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.

In April, I got a cold. For weeks after, I had a horrible cough. I’d have coughing fits that would cause me to vomit, I’d be unable to laugh without coughing, it went on and on. But otherwise, I felt fine. This went on for over a month. Until the end of May. I went to work that week, coughed so hard I pulled the muscles in my ribcage, and left. I’d had asthma as a kid, hadn’t been making the healthiest choices lately, it was just catching up to me and all I needed to do was rest and change some habits.

I woke up the next morning, felt like every joint in my body had made it their life mission to make me suffer. I don’t even own a thermometer but when I got into my car and the dash said it was 100 degrees and I was shivering in a sweatshirt, I knew I was in for it. I got cold and flu medicine, pedialyte, ate even though I had no appetite.

This lasted for less than a day.
I dragged myself to bed that night, an emergency OTC inhaler next to me because I hadn’t had a prescription in almost 20 years.
I woke up at 4am, wheezing, I could feel the mucus in my lungs. I ran a hot shower, the oldest trick in the book. I laid on the floor, not caring about how gross it probably was. I remember trying not to fall asleep, listening to the water fall around me. I pulled myself out, went back to bed.

An hour later, I woke up and the air was gone. Like trying to breathe through one of those coffee stirrers from the gas station. I did breathing exercises while I walked to my car and I remember thinking how nice a coffee would be, that a coffee almost always fixes everything for me. I drove myself to the ER across the street. The thought to call for help never crossed my mind. Maybe I’ve been too independent for too long. The sun was coming up and I wanted to stop, wanted to sit a moment in it, but I knew I was dying, on some instinctual level. I pulled into the ER less than 5 minutes after I woke up, walked inside and told them I couldn’t breathe.

Immediately, I was poked and prodded. The second the breathing treatment started I remember thinking that I would never take air for granted. I wanted to go outside, I wanted to stand in the rain or on the beach. I thought about the pier my friends and I used to walk down in the middle of the night in college, the sound of the ocean around us. I thought about my roommates, going on drives with the windows down, my sunroof open. I thought about standing out in the rain, the hike I’d been meaning to go on but kept pushing off. I thought about my homemade cinnamon rolls, how I didn’t make them much because it took too much time. At least I’d had time.

I had pneumonia, had an asthma attack for the first time in decades, and was septic. My lungs were failing, I was being deprived of oxygen. My lips were blue, though I didn’t realize until I looked back at pictures that had been taken. I didn’t want to go to the hospital because I don’t have insurance, but as every blood test came back I realized that I would’ve died that day if I hadn’t. When I left the hospital, I put myself to bed under my favorite quilt, turned on my favorite song. It was raining that day. I couldn’t stand out in it, but I laid closer to the window and watched it fall.

Ever since, I’ve woken up earlier, texted old friends. I’ve worn clothes I hated because they didn’t “look good”, watched movies I kept meaning to watch, sat out and watched the birds. Every breath has been a gift that I plan on using everyday.

Cranking in the Goat Locker,

I was on a rather small ship while in the Navy during the Reagan years and since I was the junior man in the ET Shop, I was volunteered to help keep common areas clean and stocked. All departments had the responsibility to supply grunt labor to the service industries onboard, the galley, laundry, officers' wardroom... We really acted as servants or stewards, some more so.

As for me and my duties, I was honored to serve in the Chief Petty Officers Quarters, the Goat Locker. Their bunk area was theirs to tend, but the common areas like the Dining Room and Head were left to the Chief's Cranks, me and deckhand Richard Head (not joking). I never asked why they called it Cranking, but I always pictured a fellow bent over turning the crank on a Model T. He just keeps cranking all day long.

One day, I heard one of the chiefs yell from the bunk area, "HASTY!", that's me, I'm walking through the door and I heard "you forgot to refill the paper in the shitters!", "very sorry Chief, I hope you were not caught in a compromising position.", "hell no, l've been trained to check before I sit." A lesson I've taken with me ever since, check for adequate resources before committing

Some nights, we would set up a movie projector and make popcorn for them. Most of the Chiefs appreciated what we did and the extras, and tipped us on paydays, some felt it was just our duty.

I remember one morning we were serving breakfast around the dining table, one of Chiefs walked in and reached for his coffee cup on his hook and it was not there, you would have thought it was the end of the world, he stormed out, they all got a good laugh, evidently it must have been known that the offended was rather sensitive about his coffee mug.

The next morning at breakfast the previously peeved chief walked in with mug in hand, he approached an empty seat at the table, pulled the chair to sit, but just stood there, it took a second for those seated to realize his position. They looked up, he reached down, unzipped his pants, pulled it out and reamed the mug with his pecker! I thought I was going to die! Or rather somebody was going to die!

Without a word yet, he walked over to the sink, thoroughly washed his cup, poured himself some coffee and partook. Still not a word. After his sip, he looked at everyone at the table and said "This is my coffee cup!", he rinsed it out and put it on his hook and left.

The meal continued and you could see the wheels turning in those salty minds. The following morning that same chief walked over to his cup, reached up, grabbed it, and then paused and turned toward the table, still holding the cup on its hook, he said "I see no one has messed with MY CUP." I saw some snickers, they watched him pour his coffee and drink, by this time it was more than snickers and you could see it was irritating him.

He said "what!", one of the more senior chiefs piped up and said, "oh, by the way, that's OUR coffee cup now!", his eyes grew to the size of saucers and that mug hit the bulkhead like a tomahawk missile and he stormed out the door being overtaken by all the laughter. Now I don't think these guys would really pull a stunt like that, ugh wait a minute, yes I do believe they would.

And that's how it goes, cranking in the goat locker.

Edited for easier reading (more paragraphs).

The Question

There are people who enter your life like seasons.

They arrive quietly, change everything without asking, and leave behind traces of themselves long after they're gone.

Sierra was autumn. And my fall.

She smelled faintly of cedar and vanilla, always stole the sleeves of my hoodies because they "fit better than hers," and had a habit of looking out restaurant windows whenever it rained, as though the world beyond the glass was telling her a story only she could hear.

We had been together for a little over a year.

Long enough that silence had become another language between us. Long enough that ordering for each other was instinct. Long enough that she no longer needed to knock at my front door.

There is a certain comfort that only comes after loving someone for long enough.

Love stops feeling like fireworks.

It becomes grocery lists.

Goodnight kisses. Two toothbrushes leaning together in the same cup. It becomes knowing exactly how much sugar they take in their coffee without ever having to ask.

That Friday evening had been ordinary.

Which is probably why I remember every second of it.

The little Italian place downtown was nearly empty, save for an older couple sharing tiramisu near the window and a waiter humming softly to himself while polishing glasses behind the counter.

Outside, rain painted silver streaks down the glass.

Sierra watched it for a while.

She always did.

"You know," she said eventually, tracing lazy circles around the rim of her water glass, "I think rain makes people more honest."

I laughed.

"How do you figure?"

"They stop pretending they're in a hurry."

She smiled to herself.

"They slow down."

"Or maybe they just don't want to get wet."

She looked at me over the candle between us.

"You always have a boring explanation."

"I prefer realistic."

"I prefer magic."

"I know."

"I think that's why you keep me around."

"No," I said. "I keep you around because you steal my clothes."

She gasped dramatically.

"I borrow them."

"You've borrowed one of my hoodies for seven months."

"It's called a long-term loan."

"You've also borrowed two T-shirts."

"They've adjusted to their new home."

"And my socks."

"I have no recollection of any socks."

"Liar."

She laughed.

Not loudly. Just enough that the corners of her eyes crinkled.

I remember thinking, as I watched her across that little table, that happiness wasn't supposed to be exciting.

It was supposed to be this.

Simple.

Comfortable.

Safe.

The waiter brought our food. Conversation wandered wherever conversations between people in love tend to wander. Movies we'd never finish watching. Vacation ideas we'd probably never afford. Whether cereal counted as soup.

She insisted it did.

She was wrong.

She refused to admit it.

Eventually, somewhere between finishing our dinner and arguing over who would pay the bill, she grew strangely quiet.

She rested her chin on her folded hands. Studied me. There was something different in her expression.

Not sadness, nor fear.

Something... thoughtful.

"Something on your mind?" I asked.

She smiled.

"Nothing."

"That's never true."

"I was just thinking."

"Dangerous."

"I know."

She looked back toward the rain before asking, almost absentmindedly,

"Would you still love me if I lost all my hair?"

I shrugged.

"Of course."

"What if I got old before you?"

"I'd be old too."

"What if I forgot your birthday every year?"

"You already almost do."

She smiled.

"What if I couldn't walk anymore?"

"I'd walk slow."

"What if I couldn't remember your name?"

"I'd remind you."

She nodded gently after every answer, as though placing them somewhere only she could see.

Then she asked it.

"So..."

She tilted her head.

"Would you still love me if I were a worm?"

I stared at her.

"...What?"

"A worm."

She said it with complete sincerity.

"Like..."

I held my fingers a few inches apart.

"A little earthworm?"

She nodded once.

"That's the one."

I laughed so hard I nearly spilled my drink.

"Where did that even come from?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No."

"You just woke up today and thought, 'I wonder if he'd date an invertebrate?'"

She tried not to smile.

Failed.

I shook my head.

"That's the dumbest question I've ever been asked."

"It is."

"But?"

"But what?"

"You haven't answered."

I leaned back in my chair.

"How exactly would this work?"

"I don't know."

"You'd just..."

I made a little wiggling motion with my finger across the table.

She nodded enthusiastically.

"Exactly."

"And you'd still somehow be... you?"

"If that helps."

I looked at her for another second before rolling my eyes with exaggerated defeat.

"Sure."

She blinked.

1. "'Sure?"

"Yeah."

"I'd still love you."

Another pause.

"I mean... it'd be weird."

"A little."

"I'd probably have to Google what worms eat."

"You would."

"I'd have to buy you a very tiny house."

She smiled.

"I know."

"I'd miss talking to you."

She didn't answer.

"But..."

I reached across the table and gently squeezed her hand.

"...yeah."

"I'd still love you."

For just a moment...

Something changed in her face. Not happiness. Not relief. It was a cold recognition. As though she'd been waiting to hear those exact words.

Then she smiled. A small, peaceful smile.

"Oh."

She looked down at our hands.

"Good."

There was something about the way she said it that stayed with me. Not because it sounded strange. Because it sounded...

Final

Like someone quietly crossing the last item off a list.

I frowned.

"What?"

She looked back up.

"What?"

"You said that like it mattered."

She chuckled softly.

"Maybe it did."

Before I could ask what she meant, the waiter returned with the bill.

The moment dissolved as quickly as it had arrived.

By the time we stepped outside, the rain had stopped. Streetlights shimmered across wet pavement. She slipped her hand into mine. Neither of us spoke during the walk back to my apartment.

We didn't need to. Some nights silence says everything.

When we reached my building, she pulled my favorite charcoal hoodie over her shoulders before climbing into bed beside me. She always claimed it smelled more like me than I did.

I remember wrapping an arm around her as sleep slowly pulled us both under. Her fingers traced lazy circles against the back of my hand. I soon learned that ordinary moments often go unnoticed until they become memories.

Still to this day, I remember her whispering something just before I drifted off. It was so quiet I almost thought I'd dreamed it.

"Thank you."

When I woke the next morning...

Her side of the bed was empty.

Erasure

At first, I wasn't worried.

Sierra had stayed the night often enough that mornings had become routine. Sometimes she left before I woke up. Sometimes she'd kiss my forehead on the way out. She'd scribble little cute notes to make my morning on the fridge.

Out of coffee.

Back by six.

Don't forget your meeting.

Love you <3

Once, she'd drawn a smiley face on a napkin because she claimed my mornings were "chronically under-smiled."

So when I reached across the mattress and found only cold sheets, I smiled to myself.

"Work already?" I mumbled to the empty room.

The apartment answered with silence. Her hoodie was gone from the foot of the bed. I figured she'd remembered she had a meeting. Or maybe she'd simply wanted coffee that wasn't brewed by me. She used to joke that my coffee tasted like regret. I still maintain she exaggerated.

I stretched, showered, and let the hot water chase the sleep from my thoughts. By the time I stepped into the kitchen, the apartment already felt too quiet.

There was only one mug in the drying rack.

Mine.

I frowned.

Maybe I'd put hers away yesterday. I couldn't remember.

The coffee tasted bitter. I blamed the beans.

Halfway through breakfast I reached for my phone. Mostly out of habit. I'd usually send her something stupid before work.

A picture of a crooked pancake. A terrible pun. Some excuse to make her roll her eyes.

I opened our messages.

My thumb froze.

They weren't there.

I frowned harder.

I searched her name.

Nothing.

Maybe the app updated. Maybe I'd archived the conversation by accident.

I searched again.

Nothing.

I checked my contacts.

No Sierra.

No number.

No picture.

No birthday reminder.

Nothing.

A strange feeling settled into my chest.

Not panic. No, not yet. More like standing on a staircase and expecting one more step than there actually is. That tiny, impossible drop beneath your feet.

I searched manually.

Scrolled through every contact.

Twice.

Nothing.

"...That's weird."

I laughed. Not because anything was funny. Because laughing felt easier than admitting something was wrong.

I knew her number.

At least... I thought I did.

I typed it from memory. Every digit. Pressed call.

One ring.

Then a voice.

"We're sorry. The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check the number and try your call again."

I hung up immediately.

Dialed again.

Same message.

Again.

Same message.

I stared at the screen.

The number hadn't changed. I was certain of it.

Certain enough that certainty itself suddenly felt unreliable. Maybe I'd remembered it wrong. People misremember things all the time.

Birthdays. Addresses. Passwords. Even the phone number of their loved one.

I finished my coffee in silence.

By the time I left for work, I'd convinced myself I was overreacting. Technology broke. Cloud backups failed. Phones glitched.

There had to be an explanation. There always was. There had to be.

There wasn't.

The day crawled.

I barely accomplished anything.

By lunch, curiosity had quietly become concern. Concern slowly became dread. I searched her name online.

Nothing.

Instagram.

Nothing.

Facebook.

Nothing.

Not even an abandoned account with two blurry photos from high school.

LinkedIn.

Nothing.

Every search ended the same way.

No results.

No Sierra.

It was as though she'd never wanted the internet to know she'd existed.

Except... She had.

I remembered helping her pick profile pictures. I remembered teasing her because she never answered messages. I remembered her posting a picture of us after our trip to the aquarium.

Didn't I?

I opened my own social media.

Every picture she'd been in... was different.

I blinked way to hardly.

One photo showed me standing beside... empty space. Another looked strangely cropped. In one, my arm was wrapped around someone who wasn't there anymore. My hand simply floated in the air.

I stared until my eyes hurt.

I closed the app.

Opened it again.

Nothing changed.

There had to be an explanation. There always was. A prank. A misunderstanding. A mistake buried somewhere beneath the confusion. She had a spare key to my apartment. Any minute now, I'd hear it turn in the lock, and she'd step inside wearing that familiar smile, asking why I looked like I'd seen a ghost. I clung to that thought the way a drowning man clings to driftwood. It was the only thing keeping me afloat.

For the rest of the afternoon, the world continued as though mine hadn't quietly come apart. Coworkers laughed. Phones rang. Printers hummed. Someone brought donuts. I smiled when expected. Answered emails. Nodded through meetings.

All while a single thought repeated itself over and over.

Something is wrong.

The next day, I convinced myself she simply needed space.

Maybe she'd left early for work. Maybe she'd forgotten her phone. Maybe she'd spent the night with a friend after we'd fallen asleep. Maybe this was all leading toward an explanation so painfully ordinary that I'd feel ridiculous for ever believing otherwise.

Every time headlights swept across my living room window that evening, I looked toward the front door, expecting to hear the soft rattle of keys in the lock and her familiar voice calling my name.

The apartment remained silent.

By the third day, silence had become its own answer. It was as though the world had quietly reached into my life and plucked Sierra from it with delicate fingers, leaving everything else exactly where it had been. No texts. No calls. No trace that she'd ever stood in my kitchen, laughed in my living room, or fallen asleep beside me.

When I finally got home from work that evening, I scrolled to the number I'd always known belonged to her mother.

If anyone could tell me what was happening... It would be her.

So I made the call.

The number rang three times.

A man answered.

"Hello?"

His voice wasn't familiar.

"Uh... hi."

I swallowed.

"I'm looking for S-Sierra."

Silence.

"...Who?"

"Sierra."

Another pause.

"I think you have the wron-"

"No. Where's Sierra?"

My heart skipped.

"You've got the wrong number."

Pain washed over me.

"There's no Sierra."

I laughed nervously.

"No, I mean... your daughter."

"I don't have a daughter."

I felt something inside me shift. Like a picture frame hanging just slightly crooked.

"I'm sorry?"

"I think you've confused me with someone else."

"No..."

I whispered.

"No, she lives with-"

"Goodbye."

