CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - 7 CHILLING r/Nosleep Reddit Horror Stories to listen to while contemplating what to watch on Netflix

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

CREEPYPASTA STORIES-►0:00 "I discovered a bridge in the mountains, where the footprints only ever go halfway" Creepypasta►58:36 "I shouldn't have looked through the old family pictures" Creepypasta►1:25:55 "The Meat Man" Creepypasta►1:50:19 "I Needed to Know the Truth About the Abandoned London Underground Station" Creepypasta►2:11:35 "If the Uber you get in seems strange, trust your gut" Creepypasta►2:43:47 "My Wife and I Moved into an Old Farmhouse. The Basement is Possessed" Creepypasta►3:06:35 "SCB-129" 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►Peter Polach: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LR9NkSUGGESTED 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/CreepsMcPastaCREEPYPASTA 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-

This weekend I'm in a while I'm new as I'm not on think. Oh, that dossier that morning off must be all moot as I'm too

on think. Oh, van't after I'm a moose as I'm on moose if I'm not on think. Have you it to come to come?

Give yourself then a boost with BioCure Maxshot Liquid. Three opepend Planta, magnesium, iceer.

An energy booster to make sure to come to come out of Bocure Macshot Liquid. Fooding Supplement forc try

by the apotheker. The bridge stands exactly 25 minutes walk from the last house of town. You have to take the path that winds around the edges of the field. Then when the root splits, you take the track less travelled. Head towards the mountains in the east until you reach the river, then follow it upstream for about 10 or 11 more minutes. That's where it is. Beautiful and unassuming, a careful little stone structure built over the river.

I discovered it for the first time in the summer and I only found it by chance. It wasn't immediately obvious, the bridge. My dog, Bertie, was the one who actually led me there. I let him off the lead and he made a bee-line right in that direction. I had to rush after him when I became concerned he might tumble into the river. It was stupid of me really. I haven't let him off leash anywhere dangerous since then.

don't worry. But yeah, so that's when we found the bridge. Bertie spent a happy half hour sniffing all around it and wagging excitedly, though in the summer it isn't particularly remarkable. It leads over the river to a small clearing, pleasant enough, nice grass, a big tree. Some tumbled rocks where it borders the base of the closest hills. I don't know what else to tell you really. It just leads to nowhere in particular

Probably why it's never used And no one knows it exists But in the winter Something changes Just under a week ago I was walking Bertie down the same route I'd opted as I sometimes do For the trackless travelled

Marvelling quietly at the mountains in the snow When I felt Bertie tug at the leash I looked down at him And he looked back up at me And he winded little. I laughed. Silly dog, what do you want, huh? But it was clear what he wanted to do. He wanted to head back to his favorite bridge. All right, but, hell, let's do it. So, I allowed him to lead us back down along the river, being careful to keep him unleashed this time.

Upon arrival, I could immediately tell that something was different. There was a certain sense in the air, an atmosphere that just a little. fell off. So, despite Bertus' pleas, I decided to deny his pleas to go sniffing about. I don't recall what I thought exactly when I spotted the anomaly for the first time. The tracks, I mean, the footprints in the snow. I think my first thought was probably modest surprise that somebody actually knew the bridge existed. But the real bizarrity was the fact that the footprints only went halfway across. Regular boot-shaped footprints

leading up and out to the middle of the bridge and there they just stopped. They just vanished as if the man was mid-step and then simply dissolved into thin air, into wintry mist. The thoughts made me shiver, but I didn't take it particularly seriously.

Though Bertie was desperate to go and investigate, I held him back. and instead we went along our way. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. I just couldn't get those unnatural footsteps out of my head. Just let it go already, I tried to tell myself. This is so stupid. The guy probably doubled back on himself,

or maybe the snow fell and covered up some of the prints. But both of these rationalizations failed to adequately explain what I saw. Did he just jump off, push himself up, under the side of the bridge in a single jump and then leap right off. But why would he do that? Why would anyone do that? Maybe you get whisked away the second you reach the halfway mark. Whisked away to never return to some magical land.

And so, a few days later, I find myself back at the bridge. More tracks, more footprints. Deer prints this time, by the look of them. And again, only halfway a cross. cross to that empty, unassuming, snowy clearing beyond. And I know what you're thinking. You're wondering why I haven't crossed myself to check it out already, to see what would happen. And to be honest, it's because to do so is stupid.

Why should I cross, so I can see my footprints in the snow and push these intrusive daydreams aside? It's childish. I've no need to do such a thing. So naturally, my story begins a day later, right here at the foot of the bridge, preparing to cross. Bertie isn't with me this time, it's just me. Jacket open at the front and allowing in the chill. I could zip it up and save some warmth, but to do so would require me to take my hands out of my pockets.

And to be honest, I can't really be bothered to do that right now. The snow-capped pine tree to my right Sways gently in a sudden breeze And I shiver Still stubbornly refusing to remove my hands from my pockets Ahead in the snow are the prints of a fox They pat around in a rough circle And then head to the bridge

My eyes follow them up The little dents in the white And sure enough There they cease At exactly halfway Halfway Only ever halfway Well, we'll see what happens with mine, won't we?

I say aloud to no one. My breath clouding as I take my first steps forwards. I keep to my pace and I don't slow or turn back. Tudging forwards and crunching in the snow, my footprints deep and obvious. Drawing closer now, closer to the middle. My heart to my confusion starts the pound. but I don't slow down

I just keep moving forwards until I have crossed halfway head down I watch my feet continue to make dutiful prints in the snow over the bridge across the snow I come to a quick stop at the other side of the embankment there

done I did it I sigh with just a little disappointment a part of me really wish that something was going to happen something, anything, something to add a little spark of wonder to my life. But even as I think these thoughts, I realize that something has changed. I have crossed the bridge, but looking back over it now, I see what appears to be the clearing on the opposite side.

The clearing I should have crossed to. Yes, there's the big tree, the tumbling rocks and the edges of the hills. hill, the mountains leading away beyond. I start an alarm as I see that my footprints only descend down the nearest half of the bridge. The opposite half is layered with entirely unbroken snow. What the hell? The footprints, my footprints, and, incidentally, the footprint of the fox, carry on down towards me, but they lead from nowhere.

No, I think to myself, no way. Turning around, I tried to take in my surroundings. It wasn't immediately obvious that anything had changed, but now that I properly examine, I see that the landscape here is a complete mirror of the way it looked on the opposite side of the bridge. Still wintry, still layered in snow. The river is there, and the hills and mountains.

The trees are different, and they're all in different places. There are tracks through the snow that didn't exist before. Not possible. This is insane, I muttered to myself bewildered. Hey! Comes the sudden voice of a girl, not far from me either. I jump in surprise, and there stands the voice's source. A girl about my age, maybe a little younger, wrapped up in a teal blue woolen sweater and a grey, thready scarf. She's standing by a small pine tree with one hand on the trunk, The other she brings up to a cautious, curious wave. She cocks her head and her antlers tip to the side.

Two prominent antlers like a deer's sprouting up from the top of her head. Jesus, I shout an alarm, turning at once and tripping in the snow, staggering back to the bridge. Hey, wait, she calls out, but I do not. I sprint right across, eyes forced closed by sudden blast of icy breeze. at the bridge's centre before stumbling down to the bank of the other side. Damn, when did it get so dark? I look back behind me to see the original spectacle. On the opposite side is just an empty clearing.

The clearing I was expecting to see. No girl, no mirrored world, and of course my footprints only go halfway across the bridge, just as it was before. I sprint all the way home and spend the evening in my room with Bertie considering the things that I have seen my fear

once I have time to process quickly gives way to embarrassment then to frustrated curiosity why did I leave so quickly she seemed nice a nice girl with antlers as the night progresses

I struggle to get her out of my head I end up doodling her in the corner of one of my notebooks. What if she's trapped? What if she needs help? The thoughts go round and around as the snow falls beyond the windows and she dances through my dreams in the night. The second that the sun has risen on the next wintry morning, I have left the house, heading right back to the bridge with determination.

Heart beating as I feel through me something unknown, something exhilarating. the excitement of a genuine adventure perhaps I realize as a walk that is not something I've ever really felt before not in this it's purest form the pines bristled quietly in the breeze

and the river runs slowly beneath the ice when I approach the bridge I see that the night's falling snow has entirely covered my old tracks and the crossing looks untouched I take a deep breath and slide on my eyes gloves, then make my way down to it.

Don't chicken out, Stan, I tell myself, you got this. Over the bridge I go, watching carefully this time, waiting for the exact moment of the change. I hit the halfway point and that cold breeze forces me to squint and blink, and it's in these blinks that my surroundings are suddenly shifted. The view of the clearing ahead is lost, though I know now that I would still see its mirror image if I were to look behind me. In front of me is the shifted landscape, the new trees, the new tracks. And there, sitting on a branch in the tree this time, is the girl. The girl with the antlers and the teal blue sweater. We stare at each other for a moment. Then she waves at me and jumps down

from the tree, landing with a nimble crunch in the snow. Hey, she says, it's you. It's you. Isn't it? The boy from last time. Uh, yeah, uh, hey, I reply awkwardly. Still not sure entirely how to react to her. So, uh, I came back to... Yeah, you came back. Real bad timing though. What were you thinking? She isn't smiling this time. I don't know how to respond.

Uh... Look, come on, quick. Just get over here. She runs up to me and grabs my coat, dragging me down and away from the bridge. Hey, wait, just hold on her. We have to go, all right? They're watching the bridge. They, who's? But the sound of a sudden whistling wine, followed by a burst of flame in the snow to my right, cuts my question in half.

Damn, I shout an alarm as a trail of fine cloud races through the air above her heads, finishing in a tree as that whistling wine catches up to it and bursts into a ball of fire. sending roasted pine needles raining down. The outlet girl drags me through the bushes, snow bursting in little clouds all around us as we push through, and she leads me across the nearby field. I turned to look behind me, wide-eyed at the sight that meets me there. Unlawful entry of any organism into the wholly mechanic territory,

surrender yourself at once. Blares an angry mechanical voice. Stumbling past the tree, and through the hedges come too tall and spindly beings made of a grim, dark metal. Plumes of thick black smoke are since spiraling up and out from pipes and chimneys that adorn their bodies. They comprise their bodies in an exoskeleton fashion. They grind and wear, and their necks extend out to disappear into a disturbingly fish-looking heads. Made of a strange charred metal, though, of course.

One of those metal monstrosities brings round an arm, and the tubes that connects its elbow to its body glistened bright in a sudden volcanic orange. I have to shield my face as a great breath of fire shivers from the creature's knuckles and torches the surrounding snow. I'm struck by a wave of warmth and turned back to face the way I'm going, running as fast as I can to keep up with the girl. What the hell? I shouted her, but she ignores me, instead skidding to a rapid stop. I stumble right past her and she grabs the cuff my cup. coat, dragging me suddenly sideways and down the edge of a steep bank, down towards the widening,

iced over river below. Down we go, then round corner after corner, our feet cracking the edges of the water's ice until the ground to our left levels out, and she holds me up into the snowy shrubbery at the base of the nearest mountain. It isn't until she's brought me into the relative safety of a shallow cave that she lets me go, and I stumble down onto my ass at one. trying to catch my breath as I push myself back against the cave wall, watching her wearily. She watches me back, and we sit for a while, just us too out of the cold and unsure of what to say.

She eventually breaks the ice with, You don't have any antlers? No, I reply. I don't. So, how do you fight? Like, what do you use? Fight? Well, I don't really get into many fights, but with my hands, I guess.

Your hands? Yeah, you know, like my fists. She looks down at her own fists as if considering. Huh, weird. You must have really strong arms. I flush. Then laugh awkwardly. Um, well, I mean, I guess.

There's another pause. Why did you come over the bridge at such a dumb time? she asks me. I don't even know how to answer that, I reply. I just came over because I was intrigued. I didn't think anything was actually going to, you know, happen when I crossed. Why did you run away the last time? She asks.

I just got, I don't know, I wasn't sure what was happening. I wasn't as prepared yesterday as I was today. Yesterday? Yeah, yesterday when I first came over the bridge. She shakes her head with a little half-smobile. Oh silly, it's been like four months. I tried to comprehend this. Four months?

She nods vigorously. Oh, right. Four months. I peer out to the cave entrance to the snowy world beyond. So, what the hell is going on? Where am I, and her, who are you exactly? She leans suddenly close to me, and I, and I, stumble back up against the cave wall.

Her eyes are large and brown, and she has a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and her upper cheeks. So does anyone have antlers where you're from? She asks. Um, no, not really. Dia do, I guess, but I don't know if that's what you mean. Dear? She repeats, leaning back in her haunches.

Weird. She peeks out the cave entrance. I think we're okay. now, the machine folk don't tend to bother coming out this way. They just want to protect their holy sight. I run a hand across my forehead. Holy sight. Look, could you just tell me your name? I ask her. Kalala, she replies, smiling. You? Stan, I reply. So, how come you were watching the bridge? Well, it's kind of my job to wait for animals that come through and help them get to safety. A smart drops.

A person came through once, about a year ago. Like you, no antlers either. He was one of the first creatures to cross the bridge after I took over the watcher roll. Her mood changes and the atmosphere cools a little. I wasn't fast enough to save him. I still think about him sometimes. He was a fully grown male.

But the machine folk made an example of him. I failed him and is something I've worked really, really hard to never do again. What did they do to him? I asked quietly. And she sighs and looks away. They strung him up, Stan, as a warning. I choose not to ask her to elaborate on this for now. The wind picks up outside and the sound of its rumble grows steadily louder.

Come on, she says to me, take my hand. She's warm. I don't want us to get trapped here all day. let me take you to our hide out. I nod and she leads me back out and into the bluster. I look around for signs of machines, but seeing no evidence of their presence, I fall in step alongside Kalea,

and together we trudged to the fields and the edges of the forest beneath the gentle, watchful eyes of the mountains. She tells me about herself, about this side of the bridge. She's never been across to my side, apparently, and aside from the man she mentioned her, I think I might be the second human she's ever seen. She tells me about the machines, about how the bridge and its gate between the worlds is something that the machine supposedly made themselves long, long ago, and is now regarded by these metallic beings as something of a sacred sight. The machines believe that the bridge continues to work due to its perfect balance between nature and machinery.

The location of the trees and the angles at which the bridge looks out to the hills. and mountains, all of critical importance. She scoffs a little when she says this, and I look across to her. The machine folk are hypocrites in her words. Outside of the sacred zone, wherever they go, they level and landscape and dig deep holes in the ground, pumping out fumes and bile, indifferent to the people who cross their paths at best, actively hostile at worst. If they really cared, then they wouldn't use those high.

horrible flamers, she mutters, brushing some hair behind her ear. I catch a glimpse of a deep burn around her wrist as she does this, though she quickly tugs his sleeves back down. I tell her about my life back home too. I tell her how machines aren't people, but things that people use, and this is a concept she seems fascinated by. So they just do what you tell them too?

She asks. How come? Because they have to, a reply. That's how they're designed. They don't think or anything. They don't think, she repeats. Yeah. Huh, she says, wrinkling her nose and thought.

How do you know? I don't have an answer for this. I also tell her about my dog, Bertie. Her eyes light up at his mention and unbarragal questions all about him. She doesn't recognize the word pet, but is happy to refer to him as my companion. I had a peace companion of my own once, she says excitedly. Her name was Arelli, but I had a letter go off on her own once she got too big.

I still see her sometimes, though, when she passes through. You let her go? What breed is she? Grey Wolf, she chirps. I laughed nervously. Right, I see. Maybe I could meet Bertie someday, she asks. Well, uh, yeah, why don't know?

not. I guess I could bring him over some time. You need to come through when their machines aren't taking part in their pilgrimage, though, okay? Otherwise, you'll have the same issue as you did today. I'm about to ask her to explain what she means by this, but as I open my mouth, we pass by our lone, higher hill, and the air chills. The sun breaks only feebly through the thick snow clouds overhead, but the narrow beams of winter light that have made it through glint warningly against the totem atop the hill. I left my gaze as its shadows passes across Kalea and I

and a wave of fear shivers down my spine in response. The totem atop the hill is comprised of a series of sharp dark metal poles and scraps of metal intricately woven to form the shape of a cross. A fixed to the cross is a black, flamescought skeleton.

This jaw hangs from one hinge and its rib cage is stretched and cracked wide open. Sinner and trespasser are written on signs that hang from across his limbs. Kalea looks up at it with me, and she pauses for just a moment. She rubbs her quick hand across her eyes and mutters something soft and quiet to herself under a breath before carrying on. She walks a little quicker than before, and the conversation dies with a mood. I struggle with a deep and foreboding paranoia,

as we leave the terrible shadow behind us, and we continue on and into the haze. It's not much further, Kalala tells me, as we pass into the forest. We've been walking for about 20 minutes since leaving the little cave, and her mood improved when I offered her some food I brought with me. Nothing special, just some store-bought cookies, but she'd enjoyed them so much, I actually felt a little bad telling her that he didn't have any more to give her.

I'm also not really sure what to expect of this hideout, she mentioned. I'm kind of picturing a Robin Hood-esque roughed-up campsite strung up between some trees, a band of merry men all with antlers hanging out in the woods. The truth, however, is quite different. Damn, is all I can say when I first lay eyes on it, on the hideout. Here we are, says Kalea, and she spread to her arms. Before us, and nestled in the trees are a series of narrow wooden houses.

They lean into and against each other at unusual angles. But aside from this, they look remarkably stable, and indeed very livable. What I'm seeing is less a base camp and more an intricate little village. The inhabitants are antleture, but that's about all I got correct with my prediction. They are of all ages, and they stare at me as we passed them by. There are modest market stalls here, stone whales surrounded by leaves at their bases and signposts grown into the trees. Kaleila comes a gruff voice to our right. Kalea stops and I do likewise.

