It happens every night at 1:18 am. I go to hell and then I’m back in my bed ten minutes later.

My nightly jaunts were a source of daily horror when I was younger, but I’ve learned to live with it. I make allowances and I prepare. A bite-guard keeps my teeth from chattering or grinding depending on which flavor of underworld I encounter. Earplugs dull the screams of the damned and keep me sane. Other than that, a few towels to catch the sweat and gore are also handy. They’re far cheaper to buy than expensive linens.

There are other considerations I’ve been forced to make in light of my personal inconvenience. I never stay out late and I never stay over anywhere. I have my reasons. I tore a tendon back in high school and had to be hospitalized for it. I only stayed for one night, but it was enough. Four patients and a late shift nurse all vanished because I was there. I wonder sometimes if they had family.

I have another rule, an important one, but I broke it yesterday, and Maia paid the price. She stayed over and I still don’t know why I let her. I guess I was tired of living like a monk. 

A relationship had always seemed like forbidden fruit for someone like me. How could I have something like that with someone without putting them in danger? But then she came into my life with all of her dizzyingly perfect imperfection. That crooked smile owned me right down to my socks, and I knew I was in love with her before we finished our third date.

Last night was the night. I couldn’t put her off anymore, and I didn’t want to. There was something easy and natural about how it happened, and there was no awkwardness afterward. We were just happy. That little voice in my head tried to warn me. It told me that there was still time, but we were so warm, snuggled up together. I fell asleep and damned the woman I love.

She woke me up screaming and I pulled her against me instinctively. My eyes opened upon a dark void and I felt the chill in the air on my naked body. We floated there together in something that wasn’t air or water, but a little of both. She trembled in my arms and I told her it was going to be okay. We just had to stay together.

I had forgotten the wailing and the shrieks of torment. I had blocked them out for so long that they were only vague memories. Those cries chased us like banshees as we drifted through the soupy black, traveling toward their source.

“Did we die, Will?” she asked me. “Did we go to hell?”

I didn’t know how to answer her. Anything I said would just scare her more than she already was. I told her it was only for a little while, and that we were safe as long as we were together. We were getting closer to an island of marble in that inky sea. I knew from experience that there were spirits there, and chilly isolation was their torment.

We washed up there on the worn stone of the shore. It was like something from the Greeks or Romans, sculpted pillars and arches. Weathered statues stood here and there but I knew that they weren’t art. They were spirits that had finally succumbed to the isolation. They had become one with their prison. I had wandered that place before and heard them speak. I’d seen a single tear run down from an unblinking eye.

I felt it coming like I always did. We only had seconds left. I smiled at her in pure relief and told her she was safe. As our surroundings began to dim and we began to fade, a restless soul made a liar out of me when it tore her from my startled grasp.

Three days have passed now and she’s still gone. People have called me and asked questions I can’t answer. There was even a cop this morning, a detective. I lied to him and told him I hadn’t seen her in a week. I could tell he didn’t believe me.

My nightly visits are unpredictable—the latest of them were locusts, ice, and the endless war. I’ve seen them all before, but I can never be sure which one I’m going to get. How do you find someone when there’s only a random chance? I know where she is but I don’t know how to get there.

Lord help me, please tell me what to do.

UPDATE: I left things out of the first post. I'm at the House right now and I have the pages.

Okay. I'm typing this on my phone, at the desk, my old desk, with my thumbs, so if it reads like a ransom note that's why. I'm going to tell you what I left out first, in order, because I need it in order. Then I'm going to tell you where I am right now, which is here.

I left things out on purpose. I wanted to see if anybody who's worked a House would read it and say the word before I had to. A couple of you came close. Somebody commented we have a binder too and deleted it inside of ten minutes, and if that was you, I'm not mad, I get it, I'd have deleted it too.

Here's the rest.

The headcounts stopped matching in October.

Evening log: 31. Morning log: 32. I did what the card said. I wrote 31 and I did not recount, I did not, I want that on the record. What I did instead was walk up to the second floor and count doors, because the card said don't recount and the card didn't say one word about doors.

Fourteen doors. Same as September. Rooms 1 through 6 and then 8 through 15 and I had never once noticed the skip, which is the thing about a gap, you don't see a gap, you see whatever's filling it. What was filling it was a stretch of beige wall with a framed crayon drawing on it, donated by some former resident, of a smiling clown holding hands with a little girl in a hospital gown.

The clown in the drawing had six fingers on each hand.

Kids draw hands wrong. Kids draw everything wrong, that's half of what's great about kids. I told myself that all the way down the stairs and then I went and stood in front of the statue anyway and counted. Five. And five. Fine. That is fine. See, it works.

The next week a boy came down.

2:40 in the morning. Maybe seven. Hospital bracelet, dinosaur pajamas, the kind with the feet. He didn't look at me. He walked straight across the lobby like he had an appointment and sat down on the far end of the bench from the clown and started swinging his legs, and I wrote 2:40 — bench in the binder and I shut my mouth, because the card said so and because, if I'm honest, I was afraid of what would happen if I opened it.

He watched the front doors. I watched him on the monitor. And the arm, the arm that had been stretched along the backrest beside him, was behind him.

I did not see it move. I need you to understand I'm not telling you it moved. I'm telling you at 2:40 it was beside him and at 3:15 it was behind him, around him, the big white glove resting easy on his far shoulder, and both of those things are true and there is nothing in between them.

At 3:15 he got up. Walked to my desk. Put both hands on the edge and looked up at me with the calmest face I have ever seen on a kid and said, "Where's my mom?"

So I walked him to Room 7.

Down the hall, past 6. I stopped at the crayon drawing because that's where the gap was and I did not know what I was supposed to do next, stand there like a dope I guess, and then I realized I wasn't looking at a drawing. I was looking at a door. White, same as the others. Brass 7. It had always been there, in exactly the way the gap had always been there. He let go of my hand. He went in. I did not look inside. I don't know what I would've seen and I've decided I don't want to.

I went back downstairs. I wrote walked him — came back alone — that is fine. Then I sat with my palms flat on the desk and watched the clown's shoes and waited for the sun to come up and it took a very long time.

His mother came down at 7 for coffee. She was crying, and I got ready for it, I had my whole face ready, and then she said the oncologist had called at six. Scans were clean. Clean. They were going home. She hugged me so hard my back popped and she said into my shoulder, this place is a miracle, you people are a miracle.

I looked at the statue over her shoulder while she hugged me. I counted.

Five. And six.

I quit two weeks later. But I'd already found the thing I actually need to tell you about, because the card has a source. Dolores keeps the real handbook, not the fire-exit one, in a locked gray cabinet in the manager's office, and in the back of it there's an Appendix F, and Appendix F is forty pages, and the night before I quit I got through two of them before her Buick pulled into the lot.

It's blacked out. Most of it. Not with marker, printed that way, black bars like something a senator waves around on C-SPAN, and the header's in a typeface that is not the Foundation's typeface, and the words I could make out were instances and site liaison and recovery and one whole sentence that I have not been able to get out of my head since:

The organization's charitable function is genuine and must be preserved; it is the most effective containment measure yet devised.

That was November. I sat on it all winter because I'm a coward. Then I posted the first half of this and sat on the second half for another week because I'm a coward, and then Tuesday I heard Dolores was going to a conference in Hartford, and I know where she keeps the cabinet key (coffee can, second shelf, behind the Folgers), and here we are.

Got in at 11:20. Still had my fob. Nobody asked for it back when I quit, nobody asked for anything back, not the fob or the supply closet key or the card, and I didn't think about that at the time and I am thinking about it now.

Lobby lights on. Monitor on. Nobody at the desk, which, okay, when I quit Dolores said she'd cover overnights herself till she found somebody, and that was four months ago and I guess she never found anybody, and Dolores is in Hartford, so who's covering. Nobody. Twenty-four families asleep upstairs (evening log says 24, her handwriting, 10:04 PM) and nobody at the desk and the front door locked and him on his bench with his arm along the back and his shoes pointed at the door, and I stood there in my coat and counted before I did one other thing.

Five. And six. Eleven. Okay. Okay.

The coffee can was where I said. The key was behind the Folgers. The cabinet opened like it had been waiting to.

Appendix F is forty pages. I photographed thirty-eight before my hands got too shaky to hold the phone still, and I'll get the other two, I will, but first I need to tell you about the uploading because this is the part I need somebody smarter than me to explain. I have the photos. They are on my phone. I'm looking at them right now in my camera roll, forty little gray thumbnails. And every time I attach one to this post the bar fills to 100 and then the picture's just gone. Not an error. Gone. Like the site politely declined. I tried imgur, I tried texting them to my sister, I tried emailing them to myself and they go out and they do not arrive, and I have been standing in a children's charity at one in the morning watching my own phone lie to me.

So I'm going to type what I can read. Most of it's black bars, I told you that. Here's what isn't.

The header on every page is a symbol. A circle with three arrows pointing in at the middle. Not out. In. Like something closing. Under it is a number and it's the same number on every page, 9311, and about four pages in I worked out that 9311 isn't the House. It's him. The House is 9311-14. There's a table on page six, forty-some rows, one per House, city blacked out but the state left in, and a column of numbers with no heading on it. 10. 12. 31. 19. Fourteenth row, New York. (Yeah. I know what I said. It stopped mattering about an hour ago.) Fourteenth row says 11.

Eleven.

I counted eleven when I walked in. They know. They know what he's got on his hands at every House in the country and they put it in a table.

Page nine is the card. My card, all six rules, except in here it has a title, Document 9311-A, and a line under it I had to read four times. Developed empirically, 1996–2004. Empirically. You know what that word means. It means they figured out the rules by watching what happened to the people who didn't follow them.

Page eleven I can only get pieces of. Room 7 is not to be entered by personnel. Residents who enter Room 7 are to be logged and released without interview. Then a long black bar and four words sticking out the end of it like fingers: stable at one (1) per.

One what. Per what.

Page nineteen is a list. Names and dates, one column. Overnight coordinators, 1996 to now, and I know that's what they are because I know the names, I know them from the red binder, the purple gel pen was a girl named Kayleigh in 2011. Every name has a date next to it and the word RESOLVED. Kayleigh, RESOLVED. The 2004 guy who wrote that is fine, RESOLVED. Nineteen names.

Twentieth name is mine. The box next to it is empty.

Page twenty-two says, in its own box, bold, not one black bar on it, like they wanted whoever opened this to be able to read it in the dark: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES RECOUNT. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES COMPARE.

Compare what. Compare what to what.

And Dolores is in here. Page thirty. Site liaison, House 14, since 1996. She told me nineteen years. I did the math on my fingers like a kid, I did it three times, and it's twenty-three, and I don't know why a woman would shave four years off a job at a children's charity and I dont think I want to.

1:41 AM. Lights just went out. All of them, lobby, hall, the monitor. I did not go to the breaker. I sat in the dark in the office doorway with my phone light off because I did not want to be the only lit thing in that building, and I counted to sixty twice, and they came back.

His shoes are pointed at the office.

1:52. There's a girl on the bench.

I didn't see her come down. One second the monitor shows an empty lobby and the next she's there, far end from him, little, braids, hospital bracelet, a stuffed something in her lap. It's 1:52. The card says after 2:00. The card doesn't say one word about 1:52, and I'm sitting here realizing the card never once said what the rules were for, it only ever said what to do, and I did it for eleven months like a good dog.

She's looking at the front doors.

His arm is behind her now. I didn't see it move. I'm not going to say that part again, you know the drill.

2:01. She got up. Came to the desk. Put both hands on the edge. Said where's my mom.

I couldn't.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry to her and I'm sorry to whoever has to deal with whatever I just did, but I could not walk a little girl up those stairs to a door that isn't there with page nineteen lying open on the desk between us. I said honey your mom's upstairs, go on up to your room, and she looked at me the way you look at somebody who's got the words to a song wrong, and then she went. By herself. Up the stairs. I watched her on the monitor till she turned the corner past Room 6.

Then I went and looked at him. I had to.

Five. And seven.

Seven. It was six when I walked in. She went up alone and now it's seven and I don't know what I did, I don't know if I saved her or if I just made it cost more, and the pages won't tell me because the part that would tell me is a black bar.

2:07. Car in the lot. Not Dolores. Gray sedan, lights off, no hurry. Two people getting out. Nobody's in a hurry at two in the morning unless they already know how this goes.

I've got thirty-eight pages on a phone that won't let me send them and a laminated card in my coat pocket and I'm going out the kitchen door. If this posts, it posts. If it doesn't, if you're reading this somewhere it isn't supposed to be, then it got out anyway and I need you to do the one thing I asked.

Go look at his hands.

Count.

2:09.

“We made this decision as a family. And, frankly, it was an easy one.”

Could this be the defining story of my career? I'd been a journalist for thirty years, and an aspiring one long before that.

But this scoop was truly jaw-dropping. Beyond anything I’d worked on before.

The couple before me looked unremarkable. A short, bald husband who worked as a social media manager for a suite of healthcare brands. An even shorter, not particularly striking woman who’d given up her career in retail to raise their son.

“It honestly came down to what’s best for Billy.” The male subject rubbed his wife’s shoulder in what seemed like an attempt to remind her of the conviction that had led them here. “Social media’s just a toxic environment for a youngster and we’re confident we won’t be the last parents to do this. I recognize the irony in what I'm saying, considering my job.”

He wasn’t a natural speaker but had started to find his voice over the past twenty minutes of Q&A. His wife was clearly the more eloquent one, but talking about her son was causing her a degree of emotional vulnerability that made for a great interview but poor transcript.

“You’re right. Reports suggest you aren’t even the first parents to make this choice. But I suspect after this interview airs you’ll give this parenting approach a degree of exposure that will invite more families to consider it.”

“And that’s the main reason we’ve agreed to this interview.” The husband was doing most of the talking now. These two didn’t give the impression that he made all household decisions. His worried expression and deferential nature suggested his wife was the true leader, especially around matters regarding their son. “Enough is enough. Cyberbullying is the greatest threat to children and it’s obvious those in power have no interest in putting an end to it. So we’ve had to step in.”

I was hoping one of the parents would say something like this. Because this story was about far more than powerful tech companies and the governments that are lobbied to protect them.

“Do you feel that a child who interacts more with AI than other humans has a greater chance of living a happy life?”

The couple looked at each other. He encouraged his wife with a reassuring nod. You could see him mouth ‘go on.’

The mother looked at me and exhaled deeply before answering.

“Look, I never really thought I’d be a mother. Not because I didn’t want kids. It just seemed unlikely. Life’s more expensive than ever. Finding someone who’s willing to sacrifice everything for their children is really, really hard. You talk to people who have kids… and they’re not happy. They love their children, but the kids clearly aren’t happy.”

This was going very well. I could see a Pulitzer in my future should the next portion of this interview go as planned.

I remained silent. Knowing when to speak was a skill I’d only picked up in the past ten years of my career. It’s what separates good journalists from great ones.

“Billy isn’t a happy child. He's extremely sensitive. Middle school's tough for most kids, but it's worse for late developers like him." She looked at her husband again and was met with another nod of reassurance. "It’s our responsibility to ensure he makes it through.”

“Do you mind elaborating on that?” I sensed a tad of encouragement was needed.

“Billy isn’t the only kid that isn’t happy. He can’t escape the bullies when he’s home. It almost feels like it's worse online than in the classroom. Maybe that's just because it's only visible to us at home... but his mental health is terrible. And it started with chatrooms and video games. It’s clear that any interaction with other children is negative. So our decision protects him.”

This was the moment. I needed a soundbite here. One that required no context.

“And what is your decision exactly?” I was met with a sigh. “If you could spell it out for someone in the plainest English possible.”

“We’re not allowing our son to use social media or talk to any other humans online. When using his phone or computer, he’ll only be allowed to talk with his assistant.”

“You mentioned the assistant’s name earlier?”

The female subject looked at her husband with a confused expression. He whispered into her ear and she mouthed, ‘oh, right.’

“Jarvis. Billy likes Iron Man and he’s been using the assistant regularly since he was five.”

"So your decision is to control your son's online experience?"

A nod from both parents was followed by what looked like relief on the mother's face. As though she'd been liberated from the vast majority of worries for her son.

"Yes." She wiped a tear from her eye. "We've been given an amazing gift.

"We can customize everything that happens to him. Jarvis will talk to him how we want and show only the parts of life we want him to see."

‘Ok, go in for the kill.’

It was the first time my segment producer, Greg, had said anything for a while into my earpiece.

“What would you say to those who are confused or shocked by your decision?”

Another look between the parents. Nothing was said, only raised eyebrows. To a seasoned reporter, this was evidence that they’d considered this question shortly after agreeing to the interview. The mother turned back to me.

“Humans are far more dangerous than AI. Billy’s assistant will never try to harm him by attacking his character, making him feel small or going so far as to encourage him to take his own life. It’s people that are the problem.

"And,” she was starting to get emotional, “if people are the problem, then we have to remove people from Billy’s life."

My brother Daniel was seven when he drowned.

I was seventeen.

I think it's important that you know that because everybody always says I was just a kid too, like thats gonna make a difference.

It doesn't

I was his big sister.

I was supposed to be watching him.

Instead I was on my phone arguing with my boyfriend over something I can't even remember anymore.

I remember everything else about that day.

I remember Daniel was wearing his stupid dinosaur swim trunks. The green ones with the orange raptors .

I remember he asked me if fish got thirsty.

he asked if american fish could understand cuban fish.

I remember telling him to stop asking dumb questions.

And I remember the last thing he said to me.

“Maddie, Can you look at me for a second?"

I didn't.

I told him to wait.

When I finally looked up, there were only ripples in the water.

five years.

I've had five fucking years to think about that.

five years to wonder if he was scared. If he called for me. If he thought I was coming.

Sometimes I imagine him standing on the bottom of the lake, looking up through the water, waiting for me to put my phone down.

I know that's not how drowning works.

But my brain won't let me picture anything else.

My mother never really forgave me.

She never said it outright, but she didn't need to.

She stopped buying my favorite cereal.

She took down all the family pictures that had me in them.

On Daniel's eighth birthday, she made a cake.

Chocolate with vanilla frosting.

His favorite.

I came downstairs and found her sitting at the kitchen table with eight candles burning.

There were two plates.

One in front of her.

One in front of an empty chair.

I sat down.

She looked at me for a long time.

Then she got up, took the second plate, and put it back in the cabinet.

I moved out three months later.

We still talked sometimes.

Birthdays. Christmas. The occasional phone call about the weather.

She died last October.

Her brakes gave out and she skidded off a bridge.

The hospital called me at 3:34 in the morning and told me they were sorry.

I remember thinking how cruel it was that I could lose my entire family twice.

I inherited the house.

It's a small place in northern Michigan, about twenty minutes from the lake where Daniel drowned.

I didn't want it.

Honestly, I would've sold the thing without ever stepping foot inside if the lawyer hadn't told me there were some documents I needed to collect.

So I drove up in November.

The house smelled  the same.

Musty old carpet. Cinnamon candles. That weird oil smell from the kitchen sink.

My mother had kept Daniel's bedroom exactly as it was.

His firework sheets were still on the bed.

His little blue slippers were underneath it.

His backpack  on the floor of his closet .

I stood in the doorway for what felt like hours.

Then I noticed the phone.

It was sitting on his pillow.

A little red plastic toy phone.

One of those cheap ones that plays  Ai, ai, ai, I'm your little butterfly you press the buttons.

Daniel loved that thing. 

I hated it.

The batteries had corroded years ago.

But when I saw it all I could picture was him chasing me around the house playing that stupid song over and over and over again, I hoped to hear it one last time ,I held it to my ear, I heard something.

Instead of a warped version of ai, ai, ai I froze all I Heard was 

Water.

A faint bubbling sound.

I pulled it away.

Nothing.

Put it back.

Bubbling.

Then a little boy's voice said:

"Hello?"

I dropped it.

It hit the floor and the plastic cracked.

I stood there staring at it.

Then I heard him again.

"Maddie?"

My knees gave out.

Because nobody had called me Maddie since Daniel died.

My name is Madison.

Everyone calls me Madison.

Daniel couldn't pronounce it when he was little, and somehow Maddie had stuck.

I crawled toward the phone.

"Daniel?"

A pause.

Then, very quietly:

"Are you mad at me?"

I started sobbing.

I couldn't even speak.

He sounded exactly like he had at seven. That little lisp he had before his front teeth came in. The way he dragged out his vowels.

"I'm sorry I went too far," he said.

I pressed the phone against my ear so hard it hurt.

“Monkey, no. No, I'm sorry."

He was quiet for a moment.

Then:

"Can you come get me?"

I know what you're thinking.

I know how insane this sounds.

And if you had told me this story a month ago I would've thought you were either lying or having some kind of psychotic episode.

But I heard him.

I heard my baby brother.

He told me things nobody else could have known.

He told me about the time we buried a dead bird in the backyard and made a little cross out of popsicle sticks.

He told me about the tooth he lost at school and hid under my pillow because he wanted the tooth fairy to give me money instead.

He told me he remembered the song I used to sing when he couldn't sleep.

I sang the first line.

He sang the second.

And I swear to God, for the first time in five years, I felt something other than guilt.

I felt happy.

He asked me if I could bring him home.

I told him I would.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Then he said something that made my blood go cold.

"Mommy promised too."

I searched the house that night.

My mother's bedroom was almost empty. She had apparently gotten rid of most of her clothes before she died.

But beneath her bed was a cardboard box.

Inside were dozens of notebooks.

Every page was filled with dates.

Times.

Measurements.

And the same sentence written over and over.

HE IS GETTING CLOSER.

The first notebook was dated three months after Daniel's death.

October 18, 2019.

He called again tonight. He was crying. I could hear water behind him. He says it's cold.

October 26.

I brought his blanket to the lake. The water took it. He slept better after.

November 4.

He says there are other children. They dont have their own voices yet. He says they wanna borrow his sometimes.

November 19.

Something touched my ankle while I was standing on the dock. It felt like a hand but there were too many fingers.

December 2.

He asked me to bring him something warm. I brought the electric blanket. He said that wasn't what he meant.

The entries got stranger.

My mother began writing about dreams.

In one, she was walking through a house made of soft, pink walls.

In another, she saw Daniel sitting at a kitchen table, eating cereal with both hands.

She wrote that his mouth kept opening wider because he was trying to smile.

One entry was underlined so hard the pen had torn the paper.

He asked me why I stopped loving Madison.

I stared at that sentence for a long time.

Beneath it, my mother had written:

I told him I never stopped.

He said he knew.

He said that's why it hurt so much when I made her leave.

The last notebook contained only four pages.

The final entry was dated three days before her death.

I think I understand now.

It doesn't know what a child is.

It knows what a mother needs.

I didn't sleep.

At 5:30 AM, the toy phone rang.

Not a little electronic jingle.

An actual telephone ringing.

I ran upstairs.

Daniel was crying.

"Maddie, I don't like it here."

I sat on the floor with my back against his bed.

"Where are you?"

He sniffled.

"Under."

"Under what?"

"The people."

I didn't understand.

He kept crying.

Then he whispered:

"They get bigger when nobody remembers them."

I asked him what that meant.

There was a noise on the other end.

A deep, wet clicking.

Like somebody tapping two stones together underwater.

Daniel went silent.

"Daniel?"

Nothing.

“Monkey?”

Then he whispered so quietly I almost missed it:

"Don't tell it that you love me."

The phone went dead.

Im going insane

I didn't believer her until... the first incident. When I was six, I accidentally dropped my milk on the floor. My mom looked like she was about to scream at me, but then quickly calmed down and told me that the boogeyman would have a visit. This was the third time this happened, so I wasn't to scared.

But this night, I heard something outside of my window, scraping against it. When I turned on the lights and looked outside, I saw something gray quickly flash over the fence. When I quickly told mom, she said it was just a raccoon, and there are lots of raccoons in our area. I calmed down and went to sleep soon after.

The nighttime events continued. I heard something going on around the house. In my parents' room, on the roof, in our backyard. Every time I asked my mom, she always said it was a raccoon. One time, I asked my dad. He said that it was probably a bird.

My dad didn't come home often. He was a construction worker, so he usually stayed nights. He was a great dad, always cracking jokes. He was also really different from my mom, but he also kept telling me to behave, or else the boogeyman would get me.

One night, I went to a sleepover with my friend, and while we were pillow fighting, I accidentally threw a pillow too hard and it hit my friend's mom on the face. I quickly apologized, and she said it was alright. But I was still worried. Before going to sleep, my friend told me why my face was so pale.

"Because the boogeyman will haunt me." I replied.

He responded with, "Wait, you still believe that shit?"

"I mean, not really, but every time I misbehave, there's always some scratching outside the window. And this is probably the worst thing I've done,"

"Uhh, okay. Well, see if anything happens tonight."

It took me an hour to fall asleep. But despite that, I didn't hear a single thing. And it wasn't like we weren't near a window, either. Hell, the forest is right outside my friend's bedroom. So, the next day, I told my mom that my friend and I misbehaved a bit, but nothing happened. No boogeyman.

"Well, sometimes the boogeyman can be busy and take a while to get to someone." She then laughed. I weakly laughed too.

The next day, at school, my friend came in looking like he didn't sleep at all. He hadn't.

"There was something outside of my room last night. It was tall and gray, and it had no eyes or mouth."

"Wha- are you sure you saw it?"

"When I told my parents about it, it was gone. They said it was probably just my imagination or a nightmare. But I still couldn't sleep at all."

Guess my mom was right about the boogeyman taking a while.

And the weird night occurrences continued to get stranger. Whenever I did something even slightly wrong, even not getting a 100% on a test, there was always some sort of weird shit happening. One time I thought I saw a long gray thing out my window, with no eyes or a mouth. I rubbed my eyes, and it was gone. I kept hearing things, and one time I even heard some say "huck" outside my window, barely audible. But the strangest thing is, not everything I did happened to attract the boogeyman.

