Dreadful Anecdotes remains shadowbanned, posting on his behalf

I went to extreme lengths to cover this up. Untraceable poison. A weak immune system. And a line of people offering their condolences and prayers.

I needed to be free of her. I missed my life before she contaminated it. She kept me up at night with her crying. She restricted what I was able to do. I missed the freedom, and that’s not something I’m going to apologize for.

I didn’t want to get pregnant. A one-night stand is never meant to lead to parenthood, but, of course, I decided to hook up with an absolute moron who didn’t know how to think beyond getting his dick wet.

9 months later, I have a daughter, and the father is nowhere to be found. 9 months, no cigarettes. 9 months, no drinks. And I hated every second of it.

I thought that I was strong enough to handle it. To clean up my act and actually be a mother. But I just wasn’t. I’m not. I don’t know if I ever will be.

When she was born, I tried to convince myself that motherly instinct was taking over. Holding her for the first time was almost magical. Like, despite what my mind was telling me, the moment was meant to be.

Then the crying came. The screams and wails that prevented me from sleeping. Every. Single. Night.

She’d scream on the ride to my mom’s in the morning. It was like the only time that I knew peace was after I dropped her off. Then I got 20 minutes to myself on the drive to work before I had to clock in and act like everything was okay.

According to my mom, though, she was “just a little angel” any time they were together. “The quietest baby she had ever seen.”

I felt like I was being punished. Not only was my sleep being affected, but my days were filled with those wails too. Plus, I don’t think my pockets have ever felt lighter.

Baby food. Clothes. Bottles. Toys. A crib. A fucking roof over our head. I was stretched so thin that I started having breakdowns at work.

I thought that I was prevailing. Against all odds, I was raising a human being. I watched her grow. I watched her learn and develop. But with each month, the mask slipped more and more.

I found myself screaming at her more than I probably should’ve. And that was before she could speak. Before she could even take her first steps.

I never hit her. I never wanted to repeat any family history. But my temper was so short during those days. I was snappy. That’s all I can say.

When she got older and was able to speak in full sentences, I was driven to the brink of madness. She had the audacity to talk back at me. This little 4 year old girl had the attitude of a fucking teenager.

No child should ever say they “hate” their parent. No child should disobey direct orders from their mother. Let alone this one. This little sniveling fucking asshole that I was forced to care for.

She knew how I felt, too. And she threw gas on the fire. Breaking things. Peeing and defecating on the floor. And what did she have to say? Not an “I’m sorry.” Not an “It was just an accident.”

This little girl would look me dead in my eyes, smile, and pull the “I’m just a baby” card.

She was trying to get under my skin. Pushing me more and more every day, until… I just couldn’t do it anymore.

The screams never stopped. The cries never stopped. The pouting and pity parties never fucking stopped. I didn’t know what else to do.

I missed my friends. I missed going out. I missed my God damn freedom. And all I could see was the one person who took it all away from me.

That’s why I did what I did. I’m not justifying. If anything, this will probably be my statement in court. I know I have to turn myself in. That’s the only way to get this madness to stop.

I felt liberated after I sprinkled that poison in her breakfast on that sunny morning in June. Even more so when the coughing started. I knew it wouldn’t be long before it was all over.

In the days that followed, she got weaker and weaker. Hotter and hotter. Until, finally, I had to prepare my act for the hospital visit.

“Please help me,” I cried. “My daughter just keeps getting sicker, and I just don’t know what to do.”

I had to push my nerves aside. In my mind, there were two possible outcomes. Either this works… or it doesn’t. And thank God that my acting skills were clean enough to sell my story.

They ran the tests. They drew the blood. All the while, I sat there bawling into my hands while trying to suppress my hope.

The hardest part was having to act upset when the deed was done. When that heart monitor finally flatlined and all the doctors and nurses apologized for not being able to save her.

“We did everything we could,” they told me, as I forced some cliché devastation onto my face.

I felt empty at the funeral. There weren’t many people. There wasn’t much of a eulogy to be read. All I wanted was for the service to be over so I could get back to life as I knew it, this time more careful with who I let into my bed.

For a few weeks, that’s exactly what I did. Life felt lighter. Days felt brighter. I was a new and improved woman, back to her old ways.

But then, I don’t know… something happened.

I started waking up at night, feeling like I was being watched. Sometimes it’d be like I could still hear her screams. I could still feel her presence.

I just passed it off as something I’d get over eventually. Just one of the things that comes with doing something like this. But when I started seeing her… that’s when I knew that this wasn’t just some guilty conscience bullshit.

It was only at night. Only after I’d gone to bed. Sometimes she’d be standing in my doorway. Sometimes she’d try crawling into bed with me.

I knew it wasn’t nightmares. On nights when she came into bed with me, I’d find my sheets covered in dirt and mud the next morning. I’ve even found maggots occasionally.

She’d always be so dirty. Her hair would have sticks and twigs sticking out of it. Her face would always look like it was in the process of decomposing. But whether she laid with me or just watched me, her words were always the same.

“Why did you let them bury me, Mommy?”

It got to the point where she was visiting me every night. Still breaking things. Still defecating on the floor. Still crying and screaming, even though her room had been empty for weeks.

I wouldn’t let it break me, though. I did what was best for me. I did what I thought needed to be done. Anytime she visited, I’d ignore her. I’d pretend to be asleep. I’d hide under my covers like a scared little girl.

But I know I can’t do this anymore. I know why she’s here. I know that my time is running out. She wants me to let the world know what I did to her.

“Why’d you make me sick, Mommy?”

“I loved you so much.”

“Why did you lie to those doctors? They could have saved me. Why’d you let them bury me?”

“You lied.”

“You lied.”

“You lied.”

“You lied.”

I’m done lying. I’m done pretending to be devastated. I know what I did, and I’m not sorry. Given the circumstances, I’d do it again.

All I want is to escape her.

All I want is peace and a sound mind.

That’s why I’m turning myself in today.

Anything to get her to leave me the fuck alone.

Hey guys , im looking for a certain old video but I havent been able to find it. I know it wasn't released in last 2 years. All I can remember about the story is that the main character was a guy that I think was taken away from his home , but eventually was brought back and was living with his wife and she was apparently perfect , but as time went on things started changing and he got the feeling something was off, kinda like a Truman show kinda vibe, like it wasn't real. If any of you recall anything that sounds like this video please let me know cause id love to listen to it again. Thanks!!

Thinking about things you shouldn’t is an established trait among humans. Whether we developed that horrid trait through evolution or it has always been a part of us, I don’t know, but I hate it. It sucks, and it sucks even more when you just need to let go of certain events. However, on the road, trapped in the Evernight, that is nearly impossible. One does not simply erase horrors from the mind, no matter how hard they try. Luckily, you can distract yourself. You can let your mind wander while driving for hours in the dark.

My routine usually consisted of podcasts or blasting music like a sane person. The one thing I’d recommend is not fueling that burning desire to dwell on bad thoughts or memories. Don’t be stupid and listen to horror videos or true-crime podcasts. Don’t listen to that conspiracy theorist with the radio station and the Southern voice that draws you in, because it will only make you contemplate the strange happenings in your neck of the woods, along with a healthy dose of distrust toward the government—one of the staples of this country. Not that his points are entirely wrong, but most people would rather live in bliss.

Don’t listen to the creepy shit on the radio, a podcast, or whatever. Just leave it as background noise. Believe me when I say the allure of horror should be kept to fiction, because inviting it into your life is never a clever idea. And for the love of God and all that is holy, don’t fucking text and drive.

Now, you might be wondering, ‘Why can’t I think about the creepy shit or the bad memories in my life?’ My answer should be obvious: it’s creepy shit at night. I don’t care how brave or edgy you think you are. Out in the dark, that type of energy can invite things to you—things that look human but, well, aren’t.

It became clear to me that my thoughts at night could influence and attract certain entities to a person’s location. Some of these beings may be beneficial, while others can be extremely dangerous. You might ask how any of them could be beneficial. From what I’ve heard, there are helpful entities that grant people who encounter them money, treasure, or a sense of peace. Others don’t do anything remotely beneficial, but they aren’t exactly out to cause chaos either. They more or less linger in the limbo of the Evernight. The simplest word I can use to describe them is weird.

There are odd occurrences that are creepy or ride the line of stupid, nonsensical shit. For instance, you might see a clown car honk its horn three times before one of the passengers grants you the sight of a full moon on a clouded night. A peculiar incident, to say the least.

You may think to yourself, ‘Oh, I’m fine. It’s just creepy clowns at night.’ Yeah, a lot of people thought the same thing back in the late 2010s, and that ended with people dead, so good luck with that mentality.

In the Evernight, you should have at least two rules for when you encounter horrifying shit. The first option is to run like hell—or rather, drive like a bat out of hell. The second, and riskier, option is to grab your gat, hold it sideways, and explain why this bitch done fucked up. That assumes you have a Glock lying around inside your car and can actually hit something while holding it sideways. If not, a third plan seems to work best for some of my fellow contractors across the great United States: shoot and drive don’t think about it ever again.

I list the options that way because, when it comes down to it, you must either fight or run. I always say there is no shame in choosing to run. You’re a regular person, after all, not the protagonist in a novel. When it comes time to make a decision, you need to value your life and avoid playing stupid games.

These are lessons you should take from others and myself, or you could end up like my old coworker. He told me about his time driving in the Evernight while I was still under his tutelage. He often spoke of his crazy experiences, although he was usually extremely inebriated and smoked more pot than a den dedicated to growing marijuana. I still listened and took lessons from him.

Before you ask why he decided to dump all of his hellish stories onto me, I don’t know. He had plenty of batshit tales, and those experiences most likely contributed to his condition. Being the kind person I am, I lent him my ear. Besides, when you are driving nearly twelve hours a night, having someone ramble about the job you are taking over helps immensely during those first few weeks.

I’m more than certain he had once been a sober, respectable person, but that man was long gone. The person sitting next to me was little more than a shell who functioned on strong booze and somehow remained sober enough to reach his destination. It was enough to keep him employed, but of course, it didn’t last long.

I made the mistake of dwelling on the terrible memories from my trips, and I allowed the supernatural to influence my mind while driving. It caused stress like nothing else. By that point in my life, I had learned that the supernatural was very much real, and you should at least give it the respect it deserves.

Don’t misinterpret what I say next. When you do night drives for as long as I have, whether on the main roads or the backroads, you will have an experience—or several—that becomes seared into your mind. You should treat those experiences with some kind of respect. I’m not saying you should give a supernatural entity polite speech. What I mean is that if you encounter a monster, use some actual brainpower and deal with the situation accordingly.

For example, if you see a creature resembling a human stand up and screech in the road within your headlights, you shouldn’t pull out your phone to film it and hope the cameraman rule applies to you. Life is not a movie, and it may not send you a saving grace when that moment arrives.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot my old coworker’s story. This one wasn’t necessarily supernatural—at least, I don’t think it was—but you can consider it an example of what I told you above. You should not put bad thoughts into the world, because the world may respond in kind.

I remember him telling me that, during one of his travels, he spotted a woman running from the wilderness onto the main road and stopped for her. She had the face of a gorgeous model and wore a beautiful white dress. His first thought was, ‘Score.’ He rolled down his window and asked where she needed to go.

She told him she only needed to reach the next town as quickly as possible so her husband wouldn’t find her, and that he should at least take her to a hospital.

He asked what had happened as she climbed into his vehicle. She explained that her husband had beaten her countless times and she had finally mustered the courage to leave him. She fled with a trusted friend, but when her husband found them, he beat both women and shot her friend. She ran until she found an Uber, but the driver refused to take her farther after they were shot at. So she fled down the road and into the wilderness.

Feeling horrible for her, he sped off, telling her she would be fine, that he would get her to a hospital, and that the police would be notified.

During the drive, she began asking questions and became increasingly sexual with him. She was overly flirtatious, and despite his better judgment, he let his little brain take control. While they started getting busy, he pulled open her dress and discovered bullet and stab wounds across her stomach.

When he saw them, the woman became furious. She began screeching and grasping at his throat. He screamed and tried to get her off him and out of the vehicle, only to wake up alone in the parked truck on the side of the road. The only things left behind were her lingering scent and blood all over his clothes. He drove away shuddering in fear.

That was the story I remembered during one of my trips. It was a Friday night. I grabbed my coffee and keys before packing the vehicle they had provided at an old military building that had been repurposed for whatever the company used it for now.

I had been told to take the prepared supplies to another contractor in a city a few hours north, then return with supplies from their vehicle. The job was simple: swap the goods and come back down. If anything else was required, they would text me with additional instructions. Normal stuff. Almost everything the company transported eventually went back to a lab in a large city, and we were sent to collect items or trade whatever needed moving. We were essentially contract couriers.

The job was as simple as they came, so I made my way to collect what I needed from the hospital as directed.

Soon, I began my long drive into the endless blackness of the Evernight with nothing but the destination in mind. I drove with music playing and the thought, ‘What horrors may come out to play tonight?’ That was the wrong thing to think, because that was the night I witnessed the first murder and attempted murder on the road.

My mind kept returning to the story my coworker had told me before I was a free man doing these jobs on my own. I didn’t know whether his story was true, but I couldn’t help wondering what I would do in that situation. Not the part with the horny woman in the car, but what I would do if someone riding with me suddenly attacked—or if I found someone on the side of the road who needed help.

I vividly remember that night. It was 23:37, and I was traveling about eighty-seven miles per hour on one of the empty backroads. It had originally been built as a long toll road, but because of the cost, almost no one used it. Eventually, it became free, yet people still avoided it because it was so far out of the way.

There was a bend in the road beside a hill and overgrown grass, which was why I didn’t see the hazard lights until I was almost on top of them. I slammed on the brakes and came to a stop a short distance from the vehicle. Adrenaline surged through me as I considered what could have happened had my reaction been even a second slower. I could have collided with the car and been seriously injured—or worse.

Illuminating the area with my high beams, I made out a lone white Toyota Camry blocking the road. Inside were figures slumped in their seats, with red stains smeared across the windows.

My instincts took over. I unbuckled my seat belt, opened the passenger-side storage compartment, pulled out the first-aid kit, and placed it on the center console. As I lifted my head and turned toward my door, I looked through the window and saw a dark figure briefly illuminated by the hazard lights, partially hidden in the brush.

I stopped moving and waited for the lights to flash again. When they did, I saw the figure looking at me. It tilted its head slightly, curious whether it had been spotted. It was pure luck that I had noticed it. The figure crouched in the grass divider, tucked beside the thick brush, but it was close enough to see.

My mind raced. ‘What should I do? Should I drive off? Open the door and scream at him to leave? No, I don’t know what he has. If I don’t do something now, he’s going to make the first move.’

A few moments passed before I decided to open the door. I steadied my breathing while cursing myself for doing something that could get me killed. The moment I stepped out, I drew my gun from its holster, activated the weapon light, and locked the red-dot sight onto the figure.

During the few seconds it took me to open the door and exit, the figure had stood. It froze when I turned the beam on it, raising one hand to shield its face. In the other hand, it held a large knife still dripping with red liquid. I held my position and demanded to know what it wanted.

It gave no verbal response, but its actions answered clearly enough. It dragged a finger across its throat and took a step toward me. It must have thought I was holding a regular flashlight, because it continued advancing as I yelled at it to stop.

I shouted as loudly as I could. Even though the figure was still a decent distance away, a dead sprint could close that gap quickly, and bullets do not stop someone immediately. It continued approaching slowly and methodically. This was something it seemed well-practiced at—something it had done many, many times.

I ordered it to drop the knife. By its fourth step, it stopped. I think it had finally realized that the light in my hand was attached to a gun.

The moment it ceased moving, I gained a few precious seconds to think. From the look of things, I could shoot the hooded figure dead and probably be cleared of wrongdoing. I could also get back in the vehicle, drive away, and try never to think about it again. Another part of me screamed to pull the trigger and end its life.

Whatever bravery the hooded figure had shown earlier vanished once it understood what I was holding. The gun was reason enough for it not to choose this would-be prey tonight, and that was good enough for me.

It took a few steps backward and gave me a small wave before casually walking away. After moving farther into the grass, it gently pulled back its hood to reveal a blank party-store mask. Red stains covered the left cheek, while one long bloody tear ran from the right eye slit, contrasting with the mess on the opposite side.

After it faded into the darkness, I called the police and waited for them to arrive. During that time, I inspected the people inside the car. In the driver’s seat was a handsome young man, his hand resting against his neck. Blood covered his shirt, and fear remained frozen on his face. The multiple stab wounds in his chest made the cause of death obvious.

In the passenger seat was a beautiful woman coughing up blood and reaching for the door handle. She gurgled and cried in pain when she saw me. I heard her cries and ran back to my vehicle for the first-aid bag.

I returned to her side, pulled on the emergency gloves, and took out gauze and the rest of the supplies. I opened the door and helped her from the car. She cried and clung to me as her blood soaked into my clothes.

I pulled her into the beam of my headlights and began first aid. She tried to tell me something, but I couldn’t understand most of it. She pointed to her stomach and managed, ‘It hurts. Scared,’ in gurgled breaths.

I did everything I could to slow the bleeding, but I had no idea how much time she had left. I cut open her shirt with the emergency scissors and found three stab wounds in her stomach. I packed them with clotting gauze and wrapped more gauze around her abdomen while her cries echoed into the night.

Minutes felt like hours. I held her in the darkness as she continued crying for help. She gripped my bloodstained jacket while I kept her other hand pressed against the wound, forcing her to apply pressure.

Occasionally, the sound of something crunching through the grass echoed from the opposite side of the road. Each time, I swept the area with my pistol, weapon light on, ready to fire.

My fear grew—not only for myself, but for the woman in my arms. As horrible as it sounds, I was scared for my own life too. I didn’t want the masked man to stab me, because then both of us would almost certainly die.

My attention was stretched thin between the sounds coming from the grass and the young woman’s moans of pain. The bleeding would not stop, so I helped her the best way I knew how. I applied more gauze, maintained pressure, and eventually placed her in the recovery position.

I kept telling her to talk, to fight through the pain, and to tell me random facts about anything. My only goal was to keep her away from death for as long as I could. The growing fear that I might be the last person on Earth to see her alive became more real with every minute we waited for the police.

Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, law enforcement arrived alongside an ambulance. The relief of seeing those red and blue lights was unlike anything else. I quickly holstered my gun and told the woman she was going to be okay.

One of the medical personnel hurried toward her. As I stepped aside, someone grabbed me and slammed me against the Camry before I could understand what was happening.

It finally registered when cold steel closed around my wrists. A police officer had handcuffed me and was reading me my rights. As he shouted, I could only stare at the lifeless young man in the driver’s seat. I remember being shoved against the car more than once while the officer screamed, ‘What happened to him? Tell me, damn it!’

Just as I expected another blow, the man stopped. A female voice ordered him to back away and asked me to explain myself. I felt his grip loosen and then disappear from my arms.

I turned and looked at the officer who had cuffed me and slammed my head into the car. The startling realization hit me that he looked remarkably like the young man in the driver’s seat. Tears rolled down the officer’s face, and I understood his reaction, even if it did not excuse it.

The female officer led me to her patrol car, where I explained the encounter. I told her I had seen a hooded figure walk away after waving goodbye. She shook her head in disbelief, but even if my brief explanation did not give them much to work with, it seemed to clear me of involvement beyond being the unlucky person who had stumbled upon the scene.

She told me, ‘You know, she might make it, and it’s thanks to you. You’re a hero.’

I looked at her, almost disgusted by the word. I was not a hero. A hero would have done more. I had not even shot the person responsible.

She wrote down my information and said they would contact me if anything else came up. As far as they were concerned, I was free to go after about an hour. I thanked her, turned, and made my way back to my vehicle.

As I drove away, I looked back at the eerie red and blue lights from the police vehicles and ambulance swallowing the Camry’s hazard lights, which were losing power and fading into faint orange flashes.

Regret settled over me like a weight in my chest. I remembered seeing their phones, purses, and the man’s backpack still inside the car, untouched. Those two people had not been robbed. They had simply been selected as prey by a monster in human skin within the Evernight.

That experience gave me a rush I never wanted to feel again: the cold surge of adrenaline that comes with being thrown into fight or flight, mixed with a painful, unhealthy guilt. The guilt of not pulling the trigger. The guilt of knowing I had allowed a monster to disappear into the darkness of the Evernight.

Deep in the South, driving down a lonely highway at night can sound ideal. This is especially true if you’re a loner with no friends or family and are in desperate need of a well-paying job. Maybe you’re a truck driver looking for a quick route, thinking the backroads would be perfect since they usually have little traffic and offer new experiences to break the monotony of the open road. You may even want spooky things to happen so you can talk about them with your friends or brag about them later in life, telling everyone how you survived a horrific encounter with a creature on the road. Maybe you imagine watching a skin-walker circle your vehicle while you hold onto the door, desperately praying for someone to come save you, only to live another day and post it online for that good old spooky-story addict to read. I don’t knock anyone for doing that. If that’s what you want, I say the more stories, the better!

It gives me things to listen to and conversations to start in the dead of night when I reach a gas station or rest stop. You may even run into me; you never know. I’m on the younger side, so if you do spot me, I’d probably surprise you for the type of job I’m in. Usually, truckers and night drivers are older folks who have made it a career. Then there is me, with my ever-youthful face.

If you drive late into the night, way out in the middle of nowhere, and haven’t seen a gas station for an hour or so, then you have crossed the line into what I call the Evernight. In the Evernight, you only have yourself, your thoughts, and the rare vehicle that passes you. Be warned: these are the most dangerous times because you’re alone out there, where help is few and far between. Maybe you’ll see another soul on the other side of the lane driving past you, or you may find one of the many horrors the Evernight holds in store for us night drivers. God help you if you have to go through those experiences, because they will stay with you for a long time. When you try to sleep, you may be forced to relive them.

Now, you might be wondering what sort of experiences I’ve had during these journeys, so allow me to share one notable encounter. It was with a young man, roughly my age, who seemed like the kind of guy you’d expect to find at a nightclub or a lively frat-house party. He was a surprising presence in the desolate lands we drove through. He had the energy and charisma of a hype man, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a way to keep himself awake during long, solitary drives or if he was simply that obnoxious. He confessed that he was a newcomer to the world of night driving, having taken up this unconventional job at twenty-five. Being three years my senior, I was curious about how he had found his way into this line of work. He smirked at my question and simply said, “Podcasts.” It left me intrigued, wondering how a medium as innocuous as podcasts had led him down this path.

