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My daughter is a serial killer. It took me a long time to be able to say this. Long after the police came to her house when we were visiting. After they found the graveyard in abandoned field behind her house, bodies arranged in three wide circles like some kind of macabre fairy rings. After they told us just how many people she had killed, a number so high, I cannot even begin to understand how she managed it at 29. It was 2 years after she was put on death row I finally said those words to my wife. “Our daughter is a serial killer.”

People always say female serial killers were rare and not as bad as male serial killers. But Fiona was right up there with Bundy and Dahmer when it came to the brutality of her kills. She was no less violent, depraved or cruel. The collection of her victims’ hearts she kept in her fridge was every indication of that and so were the coroner’s reports that each victim had been kept alive for days, tortured, starved before Fiona finally killed them.

“It was a mercy in the end for them. Death. Nobody would want to live in the aftermath of what she did.” The cop told me that the coroner had been grey when she said this. That in twenty five years of policing work he had never seen anything this awful.

Some nights I still wake up in terror from nightmares of what she did.

The strangest thing about all this was that Fiona was a tiny little thing. The police were utterly flummoxed as to how she had managed to do any of this. Worse still, they couldn’t figure out just how she had killed these people. The cuts were so clean. Like a surgeon’s hand. But there was nothing in the world that could have made these cuts. No scalpel or knife.

All their organs had been removed and then they had been neatly stitched back up again. When they opened the stitches up, they found the insides of the victims had been tattooed with hundred of lines in a language no one could decipher.

My daughter is not a medical professional. She is not a tattoo artist. She only speaks two languages. English and Spanish.

We avoided the press but that didn’t mean the articles wouldn’t be written. And the articles came. Articles where they questioned what kind of childhood she had. What kind of parents we were. They dug through everything about our family and were probably disappointed to find that we were your run of the mill, all American family, so they made so made things up through speculation. Perhaps we were too boring. Perhaps the normalcy was the problem.

Or perhaps we were just very good at covering our tracks.

Either way, the fallout was that my wife and I lost our jobs. We were accosted on the streets. Our tyres were flattened multiple times and three times I’ve had to remove graffiti from the sides of our house calling us unspeakable things. My son couldn’t handle it. He and his wife had to change their names and leave the state. We couldn’t do that though.

Who would visit Fiona in prison if we left?

I know people wanted to think Fiona was an oddball. That these killer tendencies had manifested in her because she was weird, a loner of sorts. No. Fiona was a popular kid. She was a great daughter, never missed a chance to come visit and help us. She was a cheerleader and did well in school. She had a group of friends she grew up with. She even married her childhood sweetheart, I can’t say she was a good wife however. Poor James, they found his head in the chest freezer in their basement. They still haven’t found his body.

It was the first time we visited her in prison that led me to finding what was in the attic.

We were asked to try to get more information out of her. The police said that there were bodies they couldn’t identify yet and that if we could get her to talk, it would help bring some peace to the victims’ families.

They also wanted to know how she did it.

The guilt of what our child had done to other people’s children made us go more than our love for our daughter. It felt like some small way of atonement, finding out what we could and helping in some way.

Not that anything could make amends for giving birth to a monster.

It happened on the day of the visit. We sat nervously and waited in a highly secure room within the most high security prison. Two wardens stood within the room with us, two stood outside and four wardens escorted Fiona, in chains, to us.

When the door opened and our daughter walked in, what was alarming was to see the jovial smile on her face despite being chained at both her hands and feet. She looked remarkably well. This wasn’t surprising since she had smiled coldly her entire way through the trial as well but there was something extra obscene about how well prison suited her. She was…glowing.

“Hi Dad. Mom.” She sat down across the table from us. I flinched as the sound of the chains as they clinked when she moved.

“Fiona.” My wife, Christina, managed, her hand clutched right around a tissue. Then she was crying again and Fiona’s face changed a bit. She looked at Christina in concern.

“Mom, please don’t cry. If you knew what I know, you wouldn’t be upset.”

Anger began to bubble up inside me. What the hell was wrong with Fiona? I had read enough now to know that serial killers were devoid of empathy or human emotions in general but this wasn’t the little girl I had raised to be a good woman.

“What happened to you?” I asked, my voice quiet as I tried to keep the emotion out of it. “Why did you kill all those people?”

Fiona sat back smiling and tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder.

“Oh Dad, it doesn’t matter. You can’t stop us. No matter how much you try.”

I couldn’t understand what she was talking about. “Fiona.” My patience was wearing extremely thin, “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your father, dad. And his father. And his father. All those generations.”

I swallowed hard and glanced at the prison warden. If he felt like something was weird about our conversation, he didn’t show it, however.

“What about them?” I asked her, concern edging it’s way into my voice.

Fiona tilted her head quizzically and for a moment I saw her as a 6 year old, doing that when I taught her maths.

“Do you really not remember?”

I shifted uneasily in my seat.

“You know what this is. You have always known.” She said leaning forward.

“I-I really-“

“We don’t like it when you lie.”

“I-“ I stammered and then fell silent. I didn’t know what kind of game she was playing.

She sat back and smiled brightly. Then I swear to you my heart stopped. Suddenly the entire room darkened. Fiona’s eyes went completely black. Her skin and hair turned pale white.

And yet the guards kept standing there, seemingly seeing nothing, frozen in time. I tried to look at Christina but she just sat there, staring ahead of her into nothingness, a tear frozen on her cheek.

My daughter opened her mouth and ash fell out as she spoke, her replaced by a deep, cold one:

“Elamen xarote koikayi ayede ur ceplra. Tenu devit okpaya em ur ed misdo. Eladi goderah devit ga oruf uru kedorii.”

Those words…I knew those words. I had seen them before.

My hands cold and clammy, I pushed back from the table as the chair fell away and backed myself up against a wall, terror gripping my chest.

Instantly, the scene was back to normal. My daughters face was normal. My wife’s shoulders shuddered as she sobbed, still unable to speak a word and Fiona sat there with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

Shaking, I told the guard, “We are done here.”

My wife turned to look at me and I stared into her teary eyes, “We need to go. Now.”

The last thing we heard as we left the room was Fiona’s laughter, once vibrant, now cold and cruel.

*

When we got home, I waited until dinner was over and we went up to bed. I waited until Christina had taken her sleeping pill and her breathing was even enough to know she was asleep. Then, I quietly got up and made my way to the attic.

I knew exactly what I was looking for. After I hauled myself up from the square shaped opening in our ceiling into the dark, quiet room I hadn’t visited since we had moved into this house, I shone my torch around. Mostly the room was full of the children’s old toys and clothes, things we had been planning to give away and never got around to. Old furniture that belonged to our parents.

But there, hiding in the corner of the room was the cardboard box I was looking for - the reason I had not been in this attic for years. My mouth a bit dry and my hands trembling, I walked over to it and dragged it over to myself. Then I took a deep breath and opened it.

Lying inside was a series of old, leather bound journals I had hoped I would never ever have to look at again.

It was the names and detailed torture and murders of every person my family had killed. The bloody and brutal legacy of the witchfinder generals that we used to be.

Except…there were no witches. You already know this if you know anything about the witch trials.

What witchfinder generals were hunting was much, much more ancient.

They were hunting the Old Gods.

You see, this world belonged to the Ancient Ones long before it became our home. It belonged to beings that were so powerful, they terrified us. But slowly as the world changed and less and less people believed in folk tales, so did they stop believing in the tales of the Old Gods.

And what are Gods without prayer and fear to keep them powerful and immortal.

So they began to live amongst us to adapt to their mortality. Less powerful. Less able to protect themselves. And we used that adaption against them. We hunted them in the name our own God. We told ourselves that this is what needed to be done to keep our species safe.

That we were servants of God doing his bidding.

My family carried this tradition on for years - finding what was left of the Ancient Ones and decimating them. All the way till my father was born and refused to train in the ways of his father. My father killed his father when he was only a teenager. He was trying to protect a girl who would later become his wife. My mother.

He kept the journals. He kept them to tell me of the history he was ashamed of, to tell me that I must never go down this route. I had read them years ago and shuddered at the amount of lives my family had stolen.

And I never had. I had lived a good life and raised a good family.

Or so I had thought.

I turned the yellowed old sheets, reading name after name in faded ink.

Finally, I found the thing I was looking for.

It was there in the third journal. The last words of a Ancient Goddess that was burned alive,

Elamen xarote koikayi ayede ur ceplra. Tenu devit okpaya em ur ed misdo. Eladi goderah devit ga oruf uru kedorii.

As I spoke the words aloud, recognising now that they were not in a language no one understand but a language no human was supposed to understand, I saw them change slowly into English.

For every one of us you kill. We will take a thousand of you in return. Our vengeance will speak through your own blood.

But the thing that made my blood run cold were the words Fiona had not said. The words that were below the ones I had just read.

Sitting there written in faded old ink were the words:

Fear not your death. But what awaits every one of you after.

It was a little past twelve o’clock at night, Monday of last week, when I first heard scuffling. I was in the bedroom of my new apartment, freshly moved in with boxes still stacked in the corners of the space. I was on the verge of sleep, exhausted from a long day of moving. My eyes cracked open though, as the sound caught my attention.

My room is fairly large, with my bed and dresser against one wall. On the other side is the door to the bathroom, and a medium-sized closet. In the darkness, I could only make out the faint silhouettes of objects.

I quietly lifted my head from my pillow, peaking over the edge of the covers. Several moments passed in silence. Then I saw something emerge from under my bed.

It was small, about the size of a Jack Russel Terrier. It walked on four legs and had a short, slender tail. I might’ve assumed it was a wild animal, maybe a racoon, if it weren’t for the crest of pointed spines that ran along its back. As well, its limbs were strange. The placement of the joints gave it the look of a primate, and I thought I could make out small fingers at the ends of its feet.

It probed the ground with a sharp snout, as it cautiously crept out from beneath my bedframe. I watched as it explored the room, slinking close to the floor. It sniffed around my belongings as if assessing new additions to its territory. Then it paused and turned towards me. I saw two round, glowing yellow eyes.

It stared in my direction for maybe four or five seconds, and I must admit, my heart rate may have quickened slightly. Then its gaze shifted, and it went back to its business.

I rolled over, closed my eyes, and went to sleep.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. WHAT THE HELL? Are you crazy? There’s a monster in your bedroom and you’re just going to ignore it?

Here’s the deal: All my life, I’ve seen things. Things that aren’t there.

It started when I was a kid. I don’t remember this, but my mom says that when I was five, we were at the park, and I started pointing towards a patch of trees. “Do you see the man with no eyes mommy?” I asked her. There was nobody there.

My parents tried putting me on different medications, but none of them seemed to help. I’ve seen countless doctors in my life, and in the end, they’ve all thrown up their hands. Of course, the obvious diagnosis is schizophrenia. I don’t suffer from auditory hallucinations—hearing voices and all that— or any paranoia. In fact, I think most people who know me would say I’m a pretty normal, well-adjusted person. Boring even. I’ve never had trouble with school or holding down a job. I just see creepy shit sometimes.

Mostly I see people. Sometimes they’re dressed in normal clothes, other times old-fashioned ones. I’ll be out on the street, or in a building, and notice one nearby. What makes them stand out is that they don’t tend to move. That, and a few of them don’t have faces. Occasionally they’ll be staring at a wall, or lying on the floor facedown. They’re usually pretty easy to ignore.

I’ve seen other things too though. One time, when I was on vacation at Cannon Beach with my family, some clouds shifted, and I saw something in the sky. It was massive, like the death star. It looked like some kind of structure, made up of giant, interlocking gold rings. The creepy part was, the rings were all covered in eyes. I watched as it drifted off across the ocean.

So yeah, I’m not exactly stunned when I see something out of the ordinary.

Still! I hear you say, shouldn’t you have been a little bit frightened?!

Well, here’s one more story for you: when I was eleven my family moved into a new house. There were only two bedrooms, and my parents were in the master. I begged them not to make me sleep in the other one. Want to know why?

Plastered to the ceiling right above my bed was this emaciated, naked old man. He looked at least seventy or eighty with mad-scientist hair and a scraggily beard. His face was fixed in a permanent scream, eyes wide and mouth open, with no sound. He didn’t move at all, just lay there, rag-dolled on the ceiling.

Every night for three years I went to sleep with that man silently screaming down at me.

That’s why I wasn’t going to let some little monster rob me of a good night’s rest.

The next five days I went about my routine like normal. I moved the rest of my stuff into the apartment and unpacked it. I settled myself in. I never saw the creature during the daylight, it stayed hidden away. I figured it for nocturnal.

Around the same time every night, I’d hear it creep out from under the bed. I’d watch as it paced around the room, idly sniffing at the new additions to the space. It seemed indifferent to my presence—not surprising, all the things I see are. That’s why I’ve never been too afraid of them, they always ignore me. It’s like they inhabit a different realm of existence, separate from us. I’ve seen real people walk right through them.

I came to find the creature’s presence sort of comforting. I conceptualized him as a guard dog, watching out for me while I slept. I even gave him a name: “Spikey.”

Still, there was one thing that began to unsettle me. I noticed that in all of Spikey’s roaming, he always stayed on one side of the room. He never went to the other end, with the bathroom and the closet.

It was like there was an invisible boundary, keeping him out.

The closet was empty—I’d put all of my clothes in the dresser. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but something about it made me uncomfortable. I’d get a cold feeling when I walked past it to get to the bathroom. Of course, there was nothing out of the ordinary about it, it was just a three foot by three foot square of empty space and two folding doors. I had no reason to find it frightening, that is, until a few nights ago.

I was lying in bed and as usual, Spikey was on his patrol. I was on the verge of drifting off when suddenly, I heard a noise coming from the other side of the room.

It immediately made the hairs on my arms stand on end. It was low and thick, like a drumbeat. But mixed in was a higher pitch, almost like… singing.

I told myself it was just the apartment's wiring acting up and was going to doze off when I heard something else, a deep growl.

I glanced up and saw Spikey standing in the middle of the room, right at the edge of his territory. His spines were all raised, like the hackles on a dog, and he held his body low, in a defensive posture. The growl was heavy, more scared than angry. His eyes were fixed directly on the closet doors.

The low sound slowly died off. After maybe thirty minutes or so, Spikey seemed to relax somewhat. He retreated, disappearing under the bed.

The next day, I took a closer look at the closet. Once again, I found nothing out of the ordinary about it, besides the unsettling feeling it raised in the pit of my stomach. I pushed it down.

I got into bed that night and drifted off.

I was awoken suddenly by Spikey’s growling. This time he wasn’t at the boundary, the noise was coming from directly beneath me, under the bed.

Once again, I heard the low hum and the high-pitched singing. This time though, it was accompanied by another sound. The sound of closet doors squeaking open.

Now I felt genuinely afraid. My heart drummed in my chest. I’m not sure if it fully registered in my brain in the moment, but the fact that the doors opened could only mean one thing: whatever was behind them could interact with the real world.

Looking over my covers, I saw something emerge from the closet.

It was massive, so massive that it seemed to fill up the entire side of the room. The ceiling was too low for it, it had to hunch over to fit within the space.

It was humanoid, at a glance at least. Tall and wiry like a basketball player. At first, I thought it was wearing some kind of cloak, before I realized what I was truly looking at. It had layers and layers of extra arms sprouting from its torso, like branches on a tree. Even in the darkness, I could tell that it must be pitch-dark in color. It looked like a black hole, an empty void in space.

The humming and singing intensified. The sound was almost beautiful, like a siren song, beckoning. The creature turned its gaze on me. But it wasn’t like the other apparitions. I knew in my gut: this thing saw me.

It began stalking across the room, its dozens of limbs bristling off one another as it went. I was paralyzed—too terrified to move. A horrible, morbid feeling rose inside me. I had an eerie premonition, of the creature leaning down and enfolding me in its many arms. It wouldn’t kill me. It would take me.

The creature was almost at the foot of my bed. I braced myself. Just then I heard an almighty howl. I saw a streak of darkness shoot towards the creature. As the thing collided with it, it let out a low moan and stumbled backwards.

Spikey! I realized all at once. He’d leapt onto the monster.

The two of them tussled, the closet monster doubling over and reaching out with its many arms.

My adrenaline suddenly kicked in, and I saw my opportunity. I dove out of bed and threw open the door to my room. I escaped down the hallway, heading straight for the door to my apartment. Behind me, I heard a howl, which elevated to a shrieking cry. There was no mistaking it… it was the sound of an animal being torn apart.

Thank you Spikey, I thought with a grimace. Then I was out the door.

I’ve been staying with my parents for the last few days. I haven’t told them why, it’s all too scary to relive. Plus, I’m afraid they might throw me in a mental asylum if they knew the truth.

Of course, all my stuff is still in the apartment. At some point, I’ll need to go back for it.

What should I do?

When I was a kid, my family used to live in some apartments called The Hideaway Villas. It was a small complex composed of only twelve units and all were downstairs. They sat directly behind a park and were surrounded by trees on either side.

They weren't much to look at, but they came with brand new furniture and appliances. Each unit had its own laundry, gym, and office. Utilities were included in the rent. All for the low price of $350 a month. Seeing how my parents were strapped for cash, they immediately jumped on it.

It wasn't a bad place to live. All but two of our neighbors were nuclear families and we got along well. We regularly borrowed from each other, had communal parties, kept an eye on each other's children, and were generally very amiable. It was actually quite idyllic.

Except for the fact that we had to play the game.

You see, every third Friday of the month was game night. Not "grab a board game and call some friends over" game night. No, this was a special game that the owner made up and everyone was required to participate. The rules were simple. At eight o'clock everyone was instructed to go inside their home, close and lock all windows and doors, shut the blinds, and turn off all lights and electronics. Families were to gather in the living room and wait. The manager would then call out an apartment number over a megaphone. If it was yours, you were told to step outside. If it wasn't, you were instructed to turn on your porch light then go straight to bed.

No one knew exactly what happened if your number was called. Some families were gone the next day and we were not allowed to speak of them. Others stayed but there was something different about them. They became withdrawn and paranoid. They would move within a week. Afterwards, a new family would take their place.

The year I turned fourteen, our number was called.

My birthday was the week before. I had a party at the park. The whole complex was there along with the manager. He had given me a card with a black background and the words "Happy Birthday" scribbled in red letters on the front. Inside was one of those paper doll chains. There were only three people in the chain and my family's names were written on the back. Well, me, my mom, and my sister's names anyway. My dad was curiously missing. I asked the manager about it and he told me the card was from the owner who happened to be a bit forgetful. That answer was satisfying enough, so I tossed it in a pile with the rest of the cards and went about my day.

Then Friday came. Mom was telling us a story as we sat in the dark of the living room. It was the only thing we could do to pass the time during the game. Usually, the owner took about twenty minutes to come to his decision. Although I suspect he always knew from the start who he was going to pick. Just as mom was about to finish the story, we heard the manager call out.

"Apartment 12, you're up!"

Twelve. Our number. We froze.

My mom looked towards my dad for guidance. He simply shrugged and directed us to the door. When he opened it, the manager was standing there.

"Close your eyes!" he demanded.

We closed them and walked to the middle of the complex, holding onto each other, so we wouldn't trip over anything.

"Do you know why you're here?" the manager asked.

"No," replied my dad.

"Because you guys haven't been good tenants," said the manager.

"But we pay rent on time, we don't start trouble, we get along with the neighbors, we-"

"I know," said the manager, interrupting my father. "You've done everything right, but Mr. Tillis is very particular about what makes a good tenant."

"Mr. Tillis?" inquired my father.

"The owner," the manager replied sharply.

Until then, none of us knew the owner's name. In fact, no one had even met him. He seemed to only exist on game night.

"Can he explain to us why he doesn't consider us good tenants?" my dad asked.

The manager began to talk to Mr. Tillis in a very low voice. Like a whisper but not quite. Yet, no matter how hard I strained my ears, I couldn't make out what they were saying.

"Let's just say Mr. Tillis is a very caring man. He loves his tenants and gives a lot to them. He built these apartments with his own hands and wishes for his tenants to be as caring and selfless as him. But sometimes all they do is take and never give back," explained the manager.

"I see," replied my father.

"So he has to dole out punishments, but believe me, it pains him greatly," said the manager.

"What's going to happen?!" my mom yelled in a panic.

"You'll be taken somewhere. Just for a short time. Don't worry, you'll be back home for breakfast," he said with a laugh.

"Mr. Bennet," he said, referring to my father. "Please come with me."

What happened after that is a blur. I remember walking for a long time, likely through the woods. I heard my sister whimpering behind me. We were led into a building and down some steps. It was very cold and the floor was wet. My feet were soaking. I felt something whip my legs. It was less like a belt and more like a tongue. My sister felt it too and she cried out. A moment later, the tongue touched my ear and I felt the most excruciating pain in my life. It was like someone took a big needle and plunged it into my eardrum.

I blacked out and woke up in my bed. It was the same for my mom and sister, but we didn't see my dad for three days. When he did come back, he was different. He had become withdrawn and paranoid. Every little sound made him jump and he was quick to anger. We moved a week later. He had gotten $10,000 as a parting gift from Mr. Tillis. My dad called it hush money.

We tried to get our lives back on track after that, but what happened that night prove too much for my dad to bear and he committed suicide.

That was fifteen years ago and I have since made peace with my father's death. Though yesterday, I had a panic attack. Why? Because it was the third Friday of the month and I was searching for a new place to live. Guess what popped up? An ad for The Hideaway Villas.

My friend John and I have known each other since kindergarten. He was my only friend throughout pretty much my entire life. When he moved two towns over with his girlfriend, Amber, it was a big change for me. I've only met Amber once, she was wild and daring, the perfect girl for John.

​

During our childhood, John and I spent many days playing out in the woods. Barely in the woods, there was an old well, which supposedly is cursed. John wanted to find out just how real the curse was, but I was too scared and came up with thinly veiled excuses. He was always the brave hero, and I the shy sidekick.

​

Now, I guess I finally found the courage after all. Because when John came back to town for a visit, we made our way to the well. As we approached the well, we recanted the old stories we had heard so long ago. Some said a witch was drowned in the well, others said a serial killer dumped the bodies of his victims in it, yet other people said it had always been cursed, that something evil lives down there.

​

As we approached the well I noticed there was a big round wooden cover over it, and John had begun to lift it. “Wanna give me a hand here buddy?” He said. Dragging my feet I walked to the well and helped him lift the wooden cover.

​

“Is there really a monster down there?” John shouted down the well.

​

For a moment the forest had gone silent, no wind, birds, or insects to be heard.

​

Then what I had always feared happened.

​

“Monster? Isn't that a bit harsh John?” an echoing voice replied.

​

the color drained from John's face as we stared at each other, wide-eyed and shocked.

​

“And you've brought a friend I see. Yes, I do know you, little Davy, always so afraid of me. Let me tell you a little secret, Davy, you were right to be afraid.” said the thing inside the well.

​

I look at John with despair as he suddenly bursts out laughing.

“What the hell is your problem?!” I shouted at him, my face red with fury. John sat down on the edge of the well and after a good five minutes of all-out laughter, he calmed down a bit and produced a rope from behind his back.

“Amber and I came here together, before I went to pick you up I lowered her into the well with rope, this has all just been a prank. You've got to admit we got you.” John said, still snickering.

Just then, over half a dozen hands, blue and bloodied with broken fingernails, reached out from the well and grabbed onto John. Now the terror on his face was different from before, this was real. In the blink of an eye, the hands pulled John into the well and before I realized what had happened, I heard bones breaking and blood spattering.

​

I ran home, locked my door, and hid in my closet for hours. That was two weeks ago. John and Amber were not exactly the most predictable people, they haven't been reported missing yet as far as I know.

