Creepy - Soul

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Soul***Written by: Keepers Coffin and Narrated by: Owen McCuen***The Price of Revenge***Story link: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Price_of_RevengeContent is available under CC BY-SA***More Than One Way ***Written by: Ryan Van Ells and Narrated by: Alicia Atkins***Investigating Madness ***Written by: No One of Consequence and Narrated by: Danielle Hewitt***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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famous chilling and disturbing creepypasters and urban legends in the world. world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy Presents Soul. Written by Keeper's Coffin and narrated by Owen McCune. I had not actually seen Simmons in person for about a year. The last time we spoke was during a flurry of research he had me do over the course of a couple months, mostly dark webbed stuff, for which Simmons required my expertise.

When I last saw him in person, he still looked like a youthful man. But when I saw him again, I saw a man who had done more than just a year's worth of aging. Maybe Simmons's sudden decline was normal. After all, I'm a computer guy, so what do I know? The deepest laws of biology are inscrutable. As of writing, scientists don't know why aging happens and certainly don't know how to reverse it. They still can't even cure the common cold, come to think of it.

So, for all I know, Simmons' sudden transition in over a year might be completely normal. But I doubt it. I doubt it because I now have some idea what Simmons had been up to since last I saw him. Maybe, in the end, it'll all be worth it. Maybe that artificial intelligence that Simmons wanted to build would be worth all the years and all the loss Simmons had experienced. The whole world of AI has taken off lately.

The stuff they've recently made public is stunning, to say the least. Everyone I talked to about it uses the word scary. I've also heard fearsome. I've also heard, buy a farm, get way off the grid, and just ride this out. We'll see. I'm a network guy, a security expert, a hacker. As much as I wish I was, I'm not any kind of expert on artificial intelligence. I mean, I know the basics.

One time, when I had a spare weekend, I went so far as to build a small, dirt, simple neural network that I found a tutorial for online. I have to admit, when I trained that thing and let it run against a real-world data set, I was knocked back in my seat by what I saw. This thing had agency. It is the closest I've come to something I would genuinely call spooky, until what happened at the house, of course. Simmons, as it turns out, had gotten a hell of a lot closer to spooky than that. I don't know that much about Simmons.

I know that he's not a computer specialist and not a trained scientist. To me, he just seemed like a guy who would come for money and done a lot of reading. He didn't have any deep level of specials. specialization in anything as far as I could tell. Not in the way most of the people I know in my field do. But he seemed to have developed quite a breadth of knowledge. And I genuinely think that beyond being bookish, Simmons was one of those people who could make connections

between widely different areas of knowledge that most people wouldn't think of. So, anyway, there he was again after a year's absence. Simmons had me meet him in the lobby of a hotel where he was staying. I remember the way Simmons was sitting with his elbows on his bony knees, his hands folded in front of him. He was always the kind of guy who would take several long seconds before answering any of your questions, even the simple ones. He would just stop and compose a long, complex answer in his mind before speaking. His answers were always like they were penned in a letter.

I approach every problem by first disassembling it into its component parts, Simmon. said to me when we were talking in that lobby. Of course, I'm sure this is the same as what you do with a technical problem. I decompose any large problem into smaller constituent parts. Then, before I solve each one, I solve even simpler version of the components I've isolated. Kind of like the way a painter does a series of little vignettes on several small canvases before committing to a larger, more complex painting. So, what I've been doing for this latest little vignette of mine,

over the past year is documenting proof of demonic possessions. Simmons began his hunt for demons with the best source he had come across, Catholic diocesan priests, specifically exorcists. These guys answer to their local bishop and deal with any possessed people in their diocese. Real actual exorcisms. Simmons had me dig up a list of these exorcists from around the world, then filter that list down to the ones we could verify were them. most legitimate. Simmons had me exclude from the list anyone who claimed to be an exorcist,

but was not an ordained Catholic priest. As nutty as this whole scheme seemed to me, Simmons was going by a very clear set of principles he had extrapolated from years of study. Apparently, when it came to possessions and exorcisms, Catholic priests were the gold standard. Most of these guys were hard to find. Most of them worked in very remote parts of the world and had no direct record on the internet at all. I found them from working backwards from certain data fingerprints I could create, from information I dug up on a host of more well-known and confirmed cases. Trust me, it took some work and a little black magic of my own to pry this information

from its hiding spots. Simmons took the list I created, paid me handsomely, then disappeared. Since then, Simmons had apparently been traveling all around the world finding these guys. He convinced a significant number of these exorcists to allow him to observe their exorcisms. Simmons got footage. He got electromagnetic readings. He took samples that he sent off to laboratories.

And looking at him in that hotel lobby, I could see that all this had taken quite a toll on him. Maybe it was the amount of traveling he had had to do. More likely, it was what he saw during those exorcisms that took years off his life. I asked to see some of the footage, but he left me in no doubt that neither I nor anyone else would ever be shown that stuff. Certainly Simmons could not tell me exactly what a soul actually is,

despite all his research. But he had finally, and for the first time in human history, I think, come up with a metric that could be applied to this thing we call a soul. Simmons could apply a binary, yes, no value to the presence of a soul. Quite simply, if a demonet, possession could be caused, that marks the presence of a soul. No soul in the room, no demonic possession possible. What does this have to do with AI? Basically, Simmons was pretty sure that any true AI, which would have to be a cognizant and self-aware entity, is impossible

without the presence of a soul. So if no soul is present, no actual consciousness is possible. The closest AI would ever get to real consciousness without a soul is clever mimicry. Simmons was convinced that our biology does not cause our consciousness. Simmons had become certain that self-awareness does not emerge as a byproduct of highly complex biology. Instead, based on his research, Simmons was convinced souls are some unexplained interdimensional force that physics has yet to catch on to. this realm of souls, this domain of consciousness, lies just outside our universe and our physical reality. That world and ours is separated by a veil.

This barrier is thin, but mostly effective at hiding one dimension from the other. At some point in humanity's evolutionary history, the biology of our brains became complex enough that the brain could affect matter and information, not just by raw chemistry anymore, but on the quantum level. These tiny little events in our monkey brains

were all it took to affect fusion between dimensions. The whole reason we as a species became conscious is that the human brain is a system capable of poking a tiny quantum hole in the veil separating our reality and the dimension that souls originate from. Consequently, what we call a soul flows in and permeates the system, giving rise to consciousness. Simmons reasoned that if any system

become sophisticated enough, it can poke a hole in the veil, even one made out of silicone and circuits. Simmons was going to give AI a soul. And I was, as it turned out, back on Simmons payroll. Now, again, I'm not an AI scientist. I'm not really a programmer or a software developer. I'm a black hat pen tester.

a hacker. I'm mostly an ethical hacker. Mostly. What it turned out Simmons needed was for me to be a slightly less than ethical hacker. I agreed to it. Everyone has a price. Simmons had his own AI people,

already working on the framework for his proposed creation. What Simmons needed me for, again, was research. He needed my magic, work backwards from a data fingerprint trick to divulge hidden knowledge on deeply walled off parts of the net. Simmons' team had their own novel idea for a new kind of AI, based mostly on arcane and epistemological research Simmons had done all on his own that simply needed to be translated into code. But there were still times when Simmons team hit a wall due to a lack of specific technical knowledge.

A lot of stuff they'd come up with was maybe theoretically correct, but not completely hashed out, to the nuts and bolts level. That is where I came in. I figured out what their knowledge gap was. Then I went out and found where other teams elsewhere in the world had already developed a solution that mapped very closely to what our team needed. Then I just kind of borrowed these resources long enough for Simmons people to make the next leap in their own work.

I had to sign my name to all kinds of secrecy when Simmons rehired me, and I'm breaking a lot of that by telling most parts of the same. this story. I'm going to try to not divulge what I don't have to. What I can tell you is that there were three others working with me and Simmons. The technical lead was a lady who had just been denied tenure at a university. She'd been some kind of AI pioneer there I thought I remembered reading about some years back. She'd given several years of her life to the department, and after she was denied tenure, she was angry at everyone and everything. Simmons could have told her the AI she was building would have wiped out all of humanity, and she probably would have stayed on the

project. I'll refer to her as Megan. The other two were graduate students. One, I'll call him Bruce, was from a university in Iran. The other was from a university in Canada. I'll call him Phil for now. I have no idea how Simmons convinced these two to drop what they were doing and join this crazy venture. For me, it was money, obviously. Megan was motivated by spite and revenge. Looking back, I sometimes think Simmons may not have had to pay Megan anything to do this. A chance for revenge was enough. Maybe money was enough for the other two as well.

