CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - 7 CHILLING r nosleep Horror Stories To Wash over Your Dreams Tonight

Episode Date: March 29, 2021

CREEPYPASTA STORIES-►0:00​ "Something is Skeletonizing the Animals" Creepypasta►27:25​ "I die every night for two minutes and eleven seconds" Creepypasta►42:38​ "What do I do about a disappearing room?" Creepypasta►1:00:28​ "My father built robots in the 80's" Creepypasta►1:32:13​"I’m an employee at an unusual movie theater. We don’t open 'Screen Zero' to the public" CreepypastaCreepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...​iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...​CREEPY THUMBNAIL ART BY►Matias Tapia: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xz...​SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YCb...​►"Personal Favourites"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEa2R...​►"Written by me"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6RA...​►"Long Stories"- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...​FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter: https://twitter.com/Creeps_McPasta​►Instagram: https://instagram.com/creepsmcpasta/​►Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/creepsmcpasta​►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreepsMcPasta​CREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic​ ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic​ ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt​ ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM​ ♪-This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only-

In retrospect, we all should have known something as up when Professor Burton bought the Douglas farm. Douglas was a farmer in name only, somehow managing to scrape a living together off a few cows, scattered chickens and the occasional cabbage. In the end, he was sick of keeping up the pretense, sold off everything and settled into the comfortable position of town drunk. Not much was known about Professor Burton, thin, bold, with thick spectacles. He looked every part the college professor He was apparently a professor of botany And no one knew why anyone would buy the Douglas farm Well, Burton certainly had plans for the place

Now, the only thing of note on that rundown farm Is the perfectly surfacable barn And every day we saw trucks drive up and unload their cargo White fixtures, hoses and cables Especially cables Burton also had a company built some sort of a deal addition to the barn, some sort of upper deck or office that could be reached

by stairs. Burton kept mostly to himself. Some thought he was strange, but most, myself included, considered him a harmless sort. That all changed three months after he bought the farm. Now, I'm a veterinarian

and I once had pretty good business in this town, with all the farmers and their animals. But the farming business isn't what it used to be, and soon most of the local farmers shifted to producing fruit and vegetables for the surrounding markets. Locally grown and well-priced produce is all the rage these days, especially old heirloom varieties.

But some still kept a few animals around, like a couple of chickens for eggs, a cow for milk, or a well-loved horse. But business was bad. So, as one of the few locals with any scientific background, I soon took up a part-time job as a CSI. Not that there was much to do, but it's at least a regular salary. There is next no crime here.

The only things the police are ever called for are fights and the occasional hbscunding goat. So it was quite unusual for me to be looking a CSI kit at 4 in the morning in some field. A dead cow. With my credentials, I guess I was ideal for the job. But I never would have thought things would have turned out the way they did.

Yes, it all started that morning with Riley's dead cow. Officer Harrison was there So was Riley, the cow's owner Riley wasn't really a farmer Instead, he kept what he called Emergency cows Livestock that could be sold whenever there was a sudden need for money

As I approached I realised there wasn't much of a carcass left It was just a skeleton Barely held together with ligaments The bones were stained but picked clean And the ground beneath and around the remains was blanketed with cow hair. Well, the scavengers worked fast.

Officer Harrison spoke up. Not that fast. Riley grunted. Cow was alive last night. I was opening my kit when I heard that. I looked up at Riley's somber face. This cow was alive last night? Riley saw the questioning look in my eyes.

I'm not crazy. Last night she was in this field, chomping grass. Today, she's that. This is unheard of. Even with scavengers and insect activity, it would have taken weeks for the cow to be reduced to this state. Officer Harrison spoke.

Riley says he didn't hear anything last night. No wolves howling, no cow screaming, or anything like that. He turned to me. Any ideas what could have done this? I shook my head. There was no animal, no phenomenon I could think of I can skeletonize a cow in one night. I've always laughed at those UFO fanatics

and the stories of cattle mutilation. Riley trailed off. He looked up at the sky. Now. Now, now, there must be a rational explanation. I said lightly as I started the bag at the bones. I needed more bags. I'll take this to the lab.

Take a closer look. I'm sure I find something. Riley just shook his head. Better sell my other cow. My investigation proved to be very unsatisfying. No tooth marks or any marks that might indicate a weapon. Not a scrap of flesh left, but the bones were still stained. No scorch marks, no acid damage.

Even the brain was missing, but the skull was intact. How? Even if some particularly ravenous pack of animals somehow killed this cow without alerting Riley and then consumed every bit of meat while leaving the bones unmarred, how would they have gotten at the brain? I admit I was a bit unsettled, but also excited. This was a mystery, a puzzle.

The community buzzed with the story of Rylis cow. Some thought it was UFOs. Others thought that this was the advent of some terrifying new flesh-eating disease. I admit I was a bit uneasy when I heard that rumor. Some even thought it was the work of humans. Perhaps some starving, desperate people came across that cow and simply ate every scrap of it. There and then, but the majority thought it was just a very hungry pack of wolves.

Didn't explain why the brain was missing, or why Riley didn't hear anything. It's ironic that over the next few weeks, it didn't ring any alarm bells when an increasing number of my clients were reporting missing cats and dogs. Not even when the farmers are happy that the go-for problems seem to have died out. Nor when we saw Professor Burton hired at work digging some kind of trench around the barn. so it was quite an unpleasant surprise when the same thing happened again this time it was a pet goat named Nancy

living in a fenced enclosure in a backyard it was the same story Nancy had been perfectly fine last night but come the morning her owners are horrified to find that she was a skeleton and a pile of hair no signs of a struggle the fence was unbroken and erroneous had heard nothing

her bones told me nothing new again her brain was missing a few days later it was a parrot still in his cage but there was something different this time although the skull sternum and hips remained inside the cage

the bones that could fit through the bars were missing and there were some feathers beneath the cage it was the parrot that finally led me to connect the pet disappearances with the skeletonizations I was pretty sure whatever did this was also feeling leading on the local cat and dog population, but wasn't only mammals and birds. Now that I finally paid attention, the insect population had plummeted as well.

No more cockroaches in the kitchens or bathrooms, no wasps around swarming over overripe fruit, no flies buzzing around rotten trash. I am sad to report that Officer Harrison took a complete disinterest in all of this. He pointedly ignored everything I laid before him and told me that he had other things to worry about. Yeah, right. Our community was completely baffled by these events. Rumors spread around like wildfire. Stories of tuberic carpenters floated about.

People started keeping their animals inside the houses or otherwise in locked coops and huts. That seemed to help a bit, although a coop of chickens was found skeletonized one morning. People started standing vigil over their remaining livestock. One day, someone had brought in a rabbit he had hit with his car. Despite my efforts, it soon died. But as I went to dispose of its carcass, an idea occurred to me. I decided I was going to get to the bottom of the mystery.

That night, I put the rabbit out of my backyard, just within the edge of the house lights, and I waited. I waited for what seemed like ours. I expected a shadowy figure to pop up any minute now. Imagine my surprise when the rabbit started to disappear, At first I didn't realize what was happening. It seemed like the rabbit was slowly sinking into the ground.

I grabbed a flashlight and went out for a closer look. When I came close enough, I realized the rabbit was covered by some sort of dark coat, a seething, moving coat. Ants Thousands of black ants crawling all over the rabbit. It occurred to me that I hadn't seen a single ant for the past few weeks, even though they used to be everywhere. And, as I watched, they formed a blanket beneath a rabbit

and started to drag it away. I decided to follow. You might think it foolish of me, but at the time I did not feel to be in danger. I was already familiar with how ants loved meat. I've seen plenty of dead chicks covered with ants. It did occur to me that the ants may be partly responsible for, at the very least, the clean bones and missing brain. and it's not that I was seeing anything alarming

I was watching ants drag away a food item except it was a rabbit instead of a grasshopper as I followed I saw other streams of ants join the group carrying the precious meat and the pace started to pick up almost three hours later I realised I was heading for Burton's property as I approached I considered waking him up to ask for permission but decided against it

He was a man of science, and he would understand. Plus, I did not relish waking up a man just to ask if I could follow some man to cross his land. They marched right across the field towards the barn. Then we came across the trench that Burton had been digging around his barn. Except it was now a moat. It was filled with murky water. As the mass approached, I saw them gathering at the edge of the water, milling around.

Then they split forward, floating in the water. water. I knew some ants were capable of this rafting behaviour, but what surprised me was what happened next. Another column approached from the opposing bank. They too started rafting, and the two columns joined up in the middle of the moat, forming a bridge. More and more ants arrived until the bridge grew big and sturdy enough for the rabbit. They carried it across while I jumped over the moat. They were heading towards the barn, and as I approached, I noticed there were gaps at the bottom of the barn doors and walls, gaps large enough for a cattle dog to squeeze through,

gaps that showed that there were some pretty strong lighting in there. As the rabbit disappeared into the barn, I hesitated. Walking across a field was one thing, but entering the barn was trespassing, plain and simple. As I walked around the barn, considering my options, I came across stairs, stairs that led up to the room that Burton had added to the barn,

and I could see the lights were on. Good, I thought. The guy is awake. I'll go up there and we'll talk about this. I ascended the stairs and knocked on the door. It was open. The room was devoid of human presence, but it was certainly not empty.

It was full of monitors and cables. It looked like his valence room. One side of the room was completely glass, overlooking the floor of the barn, and I was amazed by what I saw. Hoses draped the walls, expelling jeeps of mist. Light fixtures dangled from the ceiling on long cables, illuminating the things sprawled below.

In the centre, a massive stalk, woody and gnarled, emerged from the mound. It snaked outward in a spiral. Along its length sprung long, broad, shiny leaves at regular intervals. Each leaf had a thick mid-rib that extended into a tendril, and each tendril ended in a picture. Each picture was a massive, globular, barrel-shaped jug,

banded and striped with cream, yellow, orange, red, purple, caramel and chocolate brown, like it was carved from my gate, with two rows of webbed orange-tipped tentacles running down the front and a bright, almost fluorescent orange lip. Each had a leafy, umbrella-like cover or cap, and beneath that jutted a pair of what looked like bright fuchsia fangs. terrifyingly similar to the dentition of a particularly exotic viper. I was looking at a giant, no, giganguine picture plant,

a picture plant that was practically a mini jungle in itself. The monitors all showed the extreme close-ups to the plant. There must have been dozens of cameras hidden in the foliage. Some of the cameras were aimed at individual traps. The controls were simple and intuitive. I could zoom in on anything I wanted. so I took a closer look at the ants. They crawled all over the plant,

but were mostly concentrated on the traps, thick, writhing rivers and ribbons of black and red bodies. Normally, ants of two colonies would fight, but here I saw different species all intermingling peacefully, as if some bizarre peace treaty had been signed. Small black ants, medium-sized brown ants, might look like fire ants, ants of all sizes and colors.

An ants of shapes and varieties I've never seen before. The floor seethed with what seemed like trillions of tiny bodies. There were slender, long-legged ants and bullet-shaped stout ants. There were ants ornamented with spines and even hair. They were ants with jaws open at 180-degree angle to each other. There were ants with enormous heads and massive jaws. And they were really weird ants, ants that are bizarre protrusions, stalks and tubicles on their head and all abdomens.

