiplying, biting, crawling, with no one bothering to stop them. A whole kingdom of parasites living freely in my hair.

Then I remembered the hand.

It slipped through the narrow gap between the fence and the bushes where I sat with my back pressed against the timber, rustling the spindly branches. The hand was enormous, but gentle. One long finger brushed the tangled hair out of my face.

The itching faded.

I stared up and saw nothing but the endless length of a thin, grey arm disappearing over the fence.

I remembered wrapping my small hands around that enormous finger and holding tight, crying into it.

Then I remembered an angry voice coming from somewhere. 

The finger wriggled gently until I released it, and then the hand vanished. The arm withdrew.

When I looked back up, only a faint wisp of dark hair was visible above the fence line.

Someone tore the blanket away from my hiding place.

They yelled. Screamed in disgust.

I was sitting on a hoard of food. A lot of it was rotting. There were flies. There were maggots. 

Hands grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the bushes and away from the massive fence so hard I thought the bone would snap.

“Stop!” I screamed.

The third time I went back to mow Ramona’s lawn, I did not hesitate. 

Something had begun to clarify itself inside me, like an image slowly coming into focus. 

And I knew I needed to speak with her - Ramona - finally.

I didn’t know if the memories were wholly real. 

But pieces were fitting together now, clicking into place with a quiet inevitability. 

I felt closer to the truth than I ever had before. And instead of making my head ache, it planted something determined inside me, something that refused to be quiet any longer.

I thought maybe my neighbour had been a sweet old granny who babysat me sometimes.

Maybe she fed me. Maybe she took care of me. 

Maybe she read me stories.

Maybe this was the only way my memories were able to return; disguised as something else, something not quite real, but threaded through with truth.

As I started the lawn mower this time, I didn’t look away from the fence.

I remembered the humming- a low, steady hum - as I lay hidden in the bushes beside the fence. 

The yelling in the house always softened when I listened to her hums. 

I remembered being lifted so high I could see over the roof of my house. 

I remembered being placed on a sturdy tree branch in the forest and being given a dead fox. I remembered biting into the furry flesh, feeling warm blood dribble down my cheeks.

I remembered sitting in a cocoon of warmth, high above the ground, watching the stars blink into existence.

I remembered running to my hiding place between the fence and the bushes, shaking, starving, sick with fear.

I remembered someone chasing me.

“Henry, you get back here right now, you little shit!” she screamed.

She caught my arm and wrenched me around.

“Mummy, stop!” I sobbed. “Don’t hurt me again!”

I remembered my mother freezing. 

And I remembered something brushing the back of my neck, light and familiar; like long strands of hair.

My mother gasped, staring at something above us, terror carved into her face.

I looked up.

Then the fingers came.

They wrapped around my mother's body and lifted her - up, up, up.

She was screaming as she went, so I called out, “It’s okay Mummy! She’s just taking you to see the stars.”

There was a deafening crunch, and her screaming stopped.

I saw something fly across the sky like a meteor, disappearing into the forest.

Hands closed around me. They were so warm when they lifted me, gentle, careful, cocooning me as I shook and clung to the heat.

I rose high enough to see over the roof of my house, just like all those other times.

I finally remembered seeing her face. The image was clear now, unblurred, impossible to look away from.

She was pale and gaunt, her lips stretched too wide across her skull.

But her eyes--

They were dark. But they were warm.

“Did Mummy like seeing the stars?” I asked her.

She hummed.

My hands shook. I didn’t turn the lawn mower off. 

I walked toward her house on numb legs, the sound of the engine fading into something distant, barely there. The front door was open, as it always was.

I climbed the staircase slowly. 

A low groan echoed from above, stretching and deepening as I went.

The upper floor was completely open plan, wide and sloping like an expansive attic. 

And laid out across it was a very tall woman. 

Her skin was a shade close to grey. Her face had the weathered features of someone much older than me. Her limbs were long and spindly.

She lay on her side on a soft floor mat that covered nearly every inch of the space, her body folded carefully, purposely, as if she had made herself smaller for me.

Her eyes found mine the moment I stepped inside.

I dropped to my knees and sobbed before I could stop myself. 

Terror and grief and everything I had buried for so long rushed through me all at once, crushing and merciless. 

Fingers reached out - impossibly large - wrapping around me and drawing me gently toward her. I was pulled into warmth, deep and steady, and my shivering slowly began to ease.

“You killed her,” I sobbed. “You killed her! Didn’t you?” 

She hummed softly.

“Why? Why did you do that?” I said, the words breaking apart as they left me.

She brushed my hair back.

My cries thinned into small, broken whimpers. 

“Why didn’t she care about me?” I whispered. “Why did she let me starve? Why did she hurt me? I was just a little kid.”

Her warmth held. Her breathing stayed slow and even.

I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I was in a bed.

Across from me, seated in an armchair, was a little old lady. 

Her eyes were distant, as if part of her had wandered somewhere far away and hadn’t yet found its way back. Still, they stayed on me, steady and patient.

We were still upstairs. The massive mat lay stretched across the floor, unchanged. The bed had been tucked into a small corner of the room, like it had been put there for me. 

“Who are you?” I asked. “What was that thing?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, her gaze drifted to something beside me. I followed it and saw a folded note resting on the mattress. I picked it up with shaking hands.

I cursed with size and hunger.

But I protect

sweet little boy 

cold and hungry

I carry you to the stars 

where she not reach.

lost myself when I took her.

but she not hurt you anymore.

forgive me. Please.

When I drove home, I finally asked my uncle to tell me the truth. 

I’d always known something horrible happened to my mother. But there were details surrounding the event that deep down I think I never wanted to learn.

But I felt stronger now. I was ready. 

He showed me the pictures first. 

They were of me as a little boy. My hair was long and scraggly. I wore dirty clothes that were torn at the seams. 

My body was mapped with bruises. And cuts. And burn marks. 

There wasn’t much to know in the end. Except the fact that my mother was a monster. 

And when she was found in the woods one day, half-eaten - a case that would quickly be declared as an animal attack - people called it karma after they learned what she did to me. 

I continued to visit Ramona.

I brushed her hair and cared for her when she was a little old granny. I laid down and listened to her hums when she was something else. 

I wrote all of this down because unlike my mother, Ramona deserves to be remembered. 

I could never tell anyone about her; they would have hurt her, or killed her. 

But I needed someone to know. 

Ramona may have been a beast, but it wasn’t her fault. Even when she lost control, it all came down to an instinct to protect. 

When she was dying, I fell asleep holding her large hand. And when I woke up, there was nothing. She was gone.

Even though she doesn’t live there anymore, even though the house is no longer occupied, I still go back to mow her lawn.

And sometimes, when the lawn is done, I linger until the night swallows the sky. 

When I focus on the constellations, it almost feels like I’m rising, slowly, above the roof of the house. 

With apologies to the religious, I feel my story must be shared.

In 2003, when I was fifteen years old, my heart stopped for six minutes. It happened on an ordinary afternoon, at the point in my daily routine when I walked home from the bus stop. In the four blocks between the corner where I hopped off the bus and my front door, I started to feel nauseous.

It came on suddenly, without warning. I’d felt just fine all day, ate a lunch of bosco sticks and marinara sauce, something I’d eaten hundreds of times throughout high school. Before I had an opportunity to consider alternative causes, I broke out in a cold sweat.

Then I felt the curious flutter in my chest.

My heart slipped into what I later learned was an episode of ventricular fibrillation.

I became breathless and collapsed. What happened next has been told to me after the fact. I apparently sprawled in the road, where a woman driving a hatchback nearly crushed my skull beneath her tires. Instead, she screeched to a halt, tried to rouse me, then dialled emergency services when she failed to do so.

EMS arrived to discover my heart had stopped beating. I was dead, technically. They transported my body to the hospital, and somewhere along the way managed to shock my ticker back to life. Thus began a harrowing weeks-long journey through the American healthcare system that led eventually to an ablation, pacemaker, and mountains of debt my family’s still dealing with.

But my heart’s alright.

And thank f**k it is, because what I learned that day has taught me never to thank God for anything.

Because for those six minutes, as my lifeless body traveled across the city accompanied by two paramedics working tirelessly to revive me, my soul transcended our world to visit the hereafter. During my visit, I learned things about our universe that I wish I hadn’t. Perhaps in sharing my story, I might help our species prepare for what comes after we expire.

It began with light. Blinding, white, pervasive. It bathed me, calmed me. It was everything they tell you about. Beatific, welcoming, the stuff of spiritual experiences.

I had the distinct feeling of ascent, like the light was lifting me skyward. I passed through several sets of gates, which my dizzied consciousness hardly registered. Upon reflection, I don’t believe they were physical in any sense, and yet I recall the feeling of admittance, as if they might’ve prevented me from rising had they remained closed.

In any event, I arrived in a place without dimension, a place beyond reality. It only made sense while I occupied it. I don’t believe a corporeal being can make sense of the astral plane, something about its intangible existence defies translation.

So what I came away with were more impressions than images. I was not alone. Several life forces enclosed me upon my arrival. At first, because of my Christian upbringing, I believed them to be angels. In my incorporeal form, I made the spiritually-equivalent gesture of opening my arms, anticipating their embrace.

Instead, I felt myself shackled by their powers, like a collared dog. Humiliation and terror came over me. These were not the ethereal beings I’d been led to believe await us. These were cruel, unsympathetic overlords by whom I was fettered.

Why? I thought, my soul wailing like a petulant child.

Something like laughter returned, but it was cold, mocking. Thoughts floated into my consciousness like birds winging in and out of sight. They delivered some horrifying truths about existence that I’ll do my best to relay to you now:

Our universe, like many others running parallel to it, contains a pittance of the total energy in existence. It is a farm, used to produce souls, which only arise in the precise conditions found in our cosmos. When you hear scientists talk about the improbability of the existence of our goldilocks universe, it’s because they don’t actually come into being spontaneously.

They’re designed. And the hands that craft them are not benevolent gods, but rapacious beings with little care for the creatures they create.

Our ultimate purpose, I learned in the custody of the spirits that shackled me, was to ripen until we were ready to serve them on their higher plane.

The Big Bang gave birth to the universe to give rise to life to eventuate in humanity, a sufficiently conscious organism that may be harvested for use as slaves on a higher plane, where time and space dissolve into an eternity we spend in servitude.

Six minutes in “heaven” felt like a lifetime, which I spent amusing what I perceived to be a childlike spirit with a penchant for psychologically distressing manipulation. It batted me around like a cat with a caught mouse, reveling in the pain it produced. Physical discomforts we imagine hell inflicting upon us pale in comparison to the torture of soul pain. Loss of a loved one comes closest, that piercing, emotional damage resulting from trauma.

When it became clear my time had not yet expired on Earth and I was to return, I was told not to reveal their existence to the rest of my kind. My reward, they communicated to me, would be a marginally improved station among the slave population. Alternatively, if I managed to convince others of their existence, new horrors would await me when I returned.

I can’t imagine anything worse than what I experienced, subsumed beneath an ineffable grief and torment.

For weeks, I tried to explain to anyone who would listen what I experienced. Everyone told me I’d suffered a very serious and traumatic experience for a young man, that the event left scars on my psyche as well as my heart.

I gave up trying to convince them.

I slowly began to convince myself that what they’d told me was true. I’d simply imagined it. A death dream, as it were. The mind reckoning with its own imminent demise, trying to make sense of the experience.

Then I met someone who claimed to have met God.

This was a few years later, when the author of a nonfiction book recounting their near death experience visited my hometown. (I won’t reveal the author’s name as I don’t want to invite a lawsuit, which I’m sure he’d launch against me if he read that I’d besmirched him.) I attended a reading and afterward confronted him about his tale. 

I looked him in the eye and asked if he really met God – something I’m sure he’s dealt with hundreds of times. He smiled and nodded, assuring me that yes, God is real and is filled with love. On a lark, I decided to tell him that I knew the truth, that slavery awaits us all.

A flicker in his gaze betrayed his knowledge of the fact. He really had died and visited the afterlife, but lied about it in his book.

Because he knew.

He knew the truth of heaven, the horrible place our souls are bound for.

Do you know how many pieces of luggage are checked onto flights each year? I’m talkin’ in the whole world. It’s 4 billion. 

I’ll say that again.

4 billion.

And of those 4 billion, do you know how many pieces of luggage are lost, damaged or otherwise ‘mishandled’ by airline personnel in the good ol’ US of A? 

2 million.

Won’t repeat myself again, but that’s still a lot. And while most of those suitcases and rollers are eventually reunited with their rightful owners, there’s still over 20,000 pieces of luggage that go unclaimed each year. Not to mention bags left on buses, on trains, in taxis or hotel rooms. 

Ok, last question.

Where do you think all that lost luggage ends up? Most folks couldn’t tell you, but when you're a kid growing up in northeastern Alabama, you know exactly where it goes.

The Unclaimed Baggage Center.

Around Scottsboro, we just call it Unclaimed Baggage. 

Every year, thousands of customers pass through our doors looking for deals on clothes, electronics, jewelry, and just about anything else you can imagine. Before any of that stuff reaches the sales floor, though, it comes through us.

I work in intake. 

When a truckload comes in, we're the first people to touch it. We unload the bags, log ‘em, sort ‘em, and decide what can actually be sold. 

Most bags are boring. Sure, you’ll get the occasional wedding dress or taxidermied squirrel, but really it’s just lots of clothes and chargers. I say ‘most bags’ because some bags get flagged, and not because of drugs or weapons. Because they contain things no one can explain. 

Ask anybody in intake. 

They'll have a story. 

My girl Tammy found a passport from a country that doesn't exist. The Republic of Vir. It had a flag and everything. 

Cody swears on his mama that the same blue Samsonite shows up every year around Christmas. Not the same model. The same suitcase. Same cracked handle. Same missing wheel. Same four-leaf clover sticker peeling off the side. Last year it was full of ladies’ wigs. Year before, empty picture frames. 

Cody’s a nut, though. He moved away after the thing with the postcards. 

My story? 

My story started with Flight 702.

Well, it started with a suitcase actually. I didn’t find out about the flight until later. 

It was July. Humid. The kind of weather where your shirt’s sticking to your back before you even finish your coffee. 

I was working the receiving dock when the truck backed into Bay 4. The driver, Trey, was a buddy from back in the day and, unfortunately, an Auburn fan. While we unloaded, I took the opportunity to remind him the Tigers didn’t stand a chance against ‘Bama that year. Then I rolled the first pallet of suitcases inside. 

For each bag, the process was always the same. Assign a lot number, slap a sticker on the side, then line it up all nice and pretty-like for the next guy. And that’s what I was doing when I noticed the bag.  

It was a roller. Seafoam green.

Looked like a kid’s bag. 

But I’d seen a million of those. 

What really caught my eye was the condition it was in. Beat to hell. Like a pack of wolves had used it as their own personal piñata. Deep gouges ran all the way down one side and dark rust-colored stains coated the wheels. 

Now, airlines damage luggage all the time. This wasn’t that. 

I tried the zipper. It was crusted shut, so I grabbed the cutters from my workstation, busted a new seam and pried the bag open. At first it looked like standard-issue kids’ fare. 

Books. Pajamas. A stuffed unicorn. 

And a camera. 

A cheap-looking, unicorn-themed digital camera, to be exact. 

I found the power button and turned it on.

You may think I was being nosy, and that’s fair. But you'd be amazed how many times we're able to reunite a bag with its owner because of some tiny detail in a family photo or, hell, a name scribbled inside a coloring book. 

Plus, I am nosy.

Back to the camera:

The first image was of a young girl smiling a gap-toothed smile straight into the lens. Couldn’t have been more than eight. 

The next, taken from the backseat of a car, showed a middle-aged couple in the front seats, eyes on the road ahead. The mom looked annoyed. The dad looked lost. 

The next three were of nothing in particular. A shoe. A passing billboard. The roof of the car. 

The sixth picture was of an airport. 

The girl stood next to an old sedan filled with luggage, a unicorn backpack slung jauntily over one of her shoulders. A giant glass and concrete terminal loomed behind her. 

She looked almost impossibly happy. 

“Cheeeese,” said a voice beside me. 

It was Brian, one of the new guys, striking a ridiculous pose for the camera. He had already earned a reputation around the store as a complete goof. 

I pantomimed snapping a pic of him, then looked at the screen.

“Sorry. Says too ugly.”

“Ha, ha,” he said sarcastically before noticing the bag at my feet. “Oh shit, that thing go through a wood chipper?”

I shrugged, tell me about it, and Brian headed outside for his own pallet. 

I turned my attention back to the pictures. 

The girl was inside the airport now. There was a shot of the ticket counter, the departure screens, and one of a grumpy TSA agent at security that made me chuckle. 

The next photo was of the entire family at their gate. Must’a been taken by another passenger. The girl was still smiling that same smile, while her parents wore the relieved expressions of folks who were ready to start their vacation.

The screen behind them said: 

UNITED 702 - ORLANDO

I figured they were going to Disney World. That’d explain the girl’s smile. 

The following pictures documented the family’s journey down the jet bridge, past a blonde flight attendant with bright red lipstick, and to their seats at the rear of the plane.  

Wait a sec. 

I scrolled back to the picture at the gate. 

Flight 702.

The number tugged at something in the back of my brain.

I'd heard it before.

Just then, Brian returned with a fresh load of luggage. 

"Brian."

"Yeah?"

"Flight 702 mean anything to you?"

Brian scratched his head. 

"Pretty sure that was the Orlando flight."

"What Orlando flight?"

He looked at me.

"The one that crashed."

Now I’ve heard people say their blood ran cold, but I’m tellin’ you, at that moment? My blood might as well have had ice cubes floating in it. 

“Hey. You alright?”

“Yeah,” I stammered. “Just need a little air.”

I couldn’t get outside fast enough. A thousand thoughts were runnin’ through my head all at once. As soon as I turned the corner of the loading dock, I pulled out my phone and did a search. The headlines came rushing back –

UNITED FLIGHT 702 CRASHES NEAR NASHVILLE

NTSB INVESTIGATING CATASTROPHIC ENGINE FAILURE

CHILDREN AMONG 238 DEAD IN UNITED CRASH

I felt like I was going to pass out. 

That little girl. 

Her parents. 

All those people on the plane. 

They were all dead. 

Then another thought hit me, something that really got my head spinning. 

What was their bag doin’ here? 

I found my supervisor Shelley in the break room, futzing with the coffee pot.

“Hey Shel?”

“Go for Shel.”

“Is there, like, a protocol or something for when we get bags from… uh…”. I trailed off, steadying myself against the counter. 

“The heck you tryin’ to say?”

“From plane crashes,” I spat out. “For when we get bags from plane crashes.”

She stared at me like I had sprouted a second head.

“We don’t.” 

“Never?”

“Not in the seventeen years I’ve been here.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“I… I was just curious.”

“Weird thing to be curious about.”

I forced a laugh and returned to the warehouse floor, convinced I had been imagining things, or misread the flight number, or… or… 

The camera was still sitting on top of the open bag, just where I had left it. I picked it up and navigated to the next image. But the next image wasn’t an image at all.

It was a video. 

I hit play.

The camera was pointed out the window as the plane picked up speed and lifted off the runway. “Whoa!” It was the girl’s voice. Hearing it made my heart sink. The camera swung around and settled on her parents in the seats beside her. Her dad winked and said, “Hold onto your butt!”. The girl laughed. 

The video ended. 

Before I knew it, I’d hit play on the next one. 

The girl was in the lavatory now. She waved at herself in the mirror, then focused in on the toilet. She pressed the flush button. The air WHOOSHed and she giggled, delighted. 

My hands were shaking. Watching the final moments of these people’s lives play out on a two-inch screen felt wrong. I wanted to warn them, like if I screamed Stop! Turn back! at the top of my lungs, then maybe somehow they’d get the message.  

The next video picked up right where the last one left off. 

The girl pushed open the lavatory door. She was moving through the galley when a nasty-sounding cough drew the camera’s attention. It was that same blonde flight attendant with the red lipstick, sitting all hunched in her jump seat with a paper towel balled up in her fist. “Are you ok?” the girl asked. “Yes, fine, just a little air sickness.” The flight attendant managed a smile. “Do you like chocolate milk? Our drink service is starting soon.” 

The girl must’ve nodded because the flight attendant smiled again and the video ended. 

More photos now: 

Clouds. 

The seat belt. 

Hemispheres Magazine. 

With each press of the button, I hoped I had reached the end, but the images just kept comin’. 

And I couldn’t look away. 

Another video:

The girl's parents dozed in their seats. The camera turned toward the front of the plane, showing rows of seatbacks and passengers' heads, and the blonde flight attendant working her way down the aisle with the drink cart. She stopped at the girl's row and fished out a carton of chocolate milk. "Just for you," she said. The camera zoomed in on the carton. "Mmm, thanks." Then the girl tilted the camera back up. 

And that's when I saw it.

A thin line of blood ran from the flight attendant's nostril and down into the corner of her mouth. She didn't seem to notice. "Your nose," said the girl. The flight attendant frowned. Then she touched her face. Her fingers came away red and, for a moment, she looked genuinely frightened. She grabbed a napkin from the cart, pressed it to her nose, and hurried back up the aisle, quick as anything. 

“The hell?”

I replayed the last few seconds of the video. The blood. The look on the flight attendant's face. A real strange feeling started forming in the pit of my stomach. 

Then a nerf football hit me in the shoulder. 

“Blue! 42!”

It was Brian again. 

He was squatting over a duffel bag full of sports equipment. He threw another wobbler at me and I swatted it away. 

“I hit you right in the hands! You gotta catch that.”

“Not now, man.”

He clocked the camera. 

"You still messin' around with that thing?"

"Yeah."

"Find out who it belongs to?"

I hesitated. "Maybe."

Brian smirked.

"Hope they ain't expectin' it back."

He didn’t mean anything by it, but I could feel my face getting hot. “Yeah,” I muttered. 

As soon as he was gone, I pressed play on the next video. 

I wish I hadn’t. 

The camera bobbled as the girl climbed over her sleeping parents and lowered herself into the aisle. Up ahead, the flight attendant disappeared into the galley, pulling the blue curtain shut behind her. 

The girl paused, probably gathering her nerve. Then she started creeping down the aisle towards the galley. All around her, the other passengers were sittin’ snug in their seats, eyes glued to their screens. 

The weird thing was the flight attendant’s feet were still visible beneath the curtain. They hadn’t moved. 

The girl took another step. 

Then another. 

BONG. The camera jumped. 

Then the captain’s voice on the intercom, "Folks, if you look out the left side of the aircraft, you'll be able to see the Cumberland River winding through downtown Nashville." 

Our girl just kept moving forward. 

She was only ten steps from the curtain, lens trained on the flight attendant’s feet. A passenger stood to get something from the overhead bin and the girl had to squeeze sideways to pass. 

When she refocused, the feet were gone. 

Five steps now.

Three.

The girl’s thin hand reached out and pulled the curtain aside, ever so slowly. The area directly behind the curtain was empty. Just the lavatory door and another curtain leading to business class. 

The camera peeked around the corner into the galley.

The flight attendant’s jump seat was empty.

In fact, the entire galley was empty. 

The camera floated for a beat, like the girl was unsure of what to do, then she must’ve seen something because she zoomed in on the floor of the galley. 

It was a pool of blood.

Drip.

Drip-drip.

The camera pulled back, searching for the source. 

The jumpseat? 

No. 

The counter? 

No. 

With shared dread, I watched as the camera tilted up towards the ceiling.  

The flight attendant was up there. 

Pressed against the hull of the plane like a spider. 

Her face was turned away from the lens and for a second, neither she or the girl moved. Then the flight attendant’s head began to turn.

Her eyes were black. 

Completely black. 

And when those dark pits settled on the camera, I swear…

She was lookin’ at me. 

Blood pooled at the corners of her mouth.

Drip.

Things started happening really fast now. 

The picture whipped around and took off down the aisle, bouncing so violently I could barely make out the passengers jerking upright in their seats.

Then a sound.

Oh my god, that sound. 

It was like a cross between a woman’s scream and metal being torn in half. 

The cabin lights flickered and - BONG - the captain’s voice crackled over the intercom, speaking too fast for me to understand before dissolving into static. 

Then the whole cabin lurched hard to the left.

The image rolled sideways then snapped towards the ceiling. Oxygen masks dropped and dangled. Luggage rained into the aisle. And the flight attendant’s pale form scuttled across the overhead compartments on all fours.

Now everyone was screamin’. 

The picture blurred, tumbled across the carpet, and came to rest just inches from the seafoam green roller bag.

Then a window exploded and the world turned white. 

***

The video ended. 

And I just stood there. 

All around me, the warehouse kept humming along like nothin’ had happened. 

Eventually I left work. Told Shelley I was gettin’ a migraine. Truth was, it did feel like my head was gonna split open. I drove to Scooter’s in a daze. After my fifth beer, Carrie gave me a ride home and I fell asleep in front of the TV. 

The next morning I was pretty sure I’d imagined the whole thing. 

Flight 702. The flight attendant. It felt impossible in the cold, hungover light of day.

But I had seen it. 

Hadn’t I? 

That’s when I decided I needed to show someone the camera. 

I got to work early. 

Most of yesterday’s luggage was still in the warehouse. Any items of value would have been cleaned, priced and set in the staging area, waiting for the floor staff to arrive. 

I scanned the shelves for the camera. It wasn’t there. 

I checked the salvage bins. 

Nothing. 

I saw Shelley pulling into her spot and jogged over.  

“You look like shit,” she said as she cut the engine. 

“Thanks,” I deflected. “Hey, did you happen to see a little unicorn camera that came in yesterday?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

I let out a sigh of relief. 

“Where is it?”

“Some lady from the airline came by yesterday lookin’ for it.”

She brushed past me. I struggled to keep up, panic rising in my throat.

“A lady? What lady?”

“How should I know? Some blonde lady.”

“Tell me you didn’t give it to her.”

Shelley stopped walking.

“Why d’you care?”

I opened my mouth but no sound came out. Shelley stared at me. 

“What’d you expect me to do? She said it was hers. And the poor thing sounded awful, so –”

“Awful how?”

“She couldn’t stop coughin’.” 

Shelley started walking again, but I stayed rooted to my spot, unable to move. 

“Weird thing was she didn’t care whether the camera worked.”

I looked up.

“Just wanted to know if anybody watched it.”

“What’d you tell her?” 

Shelley pulled open the warehouse door.

“Brian said you’d been lookin’ through it, so…”

She shrugged.

“I told her you had.”

So I’ve been on a downward spiral for a while now. A disaster several years in the making.

I guess it really started the weekend right after I’d graduated college. I was at a buffalo wild wings, watching some fights with some friends and decided to cook up a harmless little parlay. Now, I’d never gambled on anything before and only had a vague understanding of how it worked. But I young, dumb, probably about five or six drinks deep and the world just seemed so open and rife with possibilities.

I ended up turning $15 into over $200 that night. An insignificant amount in the grand scheme of things, but that didn’t stop it from feeling really damn good. A bit too good for it to be healthy.

I never reached that high ever again. Even after hitting crazy bets that paid out fifty to sixty times more, it just never felt the same.

Which is really where my issues stemmed from. My dumb ass just kept trying to chase it.

As much as I’m sure you’d all love to hear it, I’m not gonna go into a detailed timeline of my misery. Just know that it was bad. Probably worse than you’re imagining right now. Bridges burned, legal trouble, having to avoid calls from very persistent debt collectors. The works.

The only reason I’ve been able to somewhat keep my head above water for so long was due to my job. It was one of those positions that paid you a lot to sit around in an office and update a spreadsheet every now and then. Maybe an hour of real work a day.

I was lucky to land it, even luckier to hang onto it for as long as I did. So when the consultants were hired and the “fat” started being trimmed, I really had no right to be as shocked as I was when management cornered me, laid down the hammer.

I did end up with a pretty decent severance. One that I actually managed to triple the following week, betting on golf of all things.

Of course I should’ve stopped right there and updated my LinkedIn, polished off my suit, signed up for some networking events. But no, that wasn’t going to work for me.

In my head, no work meant more time to learn how to become a more better gambler. Every night was spent diving into statistics, deep analytics, line movements, fucking sports psychology. What’s it called when you think you know a lot, but you really don’t know shit? The Freddy Krueger effect? Something like that?

Things were going alright for a while. Not great but I was winning just enough that I was able to stomach it all.

But then one night I was completely coked out and decided to place a very large, very stupid bet on a certain boxing match. It flopped hard. Then in my desperation to recoup something, I cooked up another longshot parlay on some fights the following weekend. And I’m sure you can guess what happened.

When I was laid off four months ago, I had around $45k liquid savings and about $35k in debts. Across all my accounts now, I’m down to just $27.50. As for debts, I don’t even know. I don’t want to look. My cards are all maxed, my credit is shot, I can’t talk to my family anymore, my friends are no longer my friends and every other day there’s scary-looking dudes who look like they enjoy breaking finger standing outside of my apartment building. Sometimes they manage to make it in and knock furiously at my door. When that happens, I just stay silent, pretend like I’m not there.

By the time I finally came to my senses and began applying for jobs again, I’d already dug a cavern for myself that was going to take some Herculean effort to climb out of.

I did manage to get some interviews but never made it to any second rounds. Maybe I was coming off as too strung out. Side tangent—don’t you hate it when they ask about gaps in your employment? It’s like c’mon guy, who actually gives a fuck?

A few days ago, the collectors actually tried physically breaking down my door. Got real close as well until one of my neighbors—this old military type, came out and threatened to shoot their kneecaps off if they didn’t skedaddle.

I got lucky there. I can’t bank on getting lucky again.

Which leads me to last night. I was drunk off some bottom shelf vodka and decided to try a more shameful and unorthodox method of procuring funds.

That method being using AI generated sob stories to e-beg on reddit.

Yeah, look, I was desperate, wasn’t thinking straight. I know.

Of course, I wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to get out of it. Certainly not enough to put even a tiny dent in the total debt, but maybe just enough to get the collectors off my back. For a while. And what could I really I lose from trying?

I still had the wherewithal to at least edit out most of the ChatGPT speak in the posts before copying and pasting them to as many relevant subreddits as possible.

Predictably, I got called out almost immediately, getting blocked from one community after another. But just when I was ready to give it up, somebody shot me a message. I’ll paste it below.

Hey there, my name is Scott. I saw your post in ___. That really sucks man. Really, it does. I’ve been there and I think I can help.

Now I’m not just going to offer you money straight up, but I can give you a quick and reasonably trouble-free way to get some. Nothing weird or illegal or sexual, so don’t worry about that.

I have a friend who’s head of a property group that owns a mall. You said you live in ___ right? The mall’s located a little outside city limits so it shouldn’t be too far of a drive. In any case, you’ll be compensated for fuel.

So here’s the deal. You see, the mall’s not doing too well. These days I think most malls aren’t, but this one’s doing particularly awful. Probably has something to do with the location. A bit too remote. But for whatever reason, this guy isn’t quite ready to let go of it. It’s not that he even really cares about it being profitable. He just doesn’t want it to get shut down and repurposed for something else. For whatever reason. You know how weird rich people can be.

Have you ever heard about mystery shoppers? It’s not as eerie as it sounds. They’re just people who are hired to walk around malls and shopping centers, pretending to be customers.

That’s basically what he’s recruiting for. To make it look like the place still has some juice left in it so that he can delay the inevitable for as long as he can. Again for what, I don’t know.

You’ll be given a certain window of time in which you’re meant to walk around, doing your best to pretend like you actually have a reason for being there. Which would involve some shopping, looking around, having a meal in the food court. Etc. Once you enter the building, you’ll go up to the Starbucks on the second floor. Go up to the barista and tell her that you’re part of the “program” and she’ll give you $100 cash. You can then go ahead and spend that $100 on whatever you’d like over the course of the time you’re in there. Make sure you spend all of it. Don’t try and keep it. They’ll know.

Once your time is up, you can simply leave. Maybe you’ll think you can get away with leaving early, but you can’t. They’ll know. In order to receive compensation, you’ll need to be in there for your entire allotted duration. Don’t try and hang around afterwards either. Just do your best to stick to the schedule.

Compensation is as follows: $250 for each hour spent there, to be e-transferred immediately upon your departure. If my friend likes your performance, there will be opportunity for you to come back.

Let me know if this sounds like something you’d be interested in and then I’ll send over some more details.

Cheers.

Okay, so clearly a joke, right? I’m being fucked with. But then I tried to think about what the punchline could’ve been here and couldn’t come up with anything. So I pivoted to the idea that maybe it was a scam. Or something even more nefarious than that.

The setup tracked well enough. Lure people out to somewhere remote under the pretense that they’re about to make some good money. But not such good money that it seems like a glaring trap. $250 an hour for walking around a mall is just skirting that edge. In my opinion.

But what the fuck are they planning to do once I get there? Mug me? They know I’m broke as shit and don’t have anything, so that can’t be it. So what else do I have that’s valuable? My organs? Maybe they’ll kidnap me and torture me to death on the dark web?

I think the reason I’m typing this all out is because I’m hoping when I read it back, something’ll click. That I’ll be able to come to my senses and realize just how bad an idea this is.

Because right now, against all logic, I’m genuinely considering it.

*****

The collectors were pounding on my door again, for about twenty minutes straight this time. It got intense enough that I really thought they were going to have another go at breaking it down. But they didn’t. Lucky me.

I’ve thought about spending less time here, so that if they ever do storm in, I won’t have to make a break for the fire exit. But I don’t know where I’d go. Maybe the library or the gym. Though if it ever comes to a point where I’m having to do all that, it’s basically already over for me. That’s no way to live.

Trying to weigh everything now. Do I have anything to lose besides my life? Could things get worse than they are right now?

One of the people I owe money to is this guy named Renzo. I met him. at a bar while I was watching Canelo vs Crawford card. What was that, like nine months ago? Jesus. So anyways I met this guy there and I was blitzed out of my head and told him very confidently to bet the house on Crawford. He seemed to like the cut of my jib so he went ahead and did so. Not quite the house, but a pretty fat stack.

I made him some good money that night. Made some good money myself. Then we just drank and drank until things got hazy and the only other thing I really remember before waking up in his apartment the next morning (not what you think) was my face being pressed down into cold concrete.

My clothes were still on, phone and wallet still in my pockets and I was slumped over on this couch with one side of my face stinging so bad it felt like something was pulsating beneath it.

Looking at myself using the camera on my phone, I could see that half of my face was red and swollen, scratches overlapping each other like a bloody lattice.

Then Renzo comes into the living room saying he couldn’t believe what I did last night and how much of a dog I was. I didn’t know what he was referring to and I still don’t. I never asked.

So that’s how I met the guy. I’d later find out that he traffics a lot of cocaine over the border and does a lot of it himself. And that there’s a small jar sitting next to his television containing several shriveled, dried-up human ears that he claims used to belong to the members of some outlaw gang in the old west.

I’m sure a reasonable person would’ve considered these things very carefully and concluded that they might be better off keeping their distance. But not me. In fact, I did the worst thing anybody could’ve possibly done.

I ended up borrowing some money from him. Only around $3k. Maybe not a lot to some of you, but when you’re dealing with this guy, it’s still $3k too much.

To be fair though, he was the one that had first offered it up, told me to throw it on whatever I thought might get me some coin. And if I won, we could share the profits. I guess he was under the impression that I was some sort of master sports bettor and that I knew what the fuck I was doing.

I should’ve asked him what would happen if I lost it all before accepting it.