Watching as a tall and white-set man puts down his tools and walks right over to us. He's massive and his antlers go out further and wider than Kalea's do. You're back early. Hey, I did what I was supposed to do, Lurday. she retorts, pointing up at him. Delane is heading out to cover the watch right now. And look, you see what I did? I brought back a boy from the other side.

Safely. I saved him. The man she called Lurdee looked down to me and raised an eyebrow. Good, he says after a beat. The machine folk have no respect for natural life. Every death in his valley is a stain on the spirit's own land. It's good to meet you, I say to him. My name is Stan.

Hmm, he replies. Stan, has been a long time since someone has crossed over the bridge. You chose a less than opportune time to pass. Behind him, a group of antler children. I can't hear what they're saying, but one of them points to me, and the others gawk and stare. I didn't know, I tell him. I didn't know about any of this.

It's different on the other side. Different and dangerous. I don't blame you seeking refuge. on the spirit side, but as I said, your timing was in up tune. Lurday turns and gestures to a group of his comrades. Kalea, we're heading out to keep sights on the pilgrimage route. We would benefit from bringing along your human. You're human, I repeat, but he ignores me.

Lurday, I don't know. I'm kind of responsible for his safety now, and I was going to show around. This wasn't a request. You're welcome to accompany us, He says. Kaila looks like she's planning to say something else, then changes a mind and bites a tongue. Fine, she says, but we're keeping him out of danger. Though they nods and he gestures us to follow.

Our little group grows in size as we are joined by more of the antlet people. Each has something to say to me and I talk with them all, till eventually we head off through the wooden village and the trees. This whole thing is crazy. I muttered to Kalala as we walk. I'm still struggling to process that this is all happening, to be honest. I don't tell her this, but I'm also finding it hard to stop thinking about the scorched skeleton, the one strung up on the cross with, trespasser and sinner signs, hanging down in warning.

I need to get back, in all honesty. Lurde talked about my side being dangerous, but I know damn well which side I'd rather be on. I need to find a safe opportunity to get back. But also, I shoot a look over to Kalala. Also, I'm still curious about this world. That sense of adventure remains, and I don't want to be like I was yesterday, running away at the first sign of peculiarity.

So, I stick it out for now. We pass by pine trees that are ringed with little lanterns, illuminating the gently drifting snow. Like Christmas lights, I murmur out loud, which color her questions. You know, I say, Christmas, Christmas lights. I don't know what that is, she replies.

For real? Ah, it's the best, I tell her. Everyone's families get together and share gifts and have good food. Everywhere is all decorated in red and green or gold. Usually there's loads of lights. Lights, like how? Like electric lights? I'm artificial.

I don't know how to explain it. to you but, but they're in all kinds of colours, and at night when it's dark, they're hung up to form flashing and moving patterns around houses and on trees. It's beautiful, honestly. She's fascinated by this. So I spend the rest of the walk telling her all about it, about all of our Christmas customs and events, and she gets more and more excited. A voice comes from her right as we walk. It's Lurdays, and to be honest, I'd kind of forgotten he was there. Don't get too attached, Kalala, he says in a low voice. You know he'll have to go back.

He stops talking at once. I get it, Larday, whatever, she mutters after a moment. But our conversation is killed, pretty much stone dead. The breeze blows. We approach the ridge of a hill and the general volume of the group drops. The talking lowers to a general murmur, and the sound of their footprints is significantly, dulled. Following the lead of those at the front, we crouch behind a series of large rocks,

and Lurde knocks my shoulder. I look at him and he motions for me to follow him up to the front, where he points over the rocks and down to the ground below. See that, he says quietly. I take a look. Down there in the valley between the hills and mountains, a dirt track has been ground into the earth and melted away all the snow. It winds his way through the, the hills, and making their gradual way along it are a series of shambling beings. The machines, it's plain to see. One of them looks just the same as the beings that attack Kalala and I this morning. Another is of a similar height but has no legs, instead churning up the snow and grass

beneath caterpillar tracks, great plumes of dark smoke leak from pipes across his shoulders, as it does from the others. The third is far larger. a shuffling behemoth that moves on four large metallic legs. If I focus, I can hear its engine whirring from all the way up here, as it churns out those tarry black clouds. If I look to the right, I can see more trails of smoke slowly approaching from behind the hills, more machines, perhaps.

Some of the group retrieve makeshift journals from their backs and begin making notes in her language I can't read, noting the angle of shadows of certain rocks with little skin. edges. I turned to Lurday. Where are they going? I ask him. They were all making their way to the bridge. There'll be dozens upon dozens more over the next few weeks. We got word the other day about a small farm out in the east, completely levelled by the machine folk to make way for a rest stop. He scratches his jaw. Three killed, no remorse. Corpses left for the birds. Rest up, I reply.

I don't get it. Why would a machine need to rest? Everyone needs to stop some time, Stan. Can't keep walking indefinitely. Kalela chimes in. But that's the whole point of a machine, isn't it? To just keep going until it breaks down? Maybe it's just a repair centre or something that they've built?

Third aid doesn't seem to understand. What abomination they've built in place of the farm is not hugely relevant. He reaches out for my shoulder. Stan, a female human, came across that bridge once, you know, decades ago now. I was only a very young man myself, but she was able to help us. She was able to tell us things of the machines. She told us they would likely fail if knocked into water, and for the most part, she has proved correct. I can't tell you how many lives we've been able to save with her information.

He looks out across the planes of the shambling machines. But it's not enough, and the machine is not enough. machine folk have changed somewhat since then. I don't know what it's like on your side, but by all accounts, your dealings with these beings are numerous and deadly. It must be difficult fighting back, without even any antlers to protect yourself.

The wind rustles the collar of my jacket, and Kalelala pulls a scarf a little tighter around the neck. Stan, says Lurday, it's your turn now, if you would help us. Take a look at these creatures. Is there anything you can think to suggest to help us here? The more machine folk come through, the greater the threat, and this is our most threatened time of year. What do you say? Will you help?

Kala looks at me, and hell, what can I say but yes? I nod and reply that I will. I'll try, I tell them, and a great general sense of goodwill and thanks spreads out across the group. So we spend the rest of the day observing the machines as they trundle through the valley, all on their way to the bridge. They may well respect the locations of the trees and rocks that surround the bridge, as Kaleela tells me they do, but out here they seem to care little for the environment.

The largest of the machines that day, a massive hulking ogre of metal, thuds past the tall, thin tree on its root, and its pipes catch in the branches. Instead of using effort to untangle itself, the machine instead just plots onwards, using a great hand to bring the entire tree down with a crash into the snow rather than stop or adjust its course.

The rumble of its fall echoes across the hills. They share their food with me and I tell them stories about my side. They seem fascinated by the concepts of cars and even basic electrical appliances, but they struggle to consider them as anything other than threats. So cars aren't dangerous, One of the people asks me,

Do they ever kill people? Well, uh... I paused for thought. Not intentional. It's human error mostly. You blame yourselves for the death they cause. It's complicated. Kalea just wants me to talk about Christmas.

I tell her about mulled wine and Christmas desserts, about Christmas music and bells and Holly and all that good stuff. And she seems enthralled by it. I can already see the cogs turning in her head, wondering if she can emulate it here in her little village. I could show you how to make a wreath if you want, I grin at her, and she grins right back with excitement. I would love that. Shh, Lurde grumbles, not so loud. Sorry, she whispers, looking at me and smiling.

But all the while, the gears in my own head are turning to. I'm trying, trying to think of it. a plan I can use to help these people, the image of the man who came before me, the black charred and broken skeleton on the cross. It's one that refuses to dissipate, and I can't help but wonder if any of their own has suffered such fate at the metallic hands of the machines. It's nightfall back of the camp by the time we return. We didn't just stay on that hilltop all day either.

We also tricked around and followed the route back a little. We tried to get a vantage point of the time. the leveled farm, but all we could see was ash and smoke. Lurde didn't feel happy taking Kalala and myself any closer, not on the first outing. It's late, I say, as the moon rises in the sky. I should really get back. Do you have to get back tonight? Kalala asks me. You can stay here, you know, if you want. Time passes differently on either side, Lurde says as he sits back in his chair of the fire. I don't know if we'd see you again, if you were to return tonight. Tell me, what do you have for us on the machine folk? Do we know these creatures remind you of the creatures

from your home? Yeah, Clara says to me. The orange lights of the fire bright in her eyes. Do you have a plan? I pause, heart beating as I look back into her eyes. She smiles, and I look away, embarrassed. Actually, yeah, I think I do. The embers drift through the air, and the antlered folk around the fire lean in. So, Kaleela, you mentioned something to me this morning. You said that the machines dig deep holes in the ground. Is that right? She nods, and there's a general murmur of agreement through the gathering.

Do you know what that is? We have our theories, but we're not sure, no. Okay, I continue. And Lurde, these machines, the bridge is a holy sight, right? They make a pilgrimage to come here. Yes. So they come from all around then. Pilgrims can travel halfway across the world if they want to.

These machines, some of them must come from really far away. I tried to gather my thoughts, express myself as best as possible. We all see the smoke they produce, right? The thick black clouds that spiral out from their bodies. I mean, they're running on some kind of fuel. They're burning it, combusting, like engines do. And I don't see them ever carrying any bags or pulling. carts. They must be topping up somewhere on their pilgrimage, or they'd never make it the

whole way round. Fuel, one of the folks asked me. Like would you mean? I guess, but it's like something that'll last longer, coal or oil. I struggle for a few minutes trying to explain the concept of fossil fuels to them, but eventually I bring the conversation back to the holes in the ground. These holes, I bet their minds. That makes no sense. They'll be. be mining for coal or oil or whatever to feed the pilgrims. I bet that's what they've done to the farm too. Mines, Lurde repeats. Energy wells.

Yeah, I guess. Stan, will you stay? Stay for one more night and help us turn your ideas into a clear plan. I hesitate. Will my parents miss me for a night or two? Sure, I reply. I'll stay. Kalea wraps me in a hug

And I tried to laugh it off I sleep that night in a spare room Listening to the sounds of the forest And the sounds of Kalea humming through the wooden wall And that next morning I'm up and awake Looking over a series of maps The known halls Or mines as they've started referring to them as

Are marked in certain locations And raiding parties are set up There's only two controls affirmed in this entire region, says Lurday. Three, if you count the demolished farm, and it's likely under new construction mine. If they finish it, I say out loud, then more machines would come through.

Why wouldn't they? So, we destroy them, says Lurday. There's a rustle of descent. Lurday, says one of the antled women. Destruction is not to be dealt out carelessly. The machine folk destroy, and the machine folk are inherently damaged and cruel. They suffer because they're.

their curse and bring that same suffering to our doorsteps. To destroy goes against the plan of the spirit, says another. I cannot break a thing that was made, even if by those wretched machines. You fools, muttered another. The machine folk are unnatural. We cannot live and let live. They mean to destroy us. They hunt us, and if they had their way, they wipe us all out of the face of the planet.

I can hunt a machine that enters into our realm, says another. If I am threatened, I will strike, but to go out and bring down something a sentient Being is built, as created? I don't know if I can. Lurday just shakes his head. If I'm said to be cursed, then so be it. This human boy has joined her ranks, and won't let this opportunity slip us by. I cannot wait for the wisdom of the next passing traveler in 10 or 20 or 40 years' time.

I step forwards. I'm not afraid of any curse. I doubt it'll affect me anyway. Machines are different from where I'm from, so I'll help you destroy him. A little further deliberation, and that's all it takes. Armed with axes and sores, and split into smaller groups of the willing and the persuaded, we head out into the wilds. Following the maps to the locations of the mines, I've never in my life felt so elated.

To be part of a mission, a mission with a real impactful purpose, and one with a threat of real danger too. As foolish as it seems, the threat is exhilarating. It sharpens and clears my mind Like nothing I've ever experienced Kalela is with a group She wanted to come And I told Lurday I wouldn't go without her

Across the field we trek Avoiding the paths of the trundling grinding machines And the trails of smoke And leaking fluid I've been given a white-green sweater Into woven with leaves and twigs And we hide ourselves at the edge of the machine's outpost

A head lies as described a huge hole in the ground, surrounded by dark metal grid work, caterpillar track gears and grinding cranes. Smoke pours from the cracks in the ground, and the snow is all melted, down there below. You know the plan, Lurday mutters, and to me nod, then split into groups.

My heart pounce as I crawl across the edge of the hill through the undergrowth, a few surviving winter thorns scratching at my hands as I move. This is insane, I think to myself, What am I doing? Why did I allow myself to get roped into this madness? Because you wanted to be, comes the simple response. And hell, it's right.

Down below the chunter has series of machines, roughly humanoid, though with long, rusted limbs. They creak and crunch as they move across the rough dirt ground, overseeing the transfer of metal materials. Materials being moved across a series of narrow tracks in smallish carts. The cards spark and were as they pass over the iron rails and some disappear into holes in the side of the nearest mountain. Kaleila Lurde and I set to work on the selected tree. An enormous reddish-brown pine that strikes way up towards the sky. Lurde determines the angle to carve at it, and then we simply sit and wait for the wind to rise. Two hours it takes before Lurde determines the wind loud enough for us to begin.

Too long wintery hours We take turns the strike of the tree Carving out a groove on the side we want it to fall We use soars too Carving out this chunk of tree in preparation Once the chunk is fully cut from the wood And already with arms aching We start soaring away at the opposite side

It takes a long time and I lose count of the number of frantic glances I make down to the mind below But after a while We have cut away through the bulk of the tree the sound of our high shrill bird whistles across the valley and the ground. Hmm, says Lurday, the others are ready. They're just waiting on us now. Just waiting on us.

So close to success, and it's here that our luck runs out. I don't know if it's me or Klaela or just freak chants, but with our final strike of the saw, an enormous creek groaned out from the tree and ripples. all the way up the trunk. In time, perfectly, to a sudden drop in the wind. We freeze and I shoot a sideways look down to the mine to see two of the machines looking back up at us.

Alert, blaze the saroniak voice. Organisms present to the facility react accordingly. Damn, I shout an alarm and panic sets in. The machines lurch into terrifying activity, grinding and creaking as they threw themselves up against. against the rock below and begin to clamber up towards us, their black eyes shining with malice. A warning horn blares from the mine and Lurde looks back at us. Keep going, he shouts.

Just keep soaring, bring this thing down. That's more than signal enough. Go. And he takes off down the side of the snow bank, snow spraying up as he lands with a crunch on the head of the nearest machine. There's a rattling of gears as cogs and oil are sent spilled out over the snow and stone, and the other machine alters its course. Flames burst from one of his pipes

and are since spraying out in a wide arc. I grabbed Clela and bring it down to the ground as they pass by over our heads and we feel the rush of heat. Come on, I tell her, we finish the job. Right, she replies, grabbing her end of the saw and feverishly we work to bring the tree down.

It creaks and wavers, crackling as it slowly starts the breakaway at our cutting, and at last we break close. clean through, and with an ear-splitting crunch, the tree begins to tip. It tips in just the direction we set it to, and the air seems to vibrate as the monstrous pine comes tumbling down. Watch out, we call out into the chaos, pulling back at a burst of flames, and the colossal

tree crashes hard into the metalwork of the mine. The second it connects, another similarly sized tree starts to fall too from the valley's opposite side, and it falls down hard, hammering into the metalwork. grids and cranes. The first causes real damage and great clouds of smoke and ash are sent billowing up and into the atmosphere. And the second impact is greater still. It smashes up the rail network and strikes the side of the mountain, sending enormous rocks and boulders tummling down right into the hole, an avalanche of them really. A great orange flash bursts from the ground and the mine begins to collapse in on itself, taking a great deal of equipment

along with it. Larday, Kala calls, suddenly throwing herself down onto a stomach and putting out an arm. Below us is the man himself, covered in ash and clambering back up the rock. I hold onto Kalea, and together we help to pull him back up

onto the embankment. Great, he grins. And I can't help grinning too. Now, let's get ourselves out of here. Thank you for your sacrifice, Claire and moaned's to the fallen tree. and she takes a moment to rub some snowy soil across the exposed trunk we've left behind. We regroup the others in our little team and we race right back up to the base camp,

careful to take a route we know won't be followed, and I'm riding the high for the rest of the day. It's all that we can talk about, and when the others rejoin us to share that they too were successful, I'm caught up in something of a celebration. I've never felt such a sense of community, I've shared experience in my entire life. It's addicting.

But I can't stay here forever. I just can't. So, the next morning, I tell them all it's time for me to go. Kalea is particularly upset, and it hurts. But I gotta go. Thank you for your help, Stan, says Lodi. You're a fine young warrior. I beam in response.

He insists. and accompanying me back to the bridge. The patrols and the watchers haven't spotted a single machine heading towards the bridge so far this morning, so we feel relatively safe. Galila comes too. Delana and the others have been covering my shift for long enough.

It's time I get back to my post anyway. She shrugs. But there is an emotion in a voice. I can hear it. We walk as a trio through the snow, though it's not as thick as it was yesterday or the day before. there's been no new snowfall for a while

we're taking a slightly different route to the one we left from Kalala and I but it isn't long before I start to recognise where we are you know I'm really grateful you allowed me to I begin but Lurde puts out a sudden warning hand and stops

something's wrong he mutters and squinting I can see a figure that might well be Delana waving frantically at us from a branch up high in a tree. Then, in the very next second, a great arc of flame comes bursting from the bushes ahead,

torching the nearby hedges and sending us jumping for our lives. One lone machine stumbles through the undergrowth and swings round its arm. Its head sparks and fizzles. Trespassers, trespasses from beyond the sight, and for the second time, Lurde takes it upon himself to be the distraction.