So began a very intense year of working with these three and Simmons. The advance Simmons gave me was more than enough to quit my current job. It also paid the rent on my place, which was good because I had to have to be. leave my apartment and take up temporary residence in a city on the other side of the country where the rest of the team was. The temporary residence and workplace for that year was an abandoned self-storage facility that Simmons owned. The place was fenced off, and we worked out of a cluster of the larger units way in the back.

We all had a separate storage unit to ourselves during this time. We had everything we needed. Simmons furnished us with all the amenities, so it was more comfy than it probably sounds. Working there was like working at a startup, with all the high-paced chaos and ambiguity that comes with that. For a year, we worked at a frenzied pace. Day after day, there was always a thorny new challenge to be met. I started every day not really knowing what I would be required to do that day, or how I was going to do it, or even if I was going to be able to do it. We worked every day like this from seven in the morning to seven at night. Quite often, I didn't go out at all at the end of

the work shift. I usually ended the day in my storage unit where I cracked a beer and curled up around my laptop on the cot. Every four weeks, however, we were given the week off. Megan, Bruce, and Phil disappeared to, who knows where. I didn't ask. For the first half of that year, I used my weeks off to maintain, or more like stumble through a long-distance relationship. and after that went bust, I just spent my weeks off back at my apartment. We made significant progress during that time. Megan and the other two were some pretty high-calibre software engineers, and they had it me when they needed a cheat sheet.

About a year after we got started, the structure of the AI that Simmons had envisioned was complete. We were ready to put together the training data set. You basically can't get an AI to work without a training data. data set, which is just a crap ton of data collected from the real world and stored inside a database. You train your fledgling AI on the training set. You give the AI a task, and it attempts to accomplish that task. Of course, the AI completely fails to get it right the first several times to try to solve the problem.

But what the AI does get from those failures is a measure of how far apart its own results are from the correct answer. From there, the AI then makes tiny adjustments to how it's trying to solve the problem. Each time it tries, the AI is allowed to check its own results against the real-world data in the training set. Each time it fails to solve a problem, it makes another adjustment to how it's solving the problem. Since its brain is a computer, the AI is able to do this kind of back-and-forth learning thousands of times a minute.

Step by tiny step, the AI gets closer to being able to solve the problem on its own. Finally, the AI gains the ability to solve the problem you gave it. You can then give it another problem similar to the one it trained on, and right away, the AI can solve it without you ever having given it explicit instructions. Walla! It learns. It was when we were ready to give this new AI its training set, that the whole situation changed.

I guess we were expecting Simmons to just, hand us the training set in some form. Usually it's a computer file of some kind on a database scoured from the internet or from some university. I thought maybe all the videos he had taken of all those exorcisms would somehow be the training set. But I was very wrong.

Instead, Simmons had us change location. One day, we all just packed up and left the storage facility. I don't know where Bruce and Phil went. Megan and myself, along with our few personal belongings, were driven by Simmons to a two-story brick house out in the bland suburban hinterland of some bland Midwestern city a few hours away. During our time at the storage facility, we were all free to come and go as we pleased. It was not often that I left the storage facility, but I was free to go out to a bar if I wanted. At this new house, though, we had to agree to be completely holed up inside without leaving. We had to stay locked in the house until Simmons said the project was completed.

We were absolutely not allowed to step outside of that house day or night. So the three of us, Simmons, Megan, and myself were shut up in this house for several weeks. Before we arrived, Simmons had packed the basement with what looked like months worth of food and other supplies. There was no need to leave the house for anything, save a grave medical emergency. The first floor was packed with all the same gear we had been. back at the storage facility. It was more uncomfortable than what we'd been used to. There was simply less room to move around.

We were cramped between workstations, server racks, cooling equipment, cables, 3D printers, you name it. The only time we could stretch out and relax was in one of the upstairs bedrooms we were each assigned. The house had an attached garage. There was a door leading out to the garage, but Simmons kept it locked shut. that garage was as off limits to us as the outdoors Simmons would not tell us what was in there the few times I watched him go into the garage

that garage is where he spent most of his time the inside had all the lights off so I could never see more than a foot or two into it also Simmons had painted the door to the garage black which was off-putting to say the least Megan and I spent the first couple of days resetting the equipment in the house after that Megan went to work doing what I could only imagine was finalizing the AI Simmons stayed locked in that garage all day every day

I would not say what he was doing in there I had absolutely nothing to do it hadn't been completely explained to me why I was there Bruce or Phil could have been of some use to Megan as she tinkered with the computers but cut off from the internet there was no way I could do anything to ply my trade necessarily meant me getting on the internet there was no way else to do it as it was the only contact we had with the outside world in that house was what we breathed and what we flushed But I was getting paid, so there I idly sat day in and day out for the first couple of weeks. When each day ended and Simmons came out of the garage, and Megan disappeared into her room,

all I could do was go to mine and drink myself to sleep. Simmons had provided ample booze for our stay, so there was that. But I became pretty miserable after the novelty of this situation had worn off, which only took a few days. The longest I'd ever been without an internet connection was one single camping weekend during college and another time I was in rehab for a couple of days. Stuck in that house, totally isolated, I had nothing to do.

I tried reading some books Simmons had brought into the house. I watched a bunch of dumb movies and played some video games. I drank a lot, and when I slept until noon as a result, Simmons didn't seem to care or notice. He just stayed locked in that garage. and barely spoke to either of us. I finally cracked after about two weeks of idleness. Simmons had come in from the garage to get something out of the kitchen,

and I used that opportunity to make my point. I announced to the room that this was all completely ridiculous, and I was going to walk out to the front sidewalk to get some damn air. I marched up to the front door and opened it. I turned my head just a bit to get Simmons in my peripheral vision, wanting to gauge his reaction. Oddly enough, Simmons, who had been so adamant to that point about us not leaving,

just stood in the kitchen entryway. So I turned and continued out the door. Salt. I completely froze. I had my foot out in front of me, suspended maybe 20 centimeters in the air just over the ground. My hands had shot out to either side, grabbing the door frame to arrest my forward momentum.

I was completely stunned and completely perplexed by the line of salt drawn on the ground in front of me. It was coarse, white salt, piled a few centimeters high and a few centimeters wide, and it stretched across the door frame like a demarcation. What flashed through my mind right then were images of what Simmons must have seen and experience during his year hunting down the possessed. And this ring of salt, I could tell at that point, had something to do with demonology, and I absolutely wanted nothing to do with it.

I realized the line of salt extended all the way around the house. Whether or not I believed it, this was some seriously deep hocus-pocus stuff I simply did not want to mess around with. I withdrew my foot slowly back into the house. Why have you done this? I remember saying to Simmons. Megan stumped over the door to see what I was talking about.

She paused, chin to her chest, staring at the salt for a few seconds. Then screwed her head around and demanded loudly that Simmons tell her exactly just what the hell was going on here. She demanded to know why Simmons had us all trapped inside the house. Okay, stop, I remember Simmons saying at that point. He then told us both to just come back inside and close the front door. He then turned and walked in the direction of the black door. the one that led to the garage. That's when he said to us,

It's time. You both need to see how we are going to create the training set. Megan and I were both puzzled, but we closed the front door and followed Simmons to the garage like he told us. He took out a key and undid the deadbolt and opened the black door for us. We couldn't see what was in the room. It was pitch black except for a candle burning in the middle of the floor. Okay, when you step in, only take one step into the room, I remember him saying.

Then stop and take four or five steps to your left. Leave enough room for Megan to get him beside you. And don't touch anything, Simmons said. We did as instructed. I went in and shuffled over. Megan shuffled in after me. Then Simmons flipped the overhead lights on. I think both Megan and I.