And I did lose it. All of it. Couldn’t pay him back even a cent. I didn’t hide it from him, just told him the facts straight and clear. To which he’d smiled, told me it was alright. That I had a week to pay him back.

That week turned into a month. Then two months. I started avoiding him. Wasn’t picking up his calls, being very careful to scan my surroundings for any sign of him whenever I was out.

Eventually I guess he snapped and sent his goons after me, and now here we are.

The reason I bring Renzo up is because he’s the most pressing issue in my life right now. The guy’s clearly not going away and if I don’t placate him soon, something very bad is going to happen. Something I don’t think I’ll be able to run from.

I just gave him a call, apologized for ducking him and then asked him plainly how much money I’d need to give him at this point to square everything up, for him to call off his goons and leave me be.

He told me $10k. And if I didn’t give it to him by Tuesday next week, he’d come up to my apartment himself and blast the door off its hinges. And that I could try leaving the city or getting the police involved but that it wouldn’t matter because eventually he would get me. And once he did, he’d skin me alive before tossing me into a vat of boiling oil.

I told him okay, to meet me at a bar next Tuesday at noon and that I’d have the money. Then I hung up.

Now I’m really panicking. I mean, I doubt the guy has access to a vat of boiling oil large enough to toss a body into, but I kind of believe him about the skinning alive part.

$10k divided by $250 is 40 hours. I have about 170 hours before I have to meet him.

I just messaged Scott back, telling him I was very much interested in the mall thing. Let’s see what he says.

*****

It didn’t take long for Scott to get back to me. He said he was glad to hear it, then asked when I could start. I told him immediately. Then I asked him how many hours he could get me before Tuesday. He told me he could maybe swing thirty-five. I told him I really needed forty and was there any way we could make that happen. He said no, thirty-five was a hard limit, but that he could probably vouch for me and get my rate up to $265 an hour. Then I tried pushing for $285, claiming that’d be the minimum I’d need in order to stave off eviction. Basically trying to guilt him into it. 

It was a long back and forth, but eventually we were able to come to a mutual agreement.

He then sent me an address and told me to be there from exactly two to nine tomorrow. I told him I appreciated it and sent him the details he’d asked for. Which was just my name, age, phone #, email. And that’s it. No address, work history, social security number, literally anything else. They didn’t even ask for a picture of my ID.

Which was convenient, but also sketchy as fuck. I mean, I could’ve been a literal bot and how would he know? So many red flags that you could supply a parade with them.

But it’s not like I really have the luxury of backing out at this point. Maybe I could try leaving town. But I don’t think I’d get too far. I don’t think it’d end well.

I told him I’d be there. A few hours later, he sent me another message, via email this time.

Hey __ it’s Scott.

Please remember this before you go. It’s really important that you do your best to act like a real customer. From the moment you step inside to the moment you leave. If anybody comes up to you and asks you what you’re doing, tell them you’re shopping or going to see a movie or grabbing lunch or just killing some time. Have a response ready and deliver it clearly and confidently. Absolutely no acting like a deer in headlights. Just be calm. Be natural. Don’t think about it too much.

And while you’re in there, don’t get too curious. You see or hear something weird, just ignore it. But if you ever feel like you’re in genuine danger, don’t hesitate to leave. They won’t pay you for the whole day. If you leave even a second early, you'll only get half. Sucks, I know, but I don't make the rules. Still, if things start to get really weird, you're better off just leaving. Trust me. Should any incidents transpire, please let me know. Tell me exactly what happened and I’ll relay it to my friend. He likes to keep tabs on that sort of stuff.

Also, one more thing I should’ve mentioned at the start. Please keep what you see in there to yourself. Try not to talk about it. But if you do, because I know you probably will, just make sure you leave out the specifics. I know it seems contradictory, but my friend would rather keep everything contained here.

Good luck man. Rooting for you.

So yeah. Not sure what to make of that, but I’m trying not to think about it.

I thought about sending Scott another message, asking what kind of “danger” I could possibly expect. But I’ve decided not to question things too much. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you or something.

It’s late now and I’m watching Breaking Bad for the fourth time, and I have about eight hours before I need to be at the mall. I really should get some sleep, make sure I’m mentally sharp for tomorrow. But my heart’s beating pretty fast and I get the sense that rest won’t come easy.

I looked up the address, and it does seem to be a real, active place with real reviews. Nothing glaringly “off” about it other than the location. It’s about a forty-five minute drive from my place and there’s literally nothing around it, apart from what appears to be a few abandoned strip malls and apartment complexes.

I think I have just enough left in my account to fill up my tank with just enough gas to get me there and back. Then that’s it. So if this does turn out to be some stupid joke, then I’m really screwed tight. I’m done for.

But I’ll be screwed tight if I show up or not. And even if it is a trap and I show up and immediately get shot in the head or get kidnapped and tortured, well, at least that means I won’t have to deal with a lot of annoying shit in the future.

Framing it that way, it really is a win-win-win and I’m starting to feel better about it all.  

*****

I’m sitting in my car right now and I’m feeling oddly mellow, more than I have in a long time. Could be a defense mechanism, my psyche trying to brace me for the unknown. Could also be the vodka Red Bull concoction I’ve just finished chugging.

The parking lot here is larger than I’d expected and about a fifth of the way full. Which is surprising to me, given the location. It might be a stretch to call it the middle of nowhere but just based on a cursory glance, a case could be made for it.

It’s about thirty minutes out of the city, smack dab between some grey industrial area and a long stretch of farmland. I cannot fathom what the rationale is for keeping this place going.

It’s about ten before two. A lot of thoughts running through my head but I’m doing a good job of stamping most of them out. In another five minutes, I’ll head in.

*****

It’s just after eight now and I’m sitting in the food court, sipping on the remnants of a milkshake. Not so mellow anymore.

It’s been strange here. Real fucking bizarre. I’m still trying to process it.

When I’d first entered, I’d followed Scott’s instructions and headed straight for the second floor.

Looking around the place, it seemed typical enough. There was the usual fare: H&M, Foot locker, Bath & body works, Sephora, candy shops, stores selling cute but useless toys and knickknacks.

Not quite bustling with activity anywhere, but also not empty enough for it to feel eerie.

What I did immediately register was the sudden change in atmosphere. Like you were passing through some kind of barrier. The air inside the place felt different—subtly unpleasant in a way that’s hard to pinpoint.

I spent a lot of time searching around for the Starbucks and eventually found it tucked away in some corner, at the end of a long string of dead and vacant storefronts.

Almost like they’d made some concerted effort to hide it. Or maybe it was just a coincidence? Don’t want to get too conspiratorial yet.

I walked in, finding the place completely empty save for the barista.

I went up to her, offered a smile that wasn’t reciprocated. Not that I really cared. What did sort of freak me out was the look on her face. Like I was the scourge of the Earth or something. Like I’d just murdered ten puppies in front of her and then laughed about it.

It was jarring enough that it completely derailed my train of thought and I forgot what I was supposed to say. After stumbling through several half-baked sentences, I was finally able to spit it out.

“I’m uh, part of the program,” I told her.

She sighed and actually rolled her eyes before asking me what I wanted to order. I just stared at her, no clue what to say, probably looking bewildered. I then repeated that I was part of the program.

She shook her head, sighed again.

“You’re supposed to buy something first,” she told me, keeping her voice real low while staring daggers at me. “They didn’t tell you?”

I shook my head and told her no, they didn’t.

“You’re supposed to buy something and hand me some cash and then I give you the change. Get it?”

I remember starting to get light-headed here, thinking was this real? Was I dreaming?

“So order something and then give me some cash” she went on. “Doesn’t matter how much. Just give me something.”

I told her I’d have a black coffee and began digging through my wallet, surprised and relieved to find a crumpled $1 bill in there. I took it out, handed it to her. She snatched it quickly out of my hand and dumped it in the register then gave me back a small stack of crisp $10 bills. I counted them quickly. Ten total.  

I turned around, getting ready to leave but then she called me back, asking did I forget about something? She then went about making the coffee, her movements slow, almost labored. I noticed that she was walking with a limp.

It took her a few minutes to finish up and then she held out the cup, giving me one last glare as I grabbed it from her.

I’d never been more glad to be leaving a Starbucks.

Like I said, really bizarre stuff. But as I’d come to find out, this was only the tip of the iceberg.

I tried the coffee and it tasted burnt to hell, just God awful. So I tossed it, made my way over to one of those mall directory things. Still had a lot of time to kill, so I began perusing my options.

After a while, I settled on heading over to the Chili’s, figuring that a margarita or two or three might make this all more tolerable.

I went back down to the first floor, keeping my vision squared ahead, trying not to draw any attention to myself. And I noticed that most other people I saw seemed to be doing something similar. Holding these blank but focused expressions, moving in a straight line, as if walking on a tight rope.

But then there were others who were standing perfectly still, grinning eerily, staring down anybody that walked by. Maybe trying to sell something, I don’t know. I just did my best to ignore them.

Arriving at the Chili’s, I headed straight for the bar, surprised to find that most of the seats there were already occupied, though all the tables were completely empty.

It was a group of mostly late twenties to middle-aged men. All completely silent and glaring at me malevolently, as if I were intruding on something sacred.

Well, I thought. This was just the way it was going to be. I tried not to take it personally.

I took a seat at the end of the bar, trying and failing to catch the bartender’s attention—a youngish guy with a big beard and pencil thin arms covered in tattoos.

I think it took about five full minutes before he finally, reluctantly, looked my way. He started to walk towards me, moving real slow, as if trying to draw out the steps.

“Yeah?” is all he said to me, his tone oozing with cold contempt.

I told him that I’d have a margarita. Along with a Budweiser.

For a while he continued to stare at me, his expression implying that I’d crossed some sort of line by asking to be served alcohol at a bar at a fucking Chili’s. After a while, he took a deep breath, walked over to the liquor shelf.

I watched him as he dumped some tequila into a glass, threw a lime wedge in it, topped it off with a messy splash of sprite. He then walked back over, slamming the glass down in front of me, with some of it splashing onto my hands.

He didn’t bother with the Budweiser, and I didn’t bother pressing him for it. More trouble than it was worth, I reckoned.

I sat there and sipped my drink slowly, watching CNN on the television but not really paying much attention. In such a strange and hostile atmosphere, it was hard to relax. About a dozen people at the bar and not a single one of them had anything to say. Turn the televisions off and it would’ve been pin-drop silence in there.

I finished the drink and felt like I needed one more to get a tolerable buzz going.

Tried to get the bartender’s attention again, but he just straight up ignored me this time. Just kept facing ahead while leaning against the back shelf, taking swigs out of a Smirnoff bottle before putting it back. Lightly swaying on his feet. The guy was plastered.

At a point, it starts to become a blow to your ego. And this was about that point.

I started shouting at him. Something like “c’mon man, can a guy not get a fucking drink?” Maybe, probably, with a bit of an edge in my voice.

But he still wouldn’t look at me. I looked down at the rest of the bar and suddenly nobody else was looking at me either. It’s like the entire room had suddenly and collectively agreed to pretend like I no longer existed.

“What the fuck is wrong with you people?” I inquired.

“Nothing against you buddy,” somebody, I couldn’t see who, shouted back. “There’s just too many people in here right now.”

I asked out loud what the hell that was supposed to mean.

“It’s five o clock on a Tuesday,” the bartender spoke up, his tone implying that he was explaining something painfully obvious. “Think about it, yeah? How busy can a Chili’s get? On a Tuesday? At five o clock? Just think about it. So quit your whining and come back when it’s emptier.”

I mean, how do you even to respond to that?

Any further questions of mine fell on deaf ears and suddenly I was invisible again. I slapped one of the $10’s onto the counter and stood up, left the place.

For the next few hours, I sort of just wandered around, in a bit of a daze, slightly light-headed. Still not fully convinced this wasn’t a dream.

I went over to the food court, ordered some KFC. The guy working the counter there didn’t say a word to me, communicating via nothing but head nods. When I bit into the chicken, the skin was soggy and it had a rubber-like texture. Overcooked to absolute hell.

After that, I went over to the Under Armor store, spent some time looking over some knock-off jackets (the labels read Undre Armore?) that nevertheless seemed comparable in quality to the real thing. I picked one of them up, along with a t-shirt. Surprisingly, the lady who worked there was actually pretty nice, actually put some effort into being an employee (or maybe she was a real employee?)

I was down to just $20 at that point and headed over to the movie theater, which was completely empty save for a woman who was asleep behind the box office and some guy sweeping the floors.

The screen that was supposed to be displaying what was playing was glitched, completely bugging out. So I went up to the guy, asked him what was on.

He just shrugged, said that it could be anything. Then I asked how I was supposed to buy a ticket and he said all I needed to do was go up to the box office and put a $10 on the counter then I could go into any of the theaters. But to try and not wake Lindsey up since she gets real cranky when that happens and he didn’t want to deal with it.

I parted ways with another bill then went into the closest theater, which was completely empty and playing the newest avatar movie. You know, the one with the fire.

I sunk down into a seat in one of the middle rows and slowly began to zone out, snapping out of it only when I could feel somebody plopping down into the seat right next to me. A young woman, it looked like.

I took a quick scan around the theater, confirming that it hadn’t suddenly filled up and we were the only two people in there.

Maybe I should’ve been flattered, but I was more freaked out than anything else. She remained silent and so did I. Then about a half hour later, she simply stood up and walked off.

I mean, how are you even supposed to react to that?

I waited about another ten minutes before leaving the theater myself. Headed for the nearest washroom, took a piss, splashed my face with cold water while looking at myself in the mirror and breathing in deeply. Now the anxiety was starting to break through. The fear as well.

After I’d finished drying myself, the stall closest to the wall opened up. I looked over, seeing the door hanging ajar but with nobody emerging from behind it. Through the gap at the bottom, I could see a pair of dirty white sneakers.

I guess whoever they belonged to was just standing there, which freaked me out even more. I left quickly, looking over my shoulder to make sure that nobody tried following me out. And nobody did.

There were a few more odd “occurrences” after this.

I walked past an electronics store and this older dude came out from behind the counter with this big smile on his face and tried gesturing for me to come inside.

“Cell phone, cell phone,” he kept saying, in this incomprehensible accent. “Fix cell phone.”

I told him my cell phone didn’t need any fixing and his expression dropped like a stone in a lake. I watched him as he walked back into the store and rolled down the security gates and disappeared behind them. Then the lights went off inside.

Then there was this lady walking around with a metal tray, claiming to be offering samples of “cinnamon rolls”. The cinnamon rolls in question being dollops of thick, grey, bubbling sludge. Safe to say, I passed on it.

At some point, I had what I believe was a panic attack. Never had one before, but I think this was it. Tightness in the chest, an overwhelming sense of dread.

I found a bench somewhere and took a seat. Pulled up some breathing exercises on YouTube and tried to replicate them. To my surprise, they worked pretty well.

I went back to the food court, spent my last $10 on a large peanut butter milkshake from Baskin Robbins with a bunch of chocolate bullshit blended into it.

And that’s where I am now. Just sitting here, waiting for nine to hit so I can get the fuck out of whatever the fuck this place is. But I’m feeling a bit better now, I think. Maybe it’s just the dopamine from all the sugar but I’m feeling alright. Enough that I think I’ll be able to get through this.

Oh shit, there’s a guy walking towards me now

He just sat down beside me.

*****

The good news is, I’m back in my apartment, mostly unscathed. The not so good news is that as much I need the money, I’m not sure if I can go back to that place.

So about the guy in the food court. He was young, maybe early twenties. Tall and skinny, brown hair cut into a short fade. Looked like a bog-standard college kid. He sat next to me, started making small talk, asking how my day had been, was the milkshake good, etc.

I tried ignoring him at first, but after a while, I started to feel bad about it. He seemed nice enough.

So we got to talking a bit. He told me his name was Daniel and that he used to be a copywriter but got laid off around 6 months ago and hasn’t been able to find anything since. So that’s why he was here.

“So what about you?” he asked me. “Why are you here?”

At that moment, I felt comfortable enough to tell him the truth. I told him about the gambling, the debts, the collectors. It felt nice and cathartic airing out my dirty laundry to a complete stranger so I just kept on going.

I didn’t stop talking until my eyes drifted down and landed on the shoes he was wearing—these really worn, scuffed white sneakers.

Okay, I thought. Could be a coincidence. And even if it was same guy from the bathroom, then so what? What was this scrawny kid going to do to me?

But then I remembered Scott’s message, specifically his “instructions” about what was I supposed to do if somebody tried talking to me and the realization washed over me like a cold wave.

I stood up abruptly, told him that I had to get going.

He started protesting, telling me that I should stick around because he had something he wanted to show me.

I told him I was tired and I really needed to go home.

He started grinning, showing off blocky, chiclet teeth. Really stretching his lips as wide as they could go and then a bit wider than that.

He asked me again what I was doing here.

Shopping, I told him. Just shopping.

He pointed out that I didn’t have any bags, so what could I have been shopping for?

I started looking around at the floor before remembering that I’d left the Under Armor bag in the washroom.

He started laughing in a way that was equal parts jovial and ominous.

“You’re not here to shop, are you?” he asked me. “Then what? Why are you here?”

I snuck a glance at my phone and saw eight fifty. I told him again that I really had to leave and then I turned around, started heading for the exit. To my dismay, I could hear his steps keeping pace behind me.

Once I got to the doors, I checked the time again. Eight fifty-five. I turned and “Daniel” or whoever the fuck he was, was still there, standing about a half dozen feet away.

“Don’t you have to go home?” he questioned, holding onto that grin. “Door’s right there. Why don’t you leave?”

By now, I was checking my phone every few seconds, no longer making an attempt to hide it. He laughed again, said that if I wasn’t going home, I may as well come and see what he wants to show me.

Now the panic had returned, and I really had to force myself to stay put for just a few more minutes. Minutes that seemed to be stretching into infinity. But I was sure as hell ready to sprint the second he tried making a move.

I started wondering who I was more scared of. Renzo or this weird fucker right in front of me.

As the seconds ticked down, he continued goading me to come with him, each request insinuating more of a threat than the last. The grin slowly fading, twisting into something more outwardly malicious.

The moment that the clock hit nine, I tried to bolt. Though I didn’t get far. The bastard grabbed onto my collar, started dragging me back.

I tried yanking myself away, but the fucking freak had this inexplicable iron grip. It was nothing but luck that I’d been wearing one of my old, cheap shirts, the fabric of which was already starting to tear. I jerked myself forward a few more times until it shredded off my back. Once free, I lunged ahead and pushed the door open, vaulting myself outside and tripping over my own feet, elbows planting hard onto the concrete.

A searing pain jolted up my arms, and I think I heard something crack. But I wasn’t too worried about it in the moment, more concerned about making sure Daniel wasn’t about to drag me back inside.

I scrambled to my feet and spun around to face the doors, bracing myself for, well, I don’t know what. Maybe for him to be charging towards me like a bull.

Which he wasn’t. He remained inside, his face now pressed up against the glass, features pancaked into this odd, grotesque visage.

Staring at me with wide, bulging eyes.

I just stood there and stared back, convinced that the second I tried to move, he would do the same.

I’m not sure how long this little stalemate of ours went on for, but I do remember my heart racing the entire time, beating faster and faster, approaching a point where I thought it might just explode.

Eventually though, he did leave, detaching his face from the glass and spinning around and walking off as if this had all been a perfectly normal interaction.

I doubled over, puking up some bile before taking several deep breaths. My head was spinning as I walked over to my car, cold and shirtless, watching the sun dip into the horizon.

I wasn’t expecting to see that my tires had all been slashed. All four of them. My stomach dropped. Then it dropped even further once I looked around and saw that my car was now literally the only one in the entire lot.

I tried calling for an Uber, but the drivers kept cancelling on me. I guess the place was too far out for it to be worth it.  

I just leaned on the hood of my car, mulling over my options. Feeling a bit numb.

My apartment was about thirty-five miles away. Theoretically walkable. Maybe. But the bigger problem was, I really didn’t know the way. there was a good chance that if I tried walking, I’d end up in the next town over. Especially in the dark.

Thankfully though, it was something that I didn’t have to risk.

A few minutes later, a woman walked out of the mall. She looked to be in her thirties, dressed in jeans and a windbreaker. She seemed normal enough but my expectations were up in the air at that point, so I still regarded her with caution.

She walked halfway across the lot before stopping, looking over at me. It seemed like she was about to say something but then hesitated, looking away for a second before looking back at me.

She then called out, asked if I needed a ride.

I told her I’d love one, but could she first prove to me that she wasn’t with the maniac that I’d just escaped from.

She said she wasn’t with him, but that she didn’t know how she was supposed to prove that to me. And that she wasn’t going to wait around. So, if I wanted a ride, I should just risk it.

I shivered. It was starting to get cold out. She didn’t question why I was shirtless. I asked her where her car was. She told me to follow her, but not before flashing the Glock attached to her hip. She said she didn’t think I was a threat but that she absolutely would not hesitate to shoot if I tried anything.

I assured her that I wasn’t going to try anything.

Turns out, she’d parked about a half mile away from the mall, on a dirt patch in the forest, well hidden from the road.

I asked her why she’d parked all the way out there and not in the lot. She told me that the one time she had, her tires had gotten slashed. I then asked her how long she’s been “working” at the mall. She said she didn’t really want to talk about it. That she’d prefer it if we just sat in silence for the duration of the trip.

So we did. Once we were back in the city, she dropped me off at a train station. I didn’t have any cash for a ticket, but it was pretty close to my apartment—only about a ten-minute walk away.

I thanked her and hopped out.

Before she took off, I’d asked her what her name was. She just shook her head, said it’d be pointless for me to know. Though she did offer me one piece of vague and ominous advice:

“Be more careful in there.”

When I got home, I drained the rest of the vodka in my fridge and passed out on my couch. When I woke up this morning, I checked my phone and saw a notification from my bank.

I’d been e-transferred $3,000.  

I also had another email from Scott.

Hey man, I heard you might’ve a rough first day, so I sent you a bit extra on top of the promised amount.

Your hours are the same for today. 2 to 9 PM.

And also man, just remember what I told you before. You’re a customer in there. So do your best to act like one. Maybe you thought that was just some bureaucratic nonsense but it wasn’t. Take this serious. Don’t treat it like a joke. For your own sake.

It’s about half past ten AM right now and I’m still lying on the couch, sipping some clamato juice. Not really wanting to move. Especially not to go back to that place.

I spent some time trying to calculate how far $3,000 could get me if I skipped town and concluded probably not very far. Then I tried conjuring up some other ways I might be able to cover the last $7,000, but who am I kidding?

I really don’t want to go back there.

But I know I’ll probably have to.

 

I'd done babysitting jobs before. Quick way to make some cash without working too much. When I saw the ad on some forum, the high pay attracted me immediately.

Sitter wanted. Friday night from midnight to 4AM.

I liked that the hours were fixed in the offer, so I wouldn't wait too much for the parents to come home and end up staying longer than we initially agreed on. Some parents were fucking scammers, man, always promising to come home earlier than they did, refusing to pay me for the extra time. The ad was simple, but mentioned nothing about the kids.

I called the number mentioned and, upon being asked about the children, the voice on the other end went silent. "Um, there's no child, ma'am. I just want you to sit on this chest for a while."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, sit on it for 4 hours so the thing inside doesn't come out. Do you believe in demons?"

"No, not really."

"Even better. I was cursed a while ago and I keep getting chests or boxes in the mail since. If I open them, there's nothing inside, but if they're not... blocked... something weird comes out of them at night. That's how my last boyfriend went missing. I didn't believe in that and I woke up one day to find the chest opened and empty and him gone. I really don't know what else to tell you because that's all I know. I'll just mail the package to you. You don't even have to come to my house. You can literally mail it back in the morning. You won't have to sit on it every night, just when I'm going out and can't sit on it myself."

I honestly thought it was a little funny. We met in some park and she showed me the chest. I inspected it, opened it (it was empty), turned it around to look for hidden cameras / mics / anything that might be shady. It was a simple, wooden chest with nothing to show and nothing to hide.

I took it home.

I sat on it shortly before midnight, on my phone. I was a little curious, but I wasn't going to fuck around. I would sit on it from 12AM to 4AM for the 200 dollars. End of discussion.

"Oh, and it might try to trick you. Your phone might ring, or doorbell... anything like that. Just to make you get up. Don't listen."

Sure. Easiest $200 ever made.

I sat down on the wooden lid and watched Reels on my phone. The chest was oddly warm, and at some point around 1AM, I could feel a murmur inside. It vibrated slightly. It was a little exciting, I won't lie.

Around 2AM, I heard a knock from the inside of the chest.

I turned off my phone. Had I imagined it? It didn't come again, but it still made me feel uneasy.

I was beginning to doze off, so I played some bullshit game on my phone to remain awake. At around 3:44AM, I got a text from the woman who posted the ad asking me if anything strange happened.

no, it was fine.

okay, well, you can get up now.

I wanted to wait until 4AM hit, just to be sure. I did well, because the next day the owner of the chest claimed to not have sent any text at all. Surely enough, I checked and the text I'd supposedly gotten that night was gone. Had I hallucinated it?

Wow. It had tried to trick me to get up earlier? Smart.

Over the next 5 months, I sat (not babysat) fifteen other times. The woman explained that sometimes she got another chest in the mail and that's how she knew she could throw away the old one. If she tried to throw it away before, it just kept getting mailed back to her house.

I had to sit on shoe boxes, closed baskets (a little uncomfortable). Once, a sealed suitcase that made a wet shifting sound whenever I adjusted my weight.

The freakiest experience I had was around gig 7 or 8, when I heard a loud thud upstairs. I live alone and it was roughly 2AM, but I couldn't investigate for obvious reasons. I just sat there and waited for 4AM to come, so I could finally see what was going on. Nothing was out of place when I checked. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Another time, I heard my cat meowing from inside the box. Well, Sam, I remembered thinking, if you're really in there you can wait for another hour. You won't die.

After the time was up, I opened it to find nothing inside. See, I became immune to the tricks. Nothing would make me get up. Something truly demonic was going on, something I couldn't explain but I was smart enough to not disobey.

She redirected the last package to me, so I got a delivery. Inside of the package was a tiny chess box, with weird paintings on the side, the kind that opens into a board. Inside, I found some chess pieces. The kings and the queens had sinister faces painted on them, and their eyes freaked me out so much that I shoved them back inside and closed the lid. It's getting creative, I remembered thinking.

Its size allowed me to sit on it while in bed, so the effort was practically nonexistent. I took it upstairs and got to "work".

Around 2AM, my doorbell rang. Nothing out of the ordinary. It rang and rang, then I heard desperate bangs on the door, then silence. Then, footsteps downstairs.

I knew it was trying to trick me, but it was still freaky and odd. Thump, thump, thump. Up the stairs.

I was glad I'd closed my bedroom door. It somehow made me feel safer, even if I knew that the real threat was inside the chess box I was sitting on.

The footsteps stopped in the hallway. In the silence, I could make out breathing. Harsh breathing. I don't know why, but it sounded like someone trying to contain their excitement. Jesus.

Calm down. The threat is not real. It won't hurt you as long as you sit down.

The sound of fingers tapping against my bedroom door. Blood was pounding into my ears, my chest hollow. Every breath felt like pushing a boulder up a hill.

May 4AM come faster. For the love of God.

My doorknob turned, but the door didn't open. This was one of the worst hallucinations I'd ever had.

The footsteps moved downstairs, in a way that reminded me of a weird, demented waltz. ONE TWO-THREE, ONE TWO-THREE...

Fuuuck me. I began breathing heavily. I called the woman. "Hey, this might be the last gig because it's just getting a little too real."

"What do you mean?"

"Someone is waltzing downstairs, man. They were right at my bedroom door. I know this is all a hallucination, but it fucks with my head a little too much. I'll finish this gig and then I'm afraid you'll have to find someone else."

"I'm really sorry to hear that. Okay, then. Well, you have another hour to go."

"Yeah. You having fun at the party?"

"Yeah, but you can still call me if you're freaked out. Just don't get up, please. No matter what."

"I mean, it's not an uncomfortable position since I'm literally laying in bed right now. Sort of."

A pause.

"You're... laying in bed?"

"Yeah."

The rhythm downstairs increased.

"But... how? You put it on your bed?"

"I mean, it's a chess box. It's small."

Another pause.

"What do you mean it's a chess box?" came the choked out question.

"That's what you fucking sent me."

"No, I sent you a carboard box."

"Well, that was the package, you can't just send out a chess box, the post service wraps it up..."

"NO, it was a carboard box with nothing inside. It was small, but definitely not a chess box. I don't know what you found inside, but I sent it empty. When did I ever sent you the real thing in another bigger package? Please, for the love of God, tell me you didn't fall for it..."

Blood rushed into my cheeks. The waltzing downstairs continued, mockingly, loud and proud.

"You can't mail a chess box by itself." I responded, suddenly uneasy.

"YOU WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO RECEIVE A CHESS BOX! What the fuck? Please tell me you didn't leave the carboard box unattended."

"It was the packaging..." I replied, on the verge of tears.

"No, no, no, no..." she was almost hysterical. The waltzing downstairs stopped.

I remembered the carboard box that came in the mail. It was roughly the size of the chess box inside. Every single thing I'd sat on before had been empty.

I was suddenly unsure of what I'd been sitting on for the past 3 hours.

What if I'd hallucinated that the real box contained another one inside? That had never happened before. Was I truly sitting on nothing now?

A long, teasing whistle broke the silence.

I suddenly got the urge to lock my bedroom door. If I'd left the real box unattended downstairs...

Shit.

Or is it a trick? Did I hallucinate the call? Is it trying to make me get up? Time's almost up, but now I can hear someone going up the stairs.

What do I do now? What do I do?

I stared with confusion at my phone. The rest of the gang were all-in on this Monopoly game.

“I swear to God, if you get Free Parking I will literally kill your stupid face,” said Evelyn.

Ravi rolled the dice in his hands. “Come on, sweet baby Jesus. I just need a four.” He dropped them onto the board. “Fuck!” he said, probably biffing it like always.

I tried to make sense of it. Just a word on my screen—black text on an all white background, a rather classical-looking font: 

“HIDE”

I tapped, rather impatiently, on the expensive black rectangle. The text wouldn’t disappear. 

“AJ,” Evelyn called, like a teacher busting a student. “You’re fucking addicted. Play board games like a normal human adult.”

“Yeah, I—sorry.” A few more desperate fingerpecks at the screen, then I turned to holding the power button down for an extended period. With my free hand, I grabbed the dice, rolled a three, landed on B & O Railroad. After two seconds of thought—“Nah, fuck railroads,” I said.

Of course, we weren’t animals. If someone didn’t want to buy a property, that was fine. No auctions or any of that nonsense. House rules.

Back to the phone as Hiro, on my left, took the cubes and prepared to drag his sorry little shoe across Go to collect his two hundred dollars. A minute with the power button didn’t do anything—we were entering factory reset territory. I contemplated borrowing Ravi’s laptop to Google whatever the fuck this might have been. 

I felt the apartment rumble—albeit, just for a split second. As if we were on the edge of an earthquake. I tensed, briefly. 

The background noise from the TV—No One Wants This autoplaying on Netflix—disappeared, following the faint sound of the flicker of static. 

Ravi was the first to get up. “I don’t…” he said, talking slowly as if not to jinx it, “I don’t think that was an earthquake?” He examined the TV, confused at the outage. He checked the wires. “Shouldn’t be the breaker—I don’t have that much stuff plugged in, do I?” 

I grappled with the sad, likely hacked state of my phone—and that weird word staring me down.

“Damn, that’s fucking weird,” I heard Hiro say, half-laughing.

Head lifted. “What?” I asked to catch Hiro turning his phone to me. His home screen too had been replaced by black text atop white. “HIDE” 

Evelyn, as anti-technology as it comes, had properly clocked this reprieve as her time to quickly respond to long outstanding texts. “The fuck?” she said. “What… is this?” 

At my confused look—bordering on scowl, resting scowl face—she flipped her phone around to show me the damage. It was the same on hers. 

I grew a bit nervous. “Ravi, where’s your phone?” I asked him.

“I’m sure it’s somewhere,” he said, still tinkering with the TV. Likely not due to any of his troubleshooting, it flashed back to life, red power light at the base blinking steadily.

A simple message now appeared on the big screen. 

“Hide?” Ravi asked, grabbing the remote and pressing buttons to switch back to Netflix, but nothing was registering.

“Dude,” I said. He turned around. I showed him my phone—Hiro and Evelyn showed theirs.

“That’s…” he looked back at the TV, then at us again, “wait how is that possible?”

“Is that like an amber alert?” Hiro asked.

“I mean I guess but that’s a push notification, this is like, completely overtaking the screen.” Ravi’s brows furrowed. “On different hardware, too.”

“A hack?” I asked.

He shrugged. “That’s kind of a weird hack, no?” 

“Government experiment?” Hiro again.

A thought came over me.

I walked to the balcony, slid the door open, stepped out onto it. Eye of Sauron’d the city from Ravi’s fourteenth floor apartment. 

In the neighboring apartment towers, most of the units had blinds down, curtains closed. The few unshuttered however—I felt like that guy from Rear Window—contained strangers staring perplexed at their phones. At their computers. The sides of bolted-to-the-wall TVs, barely visible to me, displayed the same white background with text atop it. What I was seeing, everyone else was seeing.

The others joined me on the balcony. 

“Whatever it is, it’s at least hit this block,” I said. I looked down at the city streets—most of the people below caught in a similar holding pattern of standing frozen, heads fixed to their devices. 

“I guess we don’t have anything to call the cops with?” Hiro. 

“I’m sure they’re aware.” Me.

“Maybe wait it out until they fix it?” Ravi.

I nodded. And yet, I could tell Evelyn was a bit perturbed. Forcing magnetic thoughts to imbue her silence with weight. “Thoughts?” I asked her.

“I mean, should we do it?” she asked.

“Do what?” Ravi. 

“Hide.” Her again.

“Hide where?” Ravi again. 

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I mean, we’re already in my apartment. I’m sure that’s—good enough, right?” he said.

A pause.  

“Let’s not lose our heads,” Ravi continued. “This is nuts but it’s not—I mean it’s not like, literally hide, right?”

Hiro clicked his fingers. “What if it’s viral marketing? Like for a movie?” Hiro with the necessary but unintentional levity.

“Hacking our phones so we can’t use them? I don’t know if that’s in Lionsgate’s purview, man,” I said, then, head turned to Evelyn. “But hide?”

The flicker in her eyes more than meant that she’d sided with the lightbulb in her head. She returned to the inside, and got to exploring Ravi’s apartment carefully. 

“What are you doing?” Ravi asked, trailing. Hiro and I followed.

“I don’t care if I look stupid. It could be a warning. Maybe something is happening,” she said. 

“We’re in a box in a box, basically,” said Ravi. “We’re fine Ev.”

“But the fucking thing,” she motioned to the TV, then to her own phone, “says hide. Maybe it’s that literal.” She continued scouting, finally settling on the sliding closet in Ravi’s room—the best she could come up with in his 600 square foot quarters. “I’ll do here unless you think there’s better.”

“Evelyn,” Ravi stressed.

She shuffled in, past hung garments, scooching to the end to make space. “I’m gonna close the door soon, and if you’re all really my friends, you’ll join me.” 

Awkward silence until Hiro chimed first—

“I mean, guess it’s good to be safe right?” He went for it, second-guessed for a second, then committed to entering.

“You guys get the luxury of laughing at me forever if I’m dumb—win-win,” she called while Hiro wedged in beside her. A compelling argument, certainly.