Go, he shouts to me. Kalela, get him to the bridge, and he ducked the road. and dodges as the machine approaches, avoiding a blast of fire and then ramming his horns into the machine's side, sending nuts and screws raining down into the snow. Come on, Claire cries out, grabbing my hand and dragging me towards the bridge. An exact mirror of how she welcomed me in. We race past the scorch bushes and past the trees and rocks, but as the bridge comes at last

into view, I see that it's different. Oh, I mutter, then, oh no. The snow across and around the bridge has been largely melted. It's clear to see, based on the burned branches and damaged bushes, exactly where the flame was wielded, and the bridge before me is nothing but a water-soaked stone. Kuala stares at it, then tries to speak. Stan, oh no, I'm sorry, but it's not going to work.

I try anyway. I run to the bridge and attempt to cross it, and of course I am able to. to do so, but my shoes tap against the stone, and when I reach the other side, when I reach the clearing, I'm still standing in it. If I turn around and can see Kalala still there on the opposite side, flashes of fire and burst of smoke escape up into the air behind her through the trees. I rush back across the bridge and try again, then again. But without the snow it would seem, it leads to nowhere but the clearing. It's just a bridge.

Lurdy escaped with some bruises and burns, but he apparently always does, and Claire and I simply returned to the village. I panicked a bit at first, trying to work out if the time that passed over here was inverse to the time that passed over there, struggling to work out the mathematics of it all, but I came to the conclusion that a couple of days spent on collierless side of the bridge was still only a few hours back home, or something like that. And whilst I couldn't prove it, it was enough to keep me calm at first. I spent my days with Kalea, waiting for the snow to fall sufficiently to heal the bridge, but for almost two weeks it scarcely snowed at all. I just became ingrained with the community. The destruction of the mines had a hugely positive impact on the region. Next, no new machines

came through, though Lurde remained pessimistic, or realistic in his words. He knows eventually they'll be back in machines, but for now, there is. peace. I help the group bring down that horrible metal cross, the totem atop the hill, with the scorch skeleton. We bury the bones and good words has said of this ceremony. The days go quickly and the weeks blur into months. The snow does fall again, but I'm no longer in any desperate rush to get home. After all, I ended up falling for Kalala. I'm sure that doesn't surprise you, given the way I've spoken about her. And what can I say? She's amazing.

She loves me back, by the way, even though I don't have any antlers. The months pass by, but I can't help feeling painful memories of home, of my house, my friends, my family, of Bertie. It's these thoughts that build and grow inside me. They lead to conversations with Kalea, and these conversations in my head lead to discussion about taking aback with me, just for a quick visit. Maybe I could bring Bertie back here with me

And then she'd finally get to meet him She's skeptical at first Scared too As she was raised on stories of the terrible Dangerous machines on my side of the bridge But I'm able to convince her to give it a try I remind that surely only a day or two Has passed my side

And that is almost Christmas I get to take her to a real Christmas market You'll get to see the lights I can't wait to show you and my family will love you, I promise. They won't care about your antlers. I'll make sure of it. Oh my goodness, she replies, grinning,

as we run through the snow, hand in hand. This is crazy. I can't believe I'm going to cross the bridge. I breath clouds around her mouth, and she says it again. I'm going to cross over the bridge. I laugh, though we quieten down as we approach, careful not to get ambushed in the same manner as last time.

But there are no machines in. now, and ahead through the bushes there lies the bridge, covered in snow and awaiting our arrival. I look at her, and she looks back at me. Are you ready? I ask softly, and she smiles. Let's do this. I grin at her with a rush of emotion, and together we run towards the bridge. The breeze rises as we step down into the snow, and looking past my feet as we run, I catch sight of a set of prints below me, right there in the snow. They look like rabbits.

The rabbit prints lead up to the centre of the bridge, across the middle and through the snow, and then down the opposite side and into the clearing beyond. Hell, I can see it. I can see the rabbit that made the prints on the opposite side, watching us both with his head cocked. We're moving too quickly for me to process all this of what in him. implies. But as we reach the halfway point and the breeze whistles past my ears, Kalea's laugh is suddenly lost on the wind. In one moment I'm holding tight to a hand, and the next I'm gripping nothing but air. My view changes ahead. I trip and stumble

down the bridge like an idiot, slipping and crashing down on the stone and landing with a grunt. In the grass. Just grass, no snow. Kala, I call out, breathing hard. But she's not there. I'm back to where I started, all those many months ago. This is the bridge. There on the opposite side is the clearing. But I can hear the gentle rush of river.

It isn't frozen now. There is no ice. The snow is melted, and all that's left of it sits in grey and clumps in the shadows of the trees. The bridge is just stone. There's no snow. it at all. No, I murmur, suddenly panicking. No, no, no. And I staggered to my feet. I try running over the bridge. But nothing happens. I cross forwards and backwards and again and again and again as the sun sinks in the sky, then sets. And still I cross, but nothing happens. Nothing happens

and I'm all alone. She's gone. My parents greet me with shock and concern, though Bertie is absolutely beside himself with joy when I stumble to the front door. He sleeps in my room with me, but I scarcely get any sleep at all. I just watch out the window and wait for snow. I do that a lot these days, waiting for snow that never falls. The days go by, and still, nothing. Weeks. Christmas comes and goes, months roll by.

We enter into spring, then summer, and she's all I can think about. The girl are left behind on the opposite side of the bridge. I still go there, you know, with Bertie. I like to sit on the bridge of stone, and imagine she's sitting on the opposite side with me. But I will wait. I'll wait for winter. And no matter how long it takes, I will see her again. I've been with my husband for the better part of 20 years.

We dated for 10 of those and have been married for 8. Two children accompanying us along the way. I still remember when we first met on a field trip during high school to a zoo which sat outside of our city. He walked around with me for the entire trip as we watched silly monkeys swing from branch to branch and we laughed at the elephant taking a five-minute pee right in front of us. I recall how beautiful.

The beautiful, the cotton candy skies of pinks and blue swirled above our heads on the bus ride home. It was perfect, much like the past 18 years had been. My husband had never gave me any reasons to be suspicious of him, whether that be cheating or something more sinister. No, as I said, the life we had built together was, for the most part, perfect. Of course, it wasn't without the... usual relationship problems, like arguing and the occasional disagreements, but we always made it through. Outside of bickering about who has to take the trash out or why the electric bill got paid a day late,

we'd never had any major test of our relationship. At least, not until recently, that is. It was just another average day, a warm spring Wednesday, when I noticed the first cracks in my reality. I almost wish I hadn't pulled up the old family pictures to reminisce, to take a stroll down memory lane. Even if my life, my children and my relationship were a lie, I still enjoyed every second of it. I was sitting at the kitchen table, golden rays of sunlight pouring in from the garden window as they covered us in a blanket of warmth.

I sifted to the pictures we'd taken from the polo camera which still sat somewhere. tucked away in the house. My youngest daughter, Vira, sat next to me and she rummaged with the cardboard box labeled Memories, passing me the stacks of pictures we'd accumulated over the years. Sheesh, Mom, used to be so skinny. Kids never failed to give you their most honest opinion, even if it's a little too truthful.

I giggled, try my best to conceal my distaste for a comment. Yeah, yeah, I replied. replied, rolling my eyes and sticking my tongue out at her. She laughed. As I flipped through the stacks of pictures, most of them being random pictures of her old dog, Ranger. I came across one of my husband, Sam, and I, leaning against an old fence.

His long, black hair cascaded down his shoulders in her curly mess. His arm was slung over my shoulder, a big grin on both of our faces. We were so young. The front door squealed open as heavy boots pounded the floor on the way in. It was Sam. His clothes were flecked with dirt and doused with oil from another hard day at the auto body shop. His blonde hair was matted down like a pile of greasy straw.

That's when I noticed it for the first time. I looked down at the picture and up at him several times. The man who stood before me wasn't the one in the picture. It felt like all the air had been violently torn from my lungs. If I could have screamed, I would have. Sam must have noticed my shocked reaction. He seemed to tense up before snatching the picture from my hands. What are you looking at these for?

He said, his brow furrowed. Hell, even the shape of his nose and eyebrows seemed completely off. I wanted to cry. I just wanted to look at some old pictures. I finally croaked out, tripping over my words along the way. Whoever the man that stood before me was, I didn't want him to see my worry, my anxiety over catching him. How had I not noticed this before? The man gave me an odd look, before looking down at the picture I was still clutching in my hands.

His forehead brow eased into a surprised expression, his eyes turning big like silver dollars. Wow, uh, we sure have done. changed a lot, babe. He awkwardly laughed before continuing. I'm going to go hit the shower. I'm all sorts of gross. He quickly shuffled out to the kitchen and into the bathroom down the hall. My mind began racing. Who is this man in my home? What had happened to the real Sam? How had I not noticed this before? All these questions swirled around my brain and converged at the centre, creating a mess of thoughts I couldn't sort out. I brought my shaking hands

upward, studying the image once more. Everything was wrong. Sam had long, black, curly hair which hung past his shoulders, a long nose which turned up at the end and thick black eyebrows. His eyes were big and brown, piercing through me even in the old picture.

The man in the kitchen had medium-length blonde hair, a large, wide, wide, nose and light, almost transparent eyebrows. Perhaps the most obvious difference of them all was his bright blue eyes. The man also wore a beard, which is thick and full, darker than the rest of the hair on his face and head. There's no way this could be Sam. No one just changes like that. Even if they could, it still doesn't explain his eyes changing into a completely different colour.

I began sifting through more pictures. The next picture I found was of us, a few years later, sitting around a fire and talking to my parents. Sam's hair looked different, like it was still long and black, but this time it was straight. I continued my search for more pictures, adamant to prove that the man in the house wasn't my husband.

After a couple of minutes, I managed to find another picture of Sam by himself this time, sitting on a lawn chair in our front yard drinking a beer. Two things were right about this. Sam had always been, as far as I can remember,

strictly against drinking alcohol. Secondly, his hair in this picture was shorter, a dark brown colour and straight. Perhaps the most chilling thing, however, were his eyes. Instead of the deep brown colour they'd been in the earlier image, they appeared to be a dark green in this one. The last picture I found was one of Sam and her oldest daughter, Tara, standing in front of a Christmas tree in our living room. This particular one seemed to be from just a few years ago.

Tara was no more than eight in this picture. Sam stood, or rather stooped with his arm over Tara's shoulder. They were both smiling. Sam, in this picture, had even shorter, lighter hair. His eyes were now the same color blue that the man in the kitchen had. I compared the first picture to this one, noting the distinct changes in facial structure between the two. I feel like I'm losing my mind. Are you okay?

Vira said, which made me jump. I looked down at the little girl whose eyes were like saucers. I must have looked at the little girl whose eyes were like saucers. rummaging through the memory box and wildly sifting through its contents. Yeah, yeah, I'm all right, honey. Just wanted to look at as many as I could before I start dinner, I replied, smiling weakly at my daughter. The shower stopped, leaving a deafening silence over the rest of the house.

My heart pounded as I gathered the pictures and shoved them into my pocket. Will you clean this up and put them away, please? I instructed Vira. who sighed and groaned in response. If you do, I'll let you have an ice cream sandwich after dinner. She seemed to perk up after hearing this, as she hapazily stacked the photos and tossed them back into the box. I was uneasy for the rest of the night,

stiffening up every time the strange man would walk by me or pull me in for a hug or kiss. I tried my best to hide my disgust, my fear for whoever this was in our house. The most unnerving thing was watching him interact with my daughters, though they didn't seem to notice anything off. Weird. Dinner went by without a hitch.

However, it wasn't without all goodness on my behalf. Everything and everyone else seemed fine. The kids were happy, and the man seemed nice enough. He knew the kids' names and other things only my husband could know. Maybe it was sound. Maybe I'm just overreacting. I just don't understand how someone could change so much. The night settled in as darkness consumed the house.

Bedtime. I stood in the bathroom, douse in my face in cold water, preparing to sleep in bed with a strange man. I decided it was best to study the pictures further tomorrow after he left for work. I didn't want him to find out what I knew. I walked, shuffled stiffly to the door of our bathroom, nervous to open it. The door swung open before I could touch the handle. Oh, hey, the man said, scratching the back of his head.

I got to use the bathroom. You mind? He stepped past me and shot me a look that indicated I should leave. So I did. I jogged as lightly as I could, around the bed and hopped under the covers of my side. I looked under my pillow where I hid the pictures when Sam wasn't around and made sure they were secure in their place. Turning the TV on, I flipped through the channels in an attempt to calm myself down. The door to the bathroom creaked open and out walked the man.

He lazily threw himself under the other side of the bed, groaning as he did so. If this wasn't my husband, he sure acted comfortable being in bed with me. He slid his hand down his pants and scratched his crotch before letting out a monstrous belch. Sorry, he giggled. What's up with you tonight? He said, turning his gaze to me. I looked everywhere else but his eyes. Feeling my face began to burn as I tried to come up with a lie that would satisfy him.

I'm fine. Why do you ask? I managed to get out. The longer I spent around the stranger, the more I wondered, how I hadn't noticed this sooner. The more I thought back, trying to recall how long he'd been here, or if this was Sam, how long he looked this way. The fog here my memory seemed to get.

Unise coursed through my veins. Oh, well, you've just been distant tonight, he said, his eyes turning to the television. We watched a movie for a while before I finally drifted to sleep. My adrenaline pumping, keeping me away. throughout the rest of the night. I swear I could see him watching me from the corner of my eyes while we watched TV. The night dragged on for eternity. Sometimes I'd watch Sam as he snored in a deep sleep or I'd turn the TV back on and watched another episode of my favorite series.

Eventually the glimmer of morning sunlight began peeking in through the blinds. I was first out of bed that morning. I made my way to the kitchen and began preparing breakfast, hopeful to get this man out of our house as soon as I could. I had to get answers. After an hour or so of sitting at the kitchen table, sipping on a cup of coffee, Sam walked into the kitchen, already dressed in his work outfit. Hey babe, I got a call from work and I got to leave a little early, he said, before kissing my cheek and swiftly walking out of the house. It was like he could read my mind, knowing how badly I wanted him out of the house. I took little time to return to the bedroom, eager to return to my investigation.

I spent most of the morning studying those pictures, try my best to piece it all together. The girls didn't wake up until just before noon, sleeping in as much as possible or spring break lasted. By the time they emerged from the bedroom, I had already brought out the evening. entire box of pictures, hoping I could add more to the timeline. Instead, I was shocked even further to find that my daughters had changed as well. Am I going crazy? Tara walked in lethargically into the kitchen, her feet falling like cinder blocks as she went. She just recently started drinking coffee, pouring some of the aromatic substance into a cup before sitting across from me at the table.

That's when I noticed. The image I had in front of me was of Tara from just a couple of years ago. Her hair was almost platinum blonde and wavy, accompanied by a pair of hazel eyes. The girl sitting across from me had deep red hair and dark brown eyes. Her entire facial structure seemed altered as well.

Her long, thin nose now appeared wider and more upturned. I feel like my face. entire world is crumbling around me. I squeezed my eyes shut, a ball of emotion had materialized in my throat, and no matter how hard I tried to swallow, it wouldn't go down. I folded my hands and bit down on the knuckle, try my best to stave off the eventual panic attack that was ensuing. It'll be all right, Mom, Tara said. I opened my mouth to respond, but the words were caught to my throat.

How did she know? I peered up at the girl and found her smiling coyly, the steam from the mug of coffee distorting her face. I need to use the bathroom, I said, before I abruptly standing up from my chair. I threw all of the pictures back into the box and shoved it across the table. My help burst didn't seem to face Tara in the slightest. The next couple of hours were a blur.

I don't really recall much after my interaction with Tara in the kitchen, my same mind giving way to the worst panic attack I've ever experienced in my life. Questions which no same person should ever have swirled around my mind. Are these people really my family? Is it possible for someone to... Shape-shift? Either way, I had to make a plan soon. Sam would be at home at any moment.

I sat in a space between the wall and the toilet, try my best to calm my nerves. I'll gather my things tomorrow when Sam is gone and leave when the girls aren't around, I thought. That seemed to be the best course of action. The only one. Even if I was losing my mind, I had to get away from the source of it. There's just no way these people are my family.

I cautiously sat up from my spot on the floor and quietly walked over to the door. I held my breath, afraid that making even the faintest noise would result in my sudden death. I had no reason to feel this way, but I just did. I reached for the doorknop, counting to three in my head. One, two, three small knocks emanated from the other side of the door. My entire body went stiff, my blood ran cold. My hand instinctively recalled from the doorway as I stepped backward.

Finally, the silence was broken. Honey, Tara's telling me you don't feel well, the sympathetic yet stern voice called out to me. It was the man masquerading as my husband. I remained still, silent. Please come out. I just want to talk to you. No one's upset.

He beckoned to me. I wish I would have stayed held up in the bathroom. Hell, even call him. the police and getting admitted would have been a preferable alternative to what happened after I finally gave in to his pleas. The rest of that afternoon and into the evening went by as normally as it could have. I sat in the kitchen table while my husband prepared dinner. The girls played quietly, remarkably quietly, in the living room close by.