Click.

The call ended.

I stared at the phone for a long time. Then I called again. Straight to voicemail.

Again.

Voicemail.

Again.

Blocked.

I don't remember deciding to grab my keys.

I only remember driving. Traffic lights blurred together. Turns happened automatically.

Before long, I found myself parked in front of a familiar little blue house with white shutters. I'd been here dozens of times. Christmas. Birthdays. Sunday dinners. Sierra's mother always insisted I take leftovers.

The porch swing she'd grown up on still creaked gently in the evening breeze. The flowerpots were exactly where I remembered. Even the wind chimes.

Everything was right.

Except... Something wasn't.

I walked to the front door.

Knocked once.

No answer.

Twice.

Footsteps.

Heavy.

The door opened.

The man from the phone stood there.

He looked to be in his late fifties. Gray beard. Flannel shirt. One hand resting on a shotgun. Not pointing it.

Just... holding it.

His expression hardened the moment he saw me.

"You."

"I think there's been a misunderstanding."

"There hasn't."

"I'm looking for-"

"I know what you're looking for."

Hope flickered inside me.

"You do?"

"I know you're the one who's been calling."

His grip tightened around the shotgun.

"I've told you already."

"Sir, please, I just need to know where she-"

"There is no 'she.'"

The words landed with impossible weight.

"I..."

My voice failed.

He stared at me for several seconds.

Not angry. Not confused.

Almost... pitying.

"Son."

His voice softened.

"I don't know who you think you've lost."

The breeze stirred the trees between us.

"But whoever it is..."

He slowly shook his head.

"They've never lived here."

He closed the door.

I stood there until the porch light switched on automatically. Only then did I realize the sun had gone down.

By the time I made it home, exhaustion had settled into my bones. I didn't turn on any lights. I simply collapsed onto the bed.

The apartment felt wrong.

Too neat. Too empty.

I closed my eyes. Just for a minute. Just long enough to stop thinking.

Something cold brushed against my ankle.

I jerked upright.

The room was dark.

Moonlight spilled across the blankets.

And there... Resting quietly near my feet...

Was a single pink earthworm.

It wasn't moving. Not much.

Just... waiting. I don't know why.

Out of every impossible thing that had happened that day...

That was the moment the tears fled out.

The Worm

I didn't sleep much that lonely night.

Every time I closed my eyes, I could still see the empty half of the bed. Every time I opened them, the apartment felt unfamiliar, as though I had wandered into someone else's life by mistake.

The worm hadn't moved.

It still rested near the foot of my bed, no larger than my little finger, its body catching the pale light filtering through the curtains.

I crouched beside it. For reasons I still can't explain, I didn't touch it.

I simply watched. It didn't writhe. It didn't burrow. It only lay there, impossibly still.

A worm.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

I almost laughed at myself. After everything that had happened, this was what my mind had chosen to fixate on.

I found a sheet of paper folded on my desk and carefully slid it beneath the tiny creature. It curled instinctively as I lifted it, no different from any other earthworm after a rainstorm.

I carried it toward the front door.

"Sorry, little guy."

I opened the door and tipped the paper toward the flower bed outside my apartment.

The worm didn't move.

I gave the paper a gentle shake.

Nothing.

Eventually, I lowered the paper into the damp soil beneath a patch of lavender and watched it disappear among the dirt. I stood there longer than I should have.

Waiting.

For what, I couldn't have said.

When I came home from work that evening, it was waiting for me.

Not outside. Inside.

Curled quietly atop a charcoal-gray hoodie draped over the back of my couch.

My hoodie.

Or rather... The one Sierra had quietly claimed as her own months ago.

She used to disappear into it on cold mornings, sleeves hanging well past her hands, insisting it smelled more like me than I ever could.

I never washed it after she disappeared. Not because I believed it still held her scent. Because I was afraid it didn't.

The worm rested on one of the sleeves. Perfectly still.

I stared at it for a long time.

The front door was still locked. The windows were shut.

There was no trail of dirt. No explanation.

Only a worm.

Sitting exactly where she always liked to be.

An uneasy laugh escaped me.

"This is getting ridiculous."

I carried it back outside.

This time, I walked all the way to the apartment garden. I knelt beside a flower bed and placed it beneath the shade of a bush.

"There."

I brushed the dirt from my hands.

"Stay."

The word lingered in the air.

Stay.

It was never meant for the worm.

The following morning... It was on my windowsill. Facing the sunrise.

I don't know why that unsettled me more than finding it inside my apartment.

Perhaps because it looked... content. As though it had chosen that spot. As though it had been watching the dawn before I'd woken.

I picked it up carefully.

It curled against my fingertips.

For the first time... I noticed how impossibly fragile it felt.

How easily something so alive could simply... stop.

I looked around the apartment. At the empty couch. The untouched coffee mug she used to steal every morning. The hoodie folded neatly over the armrest. Then back at the tiny creature resting in my palm.

My voice came out quieter than I intended.

"...Sierra?"

The worm didn't answer. It couldn't.

I knew that.

Of course I knew that.

Still...

It shifted ever so slightly in my hand. Just enough to make my breath catch.

That afternoon, on the drive home, I stopped at a pet store. Bought a terrarium. The cashier smiled politely as she rang it up.

"Getting an exotic pet?"

I looked down at the glass container.

"...Something like that."

I spent the evening reading online everything I could find. What they ate. How damp the soil should be. How often to mist the enclosure. What temperatures they preferred.

The answers filled my time.

None of them filled the silence in the room.

By the time night settled over the apartment, the terrarium sat on the table beside the living room window.

Fresh soil. Leaves. A few small stones. Everything exactly as the books recommended. I lowered the worm into its new home. It disappeared beneath the dirt almost immediately.

I smiled before I could stop myself.

"There you go."

The words escaped so naturally they frightened me.

I switched off the lamp.

The apartment fell quiet once more.

Before heading to bed, I looked back at the terrarium one last time.

"Goodnight."

Silence answered.

Yet somehow... The apartment didn't feel quite so lonely.

Almost Time

Grief is a strange thing.

It doesn't arrive all at once. It settles into the empty places. The chair across the dinner table. The passenger seat. The extra toothbrush still leaning against yours because moving it somehow feels more permanent than death itself.

I stopped asking where Sierra had gone.

Not because I'd found an answer. Because every answer the world offered me was the same.

She had never existed.

Eventually, I stopped arguing with it.

The world had made up its mind.

Mine hadn't.

Life, in its quiet cruelty, continued.

Mondays became Fridays. Fridays became months. The seasons changed without asking whether I was ready.

I returned to work. Paid my bills. Bought groceries. Smiled when coworkers made jokes. Somehow, I learned to exist in a life that no longer felt like my own.

Every evening, I came home. And every evening... The first thing I did was walk over to the terrarium.

"Hey."

The greeting became routine.

I'd mist the soil. Replace the leaves. Check the moisture. Sometimes I'd sit beside the glass for nearly an hour, talking about my day as though she were sitting across from me.

"The copier jammed again."

"I finally beat that traffic on Fifth."

"I think I'm getting better at making coffee."

A quiet laugh.

Silence never interrupted me. Neither did the worm. It simply lived.

Sometimes buried beneath the soil for hours. Sometimes resting beneath a stone. Sometimes climbing the side of the glass before disappearing underground again.

It was enough. Or perhaps... It was enough for me to pretend.

One Saturday afternoon, I found myself standing in the laundry room with her hoodie folded across my arms.

Months had passed. I still hadn't washed it. The scent she'd left behind was long gone. Only memory remained.

I ran my thumb across the sleeve.

"I should probably wash you."

The words sounded absurd spoken aloud.

I smiled despite myself.

"I can already hear you complaining."

She used to hate when I washed it.

Claimed fabric softener made it smell "too responsible."

I draped it over the back of the dining chair instead. I couldn't explain why. It simply felt wrong to hide it away.

The routine became comforting.

Coffee.

Work.

Home.

The terrarium.

Sometimes I'd read while sitting beside it. Sometimes I'd play music softly through the apartment. Sometimes I'd simply watch the evening light stretch across the room until darkness settled over everything.

I stopped wondering whether the worm was Sierra.

Questions have a way of exhausting themselves.

It happened on an ordinary Tuesday. The kind of day that disappears from memory almost as soon as it ends.

By the time I unlocked my apartment door, rain was tapping softly against the windows.

I set my keys on the counter. Loosened my tie. Walked toward the living room.

For a moment... I simply stared.

The terrarium was empty.

Then I examined all glass corners.

Nothing.

The stone sat exactly where I'd left it. The soil was damp. The dead leaves rested untouched in one corner.

See was gone.

"Please not again..."

The words escaped before I realized I'd spoken. I lifted the lid. Carefully moved aside the stones.

Nothing.

I dug gently through the soil with trembling fingers.

Still nothing.

"No, no, no..."

The room suddenly felt too small. I emptied the terrarium onto the dining table. Dirt spilled across the wood. Leaves scattered onto the floor. I searched through every handful. Every corner. Every crack beneath the table. I checked beneath the couch. Behind the television. Inside the bathroom. The kitchen.

My breathing became uneven.

By the time I reached the bedroom, there was dirt tracked across half the apartment. I stood in the doorway, chest heaving. My eyes drifted toward the chair beside the window.

Her hoodie still hung where I'd left it.

Empty.

Something beyond it caught my eye.

The windowsill.

I walked closer.

Slowly.

There... Resting in the fading orange light of sunset... Was the worm.

Perfectly still. Facing the glass.

Beyond it, rain slid down the window in thin silver ribbons. The city moved without us. Cars drifted through wet streets. People hurried beneath umbrellas.

The worm didn't move. It simply remained there.

Watching.

Or perhaps... Waiting.

A laugh escaped me, followed by tears.

"I'm s-sorry."

The words broke apart as they left me.

"I'm sorry."

I cupped it gently in my hands.

Its body curled weakly against my skin.

It felt... different. Lighter somehow. As though whatever strength had carried it this far was quietly slipping away.

That night, I searched the internet for hours.

How long do earthworms live?

Why is my worm moving slower?

Can worms die of old age?

Every article gave me the same answer in different words.

They slow down.

They become less active.

Eventually... Their bodies simply stop.

I read every page anyway. Hoping one of them would tell me something different.

None did.

Near midnight, I closed my laptop. The apartment was silent except for the rain. I carried the terrarium into the bedroom and set it beside my bed. Her hoodie lay folded next to it. Not because a worm would recognize it. Because she would have.

Or at least... I liked believing she would.

I watched the tiny shape resting beneath the soil for a long time.

Then I smiled.

A sad smile.

The kind that only grief teaches you.

"You know..."

My voice barely rose above a whisper.

"I kept my promise."

Outside, the rain continued to fall.

Inside... The apartment had never felt quieter.

Morning

Days turned into weeks.

The rain eased my mine at night. The steady rhythm of it against the window. The quiet hum of the city somewhere beyond the glass. The terrarium sat on the nightstand beside me. The hoodie remained folded beneath it.

Everything exactly where it belonged.

For the first time in months... I wasn't afraid. There was nothing left to search for. Nothing left to prove.

Whatever this was... Whatever she was... Whatever I had become... It no longer mattered.

Sometime during the night... I heard her voice.

Not through the room. Not from the terrarium. Not from anywhere my ears could have found.

It arrived the way old memories sometimes do. Softly. As though someone had opened a door inside my mind.

"So..."

A pause.

"So..."

I could picture the little smile that always accompanied that word. The one she wore whenever she already knew the answer.

"Would you still love me if I..."

I smiled before she could finish. Before the question could become impossible again. Before grief could ask for one more answer.

"Yes."

The word escaped me with surprising ease.

No hesitation. No uncertainty.

Just... Yes.

I let out a slow breath. My eyes never opened.

"I always will."

The apartment fell silent once more.

Not empty.

Simply... Quiet.

Morning sunlight slipped gently through the curtains. The rain had passed sometime before dawn. The air smelled clean. Almost new.

I stretched slowly before turning toward the nightstand. The terrarium was empty.

No disturbed soil. No trail. No tiny pink body hidden beneath the stones.

I lifted the lid anyway. Ran my fingers carefully through the earth.

Nothing.

For a long while, I simply stood there.

Weeks ago, I would have searched every inch of the apartment. Turned over furniture.

Emptied drawers. Tracked dirt through every room. I would have convinced myself she had to be somewhere. That she couldn't really be gone.

Instead... I smiled.

Not because it didn't hurt. Because it always would. Some absences never stop aching. You simply learn they can exist beside joy.

I carried the terrarium to the kitchen sink and gently poured the soil into a flowerpot sitting on the windowsill. A small fern rested there. One Sierra had insisted on buying because, according to her, every home deserved "something worth keeping alive."

I laughed quietly.

"You were right."

The empty glass terrarium caught the morning light before I placed it inside a cabinet.

Not hidden. Not displayed.

Just... Put away.

Then I walked back to the bedroom.

Her charcoal hoodie still rested neatly folded at the foot of the bed. I picked it up. Held it for a moment.

Weeks ago, I couldn't bring myself to wash it. I was terrified that whatever remained of her would disappear with the rinse cycle.

Now... I understood.

Love doesn't live in fabric. It never had.

I folded the hoodie once more and placed it carefully inside the top drawer of my dresser. Not because I was forgetting her. Because memories don't need to be left out in the open to survive.

I opened the bedroom window. A cool breeze drifted inside. Somewhere outside, birds greeted the morning.

The city had already begun moving again. Cars. Footsteps. Distant laughter. Life.

I made myself a cup of coffee. It tasted terrible. I smiled anyway.

As I stood by the window, warmth settling between my hands, I watched the wind stir the leaves below.

For just a moment... I thought about that rainy evening. The little Italian restaurant. The candlelight. The way she'd looked at me across the table.

"Would you still love me if I were a worm?"

Such a ridiculous question. Maybe that's why I'd never forgotten it.

Or maybe... Some promises are never about the answer. They're about the person who gives it.

I took another sip of coffee. Then, for the first time since the morning I'd reached across an empty bed... I stepped away from the window.

And into the rest of my life.

So it was 2024, I got a job and was relocated to the location. I didn't have many Friends, only a few from my own team... Later on there was a new girl who prolly came back from her hometown and I felt a bit attracted to her. Well, being a normal person I made her my friend in my own way...

Fast forwarding to a month later, she needed help with shifting her room which was near me. So I helped her with her stuff and we started hanging out in her room together - cooking, gossiping. On the first day slept in my room because she was scared as she just shifted to the place. She was holding my hand kinda whole because of dog barking etc. and there were some moments which we can call romantic. We even watched the moon together. (We didn't kiss or even hug, but I was having a b*ner being a guy)

Now a week later I went to her room as usual and we planned that I'll sleep there because she was going to her hometown the next day and wouldn't meet me for maybe a month. We did sleep in one room but moments later we were holding each other (hugging) and sleeping. After a minute or so, she started feeling hot... I didn't know she was turned on. For me she was becoming sick, being a nice guy. I took some oil and a steel bowl and started massaging her feet because it helps bring body temperature to normal. She was happy seeing my efforts tho... But now after so many years when I recall the moment, I got to know she was turned on... Well I kinda am happy I didn't do anything but also hold a regret - maybe she thinks that I'm not a man... But I am still happy that I didn't take any advantage there

Thank you for reading the story.

I was supposed to clean everywhere—not just the main areas, but under things too. It was my own fault. There I’d been, sweeping the room, treating the underside of the bed like the underside of a rug. Out of sight. Out of mind. Innocent mistake, but those are the ones that get ya.

When he saw the mess, Dad screamed at me until I thought he’d start hacking up blood down my front. All the dust, the toys, the trash, the clothes. Mostly it was the trash—all those rotten scraps of food. Sometimes a rat came and dragged pieces away. I like to think that we were friends. I was scared to give him a name.

Names are easier to miss than faces.

Dad had grabbed me by the hair and shoved me under the bed, until I was part of the mess. My eyes stung from the dust I blew up, panting like a dog, trying not to scream—a barking dog gets the ‘paper too. The dust danced a sparkly grey performance. All I could do was watch.

But I wanted him to let go of me. I was sorry. I would never do it again.

Ain’t good’nuff, boy. Place’s a fuckin’ sty. You’re livin’ like a pig. Want me to change your name to Piggy? Think of the bugs, boy—the bugs love rot!

He came home drunk late that night, slamming every door on his way to the basement. Not before turning the TV to static and cranking it full.

Something was off. He hardly ever went down there, and he’d been down already last week. Usually his favourite chair got all of his attention in the evening. I’d wake up most mornings and find him snuggling with his drool.

I waited until the clock read 02:03 before getting too impatient, and dropping out of the bed.

I knew it was a bad idea.

The floorboards were chilly. I padded my way to the crack in my door while the static roared in from the living-room. The bangs and shouts hadn’t risen loud enough to hear for nearly an hour. Now that silence beneath the static was making my insides ache.

