Snook - 4+ Hours of Terrifying Reddit Stories

Episode Date: July 12, 2026

This is 4+ Hours of Terrifying Reddit Stories! This is a megacompilation of some of the most wild, disturbing and scary stories I have ever read from reddit... I hope you enjoy! And let me know if you would like to see more videos like this in the future! Thank you all for listening! Make sure you rate the podcast 5 stars and follow! Thank you all so much for listening! Make sure to subscribe to the Patreon for early access videos and many more perks! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/SnookYT⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also! Go follow me on Spotify and Instagram!  Yes, my voice is human.  The channels subscriber goal is 1 million, so subscribe! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A strange family rented my basement. When my mom and dad retired, they got themselves a house in Greece, leaving me to care for the family home on my own. I didn't mind. It was better than trying to buy something on my own. Still, a two-story home for a single man in his early 30s, that's a bit much. I lost my job during the pandemic, and with prices on the rise, I decided to start renting out parts of the space I wasn't using. There was enough room upstairs to house at least a couple of college students

and a spacious basement for another. Just this large one-room basement that basically covered the entire underside of the building, supported by these thick concrete beams. It wasn't the kind of place I'd usually consider renting out, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to offer, as long as I was honest about the state of things. I spent a good month just preparing the spaces, clearing out the upstairs and moving things from the basement to a long-term storage facility. At first, it looked like we had some water damage to deal with, but it turned out to be

a false alarm. All in all, it was shaping up to be a pretty painless transition, and the rent would keep me afloat until I could get a proper job. I put out an ad on a couple of socials, one for the upstairs space, large enough to support at least a couple of people, and then the basement. I wasn't really sure about the basement, but I included a few pictures and hoped for the best. The price was cheap, too, cheaper than it should be, I guess. I got a few applications for the upstairs space, but most of them were either really short-term or started arguing about the price. One guy just showed up and tried to walk straight in without calling first. It was a weird time. I didn't get any calls about the basement, though, so I figured I'd just screw that up. It was early

October when I had heard the knock. The classic, da, da, da, da, da, da, kind of knock. I hurried to open, still browsing job openings on my phone and chewing on a piece of cold pizza from the prior night. It's hard to explain how surprised I was to see what I saw. Most other applicants at either either been young guys or college girls. What was now standing in front of me was a family of four, a mother and father, both in their mid-forties, and two young boys ranging from 10 to 14 years old. The mom had this autumn-colored cotton dress with a little ribbon, and the dad had this fancy black overcoat, a white shirt with a red tie. Both kids were dressed up in identical blue shirts. At first, I thought they were there to try and convert me to something. I could easily

imagine them with a set of Bibles, instead of the dad set forward. Offering me a handshake, I accepted. Hi there, he said with a warm smile. We're the Walters. We're here about the ad. Oh, uh, hello, I answered. It might get a bit crowded, but you're free to have a look. Sorry about the, uh, I vaguely gestured to my unprepared state, but the dad just shook

his head. Not at all. Hope we're not imposing. I invited them inside, and they went right past the stairs. I figured they just missed it. Excuse me, I said. It's right up there. Oh, we know, smiled the mom.

We're here about the basement. So there's this long wooden staircase that spirals into the basement. It's one of the main reasons I don't like going down there or furnishing the place. That spiral makes it almost impossible to bring things down any proper furniture. It's infuriating. But all four members of this picture-perfect family stepped down, all composed. They were courteous and. and respectful with just the polite amount of excitement.

But I got this sense that there was something just off about them. The dad brought out some measuring tape and started checking the walls. They asked me about the lack of windows, the air quality, their ability to bring down some furniture and put up some light fixtures. I agreed to all of it. I still couldn't believe they were actually considering it. This was clearly not a space meant for a family of four. they gave the impression that they were pretty well off.

There was no reason for them to run a space like this. Still, as they finished their inquiries, the mother approached me. Would you mind stepping upstairs and just walking around a bit? She asked, we'd like to see how much sound carries through. A strange way to ask for soundproofing, but I did as she asked. I got up the stairs, put on my heaviest boots, and just wandered around for a bit. After a couple of minutes, I turned the corner, only to see all four of them standing in the hallway. Picture perfect as always, all with a big smile on their faces.

We're very pleased, the mother said, we'll take it. They signed a six-month rent agreement, and I got to know them a little better off the next few weeks as they sporadically dropped by there was Delilah, the mother. Anders, the father, the kids were Aiden, who is 12, and Alvin who was 13. Apparently, they were in between housing and wanted something small and cheap in the interim. Despite all that, I couldn't shake the feeling that a basement was a strange choice for them. Still, I needed the money, and they were eager to get it done.

They even offered to pay a little extra since they were bringing in more people than I had anticipated. About a week later, they showed up for the official move-in. Lila and Anders insisted on bringing in everything in themselves, and that I shouldn't be bothered with any heavy lifting. Apparently, just letting them stay there was a favor enough. They brought in about a dozen pieces of furniture covered in blue tarp, in various sizes, along with a dozen or so large, cardboard boxes and of them marked. They put down several hand-woven carpets, the kind you'd seen in a large mansion, Lalo was a stay-at-home mom, while Anders worked as some kind of security manager for a nearby airport.

He worked odd hours, anything from 12-hour shifts to all-nighters and everything in between. He was also on call for most hours of the day and sometimes had to leave with short notice. It was strange though. One might think a person like that would need space with good cell coverage. But that basement barely had a single bar. There was Wi-Fi, but it was spotty at best. For some reason, none of this seemed to bother them. That first week living with the Walters was not a problem.

Most of the time, I forgot they were even there. I only saw them leave the basement a handful of times, and they didn't make any noise. At most, I could hear them stomping up or down that creaky old staircase a couple of times, but that was mostly Anders heading to work. In fact, I never saw Aiden and Alvin leave for some. school. I figured they were being homeschooled, further pushing the idea that this family might have

some kind of religious background. Still, they were hardly an issue. I was still working hard on finding someone to rent the upstairs, but I was having no luck. I'd considered lowering the price, but after the Walters moved in, money was becoming less of an issue. Anders even suggested that I applied for a job at the airport. He knew one of the HR people looking for hires in various departments. Having been jobless for five months, I was willing to try pretty much anything. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that they weren't telling me the whole story. I kept coming back to one thought. What the hell were they even doing down there?

Once I decided to get a better look at what they'd done with the place. At that point, I hadn't even seen how they decorated it. It was in the middle of the afternoon, and I had no idea whether they were even down there or not. Their car was gone from the driveway. I knocked a couple of times. And when there was no response, I used my key to get down. As I turned the corner, it was deathly quiet and completely dark.

I turned on the lights. They all slept in these basic single beds, all spaced out along the easternmost wall. They had a small love seat couch, along with a couple of basic plastic chairs facing a thick old TV placed against the wall. There was an empty bookshelf and a couple of scattered carpets along the floor. I could see a few open boxes. There was a bathroom next to the staircase, but it looked unused. no toothbrushes or anything.

It took me a few moments to realize that I wasn't alone. The entire family was standing in a line along the southernmost wall, furthest away from the staircase. They were standing in order of size from tallest and smallest, remaining perfectly still, just looking at me. It wasn't until they noticed me seeing them that they reacted. They all looked up at me, putting on a friendly smile. Can we help you? asked Lila.

I hope we didn't make too much noise, continued Anders. The kids just nodded in unison. I took a good look at them, but I couldn't figure out what I was looking at. I had no explanation for their behavior. Sorry, I was just going to check the water pressure. I lied. I tried knocking. That's all right, smiled Anders.

Go right ahead. Walking back up the stairs, a thought hit me. If they were all down there, why was their car gone? Who'd taken it? I had a number of strange interactions with them over the next couple of weeks. For example, I once found Aden, the younger of the two brothers, standing in the kitchen. He wasn't doing anything in particular, just standing there, staring at the spice rack. When I asked him about it, he said he wasn't doing anything.

After a while, he turned on his heel and ran back downstairs. I didn't see it, but I heard his little feet thump all the way down the staircase. Another time I saw Lila standing in the open doorway, leading to the basement. She was just standing there. hand on the doorknob, looking right at me. I said, hello, and she said it right back. But she wouldn't let me out of her sight. When I finally passed from her view, I could hear her running back downstairs, not just hurrying, running. Another time I saw Anders in the car out on the driveway, I saw him from the upstairs window just sitting there, hands on the steering wheel, for a good

15 minutes, no radio or nothing, just him alone in the car. But the strangest interaction, came one night when I was going to the kitchen to get a Coke. I spotted Lila standing in the kitchen fridge wide open. I could see her silhouette illuminated by the fridge bulb, her long black hair, wet from a fresh hour, standing in a hastily tied bathrobe, her feet bare. At first I didn't see anything strange. She was just standing there.

She wasn't getting anything. It was more like she was bathing in the light. I thought about calling out to her, but something about her demeanor made me want to sneak back into my bedroom. Then I saw it. There was something wrong with her ear. Her left ear was about three inches higher up than her right one. Without her bending her neck, her scalp seemed lightly tilted.

And there was something about the way she moved her fingers that didn't look natural. They pointed in different directions, like her hand was ever so slightly fractured. I just stayed there for a while. Looking at her from a distance, watching her shoulders rise and fall as she took deep breaths, inhaling the cold. When she turned my way, I only saw her for a moment. Her torso moving first and her legs following, like a stilted claymation puppet.

I managed to slip around the corner and heard her rush back towards the basement, her feet tapping against the hallway carpet in an uneven rhythm. When she got to the door, she stopped. I was leaning against the wall listening from the other room. I heard her step around for a bit. Then there was a snap, a popping limb, something finding its way back in the room. into a socket. Her steps resumed a natural pattern as she hurried downstairs. I just stayed there

for a while, trying to keep calm. For all intents and purposes, I might have just been seeing her in a weird light. It was dark and I was sleepy, and yet I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something unnatural about her, that I'd seen something I wasn't supposed to. From that day forward, I got more suspicious. I didn't go into the hallway at night, and I did my best to avoid the basement door altogether. I tried my vets to just put them out of my head. I went back to focus on getting a job and a second tenant for the upstairs space, both of which proved to be a challenge, but I was making progress. The TSA was hiring, for example, not the most glamorous job, but it would be solid work. There was a couple of college students who came by to check the upstairs floor, a young

couple who needed a place to stay while they finished up their master's degrees. They seemed like solid people, and we got along just fine. They knew the place wasn't the most glamorous, but it was a neat short-term solution while they finished up the upcoming semester. The only problem was the Walter's family, who I had yet to introduce them to. I remember knocking on the basement door, having the young couple standing behind me expectantly. Alvin, the oldest of the brothers, chimed in with a cheerful, come in. As we stepped downstairs, the family of four was standing in a picture-perfect two-by-two formation, mom and dad in the back, two kids in the front, all dressed in their Sunday best,

with a freshly printed smile across their faces. The whole scene was so absurd, like some kind of misplaced commercial from the 1950s. Hello, giggled Lila. Aren't they the most handsome couple, Anders? They sure are, Lila. What do you think, kids? And in unison without skipping a beat, the kids answered.

They sure are handsome. For the next 20 seconds or so, this uncomfortable silence grew between us. The Walters just stood there, smiling at us, waiting for some kind of response. I wanted to say something, but I couldn't help but to feel like I was missing something oblivious. Was Lila's eye color a bit different? Was Alvin's face a bit lopsided?

Was Anders missing a finger, or did he just stand in a weird angle? Maybe they'd been strange all along. Maybe it was only now that I was seeing it. When we finally parted ways, I followed the young couple outside. They both turned to me. Their faces, ashen. One of them just stuttered. But the other managed to form a few words.

We're not one to judge, she said. but those people give me the creeps. You won't be seen much of them. They, yeah, see, that's my point. Who does that? What kind of family willingly lives in a basement? It's only a temporary measure, I assure you. They, by then, the other chimed in.

What's with the boxes, he asked? What's in them? Personal keepsakes, clothes, that kind of stuff? No, I mean. The box that moved. The blue one. The discussion died down, and they said their goodbyes. I got the feeling that they wouldn't be returning

any time soon. Still, their words lingered in the back of my head. A box that moved? Really? How'd I miss that? After countless sleepless nights, I decided to finally get some answers. I had to take a little risk and figure this out, once and for all. So one day, I slipped a note under the door, informing them that we needed them to clear out the basement for one afternoon while a plumber did some repairs. I looked up a few plumbing things on Wikipedia and referenced a real company, making it to look all official and stuff. Later that day, Laila and Anders dropped by, holding hands, telling me that they'd be sure to be out for the day.

Maybe we'll go to the zoo, smiled Anders. Don't you have work, I asked? It comes and goes, he laughed. We're very fortunate. Very fortunate, asked Lila. So very fortunate. At the designated time, the family was out of the building. They went for a drive in Anders car, promising to return shortly.

I told them it wouldn't take the plumber more than an hour. They seemed a little suspicious when they hadn't seen the actual plumber show up yet, and they let that suspicion hang in the air. Finally, I just straight up lied, giving them a fake name and asking whether they wanted me to call them. Lila didn't call me bluff. Luckily, but as they pulled out of the driveway, I could tell I was sweating. I didn't even know what I feared, but my mind kept returning to that night when I'd seen

her standing in the light of the fridge. I had no idea what they were hiding, or what they might do if I found out about it. But there was a part of me. I just wanted to get into my car and drive. And another part of me telling me I was just being silly. When they finally drove away, I wasted no time. I hurried downstairs, turned on the light, and started to go through their stuff. It was an invasion of privacy, probably illegal. But if I wanted to sleep soundly again, I had to have an idea about why they were being so goddamn weird.

There were a lot of oddities about their place. For example, all their beds were perfectly made, like no one slept in them. Most of the couches and surfaces were covered in dust. I could tell the TV hadn't been on in a long time. It wasn't even plugged in. There were no phones or phone chargers, no laptops or desktop computers, just a bunch of boxes and underlized furniture. I did find a Polaroid camotho, at least 30 years old.

I started checking their boxes, just closed, it seemed. all variations of what I'd already seen, identical sets of shirts, pants, dresses, and shoes, at least four boxes worth. One box was just full of accessories, like earrings, necklaces, glasses, hairspray, and fake nails. Another was full of decorations and knick-knacks, porcelain dogs, family photos, dried sunflowers and roses, both with strange colors and fancy vases. I took my time carefully placing everything back the way I found it. It was odd, but nothing incriminating or downright unnatural.

Still, I remember what the couple had said about a box that moved. I couldn't see anything like it. That is, until I turned to leave. Right by the side of the stairs, resting next to the pristine bathroom was a large blue styrofoam cooler. It was the kind of thing that kind of blended into the background, like it had always been there. Still, I could clearly remember not owning one of those things. It looked old and torn like he'd be. been around for years. And maybe I was imagining things, but it looked like it was moving, pulsing,

pressing against the surface, making little plastic squeals. There was a sound coming from it, like a low guttural growl pushed through a thin pipe, a sharp rhythmic noise. It made the cooler rattle and shake, ever so slightly. I froze, hoping it would quiet down. I held my breath and waited for it to settle. I slowly stepped back up the stairs. As I ran at the corner and lost side the cooler. I heard the styrofoam cover pop off, and the sound became clearer, a loud growl, shifting in pitch from high to low, like a singer doing some kind of vocal warm-up, trying to find the right pitch. Then something hit the floor with a painful yelp. I stopped dead on my tracks, trying to identify the sound. It was like I crossed between a dog and some kind of fox, a sharp,

screeching tone. Then it scrambled to its feet. I could hear claws and paws scratched the floor, and something was coming my way. Fast. There was something primal in me that told me to run. I hurried up the stairs, only looking back for a short glimpse as I shut the door behind me. I only saw it for a moment, something black with a single eye reflecting back at me. It's skin tight and misplaced across the skull, teeth pointing in all directions, in seemingly random sizes, black drool dripping off in an elongated tongue, a thing,

wearing the cheap suit of a black dog. As I slammed the door shut, I could hear a car pull up on the driveway. It had been less than 30 minutes. Maybe they had planned to catch me in the act. I heard them come in and head straight for the basement. Meanwhile, I was in the other room, throwing together a small bag with a change of clothes and a toothbrush. The moment I heard the basement door shut, I headed for my car. The moment I got in the car, I saw them step out of the house.

They all stood there in the driveway, just looking at me. And right next to them was a beautiful black Labrador, happily wagging its tail. I didn't say a word. I just drove. I had to get some place between us and figure out what the hell I wanted to do. I wanted to go to the police, but there was no way to explain what had seen. What could they even do? Kick them out for having a dog?

There was even a clause in the rental agreement that allowed them a pet. I had nothing to go on. I decided to spend the night of a motel just outside of town. I needed time to think and sleep without having the threat of something strange living under my feet. I couldn't get that image out of my head. that black thing in a dog suit, like something trying to remember what a dog looked and sounded like in real time. I checked in at the motel and got a room on the first floor. I crawled into bed, put the TV on and surfed a bit on my phone. I could feel myself relaxed for the first time in

weeks, but every time I thought about that house and that family, I could feel my pulse stagger. I had no idea what to do or who to call, which is what led me to this site in the first place. A lot of you seem to have seen strange things. I figured I'd post here eventually, but it took me quite some time to build up the courage, mostly because of what happened later that night. I remember a tap on the door. I must have dozed off. I hadn't turned the TV off or brushed my teeth.

I just woke up with this sour feeling in my stomach. That something was terribly wrong. I'd closed the curtain, so I couldn't see who it was. I thought about hiding it under the bed or locking myself in the bathroom. My thoughts raced, but I tried to temper them with rational what-ifs. maybe it was just housekeeping or a concerned manager. Then the knock came again, this time with a voice. Mr. said Alvin Walters,

Mom must have talked to you. I didn't answer. For a few seconds, I carefully stepped out of the bed, tried my best not to make a noise. Mom wants to talk to you, he repeated. It's urgent. There was no way they didn't know I was in here. They knew, and they wanted something.

And whatever it was, I didn't want to find out. I sneaked to the back of the room with as the doorknob started to rattle. I could hear Alvin again, this time his voice shrunk to threatening lows, like the dark growl of an adult or elderly man. Mom wants to talk to you. I pulled up in the curtains to a window face in the back of the building. I figured I could climb out of the window. But as soon as those curtains opened, my heart skipped a beat.

Right there was Anders, the father himself, just inches from the window, standing straight with his neatly tucked in shirt illuminated by the sharp light of the single TV screen. An ever-curdiest smile cemented on his face. He tapped the window. Would you mind opening up, he asked? It won't take long. Again, I looked a little closer, and again, I could see little details that were just off. A slight droop of the lip that hadn't been there in the day before.

One I pulled lower than the other. his hair line further forward than usual, like he'd rushed himself to look like a person. Another knock at the door, another knock at the window, voices from the front and the back, hell, maybe even the room next door, little voices, big voices, broken voices. We just want to clear some things up. Mom wants to talk. It's not what you think. I had to make a break for it, but for that I needed to decide where to go.

So I pulled the front curtains aside to see how many of them were waiting up front. All five of them that were standing out front, mom, dad, kids, and dog. I looked back as if trying to convince myself I was sane. There were two dads, and none of them looked right. Further down the street in their car, I spotted two more kids identical to Aden and Alvin, both with little quirks, like they weren't fully formed yet. A loose jaw, a strange eye. One of them had a wide, bald spot.