I took in dual breaths of shock at what we saw. The floor was covered in what looked like pentagrams and witches sigils. They were painted in a pattern radiating out from the center of the room. The ceiling had dozens of curtain tracks bolted to it. It would turn out that these were for strategically hanging green screens during the filming. In the middle of the floor was some sort of altar. There was a candle on it, a bunch of dried plants, and a string of hundreds of little red bags. I found out when we began filming, there were tiny little cloth bags,

each containing a pinch of tobacco and sage. All these were set around a desiccated goat's head that had coins shoved into its eye sockets. All this looked like a bad movie about medieval wizards. Incongruently, all four walls were lined with cameras and recording equipment. Set on benches all along the walls where items I later found out were for doing motion capture.

Okay, you're going to tell us what the hell this is, Simmons? Megan asked. Simmons complied and told us how we were going to build our training set for the new AI. Simmons' plan was for us to don all this mocap gear, step into the ritual space he had painted on the floor, and be recorded summoning a demon. When I say summon a demon, I mean almost summon a demon, and then stop right before the critical last step. Simmons didn't want either of us getting possessed

before he could create the training set. We were to wear the mocap gear and do almost all the entire summoning ritual. We do everything right up until that last final, fully committal step. That last tiny step would be carefully constructed with deep fake software, using the rest of the recordings for reference material. The deep fake would then get appended to the,

end of the recording. Megan and I would have to do this about a hundred times over the next few weeks in order to get a sufficiently large enough training set. That is why Simmons kept me around. This had suddenly become an acting gig. Once we had a sufficiently large batch of recording to act as a training set, the plan was to switch on the AI and have it train on what we had compiled. The training task we would give our AI would be,

to summon a demon. If Simmons had got his research right, demonic possessions of super-advanced AIs are similar to demonic possessions of human neurobiology. In theory, at least, if the back-and-forth learning process of an AI as advanced as ours

was able to weave together a neural network of sufficient complexity, the neural network could poke a little hole in the quantum veil between our reality and the realm of souls. According to Simmons' research, this possibility of a soul sliding through is the bait that attracts demons.

The demon could take its seat within that neural net. Once the demon was seated in the AI, the fact that there was no actual soul present would create an imbalance between our realm and the spiritual realm where souls exist. In a perverse version of Les Chattalié's principle, that imbalance could only be corrected by causing a soul to slip through the opening in the barrier caused by the neural network of the

AI and also take its place among the circuitry. Simmons was about to see if he could create an AI with an actual soul. I didn't really believe any of this. To be honest, at this point, I'd come to believe Simmons now qualified as nothing more than a very rich lunatic who was not averse to wasting his money on naive schemes. but Simmons never came across as dangerous to me. I knew I could really use the paycheck I was going to get for playing along. So, I played along.

Megan, on the other hand, was a lot more enthusiastic than I expected about this part of the project. Once she got over the initial shock of Simmons' explanation, she never challenged Simmons on it. I'm not sure what Megan believed, and I'm not sure she believed Simmons any more than I did. but Megan, above all else, had scores to settle with her old department. If what Simmons was suggesting was even partially successful, the AI this would create would not just impress our old colleagues who had wronged her.

It would make them and all their lives work completely redundant. In fact, if we were even partially successful, everything humanity has ever done or will ever do would forever lie in the shadow of what we were about to create. So, we pressed on. I dressed up every day and put up with about four weeks of demon summoning rituals in that garage. Every day for the remaining time in that house, Megan and I would take turns suiting up in the mocap gear and going through each step of the summoning ritual, with the recording equipment running.

Simmons did all the recording with the cameras, handled the lights and the sound equipment, and repositioned the green screens. I won't go into details too much. but the summoning ritual had four distinct phases. We'd start out by lying down on the edge of the sigil pattern on the garage floor. Simmons would play an active forcing script over the loudspeaker, and we were to hold absolutely still as it played. It was, from what I can remember,

a bunch of new-age gobbledygook about envisioning the demon's form and personality. Then we were to get up and slowly walk around the sigil with our head down, as if we were a preschool or lost in thought. The script that played over the loudspeaker during that part of it was an imaginary conversation between us and the demon. There was one script for me and one that played when Megan was doing this. The scripts contained a lot of personal information from our childhoods that we were sharing with the demon.

After that, we moved deeper into the sigil circle and closer to the altar at the center. We were to mind patting and stroking the invisible head. head and arm of the demon, like we were comforting a childhood friend. This went on for about an hour while more active forcing played in the background. Finally, we would get closer to the center of the altar, pick up the string of tobacco and sage bags, and make like we were going to set them a light with the candle. But we never actually lit the bags.

That part we deepfaked later and then added the data to the end of the recording stream. But everything up to then needed to be as close to complete. completely real as we could possibly get it. Megan and I did this over and over again, day in and day out. Slowly, we built up a data set of multiple recordings. Finally, we had our training data. After all those weeks of work, flipping the AI and telling it to go was going to be ludicrously easy.

Megan was going to key in some instructions into the server, and then we were just going to kick back and wait for the AI to do the rest. Now, before we go on, let me say again, I am a hacker. So whenever I spend any time on a computer, I expect to be hacked. As a result, I always have a set of tools installed on whatever computer I use that I keep running in the background while I work. I even did this at the house, despite the fact that I knew we had no internet connection. Old habits.

There are many, many different types of cyber attacks, and each one requires corresponding monitoring. tools. I won't go into them, with one exception. An NTFS ledger detects a type of cyber attack called unauthorized partitioning. This is where someone breaks into your computer and adds a second operating system. The NTFS ledger can sense that this particular type of attack is underway against your system and in some cases stop the attack early in the process. So I had one of these running against the server that housed the AI that night when we were getting ready to run the AI against the training data. Simmons told us that we were going to switch the AI on at midnight

and have it run until after 3 in the morning. We were, after all, trying to use an AI to deliberately trigger paranormal activity and midnight to 3 was evidently the peak spooky hours. So we made an extravagant dinner from the stores in the basement and stayed up the whole evening. I have to admit that I was feeling almost overwhelmed with the thought of this project finally ending, getting my money and getting out of there. Midnight drew near, so Megan and I left the table and went to our workstations.

We powered everything up, and at ten seconds to midnight, Megan turned on the AI. At first, of course, nothing happened. The house was completely silent except for the hum of the servers and the whirring of the cooling fans. The virtual clock on my monitor ticked away,

As it got close to one in the morning, I was still sitting there wondering if anything was going to happen. That is when the little yellow arrow started glowing in the bottom right of my screen. This is an uh-oh moment because it's the warning icon for the NTFS ledger. Somehow, even though we were air-gapped, our isolated little network was under attack right in the middle of a critical experiment. I didn't say anything to the others, not wanting to alarm them unnecessarily. It could have been a glitch that caused the arrow. If it was indeed an unauthorized access attempt, there was plenty of other software I had running to shut it down before it got anywhere.

So I just kept an eye on the glowing yellow arrow and waited. Finally, a second yellow arrow appeared beside the first one. This was serious. It meant that whoever was trying to hack in and set up their own partition in our system's memory was getting to the next step. I had to take action before a lot of damage could be done. I clicked on the glowing arrow so that I could view the new partition. The screen in front of me turned blood red.

Right when this happened, I heard Megan behind me screaming, but I was way too mesmerized by what I was seeing to react to her. I struggled to describe the color I saw on that screen. It was more than just a deep blood red. It was like seeing a sound. a sound that was so chilling it stops you cold. It was like someone blowing on an Aztec death whistle and then synesthesiically converting that sound

to the color staring back at me from the monitor. I was frozen to my chair, paralyzed. Megan shrieked again, louder this time. Simmons had come barging into the room behind me to my right and was making loud yelping sounds. Thinking back on it now, he was probably belting out in structure, to the rest of us.

But at the time, too much was going on, all of it way too fast for me to make out whatever it was Simmons was trying to get me to do. The room had become very hot, as if all the cooling systems we had running suddenly shut themselves off. And the house, how do I describe it? It was like it imploded, but just slightly.

