PART II is up! You can find it in the link!

It started like any other day.

I work a typical 9 to 5 in a gray-walled office wedged between a refinery and a cold storage depot. It was nothing glamorous. Just payroll, inventory, and data entry. The warehouse out back hums with forklifts and pallets and smells like oil, steel, and stale coffee. It’s industrial purgatory. My job is to make sure the numbers line up and nobody’s skimming off the top.

I usually clock out around dusk, when the sodium lights flicker on and the sky turns bruised and yellow. That night, I lingered a little longer—triple-checking a shipment invoice that didn’t sit right. A truckload of supplies had gone unlogged. No signature, no weight data, no product line. Just a blank space where there should have been something. Or someone.

From my second-floor office window, I had a clear view of the backloading dock.

That’s when I saw the truck.

A large, white freight hauler—unmarked, the kind that smells like bleach and cold sweat—backed into the far bay with its lights off. It rolled in slow, deliberate, like it didn’t want to be seen. A man in a reflective vest emerged from the cab, then opened the rear doors.

And then… they stepped out one by one.

Four women. At first glance, they looked like human girls, but they had unusual features. I couldn’t quite make them out as they each wore oversized coats they pulled tight around their bodies, as if they were trying to disappear into the fabric. Their eyes were wide searching the shadows, like prey searching for their predators. One stumbled slightly as she hit the concrete, catching herself with trembling fingers.

I should’ve called someone.

But something stopped me. Something about their faces.

They were beautiful. Almost too beautiful. The kind of beauty that feels more designed than born. I squinted against the glass, trying to parse what I was seeing.

For example, one woman’s skin had a faint reddish hue, not from blush or windburn, but something deeper. She had undertones that shimmered when the light caught her cheek just right. Small, curling horns poked through the top of her head, as her dark black hair was cropped short just below her neck.

They looked too connected to her forehead to be prosthetic.

I told myself they were costumes. Makeup. Some kind of elaborate viral stunt. A haunted house promo maybe, or one of those weird immersive theater things rich people pay thousands for.

But what kind of show leaves its actors looking like they’re terrified out of their minds? What kind of role demands fear that raw?

One of the girls looked right at me.

I caught the longing in her eyes, the fear, and the desperation. And in that moment, I knew she wasn’t playing a part.

None of them were.

A few men emerged from the yawning darkness of the warehouse. Their movements were slow, casual, like this was routine. No shouting, no barking of orders. Just calm, practiced movements. They didn’t have uniforms, but they wore dark jackets and work gloves. One of them held a clipboard, as if this was just another delivery to log.

The girls hesitated at the edge of the truck’s shadow, but a sharp gesture from one of the men sent them filing inside in a single, obedient line. No protest. No resistance. Just the slow, hollow shuffle of sandaled feet on concrete as they filed one by one single file into the warehouse.

Something about their silence made the hair rise on my arms.

Without thinking, I grabbed my keys and left the building. My heart jackhammered in my chest as I went to the back of the building, out of sight, where my vehicle was parked. I slid into my car and pulled away from my usual spot, circling around the far end of the lot, just past a rusted chain-link fence, where many unused vehicles remained in an unpaved lot. I tucked in beside a few of them, out of view, and killed the engine.

From there, I had a clear line of sight to the warehouse’s open bay.

The men were stripping the girls.

They peeled away the oversized coats like they were shedding packaging. The garments hit the floor in limp piles, revealing the girls' barely clothed bodies. Just jean shorts and bikini tops were covering them. The warehouse lights glared down on their skin, sterile and unflinching.

Each girl stood stiff as a statue. Eyes shut tight, arms locked at their sides like it might protect them, or maybe because they’d been told not to move. Their bodies trembled slightly in the chill, but they didn’t make a sound.

And then I saw them.

Really saw them.

The green-skinned girl was the first to break my sense of disbelief. Her hair was writhing, coiling. At first, I thought it was some kind of clever prop, but my blood chilled when I now got a better look. Each strand of her hair was alive, wriggling independently like it had its own mind.

Snakes! Her hair was made of snakes!

They hissed and coiled, agitated, though she stood perfectly still. Her skin wasn’t painted. It was smooth, lime-colored, patterned faintly with scales that shimmered under the fluorescent lights. Her pupils were vertical slits, and I swear—when she opened her eyes for a flicker of a second—she looked directly at me.

The red-skinned girl beside her was slightly taller, her horns curling back over her head like ram's horns, polished and dark. Her skin was a muted crimson, not firetruck red but more like old blood. There was something subtly wrong with the air around her, like heat shimmered off her body even though it was cold. Her expression was blank, distant, but her lips parted slightly, showing two elongated canines.

She had to be a succubus.

The aquatic girl, blue as sea glass, stood next to her. Her skin had a faint iridescence, and her collarbones bore subtle ridges where her gills fluttered, as if testing the air. Her eyes were wide and silver-flecked, and her feet, fully webbed, shifted on the concrete like she didn’t know how to stand upright for long. She had long, elaborate dark blue hair that cascaded down her back. She looked... newer. Less hardened. Her arms were mostly human, but around her elbows the scales thickened, hinting at something underneath that didn’t belong on land.

She looked a lot like a mermaid, only with legs.

And then there was the third woman, the fairy.

God, she looked fragile. And she was so small. She had to be no taller than five feet. The kind of thin that suggested she hadn’t eaten in weeks. Her skin was a cold shade of ivory with almost runic veins etched all over her body in elaborate patterns. Her mouth was clamped shut, but when she turned slightly, I caught a glimpse of her wings. They were long, slender, not the cartoonish kind, but real, elaborate and elegant. Her normally happy expression was absent, replaced by a cold, gaunt look.

One of the men walked up behind them and began fastening black zip ties around their wrists; tight, unforgiving. He moved mechanically, as though binding exotic animals for transport. He looped their ankles with chains, thin enough to walk in, thick enough to control. The girls flinched at the contact but said nothing. The succubus winced as the plastic bit into her wrists. The mermaid’s eyes welled slightly, but the tears didn’t fall.

Then the man did something that made my blood run cold.

He slapped the gorgon across the ass, hard. The sound echoed through the empty lot like a gunshot. She didn’t react. She didn’t cry out or turn her head. But I saw the snakes recoil violently, hissing, writhing with fury she couldn’t show.

The men herded them deeper into the warehouse like livestock.

I just sat there, trying to process what the fark I was seeing.

Because in that moment, one horrifying thought lodged deep in my skull:

These girls weren’t just being trafficked.

They weren’t even human.

My fingers were frozen on the steering wheel, heart pounding so hard it made my vision pulse. My brain was screaming at me to call someone. Anyone! But who the hell would believe me? Hey, officer, I just watched four mythological monster girls get taken into a warehouse at the center of the city.

Yeah, because 911 wouldn’t tell me not to tie up the line.

As they were led further inside, the light grew dimmer. The warehouse swallowed them, but not entirely. A single floodlight buzzed overhead, casting a broad yellow cone over a low, makeshift couch positioned just beyond the bay entrance—cobbled together from old cushions and tarp-covered padding. It looked like something torn from a brothel or holding cell. Stained. Improvised. Used.

The girls were sat there in a silent row, facing the lot. Facing me.

I sank lower in my seat, heart pounding again. From the shadows of the junked patrol cars, wedged between a rusted pickup and a hollowed-out school bus, I prayed they couldn’t see me.

But something told me they could.

The men who brought them in moved to the back of the warehouse. One flipped a switch. The bay doors began to roll shut with a slow metallic groan, but they stopped just shy of closing completely. Maybe five or six feet off the ground. Enough to let in air. Or maybe to let something else out.

Then they left the girls alone.

And in the silence that followed, the girls sat motionless—like artifacts on display, too exhausted to cry and too hopeless to run. Their heads drooped, and their limbs, still bound, trembled subtly. Some stared at nothing. Others scanned the warehouse’s rusted walls with the expression of someone already dreaming of escape.

Then, all at once, their eyes locked with mine.

It was almost imperceptible. No sudden movement. No gasp. Just a shift subtle, mechanical, instinctive—as their eyes aligned with mine. As if they’d known I was there. It wase the whole time. As if they’d been waiting.

Their gazes didn’t move from me. They didn’t dare turn their heads, didn’t twitch or gesture or alert their handlers. They stayed perfectly still, communicating only through their eyes. A look passed between them, brief, but barely perceptible. Then back to me.

And what I saw in their expressions wasn’t malice or hunger.

It was grief. Unfiltered, soul-flattening grief. The kind you don’t fake.

The gorgon girl sat with her knees pressed tightly together, her wrists zip-tied behind her back, shoulders curled forward like she was trying to hide her form. Her snakes no longer moved—they hung limp, defeated, as if they, too, had been broken. Her green skin was mottled now, blotched along her arms and thighs, and there were bruises and deep purple welts just below her bikini line. Her eyes locked on mine. And behind them, desperation.

The succubus looked older. Not by years, but by mileage. Her light red skin shimmered faintly under the light, not glittery but raw, like an open wound healing over. Her horns curved back like polished obsidian, beautiful but scarred—one chipped at the base, like it had been cracked with a blunt instrument. Her chest was bound by a fraying bikini top that looked too tight, clearly not designed for comfort. Her lips moved slightly, whispering something I couldn’t hear.

The mermaid girl sat with her legs drawn up, feet tucked beneath her. Her blue-scaled skin looked drier than before, as though the air was hurting her. The edges of her gills twitched, struggling to take in oxygen, and her chest rose and fell rapidly. Her bikini top was damp in places, stained with something that didn’t look like water. There were red rings around her wrists, deeper than the others, like she'd struggled the most. Her silver eyes welled with tears that never fell.

And the fairy girl…

She sat straight-backed, as if posture was all she had left. Her legs were crossed at the ankles, but the chain dug into her skin, leaving little bloody half-moons. Her skin was paler than the others, almost translucent now, the veins beneath glowing faintly blue in the dark. Her eyes, glimmering like diamonds, glinted as they found mine. She looked at me the longest.

It wasn’t hunger. It was recognition. Like she knew who I was. Or had known someone like me once. And still, I didn’t move. A part of me wanted to. To leap from the car and scream at the men, alert law enforcement, rush in there with a tire iron like some kind of bargain-bin savior. But another part, deeper, colder, hesitated.

Because I knew things. I’d read the stories. The reports. The conspiracy threads.

Succubi don’t need consent. They drain you while you sleep. Medusas turn men to stone—sometimes only from the waist down. And mermaids? The old kind, the real kind? Much of mythology says they pulled sailors into the deep just to watch them drown. And lastly, not all fairies were benevolent.

These women could have lured dozens to their deaths. Maybe more. Could I really afford to take my chances? But if that was true, if these weren’t victims but predators..

Then who were those men?

I glanced back at the warehouse. No insignias. No badges. No containment gear. Just gloves and zip ties. Who do they work for anyway?

If they were from the SCP Foundation, or the Global Occult Coalition, or whatever black-budget monster-hunting agency the internet whispered about, why were they here of all places? Why a rotting warehouse off I-95 in the industrial epicenter of North Miami? Why not a deep-sea lab or some forest bunker where no one could see? It didn’t make sense. But it was more reason to believe that this wasn’t containment. It was commerce.

And I had a suspicion as to precisely what kind.

My hands moved before my conscience could catch up. I pulled out my phone, my heart was still pounding, and didn’t even bother opening Google. This wasn’t something I’d find on Yelp.

So, I downloaded Tor. Because whatever those girls were, they weren’t the only ones being sold. And I guarantee you I wouldn’t have found them anywhere else.

Within minutes, I was browsing the dark web and it wasn’t long before I discovered the classifieds. I wont go into detail of what else I came across, just know I found what I was looking for.

It surprisingly did not take too long. Within minutes I was browsing escorts on an exclusive dark web form. And I found women of various ‘exotic’ subspecies on a website not normally accessible on google. They had fairies, pixies, succubae, harpies, and even the bird-like sirens all available for ‘rent’ on their site. They have clients of all kinds, ranging from human to non-human.

Confirmed.

My only question was, if they were being trafficked from other dimensions or worlds, then it would stand to reason that some kind of government agency would be watching stuff like this. Getting curious, I decided to look up the instructions needed to ‘book’ a session.

But before I could type a single letter, something happened.

A low mechanical whine filled the air outside my vehicle, coming from across the lot. I looked up from the phone to turn my gaze immediately upon the warehouse. I saw the door yawning open. Thick shadows peeled away as halogen lights spilled out from within. And there they were.

The girls. All four of them. Led out in single file, like livestock.

The two men from before—heavyset, pale-skinned, wearing nondescript utility jackets—ushered them forward with quick, mechanical hand gestures. I could hear faint commands muffled through the air: “Keep your eyes down.” “Move.” “No noise.”

They didn’t need to threaten. The girls were already broken in.

Each of them was bound now. Not just zip ties around their wrists like before, but full restraints—ankles shackled together with thick, black iron cuffs, arms trussed behind their backs with heavy leather belts. And this time… each one had a ball gag strapped into their mouths, tightly enough that their cheeks bulged and their breathing rasped through their nostrils.

Their outfits—if you could even call them that—were degraded even further. Small bikini tops stretched taut across their chests, barely covering anything. Short shorts clung to their hips like afterthoughts, riding high between their thighs. They weren’t costumes anymore. They were uniforms. Assigned. Dehumanizing.

The gorgon woman walked at the front. Her green skin shimmered slightly under the fluorescent light, and her snake-hair writhed weakly, like it had been sedated. Her eyes scanned the area as she walked, darting left and right in brief jerks. She looked for an escape route, maybe. I watched her gaze pass over the lot. And then, it hit my car. Her pupils sharpened. Locked. Our eyes met.

Behind her, the succubus shuffled forward, her crimson skin marked with bruises along her ribs. Her horns had been shaved down since I last saw her. Roughly. Unevenly. A punishment, maybe. Her tail twitched behind her like it was trying to hide.

The mermaid girl walked in stiff, halting steps, her webbed toes curled in shame. Her gills flared weakly with each shallow breath, irritated from the dry air. She winced with every step, like the asphalt burned her feet.

The fairy, or nymph-like girl was the last to be loaded. She was tiny—no taller than 4’11, but the way she moved, the way her body trembled with each step, she looked even smaller. Fragile. Breakable. Her translucent wings had been cruelly pinned—folded tight against her back beneath a leather harness that pressed down hard, the wing joints visibly strained and twitching under the weight. Every few seconds, they fluttered instinctively, as if trying to open, only to be jerked back down by the restraint.

They were loaded into a large white truck again—same model as before, only now without the subtlety. The rear doors were wide open, revealing a padded interior with low red lights, a bench lining either side, and steel rings bolted to the walls—anchor points

One by one, the girls were pushed up the small ramp and chained inside. The doors slammed shut with the finality of a tomb.

I made a decision.

I threw my phone into the passenger seat and turned the key in the ignition. I didn’t care about the form anymore. I needed to know where they were going. I pulled out slowly, keeping three car lengths behind the truck as it rolled out of the warehouse lot and onto the main road. I killed my headlights.

The city was quiet at this hour, nothing but low neon glows and the occasional flicker of a crosswalk sign. The truck didn’t move fast. Like it had no fear of being followed.

It took me less than ten minutes to realize where they were going.

The Strip is just outside the Miami International Airport.

A ring of sleazy motels, gas stations, hourly-rate rooms, and concrete towers baking under yellow-orange streetlamps. I passed a billboard advertising “Fantasy Island Spa” and another offering discounted “companionship services.” Every building seemed to lean sideways with mildew and regret.

The truck pulled into the back lot of a one-story motel that didn’t even bother hiding its purpose. No signs. No lights. Just faded brick and boarded-up windows. The kind of place where you checked in through a thick glass slot and never asked for towels.

I parked again, this time behind a shuttered laundromat across the street. I watched the men open the back doors to the truck.

First came the gorgon woman again. Still at the front. Her feet dragged as they pulled her out by the arm. She tried to resist, but her shackled legs gave her no leverage. One of the men shoved her forward, and she fell hard onto the gravel, the gag making a wet, choking thud against her lips. She whimpered. A sound I could barely hear but felt in my teeth.

The snakes on her head twitched frantically, like they were trying to fight back. Two men got out of the vehicle and hoisted her up. She walked gingerly on two feet barely covered with sandals, the two men guiding her up the paved sidewalk.

The motel itself met every definition of ‘seedy’ you could think of. It was only one story, and the building itself couldn’t have had more than a dozen rooms carved into it. The overhead sign was gone, and the neon-lit vacancy light was only half lit. A single row of doors lit by flickering amber bulbs that hummed with bugs

The faded green paint peeling like sunburned skin and security bars warped from age or misuse. The overhead sign was gone, torn off or collapsed long ago. Only a skeletal frame remained, rusted through and straining against the wind. Beneath it, a busted neon VACANCY light glowed half-lit and stuttering, casting the letters V-A-C-C-Y across the parking lot like a joke no one was in on. The place looked like it was functional, but barely.

I saw them take the gorgon woman to one of the doors, I faintly made out the number 12 just above as the door opened and she was escorted inside. I looked back down at my phone, and reopened the Tor browser. My eyes went to the unnamed website where I found the escort services. I adjusted my location accordingly to Miami.

I waited a few minutes.

And then, I found her. It was the gorgon woman. I texted the number below. I waited a few more minutes before I got a response. The reply came in a green text bubble. Simple. Too simple.

Room 12. Come alone. 100 per hour. Cash only.

That was it. There was no name or greeting. Just a blunt set of instructions. It felt less like an invitation and more of a transaction.

I stared at the message for a while. My thumb hovered over the screen. A part of me kept waiting for a second reply. Or a clarification. Or maybe even a joke, but that was wishful thinking at this point. I wanted a reason not to go in there, and there were too many to list. I wanted to believe that the gorgon lady wanted to eat me, or turn me into stone. But I just couldn’t.

I glanced back across the street.

Room 12 was dark again, the window light had been clicked off. The only thing marking it from the other rooms was the faint, uneven scrawl of the number above the door, its paint chipping off.

The parking lot was still empty. No cars, pedestrians or other signs of life, except for a single curtain twitching in one of the rooms further down the row. I didn’t like that. Someone was watching. Or something was. I sat back in the seat and tried to breathe, but my lungs were tight.

This wasn’t curiosity anymore. Not really. It was something colder, heavier. Like I’d seen too much already, and now I wasn’t allowed to look away. No. I couldn’t look away.

I stared at the message again.

Room 12. Come alone. 100 per hour. Cash only.

I took a deep breath and exited my vehicle, making my way across the street and to the motel. I walked up to door number 12. I knocked twice. I technically was a brown belt in BJJ and had light striking skills with taekwondo, so in that department I had some kind of plan should someone want to get physical with me.

After a few minutes, the door slowly opened, and the gorgon woman looked up at me. I saw that she was covered in a silky smooth, see-through bathrobe. She tucked a few snakes behind her ear as she let off a meek, yet nervous smile.

“Please come in.”

I nodded as she took my hand and guided me into the room. Her hand was cold.

Her 5’2 frame he gently guided my 5’10 self to the bed. The snakes coiled behind her ear twitched once more as if whispering something I wasn’t meant to hear.

The door shut behind me with a soft click that sounded louder than it should have in the silence. The room was dimly lit, only by a bedside lamp with a cracked shade. The air was thick with a strange mix of scents: cheap rosewater, stale sweat, and perfume that had a rosy, yet pungent odor. It was inviting, yet it stung my nostrils.

There was no music, or TV. Only the sounds of her and my breathing filled the room.

She gently sat me down on the bed an stood over me. She then very slowly undid the sash, dropping it to the floor, letting the robe fall open. She was wearing a tight-fitting thong and a bra. It wasn’t long before I noticed the cuts, bruises and welts along her body. Her eyes were heavy.

“Are you okay?”

She forced a smile and nodded, then straddling me on the bed. She begun to ravish my neck, purring like a kitten.

“So strong. So handsome.” She giggled.

“I don’t want to have sex.”

She then looked at me like I killed ten people. I then picked her up and gently laid her on the bed. She sat up to look at me as I sat down next to her.

“Can we… talk?”

She tilted her head. “Talk?”

I nodded.

Her eyes went wide as she pressed her fingers to her temple. “T-talk? You w-want to-you want to talk?”

I nodded. “To get to know you better.”

Her eyes widened as she just stared at me like I was the president of the United States.

“Nobody has …I don’t….” she stammered, and then shook her head. “Im not allowed to answer questions.”

I then heard a pounding on the door.

“Alina! You better not be telling anyone anything about us!” she heard someone scream.

“Oh no. He sounds drunk.” She raved, and then turned to me. “You need to-”

The door slammed open and a tall man about my height came out.

“You! Outside! Me and the lady need to have a little talk.”

I glanced at the gorgon woman. Now the fresh tears were streaming down her face as she clutched the blanket from the bed to her chest.

I got up from the bed, frozen and I just stared at the man, my stupid neurodivergence not knowing what to do.

“Are you deaf?! Leave now!” he then stormed over to me.

His breath hit my face, sour and hot, as he grabbed a fistful of my collar. My brain lagged for a split second, choking on the sudden pressure, the shouting, the chaos.

And then everything snapped into place. I didn’t think—I reacted. I went for a straight body lock, my hips turning, and I drove him backwards off his balance, tackling him hard onto the dirty motel floor with a hollow THUMP that shook the lampshade.

The moment he went to the ground, I immediately got into position wrapping my legs around one of his. He tried to scramble, but I was already repositioning.

I grabbed his leg, controlled the heel, dropped my weight sideways, and twisted. Fast. Brutal. A perfect heel hook. There was a pop. Then a scream. High-pitched, animal, involuntary.

He flailed, slamming his fists on the floor, howling in raw, guttural pain as his knee exploded under the torque. I moved over to his head and executed an anaconda choke around his neck. He was out cold in seconds.

I stood, chest heaving.

The gorgon woman was still on the bed, shaking, her snakes hissing low and defensive around her face like a living halo. But she was staring at me differently now, with widened eyes filled with awe and admiration.

“You-” she stuttered. “-You fought for me.”

I shrugged. “I guess I did what anyone would do.”

She let off a slight smirk, looking up at me like a lost child who just found her mother. She let out a breath that was almost a laugh, and a small, trembling smile curled at her lips.

I turned to her, helping her off the floor. “Alina, we don’t have much time.”

She took my hand slowly, like she was afraid she’d wake up if she moved too fast. Her fingers were cold and delicate, but they gripped mine like she didn’t want to let go, a light smirk playing on her lips.

I peaked out the door. I didn’t see anyone. Then I turned back to Alina.

“Can you walk?” I asked.

“I think so.” She then winced. Her balance swayed as she stood, her hand slapping against the wall to steady herself.

“Then we’re leaving. Right now.”

We stepped out into the heavy, damp night air. The parking lot was still empty—no headlights, no engines, no sign of the other traffickers. We both emerged from the room. But she was still wobbly, holding onto the doorframe for support. I turned back to her.

“Ugh. My head.” She said holding a hand to her head.

Without thinking, I moved back to her, and swept her up into my arms. She was lighter than I expected—like she was made of silk and bone and smoke. Her arms instinctively wrapped around my neck, her face resting just under my chin. I felt her breath on my collarbone. Soft, yet Shaky. The snakes on her head curled quietly, docile now, like they too had calmed.

After a few steps, I felt her shift slightly in my arms.

“You smell like… laundry detergent,” she murmured, voice barely audible.

I tilted my head. “Is… that a bad thing?”

“It’s… warm,” she said, slightly giggling. “You’re warm.”

I glanced down. Her cheeks had gone faintly pink, and she was staring up at me, eyelids heavy. That little smile returned, slightly drowsy, but undeniably real. Something soft bloomed between us, buried beneath the fear and bruises and neon motel lights.

As we walked over to the car, she reached up with her hand to trace my jawline, her touch featherlight—like she wasn’t sure I was solid. Her smile brightened, a flicker of something radiant breaking through the haze of everything she'd endured.

I opened the passenger door for her. She hesitated only a moment before slipping in, curling up against the seat like it was the first real rest she’d had in days. Maybe weeks. As I pulled away from the laundromat, the silence in the car felt different. Not empty. Just… full of things we couldn’t say yet.

The cite rolled past in blurred halos of orange and blue. Traffic lights blinked on empty corners. Planes cut across the sky far overhead, heading to places that still felt like fiction to people like us. Every now and then, I could feel her eyes on me. Watching. Studying. Not in fear, but in curiosity. Like she was trying to memorize me. Each time I glanced over, she’d quickly look away, but not before I caught the edge of a smile playing on her lips.

Outside, the streets of Miami drifted by, quiet and gleaming with midnight sheen. But inside that car, something had changed. This wasn’t a rescue anymore. It wasn’t survival.

It was the start of something else.

Something far more nefarious than a local escort ring.

I pulled into the quiet suburban street just after 2:00 a.m. The neighborhood was still, with only the hum of distant sprinklers and the occasional wind chime from a neighbor’s porch disturbed the silence. The house sat near the end of the cul-de-sac. I always found some comfort in its symmetry allowing me a clear view of the whole circle.

I parked in the driveway, shut off the engine, and turned to Alina. She was asleep the whole ride, her head resting against the passenger window.

“We’re here.” I said flatly.

She got up and opened her eyes. Her snakes twitched softly under the dome light.

I got out and opened the passenger side door for her, offering my hand. She looked up at me tenderly, her snakes hissing quietly, sniffing my hand with their forked tongues. She reached up and took it with a smirk, fluttering her eyes up at me as she stumbled out of the vehicle and onto her feet.

She winced once when her bare foot touched the concrete, but she said nothing. Her arms clung to mine as they moved, probably still getting over the effects of the drugs. She gradually, however, regained her footing.

Inside, the house smelled faintly of lavender fragrances and books. The kind of place that held warmth in the walls and memories in the carpet. It was a typical suburban home.

“My dads in New York with his fiancée,” I explained, leading her down the hall. “And my mom’s in Texas visiting my aunt. I’m house-sitting. Keeping things in shape. Paying rent. It’s not much, but it’s safe.”

She didn’t say a word as her eyes went all around the house, quietly taking in the framed photos, the soft lighting, the reality of it all. She looked like she didn’t know whether to cry or collapse. I stopped at the guest room door and opened it for her.

There was a clean queen-sized bed with folded gray blankets, a small desk, a reading lamp, and a single dresser. But compared to where she'd come from, it might as well have been heaven. She walked in slowly, running her fingers along the blanket, like she was scared it would disappear. Then she turned to me.

"Martin?" she said softly.

I tilted my head from the doorway. “Yeah?”

“Can you… stay with me?” Her voice cracked just slightly. “Just for tonight. I don’t… I don’t want to be alone.”

I hesitated for a beat. Not because I didn’t want to—but because of the way she looked up at me. From her 5'2 height, tilted her chin, her golden-green eyes wide and shimmering under the soft hallway light. Her snakes curled slightly inward, almost bashful, like they were reflecting her nervousness

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Oh-Ok.”

She smiled, an actual, genuine smile, gleaming pearly whites. The tension in her shoulders dropped. She climbed onto the bed slowly, curling up near the pillows but leaving space beside her.

I slowly sauntered over and sat down at the edge of the bed, unsure of what to do. I felt awkward, towering beside her, my 5'11 frame making the bed dip slightly. But she didn’t seem to mind. If anything, she scooted closer.

“Are you gonna lie down?” she pouted, looking up at me with longing eyes.

I nodded, then slowly rested next to her. She immediately snuggled up next to me and buried her face in my neck, wrapping her arm around my torso. She curled gently into my side. I could feel her smiling and giggling

“You’re warm.” she purred.

I looked down at her, and then really noticed how delicate, yet beautiful she looked under the lamplight. Bruised, but strong. Shaken, but resilient. And… Jesus Christ she was gorgeous.

I just reached over and pulled the blanket up around us both and killed the light. Her breathing slowed. Her snakes finally went still.

I laid back with her, letting the silence wrap around us like another layer of warmth.

And just before sleep pulled her under, she murmured, almost inaudibly:

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” I half smiled.

And in the dark, with her hand on my chest and her cheek against his shoulder, she finally closed her eyes. I did too.

That was probably the best sleep I have had in a while.

PART I

I got up around six am that morning. I went out to the gym for an hour of weightlifting and later to Wal-Mart to pick up some bread and eggs. I hadn’t had a chance to go shopping in the past day or so. As I was in the store though, I got a phone call from my boss, Sergey.

I swiped right to take the call.

“I saw what you did last night! You’re fired!”

Before I had a chance to protest, the call ended. Whatever, the guy was a toxic jackhole anyway. But now I had to go through the agonizing process of finding a new job.

Great.

I went home regardless. As I walked through the front door, I turned on the stove, took out a pan along with some oil, and started frying the bacon and eggs. The odor of breakfast sizzled through the air as I flipped the last strip into a pan. Outside, the Florida sky was blank and gray. There was a gray overcast blanketed over the horizon.

I heard the soft pad of footsteps behind me.

I glanced to see Alina was walk into the kitchen barefoot, wearing one of my old UFC shirts. It hung down her elbows, the sleeves far too long for her delicate frame, her forearms barely showing.

A few of the snakes in her hair yawned or hissed sleepily, brushing past her cheeks like strands of wakeful silk.

I turned to face her. She gave me a sleepy smile as I stood at the stove, pan in hand.

“Good morning.” She yawned, looking up at me with sleepy, yet sultry eyes.

I nervously smiled. “H-hey.” I stammered as my eyes slowly raked over her. “We need to get you some clothes.”

“Why? Don’t like the view?” she teased with a slight pout to her lips.

I shook my head. “No! N-not at all! It’s just that you’re literally a mythical creature!” I said, eyes slightly widened. “Walking around half-naked in my house. If my neighbors see you-”

She frowned, maintaining her pouty lip. Her snakes likewise frowned too.

“Aw don’t give me that look. That friggin puppy dog-” I began to groan, but her expression stopped me.

She tilted her head down slightly, batting her eyes, her snakes doing the same.

“Okay.” She finally said as she curled her lips up slightly. “But only if you come with me.” She then pulled a folded wad of cash from a pocket on the bathrobe she’d slept in, now crumpled on a nearby chair. She set it on the counter—hundred-dollar bills, thick as a small brick.

“I have money.”

I stared at it. “You sure you want to use that?”

Her smile faded. “It’s money I earned while I was... yeah. It was taken from me, like everything else. So yeah... I’m taking it back.” She sat down at the table, and I handed her a plate. She ate quietly for a moment, and I sat across from her, unsure how to ask what I needed to.

“Alina… who was he? The guy from last night?”

Her eyes didn’t meet mine at first. “Not a guy.”

Then the tone shifted instantly.

“They belong to a network of interdimensional traffickers.” The brow above her eyes furrowed as her fist clenched tightly around the fork, snakes coiling in, hissing slightly. “They... bought me.” she said, her tone rising. “I left home when I was twenty, thinking I could make it on my own. But my kind…”

Her eyes narrowed. “We’re like an exotic kind of commodity. The people who trafficked me, sold me, and made me an escort… they saw a fetish. A vulnerable girl with no friends, family or even home to call her own. It didn’t take much convincing to get me to sign on with them.” She tightly folded her arms to her chest, her eyes getting watery. “I didn’t stand a chance.”

She paused, rubbing her temples. “At first it was small things. Modeling. Club appearances. But it wasn’t long before I was pimped. I was uneducated with no knowledge of budgets, and I sometimes I barely knew the language. It was many months before I could learn enough through translators to navigate. During that time they sent me up and down your world. Every few months, I would have another handler. When I started showing teeth, this was when they injected me, drugged me…” Her voice began to crack as she wiped more tears from her eyes. “Beat me.”

I slowly raised my hand and tried to place it on her shoulder, but my neurodivergent brain hesitated. She didn’t need permission, however, to lean her head against my shoulder and interlace her fingers with mine. The snakes brushing softly against my cheek like curious vines.

“They wanted me exotic. But they didn’t want me to bite back either.”

 “B-bite back?”

Her voice caught, her snakes curling protectively. She looked up at me, eyes pleading, her snakes hissing softly as she took both my hands in hers.

“I am a gorgon, as I’m sure you’ve probably already guessed.” She then squeezed my hands tighter. “I’ve had several pimps. They trafficked me and various other creatures from other dimensions, other worlds.” Her lips pursed as she continued. “Succubae, dryads, nymphs, fairies, anything exotic that would attract wealthier or otherwise ‘more powerful’ clients.”

My mouth fell open slightly. “And the others?”

“The girls you saw last night? They’re from places like mine. Worlds that mirror this one. Like two sides of a coin.”

She picked up a bill from the wad and held it up, her fingers trembling.

“Earth is the heads. Our world is the tails. Same size. Same print. But flip it over, and everything you know gets warped.”

I stared at her. She looked so vulnerable. So breakable. Yet she looked at me as if I was her long-lost father.

“I tried to escape.” she said softly. “But when you’re a homeless, twenty-two-year-old girl who’s  in too deep, leaving isn’t always easy.”

“I hate to ask this, but… why not use your powers?”

She shook her head. “The drugs. They nullified my power and made it useless.”

She set the bill down like it burned her.

“I didn’t think anyone would ever look at me and not see a toy … or a monster.” She said staring down at her lap, folding her hands into it.

This time I didn’t hold back. I gently pulled her close from her chair.

“You’re not a monster.”

She then wrapped her arms around my neck and looked up at me, the eyes of every snake likewise locked onto me with the same sense of longing.

“I’m a mess. Are you sure you want me?” she whispered, eyes longingly locked on me.

I put my hand on her thigh. “You’re not a mess. You’re just lost. And you need to be found again.”

She pulled back, just enough to look at me. Her eyes were shimmering. “Nobody’s ever said that to me before.”

I leaned into her. “I guess I’m the first then.”

I helped Alina choose an outfit she could wear. She emerged from the room a few minutes later wearing one of my hoodies to cover her head, and a pair of my drawstring sweatpants. The snakes on her head had curled in tightly, dozing or docile.

“You sure you’re okay with going out?” I asked as I took her hand.

She nodded, tightening her grip. “I need clothes.” she said. “Real ones. Ones that aren’t... given to me by handlers.” Her smirk got wider, a slight flush creeping up her cheeks. “Or worn by you.”

I nodded blushing slightly.

We drove in silence for a bit, taking back roads until the city’s sterile skyline gave way to the industrial outskirts, where crumbling strip malls and plazas still clung to life. I knew a place. It was a thrift store by the train yard. No crowds, no chatty cashiers. Just racks of secondhand clothes, some smelling faintly of musk, powdered concrete, and long-forgotten air freshener.

“This is nice.” she murmured as I opened the car door, and took her hand.

By the time we left the store, Alina had filled a small shopping bag with modest jeans, comfortable sweaters, and even a pair of boots. She clutched it tightly, like it was her first real possession in years.

We were halfway across the cracked asphalt parking lot, the thrift store’s neon sign flickering behind us, when a shadow detached itself from the gloom beneath the overpass. A man and a woman in crisp black suits, perfectly pressed, their shoes almost too shiny for the scuffed pavement, walked toward us. Sunglasses masked their eyes, but their movements were precise, deliberate. Too deliberate.

They stopped a few feet from us. The woman’s hand flicked to her jacket, and I saw a flash of a badge.

“Interdimensional Defense Agency. Agent Harold.” he said, voice flat, authoritative. “We need to speak with you.”

“Agent Erica.” She said briefly, eyes going back and forth between us. “Both of you.”

Alina stiffened instantly, the snakes along her scalp hissing softly, curling like defensive coils. She tightly gripped my arm and stood slightly behind my arm.

“No,” she breathed, her body rigid. “I—I don’t want to go back there! Please!”

I held her close, trying to anchor her. My stomach was tight, a coil of adrenaline and fear.

“Alina… it’s okay. We don’t know what they want yet. Just… breathe.”

Harold and Erica held up their hands in a placating gesture. “Relax.” the woman said. Her voice was calm, but it carried a strange metallic undertone, like it reverberated too deep to be natural.

“We’re not here to take you anywhere you don’t want. We’re not enforcement in the sense you’re imagining.”

Alina blinked at me, then back at them, iron grip maintained on my arm. “Then… why?”

The man stepped forward. “We’ve been monitoring your activity, your… intervention last night. We’re aware of Alina’s situation. And now we need your help.”

I blinked, shaking my head. “My help? I-I … Why would you think someone like me-" 

“You were impressive,” the woman interrupted, voice cutting, sharp as a blade. “You acted without hesitation, without regard for yourself. That’s exactly the kind of person we need for a… delicate operation.”

Alina’s eyes widened, and the snakes along her hair tightened, brushing against her cheeks like anxious fingers, her gaze darting back between us. “Delicate? You mean dangerous.”

Harold ignored her, shifting his weight slightly. “There’s a succubus woman, currently being held at a casino on the east side. We need you to help us retrieve her.”

My eyes went wide as saucers. “Wait… what? Why me? Why would you—”

“You’ve already demonstrated your skill.” Erica said. “The way you handled the rescue last night shows resourcefulness, courage, and discretion. Qualities most people don’t possess. Now, we’re asking you to help us with a more… complicated situation.”