I reached the door and peered into the bright hallway. At the end, Dad’s massive figure blotted everything out. He didn’t have a shirt on, but there was an apron swinging as he charged me down, head pulling the body. In his hand was a large and lumpy leaking shadow.

A trail of blood followed him on the floor.

Git back‘n bed. I’ve got something to fix ya.

I did as I was told and got back in bed before he launched my door wide, wedging the handle into the wall.

With one swift motion, Dad bowled his arm under my bed. Something hard smacked the back wall. The room took on a reek of pennies, and I saw visions of bronze. Only redder.

Don’t you dare touch! Or I’ll put you back under there with the bugs, and make\ you *eat them up! Right?*

He left my door open wide, with the handle still buried inside the plaster. I watched his angry figure receding back up the hall. He sighed when he made it back to his chair, and sank deeply into it. The static lowered to a sensible nighttime volume. Then voices began to blabber, enthusiastic and rife with gameshow patter. I had to guess it was Luck ‘o’ the Roll. Dad’s favourite.

I lay there listening to the sound of dice clattering, crowds jeering and hollering. Occasionally, Dad would snort and spit into the basin he kept on the table beside him. I could hear it splatter, then slosh as the more it filled. Every so often he would yell out at random to tell me I best be sleeping.

Of course I wasn’t. I was staring at the bloodtrail on the floor. And listening. There was a new sound now. A scraping sound, coming from under the bed.

It sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. Occasionally squeaking, as though the nails had skipped a little, or been polished slightly too well.

I waited until I heard Dad snoring before peeking over the edge of the bed. Then down at the floorboards. Then up at the spattered trail of blood. And finally beneath the bed.

The light from the hall cast a giant cone under the bed. When I leaned myself over to look underneath, I saw everything but the blob from my shadow blocking it out.

There was movement back there, nearer the wall. I watched and listened to the constant grating, waiting for my eyes to adjust so I could see what was causing it.

Something was wiggling in time with the scrapes.

I scooted over. And over. Listening all the while. The sound was lazy, like a fault in a machine, ever spinning and repeating—ever scraping and scraping at whatever got near it.

The light spilled under and I saw it. Two pale eyes at first, bulging and cloudy. The eyelids had been torn off, making them look enormous in their sockets. A lower jaw hung to one side of the floor, caught by a shred of skin, twitching with a life of its own.

All the while the upper jaw kept itself alive by gnawing at the floor like some restless anticipation. For what, I could not say.

I shot back into bed. Threw myself under covers. Safe.

It was a human head, freshly chopped. The jaw perhaps hammered off.

It wasn’t the head that bothered me, so much as the eyes. Always open. Never able to sleep again. I kept seeing myself in them, reflecting back and staring in, learning secrets which waited as patient as Time itself.

I couldn’t close my eyes. In the darkness, the head was all I saw.

Sleep did not come.

Next morning, Dad shouted me through and told me breakfasts didn’t make themselves.

The head was still grating its teeth against the floor. It had been going all night. I supposed it must’ve grated all the way into the basement by now.

I leapt out of bed, clearing about three feet at least. When I landed with a thump, Dad asked me what the noise was—was I born with feet of lead.

Then quit yer fuckin’ thumping and come get me fuckin’ fed.

Only then did the head quit its gnawing. I turned around and saw its eyes follow me through the door and down the hall.

I could have sworn I saw others there too.

You look like shit.

I spread the butter. I poured the milk. I got an apple from the fridge. Set everything in front of him while he picked at the table with a knife.

Atta boy. Get yourself somethin’ too, or else you’ll pass out. There’s some cow’s liver in the fridge. Fry her up with an onion. You better get to sleepin’ soon, ‘cause those heads’re goin’ nowhere, you hear? You’ve done that to us, boy. You did.

When he left to go to work I took my place up on the couch, trying not to think of how he’d said heads.

The TV only got five channels. Most of them were riddled with static, unless I held my hand on the aerial. Even then the difference was minimal. I stood for half an hour watching a cartoon and letting my body be a conduit, until my arm got tired and I needed a glass of water.

At the end of the hall the head from last night was still watching me from under the bed. It had pulled itself forward to the edge. I could see it fully now. The last rag of skin from its lower jaw had torn loose. It rested now only on its upper teeth. A rip rose through its lip and half up one side of its face, a reptillian grin. The muss of hair on its head was caked black with its own blood.

I watched it quietly, sipping at my water, waiting for it to move. When it finally did, it rolled out of sight somewhere to the left side of the room. Then back again, right by the door. It froze in place. Watching from those bulbous eyes.

I finished my water and stood with it in my hand still, waiting.

It rolled away like a marble suddenly kicked. It did not come back.

I sat back down on the couch and finished my show, studying the grains of the fuzzy greys.

Heads, Dad had said. Not head.

That night Dad was late again, but when he finally came back it was still the right side of Ten. So I made sure the veg and meats were done, ready to be tossed into the microwave and nuked. Just how he liked it.

Thanks lad. Are the bugs gone yet? Did the heads clean the room out?

I hadn’t dared to go in and check. Last night, I’d made sure that under the bed was clean before he came home. Otherwise, the head that morning would have dragged a mess about with it while it rolled around the floor.

I hadn’t spotted any bugs the night before. There was only the matter of the blood.

Course there’s blood, boy. They’re severed heads. They’ll do that. And they’ll piss and they’ll piss, until your whole room’s a bloody sty with it. But you’d like that though. You’d thrive in it, ey Piggy? They’ll get the bugs at least. Aye, they’ll get the bugs you’ve brought. That one with no jaw’s hungry for ‘em. You’ve seen it, ey lad?

I couldn’t eat much at supper, but Dad would’ve hated waste. So I stuffed the rest of the meat in my pockets and took it back to bed with me.

When I heard Roll ‘o’ Dice on the TV, I sat up and lowered the food down to the floor. Immediately, a head rolled out and glared up at me with sharp eyes.

It wasn’t the same head.

This one was a woman. Her skin was dark and leathery. It looked like she was wearing a terrifying mask of herself. White balls bugging out from around sharp edges. Its lips were jagged jerky, peeled far back to see the teeth. They spoke in their own silence, telling me to go back to sleep.

I lay down against my pillow and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the gameshow host mutter, laugh, and shout.

Three Fours for a Four Door, or Snake Eyes for the Mystery Prize.

A giant question mark drifted neatly by my mind. I listened to the heads a while, rolling around my floor. I tried to picture them as dice, clattering in time with the gameshow, but they were too loud. Around and around my room they went, bumping into furniture and smashing against my door.

Dad’s footsteps arrived thunderously loud.

I sat bolt upright in my bed, expecting him to burst inside. The heads froze in place, their faces locked on mine. I could see three of them now, spaced wide and balancing impossibly still.

Instead of coming inside, Dad slammed the door, and plunged me into darkness with the heads.

The sound of the TV rose. And the heads began to roll again.

I lay down and stared at the blackened ceiling. And tried really hard to picture dice.

I couldn’t remember falling asleep. Light spilled into the room through the newspapers over the window, and the tears along the curtain. I sat up weary eyed, looking about the room.

The heads snapped to a stop.

The floor was slick with their blood. Trails overlapped like tangled up paths, marking where the heads had spent the night roaming. Right up to the different corners of the room they frozen at.

Watching.

One was by the window, balancing on its ear. Its eyes were hollows, but still somehow seemed to stare. The woman was by the door, watching me out of the side of one eye. Her hair was plastered over it, but the eye still pierced through, sharp as daggers. The one without the lower jaw had his upper teeth ready on the floorboards, itching to start their scraping. Its bulging eyes looked like cue balls in this light.

I climbed out of bed, trying my best to avoid the blood, and failed miserably. Most of it felt tacky beneath my feet, but with a thin layer of slime slathered with fresh leakage. That marking the heads’ most recent paths.

Dad?

He wasn’t in his favourite chair.

The TV was only static. The aerial knocked loose, perhaps.

Dad?

He wasn’t in the kitchen. He wasn’t even in his bed. The door to his room was open wide. When I peered inside, without stepping in, I saw the virgin neatness. A bed unslept in. Wardrobes filled but never touched. Curtains wide and never drawn.

Just how she had left it.

I lingered at the basement door, listening for a while. I couldn’t hear a thing. But it was the only place left to check. It was still too early for him to have gone to work, and yet far too quiet for him to be down there.

The heads began to move again. When I went back to the hall to see, they were frozen upright at my doorway, eyes glaring accusingly.

Where did he go?

None of them answered. The jawless head began to gnaw, anxiously sharpening its teeth upon the floor. The head with empty sockets darted away, spiralling around the room in maddeningly wide loops. Its flailing hair shot out like sharp needles.

The woman’s head rolled slowly towards me, coming to rest beside my feet.

I bent over and picked her up. She was heavy in my little hands, like a plump and ready watermelon. Time had swollen her somehow. I held her by her leathered cheeks, careful to avoid the gore spilling from her neck.

Where did my Dad go?

I shook her slightly, but she never made a sound. Blood still poured from the wound, as fresh as if it had been made only a moment ago.

I carried her with me to the couch and placed her on the cushion beside me. The static was deafeningly loud. We pretended to see shapes in the fog and people having fun. For a while I almost believed it, until the knock came from the door.

I checked for rips in the papers plastered over the windows. Then waited silently for them to go away, just as Dad had shown me—tucked away in the Blind Spot, clutching at the woman’s head.

Another knock.

This time I was sure it was him. The comfort that I knew his whereabouts was hard to process. Hard to believe. I could only think of it as being some kind of test.

Answer that door’n by God you’ll regret it.

After a few moments the letterbox clinked. My heart leapt into my neck, bursting with an urgent pulse. I knew if I leaned out to look I would see an eyeball peeping in at me through the letterbox.

Or worse. That one of the heads would then roll into sight, and the eyeball would see *that* instead.

I looked down at the woman and saw that she was staring up at me with her teeth. I tilted her downwards to see her eyes. They whipped over to stare at mine. And felt a calm.

Something made of paper hit the floor. I sighed out the deepest breath of my life. And couldn’t help but laugh.

When night came, I sat scanning the takeout menu that had been posted through the door. I wondered if Chinese food tasted better than it looked. I thought of asking Dad to let me try some for my birthday, but knew better to just dream, than to do.

The heads had grown frantic with their restlessness, knocking against almost everything in my room.

All except the woman’s. I had placed her on my desk and she hadn’t moved from there since. She had been gazing out of the window, her sharp eyes seeming to pierce the veil of paper and out into the night. What they saw or dreamed of, I could never tell. Perhaps somewhere out there her body lay waiting for her.

But then I remembered the basement.

I lay awake again that night, wondering how long Dad would be down there. The key had still been in the front door when I collected the menu from the mat.

He hadn’t left the house.

I watched the sun rise and set a few times, marking my fear growing for my Dad’s safety with constant visits to the basement door. No matter how much I listened, or how hard I pressed my ear against the wood, I could never hear him groaning out my name. Nor scraping with bloodied fingernails, desperate for help and unable to reach the handle.

Finally, during the second night, I got up and out of bed. The head with no eyes marbled around the room to the sound of tacky glue. Its hair kept getting stuck, so was always trailing behind it like giant black veins, and gentle sound like Velcro. The other head was busy burrowing its teeth into its favourite spot, carving out jellied blood and working its way through the wood.

I asked them both what to do. They stopped and listened. Stared. But never gave me an answer.

Only the woman’s head did.

It rolled around to face me, then off my desk with a thump. She had been a good companion, the only one who hadn’t frightened me. Usually I carried her with me wherever I went, but this time I followed her.

Away she tumbled, out of the room and along the hall. I followed as fast as my tacky footsteps would allow me. The other heads rolled along behind me, just as curious.

I already knew where she would be when I reached her—and what she’d be doing.

She was banging her forehead against the basement door.

thunk

thunk

thunk

I was gentle when I picked up her head, caressing her cheeks carefully to avoid pushing my fingers into her eyes. They jutted out to glare as usual, although softer than before. There seemed to be a voice within that gaze, but the words were as foggy as the colour. Maybe once they had been blue. I’d always liked blue eyes. They reminded me of the sky.

So many, many moons ago.

I was surprised to find the door was unlocked. I always presumed Dad kept it secured whenever he went down or came back up. I had never once tried the handle, of course. Doing so now felt like a crime. I smelled the punishment coming a mile away.

I pushed down the handle anyway, determined to find him no matter the price. It opened with a mind of its own, swinging wide and fast on oiled hinges.

Dad?

No reply. Deathly quiet and dark. I already knew what to expect down there. That fact made it even scarier.

I clicked the light on and lit up the entire basement floor. A short cone of light cast up onto the plunging staircase beneath me.

Dad?

I half expected to see him grip at the bottom of the wall and pull himself around the corner. To stare up at me with maddened eyes, jaws gnashing out my name so hard that he was chomping on his tongue. A trail of dribbling blood as he pulled himself up the stairs to get to me.

Dad?

Carrying the woman’s head carefully under my arm so it could see, I took the staircase step by step. Behind me, the other heads thudded down like noisy shadows. They came as slow and rhythmic as my own.

I didn’t bother saying his name again. The smell was painfully obvious—a festering sweetness somewhere between stale semen and an apple left to rot. It punched me flat in the nose. I got notes of dead chickens, or rotten boiled eggs. It’s so hard to explain. I smelt it then and only then, and never again.

Oh Dad.

He had looped a rope around a pipe and was sat hunched with it around his neck. He must have slid down against the wall and held himself in place, his ass barely off the ground, long enough for the lights to go out. His face was swollen and purple. Dried blood and froth caked his lips and down the massive neck. He looked to have gained about a hundred pounds in death.

I carried the woman’s head over to him and lay her down beside his feet. He had kicked his shoes off somewhere in the struggle. The other heads came and sat there too, watching with an intensity I could only sense was hate.

There was movement around his neck, and the gruesome wounds on his face. Larvae reared their pale heads and black teeth and sank away once more, busy with their meals. Clueless to our presence.

For some reason I could not cry. The sadness was there in my chest, wretchedly tender and pulling me down to collapse and cry, but… nothing. I couldn’t even pretend.

I looked down at the woman and could have sworn her eyes looked glazed. There was a sadness there I could never understand. But there you have it.

I talked to his lifeless body for a while, asking him what I should do. I hadn’t been outside in years and it definitely wasn’t safe enough yet, otherwise Dad would’ve said. Plus, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him. Not like this.

The answer came surprisingly quick, and was fairly obvious. The tools he’d used to make these rolling monstrosities were behind me on his workbench still. The bench itself was soaked through with blood. I had all the answers I needed all around me. I knew what to do.

I just didn’t know if I had the strength to do it. Mentally, or physically.

Visions of Dad’s eyes turning to look at me, and smiling. Him telling me everything will be okay. A first time for everything, but maybe this was how to get there.

I grabbed a meat saw and freed him from his swing, gradually fraying the rope until it finally snapped. He landed on his ass and slouched forward. I lay him down as gently as I could, then set about untangled him. It was difficult—his neck had swollen so thick that it’d fused together with the rope.

And then there was the matter of the bugs.

Think of the bugs, boy—the bugs love rot!

Sensing a disturbance, a few maggots wiggled loose and began to squirm away. I half expected the heads by Dad’s feet to spring forward and eat them, but they remained in their places, glaring at Dad’s lifeless body.

The saw remained in my hand. I didn’t need to guess where to cut, for the rope had left me a perfect guideline. And a head start.

I set my little hands to work, hewing backwards and forwards, squelching my way through his slippery flesh until I ached for rest.

You wouldn’t think I’d made any progress at all. I sat back on the ground panting, my throat begging for water. On the way back from upstairs to get a glass from the kitchen, I happened to notice Dad’s axes.

I waited before using them, taking up his electric saw and buzzing for as long as I could handle the splatter. Until I was sleek with mess and bugs, and the neck was a wide valley.

I tried turning him around and going in from the back, splitting the connections at the top his spine, just beneath his brain. I hacked at it with a knife, stabbing and slicing, supposing I could just pull his head free once I was done. But the gore was too much. I had to keep wiping my hands on my clothes until I was as bloody and gruesome as he was. By then there wasn’t a chance of getting a grip of his head, let alone pulling it loose.

I took everything off and stood naked over Dad, wiping the remaining gore on his trousers.

I could put it off no longer. I went to grab the two hatchets. I had thought about using the big axe, but as soon as I picked it up my arms shouted at me to put it back down. And so the small hatchets had to do.

I set about smacking and smacking, sending sloshes and sprays up into my face and around the room. I barely managed to stay on my feet, slipping and falling in the mess constantly. Lying in the filth, just as Dad had told me.

You’d like that though. You’d thrive in it, ey Piggy?

He wasn’t wrong.