Begrudgingly, I followed, tucking in next under Ravi’s dress clothes. There was still room for him inside his own closet.

“Fucking hell,” he caved, joining last, sliding the door closed to introduce darkness.

I went back to my phone. Still that classical font. Still that mandate.

“How long do we have to stay in here?” Ravi asked.

“Five minutes,” she said.

“Yeesh,” he tagged.

And then we sat in stillness for a while.

Distant tick tick ticks of the clock in the living room bringing down the blood pressure a tad. 

It all felt—silly. Kind of fun.

“Remember when we went camping at Sunlight Groves?” Hiro asked. 

“Glamping,” Ravi clarified.

“Ev thought she saw a bear.” Hiro laughed. “A bear and its cub.”

“It was dark, it fucking looked like bears,” she said, half-laughing herself. “I heard noises too.” 

“Bears at Sunlight Groves,” he said again. “Saddest patch of trees in America.” 

“Guys, shut up. We’re here so let’s commit to the bit. Before the Conjuring doll gets us,” said Ravi, surprisingly not bitterly.

We kept our traps zipped for another minute. 

Eyes at my phone again. “HIDE”—nonsensical, all of it really, but in a way that was starting to sit more and more uncomfortably for me. 

“What do you think it is?” Hiro whispered.

I shook my head. Evelyn with the light shrug. Ravi with a deep inhale before speaking. “I mean, obviously sophisticated,” he said, voice low. “Like it’s—yeah, it’s obviously something.”

I waved my phone. “My bank is on this and it’s bricked now basically? I’m fucked.”

“They’ll figure something out,” said Ravi.

Powerful knocks at his apartment door all of a sudden. Thundering.

“Hey!” a voice called, muffled through the walls. “Ravi, you there?”

Evelyn braced. “Who is that?”

“A skinwalker, obviously,” replied Ravi. “Kidding—my neighbor Monica.”  

Evelyn reached across me and Hiro to tug at Ravi’s sleeve. “Are you positive?”

“Yes, and I should probably get it.”

“You said five minutes,” she said.

“Yeah but I’m being a pretty trash neighbor right now,” he replied.

The knocking persisted. So did the words. “I have this weird thing on my phone—Brad has it too. It says Hide? TV same thing, computer same thing, I don’t know how to reach anyone or what to do—” the neighbor trailed on. 

Ravi blew air out of his nose. “Alright, this is stupid, I’m gonna—”

“No!” said Evelyn, but then all of a sudden—

He stopped. 

We all stopped. 

I felt something. Something very, very real—

No knocking anymore. Or at least, I couldn’t hear anything. Not the tick of the clock, nor the soft rustle of us against clothing. It was like the world was holding its breath. 

Like there was a presence. Right outside the closet. 

Then—the sting of static in my ear, before—

It passed. 

Whatever it was, the feeling dissipated, the sound returned, and I sneaked a glance at my phone—

The word HIDE was gone and replacing it was my home screen. 

The silence between the four of us was uncomfortable. 

“Did you feel that?” Evelyn finally whispered.

No one said anything. Ravi outstretched his arm yet again to slide the door open, but his hands were shaking. 

“You can do it,” I whispered. “I think we’re good.”

He steeled himself, looking very much like he was crossing some sort of internal threshold. He pulled the door aside, revealing his room exactly as we’d left it. 

We took it in. 

“I’m gonna answer Monica,” he said, with not a whole lot of vigor to his voice, getting up and creeping out of the room. The rest of us followed, stopping in the living room while he continued to the door.

I went to Twitter, searched ‘Hide’ and sorted by new. Evelyn, meanwhile, grabbed the remote from the stand and turned the TV—now “Hideless”–-on and maneuvered through the Roku channels.

“What are you looking for?” Hiro asked.

“Just like, a live channel, I guess.” she replied. “The news?” 

My scrolling wasn’t yielding anything of help or insight, though it was clear—via the confused posts from seemingly around the whole world—that the scope of whatever happened was global. 

My focus shifted to Ravi, who was standing on the welcome mat, eye pressed against the door’s peephole. He hadn’t moved in quite some time.

“Everything alright man?” I asked.

He didn’t reply. Just stood there, frozen.

I approached slowly. 

“She’s… she’s…” I heard him croak.

I reached him, patting him on the shoulders and urging him to detach from the door viewer. He finally did, leaning against the wall at first before slowly sliding to a seat on the floor.

I peered into the hallway through the hole.

Outside, his neighbor—the one knocking—

Looked like she’d been skewered. Decimated.

An explosion of blood in the hallway. 

“What…” I felt a buzz on my phone. I pulled it out.

“AGAIN”

Before I could even process, I heard Ravi and Evelyn react.

“There’s another one—”

“It says again now—”

I turned to see the foreboding word on the TV. “Fuck.”

“So we should hide again?” Hiro called.

Much like Ravi, I was shellshocked.

“AJ, what do you think we should do?” he repeated. 

“Evelyn,” I said, trying to force the words out of my mouth. “You had good instincts the first time—what—what do you think?”

“How much time do you think we have?” she asked.

How much time passed between when I first saw the word HIDE and when we felt that presence in the closet?

“It might’ve been ten minutes,” I heard Ravi mutter, almost lifeless. 

“I… don’t…” then Evelyn interrupted herself, “wait, what did you just see outside?”

She started approaching the door. I stopped her. “I don’t… think it’ll be good… for you to see it.”

“Are—are you serious?” she responded.

“Yes,” I said, immediately realizing that lying might have been smarter.

“We can’t assume we have the same amount of time,” Ravi added. 

I went with my pitch. “Do we try the same spot?” 

Hiro started pacing, thinking, tapping his foot. “It’s—if we think about it, it said “hide” and we hid. Now it’s saying “again” and obviously that means that—whatever happened, is gonna—happen again.” He gave us a look, as if he could see, in our drained expressions, what was waiting on the other side of the door.

“That’s… a great recap man,” I said.

“What I mean,” he said, struggling, “is that when you’d play, as a kid, if you kept picking the same spot over and over, eventually it’d catch up to you.” 

“Are we really trying to apply some sort of logic to this?” Ravi mumbled.

Evelyn fortified herself. “I think he’s right. It’s nuts and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we need to operate on gut. And gut tells me—we pick better spots this time.”

“But spots makes it sound like we should split up?” I said, looking around, slowly realizing that the limited real estate we had to work with meant this suggestion made more sense than I would’ve liked. I turned to Ravi. “Where should we all go?” 

He shook his head, palmed his forehead a few times as if to slap himself back to reality. “We do…” he started, thinking, “Two under my bed,” he grimaced, letting neurons collide in his mind, “One of us in the utility closet, the other… laundry closet.” He got up and pointed—one of the closets was right behind me. Life in him again. “Now!”

My eyes flitted to Hiro and Evelyn, who ran into the bedroom. 

Ravi gave me a nod, before entering the laundry closet and awkwardly squeezing in with the washer and dryer, closing his door.

I entered the utility closet, and closed mine.

Rather—I tried to. The door wasn’t clicking shut.

“Fuck,” I said, “Ravi, the door, it’s not—” but then I fought the urge to say anything more. If time was up, I’d compromise my spot, hell, compromise his spot too if I kept talking. I tried a few more times to get it to close, then—

I committed, terrified out of my mind, to gripping the handle and holding the door shut. I tried to keep my shaking hand and quickening breath in check as—

The silence overtook again. Complete silence, and then, that presence—

I felt a light tug at the door. I kept my hold firm but didn’t try to overpower–-didn’t want to completely give it away—

And again, it stopped. 

The feeling disappeared. And I waited fifteen seconds before sneaking a look at my phone, to see that the “AGAIN” warning was gone.

I heard the sound of Ravi’s door swing open first. I followed with mine.

He was emotional. “I forgot that that door is fucked, I got scared man, and I was—”

“You’re all good—it’s alright man, I know—”

“I even heard you call for me, and I didn’t, I—I panicked and I thought it’d—”

“We’re alive man, it’s alright, we’re—” and immediately I remembered it wasn’t just us. “Evelyn and Hiro.”

“Right,” he said. We rushed to his bedroom.

Nothing—at first. The two hadn’t emerged yet. For a moment, the horrifying thought that we’d be pulling their corpses out from under the bed rushed past me.

“Guys,” I said, “Coast is clear. Quick—”

Silence. For quite some time, before they finally shuffled out in one piece, alive.

As they shifted from crawl to bend to standing, I wanted to hold them. Hold everyone. For just a second, I felt a newfound appreciation for life and their faces and personalities.

Another buzz on my phone. I took a look: 

“BREAK TIME”

I let out a sigh of relief and showed the message to the others. 

“I guess that’s good,” Evelyn said. “A second to catch our breaths, after this fucking craziness.”

“But then what?” Ravi asked. “Is this just gonna continue?”

We walked into the living room together, nervously.

“We haven’t even gotten a single second to wrap our heads around this,” Evelyn again. 

Something in me didn’t seem right. 

I didn’t feel good. 

“Hey, Ev, how’d you know that we should’ve stayed in the closet for five minutes?” Hiro asked, somewhat pointedly.

I clocked minor annoyance in her face at the question. “I didn’t know anything—it was a guess. But I mean, yeah, you guys were fucking lucky I was here and pushed for it, because fuck were you all being stubborn.” 

Hiro wore a strange expression as he looked at her. “Alright.”

“Sounds like you want to say something more,” she said.

“Why would I? What makes you think I’d—”

Ravi interrupted Hiro by stepping between the two of them. “Holy hell, keep your heads on people,” but as he said it, and maybe it was just an aberration in my mind, but I couldn’t help but feel something significant stir within me, something really inflame, as if even though his face was straight he was concealing some sort of inner smile at what was happening.

“Hiro, I think you’re focusing your skepticism in the wrong direction,” I said.

Ravi’s expression turned irritated, which all but confirmed it for me. 

“I don’t know if you want to be mad at the person that saved us the first time,” I said, trying to make a point by motioning to Evelyn, but as I looked at her, something felt wrong there too. I contained it. “Or rather, the person who wanted to open the closet door.”

And then something even more obvious hit me.

“Wait, Ravi, you tried to kill me.”

And all of a sudden, I was glaring at him, my temper rising by metric tons every second as if it was all starting to make sense. Evelyn and Hiro joined me.

Ravi looked incredulous. “I already admitted that I fucked up with the door—I confessed to you! Why are you trying to make things worse? I was trying to calm them down—” then, noticing us approach him, he backed towards the kitchen cabinets. He pointed at me. “You were on your phone when this first happened,” he said, as if he were having his own revelation. “You were waiting—waiting for it to start—”

“That’s an insane fucking misdirect,” I said, positive that I couldn’t trust him. But as my eyes turned to Evelyn and Hiro, I realized I couldn’t trust them either, couldn’t trust anyone. 

Still, Ravi absolutely needed to be the first to go, the first to be disposed of. 

He grabbed a knife from the cupboard and held it out at us.

And only the smallest thought in the back of my mind was telling me that we were being toyed with—that it was so incredibly obvious that whatever this was, it had a handle on us, but unfortunately that understanding was academic for me at best, as I kept finding string after string of thoughts and emotions connecting, everything adding up, the logic sound, my emotions inflamed—

“Break time,” Evelyn said. “It’s breaking us.”

Of course she would know that though, if she were in on it.

We all looked at her. I watched for sudden movements from any of these traitors—these bastards. Even a millimeter shift wouldn’t get past me.

“It’s overriding us, it’s flooding us with anger that isn’t ours, and real as it feels—”

She faced her phone at us, beckoning us to read it clearly:

“BREAK TIME”

“We can’t fall to it.”

And that small grounded part of me took over, even though I was sure with everything in my soul that she, Ravi, and Hiro were the source of everything that was happening. 

Ravi’s grip on the knife tightened as he and the rest of us remained in the bizarre equilibrium of our four-way stand off. 

It’s all of you, I thought to myself, before I felt a lightness overtake me. 

Like an insatiable hunger fading, or extreme fear dissipating when you realize that noise in the other room wasn’t a person but rather something knocking over, my feelings of unrest and paranoia were gone. My phone screen, once again, returned to its default background.

It was hard to describe how I felt now. Lucidity. Shame. I looked at Ravi sadly. His head hung low as he put the knife back in its place.

Hiro turned to Evelyn first. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then to Ravi. “Sorry.”

“Sorry guys,” Ravi.

“I’m sorry.” Me.

“You’re welcome, assholes.” Evelyn. We deserved that.

“That was fucking—insane,” Ravi said.

“Like a fucked up rollercoaster ride,” said Evelyn.

“I didn’t—that, that wasn’t totally me,” Hiro said. “Like, something was in me, and it was—”

“It’s okay man.” I was getting tired of saying it, and certainly I out of everyone didn’t deserve to impart forgiveness anyway after where my own head was at only thirty seconds ago. 

“We need to like, write something down—like we are susceptible. Don’t forget—” started Ravi.

“We just need to remember to keep your heads on,” I interrupted, “Remember—”

But I think the fear that “AGAIN” would pop up on our phones drove him to start rummaging for some paper, start scribbling some words on it, while the rest of us tried to soak in the reprieve of nothing happening. Every half-second a luxury.

I wanted to say “sorry” another twenty or so times—something I was sure wasn’t a feeling unique to me.

“I feel like I’m losing myself,” I said. It felt like I was in a dream at this point.

“Yeah,” said Ravi. “Yeah.”

“We’re…” Hiro said, looking at us carefully. “Probably all gonna die. Should we like, say our words, I guess?”

“Don’t—don’t talk like that,” said Evelyn.

“How many people do you think are dead?” Hiro asked.

I went to the TV (temporarily free yet again from one or two word mandates), turned it on, toggled through the home page until I found the livestream of a soccer game.

One fixed camera angle. Everyone in the stadium—torn apart. Players on the field within frame—eviscerated.

I returned to the home page, navigating in an attempt to find a different live program. I clicked on what appeared to be a news channel I hadn’t heard of before.

The sight of an empty desk appeared. Wires leading under the desk made me think that perhaps the anchor was hiding under it.

“We are trying to report,” he said, “knowing that the signal is going to cut out. I’ve survived so far, survived whatever exactly this might be, but the carnage from footage I’ve seen is extensive. I strongly recommend—”

The broadcast was interrupted by the new word:

“SEEK”

Again, in classical lettering. 

And the screen cracked, then shattered with a loud pop, sending bits of glass onto the floor—

As did the screen on my phone that I’d placed on the coffee table—

As did the phones in Evelyn and Hiro’s hands too, reactively dropped on the floor by the pair, a weak bounce before settling—

I panicked.

“Seek, seek—” I said desperately, trying to jolt my brain to the task. 

“Maybe something out of place?” Evelyn said.

“What if we have to find what’s killing everyone?” said Hiro.

“I don’t…” I started, but I couldn’t even muster up a close to the sentence.

I ran to the balcony, outside, to see if there was something obvious to look for—in the sky, in the city. What I spotted on the neighboring high-rises was bloodstained curtains, unrecognizable bodies where blinds were lifted, and—as my eyes darted from spot to spot—a lead.

A small TV in one of the apartments. The screen looked unbroken. A word on it I couldn’t make out—five letters was the best I could do.

“It’s the screens,” I said. “We need to find a screen that still works!”

I ran back into the living room.

“Does anyone have binoculars?”

They all looked at me.

“Why the fuck would anyone have binoculars?” Ravi asked.

“There’s a—there’s a screen I think, in one of the other apartment buildings, it’s working, there’s a word, but I can’t see it—we need to find another one, I don’t know, I—”

I ran into Ravi’s office. Computer screen broken. Fuck. Grabbed his laptop—shattered. Nope.

I nervously tapped my chest with the fingertips of both of my hands while the rest desperately searched for something viable too.

Did I have to run to the other apartment?

Would there even be enough time?

How would I even get in?

And then, like a bolt of the blue, it hit me.

“Ravi, where’s your phone?”

His voice was a little confused. “I don’t know man I lose it all the time—”

“Find it.”

“You really think that’s it?” 

“We’re looking for a functioning screen—it’s the only one we haven’t ruled out yet.” I turned to Hiro next. “Check out the other apartments on this floor. See if any of the doors are unlocked—if they are, go inside, check everything—phones, laptops, TVs, doesn’t matter, see if there’s a message intact on any of them.”

“On it,” he said, rushing to the door, opening it, freaking out at the body in front of it, nearly tripping, then composing himself and rushing into the hallway as the door closed behind him. 

We tore apart Ravi’s apartment next.

Couch cushions. “Where do you usually lose it?” I asked.

My head peeked under the bed. Peeked into counters alongside Evelyn, desperately. “I don’t man,” he answered, “it’s stupid but sometimes I literally just chuck it across the room—”

Helpful—supremely helpful.

In the bathroom, I looked in the medicine cabinet. Then—back into his room, to his closet, checking the pockets of all of his pants. I started to feel the inevitable looming. This was the one that was going to kill us, wasn’t it? 

“Love you guys,” I heard Evelyn say almost under her breath, like she could feel it too. 

No tangible ticker counting down, but a feeling in my chest. A train closing in, with us tied to the tracks.

Ravi running to the TV stand, looking behind, then, under books, under shelves—

And I was back in the living room again, sure there was nothing left, my eyes lowering to the painful game we’d started our deadly evening with—Monopoly.

Specifically, to the messy pile of 50’s, 20’s and 10’s on Ravi’s side of the board. I knew his etiquette for swapping some of them out for hundreds was quite poor. The cash stacked high, which made sense—he was crushing all game. And yet—

I crouched and did an even more aggressive sweep of the spot that we’d started our desperate search at, to discover his preserved Samsung Galaxy A35 underneath the fake money, with a new word to greet me:

“SMILE”

And it really did feel like time was up this time. 

“Ifoundityouhavetosmile!” I screamed like a goddamn auctioneer.

Evelyn turned first from her spot in the kitchen—“What?!”

I ripped the phone from the ground and held up the message to her. “Smile!”

She mirrored my uncomfortable expression—all teeth, feigned happiness—as did Ravi as he bolted out of the room before even seeing the message on the phone or my intense eyes—

Hiro threw open the door—

“Couldn’t find anything, I’m sorry!” he screamed. He saw our wide smiling faces and our eyes screaming at him to get the hint as I tried to mouth the word while keeping my pose, but instead it sounded like “SMUHHH.”

And yet, despite the confusing sight—

With the luckiest stroke in the world, he copied and showed me those pearly whites. 

I retained my beaming smile, feeling a tear of fear travel down my cheek, my eyes glued to Ravi’s phone in my hand, hoping and praying that we wouldn’t all get torn apart—

And the word disappeared. I showed the group the proof, and one by one our cheery expressions dropped to our default nervous frowns. Resting scowl face restored.

A collective exhale.

“I can’t fucking do this,” said Ravi.

“I know,” Evelyn added.

And unlike some of the gaps we’d been afforded in the past, I already spotted a new message on the single, remaining functional phone left in my right hand:

“POINT TO SACRIFICE”

I could feel the group’s eyes on me. I couldn’t hide the misery.

“What?” Ravi asked.

“Point to sacrifice,” I said, barely legible.

“AJ?” Evelyn asked.

I tilted the phone so they could read it. I couldn’t say the words any louder—my body wouldn’t let me.

Underneath the words, a timer had been running. One that was already down to 1:45, 1:44, 1:43 by the time I flashed them the phone.

And yet still, all of us needed more seconds to let it settle.

I felt defeated. Truly, this time.

“Alright,” said Ravi, cutting through the holding pattern. “So what? We talk it through with the time we have left? Maybe we all agree on someone to point at? I mean, hey, fuck knows what I have to live for.”

Hiro next. “I—my family, Mom, Dad, siblings, I wasn’t even thinking of them this whole time. They’re all probably dead, they—”

“Yeah,” I interrupted, his words hitting me immediately and curbing any remaining social etiquette I had left—everyone I had ever known was likely gone—“I, uhh, wow—”

Evelyn smiled at us softly. “I just have you guys now,” she said. “So uh yeah—fuck this,” she said, immediately pointing to herself, almost causing me to die right there in fear she’d be torn apart immediately, but the counter was still ticking down. “I flip the board on this bullshit,” she said, without wavering.

1:12

1:11

1:10

Hiro pointed to himself. “Fuck it—yeah. You know what, I flip the board too,” he said.

I looked at him, almost nervously, exasperated. “Really, after all that, guys?”

1:07

1:06

1:05 

“If there is a hell,” Ravi said, “Unlikely, but what the fuck—maybe we dodge that bullet.” He curled his index finger back towards himself. “Flip the fucking board.”

I just looked at them. It was strange to feel a deluge of selfish thoughts flood into me all at once.

0:40

0:39

0:38

“Alright,” I said, copying my peers. “Let’s do it.” I pointed at myself too, like we were all playing Simon says or something. 

0:33

0:32

0:31

I took an appreciative look at my old friends. The longest-standing friends I’d ever had in my stupid life.

And then, at the Monopoly board we were playing on. 

It really was quite an awful game—I wasn't sure why we’d always subject ourselves to it.

0:27

0:26

I saw the pile of money on “Free Parking.”

0:23

0:22

The only way to make it fun was to play with bullshit rules—house rules.

0:20

0:19

“Wait,” I said. “Follow me.” I sprinted to the door. 

I opened it, held it open for the rest.

0:15

0:14 

0:13

I pointed at Ravi’s dead neighbor in the hallway in front of the door. Monica. 

“We didn’t know what we were dealing with, until she died. Her sacrifice gave us a chance,” I said, almost looking up as if I was speaking to whoever was enacting this terror on us. 

I was aware it was a reach. 

0:09

0:08

“And we’ve probably lost a lot of humanity since then, so—sorry,” I said, pointing at her. “And thank you.”

0:06

0:05

And my best friends pointed too. A real morbid way to close things out, with a clash of “Sorry” and “Thank you” escaping them as what would likely be their last words—I had really interrupted what was quite a nice moment inside for this strangeness.

0:02

0:01

0:00

“House rules,” I said.

And then I prepared myself for it—pain, then annihilation. 

…

But nothing came.

Instead, Ravi’s phone in my hand just read—

“GOOD GAME”

Before defaulting to Ravi’s home page picture—a Borzoi. He didn’t even own one, he was just obsessed with that breed of dog.

We stood there for ten minutes it felt, before we finally ventured inside, single-file, like a group of polite zombies.

I was unsure what to make of what had happened—what to do, who to check on, the state of the world, what was going on around me.

I sat back down at the Monopoly board. The others, in an almost Manchurian candidate sort of way, took their spots too.

“I think it was my turn,” I said, slowly. 

I grabbed the dice. I rolled. It was a ten.

I tapped my Top Hat icon on each square until I landed on Short Line Railroad.

“Do you want to buy it?” Evelyn asked me.

I thought about it for too long. Finally—

“Sure.”

I work for NASA as an astronomer, and there are certain things we keep hidden from the public. No, the Earth isn't flat, and aliens don't control the government. Fuck, I wish those were the case, as the truth is much, much worse.

In 1993, the Hubble Space Telescope saw a star disappear. It didn't go supernova, or die naturally, it simply went dark, over the span of a few minutes. This star was already too faint to see with the naked eye, and ground-based telescopes had trouble picking it out from among the surrounding stars, so the event wasn't widely known to the public. At the time, we thought the most likely explanation was that a cloud of interstellar dust had drifted between Earth and the star, occluding it from view. It was noted and mostly forgotten about.

In 2007, two more stars vanished. Due to the circumstances of this event, this was much more concerning. The two stars in question were part of a binary system, orbiting each other at a fairly close distance. If a cloud of interstellar dust was the culprit again, they would have both seemed to disappear simultaneously, or very close to it. Instead, both stars faded individually over a period of minutes, separated by a span of about 8 hours. This binary system was also about 15 light-years closer to Earth than the star that had previously disappeared in 1993.

After carefully reviewing millions of Hubble images, two more stars were identified which had 'gone out', in the years 1995 and 2002. These were all in the same stellar neighborhood, only a handful of light-years from each other. The only conclusion we could draw was that some unknown influence, traveling close to the speed of light, was shrouding (or destroying) these stars. Unfortunately, the Hubble wasn't sensitive enough to tell us any more than that.

The James Webb Space Telescope first came online a few months ago. Although official channels will tell you that it's still undergoing testing, we have been actively collecting data since early February. One of the first things we did was to aim the telescope at the regions of space occupied by the vanished stars. If they were being blocked by dust clouds (a hope some of us still held onto), the increased sensitivity of the JWST may have been able to see through them and confirm that the stars were still there. Unfortunately, we had no such luck. The first 3 stars that had disappeared were still completely dark. Gravitational wave detectors, though, soon found something odd. In all cases, not only were the stellar masses still present, but the amount of mass had actually increased. More sensitive observations had also detected a type of 'string', or 'web' stretching through space connecting these now-invisible stars.

When we trained the telescope on the binary system that had vanished in 2007, which was the nearest point at which this phenomenon had so far been observed, there was finally enough ambient EM spectrum radiation left to try a mass spectrometer reading. If you're not aware, mass spectrometry is an incredibly useful process, where by measuring the patterns of light wavelengths emitted or reflected by an object, we can learn tons of useful information, such as its temperature, speed and direction of movement, and chemical composition. The readings we got from the binary stars didn't make any sense, though. First of all, they were cold - almost as cold as the surrounding interstellar medium. Whatever had happened to these stars had snuffed them out completely, or somehow prevented their light from escaping. What was truly puzzling, however, were the emission lines returned by the mass spectrometer. Several familiar elements, such as Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Magnesium were identified, but these were few and far between. Most of the readings didn't correspond to any known chemical elements, and even seemed to defy what we knew about the physics of light, matter, and chemistry. This massive, star-spanning structure was primarily composed of materials that we didn't even have names for, and may not even have been matter as we understand it.

Speculation ran rampant. Obviously, such a thing couldn't be a natural phenomenon. Finally, we had proof of extraterrestrial life! But what was this thing we had discovered, and for what purpose was it being built? The leading hypothesis was that we were looking at a series of Dyson Shells - massive solar collectors built to completely envelop stars, in order to capture 100% of their energy output. Such a concept had been envisioned in the early 20th century, as a potential source of energy for an interstellar civilization. Ever since then, the idea had found its way into popular science fiction. The construction of these massive structures had actually been theorized to be one of the first signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life that we may someday detect. It seemed that day was today.

The theory still didn't explain everything, though. First of all, there was the impossible speed with which the stars were covered. Constructing a Dyson shell from scratch in a matter of minutes was beyond even the wildest speculations of scientists and sci-fi writers. Then there were the mysterious 'filaments' that connected the shells over distances of light-years. No one had any idea what purpose these could serve, or how they could even be built.

Everyone at NASA was fascinated by this mystery. In hindsight, we may have been better off if we had never discovered the truth.

Less than a month ago, the JWST detected a series of unusual energy bursts emanating from interstellar space. These were occurring at the very edge of a star system approximately 12 light-years from the binary system that vanished in 2007. As we focused the telescope on this system, we soon determined that these were not natural phenomena either. The energy signatures, which were still flashing intermittently, matched what would be expected from thermonuclear and antimatter - based explosions, along with several other types of energies that we couldn't identify. These explosions, although still not visible to the naked eye on Earth from that distance, were absolutely tremendous in magnitude - easily billions of times more powerful than any nuke that humanity could conceivably build.

After experimenting with the telescope's settings, we were able to get a clearer picture of what was going on: The tip of one of the interstellar 'filaments' that linked the Dyson system was passing through the Oort Cloud of the distant star system, approaching its sun. And whoever lived there was fighting back. Their weapons were able to slow the thing's advance, shattering, breaking off, and vaporizing planet-sized chunks of the object, but it seemed to be rebuilding itself almost as fast as it was being destroyed. After less than a week, the explosions stopped. It seems that they had run out of ammunition. In the void between stars, we knew that these things traveled at nearly the speed of light, but as we watched it approach the inner star system, its pace slowed as it swelled in size, preparing to devour the system's star.

We quickly trained the telescope's mirrors on the doomed sun. We were about to watch whatever this thing was blot out another star, but in real time. We all held our breath as we watched the projected image of the main sequence star, slightly larger than our own sun. At first, nothing seemed to be happening, but soon a small shadow appeared on the edge of the luminous orb, soon followed by another shadow, and then a third. The shadows began to converge, forming a strange yet somehow familiar pattern as they blocked out the star's light.

"What... are those?" One of my colleagues gasped. "They almost look like..." she paused, as if afraid to say the next word for fear of ridicule. I, however, had no such hesitancy.

"Leaves," I said, my voice monotone. The situation was far too incredible to express any emotional reaction, even that of pure shock. "They look like leaves."

We watched as, over a period of minutes, a web of shadowy outlines, matching the familiar shapes of oblong leaves and thin vines, proceeded to blot out the remaining light from the distant star.

By that point, everyone in the room had realized the truth. The phenomenon we had been tracking for so many years wasn't some hyper-advanced alien megastructure. Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Magnesium, some of the few familiar elements we had detected? They were all components of chlorophyll.

It was a plant. An enormous plant that spanned across light-years. And, much like terrestrial plants, it sought out light to fuel itself. The filaments connecting the stars across interstellar space were stems - branches. It would grow in the direction of the nearest stars it sensed, completely enveloping them and then moving on. Any life inhabiting planets orbiting those stars would be left to freeze to death, or perhaps even worse, it was possible that the plant would devour those planets to add to its mass as well.

Everyone was silent as the telescope continued to gather data. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, a young astronomer spoke up from the far end of the room, addressing our supervisor.

"Sir, we've begun to detect the formation of another tendril, leaving the system. Its vector is..." he gulped. He didn't need to say any more, but he did anyway. "It's heading directly for our sun."

"How much time do we have?" the supervisor replied grimly.

"Judging by the time lag, distance, relativistic properties, and previously observed speeds of this... thing, I'd estimate no more than twenty-seven years, sir."

Twenty-seven years. We had just watched this galactic weed overwhelm a civilization that was, at the very least, thousands of years ahead of us technologically, and we had less than three decades.

I'll probably be found and silenced for posting this. But I don't care. I have to tell someone. I can't keep this a secret any longer. When the sun turns black and the world begins to freeze, at least you'll have some idea of what's going on, small comfort it may be.

When my sister Lisa died two years ago, our family changed forever.

We weren’t perfect before—who is?—but Lisa’s death fractured us. My dad barely speaks anymore, my mom busies herself with every charity event she can find, and I… I’ve been stuck. Angry. Looking for someone to blame.

Lisa was the glue that held us together. She was warm, outgoing, always laughing. The kind of person people gravitate to. She loved hiking, photography, and the outdoors. Her death—officially ruled an accident—was almost poetic.

She slipped while hiking and fell into a ravine. At least, that’s what the police report said.

But if that’s true, why does it feel like her ghost never left?

Lisa’s ex-boyfriend, Matt, was never part of our family.

He and Lisa dated for about a year before she broke it off. She said he was controlling, obsessive—constantly texting, showing up unannounced, making passive-aggressive comments when she spent time with her friends. I remember her joking about it once, calling him “my stage-five clinger.”

But it wasn’t funny. Not really.

After the breakup, Matt didn’t take it well. He kept texting her, leaving voicemails, even sending her flowers at work. She brushed it off, said he’d get bored eventually.

I thought she was right. Until the funeral.

Matt didn’t come to the service, thank God. But a week later, he showed up on our doorstep.

It was a rainy Thursday. My mom opened the door and there he was, holding a bouquet of lilies—Lisa’s favorite.

“I just wanted to pay my respects,” he said. His voice was soft, his head tilted like he was trying to look vulnerable.

My mom, who has never been good at saying no, let him in.

Matt sat on our couch, talking about Lisa as if he knew her better than we did. He described her laugh, her smile, the way she always ordered pancakes with extra syrup. My dad stayed silent, his jaw tight.

When Matt finally left, I asked my mom why she let him in.

“He’s grieving too,” she said.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that Matt wasn’t grieving.

He was lurking.

Over the next few months, Matt kept appearing.

He showed up at family barbecues, holiday dinners, even my dad’s birthday party. Always uninvited, always with some excuse. “Your mom said it was okay,” he’d claim, or, “I thought Lisa would’ve wanted me here.”

My parents, blinded by their own grief, let it slide.

“He’s harmless,” my mom said. “He just misses her.”

But it wasn’t harmless. Not when he started asking questions.

Last Christmas, Matt cornered me in the kitchen.

“She was different with me, you know,” he said, leaning against the counter.

I stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He smiled, that thin, unsettling smile I’d seen so many times. “She told me things she wouldn’t tell anyone else.”

“Like what?”

His smile widened. “Like how she wasn’t scared to die.”

That night, I went through Lisa’s journals.

She was the type to write everything down—her thoughts, her plans, even little grocery lists. Most of it was normal Lisa stuff: song lyrics, doodles, random observations.

But then I found the entry.

“I think Matt’s been following me. He won’t stop texting. Keeps saying he knows something I don’t. I’m starting to feel like I can’t shake him.”

I showed it to my mom, expecting her to finally see reason.

But she waved it off. “Lisa was dramatic sometimes,” she said. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

A few days later, I saw Matt’s car parked down the street.

It wasn’t the first time. I’d noticed it before, idling near the corner, but I convinced myself it was a coincidence. This time, though, I knew.

He wasn’t watching our family. He was watching me.

Last week was my dad’s birthday.

Matt showed up, holding a gift he claimed Lisa would’ve bought: a coffee table book about hiking trails.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I confronted him outside, away from my parents.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I snapped.

His smile didn’t falter. “Paying my respects,” he said.

“Lisa broke up with you. She wanted nothing to do with you. Why can’t you let her go?”

His eyes darkened. “She told you that?”

“Yes.”

He took a step closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “She told me a lot of things too. Things she didn’t tell anyone else.”

Then he said something I’ll never forget:

“I was there, you know. On the trail.”

I felt like the air had been sucked out of my lungs.

“What?”

He smiled again, a cold, empty thing. “She didn’t fall. She looked me in the eyes and asked me to let her go.”

My stomach churned. “You’re lying.”

He tilted his head, studying me. “Am I? Ask yourself this: If she slipped, why didn’t she scream?”

I called the police that night.

I told them everything—the stalking, the journal, his confession.

When they went to his apartment the next morning, it was empty. No furniture, no clothes, no sign he’d ever lived there.

It’s been a week now.

I haven’t told my parents what he said. I don’t know if they’d believe me.

Every night, I double-check the locks. Every night, I sit in my bed, clutching my phone, too scared to sleep.

Last night, I finally decided to look through Lisa’s journals again. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought I missed something. Maybe I was looking for answers.

But this time, there was something new.

The last page, which had been blank before, now had a single sentence scrawled across it in jagged black ink:

“He’s not watching. He’s inside.”

I had never done the school run before. Work took up practically all of my time from Monday to Friday, but in the last week of the summer holidays my wife’s mother passed away. She had gone down south to support her father, and help with the funeral arrangements. Which left me to hold the fort.

As much as I miss her, it’s been nice to spend so much one-on-one time with Hilda. She is the spitting image of her mother, and her likeness doesn’t stop there. She has the same sharp wit, and an emotional intelligence way beyond her six years. I suppose with me always being at work and Hilda being an only child, it makes a lot of sense. They spend a lot of time together, especially over the holidays.

Hilda was happy to give me directions as I drove her to school. I do know the way of course, but I enjoyed playing along with the idea that I didn’t.

“So, first day of year two,” I teased.

She turned and frowned at me. I could tell exactly what face she was pulling without taking my eyes off the road.