Stepping out of the motel manager's office, I saw another Lila. This one with a deflated arm and a paralyzed face. I was surrounded. I held up my phone like a weapon. I'm calling the police I yelled. Get the fuck away from me. That'd be inconvenient, said Anders. And you'd be dead, added Aidan.

Long dead, chuckled Alvin. His voice not tuned right. The doorknob rattled again, more forceful this time. I could feel my pulse rising, my breath growing short. I looked back and forth, seeing the Anders at the back window, trying to figure out the lock. Only now did I see that one of his fingers were nothing but bone. How about a trade? suggested Lila.

Something for everyone. What the fuck are you talking about? Go inside that bathroom of yours, grab a piece of tissue, and chew on it. Then drop it out the window. What? I couldn't understand what I was hearing. It's like the words were there, but didn't make any sense to me. We're going to need a new suit, said Lila.

You will do. You're not fucking. wearing me. Oh, we'll leave you alone and you'll leave us alone because if you don't, people that look like you are going to start doing some terrible things, aren't they Anders? Oh, they are, Lila, said in Anders, terrible, terrible things. So that way, we can all walk away. You'll never see us again and we'll leave you be. I tried to wrap my head around it. They were going to make a suit out of me like they'd done with that dog and with that family. There'd be someone looking like me, walking around out there, something vile.

But what choice did I have? I stepped into the bathroom and chewed up a piece of tissue. I spat it out and moved to the window. The family stepped back. I clicked the window open and flung the piece of tissue out with a flick of the finger. Mila picked it up and met my eyes with an unblinking gaze. With one clench of the fist, she grabbed the top of her head and pulled. her entire face lurched backwards.

Her lower lip reaching all the way to her eyebrows. Underneath was just this black sludge, covering what looked like a deformed skull. She was like a walking oil slick, completely midnight black and slick as water. She pushed the piece of tissue inside herself before pulling her face back down. It took her a few seconds to realign,

but she just couldn't get it to look right. She coughed a little. She waited, she nodded, and when she looked back at me, she did so with my own eyes, speaking with my own tongue. Thank you, I heard myself say. I think this will work out for all of us, don't you? I couldn't answer. I couldn't think. I just closed the curtains and scrambled backwards. I heard a car pull around, I heard rustling in the bushes out back, and from afar I could hear my own voice a final time. We'll be gone by morning, it said, but we're never far away. car drove off, leaving me in stunned silence, my mouth dry from hyperventilating. The next morning,

they were gone. The basement was empty, and they even left to think you note. Attached to it was a polar-red picture of a happy family, a mom, a dad, two kids, and a funny uncle, one that looked exactly like me. I have been contemplating on whether to share this for some time knowing what they could do, but I believe they're not technically proficient enough to find this, and I've omitted a lot of details. I just need to know if anyone has met something similar, and if so, how he managed to put it behind you. Are they still out there? Are they watching me? How many suits do they have? I've wanted to just put this behind me and pretend it never happened, but it's getting harder and harder. Every now and then, I see someone that looks vaguely like them, and Anders with a different haircut,

a Layla that's slightly younger, school photos with an Aden or Alvin, but I had different hair color. And a few weeks ago, I got a call from a friend mentioning how they'd seen me in the local newspaper. One thing is, I've never been in it. I've considered moving somewhere far, far away, but first, I just need to get this out. I need someone to believe me, the real me, and not the me you might see in the papers. Anthony Willis Anthony Willis is sitting in my chair today, a young man who is somehow skinny and fat at the same time and has greasy unwashed hair. It crosses my mind that maybe I should have the chair clean when he leaves.

This is his first time, and he is still young, fresh and stupid. Hopefully when he leaves my chair, he will be knowledgeable and maybe, just maybe, have gained a little understanding. So, how old is your child? Oh, um, Two months. Interesting. Most new parents count the age of a newborn through weeks and days. Makes sense when every week is a new milestone. And most of them don't need a second to think about how long the child has been in their lives when they've only been there for such a short time. Do you have a wife? Yes, she's 21. Wow. That's the most defining thing he can think of about her, her age, not how long they've been

married or even her name. Now that I think about it, he didn't mention his kid's name either, or even if they're a boy or a girl. Of course, I already know it's a girl because I read his file before he came in. How are they? Now he's fidgeting in his chair. Interesting. Um, good. They're pretty good. Pretty good, so descriptive. And he actually broke eye contact with me to say that. This guy is a horrible liar. Thank God. He'll be so easy to break. Yes, but we're not here to talk about them, are we? He brings his eyes back to me and sits up when he realizes that the small talk is over

and it's time to get down to business. We're here to talk about you. So how are they in relation to you? Uh, I must have caught him off guard. He's uncomfortable. He's actually stretching his arms out and placing his hands behind his head in a subconscious attempt to take up more space. Typically, in a human male, this means.

they are either intimidated or trying to impress someone they are attracted to. Something tells me, it's not the latter. After a few seconds of painful silence, I decided to help him out. Let's just start with your wife. Would you say you have a good relationship with her? I'm leaning forward, eyebrows furrowed, hands together on the table. It seems like the more attention I paid to him, the more awkward he becomes. It's delicious. Yeah, well, uh, It's okay. God, this guy doesn't want to talk. That's fine because I've dealt with a lot worse. I have a lot of baddies come through this room and sit in my chair, so far I've broken them all. Do you ever have arguments or disagreements?

Now I've got them. People who are on the brink of divorce or murder will more times than not tell me that their marriage is okay. I think that people have a very hard time revealing things like that to strangers. We've been conditioned. After all, to slap a band-aid on a bullet hole and a smile on our face during hardship, especially marital strife. Uh, well, yeah, we do. We do argue. What do you argue about? Um, he's looking away from me again.

I think this time he's trying to hide the emotion in his eyes. Lord forbid a man were to show any emotion. He gives a tiny chuckle that looks like it took a lot of effort to get out. Uh, everything. really. Everything. That doesn't sound okay. That sounds miserable. Yeah, miserable. It can be actually, ever since she got pregnant. He's still not looking at me. In fact, he is trying so hard to avoid eye contact, he has his face pointed almost completely away from me. That painting of a plant on the wall must be extremely compelling because many of the people who have sat in that chair have spent

quite a bit of time staring at it. Funny, because I always thought it was just a dumb painting of a plant. How have things changed between you two since she got pregnant? More fighting. A lot more fighting. Now he has gotten to the point where instead of spreading out, he's starting to take up less space. He's gripping his thighs and sitting upright.

What do you fight about? Try to be specific. He's moving his hands up and down his thighs now. God, he just can't stop fidgeting, can he? Just stuff like, I don't know. It's always something. Every time I walk in the door, there's something wrong. Like, I've done something wrong.

I just can't do anything right. Do you help with the baby? Man, I try to. So now he's calling me man. Looks like I'm already breaking down walls. But it's like, what am I supposed to do? It's not like going to be able to make it stop crying. Oh, interesting.

Very interesting. So now the baby's an it. And she's breastfeeding it, so it's not like I can help with that. And she never wants to just let it cry. She thinks it's our job to just jump up every time that it makes it sound and find out what's wrong. And I'm just like, won't she get spoiled like that? The more upset that he gets, the more fragmented and confusing his sentences are. But we've had one advancement. He referred to his baby daughter as she instead of it. So would you say you have different parenting ideals than your wife does? Oh yeah. He's looking at me in the eyes now and nodding furiously. Sometimes I'll get mad and I'll be like, so what? Let the damn kid cry for a bit. And then she'll just lose it. Lose it?

Oh yeah. Now he's mimicking my behavior by leaning forward and using hand motions. Suddenly I'm his best friend. Tells me, I'm a bad dad. Tells me, she hates me. I hate it when she's. says that. Because you love her? Because it fucking pisses me off. His reaction is almost explosive and I've dealt with worse so I don't react. Because you love her? Yeah, I guess he mumbles. What about your

daughter? Do you love her? Of course I do. I mean, she drives me bad shit, but she's still my kid. I just don't know. I don't think she should be treated like the queen of England, you know? Oh yeah, I know. I know all about you, Anthony Willis. And I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. know exactly how you feel about your wife and daughter. Does her wife call you names or put you down when you fight? Yeah, lazy bastard, fat ass, dumbass, deadbeat. Like, she thinks that's my fault. I can't get a job in this shit hole economy. I'm not applying myself. How long has it been since you held a job, Anthony? I already know the answer, but I ask anyways, just because I want to see him squirm. It's been, like, a while, maybe a few months. Suddenly, he's not looking at me. He's not looking at

me anymore and he's leaning back in his seat like he thinks if he gets far enough away the question won't hit him or maybe that i won't hear him but i don't have to hear him because i know why he's really sitting in my chair so does your wife work no of course not she can't work because of the baby right she quit her job like a couple months before the baby was born isn't that a load of shit he just gets to proper feet up all day while everyone rushes around her like she just gave birth to baby Jesus and then they all scream at me to get a job like it's just that easy. If neither of you work, then how do you support yourselves? Of course, I know they answer to this as well, but it's very important that he says these

things out loud. It's the only way I'm going to lead him to the truth. Her parents, you know, they've got a little money, I guess. We sleep in the spare bedroom. Sometimes. Sometimes I just sleep on the couch because I don't feel like fucking dealing with it. Sometimes I just want to get a full night of sleep without the kid. waking me up, you know? Yes, Anthony. I know. I know all too well. She insists on having the baby

sleep in the bed. I don't see why she can't just put the crib in the bathroom or the living room and then just let the baby cry for a little bit, even for just a few hours if it means we'll get some sleep, you know? But no, no, no, no, no. I need a full night of sleep sometimes, you know? What about your wife? Does she ever get a full night of sleep? What does she need it for? What does she do all day? She's always either sleeping, watching TV, or just completely glued to that baby, but then she complains at me that I should be doing the dishes making dinner, even though I literally spend hours every day on the internet searching for jobs. But as soon as I try to take a break, you can guarantee she's going to come in and start

screaming at me. I think it's funny that a few moments ago, he wasn't even speaking in full sentences to me, and now he's spewing paragraphs. He's not uncomfortable anymore. He's still fidgeting. though. He keeps his eyes on me, but his hands are traveling all over his body like he's covered in ants. Guilty conscious, Anthony? Living with your in-laws must be stressful for you as well. I'm trying to hit all the pressure points. How worked up can I get him? And what can I get him to confess?

Man, you don't even know. I know Anthony. I know all about it. But I want you to tell me anyways. her dad the dude fucking hates me like hates my guts he's constantly telling her to leave me and he really wants to keep me out or kill me probably and then her mom is just a bitch just straight a bitch she doesn't like cussing doesn't like drinking or smoking or anything except for her grandbaby she treats that baby like it came from god but me the man who made the baby she treats like shit go figure do you fight with her parents uh yes and no like they won't say anything to my face they just say it to her and then we end up fighting because of it do you get angry my voice is so low now it's

almost a whisper i'm leaning forward preparing for the pounce who wouldn't how angry well sometimes his voice is getting lower as well i just like i i just i hear that baby that damn baby screaming and i swear to god i want to kill her he's holding his hands in front of himself now with his fingers clenched. The tendons in his hands are sticking out, and I can see veins under his transparently pale skin clearly. So what do you do when you're angry? I've already got him. He'll answer any question to ask him, but I still want to lead him into his own realization. Also, I'm not done toying with him yet. I throw things, break things. Her mom doesn't like for me to get drunk so sometimes I just throw empty bottles and break them when they're not home. I slam the doors. I

punched the walls, kick the walls. I punched a hole in our bedroom door one time. I can't help it. It's really hard, you know. Being a man but being treated like a little kid, I just want a little fucking freedom. How does your wife react when you go into a rage? Oh, you know, all scared and shit. Like she actually thinks I'm going to hurt her. She gets all. freaked out. One time she told me that if I laid a hand on her, then her dad would shoot me. Dude, at this point, that fat old man can go ahead and do it. It'll be a fucking blessing right now. And what about the baby? Have you ever hurt her? God, no, of course not. I've screamed at her before, told her to shut up, but all parents get frustrated. It's actually supposed to be normal to

get frustrated sometimes, but I get treated like I'm a monster or something. Sometimes when she's crying It's so fucking loud. It's like I just can't take it anymore. And I have to punch something. Like the wall or the door? Yeah, like that, you know? Or what about the lamp? Do you sometimes smash the lamps?

Sometimes, yeah. It's like I just want some fucking sleep and sex. This is really hard to admit, especially for a man. But, you know, we haven't fucked since before she gave birth. She doesn't understand because for her it's not as big of a deal. She doesn't even take one. Single second to think about how that affects me, especially since I can't really jerk it more than maybe once a day since we have absolutely no privacy.

I have to hide in the bathroom like I'm a kid again. It's humiliating. By this point, I'm feeling borderline rage, but I've learned how to hide it very well. My face remains practically expressionless, although underneath I'm tensing up for the kill. Think about the last time you are going to be. with your wife.

What was it about? At first, it was because I wanted her to actually show me that she loved me, you know? Like, put the baby down for the two goddamn seconds to pay attention to me for once. Oh, she didn't like that. Of course she didn't like that. How dare I imply that I'm a human being with needs, right? By needs, do you mean sex? Not exactly.

I'm just a physical person, you know? Love languages and shit? Well, I'm physical. I like to be touched, you know, initiate a kiss or something every now and then. If it leaves the sex, it does, but it doesn't have to. But at the very least she could at least try. She would always complain that if she tried, it would hurt. But like, how the fuck is she going to know if it hurts this time, if she won't at least try?

Once you get this guy talking, he could go on forever. I could get him to spill his entire life story to me right now if I wanted to. But I don't. I just want one thing, and I'm getting closer. and closer. What happened next? I don't remember too well, to be honest. I always acting like I'm his good buddy.

He leans back in his chair and stretches. Talking shit about his wife seems to be making him more confident. Men like him love to talk shit. And when they actually meet someone who will sit there and listen to it without kicking their ass, they eat it up. The hardest part of my job is pretending like I'm not disgusted by men like him. You left the house, didn't you? You were quite angry.

Man, angry doesn't even cut it. I was pissed. I think I did leave. Maybe I went to a bar or something. I must have gotten real shit-faced because I can't remember anything. Can't or won't. I have to speak slowly and enunciate each syllable to keep from screaming. What does that mean?

Let me help you out. You didn't go to a bar. You went to a gas station. You bought a lot of beer. You drank a lot of beer. All by yourself in a gas station parking lot. Then what happened? Uh, now I went home.

His poor stupid brain is going into overdrive now. I think for the first time he's actually starting to question where he is and maybe who the hell I am. But there's no time for that and he wouldn't understand yet anyways. I have to keep him on track. were nearing the breaking point. Yes, you went home. Now focus on remembering. I'm leaning so far over the desk now,

I'm practically laying on it. My eyes are stuck on his so hard, he doesn't dare look away. I have to keep him focused. Her parents were still gone. I was really happy about that. I couldn't stop thinking about how lucky I was, but then I was really mad.

Why were you mad? Um, because the fucking door was locked and I didn't have a key, and I was pounding on the door and yelling and she wouldn't come and open it. She was purposefully not letting me into my own house. It's not your house, Anthony, but that's not important right now. He's making progress. So, how did you get in? Oh, easy. He looks down at his bloodied right hand.

I broke the window on the door and just reached through and unlocked it. It was really simple. I was so drunk that it didn't even really hurt. And your wife? She was inside? Yeah, I think so. He was still looking at his hand like he just couldn't comprehend. I can't let him finish the puzzle yet. He needs to put the pieces together in order. Anthony, your wife, what was she doing?

What did she do when she saw you? She started fucking screaming, loud. telling me to stay the fuck away from her. Oh yeah. Then she tells me, guess what? Her parents are at the police station. They're trying to put me in jail,

over a tiny punch, like not even half-fours. And what did you say? I told her that if I was going to go to jail, she was going to be a hospital. So she fucking runs like a little bitch into her parents' room and locks the door. I can hear the dumb bitch through the door.

She's on the phone saying, oh God, he's going to kill me. Help me, oh God. I'm mad, so I start kicking the door. I'm really only trying to scare. but then the door breaks. And next thing I know, there's a gun pointed at my face. She's pointing a gun at me, but she has the nerve to call the cops on me. I wasn't even afraid, though. I mean, I knew she wouldn't do it, you know. There's no way she has that much courage. So I just start

walking forward, and she's walking backwards and crying and saying, don't make me shoot you. So you know what I did? I walked right up to her. I took the gun and held it to my chest. And I just said, if you're going to do it, fucking do it. And you know what she did? She threw the fucking thing on the ground. And then she's just crying and saying, please don't hurt me. That bitch was going to shoot me. Can you believe it?

He's no longer on the line between crying and laughing. He's playing hopscotch with it. But she didn't shoot you. She couldn't do it. The game is over. Anthony Willis will be leaving my chair and taking his fill. filthy, greasy hair with him. He won't be leaving a better man. It's simply too late for him. But maybe I can rid the world of his stench once and for all. Maybe I can properly finish the job

he left half done. No, she couldn't. She was too sweet, too kind, too babying, too scared. Hell, I don't know, but she made a fucking mistake. I saw some bright lights. Yep, she had called the fucking cops on me. She had denied me. sex like I was fucking unworthy, locked me out of my own house, pulled a gun on me, and then called the cops. And of course, who are the cops going to believe? Not me for sure. They always take the chick's side. Always. Probably because they think she's going to bone them, you know? No, Anthony. I don't fucking know. A shoulder to cry on becomes a dick to ride on, as they say. What did you do to your wife, Anthony. Well, I thought, you know what? Maybe I should share her what it's like to have a gun

shoved in her face. So I grabbed it off the floor and pointed it at her. And then, I don't know. I was so drunk. Yes, you do remember. You remember exactly what you did. I remember she screamed or something. The cops were banging on the door. It scared me. Say what you did. Say it. I realize that I'm no longer sitting and I can't calm myself down enough to sit back down. I'm going to break him. He looks at me with tear-filled eyes, a pathetic and ugly look for him. I was just so scared. No, Anthony.

She was scared. I think there was some kind of accident like she fell? His vainy, bloody hands are on his face now. They weigh down his skin and make his eyes look saggy and inhuman. No accident. What did you do? I think I think I I think I he's rocking now the truth is fighting him hard. It's fighting to come out and be free and I think that very soon he will be defeated by it.

I think I shot her. Shot who? Who was she? I'm walking across the floor now and then standing over him. I want to hit him but I know it would be pointless. So I fight him the only way. I know how. My, my, my wife, her.

No, Anthony. Her name. What was her name? Oh God, what's happening? Where am I? Who are these people? He tries to rise from my chair only to find that he is bound, but not by chains. Why can't I leave?

Why can't I stand up? This is my last question, Anthony. Just answer it. And I will answer your questions. I'll tell you everything. What was her name? He curls up his knees and hides his face in them like a tired child. I can't say it.

You have to say it or you won't ever leave this room. You won't ever leave this chair. Please don't make me. Please. He's openly sobbing now and I can't help but remember how he felt towards his sobbing, pleading wife. You cannot leave. unless you say it. There's no other way. This is the toughest stretch, but I know that I've already won. All I have to do is keep pushing. He's so close to breaking. He's wailing, stops,

and he's calm for a few seconds. He breathes deeply a few times, and I allow him this reprive. When he looks up at me with a bloodshot eyes, I know there's no need to prod them anymore. The truth is bubbling its weight up to the top. The silence is thick and heavy. and suffocating, which I know will make it all the more relieving when it is broken. Priscilla. My wife's name is Priscilla. The words come out flat and emotionless. I wonder if this is the same way he looked when he pulled the trigger.