I got up from my spot at the table and peered out of the garden window, watching a pair of doves flying circles playing with one another. I wish so badly that I could be one of those birds, so that I could fly freely away from this place. I feel trapped, as though they would stop me if I attempted to escape. I turned away from the window, from the beautiful creatures which played amongst the nudie green trees to find these people in my home staring at me. The hamburger which sizzled and popped over the flame on the stove was the only

anything staving off the silence. The man watched me, studded me, with wide eyes as I folded my arms and backed away. I peered into the living room to find the girls doing the same. The toys cast aside as I stood and stared holes into me with cold dead eyes. I... I was just looking at the window. Is everything okay? I stammered, stumbling over my words. They soon returned to what they were doing.

before as if their behaviour wasn't completely bizarre. I'm stuck between the anxiety of being the one in the wrong, worrying that I've truly lost my mind and I'm now throwing in in the face of my perfectly normal family who's trying to help me stay sane. On the other hand, I can't help but feel that my life is in danger, that these people around me aren't who they seem to be, the small primal piece in the deepest part of my brain screaming at me. run away. I woke to the kitchen sink, pouring a glass of water to help soothe my heavy chest

and rapid heart rate. That did little to calm me. Dinner is ready, Sam said sternly, emphasizing every syllable in his words. I turned quickly to find my entire family sitting at the table. Their faces contorted and marred with anger. I'm not sure if I was just lost in my own little world at this point, but I swear I didn't hear a single footstep or noise as they all gathered for dinner, which is highly unusual, considering these people are usually very loud. The rest of the night went on similarly to this, small, nearly indescribable oddities, showing themselves in the form of my family's weird behaviour. Sometimes I'd catch them watching me, all of them watching me, studying me as though our elaborate or something.

It was deeply unsettling. Finally, the most dreaded time of them all was upon me. Bedtime. I felt a grown sense of sickness take hold in me, as the idea of sharing a bed with that man was nearly unimaginable. I feel as though my life is at stake, if I don't play along with these wicked games that something bad will happen. I crawled underneath the covers and laid in my side away from my.

my husband. I curled my body as tightly into a ball as I could, wishing that I could simply vanish from existence. God would not afford me such a liberty. Sam laid stiffly next to me. He had watched me very carefully with each step I took into the bedroom. I'd been laying there in the fetal position for about half an hour, before the silence was finally broken. You're so stupid, he said. The hate in his voice cut through the air like a knife. My heart started pounding once more. I could hardly breathe.

It took you a long time, Cindy. A long time. He laughed, a wheeze of air escaping his throat before continuing. I didn't think it would take it this long to notice. Eighteen human years. He clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction, in disappointment at my ignorance. I felt like I'd gone.

into shock, my voice finally returning to me after a few minutes of silence. What do you mean? I whimpered. I could feel the weight and the bed shift as he set up, and even with my back to him, I could feel his eyes scanning over me. You and I both know what I mean. You finally got it. You caught on. Now you know the truth. Or some of it, he replied. My blood ran cold, like ice, at the last thing he said. What do you mean some of it? Where's the real Sam? I cried out, clenching my eyes shut and gritting my teeth.

I am the real Sam. It could be hard to maintain an appearance over a prolonged amount of time for our species. I couldn't believe what the men were saying to me. You know, I could be anything you want me to be. Anything. I felt sick from his poisonous words, which had become. becoming more distorted and robotic the longer he spoke. I could feel a distinct wetness brush up against my arm.

I jerked my arm away, but it was no use. What felt like a slimy tentacle had wrapped itself around my bicep and held me firmly in place? I opened my mouth and tried to scream, only for a massive, dark hand to clamp tightly over my mouth. Hey, hey, it's going to be okay, baby, the creature said. His voice was ragged and harsh. Waves of his foul breath invading my nostrils nearly caused me to vomit. I'm going to give you one more chance. Either start acting right, or I'll make you act right.

Its grip and my arm and mouth eased as I brushed them away, trying to catch my breath. I turn my attention to the side of the bed the creature was on. But nothing. It wasn't there. I'm up here, honey, it bellowed. causing me to jump and peer up at the ceiling. The creature's arms and legs extended to the corners of the bedroom like a massive daddy long-leg spider.

His body was twisted and knotted, the knobs of its spinal cord protruding from his pale flesh. Various parts of his back and stomach pulsated angrily, as though it could explode at any moment. The worst part was its head, which was twisted backward, revealing the face of Sam as I had first met him. I can be anything, even your worst nightmare, it gargled out.

Globs of thick spit and fragments of teeth fell from his mouth and down onto me. The disgusting bile which poured onto my skin burnt horribly, causing me to roll out of bed and onto the floor. I bolted for the door, pumping my legs as quickly as I could. I flung the door open, causing it to crash violently against the wall, before my journey came to a sudden halt. Outside of my bedroom stood our two girls, looking up at me with huge black chasms where their eyes should have been.

A putrid green substance triggered freely from the exposed socket to the rise. I gagged and pushed forward, shoving the two out of my way. The front door was just a couple feet away, my one-way ticket to freedom. When I emerged into the outdoors, I was a little. met with a cool drizzle which fell from the black sky. I ran for what felt like hours before I finally collapsed from exhaustion. The last thing I remember was how badly my lungs burned and the putrid smells which still clung to the inside of my nostrils.

The events I just detailed for you happened over the course of two days about a week and a half ago. I was discovered by a squad car about three miles outside of the house I had flared. After a couple hours of questioning, they decided it was best to send me to a psychiatric ward in a larger city neighbouring ours. Obviously telling the officers about my husband turned spider demon wasn't the best reason for why I was laying in a ditch off the side of the highway. Either way, I'd rather be labelled as a delusional psychopath rather than go back to the hellhole I'd escaped. That brings us to the events which transpired this morning. I was lying in a bed

I've got my own room here when the doctor politely knocked on the door before entering he quickly stepped over to the computer which sat next to a bunch of other machines I wasn't quite sure of well miss I have some good news and some bad news

he said turning to me he was wearing a mask which obscured his face but his blue eyes seemed haunting piercing into me What's that? I said quietly. Well, Cindy, the good news is that you're definitely of sound mind. However, he removed his mask, revealing the horrors which had lurked beneath it.

The bad news, for you at least, is that you'll be coming back home. It started, as most things do, with my boredom. I was surfing around on YouTube, looking for fun. funny videos or scary videos when I stumbled across something that caught my interest. It was run by a user who went by the Meat Man and it involved stop motion footage using some very disturbing puppets. The thing that honestly caught my eye first was the thumbnail. It was a figure that appeared to be crafted entirely out of ground meat. I remember seeing the model and lifting an eyebrow as I took in what I was seeing.

Now, when I tell you that the models were grotesque, I don't mean they were ugly or badly made. They were very well put together and the amount of detail that had gone into them was astonishing. These meat puppets had hair and clothes and facial features that had all been meticulously crafted to the point of being a little uncanny. I would have almost expected them to blink or move on their own and they seemed too lifelike for the medium. The episode I had found was episode 5, and as I watched it, I quickly began to realize that this was no normal bit of YouTube content. Episode 5 involved three characters, Lisa, Steve and Michael, as they prepared for the arrival of a fourth character, Dawn. The background music was jangly and discordant, somewhere between a Calliope and America round, and it often made the voices hard to hear.

The characters were cleaning up the house, which was mostly a sheet of paper with windows drawn near the ceiling and some furniture crafted from modelling clay. As they cleaned, a voice told us how Lisa was being lazy and expected Michael and Steve to do the majority of the work. I remember thinking this was odd

because her character moved and dusted and tireded at least as much as the others, and they seemed to be working well together. After a few minutes of herky jerky cleaning, her hand came down from the ceiling and congratulated Steve and Michael on a job well done. It then pointed a pudgy finger at Lisa and scolded her for being so lazy.

The voice said that Lisa would not be allowed to join the party later since she hadn't helped. As Michael and Steve walked off stage, Lisa's character curled into a ball as loud party music played in the background. I remember feeling bad as the last frame sat frozen in place. The camera zooming in on the fetal Lisa as she sat hunkered against the wall. Though I couldn't hear anything over the loud party music,

I could see the small figure shaking a little and thought she might be crying. What the hell was this? And why did it suddenly make me feel almost voyeuristic for watching the suffering of this lumber? be not person. After that, my morbid curiosity was hooked. I went to the attached channel and saw that he had about 10 videos up, all added within the last month or two. His channel was small, only about 80 subscribers, and they were all in that style of stop motion where he used the figurine's grotesqueness to his advantage. I found the first episode, Friendship, and decided to watch it. The video was about Lisa, the meat puppet from before, and how she was sad and lonely all by herself.

The puppet mostly sat in the familiar position, bent over and appearing to sob. Suddenly two other familiar puppets, Steve and Michael, came into the scene and Lisa looked up and seemed happy to see them. A budgie hand, whom she called father, said he had seen that she was lonely and had gotten know some friends, so she wouldn't cry so much. The hand stroked her delicate hair, and it seemed to be much nicer to her now than it had been in the previous episode I'd watched. The three hugged and said they would be friends forever. Then the episode ended, and the screen went black. It had lasted less than five minutes, all told, but it still made me feel strange and put off. Those puppets were so

odd-looking, and I just couldn't shake the feeling that there was something not right about them. I was also hooked and immediately loaded up the second video. It was like a train wreck, and I needed to see how it came out, no matter what the carnage looked like. The next two episodes were pretty similar to what I'd come to expect. They were called cohabitants. and family, and followed the lives of Lisa and her new roommates.

They set up some furniture and had some getting to know you chatter as wonky music played in the background, making their words hard to hear sometimes. It was the typical stop-motion affair, but there was some odd refrain sometimes in the middle of the stop-motion. During one in particular, the boys, Stephen Michael were talking with Lisa about what to make for dinner. the stop motion abruptly cut and you could see five or six seconds of the model just standing as a loud sobbing came from the background. Amidst that sobbing, there was a soft but angry voice trying to quiet the crying. I had to rewind it a few times in order to catch it,

and I remember wondering if this was some sort of artistic film or something. Was the artist trying to make some kind of point or something? Maybe he was trying to hide it amidst the stop motion to make it even more avonement guard. It wasn't until the fourth episode that things got bad for Lisa. I noticed that while the first three videos had come out in one day, the fourth video had taken almost a week to come out. This wouldn't have been strange for any other channel, but the total shift from episode three to episode four was alarming. Video was about five minutes long and seemed to entail Lisa going out on her own one night and getting lost. She'd gone out for her.

a walk despite being told not to by the father hand and had gotten herself lost in a forest that had been drawn on white paper. The trees were the big swampy kind you often saw on kids' art assignments and it was clear that fatherhand was no artist. He wasn't a consistent narrator either because his voice and his tone seemed to get angrier the longer the episode went on. The condition of the puppet looked ghastly and that only added. to the surreal horror of the show. The Lisa puppet was clearly in bad shape, and halfway through the show, a piece fell off of her and landed on the table. The narration ended abruptly as the music continued over the visual of the greying puppet just standing in place. The sound of someone stomping off was audible over the jangly discord, and the steps sounded heavy and angry.

There was a brief moment with the sound of someone begging to be let go. but it cut away just as the sound of screaming started. The video was edited badly and an attempt had clearly been made to cut it out. When the show resumed, the Lisa Puppet was completed again with what appeared to be a fresh hunk of meat attached. The piece that had fallen off, however,

still lay in the table as though it was no more useful than a snake skin now. Towards the end of the episode, the Lisa Puppet bent over and seemed to weep as she was alone and scared in the forest. This weeping was overlaid by a soft and frantic weeping in the background,

though I'm not sure we were meant to hear that part. All of a sudden, the father hand came and showed her the way home and told her she must never do that again. Much like an actual father, the hand seemed relieved as well as angry, and Lisa went back with him to the house meekly enough. When they returned, the Stephen Michael Puppet did not seem happy to see her.

They shunned her silently, and the episode ended with Lisa crying in a corner somewhere. Then the episode faded to black, and the credits rolled. I hovered my mouse over episode six, not sure if I really wanted to watch it. Episode four, called Thankless, made episode five make a lot more sense now. Fatherhand was still likely punishing Lisa for running away, though the start of the episode made it very clear that she had just been going on a walk. The episodes were easy enough to follow, but something in them still made me uneasy. While these characters living under this fatherly hand character,

why did the narrator call them roommates if Father Hand treated some of them like children? The whole show just had an odd surrealist nature to it, and there seemed to be an underlying story that I just wasn't getting. I was invested though and had to see how it came out. Episode 6 was the strangest by far, and the comments on the video seemed to prove that I wasn't just going crazy. It was called melancholy, and the episode started with the same weird dance music

and a shot of Lisa hunched up and crying. The crying, however, was not the can sound it had been before. The episode was three and a half minutes of someone sobbing heartbreakingly, the kind of sobs that are equal parts hopelessness and terror. The camera seemed to be slowly panning in on the intricate face of the meat puppet as the sobs in the background went on and on. I had seen some strange videos in my time, but this one definitely took the cake.

The final shot was of the eye of the meat puppet, clearly defined and lovingly traced. you could see the meat beginning to mould see the bright spots that decorated the surface and just before the screen faded to black you could hear the elevated terror in the voice of the person sobbing before it was shut off by the end of the episode I had to take a break after that one

reading the comments as I tried to make sense of what I had just seen the meat man's audience seemed to be a little divided on whether this was an artistic expression or something much darker. A user had said that the sobbing and screaming had been unique and that he couldn't find them on any of the usual free-use sites. Another user questioned whether they were too real or not, thinking this might be part of someone's torture fantasy.

But others seemed to think it was just some avant-garde piece that was a little too pompous for its own good. What they did agree on was that even if it was acting, the screams were a little too real, and that all of them felt some sort of way about those cries of anguish. I'd hoped that maybe episode seven would be a return to sanity. But episode seven, called jealousy, was just weird. The narrator was telling us that the Dawn character was adjusting very nicely to the house.

All the tenants loved her and they all wanted to be a friend, and indeed the fatherhand, Steve and Michael, were all standing around her and moving animatedly. Only one character, Lisa, didn't seem to want to be friends with Dawn. She seemed to be in another room, still hunkered up and crying. The narrator explained that Lisa was jealous of Dawn and that father was becoming cross with a ratitude. The soaps from the previous episode were gone, but there were some other low noises, barely discernible over the loud jangling music. The puppet seemed to be in much better condition as well, and I suppose they had changed the meat on them recently.

The father hand came and yelled at Lisa some more, but she just stayed hunkered up and crying. Finally, he left, and the episode ended as the camera zoomed in on the little meat woman hunkered in her anguish. I looked at the next episode and wondered if I really wanted to see more. It felt like I had been watching for hours, but it turned out that all of the same, seven episodes had taken less than 30 minutes. Something about watching the by-play between the characters had gripped me, and I felt that I needed to finish it.

At the same time, there was something much darker here than I had expected. This was like someone's confession. The whole thing felt very intimate, and I almost felt voyeuristic for watching. I clicked the next episode through, telling myself that another three episodes wouldn't do too much damage. How wrong I was. Episode 8 called Hatred, opened with Lisa leaning against the paper wall as the others tried to get into a room. They started out nicely asking her to come out, wanting to talk and wanting to see her. The narrator told us that Lisa had been shirking a chores and saying unkind things to Father Hand about the other roommates.

Father Hand had, of course, shared these things with the others, and now, they wanted to talk with her. As their knocks became pounds, all three of them pulling up on the paper door as they banged and kicked. Lisa pulled her hands to her ears and put her head between her knees. The narrator told us how Michael and Steve

wanted to talk with her and how Dawn was really upset that Lisa would judge her so hastily. As they pounded and banged on the paper door, father hand suddenly came into the scene. Lisa looked up from her knees and seemed unsure of what to make of the sudden appearance of the father Father Hand told her that she brought discord to the house

and that he could no longer ignore her insolence The hand turned itself into a fist And began to beat the puppets savagely Chunks of meat fell off and was squished beneath the pounding The wire body was twisted and warped And the whole scene was made all the more horrific by the overlying carnival tune that scratched like razors across my brain.

It ended as Stephen Michael knocked and the camera zoomed in on the sad pile of meat that Lisa had become. The episode ended abruptly and then I saw a pale figure staring back at me from the suddenly dark screen. It took me half a second to realize the pale and sweating figure was me.

Episode 9, Constringen was next and there was no question. on whether I would watch it or not. I needed to know what came next. Episode 9 was as different from the others as night and day. It was a shaky cam of someone walking through a wood by night. A buttery yellow night provided a small patch of illumination,

and whoever was recording was breathing heavily as they trudged through the woods. The woods were preternaturally silent as they went, and the leaves crunching underfoot were loud and jarring. The video was four minutes long and three and a half minutes were nothing but walking feet, crunching leaves and heavy breathing. Then abruptly they stopped before a small round stone, the ground before it freshly turned up and put to rest sloppily.

Sleep well, Lisa, came the flimmy voice of the cameraman. Then it all went black again. I hit the tenth episode before I could think about it, wanting to see how it ended. Episode 10. Ambivalence seemed to be returned to normal. Dawn was sitting on the couch, seeming to laugh at something on the TV out of view.

Michael and Steve seemed to be milling about, cleaning or just chatting. The wall that had marked Lisa's room was nowhere to be seen. The father had looked over them, benevolently, as the narrator told us about Michael looking for a book he had misplaced, and dawn watching a favourite show, all seemed normal, other than the broken corpse of Lisa that lay on the floor.

The damage that father hand had done still lay about the ground, and the meat was brown and dry. Flies had begun to circle the meaty body, and if one of the puppets had to go near her, they seemed to walk unheading over a body. The only character who seemed to notice her was the fatherhand. He would look down at her from time to time, almost smugly, and shake his head before looking back at the other happy puppets. Episode 10 went dark, and I was yet again left wondering what I had just seen. The video had managed to move into my head rent-free in less time than it would have taken to watch a movie. I had moved on to other videos, other activities, but the images were never far from my mind. I'd been known to suggest strange videos to friends of mine, even linking them and Reddit to certain groups.

This one, however, was not one of them. I was hesitant to talk about it, let alone tell people about it. I did not want others to suffer under this like I was, and that was probably why I was thinking about it when I saw the poster. I was travelling for work. I work as an expert witness for specific cases and I do a lot of travelling and a lot of waiting which often leads to the aforementioned boredom.

