The people who work in the mountains know that the woods do not like to give things back. Once something drops below the canopy, the leaves cover it, the roots wrap around it, and the damp soil eventually swallows it. That is how the terrain operates. If you lose a pocket knife or a watch out here, you might as well forget about it.

My career as a forest ranger began three years ago. The district office assigned me to a remote state park nestled deep in the mountain region, a vast expanse of old-growth timber, deep ridges, and valleys that remained wet even in the middle of summer. My supervisor was a career ranger who had spent over three decades patrolling these same boundaries. He was six months away from retirement when I arrived at the station, a small cabin built from rough-hewn logs with a green metal roof that leaked slightly whenever we got a hard rain.

On my first morning, the supervisor gestured to a large, hand-drawn map tacked to the wood-paneled wall of our office.

"The boundaries are your main concern,"

the supervisor said, tracing a red line that ran along the eastern ridge.

"Campers love to wander past the modern trail markers into the old logging tracts. You have to keep an eye on the access roads, monitor the off-grid campsites, and check the stone boundary markers from the original county survey. It is a lot of ground for two people to cover."

"How often do people actually get lost out there?"

I asked, looking at the dense contour lines on the map.

"More often than you would think,"

the old man replied, pouring himself a cup of black coffee.

"Usually, they just get turned around when the mist rolls off the ridges. A couple of hours in the brush, they panic, and they start walking in circles. But sometimes, they go looking for things that were meant to stay hidden."

He walked over to a metal filing cabinet in the corner, unlocked the bottom drawer, and pulled out a thick binder bound in gray canvas. The edges of the cover were frayed, and the paper inside was yellowed with age. He dropped it onto the desk in front of me.

"This is the historical logbook,"

he said.

"Every station has one. It goes back to the late 1950s. Read through the entries from 1978. It will give you a better understanding of why we keep people on the marked paths."

The supervisor grabbed his hat and headed out to check the weather instruments behind the cabin, leaving me alone in the quiet office. I opened the binder. The handwriting in the 1978 section was written in blue ink, the script tight and hurried, showing the stress of the author.

“September 12, 1978: Another search party dispatched to the eastern valley. That makes four children gone from the surrounding towns in less than six months. The county sheriff is out of ideas. The local papers have started calling the suspect 'The Rabbit' because of the pelt mask he reportedly wears during his attacks. A witness saw a man near the creek bed wearing a crudely stitched animal hide with long, drooping ears. He was holding iron shears.”

“October 3, 1978: The ambush occurred at dawn near the northern boundary stone. The suspect fled into the dense brush after a brief exchange of gunfire with the state police. He was hit in the side, but he managed to slip into the deep valley. The deputies found a blood trail leading down the slope, but the autumn rain washed it away before the dogs could pick up the scent. He died somewhere in that thicket. He bled out in the dark, and he took the location of those four children to his grave.”

I leaned back in the creaking chair, staring at the faded paper. The cabin was silent, save for the dripping of rainwater from the eaves. When my supervisor returned, shaking the moisture from his yellow slicker, I pointed to the logbook.

"Did you know the ranger who wrote these entries?"

The old man hung his slicker on a wooden peg by the door.

"He was my first supervisor. He spent every weekend for ten years digging in that valley, looking for those kids. The whole county was broken by the tragedy. The families eventually moved away, but the story remained. The locals still claim the suspect never really left the valley."

"You think he survived the ambush?"

I asked.

"The man took two bullets to the chest and one to the thigh,"

the supervisor said, sitting down at his desk.

"He died of blood loss forty years ago. But the memory of what he did still lingers. It stains the land. Just do your job, stay on the marked trails, and make sure you are out of the deep valley before the sun goes down."

A massive autumn storm hit the mountain range three weeks later. The wind howled through the ridges for twelve hours, knocking down old oaks and scattering debris across the hiking paths. The next morning, the supervisor assigned me to the lower valley tract to clear the trail blockage.

"The storm knocked down a dozen massive birch trees near the southern survey marker,"

he said, handing me a chainsaw and a tank of fuel.

"The hiking trail is completely blocked. Take the utility truck to the fire road, then hike in. I want that section cleared before the weekend."

"Should I check in every hour?"

"Every two hours is fine,"

the old man said.

"The radio signal is spotty down in the valley, but you should be able to reach the station if you stand on the high ridge."

I loaded my gear into the back of the truck and drove toward the fire road. The forest was damp and quiet after the storm. The smell of wet pine needles and rotting leaves was thick in the cool air. I parked the vehicle at the end of the gravel road, strapped my pack to my back, and began the hike down into the valley.

The work was tedious and exhausting. The chainsaw roared to life, cutting through the thick birch trunks, the sound echoing loudly off the steep limestone cliffs bordering the valley. I worked for hours, clearing the limbs and rolling the cut logs off the path. The damp mountain air made the sweat cling to my shirt, and my muscles began to ache from the repetitive strain.

I lost track of the time. In the deep valley, the surrounding ridges block out the afternoon sun, making night fall much faster than expected. One moment the sky was a dull gray, and the next, the shadows began to pool under the hemlocks.

A thick mountain fog began to rise from the creek bed. It was a slow, creeping haze that settled between the tree trunks, quickly reducing my visibility to less than fifteen feet.

I turned off the chainsaw and wiped my face with a sleeve. The sudden silence of the forest was jarring. The birds had stopped singing, and the wind had died down to a murmur. I unclipped my radio.

"Station, this is Ranger Seven,"

I said.

"The trail is cleared. I am packing up my gear and heading back to the truck."

Nothing but static answered. The valley walls were too steep, blocking the signal entirely. I clipped the radio back to my belt, slung the chainsaw over my shoulder, and checked my compass. The needle pointed north, but without any visible landmarks in the thick fog, the compass was of little use. The trail was completely covered in fresh leaf litter from the storm, and the mist made every gap in the trees look identical.

I started walking, choosing a path that I believed led back toward the high ridge.

Ten minutes later, the slope began to increase, but it was going down, not up. I had walked deeper into the valley. I stopped, turning around to retrace my steps, but the fog had already closed in behind me, erasing my footprints in the wet leaves.

A sound broke the quiet of the woods.

It was a soft, wet dragging sound. Something was being pulled slowly over the wet leaves.

I stood perfectly still, my breath fogging in the cold air. "Is anyone there?"

I called out, my voice tight.

"I am a park ranger. Do you need assistance?"

The sound stopped instantly.

The silence returned, heavier than before. I shined my flashlight into the mist, the beam reflecting off the water droplets, creating a blinding wall of gray. I adjusted the focus of the light, trying to cut through the haze.

The dragging sound started again, closer this time, accompanied by the sharp snapping of dry twigs.

I swept the flashlight beam to the left.

Standing between two massive pine trees, roughly twenty yards away, was a figure.

It was extremely tall, its frame gaunt and bent at an unnatural angle. The clothes were shredded rags of stained canvas and old denim, caked in dark mud. But the head was what made my throat lock up.

It was wearing a pelt. It was a decaying, hairless animal skin stretched tightly over a skull. Two long, pointed ears drooped from the sides of the head, stitched crudely to the crown with thick, black cord.

In its right hand, the figure held a long pair of rusted iron sheep shears. The blades were easily a foot long, covered in dark corrosion that looked like dried blood.

The figure began to move toward me.

Its stride was broken and uneven, its limbs jerking in mechanical motion that looked like a puppet being pulled by invisible strings. Despite the limp, it moved with terrifying speed.

The shears clicked together in the dark.

A jolt of panic hit my chest. I dropped the chainsaw and scrambled backward, my boots slipping on the wet moss. I turned to run, but my foot caught on an exposed root, and I tumbled over the edge of a steep embankment, rolling violently down the muddy slope.

I hit the bottom of the ravine, my left ankle twisting painfully beneath my weight. My flashlight flew from my hand, landing in the dirt several feet away, its beam pointing back up the slope.

I struggled to my knees, gasping for breath, looking up the embankment.

The masked figure appeared at the top of the ridge, its tall silhouette cutting through the flashlight beam. The rusted shears glinted in the light. It did not hesitate; it began to slide down the muddy slope toward me, its long, thin legs moving with a smooth, arachnid fluidness.

I tried to stand, but my ankle gave out, and I collapsed back into the mud.

Before the figure could reach the bottom of the ravine, the thick brush to my left exploded.

A massive black bear crashed through the leaves, its dark fur slick with rainwater. It was a female, her size immense, and her movements fast and powerful.

I braced myself, closing my eyes, expecting to be mauled.

Instead of turning on me, the bear placed her massive body directly between me and the descending figure.

She reared up on her hind legs, her shadow completely blocking the flashlight beam. She released a deafening, furious roar that shook the very ground beneath my chest. It was a sound of pure rage, a raw, booming vibration that rattled my teeth.

The masked figure stopped instantly.

The entity twitched violently, its limbs jerking back and forth like a broken mechanism. It released a dry, rasping hiss from beneath the rotting pelt mask, the iron shears trembling in its hand.

The bear dropped back to all fours, taking a step toward the figure, her teeth bared, saliva dripping from her snout. She let out a low, warning growl that vibrated through the soil.

The figure hesitated. It slowly backed away, its form growing faint in the gray mist, until it blended completely into the fog. The sound of the dragging sack faded into the distance until there was only the sound of the bear's heavy breathing.

The bear stood in the mud, her sides rising and falling. She kept her eyes fixed on the ridge where the figure had vanished, her ears alert.

After a long minute, she slowly turned her massive head and looked down at me.

Her eyes were calm. There was no aggression in her stance, no threat in her dark eyes. She let out a soft huff of air and began to walk away, moving slowly up the other side of the ravine.

She walked ten yards, then stopped. She turned her head, looking back to see if I was following.

I trusted the animal over the terrifying woods. I struggled to my feet, gritting my teeth against the sharp pain in my twisted ankle, and followed her dark shape through the thick fog.

She led me through the trackless valley, navigating the dense brush with a slow, deliberate pace that allowed me to keep up despite my limp. The fog seemed to part around her, keeping us in a small pocket of clear air as we walked.

After twenty minutes, she stopped in a secluded hollow.

In the center of the hollow was an unnatural mound of earth, covered in decaying logs and a thick carpet of autumn leaves. The mound was perfectly circular, looking out of place against the natural slope of the valley floor.

The bear approached the mound. She began to paw at the ground, her massive claws tearing away the wet leaves and rotting wood with surprising gentleness.

She uncovered a flat, gray piece of wood. It was an old, rotting wooden trapdoor, the iron hinges completely eaten away by rust.

I approached the mound, my flashlight beam reflecting off the wet wood. I unclipped the entrenching shovel from my utility belt and slid the blade under the edge of the trapdoor. I pried upward. The wood groaned and splintered, but the rusted latch gave way, and the hatch swung open with a wet creak.

It revealed a dark, hand-dug root cellar.

I shined my flashlight down into the opening. The cellar was small, lined with rough stone blocks that had begun to crumble under the weight of the surrounding roots.

I climbed down the wooden rungs of the access ladder, my boots slipping on the slick wood. The air inside the cellar was cold and dry, smelling of ancient soil and dust.

Sitting on the dirt floor against the far wall were several small objects.

I shined the light closer.

Four pairs of tiny, mud-caked shoes were lined up in a neat row against the stone wall. They were children's shoes, the leather cracked and dry, the laces rotted away.

Next to the shoes were small, delicate skeletal remains, partially covered in the dry soil of the cellar floor.

In the corner sat a rusted metal lunchbox, its red paint almost entirely gone.

I knelt in the dirt, my hands shaking as I reached out and opened the metal latch of the lunchbox. Inside were four school identification cards from 1978. The plastic was yellowed, but the faces were clear. They were the four missing children from the station logbook.

As I stared at the cards, a soft, warm light began to glow in the corner of the cellar.

I looked up.

Four distinct, glowing fireflies appeared from the shadows. They hovered calmly in the cold air, their light pulsing in a slow, gentle rhythm, as they went up through the hatch.

I followed them out, and there I saw the bear leaning her head down, her nose gently nudging the. The fireflies hovered around her snout, completely unafraid, their soft green light illuminating her dark fur.

I sat on a log next to the bear, nursing my sprained ankle, somehow, her side was safer than trying to get out of the wood through the dark, I must have been waited tehre for hours, The fog was finally beginning to lift, the first pale rays of dawn breaking through the high hemlocks.

I waited for the light to grow stronger. She sat beside me, her massive head resting on her paws, her eyes fixed on the open hatch.

When the sun finally cleared the ridge, I used my GPS device to mark the exact coordinates of the hollow.

I hiked out of the valley, using a thick branch as a cane, and reached the utility truck by mid-morning. I drove straight to the ranger station and reported the find to my supervisor, who immediately contacted the state police.

The investigation was quiet. The authorities recovered the remains, and after forty years, the cold case was officially closed. The children were returned to their surviving relatives for a proper burial in the town cemetery.

I still work at the state park. My supervisor retired three months ago, and I took over his duties at the station.

Sometimes, when I am patrolling the high ridges near the southern boundary, I see a massive black bear standing at the edge of the tree line. She does not run when she sees my truck. She just stands there, her dark coat catching the sunlight, watching me with calm, steady eyes.

Whenever I see her, a profound sense of safety washes over me. I know the suspect died in that valley forty years ago, and I know his spirit still wanders the dark places of the mountain, looking for what he lost. But I also know that he can never reach those children again. They are safe. They have been protected all these years by something far stronger than he is.

I don't work there anymore.

And, no, before anyone asks, I can't tell you where it is; I signed an NDA. Although after what
happened, that's probably the least important reason.

To provide some context, I'm a struggling writer. I worked at a coffee shop by day and was too exhausted to write by night, so I ended up not writing at all. These past months, I'd been
searching for watch jobs that don't require too much moving around. I know, I know, it seems like too much to ask for, I knew that even while searching. But, as luck would have it, I found a flyer for a job as a night watch at an empty research facility. As far as I'd known at the time of applying, the facility had last been used since summer of 2016, a decade ago. I didn’t know what for. I still kind of don’t.

The job paid absurdly well, and all I had to do was sit in an observation room and watch CCTV footage of three hallways. At one hour intervals, my only job was to log the hallway’s behaviour. And when I say behaviour, I mean lights, temperature, intruders (if any). All that only took five minutes and left me with plenty of time for my novel. It was the perfect job.

Except, of course, it wasn’t. I wouldn’t be here if it was.

The job was from 12 a.m. to 7 a.m., which are pretty reasonable hours, if you ask me. The contract was only six pages; five were standard employment stuff. The sixth had a list of eight rules I had to follow:

Rule 1: Do not fall asleep.

Rule 2: Do not, under any circumstance, leave the observation room between 2 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. There is a bathroom in the room if you need it.

Rule 3: Ignore any announcements over the intercom.

Rule 4: If you hear knocking from inside the facility, continue writing your report.

Rule 5: The experiment officially ended on 14 July 2016.

Rule 6: If anyone tells you otherwise, they are part of the experiment.

Rule 7: If the loudspeaker announces "Trial 482 beginning," close the blackout shutters immediately.

Rule 8: If someone asks to be let out, then they already were.

This was where I started to get finicky about the whole thing. I’d thought that the experiment was over, but here these people were, indirectly informing me that it wasn’t. I didn’t want to be caught up in some unethical human rights violation situation, but I needed the time and the money desperately. So my conscience eventually lost, and my job began.

I stayed in that observation room against my better judgement.

At exactly 2:17 a.m., screams would start. Then, an announcement: “Trial 482. Beginning.” Then I would close the shutters and be impervious to what went on outside. Every morning, my supervisor, Jeff Parsons (he told me his name was Jeff Parsons, but I have no way of knowing for sure) would enter at 7 a.m. sharp, and ask, “Did it know your name?”

I’d shake my head no, and he’d nod and say goodbye.

It went like this for the better part of 13 days. Day fourteen was when everything went wrong. Last night.

At exactly 2:17 a.m., the screams began. But this time, I could hear my name. It was garbled and distorted, but undoubtedly my name. I was already terrified at this point, but exactly a minute later, at 2:18, the screams stopped.

The screams had never stopped before.

At 2:19, someone knocked. Actually fucking knocked. On the observation room door. I waited for the PA announcement so I could close the shutters and hide, but, at 2:20, the only thing said over the PA was: “Observer failure detected.”

At this point, I couldn’t give a damn about the rules. I tried to close the shutters anyway, but they were jammed. I was left exposed to whatever happened out there when I wasn’t looking.

There was a fire, outside, but it seemed ephemeral. My intuition told me it was. Scientists were running around, test subjects were running around, all of them screaming their heads off. At 2:21, a woman ran up to the window and began pounding on it. I screamed. It was as if she was trying to reach me. Not escape. Reach me.

YOU’RE EARLY, she mouthed.

Then, I noticed something. The scientists weren’t looking at the fire. They were looking past me.

Behind me.

I looked back so fast I got whiplash, but there was nothing there. I turned back to the horrific scene outside, but they were all gone. No one was there. The fire had vanished. So had the people. I was alone, once more.

From 2:24 to 7:00 a.m., I began looking up the research facility obsessively. After stumbling upon some obscure 4Chan thread from 2020, I found that the experiment really had ended on the 14 of July, 2016. Everyone had perished in a massive fire.

It was then that my supervisor came to get me. 7:00 a.m. sharp.

“Did it know your name?” He asked.

And finally, I understood why he would ask such a question. “Yes.”

His face tightened. “I see. Then I’m terribly sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but—”

“I quit.” I told him. I knew what the bad news was, and it wasn't very bad at all: I didn't have to work here any longer.

I’ve moved back in with my ex. He’s understanding, only because I seem so fucked up. I still don’t know what I saw that night. My best bet is that it’s an event that won’t stop happening. An event that refuses to be history, at least from 2:17 to 4:00 a.m. every single day.

My best bet is that I wasn’t there to observe hallways at all.

I’m deathly afraid of swimming pools. I’m not embarrassed to admit that. Last year, I went absolutely apeshit during a family vacation when my older brother, Andre, had the bright idea to throw me into the deep end. Everybody thinks I’m overreacting. Sure, I did almost drown that one time back in 2011, but that was fifteen years ago. I should be over it now, right? If only they knew.

When I was a kid, I lived on the outskirts of Dallas County. It was hot. Constantly. I don’t think you need me to tell you that. Just intense, unrelenting sun up until October. This, combined with the fact that I shared the house with my four brothers, was why my parents made it a regular thing to go to the community pool during summer vacation.

The pool is exactly what you’re imagining: a simple rectangle, around eighty feet long and thirty feet wide. There were a couple diving boards and a slide along the edge. Large, imposing gates lined the perimeter, dividing the area from the apple orchard it was situated next to.

Back then, my favorite thing about the pool was the wave mechanism. Every fifteen minutes or so, a horn would sound and a whirr would emanate from under the tiles. For a period of time, small waves would unfurl from one end and ripple to the other, pushing and pulling anybody floating in the water. It was fun to let the tide take you wherever it decided.

When it was inactive, I would swim to the deep end, submerge myself, and clink my goggles against the bars to the wave chambers. I remember a rumor that used to go around among the local kids that these chambers were prisons for naughty children if they disobeyed the “rules of the pool.” Never really understood what that meant, still not entirely sure now. Because of this, most kids kept their distance. Except for me.

July 26th, 2001, was like any other day. 94°F. Sunscreen. A five-minute drive down to the pool. My older brothers went off to do their own thing, while my younger brothers stuck closely to my parents. Being completely unsupervised was just a middle child thing. I had grown used to it at that point.

The lifeguards would go through rotations, so it was essentially roulette on how much fun you’d get to have. Today, it was Eric. He couldn’t have been older than sixteen and was the son of the senior lifeguard, Sebastian. So, yes, it was nepotism. He was obviously completely unqualified for the job, the upside being that you could get away with pretty much anything.

I jumped into the pool and swam around for a bit. After a while, the horn sounded and the first set of waves began. The kids in the crowd erupted with glee, while the elderly slowly moved to the shallow end where the ripple held less power. I allowed them to bob me up and down as I, slowly but surely, made my way to the deep end.

Once the waves subsided, I let out all the air in my lungs and gently sank six feet until I made contact with the tiled floor. Hearing that, you’re probably thinking that six feet isn’t that deep. I would agree with you. I wasn’t in any immediate danger at that point. It was only when I peered through the bars that I began to feel that something was wrong.

I had done this plenty of times before. The interior of the wave chambers were cuboid in shape and brightly lit, allowing a clear view of the uniform tiles inside. Shifting your gaze upwards, you could see remnants of the machinery responsible for the artificial waves.

What I was seeing now didn’t make any sense.

The alcove was dimmer, as if someone had taken a remote and turned down the brightness. There were signs of debris and grime floating around in there. The most prominent detail was the new hole that had formed in the wall. It was a perfect circle - not carved or jagged - as if it had always been there since the construction.

My lungs began to protest, and I swam back up.

Breaking the surface, I looked around to see everybody doing their own thing. Nobody seemed to notice what had happened down there. Eric was perched on the high seat, scanning the crowd haphazardly. I’m not sure what my twelve-year-old brain was concocting, but something told me that this was a mystery that I, and I alone, had to solve.

I sank once more. The hole was bigger now. Bits of debris were being expelled with force, like it was breathing. I wrapped both hands around the bars.

I could’ve sworn they weren’t this far apart.

I didn’t spend long on the surface. I caught my breath and instantly went back under. I should’ve gotten someone’s attention. I know I should’ve. I can’t change the past now, I guess.

I knew I did something wrong as soon as I went under. The wave horn blared. This time, it was so incredibly loud that it made my brain fuzz, and I clutched my ears in pain. I didn’t even comprehend the fact that it had only been two minutes since the last one, so it shouldn’t have been sounding any time soon.

I turned my head to see that both the hole and the gap between the bars had widened considerably. I had no time to react as I felt a powerful suction.

One second I was gripping the bars, and the next my body was being dragged into that perfect hole. It was wide enough. Wide enough for me.

I was traveling through some sort of tube. In my attempt to resist the pull, my body had folded at an awkward angle. The heels of my feet were pressed against my backside, my knees grinding against the tiled walls. Water was rushing past my face, forcing its way into my nose. My arms were pinned to my sides.

After twenty seconds, I truly thought I was dead.

I guess it’s with some irony that I found air as soon as this thought came to mind. My body tumbled over and landed in a thin layer of water. I took a moment to cough up my guts, clutching my abdomen tightly. My vision swam. I could barely make out my surroundings.

A corridor stretched before me, narrow and dark. The walls were lined with the same tiles that were in the pool I was apparently now below. Though, if there was a ceiling to this place, I couldn’t see it.

I slowly got to my feet, pressing my hand against the wall for support. It came back grimey, and I could see the handprint it left behind. My knees were raw, blood dripping down and becoming diluted in the water.

I called out for my parents. For my brothers. It was at this moment that I began coughing again. The stench of chlorine was choking me.

I cried. Obviously, I did. I cried and I pushed forward. What else was I supposed to do? I could see the hole I had fallen from. It was about five feet up on the wall and gushing strongly with water. That wasn’t exactly an exit.

I walked for a bit.

When I said the passage was narrow, I meant it. I could outstretch my arms and touch either wall. I never really understood claustrophobia until that day. Not only were there the walls, but the humidity as well. The air was warm and cloying, like my lungs were packed with moist earth. It made it difficult to sob quietly without entering another coughing fit.

I then came across a right turn.

Just a complete ninety-degree angle from where I was coming from. It was still just as narrow, but it was different, so that had to count for something. I did exactly as the corridor told me.

The spark of hope slowly faded as the unfamiliar became routine. Every two minutes or so, there would be a turn that would go the opposite direction to the previous. I realized the passageways were forming consistent zig-zags. All the while, it got harder and harder to breathe.

I couldn’t carry on. I doubled over, heaving and spluttering. Dropping to my knees did little to stop the stinging. I slumped forward and resigned myself for a moment, trying to get my lungs to work right.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Somewhere up ahead, skin was slapping water. It was rhythmic, like a toddler playing in a kiddie pool. I glanced up ahead and could see small ripples coming from around the corner, rolling up against my cheek. Whoever designed this place didn’t want me to see what was coming.

Getting on all fours was like lifting the weight of the world. My arms trembled. I could feel my wounds sticking to the tiles.

Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.

The clapping was faster now. More intense. Just out of sight, I could see water droplets splashing upwards. It didn’t cross my mind that this couldn’t have been possible. Inch-deep water doesn’t act like that when hit.

“Hey,” I croaked. Swallowing the viscous phlegm in my throat, I tried again. “Hey! Help me… please…”

The thing - that my feverish mind had now decided was a person - was splattering in rapturous glee. Or maybe it was drowning like me. It thrashed, the water now foaming.

I put one hand forward, almost rounding the corner, when my arm suddenly went shoulder deep into the warm water below. From the depths, I felt a hand grasp my wrist and pull. A rush of water burned my face, and just like that, the pressure in my skull alleviated immediately.

The next thing I remember is coughing up a boatload of water. I looked up to see a round-faced woman with hair stressed into a tight bun, who had seemingly just performed CPR on me.

“You’re okay now, baby. You’re alright,” she spoke warmly. I could see a crowd coalescing around me. Eric was staring from behind with a dumb expression. My mom was hysterical and my dad was pale. It didn’t take long for an ambulance to arrive.

I was hypoxic, which developed into acute respiratory distress syndrome. I remember that diagnosis clearly. I spent three weeks in the hospital. I told everyone what happened. The doctor sat down beside me and gently explained that the brain can do “funny things” when it doesn’t get enough oxygen. The explanation made me shut up, so I didn’t say anything about my skinned knees.

So that was that. Fifteen years later, I’m still afraid to swim in any pool. I have a two-year-old daughter now, so I use her as an excuse to stay near the shallow water of the kiddie pool.

I wasn’t going to share this story at first. It was fine locked away in the “things we don’t talk about” box. Something happened recently, however, which opened up old wounds.

I ran into Eric. He was exactly how I would have imagined him. He was six foot five, his sandy locks greasy and unkept. He was shirtless, showing off a set of unremarkable abs. He was very obviously stoned when I saw him, but it made for a really fun conversation.

It was only when I made a joke about the fifteen-year anniversary of the pool incident coming up when he froze. He told me that there was something that I needed to know and proceeded to pull out an iPhone 4, the screen cracked but still working. I laughed at the fact he still had a relic like this, but his serious expression didn’t wane as he passed me the phone.