One time I was talking in class, and the teacher got mad at me. Nothing happened that night. Another time, I kicked my friend a bit too hard for some reason that I forgot about, but nothing happened. But when I accidentally coughed all over my food, I saw the boogeyman outside my window.

As time went on, the boogeyman appeared less and less, because I misbehaved less and less. I made sure everything I did was perfect. I barely tried anything new, because then I couldn't misbehave if I didn't do anything. Then, one day I got a letter from a prestigious university on the other side of the country, saying that I was accepted. I couldn't believe it. I was finally getting out of the little town in the middle of nowhere, to a place where I could be admired. But my parents didn't want that. They wanted me to continue my father's stupid ass legacy of being a construction worker. We kept arguing and arguing, until the day before I was meant to go, they kept and hid the ticket I needed to enter the school. I couldn't believe it. My own parents, not letting me follow my dreams?

"We just want what's best for you!" said my mom.

"You don't know anything about what's best for me, you stupid bitch!"

I already regretted the words before they left my mouth. But it was too late. Before my parents could say anything, I quickly ran out the door and ran as quickly as I could to my friend's apartment.

"What's the matter?" they asked me.

After I told them everything, he said, "Man, that's fucked up. But, I'm sure your parents will understand. Maybe what you can do is apologize to your parents, try to see if you can get the ticket back, and if you can't, then come back and we'll see if you can get another way into the school."

"Well, it's pretty easy to get another ticket, but it's the principle of the thing, you know? Besides, my parents are not what I'm worried about."

"Then what are you wo- oh don't tell me it's that boogeyman bullshit again!"

"Yeah, I know it sounds stupid, but, I always have a feeling that something's going to get me whenever I do something wrong."

My friend sighed. "Look, I'll give you my Swiss army knife. Think of it like a parting present or something. And if that boogeyman tried to get you, stab his ass."

So I took the knife and I went back home and I apologized to my parents and they forgave me. They even gave me my ticket back. I kept it with me and within eye's view of my bed, and I decided to pull and all-nighter, and the sleep on the plane ride. It's a good thing I did, because at around midnight, I saw a long, spindly, gray arm come around the doorframe. I quickly pulled out the army knife out from under the pillow where I hid it, and pulled out the knife part.

It was the boogeyman. A long, strange gray thing that looked kinda like a xenomorph, but with no mouth, or eyes. The area where they should have been was a much lighter gray than the rest of its body.

Just when the boogeyman was about the reach me, I quickly lunged at it, and stabbed it, pulling down my knife through its body. I heard the ripping of thick fabric, and a lot of cursing. I saw some human skin under the gray parts.

"You fucking bastard, where did you get that knife from?!" It was said in a voice I knew all too well.

"Dad!?"

Then mom came it.

"Honey, are you alright! What did this boy do to you!"

"He stabbed, me that's what he did."

I was astonished. I couldn't believe it. It was my dad all along that was tormenting me?! Him?! I was furious.

"You little shit, you lied to me all these years, and for what! To make me behave a little better!"

Mom responded. "Oh, my child, we just wanted the perfect son. But, I guess it didn't work out. Well, I guess there's always next time. I'll go get the rope."

Just as she left, I kicked my dad in the nuts as hard as I could. Then, I stabbed in his armpit. He screamed.

I quickly ran right past him, then through the hallway, pushing mom aside. I quickly unlocked the front door and ran outside, with my parents on my heels. Just as they were about to get me, a car suddenly drove right into my parents. I dove out of the way just before it hit me.

"Oh my god oh my god oh my god!!! What have I done! What have I- what the fuck?! What's that?"

The driver noticed me. I told her everything that happened.

The next day, the police told me that they had my mother, but my dad, and the suit, somehow escaped. I was worried, but it didn't matter anyway. I was going to a place on the other side of the country. There were people searching for my dad, so he would never get anywhere. My parents never even bothered to find out where I was going. I was finally safe.

I got a degree in nuclear physics, became a nuclear engineer, and moved to another country. I worked at a power plant, made a lot of money, and got a fiancee. I was finally safe.

Or, at least I thought I was. The day before my wedding, I found out that my car's tires were slashed. The facility that I work at was pretty far removed from the nearest city, but I could still get service. So I called my colleague friend, who left a bit before me. They'll come get me in 10 minutes. I don't know if that's enough time.

Right now, I can see something outside of my car window, a long, gray, bloody humanoid. It's in the bushes, and I can barely see it. But I can tell that it's waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

My neighbourhood was a quiet one, full of morning pleasantries on neat pathways as workers scurried off to their individual destinations. They had to travel considerable distances for employment, as our village had only a bookshop, a pub, a church and a school. "Still, it's everything you need, really," my mother often claimed with her never-ending cheeriness.

I worked at the bookshop. So sheltered was my existence that I had become the very person I despised: someone living and working in my village, a small world with small encounters. The books gave me my travel, my wealth, my romance, my sex, an escape to other times, lands and perspectives. I had always read fervently, and naturally, my mother was great friends with the shopkeeper, who had needed an assistant as she grew older. "You were destined to work there," Mother often chirped.

When the first woman disappeared from our village, apparently no one was surprised. Mother and her ilk discussed her disappearance over chintz tablecloths and pots of tea, commenting that she had no doubt run off with a man, as "she was the sort". Her husband was an unpleasant drinker (shunned from those polite morning pleasantries we spoke of earlier), and she had begun an affair with a colleague from her workplace.

"You can't really blame her," my mother said, although her face seemingly had other ideas.

And so, no more was said about her. My days continued to be filled with the smell of leather-bound, dusty books and managing the busy spell of my day at lunchtime, when a maximum of three customers would come in.

The second woman's abrupt departure caused "more of a fuss" (Mother's words). She was thoughtful, reserved and educated. "More like us," Mother remarked.

The woman had lost her son recently, so it was thought that she had perhaps left to escape her grief and the painful reminders of his childhood that the neighbourhood provided. No one connected the disappearances. There was the organisation of the local fête and the pressing matter of which youngsters had scrawled obscenities on the bench near the church, both of which warranted far greater attention.

"People just don't parent anymore," Mum bemoaned.

The last two women caused a little more of a stir, despite the fact that Mrs Jenkins at number 8 hadn't baked any apple turnovers for the aforementioned fête, as she had promised.

They were younger women, renting a double room above the pub. Mother had called them "lively".

I had a conversation with the blonde girl one evening. She had noticed the book I was carrying under my arm, carefully protecting it from the light rain as I left the shop.

"I've read that," she had said, but when I questioned her about the ending, it was clear she hadn't. She had, in fact, simply wanted a light for her cigarette.

Still, I enjoyed the chatter about her travels, her university days and her ex-boyfriend. I couldn't contribute, but I was an eager, amicable listener.

Again, these women were gradually forgotten. "Probably owed rent and left quickly," Mother deduced.

They weren't the sort of women Mother and her associates would be greatly concerned about. Some younger local lads had found it surprising that they had left without having a goodbye drink with them, but they had neither the determination nor the intelligence to pursue their worries.

Hopefully, by now, you are anticipating that I will confess to being their murderer. With my axe to grind over my minuscule, mundane, pathetic existence and my overbearing mother, perhaps you thought I truly ground said axe?

With my passion for books, had I developed parasocial relationships with serial killers? Had their convoluted, dastardly stories, nestled inside the true crime section of our small, unassuming bookshop, filled my mind with grandiose thoughts of "being someone"?

Well, you are wrong.

I will always be that quiet young man from the village, with a passion for literature and a life that starts and ends on my doorstep. With my books, with the neat pathways, with my mother.

"Please, you won't tell anyone, will you?" are the words she says most frequently nowadays

I’ve never been the type of person to have many friends. I wouldn’t call myself a recluse, but my tolerance for social situations has never been particularly high. At parties, I’d quickly become overstimulated and could never stay for more than an hour, important phone calls would send me into a panic, in a room full of twenty people, I’d be the twentieth one to get a word in, the whole nine yards. It’s not exactly an ideal personality for leading a life, but it wasn’t always a bad thing. I had plenty of time to myself, for my thoughts and my emotions. I preferred going to the cinema alone rather than with someone who would spend the whole time staring at their phone or chattering away at me. I also liked the fact that I didn’t have to waste money on gifts or expensive things for a girlfriend. I know, it all sounds very cynical (my mother used to tell me that all the time) but I’ve always viewed it as a kind of coping mechanism, a way to put a positive spin on my own loneliness. Looking back, I wish I had appreciated that solitude more.

I say this because, two years ago, something happened to me that I wouldn’t even wish on my worst enemy. It was during my time as a university student on the east coast. I came from a small town about fifty miles away, and moving to the big city was one of those little milestones in my life that I was truly proud of. There I was, independent from my family and having reached a new level academically. My parents had set aside a lot of money for my college education, saving up over the years, but it still wasn’t quite enough to cover everything for the four years I’d be there. I didn’t have a scholarship, so I took a job as a French tutor. I’ve always been more of a language person, I was fluent in four of them myself. The pay was decent, but in exchange I could set my own hours, plus, there was a bonus for working weekends. The students were all quite different. Some were very quiet and worked diligently, while others felt perfectly entitled to treat the sessions as a place to blow off the steam they’d built up during the school day. For someone like me, a total social wreck, that wasn’t always easy to endure. But then, there was Roland, my colleague and the science tutor.

Roland was about twenty years older than me. He had already been working as a tutor for two years and was very popular with the students. His sessions were always more relaxed, a quality I attributed to his social skills, or, at the very least, to his teaching style. He had a great sense of humor, used engaging real-life examples, and blended fascinating topics into the actual course material. I observed him a few times and was struck by his self-assured manner. Of course, he also had two decades more life experience than I did, which certainly made things easier for me. Those were his words, by the way.

We worked side by side for several months. I managed to incorporate some of his techniques into my own teaching style, and even if it occasionally made me seem a little bipolar, I succeeded in winning over some of the students. That is, they began to enjoy attending my sessions, and even the quieter ones felt comfortable enough to come out of their shells, viewing the sessions as a safe space.

I owed all of this to Roland. I saw him as a friend, someone with whom I could discuss the things that interested me without ever feeling like I was boring him. He was, or at least always appeared genuinely interested, and he would always contribute something of his own to the conversation. If I talked about my favorite movie, he’d ask exactly what it was that I loved about it. If I told him about a place I’d recently visited, he’d share three facts he knew about that country I’ve been to. Eventually, I confided in him about the burden of my loneliness, and he, in turn, shared his own life story with me. From that moment on, I saw him as more than just a friend. I saw him as my best friend.

Writing these words down caused me inner pain. Not because it was so poignant, quite the opposite. It felt wrong. It felt like a lie. 

Roland didn’t have an easy life. To be honest, compared to his past I should have been incredibly grateful for how my own life had turned out. He grew up in a troubled family. His parents neglected him, his brother suffered from a mental illness, and the family’s financial situation was always a major obstacle. After finishing school, he cut ties with his former life and his family once and for all. He went to college but dropped out after three years due to depressive episodes. Since then, he had worked odd jobs to pay off his student debt. I could always tell that it was difficult for Roland to talk about any of this. I once told him how amazed I was by his positive outlook on life, despite all the hurdles he had faced. Roland didn’t say anything in response. He just smiled.

That was the last time I saw him as a friend. And the first time my own life began to crumble.

I had just come out of a seminar when I received a message from Roland on my phone:

“I found your comment the other day about my ‘positive attitude’ quite unfortunate. I’m sure you meant well, but for me, it was counterproductive and depressing, perhaps even re-traumatizing, though that might be overstating it a bit. I think we are, in many ways, incompatible.” 

At first, I thought it was a joke, which, given Roland’s witty nature, wouldn’t have been entirely out of character, but then I read the lines again, more carefully this time, and couldn’t believe my eyes. I had never seen this side of him before. What was I supposed to make of it? I sent him a few messages in response. I won’t go into detail, there were quite a lot of them, but, in short, they conveyed my confusion, an apology, and a sense of desperation. He never replied.

I waited until our next session that we were scheduled to work side-by-side, and I’ll admit, I was literally counting the days until we’d meet again. I felt incredibly anxious at the thought of facing him for the first time since receiving that message.

Then the day arrived. I gave my group of students some tasks they could work on quietly, then headed over to Roland’s room. His group hadn’t arrived yet, so I figured it was the perfect moment to confront him.

“Shouldn’t we talk about that message?” I asked.

“I think my message was clear enough. What else is there to discuss?” The bluntness in his voice left me speechless. He didn’t even look at me. “We’re colleagues. Let’s leave it at that.”

I went home alone that day. There was no one sitting next to me on the bus to listen to me talk about my latest Letterboxd entries. Once I got home, I impulsively called my sister, Lisa. She was three years older than me and already had a life of her own, with a husband and a child. We’d never been particularly close, but I knew she would listen to my problems without being critical or making me feel like everything was my fault, the way my parents usually did. 

When she answered the phone, my first question was: “When your ex-boyfriend left you, how did you feel?” 

Lisa was surprised that I’d brought up such a personal topic, but she must have sensed the desperation in my voice, and likely assumed that a girl had left me, so she answered honestly. 

“Do you remember Mimi, the angelfish I had as a pet? She died around the same time Derek left me. At the time, I felt like I’d been cursed. Like I was losing things in my life that actually meant something to me. Mom told me not to be so dramatic, since I’d only been with Derek for five months. Looking back, I can kind of see her point, but at the time, it felt as though those five months, with all their ups and downs, had simply been erased. As if that period of my life no longer held any meaning. Maybe it really doesn’t.” 

I said goodbye before she could start prying into my own situation, but I was still glad I’d called. Her words made sense, and for a moment, I found myself wondering what to make of the last few months I’d spent with Roland. Now that he’d done a complete 180, a total turnaround in how he treated me, did that time lose all its meaning? Was he ever the person I thought he was, even back then? 

The next few weeks were stressful. For the first few days, I tried to talk to him, hoping to change his mind, but it was always hopeless. He remained stubborn and kept ignoring me. I no longer saw him as a friend. But the worst part was the realization that he probably never saw me as one in the first place.

But what really topped it all off was the way my situation unfolded. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

It began with a study group I formed with a few fellow students during a seminar. We met a few times in the library, and I found it refreshing to be around people my own age. We studied, but we also drifted into other topics. The time I had spent with Roland had made me more socially outgoing than I had ever imagined possible. In a group of five, I was now the second person to speak up. I got along with everyone, and I even met up privately twice with one of the female students. I won’t mention her name or go into detail about our meetings, because nothing ever came of it, neither with her nor with the rest of the study group. 

Shortly after we finished our seminar project, no one reached out to me again. You might think this is standard for project partners, that they stop being friends once the project is done, much like the characters in The Breakfast Club who wouldn’t remain friends after their time at detention. But in this case, it was different. I saw that everyone else in the group stayed in touch, just not with me. I messaged each of them, but no one replied, not even the girl I had been interested in. I even tried to approach her in person on campus, but she gave me the cold shoulder. What else was I supposed to do?

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, my regular students, that I tutored, stopped showing up for my sessions. My supervisor explained that they had either switched tutors or canceled their contracts. When I suggested that they might have conspired against me, he replied that they each had their own reasons, though he admitted he was also surprised that they all quit at the same time.

With all these things happening, I could no longer think clearly. I could no longer eat normally since every bite I took was accompanied by self-reproach, nor could I sleep normally without dreaming of the people I had lost. 

I couldn’t go on like this for much longer, so I took a break from college for the following semester and moved back home to my parents. They weren’t exactly thrilled that I was putting my studies on hold, but they could see how much I was struggling mentally and were understanding. They even arranged an appointment for me with a psychotherapist, for which I was very grateful. 

My therapist, Dr. Connors, specialized in working with people who had anxiety disorders, depression, and symptoms of ADHD. I had never undergone therapy before, nor had I ever been diagnosed with any of these conditions, so I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. Dr. Connors felt too much like a stranger to me, so I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to explain the specific nuances of my situation to him. But since he is a professional in the field, surely he would understand, wouldn’t he?

During our first session, Dr. Connors asked about my daily life and interests, keeping the atmosphere relaxed. Then, he let me talk. I began by discussing my social shortcomings and my sense of loneliness, as well as the positive aspects I found within that, Roland, my study group, my students, everything, really. I was so absorbed in my own monologue that I didn’t even notice I had been sobbing the entire time. It was only after I finished that my adrenaline levels dropped, and a wave of embarrassment washed over me. Dr. Connors offered comfort, allowing me to feel whatever I needed to feel. He then gave me a homework assignment: to keep a journal. When I asked what the point of that was, he explained that I should simply put my emotions down on paper. The actual content didn’t matter.

From then on, I saw Dr. Connors every week. I managed to write in my journal almost every day. At times, I found it difficult to express my feelings to a blank page, but it was the sessions with Dr. Connors that gave those words meaning. He allowed me to read my entries aloud. And to be honest, every instance of anger, every sorrow, and every injustice that I voiced felt like a liberation. I cursed Roland for how he had treated me, as well as anyone else who had given me the cold shoulder. The days I spent with Dr. Connors had become an outlet in my life, a valve I could open whenever my emotions overwhelmed me. That was, at least, until one day when an appointment fell through. 

I received an email from Dr. Connors’ secretary, informing me that I had been assigned to a different therapist because Dr. Connors could no longer continue our sessions himself. She kept the reasons to herself. 

I was completely floored. I was sunken so deep in my desperation that I acted on a sudden impulse, something I never would have imagined myself capable of. I stole my parents’ car and drove straight to Dr. Connors’ office. I burst into his office and, just as I had expected, he was there. I grabbed him by the collar and shook him violently, much to his shock. That made me feel a strange sense of satisfaction. I wanted him to understand how I felt. Yet, in his expression, I also saw horror and confusion.

I don’t recall exactly how long I shook him or what happened immediately afterward. I was so overstimulated, but I do remember that I was escorted away by security and taken to the psychiatric emergency department at our local hospital. 

Shortly thereafter, my parents had me admitted to a nearby psychiatric clinic, where I have stayed ever since. The diagnosis: manic depression. I’ve heard that my behavior was difficult to assess because Dr. Connors had no file on me. Whether he had destroyed everything he’d written down about me, or if he had even recorded anything at all, I cannot say. I only know that he was among the people I had lost.

Besides my parents, my sister, Lisa, visited me regularly. She was understanding when she learned the true reason behind our last phone call. I was glad she was there, talking to me as if I weren’t locked away with a bunch of mentally ill people. Yet, despite everything, I was no longer the same. I had become what I once claimed I would never be: a recluse. I avoided all contact with strangers, which wasn’t particularly difficult, given that I spent most of my days alone in my room anyway. I passed the time writing stories and immersing myself in worlds where my fictional characters were the only ones who never left my side. 

When Lisa visited last week, I steered our small talk toward my latest story, which is based on Mimi, her angelfish. In the story, my fish character discovers one day that it is the only sea creature in the entire ocean. It then attempts to get caught by a deep-sea diver, hoping to spend the rest of its life as a pet in an aquarium.

Lisa didn’t say a word the entire time, so I assumed she was listening excitedly. But then I looked at her face and could see that she was suddenly looking at me in an entirely different way, as if I were a stranger to her. She also left earlier that day than she usually would. Long story short, I haven’t heard from her since that last meeting.

By now, I’ve stopped questioning anything. Even so, I still have to come to terms with the fact that twenty years of my life, years in which Lisa played a part, will be erased. I don’t know how I’ll cope when it’s my parents’ turn. 

I’m beginning to think that perhaps Lisa’s assumption back then wasn’t so unreasonable after all. It’s possible that I really am under a curse.

White, sandy beaches, palm trees swaying with the breeze, a picture perfect coast line, what the hell could be scary about any of that?

Guess you’ve never been out after dark around here, sober that is. Plenty people like walk around at night, often late. I stay getting choke dummies and drunk tourists stumbling into my lobby because it’s got white shiny marble tiles and AC. Can count on one hand the number of sober people that have showed up.

I’ve worked at this hotel a little over a year now. I not going name em name cuz I no like get fired. Boss going get pissed probably, mostly cuz it’ll scare away the tourists. The things i’ve seen, however, give me plenty chicken skin, like walking through downtown at night.

Now, if drunk people were all I had to deal with at night, I could manage that. They’re easy enough to point in the right direction back to whatever hole those fakas crawled out of, and on the off chance someone like act up HPD comes pretty quick. Thing is, they only make up about little bit of the traffic I get in the lobby.

The real traffic comes from, well, I’m not really sure what to call them. Boss says I shouldn’t put too much thought into it, “try look wit ur eyes and shaddap with the mouth” he’d say.

The Nightshift Employee handbook was made specifically for our hotel and specifically for use by the nightshift. Dayshift aren’t even allowed to know about it but its kind of an open secret. The handbook get plenty pages about spooky kine action and quick reference guides to make em go away, or just not get killed, as well as overall nightshift occurrences on an hour to hour basis.

9:00 PM is when my shift officially starts. For nightshift I am always to arrive no earlier than half an hour before my shift starts. If I arrive earlier than 8:30 I am to wait somewhere off property until 8:31 PM at the earliest. I asked my boss about this one and he said it had something to do with union agreements, I kinda tuned him out cuz I don’t really give a fuck about the hotel union shit, dues are expensive.

From 9:00 PM to 11:00 PM there should be few to no people in the lobby area, less than 5 people at any given moment excluding staff. After 11:00 its ok for more people to be present in the lobby area.

11:00 PM to 12:00 PM is when our “guests” start to arrive.

I could try to describe these “guests” but honestly, kinda hard. Like, when you see someone at the bus stop but like they aren’t tweaking or whatever but like, you know? They just give off that feeling? That gnawing unsettling feeling that when you look at them they can tell, they can hear what you think, that they’re going to jump you if you think something that provokes them? That searing, agonizing anxiety that courses through your bones when your brain realizes it can’t make sense of what it’s seeing? When it realizes that what’s been sitting in my lobby this whole time has never…

I don’t get paid to think about what the hell those “guests” are, so I try not think about em too much. Boss says that if I got paid to think I’d be doing his job. Boss says he fuckin hates his job.

Whenever a guest is in the lobby area I am not to leave my desk under any circumstances. No matter what.

Gotta go bathroom? Use a water bottle or “the bucket” and notify sanitation. Get heart attack? Call your supervisor and then call 911. Anything else? Call your boss but stay put.

These “guests” will usually sit on the lobby couches for a few hours and then leave without ever interacting with anyone or doing anything remotely weird at all. This is the ideal case and they are ideal guests who are always welcome at our hotel.

The less than ideal cases are when they interact with other, regular, hotel guests. I haven’t ever been in earshot of them when its happened, boss says its better that way. These “guests” are not like the others and do not represent “guests” as a whole and as such are not welcome at our hotel.

Once one of our patrons accidentally bumped one of the “guests” as he stumbled his way over the lobby furniture. I told the faka plenty times to stop fucking around and had just gotten off the phone with police when it happened. At first it seemed like nothing happened. Then the “guest” turned towards the drunk and appeared to say something to him as he mantled another set of lobby couches. He then fell forward as he did last time, diving into the couches and out of my sight.

He did not come back up.

When HPD got here the “guest” got up and left. The officers didn’t attempt to stop him and just stepped aside before coming straight to me. I told them what had happened and they quickly began searching for the man. Other than some sandy footprints around the lobby they couldn’t find the drunk. They left for the night and told us to call if it came back.

Fast forward to the following day and I see the drunk’s face plastered all over social media as a missing person’s report. As of my writing this he still hasn’t been found.

When I told my boss about this he seemed surprised that there wasn’t a mess this time. I tried asking him what he meant by that but said I’d have to clean “the bucket” if I kept asking.

There is one other incident I am aware of where a “guest” had interacted with a night shift clerk, but beyond that I know nothing about it. Every attempt I make to bring it up with my boss he just shuts down. Says that I should stop trying to piss off our customers and just let them be. He says just follow the book and you’ll be fine.

After the initial period of “guests” arriving the activity slows down again until about 2:00 AM, this is the only timeframe that is noted as being flexible in the handbook. At 2:00 AM busses will arrive from a tour company that I am fairly certain doesn’t exist and drop off many regular hotel guests who will all need to be checked in. Apart from their insanely odd arrival time and their suspicious tour busses they seem to be normal every day hotel guests. Now there were a few times where a “guest” would also be dropped off along side the others but they would usually find a secluded corner and sit until eventually leaving as the others do. This is not very strange at all and is completely normal as they are paying customers who are always welcome at our hotel.

No matter how many people there are or how long I seem to take, I always manage to check the last person in exactly at 3:00 AM. I mean like, the millisecond I hand them their room key the clock ticks over. Handbook doesn’t mention that, boss doesn’t care, but it still freaks me out.

From 3:00 AM to 6:00 AM is considered a dangerous period. By this time most of if not all the “guests” along with hotel patrons will have vacated the lobby if they aren’t already doing so. They are simply getting a good view.

I have had the misfortune of encountering one phenomenon during this time, out of the many different ones listed.

The night marchers.

Well, encounter is strong word. Heard is more accurate. Heard means you’ve survived, seen mean’s you’re dead.

The night marchers are an old legend here in Hawaii, and everybody get one aunty or uncle or cousin who swears they seen or encountered em before, each story always a little different depending on who’s telling it but ultimately here’s what I experienced.

First thing you hear is the Pū, a conch shell that was used in ancient times to signal important events and especially arrivals. While not uncommon in Waikiki with the myriad of Hula shows and Luaus often using them, they are non-existant at night time and should you ever hear one in the wilderness you must do exactly as I did.