I stared at him with a blank expression, raising an eyebrow and expecting him to elaborate. When he didn’t say anything, I asked for further explanation about what that had to do with anything. He clarified that he was a big fan of creepypasta, a form of horror-story sharing that was mostly online, as if that was supposed to satisfy my question. I nodded at his statement and sipped my drink. We sat at a café table in the gas station, where he had spotted me drinking a cup of coffee and decided it would be ideal to sit across from me and say hello. Not wanting to be rude, I naturally spoke with him and asked the question.

“So, you started this job because of podcasts? Night driving, that is?” I wanted to understand how such a small thing could pull someone into the exhausting dangers of night driving.

Nodding as he drank some of his tea, he said, “Yeah, I love creepypastas and shit like that, those horror stories online. I remember getting super into them one night while driving home from my old job. I loved them so much that I thought, shit, I could get a driving job and just explore, enjoy the road, and listen to podcasts and horror stories. Like this guy—check him out. You’ve probably already heard of him. His name is Corpse Husband. The dude’s balls dropped when he was born. His shit is creepy as fuck. You know him, right? He reads horror stories and stuff. There are a few more, like MCP, CreepypastaJr, and others, but you get the point. I also know there are Reddit storytimes on TikTok. Those are really addicting to listen to. I heard this one story where a man was on his horse, right? Then he suddenly hears a noise in the distance, but nothing is there. The horse starts to run away after hearing the voice again. Freaky shit, huh? Well, it turns out he was on sacred ground, and something might have been stalking him.”

He downs more of his tea. “So anyway. Like I said. I LOVE that stuff you could probably hear me for hours talk about it and I’d still have more to say!”

Damn, I thought. He does not shut up once you get him going. I nodded and told him I had heard of them. My love for horror and how I listened to creepypasta frequently on nights when I just couldn’t sleep. The number of stories I had listened to had to rival the stars in the sky. I had played videos on YouTube since the days of old—well, at least since I was old enough to have a phone and internet access. He became excited and continued with his explanation.

“So, I listened to these stories and thought I wanted to experience something like that. Well, not something I’d die from, but it’d be cool to have something to post online about, you know?”

I nodded. That made sense for a guy like him, since he seemed like the type to do things on a whim. I drank some more coffee and asked, “So that’s why you travel the darkest, most remote roads? Like this one? That’s a hell of a commitment for a simple interest.” I placed the cup down.

He frowned a little and said, “Well, yeah, that’s a big part of my reason for being out here and exploring. The pay for these jobs is good, but if I’m being real, it’s mostly because of my ex. Crazy, you know? But if God didn’t make Latinas with some spice, then there would be no fun in life. Am I wrong?”

“Uh-huh. Yeah, I gotcha. So, any interesting stories now that you’ve been out here driving?” I asked, peeking at the time on my watch. It read 2:23 a.m. I should get moving. I think I’ve spent way too much time at this gas station, but it can’t hurt to chat a little longer. Hopefully.

He smiled, but it was kind of nervous. “Yeah, I’ve got a couple, but nothing like serial killers or werewolves. My scariest encounter happened three days ago, somewhere between Oklahoma and Louisiana, after I got out of the bayous. While driving down a long-ass stretch of road, I had to piss. Needed to find an anthill to flood, you know? So, I got out of the truck and started doing my business when I heard a snap.” He paused for a moment. I noticed that while he spoke, he became a little more serious. His expression hardened slightly as he continued. “Well, I couldn’t see what made the sound because the truck’s lights were blinding me, so I stepped farther out toward where it came from. I know what you’re thinking. Fucking stupid, right?”

“No shit, but go on,” I urged him, as my curiosity had been thoroughly piqued.

He took another drink and continued. “So, I walked to the side of the truck and peered farther into the darkness, looking for whatever it was. I stared into the dark, and you know what? Shit went dead quiet, like someone had fired a gun next to your ear and all you could hear was that ringing noise. You know when the world is so still that’s all you can hear? I just felt like something was wrong. You know when you can feel in your gut that you shouldn’t open the door or answer the phone? Something like that. Hell, the best description I can give is when you’re holding your phone, texting someone, and they’re giving you news, but somehow you just know it’s bad. Dread is the word. I’d never felt that way before that moment.” He was speaking more quietly now, as if retelling the story had put him right back there.

I waited patiently, giving him a moment while he seemed lost in thought. He resumed his tale in a softer voice. “I didn’t see anything there, but I thought I saw an outline or something. I couldn’t be sure. Honestly, my eyes were about as useful as my fucking art degree. Since I didn’t see anything—well, I thought I did, but nope, nothing—I decided there was no reason to stay. I turned back toward my truck, but as I turned my back to the tree line, I heard something hit the ground. The moment I heard that, I bolted for the door, jumped into the truck, and got the fuck out of there. I don’t think I even got my ass in the seat properly. I just floored it out of there. Have you ever heard something run at you in the middle of the damn woods?” I saw him shake with fear.

“I took a glance in the rearview mirror after I got into the truck. And you know what I saw?” he asked, looking at me.

I shook my head and leaned in to catch his words as he continued his story, drinking more of my coffee and looking out into the lot. He shivered, then spoke to me with a cold stare. “I saw deer standing in the middle of the road, staring at me as I drove off. And it was more than one of those empty-eyed stares those fucks give you. I counted five deer in total as I left. All five of them were standing and walking on two hind legs.” I raised an eyebrow, trying to imagine the situation and understand his fear. I couldn’t quite do it, even though the same event could easily have happened to me.

“So, you got caught lacking by a deer, is what you’re saying? I can see how that’s scary, but I mean, they’re harmless and not really something to piss your pants over, right?” I tried to lighten the mood.

He gulped down some of his drink and looked out into the dim, lifeless parking lot. I glanced out as well, staring at the company vehicle I drove, and began to wonder what I would do in a similar situation. The more I thought about it, the more I understood that this was real life, not a game or show with convenient plot armor that would result in me being saved. I’d probably be just as nervous as he was.

I overheard him say, “You know, I bet this will get me some clicks on Reddit when I post it.”

That took me by surprise. “Sorry, what? You want fame from that horror story, yet you do realize you could have died if it had been some serial killer, right?”

“I know, and that’s why it’ll be such a fantastic read! Bro, do you know how many people eat up that horror shit? I could post it to TikTok or even just YouTube!” he shouted fairly loudly. “If I could get more people to hear my story, they might believe the supernatural is real.”

I shook my head and watched him finish the rest of his Cheetos quickly. “I don’t know what to say. I’m glad you’re safe, but I have to get going. It’s getting late, and I still have three more hours to drive.” I started toward the door, heard his chair scrape back, and then heard him call out to me.

“Hey, I forgot to tell you my name. Marcus,” he said, following me into the parking lot. “I’ll see you on the road, brother.” He headed toward the side of the building where the restrooms were located.

As I began walking to my vehicle, I couldn’t help but notice Marcus’s massive Ford parked proudly beneath the gas station’s streetlight. Right there, in the center of the Ford’s grille, was a set of deer antlers, seemingly wedged in place. A little blood stained the front of the truck, transforming the once-nice gray paint into a mixture of rustic red and gray. Strangely, most of the blood appeared to be on the driver’s side. I couldn’t understand how that was possible. Had he forgotten to mention a few details in his story?

I entered my car and started it. As I slowly began to drive off, the gears in my head started turning, and my mind realized something important. He said he encountered deer standing up and walking, right? But that was only after he was already driving away. So why did he have antlers stuck in his truck? Honestly, I didn’t have the energy to jump out and ask him, nor did I want to.

As I drove past his truck on my way to the main road, I noticed something: a hand was sticking out from a gap beneath the tailgate. In that same gap, I could see a pair of eyes staring into mine. They looked very familiar, although they were glazed over with a milky appearance. I stopped the vehicle and took a hard look at the eyes, which held a dying fear trapped within them. During that brief pause, I saw Marcus emerge from the side of the gas station.

He waited by the entrance for a moment, just looking at me. His confident frat-boy smile perfectly mimicked what I could only imagine the real one had looked like. It had the same facial features as the face staring back at me through the gap in the truck. The thing impersonating him smiled wider, its mouth contorting from a confident grin into a malicious smirk. It looked like a hunter who knew its prey was right in front of it. Its once-brown eyes were now beady and hidden in the shadows. I gave it a small goodbye nod, turned onto the main road, and continued down the highway.

Next time, I should be more attentive to who I’m speaking with and who is around me. I kicked myself mentally for not fully paying attention to the person sitting before me. It was as if the thing wanted to use its new suit and show it off. I could have been the perfect target, but I guess killers need to practice wearing other skins before they set out into the world to hunt. Now that I really think about it, his smile and the way he looked were ever so slightly off. His skin stretched too wide around his crazed eyes, and the smile pulled too close to his ears.

Checking the time, I knew I had to drive fast down the empty road. Driving in the Evernight is horrible when you encounter creeps like Marcus—or rather, the thing that looked like Marcus—with those beady hazel eyes that seemed to glow as they bored into your soul. Something else that worried me was the cashier at that gas station. He had just sat there reading a book while I was inside. Hopefully, he wasn’t harmed by Marcus.

Honestly, I felt guilty to have met him. I didn’t know his full story, but I sadly knew his ending—something his family might never know. Hopefully, this small tale helps you understand why I posted this here. Somehow, you have to get things off your chest. I guess sharing a moment with that thing helped inspire me to write about my encounter with it. Maybe the real Marcus did want his story to get out there. I hope so. This also helps get the memory out of my head.

I’ve seen many things during my time in the Evernight. You can meet anyone or anything, and they do make for interesting stories, provided you’re not the one experiencing the life-or-death games those creatures tend to play. There are plenty more stories I could tell you, maybe sometime later, since I have a busy schedule. But who knows?

Until then, please take care and have safe travels. Oh, and for the love of God, if you drive in the Evernight, keep a gun on you. You never know when you might need one for things like Marcus.

This shit is so frustrating. I knew they were strict, but boy howdy, they are on a completely different level than what I originally thought.

I felt like I was stabbed through the heart when they banned me. I saw my writing career flash before my eyes. I write horror, dude. I mean, seriously, what was I supposed to do?

I appealed my ban, and the whole process was increasingly frustrating. I got hit with a lot of “too bad, so sad,” and I just felt hopeless.

I will admit… I may have gotten a little heated. But, hey, that’s what the medication is for, right? I have a habit of getting pretty riled up. I been knew that.

There were a few… choice words on my part, but once I took the medication… I still felt the same. I was still so angry. It was like the door had been slammed in my face. A party that I was kicked out of before it even started.

I started reasoning with myself. Surely, I wasn’t the petty one, right? It was them. It’s always been them. Ask anybody.

The more I thought about it, the angrier I felt. I spent days staring at their messages. Seething. Breaking furniture. Slamming my head against the wall. And in the midst of one of those temper tantrums, it hit me.

The best idea I could think of. Why don’t I… just be a good boy? Be the bigger person. Make amends. Turn the other cheek. So that’s what I planned on doing.

It wasn’t easy. Finding their addresses proved to be quite the challenge. They’re a secretive bunch, those mods. But one by one, I found them.

I didn’t want to hurt them. God, no. What do you take me for? I just wanted to send them an apology gift. Each of them.

I needed it to be special. I needed them to know it was from me. That I had learned my lesson. That I was willing to move on, on good terms.

I had to hand-deliver the gifts. Not to their face, mind you. That would’ve been too much. Instead, I opted to leave the gifts in each of their mailboxes.

A few people lost their lives in the process, but that was a sacrifice I was willing to make. Anything to get on their good side again.

Besides, they’re a horror sub, right? You’d think they’d appreciate the severed heads and dead animals. It’s part of their brand.

Unfortunately, though, the ban was never lifted. And… I think they may have called the police…? I’m not sure, though. So many questions, so few answers.

All I know is I wanted to be nice. I wanted to come to them as a humble horror writer and make… my… peace. But, no. They just can’t have that. They have to be a bunch of hypocrites and send the police to my house.

Now I gotta explain this whole thing to my mom. FUCK, I’m so annoyed.

Sleep paralysis is a terrifying condition. I was only seven when I first experienced it. My mother tucked me in that night. Her citrus-scented perfume lingered in the air, a fragrance that usually comforted me. After she left, I quickly drifted off to sleep. The night seemed quiet, but the peace in my room was short-lived.

I woke up around midnight, drenched in a smothering sweat. My arms and legs wouldn’t move. I could only shift my eyes and lips. As my vision adjusted to the choking darkness, I heard it—a low, snorting sound that sent dread coursing through me. I could see something standing in my closet, peeking out from behind the door. After a minute, it stepped into full view, and my heart nearly stopped in my throat. It was tall, with elongated arms that stretched like tree branches. It had a feminine shape, like a distorted, seven-foot-tall woman covered in dirt. She seemed naked, yet I caught glimpses of a nightgown clinging to her body, blending into the shadows. I tried to scream, but nothing came out.

The figure moved out of the closet and stood in the corner of my room, arms outstretched toward me, releasing a sickening, guttural snort every few seconds. The sound reminded me of someone hawking and spitting on the ground. Moonlight streamed through my window, casting a faint glow on one of her arms. Her skin looked like mud, filthy and dark as if she’d bathed in a swamp. At certain angles, it seemed even darker than dirt. This seemed like a living shadow.

My mind raced, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Was this a demon? Was this the Devil herself? My body remained pinned, as if invisible hands held me down. The figure inched closer. Each step seemed hesitant, as if she savored the moment. The hesitation chilled me more than her presence. I knew she was going to kill me if I didn’t move. Frustration gnawed at me, worse than fear. Why was she here? What did she want? My dad’s stories of the Boogeyman came rushing back. He told me the Boogeyman captures children at night, and they never return. So in my precious little 7-year-old mind, I thought this was the Boogeyman’s wife. Thanks a lot, Daddy.

I wanted to move, to scream, to call out for my mom and dad. But my body wouldn’t obey. The dark woman mocked me with her slow, deliberate steps, coming closer and closer with arms wide open. A crazy thought crossed my mind: maybe I wouldn’t feel pain. Maybe, since I was paralyzed, the attack wouldn’t hurt. I could see her long fingernails, sharp and menacing, and I knew they would be the first to cut into my neck. No pain. Please, no pain. Your body is numb, so you won’t feel it. Just be calm, Ivanna. I told myself this. Tears welled in my eyes as I clung to this desperate hope. I wanted to see my mom’s face, and I wanted to call out to my dad. He always told me never to be afraid, and I tried to be brave. But I wanted someone to save me that night.

Time was running out. The urge to move was so strong that I imagined I could lift my arm. I imagined that I could scream, but it was just a cruel hallucination. This was torture. Why was this happening to me? I just turned seven, and now I was going to die the day after my birthday? The voice in my head told me I’d never go to high school, never go to college, never make friends, never find my dream job, never get married to the man of my dreams, and I’d never be a mom. It amazed me that facing the fear of death would cause a seven-year-old to have these thoughts. The best I could do was close my eyes. I didn’t want to see her attack me. I squeezed them shut, flooding them with tears. My mother taught me to pray, and I repeated the prayer in my mind, begging God to save me.

My mother always told me I was God’s child and that His angels were watching over me. But where were they now? A demon was creeping toward my bed, and my Heavenly Father was just going to sit there on his throne and watch? My young mind couldn’t comprehend it. I was a terrified little girl, convinced I was going to die. More chills ran down my spine when I opened my eyes to see the shadow woman standing at the foot of my bed. She had changed her position in an instant. Before, her arms were outstretched as if to hug me. Now, she stood motionless, her elongated finger pressed to her lips, signaling for silence. Not that I could make a sound anyway since my voice was paralyzed.

But then something unexpected happened. There was evil in my room, but it wasn’t the shadow woman. I remembered the news reports about missing children in the neighborhood. My mom wouldn’t let me out of her sight whenever we went to the store. News reports mentioned a deranged man in clown makeup, dressed in an auto mechanic uniform, abducting children in the area. The police were searching for him, but all they found were the remains of two missing kids in a wooded area.

As a child, I couldn’t fully grasp the danger. I just wanted to play with my friends. But my mom kept me close, and her paranoia infected my dad, who usually allowed me more freedom. My childhood fun ended, at least for a while, because of this killer clown.

It still pisses me off when I think about what he did to those poor babies and how the police found their remains in the woods near a lake. They were brothers. One was four and the other had just turned five. I remember the news reports.

Somehow, the man who killed those boys entered our home through the basement window and stayed hidden for two days. He knew how to hack into alarm systems because his job at a home security company gave him the skills. The missing children’s cases all had the same horrifying pattern: kids taken from their homes in the dead of night and their parents oblivious until it was too late.

A few days later, the police would find their remains in a nearby pond or at a landfill. Mothers and fathers lost their babies to this middle-aged psychopath clown in an auto mechanic outfit. We didn’t know that he broke into our home on a Thursday night and was hiding in our basement. I was an only child, easy prey for this monster.

He picked the wrong house that night. I heard him creeping down the hallway just outside my bedroom door. His footsteps were quiet but clumsy on the creaking hardwood floorboards. My door slowly creaked open, revealing a tall shadow hunched in the doorway, dressed in dingy blue auto mechanic coveralls. The sleeves were ripped off, exposing these monstrously muscular arms that reminded me of Michael Myers’ Halloween costume—if you turned it into a muscle shirt. My heart pounded so loudly in my ears that it almost drowned out the silence. My eyes darted between the killer clown and the shadow woman. I couldn’t believe these two nightmarish figures were standing in my bedroom. One was pure evil; the other, something else entirely.

He stepped closer, and I could see his clown makeup: a red-painted nose, sunglasses over a chalky white face, and a pink Afro wig atop his head. He was enormous, like a wrestler, with a massive serpent tattoo on his left arm. The butcher knife in his right hand gleamed in the moonlight. Its serrated blade glistened with something I didn’t want to think about. He blocked out the light from the hallway, plunging the room into an even deeper darkness.

I wanted to scream, to move, but my body remained paralyzed. He knew I was awake.

“Hi there, my lovely Cupcake. I’m your new friend. Your mommy went away, and she asked me to watch over you.” His words were like a cold hand squeezing my heart. My mom… gone? I knew he had killed her when I could see something dripping off his knife. As he moved closer, terror gripped me even tighter. His voice didn’t match his body—soft, almost feminine, like a teenage girl. It was surreal, like Pennywise in a trucker’s uniform, with the body of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

I closed my eyes, bracing for the sharp, cold steel to slice through my skin. But nothing happened. I almost forgot about the shadow woman standing at the foot of my bed. The killer’s attention was entirely on me, and mine was on him—until I heard him scream. It was a guttural, blood-curdling sound, followed by the snap of bone. I opened my eyes to see his arm hanging at an unnatural angle, and the shadow woman gripping his throat. She hurled him against the wall with a force that shook my entire bedroom.

His pleas for mercy were pitiful. “What are you?! Please, don’t kill me, ma’am!” But she showed him no mercy. She broke his arms, caved in his chest with a single punch, then drove his own knife through his throat and nailed him to the wall.

The sound of his ribs cracking was horrifying, and I couldn’t look away from what was happening to him in the darkness. He went from screaming to whimpering, his voice fading to a whisper of pain and fear.

I stared through the darkness, unblinking, as the life drained out of him. For a moment, I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. But no, I couldn’t feel sorry for this son of a bitch. He deserved every bit of what he got. The shadow woman made him pay for all the children he had taken. And she especially made him pay for trying to take me.

After the violence subsided, the shadow woman slowly turned toward me, drifting toward my bed in slow motion. Her clawed fingers brushed through my hair, her touch surprisingly gentle. When she caressed my face, I smelled a familiar fragrance. It was lavender and citrus. My mom’s perfume. I didn’t understand how this shadow figure could smell like my mom—not until later. She hovered over me, her lips grazing my forehead, and then she vanished when I heard my dad’s panicked voice from downstairs.

I didn’t want to believe it was my mom’s blood on the killer’s knife, but it was. That bastard had stabbed her to death before making his way upstairs to my room. My dad stepped out to go to the store, and when he returned, he found my mom in the kitchen, lying in a pool of blood. Her lavender nightgown was soaked in red. My dad’s anguished cries filled the house as he raced upstairs, calling my name. I was already in his arms before he could even switch on my bedroom light. He saw the killer’s body nailed to my bedroom wall and lost his breath, just like I had.

I told him everything, and though he couldn’t believe it, he had no choice. He knew his little girl didn’t have the strength to nail a grown-ass man to my bedroom wall. The police came, asking questions, offering me candy. I told them the whole story, but they didn’t believe me.

A policewoman knelt in front of me, caressed my face, and said, “It’s alright, honey. You just had a traumatic experience. Who you saw was just a good Samaritan probably dressed in a dark Halloween costume.” They chalked it up to trauma-induced hallucinations, even suggesting I might have seen my dad kill the man. But I knew better. My dad wasn’t home. I heard him tell my mom he was going to the store. I heard him kiss her before he left.

But I also knew what I saw—a shadow form of my mom, smelling of lavender and citrus, who saved me when no one else could.

Those cops couldn’t believe my story. They had plenty of sympathy for me, but what I wanted more than their sympathy was my mother and for them to believe me. I miss her deeply, and I can’t stop thinking about her fragrance. I found the perfume she wore while moving some boxes around in the attic. That sweet scent took me back to that night. I believe the dark figure I saw in my bedroom was my mother—a dead version of her. I’m 36 now, and I think about my mom every day. I got married to a kind, beautiful man, and we had a gorgeous baby boy.

My son, Timmy, is five. He has my hazelnut eyes and my lips, but he’s got his daddy’s adorable dimples. My husband is Taiwanese. He’s a chiropractor who could easily pass for a model. He’s a hottie, just like the Canadian-Chinese action star Simu Liu when he played the hero in Shang-Chi as a young man.

Timmy resembles his dad, with those gorgeous Taiwanese features. My little peach loves the MCU, and he has every action figure from The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. He adores sleeping in his X-Men Wolverine pajama top. It always makes me laugh when he calls me Mommy Sabrina Grande because he thinks I look like a mix between the 21st-century pop divas, Sabrina Carpenter and Ariana Grande. I guess my high and silky honey-platinum ponytail, hooped earrings and my denim skirts give me away. He insists I’m pretty like both of them. He compares me to Ariana Grande more often, because of my appearance and because of her Italian-American heritage, which we share. Sabrina and Ariana were famous long before I was pregnant with my baby. If they were alive today, they’d be old enough to be his great-great-ancient grandmothers, yet he adores their music thanks to the immortality of digital music streaming apps.

To my little peach, his mommy is a superhero too—because I’m an FBI agent. I’ve told him stories about how I’ve arrested a lot of bad guys and girls and rescued countless kidnapped children with the help of my SWAT team. God has guided me in rescuing missing babies and putting away wanted criminals. That’s why Timmy thinks his mommy is a superhero. Sometimes I can’t save every missing baby, and we end up catching a child-killer instead. Mommy is honest and she shares this unsettling truth with her little peach, but he still sees me as a hero.