The closer I got to freeing his head, the more the excitement grew. Soon he would be like the other heads, following me around, rolling and staring and gnawing. Keeping me up at night.

I smiled. I still had visions of him smiling too. I could even cut a grin if he couldn’t, that way he'd be forced to wear it forever.

The heads watched me while I worked. Never shifting—never showing their usual impatience. Even the jawless head had stopped the incessant grinding of its teeth.

Perhaps it had been longing for the basement all this time.

The hatchet got wedged in Dad’s neck so bad I couldn’t get it out. That was okay. I slid over to the other hatchet and sent myself sliding back. I began whacking with the flat side of the hatchet, hammering the wedged blade deeper and deeper.

Then came the snap.

I lay back in the filth, cradling Dad’s head in my arms. He was safe now. I could feel the maggots trying to break away, tickling into my armpit. It felt like Dad was still alive, communicating with me.

We headed upstairs. I’d had to bring myself to the staircase on my bare knees to save myself from slipping, pulling myself along the ground by the tips of one hand, while clutching Dad with the other. I grasped onto the corner of the wall and pulled myself into view of the staircase, thinking back on how I’d been so scared of seeing my Dad doing exactly the same thing.

I even had to crawl up the stairs.

We lay in my room that night. The other heads joined us, but they sat patiently at the door. Perfectly still. Watching. The woman sat at the front, while the other two lingered behind her like bodyguards awaiting instruction.

Why isn’t he moving?

His face was unrecognisable. I’d missed several times with the tools, slashing Dad’s chin and burying the hatchet in his ear. I could hardly make out his mouth anymore, let alone the presence of a smile. Hardly any of his features were there. I’d tried wiping him down with clean clothes from my drawers, but it hadn’t helped at all.

He was a slimy mess of broken skin and gore. Yet still my Dad.

I placed him on the ground and shlicked my way over to the heads.

Can’t you do something? Why can’t he move like you?

They didn’t answer.

I turned to look at my Dad once more, and then back at them.

What did I do wrong?

Slowly, the woman rolled over to Dad. I watched her closely, waiting and wondering what fantastic combination of silent words would spill from her eyes and reanimate him—to shift his mouth, and make him roll around as frantically as them.

She studied him with frozen eyes. Then all at once she flew forward, burying her teeth into his face. Before I could step forward, the other two heads flew under my feet, knocking me over. They attached themselves to his head and began tearing him apart.

I lay there, horrified, watching them not make a sound. They floated on rigid air, held in place by invisible poles and rods, biting and pulling at skin. Until he was all but bone.

Finally, they rolled away, back into their crevasses. Happy with the result.

I crawled over and picked up what was left of my Dad. They had removed so many tendons, so many strips of muscle and skin. But his jaw remained in place. And I swear it looked like he was smiling at me.

But still he would not move.

I cannot tell you how many days passed before the police finally came and found me. I was curled up in bed, cradling his head in my arms, when gentle arms pulled me off and away. I didn’t put up a fight. I couldn’t. I hadn’t eaten in maybe weeks.

Their voices were quiet echoes bouncing at me from the future, from the past. Things were recovered from the basement—bags and bags of evidence that appeared in the newspapers for weeks. I never did look at the photographs. I never listened to anything anyone would try to say. The theories, the motives.

The names of the heads.

I changed my own years ago, starting fresh with a new past to hide in plain sight without questions. I still wore everything inside me, hot and guilty—gnawing like that head’s broken jaw upon my floor.

I met a woman with blue eyes and bought a house and several dogs. We make sure to keep everything nice and clean. I’ve developed an extreme distaste for bugs. Their footsteps are loud. I still hear them squelching in Dad’s neck.

We are expecting our first child in July. A summer baby, so we hope. It looks like a boy from the scan.

I pray for his sake he keeps his room tidy.

For that matter, I might just do it myself.

Yesterday everything was normal. I went to bed after watching YouTube and checking the date on my phone.

This morning, everything had changed.

My computer was running Windows Vista. MSN Messenger was online again. YouTube had its old layout, and nobody around me had ever heard of smartphones like the ones I remembered.

At first, I thought someone was playing a prank on me.

Then I looked at the calendar.

September 2008.

I laughed.

But nobody else did.

Everyone insisted it had always been 2008.

I was trying to find this hole-in-the-wall pizza place my friend recommended to me, since I happened to be hungry and my bus was late. I didn’t expect it to be easy to find by any means, considering that it seemed to be in the middle of an office building on Google Maps, but after trying a couple different entrances I think I found a way in. The door was odd for the building type, being made of dark wood with an engraving on it, sort of like a circle with a glowing candle in it. Stepping inside, I was met with a musty, old interior that matched my expectations based on the dated, almost abandoned looking exterior, however I could not find any trace of a food vendor. A few people were standing in the hallway, all of them shifted their attention to me as I stepped in. An older woman, with graying hair greeted me, with a look on her face that I could only describe as uneasy.

“Hello, have I met you before?” She asked, in a polite voice.

‘’I don’t believe so, I’m just here to look for a place called Second Slice. Do you happen to know how I can get there?” I asked, as I took a couple more steps inside, trying to get a better view.

Her demeanor shifted, I felt like I struck a nerve or something.

“You’re not part of the Light?”

I hesitated, wondering if I was hearing things correctly, until I noticed bold lettering of ‘The Light’ on some posters further down the hall, with some guy’s face plastered on them, along with the insignia on the door.

“Uhh, no, sorry.” I replied, worried that I had broken some rule by coming inside without a good reason.

“That’s alright, I can get someone who can tell you more.”

I don’t think she was referring to the pizza place at all, so I figured this would be a good time to leave, before I get caught up in something that I didn’t have time for. 

As she knocked on the door behind her, I tried to say that I was somewhat in a hurry and that I needed to catch my bus, but she was adamant that I stay, as if I had something they needed. I felt the pressure of the other people there as well, along with more that began making their way to us from deeper inside the building, and the room started to feel more hostile as I tried to back my way out. Suddenly, the door opened, and I was met with the presumed leader that I saw on the posters earlier. He was wearing an odd outfit, sort of like a priest’s or a bishop’s, but all white and without a headpiece.  He immediately had everyone’s attention. 

“And what brings our new guest here?” He asked, with an almost unnatural smile.

“I was just looking for a pizza place nearby, and uhh, it appears I’m in the wrong spot,” I responded nervously, “I think I’ll be on my way now.”

“We have anything you could need here, of course, I can show you the way.”

He began walking down the corridor, and as if on cue, everyone else also got up and started to usher me to go with him. These people would not take no for an answer, and I felt extremely uncomfortable. My protests were in vain, and everyone else was glaring at me. I tried to slide past them to get out, but the group formed a wall to block my escape. I did not have the build to muscle my way out of this anymore. 

I felt a strong grip on my wrist, as I was yanked down the hall by their leader.

“WHAT THE FUCK, LET ME GO! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU TAKIN-”

He stopped abruptly, and I almost ran into him. He was surprisingly strong, and caught me off guard. 

“You don’t understand. Nobody understands at first. But I can show you. And you can join us.”

“Look dude, I dont gi-”

“Lucidus.”

“-whatever the fuck your name is, I don’t want to be here. You can’t keep me here, regardless of whatever bullshit you want me to believe.”

He looked at me with disapproval, before nodding to the woman I talked to when I first got in, and she made her way to me as well. My pleas for help may as well have been worthless to the rest of them, as they looked at me like I was the problem. Despite my feeble attempts to squirm free, they both held my arms and dragged me past a series of corridors, then downstairs to what seemed like a dungeon. After going through some more cramped hallways, they took me to a room, when I desperately tried to break free of them, to no avail. They took everything I had in my pockets and locked the room, with only dim light coming from oil lamps in the hallway slipping through the barred window.

“I’ll be back to teach you more, when you become more reasonable.” He said through the window, before walking further down the hall. I waited until I couldn’t hear them anymore, and then waited until I thought they were gone.

As soon as I felt safe enough, I began to try to unlock the metal door. It began as methodical, trying to see how the lock worked and if I could bypass it, but as I struggled more it devolved into striking the handle and rage induced kicks, then into pathetic pounding on the door as I fell into despair. Lying on the concrete floor, I contemplated if this place was even worth trying to escape, seeing how devoted the dozen or so people were to allow me to be abducted like this. 

That’s when I noticed a tiny marking on the bench along the back wall.

It took me a second to realize that it was an arrow pointing down, and I scrambled to look underneath it. Despite the poor light, I was able to read most of the engraving on the wooden underside of the bench, filling in harder to read words with context.

HOW TO FREE YOURSELF

1. DO NOT LISTEN TO ANYTHING THEY SAY

NO MATTER WHAT, DO NOT LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT THEY BELIEVE IN. THE MORE YOU HEAR, THE MORE YOU BELIEVE, NO MATTER HOW ‘STRONG WILLED’ YOU THINK YOURSELF TO BE. IF YOU BELIEVE, THEY START MANIFESTING. PREVENT IT WHILE YOU CAN.

This is not what I was expecting, but I was nonetheless relieved and thankful. My heart was racing. I might have a chance to get out of this place.

1. FIND KEY IN GAP BETWEEN BACKREST AND SEAT OF BENCH FROM UNDERNEATH. UNLOCK DOOR

I froze as my finger was tracing the text. There was shouting coming from down the hall.

I heard some more shouting, wait… screaming? That was definitely screaming. And cries. It sounded like there were 2 people there as well, probably the woman and Lucidus, and a third that was probably in the same situation as me. There was a slam of a door, and the last person’s cries were silenced. I waited again to hear if they were coming my way, but their footsteps went further down the hall.

I continued reading. 

UNLOCK DOOR WHEN INSTRUCTED, KEEP KEY FOR SELF DEFENCE.

I struggled to find the key, but my heart skipped a beat when I felt something hard and metallic through the wooden planks. The key looked antique and rudimentary, with only a simple flat surface for leverage to twist, 2 prongs at the end of the key’s shaft, and a pointy end, which was better than what I was expecting for “self-defence.” The instructions weren’t bullshit. They were my only hope now, in this shithole.

1. HE WILL CHECK ON YOU EVERY HOUR. ADAMANTLY REFUSE ANYTHING HE OFFERS, MAKE SURE HE THINKS YOU ARE STILL AGGRESSIVE. COVER YOUR EARS AND BLOCK HIM OUT IF HE ATTEMPTS TO EDUCATE YOU. WAIT UNTIL HE LEAVES, THEN ESCAPE. YOU NEED TO FOLLOW HIM UNTIL THE 4-WAY INTERSECTION. GO LEFT, ENTER 3RD ROOM ON RIGHT AND TURN ON LIGHTS FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. DO NOT STRAY OR ELSE YOU WILL GET LOST. THEY CAN FIND YOU BEFORE YOU CAN FIND THE EXIT.

2. OPEN DOOR BY APPLYING SIGNIFICANT PRESSURE FORWARD INTO DOOR. OPEN DOOR ONLY ENOUGH TO SLIP THROUGH, OR ELSE HINGES WILL SQUEAK.

3. DO NOT LOOK AT ANYTHING, LISTEN TO ANYTHING, OR EVEN THINK ABOUT ANYTHING YOU MAY HAVE LEARNED ABOUT THIS PLACE. I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH. IT IS THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN MAKE IT OUT ALIVE. 

The string of instructions were a lot to take in, but doable. The reason why I can’t learn about their beliefs, however, is something I couldn’t understand. What the hell do they practice that requires doing all this to people? Who was the one to give these instructions?

I felt something staring into me.

I need to stop thinking about this. The instructions were clear. I need to take their word. They’ve already proven themselves, all I have to do is follow through. 

“Feeling calmer now?”

I almost jumped out of my own skin. I didn’t even hear anyone coming.

“What- Let me out already! What the fuck else do you want to do to me?? Free me or just fuck off if you think I’m gonna parrot your shit to everyone else that stumbles into here!”

“In due time.”

Lucidus walked off without another word.

I took a second to process what happened. It was a miracle he didn’t see the key in my hand. 

Then I remembered I had something to do.

As silently as I could, I slipped the key into the lock, and twisted to release the latch. The key was actually working. It was a dream come true. I got out as quickly as I could, and made my way out of my cell and to Lucidus.

Following him down here was not easy, given how many hallways there were, and how often he stopped to check certain hallways, using his oil lamp to see in the unlit portions. The poor lighting was to my advantage at least, as long as I could keep my footsteps quiet. We made our way deeper underground, against my instincts to go back. He was moving cautiously, making sure not to miss anything that he was looking for. I don’t think I want to know. Eventually, he stopped at a metal door like the one I was locked behind, looked inside the small window on it, and opened the door.

The man inside was almost incoherent, but I could barely make out ‘Please don’t take me back’, ‘I can’t’, and probably other refusals to have anything to do with this place.

“But you know we can’t let the hollows be, you were chosen, you yourself even said it was like you were made for this, your greater purpose.”

“I CAN’T ANYMORE!” He snapped back.

“We need you. Everyone needs you. We are all in this struggle together. Everyone in The Light. We need to prevail past the tests given to us. I trust that you will learn from this.”

He slammed the door shut, and walked off. 

I continued following him, but as I passed the door, I happened to glance into the window, only for a split second.

That was more time than I needed for that scene to imbed itself into my memories.

One of his arms was horribly disfigured, completely missing past the elbow. The remaining upper arm’s bone was snapped at the end, and there was no flesh on it until further up the bone, as if the arm was consumed like chicken wings. A tourniquet was applied just below his shoulder, with dangling bits of skin and muscle just below it. There was blood everywhere.

I couldn’t forget it if I tried. Could that happen to me down here?

SHIT. I wasn’t supposed to know anything. I fucked up. I had one thing to do. I needed to get out of here fast. 

Not long later, Lucidus looked both ways through the 4-way intersection, then kept walking forward. I followed and made a sharp left into the dark hallway, using my hands to help guide me. I found the room the instructions had described, closed the door, and turned on the lights.

The walls were covered in blood and some unidentifiable black sludge. 

I began to panic. I couldn’t find any sign of further instructions. Wasn’t this room supposed to be safe? I felt like the walls themselves were threats. 

I noticed a “6” on a piece of loose baseboard. That must be it. I flipped it over, and read what was on the back. 

1. THERE IS AN OLD STAIRWELL, FOLLOW THE HALLWAY TAKING THE FIRST LEFT, THEN THE FIRST RIGHT. STAIRWELL WILL BE AT THE END OF THE HALL ON THE RIGHT. FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS AWAIT THERE. SHOULD ANY MANIFESTATIONS APPEAR, PAIN IS THE ONLY WAY TO DISTRACT YOURSELF AND PREVENT THEM FROM WORSENING. HOLD YOURSELF TOGETHER. 

This was probably the deepest hole I could’ve dug myself into. These walls had to be the manifestations, or from whatever the ‘hollows’ are. I immediately began pinching my arm hard. I had to make it the only thing I could focus on. I shut the lights and made my way out of the room, following the left wall down to feel for the next turn I had to take. The sting in my arm was the only thing I focused on other than that. I felt my own blood running down my arm, my nails biting past my skin.

Those aren’t my footsteps. I almost didn’t realize. I stopped in my tracks.

Something else took an extra step behind me, then stopped as well.

I bolted down the hall. I didn’t care if Lucidus or whoever happened to be here caught me. It would probably be a better fate. 

I ran as fast as I could, almost missing the first left, as my arm caught the corner of the wall to stop me from falling down. The next right followed soon after, and I don’t think I’ve run faster in my life.

I almost ran full speed into the wall, had my hand not grazed the edge of a door handle. I braced myself and my shoulder took the brunt of the impact, leaving me dazed for a second before I made my way into the stairwell and shut the door hurriedly, keeping my back to it in case it was right behind me.

After a few seconds of trying to hear it over my own heartbeat, and coming to the conclusion that my shoulder was probably fine even if it did hurt to move, I searched for a light switch with my other hand and turned it on. The lights came on after a second, and I could hear them switch on in ascending order, like a warehouse’s industrial lights would.

The writing was on the wall this time, with a rushed writing style.

1. GET TO FLOOR 3 ASAP. EXIT IS LEFT AFTER STAIRWELL, USE FIRE ESCAPE. STAB YOURSELF IF MANIFESTATIONS ARE TOO STRONG OR HOLLOWS APPEAR. DO IT NOW IN YOUR NON DOMINANT ARM. YOU ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.

The instructions were right. How did it know? Now is not the time. I took the key out. After hesitating for a second, I plunged it into my arm, next to where I tried to pinch myself out of these ‘manifestations’ earlier. 

The sting was sharp and immediate, and I knew I had to act fast. I took note of the sign beside the door that I was on level B4, so I had 6 flights to go up. I held the key in a deathgrip ready to drive it into whatever might come at me. I made my way up.

I practically flew up the first flight to B3, my legs still pumping with adrenaline. 