Like, there was this dull, reverberating thud all throughout the house, and with it, all the floors and walls all tilted slightly and shifted a few millimeters toward the center of the house. That snapped me out of it long enough to start looking around to see what the screaming was all about. I remember the first thing I saw was hot black slime oozing and steaming out from beneath the server racks. Then I turned more to see what Megan was still screaming at and saw the pair of legs on the stairs. We were in the living room. Behind me was the

entrance that led from the living room out to the center hall. From where I was sitting, I could see the first eight steps or so of the stairs that went up to the second floor. On the third or fourth highest step that I could see, something was standing there. It wasn't Megan or Simmons. It was a pair of legs, and they were naked. I could see from the feet up to the crotch before the rest of it was obscured by the top of the doorframe. I couldn't see its hands. But I got the distinct impression it was holding its hands folded in front of its chest and was leaning back slightly from the waist.

This thing was covered in a very thin film of gauze or maybe a very loose outer skin, like it was shedding. The legs were hairless and very pale, and they were large. Whatever or whoever this was standing on the stairs, it had to be very tall. I remember the feet were splayed, and they extended, far over the edge of the stair step, and the long toes dangled straight down and almost touched the next step below it.

Now, they tell us when we're in school about the fight or flight instinct. Apparently, one of the things evolution makes sure we come pre-programmed with is the sudden urge to react violently or run away as fast as we can when confronted with a threat. I can tell you none of that was happening in my head at that moment. sheer unadulterated terror had taken hold. I just remember thinking, please don't come down those stairs, please don't come down those stairs over and over again.

The last thing in the world I wanted to see was the rest of whatever was on those stairs. Then the thing on the stairs tilted back slightly further and lifted a foot as if to continue down. Mercifully, when I saw this, my fight or flight reaction did kick in. In an instant, I no longer gave a damn about Simmons money. I was up out of that chair and scrambling as fast as I could for the front door. Megan had already made it to the front

door and had already gotten it open. But she had barked her shin on a milk crate full of power tools one of us had left in the entryway, causing her to topple over halfway through the open doorway. To my eternal shame, I did not stop for an instant to help her. Instead, I just tried to jump over her to get out. I clumsily caught my foot on the seat of Megan's jeans and went flying head first out of that house. Landing, I did a lot of damage to my hands and knees, but in that moment of overwhelming panic, I just got up and kept running. I did not look back once. I kept running for a long time. It was like that color of red was still screaming in my brain. I ran and ran until I collapsed. I was down on my hands and knees, gasping and wretching in a grassy area that must have been a park.

The second I got my breath back, I got right back up again and kept moving. I was all out of running at that point, and my legs were killing me. But I could still manage a rapid dawn of the dead hobble, eyes focused straight ahead. I remember there were no cars out that early, so I got out into the center of the road. I kept expecting something horrific to come up behind me and dragged me away to the same. somewhere I did not want to go. I finally made it into a shopping district. All the buildings were black and silent,

but there were more street lamps, so I felt a little safer. Eventually, a squad car pulled up beside me. Two officers, very nice and courteous, got out and questioned me for a bit. I've never been happier to see the police in all my life. Of course, I told them nothing about what happened. By then, I had recovered enough

breath that I could converse without sounding like a strung-out lunatic. I just told them, I got in an argument with my girlfriend and had left the house to cool off. They were very nice and offered to drive me home. I asked them instead to just take me to whatever gas station was nearby that had a dining area. They dropped me off at a 24-hour diner. In my haste, I left my cell phone and all my other belongings behind, but luckily I had run out of the house with my wallet in my pocket. I bought coffee and sat at a booth and waited for sunrise. After that, I bought a burner phone and called for a ride to the airport. I don't know what happened to Megan after that, or Simmons. Neither Bruce nor Phil have ever tried to contact me. I did get a large deposit in my bank

account two weeks later after all this took place. It was the exact amount Simmons and I had agreed upon, so I can only assume it was Simmons who made the deposit, and that somehow he was still alive. At first, I wasn't happy to see the money in my account. Part of me didn't want to touch it, devil's money and all that. In the end, of course, I have started spending a little of the money. It isn't that I believe or don't believe in any of that stuff Simmons believed. What happened that night happened so fast and so much of it was blurred by panic

that I cannot say for sure what any of it was or what it meant. What I can say is that before that night, I definitely did not believe in anything spiritual or paranormal. Then we flipped on an AI and had it summoned something. After that, I don't know what to believe anymore. But so far, I have spent some of the money and no demons have appeared to snatch my soul away. Since this all happened to me, the latest AIs have been rolled out to the public.

All of them are magnitudes more intelligent than any earlier AI. Absolutely unprecedented. It's uncanny how ferociously intelligent they are. People are saying they're going to devour pretty much everything that came before them, including all art, writing, teaching, software, music, banking, possibly even medicine, possibly even computer programming itself. I think I'll take that money and go by a farm out in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere way off the grid.

Maybe ride this out. Creepy presents. The Price of Revenge. My story starts out like the typical schlock that Hollywood pumps out every month. A man has everything, and in one dreadful instant, he's lost at all. Now with nothing left to lose, the man sets out to avenge all that he's lost and to regain his manhood. The man is stoic, brave, cunning, and intelligent, and through violence, dominance, and foe heroism, he shows the audience that he's still worthy of being called a man.

No, that he's still worthy as a human. The but, that's what all these revenge power fans, fantasies miss. No manhood. There's no humanity. Nothing of value in the quest for vengeance. The man in this story was named Luke, and it began eight years ago. I'd spent the day taking my family out to the beach. As soon as the sun started setting, we began to pack up. I'll never forget the Auburn rays of light and the shimmering sea. My daughter Natalie was four years old at the time and had just become fascinated by stars. Being so young she didn't quite understand what they were. As we were leaving, she pointed at the water and asked if the little twinkling lights were stars. My wife, Lydia,

and I found her curiosity amusing. A sign that she was going to be a bright child. As I started the car, I placed a gentle hand on the little bump forming on my wife's stomach. She placed hers over mine. And I knew at that moment that I was truly content. It happened in a split second. A single point in time seared into my being for the rest of my life. One moment I was driving down the highway, taking the time to adjust the radio. And the next, my chest is screaming in pain as an immense pressure forces me into my seat. Then the weightlessness of space comes over.

me. And the last thing I see before it all fades to black as little shards of glass floating across my field of vision. I have the strange thought of how the headlights reflecting off them make them look like little twinkling stars. I woke several hours later in a hospital bed. The white rooms and beeping machines instantly made my heart sink. I tried to get up only to see that my left leg was in a cast. My questions about my wife. and child were ignored the first few times until a doctor very calmly confirmed my worst fears. There were only two survivors. Me and the culprit.

My antagonist. The subject of vengeance. A man named Henry Colston. Henry was a Wall Street Big Shot, ran a very successful investment firm and had a wealth vast enough to gain him an abundance of luxuries unimaginable to a man of my class. One of those luxuries was abusing the justice system. He was falling guilty for manslaughter, but didn't mean anything. All he got was a suspended jail sentence and a few years probation.

Well, I had lost everything at the age of 32. Goes to show what a good lawyer can do. and for a man like Henry it only cost him the equivalent of a few dollars the thing that hurt most the thing that cemented my need to tear down this man and make him pay for all he had done

was when he testified and shifted the blame onto me even if the majority of the court didn't side with him I knew that a few would and that burned I made a promise then that I had to vote as much time and effort as possible to see all his accomplishments crumble and fade away. It was a lot easier than I thought. A few years, the name change, dyed hair and a beard was all it took to be hired as part of his landscaping crew.

I spent the next two years scouting his vast estate. I learned every nook and cranny of it. There's a reason they say revenge is a dish best served cold. When the time was right, I snuck into his house and planted a key logger on his personal computer. Over the next year, I'd collect the personal information and passwords. I also discreetly started planting illegal content and hidden files on his computer. Child porn, to be exact. Looking back on it, I realized how fucked up that was.