I was driving through Michigan when the call of nature became too much to ignore. Luckily there was a small rest stop up ahead and I was zipping up and hailing out of the restroom when I saw the missing person's wall. My eyes found the woman before I could stop myself and my breath caught in my throat as I came up short. The woman's name was Elizabeth Rainey, 23, and she'd been missing for the last four months.

The poster was new, unmarred by yellowing and creasing, and I pulled it easily from the bullets on board. Looking at her face, I realised how much work must have gone into each puppet. Her nose, her white forehead, a small dimple in a chin, the dent in a left cheek from some childhood accident. They were all there and had been lovingly added under the precious porous face of the meat puppet.

I took the poster back to my car, my checking time approaching quickly and called a friend of mine who worked at a local police department. I told him about the girl, about the YouTube channel, about the videos and he said he'd look into it without much enthusiasm

when he called me later that day to thank me for the information. He sounded much more interested in what I had to say. I called him again a few weeks later and offered to buy him drinks if he'd sate my curiosity. He was willing, but said I might not want to know as bad as I thought I did. Over drinks, he told me the whole story. My friend had a friend too. His friend was an agent with the FBI, and, as a friend.

After watching the videos, my friend had told his friend. He sent up a link to the channel and asked him to take a look. After watching the drama himself, he trekked the IP and decided to see what they could find about this guy. Turned out that Elizabeth wasn't the only familiar face that was missing in the Michigan area. Michael Chavez, Stephen Schutt and Dawn Lee were also missing from the same area. The IP address was coming from an old house near Leigh. Huron. The owner, David Matthews, owned the house and quite a lot of acreage out there. When they had raided his house, they had caught David by surprise and found more than they bargained for.

He had been keeping them in his basement. The sicko had a large finished basement with four separate rooms. The central room held a couch, a TV, and a large kitchen table with a small set for the show and the camera. The puppets were on a nearby shelf, their body's grey, and sagging off their cloth-hanger bodies. The other implement in the room was a large, rusty meat grinder, a meat grinder with strands of rotten meat hanging from the spout. He said the flies had been thick in the room and the sound of moans had not begun

until they started kicking down doors. Dawn, Michael and Steve, were lying in their respective rooms. Most of them anyway, he had said, taking a long pull from his beer. He sent me photos from the crime scene. I wish to God he hadn't, he said. David had been in the room that a likely once belonged to Elizabeth. He had been wearing a dress, the fabric badly stretched around his frame,

and was sobbing in the corner. No matter what the agent said to him, his response was always the same, his rocking, making a strange grinding noise as his butt slid. over the concrete. He said, I shouldn't have played God, I shouldn't have made a sleep.

He just kept saying it again and again and again. The others didn't say much of anything, my friend had told me. He had scooped them to the bone, cutting off fingers and toes and arms and legs so he could grind them up to make their puppets. He'd used tourniquets and animal tranquilizers to keep him alive.

Michael and Steve were little more than torsos. Steve having half a leg and Michael little more than an elbow. Dawn was missing her legs, but her arms were thankfully intact. She had only been in the basement for a month, and it seemed like she hadn't had as much time to take from her. They'd gotten all of them out of there, and David Matthews, the meat man, was now in custody. A real win for the good guys, my friend had said.

His stare a thousand miles long, though none of them will ever walk again. The men are in a catatonic state and the girl only speaks gibberish, but at least we save them before he could finish his sick play. They had yet to find Lisa's body, but he told me they hadn't given up yet. As I sit here going through the facts,

it all just runs through my head like a rat in a maze. Every moan, every sob, was this sicko harvesting his victims so he could replace the flare. of his precious puppets. I was an unwilling participant in this, watching and encouraging this sicko to continue. I want to forget it, but I can't. I may never forget what I saw in that short hour of my life. I may never forget the terrible knowledge that the meat man has invested in me, and I may find my curiosity sated for quite some time. I

think my days of Roman YouTube and my boredom. Maybe. At an end. You could say that being caught up in this nightmare was a family tradition. My grandfather was a soldier in London in the years following the end of World War II. He'd been too young to fight in the war itself, but had joined up as soon as he could, propelled by a spirit of patriotism that had been burning inside him while the conflict raged.

As a serving soldier, he saw a side of the city which the government had killed. kept out of the newspapers. The beggars in the streets, the looting driven by poverty and hunger, and the outbreaks of violence between former soldiers who had returned home from war to find a society in which they no longer fitted.

In the diary he kept, which I'm using for this account, he wrote of being out on patrol and encountering grown men standing on street corners openly weeping. The patrols, which were carried out in addition to ones by the police, to try and maintain order, took him into some of the darkest corners of the city.

He was armed with the rifle he held. But the rifle he held was one which he'd never fired in anger, and the soldiers he was on patrol with were either very inexperienced like him, or older veterans. These were bitter men, he wrote, quick to anger and even quicker to judge. He described witnessing what was basically the summary execution of looters, when his patrol disturbed a gang robbing a warehouse storing tin goods, shot in the head for a can of beans, as he put it.

Terrible though these things were, they were overshadowed by the horrifying experience which my grandfather had in the December of 1947. His patrol was making its way through the city of London, the aspect of the metropolis known as the home of business and lawyers. Fine buildings stood and well-lit streets, while minutes away, the poor huddled together in stinking back alleys. A message came through on the radio that a body had been found near their route

and that they were to divert and take care of it. My grandfather's spirit sank as the officer passed on the order. To find a corpse on a London street in broad daylight was no longer a rare occurrence. It could, he knew, have been a murder victim, but it was all likely to have been home. hunger and cold, which had been the killer of this poor soul. And it was the job of my grandfather and his fellow soldiers to remove the body. There would be no investigation, no burial, a pocketful of stones and the river's embrace

were to be this corpse's fate, as it had been so many others. They turned off the main thoroughfare along which they'd been patrolling and entered a warren of small, cobbled streets. These were ways little tread. street stillborn names handed down to them hundreds of years before, Mises Lane, Redemption Way, Sinazali. The town fathers in those days had been God-fearing and gin-loving an equal measure. Even though it was just past noon, the lane their next entered was cast into shade by the buildings on either side. A small sign hanging from the wall proclaimed this, to be Devil's Lane.

It was here the body was meant to be, but even though the officer made them march up and down it twice, there was no sign of anything. Then one of the men called out, Sir? The officer headed over to where the man was standing. Next to a steel fence covering an open doorway set into the wall of one of the buildings.

Faded lettering next to the doorway read, London Underground Although he had never heard of it My grandfather knew This must once have been a station On the Underground Rail Network Which criss-crossed the capital During the war

It had become a nightly sheltering place For Londoners from the falling bombs I was now once again busy With rattling carriages and cough-racked commuters Some of the underground stations Had not reopened though Whether because the routes were no longer needed or the money was not there to bring them back into service.

The entrance around which the patrol gathered led, it appeared, to one such now abandoned station. This would not usually be something of interest. However, the steel fence had clearly been cut open. Someone had broken in. One of the older soldiers lit up a cigarette and said, The body we were sent to find is the corporate here. Another one of the old troopers nodded.

He all have wanted to get home for his tea before he went cold. Colder even than he is, the first soldier added. At this they all laughed. No smoking on duty, the officer said. Scowling, the old soldier, stooped out his cigarette with his fingertips and put it back in his pocket for later. Now, the officer said, we need to check if there's anyone inside that station who's up to no good.

Then he looked at my grandfather You man He said you can do it Reluctantly Wondering not for the first time Why he hadn't gotten a boring Safe job in a factory like his friends My grandfather pulled open the steel fence

Where it had been cut and squeezed the gap As he entered the darkness Waiting on the other side of the doorway He heard the officer ordering the men to move on Great he thought they aren't even going to wait for me. Tsai-ink, he began to descend the steep, winding steps, which would take him to the station platform.

He flicked on his cigarette lighter to prevent himself from stumbling and falling into the carefully constructed abyss. The air was stale, and the fame flickered, not liking the old oxygen it was being fed. Green tiles lined the walls of the narrow passageway, and he paused the posters, advertising indigestion powders, and whiskey before continuing down and emerging onto the platform. It was utterly deserted, and he cursed his officer and the entire damn army were sending him

on this fool's errand. He turned ready to head back when he heard a snap. It was there, he called out and lifted his rifle. It was then that he saw a figure crouching on the tracks. It was shrouded in darkness and crouching. over something. My grandfather could not make out what. His guts tightening with apprehension,

he stepped closer to the edge of the platform and held a lighter high, revealing the figure. It was a man, crouched over a body, one from which the flesh had been stripped, leaving only bone, which the man was methodically snapping in half

and licking at the marrow inside. So preoccupied was he with his feast, He did not notice my grandfather stumbling away, too horrified, too appalled to do anything but flee. My grandfather ran back up the steps, his skin now slick with ice-cold sweat, until he finally clawed his way out of the cut in the steel fence and found himself back in Devil's Lane. There was no sign of his comrades. That night he deserted.

He did not return to his barracks. Instead, he went back to the cramped house where his wife and infant son lived and told them to pack and hurry about it. Then they called to train north. There was no destination in mind for my grandfather, only away, as far as he could get from the hideous sight he had witnessed.

He could afford to take his family no further than Manchester, a cold, grey, industrial city where the smoke was washed down with rain. He found work, as a labourer and never spoke to his wife or his growing son about what had happened. He made this record though, the one I now hold. The diary is small, hard-backed, unlined. His son, my father, found it in grandfather's possessions after he died aged only 45.

I imagine my father was as shocked as I was by what he read. He then continued to record the events of the abandoned. an underground station, a devil's lane. It was August of 1969 and my father had returned to London, drawn by a morbid fascination with the description of what had happened 22 years before. He found a city that was in the spotlight as a playground for the rich and fashionable, a city also where many lives were blighted by poverty and discrimination. As he walked to the city of London, retreated.

placing his father's steps on the day of his patrol. He felt cold, even though the sun blazed down. He had seen a headline on a newspaper lying in the street saying, New disappearance in finance district. He had picked up the newspaper and read that over the last few years, dozens of people had apparently just disappeared off the street. Some had respectable jobs, some had been earning their living in disruptive ways, and all had gone missing. missing at night. The police said there were no proven connections between the missing

people. My father would have dismissed this as nothing more than a newspaper hack, trying to whip up a panic to sell more copies. Had he not known about the dead body which had brought his father's army patrol to Devil's Lane. He looked at the small sign telling him he was in the right place. The sun was lost behind the buildings rising on either side of him. The lane was silent, deserted, apart from him. The cut in the steel fence over the open doorway was in front of him. He took a deep breath and prized the ragged edges of the fence apart, and moments later found himself entering the underground station. Prepared for the darkness, he brought a torch with him. His hands shook as he took it out and clicked it on. The beam exposed a

beginning of the steps, the green tiles, the same advertising post as his father had described. By the time he reached the platform, his chest felt constricted. This was nerves, he knew. There was no physical reason why he was finding it hard to breathe. But reason had no place here. The platform was empty, but the tracks below were piled high with bones. They had been snapped into pieces, but were cut. clearly human. A skull nestled in one pile, its empty eyes revealed by the torchbeam

he ran over the scene. There was no sign, though, of any living being. My father told himself it was because the man who had been feasting all those years ago were surely now dead that this was what remained

of his obscene acts. My father started to retrace his way. Now he had seen the truth for himself. He wanted simply to get the hell out of there. As he began to ascend the steps, he vowed to put as much distance between this place and himself as he could.

Then he heard a sound which stopped him. It drifted up to him from below, from the tracks. It was the sound of a baby crying. He dropped the torch and ran. He made his way straight to the railway station and never returned to London. He, like his father, died young.

Having inherited the diary on his death, I believed both men were haunted by what they had experienced in the abandoned underground station, and that, no matter how far they traveled away from it, they could never truly escape. I decided I had a choice. I could lock the diary away and forget about the whole thing, or I could confront it. And when I saw for myself the truth of what had waited underground, I would not flee. Rather, I would expose it to the light. I chose the latter.

I would face the fear and end it. I was a very young child when my father descended into the underground, and it was not till later in my own life that I decided to make my fable journey to London. It was in January of this year. Most of the restrictions in place from the pandemic were lifting and the capital was returning to his bustling, uncaring self. One more stranger staring at a phone, trying to follow a map to find Devil's Lane when completely unnoticed.

I ended up asking directions from a man selling newspapers from a stall on a street corner. He pointed me in the right direction and soon I was standing, looking at the small sign. At the steel fence, the cut in it, the open doorway to the abandoned underground station. I turned on my torch, and as my grandfather and father had done, I made my way inside. I imagined them taking the same tentative steps beginning to descend. As I make my way down towards the platform, there was no sign that anything had changed in the last

75 years. The station stood apart, forgotten by everyone else. In the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world, I felt utterly alone. I reached the platform. Silence enveloped me. I could see the edge of the platform ahead, the dark lines of the track. I inch forwards and saw the first of the bones. Hundreds of fragments littered the ground. And there sat on the tracks against one side of the platform. It was a man. He was gaunt and pale in the artificial light of my torch. He had a body draped over his lap.

It was bloated and decayed, and he picked listlessly at his great flesh. My heart was beating faster and faster as I fought the urge to turn tail and run. I must not, I told myself, not if I was going to end this. So I stood there as fear pulls through me, as I learnt what terror meant. And all the while the man picked, until he found a scrap of dead flesh that he lifted to his face, sniffed, then popped into his mouth and began to chew.

His teeth worked their way through the meat, and then he said, I am disgusting, revolting. I did not know what to say. He was aware of my presence, but he continued his wary cannibalism. I swallowed, said with difficulty. I'm going to the police. You've hidden down here for more than 70 years, but you're not going to get away with it anymore. To my amazement, he chuckled at this.

Not just me, he said. I come from a long line of freaks, all skulking down here. Sating our filthy needs. But my grandfather saw you, I splittered. He looked up at me, his eyes blinking and watering in the light from my torch. Your grandfather must have seen my grandfather, he told me. My grandfather was the first of us. He was a proud man once, who left his home in the far north of Canada

to come to London to join the RAF and fight in the war. But he was injured and left defend for himself when the war ended. He had no money to go home, no money even to eat, and he had an infant son as well to take care for when the mother died in childbirth. It was then he spiraled. In his homeland there was a dark creature called A Wendigo, and some who believe they are possessed by this monster,

who crave the taste of human flesh. flesh, whether it was possession or simple insanity, my grandfather began to take bodies he found in the street and devour them. He brought his spoils here to this deserted place where he could feed undisturbed. What happened to the infant? I asked, shocked and yet transfixed by what I was hearing. The man chuckled again. A low, guttural sound devoid of any humour.

And then he said, he brought my father with him and weaned him off powdered milk. I began to feel dizzy, the roof of the station revolving before my eyes, and I had to sit down, hug my knees to my face. That's abhorrent, I said. It was survival, he told me. And when my grandfather died, my father tried to leave this place behind. He lived for a short while in the city, but the call. of the Wendigo's voice deep inside his soul

was too strong, and he returned to feed. He found his prayer at night, walking unsuspecting down dark streets, and tasted fresh meat, still warm and tender. There was only the sound of a baby crying when my father

came to this awful place, I said. I had to know, I had to understand, no matter how repulsive the truth was revealing itself to be. Those were my cries. The child he sighed or trying to live a life

not cursed. He answered My father must have been out hunting when yours came here. And now he's dead, I said. He nodded. All dead, leaving just me. Alone to scavenging graves

reached by scrabbling through mile after mile of empty tunnels to feast on this. His gaze fell on the corpse on his lap. Food I have stolen from the worms. Disgusting, I am. Revolting, he said, and resumed, picking at the dead body. I did not think I could stand up without fainting,

so I began to crawl away on my backside. I would clamber up the steps of my hands and knees if I had to. I had to escape. I reached the bottom of the steps when I heard the man say, Do not leave. I turned back. You need to be stopped, I spat out the words. His reply left me reeling.

With your help, I will be. I returned to the underground station a number of times after this, with supplies brought from above. The best place to do what was needed was the narrow green tiled line passage down which the steps wound. I blocked up the exit leading to the place. platform with a crudely built brick wall. He sat on one of the steps watching me work. I left him there as I made my way to the top of the steps where I built a second wall. As he had asked, he was blocked in.

Unable to get human flesh, he would start to death in a matter of days. This will be the end of the legacy of pain and suffering. He had told me as he sat in his lonely lair. The second wall completed. I left the underground station for the last time and walked down Devil's Lane, emerged into the light of a winter's day and began to cry. It was over.

I pulled the mask over my nose, pause in my music as the car pulled alongside the curb outside my apartment, kicking up a spray of filthy snow the plows had piled along the street. It was a red sedan with a slight tint of the windows, and one of those dancing hula ornaments at the centre of its dashboard, similar to the one displayed on my screen. I shuddered, muttering in irritation at the flex of muddy snow that now dotted my jeans, stepping gingerly through the mound as I rounded the back of the car.

I knew better than to enter the vehicle without confirming first. I had heard horror stories about women getting into the wrong Uber or lift and finding themselves stuck in a car with some maniac, and I made a practice of always checking before I got in. I squinted, glancing between the ride-chair app open on my phone and the license plate beneath the trunk, under the light of the singular street lamp on this side of the street, confirming that they were, in fact, the same.

Red rust spilled from the bottom of his trunk, flakes of it staining the top of the plate. A breeze sent another icy chill down my spine, and I hurried to open the back door opposite the driver's side, as I slid into the vehicle. Hi, I huffed with exertion, do my best to kick some of the clinging snow from my boot as I entered.