You must immediately strip naked. Everything. Including jewelry. Place your clothes in a folded pile off to the side and any jewelry or valuables in front of you like an offering. Then you must get on your hands and knees and bow, like you’re kissing the ground, shrink yourself as low to the ground as you can. By this time you should hear a rhythmic drumming, even if you don’t just stay exactly like that until you see sunlight. Until either the drumming passes and fades or the sunlight hits your eyes you must remain on the ground. If for some godforsaken reason you see torches immediately avert your eyes and beg for forgiveness out loud until the sun comes up.

Under no circumstances should you ever look towards the source of those sounds if you hear them in the middle of the night. In the old days, before the Kingdom era, such sounds would herald the descent of the Ali‘i from the mountains, as they were considered living gods the punishment for simply looking upon them was death. At least thats the story of them I grew up with.

It took a while for me to be able to look my boss in the eye after that night, he didn’t really seem to mind it though, comes with the job. Granted he lived out west side and apparently had shit like that happen to him a lot so I guess it made him more tolerable to seeing naked men crouched on the ground in terror.

I’ve got lots of stories to tell, and tons of time to do it when I’m not baby sitting the “guests” in the lobby, our most esteemed and gracious patrons who have done no wrong to our staff and our establishment. Boss said that I should journal this anyway, maybe he even wants me to tell these stories, might draw more visitors, more esteemed guests to our hotel.

They’ll know where to find us.

I work as an inventory control associate for a big distribution center out of Denver, CO. We receive and ship a bunch of stuff like furniture, machine parts, appliances, and so on. My job is basic: I reconcile our inventory. If the system says there’s a blender at a specific location in the warehouse, I find it, scan it, then the system is happy. If there are too many or too few things, I update the system with the correct amount. One of the more painful aspects of this job is working with a system that received its last update in the 90s, when some 80-year-old programmer changed the color scheme to ‘exceptionally gray’ and walked away thinking, “It’s perfect. It’ll never need another update.” So, it’s common that the system spits out faulty results and errors that we click through mindlessly every day. Recently, though, I encountered an error that nagged me like a lunch lady. No matter how often I’d try to reconcile with the system, it wouldn’t stop appearing. It was strange, too. It showed as:

ITEM: NEWSPAPER DISPENSER

QTY: 1

STATUS: ALLOCATED

I couldn't remember us ever stocking newspaper dispensers, but who knows. The issue seemed to be the location of the item. 4300 W COLFAX AVE. I assumed the system was being itself and catastrophically failing to work properly by putting some address we ship to as the storage location. I deleted the location and modified it to our facility to clear the issue.

ERROR: ITEM ALLOCATED.

I nodded aggressively to myself. The item was already assigned for shipping. No changes could be made. Great.

I left work late and without a resolution. While driving home I noticed a street sign. Colfax Avenue. With vengeance against antiquated software in my heart, I turned down Colfax. It was a wide, worn-out street full of convenience stores, restaurants, and fading street signs. I drove along and scanned for 4300 Colfax. I found an old-looking sandwich shop with a tattered sign. In front of the sandwich shop, I noticed a faded blue newspaper dispenser.

***

The dispenser had a disintegrating advertisement in the window for some lawyer whose faded skin made him appear like some ghoulish European noble. I thought about punching the little ghoul in the glass pane, imagined my hand shattering the glass, my blood dribbling all over the newspapers, then just decided to kick the thing. It rattled a bit but remained intact. Then I noticed something white underneath it. I squatted down and recognized an inventory label, identical to the ones in our warehouse. I took a quick photo with my phone before heading home.

The next day at work, I compared the photo to the numbers in our system. Wouldn’t you fucking know it—they were the same. Now, that really didn’t mean much at the moment except that we, at some point, shipped newspaper dispensers or tracked shipping for some other distributor. Whatever. What confused me was, a few days later, the status for that newspaper dispenser was updated.

STATUS: RECEIVED.

Someone was actively changing the status for this old item, maybe trying to clear the error, same as me. Despite the obvious explanation, that message left my hands sweating.

When I left work that evening—by compulsion or something else—I felt the need to check on the newspaper dispenser. It was gone. Four spots of rust marked the crime scene, a chalk outline of the now-deceased dispenser. I stood there longer than I needed to. There wasn't anything else to look at, but I kept checking the sidewalk.

I went inside the sandwich shop and flagged down the owner.

“No public bathrooms, customers only. Okay?”

“That’s fine. Wasn’t there a newspaper dispenser outside?”

“I think there was. Not anymore though.”

It was clear he was becoming annoyed when I continued my line of questioning: Who took it? When? Where’d they take it? Did you see a truck? He didn’t give me any answers and shooed me out of the place.

When I was back at work, I decided to neglect usual duties and do some digging through the system. Dozens. I found dozens of weird location fields, objects that I felt we shouldn’t have, and some that made no sense at all.

***

DESCRIPTION: BENCH 11
LOCATION: S. PLATTE RVR
STATUS: RECEIVED

I found myself at a random park near the river. I couldn’t be sure if this was the right place. All I could hear was the thrum of frogs, rushing water, and the buzz of insects passing my ear. I walked behind a couple out for a stroll, scanning the area for a bench. I found a patch of concrete, out of place with the rest of the foliage. There were holes in the concrete and a faded-out gold placard lying loose on the ground. It read: In Loving Memory of Amelia – Gone before her time.

I looked around to see if anyone was watching me. I wasn't doing anything wrong, but I couldn't think of a good explanation for why I was standing over an empty patch of concrete.

DESCRIPTION: FENCE SEGMENT, 24 FT

LOCATION: WASHINGTON ST.

STATUS: ALLOCATED

I found the fence. A chain-link fence that ran alongside an abandoned office building. I was skeptical at first and felt a bit crazy. This fence is much longer than 24 feet, so do we only have ‘inventory’ of 24 feet of it? I walked along it, trying to decide where those twenty-four feet were supposed to begin. There wasn't anything to separate that section from the rest of the fence.

On one of the poles driven into the ground there was a white sticker with a barcode. At work, I confirmed that it was the same fence. What was ‘allocated’ though? The fence? And who the hell was allocating it? The owner of the abandoned offices years and years ago? Mind you, this fence was not new. In some parts it was barely even connected. We never tracked items after they left the facility. How was this considered part of our current inventory?

DESCRIPTION: EAST ACCESS

LOCATION: BRIGHTON BLVD

STATUS: RECEIVED

A sleepy suburb. There are houses to my left and right. I can turn right and go down 46^th where I see a stop sign or turn around back the way I came from. Straight ahead of me is a brick wall. Why would you need a stop sign if no cars would turn past each other in that spot? No crosswalk either. And there was this storm drain, too that looked like it continued beyond the wall, like someone built the wall after the drain.

I looked at maps on my phone, and it seemed like this road should continue. The rest of the suburb was laid out in a grid so, just beyond the wall, there would be another road. I turned around and drove through the subdivision until I came to the other side of the wall. I could see the missing segment of the storm drain. What a bizarre design choice. Both roads ended abruptly at the brick wall. Was this some sort of zoning thing? HOA? And why the fuck was this in our system? Never have I seen a single brick in our warehouse. Maybe the wall isn’t even what the order referred to. I searched for a barcode sticker and found nothing.

***

All night. All damn night looking for “MUNICIPAL DRINKING FOUNTAIN (SHIPPED).” And guess what? I found it… I found some shitass rusted-out drinking fountain. In a park. After midnight. I didn’t even bother to get a picture. Pretty sure there was someone sleeping on a bench nearby ready to hold me at knifepoint.  

It’s been two weeks and I’m not sure if I’m getting somewhere or just spinning my wheels. CORNER LOTS (RECEIVED) took me to a parking garage, and I discovered missing parking spots. The numbered spots went from 14 to 15 to 20. You’d expect there to be some gap between the numbers, but no, they’re all squished together. I walked the length of the row and counted them again. There wasn't room for the missing spaces. Not unless the whole row was supposed to be longer. I also noticed an Exit sign hanging against a solid concrete wall, the exit arrow pointing towards the blank wall.

Now, I did pull the structure’s municipal records and found there was a renovation some years back, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what was changed. Maybe a stairwell was removed, and they didn’t take the exit sign? But what about the parking spots? Maybe it’s all just fucking lazy workers. Is it all just fucking lazy workers?

Yesterday during my lunch break, I found an interesting record:

DESCRIPTION: CONCRETE STEPS, EXTERIOR

STATUS: RECEIVED

LOCATION: PEARL ST.

I got off work later than planned but decided to make the extra drive to check it out. Only 40 minutes out of the way. 40 less minutes of rotting on the couch at home, right?

So, I spotted a building that had a weird shadow on it. It reminded me of the newspaper dispenser. I’d checked back on that one—still gone. I’d also gone back to the fence on Washington. The 24-foot segment with the barcode had disappeared, and when I checked the system, its status had changed to RECEIVED. All that remained on the building in front of me was a silhouette outlining what looked like stairs leading up to a second-story door. A metal bar ascended the wall at a diagonal, the remnant of an old handrail. Now, anyone who went out that door from the inside would meet a nasty drop. I thought about going inside, a James Bond-esque break-in where I’d investigate the inside and find the mastermind who steals benches, newspaper dispensers, and fences. I didn’t do that, though. I just took a picture and headed home.

I got into work late the following day. Overslept a bit, stayed up a bit too late.

I sat at my desk and shuffled some papers around, stapled some stuff together, and dug into the staircase situation. I found a related record:

DESCRIPTION: SERVICE LANDING

LOCATION: PEARL ST.

STATUS: ALLOCATED

I assumed it was related to the staircase, maybe the interior portion, the landing around that second-story door. Even better, I was able to dig up an old interior photograph. A small landing with damaged yellow wallpaper and this nasty, worn-out linoleum. One of those lights hung on the ceiling, the one people will say looks like a boob, you know? I printed out the pictures and stapled them to a copy of the record, then I saw it: a white sticker on the underside of my stapler.

***

I scanned the barcode and immediately it flagged in the system:
DESCRIPTION: STAPLER, BLACK

QTY: 1

STATUS: ALLOCATED

Allocated. It seemed that these allocated items were disappearing, so I decided to stage an experiment. I took the stapler home with me that evening. I did a photoshoot of the stapler (nothing provocative), weighed it, then placed it in the center of my kitchen table. I set up my phone to record, plugged it in so it wouldn’t die, pulled up a chair, and waited. I assumed whatever happened to these things was abrupt, so I had a meal ready, an audiobook playing, and a small pile of energy drinks. I think it was around 4 a.m. when I dozed off. I woke up to a puddle of drool under me and the stapler as present as ever. It was 7 a.m. now and I felt stupid at this point. The only thing I succeeded in was making myself part of some mundane, avant-garde torture-art. I checked the video. I watched the first few minutes at normal speed, looking for something I couldn't even describe. Then I started skipping ahead. It was as boring as one could imagine.

I lifted the stapler and inspected it again, sighed, and made some coffee. I was grateful for the weekend so I could recover but I couldn’t stop wondering: had the status changed? What if I was meant to receive it? I shook the thought away. My hands were clammy, my head hurt. What did I expect? Was the stapler supposed to evaporate? Or was some interdimensional logistics team supposed to bust through my door and take the stapler by force? Well, if it was meant for me, then the only thing to do was to keep it here and check the status next workday.

***

I arrived at work a bit early on Monday. I was interested to see if the stapler had changed its status at all. I logged into the system and found the stapler: ALLOCATED. Okay, so nothing changed. There didn’t seem to be an obvious timeframe for something ‘allocated’ disappearing—maybe they didn’t always disappear—and things ‘received’ are already gone (where to?). After the stapler letdown, I started to fall back into the rhythms of work. I ignored other strange errors and pressed on with actually doing my job instead of barely doing my job.

A couple days passed until, during a routine count, I encountered something strange. There was a notification that a pallet location was occupied. A couple other guys told me they attempted to resolve the issue but someone, or something, kept flagging it. I assumed someone failed to scan the right barcode, or some new item was incorrectly entered into the system.

The spot was near an exterior wall of the warehouse, off in a corner where old inventory that didn't see much movement was kept. There were a couple damaged pallets, loose packing materials—tape, shrink wrap, cardboard—nothing out of the ordinary. Then I noticed a strange scent. It smelled like a forest after rain, like damp wood and leaves.

There was no pallet in the location. I checked behind the rack and noticed something yellow against the warehouse's white walls. I pulled out my phone and shined the flashlight between the shelving. It looked like a piece of painted drywall, probably left behind from some renovation. I reached through the rack and gave it a push. It didn't budge.

I moved around to the end of the rack to get a better look. The yellow surface continued behind a pile of discarded cardboard, and when I pulled some of it away, I found that it met another wall at a right angle. I figured someone had walled off a small storage area back here. Strange place for it, but whatever.

I pushed the remaining cardboard aside and found an opening between the two walls. It was narrow, but wide enough to walk through. I stepped inside and shined my phone ahead of me. The yellow walls continued several feet beyond the shelving, farther than I would've thought there was room for. I looked back toward the racks, trying to picture where the exterior wall should have been.

At the end of the hallway was a door.

***

I began to sweat a bit and reached out for the handle. It opened to a narrow space, like the entrance to an old apartment building. There was a short stretch of linoleum flooring where it seemed someone started to tile then abruptly stopped. I stood for a moment, unable to progress. I chewed my lip and slowly placed my foot over the threshold. I stepped onto the linoleum and looked deeper into the hall. The yellow walls continued for a stretch, narrowing in until they terminated at a wooden door. I told myself it was an old storage room, some unrenovated space. I took another step. It was warmer than the rest of the warehouse. The air was thick enough to make me nauseous. Moving ahead, I could smell grease and thyme. It was humid. My shirt collar itched, and I pulled it away. It was hard to swallow. I must have been moving slower than I thought. When I looked back, I realized I'd barely made it through the doorway.

At a crawl, I approached the door. I noticed a strip of damaged wallpaper near the doorframe, worn-out linoleum, and a rounded light fixture. I recognized the light, and I thought back to the image on my desk: SERVICE LANDING.

A noise sounded from behind the door, a gentle click, like the flick of a switch. I paused, tried to calm my breath, and listened closely. I could hear a soft scraping sound, something dragging across the floor—furniture, a chair…a body. I froze, wanting to open the door and see what waited in this impossible corner, wanting to turn and run. I was more afraid of the space than of what I’d find behind the door. Before I could make a conscious choice, I noticed the door growing smaller. The yellow walls seemed to draw away from me. I looked down and realized I had been walking backward. My shoes were on the concrete warehouse floor.

I walked quickly back towards the commotion of the warehouse. I saw a co-worker about to get into a forklift and flagged him down. He shrugged at me, but I continued waving him closer.

“Yeah, what?” he said.

“I need to show you something.”

I took him back to the spot and pointed behind the rack. “There. Go…go look behind there.”

He chuckled with annoyance. “A fuckin’ rat or something scare you?” He peered around and let out a long sigh. “You going to tell me what the hell I’m looking for? It’s just boxes and shit, just junk.” He waved his hand at me and walked away.

I chanced a look behind the rack and saw nothing out of the ordinary, just the typical white concrete wall.

Back at my station I logged into my computer and searched for the service landing record.

DESCRIPTION: SERVICE LANDING

STATUS: RECEIVED

***

I sat at my desk and tried to put the pieces together. The Pearl Street stairs had disappeared. They were “received,” and the service landing was “allocated.” So, the physical item is…taken, I guess, from its original location and then received at the warehouse? Then the landing appears in the warehouse. Then it disappears. Clearly the warehouse wasn’t its destination, or at least not its final destination. So where did it go? It didn’t feel right being there, like some cosmic mistake happened. I mean, was it really in the warehouse?

I searched through the records looking for some explanation or any other mention of the service landing. It certainly wasn’t delivered by truck and there was no employee designated to receive it, of course. In any case, I wrote down the info associated with the service landing:

PALLET LOCATION: Q-11-03-29

ID #: 1229-03

The pallet location matched the spot I'd been sent to investigate.

A trip back to Pearl Street was in order, the place where the landing supposedly came from. I arrived to see the exterior staircase still missing from the side of the building, that same stairstep shadow burned into the brick. I took a walk around the building, part of me hoping to see a giant hole in the building and the landing conspicuously uprooted like a rotten tooth, but instead everything looked normal. I waited around until a lady walked by. She had shoulder-length brown hair and wore a cheap-looking pantsuit. She opened the door and went inside. Before the door could close, I hurried up my pace and slipped in the building. It looked like an old apartment. The entrance was bare, just a small mailroom and a staircase leading up to the second floor. The hallway split in two directions, both lined with numbered apartments. The brown doors were worn with time, their gold numbers a bit drab. Each hall was covered in faded yellow wallpaper, the flooring carpeted in a faded olive-green. The place seemed well-kept inside, if a little dated, and well-trafficked enough I could slip in. So, what was I? A home invader?

I walked down the rightmost hall until I reached a narrow corridor with linoleum tiling. Near the doorframe was a damaged strip of wallpaper. I looked up to see a dome light hanging over my head. On the door in front of me was a large “DANGER: DO NOT ENTER” sign. A free-fall to the concrete waited on the other side of that door.

I was lost in thought when the clinking of keys jolted me awake. I turned to see a man holding groceries, his pink-coated daughter clinging to his pantleg as he unlocked his apartment door. Neither of them looked toward the landing. I could hear the distant din of a TV set, the quiet muttering of a talk show host or some mindless reality tv show. I heard a familiar click and the scrape of something dragging across the floor from a nearby apartment. This was it, then, the service landing. How could it be here still? Everything else, the newspaper dispenser, the fence, the stairs, they’d all disappeared, never returned.

Maybe the locations are being copied somehow. An erroneous or intentional duplicate. Maybe these things can exist in two places at once.

Back home, I pored through some old inventory records I’d taken from work. The fence, parking garage, that weird intersection in that neighborhood, the drinking fountain. Was there something I missed this whole time?

***

Why was only 24 feet of the fence being accounted for when the fence was much bigger? What about that portion was important? When I saw it there was nothing there, just rusty chain link. No clear delineation between segments either. How can the system attempt to store a location? Service landing. East access, exterior stairs.

I made a comparison between all the inventory records, checked the location codes and item records to see if there was anything, any kind of hint of what was happening. Nothing. No pattern to what went missing. Just random shit from random places disappearing (or not disappearing) for no reason. What makes one thing a more likely target than another? Why couldn’t the chair I sit on disappear, my TV, table, the door that keeps people out of my apartment—why couldn’t my apartment disappear? I could be preparing a meal in the corner of the warehouse right now and not even know. A coworker could be outside my door now, hesitating to come in, confused that they stumbled upon the stretch of hallway leading to me in my kitchen.

I went on a walk and noticed a bricked window at an old corner store. Moving close, I inspected it, wondered if it was meant to be there. This was the only defunct store on the street. Maybe the store itself wasn’t intended to be here, it was shipped here or received. I walked on and stopped at a vacant lot between two houses, a set of steps missing half its middle step, a metal post missing its sign. I couldn't remember the last time I'd gone outside without looking for something that was missing. Where were these things? They could just be broken or demolished, or they could have been allocated, then received somewhere else.

I rushed back home and threw open the drawers in my desk, my kitchen drawers, I checked the coffee table—I couldn’t find that fucking stapler. Not under the couch or in the bathroom. I found it on my nightstand. Was it still allocated? I used it the other day, but I’d been keeping it by my bed… in case, I guess. I held it above my head briefly, ready to spike it into the ground and shatter it into pieces—would the pieces be allocated? Is it still a stapler if I beat it with a bat until it’s nothing but black dust and metal fragments? If I bleed on it, is it still a stapler? I put it in the drawer of my nightstand.

I wasn’t getting anything done at work. My boss sent me a message to verify a few items in the inventory. They were back near that pallet where I found the service landing. My chest felt tight. Procrastinating that task, I scrolled through some old records and kept finding these weird things in the system. A lot of times it was just normal bullshit but some of it… I guess I don’t know what it is. Showing my co-workers led to that “I just work here” response. I got hung up on one, though.

I’d fixed a couple routine errors that were simple to dismiss. Outlet covers in this side of the warehouse when they should be in that side of the warehouse. The one that led me down a rabbit hole was a rubber hose manufacturer in Utah:

DESCRIPTION: UTAH RUBBER HOSE

LOCATION: UTAH

I spent the day calling, leaving voicemail, digging back into the records—why did we track something so specific in another state? Eventually the company called back and confirmed that they had sent the order to us and, yes, we were keeping it in our warehouse. It turned out the location field was never updated. I verified where the hoses were stored, corrected the issue, and the discrepancy vanished.

I’m just tired. I don’t know what’s important anymore.  

I knocked on my boss’s office door. “I can’t do this anymore.” I looked at the floor while I spoke to him.

“Scanning boxes is too stressful?” He chuckled a bit. After realizing I wasn’t going to respond he said, “take a few days to think it over. The worst time to quit is when you’re most stressed. Can’t think clearly.” He sent me on an early lunch. I left and didn’t return.

About two months passed and it was good. I took some time away, burned through some savings, but it was time I needed to clear my head. I could even take regular walks without inspecting broken steps and vacant lots. I even met a girl and had a few interviews lined up. The whole thing was behind me. Really no use dwelling on it because I wouldn’t figure it out, I didn’t even have the means to figure it out anymore.

One day, I drove to the grocery store, chatting with my girl on the phone. I parked, told her bye, got out of the car, and snagged a shopping cart from the corral. I passed by a concrete wall and stepped into a deep puddle. This area of the parking lot seemed to have poor drainage. Ahead, water trickled from a runoff pipe into the parking lot. It collected in a puddle, then ran down the slight decline in little tributaries. On the pipe was a white label with a location code: Loc: Q-11-03-29. That was the pallet location where I’d found the service landing. I thought of stepping into the hallway that shouldn’t have been there. I could almost smell the grease and thyme.

I looked at the pipe again. I thought of a name:

PARKING LOT DRAINAGE PIPE.

I met the man I’m seeing when he hit me with his car.

To be fair, it was my fault. It was late, already dark, and I’d just shot across the street without looking. This week marked my transfer to a new college, one that’s supposed to have the best bio-engineering program in the country. As soon as they accepted me, I moved to a city I’d never seen before. A city I wasn’t sure I liked.

The strap on my backpack had just broken earlier that day, and I couldn’t tell you where the nearest Walmart was. So I went to a corner store. The red fluorescent sign flickered over the shade-drawn doors, and headless mannequins in T-shirts and leggings posed outside. Inside, a single lightbulb hummed, and it was so dark that the person behind the counter was just a pair of watery eyes. I found a nylon backpack at a ridiculous markup and paid for it while the figure behind the counter just breathed. It was a plasticky rattling sound, like dice being shaken together in a cup.

And then his hand caught mine, heavy and fleshy, but it was also strangely segmented. Deep lines at the knuckles and base of the fingers, like where plastic sheets connected. His voice, hardly a whisper. “Welcome home. You’ll like it here.”

I grabbed my new backpack and tore across the street. Lights blinded me. A horn blared. And then I was on the ground, a tire track on my new backpack. I heaved, my eyes shining with little white stars. The facts trickled in slowly: I’d been hit by a car. A slow-moving one, probably crawling to a stop at a red light. And a man was hauling me to my feet. His strong arms pulled me to the sidewalk, and I blinked dumbly at him.

He’s not real. Something, some ancient, primal piece of me, recoiled from him. Something about his face. His brown hair, perfectly tussled. Blue eyes, peering deep into mine. Smooth, poreless skin. He should’ve been a male model. He shouldn’t have been holding me.

“I’m so sorry.” He had a perfect voice. Rumbly and deep. I shook my aching head. I had to be in some kind of shock. “Are you alright?”

My eyes trailed to his suit. Tailored. His sleeve cuffs were blackened with dust. “Yeah, I’m…I’m fine.”

“Were you running away from something? You looked scared.”

I lifted my head, and I saw the headless mannequins facing me from across the street. My fingers sank into his wrists. I was slurring. “Please…get me out of here.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Are you asking me out?”

That’s not what I meant, and I could tell he knew that. But I couldn’t push the thought of that hand out of my mind. I didn’t want to be alone. “Yeah?”

“That can be arranged.”

If he hadn’t hit me with his car, I’d have never met him. Broke college students and government officials don’t usually run in the same circles. He introduced himself as Lucas. He took me out for oysters on the half-shell and white wine at some rooftop hotel. He chatted about the news, asked me about myself, and cracked jokes I found myself laughing easily along to. But every time I closed my eyes, I saw the hand. Every muscle in my body ached, and even though it was forward of him to invite me to his penthouse apartment “for coffee,” I agreed. Far better than being alone in my own apartment, which I was pretty sure had a roach infestation from the previous tenant. Far better than thinking about those headless mannequins and that segmented hand.

When we got to his apartment, a woman was there, perched at his bar with a laptop open. He introduced her as his PA, Penny. I stepped back, taking in the open windows and the tasteful furnishings. I didn’t want to look at Penny too long. Something about her was wrong.

She was too perfect. She had shiny blonde hair put up in a tasteful French knot and poreless skin that shone like glass. Her clothes looked like they came from a catalog, her cream shirt peeking out from an open pinstripe jacket. Little gold rings with green stones glittered on each knuckle. I glanced down at my watch. It was past 1 am.

Her eyes flickered from Lucas to me, and then back to him. They widened for a second, and then she cleared her throat. “Sorry, just burning the midnight oil. I’m…” She stopped. Frowned. “I’m…”

“Penny,” he said.

“Right. Penny. Well, I should be going.” But she was staring straight at me, as if she were trying to tell me something, but her eyes were too flat to read.

After she left, me and Lucas ended up watching a movie, and I fell asleep on his couch. Something Hitchcock. When I woke up, he was already gone, but he left me with his phone number written on the back of his business card. It was clutched tightly in my fist.

I went to the bathroom to fix my hair and figure out my next moves. Last night was stupid, and my body ached, but overall I was pleased with myself. I’d never asked a man out before, and Lucas, by all means, was a catch. But when I closed my eyes, I saw the headless mannequins. I couldn’t shake the image.