One looked like it had a periscope, with his eyes perched on the tip of a tall protuberance. I noticed that there were always one or two holes, scarred and woody, in every snaking tendril connected to one of the traps, and the ants entered and exited with them freely. I watched as the rabbit carcass was dragged into the barn on a bed of chitinous bodies. They swarmed over it, and the body seemed to melt. Skin and fur were sheared away, muscle and fat seemingly dissolved under the combined effort of a billytonous. and tiny jaws. White bones started to peek through the seething mass, as well as the glistening sheen of viscera. But then there was a lull in the frenetic activity. I saw various lumps being separated from the carcass. The biggest one looked like a liver before it was smothered into a different

kind of ant, shiny and brown, almost coppery. They swarmed all over the lumps, ignoring the main carcass, which was feasted on by the other ants. As the lumps shrank, the brown ant started to towards one of the traps. The ants already on the trap cleared a path for the gleaming brown stream. It snaked all the way up to the lip of the trap. I zoomed in on the trap. I watched in amazement as I saw each ant carried a lump of pulpy flesh in its jaws, and, as it approached the edge of the lip,

it would drop its cargo below into the clear pool of amber liquid. The amber liquid seemed to have bugs in it as well. Little brown larvae things that were actively wriggling and swimming. But I couldn't make them out clearly, but one thing was clear. The ants were feeding the pitcher plant. I knew picture plants were carnivorous, and a few were big enough to trap the occasional rat. But I was sure nothing on this scale was ever known to science. This thing was using ants to eat larger prey.

I zoomed back in on the rabbit. Already the bones showed underneath the seething mass, and I watched as the bones and a bit of fur with ferries. into a distant corner of the barn. I zoomed in as close as I could. Bones, small and medium-sized bones, piled hapazily. I recognized dog skulls and cat skulls, clumps and tufts of hair and fur. I checked the other corners.

Sure enough, each had a pile of bones and fur. The ants' refuse heaps. I began to understand. Smaller carcasses would be brought here to be processed, when larger animals were processed on location. But it didn't explain how the ants managed to overpower and kill such large, powerful animals, not to mention doing so silently.

The parrot was trapped in a cage, true, but the owners heard nothing, and I knew very well how loud a parrot could be. My thoughts were interrupted as the door swung open. Professor Burton stood in the doorway, holding a mug and a pot of coffee. We stared at each other, Burton spoke first.

I can explain. I jumped up, suddenly furious. You better explain this. You nearly dropped the coffee pot. No, no, what I meant to say was, what are you doing here? I rusted him, pinning him to the door. Didn't he realize what he had done?

I was rewarded with the unpleasant sensation of hot coffee running down my leg. No, we're past that. Explain this. I waved my hand vaguely at the monitors. He spoke in a shaky voice. On my last trip to Borneo, I found this little patch of rainforest and a deforested valley. The logging company gave me permission to explore before moving in.

They said I had a week, so for a while I wandered around in there. In the process, losing my camera and glasses, I come across this fantastic nepotithus. It was huge, draped from several trees like a huge liana. I collected some samples. Then, like an idiot, I didn't tell the log is what I did.

discovered. When I came back the next day, the entire patch had been raised. Those hassles worked overtime to make sure they could finish the job. They knew if news of this discovery spread, they'll never be allowed to cut down that forest. His voice shook with emotion, but he went on. But I showed them. I still had the samples I had taken away the day before, and with any luck, I would be able to propagate it. And I did, which, you idiot, so you come down here to call a monster plant? Why here? Why not in some lab somewhere? He coughed. For Professor Lewis, the head of the botany department, is a very unpleasant man, well known to staff for appropriating the work of others. So I was determined to...

I cut him off. You really don't understand what you've nearly done. You knew you were losing control. That's why you dug that moat, but it looks like they outsmarted you. I shook my head in disgust. It's sheer look that nobody was hurt. Ah, he eagerly cried, but they do not harm humans. Nonsense, why wall yourself up in this room instead of walking in your garden? But I do. I go in there to check the equipment, drop off prey items, things like that. I built this room so I could better observe what was going on,

take in the whole picture, so to speak. I can't watch the plant around the clock, so I set up the cameras to monitor everything. It's all saved to multiple redundant hard drives for later analysis, so... Wait, you're saying you've been in there? And yet, you made it out alive? It wasn't this big in the beginning. It was just a small cutting at first. I've been growing it in my house for several months,

before I decided I needed more space. All that time, I was never attacked by the colony, so... Wait, you brought the ants from Borneo, too? Yes, I already told you I managed to take several samples. I managed to collect part of the brood, which contained a queen. But what's really fascinating is that it managed to recruit local ant species, possibly through some sort of pheromone and even alter the morphology

possibly by secreting hormone analogs which affect larva development and pupa maturation. The original symbiotic species is the only one that feeds the nymphanthus directly all other species are used for prey capture and defence which look this is fascinating and all and I admit is one heck of a discovery

but you're really in over your head right now your little moat did nothing to stop them and now they're depleting the entire area of fauna You've got an ecological catastrophe just waiting to happen. I relax my hold on him. Look, I'm sorry about losing my temper, but you've messed up bad, and you need help. I suggest taking a cutting and starting somewhere else in a more secure and controlled environment. What? Start over from scratch, but you already have, what, like, terabytes of video?

I'd say you've collected enough data to make a formal description. Just take a cutting or maybe one of the traps in a truck. that should be enough to stake a claim. I don't think Professor Lewis will be able to hijack this one. I suppose you're right, he said with some reluctance. And what do you suggest I do about? Spray the place with herbicide, I said flatly. Or just chop up the thing and send it to a university or something.

Look, the plant's influence and the local ant population is too dangerous to... I paused. I remembered something. Hold on a minute. How do the ants kill the animals without... raising a ruckus. Ah, he smiled nervously. The ants are not only symbiots.

In my samples, I also collected a new species of mosquitoes that breeds in the fluid of the pictures. The larvae take a portion of the plant's food. On such a rich diet, they build of enough reserves to last their entire adult life. The adults do not feed at all, and as soon as they emerge, they will mate and lay eggs. Sometimes in the picture they hatched from. But the females still have well-developed. mouthparts and can still bite, although they can't suck blood. The salivary glands are enlarged and secret a potent and very fast acting.

Burton was interrupted again, but this time wasn't me. It was the whining, humming cloud that blew through the open doorway. The mosquitoes covered us like grey fur. I couldn't feel the bites, but it did start getting drowsy. I flailed about trying to swat them, or at least brushed them off, but they were relentless. my movement slowed, my vision blurred, then I blacked out. When I woke up, I found myself in a hospital bed,

covered all over with mosquito bites, which thankfully didn't itch. They told me nobody realised I was missing for three days. It was only when Harrison needed my report to complete his own paperwork that he bothered to check if I had shown up for work, and Burton only went to town for groceries once a week. So it was a couple of days until we were forced to. found, unconscious in the room.

So, all in all, we had been knocked out for five days. Even then, we were only discovered because someone reported that the doors to Burton's barn had been left open for two days. Burton visited me in the hospital later that day.

He regained consciousness the day before and told me what Harrison had told him. The plant was gone. The stalk had been sawn through, leaving only a stump, everything else was left behind. They left the lights, the cameras, everything was untouched, he said bitterly.

They were after one thing only. The plant. I have lost everything. But you still have the videos, your own notes. I store them all on the hard drives, and every single one of them is corrupted. Ruined. I went to a guy who specializes in data recovery. He said it's pretty much hopeless.

I was looking at a broken man. Right now, the police think is a straightforward case of assault and robbery. The official story is somebody drugged the two of us, then made off with the plant. I stared. Is that what you told them? It's what they chose to believe. I merely did nothing to correct that assumption. How did you explain all the bones and fur?

He snorted. I told them I had no idea how they got there. and that the thieves must have dumped them there. Is this guy for real? And what if I tell them what really happened? You think they'll believe your story of sedative mosquitoes and a giant pet-eating plant? They'll blow it off as a particularly vivid hallucination induced by the knockout drug or whatever. Besides, it'll be your word against mine.

He sighed. Though, to be honest, I don't care either way. I poured every penny I had into this. It was a dream come true A fantasy come to life I rescued it from a patch of rainforest That was going to be cut down I spared no expense

Now it's gone And I have nothing left Seriously You sold your house and everything Well I still have my house And a shed packed full of old fish tanks There's not much left to add The perpetrators were never caught

And the wildlife slowly replenished itself Everything was back to normal well I still have my house and a shed packed full of old fish tanks There's not much left to add The perpetrators were never caught And the wildlife slowly replenish itself Everything was back to normal

And I didn't feel like pressing the matter Especially since Burton had sold off the property And paid off everybody who had lost an animal Everybody thought it was peculiar But mighty kind and neighbourly of him I personally thought killing a beloved pet deserved harsher reparations. Burton's gone now, but I'm still uneasy.

I remember how Burton atorn with a colony never attacked him, back when he was taken care of the plant. But the mosquitoes attacked us after I told him to spray the place and destroy the plant. And the ants never touched us. We could have easily ended up as plant food. But we didn't. I think the plant is aware.

aware that killing its caretaker was a bad idea, aware that its caretaker had become a liability after talking to me, aware that our deaths would have caused the police to look more closely into the robbery, aware that Burton had stored all his data on the hard drives, and so destroyed them to keep its existence a secret. I think it wasn't stolen. I think that maybe thousands of tiny jaws were ordered to chew through the stalk, and now millions of bodies are carrying it somewhere,

else to be planted and take root. I think it escaped. When I was 13, I died. For two minutes and 11 seconds, my heartbeat stopped and my pulse was gone and I was dead.

One second I was racing my bike along the sidewalk and made a turn to the left to shortcut across the road. The next, I stared up with a blank ceiling, wrapped in bandages and wires and tubes, while some machine beat next to me in a stand. steady rhythm. I had no recollection of what happened in between. It didn't take long for this little gap in memory to be filled. My father still can't stop telling the story any chance he gets. He tells it during dinner, during long car trips, during TV commercial breaks. He tells it to friends

and colleagues and strangers at the bus stop. Remember that time you got hit by that car. We're in a panic when we got the call. They said your heart stopped. You were dead, you know. two minutes and 11 seconds I guess that's his way of coping with a traumatic experience two minutes and 11 seconds two minutes and 11 seconds two minutes and 11 seconds it didn't take long for that number to start haunting me

soon it came for me every night the dream started a few months after the accident my body was already on its way to complete recovery I had left the hospital bed behind and returned home. My leg was still wrapped in a cast and the scars left of my torso would never fade. But that was it. It was around this time I found myself waking up at night more and more often, sweating and shivering, a pain enveloping my chest.

Soon I grew able to remember the nightmares that preceded these events, or rather the one single nightmare. It was the same exact dream every night and still is to this day. day. The same visions, the same sounds, and it always lasts the exact same time. Two minutes and eleven seconds. I know, because as it became a regular occurrence, I started counting along. One second, two seconds, three seconds. The rough asphalt of the road takes in half of my view. My body lies on an orchid angle on the coarse grey material, glittering fragments of glass and small smears of red fluid. would have splattered around me.

Four seconds, five seconds, six seconds. People stand around me, some shuffle for a better view. Others just stay frozen in place. Their eyes wide open, the trembling hands squeezed against their lips. A blue light flashes somewhere behind me. Its presence vaguely visible against the bright sunlight. 13 seconds, 14 seconds, 15 seconds. A deep pain ripples through me, cold and heavy,

as if every bit of warmth slowly bleeds from my body. It radiates from my torso up into my neck and my head and my limbs. I wanted to scream, but my lips refuse to move. They're slightly open. My tongue hangs out on one side. A thick fluid slowly drips from it to the ground. I want to move, but my muscles don't respond. I expect the scent of oil and blood to spread in my nose,

but I smell nothing. I smell nothing because no. air enters my nostrils because I have stopped breathing. 28, 29, 30. Growling engines, distant sirens, voices, contorted fragments of noise that make less and less sense. Hands touch me, squeeze against my neck and wrists. I can barely make out the sensation, but it is there.

Careful at first, then more and more frantic. Shouts grow louder. More hands, more touches. shadows fall over me as people draw closer. 55, 56, 57. Someone stabilizes my neck. Someone grabs a hold of my arm. Someone slightly lifts my leg.