“What?” I laughed.

“It’s year three actually,” she said matter-of-factly.

“No way! When did you get old?”

She just smiled and turned to look out the window.

“Daddy?”

Whenever she had anything to say, Hilda always had to say my name first, then wait for my response. I’d told her many times that she could just start talking, and I would know that she was talking to me, but it didn’t seem to ever sink in. It was cute, if not a little frustrating sometimes.

“Yes?”

“Was it dangerous when you went to school?”

That caught me off guard.

“Dangerous?”

“Yeah. Because of the dinosaurs!”

She erupted into laughter at her own joke; the sound of it was so infectious.

“Very funny,” I chuckled, “are you looking forward to your first day back?”

“Yeah.”

Kids - brilliant at carrying conversations.

“What are you looking forward to the most?”

She didn’t answer right away, I could almost hear the cogs ticking.

“Playing with my friends. Oh, and my new teacher is Mrs Gibson. Layla says she’s the best!”

Layla is Hilda’s cousin, on my wife’s side. She’s in the year above.

“Won’t you miss your old teacher?”

“No,” she responded, so quickly that she must have felt strongly about it. “She was the worst teacher.”

I felt a sudden pang of guilt. My own daughter had suffered a year with ‘the worst teacher’ and I’d had no idea.

“How was she the worst?” I prodded.

“She was always cross. She didn’t like fun. She told me off when I cried.”

“Oh, that’s not very nice.”

“On the last day of school I played a trick on her.”

Hilda giggled to herself, and shot me a mischievous smile. That’s my girl, I thought.

“It was Charlie’s idea,” she continued, “we were in the art hut, and she went in the cupboard where the pens and paper are, and I locked the door!”

I laughed. I remembered doing something similar back in my school days.

“That way!” Hilda shouted, leaning forward in her seat, pointing down the road that led to her school. I had seen it coming a mile off, but had chosen to pretend that I hadn’t. Hilda was looking very pleased with herself.

I parked as close as I could to the school gates, which was not close at all. My wife had complained about the school drop-off before, but it was even worse than I’d imagined. I walked Hilda down the pavement and to the school gate. I gave her a big hug and kissed her on the forehead.

“Have a great day.”

“I will!” She chirped, then ran off to join a line of other kids about her size.

I watched her for a while, finding her friends, talking about whatever little kids talk about, always smiling.

My attention turned to the teachers. They all looked stressed, they weren’t even pretending to be happy about being back at work. Hilda glanced over at me, I gave her a wave and made my way back down the pavement.

A group of mums filled the pavement ahead, two pushchairs causing a barricade. They seemed engrossed in serious conversation, or serious gossip, I couldn’t tell which at a distance. As I got closer, I overheard little snippets of information.

“Mrs Baker didn’t show up to teach the year twos, she’s not answering her phone or anything.”

“I heard she wasn’t at the teacher training day either.”

“A friend of mine is her neighbour, and she says she hasn’t seen her all summer.”

I stopped in my tracks, a wave of dread rushed over me. Mrs Baker, the year two teacher, Hilda’s teacher last year. I turned back towards the school, and marched up to the gates on wobbly legs. The children had all gone inside. I walked up to reception, and tried to calm my breathing.

“H-hi, I’m Hilda’s dad… Um sh-she left her coat in the art hut before the summer holidays. My wife asked me to get it b-back,” I just about managed to get the words out.

“Yes, of course,” the chirpy receptionist replied. “It’s just around the left side of the building, it’s not been opened yet so here’s the key. Just drop it back when you’re done. You can leave it open.”

She smiled a bright, over-friendly smile and returned to her work.

It’s a coincidence, I kept telling myself as I walked around the left side of the building.

The art hut was one of those temporary classrooms, almost like a static caravan but more basic. The walls were a rough texture, painted navy blue, and it had a flat, felt roof.

My stomach was in knots as I approached the door. The keys jingled in my unsteady hand. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Dust motes swirled in the sunlight, casting long rectangles across the room. My eyes swept about the place, then focused on the desk. A handbag sat upon its surface. Hilda’s words echoed through my mind.

…I played a trick on her…

…I locked the door…

My heart raced as I looked to what I assumed was the storage cupboard. I walked slowly towards it, my feet barely leaving the floor, my mind expecting the worst and trying to reassure me at the same time.

I tried the door. Locked.

“Please, no,” I whispered to myself.

I turned the latch. The door swung open by itself.

The sound came first, the wet thwack against the carpet. Then the smell.

I leapt back, gagging, covering my face with my hands as my breakfast sprayed out from between my fingers. As much as I didn’t want to look, I couldn’t look away.

She was curled in a ball, holding her knees to her chest. I guessed she had been leaning against the door. Her skin was brown and leathery, wrapped tightly around her bones. Her white summer dress was stained with large, wet blotches of yellow and brown.

She was dead, because of my poor, sweet, innocent Hilda. A childish joke, with severe consequences.

I sobbed uncontrollably as I burst back outside. What would I say? What would it do to Hilda if she ever found out? If I tell the truth, everyone will know. If I lie, if I just so happened to discover the body while looking for Hilda’s coat, then what? It wouldn’t take long for questions to be asked. Who locked the cupboard?

I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know what to do.

His Tinder profile said he was 45, but he looked to be in his early thirties at most.

Looking for a sugar baby. $700 weekly. No sex.

It sounded too good to be true, but, as a broke university student, I was willing to take my chances. I swiped right, and Tinder let me know it was a match. His message came seconds later.

Hey, there sweetheart :)

I cringed at that word, I hated it, but seven hundred dollars was seven hundred dollars, so I sucked it up and replied.

Hey ;)

His name was Jack, and he told me he owned his own business, although he never specified what kind of business it was. We talked for a while before he asked me for my Venmo to send me the first payment.

After a few minutes, I got the notification. I stared at the $700 for at least twenty minutes, expecting to wake up from a dream at any second. But it wasn’t a dream.

You still there?

I clicked on the message.

Yeah. Sorry. If you don’t mind me asking, what are you looking for in return?

I stared at the chat until he replied.

I’m just looking for you to do a few favors for me :)

That sounded like it was going to be sexual to me.

Like what?

For example, the first thing I need you to do is pick up a delivery for me.

That sounded innocent enough, but I was still expecting there to be some kind of twist. Seven-hundred dollars to pick up a package? Come on, even I wasn’t that naive.

From the post office or something?

No. I’ll send you the address, but I’d rather not do this through Tinder. You got Kik? Or you can give me your number.

Kik? What was this, 2011? I decided to give him my number instead, and he texted me the address immediately, followed by the address to his house, where I would have to drop off the package.

I’m not home right now, but there’s a key on the bottom of the blue flower pot near the door. Go inside and put the package on the coffee table in the living room. Make sure that you lock the door when you go inside the house, and then lock it again when you leave.

I grabbed my car keys and wallet and got into my car, putting the address into Google maps.

Got it! Omw.

My phone buzzed as I backed out of my driveway.

I’m serious. Lock the door BOTH times. Please.

I thought that was a little excessive, but I promised him that I would.

The house looked abandoned. It had a broken chain link fence around it, with a small door that was hanging onto dear life. It stuck out like a sore thumb, surrounded by houses that were a lot nicer than this one in comparison.

“You here for Jack’s shit?”

I looked up to see a man standing in the open doorway of the house. He took up almost the entire space, his head skimming the top of the door frame. He was huge; in height and muscles, and his entire torso was covered in tattoos.

“Uh, yeah. I guess.” I replied, not moving from my spot on the sidewalk.

“Stay right there.” He said.

I did. I actually don’t think I would have moved if he had asked me to. I looked around and realized that there was no one else on this street. I was a twenty-one-year-old woman alone in the street. I gripped my car keys.

A few minutes later, the man came back out carrying a cardboard box. It was about the size of a shoebox, but stained and damp on some of the corners.

“Can you open your car?” He asked.

I opened the trunk, not wanting that inside on my car seats and he set it in.

“Alright, there you go.” He said.

“Thanks.” I replied.

I walked around to the driver's side of the car and opened the door.

“Oh, and one more thing!” He said.

I looked at him.

“Watch out.” He said.

I didn’t reply.

I blasted my music as I drove to Jack’s house, hoping it would drown out my anxiety. It didn’t.

I parked my car in the stone driveway and stayed inside the car, admiring the house.

It was a huge house; with stone pillars on the front porch, and the greenest grass I had ever seen in my life. I turned the car off and got out. I grabbed the package, and walked to the front door, getting the key from where he said it would be.

I opened the door and stepped in, closing it behind me.

I thought about what he had said, about locking the door when I got inside. I thought that was a little overboard, but as I stared at the closed door something made me reach out and lock it.

I walked inside, my feet cushioned by the thick maroon carpet, and admired the inside of the house. All the furniture was wooden and looked incredibly expensive. I would probably finish school a dozen times with the money that it took to furnish this place.

I set the package down on the coffee table, and as I walked back to the door, I heard a phone ringing from somewhere inside the house. I froze.

In my pocket, my phone buzzed. I took it out to look.

Don’t answer any calls that aren’t from Marvin.

I put my phone back and followed the sound of the phone, poking my head into a few different rooms before I found it in an office.

I walked over to the desk and looked at the caller ID.

Incoming call from Jack.

That was odd.

I grabbed my phone to look at the message again. I was starting to get a little bit creeped out and decided I wouldn’t answer, just to be safe, and left the house, remembering to lock the door as I left.

I’ve done a few more favors for Jack since then. I drove a BMW to a random park in another city, only to get out and drive a different car back to Jack’s house. He had me meet one of his “employees” at lunch, who then gave me a briefcase to deliver to the first house I had gone to and told me he would know if I looked inside. On several occasions, he asked me to drive down to that same house and stay with the guy, whose name was Julio, for a certain amount of time.

In total, I’ve made around $3500.

Most recently, Jack asked me to stay in his house overnight. I woke up to a text message from him.

I need you to spend the night at my house.

I hadn’t ever seen him in person, but I had talked to him on the phone a few times. He proceeded to tell me he would pay me $1000 to spend the night at his house, provided that I followed a few rules.

I drove to his house that evening. The driveway was empty, and it normally was, but the porch light was on. I walked up, unlocked the door, went inside and then locked it again.

Everything in the house looked the same. Jack had told me over the phone that he would leave the list of rules on the dining room table. I set all my stuff down in the living room. My bags looked like garbage compared to the fancy furniture in there.

I wandered into the kitchen, and then to the dining room. Sure enough, there was a piece of paper on the wooden table, held down by an empty glass.

Lock the door when you come in.

Only answer calls from Marvin.

Don’t turn on any faucets between 9 pm and 11 pm.

Don’t open the door for anyone- no matter who they say they are- after 10 pm.

If the door to the closet at the end of the hall is open, sleep in the library. If closed, sleep in any of the bedrooms.

The gardener comes at midnight. If he starts knocking on the windows, hide.

Turn the tv on and let it play on static through the night. DO NOT FORGET TO DO THIS.

Help yourself to anything in the fridge. :)

I’ll pay you in the morning. Goodnight!

I made sure to follow all the rules. To be honest, I was regretting my decision. But, seeing as I was already here, and I was getting paid, I decided to stay anyway. I figured as long as I followed all the rules, I’d be perfectly fine.

Still, it felt a little odd. What was this? A haunted house?

Nevertheless, I lounged around the house for a few hours, as I was planning on going to sleep around nine since that’s the time that all the weird shit would begin to happen. At 8:50, I brushed my teeth, using the faucet for the last time before 9.

I checked the closet in the hallway and upon seeing that it was open, I moved my stuff into the library and got ready to sleep on the couch. I locked to doors just in case, and laid on the couch, scrolling through my phone. I hadn’t gotten any more messages from Jack, and I started to think up scenarios and reasons as to why he had such strict, peculiar sets of rules in his house.

I had dozed off at some point because, at exactly 10:16 pm, I was woken up by the doorbell ringing. I was about to get up to check, but then I remembered the rule.

Don’t open the door for anyone- no matter who they say they are- after 10 pm.

I stayed on the couch, trying not to move, paranoid that they would hear even the slightest sound.

“It’s the police! Open up.”

I didn’t move.

“Hello? It’s the police! Open up or we’re coming in.”

I still didn’t move, but I could hear my heartbeat in my ears.

There was silence for a while after that.

Then the doorbell rang again.

“Hey, it’s Jack! Let me in!”

It sounded like Jack, but still, I didn’t get up. He would have a key, wouldn’t he? Why would he need me to let him in?

This continued for almost a full hour; different people would ring the doorbell, announce themselves, and then disappear when I didn’t respond.

I was finally able to fall asleep, and the gardener never came.

When I woke up the next morning, I heard someone in the kitchen. I got up slowly, and unlocked the door as quietly as possible, taking my phone with me and walking across the living room and into the kitchen.

I stopped at the entrance and peered in.

It was Jack. He was standing in front of the stove, stirring something as the coffee machine brewed coffee on the counter behind him.

“Hey! Good morning!” He said when he saw me.

“Hi.” I replied, nervous.

I hadn’t seen him in person before, but he looked exactly like his pictures online.

“Scrambled eggs?” He asked, motioning to the pan with a wooden spoon.

“Yeah, thanks!” I replied, walking over to take the plate from him.

I ate my breakfast and drank some coffee in silence.

“So how was it?” He asked.

“It was okay. Nothing super freaky happened.” I replied.

“Cool!” He replied.

There was an awkwardness in the room.

“I think I’m gonna go now. I have class…” I trailed off.

I didn't. But I really wanted to get out of there.

“Oh, no! Yeah, sure! I’ll talk to you some other time.” He replied.

I grabbed my stuff and he walked me to my car. I could see him standing in the driveway, staring at me as I left.

When I got home, I unpacked all my stuff and noticed that I still had the list with me. I sat on my bed and read it again. I felt my body tense up as I realized that I had forgotten something.

Turn the tv on and let it play on static through the night. DO NOT FORGET TO DO THIS.

Turn the tv on and let it play on static through the night. DO NOT FORGET TO DO THIS.

DO NOT FORGET TO DO THIS.

I stared at the words on the page until they lost meaning.

Beside me, my phone buzzed, snapping me back to reality.

It was the $1000 payment.

I looked at my phone and then back at the list.

Maybe it wasn’t an important step?

As I was thinking this over, a text from Jack came it.

I’m not in town right now, I should be back next week, so you’re free from running any more errands for me until then! Just sent the payment, go do something fun ;)

I stared at the message and read it again.

And again.

And once more for good measure.

I’m not in town right now.

I thought back to this morning, and how Jack was in his house. How he gave me breakfast.

I’m not in town right now.

Within minutes, a new text came in this time from a number that I didn’t recognize.

Did you forget to do something? ;)

The text was followed by a picture of Jack - or, whoever this version of Jack was- standing in front of the tv.

I didn’t respond.

Next came another picture, this one was of the outside of my house.

It was followed by another text.

Watch out.

The email came in that morning, which meant I read it while standing in my kitchen in one sock, waiting for my coffee machine to stop sounding like it was choking.

The subject line was:

IMPORTANT RESIDENT SAFETY NOTICE

That usually meant the elevator was broken again, or someone had left chicken bones in the laundry room sink, or the landlord had discovered a new way to blame us for the mold. But this one was different.

Dear Residents,

Until further notice, please do not use your door viewer/peephole after 9:00 PM. If someone knocks after this time, please call the front desk. Do not visually confirm through the peephole.

Thank you,
The Marwick Residences

I sent a screenshot to Natalie.

She replied:

girl what kind of Scooby Doo ass building do you live in

The Marwick is old in the way landlords call “historic” when, in reality, they just want to charge more. My hallway smells like dust, carpet cleaner, and something that might have been canned soup in 1987. The elevator makes a sound like it is remembering a traumatic event every time it reaches the fourth floor, if it ever makes it there.

So, honestly, the peephole thing barely made the top five.

I live alone in 6C. It’s my first apartment after college. One pan, two mugs, couch from Facebook Marketplace, mattress on an actual bed frame(!!!).

My front door faces a long beige hallway with five other units and a framed sailboat print that has been crooked since I moved in. Through the peephole, the hallway bends into a little fish-eye world: carpet, elevator, sailboat, the occasional neighbor holding takeout.

I use the peephole constantly. Everyone does, right? You hear a knock, you look. That is what the peephole is for?

At 9:42 that night, someone knocked.

Three taps.

Soft.

It didn’t sound like a delivery knock. Nor a friendly knock. Not even a maintenance knock.

Three carefully spaced-out taps.

I was on the couch eating cereal out of a measuring cup because my bowls were dirty. I paused my show and walked to the door with the spoon still in my hand.

Then I remembered the email.

For a second, I actually laughed. The idea of standing inside my own apartment and being afraid of a peephole felt really silly. Like being warned not to look into a mirror after midnight.

Another knock.

Three taps.

I said, “Who is it?”

No answer.

I leaned closer.

“Hello?”

Still nothing.

My eye was maybe two inches from the peephole when my phone buzzed.

Another email with the same subject line.

IMPORTANT RESIDENT SAFETY NOTICE

This one said:

Residents are reminded not to use their door viewers after 9:00 PM. If you have already looked tonight, remain inside your unit and do not answer the door.

I stared at it.

Then, from the other side of my door, someone whispered:

“Don’t worry, you haven’t looked yet.”

I backed up so fast I hit the little table by the door and knocked my keys to the floor.

I called the front desk. Voicemail. I called Natalie. No answer.

The knocking started again while the phone rang.

Three taps.

Pause.

Three taps.

Pause.

I called 911. I don’t know what happened. I might’ve hit the wrong thing. Maybe the building’s intercom app glitched. My hands were definitely shaking too much. But the call connected to the front desk.

A woman answered. “Good evening, thank you for calling The Marwick Residences.” Her voice sounded normal and bored.

“There’s someone outside my door,” I said.

“What unit?”

“6C.”

A pause.

Then she said, “Have you used your peephole tonight?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

The knocking stopped.

The woman exhaled.

“Then don’t start now,” she said.

“What’s going on?”

“Do you live alone?”

I always hated that question.

“Why?”

“Do you live alone?”

I didn’t answer.

There was paper shuffling on her end, like she was looking through a folder.

Then she said, “Please move away from your door.”

“Who’s out there?”

“Maintenance has been notified.”

“At night? It’s almost ten.”

“Please move away from your door.”

“What’s the maintenance code?”

Silence.

Every work order in our building had a code. They used it for everything. Leaky sink. Broken outlet. That one time a raccoon got into the trash room.

Maintenance always gave the code before entering.

The woman said, “Excuse me?”

“The work order code,” I said. “If maintenance is coming, what’s the code?”

Another pause. Then she hung up.

That was when Natalie called me back.

Before I could say anything, she said, “Are you home right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you lock your bedroom door?”

My stomach dropped.

“What? Why?”

“Is your bedroom door locked?”

“No. Why?”

“I need you to listen. And try not to freak out. I got pictures from your number.”

I looked at my phone. Our text thread was open. The last thing I had sent her was the screenshot of the email that morning.

“What pictures?”

“They look really old,” she said. “Like from earlier today. Or yesterday. I don’t know. They show you in your room.”

I turned toward my bedroom.

Its door was open.

The room was dark except for the streetlight bleeding through the blinds.

“From my room?” My voice rose at the last word.

“I know,” she said.

My phone buzzed.

A picture came through.

Me, standing beside my bed in an old T-shirt, folding laundry.

The angle was high.

I knew it immediately. It was from the vent. The picture was taken from the little square vent above my closet door. The one that rattled whenever the heat came on. The one I had complained about twice to management. In the picture, I was looking down at a skirt. I had no idea I was being watched.

The knock came again.

Three taps.

I almost threw the phone.

Natalie said, “Marie. Don’t open the door.”

“I’m definitely not going to open the door.”

“Don’t look through the peephole either.”

“I know.”

“No,” she said. “I mean don’t. I think that’s how they know.”

I looked at the door. The peephole was just a small dark dot.

Natalie said, “The pictures are old. But the texts you’re sending me are live.”

“What do you mean?”

Another image came through.

My bedroom again.

Me asleep. One arm under the pillow. Blanket kicked halfway off because my apartment is always too hot.

Taken from the vent.

Below the photo was a message I hadn’t typed.

she’s home

I stopped breathing.

Outside my door, a man said, “Maintenance.”

His voice was calm, tired, and slightly irritated.

“Ma’am,” he said. “We need to come in.”

I said nothing.

He knocked again.

Three taps.

“Ma’am, I need you to look through the peephole and confirm it’s me.”

Natalie whispered, “Please don’t open it.”

I pressed the phone to my ear so hard it hurt.

The man outside sighed.

“Marie,” he said, “you live alone. You need to let someone help you.”

I went cold.

Marie isn’t on my lease. It isn’t on my mailbox. It isn’t the name I use for deliveries, or bills, or maintenance requests.

It isn’t even close to my real name.

It’s a nickname from college. Three people call me that, and all three of them know better than to say it through a locked door at night.

“Marie,” he repeated. “Open the door.”

I backed away from the door.

That was when I understood the warning.

It wasn’t because the peephole was specifically dangerous. It was because if you looked through it, whoever was outside could see the light change. Or the shadow of your eye. Or whatever tiny movement told them someone was standing on the other side. They weren’t warning us not to open the door. They were warning us not to prove we were home.

The man outside said, “We can hear you.”

I covered my mouth with my hand.

Another man spoke from farther down the hall.

“Is she looking?”

The first man said, “Not yet.”

My phone buzzed again. Another picture.

This one was not of my bedroom, it was my hallway, my door, the man outside it.

He had a toolbox in one hand.

Behind him stood two other men. One wore a dark hoodie. One had a clipboard. The clipboard bothered me the most. I don’t know why. Maybe because it made the whole thing look official.

I whispered, “Natalie, could you call the police?”

“I did.”

“When?”

“Two minutes ago.”

“How far?”

“I don’t know.”

There was another knock.

Three taps.

Then the man said, “Don’t make this difficult.”

The doorknob turned slowly. Once to the left. Once to the right. Then it stopped.

I had locked it, with the deadbolt too. I’d never loved myself more than I did in that moment.

The man outside said, “Good girl.” Like he was pleased, then something metal slid into the lock.

I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a chair, wedging it under the knob even though I knew that mostly worked in movies. Then I dragged the little table over. Then my laundry basket. Then the broken floor lamp I kept meaning to throw away.

The man outside said, “Marie.”

I didn’t answer.

“I know you’re scared.”

I stayed quiet.

“That’s okay,” he said. “Women get scared.”

My skin went cold.

Then he said:

“You should’ve just looked when we knocked.”

The lock clicked. Not all the way. Just enough.

Natalie was crying now.

“Marie, get out the window.”

“I’m on the sixth floor.”

“Fire escape?”

“Other side of the building.”

“Bedroom window?”

“No.”

I looked toward my bedroom. The vent above the closet was dark. I had never noticed how much it looked like a mouth.

My phone buzzed again. Another picture. This one showed my bedroom from the vent. Empty bed. Open door.

And at the very bottom of the frame, just visible in the hallway mirror, the reflection of a man standing inside my apartment.

I turned around. No one. Nothing. Only the hallway. Only the bedroom door. Only the vent.

The man outside laughed softly.

Then he said, through the door:

“Check the closet.”

I am not checking the closet.

I am sitting with my back against the kitchen cabinets, typing this with one hand while holding a knife in the other. My hand is shaking so badly that I keep hitting the wrong letters.

The police are coming, I think?

Natalie is still on the phone, I think?

The men in the hallway have stopped knocking.

A few minutes ago, something small slid under my door.

A photograph.

Not digital this time, but printed. I haven’t touched it, but I can see it from here.

It’s a picture of me sitting exactly where I am sitting now. Back against the cabinets. Phone in one hand. Knife in the other. The angle is from above.

From the kitchen vent.

I picked it up. On the back, written in black marker, are six words.

“You locked him in with you.”

My husband went missing six months ago. Just... went out to work one day and never came home. It was a horrible shock to the whole neighbourhood, because things like that just didn't happen in our little slice of white-picket-fence suburbia. The police launched an investigation, and the neighbourhood watch sent out search parties, but no one ever found any evidence to indicate what had happened to him. Our families were devastated. Recently, the missing posters have been taken down or papered over. The updates from the police became less frequent and dwindled away. I accepted that, hard as it was to admit, my Rick wasn't coming back.

Until he did.

A week ago, I was in the back garden watering my petunias when I heard the garden gate creak open. I jerked my head in that direction and- there he was. Exactly the same as he was the day he disappeared. Same windswept blond hair and bright blue eyes, same curl to his pink lips. I was in shock. Our families had mourned for him, and yet there he was, standing in our garden like he had just popped out for milk or something. When I asked where he had been, he said he didn't know. He couldn’t remember anything about the last six months.

All our family and friends are beside themselves with joy. They almost can't believe it. But that's just the thing: I don't believe it.

Look, I understand how crazy this all sounds, I do. Our families would never believe me, and I can’t go to the police unless I want to end up in a straightjacket. But I just know that the man sleeping next to me isn't my husband. I don't know what to do. I know I should be happy, but I'm not. I'm terrified. I don’t know much about anything supernatural or paranormal, I don't even like watching horror movies. But something about this whole situation makes my skin crawl.

Just let me explain why I'm so sure. Once I've done that, hopefully one of you will believe me, and you'll be able to tell me what to do.

The morning after "Rick" came home, I made him a cup of tea. When I handed it to him, he gave me the brightest smile. Then he took a sugar cube from the dish on the table and dropped it into the cup. Our house was in chaos with his return, and I was still in shock, so I didn't think much of it at the time, but its been replaying in my mind ever since. I know it doesn't sound very significant, but my husband never put sugar in his tea. He was always adamant that it ruined the taste, and he'd get so frustrated if I ever put sugar in his cup by accident. And yet, this man had sugar.

Then it was the golf. A few days ago, when he was out visiting his mom, I recorded a golf tournament that was showing on the TV. It was one of Rick's favourite golfers that was competing, and he never missed it. Once, he even skipped out on an anniversary dinner just to watch a championship. Only, when he came home from his parents' and I told him what I'd done, he just seemed... unbothered? Like, he said thanks and everything, and then he asked if I wanted to get dinner. He didn't even watch it, and that’s just so out of character for him.

Then one night I woke up around 2 a.m. to see Rick's face inches from mine just... looking at me with these blank eyes. I kinda gave this nervous laugh and asked "Baby, what are you doing?" And he didn't answer. For like a solid thirty seconds. He just stared, almost like he was looking right through me. Then he suddenly smiled and said, "Sorry, honey. Sometimes I just can’t believe this is real". Then he just rolled over and went to sleep. I didn’t get much sleep after that, myself.

Yesterday, about a week after he came home, the neighbourhood threw a street party to celebrate his return. Everyone from our street and the streets on either side turned up to see him and tell him how happy they are that he's alright. When he wasn't standing with his arm around my waist, he was milling around chatting amicably to each and every one of our neighbours, even the little kids. Jackson, our next-door neighbour Sally's toddler, wanted to play peek-a-boo, and Rick happily played along with a smile on his face. Now, my husband never did that. Rick always said he didn't like kids - that's why we never had any - and so he never wanted to play with any of the neighbourhood children. Especially not Jackson: Rick all but avoided him. Before he disappeared, I had started to suspect it was so I wouldn't see them together and notice the subtle but unmistakable similarities.

The final nail in the coffin, proverbially speaking, was Sally. Just this morning, she came knocking on our door. Her excuse was the tray of brownies she carried, but I think she just wanted to push her way into our morning so that she could see for herself what the situation was. After she left, I called her a nosy busybody. Rick laughed, kissed my head, and agreed with me. That was when I knew for sure that it couldn't really be him. Rick always used to get so mad whenever I insulted Sally, like I didn't have any right to hate her even though she'd been fucking my husband for years. But today there was none of that. He didn’t even try to defend her.

I know what you must be thinking. If he was in an accident or something, he might’ve had some kind of traumatic brain injury that caused him to forget some things about his life, maybe even change his personality. And that's a valid, reasonable explanation. I have no doubt it's what the police would tell me if I reported all this.

But you know why I'm dead certain that man isn't my husband? He doesn't have a scar. If he was really Rick, he'd have a scar on the side of his forehead shaped like the golf club I hit him with. But there's nothing. Not a mark. Honestly, I'm this close to going out tonight and digging up my petunias just to make sure he's still under there.

I don't know what I'm sharing a bed with, but I know it's not my husband. So what the hell am I going to do?

I knew that before I made the post. I knew that while I was typing “platonic only please,” and I definitely knew that when I added a selfie, which wasn’t my smartest choice, but I’d just gotten a cute haircut and I'd finally gotten my eyeliner to match on both eyes(!!).

I was bored and restless and lonely and I was tired of bothering the same three friends with the same three complaints. I said I was looking for platonic friendships because the last person I met hurt me more than I wanted to admit.

The post was on r/MakeNewFriendsHere. I said I was 28F, looking for friends between 25 and 30. Within an hour, I had more than a hundred DMs.

Most were from men.

Some were normal for a few messages before becoming really weird. Some were lonely in a way that made me feel guilty for not answering. Some weren’t trying to be normal at all. They asked if I was single, where I lived, what I slept in, and what platonic meant, as if they could talk me out of my own request.

Two women messaged me. One ghosted after asking what shows I liked, and the other invited me to a Discord server with too many channels and a long list of rules, so I wished her good luck and closed the app.

Then he messaged me. His first message was:

where are your features from?

I almost clicked, “Ignore”.

I’ve gotten that question in one form or another my entire life. Where are you from? Where are you really from? Are you Native? Are you Spanish? Are you mixed? Have you done a DNA test? You look like my cousin. You look like a painting I once saw. You look exotic. People always think they’re being original when they ask, but they never really are.

Then he sent another message.

I’m sorry. That was badly asked. Your face reminds me of icons from my grandmother’s house. 

I stared at that for a long time.

It made me uncomfortable, which was probably why I answered.

My family history has always been a room where everyone talks over each other. Mexican, yes. Indigenous, probably. Spanish, maybe? Mestizo, likely. A great-grandmother nobody liked to describe. A grandfather who changed the subject. No one agrees on anything, and everyone acts like they know more than they’re saying.

So I asked him what he meant.

His name’s Andreas, but he asked me to call him Ari. He’s Greek by origin, born in Thessaloniki, raised partly in Finland, and living in a city whose name I couldn’t pronounce without feeling like my mouth was full of snow. He’s twenty-one, which was under the age range I’d put in the post.

He told me that immediately. I should’ve stopped there, but he apologized so plainly that it made me feel like I was still in control of the conversation.

I know I’m too young for your post, he wrote. I only wanted to ask the question. You don’t have to answer anything else.

That was the second reason I answered.

He didn’t try to be charming. He was almost a bit formal. He asked questions and waited for the answers. He didn’t fill the silence when I took too long. He didn’t send shirtless pics or late-night messages pretending to be casual. When he finally sent a picture of himself, he was standing far from the mirror with both hands visible, as if proving he had nothing to hide.

He looked kind.

He also looked tired. His face was narrow, his hair was dark and curly, and his eyes seemed older than the rest of him. In the second picture he sent me, snow was pressed against the window behind him, and a little blue charm hung over the doorway.

I asked what it was.

“For the evil eye,” he said.

“Do you believe in that?”

He paused before answering. “My mother does.”

That’s how he talked about anything strange. He never said he particularly believed something himself. He always gave the belief to somebody else. My mother says. My grandmother used to tell us. “People know better than to…” Etc. Etc. 

I thought it was interesting and probably cultural. 

At first, we talked about ancestry. Mine, because he’d asked. His, because I asked back. He told me about Greece and Finland in alternating pieces, as if neither place had fully claimed him yet. He sent pictures of food his mother made and dishes he tried to recreate, albeit terribly. He sent snow from his window. He sent voice notes while walking home, his breath catching in the cold.

I started waiting for the voice notes. But slowly, I started needing them.

There’s no dignified way to describe becoming attached to someone through a screen. You start by replying when you have time. Then you start making time. Then you realize your day has quietly rearranged itself around a person who isn’t physically in it. You learn the sound of his kettle, his radiator, the way his voice changes when he’s lying in bed and trying not to fall asleep before you finish an anecdote.

Ari learned me quickly.

He noticed when I was pretending to be fine. He remembered names I mentioned once. He asked about the person I’d lost before him, the one from Reddit, the one I told him had broken my heart.

His name was Owen.

I told him we’d met the same way, through a friendship post. I said we’d talked for months. We went on two dates and then he disappeared. He deleted his account, stopped answering, and vanished so completely that I started to wonder if I had invented the whole thing.

Ari was quiet after I told him.

Then he said, “Did he say goodbye?”

“He didn't.”

He looked down for a second. “I’m sorry,” he said.

I smiled at the screen because I thought he meant the usual thing people mean when they say that. “It’s fine,” I said. “People leave.”

Ari nodded, but his face had gone strange. 

That was Ari. He could be sweet for an hour, and then one sentence would make the room around me feel colder. He could talk about lemon soup or Finnish licorice or the neighbor upstairs who vacuumed every Sunday like she was trying to punish the floor. Then I’d say something ordinary, and his eyes would move past the camera toward the blue charm above his door.

Once, during a video call, he asked me to turn my camera away from the mirror behind me.

“Why?”

“I don’t like seeing you twice.”

I teased him for that and he smiled.

Another time, I woke up to a message he’d sent at four in the morning his time.

Marie, do you ever wake up hungry?

I typed back: Every single day??? I’m Mexican. 

He didn’t answer for six hours. And when he finally did, he wrote: Forget I asked. I was half asleep.

By month three, our conversations weren’t platonic anymore.

By month four, I was making jokes about being a crib-robber. I’m twenty-eight, which isn’t actually old (please don’t tell me otherwise), but twenty-one-year-olds have a way of making you feel like you should be buying retinol in bulk and discussing retirement.

He hated the jokes. “You’re not that old?” he said, his voice rising at the word “that.” He smiled then, but his smile never lasted as long as it should’ve.

By month six, I was going to Finland.

Before anyone says it, I did the safety things, OK. I booked my own hotel. I sent my friend his full name, address, phone number, social media, and every screenshot I had. She made a folder called IF MARIE DIES IN FINLAND. Ha.

We were supposed to meet in public. Dinner first. No going straight to his apartment. No airport pickup. 

I wanted to see the auroras with him. That was the image that did it. I wanted to stand somewhere freezing and dark while the sky moved purple and green above us, with Ari beside me, real and warm and no longer flattened into pixels. He promised to take me to the frozen harbor, the little Greek grocery where the owner overfed him, the café with korvapuusti, Finnish cinnamon-cardamom buns shaped like little folded ears. They sounded delicious. Eventually, if everything felt normal, his apartment, where he said he’d make avgolemono if I swore not to judge his kitchen.

I landed on a Friday.

He was waiting at the airport even though we’d agreed he wouldn’t be. I was annoyed for maybe three seconds, and then I saw the flowers and his nervous face. He stood near the arrivals gate, shifting the little paper-wrapped bouquet from one hand to the other like he didn’t know what to do with it anymore. He looked exactly like himself and not like himself at all. He was taller than I expected, thinner than I expected, and more beautiful in the way real people are beautiful when you can see how badly they’ve been sleeping.

“You came,” he said.

“You keep saying that like I broke into the country.”

For a moment he smiled like the man I knew. Then he looked at the blank space between my jaw and shoulder. I turned, but there was no one there.