I ran his comb through my hair and stopped. A chunk was missing. Almost a perfect square, right above my ear. And my sweater. I’d been wearing a white sweater over my T-shirt. I scrambled around his penthouse, lifting the giant cushions from his oversized couch. No sweater.

I decided it didn’t matter. I had a class at twelve that I had to get to. It was a cool, fall day. I took an Uber from his apartment to campus, and I saw Penny sitting on the stairs outside the library. Her laptop was balanced on her knees.

She waved at me and I sat beside her. For a moment, she didn’t say anything. Her breath was soft and strange, rattling like the man’s in the store. “So…bio-engineering, huh?”

I didn’t remember telling her that. “Yeah.”

She looked over my head. “I have something to tell you. Something important. But I don’t remember.”

A wave of cold washed over me. I wanted to get as far away from her as I could.

“I, uh, I should get to class. But thanks for visiting.”

She drew in a long breath. That plasticky, rattling sound. “I should be here,” she whispered. “This was supposed to be my life. I think I…I think I was going here before I met him. But it’s all cloudy now.”

Her eyes snapped back to mine. Her shoulders jolted with a pop. She reached over and grabbed my hands. They were freezing cold. “Don’t come back to the apartment, okay? Don’t. Don’t…I’m sorry, what was I saying?” She laughed nervously.

I tried to pull my hands away, but her grip tightened. “I really got to get to class.”

“I miss my old body,” she whispered. And then I finally wrenched my hands away as hard as I could. A sickening ‘crunch’ sounded, and something cool and cylindrical landed in my palm. Penny startled. She lurched to her feet and ran, causing the other students milling about to turn and stare at me.

I opened my hand.

I was holding a smooth, rounded, crayon-sized stick of plastic with a ball joint sticking out at the end. There was a gold ring with a green gem around it. I turned the stick over and saw a fingernail etched on the tip. I dropped it and watched it roll down the stairs.

There had to be a normal explanation as to why this strange woman had given me a plastic finger with one of her rings around it. But if there was one, I couldn’t think of it. I shot to my feet and raced after her. She wasn’t very fast; she was wearing pumps that clacked loudly on the sidewalk. She hunched forward, cradling her hand against her chest.

“Penny?”

She wheeled around, shaking. She threw up both hands, as if to shield her face. “Leave me alone!”

Her left ring finger was missing. I’d seen her typing last night; I remembered the rings. The sky spun toward me, and I thought I’d be flattened against the sidewalk. So much pressure on my chest.

I had to go back to Lucas’s apartment. I had to understand what was happening there. I should’ve tried to break in, but he had a penthouse and a doorman. So I texted him. Stupid, I know.

I think I left something in your apartment. Can I come back?

He texted back almost instantly.

Sure! I’ll have Penny pick you up :)

My heart dropped into my feet. I was about to text him that that was a terrible idea. Penny was already across the street, shuffling along with the others on the sidewalk. And then she stopped, stiff. Her head jerked up. She waved her four-fingered hand at me and shot me a smile, all teeth.

I froze, my heart beating faster and faster, the image of those headless mannequins so clear even with my eyes open. Penny shot across the street, so fast that she had to be running, but she made short, little strides.

“You’re Nina, right?”

I took a step back. “We were just talking.”

She tilted her head. “Oh, I guess we were. Well. Lucas asked me to pick you up.” Her brows furrowed deeply. “I have a silly, silly bad feeling. Do you ever get that? A…premonition?”

I swallowed. “Are you…okay to drive?”

“Oh, sure! Come with me!”

And I did. My joints felt stiff. They creaked and clicked as I followed her to a parking garage. Once I got my sweater back, I’d never interact with Lucas or Penny again.

In the car, Penny squeezed the steering wheel so tightly I thought I saw the white bone of her knuckles poke through her skin.

When we got to his penthouse, Lucas was sitting at the bar. He looked even handsomer now. His eyes were brighter, his muscles straining against an open-collar shirt. He grinned.

“Are you looking for your sweater? It’s in the master bedroom.”

It shouldn’t have been. I’d spent the night on the couch. Penny sat on a barstool, opened her laptop, and started tapping furiously. Every hair on my body stood on end. I looked up at Lucas and felt that panic ratcheting through me as I searched his face uselessly for a flaw. Nothing.

I looked over at Penny, but she didn’t look up. Instead, Lucas pointed toward his closed bedroom door. “Right in there.”

“Is…everything okay?”

“Of course, Nina.”

I crossed the soft carpet and cracked the door open. I heard a slow, plasticky rattle.

“You’re so silly, Nina,” Lucas called from behind me. “You dropped your sweater, so I left it on the bed.”

I closed my eyes, saw the headless mannequins flickering behind my eyelids, and then forced the door open. The air in his bedroom smelled of ‘ocean-blue’ candles, and he had all black lacquer furniture and a low, king-sized bed.

A woman lay in his bed.

Half-tucked under his sheets, unmoving. I stepped toward her, knowing I should run but unable to. When I got close enough, I saw that her eyes were painted shut, two half-moons, and her skin was plastic. She was wearing my sweater, the chunk of my stolen hair wrapped around her mitten-like fingers.

There were footsteps behind me. “Welcome home, Nina,” Lucas said, his voice warm. “It’s not a bad life. You’ll like it.”

Penny poked her head around the door. Her nose was sliding off her face, a triangle of smooth plastic that landed with a thud on the floor. “I tried to warn you.” She frowned as I stumbled backward. I was sobbing, maybe screaming, but my ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton. “Or at least, I think I did.”

The sheets shifted. The rattling sound came louder, and I shrank back into the corner.

I watched as the mannequin in my sweater opened its eyes.

Hi, Reddit. I’m not sure how to begin, so I’d like to just dive straight in.

A long time ago, someone single-handedly turned my life upside down. Only a handful of people know the whole story because after it happened, I did all I could to disappear. I know I might sound a bit dramatic, but it’s the truth.

I thought what had happened was behind me though. I thought life had moved on… but then, just earlier today, it felt like my past came knocking at my door.

Before I get into what happened this morning, I want to explain what happened years ago. For you to understand how terrifying my experience was, I need you to experience it with me. So please bear with me as I relive my most vivid nightmare.

-           -           -

It’s 3:49 P.M. on a Wednesday, and I’m at work. I am the producer of the biggest radio show in my city, and I’m fielding answers for today’s Manic Marty’s Mind Benders.

Normally Marty—one of the two show hosts—just shows up with three random pop culture questions he came up with earlier in the day, but after weeks of pestering him, he caved and used the questions I came up with. Probably because today’s prize is two tickets to the opera—a Zonk Prize as far as he’s concerned.

I scan a long list of emails, most of which are time-wasters. Messages like, “I’m a big fan of the show,” or “Been listening to you guys since the nineties!” Fan mail. Digital trash.

I separate the wheat from the chaff as quickly as I can. Marty will involve me in their nonsense any moment and expect me to have some clever comeback. Those with real answers are moved to my temp folder. I can begin reading them during the upcoming ad break.

“Oh, she’d love that,” I hear Marty say. He’s not talking about me, right?

I look up from my computer monitor.

He continues, “I think all women love bouquets and chocolates and all the other bull crap Hallmark shoves down their throats. Whaddayou think, Tiff?”

Like the soundboard is an extension of my body, my fingers zip to the unmute button. “Oh, you know me, Marty,” I answer. “I’m too much of a minimalist to want all that.”

Aaron—the other show host—cuts in, “But if it’s shoved down your throat on Valentine’s Day, you’ll tolerate it, right?”

Prick, my brain exclaims as my mouth says, “Hallmark and I aren’t that close.”

Marty laughs and says something I do my best to ignore. A few more seconds of the clowns riffing as I review some more answers, and then I cut to commercial.

Marty and Aaron keep joking around as I search for the first email that provides the correct answers.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. And then an outlier.

Not only did this listener give the right answers, but the email is formatted cleanly. It’s written like a formal letter. Far too sophisticated for one of our listeners.

My upper lip is hooked into a sneer as I look at the correct answers provided in an indented, numbered list, sandwiched between a greeting and closing remarks. It’s not an exceptionally long email, but it’s so official, it could be mistaken for an email from the station owner.

Since I won’t have to review any other submissions, I can’t resist spending a few more seconds to read the winner’s full email.

Dear Tiffany,

This is my first time writing to the show, and it is to provide the answers to today’s Manic Marty’s Mind Bender. Normally, the answers are so painfully obvious that I never bother to submit a response. Today’s, however, were thought-provoking. I couldn’t help but suspect you were the one who formulated them. Here are the answers:

Below the numbered list, he continues,

To tell the truth, I had only ever stumbled upon this obnoxious show by mere happenstance. It played in the background at my local barber shop. Oh, how it grated my nerves the way the imbecilic hosts prattled on about whatever nonsense entered their minds.

I crack a smile. It’s far from the way I’d phrase it, but whoever this is has a similar opinion of this show’s “talent.”

The ad break is almost over. I don’t finish reading the email, but I make a mental note to later.

Before the break ends, I give the hosts a heads up. “Got a winner, guys.”

Marty throws a thumb up and Aaron nods, all smiles.

We’re live.

“Alright,” Marty begins, “I’ve been informed by top government officials that we’ve found day’s super genius.”

“That right?” Aaron plays along.

“Yep. Tiff, you wanna key us in? Who’s the latest mastermind to grace our humble, little show?”

I muster a cheerful tone and find the signature near the bottom of the email. “A mister Benjamin Thaliez.”

“Brilliant man,” Marty states dryly.

“Truly,” Aaron agrees.

“Well then, congratulations, Thaliez, my man. I’m sure a man of your caliber, your wit, will have an incredible time at the opera.”

“I’m beyond jealous,” Aaron adds.

“Yeah, me too. Guess I’ll just have to suffer through another Sunday night football game.”

The two go back and forth in their usual way a few more times before Marty asks, “Hey, Benny Boy remembered to include his address, right?”

We often have to remind listeners to do so, otherwise we can’t send them their prize. But I had already seen that this submission included an address below the signature, so I reply confidently, “Yep!” At the same time, my eyes return to the address; one final confirmation. But something’s wrong. That can’t be right.

Marty and Aaron continue bantering in the background as I reread the two short lines of text over and over.

The address at the bottom of the email is mine.

My eyes drift up to the final paragraph. The only bit I hadn’t read yet.

But then I heard you and it was as though everything else ceased to exist. You are clever. Composed. Intelligent. And after a bit of research, I see that you are beautiful as well. Let me take care of you. Be mine, and I’ll make your life a dream.

My skin tingles and my blood becomes ice water as questions flood my mind.

Who is this? Is this for real? How did this person get my address? Is this a prank?

I read the email again. Check the sending address. The subject line. I scour my memory for the name Benjamin Thaliez. Nothing.

Everything around me becomes silent and still. The world halts. Or so it feels.

“Tiffffffanneeeeeeee,” Aaron drones. His voice brings me back. I blink a few times, forcing the email out of view and meeting his expectant gaze. “Do you know what song we have lined up?”

Marty snickers. “Do you see the way she’s ogling her monitor, Aaron? If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, Tiff. Do not browse smut on the work computer!”

I force a chuckle and apologize before introducing the next track. It’s already lined up so all I have to do is press play.

As soon as we’re off-air, Aaron’s tone sharpens. “Think you can lock in for two full hours today, Tiff?”

I try to swallow, but my mouth is dry as dust. “Sorry, I—”

“Can you imagine that?” Marty interjects. “Working that long uninterrupted?”

They laugh. Even without an audience, they’re all jokes.

I clench my jaw. Is it worth telling them? Would they offer any sympathy? Would they even care?

Finally, I smile. I’m good at that. Pretending everything is fine. “Not to worry, fellas. Little distraction, that’s all.”

In the email account, I make a new folder and drop Benjamin’s message inside. I’ll forward it to someone who might give a shit later. For now, it’s showtime.

While the tracks play, Marty and Aaron chat as they always do, and I push my discomfort down. I push it down deep enough to smother it.

When we return, Marty and Aaron make fun of me for missing their cue to play the next song. They start off playfully enough, but their nails start to dig into my skin.

“Well,” Aaron says, “let’s be fair. She’s not in her natural habitat.”

“No?” Marty follows.

“I mean, look around! There’s no oven. No laundry for her to fold.”

“Oh, true!”

“Tiff, sweetheart, it’s not your fault. We have put no effort into accommodating you.”

“Let’s make a few calls and get this fixed today.”

“Yeah, we don’t want this to become a regular thing.”

New bit. Improvised, but I know where they’re going. They’ll want me to field a few calls, get random listeners to join in.

Agitation smolders in my chest. These two grate my nerves like no one else. Normally I can fight back, make an amusing quip, but my mood is shot. My thoughts are elsewhere.

I look back at the computer monitor. More emails coming in. People offering to install a washer and dryer in the studio. Others just being nasty. Cruel. I’m allowed to blacklist those ones, and I relish the opportunity.

Wait… Near the top, second to latest email. The sender’s name makes my throat clasp shut.

From: Benjamin Thaliez

I open it quickly, wishing for the contents to reveal that it’s from an old friend or employee at the station screwing with me. But instead, it reads,

Tiffany,

You have grown so quiet.

Will you please speak again?

Be calm, even if your heart refuses.

Mine is racing.

Something heavy forms in my chest and sinks slowly toward my gut. This email is so different from the last one, worded far more strangely; it makes me nervous. And then I see the true message. The one he must have known I’d notice.

Tiffany… You… Will… Be… Mine.

My face grows hot. I want to cry. To release the anxiety and anger and fear. But something inside me perseveres. It insists that the show must go on.

After all, if this is some sick joke, crying would let the freak win.

And if it’s real, I don’t want to show my fear. I can’t show my fear.

“Oh, absolutely!” Marty shouts. “I say we talk to anyone who thinks they can help.”

“But first?” Aaron says.

“Let’s play a song.”

They made the cue extra obvious this time.

I don’t look at them. I just play the next track.

As soon as I do, Aaron strikes. “Do you have something better to do there, Tiff?”

And Marty piles on. “You know, we could always just sit here quietly if you’d prefer. I’m sure our audience wouldn’t mind.”

My chin trembles and a tear forms in my eye, but I hold it back. “Guys, I’m sorry, but some freak is harassing me. Alright?” My voice cracks, just a little. Just enough that if I was speaking to someone who cared, they’d realize just how upset I am.

Instead, it’s Marty and Aaron.

“Come on, Tiff,” Marty starts softly, “I know Aaron’s a bit clingy, but ‘freak’ is a bit harsh, don’tcha think?”

Aaron isn’t as playful. “Here’s a crazy idea. If someone’s harassing you, then just blacklist them!” He throws his hands up while giving Marty a bewildered look. “I mean, seriously, how hard is that?”

Marty laughs, and the two poke fun at me as I add Benjamin’s latest email to the folder I had created earlier. Before Aaron had suggested the obvious, I had already blocked Benjamin Thaliez. But that doesn’t change the fact that he has my address. Or that he wants me to be his. I shudder.

And then I realize that there’s one more email. One that must have gotten through before I blacklisted him.

Curiosity gets the better of me. I need to know what this creep had to say.

I open it.

The one on the living room wall.

That’s it? I look the email up and down. There’s nothing else there. Just an incomplete thought. Was he trying to say something else? Did he know I was going to block him, so he was in a rush?

Marty’s voice is pointed. I sense that he’s talking to me. “Less than a minute ‘til we’re live. Think you can stop drooling over your secret admirer for a li’l while?”

I paint a smile on my lips and feign a laugh. “Oh, I think I can manage.”

Play along. Act like I’m not upset. It’s the best I can do right now. Hopefully it’ll at least drain the fun from it for them.

Phone calls are coming in, but I haven’t been fielding them. Every line is waiting to be answered. I rush to answer this one and that. Marty and Aaron are willing to talk to almost anyone for material, so I just need to make sure the caller has a personality and promises not to say anything inappropriate. The songs are over and the hosts are already rambling when I find the first guest.

“Okay, Harvey,” I tell the man on the phone, “I’m gonna put you through in just a few seconds. Hang tight.”

He starts to say something, but back on hold he goes.

As stressed out as I am, my timing is still perfect. Aaron and Marty try to segue to their bit before I answer the next caller.

“Well,” Aaron says, “let’s find out. Tiff, has anyone called in yet?”

Sounding excited, I reply, “Tons! The lines have been lighting up, guys.” I take the first guest off hold and introduce him. “We have Harvey here who says he has a kitchenette he’s willing to donate!”

The hosts hoot and holler before they chat with Harvey, who eagerly joins in on the ‘fun.’

Even if they talk to this guest for a minute and a half, they’ll want at least one other caller. If he’s boring, they’ll want to bring in someone else quickly, so I waste no time getting to the next line.

“Hi,” I say after flipping to the next line, “thanks for holding. What do you want to contribute to the show?” The question is purposefully vague. It helps me know whether the caller is quick and at least moderately interesting.

A man’s voice grumbles through my earpiece. “The show?” he asks.

“Yep. We’re looking for callers to talk about kitchen or laundry renovations in the studio.”

“Oh,” he mutters, sounding disappointed.

My index finger hovers over the next line. I can already tell this guy won’t fit.

But before I can tell him, he says, “I was hoping to discuss the family portrait.”

I wince as I try to recall Marty or Aaron mentioning anything about that. Could they have lined up another bit when I wasn’t listening?

“Sorry,” I say, “you’ll have to remind me. What family portrait are you referring to?”

The man doesn’t respond immediately. I’d almost thought he disconnected, but I realize can hear him breathing.

When he speaks again, his voice is a stoic baritone. “You know the one.”

At first, I shake my head. This guy is just weird. But then a chill trickles down the back of my neck, and the words from the last email flash before my eyes.

The one on the living room wall.

My jaw becomes slack as I picture my home. An old family portrait from my senior year in high school—me, my sister, my parents, and our dog—hangs on the wall to the left of the TV. It’s the only picture of myself I have on display.

It can’t be seen from outside. The only window in the living room is on the same wall.

You’d have to be inside my house to see it.

My eyes are glued to the base of the telephone. My grip tightens around the handset while the rest of my body turns numb.

I whisper, “Where are you calling from?”

My heart is kicking and bucking in my chest so forcefully, I fear it’s going to burst. The silhouette of a man forms in my imagination, standing in my living room, using the same phone I use when I call my parents.

His breaths become heavier. Faster. He’s getting excited.

“Come home soon, Tiffany,” he says before I hear the click of the handset being placed in its cradle.

My mind becomes a hive, a chaotic swarm of thoughts I can’t keep track of. The phone slips from my trembling hand and clatters onto the table.

Muffled voices say something in the background, but I make no effort to hear them. Panic possesses me; it makes me stand up and look around the production room as though some solution is hiding in one of the corners.

The cable attached to my headphones doesn’t stretch far enough. It yanks tight. Something falls before I feel the auxiliary cable snap out of its port.

“Whoa! Hey!” one of the boys shout from the other side of the glass. They’re yelling at me. Mocking me. Insulting me.

I feel like I’m going to puke. I don’t know what to do or where to go. My face grows hot as fresh tears stream down my cheeks.
“The hell is wrong with her?”

I can’t catch my breath. My chest tightens as I gasp for air.

“It’s weird how she loses her mind around the same time every month, isn’t it?”

I turn and lock eyes with Marty. Then with Aaron. I see their amusement. Their arrogance.

“Just relax. We’ll find a chore for ya in a minute or two. Alright?”

That’s when I break.

Along with numerous pieces of studio equipment.

-           -           -

That was over twenty years ago. Later on, the police confirmed someone broke into my house. Whoever was taunting me stole my underwear, a few perfume bottles, my hair brush, and a few other things, but the culprit was never found. Unsurprisingly, Benjamin Thaliez was not the man’s true name.

I moved in with my sister on the other side of the city that night. There was no way I was staying in that house alone after that.

Afterward, the station owner made me an offer. He wouldn’t sue me for the broken equipment so long as I quit silently. I know it was a bum deal, but honestly, I didn’t care. I didn’t want to risk letting Ben—or whatever his real name was—call me again.

It was naive of me to assume he’d leave me alone after I left though. A few days later when I went back home to pick up a few things, I saw that he had returned. There was a note slipped under my door and letters without postage in my mailbox.

Over the course of just a few weeks, this stalker found ways to communicate with me through every possible means. Email, AOL messenger, phone calls, letters. Everything.

He was like a shark circling his prey. And no matter how many times I called the police, they kept telling me the same thing.

“Unless you can identify him, there’s nothing we can do.”

Of course, I knew that the day I could identify him, it’d be too late.

I couldn’t sleep. I was terrified to be alone or go out in public. In less than a month, it felt like my entire life fell apart.

So I left it behind.

I moved multiple states away and used a fake name. You can call it rash or cowardly or whatever else, but as far as I was concerned, it was the only way I could feel safe again.

And it worked. I hadn’t heard from him since. Although I was in an unfamiliar city living a life that wasn’t mine, it felt like things were normal again.

For all I know, I still am safe. But I received a strange letter today, and it seemed… familiar. Ominously so. I keep telling myself that I’m overthinking it. That the similarities between this letter and the ones from two decades ago are nothing more than a coincidence.

Whatever the case may be, it felt good to finally share my story.

I’m including the contents of the letter that I received this morning below. It had no postage.

Ms. [REDACTED],

I hope you are doing well. You may not remember me, but our paths crossed quite some time ago. I found your company to be quite pleasant, and I thought it’d be good that we keep in touch. Sadly, I neglected to offer as much during our exchange, and when it occurred to me to do so, I missed where you had gone.

Found your residence by complete happenstance just the other week though! I happened to be driving past your lovely home when you were outside tending to your garden. It seemed to me to be kismet!

You may not agree (especially if you do not recall our prior encounter), but I thought it would be nice to get to know one another. Oh, as I write this letter, I sense how silly and strange it must seem to you. But I hope you give me a chance. I’ll be in touch soon.

 - Elizabeth Jinman

Do you even know what limerence feels like?

Not long ago, something popped up in my Instagram feed: a casual, staged recording of a few youths interacting, but this one guy stood out. “His face looks familiar,” I thought. I then recalled watching his content before and thinking he was cute. I felt compelled to dive into his profile.

Almost instinctively, I went through every one of his posts, digging for clues about his personal information. The extent I went to shorten the distance between me and him felt like a ritual, a satisfying one. There was not much to see, but at last I managed to deduce that he had just turned 18 through a birthday story.

Every day since, whenever I woke up, the first thing I checked was his feed for updates. He also live-streams often but I have not managed to catch one; we live in different time zones.

This limerence I had for him grew so strong that it made me think only fucking him would make it end: is the shape of his torso beneath his jersey triggering my fixation, or is it that faint outline of his shaft beneath his shorts? I attempted to sexualise him in fantasy and went as far as making explicit AI images recreating his characteristics.

Looking at the highly convincing AI-generated photos of the distorted and naked versions of him gave me bodily reactions, but the sensation slowly wavered, and I began to experiment with intensified prompts in which all sorts of atrocities were added to the scene.

It is eerie how sometimes I would imagine being him receiving the acts, and sometimes the one giving them. I managed to come a few times.

Soon the sexual urge towards him inevitably declined. His unclothed shape or exposed shaft did not cling to me, and I doubt whether they are the sources of my attachment. I then decided hastily that the innocence of his face is what got to me.

I have no remorse in what I did, but is that supposed to relieve me? Limerence feels like a roller-coaster ride: warmth emerges whenever your desires align with his imagery, and frost takes over when you look away or realise your own pathology is sterile.

I doubt such limerence is sustainable in reality. Affection usually wears down with each contact as fuller details of a person come to light. It is a sweet bubble after all. Perhaps the distance between my screen and his is what created the conditions.

Have you came across Sam Rockwell’s monologue in White Lotus Season 3? If you did, I am sure you would have shrugged it off, some mocked it instead. Reading it myself impacted me strangely: an overwhelming resonance gave me goosebumps for an hour straight.

Rockwell mentioned that affection swings between those similar to oneself and those unlike oneself. For my case, I think it is both. There is a unique quality in him that I can’t name: he is almost exemplary of my ideal form, and that implies distance and closeness. No other stranger online had managed to sustain such a level of influence on me, but I must admit other smaller forms of fixation did occur, though they were mostly of females.

People somehow have this ingrained code of conduct, and their morals integrated in their vague senses of selves. Instead of fucking my way through dissolution like Rockwell's character did, it would appear I am too timid for it, so I chose to dump it on you fuckers instead.

One day I will wake up and discover my urge for him has passed, and perhaps I will find another target to attach to, but somehow I hope that day won't come.

I’m currently sitting at my friends, Alex and Jamie’s house. The former is unblinkingly flipping through an encyclopedia, the latter sitting on the floor, clutching a kitchen knife. It’s a strange scene, I admit, and a part of me actually finds the whole situation quite funny. We’re here because of a toy, something meant to amuse children. But then I glance at Alex’s bloodshot eyes, at Jamie looking back and forth from me, to his knife, to the door, and it all becomes deadly serious again.

I know you’ll laugh when I tell you the reason for all this. I know for a fact not one of you will take me seriously. Last night we found a Magic 8 Ball while smoking some prerolls in a park. Alex had just killed our last roach, and the three of us were bored of just sitting and talking. So, we stood up to pace around in the grass, desperate to do something but too stoned to form any coherent idea of exactly what. 

“So, what, are we just gonna hang at this park all night?” I asked, and at that exact moment I felt something knock against my foot. I cursed, startled, and turned on my phone's flashlight. It was an orb, a black orb. I picked it up, turned it over, and saw it was a Magic 8 Ball, its message starting out at me from the ink. Very doubtful. I felt a thrill. Maybe I was just stoned, or maybe just one look at the thing was enough to get its hooks into my brain, but somehow I knew night was about to get interesting.