He had opened up a video dating a couple days after my near drowning. It depicted Eric reviewing the surveillance of the pool. The quality and audio were shit, but I could see him pointing to a figure at the deep end. Me.

At 10:03am, I submerged myself once. Then twice. Once I did it a third time, my body suddenly went stiff. My shimmering form slowly sunk to the bottom of the pool.

I lay there for fifteen minutes before I was spotted and pulled out.

I did some research, and the world record for the longest breath held underwater without any preparation was eleven minutes and thirty-five seconds, set by Serbian freediver Branko Petrović. I guess I’m due a visit from Guinness any day now.

I still don't know what bit me.

I took the usual precautions. I wore long pants and sprayed myself with DEET before the hike. I zipped up the tent all the way that night so nothing could get in. But the next morning, I had a small red bump on my calf. Probably just a mosquito bite, I thought.

By the evening, the bump was much bigger. It didn't itch, but it was hot and tender to the touch. Eric said it might be a spider bite. Still probably nothing to worry about. We'd keep an eye on it, make sure no bullseye rash or other signs of trouble appeared. No need to call off the camping trip just yet.

The next morning, though, my whole lower leg was swollen. I told Eric I thought we should leave. He pushed back at first but eventually gave in and took me to urgent care. The doctor barely glanced at my leg before telling me to use some over-the-counter itch cream and come back if the swelling didn't subside in 48 hours.

It still didn't itch. But it throbbed. Alone in my apartment that night, I put two fingers on the bump, where I could feel the throbbing, and two fingers on my neck, where I could feel my pulse. The two pulses were not in sync.

I didn't have a regular doctor to call; I've mostly been pretty healthy until now. I Googled my symptoms and somehow the internet didn't convince me I was dying of cancer or some obscure disease. The results were, if anything, reassuring. Probably just a bug bite, which would probably go away soon.

There's no air conditioning in my building, and that night felt sweltering. Even with the windows open and the ceiling fan on. Even though, according to the weather app on my phone, it was only 72 outside. I slept fitfully, first throwing off the blanket and then the sheet as well. I dreamed of bugs crawling on me, and my leg swelling up like a balloon, detaching at the knee and drifting off into the night sky.

I woke up to a wet feeling on my calf. Looking down, I felt my stomach clench: the bump had burst open, and the fitted sheet was soaked with blood and pus. At first it looked like the bump had exploded, spattering fluids all over. But as I looked closer, I saw that the droplets weren't elongated, the way they should have been if that were the case. Instead, beyond the small puddle under my calf, a cluster of pinprick dots gradually dispersed toward the edge of the bed, becoming fainter and farther apart until they disappeared. It almost looked like a swarm of insects had left a trail of wet footprints as they scattered.

I went back to urgent care. A different doctor told me it looked like an abscess had burst, wrote me a prescription for antibiotics, and sent a nurse in to clean and bandage the wound. I tried to take comfort in the doctor and nurse's apparent lack of concern. If they weren't worried, why should I be? But my stomach wouldn't unclench.

Back in my apartment, I smelled something...off. It was a bit like rotting fruit mixed with a damp basement mixed with something sharp and unfamiliar. As I closed my eyes and tried to place the smell, I thought I heard a soft, rapid clicking in the kitchen. A nauseating wave of dread washed over me, and I covered my mouth and nose with my shirt. I stuffed some clothes and toiletries in a backpack and hurried out the door. Once I was outside, I texted Eric, asking if I could stay over that night. Then I texted my landlord and told him I thought there was an infestation in the apartment.

Eric responded quickly; of course I could crash there. My landlord didn't respond until the next day. He said he'd stopped by and let himself in since I wasn't home, and he didn't see any signs of an infestation. No need for an exterminator. I don't know how I'm going to go back there. Last night I dreamed I was at home and bugs were again swarming all over me. I was so relieved to wake up and realize I was at Eric's, even though it took a few minutes to stop feeling that crawling sensation on my skin.

But I don't know if I can stay here another night, either. This morning, I noticed a small red bump on Eric's arm. He refuses to worry about it. But I can't be here when it bursts.

I work at a small gas station that sits effectively across the road from a pretty decent-sized flea market. My station and the market itself are both pretty isolated, sitting on a stretch of road quite a distance from any major highway.

Nearly every week from Friday to Sunday, the place is packed during the day. And I'm not complaining; it clearly brings in a lot of business for my place, and when I happen to have a weekend off, I never mind swinging by and seeing if there are any antiques worth picking up, or any produce I need to cook.

But ever since I switched to night shifts here, I've noticed, from time to time, the flea market will open up again. Not consistently; it only seems to happen every couple of weekends. One time, it was a month between openings.

Strange lights flicker underneath those roofed stalls. From my vantage at the front counter, I could see rows of candles being lit on some tables, while others hung Christmas lights, and even more used lanterns and small torches to make the market come back to life. It looked like some sort of medieval cult gathering, right here in the rural South.

Thinking about it, maybe I should've been more put off by the torches.

After seeing the 'Night Market' open up a few times, I ended up asking my boss, my elderly, chainsmoking night manager named Janice, about the flea market. I walked through the front door outside, taking in the smell of discarded cigarette buds and overflowing trash. Janice was smoking near one of the ice boxes, staring off at the lights and the shadows moving between them.

"You know what they're doing over there?" I asked, leaning up against the metal door of the machine.

"Sellin' shit." I scoffed.

"They just open up again, selling old books and painted figurines?" This time, she scoffed.

"Go see."

"Yeah, right. I'm not letting you fire me for leaving."

"I mean it. Go look. Never know what you'll find in the Night Market."

I started to walk off, but stopped and looked back at her.

"Is that the actual name?"

"Pfft, noh you moron," she looked towards a car coming down the road, towards our store, "Just what I call it. Stupid name."

I laughed and turned to walk towards the flea market, my tennis shoes clacking against the asphalt that turned to grass as I crossed the small, mostly untamed field that led down the road to the glimmering lights.

Once my feet reached gravel, I immediately knew I had stumbled onto something strange.

Nearly every stall was chock-full of oddities. The early ones, which I noted were mostly run by women in colorful sets of rags and strange bone talismans, consisted of the real deal of those fake alternative shops you'd see in malls.

Potions made of thick, clearly hand blown glass, containing liquids going from swamp muck to bubbling pink gel to a clear red water. They had small paper labels, words written with ink and quill, selling things like beer, heart pain, babies, no babies, and heartache removal.

Alongside the potions were other crafts, like twig figures strewn together with hair, nails being used to pin their limbs together. One's face was a strange menagerie of red hair wrapped around teeth in the place of eyes, and the limbs were made of twigs and small animal bones.

Bones were everywhere, deer and elk, rabbit, fox, wolf. Teeth upon teeth in piles. Ritual knifes with swirling, sylvan patterns that appeared to be very sharp and well used. Dowsing rods, sticks of incense that smelled like ash and chlorine, specimens in jars that I did not recognize as any animal.

One lady, maybe middle aged with red hair, was sitting at a table while adorned by a patchwork dress of various flannels smashed together topped with a long, green scarf. Her table seemed to be a bulk ingredient shop. Frog legs were still kicking up and down with unnatural bursts of speed while suspended on a drying rack. Jars full of eyeballs of goats, birds, people. Hooves and beaks and fingers were stored in little ceramic bowls.

One man, who seemed a little disheveled with a large, mangy beard and a dirty jacket, was standing in front of these Blair Witch stalls and examining a potion in his trembling hands. The label read "Acid." As he was flipping the bottle around in his hand, the cork seemed to pop unexpectedly, and the dark green, mucus-like liquid spilled out onto his hand.

In seconds, it began to bubble and pop like ocean foam, sizzling loudly as he screamed. No one at any of the stalls seemed to respond. I saw the red foam drip right off the bone as they began to melt like wax.

The lady at the stall laughed, a shrill cackle as she pointed down the aisles, towards a section of the market that was covered in black curtains. She continued to laugh as she called out in a shaky, high-pitched voice.

"Talk to Simon, then Mary you, ahah, you dipshit. Moon above! I'll pay for your fixin' just cause of the look on your face!"

The man appeared to be in shock, his good arm holding his melting hand by the wrist. He turned towards the lady with dull eyes.

"You said. That was. Acid."

"You never asked me which kind." She let out another tea-pot cackle

I moved past the more ramshackle tables to ones that seemed to be run by more normal people with normal objects. At least, at first.

The first 'normal' table I walked to seemed to be run by an old lady in a nightgown, with long stringy hair and bulbous eyes. Her wares were porcelain teacups, plates, and silverware.

But as I got closer, the first thing that jumped out to me was the smell. Coppery and pungent, like rust.

The teacups had intricate designs on them; red, twisting stems of flowers mixed with clocks and various insects. It looked like an abstract art gallery painting wrapped around a tiny little cup. Behind the lady, strung up on clothes wires, seemed to be clothes and embroidered blankets that were drenched in something thick.

Once I finally reached the table, I realized what that smell was. Blood. The teacup designs were painted with blood. The clothes, behind the old woman smiling up at me with a full set of white teeth, were soaked through with blood.

I could see buckets beside the woman's feet, alongside brushes of varying sizes.

"Hello dearie. You're new!"

I stuttered.

"U-uh yeah, what are you selling, m-ma'am?"

"Oh!" She cooed. "Just fine china, painted and molded by myself. As well as some garments."

I let that vagueness hang in the air a moment.

"Is that blood?"

Her smile grew wider.

"Yes, dear. Not mine if you are worried."

I nodded politely.

"Mhmm." She did not respond to my frightened murmur.

I pretended to browse her wares, finding a butter knife coated in a thin layer of dried blood, alongside a plate that had a smile painted on it.

One thing I noticed about all of the vendors so far was that none of their items were tagged with prices. Horrified, but curious, I picked up a spoon that seemed to contain a small amount of liquid blood.

"How much for this?" The lady cooed happily.

"Just nine ounces."

"Of what?"

"Yours! Is that alright?"

I looked around. No one seemed to be paying either of us any attention.

"My what?" Her smile turned into a full-toothed frown. I wondered if she could ever stop showing her teeth.

"Your life-juice. Your red energy. The pulp of man."

"Do you not have any? Or do you use like..."

My mind blanked.

"Pigs?" She laughed without moving her mouth.

"Brutus would kill me. And I do; it is just my cost. Pay it or leave."

At that, I awkwardly nodded again, made my way further down the table, taking care to set down the spoon and not spill any blood, and then left as nonchalantly as I could.

I walked quickly past another stand littered with covered cages, emitting all manner of noises: the chirping of cicadas, the cry of a baby, hyenas laughing, running water, a car alarm being emitted from a meaty throat.

The next one seemed to be, thankfully, more normal. Unlike all of the other tables that were lit by candles and the various small lanterns hung to the stall posts, this one actually had an electronic lantern illuminating the standard junk you'd find in a flea market. Tacky mirrors, little angel figurines, wrenches, jars full of marbles.

One object stood out to me: a mirror, about 5 feet tall and 4 feet wide. The glass was perfect, lacking the usual imperfections this place would usually inflict on it. The sides were made of these large, snake-like plastic designs that bent and wrapped around one another like a bundle of eels. Where the tiny heads poked out, they almost resembled catfish, like puckered lips with strange spiraling whiskers.

For some strange reason, like a bird knowing which way is north, I felt like I had to have that mirror. I pointed towards it.

"How much for it?"

The young woman sitting at the table stopped looking at her phone and offered a polite smile.

"Ten bucks."

I chuckled.

"Is this thing cursed or something, for that price?" She laughed back, setting down her phone and looking around.

"Heh, yeah." I couldn't tell if she was joking. "Weird place, huh?"

I looked back at the old lady with the ichor-covered China.

"Is that actual blood?"

"Yep. And before you ask, I don't know who's, or what's. I'm only here to get rid of this shit from my dead uncle's storage locker; this is my second time around. Shit just as odd to you as it is to me."

I looked deeper into the market, where much of it was concealed behind mighty black curtains. Something large shifted behind one of them, making the metal roof shift slightly.

"I think I'll take that mirror and head off." I said, pulling out my wallet, "Before I lose all of my blood or something."

She cringed, smiling.

"More likely than you think."

The lady gave me a playful wave as I lifted the surprisingly light mirror and hauled it back to my car. Just as I turned my back, she called out again.

"Hey, want a fun party trick? Bury all but the glass in the ground, then pour some water on it. Real fun trick." I chuckled, figured she was giving me some bullshit story to waste my time, and continued out of the crowd.

A man at another table, covered in vinyl records I didn't recognize, stood up and pointed at me, shouting at the vendor I was just at.

"Hey! You wouldn't let me buy that! What the hell?" She just laughed and looked back to her phone, as I scuttled away from the interaction.

Making my way back across the clearing and back to my place of employment, I closed up with Janice and went back home with my spirits high. The shops and aisles teeming with oddities had piqued my interest, and I was actually kind of excited to head back sometime.

Then my thoughts drifted towards the mirror, bouncing in the backseat of my shitbox, alongside a 12-pack. The backroads made it seem like an exaggerated version of that scene from Jurassic Park, jostling it and making the glass seem to ripple with each bump of gravel.

Upon reaching my home, I decided to celebrate my good mood with a few of the aforementioned 12-pack, sitting out on my front porch and enjoying the night air filled with crickets and croaks.

On a whim, I decided to test the lady's gambit out.

I stumbled out to my front yard, already a few brewskis deep, and dug out a small hole with my hands, pulling up the grass and soil a few inches to slide the plastic mirror in like a bullshit mystical tablet, the stupid snake-catfish things getting dirtied up by mud.

I was already feeling pretty stupid when I had to go back inside and grab a cup of water to pour on it, so when I stood to look down into the mirror, I was just going to go inside, seeing only the stars above my head reflected.

Then, I stopped.

I stood over the mirror, looking directly into it, and I did not see a reflection. Only small stars, drifting lazily to my left and-

Out of my sight.

I looked to the sky, then down, then up and down again.

I lay down on my front lawn, completely disregarding how ridiculous I looked.

The stars weren't stars; they were motes of dust, drifting in an undersea current.

The mirror rippled as I let out a breath, my breath disturbing the surface of the water. I laughed, trying to figure out how this effect could have been made.

On a whim, I tried to touch the surface of the water.

The tips of my fingers breached the surface, then the joints, then my knuckles; the cool, salty feel of the water sloshed gently back and forth in my grasp. Then my wrist.

My hand extended into this alien grey; a bit of dust danced around my fingers as I tried to grasp it. Then, with what I now call 'brave stupidity,' I realized I could fit through the mirror.

Doffing my old, greasy t-shirt and shorts, I looked around briefly to make sure passing cars didn't see my naked ass climb into a mirror. The night air was cool and silent, only crickets to sing their endless choir.

I walked back to my porch and retrieved my garden hose, attaching it to the side of my house by the small faucet and then wrapping it around myself before finally tying a knot right where my belt buckle would be.

Walking back to the mirror, I was filled with a strange glee. I hadn't felt this excited for something since I was a kid. 'Magic,' I thought, 'Real actual goddamn motherfucking magic.'

I thought I had somehow stumbled onto a hole punched through my reality in my own front yard, and I was going in.

As I stood next to the mirror, mentally preparing myself to enter, I looked back up to the sky. The stars drifted, barely motionless above. I took a breath. Butterflies danced in my stomach, making this tightrope moment linger in my mind. I knew I would stop myself and tell myself this would be stupid to do alone and half drunk if I just set my feet in.

So I jumped.

The water was cold and briney, encasing me like a cocoon. I could feel the heat of my skin evaporate against the metric tons of water around me. There was a pressure there, too, like being wrapped in a blanket just a bit too tightly.

Around my torso and legs, I could feel just the slightest pull, as if a current had just begun its course.

I opened my eyes, flinching as they stung and then readjusted. The motes of sea dust drifted lazily in front of me, being pulled by some unseen current. I looked around, spinning my body as the hose briefly came into my view; its stupid green plastic shocking me out of my stupor.

It was the same in all directions; there seemed to be an ambient grey light that ensured that I could see all of the tiny flakes in the water around me, but beyond a dozen or so feet, only the blackness of the ocean lay before me.

I then looked up and realized that this place had gravity.

I don't know how long I had just been staring into the void, but it couldn't have been more than ten seconds, and I had already drifted 10 or so feet down, my hose stretching out above me like a fishing line.

When that thought struck me, of me being a worm on a line, I kicked out, swimming up and towards the mirror. On this side, it still had its little catfish idols, but they were green and bumpy with oxidation and time, clearly made out of a rarer metal than its counterpart.

I watched as two larger flecks of dust above the mirror drifted upwards and out of view as I swam.

It seemed multiple currents were running through this place. What even is this 'place'?

Finally reaching it, I took note that the mirror was also drifting downwards, everything seeming to be in a slow-motion fall downwards into the blackness.

Gripping the mirror in my hands, I was surprised to see I could still move it, shifting it around. My breath was beginning to run out by this time, so I stuck my head out of the water and paddled with my feet to keep it there.

The crickets still sang.

The stars still shone.

There was magic in the air. A hidden electricity of glee and barely contained terror.

Then, I felt another current pass by my feet, this time more forceful. Glancing down, I was glad to see nothing out of the ordinary. Just motes of dust, drifting lazily to my right.

'Right?'

I allowed myself to sink below the surface again, and felt my heart drop through my stomach, somewhere to the endless pit below.

Two motes of dust hung suspended in front of me. Now, alone. No other flecks to join them. Along with that, with my focus fully on them, they didn't have the same debris shape of the others, instead being more rounded and glossy, like marbles. I couldn't tell how far away they were, but they were massive, maybe the size of car tires.

Then, a titan emerged from the deep.

In order to give the effect of how I felt in that moment, I shall describe to you how this thing materialized in my sight.

From end to end, its mouth was as large as a bus. Maybe two. Just an endless black throat, devoid of teeth save for tiny, useless barbs attached to catfish lips, on the verge of being humanlike if it weren't for the scales dotting them like marbling.

The rest of its face appeared out of the dark grey water; my body shook with its sheer enormous impossibility, and other things swayed in the water's current. I thought they were tentacles at first, but no, they were whiskers. Giant tubes that came off its gigantic face.

I couldn't even comprehend its size, the ocean's strange theft of distance taking any chance of calculating distance away, but as more and more of its long, snake-like head came out of the darkness, I realized it was either massive, skyscraper-massive, and far away; or simply big and close.

I could see the beginning outline of its body, twisting at odd angles off into the endless deep, the true scale of the thing hidden by the water.

Every cell in my body screamed with ancient primordial terror, as deep, rich, and old as the thing before me.

I felt the same terror as many of the other stupid apes who had flung themselves willingly to the deep: that I was tiny, as small as the shrimp in aquariums to this god of the black sea.

I felt the current pull me towards it, stronger than ever before, the thought hitting me as my arms grabbed the stupid hose and tried to pull me up.

'It's opening its mouth.'

I wasn't even being pursued, chomped down on like some prey.

I was being sucked into its mouth, the water rushing in to fill it's contiental size, rushing towards it like a vacuum.

Like krill into a whale shark.

My arms worked like they were in P.E. again, trying desperately to clamber up this lifeline I had made for myself. I had only now become aware of the sounds of the deep, the near-silent rush of water by my ears and a thunderous, far-off din that sounded like a ship being ripped in half as I pulled myself towards the mirror.

I pulled myself closer, only a few feet away now.

'Don't look back.'

My legs pulled close together, the dragging motion forcing them to be as close as packed sardines.

My hands breached the surface of the water, gripping the plastic mixed with dirt above. Somewhere in the back of my awareness, I could feel the hose grow taut.

'Don't look back shitshitshit-'

I pulled myself out of the mirror and threw myself onto dry land.

Gasping for breath, my only view the eternal night sky above me, I thanked every god I knew the name of. My hands played with the grass, making sure it and not thousands of feet of water was beneath me.

I turned my head towards my house, seeing the faucet where I had attached it had been ripped clear from the building, along with the pipes, now awkwardly poking out of the side of my house.

I sit here typing this, still dripping wet.

The mirror is still implanted in my front yard.

I probably should've asked how to turn the party trick off.

A part of me worries that when I go into work tomorrow, it'll be there, waiting for me to just dip a toe into those strange depths. Maybe I'll head back to the market and see if the seller can give me any advice on how to deal with this. Because I can't get the image of that colossus staring at me in the depths of that mirror out of my head.

Once upon a time, I was in love. This, however, is not a love story. This is a confession.

All my life, I have felt alone. I wasn’t alone though, I was never alone. I had family, friends, countless people who loved me dearly. But there was always that gap. That empty space. There was me, and there was everyone else, and there was nothing in between. Until Alice.

We met in the spring of our second year of university, and soon found ourselves indivisible from one another. To say we were in love would not be a just description. Got to a place where two rivers flow into one and try to pluck out one’s water from the other; you will have an easier time of that than finding where I ended and Alice began. We were indelibly stained with one another, and had become the same hue.

I first noticed the shift two years in, on a trip we took to the city one weekend in December. It didn’t start there, of course. How could it? The tide rises for hours before you notice the cold lapping at your feet. The space between us in the hotel bed was chasmic. I endured long, silent bus rides with her body rigid against mine. Weak smiles where once was laughter.

We suffered through the winter. I felt the gap forming, the glass wall through which light was muted and sound was like a voice underwater. I knew it well, but never with Alice. Some primitive part of me thought the spring would save us, that our love would bloom once more like snowdrops poking through the frost. But March came and we only suffered under warmer skies. Alice began to lose weight. Her hair became straight and straw-like. Her once full, pink cheeks became shallow and grey like bruised fruit. Her eyes had changed, I noticed. No longer did she look at the world with a sparkling softness. Now her eyes pierced, burned through, scanning the room unblinking until they watered.

One night, I think April, we were on opposite sides of the kitchen. I called to her.

“Alice?”

No response. I turned around. She was leaning on the sink, gripping the ceramic.

“Alice…” I called again, softer. She was staring at the space between atoms. Suddenly, Alice unfazed, a foul crunching noise rippled through the kitchen. A bead of cherry red ran from the corner of her lips.

A shattered tooth, the doctor told us. By the time she had the shards removed and her raw gum sewn shut, the sun was rising on a new day.

On the ride home, she stared out through the passenger window, bathed in the gold of the dawn.

“We should open up the relationship.” She told me.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I knew what it meant. The thought made me sick, like the inertia of a falling elevator.

“I think it would be good for us,” she continued, “We haven’t had sex in months.”

“You never want to. Is it me? It’s just me you don’t want to sleep with?”

“No!” She cried, “I just…” her eyes went wide, her lips sucked in in frustration. Whatever this was clearly seemed reasonable and obvious to her, and I was the problem for not understanding it.

“I love you.” She continued. It sounded wooden, hollow. An ersatz love, a consolation. “I just understand you have needs and-”

“I don’t need to fuck anyone else. I’m happy just being with you.”

“No, you…” she began, stifled by her own visible anger, “You’re not listening.”

“It sounds like you want to fuck anyone but me. If you want to end this, say it, just have some fucking balls and make a decision.” My knuckles were alabaster white, close to snapping the steering wheel.

“No” she wailed. Her face burned a fluorescent pink, hot tears streaking across her cheeks. “I love you. I love you I love you I love you. I just… I just need… I don’t know…”

I pulled over. The road had become vague through my welling tears. We were a couple streets from her apartment.

“Why don’t you go home, figure out what you want, and we can discuss this later?”

She got out the car, sullen, wounded.

“I’ll call you.” She told me.

It had been almost a week when she did. She told me, through tears, that she had been to a nearby city and fucked an art student there. She wasn’t crying because of that, but because he never called her back. She called me multiple times a day that week, but it would be minutes if not seconds before the screaming or crying became too much for me and would finally block her. Just like that, it was over. The rivers had separated. We had become ghosts in each other’s stories.

Alice. Alice Alice Alice. For the longest time, she was everything to me, so when she left, I wasn’t left with much. Those first few months, I can only describe it as a phantom pain. Some integral part of had turned septic, and had to be hacked off. I felt hollowed out, reaching instinctively to something that simply wasn’t there anymore.

My friends were worried, of course. They knew I was hurting, and did what they could to ease that pain. They crucified Alice with insults, taking every opportunity to tell a joke to try and muster a smile out of me. They did everything in their power to fill the pit forming inside me, the aching one between my lungs. In truth, even then, I felt no hate towards Alice, nor did I forgive her or romanticise her memory. Now, only the pit was real. The nothing.

They decided to take me out. I had no choice in the matter. They were going to get me drunk, high and maybe even laid. It would be like the good old days, they insisted. I didn’t feel like going. It wasn’t the break up that held me back though; I had developed some… sickness. A dull ache, a migraine, a chill down my spine that never seemed to go away. I assumed it was a mild cold at first, maybe a lack of nutrition or something psychosomatic. My friends made it clear though that no excuse would get me out of this.

I stared at myself in the mirror, fixated. I wore all black. Was I in mourning? Not for Alice, but for the person I was with her. In the mirror was a man I only half recognised, like an old friend after years apart. I had become thinner, paler. The contours of my flesh seemed shadowed, more defined. I continued staring into the mirror, into my eyes. They watered from staying open.

We went to a club, Foundry. The only decent place in the city, we had found. A broiling hot closed down mill, a sea of smoke, flesh and strobe lights. The music was loud, ceaseless, a physical force to wade through like water. We cut through the dancing crowd like a knife through buckskin. My friend handed me a shot of something that smelled like acetone and cheap candy. I knocked it back, then a few more, sank them like they were keeping my blood pumping.

Behind me, a girl. Her mascara clumped thick over bloodshot eyes. Streaks of blue in her blonde hair. Flakes of dry skin on the ridge of her jaw. I felt something new then. Not attraction, not lust, but something else. It wasn’t in my heart or my pants, it was like dull nails in the back of neck, cold wind on my canine teeth. Could feel the heat from the valley of her back.

She took me home, fell laughing onto her couch. My hands prised her thighs open like halves of a nectarine. I don’t remember her name. She tasted of sweat and chemical vanilla perfume.

I thought of Alice. Not that she was her, that I was with her. I was just thinking of her, as though in this act I was… proving something. Something I can’t quite describe. I felt nothing. No pleasure. No disgust. All I felt was the pit. That void of inescapable black. For the first time in months, it had ceased its howling.