Someone carefully squeezes against my shoulder. With a gentle fluid motion, I'm slowly flipped onto my back. The sun sends out its blinding rays. Fabric tears as the shirt is removed from my torso. So, 125, 126, 127. A man kneels over me, his bright orange vest stained with blood. He positions his hand against my chest, then presses down. My body twitches under the impact like a giant ragdoll.

Another pump, another. Then a short pause. Then it starts again. Pump, pump, pump, pause. 159. two minutes two one pump pump pump pause

it's hard to keep track of the time the palms hit my chest with a steady rhythm but that rhythm doesn't fully match up to the seconds ticking by I feel like I'm burning like there is a fire licking over my insides like thousands of insects borrow into my skin and start tearing out my flesh two six

two seven two eight pump pump pump pause I stare up at the blue sky, concentrate on the faint white cloud formation drifting past, try to focus on its contours and shapes. Anything to keep my mind far away from the next second. Anything to divert my attention from the moment where the pain reaches this peak. 2.9. One of my ribs breaks under the pressure.

I want to scream, need to scream, but my body is dead and my lungs are empty, and those hands keep grinding and pumping, unrelenting, driving the broken piece of down deeper and deeper. 2.10. Something jolt to my chest. A first flutter of my heart muscle. Dots of light dance in front of my pupils. The sunlight disintegrates the remnants of the cloud overhead.

Shouting voices twisting, roaring, spinning. 2.11. And I awake. Back in my bed. The pain is still there. Throbbing and pumping. As if those hands are still hammering down on me. For the first few moments, it feels as if my heartbeat might go out again.

Cold sweat coats my skin, my muscles tremble, then the sensation fades. Every night, two minutes and 11 seconds. I've talked to doctors about the reoccurring pain and a few hospital checkups. There's nothing physically wrong with me, nothing they can find at least. I haven't told anyone about the dream though. This is the first time I put the experience to words. Even telling strangers on the internet feel shameful and embarrassing. It's one thing to show off the parts of my back where my skin is still twisted and contorted,

like some Vikings showing off old battle scars. It's another thing entirely to talk about waking up every night, crying and sobbing. It's another thing to admit to secretly covering my mattress with newspaper sheets in case I lose control of my bladder again. But I have to talk about it. Something changed. It happened a few days ago. One second, two seconds, three seconds.

A woman, a bit older, maybe in a late 60s, thin and tall, dressed in painfully bright, mismatching colours, sporting outdated flower patterns, walked along the sidewalk. She was slightly hunched over, carrying two plastic bags in her hands. She was just another passerby. She was just some random old lady And she was not supposed to be there 3.4.5 I've lived through the dream thousands times. Every little moment has always been the same.

Every detail has burned into my mind. Unchanging. Unwavering. Always the same. This woman was not supposed to be there. She had never been there before. 10.11.12. She stopped and looked over.

13, 14, 15. She stood there, staring, then began to slowly walk toward the scene of the accident. Her bags swung back and forth in her hands. Some blackish fluid dripped from one of them with each step. 55, 56, 57. She stopped at the outer edge of the crowd, half hidden between the wall of people.

The first responder scrabbed to me, as they always do. and gently flipped me onto my back. I couldn't see her anymore from this new position. The dream continued as it always had. The hands squeezed down on my chest, the clouds drifted across the sky. My rib broke and my heart fluttered the life and I woke up. Everything just as it always was, except for that woman. She shouldn't have been there.

The next night she was back. This time she stood in the center of the... the crowd down the very start. I could see how garish she looked. Her makeup had been painted thick over her aging face. White glittering powder covered her cheeks. Her lips were smeared with gleaming red lipstick

to the point that they look like wax replicas. Her eyes were encircled with dark violet rings of shade. The face beneath a grotesque mask of makeup was inhumanly still. No twitch of a muscle, no flare of a nostril. She didn't even seem to blink. She just stood there.

staring down at me. Her pupils never shifted away. When I was flipped onto my back, she drifted closer, towering in the corner of my vision. The seconds ticked down. The pain grew worse. The palms hit my chest.

Pomp, pump, pump, pause. Her body tensed in rhythm to the resuscitation. Her thin bony fingers tightened to shaking fists, then opened up again. Pump, pump, pump, pause. 2.9, 2.10, to 11. When I woke up, I have expected to see her still standing there, somewhere in the darkness of my room.

Of course, she was gone, along with the rest of the dream. I was alone with my pain and my tears, and my shame. She'd returned the night after. This time, she stood even closer, as close as she was able to get. Other members of the crowd slightly leaned away from her. her, as if she was emitting a disgusting smell. She didn't react, didn't seem to register anything besides me, as if all these other people weren't even there in the first place.

55, 56, 57. The woman tried to step closer the moment I was turning my back. One of the first responders stepped into a path and pushed the back. Pump, pump, pump, pause. 133, 134, 135. The pain welled up and grew deeper, and the woman was still there. Her lengthy body twisting to the left and to the right, her fingers twitching in rhythm to those palms squeezing down.

Pump, pump, pump, pause. 149, 150, 151. The moment of the worst pain was quickly approaching. She tried to push closer once more, was repelled a second time. 2.4, 2.26, 2.7. My eyes drifted to the cloud above The worst pain was coming Just three more seconds

Two more seconds Pump, pump, pump, pause 2 8, 29 Here it was The hand would squeeze down And my rib would break And my body would go up in flames And 2.10 to 11

The hand didn't return My rib didn't break My heart didn't start beating again. 212, 2.13. The open palm hovered just above my chest, about to push down. A wrinkly set of fingers gripped its wrist. The woman had managed to push into the circle of first responders and grabbed the man

just as he was about to administer the last life-giving thrust. Nails bit into flesh. She tore him backwards. He screamed. 218. 219. Somebody else rushed to my side. another set of hands found my chest

began to push frantically and struggled to find the right rhythm. 223, 224. Something inside me slipped further and further away. A grey shade drifted over the world. 225. The woman was still there,

trying to get this new person too, but the others held her back, and at 226 the hands pressed against my chest, faster and faster, and the shouts grew louder. and 227 and closer together and somebody else arrived a second 228 set of hands

joining the first and a rib 229 broke and another they pumped and 230 screamed and 231 232 232 and then I woke up my body twitched on the mattress convulsing

I was frozen from the vicious cramps tearing their way through me I tried to scream but my jaw just inched open for a second, and then bit down with all might as the next cramp hit me. My tongue got caught between my teeth, the taste of blood spread, my stomach cramped and something was pushed up my throat. With a desperate motion, I threw myself to the side. Somehow I'd gathered enough force to fool myself off the side of my bed. My forehead slammed against the edge of my night table. My vision blurred. I crashed to the ground, unable to dampen

the fall in any way. at least I wouldn't suffocate to my own vomit in this new position I lay there for minutes until the worst of the pain slowly receded that was the last time I slept fear of what had happened kept me awake throughout the next night a pack of caffeine pills got me through the next one after now I'm reaching my limit I feel myself slipping feel myself drifting off

I won't be able to stay calm conscious for much longer. Dark spidery dots crawl in the corner of my vision. My head feels like it is filled with cotton. My eyes flutter close and he gets harder and harder to open them back up. Soon I will sleep. Soon I will dream. Soon I will die again. For two minutes and eleven seconds. Or maybe. Forever. The room disappeared every second Thursday of the month. For a majority of my life, it had been more of an inconvenience than a hazard, since as long as I could remember, there had been a routine. It happened to my parents first.

One day they woke to discover that the door to my half-painted nursery opened to nothing but a flat brick wall. They called in a report to the police that led nowhere. They were unable to explain how or why someone could or would break in and wall off this one room of their new house. The cop thought they were wasting his time. They called a friend to come and look at it, but when he arrived the next day, my nursery was back.

By the third time it happened, my mom was four months pregnant with me, and my parents caught on that this was a pattern. They moved the crib and all the baby stuff to the guest room that day, and started looking at other houses. The following months, however, the room that was my nursery didn't. disappear. Instead, the guest room with a crib vanished. My parents sold the house at a lost

two days later and moved into a new place they'd been scouting. By that next second Thursday, however, the room they decided would be mine was walled off. My parents, catching onto the pattern, took the next few months of my gestation and my infancy to learn the rules of the disappearing room. First, it was only my room that would disappear. They tried dragging my crib into their room, thinking they'd just share and never let me have my own room. They were cautious that month and camped out that first Wednesday. Sure enough, their room vanished. If they were staying temporarily over at someone's place, however, the room I was given remained intact. For a few years, their solution was to leave my toys and bed in my room,

but have me sleep in the guest room every night. But I was three, and I called that guest room my room. That next Thursday, the guest room disappeared. So, the loose rules is that anything that felt like my room would disappear. Two, it happened only for a day once a month. That day was the second Thursday of every month, but there was no consistent time. My parents stayed up and watching my room with the door opened those first few months and made a chart.

There was no consistent data. The times varied from 3am, 6am on Thursday, or even 11 p.m. on that Wednesday for when the room would wall itself up. By 10 p.m. on Thursday, 2 a.m. or 10 a.m. on Friday, my room would reappear. The room went whenever it sort of felt like Thursday. 3. The door always closed when the room disappeared. My parents tried jamming it with door stops and furniture. They took the door off its hinges. They put a metal bed frame between the two rooms.

Either the door would slam closed, crushing whatever they used to bar the way, or a new door would show up. 4. The room was gone. Not just barred. My dad tried to crawl through the windows and hammered a hole through the wall to try to get inside one of those Thursdays. His attempts brought him to nothing but brick and concrete. It was like a block just switched with my living space.

My parents decided to keep this anomaly secret, afraid they'd be thought of as crazy. For worse, someone might believe them, and they'd take me away. So instead, we learned to deal with it. On the second Wednesday of each month, I'd pack a change of clothes and the schoolwork I'd need for the next day. I'd sleep in the guest room Wednesday night and go about my usual routine,

and sleep either in my reappeared room or the guest room again on Friday, depending on how late it appeared. It was an astrenuous change in routine. I never knew any different, but it worried my parents. When my mum was pregnant with my little sister, the guest room became her room, and I was made to sleep in the living room. To their surprise, and my mild annoyance, my sister's nursery never disappeared. even after she was born her room was always intact

I was six at the time so as far as I understood it I traded sleeping in the soft spacious grown-up bed for sleeping on a blown-up air mattress once a month next to a crying baby it didn't get better as we got older and learned to torture one another

the way young siblings do when I was 13 and when she was seven she had this annoying talking doll she played with almost every night night. I hated that thing, so one Wednesday night I tossed it in my room. She cried herself asleep, thinking she lost it forever, and I felt guilt and almost outweighed my annoyance. I waited by my door that Thursday, ready to make amends and bring back my sister's toy as a peace

offering. My room shifted relatively early at 9pm. My sister's doll was there, and so was a note. It was written in orange highlighter. Thank you. It wasn't cryptic, but nothing new had ever been in the room after it was gone for a day. Nothing was ever out of place. I screamed and ran for my parents. They read the note and turned on me. I know in hindsight they were afraid, not angry,

but I only heard them yelling at me, asking me what I did wrong to provoke it. None of us knew what it was, but none of us liked it. My sister took a toy back, and I slept on the air mattress and my parents' insistence, even though my bed was back. I felt like I was being punished. I thought a lot about that note. A month later, it still came to mind as I did my homework. I had an orange highlighter and a few pens in a cup on my desk.

When I drew a line of my paper, I knew it was a little bit of my paper. I knew it was the same weathered orange the note had been. We always knew my room disappeared, but this was the first time I considered that my room actually went somewhere. The next second Thursday, I wrote a note to it and left the paper in the centre of the room.