Her name was Priscilla, I correct him. Standing up, I walk away from him and sit back down to my chair across the table from him. It's time to answer some questions. Your name is Anthony Willis. You died when you were 23. This is the house that you killed Priscilla and yourself in 10 years ago. These are the people that live here now. You can see them, but they can't see you. Or hear you. They have a message for you. The young couple sitting on the other side of the room are watching with wide eyes. I know that they can't see or hear him, but the goosebumps on their arms and panic in their faces tell me that they can sell.

him. One of them is gripping the other's arm so hard I can see pale fingerprints in their arm. Anthony is sitting in the chair and finally looks like what he is. Dead. His eyes are flat and detached. His mouth hanging slightly open. They want you to know that this is their house now and you are not welcome here. You never were welcome here. It's time for you to stop breaking their lamps, kicking holes in their walls and terrorizing their children. That's why I'm here to give you this message and to enforce it. He doesn't respond for a few seconds, but I am willing to wait. I have learned that death is a very hard thing to accept, even for those who deserved it. I'm not surprised when he finally starts to fight against his invisible bonds. He is trying so hard

just to stand, but I know that his chains are unbreakable. Much stronger people than him have fought them and lost. The chains are made powerful by personal items of his, his obituary, a picture of him, and his dead wife at their high school prom, and a picture of his dead wife and their baby daughter. The couple, who now owns the house, are becoming more frightened as he struggles. His presence must be stronger now with all the energy he is exerting. If he keeps this up, they may be able to see his physical presence. No, this is my house. You're not going to take that away from me. You can't make me leave. He is fighting full force now, which is actually stronger than I would have thought when I first met him. No, Anthony, you are going to leave.

I pull a lighter out of my pocket, click it, and produce a small flame. Anthony seems to go even paler when he sees it. When I burn these items, you will be released from this world to go wherever it is you will go. Wait, his voice is high-pitched and panicky. Where will I go? That's for you to find out, Anthony. I'm still alive, so I don't know. I bring the flame towards the pictures in front of me, but he cries out again, and I allow him his last words. Am I going to hell? He asked quietly and looks pleadingly at me. I don't know, Anthony. Why don't you send me a postcard? I like the pictures. I know the couple in the room with me can hear the screaming because they both jump and grow a shade paler. One of them actually screams out loud and acts like they are going to bolt for the

door. To my surprise, they find enough courage to stay. I know that I was terrified as well the first time that I heard the wailing death screams of an unwilling spirit being forcefully ripped from this world, but now I find a small amount of pleasure. The world could always use less Anthony Willis's. Of course, it's the most horrible people who seem to cling to life the hardest. It might be because they are so terrified of what waits them on the other side, or maybe it's because they want to just inflict as much pain as possible. Either way, it's not my job to know. It's just my job to get rid of them. Not a job I chose, but the job that was chosen for me. The last remnants of Anthony Willis are fading out of this world in long tendrils of smoke that

continue to spark in an unworldly manner. The young couple are holding each other and hiding their faces from the gruesome sight that I have grown so desensitized to. Eventually, the smoke starts to clear, but a musky, sulfurous smell is still lingering in the hazy room. Yes, I'll definitely be having that chair cleaned. The next few moments are silent except for the haunting echoes of Anthony's passing. The couple finally looked towards me. One's face is tear streaked and they are trembling. The other steps forward and addresses me while never letting go of the other's hand.

Is it gone? They ask in a whisper that is barely more than a breath. Yes, he's gone now. He won't be back either. Of course, if I were you, I would still keep my eye out for any other, While uncommon, this was a traumatic death involving more than one person. So I'll keep an eye out for the wife just in case. The wife, the one he killed?

Their question reminds me that they could actually hear my side of the conversation. Yes, it's unlikely that she is still here. And even if she is, I don't think she could actually cause you any problems. But if there are more problems, don't hesitate to reach me again. Okay, thank you. the um the payment they asked tentatively i never asked for payment up front because in my experience any medium who asks for payment up front is a fraud my assistant will get you about that is there anywhere you can stay for the night possibly tomorrow night as well my mother's house that's where

the children are right now why is it is it is it not safe yet they seem so awkward talking about this they always do i find that many people when actually confronted with the superiors supernatural wood, rather brush it under the rug and erase it from their minds. I can't blame them, honestly. It's not the kind of thing you can just bring up at a company picnic in casual conversation. And retelling this story around a campfire at night just seems to make light of the situation. His presence is gone, but there's a remaining mist and bad odor that will likely persist until at least tomorrow evening, possibly the next morning even.

Some people have found this smell to be overbearing and some have even had negative side effects to do it. Nothing too serious. Headaches, nausea, lightheadedness, moodiness, finding another place to sleep for the next two nights would be safer. I think that's a great idea. I'll call your mother now. The one who has been crying seems eager to leave this place in return when the memories are less fresh and easier to reconstruct into something tangible. They leave the room quickly and as soon as the doors opened, the pressure in the dark and musty room is lightened. I don't know what to say. I don't understand this at all, but thank God for people like you. What would have happened if we hadn't called you?

I mean, could it have gotten worse? Well, if you had waited too long, I wouldn't have ever been able to help you. I'm sorry for your family's misfortune, and I hope you can be able to move past this quickly. The children may take a little time, of course. The younger they are, the better they seem to be able to remember it for some reason. Even the baby? Especially the baby. She'll probably remember this year.

and years from now, even after you have long forgotten. I'm sorry, I don't want to be rude, but I have a flight to catch, so I can't stay for much longer. No, no, of course. Go ahead. Thanks again. I am led to the door and feel the familiar rush of fresh air and sunshine and life in general. Notes to the girl whose house I live in. It took me a week to find where you keep your Wi-Fi password.

A whole week. I was really worried you'd thrown it away. But lo and behold, there it was in the cutlery drawer of all places. Everything about the way you organized things confuses me. I guess because you live on your own now, you just put things any old place. I know there was someone else before. I heard you talking about him on the phone. Johnny, I think, Jimmy?

Anyway, I know because you said it was tough being alone, but you're not alone, of course. You have me. There's a crack in your roof where I can see down onto the street below. Don't worry about the roof. by the way. Yes, it's pretty crant, but I like my space as small. I've actually stuffed a few things up there to make it smaller, just bits and bobs from the recycling. I don't think you'll miss them. I can sit with my face against the wall and see down onto the street. That's where I saw you meeting up with all those people wearing black. It would have been weird anyway because you never meet anyone, but they were

all rubbing your back and holding your hand and stuff. I was scared you were going to bring them in, but you just went off together, so that was okay. I don't know what I would have done if the house had filled up with people. You know, it really explains a lot as there was someone else before me. Like the fact you have two sets of drawers in your bedroom or how you're living in such a big house all by yourself and do weird things like leave the Wi-Fi and the cutler drawer or watch the same TV show all day on a weekend.

I'm not one to talk, mind. I'm addicted to my toys. Like the big lump of blue tack I found a while back, which is great fun to fiddle with but doesn't taste too good. or the cigarette lighter that's fun to flick on and off, or the tube that has all the patterns in you can change. I could look down that thing for hours. I often have.

That's what I normally do when you're home. Or I just sit back and listen to you do the washing dishes or run a shower or something like that. I crawl up the walls and hang there with my ear to the pipes and listen to the water rushing by. That kind of things makes me happy. Plus, you never have anyone around, so once it got your schedule memorized,

I could move around pretty freely. I know what we have. It's a symbiotic relationship. That means you help me by giving me a warm place to stay around Wi-Fi, and I help you by eating all the spiders. Of course, there's no need to thank me. I fell asleep under the towels in your airing cupboard once, before I found the roof,

and I saw you trying to get rid of one. My name is Peter Parker, but I'm also Spider-Man. This July, we're faced with a threat. That can be anyone. The world may be. have forgotten Peter Parker. I'm just a neighbor, friendly neighbor. But he hasn't forgotten them.

Sometimes Spider-Man has to do the hard thing. That's my responsibility. Dr. Banner? I didn't know you could get that big. Spider-Man, brand new day. In theaters, July 31st. That was living under your sink with a broom. I've never seen so much ridiculous fuss in my entire life,

but it makes no difference to me how many legs something has. So I just eat them up whenever I find one. and any other thing that makes its way into the house without permission, aside from myself, of course. Since I only pay rent and spiders, I try to keep the things I take to a minimum, but I can't say I feel too bad about stealing your socks. You have so many socks.

Why would one girl need so many? I get a lot more out of them than you do anyway. I like to take them apart by the threads and then wrap all the threads around my fingers and pull them tight till the tips go purple. I can nibble my own fingertips and not feel a thing. It's pretty great. I try not take too much food either. I found I can usually survive all the things you leave out or throw away.

Why don't you eat the banana skins? Another habit of yours that confuses me a lot. I like to open my mouth all the way and drop them in whole. No chewing. I've never needed too much food to get by. I really, really, really like butter, though. Not to eat as much as just to play with. You once left out a block by the window in the sun,

and it went all melty while you were at work. so I sort of started playing with it. Once I had stuck my finger in, once it was kind of hard to stop. I had it looking like a puddle by the end, but then I realized it was five and you'd be home soon, so I had to press it back into the rectangle as best as I could. But then I heard you open in the door, boy, I was so startled. I went into the cupboard under the stairs, you know,

the one you never go in, as it's full of men's shoes and codes and things, and I watched you coming through the doorway. But then came the weird part. You didn't even notice the butter. All you did was make a cup of tea and then give up halfway through and start crying. Then you ordered a Chinese and barely ate any before throwing it away. You see what I mean about your habits? I'm sorry, but it's just weird.

Sometimes if I'm having a bad night, I like to get under your bed while you're asleep. It's nice because I can hear your breathing. And then I can match my breath up with that. I lie there for ages, gasping in and out. And if you get up for the bathroom or anything, I have to go completely still. and hold my breath. I don't know why I do it. I guess it's fun. You're the first person who's company I've ever enjoyed. You cooked dinner the other evening. I noticed because you played music, but you never do. And he made something, which almost an hour and a half with about a million

ingredients. I crept down to the top of the staircase, and I could see you bouncing around doing moves with a spoon. It's so funny I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing. Then I saw something that got me really scared. You laid two places at the table. I thought there was someone else in the house and climbed all the way up to the ceiling, thinking they'd see me. As I was hanging there, I saw you serving two plates and I couldn't move for the panic. Another person. I just knew I wouldn't like them as much as you.

That they would ruin everything and make me go all crazy like I used to be. I didn't know what to do. I was ready to hurt them. Really, really hurt. That's how scared I was. Then you sat down, you lit the candle on the table, and started eating by yourself. Nobody else showed up. And after you're done, you took the other food and threw it away.

Even though I was relieved, I kind of felt bad that the other person never showed up. He didn't seem sad, though. It was like you'd expected it, just to be you. After you went to bed, I went through the bin and ate some of the food you threw away. It was delicious. I knew something was wrong the next day because you didn't leave for work. And then he ran a bath in the middle of the afternoon. After you'd been in there for ages and ages, I started to get this horrible bad feeling.

I crawled down to the landing. The bathroom door was open a crack, so I peeked through. I saw your hand. It was hanging, not in a natural way. And there was this long red line going down it. And then I realized, I ran back upstairs. I'm a coward. I know I'm a coward.

I hid under my pile of stuff and started to cry. I thought about running away. I thought about the color. A pink bath mat goes when it's covered in blood. I thought about how much I wanted to be somewhere else. But most of all, I thought about you. and how little sense you made. What I'm trying to say is that I'm sorry I let your roof on fire.

It was the only way I could think to get people to come. It actually worked better than I expected. That recycling stuff sure did burn. I ran down to the cupboard under the stairs and curled up with my hands over my head until I heard them kicked on the door and carry you out. There was a lot of confusion and bad language, but they found you. And I heard one say you were still breathing. So my favorite place in the whole world is gone now.

most of my things as well though I did think to grab the pattern tube the rest is just a big black wig on top of your house but I'm not scared you'll get better and when you come back I'll still be here I don't think it's nice to be alone

the people of my town believe a nuclear apocalypse happened decades ago the truth is almost as terrible have you ever heard of the Japanese soldiers who didn't surrender, along with the rest of their country in 1945, and spent decades hidden away in the belief that World War II still raged on. The town I lived in for the early parts of my life gave me a similar experience. As kids in our small town, we all grew up with the same story. It was late October 1962, and the Cuban Missile Crisis threatened to engulf our planet in a fiery apocalypse.

On the evening of October 27th, the townsfolk tucked themselves into bed for an inevitably restless night of sleep, whilst radio and television chatter in the background provided increasingly worried sounding commentary of this situation at hand. At some point, the signals grew garbled before eventually turning into static, and the constant noise of live updates was suddenly sorely missed. Before dawn came, unfamiliar men in army fatigues went door to door and led the townspeople into the large shelter built beneath their feet in anticipation of the exact scenario they had been alerted to. Supposedly, some people refused with the explanation that there had been no official communication of an attack or a state of war that they would comply if they were allowed to find out

for themselves through their long defunct radio and television sets. Childhood rumor had it that none of these people were seen again. I was born a decade after that night. My first memory is playing cash with myself against a decaying concrete wall in the shelter. It was a pretty big place. bigger than you'd expect for a town of our size, and life down there did its best to mimic the lives we had all had stolen from us. Those efforts were admirable, but ultimately fruitless. There was a dingy little school for the kids, a community kitchen with a massive stockpile of awful canned food, and large rooms filled with rows upon rows of rusting metal bunk beds. Still, though, life in the shelter was awful. I would not wish being trapped underground with

hundreds of people for decades on anybody, and the drab existence took its toll on the old older townspeople who had once known a life far better than that one. There was a room that became notorious for the sheer amount of people who took their own lives there. They had to get creative with such limited resources, and sometimes it would take days or weeks for somebody to die after slating their wrists with a dull and resting knife. I would know, because my father died in that godforsaken room. They found his lifeless body dangling from the ceiling, and little 10-year-old me was left in a state of agony. I didn't talk for months after it happened. And sometimes I still wish had been me instead of him. Then, at least, I wouldn't be burdened with the knowledge I am today.

I remember being taught about the aftermath of the night that started all of this in school. We were told that most of our nation and the world had been ravaged by clouds of smoke and pillars of fire, that life on the ground above us was practically impossible, that we had to stay there forever, lest we faced the horrible deaths we had been saved from. There were a lot of rules to ensure we stuck to those ideals, but we were far too terrified to be skeptical of anything we taught, and so those rules went untested. It took me until I was 19 to question the teachings we were expected to take as absolute truths. You see, whilst I was mostly a good citizen and complied with the rules of the shelter, I did have a sneaky little habit. I don't know why. Perhaps

I had grown bored or just wanted to disobey the seemingly arbitrary rules for once, but I had a borderline obsession with exploring the nooks and crannies of the shelter. Finding untouched corners and hints of a life that supposedly didn't exist anymore gave me a thrill I didn't know was possible in that place. Those hints were usually boring by any outside measure, but one day I found something that left me both in awe and bewildered terror, a window. I didn't know what it was at first, because when I came across it, all I could see was a buildup of dust and cobwebs in the shape of a square.

But I quickly got to work peeling away the layers that had built up over what was presumably a great many years to reveal something out of the mind. wildest dream. An impossibly green landscape stood before my eyes. The sky was a deep blue with an occasional cloud floating by, and the houses abandoned decades before lay there in an unmaintained condition that gave him a unique character. I must have stood there for an hours, taking it all in, wondering why the world I was taught about wasn't what I was staring at, wondering why we had all been lied to. I made my way back to my bunk bed at some point and settled in for the night of restless sleep. Of my few unconscious moments being pierced by these supposed,

supposed impossible landscape I had seen, it took me weeks to bottle up the courage to go back because I was terrified that my eyes had somehow deceived me, that I was losing my mind and that I would end up in that room with the same fate my father faced. I couldn't tell anyone, and I didn't tell anyone. They would think I was losing my mind too, and understandably so. Eventually, though, I did go back, armed with a little piece of my bed that I had managed to break off. Do you know what it's like to have a burning desire to step out into a world that you have always been how it would kill you as soon as it got the chance because I do. The perfect palette of colors before me was so strong to resist. I needed to go out there to run my fingers along the green

grass and to breathe in that air that it meant for me. So I did. The window was large enough that after the glass was broken into mini-school pieces, it was easy for me to climb out. I took my first step that wasn't in that shelter and inhaled for as long as I could whilst my lungs filled with cool, wonderful air. I turned my head back towards the window. only to find it gone. Bare concrete lay in front of me, and my way out was no longer my way back in. Despite my confusion, I figured it was some long-forgotten security redundancy, and I quickly forgot about that, though, as I refocused on the reality of life outside of that place. It was real. It was all real. I wasn't losing my mind. Everything I had seen through the window was exactly the same once

I had rid myself of its constraints, except one thing. It was out of view from the window, so I hadn't seen it before I climbed out. It pierced the otherwise impossibly pristine landscape around me. An army van. All four doors lay open, and there was a singular person in the front seat. His head had a bullet hole cleanly through it, and any blood from the incident had long dried up. As I walked closer to the van,

I noticed a piece of paper beneath the deceased soldier's dangling foot. To whoever is lucky enough to read this, I'm sorry for what we did to your people, to your families. During the Cold War, the unit I worked for was ordered to implement a psychological experiment. It went too far. We were supposed to keep you in the shelter for a year, to test our readiness for what seemed like an inevitable future, to find out whether a shelter of that scale in nature could be our saving grace, our hope for rebuilding civilization in the event of the bombs finally falling.

It was unethical at best, but I rationalized it with the false comfort of doing a service to our nation. I told myself that perhaps our research would one day keep us all alive. Even if it meant mental torment for the people of your town, well, a year came and left quite a while ago. Slowly, governmental and military interests in this little experiment dried up. On the night that this all began, you were led to believe that the bombs were fast approaching our nation. The people who refused to believe our word, legitimized only by army fatigues and commanding voices, were the smart ones. That's why it hurts so much when we were ordered to line them up against the wall.

and shoot them. They deserve so much better. The truth is that Cold War tension began to ease following the emotional high point of the missile crisis. And over the years, the need for shelter subsided. With it, as I mentioned before, so did interest in our experiment. Our men filtered out over the course of months and years until I was the only one left. Perhaps the guilt, I felt. The guilt that gnawed at me during every waking moment kept me here. I had no purpose, no resources, and no way to get to the people we had condemned to a miserable life years before. Still, though, the empty remnants of the town this once has kept a tight grip on me, and I have never been able to leave.

I will never leave. This is where I deserve to die, where I deserve to pay for the sins I committed upon the people who were once here. I hope and pray this letter someday finds a citizen of this condemned town, and I hope my confession can bring you some peace. I do not expect you to forgive me, nor do I deserve it. But please, know that every moment I remain alive will be spent in an impossibly deep regret. I have one final wish. Please bury my body in this letter as deep as you can dig in the soil of this town.