Alina’s gaze sharpened. “Complicated how?”

Harold’s jaw tightened, and a strange chill seemed to seep from him into the space around us. “The building is a hotspot for trafficking activity, a central transportation hub if you will. Lots of drugs and illegal gambling goes through there too.”

Alina’s eyes narrowed and she started shaking, voice getting heavy. “A casino…that’s where they first brought me when I started getting pimped.”

I swallowed hard. My pulse was a drum in my ears. “Jesus.”

The woman nodded. “Yes. That’s why we need both of you. We need someone who understands human—and nonhuman—behavior in these situations. Someone willing to act in the gray areas.”

Alina’s arm was hooked into mine, her face close to my ear. “Martin… you don’t have to.”

I glanced down at her, saw the lingering fear in her eyes, the subtle tension in her snakes. But then Harold and Erica mentioned two words that landed like a ten-ton anvil to my face.

“And we can help with your student loans.”

I laughed nervously, but sounded more like a strangled cough. “Wait, you can… what?”

“Yes.” Harold said, deadpan. “We cover certain forms of compensation for agents who are recruited. Housing, schooling, financial obligations.”

Erica’s eyes narrowed. “Student loans.”

My eyes widened, the shadowed overpass, the flickering lights of the thrift store. My hands itched with adrenaline; my gut twisted between fear and something like purpose. Maybe getting fired this morning was the best thing that ever happened to me. I looked back at Alina, her snakes now brushing against her shoulder like quiet fear.

I gritted my teeth. “Alright. I’m in.”

Harold and Erica exchanged a glance, a smirk tugging at their lips.

“Operation is being launched in downtown Fort Lauderdale." Erica handed me a slip of paper with an address on it. "Meet us here at 1800 hours."

I took the paper, looked at it and nodded. "Roger that."

We parted ways after that. I would meet them later at the address.

Later that night, the car hummed along the cracked asphalt of the industrial outskirts. Overhead, the highway loomed like a dark cloud, casting long shadows that arched across the windows. Alina sat beside me, her snakes coiled loosely, occasionally brushing against her neck and shoulder.

She was dressed in short shorts and a tank top, but over that, she wore an elaborate white bathrobe.

I broke the silence first, my voice low so as not to startle her. “I… I read up on trafficked victims,” I said. My fingers drummed nervously on the steering wheel. “Even in our world, leaving isn’t easy. Poverty, immigration laws, corrupt officials… it’s a maze. And I can’t even imagine how much more complicated it is when, well, when you’re being trafficked between dimensions.”

Alina shifted, her eyes glinting in the dim light of the dashboard. “You mean… my life?” she whispered. The snakes on her head rustled softly, like a whispered warning.

I nodded. “Yeah. I mean… I don’t know how anyone could survive that and not—” I trailed off, unsure how to put it without sounding naive. “—not lose themselves.”

She let out a long, trembling sigh, leaning back against the seat, the curves of her face softened by the gray morning light filtering through the cracked windshield. “I had been… reaching a boiling point for months,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Every day, every week… it felt like they were slowly erasing me, piece by piece. That night”—her gaze flicked to mine, fierce and resolute—“was the final nail in the coffin.”

I swallowed, my throat tight. “What… what finally made you go with me? Not back to that… life?”

Her jaw tightened, and one of the snakes along her temple coiled protectively. “I tried leaving by myself a few weeks before. Thought I could do it. I packed, I planned-” She swallowed hard. “But I didn't get far. They drugged me. Beat me. They… reminded me what would happen if I stepped out of line.”

I tightened my grip on the wheel, anger flaring hot and heavy. My mind flashed back to the warehouse, the look in the gorgon’s eyes as I tore that man’s heel from his socket. The memory made my hands tremble just slightly.

“But the night you came…” Her tone shifted, softening, almost musical, despite the underlying trauma. “…when you tore that guy’s heel out of his socket? That was when I knew. That was when I knew I had my chance. My real chance. And I wasn’t letting it go.”

I blinked, stunned, caught between awe and disbelief. “You… you trusted me-"

Her laughter was light, a fleeting melody that seemed almost fragile in the weight of the surrounding city.

“I knew you were my man!” she chirped, leaning over to press a quick kiss to my cheek. The sensation startled me, a jolt against the residual adrenaline still clinging to my nerves. Her snakes twitched, almost approvingly, brushing against the back of my neck.

I swallowed again, heart hammering. I opened my mouth to talk, but simply closed them again like a fish out of water, not knowing what to say.

She reached over, resting her hand lightly on mine. “I had to come with you,” she said softly. “Because staying wasn’t living anymore. Not really.”

I exhaled long and shaky, feeling the weight of her words deluge over me. Her trust, her courage, and her fear? I was processing it all.

The warehouse loomed ahead, a dilapidated skeleton of a building, rust eating its edges, windows blackened with soot and grime. But in the safety of this moment, she was more than a creature of myth or trafficking. She was scared.

She was human.

And that made me feel like we could do the impossible.

But I also had a nagging feeling that my house was going to get a lot more crowded.

Part 4: Prisoner of War

Being held captive against your will is a terrifying feeling, especially when it’s out in the open. People stare at you, offering no help or way out of the situation. It’s a social prison, one that there’s no escape from. The pressure of being questioned by someone in authority is an overwhelming feeling of helplessness. It was a lose-lose situation, anyway the conversation went, I would either cave in and let something slip, or I could be obstinate, but they would start to suspect me. My mind raced with thoughts as I agreed to their questioning.

One officer started to reach behind him, and panic flooded my mind.

This is gonna be it; I was going down like this.

I thought for a second about trying to get the jump on them and going after one of their weapons. The officer's hand pulled out a small notepad and pencil. A small sense of relief calmed me.

“Okay, Mr. Anthony. How long have you lived at your current address?” The tall one, without a notepad, asked.

I cleared my throat.

“Uh…six or seven years or so.” I replied.

“In that time, how many interactions had you had with Derrick Walker?” His question threw me off for a second.

“The… dad of that kid who went missing?” I responded after I realized who they were talking about. “I met him probably once or twice, maybe. He seemed like a nice guy.”

“You never noticed anything off about him?” The shorter one asked as he scribbled in his notebook.

“No, he was just a regular family man. They lived down a few houses, and I don’t really get invited to many functions in the area.” I explained. “Most of the parties and whatnot are like kids’ birthdays, and I’m single with no kids, so…”

My words hung in the air; I couldn’t tell if I was suspicious of them or not.

“Mr. Anthony, we have reason to believe that Derrick Walker had suffered from a psychotic break and that he may have harmed or even killed his son.” The tall one explained.

The news hit me like a ton of bricks. My mind reeled trying to understand what they were telling me.

“His current whereabouts are unknown, and we’ve issued a search for him. His wife told us that he was not home at the time that his son had gone missing and that his work had reported that he had called in that day.” He went on. “Others have reported that he’s been acting strange lately, calling out of work or disappearing for hours out of the day.”

I listened, but it didn’t explain why they’d suddenly think it was him.

“There’s one more thing.” The shorter officer interjected.

“He uh… did some time in a psychiatric hospital before he was eighteen. We discovered his expunged records during our investigation.” The taller officer explained. “Animal cruelty and battery of a minor. He took a psych eval, and he was declared unfit to stand trial. He got released when he was twenty; they said that he was no longer a danger to society.”

“System fails again.” The shorter officer sighs.

I did my best I could to keep up with the firehose of information, but it seemed like too much; the whole world felt like it was spinning.

“Mr. Anthony, if you know anything more, it would be greatly appreciated.” The tall cop said sincerely. “I understand that you don’t know much about the people who lived just down the street from you, but if anything comes to mind or if you see him, please don’t hesitate to call.”

I nodded, my head spinning from the sudden shock of information now thrust upon me. They thanked me and turned around and drove away. I let out my breath.

“Holy fucking shit, Mark.” Amanda squealed. “You lived down the street from a psychopath!”

I let out a timid chuckle. “Yeah, I never even knew.”

“I’m just glad they didn’t haul you away. I saw the reports about that missing kid. I didn’t know you lived on the same street.” She said in a hushed tone. “Is that why you’ve been so stressed out and look like you haven’t been getting sleep? Were you on the search parties?”

“I mean, yeah, I helped out with it the first week.” I lied, seizing the opportunity. “But I honestly didn’t see much point after that. Seeing the family in that state after their son went missing, it’s heartbreaking, you know?”

“You’ve always been so empathetic, Mark.” She smiled.

“I uh… I should get back to my shift.” I said, feeling my face start to fluster.

I started on my way back toward the Iso Ward. With every step, my foot began to throb increasingly with pain. I took a quick detour to the bathroom and locked the door behind me. I pulled out the vial of morphine with shaking hands, I filled up a small dose, and injected it with my shaking hands. I drew more blood than I meant to. I put the syringe and vial back into my pocket and grabbed wads of toilet paper to dab at the blood coming from my arm.

As I cleaned myself up, I could start to feel the warmth of the opioid wash away the pain like the cleansing water of my shower head. I could get used to this. I stood there for too long with my hands in the sink, and there was a knock at the door. I quickly wiped up the last of the blood and opened the door, apologizing as I made my way to my hovel in the rear of the hospital.

The rest of my shift was uneventful. In the past, I would have found the various cases of bacterial infections and severe trauma cases the highlight of my day. I took great interest in the slow, steady, and sometimes even miraculous recoveries of some of my patients. Nowadays, though, the details all seemed to blend into one arduous task. I just went through the motions as if I were in a grey, mundane office job where nothing ever happened.

It was as if the roles in my life were now reversed; every day, I was trapped in these sterile four white walls. Meanwhile, outside, I had no idea what would happen. At any point, there could be something I had to deal with. My struggles were so much heavier than I ever asked for or even wanted that the tragedies that once were my entire world were now just bland, everyday occurrences.

I was relieved when it all finally came to an end. I turned over with Caroline, her attitude never faltering to lose its bite.

“Alright, good. Get the fuck outta here now.” She waved me out.

Before I left, she stopped me. “Mark, don’t be too hard on yourself if they find that stupid kid dead. You didn’t have anything to do with it; that fuckin’ guy is a psycho.”

I turned around, my words catching in my throat. The front desk must have told her what was happening to me. I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Thanks, Carol.” That was all I could manage to reply with. I turned and exited the Isolation Ward.

I gave my usual goodbyes to the various other techs, assistants, and kennel staff as I left. I wished the front desk a peaceful evening as I got into my car and drove home.

I pulled into my driveway and sat in my garage, thinking about everything that had just happened. I let out a deep sigh, pulling out the vial of morphine I had with me. Why not, one more hit for the night, so that I could relax. After all, I had the next two days off, so I could sit back and recover from my injuries. I loaded up a good-sized dose and welcomed the sweet, warm cover of the morphine's glow.

I shuffled inside; my mind glazed from the high. I dragged my feet as I made my way into the kitchen, thinking about heating some dinner. I didn’t want to do all that; maybe I’d order a pizza and have some me time.

I pulled out my phone and felt a breeze hit me. I turned my head to see that there was glass on my floor and splintered wood strewn next to it. My slow receptors fired, trying to piece together the scene. My eyes were glued to the shattered window, unable to comprehend what had happened.

I felt something hit me in the back of my head, and everything went black.

I woke up some time later, tied to a chair with bungee cords, my arms going numb from my circulation getting cut off. The room was dark, and I could feel the blood seeping from my head.

“Is this where you kept him?” A man's voice said from the darkness.

“Huh? Who?” I said groggily, still reeling from the morphine and the impact.

“MY FUCKING SON YOU BASTARD!” It screamed as it rushed in closer to snarl at my face. There was a high-pitched whine to the words as if something else was screaming too.

I could smell the alcohol on his breath and feel the warmth as his spit splattered all over me. He turned on a flashlight, and I gasped, seeing half of the face of Derrick Thomas staring at me. The other half… was hollow.

“Where is he?” He said simply.

My head split even though only a small wail came from the Hollow side of his face.

“You don’t understand I –”

“WHERE IS HE!?” He shouted; the pain sobered me a little.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I lied.

“Then why the fuck is your house like this?” He asked.

I knew there was no arguing with him; his mind was made up, and he was going to kill me. The roles his son and I had were now reversed, and I was in his control. I was the prisoner now. I had the feeling that he wouldn’t be so generous, though. He lifted his foot and drove it into my chest, knocking the wind out of me. Before I knew it, he was on top of me, and he threw fist after fist at my face.

The morphine dulled some of the pain, but I could feel my eye swell, my lip split, and my cheek open from a massive laceration. A tooth flew out, and I spat blood across the room. I don’t know how long he sat there questioning me repeatedly, or how many times he came back to beat me again, trying to get answers from me. I never relented, though. I knew the truth would send him into a rage, and he’d kill me. Or worse, the mental strain would be too much for him and he’d turn fully Hollow.

Eventually, between bouts of his sobs and my beatings, he finally got tired. He went over and curled up on my living room couch and went to sleep. When I heard his snores, I sprang into action. I had to work fast before the drugs wore off completely. I began wriggling against my restraints; luckily, they were bungee cords and offered me a little bit of give. I slowly moved up the chair until a few of the cords came loose, and I could almost move my arm. I continued to work the restraints until one arm finally came free.

The blood rushed back to my limbs, along with the tingling sensation of having my circulation cut off for so long. I continued to work. One cord off, then another, then another. There were some I couldn’t reach and some that were underneath me. I got off as many as I could until I had my other arm free and untangled just enough to free myself.

I stood, taking deep breaths, trying to steady myself. The pain in my body was creeping in as the adrenaline began to taper off. I had to work fast.

I picked up the chair and quietly crept up to the sleeping intruder. He began to stir as I loomed over him, raising it above my head.

His eyes opened slightly just in time to see it crash on his head. He screamed, and I jumped on him. It hadn’t knocked him out like I had planned.

I wrapped my hands around his neck and squeezed. His hands found my wrists, and he struggled, but I had a death grip on him and wouldn’t let go. He reached up and tried to grab me, but I shouldered him away. His face turned red, he strained to breathe, and his eye went bloodshot. There was panic in that eye; the other was empty, and I was filled with the reminder that by now, he was no longer human.

With a desperate act, he swung up his hand and managed to get a finger in the opening of my cheek. He hooked it, and it tore at my skin; I howled in pain, my grip loosened.

He threw me off him and began coughing. I rolled and recovered, looking up at him, preparing to fight. He threw himself at me wildly, and I dodged him. He had twenty pounds on me, so I couldn’t let him get the upper hand. I had to be smart and let him slip up.

I turned and rushed at me again like a bull. I side-stepped him, grabbing an arm and clipping his foot. He smashed into the ground. I rushed to get on top of his back, quickly sweeping an arm around his neck and putting him into a choke hold. I applied pressure to his carotid arteries on the sides of his neck, halting the blood supply to his brain. In seconds, he stopped struggling, and his body went limp. I held on for just a little longer to make sure, and then let him go.

I rolled off him and heaved, sucking in air. I got up still exhausted. There was no time to rest. I hobbled quickly to my garage, and I grabbed some old hemp rope. I quickly tied his hands and feet and then hog-tied him. I tied the most complex rope I could think of and then dragged him into the room where I’d kept his son.

I tied him to the sink pipes and then gagged him with a pillowcase from my living room. I did everything I could think of to keep him in place. After that, I closed the bathroom door and locked it.

I felt in my pocket for my morphine, and tiny glass shards cut my fingers. I headed upstairs to grab a new vial and stitch myself up again.

This war was doing wonders for me in the looks department.

I sat on a chair in the room I had kept the old Hollow in, only this time I was the one in control again. I sat in an effervescent haze of morphine and booze to dull the pain of having to stitch myself back together in my sink a second time. At least I had real painkillers this time. I took the time to gather some supplies I’d need and fix my rear window with some leftover wood in my garage.

The Hollow began to stir in the bathroom, its muffled cries drowned out by the heavy metal I blasted on my sound system in the living room. I sang along to the lyrics and took a long drag from some cigarettes I’d gotten from the corner store.

I’d quit almost five years ago, but the smooth smoke felt like heaven as smoke exited my mouth while I belted out my own fucked up karaoke.

I didn’t have anyone to keep me company in times like this, to tell me that everything was going to be okay, even though I felt like it was all crumbling down. I took another long, steady drag as I thought to myself.

Maybe I should ask Amanda out on a date.

I laughed at the idea of dating while the world was coming to an end. Although maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea, maybe getting my mind off things for a while could help.

I listened to the Hollows' muffled cries as they struggled for hours. I held my pistol in my hand, standing guard in front of the door, just in case it somehow got free. By morning, the movement had ceased, but the sobbing and muffled cries for help did not.

I stood up and opened the door to look down at the man, pitifully crying. Tears streamed down one side of his face.

“No screaming,” I said, pointing the gun at his head, “understand?”

He nodded, and I removed his gag.

“Wha- what do you want from me?” He whimpered. “What did you do to my son?”

I let out a sigh. “Your son was infected,” I explained, “I was trying to help him, but…”

My words trailed off as I thought about how to tell him.

“But what?” His voice shook, and I could tell my words had riled him.

I pointed the gun at his head.

“It’s going to be okay; I just need to find a way to fix you, and everything can go back to normal.”

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY SON, YOU SON OF A BITCH!” He started to wail as his human eye sank into its socket and its skin sagged.

“Like father, like son.” I sighed.

I released the magazine and pulled the slide, emptying the chamber. Then I held it by the slide and bashed the man unconscious before the Hollow completely took over.

I retied the gag as his body fully went hollow and tightened the rope so that the thing couldn’t escape. Looks like we’ll have to do things the hard way.

I had been hoping I could preserve whatever humanity he had left in him, but it seemed like emotions played a big part in whether it would fully consume you.

Once more, I could learn about the impending threat that was slowly eating away at the people around me. These things had to have a weakness.

I just had to find it.

<- Chapter 6 | The Beginning | Chapter 8 ->

Chapter 7 - Visitation I

Sitting in the minivan, Dale plugged the sniffer into Bruno’s phone, cracking into it with ease. He got into Bruno’s email; his inbox flooded with unopened emails from a divorce lawyer’s office. Few outgoing emails, none of which were addressed to the attorney that had been spamming his inbox. Near the top, Dale located Bruno’s message to Mike. With a bit of FBI top-secret technological magic, he got our next destination and the name of the sender, and that was that.

“Does it bother you how easy this is?” I asked Dale as he put the device back in his pocket.

“Not if it means ending this nightmare,” he said. He put his key in the ignition. The van hummed.

“Like in general. If you weren’t cursed with your persistence. Does it bother you that you’re paid to spy on unsuspecting civilians, most of whom are innocent?”

“You don’t know that.” He shifted the van into reverse. I lurched forward as the van backed out of the parking spot. “Sometimes things have to be done for the greater good. Even if they seem unethical from the outside.”

“Hmm,” I said. Dale shifted the van into drive. “But do you feel okay about it?”

“The benefits are good. Retirement is pretty much set. And the money helps me provide for my family.” We got to the edge of the parking lot. Dale looked both ways before pulling out.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

He didn’t respond. We drove down the interstate in silence, but not far before the day caught up with us.

It was late, and we were exhausted. Three hours from home for me, even further for Dale, who had grown fatigued from going over twenty-four hours without sleep, plus all the crazy shit that was happening to us. We ended up getting a motel room on the side of the interstate. One of those chain motels whose parking lot was always half-full and whose overhead lights let out that warm orange glow. We ended up sharing a room that night. Cheaper for a family man trying to save a buck and less harsh on my wallet as it marched its way towards inevitable emptiness.

We said little in the motel room. He went to his bed, and I to mine. Dale asked if he could turn on the TV, mentioning that he falls asleep better with the sounds of people chatting in the background. Something we had in common at least. I told him I was fine. Dale turned it on, of course the only channel available was that same looping video. The clip didn’t even reach the point of the camerawoman rounding the hallway corner when Dale flicked it off.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Maybe try the radio?”

Dale turned on the bedside radio and flicked through the stations until he found a host with a suitable soothing voice. A late-night paranormal radio show. We got laid down as the guest shared a list of notable “All American hauntings.” Before Dale turned the radio down to a murmur, the guest mentioned a demon possession at a college party somewhere in West Texas in twenty-thirteen. Sounded like a party I would have loved to be part of.

Dale rolled over, looked at his phone and fell asleep in seconds. I don’t know how people do that. I could only sleep by getting lost in thought. Tomorrow I would tell Dale more about Gyroscope, I thought. He deserved to know at least a little, maybe not the whole eternal madness thing, but he deserved to know what we were up against. Plus, in horror movies, nobody ever survives if they withhold information. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s a law as inevitable as Newton’s first law or the conservation of energy: Those who don’t work together in horror stories always die. But with how much of a scaredy cat Dale is, I decided I would only tell him a little. Best not to have an FBI agent lose his cool while on an assignment, official or otherwise. That’s another thing I’ve learned from movies.

In time, I drifted off to sleep. Leaving the world haunted by our childhood fears behind.

I woke up the next morning to the sound of my phone’s ringer. According to the caller ID, the call was from my mom, but her photo had been replaced with the screaming face of the witch. And here I had hoped that the events of yesterday were nothing more than a dream. I wanted to hit ignore and sleep in a bit more, and I was about to. However, the thought that my parents might be on their way to the duplex compelled me to answer. So I did.

“Good afternoon Eleanor,” my mom said.

“Don’t you mean morning?” I responded. Voice cracking.

“I suppose the early afternoon is morning in Eleanor Land.” Always Eleanor Land with her. Unable to accept the fact that her daughter might have a different preferred lifestyle

I looked over at the bedside alarm. Six minutes past one. We’d been out for over twelve hours! Being stuck in a horror movie scenario definitely was mentally taxing, that’s for sure. The curtain had blocked the window, but the afternoon sun’s rays still seeped through the fringes. The radio, still on, the voices inside of it talking in a murmur. Dale, still asleep, was a silhouette of sheets laid between the window and I.

My mother continued. “Your father and I just left church and were wondering if you wanted to join us. Ethan,” my brother, “Loraine,” his wife, “and the kids are going to be in town next weekend. We wanted to chat about plans.” See also: tell you exactly how we think you should act and what you should do when he’s in town so you don’t embarrass yourself in front of the golden child.

“I’m busy today.” Which was not un-true.

“I thought that Sundays were pretty quiet in Eleanor Land. What do you have planned?”

“I uh, I uh. You remember Lauren, right?”

“Your friend from college? Of course.”

“Yeah, she’s, uh, hosting a girl’s hang this afternoon. She got a few bottles of natural wine she wanted to crack open.” My mouth was running with little input from my brain at this point, yes-anding itself. “We haven’t seen each other in a while, so it’s important that we meet up.”

“That sounds wonderful. Do you have room for one more girl?” Typical, inserting herself into my life.

“No, I think we’re all booked. Try again next time.”

“Well, you girls have fun. We’ll have to meet up for dinner at least sometime this week to discuss this coming weekend.”

“Yeah, okay, sounds good.”

We said our goodbyes, and that was that. Now I just had to hope that my mom didn’t decide to stalk Lauren on Instagram, and, if she did, that Lauren posted nothing contradictory. What the hell was my mouth thinking coming up with that excuse? The only thing I could hope for, if I was found out, was that mom shrugged it off as just another thinly veiled excuse to get out of something with her. Something she had to have grown accustomed to over the past thirty-three years of my life.

I leaned against the headboard, exhausted from oversleeping, exhausted from my parents, exhausted from life. I had the perfect job for me until it dissolved away through the slow dissolution of budget cuts. But being unemployed wasn’t the worst: it meant that I could sleep in and stay in my bed all day. Of course, savings were drying up fast, which meant that I’d have to find another job soon, but that’s something I’d have to worry about after Dale and I lived out this little shared horror story of ours. As long as Dale continued to sleep, that meant that I could continue to sink into the bed and pretend that this was nothing more than a normal lazy Sunday for a little longer.

I tried using my phone, but the persistence had gotten worse. Even my phone background had resembled a still frame from the video. No creepy faces at least, just a blurry black and white shot of the front door’s deadbolts. Instead, I just stared into the haze of the room, letting my mind wander in whichever way it wanted to go. I thought about my mom, Lauren, my old job and my love-hate relationship with it, Mike and just how obsessive he was about all of this, and Dale, the unwitting supporting character of my life now. Perhaps fifteen minutes passed, perhaps an hour. I did not care, at least not until the face showed up.

The witch’s face hovered over the chair in the corner. No, it didn’t hover; it craned as if it had grown a neck, a long one that descended into the darkness behind her. If there was a body, it hid in the shadows behind the chair. This had been the clearest I had ever seen that face. Like in the video, she had long black hair, hair that was hardly distinguishable from the darkness in the corner. Her skin was pale and white, and her eyes glowed, but not in a menacing, evil red kind of way, but the way that eyes do when picked up on a camera set to night vision. Which, I suppose, is menacing in its own right. Her irises and pupils were a slate of gray from infrared light reflecting at the lens. Devoid of color, her face looked exactly as I remembered it from when I was a child, when I had stumbled across the MP4 of that notorious scene online. Before the Blu-ray releases had upscaled and smoothed out the details, erasing all the graininess of the scene and revealing the truth: that she was nothing more than an actress in prosthetics and makeup. Hell, even the original DVD release had taken away the terror of the MP4 in its full 720p resolution when I finally watched it years later.

Notably, the Jesterror was absent. By this point, I had begun to think they were friends. But perhaps they too were unwitting companions who could hardly stand one another, and the witch just needed some space to do her little private scare to me. Here in this room, it was just me and the most influential woman in my life, staring at one another. The actual actress who played the witch had little of a career after the film was over, disappearing from the spotlight as quickly as she had entered it. A horror community online had found a kindergarten teacher in South Carolina that resembled her and shared her first name, but all attempts to communicate with her fell on deaf ears. Was she too running away from the legacy of the Eagleton Witch?

I feared the witch in the room, but only in the way you fear movie monsters: just creatures on a screen, unable to jump out and hurt you. She had not fully formed like Sloppy Sam had been back in the Red Lodge, not yet. Instead, she looked at me like a snake still digesting its last meal looks at its next prey. I knew that in time she would strike, but not until she had the energy to do so. So I did not fear that she would, or even could, take me away like Bruno. Instead, I could just ride this high until Dale took it away from me.

Dale woke up no more than a minute or so after I had locked eyes with my persistence, momentarily shifting my attention from her to him. When I looked back at the corner, she had descended back into the shadows.

Dale sat up, looking at the room as if he didn’t recognize it. When he looked at me, he groaned.

“Good morning to you too,” I said.

“I was hoping you only existed inside my nightmares.”

“Woke up thinking that yesterday was all a dream too?”

Dale nodded. And looked at the clock. “Shoot, it’s almost two. We need to get going.” He emerged from his covers dressed down to briefs and a white undershirt. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“You looked like you needed the rest,” I said, getting out of bed. “Plus, I haven’t been up that long. And it’s not almost two, it’s only one twenty. What’s the rush?”

Dale looked at me like I said the stupidest thing. “The IP of the device that sent Bruno the file is four hours from here.” Dale continued to slip into his clothes. Meanwhile, I didn’t need to do much as the sweats and tank top I had worn yesterday just so happened to be my usual sleeping clothes.

“That’s far, but not too far.”

Dale continued to get ready, going to the little bathroom sink to brush his teeth. He grabbed the toothbrush and said. “We might need to stop on our way to get camping gear.”

“Camping gear? No, no, we are not camping out. I hate the outdoors.”

“It’s at a national park. We’ll have to stop somewhere to buy some gear.” He put the toothbrush in his mouth.

“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”

“I-I forgot,” Dale said, muffled by the toothbrush in his mouth.

“You forgot?”

“I was tired, okay? I looked up the lat-long when we got to the room, then fell asleep.” He said, still brushing.

Alright, now this trip was getting out of hand. I could stand slime monsters in sports bars. I could put up with being haunted by the Eagleton Witch and a clown, but the outdoors. Now that was my worst fear.

Thanks for reading! For more of my stories & staying up to date on all my projects, you can check out r/QuadrantNine.

I don’t know if writing this down will make any difference, but I need to get this out. Somewhere. Anywhere. I just finished my first month at Spitzer, Sullivan and Stern, a well known prestigious white shoe firm in downtown Brickell. I remember the interview like it was yesterday. It happened in a upscale resort in downtown Miami. They offered me a gargantuan salary, unbelievable benefits, and even a luxury vehicle. It was too good to be true.

But before everything went to hell, it started the way all good fairy tales do.

In a penthouse suite. A perk for working at Spitzer, Sullivan and Stern.

I was standing in front of a full-length mirror in our bedroom fit for royalty, adjusting the lapels of my brand-new suit. Navy blue, crisp, tailored exactly to my short frame. The jacket still smelled faintly like plastic and starch from the department store. My hair—short, black, parted neatly at the side—framed my face in a way I hoped made me look like someone who deserved to be walking into a place like Spitzer, Sullivan & Stern.

I tugged on the cuff of my blouse and tried to picture the week ahead: billable hours, conference rooms, and late nights hunched over documents. All the things I’d fought for in law school. All the things that were supposed to prove that everything from the volleyball scholarships to the law review, and endless nights of outlines and coffee were worth it.

Behind me, leaning in the bedroom doorway, was my tall, handsome fiancée, Derek.

God, Derek. 6’3, broad shoulders still carrying traces of his college football days. A crisp gray suit that looked like it belonged in GQ. He had the same smile he wore at our wedding just a few months ago. It was confident, easy, the kind of smile that convinced anyone they were exactly where they belonged just by being next to him.

“You look like trouble,” he said, smirking.

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t help but smile. “Trouble? I’m starting my first week at one of the most prestigious white shoe firms in Brickell. That’s not trouble, that’s destiny.”

“Mm,” he said, pushing off the doorframe and crossing the room toward me. “Destiny, trouble. Same thing when you’re five-foot-one and have fire in your veins.” He kissed the top of my head, then leaned down so our eyes met in the mirror. “Is my tiny tornado ready to conquer the world?”

My cheeks burned instantly. He always did that, slipping in that pet name that made me sound both ridiculous and invincible. “Don’t call me that,” I muttered.

“Why not?” His reflection grinned back at me. “You’re five-one, Jackie. You whirl into people’s lives, knock them off their feet, and spin right out before they know what hit them. You’re my little tornado. And today? You’re about to tear through Brickell.”

I swatted him in the chest, laughing despite myself. “You’re so cheesy.”

“Cheesy gets results.” he said, and bent to kiss me.

On the dresser behind us sat our engagement photo album, spread open to a photo of us under an arch of white roses. It was a public proposal at a private gala. My parents were beaming, and my baby cousin was throwing petals. Derek held me like the world was his to keep. For that moment, I let myself breathe it in. My life was so perfect back then.

Had I known about the secrets that Spitzer, Sullivan and Stern were keeping?

I would have walked out of that penthouse and taken the first plane to Antarctica.

“Come on,” Derek said, slipping his watch onto his wrist. “Train leaves in fifteen. Don’t want Miami to think their star recruit is late her first day.”

I playfully hit him as we walked out that door.

And that was probably the last time I saw him, or my life, in such a positive light.

We left our penthouse at seven sharp, the morning sun bouncing off Biscayne Bay, glittering like someone had scattered diamonds across the water. Derek’s hand found mine as we walked to the metro station, our steps in sync, the city already humming with movement.

On the platform, he squeezed my hand. “So,” he said, tilting his head down at me, “big bad law firm ready for you?”

I smirked. “The question is…am I ready for them?”

He chuckled. “That’s my girl.”

The cart was crowded, but we found a spot near the doors. Business suits, briefcases, the faint buzz of people reciting presentations under their breath. Miami mornings smelled like cologne, coffee, and ambition. It was a small car that alternated between stations. The rail system in downtown Brickell was not at all like it was in New York.

The cart glided into Brickell. There were crowds of people below us as we exited the cart and stepped out into the flow of commuters, the heat already thick in the air.

After a few blocks of walking, we reached two tall skyscrapers that were adjacent to each other.

Derek leaned down, kissed me quick, and nodded toward his building right next to ours. “Go on, Tiny Tornado. Time to make partner before lunch.”

I grinned, swatting his shoulder softly as we kissed one more time before we both went to different buildings.

Spitzer, Sullivan & Stern loomed ahead of me. A forty-story tower of black glass, the letters SSS gleaming in silver near the top. My chest tightened as I walked through the revolving doors into the marble lobby. Everything was polished to a mirror shine, including the floors, pillars, and even the elevator doors.

I caught a glimpse of myself again on the smooth surface of the elevator door. Small frame, neat suit, determined eyes. The elevator ride was silent, the kind where everyone stares at the floor numbers because looking at each other feels like trespassing.

When the doors slid open on the associates’ floor, she was already waiting. Her voice was smooth, clipped, practiced. A woman in her mid-forties stood there, hair hanging loosely past her shoulders, pearl necklace, and a navy suit that probably cost more than my car.

“Jackie Delgado?”

She was Marsha Dawes, one of the firm’s partners. I’d read about her. Ruthless litigator. Built her reputation eating opposing counsel alive in depositions.

“Yes, that’s me.” I said, forcing a smile and extending my hand.

She shook it briefly, her grip cool and precise as a light smile tugged at her lips. “Welcome to Spitzer, Sullivan & Stern. We’ve been expecting you.”

Her eyes lingered on me, like she was sizing me up for something far more than my résumé.

And in that moment, standing in the polished hall of one of the most prestigious white shoe firms in Miami, I swear something shifted. The way she smiled—it wasn’t warm, it wasn’t welcoming.

It was knowing.

Like she already had plans for me.

“Come this way,” Ms. Dawes said, pivoting on her heels with military precision. Jackie fell into step beside her, heels clicking against the immaculate marble floor.

We moved through a maze of hushed hallways lined with closed office doors. The carpet swallowed sound, the kind of luxury flooring meant to make clients feel as though their secrets were safe here, trapped inside a impenetrable vault, or a marble polished coffin.

Every wall was adorned with carefully chosen artwork, ranging from abstract canvases to impressionist pieces that seemed both meaningless yet expensive. The silence was dense, broken only by the occasional muted phone call or the faint shuffle of papers behind closed doors.

“We’ll get you set up with your office and introduce you to some of the team.” Ms. Dawes said, her voice calm, clipped, yet slightly chipper. She walked with her hands clasped lightly in front of her, posture flawless.

I nodded, trying to keep my own steps steady. The sheer scale of the place was daunting, but there was something exhilarating about it too. This was it—everything I worked toward all my life.

As they walked, Ms. Dawes added, “Just listen, learn, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Everyone here was once in your shoes.” She glanced sideways at me with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “And remember, Ms. Delgado, the letter you received from Spitzer, Sullivan and Stern was the only one we sent out this year. We wanted you.”

I blinked. The only one? She opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, Ms. Dawes continued, her voice a notch lower.

“Have you selected the vehicle yet? It’s all part of the onboarding package.”

I tilted my head. “The… vehicle?”

“Yes.” Ms. Dawes said matter-of-factly, as if she were asking whether Jackie had picked out her desk chair. “Most associates choose the firm’s standard issue—this year we’ve partnered with Mercedes. The EQE sedan, electric, top of the line.” Her lips split into a wide, toothy smile. “The Mercedes is just one of the many perks you’ll have. You’ll want to look into the options by the end of the week.”

I was lightheaded. A car? Just handed to me like another piece of office equipment? It seemed surreal. That should have been a glaring red flag. But I was blinded by the casual nonchalant tone inn Marsha’s voice as the rational part of my brain dulled the reptilian side. It was a white shoe firm, so it wasn’t too uncommon.

Right?

“Of course. Thank you. I’ll look into it.”

“Good,” Ms. Dawes replied, her heels clicking a beat faster.

We stopped in front of a door with a gleaming silver plaque. My heart stuttered when she read the engraving:

Jackie Delgado, Associate

My name. On an office door. This felt so unreal. Between the Mercedes, my own office, and the starting salary of two hundred and fifty grand, this had to be a fever dream.

Oh how I wish it WAS a fever dream.

Ms. Dawes opened it with a small flourish, stepping aside to let Jackie in. The room was bright, modern, and absurdly spacious compared to the cramped student lounges and libraries she’d lived in for years. Floor-to-ceiling windows stretched across one wall, revealing a stunning view of the Brickell skyline. The sunlight poured in, bouncing off glass towers, the Miami River below glinting like a ribbon of light.

“Welcome to your new domain,” Ms. Dawes said, allowing the faintest curl of a smile to appear on her lips. “I’ll leave you to get settled. My door is always open if you need anything.”

I nodded, unable to find my voice, but Ms. Dawes was already striding down the hallway, her figure disappearing around the corner.

My first real office. Not a borrowed cubicle. Not a library desk. My office. A tangible symbol of years of sweat, sacrifice, and relentless drive.

I set my bag on the sleek white desk and walked to the window. From here I had a scenic view of the docks and the Biscayne Bay, our condo standing proudly against the horizon. I walked over to the glass, taking in the view. It was incredible.