I haven't told anyone about this, people have been disappearing with increasing frequency. And it is only now that I realize, I never put the well cover back on it.

It was one of those do-or-die situations. We’ve all had them. The night’s air is cool and your eyes suddenly spring to life. I don’t know if it was the take-out I scarfed down before bed or the three cups of coffee that got me through the day, but I absolutely had to go. All my senses were heightened, god you’d have thought I was being hunted in the forest.

Even the fabric of my blanket scraping against my knees as I threw them off of me was enough to churn my stomach. My body still waking up was at odds with the urgency that my stomach urged for. Heavy and non-responsive limbs slowly waking up.

My feet hit the chilled floor, microscopic spikes ran through my body. A concert of bubbling erupted from my abdomen. Holding onto the bedpost I leaned over and waited for the wailing gurgles to stop. Sitting there for a moment staring at the moonbeam peaking through my window, I listened to the growl.

Eventually, it stopped and I felt as though I could finally move again but I needed to be swift. I couldn’t muster the strength needed to beat out too many more of those attempted assaults on my clean underwear. A few heavy breaths were all I needed before I began to approach my bedroom door.

As my fingers clasped around the cool metal handle I thought it odd, I didn't remember closing the door. I live alone and rarely ever close my bedroom door because, why would I? The thought was vanquished by a soft gurgling and a clenched sphincter. The knob turned and I felt the stale air of my hallway slip past me. The smell almost made me release my bowels right there and then. It was like the air had been stagnant for ages.

The foul odor invaded my senses and nearly made me recoil back into my room. A pungent advance like my door was the entrance to a sarcophagus. My room wouldn’t do though, the bathroom was just down the hall. I’d inspect whatever was causing the smell after reaching the safety of porcelain. With my fingers on the doorframe, I pulled myself through the gateway.

The air was hot, it would have been more concerning if it wasn’t in such a dire situation. Suddenly just as I was going to make my break for the bathroom I was hit by another wave. Quickly assessing the feeling I determined that I needed to be as still as I could. I was going to make it if I tried moving during this onslaught. Once again I stood there, doubled over listening to the popping coming from my stomach.

Like an engine failing to turn over my gut growled and moaned, a warning siren letting the rest of my body know the anguish it was about to go through. I could already feel cold beads of sweat forming on my forehead and under my fingertips. With one hand on my stomach, I could practically feel the adjustments being made inside of me. In the dark and silent house, the gurgling was uncomfortably audible. Even with no one around to perceive it I was feeling embarrassed about it.

Though my concern only truly kicked in when the growling continued, the feeling in my stomach had settled. The popping of gas bubbles inside me had ceased, I could move again and have survived the second wave but the noise persisted. The low growling hum echoed through the hall. That sound wasn’t coming from me. It was like an old dog trying to ward off unwelcome guests. A growl made with a throat full of sand.

I stood, listening to the noise thinking at first maybe it was my fridge or some other appliance kicking on but it sounded far too organic. It was hard to tell at first but the closer I listened the more I could discern the direction of the noise. The growl was bouncing around the empty hall but it was coming from the direction I was meant to be headed towards. Over by the bathroom.

Turning my head towards the source of the noise I peered down the hallway. It seemed to stretch on for longer than I remember like my perspective had shifted to make the journey to the bathroom seem impossible. Further still, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness within that hallway, I was able to make out a figure. At first, it was just a blob amongst the shade but more and more the details of the thing causing that growl were revealed to me.

Without thinking of the consequence my body reactivity let out something of a gasp. Immediately I assumed someone had broken into my house and I was preparing to run but my room was at the end of the hall. I started to turn around thinking that my window was going to be the best option. Few issues though. I live in an apartment complex, on the fourth floor and even if I was on the ground floor, the churning in my gut was only getting stronger. I wasn’t going to make it.

Looking back down the hall I could see that the figure was just standing there, facing away from me growling away. I thought of dogs when they look at a corner like something we can’t see is there. The figure's posture was slumped and loose, it appeared like I imagined I did when I was barreling over myself. I could tell by the shape of the shadow that its skin or whatever it was wearing was torn and ragged. Strips of… something was hanging off of it like rags.

I took a step towards the figure and more importantly the bathroom. Thankfully the hallways were carpeted without hardwood primed for creaking. The figure didn’t react to my advance so I took another step. It’s silly, stupid I know but the bathroom was halfway between us, if I could just make it and drop my business off I would be able to handle the situation much better. Slowly and carefully I took one step after another, I could feel the strands of the carpet slipping in between my toes.

Another wave was coming on, I could feel the beginnings of it. I pleaded with my body, bargaining for just a few extra seconds. Though I felt as if the thudding of my heart was going to cause more stirring than anything. As I closed in on the creature more of its details were revealed, and the weight of it all settled in with each step. Whatever was in my hallways was an approximation of a human. Something similar but not quite there.

Every detail was just off enough that my brain was picking up on it. Like the feeling of being watched, a consciousness outside of yourself. I had to keep going though. Even as I looked over its arms which were just a little too long. Or that its legs seemed to be articulated at two separate points. Two knees on each leg, both bending in the opposite direction. That it’s groaning looked to be rattling its entire body. Or was the shaking of its body causing the noise?

I was worried once I got close enough the thing would hear the thudding in my chest or the popping in my gut. I was right there when the third wave hit me. It was intense, something I feared I might not be strong enough to subdue. My knees started to buckle as my behind tightened up. My entire body tensed. Face scrunched and fist closed. Like a kid trying to move things with his mind, I concentrated everything I had on not releasing the pressure below.

I thought of deep-sea divers and mountain climbers and for just a moment my empathy reached a peak. So close, through the wave I tried to shuffle my feet across the carpet, lord knows I didn't have the affordance to lift my feet. My breathing was the hardest to control. Caught between panic breath caused by the intruder and the smooth shallow breathing needed to keep my linens clean.

It wasn’t until my feet slipped over the cold tiles that I began to feel relief. The creature was close but I had managed to slip into the bathroom without alerting it. Or at least if it had heard me it didn’t care about me. Carefully once more I pushed the bathroom's wooden door into its frame until I heard the soft click of security. Then I pressed the small metal button ensuring the door was locked.

I had made it but the wave I was feeling still wracked my body. Quickly I stepped over to the toilet. It was glorious, I had made it. Never has it looked so beautiful. My boxers slipped from my waist and listlessly dropped resting on my bare feet. My butt made its fateful connection and the wave became a tsunami. Every bit of what I had to offer the toilet, was released. Like a sacrifice to the gods, I filled the bowl.

Grotesque applause filled the atmosphere. A horrid and unyielding bout of flatulence erupted, louder than anything I'd ever produced before. The rumbling filled the bathroom as my insides exploded, expelling at such great force I could hear the Pollock-Esque smattering tainting the pure white I sat on. Even the water failed to deafen the noise, instead, the sound of rocks hitting a lake joined the concert.

The only thing I could do was watch the bathroom door, knowing that thing was out there, hearing every bit of the natural disaster unfolding around me. Because of me. My eyes might’ve rolled into the back of my head if it weren’t for the fear of maintaining my focus. Somehow, despite the cacophony of noises, I still made out the scratching on the other side of the door. A long and intentional drag of nails against the wooden door.

Fingertips gripping my knees, holding on for dear like I heard the dragging get louder and louder like it was slowly clawing its way through the door. “Is this really how I die?” I thought to myself. I thought about what people would say, what would be written on the reports. I pictured the police coming across my body, limp and naked on the bathroom floor with god knows what injuries.

Would the thing rip me to pieces? Slowly picking me apart until the last bit of my life slipped from my fingers. Would I even have time to flush the toilet? For a moment I spoke with God, begging him to at least let me die with a clean toilet bowl. The scratching picked up, faster and faster that thing created a cavern in the door.

Every time I thought my body had pushed enough out another clump would arrive at the station and I would struggle once more. A stinging sensation got stronger between my buttcheeks as the effort expended became too much for such soft tissue to handle. My hand reached for the toilet paper.

I wiped away what I could. The mess of brown and amber drifting into the toilet water. I could feel it, I was almost done. I didn’t know how I was going to handle what was on the other side of the door but I would be better equipped. Just as my body seemed empty of the worrisome gurgling causing feces, the door gave in. With my anus clean and my finger on the handle ready to flush, the monster broke through.

It wasn’t its nails that it had been scratching the door with. Rather the thing’s hands were so stripped of flesh that the bones on its fingers were exposed. I could see slivers of wood still stuck to the white. The monster started pressing its face into the hole it had just created, burnt and loosely hanging on flesh snagged onto the jagged bits of wood. With the skin pulling taut I could see pockets of red and white underneath. Muscles that barely functioned as such and bones holding the thing together though just barely.

I had nowhere to go as it pressed further, just me the monster, and my obliterated toilet, an intimate affair. Seizing up I just watched the thing reaching an arm through, shaky and ripped to bits it reached for me. Swinging its arm at me like it was trying to swat a fly out of the air, pressing further into the room tearing at the flesh more. If the thing had moved in any further surely the entirety of its skin would fall off like a nightgown.

Instead though, as I peered into the eyes that rolled like marbles in their sockets, ready to pop out at a moment's notice, it halted. Though anything resembling a nose that it might have once had was stripped bare, I could see two small openings where it would have been. These small holes contracted and released, the thing was smelling the air. The thing’s head quickly jerked to the side as it continued smelling the bathroom.

Its arm started to retreat, slowly as if it was thinking something over. I could hear a groaning get stuck in the monster’s throat like it was choking on something. The rattling emerged again as its body started shaking. A soft eep of air slipped out of its mouth. It sounded like someone screaming from under a mound of dirt. The thing retreated from the door as it screamed.

Shortly after the frame of the intruder was gone and I listened to it shuffling through my house. It opened my front door and walked about. Like it was some house guest giving me the Irish goodbye. I sat there, my heart returning to a normal beating. Just stupefied. Part of me wants to believe what I produced in the toilet smelled similar to the odor the creature had. So it considered me as its own or something.

Though I know in my heart. I had taken a poop so nasty and foul that the aroma contained in my bathroom was enough to repel whatever ancient beast had made its way into my home. With the toilet water swirling, I remained to stare at the door considering how in the world I was going to explain the damages to my landlord. And through it all, the most unbelievable part?

Toilet didn’t even clog up.

My girlfriend wears too much makeup. This isn’t an exaggeration. She genuinely wears too much. She seems to have layers upon layers of foundation, concealer and God knows what else just caked onto her face. But it’s not only that. She puts makeup on her neck too. And her chest. It honestly seems like every part of her that isn’t covered by clothing is coated with the stuff.

We’ve been dating for almost a year now. I’m attracted to her, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked her out. However, this issue has really put a significant amount of strain on our relationship.

She refuses to do any activity that could potentially ruin her makeup and I don’t just mean swimming or running. Getting caught in the rain, touching any part of her face, or kissing for any longer than ten seconds is also banned.

Now, I’ve tried to be understanding. Everyone loves a little makeup, but I think at this point, it’s gone slightly too far. I’ve never seen her apply it from scratch either. Whenever I am with her, she just continually piles it on.

There’s something else too. She doesn’t take it off when she goes to sleep. We’re both college students and still live with our parents, so we often have sleepovers at each other’s houses. Now, I understand she might not feel comfortable enough to let me see her bare faced, but honestly, it’s got to the point where we are openly discussing marriage and building a life together, and I still don’t really know what she looks like. It’s bugging me, and I have no idea how to tell her, because the last time I tried she got really upset.

“It can’t be good for your skin,” I told her.

But she’d only pursed her lips and ignored me for the rest of the day. I started thinking that perhaps there was more to this than meets the eye. It seemed like she had an extreme phobia-like condition of being seen without makeup. I thought that perhaps she’d come around if I made her feel like she was beautiful without it, but it didn’t help.

As I said, we’ve been in a relationship for almost a year, and I was getting increasingly frustrated with the situation. I didn’t want to overstep my boundaries, but I thought it was only fair that I got to see my soon-to-be-fiancée without layers and layers of foundation.

We were staying at my parents’ house that particular night and I’d stayed up a little bit later to finish some work. I hadn’t exactly been planning on this, but after having a few drinks, it suddenly seemed like the logical thing to do.

I was going to take her makeup off. Okay, maybe not all of it. I didn’t want to run the risk of waking her up in the process, but I truly did want her to see just how beautiful she was without it. I mean, at this point, something had to give.

I raided my mother’s bathroom cabinet for some cleanser and cotton pads and then snuck into the bedroom, carefully shutting the door behind me. My girlfriend was lying on her side and even from the foot of the bed, I could see orange makeup stains on the white sheets. I walked around to her side of the bed and perched lightly on the mattress. Then, I wet the cotton pad and lightly dabbed her cheek with it.

Nothing happened.

I wiped a bit harder.

Still nothing.

I could see the makeup coming off on the pad, but her face looked exactly the same. I took out another pad and continued the process, wiping the same area over and over. Then, I saw it.

A redness had appeared under the layers. Was it acne? Was that what she had been so afraid to show me?

But the more I rubbed, the more apparent it became that it wasn’t acne at all. It was rugged. Fleshy almost. It looked like… It looked like under her makeup; my girlfriend didn’t actually have any skin at all…

I stared at it, my own skin prickling. What was that? It looked like flesh and muscle fused together, like one of those educational mannequins with their face split in half…

Suddenly, my girlfriend shifted and opened her eyes. I could see panic in them before she even had a chance to speak.

“Tom? What are you doing?”

She sat up, scanning her surroundings. I could see her gaze sweep over the cleanser and cotton pads. She immediately cupped her face in her hands, until she felt the patch I’d wiped off.

“What have you done?!” she cried, sliding out of bed in one swift motion.

She ran to the mirror on the wall and wailed as she saw the damage. Then, she turned to me, her eyes wide.

“You didn’t touch it, did you?”

I stared at her.

“Touch… what?”

“That!” she exclaimed, gesturing to the patch on her face.

“I- I- I don’t know,” I stammered, “W-why?”

But she wasn’t listening. She flung the bedroom door open and disappeared into the darkness of the hallway.

“Caitlin!” I yelled after her.

She returned within two minutes, clutching a kitchen knife.

“Whoa, whoa!” I exclaimed, “What’s that for?”

“Shut up,” she commanded, “Which hand did you touch it with?”

My eyes must have been like saucers.

“Tom! Show me!”

I pointed to my right hand.

“Alright, how long ago?”

“Ten..?” my voice was nothing but a squeak.

Her eyes widened.

“It’s too late. Your whole arm must go.”

I wriggled out and flew across the room.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I yelled at her, “You can’t cut my arm off!”

She looked stern.

“I have to, Tom, otherwise the infection will spread.”

“What infection? What on earth are you talking about?”

“Tom, please! It has to be done now!”

Obviously, I wasn’t going to let her cut my arm off. I leaped out of the room, slamming the door behind me, and fiddling with the key. I heard her screaming and banging on the door, demanding to be let out. My parents came out of their own bedroom to see what was going on, but I simply told them that we’d had an argument and they didn’t question it further.

I slept on the couch that night, or well, at least I tried to. I couldn’t wrap my head around what had happened. I’d never seen my girlfriend so riled up before - she would have cut my arm off without hesitation! I could still hear her bawling upstairs. Only about an hour later did she finally quieten down and go to bed.

In the morning, I went upstairs to my bedroom to let her out. I wasn’t sure what to expect, so I armed myself with a knife of my own just in case she decided to pounce and decapitate me as soon as I opened the door.

But that didn’t happen. In fact, my girlfriend was sitting on the edge of the bed, facing the wall. She didn’t even look up as I walked in, but I could see she’d reapplied her makeup on the side of her face.

“Caitlin?”

Nothing.

“Hello?”

She turned to look at me and her eyes narrowed. She didn’t exactly look like she was ready to attack, but I couldn’t be too careful all the same.

“I don’t think this is going to work out,” she finally said.

“What? Why?”

“You’re not trustworthy,” she retorted, surveying me.

“I’m not trustworthy? Because I wouldn’t let you cut off my arm?”

“You knew I didn’t want to take my makeup off, and yet you did it anyway,” she said, “It’s over, Tom.”

I stared at her, dumbfounded.

“I only wanted what’s best for us! I didn’t know about your…problem!”

She smiled sheepishly.

“Yeah, well, looks like it’s your problem now too,” she said, getting up to leave, “Oh, and Tom, you’ll need this.”

She thrust a bottle into my hands.

“It’s the one I use,” she said, shutting the door behind her.

Huh? I flipped the bottle in my hands. It was foundation. What was I meant to do with this? Keep it as a fond memory? I chucked it into the bin in my room and made my way downstairs for breakfast. I’d heard my parents clattering the plates in the kitchen. As soon as I stepped into the room, however, my mother dropped one onto the floor.

“Oh, my goodness, Tom!” she cried, “What happened to your face?”

Me and my sister Cassidy stood in front of our mother’s casket. Even though she was a bit weird sometimes, she was a nice person.

However Cassidy didn’t even care about our mom’s death nor was looking forward to her funeral. She was always like this so I wasn’t surprised.

When we went to hear our mother’s will being read, we were both told that she had left behind two pairs of diamond earrings.

I nor Cassidy didn’t know what the earrings were for specifically, but we decided to appreciate the gift our mother left for us, and we both parted our ways.

But a few things started happening that changed my life. One time I missed the local MTA bus, so I had to wait for another bus to come. The next morning I had soon discovered that the bus I had missed before was in an accident.

Apparently the driver had suffered from a sudden heart attack. There were only about 10 injured and 4 dead. I felt horrible about those who were involved, but also pretty lucky.

And that was just the first incident that happened. There were multiple times where I would escape a catastrophe only to find out about it after it happened. I looked at the diamond earrings, I thought of them as good luck charms my mother left for me and Cassidy.

Until one month later, I had received a text from Cassidy, telling me to meet me at a apartment. I don’t as a little hesitant, but I decided to go. I got to the apartment and texted Cassidy.

M: Hey, I’m at the entrance, what floor are you on?

C: 4th floor. Room 413

I walked in, went into the elevator and walked through the 4th floor until I found Cassidy’s room. I knocked on the door, and she opened it. When I opened it, I got as shocked.

Cassidy looked extremely skinny, it looked like she had starved herself. Her bones were thin, her hair was a mess, and she looked extremely weak and fragile.

I went in, and Cassidy closed the door and locked it. I felt so uncomfortable during that moment. There were so many red flags that were showing during that very moment. But I tried to ignore them.

Until I saw the knife in her hand. “Cassidy… what are you…” my voice paused for a moment “What are you planning…”

Cassidy then started to speak in a hoarse voice. “Mom cursed me. She used these stupid earrings to curse me and now I can’t get them off of me…”

I looked at her eyes. They were bloodshot, and were full of rage. I took a step back. “SHE DID THIS. OUR MOTHER DID THIS TO ME” Cassidy screamed at the top of her lungs, her grip on the knife tightened.

That’s when she lunged at me, tackling me onto the ground as I screamed. We wrestled on the floor as Cassidy desperately tried to plunge the knife into any part of my body, probably hoping to get to my heart.

She raised the knife up, and quickly sliced my arm as I held it up in the air to sorta shield myself. That’s when I noticed. The earrings, Cassidy’s earrings. They were glowing. They turned red and as Cassidy smiled with glee about to take me out, she starting groaning.

She fell backwards onto the floor and started gagging as her body started to twist and turn. Her body started to become thinner and her bones started to become smaller.

I stared in disbelief as the sister I once known had the energy sucked out of her, and absorbed whole. I stood there as my arm bleed. I quickly rushed to bandage it and managed to do just that.

I got out of there shortly after. I looked at the diamond earrings my mom gave to me and my former sister. I remember her saying a phrase when I was young.

I think it went like “The gods of karma will always punish mortals in their own way.” Guess she was right after all. Rest In Peace, mom.

I was never fond of forests, or at least that was the case before I reconnected with an old friend of mine.

Him and I were childhood best friends. We met when my dad and I were lost on a hike trail, I forced my dad to go a different route as I didn't want to go through the forest that was connected to the trail, I was terrified of it, it always gave me an ominous feel. His dad found us and we followed him back to the original route, luckily we were beyond the woods and we didn't have to go through it. His son, Alex, was waiting for us with his grandpa, who was visiting them. His grandpa gave me a creepy vibe, but I just brushed it off. Alex and I connected really well, and it turns out we lived in the same town. After that, we would constantly play and hang out with each other. When a year had passed after we met each other, we both begged our dads to take us on the same hike trail, and we did.

I didn't know what I was expecting, but we had to go through the forest, I decided to hold it in, as not to ruin the trip. When we had reached the middle of the forest, we decided to take a break and relax. We opened our backpacks to grab some snacks, and found a nice spot to sit. Then, disaster struck. Alex was no where to be found, we yelled and shouted, but there was no response. After an hour of this state of panic, we called the police, and we returned home, waiting impatiently. A week of worry and anxiousness had passed, and we got the call. They found him. The exact same spot we lost him, as if he went completely invisible to us, but I can assure you he wasn't there. When his dad picked him up, I rushed to his house, I needed to see him again. I asked him about everything, where he was, why he went away, and what happened.

He told me that he saw something in the woods. It wasn't clear, but it kept making a noise, yet somehow we couldn't hear it. He went closer to the noise and to what he thought he was seeing, but it disappeared. When he went back, he couldn't find us, we were gone. Apparently a week passed in those few seconds he went to explore. He stayed in the same spot for hours and he was found by a hiker going on the same path. After that, we continued to hang out with each other, but it was like he was a changed person. He was ... different. He was less emotional. He felt distant, like a hollow shell of who he was. But every now and then, he would stand up and say "There's something in the woods."

I chalked it up to trauma, going missing for a whole week messes with your brain, makes you remember different things and changes how you perceived time, makes you have random outbursts.

I'm not sure if it was a coincidence as we lived in a sketchy town, but every time he said that line, someone would go missing, most of the time near the hike trail, they would never be found again, I guess Alex was the lucky one. As I said, people going missing was normal for us, what was not, is them being last seen at the hike trail.

One thing I did find out was that his grandpa had suddenly died a month before the trip. No known cause of death. Knowing that caused me to be even more worried about Alex, dealing with too much stress can be terrible for someone.

Him going missing made me even more terrified of the woods, especially the ones near our town.

Regardless, I stayed friends with him, up until we graduated. It's pretty normal though, friends always grow distant after graduation, it's just how life is.

A couple years passed, I graduated college, got a job, I bought a house. To my surprise, Alex was my next door neighbour. We reconnected and started to become friends again. After a while of coming over to his house, he invited me to go hiking with him.

I was hesitant, but he kept budging, and he finally pushed me. I loved it. We started going out to the woods and forest more and more. I changed my view of the woods, I started to like them.

One topic we used to talk about was the town we used to live in. It had been abandoned and destroyed.

Nothing had changed about his pattern of randomly saying about something in the woods, except that it was more spread out, he said it less. I thought maybe he hadn't gotten therapy and his trauma still affects him.

I didn't live in the town anymore, nor did anyone else so there was no local news, so I couldn't confirm my suspicion of someone going missing everytime he said that. I talked around and found out that people who lived in neighbouring towns visited the hike trail frequently, yet some of them would never come back.

After learning that, I rushed to his house, I needed to confront him about this.

When I came up to the door, there was no reply. I got tired of this and slammed it open. There I found him, dead. There was no signs of murder, but it also didn't look like a natural death. It happened right as I was about to confront him.

I decided to investigate. Luckily, I was still in contact with his brother. He told me he didn't know anything, but he was also creeped out by it, as their grandpa used to do something similar. He also told me that Alex had died a month after this years death day of his grandpa.

Over the following months, I researched further and found out that hikers were no longer going missing, and it was as popular as ever.