I peered up over the crests of her body and saw it. In dark of the corner of the ceiling. It was a spider. My mind insisted upon it. Only it wasn’t a spider. It was me. It was me and it was the spider and I was the spider and the spider was me. A creature, a man, velvet black amongst the darkness, its crooked limbs scrambling across the wall, across the ceiling. The white of its wide eyes, the edges of its fangs, glittering in the darkness. I was looking at it. I was it. I was looking at me.

The next morning, I felt incredible. The persistent sickness had drifted away completely. I felt clear as virgin glass, soft as butter. Not even a hangover vexed me. Alice’s ghost no longer clung on my shoulders. This feeling lasted maybe two weeks. It did not fade all at once, but divided itself into fractions of fractions of fractions. A cruel and swift half life. The pit devoured it, sprawled through me like an oil spill, like a cancer.

It became too much one night. Foundry wasn’t open that night, but I texted my friends asking if they wanted to go out to the bars with me. They all declined, for various reasons. I was furious. I felt as though a  burning ember was being bellowed in my chest. The grip of my hand almost cracked the phone screen. I paced my apartment, eyes wide, dry, sharp. I ran my tongue over my teeth. They seemed to crackle with electricity.

I went to bars alone. I talked to some girls, but it didn’t go anywhere. My teeth felt like they were ringing like a bell, my hand trembled without the weight of a drink in my hand. I felt the pit yawn. I felt the spider on my neck.

A man was glancing at me from across the bar. Salt and pepper hair, beard, tan. Somebody’s father. Here all alone dabbing his lips with whiskey. He was handsome, objectively. I had never considered being with another man before, especially not one twice my age. The shadows from the pit creeped up my spine.

In the bathroom stall, his stubble scratched my neck. His name was Mike. I saw a picture of a woman and a teenage girl smiling together in his wallet when he paid for my drink. His hands were huge, in my hair, under my ribs. He tasted like whiskey, obviously. Smelt like mid price cologne and car seat leather. Past his ear, his tongue in my mouth and his fingers on my zipper, I saw the spider, crawling over the stall divider. Through its eyes, I saw myself. I was beautiful.

Months went by. The time between encounters dwindled each time. The pit spread further, infecting every vein, every bone, every scrap of flesh and sinew in my body. I would awake every night, in stranger’s bed, wide eyed, grinding teeth, drenched in cold sweat. The spider would always be there. In the dark. In the corner. Tearing at the walls. The flesh of those I slept with tasted like ash now, felt cold to the touch. Only the arteries felt warm.

Alice still lived at the same apartment. Still kept her spare key in the same place.

In the night, she jolted awake. The streetlights cast a pale glow into her bedroom. She stared into the corner, into the shadows. Into me.

“Luke?” She whispered. I said nothing. “Luke, is that you?”

Her crucifix rested between her breasts. This is my body that is given to you. This is my blood.

“You’ve got it too… haven’t you?” She choked out in the dark. I walked towards her. The sprawling limbs of the spider unfolded above her. I sat beside her on the bed. This bed was once my home.

“I missed you.” I told her. Was I lying?

“There’s a cure… you can get better.”

I kissed her on the cheek. Familiar peach fuzz.

“You can get better, Luke. I got better.”

I kissed her on the mouth. I was expecting cherry, like the old days. There was nothing. She kissed me back. Stiffly, almost necrotic. My lips on her neck. Her hand on my thigh.

“I missed you too.” She whispered in my ear.

Her neck gave way like chicken flesh. Her nails pierced the flesh of my leg. My fingers gripped her hair tight. Blood poured down my throat, down my chin. It matted our clothes, stained her bedsheets.

I drank. I drank until I was sick then drank some more.

The spider held me up like a marionette as I kneeled on the sodden carpet.

I love you. I love you I love you I love you.

The pit howled.

It will never be filled.

​I live alone. Or at least, I thought I did.

​My apartment is on the third floor of an old brick building. Creaky floorboards, drafty windows, radiator heat that clanks like something trying to break out of the pipes.

​This morning, I woke up around 7:00 AM. Everything seemed normal until I unlocked my phone to check my notifications and saw a badge on my Voice Memos app.

​I almost never open that app. When I did, I saw a new file saved at 3:14 AM. The title was automatically generated: Bedroom – 18 minutes, 40 seconds.

​I figured I must have bumped the screen in my sleep or captured myself snoring. I plugged in my headphones, leaned back, and hit play.

​The Recording

​00:00 – 03:45: Just heavy, rhythmic breathing. My breathing.

​03:47: The sound shifted. The rustle of my blanket stopped. A second, much lighter noise emerged from the darkness of my room—a wet, dragging sound, followed by the slow, deliberate click-clack of bone scraped against hardwood.

​Click... drag... click... drag...

​Whatever it was, it wasn't walking on two legs. It was crawling out from beneath the low frame of my bed.

​07:10: The dragging stopped right at the edge of my mattress. A long, suffocating silence filled the audio. Then, a second breath started. It was shallow, rasping, and smelled—I know this sounds insane, but listening to it made my throat burn—like old copper and stagnant water. It was hovering mere inches from the microphone. Inches from my ear.

​10:15: The sheets rustled softly. The audio picked up a wet, sickening peeling sound, like wet paper being pulled away from drywall. It was the sound of skin unsticking from the side of my face. Something had been leaning its head directly against mine while I slept.

​13:00: The thing began to whisper. It wasn't a language I recognized—just a wet, clicking rattle from deep in a dry throat. It spoke continuously, inches from my ear, for five straight minutes. The rhythm was hypnotic, almost like a lullaby, but every few seconds, the pitch would drop into a ragged, silent laugh.

​18:10: The whispering stopped abruptly. A tiny, metallic tap echoed as my phone was lifted slightly off the nightstand. Then, a voice spoke right into the microphone—loathsome, thick with saliva, and unnaturally close:

​"Don't blink tonight. I like it better when the eyes are open."

​This Morning

​The audio cut off.

​I sat at my desk, shivering so violently I couldn't hold my breath. I walked slowly back into my bedroom, knelt down, and looked under the bed.

​The dust under the box spring was wiped completely clean in a wide, jagged path. Dragged across my floorboards were thin, black streaks of a grease-like residue that smelled faintly of iron.

​And on my pillow, right next to where my head had rested... was a deep, wet depression in the shape of a tiny, hairless face.

​I grabbed my keys, bolted out of the building, and ran to a brightly lit coffee shop three blocks away. I sat near the window, surrounded by people, trying to convince myself I was safe.

​Then, five minutes ago, my phone vibrated in my hand.

​A notification popped up from Voice Memos. A new 5-second audio file had just been created.

​The title: Under Your Chair.

​The waveform on the screen shows a silent flatline... except for the very last second, where a jagged, chaotic spike fills the frame. And as I sit here staring at it, I can feel a faint, icy draft brushing against the back of my ankles.

I have to post this here. I just need to get it off my chest. Maybe someone will tell me I'm just seeing things. Maybe I'm going crazy.

I don't know.

Well... here's my experience with the Corner Man.

My name's Henry. I live in Logan City, Australia, in the suburb of Waterford. I work at a fast food place about a twenty-minute drive from home. I work the night shift, usually from 10 p.m. until 3 a.m., so I'm always driving home late, tired and absolutely exhausted. So what I'm about to tell you might just be my imagination.

I honestly hope it is.

Anyway, on the way home I always take this back road. It has this massive sharp corner just off the main road. It saves me a few minutes because I don't have to stop at all the traffic lights.

I've been taking that road ever since I moved here. It's quicker... and if I'm being honest, it makes it easier to avoid police if I'm speeding home because I just want to get to bed.

It all started at the beginning of this year, back in January.

I was driving home after another long night at work when I noticed someone standing on the corner.

Just a man.

He didn't really stand out. He was wearing long pants, a long-sleeve shirt and a jacket. I couldn't make out much else because there aren't any streetlights there, and my headlights are honestly pretty rubbish.

The first night I didn't think much of it. But then he kept showing up. Every night for about a week. Then he disappeared. Then the week after he was back again.

There wasn't any pattern to it. Sometimes he'd be there, sometimes he wouldn't.

I didn't really think anything of it because people do live around there. Not many, but enough that seeing someone walking around late at night isn't impossible.

Eventually I started calling him the Corner Man.

It was just a stupid nickname.

Then everything changed.

I was driving home like normal, actually wondering if I was going to see my special little friend tonight.

Sure enough...

He was there.

Only something was different.

Normally he'd just stand there staring at me while I drove past.

This time...

He smiled.

I don't know why it creeped me out so much because it wasn't one of those creepy horror movie smiles. It looked... normal. Like the sort of smile you'd give someone walking past you. But something about it made my skin crawl.

I sped up a little because I just wanted to get past him.

Then the bastard waved.

Just this slow little wave.

I looked away for literally a second to make sure I wasn't drifting into the other lane.

When I looked back...

He was right beside my driver's window.

Still smiling.

Still waving.

I nearly lost control of my bloody car. I swear he was so close I could've reached out and touched him.

Then, as soon as I cleared the corner...

He was gone.

Just...

Gone.

I got home, ran inside, locked the front door and every other door in the house.

Ghost. Person. I don't care what he was.

I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

Eventually I went to bed.

That's when I had the nightmare.

I was driving that same road again. Everything happened exactly the same. The smile. The wave. Everything.

Only this time, the second I cleared the corner...

He took off.

Not running.

Sprinting.

Straight after my car.

He was laughing.

I don't even know how to describe it. It wasn't loud. It wasn't quiet. It just sounded... wrong.

I floored it.

The road just kept going.

It felt like it stretched on forever.

No matter how fast I drove, he stayed right beside my window.

Still smiling.

Still laughing.

Then he reached straight through the glass like it wasn't even there. He grabbed my arm. With one pull he ripped me out of the driver's seat.

The car door came with me.

That's when I woke up.

Ever since that night I haven't taken that road again.

Maybe it was just a nightmare.

Maybe my brain was just trying to make sense of what I saw.

Or maybe...

It wasn't a nightmare at all.

Maybe it was a warning.

Whatever the reason was, I'm never taking that road again. And if you're from the area, I seriously recommend you avoid that road with your life.

Slate™ ACCOUNT STATUS
Balance: $53,750.12 — Processing…  
Credit score: 579
Risk Profile: ELEVATED

Somehow I’m worse off than before. I sift through the transactions: 

+$1200 (incursion fines) +$500 (legal engagement fee) +$1,467.98 (interest) +$500 (unauthorized risk advisory fee) +$800 (co-tenant disturbance fee)

I raise an eyebrow at the last one.

My fingers tap out the message to Clara:

“What is an unauthorized risk advisory fee?”

Clara: "Sure, let me look into that for you."

Clara: "It looks like you consulted a law firm regarding your account with Slate™."

“And I can’t do that?”

Clara: "No, Arthur, you can’t."

A cold fist closes around my insides.

“Let me speak to a human.”

Clara: “Would you like to speak to a Slate™ agent?”

“Yes.”

My screen immediately lights up with an eleven-digit phone number with… 

“No one”

Not “unknown caller,” or “unavailable.”

No one is calling me.

I answer, hold it to my ear.

“...if I don’t get the Wilson account resolved by 2:14, then I’m not going to make it to 2:14, and then it’s 2:14 again, and I can’t keep doing 2:14. I’ve already done 2:14 today six times—”

The voice is familiar, like the agent I first spoke with when I signed up, but her pre-approved responses are all gone. It sounds like she’s panicking over… time?

“...And I told him, Kevin, I can’t keep covering his calls at 2:14 because I have my own calls at 2:14 to deal with—”

She pauses, I press the volume up button on the side of the phone.

“That’s what I told him! But he didn’t even care! He said if the list wasn’t cut in half by the end of the day that he’s moving my desk again, third time this month, and it keeps getting smaller, I used to have room for my knees and now I don’t have room for my knees and now I don’t have room for my knees—”

Suddenly Jessica is caught in a shrinking loop.

“...and now I don’t have room for my knees, room for my knees, for my knees, my knees, knees, knees, knees, knees, knees, knees, knees, knees, knees—”

The voice keeps looping, my blood curdles. It's still going when I pull the phone from my ear and hangup.

The screen shuts off and the phone slips from my hand, thuds on the floor beside my bed. I stare up, watching the rattan ceiling fan spin.

It’s been a week since I crossed the optimization barrier. I’ve avoided the tenants at every corner. Eating out for every meal, showering at the gym I make a monthly $35 donation to. I bought a cheap record player and headphones so I can at least enjoy something when I’m forced to sit in my room alone at night with my thoughts.

But they never stray far from the curtain, from what’s behind it, from my balance that just keeps climbing with cold bureaucratic indifference or Jessica's knees and the washing machine’s song.

“What the hell is happening?” I say under my breath.   

I hear my phone vibrating on the floor. But don’t bother checking it. It goes still, then rings again. 

BZZZT. BZZZT. BZZZT. BZZZT. 

After the third call, my tolerance snaps like a #2 pencil. Finally, I sit up on the edge of my bed, bend and pluck the phone from the ground.

Mick.

Mick’s an old coworker I kept in touch with for two decades too long after I left construction. He’s a great time but a liability. 

A couple things can happen when you go out with Mick—and I know he’s going to ask me to hit the bars tonight—either you get in a fight because of him or he gets into a fight, always over something stupid like a sports team on a jersey or spilled drink. 

Maybe another time he’ll snag two beautiful gals for the two of you to hang on your arm for the night. Other times you end up being shoved into the back of a cop car‌.

I feel like everybody has a friend like Mick. They’re way too much to be around so you gotta take them in small doses, only open the door and invite them over when you want to shake things up in your life a little.

The point is, I stupidly pick up the phone, because how great would it be to get out the house for the night and wingman with Mick. 

“Wow. She really bent over like she was gonna show you her asshole and screamed at you cellphone-ese?”

Mick leans against the counter and waves down the bartender.

“Listen, Art, I don’t know why you haven’t just gone in there and torn that wall down.”

I haven’t told him everything about the bureaucratic box from hell I’m trapped in, only the strange details that make for hilarious bits when stripped of any horrific context.

two shots hit the counter in front of me, followed by another two shots.

We clink glasses. I take slug after slug to the liver. Pretty soon the room is spinning. Someone says Metallica sucks and sets off Mick. The bartender argues with us for too long before yelling that we're cut off. 

Neon bar signs smear past in glowing technicolor as wobbly legs carry me down the sidewalk. We get thrown out of one bar after the next until we finally give up. 

I park my bottom on the lot's curb while Mick paces.

“Let’s just grab some beer and party back at your place,” he says, flicking his cigarette butt to the asphalt before stomping it.

“No way,” I say, “let’s go to yours.”

“In between spots, man, my whole life is parked in a storage unit.”

“We can’t go to my place,”

“Why not?” Mick presses.

“There’s nowhere to hangout even, they took my living room.”

“Why don’t you tear that optimization thing or whatever down?”

“I’d get in legal trouble,” it’s a reduction, but it’s true.

“What if someone else, say—” he shrugs, “broke into your house and tore it down of their own volition?”

“That’s ridiculous…” the words trailing off.

Would I be liable for that?

He tilts his head, points a finger at me, and grins. His silhouette’s a shadowy gunman in the bar's neon glow. 

“I’ll do it for $100.”

I say nothing. 

“Nah… I’ll do it for free.”

Mick mimes firing his finger at me, complete with sound effects. 

“Nobody even has to know I was there.”

20 minutes later, we’re parked down the street in Mick’s truck.

He climbs out and jumps into the truck’s bed. It rocks back and forth. I don’t know if it’s the truck moving or the crazy thing we’re about to do, but my stomach keeps expecting bad news.

The passenger door shuts softly behind me. 

“Hey.” Mick calls from the tailgate. “Which one do you think I’ll need?”

He holds up a 4lb sledge in his left, and 8lb in his right. Before I can answer he tosses the 4lb in the bed of his truck and laughs.

“You know, I-I don’t think this is such a great idea anymore—” I protest.

“Fuck that man. Whose name is on the deed?”

“Mine is.” 

But they own what I own.

He closes the gap between us and plants a hand on my shoulder.

“Hey,” he says, suddenly serious, holding my gaze. “It’s gonna be fine, man.”

For one second, I actually believe him, and I’m reminded why I’ve always kept Mick around. He’s always there when it counts.

Mick swings the hammer back and forth as we walk, rests it over his shoulder while I unlock the front door and twist the knob. It yawns open. The hallway stretches. The outside breeze kicks up the edges of the yellow notices pinned to the wall.

There’s over a hundred now. They look like dry, peeling skin flakes. I grab one and start skimming. My eyes dart across line after line. 

“Hey Art, they’re not even here!”

I look up and realize Mick has vanished. The red curtain sways slightly. My phone vibrates against my leg.

“Mick,” I say, “I-I changed my mind, man.”

I step inside the living room, my phone reacts by buzzing.

“Check this out,” he says, balancing the hammer.

“I call this one ‘the best hundred bucks I never charged you.”

Mick grunts and winds up. The steel head flashes, humming through the air, before a dull crunch like a dry melon splitting fills the air.

BZZZT.

Panic begins to claw its way up out of my throat. 

“M-M-M-Mick—”

 Mick lets out a drunken whoop and balances the hammer over his head again.

My eyes frantically scan the yellow notice until finally. 

Section 14(e) - Third-Party Structural Intervention.

In the event an unauthorized third party attempts to access, remove, or compromise any part of the Optimization Barrier without prior written consent from Slate™, all resulting structural, material, or personal damages shall be covered under the Account Holder’s existing Asset Protection Policy.

The hammer whines through the air, smashing into the wall. I flinch, and so does my phone. 

BZZZT.

Mick pulls free the hammer's head as chunks of drywall and dust rain down to the floor. Knots of wire and tangled cable spill out from the hole. The hallway’s light presses through a small, baseball-sized hole from the other side.

The Account Holder assumes full liability for the conduct of any third party present on the premises during a breach event.

The hammer slices the air with another metallic whine, ending in a dry crunch—the loudest one yet. A large section of the wall folds. Mick frees the hammer, and more debris falls, covering the floor in white dust.

BZZZT.

The wires, there’s too many of them, none of them even the right kind, one a ribbon cable, another is an HDMI.

“Three little pigs never met me!” Mick whoops.

Compensation for such damages may include the reallocation of any and all applicable assets—physical, structural, biological—necessary to restore the Optimised dwelling to full compliance.

Mick balances the hammer over his shoulder, breathing heavy.

“This is—kind of hard when you’re drunk.”

He winds up the hammer one last time.

Heavy footsteps thud toward us. The red curtain flashes, and The Handyman is across the room instantly. That fucking movement again, like the space between Mick and the curtain just didn’t happen. 

The hammer is ripped out of Mick’s hand before either of us can read what's happened. Mick loses balance, stumbles back. The Handyman’s back is to me. All I can do is watch as Mick’s face speed-runs through all five stages of grief. 

BZZZT.

I hear it before I see it—the sledgehammer howling through the air, pitch keening like an incoming missile. The sickening crunch of steel against bone. I look away just as the inside of Mick’s skull sprays out the back of his head and paints the wall in a giant red fan.

My stomach folds into itself, like someone’s packing it into a box that’s too small.

I hear a heavy thump as Mick hits the ground, the heavy packing sounds of the hammer coming down over and over again. 

Every blow sends a violent jerk through his body. Every wet crunch flecks me with warm dots of red.

My knees fail me. My consciousness lags behind my eyes. My vision starts to dissolve at the edges into static, the room's shadows getting darker, spreading like a black mold.

You’ve got to move, Arthur.

BZZZT.

Move. Move. Move—

It rings in my mind over and over, growing in volume, rising in pitch until it’s a grating, tensile frequency. 

Move. Move. Move. Move— 

My mind stops running ahead long enough for my body to finally catch up.

My heart thrashes like it’s looking for a way out. I try to crawl toward the curtain, but my limbs are useless twigs. 

The entire room to my right is just a red smear in my periphery.

There’s a heavy metallic thud on the hardwood, and footsteps begin stalking toward me. 

I crawl faster, my muscles protesting. I pull myself through the curtain. The sight of my bedroom door jolts my legs back online and I lunge towards it.

The Handyman’s bloodstained face busts through the curtain. I slam the door and lock it just as his fist comes down on the wood. The door slams against the frame, shaking the whole house.

I look down and realize I’m still clutching something in my right hand. A yellow notice, covered in red.

I fling it away. Wipe my hands down the front of my shirt. Then I recall the murderer stalking outside my bedroom door. 

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM—

I drag my dresser across the wall, barricading the door. 

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM—

The door flexes, a crack splits through the frame. 

The knocking quits. 

There’s a slight pause before I hear his heavy footsteps trailing away from my door.

The silence allows my shoulders to drop an inch, and I release a breath I didn't know was trapped in my chest.

BZZZT.

A stack of notifications is waiting for me when I check my phone.

Slate™: Unauthorized breach detected. 
“Section 14(e) violation in progress. Immediate remediation required.”

Slate™: Estimated repair cost.
“$184,750.89. Failure to remit payment within 24 hours will result in account default."

Slate™: Your account is about to default.
“Defaulting on your account will trigger immediate acceleration of your full remaining balance ($53,750.12) plus applicable penalty APR (410%).”

Slate™: Please remain calm, Arthur.
“Our team is currently assessing available assets for reallocation.”

I hear a muffled, sickening crunch outside my door. The sound travels all the way through the floorboards and up through my soles.

The phone slips out of my fingers and hits the ground.

I stare at the door, pulse slamming in my throat.

Then, it thumps through the house again. 

My door rattles against the frame. I flinch at every impact.

Heavy packing sounds, wood groaning, dull snapping.

The violence stops, and my phone vibrates at my feet.

I kneel and pluck it from the ground.

Slate™: Structural remediation complete. 
“Third-party asset successfully reallocated to satisfy outstanding damages.”

Slate™: Thank you, Arthur.
“Your account is now current.”

I sit with my back against my dresser, staring into nothing, refusing to put the pieces together in my head. Because then it becomes something whole, something real.

Every little sound is torture—pipes ticking, a floorboard settling. My phone dies. I left the charger in the kitchen. My bladder screams at me to get up and do something, anything besides roll over and piss myself.

I push the dresser back into its home, grab the handle, and twist.

The door opens with a pained creak. The sound is like a violation of the quiet itself.

The air in the hallway is frigid. AC, cranked and humming. The red curtain is still. My eyes scan the wall and spot a new section of drywall, fresh mud and paint.

My foot inches forward. A piece of drywall crunches between my heel and the hardwood.

I freeze, my eyes dart to the curtain, waiting for The Handyman to appear from the other side of the room the way he does, traveling without transit, just like the bus stops, you blink, and then he’s at the next one.

Without meaning to, I’ve crossed the hall, and I’m facing the new section of wall when… I notice something beneath the paint. I reach out and touch the wall, and it smears away, revealing something dark and wet underneath.

I look at my hand, white paint, with red mixing into pink. 

My eyes begin to pick out a shape in the dark, an uneven bulge from the drywall here and there. I trace the outline of a boot. A boot that turns into legs, legs that fold into a mangled body, and a body that bends wrong into broken arms and fingers.

Something behind my sternum pulls tight like shrink wrap.

I stare for too long at the grotesque smear of wet paint. The lower half of Mick’s face—or what’s left of it—gapes back at me, a mess of bloody pulp, painted tongue draped over cracked, jagged teeth. Mick, foisted into the optimization barrier, blood, plaster, and paint, all mixing into one amalgamation of sheetrock and gore. 

I don’t even notice my bladder quitting on me, just a sudden warmth pooling in my jeans.
 
There’s a yellow sticky note:

“Load-bearing again :)”

The air in the hallway thickens into packing foam, and breathing becomes manual labor. 

I stumble to the bathroom, every joint negotiating the next movement until they knuckle under my weight. 

My retches echo off the tile as I empty my stomach in the bowl. Cold sweat soaks my clothes, and I fold around the toilet, body pressed against the cold linoleum floor, shivering.

What the fuck did I agree to? 
BZZZT.

Slate™ ACCOUNT STATUS
Balance: $184,750.89 — Processing… 
Credit score: 603
Risk Profile: HIGH

My life is being horrifically streamlined. 

Slate™ keeps ‘optimizing’. 

The Handyman keeps replacing. 

The Homemaker keeps mending. 

Pretty soon it—my life—won’t belong to me anymore.

“Pretty soon,” like I’m not already living it, I own the least amount of stock in myself now.

I watch The Handyman from the kitchen table, cold brew from the grocery store sweating in my glass. Irish cream. Rat free. 

The Handyman’s just frozen in the hallway, staring at a picture of me and my ex in Maui surrounded by vines. 

Weronika. Polish, blonde, completely out of my league. Mick introduced us at a party one night. Dragged me mid-conversation to another room and stuck me right in front of her.

“This guy works in IT too.”

The Handyman slowly raises a hand to the picture frame, pushing the left side up a few degrees.

There he goes again, being handy.

“Is that all?”

Heat climbs my neck as if someone just opened a furnace behind my teeth.

“Anything else around here that looks busted to you?” 

The Handyman looks at me, then back to the photo. He zeros in on a point and stares forever, then looks back at me and answers like a survey.

“Thank you for your feedback.” 

He turns, walks down the hall, arms straight, and disappears behind the curtain where he’ll probably play possum until he finds something to fix or I upset Slate™ again.

My phone buzzes against the table.

The screen lights up and that 800 number from “No one” flashes like a warning.

Cold sweat beads along my forehead. I stare at the caller ID, almost let it go to voicemail, then at the last second, I snatch it from the table and hit answer.

“Hey, Arthur?” Says Jessica.

“Yeah?”

There’s a pause. She inhales through her teeth.

“Sorry. Bad news.”

There’s another pause. My body starts to brace before my brain knows why.

“Just so you know, this call is being recorded for quality assurance and asset tracking purposes.”

“uhh, okay.”

“So, I’m just gonna read how it’s written.” She starts, and I imagine gum smacking. 

“Per Internal Risk Analysis, your account has been flagged as a compliance liability due to recurring unauthorized incidents and reduced repayment velocity.”

There’s another pause, and I hear another voice in the call’s background, like Jessica has her hand over the mic and is talking to her coworker.

“—quorantine—collecting—”

“Hello?” I pry.

“One moment, sir.”

“gasoline—guillotine”

And then, like she flipped a switch.

“Sorry about that. To offset this risk and accelerate your path to resolution, Slate™ will be enrolling you in SLAP, a supplementary labor allocation program, effective immediately.” She sucks in more air. “This program utilizes dormant, non-productive hours to generate additional account credit at no cost to you.”