I deserve to be forever condemned to in existence underneath the ground of where this all began. In existence, you have wrongly been forced to partaken. I hope my pain is far worse than we made yours. Goodbye. I must have sobbed for hours on end after reading the letter in the days and weeks after that were a haze. Much of what I remember is made up of trying to get back into the shelter and a desperate bid to give my fellow townspeople the freedom of the life we were supposed to have. At every turn and entrance, I was met with meters of concrete and never succeeded in getting back

into the shelter. I don't remember how long I tried, but eventually I gave up and decided to grant the deceased shoulder his final wish. I dug for days and buried him outside the area where the window that started, this all will be used to be. I know he said he doesn't deserve it. I know he said he doesn't deserve forgiveness, but he had the dignity to understand the awful nature of what he did, and he stayed with us until his end. He was a far better man than those who left us behind, forgotten about and condemned. I hope his regrets are washed away in the soil of our town. As for me, I left the town a long time ago. I lost my way out as I was leaving, and I was never told the original name of the town in the shelter, so unfortunately, the memories are all the proof of my experience I have.

The outside world took a lot of getting used to, but in the years since my escape, I've grown to be okay with my new life. Still, though, I will never forget what I left behind. Even if it was decades ago, my entire life was in that shelter. Everybody I knew and all that I loved. I wake up every morning, having been tormented by nightmares of still being stuck in that deep, dark, underground prison, and yet I often find myself wishing for the comfort of those I lost upon my escape. I hope they found their peace with my sudden disappearance, but something that's true. in me knows they haven't. My pain and terror out here is almost as great as it was in there.

Maybe ignorance is actually bliss, like they say. Perhaps someday, the townsfolk I once knew will be greeted with the same view of blue skies and green meadows I was. In the meantime, I desperately hope that they found a better existence in the shelter than the one I once knew. I found my little sister's diary. I wish I hadn't. My little sister, Emily, always loved keeping a diary. She had stacks of them, pastel covers with little locks, each one filled with messy handwriting and stickers. She used to guard them fiercely, threatening to tell on me if I so much as looked at them. But Emily passed away three months ago. She was only 11. A freak accident at a lake. She fell in, hit her head on a rock, and drowned before anyone could get to her.

The funeral was unbearable, and afterward, I couldn't bring myself to touch her things. Her room remained untouched, like a shrine to the girl she used to be. But last week, Mom asked me to start sorting through her belongings. I found her latest diary in the bottom drawer of her desk. It was unlocked. I thought reading it might bring me some closure. I thought it would help me feel close to her again. I was wrong.

The first few entries were normal. Today we had pizza for dinner. I took two slices before Joey could get them all. He got mad, but I don't care. They made me smile. Emily always loved teasing me. The next few pages were full of harmless ramblings, complaints about school, doodles of flowers and stars, lists of her favorite songs.

But then, about halfway through, the tone started to change. I saw the man again today. He was standing in the backyard, watching me through the window. I told Mom, but she said I was imagining things. He's always there, though. I can feel him. The man? I paused, flipping back through the earlier entries, no mention of him before.

Maybe it was just Emily's overactive imagination. She's always been a little jumpy, a little too eager to believe in monsters under the bed. I kept reading. The man came closer last night. He tapped on my window. He didn't say anything, just smiled at me. His teeth are so big. I wanted to scream, but I was too scared.

I felt a chill run down my spine. Emily's handwriting got messier with each entry, her words more frantic. He comes inside now. He stands at the foot of my bed while I pretend to sleep. He whispers my name. He says he's waiting. Waiting for what? I flipped to the last few pages, my heart pounding.

Joey doesn't see him. No one does. He told me not to tell. He said they wouldn't believe me. He said I belonged to him now. I stopped reading. My hands were shaking. This had to be some kind of prank.

A made-up story Emily wrote to scare me, but the way she described it, the fear in her words, it felt real, too real. That night, I couldn't stop thinking about the diary. I couldn't shake the image of Emily lying in bed too terrified to scream while some stranger stood over her. I barely slept. When I finally drifted off, I dreamed about her. She was standing at the edge of a lake, staring at me with wide, unblinking eyes.

Her lips moved, but no sound came out. When I woke up, I was drenched in sweat. And there was mud on my shoes. I told myself it was nothing. Maybe I'd gone outside to clear my head and didn't remember. But the next day, I found a page from Emily's diary lying on my desk. I had him brought the diary upstairs. The page wasn't one I'd read before.

He says Joey will come next. He says Joey will join me soon. My blood turned to ice. That night I locked my bedroom door. I tried to convince myself it was just all in my head. The grief was playing tricks on me. But as I lay there, staring at the ceiling, I heard it. A tap.

Tap. Tap. On my window. I don't want to look. I couldn't. but something made me turn my head. He was there. A man tall and thin, his face pale and stretched like wax. He smiled at me, bearing rows of jagged teeth and pressed a single finger to his lips. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. When I woke up, it was morning. The window was locked, no sign of anyone outside. I almost convinced myself it was a dream, until I went downstairs

and found another page from Emily's diary on the kitchen table. He said, is his time. He says Joey belongs to him now. I haven't slept since. I haven't left the house. I keep hearing taps at the windows, whispers in the dark. Last night, I found muddy footprints leading from the lake to my bedroom door. I think I understand now. Emily didn't fall. She didn't hit her head. He took her. And now he's coming for me. Because you are my baby. My mother had the most beautiful teeth. Her teeth are my first memory. I remember them. Long. and white and bared in a ferocious grin shining under the full moon as she told me a story not a fairy tale or picture book but my the story the story of how i'd come to her rather how'd

she'd come to me when i was very small too small to remember anything at all my mother stole me from a man and took me to live in the forest she stole me not as an act of love but as an act of revenge though i was desperate to know she never told me what needed revenge One night, I finally asked, why won't you tell me? Because you're my baby, she whispered in her low, wet voice. She stroked my face with long fingers. Her teeth glittered under the stars, rich and pale as polished ivory. My baby will never hear or see or know the cruelties that haunt me.

Cruelty was not the only thing my mother knew that I did not, although it was the only thing she refused to teach me. My mother tried very hard to teach me everything, else she knew. Unfortunately, I was a very poor people indeed. My mother was a remarkable huntress. She felt elk and bare effortlessly. Sometimes she slid into the lake without so much as a ripple, and returned hours later with a monstrous fish clamped in her jaws. Because hunting came so easily to her, mother expected me to learn quickly. Men hunt, she hissed. They have always hunted. So shall you. But I could not hunt, not like her. My small, soft fingers were no match for her lethal claws.

my clumsy little body, somehow so susceptible to both the heat and the cold, trailed after her like whip-like predators form. Mother caught deer and foxes with her beautiful teeth, striking from the shadows like a snake. By contrast, my dull teeth could not even crush rabbit bones. I persevered, but did not improve. One night, while mother snake through the shadows, communing with trees and evading the dark things prowling the night,

I curled up and wept. She found me that way, weak and weeping. I covered my eyes and held my breath. I knew it was useless. Mother could hear my heartbeat from the other side of the hill, so she surely knew I was crying. But that small scrap of pride was all I had. Mother stood there for a long time.

Then she crept forward and covered me with fresh leaves before lying beside me. I will feed you always, she whispered, because you are my baby. In addition to hunting, my mother was a phenomenal creator of shelters. Sometimes she lived within the earth. snaking through loam and tree roots like treasure hoarding dragons of old. Sometimes she lived in the trees. Many nights I watched in awe as her bones elongated and tore through her rough skin, stretching upward to twist among the branches like an ancient spider god.

I would wait patiently, sometimes for hours, as mother communed with the spirits buried in the roots. And sometimes she lived in the shadows, creeping through the darkness, to flush out food and threat alike. So, Mother tried to teach me to dig burrows, but I could not dig like her. I was too small and too soft, and far too frightened of the bugs and moles that tunneled through the earth. So, she tried to teach me to live among the tree branches, to rest and listen as the redwoods murmured

the long, strange histories of the earth. But my bones could not stretch like mothers. I could not twist my arms to match the branches. My skin could not interlock with the tree bark, and my blood was too sluggish to melt into the sap. So Mother tried to teach me to live in the shadows, but the darkness terrified me. Every night, he hid and wept, imagining the legs of centipedes crawling across my skin. All the night creatures reveled in my fear.

Owl swooped down to taunt me, and bats torpedoed towards me, giggling in their shrill, squeaking voices until Mother slapped them out of the sky. Finally, Mother realized the futility of these lessons, so she dug a deep burrow just for me. She lined it with leaves and slurped the worms and roaches from the wall. walls. When she finished, I burst into tears. Why do you weep, she rasped? Because you do everything for me. I knew the laws of nature. I knew the laws of forest creatures and their young. Young that were weak, were killed in the nest. Young that could not learn to fend for themselves or abandoned to die. I was weak and soft and coated in terrible, ugly scars. Why do you do everything for me? Mother

snaked forward, long, large hands sinking into the earth. She curled around me and pulled me close. Because you're my baby. Mother did not always live in the burrow with me. She roamed the mountains. She burrowed with moles, slithered with snakes, grazed with elk, hunted with wolves, stood with trees. When I was very small, I thought she ate the forest, but it was not that simple. She protected it, and in return it sustained her. My heart, she told me one rainy night, is the forest. So this is how it must be. As I grew older, I, I grew older, I was a little. I was a I developed rudimentary survival skills. I shied away from hunting big game, elk and deer, bears and boar, because I did not protect the forest.

I gave it nothing. I only took, so I took as little as I could. I trapped rabbits, fished the streams, and ate wild berries. I dared take nothing else. Once I could reliably feed myself, mother stayed far away for long stretches, hours, then days, and finally weeks. I missed her terribly, with a deep, panicky ache. I confronted her about it one balmy spring evening. You leave me more and more, I accused.

Soon you'll leave me forever. Never, she murmured. A breeze twined round us, raising goose flesh on my skin and ripping her long white hair. I will never leave you. But you do, I screamed. You already do. Before you came, I lived among the trees,

listening to their warnings. I slept in the warm earth as worms and centipedes nibed my skin. I spent many of your lifetimes within the forest. Little one. So many lives at the same time that I forgot my own name. I do not leave you. I have left the forest for you. I didn't come here.

I sobbed. You took me. I did, she said. So I will never leave you. When you think I've left, silence yourself and listen. Listen for me the way I listen for the trees, the animals and the stars. If you're silent and you're sincere, you will hear me. And then she left.

Fury and jealousy seared my heart like a wildfire. She insulted me. She humiliated me. And after all, that she left me, left me for the centipedes and the wolves of the stupid, chittering bats. I don't need you, I screamed. An owl hooted angrily in response. I don't need you at all.

Then I ran from my burrow. As it, the earthen door materialized before me, nodding with flowers. was in wild grasses, anger swelled inside me. It possessed me, this wild ball of misery born of my own endless fear and inadequacy. And it spoke to me. Why should you return to the borough, it asked? Why indeed? It wasn't mine. It was mothers. The entire forest belonged to mother. Without her, the forest would have been consumed me a long ago. So I turned away from the borough and kept running. I will find the end of the forest, I decided. I will leave it once and for all. I ran for days, in the process treating the forest with contempt.

I stripped the trees of their leaves to make nightly beds. I threw rocks at birds and rabbits. I brooded bushes and stripped entire groves of their berries, eating until I threw up from sheer excess. Then I ate again, not out of hunger, not out of any need, but out of malice. And one day, long after spring seated to summer in a verdant explosion of heat and greenery, I heard voices. I froze immediately. The only voice I knew was mothers, wet and low,

an earthy, rib-shaken whisper. These voices were nothing like mothers. They were high and somehow infantile, with strange shrill notes. These voices, they were like mine. Trembling, I dropped low and crept through the underbrush. Sun-warmed leaves brushed against my face, smooth but painfully crisp.

The sun was taking its toll on them. I snaked over the ground, pretending I was mother, slipping through the forest like an invisible snake. I reached a break in the trees and peered through. In a small clearing were four creatures. They had pink skin and wore heavy clothes that looked suffocating. Their hands were small and soft, their faces were smooth and babylike, somehow half-formed, wide-eyed and rounded, with soft noses and plump fesh.

I touched my face, flat and smooth, and looked down at myself. mud streaked, deeply tanned, and marked with a hideous mass of scars, but still soft, hairless, small, weak. There was no mistaking it. These things in the woods, these overdressed, half-formed beans with small teeth and no claws, and over-large eyes were like me. They were men. I stood up, propelled by panicky excitement, and strode forward.

All at once, they froze. What the hell, one whispered? He lifted something in his arms and pointed it at me. It was long and strange to me. Inorganic, not alive, with a wooden handle in a gleaming tube. Just then I realized something. The forest was silent. A few birds chirped and sang, and a few bugs emitted their persistent drone.

But the vast majority, birds, insects, trees were silent. No rabbits, no deer, certainly no bears. These things, these creatures like me, these men. had silenced the earth. They'd stolen the forest from itself. We stared at each other for a long time as ever-growing summer heat filled the clearing like an invisible pool. Mother, I whispered, Mother, please help me. She did not, so I turned and ran. The men immediately pursued. I could hear them yelling, crushing the undergrowth, stamping on blossoms and bugs, snapping branches as they ran. The forest's deathly silence was worse than any cry. There it is, one of them screamed.

A second later, the force exploded. A deafening boom shook the trees and ate through the air as pain erupted on my shoulder. I didn't dare stop or look. I pressed on running and crying that the men came after me. The forest seemed to punish me for my earlier cruelty. Brambles scratched my legs. Stones cut my feet. Branches wiped at my face, leaving deep, stinging to runnels.

I thanked the forest for its kindness. I thanked it for punishing me rather than stopping me. The men gasped and wailed amongst themselves. What the hell is it? I don't know. I don't know. Is it a kid? Look at its face.

Look at its fucking face. That isn't a kid. Something suddenly filled my ears, droning the sounds of the men in the forest. A deep musical rushing. The bird song transformed into a turbulent river. And then mother came, erupting from the trees like a great beast of old.

But that's what she was, after all. A great beast. surely a demon of the ancient world. She pounced upon the men, battling them the way a housecat bats with toys. She clamped one between her claws, squeezing until his head separated and went rolling across the ground. One by one, Mother caught and tore them, shredding them the way she shredded leaves with my bedding. Blood streaked the forest, turning the dirt to mud and dripping from the trees like sluggish rain. Mother dug her claws into the skull of the last survivor and cracked it open like a fruit.

blood and gray brain glistened in the sunlight. The man screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed. Mother leaned down and extended her tongue. It curled outward, pale and orange-gold-like sunrise on a cold, clear morning, indelicately slurped his brains. Curl by curl, like so many worms from my borough walls. By the time he stopped screaming, the forest had returned to its loud familiar glory, murmuring trees, singing birds, skittering insects, grazing.

deer. I smiled and ran to mother. She reared up and screamed. See what you've done? Terror paralyzed me. I looked helplessly at her, blazing eyes, contorted face, runnels with earth and wildflowers, sunbleached bone and pale, spongy rot. My mother, my beautiful demon mother, who claimed me out of revenge and raised me out of obligation, staring at me like I was a man. When you stone a bird, my heart stops. When you break a branch, my humbone snap. When you selfishly strip the shrubs of your fruit of their very birthright, my skin blisters. When you hurt the forest, she roared, my heart bleeds. I fell to my knees and hid my face.

Mother rushed forward on her many limbs and wrapped long fingers around my throat. She lifted me up, dangling me over the forest floor. I killed men for you. Now more will come. They will trample. They will cut. They will burn. They will kill.

They will kill the bears and the cougars and the wolves, for they will blame the predators for what I have done for you. Do you see? She shook me. The carnage below seemed to swing beneath me, a tapestry of blood-soaked earth and ruined corpses. Do you see? Yes, Mother, I whispered. I see.

She dropped me. I hid the ground with such a force it knocked the wind out of me. Mother pulled back and bruised herself with one of the corpses. I looked up, shaking. Birds watched from the trees, quick and curious and full of condemnation. I averted my eyes as tears spilled. returned to me. She extended an arm and opened her hand. Upon her palm were four eyes and a large glistening heart. I stared at them blankly, then looked up at her. Four eyes, she said, one from each

man, in the heart of the one that shot you. Eat. My lip quivered. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the gore in my mother's hand, a heart and eyes, raw and plump, alive just minutes ago. mother i said please are you of me she asked are you of man the forest became painfully silent the animals the trees and the insects all waiting with bated breath i am of you mother i plucked the first eye from her palm it was round in curiously firm with a sort of firm watery texture i associated with half-rottent fruits the pink wormy optic nerve dangled for a terrible moment i thought I would vomit. Then I raised it to my lips and bit in. The eyes were awful, the heart even worse, thick and almost impossible to chew. Mother had to tear it for me, slicing it into manageable pieces with her beautiful teeth. When I finished, mother picked me up and, holding me tightly, streaked back to the burrow as night fell. That night, I became ill. I shook and shivered and hallucinated for days. My mind bled with images of dangling eyes and glistening hearts and skulls

cracked apart like pomegranates. Mother lay with my all the while, soothing me with ancient songs like birdsong turned to rivers, and cooling me with her damp, earthy breath. Finally, the fever broke. I sat up, gasping as the last visages of my nightmare drifted away. Mother sat across the burrow, hunched over tiredly. You are well, she said. I am glad, for I must leave. I blinked tiredly. Why? Men, she said. But you killed them. There are more, she said. They crept into the forest, searching for their dead brethren. They are cutting the trees and crushing the flowers and killing the bears, my little one.

If I don't stop them, they will even come for you. I have to stop them. My heart is the forest, and so are you. I must protect both. A lump rose in my throat. Shame like I'd never known enveloped me. I'm so sorry. You are my baby.

Babies must learn. By learning, they grow. Mother, I said. Am I truly of man? Mother closed her eyes for a long time. She did not speak. Then she drew a deep breath. I took you from a cruel man.

Listen. I will tell you now of the cruelties I endured. I listened and raptured and horrified as she spun her sorry tale. Mother was once a young, beautiful, human woman. Surely not more beautiful than you are now, I objected. Listen, she said. Mother was alone in the world. She had no family or friends.

She once had a family, but they harmed. her greatly so she ran away. She lived in the forest in a small ragged tent. She ate wild berries, fished the lake, and boiled water to drink. Laws are strange things. Though mother hurt nothing and no one, she was breaking the law by living in the forest. She was found and caught and imprisoned, separated from the trees and the birds. Mother faded quickly. Though she was only jailed for a short while, it nearly killed her. The day she was released was the best day of her life, or so she thought. No sooner had mother gathered her meager belongings and exited the jail, then a guard came up beside her. Where are you headed to, he asked. I'll take you wherever you want to go.

Mother was ecstatic. Take me back to the forest, she said. The guard obliged, driving her towards the woods, except he stopped too soon. He stopped at a house. His house, it turned out. The guard was a terrible man. He trapped mother. He hurt her, tortured her, abused her in every. way. He cut her open. He burned her. He snapped her bones. And he put a baby in her. Mother was so broken that he missed all signs of impending childbirth. When I came, Mother died. He dumped me in a vada acid, mother told me, and scattered my liquid remains among the trees. But then I heard you. Mother smiled faintly. Crumbles of dirt and root fell from your face. I heard your cry. Your need for me. I do not understand what Mother said next.

It is difficult to translate, but the closest I can come in, everyone sings a song to those they love. Most aren't able to hear these songs. If you can't hear it, it can't help you. But if you can hear it, a song is the most powerful thing in the world. It kills. It calls. It consumes. It destroys.