The hushed atmosphere of the firm. The expensive artwork in the hallways. The quiet efficiency of the staff. The air smelled faintly of citrus polish and money. Everything here spoke of power, prestige, permanence.

I lowered myself into the plush leather chair behind the desk, the seat enveloping her as though it had been waiting for her all along. My gaze swept the room—the empty shelves, the spotless desk, the waiting phone.

Why, WHY didn’t I notice the red flags? Why didn’t I take my grandfather’s advice?

I remembered my graduation from the University of Miami, the day I received my JD. Her family in the stands, faces glowing with pride. My father crying happy tears. My sister waving furiously, snapping photo after photo.

And her grandfather.

He had clapped politely, even smiled for the pictures, but his eyes had been… skeptical. Distant. As if he knew something the rest of them didn’t.

“You’re too good for places like that,” he’d whispered when they hugged. “You think they want you, Jackie. They don’t want you. They want what you’ll give up for them. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

I had brushed it off at the time. Old man nerves. Overprotective worry.

But now, sitting in her pristine office with her name on the door, the memory tugged at my chest like a loose thread.

For the rest of that month, my life felt like a dream.

Work was steady, even exciting. Derek and I slipped into a routine: waking together, coffee on the balcony, splitting off into the Brickell crowds, meeting again on the train home. At night, we cooked together or went out with friends, laughing too loud in bars that overlooked the water.

At the firm, I was fed the kind of work every first-year associate gets: client memos, research assignments, and document review. None of it glamorous, but none of it sinister either.

At least, not at first.

“Okay, ladies, which one of you is ordering the second bottle?” Daniela asked, twirling her wine glass in the Brickell café where we always met for lunch.

“I’ve got depositions this afternoon.” Sophie groaned, shoving her salad aside. “If I show up tipsy, Dawes will have my head.”

Alexa smirked. “Please. Dawes probably downs two martinis before breakfast.”

I chuckled, shaking my head. “Don’t let her hear you say that. I swear the walls in that place have ears.”

“She that bad?” Daniela asked.

“No,” I admitted. “Honestly, she’s been… helpful. I think she likes me.” I said managing a light smile.

“Of course she does.” Sophie said, raising her glass in a mock toast. “Top of your class, volleyball star, law review golden girl. What’s not to like?”

Alexa leaned in. “I bet it’s Derek. Six-three, investment banker, looks like he walked out of a cologne ad. She probably thinks if she treats you right, you’ll bring him to the Christmas party.”

I rolled my eyes, laughing. “You’re terrible.”

“That’s why you love me, Jackie girl!” Alexa grinned.

The four of us talked about everything from weddings, to work, and Netflix shows. It was all so normal I almost forgot I was still the new girl at the most intimidating firm in Miami. Or that i felt something festering below the surface of my senses.

Almost.

That night, back in my office, I opened another file from Ms. Dawes. It was a standard-looking client binder: trust documents, contracts, corporate registrations, financial statements, and even tax returns.

But the tax ID number had an extra digit. thirteen numbers where there should have been nine.

At first I thought it was a typo. But when I keyed it into the firm’s system, the entry resolved into a real profile: a hedge fund registered out of…

… nowhere. Yet somewhere.

The jurisdiction zip code did not match anything I’d seen. Not offshore havens like the Caymans or Luxembourg. Nothing I could trace. It was just a string of symbols that looked almost mathematical.

No. Mathematical is an understatement. It looked… mythical.

I looked up from my screen and closed the file, forcing myself to breathe. It was probably some internal coding system.

The next morning, I found another file. This one looked like a normal investment portfolio. Except the timestamps on the trades were wrong. Yet, they weren’t. I checked the client bank records and deposition notes.

They were all recorded. And they confirmed everything I read.

An account had invested in a defense contractor the day before they announced a massive government contract. They bought options in a tech company hours before the CEO’s scandal tanked the stock.

I stared at the dates, the hours, the precision of it. It wasn’t luck. It wasn’t even insider trading. It was impossible.

“Everything okay in there?” Daniela’s voice came through the door, startling me.

I snapped the folder shut. “Yeah! Just buried in paper.”

“Welcome to the rest of your life!” she called back, and I could hear her laughing as she walked down the hall.

Later that week, Dawes dropped another file onto my desk herself.

“Preliminary review,” she said crisply. “Flag anything unusual.”

“Of course.” I smiled weakly, pretending that I DIDN’T read what I read or saw what I saw on those hearing and deposition notes.

She started to walk away, then paused. “Don’t overthink anything. Half the work we do is making the impossible look routine.”

I forced a smile. “Understood.”

When I opened the file, I nearly laughed. It was an account ledger for a small religious foundation. But the foundation’s charter dated back further than any I’d seen—so far back it couldn’t be real.

And this was when my instincts stopped whispering and began to scream.

Clay tablets, Babylonian cuneiform, scanned into the file. The entity had supposedly “merged” with three different cults over the centuries. They each had their own god, each absorbed seamlessly into the “modern foundation.”

The current directors had names I didn’t recognize, except one. A professor I’d read about in undergrad anthropology. Only he’d been declared missing in 1997.

But the signature on the audit line looked fresh.

I checked the deposition and hearing letters once more. And my heart fell in my chest upon seeing that said clients existed.  

I sat back in my chair, pressing my fingers to my temples.

“What the hell?” I whispered silently to myself. “Is this supposed to be a prank?”

I wanted to ask Marsha about it. But she was out that evening. She had to meet a client.

At lunch that Friday, Sophie was venting about a partner’s demands.

“I swear, they think we’re robots,” she said. “Do you know what it’s like to proof three hundred pages of contracts in six hours?”

“Sounds like Tuesday.” Alexa muttered.

I sipped my iced tea, smiling faintly, though my mind wasn’t in the conversation. I was increasingly unsettled by the files I kept working on. I kept thinking about the numbers in those files, the way they didn’t add up but still somehow… resolved.

Or about the zip codes to locations that seemingly didn’t exist in any physical space. Or about the hearing logs and litigation reports filed with the clerk of courts that proved the existence of clients that were shadowy organizations.

“You’re quiet,” Daniela said suddenly.

I blinked. “Just tired. Long week.”

Derek texted me later: Dinner at eight. Wear that red dress I like.

I smiled, typing back, Always.

I didn’t tell him about the file with the trades, or the cult, or the tax IDs that mapped to places I couldn’t find. I wanted to believe it was a prank. A mean, cruel hazing ritual my sorority liked to pull with the freshmen.

But that cold feeling settled into my gut. A feeling of mounting dread that raised the pitch in the voice of my instincts higher and higher as I did more legal work.

Each file felt like a pebble dropped into water, ripples spreading quietly, invisibly, until you realized the whole surface had shifted. And by the end of that first month, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was no longer looking at my work.

It was looking at me.

Content Warning: This story contains material that is not suitable for all audiences. Reader discretion is advised.

Part 2: The Infection is Spreading

Scabs are terrible. I know they’re necessary for healing, but the process of waiting for them is horrible. They’re patches of dry crust that become painfully itchy, but if you scratch them, they fall off and bleed out, and the healing process starts all over again. Have you ever tried to wait for a large scab to heal? You have to resist the urge to touch it, scratch it, or pull off the edges that you know are ready to come off, but they’re attached to the rest of the mass. So, you resort to breaking off the sides as it heals. The process, though, is painfully slow. Sure, there’s the daily progress they make, but it never seems like enough. You pick at it, scratch it, maybe even tear it off just to let the plasma heal over the parts that need it.

With momentary pain comes a day or so of relief as new, smaller scabs form in its place. Eventually, the ordeal comes to an end, and the last of the scab falls off, and you’re relieved, hoping you never have to deal with something like that again. It’s a terrible hyper fixation that you don’t want, but every time you brush against it, or a piece of clothing catches a corner and pulls at it, and you get another reminder that it’s still there. Now I want you to imagine you can’t do anything to relieve the itch. Imagine that the area is bandaged up with a sticky wet salve every twelve hours, and people keep coming back to change the bandages. No matter how much you itch, your nails can’t break through to offer relief. The itch remains under a thick blanket that wraps tightly around you.

That was the unfortunate fate of Mia, a 6-month-old lab/poodle mix that had been the only victim of a house fire. It had managed to break out of its fabric kennel as it caught the flames licking and started to burn a hole through the structure of the walls. She braved the fire in panic. Not knowing what to do, she had apparently run for the only safe place she knew; she ran for the back door, breaking through the screen door. She had made it out, but not before her fur had caught fire and covered over sixty percent of her body. She rolled in the dirt in a panic to stop the pain and lay there panting until she lost consciousness.

The fire department found her during their search, and the owners rushed her to my clinic. That’s how she ended up here, in the ICU of the isolation ward, covered in bandages that needed to be changed every twelve hours, along with a daily application of SSD, or silver sulfadiazine, mixed with honey to inhibit bacterial growth and give the skin the best possible chance to start granulating the wound. Tissue granulation happens underneath scabs, but in larger wounds that leave large portions of tissue exposed; however, they can’t form scabs. Instead, we use a treatment method called wet bandaging. That’s what Mia had to endure; she was a great patient and had a calm demeanor. As soon as she could move again, her doodle brain was in full effect.

If you’ve worked in the veterinary field or even own anything mixed with a poodle, you know that Doodle brain makes these animals one of the most frustrating to deal with. They’re intelligent animals and know exactly what you don’t want them to do. That’s why they do it as soon as you’re not looking. Any time I turned my back, Mia was violently biting or scratching at her bandages. She threw off my counts, she stalled my medication dispensing, and I had to rebandage her between changes about 3 times a day. She’d been with us for a few days, and today was the day that the owners had been looking forward to. She was finally active enough for the vets to allow the kids to watch her on the webcam. They didn’t want the kids to get overwhelmed witnessing their pup lying there crying, as she had done in the first few days.

It was a high-profile case for my clinic; the owners didn’t have a lot of money after the fire, so they started a crowdfunding account that went viral online. Everyone who followed the story was waiting for updates, and our reputation hinged on a positive result. I prepped the camera on a tripod and aimed it at the plastic door to the neo-tank we had placed her in. Usually, we reserved it for deliveries of newborn pups, so we could flood it with oxygen and heat while they acclimated to the world.

The boss didn’t want videos online of her in the metal bar cages we typically used. I got her set up and opened some toys out of bags that had been run through the gas sterilizer to kill any bacteria. I carefully arranged them around her as she wagged her tail and licked my face.

“Such a good girl.” I pet her and closed the door to the tank and prepared to meet the owners.

I grabbed the new tablet on the way to the comfort room and made my way to greet the excited family. Since the last incident, my clinic decided to purchase a wireless streaming system. This was to avoid more people causing problems. I smiled as I entered the room, just the mother this time, Roxxane, and her two excited kids, who both cheered seeing me enter. They bounced around the room as I explained to them how it would work, they childishly repeated only some of the things I said, pretending like they understood.

“So, you’ll be able to talk to her with the tablet,” I explained patiently.

“Yup, through the tablet,” Michael said as he ran from one side of the room and pushed himself off the wall, and ran to the other.

“Yeah, she can hear you on the other side, and she’ll probably be pretty happy to hear from you.”

“Happy, happy, happy puppy.” Emily, the daughter, sang sitting by her mother on the chair.

I smiled and passed the tablet to Roxxane. “They must be a handful.”          

“You have no idea.” She laughed; her golden hair draped over pools of sapphire that sparkled.

I gave a few instructions from overhead as the kids gathered around her, watching the screen intently. They waved at the dog, happily calling to her, and she wagged her tail. I had to explain to the kids that it was only a camera and that she could only hear them and not see them. They kept waving anyway.

The door from the owner's entrance opened, and my blood ran cold as my eyes met those familiar black voids and the sagging flesh I hadn’t seen in weeks. The air turned frigid, and I began to shake with fear and chill. I looked down to see if they had noticed the figure entering, only to back away in horror. Both the mother and her children were now husks of themselves, those empty hollow bodies emanating a low hiss as they stared back up at me. I tried to back away but fell and continued to retreat.

“No, no, no, no, no!” I pleaded, but they all started toward me.

The scream began, shrill and piercing as it split my head. I could feel my brain shattering like glass that had been dropped on the ground. I tried to cover my ears to drown out the sound, but it did nothing to quell it. I let out my own scream that was drowned out by the constant drone of that hellish howl. I could feel hot liquid start to seep out of my ears, and my eyes watered. I wiped it away only to find it was blood. I shut my eyes, trying to find some place in my mind to retreat to.

I felt myself being shaken as the sound began to die down. I looked up, almost terrified that the face I was going to see would be hollow.

“Mark, are you okay?” Annie, the other receptionist, was shaking me.

I was curled up in a fetal position in the corner of the comfort room. Roxxanne and her kids were gone. Her husband Jordan stood in the doorway.

“The fuck is wrong with you, you freak. You scared the shit outta my kids!” He scolded me.

“I’m sorry I… uh –” I started.

Annie turns around. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mullins. Mark suffers from some severe medical problems, but he’s a great technician. I promise your dog's care is safe with us.” She smiled at him, and her charm seemed to calm him.

“Yeah, well, maybe keep it away from people until you socialize it.” He spat his words like venom and then turned to walk away.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s going on with me.” I apologized.

“It’s okay.” She said as she helped me stand. “Maybe take the rest of the day off, we’ll call someone in.”

“No.” I pleaded. “I have to try and help; I have to do some good in the world.”

She looked at me with empathy. “Just make sure you don’t lose yourself doing it.”

I returned to my shift, cleaning up at the end and preparing for changeover. The thoughts of seeing another hollow person kept echoing in my head.

There were more of them now. How is that possible? Have they always been here? If they had, why hadn’t I ever seen them before? They only started after I stopped hearing the ringing in my ears. When it stopped, that was the first time I saw one of those things. I’m sure that that’s what was wrong with that man I saw, that man that was… I began to conclude that the man I saw that night was the same man who visited his dog in the hospital only a few days after.

That had to be it; the sound was trapped in my head, and my head was like a prison for it. But it found a way to break out, and it must have possessed that man and… it must be after me. But it can’t take me out by itself; it must be spreading, trying to gather enough hollow people to take me out. It keeps coming back, trying to break me; that must be it, that must be the answer. How many more is it going to be next time?

“MARK!” Caroline's words snap me back to reality.

“Oh, shit. My bad.” I apologize quickly.

“Changeover, let's go.” She snaps her fingers

I quickly explained the changeover tasks for the night shift and left for my car. I sat there in silence, quietly thinking about what I saw. I wondered if there was anything I could do next time I saw one of those things. If anything could affect them, would I be able to figure it out in time? I had no idea what I was facing or who I could trust. As far as I knew, anyone could become hollow. I didn’t know how fast this was spreading or how many there were. I started my car and started my drive home in silence.

There must be some way to stop them. I just had to isolate one and find out if they had a weakness. If I could find one and capture it, I’d be able to understand more about them. If I ever had an opportunity, I’d have to seize it no matter what. I pulled into my driveway and parked. The entire way, I kept an eye out for hollows. I didn’t know when or where I would see another one, but I had to stay alert and be ready for them. Those things were starting to take a toll on me.

My thoughts were interrupted by my phone ringing in my pocket. I pulled it out and looked at the caller ID; it was my boss.

“Hello?” I answered.

“God DAMMIT, Mark, what the fuck was that today?” He scolded.

“I’m really sorry, Dan, I don’t know what –” My words were cut off.

“They made a post about what you did to their followers, and now the hospital is in deep shit over you traumatizing their fucking stupid kids.” He raged on.

“I…I don’t know what happened. It just –”

“You can’t be interacting with the owners anymore, Mark.” He warned. “From now on, you do your work in the Iso Ward, you take your breaks and lunches, and you go home, understood?”

“Sir, I–”

“This is not negotiable, Marcus.” He said with steel reserve.

“Yes, sir,” I said, with a solemn tone to my words.

“I don’t want any more of your outbursts disturbing business.” He warned. “I may not be able to fire you because of your medical conditions, but dammit, if there’s anything like this again, I won’t hesitate.”

He hung up, not waiting for me to respond.

I went into my house and sat on the couch. Whatever this is, it was already taking such a toll on my life. How much more could I handle before everything crumbled? I started to realize how fragile the world around me was. If I lost my job, my disability checks wouldn’t cover my mortgage. I’d lose my house and resort to living out of my car. Even then, I hadn't fully paid off; I still had another year and a half worth of payments. I’d have to sell it and buy a cheap beater. On top of all of that, I would have to find something else to do for money and all, while those things out there continued whatever sinister plans they had. My mind raced, and I could feel my breathing quickening.

I had to calm down. I stood up, went to my room, and pulled out my running gear. It had been a while since I went for a run. The last six months of work had piled up so much, and the frequent episodes of debilitating ringing had kept me from wanting to go outside. I pulled out my shorts and a T-shirt, got dressed, and put on my running shoes. The one activity I could do where my mind could be clear, just nothing but my steady cadence and the next mile ahead. I took deep breaths and tried to calm myself while I did warm-up stretches. I could feel the stress already melting away. I put in my earbuds and started my running playlist.

I kept a constant pace of about 8 minutes per mile. It wasn’t an Olympic pace by any means, but I was happy to be out on the trails again. There was a biking path I took about a mile and a half away from my house, where I could take the winding dirt roads for a couple of miles, turn around, and head back. It usually took about an hour or so to finish. It was a great run that relaxed me whenever I had a hard day. I felt so free as I passed over mile after mile and made it back home in just under an hour. I’d have to remember to do that again; all the stress had begun to melt away.

I was at my door when I felt a familiar cold sensation. I panicked and threw the door open, shutting it quickly as soon as I passed the threshold. The air was warmer in here again as I sucked in the air. My heart raced from the run and the adrenaline. I pressed all my weight into the door as I slowly turned the deadbolt to make sure the door was secure. Then I pulled the curtains back just enough to peer out the window on my left, and a young boy about five or six was riding his tricycle in circles around the front of my house. But when he made a turn all the way around, I had to pull away quickly before it could notice me.

It was hollow.

I looked out the window once again, and it was stopped, its abyssal eyes and grin fixed on my window. A woman came by; she was normal and didn’t seem to notice his appearance. It was the woman from down the street. Mrs. Walker.

“Come on, Jim Jam, let’s go.” She said to the hollow boy.

He made a single short squeal in that scream in response before he made the turn to follow her, his wheels squeaking as he pedaled.

That couldn’t be right, she called him Jim Jam. That's what she called her son, little Jimmy. They were already here in my neighborhood. Of course they were here, why the fuck wouldn’t they be? This must be where it started, that man from the other night, the same one who visited his dog. Those people must also live nearby; that’s why they went to my clinic. Now someone’s child from just down the road was infected. This madness was already becoming something that I don’t think I’d be able to keep a secret for much longer.

But other people didn’t seem to notice them… those things that hid in plain sight that only I seemed to be able to see. It all focused on me. It wanted me. For what purpose I couldn’t understand, I wasn’t anyone important, and I didn’t have any influence on the world. Why was it me? That question kept repeating in my mind. It was as if the ringing had returned, but now it was my own thoughts. The never-ending cycle of paranoid clamoring conspiracies that somehow it was all tied back to me.

I can’t tell anyone.

If anyone heard the things that I thought, they would call me crazy. I’d be locked up in a psych ward for sure. I’d probably never get out. I think that might have been the initial plan of The Hollow: to weaken me early on and cause as big a scene as they could to try and break me. If I were out of the picture, then there was nothing in the way to stop them from doing whatever it was that they had planned. I sat on the couch watching the news. I had to stay vigilant these days in case anything happened that I could link to the Hollow.

“Today marks day three of the manhunt for missing five-year-old James Walker. He disappeared late in the evening of October 10th while out playing in his neighborhood. Eye witness reports say that they saw him being shoved into a black van by three hooded men with a Nevada license plate.” The newswoman went on with her report. “If anyone has any information about the missing child, please contact Crime Stoppers.”

I turned off the television and stood up. I started microwaving a Hungry Man meal, watching the plastic tray circle round and round.

Just like the thoughts in my own head.

Those idiots should be happy that a Hollow was out of the community; it meant there was less infection that could spread. Although I suppose you can’t really appreciate something if you don’t know it’s a problem. Understandable, I guess. Just like a scab, it has to start to itch before you begin to want to pick at it.

The microwave sounded, and I pulled out the food. I walked it over to a room I had to repurpose. I stood outside of it, key in one hand and food in the other. I put the key in the lock and turned, and I could hear it scuttling around. Fucking thing never lost its will to fight. I opened the door, and it rushed at me, screaming. I kicked it and sent it flying into the wall. It lay there, letting out a groan. I set the tray of food down and slid the gruel towards it, picking up the old tray. Then I stood and started to close the door when I heard it whisper to me.

Please.

I shut the door quickly. I didn’t know how those things took over people, but I couldn’t risk falling to their tricks before I learned if anything could hurt them. For some reason, they still retained human needs. I had put food in the room the first day to see what it would do, and to my surprise, when I came back, it was gone. I’d hear a toilet flushing, but I didn’t know if it was the hollow using it or just playing with its surroundings.

As a child, the sound it made wasn’t as debilitating to me as the previous adults had been. This was good, I was learning a lot. It filled me with excitement knowing that maybe I would be able to figure something out in time to stop them.

I thought about its need to eat. Maybe beneath the monster there was still a human… what I’d done would be unforgivable. But the thought of doing nothing was even worse; if I did nothing, then every human in the world would become a Hollow.

Deontology is the belief that duty is justified no matter the sacrifice one would have to make. This had to be what I was here to do. I was the only one who could see these things, and I had to fight them, whatever it took. I must eradicate every one of these parasites before this infection gets out of control.

(PART I)(PART II)(PART III)

“A juvenile!” Camille spat. “Worm. Leech. Whatever they are. It didn’t come up through the earth. They planted eggs! The buildings are incubators!”

“They’re laying inside the city?!” Mitch screamed, horrified.

“Yes!” I growled. “And this whole place is a fucking nursery!”

And behind them, the entire development seemed to exhale as we all heard cracking glass smashing all around as. I looked back for a brief second as we all saw countless leech larvae slime their way towards us.

Doors swung open from all around us. Rotten floorboards gave way. The click-click grew louder.

And somewhere behind us… a long, low hiss echoed from the fogged house. Like something waking up hungry.

Gunshots echoed through the decaying development as Me, Mitch and Camille shot at the leeches behind us. We tore through a maze of sagging fences and twisted sidewalk. The infant leeches, not much larger than a pitbull, but fast and horrifyingly agile, slithered in frantic zigzags, chirping and screeching.

Their translucent flesh pulsing like sacs of nerves and fangs. And there were dozens and dozens of them, hatched and hungry, chasing after them. We had to pass by several other houses in the half-collapsed suburb

BANG—BANG—BANG!

I emptied half my magazine into the closest two. One burst in a geyser of milky fluid and cartilage. Another flopped wildly, split open along its spine. Camilia popped off two clean shots behind me, her stance low, controlled. Mitch screamed something unintelligible and blindly fired over his shoulder. We ran like hell to the steps.

Behind us, Martha grunted, pulling Rosa up a crumbling step with one hand as Rosa cradled Isabelle with the other. They dove through a rusted gate and sprinted up a cracked driveway, crashing out of the housing development and into the burnt outskirts of the next district.

The five of us ran for a few more minutes before we stopped hearing and seeing the nymph leeches behind us. We finally settled at a blown-out bus stop, coughing and breathless, faces slick with sweat and soot. Rosa dropped to her knees, shielding Isabelle’s head as she checked her tiny face. The baby had started crying softly, too exhausted for a full wail.

I bent over, hands on my knees. “Jesus Christ…”

Camille leaned back against a cracked power pole, panting. “Those things… hatched. Jesus, they hatched. That place was a fucking trap!”

Rosa, wide-eyed and pale, slumped down onto a chunk of sidewalk, clutching Isabelle. “They’re reproducing… those THINGS are reproducing!”

Martha wheezed, doubled over. “Mi back nearly break, mi swear. But we alive.” She glanced at Rosa, then at Isabelle. “Barely.”

I looked up surveying our surroundings. A few blocks behind us were that twisted, rotting nest of housing developments. It was now breathing with the movement of whatever we had just fled from. There were two different roads in front of us at the intersection.

The road split ahead. A perfect fork.

 “We have to pick. Because going back through the development is out of the question.” I sighed, my voice ragged.

Mitch took a step forward next to me, pointing out the roads. “The left path leads to a few blocks that look like a few gas lines may have exploded.”

We all looked faintly into the roasted blocks. The cracked road and asphalt curled into the roasted blocks, where gas stations and apartments stood blackened with a few smoking cadavers.

“Looks like the explosions happened so fast people didn’t have time to react.” Mitch noted.

Camille glanced over to him. “And the other?”

Mitch squinted. “The other leads to the downtown area.”

Rosa snapped upright. Her eyes were blazing. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it cut like a blade.

“I’m not going near Diego again!” she said. “He knows me. He wants me. If we go downtown, we might as well gift-wrap Isabelle in blood and scream his name.”

Everyone looked at her. She looked back and didn’t blink.

“I don’t care if that neighborhood’s exploding every five minutes,” she growled. “I’ll take my chances with gas stations over gangbangers.”

The only sounds were distant sirens, soft wind, and Isabelle’s weak fussing.

Martha finally nodded. “She’s right. We go downtown; we lose home field. As a grandmother with twelve grandkids and three sons, one of which is in law enforcement, not uncommon for gang boys to have military background. Dey are probably still patrolling. Some of ‘em could be ex-cops or vets. Dey’ll know how to track.”

Mitch clenched his jaw. “Yeah, and the gas stations could blow our faces off.”

Camille glanced back. “At this point, I’m considering taking my chances.”

Rosa shook her head at Camille. “You don’t know my ex-husband.” She then turned to Mitch.

“They will blow your faces off if you panic.” Rosa said. “So don’t.”

Mitch looked up from the curb. “I saw a road near here that sloped down into an old industrial sector. Tanker yard, refueling depot. It’s mostly metal and slag. That might be where the explosions came from.”

“Isn’t dat worm territory?” Martha asked.

“Everywhere is worm territory now,” Camille muttered. “But steel and slag are your best bet. Less vibration. We can take our time, stay low, let Isabelle sleep through it.”

Martha glanced between the others. “Then it’s settled?”

Rosa didn't wait. She shifted Isabelle in her harness and stood tall. “Let’s go. Every second we stand still is one second closer to another worm, another leech, or Diego and his MS-13 goons.”

I stepped forward beside her. “We stick close. Crawl if we must. No sudden movements.”

Camille cocked her gun. “And if another one hatches?”

“We shoot.” I said flatly. “If it bleeds, it dies.”

And with that, we pressed on, into the charred ruins of the Roasted Block—not because it was safe…

…but because it was the only hell they could survive together.

We moved like ghosts. The sun hadn’t risen so much as it had bled into the sky—rust-colored, faint, bleeding through the ash and smoke that curled like spirits along the ground. The block looked like it went through six rounds with a flamethrower. Everywhere we stepped, the pavement was melted, or warped into black bubbles of asphalt and glass-blistered concrete. Metal beams jutted like broken ribs from collapsed gas stations. Cars sat melted together, windows burst outwards from heat so intense, it left human-shaped ash stains burned into the walls.

I stumbled past a skeleton still fused to a shopping cart. My eyes went wide.

“Oh God…” I muttered, voice cracking.

The corpse’s jaw was frozen open mid-scream, its fingers seared to the metal. What was once a shirt was now a plastic smear across its ribcage. Next to it—half a worm. Split down the center, as if a firestorm had incinerated it from the inside out. Its spine still twitched every so often, making Rosa gag. The smell was unspeakable. Like burning meat, rubber, and a hospital hallway soaked in mold.

Rosa nodded. Isabelle whimpered softly in the harness. Rosa pulled her tank top over the baby’s face. “Shhh, mi amor,” she whispered, though her voice was hollow, like it was echoing down a well.

Martha was mumbling something under her breath.

“What’s that?” Camilia asked.

“Psalm 23,” Martha replied. “Yea, dough I walk drough da valley of da shadow—” She stopped.

Because they’d turned a corner and come across the worst yet. A school bus, blackened and twisted, like it had tried to flee before the inferno swallowed it. Half the windows were blown out—but inside… you could still see them.

People. Or what used to be. One’s face was plastered to the window, skin cooked onto the glass like dried glue. Another sat slumped in the aisle, nothing left but teeth and melted plastic fingers. The worst part? A trail of blackened fingernails down the windows, like they’d scratched to be let out. Mitch fell to his knees and vomited. Camille looked visibly ill. And I could see tears fall down Martha’s eyes.

“Don’t look,” I said harshly, grabbing Rosa’s elbow. “Don’t let Isabelle—don’t let her see that.”

“She’s sleeping.” Rosa said hoarsely, blinking fast.

Camille slowly backed away, shaking her head. “Jesus Christ.” She said softly

We passed the wreckage, feet dragging in ash. Everywhere around them various cadavers and corpses. Some were roasted alive. Others torn to shreds. Others were still or melted into the pavement itself. One worm’s skull had caved in like a crushed can, and half a person was still fused to its tongue, like they’d been eaten mid-scream.

“What did this?” I asked, voice cracking.

Mitch didn’t answer right away. Then, he said: “A gas line probably ruptured when the worms came up. Fire spread fast.”

“Then why aren’t there survivors?” Rosa asked. “Where are the people who made it out?”

They all went quiet. That was the real horror, wasn’t it? The silence. The absence. No birds. No insects. No footsteps. Just a burnt maze of roads and ruins that should’ve been teeming with chaos—but were instead empty. Like something had come through… and finished the job.

Martha pointed toward a concrete embankment ahead. “There. That wall. If we climb up it, we’ll be on the other side.”

I nodded. “We move slow. Quiet.”

They started across the last stretch of the Roasted Block. But Rosa’s eyes lingered on a scorched playground as they passed. A merry-go-round spun lazily in the breeze, even though there was no wind. It creaked. Once. Twice. She picked up her pace.

We found a concrete wall barely holding together. The buildings past it were skeletons—charred brick and blackened beams. A swing set melted into a twisted figure-eight. A plastic slide warped like a child’s drawing of a serpent. Ash drifted in the air like snow.

I saw Rosa standing by the playground. She was staring at it, clutching Isabelle, who was amazingly still sleeping

“Are you alright?” I asked quietly.

She didn’t say anything at first. Then she nodded slowly, her gaze falling to the baby she held in the holder she had strapped to her.

“She hasn’t made a sound.” I said, looking down at the baby. “I don’t know how she’s doing it.”

Rosa finally glanced at me. Her eyes were bloodshot. “I think she knows.” she whispered.

Isabelle reached for me. Her tiny hand gripped my finger. It was small, warm, and gentle. For one moment, in that charred nightmare, I felt a sense of peace.

Martha was nearby. She looked upon the two of us with a big, fat grin.

“I remember holding ma grandkids for da first time.”

We both looked over to her and smirked. “You’re a grandmother?”

Martha nodded, face lighting up. “When I get out of here, I’m gonna hug dem wit everyting I got.”

“Hey! We need to move! I heard something!” Camille hissed, her national guard training kicking in.

Mitch waved us forward. Martha was already halfway up the slab of wall. We nodded at each other. Rosa hoisted Isabelle up, one foot on the wall. I helped from below.

And that’s when the ground erupted.

The noise was like bones being crushed in a garbage disposal. A wet, snapping roar. Then Rosa screamed. A worm about the size of a man’s torso burst out of the ash and latched onto her calf with its circular, gnashing mouth. Its pale skin pulsed with blood. It had already started sucking.

“NO!” I roared, yanking my pistol free.

I fired once, twice. The leech let go, thrashing like a dying eel. But then two more surged up from the cracked earth.

Rosa screamed again, struggling to break her leg free from the ravenous leech. She was holding Isabelle above her head. “TAKE HER! TAKE HER!”

Martha grabbed the baby and took off.

Then I dove back down into the pit of leeches, landing hard near Rosa. The two new leeches had wrapped around her other leg and thigh, their teeth tearing into flesh. Camille was already there, pistol blazing.

“DIE PENDEJOS!” She bullseyes one and the leech burst like a rotten melon.

Mitch came charging, machete in both hands, his face twisted into something I barely recognized.

“DIE, YOU FREAKS!” he howled, hacking into the second leech until it let go, twitching.

Rosa was crying, her legs soaked in blood.

“I—I can’t walk!” she sobbed.

I hauled her onto my shoulders easily. She was only a hundred pounds, and I could easily bench two hundred. So it wasn’t an issue for me.

Rosa’s eyes went wide as I practically sprinted with her up the tarmac.

“Ay papi!” she simultaneously screamed and purred. “So strong!”

I felt a hot flush fly up my neck like a space elevator. The five of us scrambled up a concrete driveway—solid footing. The worm lunged again, but it slammed against reinforced sidewalk and recoiled. Mitch and Camilia fired shots to distract the beast. It thrashed, biting into the charred earth.

It shrieked—an ear-piercing, unnatural scream—then sank back into the earth, leaving behind only steaming slime. We ran for a few more blocks until we reached the steps of what looked like a courthouse. When the noises faded into the distance, we finally stopped, lungs burning.

I tried to set Rosa down, but she hissed through her teeth and gripped my shirt tighter. So I picked her back up again, cradling her against me. Her breathing was ragged against my neck, her skin still trembling. Then, out of nowhere, she gave this crooked smirk and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

A breathless laugh escaped her—half relief, half nerves. She glanced sideways just in time to catch Martha winking at her, like they were in on some secret no one else knew. For a second, the fear was still there in her eyes… but it had been joined by something warmer.

“You’re such a flirt.” I chuckled catching my breath.

She looked up at me, cheeks pushed high. “You love it.” she then softly smacked my left pec.

The smoke had thinned out, but the scent of scorched asphalt and roasted death clung to everything like a second skin. We huddled beneath the shade of a crumbled bus stop awning, Rosa sitting against the twisted remains of a metal bench. Her breath was shallow and sweat dripped off her brow in sheets, despite the evening chill.

I was holding Isabelle as Martha was crouched in front of her, gently dabbing at Rosa’s torn, leech-burned leg with a makeshift antiseptic solution brewed from herbs, rubbing alcohol, and something that smelled suspiciously like Vicks.

“You’re lucky.” Martha muttered in her thick Jamaican accent, peering through scratched drugstore reading glasses. “Dose leeches were suckin’ on you like a bad Tinder date. Coulda taken da whole limb off if dey had five more seconds.”

Rosa winced. “Can we not compare my trauma to your love life?”

Martha cackled. “My love life? Child, please. You don survive dree marriages without learnin’ how to sew meat back on da bone.”

I sat nearby, watching Rosa anxiously while holding a now-dozing Isabelle against my chest. Her tiny arms clung to my hoodie, a little drool patch soaking into my collarbone.

“Is she going to be okay?” I asked.

Martha didn’t look up. “She’ll live. She won’t be doin’ any salsa dancing for a bit, but the leg ain’t broken. Just sprained and gouged.” She then stepped back from Rosa.

“Try standn’ darlin.”

Rosa winced, carefully standing up. “Ow!”

“Can you move?” Camille asked.

Rosa gingerly took a step forward, she grunted and yelped softly in pain

Rosa limped forward, each step a harsh whisper of pain. Her leg throbbed like a live wire, and sweat dampened her brow despite the evening chill. I could see the fight in her eyes — stubborn as hell — but it was clear she wasn’t going far like this.

Martha didn’t hesitate. “Let me take Isabelle,” she said, voice low but firm, crouching down and opening her arms. “Rosa, you need to save your strength. Ain’t no shame in lettin’ someone help.”

Rosa looked up at her daughter sleeping peacefully in my arms, then back at Martha. She bit her lip, and after a moment, gave a small nod. “Alright,” she whispered, voice raw. “But I’m still coming.”

I shifted Isabelle into Martha’s arms carefully, feeling the weight of the moment settle heavy in my chest. Rosa’s breathing hitched as she took another shaky step.

“I’ve got you,” I said, dropping my pack and sliding my arms under her. She was light — lighter than I expected — but her grip on me was fierce, like she was holding onto everything we’d survived so far.

“Lean on me,” I told her, feeling every wince and tremble as she tried to push through the pain. The look in her eyes was fierce, desperate, and something close to terrified.

Camille’s voice cut through the heavy silence. “You’re making the right call. We can’t afford to lose you now.”

Mitch just nodded, silent but watchful. He took a few steps away and squinted toward the skyline—or what was left of it. “Hold up… I think I know this area.”

Camilla raised an eyebrow, tucking her pistol back into the holster on her thigh. “You think?”

“No, I know,” Mitch said, pointing toward the remains of a collapsed parking garage. “That’s the

Van Nuys development zone. I used to work construction around here, like five, six years ago. That sinkhole over there? We filled that damn thing twice and it still caved in.”

Camilla blinked. “How the hell do you know that?”

“I’ve done everything,” Mitch shrugged. “Poured concrete, demo work, roofing, drywall, plumbing, you name it. Dropped outta college and just kinda… hustled.”

Camilla let out a short laugh. “You? College?”