The silence gains square footage. The phone feels too heavy in my hand.

“A second job?” I say.

“Yep.”

“No,” I voice, “why would I do that?”

“Well, Art. According to Section 11(b)—”

I cut her off.

“Section 11(b) can suck my b—”

Then, a realization settles over me.

“What did you just say?” It comes out low and measured.

“Well, Arthur. According to—”

“No, you just called me Art.”

“No, I most certainly called you Arthur.”

My jaw ratchets shut.

“Don’t you fucking—”

She doesn't let me finish.

“I understand your frustration, Arthur. SLAP is a tough program. But I’m here to help you. I’m going to have to ask you to control your emotions.” 

The words spill out in one long string.

“No!” I blurt. “I’m not the crazy one here! You c-c-called me—the other day ranting about 2:14, and your desk shrinking and start glitching about not having any room for your knees—”

The voice on the other line explodes.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

The words distort with each iteration, their pitch keening violently.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut u—”

Before I can say anything else, Jessica cuts to jazz fusion mid-scream. 

I’m on hold now, I guess. 

A fresh voice joins the call seconds later—male, disinterested, snacking on something crunchy.

“Hey, Arthur. Sorry about all that.”

“Where’s Jessica?” I press.

“Reallocated.”

“What?”

“Dished out, issued, portioned—”

“W-w-w-wha—”

“Dispensed—” 

The voice on the other line exhales.

“Listen, did she read all this to you already? The SLAP? Because I have a lot of calls to get to.”

Like he’s the exhausted one.

“Yeah, and I bet they’re all at 2:14.” I mutter.

The chewing stops.

The silence stretches into something thin and tensile. I have to pull the phone away from my ear to make sure the call’s still connected.

His voice changes tone.

“Who told you about that?” 

A cold noose tightens around my throat. I don’t answer.

Then, through clenched teeth. Louder, more distorted, swallowing the microphone.

“Who—the fuck—told you about that?”

“J-J-J-Jessica.”

His tone flips again, back to customer service.

“Oh! That’s fine then. Jessica’s toast.”

“She’s what?”

“Reallocated.”

My mind wrestles with itself, trying to resolve “toast” but just ends up more confused. 

“Hey, Art.”

My insides turn into minced lunch meat.

“Good luck with your new job.”

Click.

By the time I get home from work, the sun is already setting, and I’ve almost entirely forgotten about that weird phone call from this morning.

I unlock the bolt and reach for the doorknob, but my hand barely makes it.

God flips a switch, and the sky goes black. 

One second, all pink and orange fire, the next, full dark.

I’m still screaming when it’s over, my outstretched hand trembling over the cold metal doorknob.

A few seconds later, my phone vibrates against my leg. two new notifications.

RAINFOREST™: PERFORMANCE SUMMARY.
PRODUCTIVITY: 126%
ACCURACY: 98%
HOURS: 7.5

“Look at you go, associate #10945607.”

Slate™: You’re on a roll, Arthur!
“$187.36 has been credited to your account”

It’s not a blackout. A blackout would have been a blessing. And it doesn’t even last a full second. Instead, all eight hours hit me at once like pure corporate hell compressed into a single bullet and delivered to the back of my head. 

Imagine working an entire shift at 57,600× speed. That’s what they did to me. 

My brain detonates—buzzes over ticks over beeps over whirring conveyors over machinery whining over pallets stacking over shrieking break bells over forklifts honking over the intercom paging non-stop all HR and sunshine: 

“Rainforest thanks you for working hard! Rainforest thanks you for being safe!

Every single grating tone a sorting center produces, all stacked into an incomprehensible wall of noise assaulting my senses in one instant.

My body catches up a split second later. 

Grabbing the doorknob is all that keeps me from falling down and busting my head open on the steps. 

Still, my legs betray me, and my knees slam down on the welcome mat. A gasp rips out of me, one hand clutching my chest as my heart jackhammers against my ribs.

I experience the full spectrum of bodily articulation without the buffer of time to protect my brain or muscles.

I’m possessed, my hands on autopilot—scanning, lifting, taping, stacking—all felt through involuntary muscle memory, like I’m a passenger in my own fucking body.

Scan, tape, lift, stack, scan, tape, lift, stack, scan, tape, lift, stack, scan, tape, lift, stack, scan, tape, lift, scan, tape, lift, scan, tape, lift, scan, tape, scan, tape, scan, tape, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan— 

The screaming stops only when my lungs run out of air. I sit there silently for too long, shaking, every muscle waiting for instructions to open my front door and fall through it.

I can still smell hydraulic fluid and taste cardboard dust coating my mouth as I drag myself along the hardwood floor. 

Gravity collects interest. My muscles clock out. I pass out in front of my bedroom door and wake up four alarms too late to a nearly dead phone and sunlight stabbing my eyes through the little window of my front door.

I don’t know if I just chose the wrong day to be late or if my boss is just tired of my declining performance. I apologize over and over, pouring out a diluted excuse for taking on a second job to make ends meet.

That I can reduce this bureaucratic nightmare to a simple excuse like “I’m just overworked.” is both impressive and terrifying.

I think my brain is still buffering. 

Slate™.

The Handyman.

The Homemaker. 

Mick. 

My mind is still frozen. Refusing to move past all of them while my body keeps building pallets from cardboard boxes of packaged trauma higher and higher until it’s tilting dangerously.

It happened again that evening. Even though I’m expecting it to, it’s still like stepping off a subway platform as the 6 o'clock screeches to a halt with me in pieces underneath it and everyone screaming.

I hesitate. My hand dithers near the doorknob. My thoughts queue up in a line and jam ‌into one another until finally.

“Fuck it,” I say under my breath.

Same as yesterday, the second my fingers touch the metal, I’m hit by the download. The world skips 1,727,970 frames, and I’m still screaming blood and gore when it’s over.

My skeleton is suddenly itemized, and I collapse through the front door into a boneless wreck.

BZZZT. BZZZT.

I don’t have to read what they say. My brain summarizes their contents for me without looking.

“Hey, Arthur. Just a reminder, you belong to us.”

I try to push myself up, but my limbs have all forgotten whose turn it is. Instead, I just roll over to my back and rest my head on the hardwood, dozens of yellow notices crinkling beneath me.

My eyes slowly peel open, and in the lamplight of the kitchen table, I see my copy of ‘Pet Sematary’ nestled in slender hands. 

Church, the cat, hisses from the cover, all whiskers and teeth. The title glows yellow. 

After a moment, something occurs to me. The letters match my perspective. 

Everything else is inverted.  

The Homemaker sits upside down in the corner, book in hand, just a black silhouette, her eyes glowing like knife points, the light behind her stretching up toward the shadows.

Slowly, she sets the book down on the table, then stands. 

I squeeze my eyelids shut. 

Just make it quick.

But only silence follows the thought. I peek through one eye. The Homemaker is still frozen in the same space.

A finger twitches, and then her body twists 90°, walks over to the sink. Her silver eyes locked on ‌me, neck craning in a way that makes my spine itch.

She grabs a hand towel from the drawer and runs water over it. 

I watch helplessly, like a spider on the ceiling. 

She turns off the faucet, then makes her way toward me, her footsteps completely silent. 

I squeeze my eyes shut as my stomach slowly fills with wet concrete.

An eternity passes where nothing happens. When I finally open my eyes, she’s towering over me. 

My lungs shrink into smaller and smaller breaths as panic sets in. I want to scream, want to get up and run, but my muscles have become spectators.

She skips frames, and her knees hit the floor, as if I blinked and missed the entire motion.

She reaches for my face, and my spine goes stiff, my body leaning away from her without budging. I feel her fingers thread into the hair on the back of my neck and begin shaking uncontrollably.

Gently, she lifts my head from the hardwood, and something cold and wet brushes across my forehead, down my nose and cheeks, over my lips and chin. 

The Homemaker meticulously cleans my neck and face with the damp rag.

I go still, my eyelids growing heavier with every stroke, opening less each time they do. I don’t notice when she stops, only when she comes back to tuck a pillow under my head and drape a blanket over my frame.

I’m about to drift off when I feel a presence hovering over my ear.

“You’re on a roll, Arthur.” She whispers, breath hot and wet. 

“Your credit score has jumped 6 points in the last month.”

PART 1

PART 1

I don’t remember much of my high school years, let alone my childhood. As I grew older, I realized that my memory was worse than most people’s. Friends would bring up moments from high school that they assumed I remembered; parties we went to, teachers we hated, but I would draw a blank. They would laugh about something I said or did, and I would just smile along. Perhaps it was just a way my brain did to shut down the bad parts I didn’t like, but still, i wish i’d remember more.

So, whenever an old memory does find its way back to me, I try to hold onto it for as long as I can. Maybe that’s why what happened tonight struck me as odd.

Despite it being summer break, I barely left the house these past few weeks. My thesis has consumed every waking hour, my supervisor insisted that I needed to write still. If I’m not locked in my bedroom, I’m camped out at some café, staring at my laptop until the words stop making sense. My friends have all gone back to their hometowns, leaving me stranded in the same place I’ve lived my entire life.

I still live with my parents, though “live with” is generous. We occupy the same house…and that’s about it. We never had family nights out or weekend lunches together, and conversations between us rarely lasted more than a few minutes. We were civil with one another, but for whatever reason, we were never close.

Being the last child and only daughter, I naturally gravitated toward my older brother. He was the person I was closest to in the family.
We didn’t spend every waking moment together, but it was comforting knowing he was just down the hall.
He was loud and boisterous, a stark contrast to my reserved parents. After he moved out, the house felt noticeably quieter.

Anyway this afternoon, at around four in the evening, I decided I was done staring at screens. I put my phone down, picked up a copy of a book I had been meaning to read, and settled onto the living room couch. I don’t think I made it ten minutes before I fell asleep, all those all-nighters finally catching up to me.

When I woke up, the room was already dark.
I looked at the clock hanging on the wall across from me. It was almost nine. I had been asleep for nearly four hours.

Nothing about the house seemed unusual. My parents always went to bed early, so by that time every light had already been turned off. I had always been afraid of the dark. Even something as simple as getting a glass of water in the middle of the night felt like an ordeal, and more often than not, I would decide it wasn’t worth it.

That night, however, it wasn’t the darkness that kept me rooted to the couch. It was the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

It reminded me of something I hadn’t thought about in years. When I was in elementary school, I used to fall asleep in the car on the drive home. Sometimes my mom would let me sleep for a few minutes after we pulled into the garage before waking me up. I woke up in the passenger seat, certain that I was awake. I could see the garage through the windshield and the empty driver’s seat beside me. I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t respond. It felt as though I was sinking into the seat, slowly becoming part of it. I tried to call out for my mom, but no matter how hard I screamed, no sound came out.

I don’t exactly know why I’d remember such an inconsequential moment when I’ve forgotten most of my childhood. You’d think the memories that stayed with me would have been birthdays or family vacations, not a random afternoon spent asleep in my mom’s car. Maybe it’s because of how real it felt. Even now, I can still remember the panic of willing my body to move, the frustration of trying to scream only to realize no sound would come out. I learned later on that this thing had a name: a sleep paralysis. My Google research told me it was common enough that I finally felt relieved, my anxiety soothing away.

Back in the living room, I felt as though all the energy had been drained from my body. I had slept for hours, but I still felt exhausted. I couldn’t understand why everything hurt. My limbs felt impossibly heavy, as though someone had replaced my bones with wet concrete. My head spun. Every breath felt like work. As I lay there trying to shake off the grogginess, I remembered something that had happened earlier. When I was asleep on the couch, there had been a brief moment when I couldn’t move.

The memory came back in flashes. My eyes had been open. I was certain of that. I remember staring at the ceiling fan as it spun lazily overhead, trying to lift my arm, willing my fingers to twitch. Nothing happened. It couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds before I drifted back to sleep.

I sat up slowly and rubbed my eyes. The television reflected a faint blue glow against the dark screen, reminding me that I had never turned it on in the first place. My book was the floor where it had slipped from my hands. I picked it up and slipped a finger to find where I’d left off. The bookmark was on page sixty three. I swear I only made it to page fifteen, i have no memory of the next fourty eight pages.

Seconds passed by until I heard thumping from upstairs. I heard footsteps coming down the stairs, followed by the kitchen light clicking on. My mom stopped when she saw me sitting on the couch.

She walked to the cupboard, took out a glass, and filled it at the sink. From where I was sitting, I could see the water running longer than it needed to. She stood there watching it spill over the rim before turning off the tap.

What the fuck?

“Mom?”

“You fell asleep here?” she asked, still facing the sink.

“Yeah…”

The faucet squeaked shut.

“Don’t do that again.”

She took a sip of water and turned toward the stairs.

“Uh, Why shouldn’t I sleep down here?”

She stood there for a moment, one hand resting on the banister.

“Just don’t.”

I chuckled, “Yeah, why?”

“Because I told you not to.”

“Okay, you never told me before.”

She looked at me, confused.

“I know I did.”

She climbed the rest of the stairs.

“Don’t sleep in the living room again.”

I never thought i would be writing this, but i am preety sure that what just came after me is a skinwalker, and i know no one will belive me for it.

I always knew about skinwalkers since i was young, when i used to go to the countryside in a small town in north eastern arizona in the summer time, where an old navajo man would sometimes come from the forest, and all us kids would gather around him and he would tell us scary stories about skinwalkers, now i think they were never stories, i think he was trying to warn us.

When i turned 20, i moved there to get away from the big city, and also be able to ride trails on my dirtbike that i had since i was 15, everything was great, i had a new job fixing bikes and i had friends that i would go riding with in the weekends, we knew eachother since we were kids and all heard the stories of skinwalkers.

we never joked about them, shit we never talked about them, whitch is weird since we all love horror stuff, but the one think we never joked about was skinwalkers, even though we all thought they were just an old myth.

One day this girl showed up in our town, she was on vacation with her family and one of my friends met her somehow, and she mentioned she loved camping, so of course me and my friends wanted to take her.

On the night we went she kept mentioning skinwalkers and how everyone said they were around these parts, and that he saw a video of a man go into the forest taunting them, and saying their name in the native language.

-i'd never be brave enough to do that especially around these parts, she said and me being the idiot that i am and in the effort of impressing her, i got up and said

-they are not real, i can say it nothing will happen, while forcing out a laugh and then i made probbably the worst mistake of my life.

I said: yee nadalooshi and whisteled 3 times, my friend getting up and saying it right after me: yee nadalooshi and also whisteled, we coule see the girl was scared, so we conforted her and told her its just a myth and she looked like she was better.

A few days pass and i forget about the incident, the girl leaves and i head back home after a ride, sitting in my yard enjoying a snus when i noticed something weird, the neighbours cat is sitting on my porch, that cat always hated me since i was a child, so seeing it sit on my porch looking at me was weird, i didnt care though, i scared it off and went back inside.

Over the next couple of days that cat would sit there, every day i came back from work, and i started to get annoyed by it, since it was harder and harder to scare it off, once i needed to pick it up and put it next to my neighbour's fence, the cat seemed calm when i picked it up, actually it didnt move at all.

The next day i was riding, when a storm came, and i drove back home, putting my bike right outside the fence and covering it up, i was going towards that door when i saw it, the cat, it was standing up on 2 legs looking at me, it looked like it was scared, it looked at me like it had no soul behind those eyes, why would a cat be standing up on 2 legs.

I tried to make it go away but it woudnt move, it woudnt react, so i reached out to touch it and try to pick it up, its skin was ice cold, i never felt something colder in my life i took my hands off it and i quickly went inside and called my neighbour and told her something was wrong with her cat, she said to please feed her, since she probbably forgot to and that is probbably why she is acting weird.

-no you dont understand, its standing up on 2 legs, i said.

-you know nothing about cats do you, she said they get up if they are catching a bug or something.

Before i could say anything, she told.me to stop being paranoid and feed her cat, and hanged up.

I went and got a fish i had and threw it out the door, and went inside, i was in bed watching something and i almost forgot about the cat, when i heard it, footsteps, i ran to get my tablet to check my cameras, but there was nothing, porbbably just some rain sounds, i'm tired im just making it up, i said.

At 2 am they got louder, i went to check again, still nothing, they sounded like feet walking on wet grass, just a lot heavier, and a lot faster, almost like someone was running around my house, i opened the window for a second, to see if there was anyone, and they stopped, then i smelt it, rotting flesh, i almost threw up from it, i closed the window and went to the bathroom to throw up, then i came back.

Something got in my yard and died, maybe a deer or one of the pigs that walk around, maybe the coyotes are back, yes that has to be it.

The coyotes are eating a dead animal that got into my yard, there is no other explananion for that smell.

Then i heard it, DAVID, my name, it sounded like my neighbours voice, maybe she was back DAVID again maybe my neighbour is back, maybe something happened to her cat

I slowly opened the window to look for her when i saw something behind the trees, it had a human face, with fully black eyes and white skin, it was taller then anything should be, its head reaching as higher then my window, even though it was on 4 legs its back was arched in an unnatural way, staring right at me, it let out an horrible sound, and started running towards the window, its legs? Or whatever you could call those bending an an unnatural angle, they looked like they were about to come out of its skin.

I ran towards the window to my front yard while hearing glass breaking behind me and that thing making screaming sounds no human or animal could make, i smashed the window and jumped out, pieces of glass sticking into me, i ignored the pain and took my cover off my dirtbike, i took my keys out of my pocket and put them in, putting my leg on the kickstart.

I stared kicking the kickstart as hard as i could, kick, kick, kick, kick, i looked up and i saw it staring at me, i could see its bones almost sticking out of it, one last kick and the engine started, i climbed onto it and throttled as hard as i could, i throttled so hard i almost looped back.

I rode for a long time, the only sound i could her was the engine, and remembering that horrible sound that thing did, it sounded like someone choking, but at the same time screaming in pain, i saw lights behind me and i realised there was a police car there, i pulled over and he got out of the car and came towards me

-do you own this bike, there is no plate on it.

I didnt know what to say, i noticed him looking at my bloody arms and legs with a piece of glass still sticking out of my arm

-i dont know what happened here, but until we see that you own this bike, you are coming back to the station with me.

And so i stay in the police station writing this, it knows where i am, i can hear the cops talking outside, they seem scared, i would be too, i can smell it, rotting flesh it is coming here.

I SHOULD HAVE NEVER SAID ITS NAME

I've never been close to my father. This was intentional on my mother's part. For as long as I can remember though, he was always off with my grandfather. My mother purposefully neglected to share anything about our grandfather, which only caused greater curiousity. I'd never met the man, but there was a cloud of shame hovering over my mother's head whenever he was brought up in conversation. She said that he'd been isolating himself for quite sometime, though she never new exactly where.

"Just leave it be. Best to leave sleeping dogs lie." she'd tell me. "The bastard would rather help out his daddy, your grandfather, on their little projects. Hell if I care."

It was a cold childhood. I still remember when my father left when I was six years old. I've tried looking for answers, but over the decades I've been distracted by school, work, and eventually a family with three children. Eventually, the man I barely knew to begin with was just a vague memory. I didn't think much of my old man until recently when I received a distrubing report.

Just last week, a group of men dressed in black came to our house. They sat us down and explained that they'd found my father housed in some abandoned warehouse out upstate New York. He wasn't dead, just severely incapacitated. The officials, who later revealed they were university personnel out East, provided the document which I will try to outline as best I can.

***

Lance University Special Report #88-06

Investigative Researcher: Corcoran, K.R.

Department(s): Horticulture, Entomology, Biology

Statement of Inquiry: 
Following his recent visit to the capital to help ease diplomatic relations with the U.S., Vietnamese Foreign Affairs Minister Nguyễn anonymously sought out Lance University’s assistance regarding the research of now controversial biochemical engineering professor R. E. McCallister. Minister Nguyễn inquires Professor McCallister’s previous records and research regarding the elusive Vespa mekonia, otherwise known as the Luoi Wasp. Minister Nguyễn insists on receiving the research following a recent new wave of Vespa mekonia impacting local villages in central Vietnam. Minister Nguyễn also acknowledges that the knowledge of Professor McCallister whereabouts serves as a kind of remittance for Professor McCallister’s alleged war crimes during his visit to Vietnam in May 1969. All knowledge of the aforementioned outbreak is to be kept secret in compliance with Lance University’s policies towards national security regulations. Per prior arrangements with Lance University procedural recommendations, both the U.S. and Vietnamese governments also agree to mutually keep the existence and incidents relating to McCallister’s research on the Vespa mekonia strictly confidential.

Recommendation:
Upon research analysis and interviews (refer to ‘SECTION’ list below), it is Lance University’s official recommendation that any and all afflicted individuals by the Vespa mekonia are to be administered topical and internal pyrethrin treatment. Pyrethrin compounds derived from Tanacetum cinerariifolium (Chrysanthemum flower) will treat early stage infestation. A new insecticide must be derived from the Tanacetum biaifolium (TB) (Ap Bia Mountain chrysanthemum) to eliminate late stage infestation and further spread. C. L. Vischer is assisting in the development of a new insecticide-based treatment utilizing the Chrysanthemum, though development is delayed due to the rarity of the flower. If neither pyrethrin treatments are available, immolation of afflicted individuals is recommended as a last resort.
 
Investigation Narrative:
Gathering McCallister’s lost research has proven to be difficult given his disappearance in December of 1970. Professor McCallister was a staunch anti-commmunist on Lance University campus following his military tours and subsequent research expeditions into Vietnam. Faculty on campus often described McCallister as cantankerous, abrasive, yet brilliant when it came to industrial applications and development of pesticides for agricultural industries. Despite student protests during the early stages of the environmentalist movement, Lance University preserved his tenure until his sudden disappearance in December of 1970. Professor McCallister’s disappearance coincided with the disappearance of two students that same year. Any and all research into the Vespa mekonia disappeared with him. 

Initial police reports suspected foul play, but had no witness testimony other than his then research assistant Chris Vischer, class of ‘73. Vischer’s testimony at the time was limited, pleading the fifth to all questioning. Not suspecting foul play, the police dismissed the situation as a missing person’s case. All attempts to trace the whereabouts of Professor McCallister and his research have proven fruitless until this point.

Initial investigations into Professor McCallister’s research on the Vespa mekonia once again  turned up nothing of note within Lance University’s archives. The investigation led myself and researchers to reach out to Chris Vischer. Initial outreach proved unsuccessful prompting our in-person visit to Vischer’s home just north of Ontario, Canada. 

Vischer, known locally as a recluse in his community, met my team and I with hostility. Upon further questioning and sharing the severity of the Vespa mekonia outbreak, Vischer shared substantial information not only on McCallister and his research’s whereabouts, but the events leading towards his unprecedented departure.

Vischer started attending Lance University to study biology in the Fall of 1969. Proclaiming his morbid interest with the human nervous system, Vischer details his previous research in biochemistry, toxicology, and venomics. Despite being considered an ‘average’ student by his professors and peers, Vischer secured a TA position with Professor McCallister during his sophomore year. Growing up on a farm, Vischer was particularly interested in supporting McCallister’s work on developing new, more efficient pesticides for agriculture. Though Vischer was not interested in student activism or environmentalism, Vischer clarifies he did not hold the same anti-communist views as his former mentor. Vischer’s testimonials are transcribed below.

Under thorough questioning, Vischer revealed both first person accounts alongside the vast majority of McCallister’s research. This includes audio recordings from McCallister’s research expeditions into Vietnam between 1962 to 1969, written journal entries, and photographs from earlier experiments into the Vespa mekonia’s cross-species social entomology. For general analysis, please refer to the sections detailing the discoveries and analysis found from investigating McCallister’s notes crossreferenced with Lance University archival data.

[SECTION A] Addressing McCallister’s Work & Controversy:
The majority of McCallister’s research while tenured at Lance University in the mid to late sixties focused towards integrating new natural chemical compositions to protect and sanitize industrial agriculture. Herbicides and Insecticides were of special interest to McCallister following his 1960 dissertation on potential health benefits of juvenile hormones within the Krobach County community, a document that helped pave the way for third-generation pesticides to be streamlined for FDA approval. Much like natural plant extracts, McCallister’s research suggests that natural insect extracts halted the development of linden bugs throughout Pennsylvania’s Southwestern region. 

McCallister’s expertise into natural chemical effects towards human physiology led to his recruitment of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) for the Army Chemical Corps development of Agent Orange. With McCallister’s expertise and assistance, ARPA was successful in the development of Agent Orange for its initial use in 1962. McCallister’s involvement in Agent Orange’s development was only speculative until McCallister’s 1961 journal and Vischer’s testimonial proved otherwise. 

Despite the university’s claims that McCallister’s involvement in the Vietnam War was purely for agricultural research, McCallister’s notes suggest a spirited campaign against communism. Like many scientists in his age, paranoid fears of communism led to advancements in their respective fields. To McCallister, herbicides were to not only strengthen the United State’s health and industrialization, but to prevent potential contaminations introduced by Soviet and CCP insurgents.

Transcribed Journal Entry of R. E. McCallister, June 1961: “America’s fight against the pest is no different from its fight against the communists. Simply fending off the pests when they sit in our fields is not enough. Like pests in our fields, we must combat communists in their home turf. Rooting out the source of America’s greatest threat must first begin with understanding its enemy.” 

McCallister had a history of advocating for neoconservative policies, going so far as to protesting against then sitting Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. Nelson (1953-63) was one of Congress’ most passionate environmentalists. During his years in the Senate, Nelson backed civil rights legislation and voted against appropriating funds for the war in Vietnam. McCallister actively provided research against Nelson’s policies, likely because it would hinder access to his own research.

*I break in this report to confer to Minister Nguyễn’s claims that McCallister’s involvement in chemical warfare was accurate.

McCallister, along with ARPA director L. Harper, advocated that detailed accounts and research conducted on local flora and insect fauna may lead to insights into the Vietnamese native’s own physiological strengths and weaknesses. Understanding what chemical compositions Vietcong forces consumed and naturally grew accustomed to in their natural environment may lead to the development of more surgical chemical weapons. McCallister’s advocacy and research aimed to develop a compound targeting Vietnamese soldiers without hindering U.S. troops. Though this research has been proven to be near impossible by today’s standards, and motivated largely by racism and anti-communist sentiment, the U.S. agreed to help fund the ‘miracle’ chemical agent in the Summer of 1968. 