Reading it now, I'm surprised at my own juvenile concerns. You got me in trouble. Are you using my highlighter? Don't do that. I don't want you touch my stuff. That Friday, when my room reappeared, there was a paper on the floor. Sorry, was all it said. The word itself was written in a rusty pale red.

It almost looked like watercolour. Only, of course, it wasn't. It had written back its message and blood, but not in a threatening manner. The handwriting was neat, and there were no ominous stains along the edges. It was a real response from the word. the thing inside my room. It had written a short apology on the back of my note. I hid that note from my parents. There was this giddy, childish excitement in me that felt like a pioneer of new lands. I was overjoyed more than anything to be the one to discover

the secret to a room my parents knew supposedly everything about. You almost killed me to wait a whole month to write again, but when the next Mark Thursday came around, I was ready. I left another note and a cheap ballpoint pen in the centre of my room. That note was gross. Did you write it in blood? You should use pens dummy? Here, have this one. My mum and dad say this room is haunted.

That makes you the monster, right? Do you live under my bed? Right back. From Tom. The thing on the other side already knew where I lived. But I was taught not to give out my full name to strangers. I got a response the next day on the back of my paper. Sorry, you said not to use your pens, so I bit my finger.

I'm not a monster. I live in this room. Not under the bed. There isn't a bed, except on these nights. There weren't any toys for a long time either. I liked the doll. It was like talking to someone. I don't have anyone to talk to here.

I didn't mean to get you in trouble. Intrigue won out over caution. I think, at that age, it started as an experiment for me to learn what I could about the inside of the room to gain insight my parents never could. The next week, I tossed my sister's talking toy and a blank notebook into the room. I left a note giving the notebook to him

and telling him to write me back. I can't remember exactly what I said, but the introduction was something along the lines of, if you have no one to talk to, then you can talk to me. I thought I was being clever, gaining his trust. I can't remember exactly what I said. said, but for months we exchanged messages back and forth in that notebook. It would ask me about

school, my favourite shows, my favourite superheroes, things like that. I soon forgot it was an interrogation and thought of the thing on the other side of the door as an outlet for my grievances. It became my supernatural pen pal. If my parents grounded me, I confided in it. If my sister annoyed me, I'd tell it how much I wished I was an only child. It wrote to me once, If you don't like it out there, you can come play here, stay with me for a month. Even then, I felt a serious aversion to that invitation. Yet, I also felt guilty that I couldn't trust my friend in the other room. I thought I was being too paranoid, and my letter to it that next month was an apologetic decline.

I didn't want to stay with it for a month. It didn't like to talk about itself, or what it was like on the other days it wasn't in my room. From what little I had gathered, I got the sense it couldn't leave. From its brief descriptions, I knew the walls were bare and cold, made of coarse stone. It said there were no snacks or TV, so it was always bored and always hungry until my room appeared. It asked me about the snack foods the most. I got into the habit of saving some dinner from, or sneaking some cookies or chips up to my room on Wednesday nights. It was a ravenous thing.

I'd find entire packages of cookies and bags of chips in my waistbasket after one day. It also liked dolls. Sometimes it'd keep them for a day, sometimes for the whole month. When I gave it some of my sister's toys, they'd have their clothes switched and hair-braided or done up, sometimes half-ripped out, sometimes with missing limbs. The notebook always remained, but it would write plenty of questions about school, about the town I was in, and what happened on TV shows. I'd be sure to fill up that notebook with as much information as possible.

Talking to it almost became an assignment. An entire afternoon I'd dedicate to my friend inside the room. Sometimes, between days of the month, I'd read through our entries, and I remember feeling the nostalgia and warmth experiencing those letters. He'd always invite me to stay with him. They were always polite invitations, a solution offered when I complained that I didn't want to go to school or go to my sister's dance recital.

I always refused. Why didn't you come out of the room and spend a month with us? I asked him once. I can't come out, he'd written back. I can't go anywhere until someone else comes in. Then one day, my notebook went missing, and the first corporate I could think of was my sister. She was always going through my things, and I had seen her trying to peop. on what I was writing for weeks. When I came into a room, she was playing with that stupid doll.

When she denied stealing from me, I yelled at her, and we got into a fight. I kept asking her, day after day, and she kept denying it. I told her it stopped being funny days ago, and she kept insisting.

I didn't take a stupid book, she said. Stop saying I did, or I'll tell Mom and Dad you've been breaking the rules. That got under my skin. If she took the book, fine, I'd be angry at her. But exposing my secret to our parents was unforgivable in my mind.

So, I wrote up a short note for the next Thursday. Keep as many as you want. That night, when my parents were asleep and my sister had drifted off, I gathered every doll, every stuffed animal, every stupid toy my sister loved, and I threw them all into the centre of my room. I made three trips to gather every last Barbie in Bratstall. I went to the kitchen and gathered the box of her favourite cereal, her favorite snacks, and every last bag of chips she liked. I put all of it in a pile in the centre of the room so ornately arranged with my note in the centre of the display.

The last, the prize jewel, was the talking doll she kept at a bedside. By now, my sister would have turned over and left the stupid thing to lay splayed out in some forgotten corner of the bed. I crept quietly to a bed and felt along the edges. And there it was, the plastic hand of the talking doll. I pulled it up, and just then, the stupid thing's voice box activated. I flinched, bracing for my sister's jump awake and catch me stealing her favourite toy. She didn't. She didn't start crying, because she wasn't in the bed.

There's nothing in this world that's ever sobered me faster. My irritation, my vengeful intention. and my petting sibling grudge vanished at the sight of the empty bed. I dropped a doll, my mind racing to the one possibility that seemed like a certainty. The gut twist of guilt and fear spurred on my heart and dried out my mouth. I ran to my room, sliding into the wall with a loud thud in my rush. Just as I passed my frame, I saw my sister there, holding an armful of a doll's trying to steal back a toys.

I'm told, I shouted. her name, but I just remember her freezing in place. The door slammed shut, and it was Thursday. My parents came rushing and my mom started screaming. They pounded against the wall behind the door. They took a hammer to it. They clawed at the wall like animals. I stayed home from school that day.

My dad rotated between scolding me and pacing along the door. My mom kept searching the house and walking up and down the neighborhood, as if a daughter was only lost. It wasn't Friday until 6am on Saturday morning that week, and we were all exhausted. When the door creaked and the house shifted,

we all grabbed for the door and opened it to my room. My sister's toys were all dispersed all around my room. The snacks were torn into and gathered in the wastebasket or scattered along the floor. The thing we cared about, however,

my little sister, It was nowhere to be seen. I don't remember much of that next month, aside from the hours I'd spent sitting outside that door, waiting as if the rules would be broken and it had spontaneously burst open. My parents didn't ground me officially. They didn't seem to know what to do with me.

My mother wouldn't look at me. My father was the one to tell me it wasn't my fault every few days. And that only made me feel worse. Then, the second Thursday of the month, month came and I had another note. Please give Emily back. There was no reply because that night my room didn't disappear.

We all sat by an open door waiting for it to slam closed. We waited all of Wednesday night and my parents took off Thursday and Friday but my room remained as it was for the first time in 13 years. It never changed back. I never found my notebook, by the way.

I don't think my sister was lying. I gave her to that thing behind the wall for no reason. It's been 20 years since that night, and I still feel sick thinking about it. My father tries to keep in touch, but I don't think my mother ever forgave me. The last time I saw her was at my wedding. I'll keep my family guilt to myself, but I told you all of that, because now I need help. I need any information anyone can give me

because it's not over. I have a wife of my own, you see, and we're expecting. She's three months along, and we started clearing out the space for a nursery. Last night, it disappeared. I have a surprise for you, Jimbo. My father, the inventor in Plaid, stood in the middle of the living room

with a blocky object hidden beneath a bed sheet. It was the spring of 1981. My mother and me had just come back from the park. What is it? I asked. Guess. His hands tightened over the cloth. Whatever the surprise was, he was excited to reveal it. A gentle whir and a beep came from beneath a bedsheet.

A skeptical smile spread across my mother's face. Brian, he didn't benefit. I'll be able to, uh-uh, don't spoil it. He cuts her off. Let him guess. Come on, Jimbo. What do you think the surprise is? The mysterious object led out a series of beeps. Weight shifted beneath the bed sheet.

I didn't have the faintest idea of what it could be, but I also knew my father well enough to know he wouldn't move on unless I made a guess. A washing machine? I guessed. They both laughed. Over the following years, my guests will be carved into family history through funny dinner party anecdotes. It's not a washing machine, Jimbo. My father finally said. It's something much better than a washing machine.

You didn't actually build it, did you? My mother asked and amused this belief. Hun, if you didn't want a husband who builds things, you shouldn't have married an inventor. He said, with pride in his voice, and then turned to me. Jimbo, let me introduce you to your new friend. Zorbo. He ripped off the cloth covering the bulky thing in our living room. A pair of flashlight eyes stared back at me from a rectangular metal skull. Knubs and dials stuck out of the robot stainless steel chest like metals from some intergalactic war.

Its arms hung in tubing that seemed to have come straight from a vacuum cleaner. But its hands were made up of sleek shapes that suggested top secret military technology. Hello, friend, I am Zorbo, the robot said, his voice strained through lifeless circuitry. Would you like to play catch with me? I was an only child, and by extension, a lonely child. For years, I had begged my parents for a younger brother or sister, but the medication that my mother was taking made the idea of another pregnancy far too dangerous. That winter, I shifted my pleas for company over to a dog,

and my parents obliged, but within three hours of finding my new friend beneath the Christmas tree, I ended up in the emergency room. Turns out that I am deathly allergic to dogs. With his son, unable to find companionship, my father attempted to help the only way he knew how, by inventing me a friend. The heap of sentient metal terrified me.

There was something about the sluggish way that Zorber's eyes scanned the room that made me feel quintessentially unsubbed. safe, but I knew if I rejected my father's gift, I would break the man's heart. After the initial fear of the robot passed, our little family went outside and played catch with Zorbo. Soon enough, word about Zorbo got around the neighbourhood. You could have made an 80s sitcom about us. We were the family living in suburbia with a zany robot, except Zorbo wasn't very zany. At first, he was the equivalent of a particularly friendly Roomba who could throw around a baseball. But as time went on, and as my mother got sicker, Zorbo's skill set expanded.

Every night, as I lay awake, terrified of the lifeless machine that lived with us, I could see the lights on my father's workshop burning in the darkness of her backyard. Within months, Zorbo could cook and clean and mow the lawn. Every chore that the robot was made to do gave my mother more time to rest and gave my father and me more time to spend with her. But that time was limited

as she lay on the hospital bed getting out the few final words that a disease riddle body could muster. Zorbo was there. As me and my father wept and assured my mother that she lived a truly beautiful life the robot stood in the corner of the room his flashlight eyes scanning his surrounding

He listened to her last words. He internalised him deep into a circuitry. For a year, the house was a place of inescapable sadness. Every room, every dish, every tiny bit of existence reminded us of the woman who was whisked away by a clump of rogue cells. Even though we were in a state of deep mourning, the house was immaculate and our stomachs were full. As we tried to make sense of the new world we were living in,

Sorboe, the robot, was there to take care of us. The memory of my mother never faded. Decades later, a day seldom goes by when I don't think of her. But as time passed, the daily soul-shattering sadness turned into quiet melancholy. Life carried on. My father went back to work for the military. I started grade school. People moved in and out of the neighbourhood,

and eventually the life we once lived as a family became a memory. The only thing that remained constant was Zorbo. He was always there, making sure we were comfortable, serving us and providing an emotional crutch when needed. That all changed in the summer of 1989, the summer of the lawnmower. Cindy, the daughter of a new neighbour across the street, was sitting with me at the living room table

outlining a five-paragraph essay on the effects of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. I was trying to do the same, but my hormone-addled mind refused to think about the Soviet tanks or the crushing of democracy. All I could think about was Cindy. It was the last week of school,

and I was hopelessly in love. Hey, how do you spell Bresnev? All of these Soviet names give me a headache, she asked, leaning over to my near empty paper. I tried to spell out the name, But the angelic smell of a conditioner made it difficult to concentrate. Zorbo, apparently said, giving up an impressing Cindy with my spelling skills. How do you spell Bresnev?