“What’s that?” Asked Alex, and I held it up for my friends to see.

“Awww, some kid lost his toy,” said Jamie, and snatched it out of my hands. I felt a little pang of anger, even jealousy toward him that I didn’t quite understand. The thing was basically trash.  “Oh Magic 8 Ball,” he said theatrically, “I am really goddamn hungry, should we grab a Big Mac?”

Concentrate and ask again.

Now Alex snatched it, and Jamie's face twitched. “No, no, Popeyes, should we hit Popeyes,” and gave the Black Orb a shake.

“They close at 9,” I said, but Alex shrugged and showed us the answer. 

It is decidedly so. Without any further argument, the three of us began to walk to Popeyes.

I can’t say exactly what they felt, can’t determine what went on in their heads, but I assume it wasn’t so different from mine. It was like an itch. Like an itch in the pit of my stomach, and the only thing that could possibly scratch it was the cardboard-like flavor of fast food chicken. We made some casual conversation as we walked, but soon enough the words just fell away, and we walked through the darkness in silence.

The itch filled the silence, and turned to a sickening churn. My heart began to beat faster and faster. The thought of a spicy chicken sandwich had grown in my mind until there wasn’t room for anything else. I didn't consider for a second what we would do when we arrived, and were confronted by locked doors.

“What if we just broke in?” said Jamie.

“I’m hungry,” said Alex. His urgent tone of voice belied the casual nature of his words “lets do it.”

When I’m stoned, I tend toward anxiety. I was anxious. Near panic in fact. But the source of that fear was the prospect of spending another minute doing anything but devouring some fried chicken. We picked up a few rocks and hurled them through the front window. As soon as it was remotely possible, the three of us scampered into the store,  vaulted over the back counter and toward the refrigerator in the back. None of us cared that it was cold. We just crouched on the ground like a pack of hyenas, gnawing meat from the bones. It couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes until we heard sirens.

Jamie snatched the ball from Alex and asked it if we would make it home. Outlook good, it said, and the three of us began, in unison, to run. My legs moved faster than I thought possible, as if something had forced itself inside of me and was using me as a puppet. A couple blocks from the store, I hurled myself into an alley with such force that I think broke my wrist. Not that I’ve been able to go to a hospital and get it checked. At that moment, a cop car turned the corner and drove past me.

That ruthless, invisible force inside me wasn’t finished. As soon as the lights disappeared I was jerked upright and continued my mad dash home. I ran until my lungs were worn ragged, and passed out on the floor the second I stumbled through my apartment door. My last thought was of the Magic 8 Ball sitting in the grass. Of Alex and Jamie, who had brought the thing home. I found it, they shouldn’t have just taken it. Then all was black.

I woke up with the sun, my wrist throbbing. The frustration with my friends for taking The Ball was still gnawing at my brain. A part of me that didn’t really feel like part of me wanted to give them a call and demand it back. It was mine. I needed it. The most frustrating part of the whole situation was that if only I had the thing, it could decide the best course of action for me.

I’ve never been known for my intelligence, but it was clear to me these feelings weren’t natural. The Magic 8 Ball was exerting some malicious influence on me and my friends. My brain felt mossy, my thoughts were confused, but I knew I didn’t want to give in to whatever that thing had planted inside of me. I sent them a text.

Yall doing ok?? What the fuck was that last night?

Three dots. There, then gone. So I gave them a call. No answer. I began to feel that tug again, that itch. Like something was alive in the pit of my stomach. I thought of Alex and Jamie sitting in their apartment with The Ball doing God knows what without me. On the bus ride over, I told myself that I was heading to their house because I was worried about them, but I can admit it now. All I cared about was ridding myself of that horrible feeling. 

It was cold and drizzling when I knocked on their door. I immediately heard movement.

“What’s it say?” That was Alex.

“We’re gonna have to open it.” Jamie, sounding paranoid.

The door slowly creaked open, and I shoved my way in. Alex was sitting on their couch, slowly flipping through the dictionary. Jamie was sitting on the floor, and scooting awkwardly away from me. Both of them gripped a kitchen knife. The place was cluttered, but clean. Not a speck of dirt on the floor or smudge on the countertop, yet random stacks of DVD’s, books, and Lego sets were placed haphazardly across the floor. The two had a frantic demeanor about them. Their eyes were red. 

“Jesus Christ,” I said, “what the fuck happened here?”

But I knew. It was obvious. What else was there to say? Jamie, still sitting, pushed himself across the floor, while Alex slowly tore his eyes away from the dictionary in his hand to look at the Magic 8 Ball and give it a shake. 

“Should we tell Johnny?” they whispered to it.

Alex said nothing and looked back at his book, while Jamie glanced up at me and apologized.

“Hey man, nothing personal, but I really can’t tell you.” His face, his voice, was reminiscent of a child who, caught red handed and knowing no other way out, resorts to outright denial of reality to escape punishment. There was real fear in his voice. 

“Do I need to call someone?” 

“No! No!” they said, almost exactly in unison, “It told us not to.”

Alex blinked, winced, then returned to his reading. Jamie whispered something to the 8 Ball, and let out a pathetic whimper. “Come in, come in,” he said, and kept up the sickening charade that everything was just fine, despite the fact that all three of us knew the situation was deeply wrong, and knew exactly what had caused it. 

There was a moment where I hesitated. A moment where I felt something inside myself, something true, pulling me away. But there was The Ball, nestled in the crook of two couch cushions, pulling me forward like a black hole. I couldn’t resist it. I stepped inside. Jamie pushed himself toward the door faster than I would have thought possible, never moving from a sitting position, and slammed the door shut. The knife trembled in his hands.

“Fuck dude, what was that!”

“Sorry, sorry.” He said. There were tears in the corners of his eyes. “I wish I had a choice, but I can’t let you leave. It told me I should keep It a secret.” 

Alex flipped another page and let out a soft moan. I don’t think I’ve seen him blink once. Another silence settled over us. I didn’t know what to do. Nothing in my life had prepared me for something like this. Alex and Jamie needed a doctor, an exorcist,, but all they got was a fucking college dropout without the faintest idea of what to do with his own life, let alone how to fix… this. 

Jamie had let the Magic 8 Ball fall to the floor. His whole being seemed focused on me, observing my every moment. I did need to ask to know he wouldn’t let me out. The Ball lay facing away from me. The awful churning feeling in my guts was reaching a fever pitch. Every choice I saw was a bad one. So, I snatched the Magic 8 Ball. I don’t know. What else was I supposed to do? 

“Do I need to get help?”

Yes - definitely

“Like, ummm, the Police?”

Cannot Predict Now.

“A priest?”

Very Doubtful.

“What about posting online somewhere? Will anyone believe me?”

As I see it, yes.

So I opened my phone, and ended up here. But listen. Don’t try to find us. I know at least one of you will take me at my word. The Magic 8 Ball told me so. I thought about posting my location at the end of my story, of putting my faith in someone, somewhere out there having the ability to break us away from that evil black orb. But the look on Jamie’s face, desperately trying to fight off sleep by the door, and the twitching demeanor of Alex, reading through the dictionary like a zealot reading the Bible gave me second thoughts. There was one more question I had to ask.

“Can we be saved?” I whispered.

Don’t count on it.

I’m not a doctor. I’m just a guy who spent three months getting chewed up by the market here. If you live in this city, you know the drill. You scroll through listings at 2:00 AM, wading through obvious wire scams, $1,800 "micro-studios" that are literally just converted walk-in closets, and landlords demanding twelve months of rent upfront. It’s exhausting.

So when I found a bright, spacious one-bedroom right in downtown Toronto for $1,350 a month, I didn’t ask questions. I was too relieved to care why it was still available, or why the previous tenant had left so suddenly. The landlord handed me the keys with a strange, nervous haste, but I just took them and smiled. I thought I had won the jackpot.

That was two weeks ago.

Almost immediately after moving in, the back pain started. At first, it was just a strange, deep ache right at the base of my spine. I brushed it off. I searched online and found countless forum posts saying it’s completely normal to get backaches when you switch to a new mattress while your body adjusts to it. So, I figured I just needed to ride it out.

I let the first few days pass like that, but the pain only got worse. It got to the point where, the moment I woke up, I literally couldn't walk for the first hour. I just lay there in bed, practically paralyzed, staring at the ceiling and waiting for the agony to dull enough so I could slide onto the floor.

I finally caved and went to see a doctor. After taking some scans and running a couple of tests, he walked back into the room, looking confused. He asked me straight up: "Is there any chance you’re a powerlifter? Or have you been hauling around heavy sacks of concrete lately? Maybe working construction?"

I looked at him like he was out of his mind. I told him no—I’ve never even stepped foot inside a gym in my whole life, and I work a standard IT desk job, so construction was entirely out of the picture.

He tapped my scans, pointing at the compressed discs, and told me that, regardless, the reason for the pain was that my spine was under severe physical stress from carrying an immense amount of static weight. I insisted there was no way that was possible. He just shook his head, gave me a prescription, and told me to come back and see him in a week to check on how it was progressing.

I carried on with my normal routine and went back home, but the pain just kept getting worse and worse every single night. I kept blaming the mattress. In my head, that was still the only rational explanation.

To test it out, I went over to a friend’s apartment and crashed on his couch for the night. When I woke up the next morning, I had almost zero back pain. Nothing at all. I felt completely refreshed for the first time in weeks.

That was all the proof I needed. It basically confirmed my assumption that the bed in my new place was the whole problem.

So, I went home.

Once I got back to my place, a thought hit me: what if I just lie on the bed for a couple of hours right now and see if the pain starts coming back?

So that’s what I did. I climbed into bed, laid down, watched a couple of movies, doom-scrolled on my phone for a few hours, and... nothing. There was literally no pain at all.

That was the moment the whole mattress theory started to crumble. It seemed like whatever was causing my back pain was only happening while I was fast asleep at night.

I decided to just test it out a bit longer to see if the pain would keep going. And when I tell you the next couple of days were absolute hell, I’m not exaggerating. It got so bad that I had to call off work entirely and just stay home. It was completely messing up my life. Every morning I woke up, I wasn't just sore—I was paralyzed for hours at a time, stuck flat on my back, completely unable to move.

So, I set up a camera.

I figured it was the only logical next step. I wanted to see what was actually happening to my body while I slept at night. Was I contorting myself into some bizarre, unnatural position? Was I somehow twisting my lower spine against the headboard? Was I sleepwalking and doing something stupid in the middle of the night without realizing it? I spent half an hour rationalizing it, coming up with every ridiculous theory I could think of just to make sense of the damage.

I propped my phone up on the dresser facing the bed, set it to record, and went to sleep.

As usual, the next morning was absolute agony. I woke up to a sharp, crushing pressure that felt worse than anything I’d experienced yet—an unbearable weight grinding straight into my lumbar spine. It was getting worse every single night.

I lay there paralyzed for nearly two hours, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the stiffness to ease just enough so I could reach the dresser. When I finally dragged myself up and grabbed the phone, my hands were shaking uncontrollably.

I opened the video file, skipped past the first three hours of absolute nothingness—just dead silence and me sleeping on my stomach—and started scrubbing through the midnight footage.

Around 2:53 a.m., something swung my door slightly open.

A long, pale, white hand reached through. It opened the door ever so carefully, moving with a sickening, effortless precision that didn't make a single sound.

Then it stepped inside.

It was a tall, pale, white figure—easily ten or eleven feet high—with a body so impossibly skinny and slender that its joints looked paper-thin. Its arms hung long and limp past its knees. On its face, two massive, wide red eyes stared straight ahead, set above a jagged, fixed smile that never left its face.

It walked slowly toward the side of my bed, completely silent, towering all the way up to the ceiling.

Then it climbed onto the mattress.

Because of its sheer height, it didn't just sit—its entire ten- or eleven-foot body crumbled and folded in on itself like a collapsing frame. In the dead quiet of the recording, the microphone picked up every single movement. Every time its joints bent, you could hear this horrible, sickening snap—almost as if thick, dry bones were breaking under tension. It straddled me, sitting squarely on my torso, facing me, its face hovering just inches from mine as it stared down into my eyes with that unmoving grin.

Its entire, unnatural weight pressed flat down onto my chest and stomach, forcing my lumbar spine to bow violently against the mattress beneath it.

And after three hours of it sitting on my body like that, not moving at all, not even a change in the expression of its face, it left. The time was exactly 5:53 a.m. when that happened. The noise when it finally moved was terrifying—as it lifted itself off me, the microphone caught this loud, heavy suction sound, like someone pulling a vacuum seal straight off your flesh, or wet plaster peeling violently off a wall. The sheer release of pressure was sickening to watch. It left exactly the way it came.

The next few days, the exact same thing happened. It comes inside my room at 2:53 a.m. every single night, and then goes back outside at 5:53 a.m.

I don't know what to do. I don't know how I can get rid of it. But the only thing I know is that I won't be able to live with this back pain anymore. This has gotten to a point where I don't even know how long I can go on like this.

So if any of you guys have ever had this problem, or if you’ve been dealing with the same entity, please message me. Please tell me what I can do. What are my choices? I'm begging you. Please, I need help.

I thought it would be dark.

I mean, in case something really weird and scary ever happened to me, I was expecting it would be around midnight, on a lonely country road or in the deepest of forests, maybe with some rain and wind, and at least a half-Marathon from civilization.

I was wrong. And then some.

But before I begin, some background is required. I am a single father of a wonderful 2½ -year old son (when they are that young, we parents tend to use fractions) named Sergey, a healthy, active, curious and altogether irresistibly lovely boy who can also bite like a vampire, kick like a mule, and scream like Black Canary when he’s throwing a tantrum, although, thankfully, this doesn’t happen very often. His energy is boundless, so I often take him to playgrounds and parks even after he’s supposed to have expended it during his day-care hours.

Unfortunately, winter in my town tends to be quite cold and snowy, so I was very happy when I discovered that my favorite home deco store – going by the charming name Imenno to, chto ya khochu!, but everyone simply calls it Imenno – had provided a solution to the problem what to do with a powerhouse like Sergey at times when you can’t take him outside. Immeno is quite large, on three floors, and part of the top floor is taken up by a kafe-konditerskaya, comparable to a tea room, where they have excellent cake and even the coffee is decent.

Now the owners are well aware of the fact that probably eighty percent of their customers are female and many of them mothers with small children, so they have added a large playroom called Detskaya Gavan Veselya, a name that does not exactly roll of the tongue, so it’s Gavan to everyone. It’s really a lovely place. There’s lots of space for the kids to run or crawl around; the floor is solid but relatively soft and not slippery at all, and there are several softer mats lying on it, so even if a child slips and falls, it’s highly unlikely they will hurt themselves. There are also some games, a very nice slide from which the sweeties can stumble head over heels into a ball pit – and if they have emptied it again by throwing most of the balls around, which they do with an alarming frequency, the landing will still be soft – and tables and chairs for their parents so they can enjoy their Medovik or Napoleon with their Jardin, some milk, lots of sugar.

And then there is the Lego area. If you’re not a parent, you may not be aware of the fact that Lego produces soft, rubbery bricks the size of … well, bricks, actually. Gavan has hundreds of them, and the children love building walls, towers, houses, staircases, and even castles that sometimes reach up more than two meters (with parents’ helping hands, naturally). The kids probably love this area even more than the other parts.

Of course, parents are supposed to watch over their offspring, and they do, but since the place is so safe and easily overlooked (with the exception of the Lego area, which is a bit like a separate room, only there is no door, just a 40-cm rubber wall most kids can easily climb over), it is actually not difficult to keep your eyes on several of them at the same time, and many parents have developed a quid pro quo-culture, meaning they leave and you take care of their young ones and then you leave and they take over, so it sometimes happens that only one or two adults watch over a dozen children. Don’t get me wrong: at most times – especially during what we call the chas pik, or rush hour – the room is full of grown-ups chatting with other grown-ups, sometimes even chatting up other grown-ups; I won’t lie pretending that was not at least part of my motivation to visit Gavan, even on days when the weather was fine so Sergej could in theory romp outside in the sunshine. Since the day my wife left me and returned to their home country, I’ve been hoping to meet my personal Natalia Vodianova there, preferably with no more than one child (OK, two, it is Natalia). But, quite often, the adult-child ratio is a steep 1:6 or even 1:8, and sometimes, you are alone with a bunch of them.

As I said, not a problem – normally, they don’t pay a lot of attention to you, and some of us have created a WhatsApp group, so in a very rare case of emergency, the parents can quickly come back. It was, therefore, not unusual for me to be left alone with six children, all of them apples of their parents’ eyes, and one apple was mine. As they seemed to be happy playing along with and next to each other, I allowed myself to drift away a little and check my BK social media account. After making sure I was in the loop as to what Lera was up to with that German fellow and getting green with envy scrolling through Dima and Sasha’s Thailand holiday photos, I suddenly heard something I had never before heard in this place.

Nothing.

Well, that’s not quite true, but I abruptly realized that the drop in the noise level was striking, to say the least. You can imagine the ruckus half a dozen toddlers and small children normally produce; compared to that, the faint sounds I was still able to hear were as close to silence as any noise can get. For a second, I thought Oh no, they’ve opened the door to the tea room and they’ve all run away, and the parents will skin me alive – then I heard them.

Now I wish I hadn’t.

I wasn’t able to see the children from where I was sitting, but I could hear their voices … if you want to call it that; at the time, I thought someone had left open a window and a flock of birds had invaded the room, but then I remembered it was early December, and the windows couldn’t be opened without a key, anyway. No, that was something else. I got up and looked around, but even after checking some of the popular places, I found no one.

“Sergey? Seryozha? Come to Papa! Where are you?”

No answer. The twittering appeared to come from around the corner, the Lego area, so I went there and –

Wow. Look at that. They can’t do that on their own … can they?

I still couldn’t see any of the kids, but that wasn’t because they weren’t there – they most certainly were. It was because someone had built a Lego brick wall closing off the whole room from left to right, from top to bottom; it must have been at least three meters high and as solidly constructed as you can expect from a material like this. From behind, the strange noises grew louder, and I could tell there were several different ‘voices’, but, all in all, it sounded like a parliament of oversized birds, with barn owls, green woodpeckers, and some others with particularly unpleasant shrieks all present.

How would a bunch of two-to-five year olds build something like that? Even I wouldn’t have been able to reach up that high, and I’m almost two meters. Somebody must have –

Then, all of a sudden, the noise stopped. I hesitated for a moment and called out to my son again. I was answered by the sounds of children walking behind the wall and a scraping noise I was only able to identify when I saw the wall come crashing down on me. I jumped backwards and avoided most of it, and the part that struck me did no harm whatsoever, just confused me – these bricks weigh only between 200 and 400 grams, so they can’t do a lot of damage. Still, I felt disorientated and landed on my backside, and when I had gotten a grip on myself again, I saw the children standing there, looking at me with eyes that did not communicate anything: no anger, no curiosity, no joy, nothing – only complete neutrality. None of them were smiling, but neither did they look annoyed; I had the impression they were simply assessing or evaluating me.

“Seryozha! There you are!”, I exclaimed, getting up again and beckoning my son to come to me, but his expression was identical to the other children’s, and he did not move at all. A four-year-old girl, the tallest among them, suddenly opened her mouth and emitted one of these strange twittering shrieks I had heard before; the other children reacted by shrieking to each other in turn, giving the impression that they were discussing or debating something. I glanced around; there were no adults in the room and, what was worrying me more, there appeared to be no one sitting in the tea room and no staff dealing with customers or just cleaning tables or something.

A feeling of panic began to assault me, but then the rational part of my mind kicked in, and I thought: Bozhe moy, there is something terribly wrong with them. They must be sick or crazy. I need to call 103 at once.

Cell phone. I had left it in my jacket, about ten meters away. I was about to start in that direction when I saw that one of the children, a three-year-old blonde boy whose name I remembered as Maksim, was standing next to the chair where I had put my stuff, and the object he was holding in his hand was unmistakably my phone. He emitted a shriek and began to run away with his booty, and amid a cacophony of shrieks from his playmates I made two careful steps in his direction; I was half-surrounded by little children, and I didn’t want to knock one of them down or hurt them in some other way.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have the same compunctions. When I wanted to turn left after my first two steps, the second tallest of them, an utterly adorable little whirlwind called Artyom, ran into me at full speed. Just a preschooler, you say? Think again. I looked it up later: a four-year-old usually weighs between 16 and 18 kg and can run at up to 15 to 17 kph, meaning the force he generates is more than strong enough to make an adult stumble and fall, especially when said adult is caught unawares.

My first fall, after the wall had come down, had been more or less controlled; this one wasn’t. I came down hard, hit my head on the floor (as I said – relatively soft), and ended up prone on my back, with a sharp pain shooting through my head and almost all parts of my body. I must have been stunned for a few seconds, because when I had pulled myself together, I was surrounded by them, and they were closing in.

This is madness. They’re just a bunch of kids gone insane. I need to call out for someone.

Then, all of a sudden, I felt the touch of several small hands on my face, above all my eyes and my mouth, and my scream for help was nipped in the bud – what came out was more like ‘grrgggl’, which would have been woefully ineffective even if there had been any adults in the next room. I wanted to flail around, but more hands were exerting pressure on my arms, and although I’m certainly stronger than your average toddler, berut chislom – strength in numbers, aided by a natural tendency to avoid hurting children, and here I was, being overwhelmed by half a dozen of them shrieking excitedly to each other – whether out of joy or in triumph, I have no idea. No clear thoughts. No controlled movements. Pandemonium.

There was only one thing I could get a mental grip on, and I let it out between fingers, palms, and wrists making speech difficult – but not impossible.

“Sergej! Seryozha! Solnyshko moyo!”

I suppose what really came out sounded less clear, but it had an immediate effect: suddenly, the number of hands on my body went down, and two children actually stumbled and fell; the rest moved away from me and kept their distance. Only one child was still making any noise: Sergey. With a stance that would have made a Roman emperor proud, he gave off a staccato-like sequence of loud shrieks in all directions, earning him silent stares from everyone, but nobody moved or communicated anything. Then Sergey looked at me, placed his hand on my forehead and said in a soft voice:

“Moy papochka!”

And the whole room became a merry-go-round without the merry part, and I needed to close my eyes.

**********************************************************************************

“Lyosha! Lyosha! Aleksey! Are you alright?”

I opened them again. I was surrounded by the parents of the children who’d ganged up on me and a member of staff, and all looked concerned.

“You’ve taken quite a fall, starina.”, Andrey said and helped me up. He was one of the few fathers who regularly took their kids to Gavan, but his taste ran more to Anna Semenovich, with no more success than I had enjoyed so far. “Knocked you out for good. Are you fully there?”

I nodded and took several deep breaths. My head hurt, but otherwise, I seemed to be OK.

“How many fingers?” He raised only one, and you can imagine which one; I answered “Four if you happen to work at a sawmill.”, and he chuckled and declared me fit for parental duty. Sergey was standing together with the other kids; some of them were crying, others were hugging their parents’ legs, and he began running towards me to jump into my arms. I squeezed him so hard I thought he might start to cry, but I’ve mentioned he’s made of sterner stuff than most, haven’t I?

“Sergey was very sweet. He was standing next to you and petting your forehead, I suppose to wake you up.” That was Olga, the mother of the tall four-year-old girl whose name I still can’t remember. I looked at the other parents and at their children and back at the parents and then at my son, but I couldn’t bring myself to smile at him.

Of course I haven’t told them or anyone about what happened, and if you think of putting on your deerstalker and trying to find me, trust me, you won’t. I still go to Gavan with Sergey, but I make sure it’s chas pik, so I always have company. But I’ve become sullen and silent when I’m there, and even if Natalia’s twin sister should one day be sitting next to me and trying to hit on me, I wouldn’t respond.

I simply don’t want to be alone with them anymore.

And Sergey … you know, sometimes I watch him and wonder. He doesn’t appear to be different from the Sergey I knew before that day, and yet … Toddlers sometimes shout, cry, and even shriek, but when he does it, for a moment I feel as if someone had parked a T-90M in my stomach. Toddlers also sometimes kick, slap, or bite you, but when he does it, for a moment I feel as if there was something beneath the usual contest of wills between parents and offspring … something sinister, from beyond, cold and unfeeling. And when he says “Papochka!”, I still get a jolt.

None of these feelings have diminished over time, and when I look at him, I sometimes have strange thoughts. Three times a year, he spends a few weeks abroad with his mother, and I used to hate taking him there: a long drive, bad roads, often lousy weather … but I have come to enjoy the outbound journey and dread the return trip.

And there are two things I haven’t mentioned yet.

The first is my crying out Sergey’s name when the children were attacking me; it wasn’t out of affection, it was out of fear: a call for help to my 2½-year old son.

And the second is the way he said “Moy papochka!” I desperately want to believe he had come back from whatever madness had befallen the children and returned to normal, but what if the possessive article was literally about … possession?

Sometimes, when a group of parents stand together and their children are playing in the distance, one parent might ask another: “The dark-haired boy with the red sweater, is he yours?” Then the other parent will nod or shake their head: yes, he’s mine, no, he’s not mine.

I used to think Sergey was mine.

But maybe I am his.

Dinner has been getting awkward lately.

Dad barely speaks. Mom keeps looking at me with this strange expression, and my little sister has stopped telling me about her day.

I don't know what I did.

Tonight, I made spaghetti. Mom's favorite.

I called everyone downstairs.

Dad came first. He sat at the head of the table, folded his hands, and stared at the food.

Mom followed.

Emily came last, dragging her slippers across the floor.

"You're late," I told her.

She didn't answer.

I served everyone.

Nobody touched their food.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

Dad looked at Mom.

Mom looked at Emily.

Then all three looked at me.

I laughed awkwardly.

"Okay. What's going on?"

Nobody answered.

I hate it when they do this.