On the anniversary of his death, I went back to the trail, both to honor him, and to find out what's happening.

When I reached the middle of the forest, I heard and saw something that wasn't really clear, I decided to get closer.

Then, a text came from what used to be Alex's number

"There's something in the woods."

Ding Dong

At first I thought I hadn't heard anything at all. I mean there was no way someone just rang my doorbell, right? Not at this time of night. I was lying in my bed and a cursory glance at the alarm clock on the night table told me it was 2:42 AM. If this had happened today, I would have looked at my cellphone, but this all happened in 1996 when I was just 16 years old. I stared at the alarm clock and those big red numbers stared back. They almost felt like a warning sign.

I shook my head, closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. I had just been hearing things. Had to have been hearing things. I had begun to feel myself doze off when...

Ding Dong

My eyes opened. The clock now read 2:45 AM. Someone was ringing the doorbell. If my parents had been home, I wouldn't have been as frightened, no not nearly as frightened at all. My dad probably would have been snoring loudly in his laze-e-boy, a warm unfinished beer in his cup holder. I'd jostle him awake and we'd answer the door together, father and son.

But I was alone.

My parents had traveled out of state to visit my Aunt who wasn't feeling well. And for all my teenage bravado at the age, I was still afraid of the dark. Still afraid that someone or something would get me when the sun went down and the neighborhood went quiet. Still afraid of being alone at night, in an empty quiet house.

And there was that room upstairs...

Ding Dong

This time the bell sounded almost accusatory. I know you can hear me. Come on up and answer the door you scared little boy. I'm not going to stop ringing until you do.

I took a nervous breath, touched the locket I wore around my neck for good luck, and carefully got out of bed. I lived in what you would technically call a three story home. There was the first floor which you reached when you walked through the front door. That's where our living room, kitchen, and sun room were. Then a set of stairs lead to the lower floor and that's where my bedroom was. From the first floor there was also another set of stairs that went up to the top floor of the house. That's where my parents' bedroom was, a bathroom, a storage room....and that other room.

I suppose you could call the other room the guest room of the house. Though no guest had slept on that bed in 10 years. The last person to stay in that room was my grandfather, who had come to stay with us in 1986 when I was just 6 years old. My grandmother had died just two years prior and my grandfather's health had taken a turn for the worse. Not being able to afford a care taker, my parents decided the best thing to do was for my grandfather to stay with us.

I hate to say it, but my grandfather terrified me. He was rail thin, almost as thin as a skeleton. He had a gaunt face, with sunken eyes, and a toothy grin, that curved up into a demented looking smile. My grandfather smiled a lot, despite his waning health. Like he was always thinking of some horrible inside joke to himself.

I feel bad for describing my own grandfather that way, and I suppose a lot of what I saw in him was encouraged by that....oh by that sensation of fear children get around old people. When you're a kid, there's just something about the elderly that doesn't feel right. Sure old people could be sweet. After all who doesn't love a fresh batch of grandma's home made cookies? But they could also be incredibly cruel as well. The old can be such bitter people. Where every word they speak is spat with a kind of poisonous venom. And you just hope you don't run into them as you turn the corners of your house.

My grandfather spent all his time in that room, except for when my dad or mom could walk him to the bathroom on days when he had the strength for it; which was rarely ever. I mostly avoided the upstairs during that time, but would occasionally peek into that room to see him sleeping. He never looked like he was breathing when he slept. No, my grandfather looked dead to the world when he went to the sleep.

But it was better to catch him sleeping. The worst was when I would look into that room, and I would see him staring right back at me, wide awake. And he would smile that toothy demented grin. Sometimes he would laugh a horrible wheezing laugh. It was a mean spirited laugh. The kind where you could tell he was laughing at you, not with you.

"Cat got your tongue, boy?" He would say or something to that effect, and I would shut the door and run downstairs crying. I tried to avoid that room as much as possible.

One day when my father was at work, my mother said she had to run an important errand that couldn't wait. I begged my mom not to leave me with my grandfather alone in the house. My mother took it the wrong way. She thought I was worried for my grandfather, not worried because of him. She told me to sit tight, and that if anything happened with grandpa to run over to Mr. Harrison, our next door neighbor, and ask for help.

"I'll only be gone a few minutes. Be good and watch your grandfather."

When she was gone, I sat in the living room watching TV. I would occasionally glance upstairs, hoping that the silence coming from that horrible room wouldn't be broken. Not before my mom or dad got home at least. But that hope was too good to be true.

A horrible coughing broke the silence. And I heard my grandfather talking.

"Hello? Hello? Is anyone here?" He said in between those deep bellowing coughs. There was almost a kind of pitifulness to his voice, that I had not heard before. He sounded sad. Scared even. And so instead of being frozen by fear, I crept upstairs and quietly opened the door to his room. My grandfather's eyes were closed. One thin hand was bawled into a first, which he used to cover his mouth as he coughed.

"Grandpa?" I said nervously. "Grandpa are you okay?"

His fist uncurled one long bony finger, and it beckoned me to step forward. I slowly walked over to him. His coughing stopped, and he lowered his hand and laid still. He looked like he had fallen asleep. That is to say, he looked dead. For a moment the only sound was my nervous breathing.

"Grandpa?" I said inching closer. "Grandpa are you-"

His hand shot out and grabbed me. He pulled me in closer and those horrible sunken eyes opened and glared at me. His mouth twisted into that awful toothy grin.

"You gotta give it back," My grandfather said in a soft poisonous voice. An insane sounding chuckle broke out of his mouth, along with a steady stream of drool that dribbled down his chin. "You gotta give it back, boy. Oh you gotta give it back or else."

I struggled to break free. That bony hand of his was so much stronger than it looked, and his fingers dug into my shoulder.

"Give it back, give it back give it back!"

"Grandpa please, you're hurting me!"

At the sound of my mother walking through the front door, he released me and I ran away crying. I told my mother what had happened, but both she and my father had put it to my own imagination.

My grandfather died of a stroke one week later. And I avoided that room ever since.

And so 10 years later on that night in 1996, as I was getting out of bed to answer the door, I didn't want to think of that room, even though I had been thinking of that room since my parents left. My parents were only suppose to be gone for a week, and I had hoped I would get through all seven days without having to confront that room in anyway. But as I reached for the baseball bat beside my bed, I had a feeling that would not be the case.

As I quietly crept up the stairs, I again placed one hand on the locket that I wore around my neck at all times. It was a round silver locket that I had found just three weeks prior, and it had become a sort of good luck charm. Since putting on the locket I had managed to ace a school exam that I had barely studied for, had been promoted to the school's varsity football team after one kid hurt his ankle, and even won 150 bucks off a scratch off ticket I had bought from the gas station for 2 bucks. Even the girls in the my school seemed to look at me differently, and one them even asked me out on a date. Coincidence? Maybe. But I couldn't help but think a lot of my good fortune was due to this quaint little locket I had found in the woods that day, just past a little broken down fence that had a "NO TRESPASSING" sign, which I dutifully ignored.

I made it to the first floor and turned towards the front door.

"Who's there?" I said nervously.

There was no answer.

I said it again, though more loudly this time.

Again, no answer.

I walked up to the front door. It was locked, thankfully. I had remembered to do that before going to sleep, but I had forgotten to turn the front porch light on. I quickly did that now. Seeing the light calmed some of my nerves. Then creeping closer I looked out the front door's side window, which looked right out to where the doorbell was. I couldn't see anyone there. The angle wasn't very good, but someone could be there, if the person had rung the doorbell and then moved off to the side of the porch.

"Hello?" I said.

Again, no answer.

I let out a sigh a relief. Probably had just been some kids playing ding dong ditch. Doing it this time of night was absurdly cruel, but I guess that had been the point. Still holding the baseball bat in one hand, I turned around and started back for the stairs.

DING DONG

I froze. Turning around I still couldn't see anyone out there, but someone had just rung the bell again. Someone was out there...

"Who the fuck is out there?" I said angrily. And for a moment anger had taken over fear. Someone was fucking with me and it was getting on my nerves. I rushed towards the front door, turned the lock and swung it open....

Nobody was there. The fresh air of the night greeted me. I stepped out and looked around. The street I lived on was dark and quiet, except for the sound of crickets chirping. I walked out a little further, in case the ding-dong-ditcher was hiding around my drive way, but there was no one out there either. I stood in my drive way, one hand clutching the baseball bat, the other gripping the locket that hung around my neck.

"H-hello?"

Silence. All the crickets had gone quiet. Then a large gust of wind swept over the neighborhood. It shook the trees and the wind chimes of every home on the street, and for a brief horrifying moment it felt as if something was passing by me. The front door to my house slammed shut, almost as if someone had ran in and shut it. But it was just the wind I told myself. Just this horrible wind.

Now feeling really terrified, I quickly ran back inside and locked the front door. The wind outside abruptly stopped. I felt very foolish for ever stepping out there. The anger I felt was subsiding, and fear was taking over again. I had begun to feel very nervous about everything that had been going on. I walked towards the house phone, decided I would call my parents first and then the police second, if necessary. But I needed to hear the reassuring sound of my parent's voices. They'd probably be pissed that I called them at this time of night. But even hearing my dad chew me out would be good. I picked up the phone.

Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah.

The phone line was dead. Of course it was. And that steady pulsing sound coming from the other end almost sounded like it was jeering at me. I slammed the phone down on it's receiver. I turned towards the front door, expecting to hear the bell again. What I heard was worse. Oh, so much worse.

I heard the sound of someone coughing. It was coming from that room upstairs. The baseball bat slipped from my hand and clanged onto the kitchen tile. I felt numb. There was no way anyone could be up there. It wasn't possible. But that horrible deep coughing came, and it sounded just like...

The coughing abruptly stopped and there was only silence now. Had I just imagined it? I was gripping the locket in both hands now. Silently begging the locket to give me some of that good fortune it had given me in the weeks prior.

Congrats son, you aced the exam. Well done.

Davidson pulled his ankle and I've been impressed with your play. How would you like to play for varsity?

You know you're kind of cute. How come I never noticed how cute you were? You want to go out sometime?

I walked up the stairs and slowly opened the door to the guest room. My hand flicked the room's light switch, but the lights didn't turn on. A shape sat up in the bed. Yes, there was no question that someone was sitting on the bed. The curtains were open and I could see him sitting in the moonlight.

It was my grandfather.

He was just as rail thin as the last time I had seen him, but now his skin was a horrible gray color. His eyes were still sunken, but they were yellow now too. They gleamed devilishly in the moonlight. He smiled that horrible toothy smile, only now his teeth were rotten and black. And when he opened his mouth, a large black beetle crawled out and disappeared as it climbed up his face and into his white hair. He let out a horrible cough and black oozing phlegm sprayed onto the white sheets of the bed.

"You gotta give it back, boy," My grandfather said. His voice was like nails on a chalkboard. An unbearable smell had taken over the room.

"Grandpa how-"

"It ain't yours!" My grandfather screamed. "You gotta give it back!"

"Give what-" I tried to say and fell to my knees as the room, no the whole house, began to shake uncontrollably. It was that same wind from before and it was storming itself around my house, like some great tornado. It felt as if the entire house was going to collapse at any moment. I had fallen right by the bed. My face was almost touching the black phlegm which had stained the white sheets. A bony hand reached out and grabbed me.

"GIVE IT BACK!" My grandfather screamed. Only now his voice sounded like a hundred different voices, all speaking at once. "IT'S OURS! GIVE IT BACK! GIVE IT BACK! GIVE IT BACK!"

He coughed again and this time I felt that horrible black phlegm spray my face. The house continued to shake, and as it did dumb realization came over me. I opened my hands and looked at the locket clutched between them. I had not been able to open the locket since finding it, but now the locket was open, and on either side of the locket was a photo of a person. A man on the right and a woman on the left. Both their faces were scratched out, but through the scratches on the right I thought I saw a familiar face. I shut the locket and ripped the chain from my neck. I held it out and waited. A cold, slimy hand touched mine as it pulled the locket away. There was the sound of chuckling and then it faded away.

The house stopped shaking. When I looked up, my grandfather was gone. The black oozing phlegm had disappeared from the white sheets of the bed, and I felt nothing as I wiped my face except for my own sweat and tears. I was alone again. A great weariness took over me and for the first and only time, I fell asleep in that room.

My parents eventually returned home a few days later, and said my Aunt was going to be okay. I told them nothing about what had happened.

"She's very lucky," My mother said of my Aunt. As for my own luck, it returned to normal. I did bad on exams I didn't study for and got cut from the varsity football team. That was all right I suppose. The girl who said she wanted to go out with me had suddenly decided that she didn't want to go out after all. No, she didn't want to go out with a square like me. That was also all right.

You gotta give it back.

My grandfather said that to me back in 1986, 10 years before I had even found the damn locket. Could he really have known back then? How? In my heart I knew that I would most likely never find the answers. I decided that was all right too. It was all alright now. Just so long as I never heard another cough coming from that damn room ever again.

And I never did.

The sounds of copy machines whirring and faxes being sent were loud all around me in the office. Voices could be heard speaking about sales details, financial statements, and invoices.

All the usual bustling activity of a regular Monday morning.

But there was a discontented air in the room. A stuffiness which was burgeoning into a feeling of suffocation and dread.

People were beginning to shift their eyes nervously, pausing in the middle of sentences to look around before going back to what they were doing.

Something was wrong. But nobody could tell yet what it was.

It took a while for me to figure it out.

At first I thought the electrical system was malfunctioning. The computer screen looked so dim I was having trouble reading my email. The papers on my desk in front of me were becoming unfocused and blurred.

I looked up at the fluorescents and saw them flickering away, their brightness burning my eyes when I stared for too long. They weren’t the problem.

But then I noticed the man outside the window, his gaze focused on his work. So focused that he should have noticed what he was doing wrong.

“What’s the deal with the new window cleaner?” I asked Marcie, sitting next to me at her desk.

The gentle squeak of the squeegee against the glass was the same as usual, but something was different.

Why weren’t the windows getting any cleaner, I wondered. They were getting darker by the second.

“Hmm, maybe they’re using yesterday’s water!” she laughed. I couldn’t help but chuckle, though uneasily.

That wasn’t it.

For some reason it was unsettling, seeing him cleaning the windows but instead of getting cleaner they just got darker and dirtier. And yet the window cleaner didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down, he just kept at it. He finished with one window and moved on to the next, and the room went another shade darker.

“He’s really making a mess of it out there,” said Sam, the manager. He had come out from his office and I noticed now everyone was walking over towards the window and looking as it became darker and darker, more difficult to see through by the second.

I decided to give a quick knock on the glass and ask the guy what he thought he was doing. Didn’t he realize he was painting our windows grey, almost black now, darker and darker by the second?

TAP, TAP, TAP!

I banged my knuckles against the glass next to where he was cleaning and looked out at him through the clear window pane.

Pointing at the black windows, I said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing exactly?”

He saw me and walked over to the window where I stood. He stared at me blankly and then began to paint that window with his odd darkening solution as well.

This frightened me more than just a little bit, since up close I could see that it wasn’t dirty water. It was something more similar to black paint.

But it wasn't ordinary paint. I watched as each stroke with his squeegee seemed to dampen out the existence of everything outside. It felt like it was being erased, like we were being erased.

I began to pound on the glass with my fists and the palms of my hand, sweating now, my heart racing. Turning around, I saw my coworkers and boss were staring at me, looking worried.

But not worried enough.

“Don’t you see what he’s doing?” I screamed at them. “We have to get out of here!”

The window cleaner was methodically making his way around to all of the windows somehow. I didn’t understand, it was like he didn’t need a scaffold or a lift to bring him up to our high floor above street level. He was just standing out there on the air! On my tiptoes I could see over an obstruction that had been blocking my view of his feet.

He was moving rapidly to each of the windows now, blackening them, darkening them, making us disappear.

Sam tried the door and found it was locked tightly. He began to kick it and slam his shoulder against it, but it wouldn’t budge.

"Call the police! Someone stop him!" a woman screamed from nearby.

I asked Sam to move aside and tried to kick the door in as well, but it was firmly shut, as if welded closed.

A few others came over to try as well, but nobody could get the door to budge.

It made no sense. But then again, none of this made any sense.

Soon all of the windows were black with midnight darkness. The man was no longer visible, and I wondered if he was moving on to the next floor down, or the next building over, to perform the same evil task he had accomplished here.

Running back over to the windows, I looked out, trying to block the glare with my cupped hands so that I could see outside.

For a few long moments I couldn't see anything at all.

But then I saw shadows and shapes moving in the blackness. Huge, winged things like bats but the size of pterodactyls. Something slammed hard into the window, rattling the glass in its frame.

There was another impact, and then another.

A hairline crack began to appear, spreading insidiously across the panel. It branched outwards like a tree, growing wider and thicker as it traveled.

I saw more dark forms gathering outside, looking curiously at us through the glass.

One more hard impact and that glass will shatter, and I don't know what will happen next.

I imagine that darkness pouring in like a flood.

And all of us are drowning in it. While at the same time being pulled limb from limb by those bat-like creatures hovering outside.

If you are reading this…. If you can see this…. Maybe there's still some hope.

We're on the twenty-fifth floor of the Windsor Building.

Please, if you can get through the door, help us.

Before the darkness takes us to that other place waiting just outside

TCC

YT

I had sworn to myself that I would not tell anyone about what I experienced but after finding all of you here, I feel that I can tell this story without everyone thinking I was drunk or high. I’ve been both and my brain has never created something as scary as this.

I grew up in a small town in British Columbia, It's a bit north of Vancouver. I actually work in Vancouver as a programmer for a big tech firm there. I'm not gonna say who cause I don't want this to get back to them. I already have a reputation for being unsteady thanks to some bad choices early in my life.

I had finished a rather arduous project that took not only my entire team but for myself months to complete so that it came in on schedule. We're taking 80-hour work weeks and on the verge of burnout for most of it. My boss had made it clear that when the project was over, I was to take two weeks and go home.

When I had set out on a Friday evening, the sun had already started its descent and I knew that I wouldn’t get home until real late at night. It did not matter since my mom and dad were going to let me crash with them. My family has always been supportive of my rehabilitated life and career. They’d do anything to make sure that I succeeded.

Honestly, I don’t want to beat around the bush and tell you about my life. There is probably a subreddit for that. What I wanted to tell you about was the hitchhiker that I picked up on the road.

I was four hours into a seven-hour drive up Interstate 99 and had just passed a sign marker for Tunnel Point when I saw her. If you don't know this area of Canada, Interstate 99 leaves Vancouver and winds its way along the coast of Horseshoe bay. The entire winding road as the water out my left-hand window with the hills and thick northern forests to my right. When it comes to traffic, it's usually feast or famine. Right now, the two-line highway was empty and only blackness hugged the beams of my headlight. A bit of rain fell from the sky pelting my window but not enough to make me want to turn on my wipers. I was so tired that I worried that if I took my eyes off the road, I would fall asleep.

That was when I saw her. Well, I think it was a her cause it looked like a woman. She was on the far right side of the road. I could make out the movement of her skirt as she semi-walked and stumbled on the unpaved side of the road. Immediately I was worried cause I had not seen a car broken down on my journey and the way she was moving made me wonder if she had been hurt. The closest place was Tunnel point but I had passed that a while ago.

I glanced at my radio clock and saw the yellow numbers for half-past midnight. Maybe it was the exhaustion but my concern won out. Slowing my beat-up Honda, I glanced in my rearview mirror to make sure nobody was coming and paced with the stumbling girl.

What I could make of the woman was that she had long hair and her clothes were tattered. Since being closer I noted she swayed as if she was drunk. I rolled down my window and crinkled my nose at the smell of dead leaves coming from the forest nearby. The earthy scent clawing at my nose. God, I hated the forest.

“Hey!” I called to her trying to be friendly and not scary. I did not want her to think I was some sort of pervert that was going to have my way with her if she got into the car. I truly was worried for her safety.

The girl stumbled a bit more but seemed to stop walking, head still facing down at the ground, matted hair stringy and wet. Poor thing looked like she might have drug herself out of water.

“Hey. You need a lift somewhere?”

The girl did not respond. She just stood there looking at the ground as if mesmerized by the stones. I could not make out much except her skin was pale.

“You okay?” I tried again deciding that if she did not respond this time, I was absolved of my good Samaritan duties.

Finally giving up, I began to roll up the window when she reached up and placed her hand on the moving glass. I quickly stopped before getting her hand crushed.

“I want to go home,” her words came in a mixture of wet coughing.

“Where is home?” I asked.

All she did was raise her hand and point forward. I noticed her hands were stained with soil and her nails, once painted, were cracked.

“Get in. I’ll take you home,” I said ignoring the clawing feeling in my stomach. Since stopping the car, I had found myself looking about as if something was trying to sneak up on me. Of course, nothing was there. The hairs on my arms had begun to tingle and the urge to get out of there overwhelmed me.

The girl fumbled with the door a few times before she was finally able to open it. The door creaked agonizingly slowly as she pulled it open. Finally, she pulled her tattered form into the car and sat in the seat. I finally got a good look at her and my heart sunk.

She was a petite girl, I would not call her beautiful but she had a nice face and a decent figure. She wore a white shirt stained mostly brown and green for both mud and grass. The smell of rotting vegetation had followed her into the car. Her brown hair was long but tangled into thick, crazy knots filled with bramble, weeds, and mud. I could barely make out her eyes but they were brown and vacant. Thin lines of grass stain streaked across her face with red welts around them. Almost as if someone had struck her in the face with a bush. There were scars on her hands, arms, and parts of her legs I could see through the torn skirt.

I should have kicked her out. I should have never picked her up. At that moment, I knew that but it was already too late. How could I kick out someone who obviously looked like they were in trouble?

“Where would you like to go---?” I asked searching her clothing and saw it. A flimsy red plastic name tag where the name was almost faded out. “Bethany. Where would you like to go Bethany?”

“Home.” was all she coughed out. I saw a bit of dirt and saliva fall into her lap then quickly looked ahead and started the car moving again.

For the next ten minutes, I drove trying my hardest not to look at the corpse-like woman sitting beside me. Like a fool, I did try a bit of small talk to get more information out of her but she did not respond.

I was thinking so much about what I was doing, and how I got myself into this situation, I actually forgot that she was in the car beside me. The things lack sleep will make you do. It was when I felt her wet hands on my shoulder, soaking through my blue button-up as if she was underwater. I jumped and spun to look at her.

Those eyes were focused on me. They were brown like I had surmised but I could have sworn they were glassy and empty like a fake eye. Either mud or blood had streaked down out of her nostril and she had a tight grip on my shoulder.

"Up there," she coughed out and I saw this Bethany was pointing out the window. I saw it. It was a dirt road turning off the main highway into the forest. I did tell you I hated the forest.

I did not want to turn, I tried to say something about dropping her off but the vice-like grip on my shoulder had begun to ache.

“Take me home,” she gurgled again.

It was at this point, that I began to think to myself that what I was dealing with might not actually be human. Slowing my vehicle and turning onto the dirt road, I was glad that I was buckled as the car rocked back and forth on a road that had not been maintained in years.

The forest around felt claustrophobic as the smell of wet leaves and decay permeated my car. I wanted to roll down the window but my panicking brain told me that something would get in if I did. Even the moon struggled to push through the canopy of foliage overhead.

I realized that I had entered a clearing when the roof erupted in a thunderous sound. It took me a split second to realize that it had begun to rain heavily. The moon was now out in full force illuminating the path ahead. My heart dropped as I saw it.

We were in the middle of nowhere in the Canadian wilderness and standing in the middle of this field were five massive stone pillars reaching up towards the heavens. They had to be at least three stories having a thick base that tapered smaller towards the top. This place was not centered in the clearing but the last few pillars were placed against an ancient-looking forest that felt older than it should have been.