Thank you for asking, friend. The robot's flashlight eyes spun around in a half circle before he gave his reply. Leonid Bresnev, leader of the Soviet Union between 1964 and 1982, L-E-O-N-I-D, B-R-E-Z-H-N-E-V Thank you, Zobo, Cindy said. You are welcome, friend, Zorbo replied. Would you like more spelling help? No, thank you, Zorbo, I mumbled.

Cindy thought the robot was really neat, and even though my metal houseguess still made me uncomfortable, I was starting to embrace the benefits of having a sentient machine full of knowledge wearing around the house. Don't talk too much about the Soviets with Zorbo kids. Things might get personal. My father said, emerging from the kitchen with a sandwich, so precisely cut that he could only have come from a machine.

He's part Russian. I mean, most of his circuitry is Japanese, but our metal friend here might still get a bit offended if you don't tell the Kremlin political line. Cindy's laugh was like a symphony of angels, enjoying a wholesome joke. I'll be sure to keep the polite bureau in mind been talking to Sorbo, Mr. Carpec, she said.

Polo Bureau, eh? My father was impressed. Smart one right here, Jimbo. Hold on to her. She can teach you a thing or two. I wanted to hold onto her. Oh, God, how I wanted to hold on to her. I wanted to surrender myself into the goddess

and scream my undying love for Cindy through my crackling voice cords. But instead, I just blushed. My father stifled a grin and changed the topic. By the way, away, Cindy, send you pops my regards about the new lawnmower. Beauty of a machine he's got there. If we didn't have Zorbo here cutting our grass, I'd be hounding him for the name of the salesman.

My father gave Sorbo a friendly pat on his troubler arm and then turned to me. Seeing the neighbour's lawnmower yet, Jimbo? I shook my head. She's a beaut. He kissed the tip of his fingers like the Italian chefs on TV. I'll pass on the compliments, Mr. Carpec. Cindy said, smiling. I'll actually do so now.

Essay is just about done. Thanks for the spelling help, Zorbo. You are welcome, friend. I left my unfinished essay behind and followed Cindy to the edge of my front lawn. I'd hoped that at some point during the 30-second walk a burst of bravery would manifest

to my chest and I would tell her how I felt. But I didn't. I just stood behind a white-pigot fence watching my one true love skip across the street. A gym? Sind his dad yelled as he mowed his lawn. Say hi to your old man for me, will you? Sure thing, Mr. Clark, I yelled back.

Also, my dad sent his compliments about your lawnmower. Mr. Clark's old machine was a rusting, gas-guzzling beast. Whenever his lawn was getting a trim, the entire neighborhood would be alerted to the crownskeeping with a jagged metallic screech. But that was not a little. longer the case. The new lawnmower was a tool of sleek, metallic shapes and blinking lights that led out nothing but a soft hum as it cut through the grass. Thanks Jim,

she's a butte, ain't she? Cindy's dad said, before returning the mower. I never inherited the fascination with machines that my father had, but watching that machine work away at the greenery, I couldn't help but recognize a hint of hypnotizing aesthetic. Looking at the the calculated metallic body of the machine made me feel like I was living in the 21st century. The future had arrived in suburbia. Hello, friend. An inhuman voice next to me said. What is that?

That's a lawnmower, I replied, uncomfortable to the idea of how quietly Zorba could move when he wanted to. Lawn mower, Zorbo said, with an unusual softness in his jagged screech. Beautiful lawnmower. Yeah, I said, beautiful lawnmower. My father seldom cooked, but when he did, he would deliver a symphony of spices that would make you eat yourself into a food coma. Even Zorbo, with all of his circuitry and mechanical precision, couldn't replicate the mouth-watering flavor of my father's bolognese. Yet, as delicious as dinner was that night, I couldn't bring myself to enjoy this spaghetti. Instead of letting my mind drift away on the gentle notes of paprika,

I was tied down to reality by my frustrated teenage heart. So, he said, is Cindy seeing someone? No, I replied. Don't think so at least. He swallowed another forkful of pasta, and then, with his mouth still full, as if it was a matter of no importance, he asked the question that had been festering him.

the back of my head for the past three months. You're gonna ask her out? The butterflies in my stomach informed me that I wouldn't be eating any more that night. I don't know, I said. I'm scared she'll say no. It doesn't matter, Jimbo. You're 14, my father told me.

If she says no, you won't remember it in a couple of years. What you will remember forever is not asking. I was a teen. my perception of time barely reached past the end of summer break. Yet for a split second, I imagined myself at 40, my hairline thinning like my dad's, eating spaghetti with a child of my own. But I'm nervous. What if she says no?

I finally asked. You'll survive, he said. I was nervous when I first asked out your mom, and it worked out fine. He smiled as he said it, but as soon as he mentioned her, his eyes dimmed. It had been years since she had passed, but certain memories stay as sharp as the day that they were forged. We were sitting in the living room, eating spicy spaghetti.

But really, we were both back in that hospital room, sitting by the frail body of the woman who once made my father nervous. Where's Zorbo? He brought the conversation back to reality. Zorbo, where are you? At dinner time, Zorbo would usually be in the kids. kitchen, quietly wearing to himself, waiting for dishes to wash up. But that night, the robot wasn't anywhere to be found.

We searched all across the house, but our electric servant was gone. It wasn't until a chance glance out the window that I first saw him. The moon softly reflected of his metallic body. His flashlight eyes hovered beams of red into the night. Zorbo was staring at Cindy's house. Beautiful lawnmower. His voice was different. It was as if a roughness had been chipped away,

as if somewhere within his wiry viscera, a hint of emotion existed. Beautiful lawnmower, there was a trace of longing in his voice. Huh? My father said. Looks like someone's blown a fuse. Come here, Zorbo.

We all take you into the garage and figure out what's up. But the robot refused to butt. It wasn't until my father pulled his tube arms towards the workshop that Zorbo relented and started to move. But even as Zorbo's blinking body moved away from the street, his head remained turned. Those flashlights through which he took in the outside world were aimed straight at Cindy's house.

Love is the only thing that matters, Zorbo said. My father froze. The gentle note of humanity in Zorbo's voice, sense a bolt of discomfort through my spine. We recognise those words. Beautiful lawnmower, Zorbo said again, his artificiality returning.

My father's face slowly gained its smile. Beautiful lawnmower indeed, buddy. Let's get your circuitry checked out. There was enough pain medication and her to tire away most of her personality. But somewhere in that bony woman was the resemblance of my mother. We sat with her for the last two days of her life,

trying to say all the things we would regret not saying, and assuring her of what a beautiful life she had lived. Whenever she would sleep, I would go make my acquaintance with a soda machine and stroll around the hospital looking for people who had it worse than me. My father talked extensively to whoever would listen about the machines his wife was hooked up to.

Zorbo still stood in the back of the room. He never moved an inch until the hour when she died It was as if He could tell that the life was seeping out of her As if the machines that were keeping her alive Had told him that she was moving on As we listened to my mother's final attempts

At speaking Zorbo slid behind us We stood vigil as a family Love Is the only thing that matters She said Zorbo softly worded next to us as she died.

That night, I was sat with the memories and tried to make sense of everything. I saw my mom again. I felt that heat in my chest when I thought about Cindy. I could imagine myself as a regretful bolding 40-year-old. Love is all that matters.

Outside, my father tinkered away in the garage, trying to wipe Zorbo circuits of the notion of love. But in my bedroom, a fire of teenage passion was burning. I felt a son. sleep, trying to compose a monologue that would make Cindy swoon. Hey, were you meant to write a summary for the chapter or just until page 48? she asked.

I had no idea what she was talking about. All I knew was that we were sitting in her living room and I was about to tell her. I really like you, I blurted out. Like, as a person, Cindy, I think you're pretty cool. But also, I like you as, like, a romantic part. Like, I think you're cute, and I think about you all the time. I like you. I'm sorry.

It came out of me like a rushing waterfall, but my face felt like it was the surface of the sun. A confused look, turned up the heat. Uh... Her eyes kept on filtering. For a split second, she looked a bit like Zorbo, if you have asked him what time it was. I... Uh... I'm...

sorry, too, because, um, I like you as a friend, but, yeah, no. I stared down at my text book. Leonid Brissnav was glaring at me from the page. I should go, she whispered. I'll walk you out, I said, immediately biting into my cheek. The walk to the edge of the yard couldn't have taken longer than 30 seconds, but as we quietly made her way out of the house, I ate. the decade. My mind was wholly consumed by the sting of rejection, the tragedy of it, the unfairness of it. I was a little boy getting an allergic reaction to a Christmas puppy again,

but this time, instead of a rash of my skin, there was a rash of my heart. I walked past Sorbo without looking at him. From the whirring of his hand blades, I presumed that he was just mowing the lawn. She didn't say anything. Cindy walked across the street and passed the front door without a single glance back. Sure, she apologised a week later, and a couple months down the line, I was awestruck with someone else. But, in that moment, in that searing moment,

my world was on fire. Beautiful lawnmower, Zorbo said. Soyl clung to his metallic body. The blades that extended from his hands tore him to the ground, shooting bits of earth sprawling across the sidewalk. He stared across that street, with the same longing I had in my soul.

Love is the only thing that matters. Yeah, I said, as I shuffled off to my room to mope, my father found Zorbo shortly before the sunset. He walked out, calling to the robot about the dirty dishes that he gathered in the sink, but as soon as my father saw his creation digging into the ground, his tone changed.

He spoke to him in calm, soothing words. The robot, had been working like precise clockwork since the day that he was constructed. My father was worried to see his creation descend into glitch-filled madness. I knew I should have told him as soon as I found the malfunctioning robot,

but there were more pressing things in my mind. As my father rolled Sorbo into his workshop, my love for Cindy consumed me. The life we would have had if I had just waited, if I had just phrased my confession of love differently. Snapshots of an alternate reality burned into my mind like an angry film reel. The visions in my head grew sharper.

I didn't just get rejected by some teenage girl. I got rejected by my future wife. Images of me proposing, of us having a first child, of me sitting by a hospital bed as she died of old age. They squirmed through my mind, accompanied by a booming replay of the couple of dozen words with which I wiped them from the future. I was 100% sure I had reached my first lifelong regret.

I writhed with mental discomfort until I couldn't be alone. The lights were on in my father's workshop. Dad? I asked, standing in the door. Hey, Jimbo, sorry, going to skip over dinner tonight. I think there should still be some bolognese in the fridge, though. He said, not looking away from his work. My father's workshop was always a mess of disparate electronics and scattered tools. But that night, all other projects were cleared away to make room for Zorbo.

Our robotic family member lay in a wooden table, his sleek metal skin removed, revealing a chaotic mess of wires and computer chips. Was Zobo acting any different when you came home in school? He asked, while digging out a stack of microchips from behind the robot's eyes with a screwdriver. Yeah, he, uh, was digging a hole in the front yard. All right, well, my father buried the frustration in his voice with a sigh. Next time you see him doing something weird, please tell me right jim Zorbo's inner workings are very

fragile if something is wrong it needs to be fixed I don't want to lose into some loose wiring sorry dad I said he mumbled something and went back to tinkering with the robot's skull I was going to leave him to his work

but the sadness in my chest was far too potent for me to be alone I knew I needed to talk to someone so I asked Cindy out. As soon as the words left my mouth, his hands stopped moving. I didn't have

anything to say. As soon as he turned around, he could tell. Before I knew it, I was wrapped up in a bear hug with my eyes growing wet. It's going to be okay, Jimbo. There will be plenty of others. Proud of you. Proud of me?