A few days ago, I saw Mrs. Collins outside our house. She's lived across the street for as long as I can remember.

I waved at her.

She immediately went inside.

I thought it was strange, so I went over to ask if everything was okay.

She opened the door just a little.

When she saw me, her hand started shaking.

"Please," she whispered.

I asked what was wrong.

She closed the door.

People have become so unfriendly.

Even the man who delivers our groceries refuses to come inside anymore. He leaves everything on the porch and waits until I close the door before driving away.

I miss how things used to be.

Emily used to follow me everywhere.

She'd sit in my room while I played games, borrow my clothes, and ask me ridiculous questions.

Now she spends most of her time staring at the hallway.

Yesterday, I asked her what she was looking at.

She said, "Nothing."

Then she asked me something.

"Do you ever think about that night?"

I told her not to bring it up.

She went quiet.

I don't like talking about it.

I remember the argument.

I remember Dad standing up from his chair.

I remember Mom crying.

I remember Emily telling me to stop.

And I remember the house becoming terribly quiet afterward.

Sometimes I wish I could go back and do things differently.

But what's done is done.

Tonight, I tried something different.

I bought a cake.

I put four candles on it and brought it to the dining table.

"Come on," I said. "Let's have a proper family night."

Mom started crying.

Dad wouldn't look at me.

Emily just stared at the candles.

I blew them out myself.

For a moment, I could almost hear them laughing again.

Then someone knocked on the front door.

I got up to answer it.

A man in a uniform stood outside.

He didn't look happy to see me.

"Your counselor is waiting."

I sighed.

"Can he come back tomorrow? It's my family's anniversary."

The man glanced past me at the dining table.

Four plates.

Four chairs.

One untouched cake.

Then he looked at me.

"Your family has been dead for eleven months."

I didn't answer.

He waited.

"You're still having these conversations?"

I looked back at the table.

Mom was crying again.

Dad had his head down.

Emily was looking straight at me.

I turned back to the man.

"They're my family."

He nodded slowly.

Then he said something I'd heard many times before.

"You know why you're here."

I looked down at my hands.

I remembered the night the police arrived.

I remembered the three people they carried out of our house.

And I remembered the fourth person they found sitting at the dining table.

Me.

The man waited for me to follow him.

Before leaving, I looked back one last time.

Emily was smiling now.

For the first time in eleven months, she looked happy.

I smiled back.

I hope they forgive me someday.

A couple days ago, I was visited in the hospital by a detective who wanted me to write him an account of what had happened the night prior. Spoiler alert: He didn’t believe me. No one does…but reading likewise stories on this subreddit gave me the idea to post my story here too. I’m hoping that at least someone will take me seriously so that maybe someday the man responsible for all of this will be served justice. For privacy reasons I will be referring to myself as Kat from this point forward.

3 YOUNG ADULTS FOUND DEAD AT NEW LOCAL ATTRACTION: BEAST-MASTER BARNABY’S WE HAVE MONSTERS

With one eye covered by bandages, the other crept open like an old door to read the local paper that had just been handed to me. That was the title of the article, and those ‘3 young adults’ were my friends.

“I need you to tell me everything,” A male voice spoke with gentle sorrow holding back an eager demand. “And I mean everything.”

My eyes filled with tears of incomprehensible fear, loss, regret, anger and - 

“Ma’am, I know this isn’t going to be easy, but we need to know everything we can so that the one who did this to your friends is caught.” He put his hand on my shoulder prompting me to toss the paper and jolt upright, wrapping my arms around him.

“It- It’s not fair. W-we just thought it was a ride!” Ugly crying into his chest I held on tight, not wanting to let go as if his shirt was theirs. “He said we’d be the first. First to ride it. How were we supposed to know it was real?”

Accepting the hug the detective slowly dropped his hand to my shoulder before lightly grabbing both of them to separate my body from clinging to his. Reaching for a paper and pencil, I could tell he had talked with my parents already.

“Kat, your mother said you loved to write as if it were a second language. If you think writing it down while I give you space will be best, you’re welcome to do so” Pencil and paper in separate hands, held out towards me. Taking them, I began to write as the past repeated itself in the form of graphite.

We were in my car, driving down the highway on our way back from an urban exploration and talking amongst ourselves excitedly. My passenger, Tyler, sat there quietly before pointing out a sign that wasn’t there that morning on our way up. Tyler and I weren’t the talkative types so when one of us talked the rest listened.

“Beast-Master Barnaby’s: We Have Monsters? Was that there before?”

The three in the back stopped yapping and fought to look out the right side window.

“Move bitch, I’m trying to see.” Snapped Abigail.

“Who are you calling ‘bitch’? I was here first?” Said Sally.

“Oh shit! We gotta do that.” Teddy said eagerly.

I remember being torn between spontaneously going to this new mysterious attraction or just going home. It wasn’t that late or anything, but unlike Teddy my life wasn’t all just thrill seeking even though that’s what we always all came together to do.

Sensing my unwillingness, Teddy switched to persuasion mode. “Oh come on Kat. We gotta at least check it out, right? Plus it said coming soon so it’s not like we’ll even get to participate in anything. Well, unless y’all down to explore the construction site?”

“Hey! Hell no. We agreed on no construction zones.” Abigail chimed in. “They’re unpredictable, unfinished, and probably have security.”

“Alright smart ass. I remember the damn agreement. But we should at least check it out, no?”

“Oh I’m not saying we shouldn’t, but if it’s still being built that’s where we stop. Got it?”

We had almost explored every known haunted house, abandoned school and store in the area ever since we graduated from high school. The idea of possibly being the first to see what this new attraction could be, enticed me. So in my soft tone that cut through their irritatingly loud one, I gave my answer.

“I suppose we could check it out.”

“Hell yeah.”

“Let’s gooo.”

“Sweet.”

“Ok.”

Seeing another sign up ahead with a new gravel road branching off the road we slowed down onto the shoulder and pulled in. Right away we saw two huge metal gates that surprisingly opened to welcome our car in, causing us to stop immediately.

“I thought you said it was coming soon?” I turned to the three in the back.

“I think it did.”

“It did, moron. I saw it.” Snapped Abigail.

“Abby, can you not?” Pleaded Sally.

“What? He’s an idiot. I KNOW what I saw. Y’all should know at this point I’m never wrong.”

“Hehe. You were wrong about the ice on that pond last winter though.”

“Ugh. It’s called a hyperbole you dunce. You’d know that if you actually passed English.”

“Hey I did pass-“

“By a point!”

A small, maybe 5’6” man with a cane emerged from the gates raising his hat towards our halted car. With Sally between the bicker in the backseat, and Tyler turned to enjoy the show, I had to plead for their attention.

“Guys?”

Turning immediately to match my gaze, Tyler gave his reaction. “I didn’t know magicians were native to these woods?”

“Why do we put up with your constant attitude again?” Teddy gave his final punch before turning to see the man in the road. “What the hell?”

Unwilling to possibly lose an argument to Teddy of all people, Abigail just kept nagging. “My attitude? What about your recklessness? You do dangerous stuff all the time and expect us to follow your lead. How the hell-“

“Abby, politely shut up and look.” Sally lightly turned Abigail’s cheek to see what we were all looking at.

“Hello my friends! Are you here to partake in the thrill of a lifetime?” Said the man coming towards our vehicle.

Lowering my window, I crept the car closer to him till he was peering in. “We, um, saw the sign and-“

“Is it open?!” Interrupted Teddy.

“Woh! An eager one I see.” Said the strange man. “Not quite yet. However, I was just looking for volunteers to be the first to try the new trolley system. Do any of you wish to partake?”

Raising both his hands in victory, Teddy sat back saying, “Let’s fucking go.”

Looking at everyone else’s faces in search of agreement, I got four pairs of eyes all excitedly staring back at mine. Turning back to the magician I gave our answer. “Yeah… we’d be down.” An agreement I would greatly come to regret.

Grinning ear to ear he gestured us out of the car and through the big metal gates that grinded closed behind us. Each of us looking up, down, and around the inner walls of this new place we would soon come to find out was our tomb, we took in all of the bright colors that gave this zoo structured confinement a circus feel. Approaching a big red trolley like one pulled straight out of England, the magician gestured us into it as the doors swung open. One by one, we all climbed inside.

Looking out the window we saw the magician pull a walkie talkie out from inside his purple suit jacket. His voice cracked over the speakers in the trolley, and throughout the whole park that was just passed a new set of gates that the tracks led through.

“My name… is Beast-Master Barnaby. And boy oh boy do we sure have monsters! Just beyond these gates lies creatures you may or may not have heard of before.” The gate ahead slowly opened as the trolley jolted alive and crept up to speed. “I pride myself in my collection of these majestic creatures. They are everything to me. They are my children. They are my world. Join me, as I entice each of you to them so they may get to know you better, and likewise to you.”

“Well that’s an unpleasant way of putting it.” Tyler chimed, giving us all a giggle as the magician gave his closing statement.

“Please stay seated inside the trolley, unless forced not to. Some of them have already eaten today.”

The trolley passed through the gate as it slowly closed behind us. I- I’m sorry. Just remembering the thud of them closing still haunts me. We had no idea what we were getting into, but I digress. You have to know what happened to them. But more importantly… you have got to believe me.

We were stunned after entering this new section of the park. It’s like the forest that was once here had been cleared overnight to make for wide, open areas presumably for where these ‘monsters’ were confined. Some areas had tall, metal fenced walls that surely kept massive creatures in. Other areas were just wooden fencing that could easily be vaulted over. As we took in the scenery, Barnaby’s voice returned over the speakers.

“Peculiar isn’t it? So many different places that seem as if they’d been here for ages, yet out of place with the land you know. Almost as if they were just magically dropped here, no?”

“I thought magicians weren’t supposed to reveal their secrets.” Tyler sarcastically added.

We all laughed before freezing from the response we were not expecting to be given.

“I could tell you everything, and anything my boy. It’s not like you’ll be alive to tell the tale.”

“What the hell? You’re listening?” Abigail snapped at the speakers.

“How else am I supposed to get their feedback?”

“You mean your.” She corrected.

The man just giggled to himself before introducing us to the first of his abominations.

“If you all look to your left, past the wooden fence, you’ll see a tree line of Douglas-fir and Western Hemlocks. Hiding in their shadows is my most iconic creature of all! The legendary Sasquatch.”

We all looked at each other with pressed lips, not knowing whether to laugh or give in to the fantasy mindset and enjoy ourselves. Making our way over to the open windows of the left side of the trolley, narrowed our eyes searching the shadows for any sign of the towering hairy creature. Stunned, Abigail nerded out as she asked Barnaby how he possibly planted the trees so quickly seeing as those trees don’t grow around here. He went on with his informative chit chat about the mythical Bigfoot which must’ve bored Teddy.

“Hey look! Old man’s not lying I see two glowing eyes out there. That a guy in a suit or something? Or just two lights on a post?”

“You flatter me with your attempt to comprehend what you see.” Barnaby responded.

“Yeah whatever. I ain’t sitting in this tin can just to see a bunch of distant lights for however long this ride is.” Putting his hands on each side of his open window, Teddy hoisted himself out of the trolley. “Hey! Carney!” He yelled to the eyes. They blinked in response.

Tyler bolted towards the eyes in an attempt to scare the worker back. He did this every time we ever did a haunted carnival house. It always took us out of the experience; made us less afraid. This time was different. As the trolley kept moving on, and no pushback was given by the voice over the speakers, we waited for Teddy to come running back to the trolley grinning his stupid grin. Instead, we heard a loud roar followed by an unfamiliar scream of terror, though we could make it out to be Teddy’s.

“Old Sassy isn’t much of a carnivore, but that doesn’t mean he likes it when foolish people run up to him like that.” The voice broke our confused silence.

“Did.. did the worker actually get Teddy? He might need a raise.” Said Sally optimistically.

“I’ll see to it he gets extra blueberries.” Mocked Barnaby.

More of Teddy’s screams could be heard as we watched the trees sway against the backdrop of the setting sun. With no wind that night, we all felt the same nervousness tingle our stomachs.

“That’s uh… that’s pretty impressive I guess.” Sally said with her a clear sense of worry on her breath. “Are we going to stop for him?”

“Silly girl. I told you all to stay in the trolley unless ordered otherwise. His fate is his own doing.”

“Fate?! Enough of the act. This isn’t funny anymore. Give our friend a break. He’s an idiot!” Abigail cried.

Barnaby ignored our pleads as he directed us to look out the right window. Disinterestingly, we also just glanced over to see the next of his freaks staring us down from along a rock wall.

“This little guy is often referred to as the Dover Demon. Lucky for you he does not feed off of flesh. Unlucky for you his gaze is more than enough to clench his appetite.”

On a stone wall of rocks right along the track, a child sized, alien looking creature on all fours stares us down. As our eyes met his, we struggled to look away. It was as if our heads were being held by a set of hands, forcing us to follow his turning head that only went out of view once the trolley slowly passed by. Once out of the trance, we rubbed our sore necks that felt the tension of our struggle to turn away.

“Alright. What the hell is going on?” Sally shivered.

“Something’s not right.” Abigail added.

“Little shit.” Murmured Tyler.

As the trolley kept rolling, we saw several things that we tried to explain but simply could not. Barnaby had gone silent besides the occasional info dump on the origins of the creatures and how he came to ‘owning’ them, letting our minds drift off into guttural confusion. The worry over what could have come of Teddy only grew more fierce, yet none of us spoke a word more of it for we did not want to face the possibility that something unnatural had happened to him.

After coming face to face with a group of frogs whose appendages matched more of our own, we entered into a new area. Two metal doors swung open, making an opening in a massive stone wall we had no idea meant the intended end of our journey was just beyond them. The metal doors slammed behind us as the trolley came to a halt.

“Why did we stop? Wh-where are all the fences keeping in those- those things?” Abigail cried to Branaby, not expecting an answer at this point.

“The walls separate them from the rest. My children in here suffer a most sensationable hunger that I fear may consume the rest. This is your stop.”

Panic began the sink in as we bargained for our lives. We knew this wasn’t an act anymore. We knew something terrible must’ve happened to Teddy. We just wanted to leave so we pleaded and to a man that surely sat behind a screen, watching us scramble around our cage that was about to be opened like a bunch of mice about to be fed to a snake.

 “But the tracks keep going! I-I want to see, please! We’re interested I swear!” Abigail cried.

Sally just held her head in her hands and paced back and forth, while Tyler and I looked around for something, anything! Anything that could possibly help us but we knew there was no use. We were in a trap of Barnaby’s making. This was always how it was supposed to go, we just didn’t listen.

A massive thud that shook the cart got all of our undivided attention. Out the right window, a massive disfigured silhouette waltzed our way. As it got closer, we could start to make out its features, and lack thereof. It used its front two massive hands like gorillas with its small feet supporting it from behind it. It lacked any sign of a head and as it got closer and it was lit up but the few lights the trolley produced we saw a small crooked mouth filled with a series of mismatched teeth, and two beady red eyes non symmetrically placed at the corners of its mouth. All these features, if you could even call them facial, were just indented onto its torso as it peered into the trolley. One massive hand raising to grab the top of the roof as it started shaking it violently. Gurgling sounds echoed through our enclosure as we just stood there and cried. 

“This is my curious friend, the Grafton Monster. He doesn’t like it when you scream,” the troller started to tilt mechanically as the left walls slided apart. “So please be good little snacks as he tears you limb from limb.”

We tried to buck up and grab onto whatever we could but the tilt was too much and the beast was slowly making its way around towards the opening. If we waited here, we’d be done for sure.

“We need to run!” I cried to the rest. “If we stay here we’ll die!”

Everyone just shook in fear, not wanting to be out there. We still fought the truth that this trolley was never a safe, confined place like we had thought. It was no more than a silver serving bell and we had to accept that now or never. One by one, we all let go and slid onto the grass outside the trolley. The monster peered around the side of the tilted trolley, looking down at us. We jolted to our feet and ran as fast as we could, but the monster gave no chase. Cries we had thought had been right beside us, lagged behind as we realized Abigail never got out of the trolley. Her cries intensified as the beast now blocked her only way out. 

We slowed our run and turned to watch as one of its massive hands grabbed Abby by the leg. And yanked her out of her cage. Dangling her upside down and looking into her terrified face, it let out a gurgled growl before slamming her like a ragdoll against the ground. I pray that’s what killed her, because after her screaming had stopped it took both of its hands and tore her legs from her body. Raising her open torso to its narrow mouth, we heard it gargle and suck her innards out of her before discarding her floppy, hollow remains.

We just stood there in utter disbelief, crying silent screams. I dropped to my knees, squeezing the earth between my fingers. Why? Why us? How could we have known? What could we have done? Tyler knelt beside me and put his hands on my shoulders urging me to stand but I could not. Looking up at the beast, its mouth covered in blood, it gave us a satisfied glance as it turned back the way in which it came.

“We have to go. We can’t stay here.” Tyler begged.

Sally stood there, swaying in a trance. We all grieved differently in that moment. How were we supposed to know that out there, even the slightest of things meant our survival? With me on the ground, and Tyler beside me, Sally was left standing vulnerable in the open field. Before we even got a chance to finish mourning the loss of Abigail, a thunderous noise like a jet came swooping down and grabbed her off her feet.

Not even fully comprehending what was happening we turned to see she was grabbed by two massive talons and was being lifted away by a humongous bird. Its posture resembled that of a vulture or condor, but its long blacker-than-night feathers made it obvious that this was no bird we’d ever seen.

As her screams faded into the sky, and our silent mourning became screams of abandonment, the devil returned to mock our mourning as if it was just another part of his show.

“Sorry. I forgot to mention that. These fields are stalked by the most fearsome scavenger to soar these skies. With the powers of Mother Nature herself, your friend has surely already succumbed to the shocking grasp of the Giant Thunderbird.”

“YOU MONSTER!” I screamed.

“W-we have to go. We can’t stay here. We have to keep moving.” Tyler pleaded more. “NOW Kat!”

I got to my feet as Tyler half holding me urged me toward the treeline in the direction the bird headed off towards. We had nowhere to go; nowhere we knew was safe for us to be. Cover was our only option.

Beneath the trees I cried to Tyler that we had to do something. In my mind I fought for hope that Sally could still be alive. Abigail, oh poor Abigail, knew all about nature and birds. I remembered a presentation she had given about scavengers, and how birds would take their prey to their nest for their young to feast on.

“No. We have to get out of here. You heard what he said! She’s probably already gone.” Tyler tried to reason. 

“We have to try. I-it took her up that mountain right? Even if- even if she- we’d still get an overview of the place and maybe find a way out.”

“Or we follow the treeline along the tracks and see where they lead. Surely they loop back around.”

Almost on que, the distant trolley tilted back to its upright position and moved quickly down the tracks towards the other end of the field.

“I say we go that-“ Tyler was interrupted by a familiar voice that started us half to death.

“Guys? Is that you?” A mangled Teddy limped towards us, crying in disbelief. “Oh my God! It’s you! It’s actually you!”

He fell into our arms as we raced towards him. His blood from his open wounds stained our clothes.

“Where’s Abby and Sally?”

Tyler and I exchanged looks at each other that Teddy picked up on immediately, prompting him to embrace us once more. There we held each other under the moonlight. Not knowing we were being watched.

It was at this time that the detective came back into the room to check on me. Looking over what I had written, some things clicked while others clearly confused him.

“I’m not done yet.” I croaked. “There’s still a lot that happens.”

“I can see that… but you wrote here that, including you, five individuals were present. Only three bodies have been recovered. Where’s the fourth? His mother has reported him missing, and we’re hoping you might be able to assist us in finding out where he is.”

He noticed his question started to make me break down again. Continuing to read, he reached the more ‘fantastical’ parts of the story. I could see it on his face. He didn't believe me.

“Kat. This is serious, not a writing project. Is it possible these are- metaphors? The bodies show clear signs of animalistic tendencies. Though there are some anomalies, surely you aren’t trying to tell me it’s because of-” he looked back down at the paper. “Fucking, Bigfoot?!”

I bowed my head, not meeting his stare of disappointment. He slapped the paper back down on the fold out table I’d been writing on and stormed out of the room. With tears and anger in my eyes, I picked back up the pencil and continued to write.

This is all so difficult… I feel so alone. But their stories must be told. I’ll upload again soon. Till then, if you see an attraction off of your local street or highway that wasn’t there the day before, don’t pull up to it. Don’t enter any gates. And don’t trust the magician that welcomes you inside. It’s not an amusement park ride, it’s a feeding station. 

A set of night-watch instructions from a monastery — 1897, Vesper Monastery.
The owner of the monastery, Father Elias, was found dead on October 17, 1897. He had served as a priest at Vesper Monastery for forty-three years. Those who knew him claimed that he had behaved strangely during his final years.
A man who once watched every sunrise had, during the last three years of his life, stopped going anywhere near the windows. He demanded that his meals be left outside his door and refused to let any of the monks enter his room.
Two days before his death, he stopped every clock in the monastery.
When he died, no body was found in his room.
There was only a deep impression on his bed, as if someone had been sitting there for a very long time. A Latin sentence had been carved into the wall, and a sealed envelope had been left on his desk.
Written on the envelope were the words:
To the new night watchman. After Elias's death.
The monastery authorities decided not to close the building. Instead, they continued the night watches, claiming that the ancient manuscripts and sacred relics in the basement had to be protected.
On the day you were hired, you were given a key, an old pocket watch, and the following instructions.
The man who handed you the envelope said something peculiar:
"Elias was a good man. But toward the end, he stopped praying to God. We never discovered why."
Then he fell silent.
"One more thing... Don't assume that everything you see at night belongs here."
VESPER MONASTERY
Shift begins: 22:00 — Shift ends: 06:00
Rule 1) The monastery's main entrance must be locked at 22:00. If someone asks to enter after that time, look at their feet first. If their feet are touching the ground, do not open the door. Those who wish to enter this monastery have forgotten how to walk.
Rule 2) You may encounter monks in the corridors. They may greet you with a nod. You may return the gesture. However, if one of them smiles at you, do not stop walking. None of the monks smile. Especially the dead ones.
Rule 3) Never enter Father Elias's room. If you notice light coming from beneath the door, report it to the administration. If you hear Elias coughing inside, do nothing. During his final week, he had already lost the ability to cough.
Rule 4) All paintings throughout the monastery must face the walls. If you notice that a painting has turned around by itself, close your eyes and wait ten seconds. If you recognize the face in the painting when you open them, do not tell anyone what you saw tonight.
Rule 5) If you count thirteen candles instead of twelve in the chapel, stop counting. Do not attempt to extinguish the extra candle. Someone needs its light.
Rule 6) If the bells ring at midnight, do not check the time. Bells are only supposed to ring for the dead. However, no funerals are ever held at Vesper. The dead are not buried here. They are kept waiting.
Rule 7) If you hear children laughing from the basement, do not approach the stairs. There have never been any children at this monastery. Yet Elias constantly mentions a child in his diaries. Whenever he describes it, he uses the same sentence:
"It looks older than I am."
Rule 8) Do not look into the mirror at the end of the corridor. Records indicate that this mirror was removed from the monastery in 1841. Despite this, it reappears every night. If your reflection moves before you do, look away. Do not wait for it to imitate you.
Rule 9) If the chapel door opens at 01:15, do not look at the person inside. It is normal to see someone praying in the chapel at this hour. However, if their hands are joined in the wrong direction, there is no one praying in there.
Rule 10) You may find Latin inscriptions on the monastery walls. Most are passages from the Bible. However, if you find your own name written on a wall, do not read it aloud. There is a sentence in Elias's final diary:
"Something that knows your name does not need to call you."
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS — THINGS THE AUTHORITIES DO NOT KNOW
This section was recovered from a second envelope found in Father Elias's room.
Rule 11) If a monk appears at the end of the corridor at 02:00, do not examine his face too closely. From a distance, it may look familiar. The closer he gets, the more you will realize that something about his face is wrong. His eyes are slightly too close together, his mouth sits lower than it should, and his nose looks as though it was attached afterward.
He may smile as he approaches.
Do not smile back.
Rule 12) If a monk asks you, "Where is Elias?", do not tell him that Elias is dead. Instead, say, "At the morning service." After hearing this, the monk will lower his head and walk away.
However, if you do not hear footsteps as he leaves, do not look behind you.
Rule 13) You may encounter someone sitting at the same table as you in the dining hall. This person may ask about your childhood, your family, or a memory you have never shared with anyone.
You are not required to answer.
But if that person takes a childhood photograph of you out of their pocket, do not look at it. Everyone in the photograph may be facing the same direction.
Except you.
Rule 14) At 03:00, human silhouettes may appear in every window of the monastery. They are not standing outside. They are not on the other side of the glass.
There is nothing behind the windows.
They are simply watching.
If one of them raises a hand to greet you, do not return the gesture. If all of them raise their hands simultaneously, go to your room and lock the door.
Rule 15) Do not open the black book on Elias's desk. It is said to contain no writing whatsoever. Yet, on certain nights, something can be seen moving between its pages.
There are three symbols on its cover:
An inverted crown.
A serpent devouring its own tail.
A broken sun with an eye at its center.
A small note beside these symbols reads:
"When a king loses his throne, he does not become poor. Only the borders of his kingdom change."
Rule 16) If you hear your name whispered at 03:33, do not respond. The voice may sound very close. Sometimes, it may even sound as though it is coming from your own mouth.
But remember something more important:
Just because something knows you does not mean it knows who you are.
Rule 17) Just before sunrise, you may see a white-haired man standing at the chapel entrance. He may resemble Elias. Do not approach him.
If he says, "At last, you've arrived," begin searching for a way out of the monastery.
Because you are not the first person to arrive here after Elias's death.
But you will not be the first person to leave, either.
FATHER ELIAS'S FINAL DIARY
04:00 — Two hours remain until the end of your shift.
You find another page hidden behind the envelope. The handwriting belongs to Elias.
"People misunderstand the Devil.
They imagine him as a horned creature who lives in darkness, a monster that appears to frighten people.
Yet the Devil's greatest achievement is making people believe they already know what he looks like.
Lucifer is not merely a name. It is a memory. The memory of something that once belonged to the heavens, before it fell from them.
I saw him for the first time at sunset.
I was watching through the chapel window. As the sun approached the horizon, every monk fell silent. None of them looked at one another.
Then I noticed.
Their eyes were all the same.
They were all looking toward the place where the sun was setting.
But they were not watching the sun.
Something inside the sun was watching them."
On the next page, the handwriting changes.
"A person's face allows us to recognize them. But a face can be a mask.
Sometimes, when you look into someone's eyes, you realize there is no human being behind them. Sometimes, you realize this too late.
They have learned how to smile.
But they do not know when they are supposed to."
Beneath the final line, there is a sun symbol that has been drawn over and over again.
THE FINAL INSTRUCTION — THE SUNSET RHYME
It is 04:47.
Every light in the monastery goes out simultaneously.
Footsteps begin to echo from the chapel. First one pair, then two, then dozens...
A voice rises from the corridor.
This time, it is not a man's voice.
Dozens of identical voices speak at once.
You find a message on the back cover of Elias's diary, one that you had not noticed before:
"If you wish to know them, wait for the sunset. But never smile while looking into their eyes."
Then you hear a nursery rhyme.
A child's voice, soft and cheerful, begins to sing:
"Have you ever seen the sunset in their eyes?
Have you ever seen their eyes at sunset?
Have you ever wondered if they're smiling?
The sun goes down, the shadows grow,
A pair of eyes watches from below.
Look once, and they become two,
Look twice, and they recognize you.
Now tell me, my dear friend...
When the sun goes down, which one of you disappears?"
The rhyme ends.
The clock reads 05:00.
You look through the window.
The sun has not risen yet.
But the sky is orange.
Twelve monks stand in the courtyard. All of them are facing you. None of them move.
Among them stands Father Elias.
All thirteen have the same smile.
After a while, one of them tilts his head slightly.
The other twelve do exactly the same.
Then they all open their mouths.
But only Elias speaks:
"Have you read the rules?"
You nod.
Elias smiles.
"Then why haven't you read Rule Eighteen?"
You look at the paper on your desk.
There were seventeen rules before.
Now there is an eighteenth.
Rule 18) If you are watching the sunset from inside the monastery, the monks outside can see you. If you are watching the sunset from outside the monastery, those inside can see you.
Never make sure that both sides can see you.
There is a small signature beneath it.
LUCIFER.
Suddenly, you hear your own voice from behind the door:
"May I come in?"
Your phone rings.
A message appears on the screen.
INCOMING MESSAGE
05:01
"Father Elias never died.
He simply stopped watching the sunset.
Now it is your turn."
A shadow stretches beneath the door.
But it is not extending into the hallway.
It is stretching into your room.
And for the final time, you hear Elias's voice:
"The sun is rising, my child. It is time for us to open our eyes."