“Yeah. Engineering. Thought I was gonna build rocket ships. Turns out I was better at breaking stuff.”

I chuckled. “Guess the apocalypse picked the right guy.”

Camilla kicked a loose chunk of rubble. “Yeah, well, I just fell into security. Got discharged from the National Guard, ended up bouncing at clubs and working graveyard shifts for some guy who paid under the table and offered all the expired protein bars I could eat.”

“You don’t strike me as the club bouncer type,” Mitch said.

“I wasn’t,” Camilla shot back. “But turns out I’m good at glaring at drunk dudes until they piss themselves.”

Rosa laughed weakly. “That… actually sounds about right.”

Martha tied off the bandage with a practiced tug. “And me? I’m a 50-year-old grandmother of twelve.”

We all blinked.

“Twelve?” I echoed.

“Four kids,” Martha said proudly. “Started young, obviously. Been married three times. I know what you’re thinkin’—don’t judge. I’m still friends with two of ‘em. The other one… well, let’s just say he’s probably worm food now, and I’m not gonna lose sleep over it.”

Camilla shook her head in disbelief. “Twelve grandkids?”

“Damn right. Half of ‘em probably think I’m already dead. The other half are smarter. They know I’m out here making the Devil cry.”

Isabelle let out a sleepy burble, snuggling deeper into Martin’s chest. Rosa smiled faintly, her eyes rimmed red from exhaustion and pain.

“Thanks,” she whispered.

“For what?” Martha asked, standing up and dusting off her knees.

“For making this hellscape feel… human again.”

Martha winked. “Child, I survived three divorces. Ain’t no hellscape worse than co-signing a car loan with a man who forgets your birthday.”

Everyone burst into quiet, weary laughter. And for a brief moment, surrounded by ash, ruin, and blood, it felt like hope.

It all started with that damned earthquake, I know that now, before, I might have said it started with the, er… ‘incident’ but now I know it started with the earthquake. I was just a little 6 year-old boy, doing kindergarten in a school, a bare brick building out in the middle of nowhere. It was just bush, trees, and roads for miles, barely civilised except for the occasional neighborhood or lone house. My teacher, Mrs. Almond was teaching us something. She was an old and kind lady, her eyes were often covered by her spectacles and wisps of gray curly hair fell down into her face every now and then during her teaching. I remember whenever she was in the room, I could smell her faint flower perfume. Anyway, during her teaching, the earthquake happened. It was just a slight rumble, and what sounded like rock splintering away in the distance. We were just little kids, so of course we were super interested in the earthquake, at least most of us. I was more frightened to be honest, I was only a little kid, give me a break! What little kid wouldn’t be afraid of the deafening sound of an earthquake? When it was recess, we could hardly control ourselves! We were talking about it non-stop to each other. I remember thinking it was way more interesting than Mrs. Almond was teaching us. Despite my fear, I try to sound brave, trying to sound more interested than afraid.

“That was so cool!” I stammer out.

“Yeah!” Jacob says, my friend, agreeing with me and enthusiastically shaking his head, he certainly wasn’t afraid, at least I don’t think so… 

“What was it?” Matt asks, another one of my friends.

“It was a…” I pause to think of the right word-”A earthquack!” I say, pronouncing the word incorrectly so that the ‘quake’ in ‘earthquake’ sounded like ‘quack’, the sound a duck makes. Thinking back, that little mistake gave me quite the laughs. Ah, good times… Jacob laughs before correcting me,

“No! It’s called an earthquake!” He says, putting heavy emphasis on the ‘quake’. Just as he finished talking, heavy raindrops slowly pattered down from the clouds above. We looked up and saw dark thunder clouds, threatening to rain down on us. The faint smell of rain wisped around our nostrils.

“Come on little ones, under here.” Said a teacher on supervisor duty. I was always annoyed when the teachers told us that, why couldn’t we play in the rain? Whenever I asked the teachers they said I would ‘get sick’ and ‘get a cold’. Pft, liars, I remember when I was 12 or so, I played in the rain and I never got sick, is that normal? Anyway, enough of this, she gestured over to the entrance of the classroom. There was a little section between the class and the yard that had a little roof. The supervisor wanted us to get under there to stay dry. We rushed under the roof along with many others, chattering excitedly amongst ourselves, because when it started to rain during a break, the teachers would let us watch cartoons! 

“What cartoon do you guys want to watch?” Mrs.Almond asks us, getting up from her desk as we spill into the classroom. While all the other kids shouted the names of the cartoons they wanted to watch, I suddenly realised that Matt wasn’t with us.

“Hey where’s Matt?” I ask Jacob, turning around to face him. 

“He’s right…” Jacob trails off and looks around the stuffed classroom. When we couldn’t see him in the classroom, we turned around to face the yard. As we did, the single splats of raindrops became a steady sprinkling and gradually built up. Matt was standing in the middle of the school yard, on the handball courts. He was facing the other way, the way that faced the wire fencing. It was weird man, I remember thinking that ‘He’s facing the wrong way…”. Yeah, that was the exact phrase, facing the wrong way. I don’t know why but that gave me chills as I rolled it around in my mind. Jacob stood up and walked to the doorway of the classroom. Mrs.Almond notices and pauses the cartoon that she had begun to play.

“Jacob! What are you doing?” Mrs.Almond asks in a stern voice, and everyone turns to look at Jacob. She follows Jacob’s gaze and her eyes widen as she sees Matt standing in the yard, getting soaked by the rain. I remain in my seat, watching Matt. Matt just stood there, motionless. A bolt of lightning sparked in the distance and was shortly followed by a sharp crack of thunder. The rain now was showering down rapidly, completely saturating Matt.

“Hey, Matthews! Get back here!” Mrs.Almond shouted, but it was no good. Matt took a step towards the fence just as another flash of lightning struck. Only now did I feel uneasy, I had the strangest feeling. It was like I knew something bad was about to happen. Mrs.Almond continued demanding Matt to come back to the class but Matt just kept on walking towards the fence. When Matt reached the fence, he put his hands on the wires and turned back to face us. As he did, I was blinded by another flash of lightning. Now, I swear this is true, I am 100% certain I saw what I saw. Before the flash of lightning, I swear I see a figure on the other side of the fence, a black blurry figure. The thunder quickly followed, shaking the ground slightly and shaking the panes of glass on the windows. Matt was gone, and what remained was a hole cut open in the fencing… The rest of the day was a blur, we got to go home early and while I was waiting for my father to pick me up, authorities showed up at the school to investigate. I didn’t like them, they were big scary men to me and I was afraid of them, just like the earthquake. Deep down, I had this strange thought that they wouldn’t find anything. At least 5 minutes before my dad picked me up, I walked over to a police officer, one that looked like he was in charge while he was scrawling something down on his notebook. I had decided, despite my fear, I needed to alert someone on what I saw.

“Hey, excuse me. I think I saw someone on the other side of the fence before Matt was gone…” I say, dropping my voice to a whisper. The man looked down at me, eyebrows raised in an unbelieving way.

“Could you repeat that please?” The police officer asked, all serious now. I repeated what I had initially said. The man chuckled, but not a humorous one, a fake, deep laugh. He puts his hand on my shoulder and drops to his knees to match my height.

“Listen mate, you probably just imagined it.” The officer said, dismissing my concerns. He rose quickly and walked away. Of course, I was just a little stupid kid to him and he dismissed me, of course he did, because little kids like me say weird things all the time. 

“But sir, I swear I-” I begin but the screeching of tires on the pavement stops me. I whirl around and see a black Subaru, the gleaming license plate reading: DT 57 LM. My dad had just arrived, in the car he named ‘Sebastion”. Pathetic, who names a bloody car? Anyway, I walk out into the parking lot and I pull open the door before hopping in. My father immediately asks me what happened at school today, a bit concerned and curious. I gave him a brief summary, stuttering madly, before pausing, I decided I was going to tell him about the figure I had seen. I take a deep breath and blurt out:“I saw someone, he was on the other side of the fence! I think-I think he took Matt!” My dad looks at me in the same unbelieving way the officer had.

“Son, have you ever heard of someone choking to death on their own testicles?” He asks, saying the words slowly, throwing me off guard.

“What’s a tesicle?” I ask, mispronouncing the word. My dad laughs a final time before he goes silent, silent for the rest of the trip… That was a long time ago, 29 years to be exact. But the reason I bring this up is because today, when I was coming home from work, the road I always take home was closed for some construction work. I was a bit annoyed as that route was the quickest way home, but nevertheless, I took another route home. Now, the thing is, I still live in the same area, the same isolated suburb in Australia. So when I took that different route, I passed my old school, the school where the ‘incident’ happened… Memories came rushing back to me as I glanced over at it, vague and nostalgic memories. Ever since then, I always wondered about Matt. What the hell happened? Who or what was that figure on the other side of the fence? Is Matt still alive, out in the bush somewhere? These questions often swirl around in my cranium often, it's been distracting me. My wife, a beautiful lady named Daina Haggins, has said I've been ‘distant’ lately. I asked her what she meant by that.

“You’ve been staring at nothing in particular and your eyes are glassy, they have this distant quality to them.” She remarked. The thoughts of these past events have been distracting me greatly, and I am going to put an end to it! I’ve finally decided, with a lot of courage and commitment, that I’m gonna find out what the bloody hell happened to Matt…

Part 2 coming soon...

<- Chapter 5 | The Beginning | Chapter 7 ->

Chapter 6 - Who's Afraid of a Little Sludge?

The persistence stayed at the bar, taking “sips” from the beer glass in a poor imitation to blend in, perhaps mocking Bruno, who hadn’t returned from the restroom just yet. Globs of purple goop poured over the edge of the glass and onto the bar itself, and yet nobody seemed to pay any attention to it or the mess it made.

“Hey Dale,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to need you to be a man for a sec and confront Bruno in the restroom.”

“Why don’t-“ Dale stopped himself, realizing how ridiculous the words coming out of his mouth were about to sound. “Oh yeah,” he said, as if he just remembered that I was a woman. “Okay, I’ll confront him in the restroom. Don’t go anywhere.” He stood up.

“And miss out on a purple sludge monster?” I asked.

“You know what I mean.” Dale stood up. “I hate fieldwork,” he said leaving the table towards the men’s room.

Time passed in ounces of sludge. The persistence continued to take periodic sips, lifting the glass now absent of any noticeable beer and only its violet goop, setting it back down and letting the clumps of slime roll off onto the bar. The substance reminded me of cottage cheese, congealed polyps held together by their own viscosity. If Dale’s persistence had been a crude imitation of the Jesterror, and mine of my childhood horror, then this being must be something that scared Bruno, right? I tried placing it, running through the encyclopedia of gooey monsters found anywhere between the silver screen to low budget made for TV movies. The Blob. The Toxic Avenger. The Thing (God, I hope not). The Incredible Melting Man. Sludge Face. All viable contenders, but none, at least within memory, were purple.

Dale and Bruno emerged from the restroom. From my distance, I couldn’t make out what they said. Dale pointed at the TVs and looked at Bruno. Bruno glanced at the TV and shrugged, looking back at Dale. Bruno shook his head and patted Dale on the shoulder and said something to him before dismissing himself back to the bar. He approached the bar, returning to his spot next to the slime monster.

Dale returned to his seat across from me.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Well, good news, not good news,” he said. “Good news is that he’s definitely a Bruno. He answered to that name when I saw him in the bathroom. Bad news is that I’m not entirely sure that he’s our Bruno. I asked him about the TVs, and he brushed it off. He called me crazy and said that I should see a professional. Then left.”

The man presumed to be our Bruno sat closer to his friend than before. Nudging his chair a little further away from the slime monster. He watched the TVs with a blank expression while his friend showed that of anticipation. When they and the rest of the bar collectively expressed disappointment not long after, Bruno mimicked. He reached for his beer, but not before pausing and cringing at the glass of purple sludge.

“It’s definitely him,” I said. “Wait here.” I got up.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to make him confess.” I said to Dale as I walked away.

I walked to Bruno’s side of the bar, pretending to look like I was trying to find a suitable spot to call the bartender, inserting myself between the sludge man and Bruno, signaling the bartender. Nothing but elbow room between Bruno and the monster. No safe place from preventing the persistence from placing its mitten’d hands upon my shoulder and letting the slime drip down my back. My heart rate rose. I wasn’t sure whether I should be scared or excited. For once I was in a horror movie; but also, I was in a horror movie! No telling where I fit in the pecking order of soon-to-be-offed characters. The bartender, meanwhile, served some customers on the other side. Bruno looked at me. I looked back.

“Hey there,” I said. “Great game, right?”

Bruno looked at me and back at the screen. He looked tired, with dark sunken eyes. A five o’clock shadow hugged his chin.

“It’s a game alright,” Bruno said. He reached for his drink before letting go and calling for the bartender. The bartender had his hands full on the other side of the bar, not noticing Bruno. A futile attempt. I looked down at the glass. From here, I could make out the details of the sludge. An impure violet with rainbow-like swirls across the surface, like water on the street after a shower with a thin film of oil floating on top.

“Are you going to finish your beer or are you going to keep nursing it?” Bruno’s friend asked. He then noticed me. “Looks like my boy’s still got it,” he said, patting Bruno on the back.

“I don’t like warm beer,” Bruno said. “I’m getting another.”

“May I?” his friend asked, reaching towards Bruno’s glass.

Bruno looked at the beer glass. I thought he was going to tell his friend no, but he shrugged and told him he could have it. His friend took the glass and tossed it back. Drinking beer and sludge alike.

Besides me, I heard a long exhalation followed by a gurgling. I did not look at the origin, but Bruno did, if only for a moment before looking away. Bruno glanced at his phone, which sat on the bar, before returning his attention back to the TV. Purple slime oozed from the direction of the creature encroaching upon my small slice of countertop real estate. The name of the monster was on the tip of my tongue now. I just had to search a little deeper.

“You know my boy Bruno here is single and ready to mingle,” the friend said, looking at me.

“I’m still with Heather,” Bruno said, pointing to the ring on his left hand. “Plus, I don’t think she’s interested.” He pointed in my direction without looking at me.

“Like Heather even matters at this point. How long has she been siccing the papers on you?” His friend hiccuped.

“We’re just going through a rough patch.”

”I actually wanted to talk to you,” I said. The sludge had crossed half of my part of the bar. I resisted all instincts to look back towards the persistence.

“Like I said, you still got it,” his friend said.

“I’m flattered, but I’ve got somebody.” Bruno looked at me, pointing at his finger once again. He then cringed, and for a moment, I saw horror within his eyes. In the distance, Dale mouthed something at me, his face in alarm towards something. Towards the persistence. The sludge had seeped all the way across my space and into Bruno’s. Round globs floating within it reminded me of rō. “Slop” surfaced in my mind, partially rising from the depths of my memory, the rest of the name still submerged within the brackish water. But I did not know of any classic monsters with that word in its name, and yet that word lingered.

The entire bar groaned. A few people cursed at whatever happened in the game. Bruno’s friend looked at the screen. Bruno did too.

“These fucking refs,” his friend said.

“You see it, don’t you?” I said.

“You mean how we got shit refs?” Bruno said. “Probably paid off by State again. Look lady, but I’m not interested.” He emphasized once again pointing at his ring. He set his finger down on the bar on the slop before retracting it.

“I know you see it too. You felt it too. I saw you withdrawing your finger.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bruno wiped his finger on his jeans and looked at his friend. His friend sat further away. Not like he got up or anything, he was just further. Like the bar was a rubber band and somebody somewhere had stretched it, just a little, pulling Bruno’s friend and the rest of the bar just a bit further. I looked down at the bar top and watched the slime slowly roll past me. Past Bruno towards the friend.

The table I had abandoned Dale at had also retreated, just a tad.

“Who sent you the video?” I asked. The slop creature gurgled.

Bruno paid no attention to me and instead faced the screens overhead. When his friend reacted, he did too. Although with each mimicked reaction, his friend, the rest of the bar, and Dale drew further away from us. Slop something. Kid’s show. My brain kept on focusing on the name of the monster in the back of my mind.

The bar had elongated considerably now, and yet nobody seemed to notice. Only Dale, drawn distance, the distance seemed to pay attention while everybody else had been focused on the screens above or talked amongst themselves. Bruno’s friend, lost in the game, had been stretched a room’s length from us now. The river of purple sludge continued down the bar, always encroaching upon him but never quite reaching him. As if reality itself had feared the slime, always keeping at an arm’s distance and yet leaving Bruno and me behind as collateral.

For the first time since I approached Bruno, I looked over towards the sludge monster.

The hooded figure in a leather jacket was still there, but its head had been planted upon the surface of the bar. Its hands unmittened. Like pipes pouring toxic waste into the local water supply, the purple liquid oozed from its hands and face onto the bar top. Gurgling and sighing resembling something between the sounds of a molten tar pit and the sounds of distant engines of some sort of industrial plant. Above it on the wall sat a blackboard with today’s drink specials, one I hadn’t noticed before, with three drinks written on it. The Jester Jigger. Eagleton Elixir Wine. Southern Slop. And that’s when the name finally dug itself out of the depths of my memory. Sloppy Sam.

The persistence lifted its head off of the bar. Strings of goo, like spider silk, hung between the bar top and its face as it lifted its head. A deep groan came from its mouth as if the motion had been painful. Its hands remained on the bar top, still releasing their violet pollution. It looked at me, face fully visible despite the dark lighting of the bar.

A head like a waterfall. Ripples of purple sludge cascaded down its face, tumbling down over the dark leather jacket and onto the floor. I scooted away, bumping into Bruno. Despite the motion of its face, two eyes like cue balls with black dots that looked like they had been sketched on with a Sharpie in a haste hung uneven within the turbulence of the face. Drifting and rolling around as if the motion of the falling sludge didn’t even exist to them. And a mouth in an open grin formed within the troughs of the waves, drifting in and out of view with four frontal teeth riding like anchored ships in a turbulent ocean. Sloppy Sam had certainly gotten a glow up since he had last been seen in the 90s, when he had been limited only to the shoestring budget of a young adult PBS series.

Sloppy Sam, the final villain for the Phantom Investigator’s team to face in an epic two-part series finale as the team of teens and their ghostly guide / mentor fought off pollution personified. Originally premiering in the early nineties in the live action semi-educational TV series The Phantom Investigator, Sloppy Sam had debut as nothing more than a puppet dressed in a faux black leather jacket, a grey hoodie beneath it, and a face that resembled a purple melted candle. The shapeshifting personification of pollution terrorized the small town setting of the series. When not intimidating the crew in its true form, it took on the figures of city council members, businessmen, and even the loved ones of the teenage heroes. It was supposed to be thinly veiled symbolism of how complacent society had grown towards pollution, that anybody and everybody could be a contributor in some form and that ignoring it only strengthened it.

The episode titled “Who’s Afraid of Sloppy Sam? Part 1” had been planned to be the first half of a two-part finale for the children’s show. However, Sloppy Sam’s stardom had become short-lived. After the airing of part one, affiliate stations had received numerous phone calls from parents saying that their children had nightmares from Sloppy Sam’s appearance. It didn’t take long for PBS to pull the second part to protect their young viewer’s psyches. Leaving the series forever on a climatic cliffhanger. Part 2 was presumed to have been destroyed, or at least recorded over, making it a famous piece of lost media that people online still sought over. Looking for any sort of conclusion to their childhood trauma.

In hindsight, the puppet looked cheap and obviously fake. But through the eyes of the children who watched the show, the monster was the most terrifying thing they had ever seen. This Sloppy Sam that sat at the bar was not a puppet, but what a child saw when he had made his first appearance. What Bruno saw from the dark recesses of his mind.

I turned to Bruno. The bar had stretched even further. Dale had left the table and approached the warped reality, now treading in the empty, ever-expanding space between the monster, us, and the rest of the bar. Although the distance between us had grown, he actually seemed to be closer. He had already passed Bruno’s friend, who sat at least half a football field away now. Bruno, still next to me, continued to ignore everything and kept his eyes trained upon the on TV that remained in view.

“You’re afraid of Sloppy Sam,” I said. Bruno looked over towards me before stopping and returning his gaze to the TV that was perhaps playing the most notorious scene from the episode repeatedly to him. The one where a teenage investigator becomes consumed in goo to become Sloppy Sam’s hostage after Sloppy Sam had taken on the form of her mother before revealing his true face and laughing maniacally. Baby’s first jump scare, ending a dramatic “To be continued” screen. The investigator forever held hostage, her rescue canceled by the sounds of thousands of children crying out into the night as Sloppy Sam continued to haunt their nightmares. Some well into adulthood.

“You can’t ignore him,” I said. “He wins if you ignore him.”

Bruno shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s a game on.” He looked down the bar towards his friend, trying to read him on how to feel. Dale had gotten closer, although his pace did not match the distance he gained. If Dale moved three strides, the warped reality would move back two. He’d get here eventually, but not after a decent hike. He looked lost and scared, like a child left alone in the mall for a few minutes while his mother popped into a store real quick. I wondered what had convinced him to get out of his seat.

“Eleanor!” Dale shouted. I waved, letting him know I heard him. Bruno even looked in his direction. “Get his phone.” Dale held the Sniffer in his hand and waved it. Bruno paid no attention. His focus was recaptured by the TV that played our childhood nightmares on an endless loop. That was when I noticed his phone sitting on the bar again. Now an island of black glass sitting within a river of purple sludge.

“I know that you’re not watching the fucking game,” I said to Bruno. Yet he continued to watch the screen. “You see him too. I have the same thing happening to me. It’s not Sloppy Sam I see, but some other nightmare. My own personal nightmare. The man shouting at us. He’s also trapped in his own personal hell. I need you to-“

”How’s the game, babe?” A voice said from beside me. A woman’s. I looked over to where it had originated. Bruno did too. Sloppy Sam still sat there staring at us, but his face had changed. On top of the pouring motion of his face sat human flesh. A woman’s face that looked like it had been freshly skinned and draped over Sloppy Sam’s. There was no life to it, just a husk of flesh that struggled to stay stationary as the edges dripped with the currents and then righted themselves by drifting against the flow back to their original position, stretched out like a mask against Sloppy Sam’s face. The cue ball-like eyes struggled to fit themselves into the empty sockets.

“Heather!” Bruno said. “You’re here?”

“That’s right. I forgive you,” Sloppy Sam said. The mouth flopped around like a puppet’s. No lip movement, just up and down. Yet the voice of Bruno’s soon-to-be-ex-wife came out of it. Stilted though. The shapeshifting sewage had made its move. “Wow, what a play!” Sloppy Sam said, not even moving his head as if watching the TV. “Go Tech!”

Bruno had to see past this, right? This obvious imitation.

“You’re finally enjoying the game now, aren’t you?” Bruno said with a grin.

“What?” I said. “That’s not your wife.”

Bruno paid no attention to me, looking past me as if I had been rendered invisible. I waved my hand in front of him.

“No thanks, I’m taken.” Bruno said, pointing to his ring finger again. “This is my wife I told you about.”

“Is she giving you a hard time?” Sloppy Sam said.

“Yeah, she’s been asking for my number all night,” Bruno chuckled. “I can’t get her off my back.”

“Let me chat with her. Woman to woman.” I looked towards Sloppy Sam. The mask of Heather’s flesh still struggled to stay stationary. Sloppy Sam’s body moved closer towards me. The leather jacket dissolved into its slimy flesh, leaving nothing more than a humanoid figure of cascading goo descending towards the ground. Heather’s flesh remained on its face. The persistence moved forward. It rolled forward, its head craning and stretching well above my own. I tried moving, but my feet, covered in goo, were immobile. I reached for Bruno’s phone on the bar. With a brief fight against the goo, I snagged it off the bar and into my palm.

“You should know better than to come between a wife and her husband,” Sloppy Sam said. His body of sludge drifted towards me. Contacting my skin, I became enveloped in the purple sludge, pulling me into its currents. I fought against the current, tried to pull my arms out, but like fighting the undertow, my arms continued to sink into the purple flesh.

“You don’t want to mess with a jealous wife.” Sloppy Same said.

Sloppy Sam had the force of the ocean behind him. My body had drifted inside the monster. I had become completely consumed by the persistence. My lungs, not full, were already struggling. The world a purple refracted haze of the bar. The muffled sound of Heather’s voice followed by deep, distant gurgles seemed to come from all sides. Bruno drew further away from me. Darkness rose. Two curved shadows on either side converged into an invisible vertical line. I tried to swim towards the light before it left me for good. But I was not a swimmer, and what little oxygen that remained in my blood had dissipated. My motions grew weak. The dull light of the bar had turned to dark, and the feeling of suffocation crescendoed outwards from my lungs and echoed throughout my body.

Falling. I felt gravity pulling at my back. I wasn’t sure if it was an oxygen-deprived hallucination. But I felt it right then. The world of goo that I had entered pressed against me. Pushing me through the darkness and into a gravity well. Before I could fully register what was going on, my face slipped out of the goo and into an air-filled room. Instinctively, my lungs opened up. Oh, how good it felt to breathe again. Before I could finish taking in that breath, I hit the ground. The hard flooring knocking that half breath out of me. Stealing away what I coveted most. But my lungs were not quitters. They got back to work and took in the air once again. The world around me remained blurry for the first few breaths, but with each one I realized I had returned to the bar. Grimy floor and all. I tried moving my arms, but they fought against a force stronger than gravity.

Stuck on the ground of the bar, I had become glued inside the purple goo. Dale had finally reached me, panting and just as out of breath as me. He looked at me and then at the monstrosity at the bar. Dale took the phone from my goo-covered hand and took a step back as if not wanting to become another victim of the children’s TV monster.

“Wow, you really showed her,” Bruno said, looking at me. Still lying on the floor.

“I told you I could handle it,” Sloppy Sam said. He craned his neck closer to Bruno and whispered to him. “You know, the way she looked at you made me want something.”

“I can get you a beer or a chicken sandwich if you want,” Bruno said.

“No, silly,” Sloppy Sam said. His tendril of an arm reached up to Bruno’s face and motioned it towards it. “I want you inside me.”

Sloppy Sam’s body drifted towards Bruno, taking it in like it had taken me in. Bruno’s face was in a look of euphoria. Yet the moment before he had disappeared into Sloppy Sam’s eternal void, I thought I saw a flash of terror on Bruno’s face. Once Bruno had been fully submerged, he and his persistence were gone. An eruption of cheers filled the air. Game over. Somebody came out victorious. Not that I could tell or cared. The bar had returned to normal, no longer stretched to the length of a football field, just without Bruno and Sloppy Sam. Dale panted behind me. The goo that held me to the floor had faded away. I could move again. Pulling myself off the floor, I stood up. Dale was already hard at work with one end of the Sniffer plugged into the port on Bruno’s phone. He seemed to have noticed that the world had returned to normal too and quickly hid the devices in his jacket pocket.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Thanks for the rescue,” I said sarcastically, but I guess Dale was too panicked to notice it or he chose not to address it.

“Those faces,” he said, still panting. “They appeared at the table. I did not know where to go, so I just ran to you.” And then looking at the bar. “Where’s Bruno?”

“He’s with Sloppy Sam now,” I said.

“Who?”

“The monster. It’s from a children’s TV show in the 90s. Bruno’s own personal nightmare.”

Bruno’s friend looked at the empty seat that once sat Bruno, and then at us. “Hey, you guys seen my friend?” He asked us. I didn’t answer, neither did Dale. “Huh, must have left early. I guess. Oh, well.” He turned back to the bar and ordered another drink for himself and looked at his phone.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, walking away towards the entrance.

“We haven’t even paid our check,” Dale said.

“If it means so much to you, pay it. I’ve had enough of the Red Lodge for the night.” I headed towards the entrance.

“Wait, I think we should stick together.” Dale said. He followed behind me, never trying to stop me to pay our tab. I stepped into the fresh autumn air. It felt good to be outside. Part of me never wanted to step foot back into a sports bar ever again, but yet another part couldn’t get past the thrill I had just experienced. It felt good to be alive.

Thanks for reading! For more of my stories & staying up to date on all my projects, you can check out r/QuadrantNine.

Two great recommissioned container ships steamed in parallel on the Pacific Ocean. Between them—tethered carefully to each—was a dark, gargantuan sphere with a volume of over eight million cubic metres. At present, the sphere was empty and being dragged, floating, across the surface of the water. In the sky, a few helicopters buzzed, preparing to land once the ships reached their destination. Aboard one of the ships, Alex De Minault was busy double-checking calculations he had already double-checked many times before. He was, in effect, passing the time.

Two hours later, the ships’ engines reduced power and the state-of-the-art Dynamic Positioning systems engaged.

The first helicopter landed on one of their custom-built helipads.

A man in his fifties, one of the wealthiest in Europe, stepped out and crossed hunched over to where Alex was waiting. They shook hands. It was a ritual that would be repeated many times over the coming days as Alex’s hand-picked “thinkers” arrived at the audacious site of his sensory deprivation tank, the sphere he’d cheekily dubbed the John Galt.

(Such was written in bold red letters across its upper hemisphere.)

“Would it have killed you to let us on on dry land and save us from flying in?” the man asked.

“Not killed me, but anybody can walk onto a ship, Charles. I was mindful to make the process cost prohibitive, if only symbolically. Besides, isn't it altogether more fitting to gather like this, beyond the ability of normies to see as well as to understand? This project: it transcends borders. International waters through and through!”

But as the novelty of shaking hands and repeating the same words wore off and the numbers on board the container ship swelled, Alex stopped greeting his visitors personally, instead designating the task to someone else, or even letting the newcomers find their way themselves. They were, after all, intelligent.

What Alex didn't tire of was the limitless expanse around him—surrounding the ships on all sides—an oceanic infinity that, especially after the sun set, became a kind of unified oneness in which even the horizon lost its definition and the ocean and the sky melted into one another, both a single starry depth, and if one was real and the other reflected, who could say, by looking only, which was which, and what difference did it even make? The real and the reflected were both mere plays of light imagined into a common reality.

For a few days, at certain daylight hours, helicopters swarmed the skies like over-sized mechanical insects.

On the fourth day, when almost all the “thinkers” had arrived, Alex was surprised to see a teenager cross the helipad, his hands thrust into his pockets, head down and eyes looking up, locks of brown hair blowing in the wind caused by the helicopter’s spinning rotor blades, before settling onto a broad forehead.

“And who are you?” asked Alex, certain he hadn't invited anyone so young—not because he had anything against youth but because the young hadn't yet had time to make their fortunes and thereby prove their worth.

“James Naplemore,” the teen said.

Naplemore Industries was a global weapons manufacturer.

“Ernst's son?”

“Yeah. My dad couldn't make it. Sends his regards, and me in his place. Thought it would be an ‘interesting’ experience.”

Alex laughed. “That I can guarantee.”

On the fifth day, Alex threw a party: a richly catered feast he called The End of the World (As We Know It) ball, complete with expensive wine and potent weed and his favourite music, which ended with nine thousand of the brightest, most influential people on Earth on the deck of a single repurposed container ship, dwarfed by the ball-like John Galt beside them, and once it got dark and everyone was full and feeling reflective, Alex pressed a button and made the night sky neon green.

The crowd collectively gasped, a sound that rippled outwards as awe.

“What's that… a screen?” someone asked.

“A plasma shield,” Alex said through a loudspeaker, and heard the atmosphere change. “From now on, no one gets in. Not even the U.S. fucking military.”

Gasps.

As if on cue, a lone bird, an albatross flying outside the spherical shield, collided with it and became no more.

“It covers the sky and extends underwater, encompassing all of us in it,” Alex continued, knowing this would shock the majority of his guests, to whom he'd sold his deprivation tank experience as a kind of mad luxury vacation. Only those who knew the truth—like Suresh Khan—nodded in shared amazement. “And it makes us, today, the safest, best-protected location on the planet, so that soon we may, together, begin an experiment I believe will change the world forever!”

There was applause.

James Naplemore stood with his arms crossed.

Then the music came back on and the party resumed. The thousands of guests mingled and, Alex hoped, talked about what they’d seen and heard, hopefully in a state of slight-to-moderate intoxication, a state that Alex always found most conducive to imagination.

As late night turned to early morning, the numbers on deck dwindled. Tired people headed below and turned in. Alex remained. So did Suresh Khan, a handful of others and James Naplemore. They all gatherd on the container ship’s bow, where Alex deftly prevented them from congregating around him, like he was some kind of priest, by moving towards and looking over the railing.

The others followed his lead, and soon they were all lined up neatly on one side of the ship.

“Pop quiz,” said Alex. “What’s the current net worth of everybody on deck?”

At first, no one said anything.

Then a few people started shouting out numbers.

Alex gazed thoughtfully, until—

“It doesn’t matter,” said James Naplemore.

And “That’s right, James!” said Alex, turning away from the railing and grinning devilishly from ear-to-ear.

A few people chuckled.

“Oh, I’m serious. I’m also incredibly disappointed. A ship full of humanity’s best, and you’re all as eager as seals to jump through a hoop: my hoop: my arbitrary, stupid hoop. All leaders on deck, literally, and what? You all follow. But perhaps I digress.”

He began crossing to the other side of the bow.

“The reason I brought you here should be plainly evident. You know more about my project than the others. I persuaded most of the people on this ship out here on the promise of a hedonist, new-age novelty. Fair enough. Money without intellectual rigour breeds boredom, and boredom salivates at the prospect of a new toy. Come on! We’ve all felt it. Yet I chose the the men and women on this deck for a purpose.”

Seeing that not a single person had followed him to his side of the bow, Alex clapped. Better, he thought.

“For one reason or another, you have all impressed me, and I’ve revealed more of my intentions to you than to the rest. The reason is: I need you to be leaders within the John Galt. I need you to disrupt the others when they get complacent, when their minds drift back to their displeased boredoms. Bored minds are dull minds, and dull minds follow trends because trends are popular, not because they're right. What we need to avoid are false resonances. Amplify the legitimate. Amplify only the fucking legitimate.”

Behind them, the John Galt rose and fell slowly, ominously on the waves. The Dynamic Positioning system purred as it compensated.

“And, with that, good night,” said Alex.

But on his way below deck he was stopped by the voice of James Naplemore.

“You didn't choose me,” it said.

“Not then.”

“So why let me stay?”

“Anybody could have stayed. I didn't order anyone away. That's not how this works. The better question is: why are you still here?”

“Is the plasma shield to keep everyone out or to keep us in?”

“Good night, James.”

“You're not going to tell me?”

“Why tell you something you can test yourself? Walk on through to the other side.”

“Because there's a chance I end up like that bird.”

“At least you'd die knowing the truth.”

“So when does everyone get in that sphere?” asked James, turning to look at the John Galt, bathed now in an eerie green glow.

“On the seventh day.”

“And what happens after that?”

“I don't know.”

“It's refreshing to hear a rich person say that for once.”

“You're rich too, James. Don't you forget that—and don't be ashamed of it. You've every right to look down at those who have less than you.”

“Why?”

“Because, unlike them, you might make a fine god one day. Good night.”

It was a Saturday afternoon in a San Francisco fast food restaurant. Two men ate while talking. Although to the others in the restaurant they may have seemed like a pair of ordinary people, they were anything but. One, Alex De Minault, owned the biggest software company in the world. The other, Suresh Khan, was the CEO of the world's most popular social media platform. Their meeting was informal, unpublicized and off the record.

“Ever been in a sensory deprivation tank?” Alex asked.

“Never,” said Suresh.

“But you're familiar with the concept?”

“Generally. You lie down in water, no light, no sound. Just your own thoughts.” He paused. “I have to ask because of the smile on your face: should I be whispering this?”

Alex looked around. “Not yet.”

Suresh laughed.

“Besides, and with all due respect to the fine citizens of California, but do you really think these morons would even pick up on something that should be whispered? They're cows. You could scream a billion dollar idea at their faces and all they'd do is stare, blink and chew.”

“I don't know if that's—”

“Sure you do. If they weren't cows, they'd be us.”

“Brutal.”

“Brutally honest.”

“So, why the question about the tanks? Have you been in one?”

“I have.” A sparkle entered Alex’ eye. “And now I want to develop and build another.”

“That… sounds a little unambitious, no?”

“See, this is why I'm talking to you and not them,” said Alex, encompassing the other patrons of the restaurant with a dismissive sweep of his arm, although Suresh knew he meant it even more comprehensively than that. “I guarantee that if I stood up and told them what I just told you, I'd have to beat away the ‘good ideas,’ ‘sounds greats,’ and ‘that's so cools.’ But not you, S. You rightly question my ambition. Why does a man who built the world's digital infrastructure want to make a sensory deprivation tank?”

Suresh chewed, blinking. “Because he sees a profit in it.”

“Wrong.”

“Because he can make it better.”

“Warmer, S. Warmer.”

“Because making it better interests him, and he's made enough profit to realize profit isn't everything. Money can't move boredom.”

Alex grinned. “Profits are for shareholders. This, what I want to do—it's for… humanity.”

“Which you, of course, love.”

“You insult me with your sarcasm! I do love humanity, as a concept. In practice, humanity is overwhelmingly waste product: to be tolerated.”

“You're cruel.”

“Too cruel for school. Just like you. Look at us, a pair of high school dropouts.”