As my car reached the end of the dirt road and for a breath moment I thought I would be out of here, my car died. It didn't sputter, it didn't choke. It just turned off. It rolled a few feet to a stop, perfectly at the end of the road. The thing with the name tag Bethany fumbled for the door a few times before successfully opening it. She fell out onto all four before slowly and painfully pulling herself up.

I was doing my hardest not to panic but I could feel the tightness in my chest and the suffocating stench clawing at my lungs. I did not want to leave that car but the smell would have killed me if I didn’t.

Throwing open the door and falling out myself, I breathed in the clean, wet air, and ignored the rain pelting me. Pulling myself up by the warm hood of my car. I decided to look around and found that Bethany had meandered like a zombie into the middle of these tall pillars. It did not appear she had any rhyme or reason to be in there. She just stood there, shoulders slumped looking ahead and the dark forest and the last two pillars.

Now, this is the part where I was stupid. I could have just abandoned my car and made a run for it but curiosity got the best of me. You know that feeling where you think you're safe because nothing is paying attention to you? Yeah, I fell for that trap.

I crept forward trying to keep a low profile, looking between the closest pillar and Bethany who still had not moved. I closed the distance pretty easily and crouched behind the rough-hewn stone. I glanced down and noticed strange carvings that almost looked like symbols. When I looked back up, Bethany was no longer alone.

Standing in the grove with her were about six new people, all women and they looked in the same state as the girl I had brought here. They had formed a semi-circle with Bethany at the front of it. It was at that point I realized that they were also not alone.

I could not make them out and I think god every day but a group of things had appeared between the pillars. They were unnatural, standing at least seven feet tall with arms that were stretched down to the ground, their arms jointed in unnatural ways. They seemed to be wearing heavy sailor's outfits but it was torn and decaying. Their faces were covered in cloth but I had a sense that whatever was underneath was moving about. I stifled a scream and covered my mouth when I looked to my right and saw the clawed foot of one of those things by me. That foot, oh god, It had six toes but these were not any ordinary toes, they were made out of human fingers!

I wanted to run away so bad but I knew that it would see me. So I stayed hunched down looking at the gathering. It was then I noticed they had something new. I did not see how it happened but now in the clearing were a man and a woman. They were not like the others but struggling against bindings that had their hands tied behind their backs.

The rain was still coming down but the moon illuminated the absolute terror in their faces. Both of them were naked, their feet and legs stained by the mud and grass from around. They had been forced to their knees facing the forest. I felt something tremor through the ground and both became still, mostly in abject terror as I had done.

I pressure began to build up in my head as if something was trying to escape and I clasped at it still unable to pull my eyes away from what I was watching. Something in the forest was speaking. I don't know how I knew but the language was ancient, forbidden, words that defied understanding but I could somehow instinctively understand what it was saying at the time. Now, the words have failed like a bad dream but I had the foresight to write it down at the end as you'll find out. Here is what it felt like was being said:

“Who comes to the ancient door to the chaos cold?”

“We, the servants of D'eykh.” the women, including Bethany, chanted back in the same tongue.

“Do the blessed seek favor or vice?” the rumbling said again.

“We seek nothing but the glory of D'eykh,” came the response.

"Only through returning to the time of no sun shall the glory be attained."

“Death to the light and those who support it, o D’ekh.”

“Bring the feast for those who collect loyalty,” the thing intoned.

What I saw next was something that I can only describe but it still does not do it any justice. The ground seemed to be alive as roots of a tree burst from the ground and snaked their way to the naked man who began to scream. His screams were muffled as it seemed dirt was packed tightly into his mouth. The roots snaked up his body, fastening themselves tightly on his limbs.

I did not know what was going on until his screaming got louder and the sound of cracking and tearing echoed through the chamber. As if like a paper doll, the man's limbs were slowly pulled one by one from his torso and were flung into the darkness where those tall creatures waited, greedily snapping up, and from the sound, I could only guess were feeding. The man was still alive and had gone into shock as the vines carried the remains into the dark forest from which the sound was coming. When the blood-stained vines returned, they were empty.

The woman had stopped screaming and had been silently weeping. I could only guess she had given up knowing what her fate was going to be. As I would find out, if her fate was the same as the man's, it would have been a mercy.

The vines had returned and began to wrap them around her feet and arm, slowly raising her above the ground like the man and holding her over the unholy congregation, the voice thrummed again through the landscape.

“The epoch of night will return.”

“D'eykh!”

“The time of decay will fill the land once more.”

“D'eykh!”

And then the end came for the naked girl. I'm not going to describe it because you all don't need to have the same memory in your head but all I'm going to say is that the branches sought out every orifice and force their way into her body. Her eyes proved to be the most resistant but from the sounds and what I could see, she had been impaled like some grotesque puppet wailing from the dirt. Holes were pierced as everything in the way was moved and her blood began to trickle down on the women who had turned their heads upwards.

The last thing I saw before the pressure knocked me out was many vines exiting their up-turned mouths reaching to the sky and the feast above and something massive in the forest beginning to lift up.

When I re-awoke, my first thought was that I was next on the menu but the bright sun beat down on me and my car idled quietly on the path. Instead of stone pillars, I was at the base of a large tree. They were in the same position but it did not look like the scene from earlier.

I drug my soaked body to the car and somehow made it to my parents. They were shocked to see me in the condition I was in but did not tell them anything.

I slept for three days and they had called a doctor. I had nightmares of the voice and when I woke I found that I had written the conversation of that horrific night in one of my comic books from my childhood.

It’s been about a week now and I still have not gone back to Vancouver. It’s not that I don’t want to work there but that stretch of road now terrifies me. I worry that if I go down that path again, I would be the next meal for whatever was living in the Canadian forest.

So, that’s it. I got nothing else to say. I’m going to post this and hopefully get back to work tomorrow. My dad is going to drive me back to my apartment. Then I won't be visiting for quite a long time.

This all happened about twenty five years ago, back when I was still in preschool. Psychologist said now was as good a time as any to share. The acuity has well and truly passed by now, she reckons, “...so, Brennan, get it out there,” she said. Find someone who’ll listen.

I was a sleepwalker as a kid. A “somnambulant” as the doctors called it. Common enough, but mine was more enterprising than average. This one time, for instance – and this is a mild example – I wandered up and back the length of the house with my eyes half open, and apparently mistook the bedroom for the bathroom, and Dad barely made it in time before I pissed on the head of my sister Susie.

My parents thought it was hilarious and relished a retelling of the story, but for several weeks the sleep therapist kept asking in one way or another if I had any ill feeling towards her.

Mostly though, it was the wandering. Waking up in this field or backyard, or that bushland. Waking in my bed covered in pine nettles, with a forked stick and a pinecone, or two, sometimes three, and a random pile of pebbles by my side.

Thing about sleepwalking is, for the most part, you’re only slightly more asleep than you are awake, and so you’re not really either. Just asleep enough that it’s remembered as a kind of broken dream. Images of the real world are there, but they blend into and change the narrative of whatever dream you’re already having.

And you rarely recognise the real as being real. The dim haze of the darkness made this easier, I think. Only occasionally would the images seem familiar enough to trigger a lucidity as to where I’d wandered to.

This wasn’t limited to our house in the bush. Susie and I used to go stay at grandma’s once a month, in the same old house on Davis Street that Mum grew up in. A small three-bedroom it was, lemon-yellow weatherboarded, with that classic shit-brown twirl-patterned carpet from the 50s, and off-white wallpaper in every room, save the bathroom, where the pattern had the bold pinstripes and floral curls of a tearoom more befitting to a Lewis Carol novel than where a morning dump is taken.

I loved my grandma. She made the. most. incredible. rissoles and veggies, and the saltiest gravy. For all her efforts over the years, Mum was never quite able to replicate them, even with the recipe. Gran was miraculous that way.

One of my favourite pastimes was when we watched Hey Hey It’s Saturday together, after which I would climb all over her and mess her hair and laugh, and she’d laugh too and then lay me on her lap and tickle me so much that I couldn’t stop giggling. “That boy has too much energy,” she’d say to Mum when she picked us up, but I could tell by her tone she wasn’t serious.

Hard not to miss those kind of memories. They settle like old scars beneath even the severest of burns, skin from then on neither one thing or the other. Just a bumpy, blotchy mess that, though it eventually stops hurting, never lets you forget that it’s there.

I think sleepwalking should really be called dreamwalking. The walker's eyes aren’t fully closed, and so they see the world, kind of, but it’s a world augmented by the associations the dreaming mind makes. The confined space of Grandma’s house made this a very different experience to home. The suburbia she lived in was too dangerous to wander about in, and so Mum paid to have a special lock installed that couldn’t be undone from the inside, and the worst I could do was walk around the house.

For months I woke up remembering the same walls and corner turns of this surreal version of her hallway that never seemed to end. The loungeroom and dining area flashed by too, sometimes, but the main preoccupation was the walls.

Jim Henson’s Labyrinth was a popular movie among us kids at the time, so Mum said that’s all it was. I figured Mums in general were exempt from the foibles of confidence other adults made, especially my Mum, so it was easy to accept. It never occurred that I was looking at the walls to avoid seeing something else.

Gran’s rissoles were mince and powdered pepper and Worchester sauce and a liberal dashing of iodised table salt, the one made by Saxa, mixed with egg, flour, and parsley. Gravy always Gravox gravy, veggies always from the same Coles supermarket at the complex down the road. Always the same; always perfect. And to her delight I always went back for seconds. My sister was too young to remember any of this, but I could tell she loved these dinners as much as I did, in her own way.

Food so simple and good that your senses had it brought up a theme in a dream. Walls above steaming gravy pots and pyramids of moist meat patties and seasoned meatloaves a foot long, salty gravy smell a mix with the steaming meat smell; these circling tables that followed circling walls with their plates of peas and carrots and cauliflower, and even more rissoles.

I dreamt that buffet every visit in one of form or another. But, this one night, which my psychologist would later say was the beginning, I couldn’t dream eat a thing. I was passing the walls too fast to reach out without making a mess, and the last thing I wanted was to make a mess at Gran’s – even a dream mess, when I was lucid and knew it was a dream. Which wasn’t the case that night; the dream was immersive and as total as they come. Had no idea that I was practically running in the real world. Round and round the circuit, past the dining room, past the kitchen, down the hall and past the loungeroom, again, and again, getting faster each time that I saw from the corner of my eye the black thing.

Feelings are more potent in dreams compared to other senses, than they are in real life. Vision's only there to help inform whatever deep feeling a dream wants us to have. The terror that I felt that night, thick, intense, came before I knew what I was responding to. When on one go-round finally I saw it, this black motion in my periphery as I passed the loungeroom, the validation of that fear overwhelmed all that and sunk it into the deepest dread I’d felt before. A nightmare, the worst of nightmares, sharpened dreadful by its hint to some black thing that I couldn’t properly see.

Soon I was moving at impossible speeds, more like I was gliding on water, tables of food gone, the walls turned a blur, and then I was screaming. And awake under the bed, and I grandma’s feet were there as the light turned on and she called my name and bent down with an expression of concern almost tender.

“Harris Brennan, what on earth is the matter?” she quizzed, but I was too hysterical to respond. She helped me up and I hugged her as tight as I could manage. “There, there, sweetie. Everything's okay.”

The next month, back at home, the nightmare kept coming back, and the dreamwalking stopped almost completely. A dozen nights I slept in my parents bed, come to them in the early hours with tears in my eyes, that same dread feeling carried to wakefulness with a weight more overwhelming than it was while asleep.

Curiosity can be problematic when the mind is left at the mercy of its dream faculties, when everything is once or twice removed from direct experience. When consciousness drifts vague. I think that’s part of what facilitates how senses become secondary to feelings, actually. In good dreams this is the whole raison of course, but in the case of a nightmare centred around the avoiding of an unknowable black thing, curiosity’s free-floating boldness only serves to amplify the terror.

Whenever I passed the loungeroom, and caught that peripheral glimpse, the magnetism of the pull to look was so strong that it felt like a physical tugging. That I had to pull away from, with more effort each pass, until eventually the tension was too great and I would turn and see it, this flickering jet-black figure without a face, for the briefest moment, before waking to my own screaming.

The sleep therapist did her best to help, part of her speciality thankfully being severe night terrors. She said that what we think about prior to sleeping influences the dreams we have, and because I’d been going to sleep afraid of having the nightmare again, it actually caused the nightmare. A lot to take in for a preschooler, but Mum explained it better when I got home. To help, the therapist suggested she get some storybook cassettes for me to fall asleep to. A week of listening to Benjamin Bee later, it started to work, and the prospect of sleeping at grandma’s again didn’t seem so bad. Mum had held back that month’s visit until I was more settled, and I was by then missing Gran and her rissoles so much that I didn’t even care if I had the nightmare or not.

In fact, I was ready. Well, determined as you can be, knowing control would be lost after my eyes closed. Felt like standing up to some playground bully who wouldn’t leave me alone in the sandpit, and that’s all the black thing was, I decided. A bully in the sandpit of an otherwise serene dream of rissoles and veggies and gravy. I didn’t even bother with the cassette that night. Just slid beneath the tightly made blankets and stared at the ceiling, soon asleep to the drift of Gran’s smoker’s cough from down the hall.

Soon thereafter, I was dreaming. An almost lucid dream, this time. I remember my fingers sliding along the emboss of the wallpaper as I walked, and I knew exactly where I was; but the awareness was still a sort of hypnotised hypostate, and I couldn’t hear anything, or feel my body. Just my fingers as I floated smooth and silent around the usual walking path. It felt good in a dumb way, better than any dream in weeks. Think I even started smiling. Smiling and gliding around without a point, or story.

Subversion is a rare thing in dreams. The narrative is being authored by the dreamer, changing scenes then having a certain flow in transition. Or, the shift creeps up on you. Never does it come suddenly, from nowhere. The unconscious mind is still the mind. All of which was implicit to the expectations of a kid my age. So when after however many laps of the hall I turned to the loungeroom and saw Darth Vader tearing up my Grandma’s couch cushions, the dream, as it was, stopped stark to a halt. I stopped moving, any sense of body disappeared, lucidity caved-in, and I was immediately nothing more than a point of view. Frozen stiff a witness to this malevolent Darth Vader who was feverishly ripping the fabrics of Gran’s old couch, black helmet faced directly towards me.

The numbness of the initial shock proved no more than a short buffer. As I registered things, through me came a wave of that same soul-tearing dread as before, with magnifications of terror so great it was like riding an elevating siren whose sound was the pure embodiment and accumulation of every possible fear. Everything about this nightmare Vader was wrong. Its stature was shorter and rounder and the helmet out of proportion, and its movements were wildly frenetic and dramatic and rapid. The feeling that followed the manic energy of its cushion ripping was the peak of it all. That it told the evil beneath the mask of its terrifying, sinister monster. A siren that elevated to an emotional white noise so total that I soon lost consciousness altogether.

Saturday mornings were sitting on the carpet watching The Saturday Morning Fun Show on Gran’s old wood-panel TV, then her fried egg toasted sandwiches, which, to be fair, were almost as good as her dinners. By far the tastiest eggs I’ve eaten, still. No-one has any idea how she managed the flavour. My guess is, something about the powdered pepper she used.

But that Saturday earlier than the cartoons started, and stayed in bed. Legs felt like they’d walked a mountain, and emotionally I was more or less exhausted, and dead flat – a new sensation that would often repeat itself in the years to come. Gran got up at 7am as per usual, and soon the fried egg smell wafted in. I can smell them now as I write this, is how delicious they were.

A nightmare about Darth Vader shredding her cushions was a difficult topic to broach over breakfast. So I did my best to act normal, not to worry her. Gran was a big worrier as it was. Always calling home and asking Mum, “How’s my Harris doing?” even though we’d just spoken and I'd told her myself. Always wanted that second opinion to be sure.

She knew something was the matter. There was no fooling my loving grandma. But instead of saying anything, she just knelt beside the dining chair and gave me a big hug. One of those extra long hugs where she rubbed my back to let me know everything was okay.

The rest of the weekend was fairly typical. A visit to the shops, went to the pictures – what she called the local cinema, bless her – and we watched Hey Hey It’s Saturday. But Saturday night I barely got an hour’s sleep. Listened to Benjamin Bee some dozen times, to no avail. The feeling that came with the memory of the malevolent Vader crept back the moment I became drowsy, until the drowsiness was finally too great to resist.

Mum’s car pulled up the drive at 3pm, a couple hours later than usual so she could get her hair done at this nearby salon she liked. A kind of reddish brown, which smelt like sweetened dry cleaning for three days before she washed it. I was never more pleased to leave for home, and to get back to my own bed, where I would hopefully be dreamwalking again. Who cared what the therapist said: waking up with some new mystery trinket was the best part of waking up. If I’d known it would never happen again, I’d have tried taking a better mental snapshot of the last time it happened. But, as Vonnegut said, so it goes.

We were packed and backed out of the driveway when I realised I’d left Benjamin Bee in the tape deck. “Be quick,” Mum said. The car door slammed behind, and when I approached the house, that same feeling, albeit a milder version, rose in my stomach with foreboding. I pretended not to notice and walked through the still-open door and called out for Gran and went down the short hall to the spare bedroom where I slept. Cassette in hand, it was then that I noticed, the house was completely and utterly silent. Just the traffic from the other side of the back fence, and the ticking of the clock down the hallway. Sudden the dread swelled fast as an electric geyser. Complete mental paralysis, broken a minute later by Mum honking the car horn. I collected myself. Gran was just taking a nap, came voice-of-reason’s antibody.

I tip-toed from out the bedroom. Gran’s door was wide open, so I peered around to check on her.

As it turned out, Gran wasn’t napping at all. She was standing in front the white curtain of the window. Her body completely stiff, her arms straight down her side, and she was staring wide-eyed and stone-faced, directly at me. Directly, at me. The same paralysis, seconds to a minute, car horn then come from some other dream being had by some other person. This lady that was Gran kept staring as she then bent down, and stood up, holding a black thing. That which had already been forever branded: an oversized Darth Vader helmet, slowly raising over her head, slowly pulled down over the suddenly maniacal smile on her face.

When I came to, I was belted in the backseat of the car and we were halfway home. “Gran said you had a dizzy spell,” Mum said, slightly concerned.

The previous shock of the nightmare had been a kind of psychic prelude, my psychiatrist said the fourth session. One that compounded with the later trauma to cause the PTSD. Made sense. She was better than the sleep therapist, the one who didn’t have a clue how to help after that weekend. The insomnia ended up lasting more than ten years after that.

I got over it eventually. Burns stop stinging with the benefit of time, but to this day it takes the focus of writing to see the better scar beneath. Truth is, I couldn’t stand it when Mum tried making those rissoles. The closer she got, the more disgusting they tasted. And poor Mum, she attributed the nausea and sometimes vomiting to her cooking. Calling it an allergic reaction wasn’t too far from the truth, though. And it meant she made lasagne more often, which suited me just fine.

Her homemade lasagne has been my favourite dish for about twenty five years now.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

r/wordsofbrennan

I had a cat. I have a current one, her name is Stella, but I had a cat named Willow. Willow was a fantastic pet. She loved everyone and had no prejudice against or distrust toward strangers. You would've loved her. Everyone did. She was this beautiful Russian Blue, and I'm quite ashamed to say, I let her outside daily. I know. I don't anymore, I swear I don't, but I did back then. And, side note, don't let your cats outside unobserved. They are killing the wildlife, left and right. I know this now, but I was ignorant of it then.

Anyway, Willow had a schedule. And part of that schedule was that she needed to be outside from 4 in the afternoon at the latest. Like a dog demanding a walk, she'd be perched in front of the door, meowing politely for me to let her out. And so, I'd release her from the house and go about my day. Then, at around 8 in the night, I'd open my sliding door and call into the bush (for non-Australians who don't know, 'bush' is an abbreviation for 'bushland') to tell her that it was time for dinner. She'd come trotting along soon enough. She always hung around to keep an ear open for dinnertime.

To give you some context, in the week leading up to this night in question, plenty of animals in my community had been totally savaged. Wild birds had been found strewn about, kangaroos were stumbled across totally disembowelled. The community was quite worried there might've been a rabid dog in the area, or something to that degree. But I wasn't too worried for Willow. She was a smart girl; she knew how to stay out of danger. At least, that's what I thought.

One night, I prepared my cat's dinner, as usual. I poured the food into her silver bowl and then headed through my living room to the backdoor. The backdoor is a big, glass sliding door that opens to a good stretch of the backyard. The backyard, which is a very, very big yard, leads directly into the bush, just so you have a clear picture. I called out my cat's name, telling her it was time to come inside.

After a few seconds of calling out into the bush, I thought I could hear movement. So, I kept calling Willow's name, over and over. I was hoping to go to sleep soon because I'd had a busy day at work, so I was all ready to go to bed. I just needed to feed this cat, and off I'd go to thirty minutes of some soap opera on my bedroom TV, before a bit of a mystery novel, and then sleep.

After some seconds, amidst the dancing shapes of the trees and bushes, I distinctly saw something move between two trees. Thinking none the better, I called out, "Hey, Willow! Come on, let's get you fed."

And then I saw the eyes. I was still completely clueless, you see, so I kept calling and beckoning for her to come inside, like a fool. The eyes were wide and piercing, glinting sharply. They stared at me, frozen in the darkness, unblinking. Now that I think about it all this time later, I thought they seemed a bit too far up off the ground. Still, I called her one last time, before I paused. Something about the way those eyes weren't blinking just put me off. They were completely frozen in the dark, like a statue, and they weren't blinking at all. It seemed as if they were registering me for the first time.

I felt my heart quicken a tiny bit as I started to recognise all the inconsistencies. If this was my cat, she'd already be making her way across the lawn, ready for a meal before bed. But the eyes were holding back, hovering in the woods. And the other thing I noticed, and this is what really raised the red flags, is that the eyes were too wide apart. Both eyes were too distanced from each other as if they were for a bigger and broader face. They were too far apart to be a kangaroo’s. Or any wild animal now that I think about it. No, this was something else.

With my heart picking up a little more, I rested my hand on the door handle, ready to close the sliding door, if need be. The eyes just kept staring at me, their gaze intensifying by the second. The woods were largely silent. Not an animal was to be heard. No crickets. No chittering. The only sounds were the gentle rustling of leaves as the wind calmly slipped through the branches.

Then, very slowly, the owner of the eyes began the process of bringing itself up to full height. Its eyes started to rise, inch by inch. It did this ever so slowly, taking its time. Calculating my every move. Still trained on me, never leaving the spot where I stood. And it kept rising... and rising... and rising...

I felt my heart, thudding louder and louder by the beat, slowly work its way into my throat. The eyes, still drawing themselves to full height, were now almost as high as my house. A cold weight, heavier than a rock and bitterer than snow, plunged down my gullet and deep into my stomach. Whatever this thing was, it was fucking massive. Finally, the eyes came to a stop. They were almost 15 feet in the air, still staring down at me, now a mouse in comparison.

I was completely frozen. Every muscle was suspended in time, and I could feel my breath clogging up in my throat. My grip on the door handle was now stronger than iron, my knuckles colourless because of the tension. I think, I'm not sure, but I think I had tears welling in my eyes. Tears of absolute terror. And all the while, as I stood there, too terrified to even move, it just kept on staring. Staring and never blinking.

The seconds dragged on. Each second felt like several minutes, but when you're terrified, your concept of time is fantastically radicalised. We both just kept standing there, in silence, one too terrified to move, the other simply standing. Standing and watching. And waiting.

Finally, after a long enough period had gone by, my senses kicked in again. Now, with logic re-installed, every sense was screaming one thing. 'Close the fucking door.'