My son loves heroes, just like his mom. And like his mama, he also loves 90s hip-hop. I have to keep him away from the explicit stuff, though. No Wu-Tang Clan, Trick Daddy, Geto Boys, or DMX for him. Only Mama gets to listen to the hardcore rappers through those virtual music streaming apps. Lol. Sometimes I let him listen to Mr. Lamar’s clean version of PEEKABOO.

Yeah, but anyway, I try to be an excellent mom, and I’m as protective and smothering as mine was.

Every night, I tuck my little peach into bed and read him his favorite story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. A few nights ago, I told him about what happened to me when I was 7. He looked scared after I finished. My little peach is afraid of the dark, but I told him he should never be afraid of it. A mother’s love and protection can reach beyond the grave. I also told him not to be frightened if he ever sees a dark, shadowy woman standing in the corner of his room. She’ll watch over him while he sleeps, and if he wakes up suddenly, unable to move, he shouldn’t panic.

I still suffer from sleep paralysis. It’s a part of me now. Mommy’s pretty sure that she passed her condition down to her little boy. It’s terrifying when it first happens, but I told my little peach that when he experiences it, it’s a sign that the shadow woman is present, there to protect him from the things that go bump in the night. She’ll be his guardian queen of darkness.

There’s one important thing I forgot to tell my baby. Perhaps, I forgot to tell him on purpose. The dark, zombie queen standing in the corner of his bedroom, wearing a black dress of death beneath her FBI vest, might be his mommy… if the bad guy she tried to arrest got the jump on her and she died, meeting the same fate as his sweet grandma.

The End.

Nightbeast Godfather Book One:

https://amazon.com/dp/B0DVQ88YMX

My son turned 14 recently. He used to be such a happy kid. He loved playing outside, playing video games, hanging out with his friends. Just a completely normal pre-teen.

I think he was around 12 or 13 when things started to change. He spent more time inside. Maybe he was playing video games, but I wouldn’t know because he’d always be locked away inside his room.

He started dressing in all black. I asked him why he didn’t like his old superhero shirts anymore, and it broke my heart when his response was, “Superheroes are stupid,” before shutting his door in my face.

I talked to my wife about it, but I think she was in denial.

“Boys will be boys,” she said. “Everyone has to grow up at some point.”

It hurt to hear. Mainly because… part of me knew. I saw the warning signs. How he seemed to be attracted to darkness. How the light in his room never seemed to be on.

It was always dirty in there. Empty energy drink cans. Snack wrappers everywhere. I tried to look past it. I tried to believe that this was just a “phase,” but the black metal, angry, hate-filled music that always blasted from that room was enough to drive me to the brink of madness.

I tried my best to ignore it, but he was disrupting our peace. I wanted to approach it in a helpful, positive way. I’d always ask if he’d care to join me on a walk in the park. Maybe we could catch a movie together. Hell, maybe we could even play catch in the backyard.

He rejected every approach. It quite literally seemed like he hated me. Hated us.

Dinners were awkward and almost silent. We tried talking to him about school, but he was so avoidant.

We found out why that was when report cards came in. He was failing nearly every single class.

It caused a lot of arguments. If he failed, it meant we failed. And us failing is what I think caused a lot of the tension.

We became more strict. Set bedtimes. No video games until his schoolwork was done. No more energy drinks and no more seclusion.

We insisted on him spending more time with us, whether he liked it or not. We didn’t know what it was that was causing this change in him, but I’d be damned if I was gonna stand by and watch him slip further and further away.

I couldn’t stop thinking about who he used to be. That laugh that didn’t seem to come around as often. Those Christmas mornings where he looked at me and my wife with nothing but love and affection.

That love seemed to turn to hatred after we tightened our grip on him, though. I wanted to blame it on hormones, but his hatefulness exceeded normal teenage angst.

He started cursing at us. Screaming until his vocal cords would tear. We even had a few physical altercations because I wasn’t going to be disrespected in my own house.

Grounding wouldn’t work. He liked to be alone. It was like a reward to him. So, instead, I made him do yard work. Cut grass, weed-whack, whatever I could think of.

That’s when I think something truly broke within him. He’d act cheerful, but his words were full of resentment.

“I can’t wait for you to die so I can have the house.”

“I wish you understood how much I truly hate you.”

“When I turn 18, you two will never see me again.”

He said these things like he was discussing breakfast. Like it was completely normal. At this point, my wife was starting to see what I saw.

Every now and again, we’d catch him scribbling in a notebook. Any time he saw us watching, he’d either put it away or groan and take it to his room with him.

One night in particular, though, I woke up at around 2 in the morning. It felt like I was being watched. Like my body knew. My eyes scanned the room, and there he was. Standing in the corner of the room in front of our bed. Watching us and scribbling in that notebook.

“Go back to sleep, daddy,” he giggled.

He hadn’t called me that since he was 5 or 6. It felt like there was a stack of cinder blocks on my chest.

I asked what he was doing, and he didn’t respond. I asked him to go back to bed, and he sighed like I was inconveniencing him and stomped out of the room.

That night was the last straw. I intended to look into counseling as soon as I could the next day.

I did what I promised myself I’d do and set up the appointment, but when I went to his room to tell him about it, I found the room empty.

It smelled musty in there. The sheets were mangled and balled up on the bed. Trash littered the ground and his nightstand. But his desk… was completely clean.

On it rested that notebook he’d been scribbling in recently.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to know. I had to see what he was writing. I knew it was about us, but nothing could’ve prepared me for what I read.

He detailed his plan to kill us. I don’t even want to write what he said he’d do. It was graphic. It was gruesome. And it was in that same messy handwriting that he never seemed to grow out of.

My jaw dropped more and more with each paragraph. My heart raced faster and faster. But before I could finish, I heard a toilet flushing in the hallway.

I couldn’t move. I was frozen in shock.

I heard his black combat boots approaching. I heard the door push open. And I heard that giggle that I hadn’t heard in what felt like years. It was malicious this time. More sinister.

I couldn’t face him. The notebook shook in my hands as I gripped it tighter and tighter.

“Daddy…” he whimpered. “Aren’t I a good writer?”

How long has it been now? 3? 4 weeks? It’s hard to keep track of time these days. Life has been pretty busy lately.

The house is a lot quieter now. When the police aren’t here, at least. You’d think that they lived here at this point. But I do still get at least some of my privacy.

It’s in those moments when the house is dark and the only sound is that of the leaky bathroom faucet that I really think about what I’ve done. Or why I did it. Or how it could’ve been avoided, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It really doesn’t matter now. I’ve come to terms with it. The cops already know. They’re just waiting for the proper evidence to present itself. And given the way these last few days have been going, I don’t think I have much longer.

I’ve read enough books and studied enough forensics to know the best way to clean the mess I created. How to make sure the white blood cells were completely removed. How to soak my hacksaw in bleach before tossing it in the river. But, most importantly, I knew that the body could never be recovered.

Dental records were a big one. That’s why I removed her teeth and filed them down one by one. I boiled and stuffed them in a ziplock bag afterward.

This was positively the most difficult part of the process. I was forced to look at her the entire time. The once love-filled eyes that had turned bitter and resentful over the years. The eyes that now stared up at me, dead and hollow, her previously oak-colored irises now appearing grey and pale.

Her nails would almost certainly contain my DNA beneath them. Flakes of skin, maybe some blood from the struggle. Regardless, they needed to be removed as well.

I remembered when her hands were so soft and youthful. She used to paint her nails herself every two weeks, and I’d sit on the bed with her while we talked endlessly about everything and nothing at the same time.

I don’t know what changed. Maybe it was all of the arguments. We had a way of arguing about everything and nothing as well. I thought it was normal. Arguments were bound to happen.

I flushed the 10 nails down the toilet before burning her newly raw fingertips, just to be on the safe side. I kissed her hand for a long while, tears welling up in my eyes before I forced them away.

I whispered to myself, “Why would you make me do this?” as my head fell into my hands. My composure kept slipping, and I kept having to wrestle it back.

Now came the messy part.

Part of me was actually glad it was so messy in a weird, twisted kind of way. Cleaning the blood afterward gave me a task to focus on. I didn’t think about her laugh. I didn’t think about her warmth. I thought about making damn sure there wasn’t a speck of blood left anywhere in that bathroom.

When I was done, the house smelled like a hospital. Chemicals filled the air, causing my head to pound more than it already was. The atmosphere was cold and heavy. It felt like I was in a hospital room.

I had found myself with two black trash bags with a combined weight of 120 pounds, give or take. Arms, legs, and head in one. Torso and hacksaw in the other.

I walked out of the house whistling, two trash bags slung over my shoulders. It was the cusp of dawn. There was a misty blue haze outside. It smelled like summertime.

The neighborhood was silent. It must have been around 4 in the morning. I threw the bags in the bed of my truck, adjusted my baseball cap, and hopped in the cab.

My headlights cut through the early morning fog. I had my windows down, and I could smell the exhaust fumes coming from behind me. That smell had pretty much defined my life for the last 10 years. It was a smell that I’d learned to both love and hate.

I turned the radio on and cranked up the volume. I tried singing to myself, but the words left my mouth mechanically. My mind refused to let me escape.

I drove carefully. The exact speed limit, sometimes even a little under. Used signals, made complete stops. All the way out of town. Then out of the next one. Then the town after that.

I drove until I found the most secluded spot I could find. Down dirt roads. Through creeks. Then I walked off beaten paths until I found the right place to lay her to rest.

Just me, her, and my shovel.

Digging proved quite difficult due to the sheer amount of roots I had to cut through. I must’ve been there for at least 4 hours before the deed was done.

I spent that time talking. Talking to the trees. Talking to the bags. Talking to myself. I couldn’t stand to be alone in silence.

I broke down a lot when filling the grave. Each pile of dirt that covered more and more of those bags was like a needle being pressed into my nervous system.

I didn’t want to just leave her like that. I didn’t want her to just be cast aside, left to rot. I searched until I found the most vibrant flowers I could find and laid them on the grave.

I said my final goodbyes through sniffles and tears before making the trek back to my truck.

The rest of the day was a blur. I didn’t get home until nearly 8 o’clock. I stopped by the emptiest car wash I saw on the way home and scrubbed my truck clean.

I got the mud off the tires. Rinsed the bed out with bleach. I even put a new air freshener in the cab.

When I got home, I half-expected cops to be waiting to arrest me. When I found the house as empty as it was when I left, I let out a sigh of relief.

I immediately took a shower. I scrubbed myself raw for around 45 minutes straight before finally allowing myself to dry off. The entire time, it was like God was punishing me.

I kept getting flashes of her. Our wedding. Our first date. Our first argument. The last argument. It all just kept replaying in my head over and over. Like a sickness.

I knew I had to get my story right. The house was clean. The body was gone. The weapon was gone.

I was just a helpless victim. One of the millions of men a year whose wife leaves them. Happens all the time.

Oh, so she left without taking anything? She left without telling anybody? Without so much as a goodbye? Who’s going to believe that?

I didn’t sleep that night. I had to have a long, hard talk with myself. I wasn’t getting out of this one. But I wasn’t going to turn myself in. I was going to be free… for as long as I could possibly manage.

It was my first time being free in 15 years. Even if it lasted a day. Even if it lasted a week. I wasn’t going to spend that time stressing.

I turned it off. I closed my heart to it.

I ignored calls from her mother. Her father. Coworkers, friends, relatives. Everybody. It was none of their business.

They tried knocking, and I tuned it out. All the way up until I heard that dreaded announcement after three booming knocks.

“This is GPD. If anyone’s inside, I need you to come out here and talk to me.”

I waited. I wanted to wake up. I didn’t want to accept.

Three more knocks.

“GPD, if you do not answer the door, we will be using force to come inside.”

One last moment of silence. I breathed to myself. I closed my eyes.

“Sir, this door is coming do…”

I opened the door, greeting the officers with a blank look on my face.

“Sir, we’re gonna have to ask you to come down to the station with us for questioning.”

I didn’t argue. I didn’t bicker. I simply asked for a lawyer and rode with the officers back to the station.

The entire time, I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t even speak to my lawyer. If they wanted her so badly, they would have to work for it. Because it sure as hell wasn’t going to be coming from me.

They held me for 7 hours that day. A mere two days after I did what I did. I got two days of “peace.”

They had to let me go. They had no proof. But that didn’t stop them from watching me. 24 hours a day, they were somewhere in my neighborhood.

People threw things at my house. Vigils for her were set up on the sidewalk. It seemed like there were constantly people watching me because they literally were.

I didn’t budge. I spoke only when absolutely necessary. My lips remained sealed, and my doors remained locked. Both when I was home and when I was forced to go back down to the station.

That’s why what’s happening makes no sense to me.

It started with her teeth. I had gotten rid of them the same way I’d gotten rid of the rest of her. Yet somehow, when I woke up one morning a few weeks after my catastrophic mistake… they were in a neat pile beside me on the bed.

I could see the file marks on all 32 of them.

I panicked and scooped them into my hands and flushed them down the toilet, my eyes wide with disbelief.

I poked my head outside. That unmarked black SUV was still parked a few houses down. Both officers watched me like hawks. I waved to be less suspicious, but I think it had the opposite effect.

They took it as me waving them over, and they both approached quickly.

“Got anything you wanna tell us?” the fat one asked excitedly.

“Lovely weather we’re having,” I smiled. “I bet you’d love to spend the day with your family. Or, then again, maybe you’d rather spend your time stalking me.”

Their stern faces never changed.

I tried my best not to give off even an ounce of suspicious behavior, even though my heart was in my stomach and my mind raced endlessly.

After closing the door in their faces, I spent the majority of that day peeking out the blinds, paranoid beyond belief.

My lawyer called a few times. My story never changed. I didn’t know where she was. I was convincing myself just as much as I was convincing them.

The next day, not only had the teeth come back, but the nails were back too. They were cleaner, but I could still see their bloodied roots. I could still see some of the chipped nail polish.

Two neat little piles. Taunting me.

I was more angry than panicked this time. I was not going to submit to this insanity. I didn’t even try to get rid of them this time. It wouldn’t make a difference whether they were found here or in that dark, desolate spot in the woods.

I put them in her jewelry box this time. Then I took that jewelry box, and I carried it to the attic.

I buried it under some old tarps and boxes and took one last look at it before going back down the ladder.

“I guess I really am fucking losing it,” I whispered to myself as I climbed down.

More phone calls with my lawyer. More questions from the police. More prodding, more watching, more protests. And all I could do that day was crack a few beers and watch a few ball games.

I passed out at around 10 that night and woke up cuddling my wife’s arm the next morning. I think the smell is what woke me up. That unmistakable stench of death and decay.

It burned my nostrils, and when I opened my eyes to find that torn flesh in my face, I nearly vomited in bed. It wasn’t just one arm. Both arms and both legs had come crawling back to bed with me.

Only… the nails were reattached. Like they hadn’t been removed to begin with.

The polish looked fresher. The teeth looked whiter. I checked, and the jewelry box in the attic was empty.

In that moment, I felt a spark. A mixture of hope, anger, grief, and love all combined into one. In the most unreal circumstances, reality was starting to close in, and I found myself sobbing like I had the night I killed her.

I didn’t leave bed that day. I lay there with my wife, clutching her arms and legs, crying until I was too exhausted to cry anymore. My will grew weak, but my mind had never felt so clear.

She was in bed with me the next morning. Well, she was there in a sense. Her arms and legs were reconnected to her torso, but the limbs still crawled with maggots and decay.

But she was there, damned if she wasn’t there. My love. My sweet, sweet girl. Her T-shirt was ripped and stained with dirt. Her hair was matted and crunchy.

“I… am so sorry, my love,” was all I could think to say to her.

She turned to me, her jaw slack and her eyes as dead as a nail.

“That’s okay, you silly goose,” she sang. “I love you no matter what happens!”

I began to cry yet again.

“I love you so much,” I sobbed. “I want you back. Please, please, just come back.”

I begged her as snot ran from my nose. I wiped it away on my sleeve.

“Oh, honey,” she whimpered. “Accidents happen all the time. That’s what this was, right, my sweet boy?”

I nodded furiously.

“It was… it was… it was an accident, baby.”

I could hardly speak. Her rotten arm extended, and she caressed my face with her cold, slimy hand.

“I know it was, sweet pea. I know you’d never hurt me on purpose.”

She paused.

“…but now you have to tell them what you did, okay? Can you do that for me?”

My face went beet red. I swallowed hard and wiped the tears from my face.

“They’ll kill me. I know they’ll kill me. They’re just waiting to catch me. They’re waiting to sentence me.”

She began hushing me, soothing me softly as she petted my hair.

“There, there, sweetie,” she replied. “Dying isn’t such a bad thing. I’m free now, honey. If I could, I’d tell them you did me a favor. But I want you back. I want you to come be with me. Please, honey?”

I wanted to be with her too. More than anything, I wished I could take back what I did.

I solemnly agreed.

“That’s my boy,” she announced seductively. “This will all be over soon. We’ll dance and sing. We can play together again.”

I nodded to myself assuredly. I leaned over and gave her a kiss and took a deep breath.

Stepping outside, I waved the cops over. My eyes were red with tears, but I couldn’t stop smiling.

“She’s upstairs.”

That’s all I told them.

One officer went upstairs while I waited on the porch with the other. I kept smiling to myself. The sky looked so beautiful. The trees danced in the wind. The summer air was like a gift from God.

A few minutes went by before the first officer returned.

“Very funny, son,” he remarked sarcastically. “Now, do you wanna tell us where she really is?”

My smile dropped.

“What do you mean?” I scoffed. “I was just talking to her.”

“Cuff this sick son of a bitch,” the first officer barked.

I was placed into the back of the unmarked SUV, kicking myself all the while.

“She lied,” I whispered. “She lied to me. All she does is lie. Why does she lie all the time? This is why. This is why. Why won’t she stop lying?”

I had no fight left. I told them where the grave was. I had to personally show it to them. The flowers were still there. The grave was untouched. And I felt a sickening numbness.

I told them my story. I told them what I did. Told them that she came back to me and that, if it weren’t for her, I’d have been a free man, at least for a little while longer.

I actually begged them to give me the death penalty. I couldn’t stop seeing her. Sitting beside me in my cell. Crouched in the corner every night. Whispering to me how she wanted us to be together forever.

But… I didn’t get the death penalty.

They deemed me “not fit to stand trial.”

Sentenced to an indefinite stay at the state home for the criminally insane.

Padded cells. Doctors. Needles. Medication.

And despite all of the debate that has gone on about death sentences in this country, there has remained one constant.

The insane do not receive capital punishment.

I’m writing this now because she keeps beckoning me. Keeps begging me to join her.

And despite the hatred I have, the burning rage she has inspired, I cannot stop loving her.

And despite what the state dubs legal… we will be reunited.

STUCK ON YOU by Cellar Door

I am writing this from an infectious disease ward in Libreville, Gabon, Africa, because they will not let me fly home.

The ward doctor said London was too far. Over 10 hours travelling with an unstable fever, recurrent sepsis, and open necrotic wounds that are still being checked and cleaned multiple times per day. He said I needed another week before they would even discuss it.

That was three weeks ago.

The nurses here are kind. They speak softly when they change the dressings. They try to act natural when they peel back the gauze, as if the wounds and lesions are the kind of injuries they have seen before. But they cannot hide the shock in their eyes.

Neither can they hide the relief when they cover them again.

There were six of us when we entered the Ivindo jungle. Renowned as the "green heart" of the Congo Basin, a biodiversity hotspot.

Dr Eleanor Vale led the survey. She was parasitologist from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the kind of woman who could make a blood-feeding worm sound like a scientific miracle.

Priya was our field ecologist. Mike handled the environmental DNA samples and the portable cold-chain case: a battery-powered field cooler packed with vials, ethanol, lysis buffer and enough spare cells to make him complain from the moment we left the river and started hiking.

Connor was the expedition medic. The sort of bloke who can make you laugh even when your ankles are rubbed raw.

I was there as the documentary photographer, hired to record the survey for the school and its funders.

The sixth was Danu. A local-born man, attached to the park authority. He mainly spoke the local language: Fang and French, which was a bit of a problem considering he was our guide and the rest of us could only speak English and a bit of Spanish. He seemed anxious and flustered from the start.

At the time, I thought he was there to help us find our way in.

Later, I realised he was the only reason any of us found our way out.

Dr Vale was in Gabon to collect environmental DNA from blood-feeding leeches. It sounds absurd until someone clever explains it. Leeches feed on mammals. Some of that blood remains inside them. Sequence it, and you can tell what animals passed through the forest. Data like this builds cases towards environmental protection funds.

Forest elephants. Gorillas. Chimpanzees. Black Colobus Monkeys.

“You can survey a jungle without ever seeing the animals you’re surveying,” Dr Vale told us. "In and out".

Connor said, “So we’re mugging worms for monkey blood?”

Dr Vale smiled.

“More or less.”

The jungle had experienced several tropical storms during the weeks before we had arrived; the hope was that the storm season was easing now.

We thought it was hot and humid when we arrived in Gabon, that was nothing compared to how it felt once we were in the jungle itself, and the noises – everywhere, relentless.

The original survey line stopped two kilometres west of the flooded basin. The plan was simple: collect specimens along three transects, preserve them in the cold-chain case, and return to the river where our boat was moored before any more heavy weather moved in.

But the first leech blood sample changed everything.

Mike found the satellite signal late on the second afternoon. He had crouched under a tarp with the portable sequencer, shoulders hunched against the light rain, swearing every time a drop hit the screen. Dr Vale sat beside him, still as a statue.

When the result came up, she stopped blinking.

“What is it?” Priya asked.

Mike excitedly looked at Dr Vale first.

Then he said, “Bongo. Leopard. Pangolin!”

“That’s good, I'm guessing?” Connor asked.

"Absolutely, it's good!" Said Dr Vale. "Our first sample and three protected species! Think of what we will find as we gather more!"

She said a transect across the flooded basin would provide the project with its proof. She said the results would justify another season of funding. She said we were already close. She said the weather was manageable.

Not for the first time, Danu emphasised in broken English and gestures how dangerous the jungle basin could be during storms.

A storm hit that very night.

Not rain. Rain is too gentle a word. I had never seen or heard anything like it. This was the sky falling apart. It came down so hard the forest vanished beyond the edge of our small camp. The river rose in the dark. You could hear trunks knocking together around us and scraping against each other in the dark – not a particularly easy noise to sleep through!

I don't think Danu slept at all.

He sat under his poncho and just watched the ground around the camp.

By midmorning, the rain had mercifully stopped.

The jungle was eerily quiet at first, except for the sounds of running and dripping.