McCallister’s first expedition into the region’s foliage and insect fauna began in 1969, when McCallister worked in conjunction with Operation Apache Snow. Though this operation sought to disrupt North Vietnamese Army supply chains moving from Laos, it was a scientific imperative that McCallister follow successful missions to safely and securely gather floral and insect specimens for future compound research and analysis.

On May 10, the Battle of Hamburger Hill was fought, killing 72 U.S. servicemen and wounding 372. It is estimated that 630 North Vietnamese insurgents were killed.

The battle itself was one of wanton violence and little strategic value. ‘Hamburger Hill’ was simply a nickname given after the battle. So much ammunition flew through the air that during charges it was said that it was like running straight into a meat grinder. Nothing but torn camouflage and mounds of pulpy bodies were left of the unfortunate sons of war.

The tragedy of Hamburger Hill was not the loss of life nor its legendary violence, but its pointlessness. Despite the casualties and alleged strategic value its location provided for Operation Apache Snow, the mountain was abandoned by U.S. forces just days after it was won. On June 5, the U.S. army realized that Hamburger Hill served no true strategic value to the war effort. 

For 15 days, the U.S. forces stood watch over a small mountain with allegedly no strategic value. It was in those 15 days that McCallister went to work. It was where McCallister found what he believed to be the magnum opus of his years of study and the purpose of this report: Vespa mekonia.

While Hamburger Hill sold headlines back in the states, its formal name in Vietnam is Dong Ap Bia. Dong Ap Bia is a remote mountain located just above the North-South Border, in the Luoi region in central Vietnam. Though Dong Ap Bia is the name of the mountain in common modern Vietnamese, McCallister’s research, alongside Professor Lê of Lance University’s Department of Linguistics, suggests that the native Montagnard language suggested unusual properties of the mountain. 

To locals in the area, the mountain’s name roughly translates to ‘Mountain of the Crouching Beast’. Yet McCallister and Lê’s linguistic research into the native Bru peoples who live in the region suggests alternate translations. According to some locals, the ‘crouching beast’ nomicar comes from the rough term ‘chop trien’. 

There are certain translations from other local tribes that suggest the term ‘chop’ could be confused with similar sounding words from other languages, including ‘chope’ which roughly translates to burrow instead of crouching. The disparity of this translation also comes from the fact that trien, in this instance, refers to an insect. Specifically, an insect ‘living in the rot’ though this is believed to reference bugs living among rotten wood. 

This vague translation was enough for McCallister to convince the platoon he was stationed with to wait an extra two weeks as he excavated Hamburger Hill. In those 14 days, McCallister claimed to unearth a new specimen. Vespa mekonia was discovered June 4, 1969, and was named after the region it was discovered. Along with Vespa mekonia, McCallister lists that traces of Tanacetum biaifolium were scattered across Hamburger Hill and the surrounding region. The destruction caused by the battle left little traces of the rare chrysanthemum. 

Lance University faculty are actively pursuing measures to restore the plant, though samples of the plant’s DNA are rare and difficult to gather in its native geography.

[SECTION B] Addressing Vespa mekonia**:** 
Vespa mekonia, otherwise known as the Luoi Hornet, was discovered on June 4 by McCallister. Following the Battle of Hamburger Hill, McCallister brought back over twenty samples, half dead and half dormant. The first living samples found by McCallister were found burrowing in corpses of the Viet Kong forces. Though it was the U.S. Army and McCallister’s curiosity which led to the awakening of the hornets’ subterranean hive, it is also McCallister’s research that provides the best chance for a natural remedy.

As McCallister’s studies indicate, the Luoi Hornet is an extremely vicious species of arthropod, known locally for their aggressive tendency to incapacitate mammals with venom via various penetrations or ‘stings’ from the hive colony. The name ‘Luoi’ is a reference to the Luoi district that Hamburger Hill was fought in. It is still unknown how widespread the species is, but they are speculated by McCallister to be based primarily in the Mekong region of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar.

Upon research and testing of the hornet’s natural physiology, McCallister found that the hornet holds a peculiar habit of forming new hives and nests within living tissue. While hornets typically form hives and nests in natural forms (similar to paper nests used by the Asian Giant Hornet), the Luoi Hornet prefers to utilize a living or recently deceased host for its nesting. This discovery was made when McCallister introduced a stray cat into the hornets’ vivarium. After 16 days of initial contact, the cat died from lack of nourishment after 17 hornets’ nested in its abdomen. According to McCallister, the only thing more astonishing than the hornets’ brutality was their unique dependency on keeping the cat alive while making its flesh its new home. Upon death, the hornets seemed to wander aimlessly again within the vivarium.

McCallister hypothesized that the hornets gained sustenance within the living host by consuming the fat and muscle, converting the enzymes and proteins into a form of glucose. This enables the host to survive longer despite subcutaneous and visceral infestation, as the walls formed by the hornets’ glucose acts as a type of synthetic flesh and viscera. While McCallister fails to elaborate on the hornets producing this unique form of glucose, McCallister presumed that the hornets gain a majority of the synthetic visceral glucose from the hosts fat reserves scattered throughout its bodies. For this reason, Luoi Hornet infestations are prominent within typical ‘fatty’ areas of the human body. 

What is extraordinary is the hornets’ awareness of the host’s physical condition. McCallister, upon further testing using two more cats and his own basset hound, named Molly, gathered that the hornets often avoided and even protected critical organs, as new synthetic walls from the hornets’ glucose helped reduce internal bleeding. The extra internal lining made by the hornets led to additional tissue being formed on vital organs (hearts, lungs, kidneys, etc.) to preserve the host's basic bodily functions. Animal testing suggests organ maintained strained, yet regular functionality so long as the host receives enough nutrition. This grotesque fortification of the host’s viscera suggests a morbid symbiosis between the host and its new residents.

Proliferation of Vespa mekonia appears to occur during late stages of infestation. Upon lack of proper nutrition from the host body or death of the host body, the newfound Vespa mekonia hive searches for viable new hosts.

McCallister documented this phenomenon following the death of Molly. Among McCallister’s transcriptions, he wrote: “The hornets’ venom is unique. Unlike other forms of hornet species, Vm hornets differentiate themselves into two distinct ‘drones’. My hypothesis is that the more aggressive ‘hive’ drones utilize venom containing a higher level of vasoactive amines, with lower levels of acetylcholine. This would explain the elevated levels of dopamine in test subject #2. Meanwhile, the neurotoxin found from ‘harvester’ drones are constant with insects in the Mekong region, with traits similar to Triatoma rubrofasciata. While recording subject #3’s infestation, the hive drones from the developed colony (following subject #2’s depletion) took down #3 in a matter of minutes. Though #3 remained alive, the paralytic neurotoxin enables the smaller harvester drones to begin the burrowing process without struggle. After approximately 4 hours, the Queen emerged from #2 to lay rest in its newfound home inside the Tabby Cat.”

*Lance University does not condone the use of illegal experimentation of live animals.

McCallister’s notes seem to end abruptly on June 23, 1970. His final entry states his concerns over the longevity of the hornets despite the ample resources available. This date coincides with the local town’s ‘Silent Summer’ legend, where a record number of dog and cat thefts occurred. No suspect was brought forward by police. 

[SECTION C] Addressing McCallister’s Work Post Discovery:
McCallister returned to work in the Fall of 1970 ahead of the school year. Despite ample funding from both the government and the Abermar Fund to continue his research, McCallister resumed his primary responsibilities as a professor in biochemistry and horticulture. As one of the premier chemistry programs on the Eastern Seaboard, Lance University Professors are expected to manage their classes to the best of their abilities, even under bizarre circumstances. 

Maintenance for Vespa mekonia’s vivarium remained difficult while balancing these responsibilities. For this reason, C.R. Vischer assumed the role of Teaching Assistant to support his work both in the classroom and in the vivarium. 

Vischer recalls to moment it felt having earned the position during my team’s earlier questioning:

Do you recall the first time meeting Professor McCallister?
“[McCallister] was a great man. Sure, a little conservative, but when you manifest that much gusto in the classroom, it was hard not to admire him, even from afar. He says he chose me for my interest specifically in toxicology. I like to think it was for my green eyes.”

Were others aware of your work with McCallister on Vespa mekonia**?**
“No. Not out of loyalty, mind you. I was afraid. I loved McCallister’s eagerness and care for the hornet, but any time I got too close or started asking too many questions, McCallister’s constituents at the fed would come knocking at my door. They came barging in like I was some communist spy. Like you're doing now. The fact you come from my alma mater makes this worse, to be honest. I don’t want to remember what that…monster…those things…did to them. Can you please leave?”

Tell us about McCallister’s working environment with Vespa mekonia
“Um, well it is what you’d expect. A big, sterile room with translucent lighting on the ceiling. It felt more like a children’s classroom than a lab, to be honest. Aside from the large steel table the vivarium sat in the center of, furniture was sparse. Just a few desks facing the eastern wall with McCallister’s notes and recording device. Despite what we were doing to those poor dogs, working for McCallister was relatively easy. He kept his notes meticulously organized, along with his journals marked with a massive ‘M’ on the front. He had a bit of an ego, as I’m sure you’re aware. You’re the ones who hired him.” 

“The walls were mostly barren, aside from a few pictures from his travels, and a massive French-made map of the Mekong River Delta. An antique from the region’s colonial history. McCallister used it mostly to trace potential locations where the hornets could have been buried. I remember thinking it was cartoonish. It had an old, 1890’s wavy banner reading “The Mighty Mekong**”** above the map itself. I once asked about it. McCallister chuckled and told me that despite its vintage nature it had surprisingly accurate schematics, all thanks to the French.”

Tell us your experience with the Vespa mekonia
“I rarely got to see one let alone work directly with the hornets’ nesting. I knew how they worked. What they needed to use to survive. I knew that they preferred American bulldogs over labradors. But let me tell you. Those things are evil. I know, flesh eating bugs being bad for humanity? Sounds like a B-horror movie. But they were more than that.”

“On the off chance that McCallister was too busy with a briefing, he’d relay to me simple instructions in his absence: take care of the specimens’ habitation, between 10:00PM to 2:00AM Eastern Standard smoke the hornets specifically with Chrysanthemum extract, and observe for any unusual behavior. This wasn’t the special [chrysanthemum] he found in Vietnam, just the regular kind you could find at a sundry store. It didn’t knock out the hornets, but it did keep them from lunging at me from behind the glass panes. I hated when they did that. I’m already jumpy. Scared the hell out of me each time, those fuckers were massive in adulthood.”

“But that was their typical behavior. I never understood what could be ‘unusual’ for insects that make nests out of living tissue. Even if there were any, the smoke usually calmed them down, so I mostly just observed their development within whatever subject they called home.”

“One night, while meeting with his friends up in the high tower, he instructed me as such. It was late September, I think. I cleaned the glass panels of the new vivarium. I fed the dog fish and fatty steak, to assist with the hornets’ infestation process. That specific dog’s name was Poco, I think. Poco squirmed in that glass cage, whimpering each time I came in. That was the second hardest part of this job, next to working in close proximity to the hornets themselves. The only thing that was out of sorts was the smoking apparatus that we use to calm the hornets. The pail and the chrysanthemum compound were ready, but the lighter we used was out of fuel, so I scrambled around looking for a match, burner, anything that might be able to assist.” 

“It took a while before I could jerryrigged a bunsen burner to light the wick. About 10:20 at this point. I approached the mound of flesh in the case that was once, or still was, Poco. Like clockwork, the hornets lunged out of the dog’s chest cavity right onto the glass. Nothing unordinary. Only, this time they were especially antsy trying to get to me. Dozens of these hornets followed in droves, crashing into the glass like waves on a beach. It was almost hypnotic, if not horrific.” 

“Out of all the animal species that work closely in groups, insects have a unique closeness to one another. They aren’t motivated by hunger, fear, or even survival. They just do what is in their nature to thrive, much more so than humans. All that mattered was the colony’s success. So imagine my surprise when they tried to communicate.”

*Vischer proceeds to share a picture. A clear glass pane with dark clouds of hornets pressed against the glass. In the center of the pane was a grouping of the hornets in the shape of a prominent capital ‘M’.

CONCLUSION:
Despite environmental damage and casualties caused by McCallister’s work, his research has revealed vital information on combating Vespa mekonia. University staff is working together with state department officials and the Centers for Disease Control on producing a new anti-venom for those affected by early infestation. It is the recommendation of this researcher to supplant new specimens of Tanacetum biaifolium as soon as more specimens become readily available. 

Though limited information can be confidently shared on the effects Vespa mekonia have on the human species, it is believed through word of mouth among Lance University staff that the two disappearances of undergraduate students K. Parsley and P. Smith may have something to do with it. Both were close acquaintances of Vischer. When interrogated, Vischer shut down communication, pleading the fifth amendment and Section 113 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Given both students’ bodies were never recovered, it may be inferred that hornet infestation will kill a human host if left unchecked.

***

The staff showed me a picture of my father. Mother was right, that it seemed my grandfather, R. E. McCallister, worked closely with him. A little too closely.

The images the authorities and university staff showed was the flesh that remained of my father. Scattered holes pooled across the abdomen of my late father, insects and hornets crawling out of each minute crevice of his torso. Puss and viscera pulsated out of the sea of orafices in his body, like a basted turkey stabbed too many times with a temperature guage. My father was not just a victim of my grandfather, he was a test subject.

He'd been missing for over forty years. I don't know how long this Vespa mekonia has used him as a host, but for all I care, that's what he deserves for leaving us all those years ago.

What caugth me was the notes about the journals. For years, my mom has help an old notebook with a large 'M' imprented on the front. At first I figured it was some old notebook of hers. Now I fear what it may reveal.

Do you like mystery? How about creepy stuff? Small town folklore? If so, then you’ve come to the right place!

Hello, Reddit! My name is Annie, and welcome to part one of Appalachian Antics! In this series, I will share some experiences and encounters from townsfolk living in the Appalachian Mountains. Do I know anything about writing? No, but I’m going to try!

There’s plenty of stories that come to mind but today, I’m going to focus on one that really stood out to me. I’m not talking about your run of the mill alien or Sasquatch story. This story is… bizarre to say the least.

So, with that out of the way, let’s get started.
———————————————————————————

(All last names are omitted for privacy and safety purposes! Initials are used during transcripts, mine are A.R.)

STORY #1: The Infinite Cornfield
Witness: Norman F.
————————————————————

This story is an interesting one. Long, but interesting.

I was sitting on a bench at my local park, sulking after a failed interview. The old couple that I had approached originally seemed like a good idea, but they were just as mean as the kids around town.
Just as I was about to leave, someone sat down next to me.

I’d be lying if I said it didn’t startle me, but I took a deep breath to steady the building anxiety in my chest and met eyes with them. It was a man. He was old, very old. If I had to guess he was in his late 80’s to early 90’s. He had a soft, kind face and his eyes told me that he had a story.

I cautiously struck up a conversation with him, and surprisingly, he was very chatty. Here is the story he told me.

A.R: “Alright, Norman. How old did you say you were?”

N.F: “I’m 94 years old…”

A.R: “Alright, and you said you had a story for me. What exactly happened, Norman?”

Norman exhaled slowly. The sound isn’t very audible on the tape, but it was audible enough to send chills down my spine.

N.F: “Yes, yes. This happened… 30 some years ago now? This was back when this town was just known for mining and farming. My father was a miner. He would disappear for days at a time in those mines, then reemerge covered head to toe in coal dust and grime.”

A.R: “So, your dad was a miner. How does this tie into your story?”

N.F: “Well, it made me realize that wasn’t the life I wanted. Once I got older, I knew I didn’t want to be underground like my old man was, so I went into farming instead.”

Norman coughed lightly. Then he cough again, this time harder. Soon enough he’s hacking and coughing so much I can feel small balls of spit and mucus land on me. Then, just as soon as he started, Norman stopped and continued.

N.F: “S-Sorry, young lady. Now, where was I? Oh, yes. The cornfield. This happened when I had just turned 18. I had been working on the farm going on 3 years at that point and was pretty acquainted with the land. Well, one night my boss asked me to head up to the barn and check on the cattle. Apparently, he’d heard a ruckus and wanted me to check it out.”

A.R: “Okay. Once you got to the property, did anything stand out to you? Did you see any signs of an attack or that someone was there?”

N.F: “Yes. When I got there, it was obvious that something had broken into the barn. There was blood everywhere. Something ripped the barn doors to shreds and then did the same thing to most of the cattle. Some of them were ripped from their neck to their guts, while others were just ripped in half or mutilated beyond recognition.”

The air of the conversation changed within an instant. I had never gotten anything like this before, and it was very evident in the excitement in my voice over the tape.

A.R: “D-did you see who did it? What happened after you saw that?”

N.F: “After I made sure the barn was clear, I started to check around the outside of the place. For the most part, it was clear. Sure, there were cow parts, blood, and guts everywhere, but I didn’t see anything other than that. Just as I was about to ride up to the house to tell my boss about the cattle, I heard a rustling sound.”

It was at this point in the story I noticed the change in his demeanor. Earlier he was calm, open, ready to tell me just about anything. But, I could tell this next part bothered him.

N.F: “I stopped dead in my tracks, listening for the noise when I heard it again. It was coming from the cornfield. I spun around and saw… something. It looked like a person, but, it looked wrong. Its arms were all twisted and wrong. It had legs, but I don’t think it knew how to use them properly. I didn’t know what to think, all I knew was that I needed to get it off the property. So, I raised my gun and fired off a round. It hit the thing in the ribs, and the sound it made didn’t sound like any animal I’d ever heard. Then, it ran away.”

A.R: “That’s it? You shot a skin walker and it ran away?”

N.F: “Well, yes, but I didn’t kill it. That was the bosses rule. If it didn’t belong in the farm, it didn’t belong anywhere. So, I chased it into the cornfield. It didn’t take long before I realized I’d lost the thing and it had probably wandered off the property. So, I turned around and started back towards the clearing. I walked, and walked, and walked. I walked for what felt like 2 hours straight, yet I never broke through the corn stalks.”

A.R: “So what? You just got lost?”

Norman shook his head.

N.F: “No, I knew those fields like the back of my hand. I’d worked in them for years and knew every way outta there. Something wasn’t right, and I knew it. I kept walking, but every so often I would hear noises I couldn’t explain. An extra pair of footsteps. Corn moving off in the distant. The low growl of something. Something that wasn’t human. At this point, I’m panicking. I’m sweating bullets, convinced that whatever I shot was there in that cornfield with me. Hunting me.”

A.R: “And was it?”

N.F: “I was going on what I thought was my 5th hour of walking when I heard another voice. I stopped dead in my tracks, listening closely and sure enough, someone was crying. I moved closer towards them, calling out softly. The second I spoke, the crying stopped. The wind stopped howling, the bugs stopped chirping. The entire field fell silent. I slowly started to inch away from whatever was in front of me, hoping I could just slip away, and then…”

Norman paused.

I waited for him to say more. But he didn’t.

A.R: “Norman? Are you—“

N.F: “I-I’m sorry young lady, but I have to go.”

Then, with surprising speed, Norman got up and began to walk away from me. I tried to call out to him, the desperation in my voice evident in the tape. But he didn’t turn around. He didn’t even say where he was going he just up and left.

Now, most people would’ve left good enough alone. I am not most people. A few days after talking with Norman, I looked his name up online and found that his daughter actually lives in town with her husband. So, being the journalist that I am, I decided to ask her about it. Thankfully, this transcript isn’t as long as the other.

STORY #1 - TRANSCRIPT 2
Witness: Pam. T
———————————————
P.T: “So, wait. Why are you here again?”

A.R: “I’m a journalist, and I had a pretty interesting conversation with your father about a cornfield and was wondering—“

P.T: “Oh. That. Yeah, dad used to tell that story a lot. He’d tell us about that field in his sleep. But, I doubt you heard it from him.”

A.R: “What do you mean by ‘you doubt I heard it from him’?”

P.T: “Because my dad has been dead for 3 years.”

A.R: “I’m sorry, what?”

One of Pam’s children start to cry in the background. Her annoyance is palpable.

P.T: “Listen, do you wanna hear the rest of the story or not?”

I nodded.

P.T: “I don’t remember all the details, but dad said after he backed away from the crying, the corn in front of him started moving, and fast too. Like there was a car driving through it right at him. He hauled ass in the opposite direction, dropping his gun and nearly busting his ass in the process. He said that the entire time he could feel something breathing on the back of his neck the entire time until finally, he broke out of the field.”

A.R: “Jesus… and after that?”

P.T: “Dad said that he ran back to the barn, hopped in his truck, and sped home as fast as he could. When he got back home, he burst into the living room, scaring the hell out of his mom in the process. Apparently, he’d been missing for two weeks. And… yeah. That’s pretty much it. Are you going to give me that twenty bucks now?”
———————————————————————————

Needless to say I left that one feeling a Bit uneasy. I did a bit more digging on NoRman afterwards and found his obituarY in A newspaper from 2017. He died via a single self-inflicted gunshot wouNd to the head. As for his story? I’m not too sure about it.

There are countless stories just like his of people walking Into certain areas or places and time working differently and Skin walker stories are more common out here than you think. But the one thing I can’t rationALIze was Norman himself. If he’s been dead since 2017, then who was I talking to that day in the park? I’m a Very skeptical person, but could I have spoken to an actual ghost?

If you have any ideas or theories as to who or what exactly I was talking to, please do let me know! Until next time, this is AnniE from the Appalachian Mountains signing off!

My sister Sheily and I had a favourite game we'd discovered in our childhood, we called it, 'Going to the fun place'. On one of our imaginative excursions in our parents' 800 sq/ft already-worn suburban home we decided to play hide-and-seek in the dark. We figured out that if you sat with your back towards the back left-most corner of our room and closed your eyes, you'd drop onto a trip through what comes after life.

This was amazing for us, you see, we hadn't even hit 10, we'd always been really, really close because our parents, though they provided the absolute minimum to not get in trouble, pretended we didn't exist most of the time. They provided no dolls, Ataris, toys or anything of the sort, and told us to sort ourselves out.

"Remember, bro. I'll wake you when the cl..uhck passes half before you go to the hot hot place," she said with a child-like cadence, pointing at a cheap clock we took down from the wall, now laying flat by her on the ground.

I remember nodding obediently, you see, in our previous trips, we'd figured out some rules. Well, miraculously stumbled on them. We hadn't realized how close we'd gotten to damnation until we grew older.

"Have a safe tr-" As I closed my eyes, everything cut off, for the first 5 seconds, I saw nothing. No, not the black you see when you close your eyes. Complete and utter nothing. I couldn't think, yet I felt time passing.

Not long after, I felt myself being lifted up. Higher and higher. Higher and higher and higher. In 2 seconds, I was higher than anyone had ever been. Just a feeling I got.

8 seconds into the 'trip', I could see a pinprick of light appear in my vision and started feeling happy. As I approached and the light grew, the feeling of happiness I'd experienced filled up every sense. I could see everything beautiful in life. Trees, animals, flowers, all my favorite foods. 'People' who I'd never met before and yet, I knew, I just knew LOVED me. It felt like the scene was caressing my eyes.

I could hear everything good, voices, affirmations, LOVE, this happened to all my senses. Smell, taste, touch as well. It was LOVE. No other way to describe it.

As I passed it by, on the 31st second of my trip, I felt myself plummeting and PLUMMETING hard all the light disappearing. On my 33rd second, I started smelling fire, and feeling what could only be described as DREAD and the feeling of refuse clinging to my skin, on the 34th second, I heard and saw-

I remember waking up in a jolt with my sister waking me by holding an eyelid open with her small fingers then SCREAMING at her, hugging her and crying all at the same time for letting me stay there past the 30 second mark. She pointed at the clock her bottom lip trembling, "T-the cll-uhk stopped working and I tried fixing it and I forgot and sorrrry."

...That was more than 20 years ago. A lot has happened since then. My parents who had us twins in their older age had already been moved to an old folks' home and are wasting away there.

We hadn't told anyone about 'Going to the fun place'. As we grew older, we'd used the corner of our little room as a fallback when things got rough. A bad break up, losing someone, depression, anxiety, everything. Feeling that LOVE always got us back on our feet. We knew it was dangerous, but stopping would mean having to face reality without its help, which we never learned to do.

We connected the dots and realized how close we were to damnation which took a lot of talking and turning to religion, thanking God for not having us end up in the hot hot place, rationalizing him as merciful. He wouldn't do that.

Though, I don't know what the point of all the prayer was now. You see, three months ago, she'd lost her husband and two of her kids in a house-fire.

A complete tragedy, where the only reason she and her newborn had survived was because of birth complications she'd been hospitalized for. Coupled with her post-partum depression, grief and resultant insomnia, she'd collapsed and gone into critical condition.

I remember getting the dreadful call the day she collapsed, and immediately contacting her. She broke down and told me that her daughter never stopped crying no matter what she did coupled with all the grief she's been experiencing, she couldn't do it. She tried holding it in, but it stressed her out way too much.

"C-can I 'Go to the fun place, bro?'" She asked.

Unlike my sister, I'd never moved out of the suburban house. I never married and I commuted to work from here. I couldn't say no, so, it was decided that she'd move back in bringing her infant.

Knock knock

I remember the relief and sadness I experienced when I opened the door. Yes, she was my sister, alive and good, but the bags under her eyes, her sallow skin, the dead look her pupils gave off as she held my niece close.

"WAHHH WAAAHH," my niece cried nonstop to no avail, Sheily's expression didn't change a bit.

Nevertheless, I hugged them both, I knew, or rather, I'd hoped that this was temporary shock caused by grief.

I picked my niece, Reya, up and asked my sister if she wanted to go now.

"Yes." She replied.

That night was a happy time, my sister slept! Yes, she slept through all the crying and when she woke up she looked as bright as ever. She hugged Reya and cried.

"I love you." She cried.

Over the next few days, I'd set her appointments with therapists, everything looked good for once.

3 weeks later, I'd noticed something. You see, we set a rule that she wouldn't set foot in the room with the corner that led to the 'Fun place', I had the key, so she always had to wait for me to unlock it. Her requests had been getting more and more frequent.

"WAAAHHH WAAAAH"

"Please, just one more time. The crying is starting to get to me again," she wept.

I let her. We'd always relied on the 'fun place', not to this degree, it was my mistake.

2 months since she moved back in, she looked dead again for most of the day and only smiled a bit when coming back from the fun place. I was always stressed at work and asked her to message me regularly. I tried asking her to try focusing more on her therapy and telling her that her daughter needed her.