Of course, you put yourself out there, and that's the most important... Love is the only thing that matters. Wires were hanging off his raw body. His flashlight ice put around the room, searching for an exit. Zorbo was gaining off the table and moving towards the door. Beautiful lawnmower, he goggled through a partially dismantled voice box. Sorebo?

My father let go of me and walked up to the staggering mess of electronics. Where are you going, Zorbo? Love is the only thing that matters, Zorbo said, shuffling his way past my father. Beautiful lawnmower. Now, now, Zorbo, my father said, grabbing Zorbo's arm,

slightly above the mud-caged blades. I think you need to lie down for a bit. There's something wrong with you and... Beautiful lawnmower. Zorbo boomed as he ripped free of my father's grip. Love is the only thing that matters. He continued walking out of the garage, each step filled with crackling defiance.

"'Saubo, you stop right this instant.' My father yelled in a tone I was only familiar to me from early childhood. "'If you keep behaving like this, I will shut you off.' The robot's body froze mid-step. He didn't turn around, but his head did. "'You want to stop Sorbo from love?' My father gently pushed me aside,

placing me away from the disobedient robot. "'Sorbo,' he said, his voice growing cold. Come back here and lie down on the table. The beams of light focused in my father. The wiring of Zorbo's body twisted and turned until they were face to face. The blade in his hand started to spin.

You want to stop Zorbo from love? His voice slowed in volume. He was almost drowned out by the sharp whirring of the mud-covered knives. Goodbye, friend. Zorbo's tubular arm came down like a chop. on my father's shoulder. Hoplard splashed all over my face. Pain screams filled my ears.

The blades cut through my father's skin like butter. I could hear the crackling of bones breaking. Through my father's throat-taring agony, I could hear a single word come through. Run! He wanted his only child to get away from the manic robot that was soaring at his arm. He wanted me to survive.

But I couldn't move an inch. I just stood there, pressed up against the tall cabinet, watching my father be murdered by a robot. I could see myself running across the street to Cindy's house. I could see myself trying to explain to a police officer that an unhinged robot killed my dad. I could see myself standing at my father's funeral, watching the dirt over his casket solidified my status as an orphan. But I would never actually see my father's funeral. Instead, I felt the cold steel of a monkey wrench in my head.

hand. I summoned a battle cry from the depth of my lungs. If I let my father die in the hands of a robot, I would regret it for the rest of my life. The adrenaline coursing through my veins gave reality a jagged edge. Everything moved in a neck-breaking speed, but each time the blunt object made contact the Zorbo's wiry brain, time dissolved into a short-lived eternity. Zorbo's intricately woven mind was reduced to a mess of cables. Soon enough, my wrench may contact. with the floor of the garage. Zorbo was dead. Everything after that

is a blur. I remember stumbling out into the street, covered in blood, barely able to muster up more strength to Yale for help. I remember Clark, holding down a torn shirt over the geyser of blood and was streaming out of my father's shoulder. I remember sitting

in the back of an ambulance, watching my father linger on the edge of life. For two days, I survived and a diet of pop and chocolate from a merely a vending machine. He had lost a lot of blood. Even at 14, I could sense though the doctors were preparing me for the worst.

But, miraculously, on the third day, I was allowed to see my dad. He was weak, desperately weak, but he was alive. All that cost him was his arm. He spent the entire summer in a state of exhausted shock from his creation turning on him.

But by the time the four leaves filled our yard, he was outside with a rake, cracking jokes. By Christmas, he had a new metallic arm, courtesy of his workbench. By new years, he was washing dishes. Mr. Clark was more than happy to give him the number of the lawnmower salesman. Life carried on. I graduated high school, moved out of state for university, and then continued moving every couple of years depending on where my job took me. I had my fair share of rejection and breakups.

But no heartache ever reached the mythical proportions of the rejection of 89. With all said and done, though, my father was right. Knowing that I had asked and got shot down was considerably easier to live with than having to wonder what could have been. I grew into an adult, and my father shrunk into an old man. He continued to do work for the army well into old age. But as time went on, he was phased out by younger minds, they were more in touch with modern tech.

In retirement, my father continued to tinker with electronics and built himself contraptions to help him with the tasks that old age made difficult. But, eventually, as Tremus set into his human hand, an age chipped away at his human brain, he stopped coming to his workshop. I found myself thinking about his funeral again. But this time, it wasn't just a panic snapshot forced into my head by a franted robot servant.

This time I knew that somewhere down the line, I will be standing in a church trying to summarize what the man meant to me in a speech to his old co-workers and family who I hadn't seen for years. But I never did. I never saw my father's funeral. The fact that I belonged to a whole generation of people who were robbed of a funeral makes the pain sting less. There were plenty of other children of the 80s who lost the parents during the pandemic of 20. Who didn't have weekly Skype calls with her father's, who had unresolved issues, we'd fallen out of touch. But knowing that I'm not the only one who lost the parent during the corona outbreak only lessens the pain slightly. The thought of him dying alone, feverish, connected to a respirator he could have built in his workshop,

still cuts into my heart with a fiery force. By the time I was able to travel back to my hometown, the house had been empty for months. I walked through the rooms who wept as the memories watched. over me. Even though I was filled with sorrow, there was a catharsis to it all. The two people who'd brought me into the world were gone, but they gave me the tools to survive in it. They shaped the person who mourned them. Each room was filled with evidence that I was loved, and I have it on good authority that love is important. But my father's workshop was different. When I turned on the light, I wasn't reminded of it.

of the afternoons I spent keeping my father company while he worked on his projects, or of all the toys that my father built me when I was a kid. No, there were no memories at all. All I could focus on was the object hidden beneath a bed sheet in the centre of the room. A part of me wanted to turn around and leave whatever my father's project was a mystery. But I knew myself well enough to know that the question of what was hidden beneath a bedsheet would still sleep away from me forever. I gripped my hand around the cloth

and pulled. It was the same lawnmower that Mr. Clark had back in the 80s. It, over-the-top impression of the future, seen nearly comical by modern standards. But there was something attached to its sleek, metallic frame that chilled me to my middle-aged core. Two red, flashing lights focused on me.

Love is the most important thing Zorbo's voice box whispered out of the core of the machine Beautiful lawnmower The movie theatre complex I work at is a pretty standard one Large lobby, popcorn and confectionery stands and film posters everywhere you look Numerous screens with row after row of seats and soft Here for little dusty red fabric

We have 12 screens in total officially. They're pretty obviously laid out. You grab your ticket and head past the attendant and the little rote-off gate. Down you go through one of the wide scarlet corridors of the complex. Pass large, faintly glowing white signs with enormous numbers printed across their faces. Screens 1 to 5 on the left. Screen 7 to 12 on the right. Screen 6 straight ahead. Screens 9 onwards requires you to head around a corner at the far end and for screen to 12, another still. There's a bunch of stuff back there.

A large supply closet, a vending machine, restrooms. Employee-only areas that lead you to some of the screens backstages. Not as exciting as you might think. And then, there's something else as well. We don't really know much about it. The big boss has forbidden us from heading down, but he's never actually here. So, naturally, we ignore this rule pretty frequently. My immediate supervisor loves going down.

When there's a few of us off shift, we'll typically sneak off as a little squad, head down with a few boxes of popcorn and watch for like an hour or more. It's always fascinating and it's always different. Screen Zero There is no glowing sign with a zero on it, if that's what you're wondering. Screen Zero is just a nickname we've decided on as a collective. Seems appropriate. Screen Zero can be reached by heading there is set of nondescript double doors

by the storeroom near the visitor entrance to Screen 12. We're heading there right now, my supervisor and I, and a group of three others. It's a quiet one tonight, and the only background noise to our joking and low-grade banter is the muffled, general buzz and rumble of the movies playing on the screens behind the corridor walls.

The glowing panel for Screen 11 flickers and words as we pass by it. The thing's been on blink for weeks now. We've been waiting on a repair for a while. What do you think is going to show tonight, Finn? Lev asked me. That's my supervisor, Lev. He's only a couple years older than me.

It's going to be a spooky one, I reply, grinning. I can feel it. I hate the scary ones, one of my colleagues mutters behind me as he stuffs a handful of popcorn into his mouth. They give me nightmares. There was a few whispers of Posse and other such insults accompanied by some good nature jostling. I'm not a part of it, however. I don't blame him. It's all fun and games in the light of the day, but at night at times like this, and especially down there in the dark,

screen zero can be seriously unsettling, though as part of the thrill, I guess. Screen zero is, at first glance, a screen like all the others. 100 or so seats, all in rows like you'd expect. The only light in Screen Zero, unless the screen comes alive, that is, is the faint dim glow of the green emergency exit sign. We have looked for a switch and a series of mains for the electrics, but our search has so far been unsuccessful. Nor have we been able to find any way backstage.

Screen Zero seems to be triggered into life, once everyone in the room has taken a seat. We reach the end of the complex corridor, past the panel for screen 12. He pushed through the double doors by the storeroom. It opens onto a set of narrow and undecorated stairs, leading down and around into the darkness below, and the mood shifts, as it always does, to one of excitement, if rather anxious energy,

and we begin our steady descent. The screen, typically once everyone who has chosen to venture down has settled, begins to rumble and quietly roar. In that way, the movie theatres always do before the movie starts to play. The anticipation builds. If you are particularly attuned, you can feel the subtle vibration of the speakers through the seats. In screen zero, some of the other swear they can feel a soft breeze against their face as the process begins, a stirring of the airs around their skin. Though, I have to say, I've never felt this myself. We're not sure how, but once we're quiet and watching without fail, that's when

the screen always begins to play. It cycles through weird and sometimes downright disturbing commercials and trailers, but we never get to see the actual film. The movie. It just never arrives. The anticipation builds and builds and builds, but the commercials and the trailers never stopped coming. The longest I've ever been down in Screen Zero was about an hour, but I know that sometimes the other guys tried for an overnight session one time, around Halloween. I think they made it about three hours before it all became too much and they bailed. There were four of them in total, but three of them don't come down to Screen Zero anymore. Two of them quit the job outright. The fourth was Lev, but even he won't talk to me about what he saw towards the end of their

little viewing party, just that the movie never played. We reached the bottom of the staircase and head through the lightless corridor that lies ahead and through the heavy doors at the opposite end. Screen zero awaits. Ten bucks say's dead girl plays tonight, someone mutters. I'll take you up on that, say someone else amidst the chuckles. And we scoge down the aisle to the seats in the very middle, the best in the house. The commercials and trailers that Screen Zero chooses to play for us are almost always different, unique in their own right.

That's part of what makes it so fascinating. But Dead Girl is one of the screen's rare examples of repetition. It's a trailer that varies subtly in its content, but always features the same titular character, the Dead Girl for a movie officially titled, You Left Her Behind and She Died. not the catchies of titles and one that often draws laughs when reminisce the bout in the lobby upstairs but when it appears in simple white text

upon the black title card before the trailer I can never help a terrible sense of sinking dread I know the others feel it too I'm hoping we won't be seeing it tonight but such is never guaranteed I think about my previous experiences in screen zero as I take my seat and that all too familiar rumble

picks up at the edges of the walls. Goosepumps ripple across my skin and I feel the urge to turn around to look behind me. And I do so. Behind is nothing but empty seats and shadow. I look back to the screen.