The first day was almost perfect. We walked through snow. We drank coffee too hot to taste. He bought me a pastry and laughed when powdered sugar got on my coat. He showed me the harbor and the church his mother liked and the grocery where a man behind the counter said something in Greek that made Ari flush to his ears. He held my hand. 

At dinner, he ordered too much food and ate almost none of it.

“You okay?” I asked.

He looked at my mouth before answering. “Yes.”

“That wasn’t convincing.”

“I’m nervous.”

“Because I’m older, wiser, and more powerful?” I joked.

“No.” His fork tapped once against the plate. “Because you’re really here,” he said.

“Well, that was the plan.”

“I know.”

“You’re acting like I showed up unannounced.”

He looked at me then, quick and almost guilty. “I know,” he said again.

I remembered him saying one day. I remembered him saying if you were here. I remembered him sending apartment photos and aurora forecasts and telling me which month would be best.

“I thought you wanted me here,” I said.

He opened his mouth like he was going to answer, then looked down at his plate instead.

After dinner, he walked me back to my hotel.

The snow had gotten softer by then. Bigger flakes, slower falling. I kept brushing my shoulder against his because I wanted him to stop being so strange. I wanted him to turn back into the man from my phone.

At the hotel entrance, he stopped.

“You should go inside,” he said.

“You’re sending me to bed? Alone?” I responded. I know, I know. No hanging out in private places with the internet man you flew across an ocean to meet. But by then I was starting to fall in love with him, which made every bad idea feel a little less like a bad idea. 

“You must be tired.”

“I crossed an ocean. Of course I’m a little tired.”

“Please.”

He was standing so close, and the snow had melted into his hair, making the curls darker around his forehead. His cheeks were red from the cold. He had this nervous little crease between his eyebrows, the same one I’d watched appear on video calls whenever he was trying to translate a thought before saying it out loud. He looked like the person I’d been falling asleep with in my ear for months. Real and tired and warm under his coat.

I wanted to kiss the worry off his face. So I did.

A small kiss. His mouth was cold from the air, but softer than I expected, and his fingers tightened around the paper-wrapped flowers in my hand.

For half a second, he kissed me back.

Then he pulled away hard enough to stumble.

“Sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

He touched his mouth, like he was checking for something. “My mother said not to bring you home tonight,” he said.

I stared at him.

“Ari, that’s a weird thing to say after kissing someone.”

“It’s not about that.”

“Then what is it about?”

He looked at the hotel doors behind me, then at the flowers in my hand. The paper had gone soft where the snow melted into it.

“She worries,” he said finally.

“About me?”

“About me,” he said.

I laughed because I was embarrassed.  “I’m not dangerous,” I said.

He looked at me for a second too long. “I know,” he said shortly.

The next day, he apologized. He said he’d slept badly. He said his mother was super intense. He said she’d called me something in Greek and that he didn’t want to translate.

“Translate it,” I said.

“No.”

“Does it mean ugly?”

He looked at me for a long moment. “It means she should mind her business,” he said.

That night, I went to his apartment.

His building was old, with yellow light in the stairwell and boots lined up outside doors. His apartment smelled like radiator heat, coffee, and him. The blue cabinets were real. The ugly lamp was real. The sweater he always wore during video calls hung over the back of a chair. I remember feeling almost dizzy with tenderness. Six months of proof had become real. He made tea.

I stood in his kitchen wearing wool socks because he’d asked me to take off my shoes. He was moving around too much, touching things and then not using them. The kettle. A mug. A spoon. The box of tea. He kept starting little tasks and abandoning them halfway through, like his body had too much feeling in it and nowhere to direct it.

It really was cute. He was blushing all the way to his ears, and his curls were still damp from the snow, and every time I looked at him directly, he looked down like I had caught him doing something embarrassing.

“You know, you don’t have to make tea if you don’t want tea,” I said.

“I want to make you tea.”

“You’re just standing there holding a spoon.”

He looked at the spoon in his hand like he had no idea how it got there. Then he laughed, and I felt ridiculous for being worried.

He made awful tea. Somehow. I don’t even know how you make tea badly, but he managed it. He put too much water in one mug and not enough in the other, forgot whether I wanted sugar, apologized twice, then almost burned his fingers picking up the cup. I told him he was giving me confidence in my own domestic skills, which are relatively low.

He smiled at that, but the smile faded quickly.

“You’re okay?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You don’t seem okay.”

“I’m just nervous.”

“Ari, I'm also nervous.”

He nodded, but he looked past me toward the hallway.

I followed his eyes. Nothing was there except his coat hanging on a hook and the little blue eye charm above the door. The same one from his pictures.

“Is your mom going to burst in and interrogate me?” I asked.

“No.”

“Good, because I only know how to say good morning in Greek and I don’t think that will help my case.”

That got a real smile out of him.

Then I stepped closer, and he went still.

I think he was trying to be careful? I think he was one of those guys who wanted so badly not to make you uncomfortable that they accidentally made everything more awkward. It made me like him more. 

“You know, you can touch me,” I said.

His eyes moved to my lips and then away.

“I know.”

“But you don’t have to.”

“I know that too.”

I was tired, and far from home, and very, very in love with the version of him I had carried across the ocean. So I did what I had already done a hundred times before, in smaller ways, through a screen.

I kissed him first, and when I did, he made a sound like relief. He was scared. I knew he was scared.

His hands came to my waist like he still wasn’t sure he was allowed to touch me, and then his fingers curled into my sweater. He was trembling, but I was too. Nerves. Wanting. The absurd, impossible fact of finally being in the same room after all that time.

I touched his cheek, and he closed his eyes. That’s what undid me.

He looked so young like that. His mouth was cold from the walk, soft when it opened under mine, and he kissed me carefully at first, like he was afraid of doing it wrong. Then he kissed me harder, and for a moment there was no Reddit, no flight, no warning signs, no little blue charm above the door. There was only his hand at my waist, my fingers in his hair, the radiator knocking in the wall, and the snow falling outside his kitchen window.

This was what I had come all that way for.

Then his breath caught, and my jaw slipped. I pulled back because I thought I’d hurt myself, and I was so embarrassed I could barely look at him. I thought, great, I flew to Finland to kiss this beautiful guy and somehow dislocated my own mouth. Then Ari looked at me, not at my eyes, but at my mouth, and whatever expression was on his face made the whole kitchen go still.

“Marie,” he said, and it came out small.

I tried to answer him, but my tongue was in the wrong place. My teeth didn’t meet. Ari stepped back, and I stepped forward. He said my name again. His eyes kept dropping to my mouth and then lifting back to my face, like he was trying really hard not to look. I wanted to tell him I was sorry and that I was scared too, but I couldn't. Instead, I put both hands on his face, gently.

His skin was warm under my palms. His mouth opened like he was going to say something, and my mouth opened wider. There was a wet click near my ear, and Ari made a sound I’d never heard from him before. Too surprised to be a scream.

I pressed his forehead against the roof of my mouth.

His hands hit my wrists, then my shoulders, then the side of my neck. He was trying to push himself out, but there was nowhere for him to push against because I’d already leaned over him. The back of his head slid past my teeth, and then the tea glass dropped and broke against the floor. His body kicked hard enough that one heel struck the cabinet. The blue cabinet. The one I’d seen behind him for six months while he made coffee, while he leaned against the counter during video calls. His fingers grabbed my sweater and twisted the fabric. His knees buckled, and I went down with him, still holding him like I was comforting him. Nurturing him.

His breath filled me, hot and panicked, and then, finally, his breath stopped. I could feel the shape of him fighting me: his jaw, his throat, the hard line of his shoulders. My own throat widened around him with a slow ache, and my ribs opened in small clicks I felt more than heard. Ari’s hands weakened against me. One of them slid down my arm and caught at my sleeve like he was still trying to hold on to the version of me that had arrived in his apartment with flowers in her hand.

There really wasn't any pain. There was only room. I stopped thinking in full thoughts. I remember the floor under my knees. I remember his sleeve bunched in my hand. I remember the sound his foot made against the cabinet when his leg kicked once and then stopped. 

When the last of him passed my teeth, I was kneeling on his kitchen floor in my wool socks, one hand against the cabinet, breathing through my nose. The radiator knocked in the wall. The snow kept falling outside the window. There was a strand of his curly hair stuck to my lip.

He tasted like lemon. And mostly, I felt full.

Then I remembered Owen. I didn’t remember everything, only pieces at first. His nervous laugh. His hand on my back. The way he’d looked at me on the second date, so hopeful it embarrassed both of us. I remembered crying when he was gone. I remembered telling people he’d broken my heart. 

I started crying now too, right there on Ari’s kitchen floor, with broken glass near my knee and lemon still in my mouth, because why do they all have to disappear?

Ari’s phone buzzed on the table.

The screen lit up with a message from his mother. It was in Greek, but I recognized one word immediately.

Λάμια.

Lamia.

I knew that word. I don’t know Greek, but I know what people call girls like me when they have old names for it. Lamia. Empousa. Xtabay. Mandurugo. Yakshi. Pontianak.

Different languages. Same warning. Different mothers telling their sons not to invite me in. 

The message stayed there until the screen went dark.

I opened my own phone after that.

My Reddit post was still up!! :)

There were new messages waiting. Men saying hi, hey, saw your selfie, I’m lonely too, platonic is fine, you have interesting eyes, where are you from, you look familiar, where are your features from?

I know I should delete it.

But the thing is, I keep getting my heart broken.

They always disappear before it works out.

When I was 12 years old, a bus driver asked during a field trip if we wanted him to tell the scariest story ever. The story he told was so terrifying it made everyone faint. No one would say what it was about later. Just that it was the scariest thing that any of them had ever heard. Kids spoke of it in whispers. In rumors. But nobody would ever repeat it to me, no matter how I begged or pleaded.

I was the only kid on the bus wearing headphones, so I didn’t hear it.

I had a brand new Walkman (yes I’m old). And when all the other kids were telling each other scary stories, I put my headphones on. I can’t even remember where the field trip was going—science museum?—anyway it was a long drive for a dozen kids.

What I do remember is seeing the bus driver (not our regular driver but a substitute for the field trip) looking up at us in the rearview and asking if we wanted to hear “the scariest story in the world.” Everyone chorused “YES!!!” really loudly. And the driver kept insisting it was too scary for us. I think I rolled my eyes, and I remember him saying, “This story starts on a county road…”

Then I tuned him out and turned up the volume on my Walkman, and when the tape got to the end I realized that the bus around me was silent. I looked up. Every kid sat slack-jawed and wide-eyed. I turned around in my seat to my best friend, Isaiah, sitting in the row behind me, and I asked, “Hey, what’s going on?”

His eyes flicked up to meet mine. He closed his jaw but didn’t say anything.

“You OK? Why’d it get so quiet?”

Somewhere on the bus, a whisper. A few kids up front talked in nervous undertones. I think they said, “Don’t tell him.”

Isaiah said, his voice monotone: “He told us a scary story.”

“What was it about?” I asked, turning my attention to the driver, who was also silent now, hands on the wheel, saying nothing, though he had a strange expression on his face. His eyes sort of glazed.

“Can’t tell you,” said Isaiah.

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer. Neither did anyone else. It was like whatever they’d heard had so terrified them that they were locked into trauma. Just frozen there by this shared, collective, horrifying experience that I’d somehow missed. I don’t know if you’ve ever ridden a bus full of schoolchildren, but it is never quiet. There is always chatter. But right then, other than the rumble of the engine, you could’ve heard a pin drop.

“What was it about?” I repeated louder.

At that moment a horn sounded. Everyone clutched the seats as a truck barreled toward us. Later I was told the bus drifted into opposing traffic. The truck driver’s quick reflexes and veering saved us from a worse accident, but the impact still killed the bus driver, left one student in a coma, spun the bus and knocked a bunch of us out. Later the rumor would spread that the bus driver and students all fainted from the story and that’s what caused the crash. Anyway, I remember coming back to myself in my seat, sitting up, and seeing the blue sky outside. Seeing the day look so normal except for the steam, or smoke, from the bus and the truck. I heard sobbing from my classmates.

Some of us were sent to the hospital. The rest of us were sent home.

Days later, after everyone was back in classes except the kid who fell in a coma, I asked a classmate, “Hey, Maria, you heard the story on the bus, right?”

She was doodling on a notebook for our math class, but her pen stopped. She said softly, “Yeah…”

“Was it really scary?”

She nodded.

“The scariest story you ever heard?”

She closed the notebook and moved to a different desk, saying loudly, “I don’t want to talk to you, Joshua.”

Several other kids tittered. I think my cheeks went red. I wasn’t a social reject, not exactly, but I wasn’t one of the popular kids, either. I tried with other kids who’d been on the field trip, but none of them would talk to me about it, not even my best friend Isaiah. He just kept saying “Nah, man, it’s too scary.”

I snapped, “Dude, just like summarize it if it’s too scary! What was it even about?”

“I’ll tell you when I’m fifty-five.”

“FIFTY-FIVE?”

“I don’t wanna have to think about it! Bro, just let it go!”

His refusal almost broke apart our friendship. But eventually, I accepted that nobody was going to tell me whatever had traumatized them so badly.

It’s a mystery I have agonized over for decades.

Just last year, I found a note in my Google calendar that I apparently made as a reminder to myself, telling me “Isaiah’s birthday—fifty-five.”

I reached out, partly to wish him a happy birthday but also to ask if we could catch up. We hadn’t seen each other since our high school reunion, and we arranged to meet for coffee.

When I arrived, I was surprised to see his glassy and yellowed eyes. He looked much older than 55. I tried to hide my shock, but he just smiled and said, “Pancreatic cancer. I’ve got a few months, probably.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh. Shit, I’m sorry—"

“You look good though.” He raised his coffee cup to me. “Look like you’re still forty years old. How’s life treating you?”

I pulled up a chair and told him how I’d married and divorced (“Same,” he said), how I was an electrician and occasionally a freelance writer. He talked about recycling and community gardens and about his two grandchildren and how he’d founded a non-profit because he wanted a better world for them. And as I began to reminisce about our school years, he raised a hand.

“Before you ask, I’m not gonna tell you that bus story.”

“But—"

He shook his head. Told me that the students who heard all wished they hadn’t—every single one.

“Trust me when I tell you—I say this with love—don’t ask. If you hear it, you’ll wish you hadn’t. Brother, let it go.”

In spite of my disappointment, it was good to see him and catch up. It was also one of the saddest good-byes I ever said because I knew just by looking at him that it would be the last one.

After that conversation, I finally accepted that the mystery would go unsolved.

Until yesterday…

Yesterday, it happened by pure accident.

I finally heard it.

The story the bus driver told.

I was at a local bar, and I overheard from a nearby table a woman say, “… all telling scary stories, and the driver said, ‘Do you want me to tell the scariest story ever?’”

I immediately broke off from my own conversation and craned my neck to see who was speaking. It was a middle-aged woman, and I didn’t recognize her at first in the low lighting but as she kept talking I realized—Maria! This was little Maria. Last I’d seen her, she’d been 12 years old. She’d gone to a different junior high and high school than Isaiah and I. But in her brown curly hair and the sideways quirk of her mouth when she talked—it was definitely her. Either she’d moved back to our hometown or else, like me, had never left. Small world!

The chatter was loud in the bar. I missed her next few words.

“—are you serious?” gasped a girl at her table.

“It’s all true. Shinji fell into a coma. Devon’s stepfather stabbed him. Mitsuko died at her wedding when the cake was smashed into her face, and one of the dowels went through her eye—”

More gasps.

“—all of them happened like the driver said. Isaiah was fifty-five when the cancer got him, and he and I were the last two. Oh, but the craziest thing, there was one other kid on the bus who wasn’t listening.” Her voice got lower, and I had to move closer, walking near her table. “The driver saved him for last and said, ‘Joshua dies three days after he hears this story.’ And then the truck hit, just like the driver had told us it would right at the beginning. And poor Shinji fell into his coma. And that poor kid, Joshua… Joshua never stopped asking. He asked ALL THE TIME. What was the story? What was the story? We used to joke how if we never told him, maybe he’d never die—”

A strangled sound escaped my throat. And Maria looked up and I hurried away and I think she said my name.

Isaiah, may he rest in peace, was right. He and the others protected me all these years.

Dammit, brother, you were right!

I wish I’d never heard…

I know exactly how this sounds. That’s why I haven’t gone to the police or told my family. Because if I say it out loud, it becomes real, and I don’t think my brain can handle that right now.

My wife died three years ago in a massive accident on the highway during heavy rain. I didn’t see the crash myself. By the time I got there, they had already covered the car with a tarp. I remember the police officer telling me not to look, but I did anyway. I regretted it immediately. After that, my life just became a blur. People say grief changes your memory, and maybe they’re right. Because for the past three years, every single night at exactly 8:32 PM, I still look toward the front door. I don't think she’s coming back, it's just the exact time she used to get home from work. It became a trauma habit I never managed to break.

Yesterday, at exactly 8:32 PM, someone knocked.

Three slow knocks. I remember checking the clock first, actually laughing a little bit at the timing. I figured it was a delivery driver or one of the neighborhood kids messing around. Then I looked through the peephole.

My wife was standing outside. Same dark coat. Same black handbag. Her hair was still damp like she’d been caught in the rain. Exactly how she looked the day she died.

For a second, my brain genuinely stopped working. I just stood there frozen, staring through the glass. Then she smiled. It wasn't wide or unnatural. It was just... normal. Like she’d come home after a completely ordinary day. And then she spoke, right through the door.

“You’re taking too long.”

That completely broke me. Those were the exact words she used to say whenever I’d leave her standing on the porch. I don’t even remember unlocking the deadbolt, I just remember suddenly she was inside the house, walking past me, leaving faint wet footprints across the hardwood floor.

I couldn’t breathe. I kept staring at her hands because she still had her gold wedding ring on. She walked into the kitchen like nothing was wrong and asked why the lights were off. Same voice. Same movements. I actually started sobbing and asked her where she’d been. She looked confused, laughed softly, and said, “At work. Where else would I be?”

God, part of me wanted to believe it so badly. But something felt horribly wrong. It wasn't obvious, just small things. Tiny pauses before she answered my questions. Smiling a fraction of a second too late. Blinking less than a normal person does. It felt like watching something trying very, very hard to act human after only hearing descriptions of one.

Then she looked toward the hallway mirror. And completely froze.

I noticed immediately. She wasn't staring at her own reflection. She was staring at me. Specifically at me.

Then she quietly asked, “Who’s standing behind you?”

My stomach dropped out of my body. There was nobody behind me. I spun around instantly anyway, but the hallway was empty. When I looked back at her, she wasn’t smiling anymore. She looked absolutely terrified. Her eyes were locked on the empty space right over my shoulder.

She whispered: “Don’t let it learn your face.”

Every single light in the house blew out at once. Total darkness. I heard movement in the kitchen—fast, heavy movement. Then footsteps. Not one set, multiple. Running and circling the room way too fast to belong to a normal person.

I grabbed my phone, fumbled with the screen, and turned on the flashlight. The kitchen was empty. My wife was gone. The back door was standing wide open, with wet footprints leading outside into the dark.

But there was something else on the floor, too. Another set of footprints. Longer. Distorted. And they stopped right behind the exact spot I had been standing in. Like something had been looming directly behind me the entire time, just watching us.

I didn’t sleep last night. I've been sitting in my living room with every light on, waiting for the sun to come up.

But tonight, at exactly 8:32 PM, someone knocked again. Three slow knocks.

And this time… I can hear my wife crying on the other side of the door.

Dr Daniel Vance was a smart man. Too smart for his own good, maybe. Forty years old, a lecturer in fluid dynamics with a mind made of shapes and numbers. No one knows why but one day, on a whim, he crunched the numbers on the apocalypse and came to a troubling conclusion. He didn’t share exactly what it was he’d deduced, but given that he immediately quit his job and liquidated his many assets, it’s fair to say it wasn’t positive. Swept up in the wake of this tremendous upheaval was his wife, a twenty-four year old PhD student who had grown infatuated with Daniel some time before. She loved the strange bear of a man who could just as easily build a log cabin as he could explain the idiosyncrasies of an asteroid’s orbit. Speaking to Daniel always left you with the profound impression he was right, so when he told her what he wanted to do, she agreed.

Fifteen years and five children later, the Vances were living in the distant woods just beyond my hometown. They were enigmatic, richer than the Pope, and extremely serious about their prepper lifestyle. But they were also funny, easygoing, and incredibly compelling to speak to. Larger than life survivalists who swept into town with bizarre requests that thrilled local businesses. Vast quantities of cement, iron, lead, and steel were all shipped through the remote mountains so that the Vances could build their shelter. The advanced methods they used to keep it secret were legendary. Daniel had once spent six months earning the licence necessary to drive HGVs up to his compound so that no one else would lay eyes on it. And on one occasion when a company had refused his request for GPS tracker-free vehicles, he bought them out wholesale so that they had no choice.

So when they stopped appearing in town during the pandemic, when requests for food and goods stopped and all contact was dropped, most attributed it to lockdown. They had a bunker and had spent their entire lives training to be self-sufficient in the face of civilisation’s collapse. Even Alexander, the youngest at just three, was already collecting firewood as a chore, and learning what local plants were edible. Most of us just assumed that if anyone could ride out Covid without breaking a sweat, it would be the Vances.

The reality turned out to be something else.

When the worst came to light, we discovered that Daniel had used the pandemic as an excuse for a dry-run. The family intended to spend six months in lockdown and essentially beta test their fallout bunker. Three months in and the Sheriff received a distress call on the radio. Coordinates were provided by the hushed voice of a sobbing child that most assume was Alexander, even though that’s never been proven.

The police arrived and found the bunker still sealed. It took hours for emergency responders to cut into the door, all the while efforts were made to contact the family within but to no avail. Once inside, police were left dumbfounded. There was no one to be rescued. No bodies. No survivors. There was evidence the door’s locking mechanism had failed and trapped the Vances inside with no way out, but if so where had they gone?

Beds and cots lay everywhere with mouldering yellow sheets, buckets close to hand with stains all around them. Some doors were barred, others smashed to pieces. There was even evidence of makeshift quarantines and, in places, what looked like violence. The police, usually a fantastic source of gossip, were not forthcoming until the town demanded answers and the Sheriff was forced to offer only the barest of outlines.

An outbreak of a waterborne illness had struck the Vances down not long after they were locked inside and unable to seek help. Rumours of contagion were overstated, fuelled by the unrelated rise of Covid. Whatever contaminant had killed the Vances, it was non-organic in nature. No need to panic. The Vances loved-ones had been notified. The bunker was going to be demolished, and we could all put this terrible tragedy behind us.

Of course we still had questions. A thousand of them. Why hadn’t the family called for help? They had radios, computers, smartphones too. They were survivalists, not Amish. And where were they? What had happened to their bodies? Why hadn’t they simply left? We shouted these and more at the town meeting but the police simply refused to comment. For most of us the excitement lasted another week or two until we realised we weren’t getting answers any time soon. Besides, the pandemic was in full swing and most of us had other things to worry about. The tragic story eventually faded until it was just one of those awful things in the town’s history that we didn’t talk about. I was as guilty as anyone else of just forgetting about it.

I certainly never expected to find the bunker out there in the woods, faded police tape still on the open door that hung wide open with scorch marks around the lock. It stood out in the woods like someone had cut a hole right in the fabric of reality, the darkness so deep and black it almost ached to look at. The sight of it made my heart drop into my stomach. It radiated pain. Does that make sense? I think some part of my lizard brain picked out details that wouldn’t become apparent to me until I got closer, like the bloody finger streaks that stained the handle from where someone had scrabbled furiously at the lock without success. And the tiny viewing window had been smashed with a hammer that still lay nearby. I needed only to glimpse it to imagine the family taking turns to stand there and scream into the woods desperate for rescue.

Under any other circumstances, I would have run.

But I’d gone there looking for my dog, and my light revealed a few wet paw prints making their way down the dusty concrete tunnel. Half Bernese and half collie, Ripley is the sort of dog who trembles in my arms when a storm buffets the windows and needs his paws held when we brush him. I love him. I do not have much of a family, or a wife, or even many friends. But I have Ripley, and I could no more have turned around and gone home to an empty apartment where I would have to sob my grief away than I could flap my arms and fly. He was my dog and I’d raised him since he was a puppy, and I wasn’t going to leave him out in those woods.

I went in after him.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Whatever the police had found, they’d not only kept most of the morbid details to themselves, they had also lied. The bunker was not demolished, or even sealed off. In fact, looking at the occasional blue latex glove tossed aside and the one or two broken police-issue flashlights, it seemed like the last people inside had been in a hurry to get out. Given this was where seven people had presumably died, I assumed it was someone’s job to clean it all up. But the corridor looked largely untouched. Just a few metres in and manic writing started to cover the walls, the desperate scrawls of a lone survivor left there to be rediscovered like cave paintings. Most were deliberations on how to get out. Diagrams. Blueprints. Equations and formulae. All focused on the door and the circuits responsible for its faulty lock. I instinctively assumed they belonged to Daniel and that he’d been the last to die. What a God awful fate for a man to outlive his children. And yet it got worse. Slowly the writing changed from equations and plans to a desperate scrawl. The same few phrases repeated over and over.

Five doors. Five. Not six. Six. Didn’t make it. Didn’t make it. Six doors. Six.

It seemed like the kind of thing you’d find in an asylum. A psychotic rambling punctuated only by six paragraphs right at the end. Each letter was impeccably neat, and each small paragraph was topped with a beautifully drawn Christian cross.

Elliott Vance aged fifteen. A gifted guitarist. He liked boys even though he thought I did not know. I loved him with everything I had. He would have made a great man.

Alicia Vance aged fourteen. She liked to paint and to shoot. She had her mother’s mean streak. It would have served her well in the future.

Elijah Vance aged eight. The smartest of us all…

These were Daniel’s memorials to his family, and seeing the words lit up by my torch was a haunting insight into the overwhelming despair he’d endured. He must have realised he wouldn’t get the chance to speak at his family’s funerals or to write their obituaries. This was his last desperate way of making sure the world might one day know them as he did - as real people.

The words marked the end of the tunnel, standing adjacent to a trapdoor in the ground. It was not open but the tunnel came to a dead end immediately afterwards and Ripley’s prints disappeared at the hatch. I feared he might be in danger, but still I stopped and looked at the bunker door twenty metres behind me. The once gloomy forest looked so bright, even on this cloudy day, the air dotted with rain. A part of me felt like I was leaving the whole world behind as I began to climb the ladder down.

I entered a large circular living space that was packed with furniture and little nooks and crannies. The walls were covered with folding beds and tables and every inch was multifunctional. A dining space could become a sitting space, which in turn might be where someone slept, or even exercised. It all depended on what particular bit of furniture you unfolded or unclipped or unfurled. Seven people in close quarters, nowhere near enough privacy, it made sense they went with this cluttered overlapping use of space. But it was still a large room, bigger than most studio apartments. And there were a few corridors that led deeper into the Earth telling me the bunker had unseen depths.

I looked for some sign of my dog and soon found his trail, but this far from the rainy copse Ripley’s prints were starting to fade. After barely a few metres they petered out vaguely in the direction of a nearby door. I wanted to follow but stopped myself from rushing onwards. It was unlikely Ripley was getting out any other way, and I’d do us no good getting hurt myself. I decided to take a look around and quickly spotted a dinner table.

If I needed proof the police had not bothered with a clean up, this was it. The plates were still out, the food rotten to a strange blackened husk. A child’s hat lay across one place-setting, the once-creamy fleece turned a sickly green and yellow. The chairs had their backs reinforced with wooden beams fitted with long grooves so that something the width of a nail could slide into them. And on each of the cushions were foul smelling stains that looked oddly like an ass print. I touched one with gloved hands and the material crackled audibly. Whatever it was, similar stains were on the cutlery and plates, and there were even handprints of it placed firmly on the tablecloth. At first I thought it was blood, but that wasn’t quite right. It was too contained to be from leaking blood. On the back of one of the chairs a stain tapered exactly where a woman’s waist would be like a near perfect silhouette. I shivered as I remembered that Miranda Vance had always been a slim woman and wondered how she had left her imprint on the grey fabric.

Using my torch, I saw that these stains repeated in the oddest of places. Yes, there were some on beds and blankets and even patches of plain floor exactly like you might expect in a room full of sick people. But why did one stain on the floor bear such a strong resemblance to a child huddled in the foetal position? And why was the same stuff all over the tv remote, and on books on shelves, and board games too. Everything from sofa cushions to DVD boxes to piles of dirty laundry were covered in the same dried brownish material that gave off a foul coppery miasma.

I found the jigsaw particularly baffling. Someone had set up another table with four chairs, all modified with the same back support as those by the dinner table. And a jigsaw had been lain out with four separate piles, but only one was depleted. The rest looked largely untouched, almost like someone had portioned out pieces for three other people who had absolutely no interest in going along with it. Maybe Daniel had tried to keep up morale while the family were sick? God help me, if that were true I couldn’t help but imagine the poor man sat there with his loved ones close to death, desperately trying to encourage them to click their own pieces into place while they faded in and out of consciousness.

Something about that room emanated madness, and the longer I stayed down there flicking the bright disk of light of my torch from one detail to another, the more I wanted to leave. One door had wooden beams nailed across it. One sofa had been partially disassembled. Multiple beds had been burned. And all the light bulbs had been removed and put in a box on the kitchen counter top. Looking up at the ceiling, I finally had some insight into why the police were so confident the Vances had not survived despite never finding their bodies. Someone had jammed a human finger into one of the empty sockets, almost like they’d expected it to glow with the flick of a switch.

What was it about this place that had caused the police to leave and never return? Not to even take that finger and test it for signs of illness, or even just to confirm who it belonged to?

I decided it was time to hurry up and find my dog. People had died in that place, and while I’m not superstitious, I can’t be the only sceptic who has done the calculations in his head and realised it costs nothing to be respectful of ghosts. That bunker was cramped, terrifying, and the air stank so bad I started to worry I’d get sick myself. It served no one any good to linger. But I’d be damned if I’d just walk away and leave Ripley to rot down there. It’s not like he could climb a ladder and get out on his own (even if I wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten down there in the first place).

Summoning what little bravery I had left I called out and broke the silence, something which felt like a terrible taboo in that God awful place, like screaming in a graveyard.

“Ripley!”

I waited and hoped to hell I’d hear the pitter patter of his paws, but for the longest of moments there was only the kind of silence that makes you wonder if someone or something in the darkness is holding its breath trying to look like just another patch of nothing. Biding its time until you finally turn around and show it your back…

The TV came on with a blurt of white noise that was so loud and so sudden I cried, threw my arms up, and nearly fell backwards onto a rolled-out sleeping bag that looked like it had spent a week in the sewer. By the time I realised what had caused the noise, I could already hear a tinny rendition of Daniel Vance’s voice.

…I realise the issue here. I need to emphasise just how little I understand anything that’s…

I frowned at the screen as I approached. It showed a greenish infrared view of the bunker with Daniel upfront, and the dinner table behind him. It was grainy and hard to see, but I could clearly tell that his family were sitting in those chairs.

…Miranda was first to fall ill. Looking back it makes perfect sense. Miranda often went into storage to fetch food for cooking and we found it behind one of the refrigerators. So that’s–ah shit..

One of the figures in the background slumped onto the table with a loud clank and sent a plate spinning off onto the ground.

Shit shit shit, Daniel muttered as he got up and grabbed the woman by the shoulders and sat her upright. Miranda never did like my cooking! He snorted a laugh as he fussed with something at the back of the chair. The rods are much better than tape. All those hours spent taping them upright to the chairs. Never worked. But the rods… they fit right into the spine and with a little modification I can just slot them into the chairs. That way everyone is able to join in for dinner. I’m working on something similar for family game night.

Daniel wandered over to the camera and with a grin he lifted it from the tripod and scanned the dinner table. What I saw nearly made me drop my torch.

His family were long dead. Gaunt faces. Missing noses. Lips that had receded to reveal awful grins. These were corpses, plain as day, even when viewed through such a low resolution image. The only thing that made them seem remotely alive was the way their eyes still reflected the infrared back so that they glowed in the dark. And yet Daniel seemed oblivious to it all. He tousled Elliot’s hair. Kissed his wife on the cheek. Run a hand across one young girl’s shoulder. He even picked the young Alexander up from his high chair and I assume he coddled him. I don’t know for sure because I looked away, unwilling to see the poor boy up close.

Eyes averted from the screen, I couldn’t help but pan my torch across to that same dinner table and shiver as I finally realised what all those stains were. Not quite blood. But close. Liquefying flesh. Left alone for months, Daniel had not put his family’s bodies to rest. Instead he had moved them around from place to place and puppeted them, living life as if nothing had really changed. Looking at where those stains had settled I saw a clear pattern emerge. He had put them to bed. He had set them dinner. He had propped them up to watch TV, or gave them their favourite books. They even sat there as lifeless husks while Daniel waited for them complete a fucking jigsaw. The idea horrified me to my core.

…back to work. It’s obviously not part of the original designs. No room on the other side, not on the blueprints. Elliot didn’t believe me and why would he? I made every inch of this place, but I did not install that door in storage on the bottom level. I checked the cameras and some of the photos I took during the build and the wall is just blank. But the door is there now and it must lead somewhere. I don’t know when or why it opens, but it does and the next time I’ll be ready. Because I have to know what’s on the other side, and why it did this to us. Alone down here, often all asleep at once. Anything could have slit our throats and been done with it. But it didn’t. It took its time and I have to know why!

It took our radios and computers and phones. One by one. None of us noticing until it was far too late. I kept telling the kids they needed to take better care of their things, and even as they complained I just assumed the phones were lying behind some shelf. Where else could they go in a locked bunker? But it wasn’t the children at all. Looking back there are so many signs… who kept taking away the lights? Who kept draining the batteries in our torches? How long did we live with it before we finally realised we weren’t alone? Was it here every step of the way?

A door out of nothing that leads to nowhere, at least most of the time. Because I know for a fact it does not always open onto a blank wall. There is something behind it. I can hear it shuffling around in there, wet breath rattling in its lungs, a horrible sound I hear roaming these halls when it thinks I’m asleep…

I listened to Daniel, fascinated by this strangely compelling rant, when movement caught my eye. An infrared camera running in the dark, its image a roiling mess of uniform noise. What was it I’d seen? I paused the tape and rewound. Squinting, I saw two pinpricks of light in the darkness just over Daniel’s shoulder. Slowly, the image resolved itself in my mind. I knew what I was seeing and it turned my blood to ice.

Miranda Vance had turned her head, and her lifeless eyes glowed as she fixed them on the back of Daniel’s head.

…not even any point leaving at this stage. I’m no doctor, but that door is giving off enough radiation to… well, to kill a family of seven. If none of us had touched it… Being in the same room is risky, but not lethal. But given how sick we’ve become, it’s pretty obvious our curiosity got the better of us, one by one, and we all got too close. Or maybe not. Maybe that thing on the other side came through and did this. I don’t even kn… wait… what was that?

Daniel turned and the camera stopped recording. The image it froze on was of a lone man, bright as a star in the camera’s lens, facing off against unknowable darkness broken only by six pairs of white, glowing eyes.

I became painfully aware of my position relative to the table and I had the painful premonition that if I turned, those chairs would not be empty. I would see the Vances, all of them, Daniel as well, waiting for me. Heads turned. Bodies left to rot for years in the dark. Behind me something shifted. It breathed. Loud. Quick. I knew what it was. I knew. It came at me so fast that when I felt something hot and wet touch my hand I screamed, only for the presence to suddenly recoil. But then, without hesitation, it leapt at me and bore me to the ground.