It strengthens. And sometimes it resurrects. When I were formed and breathed again, I stole you from your father, mother said. Then I brought you here. because you are my baby. I wept silently because I didn't know what to say. I must go, she said. The trees and the animals need me now.

So remember, little one, when you are silent and you are sincere, you will hear me. Then she whipped around, like a wolf, a snake, and hawk combined and left. She did not return. At first I thought nothing of it.

I had made a terrible mess. I had summoned men. I'd cause the forest to bleed. Mother had a great deal of work ahead of her. But summer slowly bleak. let into fall, and still mother did not return. When the first snow came, dry and cold, skittering across the landscape like powder, I knew something was wrong. The snows deepened, the forest drifted into its winter's sleep, cloaked in ice and fog. Every night I made myself

silent. I mustered all the sincerity I could, and I listened for my mother's voice. It didn't come. I grew thin and sick, my skin burned even as I shivered, my chest grew congested, my throat so sore I couldn't sleep. My breath came in sharp, pained wheezes. Soon I became too weak to leave the burrow. I crawled to the doorway and ate snow. For sustenance, I slurped worms from the earth and walls. It was not enough, and I knew it. Only then, in the quiet and peace and fear of approaching death, did I become truly silent. Only then did I hear the voice of my mother. I heard her in my dreams, the low, rushing voice, like music made in water. I am coming, she said. I am coming, she said. I'm I am coming because you are my baby.

I smiled and slept. Next thing I knew I was cold. Cold and wet and shivering, but awake. I shot up and screamed as my skin brushed the thick flower-matted hide of my mother. I spun around, smiling and froze. Mother lay beside me, panting, blood seeped from a hundred wounds, crusting her hair. The exposed bones in her face were crushed and concave, leaking gore and blood.

Without opening her eyes, she smiled. I heard you. I heard your song. Tears blurred my vision. My chest began to hitch. I couldn't draw breath. It was like I was sick again, drowning in pus and trapped fluid. Only I wasn't dying this time. My mother was. Then stay, I said. You have to stay because you can hear my song. No, she said. You needed to see me again, but you do not need me. I need you, mama. I need you. No, she said. I killed all who would harm you. But what about the forest? The forest will kill me without you. She chuckled.

Her breath came, terribly fast and increasingly weak. You are of me. Remember, you are of me. You are my baby. My mother, my beautiful, ancient mother, drew a shallow breath and lay still. I lay beside her for many days. Then, when she began to stink, I left. A hiker eventually found me, a stupid, solitary hiker with a soft heart, a great,

deal of patience and no fear. When I learned to speak the words of men, the authorities lost no time in telling me that mother was not really my mother. They discovered my identity, at least in a manner of speaking, through DNA. My real mother, they say, was a vagrant, a Jane Doe who lived in a tent in the National Park. She was alone and defenseless, two things that attract human monsters. After a brief stint in jail for loitering, my mother ended up kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured by an ass yet unidentified, a silent, who eventually tried unsuccessfully to dissolve her in acid. They think he attempted to dissolve my body too. That's why I am covered in scars. It is why I frightened those hunters so long ago. The acid burns make me look like a monster to men. Since my real mother

apparently died long ago, they decided that mother, whoever she was, was nothing but a crazy, homeless child abuser. But I know better. Even so, I adapted. I had no choice. I am of mother, but I live among men. That's what animals must do. Their young learn, grow, and adapt. If they don't, they die. But I'm not adapting anymore. At least I'm not adapting to live among men. My mouth is changing, changing in ways that are terrible to people, but wonderful to me. It's my teeth, you see. I'm growing my mother's beautiful teeth. Looking at my teeth in the mirror was frightening and electrifying. Joy and terror ran through my veins in equal measure. It had to mean something, so I fell silent.

I became sincere. I listened. And I heard. I heard the voice of my mother, low and rushing, like birdsong turned to a wild river. She tells me I do not belong with men, because I am of her heart. And her heart is the forest. She tells me I must return. And she tells me she is waiting for me because I am.

her baby my wife came home early my wife a spoiled only child to wealthy parents living in rural new york we've been married for eight months at the time and things could not have been going better we had a house great careers and a couple of cars to really sew in the american dream we've been planning on getting a dog with thoughts of children not too distant either though things wouldn't go as planned one morning my wife got a call from the police informing her that both her parents had died in a car crash. I had never seen her so distraught in my entire life. After the wake and funerals came the nitty-gritty legal stuff nobody ever wants to talk about after a death. When we went over the will, we found that her parents had left her estate, a 200-acre plot of land with a

million-dollar home on the lake. We are shocked to say the least. We began moving in as soon as possible. We sold our old house and our cars and graciously accepted all the belongings their parents wishes to have. There was one problem, though. The house just felt dead. It was so large yet somehow cramped. All the walls seemed tighter than they should have, and you could scream from one end of the house and not hear it at the other. It took some getting used to, but the old behemoth finally grew on us. At least that's what I told my wife. When I was home alone, there was just something disconcerning about the place. A creek on the floor, and rustle on the windows, the chill on my neck when I walked past a reflective window, feeling as if I was being watched. I truly hated it.

My wife worked a late every weeknight. She took care of people in a home from the ARC, and her shifts ran from four to midnight. I usually enjoyed that brief alone time. I would often read or write, and sometimes pack a huge bong and really get into a movie, and this was just one of those nights. I settled in for the night. I took a few big hits off my bong. and wrap myself on the blanket and started my movie. It was a Friday, and only 8 o'clock. So I figured a few beers wouldn't hurt either. I had four and a half hours until my wife got back.

I cracked a few, and made it a halfway through my movie before I heard something downstairs. I swear I thought it was the house playing tricks on me like it's done many times in the past. I tried to ignore it, but then I heard something slam. I quickly got up and went downstairs. My heart froze when I could see the glow of the kitchen light, that I know I had turned off.

I quietly inched my way to the large doorway that entered into the kitchen. I could hear movement, and overwhelming sense of dread seeped over my body as I finally peaked around the wall. It was my wife. Jesus Christ, woman, I half-jokingly shouted out to her. She jumped, startled of my presence. Oh, God, don't scare me like that, she said.

Don't scare you. I just thought I was about to die. You don't think you could have called out to say hello? or something and why are you home so early anyways is julie all right with that i asked yeah she's fine i told her i wasn't feeling well she said and are you feeling well i asked seeing that she seemed perfectly fine she had a guilty look i'm totally fine i just didn't feel like being there she said with a half giggle i found it surprising she never comes home early and she didn't seem to make a big deal about it. I quickly changed my focus when I noticed she had a few bags of groceries.

I asked her what she was making, to which she excitedly responded, Chicken Alfredo. Oh, damn. Can't wait. Need help? I asked. She turned around with a knife in her hand as she laid out the chicken. She smiled and said no. She slowly pointed the knife towards my face with lusty eyes. Tonight is about you. She said, get in the knife closer to my face. I'm going to make you this dinner. It may be. later, you can help me with a few other things. She smiled again, deviously. I bit my lip and watched her continue to prepare the meal. I grabbed her butt and told her I was going to watch the rest of my movie. I went upstairs and sat down for my movie. About 15 minutes later, my wife walked into the room.

The knife still in her hand. Dinner is ready, is all she said as she slowly left the room. I went down minutes later to find the dinner all nicely set up and ready to eat. The table looked amazing. Too amazing. Oh my God, you outdid yourself. I've got to get a picture of this for Instagram. I shuffled through my pockets and noticed I had left my phone upstairs. I quickly went up and couldn't seem to find it anywhere. I'm sure it was just lost in the blankets. I went to the top of the steps and shouted down. Can you call my phone? She laughed. No, you got to work for this Insta picture. Come on, I said. My food is getting cold. There was no response. I continued looking for about three minutes until I finally heard it vibrating. I found it on the ground underneath one of my

shirts. It was my wife finally calling me. Finally, I said, and hung up the phone as I stood up to go downstairs. The phone rang again. My wife again. I answered my phone. What do you want? Excuse me. What was that finally for? And why are you being rude, she said. You wouldn't call my phone, I said. Sorry I can't call you whenever you think about it. I'm at work. I've got shit to do, she said, setting a cold spike through my core. What did you just say? I asked. I said, I'm busy. I've got another hour of work and I was just calling to tell you I miss you, but you got to answer the phone like a dick, she said. So you're saying you're not home? In the kitchen, I said. My voice now quiet and shaky. Oh,

I'm not in the kitchen. Good one, she laughed. No, no, I'm not in the kitchen. Good one. She laughed. No, no, I'm I mean, there's someone here that looks exactly like you downstairs. I thought you came home early. I gulped as my realizations paralyzed my body. You need to lock the bedroom door right now and find whatever weapon you can. I'm calling the police, she said frantically. Babe, what the hell is going on? Who is that? I asked.

Fear flaking from my voice. It's my sister. I stayed in the room until the police arrived. Turns out she had gotten skittish and left far before the cops got there. They found arsenic in the food. The knife stuck in the table and a note with four words. The house is mine. My wife never told me about her twin sister.

Apparently she'd been in and out of prison and psych words her whole life. She'd been disowned by the family and was as good as dead. That is until she heard about the accident. Now all those strange feelings I was getting feel a lot more valid. And those feelings haven't stopped. In Deep Appalachia, Halloween Night comes with rules. I've lived my entire life in a holler on the outskirts of Wyoming County, West Virginia, deep in the mountains of Appalachia.

It's a place so remote most folks don't even know it exists on a map, just a handful of families, and dense, unforgiven woods. This place doesn't have neighborhoods, doesn't have sidewalks, and most definitely does not have trick-or-treaters on Halloween. Halloween is in a holiday here. It's a test. My family and the others who've lived here long enough to know follow a set of rules on Halloween night. It's not tradition or superstition, it's survival.

Those who didn't follow the rules didn't live long enough to tell anyone about it. Our rules aren't just about keeping doors locked or avoiding dark places. They're specific with reasons rooted in events we don't talk about. My dad always said they came from my great-grandmother's time, when people came to these mountains from Scotland and still believed in the old ways. whether it's spirits or something else that's out there or things just too old to name. Halloween night here has always been a game of life and death, and each rule existed to give you just enough of an edge to make it through them till morning.

The first time I broke a rule, I learned why they exist, and I'll never forget it. Every October around the second week, the rules went up on the fridge. We lived by them. My family took them seriously, and not just in a keep the kids safe kind of way, no. These rules were for everyone. Break one, and you'd put us all in danger. Here's how they go. 1. If you hear three knocks at the door after sunset, do not answer.

2. If you hear a single hard knock open the door, but do not look at who stands there. Hold out a basket of freshly baked bread and wait until you hear footsteps leaving to shut the door. 3. If you hear someone call your name from the woods, do not answer. 4. If you see a figure at the tree line wearing a wide-brimmed hat, do not look at him for longer than one second. Five, if you hear chains dragging on the ground, sprinkle salt on all windowsills and door thresholds within one minute. Six, if a candle is burning in the window of the old abandoned Anderson cabin up the hill, stay indoors no matter what.

These rules didn't exist for no reason. They were handed down because bad things had happened. People vanished, people died, and strange things occurred. That's just how it was. I remember one specific year. Years back when Halloween night fell on a full moon. The air felt different, charged. My dad had a sense for when things were going to be bad. You could just feel it in the holla, thick in the air, like something breathing down your neck. Dad told us to get all the preparations done early. Salt the windows now, he instructed, standing by the door, his face tight with worry, we're not waiting for the chains. I followed his orders without question, pouring salt along each window cell and at the front and back door thresholds. My brother was baking bread,

already anticipating rule number two, the one we hated the most. It was the one that forced us to interact with whatever knocked, whatever stood on the other side of the door. We never knew who or what it was, but we knew if he didn't offer bread or if you dared to look, it wouldn't be good. By late afternoon the house was fortified. The bread was cooling on the counter, its smell filling in the kitchen, the fire was lit, burning low. and a 12-gauge shotgun lay across Dad's lap like it always did on Halloween. Isaac, my younger brother, sat closest to the window, glancing out every now and then. We had about three hours before sunset.

The rules were clear. Everything bad happened after dark, but the waiting was the worst part. The longer we sat there, the more anxious we became. Did we use enough salt this year? Isaac asked quietly. Dad didn't answer. He just stared into the fire, gripping the gun tighter. That was an answer enough. The first knock came just after dark. A single knock, slow and deliberate.

Isaac and I froze, staring at the door. Dad stood up, motioning for us to stay back and be quiet. I swallowed hard, heart pounding in my chest. It was time to follow rural tool. Without a word, Dad picked up the basket of bread from the counter, freshly baked, still warm. He walked at the door, resting one hand on the knob. Remember, he said. His voice low and steady.

Don't look. He opened the door just wide enough to slip the basket through the crack. His eyes focused on the floor. The warm smell of the bread wafted out, and I could hear a faint shuffling on the porch. Whoever, or whatever it was, was out there. I saw a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye, a shadow stretching across the porch, but I didn't dare look. Dad held the basket out, his hand shaking slightly, for a few heartbeats. There was no sound, no movement, and then footsteps.

Slow, heavy footsteps retreating from the porch. He waited until they faded completely, then shut the door quietly, locking it tight. Isaac let out of breath. Why don't we just leave the bread out early? Why do we have to wait for the knock? Dad's face went pale, and his eyes were hard. We have to wait for the knock, and if we don't answer the knock, it'll come in. We thought it was over.

We had followed the rule two to the letter, and for a moment it seemed like things were quiet. But in here, nothing stays quiet for long on Halloween. Isaac was first to notice him. He was standing at the edge of the woods. Just where the trees meet the clearing. He was tall and thin, a wide-brimmed hat, casting his face in a shadow. He didn't move. He didn't make a sound.

But he was there, watching. Isaac gasped, pointing, it's him, he whispered. Voice trembling. Dad didn't need to ask who. He knew. We all did. The man in the hat. Don't look at him, Dad snapped.

not for more than a second. I glanced, just enough to confirm he was there. A tall, dark figure, almost blending into the shadows of the trees, but distinct enough to make my blood run cold. I looked away quickly, heart hammering in my chest. We got away from the doors and windows out of the house. We sat huddled in the living room. The fire, our only light.

Outside, the man in the hat stood of the tree line, unmoving as the night crept on. It wasn't until after midnight that we hurt the chains. At first, it was faint. A metallic clinking that seemed distant, almost like it could have been the wind. But it grew louder, closer. It was unmistakable. The sound of chains being dragged across the rocky ground outside. Isaac's face turned pale.

He shot me a quick look, wide-eyed and terrified. The salt, he whispered. Dad nodded grimly. Go check. I got up slowly, trying to control the tremor in my legs. I circled the house, inspecting every window and doorframe. The salt lines were intact. nothing had disturbed them.

The chains continued to scrape outside, dragging closer and closer, but we didn't dare open the door. We didn't dare look. We stayed inside, sitting together in the flickering light of the fire, listening to the sound of the chains until the first light of dawn broke through the windows. We had made it through the night. The man in the hat was gone. The chains had stopped.

But as the morning light seeped through the shutters, I glanced toward the old Anderson cabin up the hill. And there it was. A single candle still burning in the window. The rules are clear. When the candle burns in the Anderson cabin, you stay inside. No exceptions. No excuses.

Even with the sun beginning to shine and the birds beginning to chirp, the sight of that candle filled me with a primal fear. We have to wait until the candle goes out before we can go outside, before the night is truly over. And that's how it goes here. The rules aren't just there to be followed. They're there to keep you alive. And if you're smart, you don't ask questions.

Sometimes it's better not to know. know. Halloween here had always been terrifying, but last year, last year was different. It wasn't just the unusual ease or the normal anxiety that came with the setting sun. It almost felt like the rules weren't enough anymore. My dad was getting older, his movement slower, his hands a little less steady. We all knew it, but no one said anything. We just followed the rules like always, hoping that would be enough. We spent the day in preparation, salting the windows, baking the bread, the usual. Isaac and I were jittery, pacing around double-checking everything. With my dad getting older, we felt a great pressure to take it upon ourselves to prepare.

The sky darkened fast with unusual, clouds rolling in from the west, blotting out the last rays of the sun. By the time dusk fell, the fire was burning low, and the house sat in darkness. Dad sat in his usual spot by the door, the shotgun across his lap. The basket of bread, fresh out of the oven, sat next to him. We all waited. Our hearts pounding in in the silence. I kept glancing at the windows, expecting to see the figure in the hat or hear the drag of chains.

And then it came. A single knock, loud, and deliberate. Dad stood up, just like every other year. Stay put, he muttered, picking up the basket with his trembling hands. His face was pale, but his voice was steady. Isaac and I exchanged a nervous glance as dad approached the door. As always, I stared at the floor, focusing on the sound-crackling fire and trying to block out the sense of dread that had settled in my gut. he opened the door a crack, just enough to push the basket through without seeing whatever waited on the other side. But this time, something went wrong. As Dad leaned forward, he knocked the basket against the door frame and lost his grip.

The bread tumbled out, scattering across the porch. The sudden movement, the noise, without thinking I looked up, I looked at it, and I saw it. It wasn't a man. It wasn't anything I could name. It stood hunched over, far too tall to be human. Its limbs were unnaturally long. Its skin pale and stretched tight over bones that jutted out at odd angles. Its face was sunken, like a skull with pale white skin pulled tight over it.

And its eyes were wild and wide, too wide, like it didn't have eyelids. Its mouth opened unnaturally wide, a black gaping hole that emitted a horrible, deafening wail. It was a sound I had never heard before, like metal scraping against stone, but worse. It drilled into my skull, making my ears ring in my vision. vision blur. Before I could react, before I could even scream, the thing lunged its bony hand shot out, grabbing my dad by the collar. In one terrifying quick motion, he yanked him off the porch, dragging him toward the woods. The sound of his body scraping against the ground, his muffled cries, and the creature's horrible wail all blurred together into a scene of pure terror. Isaac screamed

first. I was frozen. My mind unable to comprehend what had just happened. But Isaac screamed jolted me back to reality. Dad, Isaac yelled, bolting for the door. I followed, my leg shaking, and my heart pounding so hard it felt like it would burst out of my chest. We ran out into the cold night air, towards the end of the woods where we could still hear Dad's faint cries. But before we could take more steps, I saw it.

The candle. A single flickering light in the window of the old Anderson cabin. My blood ran cold. We had come outside when the candle was burning. I grabbed Isaac's arms, pulling him to stop. Wait, I whispered, voice shaking. The cabin. As if on cue, the door of the cabin suddenly flew open with a loud crash,

as if something unseen was about to come storming out, something angry, something that should not have been awakened. We have to go, I shouted, dragging Isaac back towards our house. We scrambled inside, slamming the door shut behind us. I locked it, my hands trembling so badly I could barely turn the key. The shotgun was still on the floor by Dad's chair, but it felt useless. What good would it do against something like that? But the night was far from over. We huddled in the living room, terrified, waiting for the next rule to break.

Isaac was crying. His hand shaking as he tried to steady his breathing. I stared at the door half expecting something to come crashing through at any moment. The chains came next. We heard them clattering on the ground, dragging closer and closer. I grabbed the bag of salt, getting ready to double-check the lines of salt we had placed down earlier. The chains dragged right up to the front door. The metallic clinking echoing in the silence.