Screen Zero has shown us all sorts of curious and twisted scenes over the course of our many visits. The commercials are typically a little less frightening than the trailers, if still, rather insistent. at heart. I remember an ad for something called The Grindr. The screen flashed with blueprints for an enormous cylindrical machine,

all that rotated around and around, a picture of linear gears and barbs and crunching metal teeth. It was calmly discussed, and, I presume, explained by a man off screen, speaking in a language that none of us understood. Sounded vaguely European. The animated blueprints revealed, after a little more discussion,

a steady moving conveyor belt, one that led right into the path of the grinder. These animations were lost in favour of a more realistic 3D graphic of a large, clear container filling up with a dark, red-black fluid affixed to the grinder side as it turned and turned. The man's voice then suddenly cut out, replaced by silence,

and, after a few seconds more, the commercial cut out entirely, abruptly ending in black. There was a public safety announcement played on the screen once. A group of kids, aged around 9 or 10, were talking and playing with the group of Playmobile figures around a barbecue grill in a warm garden. The camera kept panning in real close on one of the figures, to the sound of a beating heart, growing steadily louder and louder.

The figure was, eventually, carelessly dropped by the kid who was playing with it, and the camera watched it tumble onto the barbecue grill and fall down past the metal grid onto the coals below. The camera maintained a slow pan as the children's laughter faded away and the figure started to burn and melt. The flames grew brighter and brighter in intensity, and not until the little toy had been melted beyond recognition did the screen cut mercifully to black.

Fire is not a toy, it said in yellow text. Keep your children safe from the dangerous. of fire. Even thinking about it makes me shiver. I remember the screen playing as a commercial for an enormous water park. Indoors, somehow,

which I would deem impossible given the park supposed its eyes, and the place was entirely empty. The water flowed, the camera panned across a plethora of exciting, and, upon reflection, a great many physically impossible slides, but no

people. It was rainforest-themed, beneath an enormous glass-like dome. Some other sides intersected with each other, the water flowing impossibly down only their predestined tracks, rippling with nothing more than a few bubbles where the streams intersected. The camera dove down great tunnels. Tunnels seemingly without end, filled with spiraling colors and flashing lights and cascading water,

widening into sizes that made no logical sense, merging with more of the tunnels and carrying off and away into the unknown. One of the tunnels was pitch black and made me feel very cold as the camera passed by, lingering for a moment on its entrance, and the churning grey-white foam that frothed there. There's something down there, I remember thinking, there's something in the tunnel. One time it just played as footage of an empty screen zero. For three full minutes, just footage of the screen's empty seats in the darkness. That could have well been the creepiest, actually. I was watching through my fingers, ever expecting for something to happen, for something to jump out from the shadows.

But nothing ever did. My thought process is interrupted by Screen Zero's dutiful awakening. I exchanged and nervous but excited glances with the guys. My heart beats with fearful anticipation. Here we go. Screen Zero flickers into life. One of the guys to my left munches quietly on a mouthful of popcorn. The first commercial cuts through the rumbling quiet with such intensity that I jump in fright in my seat.

Welcome, announces a sharp voice, and the screen rolls back to show us a man in a brown suit, walking across a hill of fresh green grass. He grins, revealing a mouth full of bright white teeth. Welcome indeed, friends to be, my pioneers, to a place that defies the limits of the world we know. It's time to re-question your assumptions about, what it means to be alive. He sounds British. He throws out of hand,

and the camera pans across the theme park of astronomical complexity. A picture of interlocking rails and whirring animatronics. Dream World salutes you, the man proudly proclaims, and through a series of fades we had taken around the theme park.

We see a fountain covered in robotic little frogs. The yellow orange eyes of a fibreglass dragon flashes bright as it turns on its pedestal in the midst of a roller coaster, one that passes through a cave. The cogs turn beneath a green-grey plastic of its body, and it opens its mouth, almost as if it is about to try and speak. Then the scene transitions to a colossal, animatronic whale, rising up from a body of water,

an electric whale's song pulses out from its form as the water above it is pushed aside. A grimace. This spectacle fills me with a deep and bizarrely primal fear. The whale looks ever so slightly too fake to be real. The movement of his jaw are too robotic. Its eye looks just a little too painted, and the result is an enormous animatronic monstrosity. I dread to think what vicious gears and pistons churn beneath it in the dark water.

Harry Lawson's dream world reads the text across the screen. Opening three. Not opening third, or opening in three months or three weeks, etc. just opening three. The screen cuts the black and the commercial is replaced by another. The screen fades into an aquarium, bathed in a pale, icy light.

I shiver. I get the impression that the aquarium is cold, and I feel this cold secondhand. A series of unusual circles appear overlaid on the screen and the panning shot of the aquarium beyond. There are three of these circles, some darker than others,

and two of them are broken in places. I move my head from side to side and realise that the circle in the middle seems to be closer than the others, as if it is being pushed out of the screen towards me. It's an optical illusion of some kind, one that makes me feel rather dizzy. The circles vanish and the sound of grating stone

like rock being dragged over a sheet of rough granite is played through the speakers, accompanying an atmospheric bubbling from the various tanks. The camera takes us through the aquarium, though I do not recognize any of the fish. We are shown silvery little creatures with tiny black bead eyes rippling silently through the water of the home.

Curious cylindrical crabs with tall, tearing shells, ambling and shuffling across the sands at the bottom of their tank. Eels lined with fur, slither grotesquely around and over each other in an exhibit filled with mossy green water. The pupils of their eyes are rectangular, like those of a goat.

The ruined and mutilated carcass of so now unrecognizable creature is dumped into the body of dark water and is dragged down into the depths by a great black lobster-like claw, one of horrific size. I squirm in my seat. Something is different tonight. These commercials feel more real than usual. I hate it, I decide and I want to leave, but I refuse to be attacked as a posse by the others. I won't be the first to get up. I won't.

It doesn't help that to do so, I believe, feels like breaking some kind of twisted spell. And I'm not walking up those creepier stairs in the dark by myself. I remain where I am as beads of sweat begin to bud across my skin. The commercial continues and shows us a mermaid. Beautiful, if a little eerie. She doesn't look like a person in a costume or CGI. She looks real.

And she stares at the camera in sad silence, her hair floating about to bare shoulders in the icy water. She's... Lonely, I decide. The ad cuts out, replaced by another. The walls of screen zero rumbled dutifully on. The faint green glow of the emergency exit sign flickers in the darkness. And when the screen relights, I feel my stomach lurch in distress.

No, someone murmurs in dismay to my right. It's her. It's the dead girl. It's too soon, I think, in curious panic. She's not supposed to appear until the trailers. It's too early. It's way too early for this. I have to remind myself that I'm just watching a screen.

They're just pictures on a screen. I'm not in any danger. We are not in any danger. There is no crunching or rustling in the seats around me now. In death silence we watch Unable to take her eyes from the screen The trailers and promos for The Dead Girl Are always slightly different

But at their base contain the same core element The camera begins on the girl's corpse She is still as death Eyes wide and lifeless Teeth clenched She is slumped in the seat of a movie complex Not this similar to our own

The light is cold and blue As is the shade of her skin Her eyes are also blue, only paler. She stares at nothing, up towards the ceiling. She has something clasped tight in her hand. She always does, but, as always, I cannot see what it is. The camera panned slowly back, so terribly, painfully slow. I want to look away, but I can't bring myself to do so.

As more of the room is made clear to the audience, the edges of the theatre seats are revealed to be tipped to. in frost. The sound of wind blowing beyond the walls grow subtly in volume as snow starts to drift into the girl's complex. My heart thrums in my chest. The camera

has begun to rotate. Round it goes and the broken walls of the complex are made clear. Beyond their edge is only bleak white mist. In another few seconds the camera will meet the gaze of the dead girl. Her eyes will bore back into mine.

The anticipation is torture. And I cringe in discomfort. Any second now, and our eyes meet. The camera cuts to a close-up shot of the girl's face, then fades the black. You left her behind, reads the text, and she died. The words hanging the void of the screen for a moment more. Then they too disappear. Aurora's seat is utterly silent.

No one breathes. The great robe of tension upon which the atmosphere is balanced grows tighter and torter, stretched horrifically and unnaturally. Guys, I want to say, it's time to go. Please, we need to leave. But I cannot bring myself to do it. An irrational fear has taken a hold of me, one that claims that by doing so I will single myself out to screen zero, and I might as well draw a target across my face. So, I remain motionless, staring. dead girl's pale blue eyes still burned like ice into my mind.

The screen lights up with the next commercial. The cycle continues. The camera pans in on a long, low building, well maintained and wildly out of place, nistled as it is amongst the squalid, run down street of an unfamiliar city. A little jingle plays from the speakers, one which is wholly unremarkable, yet grotesquely upbeat. Had the jingle played on TV and the friendly light on my living room

I doubt I would have even looked up from my phone but here played in the darkness of screen zero following the quiet horror of an unexpected dead girl promo it's sick it makes my skin crawl

the camera draws us through the double doors of the building then the doors beyond and the place is revealed to be a restaurant of some kind at first glance it seems relatively normal deep scarlet decor wealthy-looking patrons

eating their meals at the tables the air seems to ripple ever so subtly with heat and it's as if I can actually smell the sense that the restaurant boasts rich pork fragrant spices and fine meat but the longer you look

the more you start to notice it's all meat for one thing every plate is piled with ribs and slabs of steak sticky and leaking as the camera travels through the restaurant and passes the patrons by. We hear their snorts and burps of gluttony.

They're ravenous chomping and munching and grinding teeth. We see the juices fly from their lips, and the patrons themselves. Their skin, upon closer inspection, is covered in scales. Some more flesh-colored, some closer to grey. I grip the edges of my seat as one. Only one of the nearest patrons bulging ice swivels around in its sockets to regard the camera. The other, staring at the plate of meat, being lowered by the waitress to the table. She has three.

The waitress has three eyes. One of the patrons, to my utter disgust, right near the back, appears to be little more than an enormous, scrabbling beetle. They are lost to sight as the camera pushes through the doors to the kitchen, and my stomach twist and turns in bitter revulsion. A large woman stands proudly, hands clasped before. her. Her skin is greyish and her eyes bulge out like all the rest of them. Her neck is lost of rolls. Her neck is lost a rose of several great chins and when she opens her mouth it reveals her rows of broken, sharpened teeth. Far sharper than teeth have any right to be. She speaks

about a grand reopening but I struggle to pay attention to her words. I cannot tear my focus away from what I can see behind her, in amongst the chefs. The human core. corpses. Many are headless and limeless, sizzling away behind the counter, dripping succulents as they are turned on their spits, bubbling and steaming on the grills. My mouth fills with pre-vumpt saliva and have to force the sensational way. I watch a chef bring down his blade and slice the fingertips from a hand of a severed arm. Only the finest, the woman finishes, farm-raised and locally sourced. And the screen cuts to a card of deep. burnt red. Now hiring, it reads across it in gold, with its turns and conditions in small print

along the bottom. There is no time to read it, however, before the commercial ends, and, as it does so, I can feel the heat of the room leave with it, and we are plunged back into the cool darkness of the theatre. Speak, Finn, speak, say something. I summon from within every ounce of will I can find. "'Lev,' I whispered to my right, in a voice that shakes and is barely audible. "'Lev, what do we do?' "'He hears me. I know it. "'But he doesn't respond. "'His knuckles are white against the armrest.'

"'The next commercial plays. "'It's her again. It's dead girl. "'The exact same scene as before. "'The silent and empty movie theatre, "'the cold and staring lifeless. size, the frost-tipped seats and the edges of snow in the rising wind. Please, I beg silently, please make it stop. But the trailer plays on, if anything, a little slower than it did before.