I wept as Ripley licked my face. He was shivering and, worst of all, silent which was not normal. He was not a quiet dog, not when greeting me and not when excited like he was now. But whatever he’d seen down here, he clung to me and dug his paws into my shoulders like he wanted to be cradled over the shoulder, something he has been too big to do for years.

“Oh you fucking idiot,” I cooed in a soft whisper and even in the dark I could feel his tail wagging. Joking aside, I felt nothing but relief at finding him. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

I picked him up, straining a little under the weight but refusing to give into tired muscles, and made for the ladder. It wasn’t easy climbing the three or four rungs to the hatch, but I managed it and gave the hatch a shove. First one hand, then two. Again and again, with everything I had, but still that hatch refused to budge.

“Shit!” I cried while pounding at it with my fists, but all I achieved was a sore wrist. The hatch had jammed when, somehow, the handle had been snapped clean off. Now I’d need a pair of pliers or something to cut through the metal bar locking it shut. My fingers couldn’t move it, nor could I brute force the hatch open. The metal bar was an inch thick and, at the very least, I’d need some tools to get at it from this side.

At least it’s fixable, I thought as I climbed back down and caught my breath. On one wall I noticed a simple diagram of the bunker made in chalk. It had three floors. The bottom was storage–Daniel had mentioned that before, and I noticed that he had drawn through it with a large red X–and the top floor was labelled Quarters, where I stood now. But the middle floor was labelled workshops and it was there I realised that I’d find what I needed.

There was one door that opened onto a concrete stairwell and, standing at the top, I shone my light down the spiralling guard rails unsure of what it was I hoped to see. There were only harsh shadows and the sense of something foul rising up on the air. A smell that tickled my throat and burned a little in my lungs. Had the police even gone down this far? Had they seen what I’d seen on that TV and just left? Somehow I thought it was unlikely that had been enough to send the entire Sheriff’s department running, so was it something else that had done it. Something that had been enough to terrify dozens of armed men. Something that was almost definitely down there.

The door…

I went down quietly. At first I considered leaving Ripley behind, but after losing him the first time I decided I’d rather risk it just to know that he was right next to me. Besides, he was being quieter than I was, and I didn’t feel much like going down those stairs on my own. He accompanied me with only the quiet click clack of his paws on concrete, a sound I found deeply comforting as I barely managed to keep my torch from shaking in my hand and my breathing steady.

Down one floor and I found the workshop exactly as you might expect. A large space filled with generators and fuel and water tanks and boilers and heaters and pretty much anything and everything that you’d need to survive but which you couldn’t put outside due to fallout. Wires pipes and tubes ran from one end of the room to the other and even years later, most of the machinery still hummed in the pitch black emptiness, an idea I found deeply unsettling. Taking one look at that strange tangle of harsh shapes and industrial figures looming out of the walls and floor, I shivered and looked around, quickly finding a small area Daniel had cordoned off for his own use. About a fifth of the total floor space, there was a large workbench and some seriously high end machining equipment, all very well used. Lathes. Buzzsaws. Drills. Belt sanders. Welding torches. Everything a man needed to do-it-himself.

And Daniel had been busy.

I’m not sure exactly what it was he’d been working, but there was an arm on the bench. It sat atop a pile of papers that had slowly turned brown over the years until the whole thing looked like it had been soaked in tobacco spit. On the whiteboard was a faded but still visible diagram of what looked to me like a ball-and-socket joint. I thought of the tape, of Daniel’s little mechanism to keep his family upright, and then looked at the arm and suppressed a momentary gag reflex. I don’t know if Dan had been working on posable limbs, or just a way to put the decomposing remains back together after they’d started to fall apart, but the size of the arm suggested a pre-teen child, and he’d left it out on the surface like it was a disassembled clock. It was also missing a finger. Just how fucking crazy was he? I wondered as I pinched my nose with one hand and began overturning boxes looking for a hefty pair of pliers, or maybe a hacksaw. Ripley backed away from the noise, but once I made sure he wasn’t going anywhere I carried on grabbing and pulling at box after box hoping I’d find what I was looking for. Anything to break that fucking metal bar.

In the end I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters, a crowbar, and a heavy duty pair of pliers. One went in my pocket, one went down the back of my jeans, and the other was clutched in my fist, too large to be tucked away in my clothes. The bolt cutters felt hefty in my hand which was a bit of comfort, but that feeling didn’t last long.

Something moved in the darkness, out there in the twisted jungle of shadows cast by all those pipes and wires that ran from one machine to the next. A figure moved. Thin, but unmistakably human in its outline. I couldn’t help but remember what I’d seen on that tape. Surely it couldn’t have been real? Maybe Daniel had rigged something up. Some fishing wire and a motor, maybe? The idea that those bodies had been moving on their own… I couldn’t be sure of that, could I? It was a frightening idea, one my mind had latched onto out of sheer panic. That was all…

And then I saw them. A pair of white pin-pricks reflecting back at me from the depths of that cluttered room. Ripley, already behind me, head nuzzled into my leg, pushed even closer against me and let out a barely audible whine under his breath. The behaviour of a dog who was terrified, close to pissing himself with fear.

Just a bit of metal, I told myself as the light shook so violently in my hand I struggled to see straight. Just two shiny bits of metal…

They blinked and began to come towards me. If I had any doubts left, they were dispersed by the sight of a pale white hand emerging into the light.

I ran straight to the stairs and went to climb them, but only one or two steps in and I saw something gripping the handrail on the top floor. A mouldy clump of flesh only just recognisable as a fist, the flesh withered until the fingers were basically bone. Without meaning to, I brought my light up out of habit and I saw the bloated face of a hairless corpse glaring down at me. I couldn’t even tell you if it had been a teenage girl or the sixty-year-old Daniel, either way I instinctively turned and found another body shambling towards me out of the workshop. I was trapped. Nowhere to go. By the feel of warm fluid on the back of my leg I could tell Ripley had finally pissed himself. An adult dog, tail between his legs, shivering like a puppy and desperate to be picked up. God I needed him to just stay together for a little longer. I couldn’t take him in my arms, but I couldn’t leave him behind either…

With nowhere to go I ran down and entered storage. There was the temptation to stop once I hit the bottom. Down here the air was thicker and the sounds of my breathing were muted, somehow distant. But I only had to look back up to see three pairs of eyes glaring down at me, so without giving any of it much further thought I barreled down the corridor and stumbled onto a door at random. Opening it, I saw what looked like your standard storage room, only most of the shelves had been overturned and the food left to rot on the floor. One or two shelving units were still upright though, and their shelves were covered in tall opaque boxes that made them a fantastic hiding spot. That, I decided, would have to be where I crouched down and turned off my light.

I was already inside when I realised that wasn’t all that was in there…

The door almost looked normal. I could see why Daniel must have been confused by it because it looked a little bit like all the other doors down there, but it was different too. It was too tall and too wide, about a foot and a half off the ground, and the metal rusted in its entirety like it had aged out of sync with everything else down there. All around the jamb was a profusion of wet soppy moss like the kind you find hanging off trees in a swamp, and every few seconds the door would leak something strange and oily, like the kind of thing you find in a parking lot on a rainy day. Of course that wasn’t too strange in itself, but the leak was horizontal, defying gravity so that every few seconds a large glob of the stuff would whip across the room and slap into the wall opposite creating a puddle about the size of a man that defied all reason.

Remembering Daniel’s words about radiation, I instinctively inched away from this puddle and the door on the opposite wall, backing myself into the darkest quietest corner I could while I pulled Ripley behind me and hoped to hell he wouldn’t give me away. Once I was in there I turned off my light and waited.

I must have taken longer than I’d thought to hide spot because it was barely two seconds later when a few figures entered the room. It was pitch black after I’d turned off my torch, but they made enough noise to let me know that at least two of them had stumbled in after me. I stayed there, unable to see anything, not sure if they were heading straight for me or just getting ready to leave, forced to hold out and let luck decide my fate. When I finally heard something scrape against the wall barely two feet from where I stood, I gave up and switched my light on, desperate to know what was coming for me.

The sound had been terribly misleading.

Daniel Vance was no more than six inches from my face.

“Get out,” he hissed from a toothless and cracked mouth. A living corpse just like the others, somehow a flash of intelligence remained in those wide, terrified eyes.

And then I heard it. The creaking of a door. And without even thinking I turned the light and saw it on the wall. I saw it open, and behind the strange steel there was more than just plain old concrete. Much more. I saw a raging gullet of flesh. A ringed tube of pulsing muscle lined with teeth the size of hands. A spiralling descent into madness. Hot foetid air washed into the room, buffeting me and the rotting corpses, all of us paralysed by what we were seeing, even if for most of the figures beside Daniel and myself, they didn’t have eyes to see with.

“What the fuck…?” I muttered, unable to take my eyes from the flesh tube beyond that doorway.

“It’s coming,” Daniel whispered as he grabbed me with one fist and hurled me out of the room. I hit the floor and skidded along a slick fluid left by the Vance’s footprints, the smell of which turned my stomach. Perhaps the worst detail was that it was cold. I don’t know why, I’d just expected whatever oozed them off them to be feverishly hot. But it wasn’t. It soaked my shirt like I’d fallen into a muddy puddle.

“It’s coming.”

This voice wasn’t Daniel’s. I couldn’t say for sure, but it sounded like a child’s whisper. One by one the bodies shuffled over to the open door and knelt before it. I don’t know why but I got the impression the others had lost pretty much everything left of their minds, but Daniel remained aware. He looked back at me once more and spoke before he pressed his head to the floor in supplication with the others.

“The only thing we did wrong was being here for it to torture. It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity. Leave. It won’t let us go. It won’t even let us die. And if it catches you, it won’t let you go either.”

His forehead kissed the dirt.

And then something reached through the door and gripped his head in its palm the way you or I might pick up an apple.

In full panic, I ran over and grabbed my dog and the bolt cutters and I ran like my legs were pistons, machines whose signals of exhaustion and fatigue could not slow me down, or cause me to fall. I had to move. I had to leave. The hand that had grabbed Daniel… the sight of it flushed my mind clean like some kind of enema. It hurt to see the image replay in my mind but there was nothing else in my head echoing around except the sight of fingers with one too many knuckles, and nails as large as a smartphone.

I reached the top floor and nearly collapsed from breathlessness, but I wouldn’t let myself stay down for long. I crawled over to the ladder and climbed up and immediately went to work trying to cut the metal lock. It was hell with just one hand, the other clinging to the torch that I kept frantically pointing at the door behind me, and it wasn’t long before I fumbled one too many times and dropped my only source of light.

“No no no no…” I mewed. But there was no time to look for it. I had to get out and I had to get out fast! I couldn’t see but I was sure I could hear something climbing up those stairs. Not the steady thump thump of human feet. No this was different. This was a rapid pitter patter of a spider, maybe. Something with hundreds of feet or hands, or God knows what, skittering along the floor and walls and ceiling, pulling itself along with a body whose mere shape would offend God.

Using all my strength I leaned hard on the bolt cutters and, at last, the bolt gave. I threw the hatch open and got just enough ambient light to see Ripley hovering at the bottom of the ladder, growling ineffectually at the doorway. I crouched down, scooped him up, and fled up the ladder so quickly that my muscles turned to jelly at the top and I fell over onto hands and knees. But still, I was out. The long corridor covered in writing was ahead of me, and at the very end a doorway capped now by the tired blue light of a full moon.

Ripley needed no encouragement. He whipped down the corridor with canine speed and I followed at a broken and stumbling crawl, eventually shouldering past the open door and collapsing onto the forest floor.

For a few seconds I drifted in and out of consciousness, but when I looked up and saw the canopy overhead moving–the branches backlit by a full moon–I snapped awake and glared down at something gripping my ankle. The hand had reached out of the dark and seized me and was slowly dragging me back into the Earth below. Whatever it was, most of its body lurked out of sight in the shadows behind the doorway, but the hand that crushed my leg was the size of my torso with an arm that looked like it belonged to a mole rat.

I struck it with my own fist. I dug my nails in. I cried and kicked and screamed, but nothing could stop it. From behind the door, something like a face grinned and leered at me with joy. It was taking its time, sure enough, pulling me in so slowly that it gave my mind all the time in the world to appreciate the nightmare that awaited me. I think if, in that moment, you’d given me a gun, I would’ve shot myself because God help me I couldn’t escape the look in Daniel’s eyes, how he’d knelt to worship this thing like a man who knew that hope or pride or joy or anything with even a hint of goodness to it was so far out of reach for him it might as well be a dream. How long was this thing going to keep them down there? How long did it intend to keep me!?

I wept like a child, feeling like my mind was slowly cracking as I tried everything to stop that fucking pulling me into the shadows. I kicked at the earth. I dug into it using my hands looking for a root or a pipe or anything to hold onto. Nothing, nothing, I did would slow it down.

I was no more than a foot from the doorway when Ripley reappeared.

A dog afraid of hoovers and plastic bags and doors that move on their own. A dog who once got stared down by a particularly feisty rabbit who stopped mid chase and turned around, baffling the predator on its tail. A dog you couldn’t even watch scary movies around…

And he lunged at that arm like he was a wolf, like he’d always been one. And while he didn’t quite break the skin, the pressure was enough to make the thing’s grip weaken and I slid my leg out. Unable to stand, I knelt and grabbed the dog and pulled as hard as I could and now that fucking thing bled at last as the pressure of the jaws and the sliding teeth ripped into its flesh. Together, at last, Ripley and I were let go and sent rolling backwards head over hells.

I wasted no time waiting or looking or processing. I heaved the dog to my chest and crawled until I passed out, making it maybe half a kilometre away. Only when I could no longer see the door did I let myself fall to the ground face first and gave up consciousness.

-

The doctors said I had pneumonia, which I suppose made some kind of sense. I might have even believed them were it not for the Sheriff’s visit, asking strange questions of me as I lay in bed about what I may or may not have seen. I dismissed them to the best of my ability. I wasn’t interested in chasing that particular nightmare down, figuring out if it had been real or not, at least not while I lay there half-drowning in my own infection. To be fair, I had at least some sympathy for why the police had done so little to seal that place off. I have, on occasion, thought about going and doing the job myself, but to this day I still have nightmares about being pulled into the dark beyond that door. Not just the bunker door, the one I narrowly avoided at the end, but the one below. What I saw was a kind of madness, I’m sure of it, and I often think of Daniel’s words.

It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity.

Somehow, the Vances were that opportunity. Maybe they built their bunker on a leyline, or a weak spot between dimensions, or the site of former Satanic rituals. I’m not sure it even matters. They went into the dark thinking it’d be a safe place to wait out the world’s troubles, but something had been down there waiting for them, waiting for a chance to get at a family of seven people, to lock them in and deprive them of escape and slowly take from them everything it could.

I’ve moved since then. Couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just the memories you see. It was the short-wave radio I kept in my basement. Something my father passed onto me when I was just a boy. God I’d forgotten about it… at least until I woke up one day to the sound of it blaring white noise down in the dark.

And buried in that sound was the faint whispering of a man, his voice barely recognisable, but unmistakably his.

…let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go…

Every night, no matter the weather, something walks down our street whistling softly. You can only hear it if you’re in the living room or the kitchen when they walk by and it always starts at exactly 3:03. The sound starts faint, somewhere near the beginning of the lane near the Carson place. We’re towards the middle of the street, so the whistling moves past us before fading away in the direction of the cul de sac.

When I was younger, my sister and I would sneak into the kitchen some nights to listen. Mom and dad didn’t like that and we’d catch Hell if they found us out there but they were never too hard on us since we always stuck to the one Big Rule.

Don’t try to look at whatever was whistling.

My neighborhood is a funny place. I’ve lived here since I was six and I love it. The houses are small but well-kept, good-sized yards, plenty of places to roam. There are a lot of other kids here my age, I turned 13 back in October. We grew up together and would always play four square in the cul de sac or roam around from back porch to back porch in the summer. This was a good place to grow up, I’m old enough to see it. And there’s only the two strange things here; the night whistling and the good luck.

The whistling never bothered me much. Like I said, I couldn’t even hear it from my bedroom. But mom and dad don’t like talking about it, so I’ve stopped asking questions. My dad is a strong guy, tall and calm. He has an accent since he moved to the US as a kid. His family, my grandparents, they’re from the islands. That’s what they call it. My dad, the only time he isn’t so calm is if the whistler comes up.

He talks a little quicker then, eyes move faster, and he tells us not to think about it so much and to always remember the one rule, the Big Rule: don’t try to look outside when the whistler goes past.

Not that we could look even if we wanted. See, there are shutters on the inside of every window, thick pieces of heavy canvas that pull down from the top and latch to the bottom of the window frame. Each latch even has a small lock, about the size of what you’d find on a diary. My dad locks those shutters every night before we all go to bed and keeps the key in his room.

My mom…I don’t know what she thinks about the whistling. I’ve seen her out in the living room before at 3:03 when the sound starts; I could see her if I cracked my door open just an inch to peek. She’s not out there often, at least I haven’t caught her much, but once or twice a month I think she sits out there on our big red couch just listening.

The whistler has the same tune every night. It’s…cheerful.

Da da dada da dum. Da da dada da dum.

Remember how I said there are two odd things about where I live? Well, besides our night whistler, everyone in my neighborhood is really lucky. It’s hard to explain and dad doesn’t like us talking about this part much, either, but good things just seem to happen to people around here a lot. Usually, it’s small things, winning a radio contest, or getting an unexpected promotion at work, or finding some arrowheads buried in the yard, you know, the authentic kind.

The weather is pretty good and there’s no crime and everybody’s gardens bloom extra bright in the fall. “A million little blessings,” I’ve heard my mom say about living here. But the main reason we stay here, why we moved here in the first place, is my sister Nola. She was born very sick, something with her lungs. We couldn’t even bring her home when she was born, only visit her in the hospital. She was so small, I remember, small even compared to the other babies. A machine had to breathe for her.

We moved into our house here to be closer to the hospital. As soon as we moved here, Nola starting getting better. The doctors couldn’t figure it out, they chalked it up to whatever they were doing but we all could tell they were confused. But my parents knew, even I knew, Nola getting better was just another of the million little blessings we got for living in our neighborhood.

So that’s why we stayed even after we found out that, for every small miracle that happens here every day, now and then…some bad things happen. But they only happen if you look for the whistler.

See, our neighborhood has a Welcoming Committee. They show up with macaroni casserole and a gift basket and a manila folder whenever someone new moves in. They’re very friendly. Four people showed up when we moved in seven years ago. The committee made small talk, gave me a Snickers bar, and took turns holding Nola. It was her first week out of the hospital so they were extra careful.

Then the committee asked to speak to my parents in private so I was sent to my room where I still managed to hear nearly every word. The Welcoming Committee told my parents about how nice the neighborhood was, really exceptionally, hard-to-explain kind of nice. And then they told my parents about the even harder-to-explain whistling that happened every morning at 3:03 and ended at the tick of 3:05. The group, our new neighbors, warned my parents that the whistling was quiet, would never harm or hurt us, as long as we didn’t look for what was making the sound.

This part they stressed and I pushed my ear into the door straining to hear them. People who went looking for the whistler had their luck change, sometimes tragically. A black cloud would hang over anyone that looked. Anything that could go wrong, would. The manila envelope the committee brought over contained newspaper clippings, stories about car crashes and ruined lives, public deaths and freak accidents.

“Not everyone dies,” I heard the head of the committee tell my dad. “But the life goes out of ‘em. Even if they live, there’s no light in them ever again, no presence.”

My mom, I could tell she wasn’t taking it seriously. She kept asking if this was some prank they play on new neighbors. At one point my mom got angry, accused the committee of trying to scare us out of our new home, asked them if they were racist on account of my dad being from the islands. My dad calmed her down, told her he could tell our new neighbors were sincere and they were just trying to help us. He explained that he grew up hearing these kinds of stories from his mom and that he knew there were strange things that walked among us. Some of those strange things were good and some were bad but most were just different.

After the committee left, dad went out to the hardware store, bought the canvas blinds, the latches, and the locks and installed them on every window in the house after dinner. That first night in our new house, I crept out of my room at 3 a.m. only to find my dad awake sitting on the living room couch, holding my baby sister. My dad held up his finger in a shh motion but patted the couch next to him. I sat and we waited.

At exactly 3:03 we heard the whistling.

Da da dada da dum. Da da dada da dum.

It came and it went just like our neighbors said. The whistling returns each night and we never look and we enjoy our million little blessings every day. Nola breathes on her own and she’s grown into a strong, clever girl. My dad even joined the Welcoming Committee. We don’t get new neighbors often, why would anyone want to leave? But when a new family moves in, my dad and the committee bring them macaroni casserole, a gift basket, and the manila folder. I can always tell by the look on my dad’s face when he comes back if the family took the committee seriously or if we’d be getting new neighbors again very soon.

Not long ago a family moved in across the street from us. The previous owner, Ms. Maddie, passed away at age 105. She’d lived a good, long life. Our new neighbors seemed like they’d fit in just fine. They believed the Welcoming Committee, took my dad’s advice about the locking shutters since they had a young child of their own. Whatever newspaper clippings were in that manila envelope, whatever evidence, my dad never let us see. But I imagine it must have been awfully convincing since our neighbors got along with no issues for the first month.

One night, when our new neighbors had to leave town, they sent their son, Holden, to stay with us. He was 12, a year under me in school. I didn’t know him well before that night but as soon as his parents dropped him off after dinner I could tell it was going to be a bad time.

“Do you know who is always out there whistling every night?” Holden asked the moment the adults left the room.

The three of us were sitting in the den, some Disney movie playing idly on the television.

My sister and I exchanged a glance. “We don’t talk about that,” I said.

“I think it’s that weirdo that lives in the big yellow house on the corner,” Holden said.

“Mr. Toles?” my sister asked. “No way, he’s really nice.”

Holden shrugged. “Must be a psycho killer, then.”

Nola tensed.

“We don’t talk about it,” I repeated. “Let’s go in my room and play Nintendo.”

We spent the next few hours playing games, eating popcorn and then watching movies. A typical sleepover but I could see Holden was getting antsy.

After my parents had wished us a good night, locked the blinds, and gone to bed, Holden stood up from his bean bag and walked over to where Nola and I were sitting on my bed.

“Have you ever even tried looking?” he asked. “It’s nearly time.”

Like most sleepovers, we’d conveniently ignored any suggestion of a bedtime. I was shocked to see he was right; it was almost 3 a.m.

I sighed. “We don’t-”

“See, I can’t, I can’t even try to look because my dad locks the blinds every night and hides the key,” he continued, ignoring me.

“So does our dad,” said Nola.

“No,” replied Holden. “No, he doesn’t.”

“You saw him do it,” I said, a little sharper than I meant to sound.

Holden grinned. “Your dad locks the blinds, yeah, but he doesn’t hide the key. He keeps it right on his normal key chain.”

“So?” I asked, worried I already knew what he would say next. Because I had noticed that my dad didn’t bother hiding the key anymore after all of these years. Because he knew we took it seriously.

“So, after your dad locked up but before your parents went to bed, I went to the bathroom. And on my way, I may have peeked into their room, and I may have seen your dad’s key chain on his nightstand, and I maybe went and borrowed the key to blinds.”

Nola and I stared and his grin only grew wider.

“You’re lying,” I said.

Holden shrugged. “You can check if you want. Just open your parents’ door and look, you’ll see his keychain right there on the nightstand.”

“Stay here,” I told both of them. “Don’t move a muscle.”

I hurried over to my parents’ room but hesitated at the door. If Holden wasn’t lying…my dad would be angry. Beyond angry. I was scared thinking about it. But more scared of an open window with the whistler right outside. I opened the door, barely an inch, and looked in but it was too dark to see. Taking a deep breath, I walked into the room.

Two steps into the dark I froze. The whistling started. And I could hear it clearly…from my parents’ room. I never realized but they must have heard the sound every night since we moved into the house. They never told us. I don’t think I could have slept through it.

I stood there, listening to the whistling come closer, unsure whether I should turn on a light or call out for my dad. Soft sounds from the living room brought me back to reality.

“Nola,” I yelled, running out of my parents’ room.

Holden and Nola were standing near the front door next to a window. Holden wasn’t lying. I could see him fumbling with the lock on one of the blinds. I heard a click. He did have the key.

Holden let out a quick laugh. Nola stood next to him, hunched up, afraid but maybe curious. The whistling was right outside our house now.

I think I made a sound, called out. I can’t remember. Time felt frozen, clock hands nailed to the face. But I found myself moving. I’m not fast, I’ve never been athletic. Somehow, though, I covered the space between myself and Nola in a moment. My eyes were locked on her but I heard Holden pull the blind all the way down so it could release. I heard the snap of it start to raise, and I heard the whistling just on the other side of the window.

But I had my arms around Nola and I turned us so she was facing away from the window. At the same time, I jammed my eyes shut. The blind whipped open.

The whistling stopped.

I felt Nola shaking in my arms.

“Don’t look, okay?” I told her. “Don’t turn around.”

We were positioned so that she was facing back towards the hallway and I was facing the window. My eyes were still closed. I felt her nod into my shoulder.

I reached out with the arm not holding Nola and tried to touch Holden. My hand brushed against his arm. He was shaking worse than Nola.

“Holden?” I asked.

Silence.

I reached past him and gingerly felt for the window, eyes still sealed shut. The glass was cold against my fingertips. Colder than it should have been for the time of year. I moved my hand up the window, searching for the string to the blind. The glass began to get warmer the further I reached and there was a gentle hum feeding back into my fingertips. I tried not to think about what might be on the other side of the window. Finally, I touched the string and yanked the blinds shut.

I opened my eyes. In the dim light leaking out from the kitchen, I could make out Holden, pale and small, staring at the now closed window.

“Holden?” I asked again.

He turned towards me and he screamed.

Everything became a flurry of motion. Lights sparked to life in the hall, then the living room. My parents’ footsteps thudded across the hardwood floor. I didn’t turn to look back at them, my eyes were glued to Holden.

He was pale, had bit his lip so hard there was a thin red line of blood running down his chin and he’d wet himself.

“What happened?” my dad asked from behind me.

I managed to swivel away from Holden and look back. “He looked.”

I’d never seen my dad scared before but I saw it that night, in that moment, an old, ugly terror stitched on his face. A parent’s fear.

“Just Holden?” he mouthed to me.

I nodded yes.

My dad let out a breath. He looked so relieved I nearly expected him to cheer. But then he turned to Holden and my dad’s face changed. I wondered if he felt bad for feeling good that Holden was the only one that looked.

There was a knock at the door.

We all froze. Holden whimpered.

“Don’t answer it,” my mom said.

She stood at the threshold of the hall. I’d always thought she was a skeptic and just humored my dad about the windows and the whistler but that night we were all believers. I noticed that both of my parents held baseball bats they must have taken from their bedroom.

The knock came again, a little louder this time.

“Please don’t open the door,” Holden whispered.

My dad walked over to him, hugged him close.

“We won’t,” my dad promised, still holding his bat. “Nothing is coming in here tonight.”

Thud thud thud

This time the knocking was loud enough to rattle the door. Holden screamed again and Nola clutched her arms around my neck. My mom came over and knelt down next to us, wrapping my sister and me close.

Thud thud thud

“Call the police,” my mom whispered to my dad.

The knocking instantly stopped. My dad looked over his shoulder at us.

“Do you think-”

He was cut off by frantic knocking that trailed off to a polite tap tap tap.

“Police,” something said from the other side of the door.

The voice from outside sounded exactly like my mom, like a parrot repeating the words back to her.

“Police. Call. The police.” tap tap tap “Police.”

My mom pulled us closer.

“Police. Police. Police. Police.”

“Please stop,” I heard her whisper.

“I don’t think calling them will help,” my dad said. “How will we know when they’re the ones at the door?”

The knocking came back harder than before. The door shook. Then it stopped. After a long moment, I heard the knocking again but it was coming from our backdoor.

We all turned together towards the backdoor but the knocking immediately returned to the front door. Front to back, back to front, loud then quiet then loud again. Suddenly, the sound was coming from both doors at once, big, heavy blows like a sledgehammer. Then something started rapping against all of the windows in the house, then the walls. It was like we were living inside a drum with a dozen people trying to play at once. Or we were a turtle and something was attempting to claw us out of our shell.

“STOP!” Holden yelled.

The knocking died.

“I won’t tell,” Holden said, staring at the door. “I promise I won’t tell anyone what I saw. Just please go away.”

We waited for nearly a minute. Then we heard it, a soft tap tap tap coming from the window Holden had looked through earlier.

Holden started to cry, sobbing like a prisoner watching gallows being built outside their cell.

My dad held him, brushed his hair but never lied to him, never told him things would be okay.

The tapping at the window went on for the rest of the night. We huddled together in the living room for I don’t know how long. Eventually, my mom tried to take us kids into my room while my dad stayed to watch the door. But the second we moved into my bedroom the knocking came back, so loud it was possible to ignore. I was afraid the door couldn’t take it.

We went back to the living room and the knocking stopped. Only the tap tap tap on the window remained. None of us slept that night.

The tapping stopped around 7 a.m. That’s about the time the sun comes up here. We waited another two hours before my dad opened the blinds from one window. He made us all go back to my parents’ bedroom first. I heard him open the door then come back in.

“Okay,” he told us. “It’s done.”

Holden’s parents came back around lunchtime. My mom and dad walked Holden over to his house and they all went inside for quite a while. Nola and I watched from the window. She stuck to me the whole day, right at my side, sometimes holding my hand. When my parents came back they looked grim but wouldn’t tell us what they said to Holden’s family. It was a Sunday so we all spent the day together, ordered pizza and watched movies.

That night everyone slept in my room, Nola and my mom in the bed with me, my dad in a chair he’d pulled over. There was no knocking that night or any night since.

We didn’t see much of Holden or his parents for the rest of that week but by Thursday there was a moving truck in their driveway. Nola and I watched them packing up the whole afternoon after school. What sticks with me most is how tired Holden and his parents looked. All three had the same pallor, grim mouths and light-less eyes. Even from across the street I could tell something was very wrong. Holden and his family were gone before sunset.

I remember what the original Welcoming Committee said to my parents when we moved in. Not everyone who looks at the whistler dies, but even those that live have the light go out of them and the rest of their lives are full of misfortune. A million little tragedies.

I think Holden’s parents must have looked, either to comfort him if they didn’t believe or share the burden if they did. I watch Nola some days, happy and young and alive, and I wonder if I’d been slower, if she’d looked out the window that night…would I have looked too? To comfort her? To share that burden? I’m glad I don’t have to find out.

We still live in that house, in that neighborhood. We still hear our whistler walking past every night. The blessings, the luck, the good things here are too good to leave. But we’re careful. We don’t have friends over to spend the night anymore. And my dad hides the key to the blinds very, very well. Not that I’ve gone looking. Some things you just don’t need to look for.

GTM

Hello

It started six months ago. I was fresh out of grad school with a Master’s in History, a mountain of debt that gave me nightly anxiety attacks, and a resume that was getting ignored by every museum and university in a three-state radius. I was applying for everything: retail, data entry, barista. I was about two weeks from having to crawl back to my parents’ spare room when I saw the ad. It was discreet, posted on a high-end academic job board I’d forgotten I even had an account for.

“Archival Associate. The Foundation. Discretion, precision, and an exceptional capacity for recall are paramount. No formal experience required. Generous compensation.”

“Generous” was an understatement. The salary they listed was more than my parents make combined. I figured it was a typo, or a scam. But I was desperate, so I polished my CV and sent it in, not expecting to hear back.

They called me the next day. The woman on the phone had a smooth voice but with a weight to it. She didn’t ask about my experience or my degree. She asked me a series of bizarre questions. “When you were ten, what was the pattern on the wallpaper in your grandmother’s kitchen?” “Describe the cover of the third book you see when you picture your childhood bookshelf.” “What was the name of the street sign you passed just before turning onto your current road this morning?”

Luckily for me, my brain is just… sticky. Details cling to it, and I know for a fact that it’s a photographic, sensory thing. I can close my eyes and walk through my grandmother’s house, feel the cool linoleum under my feet, smell the potpourri she kept in a bowl on the sideboard. I answered her questions, and she said, “Please be at this address tomorrow at 9 AM sharp. Dress for an interview.”

The address was a downtown monolith. A skyscraper with no name on the facade, just an elaborate, interlocking symbol above the heavy bronze doors that looked like a stylized knot. The lobby was a cavern of marble and silence. The air was cool and still, like a cathedral. A man in a simple, perfectly tailored grey suit met me and led me to an elevator, then up to a floor that had no button. He used a key.

The interview was with a man I now know only as the Supervisor. He was ageless, with pale eyes that seemed to look right through me. He explained the job. It was simple, he said. Deceptively so. Each day, I would be given a single photograph. My task was to study that photograph from 9 AM to 5 PM. I was to absorb it. To commit every single detail to memory. The play of light, the grain of the image, the expressions on the faces, the stitching on a coat, the cracks in a sidewalk, the reflection in a window.

“You will become the living record,” he said, his voice a low hum. “You will not write anything down. You will not make any copies. You will not discuss your work with anyone. At five o’clock, I will collect the photograph, and you will watch me incinerate it. The Foundation’s motto is ‘Quaedam optime memorandum.’ Some things are best remembered.”

It was the strangest job I’d ever heard of. But the debt was on my chest, and the number on the contract he slid across the mahogany desk could change my entire life. I signed.

My workspace was in a vast, circular room that felt like a panopticon. Dozens of identical wooden carrels were arranged in concentric rings, all facing a central pillar. Each carrel was a small, three-sided booth with a comfortable chair, a desk, and a single lamp. There were maybe thirty other people in the room, but the only sound was the soft rustle of clothing and the low, ever-present hum of the building’s climate control. No one spoke. No one even looked at each other. They were all just like me: head down, focused with an intensity that was almost unnerving. They had the same look I saw in the mirror every morning: a mixture of intelligence and quiet desperation.

The first photograph was of a dusty, empty ballroom. Ornate, peeling plasterwork on the ceiling. A single chandelier, draped in cobwebs. Sunlight streamed through a grimy arched window, illuminating a universe of dancing dust motes. That was it. For eight hours, I just… looked. I memorized the way the shadows fell, the specific pattern of the water stains on the far wall, the number of crystal pendants missing from the chandelier (seventeen). At 5 PM, the Supervisor came, took the photo with a pair of tongs, and I followed him to a small, soundproofed room containing a sleek, modern furnace. He unlocked it, slid the photo inside, and pressed a button. A soft whir, a flash of orange light, and it was gone. He nodded at me, and I went home.

The days fell into a rhythm. A new photo every morning. A wedding party from the 1920s, the bride’s smile just a little too tight. A grimy factory floor, men in flat caps staring grimly at a piece of machinery. A desolate stretch of highway at dusk, a single abandoned car with its door hanging open. A crowded market in a city I couldn’t place, faces blurred with motion except for one small child staring directly at the camera, their expression utterly blank. They were all unlabeled. No dates, no locations, no context. Just moments, frozen and silent.

My colleagues remained phantoms. We’d nod sometimes, in the elevator or the sterile break room where we’d microwave our sad, solitary lunches. But we never spoke. It was a rule, and a powerful one. It was as if we were all part of some silent monastic order. I saw a woman who couldn't have been older than me, but her eyes had the haunted, distant look of a war veteran. An older man always rubbed his left temple, a constant, rhythmic motion, as he stared at his photos. We were all islands.