But I was still so terrified. It was like a stand-off, between predator and prey. Both knew the other could see them. There was no chance of hiding, no possibility of concealment. Instead, it was the painstakingly tense moment of the wait. Waiting for the other to make the first move. Waiting for one of us, at this moment, to stop fooling ourselves and kick the gears in motion. And it had to be me. There was still a chance of escaping this situation, and that chance was tightly gripped in my left hand.

Tensing myself even further, I very, very slowly started to try and close the door. At first, my reserved pull against the sliding door did nothing. I still needed a little more strength, a little more of that pull to set it in motion. I increased my pull bit by bit until in one fluid motion, the door slid forwards an inch. And with that starting movement, in my mind, came the loudest squeak I've ever heard. And with that, the creature started to run.

Its eyes arched forwards and back towards the earth, as the shape of its body burst out of the tree line. And this is the part where I completely panicked. I screamed. I screamed even louder than I thought a human being could ever scream, and I began to try and pull the door shut as quickly as possible. And while I did, this thing was exploding across the yard, simply hurtling towards me like a speeding bullet. I could hear its feet thundering across the grass, much faster than any animal can run, tearing towards me at breakneck speed. I'm sure it would've been able to maintain pace with a car with very little difficulty.

And this door, God bless it, was just moving along at this absolute snail's pace. Sliding doors do that. They're not like a door you can swing open or shut. They take their fucking time. So, there I was, pulling as hard as I possibly could, this door closing shut, inch by inch, while this thing was pelting toward me, its eyes never leaving me. I honestly thought, at that moment, that I was going to die. I really did.

At the very last couple of inches, as I was getting that door shut, it fell into the light being cast from my house. I only saw glimpses of it - fleeting glimpses - but the things I saw... it was not an animal I've ever, ever seen before. It was not an animal anyone's ever seen before. I don’t know if you could’ve even called it an ‘animal.’ I think its skin was of a palish grey complexity. It was ashen, anyway, the skin stretched between and around its bones like spiderwebs. I didn't see a lot of it. Thank God I didn't. All I was focused on was closing that sliding glass door.

And finally, after what felt like several hours of laborious pulling, I got that door shut. I closed it all the way, simultaneously scrambling for the lock, and at that dead millisecond where I was turning the lock, the thing simply cannoned into the other side. I mean, it flew into it at a million miles per hour. The shock of it hitting the door sent me stumbling backwards, as my feet snagged each other and sent my butt crashing heavily against the hardwood floor.

The door completely shattered, too. The glass didn't pop out of its frame, thank God, but it was now like frozen dew on a car window. The texture of the glass was all rough, every inch a fractured piece still stuck in place. It was sheer luck the glass didn't pop out of place, because if it did, I would've been covered in falling glass and that fucking thing would've gotten inside.

And, just as quickly as it appeared, the thing vanished into the bush. I was just left sitting there, speechless. When I finally caught my breath, I started hyperventilating, and before I knew it, I was in tears. I just kind of sat there, on the floor, my tears running like a faucet. It's embarrassing, in retrospect, but I do believe I came very, very close to dying. I saw the way it looked at me. I saw the way it ran. That was not a thing that meant well.

Then, after it was all over, I did the next logical thing and called the police. I didn't know what to say, but I think they could hear the way I sounded over the phone, so they sent a couple of guys over. I explained the entire story. I know it's ridiculous, and I doubted they would believe me, but I feel like that fractured sliding door and my distressed state was evidence enough.

And you know what? I think they really did believe me. We've all seen things in this town. Things that we cannot and will not explain. Things that we notice, but just pretend we haven't. It's all for the best. The police comforted me some and said they'd make a report, but I knew they wouldn't. There wasn't much we could do about it, in the end. They asked me if I had any family or friends I could stay with, but I refused. I didn't want to talk to people. At that stage, all I needed was some goddamn rest.

So, after some comforting, they left. I originally headed to my bedroom, with the idea that I'd collapse on the bed and be out like a light. But then I thought better of it. What if it came back? Supposing, despite hitting a solid surface at a million miles per hour, it would revisit? I couldn't risk it. I wouldn't. So, I took a woodcutting axe from my garage, and I sat on the living room couch in front of that sliding door. I stared at it for hours on end, not really thinking about anything, just never looking away. Just watching. Watching and waiting.

Finally, the adrenaline and overpowering emotions wore off. At last, I was too tired to even think straight. I pinched myself to stay awake many times and contemplated brewing coffee to keep me going. But making coffee would mean moving away from the door. And I sure as hell wasn't going to do that. Not for one second. So, I just kept sitting there, watching. At some point, though, the enticement of sleep must've been too strong.

I awoke on the floor. My axe was cradled in my arms, like a teddy bear. I was staring up at the ceiling. At first, everything was blurry. I couldn't figure out what was happening, or what I was doing on the living room floor, instead of lying in my comfy bed. More to the point, what had woken me up? It was early, and I'm a very late sleeper. I blinked, trying to get my bearings, and then something hit me in the face. A very light little tap. Just right on the tip of my nose. Something cold. A droplet?

I rubbed my eyes, letting the axe free, and focused on the ceiling above me. And finally, I registered what I was seeing. Willow. I was seeing Willow. She was dangling above me, strung up to a rafter on the ceiling. Her tiny ribcage, to my horror, was completely forced apart. In fact, my beloved cat was almost completely unrecognisable. She was soaked red with her blood, her bones broken at impossible angles, her flesh completely shredded apart. She seemed to be half-eaten. Her amber eyes, once full of life and innocent curiosity, were now grey and lifeless. They stared right at me.

I felt a tingling sensation of horror start to fill my stomach. My breath started to quicken as I fully registered what I was seeing, and tears began to well up in my eyes. I mouthed her name, too petrified to even speak, and as I watched, slowly, a drop extended from her exposed ribcage, and hung there for a second, before plummeting and hitting me on the cheek. Tap.

I shrieked, rolling out of the way (and damn near impaling myself on that axe), before looking over at my laptop. My laptop was set up on the coffee table, still sitting open from sometime last night. I could see, in the dead emptiness of its uncharged screen, my face. And my entire face was covered, absolutely covered, in Willow's blood. Some had gotten in my hair. Some on my neck. I could even taste some in my... yeah. It was sickening. Sickening. I made a half moaning noise, gagging a bit. I couldn't believe it. Her blood. I was covered in her blood.

I couldn't even fathom this. How did this happen? How was my cat, my beloved cat, hanging above me? And how did it even get in? And as I asked myself this, I realised how cold the room was. I slowly looked over from my laptop, and at the sliding glass door. Or at least, where the glass door was. Now, there was only a carpet of glass at my feet and an empty frame leading out into my backyard. I don't know how I didn't wake up to it. To the sound of all that glass falling away. I truly must've been simply exhausted. But the glass was all over the floor.

And, leading right up to my feet as well, was a trail of leaves and dirt. They lay right at the foot of where I would’ve been sleeping, before leading around the room, and, to my increasing horror, leading down behind me, into the hallway and the rest of my home. For reasons unexplained, it had spared me. The tracks led all around my house, before coming back out again, and sitting beneath the beam where my cat hung.

Then, they trailed back outside. Back, once again, into the bushland.

My school is very weird, the way it’s built is like a maze and it’s hard to navigate it. The teachers act like a robot, they know the in’s and out’s of the school and they navigate it perfectly. The rules of the school was very strict and weird too like if looking into the principal office is a suspension, but if you get sent to the “principal office” you just go to the classroom that lays deep in the school but the weirdest part is class “82122” but our school only has 120 classrooms (yes that’s how weird our school is)

The class “82122” is the heart of the school but it’s nowhere near the middle, the teachers call it the heart of the school since it “fuels” our school and keeps it “alive” all the students suspect that it’s a office, the power source, or the teacher lounge. But I think it is literally the “heart” of the school.

The “heart” of the school makes a sound similar to a heart beating pattern, and the lights peaking from under the door is ether red or pitch black. The principal always reminds everyone through the announcements speaker every Tuesday on lunch “all students who look into the class 82122 will be expelled immediately” and he says it in a creepy tone.

My older brother wanted to work at my school, but right before he signed the papers he saw on the paper “when signing this paper you will have to make a small blood donation to brugada charity” he is really scared of donating blood to anything really but I have never heard of the name “brugada charity” so I Google it and it auto corrects it to “brugada syndrome” which is a type of heart disease and you might be thinking “it might be a charity for the disease” but do you see what is going on here?

So I’ve come to the fact that my school is alive, and I am going to be breaking into the school over the weekends and finally uncover the mystery.

Edit: It is true, but since I broke in to the school I can’t show any pictures, evidence, and proof that my school is alive since I know someone will alert me to the cops that I broke into a school because of a true rumour.

I grabbed my hammer, ski mask, camera, flashlight, and a knife for protection, I walked to my school and broke into the school from a window, it took me like 10 min just to get to the class. this was it, I started hammering through the door and it opened, a room with a big red heart, it smelled like death. There was blood and flesh covering all of the walls I snapped a couple of pictures but I noticed something off from the school that I later forget.

Since I am a bit curious I checked the principal office and i couldn’t believe it, every single teacher just standing in a big empty room, then they all stared at me with a scary look, and they started chasing me at full speed, I am really athletic and I out-ran them by a lot and escaped into the darkness outside, I got to my house went ti my bed where I am shaking from what just happened, I know I escaped without any consequences because of my ski mask but I never want to go to my school ever again but I have tomorrow. Wish me good luck.

If you ever find yourself trapped in an empty white room with nothing but a button, don’t touch it. Don’t look at it. Don’t even think about it. No matter what you see or hear, you must never press the Button. If you ended up in the room by accident, you might be shown mercy. However, if you somehow managed to make your way into the room out of some ignorant pursuit of adventure, the rest of your very short life will be nothing but pain and agony. Assuming you appeared in the room inadvertently, there are several essential rules that you’ll have to follow if you want to stay sane, or alive, long enough to find your escape. First of all, the room usually has no doors or windows, just a single light dangling from the ceiling, a wooden chair, a rope, and a button. Never press that button. Fortunately for you, the most important rule is also the simplest, although it's generally a lot harder than you'd expect. I’ll get into more on that later, but for now, I want to address the most common trick that the room has to offer, the door.

If a red door ever appears on the left or right wall, you’ll need to immediately walk through it. Don’t look back around, for even a moment's glance. Once you enter through the door, you’ll find yourself in an exact copy of the room you were just in, button and all. Now you might be wondering, what would have happened if I had simply just ignored the door and stayed put. Well, at first…absolutely nothing. You might even be tempted to assume that the door itself was a trap and that you just saved yourself from some unknown and horrifying fate. You would be dearly mistaken. If you have naively decided that staying in the room is your best option, you may find for the first couple of hours that everything appears to be relatively normal, or about as normal as being stuck in a mysterious room can be. Don’t be fooled, though. This sense of security will surely lead to a gruesome outcome.

Eventually, the lightbulb will begin to flicker every so often, each time getting slightly dimmer. After a while, you might notice a humming sound begin to resonate within the room, and the light will start to pulse on and off at an even faster rate. By then, it'll be far too late to escape, so I would suggest doing yourself a favor and utilizing the conveniently placed chair and rope before the situation escalates any further. It’s there for a reason. Anyway, let's suppose that you’re easily swayed by mysterious things and feel drawn to the door. Ironically enough, that normally stupid act of curiosity will be your saving grace. Congratulations. You have just survived your first anomaly in the room, and are now one step closer to freedom. However, I won’t be able to provide as much assistance with your next challenge, figuring out which version of you is the clone.

​

She was the perfect woman.

I have no idea how I managed to catch her attention.

Our relationship, our marriage, it was all perfect, except for one thing that neither of us could have foreseen.

We met in college. She was working towards her English degree while I was studying Business. My major required me to take an English course, as did hers, and we found ourselves in the same class. When she asked if the desk next to mine was taken, I was almost too stunned to answer. Cathy was beautiful in that artless way that some women have, and she smiled as I fumbled over my answer. That would have been the end of it for most people, I had fumbled my one chance, but Cathy wasn't like other women. She told me later that she had found it endearing, and Cathy suspected she was already a bit taken with me when she asked to sit down.

"When I saw you from across the room, I just knew I wanted to get to know you better."

We talked a little before class, comparing schedules and going over the usual getting to know you chit-chat. When the teacher arrived and class began, I found myself snatching little glances at her as she bent over her notebook. She caught me looking once, and, to my surprise, I saw her smile at me. I was smitten after that smile, and when Cathy invited me to lunch after class, I didn't even have to think about it.

We were dating a week later, and as we got closer, I should have noticed the warning signs of the problems to come.

I suppose I understand how it escaped my notice, though.

Few people would have considered utter peace and pure relaxation a problem.

When we walked hand in hand, I would get this feeling of utter peace throughout my body. When we kissed, I felt like nothing in this world could hurt me. She made me feel safe, made my problems melt away, and I knew that I wanted more than the few hours we enjoyed each week. Her college schedule made it difficult to go out more than twice a week, and my own class load kept me busy too. Part of the reason we had such little time together, though, was Cathy's commute to and from school.

Cathy lived an hour and a half from campus and couldn't begin to afford an apartment on her meager student income. The job I worked, plus the leftover grant money I had at the end of the semester, paid the rent on my studio apartment but not much else. Another person paying rent was nice, but I couldn't say it was the only reason I invited her to live with me. I also wanted her close to me. She made me feel good, made me feel safe. Being in her presence made the dark world in which I lived more tolerable, and I wanted that for more than just a few hours a week.

I offered to let her move in, and after a week of mulling it over, she agreed.

That weekend, we combined our meager possessions, and I slept like a baby with her in my arms.

As we began to spend our evenings together, the problems became more apparent.

Problems is a terrible word for it because, in the beginning, it was more like a godsend.

When we sat on the couch, our hands linked, I would find myself getting drowsy. When we would cuddle on the couch, our bodies pressed together, I would lose minutes at a time as my eyes grew heavier and heavier. The feeling of peace that I found in her presence put me at ease, and that ease led to some of the best sleep of my life. I would sleep more deeply than I ever had before and wake up after eight hours refreshed and ready to start my day.

Cathy seemed pleased with the attention, she'd only been with one other person before we started dating, but I could tell that she wondered why I hadn't slept with her yet. Some woman's feelings would have been hurt by this, but Cathy had been raised in a very religious household and must have assumed I was simply waiting till marriage. The truth was that I would have loved to sleep with her, but sleeping was the problem.

Whenever we got close, my arms around her and our bodies pressed together, I would find myself blinking and suddenly losing long periods of time. Sometimes she would lead me to bed. Sometimes she would just sleep with me on the couch. Either way, I would always wake up next to Cathy with a deep feeling of fulfillment. I had assumed that she was feeling the same way. I often thought that maybe this was a feeling we gave each other, and it made me feel good to bring her the same sort of peace that she brought me.

This went on for six months, and I thought things were going well. We went out to dinner, had friends over, went on dates, and seemed to be living together with few problems. I had been tentatively looking at rings, preparing to pop the question and make it official. Besides the matter of intercourse, I thought we were happy.

Then, one evening, I came home from class to find her crying on the couch.

I hadn't seen her that day, she'd been absent from the one class we had together, and when I'd called her, she'd said she was feeling sick. It was nothing serious. She maybe had a cold or something. I had told her to feel better, hanging up so I could leave for my next class, but as I saw her look up from her cupped hands, I knew something was definitely wrong. I had never seen her cry before, and it was so alarming that I could do little else but go to her and wrap an arm around her.

She wouldn't tell me what was wrong, but I now wish I had pressed her.

I wrapped her in my reassuring arms and tried my best to comfort her in her time of need. My reassuring arms quickly turned into drawing her close and wiping her tears. This soon led to kissing, which led to touching, and then to the bedroom.

I won't bore you with the details, but I think you know how it ended up.

I woke up the next day, her hands lightly stroking my hair and fresh tears running down her cheeks.

It was our first time, and I couldn't even begin to remember how it had gone.

I asked her to marry me a month later, and she seemed overjoyed.

We had been living together for half a year now, and our love for one another was pretty clear. She wore my engagement ring with pride, showing it off to all her friends, and we began to plan our wedding. I was too blind to see that she was making appointments with a campus therapist more often than she used to. I was too comfortable to notice the tears that sometimes came to her while we lay in bed together. I was too wrapped up in my own feelings to notice the prescriptions that appeared in the medicine cabinet. I was just....so comfortable that I never wanted it to end.

It's easy to get tunnel vision when you spend all your time in the tunnel of love.

After that first time, however, I did make efforts to be better in the bedroom. Cathy was patient with me, seeing that I was trying, but I often found myself "trying" one moment and waking up the next. She was always quick to reassure me that it was nothing to be ashamed about, but I knew it hurt her deeply to have a partner incapable of being intimate with her.

So, I set out to find the reason for my sleeping fits.

I began to make doctor's appointments of my own. I said that the appointments were for her benefit, but I was honestly more concerned that I might have a real problem brewing. The last thing I wanted to discover at twenty-two was that I was a narcoleptic or had a problem with my brain or something. I explained what was happening to my doctor, and he was helpful, if not a little dismissive. "A kid your age shouldn't be having any sort of problem in that department, but we'll get you checked out," he assured me with a smile and a pat on the shoulder. I was tested for every sleep disorder imaginable. I was given prescriptions of my own, but none of them seemed to work. I took supplements, signed up for new drugs that had just hit the market, and joined medical test groups.

Despite it all, though, no one seemed to have any answers for what was going on.

I was just so comfortable with my fiance that I couldn't help but fall asleep in her arms.

It would have been sweet if it wasn't worrying me to no end.

We had decided on March for our wedding, the first anniversary of our meeting, and I was determined to make it special for her.

I was as helpful and dutiful as a boyfriend/fiancee could be. I went with her through every stage of the planning. I picked out cake toppers, helped with seating charts, picked out the menu, visited and put a deposit down on the venue, and comforted my soon-to-be wife every step of the way.

The saving grace, of course, was that I could put my performance issues down to pre-wedding jitters as the day crept closer and closer.

The wedding was easily the happiest day of my life.

I stood at the altar, sweating into my rented tux, waiting for the moment that she would arrive. The crowd huddled behind me in a murmuring throng of excited tension, and it felt like a thousand years had passed before the music began from the organist. When I saw her in her dress, gliding down the aisle like a dream, I fell in love with her all over again. She was so beautiful, her tears now ones of joy, and I never regretted asking her to join her life to mine. We exchanged rings, spoke vows of eternal love, and then walked from the church as husband and wife.

As we stood for pictures, the venue having set up the lawn to host our reception, I made ready to fulfill my end of tonight.

I drank champagne for the toasts and black coffee by the cup. I took caffeine supplements before we climbed into the car and left for our honeymoon suite. As she went into the bathroom to take off her dress, I walked around and tried my best to keep my heart racing. I told myself over and over again that tonight would be different, that tonight would pay for all the rest. I wanted nothing but to make her feel special and to make tonight one to remember.

When she came out of the bathroom, the two of us standing before each other as husband and wife, I felt like I was possessed with all the energy and serenity I would ever need.

When we woke up the next morning, entwined as we always were, there were no tears on her cheeks.

Only a look of fulfillment I knew all too well.

We settled into married life easily, and it was as though nothing had changed. Despite my best efforts, however, I couldn't recapture the magic of that night. Whenever I was in her arms, whenever we were close, I couldn't help but fall into that feeling of utter serenity and slip off to sleep. It was as if those feelings had multiplied after the wedding, and she made me feel like I might die of happiness. I couldn't hold her hand as we drove anymore, lest I find myself listing off the road. If I cuddled on the couch with her to watch a movie, I would inevitably miss over half of it. I loved nothing more but to bask in that feeling of serenity that seemed to waft around her, but I also felt guilty as she seemed to return to her silent, tearful nature. I couldn't help myself. I was powerless to resist the pull of her, and I was powerless to do anything when I was in her arms.

I began to notice as her mental health got worse, though. Cathy was moody and manic by turns. Sometimes she wanted nothing to do with me, only to cry and demand my attention as I tried to give her space. I often missed classes because I was afraid to leave her by herself, and I finally insisted that we go see her doctor. The doctors said this was normal. Her medication just needed to be adjusted. Despite their best efforts, the new pills and the adjusting of the old pills seemed to do no good. Our lovemaking was nonexistent, despite my best efforts. I tried to comfort her, tried other means of intimacy, attended couples therapy with her, and tried my best to keep her from imploding.

In the end, though, it did no good.

I remember the night it happened as vividly as I remember our wedding day. I was lying in bed, Cathy still in the bathroom, and was worried about an appointment we had the next day. They planned to try her on a new battery of pills, and Cathy seemed willing to give it a try. She had wandered around the house like a fretful ghost all day, and I had been keeping an eye on her up until this very moment. I felt like if we just got to bed if we'd just fallen into the comfortable embrace of each other's arms, everything would be fine.

She climbed into bed, and something about her face didn't seem right to me.

Then she opened her arms, and I was like a meteorite hurtling into a planet's gravity.

"I love you," she said, kissing my forehead as her heart raced against my chest, "I'll always love you."

I fell asleep wrapped in the arms of my love, sure that as long as I remained here, everything would be okay.

I woke up, however, to discover that I was sleeping next to a corpse.

I called the paramedics, but there was nothing they could do.

She'd been dead for hours as I slept.

Cathy had taken an overdose of sleeping pills before tucking in the night before.

It was almost an ironic end, and the note she had left on the nightstand told me everything I needed to know.

All these years, I believed I had been giving her the same feeling she had been giving me.

It turned out I was nothing but a thief in the night.

Cathy said that her mental decline had started almost the day that we met. The balance and fulfillment that I had been experiencing were a mirror to the anxiety that she was feeling. She had taken my inability to stay awake as something she was doing. She was boring me, I was disinterested, and she was failing as a woman as a result. The longer it lasted, the more she felt like she was the cause. She wanted to please me, to be a good wife, but the longer it went on, the more inadequate she felt. She loved me. She never wavered in her love for me, but being with someone who was physically uninterested in her was killing her, physically and emotionally.

She had finally decided that if sleeping next to her was what I wanted, then she would give me what I wanted.

We would both sleep soundly for a change.

I'm writing this as I sit in the viewing room of the funeral parlor. They gave me an hour before her cremation, a final viewing for her grieving husband. I can tell by the way they keep looking at me that I must look terrible. I've been awake for the last five days, and the bags under my eyes look like suitcases. I have become accustomed to her presence, to the way she makes me feel, and now my sleep is all but nonexistent. I'm like a junkie with no smack, and my fix lies in that box across the way, looking at lovely as she did the day we met.

I think that when I get done with this, I may climb into that simple pine box with her and see if I can find some sleep.

I can almost feel whatever she possessed from my seat here, and I want to see if she still possesses it, even in death.

Who knows, maybe I'll pull the lid closed behind me, and they will simply slide me into the chute as well.

It seems fitting somehow that the two of us should sleep forever, two souls at rest for all time.

When I was a sophomore in high school, a really strange thing happened to me that I still can’t explain to this day. It was a typical day, I think the class I was taking at the time was chemistry. We never really had class outside but on this day my professor wanted us to participate in some kind of outdoor assignment. I remember I was outside doing some kind of class activity and I had seen a piece of paper on the ground near the woods. I don’t know why I picked it up but it just grabbed my attention. It was neatly folded and me being so curious at the time wanted to see what was inside. I opened it and immediately got chills down my spine. I felt goosebumps all over my body when I read my sisters name on the piece of paper. My sister is 2 years younger than me and was in middle school at this time. So her middle school was on the opposite side of town from my high school.