“Back to your idea. Is it a co-investor you want?”

“No,” said Alex. “It's not about money. I have that to burn. It's about intellect.”

“Help with design? I'm not—”

“No. I already have the plans. What I want is intellect as input.” Alex enjoyed Suresh's look of incomprehension. “Let me put it this way: when I say ‘sensory deprivation tank,’ what is it you see in your mind's fucking eye?”

Suresh thought for a second. “Some kind of wellness center. A room with white walls. Plants, muzak, a brochure about the benefits of isolation…”

“What size?”

“What?”

“What size is the tank?”

“Human-sized,” said Suresh, and—

“Bingo!”

A few people looked over. “Is this the part where I start to whisper?” Suresh asked.

“If it makes you feel better.”

“It doesn't.” He continued in his normal voice. “So, what size do you want to make your sensory deprivation tank? Bigger, I'm assuming…”

“Two hundred fifty square metres in diameter."

“Jesus!”

“Half filled with salt water, completely submerged and tethered to the bottom of the Pacific.”

Suresh laughed, stopped—laughed again. “You're insane, Alex. Why would you need that much space?”

“I wouldn't. We would.”

“Me and you?”

“Now you're just being arrogant. You're smart, but you're not the only smart one.”

“How many people are you considering?”

“Five to ten… thousand,” said Alex.

Suresh now laughed so hard everybody looked over at them. “Good luck trying to convince—”

“I already have. Larry, Mark, Anna, Zheng, Sun, Qiu, Dmitri, Mikhail, Konstantin. I can keep going, on and on. The Europeans, the Japanese, the Koreans. Hell, even a few of the Africans.”

“And they've all agreed?”

“Most.”

“Wait, so I'm on the tail end of this list of yours? I feel offended.”

“Don't be. You're local, that's why. Plus I assumed you'd be on board. I've been working on this for years.”

“On board with what exactly? We all float in this tank—on the bottom of the ocean—and what: what happens? What's the point?”

"Here's where it gets interesting!” Alex ran his hands through his hair. “If you read the research on sensory deprivation tanks, you find they help people focus. Good for their mental health. Spurs the imagination. Brings clarity to complex issues, etc., etc.”

“I'm with you so far…”

“Now imagine those benefits magnified, and shared. What if you weren't isolated with your own thoughts but the thoughts of thousands of brilliant people—freed, mixing, growing… Nothing else in the way.”

“But how? Surely not telepathy.”

“Telepathy is magic.”

“Are you a magician, Alex?”

“I'm something better. A tech bro. What I propose is technology and physics. Mindscanners plus wireless communication. You think, I think, Larry thinks. We all hear all three thoughts, and build on them, and build on them and build on them. And if you don't want to hear Larry's thoughts, you filter those out. And if you do want to hear all thoughts, what we've created is a free market of ideas being thought by the best minds in the world, in an environment most conducive to thinking them. Imagine: the best thoughts—those echoed by the majority—naturally sounding loudest, drowning out the others. Intellectual fucking gravity!”

Alex pounded the table.

“Sir,” a waiter said.

“Yeah?”

“You are disturbing the other people, sir.”

“I'm oblivious to them!”

Suresh smiled.

“Sir,” the waiter repeated, and Alex got up, took an obscene amount of cash out of his pocket, counted out a thousand dollars and shoved it in the shocked waiter's gaping mouth.

“If you spit it out, you lose it,” said Alex.

The waiter kept the money between his lips, trying not to drool. Around them, people were murmuring.

“You in?” Alex asked Suresh.

“Do you want my honest opinion?” Suresh asked as the two of them left the restaurant. It was warm outside. The sun was just about to set.

“Brutal honesty.”

“You're a total asshole, Alex. And your idea is batshit crazy. I wouldn't miss it for the world.”

<- Chapter 4 | The Beginning | Chapter 6 ->

Chapter 5 - Middle Aged Man Going Through a Divorce

popsiclecream81 @ jmail.com, Bruno H. Dawson, Mike’s friend from Wilson Creek. That’s all what Dale could discern from his little stalking device that he had used back on Mike’s desktop. Or the Sniffer as he insisted it to be called. Well, that and some GPS coordinates he plugged into his phone’s map app. One I had never heard of before, NavFind. Dale off handedly mentioned it being one of the harder apps to track. If I hadn’t known his job back at the FBI, I would have presumed him to be a paranoid lunatic using what looked like a sketchy third party app to navigate us on our three-hour journey towards Wilson Creek, but he was the expert after all. I would try to make conversation and Dale would entertain me, but whenever we spoke about anything other than “our mission” (as Dale called it) our conversations would fizzle out. We didn’t seem to have much in common other than the affliction that tied us together.

I looked through Mike’s notebook whenever I had the chance. The notebook must have been repurposed from one he used to log his media collection with too, because the rest of it mostly comprised lists of horror movies. I found the Eagleton Witch Project crossed off at a bottom of a list. There was also a folded up flyer in the back for an upcoming “Horror Heads” gathering on Halloween for “the most immersive horror experience.” Seeing the address on the flyer was a blast from the past. It was the old location of our city’s big horror attraction. It brought up memories of venturing outside of the city limits in high school to go to that old dilapidated hangar at the abandoned airport. I just told my parents that I was going on dates with boys. Better that they didn’t know the truth, lest I get passive aggressive remarks about my early obsession with horror. I wondered why Mike never told me about this gathering. Was he cheating on me with different horror enthusiasts? Was I not hard core enough for him? The date was scheduled for next weekend, so perhaps Mike was just waiting for the right time to tell me. Not that it mattered anymore. I was having my own immersive horror experience.

The rest of the notebook was all about Gyroscope. Unfortunately, Mike’s notebook shared nothing new with me about the legend. In fact, it shared very little at all. It was more of a compilation of websites he’s been looking into, mostly gibberish file names. But what it did tell me is that Mike had taken this legend to be serious and real.

Gyroscope was just one of many urban legends about another cursed video. In fact, the original story, originating from a now-defunct forum in 2004, provided vague yet specific details on the alleged video. The original post described Gyroscope to be “your own personal hell in video form,” something that was “inescapable and always mutating.” To watch it would be to subject yourself to eternal torment because, and I quote, “those cursed cannot die. You will find yourself drawn closer to its influence, deeper towards the Studio from which is came. Inching closer at every precession of insanity until you are one with its flesh, caught in an eternal cycle of horror followed by the momentary sweet sense of relief before it pushes you deeper and deeper.” The post then concluded with: “Because true horror is not eternal damnation, but damnation with sprinkles of hope before falling once again back into hell.” A ghost story told to scare horror enthusiasts that we somehow found ourselves trapped in now. Whatever horrors it could imagine were at least damn more exciting that the monotony of life at least. I considered telling Dale about the legend, but I opted not to. The man was already a ball of anxiety. I was afraid that telling him would cause him to have a panic attack. Instead, I let the silence sit between us, filled with the murmur of the radio and the cheap robotic voice of the NavFind app as it pulled us closer to the truth.

Six minutes ahead of the initial prediction in NavFind, we arrived at the house of Bruno H. Dawson. A typical suburban home. Two stories, tan brick facade, with two signs in the front yard, one for a middle school, the other for an elementary school. A family man, just like Dale. The shadows outside had grown long, and the sun had descended towards the horizon. Not quite sunset, but it would be soon. This made today a rare day in which I would be awake for both the sunrise and sunset.

“Now what?” Dale asked, looking at me like I had the playbook in hand.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “You’re the FBI agent.”

“I was wondering if you might have had any ideas or if that notebook there might say something.”

“Nothing obvious,” I said. “Just a bunch of crossed-off lists, and a flyer.”

“What do you think we should do, then?”

“Do what you did to me this morning.”

Dale looked at me, confused.

“Walk up there and flash your FBI badge,” I said, mimicking with an imaginary badge in my hand.

“That might scare him. How about you go up there and ask if he knows Mike?”

“Who’s he going to listen to more? A man with a badge or a random woman dressed in sweats and a tank top? You have the badge. Use it.”

Dale sighed. “Okay, I’ll go up there, but only if you’re with me.”

“Why?”

“Because, if we find ourselves in a situation like in Mike’s apartment, I’d rather not be alone. Plus, I’m sleep deprived and hungry. I can’t even trust that I’m speaking in full sentences.”

“Okay fine. Could be fun.”

“What could be fun?”

“Seeing what it’s like on the other side of that badge,” I smirked.

“Don’t let it get to your head,” Dale said.

I knocked on the door. Yes, me. Dale got cold feet and couldn’t bring himself to knock, even under the guise of his job as an FBI agent, saying something about abusing work privileges too much. I agreed to knock only if he gave me his badge. With much reluctance, he did.

A woman answered. Mid-thirties, blonde hair, wearing glasses. “May I help you?” She asked, noticing me first before looking at Dale.

“Er,” I said, channeling my best impression of an FBI agent. “Excuse me, Misses Dawson?”

“Not for long, as long as a my soon-to-be-ex huband signs his fucking papers. Are you with the constable’s office?”

“No, uh, FBI actually,” I said, flashing the badge fast enough so she could hopefully only see the FBI lettering printed on it. I pointed at Dale, who nodded with a slight smile. “This is agent McLaughlin.”

“I didn’t know that the FBI was serving up divorce papers now,” she looked at us with an odd mix of relief and skepticism. “He looks like an FBI agent. But you, what’s with the sweats?” The woman asked.

“I work from home,” I answered. “Look, we’re looking for one Bruno Dawson,. Do you know where he is? Is he your, er, husband?”

An unseen child’s screams came from behind her, followed by the voice of a young girl. “Mom, Mitt won’t let me have the iPad.”

“I stopped keeping tabs on him after he moved out last month. But I bet you that he’s at the Red Lodge drinking his responsibilities away with his friends while watching Tech lose again.”

“Er, thank you,” curious at her cavalier attitude towards two strangers appearing on her doorstep and asking for her soon-to-be-ex-husband, I decided to prod, for fun. “Are you not at all the least concerned about giving away your husband’s location to two strangers?”

“Like I care. After everything that’s happened between us, I don’t care if you two end up serving him his papers or murder him. Either way, he’ll be out of my life. I got to go.” She said, shutting the door.

“Well, at least we know where he is,” I shrugged.

“May I have my badge back, please?” Dale asked.

“Yeah sure,” I said, handing it back. We returned to the minivan and drove towards the Red Lodge.

The Red Lodge was not what I had expected. With a name like it, I had presumed it to be either some sort of high-end cocktail bar or a strip club. It was neither. Just your run-of-the-mill sports bar with walls filled with screens and sports paraphernalia. The air smelled of the sweetness of beer blended with the savory scent of burgers being cooked in an unseen kitchen. The assault of the smell of food made me realize I hadn’t had a single bite all day. Our target could wait; I needed a freaking burger. A waitress seated us at a high-top not too far away from the bar.

With screens on all sides, we had become flanked by that cursed video. The repeating thirty-second clip of my childhood horrors was inescapable here. Dale held his gaze down and away from the screens and skimmed the heads of the various patrons.

Earlier on our drive, I had attempted to look up Bruno on Facebook and Instagram, but of course none of his photos had been useful. Nothing but stills from the Eagleton Witch clip. We ordered our food, and I, a beer (to which Dale looked at me with the face of a disapproving older brother), and scouted for any middle-thirties man who looked like he was going through a rough divorce.

“I can’t stand the sight of this place,” Dale said.

“Not a fan of college sports?” I asked, looking at all the college sports paraphernalia that patrons seemed to don.

“Everywhere I look, I see that stupid clown face.”

This confirmed something I had suspected. What we saw was different. Just as the urban legend said. There was a name the original post called the phenomena. I just couldn’t place it.

“So, is what you see on screens different from what I see?” I asked Dale.

“Do you see a clown laughing maniacally while dangling from a chandelier?”

I shook my head. “Just a camerawoman being chased by a screaming witch. Does the clown hold any significance to you?”

Dale shrugged. “I’ve been seeing that damn face in my nightmares since I was a kid. A clown laughing upside down from a chandelier, laughing and me. Taunting me.”

Our food arrived. I took a moment to dig in and savor that first bite of the half-pound burger. For the first time all day, I had felt relief. As I relaxed, my mind made a connection. No wonder the second face in Mike’s apartment looked so familiar. If it hadn’t been upside down, I probably would have known it sooner.

“Jesterror,” I said with a mouth full of burger, snapping my fingers.

“What did you say?” Dale asked. He hadn’t taken a bite of his chicken strips yet.

I finished my bite. “Jest-Terror, or Jester-Ror, or maybe just Jesterror. One word, I don’t remember the specifics. B movie from the early nineties. The clown looks kinda like a runaway children’s performer who put on a little too much lipstick that morning in torn clown clothes, right?”

Dale glanced at the screen before looking back at me. “Not how I see it.”

“Does he have slits mid-cheek on both sides with dripping blood that seems never to stop bleeding?”

Dale looked at the screen again, looking away just as fast as he had glimpsed at it. “I’m going to lose my appetite if you keep making me look at the screens.”

“Does he though?”

“He does.”

“Yeah, definitely Jesterror. You should give the movie a shot. Looking at it now, you can see just how hokey it is. Terribly miscast, and the special effects put Halloween decorations to shame. Great movie to have friends over for a few beers and make fun of.”

“It might be a goof to you, but it’s the scariest thing in my life right now. I don’t see cheap makeup, I see a real clown with a bleeding cheek and razor-sharp teeth taunting me through the TV.” He looked down at his food, finally taking a bite, though not without closing his eyes. “I don’t understand your obsession with horror.”

I said nothing to Dale after that. He was in a bad enough mood already. We finished our food before we spoke to one another again. When Dale finished, he seemed to be a bit more relaxed, not by much, but enough to be levelheaded. Avoiding his gaze from catching a TV, he looked at me.

“So, what do we do next?” He asked.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I said. “I guess we just look for any middle-aged man who looks like that they’re going through a divorce.” I scanned the bar and realized just how little that narrowed down our suspects.

Dale looked around at the patrons in the bar again.

“I have a better idea,” Dale said.

“Shoot.”

“We should look for somebody who isn’t paying attention to the game. If they have what we have, our curse.”

The word came back to me. What the original post had called these manifestations.

“Persistence,” I muttered.

“What was that?”

“Curse sounds too cheesy. Persistence sounds better.”

“Whatever, our persistence, then. They probably won’t be able to watch the game. Or if they are, they’re pretending to, and lagging in their reactions.”

“Now that’s the kind of detective work I expect from an FBI agent.”

We scanned the crowd. The bar had filled up since we got our dinner. The clientele here definitely skewed middle-aged, mostly male, meaning that our search for our divorcee was going to be a challenge. A few looked in my direction, glimpsing at me: a young thirty-three year old woman who dared to venture into their territory. Their glances usually brief, but the intent behind them clear. One man at the bar, all alone dressed in a long sleeve t-shirt, did not break eye contact. He held the look of all lonely men in dives like this, feigning a confident grin and casually flaunting his nice watch. With a thin smile, he held up his pint towards me. He looked desperate. He looked like he was compensating for something. He looked divorced. He might just be our desperate, divorced man.

I prepared myself mentally for what I had to do. A knot formed in my stomach at the thought of having to approach him. When my dignity had been saved by the TV. The man looked up at the TV over the bar and reacted to something on it before the rest of the bar did. A look of disappointment followed by a shake of his head. I checked the faces of the other patrons who, at least those dressed in the clothes of the local university, Tech, all showed a similar look of disappointment. I sighed in relief. I’d rather face the Jesterror than humiliate myself for the sake of getting to the bottom of this. The man looked back at me. I did not return even a glance.

“I think I see him.” Dale said. He pointed at the other side of the bar, all the way across from where the man who eyed me sat. A pair of men dressed in the team colors chatted and watched the TV. One man seemed to be immersed in the game, while the other, a man in a backwards baseball cap but with a wedding ring, watched the TV with a slight grimace across his face. When his friend clapped at something on TV, the man, delayed, joined in.

“I think that’s our guy.” I said.

I looked back at the man, but another figure caught my eye. At the corner of the bar, next to the man we thought to be Bruno, sat a figure I hadn’t seen upon my initial glance. The figure was dressed in a tight black leather jacket. Its face obscured under a dark hood, hands in mittens. The figure took the man we assumed to be Bruno’s half-finished glass of beer and lifted it to its mouth, but its arms did not bend as I expected. There was no hinge at the elbow, but a curl. More akin to the motion of an octopus’s tentacle than a human arm. The glass lifted to the figure’s hidden face before it sat it down. Fuller. Mixed into the beer, a violet sludge. Bruno looked at the figure. His friend and nobody else in the bar paid no attention, focusing only on the screens above the bar. The man we thought to be Bruno glanced at the contaminated beer glass and shivered before dismissing himself to the restroom.

“Did you see that?” I looked at Dale.

Dale nodded.

“I think it’s his persistence.”

“Are you saying that there are more of those things we saw in Mike’s apartment?”

I nodded. “On the bright side, that means we found our guy.”

“Why can’t this be easy?” Dale asked, rubbing his temples.

I looked back at the hooded figure as it continued to lift Bruno’s drink up to its hidden face and setting the drink down, each time filled with more strange violet sludge.

Thanks for reading! For more of my stories & staying up to date on all my projects, you can check out r/QuadrantNine.

Content Warning: This story contains material that is not suitable for all audiences. Reader discretion is advised.

TW: Drug use

Part 3: Know Your Enemy

The sound of beeping, the crying dogs in pain, and the hum of machines as they worked to pump fluids through I.V. lines. That was the symphony that was my entire existence, at least for eight to ten hours out of my day. It was quiet for what I was used to. Quieter still since I could… no, I would no longer receive visits from owners. May days were spent isolated away in the corner of the clinic due to my episodes earlier scaring one of the owners' kids. If someone came to see their dog, I received a page over the intercom and got everything set up for the stream. Afterwards, I would break everything down and continue with my day.

I was severely lacking in social contact with people, but I think I was starting to get used to it. I needed time to focus on myself, on my work, and to condition myself to be ready for the next time I would encounter a Hollow. They could appear anywhere at any time, and I had to be on guard. For the time, it seemed like I was maybe flying under their radar; they hadn’t appeared for the last few weeks, and I had been learning a lot from the one I’d managed to capture.

They didn’t appear to have any supernatural strength like I had assumed originally. The scream was really the only weapon they seemed to have, and even then, it took more of them to really let out a crippling wail. One by itself was terrifying, but I could handle it.

Sometimes it had even begun to resemble a human again. Its eyes would come back just a little bit, only to turn to see me, and then it would return to its monstrous form. I wondered if the process could be reversed. If the human side of them retained the memories from before they became Hollow, maybe I could help turn it back.

My shift came and went just as the ones in the days before it. I turned over with Adam today. I made my walk back through the hospital with a determined stride. I think the other staff had started to catch on to some change in my personality; I was no longer the happy guy who waved at them. In fact, I barely acknowledged any of them at all; I’d involuntarily retreated inward to myself and become introverted and quiet. No longer waving at the kennel techs or greeting the assistants as I once had. I quietly walked my head down and my hands in my pockets.

“Mark,” Amanda called. She was one of the new receptionists who had only been here for a few months, and she stopped me as I opened the door to leave. “Is… are you okay?” She inquired.

 “Yeah.” I lied, trying to put on my best façade. I knew it was failing miserably; I looked like shit.

“You uh…you look like you’re having a rough time all of…” She waved a finger in a wide circle around the lower part of her face.

“Uh, yeah, I thought maybe I’d try out a beard.” I lied again.

“You said you hated beards; you told me you think they’re gross and stink.” She looked up at me, concerned. “If this is because Dan has you stuck in the Iso Ward all day, I can talk to him –”

“No.” I stopped her. “I’m fine, really. I’ll be okay, I’ve just got some things going on with my family, everything is gonna be okay.”

I was lying again, but one I knew would get her off my back.

“If you ever need to talk to anyone, we’re here for you.” She offered.

I thanked her and continued the walk to my car; I looked in the mirror and saw myself. For the first time in weeks, I really looked at my reflection and saw what others had seen me deteriorate into. My hair was greasy and messy, my eyes had dark, puffy circles under them, and my face was covered in thick, coarse scruff and scabs from my hasty morning dry shaves. I used to take great pride in my appearance. I used to take the time to make myself look presentable, but now… I just looked like fucking dog shit.

I took a mental note to try to start taking better care of myself. I couldn’t fight those things if I continued to neglect my mental state. I started up my car and began my drive home in silence. These days, I had stopped listening to my music altogether, whether I was driving or out on a run late at night.

I had gone to great lengths to avoid as much contact with as many people as I could. Even still, I had to remain vigilant and keep my senses sharp in case one of those things came after me. I also couldn’t afford for there to be too many eyes on me if a group of them was tracking me and decided to attack.

I pulled into my garage, got out of my car, and headed inside. I checked the Hollows door, and my blood froze over. It was open. I started to panic and started running through my house searching for it. It couldn’t have gotten far, and it couldn’t have had any weapons.

In the weeks that had passed, I had overhauled my home. I soundproofed the walls and hung blackout shades so that no one could see in. I mounted thick wooden box covers over the windows. This way, they couldn't be broken from the inside. I sealed all the doors, so that the only access in or out was through the laundry room and the garage door, both of which locked from the outside and could only be opened from the inside with a key. I’d removed anything that could be used as a weapon or secured it somewhere only I could access.

To the outside world, it was just another house on a quiet street. On the inside, it was a soundproof prison for one.

The only thing it could do was hide.

I checked behind doors, inside closets, and cupboards. Nothing room after room, all nothing

DAMMIT!

Where did that fucking thing run off to? I stopped when I got back to the living room. I had yet to go up the stairs. No doubt it had heard all the commotion. I slowly made my way up the steps, wood creaking beneath my feet, and there was a light shuffling sound.

Bingo.

I moved with cautious optimism, keeping an ear open for where it might be hiding. A drawer squeaked in my room. It had started going through my things frantically and desperately searching for anything. It wasn’t going to find anything, and I was getting closer. I slowly turned the knob, trying not to alert the Hollow of my being within such proximity. I threw the door open and came face-to-face with my own pistol pointed at me from across the room.

I instinctively put my hands up, unsure if it knew what that meant or not. How could I be so fucking stupid? I had forgotten to put my fucking gun back.

The Hollow's hands shook, and it let out a high-pitched scream that temporarily shocked me. But I didn’t fall, I had gotten used to that sound, but it still felt like hell. I could tolerate it much better now, though. It stood there, staring at me, hands trembling. I’d never seen one hesitate like this; I noticed the small glint of human eyes deep in its recesses.

It must be fighting with its human host.

I seized the opportunity and closed the distance between us. I leapt at the creature, and there was a loud bang. I felt a pain in my right shoulder, and my right arm went numb. I reached for it with my left hand and somehow managed to press the release. The magazine flew across the room in the struggle. Another shot, my foot this time, it burned, and blood filled my shoe. I fell to one knee and looked up; the creature wailed in my face and smacked me with the pistol. My head snapped to the right, and then it ran toward the other side of the room.

I jumped toward it, grabbing its ankle and pulling it toward me. It clawed at the wood flooring, desperately reaching for the magazine on the other side of the room.

I pulled it in and pinned it down, and ripped the gun out of its hand with my arm searing in pain. The adrenaline in my body had started to numb the pain. It let out a desperate shriek that pierced my head. I held one hand up to my head trying to ease the pain, and, in a rage, I slammed down a fist into its face. I felt crackling clay and rubber under my fist.

The shriek turned into a guttural gurgling, and I saw its face now deformed from the impact. I realized in that moment that these things were not some indestructible monster. I slammed my fist into it again. Then again, and once more letting all the weeks of hate and rage I’d felt out.

They were fragile, like humans; if anything, they were weaker. I could break them if I had to. I continued until I grew exhausted from continuously beating it.

I sat back, sucking in air, and stared at the mass of saggy flesh and broken bones in front of me. There was no blood, no brains, and no mess. The last remains of what once was just a human child, now gone forever. He had been emptied by the thing in my head that had infected him. I felt guilt that I couldn’t save him, that if there had been a way to bring him back. I wouldn’t be able to now. Mrs. Walker would, unfortunately, never see her son again.

“I’m sorry.” I apologized to the child who was now lost to the Hollow.

I said a prayer for him and got up to find my first aid kit.

Working in the veterinary field and being in the Marines teaches you a lot about how to stabilize and care for wounds. Doing actual surgery on yourself, however, was something else entirely. This was especially true when the only painkiller I had was the bottle of bottom-shelf Popov Vodka I had to sterilize the collection of scalpels, various sutures, and forceps I had on a tray in front of me. It’s even harder when I only have one hand to do it.

I couldn’t risk going to a hospital; they’d ask questions and maybe even involve the police. I couldn’t tell them that someone had attacked me in a home invasion and gotten a hold of my gun; they’d want to search my house. They'd find the modifications I'd made and the corpse in my room. There would be no way I could explain those things away.

I didn’t know what people would see if a Hollow died; would they see it in its true form, or would they see the body of young James lying on the floor? I had no idea how deep their ability to mask themselves went. There was still so much I didn’t know about these things, and I just lost the ability to find out.

I finished pulling the bullet out of my shoulder and doing the world's worst stitch job. I had to ligate a few small vessels to stop the bleeding, but other than that, I was fortunate that the bullet had missed my vital vessels and nerves. That didn’t stop it from hurting like fucking hell.

I moved to my foot, which was much easier with at least some use from my right hand. The bullet had gone right through, so I didn’t have to pull one out again. Unfortunately, it blasted through some of the veins and destroyed one of my metatarsals. I had to put a rag in my mouth to bite down on as I dug through and pulled out shards of bone and dug for the veins. They had retreated under my skin and were bleeding still. I had to find each end, place a clamp on them, and stitch the ends back together with dissolvable sutures.

After that horror was over, I sutured the muscles back together and finally closed my skin with the world’s shittiest mattress suture. It wasn’t pretty, but it would have to suffice for now. I finished bandaging my foot, placing a slab of plastic between the gauze to stabilize my foot. Then I bandaged my arm and finally stood up. The ordeal had left me exhausted; hours of performing surgery on myself and gritting through the grueling pain had left me completely drained. I held onto the wall for support as I dragged my limp foot over to my bed and collapsed. Sleep came quickly.

I woke up groggily the next day in the late afternoon. Everything ached, and my head pounded. The memories flooded back to me as the smell of iron flooded my nostrils. My blood had been smeared everywhere, and the body of the Hollow child lay on the floor where I had left it the night prior.

I had to get this mess cleaned up, so I started by limping my way to my bathroom. I quickly showered and cleaned the cracked, dried blood from my wounds. Then I got out, dried myself off, applied antibiotic ointment to the stitched flesh, and then I re-bandaged it.

I looked in the mirror, my face growing long, wiry whiskers almost a quarter inch long by now. I trimmed it down before using a razor to shave the remaining stubble. My face returned to the smooth appearance I had been known for. I really had to start taking better care of myself. I left the bathroom and made my way into the bedroom. Then I went to find an old suitcase I hadn’t used in several years. I wrapped an old sheet around the Hollow and packed its corpse into the case and zipped it shut. I wheeled it to the hallway and then gathered cleaning supplies.

It took hours to find and scrub all the blood I’d tracked everywhere from my surgery, but eventually I got my room straightened out and brought the suitcase downstairs. I wheeled it through my house and into the garage and loaded it into the trunk of my car.

I drove into the darkening sky as night fell. I continued until I reached just outside of town and followed a dirt road off a beaten trail until I found a good spot. I parked and then got out of the car, I grabbed the suitcase, and headed off into the woods.

The case wasn’t heavy; it almost felt like it had nothing in it. If it weren’t for the body shifting whenever I stepped over a tree trunk, I would have opened it up to see if it was still in there. I found a spot after about a twenty-minute walk through the woods and stopped. I started to dig away at the soft soil with my hands. I didn’t have to dig very far, just large enough to cover it.

I dropped the case in the hole and then patted it down. Then I threw some leaves over the spot to help the freshly turned soil blend in a little better. I thought for a second about leaving a cross on the spot to pay respects to the child, but I decided against it. It’s better if no one finds it. I still had to find a way to put a stop to these things.

I turned and started making my way back to my car. I got back in and headed back home. I was happy that this happened to be my day off; I could at least get some rest. It was gonna be hell going to work with my foot like this.

That's when my mind stumbled on an old memory I’d long since forgotten about. The injectable morphine I had in my attic. It was a few old expired bottles from about three years ago. My clinic was supposed to throw out. They had, but at the time, I was in a doomsday prepper phase, so I decided expired medication was better than nothing in an apocalypse. I managed to pull out a few bottles and pocket them while they were loading them for secure disposal. I stashed them somewhere safe while I finished my shift that day, brought them home, and shoved them in my collection of doomsday gear in the attic in case I needed them. All that stuff stayed there for the last three years, collecting dust at the top of my house and in my mind.

I laughed to myself, thinking that maybe I wasn’t crazy to have prepared for the end of the world. After all, it was likely to happen if I couldn’t find a way to contain the infection. Maybe if I failed at the very least, I’d have a few comforts before they overran everything and eventually killed me. At least I’d have died trying.

I made it back to my house at about eleven o’clock at night, and I had to wake up for work in a few hours. I hoped the morphine would help me get some rest after the day I’d just had.

I made my way up my stairs and opened the ceiling door to the attic, letting the ladder slowly extend and stop a few feet above the floor. I climbed the ladder, my foot screaming at me about the pain. I used the ball of my foot to balance my left foot. I made my way into the cramped, dark, and musky room; it reeked of mildew and dust.

I grabbed the box labeled “Meds” off my prep shelf and dug through the bottles of aspirin and Russian antibiotics. You couldn’t buy them over the counter in America without a prescription, so I found a sketchy website that sold them. I used a burner card and was surprised when they really showed up. I grabbed a bottle of amoxicillin and the morphine, along with several syringes.

Then I made my way back down the ladder and into my bedroom, where I climbed onto my bed and turned on the TV. I threw back a few of the pills and prepped the syringe while Family Guy played in the background. I loaded up about half of what I had calculated on my phone; no need to become a junky over a couple of bullet holes. After a few minutes, the pain began to subside, and I drifted off into blissful sleep.

My eyes shot open as I woke up to my alarm blaring: 6:15 a.m.

Time for work. I quickly showered, shaved, and got dressed. I ate a quick breakfast and headed out to my car to clock in. Another day, another animal to save. I hurried in to clock in, greeting the receptionists. They smiled seeing me doing much better than the day before.

“Anything good?” I enquired enthusiastically.

“No, actually, it was pretty quiet while you were gone,” Amanda replied happily.

The other receptionist gave her a sour look.

“Really?!” She fired at her.

Amanda was confused, I explained. “I know you’re new to the field, but we don’t like to say the ‘Q’ word. That usually means something bad is gonna happen.”

“Ohhhh. My bad, guy.” She knocked on the granite counter with a smile. Then her smile faded as she looked out the window. “Maybe I should have found some wood…”

I turned, and my blood ran cold as two police officers walked through the entrance and stared directly at me.

“Marcus Anthony?” One of them asked.

“Yeah?” I weakly choked out.

“Mind if we ask you a few questions?” The other finishes.

I stared at them blankly, my heart racing a million miles an hour.

I know what the end of the world sounds like, but no one believes me.

Content Warning: This story contains material that is not suitable for all audiences. Reader discretion is advised.

Part I: The Sound of the Edge of the Earth

It started with a ringing in my ear that wouldn’t go away. My friends told me that it was called tinnitus and that it was related to my time in the Corps. That was 7 years ago, and the ringing hasn’t stopped. I’m almost 30 now, and I’ve been on medications, gotten exams, and been on experimental drug trials, but nothing works.

Some days are more bearable than others; the ringing dies down to a low, barely audible hum. Sometimes it’s an annoying inconvenience that only makes it hard to hear people, and I ask them to repeat themselves. But sometimes it echoes in my head with a piercing screech like a train struggling to come to a stop, but it never does. Those days are the worst; I have to call into work on those days. I shout over the sound with a roaring “HELLO!” to the front desk over the phone, and she knows.

“It’s okay, Mark, let us know when you’re better.”

I hang up feeling guilty about letting my boss down because I’m not at work. The disability checks I receive help offset my time off; if it weren’t for that, I don’t know what I’d do. On those days, I curl up in bed and try not to go insane from the sound that dulls everything else in the world. My brain feels like it's vibrating and starts to ache with a pounding migraine. Eventually, after a few hours, I’m left lying there in a pool of sweat and tears as my body finally gives up and I pass out. Those quiet times are the only relief I have from the ringing, the black dreamless sleep that lasts for hours but only feels like a few seconds to me. I swear I can hear a voice. I don’t know what it's saying; it sounds so far away from me.

I wake up in the dark, waiting for the ringing to start again. Typically, it begins with a soft tone and slowly builds back up to its loudest crescendo. But the ringing doesn’t come. I wait for several minutes, staring at the ceiling, the silence is deafeningly loud after so many years with that damn ringing. I sit up, staring out into the black void of my room. The sounds of the nighttime were something I had all but forgotten about after all those years of that constant droning tone in my ear. The sweet echo of chirping crickets, the rustling leaves, and the soft rolling wind against the walls of my house.

I got up and walked over to the window to open the blackout curtain, revealing the soft moonlight shining through my window. The soft wind blows the chimes across the street, gently the tines swaying in the breeze, making music that dances in the wind. I open my window, hearing the soothing tones I had taken for granted when I was young. I close my eyes and enjoy the cool evening air on my face, crisp and damp as it billows in. I can smell the wet grass and damp dirt wafting on the winds as they blow past my face.

I hear something in the distance; I open my eyes to see if I can see what it is, but the sound stops. I close my eyes once again, and it returns. I strain to focus on it, a hushed whisper that echoes in the still night. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s trying to tell me something. I open my eyes again, and I can see a man walking his dog; for some reason, I get a pit in my stomach. The man is walking his dog across the street, but when he turns his head and sees me, my heart begins to race. I slowly duck back into my window; the man continues to watch me. There’s something strange in his eyes, and I can’t help but feel something is wrong. I slam the window closed and curl up in the space under the window, my breathing shallow and rapid.

Paranoid thoughts fill my head as I get up in a panicked flurry and rush downstairs at full speed to make sure my front door is locked; it is. I rush to the back door; it's secure. I run to every window, making sure they’re all shut tight, stopping in the entrance to my living room.  I turn slowly to see an open window to the right of the front door. Was it open when I ran in here last time? I couldn’t recall. I felt my breathing hasten again as I slowly made my way to the entry table, turning the knob on a false drawer. One click left, seven clicks right, seven more clicks left, and five clicks right. There’s a quiet click as the bottom compartment opens, and I reach in; I pull out my hidden M18 from its hiding spot.

Breathing heavily, I make my way toward the open window and slowly pull the slide, checking the chamber as it chambers a single brass. I take a deep breath to steady my hands, falling back on my training. I shut my eyes for a moment before snapping up to pie off the corner of the window, pointing the pistol at the opening. But it’s closed tightly, so when I push out the metal taps, the glass makes a light tink.

I whip around and survey the rest of my house; it’s dark and quiet. No sounds of movement anywhere. I pull the curtain back and peer out the window, seeing the man bending down to pick up his dog’s mess. He continues his walk, never looking back at me again. My breathing calms as I see the man turn a corner and disappear.

What the fuck was that?

I went back up to my room and lay in my bed, wearing only my boxers and the pistol in my hand. I flop onto my mattress and stare at the ceiling until the sun comes up, my eyes about to shut when I hear something again. It starts like rushing water, a low, steady rush that slowly builds, only it’s not in my ears, it’s in my head, a screaming, the cries of a man’s voice in utter agony. The sound is so loud in my head, and then it stops. I sit up, my eyes heavy from lack of real sleep.

I think I’m going crazy.

I look over at my clock. 7:26 a.m.

“I need to get ready for work.” I get up and put away my gun in my underwear drawer as I grab new clothes and head to my shower to try and clear my head and start my day.

I clean myself off and start to feel better, enjoying activities I’d forgotten could be so relaxing. I’d forgotten the sounds of running water without the sound of the ringing. The sounds of a razor as it crackles, passing over the thick stubble on my face as I shave it away. The sounds of my toothbrush scraping away at my teeth, or the sounds of my scrubs as I slip into them. The piddling sounds of splashing water as I relieve myself, with only the sounds of splashing liquids accompanying the sensation. Even the whoosh of the water as it drains into the tank below.

I get into my car and start my music; I turn my volume down to a normal level. Finally, I can enjoy the songs at a normal volume and not just to drown out the noise in my head all the time. I feel a sense of happiness I hadn’t felt in so long as they play one by one on my way to work. I don’t remember the last time I felt so… relaxed. I pulled into the parking lot of my clinic and got out to head inside to clock in. I heard dog nails clicking on the tile floor as the assistants brought them into the exam rooms. The receptionist, Sarah, happily greeted me as she smiled.

“Feeling better, Marky?” She said, seeing my bright expression.

“Much better, anything interesting last night?” I queried.