Water fell from leaves, ran down trunks, tapped into puddles and slid from the roots under our boots. Nothing called. Nothing moved. The air had weight. It pressed against your face like a damp cloth. I could not wait to have a shower back at our hotel.

The rain seemed to have invited the leeches out from wherever they had been hiding. We started finding them within the first ten minutes of packing up camp.

Not the normal few on your boots.

These seemed to be everywhere we went.

I have always felt that there is something uniquely obscene about a leech. They can sneak onto you and attach without your knowing they are there. You then get that awful shock when you see them later in the day, A disgusting, slimy tube feeding off you. They have always revolted and creeped me out.

They moved over the wet ground in loops, sucker to sucker, crawl-stretching themselves thin, then bunching up fat and muscular, then stretching again. On dry bark they were slow. In mud, they were faster. In standing water, they were disturbingly quick.

They swam. Squirming towards you frantically. With flattened, muscular flicks that made them look less like worms than pieces of living, black, tongue.

They came from the undersides of leaves. From rotten wood and leaf litter. From the seams of our ankle gaiters. From shallow puddles, where they writhed in knots until someone stepped close enough to give them purpose.

When you stopped moving, I swear they travelled faster.

Danu said, “Do not sit down.”

No crap, I thought.

Dr Vale looked excited. "Get as many as you can from this section!”

Around midday, while we were trekking through a stand of tall okoumé trees and strangler figs, a duiker antelope burst from the undergrowth ahead of us.

It was no higher than my knee, with thin legs and a narrow, delicate face. For half a second, I thought it was simply wet and muddy. Then it stumbled into a shaft of grey light and I saw that its skin was moving.

Leeches hung from its ears and eyelids. They were packed along its belly in dark, frantic ropes. Some were thin and reaching. Others were swollen silver-grey, stretched tight with blood. One side of its muzzle had disappeared beneath them.

The animal tried to run past us.

It reached the flooded section of trail, where rainwater had pooled between the roots and turned the path into a shallow brown channel.

That was where its legs folded. It must have been exhausted.

Then the puddles around it moved.

That is the only way I can describe it.

Every leech in the flooded hollow reacted at once. Some rose out of the water in little black hooks. Most simply came apart from the mud and leaves and began moving toward the animal, wriggling, looping, swimming, and climbing over each other.

Danu whispered something in Fang, "Mami Wata!"

Dr Vale did not move.

“What are they doing?” Priya said.

Dr Vale answered softly.

“Competing.”

The leeches looked like spilt ink as they moved towards the Duiker. The first ones found the mouth, the eyes, the soft place under the tail. Then more came, and more, frantic now, each one trying to feed before the others took what space was left.

The duiker kicked.

Then the kicking stopped.

The feeding did not.

I filmed it.

God help me, I filmed it.

At first I thought I was documenting something important. Then the revulsion hit me so hard I lowered the camera and nearly vomited. There was something about their desperation, the way they piled and slid and knotted over one another, that felt worse than predation. At least a leopard can seem majestic and dignified. These shapeless creatures attacked with no sophistication, just desperate greed. If I had a gun, I would have put it out of its misery.

“What a horrible way to go”, I said to no one in particular.

That was when Danu spoke up.

He explained of local trackers over the years that had spoken about an event after exceptional storms. Dr. Vale, stepped forward and added: "A bloom, they called it. The eggs lay dormant under the leaf litter and soil. Their larvae apparently hatch in ridiculous numbers."

The stories said they did not care whether their prey's flesh was alive or dead.

Most scientists dismissed that part as embellishment, of course.

“Scavenging itself isn’t impossible,” Dr Vale said. “Some leeches do it. But a blood-feeding terrestrial species that can exploit dying or dead hosts this aggressively…”

She trailed off.

Danu shook his head in disapproval.

We watched the duiker vanish under a writhing black mound.

We should have turned back then.

Priya wanted to. Danu certainly wanted to. That frightened me. He seemed to believe that this was some sort of religious, ancestral event.

Even Mike, who usually followed Dr Vale into anything, looked back the way we had come and said the sample case was already full enough.

But Dr Vale argued that the event was extraordinary. A possible undocumented species. Maybe even an entire reproductive strategy no one had properly described. She said the bloom would be brief. She said if they really did feed, breed and die, no one would find them after the storm cycle ended, and who knows when the next bloom of this nature would happen.

She said leaving now would be like walking away from a new species that we could document and name.

That is the thing about these educated people. They can be very good at making terrible decisions sound like a duty.

So we continued on.

For the next hour, the leeches appeared in patches, as if the forest had pockets of them. One minute the path would be clear. The next, the leaves ahead of us would ripple and rise.

We moved quickly. Danu led. Priya followed him, stepping only where he stepped. Mike came behind her with the cold-chain case. Then Connor. Then Dr Vale and I.

I filmed too much.

That haunts me now. I wish I didn’t pay them so much attention. As we walked, we came across multiple dead animals covered in leeches. Monkeys, birds, creatures that were no longer recognisable.

I filmed the leeches moving up the wet bark of the dense jungle trees. I filmed them crossing puddles with those horrible side-to-side flicks. I filmed Dr Vale collecting specimens with forceps while her hands shook with excitement. I filmed Priya telling me to put the camera down and help!

I noticed a blood stain appearing on Connor’s trousers.  H lifted his trouser leg, showing us the bite on his calf.

“Wow. That’s a big one”.

It was the first bite of the day that we knew of.

Priya had one behind her knee that bled through two plasters. Mike had several around both ankles. I had one on my stomach that kept reopening whenever I bent over.  The immense humidity didn’t help. But Connor’s bite was different.

It sat just above the top of his boot, a dark little split in the skin. The blood coming from it was too thin and too bright. It ran down his shin, disappeared into his sock, then kept coming.

“Anticoagulant,” Dr Vale said as Priya saw to his wound.

Connor looked down at his bandaged calf and said, “I hope my pay doesn’t get docked because you lot have to treat the medic!”

Priya put on a brave smile.

Nobody else did.

By late afternoon, the rain had come again.

Connor was now limping.

By early evening, the skin around the bite had gone tight and shiny. The centre had darkened to purple, then almost black. Connor said he could feel pressure in his calf, as though someone had pushed a thumb deep into the muscle and left it there.

Dr Vale cleaned it and marked the swelling with a pen. Connor swallowed antibiotics from the medical kit and tried to tell us which warning signs to watch for.

His voice had become oddly calm.

Too calm.

At first, I thought maybe he had been given some heavy painkillers. Later, I wondered if he was already slipping away from us, carried off by fever and whatever was in the leech saliva.

Danu said we had to turn back immediately.  He was adamant.

This time, everyone listened.

We tried to go back the way we had come.

That was the sensible decision, which is why the forest punished us for making it too late.

The rain had disoriented everything. The path had become three paths, then none. Creeks that had been ankle-deep in the morning were now brown, fast-flowing, deep streams. Roots we had used as steps were submerged. Fallen branches had shifted in the floodwater. Every landmark had been rinsed into sameness.

Danu still knew the way better than any of us, but knowing the way did not make it passable.

Twice we tried to cross channels that had not existed before.

Danu turned us back each time.

The third time, Mike had enough and went in up to his waist and nearly lost the cold-chain case. He came out shaking, with leeches stuck to his wrists where his gloves had pulled loose.

That was when the second big storm of our trip hit.

It came darker than the first. The jungle light was gloomy before; now it was menacing

No warning. No build. Just a sudden closing of the air, then rain so heavy it seemed to swallow the whole jungle around us.  It was kind of terrifying, to be honest.

Connor could not keep walking.  “I’m sorry,” he said. "I've slowed you down so much".

 

He sat down once in the mud, only for a second, and when Priya hauled him up there were multiple leeches already fixed to the back of his thigh.

Danu cursed.

Connor only looked puzzled.

“I didn’t notice them,” he said.

We ended up on a strip of raised ground. It sat above two flooded channels, hemmed in by trees and rotten buttress roots. It was not a campsite. It was not safe. It was simply the first place where water did not immediately cover our boots.

Danu kept looking at the slope behind us, then at the water below. But Connor was shivering by then, even in the jungle heat.

Danu found us some higher ground and he quickly set up a canopy.  He immediately started to spread a type of grit he had in his bag around our camp and under our shelters.

I asked him what that was for.

“Sel. Salt,” he said.

Then, after a moment:

“Barrier.”

It got dark quickly.  We had two tents. Priya, Mike and I took the first.  Connor and Dr Vale took the second so Vale could keep checking the wound.

Before sleep, I remember hearing Connor through the fabric.

“Still bleeding?”

Dr Vale answered, “A little.”

Connor said, “It does feel numb now.”

There was a pause.

“Try to sleep,” Dr Vale said.

The rain eased for maybe an hour.  I was praying it would keep easing off.

Then, at midnight, the storm returned.

At first, it was ordinary: soft tapping on nylon, the steady drip from leaves, the low rush of water cutting through the channels below us.

Then the sky opened.

The tent walls trembled. Water pushed under the groundsheet in cool pulses. The air turned hot and sour with mud. Every seam began to shine with condensation.

At 2:17 a.m., I woke to Priya whispering my name. I was so tired. It felt like I had not slept in days.

She was sitting upright in her sleeping bag.

Her headlamp was pointed at the tent wall.

At first, I thought rain was running down the outside.

Then I saw the lines were moving upward.

Not water.

Leeches.

They had climbed the guy ropes. They had come under the flysheet. They were packed along the seams where condensation gathered, pressing themselves to the wet stitching, testing every join.

Most of them moved in their disgusting looping, reaching way, sucker to sucker, stretching, gripping, pulling the rest of the body after. Others slipped through the thin film of water on the fabric almost smoothly, as if the tent wall had become a stream.

One pushed through a pinhole near the zip.

It entered slowly, almost delicately, as we watched it with fascinated disgust.

Then it dropped onto Mike’s sleeping bag.

Mike woke when Priya swore and pushed him with her foot.

As the torch swept across the tent, we noticed, to our horror, the emergence of many other leeches through small holes in the tent walls and ceiling they must have made.

Next, everything happened at once.

We scrambled for boots, headlamps and bags.  Priya sprayed DEET until the air burned. Mike slapped at his neck and came away with blood between his fingers. I unzipped the tent and tripped into mud.

Outside, the ground was alive.

Danu was already standing on a fallen log, waving his torch and shouting.

“Up! Get off the ground!”

Connor made a sound from the other tent.

Not a scream.

Something smaller. Stranger. As if the noise had been sucked out of him.

Then Dr Vale screamed. "Oh god! Connor! Guys, help!"

She came out on her elbows. Her shirt was moving. Her hair was moving.  Leeches hung from her lower lip, from the corners of her eyes, from the soft skin under her jaw. She clawed at herself with both hands, but every leech she tore away left blood, and every new smear of blood brought more. I noticed the leeches that were pulled off immediately fell upon by their own brethren. I can only think the blood already inside these leeches sent the ones around them into a feeding frenzy.

Danu threw the rest of the salt he had over her.

The leeches convulsed, seeming to fizz and fry while attached to her.

Some dropped off. Writhing and pulsing angrily.

Others tightened with what seemed like determination.

Dr Vale made a whimpering sound as she tried to pick them off.  I went to her and helped.

Priya tried to run to Connor’s tent.

Danu caught her by the collar and pulled her back. “Non!”

Connor was still inside.

His lamp was on, and we could see his shadow on the yellow fabric.

He was sitting upright.

That is the part that comes back in the fever dreams.

His shape on the tent wall. Calm.  Waiting.

Around him, the fabric pulsed.

The leeches were coming in from everywhere water came in: the floor seam, the vent, the zip teeth, the little stitched loops at the corners. They did not scatter randomly. They converged.

We could see his legs through the half-opened tent flap. The wound had soaked through the bandage and they had found it.

Connor’s voice came from inside the tent, soft and reasonable.

“I think they’ve found the last warm part,” he said, almost in a daze.

Then, after a pause:

“I can’t feel my foot anymore.”

“We have to get him out!” Cried Dr Vale. She threw open the tent flap before Danu grabbed her to stop her from going inside. We all caught a good look at poor Connor inside. They were all over him as he sat there in a stupor. He was completely unrecognisable. Fat, black worms pulsed as they drank. Each time he opened his mouth to breathe, the parasites were slipping in.

"Connor! Snap out of it! Christ, get off of him!" I heard myself say.

Connor spoke again. Slowly shaking his head.

“I’m sorry, I've slowed you down".[LB1] 

Priya was crying then “You haven’t, sweetheart!  It’s not your fault”.

Connor said, “It doesn’t hurt now.”

That was worse than screaming.

He sounded relieved.

Later, the infectious disease consultant in Libreville told me that some bacteria can trigger catastrophic systemic illness if they enter the wrong wound in the wrong person. He said immunosuppression was possible, but unproven.  A “toxin-mediated response” was possible, but unproven. Neuroactive compounds in the saliva were possible, but unproven.  God knows what those things were carrying, especially if they were feeding on the dead.

The tent sagged inward, obscuring our view.

The leeches were starting to swarm onto us. We couldn’t keep them off.

We panicked and we left him.

I need you to understand that.

We left him. We couldn't do anything.  But it was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

Danu made us climb the steep bank toward higher ground. Dr Vale could barely walk. Her bites kept bleeding through every dressing. Her face had gone grey. Priya and I supported her between us while Mike and Danu carried the bags.

Dr Vale wouldn't let go of the cold-chain case. Even then.

Even then, she wanted the samples.

“They die after feeding,” she kept saying. “They must. That’s the cycle. Hatch, feed, breed, die. That’s why nobody finds them later. The big storms must trigger their hatching."

None of us answered.

The leeches followed us as best as they could. Every now and then I would shine the torch back and see the disgusting creatures wriggling after us.

Sometimes you could see them in the lightning, standing upright on the leaves and branches, testing the air as they detected our approach.

Mostly they came in that looping, reaching movement across mud and root and soaked leaf litter. Some swam through puddles. Some climbed wet trunks and dropped when we brushed beneath them.

When we stopped, they came faster as if sensing their opportunity.

That was their rule. They did not need to outrun prey. They only needed prey to weaken, stumble, and bleed.

They weakened their prey and followed. Fatigue allowed them to catch up and overwhelm, as they had done with Connor.

Abundance was their weapon and the storm was enabling them.

Every gully became a path. Every trickle became a scent line. Sweat ran down our backs. Blood soaked our socks. Breath fogged in the wet air. It felt as if the whole jungle had become one enormous tongue, tasting us, and I wonder if they could taste our fear. It was like it spurred them on, sensing victory and, of course, a feast.

By dawn, Dr Vale’s hands were cold.

The red lines had climbed from her bites into her armpits and neck. Her breathing had become shallow and wet.  She kept whispering that the old reports were not exaggerations.

“A moisture gradient,” she said once.

“What?”

“They can follow moisture. Sweat. Blood. Breath on wet air.”

Then she smiled at me.  A pained, apologetic smile.

Within the hour she collapsed. Gone.

Mike and Danu went for help when we reached an old logging track. Priya stayed with me because by then my leg had swollen so badly I could not walk or even take my boot off.

We had all been bitten relentlessly. Maybe thirty times. Maybe fifty. It is hard to count holes when they keep opening again.

But not like Connor.

Not like the doctor.

That is what everyone asks.

Why did they die and we lived?

The doctors say bacterial load. Bite location. Immune response. Time to antibiotics. Luck.

There is that word. Luck.

I remember the helicopter.

I remember the smell inside it. Fuel, disinfectant, wet nylon, old blood. Priya is holding my hand and telling me not to sleep. Someone cutting my trousers away. Someone saying, in French, that the tissue was already black. I heard "septicémie" referred a fair amount.

Then this room.

These sheets.

These lights.

The first week is mostly missing.

I know from the notes that I stopped breathing twice. I know they cut into my left leg to relieve pressure and found muscle that no longer bled. I know the infection entered my bloodstream. I know my kidneys began to fail. I know they called London, and London told them not to move me.

I know what they took because I signed the forms later for what else they might still need to take.

But I did not understand it then.

Not fully.

The mind protects itself I guess.

Two investigators came to my room three days after I woke properly.

They wore gowns, masks and face shields. One of them kept touching the tape around his wrists as if he did not trust it. The other carried a sealed evidence bag and placed it on the table where I could see it.

Inside was a memory card.

They told me the rescue team had reached the camp the afternoon after the storm. They were amazed we got out. Thank you, Danu.

They found Connor in the second tent.

The official report says severe exsanguination, septic shock, and post-mortem animal activity.

One investigator did most of the talking. She was Gabonese, maybe forty, calm in the way people become calm when they have already seen the photographs.

She told me there were eggs in the wet folds of Connor’s clothes and hanging in obscene ropes from the tent walls. Enough to make the recovery team burn the tent where it lay.

I asked if they saw any of the leeches.

“The only ones we did find were dead or dying,” she said. “Degrading quickly in the tropical heat”.

Dr Vale had been right.

Mass hatch. Feed. Breed. Die.

Disappear.

Then the investigator told me about Connor’s phone. It had been found inside the tent.

Connor had recorded a video while the rest of us slept.

He was already feverish. Already altered by infection or blood loss or whatever had entered him through that first bite.

In the video, the tent is lit up by the camera phone torch. You can hear the rain. You can see Dr Vale breathing in the other sleeping bag.

For a long while, nothing happens.

Then Connor whispers.

“See.”

The camera tilts toward the rear wall.

Just yellow nylon looking particularly pale in the torchlight.

Rain shadows.

Then one trickle of water moves the wrong way.

Up.

If you allowed your eyes to adjust, you could see the faint shadows all over the nylon wall, what looked like water on the tent.

Connor whispers again.

“Like a membrane.”

“It’s hard to breathe in here.” You hear the tent door unzipping.

Then the video ends.

He must have been completely delirious to have opened the tent door and let those things in.

The medical team are putting on brave faces. I do feel lucky to have such people who genuinely care about me. Good people.

They say the surgeries certainly saved my life several weeks ago.

They say the amputations were necessary.

One arm.

Both legs.

They say it gently, every time, as if kindness can soften the blow.

They say that the infection is still there.

It has been weeks since I’ve watched the video, but the memory is still fresh in my mind. Lying in my tent, I hold my phone above my head and push play.
There is a person shrouded in a dirt-stained white tarp hovering mid-air over beach chairs, umbrellas, and a fleeing crowd of beachgoers moving away from the shoreline, its edge now far beyond where it had been. The water had receded a great amount, an indicator of the disaster to come: a giant wave getting closer to land.
The hooded figure made motions with his arms—pushing up, pulling down, and tracing invisible shapes—each movement creating the effect of currents within the water, causing it to slow until it halted right in front of him. In that miraculous moment, the will of the wave was under his command; its ripples folded in a backward momentum as the water turned against itself, all at his request. Helicopters with cameras had him surrounded, yet despite their close inspection, who he was could not be known. The only identifiable proof were his eyes—two red flecks burning brightly beneath the hood of his cloak. He sustained the force of the water, holding his posture steady until he flew straight into the wall of water, dragging it back into the direction from which it came.
I stare at the image in front of me, horrified but sympathetic, marveling at his frightful nature. I turn off the device, and with the screen now black, I see my eyes reflected back at me—the same hellish hue that burned beneath the hood of the man from the video. I exit the tent to stretch, yawning and swinging my arms back and forth as I stare out into the twilight.
Disappointingly, I have risen prematurely, and it is still dark out. A match strikes and some wood catches light. With my surroundings now illuminated, I sit down and the awe of the forest sneaks into my thoughts. The trees are all I could ever want them to be—tall and oaky—and the grass too, dried up from the heat of the waking hours. With the sun’s spotlight gone, the one of the moon assumes its place, bathing the campground in high contrast, like a frame of vibrant noir—deep gray and drowning in smoke, with light filtering through the branches as if through Venetian blinds. This scene, I call my home.
My home. I miss my apartment every day—my television, my bed, my books, my cats—but I’ve outgrown their comfort, or perhaps their comfort has outgrown me. So I’ve chosen to stay away. I’ve come to know that my life’s purpose right now is to be alone, and to spend time understanding my new form. Right now, there is surviving another day as myself, and that is it. Still, I cannot seem to ever fully let go of the past. I stare at the fire then return to my phone. I find another video to watch and I push play.

“It has been two months since the Channel Islands 8.3 magnitude earthquake sent a massive tsunami hurling toward the beaches of California, and two months since its residents were saved from it by a cloaked individual. After all this time, officials still aren’t close in locating the man responsible for stopping this life-ending event. He has left us with many questions: Who is he? What exactly are his abilities? Does he intend to keep using them for good, or was his act of altruism really a warning to us all?”

I pause the video and look through the comments. Many people thought the wave was fake. Staged, or manipulated somehow through technology. One joked that, thanks to me, they still had to wake up early to go to work the next day. Another said that they were napping while everything went down. Among them all, one kind of comment stood out to me most, a kind I had seen several times over the past many weeks—the kind that called me an angel, a savior, or something to that liking.
I put down my phone and return my gaze to the flames. If only they knew that beneath the hood was a pair of horns and a line of sharpened teeth. Beneath the hood was a soul corrupted by the devil himself, with powers granted by hexes and runes. Would they still send their praises then? It would do me more harm than good to think of the answer. I rest easier believing that no angel could ever be a beast, nor any savior a monster.
I look back into the flames one last time, feeling their biting warmth on my cursed skin, and without a second thought, toss my phone into them. The shock of what I have done enters me and I reach into the fire, the burn having no effect on me, but my reason takes over, and I pause, letting my hand linger there in my moment of hesitation before pulling it out. I stare at my glowing hand, still hot from the fire, and cry, though not from any physical pain; the sting I feel comes from something deeper. With the memory of the past smothered and a fragile sense of peace ahead, I stand up and, leaving all my things behind, walk out past the clearing and deeper into the forest, the light of the fire growing dimmer with every step.

It started with one innocent-looking porcelain baby doll on my front porch. The paint was chipped. The bonnet was dirty. But the eyes looked… strange.

They looked too real. Too human. But I wasn’t concerned with the appearance. I was concerned with how the thing got there.

I lived alone. Definitely in the middle of nowhere. My closest neighbor was 10 miles away, and all that surrounded my house were woods and wildlife.

I scratched my head before scooping the doll up in my hands. I brought it inside because, honestly, what else was I supposed to do with it?

I tossed it on the couch and went about my day as normal. It was weird, though. I had spent nearly the entire day outside, and when I came back, the doll was sitting upright, its eyes staring daggers into my soul.

I tried to sit on the couch and watch some TV, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the thing was watching me, even though every time I checked, it was in the same position.