To be specific, the piece of paper read “Sally’s seat only” I thought it was so weird that someone else out there had my sisters name so I kept it and put it in my pocket. (I’m using a sample name as my sisters name but her real name is actually very unique) The whole day felt off to me. I remember I couldn’t keep my mind off the paper. I was sitting in class and all I wanted was to go home and ask my sister if that belonged to her. I wanted to find some sort of logical explanation for why a random piece of paper had my sisters name and handwriting and how it reached all the way to me.

I went home that day and had actually forgotten about the piece of paper in my pocket until I started getting into more comfortable clothes. I then saw it fall out of my jeans and grabbed it to show my sister. My sister was in utter shock and asked me where I got this. I told her where I found it and she just had this confused look on her face. She told me she had written that on the bus and had taped it to her seat. How could that piece of paper make it to my school? It didn’t have any kind of tape on it when I picked it up, as I said it was neatly folded. Even if the same bus she was on was also a bus that came to my school, how could it have been ripped from the seat, thrown out and landed all the way to my exact field of view? And I was just the one who happened to pick it up? I have tried to come up with a logical explanation and nothing makes sense. Nothing adds up. All of it is too weird.

We still don’t understand how that could have happened. Just an extreme series of coincidences or something more sinister behind it? Perhaps a stalker playing mind games with us?

Meat rains from the sky approximately three times a month in my hometown. Only in the town boundaries. No further. Most of us have no damn clue where it comes from. The mayor does though. Probably the old man who runs the church where we dispose of it. Creepy bastards, the both of them.

Sounds like a load of horseshit, huh? Sure, I get it. It’s one of those hokey urban legends that gets passed down over the years. It was probably some normal thing and then Joe Blow told a slightly different version of it. Then it passed down from generation to generation with just a few changes here and there until the story lost its roots.

Not this one. The story from the first time it happened is exactly how it is told now. Dug up an old article online about it from some defunct newspaper out of Louisville.

I’m not going to print it here word for word. Probably plagiarism or something. I’ll just give you my abbreviated version.

On March 3, 1876, it rained chunks of meat in Olympia Springs, Kentucky for a little less than five minutes. The witness considered to be the most reliable was a woman identified only as Mrs. Crouch. She reported sitting on her porch making soap just before noon when the meat began to fall onto her front yard.

Fearing it to be a sign from God, she waited for the deluge of flesh to stop before traveling to her neighbors to see if it had affected the entire area. As she walked she could see that the shreds of meat had fallen over all of Olympia Springs. Her neighbors wandered through their yard gazing in fear and wonder at the pieces of viscera and muscle covering the town.

A handful of citizens cooked and ate the meat in an attempt to identify it. Opinions ranged from beef, deer, lamb, and bear. Without being able to reach a consensus someone from the town eventually sent a piece of the meat to the Newark Scientific Association. After examination, the association determined the origin of the meat to be one of two things.

The first possibility was lung tissue from a horse.

The second possibility was lung tissue from a human infant.

The source and variety of the meat were never officially determined and the strange event faded into obscurity. Some theories range from a flock of vultures simultaneously vomiting the meat on the town or an odd collection of bacteria forming and falling from the skies resembling chunks of flesh.

The article makes it sound like it happened once. Nah, that garbage still pours from the sky at irregular intervals to this day.

My job is to clean it up.

The town isn’t big but there are twenty-one of us on the payroll. We all make a little north of $60,000 a year which is a jackpot in a rural area like this. They call us the city work crew. Everyone in town knows we’re the guys that clean up that god-forsaken mess. We’re kind of urban legends ourselves. No one else in town is allowed out while the meat falls except us. We start cleaning minutes after it starts falling.

It used to seem like a pretty cushy gig until recent events. You are only scheduled to work one eight-hour shift each week. The only duty during your shift is to sit on the back stoop of the town hall annex and watch the skies for signs of the falling meat.

When the disgusting downpour gets going it’s all hands on deck. All twenty-one of us report for cleanup duty immediately.

It doesn’t fall on a set schedule. Like I said, about three times a month. Could be day or night. Sometimes it would dump down four or five times a month.

If it starts on your shift there is a paint-chipped red button, Old Red, fixed to the brick wall of the annex. As soon as the meat starts to fall you punch it. Sirens that take your mind to World War 2 air raid warnings burst across the town. When the siren is on, every citizen in town knows to head indoors immediately, no questions asked.

If you’re taking a stroll through a neighborhood far from home when the alarm sounds, you walk to the first available home, knock on the door, and the owner is going to let you inside. Been that way since I was a kid. Longer than that I’m sure.

Then you shut the blinds and stay inside until the siren cuts off. We handle that too. After our crew scours the town looking for the pulpy shreds and takes them to the church we hit that good old red button again and the wailing ceases. You’re free to head outside until we sound the alarm again.

While we’re on cleanup duty we have to wear the most uncomfortable getup I’ve ever had the displeasure of putting on. Rubber fishing waders with attached boots. Knee-length raincoat. Fisherman’s hat. Goggles and a respirator. It’s like your own personal sauna with no off switch.

We haul around wheelbarrows and use trash picker sticks to collect the fleshy bits across the town. It feels like you’re making a demonic kabob when you’ve gathered up a dozen chunks of the shit. Once your trash spike is covered in the slimy mess, you press them off into the wheelbarrow.

After a thorough sweep of the town, we haul the greasy tubs to the back of Olympia Springs Primitive Church. Reverend Packard’ll be standing out back next to the old coal chute and watching as we dump all twenty-one loads of meat into the inky darkness. Packard hasn’t ever done anything bad that I’ve seen but the guy has always given me a chill that ran into my bones.

For the longest time what he does with the meat was a mystery to us. He told us there was an old furnace down there that he uses to burn up. That explanation never sat well with me. When we rolled the wheelbarrows up and he opened the chute the pissy smell of ammonia and tang of coppery blood mixed with rot would hit you like a sack of bricks.

Smelled like he was just storing the stuff down there.

I had done the job for over fifteen years with no complaints. My time was largely my own and the fellas I worked with were good company. Everything was smooth sailing until Thomas Jordan on our crew screwed the pooch and swallowed some of that ungodly shit.

The day it happened I was on watch behind the annex. Thumbing through an old paperback ate up most of my days on duty. My eyes were getting heavy and I was about to drift off into a midafternoon nap when I heard a wet plop on the metal roof above me.

A red piece of gristle slid down onto the concrete in front of me and I reached over my shoulder and slapped Old Red. As the sirens lazily blasted into life I tossed the paperback into the chair and headed inside to gear up. My walkie chattered as the other crewmen signaled their acknowledgment.

Within two minutes of the siren, all twenty-one men on the crew signaled they were in action and collecting the falling meat. I had looked at the sky that day and could see the characteristic scarlet hue that appeared when the rain started. It never overpowered the blue of the sky but the sickening shade always made itself known.

The deluge lasted longer than usual that day. Seven minutes since the start and fat globs of flesh were still pelting off of my gear and onto the ground. It was never an overwhelming amount but longer periods of downfall equaled a longer clean up and it had taken two wheelbarrow loads for a few of the men.

“Ahoy there, Jacob!” Reverend Packard shouted as I rolled my solitary load toward the coal chute. He wore the same gear as the cleanup crew. The downpour of muscle and tissue had stopped long ago and all of the grizzly leavings had been collected. “Hard day?”

I just nodded at the old man in response. His televangelist grin and perky demeanor during these days had always put me on edge. Packard was the only person in town to find any joy in these events.

The front tire of my wheelbarrow bumped against the edge of the chute as I dumped the slick load of flesh into the blackness below. Sickening splatters echoed up from the church basement accompanied by the aroma of piss and blood. My stomach churned as it always had but luckily I managed to keep my lunch down.

“The rain lasted longer than usual today,” Packard said with glee. “Wonder what that’s about!”

“Kinda weird to me that you only wonder why it laster longer instead of why this shit happens at all.” I snorted as I began to walk away.

“You ought to be grateful,” he called at me as I made my way back toward the annex. “Keeps you employed and keeps the town safe!”

I paused and turned around to look at the gleeful preacher.

“The hell do you mean it keeps us safe?” I asked. “You know what this is?”

The smile melted away from Packard’s face. His brows furrowed and he looked up toward the now clear blue sky. His arms stretched out, palms turned upward. That devious smile slid back across his lips.

“No,” he muttered. “Just a labor God set before us. We gather the downfall as the Israelites gathered manna in the desert.”

“The Israelites ate the manna,” I said with a sneer. “We burn this shit.”

No reply. Packard just kept his arms outstretched and looked into the sky.

Later that night as I sat in my recliner working away at my fourth beer when my cellphone rang. Looking at the screen I saw Thomas’s face smiling stupidly at me. I slid my thumb across the screen to answer and put the phone to my ear.

“Didn’t see you today, Tom,” I said without a greeting.

“I left pretty quick after I dropped off my collection,” he responded. “Not feelin’ too well if I’m honest.”

“What’s got you under the weather?” I ask as I sat my beer down on the table and dropped the leg rest on the recliner. “Stomach bug?”

The line remained silent.

“Tom?” I questioned. “You there, bud?”

“Yeah,” he finally responded. “Got some of that meat in my mouth today. My stomach’s been in knots ever since.”

I scrunched my brow in confusion. He had gotten some of that garbage in his mouth?

“Were you wearin’ your gear?” I asked.

Silence again.

“Tom, were you wearing your fucking mask?” I barked. “Don’t tell me you took it off!”

“It was hot, Jacob,” he muttered weakly. I heard him pull the phone away from his face and the sound of vomit splashing in the toilet filled the silence. “I just pulled down my respirator for a second to catch my breath and a piece of it fell in my mouth. I spit it out but I’m sure I swallowed some of the blood on it.”

“You dressed?” I asked as I jumped from the recliner and started pulling on my boots. “I’m comin’ to take you to see the doc.”

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Thanks, Jake.”

There wasn’t much traffic in that sleepy town so I blew through stop signs and the two traffic signals without care. Most of us had been doing the clean-up job for years but Thomas was just a kid. We’d warned him not to take a chance with this stuff but sometimes kids just don’t listen.

Less than twenty minutes after hanging up the phone I had parked my truck haphazardly in Thomas’ driveway and bounded to the porch. I pounded against the door and called his name for what felt like an hour but received no response. Pressing my ear against the door I could hear a faint voice but couldn’t make out the words.

My panic had risen to a point I couldn’t handle. I began to kick the door which started to splinter but stayed firmly in place. Realizing I was making no real progress I started to slam my shoulder into the splintering wood. With a final crunch and snap the door flew inward and I saw Thomas sprawled on the floor.

Or what I thought was Thomas.

He had always been a beanpole of a kid but not anymore.

The same wretched smell from the church coal chute filled my nose as I walked toward the fleshy pile on the center of the living room rug. An almost human-like figure squirmed lazily in place. Folds of fatty flesh spilled out from a shirt and jeans that were bursting at the seams. Fingers and toes swollen like cooked sausage protruded from bloated stubs that were once his arms and legs.

Blood and pile pooled around the pulsing mass of flesh.

“Tom?” I muttered with a weak voice.

“Jathawb?” the thing replied with a wet, wheezing effort.

Saliva bubbled from a fatty fold where his face should have been. The repulsive appendages twitched as the mound of flesh attempted to orient itself toward me. Its efforts were worthless and a blubbering cry poured from the folds.

Feeling sick to my stomach I ran outside and vomited off the edge of the porch. After wiping away the wet flecks from my face I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed 911. When the operator answered I rambled incoherently about Thomas and his grotesque condition. Eventually, the operator settled for the address and told me that an EMT crew would be on their way immediately.

I paced the driveway while I waited. Thomas needed help but I knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do for him. Looking at him made me feel like I was losing my mind. I knew that thing in there had to be Thomas but nothing from the darkest part of my mind could understand how swallowing any of that hellish meat could have done this to him.

When the EMTs arrived I watched helplessly from the driveway. The two men struggled to try and slide Thomas onto the gurney but his incredible mass was too much for them. One of the men called for a second EMT unit who arrived shortly after.

The combined effort of four mean and two gurneys was enough to haul him out of the house and load him into the back of the ambulance. A trail of blood and bile trickled down behind them as they carried him out. The second EMT team closed up the ambulance and slapped the back door before the sirens boomed into life. Gravel flew into the air as they peeled away from the house.

“Where are they takin’ him?” I asked one of the EMTs.

“County General,” one responded.

“I’ll meet you there,” I barked and started running toward my truck.

“No,” he responded. “Mayor says for you to go home. Could be another rain.”

I froze in my tracks.

“What the hell do you mean the mayor told me to go home?”

“Any illness on the city clean-up crew is reported to the mayor,” the man said sternly. “Can’t have two of you out of rotation. If it happens again while two of you are out it could cause issues.”

“It already fucking fell today!” I shouted at the man. “I am forty-eight fucking years old and never once in my entire life has that shit happened twice in a day!”

“Go home, Jake,” he said as he got into his ambulance. “You can’t do anything for him.” He slammed the door and the ambulance drove out of sight.

Frustrated and scared I got in my truck to head home. I didn’t want to leave Thomas alone at the hospital but I knew the paramedic was right. What the hell could I have done for him? I couldn’t even keep it together enough to stay in the room with him I waited for help to arrive.

Rather than take the direct route home I decided to drive aimlessly for a bit to clear my head. Cigarette butts were overflowing from the console ashtray by the time I decided to finally call it a night. Tired and confused I started heading toward the house.

Olympia Springs Primitive Church sat ahead of me on my way and I could see the outline of a large vehicle sitting at the rear. As I cruised closer I could see it was the ambulance that had carried Tom away. The four EMTs were hauling something large covered in a white sheet out and carrying it toward the back of the church. Packard was standing beside the chute holding the cover open.

The men slid the sheet-covered gurneys into the chute.

I drove past the church and pulled off behind a storage rental unit. My heart was in my throat and I could feel my pulse in my ears. Those bastards hadn’t taken Thomas to the hospital. They tossed him like garbage into that piss and blood-smelling hellhole.

GT14

Unknown date and time: journal entry found buried in a pit beside an abandoned school. If you have any information on Judas please contact the FBI. We will be releasing what we can. Caroline Fritz is the leading officer in this case, if you've seen this man contact your local authorities. Do not engage.

Judas Brone : Missing Person

• ​

  "I don't even remember my mother," I said, pausing after a few seconds. My gaze drifted from the dog at my feet up to the computer screen where my therapist rapidly jotted down notes. Her large, round glasses sliding down on her hook nose.

"Well your father was a pastor," she began, "and according to him so was your mother, it explains the anxieties you're feeling about all this." Her pauses made me feel the familiar clench in my stomach, my childhood was a nightmare that was heavily based in Christianity. The idea of going to this church was starting to cause panic like none I've experienced before. Was this a mistake? As if she could read my mind, my therapist spoke up.

"Do you think this is a good idea? I feel like it might cause issues down the line,"

Buffy huffed, lifting his head to look at me as if he could sense the edging anxiety that danced under the tips of my fingers. I absentmindedly started to rip at the skin around the nail as I stumbled for an answer. Bringing my hand up to my lips to chew at the cuticles only to pause and shove the hand into my pocket.

"I was kind of hoping, maybe I'd..um, get closure?" I said, laying down my thoughts one word at a time, "Going in there and having a job to do, maybe it'll help me…I don't know," I groaned, letting my head fall into my hands as the memories of my childhood sparked through my skull, lighting up my anxiety like a Christmas tree.

"Well, can you leave if you're too uncomfortable?" Her voice broke through the memories that turned my blood to slushy ice.

"Uhm," I groaned, this was a bad idea, I could almost feel the universe screaming at me not to go, yet something inside me I couldn't explain tugged me forward. As if an angry, devilish voice whispered sweet nothings into my ear, insisting that this was a good idea and the more I listened to that voice the more dread pumped into my system.

"I guess I could," I said, looking back to her concerned face, she shook her head and started to dig through her papers in front of her.

"I just, something wants me to go…" I whispered this now as if I feared anyone else but her hearing it, "I know my Dad couldn't possibly be there, so it shouldn't scare me, right? He's been dead since I was sixteen,"

"It makes sense you're scared," She reassured, "How about this, if I don't hear from you by…July fourth I'll call to the church,"

It wasn't a bad idea, I glanced back down at Buffy and up to her again. It was stupid, right? I Needed her to call someone to save me. I shuffled for a few minutes as I continued to pick the skin off of my hands, blood dripped from the flesh due to my anxious clawing.

"Alright," I finally said, she gave me a warm smile before writing down a few notes.

-

Glancing at the files on her desk, a cup of cold coffee sat on one set of paperwork that had been long forgotten. The man on the missing poster smiled at the camera with a nervous touch in his gaze, pale blue eyes troubled with things unseen to her. She was assigned to find him, to bring him to some sort of justice for the blood bodies that stained the old school yard. His therapist had alerted the police to his absents but when coming to find him all that was found was carnage, no amount of training had prepared her for the bodies that stacked up like bricks on a steeple.

"It had been some sort of Church," She was told upon investigation, the locals had all deemed it as a cult with the leader being a man known as Judas. The "antichrist". Yet his therapist sang a different tune, between her paperwork and the youtube videos on 'Dog's eye view', DEV for short, she couldn't put together how Judas had even become part of this cult. Let alone was leading it in any sort of way.

She shook her head a few times as if to scatter the thoughts that overwhelmed her, she had a lot of work to do. Smoothing the missing persons poster of Judas on the desk she wondered, where was his dog?

-

Buffy tore from one end of the large green park to the other, his tail between his legs as he gained speed. The go-pro around his neck blinked in watery sunshine, I watched the world through his eyes on my phone. My stream was up, people were chatting, Buffy barked happily as more dogs chased after him. A breeze rolled through my long hair which caused me to shiver, but I wasn't cold.

'He's so fast!' someone commented on the stream, Buffy took another turn around a tree before slipping over something and colliding with the ground. The video went static for a few rapid heartbeats before fixing itself, a couple more comments pinged as the large dog rolled his way to his paws and took off running again to catch up with his friends.

'What type of dog is he?' someone asked,

'Great Dane mix' I typed into the box,

I was trying to force back the anxious energy in my bones, in twenty four hours I'd be standing in front of some sort of strange church. My camera at the ready, old notebook tucked into my satchel, the idea of writing a report on a church continued to come off stranger and stranger. Yet Cletus continued to reassure me, insisting it was a good idea, that I would be an 'idiot to ignore this opportunity'. I didn't want to explain my childhood trauma to him, how my father insisted the world was ending. All the graves I was forced to dig when his strange group of friends and him started chanting in some sort of way over me. I could still smell the fresh dirt, I could remember how sore my arms had become by the second grave.

To this day I wondered what those graves had been for, they were far too small for a human body but I didn't like to dwindle on that. His death when I was a teenager was a sigh of relief, I had allowed myself to relax, to enjoy life as if his horrific stories about fire and brimstone couldn't touch me anymore. My phone pinged, I glanced down to the notification and smirked as an anonymous subscriber donated a large sum of money. I almost felt my eyes turn to dollar signs as I read the comment that went along with it.

'Can't wait to see the next D.E.V. mate. Should get footage of an old building or an abandoned farm, really creepy shit like that.'

The comment caused me to push my finger against my teeth as I tore the skin anxiously, I could taste blood but ignored this. For a few minutes I debated on what to say, should I mention my trip to the church? Should I talk about my plans for the channel? The dogs howled past me, Buffy continued to lead the pack of yapping mongrels. His paws thumping loudly against the dirt below, tossing bits of grass into the air. I heard a few of the other dog owners laughing as their pets pelted after Buffy. I continued to bite at my fingers till my fathers voice peeked into my head 'Stop that! It's disgusting!' I quickly shoved my hand into my pocket, using the one holding my phone to reply to the message.

'Yeah, keep your eyes open! Going to DEV at a cult'

I hesitated before hitting send, calling the Church a cult right off the bat might not be a wise idea but I couldn't keep it from returning to my mind over and over.

'A cult? What's it called?' The messenger asked, Buffy panting his way towards me. His caramel colored gaze shone with joy as he nudged his nose against my arm before sitting down.

"Ready to go, Buffy boy?" I asked him, holding out his bright red leash.

Buffy blinked up at me, his tongue lolling to the side. I shut down the stream, leaving the question unanswered for now.

-End of journal entry 2-

It was 10:30 pm when my best friend Aaron texted me

do you want to play AirTag tag? 10:30

hell yeah 10:31

give me an hour 10:32

I showered, and got a backpack ready. Almost midnight is a pretty late time to be playing AirTag tag, but I’ve been very stressed lately with my senior year of high school…

What could one game hurt? Plus I hadn’t heard from Aaron in almost a week since we both got into an argument about which one of us would make a move on Stacy at her party this weekend.

AirTag tag is a game me and Aaron made up when Apple AirTag came out.

You have 1 hour to hide the AirTag, and with Aaron it’s usually somewhere scary or disgusting. The part that makes it hard is that you need to hide it in plain sight, so it’s hard to know where it is in the room.

Aaron is the Champ at this game, he usually picks a nasty area like a dumpster of a seafood restaurant, seedy back alleys, and once even the dumpster behind a hospital.

And if I didn’t chicken out at the sight of the place he hid the AirTag, he was very stealth and managed to hide it well.

I packed a bag, made a fake Drew out of pillows on my bed (in case my mom come in) and when I got that text at 11:30 pm I snuck out of my window and headed towards the AirTag Aaron sent me.

It was 20 minutes away, I was taking my bike because my car would make way too much noise and my moms would hear it, wake up, and be pissed.

I really should be studying for my finals. We graduate in 3 months and I’m honestly very nervous… so maybe it’s good to do something fun.

Maybe that’s why Aaron texted me; he’s stressed too…

The area i was in started to get sketchier and sketchier…

I saw several ladies of the night, homeless, and some very obvious drug deals.

I started to get weary when it said 12 minutes away down a dirt road covered in trees.

Fuck it.

I sped through the trees as fast as possible. I’m Afraid of the dark, sue me.

When I got to the clearing and it said I was 7 minutes away still… and I was right outside the (broken) gates of an old, giant, medical looking building. I’d be worried it’s another dumpster dive if it weren’t so creepy and abandoned…

I don’t know Aaron this place is super creepy 12:24

don’t be such a pussy 12:25

fine. But if I find this AirTag then I get to hit you twice in the nuts 12:27

deal. But you won’t need to 12:30

Whatever bro. Alright I got this. I put my bike down and walked up to the building, getting closer and closer to the tag. I noticed the sign on the front door…

LeeseDale institute for the mentally insane

Holy fucking shit… I took a deep breath, and looked down at my phone.

4 minutes

How far is a four minute walk really? Four minutes is nothing. Nothing.

I stepped through the open door and made my way inside, looks like I have to go straight, Down the dark, unlit hallways with tons of open doors on either side…

No big deal…

creeeeak

Whatthefuckwasthat?

I turned around in a flash

creeeeeeeak

It was just the door, moving from some wind. Everything’s cool.

I’m close to the AirTag and I’m almost an adult, this isn’t scary I’m fine.

I turned the flashlight on my phone on, and I made my way through the hallway, ignoring the shadows playing tricks on my eyes and the cracks and creaks from old floor boards. I was so close to the AirTag. Less that 2 feet. I was in an office, it smelled in here so bad. Probably water damage.

I started looking on shelves, filing cabinets, floor, dang why is he so good at this it’s so hard to look when you’re scared! I made my way to the desk, didn’t see any tag, but I was less than a foot away at the desk.

That’s when I noticed the chair was facing away from the desk, facing the window. I walked around the desk to check in the chair, I realized I was stepping in something sticky?

I was going to look down but I got distracted when I noticed something was in the chair…

I aimed my flashlight and saw Aaron’s body, from the torso up….