Using the exploitation and abuse of children for my gain? But that's what the pursuit of vengeance does. It dehumanizes every aspect of a person in their lives. You listen to this aren't so different. I realize now that people's morals are actually quite twisted and malicious. They just delude them. into thinking that they're not. How many times do people casually throw around comments about how they would kill those who

bring harm to them and their loved ones? Heavy statements thrown around so lightly as indicative of the kind of collective morals our society holds. The pursuit of revenge is not only condoned but glorified to an extent, but what most people don't truly realize is the cost of the cost of the every action. And the price of revenge dwarfs all preconceived notions. After another year of slowly setting up my plans, I left an anonymous tip with the FBI.

They confiscated Henry's computer. He was confident they wouldn't find anything. I wish I were around to see his face when they told him about the files they found. He was arrested. He paid bail pretty quickly and was back at his own. a state only to find that his bank accounts had been emptied. Next, I posted several anonymous accusations online of Henry being a sexual abuser, sent a few messages to prominent internet blogs and news sites.

Within a day, the online world was flooded with articles of his supposed abuse. Hordes of online users condemned and viciously attacked Henry. Someone leaked his address. before long death threats and other abuse were hurled at Henry in the real world. His wife of 20 years announced her plans a divorce and revealed that she was no longer living with Henry. I didn't stop there. I organized a mass protest of his firm, and within a week, Henry was forced to resign from the company he had spent his entire life building. Henry's life was virtually destroyed.

At the age of 52, he was broke, alone, hated, legacy in ruins. He had nothing left to live for. It wasn't enough for me. I had to be there at the height of his despair. I wanted to tell him that this was what he deserved for what he did to me. I wanted to see his face, the agony of knowing that he was. did this to himself. I wanted to see him realize that there was no way out of the hell I had created. And most importantly, I wanted to see him give in and take his own life. I wanted to savor the

sheer depths of suffering I had brought to this man. To know that I had the strength to avenge my grievances. I broke into his house on the night before he was stood back at court, armed with a revolver. I found Henry slumped in a chair in the middle of the living room, his back to me. I aimed my gun and cocked the hammer. Hearing the noise, he turned around to face me, an expression of recognition carved into his visage. You know who I am?

I do. So you know what you did to me justifies what I have done to you. I see. I guess I should think so. Smug to the very end. Then? He asked. I threw Henry little capsule I had prepared.

A cyanide pill. He caught it and examined it closely, taking a few moments from to realize what it was and what I wanted. I guess it's only fair for it to end like the, this, he said. I learned a long time ago that nothing in this life is fair. You taught me that. You destroyed my life.

This is the only price you have to pay. Henry gave me an almost sad smile before placing the pill between his molars. I drew closer, wanting to witness the moment he bit down on it. I was in a near euphoric state Eight years of planning Finally paying off From the corners of my vision I saw a familiar sight

Little lights Little stars started appearing I recalled the fateful day that bound us Natalie asking If the shimmering ocean water was filled with stars Lydia's soft hand over mine. The life growing inside her. Shattered glass caught in mid-flight, twinkling like stars. It all came rushing back to me in the most literal way possible. A blast of pressure flung and pinned me to the

ground. My limbs went limp, and I felt that familiar weightlessness that existed in the split second of a car crash. The lights that I mistook as stars coalesced and saw, and so that I mistook as stars coalesced and started taking form before my very eyes. Henry stood up, a smug grin on his face. He spoke as the lights became more defined. You think I don't know about your scheming? I've known for years. I knew exactly what was going to happen and how.

I tried to say something, but the words died before they even formed. I tried to reach for my gun, but my body refused to even respond. It was as if some invisible force was pinning me down. You see, Luke, ever since I was young, the otherworldly and metaphysical has fascinated me. It wasn't until I made a name for myself when I had the funds to indulge in my interests. In the decade I spent searching, I never found a single thing. So you can imagine my shock when something found me. I was still struggling to move when the once abstract form of lights materialized into something physical.

The being that stood before me defied all laws of natural biology. It couldn't have been something created in our world. No, this being must have originated from some recess of existence so foreign to our own that to see it unfiltered would surely drive most to madness. The closest thing resembled was a cephalopod, long gnarled tentacles twisting and writhing through the air. Where a mantle should have been instead contained a massive gaping maw, fangs filling the crevice. A single eye, larger in my head, was set at the center of its body.

It gazed into our world with unrivaled curiosity. Ah, you're finally here. We can begin. First, we want to apologize truly. What happened was unfortunate. I would have gladly gone to prison in an attempt to atone for my sins, but fate interfered. I had to fight to stay out of prison. See shortly after our accident, I came into contact with the being you see before you.

It offered me a chance to leave this world for another. It promised to show me planes of existence unknown to man. It showed me the future that awaited me. So we planned. We knew exactly what would occur tonight eight years ago. And it's exactly what we wanted. The otherworldly being focused its gaze on me, and I felt myself being lifted off the ground. I was levitating now and was able to look around, but my body was still unresponsive.

You see, in order for us to open a gateway into the upper recesses of the astral plains, a sacrifice must be made. However, it can't be just any sacrifice. The person most intimate with you has to be sacrificed. My wife and I have been drifting apart for years. She wouldn't fit the criteria. However, you devoted almost a decade to me. In a way, we're closer than lovers.

You know me better than my own parents. So it'll have to be you, Luke. There is no other way. I wanted to scream, but still no sound would escape my lips. I saw a limp body move into view. It was lifted and suspended in mid-air by forces beyond my comprehension. Forces surely belonging to the entity. I tried to make out whose body it was.

I thought for a moment that maybe Henry had lured someone else into here. It was the clothes that gave it away. I recognized the black sweater at war as my own. Silent screams flooded my every thought. Somehow my consciousness had been separated from my body. Fortunately for you, we only need your physical body. See the physical can't travel into the other realms, but the mind can. It's said that some extraordinarily gifted people can project segments of their consciousness into the astrales.

planes, but for ordinary people like me, this is the only way. I hope that you can forgive me for this one final cruelty. I saw Henry's body fall limp, and he collapsed under the floor. Streams of light flowed from his body and convened into a singular, brilliant orb. The orb moved through the air and settled next to the entity. My body was lifted higher into the air before its limbs contained. toward it and snapped back. The sounds of breaking bones reverberated throughout the room. I was left powerless.

You could only watch as my body collapse into itself. Ribs and spinal segments punctured the skin. Blood and entrails pooled and were forced back into the fleshy mass my body was compressed into. Inexplicable despair filled my being as I watched my body being. crushed and forced into a singular tiny point suspended in mid-air. It shrunk to the size of a needle's head before it blinked out of existence. A rift immediately replaced the singularity beyond its threshold.

A swirling tempest of colors so brilliant and vivid to call them anything but beautiful would be dishonest. Further still, I could see a realm of a realm of the world. celestial bodies. I thought I saw them form the image of a massive, cosmic eye. Thank you for your sacrifice. Tonight wouldn't have been possible without you. I saw the orb of light. Henry's consciousness entered the rift and ascended into the world to lay beyond. The being that had performed this strange ritual gave me one final glare and and spoke a single word, curious. Then it turned and entered the rift.

The portal closing as soon as it crossed. The distinct sensation of falling came over me as I felt myself being lowered. The last thing I saw before fading into unconsciousness was Henry's lifeless body. I woke the next day with the start, momentarily believing my encounter had been a wild hallucination. When I tried to get up, I knew something was wrong. My body felt off as if it was foreign to me. I got up and ran to the nearest mirror.

I fell into hysterics upon seeing the face of Henry staring back at me. All that had happened, all that I had suffered, only to be left with this. I trashed the place. I screamed. I cried. and found the sign I'd pill on the floor. I hold it now in between my teeth, unsure if I have the strength to bite down.

I promised myself that I would write down my tail, let the world know what had happened, even if no one would believe it. All that time spent planning and scheming meant nothing now. My convictions are shattered. My will is broken. It's as if my very being has been violated, maybe if I had spent the time seeking closure instead of vengeance.