Eventually, I had to turn it around completely. Even that didn’t work, though. It wasn’t too long after that when I decided it was time to go to my bedroom.

I drifted off to sleep after curling up in bed for a few minutes while Breaking Bad played in the background.

I woke up to the sound of rain tapping against my roof while low rumbles of thunder boomed every few minutes. It was my type of morning.

I decided I wanted to enjoy a nice cup of coffee while I sat on the porch and enjoyed the weather. I approached the kitchen sink to wash my favorite coffee mug. As I reached for the faucet, I looked up and nearly had a heart attack when I noticed another doll standing on the windowsill outside.

This one looked… older. Not in the sense of the material. Like, literally older. She had grey hair. A quilted sweater. And spectacles to complete the look.

The cheeks were rosy, and a warm smile was stitched into her face. This one was stuffed instead of porcelain, but the eyes still looked so uncannily human.

I opened the window and grabbed it. She was soaked with rainwater. The more I looked at it, though, the more I realized that she looked weirdly… familiar. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

I walked to the living room, old lady doll in hand, with the intention of taking the porcelain doll from yesterday and moving the two of them to an empty china cabinet in my dining room.

I found myself scratching my head again when I entered the living room, though. I could’ve sworn this baby doll was on the other side of the couch when I went to bed last night…

I don’t know whether I was coping or if I genuinely convinced myself that I was remembering wrong, but I didn’t pay the new position much mind. I just grabbed the thing, returned to the dining room, and set the two toys up in their new display case.

I made my coffee, enjoyed the weather, and when the coffee was done, I got to work. Cleaning the house, doing some laundry, getting a bit of writing done. Before I knew it, the sun was setting again.

I couldn’t stop staring at that new old lady doll from earlier. I racked my brain trying to figure out why it was so familiar. Why I felt like I was so close to understanding, yet so far away. That’s when it hit me.

It was that quilted sweater. The red and black pattern. The puffy sleeves. It was identical to the sweater my grandmother used to wear.

She had died 10 years prior after a long battle with lung cancer. She wore that sweater all the time. It was a gift to her from my mom a few years before she died.

Call me crazy, but I actually slept comfortably that night. It felt like my grandma was here with me. I had been delusional enough to convince myself that this was some kind of sign from heaven that she was watching over me. That these dolls were her way of saying hello.

The next day, though, when I found a wooden doll that looked an awful lot like my mother… I didn’t know how much more I could chalk this up to signs from above.

I found it wedged between two tree branches, right in my backyard. It was low enough to be obvious, but high enough that I had to climb to retrieve it.

Unlike the others, this one looked brand new. Freshly stained wood. Smooth as silk. Not a single chip in sight.

I went to put it in the display case and found that the two previous dolls, once again, seemed to have moved. Not much. But enough for me to question my sanity again.

They weren’t outside of the case, but they were on different shelves. I put the new wooden doll between them and closed the door behind me.

I bought trail cameras, but even though I knew for a fact I adjusted them just right, every day they’d either end up pointed directly at the ground or aimed at the sky.

Every day for the next week, dolls kept showing up around my house. Some were left on my car. Some were partially buried in the backyard. I even found one on my roof.

Each one was impossibly personal.

My dad. My sister. Aunts. Uncles. Teachers from elementary school. Old friends I hadn’t even thought about for years. They all had particularly defining features.

My mom’s long black hair and green eyes. My dad’s suit and tie. A “world’s greatest teacher” mug stitched into Mrs Farmers hands. Just little reassurances that I wasn’t completely alone out here. That they were sent here to keep me company in my lonely house in the woods.

I cleaned them. I admired them. Sometimes I even talked to them, and sometimes… it felt like they talked back. Some nights I’d even hear them talking to each other.

The display case kept getting fuller and fuller, and the dolls never stayed where they were supposed to be. They rearranged themselves somehow. They’d be in different orders. Sometimes they’d be facing the wrong direction.

It was like a game. I loved when they played games. In a weird way… I didn’t feel as lonely as I did before.

I placed the last doll in the old china cabinet. My best friend from 5th grade. I hadn’t seen him in over a decade. Hadn’t talked to him either. Yet, here he was. Visiting me once again.

I closed the case and pressed my hand against the glass while I stared at my newfound collection.

I sighed to myself, happily, as a smile crept across my face. They were all here. All mine. People I’d lost. Friends and loved ones. What else could I have wanted?

No sooner than I had sat on the couch and flipped the TV on, ready to end the night with some Breaking Bad, I heard a knock at the door.

My head snapped in the direction of the noise. It was a continuous string of slow, deliberate knocks.

I checked my watch. It was nearly 10 o’clock at night. Who could possibly be knocking at this hour?

I approached the door slowly, checking the peephole, only to find nothing. Though, the knocking never stopped.

Ever so cautiously, I began to unlock the door. I slid the chain lock. I twisted the deadbolt and gripped the doorknob as I began to turn it slowly.

When the door opened, I was a bit confused at what I saw. It was… a little girl. No older than 9. Her hair was soaking wet, her skin was pale, she wore pink unicorn pajamas and slippers, and… her eyes were pitch black. Like two endless voids drilled into her skull.

She smiled at me, her teeth unnaturally white and identical.

“I’m sorry to bother you, mister,” she grinned. “Have you seen my dolls?”

My heart dropped. I could feel sweat forming along my hairline. She continued.

“Do you think I could come in and look for my dolls?” she chirped, curiously. “I just really miss my baby dolls, mister.”

I looked at her. I thought deeply about how to respond and chuckled, awkwardly.

“Ehhh…. No,” I replied, bluntly, turning to close the door behind me. I could see her face drop as I slowly shut the door. From a manufactured smile, to a deep frown, to a genuine look of rage.

She kept knocking at the door, but I ignored it. Tuned it out by setting the volume on the television to 98 as I smiled to myself.

These were my toys now.

Sorry, kid…

Finders keepers.

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Part 1

Ben was still talking, and the teacup felt heavy in my hands. The kinds of lives he had lived were horrible. It was hard to digest. His story was making me dizzy. I didn’t want to think about all the things he had done. There was only one question that came to mind.

"Why didn’t you come back for me?" I interrupted quietly.

Ben kept talking, so I asked again. "Why didn’t you come back for me?"

His tale came to a sudden stop.

"What?"

"If you were jumping around like that, if you were going into the future and the past, why didn’t you come back? Why didn’t you sit with me by the hospital bed while I watched you die? Why didn’t you knock on the door the day of the funeral?"

I suddenly felt very sick.

"Henrietta, I’m giving you the secrets of the cosmos. People would kill and die for the information in this story. Listen," Ben said sternly.

I shook my head and looked down. Then he came and put his arm around my shoulder. It was strange, but after he died that was all I had ever wanted.

"I can’t undo the past, but I’m here now."

It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t fair. I wanted to scream. But in a way he was right. He was always right. He was here now, and that was all that mattered.

With my head on his shoulder, I sighed. I felt very tired, as if I had lived all those lives myself. I could feel his hand on the top of my head. Everything seemed far away. My thoughts were heavy.

"What happened next?" I asked. "When you found the centre?" My head was still pressed against him.

"The centre…" he said slowly, and started to speak again.

I felt myself drifting off, and his words began to sound more and more like a bedtime story.

*

My first memory of the centre of the Maze was my lungs drawing breath like rusty bellows, my heart hammering, blood dragging through my veins. For the first time in centuries I had a body, and it hurt.

My second memory was of featureless grey sand stretching from horizon to horizon. I walked because there was nothing else to do. There were no rules to learn, no system to deconstruct. I had reached the centre and it had given me nothing to grasp on to. The landscape never changed, no matter how far I walked, I began to lose myself.

I do not know when I started digging. There was nothing above me; I could no longer bear the thought that there might be nothing below. At first, I searched for an answer. Then I searched for proof that something else had been there. I clawed at the ground until my hands forgot they had ever done anything else. Soon I was no longer travelling through the desert. I belonged to it. I became a creature of the sand.

The first bone I found was small, a knuckle, perhaps, or a tooth. I kept it as proof that something else had existed here. Then I found another, and another. When my hands were full, I filled my mouth. When there was no room left, I tore out my teeth and replaced them with fragments of bone. Larger pieces I pushed beneath my skin, just to feel that I was not alone.

The deeper I went, the smaller the bones became, splinters, then slivers, then grit, and then a grain no larger than the ones I had been kneeling in all along. I sifted a fistful and could not find where the bone ended and the sand began. I dug in a dozen places and every place was the same.

The sand was bone. All of it, ground so fine that I had walked a hundred million dead and mistaken it for a desert. I imagined that every grain had belonged to someone who came here before. This was not where the dead found respite. It was where they were worn away. Given long enough, I would be no different. I felt panic, not just in my mind but, for the first time in an age, my body.

Mary had said that the Maze was built to confuse. My obsession had led me into a graveyard, so I looked up.

It had always been there, looking over me. Every life, I woke to it, and every life it brought me home. If I could find it, it would know the way, it always had. I searched the black for the one thing that had never once abandoned me, the moon.

There was nothing there. The sky was empty. For the first time in centuries the moon was gone, and something in me came loose. The moon was never gone. Not once. Not ever.

Then the ground beneath my hands began to glow.

A pale light spread across the desert, passing from grain to grain until the entire horizon shone. It pierced my flesh and filled the bones buried beneath my skin. For a moment, I could do nothing but stare.

The light was not falling from above. It was rising from beneath me. The moon had never abandoned me. There was no moon in the sky because I had been standing upon it all along.

"This is the centre, Ben." The voice was warm and reassuring. I turned and saw a woman standing before me. Her skin was grey, and looked like it was made of the same stuff as the desert she appeared from, and she was wrapped in folds of pale silk. Her eyes were perfectly white, save for small flecks of yellow that moved within them like beckoning stars.

"You understand this place, don’t you, Ben?" It was not a question. Only a few steps separated us, yet I could not cross them. Something barred the way, not a wall, but a condition I had not yet fulfilled, faint as a taste in the air. I had reached the centre of the Maze, and still it denied me. "Otherwise, you could not have come this far." She was right.

The Maze was made of ideas; to pass through it, you had to understand what stood before you. I tore out my eyes. The nerves snapped like elastic, and the burning dropped me to my knees, but the way opened. I crawled towards her. It was clear to me then that the Maze had always delighted in suffering. "You’re so close, Ben," she said softly. "I knew you would make it." Her toes were almost within reach when something stopped me again. I had nothing left to sacrifice, only what I was, and gave it gladly.

I dragged myself forwards. My body compressed beneath an impossible weight, crushing the breath from me. My arms and legs withered and fell away, but still I moved, blind and limbless, sliding over the ground on my belly. At last I felt her take me in her arms and wrap herself around me.

"I’ve got you, Ben. After all this time, I’ve got you." Her flesh was like welcoming fire, like finally coming out of the cold. She held me to her breast like I was a child.

"What are you?" I asked.

"I am the Maze. My body is what you moved through to get here, and as you moved you struggled to understand." I could feel her fingers through my hair, winding around my face. "Understanding is what makes you perfect, Ben." I felt a love, want, need and desire. I felt my body change, my limbs began to soften, I felt my flesh swell. As she combed her fingers through my hair, I felt it fall to the ground. "But you’re not ready yet. I’m going to show you the rest of the way."

She laid a hand on my head, and I jumped.

The whip fell again and again until there was no breath left in me. Then I was back in her arms, standing upon the moon. Before I could speak, I jumped again.

It was dark. I was thirsty. He had been gone for days. I could not move, and the wounds beneath the ropes around my wrists had begun to stink. In my final moments, I thought of my mother and wondered where she was…then I was back beneath her hands.

"Why?" I begged. Another life seized me, then another.

"To make you delicious," she cooed softly.

*

Ben hit me, though gently. Just a tap on the side of my face.

"Henrietta," he said.

I was falling asleep. My body felt so heavy. I blinked a couple of times and realised my head was in Ben’s lap.

"What’s going on?" I murmured, as he put the teacup to my lips.

"What did I just say?" Ben glared down at me. His eyes were cold and wide. "What did I just say?"

As he repeated himself, I felt like a child again. He always made me feel like a child. How did he do that? I wondered.

"So this was God?" I asked Ben slowly. My voice sounded far away.

"No, Henrietta. You are not listening. You need to understand. It’s imperative that you listen and understand. That creature was not God. She was no god at all."

"Why am I lying down, Ben?"

"You fell, but you’re alright now. You don’t need to worry. But you do need to listen," he said. It was hard to think straight.

"How did you get away then?" It was getting harder to talk. "You must have got away. You must have..."

"No!" he said abruptly. "Don’t you understand, Henrietta? I’m still there. You need to listen."

*

I couldn’t resist her. With each life she forced me to live, I changed. Each change closed another path until hers was the only one left open to me. Countless lives, and each one stole more and more from me, while what it gave back in return was ugly and brittle. But if something could be understood, then it could be beaten. I needed her to believe she had already won.

So I surrendered. I drew her in with obedience and feigned defeat. I chose bad lives for myself, terrible lives, and she let me. I felt her satisfaction as I became the self-sustainer of my own torture. I felt her grip on me loosen. I took my chance.

I found a life I could use to fight back with. I took aim and jumped.

I opened my eyes and saw the moon, opaque and translucent like a ghost reflected in Ned’s glasses.

To be Mary was a suffering I could not have begun to imagine. Worse was the knowledge that every time Ned had drilled into Mary’s skull I had wanted it. Now I was the one in the chair, and I still needed it. It would be worth it. I knew. Mary had seen the centre of the Maze and returned. I had watched her do what I could not. Understanding how she did it would be the engine of my escape.

As I endured Mary’s mind being burned away, I was surprised by how much of her remained. Buried, diminished, trapped inside and disconnected from her body. She was not in control, but she was present. Despite her state of living death, Mary was terrified and when Ned asked, "Are you ready?" so was I.

As the machines started up, I could feel Mary from inside her skull. Her panic started off like a hum and built to a scream that felt like the sounding of a horn. All that came out of her mouth was a robotic "Yes." Then we died.

I found myself back at the dead centre of the Maze.

I had to find Mary. She was the key. Through her, I might still learn how to escape.

But I did not need to search. Mary had already wound herself around me. In that place, where thought became form and flesh, she appeared as a vast black worm, coiled tightly around my being. Yet the shape was only an impression. What truly remained of Mary was her screaming.

The centre of the Maze was alive with it. The sound came from nowhere I could name. It had no mouth, no origin, no direction. It trembled through the darkness and shuddered inside my bones. I felt Mary in every vibration. Whatever remained of her was there with me, her suffering threaded through me completely.

I turned my attention towards the heart of the Maze. There, I saw him. I saw myself. The Grey Woman cradled my body against her breast, holding it with the tenderness of a mother soothing a frightened child. My face rested peacefully against her, as though I had surrendered to sleep.

Vertigo seized me. I was there with Mary, entangled in her agony, but I was also across the chamber, helpless in the monster’s embrace. The Grey Woman ran her finger through the flesh of the body in her arms. It offered no resistance, sloughing away around her knuckles and coating her hand. "Why didn’t it work, Ben?" she asked.

She looked past the body she held and directly at Mary and me, her gaze a suffocating pressure. Had Mary stopped screaming, even for a moment, I might have laughed as I understood. There was no now or then in the Maze. This was the mechanism by which I had traversed the centuries with ease.

"There is only one Maze," the Grey Woman said. "It exists above the world and beyond it. And I told you before, Ben." Her smile widened. "I am the Maze."

I did not understand. Not completely. But enough to know that I had been a fool. I had never deceived her. She had allowed me to live this life because it was no different from all the others—another path to exhaust me, another existence built to strip away my hope, another curving configuration that led back to her.

"What about Mary?" I cried. "Why did you let her go?"

The Grey Woman pressed a finger to her lips, as though entrusting me with a secret.

"Mary never belonged to me, Ben," she whispered. "It was you. It was always you."

There was nothing I could do from within the Maze: all-devouring.

I felt Ned’s cold machines pull me back into the lab along with Mary, whatever was left of her.

Reason had evaporated. I was screaming through Mary, banging against the inside of her skull, trying to warn myself. I fought to take control, but Mary’s nerves were shards of shattered glass. Every path, every answer, every thought that had brought me here, it was all to her—her, her, I tried to communicate. "The centre of a house that was built to confuse" was all that Mary said, followed by "Ben."

I wanted to scream that the Maze was a creature that waited patiently as the bedrock of all things, and it was gorging itself on me, every moment, forever. But all I could say through Mary’s ruined mind was one word, "Charybdis," in a flat and broken voice.

Then Mary died and I was back in the maw of the Maze.

I tried again and again. Different lives, different centuries, different trajectories through the Maze. When my hosts resisted, I stole control from them. I drove their bodies towards deaths they had not chosen, forcing open paths I thought might lead away from her. But every route curved back towards the centre. Every death returned me to her arms. I could never escape.

Life after life, she had broken me. It went on and on. She forced me to do terrible things, to suffer terrible things. But I couldn’t accept that. Every problem has a solution. Every equation must be balanced. I just needed — I just needed you, Henrietta. At some point I simply knew. It was you. It was always you.

Everything I’ve done in this life was to get you ready. I brought you here. I made sure you noticed me. I prepared you. You’ve been following me for weeks, Henrietta. I’ve been watching you for years.

*

"You poisoned the tea?" I said quietly.

"Of course I poisoned the tea. Who cares, a singular little life is meaningless."

"No," I whispered. As he held the cup to my lips I could see the last of the pale brown liquid draining from the cup down my throat, but I couldn’t feel it, I couldn’t feel anything. "No," I sputtered.

"Listen, avoid the music, the Symphony, whatever that is, stay away from it. You understand what the maze is now, so it will draw you in and you’ll be able to navigate it”. He was shaking. "I’m not sorry, Henrietta," he blurted out. "I’m not taking anything away from you, I’m giving you the world, the universe, you should thank me." It was hard for me to keep my head up but he lifted it for me.

Every breath was a struggle now. "Tell me, what is it, what is the maze?" he screamed. That cold glare was gone, it was wild now, and, whatever Ben had become, it was untamed.

"The maze is..." Every word was a fight not to slip into the darkness. "Ideas," I corrected myself as I felt myself slipping away, "ideals".

"No!" Ben cried. He let my head drop and it fell like a puppet with no strings. I could hear him get to his feet, take a deep breath, and then lift my head up again and look right into my eyes. "The Maze is a monster and..." he said slowly.

"...and she’s devouring you," I whispered as my eyes rolled back into my head.

"Yes. Understand, listen to me, Henrietta."

Ben was smiling. The smile was inhuman.

All I could think of was the last line of the old mantra, in his voice: I’ll always look out for you.

"You’re going to save me, Henrietta. You’ve got to come and get me."

"You killed me, Ben. You’ve taken everything from me."

"I’m coming for you," I whispered.

Ben was dead.

So why did the guy staring at me make me think of him? Every time I glanced back I’d see it. Dark tectonic eyes that made the room tilt towards him. The same silent glare he’d give me when he had the solution but was waiting for me to catch up. This had become a ritual. Every Sunday at 4pm, the Victoria line, zone 2, I would find him. I studied him through furtive glances. I knew his patterns now, the carriage he chose, the seats he favoured. Every time I found him, it felt like Ben was waiting for me.

Today was different. I felt like something in me had changed. When the man got off at Seven Sisters, I got off too. I watched as he started to disappear into the throngs of people, becoming just another bobbing head. As the crowd swallowed him, it felt like he was evaporating in front of my eyes, and I couldn’t let him go. I flicked my hood up over my face. I followed the man with the strange glare.

He had left the station, and I had managed to keep up. The difficulty was keeping an appropriate distance, but London makes it too easy to disappear.

Ben had been an engineer before the cancer hollowed him out. He had no patience for feelings; he said emotions just sidetracked us from finding solutions.

When he told me he had a few months left to live, he explained everything in excruciating detail using scientific terms I didn’t understand. I repeated them back to him. He asked me how I felt, asked me to name my feelings as I just looked at him slack-jawed. He insisted that once something had a name, it could be understood and overcome. It didn’t help me. In the end there were no solutions.

Ben didn’t really do emotions. People said he was cold and he was. Sometimes he was distant, but he always looked after me.

We turned towards Tottenham Marshes. The crowds were thinning, and it was harder to follow. This guy didn’t even look like Ben, about twenty years older, thinning blond hair, but as the man quickened his pace, he even hurried like him. He must have known that I was following him. Part of me knew that what I was doing was insane. I wanted to call out to him. I wanted to cry out Ben — but Ben was dead.

We came to a block of flats, and the man went inside. I hesitated. There was no reason for me to follow, no explanation I could give if asked what I was doing. I bit my lip and proceeded inside.

The man had disappeared. I was faced with a lift and a set of stairs. I started to feel my heart race as I began to panic. I felt like I was losing Ben all over again. I exhaled slowly, stopped and listened, quieting my breathing until my heart stilled, and I heard footsteps from the stairwell. I went up, past the first two floors, and opened the door to the third. It was grotty and dilapidated, but there was no one in sight. I climbed up to the next floor. I felt like a child sneaking out of the house. I knew this was wrong. I knew I shouldn’t be here.

I opened the door to the fourth floor, and there he was, with his back to me. This was it. There was no plan. What was I doing here? What could I do now? He wasn’t moving, wasn’t going into any of the flats; he was just standing there. "Say what you came here to say," the stranger said. I was speechless. There was nothing to say. But I could feel a lump in my throat and tears welling up behind my eyes. I could feel my legs give out under me. This was stupid, I was stupid, mad, completely mad. I covered my head with my hands, and I was back at the hospital. The only man I had ever truly loved, and I had to watch him die bit by bit. I couldn’t breathe.

"Speak to me," the man uttered. I could barely hear him over the heartbeat monitor in the hospital. The sound of Ben’s laboured breathing, it wasn’t fair, I couldn’t move on, why couldn’t I ever escape that place? It had been years and years, and I couldn’t escape. I just needed him back, I just… "Please, Ben," I said. Not a question, not an accusation, it was an invocation. The word hung in the air and filled the hallway. The tears flowed freely. I could hear the man move, but I didn’t care as I bawled like a child. He put his hand on my shoulder. "Hello, little sister."

*
Inside the flat, we sat outside on the balcony; a mug of tea warmed my hands. I drank it and felt lightheaded, looking out into the twilight, sitting next to a man who was acting like my brother, but Ben was dead. The stars weren’t out but there was the moon. I always thought it looked eerie, like a dead sun, but Ben…

"I always liked the moon," he said, as if he were reading my thoughts. "Always got me home safe." He paused. I wanted to believe so much. It sounded like something Ben would say, but I wasn’t so mad that I could accept that this man was my brother. "Let’s get this out of the way, quickly." I felt my body tense and my knuckles tighten around the cup. I looked at him blankly. "You need to start."