I could hear it just outside, scraping against the wooden steps of the porch. But I knew the salt would hold. It always did. Or so I thought. Isaac was the first to notice it. We'd forgotten to resalt the front door threshold after going outside. The wind from the open door had disturbed our sight line. Just as I was about a rush towards the door to result it, I heard the chains and had creaking against the door.

It sounded as though a heavy weight was slowly leaning against it. I knew we didn't have time. I began to back away, motioning to Isaac to go to the bedroom. Isaac screamed as the door burst open. We ran into the back bedroom, hearts pounding, breaths coming in, ragged gasps. I quickly salted in front of the door to the bedroom and checked the windows. It's in the house, I whispered. I could feel it, a present, something cold and malevolent, creeping through the house towards us.

I don't know how long we waited or how long we listened to the chains pacing back and forth through our house. Eventually, we heard them go back outside. slowly we left the bedroom and quietly closed and locked the front door. I placed a fresh line of salt in front of the door and breathed a sigh of relief. We were safe for now. And then we heard it again. A knock. But not the single knock and not the three knocks.

This was something new, something that didn't fit the rules. It was a rapid, frantic pounding as if whatever was out there wanted in now. My heart stopped. The rules didn't cover this. Isaac looked at me, eyes wide with terror. What do we do? I didn't have an answer. The pounding grew louder, more desperate. The windows rattled in their frames, and the fire flickered, casting wild shadows on the walls. Whatever was out there was angry, angry than anything I'd ever felt before. We just wait, I whispered. My voice barely

audible above the noise. We waited until daylight. The rest of the night was a blur of terror. Every minute felt like an hour. Every sound made my heart leap into my throat. We didn't sleep. We didn't dare move from the living room. We huddled to get. in front of the fire, clutching the shotgun like it was our last hope, and quietly crying over the loss of our father. The pounding on the door never stopped. The chains outside the house dragged back and forth, a constant reminder of the horror that waited just beyond the walls. And through it all, the candle in the Anderson cabin burned bright, flickering in the distance like a beacon of death.

But somehow, we made it. By the time the first light of dawn broke over the mountains, the sound stopped, the pounding ceased, the chains fell silent, the candle and the cab. the candle in the cabin flickered out. We'd survived another year, barely. But dad never came back. Halloween in our holler had always been a test. But last year, it wasn't enough. Breaking the rules cost my dad's life, and everything is different.

And I can't shake the feeling that this Halloween will be worse. I found a hidden door in my basement. I wish I had never opened it. I've lived in my house for five years. It's an old place built in the early 1900s, with all the charm and creeks you'd expect from a century-old home. The basement has always freaked me out a bit. It's cold, damp, and smells faintly of mildew, but I never paid much attention beyond the occasional trip to store boxes or grab tools until last week. I was moving some old furniture when I noticed a draft.

At first, I thought it was just the basement being drafty as usual, but then I realized it was coming from behind one of the shelves. The air was colder, almost icy. Curious, I pulled the shelf away from the wall, and that's when I saw it, a small wooden door, barely taller than a crawl space hatch, covered in peeling paint. I stared at it for a long time. It wasn't on the house inspection report when I bought the place, and I had never noticed it before. It had no handle, just a keyhole. I should have stopped right there. I should have walked away, but I didn't.

Instead, I grabbed my toolbox, pick the lock. thank you, YouTube tutorials, and swung the door open. Behind it was a narrow stone staircase spiraling down into the darkness. The air that rushed out smelled wrong. Damp, metallic, and faintly sweet like rotting fruit. Against every ounce of better judgment, I grabbed a flashlight and started descending. The steps felt endless. The farther I went, the more of the walls seemed to close in. When I finally reached the bottom, I found myself in a small circular chamber made of small, smooth stone. In the center was a well. It looked ancient, the edges worn smooth as if by centuries of use. Here's where it gets weird. As I shine my flashlight around, I noticed something

scratched into the walls, words, over and over, the same phrase, do not look down. I backed away from the well, heart pounding, but then I heard it, a soft, wet sound like something shifting in the water. My flashlight flickered, and in the brief darkness, I swear I heard a whisper. faint, like it was coming from miles below. Help me. I should have run. I should have bolted back upstairs and sealed the door forever, but something about that voice.

It didn't sound threatening. It sounded desperate. Against my better judgment, I leaned over the well and aimed my flashlight down. The beam barely reached the water. It was black and still, reflecting nothing, but as I stared, the surface began to ripple. Slowly, something started to rise.

At first I thought, I thought it was a person, a head pale and smooth, breaking the surface. Then I saw the eyes, round, lidless, and too large for its face. Its mouth was wide, filled with needle-like teeth, and it was smiling. The whisper came again, louder this time. Help me. I don't remember running back up the stairs. I don't remember sealing the door or pushing the shelf back in place,

but I must have because when I came to, I was sitting on my kitchen floor, shaking. The basement door locked tight. Since then, I've heard noises at night, soft scratching like something trying to find its way out. Last night I found muddy footprints leading from the basement door to my bed. I haven't been back down there. I don't think I ever will, but the scratches are getting louder. I can't help but notice. They're starting to sound like words.

Help me. My ex-girlfriend went missing ten years ago. Today I might have found some evidence as to what happened. So my ex-girlfriend went missing almost 10 years ago. Last time she was seen, she was in a red dress on her way to a party, including Nipaka, in a red 1999 Fiatzicinto S with the license plate C.J. 96 TAT. On that day, she left to go to the party, but never arrived and was later declared missing. Today, on my way back from work, I stopped to check up on one of my aunts and uncles who I've been seen in a while.

Now, since I was a teenager, I collected license plates. I didn't steal them off cars on the street. I just took them off scrap cars. My uncle said, while I went out fishing a few days ago, I found this in the river. And gave me a rusty old license plate he found in the river, and guess what? The plate text was C.J. 96 TAT, the same as my ex-girlfriend's car. What I think happened is that on that day, she might have lost control of the car and crashed into the Somays River. I'm not 100% sure of this. Update, so after I reported it, they started searching the Somerese.

River for any evidence of a red fiatz Tianto. They found the car in the river all bashed up as if it rolled over before ending up in the river, with the driver's door open and no human remains inside the car. Everyone's theory is that since she might have lost control the car, rolled over and landed in the river and managed to escape the car while trying to flag down another motors for help, her purse and phone were still in the car, she got kidnapped and most probably R-worded and killed. The police are still working on the case, however. update two the case has gone cold again the police said that she is definitely dead and either drowned into her escape from the car or got kidnapped while trying to flag down another motorist either way

she's most likely dead there's no way to find her body after 10 years i volunteered to sit next to a dead man on a plane and deeply regret it the man in seat 43a died halfway across the atlantic i was sitting near the front of the plane, just behind first class, and couldn't really see the commotion. But I could hear someone gasping and retching, loud at first, then quieter and quieter. A flight attendant got on the PA and asked for any medical professionals among the passengers to help. I guess there were none. After a few minutes, the man sounds deteriorated into a sort of gurgle, then silence.

Then it was over. His name was Molly knew, and he was old, but not that. old. And it was likely a heart attack, aneurysm, drug reaction, or God's will. According to conflicting, NFH hand reports that flittered down the plane from Row 43 where a flight attendant simply bucked the newly deceased back into his window seat and covered his face with a complimentary airline blanket. The pilot got on the intercom and told us the plane would be turning back to New York due to a tragic medical situation involving one of our passengers. Folks were looking for a volunteer willing to sit next to the deceased while we returned

to our originating airport. The pilot continued, this flight is entirely full and the person sitting there now isn't feeling comfortable. It's an aisle seat and will only be a few hours before we're back overland. I'm not sure why I volunteered, probably some combination of exhaustion, altruism, and morbid curiosity. My vacation plans were shot anyway, I figured. so why not take the most interesting seat on the plane?

The flat attendant thanked me profusely, as did a queasy-looking teenager who took my original seat. I picked up my handbag and shuffled down the aisle to the very last row of the plane. My only prior experience with corpses was an open casket funeral for my grandmother when I was a kid. But the idea of death had never particularly bothered me. It's natural, after all. That said, I admit that I second-guessed my decision

as soon as I saw my new seat-mate. Mr. Mollineau. Rest in place, sat upright between the window and me, strapped around the waist, with a blue fleece blanket covering his torso and head. The blanket did not cover his hands, which were resting on his lap above his seatbelt, placed that way by a flight attendant as a sign of respect, I assumed. Molly knew's pale fingers were twisted into claws that betrayed the agony of his death. I couldn't look at those hands without imagining what his face looked like under the blanket. I thought of asking for a second blanket, but the flight crew was still busy and calming down other passengers and preparing for our U-turn around the Atlantic Ocean.

So I tried to forget my uneasiness and closed my eyes and slept. I woke. Hours or minutes later, I don't know. To the jostling of turbulence. The cabin lights were off and most of the passengers around me seemed to be sleeping. I looked out the window, trying not to look at Molly knew as I did so, and saw only the uniform blackness of the night. I imagined the ocean miles below us, lightless and cold.

The thought unsettled me, and I reached across Mali New to close the window shade. Then I stopped myself. Hadn't the shade been closed when I sat down? I realized there was something else off about this scene. Molly New's posture had somehow changed while I slept. It took me a few seconds to pinpoint it. His gnarled hands remained on his lap. He was still belted at the waist, and the blanket still shrouded his arm.

upper body. But the fabric looked somehow twisted now, as if he had been fidgeting. Very slowly, knowing it was insane even as I knew I couldn't stop myself, I lifted a corner of the blanket. I uncovered his shirt, which the flight crew had unbuttoned while trying to save him. A patch of blue-gray skin-sprouting white chest hair peeked out from it. I lifted the blanket higher. His color was flecked with dried blood. I remember his terrible. gasping. Finally, I pulled the blanket entirely off and stifled a scream. Molly Neu's head was turned away from me, exactly as if he had turned to stare at the window. I could see his face reflected in the pexy glass. It was undoubtedly a dead man's face. Pale, drawn, lips parted, jaw slack.

There was no life in it, except his eyes. They were moving. I stared at the reflection for half a it, and I'm sure of it. In the center of that death mask, two pupils flicked back and forth, as if tracking something out there in the sky. What are you doing? A voice beside me interrupted. I whipped around and saw the woman seated across the aisle staring at me, not so much in fear as disgust. Cover him back up. Give him his peace. He's, I think he's moving, I stammered. His eyes. I think he might not actually be, but I couldn't finish the sentence. It was too crazy. Nor did I have to, because at that moment, my stomach dropped 10 feet along with everything else in the plane. Coffee cups and purses slammed against the ceiling.

A man near the first class section nearly tumbled out of his seat. I heard call lights going off all over the plane as passengers were jolted awake in panic and confusion. Passengers, please take your seats, buckle in and secure any loose items, the pilot said over the PA, sounding shaking himself. The weather along our flight path is clear and no planes in the area report in turbulence, so I'm not sure what it this is, but we should be through it momentarily. Even as he spoke, the mild background shaking, I had felt since waking up, became noticeably more violent. The woman across the aisle became fumbling for his seatbelt, no longer paying any intention to me or Molly knew. I forced myself to look at him again.

The jolt must have caused him to pitch forward at the waist, his head colliding with the seat in front of him. But Mollyneux's face was still turned towards that window. his neck twisted as such a sharp angle that I worried it had snapped. I looked at his hands again, in the pallor of his skin. Three flight attendants and a dozen passengers had witnessed this man's death, and I could not rationally imagine they were mistaken. And yet, in the reflection of the window, his eyes left to right, left to right. I had heard that strange reflexes sometimes kick in after death,

limbs flailing, headless chickens running, nerves clearing out the last backlog of instructions from the brain. But the eyes I had never heard of that. I made myself look past that unsettling reflection at the sky itself. It was still dark, moonless and cloudless, but the atmosphere seemed to have taken on a strange hue, a very dark green, like pea soup fog. I thought I could see vague shapes swirling around in the murk, though it might have been just an optical illusion. I recoiled. I desperately wanted to be anywhere else right then,

but the rest of the cabin was approaching a state of panonomium. Flat attendants were hurrying up and down the aisle, attending to spills and bruises, even as they tripped and staggered, the entire plane was shuddering like a barrel going down the rapids. A series of jolts sent Mollinu's upper body swinging back and forth like an upside-down pendulum. He was thrown backward into his seat,

and sideways into me, a horrible feeling I will never forget, and then the opposite way, his face slamming directly into the window where it came to rest. That was enough for me. I imbuckled, leapt out of my seat, and locked myself in the bathroom directly behind me. I would cower on a toilet for the rest of this hellish flight rather than spend another minute sitting with Mr. Mollinu. This plane worked for a half hour or so. I braced both my arms against the bathroom walls and listened to the chimes of flight attendants call buttons, the whine of jet engines, and the growling of the sky.

I tried to calm myself by visualizing the skyline of New York, the JFK airstrip, a calm descent. But then I imagined Molly News window. His face mashed up against the glass like a little boy's, his dead eyes searching the night. The captain's disembodied voice called me back to reality. He sounded outright scared now, and the PA kept cutting in and out. Extremely anomalous weather. Need everyone in their seats in the emergency position immediately if we depressurize. The turbulence stopped for four or five seconds, and then suddenly it felt like I was inside a washing

machine. I bounced against the walls of the bathroom, I landed on the floor, and could barely manage to get the door open and crawl on all floors into the aisle. All three flight attendants were down, sprawled on backs and bellies between the seats. Some of the overhead luggage bins had burst open and spewed baggage out. Many of the passengers were weeping, a few prayed, and through it all, the plane would not stop shaking. I heard a series of small bangs above my head and felt something wet on my cheek. Every single soda can in the galley had exploded. I climbed into my seat and belted myself in, having briefly forgotten about Molly knew and my terror. Thwack. Thwack. But he was still in his seat, of course, whipping back and forth like a flagpole in a hurricane, headbutting the window so hard

that I could see the plexiglass balloon outwards and rebound each time. Thwack. I became worried he'd crack the window, though that's supposed to be impossible, so I overcame my revolution and grabbed his shoulders, but I couldn't restrain him. Again and again, his head hit the window. I began to fear that it was not simply the motion of the plane that compelled him. Thwack, thwack, thwack, no one else on the plane was watching this. Some of the passengers had rallied and were trying to pull the injured flight attendants out of the aisle. Others were whispering goodbye messages into their phones. Thwack, thwack, quack, crack. I heard something cracked beside me, and hope dead. desperately that it was Molly New's skull and not the window. Outside I could see that green fog was

alive and swirling, amorphorous shapes. Thwack, crum, crum, another explosion, not pop cans this time, but pressurized oxygen escaping into sky. Molly knew had managed to smash out both window panes in one final blow. Now his mangled head was hanging outside the plane and the rest of his body was straining to follow it, restrained only by a seatbelt and the width of his shoulders. An alarm went off in the cabin and a jungle of oxygen mask fell from the ceiling. I put mine on at once, but heard other people screaming. Some passengers were trying desperately to get their masks on, the unconscious air crew, but the plane was shaking more violently than ever.

And loose debris was flying up the aisles toward my row, toward the hole a dead man made in the plane. Cabin breach, said the pilot. Limited backup oxygen, so I'm trying to descend to a safe altitude. But hard to do that in the storm, or whatever it is, God be with us. Once I was sure that I could breathe and was no longer in danger of being sucked out myself, I took one last look at Molly knew. His head must have torn clean off outside the window, for all I could see of it past the rest of his body.

I pictured those eyes again, which had seen something in the sky that we had not seen, could not see, even as it now threatened to shake the plane apart. There was some connection between these events that I might never understand. But even without understanding, I could make the last move available to me. I reached over Molly News' lap, lifted one of those cold, clawed hands and unclasped his seatbelt. There was an intolerable crunching noise as I presume his shoulders were squeezed and crushed to fit the window frame, and then, in a split second, he was gone. Out the window, into the night, a pale old man falling end over end toward the black ocean.

Whatever you saw it there, I whispered, whatever you were looking for, go to it and leave us be. The green fog lifted a few minutes later and the plane descended until it was safe to breathe without the masks. Less than an hour later, I really did see the JFK airstrip. A whole squadron of police and ambulances met us on the way down. The flight attendants and several passengers had to be hospitalized, but as far as I know, no one suffered serious injuries. Federal investigators eventually concluded that we had flown through a localized weather anomaly, witnessed by no other plane in that sky that night. Some sort of debris must have been flying around up there,

with us and taking out the window at 43A. They wrote in the report. This event led to a sudden loss of cabin pressure in which the body of a passenger who had died earlier in an unrelated medical emergency was ejected from the plane. I expected to hear a lot more about it in the news, but I suppose in the end it was just one of those things. The airline had no interest in publicizing the incident, of course, and the passengers had no desire to relive it. For most people on the flight, it was simply a freak tragedy followed by a close call. falls well that ends well. I'm the only one that will dream for the rest of my life about Molly Neu's eyes and what they saw on the way to the ocean. My local radio station has been announcing

people's names for a while now. I just found out what it meant. For as long as I can remember, WLNK 97.3, the link has been the local radio station in my town. It's one of those stations that plays a little bit of everything, old rock, some pop hits, even a few talk shows when the ad money dries up. Everyone listens to it. You know, that kind of station that's always on in the background at diners, garages, and grocery stores. I'd been a casual listener my whole life. It was dependable, familiar, safe. But all of that changed three months ago. The night I noticed something I can't explain. Something no one else seems to believe, no matter how many times I try to tell them. It started on a Monday night. I've been driving home late from work flipping between

stations when I landed on WL and K. I wasn't paying much attention, just another evening commute. The DJ was wrapping up a song, probably something by Fleetwood Mac, when he cut to his usual banter. And now, the name of the nights, he said, his voice dropping into a strange, almost playful tone. There was a pause, static buzzing faintly in the background. Then, with eerie clarity, the DJ said a single name. Jessica Browning. It felt odd. There was no context, no explanation, just a name, dropped into the ether like a stone into still water. I shrugged it off. Maybe it was part of a contest or some weird new segment. But I couldn't shake the way it felt. The delivery was too strange, too deliberate.

I forgot about it until the following Monday. I was driving again. Same time, same station, when the DJ did it again. And now, the name of the night. This time, the name was Robert Sanchez. Another pause. Another song. The pattern continued every Monday at exactly 11.05 p.m. One name, no explanation. Just dropped into the void. By the fifth week, curiosity has gotten the better of me. I started listening religiously, notebook in hand. Each Monday night I jot down the name. And each week, I'd search social media, local news sites, everything, were anything that might explain what this segment was about. At first, I found nothing. No contestants, no winners, no mentions of the name anywhere. But then, something changed. One week, the name was Caleb Howard. It stuck with me because Caleb worked at the

gas station near my apartment. We weren't friends or anything, but I'd chat with him a few times while paying a for a coffee or snacks. He was a nice guy, always had a smile on his face. I didn't think much of it until a week later. When I stopped at the gas station as I helped find Caleb poster taped to the door, he'd gone missing. The clerk behind the counter, a college kid with a nervous energy. Told me Caleb had just disappeared after a shift. No one knew where he'd gone. His car was still in the parking lot. I couldn't believe it. Caleb's name had been said on WLNK exactly a week before. I told myself it was a coincidence, but deep down, I knew it wasn't. I started digging. I went through the names I'd written down in my notebook and searched for any trace of them. By now I had six names,

including Caleb's. Three of them, Jessica Browning. Robert Sanchez and Caleb Howard were confirmed missing. Their faces stared back at me from articles and social media posts, plastered with desperate pleas from family and friends. No one else seemed to see the pattern. I tried asking people about the radio show and everyone looked at me like I was crazy. A few people said they listened to WL&K, but none of them had noticed the name of the night segment.