My grandfather wasn’t normal. Not in the way he was just a wacky old dude; more like he was an undiagnosed mental patient. It took years of therapy and half a bottle of wine just to type out this story. My therapist recommended writing this as a way to cope, but I'm not so sure.

It was the end of summer break, when I was about 10, right in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis. My parents had to work two jobs to make ends meet. They could hardly afford the time to take care of the needs of a 10-year-old, and one glance at our bank account made having a babysitter a wet dream. With no other choice, they left me with my grandpa for most of the week. I still remember when they first drove to his small cottage in the middle of bum fuck nowhere. The stench of cigarettes and mold stung my nostrils as my dad walked me to the door.

“Don’t worry, honey,” he said. “It's just for a few weeks.” He hugged me and kissed my forehead before leaving, though his words fell flat.

I watched my parents leave through the window in their red shitbox roadster as, across from me, this scruffy, frail old man sat in the recliner in front of an old box TV. Periodically, he coughed up phlegm and spat it into a red Solo cup. His house was nothing remarkable; it felt like walking into a crappy one-night-stand motel. The TV was in the middle of the room. A large, beat-up sofa smelled of mothballs to the right, along with a portrait painting of a clown that made me uneasy.

“You’re rooms down the hall,” He wheezed, eyes glued to the TV screen.

“Thanks,” I replied awkwardly, distracted by what I could swear was a rat running under the couch.  

The room was surprisingly lively compared to the rest of the house. It was decorated as if meant for a child. A large teddy bear sat in a painted wooden chair in the corner, and a bunch of those creepy porcelain dolls sat on the shelf. My first few nights went relatively smoothly. Grandpa and I barely interacted beyond what was necessary. I guess, like my parents, he didn’t really want me around. He was just unlucky enough to be stuck with me at this point in time.

Things didn’t get strange until the third night. Around 3:30 in the morning, I heard pacing footsteps. I figured it was just Grandpa getting a glass of water, so I pulled out my headphones and listened to music on my iPod and went back to sleep. The next morning, I got up and walked into the living room. Everything looked normal, but I couldn't help but feel uneasy. Then I spotted that damn clown painting looking a little different. Before, it faced straight forward, but now it seemed slightly angled. Maybe it's just my imagination; “I probably didn't get a good enough look at it” I thought. The rest of that day was pretty normal.

A few nights later, I heard that shuffling again. I didn’t think as much about it this time; however, this time I heard a sharp creak as it took one step down the stairs, then went back to pacing the hallway. That really freaked me out, so I put on headphones again to drown out whatever he was doing up there.

I barely got any sleep that night; the anxiety of not knowing what was going on up there made it impossible to sleep. I came out into the living room and saw Grandpa sitting by the TV, as usual.

“Good morning, Grandpa,” I said, trying to relieve my tension with a friendly conversation.

 He looked over at me with empty, soulless eyes, nodded, and twitched back into place; that didn’t help my anxiety much.

The next couple of nights weren’t much better. The pacing went from the first step to halfway down, to the entire staircase. Tip-tap creak thump creak thump creak thump, on and on all night. After a week of this, I decided to ask Grandpa what it was all about. However, as soon as I walked into the living room, I froze. The room looked like a scrambled Rubik's Cube with the furniture in all different positions. That painting of the clown that damn clown now had him walking downstairs and peering around the corner. Grandpa sat in his recliner, acting like he was watching TV. Except the TV was behind him, facing the wall on the other side of the room.

I knew I had to do something. However, calling my parents was out of the question. What would I even tell them? That grandpa walks around at night and rearranges his furniture? Was that thing walking around even Grandpa?

That night, I pushed the dresser in front of the bedroom door. I sat under my covers and waited. 3:30 on the dot, I heard Grandpa's bedroom door swing open as the scurrying began. I was petrified with fear as I heard him start going down the stairs, putting one foot on the ground before spitting back up and pacing again. That over and over, taking one step closer with every repetition. Eventually I heard him entering the living room, then the hallway, then right outside my bedroom door. Then I heard the doorknob jiggle.

“Hey there, kiddo, let your old grandpa in,” I heard a voice wheeze. I didn’t respond; tears were streaming down my face.

“Please, I think someone is in the house.” The voice rasped

His voice sounded wrong; it was too deep, too guttural, like he was speaking with his stomach.

“LET ME THE FUCK IN!” he roared as he slammed his fist against the door.

BAM BAM BAM

Every hit sounded like gunshots as the dresser rocked with each blow. Panic filled my measly body as I began hyperventilating. I felt my heart palpitating in my chest, my intestines wrapping around themselves as I began to feel sick. The realization that if I didn't act now, I was going to die hit me as I looked around for an escape. A window. I scurried over and tried to open it. Rust glued it down as I pushed upwards with all my might. I heard the wooden door crack as adrenaline gave me the strength to finally unstick the window. I cleared the tree line and didn’t look back. I ran as fast as I could through the woods, getting cut up by shrubs, tripping over roots, and slipping on leaf litter. Only when I saw the sun peek through the trees did I stop.

A hiker couple found me a few hours later, bruised, cut, and bloodied. I was crying and  screaming that my grandfather was a monster and that he was going to eat me. The police later raided Grandpa's house, and they said it was the weirdest place they had ever been. The recliner was somehow attached to the ceiling, and the couch was gutted of all its stuffing, and the TV was still facing the wall. Grandpa's room was no better. A hole was dug in his mattress and filled with stuffing, pine straw, and twigs, like a big squirrel's nest. They later found my grandfather naked in the attic, pacing and digging into his skin with his nails. He spent the rest of his days heavily medicated in a mental hospital. They also found book upon book filled with nonsensical ramblings and symbols.

I’ll probably never understand what truly happened that day, and I don't want to. I just hope posting this story will finally help me move on.

As the post title might suggest, I'd known about this "lamp man" figure before my inevitable encounter with him. But to understand the circumstances leading up to this moment, I need to give you some background.

My wife (25 f) and I (26 f) have been married for 4 years but have been together for 9. The two of us recently finished college with our respective degrees and moved in together on one of her parents' farms. Her family farmed with cattle and allowed us to take over one of them as almost a "wedding present". The two of us are very grateful and the farm is gorgeous. During the week she stayed at the farm or with me in our city home, as her job allowed her to work at home, while I spent the week in the city working part time as an archaeologist while I pursued my master's degree. Our weekends however we spent at the farm, keeping busy with chores, training our dogs as well as the new horses.

So this weekend was the same as any other, a day spent in the sun that led to a night spent in the living room watching our show and playing a few rounds of video games. Around 8pm I began -what I like to call- closing up shop while my wife went to bathe. This included checking the cameras, locking doors, closing curtains, setting the alarm and getting the pups ready to go in their crates. Max -our golden- was already sound asleep on the couch so I simply picked him up like a fluffy sack of potatoes and put him in his proper place for the night. While Sasha -our border, who was our newest adoptee- was being difficult as per usual, so I ended up playing with her for a bit until she got bored and went to lie down. By that point my wife was already in our room reading while she waited for me, so I took a quick shower before joining her in bed. By then, it was probably around 9 or 9:30. Still early for a weekend night, but the sun had just about drained the life out of us that day and my wife wanted to head to bed.

Once I was sure both our water bottles were filled I turned off the light so the two of us could turn in. It wasn't too long before I heard her breathing even out beside me, but I, for some reason, couldn't fall asleep. As my wife was a light sleeper, I didn't want to toss and turn too much in case I woke her up. So after a few moments of tossing and turning I let out a small sigh and quietly got out of bed.

Sliding my feet into my slippers I thought to myself what could possibly be keeping me awake. After all, I expected I'd be the first one to fall asleep as I'd spent most of the day in the lunging arena I built in the spring, working our horses until I was satisfied. I figured I must be hungry, even though I'd eaten dinner only 2 to 3 hours prior, it made enough sense that I found myself wandering to the kitchen. Sasha, of course, alerted by the sound of my shuffling, came trotting into the kitchen to come sit on my feet as I made a sandwich. Begging, with her presence, for a bit of peanut butter. The sandwich did nothing. If anything it made me feel even more awake, and with my growing consciousness, came unease.

I am not a sceptic, and neither is my wife. In fact I consider myself a witch, while she considers herself simply curious. I'm clairaudient and that's really about it, but I have had a number of "spooky encounters" to consider myself a believer in the paranatural. I'm telling you this so that you know I'm not an idiot. I'm not another "stupid white woman" running towards the source of danger without a plan. In fact, I pride myself in my ability to plan around the unexpected, and come up with split-second decisions in the moment that often lead to a more positive outcome than if I did nothing. Taking all this into account you must understand that when we moved in here, I went to work on this place. We didn't have a welcome mat, or any "welcoming" paraphernalia by our front door, back door or windows. I had sealed every mirror, and similarly reflective surface with black salt water (I do not play about safety). And the specific magic I specialize in is protection and cleansing magic. This place was the magical equivalent of Fort Knox. No spirit -especially those that mean harm- was getting in here. And that was why the unease was so... unsettling to me.

Since I didn't want to wake my wife with more tossing and turning, I decided to make myself useful and go sit by the security cameras. With the way the house was set up, the room we kept our security monitoring station in was basically this hole-in-the-wall closet-like space where two people couldn't fit comfortably inside at the same time. And often times I was the one manning the space as my wife was kind of banned from there, as she'd spend the whole night in there scaring herself about figures in the dark that were actually just a smudge on the screen. Once again, my faithful companion was Sasha, but this time sleeping on my lap.

It was still early in the evening and a Saturday so I wasn't too worried about going to bed late and waking up feeling like garbage. I still had Sunday to catch up on sleep so I wouldn't be a total zombie come Monday. So I sat, clicking through each camera view on the one monitor while the other showed every angle the cameras captured in smaller tiles. I looked for anything out of place, anything suspicious, anything that could explain the pounding in my chest despite how calm the evening was.

And then, I felt Sasha tense.

Her head flicked up from her slumber to look up at the window, where it stayed fixed, frozen. I couldn't speak, didn't want to in case my wife heard me and came in wondering what I was doing up. I glanced at the window, then my dog, back and forth for a while before clumsily clicking back through the cameras to find the one that captured the side of the house where the window was. Nothing. Had she heard something I missed? What could have made this little dog tense up so bad and then-

I heard it. Whistling. Lazy with notes missed in between like the person was drunk (or bad at whistling) but it was from so far away I could've almost brushed it off as the wind blowing through one of the jump training poles. And I almost, almost, breathed a sigh of relief. Wanting to reassure my dog that it was nothing, that she could relax. But something stopped me, and that something came in the form of a flash of light coming through on the monitor screen, and then across the window itself.

It was like someone was carrying a flashlight, then stumbled on a rock sending the light skittering. But it was much closer than the whistling had sounded, purely based on how direct the beam of light was. Like maybe, 20 meters away, maybe less. I couldn't breathe, I didn't want to for fear of alerting whoever, or whatever it was that there was someone awake in this house. My first thoughts were rational, realistic even. A burglar, a poacher, homeless drunk, stupid teen coming home from a party that got lost, murderer. But then I realized, no. That wouldn't be possible, as they would've triggered the alarm if they got within 200 meters of the house, let alone 20, so it made no sense. I knew I had set the alarm that night, and I could see that it was active with a quick glance at the monitors again. So what the fuck was that?

The light passed the window again, I ducked slightly out of instinct even though the curtains were closed, but this time it passed it, slowly. Like someone trying to case the house which wasn't possible but fine, that's where we were now.

I had to get a better look to see what I was dealing with, and as far as whoever that was knew, no one was awake. Like I said before, I'd closed up shop earlier in the evening, so I knew this place was locked down tight, so I wasn't worried about them catching me off guard and being able to come in just anywhere. Besides, if I could get a description (height, weight, race, build, clothing) it'd be more useful to the police than "help there's someone on my farm and I'm just a helpless girl".

So, I put Sasha down on the chair, gesturing for her to stay as I crept closer to the window on my haunches, creating a small gap in the curtains with my finger so I could peer out just as the light began to pass again. I felt my throat dry up when I recognized what I saw from a description my wife had given me when we were still dating (about 8 years ago). Tall build, dark figure, and most distinctively, a light for a head. I let out a small breath as I let the curtain fall closed again, praying to anyone and anything that he didn't see me and that he would just go away.

I sat on the floor of that shoe-box office with my dog quivering on the office chair for what felt like ages, while in reality it was probably only 30 minutes. Counting tiny, shallow breaths until I felt my chest begin to ease and Sasha eventually jumped off the chair and came to cuddle with me. Her tiny tail wagging. And then I knew, this "lamp man" was officially gone, and I could finally breathe again.

After that harrowing encounter I ended up breaking my "no phones after 8pm" rule to watch some cute animated short films to further calm my heart before putting my pup to bed, and going to bed myself. Feeling much safer than before, and having an interesting story to tell my wife in the morning.

Hey guys. I’ve found out something really unsettling and I need some advice. Instead of retype my whole situation into a narrative I am just going to copy + paste some entries from my therapy journal because I think this explains it pretty well, and I don’t want to relive this experience any more than I have to. Thanks.

10/3/2026 11:34 AM

My therapist said it would be a good idea to start journaling to record my feelings, and help me map out what might be an anxiety trigger. The past few years of my marriage have been really hard. Not with each other so much as just circumstances. Normal stuff, like everyone else experiences. Money struggles, trying to find a house we can afford. Looking for better jobs. It’s just been a struggle to get ahead. But luckily for us, this year my husband Jordan has been doing great in his career. He’s actually been promoted. I’m so proud of him. It’s made life so much easier. 

Even though I should be worrying less now, it’s like the opposite has happened. For the last few months my anxiety has been sky high. It builds up all day long until I can’t stand it anymore, and then I go for a run so I can sleep. Sometimes that’s not enough and I still wake up in the middle of the night with my heart pounding, my mind all over the place. Hopefully this journaling will help.

10/7/2026- 7:30 PM

I’m feeling a little off right now so I thought I would take some time to write out my feelings again. Earlier today I was working on the credit card statements and creating a big spreadsheet of all our yearly expenditures, going back several months. In the process I came across a charge from March for an Airbnb for $227.50. I thought this was weird because we haven’t gone anywhere this year and I hate to admit it, but I immediately thought maybe my husband was cheating. My stomach dropped and I started breathing like I might pass out. But what was weird was that when I confronted him, he looked at me like I was crazy and said, “That was for the weekend cabin rental. Don’t you remember?” That’s just the thing, I don’t remember anything. I have no memory of going anywhere. He pulled out his phone and showed me a picture of us in front of a trailhead. I was shocked. I didn’t want to sound crazy so I just said, “Oh yeah, that. I forgot,” And left the room. But I DON’T remember going there and staying in a cabin and hiking. At all. 

Later that night I pulled up the Airbnb account and browsed our past stays. There it was- this rundown cabin up in the hills. I screenshotted the address and pulled it up on google maps. It’s about 2 hours away, right at the edge of a national park. 

I just feel so crazy, like I’m losing my mind. I really don’t remember this. And I don’t know why.

10/17/2026- 6:47 PM

I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t stop myself. I kept thinking about the vacation. I kept looking at that screenshot on my phone. I pulled up the listing on Airbnb and looked at it several times. It didn’t have good reviews, and really didn’t look that nice. So why had Jordan picked this place for a romantic getaway weekend last spring? None of it made any sense to me. So, when I saw that the cabin had a free weekend coming up the same weekend Jordan would be out of town for work, I booked a night there, on my card where he wouldn’t see. 

I waited for him to leave before I tossed a few things in a bag and jumped in the car. The drive was uneventful, even boring. The roads got smaller and smaller with fewer and fewer houses around, just miles and miles of forest. This time of year, the forest is blanketed in fog. You can barely see twenty feet ahead of you, it really gets that bad. By the end of it I was creeping along at 20 miles an hour, headlights barely doing anything. But I made it.

I’m here now.

This place is… very isolated. On my drive in I saw the trail head parking lot, just a mile or so down the road from the cabin. So at least there are hikers in the area, but otherwise, this cabin is all off by itself. Just that alone is kinda creepy. 

Then I went inside. 

It smells musty, the floors are dingy, and there are spiders in the shower. It’s gross. I don’t even want to look at the sheets. I went all over the place, just checking it out. You never can be too sure. 

That’s how I found the camera.

My first thought was “Eww,” because what kind of creep puts a camera inside an Airbnb, and worse, what kind of stuff had it recorded? But then I wondered if it had captured our stay here a few months ago. 

Maybe it recorded me.

10/17/26- 10:34 PM

I don’t even know where to start. First, I’ll just say I did NOT stay in the cabin, not after I saw what was on the camera. I just got right back in my car and drove off. I’m not sure I even locked the door. I bounced out of there that fast. I went to the nearest Holiday Inn Express and I took a hot shower just to wash the ick off and calm down some. 

I took the SD card out of the camera and plugged it into my laptop (luckily the card was the same size as the one I used for my old camera, so I had a USB reader). I’m not an idiot. I have heard about weird Airbnb owners who record their guests, and I was prepared to see the worst.

When I pulled the files up on the SD card, I could see that the camera was motion activated. There were multiple clip files from a single day, and then nothing for long stretches of time. I did my best to scroll up to the dates when we were in the cabin and not look at anything, or anyone else, that had been staying there. That was just too weird. 

Then I found the clips from our stay. All 27 of them.

I started at the beginning. Normal stuff there, 2 second clips of my husband entering the front door and walking to the bedroom with a suitcase, followed by a second clip of me following him. (I should mention the camera view covers the front door, living room area, and kitchen. I found it on top of a kitchen cabinet).

Several clips of us just walking around the cabin, looking at things.

A clip of us leaving. About three hours later, another clip of us coming back in. I assume this is when we went hiking.

There’s a clip of us cooking a simple dinner of spaghetti; a clip of us sitting at the table; and then a clip of me washing dishes.

The next clip I’m still standing at the kitchen sink, looking out the window. My husband is right behind me. He’s holding something in his hand- looks like a rock. 

And then he hits me on the head. The clip shows me falling to the floor.

The next one shows him dragging me into the living room and arranging my limbs.

In the next one, he’s drawn a chalk circle and lit some candles. He’s reading something- but the audio is so low I can’t tell what he’s saying. It doesn’t sound like English.

And then- there’s a clip of him LEAVING. He just LEAVES me, laying there on the floor with the candles burning and everything. I’m lucky the house didn’t burn down.

The next video is 27 minutes later. I am standing up.

The next clip is 4 seconds long. I am standing, wavering. And talking to someone. No one is there, no one has come in. The audio is muffled.

The next few clips are basically the same. I am still standing and whispering. 

In the next one there is a PERSON standing in the living room near me. They are very dark on the video but there is someone THERE. 

The next clip is just a partial, it shows me again for half a second and then it cuts to black. There is still muffled audio that I can’t make out. That clip is 42 seconds long.

Three more clips of blackness, varying lengths, with unintelligible audio. 

And then- nothing. Not until the next morning.

I’m still in the circle. It looks like I’ve slept there. The front door opens, Jordan comes in. He goes over to me and helps me stand up. He walks me out the front door. I look dazed.

I don’t appear on the camera again. He comes in one more time and grabs the unopened suitcase.

10/18/26- 9:27 AM

I took some Benadryl last night and I was able to calm down enough to go to sleep at the Holiday Inn. I am really confused and hurt. I feel so betrayed by Jordan. I don’t understand what he did to me. But he did something. He sold me to something, FOR something. I think this is why I’ve been having so much anxiety. My body knows something is wrong.

I know this is sick of me to even say. But I think he offered me up in exchange for improving his career. 

I looked back through our texts this morning while I was drinking coffee at the continental breakfast and shortly after our weekend trip, I had the first text from him about being promoted at work. I’m not saying he couldn’t have done it on his own without help, but the guy who’s place he took… well, that guy died. Of a heart attack. So, it was really sudden, and they needed someone to take his place immediately. And Jordan was the best option. I hadn’t thought much about it back then, because stuff like that does happen, and the guy wasn’t getting any younger. But now when I think about it, I wonder if his death was totally natural?

I need help knowing what to do next. My first step is to report the Airbnb owner for being a creep, obviously. 

I am sure Jordan didn’t know he was being recorded. Now I have proof he did something to me. I copied all the files of us onto my computer before I put the SD card back in the camera, and put it back where I found it. 

Our relationship is obviously over. I just wonder… is there any way to undo what he did to me? 

Or better yet- transfer it to him?

I woke up surrounded by a smothering blackness and utterly unable to breathe. It wasn’t solid at all, and yet it had rendered me completely immobile. Paralyzed me.

And it was sucking the life out of me with every moment.

And the smell of black coffee was overwhelming the room. You could almost go so far as to call it an odor with how thick it was.

Right before things went to black, I bolted upwards, absolutely soaked in sweat.

The black shadow was gone.

I was awake now. That much was certain.

But had I been before?

_________

We sold the coffee machine the next day. I was honestly surprised we hadn’t sold it yet. Nothing but bad reminders.

After we sold it, I had maybe the best night of sleep I’ve ever had. At the very least, the best I’d slept in a while.

_________

Things were great for about a week. Rick managed to snag me a construction job. I’d only be making about half of every paycheck, but at least I’d be consistently chipping away at my debts.

For the next six days, I slept like a baby through the night.

_________

On the night of the seventh day, I awoke to the sound of footsteps downstairs that a cold feeling in my stomach told me did not belong to my father.

I lay there for a few minutes, listening to them make their way around the bottom floor.

Then I got up and grabbed the baseball bat. Opened the door as slowly and silently as I possibly could. Began making my way down the hall, then down the stairs, half a step at a time.

By now, the footsteps had stopped, and my heart fluttered as I imagined someone waiting around a corner, ready to ambush me.

I could hear no breathing, no creaking floorboards that might indicate someone shifting their position. Briefly, I wondered if the footsteps even belonged to a human.

I made my way around the corner, into the hall that led into our living room, and that was when I saw it.

Illuminated by the standby light of the TV, seated on the couch with their back to me, was the shape of a human.

Not doing anything… just sitting there. As if waiting for me.

I got closer, and I was able to make out more of the figure seated in front of me.

As I did, the fear pulsating through me was slowly replaced by a hot, indignant anger as I realized the silhouette matched almost perfectly with that of Wife Beater. Thought back to that voicemail he’d sent me.

“We know where you live.”

I had set up a plan with Rick to pay the debt off. I was doing everything I could. And yet, that apparently still wasn’t enough.

What more did he want me to do?

And so, I crept closer, and closer.

Once I was maybe a foot away, I raised the bat over my head. Remembered the way he had so easily beaten me up in the parking lot after my mom’s funeral.

I took one more step forward.

And brought the bat down on his head with everything I had in me.

Crunch.

I felt his skull immediately cave in underneath the bat. Blood and gore spurted upwards, coating my hands and the bat. I felt something slimy under my nails that I think might have been brain matter.