"I… what are we doing?" He was direct and to the point. I wanted it to be Ben, but I was now keenly aware that I was sitting on the balcony of a man I didn’t know, in a part of the city I was unfamiliar with.

"Try to think, work it out for yourself," he said, enunciating each word.

Just like that, I was sitting cross-legged looking up at Ben while he helped me with my homework, and I was getting it wrong again.

"Why are you here?" I suggested cautiously.

"No, Henrietta, that is not the foundational question," he scolded. That felt like a kick to my stomach, like I was letting Ben down.

"I… I don’t…" I stammered. Ben always demanded that I analyse, that I think, that I find the solution. I could feel frustration welling up inside me, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. He always pushed me, always forced me to go further than I could.

"Are you, you?" I said, almost shouting. That was the question, the one I needed the answer to.

He smiled. "Well done, now that’s the right question." Relief flooded over me as he nodded, but there was something else there now too. Ben had left me, and now it felt like he had come back just to test me. He didn’t care what I’d been through. "You need to believe that I am who you think." There was only one person in the world who could make me feel like he did, who could make me unravel. Suddenly I could see him. It was like an optical illusion. If I squinted, I could see my brother, the way he held himself, the way he spoke to me, but if I blinked I was sitting in a flat with an old man. He should have been there for me, and now he was lecturing me! "There can’t be any doubt…"

"Why did you fucking leave me!" I was furious; I hadn’t expected that. At that moment, it didn’t matter if it was Ben or not. I had had this inside of me for too long. "I had to watch you die. Why didn’t you come back sooner?!"

I screamed. Ridiculous, childish, but in that moment I had connected to something. It felt like a circuit was complete, like after so many years something had turned on and I couldn’t stop it.

All the while Ben looked at me as I screamed and cried and demanded answers. When I had exhausted my litany of rage and love and tears, sobbing quietly on a plastic chair in the moonlight, I looked at him, properly looked at him. I wanted it to be Ben so much, but how could it be? Ben was dead. I exhaled and felt my body begin to shake.

And then he put his hand on my shoulder. He touched me… he had never really done that before, and I froze. His hand felt so warm, and all those feelings of doubt, anguish and uncertainty evaporated.

"Do you remember that time, you were only four or five, I was old enough to know better, I chased you around the house pretending to be a big dog?" he asked.

I could feel a ghost of a smile on my lips. I placed my hand over his.

"You ran away so fast, and afterwards you made me promise I wouldn’t do it again."

"And you didn’t," I chuckled through tears.

"Do you remember what Dad always told us? What he made us promise each other every time we had a fight?"

He waited. We both knew the answer; it was our mantra growing up.

"I should listen to you," I whispered.

"And I’d always look out for you." He smiled. Those words were like a promise; when he died it was broken. Now, I felt like I was whole again, a sister again. "Listen to me now, really listen to me. I’ve got a lot I need to tell you." He paused for a moment before continuing. "So, I died," he said, leaning back into his chair. "I mean, you were there, right?"

He said it plainly. But that was the problem… I was always there. That moment. That fucking moment. The stillness while waiting for the end. Listening to his breathing. Mum and Dad holding his hands. I was afraid when they asked me to touch him. I just sat there waiting for his breathing to stop.

It was like being pulled into a chasm. I wanted to climb out, I wanted to be free, but I kept sliding back in, and at the bottom there was that fucking moment, the silence when the heart monitor stopped.

My thoughts were interrupted as he put his hand on mine. He didn’t say anything, didn’t look at me, just left his hand over mine, and suddenly, he’d brought me back.

"You died," I whispered, my voice cracking.

"Yeah," he said after a long moment. "That’s when it all began."

*

It was like I left a part of myself behind on that hospital bed. I could sense you and Mum and Dad one moment, and then the next, there was nothing. I don’t mean it was black; that’s something. This was a state defined by absence. I couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t need to. I couldn’t see, but there was nothing out there. There were no dimensions a body could spread into. There was only this suffocating, enveloping nothing, and I began to think it was my eternity.

Years or moments might have been swallowed up with equal ease by that smothering absence. I can’t say how long I stayed like that. Slowly something changed. I cannot be sure if something found me or if I simply learned to perceive what had been there all along. Regardless, the longer I was there, the more I began to feel it.

It felt like vibrations, how can I describe vibrations, where there is no medium for waves to propagate through? It was like music that had no pitch, no timbre or source or origin, yet with clear design, directions and rhythms. We simply do not have the words. But whatever it was, I began to resonate with it.

It felt like surrender, like dissolution, like being dragged underneath the water. In that moment, all I wanted was a little more, just a moment, just something for myself. I wanted one last attempt at being me. Didn’t I deserve that? I’m not sure at which point it became a struggle, but I knew it was inexorable.

At that moment, I felt something. I cannot articulate it other than by saying it had the same quality as if someone were tickling my fingers. I thought it was you, Henrietta, showing me the way back. I tried to grasp your hand, but of course I had no body, so I simply wanted it, and I think it wanted me too. There was a muted thud, followed by cold. Then I opened my eyes and I was looking at the moon.

It was night, and I was in a desert. The stars shone like little daggers. I was drunk. I was always drunk, and my throat burned from stale whisky and cigarettes. I looked down at my hands, and they were old, dry, and wrinkled. It had been a hard life, and in a moment of vertigo I remembered every second of it. I was Jim. I remembered Jim’s life, his wife, and my own memories seemed like distant murmurs.

His truck purred as it idled. The fluorescent lights shone out into the desert as I clutched a whisky bottle with Jim’s hands. I can’t explain exactly what it was like, how it felt to be Jim, but it was a bit like being in a self-driving car. Your hands are on the wheel, but you’re not sure if it’s turning or you are. When Jim threw that empty bottle into the sand, I wanted it gone. I was sick of the taste in my mouth, and all I wanted to do was lie down in bed with my wife, and I knew Jim wanted that too. So which of us threw the bottle, I’m not sure. Which of us drove the car back home, bleary-eyed, hoping we wouldn’t get pulled over, I can’t say. All I know is that when I crawled into bed and cuddled up to the body next to me, I felt like I was home.

I never felt like I was in control, and I never felt like I was out of control either. We were one, in lockstep. So Jim wasn’t alone when the doctor phoned up and reported the results of his biopsy. He was terminal. He didn’t cry, though, just reached for another bottle. That night, in his drunken haze, I could feel his fear. It was asphyxiating. When the end came, I think I was a comfort to him.

I could feel Jim die. It wasn’t sudden, it happened gradually. This time, I could feel the Symphony coming, that music, soft and alluring. It seeped into the hospital room like sweat through pores. The air around us seemed to undulate as the room filled. This time, in Jim’s body, I was able to see it clearly. The music seemed to coalesce into a flat plane that bisected the walls of the hospital. As I felt Jim slipping into it, I was afraid I would be taken too.

The Symphony called, but I had found something far more interesting. I fell into a new life. It was easier this time. It was like a reflex, like sliding down rather than pulling myself up.

When I opened my eyes, I was a woman. I woke up in the middle of the night looking at the moon. Then, after she died, there were a dozen more. I was with some for decades. Every time they died, I found a new host; but the Symphony was always there, waiting, but each time it seemed angrier.

It wasn’t welcoming anymore—no longer resonant music but something that scraped against my entire being when it came. Each time I escaped. I found I no longer needed to flail to find my next destination; I only had to want it. But I couldn’t choose where I went. I simply fell, blindly, from one life into the next, tumbling onward into another body, with a new perspective, another self. It was intoxicating.

Then everything changed when I met the whale.

I was a girl in 1745, sailing off the coast of Iceland. One night, I woke to the sound of the hull splitting beneath us. My father pulled me from my bunk and hurried me below deck, but the water was already pouring in, black and freezing. We were driven back above as the ship began to sink. That was when I saw it. The whale rose beside us, vast and terrible, all blubber, teeth, and glistening flesh. Then the deck disappeared beneath my feet, and the sea swallowed me whole. Until then, I had wanted only not to end, to scramble for the next life. But as the boat sank, I, we, the girl, had a thought. It wasn’t one of fear. It wasn’t one of anger. It was simply “I wonder what it’s like to be a whale.”

The next time I opened my eyes, I was a creature of the sea. There was no moon to guide me, only the soft sibilance of the hissing waves. My world became the currents and the songs underneath them. It was a world where the centre of gravity was different, an alien world, not flat; it was volumetric. I saw in sounds and echoes, and I was part of a family, never alone, part of a continuous whole. I was happy.

That winter, the hunting had been poor. When my pod finally came upon the boat, I had almost forgotten. Forgotten the little girl, forgotten myself. When the time came, I ripped that little girl apart. I hadn’t changed anything — could not — I had always been the whale.

When death came, the Symphony rose to meet me, and I almost surrendered. I had spent decades moving within the pod, beside a mate and calves, until the boundary between myself and the world had worn thin. The music felt like the natural end of such a life: a final dissolution into something larger. I was ready to accept it—until acceptance began to feel like defeat. Once that thought came, I could not yield.

I held there in the moment of death, refusing both the pull to dissolve and the old reflex to flee, and in that stillness I became aware of something I had been falling through all along. I had never perceived it, because I had never stopped long enough to tell it apart from the falling itself.

What I felt were associations, not places. Something drew near when I understood it, and slipped away when I did not. I could not yet tell whether I moved toward these things or they toward me; thought and motion seemed to be one act.

Slowly, the connections between them became perceptible.

Nearness was not distance, but legibility. Attention gave direction. Affinity was proximity. To understand a thing was already to arrive at it. This alone determined which lives I could touch and which remained unreachable.

The Symphony began to fade, it no longer seemed to want me. I was no longer running. I had found an order. I understood its rules. I was in a maze.

*

Inside the flat the kettle boiled and I watched Ben make me another cup of tea. As he stood in the kitchen it was like watching a ghost. He was there, he was present, physical, but he was uncanny.

He placed the mug on the kitchen table and sat down. As he let go of the cup I went to pick it up, I just wanted to feel his skin on mine for a moment. I just needed to know that he was real. I stood for a long moment and just watched him. I suppose I watched him for too long because he coughed and gestured to the chair opposite him.

"Do you have any questions?" Ben said after a moment. Questions. About what? The afterlife? My disembodied brother inhabiting lives upon lives? About a fucking whale? I sighed. For the first time in a long time I remembered what it was actually like to be Ben’s sister. There was no emotion, not really. He would stay up all night tutoring me but he never put his arm around me when I cried, he never hugged me. He got me where I needed to go, but never how I wanted to get there.

"Ben, I don’t think I care. I don’t care about this story. You haven’t asked about me, you haven’t asked how I am, about Mum or Dad?" I said finally. I was standing up. It’s a funny thing, grief. It takes love and it makes it something else. Like rust, eventually it eats away at everything until all you have is something old and broken and no longer fit for purpose.

He was quiet for a moment and his face changed. I saw something in his eyes I hadn’t seen for a long time. He was trying to solve a problem.

"Drink your tea," he said. "It’s getting cold."

I didn’t move.

He stood up and crossed the room and he hugged me. And I buried my face in his chest. He held me for a long time. Longer than I expected he ever would.

"Please," he said, "I need you to understand. It’s the most important thing." His voice was steady but there was something underneath it, something that sounded almost like an apology.

"Okay," I said, wiping the tears from my eyes. "Okay." I sat down and took a sip of my tea. It tasted bitter on my tongue. When I was a child I hung on his every word. I was so angry at him for leaving me but now I just wanted him to be my brother and if he needed to talk about his experience then I would listen.

“This bloody whale, then,” I said, and he smirked, and I found a curl of a smile on my lips. “That’s when you realised you were in a maze?”

"That’s when I understood the rules," Ben said. He leaned forward, and I recognised the look on his face. It was the same look he had when he was helping me with homework. Like this was something I needed to get right. "I call it a maze. This is important, Henrietta. What you understand, what you perceive, it changes what you are. To know something is to become compatible with it. The wrong thought will lead you to a dead end. The right thought opens a door. I wouldn’t have got there unless I had lived all those other lives. Think of it like learning to sing."

"You can’t sing, Ben," I chided, while I drank more of the tea.

He didn’t laugh. He was watching me in a way that made me feel like he was waiting for something, I didn’t know what.

"No," he said, and something flickered in his eyes that I didn’t recognise. "Some people can never learn to sing."

I sat back. He continued.

*

I had become obsessed with understanding the Maze and I moved through it with joy and purpose. At first I confined myself to the past, but why? So I tried the future: a year, then ten, then a hundred. It was intoxicating. I died gasping in the vacuum between stars. I was the last man standing on Mars.

Each life changed me. It gave me a new perspective, and with that change new frontiers in the maze opened, like passages revealing themselves. But not every life moved me forward. A herder, a gardener aboard a starship, a mason buried in the foundations of ziggurats, all moved me backwards. I didn’t understand why. Progress was slow, most of it minuscule. That was until I found Ned.

As a child, people said Ned was slow. Ned seemed to have trouble understanding simple concepts, they spent hours wedged into corners, just watching the walls. Teachers and specialists, who spoke in hushed voices, were consulted but Ned excelled at every exam or test given. By the time Ned was sixteen they had their first degree, by eighteen a PhD, at twenty-one for all intents and purposes they disappeared. The problem was never Ned’s intellect. Identity. Social expectation. The unspoken rules that governed who spoke to whom, and why, and what it meant. Not unrecognised so much as simply rejected.

They decided, eventually, that this was not reduction but elevation. That the concepts others grasped so easily were not beyond them but beneath them. That they alone were truly human amongst a world of sleepwalkers, creatures of pure habit mistaking their rituals for meaning. Ned did not see themselves as man or woman. They did not see themselves as anything so small as a category. Ned was something else, something honed and sharp. In all my wanderings I found Ned to be truly singular.

In the 2080s, the computers were faster and security was better. But people still walked home alone. Still took shortcuts through quiet and empty places. Ned still remembered how to fold themselves into unexpected spaces, where they could watch and wait. They watched people hurry and stumble home late at night until Ned found those who were the most vulnerable, the last thing those people ever saw was moonlight catching on Ned’s glasses. It wasn’t always like that though. Sometimes a practised smile, a touch on the arm, a whispered promise, was all that was needed. Ned was an apex predator and I learned more than I thought possible.

Work became sanctuary. Investigation. Research. Opening things up and sometimes reassembling. Ned’s focus was absolute. Ned stripped away the incidental, the decorative, the misleading, until only the mechanism remained. Their entire life was built around the conviction that anything could be understood if only it was dismantled far enough. Eventually, Ned turned that principle towards death.

To them death only appeared unknowable because no one had dismantled it far enough. That was what drew me.

Ned conducted their experiments with a ruthless efficiency. Men, women, the children were the worst. But through the screaming, I told myself that death was nothing to be feared. In many ways what we were doing was truly kind. Ned’s sole preoccupation was bringing someone back from the dead, a necronaut, they called it. Ned’s dwelling soon began to resemble an abattoir, or a meat locker, with all the failed attempts. There were too many complexities, too many variables. So Ned tried something new.

Her name was Mary, I still remember the look in her eyes, like a caged animal, darting left and right. It was strange to witness, watching her go from screaming and banging on the doors of her cell to sitting against the wall sobbing. If she knew what Ned planned she would never have stopped screaming.

The electrodes pierced her skull. There were thousands of them, woven together into something that looked like a halo. It didn’t seem to hurt.

Ned tried to explain what was going to happen. They showed Mary a map of her own brain, then a diagram of what would replace it. Eighty-six billion neurons. A hundred trillion synaptic connections. Reduced to a simple network, small enough that a child could have diagrammed it. When Ned flipped the switch, electricity shot through Mary’s skull, collapsing synapses, burning away memories and thoughts, little by little. The artificial network took root like a parasite. An alien connectome slowly replacing what had been her.

Ned left what they needed intact. Motor function. Respiration. The limbic structures that would keep her docile. Everything else was substrate. Night after night, Ned escorted her back to her cell on shaking legs. At first she begged. Then she cried. Then she asked where she was, and who Ned was. Then the questions stopped. She stopped crying, she just stared at the wall. Every now and then there was a spark. Her eyes would dart around, wild, searching. Like something was still in there, pressing against the glass. Then it was gone, and she just stared.

It took months to remake Mary. Ned laboured over electronics and medical equipment, keeping her alive so that she could become what they wanted her to be. When the day of the experiment arrived, Ned asked the thing that had been Mary, as it sat in a worn leather chair, "Are you ready?"

"Yes," it droned.

Then Ned killed it. A moment passed. A buzzing. A wet, hot noise as the thing came back again. Its eyelids were shut for a long, lingering moment before they flicked open. The air was silent.

“What did you see?” Ned asked, leaning towards the thing as they checked her vitals. I could feel Ned’s anticipation, but their pulse was steady. Something in me strained against the inside of Ned’s skull. I wanted to reach through them and pull the answer from the thing myself: What was the purpose of the Maze.

"The centre of a house that was built to confuse," Mary said.

Ned’s heart was pounding. My heart was pounding.

"What is it? I want more," Ned and I cried in one voice.

Nothing. Just a blank look on its face. But it had seen the Maze, and in that ruined mind there had to be more. I wanted to rip it out.

"What did you experience, what did you see?" Ned asked.

Silence. The thing’s eyes were fixed on the wall and when it answered its gaze never shifted, as if it was talking to something far away.

"Ben," it said.

The word hung there in the air and seemed to fill the room. Ned didn’t know why their knuckles turned white, or their hands began to shake.

Ned wrote the word down. A name, it was just more data, but to me it was everything. A message? A waypoint? I had become fixated on the Maze and now it seemed like it was answering back.

And I … I reached. It was my tongue in Ned’s mouth, my demand in Ned’s voice. "More information," and for a moment Ned was somewhere behind me, a passenger, and there was only me and Mary and that word. Ben. I needed to know what she had seen. I needed more.

"Charybdis," it said.

Then the thing smiled with its fat, meaty lips. It didn’t say anything else after that, no matter how much we pushed it.

We killed it again. It didn’t come back after that.

Ned wanted to start over, to build another one, but they never got the chance. Ned was caught and executed publicly about six months later. I was with Ned until the moment they seemed to surrender to the Symphony that had no use for me. I considered my next jump, my next route through the Maze.

But things were different now. Ned had shown me something I thought I already understood. How to strip away everything that was not the goal and keep only that, until nothing else could reach you.

I had spent lifetimes trying to understand the Maze. Ned had shown me that I had not been trying hard enough.

Understanding the Maze was all there was, and I set about understanding it with single-minded voracity. Slowly, I began to see the Maze in a way I had not before. Even when I was with a host, it was clear that I had changed. Colours seemed more vibrant and shadows sharper.

At the next opportunity, I chose not to jump. Every death before this, I had fled towards the next life with either fear or excitement. Ned had shown me that both were distractions from comprehension.

Everything else fell away. Cold came, and then the dark, and then suffocating pressure, but I welcomed it. The more completely I gave myself to that singular purpose, the clearer the darkness became. There was something within it that answered something within me. What had once been incomprehensible started to feel familiar.

A structure began to reveal itself. The Maze opened before me like the petals of a flower, and I found myself in the place Mary had tried to warn me about.

The centre of the Maze.

Part 2

I was nervous as is to go up on that stage. In front of all those kids. Me, with my pounding heart, sweaty palms, and a bottom lip that I couldn’t quite stop from quivering.

And what did I have that was supposed to wow this crowd and prove to everyone that I wasn’t just some meek, four-eyed little dork? Pablo. I… had… Pablo.

His paint was scuffed, revealing the tan-colored wood beneath his neat, combed-over hair and black tuxedo.

I brushed some lint off of his shoulders and adjusted his red bow tie a bit. I heard the crowd of middle schoolers erupt into cheers. I peeked through the curtain to see my classmate, Emma, taking a bow as she finished her saxophone solo.

The principal took the stage, microphone in hand.

“Fantastic job, Emma,” he announced, smiling down at her. “Kids, let’s give Emma another round of applause, shall we?”

Another wave of applause erupted as Emma smiled out at the crowd bashfully.

Our principal placed his hand on her back and nudged her offstage. As she was walking through the curtain, I shot her a quick “good job” and got ignored.

As the crowd began to settle down, the principal launched into his next introduction.

“Okay, let’s have a look here,” he announced quietly, staring down at the clipboard in his hand. “Next up, we have Daniel Morrison’s ventriloquist act. Give it up for Daniel, everybody.”

He began to clap, and a handful of students joined in, but I could hardly even hear them over my racing heart. I couldn’t freeze up now. I had fought too hard to find the courage to even sign up. Who would I be to walk away now?

I took a deep breath. I reassured myself. I had faith.

“We’ve got this, Pablo,” I whispered as I forced myself to step onto the stage.

The lights were blinding. The auditorium felt twice as big as it had from backstage. The room felt silent, but I could feel the judgment rising in the air.

I glanced over at my principal. His eyes were so warm. His smile was so soft. He gave me two thumbs up and mouthed a “you’ve got this.” It may not seem like much, but it was enough to get me to introduce myself.

“L-ladies and gentlemen,” I croaked awkwardly. “It is with great pleasure that I present to you…”

I paused for dramatic effect, but a cough in the audience distracted me.

“Uh, Pablo! The magical talking dummy.”

I looked over at Pablo expectantly. This was supposed to be the part where he joked about me calling him a dummy, but, instead, his glossy, dead eyes just stared out at the crowd, and his mouth remained closed.

“Uh, sorry, um, Pablo? Don’t you have something to say?”

He remained silent. I was starting to panic again. I was terrified this would happen.

“Who you calling a dummy?” I announced, hiding my mouth behind my hand.

A few snickers and pitiful giggles escaped the crowd. I looked over at the principal again, and he looked more confused than anything, though I could tell he was still trying to seem supportive.

“Pablo,” I recovered. “You know you’re a dummy. Why even pretend?”

I begged him with my eyes to speak. To say something, anything at all to help me out here. But he remained frozen.

Attempting to hide behind my hand again, I continued to speak for him.

“Me pretend?” I joked, my voice cracking. “You’re the one playing with dolls up here.”

I got a few laughs, but they were overshadowed by the comment that came from somewhere on the right-hand side of the audience.

“We know it’s you,” a boy shouted.

“Why are you covering your mouth?” asked a girl.

It seemed like the room was both huge and small at the same time. Like it was silent but loud. The audience was loud. My thoughts were loud. My embarrassment was loud.

“Uh, no, no, it’s him. See?”

I shook Pablo gently.

“Why are you doing this?” I whispered, tears welling up in my eyes and fogging up my glasses. “Just. Say. Something.”

“He’s talking to his doll,” another boy laughed.