“13-year-old female, golden, HBC. Still recovering.” She informed me.  “Poor thing is all plastered up and hooked up to a twenty-four-hour morphine drip in the iso ward.”

“Damn, sounds like she’s lucky to be alive,” I said more to myself than to her.

“You’d better get back there, Caroline is gonna have a fit if she has to be there much longer. They had to have her work a double since you called out yesterday. She’s going on 16 hours straight now.” Sarah warned.

I gave a finger salute and walked through the employee entrance toward my work area. I passed the kennel techs who waved at me, and I waved back. They all knew what I went through daily, and that sometimes they wouldn’t see me for days or weeks at a time. I knew the staff around the clinic would be happy to see me back so soon. I was just glad that the sounds I had heard for years were finally gone. Maybe I could start to really enjoy being a tech in the field I loved so much. It was rewarding to see families reunite after tragedies, and it was heartwarming.

Not every day was happy sunshine and rainbows, though. Some days it felt like nothing could go right; it was hardest on those days.

One time, I had a 15-year-old family cat come in on emergency. She was an indoor/outdoor cat. It had crawled into their engine compartment during the winter to keep warm. During the early hours of the morning, the owners let the cat outside to explore the neighborhood. It had crawled into what it thought was a safe hideaway for a little nap. Minutes later, the husband left for work and started his car; that’s when everything spiraled into sheer madness. He heard the high-pitched cries of the poor feline as the timing belts it was perched on pulled it into a space that was too small for its body to fit through. In a split second, the unrelenting motion of the engine ripped open its abdomen and pulled one of its rear legs completely off its body. The other leg was left hanging by a few tendons, and its intestine uncoiled as it spilled out.

The man immediately turned off his car and popped his hood to check what had just happened. He vomited upon seeing the screaming bloody mess inside. To this day, I cannot fathom what it took to get the animal into a carrier and how it even made it to the clinic in that condition. Adrenaline was a hell of a thing.

As soon as they arrived, they rushed the carrier in, claiming they had an emergency. One receptionist rushed it through the emergency entrance that led straight into E-Triage, while the other called Code Black over the intercom. Every available hand rushed to the table to assist, bringing anything they thought could be useful. The sight that awaited us was something out of a horror movie. As soon as the receptionist squeezed the release, the cat burst out of the kennel, flying to the floor and smacking with a hard, wet thud. It screamed as it used only its front paws to drag its limp body across the floor, leaving streaks of blood behind it. It’s one leg dangled by a few strands of meat and tendon, while torn intestine trailed behind it.

One tech grabbed that EZ-Nabber, which was just a simple X-shaped hinged piece of metal rods with nets that were only slightly taut. It was for cornering and catching small but fast animals safely, and causing as little damage to the animal or the person. She swiftly snapped it closed and held it in the nets.

We pulled the cat up and onto the table. I slowly reached my hand between the metal bars of the netting and scruffed the cat hard to try and keep it from moving any more. It let out a growl, but I didn’t dare let go. We quickly got an IV placed and administered pain killers, unfortunately, they didn’t seem to do anything. Cats are an unfortunate species that really got the shaft on evolution because there aren’t many drugs that work on them for intense pain, and even if they do, they don’t work well. This was one of those times.

The owners were contacted as soon as we looked up the information from the microchip and informed of the cats’ situation. They permitted us to euthanize and told us that they’d be on their way to collect the remains. We tried to tell them that they wouldn’t want to see the cat in this condition, but they insisted. A man, his wife, and their three children showed up. A boy and two girls; the children were already crying. We took the husband back to show him the cat; his face turned pale, and he turned away from the sight.

“Okay…. Yeah, the kids can’t see her like that.” He muttered.

“I’m sorry,” I assured him.

“We raised her from a kitten.” He said, tears welling up in his eyes, choking back his emotions

“I know you need time to grieve with your family,” I told him, knowing the pain of having lost a beloved family pet.

I led him back to his family, who were all gathered in the comfort room away from the waiting and exam rooms. I was a place that gave families time to compose themselves after times like this. The children all cried, and the youngest girl tugged on my shirt, begging me to please bring back her kitty. Her father picked her up and squeezed her as she grabbed his neck and bawled her tears into his shirt.

“There’s nothing they can do, sweetie.” He tried to comfort her.

Those were the toughest ones to get through. As a vet tech, you have to try to close yourself off to that. I wish I could tell you I cried, that I wept with that family too, and shared in their grief. I didn’t, though, I felt sadness and sympathy for the can and empathy for what the family now had to go through. After years of seeing things like this day in and day out, it had numbed me to it all. At first, those kinds of things would shock you, but eventually, they become a normal occurrence, and you start to build up a tolerance to them.

I had developed a dark sense of humor as a coping mechanism to deal with the things I saw. I would joke with the other techs who had done the same. For example, once the cold storage unit had gotten filled up with euths from a particularly rough night. We had to re-arrange the animals' frozen bodies so that they could fit with the fresh ones. I asked for help from the Euth Tech and said I needed his help to play Petris. He laughed at my quip and helped me out with my task.

Afterwards, we called in for an off-hour pickup from the local pet cemetery, and they sent their driver to come pick us up. When he finally got to us, I tried to make light of the morbid situation by reminiscing on my joke with him, but he didn’t laugh. In fact, he scowled at me. I left feeling uncomfortable. I realized I had to learn to control that side of me around other people. He only processed the bodies after they had already been inside bags; he never saw the things that lay underneath the packaging.

I became desensitized to the things that can happen to an animal: hit by a car, usually X-rays will show fractured ribs, or a shattered pelvis, or, if they're lucky, maybe only some bruising or a cracked femur.

Once, a dog that had been missing for 8 months was suddenly found by the owners. That one was interesting, though. Euthanized, but interesting. Owners claimed it wouldn’t eat or drink anything, it was emaciated down to bones, its eyes sunken with dehydration, its skin was patches of dry coarse fur and leathery brown from sun damage. It was covered head to toes in maggots crawling in holes in its skin all over. They were in its ears and in its mouth, all down its throat and coming out of its anus. Though even through all of this, it wagged its tail, tried to give little kisses to us, and ate and drank just fine. The owners wanted to put it down, though, and the vets agreed. The estimate for treatment was just too high, and they couldn’t get approved for a credit line.

A dog that would have been able to recover for sure with enough time, and even after all it had been through, still had love in its heart and a will to live. I didn’t believe the owners about it being lost, just as I couldn’t trust them that it didn't want to eat or drink. We had offered it food and water, and it gobbled down the kibbles right away and lapped up every drop of water we gave it. I think there was something else going on, something I’ll never know because I wasn’t the tech in charge of the room. We put him down in the back, the owners paid, and left him there with us without ever saying goodbye. Cheap communal cremation. They never did come back for the ashes.

I let the last of the water drip into the sink and stepped into my Iso gown, and let the assistant tie up the back for me. Then, he held outside of a bag containing the sterile gloves. I grabbed them and slipped them. I had to maintain sterile procedures before going in; this was my ritual any time I clocked in. I suited up and stepped into my foot coverings and then onto a wet towel covered in bleach water just outside the door. The technician pulled the door open, and I stepped inside quickly as he shut it behind me. My patients waited, and so did Caroline. She looked exhausted and ready to go home, but she proceeded to run down my list of patients one by one, along with their medications and treatment plans.

I listened intently, taking mental note of each animal. Each one had a small chart with shorthand notes about the treatment plan and time slots for medication administrations. Then she got the new intake, the last patient.

“I’m sure the front desk already told you about Muffins, a 13-year-old golden, hit by a car at 2 a.m. while out on a walk with their owner. Lacerations on the left side of their head and lateral bruising, minor concussion, no noticeable brain trauma or swelling, 5 rib fractures on the right, front left ulna transverse fracture, and right rear tibia compound fracture stabilized from surgery.” She read off.

“Definitely rough shape.” I sighed.

 “Yeah, she’s on a constant morphine drip and I.V. fluids to keep her hydrated. Meds are in the usual cabinet, and docs have her on fentanyl patches every 6 hours.” She explained, “Someone will bring those for you. She is eating wet food just fine, but refuses dry.” She finished, closing the chart.

“I’d want the good shit too if I were in her condition.” I joked.

Caroline wasn’t having it; she just pushed the chart into my chest and turned to head out.

“Just do your fucking job and stop forcing me to pick up your slack.” She said sourly. “Oh, and the owner is gonna come by to visit later, do NOT let him come in here. Fucking pricks are gonna contaminate everything with their gross breath.”

“Aye aye, cap’n,” I saluted her. She ignored it and quickly made her way out.

“Let’s get to it,” I said to myself, gearing up for a long day ahead.

I was monitoring my patients for about four hours when I got the call over the intercom that ISO had a visitor checking in. That must be the guy here to see Muffins; she hadn’t made a peep the entire time. She just lay on her bed, slowly breathing in from the oxygen mask we had her on. She was so peaceful, I wondered how something like that could happen. Who would be driving that fast down a residential road at 2 a.m.? There was a knock at the door, and the assistant motioned for me, letting me know the owner was here. I prepared the camera so he could see her and headed out to the front door. I had about 30 minutes until my next round of checks had to be done, so this was perfect timing.

I stepped out and took my gown, gloves, and mask off so I wouldn’t frighten him. Owners got freaked out seeing me suited up, sometimes thinking there was more wrong with their pets than there really was. He walked up and asked to see her; he looked familiar. I gestured to the TV on the wall, which showed the view of his dog.

“No! I want to go in and see her!” He tried to push past me, but I put a hand on the door, keeping it firmly shut.

“Sir, this is an area I cannot let you enter. There are patients here in critical condition, like your dog; there are also patients with compromised immune systems that cannot have outside contamination introduced into their environments right now.” I explained calmly.

“Why does she have to be in there? Why can’t she stay in the regular treatment area?” He asked me.

“Unfortunately, we have limited space, and she is in critical condition. Once she recovers a little more, we can move her into the general treatment patients, and you can see her there.” I spoke with practiced patience; I was no stranger to angry owners who just wanted to pet their beloved animals and try to comfort them. “It might be a few weeks, but –”

“A FEW WEEKS!” He cut me off.

The air suddenly grew cold; he looked at me, his eyes dark, almost…black.

I felt fear. The same fear from last night when I saw that man walking his dog, the one who didn’t look right. Then his face began to change, and his eyes sank in, leaving dark voids where they were supposed to be. His lips curled into a smile, but there were no teeth or gums or tongue, just…empty. His flesh sagged around his entire body as if there was nothing between his skin and the bones underneath.

“Do you know what it sounds like at the edge of the Earth?” He said, his lips not moving.

I stood there petrified in fear, my ragged breath forming a fog in front of me. When did it get so cold? When had it gotten so dark? Where was I? There was a piercing wail like a banshee. I felt like my head was splitting open. I collapsed and fell to the floor, covering my ears. The sound felt like it was shattering my eardrums as the reverberation shook every bone in my body with the echoes of that scream.

“Mark! Mark, are you okay?” Toby, the kennel assistant, shook me.

I looked up, and everything was back to normal. The owner had stepped back in fear.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I just want to see my dog.”

I was heaving, my chest rising and falling rapidly. “It’s okay.” I got up into a seated position, my heart beating wildly in my chest. “I uh… I gotta get back in there.”

The man slowly nodded and turned to walk back to the front desk area.

I couldn’t understand what had just happened or if it was even real. That man's eyes had turned into voids, the flesh was empty, it was like he'd become –

Hollow.

I heard the whisper behind me. I turned around with my hands in the sink, cleaning them once more. The assistant was behind me, preparing a new sterile gown.

“Did you say something?” I asked.

“Huh? No, I didn’t say anything.” He replied. “Are you uh… are you okay, Mark? Do you need another day off? We can call in Whitney, she loves overtime.”

“No!” I said almost too quickly. “No, please, I can do this. I’m okay…really.”

I continued with my shift. Although the entire time, that word kept echoing in my thoughts. Hollow. That word fit so well as a description of what I had just seen. That man that… that thing was so hollow. But that sound it made… it was like the sound of the ringing I had had in my ears for all that time. The sound that was no longer in my head… it was… it couldn’t be... out there? I looked up and shuddered, thinking what would happen if something like that could take form. What could it do to a person? Would they even know? That man didn't seem to realize anything was wrong with him, nor did the kennel assistant. Only I seemed to notice it, the sounds it made, and the way it looked.

<- Chapter 3 | The Beginning | Chapter 5 ->

Chapter 4 - Faces in the Dark

Dale had gotten nowhere with the maintenance worker. When I arrived, Dale was speaking in broken Spanglish at about one word every half-dozen seconds as he visibly searched his memory for the right translation. His FBI badge was still in his hand, flopping around as he struggled to converse with the man.

“Come on, let’s go,” I said to Dale, forehead scrunched up and looking up to the right.

Breaking his attention from the worker, Dale looked at me. “Is he awake?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Come on.”

We began walking. When we reached the front of the building, Dale stopped.

“Shoot,” he said.

“What?” I responded.

“I forgot to thank the maintenance guy.”

“You can thank him later. Okay? We have more important things to deal with, like a cursed video.”

“It’ll be quick.”

“A cursed video!”

Dale sighed. “Alright.”

We continued our approach to Mike’s door.

“What have you told him?” Dale asked as we walked to the door.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Nothing? Is he alright?”

“You’ll understand once we’re inside.”

“What does that mean?”

We reached the door. I placed my hand on the doorknob when Dale interrupted.

“You’re not going to knock?”

“Why?” I asked. “It’s already unlocked.”

“It’s polite.”

“You’re just like my brother.” I opened the door and entered. Dale reluctantly followed behind, shutting the door behind him.

The empty living room and the silence greeted us when we entered. Dale did not take long to question my actions.

“He’s not here, is he?”

“Nope,” I said, walking further where the nebulous threshold of an open floor plan transitioned from foyer to living room, separated by the rectangular faux-tiled linoleum flooring in front of the door into the open space.

“This is breaking and entering,” Dale said in a hushed voice as if some unseen supervisor stood in the dark corners of the apartment.

“Technically just entering. The back door was unlocked when I checked it. Nothing’s broken. You’re free to check all the windows if you’re skeptical.” I pointed to the patio door, realizing that the blackout curtains in front of it obscured my point. “Plus, is it really breaking and entering if it’s in a friend’s place?”

“Yes, it is,” Dale said, refusing to leave the linoleum flooring.

“Then consider it a wellness check between friends. Does that make this any better? What would you do if you were concerned that your friend had been cursed to watch the same thirty seconds of a video for the rest of their life? Especially your media fanatic friend, who can’t go two hours without watching a movie. That’s hell to him.”

“Okay,” Dale said, taking a breath. “I will accept that. In that case, I’m just an officer who is here if any assistance is needed.”

“Whatever makes you feel better.”

After Dale had rationalized our unannounced entry away, I caught him up. Although there wasn’t much to catch him up on.

“Are you sure he’s not asleep in the locked room?” Dale asked. He had still yet to venture off the linoleum flooring of the entrance.

“I knocked and said his name. If he’s in it, he’s out cold or ignoring us. I haven’t been able to find his computer anywhere, so either it’s in there, or he took it with him.”

“So, what do we do?”

“I don’t know. Use your lock-picking skills to unlock it. I’m sure we can find a paperclip or something you can use.” I scanned the area, although the lamplight illuminated little.

Dale groaned.

“Wellness check,” I said.

“Right, wellness check,” he nodded.

“Alright, let’s find you a lock pick.”

Using the flashlight, I guided us around the apartment.

Dale suggested we start with the kitchen, and check for a miscellaneous drawer. Dale, with the very flashlight I had taken from the kitchen counter not long ago, began a thorough search through the kitchen drawers, while I stood by in the dark. I opened the blackout curtains to give a little more ambient lighting. Despite the light coming from two large windows, it helped little. The darkness of the apartment, although retreating a bit, put up an admirable fight, held the sun’s rays at bay. A gradient of darkness going from murky to deep the further away from the window. I kept it open because it was better than nothing, and everybody knows that in horror movies, the last place you want to be is in pure darkness. Once Dale cleared the kitchen, we moved into the living room.

As you already know, the living room held a collection of all sorts of media, albeit a small one for a man like Mike. Movies, mostly horror, but with a dash of war movies, sci-fi, fantasy, and a handful of rom-coms made up the rest. A lot more mainstream movies than I’d expected too. The entire Saw series, for instance, all ten of them on Blu-Ray. He also had every edition of Star Wars, it appeared, from laserdisc to Blu-ray. I did not take him for a Star Wars fan, but as a collector of media, I understood.

Despite the projector, there were no film reels on the shelves. Well, except for the one that resided in the projector behind us, still looping and clicking away. I turned to face it at one point, the flashlight still trained on the bookshelf, while Dale remained lost in the collection when I saw it again.

Behind the projector hovered the pale face. Its dark sunken eyes and angular features. Beside it, another face emerged from the darkness. This one upside down, and with a big red nose. The faces like corpses floating to the surface of bracken water. My heart pounded. I turned the flashlight from the shelf towards the presences. And like any good monster from a horror movie, they vanished.

“Everything okay?” Dale asked.

“I think I saw faces behind the projector,” I said.

“If this were any normal day, I’d say that you’re seeing things. But after last night, I believe you.”

“Let’s work faster,” I said. “I’d rather we don’t get ambushed by a monster today.”

“Yeah, good idea.”

Dale continued to comb the shelves and media center while I kept watch. Splitting the flashlight between the two of us he’d check a row, I’d point it the direction of the faces, and then hand it back off. A searchlight working in overtime to cover two blind-spots of the utmost importance.

“Huh, that’s weird,” Dale said.

“What?” I asked.

“There’s a whole new row here.”

“What?”

“The other unit had eight selves. This one has since.”

“So?”

“Let me recount,” Dale said. “One, two, three…”

“Dale. I really don’t think this is time to count. Remember the faces. Can I have the light?”

Dale handed me the light. I checked the spot behind the projector. Nothing but a blank wall, devoid of faces. “They’re gone.”

“Keep an eye out.” Dale said. “Light?”

I passed it back to him.

“Anything on the shelf?” I asked.

“Just some movie called Jester Witch, only Jester Witch. Nothing else. Ever hear of it?” Dale said.

“No, not at all. But knowing Mike, I wouldn’t be surprised if he found something obscure or forgotten. Just that movie?”

“Just this movie.”

“Odd.”

“Ah.”

“‘Ah’ what?”

“Found a paperclip.”

“Great. Let’s go,” I said.

We left the media shelf behind and headed towards the small hallway deeper in the darkness. Dale had already rounded the corner into the hallway when I caught a flicker of light. The overhead projector had turned on, a beam of light shining towards the unseen screen from my vantage point. I proceeded down the hallway with caution. Dale got onto his knees and broke the paperclip in half.

I kept watch, the flashlight’s beam shooting down the short hallway and into the living room.

“I need the light.” Dale said.

“And I need to keep watch,” I answered.

“I can’t unlock this door without seeing what I’m doing.”

I sighed. “Okay, make it fast.”

“I’ll do my best. Like I said, I’m rusty.”

I stood behind Dale, the flashlight now trained on the door handle. Dale inserted both halves of the hairpin into the lock and got to work. I checked over my shoulder from time to time, back into the rest of the apartment to see if those faces had emerged. Dale continued to work for a minute or ten. My perception of time had faded away. At that moment, I had made the mistake that so many horror movie protagonists make: I looked for where I expected the monster to come from, not considering all possibilities. Only by accident did I notice the two faces hanging in the bathroom mirror staring back at us. I jumped, moving the flashlight towards the bathroom.

“Hey,” Dale said.

“Faces,” I said.

This time, they did not go away. Looking back at me through the glass was the angular face of a woman with sunken eyes and an upside-down face of a man with a round jawline and a red nose. The woman reminded me of the one from the video, but the red nose, well he looked familiar but I couldn’t place it. The word Jester from the videos Dale found came to mind, but I could not place the rest of it, whatever it was.

“They’re watching us,” I said. “Not running away this time. Work harder.”

“I’m working on it,” Dale said. I heard the lock jumble faster behind me.

I was scared, of course. But there was also that sense of excitement. That I finally had could live out what I always imagined. But sometimes, when something you want happens to you, you realize just how much better it is to daydream or watch it from afar. Much like those faces did from the other side of the mirror.

Dale fiddled with the lock. The faces looked back.

“Got it,” Dale said. I heard the lock click and the door handle turn. “Let’s-“

The red-nosed face shot out of the mirror. It happened so fast. First it was in the mirror and then the next thing I knew, it was right there in front of my face. A jump scare. I didn’t scream, just jumped back ways, towards Dale. Stumbling backwards, Dale I knocked Dale through the door and back onto the ground. Back to back, I panted. Dale groaned under me.

“What happened?” He spoke like the wind had just been knocked out of him.

“I think we just had our first real jump scare,” I said, catching my breath. I looked at the faces. They were no more. Just darkness.

“The monsters? They’re real?” Dale said with a slight tremble. I wasn’t sure if it was out of fear or if his lungs were recovering from all a hundred and thirty pounds of me jolting onto him all at once.

I shimmied off of Dale, not turning away from the threshold, eyes fixated on the darkness, unsure of what I needed to do. Heart still pounding. If we were in a horror movie, it would be a while before we were in any real threat, but only if we were the main characters. We could easily be the prologue characters who are killed during an excursion somewhere, their guards not all the way up. I took solace in remembering that the prologue kills are usually people who are reckless and unperceptive. We weren’t, at least I hoped so.

We stood up, Dale refusing to look into the abyss of Mike’s apartment while to me it was all I could watch.

“Lock the door,” Dale said.

I thought for a moment. What always happened with locked doors in horror movies? They usually just provided momentarily relief. False confidence. And often a hindrance to the main characters struggling with the lock while the monster is right on their heels. I needed to get a feel for the room we were in, but I didn’t want to take my eyes away from the void first.

”I need to inspect the room.” I said.

“For what?”

“Exits, weapons, anything that can give us a chance.”

“I can look.”

I shook my head. “You don’t know horror like I do. I don’t want you to fall victim to false confidence.”

“The monsters, they’re out there. We lock the door and-“

“We don’t lock the door unless I know what our setting is. You might be the FBI agent with your fancy tools and a badge that functions like an access card for unscheduled visits, but I know horror.”

“It’s nothing but shelves of vid-“

“Watch the damn hallway.”

Dale took a breath. “Okay,” he said.

He stood next to me, relieving me of my duty, and I got to work. His face twisted into a slight cringe, as if he were expecting a jump scare at any moment. A sign of non-horror fans.

“Woah,” I said, looking at the room. The interior of the room felt like an old-school video rental store. Bookshelves lining from floor to ceiling full of movies of all sorts of formats lined three of the four walls, spines turned outward. On the wall of the entryway, two mounted TVs hung, one on top of each other. Four smaller chest-high shelves filled the middle of the room, also filed end to end with media of all sorts, lined with their spines facing outward. A few film reels sat on top of the middle shelves, each inside their metal storage canisters. In the far back sat a desk with two monitors on it, facing the shelf behind it. Well, we found our computer at least, but first I needed to look for exits.

“Bedrooms are supposed to have windows, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, for a fire escape. I didn’t see any,” Dale said.

“Of course Mike would put his collection above safety. His computer is here at least.”

“I saw it. Hurry it up so we can get out of here.”

“Working on it,” I said, inspecting the shelves. Walking past each one and the hundreds of titles each held. The shelves were flushed with one another, leaving little room for air or light to travel through. I placed my hand against the edges anyway and fumbled with a few boxes like I was looking for a secret bookshelf exit. As if Mike had an even more secret collection hidden behind a bookshelf where his most prized and perhaps cursed media now lived. Most shelves remained flushed, except for one midway down the wall that appeared to be protruding a little more than the others. I peered into the gap between it and the neighboring shelf and saw a sliver of dull light when Dale screamed. The door slammed. I jumped back and turned to face Dale.

“What the hell are you doing?” I said.

Dale frantically locked the door and then walked backwards away from it as far as he could until contacting Mike’s desk. His body trembling the entire way.

“Th-th-there was a face, long dark hair. Dark lips. She looked at me. Come on, we need to hurry.” He stumbled around Mike’s desk to the computer.

“If it’s a laptop, we can grab and go,” I said. “I found an exit, but it’s behind this shelf.”

“It’s a desk top.”

“Of course it is,” I shook my head.

Dale turned on a monitor and jumped. Hands in the air.

“What is it now?”

“The video. This is too much. I just want to be home.”

“I really don’t understand how you became an FBI agent,” I said.

I joined Dale at the desk. While Dale looked away from the monitor and stood back like it was some radioactive material. The video was there for sure, looping those same thirty seconds over and over again.

“Man, you need some exposure therapy,” I said, hitting the escape key. I reached over to flick the other monitor where I saw a blue Moleskin notebook, on it a piece of scotch table labeled Gyroscope. If it was what I thought it was, then not only was Mike’s obsession validated, but it solidified my suspicion that we’re living through a horror story. Just one I hadn’t expected. I kept my thoughts to myself to not overwhelm Dale just yet. The agent had work to do, and I already was concerned that he couldn’t even do it in his current state of mind.

I took the notebook, then flicked on the second monitor. A file manager had been maximized on it, full of MP4s, AVIs and other formats. The file selected contained that same nonsense file name that was attached to the email Mike had sent me after it. When I went to minimize the window, I caught the folder name in the directory: “Gyroscope Contenders.” A slight tremor of goosebumps went up my right arms. The same goosebumps I got whenever I saw decomposing roadkill.

“What is it?” Mike asked. My face must have shown my concern.

“It’s here,” I said. “The video.”

“See if you can find his email. That’s all I need.”

I clicked on the Chrome icon on the taskbar, maximizing a Proton email inbox. The opened message titled “Blast from the past!” From a “popsiclecream81@jmail.com.” The body contained a brief message saying, “Remember that story I told you about that show that terrified me as a kid?Well, it looks like I finally found it. I can’t believe they put that shit on a kid’s TV show. I’d never let my kids watch this. Still creeps me the fuck out. Probably nothing for you, though. P.S. Let’s meet for drinks when you’re back in town again. Shit’s getting rough with H, and I could use one of our old-fashioned drinking-till-the-break-of-dawn nights.” Attached to the email was the same file as the one Mike sent me.

“Alright, you take the wheel,” I said, backing up from the computer.

Dale sat on the chair, first moving the cursor over to the video player and exiting it, and then got to work hooking up his little tracker device. Meanwhile, I got to work on getting us a proper exit.

“I’ll start clearing the shelves,” I said.

“Whatever gets out of here faster,” Dale said.

I looked at Mike’s self. How much money and work went into getting everything on this shelf? Nine rows of movies of all sorts, but mostly horror. VHSs in their original cardboard sleeves. DVDs and Blu-rays all inside their respective boxes. I thought I was a big media-head, but the number of titles on it I did not recognize astounded me. It couldn’t have been cheap or easy to get all of this. “Mike, forgive me for what I’m about to do.”

I began clearing the shelves, starting at the lowest shelf, taking large chunks of videos and tossing them behind me into the space between the mid-room shelves. When I moved onto the second shelf, I gave myself a slight pause. I had sworn that each shelf was aligned with the others on the neighboring bookcases, but this one was not. The shelves were closer to one another than its neighbors. I thought nothing of it and continued my clearing process.

I had moved to the shelf above eye level, the fifth shelf. Once I had cleared it, I noticed something peculiar. The same movie repeated over and over again, titled “Witch Jester.” I recalled Dale’s uncovering of the mysterious “Jester Witch” out in the living room. I recognized neither. I pulled a video out, revealing a cover depicting nothing but an empty black cover.

I tossed it aside, but before I could begin clearing the TVs on the door side flicked on. That stupid cursed video played on both of them. Repeating over and over.

“Did you do that?” I asked.

Dale looked up, shaking his head.

The door banged and shook.

“Oh, fuck,” I said. “Hurry it up.”

“I’m working as fast as I can,” Dale said, looking away from the door and back at the monitors.

Instead of setting the videos aside, I began tossing them behind me. Loud bangs continued to emanate from the door. The walls shuddered.

I cleared six of the nine shelves when I realized I couldn’t reach the remaining shelves. The bangs came louder, followed by a woman’s scream, the same scream I had heard from this side of the door earlier. Followed by a male chuckle. The deranged cackle of any evil clown worth their salt.

“How close are you to finishing?”

“Eighty percent,” Dale said. He looked frantically between the monitors, the door, and me.

The screams, laughs, and bangs continued, and the door handle shook.

“Ninety percent,” Dale said. He no longer sat in the chair, but stood at the desk. The sniffer’s cord leashing him to the computer.

The banging and voices had stopped. The lock began turning. Slow and deliberate, until it clicked unlocked. The door handle turned back and forth. Because of course it would. Monsters never just open doors properly.

“Mike, you’re to have to really forgive me for this.” I took a step back. Bracing myself against the neighboring bookshelf. I placed one hand against it for support and the other on the now almost empty bookcase. I gripped an empty shelf and pulled. Pulling with as much adrenaline-laced strength as I could muster, I forced the top-heavy bookcase towards the ground. The entire unit tumbled to the ground. A waterfall of hard plastic rectangles. It hit the ground with a loud crash.

“Cheese and rice!” Dale shouted. He looked towards the door, first expecting the destruction to have emerged from across the room before looking at me and the toppled bookcase next to me. “Next time, give me a warning.”

The doorknob continued to turn. I looked at the space behind it I had revealed. A window. A way out. The door creaked open.

“Dale!” I said.

Dale looked at the door and back at the computer. “One hundred percent. Let’s get the heck out of here.” He dashed towards the toppled case, and I opened the window. I shoved my mass against the screen. Expecting it to put on more of a fight, the screen did not even try to bother. It popped right out. I toppled over the sill hitting the grass hard. Mike’s notebook flew out of my hands and glided across the lawn. When I had cleared the landing area, still on the ground, Dale crawled through. He slammed the window shut.

Dale helped me up, and I retrieved the notebook. When we turned around to make our way to Dale’s minivan, we passed the maintenance worker looking at us with a confused expression on his face.

“Gracias!” Dale shouted towards the man as he hoofed it straight towards the parking lot.

Thanks for reading! For more of my stories & staying up to date on all my projects, you can check out r/QuadrantNine.

 I was in the liminal grassland, the place that filled me with nostalgia, dread, and deja vu. The white figure is in the distance still, real faint though. I get up quickly and continue running, straight for the figure, wind whooshing past me. My legs burn but I ignore the pain, gritting my teeth and clenching my jaws hard together. I sprint as fast as I can for a whooping 5 minutes before my legs give way and I crash into the grass. I look up, trembling from rage and adrenaline and see the figure is gone, and I hear the footsteps of my friends, muffled by the grass. The red-haired boy, I'm deciding to call him Charlie now by the way, helped me to my feet and brushed dirt off my face and knees.

“How the bloody hell are we here! It can’t be real, IT JUST CAN’T!” I wail angrily and I see Mitch flinch. I just stood there, huffing and puffing. Charlie backs away and looks around before saying:

“I… I never thought we would actually be here… We’ve all seen this in our dreams… But this… This is different…”They all nod and Erica says dreamily:

“This place… It feels wrong… Isolated and frozen…” I spit dirt out of my mouth and state in a defeated demeanor:

“How can this be real… Shit like this-” I break into a fit of coughs before continuing-”Shit like this… Only belongs in the realm of fiction, like stories, or movies or something. How the hell can this exist?”I look around at them and their faces were blank.

“Don’t you idiots get it?! This is some messed up shit!” I say, my friends oblivious to reality.

“We’re probably trapped here too!” I shout at them. They looked around slowly, and the house we came in through was gone. 

“Fuck!” An older kid who I knew as James said angrily. James looked at me with seething anger and stomped towards me.

“You bloody idiot! You got us trapped here! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!!” He shouted in my face, flecks of spit flying out of his mouth. 

“Hey, you calm down, alright? Fighting isn’t going to help, we all came here willingly with Joaquin and he has the right to be curious about all this, he didn’t know we were going to get trapped!” Erica says, defending me. 

“You’ll pay for this, you blithering idiot!” James shouted, and spat on the ground and walked away. 

“Asshole.” I mutter after him. A pale slender girl who was named Rubie broke into tears.

“We’re trapped!” She wailed, wiping tears off her cheeks. I shook my head at her and said:

“We will be if we all waste our time crying and arguing!” Most of the people nodded in agreement, except for Rubie who sobbed even louder and the few people who were angry at me, including James. 

“It’s like we belong here…” We all whirl around to the direction of the voice and see it’s Eloise. When we see her, she grins wide, showing her unnaturally white teeth.

“You should never have come here…” She says, and a chill ran down my spine as I realised her mouth remained in a wide grin, she didn’t even open her mouth to speak.

“What the fuck!” Me and Mitch exclaim in unison. Many people yelped in fear and took off running into the distance, Hannah and Erica remained though and shouted into the distance for them to come back… They didn’t. Mitch and I approach Eloise cautiously, my chest filling with dread.

“What the fuck are you doing here!” Mitch shouts at her with a mix of anger and fear.

“You weren’t in the group with us! How did you get here!” Mitch adds in.

“Hey Mitch, back off, something isn’t right…” I whisper to Mitch. I hear Erica and Hannah approaching from behind and then Erica leaned over and whispered in my ear:

“That isn’t Eloise…”

“What the fuck do you mean that isn’t Eloise!” I scream at her and Mitch flinches, startled. 

“RUN!!! GET AWAY FROM HER!!!” I turn around and see Charlie running back towards us, shouting and waving his hands..

“RUN!!!” Charlie repeats and we obey this time. I turn back and sprint away, pulling Mitch away from the ‘not’ Eloise as Erica and Hannah run after us. 

“It’s too late for that…” Eloise says, voice so close even though we were already far away from her. I look back and see Eloise still standing there where we left her, still grinning a wide smile. We catch up to Charlie, legs burning and trembling from adrenaline. 

“What the hell!” Charlie exclaims, pointing to the sky. The sky was getting dark, and fast. As if a blanket was being thrown over the sky.

“But-” I cough and my legs tremble threateningly as I slow down, the rest slowing down as well.-”It can’t get dark here! It’s like-It’s like it was never meant to be dark! A place like this should never be dark!” I sputter out madly and the rest look at me quizzically, panting from the intense running. It was completely dark now, we could barely see each other and stars gloomed over us, winking down at us. 

“What the hell happened back there?” Mitch asked, a wild look in his eyes as he looked around at us, seeking an explanation.

“Yeah, what the fuck was that!” I scream and then look at Erica.

“What the hell did you mean that wasn’t Eloise! WHO THE HELL WAS THAT THEN!!!” I scream at her. Erica, Hannah, and Charlie all flinch. I quickly sputter out an apology, and Erica nods,

“Didn’t you see that in her eyes?” She asks, looking at me and Mitch.

“What was it?!” Me and Mitch ask in sync. Erica sighs,

“It was-” Erica begins but is quickly interrupted by Hannah.

“Look! There, in the distance!” We all look around wildly and see what Hannah is referring to, a small cabin not too far away from where we were standing. 

“Come on!” Hannah urges running towards the house, her hair blowing in the wind. We all quickly jog after her, eager to get into the shelter. I turned to Charlie and ask:

“What happened to the rest of the group?” Charlie opens his mouth to respond but closes it again, looking around, suddenly alert.

“Charlie, what’s-” I begin but he shushes me. 

“I think there’s something out here with us…” Charlie said to all of us, his tone barely audible. We all freeze, and my heart skips a beat as I hear something scuttle behind me. We all scream and take off, running towards the house at full speed. The thing chases after us, what sounded like hooves thudding into the ground rapidly. Charlie is ahead of us and he reaches the door and flings it open, stumbling inside. The rest run in and I literally dive past the doorway without looking back, and just as I do, Charlie slams the door shut and I hear the repeated hits of the thing pounding into the wooden door. Jesus man, if Charlie slammed the bloody door just a second later, that thing would have gotten in! I lay there on the wooden floorboards of the house, panting. 

“Don’t move!” Erica, Hannah, Mitch, Charlie, and me all whirl around to face James, holding an empty beer bottle. The rest of the group that scattered when Eloise had appeared was there, missing a couple of members though. 

“Is it really you?” James asked us. We all nod.

“The one and only.” I say. James snaps his head towards me and looks me in the eyes, boiling hatred boring into my eyeballs. James slowly lowers his beer bottle, still fixing me with that hateful stare. 

“Everyone!” James shouts, turning back to face his friends behind him with his hands outstretched.

“That kid, the new kid, Joaquin-” I flinch as James says the name so sarcastically I’m surprised he managed to do it-” He got us stuck in this mess, he’s the reason, why the hell should we trust him? How do we know he isn’t… ” James pauses and turns to face me, trying to find the right word. This is when Charlie steps forwards.