Some even insisted it just didn't exist. I couldn't explain it. How could a radio broadcast that I heard every week leave no trace? By the time the eighth name was announced, I was obsessed. The name was Emily Carter. I didn't know her personally, but a quick search on social media turned up her profile. She was 28, lived on the other side of town, and worked as a veterinary assistant. Her posts were filled with photos of smiling dogs and cats, each caption brimming with positivity.

I couldn't let her vanish like the others. I sent her a message. It was awkward, clumsy. Hi, you don't know me, but I heard your name mentioned on a radio station. It's hard to explain, but I think something bad might happen to you soon. Please be careful. She didn't reply. Over the next week, I checked her profile obsessively.

She posted like normal, pictures of her dog, updates from work, jokes about her favorite TV show. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Then, exactly seven days later, her post stopped. I knew what that meant. The next morning, I say news article. local veterinary assistant reported missing. She was gone. I couldn't take it anymore.

I needed answers. I started visiting WLNK's building after hours, trying to figure out who was behind the segment. The station was housed in an old, nondescript building downtown. I watched it for hours, hoping to catch a glimpse of the DJ or anyone who might know about the names. Nothing. On a whim, I tried calling this station during the day.

The receptionist, who answered, sounded confused when I asked about the 11th. We don't have anything like that on our schedule, she said. Are you sure you're listening to WL&K? Yes, I insisted. It happens every Monday night. There was a long pause. Then quietly, she said, we don't have live programming at that time. Last Monday, the name was Brandon Lewis.

I found him online, a local contractor with a wife and two kids. I didn't bother messaging him this time. No one ever believed me. Instead, I decided to confront the source. at 10.30 p.m. I parked outside W.L.N.K. The building was dark except for a single light on the second floor. I waited, heart pounding until 1105. When the time came, I heard it, the muffled sound of the broadcast through the building's walls. And now, the name of the night, I burst through the door. Inside the station was eerly silent. The reception desk was empty. The hallways dark.

I followed the faint sound of the DJ's voice up a flight of creaky stairs, the second floor. At the end of the hallway, a door was slightly ajar, warm light spilling into the corridor. I pushed it open. The room was empty, just an old desk, a microphone, and a tangle of outdated broadcasting equipment. The light on the on-air sign flickered weekly, and the static-filled voice of the DJ continued. Brandon, Lewis. I stepped closer, and the equipment suddenly shut off. The room plunged into silence. Then I saw it. Take to the wall behind the desk, was a list of names written in neat loopy handwriting. My heart stopped when I saw the last entry.

Ethan Grant. That's my name. It's been six days since that broadcast. I've locked myself in my apartment. Every door and windows sealed. The phone rings sometimes, but I don't answer it. Tomorrow is day seven. If anyone hears this, if anyone knows what's happening, please,

don't let them say another name, because no one ever comes back. Help me. There's a man pretending to be my dog. Hi. My name is Sydney. I am 13 years old. My best friend's name was Honey. She was a nine-year-old Goldie. The man pretending to be Honey looks like he is around 40 years old. He wears her skin and my family believes it is her. They brought him home three weeks ago. My mom cried when she saw him sitting on the porch. My dad dropped to his knees, calling him our sweet girl. As he scratched behind Honey's floppy eye, reaching his pink, white, human ear. He didn't seem to notice how Honey's ear was slightly

falling with each scratch. Danny, my little brother, hugged his neck and buried his face in the man's skin, rubbing the rolls of his back like his fur. But it's not, honey. It's a naked man wearing my best friend's fur. Honey didn't walk like that. She didn't stumble over her own paws or, well, hands and knees because that's what they are. Hands and knees. Hands and knees. knees. He crawls awkwardly, shifting his weight like he's never done it before, like he's learning how to be a dog. The worst part is, I think he believes it. He barks when my parents tell him to, his deep and manly voice sounding nothing like my honey. He growls when Danny plays tug-of-war, getting in a dog-like playful position as drool drips from his chin and his body is on full display.

He even wags what's left of her tail. It's unsettling. It makes me cry. He sits by the door when the leash comes out, panting with this strange, unnatural smile like he's excited, like he wants to be walked. I tried to tell my mom. I told her it wasn't honey, but she just stroked his head and said, Don't say that, Sidney. Look how happy she is to be home. The first night he got here, I heard scratching outside my window.

I peeked through the curtains and saw him in the backyard digging with his bare hands. His nails were caked with dirt. and he was muttering to himself between shallow, panting breaths. I stayed up all night, listening to him clawed the ground. The next morning, I found out why. When I went outside, there was a fresh hole near the fence where he'd been digging. It was sloppy, dirt scattered everywhere, and right at the bottom of it was honey's old color.

It was torn, the leather shredded, and the metal buckle was stained dark red. I didn't hear him coming. You shouldn't have gone out here, he said. his voice was low and when I turned around he was crouched by my legs his head tilted like he was trying to understand me

his hands were dirty trembling as he reached for me but I bolted before he could get any closer honey come here girl my dad called out and he went back to barking and tail wagging trotting to him on hands and knees but not before looking at me with his tongue out since then he won't leave me alone he follows me around the house

sniffling at my toe toes and licking my legs. Anytime I'd yell at him to stop, my family would tell me I've turned into a dog abuser. They'd make me pet him, and he'd bark happily. He sits outside my door at night, whining softly, scratching at the wood. Last night, he finally pushed the door open. Scoot over, he growled, climbing into my bed without waiting for me to answer. He curled up beside me. His knees pulled to his chest and rested his head on my pillow. He smelled like dirt. and sweat and something I don't want to name. I didn't sleep at all. I just lay there, stiff and silent, and he muttered and whimpered in his sleep. His breath warm against the back

of my neck. I could hear every human word that left his lips. Yet my family doesn't believe me. They really think it's honey. I am the only one mourning my best friend. I don't think he's going to stop and I'm scared. I'm either experiencing psychosis or my family is playing a cruel trick on me. It's a big jump between those two options. I get that, but at this point I truly cannot tell what the truth is. I think there needs to be a bit of context here. I'm 24 and I live in the UK, but I was born in New Zealand. And that's where my parents and brother still reside. I moved to board after university and haven't seen my family since before the pandemic. There's a lot of history there.

Like most families, we have unresolved issues. The short of it is my parents and brother get along great, a complete unit, and I'm the odd one out. I think it's also important to admit I've been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. The rest of my family is normal. 2024 was the year I finally came home for Christmas. New Zealand being Southern Hemisphere, has a summer Christmas, and I have desperately missed that.

Birmingham can be so grim in winter, even with the Christmas decorations. I grew up with a summer Christmas. Barbecues, trips to the beach, a family game of touch rugby, that's what I miss. Maybe coming back would remind me that all those bad feelings I had about my family were just part of my own histronics. That's something I've been working on with the therapist, learning to accept that I had a catastrophizing tendency and things weren't always as bad as I remembered them.

In New Zealand, summer homes are called botches. Our family one was near the beach in a town called Otaki. That's where we always spend Christmas. On the drive up, my parents revealed my brother, we'll call him Johnny, was bringing his girlfriend, Emmy. This is where things get weird. I'd heard a lot about Emmy. My parents adored her, and it was hard not to feel a little little jealous.

They spoke about it as if she was just such a natural fit in the family. They'd all gone to Australia together, didn't invite me, and done a life-changing outback tour. I saw the photos on Facebook, but Emmy was always the one taking the photo. She was never in any frame. Admittedly, I had spent a few late nights stalking Johnny's social media to try and gain more insight into Emmy. I had to admit to my therapist that a part of me wished they'd break up so my parents could see I wasn't replaceable with some other girl. I hated those feelings, even if they were intrusive. Emmy had an Instagram, but it was locked down.

All I could see was her tiny profile pick, a mannequin head with a black wig, that told me nothing about her, or I thought it didn't. My parents and I arrived first to the Bach. Johnny and Emmy were coming up the next morning. It was hard to listen to my parents talk about all the memories they'd made since I'd been away. They'd retired, gone on cruises, and made a comfortable life for themselves. They couldn't stop gushing out about how great Emmy was for Johnny

and how proud they were of my brother and what he'd accomplished. Not once did they ask me what I was up to were what was going on in my life. Not much was going on, to be honest. I had an admin job with no upward mobility, and I'd never had a serious boyfriend to write home about. Everything I'd done since getting my degree was disappointing. I'd barely even traveled the UK in Europe, fucking Brexit in a pandemic,

because it was expensive, even going to Tesco. We saw the Volkswagen Golf pulling up the next morning. The favorite child had arrived. I made sure to bring enough anxiety medication on this trip. I almost considered doubling my dose just to make it through this Christmas. Johnny came in with the luggage. His dog barged past him and jumped right on me. I hated dogs.

I was actually scared of them. He didn't tell me he was bringing a dog. By the time I got back from the bathroom and calmed myself down, Emmy and Johnny were on the couch in the living space. This may seem pedantic, but in the box we all had our sitting spaces. Dad got the green arm chair, mom got the ratten chair, and Johnny and I got the couch. He sat on the left and I sat on the right. Emmy, of course, was sitting in my seat.

That's what I noticed first before I even figured out what else was amiss. Awkwardly, I went to the kitchen to get myself a spare chair and pulled it up to the conversation. Only then did I get a proper look at Emmy. It was a mannequin. She had a black wig on, but no facial detail. Only the faint outline of eyes, lips, and a petite nose. I could see the bendable joints had been positioned, so she was sitting rigidly upright.

Oh, I said, laughing with a surprise. I assumed it was a joke. Where's, uh, where's Emmy? Everyone looked at me as if I'd grown a second head. Johnny looked at the mannequin as if it was talking, then back at me. This is Emmy, he said flatly. You gone blind or something? I looked at my parents to search for any answers.

Neither of them had humorous expressions. They looked more concerned that I was going to ruin Emmy's trip. Okay, I'd play along. See how far this joke went. Sorry, uh, hi, Emmy, I said, awkwardly putting out my hand to shake. I looked at the rest of them for approval. Emmy did not shake my hand, no shock. Awkwardly, I retracted it.

A moment of silence, then they all laughed at a joke I hadn't heard. The dog jumped on the couch and started licking the page white plastic on the mannequin's face. Johnny laughed. Such a mama's boy. The joke did not relent. I went to my room, my brother and I used to share a room, but now I've been putting the sleep out so he could share with a giant doll and tried to regroup. My family had never been pranksters. This seemed excessive and like an exhausting show to put on.

Was it going to be like this all Christmas? It was time to get some answers. I was too afraid to ask them directly because of how I was ostracized, so I went to call grandma. Her and I had affinity that I didn't have with the rest of my family. I tried to ring her, but she didn't pick up. Not too surprising given she was staying with my uncle and his kids for Christmas. She'd probably left her phone off. My mom swung by the sleep out with a very stern.

expression. Why are you hiding out here? She demanded. You're worrying to know everyone. I apologize and said I would be back in soon. Mum started sliding the door shut and then paused. Also, we need you to get over whatever you've got against Emmy. She was sensing that you didn't like her. She's a lovely gal and I don't want her to feel unwelcome this Christmas. So get yourself together and at least pretend you care about this family. Those words, people, pierced me like icicles. She slid the door shut before I could even reply. If her goal had been to hurry me up to come inside, it only slowed me down because now I was crying. Why were they making me feel so guilty over a doll? It was just cruel. Dinner came and went. I watched Emmy out of the

corner of my eye, but tried my best to play along. Laughing with the family laughed, asked questions to Johnny about how they met. They served her a plate of food, but she didn't eat any of it. Not Her position only changed when I was out of the room or not looking. My family must have been moving her. It was very unsettling. I moved to take my plate to the sink and when I looked back, her head had been turned to face me. I shuddered and ignored it, doing my best to keep up a smile. As adults, we didn't exchange Christmas gifts anymore.

I still brought them back, little trinkets from the UK, but they didn't get anything for me. It was just a coincidence they all got each other a gift, including for Emmy. She got a bottle of perfume from Mom and Dad and a beach towel and swimsuit from Johnny. I brought her a little statue of a bull since it was iconic to Birmingham. Maybe my family would start pretending it was a real bull, and the joke would get bigger. We went to the beach as was a Kiwi tradition on Christmas Day. I forgot to bring a bloody swimsuit because it was hard to pack for summer when you're living in winter. I put on shorts and brought my Kindle.

Mom took Johnny's dog for a walk along the beach while Dad and Johnny went in into the water. That left Emmy and I on the beach towels together. She was sunbathing. And by that, I mean she was lying completely flat with sunglasses popped over her eyeless face. It's absolute crap. I'd they're playing this game with me, I told her. She did not respond. Pretending you're real and all that, it's not funny at all. I don't get why they're doing it. Is it just because they hate me? I rolled onto my side and plucked the glasses off her face and put them on myself. She didn't need them. I then flicked her face. Sure enough, plastic. Mum came back. Her smile instantly faded when she looked to Emmy. What's wrong, darling? She crouched down and listened to what the mannequin had to say.

She said my name with all that scorn of a mother finding a child who broke the fine china. Why would you say those horrible things to Emmy? What is wrong with you? Johnny and dad seemed to hear the commotion and came out of the water. I was now sitting upright, legs hugged in my chest of protection. Johnny looked so furious I was actually worried he'd hit me. You assaulted her? He asked. Fucking Christ, did you come back from England just to make the rest of us as miserable as you? It all felt like a nightmare. How could they have known what I said and done to Emmy, but none of them were around? Maybe they had some sort of audio recording device inside her, but at that point, I was beginning to doubt myself. The ride back to the beach was painfully silent. I shot off to the

sleep out and began to pack my things. I don't know if it was just a joke, if I was insane. Either way, I had to get away from here. I wasn't wanted and I'd make things worse. I ordered an Uber to take me to Parapara-Umu so I could get the train back to Wellington. I'd find some accommodation and get my flights changed so I could fly home earlier. Surely some hotels would have some room even if it was Christmas Day. Nobody came out to say goodbye as the car pulled up. I was grateful for that. I didn't want any more conflict. Only. as I was driven away, did I look back and see the mannequin standing in the window looking out at me? Grandma got back to me later. She didn't know about what had happened at the Bach yet.

Have you met Emily? I asked Shagley. Johnny's a girlfriend? I have, she said joyfully. She's a bit quiet, but she's a lovely girl. I'm so glad you had got to meet her this Christmas. I had a lot of time to think during the 30 hours of transit back to the UK. The entire experience felt so surreal. When my workmates asked how my trip was, I didn't mention any of the details about Emmy. Nothing had ever made me question my reality more in my entire life. Maybe I was experiencing some sort of psychosis stemming from my anxiety about seeing my family. Maybe they had set up some elaborate trick because they hated me so much and wanted me to stay away forever. Either option is horrifying.

They never listen. They never believe. but I'll keep trying because that's all I can do. That's all I've ever been able to do. I've been working in this textile factory for 40 years now. I've seen them come and go, both the living and the dead. When Sarah walked in that morning, bright-eyed and full of hope, my heart sank. They always looked like that at first. They never listen.

They never believe. Something about her reminded me of myself decades ago, before I learned the true nature of this place. The memories flood back whenever a new phase appears. Emily in 92, she had the same determined walk, head held high despite the whispers from the old-timers. She lasted three weeks before the cutting machine claimed her. Maria in 98, her laugh could light up the whole floor until the day she answered a call for help that came from no living throat. And then there was Kate in 03, Lisa and 07, Amanda in 12.

The list grows longer every year, and I forced myself to remember each name, each face, each story, someone has to carry their memory. I watched Sarah fill out her paperwork, her hands steady and sure. If only she knew what those forms really meant. Not just employment agreements, but potential obituaries, waiting to be written. The factory hasn't changed much since I started here in 1985. The same industrial lights flicker overhead, casting long shadows between the rows of machinery. The air still carries that distinct mix of cotton fibers and machine oil, but now it carries something else too. Whispers, echoes, and the lingering presence of those who never left.

I remember my first day like it was yesterday. Margaret, the floor supervisor then, had given me the same tour I now give to others. She'd seemed distracted that day, her eyes constantly darting to empty corners of the room. I understand now what she was seen. She didn't make it to retirement, lost to a cutting machine in 93. Sometimes I still hear her counting inventory in the storage room. I tried to warn them all in my own way. During Sarah's lunch break, I pulled her aside, and my hands were shaking. They always do now, after what I've seen. There are things you need to know about this place, I told her.

Watching her young face for any sign of understanding. When you hear someone asking for help with their machine, don't go, never go alone, always verify with at least two other people that someone needs help. The voices, they're not always who they claim to be. I remember giving the same warning to Jennifer in 05. she laughed it off. Three days later, we found her by the spinning wheel. The ghost that called her had warned my voice. Sarah nodded politely, but I could see the skepticism in her eyes. They all have that look at first, that mixture of concern and pity for the old woman who spent too many years

among the machines. Some think I've inhaled too much cotton dust. Others assume the isolation has gotten to me. If only it were that simple. Back in 1997, I tried to document everything. I kept detailed records of every incident, every pattern I noticed, the way that was. way the machines would run at slightly different speeds just before someone died. The cold spots I would appear in new places. The voices that sounded just a little too perfect, too familiar. Management found my notebooks during a routine locker inspection. They sent me to three different psychiatrists. I learned to keep my observations to myself after that. I watched Sarah during her first week noting how quickly she picked up the work. She had good instincts around the machines,

respected their power, but she was also kind, too kind. When Lucy from packaging called out sick, Sarah volunteered to cover part of her shift. She didn't know that Lucy had died in no one, and sometimes her ghost still punches in for the night shift. I was in the break room when it happened. My sandwich sat untouched as I heard the commotion, running footsteps and machines, terrible grinding, then silence. I knew before I even got up. They'd used my voice again. I ran to the spinning room.

My arthritis forgotten in the moment. But I was too late, and it was too late. The spinning wheel was still humming. Threads tangled in possible ways. Sarah's body lay motionless beside it. Her hand still reaching out to where she thought I had been standing, asking for help with a jammed mechanism. The worst part is always the aftermath.

The police investigations, these safety inspections, the grief counselors. They never find anything wrong with the machines. They never question why it's always the same machines, the same circumstances. The reports always read, operator error or failure to follow safety protocols. But how do you report that a ghost asked for help? How do you explain that the voice called out in distress wasn't human at all? Sometimes I wonder if I'm part of the curse too, doomed to watch to warm but never to save.