What did I even expect to happen after I achieve my revenge? I'd still be the same broken man. Now with nothing to live for, I'd never planned to move on, never planned for peace of mind. I was so caught up in my quest for vindication that I was so caught up in my quest for vindication that I lost sight of any real end. Maybe the cost of vengeance is that there is no end, nothing that can bring you to an end that you desire as I roll the cyanide pill between my molars. I like to think that the cost has finally been paid. Creepy presents more than one way, written by Ryan Van Ells, and narrated by Alicia Atkins.

I hated his damn cat. Every morning when I woke up it was there, lying on his chest and staring at him. Into his eyes, I thought, even though they were closed. Every night when I would come home from work, it was there. Cuddling with him, rubbing against his face, loving him. We couldn't cuddle for more than a few minutes before it would be there, meowing between us.

I tried bringing it up only once, and he called me crazy. We were sitting in the living room on his old couch from college. It sighed scratched with claw marks. He scratched the cat's ears, asserting that it was just a cat, and that feeling jealous was a little weird. It purred in agreement. He added that what I saw was merely his love for the cat. It was a story I'd heard a dozen times before.

He got it in college after his fiancé died. died. His frat brothers found it on the fraternity porch. They gave it to him as a present because they thought he was depressed. He was. The cat gave him a reason to get up, and he loved it. Now that it was old, it deserved the best life he could give it as thanks. I nodded along as though I hadn't heard it all before, making sympathetic eyes and ooing in all the right places. I hated this story almost as much as the cat itself. It was another reminder that he loved another woman before me. Not just loved, but wanted to marry.

The only reason he lost her was because of some drunk driver. It was an impossible standard to live up to. And I knew every time he saw the damn cat, he was reminded of her and that's why he kept it around. I'd found pictures of her in a scrapbook when I moved in. She was gorgeous. "'Thinner than me, a kind face to my angular one, "'and big green eyes with a weird flick of gold in one iris

"'that should have been ugly but somehow made her even more attractive. "'I made him throw the scrapbook out. "'I rubbed his arm as he talked, though, "'feeling the firmness of his shoulder, "'and played as though his vulnerability aroused me. "'The only time I got him all to myself, "'when it wouldn't watch us, was when we fucked.

I ran my fingers down his forearm, his fingers, his pants. He stirred under my hand. He was so easy when you let him talk. He pushed the cat off his lap and led me to the bedroom. I lit loose a victorious smirk behind me as we went. I could have sworn the cat was glaring at me. He slept beside me,

his chest rising and falling gently. His breath so softly, as gentle in rest as he is awake. I love him so much. But he doesn't love me. Not as much as I do, him. I will forever be in the shadow of a woman I never met. I want to hit him for it. But that would wake him, and he'd already called me crazy once that day.

It is at the foot of the bed. I don't remember opening the door to let it in. its black body is curled up and snoring like a little human hidden inside a cat's body. A little human who loves him and would snatch him from me if it could. I resist the urge to kick it and pretend I was asleep. Before I met him, I would have never thought it was possible for me to hate an animal. Sure, I was never a pet person. I never particularly cared for cats, also true.

But I never gave them a second thought outside of a few visits. to Vanessa and her three cats, and I never would have given them enough thought to recognize distinctive personalities. This, though, was personal. I hated this cat almost as much as I hated Amy Genders in the 10th grade for telling everyone I liked Jason Valal when I did not.

I liked his best friend, Daniel Beckett. Then neither one would talk to me because bros before hoes or whatever boys said. Of course, Daniel started dating Amy a week later. I hated the cat almost as much as her. Maybe more. I would never be special to him like it was. I would always be the girl he just fell in love with, not the one who saved him. He left the next day for some weekend's boys' trip at a cabin. I tried not to pout. I really did. I thought we were going to get a weekend for some alone time, I said. He nonchalantly mentioned

that he'd already told me about this last month. He did not look up from packing. No? I stopped myself. No, you didn't, I almost said. Which felt like the truth because I had heard him say those words, but I hadn't let myself think about what they meant. That he was about to spend an entire weekend away from me with who knows who.

My face was hot, and I knew my skin was red. I cursed my pale skin. No, you're right, I said. I leaned against the doorframe, trying to show nonchalance. Who's all going to be there? I asked. He'd finished packing and was heading past me to the door, exasperately saying that he had already told me that it was just some of the guys. Anyone else?

He retorted that it was going to be people that I knew. They're just going to be fishing and drinking. He kissed me on top of the head. He sighed and added that he would love to have me come along, but it's no wife's weekend. I crossed my arms. He called me wife on purpose, I knew, to try to make me more secure. It was a dumb trick. I hated that it worked.

I put my hand on his chest and shoved. Get out of here already, I said. He smiled and he left, leaving me and it alone. Did you know that if you leave a door open all day, a cat won't actually leave? From every TV show and movie with cats I'd ever seen, I thought if you left the front door open for half a second too long, the thing would dart out from between your legs and be gone into the night to be chased down by coyotes or hawks or whatever.

But even when I sat the cat in front of the open patio door and tapped it with the broom, it only regarded me with disdain. Fine, I said. You don't want to be free? Don't. I slammed the door shut. Cats, also, apparently, have a great nose for poisons. I gave it its dinner and sprinkled a handful of crumbled lilies from the flower shop around the corner in it.

I didn't expect it would eat the plant bits, but hopefully it would take in enough of the pollen to do the trick. The damn thing didn't even sniff at the plate. It looked at it, raised its head in disgust, and walked away to the living room. Fine. Don't eat, I thought. And then, I bet you'd have eaten it if he put it together. I sat down with my dinner when a crash came from the living room. Sighing, I got up and walked over to find the cat had knocked over a flower vase, filled with orchids, not lilies. I swore, scooped up the shattered vase. I could sweep later.

I was hungry and tossed it in the trash. I returned just in time to find it snatching a whole chicken breast from my plate. Enraged, I darted forward and reached for the chicken. It swatted out with claws and raked a long, fiery cut into my hand. I recalled. Blood wailed out of the cut. It hurt like hell. Screw this!

I grabbed the cat by the scruff of its neck. It yelled. Shut up! I wrapped it in a thick blanket, covering its mouth and yowls. I hurried out the apartment door, and, thinking I'd rather not be seen outside with a squirming blanket, rushed down the hallway to the trash chute. Then I flung it open and dumped the cat down.

It screamed as it fell. A long, human scream. The blanket bounced against the walls of the chute once, twice, and finally thumped down, silent, in the basement dumpster. There was no yow. Had anyone heard? I looked up and down the hallway. There were no curious heads poking out of the doorways,

no angry cat ladies rushing out yelling, I know what you did. I hurried back to my apartment, head bowed, bleeding hand, cradled. There was a twinge of regret in my stomach. I swallowed it down, letting the feeling die in the bile of my stomach. It was the cost of love. The cost of my insured future with him.

One I was willing to make. I slipped into my apartment, closing the door as silently as possible, and locked it. I slept like a baby. When I walked into the kitchen the next morning, it was there, staring at me over its now empty food bowl. my mother's antique mahogany dinner table between us. It was the one decent piece of furniture in this apartment, and of course it was mine. There was a long scratch across the wood.

If cat's faces had expressions, I could have sworn it was amused. Our eyes locked, its tail flicked. Then, with a lithe speed belonging to the house cat's ancestry, It leapt onto the dining table, sent the ceramic centerpiece flying across the room to shatter on a cabinet door, and pounce onto my face. All fur and claws and fury. I was blinded and suffocated, pointed claws raked at my scalp. Patches of skin ripped off, blood dripped down my forehead. Then it was gone, tearing off across the apartment.

I screamed in pain and rage and gave chase. Dropless of blood trail behind me onto kitchen tile and hallway carpet. The living room was empty. So was the bathroom. As I returned to the bedroom, I closed the door behind me. Nowhere to run now. One step into the room and something was wrong. It smelled different from earlier that morning.

Like thick incense. It tickled my nose. The cat sat on the window seal, staring at. at me. We made eye contact. How had I never noticed its eyes before? They were a deep, emerald green, a single fleck of gold hidden that I hadn't noticed before at the edges. The longer I stared, the deeper the green became, as though it were a swirling deep sea begging me to dive in. I woke up on the floor. When I tried to rise, vertigo took me, and I couldn't get up from all fours.