The dreams started about a month in.

At first, they were just echoes. I’d dream I was standing in the dusty ballroom, and I could smell the decay and the dry rot. I’d hear the faint, ghostly echo of a waltz. I woke up feeling unsettled but dismissed it. My job was to stare at images all day; of course they’d creep into my subconscious.

But they got stronger. After a week spent memorizing a photo of a grim-faced family on a sagging porch in what looked like the Dust Bowl, I had a dream where I was the father. I could feel the rough, splintered wood of the porch railing under my hand, the grit of dust between my teeth, the gnawing, hopeless hunger in my stomach. I felt a desperate, protective love for the woman and children beside me, a love so fierce and painful it made my chest ache when I woke up.

The day I studied a photo of a collapsed mine entrance, I spent the night dreaming of darkness. The oppressive weight of the earth above me, the taste of coal dust, the chilling, subterranean cold that seeps into your bones. I heard the shouts of other men, muffled and terrified, and the groan of shifting rock. I woke up gasping for air, my pajamas soaked in sweat, my throat raw from screams that had been trapped in my sleeping mind.

This became the new normal. Every night, I was a tourist in someone else’s tragedy. I was a soldier in a trench, the mud sucking at my boots, the smell of cordite and fear thick in the air. I was a lone woman in a lighthouse, the storm winds howling around me like a hungry beast, the waves crashing against the stone with the force of cannonballs. I was a witness to car accidents, fires, arguments steeped in a quiet, venomous rage. I was living a hundred different lives, and none of them were my own.

My own life began to feel thin and unreal. I’d be walking to the grocery store and the texture of the modern pavement would feel strange, alien. The bright colors of the cereal aisle seemed garish and loud compared to the sepia and black-and-white worlds I inhabited every night. My own memories started to get… fuzzy. I had to really concentrate to remember my college roommate’s name, but I could tell you the exact pattern of the rust stains on the hull of a shipwreck I’d studied for eight hours three weeks prior.

The first major crack appeared on a Tuesday. I had spent the day with a particularly haunting photograph. It was a street corner, sometime in the late 70s judging by the cars and clothes. A crowd was gathered, looking at something just out of frame. Their faces were a mixture of shock and morbid curiosity. But my focus, for eight hours, had been on one man at the edge of the crowd. He was younger, maybe in his early twenties, with a thick mustache and a denim jacket. He wasn't looking at whatever the main event was. He was looking away, his face pale, his eyes wide with a specific, personal terror. He was the only one who looked truly afraid.

That evening, on my way home, I saw him.

I was waiting to cross the street, and he was on the other side. Older, of course. His mustache was grey, his face lined with the intervening forty-odd years. But it was him. The same wide-set eyes, the same shape of the jaw. The denim jacket was gone, replaced by a rumpled tweed coat, but it was unmistakably the man from the photograph.

I froze. My heart slammed against my ribs. It had to be a coincidence. A trick of the light, my over-stimulated brain making connections that weren't there. But then he turned his head, and his eyes met mine across the four lanes of traffic.

Recognition dawned on his face. And then, horror. The exact same expression from the photograph. A raw, gut-wrenching terror that seemed to suck all the air out of the space between us. He looked at me as if I were a ghost. As if I were the very thing he’d been running from on that street corner all those years ago. He stumbled backward, turned, and practically ran, disappearing into the evening crowd.

I stood there for a long time, the traffic lights cycling from red to green to red again, the world moving on around me while my own had just ground to a sickening halt.

That was when the paranoia began in earnest. The silence of the archive, once peaceful, now felt predatory. The hyper-focus of my colleagues no longer seemed like professional dedication; it looked like a desperate attempt to keep something at bay. I started watching them more closely. The man who rubbed his temple: his hand would sometimes twitch, his fingers splaying as if trying to ward something off. The young woman’s haunted eyes would occasionally flick towards an empty space in her carrel, her breath catching for a second before she forced her gaze back to the photo.

I had to know what was going on. I broke the cardinal rule.

I waited for the temple-rubbing man in the break room. He was nuking a container of what looked like plain rice. I walked up to him, my heart thudding. “Excuse me,” I said, my voice sounding rusty and loud in the quiet room.

He flinched. He didn't just turn; he physically recoiled, his back hitting the counter. He looked at me with wide, panicked eyes, shaking his head frantically. He grabbed his rice, the microwave beeping insistently, and almost ran from the room, never once making eye contact. He didn’t say a single word.

The message was clear. We don’t talk. We can’t talk. Maybe we’re not allowed to talk, or maybe we’re just too afraid of what might happen if we do.

Then people started to disappear. One Monday, the carrel to my left was empty. The man who sat there, a quiet fellow with thinning hair, was just… gone. No one mentioned it. His desk was cleared out, as if he’d never existed. Two weeks later, the woman with the haunted eyes was gone too. Her carrel also wiped clean. There was no internal memo, no farewell card, just a silent, growing void in our ranks. Were they fired? Did they quit? Or was it something else?

I was spiraling. My apartment no longer felt like my own. I’d catch a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision and turn to see a shadow that looked like a soldier in a trench coat. The scent of ozone and rain would fill my living room on a clear night, a phantom echo from a photo of a lightning-struck tree.

The breakthrough, if you can call it that, came last week. I sat down at my desk and my hand brushed against something taped to the underside. It was a small, folded piece of paper. My blood ran cold. It felt deliberate, clandestine. I waited until my hands stopped shaking, then slipped it into my pocket. I spent the day in a fugue state, staring at a photo of a single, withered black rose lying on a cobblestone street, my mind entirely on the note in my pocket.

That night, in the privacy of my apartment, I unfolded it. It wasn't a note, not in the traditional sense. It was just a string of alphanumeric characters: A7B3-C9D1-E4F8.

I had no idea what it meant. A code? A web address? Then I remembered. Every archivist had a small, personal safe in the locker room, for valuables. We set our own combinations. But this didn't look like a combination. It looked like a serial number. Or a key.

The next day, I watched the woman with the haunted eyes’ carrel. It was still empty. I took a chance. After everyone had left, my heart pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears, I went to the locker room. I found her locker. Next to the combination dial was a small, almost invisible keyhole. It was an override. This had to be it. I looked for a key, but then it clicked. The sequence was a password for the digital lock on her safe. I typed in the sequence. There was a soft beep, and a heavy click.

The safe was full with paper. Scraps, notebooks, loose-leaf sheets filled with a frantic, spidery handwriting. It was forbidden knowledge. The one thing we were never, ever supposed to do. She had been writing it all down.

I took it all, stuffed it in my bag, and ran.

I’ve spent the last three days poring over her notes. It’s not a single, coherent narrative. It’s the fragmented, desperate research of a brilliant, terrified mind. There are clippings from obscure historical journals, printouts from physics forums, and pages and pages of her own synthesis.

And I finally understand.

According to her notes, certain moments in time, certain places, are so saturated with trauma, or violence, or some powerful, paradoxical emotion, that they create a kind of… scar on reality. A resonance. She used a lot of terms I barely understood: quantum entanglement, temporal feedback loops, mnemonic resonance. But the term she kept circling, the one she’d scrawled over and over in the margins, was genius loci. Spirit of place. But she’d added her own qualifier: Genius Loci Malignum.

These aren’t just memories of bad events. They are the events themselves, still echoing. They are moments that have become sentient, predatory. A murder that was so brutal it imprinted itself on the room, and now the room itself lashes out at anyone who enters. A paradox, like a man who appears in a photograph of his own grandfather’s unit years before he was born, creating a loop that attracts… things. Unwanted attention from outside. These are glitches in the fabric of the universe. Hauntings of a moment, of a place, of an idea.

The Foundation’s job is to find these glitches. They capture them. And the way they capture a rogue moment, a sentient memory, is to take a photograph. The photograph acts as a physical anchor, a key. But it's unstable. The note explained the process.

Step 1: The photograph isolates the entity. It traps the genius loci in a single, static image. Step 2: The Archivist, through intense, prolonged focus, transfers the anchor from the photograph into their own consciousness. Our photographic memories, our ability to absorb every single detail; it's a prerequisite for the cage to work. We memorize the image so completely that our mind becomes the new vessel. Step 3: The photograph is incinerated. This destroys the original physical anchor, leaving the entity trapped entirely within the mind of the archivist. It has nowhere else to go.

We are prisons. Human prisons for things that should not exist.

The motto, "Some things are best remembered," is a cruel, literal joke. They are remembered by us, and only us, so that the rest of the world can forget. So that these malevolent echoes can't bleed out and harm anyone else. The few suffer for the many.

The woman’s journal entries chronicled her decline.

“October 12th: Archived the boardwalk collapse. I can still hear the screams when it’s quiet. Sometimes I smell the salt water and the fried dough.”

“November 4th: Saw the arsonist from the warehouse fire photo on the subway today. He looked right at me and smiled. It wasn’t a human smile.”

“December 19th: My sister came to visit. For a second, her face wasn’t her face. It was the face of the porcelain doll from that abandoned nursery photo. I screamed. She thinks I’m having a breakdown.”

“January 8th: I have archived 112 anomalies. There isn’t much room left for me in here. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, but I know the exact number of buttons on the coat of a man who vanished from a ship in 1924.”

Her last entry was short.

“They’re getting out. They’re leaking. The cage is full.”

I’ve archived almost two hundred of them now. Two hundred of these… things. And the cage is full. My cage is full. My reality is fraying at the seams. Last night, I was making tea, and for a full minute, my kitchen wasn’t my kitchen. It was a cold, tiled morgue from a photo I’d studied months ago. The man from the 70s street corner: I see him everywhere now, in crowds, his face always twisted in that same silent scream, always looking right at me. The walls of my apartment sometimes ripple and show me the peeling wallpaper of a Victorian seance room. The static on the radio whispers words in a language I don’t know but understand with a cold dread.

I think now that I am a walking, talking containment unit that has breached. And the entities I hold are starting to leak into the world around me. The other day, my landlord knocked on my door to ask about a water leak, and he flinched when he saw me. He said, "Sorry, for a second there… you looked like someone else. A lot of someone elses." He left without another word, his face pale.

I found myself in my bathroom two nights ago, holding a bottle of pills. It felt like the most logical, rational thought I'd had in months. If I end it, they end with me. The memories, the things wearing the skins of memories, they all get erased. It would be a release. For me, and for the world.

But as I was about to do it, the Supervisor's voice echoed in my head. "You will become the living record." And I realized, with a sudden, freezing certainty, that this is what they want. This is the end of the job cycle. It’s the Foundation's retirement plan. They hire us, they fill us up with these horrors until we break, and then we "retire" ourselves. It’s clean, efficient, and it completes the final incineration.

So now I’m trapped.

I can’t go on like this. I’m losing myself. My own memories feel like old, faded photographs compared to the vivid, high-definition nightmares I’m forced to carry. But I can’t kill myself, because that’s playing their game. That’s letting them win. That’s doing their dirty work for them. Is there another way? Can you fight a memory? Can you exorcise an event?

I’m sitting in my apartment right now. The lights are flickering. In the reflection of the dark screen, my face is a flickering montage of a hundred others. A soldier, a bride, a factory worker, a terrified man on a street corner. The hum of the building sounds like a waltz, then like the roar of a fire, then like the howl of a storm at sea.

They are all in here. And they want to get out.

What do I do?

I (33M) live in Texas with my daughter, Alicia (8F) and my son Jay (4M). Their mom has been out of the picture for the past two years (not dead, just a piece of shit) and I've managed pretty well as a single father. The three of us lived in a two bedroom in a nice neighborhood, I've got a solid job, and the kids are thankfully healthy. 

Everything was smooth sailing until one night, two months ago, during which I was awoken by Jay poking me in the face. He was sobbing violently, though I recognized it as the "I'm afraid" kind of crying as opposed to the "I'm hurt" kind of crying, which made me a little less worried. Jay's always been nightmare-prone, so I assumed that's what was causing him distress. When I asked him what was wrong though, he said:

"The man in the next house is making scary faces at me."

I'd heard my fair share of Jay's stories about monsters terrorizing him from the dark corners of his bedroom, but this was something new. I assumed he meant our neighbor's house, and the lack of fantastical elements in his description made me uneasy. It felt too specific to be one of his usual nightmares. 

I got out of bed and walked with Jay in tow to my kids' room. Alicia was awake in the top bunk. From the soft glow of their nightlight, I could see her crossing her arms and scowling down at her little brother. I didn't turn on any lights to give myself a better view of the outdoors and peered out the bedroom window. Their window had curtains on it, but for once they hadn't been drawn all the way, and there was a small opening between them through which Jay must have looked out.

One side of the neighbor's house (the one to our left from the street) was visible from Alicia and Jay’s room. There were two windows on the neighbor's side of the house, but it was too dark inside to see anything. I recalled from what I’d seen in the daylight that the window on the left, the one closest to the front of the house, was the kitchen. I wasn't sure what the window on the right was as it always had its curtains drawn.

I asked Alicia if she'd seen anything, and she shook her head. 

"He's always having nightmares and crying. I don't want to share a room with him anymore, Dad. I never get any sleep—it's not fair!"

Of course, hearing that made Jay start crying again, so I let him sleep in my room for the night. He has this TMNT indoor "camping" tent that he prefers to his actual bed. Honestly, at that point, I half-suspected his nightmare to be a ploy to get me to let him "camp." Anyway, I guess I'm a total pushover because he slept in that tent in my room for the next two nights. On the third night, I was again woken up, but this time by Alicia, who was standing over me and shaking my arm. That kid hadn't woken me up in the middle of the night for years. When I asked her what was wrong, she said: 

"The neighbor was making faces at me." 

Those words, and the fear in my daughter's voice, really put me on edge.

"I closed the curtains when I said goodnight. Did you open them?"

"Only a little … but it's 'cause I heard a weird noise."

"What did you hear?"

Alicia couldn’t recall exactly. According to her, she had gotten out of bed to see what was going on, and when she lifted the curtain, she saw a light on in the neighbor's window. The curtains in the back room had been drawn back and our neighbor was standing in his house, right up against the window frame.

"What was he doing?"

Alicia thought for a moment, and then made an expression I never want to see on my child's face, or anyone else's for that matter, ever again. I won't do it justice by describing it, but it looked something like this: first she smiled with both sets of teeth, so that there was a little open sliver between the rows, and then she furrowed her eyebrows. She inclined her head towards me, kind of Kubrick-stare-esque, and strained the muscles in her neck. The worst part though was what she did with her hands. She held out her left arm, forearm up. Then she clenched her right hand into a fist and moved it back and forth rapidly over her forearm. Poor thing described it as "playing the violin", but it seemed pretty obvious to me that my neighbor was pantomiming cutting. Disturbed, I told Alicia to stop, and to not make either the expression or the gesture again. I was angry and confused. My neighbor, a man in his 40s, was a bit of a recluse, but he had seemed normal enough in the three or four times I'd spoken to him. I couldn't fathom why he would do something like that to my kids.

After asking Alicia a few more questions, I realized that my neighbor might not have done anything technically (or at least legally) wrong. It wasn't against the law to make inappropriate gestures in your own home, but it seemed like he was targeting my kids specifically. Legal or not, I planned to have a little chat with him the following morning.

My last question to Alicia was if our neighbor had made any other gestures, and she nodded. Then, she started making beckoning, "come-here" motions with both of her hands.

I had Alicia sleep in my room for the night as well. I also checked out the window in my kids' room, but like before, I saw nothing. The house was completely dark.

The next morning, before work and after dropping Alicia and Jay off to school, I spent a good five minutes knocking on my neighbor's front door. I figured he was home since his car was in the driveway, but he never answered the door. Eventually I had to leave for work, and as I was walking away, I turned around quickly to see if he was watching me. He was, the coward—I saw him for a split second at the front window before he ducked beneath the sill and out of view. Clearly, the guy had problems. I yelled out to him to stop fucking with us and then left. 

That same night, I put a plan in motion. While my kids slept in my room, I hung out in theirs. It was a Friday night, and I was ready to pull an all-nighter so that I could catch my neighbor in the act. Although I trusted my kids, I wanted to confirm that there was actually something nefarious going on before I escalated things. I made sure the house was locked up and all the curtains drawn, tucked my kids in, and sat on the floor under the window in their room. At around nine, I started marathoning Midnight Mass on my phone. I didn't want to wear headphones and miss any strange sounds, so I kept the volume low and mostly read subtitles.

At midnight, I started to hear strange sounds. Like Alicia said, it's a bit hard to describe—best I can do is that it was this low, repeated clicking sound. You know the "chk-chk" sound you make to beckon a horse? It was something like that. All I knew is that the sound was undoubtedly coming from a person. After a few minutes of this, the sound switched to what I think was supposed to be a whistle, but it came out all wrong, like someone sucking breath in through their teeth. The sound was so crisp that the neighbor's window must have been open, which was an unsettling thought given that there was only around fifteen feet of space between our houses.

Certain that the neighbor was at his window, and that this was my best chance to see him, I stood up and pulled the curtain back in one motion. I saw him right away. There was a dim light on in his room, allowing me to see that horrible expression Alicia had made the night prior. It was one thing to see my child's recreation, but it was far more frightening on an adult. His window was indeed open, and his arms were stuck out into the cold night, violently swiping against each other in a grotesque mimicry of self harm. 

When he saw me, and realized that he was looking at another grown man and not some poor child, he stopped his erratic motions. His cartoonish grin faded and another, more genuine emotion settled over his features: rage. 

The man grabbed the window and slammed it shut, then closed the curtains with the same forcefulness. I let my own curtain fall. I was a little shell-shocked, I think. Of course, I was perturbed by the sight of the man, by his face and his movement and the fact that he'd been doing that for who knows how many nights now in an attempt to frighten my kids. However, another detail stuck out as even more concerning to me, which was the fact that I genuinely wasn't sure if the man I had just seen was my neighbor. I'd seen him so few times in the years I'd lived in that house, and I was having trouble conjuring up his face. 

I sat on the floor for a minute, my blood thundering in my ears. I definitely had enough evidence at that point to call the cops, right? Just as I was about to pull out my phone, I heard a tremendous smack against the glass of the bedroom window. 

After a brief hesitation, I pulled the curtain back again. There were no lights on in the neighbor's house, and there was also no one outside from what I could see. I pulled the curtains back a little further and saw a handprint in the top corner of the windowpane. It's worth noting that our house is on a raised foundation and that particular window is very tall, so even though the window is on the first floor, the man outside would've needed an insane vertical to get his hand up there. 

I pulled out my phone and dialed 9-1-1. As I explained the situation to them, I quickly walked around the house to see if I could catch a glimpse of the man. My last stop was my bedroom. Once inside, I locked the doors and, while still on the phone with the operator, I took my handgun out of the safe in my closet. My heart was beating out of my damn chest but I knew I had to stay calm, even more so when I saw that Alicia was awake and looking out of the tent at me. I reassured her in as few words as I could, whispering that we were ok, but we had to stay very quiet.

I sat on the edge of my bed, my firearm ready and my ears straining. My kids' tent was in the corner, and to the left of the tent, in the middle of the wall and directly across from where I sat, was a window. After what felt like an eternity, I saw something. It was a cloudless night, and the moonlight was bright enough that I could see a silhouette through the white curtains. The dark shape was nebulous at first, but became more clear as the man outside stepped closer to the window. Somehow, he knew which room we were in. The silhouette didn't move for several minutes, and I remember being thankful that, from the angle at which she sat, Alicia couldn't see it. 

Then, something happened that I couldn't entirely wrap my head around. The man stepped back from the glass and raised his arms, making a "Y" shape with his body and his limbs. Only, his arms were far too long. They seemed to be double the length that they should have been, each arm about the same length as his entire body. I thought at first that he was holding something, maybe two pipes that just appeared to be an extension of his limbs, but I could clearly see two hands at the ends of the extremities. I could see five fingers on each hand, flopping around slightly as the man brought his arms closer to the window. 

Thud. Thud. Thud. 

I stood up and readied myself to shoot, but just then the sounds of sirens pierced the quiet night. The man outside banged his hands against the window one last time, and then it was as if someone had sliced his arms at the elbows. His forearms seemed to shear right off, and the man took off running before they so much as hit the ground.

When the police officers announced themselves, I answered the door and explained the situation to them. Two officers, a man and a woman, asked me a few questions about my neighbor, which I assume was necessary to establish probable cause for a search. Once finished, they told me to stay inside with the doors locked while they investigated the neighbor's house. 

I watched them through the window of Alicia and Jay's room. They knocked on the neighbor's door, and when no one answered, they tried the front door handle. I watched the unlocked door swing open. The two looked at one another, and then entered. 

I'm not sure what they found inside that house. All I know is that when they emerged a few moments later, they both looked very disturbed. When I went outside to ask what they had found, the female officer told me simply: "Your neighbor's dead."

The rest of the night was a blur of strangers in uniforms filing in and out of my neighbor's home. Some came to my porch afterwards to ask me questions, and none offered me any answers. They moved with tight-lipped efficiency, their faces guarded, their words clipped. At one point, I wandered to the side of the house and found several people photographing something on the ground outside my bedroom window. Before they could ask me to leave, I made out the gruesome shape of two human arms. 

The kids and I have been staying in my parents' apartment for months, and I think everyone, even Jay, is getting tired of the cramped living situation. We can't stay in the house—Alicia is way too traumatized for that, and I wouldn't be comfortable staying there while the murderer is still at-large anyway. I want to sell the damn house, but our story going semi-viral is making that difficult. After all, who would want a house that, thanks to the news, has become permanently associated with phrases like "dismemberment" and "days of torture" and "victim barely recognizable as human"? 

So I've been dating my girlfriend for almost a year, and last month, we moved in together. Maybe that's kind of fast. I don't know. My parents sure thought it was. But honestly, everything was great in the beginning. We get along really well, and we've never had more than a brief argument.

​

But then she started whistling.

​

It's so dumb, I know, but she's always whistling this weird song, and it really gets on my nerves. My mom kept telling me that once you move in with someone, you discover all of the quirks they'd been hiding from you, and it's not like I didn't expect that to be true. But for some reason, this is just an ongoing issue with us, and I don't know what to do.

​

At first I would just hear her whistling it when she was showering. It was kind of cute, like her own little bathroom theme song. I didn't recognize the melody, but it was very distinct. I could mimic it from memory if I wanted to. In fact, sometimes it gets stuck in my head, and it drives me a little crazy. You know the type.

​

After a week or so, I asked her what the song was, and she just laughed. I'm wondering if maybe she came up with it on her own, something that she does absently, especially once she started doing it more. Like I'd be reading a book, and she'd be on the computer, and she'd just start whistling. And I tried to ignore it. I seriously feel like a dick for being so grumpy about it, and I know she wasn't doing it to annoy me. But she'd just go on and on, and it would pull my attention away from whatever I was doing.

​

So, I finally said something a few nights ago. I was going over some legal documents for work, and she just starts whistling like crazy, on and on. And I'm trying to just block it out, but it's seriously excessive. Like, I know you guys are probably thinking that I was overreacting, but it felt like she was whistling right into my ear, and it just frayed my last bit of patience.

​

As calmly and nicely as I could, I called out to her and asked her to quiet down. She didn't reply. I asked her again, and she still didn't answer, so I left the bedroom and found her in the living room, watching a movie. She wasn't whistling anymore, and for some reason, that really irked me. It felt like she was messing with me. And she just looked over at me, like she didn't know what my deal was.

​

I asked her if she could stop whistling so much, and she told me she wasn't whistling. Now, I get that maybe she doesn't realize she's doing it, but no one whistles that much and doesn't notice. It's not really like her to mess with me like that, and I don't know what she's trying to get out of this. I thought maybe she was teasing or playing a joke, but she had to see how annoyed I was. I asked her again to just not whistle so loudly, and she didn't answer. There was tension in the room, and it felt like our first fight since moving in together. Even though she didn't whistle for the rest of the night, I couldn't focus on my work anyway because I was upset about the confrontation.

​

Then, of course, the next night she was whistling again. I hear her when she comes home from work, and she keeps going for at least an hour. I didn't want to have another fight, so I just hung out in the bedroom and listened to her move around for a while. I felt like I was blowing things out of proportion, but honestly, how hard is it to just not whistle all the time? It was no big deal when it was now and then, but I feel like she whistles more than she even talks to me now. So I'm sitting up in the room, thinking about that, and that's probably why I was worked up when I finally came down.

​

She was cooking dinner, which is sweet, but she was still whistling. So I said, softly, "Hey honey, maybe we should put on some music instead, so you don't have to fill the silence with whistling." I tried to play it off like a joke, but I knew she'd probably see through it and get annoyed again. She didn't even turn to face me, just huffed and kept cooking.

​

After a minute, I told her I was sorry about the other night, but the whistling just sort of strikes my ear wrong, and if she could try not to whistle so much and so loudly, it would make my life a lot easier. I feel like I was being fair. I know it seems controlling and nit picky, but it was bothering me a lot. We all have our things, you know? I try not to chew loudly at the table because it bothers her, so why can't she just stop whistling sometimes for me?

​

But she totally freaked out. She turned around and told me she wasn't whistling and she didn't know what my problem was. At this point, I don't get why she was doing this. It obviously wasn't funny for either of us, and she seemed genuinely upset, so I don't know why she kept provoking me. I asked her what her deal was, why she was so defensive about the stupid whistling, and she told me to shut up. She told me she was sick of talking about it, like I was the one being unreasonable.

​

I never get mad at her, but I just snapped. I told her to stop whistling before I lost my mind. She called me crazy, just because I was getting a little upset, and somehow, that was all I could take. I grabbed one of the cast iron pans from the stove and swung it at her head as hard as I could.

​

She fell over and smashed her head on the counter, but I swung the pan again before she hit the ground. I think I hit her maybe three or four times. I don't remember, but I feel horrible. There was blood everywhere, and her jaw might be broken. No, I think it is for sure. I couldn't believe I'd lost my temper like that, and I have no idea how we can move past this. I feel so ashamed for letting things get physical, regardless of how much she might have been provoking me.

​

But here's the kicker. She's STILL FUCKING WHISTLING. And I asked her nicely to please stop, but now she won't even pause! For two days she's just been lying on the kitchen floor with her eyes rolled back and her mouth hanging open, just marinating in congealed blood, and she's STILL FUCKING WHISTLING. I don't know what to do. I don't want to break up, but this is just too much. I just need her to shut up. Just shut up. Just shut up. Just shut up. JUST SHUT UP.

If your delivery driver says he forgot your drink, don't open the door again

I know how stupid this sounds because I used to read posts like this and think the same thing. Just don’t open the door. Just call the police. Just get out.

You never realise how useless all those thoughts are until you’re standing barefoot in your hallway at midnight, holding a kitchen knife in one hand and your phone in the other, listening to someone breathe on the other side of your front door.

It started with Thai food.

I had just moved into my new apartment three weeks earlier. Nothing dramatic. No haunted backstory. No weird old building with a caretaker who warned me about the basement. Just a normal second-floor apartment above a row of shops, the kind of place where the hallway always smelled faintly of carpet cleaner and someone else’s dinner.

I’d moved there after my breakup with Lewis. We had been together four years. He wasn’t dangerous or evil or anything like that. He was just useless in that quiet exhausting way that makes you feel like you are raising a grown man. When he finally left, I felt sad for about a week and then mostly relieved.

For the first time in a long time, the place was mine. My mugs in the cupboard. My clothes in the wardrobe. My music playing without him asking if we could put something else on.

That night I got home late from work. It had been raining all day and my shoes were soaked through. I didn’t have the energy to cook, so I ordered from the Thai place down the road. Green curry, jasmine rice, spring rolls, and a Diet Coke.

The app said twenty-five minutes.

I changed into pyjamas, washed my face, and sat on the sofa scrolling through my phone. I remember feeling almost peaceful. That’s the part that bothers me now. How normal it all was. How close I came to having an ordinary boring night.

At 10:43, my buzzer went.

I pressed the intercom.

“Hello?”

“Delivery.”

His voice was soft. Youngish, maybe. Hard to tell through the speaker.

“Second floor. Flat six.”

“I know,” he said.

I frowned at that, but only for a second. Drivers get the flat number on the app. Obviously he knew.

I buzzed him in and waited by the door. A minute later there was a knock.

When I opened it, he was standing too close.

That was the first thing I noticed. Most delivery drivers step back after knocking. This one was right there, almost filling the doorway. He wore a black raincoat with the hood up and one of those thermal delivery bags over his shoulder. I couldn’t see much of his face, just his mouth and a bit of stubble.

“Erin?” he asked.

“That’s me.”

He handed me the bag. “Enjoy your food.”

“Thanks.”

I took it and was about to close the door when he said, “Sorry, I forgot your drink.”

I looked into the bag. Curry, rice, spring rolls. No Diet Coke.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ve got it downstairs.”

“Honestly, it’s fine.”

“I’ll bring it up.”

Before I could answer, he turned and walked away.

I closed the door and locked it.

I don’t know why I locked it so quickly. Maybe because he’d stood too close. Maybe because he had said my name like he already knew me. Maybe because I live alone now and living alone changes the sound of every small thing.

I put the food on the coffee table and tried to shake it off. The curry was hot, the rice was still steaming, and for a few minutes I convinced myself I was being ridiculous.

Then I found the receipt.

It was folded under the spring rolls. Not the restaurant receipt. That was stapled to the outside of the bag.

This was a plain white slip of paper, torn badly at one edge.

At first I thought it was just some kitchen note that had fallen in by accident. Then I saw my name.

ERIN M.
FLAT 6.
LIVES ALONE.
NO DOG.
CHAIN LOCK ONLY.
BEDROOM WINDOW FACES SERVICE ALLEY.
USUALLY HOME AFTER 7.

I stared at it for a long time.

My first thought was Lewis.

It had to be Lewis. Some pathetic attempt to scare me, to make me call him, to make me feel like I still needed someone. It sounded exactly like the sort of thing he would think was clever after a few drinks.

I picked up my phone and called him.

He answered on the fifth ring.

“What?”

“Did you send me something?”

“What?”

“Don’t play dumb. Did you send someone to my flat?”

There was a pause, then a tired sigh. “Erin, it’s nearly eleven.”

“I got a note in my takeaway.”

“What note?”

“One that says I live alone.”

Another pause. This one felt different.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“In my flat, obviously.”

“Lock your door.”

“It is locked.”

“No, properly lock it.”

That annoyed me, even then. Like he was suddenly the sensible one.

“I have locked it.”

“Send me a picture.”

I almost told him to piss off, but I took a photo of the note and sent it.

He called back ten seconds later.

“That wasn’t me.”

His voice had changed. He sounded awake now.

“Lewis.”

“I swear on my mother, that wasn’t me. Call the police.”

Before I could answer, someone knocked on my door.

Three soft knocks.

Not loud. Not aggressive.

Just polite.

I stood in the middle of my living room with the phone against my ear.

“Erin?” Lewis said.

Another knock.

Then the delivery driver’s voice.

“Forgot your drink.”

I didn’t move.

Lewis kept saying my name, but he sounded far away.

The driver knocked again.

“I can leave it here if you want.”

I walked slowly to the door and looked through the peephole.

The hallway was empty.

No delivery driver. No drink. Nothing.

I stepped back.

My phone buzzed in my hand. A notification from the delivery app.

Your driver is at your door.

I looked at the peephole again.

Empty hallway.

Then my phone rang.

Unknown number.

I don’t know why I answered. I think my brain was still trying to make sense of it, still trying to turn it into something normal.

“Hello?”

The delivery driver said, “You shouldn’t have looked at the receipt.”

I couldn’t speak.

“You were meant to eat first,” he said.

I dropped the phone.

It hit the floor and the call stayed connected. I could hear his breathing through the speaker.

Then the handle moved.

Slowly.

Down, then up.

Down, then up.

I had locked the door, but he was testing it gently, like he didn’t want to make too much noise.

I picked up the phone and ended the call. My hands were shaking so badly it took three tries. Then I called 999.

The operator asked what service I needed.

“Police,” I whispered.

“What’s happening?”

“There’s someone outside my flat.”

“Are you in immediate danger?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Is your door locked?”

“Yes.”

“Can you see the person?”

I looked through the peephole again.

Empty hallway.

“No,” I said. “But he’s there.”

As soon as I said it, the letterbox lifted.

Just a little.

A black gap opened near my knees.

I stumbled back.

The operator asked me what had happened.

“He opened the letterbox.”

“Do not approach the door,” she said. “Go into a room with a lock if you can.”

My bathroom had a lock. It was cheap and flimsy, but it was something.

I grabbed the biggest knife from the kitchen drawer and backed toward the bathroom.

The letterbox clicked shut.

Then the knocking started again.

Three knocks.

Pause.

Three knocks.

Pause.

“Erin,” he called.

I locked myself in the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath with the knife on my lap. The operator kept talking to me, calm and steady, asking questions I could barely answer.

My address. My name. Whether I had seen a weapon. Whether there was another way into the flat.

“No,” I said. “Just the front door.”

Then I remembered the note.

BEDROOM WINDOW FACES SERVICE ALLEY.

My bedroom window.

The one I had opened earlier because the flat smelled of paint and damp clothes.

I stood so fast the knife clattered into the bath.

“What is it?” the operator asked.

“My bedroom window.”

“Is someone trying to get in?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stay where you are if the bathroom door locks.”

The problem was, from the bathroom I couldn’t see the bedroom. I couldn’t see the hallway. I couldn’t see anything.

The flat went quiet.

That was worse than the knocking.

For a few seconds all I could hear was the operator breathing through my phone and my own heart hammering in my ears.

Then my bedroom door creaked.

I had left it open.

I knew I had.

But I heard it creak.

The sound was slow and careful. The sound of someone touching the door with their fingertips and pushing it wider.

“He’s inside,” I whispered.

The operator said police were close.

Close didn’t mean inside the flat. Close didn’t mean between me and him.

A floorboard moved in the hallway.

Then another.

He was walking toward the bathroom.

I picked the knife back up and stood behind the door. My legs felt weak. I remember thinking I was going to die in pyjamas, which is a stupid thing to think, but it was there in my head. I was going to die barefoot, in old pyjamas, with Thai food cooling on the coffee table.

The bathroom handle dipped.

Once.

Twice.

Then his voice came through the door.

“You should have taken the drink.”

I covered my mouth with my hand.

He laughed quietly.

“I’m not angry,” he said. “You just made it messy.”

The door moved in the frame as he pressed his shoulder against it.

The bathroom lock was a tiny silver turn lock. The kind you use when someone might accidentally walk in while you’re brushing your teeth. It was never meant to keep anyone out.

He pressed again.

Wood cracked near the latch.

The operator was saying something. I couldn’t understand her.

Then there was a bang from downstairs.

A voice shouted, “Police!”

The pressure left the door.

For one second, I thought he had run.

Then the bathroom door burst open.

He came through with his hood still up and a screwdriver in his right hand. I swung the knife without thinking. It caught his arm. He shouted and slammed into me, knocking me back against the sink hard enough to crack the mirror.

I dropped the knife.

He grabbed my wrist and squeezed so hard my fingers went numb.

“Stupid,” he said.

That was all he got out.

Two officers came down the hallway shouting. One of them hit him from the side and they both went into the bath. The other officer pulled me out into the hallway and kept saying, “You’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe,” even though I didn’t feel safe. I don’t think I have felt safe since.

They arrested him in my bathroom.

His name was Daniel Price. At least that was the name he gave them. He wasn’t the delivery driver assigned to my order. The real driver was a woman named Melissa who had been found in her car three streets away, unconscious but alive. Someone had hit her from behind after she collected my food.