The camera rotates to meet a blind gaze. It holds on the close-up of her face, then cuts out once again. You left her behind, and she died, reads the text. The screen changes. I can't take much more of this. We made a decision coming down here tonight. A real, terrible mistake. This is so much worse than what it's supposed to be.

A loud and clown-like laughter burst from the speakers as the pictures on screen light up in a myriad of sickly, artificial enhanced colours. Wow, says the little girl as the camera zooms in on her face, then down to her hand. We are shown a pair of ancient dice, sitting in the centre of a palm, and carved from a thick and deep red-brown wood.

They are quite obviously out of place in their cartoonish, exaggerated surroundings. Hey, let me see those, calls a boy, and the girl gleefully throws the dice through the air, and the boy catches them in his fist. Another series of zooms and close-ups. There's a whole group of them now, of kids all looking at the dice and dressed in bright primary colours. Hey, kids, comes a disemboded voice.

and the children look up the screen, smiles wide. Yeah, they replies one. Are you feeling lucky? They cheer and clapping response as a jaunty xylophone pop tune bubbles away in the background. Make a wish and give him a roll. Just keep him close and watch your soul.

Sings the voice merrily. I wish for ice cream, says the boy and he crouches the roll that dies across the ground. The camera follows the movements of the exaggerated angles and quick-changing close-ups. The dice land heavily on a four and a three. The camera suddenly swivels and the colours are temporarily blurred. The focus shifts to the street and an ice cream truck skids to a stop by the front lawn.

Hey, calls the driver, adjusting his cap. What do you know? My freezer's just gone and broke. You kids want any of this ice cream before it melts. The camera shifts to a POV of the ice cream man as the cheering kids run the length of the grass. for their free cones. He starts to hand them down to the jumping, buggy children, all except for the boy

who actually rolled the dice. He is not the camera's focus, but he can be seen in the background, writhing and screaming in the grass. The others have left him behind. He cries out in pain as red cuts and fresh scars that slice in their way across his bare skin,

as if marked by an invisible blade. His screams are lost beneath the music. The camera, shows up a close-up of the dice, still in the grass, and a third girl grabs them up. She looks into the camera with a smile, ice cream cones slowly starting to drip into her other hand. I'm so sick of my mom, she exclaims with a grin. I wish she was dead. The laugh track plays, and the screen cuts the black. The commercial ends. Jesus, it's so cold in here, I think to myself, shivering.

Since when was Screen Zero so cold? This is hell. I'm trapped in a nightmare here. We have to go. But nobody moves and the watch party continues. The screen bathes the seat in front in a soft yellow light. It shows us yet another movie theatre, one like ours, more or less empty and occupied by only a handful of guests, sat right in the very centre. For one long, terrible moment, I think that it is us.

A screen zero is showing us footage of ourselves. There's Lev sat in the middle. I tense right up. But no, it isn't us. The people on screen are smiling. They are laughing. I can't hear what they're saying, but they're talking in low voices. I have to examine him closely, but the teenager in the middle is not Lev.

Similar for sure, but the bone structure is slightly different. His hair is lighter. "'Lev,' someone whispers to my right, "'isn't that your dad?' "'Lev again does not respond. "'Could it be, I think? "'Could that be Lev's dad, back when he was young?' "'There are five of them in the group,

"'four guys and a girl.' "'The girl alone stops laughing. "'She quietly disengages with the group "'and looks slowly up at the camera, "'her bright blue eyes glittering "'a little green in the yellowish light. "'I swallow a sharp intake, of air.

It's her. It's the dead girl. But I have no time to process the implications of this realization before the scene cuts out yet again. A white message flashes up in the black. The following trailer are appropriate for the rating of this film. Then it disappears. The text is replaced by the title card for a movie that does not exist.

It's called Broken and Rebels from the Skeleton, Rated NC-17. C-17. The day began as any other, whispers the narrative voice of a young woman as the scene fades in. It's fall in New England. She is locking up the front door of a little house and heading down the street,

drawing her coat about her shoulders against the breeze. When, without even a word of warning, everything changed. The woman steps into a thin but wide cluster of orange-red leaves, and she stumbles. She trips and falls.

right through. She falls through the leaves as if they were water and disappears from sight. The camera shakes and we see her panicked. She's falling through a shadowy tunnel. The leaves blown all around her body. The leaves fly past the camera and they are replaced by great webs and hordes of spindly spiders, watching her fall with her hungry green eyes. A close-up is played of a pair of fangs that tear into the back of her hand, ripping off a slither of flesh with bursts of blood. The woman screams and twists As she falls through the tunnel

She is caught with a mortal suddenness In the strings of a great web One which promptly and mercilessly snapped her neck The camera holds its position The spiders draw in Leave her alone Calls out a voice And a flash of light encompasses the screen

The scene fades in slow And we see the woman in a childhood bedroom Metal bars can be seen protruding from a neck, connecting her head to her shoulders. She raises an arm with an accompanying mechanical whir, and the camera zooms in on the back of her head through her hair as she rises to a robotic stand. There is the spider.

Hidden in a crevice he is built in the back of a skull, tugging on wires and little metal wheels with his many legs. I will fix you, he whispers. You're safe with me. Dramatic classical music starts to play. over the speakers, and the audience has granted several wide, panning shots of New England cities and landscapes. We see the woman being harassed on a bus by a gang of teenagers. We see her lose her hand as she tries to brush her teeth with a cluster of bolts and gears. She never reacts,

only stares expressionously ahead. We see her standing on the side of a bridge on the rain, and we see the spider eating its way through a corpse of a rat. It cuts abruptly to black with a beat of a drum. Coming soon. Darkness. Lev, I whisper. We need to go, man. We need to go before. Before the trailer for the Dead Girl plays, I mean to say,

because I know that it will be different this time. It'll be different for the worse. But I cannot bring myself to say the words. I can't do it. The weight of the environment forces me back into strange silence. The trailers play on. Cornfield, this one is. called rated R.

And sure enough, the opening shot is one of a cornfield, gold and green, shifting and stirring in gentle breeze. The camera remains fixed in place as a rumbling rises in the speakers, reverberating through the seats and the floor and the corn starts to shake a little more violently. The sounds of heavy scuttling and a low grinding and clicking becomes clear amidst the rubble. And just when I can take the growing tension no more, a colossal centerpiece. creeps into view in the distance. Massive and unearthly, it winds

his way through the corn, ever scanning for the most rewarding route with its lightless black eyes. It tears the corn from its stems with its pincers and chews it up as it scuttles up close and right across the view of the camera, shaking it a little as it does so. Release, summer,

flashes the text across the corn backdrop. There is a date beside it, but the numbers are scrambled. It cuts the black and the next trail plays. and we are too late It is time it would seem to pay the price for our inaction My heart pounds loud and hard in my chest As if it is trying to burst free

As if it is trying to escape from this terrible place You left her behind and she died Rated NC-17 No someone murmurs to my left But there is nothing we can do now but watch We may as well be bound to our seats It opens on that all too familiar theatre complex The dark rows of seats cast under a cold blue light

I shiver The temperature drops The camera movements remain the same but She's not there The dead girl is nowhere to be seen Despite the icy chill in the air The beads of sweat across my neck And shoulders begin to leak down my back

The ground shakes The wind rises And the snow starts to fall Whether it falls on screen Or in real life All around us here in screen zero I could not say I cannot look away

The seats are tipped at frost The camera reveals her same wrecked walls That swirling snowy mist beyond But the dead girl's seat is empty A sudden and biting fear Terrible beyond word strike hard and holds me tight in its jaw. She's here in screen zero,

I realize in panic. She's in one of the seats behind us. She's right behind us at this exact moment. Does anyone else have this same thought simultaneously? Is it one that is shared? Because Lev speaks now, is voice low but loud as our hair is whipped back from her heads. The wind is ice.

and it blows with the force of a gale. Don't turn around, he commands as the rushing force of the hurricane blows in my ears. Don't turn around. She isn't here. She can't be. It's a screen, nothing more. Just don't turn around.

The voice of a girl, impossibly loud and painfully shrill, screams in fury from the speakers, forcing them into crackling and sparking despair. You left her behind. You left her behind in the waist. How could you? How could you leave her behind? It wasn't me, left shouts in defence.

I swear it. You left her behind, screams the response with the force of a barreling storm. You left her behind! With a final piercing shriek and a roar that rumbles the foundations of the building, we are pressed back into our seats and forced to close her eyes tight shut against the burst of the iciest wind so far. I can feel the sting of it on my cheeks, on my ears. I can feel the torrents of snow and sleet against my skin. I feel it.

But when the gust has passed and we are able to open our eyes once again, the screen is just as it was. No frost, no snow, no wind. The screen is black. The speakers are quiet. Silence. And something happens next that has never happened before. Not to my knowledge at least.

The trailers, to my mind. dismay. Come to an end. This isn't supposed to happen. None of this is supposed to happen. Did we push our look too far? Did we push Screen Zero beyond its limits? The director's title card appears.

It tells us the name of the film. The name of Screen Zero's exclusive film. It is called The Waste's An Interactive Journey. Unrated. The sense of dread that overhauled. comes me, as the picture fades gradually in from the black, is like nothing I've ever experienced, nor have ever experienced since. As it washes over me, I feel as if I'm drowning. I am drowning down here in the dark of screen zero. A lone violin plays softly and sadly through the speakers,

and the camera begins a long, slow pan across the bound field of rock and snow. As far as the eye can see, from grey horizon to grey horizon, is empty space. ruined columns of stone and vast flat plains of white. A pack of shadowy walls appear from behind a stone. They pad towards the camera, and as they draw closer, their forms become clearer. They are headed right for the camera. They are looking right through it.

They are looking right through the screen. And to my horror, I recognize them. I recognize each and every wolf, because they are us They are the group of guys that sit beside me Myself included Our skin and bodies and faces Stretch nightmarishly over the skeletons of wolves

Eyes are glow There is me padding through the snow Lev is beside me He pulls back the lips of his twisted human wolf jaw And snarls and snaps And that's it That's the end of it The trigger

Leve, the real Leve, springs up from a seat with a scream. It is the cataclysm that we so desperately needed, and the dominoes fall as fast as a blink. The entire group is on their feet in an instant, in the throes of panic, shouting and swearing and pushing and clattering for the exit. Back we run past the seats and up the aisles in the dark as the wolves snap and snarl at our heels. Back we push through the heavy double doors, back through the corridor and back up those narrow backroom stairs, back into the scarlet corridor of the lobby, with bloodshot eyes and drenched in sweat,

and back we stumble round the corners and into the theatre's main lobby. Terrified, drained, but safe, safe and alive. That was one of the worst nights of my life. They've quit the following day and stopped responding to my messages. I'm still an employee,

I need the money, but I called out. sick and use the great many off days in the following weeks, and I'll be damned if I'm ever heading back down to screen's hero. Screw that, never again. Because as if all that wasn't bad enough, there's still something I haven't mentioned yet, something we saw at the very end of our experience, and every time I find myself dwelling in curiosity on the meaning behind the movie, behind the movie titled The Waste and Interactive Experience, behind the Appearance of the Dead girl, and of supposedly Lev's father and all the rest.

I think of what I saw on my way out. As we pushed and shoved her ways through the shadows of screen zero to the exit, there was something new on the wall, something changed, something that could have only been put up by hand by a physical presence in the theatre. It was a poster, affixed to the wall, one that was not there when we went in. I'm sure of it. It was a poster for, you left her behind and she died. It was blue and cold and showed in the lower half the head and shoulders of the dead girl,

staring out at nothing with those lifeless eyes. Above her, retreating into the distance were row after row of theatre seats, all tipped in frost. And at the very back, at the very back of the poster, where a chaotic group of human-shaped shadows, pushing and giant, and sprinting their way through the swelling mists.