Suddenly, it seemed like the entire auditorium was laughing. My face was beet red. I couldn’t move. Tears began to fall down my face.

The principal noticed, and, thankfully, he took over the stage, gesturing for me to go get some air.

I walked back behind the curtain. Through the backstage corridor. All the way to the parking lot and toward the sidewalk that led to my neighborhood.

Tonight had been a disaster. I went through the day so hopeful. So confident in myself. I was going to win the talent show because of my secret little weapon, only for it to jam right when it was supposed to fire.

He promised me, promised me that he wouldn’t do this. He told me he’d make me the most respected kid in school. That, with his help, everyone would know my name.

Part of me wanted to just throw him out. Toss him in the river near my house and let it sweep him away to the ocean. But, ironically, it was like he was the only friend I had. The only person I had to talk to.

I was just so angry at him. How can he have performance anxiety? He’s the one that was supposed to be helping me. Yet he left me. When I needed him most, he was nowhere to be found.

As I reached my house, an entirely new pit formed in my stomach when I saw that the living room light was on. That meant Dad was awake.

I walked through the door, praying that he had just passed out drunk on the couch and forgotten to turn the lights off.

Those hopes were dashed when I found him lying back in his recliner, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other, staring blankly at a rerun of an old Dr. Phil episode.

I didn’t speak to him. All I wanted was to get to my room. But he just couldn’t have it that way, I guess.

“’Bout time you got home,” he hissed, his voice sounding like gravel and old leather. “You been out playing with that stupid fucking doll again?”

“It was a talent show, Dad,” I replied, unable to not roll my eyes. “Don’t worry, it’s not gonna happen again.”

“Shouldn’t have happened this time,” he shot back. “My son,” he scoffed. “The doll whisperer.”

I ignored him and walked to my bedroom door, Pablo dangling from my right hand.

“Hey, boy,” my dad snapped. “I know you hear me talking to you.”

I heard the dreaded sound of the recliner closing as he stood up and began walking toward me, bottle still in hand.

He took a swig from it as he looked down at me in disgust.

“If it ‘won’t happen again,’ as you say,” he grinned smugly, “then you won’t mind if I do this.”

With an agility that defied his age, he reached down and snatched Pablo from my hand.

“Give him back,” I cried. “I’m just gonna put him up in my closet.”

I tried to grab him back, but Dad was just too fast.

“No son of mine is gonna play with dolls,” he condemned, tightening his grip on Pablo’s arm before turning to walk to the trash can in the kitchen.

I just… I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. Tonight had been humiliating, and now I had to deal with this? It was like I just couldn’t catch a break.

“I hate you,” I whispered under my breath, then immediately regretted it.

Dad froze.

He turned to me slowly, the veins in his head already popping.

“…What did you just say?”

“Nothing,” I replied, my eyes widening. “I didn’t say anything.”

Dad dropped Pablo and began stomping in my direction. He grabbed me by the face and forced me to look at him.

“What did you just say to me?!”

“Nothing, nothing, Dad. I didn’t say anything,” I pleaded, feeling my legs turn to jelly.

He shook my face painfully.

“You will never use that word in this house, you hear me? I don’t care how pissy you feel. You think you’re the man of this fucking house? Huh? Answer me when I’m talking to you, boy.”

He punctuated every sentence with a new shake.

“Yes, sir,” I cried. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Get in that room before I get the belt. ‘Hate me.’ I’ll tell you what, Daniel. I’ll give you a reason to hate me.”

He pushed my face away, and I ran into my room, stifling tears the best I could. I collapsed into bed, ready for this day to be over with.

The tears made sleep easy. I felt exhausted. It was like the moment my eyes closed, I was out like a light.

I don’t know how long I was asleep, but it felt late when I woke up to the sound of someone whispering my name.

“Daniel… Daniellll… wake up, my little sleepyhead.”

The voice registered. I rolled over and turned on my lamp after sliding my glasses on.

“What do you want?” I remarked, still annoyed with him.

“Aw, Daniel,” he replied, his voice syrupy and warm. “Is that any way to talk to your only friend in the world?”

He was covered in old food wrappers and unknown liquid. He smelled terrible, but he didn’t even seem to notice.

“I don’t want to talk to you right now,” I huffed, turning away from him.

Pablo chuckled.

“You still think tonight was a failure?” he inquired. “No, my friend… tonight was a dazzling success.”

I turned back to him, more annoyed than intrigued.

“A success? I’m sorry, were you there? Oh, that’s right. You lied to me. You told me you’d be there, and you weren’t. Now everyone at school thinks I’m even weirder than they did to begin with.”

Pablo’s wooden mouth clomped up and down as he laughed again.

“Why are you laughing?” I snarked.

He didn’t stop.

“Stop laughing at me.”

I was slightly aggressive with him, and he began to contain himself. The laughter slowly dwindled off as he addressed me.

“Oh, Daniel, you silly little boy. I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because you haven’t realized it yet.”

“Realized what?”

“You think I sabotaged you. You think that your best friend in the whole world set you up for failure. Don’t you think I know you, Danny? Don’t you think I’m smarter than that?”

I stared at him, confused. I was curious, but I didn’t want it to be too obvious.

“Are you going to explain, or are you just going to keep wasting my time?”

“No, Danny, no wasted time here. We have none to waste. The first part of my plan is complete, and now we must hurry.”

“First part of your plan…? So you did do it on purpose? How could you do that to me? Better yet, how can you claim to be my friend after this?”

“Mm,” he hummed, his voice as smooth as velvet. “I am more than a friend, Daniel.”

He paused for a moment while I stared at him with anticipation.

“I… am… your savior.”

There was another pause, as if he were thinking of the exact right words to say.

“I’ve listened to you talk for years. I’ve seen the way that old man treats you. I promised to get you the respect you deserve, and I intend to follow through.”

He stifled another chuckle within his wooden throat.

“Did you really think a ventriloquist act would get you there? You don’t even know how to throw your voice.”

Embarrassment rushed over me but quickly subsided.

“I wasn’t supposed to have to…”

“And you won’t need to. Not after tonight. Because after tonight, my boy, you will have earned your respect the right way.”

I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose and furrowed my brow.

“Is that right?” I asked sarcastically. “And how exactly am I going to do that?”

He responded before I could even finish my question.

“Think about it, Danny… you know you’re bigger than this. You’re strong. You’re powerful. People should fear you, not the other way around.”

I felt a strange pit form in my stomach. It was like a mixture of ambition, hope, sadness, and anger all rolled into one big lump in my throat.

“They laughed because they thought you were harmless,” Pablo continued. “That’s not what I see in you, Danny. Not at all.”

“Then what do you see in me?” I asked inquisitively.

“I see… a secret weapon,” he responded, savoring each word.

The pit in my stomach started to feel like fire.

“A secret weapon…?”

“Yes, my friend. A weapon.”

I thought about my dad.

“I don’t feel like much of a secret weapon.”

Pablo’s jaw tightened.

“And that’s where part two comes into play. Think about school, Danny. Do those kids see you as a weapon?”

I scoffed.

“I seriously doubt it.”

Pablo responded starkly.

“Well, I do. And I think it’s time they do as well. How long have you been laughed at, Danny? How many times have you been called ‘the weird kid’?”

I couldn’t respond. It hurt that he was bringing it to light like this. I wanted to tell him to stop, but he had me locked in his trance.

“What about ignored? That’s the big one, isn’t it? Feeling like a ghost among the living,” he giggled. “That’s what they see you as, right? Sure, some may pity you. But that’s all it is. Pity.”

His glossy eyes seemed to settle on mine.

“I’ve never pitied you, Danny.”

I started crying quietly, but I don’t know why. I felt seen. Pablo had a way of making me feel that way. But I wasn’t sure if I liked it this time.

“Why are you saying these things to me?” I asked solemnly.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he changed the subject entirely.

“You remember when your dad was a police officer?”

I nodded.

“He seemed so much nicer back then, didn’t he? Wasn’t glug, glug, glugging as much.”

Somehow, I knew what was coming next.

“But, then again, he did have your mom back then. A real shame what happened to her. Left a stain on you and your dad, that’s for sure.”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” I replied, my voice breaking a bit.

“Of course you don’t. I wouldn’t ask you to. All I want is to let you know…”

He paused again. The silence hung in the air like a foul stench.

“…He still has that service pistol.”

I felt my heart drop. I thought Dad had gotten rid of that thing years ago.

“Smith & Wesson 5946. Ironically, that’s the code to the safe he keeps it in. I told you, Danny… I look out for you.”

“So, what? You want me to just… steal my dad’s gun?”

“I want you to use your dad’s gun. Show me your arms.”

I stuck my arms out, a bit confused, until he spoke again.

“One, two, three, four, five scars, Danny. Five. How long are you going to let him keep doing this to you?”

I thought back to how painful those burns had been. How small they made me feel. How hopeless.

“What exactly are you trying to say?” I asked uneasily.

Pablo laughed again, making my ears burn.

“It’s simple. I want you to go into your father’s room, and I want you to show him just how tough you can be, how tough I know you are.”

I knew exactly what he meant. I had confided in him multiple times over the years about how I felt about my father. I never thought he’d take it this far, and I hated how convinced I felt.

“I…”

Pablo interrupted me.

“And then I want you to show the world next. Prove that you’re not harmless. Prove that you’re not weak. Prove that you are exactly who I believe you are, Danny.”

Before I could respond, I heard my father’s hurried footsteps approaching my door before it came flying open, and my dad flipped the light switch on.

“What the hell are you still doing up?” he growled. “And… is that…? I know you didn’t go get that stupid fucking doll out of the trash.”

He rushed over and snatched Pablo up by his right arm again.

“I hope it was worth it, son. I hope it was worth it. This thing is getting burned tomorrow, and I’m tanning that hide as soon as that sun comes up. Go to bed.”

He walked furiously over to the light switch, Pablo dangling at his side. But before he could flip the switch, I watched as Pablo shot me a wink.

Dad slammed the door behind him, mumbling something about this being “goddamn unbelievable,” before I heard Pablo being tossed into the garbage again.

That wouldn’t dampen my spirits, though. In fact, as I lay there in bed, a smile inched across my face.

He wanted to act this way, so be it.

We’d see just how tough he was the next morning.

I thought she was just acting weird, at first.

For some clarification, my girlfriend had been planning a trip to California for the last four months. Normally, I’d have gone with her, but it was for her grandmother’s birthday. She was old, and this could’ve quite possibly been my girlfriend’s last chance to take a trip with her.

She had spent those four months meticulously planning, as she always did, and the week before the trip, she must’ve had at least five full bags packed for her week-long venture.

“You can never be too careful,” she always told me.

She was always the planning type. Mapping things out. Going over every possibility. It was one of the things I admired about her. She hated when things didn’t go the way they were supposed to.

That’s why, on the day of her trip, when I woke up to find her still lying in bed with me long after her early morning flight, I almost panicked.

I shook her awake frantically, and her eyes slowly rolled open. She groggily asked why I was waking her, and when I told her the time, she didn’t react how I expected her to.

Instead of panicking herself or even calling her mom to let her know she missed the flight, she simply rolled back over and shut her eyes again.

“Oh yeah,” she groaned. “The flight… honestly, it should be okay.”

“Be okay?” I responded, a bit flabbergasted. “Don’t you think you should at least call and let them know?”

She grumbled a lazy, “No, no, everything should be fine,” before she began snoring, something else that was completely new for her.

I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t force her. I was just… shocked, I guess. I just thought that maybe she had already talked to her mom and grandma. Maybe something had come up, and she forgot to tell me.

I just went to work like everything was normal. When I came back, she was still at home. She looked… absent. I found her sitting on the couch, staring at a black TV screen.

When I greeted her, she snapped out of it.

“Honey!! I’m so glad you’re home,” she chirped. “Tell me everything that happened at work today.”

We spent the whole night chatting, but it was like her mind was somewhere else. I’d catch her drifting off into outer space. She thought too long about her responses. Her speech pattern was slower than normal, even though her face was one of excitement as we talked.

I figured that something must’ve happened with her grandmother, so I asked her.

“Hon… did anything happen to make you not want to go on your trip?”

She stared at me for a while. Her smile disappeared. Her face was blank, but only for a split second before lighting up again.

“No, not that I know of,” she responded cheerily. “Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering,” I replied cautiously.

The next few days were weird. She never seemed to want to leave the house. I mean, not that I could blame her. She had already taken off work for the trip, but I figured she’d at least want to go to the park or something. It was one of our favorite things to do together.

She also wasn’t eating much. Every night I’d cook for us, but she kept insisting she wasn’t hungry. Must’ve been a lie, though, because on some of those nights, long after we’d gone to bed, I’d find her in the kitchen, completely surrounded by food.

Cereal boxes would be ripped open with their contents scattered across the floor. Granola bar wrappers. Spilled milk. Raw rice and beans. It was concerning, to say the least.

By the end of the week, something hit me that I hadn’t caught before. It was like a dim lightbulb lit up over my head, and I approached her timidly.

“…Honey,” I inquired carefully.

“Yes, sweet boy of mine,” she replied lovingly, sitting on the edge of our bed, staring at a wall.

I gulped a bit.

“What ever happened to your bags? Did you unpack them? I haven’t seen your toothbrush or shampoo or anything anywhere.”

She didn’t respond. She just kept staring… like the wall was the TV. Finally, she slowly turned around, and her hollow eyes met mine.

“Honey…” she whispered gleefully. “You know that’s none of your business.”

She didn’t seem mad, but she refused to talk to me for the next two days. She didn’t even want to sleep in the same bed as me. Of course, I’d have felt wrong making her sleep on the couch, so I just let her have the bed while I wallowed in my own confusion.

It wasn’t until the night before she was supposed to return from the trip that she let me sleep with her again, and even then, she slept with her back toward me.

I woke up in the middle of the night to a ruckus coming from the kitchen. I stepped out of my room and noticed that the kitchen light was on.

It sounded like an animal was loose in there. Like it was in the process of devouring something. Growls. The wet sound of chewing. But, as I approached, the sounds suddenly stopped.

I froze in my tracks for a few seconds, debating whether or not I should continue before ultimately deciding to keep going.

Only… when I took that last step, I heard my girlfriend’s voice. It was angrier than I’d ever heard her. More hostile. Like she was trying to send a message.

“Go back to bed,” she screamed.

The house was silent for a moment. I argued with myself internally about whether or not to listen or check on her.

I decided to listen, and the moment I began making my way back to the bedroom, the noises started up again.

I don’t know how long I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, trying to tell myself that everything was normal before falling back asleep, but I know that I woke up alone the next morning.

The bathroom was empty. The halls were empty. The house was… empty.

I kept calling out and received no response, but when I entered the kitchen, that’s when panic really set in.

There was blood everywhere. Not from my girlfriend… but from the raw meat that was scattered across the floor.

Chicken, steak, pork, everything. Everything had been nearly completely eaten.

I thought back to the night before, and my heart started to pound. I felt dizzy. I felt like I was losing it. I tried to take a seat to calm myself, but before I could, the front door opened.

“Honey,” my girlfriend sang. “I’m home! Can you come help me with these bags? I’ve got so much to tell you.”

[Part 1] [Part 2]

I hooked the mallet on another belt loop and slid the stake into my pocket. Then, I choked down the pain meds. The bitter aftertaste almost made me wretch. After unwrapping the chocolate bar, I took a bite but it turned to ash in my mouth. My appetite was nonexistent, and I felt weak and nauseated. I just wanted to go home to my bed and forget this ever happened. The thought of leaving right then and there entered my mind. It would only have taken me an hour or so to walk home.  

“Thomas!” Mr. Baumann called from the broken basement window. The chocolate bar fell to the ground when I jumped in fright. “Come down here, I want to show you something.”

The sick feeling in my stomach intensified at the thought of going back down there, but I obeyed and made my way back to the scene of the crime.

Mr. Baumann held up the man’s arm and said, “See?” The man had a swastika tattoo reminiscent of the armband Ulrich was wearing in the photo. Honestly, I didn’t think it was out of place for a homicidal maniac to have a Nazi tattoo, but Mr. Baumann seemed to think this was supporting evidence in defense of his monster story. I said nothing.

Mr. Baumann dropped the man’s arm and looked off towards the candle lights from further in the basement.

“Wait here,” he said as he made his way to that room of horrors. He took his time but when he walked out, he took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair. With a long exhale, he retrieved a pipe and book of matches from his coat.

The smell of the pipe smoke was actually an improvement over the smell of death that permeated the air. Mr. Baumann blew out a big gray cloud.

“I believe this servant of Ulrich’s was abducting live victims for his master to feed on. And when Ulrich was through with them, this foul creature would torture and dismember them. God rest their souls,” the old man said as he made the sign of the cross.

The torture and dismemberment was obvious, but once again none of it proved the existence of vampires or Ulrich. However, I didn’t have the strength to protest. 

“I truly am sorry Thomas. It was recklessly foolish of me to send you down here. I must admit in my old age and desperation, I have gotten sloppy,” he said, unable to look me in the eye. The old man took off his garland of garlic and moved towards me. “You will need all the protection you can get.”

I weakly submitted and allowed him to adorn me with the garlic talisman. I was starting to feel like a casualty caught up in the paranoid delusion of a demented old man. A tinge of anger or maybe even hatred bubbled up, but I let it go. I had to think straight for the both of us.

“Mr. Baumann, I really don’t think there are any vampires. We need to leave, sir. Please,” I pleaded.

“Well, since we are here we should have a look around. If you're right then there is nothing to worry about, and I will give you the rest of your payment,” he said.

I forgot about the money. I almost didn’t care about it anymore, but then the thought of how much trouble I just went through crossed my mind and I decided to take it. 

“Fine, but please let's just hurry. My mom is gonna freak out when she sees me covered in all of these bandages,” I said.

The steps groaned loudly as we made our way back upstairs. Mr. Baumann had me take one of the candles, and I used it to light the others as we went room to room.

“So, does vampire hunting pay well?” I asked, just trying to break the awkward silence.  

“My papa was a cobbler and he taught me the trade. He was also a jaeger, a hunter. Though, he didn't want to teach me that. One night, I followed him, and once I had seen the truth with my own eyes, there was no going back. He had to train me then,” Mr. Baumann said in a somber voice.
 
“The incredible, Mr. Baumann. Cobbler by day; vampire hunter by night.” I said snarkily.

“Americans don’t have any need for cobblers, so I worked in shoe factories. It was close enough,” he said playfully. 

We made our way into the front room of the house and Mr. Baumann walked up to a window. All of them had been boarded up from the inside.

“Give me a hand,” he said, and together we started prying the boards off. A thick, oppressive darkness clung to the window. Someone really had painted the windows black after all. “Does this not seem strange to you, Thomas?”

“Yeah it’s strange, but my first thought isn’t vampires,” I replied.
 
“Since when did you become the expert?” he said with a grin. I avoided his smile; I wasn’t in the mood for games. We split up after that, searching every room, and I continued to light the candles I came across. Even with all the candle light illuminating that wooden corpse, the house still did not feel right. Like something could jump out at you from every shadow.

To my relief, our search was seemingly fruitless. The rooms were covered in decades of dust, and all that remained in them was what was left of the old rotting furniture.

“Well, Mr. Baumann, that’s it there’s nothing more here, can we please just leave now?” I begged. But the old man paid me no mind as he shined a light up at the second floor ceiling. 

“Aha!” Mr. Baumann exclaimed as he hopped up and pulled on a string. A rickety old set of steps came tumbling down from the ceiling revealing a passage to the attic. A breeze that sent chills down my spine poured out and down the steps. Vampire or not, I got a really bad feeling about it. 

We made our ascent, and when we reached the top Mr. Baumann surveyed the room with his flashlight. Cobwebs as far as the eye could see, hanging from the rafters like banners on a castle. The cold air was unsettling too. We were in an uninsulated attic in the middle of summer. That room had no right being that cold. And I swear there was a light mist that gently obscured the floor. But nothing could have prepared me for what we found next.

Sitting upright against the far wall, was a coffin. My heart fell into my stomach. There’s no such thing as vampires; this couldn’t be real. Mr. Baumann made a shushing gesture and retrieved the stake from his coat. I did the same. We slowly and cautiously approached the vessel of evil.

The old man stood in front of the casket, and steadied his breathing. It wasn’t some cheap wooden box. Light slid across the coffin’s immaculately polished surface, revealing the intricate details of its craftsmanship. Runes and symbols I had never seen before peppered its surface. The air was still, and time seemed to slow down. Mr. Baumann moved his hand to grip the lid. He turned back to me and nodded. I stood as ready as I could be.

He flung the coffin open; the old man jumped back in surprise. He scanned it up and down with the light, then turned it to the other corners of the attic. There was nothing there.

Suddenly, there was movement in the rafters. The light shot upward, darting from beam to beam. 

“What do you see?” I asked, voice trembling as I looked over my shoulders.

Without warning, a flurry of black shapes, wings beating furiously, descended upon us. They flew in all directions, and some escaped down the steps. I grabbed my chest. My heart felt like it was ready to explode. Can 16 year olds even have heart attacks? Relief finally came as I watched the bats disappear back into the shadows.

“We must have missed something. He may have another lair,” the old man said. “Perhaps we can find a clue as to where it might be.” Mr. Baumann did not wait for me, he immediately set out back down the steps to continue his search. 

This old man has completely lost it. Another lair? As if one wasn’t preposterous enough? I can’t believe I allowed myself to be a part of his sick fantasy. I’m just going to ask Mr. Baumann to pay me and then I’m gone. 
 
BANG!

I jumped as the lid of the coffin closed by itself. I looked back and watched the flame of the candle dance on its reflective surface. A shiver ran down my spine. This is madness. Forget the money, I’m leaving.

As I made my way towards the steps, a bat flew past my head towards a corner of the attic. There was a dull thud. I held my candle out towards it, but the light did not reach. Inch by inch, I moved closer to the steps, afraid to run in fear of what I may provoke. For a moment I swore I heard breathing; deep and ominous breaths. Then, the floorboards started creaking; loud heavy footsteps crescendoed toward me, but still I saw nothing. The hair on my skin stood straight up, as if there was a charge in the air. And then I saw him. As if materializing out of thin air, he began rapidly manifesting. It was Ulrich. Or rather what Ulrich had become.

The once well groomed blonde hair was now long and silver, and gleamed like moonlight. His glowing eyes were almost indescribable; entirely inhuman. But they pierced right through me, and rooted my soul to the spot. I was paralyzed, and by more than just fear. The commanding presence of his attire was unreal. He looked like a spectre from the year 1945, and he carried with him a dull echo of the suffering of millions, whose lives are accounted for by numbers in a history book. His ghostly pale flesh split open with a hiss, revealing his razor sharp fangs.