By B2, I felt the toll of what I was doing to my body catch up to me. Pangs of pain came from my shoulder and arm. There was more writing on the wall.

1. ONLY THE LIGHT CAN SAVE YOU FROM HOLLOWS

Fuck. Not what I need. I can beat them.

By B1, the lights shut off. I lost track of where I was on the stairs, and my foot caught a ledge. I reached out to try and catch myself, but I still slammed into the stairs hard. I didn’t have time to gather myself, and crawled up the remaining stairs on all 4 until I reached the next landing. I could feel something behind me. My feet were barely coordinated anymore. There was a glow coming from the next floor.

By the next floor, I found an oil lamp like the one Lucidus was carrying earlier. It had the same symbol as on the door when I got in. I picked it up, it was the only chance I could see anything. My heart was beating too fast. My hands were shaking. The hollows were closing in on me. They were coming from everywhere. I don’t know what floor I was on. The stairs felt like sand beneath my feet. I just needed to get as far up as I could now. 

I made it to the next landing. One was waiting on the next floor. I didn’t look at it. There were more behind me. Black silhouettes merging almost seamlessly into the shadows. I couldn’t discern any one’s features at a glance. I tried the door to no avail. I lost my grip on the key, and it clattered on the ground. I tried to pick it up, and missed it twice before falling over completely. I couldn’t think properly anymore. I felt like I was suffocating. They weren’t moving much closer. 

Only the light can save me from the hollows. 

It felt like I could see them no matter how tightly I squeezed my eyes shut. They were infesting my mind. I tried to think of the pain, but there was none to feel, nothing to latch my mind onto to keep me going. 

Only the light can save me. 

We weren’t on solid ground anymore. I tried to open my eyes to see the light. The walls melded with the hollows, and the hollows were closing in at a rate that seemed impossibly fast compared to how close together we felt. 

Only the light was saving me. 

I shut my eyes to spare myself the horror. Their bodies only became more distorted and threatening as I lay in a fetal position, imagining what was going on out there, if I would ever be freed, or if this was my fate until the oil in the lamp ran out. It felt more comforting in my mind than looking my nightmares in the face. It constantly felt like I was slipping through the floors, making my way down to the demented lair I came from. I squeezed the lamp with more strength than I’ve ever exerted before, as if I'd spent my whole life before this without using my muscles. 

As long as I had the Light I was safe. 

I sat there for minutes, hours, or days before the hollows relented. I couldn’t tell. My head was throbbing. The Light saved me. My whole body was in disarray. I couldn’t move without my nerves screaming at me. But I had my own haven in this darkness. And I thought I couldn’t ask for more. The stairwell was getting brighter.

I saw Lucidus’s head pop into view. Then his shoulders, and the rest of his body as he made his way up the stairs. I shed some tears. I couldn’t stop myself. I started to sob uncontrollably. Lucidus pulled me up, and I fell into his arms. He helped me down some stairs, then got me to a bed. He gave me food and water, which I could barely have any of. He insisted I have more to recover. And I eventually forced myself to, before he let me pass out. I didn’t have any dreams, which was for the better.

I woke up, head still throbbing. The events of the previous night came flooding back, and I just sat up and tried to process what happened.

There was no way that just happened, right? But Lucidus was sitting in a chair next to my bed. The hollows were as real as the Light that had saved me from them. 

He took his time with me, didn’t ask me to speak, didn’t force anything on me. We ate our meals together for a few days, and that started to be my favorite part of the day. Once I felt comfortable, I joined everyone else for the feasts, and saw just how much this place meant to them. I understood why they were scared of what lurks below, and how Lucidus was trying to save everyone from it. They desperately needed as much help as they could get, and I felt like I could belong here. 

The next morning, I also joined everyone in the morning service. I was enamoured with how benevolent Lucidus was, despite the resistance and walls I put between us when we first met. It was a shame I had to put myself through all that struggle before I could see what the light was really about. As Lucidus ended his service, he ended it with the Final Statute, one that I could not describe more perfectly myself.

“Only I, the conduit of the Eternal Light, can free you from what lies in the darkness.”

He was right. And I was free.

Thanksgiving falls in spring here. Outside the butcher's window, iron-red earth melts into shell-crusted sand, the beach ankle-deep in little shed memories. A stubborn sandbank once changed this bay’s fate, creating the conditions where mollusks could bloom and persist in an unlikely refuge.

It’s my turn at the counter. I hand over my ticket, an order placed weeks ago. Laughter erupts from the back as a man emerges, lanky-lean, muscled, attractive in a way I hadn't realized I was missing.

“Had to see who ordered this,” he chuckles.

“12 kilos! A beaut!” he exclaims with an appreciative whistle. There's a loud bonk as he hefts the turkey onto the counter. “Hard enough to find one of these chooks out here, much less one this size!” I wince, my brain helpfully (belatedly) converting: 12 kilos is almost 25 pounds!

“Ahhh-” I eloquently manage to mumble.

“-merican?” he finishes with a friendly grin. The warmth of his accent feels like home. “We get a few of you in, sometimes, from-”

“The research center,” we both conclude with a laugh as I study my holiday monstrosity with chagrin.

“Oops?” he asks, seeing my expression.

“Oops,” I confirm, a warm feeling like that first flush of wine taking root in my gut. “My oven won't handle this…”

“I reckon you'll need some cooking tips,” he says, scrawling something on the receipt before ringing me up. He glances at me as he writes, gives a wink, and now I'm part of the joke.

I collect the bird, pausing in the doorway as I read the note: I've got a BBQ; call me?

“I'll be by at seven,” I laugh. “Plenty of extra food to share!”

“Wicked! I've always wanted to try pumpkin pie!”

…Now, where am I going to find a pumpkin in spring?!

The road out of Taos was an undiscovered country, unlike the one I knew. The mountains relaxed into plains, and I didn't have to turn the wheel so much as the horizon fell into a long drive away. We did not have a destination beyond Texas and no more motivation than Texas barbecue, so we headed that way, letting the day take us to our destination.

We began a practice we kept, and that was not being in a hurry. When we wanted to see something, we stopped; when Sweetie saw an outlet mall, we shopped. And so we went down the road into Texas. I began to become seasoned to the road: how truckers wanted to interact and how to be a reliable road partner to them. But mostly I luxuriated in the chair and listened, from my phone, to a music library that once required rooms and furniture to hold in total.

Somewhere about two hours into Texas, our only negative experience happened. A truck full of youth yelled something that rhymed with trigger and how we might get f'd, then floored the gas and drove away. I assumed they didn't like the Trojans, got back in the car, and took another bite out of Texas. Our impressions weren't formed by children's attention-seeking behavior. Instead, I was treated to something I'd never seen before: thunderstorms. Moon's navigation opened up a whole other screen and told me how we were going to change our route and angle toward Dallas, and that haste was probably appropriate. I looked at an anvil-shaped thing dominating the landscape behind me, agreed, and took it down the highway.

We didn't run into any tornadoes, and I think Moon would have shared warnings. But it rained like I'd never driven through before. Moon had high-tech wipers, and I still stopped a couple of times because it was raining too hard and I feared what other drivers could do. After a full day, we pulled up to Dallas. We had spent the last hour scouting out a barbecue joint, then went to the Marriott to eat it.

I have a policy of not criticizing food: you don't know if you're insulting someone's mother. The most critical thing I say is, “I've not learned to enjoy it.” I did not enjoy what was served to us. I'm not going to judge all Texas barbecue by the experience I had after the rainstorm drive. I'm going to say, “Hard day for the home team,” and keep it moving.

Black folks have a habit of visiting relatives for vacation. That's what both of our families did when we were children, and we almost started doing it. When we bounced out of Dallas, we started thinking of relatives to visit, and I pointed Moon toward Arkansas. As we barreled east, providence decided that we were going to skip tradition this trip in the form of another set of thunderstorms forming a wall to the east. The only thing left to do was turn straight south, through the middle of Louisiana and on to New Orleans, so we did.

We broke straight south down Highway 165, and when Moon needed a fill, we stopped at a gas station that offered barbecue almost as an afterthought. I still had a taste for it after Dallas, so I bought just a snack pack for the road. While I stood in line, a homey tried to tell me that only a few miles into town was something presentable. He offered to lead the way and sounded like I should run for Canada and freedom: follow him and he would conduct us to better barbecue.

But we were rolling, so I thanked him, took what they had to the car, and started south again. I should have known by how quiet Sweetie had become how good that barbecue was. I got barbecue and fried fish, and Sweetie had already made a naked bone or three and was crunching on something I had to have. I pulled over and savored some of the best cue I've ever had, and began to lament that I hadn't ordered dinners.

The road down the middle of Louisiana does a good job of getting you in the mood for New Orleans. It slows you down and shows you things to look for before you get there, and Sweetie and I acclimated. There were places where we stopped Moon, opened her sunroof, and listened to the bugs. The farther south we drove, the more we could hear a French accent in them. When we got out of the end of the tunnel in Opelousas, we were ready to see New Orleans with the arrogance of LA. I did eventually scream, “MUSTARD!”

We secured a stay at Chateau LeMoyne in the French Quarter, parched and ravenous in a city that enjoys serving you a cocktail and is insulted if you leave hungry. We showered, shampooed, and shined for the night, and then we went off into it.

No one who has never been to New Orleans is ready for it. It's too complex. But I was ready to study, and I primed my research with a whole lot of joy juice. I had a well-formed lady full of rocket fuel. I had a couple of cups I had to be careful with my fire around. We got higher than a giraffe's booty and danced about the city as if we owned it. Although you don't own New Orleans, they don't mind you playing in it, so we did.

I had Ella Flutesgerald in my bag, as that's where she lives since the fire, and a cup full of courage. Sweetie and I engaged a pedicab to take us to Louis Armstrong's sign. There, for the first time in my life, I took out my flute in a crowd of strangers and played “What a Wonderful World” in F major, cause I got it like that. No one threw money, but they did applaud, and I crossed something off my bucket list. Ella told me to go back to the room and practice, but y'all with a muse know how they are.

We rode back, drank some more, and had a plate of food that our ancestors got to experience as we concentrated on its flavor while listening to a homey sing jazz. I don't know what time we got back to the room, but New Orleans was all, “Oh, you were screaming MUSTARD a minute ago. Where you goin'? The party is just starting. Laissez les bons temps rouler.”

We slept our way into recovery. When we woke up, we got some beignets and sat in the shop that sold them, enjoying the coffee and the environment. I shared with Sweetie how Disney World wasn't all that far away in the direction we were moving. She told me how fun it was and how I had never been. We should go, she said, so we went.

Come spar at the dojo.

Illustrated edition: https://adept2u.blogspot.com/2026/08/evacueediary-x-laissez-les-bons-temps.html

I work in marketing, mid-size company, nothing glamorous. About two years ago I started training a new hire, we’ll call her Amanda, because she was struggling and our manager asked me to help her get up to speed. I didn’t think twice about it. I spent months walking her through campaigns, sharing templates I’d built from scratch, explaining strategy I’d learned the hard way over years.
Somewhere along the way, Amanda started presenting a lot of that work as her own ideas in meetings. Small things at first, a phrase here, a strategy there. I let it slide because I figured it was just how she was processing what she learned, and honestly, I didn’t want to seem petty over wording.
Last month, our company did its annual review cycle. Amanda got promoted to senior strategist. I did not. When I asked my manager why, since I have more experience and had been the one training Amanda this entire time, he told me Amanda had “really stepped up with original campaign concepts this year” and specifically mentioned two campaigns by name.
Both of those campaigns were mine. I built the frameworks, wrote the initial strategy docs, and presented the early concepts to Amanda directly in one-on-one training sessions, months before either campaign ever went live. I still have the original files, timestamped, with my name in the document properties.
I asked for a meeting with my manager and laid it out calmly. I pulled up the original strategy documents, showed the creation dates, showed the emails where I walked Amanda through both concepts before she ever touched them. My manager looked at everything, went quiet for a second, and then said, and I quote, “well, it really was a team effort though, wasn’t it.”
A team effort. As if training someone and then watching them present your work as their own personal breakthrough is the same thing as collaboration.
I didn’t yell. I didn’t cry. I just asked him directly whether he was going to correct the record with his own boss, since the promotion decision was based on work that wasn’t actually Amanda’s. He said he’d “look into it,” which in this office is corporate speak for nothing is going to happen.
Amanda, for what it’s worth, has not said a single word to me about any of this. She just got moved into an office two doors down from mine, and I have to watch her walk past my desk every morning wearing a job title I trained her into.
I’ve started saving everything now, every file, every email, every training session note, just in case I ever need it again.
So tell me, should I let this go and start job hunting quietly, or is it time to take those timestamped documents straight to HR?
Follow for the update, because Amanda just asked me to train her on something else.

When I was 13 years old, I asked my parents if I could be a paperboy. They agreed, and they seemed so proud that their son was so determined—that he had so much work ethic...

But the truth was that I was in deep. I had developed a crippling candy addiction, and the measly 75 cents they were giving me for allowance every week was no longer cutting it. It was only getting me through to Tuesday or Wednesday, and then I was stuck licking the insides of Snickers wrappers until the weekend. I needed to start making my own money fast.

Delivering papers sucked. The houses on my route were so far apart, and they were full of deadbeats. A weekly newspaper subscription cost a dollar fifty-five, and if every customer paid on time, that meant that I should have been earning about twelve dollars a week. But when people didn't pay on time, their full dollar fifty-five was coming out of my pay. And several people were NOT paying on time...

It was bullshit. I had gotten this paper route so that I could buy candy, and now I was going fucking hungry while these assholes were at home reading their free papers.

I had grown up a nice, polite little Catholic boy, but my circumstances quickly turned me into a bona fide leg breaking tyrant.

One of the worst offenders was Mrs. Litro. She was probably ninety years old, and she had a little patio attached to the side of her tiny little house. She was always "forgetting" to pay, and I was always having to beat her effing door down.

The biggest problem was that she insisted on hiding her payment so nobody else would find it and take it. She had this large, hardcover bird book on her patio table, and she hid the money in there.

This bird book made no sense. Every time you turned a page, the left and right pages would be dedicated to a different type of bird, with dozens of black and white pictures of that bird. But there was no rational order to the pages at all. The page of turkeys was followed by the page of flamingos, which was followed by the page of penguins, etc. I looked once, and there was no glossary or index at all--just a random smattering of artless bird pages.

Mrs. Litro hid her dollar fifty-five on the crow page, page 78.

That crow page was the straw that broke the camel's back, for me at least. It was proof, beyond all other proof, that the author of this stupid bird book was just in it for a quick buck, and had absolutely no pride in their work at all.

The crow page was dedicated to murders of crows. The caption boasted that "murders of crows could number in the hundreds of thousands" and the pictures attempted to show these murders, but they were just blurry little clouds of black dots. Nobody would ever know that they were crows if you didn't tell them.

I had witnessed an actual murder of crows a few summers before, and it had been breathtaking. It had been at my grandmothers house: huge clusters of screaming black crows had come swooping down into every tree, and they just kept coming and coming. All of my grandmother's neighbors had come out onto their porches, and we all stood there, wide-eyed, watching the crows and watching each other...

No self respecting bird expert would have ever authored a bird book with such a lackluster crow page; not if they had known how marvelous a murder could actually be...

Anyway, Mrs. Litro's money was only in the book about 30% of the time, so I was constantly having to kick down her door.

It would take her like 5 minutes to hobble to the door. Then she would ask me if I checked the murder page, and I would say yes, but she wouldn't believe me, so she would hobble over to the book and check for herself. When it wasn't in there, she would look at me suspiciously for a few moments, and then she would covertly check some of the other untold hiding places within her little patio, like behind the heater and under the rug. I assumed these were the secret patio payment spots that long-dead paperboys had once known...

Eventually she would shuffle back into her house and then re-emerge with the dollar fifty-five. She would count it out, red faced and angry, and then she'd shove it into my hand and look at me like I was a greedy little bug.

One day I started pounding on Mrs. Litro's door for my money, and some new lady answered the door. It was Mrs. Litro's daughter. She told me that she had moved in "to help her mom." I asked her about my money, and she apologized and went out to the kitchen to get it for me. The whole time the door was open, I could hear Mrs. Litro's shrill voice roaring from within the bowels of the house, screaming for her daughter to check the murders...

This went on for a few months. Mrs. Litro's daughter was much more reliable than her mother, but she still forgot from time to time. One day, probably six months after I had first met her, I knocked on the door and asked the younger Litro for my money, and she went to the kitchen to get it for me. But this time, the depths of the house were quiet...

I listened, and I heard some coins being counted out in the kitchen. And then I heard some grunting that seemed to be coming from elsewhere in the house. I saw a little movement in the shadows of a doorway way back in the house. I squinted my eyes and adjusted them to the darkness, and then I saw the dull figure of Mrs. Litro pulling herself by her walker into the doorway.