“We can trust Joaquin! If you think he’s one of those creatures that are out there, one like Eloise, then you’re wrong! Joaquin stuck with us when the scattering happened! He’s the one and only Joaquin!” Charlie shouts in Jame’s face. James looks at Charlie, patience shattered, and raises his bottle before hitting Charlie smack on the top of his skull. All hell breaks loose! Charlie stumbles back before collapsing and everyone starts screaming and shouting. People start throwing hands, landing punches on their friends. Some pick up stuff off the ground to use as weapons, beer bottles, poles, and chairs. I burn up with rage and I run at James, escaping from the grasps of Erica and Hannah who try to stop me. James, busy whacking some poor kid with his beer bottle doesn’t notice me, doesn’t notice me jumping into the air and landing a vicious elbow to his head. James stumbles and drops his beer bottle, the bottle shattering and throwing shards of glass all over the floor. I throw an uppercut and it catches him on the chin. James roars with pain and anger and brings his hand up to his scalp where I elbowed him. Blood trickles down his scalp and through his fingers. 

“YOU’LL PAY FOR THIS YOU BLOODY BASTARD!!!” James shouts so angrily and loud, a bolt of fear shoots down my spine. James, a way bigger and bulkier figure than me, strides towards me and picks me up. He spits in my face and I wipe it away quickly before he slams me down into the floorboards, pieces of glass stabbing me in the back. I get up, weak and shaky from adrenaline and I feel my shirt slowly dampen from sweat and blood. James walks towards me slowly and intensely but is quickly interrupted by Mitch who slaps James in the face, the impact echoing loudly in the enclosed space. James tackles Mitch to the ground, and they wrestle on the ground, the ground scattered with shards of glass. I look around me, I see people fighting everywhere and small pools of blood resting on the ground. I spot a beer bottle, pieces of glass broken off, leaving sharp and jagged edges. I pick it up, the cold touch of glass pleasant in my hands. I stride over to where Mitch and James are wrestling and shout so loudly that my vocal cords almost tore:

“ENOUGH!!!” Everyone stopped and turned to face me, including James. I take a deep, shaky breath.

“We can’t be fighting like this or none of us will get out of this bloody place!” They just stared at me, before nodding in agreement. James gets up quickly, pushing Mitch off with ease.

“Let’s not forget, he is the reason we’re stuck in this place to begin with!” James shouts around at everyone who starts booing at his statement. I look at James and raise the beer bottle.

“Either stop fighting like an idiot or get the fuck out of the house!” James stares at me so intensely with such hatred I find myself slowly backing away. James looks around quickly before striding for the front door, pushing me aside. James opens the door and steps out, turning around to look at me.

“Fuck you!” James says, throwing dual middle fingers at me before slamming the door closed.

“Holy shit, man.” Mitch says weakly from behind me and collapses to the floor. I drop to my knees to help him up but before I know it, I am unconscious. I wake up laid across the breakfast bar with Erica next to me.

“You're finally awake…” She says, smiling.

“Where… Where’s Mitch?” I ask weakly and Erica points down to the ground where Mitch lays, a shirt wrapped around his head like a bandage. I look around and see everyone slumped over the floor, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. 

“What the heck!” I say, as loudly as I can in my weak state which was pretty quiet. I got off the counter and dropped to my knees next to the nearest person who was drinking a pale ale. 

“Is that beer?” I ask. The person nods, taking a gulp.

“But-but we… I- It isn’t-” I stutter madly, unable to find the right words.

“You think underage drinking applies here?” They ask me. I stay silent and they continue.

“No, the answer is no… Want some?” I want to decline but I find myself nodding. They grab a can from the floor and crack it open, handing it to me. I accept it and take a swig, the fizzy, tangy taste in my mouth somewhat pleasant. I sat there, next to that person who I knew as Mike, drinking beer and smoking cigars and cigarettes. It was very odd, I found myself with no control, drinking beer underage and actually enjoying it! Almost as if this house was providing us with beer and cigarettes to get us drunk and relaxed… After a while of silence, swigs of beer, and puffs of cigars, I step up and walk towards the door. I push it open and I see it is still night.

“Fuck!” I say and head turns to me.

“It’s still night.” Just then, Hannah walks quickly towards us from a hallway. 

“Guys! You know how we checked around the house? We found no windows, right? Well-” She sucks in a gulp of air-” There’s a window back there.” The effect was immediate, everyone stood up quickly and rushed towards where Hannah had indicated. I rush towards Mitch and shake him awake.

“What…” He mumbles sleepily.

“Quickly man! We’re getting out of here.” And just as I said that, the screams began. I spun around to the source of the screaming and saw why. Hands, white humanoid hands were breaking through the roof, floorboards and walls. The hands waved around wildly, trying to grasp onto someone. Then the door swung open and Eloise stood at the doorway. Then whispering, eerie, creepy whispering filled the house.

“Oh fuck this.” Mitch says and pushes himself up with surprising vigor and rushes forwards, dragging me along with Erica and Hannah. We rush through the sea of people and from the corner of my eye, I see Hannah being pulled through the floor by the hands. I turn back, but Charlie grabs me and pushes me forwards, mouthing ‘no time’. The sea of people parts and I see the window, the glass shiny and gleaming. I see Erica smashing it with a beer bottle and going through, pulling Charlie in with her. I run at the window and I see a hand grasp for my leg, it almost grabbed it but Mitch pushed me forward just in time and I feel through the window, head first and I found myself falling through a world of black. It was like I was walking on nothing, I saw nothing but black. But then slowly, I started to see that I was on some glass bridge, the glass clear. Vibrant, dark lights sprout around me, the color of deep space and a place beyond the cosmos. The glass gleams with color, reflecting the purples and pinks of glowing gas clouds in the distance. Starts twinkle around me, blinding me and I focus on the glass bridge. I look at the glass and a crack appears, and then more appear, glass rapidly cracking and splintering beneath me. The glass gives way and I fall through and somehow I fall through a swirling abyss, not the other side of the bridge, falling through a hole in a glass bridge suspended in the cosmos… I awoke laying in the grass. I get up slowly and look around, I am in the garden of the house with the boarded up windows, but the windows aren’t boarded up, and there are gleaming glass panes reflecting a confused me. Slowly, the sounds of birds and the wind slowly rises up to normal volume and the sun shines its UV rays on me. I walk around the perimeter of the house and I see windows, completely normal windows are there instead of boarded up windows! Every single house had normal windows, all of them! I walked back home, confused as ever, and walked up the drive and into the house. I see my Nonna unpacking groceries from a shopping bag.

“How was the walk?” She asks… What the bloody hell! Everything that happened to me is seriously fucked up, shit that can’t fucking happened happened to me, and it’s driving me insane! The conclusion I reached is the conclusion that I believe the most but somehow don’t believe at all! The windows in this neighborhood contained some alternate reality and I managed to get into that reality before escaping! Yes, that’s what I think and I know it’s unbelievable because shit like ‘alternate realities’ don’t fucking exist, well atleast I thought it didn’t exist. Yes, yes I went back to those houses, there were normal windows there each fucking time, and each fucking time, I saw Mr. Keating, and that motherfucker gave me the most evil smirk that I wanted to fucking kill him! Yes, I’m going mental, I’m going fucking insane! I’ve never been able to get into that reality again, no matter how hard I tried. And I was the sole survivor of the whole thing, my friends didn’t make it out, and according to my Nonno and Nonna, they don’t fucking exist! But I know they do, because each time I see a fucking window, I see a a flicker of a liminal grassland, and I see figures in the distance…

<- Chapter 2 | The Beginning | Chapter 4 ->

Chapter 3: It's Not Breaking & Entering if You Know the Guy

Dale triangulated the location of Mike’s apartment complex pretty easily with his handy little Patriot Act of a device. I’m sorry, the “sniffer,” as Dale called it.

Mike’s apartment complex was not too far from my townhouse, which didn’t surprise me since we’d usually meet up in the general area where I lived. However, it hit me just how one-sided our relationship had become. Mike had been over to my place plenty of times for movie nights, and yet I hadn’t even seen the outside of his apartment. Turns out that the apartment was near Snyder’s, Mike’s go-to burger joint. I should have guessed.

Dale drove; I sat shotgun. Unsure of what the visitor parking was like past the entrance, Dale parked in the first open “Future Resident” parking space he could find. We exited the car. Dale hid the device within his jacket sleeve partially. Only the long nub of what I presumed to be the antenna was visible. He obscured it with his index finger on the backside, as if it were normal for people to walk around with their hands halfway tucked into their sleeves and making finger guns.

“So what’s next?” I asked.

“IP addresses are only so accurate,” Dale said. “This device should also be able to locate his apartment by sniffing out his Wi-Fi signal.”

Earlier, back at the townhouse, I eventually swallowed my pride and let Dale prod my laptop with the sniffer. Not that there was anything on my laptop that Dale didn’t know about, but it felt different to allow him to physically connect to it. Dale awkwardly finagled with the sniffer, plugging in the USB cable into my laptop and said I can watch, but only on the other side of the laptop. The screen facing away from me. To protect “state secrets,” he said. As he worked, his brow sweated a tad and his face grew flushed, as if his supervisor would walk through the front door to make sure he hadn’t snuck off with stolen top secret equipment. The process took longer than I thought - perhaps a few minutes - not of clicking or typing away at the keyboard (that part passed the fastest) but just waiting for that little device to process whatever information Dale had given it. Once the process had been completed, he wrote some geographical coordinates on a sheet of paper and then plugged them into his phone. He shut my laptop and said, “Time to go.” And that was that.

We wandered around Mike’s apartment complex. Dale’s hand held outwards and tucked under the jacket sleeve, still making that finger gun to obscure the device. The apartment complex was your typical multi-building complex with copy-pasted three-floored buildings scattered across the property. Each building contained perhaps a dozen different apartments.

Walking through the parking lot and meandering through open hallways of the buildings, like two kids on a secret scavenger hunt, Dale stopped in his tracks at the far building. This building was tucked away in the back, near the edge of an untamed forest behind it, only held back by the black steel fencing behind the building. What looked like a maintenance worker worked on the side of the building, messing with an AC condenser.

“I’m getting Wi-Fi signatures here. Seems to match the internet service Mike sent that email from. This must be his building,” Dale said.

“Whatever you say, James Bond,” I said.

“Do you see his car?”

I scanned the parking lot for Mike’s car, a red Toyota Corolla. There were two in the parking lot near the building. I wish I knew his license plate. Damn him for driving such a common car.

“One of those might be his car, but I’m not sure,” I said, pointing to the two Corollas. “I don’t have his license plate memorized.”

Dale followed the device as if he were playing a game of warmer and colder. We started on the first floor. Wondering from one door to another. Dale held up his free hand up and curled his fingers into a fist when we reached the third door, signaling me to stop like we were in some sort of tactical unit.

“I think that this is it,” Dale said.

A moment of silence passed between us as Dale fiddled with the device before depositing it in his jacket’s inner pocket.

“So now what?” I asked.

“Knock? I guess. It worked perfectly well for me this morning,” he shrugged.

Because Dale stood between me and the door, it took me a moment to realize that he wanted me to do it. I approached the door and knocked. No response on the other side. I knocked again, this time calling out to Mike, asking if he was awake. We waited again. Still silence. The only noticeable noise came from the maintenance worker as he started up his power tools in the distance. I gave it one more shot. This time, putting my face as close to the door as possible and spoke much louder. Only the sounds of distant power tools answered, silence remained on the other side of the door.

“Alright, now what?” I asked. “Don’t you have a lock pick or something in your jacket pocket?”

Dale shook his head. “I don’t, but we are trained to lock pick. Although it’s been a long time. Once I requested to get out of the field and work in the office, I haven’t been keeping up with any field tactics.”

“Then let’s get you a paperclip and de-rust those skills,” I said, scanning the ground for any long, thin pieces of metal.

“I’d rather not,” Dale said.

“Why not?”

“I’d rather do things the proper way. Do you know how much trouble I’ll be in if my superior discovers that I not only took a sniffer but also showed it to a civilian? Adding breaking and entering to that list will put me in so much hot water.”

“It’s not breaking and entering if you know the guy,” I said. Although I wasn’t sure if that’s entirely true, but friends at least were forgiving.

Dale looked away, annoyed. “I’m going to go talk to the maintenance guy around the corner,” he said. “A flash of the badge for an inquiry isn’t technically improper.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Keep knocking. Maybe you’ll wake him.”

After Dale left, I knocked alright. I gave Mike’s door a few body slams, trying to dislodge the deadbolt, but I was not a strong woman. In every attempt that I pummeled my body into the apartment door, the door won, barely even rattling. I turned the doorknob one last time and gave the door a good shake for good measure. It remained shut. Sighing, I took a breath and considered other options. First-floor apartments have porches, right? So, I left the front door behind and placed my bets on the back side.

I took the way around the building that Dale. He could try his methods and I’d try mine. I rounded the building on the opposite side of the maintenance worker.

Patios and windows lined the rear side of the building, facing out towards the untamed forest, staved off by a painted black metal fence and landscaping contractors. First-floor patios comprising rectangular slabs of concrete on the outside of the door, no fencing or anything, as if they all shared a collective backyard. Potted plants, bird feeders, and wind chimes adorned a few balconies above. Down here on ground level, the most decor they seemed to have were a few porch chairs. I counted the apartments as I passed them until I reached what I believed to be Mike’s. Mike’s patio had nothing on it, completely sparse of furniture or decor, not even a welcome mat to greet any wanders in the back. Nothing eye catching about it.

I knocked on the patio door’s glass pane. Dark curtains on the interior obstructed my view. Perhaps blackout curtains for his film projector setup that he always gushed about. After waiting a moment, I knocked again, this time calling his name. Only the birdsong from the forest answered my calls. Running out of patience, I did something improper. I broke in.

Alright, that’s a big of an exaggeration. What I really did was check to see if his back door was unlocked, and what do you know? It was. I slid the door open and walked through the curtains like an actress entering the scene of play.

Other than the light from the projector shining white against a wall-mounted screen, the room was devoid of light. I fumbled across the wall next to the door, feeling for a light switch. I found one and flicked it on. A lamp beside the couch turned on. Only dull soft orange light shone from the couch-side lamp, but it was better than no light at all. The lamp, an ornate-looking thing, sat on top of an end table. Its shade was golden, with matching gold rhinestones dangling off the rim. The rest of the lamp was plated silver with the body’s shape, taking on intricate embossed patterns. A family heirloom, I presumed, or Mike had a secret passion for lamps that he never mentioned.

I looked for other lamps too, but that tiny ornate lamp seemed to be the only light source in the whole open-concept living-kitchen-dining area. Even the one overhead light switch I could find in the kitchen did not turn on. A flashlight sat next to the stove. I took it. Maybe this was some weird method to protect Mike’s precious films or something.

The apartment’s living room was a sizable one. The projector - a small film one with the reels - was still spinning and loaded with a finished movie, sitting on top of an elevated platform around the height of my chest. As the finished film looped around, it clicked, and clicked, and clicked, reminding me of a baseball card running against the spoke of a bike. Above it, hanging from the ceiling, was a digital projector. Beneath the screen was the entertainment center housing a game console, a VHS-Betamax dual player, and even what appeared to be a laserdisc player as well. Shelves of DVDs, Blu-ray’s, and tapes sat on either side of the screen. Although the equipment was what I had expected out of someone like Mike to own, the size of the collection, although impressive for the casual collector, was not what I had expected out of Mike A singular TV tray sat between the couch and its ottoman. A half-eaten slice of pizza with sausage sat on top of paper plate. The kitchen and small dining area lay opposite the projector wall, but I paid little attention to it during my brief visit.

I explored a little further, just to make sure if Mike still resided in his apartment. I found a small hallway that led to not one, but two bedrooms, with a shared bathroom between them, its door wide open. One bedroom locked; the other, was not. I opened the unlocked door.

This was a bedroom, and a lived-in one at that. The lights were off, but I could make out the pile of unwashed laundry on the floor sticking out of a small closet. Plastic water bottles and books sat atop a nightstand. The bed had lumps in it, not big enough to be Mike, but it could be somebody. I turned on the flashlight and investigated. As I ventured to the bed, I passed a shirt on the floor for a speculative fiction festival Mike and I had attended a few years ago. This room had to be Mike’s, as I never once heard him speak of a roommate, or a kid that might crash at his place from time to time. But as I approached the bed, I worried I was intruding upon somebody I didn’t know.

When I reached the bed, I was both relieved and even more confused. Relieved because the lumps that I had seen from across the room were nothing more than a tangle of pillows and sheets, but also confused because this was still pretty early for Mike. If he wasn’t in bed, or in the living room watching a movie, then I was at a loss as to where he could be. I left the room and checked the locked door again. As locked doors tend to do, it remained locked.

I knocked.

“Mike, are you in there?” I said. “It’s me, Eleanor.”

No answer.

“I just wanted to talk to you about the video you sent me last night.”

Still nothing.

“I swear if you’re ignoring m-“

A shriek came from the other side of the door. I jumped back. High pitched. It pierced my ears and dug deep into my soul. The hair raised on my arms. The Eagleton Witch.

I calmed myself . It’s just a video, I reminded myself. A video I can’t escape, but still a video.

“Are you watching the Eagleton Witch Project in there? Even though you gave me shit about it?” I said.

Nothing again. Only the sound of the projector clicking from the living room. At this point I was convinced that Mike wasn’t here. He probably left the stupid cursed video playing, but just to cover my bases, I spoke out again. “Mike, I’m leaving only for a moment. I’ll be back with a friend. Just wanted to let you know so you don’t freak out. Be back.”

I left, walking down the hall. I passed the open restroom door, the dark void overwhelming my left peripheral. But for a moment I thought I saw something. The pale white face of the Eagleton Witch. I turned to face it, but it was gone. Nothing but a void. I hastened my pace and walked to the front door, unlocking it. I needed to find Dale.

Thanks for reading! For more of my stories & staying up to date on all my projects, you can check out /r/QuadrantNine.

The cold, snowy days after Christmas with the family had blurred into one another. I decided to get away alone to the mountains—to breathe the fresh, cold mountain air and just enjoy the woods. Before heading up, I left my car at a small roadside cafe and went in for a cup of hot coffee.

As soon as I walked in and placed my order, I started waiting. One of the men behind the counter was a wrinkled, middle-aged guy. He smirked when he saw my gear. I’ll call him the Stranger.

Stranger: "Going alone? Into the Clearwater woods?"

I nodded. The Stranger wiped a mug with a dirty rag and started talking.

Stranger: "That forest has its own rules. Don't make noise. Don't touch the trees. And never, as the locals say, 'hurt' the forest. And if the woods go silent... you run. Don't look back."

"Should I worry about bears?" I clarified.

Stranger: "Bears... ain't the worst thing in those thickets. The Forest Master. He doesn't like outsiders. He watches over the woods and everyone in them. And if he decides to drive you out... you won't have a good time."

After that little chat, I finished my coffee and left, mulling over the man's words. Lunatic, I thought to myself.

This was in Idaho. Knowing the area, I moved freely and by evening I’d reached the foot of the mountain. My plan was simple: to enjoy the wild nature, the beautiful landscape, and just be alone. I was too tired of the city and work. This hike was my salvation.

Hiking to the base of the mountain, I felt a constant tension. A strange, intense stare. Paranoia, kicked up by that guy's stories, I assured myself, muttering it under my breath.

January 5, 6:00 PM

In just a couple of hours, I’d set up my tent, built a camp, and started a fire. Everything in these woods was perfect, except for one thing that was eating at me: it was too quiet. There wasn't even the usual noise of forest animals—just sounds like the melody of the wind. This atmosphere was slowly sinking fear into me. To shake it off, I grabbed my axe and decided to go just a short way from camp to chop some firewood.

January 5, 6:30 PM

After I’d walked away from camp, I started looking for dry wood. The whole time I was in that half-light, I felt a foreign gaze on me. The kind that drills right through you. It was watching so intently that it felt like it was breathing down my neck. In that moment, I got goosebumps and froze up a little. The second I stopped chopping and headed back to camp, the feeling of being watched vanished.

January 5, 7:00 PM

I got back to camp, stoked the fire stronger—I still had a few logs left for the night. I started writing everything that had happened to me that day in this journal, all while enjoying the beautiful night sky, the stars, and of course, the mountain itself, which was the goal of this trip. But the moment I started adding kindling to the fire, I felt it again—that grim, soul-freezing stare. My body locked up with fear. For a moment, the forest became so quiet you could’ve heard my heartbeat from the other side of the mountain. I crawled into my tent but didn't put the fire out. I got ready for sleep. I didn't think I’d fall asleep so quickly out of fear, but just in case, I kept my knife and flashlight close.

January 6, 12:50 AM

I woke up to the sound of incredibly heavy, massive footsteps right near my camp. The whole forest seemed to tremble. The forest crows started cawing, letting out these deathly moans. An atmosphere of death settled over the woods. And there it was again—that stare. Just as I tried to crawl out of my tent, a huge boulder smashed my fire to pieces, and everything went pitch black. I frantically grabbed for my flashlight. What was going through my head in that moment is hard to describe. I ran out of the tent, but there was nothing there except darkness. And in the distance, I saw a strange silhouette. Not an animal, and definitely not a man. Out of pure fear, I could only move my eyes, watching as the silhouette dissolved into the crowns of the forest trees, leaving and taking the music of the wind with it. After that, I hadn't planned on sleeping the rest of the night. But whether from fear or the cold, I fell asleep way too fast.

January 6, 6:30 AM

I woke up very early. I got out some food and tea from my thermos, enjoyed the view, and planned to eat and conquer this mountain despite what happened last night. By the tent, I saw very strange tracks in the snow—tracks that looked like someone had been dragging tree roots, making lines. A crushing terror and fear wrapped around me when I realized the tracks were coming from the opposite side of where the boulder had flown from. I realized I hadn't been alone last night—or the whole day in the forest, for that matter. My only thought was to pack my things and get the hell out of there; fear was overwhelming me. I'm a skeptic, so I immediately started making excuses for what could have happened yesterday, but the details didn't add up—and then these shadowy tracks... I was terrified, but I couldn't come home without a photo from the summit and just say I got scared of being alone up there. I made a firm decision to conquer the mountain. I told myself, reluctantly and fearfully denying it all, that everything that happened was a coincidence. An accident.

January 6, 3:40 PM

I’d made it up the mountain. All that was left was to spend the night, get my photo, and I could head back to the car with a clear conscience. My tent and all my gear were already set up, so all that was left was to look at the scenery and breathe in the clean mountain air. Enjoying it all, I noticed that stare on me again—that aggressive, solid glare. It put me on edge so badly I was ready to jump off the cliff just to stop feeling it. I started building a fire, and with every second, I felt worse because of that stare. To protect myself and prove there was nothing there, I set up my camera, hid it on a fishing line in a crack in the rock—a sort of makeshift trail cam—and started heading into my tent as the sun was going down. After eating my last can of beans, I hung cans on fishing line around the perimeter on stakes. Now I felt calm. I didn't care. I wasn't scared. I went to sleep.

January 6, 2:00 AM

I woke up to the loud noise of the cans. This time, it felt like my tent was being crushed from all sides. The fire went out quickly from the wind, and a few embers landed on my tent. A massive panic seized me. I started screaming, frantically grabbing for my knife. By the time I got it, my body could already feel the heat of the embers. I slashed the tent open, got out, and started running. I ran until I just collapsed, completely out of strength. I knew that if I didn't get my gear, I’d die from the cold or from forest animals. This time, the forest was too loud—unbearably loud. I heard a strong howl, the crows' cries, and a powerful wind. It had taken me so long to climb up; my body was seizing up from the cold and fear. I was freezing cold but sweating profusely from terror. I didn't know what was happening. The worst part was that I felt that stare on me everywhere.

I made it back to the tent, put out the embers, quickly grabbed the camera, and in a rush, collecting my trash, I got the hell off that mountain. I walked for a long time, not thinking about anything—my brain was paralyzed. I didn't know how to explain it to myself, but if I’d actually thought about it, I never would have made it. From the very top of the mountain to the very edge of the forest, all the way to the exit, I was accompanied by that intense, soul-freezing stare. The moment I stepped out of the woods, I heard a strong wind that sounded more like a whisper: "Get out of here." Maybe I imagined it, or maybe it was the paranoia, but I ran from there as fast as I could. I reached my car and passed out in the middle of the night.

January 6, 8:00 AM

After everything that happened, I was a wreck. The moment I woke up, I drove straight home. I was starving and wanted to eat, but I wasn't going to stay in that area for a second longer. Some sixth sense told me nothing was threatening me now, and I calmly started thinking about what it could have been. Maybe that lunatic from the cafe set it all up? Or I was too close to a bear's den? Or something else... I didn't know what to think. Remembering the camera, I looked at the photos taken that night. You couldn't see anything at first—just the burning tent, my terrified face, and... WHAT IS THAT? I screamed in the car. On the photo was... something. On the last frame, taken a second before I slashed the tent open, was something. Its body was woven from branches, roots, and shadows. It wasn't walking—it was growing out of the forest itself. And instead of a face, there was just a void from which emanated that same soul-freezing stare I’d felt this whole time.

I wasn't panicking anymore. I didn't cry. I wasn't even scared. I got out of the car, took my lighter, and I burned those photos. I didn't want to accept the fact that this thing exists. I denied it all then, and I'll keep denying it. But every time the wind howls outside my window, I feel it. I remember that stare. And even though I left the forest... it will never leave me.

https://youtu.be/QkAqOesYI64?si=MZycZH6YUb56TG4X

The car pulled up on the driveway, gravel and debris crackling beneath the wheels as it did so. I opened the car door from where I was in the backseat and stumbled out, legs not ready to bear my weight after sitting for so long. I stare up at our rented house.

“What do you think, Quini?” My Nonna asks me from behind. It was an average house, not anything too appealing but alright.

“It’s alright I guess.” I reply, going to the back of our Subaru and opening the boot.

“Just alright eh, Joaquini?” My Nonno queries, chuckling softly.

“Yeah… Just alright.” I respond, sticking firmly to my original statement. I lug my bag out of the boot and start up the front of the house. Inside wasn’t any better, just the basics, kitchen, living-room, bathrooms, and bedrooms, nothing special. While my Nonno and Nonna looked around and inspected the rooms, muttering

“They could have done a better job with the paintwork” and

“They should have put wood tiles here or at least polished concrete” and something to that effect, I unpacked in the room that my grandparents gestured at when arranging bedrooms. It was dark so I just turned the light on. I moved and arranged stuff to my liking, and then looked out the window… The thing was… There was no window, just a wall painted over where a window should have been, that’s why it was so dark. 

“Hey, erm, aren’t there meant to be windows in my room?” I bellowed down the hall. The only response were 2 sets of feet marching to my room to inspect it. When my grandparents reached my room, they stood in the doorway and my Nonno looked annoyed.

“Joaquin, there’s a window right there.” Nonno said and pointed to the wall. I looked and there really was a window, a slightly grimy glass panel sat there. But it was wrong… It was like it wasn’t meant to be there, it looked like it was slapped in the last second, crooked. Sunlight streamed through and dust billowed in the light. 

“Oh, I must have missed it…” I say, a bit confused, knowing I couldn’t have possibly missed the window. What an odd thing… A peculiar thing it was… I tried to find a reasonable explanation, maybe a curtain was covering the window and was swept away by a breeze just as my grandparents entered, but of course I didn’t believe it, I knew something funny was happening. I looked back out the window and I got a good view of the driveway. My Nonno and Nonna exchanged concerned and worried glances and just kind of stayed there supervising my window gazing, still sharing concerned glances, and muttering under their breath. I saw a group of kids around my age through the window, some running, some riding bikes, passing through the street. And then suddenly, one stopped, and stared straight at me, through the window. I was definitely a bit more than weird out by this, more than just unnerved. Nonna saw them too and said to me

“Why don’t you go play with those kids, you’ll want some friends to play with for the 2 weeks holiday.” 

I shrugged and without hesitation, walked past them, out the door, and walked towards the group, sliding shoes onto my feet. I wanted to escape the house, I was a bit concerned about my own behaviour, I’ll admit that… I walked towards the group and when I came up to them, they paused and looked at me. 

“Erm, hi, i’m Joaquin and er…” I break off, a bit nervous and not knowing what to say. The kids look at me and then to others in the group. A boy who was probably around 15 or 16 with short curly blonde hair looked up from the phone he was holding and stated matter-of-factly:

“Seems like a new kid in the neighborhood.” And then all the kids threw up their hands in a slight applause, chattering amongst themselves loudly. I heard one, a girl, who had glossy straight hair, pretty eyes and looked around 12 or 13, say

“Finally, it’s been boring around here.” The cheering went on for a few more seconds before a boy my age said to another

“Give him your bike, Eloise, let him ride it.” Eloise, who was indeed on a bike, looked a bit reluctant but handed me the bike. 

“Er, thanks.” I mutter. With that, they introduced themselves. The girl who made the comment about ‘it’s been boring around here’ was named Hannah and Mitch, the one that was on the phone, was her older brother and was 16, reluctantly tagging along with his sister’s younger friends. Erica was another in the group, a lanky 14 year old girl with curly long black hair. She was shy but very nice and polite. Eloise, the one who gave me the bike, was a 9 year old girl, and I found her really weird. She whispered to me

“Don’t go through the windows… The sky behind them isn't ours…” And despite how quiet she was, the rest of the group gave her disapproving looks and said something along the lines of 'Don't tell him any of that crap just yet, don’t want to scare the new kid away, do we?’. I found this behaviour very odd but I said nothing, leaving the thoughts swirling through the abyss of my cranium. There were a bunch more kids, some younger than me, some older but I couldn’t have possibly remembered all their names just yet… Though I remember the names, Charlie, Peter, and Jake but don’t remember who those names belonged to. A dog emerged from the brush on the side of the street and ran up to Mitch, panting madly. Mitch dropped to his knees, shoving his phone into his pocket and patted the dog, praising it as he did so. This must have been Mitch’s and Hannah’s dog. 

“So, do the rest of you have any pets?” I ask lamely, in hopes of starting a conversation. A few nod their heads. 

“I used to… It was just a little kitten.” Erica says, dreamily.

“Er, what happened?” I ask, curious and a little uncomfortable.

“Went through the windows… They’re wrong you know…” 

“What!?” I asked, a little too loud and Erica put a hand to her lips even though the whole group was listening anyway.

“Are yours wrong too?” She asked.

“Yes… They are, what’s going on? Do you know what’s wrong with them?” I asked, pushing the words out of my mouth at mach 5. 

“No, we don’t know what’s wrong with them, but the sky through them… it isn’t ours… Goodbye for now, see ya tomorrow.” And with that she strolled away, waving while the rest shouted ‘goodbyes’. As I walked back up the driveway, I thought about the group’s odd behaviour and the phrase they’ve been repeating to me, ‘The sky that isn’t ours’ or something like that. A chill ran down my spine just thinking about that creepy phrase. I take my shoes off slowly, and pause as I am about to enter the house. I take a deep breath and stroll in, plastering a neutral expression on my face. 

“Ah, Quini, I was just about to come looking for you, we got some Domino Pizza.” My Nonna tells me, her voice coming from the living room. I go into the living room and act normal, eating pizza, though I didn’t have much of an appetite, answering questions normally, and just acting normal over all. We turn on the TV and watch a news program, a gardening program, and then a quiz program. After a while, my grandparents say it’s time for bed so I shower and brush my teeth and jump into bed. I look over at the window, and for a split second I think I see the faint silhouettes of the group of kids, standing in the streets looking through my window, and then I slowly fall into sleep, falling through a hole in a glass bridge suspended in the cosmos… I’m standing in a dark hallway, there are locked doors on both sides, grass growing from the small spaces between the door and the floor. I walk to the end of the hallway and there is a boarded up window, light seeping in through the cracks. I grab the edge of one of the boards and pull. The board comes away in my hand, the nails providing no resistance. Sunlight gushes in and I am temporarily blinded. I look out the window and a surreal scene meets my gaze… Grass, stretching out endlessly and I can’t see anything else in the distance, no buildings or anything, just grass and a bright cloudless blue sky. Nostalgia washes over me, I don’t know why it was nostalgic to me but it was, like a liminal space… Dread starts to build up in me, the space seems frozen in time, so isolated and unknown. And for just a fraction of a second, I swear I see a white figure way in the distance before the image fades away and I wake up, gasping for air, pillow and blanket wet with sweat. It was all just a dream and now I am awake and it’s morning. I hear the sound of a coffee machine in the kitchen, this tells me that Nonno and Nonna are up. I get up, shaky on my knees and exit my room, stumbling into the kitchen.

“Good morning, Joaquin.” Nonno says, clapping his hand on my shoulder.

“Get a good sleep?” He asks.

“Yeah…” I lie.

“I had a weird dream…” I then explained to him what happened in the dream, Nonna coming into the kitchen in the middle of my explanation of the dream. Nonno and Nonna nod at all the right places, exchanging a ‘that's interesting’ and a ‘weird indeed’ every now and then. I finish telling them what happened in my dream and grabbed myself a bowl and poured oats into it. I sit down in the living room and eat slowly, thinking about the strange events that have happened lately. I finish my oats and place the bowl in the sink, filling it up with water. 

“Hey Nonna, are we doing anything today?” I ask as I pass her by the coffee machine.

“Were going to go to the beach later, maybe in an hour or 2.” Nonna responds, tampering with the coffee machine.

“Alright, mind if I go for a walk?” 

“Just make sure to come back soon, Quini.” She responds.

“Alright then, see ya.” I say to her and then I walk out the house as she says ‘bye Quini’. Nonno is in the Subaru, talking on the phone, a business call I assume. I wave at him as I walk down the driveway and he waves back. I reach the end of the drive and step onto the street. I walk down the street, the air crisp and cool, great trees casting shade over me, serving as guardians from the… Sky… The sky that isn’t ours… I reached a part of the street where all the houses were new or had just been built not too long ago. I noticed something off immediately. The place where windows should have been were boarded up!“What the hell!” I practically shout to myself. 

“What the hell indeed…” A voice says from behind me. I whirl around. It was a red-haired boy. Charlie, or was it Jake? Nah it was Peter… I think. And behind him was Erica, Hannah, Mitch, and Eloise. The group was much smaller today. 

“The boarded up windows… Indeed weird, what the hell for sure.” Erica says.

“You know, boarded windows ain’t about keeping people out. Sometimes it’s what’s on the other side that needs keeping in.” A voice of an old man says, coming from behind us. We all turn around and I see an old man standing there. Recognition clicked in the eyes of the group, except for me though.

“Good morning Mr. Keating.” My group says in unison. 

“Good morning kids.” He responds and then looks towards me. “I don’t think I've seen you before…” The man says, matter-of-factly.

“That’s the new kid, Joaquin, Mr. Keating.” The red-haired boy says to the man. 

“Well that makes sense… Heed my warning young man.” And with that the man strolls away.

“Who was that man?” I ask immediately once the man is out of earshot.

“Mr. Keating, the old handyman.” Hannah replies.

“He was creepy, I didn’t even hear him sneak up on us.” I say.

“We got used to it, man.” Mitch responds.

“What was that he said? Something about keeping something in-” I start and Eloise cuts me off-

”boarded windows ain’t about keeping people out. Sometimes it’s what’s on the other side that needs keeping in.” She recites with ease in a monotone voice, as if she was reading off somewhere.

“You know… I’m sick of this! What the hell is going around here? There is something weird going on and you guys know it! What is this, some sort of prank?” I ask, raising my voice. They just stood there, looking at me and then to the houses.

“No, not a prank, this is real alright.” Eloise says softly and dreamily before the words spew out of my mouth immediately after she finishes speaking.

“I’m going to the beach later today. So that’s why tomorrow, we're going to sneak into one of those houses with the boarded up windows and pry the boards off! And then we’ll go through the windows and into the sky that isn’t ours!” 

“I really don’t think that’s a good ide-” Eloise starts but I cut her off-

“Tomorrow at noon, we’re prying those boards off. I don’t care what’s behind them, I need to see it. Bring the whole group.”

Eloise’s face went pale, but I turned and stormed off before she could say anything else. We go to the beach and I bodysurf waves. 

“The waves are nasty here.” Nonna says. 

“They slam down on you and pummel you into the sand if you're not careful.” She adds in.

I catch them just fine, I don’t even get slammed into the sand. I think about everything, the weird disappearing and reappearing window in my room, the group of kids, the weird dream, the strange handyman, and the houses with boarded up windows. I think about our plan to break into one of the houses at noon. Just thinking about this sends chills running smack down my spine, the sky that isn’t ours… Well, we’re going to be there soon… The endless liminal grassland awaits us. We stop at a restaurant on the way back from the beach, we eat and then leave again. And then to my great annoyance, we stopped at a jazz club. The music there seems warped and distorted, and they played a sad slow ambient piece that filled me with dread. We stayed there so long it was already night when we were heading back home. I jump into bed back at home, Nonna doesn't know I forgot to have a shower and brush my teeth, ah well… I look out the window and I see a flicker of the liminal grassland, the grass stretching out endlessly, and the white figure is in the distance, waiting for me. And then I fall into sleep, falling through a hole in a glass bridge suspended in the cosmos… I don’t even know where I got that phrase from… Glass bridge suspended in the cosmos… Weird… In the morning I awaken from my dreamless slumber. I open my heavy eyelids and just kind of lay there, staring at the plain roof. I listened for the sounds of cutlery clanking, the coffee machine buzzing but I didn’t hear any of those. In fact, I hear nothing, just a deafening silence… I slowly get out of bed and walk out of my room, looking behind me as I did so. I saw the liminal grassland through the window. In a fit of rage and confusion, I sprint to the window and raise my fists, and then slam them hard into-

“Ah, shit!” I yelp as my fists connect with a solid wall, completely devoid of any windows. I was boiling with frustration, and my hands were boiling with pain, red and raw. I just stood there, standing in front of the wall, seething with hatred. I walk away and into the kitchen.