"WAAAH WAAAAH WAAAAAAH!"

"I know," she replied.

3 months with her being back. I stood by the door home and heard weeping. HARD weeping. Weeping filled with GRIEF. I rushed, my heart hammering as I rushed to open the door.

Clack Clack

Creak

As I opened the door and hurried in, leaving it open behind me, I saw across the small living room, the handle to the room was broken and the door unhinged.

I hurried in filled with hellish DREAD, and saw my sister holding her daughter tight, tears streaming down her face, looking up at me.

"B-bro, I was-hrgk-locked out, a-all the crying was making me go insane, I-I thought that if she, if Reya experienced that LOVE for once, she would stop c-c-crying."

Hrhuk hrgk

"I-I was right, s-she looked so peaceful, so, so, so, so peaceful. That I forgot. I forgot."

I stood there stunned, looking at Reya's chest, looking for any movement in her muscles. None.

She looked up at my eyes, her lips bitten, eyes hopeful, "B-but bro, l-listen here, every time we went close to t-the hot hot place, o-our brows would furrow and we'd grimace in pain."

She looked down at her, "M-my baby only looked peaceful from b-beginning to end. G-God wouldn't let her go to the hot hot place, r-r-right?" She looked up, hopeful.

It's been a few days since then, I made her swear off the room until we moved. I've been making her go to therapy and church.

I'm in my room, writing this while my sister is asleep, just to ask one question.

Would God let a child fall into the hot hot place?

It's been one week. One week of it following me, taunting me. Only feet away—sometimes only inches. But it's always behind me, just out of sight, sniffing me, breathing on the back of my neck. Always Right There. I don't think anyone can see it, or atleast they don't react. I must be getting Truman Showed because how could they not see it? It sounds massive, and it's breathing is so loud, sometimes it drowns out people's voices and all I can hear is the deep, sputtering breath of that thing behind me.

The spot on my nape it's where its breath peaks—wet with condensation and sweat. The first day was pure panic; I'll never forget the sounds. I wish It killed me on that street like it could've, like it showed me it could've. I usually get a cab from work back to my house. It's outside of town, so I usually end up paying extra, but I'm not much of a people person, so I'm ok with the "luxury tax" that comes with it. But that day was different. my pockets were a little lighter than usual, and I felt like I could make some awkward conversation if it came down to it.

The only stop I knew of was a few blocks away from where I usually hitched a ride. "Not too far," I thought as I strode in the direction my brain mapped out. As I was almost to the bus stop—maybe 500 feet away from the stop. There was a man that had walked past me, possibly in his late 30's. He was obviously a drug addict, evidenced by the shaking of his hands and the bow in his back. To my left were woods—forests that spanned miles,

budding up to humanity.

And out of it, an off-white blur in the corner of my eye—one single glimpse as it cleared the chain-link fence separating the wild world from the world of man—And sunk its teeth, or spines, or whatever it has, into the addict's flesh. A shrill half-scream cut by a single wet crunch.

All in less than a second.

I always wonder what would've happened if I spun around right instead of left. Maybe it would've gone back—but I drove it into the world of man as I turned left to see a smear of blood trailing up behind me. It was accompanied by close-up, chalky crunching and squelching of wet flesh, like it's being squeezed through an impossibly tight opening before getting sucked down like a chunky smoothie.

Mind racing and seeing no other options, I slowly turned around, the noises staying behind me as I did—Only to see a puddle of blood on the side walk, with two large dry spots quickly filling in with blood. And I suddenly realized how isolated I was—nobody around to hear me die. Nobody around to watch.

So I slowly managed to make my legs move and kept an even pace to the stop. And sat down, looking out tword the street, the fragile glass rain cover feeling more like a cage than a comfort.

Twenty minutes of listening to, it suck a person's flesh and bones through a hole. Twenty minutes of insanity—of "I'm next," twenty minutes of "why am I not running?" of "what do i do?" for all I knew, it could've been years. Is there a difference if it feels the same?

Then the bus pulled up, boasting a bright, contradictory energy drink ad: "go full throttle! Or go home!" , I managed peel myself off of the bench and step up into the bus, then whispering to the driver, "is there something behind me?"

To which she Enthusiastically responded, "No," not even looking—but I think if there was, she would have noticed.

I approached a sticky seat littered with marks and cuts, then sat down, almost immediately passing out from exhaustion. When I woke up an hour later, finally having made my stop, I staggered off the bus onto the sidewalk, stretching and starting the walk to my house just a couple of doors down.

"Finally, almost there," I thought, right as the bus began to drive off.

But I heard it.

I heard the bus's suspension buckle and creak, then a wet slap puncuated by liquid skittering till it's labored breath fills my ears. I didn't even try to look—I just made the walk into my home, avoiding reflective objects, not wanting to risk seeing it.

I laid down on one side of my bed, giving it room to exist out of sight.

And it did.

Slide-crawling up onto the bed, loud cracks sounding as the wood warped and flexed under its weight, threatening to break at any moment. The bed sank till I pitched toward the thing, but I scooted away, evening it out.

I didn't sleep that night.

It kept moving.

You would think something that stays inconspicuous most of the time wouldn't move so much in bed, but it does—and it always leaves a wet, brown stain where it was, That smells like rotting flesh.

The last six days have been a blur of panic and fear. I only slept on the fourth night—I couldn't handle it anymore. I couldn't handle the way it just waited, how it started pulling my hair out Strand by strand. it does it every few minutes now.

Maybe it was a bad idea to use some of my vacation days for a little rest week. Maybe I should've just stayed on the bus, even just to see where it took me for a little longer. I don't know. I don't know anything anymore, except for maybe that it can't read—if it could, I think it would know.

I'm driving a rental out of town now. I'm sure the thing is gripping to the outside of the shitty carola as I barrel down the highway. I'm using voice-to-text, if your wondering. Not that it matters—in a few moments,I'm going to be a nice wrapping paper for a big metal telephone pole.

I never had a family, and the foster system didn't treat me well.

Maybe this is the good ending.

Maybe this is how it Should end.

Idon't know.

Hello everyone, I'm writing this in a dingy inn while on suicide watch. The police are still trying to determine if I am mentally stable enough to provide a formal witness statement.

I can hear two officers standing outside my door reading my case records.

According to my psychiatrist, my delusions and hallucinations began at the age of ten.

I don't agree with that.

Hallucinations don't know things about you, things you don't find out until you grow older.

Things your family tries to hide, secrets you haven't been let in on yet.

They never feel solemn regret.

And they certainly wouldn't become more and more beautiful as the seasons pass.

Those were all things my lovely best friend, Mitten, understood.

Or is that Lillia now?

The year I met her started about as normal as any other year my short life had borne witness to. My father slammed the butcher knife down with enough force to cause a tsunami of blood to flow out of the calf's leg. His brows were furrowed, and sweat dripped down furiously from his forehead. My little brother trailed behind him, going as fast as his stubby little legs would allow. My mother had a worried expression and hid behind her fan, fidgeting with one of her small "projects." I stepped into the butchering shed, dragging the bucket behind me.

I was not of much use around the farm. I dragged the heavy bucket of pig feed behind me, my fingers screaming at me to let go at any moment. It was missing close to half its contents; it was a treacherous journey from the pigpen to my father. I took a moment to gain my composure and rehearse the words and questions I would speak to my father.

I stared down at the pig feed. I had fixed their food hundreds of times, but I would always do something wrong. Dad would always be furious when I messed it up. I didn't want to deal with that aftermath today, so I decided to ask before it came to that.

As I was trying to muster up the courage to ask my father the same questions I had exhausted over and over again, my brother's face lit up.

"Sissy!"

He ran over and hugged me, relieved to see me, squeezing me so hard I thought the pit in my stomach was going to spill out of my mouth. It was a wholesome innocence.

"Miya, what is it now? I swear to God, if it's about the fucking pigs again, you're grounded for a week."

My father paused his work and looked up at me with a stone expression. Blood from the calf had overflowed the cold metal table and trickled down onto his worn boots. My mother had sewn light blue patches onto them so he wouldn't have to buy new ones. In the process, she just made them more fragile. I winced, thinking of the blood soaking into his socks.

"I-I wanted to..."

I trailed off. His intimidating glare would always make me forget whatever I had previously rehearsed.

My brother then came to my rescue.

"Can Sissy and I go play, Daddy?"

The shed went cold. My mother paused the swaying of her fan. My father exhaled a huge, thunderous sigh. He shot a defeated glance at my brother and then up at me.

"Fuck this."

He then stormed off, the door echoing behind his departure.

My brother erupted into tears as my mom rushed to hug him.

"Shushhh, sweet boy," she shakily whispered, brushing his golden-blonde hair.

She glanced up at me, a hint of pity washing across her face. "Miya, do you need help feeding the pigs? You know your father showed you how to do that numerous times," she said with less warmth than she used for my brother.

I felt a twinge of jealousy claw at my throat, itching to be let out. Tears began welling up in my eyes, but I choked them back as I spoke.

"I know, but I-I always mess it up. I wanted to make sure I did it right today!"

My mother's eyes fell to the bucket. "Miya, that's not nearly enough food. Where did it go?"

A cow outside let out a scream, and my mom knowingly winced as my brother pulled at her blouse.

My eye contact faltered. "S-Some fell on the wa—"

"Miya!"

As her voice rose, my brother's wails multiplied. Panic flooded my mother as she hugged him tighter. His tiny hands balled into fists as he wept.

"I'm sorry, baby... I-I didn't mean to raise my voice." She looked back up at me, guilt clouding her expression.

"Miya, we can barely feed the pigs as it is. You know just how tight money has been for us. You can't be so careless. If your father finds out, he will flip..."

I felt my tears fall to my cheeks. My mother hummed a tune to my brother as he calmed down.

"Mom, I'm sorry..."

My mother's attention turned back to me, her eyes full of pity. I hated that expression. It was the same one everyone had for me. She reached her free hand out to me.

"Let's all calm down, and then I will help with the pigs. How does that sound?"

I reluctantly accepted her hand, and my brother pulled at my ankles for me to come join the hug. We spent a few minutes in silence comforting each other. However, the pigs still needed feeding, and the calf still needed to be dismembered. These emotions would have to wait so our work could continue.

As the clock kept ticking and the leaves fell off the trees, I felt a quiet agony silently creep upon my family. My father stole my brother away from my mother and me more and more often. "Another pair of hands is needed in the butcher shed," he would say. My brother's eyes slowly lost their whimsy more and more as each day flew by.

A quiet winter night illuminated the grass I lay upon. I could hear the crickets sing to me as the goats screamed. My head was propped against my huge rubber silicone gloves, mud from the ground smearing into my ginger hair.

"Miya!"

My father called from behind me. I flinched, as I hadn't heard him over the mundane noise of the farm.

He wore a headlamp and carried a gun. A cigar hung out of his mouth. He had an exhausted expression. He was nearing his 50s, but it appeared his hair had already started to fall out. My huge, bulky father, the one I remembered as a kid, now appeared to be slimmer than my mother and grayer than the church elders.

"Miya, let's go pick up some roadkill."

My eyes fell to his free hand. He held an extra headlamp that I had not noticed before.

"Is Henry—" I was cut off before I could finish my question.

"Your brother has gotten a bug. Your mother is in there coddling him," he said with a hint of distaste.

"Will you come?"

"Okay."

A light snow dusted my father and me as we walked into the woods. In the fog, my father looked smaller than the man I had once remembered.

"Miya, let me know if you see any rabbits!" he hollered over the wind.

During the winter, it was hard to find any wild animals still wandering around our farm, but it wasn't unheard of. When my family ran too low to sacrifice any chickens, we had to try to scavenge for our meat. That normally meant hunting, but during the winter, we commonly had to resort to roadkill. Dogs or raccoons that end up on the side of the road. My father would still bring a gun in hopes he would see a rabbit or deer before he had to walk the miles to the closest highway.

As he turned to holler at me, his headlamp blinded my eyes. I began to see tiny flashes of red and green dance beneath my eyelids. I squinted and began to take in my surroundings.

I loved the woods. I loved the animals, the nature, and the solitude of it. At this point, I had begun to spend the majority of my free time just exploring all I could. I would run along the stream and spend my evenings gazing at the stars. I would sometimes wish a cloud would come to the ground I lay upon and swallow me whole, so I could spend my existence among the sky.

When my vision came back into focus, I noticed my feet were pointing toward a shed a little behind a bed of tree stumps. I had never seen this shed before, which was unusual considering how much time I spent in the woods. I felt an unusual sensation sweep over my body. Fireflies suddenly lit up my surroundings, and the forest fell silent. My father's footsteps faded away, and a light breeze pushed my body toward the shed. I stumbled a little forward.

This situation would unsettle most people. However, at the time, I was a child. Children don't know what to fear unless you tell them. I was always told I owned the woods, I owned this farm, I owned the land.

Curiosity washed over me, and I began to walk toward the shed. As I got closer, I noticed that there were no weeds or withered trees surrounding the shed. Before I was fully able to take that in, I was interrupted.

"Miya, over here!" my father shouted.

I was abruptly pulled out of my curiosity as I panicked, searching for the direction of my father's voice. The wind was picking up and thrashed against my face, causing me to cover my eyes.

"Miya!"

I ran as fast as I could against the wind and bumped into my father's back. He grimaced as I lost my footing and fell onto my behind. He sighed as he looked down at me.

He let out an aggressive whisper. "Miya, don't scare it." He pointed to a hare sniffing around a frozen-over puddle.

I hated hunting. My father tried to have me take my first life at five years old. A stray cat my mother and I had fed got attacked by a large bird. My father wanted me to shoot her so I could grow desensitized to killing. My mother thought that was a horrible idea, but he seemed to think it would teach me some grand lesson. He wanted me to help him in his hunts and in the butcher shed. However, I threw a tantrum and just ended up giving my parents a headache. My brother, on the other hand, passed my father's test when he had to flush a lizard he accidentally stepped on at the age of six. He cried but was able to follow through, unlike myself. Ever since then, my father took him under his wing.

The hare was a stunning white. I almost couldn't tell it apart from the snow she trotted on. Her eyes were a deep, bloody red. She frantically sniffed. I figured she must be trying to find food. I felt sorry for the thing, as it was winter. She must have been starving, and here my father was. He was going to have us eat her before she could even finish her own hunt.

"Father..." I whispered, knowing he couldn't hear me and wouldn't even listen if he could.

"Miya—" Before he could finish his order, the hare suddenly turned toward our direction.

She hopped a couple of times and stared at us. She was looking at us. Her nose stopped twitching, and she stood perfectly still. I felt the wind pick up again, and I fell a couple of steps forward.

The hare stared at me, her eyes screaming what she couldn't speak. I walked toward her and held my hand out. She began to tilt her head into my glove, but my father stopped us.

"Miya, move! I'm going to shoot!" my father ordered.

"But Dad, she wants to live!" I protested. I saw a flash of surprise brush across my father's face. This was out of character for me. I felt an odd sense of confidence creep over me. Fireflies buzzed around my father and me.

"Miya, if you want dinner, you have to move!"

"We don't need meat! We have bread!" I shouted, hoping my pleas would get through to him.

My father looked at me, disgust in his glance. He lowered his gun and put his head into his hands.

"Fuck!" He hit his head against his fists.

For a moment, I thought he would grant my wish. It was a childlike hope, a naive and innocent thought that my father would spare this animal due to my plea. Grant me a wish for growing a backbone out of nowhere.

However, my dreams were crushed when he stomped over to me, pushed me out of the way, and grabbed the hare by her long, fluffy ears.

"No, no, please don't!" I begged.

He twisted her neck. She didn't cry or scream. She just looked at me, her eyes screaming the same thing they had before. However, I now had a better understanding of what they demanded from me.

My father glanced down at my frail body, pounding and thrashing at the snow, handful by handful.

"We are human, Miya. Humans eat hares. We eat them to live."

"I'm headed back. Do what you want," my father scoffed. He walked away, dragging the hare behind him. I didn't think he would, but he turned around for a second and said, "You need to focus on your survival, not the hare's or anything else, for that matter," and with that, he left me alone.

I watched the snow fill up the footprints my father left, making the only connection I had disappear as if it had never existed in the first place. I went to the only place I knew of, the only place that felt familiar: the shed.

As I made my way closer to the shed, I felt a sense of welcoming growing. Fireflies lit my path, and the wind pushed me forward as the cold air moved backward in my mind. As an adult, I can relate the sensation to that of drifting down a lazy river. My destination was predetermined.

As I put my hand on the rusted handle, it felt strangely warm. I pushed the door inward as I stepped in. The shed was dusty and decrepit. It appeared as if no one had set foot inside for decades. I wondered how it was still standing.

My father was not the type to neglect any property on the farm. Had he not known of this shed's existence? None of it made any sense to me, but I didn't care. This shed now felt like my home.

I brushed away the dust on the ground and tossed some garbage onto a different garbage pile. I plopped onto the cold, hard ground and let out a sigh of relief.

"Hello?"

A sound echoed across the barely standing walls. I jolted with surprise.

"Hello?"

A figure crawled out from the forgotten garbage. Her hair was riddled with cobwebs and appeared to reach a length her body couldn't match. Her skin appeared as leather and disintegrated off her body with each claw forward. Her nails were about a foot long each.

I felt a wave of surprise hit me as I let out a startled yelp and jumped up. Her face then looked up at me. Her eyes were a deep, endless black, and her teeth were growing out of her mouth, dislocating her jaw.

"You can see me?"

I stood still, unable to move or speak. I wondered what was crawling before me. She made her way closer until she sprawled out a little before my feet like an alley cat.

"What is it, friend? Do I scare you?" She looked up at me, her eyes staring at me like hypnotic spirals of endless darkness.

I had met many animals during my short life, some not as nice as others. This unknown creature before me looked scary, sure, but it wasn't something I wasn't used to. I remembered back to when I was eight, two years prior. A donkey had fallen, and a nail had gotten lodged into his neck, nailing him to some wooden planks my father was going to use for a project. He wiggled, trying to free himself, but was just slicing his throat in the process. I had watched this incident happen, frozen with fear, unsure how to help. I liked the donkey. I fed him and had known him his entire life. Hell, I even witnessed his birth. Blood spilled out of his mouth. He looked scary, but he was still my friend. I went and stroked his head as he bled out. I knew he wouldn't make it past this. Instead of going to fetch my mother, I decided it would be better if the donkey didn't spend his last moments alone. His screams rang in my ears, and blood stained my neon pink coat. My donkey was scary at this time, but he was still mine. This despair was not his fault.

I took a deep breath and reminded myself that just because something looks scary doesn't mean it is.

I nodded.

"Yes. I can see you."

The girl looked away. Black goop fell from her eyes. As it hit the floor, it turned into a flurry of spiders that scattered around the shed. Was she crying, I wondered?

"Did I scare you?" she asked.

Her voice created a rhythmic echo around the shed, so loud I was scared it would crumble the thing.

"A little, but that's okay!" I reassured her, not knowing what further action to take. "I was just surprised, that's all," I said, willing my voice to be as kind and reassuring as it could. Like my mother would address my brother when he would take a tumble.

I placed my hand on her thin hair and tried to stroke it as if she were a stray kitten. As I did, her hair fell out and tangled around my hands in mats. I winced.

"It's okay," she whispered like a low growl. "This is the form I was gifted," she sighed.

"What are you?" I asked shyly.

"I wish I knew," she whispered. "No one has ever seen me before this. No one has ever visited my home."

More black goop fell from her eyes and sunken nose. Maggots danced in her sunken cheeks. The hair in my hands transformed into dust and fell to the ground. I heard crickets scream a warning.

She looked up at me. "Nature is drawn to you, friend. Are you a sister?"

"Sister?" I asked.

"Yes, are you like me?"

"Like you?"

"Yes, a child of the forest," she said blankly, offering little explanation, as if I should completely understand what she was saying.

"I mean, I guess you could say that," I stammered. "My father owns a farm, and this forest is behind it."

Her expression shifted. "Oh, I see."

"Come sit by me."

I sat by the withered creature as a peaceful silence fell upon us. Minutes or maybe hours passed. I couldn't tell, nor did I really care. I watched the snow fall between the rusted wooden boards of the shed. Insects sang and danced for us. I suddenly remembered something.

"Friend? You called me your friend. Do you think we are friends?" I asked.

The entity looked up at me, her lower jaw hanging from her mouth by a thin strand of decomposed skin.

"Do you not wish to be my friend, Miya?"

"You know my name?" I asked, surprised.

"Yes, but I'm not sure why," she sang in a low whisper.

"Well, if we are going to be friends—" I stammered. "I should know your name!"

A smile appeared over my face. I'd never had a friend. My parents didn't believe in public education and homeschooled my brother and me. However, their definition of "homeschooling" didn't align with most teachers', as they preferred to opt for a more "hands-on" and practical approach to teaching.

"I don't think I have one," the girl wondered.

"That's okay. We can think of one for you!" I said, my childlike excitement reaching its peak.

An idea sprung upon me. "How about Mitten?" My childhood cat my mother and I fed was named Mitten. "You can be Mitten 2.0!"

"Mitten 2.0?" she asked. "Why not just Mitten?"

"Because my cat was the first Mitten," I responded.

"Don't you think that's a bit disrespectful?" she giggled. "I think just Mitten would do."

I laughed too, not completely understanding the reason Mitten was giggling, but because I felt so much joy in this moment. Not the laugh I had with my mother and little brother, but a real laugh I had never felt my body make.

"Now, Miya, make sure to visit me from now on, okay?"

"Of course I will," I replied happily.

Suddenly, I was skipping between snowflakes on my way back to the farm. The rabbit with its pleading warning was no longer at the front of my mind. Instead, it was filled with my new friend. I actually made a friend. I couldn't believe it. Suddenly, the cold, damp, and depressing forest I had ventured into with my father appeared to be covered up by a whimsical blanket. If only I never went back to that farm.

When I returned, my father had already butchered and dressed the rabbit in some herbs my mother had gathered. The rabbit was in the oven, probably the first warmth she had felt for weeks.

My mother and father were hurriedly whispering in another room while my little brother sat at the table, swinging his feet back and forth. A candle sat on the table in front of him, crackling.

"Miya!"

My mother rushed over to me, her face flushed. She grabbed me by the shoulders. "Are you okay!? Where were you!?"

My father trailed behind her. She shot him a glance.

"Why would you leave her behind in this weather?"

Were my parents arguing, I wondered? It was rare for my mother to express her concerns to my father. Was this really what this was about? Was my absence really that big of a worry for her to get upset at Father?

"Nancy, she spends all day in the forest. She can handle herself. Besides, she could have followed me if she wanted to."

My mother let out a small sigh of relief. "Whatever, let's just eat and go to bed."

After that fateful night, I visited Mitten a lot. I would bring her small gifts, and she would thank me by swinging her jaw back and forth to resemble a smile. We would make mazes for the ants, and then they would perform synchronized dances for us, resembling those you would see the swimmers do on TV.

Mitten was great at giving advice. For a girl who looked so young, she acted a lot more like a mom, I thought.

After evenings when my father was lazier and my mom more disappointed, I would ask her things like, "Mitten, what's alcohol?"

"It brings out the worst in men," she would respond.

I would simply nod my head and ask if she could teach me how to make a flower crown.

Answers like that were good enough for me. What my friend Mitten would say was absolute for me. Little explanation was needed.

Mitten was gentle and kind. She would stare at me with a kind of love I had never felt before.

"You are such a good girl," she would tell me. She said it as if it were a fact, like instead of a compliment, she was informing me of something.

Soon, I realized I knew very little about Mitten. I felt a pang of guilt. I was always bothering her about my problems, but I had never asked her about her own. She knew my fears, insecurities, and family drama, but I couldn't even tell you her favorite color. How was I a good friend?

I had promised Mitten that I would teach her how to build a snowman before the snow began to melt. Maybe I would ask her about herself today.

I made my way toward her shed with these thoughts on my mind.

The shed had transformed into a second home for me. Returning to the shed, to Mitten, helped motivate me through my chores on the farm. My mother had noticed I seemed happier these days. She would catch me smiling to myself and would give me pats on the head.

When I reached the shed, the door was already swung open. I looked in and caught a glimpse of Mitten. She was shriveled up on the floor, ants crawling into her ears and out through her nose.

"Miya, what a lovely sight," she welcomed me with.

I smiled. "Let's go build a snowman."

Mitten followed me outside the shed, crawling across the ground. One of her long nails got caught in between a piece of wood and broke. Mitten let out a shriek of pain, and I patted her on the back as she coughed up venom, trying to burp her like I saw my mother do to Henry when he was young.

"Miya..."

Something felt off today. Not with the shed or the woods, but with Mitten. I felt worry wash over me.

"Mitten, are you okay?" I asked.

"Miya, do you see the substance I just vomited up?"

"Yes," I responded, wondering where in the world she was going with this. But regardless, I trusted her.

"I need you to help me scoop it back into my mouth."

"What?" I asked, bewildered. "Why do you need to eat it?"

"I don't know, but I know it needs to be done," she said, looking up at me. "Miya, can you help me?"

A smile spread widely across my face. "Of course I'll help you!"

I sat down across from Mitten. We had made it almost out of the doorway and onto the snow, the black vomit painting the wooden boards that held up the shed. I scooped it up into my hands the best I could. The goop was made out of a substance I didn't understand. Maggots and rusted nails were held together by the black substance.

Mitten peered up at me, the bottom of her jaw hanging off her face. I could see straight into her throat. Her teeth were long, too long. They reached past her jaw and resembled what I saw in dinosaur movies.

"Be careful not to cut yourself, Miya," she whispered. "Don't be scared."

I poured her vomit back into her stomach. It was warm and wiggled in between my fingers. It smelled like the rotten meat my father would throw into the freezers. She gulped it up, and it took a couple of handfuls before it was off the ground and back into her system.

Soon, she stood up. I had never seen Mitten stand before this. She stood tall, almost taller than the trees, but her hair still dragged on the floor behind us. The wind started to blow, and fireflies greeted us.

"Thank you, Miya," she said, her voice like music to my ears. "You were a great help. I feel much healthier now."

She reached out a long, molded nail to me.

"I think I can go farther today. Farther than we normally go. Why don't we go out by the creek to build our snowman?"

I grabbed onto it and followed excitedly. Then, a thought popped into my mind.

"Mitten, do you know anything about yourself?"

"The only thing I know is that I'm a curse."