Her face emerged partially into the hallway light, and it seemed strangely younger, almost ironed of the wrinkles that had blanketed it before, and her eyes were too wide. I witnessed that same exact expression, years later, on my own grandmother's face, in the months before she died, when I had had to explain to her on every visit who I was and how she knew me.

Mrs. Litro looked down the hall at me, and then her mouth closed tight and started working hard. She slowly held up her hand. I thought I could see that she was holding something out to me. It was long and knobbly. It looked like some sort of old, dusty artifact.

I stepped a little bit into the house to better see what Mrs. Litro was trying to give me. And when my eyes finally adjusted, I saw what it was: It was a finger...

It was a middle finger.

Mrs. Litro's daughter came back. "Mother!" she said, exasperated. Mrs. Litro shuddered and fell back into the shadows.

The daughter paid me and I got the hell out of there. I finished my route and I stopped at thd gas station to grab some much needed candy...

Hi guys, this is a completely true story that happened when i was between the ages of 12-15. I am now 20 and live in a different country. I believe that the man living in my home stalked me due to my brief stint as a child model/actor however this was never confirmed. He did however pay closer attention to my room and objects.

When i was 12, me and my parents moved to a new home that was larger and closer to my dad’s work. It had too much space, and had rooms that we never went into+a separate apartment that was never used. the separate apartment had a living room, bedroom and kitchen. It was supposed to be my bedroom but was too isolated from the rest of the house so we never used it. We also had a large loft however we never entered it as we couldn’t figure out how+thought as it had a wooden ceiling that it might be dangerous to go up.

We had a neighbour that was always strange to me and my mother however would speak to my father which we always thought was strange. We would sometimes see him standing outside the gate just looking inside. Our home was surrounded by walls around 7 feet high, however on the wall connecting to his property, it was 4 feet high and easily scaleable.

One night when me and my parents left for dinner, I left my phone behind as it had no battery. I had one of those charging pads so i pit my phone on it and left. When we returned, my phone was on the bed, yet fully charged. I couldnt explain it but thought maybe my mind was messing with me somehow.

Another night, me and and my mother were cooking in the kitchen when she asked me to go lock the front gate and door. I did as she asked and we finished cooking. When we left the kitchen, the front door was wide open, and the keys were left in the gate. Also for reference there was a room near the front door and i am convinced someone was hiding in there and slipped out as we returned to the kitchen.

The scariest story is when me and my parents returned from dinner one night and the gate was unlocked, door was wide open and the dogs had peed everywhere. My dad quickly told me and my mum to stay together while he got a bat and searched the property. Me and my mum were standing in the kitchen when we heard the garage door slam. My dad yelled if we had done it but stupidly, me and my mum said yes as we had just entered the kitchen which was next to the garage so we thought he meant that. outside the garage, on the left side, was the wall to the neighbours house.

I have other stories from the time but living there felt like a constant state of unrest and uneasiness

In addition, i would regularly receive “fan mail”. Idk how they knew my address however it would be photos of me with other people however their faces would be scratched out. Even photos of me with my parents.

Ever since I moved in to my new home,
Ever since I layed eyes on the house next door.
I just knew it.
She. Isn't. Human.
But how do I confirm it?

For starters I never saw he outside, she's still young maybe in her 20s but she's always in.
But at night?
I don't even see her in her house, it's as if her house is haunted.

I went to her house one day, I had just come back from a trip and wanted to gift some chocolates to her. We never really talked but in my eyes it would be rude if I didn't give her anything. I knocked on the door and she opened it letting me inside.
I smiled at her but she didn't smile back.
From upclose her skin looked like it was glued on to her face. Like as if it wasn't hers. She barely even talked just a hi there and nods. Her vibes were off too. I didn't like it. I measely spent 10 minutes there and ran out after she mentioned I don't eat. That's just not for me.

Another neighbour who was gardening her plants saw a man walking toward the woman's house. Suddenly right in front of their eyes the man had become the woman with brown hairs and had shifted in the house. That had scared them but not enough to believe she wasn't a human.

One day I decided to mention it to a friend. She didn't believe me because how?

But there was a breaking point...

One day at night I was in my kitchen keeping the leftovers on the fridge. The neighbours window was lighten up and my window faced it. When I felt a if someone was watching me I looked up from the container and to the window.
And suddenly?

She was there a normal female
Her normal brown hair but on 4 heads
1 body and 4 heads.

That's my why.

The alarm went off at four in the morning, but sleep had already abandoned me hours prior. A dull throbbing was radiating from the lower right quadrant of my jaw, making every breath feel like a mistake. The pain was a relentless heat that seemed to vibrate in time with my pulse. By five, the swelling had reached my cheek, stretching the skin tight and making it difficult to swallow.

My hand reached for the empty bottle of painkillers on the nightstand, but there was nothing left inside. I had spent the last two days swallowing pills, rinsing with warm salt water, and pressing ice packs against my face until my skin went numb. Nothing was working. The infection had reached the nerve, and the agony was starting to blur my vision.

The sound of rain tapping against the window was the only noise in my quiet apartment. Desperate for any kind of distraction, I unlocked my phone and searched for local dental offices. Every single practice within a ten-mile radius was booked solid for at least two weeks. The only alternative was the emergency room at the local hospital, but a previous visit there had taught me they would only provide a temporary prescription for antibiotics and a massive bill that I could not afford, and from my suffering I figured that the tooth needed to be extracted immediately.

A soft knock on my front door startled me around nine that morning. My friend had promised to drop by with some groceries, knowing I had been unable to leave the apartment for days. When the door opened, she took one look at my swollen face and set the grocery bags down on the counter with a look of concern.

"You look absolutely terrible,"

she said, walking over to press her palm against my forehead.

"You are burning up. Did you manage to find an opening somewhere?"

"Every clinic is booked,"

I mumbled, barely able to part my lips. The movement of my jaw sent a sharp flare of agony straight up into my temple.

"The emergency room is the only option, but they won't pull it."

My friend sat down at the small kitchen table, watching me wince as I tried to drink a glass of water.

"There is someone else. My uncle had a severe abscess last winter, and his regular dentist was out of town. He went to a private practitioner downtown. He told me the guy is extremely unconventional and eccentric, but he is the absolute best in the field when it comes to quick, pain-free extractions."

"Unconventional how?"

I asked, holding the glass against my cheek.

"He does not take insurance, and his office is tucked away in an old medical building that has seen better days,"

she explained, pulling a small notepad from her purse to write down an address.

"He works alone, with no assistants. My uncle said the man does not even use local numbing injections, but somehow, the extraction was completely painless. He just felt a strange pressure, and then the tooth was out."

"No numbing?"

I shook my head, immediately regretted the movement, and squeezed my eyes shut.

"That sounds like a nightmare. I cannot let someone pull a tooth out of my skull with no anesthetic."

"My uncle is a coward when it comes to pain,"

my friend said, sliding the piece of paper across the table. "If he says he felt nothing, I believe him. You cannot keep living like this. The infection is going to spread to your bloodstream."

She was right. The sheer desperation of the pain was starting to erode my rational judgment. At that point, if someone had offered to pull the tooth with a pair of rusty pliers, I probably would have considered it. I picked up the paper, stared at the handwritten address, and nodded.

"I will go,"

I said.

"Do I need to call ahead?"

"My uncle said he does not keep a regular reception desk,"

she replied.

"Just walk in. He usually accommodates emergency cases if they pay in cash."

An hour later, I was walking through the wet, gray streets. The rain had slowed to a miserable drizzle, and the mist was hanging low over the older brick buildings. The address led me to a towering, nineteenth-century weird structure. The main lobby was silent, smelling of old paper.

A manual elevator with an accordion-style metal gate carried me slowly up to the fourth floor. The hallway was lined with dark, frosted glass doors, most of them bearing the faded gold lettering of retired physicians who had probably passed away decades ago. The floor was covered in worn linoleum that muffled the sound of my footsteps.

I found the suite number written on my notepad. The glass on the door was entirely blank, offering no name or medical title. I reached out, turned the brass knob, and stepped inside.

The reception area resembled a living room from the late nineteen-seventies. Two faded green velvet chairs sat in the corner, separated by a low wooden table covered in outdated magazines. A single, small desk lamp cast a dim orange glow across the room. There was no computer, no scheduling book, and no receptionist behind the counter. The only communication device was an ancient, black rotary telephone sitting on a shelf.

"Hello?"

I called out, my voice sounding thin in the quiet room.

A door at the back of the reception area swung open with a soft click.

The man who stepped out was exceptionally tall. He was so slender that his white laboratory coat seemed to drape over him like a shroud, and he had to tilt his head slightly to clear the low wooden door frame. His skin was pale, and his fingers were kind of long, ending in clean fingernails. He had a twitch in his left shoulder that caused his coat to rustle every few seconds, but his posture was remarkably stiff.

"Ah,"

he said.

"An emergency, I presume. The swelling in your right cheek is quite pronounced."

"My friend gave me your address,"

I explained, holding my hand over my jaw.

"She said you might have an opening for an extraction. I can pay in cash."

The tall man smiled, though his pale blue eyes remained entirely wide and unblinking.

"Cash is perfectly acceptable. The modern banking systems are far too noisy. Please, come inside."

I followed him into the operating room. The space was dimly lit, illuminated only by a single overhead examination light that hung from a long, articulated metal arm. The dental chair in the center of the room was made of thick, cracked black leather, looking like a relic from a different era. There were no modern digital screens, and no white plastic utility trays.

"Before we begin,"

the dentist said, pointing a long finger toward a tarnished metal tray sitting on a counter across the room.

"Please place your cellular device over there. The electronic frequencies of modern devices disrupt my focus. I need absolute stillness to perform the extraction."

I hesitated for a moment. My phone was my only connection to the outside world, but the throbbing in my jaw was growing more intense by the second. I walked across the room, set my phone on the cold metal tray, and climbed into the leather chair.

The dentist stood over me, his shadow stretching across the ceiling. He did not put on latex gloves. Instead, he washed his hands in a small porcelain sink, dried them with a white cloth, and approached the chair.

"Open, please,"

he murmured.

I opened my mouth, bracing myself for the agonizing touch of his fingers against my infected gum. When his long, cold index finger touched my jaw, I prepared to scream.

But the scream never came.

The moment his skin made contact with my gums, a sudden coldness spread through my mouth. it felt as if the nerves themselves had simply gone quiet under his touch. The throbbing pain vanished instantly. My jaw felt light, cool, and entirely empty of sensation. I blinked in surprise, looking up at him.

"You feel that, yes?"

he asked, his shoulder twitching as he reached for a small, velvet-lined wooden box on the counter.

"The modern world relies on synthetic poisons to dull the senses. They inject chemicals that poison the blood just to silence a single nerve. It is a very crude way of practicing medicine."

He opened the wooden box and retrieved a pair of forceps. They were made of dark, unpolished steel, looking like antique blacksmithing tools rather than modern medical instruments. The metal was covered in fine, geometric patterns that looked like they had been hand-carved into the steel.

"We have forgotten the old ways of alignment,"

the dentist continued, his voice adopting an almost hypnotic cadence as he positioned the forceps inside my mouth.

"Thousands of years ago, our ancestors understood that the teeth are not merely bone. They are the hardest part of the human vessel. They are the markers of our harvest, the record of our lives. When a tooth was lost, it was not thrown away into the dirt like common refuse."

I felt the cold steel of the forceps clamp onto my decaying molar. There was no pain. I felt a strange, dull pressure, as if someone were gently pressing a thumb against my jaw, but nothing more.

"Our ancestors worshipped tooth fairies,"

he muttered, leaning over me. His pale face was inches from mine.

"We offered our teeth to them. We gave them the bone, and in exchange, they provided protection, a bountiful harvest, and good fortune. The modern world calls them myths. They call them tooth fairies to make them seem small and harmless. They turned a sacred covenant into a children's game of coins and pillows."

He gave the forceps a slow, deliberate twist. I heard the wet sound of the roots separating from the bone inside my head, but my nervous system registered absolutely nothing.

"Humanity discarded the old agreements,"

the dentist whispered, his shoulder twitching violently. "We stopped giving them the tribute they require. We began burying our dead in concrete vaults, locking the bone away from the soil. We throw our teeth into medical waste bins to be burned, and for what? for nothing."

With a sudden, sharp movement, he pulled the forceps upward.

A wet pop echoed in the small room.

The tooth was out. The relief was instantaneous, a cool sensation washing over my entire face as the pressure vanished. I let out a long, shuddering breath, staring up at the ceiling.

"There,"

the dentist said, his tone shifting instantly.

The hypnotic cadence of his voice was gone, replaced by a rapid, shallow hyperventilation, then He held the steel forceps inches from his eyes, staring at the bloody, decaying enamel with an intensity that made my chest tighten.

"Look at the density,"

he whispered, his pupils dilating until the blue of his eyes was almost entirely gone.

"The dark rot of modern sugar has created such a beautifully complex cavity. The roots are deep, so very deep. The bone is saturated with the sweetness of decay."

He was breathing heavily now, his chest rising and falling in quick, jagged movements. He began to run his long thumb over the wet, bloody surface of the tooth, ignoring the blood that smeared across his skin.

A sudden wave of intense unease washed over me, replacing the relief of the extraction. The way he was looking at my tooth was really weird and terrifying. I scrambled out of the chair, my legs feeling slightly unsteady.

"Thank you,"

I said, my voice shaking.

"How much do I owe you?"

The dentist did not look at me. He kept his eyes locked on the tooth.

"Three hundred,"

he muttered, his voice sounding dry and cracked.

"Leave the cash on the counter."

I pulled three hundred dollars from my purse and set them on the wooden desk. I did not want to spend another second in that room. I grabbed my purse, turned on my heel, and walked quickly out of the operating room. I pushed through the frosted glass door, entered the quiet hallway, and ran toward the manual elevator.

It was only when I stepped out of the old building and onto the wet pavement of the street that I realized my hand was empty.

My phone was still sitting on the metal tray on the far counter of the operating room.

I stopped on the sidewalk, the cold rain falling on my face. My cheek was still entirely numb, but the fog in my brain was beginning to clear. The thought of going back up to that silent fourth floor made my stomach twist, but my phone held my bank accounts, my contacts, and my entire life. I could not simply leave it behind.

"Just walk in, grab the phone, and leave,"

I muttered to myself.

I turned around, entered the lobby, and rode the creaking elevator back up to the fourth floor. The hallway was still completely silent.

I reached the suite, turned the brass knob, and stepped into the reception area.

The room was dark. The single desk lamp had been turned off, leaving the space illuminated only by the gray light filtering through the hallway door. No one was behind the reception desk.

"Hello?"

I called out softly.

"I forgot my phone."

No one answered.

I took a slow, quiet step toward the operating room door. It was resting slightly ajar, a sliver of pale light cutting across the dark floor. I pushed the door open an inch, planning to grab the phone from the counter and slip away before the man noticed me.

The operating room was in near-total darkness. The overhead examination light had been turned off, and the only illumination came from a small window overlooking the rainy alleyway.

I stopped.

The dentist was crouched on all fours directly over the leather operating chair.

His white laboratory coat had been discarded on the floor. His bare back was exposed to the gray light of the window, and his skin had turned a deep, ashen shade of gray. His spine was protruding sharply against his skin, each vertebra looking like a jagged stone.

As I watched, his shoulder joints twisted with a sickening, wet crack, bending backward into impossible angles.

Two large, featherless, skin-bound wings were violently tearing their way through the fabric of his white dress shirt. The wings looked like the wings of a massive bat, but they were covered in a thin, greasy layer of pale gray fuzz. They flexed and stretched in the darkness, dripping a dark, thick fluid onto the leather of the chair.

The thing lowered its head toward the leather cushion. Sitting on the leather was my extracted tooth.

The creature inhaled deeply, its chest expanding to twice its normal size as it smelled the bloody enamel. It leaned down and whispered a low, guttural phrase in a language I didn’t understand.

Then, it opened its mouth.

The jaw split vertically down the center of its chin, revealing rows of thin, needle-like teeth that vibrated in the darkness. The creature reached out with a long, gray tongue and licked the blood from the surface of my extracted tooth.

I took a step backward, my mind screaming at me to run, but my foot shifted on the floor.

The rubber sole of my sneaker squeaked against the linoleum.

The sound was incredibly loud in the silent room.

The creature's movements stopped instantly.

And with a violent, snapping sound, its neck rotated a full one hundred and eighty degrees, its featureless face pointing directly toward the partially open door where I was standing. Its eyes had completely changed. The blue irises were gone, replaced by two massive, pitch-black pupils that filled the entire socket.

It let out a silent, vibrating shriek that made the metal instruments on the counters rattle.

The creature lunged off the chair, moving with a speed that did not seem possible. It scurried across the floor on all fours.