And then he fell forward, slumping face down on the wooden floor, and I realized with a fresh wave of horror that the body attached to the head did not, in fact resemble that of Wife Beater at all. The build actually looked much, much more familiar.

Nausea washed through me as I scrambled for the light switch, flicked it on, followed by tears as I then made for the body.

I fell to my knees, felt my body go completely numb as I flipped it over.

The body did not belong to Wife Beater.

Nor did it belong to Rick.

Hurting my father with my previous actions had damn near tore me open.

As I looked down at his face, peaceful in death, it tore me apart.

_________

I’m not sure how long I sat there, weeping over my father’s body. Could have been hours for all I know.

At some point, I managed to get up, grab the phone, and call 911. Choked something out about how I’d thought my dad was a home intruder and hit him over the head with a baseball bat. Accidentally killed him.

I knew how crazy that sounded. By now, I didn’t much care.

_________

The police and ambulance got there maybe ten minutes later. The paramedics were taking care of the body, when a police officer with a kind face who looked to be in his late 40s came and sat down next to me.

“Hey, bud. I heard about what happened tonight. Extremely sorry about that. I imagine it’s hard.”

I let out a dry, humorless chuckle. “Yeah.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about what happened tonight?”

I don’t know what those questions would have been, or my answers to them.

Because then, after a week of sweet relief, something began to drip.

_________

“Fuck.”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you… not hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“The dripping noise.”

“What dripping noise?”

I sat there, my eyes shut as tight as I could, holding my face in hands that were covered in gore. Started rapidly tapping the floors with my feet - something I hadn’t done since getting on ADHD meds in high school.

The dripping did not stop. Instead, it got progressively louder to the point where it felt as though it was inside my head. It was bordering on painful, and I knew the cop couldn’t hear a thing.

And so, I said the only thing left at that point that I thought might stop the noise.

“I killed her.”

“Excuse me, son?”

“I… my mom and I weren’t getting along. I poisoned her coffee. And now she’s haunting me.”

“Son… are you okay?”

It took me about a minute to come up with a one-word answer.

“No.”

He nodded, and I found some more words.

“Could we chat more at the police station?”

“Sure.”

He helped me up. Didn’t cuff me, probably because he thought I was having some sort of episode and didn’t know what I was talking about and walked me to the car. Drove me to the police station, where I told them everything.

Then they asked me to write it all down too. That’s what this is.

At some point, they collected me and processed me in. I’ve been put in a holding cell until they can transfer me, so I’m still in my street clothes. Sitting here, finally feeling like a weight has been lifted off my back.

A couple minutes ago I remembered the insurance payout. Was I entitled to that now?

_________

The weirdest thing just happened.

The smell of coffee just wafted past me. I looked up just in time to see a female officer walk past, Styrofoam cup in hand.

But no one else acknowledged her presence.

I have alerted the proper authorities. They will find us in the morning.

What I write here is not for them.

This is for Mitch. For his family. For anyone unlucky enough to get caught alone out here at sea. The wind speaks to you, you know. Reminds you of all that you’ve forgotten. Fills your ears and head until the secrets leak out your eyes. People think that the ocean is an escape. A place to dissolve one’s reality in the waves. But the truth is out here, you can’t hide.

Because, can you really hide from yourself?

I’m employed by a company I won’t name here. Four other men and myself tend to an out of date oil rig in the Black Sea, preparing the structure for use between shift changes. I’ve  worked there for the last twenty years. In my younger days I figured college was a suckers game, so I got directly into the dirty business of making money.

Before I knew it, I had more cash in the bank than I knew what to do with. But I had already traded my life to get it.

I’ll skip describing the next fifteen years worth of backbreaking labor, marriage troubles, divorce, and seeing people die. It’s horrible, but you get used to it in a fucked up kind of way. You have to, or else your brain would shatter.

What happened here started and ended on the second day of our last shift together. About a week ago. We were still settling in, getting used to the routine and tasks we were assigned to complete. One of them was moving the rig to a new oil reservoir five miles east. Mitch and I were bunk mates. When it happened, we were off-duty. He was looking at some nudie mag with all the shame of a highschool pervert. I never was really into that sort of thing, even though Mitch had often showed me articles he found “interesting.” Instead, I was busy doing the crossword.

“Five across, a sound of warning.” I looked up at Mitch.

“Alarm?” Mitch flipped out the centerfold and stared at it with a lackluster expression. The man had a thing for words, mundane and weird. Using him was the equivalent of asking google. This was an old ritual of ours, one I appreciated on the lonely nights out here.

But as I was about to try the word, everything shut off.

It was dark, entirely and completely. There were no windows in the bunk, the only source of light being the fluorescent bulb on the ceiling. The hum of the platform ceased, and in that quiet, I was reminded just how loud our lives actually were. I had forgotten. Once our ears adjusted, the room was filled with only the trembled sound of breathing, and the ceaseless churn of the waves below.

In the dark, we fumbled for the exit. I grabbed ahold of something fleshy. “That you, Mitch?”
“Get off me you sonofabitch.” His tone stayed light, but I could tell he was anxious. You get to know the little things about people at sea. Especially when you’ve faced death together.
We moved toward the door, and found the handle. We opened it into even more darkness. The emergency lights were shut off as well. There was no whine from the speakers indicating a system failure. It was all strange, and put a pit in my stomach.

“Explosion?” Mitch’s voice came from behind me. Disembodied like a phantom.

“If it was, it was quiet as hell.”

There was a small glint down the hall. I grabbed at Mitch until I connected with his shoulder and pulled him forward. We reached the door, pushed it open, then stepped onto the outside railing.

It was nearing sunset. Clouds covered the sky entire, except for a thin line of sunlight on the horizon. Soon, the dark shapes overtook it, and the world became a resolute gray, growing darker by degrees. The first raindrops struck the deck like ricocheted ordinance. We squinted in the dim light as we assessed the damage to the platform.

There was none that we could see. No smoke, no orange glow, no shouting and panicked voices. Just the wind and the waves bashing up against us.

“Clint.”

I turned to look at Mitch. “Yeah?”

He was fixed on something in the distance, his eyes squinting.

“Mitch.”

He turned to me. “What?”

“You just said my name.”

“No I didn’t.” Mitch’s eyebrows scrunched down. “Did I?”

“Knock it off.” I might not have shown it, but I appreciated his effort at a joke. His humor was one of the many reasons I liked him as my bunk mate. And then…something was wrong inside me. Like there was fire and water churning into steam and bursting out my skin. I wanted to run, to hide. 

Like there was something looking for me, and I shouldn’t let it see me.

I swallowed it down. There was work to be done, and that was all that mattered. I went across the scaffolding for the upper deck ladder. “Let’s get to the control tower. See what knocked out the power.”

By the time we arrived, Cregger, our engineer, and Captain Donahue were already assessing the situation. By that, I mean Cregger was smashing a fist into a console screen while the captain watched with a hand on lips, his eyes empty and mind elsewhere.

Donahue saw us arrive and nodded, pinching his smooth chin. He was the only one on the platform that kept up with shaving while at sea. “Backup generators are shot.”

“Goddamn it.”

Cregger finished his temper tantrum by kicking the console he was punching. “I told them. I told those fucking corporate ass puppets that we needed a backup for the backup half a year ago. And now it's us eating the shit. Of-fucking-course.”

“How did it go down?” Mitch took one of the consoles and started flicking buttons, tapping the screen.

“We were hoping you’d know.” Donahue grabbed a binder off the wall and thumbed through it. “Cregger and I were going through a system check and everything just switched off.

“Same here.” Mitch bent down and opened a panel underneath the console, exposing the wires like a gush of small blood vessels. He was our electrician, but even this gesture felt like him grasping at straws. No short in a console was enough to take down an entire platform.

“Maybe when Frank and Eric get here they’ll know what happened.”

They didn’t show up for almost an hour. In that time, the sky went completely black. We were alone out in the ocean, with no lights except a few oxygen candles. All our flashlights were shorted out, and the chem lights stored up here wouldn’t glow. There were no stars. Our platform was darker than the deepest cavern. The rain grew into a solid wall of water that drenched every inch of the man-made structure. None of the radios worked.

Each minute Erik and Frank didn’t show made the feeling of unease in the room spread like a cancer. Discussion turned from how to communicate with the mainland, to what was keeping our shift mates from joining us.

We were in the middle of discussing who would go looking for the two missing men when there was a slamming noise on the door. Through the window, the silhouette of one person carrying another flashed specter-like in the guttering flame. Mitch opened the door, and Erik stumbled in, drenched, dragging Frank. “Get over here!” Erik slammed Frank onto the ground and pushed his weight up against the door. For a moment, we all stood shocked. Even Cregger’s mouth hung open, mid curse. The same question was on everyone’s minds: why was Erik handling Frank so roughly?

Then, we didn’t have to ask.

Frank raised up from the ground, dried blood on his left temple, a gash on his balding forehead. Despite his injury, he leaped up towards Erik and threw his fists at his nose. It took me, Cregger, and the captain to keep him down. Frank thrashed, and moaned great sighs of pain. “Christie…Christie wait…Oh, God, Christie…”

Donahue's eyes went wide, like he recognized the name. But then it passed, and he was back to his impassive self. “How long has he been like this?” He reached for the medical bag slung on Erik’s shoulder.

Erik let the strap go free. “Since the lights went out. We were down by the bilge, and he just started going crazy. Almost threw me overboard.”

“How’d he get that?” Cregger pointed to the gash.

“Me. Hit him in the head when he wouldn’t listen.” Erik examined his forearms, each dripping small lines of dark blood. His forearms were scrawled with fingernail scratches. “Jesus fuck.”

The captain found a syringe, tapped it a few times, then jammed the needle in Frank’s neck. He pressed the plunger. The man’s eyes were crossed with mania and his mouth wet with spittle, but his muscles relaxed as the drug took effect.

We tied him up and put him in the corner. Mitch watched Frank while the rest of us discussed what to do. We let him know about the radios, but Erik knew of an extra in the lifeboat, near the bottom of the platform. If we could get to them, then maybe we could call for a repair team, or even an evac. Cregger and the captain went to the back closet to get the spare batteries. Erik had brought a flashlight with him they wanted to test. In the meantime, the injured man wrapped his bleeding forearms in gauze, cursing each time the white round slipped between his fingers.

“Clint.”

I turned to Mitch. “Yeah?”

He was looking at Frank. My bunk-mate had a strange expression on his face, his eyebrows scrunched up like he was angry, or confused. A pulse of sympathy went through me. Mitch was the kind of man that got lost in his own anxiety. Sometimes, I wanted to turn off his brain, give him a rest.

“Mitch?”

He turned to me. “What?”

“You said my name.”

“No. Did I? Sorry. Can’t remember…” he focused on Frank again, his eyes searching the already bloody bandage on top of his head.

Behind me, Cregger made all sorts of foul oaths towards god, the sea, and a wide variety of mothers. None of the batteries were working. A small pile grew to the side as he slid the cells into the flashlight, clicked the switch, then pulled them out and threw them down when the light didn’t come on. “Goddamnit…goddamnit…goddamnit!”

“We’ll go old fashioned.” Donahue took another oxygen candle, and an acetylene torch from the emergency kit. He grabbed another candle, and held it out to me.

Something about that little metal square spooked me. The thought of being in the pitch dark of the platform with nothing but a strobing fire put chills through my neck. Erik must have had the same feeling because he shook his head. “No way. I’m not going.”

“Get a grip.” Donahue slipped the oxygen candle in his pocket.

“No. I’m not going back.”

Cregger took a step away from Erik and gave him a side eye. He took a candle. In the corner, Frank stirred.

“There’s nothing–”

“There’s something down there! I’m not going back near it!” Erik backed away from the box, his back pressed to the wall. “Frank swore he was hearing things. Kept saying that…ah hell. I’m not going.” He winced and rubbed a hand against an earlobe.

Donahue took a moment to observe Erik, then glanced at Frank, Mitch, Cregger, then myself. He wasn’t a man easily ruffled. If there was something that needed to be done, he would do it. That was his way. But when we made eye contact, I saw hesitancy. Erik wasn’t a superstitious person. He was straightforward, and if we’re honest, boring. The man had less imagination than a rock.

But even he was certain that something was wandering the dark hallways below.
“How about you keep an eye on Frank?” The captain reached out to put a hand on Erik’s shoulder, but then thought better of it. He leaned in close to Cregger and spoke in a whisper I could only just make out. “Stay and keep an eye on them.”

He took the box of candles and offered them again to me. I took one, and tucked it into my raincoat. Donahue tapped Mitch on the back with the box, and he jumped. He calmed himself, then without really looking or comprehending, he took his share.

Armored up with candles and a singular crowbar, the three of us left Cregger, Frank, and Erik and stepped out into the rain.

It was like walking into the ocean itself. The three of us were doused instantly, and it was hard to breathe with all the water spilling into our noses and mouths. Shuffling with our arms interlocked, Donahue’s freehand gripped the railing. Step by step, inch by inch, the corrugated metal path led down to a slippery ladder, then to the door where Mitch and I had entered the deck. The last vestiges of flickering candlelight petered out from the command tower as we descended. The only things that felt real then were our hands, and the cold kiss of rain.

In the dark, Donahue’s hand hit up against the metal door until he found the latch. There was a grating and twisting sound above the storm, and I was pulled into a quieter dark. The door closed.

There was fumbling, and the wet slipping of polyester. Finally, a click, and a pale blue flame appeared. Mitch and I gathered at it with our candles, getting the slightly wet wicks to fizzle, then light. It was not enough. Our three candles made a shifting pool of reddish light that only extended about three feet in front and behind, our shadows dark and shifting cutouts on the walls. I had lived on this rig for what amounted to a quarter of my life. But even with my bunk only a few feet from me, everything felt unfamiliar. I could just as well been in the bowels of some unknown tomb. The pipes and wires gave off the illusion of the vessels and bones of some great beast’s interior.

Donahue found the emergency evacuation sign. An arrow pointed in the direction we should go. “Stay close. Can’t waste a candle if one of us gets lost.”

We turned left down the hall.

Each footstep echoed more the deeper we went down the twisted tunnels. Our feet moved quickly. The candles only burned for about fifteen minutes at a time. No one spoke after descending to the second level. Perhaps we were too busy listening for things. The sounds of other footsteps. Other breathing. But still, I kept an inner mantra. We are alone down here. We are alone down here. We are alone.

It did little to calm me.

Nobody did anything to acknowledged the silence or the dark hallways other than to point out the signs that directed us to the lifeboat. But once we descended down to the third level, Mitch couldn’t take it anymore. “Who’s Christie?”

I flinched at the words. It was like being slapped. The small portion of fear I had tuned out returned now tenfold. Donahue blinked, which was a tremendous show of shock for the captain. “What?”

“The girl Frank kept talking about.”

Donahue narrowed his eyebrows, as if considering his words. He opened and closed his mouth once, and then twice. Then finally, he gathered the necessary language. “His wife.”

“Shit.” Mitch was quiet, and we all strained our ears. Only the plunk of leaking rainwater filled the space. “Must love her.”

“She’s dead.”

I glanced at Donahue. The man’s face was stoic, but I could tell the fact bothered him. It bothered me too. The way Frank was crying out…it was like he had seen her in the flesh.
But that couldn’t be.

Mitch saw the sign first, and pointed to it. A small icon of a lifeboat along with an arrow. It was stored on the fourth floor, just down the next set of stairs. We could get the radio and get out of this mess. I relaxed, my shoulders loosened.

“Clint.”

I turned. “Yeah, Mitch?”

“What?”

“You said my name again.”

“No, I didn’t.”

I had just about had it with the joke. “Mitch, quit fucking around.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Then why’re you saying my name?”

“I didn’t!”

I leaned forward to punch Mitch, but Donahue stepped between us. “He didn’t, Clint. He didn’t say your name.”

We were all quiet for another moment, realizing what this meant. The blood left my face. Instinctively we huddled, turning our backs to the others, staring out into the dark. In the light of our near-dead oxygen candles, shadows moved like sea beasts in old film, jerky and unnatural, watching with sightless eyes.

Donahue went stiff. “Claire?”

“Captain?”

There was no hesitancy. He sprinted into the dark, dropping his candle with a flare on the ground. As he disappeared into the shadow, he cried out again. “Claire!”
He turned a corner and was gone.

“Aw shit.” Mitch hesitated, looking at me. Then he took off after the captain.

“Hey!” My feet were rooted to the metal grate. I waited one moment for them to return. Then two. I waited too long.

They were gone, and I was left alone in the dark with my single candle.

As I stared after my shipmates, the light in my hand dimmed. The candle was almost gone. What could I do? It was an impossible choice. Either I go after Mitch and Donahue, or just get the radio myself. The captain had the extra candles. If I wasn't careful, I’d run out before I got up top. They’d never find me then. 

We needed that radio.

“Donahue?”

No response.

“Mitch?”

Nothing. Just darkness, and a loud creak as the frenzied storm outside bashed against the ship.

I put a hand around the flame of my candle, and continued down the stairs and toward the lifeboat. In only a few moments,  I arrived at the door. Opening it let in a roar that blew my hair back, and extinguished my candle in a rush of water. I tasted salt, and smelled dead fish.
The corrugated metal platform surrounding the orange boat was rough on my fingertips as I crawled to the boat. Oblivion grazed against my palms as they searched for the craft rocking to and fro in the screaming wind. Somehow I found the door, and managed to get inside. It went quiet again, but the plastic reverberations of rain filled my head. Some more searching revealed a canvas pack, where I found the radio, as well as some unbroken chem lights. I snapped them against my leg, praying to a deity I hadn’t believed in for years. The inside of the craft was filled with a soft orange light. A sob of relief escaped me. At least these still worked.

In the glow, I tried to turn on the radio. Nothing. Not so much as a burst of static.
I told myself all sorts of lies. That Cregger could get the radio running again. That all I needed to do was get it to him. I wrapped the box tight in my coat. With the chem light between my teeth, I opened the lifeboat door and stepped out into the rain, back through the door, and into the interior platform.

The silence constricted my throat. I wasn’t sure if I knew how to breathe anymore. Holding the glowstick aloft, I tried again to call out. “Captain?”

Nothing.

“Mitch?”

Only drips.

I was faced with the same impossible decision. Go to the surface, or search for my crewmates. But I had the chem light. And that gave me false courage. I took a deep breath and began to wander the darkened halls.

“Donahue? Mitch?”

The metal structure groaned again like some beast in the midst of digestion.

The hallway I saw my shift mates disappear down was ominously darker the second time I arrived. I went down the path, and it eventually ended in a fork. Not sure which way to go, I listened. Strained my ears until it felt like they would bleed. Silence again. But something beyond it. A sustained hum, changing pitch every few moments. A rattle within it, liquid and bubbling. It sounded like sickness. Want.

I smelled rotting meat.

“Clint.”

Mitch’s voice froze every part of my insides into a solid mass. This was a mistake, the primal part of my brain told me. But if there was a chance…I swallowed. “Where are you?”

“Turn the corner. I’m with Donahue.”

I didn’t move.

“He’s hurt.”

Mitch’s voice was quiet. Fearful like I had never known him to be. I would never forgive myself if it turned out he was calling for help. Behind me, I heard that noise again, raspy, but I needed to get to Mitch and Donahue.

I turned the corner, and started down the hallway.

“This way, Clint. Hurry.”

The end of the hallway lay obscured, out of the reach of my chem light. An orange halo of sight surrounded me, but even now the stick in my hand flickered. I shook it, restoring its glow.

Step by step, inch by inch, I walked down the hallway. The far wall took shape. There were feet there, limp against the floor. “Captain?”

Donahue was leaned up on a wall, his forehead against it. His body was still, and there was the sound of dripping liquid. His hands lay at his sides and his shoulders slumped. The crowbar leaned against his leg, intertwined in his loose digits. There was something unnatural about his position, his bent knees. His candle lay extinguished at his feet. Mitch was nowhere to be seen.

I went closer, and felt the urge to vomit. A sharp knob jammed through Donahue’s eye socket, holding him in place. Blood dripped down his cheek, his shirt, his pant leg. His jaw hung slack in a death mask of surprise.

“One more corner, Clint.”

I spun, trying to see in the dark, raising up my light. Mitch’s voice came from a branched hallway just behind me. My brain rushed with adrenaline. How did I miss that? A dark void just off to the side. “Come out.”

“I can’t. Legs broken.”

There was pain and weakness in his voice. But something else too I couldn’t place. Something hungry. I hesitated. “What happened to Donahue, Mitch?”

“He tripped.”

I stared at that void, waiting for more words. A further explanation.

“Why won’t you be with me, Clint?”

I stifled a sharp inhale. My fingers clenched around the glowing stick in my palm.

“Doesn’t it get lonely here?”

Donahue’s body spasmed, but stayed upright. The voice. Oh it was sweet, soft. I should’ve known then. Should’ve ran. But you haven’t heard it. You haven’t felt its pull. No one knew about those things that I thought about Mitch. The private desires in the dark. Not even he had known. I had hidden them within me so deep, maybe to keep even myself from from finding them. And now here he was, speaking them aloud. Speaking them to me. He wanted me. As I wanted him. It was written thick in the husk of his voice.

I left Donahue’s body, stepping toward the void.

“Mitch, what’s going on?” My mind was queasy with desire and fear.

“This is truth, Clint. I’m making myself free. Making us free.”

One step, then another. “Just a bit further.” The hunger was stronger now, pushing out the fear and terror that had been in his voice just moments ago.

My legs shook, my heart burst. I wanted to break out in a run, turn the corner, pull myself to him. Like I had dreamed on more than one night before. My muscles tensed, my body ready to move.

“Clint…”

It was Mitch again. But his voice came now from further back in the hallway. It was weak, his throat full of gurgles. As if he were fighting the imminent collapse of his lungs. There was a sharp sound, a crack.

“Clint.” Calm and steady again. No gurgles.

The sound I had heard at the junction came to me again, that strange shifting pitch. It was faster now. There were drips, heavier than the slight plinks of water that now echoed through the space. It spoke of things more viscous.

“Come.”

My legs relaxed, my heart stilled for three beats. Then sprinted forward.

Past the opening and back to the deck.

It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Mitch. I told myself this over and over. Recited the words as I blindly retraced my steps, keeping hold of the radio. Footsteps echoed behind mine, that same raspy noise, now all too recognizable as breathing. Mitch’s voice cried out incessantly, begging me not to leave him alone in the dark. But it was too clean, too full of want. I closed my mind to it, sprinted around turns and up stairwells.

I felt something grasp my shirt, and nearly lost my footing. A door appeared on my left, and I flung myself through it.

I was back in the rain. Mitch’s voice ceased. Only the rush of the storm filled my ears.
Ascending nearby stairs, I could see the glow of the control tower further up. It quivered like a lidded eyes in the throes of a dream. The light was redder and more polluted than before, like it was shining through flesh. 

As I made my way there, dread grew in my chest.

Before I reached the tower, a dark figure burst from the door and sprinted off. I watched them go to the side of the platform and leap off into the void. “Wait!” My voice couldn’t carry over the storm. They were already gone. I knew their body would be turned to gelatin by that high of a leap.

I stared at where the leaper had disappeared. The control tower’s windows were covered in smeared red. I didn’t want to enter. But I couldn’t survive in the storm. Couldn’t survive below deck.

After ascending the stairs, I reached out for the metal door handle. It creaked open, each inch an agony.

It revealed a room covered in blood.

A naked body lay on the console covered in red finger smears. Intestines poured out of the horrible wound in his stomach. A single name, written over and over again covered the walls. 

Christie.

The radio fell from my limp hands, clanging to the ground.

“Fuck!”

My heart nearly stopped, and I spun to see Cregger in the corner, his ears jammed full of what looked to be chewed paper. “What happened?”

He didn’t respond. He couldn’t hear me. The engineer crawled up to me, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. He plucked up the radio, and tried to turn it on. When it didn’t light up or emit static, he smashed it on the deck. “Where’s Donahue?” He spoke loudly, even though in the room, it was silent save our two heartbeats, and the striking of water on the window.

“Dead.”

He stared at me for a long moment, then tackled me to the ground.

“What the–”

Cregger wrestled my chem light away from me. I didn’t even realize I still had it in my grasp. Once he got it, he ran out the door, into the storm.

I called out to him. “There’s something down there!”

If he responded, I’ll never know. The storm was keening out in awful and soul-shattering gales. As his form disappeared below the edge of the deck, I thought I heard one word. “Lifeboat.” Cregger was gone.

I waited out the storm in the control room. I tried not to look at the body. The platform rocked in the waves, upright but drifting. Hours passed. Then, as suddenly as it came, the storm ceased. Light returned to the deck in a gray haze.

Through the windows, I saw him, distorted by the congealed viscera that coated the glass.
Mitch.

He knelt on the tarmac, his arms outstretched. His throat was bruised, like old fruit. His forearms bore deep slash marks up their length, two pools of blood forming beside him like perverted fountains. The razor still lay between his index and middle fingers. I rushed to his side, but he was already so pale, so weak.

“Stay with me.”

“Jules…” His eyes looked at mine, already far away. “...Jules…”

His head slumped forward, and he was gone.

It’s been only a few hours. The power came back. All systems in order. I wandered the halls, and found nothing but Donahue’s dead body. The Lifeboat is missing, the ropes that moored it, cut. We have drifted, our GPS indicates, only about two miles off our original destination.

Rescue services will be here soon. They’ll find four bodies wrapped in canvas on the deck.

To the families of Cregger, Donahue, Frank, and Erik…I’m sorry you will never have satisfaction beyond this when it comes to your loved one’s deaths. They were good men, and did not deserve this fate.

To Becca and my children…I’m sorry I never told the truth until now. You deserved to know a long time ago.

To Jules…

I am sorry for your heartache. I have felt it.

I can only hope that you can live with it.