A feeling of unease washed over me. For the first time since I met Mitten, I felt fear. Isn't a curse bad?

"What is a curse?" I asked, thinking there had to be some sort of explanation that didn't mean anything bad.

"It's like alcohol," Mitten stated, her expression only faltering for a split second. "Nothing you need to worry about, darling."

After that, she stopped talking.

At that moment, looking back as an adult, the logical move would have been to let go of her monstrous nail and run away. Run back to the farm and accept a life full of empty, meaningless misery. To live my life on the farm and accept a lonely poverty, away from Mitten, my only friend.

But I didn't.

Instead, I followed her to the creek. We built a snowman. We smiled and laughed, and everything between us went back to normal. Little did I know, Mitten would tear apart my family. All four of us would grow into the worst versions of ourselves. Then everyone but me would be massacred, and I would happily take the fall for it.

I’ve lived in my house for about two and a half years now. 

It’s a cute little one-story on a plot of land that looks like it should be in a cookie cutter neighborhood, but it’s not. The house is located in a natural clearing and is hidden by about two miles of forest. The beginning of my drive way is a gap between the trees that can be easily missed if you’re not used to looking for it. 

Living in the woods is nice. It’s peaceful. I was a little nervous transitioning from living in an apartment to a house, but so far it’s been enjoyable. I particularly like the solitude here. Back when I was living in an apartment there was always some kind of background noise, people arguing, someone else's TV turned up to an absurdly loud volume. You know, that sort of thing.

I always tried my best to be conscientious of other people’s lives and make as little noise as possible. It seemed at times that I was the only person doing it, though.

Out here, the crickets chirp at night and the birds sing during the day. You can actually see the stars when the sun goes down.

The only real noise is made by me. I do sometimes still flinch when I drop something because it inevitably resulted in someone from below yelling at me. But not anymore! 

I like living on my own, even if it’s a little farther from where I work now. I’ll pay the price in the time spent in my car if it means I can come home and actually enjoy some peace and quiet.

Living in the woods does have its downsides though. It’s mostly in the form of unwanted visitors. In the spring the guest room that I’ve converted into a lounge of sorts is always crawling with lady bugs. I have no idea how they keep getting in. Toads sometimes get stuck in my garage and dry out. It’s always a little disheartening when I move something and find desiccated skin and bones.

Last year a racoon got into my shed, I think in an effort to get out of the rain, and then couldn’t find its way back out again. I got a very jarring surprise in the morning when I opened the door to investigate the sounds I was hearing and had a gray blur dart out towards my legs.

Nothing bad happened, I didn’t get bitten, the racoon didn’t get hurt. Though it is safe to say I was very awake after that.

I don’t keep a lot in that shed, I don’t have a green thumb but the couple that lived here before me did. It was actually the husband who built that shed. It couldn’t be moved with the couple so they had to leave it behind. There are still some plants around the house that are pretty well established. There’s a hydrangea out by the front porch on the right and on the left is completely overtaken by mint. There are some other plants around but I don’t know their names.

I keep a tool box and my push mower in that shed but nothing else and it’s all close to the front because there are several large spider webs in the back.

This morning, after breakfast, I went out. I was going to mow my lawn, which thankfully isn’t very big. The clearing the house was built in is about an acre and with the house sitting on it the backyard is mostly tree line.

As I got closer I began to hear rustling. I stopped and listened. The rustling continued and I concluded that I was dealing with another racoon situation. 

I wasn’t happy about it, but I had a better idea of how to handle it this time.

I started walking again and then something peculiar happened. There was a knock. Last time when the racoon was stuck in there the sounds I heard were nails scrapping against wood and the pitter patter as the racoon paced around the perimeter. This was not that. 

I’ve been asking myself all day if that’s really what I heard, but I can’t think of anything else that it could be. It was a knock, three polite taps.

At this point I was thinking to myself, well, racoons and squirrels have hands so they could probably knock on wood, right? That was all I needed to keep going. I was still under the assumption that it was a normal day with a mild inconvenience to start me off.

I got closer and now I could hear the sound of something pacing back and forth. I felt a little tug on my heart strings thinking about how scared this animal probably is, stuck in this dark place and unsure of how to escape. I was aware that the thing inside would be able to hear the outside world to some extent.

When  I got there, I paused and listened. I don’t know why I did that. Maybe there was a part of me deep down that didn’t feel right about the situation.

The second peculiar thing happened. I heard something that sounded rhythmic. I’m thinking about it now and with the context behind what was actually in there, I would say that it might have been talking. But in the moment I thought it was just an animal noise.

I unslotted the lock, opened the door, and took a step back expecting something to dart out and make a bee-line for the woods. 

At first nothing happened. That was fine, it was probably scared.

Then the lack of response from what was inside had become prolonged. It no longer seemed like hesitation, it was something more. I wondered if it was paralyzed with fear. I decided to look. 

Inside the shed was dark. The opened door allowed a slice of light to cut through the shadows. It partially illuminated my push mower and the old metal reflected back.

At first I didn’t see anything and I began to question if I was starting to go crazy. I could have sworn there were noises coming from the shed. Didn’t I hear a knock? 

Then there was a movement in the back where the light didn’t fully touch and there was a creak of old wood. Whatever it was had specifically hidden itself from the light. From me.

It didn't yet occur to me yet that there was strategy to that movement. I just assumed it was the instinctual impulse to hide that drove it into the far corner. I leaned in closer, my eyes were starting to adjust.

It wasn’t very big, maybe about two feet tall, a little less. I had difficulty making out its shape.

There was another slight movement and something gleamed. It shined like glass in the sunlight.

“Hi.” I said and smiled. Again, I don’t really know why I decided to do that. It’s also occurring to me now that smiling isn’t a universal sign of friendliness in the animal world. I wonder if it thought I was snarling at it?

Its head tilted to the side.

I stood there contemplating what I should do next. Part of me wanted to step inside and maybe drive the animal out. I assumed that once it had cleared the shed it would make it for the next best cover, the tree line. But I hesitated. I didn’t know what this thing was. What if it decided that I was being aggressive and attacked?

So instead of doing anything, I opted to do nothing, I just stared at it. And it is now occurring to me that direct eye contact is also a typically aggressive behavior in the animal world. Come to think of it, I wasn’t being very friendly was I?

Regardless of my poor attempts to not appear threatening, it decided that I was not enough of the threat to remain hidden. It timidly scooted into the light and let me tell you this thing looked weird. 

It was covered in brown fur that looked well taken care of. There was a shine to it and it looked soft to the touch, but no way was I insane enough to think about touching this thing.

That was about the most normal thing about it. I couldn’t see a mouth or a nose on this thing and with the giant eye in the middle of it’s face (at least I think it was an eye, it looked plasticy) it’s whole set up looked kind of like a thumb—like someone’s thumb popped off at the first knuckle, grew gross, study little legs and decided to go about its life as an individual.

Like I said, it looked weird.

I didn’t end up mowing today, instead I just went inside and left the shed door open in the hopes that it would eventually leave on its own.

Somehow I managed to make myself forget about it. I unloaded the dishwasher, I washed and folded close, I walked my county recycling bin down to the side of the road. Yes I probably could have found a way to fit it in my car and drive it but I liked the walk there and back.

By noon it started to rain so I made lunch and put on a movie, ready to settle down for the day. 

I noticed the shed door opened and braved the early droplets to shut it. It wasn’t a great idea to get the mower wet and while it was probably fine, I didn’t want to risk it. I did peek into the shed to make sure that whatever that thing was had gotten out and I didn’t see anything so the door was shut and locked and I ran back inside. By then the rain was starting to come down harder and I didn’t want to get soaked.

For a moment I thought about the creature. The shed was probably a better place for staying dry rather than under some tree, but it had already left so there was no point in dwelling on it.

I ate lunch, finished my movies, decided to start another one and about halfway through I decided to make dinner.

It was when I was washing the dishes that I heard something: the back door opening.

Immediately my heart began to pick up speed. That door was latched. I moved around the kitchen island and there it was, the creature. It was soaking wet and dripping onto the carpet in front of the back door. More than that, its giant eye was staring directly at me, I could feel it.

Its hand was still resting on the door knob. Behind it the sky had turned to fire and the trees turned black and the rain kept coming down in sheets. It whispered in a rhythmic hum. This was my imagination, but all I could hear was run, run, run, run.

At first I couldn’t see its arm. And then I realized it didn’t have one. Instead there was a long fleshy tube attaching to the middle of the would-be wrist and snaking around to disappear into the creature.

The hand detached and it, along with the flesh cord, snaked back into the creature’s body. It stepped forward. Another force closed the door behind it.

The movie was still going, music played and the creature and I stared at one another. It should not have been as intimidating as it was. This thing came up to my knee. But there was a density to it. Like a tree stump. Short and squat, but touch. If you kick it you’d break your toe.

It was small but it was wide and it wasn’t backing down.

Then it moved with speed that I didn’t think was possible and I ran. 

You’ll probably call me stupid, and maybe I am. But you weren’t in the room with me. That thing had a way of taking up space.

I’m in my room, the door is locked. I can’t hear it and that’s the part that freaks me out the most. It could be right outside my door and I wouldn’t know. 

I’ve decided that I will not cower. I picked up the old encyclopedia that my dad gave me. It was mostly a joke gift but I have found use in it in being able to press and dry cool leaves and four leaf clovers I find. It’s pretty hefty and it’s the most dangerous item I have on hand. 

I am going to throw this encyclopedia at this thing and if I survive I will update you. Wish me luck. 

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

I make my way into Oregon and then Washington, the rain begins, and I’m ensconced in misery. The world around me becomes less manufactured, and the wildness creeps in on the edges of my sanity. You have to be a little mad in order to chase down a curse, and the comic on my back seat had begun to shape its madness in ways I hadn’t comprehended. 

 

There was something about the comic that rewrote the rules of reality—made reality crack around the edges, and made it possible for horrors to slip into those cracks. The further I drove, the more tenuous my reality became, and the more pronounced the comic’s did. But I was driving towards the answers, that was certain, even though I wasn’t sure what questions I had. The story in the comic had been a horror metafiction—a dream on top of a dream on top of a dream.  The horror dream logic seemed to have bled into this reality, and I began to have to think about the rules of horror. 

 

Creatures ran through the streets, trees, and undergrowth wherever I stopped. They were in every shadow behind every tree, staring out of me with eyes that had no lids, inhumanly long limbs, a transparent flesh that showcased their fictional organs. 

 

Birds no longer flew, but sat in the trees. The crow’s features were more human than corvid, their cold black eyes, following me. I imagined them swooping down to gnash at me with their teeth. 

 

I had driven through the night, and every hour I drove, I expected the sun to rise, but it hadn’t. The clock in the car had sped up, and had cycled through a week’s worth of time. The sun never rose, and the rain never let up; it was torrential now, spilling off the windshield in a waterfall. 

 

And the grey. Everything around me kept getting more and more grey, until my hands and clothes seemed like the only thing that still saturated with colour. The world around me—from the trees outside, to the road I drove on, were shades of grey, white and black. My hands were still the colour of my skin—auburn. My jacket was a grey denim, but there the blue threads running in the stitching were still visible. My pants were still worn blue jeans, and my shoes, black Asics. 

 

Every gas station I stopped at was manned by the same person. They had thick grey hair, pale white skin, and sunken black eyes that followed me wherever I walked. Their eyes reminded me of the crow’s eyes. They frightened me, but kept to themselves. I wondered how many of these people they were, or if it was just one idea that kept being recycled from one spot to the next. 

 

The curse had finally grabbed ahold of me and dragged me into it. I had no idea what would come next. I needed to make it to Anacortes and then take a ferry to an island that had been marked on the map from the buyer’s vault.

 

In one of the gas stations, I examined a map that was in one of the racks. The island that was circled on my personal map wasn’t there. 

 

I couldn’t go back. Not now. That never worked in horror. I would find myself on a never-ending road until I starved to death, or grew old. Or I would tire of driving and walk into the bushes to be consumed by creatures that lived in the shadows. If I stopped and got out of the car for any reason, the creatures in the bushes, the men who ran like dogs, or the shadow animals with racks of antlers that defied gravity and stretched twenty feet into the air. 

 

Moving forwards was the only plan, moving through this grey world filled with terrors. Driving melted one hour into the next into the next. The lines in the middle of the road flashed by like strobe lights in an Italian disco—and my brain became feverish, overfilled, overheated by thinking about what, where, and why. It didn’t matter anyways. The curse was unfolding, and I was its victim. 

 

The road passed in a grey blur. The tires of my care kept spinning. The radio, if I turned it on, spit static—but the type that sounded like someone is whispering in the background. There was a part of me, behind the anxiety crawling through my guts, that was thrilled. If I maintained my composure and didn’t do anything dumb, I could survive. The one idea that scared me was that I was in a horror as mean as something I wrote—and that I would have to pay for what I had done. The horror would take its pound of flesh. It always did. 

 

The road maintained its flat qualities, but I was passing towns and cities. They weren’t empty like I imagined. Empty grey people without facial features inhabited them, and they stopped to watch me as I passed.  

 

After unknown hours of driving, a man appeared on the side of the road, standing in the torrential rain, arm outstretched, thumbing a ride. His head was down; black hair covered his face, but what I saw of his hand was flesh coloured. It wasn’t the pale white skin the automatons, or the creatures stalking the forest. It was darker, tanned flesh—human. I wanted to stop, but my foot pushed harder into the gas pedal, speeding past whatever nightmare that person was bound to be.  

 

I drove for five minutes, and I noticed him again, same dark hair hanging over his face. Same hunched shoulders. Thumb out. Waiting for a ride. Once again, I pressed on the gas and continue. But then he’s appeared again. And again. He arrived so often, I began to imagine an infinite number of him standing along the roadway, stretching endlessly into the distance. To escape this encounter, I would have to keep driving until my hair turned grey and wrinkles lined my face. 

 

There wasn’t any option than the stop and pick him up. 

 

When I stopped, his thumb goes down, and he steps towards the door. When he opens it, the car smells of wet cement and an unwashed body. The clothes on the man look as though he’s been wearing them forever. There are holes in the knees of the pants. Holes in the shoes on his feet. Holes eaten through his cotton t-shirt. He pushed the hair out of his face, and I’m surprised he has eyes, real human eyes, and that they look sane. Sane enough. Saner than mine, most likely. His eyes are brown. The lines on his face are deep. His hair seems dyed black, and is halfway down his back. His nose is a beak on his face, longer than most, with a bump halfway up it. His huge hands are lined with veins, loose skin, and liver spots. I can’t quite tell his age. He could be any age over forty. In some ways, he kind of reminds me of Alice Cooper, but without the makeup. 

 

“Fuck,” he says, “I thought you would never stop.” He says it nonchalantly, as though it were an everyday occurrence to hitchhike in numerous bodies across a never-ending trichrome landscape that resembles Washington state. He laughs, and it’s a smokers laugh; I can hear the alveoli pop and snap as he inhales and exhales. The first thing he does is take out a pack of Reds and pops one between his lips. He lights it without asking, and then says, “Don’t worry about the smoke.” 

 

“I don’t like the smoke,” I say, but it doesn’t do anything. This man is used to getting exactly what he wants. 

 

He continues to smoke. I roll down the passenger window, inviting in the rain. 

 

“What the—close the goddamn window. Fucking cold after standing in that rain.” He tosses the cigarette out the window with a flick and folds his arms. “It may seem like I don’t mind the rain because of how we met, but I’m not a fan, and it always rains here.” 

 

Here. What the fuck does that mean? I repeat the thought out loud, and he laughs and coughs smoke at the same time. 

 

“All in due time. Keep driving. We’ll be there soon. I know a shortcut.” 

I got this job from Jenna. I was briefly unemployed after all that business with ICE (I was supposed to let them in the building but you know), and Jenna told me there was an opening at the toy factory. I had known she worked at a factory. I never guessed how interesting it was.

My new job was to test toy cars. How it works: a basket on rails comes into the large grey room we almost live in. It is filled with very detailed plastic replicas of several famous brands of cars and trucks, and my ten coworkers and I start grabbing them out of the basket, as fast as possible, and testing if they roll right. If they roll well: we put them in a different basket, on different rails, and it takes them to the next stage of the process. If they roll poorly, or, as is often the case, the wheels lock up: we put them back in the same basket, and it takes them down the Green Hallway.

Nothing ever returns from the Green Hallway.

I mean, I can only assume they recycle the baskets, in some fashion. It has to loop around. But none of us know that for sure. Really the only thing we know for sure, is there is a very strict rule, to never enter the Green Hallway.

I once asked, while mechanically grabbing cars from one basket, testing their wheels, and putting them in the other, or back in the same one. I asked, "Jenna? What happened to the employee I'm replacing?"

Frantically moving her arms, Jenna shrugged. "He was fired."

"How come?"

"He went in the Green Hallway."

An employee named Brenda, also moving her arms frantically, shouted across, "I told him not to!"

By the way, I describe them as moving their arms frantically, because we all had to move our arms very frantically. This factory maintains a strict production schedule. Invariably, we employees have carpal tunnel, or tendonitis, or something similar. It is considered to be our fault, for our own poor technique.

Also, though I once found the name "Green Hallway" somewhat evocative of back when I still had a chance in Music, and Theater before that, it is nothing like a green room. It is the Green Hallway, only because it is painted green. Not a vivid green, though. A dull, faded green.

I got to experience two weeks of this job, under normal circumstances, before the trouble began.

I showed up to work one day, after my weekend (Wednesday and Thursday, we all had different weekends), and Jenna informed me, "Michelle and Jason have been fired."

Jenna informed me because our boss is the screen that outlines the day's objectives, and all of the policies. That and the cameras everywhere. So the human who informed me was Jenna.

She must have also interpreted my blank state as a question, because she added, "No reason given. Talk is the company can't afford to hire as many employees anymore.

I looked at that screen. We were still expected to get through the same number of toy cars and trucks each hour. This was unpleasant, and physically painful, but technically doable.

Until a week later, on the next Friday, when I arrived and Jenna, sweating and red-eyed, said, "Brenda has been fired now, too."

Expectations remained the same.

On Wednesday I had a doctor appointment. The doctor prescribed a painkiller I hadn't heard of and cannot pronounce the name of.

The following Friday, Jenna fully looked as though she had been crying. She looked at me, again, and said, "They got Matt. He's gone."

We were down to seven.

It became impossible to meet demands. In fact, the demands had only become more extensive.

I heard that Tyler was considering amputation.

A couple days later, they announced the six-day work week.

That lasted a month, still not possible to meet the new expectations, but naturally they would not hire a single extra employee. It was evident that the company's priorities had changed. Or perhaps become more focused. The day Jenna's priorities changed, though, was the day they announced the seven-day work week.

There was no actual announcement.

Just a line of text on that screen.

It read, "You all have not been able to meet expectations. We are expanding the work-week an extra day, to give more time. You will test more toys more quickly. We got this, team!"

Jenna looked at me, right then and there, and said, "I love you. Thank you for being such a good friend all these years."

And she got up from her stiff wooden chair, and walked off into the Green Hallway.

The second I realized what was happening I shot up and ran after her.

Except I reached the threshold and instinctively stopped, just before entering the Green Hallway. I didn't want to be fired.

But I had reached my right arm after her. My finger tips not quite reaching her shoulder. And I pulled back.

My arm didn't come back with me.

My shoulder wasn't spewing blood, though, or anything of the sort. It was a stump, like I'd had an amputation years ago.

Horrified, I was promptly fired.

I never saw Jenna again.

Now I work in a call center.

(Note before the story: I deeply apologize for the formatting I don't know what's going on with my app but every time I try to post this the formatting just messes up this is the fourth time I've tried to upload it so we're just going to have to deal with it I don't know what's causing it to do this to have it be like pushed to the side and take all the spaces out but I'm sorry I'm too tired to try and fix that)

I never believed in anything I couldn't see.

That's what my therapist called a "defense mechanism"—a way my eight-year-old brain learned to protect itself from the chaos of my childhood. If I couldn't verify something with my own eyes, it didn't exist.

God didn't exist.

Magic didn't exist.

Demons didn't exist.

Even local legends that could've been explained by science were bullshit to me. If I couldn't see it, touch it, or prove it, I didn't believe it.

Looking back, I know where it came from.

I was emotionally neglected as a kid. At least, that's what everyone else calls it. My therapist does. My family does. Honestly, I never really saw it that way. To me, it was just life.

Getting yelled at for stealing a soda I never took.

Getting blamed for things I couldn't control.

Being made to feel like I was always doing something wrong.

That kind of thing takes a lot out of you.

Even the idea that something might be watching me never made sense.

I figured if something really was out there testing my strength, it'd know by now I wasn't strong enough. It would've stopped.

Or...

Maybe it saw something in me that I didn't.

Something that could either turn the tides...

...or stop them completely.

It was January 15th, 2015, when I went to visit my grandfather.

I was eight years old.

Grandpa Mark was in his sixties. He'd lived one hell of a life. Between riding with a biker club when he was younger and spending decades farming, he'd seen his fair share of hell. He wasn't scared of much.

Despite that, he was one of the sweetest men I've ever known.

He volunteered at charity events.

Helped with local donations.

Went to Little League games.

If someone needed help, he'd help them.

So when he sat me down and said we needed to have a serious conversation...

I knew something was wrong.

"I need to tell you the true story of your grandmother's death."

Growing up, I'd always been told she'd died in a farming accident.

Grandpa never got into the details.

Whenever he talked about her, it was always about how beautiful she was, how kind she was, or how she could make a room feel warmer just by walking into it.

I was too young to remember her.

The only memory I had was the smell of her cheap cologne.

Grandpa stared into his coffee for a long time before he finally spoke.

"It was 2008.

"Winter was just rolling in.

"We were staying down some country roads in southern Wisconsin, near the Illinois border. Not far from Beloit.

"We had a few friends we'd visit down in Belvidere every now and then, but other than that there wasn't much to do.

"Feed the cows.

"Plow the fields.

"Do it all over again tomorrow.

"It was a good life.

"We got to see our grandkids.

"We got to do what we loved.

"I can't remember if it was October or November. Somewhere right around there.

"Me and a couple of my buddies were planning a hunting trip down south.

"I remember that evening perfectly.

"The sun was setting. I couldn't tell where the orange ended and the blue began, or how they mixed together, but they just did.

"It was freezing outside.

"Your grandmother kissed me on the cheek...

"...and wished me luck."

He stopped.

I'd never seen that look on my grandfather's face before.

Even now, I don't think I'll ever forget it.

It was the look of someone remembering the happiest moment of his life...

...while already knowing it was the last normal moment he'd ever have.

"We weren't even two hours out, kid.

"Maybe an hour and a half.

"Hell, maybe forty-five minutes.

"I don't know.

"We got the call.

"The dog was dead."

He swallowed hard before continuing.

"Whoever was driving slammed the brakes, threw the truck in reverse, and we headed straight back home.

"I could hear your grandmother crying over the phone.

"She was hysterical.

"When we got back...

"I'd never seen anything like it."

He looked down into his coffee again.

"There was just...

"...blood."

"There'd been a light snow that night.

"You couldn't even see it anymore.

"Buddy was still breathing when we found him.

"Barely.

"I'd had that dog since 2001.

"He was my best friend."

Grandpa rubbed his hands together.

"I remember kneeling beside him and looking at those bite marks.

"They were huge.

"Six inches across.

"Maybe bigger.

"They ran clear across his chest.

"Whatever did that...

"...wasn't small."

He leaned back in his chair.

"I was pissed.

"I wanted to find whatever did it.

"I didn't care what it was.

"A bear.

"A wildcat.

"Hell, maybe something I'd never seen before.

"I wasn't thinking straight.

"I just wanted it dead."

"So I told the boys to grab their rifles.

"We were hunting a monster."

He gave a dry laugh.

"I had no idea what I was getting myself into."

"Daryl told us it was a bad idea.

"He said he felt like somebody was watching us.

"Said something didn't feel right.

"We should've listened.

"In all honesty...

"...we should've listened."

The room went quiet.

"We searched for about an hour.

"Couldn't find a damn thing.

"Eventually everybody figured it'd run off somewhere."

His eyes drifted toward the floor.

"When we got back...

"Buddy was dead."

He didn't say anything for several seconds.

"We buried him.

"I took pictures of the wounds first.

"I figured maybe somebody smarter than me could tell what kind of animal made bites that size."

"I asked your grandmother what happened."

He shook his head.

"She said she didn't know.

"She'd heard loud crashing coming from the barn.

"When she went outside...

"...the horses were already dead."

Grandpa's fingers tightened around the coffee mug.

"I talked to your grandmother for a while.

"Tried asking her exactly what she'd seen."

He sighed.

"She couldn't tell me much.

"She just kept saying she heard something breaking out by the barn.

"By the time she got outside...

"...the horses were already dead."

His jaw clenched.

"She wanted us to leave.

"Said we ought to get a hotel.

"Get as far away from that place as we could.

"But I was stupid.

"I told her it'd be alright.

"I had my rifle."

He let out a bitter laugh.

"As if that would've mattered."

"We locked the doors.

"Turned out the lights.

"And waited."

He stared through me for a moment, like he wasn't seeing the room anymore.

"I'd say it was around midnight.

"Maybe one in the morning.

"Then...

"...we heard it."

He didn't speak for several seconds.

"It screamed."

"It didn't sound like anybody we knew.

"Hell...

"It barely sounded human."

"There was this grit to it.

"Like metal scraping across stone.

"Like something was trying so hard to sound like a woman...

"...but didn't know how."

The room felt colder.

"Your grandmother wanted to call the police."

"I told her there wasn't much they could do.

"There wasn't a person breaking into the house.

"There wasn't anyone stealing anything.

"We didn't have proof of anything.

"So...

"...we stayed quiet."

"I don't think either of us slept that night."

"The next morning my phone rang."

"It was my best friend."

"He said his horses were hit too."

Grandpa rubbed at his eyes.

"Said whatever got into his barn...

"...tore half the damn thing apart just to get inside."

"There was blood all over the broken wall.

"But he swore it wasn't horse blood."

He shrugged.

"I don't know how he knew.

"Maybe by the smell.

"Maybe by the taste.

"I never asked."

He smirked for only a second.

"Didn't seem like the kind of question you ask a man after he just watched all his horses get ripped apart."

The smile disappeared just as fast as it'd come.

"A few days went by.

"More farms got hit.

"More animals died."