Jonathan? I decided I'd clean them as best as I could and turned bringing my legs into the car as I sat upright, turning my full attention to the driver for the first time. He nodded, his long, greasy hair bobbing

across his shoulders with a motion. He watched me for a moment in the rearview mirror, and I couldn't help but stir. Something about the odd look in his eyes, making me slightly uncomfortable. Even with a mask covering half of his face, a stained surgical mask that looked like it had been in use since the start of the pandemic. There was something hollow, it's strangely sinister in his vacant stare. For a moment, I considered thinking up some excuse to go back inside and call another ride. but a quick glance at the time made me realize

I was already going to be late. My boss was an asshole and I'd had a string of late starts throughout the year since my car had died on me. I really couldn't make this worse. I took in a breath clutching the pepper spray in my keys for affirmation as I closed the door.

My eyes watered as a smell of the car hit my nose and I almost climbed out from that alone. I was sure. the men must have noticed my reaction as he watched in the rearview, but I didn't care, as I was more focused and not audibly gagging. And I couldn't understand how or why he would even let someone in his car like this. In an instant, he pulled the car forward onto the road, leading out of town towards my job. I work as a bartender at a local dive bar slash strip club on the outskirts of town, 15 minutes for my house. I had a car.

or did before I got into an accident during the pandemic, and with slow work, it had been a struggle to save for repairs. So, for the time being, it was ride-chair apps and awkward conversations. I fought the urge to get comfortable and settle in to scroll social media or listen to a podcast. My cell service was spotting these areas as it was, and I was quickly running out of data for the month. So any streaming was out of the question. Hell, even trying to follow the progress of my ride on the app was all but impossible with my phone, the image of the car usually frozen on the last road there was internet.

Besides, something about the man demanded, and I keep my guard raised. A strange sense of disquiet seeded in me at the sight of him, and I prayed for the seconds that tick by faster. I watched his phone, try my best, though likely falling short of stealth, as I tried to make sure he didn't visit, fear from the path. As I watched this screen, glancing down at my phone every few seconds

that try and appear less nervous. Every so often, I get that odd pins and needle sensation at the back of my neck. The feeling that I was being watched, and from my peripheral, I was certain I could see him watching me intently through the rear view mirror, only for me to glance up and find his attention focused on the road ahead. Despite my best attempt, I couldn't get past the smell. It reeked, and I couldn't understand how Jonathan wasn't reacting. I was trying to work up the courage to ask him to roll down a window without coming off as rude when he suddenly spoke. His voice was lone raspy as he read the name of my bar out loud. What are you doing something like that at a time like this? He asked the question devoid of any

semblance of genuine worry. It's late. Almost midnight. He tapped the time on the dashboard. Someone waiting for you? The question sent a chill down my back, and I could feel my hackles' rays at his probing nature. Yes, my boyfriend, I answered far too quickly. I thanked God for the mask, certain that without it,

he could see the lie in my face. Even with it, I wasn't sure he couldn't, as he peered through the rearview mirror. I glanced out the window to my side. We were on the freeway nearing my job, about ten minutes away, empty road and trees speeding past. I couldn't ask him to let me out, but that was its own frightening prospect, and the fact that the road was all but empty at this late hour made the idea even more uncomfortable. I held back a sigh.

We were getting closer to my job, and he seemed to be sticking to the GPS. I clutched the pepper spray for assurance and resolved that I could make it through the rest of the drive. It's not like I hadn't had a creepy driver or two before, but I'd always made it to my destination safely. There hadn't been anything yet to tell me Jonathan wasn't anything more than your average, run-of-the-mill creep. I was sure I could handle ten more minutes of uneasiness, rather than being stranded on the side of the road at night. Still, his question and my sudden answer had put me on edge, and an idea occurred to me.

I scrolled through my contacts until I found Tyrell, my co-worker, and the nighttime security at the bar. He was the closest thing to a friend I had, and a tall, imposing veteran. The phone rang once, twice, several times, as I pleaded mentally for an answer. Hey, this is Tyrell, my heart leaped. Hey, Ty, I'm... Sorry I missed a call. Leave a message and I'll get right back to you. And my heart plummeted in the following instant.

Though his eyes stayed in the road, I can almost feel that the man's attention was fully on me. I'm on my way, I tried to continue seamlessly, stumbling along my words, despite myself as I spoke. I'll need some help taking that stuff inside from the back, so... So if you could come out and help me,

that would be great. I paused, my heart in my throat as we watched each other in the mirror. The air buzzed with palpable tension, and it suddenly felt very suffocating onto the mask as I tried to breathe normally. That stench? God, where was it coming from? It clung to the air, assaulting my senses with every breath, and my eyes watered.

Okay, bye! I muttered into the phone. realizing I was supposed to be on call. I'd been so distracted, my tension had swayed from both the road and Jonathan's phone. I hardly realized that we veered off from my recognised path at some point, apparently turning down one of the many off-roads along the way. I could see the icon on his screen freeze as the app recalculated the route, finding a new path to my job, which he ignored continuing forward.

Uh, I think you should have stayed on the interstate. date, it's the quickest way and my boyfriend's already expecting me, so... Jonathan chuckled to himself. It's a shortcut, he murmured. Then, with a click, he turned off the screen of his phone, grabbing it off its mount at the centre of the dashboard, sliding it into his coat pocket beneath something else. My heart plummeted as though our own free fall.

He laughed to himself as though he told some inside joke, and with a feigned, odd sort of leisure, began drumming along the steering wheel with his fingers humming off key loudly. My head spun a sense of surrealism buzzing in the air as my stomach dropped watching the screen of his phone go black. I could check our progress from the app. I knew that much, but something told me it wasn't necessary. Everything about the way he'd said it and the fact that he'd turn off the phone told me that he wasn't heading for the bar. I glanced down at the phone trying desperately to appear in

phased, though I was sure my heartbeat must have been audible over the silence in the car and the faint grunt of gravel roads under the tires. As I watched the car veer further from any recognised path to my job, a light bulb went off as I noticed something from the corner of my eye. The image of the driver, Jonathan. I took in a sharp breath. I hadn't paid close enough attention. I checked the license plate.

I always check the license plate, but that wasn't enough. In my haste, I neglected to actually check that the driver on the app was the one sitting in the front seat. Staring down at the screen, my hands began to shake. No matter how hard I tried to stop it, as a cold dread began to wash through me. My eyes moved slowly from my phone to the man at the front seat, and to my horror, I could see that it was still glancing up in the mirror back at me. It wasn't the right driver. The man on my screen, Jonathan, was a kindly looking older gentleman, old enough to be my grandfather, with tan skin and short grey hair cut neat.

A far cry from the shifty, strange character I was now alone in the car with. My mind raced as my heartbeat painfully thudded against the inside of my chest. I wanted to call the police, but the idea scared me for the same reason, asking him to stop at earlier. Escalation. I got the distinct feeling the man was unwell and likely dangerous. He could respond to my attempts to call

with more immediate violence. Damn, I wanted to throw up. I listened to a true crime podcast or two in my day and it was beginning to feel more and more like I was being featured in one. I could almost hear them narrating my demise, describing with a practice spooky voice how I'd been distracted and wandered into a nightmarish last ride.

My thoughts were plagued by all the things I hadn't done, whether it was because I put them off till a nebulous future date or just couldn't because of life. There was so much I wanted to do. I was so caught up in horrible fantasy, I was slow to realize that the car was slowing down, pulling near the side of the unmarked road. The thudding in my chest intensified violently,

as I saw his eyes in the mirror and found the look of predatory glee glistening in them. I... What? Where are we? I bit my tongue furiously and how feeble I sounded in the moment.

The fear audible in my voice as I stumbled over my words. The silence in the car felt suffocating paired with that smell. God, what was that? Between the sheer terror I felt and the disgust that horrid stench brood me. I wasn't sure if I was going to vomit or pass out. It was like the reek of feces and blood

and... I didn't know how I missed it before. The smell of blood, clear as day now that I noticed it, was present amongst that unfamiliar stench. Animal panic lurched forth in me, a foreboding sense that something bad had happened in this car, likely very recently twisting my stomach into not. Why are you stopping? I asked. Do my best to sound firm in my question. He laughed, trying to conceal it by halfway stifling it into a fake coughing fit. Ah, this something I have to show you. Look. He ushered for me to move nearer, pointing in the distance at something I couldn't see from the backseat, ushering for me to lean into the front of the car with him. It's right there. I'm just showing people.

Look, come over here and you can see. A nauseating shudder raised the hairs along my back. He motioned the game for me to move closer, indicating the space

on the console beside him right within arm's reach. I... I can see it from here, a lied, unable to make out whatever in the trees he was pointing to

unwilling to take my eyes off of him for long. He sighed and muttering something giggling to himself again like he was telling some wonderful joke come on it'll be quick then I'll get you right back to work

I didn't know what to do something made me feel like outright rejecting his invitation might lead things to spiral even quicker but I was not about to leave the little safety the car offered at his request to follow this creep into the woods any doubt

that he intended something awful had all but disappeared with his unwillingness to listen when I was clearly freaked out. The sicker was enjoying this. I think I see it fine here, really, I said, working at my seatbelt with one hand, opening the phone app to dial 911 in the other. Thankfully, he was still giggling to himself, staring out at the dark road ahead. Nah, I think you should really step outside.

I can help you if you'd like. He turned to face me, and, in his eyes, I saw nothing but venom and glee. I could have passed out from the sheer tidal wave of emotion that struck, dread and adrenaline battling for dominance as they seared through my veins. My eyes watered. God, I wanted them not to, but I couldn't help it, and I saw, even beneath a filthy mask, his smile widen, eyes thinning with humor.

He turned back around, sliding a hand into the pocket of his large jacket, as he placed the other on the handle of his door. In my head, I could see myself dying a thousand awful ways, dragged out to live the quick, violent end of my life in some forest. I could almost see myself laying there, the life gone from my eyes as I grew frigid with the night, at the mercy of the element of nature and decay until some poor asshole found me. From the murky fog of horror clinging to me,

perhaps spurred by that thought, came an idea. It probably wasn't a good one, and I could immediately picture the many ways it may only expedite my death, but it was an idea, nonetheless. I could fight, but doubted I could win.

I could use my pepper spray, but then what? Unless I could overpower him enough to get him out of the car, I'd be running down some empty road waiting for police, and I was pretty sure he'd recover and get to me long before they could.

It was risky, but this, if it worked, could offer me an escape from the waking nightmare I was in. Yeah, okay, sounds cool. I tried to sound convincingly interested, failing even to myself as I grabbed the handle of the door. I swallowed, feeling almost nauseous from anxiety as he watched me through the mirror, eyes narrowed. Still, it appeared my answer was enough for him. I guess whether it was genuine or not, we both knew I had no other choice. Mottering a silent prayer for the first time in years, I pulled open the door, stepping out of the car.

I engaged the door lock, then closed it behind me, the sound ringing with a potential finality. The night air had a bite to it, frigid with a stubborn breeze that sent pins and needles through me. I had to be quick. I stepped away from the door, moving forward nearer the passenger side, glancing out in the direction he'd pointed, confirming my suspicion. There was nothing out there, nothing but trees and more trees. I heard the driver's side door open and shut behind me and turned to seam rounding the car. He was tall, taller than I'd expected from his sitting position, his legs casting long shadows as he passed the car's headlights.

My heart pounded, and for a moment my body seemed to lag before some animal part of me screamed to move, adrenaline spurring me forth. I gripped the handle of the door, pulling it open as quickly as I could move, and throwing myself inside. I shot a quick glance out the windshield and saw him freeze, and stop, slamming both hands on the hood of the car with a thud, and with a look of fury in his eyes, made worse by the shadow the headlights cast. as he did something in his hand caught the light casting a glint he had a knife

a long blade fit for some sort of butcher already used by the looks of it get the hell out of the car I'm gonna gut you if you don't open this door he cried out a sound much like a furious animal and hurried to the passenger side door I locked it as quickly as I could move

recalling away from the window as he slammed his fists against a glass which cracked slightly where the hill to the blade made contact. I screamed, a sound almost unfamiliar from my own mouth, as he slammed his fists into the window again in a rage. He stared at me, eyes almost bulging out of his head with anger, veins visible on his pale neck,

then glanced at the door I'd just come out of, tearing at the handle. I had locked it. The feeling of relief at my foresight was like a salve and an open wound, only to be replaced as I watched him beginning to round the back of the car, I hadn't locked the other door. No, no, no, I cried. My voice roar with pure panic and defiance. I crawled over the center console, slamming my leg painfully against it in the process

as I dove desperately for the power door lock on the driver's side. A hand's made contact at the same time. His on the handle, mine on the button. The split second difference in the time it takes to pull the handle versus the push of a button made the difference between life and death. The doors locked with a satisfying click And I turned to see the man who wasn't Jonathan's eyes widen With a look of fury, shock and worry

He reared back and kicked the driver's side window With enough force that his leg made it through The bottom of his boot barely an inch of my face But it didn't manage to fully shatter it He strained for a moment to pull his leg free Muttering a string of expletives and threats at me As he pulled against a glass which tore the legs of his stained jeans and drew nauseating amounts of blood in the process.

Shock held me in place for a moment as I tried to blink myself back into action. My eyes fell on the keys, still in the ignition, and a glance back at the man trying to pry his leg from the window. He watched me with hate in his eyes, gripping the stained blade in his hand with white knuckles. I'm going to kill you, Tracy. It shook me somehow, more than anything, to hear him say my name, and I wondered for a few horrifying men.

moments how he had, before I realized he had access to the app. He'd been on Jonathan's phone and would have seen the passenger's name. He groaned with exertion as he pulled, freeing his leg to the ankle. I'm going to reach in and get you. I had heard enough. Here, let me help you. I pulled the car from parked to drive and hit the gas. No, wait, no!

His words were cut off as the car picked up speed. It was a sickening crunch. and a spray of blood and broken glass as most of the window gave way, and the man's leg met the car's frame at a devastating speed. His roar of pain was just barely audible over the roar of the engine as I sped down the gravel path. I hit the brakes a few hundred feet up, glancing down at the map on the rideshare app still open on my phone. The road was a dead end. I would have to turn around. I maneuvered the car around as quickly as I could manage, desperate not to pull up. pull off into a ditch. The headlights illuminated the road, and I peered out expecting to see the

man in pursuit, dragging himself toward, if need be, blade in hand. But the road was empty. There was nothing to even indicate he'd been there at all, but a pile of glass on the road, and some blood. Screw this, I breathed, still practically hyperventilating with panic, and I hit the gas. The road was dark, illuminated only by the light from the car But I didn't slow down until I was on the main road Frightened as if somehow I was sure the man would follow me on foot No matter how unlikely that was now The roar of the engine faded into the general chaos of my thoughts

The sounds around me seemed to echo as I stared out at the road ahead Laughing and crying to myself I'm sure I would have looked like a manic to anyone who saw me but the road was mostly empty. I began to shake as the adrenaline started to fade, my stomach rumbling ominously, with a sudden nausea I felt as reality set in. I had almost died tonight.

I eased my foot on the gas, realizing I was nearing 100, and fumbled from my phone dialing 911, while talking to the dispatcher and filling her in on my experience as best as I could in my state, I got a call back from Tyrell, followed by a long string of texts asking if I was okay. Apparently, I'd sounded as scared in the voicemails as I'd felt,

and isn't a strange chill down my back knowing that man had heard me like that. My breath came quick and heavy, and I almost gagged yet again at that putrid reek, rolling down all the windows to try and clear the car of it. I'd almost thought it was coming from the fake driver, but now that he was gone I was sure there must be something else morbid curiosity began to arise with something like awful realization

I'd finished with the dispatcher by the time I pulled into the parking lot of the bar she'd sent out a few officers some to come meet me at the bar get my statement and pick up the vehicle and others to the area I'd escaped from in search of the man I'd described

Tyrell stood outside holding his jacket close around his neck. His demeanour shifted immediately upon seeing me and the car. The window shattered and blood staining the glass and streaking the door. I'm sure I didn't look much better than I'd felt. What the hell happened to you? he asked, sounding both shocked and genuinely worried as I brought the car to a park in the middle of the lot, not bothering to find a space for it. I got out, grabbing the keys as I did, and rounding the back of the car. He followed me, concern and curiosity lining his face as I made my way to the trunk.

My eyes watered. I was right. The smell hit me strongest standing outside the trunk, and I saw Tyrell's face grew in disgust. What the hell is in there? He asked, coughing for a few seconds, as though he might puke, only to spit. Something bad, I think. I'm pretty sure I was going to be in there. He gave me a look that was unreadable

and I didn't offer an explanation, a new sort of horror bubbling within me with the realization. I slid the key into the lock of the old car's trunk, turning it with a click, swallowing hard against the lump rising in my throat. I opened the trunk. The air that rushed forth was warm and moist and rancid, like an oven filled with decaying meat,

I staggered back, blinking wildly against the watering of my eyes. Oh my God, Tyrol breathed. I wiped a moisture from my eyes and looked into the trunk. My mouth fell open and my stomach flipped as I saw it, stuffed into the back of the car. The remains of Jonathan. The actual Jonathan, whose picture I'd seen on the app. His face was a chalky white, mouth agape in a... permanent expression of horror, and where there should have been eyes. Instead, we were empty pits.

A long gash reached from the bottom of his chin to his groin, splitting him down the middle, spreading all manner of contents throughout the insides of the trunk, made worse given the orchid position in which he'd been made to fit. Random cuts lined his greying skin, odd fingers or toes missing from his hands and feet. My heart hurt for the man that I'd never known. His last moments having been filled with nothing but the needless cruelty of a maniac, and a part of me mourned for the version of myself that didn't escape. As selfish as it may sound, looking at the man felt like looking at a potential version of myself, jarring in more ways than I'd expected,

and I quickly closed the trunk of the car again. I shut my eyes and held my mouth close, swallowing hard against the rising bile I felt, and turn to Tyrell. Let's go inside. Cops should be as soon to get my statement and I need a drink. He nodded, eyes still wide,

casting another glance at the trunk before leading me inside. The cop showed up not too long after, though by then I was already bit buzzed. I'd survived an attempted murder and there was a much more information I could give that I hadn't already. I spent that night and my sister, this house, my boss offering me the rare night off due to my event, as he called it,

and Ty offered me a ride as I was in no mood to call an Uber, taxi or anything of the sort. The following days went by in something of a surreal blur. I took call after call from friends, acquaintances, people I'd met once at a party, and the like, all feigning concern in an attempt to hear the story from me. At some point I returned home, feeling self-conscious about burdening my sister and a husband, returned to my apartment. Between all of the gossip-seeking calls came one call I was waiting for. It was from a detective Howard at the local police department, the man in charge of my case.