I felt weak, small even. The front door to the apartment open, and I'd realize he'd woken me up by putting his key in the lock. And the last thing I remembered was... Was what? Trying to catch it, and then... I heard my husband's voice calling out. Hello, sweetheart, as he walked over to me.

He bent down and petted the top of my head. I purred. He told me he missed me. I missed you too, I tried to say, but what came out was a wine. He smiled and stood up. My husband yelled out to me, asking if I was home. I'm right here, I wanted to shout. I wanted to jump on two legs and embrace him and tell him how much I loved him and had missed him. Instead, all I managed was a yowl. I stood on my four legs. My paws patted on the hardwood as I followed him deeper into the apartment. I'm right here.

Love me. See me. Nothing I said came out right. Was this a dream? A terrible nightmare? Some carmic shift designed to teach me a lesson? Well, I'd learned it. I was ready to turn back now.

Ready to be human again. He made his way to the living room, and I heard him saying I was so quiet he didn't even hear me in here. He was in the living room with me. At least someone that resembled me. Same hair, same face, same everything, except for the eyes. The eyes were mine, but there was a single cold flecked at the edge of the iris. I wailed. Look at its eyes.

He didn't understand, couldn't understand. He and it kissed. Damn, I missed you too, he said when it finally broke. Then it, without a word, grabbed him by the hand and led him to the bedroom. It spared me one last victorious smirk before closing the bedroom door. Creepy presents investigating madness. Written by known of consequence and narrated by Danielle Hewitt. I sit in the front passenger seat of the black SUV and watch the world pass by outside.

It's been a really long time since I last did something ordinary. My life has been anything but since high school. Sometimes I sit around and wonder, if I could go back and change one thing, something small and innocuous, would it have made our lives normal? Maybe if our pet pig Wilbur hadn't gotten mixed in with the pigs for slaughter, we wouldn't have relied so heavily on fish.

Had that been the first domino to fall that led our lives to be this fucked up? When we were growing up, Erica had wanted to work in fashion, maybe be a supermodel. She was pretty enough for it. Some people said that about me, but I didn't think. so. Even though we're twins, in my mind, Erica was the pretty one. Me? I'd wanted to be a novelist, something that would impact the world but allow me to be anonymous. I think about this in hopes that my mind won't drift back to the one thing I've been trying to avoid thinking about. It's always the way of things. Someone tells you not to think of the color red, and it's all you can

think about. The human psyche is a pain in the ass at times like this. The entire experience had been the worst sort of deja vu I'd ever felt. And even after taking such painstakingly difficult precautions, the creature tore past my mental walls with ease. Should have known better. After all, I was impressed upon by something as old as the cosmos. She used me to get out of the ice, much like the master used me to get out of his watery prison. Though, if I'm being honest about it, it wasn't near the violation it had been with him. Marcus and Brittany Raylan had been trying to revive her

since the frozen monster was brought to their facility. But they were doing a lot of guesswork. It hadn't occurred to them that she'd been cognizant the whole time. By using me as a conduit, she instructed her own revival. While the master thrives in salt, water, she requires fresh water, and an insane amount of sugar. I hadn't known it back then, but the water in the master's tank had been distilled water, which is what had sapped all his strength and most of his power. Once freed from the ice, it took a matter of hours for the

winged female to regain everything she had once been. I didn't know if that was a good thing or not, but I didn't have a choice in the matter. It did surprise me that she eventually apologized for the violation. She detests manipulating lower life forms like that. She didn't specifically say lower life forms, but it was the impression I took. The dozen or so employees that had been present didn't seem nearly as fazed by her as I was. Then again, they'd been in her presence for a while and had time to adjust. Also, they hadn't been mind-raped by her like I did.

I did want to ask why she waited for me to get there to do it, but I didn't exactly have access to all my faculties at the time. Yes, she'd extracted herself from my head, but what I was seeing kept me from doing much more than standing there with wide eyes. The massive beast started to shrink and alter its very body structure in a matter of seconds. Something more human was standing in front of us. A six-foot-three Amazon.

and with mocha skin, extremely short fire orange hair, and pure silver eyes. Not exactly inconspicuous, but this form would be easy to move about in this world. While the workers started shutting down operations, their upper management escorted the newly formed creature to a different part of whatever facility we were in. I thought my part was done and over with, but then Brittany took me by the arm and made sure I followed. Apparently I was in such a state of shock that I'd forgotten to blink. We ended up in a lounge of sorts, with refreshments and comfortable chairs around a large round table. I sat there and

listened to the woman girl Marcus about what the master's been up to since his unexpected revival several years ago. Brittany seemed more concerned with me at the moment and made sure I drink some water. Seriously, getting mine raped like that takes a while to recover from. This didn't go on noticed by the creature. Marcus summarized a lot of things about the master and the Eldridge conglomerate that I knew about. The mass production of the Shadow Cove Prawns and their fast domination over the entire shrimping industry. Sabotage of multiple positively impacting environmental projects. Even the takeover of the most recognizable cookie distribution network in America and the company responsible for production. Then he started describing things I wasn't.

aware of. Eldrich has been taking control of the largest and oldest libraries in the world, not to privatize them, but to gain access to the rarest of books. The conglomerate has also been taking over a number of exploration supplier companies and funding dozens of dangerous expeditions into the world's deadliest desert wastelands. Marcus had it on good authority that the master is searching for something. But as to what, he has no clue. Once his long-winded explanation is done, the woman turns to me and I nearly choke of my water. For a moment, I'd hope she forgot I was there, but I should have known better. If my part in this was over, I wouldn't have been brought back to the room with them.

I'd have been escorted back to the SUV and dropped off back at my apartment. Under normal circumstances, that would have pissed me off. But I would have been fine with it in the moment. I know that the woman was trying to be unimposing, but there was no way for her to pull it off. I was as timid as a rabbit hiding in a thicket with predators all around. Part of me wanted to bolt for the door, but the rest of me was too afraid to move. It was completely irrational. But perhaps if my mental barriers had held up even a little, I wouldn't have been quite so afraid.

My fear was palpable in the room, and everyone could sense it. The woman moved from her chair on the opposite side of the table to the one directly next to me. Brittany was on my other side, and I began to think the non-human entities were ganging up on me. I itched to reach for the gun at the small of my back, but then I remembered it had been taken away from me before entering the facility. The woman reached out her hand, palm up, asking for me to place my hand in hers. The gesture was asking something more of me, but I didn't know that. tentatively I placed my hand in hers ready to pull it back at the first sign of hostility only that didn't happen the moment my cold flesh touched her much warmer skin I began to calm down my heart rate which was so jacked up began to slow and the tension in my body began to fade it was obvious she was in my head again but I only realized it when I was I began to hear a gentle song in my mind.

It was so soft and soothing, bringing a gentle calm to the raging waves crashing onto the shore. Only this shore isn't at the ocean or sea, but a large lake. It was very obvious the body of water I had imagined in my head was freshwater, not salt. There's so much about her. That's opposite of the master. Before she started asking me for information, She initiated introductions, asking me for my name.

My voice sounded alien to me, with as calmly as it came out, and I told her, my name is Emma Jones. Then I surprised her. What's your name? She gave me a gentle smile at that, and in a way that wasn't condescending, said that my human brain couldn't comprehend her name. In fact, the human tongue isn't meant to form the same. sounds required to pronounce it. After a moment, she considered a name to give, something that seemed appropriate. Eventually, she settled on Maddie. It's a play on the word matron. Once she had

given herself a name, I seemed to be comfortable with her, and I ended up interrogating her, not the other way around. Though it didn't seem like an interrogation, but more like a one-sided first-date conversation. I asked a ton of questions. and she answered them as best as she could. Maddie was still learning how the human mind worked and often had to change her answers so they made sense. When Brittany first took me into the room to see Maddie's true form trapped in ice, my initial thought was that they'd found the master's wife, or mate.

I'd been very wrong. Maddie was more like the master's mother, but after saying that, she backtracked and described it in a different way. It equated more to having a tumor removed from one's colon, only to have that tumor gain sentience and become its own entity. The removal of these growths is a common thing for her species, but not all of them become self-aware. If they do, they try to destroy them immediately.