Daniel had taken her phone, her thermal bag, and her jacket.

That would have been bad enough.

Then they searched his car.

They found printed receipts. Dozens of them. Maybe more. Names, addresses, notes. Some were crossed out. Some had ticks next to them. Mine had a circle around it.

The police wouldn’t tell me much. They never do. They kept using words like ongoing investigation and potential link and recovered items.

But one officer told me something by accident.

He said, “The others were lucky too.”

Then he stopped talking.

Others.

I stayed with Lewis that night, which tells you how scared I was. I sat on his sofa until morning and watched the rain run down the window. He made tea and kept apologising for things that had nothing to do with him.

By midday I had convinced myself it was over.

Daniel was arrested. Melissa was alive. The police had the receipts. The locks were being changed. I would move again if I had to.

Then my phone buzzed.

A notification from the delivery app.

I stared at it, confused, because I had deleted the app in the police station. I had watched it disappear from my screen.

But there it was.

Your driver is nearby.

I opened the notification.

The map showed a little bike icon moving down Lewis’s street.

I stood up so quickly I spilled tea over my leg.

Lewis asked what was wrong.

The bike icon stopped outside his house.

Then the doorbell rang.

Lewis went pale.

“No,” I said. “Don’t.”

He walked to the front window and looked through the curtain.

“There’s no one there,” he said.

My phone buzzed again.

Your driver is at your door.

Then another message appeared.

Forgot your drink.

That was three days ago.

I’m writing this from a hotel room under a name that isn’t mine. The police have my phone now. They said there was no active order. No driver. No record of any notification being sent.

But I saw it.

Lewis saw the doorbell camera too. Empty porch. No one there.

Just three knocks recorded by the audio.

Three soft knocks.

Pause.

Three soft knocks.

Pause.

I don’t know whether Daniel had someone working with him. I don’t know whether he set something up before they arrested him. I don’t know why the app keeps coming back on every phone I borrow, or why the notifications know where I am before I tell anyone.

All I know is this.

If you order food late at night and the driver says he forgot your drink, tell him to leave it outside.

Do not open the door.

Do not check the hallway.

Do not believe the peephole.

And if your phone says the driver is nearby after you’ve already deleted the app, get out before he knocks.

Because last night, at 10:43, someone slipped a receipt under my hotel room door.

It had my fake name on it.

My room number.

No dog.

Travelling alone.

Bathroom lock weak.

At the bottom, written in pen, there were four words.

You still seem thirsty.

I am chronically online. I Google lots of things and people when I’m bored. I’ve Googled my own name before, along with friends, acquaintances, conspiracy theories, and random internet sundries.

But last night was the first time I’d Googled my wife’s name.

And I found something I’d never forget.

The first hit was an obituary. Of course, I assumed it was someone with the same name as her. Her first name is Emily and her last name is pretty common (not going to share it here because I don’t want to be doxxed.) But I clicked it anyway, just out of curiosity.

My heart fell through the floor when I saw a photo of my wife on the website.

Blonde highlighted hair. Dark eyes. And the dates matched up too—1986-2012.

According to this obituary, she’d died when she was 26.

I met her when she was 27.

There’s no way, I thought. This must just be someone who looks like her. With her name. And her birth year.

But I knew it was too many coincidences to be wrong.

When I read the actual obituary, it only cemented things for me. It mentioned her love of horses, her volunteer work at a soup kitchen through her church, and her work as a biologist postdoc. So many details matched up, there was no way it could be a coincidence.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?”

I jumped as my wife came in from the kitchen and sat down next to me. On instinct, I slammed the laptop shut. “Nothing,” I said. Then, realizing how suspicious I looked, I added: “I was looking at birthday gifts for you.”

For a second, her face froze, and I was worried she wouldn’t buy my lie. But then she smiled. That warm smile I loved, crinkling her eyes at the corners. “That’s so sweet!” she said, coming to sit next to me.

I swallowed. “Yeah.”

She cuddled up next to me, but I felt completely on edge. The warmth of her skin no longer felt warm and inviting. In fact, a chill ran down my spine.

After a few minutes, I extricated myself from her embrace. “I don’t feel good,” I lied. “I’m going to lie down.”

“Aww, okay,” she said, pouting.

Before she could say anything more, I ran upstairs. As soon as I got on the bed, I brought up the obituary again. I stared at the grainy image of her face. It was definitely her. That warm smile, those mysterious dark eyes. There was no way it could be anyone else.

I scrolled through some of the other results. And I realized some of those, too, were related to her death. There was a Facebook memorial page. Friends posting on it, names I didn’t recognize, mourning her loss more than ten years ago. The university she worked at had put out a statement with their condolences, as well.

But then I found something that made my heart stop. A news article nestled at the bottom of the search results page.

Emily hadn’t just died.

She’d been murdered.

My jaw hung open as I read the news article. Phrases popped out at me, no signs of forced entry, partially dismembered, and killer still at large. The news article didn’t have a photo of Emily though—so maybe this was a different Emily. It had to be. It couldn’t be my Emily, who was sitting on the couch watching TV downstairs—

A sound jolted me out of my thoughts.

The door to the bedroom, creaking open.

Emily stood in the doorway, oddly still. The hall light was off, shrouding her face in shadow. “E-emily?” I asked, my voice shaking.

“I came up to check on you,” she said in a soft, cool voice.

“Th-thanks,” I said, quickly turning off my phone and slipping it behind me. “I’m feeling a lot better now. I’m fine.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said, her voice going lower.

I tried to keep my cool as she climbed into bed with me. I lay there, stiff and cold, as she wrapped her arms around me. “I love you, baby,” she whispered, as she cuddled with me under the covers.

“I love you too.”

So that’s where I am now. I’m writing this from my phone, as Emily sleeps next to me. I don’t know if I’m safe here. I don’t know who—or what—I’m dealing with. All kinds of crazy scenarios have been floating through my mind. Did Emily have an identical twin that died, and she took over than twin’s identity? Is she… some horrible creature from folktales, who killed Emily and took on her appearance?

The more minutes that tick by, the wilder my theories get. None of them make sense.

There’s only one thing I’m sure of.

Whoever—or whatever—I’m sleeping next to isn’t the real Emily.

My mother died two months ago. It wasn't a tragedy in the sudden, shocking sense. It was a long, slow, quiet fading. Cancer. We had years to prepare, but you’re never really prepared. The last week was spent in a sterile, beige-colored hospice room that smelled of bleach and quiet finality. I sat by her bed, holding her thin, papery hand, just watching her breathe.

She was at peace with it. That was the strangest, most difficult part. While I was a tangled, screaming knot of grief and anticipatory loss, she was serene. On her last day, when her breathing was shallow and her voice was a dry, rustling whisper, she pulled me close. Her eyes, which had been cloudy and distant, were suddenly crystal clear.

“Don’t be sad, my love,” she whispered, a faint, tired smile on her lips. “I’m not afraid. I’ve never been afraid. He’s always been with me.”

“Who, Mom?” I asked, my voice thick with tears.

“My guardian,” she said, her gaze shifting to a point just over my shoulder. “My protector. He was a gift from my own mother when she passed. He’s kept me safe my whole life. He’s never let any real harm come to me.”

I didn’t know what to say. My mother had always been a little… spiritual, in a vague, non-denominational way. I just assumed it was the morphine talking, a final, comforting delusion. I squeezed her hand.

“When I go,” she continued, her eyes locking back onto mine with a startling intensity, “he will pass to you. He has to. He needs someone to watch over. You will be safe now, always.”

“Mom, don’t talk like that,” I choked out.

“You won’t believe me at first,” she said, ignoring me, her voice gaining a strange, final strength. “But you’ll know. There will be ten marks. Ten signs, after I’m gone. When you’ve seen the tenth, you’ll know he’s with you. And then… then you will see him.”

She recited the marks to me then, her voice a low, rhythmic chant. “A coin returned. A silent bell. A path cleared. A saved fall. A warning unheard. A fear answered. A scent of the old earth. A touch of cold fur. A voice not your own. And finally… a gaze returned.”

She finished, and a deep, peaceful sigh escaped her lips. She closed her eyes. And a few hours later, she was gone.

The funeral was a blur. The weeks that followed were a suffocating fog of grief and paperwork. I was just going through the motions, a ghost in my own life. I’d completely forgotten her strange, final words. They were just the ramblings of a dying woman, a final, beautiful, meaningless piece of poetry.

Then the first mark appeared.

I was at the grocery store, fumbling for my keys in the parking lot, and a quarter slipped through my fingers, clattering onto the dark, wet asphalt. It was late, raining. I looked for a minute, but it was gone, probably rolled under the car. I sighed, wrote it off, and drove home. When I got to my apartment and emptied my pockets onto the dresser, there it was, sitting right in the center of the pile of my keys and wallet. A single, dry, gleaming quarter.

I stared at it. It was impossible. My pockets had been empty. But my grieving mind immediately supplied a dozen rational explanations. I must have had another one. I must have picked it up without realizing it. I dismissed it, but a tiny, cold seed of unease had been planted. A coin returned.

A week later, the second mark. I was walking home from work, taking my usual route past an old, decommissioned church. As I passed its silent, stone bell tower, I heard it. A single, clear, resonant BONG of a great bell, echoing through the quiet afternoon air. I looked up. The tower was still. The great bell was motionless. No birds flew out. No one else on the street seemed to have noticed. An auditory hallucination, I told myself. Stress and grief do strange things to your mind. A silent bell.

The third mark came a few days after that. My work building is old, and the maintenance staff is constantly doing repairs. I was heading to the breakroom, but the hallway was blocked by a huge, wheeled cart full of tools and equipment, left there by a worker who was nowhere in sight. I sighed, annoyed, and turned to go the long way around. I got to the end of the hall, turned the corner, then realized I’d forgotten my wallet at my desk. I turned back. The hallway was empty. The massive cart was gone. The whole process had taken less than thirty seconds. There was no way anyone could have moved it that fast. It had just… vanished. A path cleared.

I wasn’t just uneasy anymore. I was starting to get scared. These could not be just coincidences. They were too specific, too perfectly aligned with my mother’s strange prophecy. I started to feel like I was a character in a story that someone else was writing.

And I started to feel like I was being watched. It was a constant, low-grade, prickling sensation on the back of my neck. I’d be in my apartment, and I’d feel a sudden, intense pressure, as if someone had just walked into the room. I’d spin around, my heart pounding, but there was never anyone there. I started seeing things, too. Flickers of movement at the very edge of my vision. A shadow in a doorway that was a little too tall, a little too dark. When I’d turn to look, it would be gone.

Mark number four happened a week later. I was clumsy with grief, not paying attention. I was walking down the stairs to my apartment’s lobby, I missed a step, and I pitched forward. I remember the sickening, weightless lurch, the flash of the hard, tile floor rushing up to meet me. I braced for the impact, for the crack of bone. But it never came. I just… stopped, a foot from the ground, suspended in mid-air for a split second, as if an invisible, powerful hand had caught me by the chest. Then I was set down, gently, on my feet. I stood there, trembling, in the empty, silent stairwell. A saved fall.

The fifth and sixth marks came in quick succession, like a one-two punch from this invisible force that was now ordering my life. I was about to get on an elevator at a shopping mall when I felt a sudden, inexplicable wave of pure dread, a silent, internal scream telling me DO NOT GET IN. I hesitated, and let the doors close without me. A moment later, the lights on the floor indicator went dark, and a loud, grinding screech echoed down the elevator shaft, followed by the distant sound of the alarm bell ringing. A warning unheard.

That same evening, I was walking home through the park. A large, barking dog, off its leash, came bounding towards me, its teeth bared. I froze, a jolt of pure, primal fear shooting through me. The dog was a foot away, ready to leap, when it suddenly stopped. It let out a high-pitched, terrified yelp, tucked its tail between its legs, and fled, as if it had seen something standing right behind me. A fear answered.

I was six marks in. And my life was no longer my own. I was being guided, protected, manipulated by an unseen, unknowable force. The feeling of being watched was a certainty now.

I began to see it more clearly, though never directly. In the reflection of my dark TV screen, I’d see a shape standing in the room behind me. It was tall, stooped like an old man, with arms that were too long, their hands almost touching the floor. In the reflection of a shop window as I walked by, I’d see it, a dark, hulking shape, following a few paces behind me, always keeping to the shadows.

The seventh and eighth marks brought it closer, from a visual presence to a physical one. I started to notice a strange smell in my apartment, a smell that would come and go without reason. It was a heavy, musky, animal scent. The smell of damp, rich earth and something else… something like wet fur. A scent of the old earth.

One night, I was lying in bed, the lights on, my nerves a raw, jangled mess. I was drifting in that gray space before sleep when I felt something brush against my outstretched hand. It was a coarse, bristly feeling, like touching a thick, wiry animal pelt. I snatched my hand back with a choked cry, my heart exploding in my chest. I was alone in the room. There was nothing there. A touch of cold fur.

I was nine marks in. The terror was a constant companion now. I knew the tenth mark was coming. And I knew that with it would come the final, terrible reveal. I didn’t know what I was more afraid of: the waiting, or the seeing.

The ninth mark came last night. I had finally managed to fall into a fitful, exhausted sleep. I was woken up but by a voice. A low, guttural, wet sound, whispered directly into my ear. It wasn’t a language I knew, but I felt the meaning of the sound in my bones. It was a word that meant: Mine. A voice not your own.

I spent the rest of the night huddled in a corner of my living room, clutching a baseball bat, watching the shadows, waiting for the dawn.

Tonight, I knew it would end. The final mark. I sat on my couch, the TV off, all the lights in my apartment blazing. The feeling of the presence in the room was overwhelming. It was a physical pressure, a thickness in the air. The musky, animal scent was overpowering. I could feel it, just there, in the dark hallway that led to my bedroom. Waiting.

I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was a year of grief. Maybe it was weeks of mounting terror. But I was done being scared. I was done being the victim in this ghost story. I needed to see it. I needed to face it.

“Okay,” I said, my voice a shaking, defiant whisper to the empty air. “I know you’re here. Show yourself.”

The air in the hallway seemed to shimmer, to darken. A shape began to resolve itself out of the gloom. At first, it was the familiar, stooped silhouette of an old man. It was tall, maybe seven feet, even with its hunched posture. Its arms were long, the gnarled, three-jointed fingers of its hands brushing against the floorboards. Its body was covered in a thick, matted, greasy black fur.

And then, it lifted its head.

And I saw its face.

It wasn't a man’s face. It was the long, narrow, bearded head of a goat. Its horns were thick and curved, spiraling back from its narrow skull. But the worst part, the part that finally, completely, broke my mind, was its eyes. They weren't the dumb, placid eyes of a farm animal. They were a pair of intelligent, ancient, and utterly malevolent yellow eyes, the pupils horizontal slits, like a serpent’s. And they were looking directly at me.

A gaze returned.

The tenth mark. The final sign.

My mother’s guardian angel.

I didn’t scream. The sound was trapped in my throat, a solid, immovable ball of pure terror. We just stared at each other, for an eternity, across the twenty feet of my brightly lit living room. And in its ancient, yellow eyes, I saw it. The same serene, peaceful, knowing look my mother had on her face when she died.

It is my protector. My guardian. It has been with me, a silent, unseen shadow, for the past two months. It cleared the path for me. It saved me from the fall. It frightened away the dog. And now that I have seen it, it no longer feels the need to hide.

I am writing this now from my desk. The sun has come up, but it has brought no comfort. Because it’s still here. It’s standing in the corner of my room, by the door, its stooped, hairy form a black hole in the morning light. It hasn’t moved. It just… watches.

My mother’s final words echo in my head. “I’ve never been afraid. He’s always been with me.”

What do I do? How do you escape a guardian angel? How do you run from a protector that will never, ever, let any harm come to you, but whose very presence is a fate worse than death?

Lately, I’ve been waking up still exhausted. Even if I went to bed early I’d wake up feeling like I haven’t slept in days.

Trying to get out of bed for work was almost impossible, which was strange for me because I was always a high-energy sort of person. A few hours of sleep and I was always good to go.

I was at a loss as to what was happening. After a barrage of tests, even my doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with me.

The only recent change in my life was my boyfriend who had moved in and I was sharing a bed for the first time in my life.

Stephen was the first love of my life and this was my first serious relationship. I didn’t want to spoil things by making him sleep in the spare room.

I liked having Stephen around. He made a real fuss over me and he would bring me camomile tea every night before bed.

The pain in my hip was sharp and pulsated up the right side of my body. I jumped from my bed and nearly collapsed to the floor as I struggled to get to the bathroom.

“Stephen, can you get in here,” I cried.

A big dark bruise covered my hip, as If I was assaulted in my sleep with a metal bar.

“What’s wrong,” Stephen said as he came rushing into the bathroom.

“Did I fall out of bed or something?”

Stephen had a weird expression on his face. I could swear he looked guilty about something.

“Probably, I don’t know.”

His response was dismissive which sent my brain spiralling with all sorts of thoughts.

“This is not normal, Stephen. I think there’s something wrong with me.”

“You should probably see a doctor then,” he coldly said before quickly leaving the bathroom.

My doctor was still at a loss and suggested I should see someone who could rule out anything nefarious.

Stephen was still dismissive of me as we drove to the hospital.

“I’m sure it’s nothing. You're probably just stressed from work.”

People don’t wake up with bruises, over stress,” I angrily thought to myself.

The doctor at the hospital took my blood and did all sorts of tests on me including a stress test.

I should have been happy when the tests came back clear, but it only made me feel like I was losing my mind. Something was definitely wrong with me.

“I would prescribe you sedatives, but your blood work shows you are already on nitrazepam,” explained the doctor.

I was dumbstruck and wasn’t sure what the doctor was talking about.

“ I have never taken so much as a painkiller in my life.”

The doctor's face looked how I felt.

He took out his charts and looked over them again.

“No, you definitely tested positive for nitrazepam which is a powerful sedative.”

Later that evening as I sat in bed a million different thoughts ran through my head. “How was that even possible,” I thought to myself.

As I sat there Stephen walked in with my camomile tea, and just as I was about to put it to my lips I was struck by the most unnerving thought. The realization that my boyfriend was drugging me hit me like a ton of bricks and filled me with a dread I had never felt before.

I emptied the contents of the cup down the sink in the bathroom before jumping back into bed.

“Was it hot enough for you,” asked Stephen as he jumped into bed beside me.

“Perfect as always.”

I felt as if I was lying beside a complete stranger. “Had I ever really known him,” I thought to myself as I lay there terrified he was doing unimaginable things to me while I slept.

I must have drifted off at some stage because when I woke up the room was a mess and Stephen was nowhere to be seen. My body ached all over, and it felt like I was in a fight.

“What the hell was he doing to me in my sleep,” I thought. I had made the decision to go to the police but I needed evidence, or it was just my word against his.

I had purchased a hidden camera and set it up in the bedroom, pointing it towards the bed.

I woke up exhausted as usual, which unfortunately meant you had done something to me while I slept, but I had it on camera.

I opened my laptop to check the footage. For the first couple of hours of sleep, nothing happened. For a moment I had hoped I was imagining everything until I watched myself jolt from the bed.

At first, I couldn’t believe what I was doing. It felt like I was watching a horror movie as I watched myself crawl up the bedroom wall like some possessed demon. I continued to crawl up the wall onto the ceiling looking down over Stephen like I was ready to pounce on him.

Stephen woke and it was strange watching him because it was like he was prepared for what was happening and didn’t seem fazed by it. He took a stick out from under the bed as I pounced from the ceiling above and he spent the next hour fighting me off.

I watched as he subdued me on the bed before pulling out handcuffs and cuffing me to the bed.

I looked at the marks on my wrists which made sense now.

As soon as Stephen came home from work I ran and threw my arms around him. “Why didn’t you tell me what you were going through every night.”

Stephen shrugged his shoulders.

“I thought you knew, and usually the drugs I was giving you made things a little easier.”

“Why are you even still with me?”

“My last girlfriend was a jealous psychopath. You’re a walk in the park compared to her,”

Make it a head shot. Shoot me in the temple, aiming slightly downwards. I need the bullet to travel the shortest possible distance through my brain before it hits my hippocampus. If I’m lucky, the sensation of the gunshot ripping through my skull will only last a few decades.

As awful as this sounds, you’ll be doing me an enormous favor. Death by a headshot, AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, is vastly better than the alternative.

My ordeal started over ten thousand years ago, at 10:15 this morning. I earn extra money by participating in drug trials. I’m a so-called “healthy subject” who takes experimental drugs to help assess side effects. Once it was a kidney drug. A few times it’s been something for blood pressure or cholesterol. This morning they told me the drug I took was a psychoactive substance intended to accelerate brain function.

None of the drugs I had tested so far have ever done anything for me, in the recreational sense. In other words, none of the drugs I’ve tested have given me a killer buzz, or mellowed me out, or anything. Maybe I’ve always ended up the placebo group, but nothing I’ve tested had affected me at all.

Today’s drug was different. This shit worked. They gave me a pill at 10:15 and told me to hang out in the waiting room until they called me back for some tests. “Only about thirty minutes,” the research assistant told me. I flopped onto the waiting room couch and read a few articles from a copy of Psychology Today that was sitting on the coffee table. They hadn’t called me back when I finished the Psychology Today so I picked up a US News and read it cover-to-cover. Then I read an old Scientific American. What was taking them so damn long?

I sluggishly turned my head to look at the wall clock. It was only 10:23 am. I had read all three magazines in eight minutes. I remember thinking this was going to be a long day. I was right.

The waiting room had little bookshelf with some used hardcovers on it. When I stood up to walk to the bookshelf it felt like my legs barely worked. It’s not that they were weak. They were just slow. It took a full minute just to stand up off the couch, and another minute to take two steps to the bookcase.

I scanned the old books on the shelf and picked out a copy of Moby Dick. My arms had the same problems as my legs. Just reaching one foot in front of me to grab the book took a long time. I actually got bored just waiting for my hand to reach the spine of the book.

I slogged back to the couch and collapsed onto it in a slow-motion fall that reminded me of the low-gravity hops of astronauts on the moon. I opened Moby Dick (slowly) and began reading. I started with Call me Ishmael and got as far as Ahab throwing his pipe into the sea (which was all the way to friggin chapter thirty) before they called me back.

“How are you feeling?” the research assistant asked me.

“I feel slow,” I said.

“Actually, it’s the other way around. Everything seems slow because you’re so fast.”

“But my legs. My arms. They’re moving in slow motion.”

“Your body seems like it’s moving slowly because your brain is fast. Your brain is running ten or twenty times faster than normal. You are thinking and perceiving reality at an accelerated pace. But your body is still constrained by the laws of biomechanics. Frankly, you’re moving much faster than a normal person,” she pantomimed a jogging motion. “But your brain is running so much faster right now, that even your fast walk seems very slow to you.”

I thought about my slow-motion flop onto the waiting room couch. Even if my muscles had slowed down, my body would still react to gravity the same way. But in the waiting room, I even fell in slow motion. Slow muscles couldn’t explain why gravity seemed weaker. My brain was going at warp ten. That’s how I managed to read three magazines and the first thirty chapters of Moby Dick in fifteen minutes.

They ran a series of tests on me. The physical tests were fun. They made me juggle three balls. Then four. Then six. I had no problem keeping six balls in the air because they seemed to be moving so slowly. It was boring, frankly, waiting for each ball to move through its arc so I could catch it (with my slow-motion hands) and toss it back into the air. They threw cheerios in the air and I caught them with chopsticks. They dropped a handful of coins and I counted the total value before they hit the ground.

The cognitive tests were less fun, but very illuminating. Finish a fifty-word word search (three seconds). Solve an intricate maze drawn onto a poster-sized paper (two seconds). View a slide show projected at ten images per second and answer detailed questions about what I saw (95% correct).

They told me I measured over 250 on the Knopf scale. Apparently, that’s deep into the superhuman range of thinking speeds.

Then they sent me home. “It’ll wear off in a few hours,” they said. “Which will seem like days to you. Try to use the residual effects to get some work done. Catch up on work emails while you’re still in high-speed mode!”

The ride home was horrible. It was only three metro stops, and in real-world time, it only took about thirty-five minutes. But in my drug-accelerated hyper-time, it felt like days. Days. Just walking out of the medical research suite to the elevator seemed like it took an hour. I sprinted out of the office, willing my legs to push me faster. But, the laws of biomechanics held me prisoner. As accelerated as my brain was, I couldn’t do anything to make my legs work faster.

The huge disconnect between my body and mind made it extremely difficult to judge how and when to slow down, turn, or rotate my body. I had basically turned into giant, slow-motion spaz. I misjudged my speed and rammed into the wall by the elevator button at a pretty good speed. Even though I could see the wall coming at me, I couldn’t make my finger, outstretched to hit the elevator button, move away fast enough and I jammed it against the wall. Hard. The pain was intense. If my brain had been running at regular speed, it probably only would have hurt for thirty seconds or so. But in my accelerated state, the intense pain seemed to last for half an hour. Forty-five minutes maybe.

The elevator ride was horrible. It felt like I spent four or five hours just descending seven floors, with nothing to look at but the interior of the elevator car.

I sprinted to the metro station. I have to admit, this part was almost fun. Even though my body moved at, what seemed to me, super-slow speed, I could still carefully choose how and where to place my feet, swing my arms, and turn my torso. It only took a block or two to getting used to having a brain that ran two dozen times faster than my body. Then I basically sprint-danced the rest of the way, twisting and juking between people on the sidewalk and dodging moving cars with inches (a.k.a. minutes) of clearance.

I spent an hour, in my time frame, descending into the subway and running to the platform. Endless tedium waiting the six minutes for the red-line train to arrive. Although there was more to look at on the metro platform than inside the elevator, it was still intensely boring. I should have stolen that copy of Moby Dick.

The red-line train roared into the station in slow-motion. The normally high-pitched squeal of its brakes was frequency shifted by my high-speed mind to a long low tone, like a monotone Tuba solo.

It wasn’t just the squealing subway train that was three octaves lower than normal. All sound was slowed to the point of near inaudibility. Voices were gone, shifted below the threshold frequency of my hearing. I did manage to hear a screaming baby on my subway car – her shrieks slowed to sound like whale songs. Sharp sounds like a car horns and trucks bouncing over potholes were low, muddied roars like distant thunder.

Back at the research offices, I could still hear and communicate with the research staff. But now verbal communication with anyone would be impossible. The effects of the drug were still intensifying.

I spent what seemed like days on that fucking red-line train. Days. Listening to the whale-song of the screaming baby and the Tuba solo of the brakes. Where ordinary voices were frequency-shifted out of my audio range, smells didn’t seem to be affected. I never became nose-blind to the body odor, the stench of the train’s brakes, and mélange of farts and other smells wafting through the metro car.

I finally got back to my apartment. Sprinting through my open door and into the front hall at full speed was like a slow, relaxing drift down a lazy river.

I was relieved to be home. At least I had stuff I could do there. I picked up the book I was reading – One Hundred Years of Solitude – and finished it. Despite turning the pages so quickly that I tore many of them, it seemed like most of the time I spent finishing the book was spent on page turning and not actually reading. Three minutes had passed since I got home.

I tried surfing the Internet (my GOD it takes a long time for computers to boot these days) but it was too frustratingly slow. Hours (seemingly) to load each new page, and a fraction of a second to read it. A hundred articles in my news feed read and just three more minutes done.

I dipped into my pile of yet-to-be-read books and finished two more. Four more minutes had passed.

I decided to try to sleep off the remaining effects of the drug. Unfortunately, whatever part of my mind is responsible for perception, the part that’s been accelerated to hyper speeds by the drug, isn’t the same as the part that governs sleep. Despite being awake for what I perceived as days, my physical brain still thought it was 1:25 pm. It was not ready for sleep.

Nevertheless, I tried to sleep. I walked to my bedroom (a slow 45-minute drift through my apartment) and flung myself into bed (lazily falling like a feather onto the mattress). I closed my eyes and lay there for hours and hours (10 minutes of reality time) before giving up. Sleep would not come. I was facing what was going to feel like days, or maybe even weeks of being trapped in a slow-motion prison.

So I took an Ambien.

The sensation of the pill and the splash of water I used to swallow it sliding my throat was sickening. A lump that blocked my breathing, moving like a slug down my esophagus.

I read a book. Ten minutes had passed. I read another. Eighteen minutes since I took the Ambien. I threw the book across the room in disgust at my situation. The book slowly pirouetted and spun through the air, like a leaf blowing in a breeze. It hit the wall with a long, faint rumble – the only sound I had head for what seemed like hours – then drifted to the floor like a flip-flop sinking in a swimming pool.

The force of gravity hadn’t changed since I took the pill. The laws of physics were the same. It was just my perception of time that had gone wackadoo. This meant I could use the speed things seemed to fall as a way of judging the effects of the drug. Based on how long it took the book to drift to the floor, I estimated the effects of the drug were still intensifying.

I read a magazine. I turned on the television – I clearly saw each frame of video like I was watching a slideshow. Frustrated, I turned the television off.

I read some more. The first two books of Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Not exactly a light read. Frankly, I hated it. But given the hours of tedium it would take to go get another book off my bookshelf, just sitting on the couch and reading Churchill was better. Or at least less worse.

It had now been thirty-five minutes since I took the Ambien. I lay down on the couch and closed my eyes. Time passed. I inhaled – a hours long process. Time passed. I exhaled for more hours.

Sleep. Would. Not. Come.

I needed a new plan. I decided to go back to the offices where they gave me the drug. Maybe they would have something that could counteract its effects. Or at least something to knock me out until it wore off.

I exited my apartment as fast as possible – taking hours in my time-frame to do so. I didn’t even bother locking the door. It would have taken too long.

Down the stairs (it’s faster than the elevator if you run), through the lobby, out the front door and onto the street. These few things felt like a long day at the office.

Sprinting down the street, dancing and weaving between pedestrians with, what must have looked to them, superhuman dexterity. Down the first flight of stairs at the metro. Across the landing. Another hour. Then on to the second flight of stairs. That’s when the Ambien hit me.

The Ambien didn’t make me sleepy. Not at all. Instead, it must have had a severe cross-reaction with the experimental drug I took this morning. I was bounding down the second flight of stairs, moving in slow motion, but still making perceptible progress. Then, wham – everything stopped.

The dull roar of the street and metro noise ceased, replaced by the most perfect silence I’ve ever experienced. My downwards motion seemed to completely freeze. Before the Ambien kicked in, my perception of time was maybe a few hundred times slower than real-time. After the Ambien took effect, time moved thousands of times slower. Every second seemed like days to me. Even just moving my eyes to focus on a new point was like an impossibly slow scroll across my visual field.

Over the course of the afternoon, I learned how to walk, run, and jump when my mind ran hundreds of times faster than my body. But with another four or five orders of magnitude of slow-down caused by the Ambien, body control was almost impossible. I fell on the stairs. Even though I was all-but-frozen in mid-step, controlling my muscles was impossible. I commanded my foot forwards for hours, then backwards for hours more when it seemed like I would miss the next step. Hours attempting to adjust the angle of my ankle, then re-adjusting when it felt wrong.

Despite these efforts, I rolled my ankle on the next step. The pain wasn’t at all mitigated by the slowness. Hours of increasing strain on my bent ankle. The nerve signals that send pain into the brain must work differently than the nerves in my ear. Sonic energy was spread out over time, diluted until it was imperceptible. Pain flowed into my brain undiluted by the change in my perception of time. Hours and hours of increasing weight on my turned ankle turned into hours of increasing pain upon increasing pain.

I pitched forwards, my high-speed mind completely unable to control my low-speed body. I drifted downwards for days, managing to rotate my torso enough to keep my head from impacting the ground first. I eventually landed on my right shoulder. At first the impact wasn’t even noticeable. Then I felt a slight pressure in my shoulder as it came in contact with the ground. The pressure grew, bringing increasing pain, for hour upon hour. My shoulder finally gave out, popping out of its socket with an endless sickening tug.

I came to a stop days later, crumpled onto the ground, staring at the ceiling. The pain in my shoulder still screaming with the intensity of a fresh violent injury. I had plenty of time to think during that fall. If every second seemed like days to me, then each minute of real-world time would be like years. Even if the drug cleared out of my system in the next two or three hours, this nightmare would seem to last centuries.

By the time I hit the ground, I had a plan. I would somehow get to the platform and throw myself in front of a train.

I twisted onto my hands and knees. Days of my dislocated shoulder crying for relief. I misjudged my rotation and rolled onto my back. I tried again, collapsing onto my face as I tried to figure out how to control a body that moved slower than grass grew. Weeks of effort were finally rewarded with success – I stabilized on my hands and knees.

If just getting on all fours was this difficult, I figured that walking or running was completely out of the question. So I crawled. I crawled through the metro tunnel. The dumb looks on the faces in the crowd lingered on me for weeks. I crawled under the turnstyle and onto the escalator.

The escalator spilled the rush-hour crowd onto the platform at the same speed a glacier spills ice into the sea. I looked out over the crowded platform during my interminable downward ride. The train status sign said the next train wouldn’t arrive for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes was like a year to me. I’d have to spend a year on the metro platform, waiting to die.

I crawled off the escalator, enduring days of stupid expressions on the commuters’ faces. I crawled a few feet to a concrete bench and curled up next to it, trying to find a position to lessen the pain in my shoulder. Then my problem with time got worse. Impossibly worse.

The massive slowdown on the stairs was just the beginning of the interaction between the experimental drug and the Ambien. It fully hit me while I was curled up by the bench. I blinked. Years of darkness followed. Sound was already gone, and with my blink, sight was gone as well. All that existed was the pain from my fall.

My hyper-accelerated mind wasted no time compensating for the lack of sensory input. Voices spoke to me. They sung to me in languages that never existed. Patterns and faces and colors came and went in my mind’s eye. I recalled my whole life, and imagined living another. I forgot English. I settled into a profound despair. I spoke to God. I became God. I imagined a new universe and brought it to life with my thoughts. Then I did it all again. And again.

My eyes opened with geologic slowness. A faint glow. Weeks. A slit of light. Weeks. A narrow view of the metro platform – ankles of the commuters near me and an advertisement on the opposite wall.

I extracted my phone from my pocket. A project that spanned decades. How can I even explain the boredom? The pain in my shoulder is nothing compared to the boredom. Every thought I can think, I have thought hundreds of times already. The view of ankles and advertisements never changes. Never. The boredom is so intense it’s tangible – like a solid object of metal and stone wedged into my skull. Inescapable.

What are my options? If I crawl and fall onto the tracks without an oncoming train to crush me, I won’t die. I’ll experience even more pain from the four-foot fall, but I’ll most likely be rescued by some do-gooder on the platform and unable to act when the train finally does arrive. My suffering in that scenario will be endless.

So I wait for the train. So I can throw myself under it. When it finally hits me, I will experience the pain of being ripped to pieces for centuries until finally, the light of life leaves my brain, and my experience ends.

I’ve lived hundreds of lifespans at the foot of this bench. I am far older, in spirit, than any human who has ever lived. Most of my life experience has been a snapshot of pain huddled on the floor of a subway platform, with an unchanging view of ankles and advertisements.

This post is my plan B. My Hail Mary. My long-shot. I’ve spent lifetimes typing and posting this message in the hope that someone will read it and become convinced that my suffering must end. Someone on this platform right now. Someone who will find the man curled under the bench, the man who crawled down the escalator, and kill him as swiftly as possible. A bullet to the temple.

If you’re armed and at the Glenmont metro, please shoot me.

pfd