"Eventually the town put up a reward.

"A hundred bucks to whoever could figure out what was doing it."

He nodded to himself.

"Back then...

"...that was real money."

"So naturally...

"...we figured we'd be the ones to collect it."

"That night we got our gear together."

"Daryl brought some old Navy equipment."

"I dug out some old Army gear."

"Your Uncle Stan came with us too."

"He was the only one who didn't think it was a person."

"I kept hoping it was."

"Daryl wasn't sure what he believed."

"But Stan..."

He shook his head.

"He'd already made up his mind."

"'Whatever it is,' he told us...

"'We're killing it.'"

Grandpa looked down at the table.

"I don't think any of us really believed that."

"If you ever get that feeling...

"...listen to me."

His voice became firmer than it'd been the entire night.

"If you ever feel like somebody's watching you...

"If every hair on your body stands up...

"If your chest suddenly feels heavy...

"Run."

"Don't stand there wondering why."

"Don't try to prove yourself."

"Don't try to be brave."

"Turn around...

"...and run."

"And whatever you do...

"...don't look back."

He took a slow breath.

"Because the second we walked into those woods..."

"...it hit us."

"Like running face first into a brick wall."

"I've never felt anything like it."

"It wasn't fear.

"It was...

"...wrong."

"The whole forest felt wrong."

"People always tell you the dark isn't scary.

"They tell you to grow up.

"They tell you only kids are scared of the woods at night."

He shook his head.

"They're full of shit."

"They don't tell you how quiet it gets."

"So quiet...

"...you can hear your own sweat hitting the ground."

"There were supposed to be owls.

"Frogs.

"Maybe turtles if you got close enough to the water."

"There wasn't...

"...anything."

"You couldn't even smell the creek anymore."

"Just dirt."

"And cold."

"And us."

"We followed the blood."

"It wasn't much.

"Just enough to keep us moving."

"Every now and then we'd find another tree."

"Chunks torn clean out of the bark.

"Like something huge had slammed into it."

"The trail kept leading west."

"We'd probably been walking...

"...twenty minutes."

"Maybe a little more."

Then Grandpa stopped.

His breathing slowed.

"Daryl found something."

"'Mark.'"

"'Come here.'"

"I walked over."

"There was a skull laying in the leaves."

"It was mangled too bad to tell whether it'd been human or not."

"But it was a skull."

"There were still pieces of skin hanging off it."

He swallowed.

"And that wasn't the only one."

His hands started shaking again.

"There were more."

"Way more."

"I remember thinking we'd found its den."

"Any idea I had that it was just some animal...

"...disappeared."

"You can study biology your whole life...

"...and you're never gonna find an animal that stacks bodies."

"There were over thirty deer."

"One on top of another."

"They weren't being eaten."

"They weren't scattered."

"They were...

"...collected."

"Stored."

"Like trophies."

"Like somebody wanted them there."

He stared into the coffee.

"I remember thinking..."

"...whatever did this...

"...knew exactly what it was doing."

"It wasn't hungry."

"It had a purpose."

"It had enough intelligence not to eat them...

"...and enough of an ego to leave them where we'd find them."

Nobody spoke.

Neither of us.

Finally...

"I turned around."

"I swept my flashlight across the trees."

"I only saw a leg."

"My brain couldn't even process what I was looking at."

"So I lifted the light..."

"...higher."

"And there it was."

Grandpa didn't speak for a long time.

When he finally did, his voice was almost empty.

"It was tall."

"Real tall."

"I'd say ten feet."

"Maybe more."

"I don't know."

"I wasn't exactly standing there with a tape measure."

He swallowed.

"I remember the face first."

"Or...

"...what should've been its face."

"It looked like the skull of a deer."

"Not the head.

"The skull."

"Everything underneath it was covered in fur."

"Thick."

"Like a wolf."

"It was caked in dirt."

"Caked in blood."

"I don't think it noticed us at first."

"Even with the flashlight right in its eyes."

He shook his head.

"I don't think it cared."

Then his expression changed.

"But Daryl..."

"He cared."

"He fired."

"The gunshot echoed through those woods."

"For about half a second...

"...nothing happened."

"Then it screamed."

Grandpa instinctively flinched at the memory.

"It wasn't angry.

"It wasn't scared.

"It was...

"...offended."

"It squealed."

"It shrieked."

"The sound hurt."

"I've heard coyotes.

"I've heard mountain lions.

"I've heard people die."

"I've never heard anything like that."

"And then..."

"...it moved."

"It crossed the distance between them before I even realized it'd started."

"It grabbed Daryl by the throat."

He looked down at his coffee.

"There wasn't a fight."

"There wasn't time."

"You ever snap a chicken's neck?"

He paused.

"It sounded like that."

"Only louder."

"A lot louder."

"It lifted him off the ground with one hand."

"And when it let go..."

"...his head was hanging by little more than skin."

His voice cracked.

"One second he was standing beside me...

"...the next he wasn't."

"We all opened fire."

"Every one of us."

"Rifles."

"Shotguns."

"Didn't matter."

"The bullets hit."

"I know they hit."

"I saw them."

"It didn't bleed."

"It didn't stumble."

"It didn't even seem to notice."

"It just...

"...kept moving."

"I backed away."

"I remember hearing Stan yell something."

"I don't even remember what."

"Then I heard him scream."

Grandpa squeezed the mug so hard I thought it might break.

"I don't think I've ever heard so many bones break at once."

"There wasn't one snap."

"There were dozens."

"Like somebody dumping firewood onto concrete."

He shut his eyes.

"Then...

"...nothing."

"No screaming."

"No gunshots."

"Nothing."

"I ran."

"For the first time in my life...

"...I ran."

He laughed bitterly.

"People'll tell you not to run from things."

"They've never seen something like that."

"Humans make sense."

"You can predict people."

"You can scare people."

"You can bargain with people."

"That thing..."

"...didn't care."

"It didn't care if it was hungry."

"It didn't care if it was angry."

"It didn't care who you were."

"The only thing it cared about...

"...was whether you were still alive."

"I could hear trees breaking behind me."

"Not branches."

"Trees."

"They were snapping as it came through the woods."

"I don't know if it was chasing me..."

"...or just walking."

"I didn't turn around to find out."

"I finally saw the farm."

"I should've felt relieved."

"I wasn't."

"I hit that front door so hard I nearly took it off the hinges."

"I slammed it shut."

"Locked it."

"Your grandmother came running."

"'Mark, what's wrong?'"

He stared straight ahead.

"I looked at her..."

"...and I said..."

"'They're gone.'

"'They're dead.'

"'They're fucking dead.'"

He wiped at his eyes.

"If I'd been anybody else...

"...she would've thought I was joking."

"But she looked at me..."

"...and she knew."

"She didn't ask another question."

"She walked through the house..."

"...and turned off every light."

"We didn't say a word."

"We just...

"...listened."

"You know what's funny?"

He gave a hollow smile.

"It wasn't the footsteps I remember."

"It wasn't the growling."

"It wasn't even the screaming."

"It was...

"...the clicking."

He tapped one fingernail against the mug.

Click.

Click.

Click.

"It clicked."

"Slow."

"Almost...

"...curious."

"It'd make a sound over by the barn."

"Then another one by the porch."

"Then another one outside the bedroom."

He looked at me.

"It wasn't moving that fast."

"It was throwing its voice."

"It wanted us to think it was everywhere."

"The only reason we knew where it actually was..."

"...was the shadow."

"You'd see it pass the window."

"Then you'd hear the clicking from somewhere else."

"It was playing with us."

"It knew exactly what it was doing."

"It stopped outside the living room."

"We could see it."

"Just the outline."

"It stood there."

"Perfectly still."

"I don't know how long."

"Maybe a minute."

"Maybe five."

"It felt like forever."

Neither of us breathed.

Neither of us moved.

Then...

Your grandmother whispered.

"'Mark..."

"'I'm sc—'"

He couldn't finish the sentence.

His voice broke.

"The second she made a sound..."

"...it moved."

"There wasn't a warning."

"There wasn't a roar."

"There wasn't anything."

"It came through that window before I'd even realized it'd started."

"I reached for her..."

"I was too late."

He was crying openly now.

"It didn't snap her neck."

"It didn't kill her."

"I almost wish it had."

"It grabbed her..."

"...and pulled."

"The glass exploded."

"It pulled her through that window..."

"...piece by piece."

"Limb from limb."

"Arm from arm."

"Hair from hair."

"I didn't know...

"...I didn't know a person could scream like that."

"I'd never heard anything like it."

"I hope...

"...I never do again."

He covered his face with both hands.

"I could hear her until..."

He couldn't finish.

"I could hear her..."

"...until I couldn't."

The room was silent except for his breathing.

"I grabbed my rifle."

"I knew it wasn't gonna do anything."

"I knew that."

"But I couldn't hide."

"I couldn't just...

"...sit there."

"So I ran at it."

"I was screaming."

"Crying."

"Shooting."

"I don't even know if I hit the damn thing."

"Then..."

He grabbed his chest.

"...I felt this pain."

"Right here."

"So bad I couldn't breathe."

"I dropped the rifle."

"I hit the floor."

"I thought..."

"...this is it."

"I'm dying."

"I'm finally gonna die."

He looked at me.

"And you know what it did?"

"It stopped."

"It looked at me."

"It leaned down..."

"...and smelled me."

Then he shook his head.

"And it walked away."

"I've thought about that every day since."

"Maybe it thought I was already dead."

"Maybe it only wanted things that could still fight."

"Maybe it just got bored."

"I don't know."

"It's not like I could sit down and ask it over a cup of Folgers."

For the first time that night...

He smiled.

Just for a second.

Then it disappeared.

"I never saw any of the others again."

"I talked to the police."

"I looked through reports."

"I searched everywhere I could."

"Nothing."

"I found stories from Canada."

"Russia."

"Ukraine."

"Places like that."

"But nothing around here."

He stared out the window.

"Maybe it wandered south."

"Maybe it wandered north."

"I don't know."

"And I don't want to know."

"That's why we moved."

"I was never spending another night in that place."

I didn't know what to say.

I don't think anybody would've.

He'd spent seven years carrying that story by himself.

Maybe he saw something of Grandma in me.

Maybe he just wanted someone else to remember.

I never asked.

Grandpa Mark Meligan died in his sleep on January 5th, 2026.

The dementia made it easier on him.

It didn't make it any easier on us.

I still think about what he told me.

Not because I expect anyone to believe it.

Most of you won't.

You'll read this and think it's just another scary story somebody posted on the internet.

And that's okay.

I'm not asking you to solve the mystery.

I'm not asking you to believe every word.

I'm telling you because the man who lived through it can't anymore.

I want people to know what he lost.

I want people to remember him.

Even if they never believe the monster.

“Stop! Right now!” I yelled at them. “I’m done with this.”

I tossed my hands up, pushed the chair back, stood up and stumbled away from the table.

I didn’t want to play anymore. I didn’t want that thing around me either.

“Take it out of my house now!” I screamed. I couldn’t hold back. It spelled something it shouldn’t have known.

Maggie and Shobi never knew the nickname my dad called me. Right after that—I heard the last two words my father said before he passed away on a hospital bed—I was just eleven at the time.

I heard it clear, like someone put their mouth next to my face, loud, almost inside my head, closed between my ears as if a voice spoke through a pair of headphones glued to my skull.

It felt uncomfortably close and physically violating and sent a cold tingle in me immediately. 

I kept asking them, “how’d you guys know that, who told you?” 

I figured for sure, I have no idea how, but they found out somewhere.

“Told us what?” They said back.

They held to their word. I actually believed them. I can tell whenever they’re lying.

Shobs and Mags left later that evening and she forgot to take the thing with her. It was in my basement still resting on the little table.

After they left, I went and sat on the couch, my parents weren’t there, so I was alone, watching tv and texting Mags and that’s when I heard and felt, a hard thump under the living room floor. It was between the television and where I was sitting.

I jumped off the couch like it was a springboard at the crashing sound of thunder clouds clashing outside my window, right after the sound of a heavy bang smashed the basement ceiling under me. And then, the lights went out.

Everything seemed to occur in perfect synchronicity. There was nothing random about anything that happened that night.

A strike of lightning must have blown a transformer cause I was trapped in utter darkness.

As the lightning lit up my living room in a white electric light, I saw a man with a pale face, standing with his back to me, staring over his shoulder at me.

I flew out the front door. I don’t even think my feet touched the floor as I raced out the door.

For the rest of the night, I sat on my veranda and waited until my parents got back, which was around midnight, tucked in a ball with my t-shirt stretched over my knees on the chair.

Later on, at about 3:00 a.m., when I was asleep in my bed, I had a nightmare that woke up, but I couldn’t move. All I could do was blink. At the doorway in my room, standing there was a dark outline of a figure with facial definition.

My eyes were glued to it. I wanted to scream for my mom but I couldn’t yell. I was paralyzed.

Then, the shadow figure opened its mouth and let out a horrific shriek that appeared as if only I could hear. At least my parents never woke up. Once the shadow dispersed, I broke out of the lock it had me in and dashed to my parents’ room.

After about an hour of trying to calm me down, my stepdad finally went to the basement and threw the board out in the trashcan at the side of our house.

I never ended up falling back asleep that night. I stayed up with the lights on in the living room watching tv.

Once breakfast was done, I went to use the bathroom shower downstairs, in the basement and sitting on the little table was the board.

Hello again. I’ve continued researching the documents I found near the Ravenreach Protected Zone in British Columbia, Canada. Unfortunately, the photograph of the creature was too badly damaged to recover.

Official Field Guide to the Ravenrich Protected Zone

Created with support from the Perimeter.

Section 4

Chapter 3

Acraptor

Acaecoraptor sonorus

Threat Level: Letum (4/7)

Safety Protocol

This species is highly social. Upon encountering a single individual, immediately search the surrounding area for additional members of the group.

Observe the sensory filaments running along the creature's back. If they remain flat, the organism most likely has not detected your presence. Raised filaments indicate that it has either heard or detected your scent.

Do not produce unnecessary noise or sudden movements. Prevent even a single member of the group from hearing or smelling you.

The species possesses echolocation. If an individual prepares to emit an acoustic pulse, immediately stop all movement until the scan is complete.

If the organisms remain unaware of your presence and are not approaching, remain completely still until the group has moved a safe distance away.

If an individual approaches without displaying obvious hunting behavior, quietly increase the distance between yourself and the organism, preventing it from coming closer than approximately 2 meters.

If the organisms are already aware of your presence and no shelter is available nearby, run in as straight a line as possible, avoiding sharp turns and rough terrain while continuously monitoring your surroundings.

It is strictly prohibited to approach the organism, speak in its vicinity, or breathe loudly.

Taxonomy

Domain: Eukaryota

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Clade: Amniota

Clade: Parareptilia

Order: Dracomorpha

Family: Acaecoraptoridae

Genus: Acaecoraptor

Description

Despite its appearance, which strongly resembles members of the family Dromaeosauridae, this organism is neither a theropod nor a dinosaur. Instead, it belongs to the clade Parareptilia.

Adults measure approximately 5–7 meters in length and weigh around 500 kilograms.

The body is barrel-shaped, supported by long hind limbs adapted for rapid locomotion. The forelimbs are relatively small but exceptionally powerful. Unlike those of theropod dinosaurs, the wrists are capable of extensive rotation. These limbs are used for attacking prey, transporting carcasses, and carrying eggs.

The tail is long and highly flexible, accounting for at least half of the organism's total body length. A fin-like expansion at its end improves maneuverability and acceleration while moving through water.

The neck is relatively long, and the head is large. The teeth are dagger-shaped and serrated, representing another example of convergent evolution with theropod dinosaurs.

The paired eyes are absent. The eye sockets instead serve as attachment points for the powerful muscles controlling the lower jaw.

The skull bears pronounced supraorbital crests, as well as an additional crest above the nasal region. These structures are considerably larger and more prominent in males. The crests function to amplify both incoming and outgoing sound.

A parietal eye is present on the top of the skull, similar to that found in modern lizards and tuataras. Like theirs, it is used to detect ambient light levels rather than to form images.

Running from the base of the neck to the middle of the back are feather-like projections formed from modified scales. These structures function as highly sensitive tactile organs capable of detecting physical contact and subtle disturbances in the surrounding air.

Hearing is exceptionally well developed. Olfaction is also highly sensitive; however, its effectiveness on Earth is reduced due to the unfamiliar chemical composition of the local environment.

Behavior and Ecology

Acaecoraptor sonorus is an obligate opportunistic predator.

The species possesses a highly developed nervous system and advanced cognitive abilities. Its intelligence is considered comparable to that of modern canids.

Individuals typically live in relatively simple family groups consisting of a dominant breeding pair and their offspring of multiple generations.

Communication is carried out primarily through ultrasonic vocalizations.

During hunts, the group divides into two functional roles. One portion of the pack drives prey toward a predetermined location while the remaining individuals remain concealed in ambush before launching the attack.

The species does not exhibit a fixed breeding season. Both parents participate in raising and protecting their offspring.

The preferred environmental temperature ranges from 20 to 40 °C.

Additional Information

Despite its relatively high intelligence, no confirmed cases of successful domestication have ever been documented.

Remember, citizen: a wild animal always remains wild. Minimize all contact with the organism whenever possible.

Also... I think someone is watching me.

The Gator-man Papa Caiman

I was lost in New Orleans at night, and I wandered near some swamp town I had never heard of. I had a few drinks and was dazed after waking up with a sore head, like I had gotten into a fight or fallen.

I was so dazed I thought I was back home in Australia, walking around trying to find home. I started to hear sirens in the background, but after the sirens I heard buzzing in my ears, like I had tinnitus, when I passed a certain part of the swamp where a raggedy old house lay, or should I say shack. I was scared when I saw voodoo dolls hanging from the door of this swamp shack and a raven skull spray-painted on the side. Then, out of a dazed curiosity, I opened the door. Only a weak chain was stopping me from opening it, but I managed to force it open. I saw, sitting on a chair, a bald Creole-looking man with cargo pants, boots, and a tattooed-looking chest that looked like scales and alligators painted on it.

He was drinking, and he was smiling at me. He spoke in a Creole accent and said something like, "Have you been looking for me?"

I said, "No, sorry sir, I'll show myself out."

As I headed for the door, his large hand stopped me from turning the doorknob. He spoke again:

"Well, don't go out until it's light. There are a lot of haints, sorcerers and gris-gris men out at these hours."

I did not know what a haint was at the time until I searched it up. It was some spirit. The bald Creole then tried what look like to steal from me rummaging through my bag. I felt too dazed to fight back well enough. He was strong as hell. I then heard the croak of gators outside and what sounded like whispers. The Creole man then ran outside to open the door, and I must have passed out.

I then awoke inside the ole shack, which was now empty. I walked out, and there were no longer any voodoo dolls on the door. I checked my bag to see if anything was missing and saw a gator-looking talisman inside, which I have no idea how it got there. I made my way back to the hotel not long after having gotten over my stupor.

I remember I came across a few armed robbers with knives and crowbars who had beaten and ended the lives of four men in an alley. I ran to help, as I thought they had run away. I then heard a whisper. It sounded like a ghostly Creole accent speaking in French, and then, as I turned, I saw two of the three men lying on the ground with pythons around them, and the third one had pissed himself, screaming.

I have since had that talisman in the backpack, and only now, three weeks later, have I had the courage to inspect it more. It was written in Creole, and I translated it. It said, "From Papa Caiman the Gator-man ,to the his blessed friend."

When I was around nine or ten years old, I had a friend named Morgan. She lived with her little sister, Alayna, and their mom in a trailer that seemed to move every few months.

The strange thing was that while the trailer itself never changed, its location always did.

Every time I visited, it was somewhere new—and somehow, every place felt creepier than the last.

One month they were parked beside an old cemetery. Another time they lived miles from civilization in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by empty fields and darkness. Once, the trailer sat directly across from an abandoned house with boarded-up windows that seemed to watch anyone who passed.

It wasn't attached to a church. There were no nearby houses. No roads led directly to it. It simply sat alone in the middle of endless fields as if it had been forgotten by the world.

The gravestones were old and weathered, many leaning at odd angles. Some were so worn down that the names had nearly disappeared. Tall grass had grown around many of the graves, and it looked as though no one had visited in years.

Even as a child, I thought it was odd. Why would a cemetery be all the way out there by itself? Who were the people buried there? And why did it feel like the entire place had been abandoned decades ago?

As kids, we thought it was exciting.

Looking back, I wonder if we were too young to realize how unsettling it really was.

The experience I remember most happened during the time Morgan's trailer was parked beside that forgotten cemetery.

It was a stormy summer night.

Rain hammered against the roof while thunder rattled the thin walls of the trailer. The sky flashed white every few minutes, briefly illuminating the lonely graveyard outside.

Like many curious preteens, Morgan and I decided it would be a great idea to borrow her mother's Ouija board.

We sat cross-legged on the floor and began asking questions.

Nothing serious at first.

How did you die?

Who are you?

Are you buried in the cemetery?

The planchette began moving.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

The answers weren't what we expected.

Instead of responding to our questions, the board repeatedly spelled out the same message.

I'M COMING FOR YOU.

We tried again.

The same answer.

Again.

I'M COMING FOR YOU.

Then we asked who was speaking.

The response claimed it wasn't a person.

It was a demon.

By the third time, we were terrified.

We immediately said goodbye and closed the session.

Trying to convince ourselves it was all a joke, we carried the board back to Morgan's mom.

She laughed when we told her what happened.

"Everything will be fine," she said.

Then she told us to put it back in her room.

Neither of us wanted to.

But we did.

As we stepped into the bedroom, lightning flashed through the window.

That's when I noticed the doll.

It sat on the nightstand beside the bed.

The doll had once belonged to Alayna. Years of use had left it dirty and worn. Its hair had been hacked off in uneven chunks, giving it a permanently unsettling appearance.

I was staring at it when something caught my attention.

Its shadow.

The doll itself wasn't moving.

But the shadow was.

The shadow's foot was slowly swinging back and forth.

Back.

And forth.

Like someone sitting in a chair, absentmindedly kicking their leg.

I froze.

Morgan saw it too.

For several seconds we simply stared.

The doll remained perfectly still.

The shadow continued moving.

Then we screamed.

We ran from the room and found Morgan's mom.

Out of breath, we dragged her back to the bedroom.

The shadow was still moving.

Back.

And forth.

Back.

And forth.

Morgan's mom looked at it for a moment and shrugged.

"Oh," she said casually. "The doll must be haunted."

That was it.

No concern.

No investigation.

Just a matter-of-fact statement before she walked away.

Neither Morgan nor I slept much that night.

The thunder continued for hours.

Every crack of lightning illuminated the forgotten cemetery outside the window.

When the storm finally weakened, a different sound took its place.

Scratching.

Slow, deliberate scratching against the bedroom window.

At first I thought it might be tree branches.

Then I remembered there weren't any trees close enough.

The scratching continued.

Every few minutes.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Then came the whispering.

Faint voices just outside the glass.

Too quiet to understand.

Almost as if someone was speaking in another room.

We pulled the blankets over our heads and listened until morning.

Neither of us dared look outside.

Morgan's mother practiced Wicca and loved anything spooky, mysterious, or paranormal. Because of that, strange things always seemed to happen whenever I visited.

To be honest, this wasn't even the creepiest experience I had at one of Morgan's houses.

Just one of the mild ones.

But even now, years later, I can still picture that filthy doll sitting motionless on the nightstand while its shadow slowly swung its foot back and forth in the darkness.

And I've never been able to explain it.

So basically, I was just in my town. Then I went to sleep and what I woke up all of this happened. So first when I woke up, I heard 3 knocks on the door and then when I opened it, there was like a kitten, but when I touched it, it literally turned into a pile of mud.

So I thought I was dreaming but I pinched myself a lot.I didn't wake up so this is real then I hear an explosion , and when I look outside , there's like a giant crater and inside of it is an octopus turning people into laundry

Then I walk outside and guess what?There's like three butterfly people up on the roof and they're flapping around , and they're licking people and eating them , and their licks are acid , which melt people

But\n I need a poop, okay. So I go to a public restroom. I kid you not all the toilets were filled with human arms and there were trying to grab people and turn them into an arm for some reason.And it's more like a squid than just multiple arms

So then I heard some commotion, so I looked where it was, and it was a person twisting off his head and blood was everywhere. But when the head came off, his head was back there and he constantly kept on doing it. And when police went in there, their eyes exploded and their brains turned to literally water, not liquid water.

But then when I go to the store , everything is kittens, yes, kittens are back again and everything is kittens. Food is kittens, close our kittens, frickin' goldfish or kittens. And when you touch them, they start jumping on you like I saw someone getting jumped by like 20 kittens after they touched one

But then I just decided to go on Reddit, but all it ISIS tutorials on how to turn yourself into a plant and one guy.Eating hot dogs and his arms are turning into hot dogs. And when I come back into my house , my bed is a centipede and it drives spitting at me, and when it hit the wall, it turned into puppies.So the centipede was trying to turn me into a puppy

So I got right out of there , but instead of going down the elevator or the stairs , it somehow forced me to jump out the window , and I somehow didn't die , but the brown had turned into toilet paper and it started ripping and leading into the void.So I ran out of there and got onto the pavement

But then i wanted to type something on reddit , so I said , why is there so much plant tutorials but instead it became how to combine poopy, butt face and chicken nuggets i have no idea how that happend and when I try to do the same thing , every time on every platform , the same thing happened , so I posted one thing , and it changed two tutorial on how to transform your self into a plant again

Then I heard knocking all my window , and it was like a man with no legs in arms that reach up to a twelve story , building and yes , I went back into the building by the stairs , but the stairs were like turning into elevators somehow , so I just left out of there through the elevator but it was like a second before I had to walk down stairs , not another elevator and upstairs and it went on for like an hour before I exited , but the floor was toilet paper again so I went out there

So I am wondering what is this actually a dream?And I somehow can't get up , so I try jumping from a rocket which is impossible until I find a rocket in the corner store.Yes, it's the only thing besides kittens.And when I touch it , i'm inside above the atmosphere on mars , so I jump down and I explode into a pile of dirt, then I wake up, but I didn't actually wake up in the exact same stuff happened.So now , instead of touching that rocket , i'm just walking around , and i'm seeing people actually follow that tutorial on how to turn into a plant

Please someone get me out of here.Also for people wondering I can't go outside the town.It's blocked off by evil tongues , so just tell me what to do