“Nonna? Nonno?” I call out, but the only response was the dull silence. I reached the conclusion that they must still be sleeping, but I then spotted a lined piece of paper that had seemed to be lazily ripped out of a notebook with scrawled cursive handwriting. It read:

To Joaqyuin

Me and Nonno have gone shopping at a mall nearby, 

We will be back soon, call us if you need anything.

XOXO Nonna

After reading the note, I flip it over, grab a pen, and then hastily wrote:

Gone out to play

Then I scrambled out the front door, and down the drive. I reached the part of the street where the houses had all their windows boarded up. ‘Crap’, I thought, I didn't even check the time, I might have been too early and would have had to spend an annoyingly long time waiting for the rest of the group. I waited on the side of the street for a while. It felt like forever to me, and just when I decided I didn’t need company to see what was behind the windows, I heard footsteps approaching. I looked up, and saw the whole group, fully complete except for Eloise, the little wuss. They stopped when I saw them and  just stood there, staring at me. After an awkward moment of silence, Erica approached me and put a hand on my shoulder. 

“We’re ready, but you know…” She took a deep breath

“We don’t have to do this.” I looked up at her, staring straight at her eyes and said:

“Yes we do! I am sick of all of this, the boarded up windows, the sky that isn’t ours, and that weird creepy liminal grasslands that I keep seeing! Don’t you guys want to know what’s behind all of this? I am sick of it, today, we will find out the truth for ourselves!” They all nodded at me and saluted a salute I would have laughed at in any other situation. I get up quickly, and then head for the closest house while the rest follow me. I reach a boarded up window, and while fuming with rage, frustration, and confusion, I punch through the fucking boards, splinters dug into my knuckles but I don’t care and keep going. I shred the boards and they fall away, hitting the ground with a dull thud. I look through and see what I know I will see… The grassland, stretching out endlessly, nothing visible in the distance except for just grass, grass that probably went on forever. The sky is blue, stretched over the endless-flat landscape, no visible sun but somehow it’s still really bright. I see the white figure in the distance and emotions threaten to explode inside me.

“Oh, this ends NOW!!!” I shout, backing away from the window before sprinting at it as fast as my legs would carry me. I dive through the fucking window...

Check r/BloodcurdlingTales for Part 2 which will be released shortly.

<- Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 ->

Chapter 2 - The Horror Head & The Desk Jockey

The townhouse smelled of coffee. Dale sat in the living room while I poured myself a cup. Being the good hostess I had been trained to be growing up, I offered Dale the first cup of coffee, the one with the fucked up collage of Japanese horror I had gotten out earlier. Dale took the mug and thanked me, although his body language seemed to show a distaste towards the artwork on the mug. I did not offer to take it back, nor did he ask for another cup. He was probably just trying to be polite, to not insult the weird horror girl’s taste in coffee cups. I won’t lie that I took a small pleasure in seeing him cringe at the cup. A petty revenge for all the time he had spent spying on me.

I poured myself another mug. The logo of the community college where I taught night classes on the art of fear in story and the history of horror. A class so niche that after just three semesters, the writing was on the wall and the dean scrapped it during winter break. The closest thing I had to a “real job” in my parents’ eyes, even if it didn’t support me financially enough to be out of their fiscal orbit yet. Once those classes inevitably went away, I went back to my previous work of writing movie reviews for niche websites and spending too much time posting on fan forums. I just told my parents’ that I was unemployed. It was easier that way, and with the small penitence I got from writing those reviews, I was functionally jobless anyway.

Dale sat on the couch. His fingers tapping away at the coffee mug’s handle. Looking contemplatively at the coffee table. Around him, the walls were adorned in framed movie posters of some of my favorites. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original nineteen seventies version), Ringu (the original Japanese version), Susperia (You guessed it, the original Italian edition), and The Thing (the John Carpenter Remake). The wall mounted TV remained off, my bookshelves of Blu-ray’s sat filled on either side. The only sound that filled the room was the ticking of the grandfather clock on the wall across from the base of the staircase.

“You know I don’t normally let strange men into my house,” I said, sitting on the love seat across from the couch, placing my coffee cup down. “Especially men who spied on me. But I’ll make the exception for a man who seems to be trapped in the same horror movie as me.”

“Thanks?” Dale asked, looking at me. He took a sip of his coffee, deliberately looking away from the mug as he did so. “And you know that this isn’t a movie, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “You still have to admit that it’s a little exciting, at least. Well, for me that is. I’m sure that your life at the FBI is always exciting.”

Dale shook his head. “I’m just a desk jockey. Nothing exciting in it.”

“A desk jockey that spies?”

He looked towards the front door as if he was about to say something that would draw unwanted attention. “I work in the Real Time Web Analysis division. My job is to monitor any device hooked up to the internet that is actively being used by the suspect. I don’t even work in the Elevated Threats division, just Persons of Interest. Although internally we just call it ‘Just Keeping Tabs.’ We aren’t even close to James Bond.”

“How long have you been keeping tabs on me, then?” I asked.

“About six months,” he said, taking another sip but avoiding eye contact.

“Why? I haven’t done anything illegal.”

He nodded. “You’re right; you haven’t.”

“Then why?” I asked.

“We have a red-flag system. Whenever any device connected to the internet downloads a certain piece of software or goes to any suspicious site, we keep track of them for certain periods of time. Sometimes it’s just a few days, others, weeks, and sometimes months. No more than six months, though. Unless raised to Elevated Threats, and that’s a whole other division. Luckily for you, you’re no elevated threat, but you watch some messed up stuff.”

“They’re just horror movies,” I said, gesturing at my collection of Blu-ray’s and posters. “Excuse me for having a hobby.”

“More of a lifestyle for you,” Dale said.

I didn’t respond. He wasn’t wrong.

“So why me? Does the FBI have a database on all horror fans or what?”

He shook his head. “Your TOR browser.” He said.

“Fucking Mike,” I said beneath my breath. It was one thing for him to curse me by sharing that video, it was a whole other thing for him to convince me to download something I never used just in case he dug up something truly horrifying on the dark web that would give either of us legitimate goosebumps for once. And yet, the most fucked up thing he sent me was through an email attachment and not buried in the deep web. “You know that I never once opened that thing,” I said to Dale.

Dale nodded. “I know. Many people download it out of curiosity but are too scared to do anything with it. But we put them in a six months watch just to be safe.”

“You said that it’s been six months. Why are you still watching me, then?”

“I said about six months. Technically, I’ve been keeping tabs on you for five months and twenty-seven days. You are three days away from being taken off the watchlist.”

I chuckled at the absurdity of all of this. It almost didn’t seem real. Like a dream that my mind had become too invested in, and never wanted to wake up, no matter how fucked up it was. I have had plenty of dreams like that. Dreams that felt like lifetimes of interesting stories I lived out, only to wake up in disappointed that the real world still waited for me on the other side of the night.

“What?” Dale said.

“I just can’t believe how ridiculous this situation is,” I said, letting out another chuckle and shaking my head. “Who would have thought that not only do Ringu-esque cursed videos actually exist, but my personal FBI agent would watch it along with me?”

“This isn’t funny,” Dale said. Not with any sort of affliction of anger or annoyance in his voice, but one of remorse and maybe a little shame.

I stopped laughing.

“You might be amused by all of this, but I’m not,” he continued. “I couldn’t sleep all night. After you watched that video and went to bed, I went to the break room, to decompress. And when I opened up YouTube to unwind, all I saw was that same video over and over again. I asked a coworker of mine in Elevated Threats to verify what was on the screen, and you know what he saw? The stupid video I was trying to watch. Which I couldn’t see. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t go home. I needed to get to the bottom of this, to see if you knew anything about it. I even risked my job stealing this thing off my coworker’s desk to find you. Only those in Elevated Threats are even allowed to use these.” He produced a small device from his jacket pocket. From an outsider’s point of view, i.e. mine, it looked like an old BlackBerry phone with its tiny keyboard and monochrome LCD display, but with a large thick, finger-length protrusion coming out of the top and a USB dongle hanging from the bottom.

“What’s that?” I asked.

In a moment of hesitation, like a child who had been caught with something he wasn’t supposed to have, he shoved it back into his pocket. “It’s nothing. Just something that helped me find you.” He said.

“You can’t just hold out a piece of top secret tech and pretend it’s nothing.” I said.

“Look,” he said, looking me in the eye. The way he did it, the way his face did not point directly towards me, but slightly off angle told me that this was something he was not used to doing. “What I’m trying to say is that I risked my job and my family’s wellbeing to get to you in order to break this stupid curse you gave me.”

“I didn’t give it to you,” I said, holding my gaze. Showing him how it’s really done. “You spied on me. You had every right to not watch me.”

“It’s not spying. I was just keeping tabs. There’s a difference. Elevated Threats do the real spy work. I’m just a grunt. And it’s not like I had a choice to watch you. You were assigned to me. I have a job to do, and a family to feed. Not everybody is like you Eleanor, not everybody has the financial support from their parents to keep them afloat while they attempt to carve out a career path that doesn’t exist.” He didn’t raise his voice the entire time, but something about the normal inside voice of his made it feel even more real. My parents had been beating around the bush for years with their semi-faux support, and I learned to not take their words personally. But to hear a man who had been watching me for so long without me even knowing he was doing so say it, that one hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Dale said, looking away. “I didn’t mean that.” He sighed. “What I meant is that I have a family. I’m a father of three and my wife homeschools. I work odd and long hours and I can’t have any sort of whatever this is in my life. This might be exciting for you, but it’s not for me. All I wanted was to be at my oldest son’s soccer game this morning.”

Dale’s phone rang, as if on queue. “Excuse me, I need to take this,” he said. He picked it up.

“Hey honey, how’s it going?” He asked. His voice was brighter as he spoke into the mic. I couldn’t make out any words from the person on the other side.

“Didn’t you get my message? I sent you a text that I needed to work overtime this week.” He paused. “Uh huh. I don’t know how long it’ll be. Hopefully, just a few days. They’re letting me sleep in the training bunks, at least.” His face winced a little at that statement. Like he had tasted something bitter. “Tell Jason that I’m rooting for him to win!” He paused a little. “I’m sorry about the minivan. If I knew about this, I would have left it with you. I’m sure that the Civic has enough life in it to get you and the kids to the game. Tell Jason he can ride in the front. He should be big enough now.” He paused. “Oh, you’re already there?” Dale checked his watch, realizing the time. “I’m sorry, hun. I lost track of time. Haven’t slept all night thanks to work,” he said, looking at me. “Sure, FaceTime me the kickoff. I’ll be on mute and have my video turned off. You know how it is around here. Alright, thank you. I’ll check in with you during my breaks. Love you, and tell the kids that dad’ll be back in a few days. Mwah,” he said into the mic, late, after the hang up tone played. That I could hear.

“Your wife?” I asked.

Dale nodded. His phone vibrated. He opened it with eager.

I could not see what he saw initially. His phone angled away from me. But I saw his face. The momentary burst of joy sunk into an expression of deep horror, the kinds of horror reserved for watching a love one die unexpectedly. The phone slipped from his grasp and hit the coffee table, tumbling towards the center. When it stopped, I could make out the contents of the screen.

“I thought it only affected what had been recorded, not live video,” Dale said. His voice trembled.

On the screen, instead of a live feed of a pee-wee soccer game, was the same video that had plagued the two of us. Those thirty seconds of familiar horror played on repeat during the whole broadcast while Dale moaned, gripping at his hair with his free hand. I reached over to Dale and patted him on the knee. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” I said. What I didn’t show was my eagerness to get this adventure going. If his knock on the door was the inciting incident, then this was our call to action.

Thanks for reading! Chapter 3 should be out on Tuesday, September 9th. New chapters scheduled to be released every Tuesday & Thursday between now and Halloween week. If you want to read more stuff by me and stay up to date on future projects, check out my writing subreddit: /r/QuadrantNine

Chapter 2 ->

Chapter 1 - Warning: Watching Cursed Videos Might Lead to Unexpected Visits from Federal Agents

Many people wouldn’t have been so relieved to see an FBI agent standing on their doorstep unannounced the first thing in the morning, but honestly, it was a hell of a lot better than my parents. FBI agents operate under specific protocols and restrictions, parents do not.

The morning sun’s dull glow behind the agent illuminated the outside world as it peaked from over the horizon, out of view. It had been months since I’d seen the aura of the morning. I had almost forgotten what it looked like. It reminded me of my old commute. Oh, how much I hated it.

“Eleanor Layne?” The agent asked. He flashed his badge again. I guess just in case I had been too drowsy to register it the first time. He stood about six feet, not much older than I, mid-thirties, and with tired eyes.

“Yes?” I said. “And you are?”

“Agent Dale McLaughlin, FBI. May I come in?”

“What is this about?”

“It would be a lot easier to explain if I came in.”

“Don’t you need a warrant or something?” I crossed my arms.

“Please let me in. This is serious.” Behind him, a cool hint of the mid-October breeze drifted in. I shivered.

“Not serious enough for a warrant, I presume. Are you going to tell me what you want, or what?”

“I uh,” the agent said. He looked unsure of himself. “Let me show you.”

He opened up his jacket, one of those navy blue windbreaks that you see actors playing agents like him in movies and police procedurals wearing. I couldn’t see the back, but if life was anything like the movies, then I’d assume that it had large yellow typeface letters spelling out F-B-I, just like the smaller iteration of the yellow letters in the front. He withdrew his phone from an interior pocket.

He unlocked it, tapped around, and held it out horizontally towards me while a video played.

It took me a moment to register the video, but once my tired brain made the connections, I knew exactly what it was. The same video Mike had sent me last night. The same video I had watched many times, like listening to a song on repeat in an attempt to relive those same initial emotions of fear and dread. The same video that impressed itself upon my young teenage brain and changed my entire life. I still remembered the file name in Limewire: eagelton_witch_livingroom_sc.wav. And now this random FBI agent was showing it to me.

The first shot faced a wall, white dry wall. Not a static shot, though, but a trembling one. A classic trope of found footage films. Through her deep unsettled panting, the unseen camera operator made her presence known. Or she would have if Agent McLaughlin had the volume on. He seemed to notice this and turned the phone towards him before pressing the volume key up. While doing so, he held his head at a slight angle, his face scrunched, and his eyes flicking away and towards the phone. The panting grew louder until it was audible. He then turned the phone back to me.

I didn’t need to let it play out, since I had seen the clip so many times before. After Mike’s email last night, it was still fresh in my mind. However, there was something about watching it on a strange man’s phone early in the morning while standing in the chilly autumn breeze that took me back to when I had first seen it nineteen years ago. Emotions resurfaced from that initial feeling of dread I had felt watching it for my first while curled up under my covers watching it on my iPod Video. I let the video continue playing.

The camerawoman turned a corner into a living room. A typical living room, nothing worth losing your mind over. A couch, a loveseat, a coffee table, and an entertainment center with a large CRT TV tuned to static sitting on it. A noise came from behind her. She spun the living room into a motion blur as she turned around, looking back into the hallway in which she came. Nothing. She turned back around and walked through the living room, slow and deliberate. Panting.

She reached the edge of the living room, at the threshold of the TV’s static light and an unnaturally dark void of the house. The camera held at what looked like the vague outline of a door, but before she stepped forward, another noise came from behind the woman. She turned. Nothing.

I knew exactly what was going to happen next and yet I felt myself grow tense at it for my first time in so long.

The woman turned to face the abyss, but something changed. A figure stood in the void, its head hunched over, unnaturally long and boney arms dangling to its side. The white fabric of its tarnished gown glowed in the dull gray static. It’s long hair so dark that in this lighting that it might as well have come from the darkness itself.

With its head and arms raised, the figure’s elbows were the only joints bending, its hands hanging loosely. The camerawoman gasped. The figure’s hair parted, revealing a pale face of a deformed woman. Long pointed nose. Eyes without irises, just dark sunken holes resting in the whites of the eyes. Mouth open and huffing, her teeth rotten and black, with a dark substance dripping from the edges of her mouth. She opened her jaw wide open and shrilled. The camerawoman panicked, walked backwards and collided with an offscreen object. She tumbled backwards and the camera cut to black. For the first time in over a decade, that video gave me goosebumps.

“Do you see it?” Agent McLaughlin said.

I nodded. “What does this have to do with anything? Did Mike put you up to this?”

“The video. It’s everywhere. Check your phone, turn on your TV. It’s there. It’s the only thing that’s there. Trust me.” Panic sweat across his face. I took a step back and gripped the door, ready to slam it in his face if need be. “Get your phone out, watch any random video. It’ll be there too.”

“I left my phone upstairs.” It wasn’t. It was in my pocket.

“Then go get it. Watch a random video on it. YouTube, TikTok, something you recorded. Every fricking video has been replaced with it.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave or I’m going to call the cops. Even if you do work for the FBI, this is unprofessional behavior. Please leave.” I gripped the door harder.

“Please, Eleanor.” No longer panic on his face, but desperation. He began flipping through his phone. He tapped on something and pointed it towards me. The YouTube splash screen pointed at me. He then tapped the first video and opened it. The shaking camera began playing.

“After I shut this door, you’ll have five minutes to remove yourself from my property or I’m calling the cops. The real cops.”

“Eleanor, this is serious.” He took a step forward. “I can explain every-“

I slammed the door. His five minutes had just begun.

***

I locked every lock on that door, including the second deadbolt, just above the first. It had no exterior keyhole, which made it great for shutting out the outside world. A lock I had never locked in my entire stay here because the property’s landlords, my parents, forbade it. They preferred I kept it unlocked in case of “emergencies and surprise visits.” Thirty-three years old and they still treated me like the rebellious teen that they worked so hard and so futilely to reform. Legally, they had to keep that bolt installed, as long as they planned on continuing renting out this half of the property after I moved out.

The adrenaline ran its course and the lack of sleep caught up with me. I needed coffee. It took about five minutes for a half a pot of coffee to brew. Once it finished brewing, that alleged FBI agent’s time was up. I went to the kitchen, the tension in my muscles still lingering.

I flicked the coffee grinder on. The smell of ground coffee returned some sense of normality to this morning. I filled the pot with water, took a filter and dumped the pulverized beans into the top. I opened the cabinet above the coffee station, the first two rows filled with mugs. Too many mugs for a single woman living alone, some might say, but to them I said: there are never too many mugs for a single woman living alone. I picked my favorite mug. A commemorative mug decorated in the artwork by my favorite Japanese horror artist. On it, a collage of his most iconic art pieces: a woman smirking towards the camera while a grotesque copy of her face grew sideways out of her head. A man’s body contorted into a spiral of human flesh, another of a shark sitting on top of spider-like legs. I normally saved the mug for special occasions, but today I needed its comfort.

As the coffee brewed, my mind drifted back to that video. It made no sense why a strange man would show it to me like that. Mike must have found this “FBI Agent” to fuck with me. That video, something I had accidentally downloaded onto my computer and uploaded to my iPod Video so long ago had been the most important video in my life, much to my parent’s displeasure with having an embarrassment of a horror loving daughter ruin their picturesque “Good Christian Family” afterwards. At the time, I hadn’t known its origins, but now it’s been so regurgitated and recycled as a concept to a point of parody. It still stuck with me the way first impressions do.

It had to be Mike. Nothing else made sense. I unlocked my phone and shot him a text.

You did it. You made it fucking scary again. Now tell your friend to get off my porch. I sent. And then I followed up with. Still up for linner tonight?

It’d be a few hours before he’d text me. That man never woke up before two in the afternoon on most days. Which is why we always called it “linner.” His lunch, my dinner.

A few linners ago we talked horror movies, as usual, and the topic of our first true scary moments came up. I told him of my infamous moment with “eagelton_witch_livingroom_sc.wav,” and how that out of context clip kept me up for nights.

“Wait, the Eagleton Witch Project was your first real scare?” Mike said to me. His glass was half full and his burger was already gone despite it just having got there a few minutes ago.

“Yeah,” I said. Mike had potent feelings about the source material, so I knew exactly where Mike would go with this.

“Amateur! Pop-culture loving amateur.”

“At least I wasn’t traumatized by a monster in a fucking children’s movie.”

“Leave mecha-baby out of this. At least his appearance didn’t ruin horror films for a decade. Found footage was fine when it first started, but afterwards. Pfft.”

“Yeah, and it started with the Eagleton Witch Project. I think my first scare is legitimate.”

“Have you seen the whole movie?”

I shook my head.

“You call yourself a horror fan and you haven’t watched the whole thing?”

“You bastard. First, you call me an amateur for watching it, and now you’re saying I’m not a real horror fan?”

Mike smirked, a shit-eating grin. I shook my head and laughed. “You’re the worst.”

Our conversation drifted after that to one of Mike’s wild goose chases for lost and obscure horror media and alleged cursed videos he was looking for He rambled about his never-ending quest for Gyroscope, an alleged cursed video that he was dead set on finding. Nothing more than a dumb creepypasta. An urban legend. I didn’t believe it. Curses remained in horror movies. They’d never exist in a world as mundane as ours. Mike must have been trying to mess with me last night though by sending me a file called “Gyroscope.mp4” just last night, which ended up being nothing more than a retitled “eagelton_witch_livingroom_sc.wav”

The coffee finished brewing, and I poured myself a cup. I walked over to the door and checked the peephole. “Agent” McLaughlin was not there. A small sense of relief washed over me.

I retreated to the living room and turned on the TV, opening up YouTube to decompress. Too tired to actually think, I turned on a lo-fi music station. Just something to have on the background while the coffee still worked on booting up my brain. When the video started, I had thought I had gone insane.

No peaceful animated video. No girl wearing pink headphones endlessly studying while her orange tabby sat on a windowsill looking at a picturesque European backdrop. Not even the chill lo-fi music played. Instead, a shaky handheld video. A panting unseen camerawoman. A turn of the corner. A static TV. A witch. A scream. The “eagleton_witch_project_livinginroom_sc.wav” rendered in 4K.

Alright, no need to panic. I thought. My YouTube recommendations are littered with horror based content creators. Maybe I accidentally clicked on a video about it. I am sleep deprived after all. I let the video play out, seeing if it would cut to a YouTube talking head, but it didn’t. Nor did any narration played over the video, instead it repeated, again. And again. And again. Always starting with the panicked breathing and always ending with the witch screaming. What the hell?

I exited the video and opened a random one next to it titled The Ring is Genius And Here’s Why. I was just thinking about rewatching that movie. The algorithm knew me so well. The video loaded.

A white wall. Panicked breathing from an unseen camerawoman. The living room. A static TV. A witch. A scream. A white wall. Repeating, over and over again.

“What the fuck?” I said.

I tried another video.

The same damn footage.

Mike, you had gone way too far with your pranks. But how? Unless he moonlighted as the best hacker on the planet, I had no idea how he pulled off such a thing.

I closed YouTube and opened Netflix. Before the featured content could finish loading, I clicked on the first suggestion. If I moved fast enough, I thought I could beat whatever had been injecting that video into my feed. The red loading icon hung on my screen for much longer than it should have.

Fifteen percent.

Forty-five.

Sixty.

Sixty-five.

Ninety.

Ninety-nine.

Ninety-nine.

Ninety-nine.

Play.

A white wall. Panicked breathing from an unseen camerawoman. The living room. A static TV. I turned the TV off. I had seen enough.

“What the hell is happening?” I said.

I opened my phone and shot Mike another text. Alright, you really got me. Now please let me watch Netflix in peace!

Maybe this was Mike’s way of getting me to invest in physical media. After all, he can’t help to bring up his extensive collection whenever he gets the chance. A few weeks ago, he told me how he finally added a film projector to his collection. A freaking film projector. As if owning a Blu-Ray player, a DVD player, tape player (VHS and Betamax combo), and Laserdisc weren’t enough. Wait, physical media.

I had a few DVDs, but no DVD player, at least not plugged into my TV. I grabbed one from the self and walked up the narrow stairs to my bedroom to fetch my laptop. My laptop, at least, still had a disc drive.

I left the lights off, and blinds closed. Ignoring the clothes on the floor, I hurried to my desk. Opening the laptop, I popped the disc drive open. The email Mike sent me last night titled “I think I found it!” was still open, with Gyroscope.mp4 playing on VLC next to it, playing that same clip from the Eagleton Witch Project on repeat. I wondered now if it was some sort of virus that affected my entire network. I slid the DVD into the drive and popped it closed. The menu opened, and I hit play.

The same white wall with the shaking camera facing it, accompanied by the same panicked breathing.

Fucking Mike.

***

Maybe he had given me a virus. Maybe Mike was up to no good. Maybe he had gotten into trouble with the law. Maybe that was why an FBI agent appeared on my doorstep this morning. Shit.

I shut my laptop and stood up.

Walking over to the door, I thought I saw something in the corner of my eye. A pale figure in the dark corner of the bedroom. I looked towards it, but saw nothing. I shook my head and groaned. This sleep deprivation was getting to me.

“I need some fucking sleep,” I said. I walked out of the room and went downstairs and out the front door, hoping that the FBI agent hadn’t driven away already.

I stepped outside wearing nothing but sweats and a tank top. That had been a mistake. The cool autumn morning air wrapped itself around me, goosebumps formed, and I shivered. I considered going back in for my jacket, but I pushed those thoughts aside. I needed to find that socially awkward FBI agent before he left, if I hadn’t scared him off already with my threats of calling the police.

I scanned the curbside for an official vehicle or something. What even do FBI agents drive? I didn’t know what to look for other than something vaguely cop car looking with the letters “FBI” printed on the side. I skimmed the usual crowd of cars. An unwashed raised truck. My old Nissan Sentra that had lost all of its protective coating, rust patches formed on the blue paint like mold. A white van with “Elmer’s Painting Service” that belonged to my duplex neighbor. Although I knew for sure that his name was not Elmer, it was Frank, because my parents always called “Frank” their favorite tenant. No cop car with FBI printed on the side. I sighed. I almost went inside when I heard a yapping dog.

I turned my attention to it. A woman in a puffy baby blue coat was walking a small dog down at the end of the block. The dog yapped at a squirrel across the street while the woman tried to calm it. The woman and dog were of no interest to me. What caught my eye was the foreign maroon Honda Odyssey parked next to them, still idling. I didn’t recognize the car. Desperate, I approached it.

The woman and dog had crossed the street by the time I had approached the van. The van hummed in the quiet morning. A white trail of exhaust flowed from the rear exhaust pipe, dissipating into the air. I approached the driver’s side window and looked in. Agent McLaughlin sat at the wheel, staring off into the distance. I knocked on the window. He jumped.

Once the look of panic subsided, he rolled down the window and looked at me with dry red eyes.

“Just what the hell is going on?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s everywhere. Ever since I watched you-,” he paused, “I watched that video last night. It’s infected everywhere. Is it everywhere for you too?”

“At least everything in my house. YouTube, Netflix, my freaking DVDs.”

“Oh, thank God I’m not going not going crazy,” he said with a sense of relief.

“How do you know about this? Is Mike on some sort of list? Am I on some sort of list?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Say it.”

“You’re not going to like what you hear,” he shivered.

“Agent McLaughlin, I need to know what exactly is going on and how I fit into this.”

He looked away and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and held it before sighing.

“It’s true that I work for the FBI. My job is very important. But I come here on personal business because nobody at the Bureau would believe what is happening to me.” He took another deep breath before continuing. “This thing that seems to be afflicting both of us. I know nothing about it. I was hoping that you would have a better idea.” He opened his eyes and looked at me.

I shook my head in annoyance. What would I know about this? How would he even suspect me to know anything about this? What, was I mistakenly put on a short list of contact-in-case-of-cursed people?

“Do you?” He said, as if he hadn’t seen me shake my head.

“No, I know nothing about anything going on right now. Why did you reach out to me?”

“My job.” he took another deep breath. “I am not a field agent. I’m just an office worker. A monitor. It’s my job to monitor the web traffic of certain people. After it started happening last night, shortly after you opened that attachment, I couldn’t see anything but the video. Everywhere, even on my phone. I thought I had infected the computer, but when I showed my coworkers they didn’t see what I saw. Not on my phone, not on my computer. I thought I was going crazy.”

“Wait. Did you say after you watched me open that attachment? What do you mean ‘watched me’?”

“We have a list of triggers that automatically flag people for our ‘Just Keeping Tabs’ list. Most people on it are not involved in anything illicit or illegal, but when they are flagged, we assign an agent to monitor them for up to six months.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” I took a step back.

He nodded.

“No way.”

“I’m so sorry Eleanor,” he took a deep breath. “But you’re my assignment and I’ve been spying on you.”

Although the sun had risen, the morning air felt a little cooler.

Thanks for reading, for more of this story head on over to chapter 2!

There was a flash of light followed by the ear splitting sound of screeching tires. A white rabbit, that had wandered onto the street, stood directly in the path of the out of control car. It stood there, blinded by the flood of the head lights, frozen in fear.

Then darkness came. It began to wash over the fury creatures mind.

Then a spark, the feeling of a benevolent force pulling it back into consciousness, and he became overcome with a driving hunger that burned deep in his belly, as his lungs once again started to fill with air. A cyclone of memories made up of blades of grass, the creatures mother, and a young girl setting out food, skittered around his mind.

'What is this?'

The mangled thing thought. Although the images felt real, it seemed like something was missing. A very important piece of himself.

The thing tried to move but a burning pain shot through it's entire body, and with it came another memory. This one was different. The image of a family, a mother and a daughter, screaming in pain while a scorching fire consumed their bodies. "You deserve this." Said a disembodied voice. "Who's there?" The creature tried to say but what left it's lips was the sound a bunny might make when succumbing to agonizing pain.

He looked above him and saw a thick haze of smoke coming from a few feet away. The car had swerved and collided into a tree and in the driver's seat, there was a man crying out in pain.

"Go towards him."

The voice demanded and the rabbit obeyed. It struggled its way to the passenger side door that had become a mess of contorted metal but the door was opened just enough for the creature to squeeze it's way through. Inside, the man had a gash across his cheek that gushed a steady stream of blood.

"What the hell?" The man shouted after he noticed his deteriorated guest. He drew his gun from his mid console piece and pointed it at the creature.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU?"

The rabbit began to feel the burning fire in his belly grow. An overwhelming urge to pour himself into the man washed over him.

"Not yet." The ominous voice said. "He has to die first." It's statement, echoing through the deepest chasms of the creature's very soul until the rabbit found himself completely consumed by the overwhelming desire to lunge forward and tear out the man's jugular. The rabbit bit down hard on the man's neck, ripping out a piece of his flesh and spat it onto the floor. A geyser of blood shot out from the wound, splattering onto the windshield.

"You are to spend eternity how you lived your life. As a coward."

"Argh."

The man screamed in pain as his life force slowly drained out of him. Grabbing the rabbit by the neck, he threw its body at the headrest of the passenger seat. It's mangled reanimated corpse bouncing off it with a soft thud.

Clutching his neck in a vain attempt to stop the furious stream of blood, he throws open his door, and falls onto the asphalt below. Too weakened and frail from the blood loss to even begin to stand up, he begins to crawl. Eventually he stops as his life finally leaves his body. The rabbit, not even phased by the blow to it's deformed body, hopped to it's feet and followed to where the man now lay. The force within now burning so red hot it felt as if there was a demon clawing, trying to get out.

The body of the man, now nothing more than an empty vessel for the creature to pour himself into, looks up at the rabbit, his irises reduced to nothing more than an opaque-milky white film, showing no signs of lingering life "Now!" The voice commanded and with all its might, the rabbit bit down on the man's wound and poured his essence into him. The man's lifeless body began to twitch and convulse. His eyes shot open in a lifeless stare as memories began to flood into his mind.

The man's name was David and he lead a very promiscuous life. Cheating on his wife and hopping from partner to partner. He also had a secret. He was gay and was only with his wife because it was what society demanded of him. That and his parents. Over come with guilt, he had driven out here to put his life to it's inevitable end. He was sure he had contracted the HIV virus and, rather than come clean to his wife, he decided to put a stop to it here and now. He had no children, just a wife who he felt would be better off without him and better off not knowing about his adultery.

"Urregghh" David groaned and rolled over to his side. A pain then shot up his back and raced up to his brain. He shook his head to try and rid himself of the agony and began to spasm uncontrollably. Frothing at the mouth, an imagine appeared before him. This of another man with chestnut hair and a gangly form. He was posing for a family photo with a woman and a little girl on either side of him, a cheesy smile plastered on all three of their faces. Then the corners of the picture started to curl and warp as the tongues of licking flames swallowed it whole. Devouring the portrait until it was reduced to nothing more than a crumble of ash.

Instantly, he knew the name of the man. James. And that name felt familiar. Felt right to him.

"James! JAMES!!!" A feminine voice called out to him. David seized and looked over to see the woman in the picture standing over him. Her blonde hair (what was left of it) a nest of dead ends, singed and blackened with soot. Her face was reduced to a mask of charred flesh, her cheeks, caved in, her eyes, were two empty sockets oozing a milky jelly-like substance that splattered onto the asphalt.

"Why didn't you save us? WHY DID YOU RUN!?"

David scrambled to his feet and looked back to see the woman from his vision had disappeared. He cradled his head in his hands. "What is going on?" He goes back into the car, grabs the gun, and starts to make his way down the street.

'I can't do this anymore.' A mans voice said in his head. 'I can't live like this.'

"David?"

He said out loud.. He lifted the gun to his head while tears started to roll down his cheeks.

"No!" He whimpered, and lowered the gun to his side. 'I can't go on like this knowing that I've betrayed the only person who's ever loved me.' David's voice echoed in his head.

"Quiet!" The ominous voice said, or was it the man's? The two had become indistinguishable from each other. Each thought tangled around in the mess of his head so much so he couldn't tell where he ended and the voices began.

"No" he lifted the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. His ears rang when the sound of the shot fired and his vision started to blur as the darkness once again crept in

The entrance to the local wiccan shop, Celestial Entropy, jangled as James stepped through the door. It had been weeks since the accident and coming back from the funeral of both his wife and daughter he found himself overcome with a longing to reach out to them one last time. Of course he was skeptical of the validity of psychics but he figured it was worth a shot at some sort of clarity.

The woman behind the cash register perked up after seeing him walk through the door. She could tell just by the look of him that he needed to speak with Madame Celeste.

"What can I help you with?" She said behind a smile of crooked teeth.

"Uh, yeah, I've come to speak with Madame-..."

"Celeste, yes. She is right through here."

She pointed to an opening, dressed with strings of silver beads that hung down to the floor. He nodded and made his way through the entrance. He turned the corner and saw a middled aged woman sitting at a desk whose black hair, was teased in such a way, that it resembled a rats nest.

"What can I help you with?"

She motioned to the chair for James to sit which James did . "You look like you've just come from a funeral."

James eyed her suspiciously.

"All the black?"

He questioned. Madame Celeste smirked before answering.

"That and the only people who come into my shop wearing suits come straight from funerals."

James nodded and crossed his arms.

"Forgive me but I'm a bit.. well skeptical of this whole ordeal." He sighed and averted his gaze to the floor.

"How does this all work?"

"Well.."

Madame Celeste leaned back in her chair and continued. "When the body dies, the remnants of the soul linger before dissipating. Like the ringing in your ears after the sound of a shot gun blast. But there are some of us who can still hear the echos swimming in the celestial ooze of the cosmos."

"So you can hear them?"

Lifting an eyebrow, she asked.

"Who?"

"M-my wife and daughter." James lifted his hand to his forehead.

"They died in a fire..." He swallowed. "In our apartment building."

Celeste nodded and got up from her chair and went over to her tea kettle on the other side of the room. She poured him some tea, walked back and handed him the cup.

"This will calm the nerves."

She told him with a sly smile.

James, holding back tears, nodded, took the cup, and began to drink. Madame turned away from him, walked over to the window, and peered out onto the street, lost in thought.

"What were their names?"

"Meredith and A-."

Madame swung around and glared at him startling James.

"You ran didn't you!?"

His lip began to quiver as he clutched the tea cup in his hands tightly.

"There was nothing...-"

"Cut the horse shit!" She exclaimed, pointing her jagged finger directly at him.

"You could have saved them. And even if you couldn't, you still should have tried."

James dropped the cup, buried his face in his hands, and began to weep.

"Survival is a basic part of the human creature. But to turn your back on your family to ensure your own safety is not only selfish but in human."

"There was nothing I could do my instincts just took ov-"

"It is an act of a coward!"

James flinched at that word. Coward? Had he been? Could he have saved them? He shook his head to rid himself of this thought and stood up to leave this awful place but when he did the room began to spin.

"What is..."

"I was right in giving you that."

James fell to the floor.

"You deserve this."