I'd been cleared of any suspected involvement almost immediately, as the body of Jonathan Derry, as I come to learn his name, was several hours old by the time I'd stepped into the vehicle and his car had been taken hours away from the city he lived and most commonly drove in all the way to our little town likely by the man I'd been in the car with that night they didn't have any clue as to the man's identity

as by the time the officers had arrived there was no trace of him besides his blood in the pools of glass and my description of a guy with greasy long hair would only be so helpful given a person on the run is likely to change their appearance. A haircut usually being the first solution. He told me they were keeping an ear out at any local hospitals for a man of his description with an injury to the leg like the one I'd likely caused him

and told me I'd be kept updated on their progress. You survive something most people probably wouldn't, he said as the call drew to a close. Count yourself lucky. I guess. Thanks. problem, get some rest, if you've got any questions. It occurred to me instantly, like a random light flickering to light amongst the darkness. I wasn't even sure why.

Did you find the phone? The drivers, Jonathan's. It was like pulling out a string and unraveling more and more frightening realizations. The phone had had my address, my name and phone number on it. I'd never finished the ride, so there was no way to be sure how long he'd see my address. Even if he hadn't, he'd seen where I lived. No, no phone. They're looking into it, though.

What if he comes back? He knows where I live, where I work, what if it comes back? The words left my mouth almost mechanically, my breath catching in my throat as a familiar anxiety returned. Then you call us. that's not likely to happen. We've got no reason to believe he'd stay in the area. You're safe. He didn't sound convincing.

Again, if anything happens, call us. Okay, thanks. I couldn't think of anything else to say, as the call clicked to an end. The last few days have been passable. Tai has offered to drive me to and from work, which is fine for the time being. But I live out of his way, and I don't want to impede for much longer.

There's been no sign of that man, outside the recurring nightmares riddling my restless sleep each night. But every time I see an unfamiliar car slow down outside my building, my heart stops, which is all too often in an apartment complex. That's why I'm telling you this.

It's both a warning and an attempt to get this out of my head, so maybe leaving it here will help. That man, whoever he is, is still out there, and I'm sure there are others like him. If you use ridesharing apps, Uber, Lyft, hell, even taxis, and the driver ever makes you feel uneasy in the slightest, trust your gut. It's better than what the alternative could be, what it could have been for me.

It's better than living a life looking over your shoulder. That's the last of it, I said, breathing a sigh and collapsing on the couch. I am officially toast. I just finished hauling the last couple of boxes into the house from the moving truck. Stacks of them were piled throughout the living room, making a corrugated fortress around me. Unpacking would be another long adventure, but at least we had finally gotten all of our belongings into the farmhouse so that we could begin the process of starting our new life here. As I lay in the couch, relaxing momentarily, the hairs began to stand up on the back of my neck.

I started to get a strong sense that I was being watched, specifically from the door beneath the stairs, leading to the basement. It creaked open slowly, just a crack as I observed it back. I closed my eyes, ignoring that paranoid feeling. There was no one else in the house except for us. therefore nobody was watching me it was just my imagination yet still every time i turned away i felt a tingling and saw a vague shadow in that direction just barely visible in my peripherals there was also a feeling of a presence that i could not ignore the door to the basement yawned open wider as if inviting me in darkness peered out blacker than a midnight grave yard. Standing up on shaking legs, I began to walk over to the door, thinking a draft from the basement was blowing it open. I didn't like the feeling of it being ajar. Don't ask me why,

but I just didn't like it. As I drew closer, the sensation of eyes watching me became even more powerful, as if I was drawing closer to a predator, and my body was telling me to turn away and run. That darkness was too much for me to look at, so I turned my eyes away briefly. But that made the feeling even worse. I couldn't help thinking that if something jumped out from the doorway, I wouldn't see it until it was too late. So I looked back again, forced myself to focus my attention on the eerie blackness. When I returned my gaze to the doorway, I could have sworn I saw eyes looking back at me from the darkness. for a brief instant, so quick it could have been passed off as a trick of the light.

But it made my heart skip a beat nonetheless. I slammed the door shut so hard, it shook the house and my wife yelled at me to be more gentle with the old place. Heading into the kitchen, my heart thumping in my chest, and I told Christine what had happened. What do you mean you saw eyes down there? There was somebody in the basement. We need to call the cops? Hang on, hang on. I was trying to decide if my overtide brain had imagined it. I thought I'd seen something,

but the more I considered it, the less likely it seemed. It could have been my eyes playing tricks for me. I grab a flashlight and take a look. No, you can't. It's too dangerous. The place was locked up right, so it couldn't have been a person down there. I was probably imagining things,

but I'll take a look just to be safe. Are you sure about this? Maybe we should call the police and have them check it out. It'll take them an hour just to get here. We're not in the city anymore, remember? Besides, there's no way anybody could have gotten in here since the owners left. Not unless they had a key. Just let me take a look, okay?

Christine reluctantly agreed and took out a phone, dialing 911 and getting ready to hit send in case anything happened. I found a flashlight in one of the boxes marked camping, and open the basement door. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, I began to descend. Proceeding down the rickety steps, the beam of light showed multitude of dust motes

and particles floating in the air being kicked up by my movements. Ancient wooden stairs creaked beneath my feet with each step I took, going down and down, deeper beneath the ground. As I did, the feeling returned again. the sensation of something watching me, that unpleasant feeling began to grow and blossom

into the worst fear I'd ever experienced in my life as I set my foot down on the dirt-packed floor off the lower level. The old farmhouse had an ancient relic of a basement, I realised. Since we'd moved from a long ways away, we hadn't seen the place in person. This was the first time I'd been down there. The owners had chosen not to include pictures of the basement in their ad and I was beginning to understand why.

Shining my light around, I saw there were old pieces of leather and ragged strips of wire, rope and twine, hanging from the ceiling's crossbeams. Crude wooden crosses assembled from broken sticks and small logs hung suspended from these, turning and swaying gently,

despite the lack of breeze down in the basement. I felt a presence behind me suddenly and spun around, the air turning ice cold. For a moment, I thought I saw a dark shadow shape similar to a person, but there was no one standing there. Every part of me wanted to get out to there, but I knew I had to make sure the basement was empty.

I showed my flashlight into every corner and every hiding space, making sure it was inoccupied. Surely enough, it was. But I did find something There was a black box in a stone alcove surrounding by inscriptions carved directly into the foundations of the house The strange shrine resembled something

From a church or a temple But it appeared darker somehow Evil A chill ran through my bones Which seemed to emanate from the stone Unlit candles and strange black statues Surrounded the box sitting dead centre The focal piece of this creepy

Unholy altar I don't remember taking the box upstairs with me, but nonetheless I found myself back on the main level holding it in my hands. It looked curious and ancient. The feeling of someone watching remained, accompanied by an old chill which ran through my bones, almost like the temperature in the house had gone down by ten degrees. There's nobody down there, I told Christine, who's waiting for me at the top of the stairs? but I found this weird box and all these crosses were hanging from the ceiling

It's creepy You need to get rid of that thing She said holding up her hands to cover her eyes From even looking at it I hate it There's something wrong with it Really? What do you want me to do with it I asked

It's just a more box Probably somebody's keepsakes I don't care Put it outside and send it away with the trash On Pickup Day Just get rid of it Christine never acted this way. She didn't believe in superstition or curses. She was a self-proclaimed atheist,

in fact. But the way she was acting was enough to convince me she was serious. So I didn't argue. Okay, I'll put it outside, I said. I brought it out with me into the front yard and tried to decide where to put it. I settled on leaving it in the back of the moving truck. and the glow of the lights inside the back of the moving van I took a moment to take a closer look at the box it was ice-cold to the touch I realised the surface of it was slick and black like polished marble but when I took my hands away it smudged off like charcoal

there were archaic symbols carved into it and a lock held it shut from the front I found myself trying to open it but was unable to Distantly, I heard something whispering to me, its voice insistent and raspy, but I dismissed that as just a wind and nothing more. Eventually I gave up on the box's lock and went inside. My wife looked startled when I walked in the front door. What were you doing out there?

I thought you'd come to bed. You were out there with that creepy box for over an hour. No? I started to disagree with her, but then I looked at my watch. and realized she was right. Unsure what to say, I told her I was tired and must have zoned out. I needed to get some sleep. Trudging up the stairs to the bedroom, I collapsed on the unmade mattress,

and drifted off into a deep slumber. As I slept, my dreams were filled with that dark feeling of being observed, as if eyes were watching me closely from the corner of the bedroom, in the shadows. When I awoke, it was still dark outside. I looked around the pitch-black room, feeling uneasy. I saw unfamiliar shapes and shadows I didn't recognize. That feeling of being watched and returned tenfold,

and I felt a presence observing me from the corner, where a man-shaped shadow stood. Running over to the door, I went to turn on the light switch. I flicked it to the on position, but the lights didn't turn on, the room remained stubbornly dark. My heart was pounding as I felt that presence staring at me in the room. I wanted more than anything to turn on the lights, but they wouldn't go on. With some reason, I found myself going back to bed instead of fleeing the room, terrified as I was.

I found myself lying back down in bed, tucking myself back under the covers and staring at the thing in the corner as it watched me. A dark, unrecognizable shape in the corner of the bedroom began to move towards me. The shadow shape of a person reaching out for me, coming for me. I tried to move but found myself paralysed and unable. I tried to scream, but couldn't. I woke up panting, covered in sweat, and realised I had dreamt the whole thing. The shape in the corner had revealed itself in the morning light. and I saw it was, in fact, a stack of boxes with coats draped over the top of it.

It was barely sunrise outside and Christine was in bed next to me. She bolted upright, looking startled and asked what had happened. I had a horrible dream. It felt a real. You know there's waking nightmares when you feel as if you were up and walking around after being asleep, only to realize that you were out the whole time? My wife didn't answer. Her eyes were fixed on something.

across the room. She was looking at the dresser and a jaw was hanging down. What is that thing doing here? I told you to get rid of it and you brought it up here and opened it instead. She was pointing at something and I followed a gaze to see the black box from the basement was on the bureau. It was open but I had no memory of doing that. What the hell? I didn't do that and I definitely didn't open it, did I? You're telling me you don't remember bringing that box in here and opening it? No, and it was locked.

I couldn't have opened it. Just get it out of here. I don't want to lock it anymore, okay? Bring it to the dump or something. Just get it out of the house and far away from here. I went over to the dresser and saw the open box was filled with strange items. A lock of hair, a charred piece of clothing,

a cross and other burnt pieces. A lock of hair, chopies of clothing, a cross, and other burnt pieces. There was a powerful odour coming from it as well, and like anything I'd ever come across. The stench was unpleasant and burnt my nostrils as I drew closer. This is impossible. I know I didn't bring this in here. It's cursed or something.

Just get it out of the house, please. My wife was more upset than I'd ever seen her, so I put on my clothes and took the box out to the car with me. I didn't know whether local dump was exactly, but I figured I would go look for it. As I near the town, I saw an antique shop at the side of the road and pulled over on a whim. I wondered if the owner would be interested in taking the box off my hands, or if you could at least tell me what it was. The bell above the door rang as I entered, and a man came out from the back room,

polishing a brass candelabra with a rag. Good morning. He said in a friendly voice, How can I help? He stopped speaking abruptly when he saw what was in my hands. The candelabra fell to the floor with a loud clang, and he began to visibly shake as he raised a finger to point to the box. Do you recognise this?

I asked. Where did you get that thing? We just moved in up the road, my wife and I. He was in the basement of the old farmhouse up the street. I moved towards him with my handout. to shake his hand and saw that my fingers were smudged black with the box's darkness. He backed away, slamming into the wall behind him and sending a frame photo crashing to the floor. The glass shattering loudly.

Don't touch me. Don't touch anything. Just get out. Get out and put that thing back where you found it. If you do anything else with it, you'll never get your life back. You should never have taken it from its resting place. You should have never come here. I backed away from him, terrified even before. more than before, especially now that I knew others were aware of the dark powers this box contained. Whatever it was, it was not meant to be moved. Its resting place was of extreme importance.

Maybe that was why the house had been so cheap. It came with a cursed basement. The man began to throw things at me, shouting in a foreign language I didn't recognize, then speaking harshly in English, telling me to leave and never come back. He spoke in prayer-like incantations and made the sign of the cross over and over again. I stumbled out to my car and started the engine, driving back towards the farmhouse, wishing we'd never purchased the place. When I pulled up outside the farmhouse, I tried to decide what to say to my wife. How would I explain to her that the box couldn't be moved? Maybe if we just left it in the basement, the presents would leave us alone.

I decided I would just try to sneak it in and put it back in the basement without a noticing. I would explain it to her later, or at least try to. The important thing now seemed to be to return it to its proper place before something really terrible happened. Going back inside the house quietly, I closed the front door behind me as softly as I could and glanced up the stairs. The light was off in the bedroom, so I assumed Christine would still be up there. I went to the basement door and opened it quietly, being careful not to make too much noise in case Christine had gone back to sleep again upstairs. I began heading down into the darkness beneath the house. I was holding the box carefully in my hands, like a life bomb, since I wasn't sure what would happen if I dropped it or did anything wrong.

Each creaking stare made my heart hammer faster as I trot down towards the dirt floor of the basement. Finally, I set foot down there and looked around, seeing only shadows. The light from upstairs was dim, I was the only source I had to see by. My phone was in my pocket, and I kept it there, thinking I would only be down there for a few moments. Walking across a blackened space towards the alcove which had housed the black box, I began to feel watched again. It was only then that I noticed that sensation had been gone for a while, as I drove to the the antique store and back again.

Whatever had been in the box watching me. It had not stayed inside after the thing had opened. It had stayed in the house with my wife. A loud bang came from the top of the stairs and the entire basement went completely pitch black in an instant.

I realised the door had slammed shut and I figured Christine had closed it. Maybe she didn't realize I was home. I began to fumble for the cell phone in my pocket, needing a bit of light to feel safe down in the terrifying basement. But before I could grab it, something attacked me. The shrieking wail it made was inhuman and full of rage. It swiped at me with sharp claws in the darkness as I rolled and ducked away from it, trying to escape. I threw the box down to the floor, hoping to get away.

As I got up, I hit my head and a dangling wooden crumbed. cross, and nearly got wrapped up in the twine which suspended it from the ceiling. Stumbling, I tried to find my way to the stairs, screaming for my wife to help me. She didn't answer. A moment later, the thing came at me again. It was fast, but thin, and just a bit weaker than me, despite its anger. I managed to grab its wrists and pushed it up against the wall, then tripped it to the floor. I ran up the stairs, stumbling on the steps, and, you know, scraping my shins, bloodying them badly. Just as I reached the top, the thing came at me again. It was relentless. Screaming ancient curses with spittle flying in my face, it swiped at my eyes

and got one of them blinding me. The door was just behind me, so I flung it open and shoved the thing away from me. And as light from the main level came flooding in through the open door, I saw what had been attacking me. my wife tumbled down the steps, cracking a head against the wall on the way down, then falling lifelessly to the dirt floor of the basement below. I took a few shaky steps down the stairs, looking to confirm if my eyes had deceived me, but they had not. The thing in the box had stayed behind when I left,

and it possessed my wife, driving it down into the darkness of its lair, where it felt most at home. As I stood there, staring at her lifeless body, I saw her begin to twitch. Her fingers began to drum up and down. Then her head began to rock and make a loud smacking sound as her forehead impacted the basement floor again and again. Hard. Christine? I called down the stairs.

Stop. Stop, please. She continued the self-destructive behaviour, smashing her skull hard. against the dirt floor. I began to take a shaky step down to stop her, but then hesitated. That thing was still inside of her. It wasn't safe,

and yet I couldn't just let her keep hurting herself like that. The meaty sound repeated again and again as I screamed for her to stop. But she wouldn't. But I wouldn't go down there again, and eventually the thing inside of her realized that, come save me honey she said in a droning beehive voice i need you no i just stood at the top of the stairs waiting my wife appeared to have broken a few limbs during her fall but that didn't stop her from moving quickly sickening sounds of bone crunching could be heard from up the stairs as she got to her feet her one ankle failing so that she rested a weight on the splintered

knob of a tibia rather than on a foot. Whatever was inside of her felt no pain, but looked agonising to me. She began to shuffle over the wooden stairs without warning, moving faster than I thought possible, crab-like and inhuman on four legs. It looked like she wouldn't be able to make it on a fractured bones, and yet she moved like a restless insect, her other limbs making up for the deficit of the lost one. Using her arms like additional legs She began to crawl towards me up the stairs

Her fingernails digging into the splintered wooden stairs And breaking off as she raced faster and faster Gaining momentum I realised that the last second That I had been paralysed with terror And through the door shot Just as she slammed into it With a shuddering bank that rattled the upstairs windows

In their frames There was no lock on the door and I could do nothing except hold it closed with all the weight in my body she doesn't relent for a second turning the knob constantly pressing with all of her strength on the door

as I grip my teeth and fight against the weight I'm sitting here still with my back pressed up against the door my feet wedged against the opposing wall with all the force I can muster when I finish getting this out

I don't know what I'll do Maybe I'll try the police and see what they say My biggest concern is that they'll want to let her out She'll probably pretend to be normal when they arrive She'll pretend I'm insane that I attacked her But I know that's not her It's the thing from the basement The thing from the black box

Whatever it is, she can't be allowed to bring it back to the surface It was locked down in that basement for a reason And that's where it needs to stay. It was early Sunday and I was ready to treat the world. I live in a relatively ignorant neighbourhood. A happenstance of myself only managing to get a minimum wage drop at a local fast food joint nearby. The Burger Shack. But this morning I was going to help educate the area on real music.