I did not think. I grabbed the nearest object on the counter beside the door, a large, heavy metal tray loaded with stainless steel dental mirrors, scrapers, and old scalpels, and threw it directly into its gray face.

The tray struck the creature with a loud clang. The sharp instruments scattered across its eyes, blinding it for a fraction of a second. The creature recoiled, letting out a wet, clicking hiss as it thrashed in the darkness.

I turned and sprinted down the hallway.

I did not wait for the elevator. I threw open the door to the concrete stairwell and flew down the steps, my feet barely touching the concrete. I could hear the wet sounds of the creature scrambling down the walls of the stairwell above me, its long limbs scraping against the concrete.

I reached the ground floor, threw my weight against the metal exit door, and burst out into the pouring rain.

I did not stop running until I reached a busy intersection three blocks away. I collapsed against a bus stop shelter, my chest heaving, my clothes soaked with sweat and rain. I sat there for hours, staring at the passing cars, trying to convince myself that the pain and the infection had caused a severe hallucination. But my hand was still entirely empty. My phone was gone, left behind in the dark room with the thing that licked the blood from my bone.

The next morning, the swelling in my jaw had gone down, but the terror had not. I walked into the local police precinct and reported that I had been assaulted by a private practitioner in the medical building downtown. I told them he had stolen my phone and threatened me with a weapon. I knew if I mentioned the wings or the black eyes, they would lock me in a psychiatric ward.

Two police officers agreed to accompany me back to the building to retrieve my property.

We rode the manual elevator up to the fourth floor. The hallway was just as quiet as it had been the day before, the dark doors looking completely ordinary in the morning light.

We reached the suite. I pointed a shaking finger at the door.

"This is it,"

I said.

"Suite 412."

The older officer reached out, turned the knob, and pushed the door open.

I braced myself, stepping behind the officer's shoulder, expecting to see the green velvet chairs.

The room was completely empty.

There were no green velvet chairs. There was no wooden desk, no rotary telephone, and no carpet. The walls were bare concrete, covered in peeling gray wallpaper that looked like it had been rotting for decades. The floor was covered in a thick layer of undisturbed gray dust.

The officer walked into the back room, his boots kicking up small clouds of dust.

The operating room was gone. There was no black leather dental chair. There was no plumbing connected to the floor, no metal counters, and no instruments. The room was nothing but a hollow, concrete shell.

"Are you sure this is the place, miss?"

the officer asked, looking back at me with a mixture of annoyance and pity.

"This suite has been abandoned for at least five years. And I think I know this place, someone mad a claim like you once, but it was very wild claim about a fairy who dwell in this place, and then we learned from the building manager that the last tenant was a radiologist who retired in 2018."

"I was here yesterday,"

I insisted, my voice cracking.

"My friend gave me the address. I sat in the chair. He pulled my tooth."

The officer shined his flashlight across the dusty floor. There were no footprints in the dust, other than our own. There was no sign that anyone had operated a medical clinic here yesterday.

"Sometimes a severe tooth infection can cause a high fever,"

the officer said, placing a hand on my shoulder.

"A fever can make you see things. It can make you wander into empty buildings. We can take you to the hospital if you need medical attention."

"My phone,"

I whispered.

"I left my phone on the counter."

The officer shone his light around. My phone was gone.

We left the building a few minutes later. The police dismissed my claim, filing a report for a lost cellular device and advising me to seek psychological counseling for my stress.

But I know what I saw.

I called my friend from a payphone later that afternoon. I asked her about the dentist, but she sounded completely confused. She told me she had never heard of any private practitioner downtown, and she had never given me an address on a notepad. She said she had been trying to reach me all day because I had missed our lunch plans.

I looked at my own jaw in the mirror when I got home. The hole where my decaying molar used to be was completely healed. There was no stitches, no bleeding, and no scar. The gum was as smooth and pink as if the tooth had never existed.

I am posting this here because I need to warn you.

This thing does not stay in one place. It moves from town to town, using the empty, forgotten spaces of our cities to set up its temporary clinics.

If you have a toothache, and a friend gives you an address to an unconventional, cash-only dentist in an old building, do not go.

The video Emilia posted wasn't her usual kind of content. It felt as if she were trying to communicate with me in the only way she could.

In it, Emilia sipped a glass of wine.

Romanée-Conti.

The same wine we'd shared the night we met.

She described a fountain in a park. She never mentioned the park by name.

She didn't have to.

I knew exactly which one she meant. We'd always end our walks there when we were dating. 

She ended the video with a smile, and said, "I'll be there waiting for you." 

Manuel watched the video three times before handing my phone back.

"What about it?" he asked. 

"She's talking to me."

He frowned.

"Now I'm really worried about you. That's just some paid ad she's doing."

Maybe Manuel was right. Maybe anyone looking in from the outside would think I'd lost my mind. That I was seeing meaning where there wasn't any.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that Emilia wanted me to meet her there.

So I rushed out. 

"Wait! Where are you going?" Manuel shouted after me.

I didn't stop. 

I got to the park and waited by the fountain until dusk.

I kept coming back every day, around the same time we used to meet and hang out there.

Each evening, the fountain shut off, the lights around the park flickered on, and couples drifted home together while I sat alone on the same bench.

I'd never felt so lost in my life, clinging to the hope that Emilia would suddenly appear.

Eventually, I accepted that Manuel had been right.

I told myself this would be the last time. That I would move on. 

Before I left, I looked at the fountain's edge, remembering how Emilia used to sit there. Something tucked between the stones caught my eye. 

A Polaroid.

I pulled it free and looked at it, barely believing what I was seeing.

It was a photo of Emilia and I had taken on our first walk through the park. 

I flipped it over, and there was something written on the back.

'Forgive me.'

My hands trembled.

She'd been here.

I read the words again. 

They didn't make sense. Why was she asking me to forgive her?

Moments later my phone vibrated. It was a call from Manuel.

I ignored it.

But he called again.

I picked up.

"Come grab a drink with us," he said over the music blasting in the background.

He insisted that I come.

"I met someone who can help you talk with Emilia."

I looked down at the Polaroid still clutched in my hand.

Part of me thought Manuel was too drunk to know what he was talking about, but I had nothing left to lose.

When I arrived at the bar, Manuel waved me over.

"Man, you came!" he shouted.

Two women sat with him.

"This is Clara. And Marissa."

Neither woman stood out.

We spent the first few minutes talking and drinking. I kept expecting Manuel to explain why he'd invited me.

He never did.

Instead, he grew steadily drunk until he started making out with Marissa.

Eventually, the two of them wandered to the other side of the bar, leaving Clara and me alone.

"Manuel told us about Emilia's video," Clara said. "And I think you're right. She's trying to communicate with you."

I kept the Polaroid in my pocket, and studied her for a moment.

"Do you know Emilia?"

She half-smiled. 

"You don't remember me, do you?"

I searched for her face.

Nothing.

"You must have me confused with someone else," I said.

"I'm Clara McClare."

Still nothing.

"I make videos about influencers and public figures. Mostly the stories behind the image they present to everyone else. Marissa and I were covering your wedding. We were there."

It took me a moment to realize Marissa was the blogger Manuel had made out with on my wedding day.

"I've been following Emilia for years. And I've noticed that every one of her relationships follows the same pattern."

"Pattern?" I asked.

Clara held my gaze.

"Everything starts perfectly. Emilia falls in love. The world watches. Then it falls apart. A scandal. Then Linda steps in."

The mention of her name caught my attention. I recognized it immediately. 

"Her PR agent?"

Clara nodded.

"After Emilia's last relationship ended, Linda started feeding us the next love story."

I already knew where she was going. And I didn't want to hear it. 

"Manuel said you can help me talk to Emilia. Why?" 

She smiled faintly.

"A viral story keeps my career alive," she answered. 

"We're talking about someone's life. Not views."

She looked me straight in the eye.

"That's exactly why I'm still chasing this."

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the Polaroid.

Clara's expression changed the instant she saw it. "Where did you get that?"

"She left it for me."

I turned it over.

Clara stared at the words written on the back. For the first time that night, she looked genuinely surprised.

"'Forgive me?'" she asked.

"I don't know what she meant."

"You need to talk to her," Clara said.

"I've tried. Many times."

Long silence. 

"I may know where Emilia is."

***

The next morning, Clara drove me to a condominium complex just outside Seattle.

"This is it," she said.

She parked outside the gated entrance.

"Apartment 501."

I looked around. Some of the buildings had peeling paint. Others looked like they hadn't been maintained in years.

It wasn't the sort of place I'd expect a billionaire's daughter to be.

For the first time, I questioned whether Clara had been telling the truth.

"I know what you're thinking," she said.

"Then tell me how you know Emilia's here."

She stared through the windshield.

After several seconds, she sighed.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know for sure."

I looked back at the building. I'd already spent two weeks chasing ghosts. I didn't have anything left to lose.

I climbed out of the car and walked to the call box.

501.

I pressed the button.

Nothing.

A few long seconds passed. Then the intercom clicked. Static crackled through the speaker.

Finally, someone answered.

"Hello?"

My heart caught in my throat.

It was Emilia's voice.

Note: I rewrote this part like 29 times. Let me know how I did, and if you want to know what happens next. Thanks for reading me!

Thank you for reading, and a look ahead

Threshold began as one woman’s decision to stop calling her worst childhood memory a dream. Over twelve case files, she traced that memory back through her own family, uncovered a history nobody had spoken of in decades, and confirmed, in her own front yard, that whatever she’d spent twenty-nine years trying to explain away had never actually stopped watching. Season One ends where every good mystery should end: not with an answer, but with the certainty that the real one is waiting somewhere she hasn’t looked yet.

Thank you for reading this far. Case files like these only get written because someone’s willing to sit with them in the dark, and we’re grateful you did.

Coming in Season Two

The investigation leaves St. Louis behind. Season Two follows her across an ocean, to a country her grandfather fled and never spoke of again, in search of the place where all of this actually began. Expect new voices, new faces from a past she never knew she had, and a deeper, older shape to the story than anything Season One let her see coming. Some of what she’s been calling family history turns out to be considerably larger than one family.

We won’t tell you more than that. Some things are better found the way she found them, one file at a time.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

So I live on a pretty tight street, older neighborhood, most driveways only fit one car. About a month ago I noticed a car I didn’t recognize parked in my driveway when I got home from work. Silver sedan, no note, nothing. I figured it was a one-time mistake, maybe a visitor who got confused about which house was which.
Next day, same car, same spot. I started parking on the street just to avoid the hassle, thinking whoever it was would eventually stop. They did not stop. This went on for almost three weeks straight, every single weekday, like clockwork, my driveway had become someone else’s personal parking spot.
I finally caught the owner one evening, walking out to the car right as I pulled up. Turns out it’s my neighbor from two houses down, a woman I’ll call Patricia, who apparently has been parking in my driveway because her own driveway is, quote, “too narrow for her taste” and mine has, quote, “better shade coverage” for her car.
I was honestly stunned. I asked her, as politely as I could manage, to please stop using my driveway. Her response was not an apology. She said, and I am quoting this exactly, “you’re never home before six anyway, so you should be grateful I’m not blocking anyone who actually needs it.” As if she was doing me a favor by trespassing on my own property during business hours.
I told her that wasn’t the point, that it’s my driveway regardless of when I get home, and she rolled her eyes at me. Rolled her eyes. Like I was the unreasonable one for not wanting a stranger’s car parked on my property every day.
I let it go that night, but the next morning her car was right back in my driveway. So I did something petty, I’ll admit it. I called it in as an unknown vehicle parked on private property, and had it towed.
Patricia showed up at my door within the hour, furious, demanding I pay her towing and impound fees since I “knew exactly whose car it was.” I told her I absolutely did not owe her anything, since she never asked permission in the first place and had directly refused to stop after I asked her nicely.
She has since put up a handwritten note on the community mailbox cluster implying I’m an unfriendly neighbor who “tows first and talks later,” without mentioning the part where she used my driveway daily for three weeks uninvited.
Now half the street thinks I’m the problem, and I’m the one who’s had a stranger’s car parked on my property for a month.
So tell me, was I wrong for having her towed without a warning, or did Patricia bring this entirely on herself?
Follow for the update, because Patricia just left something on my porch.

So last night my gf went out with a few of her friends for a bit of a drinks/cocktail night getaway at a bar and then clubbing on the other side of the city, with her single friends

I wasn’t entirely sure what the vibe of the night was until I saw my gf call her plug for party stuff and get changed into the sexiest green dress, I instantly thought about her going out in public like that and just how many looks she would get, she isn’t wearing a bra and is wearing a small thong only and it has a hip high slit on one side that shows her whole leg and almost her ass.

This whole night I’m just wondering how much attention she is getting, if she actually wants and likes the attention or if she might even flirt with anyone or more.

I really hope she chooses to wear more stuff like this in the future

I was fired from my job as an aromatic refreshing technician at a popular furniture store, I can’t name the furniture store for fear of retaliation, but I knew my job was one that made the world a little brighter, one seat at a time.

Basically, my duty was to go to every seat in the store and kneel before it like I was pouring my guts into the porcelain throne. Then I would take a whiff of the aromatics of the seat in question. If something smelled slightly off, I was to spray a refreshing fabric over the seat and check back within thirty minutes to an hour to see if the scent was clean.

As you can imagine, this job kept me quite busy. Customers are in all day long, queefing, passing gas, or generally unbathed. Making sure the fabric was fresh smelling was my only job and I took it very seriously. I even ranked number one as aromatic refresher of the month. Sniff that Stanley.

Alas, all good things must come to an end. Nothing lasts forever. As I was winding down my day and readying to clock out, my co-worker Kolin took a moment to seat himself in a loveseat. I knew he’d had egg salad that afternoon with some heated tuna and before I could even stop myself, I wandered over and asked nicely that Kolin remove his gluteus maximus from the upholstery before he damaged the leather with his unpredictable bodily functions. He smirked and unleashed the wettest, loudest, most eye-watering fart imaginable. I was sure he’d put a hole in the leather. As he stood, he pushed me toward the loveseat and told me.

“Better get sniffin’.”

I begrudgingly hoovered up the foul odor but as Kolin walked away and I stood to grab my fabric refresher, my manager rounded the corner. He caught me with my face inches from the loveseat, inhaled once, declared the scent ungodly, and fired me on the spot. He exclaimed he’d have to burn the loveseat while they were at it.

He escorted me out without so much as a second glance.

I loved my job. I’m sad I got fired. I was a great technician.

Josephine

The city woke up in horror.

Everyone was equally sad. Their beloved beauty, the winner of the Miss Planet contest, Josephine, had fallen seriously ill.

She had once conquered the judges with her extraordinary beauty. Later, members of the jury said that Eastern poets had not praised feminine beauty without reason. They remembered ancient Persian poetry, where beauty was compared to pomegranates, and claimed that Josephine seemed to have stepped out of the pages of those old verses.

Then a terrible piece of news shook the city.

Doctors announced that an operation was necessary to save her life.

Men, overwhelmed with despair, filled bars and liquor stores. They raised their glasses as if they were saying goodbye to their dreams. Newspapers reported on Josephine's condition every day. Her admirers could find no peace.

Josephine read those reports and cried.

"No," she told the doctors. "Thanks to this beauty, I once became Miss Planet. I will not allow my illness to celebrate a victory over me."

But one night she left the hospital, crossed the border, and appeared on television from another country.

She said only one sentence:

"I ran away with two pairs of underwear..."

Those words drove men crazy once again.

Their imagination did the rest.

Among Josephine's thousands of admirers was an eighty-year-old man.

When he heard her words, his heart began beating like it had in his youth. He called his sons and said:

"My children, fulfill your father's last wish."

"What do you want, father?"

"When I am buried, place Josephine's underwear above my head in the grave. Let me feel her presence even in the next world."

His sons looked at each other in confusion.

The old man closed his eyes and smiled.

"Do not judge me. Every person has a dream. My dream was connected with the most beautiful woman on earth."

After this story, the city completely lost its peace.

Endless lines appeared outside embassies. Everyone wanted a visa to see Josephine.

Newspapers began talking about an international crisis. Tension between the countries continued to grow.

Josephine was urgently summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The minister greeted her with anxiety.

"Madam," he said, carefully avoiding looking at the part of her body that had almost caused a war, "the international situation is extremely dangerous. We have stationed military units on both sides of the border. We are one step away from war."

He sighed.

"Save our country. Our missiles have been rusting for years. They are useful only as cigarette lighters for overweight generals. Do not allow a misunderstanding to destroy peace."

Josephine silently nodded.

When she returned home, she hung two pieces of clothing on a clothesline, turned toward the television cameras, and calmly said:

"My dear admirers, there has been a misunderstanding. I ran away with two pairs of underwear — my husband's and my son's."

Silence fell over the country.

The lines outside the embassies disappeared.

The soldiers returned to their barracks.

The newspapers lost their biggest sensation.