Once one of these tumors gain sentience, they always try to escape and cause mischief. As cosmic entities, they have access to planes of existence that human beings, has only guessed at or is completely unaware of. The tumors travel to the farthest reaches of existence and wreak havoc on the most underdeveloped life forms they can find. It's easier for them to manipulate primitive species

that have the capacity for higher thought but haven't achieved it yet. Maddie was basically describing humanity. There's a number of these tumors that have gotten away with horrible atrocities to such species. Thousands in the last several millennia. When this happens, Maddie's race makes whoever the tumor came from, responsible for either capturing or destroying the chaotic terror. Unfortunately, these annoying little creatures gain power quickly and sometimes

can't be destroyed. The only thing that can be done with them at that point is to put them in a celestial prison specifically designed to hold them. At last count, there are 1,133 of them in prison, and only one free. When Maddie tracked down her tumor, she miscalculated her arrival and immediately became trapped in ice somewhere at the top of the world. The salt content of the ice made it impossible for her to escape, or to even reach out to any of her people for assistance.

Even if she had, it would have been unlikely someone would have helped her. The master is her responsibility, and asking for help in their society is a major sign of weakness. To do so is to base a problem. sign your own death warrant. Those things take survival of the fittest to heart, assuming they have hearts. So, that explains why she's here. But there's got to be more to this than that. I felt the master in my mind when I released him, and I knew there was more to his presence than creating chaos for humanity. Sadly, Maddie doesn't know what he's up to other than death, destruction,

mayhem, and chaos. I asked if any of these people, other tumors created a cult around them, but she didn't understand what I meant. I then had to explain religion to her, and she grew awfully quiet when I'd finished. It was then she started grilling me about my involvement with the master. I tried telling her everything, but Maddie kept interrupting me, not understanding my meaning. Another fun fact about her species. They don't actually have mouths for speech. They communicate in a way to us that, seems like telepathy. But it's more complex than that. We were still holding hands, and I decided to just let her in my mind so she could extract the information. Unfortunately,

that meant I had to relive every one of those experiences all over again. The closest I can relate the sensation to is like when you transfer documents and files between computers. Only your mind is the processor. You see, think, and feel all of the data. But in a fraction of the time, so it all happened in a matter of moments. I was left crying after it was over, but only because I had to feel the sensation of losing my sister, as if it was the first time all over again. You're right. There is something bigger going on here, but I don't know what. Hearing Maddie say this worried us all.

We were hoping she was going to have all the answers we were looking for. That day I became an official employee of Pyramid. My private detective business had been temporarily shut down, and I have an executive office at their corporate headquarters. It's right next to Brittany's office, and they've even set me up with their corporate housing, which is in the same building. I thought this was a little strange,

but as it turned out, the Raylands also live in. the building. The only reason I had accepted this was because Maddie insisted on it. She'd been able to use me to facilitate her escape from the ice, because the invasion of my mind from the master left a psychic tunnel. Since the master came from her, she was able to use that tunnel to enter me. Making the Raylands take me in was a way to keep me protected while I worked to find out what the master's up to. Also as a way to thank me for securing her release. Maddie is helping me close that psychic tunnel in my mind. The resources I accumulated over the years pale in comparison to what Pyramid has.

I'm talking complete access to business, political, and criminal databases on a global scale. I use this access to dive further into researching embrace, the master's cult. The Raylands know a lot about Eldritch and their business holdings, but they know surprisingly little about the cult. There's a lot of shit to wade through. But I start seeing patterns. Since the creation of embrace, madness has been spreading like a damn disease throughout the world. Violent crimes have been on a steady rise across the board, and mental facilities all over have been overflowing.

Then Eldridge created the cookie consortium, and everything took a giant leap for the worse. I ran a search with a series of keywords to include violence, cults, murder, and ritual. There were a lot of results that dated back several decades, but the first relevant one that caught my eye was a newspaper article from a small town in Texas called Coburn. It described an event where a local kid was hanging out with some friends and then started talking gibberish. The friend sat around listening to his mad rantings and didn't move a muscle.

Even when he started beating them to death with a skateboard, apparently those kids had been recording themselves doing skate tricks before things got weird, and the entire bizarre incident was captured. Unfortunately, the video has since been tanked down from every social media platform. This is where Pyramids' resources really come in handy. I find the video in the FBI's database and watch it. I kind of wish I hadn't, thinking there couldn't possibly be anything worse than watching as a man was eaten alive by a very large shrimp.

They had given me nightmares. But he'd been a wife-beating asshole. These were just some dumb-ass teenagers. The video starts off with them doing stupid little skateboarding tricks. But then one of them broke out the cookies. The green box let me know that they were chocolate-ment-madness cookies. And those kids were going at them like it was their last meal. For all but one kid, it was.

After throwing back a shot of that sweet whiskey I'd requested to be stalked in my office, I started looking for more violent incidents. This time, I was specifically looking for anything that mentioned cookies from Eldridge Cookie Consortium. That generated a hell of a lot of results, all within the last several months. I started making lists with names, locations, dates, and if the kind of cookies eaten were available, the type of cookie consumed. Chocolate Mint Madness, caramel coconut embrace, peanut togetherness, and buttery unity.

The only type of cookie not mentioned was New World. By the time I'd gone through all the results, I had well over 400 documented cases. The most recent was a few states over, a vicious attack by a woman named Kristen Barnett, Chrissy to her friends. She'd been with some friends that decided to share a box of peanut butter togetherness. Like with the kid from Colburn,

she started speaking gibberish and killed the others. She didn't have a weapon like all the other cases I've read about, but used her hands and nails to cut them up. There is another thing that links all these cases together. Shortly after the violent incident is made public, a group of unidentified individuals abducts the murderer, often killing a lot of hospital staff or police if they haven't been transferred yet. The abductors are always wearing dark robes,

and the murderers go with them willingly. Kristen Barnett's abduction happened as the police tried arresting her. I accessed the body cam footage of all the cops killed in the incident and found something disturbing. Erica was there, with the robed figures and an ordinary-looking person that for some reason was oddly familiar to me. The guy called Kristen a strange name that she answered to and said she was number 374.

I didn't know what that meant. but this was big news, and I called in Maddie. I played one of the recordings for Maddie, and when it got to the part where the oddly familiar guy called Kristen that strange name, she did something I hadn't heard her do before. She cursed. Maddie recognized the name as one of the entities, like the master, that's locked in a celestial prison, she told me about.

Why would your sister call that man the gardener? I really wish I knew. But all this was pointing to something. We just haven't figured it out yet. Before we could discuss anything further, my computer flashed red and an alarm went off. Once I had started finding all these incidences, I set up a protocol to immediately alert me to a new one.

I opened the flashing icon and started reading. There was a new incident, and it just so happened to be in this city. A diva was just arrested for murdering several people at an all-male gay burlesque show downtown. The perpetrator, legal name, Ethan Jessup, was being taken to Havencrest Asylum for the criminally insane. The very security team that escorted me to where Maddie was trapped in ice is in the SUV with me.

I have my gun back, but for this excursion, we're merely observers. There are three more SUVs, strategically positioned around the asylum, watching as two squad cars pull up. As the police get Jessup out, a black van comes tearing down the street and screeches to a halt. Several robed figures pile out of the van's side and back doors, brandishing firearms and blades. The police exchange fire with the cult members, and my people move in. But don't get in there in time to save the police. The cult members are very driven, possibly wearing body armor under their robes.

I saw several of them take direct hits from the cop's guns. but didn't go down. My people are better equipped than the police and manage to take them down. Some of the cult members are killed, but at least half of them are captured. Most importantly, Jessup is taken alive and secured in the back of one of the SUVs.

We get the hell out of there before more police show up. The master has been sending his followers out for these murderers, and now that we have one, we might finally find out what he's up to. I'd been hoping that my sister, and this Gardner guy, would have been part of the abduction team. But we didn't get that lucky. At least we're taking a step in the right direction. I just hope we get the whole picture before it's too late.

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