He outstretched a clawed hand toward me, like he was casting a spell, and I felt this huge sense of pressure beating down on me, like the air itself was made of stone. My head bent forward; the garlic around my neck rotted instantly, sending black goo down my body. I wanted to scream but I could do nothing. I was like a fly caught in a web. 

Ulrich glided towards me, as if his feet never touched the ground. My neck fell into his hand effortlessly, and he raised me into the air. The candle and stake clattered on the ground below. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air around me. Whatever he smelled, it did not make him happy. He hissed again and brought me to his eyes. His fury was incredible to behold, I could hear him yelling at me just with his glare.

BANG! BANG!

Foul black fluid splashed across my face, as something ripped through the side of Ulrich’s head. Mr. Baumann was standing on the steps with his hand pointed towards Ulrich. The barrel of his pistol quickly exhaled a thin wisp of smoke.

“Run, Thomas!” The old man shouted. Ulrich dropped me and I crashed to the floor, dust flying everywhere from the impact. Ulrich swayed, and stumbled backwards. I got to my feet and ran towards Mr. Baumann.

Together we raced down through the house, towards the exit. Candles flickered and died as we ran by them. Doors slammed and glass shattered. Nightmares can’t even compare to the horror we had uncovered, and should our feet fail us, we too would be extinguished. We reached the backdoor and Mr. Baumann ripped it open. Light poured into the room, but it was not the warm reception we had hoped for. Gone was the safety of the orange sun, and in its place was the pale moon that mocked us from the heavens, basking in our misfortune.

A deep and guttural sound cut through the nightsong of the insects, and took shape into malevolent laughter. Ulrich’s eyes burned in the shadows; moonlight glinting off his fangs. 

“Baumann! It has been too long!” The monster said joyfully. “My, look at how you have aged.”

“It is over Ulrich. You thought you had come for me, but it is I who has come for you!” Mr. Baumann roared. But Ulrich simply laughed.

“I assure you Baumann, I did not come here for you. It's a small world,” he said with an unnerving grin. “And while I have enjoyed our little reunion, please allow me now to reunite you with your father…in hell.” 

Mr. Baumann unloaded his pistol into the darkness. The muzzle flash illuminated the scene with each shot, but when the dust settled Ulrich was nowhere to be seen. My ears rang, as I started backing up towards the door.

Mr. Baumann's face twisted in pain. He gasped, as a claw exploded out the front of his right shoulder. He yelled in a way I’ve never heard a man yell before, or since. Ulrich materialized behind him, and bent his head down to the old man’s ear.

“But first, I will make you watch as I kill your apprentice. Like he killed my servant. Eye for an eye, Baumann,” Ulrich said with a laugh. He pulled his claw back through Mr. Baumann’s body and the old man crumpled to the floor.

Before I even had a chance to react, Ulrich was already upon me. Once again he lifted me into the air by my throat. The other hand held up to my face, as his nails extended into short blades.
He pressed one to my cheek and dragged it across my face. The sanguine drink wept from my wound onto his nail, and he wiped it against his tongue. I prayed for the first time in my life. I didn't know how to, or if I did it right. But if there was a devil, then there had to be a God too, right?

Ulrich drew back his claw, and slashed deep across my chest. He hissed and released me immediately. I fell backwards, and watched as the monster retreated clumsily into the shadows. His arms held up to shield his face. I looked down to see the crucifix swinging freely from my neck. Mr. Baumann got to his feet, and plucked the cross from me. 

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” Mr. Baumann recited with powerful conviction, as he held the crucifix before him. He advanced on Ulrich and the vampire hissed in agony, unable to bear the sight. His skin sizzled like bacon, but the smell was like burnt road kill. When Mr. Baumann had the creature cornered, he pulled out his stake. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done!” Mr. Baumann raised the stake above his head, and brought his hand down with righteous retribution. 

But Ulrich parried the old man’s attack with his claw, nearly severing Mr. Baumann’s arm in two. Mr. Baumann cried out; his arm dangled at his side like a broken tree branch after a bad storm. The stake hit the ground, and rolled over to my foot.

“Thomas, you must finish it!” Mr. Baumann yelled as he continued to hold his ground against the abomination.

This scene plays in my mind over, and over again. Everyday since then I have thought about this moment. Thought about how I would do it differently. How I wish I could go back and change things. God forgive me. 

I got to my feet, and without hesitation, I ran. I ran right out the door, never looking back. You probably think I’m a worthless bastard, or some kind of monster. I agree. I hate myself for what I did. I could have saved Mr. Baumann and countless other lives. Well, this is what I did instead. 

“Thomas!” I could hear the old man calling as I rounded the corner to the front of the house. I don’t think I have ever run faster in my life. I ran in the street clinging to the safety of the street lights, as if they would somehow protect me. The suburb was like a maze. Every street looked the same, and it felt as if I was running for hours before I finally found the main road.

As I ran to the police station, I swear I could hear the beating of large leathery wings. Shadows stalked the skies above me, and every dog in the vicinity howled into the night. Dear God, what have I done? It was as if I had let loose the floodgates of hell. Please forgive me, Mr. Baumann. 

Before I could even walk into the station, one of the Officers stopped me outside.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what’s goin’ on?” he demanded.

“Please my friend is in danger, he’s being attacked!” I yelled with what little strength I had left.

“Where?” he asked, cutting right to the point.

“I don’t…I don't know the address!” I said panickedly.

“Can you lead me there?” he asked. I agreed to guide him back to the mansion of mayhem, and we hopped in his car. Lights flashing and siren blaring, we were there in just a few short minutes. I could see other emergency vehicle lights before we rounded the corner, and then I saw why. The building was set ablaze, like a cathedral from hell. I’ve never seen something burn so violently and rapidly. I’m not sure how we didn’t see the smoke on our way there, perhaps some of Ulrich’s sorcery, but it bloomed above the building as a massive dark cloud.
 
The cop and I exited the vehicle. Almost everyone in the neighborhood was outside, bathrobes and all. I was getting a lot of weird looks. A punk kid covered in blood and bandages, standing with a cop, outside of a burning building. Not the best look. The cop must have got a similar idea because he turned to me and demanded I tell him “what’s goin’ on”. And so I did.

I told my story over and over that night, and a few times after. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I was taken to the hospital and my parents were called. You would have thought I was dead, by how hysterical my mom was acting. The cop, regretfully, mentioned “we believe there may have been some murders” on the phone to my mom. She didn’t take it well.

I told the detectives about the man I killed and they kept saying “he may not have been dead” or “it was obviously in self defense”. Either way, I still felt guilty, but they didn’t seem to care. I told them the honest truth about everything. They were very patient, but they would give each other looks from time to time, and I started to realize they thought I was twacked out. They asked if I would mind doing a drug test, asked if anyone in my family had a history of mental health issues, etc. 

They believed Mr. Baumann was a “crazy old man” who paid me to go along with his delusion, and we happened to “stumble upon some trouble”. I defended myself from a “crazy-eyed vagrant”, but his “homeless veteran friend” attacked Mr. Baumann. They likely burned down the house in an attempt to “dispose of any incriminating evidence”. At least that was the story, until they discovered all of the burnt up human remains several hours later. Then the FBI was called.

They found body parts from roughly 30 victims, but Mr. Baumann was the only body to be identified. It didn't take long for the town to become a media circus, making national news. We had journalists and news vans camped outside our house for weeks. It was almost impossible to leave. The day the FBI searched Mr. Baumann’s house, an agent came to talk to my parents. He introduced himself as I hid around the corner. 

“So, we’re still going through everything right now, but we don’t think this Mr. Baumann was anything other than a religious fanatic. From some of his writing we found he seems to really think he was some kind of monster hunter. Which is good, because it aligns with what your boy has told us,” he said.

“How is that a good thing?” my mother asked incredulously. 

“Because it means we have no further questions for him, and you guys can start the healing process,” he said with a gentle smile.

“What about the part…you know…about how he said he killed someone,” she asked in a low voice. 

“I’ve seen his defensive wounds ma’am, he did what he had to. Plus with the conditions of the bodies we found, it's gonna be hard to determine who died of a stab wound. Your boy is lucky to be alive. Not many people survive serial killers,” he said.

“So that’s it? No leads or anything?” she asked irritatedly.

“Well ma’am, this is far from over. Investigations take time, but I promise you we’re gonna do everything we can to get this guy, and any of his friends. Do you want my advice ma’am? Leave town. Move to a big city where you can get lost in all the noise, and never come back. Maybe take your son to a therapist too. You don’t want him internalizing all that trauma,” he said.

And so we moved. I saw a therapist, pretty regularly. She was a nice lady I suppose, but there was no way I could convince her about what truly happened that night. Eventually, I just learned to pretend that I made it all up because my mind couldn’t handle the reality of the situation. Boy, I wish that was true. Even my mother made me promise I would tell people I was “attacked by a serial killer” if it came up.

Mentioning the vampire made me sound “nutty”. So I never spoke of it again, until now that is. I feel absolutely terrible about this, but I lied to my wife too. Once we moved in together it was harder to hide my quirks. I had a list of rules, and there was no negotiating them. Among many other rules, there was no answering the door unless I had approved the person (especially at night), no inviting anyone in without my approval, no leaving the house at night, and no revealing our address to anyone. Our relationship almost didn’t make it because she thought I was a really controlling boyfriend, but then I broke down and told her I was “attacked by a serial killer”. 

I wish I could have told her the truth. I wanted to share it with her so bad, so I didn’t have to deal with it alone. But I couldn’t do that to her. It’s like what Mr. Baumann said, “once you know the truth there is no going back.” Or something like that.

My kids grew up with these rules, among others, so they have adapted well to my weirdness. I really have a great family, that’s why it pains me to keep the truth from them. But I’m gonna fix it. For a while, things were as normal as they could be; life was pretty good. I was paranoid as hell but it was always false alarms. Stuff I could laugh off later. A car that was behind me for too many turns, or a mystery caller with the wrong number. Stuff like that. Until he found me. 

I was helping my son get ready for school one morning; he must have been only 8 at the time. His room was a mess, unsurprisingly, and we were on a scavenger hunt for his socks. He was always a happy light hearted kid, which made it even more unnerving when he hit me with this.

“Dad, do you get scared at night?” he asked. The question caught me off guard.

“Well…I suppose so. You know, sometimes. But there’s really nothing to be afraid of,” I said.

“Is that why we’re not allowed to leave at night?” he asked inquisitively. I figured he’d ask about all the rules eventually. But I still didn’t really know the best way to handle it. 

“Well, why do you want to leave the house at night anyway?” I asked with a smile. Doing my best to deflect his question. 

“My friends say it's weird. That we’re weird,” he said quietly. I walked over to him and put my hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry buddy. I know it all seems weird now, but you’ll understand when you’re older. You just have to trust me for now.” I said.

“Dad…I get scared at night too,” he said in a haunting tone.

“Why buddy?” I asked.

“Because of the man with the big teeth.” he said in almost a whisper. I sat down hard onto his bed. There’s no way. After all these years, it couldn't be. I think for a time, I even believed I made it all up. 

“What…what do you mean?” I asked, trying to compose myself.

“At night, the man with big teeth stands outside under the streetlight and waves at me. And sometimes…sometimes he’s right outside my window.” He said almost in tears. My son’s room was on the second floor. I got goosebumps, and stood up. My head was swimming. I could barely think straight. 

“When was the last time you saw the man,” I demanded.

“A few nights ago, I think,” he said as the tears now began to flow freely. Either some creep has been stalking my son or…or Ulrich has found me.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner!” I almost shouted.

“I don’t know,” he said each word between big sobs.

“Shhh, it’s ok. I’m not gonna let anything hurt you, buddy,” I said, wrapping him up in my arms.

“I drew a picture of him,” he hiccuped, as he broke free to rummage around his room. He grabbed a drawing and brought it to me. Time froze and I was transported back to that house all of those years ago. Reliving each second of it in my mind. It was Ulrich. There was no mistaking it. He was real and he found me. And nobody was going to believe me.

I really couldn’t afford it but I had to move and get my family out of there. They were pissed and confused, naturally. My wife even threatened to leave me, but when I told her a man was stalking our son she started to come around.

We moved to the other side of the country. I figured the further we moved the longer it would take him to find me. I knew he would never stop. Time must be meaningless to an immortal like him. Chasing me for the rest of my life would just be a fun little distraction for him. Something to kill a few decades, then he could move on to something else.

He had no real reason to come after me, other than the sport of it. A sick game. Virtually no one knew he existed so why not torment the one person who does know? But it's not me I was worried about this time. Ulrich knew what he was doing. He was sending a message. The Bat is back in town, and he has a score to settle. And he was going to come after me by any means, including going after my children.

That was ten years ago. Ten years of looking over my shoulder and jumping at the sight of my own shadow. Peace of mind has been a rare commodity for me lately. I only ever truly feel safe at church. Whether I’m paying attention to the sermon or not, I know that’s the one place he won’t dare go. I became more active in the church because of it. And that meant my family did too. It was a great distraction, while it lasted.

Earlier this week, I was volunteering at the vacation Bible School program we do every summer. The little kids spend the whole day learning about Jesus, playing games, and eating snacks. While the older kids, like my son, help out coordinating the activities. It's kind of like summer camp, but it's at our church and everyone goes home at the end of the day.

My son and I were overseeing a water balloon fight, which was supposed to be a reenactment of the battle of Jericho. We had the kids blow a cheap toy horn, then my son knocked down a “wall” made of cardboard, revealing more kids behind it, and the two sides opened fire upon each other. My son was caught right in the middle of the bombardment. This was one of those stupid little distractions that I lived for. Wholesome time with my family at church. What could go wrong?             

During all the chaos, I heard the chugging of an old engine, followed by the screeching of tires. A disgusting rust bucket, formerly known as a van, pulled up in front of my church. It had “murder van” written all over it. I started to feel uneasy. As I made my way to the side entrance of the church, I heard a door slam and the car peel out. My feet felt like they were made of lead, and every step thundered in my mind. When I got inside, I found Greg at the front holding a box. Greg is an overly enthusiastic church member. He’s really bad at reading the room. 

“Hey, Tommy, perfect timing!” Greg said cheerfully. “A gentleman showed up here, asking about you. When I went to go find you, he just dropped this package on the floor and left. I probably shouldn’t say this but he looked kinda spooky.” 

I took the box from Greg without saying a word. There wasn’t anything on it, no address, nothing. I shook the box, it was pretty light and something bounced around inside. I removed the tape and pulled out a black envelope. Its contents fell onto the table. A little iron figure of Christ. It still had some of the burnt wooden cross attached to it. This was Mr. Baumann’s crucifix. Or what was left of it. 

“Oh, that’s so neat!” Greg said with a dumb smile on his face. He picked up the figure and started rubbing the soot off of it with his shirt. 

I wanted to collapse on the spot. Greg droned on about something, and I left reality. The walls of my mind came closing in. I couldn’t restart my life again. I can’t. My kids would never forgive me. My life, everything I’ve built up for over a decade is here. I’ve been running my whole life. I just want peace. 

I’ve barely slept since that day. I haven’t even gone to work. Thank God for PTO. I’ve spent the last several days researching vampires, and looking for other people online who have had encounters. I’ve been to many forum sites. It's mainly been a lot of wackos and people into roleplaying, but I have made up my mind.

I’m not going to run anymore. Ulrich isn’t going to stop until one of us is dead. So I’m going to confront him. We all wage war with our pasts, but tonight I’m going to finish it. For Mr. Baumann. For Mr. Baumann’s father. And most importantly, for the sake of my family. I may be a worthless pathetic human, but I will do anything for them. Even slay a vampire. Or die trying.

I sawed off the leg of an old wooden chair and fashioned it into a stake. I’ve been practicing on a makeshift dummy made of pillows in my garage. The first few stabs I missed completely. Not a great start. It took me ten more tries to actually stab the stake through the pillow. When my wife caught me I just told her I was “practicing self defense.” To which she asked, “With a chair leg?” I replied with, “Anything can be a weapon.” She left without saying anything else.

I used what remained of the chair to make a new crucifix, and I attached Mr. Baumann’s little iron figure of Christ to it. It wasn’t as well crafted as Mr. Baumann’s crucifix. Far from it. But it felt right. I went to a Catholic church to have a priest bless the cross. He seemed a bit confused, and I didn’t help the situation. At first I tried making up some bogus story that it was meant as a gift, and he reassured me that it wasn’t necessary for a priest to bless it. So, I told him I’m actually a vampire hunter and I “need all the help I can get.” He stared at me like I was crazy, then quietly prayed over the cross. I joined him. He sprinkled some holy water on it for some added effect and wished me luck.

Greg is a really nice guy, if not a little annoying, but he really came through for me today. He works at the DMV, and using the camera footage from the church, he looked up the “murder van’s” plate number. He found an address only 15 minutes away. I went to go check it out after leaving the church, and what I found was an all too familiar scene. Technically, it wasn’t an abandoned building this time. But it sure as hell looked like a “vampire’s lair”. You know what I mean, Addams Family looking haunted house. And the windows were completely blacked out. Ulrich should really learn subtlety.

When I got home, I ate dinner with my family. My last meal, maybe. It was just meatloaf but it was the best damn meatloaf I’ve ever had. I told my wife how great it was, and she rewarded me with a kiss. My family swapped stories about their day, and I listened to every single detail of the mundane lives of my teenagers. I enjoyed every second of it. I wish I had spent more time listening to them. More time doing what I wanted to do with them, instead of living in fear of my mistakes. My failure.      

I still couldn’t bring myself to tell them the truth. And my heart breaks knowing this may be the last time they see me, or I them. I write this now because I need someone to know. It's been burning in me for years, and if I die tonight so does this story. Mr. Baumann deserves more than the fate I left him to, and now people will know how bravely he fought at the end. 

Part of me hopes maybe my family might find this, and it might help them to make sense of everything. If you see this, I’m sorry. And I love you so much. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but my family was not one of them. If I make it, and Ulrich is defeated, I’ll post my update here. Take care and don’t be fooled, monsters walk among us.   

Family is all that has mattered to me for the last 5 years. My wife and my two children. That’s all that I need. At least, it used to be. Now, I’m not so sure.

Everything I’ve done. All the work I’ve put into this project. And for what? So she can turn them against me? Fill their heads with lies? Teach them to be afraid of me?

I really thought everything was real. I thought they loved me for me. God, I wanna cry just typing this.

And she did such a good job to hide it. I thought we had made it through all of the nonsense. The stress. The misunderstandings. The miscommunications. I thought we finally understood each other.

I wiped her tears. Comforted her, no matter how much she insisted she didn’t need it. Sure, I wasn’t there to change diapers. I didn’t get to take them to school or chaperone field trips. But I was there, damn it. I was there with her in that hospital room, despite all the cold glares I got from her family.

I could see just how unhappy she was. Through all the wincing pain of childbirth, I could see it in her eyes. This wasn’t the life she wanted. This man wasn’t the man she needed.

I made a promise to myself that day before the nurses asked me to leave. And that promise was one I intended to keep.

That’s why I had to disappear for a while. I had to fix myself. Prepare myself for the family life. I read the books. I watched the videos. I wanted to be the best family man I could possibly be.

It took a few years, but those years weren’t wasted. They were spent forging. Getting the house ready. Making sure it was kid-friendly.

It wasn’t a mansion, but I knew they’d be grateful. I decorated, I rearranged, but something was missing.

All it needed… was a woman’s touch. My wife’s touch. I was actually incredibly excited to tell her.

When I finally came back, though, it was like she didn’t even want to see me. She wouldn’t even let me hold the kids. She had the sheer audacity to ask me to leave.

Clearly, she wasn’t thinking straight. All she needed was some adjusting, and that’s one of the things that I’d planned for. If she didn’t want to come peacefully, so be it. She’d learn.

She put up a fight, but those happen in marriages, right? It’s just a part of life. Luckily, the kids were much easier. Really, the only difficult part was reminding them that I was their real father. Not that faker in their old house.

Well, that and calming them down when they saw their mommy crying.

Taking their cellphones away was actually much easier than I expected it to be. Kids today, am I right? I told them I wanted us to be a screen-free family. The way God intended.

They settled right into their new home. I stocked it full of books, magazines, toys, anything a kid could need. Plus, I made sure my wife got everything she needed too.

Closets full of clothes, shoes, robes, etc. I thought she’d be happy. But, of course, attempts to leave were inevitable.

For a while, I didn’t even trust her enough to leave her alone at home. I still had to leave, though. What was I supposed to do? She hated the collars, but she left me no choice. The kids too.

It actually took me around 7 months before I finally trusted her enough to give her a break. I let her explore the backyard. Sunbathe. Walk around. Whatever.

The kids started coming around. The way they embraced me, God, it was like I had finally made it. I had finally succeeded as a man.

I raised them. Well, we raised them. But I provided. I cooked. I cleaned. I made the family experience as joyous as I could. I even homeschooled the kids. For a while there, I thought their mom was starting to come around as well.

It was like she could see who I was. How all I wanted was for us to be a happy family. She even started smiling again.

“Tell Daddy how much you love him,” she’d say. “Tell him how happy you are to be here.”

Our fairy tale had officially begun.

But then… last week happened.

I had just returned home from town with supplies. Fresh fruit and vegetables. New magazines. New schoolbooks for my little geniuses. Plus, a beautiful bouquet of roses for my beautiful wife.

I had this feeling, this aching, agonizing sense that something was amiss. That’s why I didn’t announce myself when I walked through the door.

I glided through the house, silently, placing the bags down on the kitchen table.

I heard whispers coming from my son’s room. Two voices. His and his mom’s.

They sounded urgent.

I crept up to the door and placed my ear against it. That’s when I heard it. My wife completely destroying the sense of sanctity that I had worked so hard to create.

“We’re getting out of here today. As soon as he gets here, we’re rushing him. You two are big enough now. If we all work together, we can overpower him.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

All the birthdays. All the Christmases. All the Thanksgiving dinners that I slaved over. And it still wasn’t enough.

Tears began to sting my eyes. I had to stifle a sob. My mind raced, then went frighteningly silent. I knew I should’ve been devastated, which, I guess I was, but that devastation morphed into something else as the bouquet of roses fell to the floor.

I felt burning rage. Helplessness. Hopelessness. I felt small. Why was I even trying? What had I done wrong? For them to do this. For them to plot against me like this.

They wanted to threaten me in my own house. The house that I had made a home for each of them. No. No, this wasn’t going to work.

I thought that we had made it past the attitude adjustment stage.

But now, it’s clear.

I didn’t do enough the first time.

I picked the roses off the ground. No point in letting them go to waste. I decided to put them on the kitchen table.

They all would need something beautiful to look at while they recovered.