I whipped up my guitar, plugged it into the amp and aimed it out of the window. I gave it a gentle pat, the tinge of reverb muttering from the speaker. But just as I was about to pound out some classic riffs, my neighbour's alarm clock went off, and it all came rushing back to why I hate living here. The worst of the worst music one could think of shot out from my neighbour's open window and immediately sent me back. I fell from the window lip and almost knocked my guitar.

Good morning, Stephen. Want to go squirrel catching? he screamed from his window. This was a strange sport he seemed to relish in. I'd catch him and his friend doing this in their spare time, and they seemed fascinated by it. So much so that they seemed to always think I'd want to end on the action. I wanted to respond right away with a firm no, but I was still on my back.

However, this was enough for invitation. Great, we'll be right. over. Oh no, I thought, no, no, no, no, no, no, I muttered to myself. I set my guitar down when I heard some knocks on the door. They were here. I wonder who that could be, I sarcastically thought to myself. I opened the door and there they were. Goofy looks in their faces, absolute absence behind their eyes. I never know if they're strung upon junk 24-7, but they float about in life and have absolutely no issue with them. that. Ready to go? said Sean. Sean was short and stocky and always wore a shirt, even when

not working. Someone must have told him to always dress for the job you want, but with none of the actual advice on how to act on it. He too works in the burger shack, always overdressed for the job. His friend was next to him, Patton, my other neighbour, grotesquely overweight, absolutely dumb as bricks and always wearing casual shorts no matter the season. No, I'm not ready to go, I say, and slam the door. I think I'm firm with my answer. I hear Patton say, he doesn't want to play with us through the door. But Sean, delusional as usual, says, no, Patton, he's just not ready.

After that, I hear what I dread. More knocks. I open the door to Sean, immediately asking, ready now? No, I shout back and slam the door once more. You'd think this would be enough, but that's underestimating the sheer determination of these two. This cycle happened several more times

before I just ripped the door open and screamed, No, I'm not ready, I'll never be ready, don't you get it? Sure we do, is all he says back. Simply just confusing or just plain dumb. Shouldn't you be at work today, Sean? I ask, trying to think of any way to get him out of my. my hair. I'd love to be at work today, but it's Sunday. The burger shack is closed. At first, I was irked by how sad he was. I never knew someone so excited to work minimum wage,

but then an idea came to me. Hold on a sec. I'll be right out, I say suspiciously. I knew this would hold him there for long enough. I strad to my guitar around me, slipped back into the house and out the back door. I quickly hopped the fence and made my way around the neighbourhood into town. I knew exactly where I would get my peace. Slipping through the side streets, I made it to the building I knew would be empty. The burger shack. I pulled out my key, something I used to open in the mornings and went in.

Hello? I called out just in case. No response. Perfect. alone at last I thought to myself and pulled at my guitar to play. Stephen, Stephen, I heard from outside. I quickly dipped into the kitchen to hide as they came into the restaurant. How the hell did they know I was here? They must have seen me. They looked around, all while calling out for me.

The kitchen area in this fast food joint was small and linked to the eating area through a portal where orders were put through. so I knew the kitchen wasn't the best place to hide. Now that I was in the kitchen, I couldn't get out without getting past them, so I had to go further in. The only enclosed space was the freezer unit, so I made my way in there. Stephen? I could hear over and over from around the restaurant.

They got close, but seemed to search the main hall in the kitchen. Well, he's not here. I'll bet that eager beavers already down at the park catching squirrels. This blatantly wrong revelation kicked them into action and they left to look for me elsewhere. Finally, they're gone, I say to myself as I tried to open the door and heard a metallic clunk in response.

The door was known to be stiff, so I tried it again, harder this time. But when the clunk rejected me again, all I could think was, oh no. I sat down, guitar on my lap. I was suddenly regretting only coming out in a t-shirt. It wasn't long until I was overcome with an uncontrollable shiver.

My breathing slowed and slowed. Oh well, I thought to myself, someone will realize I'm gone and come looking for me. I'll be out of here in no time. This was the last thought I had before passing out. I heard the faint sounds of grinding metal. The tics of steel bending echoed around. I tried to stir awake but couldn't move.

There was nothing but blackness from my eyes being stuck shut. I heard the slam of heavy metal, and though my eyes were closed, I could pick up the faint rays of light. A muffled voice rang out. Oh my, a frozen sapien! After that, I heard a whirring song. sound and flashes of red. It felt warm, but very quickly too warm. I felt a horrible burning sensation as the feeling came back into my body. I'll be out of here in no time, I muttered to myself

a continuing thought from earlier. Greetings, primitive, came a robotic voice no longer muffled. As I slowly woke, many realisations kicked in. First was the amount of ice around the me. It seemed I was in the freezer for longer than I thought. Way longer. I was shivering still, yet had a burn on my back end. I looked up in fright at the figure before me. Sean? I stuttered through blue lips. Is that you? Sean? No, I'm Sean Tron. Welcome to the future. What? I stammered back. Welcome to the future, he repeated. Uh, the future? At this, I looked around.

Everything around me was shinier, unnaturally so. A chromatic shine gleamed off everything. The material was far into what I'd known, yet had an earthly familiarity. Huh? Okay, uh, what's going on here? Why is everything chrome? I said, confused. Everything is chrome in the future?

He shoots back. What? I start before panic sets in. I ran to look outside the window, and indeed, not only are the constructs of the building a shining metallic material, but the nature outside too has a sheen.

Oh my, escapes my lips, as I notice even the sand is now an unnatural, reflective hue. Impossible is lying, I say to myself, in utter denial. Then, a thing of beauty comes forth.

A flower. Nature tried to reach its grasp through the unnatural layer. It was untouched by the chromatic curse under the crone dirt and flicked up from the ground. But this ray of hope is quashed quickly when a vehicle shoots around

and a figure comes out and immediately sprays the flower with an unknown substance that causes the flower to change. Before the figure ran back to the vehicle and sped off, the flower went from its natural beauty to the uniform shade of chrome instantly. It was sickening. He's right, I mutter.

Of course I'm right, Stephen. Just ask my clones. I flinched as three more Shorns suddenly appeared next to him. It's easy to dress up others like you and pretend they're you. But this was something else entirely. Even their smallest body language

just screamed Sean. It was uncanny. My head started spinning. This was too much to take in. In a panic, I looked around for answers, but found only more questions, because on the wall, I saw a calendar set to the current date. April 1st, 4022. How long was I in the freezer?

I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted to wake up. I fell to the floor in shock. All I did was curl my breath. body in spasms, forcing myself to wake up from this nightmare. Future, I kept saying to myself, future, future, future. A mantra that was not at all comforting. While in complete disarray, a heavy hit whacked me on the head.

I held my face as I looked at what had happened. It seemed in my breakdown that Sean recognized this and tried to snap me out of it. It somewhat worked. Thanks, I muttered. After a moment of composing myself, I shifted my thoughts into action. Now listen, all of you, I don't belong here. This is all a horrible mistake. Please, we've got to do something, I pleaded.

I knew that my thoughts would only run in circles. They were right. Though I feel I'm of at least slightly above average intelligence in my time. Here, in the future, they are always. right. I really am a primitive being. If anyone could help me, it was people from this time. The main Sean paused for a moment. He seemed to contemplate my situation. His simple mind was more excited to see me than thinking about how displaced I truly was. But taken aback, I could seem thinking of something to do. Squirrel catching, he exclaimed. That was his

idea. The first thing that came to his head when thinking of something to do was squirrel catching. I knew my hopes were misplaced. It seemed, no matter what ear it was, Sean was always shorn. Another voice joined the fray, a dullard sound, low IQ dripping from the inflection. Squirrel catching, it said excitedly. Around he came, pattern, both heads of him. Instead of the average hick he usually presented himself as, he was still that, but now with two fully functioning heads, both operating of their own accord. I was freaking out inside at the sight of this,

but kept it under control to ask one more time before lashing out. All my fears at this point were instead boiling into a red shade of anger. Just listen to me! I'm not supposed to be here. I've got to get back to my own time period. I've got to go, I beg. Well, why didn't you just ask? The time machine is down the hall, to the left. Sean responded simply.

I didn't even have time to be defounded. As soon as he said this, I dashed away. No thank yous, no goodbyes, just haste. I ran down the hall into another room, though this one was different from what I'd expected. Instead of the uniform chrome the rest of the world seemed to fall into, the ceiling was a fluorescent green, and the walls were covered in pink hue stripes.

Well, I wouldn't have chosen this interior, I'd be mused. The room was empty besides one key feature. A wall switch with two settings. Future and past. Right then, it was on the topmost setting, which made sense. All I'd have to do is flip it to the middle, I thought to myself. But another thought came to me. If Sean exists in the future, I'd better go to the past.

I flipped the lever from his most upright position with no regard straight to the bottom. Immediately as siren blared and the room clapped from existence from within the burger shack. Lights and particles flew past at dizzying speeds. I witnessed something no one from my generation nor many others would ever comprehend. I truly feel primitive now, just trying to think of mortal words to describe even a modicum of what I saw. My first indication that this might not have been a good idea was when the room crashed into the ground below. The room was built into the burger shack, so the fact that the establishment didn't exist when I was flung into it meant it no longer latch to a construct.

My first worry was if the room was still powered. I heard a scuttle from next to me and saw a sudden. strange shell creature tinker past. Then I saw the tail end of some animal in the distance moving between the foliage. I didn't recognise it either, though I wasn't well-versed in the animal kingdom to know what this meant at that moment. Wow, this is sort of an old-world charm, I thought to myself. Nature was indeed king here.

I'd never seen such a rich and untouched natural environment. The only hint of civilization being the gaudy room dumped in the middle of the greenery. A stark contrast to where I just came from. Then I heard more rustles. These seemed more deliberate. More and more rustles came from the tree line. Then a shape swung from tree to tree too fast for me to catch. I sharpened my gaze, but it happened again too fast to catch.

A shadowy blur bounced from branch to branch, and it was getting closer. Huh? I said out loud, involuntarily. Suddenly, it lurched from behind the closest tree. My heart pounded as I started to really fear for my life. I was safe in civilization, but he began to sink in how far away from that I truly was. I slowly approached, taking the initiative. But as soon as I saw the lurching figure flinch, I screamed,

stay back on sight. But the figure didn't jump out at me and instead approached curiously. Their jaw was heavily protruding and their teeth almost resembled fangs. Hair covered so much of their bare skin.

But I recognised the silhouette immediately. It was a primitive shorn. He slowly approached, slowly reaching his hand to me, whereupon contact, immediately retracted it. He sniffed curiously, as if familiarizing with the scent.

Uh, no thanks, I blurted. A breeze rolled past my ear, but it carried a fetid stink. A rotten wind whisked rhythmically past me, with the escalating sound of breathing. I slowly turned to see the face of a disgusting, neolithic pattern. He bared his teeth in a rictus grin, revealing a rotten grimace. Uh, hi there, I said nervously. Well, I better get going now. I had no idea if they understood my words, but I hoped they understood my tone and body language.

As I backed away, the past Sean reached out and firmly grasped my arm. Yes, that's my arm, I said lightly, trying to diffuse the situation. He then picked up my arm and did something unexpected. He lifted it to his head, placed it on top, and the hunched pattern licked it. Oh, that's sweet, I said with a hint of irritation. Though not in rage, Patton seemed to lash out and started smashing the ground. Maybe he was excited. He shivered, and I realized he was getting scared.

From behind me came more rustles. A chill ran down my spine. If there was something behind me enough to scare my human-sized compatriots, then I'd stand no chance with my less than athletic body. The two ducked for cover, something easier for them as they were already near the foliage line. I turned slowly to see what was emerging. It was a squirrel. Oh, look, it's just a little squirrel, I said matter-of-factly, trying to diffuse the tension.

But they weren't buying it. They started screaming and hysterically running around. I just wanted to leave. Well, I'm going away now, I said, trying to back up, using the panic as a distraction. I walked away while they were still faffing about. The future, the past, the present. Those two were still dull as ever. I found a nice shady spot away from the fools.

No reason to waste this time anyway. It was still my day off after. all. I pulled over the guitar that was still strapped to me and tried to play the first notes to smoke on the water. But each time, I never got far. After every few notes, either Sean or pattern would scream. It was almost rhythmic. The pattern had a purpose. What are you simpletons doing? I stormed back screaming. I watched them for a moment. one of them would grab the squirrel where it'd nibble on his skin causing a small cut to which he'd scream and let go. At this, the other would somehow think it was a good idea to try it himself.

This cycle was repeated at nauseam. You're supposed to catch these things, not torture yourself with them, I yelled. I grabbed some sticks and foliage and made a makeshift net. It wasn't long before I had something workable. This ought to make things go a little smoother, I said, handing them their tools. As almost expected, they showed their amazing intelligence once more, and put it around their lips. Give me those things. You're supposed to catch them like this?

I screamed before showing them how it was done. It's called squirrel catching, I told them. They loved it. Excitement beamed from them as they immediately chased the critter around with their net. Finally, I said to myself contently, as I sat down on a nearby rock. I started strumming a few jingles to myself just as a warm-up, but this time they heard it, and they did not like it. They broke out into a frenzied scream.

The sound was too alien for them. They turned to me with so much malice in their eyes, and stark contrast to the glazed-over look they usually. had. I didn't even hesitate. My flight response kicked right in, and I fled. Luckily, in the direction I came. I jumped straight back into the room I came from, as he started climbing around and hammering at the walls. It sounded like this place wouldn't hold for very long, so I started frantically jamming the lever up and down repeatedly to try elicit any response from the machine. Get me out of here, I screamed, and I heard a crunching snap as I did. Oh no, I thought. did they break in?

I looked around, but I realized I still held something as I turned my body. The switch? I looked back and saw the mechanism. I had no idea

where it was last set, but I knew I no longer had control of the machine. I figured the machine was simple, easy enough for me to understand. It only had past

and future on it. But then the icon changed. It rolled like slot machine and landed on some mismatched icons. It seemed there was more to it, but it was too late now for any kind of discovery. I was at the mercy of what the machine did. Loser, the machine spat out.

I didn't have time to dwell on how one could lose on a time machine as the room was snapped out of existence. It shocked and rumbled. I could tell I was no longer lodged in the ground. This time the room walked more drastically. I could feel my skin pull, but it wasn't just an on-surface sensation when I looked down. I was being stretched like putty around the room. Colors changed wildly as my eyes rocked from the motions.

My ears were barraged with an almost siren-like scream. The room was at its limits. I was at my limits too, as I felt the room stretch and stretch, until I felt as thin as hair, and I blacked out. I stirred. I couldn't feel how long it had been since losing consciousness, but I was alone in a white room as seen to have no ends. It had to have been a room as I couldn't see the sky.

I slowly got up to explore. The only other things that stuck out were the coloured squares, seemingly scattered out in geometric randomness. They didn't adhere to any logic. I lifted one to see what it was, and it just slowly floated up slightly and faded away from sight. This was a lot to take in, but one thought pushed this way to the front. He's not here, no more Sean, I may finally have found a place where I can be all. Alone, more colors appeared, taking the form of my last said word.

It lurched from my mouth as I said it. Alone shot out in fluorescent colors. Then another appeared, as it was spoken next to me. Alone and again, alone and again, alone and again, alone, alone, alone. It repeated around me, echoing in the vast expanse of infinity around me. Each time lit up with strange, cosmic colorful letters. I didn't know what this meant, nor did I want to find out. Either I was truly alone, and this world was trying to crush my sanity.

Or I wasn't alone, and with their power, I didn't want to find out their intention. I'd got to get out of here, I screamed. The problem was, I no longer knew where the room was. So, I just ran. I chose a direction and sprinted as fast as I could. But though I couldn't mark where I was, the room now being all stark white made it feel like I was running in circles. All the while, the sounds of my stomping feet were drowned out by the eternally echoing voices

of the infinite, seeping into my ears, feeding my panic. Where's the machine? Where's anything? Where? Where? I screamed. I knew running was useless, so I just started stomping in frustration, almost like a toddler not getting what they wanted.

I jumped and jumped in rage, until I crashed down into a room below. Looking around, I recognised the gaudy interior straight away. It was the time machine. I ran up to the controls, but they were still broken. Damn, I thought, I couldn't take it anymore. I just broke down. I started banging on the broken controls in dire frustration.

I want to go home. home, I want to go home, I want to go home. I miss my small town. I miss my apartment. I even miss Sean, I sobbed. Right when I said that, something happened. Light shut out and the room burst with movement, quickly followed by a crash. The room had shifted once more. I opened the door and coughed from the dust still settling. But the dust had a familiar taste. I recognized it but when it was kicked up on my walks to work. I looked around, and I was right. I was home.

The machine sat crashed outside my apartment. And there they were. Sean, Patton, I shouted excitedly. Hi, Stephen, they said back. Oh, I'm back. I can't believe this. I was in space, and I went to the future, and then, and then I went to the past,

and then I was nowhere, but now I'm back. And, and you just, you don't. don't know how happy I'm to see you guys, I blurted. My excitement was too much to make me hold back. Does this mean you want to go squirrel catching? They said excitedly. No, who's the idiot who invented that game anyway? I snapped back.

I was finally gathering my wits. You are, Stephen, they said with pride. And they burst out laughing. I'm going back. I muttered to myself in frustration.