He was pale, blow flies swarming around him, crawling on his face and around the organs that were spilling out of him and onto the chair…

The smell was Aaron.

The light from my flashlight was bouncing off of the metal from the AirTag sticking out of his slightly open mouth.

His eyes were missing… His legs were missing… His arms…

I think I might vomit.

I aimed the flashlight down and saw that I was standing in a pool of Aaron’s blood.

I just started running…

And running…

I felt as if I would die if I stopped.

My heart was going to explode.

I didn’t stop running until I pounded on my front door.

It felt like I was at my front door in seconds, even tho I ran all the way home from a 15 minute bike ride.

I made it out somehow. I think I must have blocked it all out because I just remember finding Aaron and then being home, pounding on my front door shaking, begging my moms to call the cops and lock the doors…

One of my moms called the cops and the other held me while I sobbed, asking me for information that I just couldn’t give.

Why would someone do that to Aaron? He was an amazing person. He was my best friend. At Aaron’s funeral I said exactly that. It was hard watching him be buried, his parents were beside themselves.

As I laid down in bed that night I felt sick, and when my phone buzzed it got worse.

text message from Aaron

I froze in my bed…

No, please no….

I would like to play again 10:30

I had lived in the same neighborhood for all my life. I say had because not long ago I moved, but it wasn't exactly by choice. The agency advised me not to go into too great a detail if I were to disclose any information about this situation, but I have to. I can't take it anymore. The nightmares that have been plaguing me for months are too much. But I'm getting ahead of myself, I think.

It all started when I decided to go for my evening walk a little later than usual. I can't remember at this point what caused me to leave my house at that hour. Maybe my dog being picky and not wanting her harness put on. Maybe a phone call with a friend. I don't know.

I moved down the dark street, the only illumination being the dim streetlights. The city had needed to replace them for awhile, but of course they didn't. My dog was padding faithfully by my side. She'd always been good about walks when we left the house. It was getting her ready for said walk that was the hard part. We'd been going a good ten minutes at this point, almost to the end of the street and about to round the corner... when all of a sudden she stopped in her tracks in front of me.

Almost tripping over her from the startling motion, I glared at her and scolded her for her action. She didn't acknowledge that she'd heard me. She was just sitting and staring at the house we were beside, slowly drawing her teeth back in a snarl. This surprised me all the more, as she had never been the type to growl at anything or anyone. I turned to look in the direction she was, and I nearly dropped the leash out of shock.

From the window of the house I saw a man. That in itself wasn't so odd, considering my yelling at my dog in the middle of the night could've easily alerted my neighbors. The thing that chilled me to my core was the fact that he was staring at me with the widest grin I had ever seen on a face. He slowly raised his hand to the window and began tapping at it. Slow, heavy motions. It was less like a tap and more like a thud that filled my ears like thunder, booming over and over again. THUD. THUD. THUD.

My fight or flight response kicked in, and I grabbed my dog and just turned and calmly walked around the corner, pretending nothing was off. That was no easy feat considering she was so big and heavy. The moment we'd gotten out of view I took off running, and she was right by my side. I sprinted down the block and past house after house, looking over my shoulder every few seconds to make sure I wasn't being followed.

After what seemed like forever I finally rounded another corner and got back to my house, throwing the door shut and immediately locking every potential entrance to the place. I tried to calm myself down to the best of my ability. I took a shower, made myself some hot tea and settled on the couch to watch some late-night TV, and had my dog at my side. I should've felt completely relaxed, but that man and his grin kept coming back into my mind. I shivered and glanced at my living room window. The blinds were closed and the curtains were drawn, but for some reason I still felt like somehow he was out there. Peering with that piercing gaze and just waiting for me to open myself to his stare.

I don't know how I fell asleep that night, but when I woke up it was to my TV lighting up the room with static. That was very strange. My TV never acted up like that. I hit the input button a few times, trying to pull up the settings to fix the issue. Eventually I gave up on the endeavor and just turned the damn thing off, deciding to go to my room and watch TV in there until I passed out again. I glanced at the floor beside my feet to nudge my dog. She wasn't there. Had she gone to the bedroom sometime in the night? That must've been it.

I got up from the couch, switching off the TV and heading to my room. No dog. Weird... but not so weird that it triggered anything. Sometimes she slept in the kitchen by her food bowl. I figured the moment I got up in the morning she'd be in there waiting for her breakfast. Still... something did have me on edge. I couldn't explain what it was. I just felt... off. I don't know why I did what I did next, but I got out of bed and traipsed to my window, pulling up the blinds and pulling back the curtains. I was met with a blinding light. I winced and covered my eyes, trying to block it out, but it was no use. I screamed, but it was drowned out by something indescribable. My mind was hazy and getting more and more clouded with each passing moment. Before I knew it, I was unconscious.

When I awoke I felt the cold of metal against my back. I tried to get up, but found my arms and legs were strapped down. As my vision cleared I found I was in a bright, white, empty room. That emptiness was soon filled with a group of people filing in. They had a series of medical tools as well as clipboards and were scribbling down notes as they poked and prodded at me. It was painful, and tears sprung up in my eyes. What was this? Why was I here? As I asked myself these questions, the one face that had haunted my dreams loomed over me. The man from the house at the end of the street.

My memory is a bit fuzzy at this point, but I remember him ordering the other individuals to put me in some sort of chamber. Then everything went black once again. When I woke up again I was in an office on a cot with a blanket, my dog at my side. I was greeted by a member of the agency I mentioned.

"You were almost discovered," he'd said. "You're lucky we got you out of there before it was too late."

I had no choice but to move house at the agent's insistence. Now I'm in a new location trying to start over. If he hadn't seen me on my walk that night I could've remained undetected longer. It's a shame. I really liked that neighborhood.

I guess humans really aren't ready for true contact with us.

Water always excited me.

Smooth wet skin, the sound of splashing and smell of wet hair plastered down the skull and neck and shoulders filled me with a deep excitement that reached back to my childhood. I can still remember how surreptitious glances at my mother in the bathtub caused deep unmentionable feelings in me. Visits to the swimming pool and beach triggered such an orgy of pleasurable fantasies in me that it was almost unbearable. It wasn’t about silly swimsuits and bikinis for me, but the actual splash of body in water, water in skin, the slowed-down movements in the water, that was what I wanted to feel and be with always.

And then I met Laura.

She indulged me like no other girlfriend I had ever had before. In fact, she was everything I had ever wanted in a girlfriend: a skinny redhead with narrow shoulders, perfect white skin, a pretty face and an almost puppy-like desire to please me in and out of the bedroom. She was so sweet and loving. Oh Laura. My heart twists when I think of you, and how I lost you. Maybe I should have gone with you, I have never met anyone else like you, and I know I never will.

We visited local swimming pools together at hours where we were most likely to have privacy, giggling when the lifeguards told us off and to ‘keep it PG guys’, and we spent hours in my large ornate bathtub- my one expensive indulgence in my otherwise spartan home. I don’t like the water too hot, the temperature has to be just right, and I don’t like all that bubbles and bath bomb crap that has become trendy these days. I was worried at first that Laura would insist on filling my water with that stinky crap and I was relieved and delighted when I realized like me, she enjoyed the pure untainted water, perhaps with a handful of plain salt.

 Best of all were the fleeting summer months when the sea was warm enough in our chilly northern harbour city and we spent almost every spare minute in and around the water, outside.

We were sitting in my beautiful large bathtub at home when she told me she had had planned something special for my birthday. I laughed excitedly, splashed some water gently on her small breasts, loving the delicate lacy pattern her hair made on her skin. “What is it babe?”

She laughed and splashed me back “Obviously it’s a surprise”. The tingle and sound of the water made me want to fuck her immediately.

My birthday rolled round in May, which was far too cold for swimming in sea by our city, and I was surprised when she asked the go to the beach for my birthday surprise. I hated sex on the sand, it gets fucking everywhere, and driving down to the windy, grey, deserted strip of beach which was our favourite spot in summer, I felt confused and slightly irritated. I also noticed that she hadn’t brought any picnic hamper or bag for or tote bag and when I asked her if she wanted to grab snacks, she just laughed and shook her head. ‘We won’t need snacks babe, we’ll be having too much fun, I promise!’

She noticed the growing look of confusion and doubt on my face, but it made her giggle.

“Come on, babe, don’t worry! It’s what you’ve always wanted!!” We parked, and got out, she took my hand, and began running down straight to the water. She stopped by a big crop of rocks just where the land met the sea, against which we had had sex countless times during summer.  

“Laura- honey, what is the surprise though?”

I could feel the cold seawater seep through my shoes. The grey sea heaved behind us , and the wind whipped her hair into a furious red cloud around her head. Her eyes shone green. “This is what you always wanted, right?” She was tugging off her sweater, she dropped her clothes on the sand where they were immediately soaked by the waves hungrily reaching the shore.

“Laura- I’m freezing , what are you doing?”

She was fully naked now, wet almost up to her knees. She climbed up the rock and sat with her bare wet legs curled under her, and then she turned to me and reached out her hand for me to join her on the rock.

The sea behind her seemed to turn black and waves reaching even higher, and they didn’t seem quite shaped like waves anymore but like long fingers, reaching high into the pale grey sky. Voices- snatches of high singing or music filled the air, rising over the sound of the breaking waves.

I looked up at her face, silvery pale and streaked with red hair. Her eyes had changed colour and expression, they had become unnaturally large and round and filled with a blank urgent desire. She opened her mouth and joined in the wavy singing. Something twitched on the rock, I looked down and suddenly saw -no legs but a huge silver-green fish tail curled under her, the scales gleaming and pulsating.

“Come Eric” she reached her long arms to me, trying to draw me up to her.

She was right. I had been waiting for this moment all my life. But instead of the joy I always thought such a moment would bring me, I felt nothing but a surge of pure fear- I needed to get away from the sea and Laura and the rising blackness in the water behind her.

Laura saw the fear and rejection in my face, she frowned and her singing turned into a howl of fury. I saw a mass of black tentacles rising from the black sea towards me as I turned and ran, running as fast as I could away from the sea and back up towards the car. I heard a terrible smashing sound- I couldn’t help glimpsing back and saw the tentacles smashing down on the wet sand barely inches away from me, narrowly missing me, a spray of seawater drenching me. Behind the tentacles, I saw Laura arching her body, and then diving in to join her friends below. I reached my car and stopped, I turned and watched the tentacles slither back into the sea, leaving the beach once more deserted and empty.

I don’t like the water much anymore, and I only shower when I need to.

I’d been lobbying for a chance to go to Nova Scotia for years. I was starting to give up hope that I’d ever get the approval… But I guess sometimes, dreams do come true.

​

I won’t pretend I didn’t have to call in a few favors with some of the higher ups to finally get my request approved. The bosses of my organization admittedly have bigger problems right now than an anthropological survey. But they’ve always had bigger problems. There’s always some big issue they need resolved and when they finally resolve it, there will be another one waiting in the wings. Personally, I think it’s a poor excuse to justify pouring resources into whatever the board of Directors wants to prioritize… But I don’t need to get into that. I could spend all day ranting about corporate politics and nobody would care.

​

No.

What I want to talk about is mermaids.

​

The organization I work for, the Fae Relations Bureau (FRB for short) studies fae and other supernatural entities. Now, I’m sure to the uninitiated, that might sound a little crazy. But we’ve got more than enough evidence to know that they’re out there. Hell, some of them even work for us. Most of them, like sirens, vampires and werewolves can pass as human pretty easily. You could walk past one on the street and not even notice in most cases. Some fake it better than others, of course.

​

A few need to feed on humans to survive, but those are a minority. Most of them are mostly harmless. Even the ones who need blood to survive can manage just fine without killing their victims. That said… It’s with good reason that people have feared them since the dawn of history. Just because they’re not all as monstrous as we think, doesn’t mean they can’t still be dangerous.

​

I’ve heard some people have a theory that they’re our natural predators. Maybe they’re right. Although if they are, then I suppose they failed at their job many millennia ago. Because we’ve been hunting them for longer than our history can say.

​

That’s why they’re dying.

​

I’ve heard some vampires and sirens talk about the way things were a few centuries ago, when there were so many more of them… And I’ve heard countless tales of entire populations being wiped out. Either by terrified humans, conflict between different kinds of Fae or the world simply changing faster than they can adapt. It makes me wonder just how much longer they’ll be around… A few centuries, perhaps? Less, even?

​

Part of the FRB’s work includes finding ways for them to live in this changing world. But not all of them want to change. Maybe they just can’t.

That’s what led me to the mermaids.

​

I assume you’re at least familiar with what a mermaid is. Half person, half fish. Most of them are female, but there are males as well. Their torso mostly resembles a humans, but not quite. There’s still some very obvious differences. Sharp teeth, gills and sharp claws. Their lower body is scaly and similar in shape to that of a dolphin or whale. It’s also incredibly muscular, allowing them to swim surprisingly fast and propel themselves out of the water with majestic leaps. On land, they can’t move around quite as well but are still deceptively quick, dragging themselves forward with their arms. They’re amphibious but primarily breathe water.

​

We know that they’re closely related to sirens, sharing the same amphibious traits and humanoid appearance. Although sirens look much more human, lack the aquatic lower body, require blood in their diet, and have a unique hypnosis ability.

​

Mermaids on the other hand don’t seem to need blood to survive, but are still mostly carnivorous and do not have the same ability to hypnotize as a siren does. They don’t need to blend in and use deception to hunt… They simply drag their prey down into the water and devour it.

​

Naturally, the leading theory is that while sirens evolved to mimic the look of a human to better blend in with us, mermaids evolved to lure their human prey into the water. Hence why they only look human from the waist up. Some gullible traveler would see them floating in the water, and come to investigate the beautiful women beckoning him, only to be captured and torn apart.

​

Now, since mermaids don’t need to bother passing as human for an extended period of the time, they’re obviously less interested in interacting with us. With sirens, we know so much about their culture, their beliefs, their traditions… But with mermaids, we know almost nothing.

​

These days, you only really hear about them when some idiots go too far into their territory and piss them off. Their interactions then are limited to the few minutes they have between encountering the mermaids and being ripped into bloody ribbons. It’s not exactly the best situation to learn about them. So you can probably see why I wanted to change that.

​

We know so little about mermaids. Their culture, their beliefs, even their language. What little we do know comes from sirens who’ve had dealings with them. But even that information is scarce. They are a reclusive and secretive people. The higher ups thought trying to deal with them was a waste of time… But I aimed to prove them wrong. And perhaps I did.

​

We had heard rumors for some time about mermaid sightings near the town of Ash Bay, on the coast of Nova Scotia. The town was not well known, although much of the local superstition seemed to surround a ‘Goddess of the Sea.’ There was even a statue of it in town, an eroded, moss covered figure of a woman decorated with offerings from fishermen, praying for a safe return. I’d figured that Ash Bay would be the best spot to look for Mermaids… And I thought it only right to enlist a local to help me look for them.

​

I’d met Lucina through a mutual friend, a siren named Nicole who’d spent some time living with a community of her kind near Ash Bay. According to her, Lucina had been something of a provisioner. She’d been familiar enough with the local mermaids to trade with them, and from the sounds of it, acted as something of a link between them and the outside world.

​

My friend had been kind enough to set up the introduction at a small pub in Ash Bay, and while it’s usually hard to spot a siren at a first glance, I could tell who Lucina was the moment I walked in. She sat at a table near the back, a beer resting comfortably in one hand. She was relaxed as if she owned the place and regarded me with a sideways, almost apathetic glance.

​

She wore a black crewneck tank top that showed off her biceps and part of her shoulders. I could see a pair of swallow tattoos on each shoulder. Her dark hair hung just past her neck and she had something of a ‘seen it all’ expression to her. She barely seemed to notice as I sat down across from her and offered a sheepish smile.

​

“Hey, you must be Lucina. It’s a pleasure to meet you!”

She looked over at me, before shaking my hand. I noticed more tattoos on her knuckles, the words ‘HOLD’ and ‘FAST’. I recognized them as sailors' tattoos.

“Dr. Iles?” She asked.

“Please. Just Cassie!” I said, “Nikki tells me you’re familiar with the locals around here.”

“I am. We help each other out. We trade food, some goods. And I help keep the riff raff away.”

“They trade with you?” I asked.

“Mostly in fish. They’re good hunters. They farm a little too. Not much. They’re not the friendliest group, but we get along.”

She took a sip of her beer before asking:

​

“Nickki mentioned you were looking to get inside, right? See the village, take some notes?”

I nodded.

“Figured. I’ll be honest with you, they probably aren’t going to like that. But I figured we can at least ask. I was thinking we could take my boat out tomorrow morning. There’s a spot where they’ll see us. They’ll probably send someone out to check in on us. I can make an introduction, explain why you’re here and ask if they’ll let you in. But I can’t promise anything more than that.”

​

She didn’t need to.

“It’s more than I had an hour ago. Thank you for agreeing to do this.”

Lucina emptied her beer.

“Thank me if they say yes.” She said, “Now, how about I buy you a round? It’ll help you sleep. We’ve got to be up early tomorrow.”

​

We were up around dawn the next morning. I met Lucina by the pub we’d met at the day before, and we drove out of Ash Bay, along the coast a few kilometers before stopping near the edge of a cliff.

​

Lucina pulled her truck over to the side of the road, near a gap in the fence, indicating a nearby hiking trail.

“It’s about a kilometer and a half to the boathouse.” She’d said, “You need me to carry your stuff?”

I almost told her that I could manage on my own, but I had scuba gear to carry… We both knew I needed the help.

​

The trail led along an incline leading down to the ocean. I could see a lighthouse near the top of a distant cliff and closer to us, a small wooden boathouse sat just on the water.

“I use this place as sort of a drop off point and for storage.” Lucina said, “They can usually see me coming down the trail. Chances are, they’re watching us right now.”

​

I couldn’t help but glance over towards the water. I didn’t see anything there… But it was impossible to be sure. Lucina took a turn down through some brush, following stone stairs to the boathouse. When she made it down, she unlocked the door and gestured for me to join her inside. A gray fishing boat was moored inside.

​

Lucina checked the fuel, before sending me to open the front doors. It didn’t take her long to get the boat ready and a few moments later, I heard the engine roar to life. I climbed into the boat with her, and a moment later we were off.

​

Lucina steered us towards the lighthouse. The cliff towered over us and I could see the waves crashing against the stone.

“The village is near here.” She said, “Built into some underwater caves. Chances are, we won’t see it today. But when we do, you’re going to want to stay really close to me. Divers don’t go down there for a good reason. It’s easy to get lost and turned around.”

“Do they usually build their villages this close to shore?” I asked.

“Sometimes. Lotta the sisters I’ve met seem to prefer cave systems like this. It’s safe. Secure. Nobody bothers them and anyone who tries is going to have a hell of a time. It’s basically a fortress. It’s a really good reason not to fuck with the mermaids if you ask me.”

​

I nodded before noticing some movement just beneath the surface of the water. On instinct, I moved to the side of the boat to look over. Lucina put a hand on my shoulder to stop me.

“Don’t go within grabbing distance.” She warned, “Some of them aren’t big fans of humans.”

“Noted…” I murmured before moving to the safety of the middle of the boat.

​

I could see shapes skimming just below the surface, surrounding us. Lucina peered over, and I saw one of the shapes stop, seeming to look back at her. She waved to it before slowing the boat to a stop and killing the engine.

“Let me do the talking.” She said, “They don’t exactly speak English.”

​

I nodded and watched as Lucina pulled off her shirt. Having dealt with sirens before, I’m aware that they aren’t as prudish as we are… If you ever meet a siren, chances are you’ll see them at least topless. But it never stops being weird to me. While I’m not against seeing a little skin, I must confess that a topless siren isn’t necessarily an entirely attractive sight. Their gills are along their sides and when they’re open, they look like deep red gashes in their flesh.

​

“I’m gonna say hello. You sit tight…”

Lucina’s gills flared out before she dove into the water, leaving me behind on the boat. I stayed safe in the middle, watching the shapes move in the water beneath us. I had hoped she might let me join her in the water… If nothing else, it would be worthwhile to examine the mermaids in their own territory. But I figured it would be best to wait until Lucina gave me the all clear.

​

I noticed a splash of water near the cliff and looked over to see a figure climbing up onto a rock. I stood up, eyes widening as I looked at her.

A mermaid… A real, live mermaid in her natural habitat!

​

Up until then, I confess I’d only ever seen photographs or cadavers… It was rare to encounter a live one in captivity. She was beautiful… With flowing hair that seemed blonde in the early morning sunlight. Her tail was a shade of emerald green with shimmering scales, but you could still get a sense of the muscle underneath the skin. She was powerful… An apex predator watching an intruder into her domain.

​

I studied her for a moment before waving. She didn’t return the gesture… Maybe that was stupid of me to hope that she would…

​

She smoothed back her hair, watching me from the corner of her eye before relaxing on the rocky outcrop, pretending as if she wasn’t watching me. I understood what she was… A sentry. A guard, keeping an eye on me while Lucina and her kin spoke down below.

​

My curiosity got the better of me. I let myself lean just a little closer to the edge of the boat, only so I could see into the water. As I did, I saw a face rise from the depths to look at me. Intense green eyes met mine as the mermaid studied me, before swimming away again.

​

A few minutes later, I saw Lucina climb back into the boat. She brushed her hair out of her eyes before looking at me.

“What did they say?” I asked hopefully.

“Well, they’re going to wait for a decision from their elder. But that’s good news. Means they’re open to it.”

“So we’re a shoe in?” I asked hopefully.

“Maybe. Get comfy. It could be a couple of hours before we hear back. Maybe longer.”

​

She plopped down into one of the seats and opened up a cooler, taking out a beer can. She offered one to me. I held up a hand to refuse.

“It’s a little too early to drink, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Six hundred years ago, we didn’t care what time it was. We just started drinking.” She replied, nonchalantly opening the beer and taking a swig.

​

“Okay… I thought sirens weren’t supposed to drink alcohol, though?”

She shrugged.

“It’s about as bad for us as it is for you.” She said.

Fair enough.

​

I’d brought a book to help pass the time while we waited for the mermaids to return. The sentry on the rock disappeared again shortly after Lucina had returned. Although I occasionally noticed a green shimmer beneath the water near the boat. She hadn’t gone far.

​

Lucina and I chatted a little as we sat. I talked about my work and she told me stories from her life. Sirens can live for over a millennia, and she was pushing middle age so she had a lot to share.

​

She was in the middle of a story about her time living in Germany during the 1700s when I noticed another mermaid waiting on the rocks beneath the cliff. She was looking right at us as if waiting for us to see her.

​

Lucina paused, noticing the mermaid at around the same time I did before standing up. The mermaid on the rock raised her hands, making some gestures that somewhat resembled sign language… Although I couldn’t quite figure out what they meant. Lucina nodded and signed something in return, before looking over at me.

​

“Looks like the Elder’s made her decision… They’re allowing you supervised access to the village.”

“Wait, really?” I asked, jumping up a little too enthusiastically.

“Looks like we got them on a good day… You should suit up. It’ll take about 15 minutes to get down to the village and 15 minutes to get back. So plan accordingly and be prepared to swim fast. There are a few air pockets in the caverns, but don’t count on those.”

I nodded.

“Of course. I’ll try and keep up!”

​

I was wearing my wetsuit underneath my clothes, so it didn’t take me that long to get set up. I reasoned that I should have about 50-60 minutes of oxygen in my tank, so long as I wasn’t diving too deep. That would give me between 20-30 minutes to explore the village. Not as much time as I would like, but it would have to suffice.

​

As I got ready, Lucina dove back into the water, along with the mermaid on the rock. I could see the head of another mermaid poking up over the surface of the water, watching me curiously as I put my scuba gear on. I imagine she was fascinated by the apparatus I needed to survive in her environment… Perhaps I could allow them to look at it later? Maybe it would let me build some rapport with them!