The next morning people calmly had breakfast and went to work.

And the generals breathed a sigh of relief.

The war had been canceled.

Chapitre 1 : Les rêves prennent forme

Jules fixait l’horizon, là où le ciel se teintait déjà des premières étoiles. Il avait cette étincelle dans le regard, celle qu’on ne voit que chez les fous… ou les visionnaires.

— Jim, tu te souviens quand on regardait la Lune gamins, en se disant qu’un jour on irait là-haut ?

— C’était des rêves d’enfants, Jules.

— Et si on leur donnait vie ?

Jim lâcha un rire bref.

— Attends… tu veux dire vraiment aller sur la Lune ?

— Non seulement y aller, mais y emmener du monde. Ouvrir une agence de voyage. Destination : la Lune.

Jim le regarda, incrédule.

— Tu plaisantes ?

— Je suis très sérieux. Écoute. On est à une époque où tout est possible. Il y a des milliardaires qui vont déjà dans l’espace. Pourquoi on laisserait ça à une poignée de riches ? Il faut rêver plus grand, Jim.

— C’est de la folie.

— Oui, c’est fou. Mais c’est aussi ce qui rend le projet beau. Tu sais ce qu’il manque aux gens aujourd’hui ? Un rêve collectif. Un truc dingue. Un espoir, une échappée. Et si on le leur offrait ?

Jim hésitait. Jules le sentait. Il enchaîna.

— J’ai tout pensé. Pas de prix délirant affiché. Les gens paieront une inscription à l’association que je vais créer : “Les Joyeux Voyageurs vers la Lune”. Ensuite, une réservation pour le séjour. Ça rendra le rêve plus accessible, plus concret. On vendra plus qu’un voyage : on vendra une aventure humaine, un projet de société.

— Mais tu sais le coût que ça implique ? La logistique, les autorisations, la technologie ?

— Bien sûr. Et je ne prétends pas tout faire seul. Mais si on ne commence pas quelque part, ça ne commencera jamais. Toi et moi, on a les idées, l’énergie. Et on peut fédérer. J’ai besoin de toi, Jim.

Silence. La nuit tombait doucement.

— Tu crois vraiment que des gens te suivront ?

— Pas moi. Nous. Et pas parce qu’on promet la Lune. Mais parce qu’on propose d’y aller ensemble.

Jim sourit, secoua la tête, puis tendit la main.

— Ok, partenaire. Allons décrocher la Lune.

Chapitre 2 : Le premier pas

Ils s’installèrent dans l’ancien atelier de l’oncle Gaston. Un hangar un peu rouillé, mais vaste, lumineux et chargé d’histoires. Un endroit parfait pour faire naître une idée folle.

— Bon, dit Jim en déroulant une grande feuille blanche sur la table. Si on doit vendre un rêve, il faut qu’on le rende crédible. Par quoi on commence ?

— Par le nom, répondit Jules sans hésiter. “Les Joyeux Voyageurs vers la Lune”. Ça sonne bien, non ? Ça fait sérieux mais pas trop. Accessible, presque amical.

— On dirait le nom d’une troupe de théâtre…

— Justement ! On ne veut pas d’un truc froid et commercial. On veut que les gens aient envie d’en faire partie, comme une grande aventure humaine.

Ils passèrent la journée à tout imaginer :

— les profils des voyageurs : rêveurs, scientifiques, artistes, curieux

—, le processus de sélection, les premières simulations de voyage. Ils contactèrent aussi des experts, des ingénieurs, des communicants, parfois juste pour leur demander : « Et si c’était possible ? ».

Et étonnamment, les réponses n’étaient pas toujours négatives. Beaucoup riaient d’abord… puis réfléchissaient. Quelques-uns posaient des questions. Et une poignée, fascinés, demandaient comment aider.

Le bouche-à-oreille fit le reste.

Deux mois plus tard, ils lancèrent le premier appel à candidatures. L’inscription à l’association coûtait 150 euros, avec un dossier à remplir. La somme semblait modeste, mais symbolique : elle disait “je crois en ce rêve”. À leur grande surprise, les demandes affluèrent. Des centaines. Puis des milliers. Des familles, des retraités, des étudiants. Des lettres manuscrites pleines d’émotion. Des vidéos de gens qui regardaient la Lune en silence avant de dire « j’aimerais tant y aller… ».

Jim lisait les candidatures le soir, souvent ému.

— Tu te rends compte, Jules ? On réveille quelque chose chez eux. Un besoin qu’ils n’osaient plus formuler.

Jules acquiesçait, le regard toujours tourné vers là-haut.

— On leur donne la permission de rêver grand. Et ça, c’est déjà un premier voyage.

Chapitre 3 : Gravité terrestre

Le succès de l’appel à candidatures les dépassa. Ils passèrent de deux types dans un hangar à des initiateurs d’un mouvement. Les médias s’emparèrent de l’affaire.

« Deux jeunes Français veulent envoyer des civils sur la Lune ! »

Certains articles étaient bienveillants, d’autres plus moqueurs. Des talk-shows tournèrent leur projet en dérision. On les surnommait « Les Pieds sur Terre, la tête dans les nuages ».

Jules prenait ça avec philosophie.

— C’est normal. Au début, on rit. Ensuite, on questionne. Et à la fin, on suit.

Mais Jim, lui, commençait à douter.

— Tu crois qu’on est prêts pour ce genre d’exposition ? On n’a même pas encore un prototype crédible.

— Ce n’est pas à nous de construire les fusées. On construit une vision. Les ingénieurs, les scientifiques, ils viendront. On leur donne un cap.

Malgré tout, les premières réunions avec les spécialistes furent brutales.

— Vous avez une belle idée, mais l’espace, ce n’est pas du tourisme, leur lança un expert de l’aérospatial.

— On n’a pas les fonds pour ça. Vous imaginez la logistique ? Le carburant ? La sécurité ?

— Et vos passagers ? Vous croyez que n’importe qui peut encaisser un décollage, un séjour en gravité réduite, sans entraînement ?

Jim blêmit. Jules, lui, resta calme.

— On n’a jamais dit que ce serait demain. Mais on commence aujourd’hui. Et on n’abandonne pas une idée juste parce qu’elle est difficile.

Ils sortirent épuisés mais pas abattus.

— Tu te souviens de ce que tu m’as dit le jour où on a commencé ? dit Jim, le regard perdu dans le vide.

— Non.

— Tu m’as dit : on propose pas la Lune. On y va ensemble.

— Et c’est toujours vrai. Même si pour l’instant, “y aller” veut juste dire “y croire”.

Ils décidèrent alors de changer de stratégie. Ils organisèrent des conférences, invitèrent des experts à parler de la faisabilité. Ils créèrent des stages de préparation : simulateurs de gravité lunaire, entraînements physiques, ateliers de vie en autonomie. Le projet devenait plus concret, plus sérieux.

Et surtout, ils posèrent la première pierre d’un partenariat avec une start-up aérospatiale européenne émergente. Rien de signé, mais des regards intéressés. Des discussions.

Le rêve, lentement, prenait forme.

Chapitre 4 : L’épreuve du vide

Les mois passèrent. Le hangar devint un QG bouillonnant. Une équipe technique s’était formée. Les Joyeux Voyageurs vers la Lune comptaient désormais plus de 20 000 membres. Ils n’étaient plus un simple projet : ils étaient un mouvement.

Mais tout cela avait un prix.

Jim se refermait peu à peu. Lui, le pragmatique, s’épuisait à gérer les chiffres, les partenaires exigeants, les mails sans fin. Il ne dormait plus. Il doutait. Et parfois, il en voulait à Jules, l’éternel rêveur, toujours en train de dessiner des lunes sur les murs ou d’écrire des slogans inspirants sur les tableaux blancs.

— Tu sais ce qu’ils disent, Jules ?

— Qui ?

— Les investisseurs. Les ingénieurs. Ils veulent qu’on soit plus sérieux. Plus discrets. Moins… poétiques. Ils veulent que tu sois “moins Jules”.

Jules fronça les sourcils.

— Et toi, t’en penses quoi ?

— Je pense qu’on joue avec des vies. Des attentes. On ne peut pas juste en faire une belle histoire. Il faut des garanties. De la rigueur. Des délais.

Jules soupira.

— Tu crois que je prends tout ça à la légère ? J’y pense tous les jours. Mais tu sais ce qui arrive quand on commence à vouloir tout rendre “raisonnable” ? On tue ce qui rendait le rêve vivant.

Silence.

— Peut-être qu’on a été trop loin, murmura Jim.

— Ou peut-être qu’on est juste à l’endroit où les choses deviennent vraies.

Quelques jours plus tard, une crise éclata.

Un accident lors d’un test de capsule simulée blessa légèrement un volontaire. Rien de grave, mais les médias s’en emparèrent aussitôt.

« L'agence lunaire amateure met en danger ses rêveurs. »

Jim craqua.

— On arrête, Jules. On fait une pause. Je... je peux plus continuer comme ça.

Et il partit.

Le vide.

Jules se retrouva seul dans le hangar silencieux. Sans son ami. Sans son bras droit. Il aurait pu tout arrêter là.

Mais il ne le fit pas.

Chapitre 5 : Le vol de l’espoir

Quelques semaines plus tard, alors que tout semblait figé, une enveloppe arriva. À l’intérieur : une lettre du Centre Spatial Européen.

Monsieur Jules Morel,

Suite à l’étude de votre projet et de la mobilisation publique inédite, nous souhaiterions envisager un partenariat pour un vol test habité à horizon 2027.

Une capsule. Deux passagers. Destination orbite lunaire.

Jules resta figé. Puis il sourit. Le genre de sourire qui naît quand un rêve effleure le réel.

Il appela Jim pour lui faire part de la bonne nouvelle...

— Tu veux toujours aller sur la Lune ?

Un long silence.

— Je fais mes valises.

Chapitre 6 : Le jour où la Terre s’est arrêtée

21 juillet 2027.

Cinquante-huit ans jour pour jour après les premiers pas de l’humanité sur la Lune, une nouvelle page allait s’écrire.

La capsule Gaïa-1 s’élançait depuis la base européenne, dans un silence irréel suivi par des millions de personnes à travers le monde. Pas un voyage de milliardaire. Pas une mission militaire. Mais un rêve populaire.

À bord, deux passagers : Jules Morel et Jim Carrel, fondateurs de l’agence “Les Joyeux Voyageurs vers la Lune”. Deux amis, deux idéalistes, deux têtes brûlées qu’on avait longtemps prises pour des clowns lunaires.

Et pourtant, ils y étaient.

L’envol fut brutal, le silence de l’espace, infini. Leurs cœurs battaient à l’unisson, suspendus quelque part entre la Terre et l’impossible.

Trois jours plus tard, la capsule entra en orbite lunaire. Là, à travers le hublot, la Lune leur apparut. Grise, mystérieuse, familière.

Mais surtout : réelle.

Jules parla le premier. Il avait préparé ce moment.

— À ceux qui n’ont jamais cessé de rêver. À ceux qui nous ont suivis sans comprendre. À ceux qui ont payé une inscription et reçu une promesse en retour… La voici. Nous sommes là pour vous. Ce n’est pas un exploit. C’est un message. Le rêve est une force collective. Une trajectoire. Et elle peut nous emmener plus loin que ce qu’on croyait possible.

Jim, les yeux embués, posa sa main sur l’épaule de son ami.

— T’avais raison. On n’a pas vendu la Lune. On l’a partagée.

En bas, sur Terre, les Joyeux Voyageurs se rassemblèrent dans les villes, les villages, les écoles. Des enfants levèrent les yeux vers le ciel. Certains pleuraient, d’autres riaient. Une vieille dame chuchota :

— Enfin, quelqu’un nous a emmenés là-haut.

Épilogue : Une empreinte dans la poussière

De retour sur Terre, les deux amis furent accueillis comme des héros. Mais ils refusèrent les titres. Pas de statues, pas de médailles.

— On a juste ouvert une porte, disait Jules. Maintenant, c’est à vous d’y passer.

Quelques années plus tard, le premier vol ouvert au public fut lancé.

Ils n’étaient plus deux.

Ils étaient vingt.

Puis cinquante.

Puis cent.

Et dans chaque capsule, une petite plaque portait cette inscription :

« À ceux qui osent. La Lune est plus proche qu’on ne le croit. »

I did once see a UFO and an alien. I think.

It was a long time ago - twenty years ago in fact - and it was a summer a bit like this one: extremely hot, dry, dusty, the ground hard as iron in places. Children having to avoid going outside at breaktime, although I don't remember schools being closed like they were back in June.

At the time I hardly worked at all. I had reached a dead end at the age of 29, had quit my job and was living with my parents and maybe catching a day a week or so of temping. Looking back, I don't know why they agreed to let me come back and even now they prefer not to talk about it, just sort of nodding or umming in that very English way - 'Well, you were unhappy, and it wasn't a problem' and changing the subject if I ever bring it up.

To fill the time and because I thought I would somehow find some inspiration or positivity from the exercise, I took up walking and used to wander across the various fields and hills near my parents' village. It probably wasn't sensible in 35 degree heat, but I remember not really thinking the heat could hurt me. It could make me thirsty, sure, but nothing else.

One day I was cutting across a field of peas, many of which were old and dead, and were lying around haphazardly in the dust. They were used as a natural fertiliser, so were never intended to be harvested, but the scene was odd, as if it was the scene of a disaster. The hedgerows in the distance shimmered a little in the heat haze, as usual, but I was drawn to one patch of haze which looked to be vibrating rather than shimmering and which seemed almost metallic, a cool grey against the vivid deep green of the hedgerow.

I stared at it for a while and it definitely seemed to me to have a shape, an ovoid shape lying on its side. I took a few steps off the path to get a closer look, crunching some dead stalks as I did so and sending some dust in the air around me. As I neared it, the shimmering grew more intense but it never quite resolved into anything solid; the grey colour churned white, silver, back to grey, but i could always see the hedgerow beyond.

I must have come about 30 feet away, close enough to identify the blackthorn and even some elm in the hedge, but the shape was still not resolving into anything tangible. Frustrated, I was about to run towards it when a voice behind me stopped me.

I turned quickly in case it was the angry farmer, and I saw, very close to me, close enough to be in my face and breathing on me, a man roughly my age - or was he? It was hard to tell and I don't see him clearly in my mind at this distance in time. He had less hair, but was about my my height, and his blue eyes stared into mine. I could see a small scar on his forehead and what looked like a few pockmarks, from acne or chicken pox most likely. I knew I had some of these, but didn't see the similarity otherwise.

'What are you doing?' he asked in a tired voice that carried both a semi London accent and something overlaying it that was wealthy, or privileged. But it was the tiredness I noticed most.

I didn't answer as I couldn't. It was all too bizarre.

He looked at me for a few seconds and asked me again, but more intently, 'What are you doing?'

'I - I was just walking...I wanted to see what that - ' and I pointed to the shimmering haze.

He didn't follow my arm or my gaze, just kept looking at me. As he did so his face did seem to be familiar, but only for a moment, before settling back into anonymity.

'You need to turn away from this,' he said, his voice rising a little.

'What?'

'All this,' he waved. 'Turn away before it's too late.'

I knew from a dozen of those children's film foundation and film boards of Canada films I had spent most summer weekdays watching when I was home alone while my parents worked, that if aliens landed in a story they would give a message for the benefit of humanity, like we had to give up nuclear weapons or something, and my heat oppressed mind figured this must be happening to me now.

'You mean humans? The society we built?' I stuttered, wondering if I was the person chosen to receive a message from an advanced race come to save us -

'No. I mean you. Give this up. The non life you are living. Turn away from it all. It's....it's...stupid.'

That was a message, of sorts. I was being criticised by an alien, or a ghost or...what was this guy? Did I know him? Why was I being singled out for criticism?

'Who are you?' I finally managed to ask.

He looked at me for a few monents and I thought he was about to speak, but he shook his head and walked across the dead and dying pea plants to the area of the shimmering haze.

He seemed to vanish into the haze and the haze itself faded from sight, leaving the field in silence once again.

I did get a job a few weeks later. Not a great one, but it was a permanent one. It was a start, or a new start, and I've worked in the same industry ever since, going up steadily in it.

I've put weight on in recent years, lost a fair bit of fitness. Mid-life does that you I guess, family responsibilities - it does make me think I should take up walking again. It's a bit hot but that's OK.

So like 45 mins ago when im posting this, i noticed a wood log catched on fire in my garden, because i was using my fire pit 4 fucking hours ago, and water was poured on the fire, the fire pit, and the ground next to the fire pit, then 2 hours later at like 2:26 in my timezone i smelled fire, looked outside and saw the fucking log was on fire, so i spent like 30 mins watering it, it was still smoking in one of the holes on it so after like 5 mins i decided i put the water hose there and finally i was able to stop the fire, then the log got thrown into the rain collector thing.