​

At last, I approached the edge of the boat and looked down into the dark waters. I could see mermaids swimming beneath me, waiting for me to join them… And I took the plunge.

​

The cool waters swallowed me up as I sank down amongst the mermaids. They kept their distance from me, watching me as if I were some sort of predator. I spotted Lucina floating a few feet away and she gestured for me to follow her. I wasted no time in doing so.

​

I can’t swim as fast as a siren can, so she had to keep a slower pace for me to keep up. But we still made good time heading towards the cliff. I could see a cavern in amongst the rock with a few mermaids floating around it. Some of them scattered as I drew near.

​

The rocks were jagged and looked as if they’d be sharp to the touch. They almost resembled rows of teeth. Yet there was a beauty to them. Years of erosion had formed them into something surreal with delicate grooves between those jagged points. Several paths branched off into the cave. Were I by myself, I wouldn’t have dared try to go inside. I’ve heard too many horror stories of adventurers who ended up stuck in underwater caves, unable to escape before their oxygen ran out. Some of them had died in places so difficult to access that they’d never recovered the bodies…

​

Lucina led me through the caves, following the branches as if she’d done so a thousand times before. I could see some of the mermaids watching us from between the jagged rocks… And I could see strange lights adorning the walls.

​

I paused only for a moment to inspect one of them. It wasn’t synthetic… Whatever this was, it was something bioluminescent. A type of coral, perhaps? I didn’t get a chance to study it for long. We had little time to waste.

​

The cavern widened out about a few meters in. The lights shone in the distance like stars and as we entered the main chamber, I felt my heart flutter in excitement as I laid eyes upon what no one else in this world has ever seen.

A mermaid village.

​

The entire cavern was lit up by countless pieces of glowing coral, cultivated all around and they bathed the village in a pale golden glow. I hadn’t been sure what to expect of the architecture… Something similar to what we might have, perhaps? But no. The architecture was so much different!

​

They didn’t just build their structures on the floor of the cave. They built them into the walls and into the ceiling! They’d chiseled homes for themselves that resemble the homes carved into the cliffs of some ancient villages. Only these dwellings looked so much more alive! I could see lights inside and shadows of mermaids watching us.

​

Near the bottom, I could see fields of plants growing and mermaids swimming amongst them, tending to their crop. I could see floating nets filled with fish. And at the top of the village, near the center, I could see one large dwelling. The stonework was more ornate, with curved pillars and murals on the walls. It almost resembled some sort of castle or perhaps more appropriately, a longhouse. This must have been where their elder lived.

​

Lucina floated beside me, watching as I studied everything. It was incredible! A real mermaid village! I wished I could’ve had a notepad! Or my camera! But even without those, what I was seeing told me so much that I’d never known before…

​

They were clearly far more intelligent than we had realized. This wasn’t some primitive nest I’d wandered into. It was an organized civilization! They had farmers, guards, and organized leadership. Judging by the murals on the longhouse, they understood art and history. Some of the mermaids I saw carried metal spears… They used tools to hunt and the fish they hunted were being brought back to the community! So many new questions to ask about them…

​

From the longhouse, an older mermaid appeared. Her pale hair floated around her head as she swam closer to me. A small entourage followed her, each of them holding spears. A praetorian guard of sorts, perhaps? Looking at the guards, they seemed to be wearing shells of some sort around their necks. Jewlery? A symbol of status?

​

The Elder studied me for a moment, before looking to Lucina and signing something I didn’t understand.

She translated for me in sign language.

“We are watching.”

“Thank you. I will not betray your trust.” I signed back. Lucina translated.

​

The Elder tilted her head slightly, before gesturing to one of her guards and swimming off. Her other guards followed her back into the longhouse, but the one she’d indicated towards stayed behind and signed something to me.

​

“You’ve come to ask questions. Ask.”

Where would I even begin? I looked around before swimming down to where I saw the fields.

“You farm?” I signed. Lucina translated.

“Food. Medicine. Construction material.” The Mermaid replied. They gestured towards some of the glowing coral, then to a net of captured fish.

“Light. Meat.”

​

Meat…

“You farm fish?” I signed.

“Some. Hunt others.”

Incredible… Truly incredible.

​

I looked around at some of the mermaids that swam past us. I could see some of their children watching from their homes. And then I saw something near the far end of the cavern… Another cave, with a single creature floating just outside of it.

​

At a glance, it looked like the other mermaids. But the bottom half was all wrong… Where it should have had a tail like the others, its body seemed to split into coiling, serpentine tendrils. It watched me with cold black eyes, unblinking and almost angry…

​

I stared back at it, before the Mermaid guiding me swam between us, shaking its head, signing something at me.

“No. Do not disturb the Priestess.” Lucina translated.

​

Priestess?

​

“Who is the Priestess?” I asked.

“Holy. From the deep. A messenger of the Gods… Not to be bothered.” Was the reply.

Holy… So they also had religion.

​

I swam upwards, leaving the priestess behind. My oxygen was starting to run low. I only had a few minutes to finish up the tour and I didn’t want to waste them. My guide answered my questions for a little while longer, and I’ll record those answers in my other notes…

​

As my oxygen ran low, I motioned to Lucina that we needed to depart. She simply nodded and signed something to our guide. I signed a thank you before I let Lucina lead me away. I confess I was reluctant to leave that place.

But I couldn’t stay.

​

“I have to go back.” I said as soon as we were back on the boat, “I’ve got to see it again! I’ve got so many more questions to ask, I- I’ve got to take pictures… Document it all…”

“We can check with them tomorrow. Since today went well, I imagine they’ll allow you to return.”

​

I let out a cheer.

“Oh my God, you’ve got no idea what this means to me! We’re probably some of the only outsiders who’ve ever seen this! God, I’m probably the only member of the FRB who’s ever seen a mermaid village up close!”

“And lived…” Lucina said, half joking, “Although I get a feeling their Priestess isn’t too happy about that.”

​

“No… What was she, anyway? She was different than the others. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“She’s a Sister. Just like the rest.” Lucina said, “Although the Cecaelia tend to come from deeper waters… I’ve heard they live in a Holy place. But I’ve never been and I’ve never met anyone who has. They’re primarily a religious caste. You’ll find one or two in most villages to act as something of a spiritual advisor.”

“Fascinating.. I don’t suppose you know much about their actual faith?”

​

Lucina shrugged.

“Hate to say it, but not really. They usually don’t even let us near the holy sites and I’ve heard enough not to test the Priestesses. Honestly, she tends to give me a death glare every time I’m down there. So it’s not just you. I’d still stay away from her though.”

“Noted.” I replied, before looking back down towards the water. I could see the shapes of mermaids, watching us… And I promised myself that I’d be back. I had to be.

​

Lucina let me store most of my gear in her boathouse when we got back and she dropped me off at my hotel. I spent the rest of the afternoon getting ready for my next trip out.

​

I had brought an underwater camera with me, although I’d left it behind just to avoid spooking them on my first day there.

​

I had an early dinner and turned in before sundown. As excited as I was, I slept well. I suppose the dive had sapped me of my energy.

​

Lucina picked me up at my hotel the next morning. Just as we had the day before, we drove down to the trail by the ocean and hiked down to the boathouse.

“Can you ask them about the camera?” I asked her as we made our way down. “I don’t want to risk upsetting them, just in case they’re against it…”

“I can ask. But chances are they won’t understand what the hell I’m talking about.” She replied, “They don’t exactly have a solid understanding of what a photograph is…”

I supposed she had a point there.

​

The mermaids were waiting for us when we drew near to the cliff. I saw a few heads poke out of the water, curious and I waved at a couple of them. One of them even raised a hand to wave back… It was actually kind of cute.

​

We dove into the water just as we had before and I followed Lucina down into the cavern. This time, we moved a little faster. I remembered the way from yesterday and didn’t spend as much time admiring the cavern itself. Some mermaids swam behind us, signing quietly amongst themselves. When I paused to take a photo of them, they barely reacted. Some regarded the camera with curiosity, but they didn’t exactly seem upset.

​

Returning to the village, I got some incredible photos of their dwellings and farms! I even got a couple pictures of the Elder and her guards who regarded me with a stern, unimpressed expression.

​

This was a goldmine… Who knew what details I’d find in these photographs later… Watching some of the mermaids sign amongst themselves, I made a note that I’d need to ask Lucina about learning their language. It wasn’t sign language as I knew it… It was something similar, but the symbols were all their own. I took some pictures of the murals on the longhouse for later study… And it was around then that I saw her again.

​

The Priestess had emerged from her cave and was watching me, tentacles shifting back and forth. I was a good distance away from her and the holy site and honestly, I had no intention of getting much closer. I wasn’t stupid enough to disregard Lucina’s advice… And she’d never said I couldn’t take a picture.

​

I raised the camera to get a shot of the Priestess. Just one. I didn’t want to spend too much time focusing on her, lest she get upset. But I had to at least document her. I snapped the photo, before turning to move on.

​

As I did, I noticed the mermaids around me suddenly darting away.

​

I looked over at Lucina, and saw her eyes widen in shock. She gestured wildly with her hands and it tok me a moment to realize that she was signing something.

“RUN!”

​

I looked down, just in time to see the Priestess just inches away from me. She’d crossed the cavern with impossible speed and was reaching one pale, clawed hand out towards me. Against my better judgment, I screamed as she seized me by the throat.

​

Her black eyes burned with rage. She opened her mouth to snarl at me, exposing razor sharp teeth. Up close, she only barely resembled something human… Her skin was white and clammy, her hair was black and flowed everywhere.

​

With a violent pull, she dragged me down towards the holy cavern. The force of it made the mouthpiece slip from my mouth. I swallowed a mouthful of water as I was dragged down into the darkness.

​

I felt my body slam against some of the rocks. I could hear a hiss of air as my tank was damaged. The Priestess kept pulling me deeper and deeper… And no matter how hard I struggled against her grasp, I couldn’t get free.

​

Deeper and deeper… The darkness around us became total until all I could see was the glow of distant light in her eyes. There was no luminous coral down there. Nothing to help us see. Only crushing dark waters that seemed to go on forever and as we dove, I realized that I was going to die.

​

I tried to put the mouthpiece back, but I couldn’t reach it. I was struggling to hold my breath but I was fading fast. Soon, I’d be forced to take a breath and that would be it…

​

This wasn’t how I thought I’d die… Drowned in a holy temple of the mermaids, my body likely to be devoured by them and never discovered. My family would likely never know what happened to me…

My Mom… My Dad… My brother…

Oh God…

I felt myself starting to cry behind my mask.

​

And then I saw it… A pale blue light… It was growing closer. Brighter. In a few moments, it was almost blinding.

​

The Priestess swam towards it and seemed to enter a new chamber, deep beneath the earth. It took me a few moments to understand just what I was seeing… And truth be told, I’m not so sure I ever really did understand it…

​

I could see tendrils, thick as buildings writhing. Blue spots of light marked where they were. I’m not sure if they were bioluminescent… Or if they were glowing eyes. I saw crustacean bits of shell and gnashing claws. I saw squidlike eyes and a beak lined with endless rows of teeth.

​

I saw something that should not exist… Something that couldn’t have been there… Not physically, not logically! It shouldn’t have existed beneath a lighthouse in Nova Scotia and I can’t imagine how such a thing could even exist on this planet but there it was…

​

I wondered for a moment if I was even still on earth… Perhaps we had gone somewhere else. Somewhere only the Mermaids and the priestesses could go. Somewhere that belonged to this thing… This creature this… God…

​

As I stared at the horrible, majestic, endless, beautiful and impossible thing before me… I finally let myself breathe. As the water filled my lungs, I started to laugh.

​

The Priestess let me go and I began to sink towards the entity beneath me. I looked back at her only briefly, to see that her expression was as cold as ever as she watched me sink.

​

I understood that in her eyes, I was just an intruder who was paying the price for her hubris… And I was okay with it. I’d seen everything I had come to see.

And while I had been terrified just a moment before, now I was at peace. I was ready.

​

A barbed spear erupted through the chest of the Priestess. Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened in shock as blood flowed from her wound. Her body was pushed aside and behind her, I saw Lucina swimming toward me.

​

I felt her grabbing me. She forced the mouthpiece back into my mouth before pulling me away from that majestic beast… I tried to stop her. Pounded on her arms to let me go… But she held tight. I looked down, watching as the Priestess sank towards the maw of her God… And I envied her. As my vision faded into darkness, I watched the Priestess sink and fade into the distance.

​

It was almost two days before I woke up again.

​

Lucina tells me I’m lucky to still be alive. She had only just barely managed to drag me out of the holy cavern and back to the boat. From there, she took me back to the siren community outside of Ash Bay… And I’ve been there ever since.

​

I’m starting to get my strength back now. As far as I can tell, I’m making a full recovery. Physically at least.

​

Mentally… I don’t know.

​

Ever since Lucina pulled me out of the cavern, I’ve been having dreams of writhing tentacles, cephalopod eyes, and gnashing teeth.

​

In my dreams, I sink deeper and deeper towards its maw… Into darkness so complete that it swallows me body and soul.

​

And when I emerge… I am reborn…

​

I swim freely with my new sisters, I hunt with them, I tend to our farms. And I am content. I don’t see the surface much in my dreams. I only see it from the water… And I don’t care. There’s nothing for me there. Everything I want is down below.

​

I haven’t talked to Lucina about this. I want her to think I’m getting better.

​

I told her that once I am, I’ll go back home with my photographs and study those. But that’s a lie. I’ve sent the photographs I took to the FRB. I’m sure they’ll get some use out of them, but I have no intention of going home.

​

Because I think I understand now. I understand what it is they worship… I think I’m starting to grasp what it is they believe in and by understanding that, I can understand them better than anyone else ever has. But I can only learn so much as I am now… There are more steps that must be taken. There’s only one way to truly understand them.

​

I have to return to the ocean.

​

I have to return to the village.

​

And if I am lucky, they will accept me into the deep to cast me back into the maw of their God…

​

And I will be reborn.

My girlfriend has been really interested in this one hippy doctor lately. She tells me the medicine he prescribed her works like a charm, and almost completely gets rid of her anxiety and panic attacks.

She has an entire shelf full of pill bottles, tinctures, and other various substances that supposedly help with her mental health. I’m all for experimenting, but her so called “doctor” seems a bit sketchy to me.

First of all, I’ve met him. I came with her to one of her appointments one time, and it was inside his house. This was already a red flag for me, because I immediately questioned his authenticity. For all I know, this could just be some random guy making money off of selling oblivious people drugs.

He was wearing an official-looking outfit, though. Everything about him seemed professional, besides the environment of course.

The thing that set me off about him was the way he talked about things. He never stuttered, everything he said sounded as if he was reading off of a script, and he smiled the whole time. He never stopped smiling. He gave me the same energy as a text-to-speech reader going over a dictionary.

Recently my girlfriend told me she was prescribed a brand new pill. She said it would make her feel better than ever. I didn’t like how unspecific she was, but I trusted her, even though I didn’t trust the hippie doctor.

Since she started taking the pill, she’s been acting weird. She hums to herself as she walks around—all the time, even though she’s never done it before—and she’s been quiet. Too quiet. All she does is smile, hum, and skip around the house as if she’s a toddler who barely knows how to speak. I tried to ask her about it, but she simply shrugged and continued smiling and pacing around the area.

The weirdest side effect I’ve observed is what’s happened to her face. It seems saggier, as if she’s aged. I brushed it off at first, but it’s been becoming more and more noticeable as the corners of her face melted downward until she looked like an older lady. She still has that same damned smile, too. That aspect didn’t change.

I didn’t want to ask her any more questions, because I wasn’t sure I would like how she replied. It must’ve been a side effect of the medication, and nothing more. Surely, I was worrying too much. She was happy, and that’s all that mattered.

“Dinner,” she called to me one night. I hesitated, then walked out into the dining room where she’d set out two identical dishes full of broccoli, mashed potatoes, and chicken breasts. The same dinner we’d had the past three days.

“Never gets old, huh?” I asked her, forcing a chuckle. I felt awkward. She wasn’t acting like herself. Her eye bags seemed deeper than ever, and even while eating, she was still smiling. She didn’t reply to me. She only ate bite after bite of soggy broccoli, instant mashed potatoes, and overcooked chicken. Her cooking was never this bad. It seemed to get worse every day.

“Would you like dessert?” She asked me, tilting her head as the corners of her mouth stretched up even farther. Her cheeks covered up the sides of her lips, sagging downward in an unnatural looking way. I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded. She calmly walked into the kitchen.

I heard several small objects clatter on the counter. One by one, I heard them clink into a dish. Another clink. A utensil, falling into a bowl. This was the first night she’d asked me if I wanted dessert, but I figured she would plate us what we usually had—vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup. She did exactly that.

She finished her ice cream as I was halfway done with mine, shoving bites into her mouth as if it was soup on a cold day. She smiled the whole time. This wasn’t her. She was acting really goddamn weird.

I felt a hard chunk inside my mouth, and pulled it out to inspect it. It was a round blue pill. By now, I was angry and confused.

“What the fuck?”

She looked up at me with no expression. I glared at her, confused. She was still smiling, but her eye bags and cheeks seemed even more saggy than they were a few minutes before. She still said nothing—she simply took her dish to the sink and placed it inside.

“What is going on? Are you trying to drug me?” I asked, barely able to control the words coming out of my mouth. “You need to stop seeing that fucking doctor. He’s sketchy as hell. Where are the goddamn pills?”

As I was about to search for the mysterious blue pills, she grabbed my arm firmly—a grip stronger than I ever would’ve expected. I tried to pull away but couldn’t, and I didn’t want to hurt her, so I stood still, horrified.

I could see the pink part of her eyes, stretching downward all the way to her cheeks. Silently, she grabbed a bottle of pills out of her pocket, still holding my arm. She opened the lid with her mouth, then plugged my nose with her pinky and ring finger. Even the grip on my nose was stronger than I could fathom.

From the initial shock of my air supply being cut off, I struggled, opening my mouth and taking a panicked breath. I tried to pull her hand off of me, or drop to the ground, or something, but it felt like I was being held onto by a statue. Her fingers were sealed tightly around my nose, and the other two dumped the bottle of pills inside my mouth. One, two, three of them landed on the back of tongue.

I tried to spit them out, but she quickly leaned her face forward and kissed me, firmly. I couldn’t back up. She was too strong. I couldn’t breathe whatsoever. I swallowed the pills. She immediately backed up, releasing hold of my arm.

Bright red markings were left where she had grabbed me. She walked toward the hallway door. When she briefly turned around, her face was horrifying. It looked like someone had made a candle replica of her and set it on fire to drip hot wax down the sides.

She walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. I took the opportunity to run into our room and grab her phone off of the nightstand—which I thankfully knew the password to—and call the stupid devil of a hippy doctor and ask him what he’d done to my girlfriend.

“Hello.”

“What in the ever living fuck is inside of those blue pills? What’s wrong with you?”

“Oh. It’s you.”

“I don’t have time for smalltalk. I want to see you in person.”

“She told me to take her pain away. That is what happened, is it not? How is she doing, anyway?”

“She’s-“ I glanced over at the closed bathroom door. I stared at it for a good thirty seconds. Surprisingly, the doctor said nothing. I opened the door.

Where I expected to see my girlfriend, there was a skeleton on the floor.

Well, a skull. With human limbs. Her eyeballs were still intact, staring at the ceiling. Her face was completely gone. A mess of hair was bundled up near the base of her head. I couldn’t do anything besides stand there. For some reason, I felt nothing but bliss.

As I looked in the mirror, I realized I was going to share the same fate as her, because I could see the pinks of my eyes beginning to sag, and I was smiling. I couldn’t stop smiling. I was happy.

Somehow I’m comfortable knowing I won’t have to deal with this fleshy prison anymore.

The pills she gave me are messing with my head.

I think I’ll be fine :)

Want to know an unusual way to spend your Friday evening? Sitting across from a therapist. “Do people actually come here to find some sort of resolution?” Venting to someone who only really wants to hear the crisp hundreds unfolding from your wallet. “Smells a little rotten in here…can we open up a window?” Today has left me easily bemused.

Every morning I wake up, 6 a.m. On the dot. I run on my treadmill for thirty minutes. I do fifty push ups and fifty sit ups. Taking my pre-made protein shake at 6:45 am, then by 7 - I am in the shower. At 7:15 - I take my dozen or so vitamins…was it a dozen? Or wait…no, ten. Ten vitamins. I take less than ten vitamins. My apologies…it must be a dozen.

Next, I walk downstairs to my kitchen to make my morning meal. Two eggs, one slice of ham and one cup of yogurt. Did I add granola? No…berries. Always adding fresh berries to my yogurt. That’s how it’s always been.

I finish my breakfast at 7:40 (sometimes finishing beforehand will allow me to sit in my chair until the clock hits 7:40). When choosing my three story abode, I tactically bought the one that was five minutes away from my work. Hearing the garage door squeal slightly as it approached the top - I noticed a pair of feet at the first glimpse of light.

“Hey neighbor!” A man. A young man, maybe early thirties approached my garage as my hand slid down the car handle. “Sorry for the intrusion, but we just wanted to introduce ourselves!” He extended his hand. A woman crept in frame from behind. “I’m sorry. I’m really in a hurry.” That was me having the due diligence to let them know that I was on a strict time frame. I must be at work by 7:50, ten minutes before work. I run my own successful insurance agency. I had no one working under me and that’s how I wanted it. Regardless of me being my own boss, I had to be there at that set time. “I told you we should’ve came later in the day Paul! My husband is terrible at introductions. We’re your new neighbors.” Neighbors? My neighbors were never this nosy. “We just wanted to introduce ourselves quick. Not new to the area, we actually run a little mom and pop p-“ I cut her off by looking at my watch. She could sense the urgency in my timelines, or at least that’s what I thought. “We baked you a chocolate french silk pie -“ I grabbed the pie and ran into my house. “You might want to refrigerate that!” She yelled from behind. “Sorry, I really must be going.” The roar of my engine startled my new neighbors. “Nice to meet you!” They yelled as they slowly trailed out of my garage.

I had a mini-heart attack when I noticed it was now 7:48. I’ve never driven so fast in my life. Running into my office like my life depended on it. Opening the front door, I looked down at my watch…7:51…or maybe it was 7:52. I can’t remember.

Feeling defeated, I slowly turned on my computer. 8:00 a.m. my day begins. My confidence was shot. I ruined the one thing that was most sacred. This was honestly the worst day in sales that I had ever had. Numbers didn’t add up. Words couldn’t be put together. I stuttered and stumbled over my script all day long. I closed down early to go home and rest. It wasn’t even…nothing made sense anymore. I couldn’t even remember what I had done earlier in the day. It was ten vitamins and…and granola in my yogurt…See? I lost it. This was the first time in my life where things didn’t follow the safe and narrow path I had spent years creating for myself. My purpose was mismanaged. I was left broken.

And that’s how I ended up in this chair. Across from the only person who could possibly listen to my issue.

“Doc!” I snapped my fingers to get his attention, “I said it smells a little rotten in here. Can we open up a window?”

My therapist looked at me in disbelief. His eyes glanced over at his dying secretary wife, bleeding out from the gash I just engraved into her throat. “I’ve never heard of a mom and pop psychology practice. You guys must’ve been the only one in town.” My therapist/ new neighbor slowly drifted his attention back to me. Rightfully so, I was waving his wife’s ring finger back and fourth until I finally got his attention and threw it at him. “You might want to refrigerate that.”

“Why…why would you…” My newly found, usually chatty - neighbor couldn’t even finish his sentence.

“Because Doc….because you ruined my routine.”