40 years of the same story different faces. The ghost never take me. Perhaps that's my real punishment. The next morning I stood at my usual spot watching them covered Sarah's body. The machines hummed their eternal song. and I could always see her ghost forming in corners of my vision, another shadow among shadows, another voice I would call out for help. In 40 years, I've learned to recognize the different types of ghost shine, the fresh ones glow brighter,

still clinging to their last moments. Sarah's had the same desperate gleam I've seen too many times before. They all start the same way, confused, angry, desperate to understand what happened. Some fade with time, becoming more mere whispers in the darkness, others grow stronger, learning to mimic voices to manipulate the machines. I returned to my station as I always do, the only living soul among the machines and her ghostly operations. Sometimes in the quiet moments between shifts,

I catch glimpses of all of them, Emily, Maria, Jennifer, and now Sarah. They watch me with hollow eyes, perhaps wondering, why I survived while they didn't. There was a time, years ago, when I tried to quit. I made it as far as the parking lot before the weight of my responsibility pulled me back. Who would warn the new ones if I left? who would remember their names, their stories, who would know to look for the signs,

to question the familiar voices calling out in the night shift? So I stayed, becoming as much a fixture of this place as the ghost themselves. Tomorrow, someone knew we'll walk through those doors, and I'll try again, knowing it probably won't make a difference. Because that's my curse to keep trying, to keep warning, to keep remembering. It's the least I can do for all the souls trapped in this place of endless shifts in eternal overtime. The factory stands as it always has, a monument of progress and productivity,

its windows gleaming in the morning sun. But I know it's true nature now. It's not just a factory. It's a gathering place for the loss, a repository of voices that will never quite fade away. And I remember its sole living witness, keeper of its dark secrets, guardian of its growing collection of shadows. As the afternoon shift begins, I hear Sarah's voice for the first time since her death, calling out from near the spinning wheel.

It's perfect, too perfect, just like all the others. I closed my eyes and whisper a quiet prayer for whoever walks through those doors tomorrow. They never listen. They never believe. But I'll keep trying because that's all I can do. That's all I've ever been able to do. I played hide and seek with my son and found something terrifying. During quarantine, my four-year-old and I played a lot of hide-and-seek.

Well, hide-and-seek with a few extra rules. One, I'm the only one that hides. He doesn't want to. Two, I have to call out you-hoo every few minutes, otherwise he'd never find me. And three, when he gets close, I pop a hand or foot out of my hiding spot and he shrieks, I see your feet. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Four-year-olds are really stupid, okay? And I didn't exactly have the money to buy him a ton of toys. We just moved out into this house a few weeks ago. The rent took up nearly my entire paycheck. I got all the furniture from FreeCycle. We ate beans and rice often, and I was still driving around a 20-year-old car. Hide again, Benjamin said, tugging my hand.

Hide again. But it's almost bedtime. Please. Okay. But only one game, okay? Go count on the kitchen. He ran around the corner as fast as he could. One, two.

I ran through the living room, and then I saw it, the hall closet. Perfect. I opened the door and ducked inside. It was a tight fit. All those scratchy, furry old coats pressing against me, it. Because the better the hiding spot, the more time I got to myself. I pulled out my phone and started browsing Reddit. Soon his muffled footsteps sounded around the dining room. I waited a minute. When he didn't seem to be coming my way, I cracked the door. You-hoo, I've called out.

Footsteps grew louder. I heard his muffled giggles as he walked towards me, and then he started going up the stairs. What an idiot. I cracked the door open a little further, just in time to see his little feet disappear from the landing. Then I shrugged. More time for me. I sat back down in the closet and pulled out the phone. Mommy, I heard me giggle from upstairs. Mommy, where are you? I smiled. I wonder if a mom invented hiding seek. It's quite brilliant. You get a few precious minutes away from your child. They're not even supposed to make much noise. You're entertaining them at the same time. Absolutely br-oh! I stopped. Every muscle in my body froze. but I heard it clear as day, a soft, clear voice calling from upstairs,

but Benjamin and I were home alone. Oh, God. Someone's in the house in Benjamin. I burst out of the closet. Benjamin, where are you? I heard Benjamin's footsteps running above me. His giggles, trailing down to me. I couldn't move, couldn't breathe.

Benjamin, I finally screamed. More giggles, and then Benjamin's voice, I see your feet. No, I catapulted up the steps, screaming for him, and burst into the bedroom, and he wasn't. air, just as empty rocket bed, comforter rumpled, embroidered stars staring back at me, I ran back into the hallway, spinning around, Benjamin, but I didn't hear any footsteps, any giggling. The house was dead silent now, and I could hear a pin drop.

I ran into the guest bedroom. It was empty. I ran over to the closet, threw it open, looked up and down, nothing. Stumbling back out into the hallway, crossed back towards my bedroom, the only bedroom left. I ran inside and flicked on the light. Empty. The pile of dirty laundry on the chair, untouched, the wardrobe hanging open, my clothes inside, the pillows piled up on each other in a heap, heart dropping, I ran around the other side of the bed, also empty. I crouched to look under the bed, empty. Mommy, mommy. Relief flooded me as I heard that voice. The door to the bathroom opened a crack and one blue eye peered out at me, wide with fear. I ran over and grabbed him, hugged him, and then I hoisted him up and started out for the bathroom.

His eyes were still wide with fear, and they weren't focused on my face, but the spot just above my shoulder. I whipped around. It took me a moment to see it, but then I did. I stared at the wardrobe, frozen, my heart pounding on my ears. In the shadows, poking out from underneath the hems of my dresses and coats were two feet. In moments like this, my brain doesn't really think. It's too slow. Instinct rains. The smartest thing would have been to lock ourselves in the bathroom and climb out the window,

but instead I just ran for the hallway as fast as I could. As I ran down the stairs, I heard the weighted footsteps slow and methodical resonating through the house. I could still hear them pounding into my brain as I ran to the neighbor and screamed for help. The police came. They searched the house. They didn't find anything. No signs of forced entry either.

So they promised me they'd patrol my street for the next few days. But that was all they could really do. I decided to stay at friend's house for a few weeks until I felt safe again. But every time I closed my eyes, I could see them. Those two feet that looked so off somehow. swollen as if waterlogged, a bit too grayish in tone to belong to any normal person, toenails blackened and split. And I think back to that wardrobe, how I'd gotten it for free, how the owner told me his mother had just died.

And he was just trying to get rid of all her stuff as quickly as possible. And I wondered, how exactly did she die? I think my roommate is a cannibal. For context, I met Thomas when we were randomly assigned to be roommates our freshman year of college. Nothing seemed to be off with him back then. Yeah, he was out a lot and came back late at nights, but I always figured he was just having fun with friends. It's not like I wasn't doing the same. We had four semesters of living on campus, two years.

In that time, he never really stuck me as particularly eccentric, maybe a few little things, like how he never put any food in our mini-fridge, but nothing that worn. to genuine concern. It wasn't until we moved into an apartment, I think so had become strange. I moved in about a week after he did. A few days before, classes were going to start, I was supposed to come in at the same time. But my aunt died, and I needed to help my dad with some aftermath there. It would have kept me longer had the start of the semester not snuck up, but that's beside the point. We viewed the apartment together initially, and it was a pretty nice, cozy place. Not exactly modern, but sure is hell cheap enough to make it worth without said price being shady.

Neither of us were bothered. But when I was finally able to move in, the place looked worse for the wear somehow, significant enough that I noticed immediately. The paint in some places that started chipping severely, something Thomas didn't even react to when I pointed it out. The floors were mostly fine, but a few of the boards creaked particularly loud, which I hadn't noticed at our viewing. Again, enough that it bothered me, and still not enough for Thomas to give a damn about it.

Then there was the fact that the lock to the remaining bedroom, mine, was broken. A problem not easily fixable on a college budget. I asked Thomas about that one, making sure he actually answered me, but he just kind of shrugged it off and told me he hadn't noticed it. But still, okay, whatever, weird, but probably not a big deal besides losing our security deposit. It didn't matter. The semester started and the weeks progressed.

And that was when I started noticing things about Thomas. living in an apartment instead of a dorm was the most distant he'd ever been. It's not like he was ever super talkative, but now it seemed like he'd only glanced my way and move on, unwilling to do more. In fact, he only really talked to me if it was to snap at me about being clean or quiet. With the former, he was only a little bit of a clean freak back in our dorm, incessant about his own side, but he only got really pressed about it if any of the mess seeped into his. Here and now, though, it really shined through how bad it was. He never touched my room or anything, but the rest of the apartment had to be spotless or he'd be pissed.

A few times more recently, he's thrown out my stuff because I hadn't touched it in too long, whatever that means. Nothing devastating, but one of those things was a spare charger, I had to dig out of the trash and then got sprayed down with a breeze for. Nothing short of annoying, is what I'm getting at here. Why he suddenly became really anal about it was anyone's guess at that point. As for the being quiet part, that was an entirely new issue. Thomas never gave a darn if it was loud while playing a game before, but suddenly now it was worth slamming my door open without knocking over. I asked him to maybe be a little bit more polite about the issue when it came up, but I was again sort of just brushed off. Still, it rubbed me the wrong way, how suddenly angry he was getting about the issue.

Yes, it was my fault, and I got better about it. But what the hell was the switch up? Yes, I still wrote it off. Maybe he had some mental or emotional stuff going on he didn't want to talk about. I could be patient with them, sure. But it got worse. A roommate who clearly labels of what food is his in the fridge is nothing to me mad about. Still, a few weeks into the year, I did a deep clean of the refrigerator.

One that, to be fair, I had meant to do as soon as I moved in. But it was too late for that. And now I had to take everything out to scrub it down. Only a few things were his, most of them in the freezer. I took them out, setting them aside to clean it up quickly so nothing went bad. Probably no reason to worry about that. But whatever. Once I was done, I was checking over everything as I put it back

when I noticed something with his name on it that had an especially pungent smell. It was awful enough that it made my nose instinctively wrinkle up. I put it back down, hastily shoving everything else back into the fridge before turning to it. Nothing really weird, just a piece of meat and tight saran wrap that looked to still be a little bit bloody. Frowning, I started unwrapping it to make sure Thomas hadn't put rotten meat in his freezer. The odor only got more foul as I did. It was a smell difficult to describe, though it was what I was worried about. It didn't smell like rotting meat.

It just smelled like death. Before I actually unwrapped the whole thing, it had a lot of layers, something I only questioned after the fact. Thomas came home and stopped blood dead in the doorway. Why are you touching my shit? He stormed over after a second, snatching the meat off the table and immediately started to rewrap it. His hands were shaking. It smells disgusting, man, I told him, stepping back a little. I wanted to check it wasn't rotten.

It's not. I'm on a diet, he snapped. Don't take my food. I wasn't taking it at his back. Don't touch it. Thomas stuffed the meat back into the freezer at that, then swiftly retreated to his room, barely opening the door and sliding through, leaving me to scrub my hands off that horrible stench. It was then that I got really suspicious of Thomas. The other weird things layered onto that incident that made me start observing him closer. I wasn't trying to stalk my roommate by any means,

but looking past the surfaced made me notice some more things. how half the creaking boards were in front of his room, how he always slipped into his room like he was hiding something in there, that most of his labeled food had that same disgusting odor of death when I checked. Well, sniff tested them. After the first time, I was a little scared to unwrap another one. Maybe it was stupid, but I read it online somewhere that I reasoned for creaking floorboards could be that they had been recently lifted up.

So another little investigation started. This one intentional. When Thomas left for class, I started checking another boards. and it wasn't long before I turned up something, a hand saw. Off-putting thing to be hidden under my feet, to say the least. It looked pretty well worn, clean but used. Aside from the saw, lifting the board let me see a mysterious reddish-brown blotch stained into the underside of it.

I was enough for me to put the board back on and stop thinking about it for now, at least until I could come up with a plan. I had a film major buddy, and I managed to convince him to let me use an old video camera for his science. I hit it in a plant and aimed it at the door to Thomas' bedroom at leg level, set up to stay at said friends for the night, and then let it play out. In hindsight, a mediocre video camera was a really shitty pick for this, but it did job enough. I didn't get a live feed or anything, but I was left to wall in anxiety the whole night. When I got back while Thomas was out the next day, I could dig the camera out and watch what it showed me. After charging it anyway, it caught eight hours of footage before dying.

Most of it was nothing, which I sped through until Thomas was suddenly, pulling up the floorboard, I jumped back and let the video play. Thomas walked into frame, emotionlessly kneeling down and yanking the floorboard up, pulling the hand saw out and putting it down again. He walked into his room, seemingly stowing it away, then left again for another hour or so. When he came back, there was a woman our age with him. They were talking quietly enough that the video camera didn't pick up the words, but I could make a guess what it was about. They disappeared into his bedroom, the lock clicking loudly. It remained quiet for another moment. moment. Before the worst, most horribly unsurprising sound at my ears. A woman's scream being cut short.

I could barely watch the next two hours of footage. All that remained before the camera died. But I did. I sat there in horror watching Thomas's legs walk between his bedroom, the kitchen, and the door over and over again, bringing things, wrapping up pieces of meat at one point near the end, stopping to sit at the table and eat something. I could only guess what. I think typing this out has helped me process it a little, but Thomas is going to be home from his class soon. I'm kind of terrified to leave the room when he's here. I'm worried he knows that I've got him figured out, or at least under enough suspicion to warrant police involvement.

I can't confront him. That's a horrible idea. But I think I hear his case jingling, so I'm going to have to pass him if I want to get to the cops. Wish me a luck. If there's no update, well, you know what happens to me. I live alone, so who keeps writing messages on my mirror? I turned 18 in 2008, and on the day of my birthday, for reasons I won't bore you, I packed up my things and moved out. For four years, I lived in my car, working as a barista from six to two,

and as a line cook from four to ten. My plan was to work and to add enough money for my own place, and then to go to either college or get a more stable job. Looking back on it now, I don't know how I did it, but by 22, I'd saved up a decent sum of money and began my hunt for a semi-permanent place of residents. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, and though housing prices weren't as bad as they are now, it was still a pricey county. After months of asking around, I was connected with Anders, an elderly man who was leasing a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in North Hollywood for far below market rate. The catch, because there's always a catch when it comes to affordable housing, was that the house had been terribly maintained. It had been unoccupied for a year. It would need

some serious TLC before most people could comfortably reside in it. I, however, have been living out of my car for four years, as long as the place had running water, it would be an upgrade for me. I moved into the house in fall 2012. Anders gave me a tour before I settled in. He was a short, joyful old man, well, meaning, but how do I put this? Maybe not the most focused as a result of his age? At one point during the tour, he showed me the bathroom, then the master bedroom, then the bathroom again, then the master bedroom again. He was about to walk into the bathroom for a third time before I gently guided him down the hall. The house itself was livable at what weathered. Dim lighting from outdated fixtures cast long shadows over peeling wallpaper. The ceiling in many

of the rooms was discolored from past leaks. The faucet in the kitchen, sink was broken, the bathtub was badly chipped, and a few of the cabinet handles fell off in my hand. It was a rundown place located in a bars on the window kind of neighborhood, but still it was my place. I was smiling ear to ear when Anders gave me the keys. It's a good house with the good bones. You take care of it now, he instructed, which I found ironic. Before he left, I paused in the front doorway. Drawing a hand to his chin as he looked behind me into the house. I tried to follow his gaze, but couldn't figure out what he was looking at. Everything all right? Yes, just that something looks different about that bathroom, though I can't put my finger on what?

Ah, well, it's a good house with good bones. You take care of it now. And with that, he gave me a nod and left me to my unpacking. I hadn't realized how much I'd miss living in a house. I didn't care how run down the place was. Just having an accessible bathroom and a full-sized mattress to sleep on made me feel like a king. After I spent a few days cleaning the place up, I invited my sister and a fiancee over for dinner. I'm sure it sounds stupid, but my newly acquired ability to host company made me proud. In no time at all, I'd comfortably settled into my new home. That evening, after saying goodbye to my guests, I took a shower.

The bathroom lacked a traditional above the sink mirror. Instead, I had a wide, full-length mirror mounted on the wall to the wall to the last. the left of the vanity. When I exited the shower and stepped up through the glass, raising a hand to wipe away the fog, I noticed something odd. In the condensation, right at the eye level, was the word high. I didn't know what to make of it. Somehow the letters seemed intentional. It was hard to pass off as simply the way the steam had settled. My sister had been in the bathroom just before she left. Maybe she had written the word on the mirror with her fingertip, and the steam had only made the letters visible after my shower. I almost texted her about it,

but the message seemed ridiculous when I typed it out, paranoid even. I wiped the mirror down and turned in for the night, and soon I forgot about it entirely. The following week, I received a promotion at one of my jobs, and while I was grateful for the additional income, my new position meant longer days. Additionally, I realized that a few of the house repairs were beyond my ability, and so I started outsourcing some of work to contractors. It was annoying to only have the house to myself at night, but I didn't have another option with my busy schedule. things were generally progressing smoothly, though every once in a while, in the middle of the night, I'd be awoken by a sound that I couldn't quite place. When I next noticed writing on my mirror, I've been living at the house for a month.

The second sudden occurred in much the same way as the first. I came back home after work and took a shower. When I pushed back the shower curtain, I looked at the glass and saw written in the condensation, the words. Staying long? Now, I could pass two letters off as a coincidence, but two words and entire question. That was no coincidence. Someone had been in my bathroom and recently. I had contractors in and out of my house all the time, so one of them could have written the message, but why? I got dressed and put a handle on my bathroom door knob and about to go back into my bedroom. When it occurred to me that whoever had written that message might still be around, I slowly cracked open the door, peering down the dark hallway in one direction. then the other. I listened very carefully, but heard nothing. I walked around my house, which

didn't take long given its size, and looked for anything out of place. All my doors were locked, all my windows were shut, and none of my personal items had been disturbed. If someone had broken into my house, they were long gone by the time I looked around. That second message put me on edge for days. I triple-checked that my windows and doors were locked each night. I looked in every potential hiding spot, of which there were very few in my little house. after I came home from work and before I went to sleep. And yet, though I was certain that my house was secure, I couldn't shake the sense that something was wrong.

A month passed without incident. I'd almost started to feel at home in my new lodgings again until one Friday morning I woke just past 3 a.m. I couldn't immediately tell what had woken me. Often, the house settled that night creaking and groaning in ways that made me it sound alive, but in that moment the house was silent. It was only after I turned my head to the side did I realize that my bedroom door, which I was certain I had shut, was wide open.

I stared down the hallway, feeling as though I were gazing into a black hole. The darkness was abyssal. I kept waiting for my eyes to adjust, waiting for them to pick out the familiar shapes of my home, but they never did. I couldn't see a thing. So why did I feel like something could see me? Like there was something in the house with me, just feet beyond the threshold to my bedroom, watching, waiting. Somehow I found the courage to rise from my bed and walk toward the door.

When I made it to the handle, I grabbed it and slammed the door shut. I didn't investigate further. Didn't so much to stick my head out into the hall for a closer look. My bedroom door didn't have a lock. None of the doors except the bathroom did, so I dragged my bookcase in front of the door. It was a small bookcase. An intruder could probably ram the door open anyway if they wanted to, but not before the sound alerted me.

When morning came, I had to leave the house for work. I genuinely considered exiting my house through the window. I was almost late by the time I worked up the nerve to myself to look around the house before I left. As always, I found nothing amiss. After work, when I reluctantly returned home for the night, I ate a quick dinner and hopped in the shower. I remember standing in the tub for a long time, mulling over my predicament.

I'd heard horror stories about people secretly living in other people's homes. Maybe I'd become a victim of a frog without even knowing. But if that was the case, then where the hell were they? There was nowhere to hide in that tiny house. I'd torn the place apart multiple times by then, checking every cabinet and closet. The inside of the house couldn't be accessed from the crawl space, and the air vents were too small for a person to fit in. Suddenly I heard a click, so tiny that I'd almost missed it entirely. I tore back the shower curtain, gripping the shampoo bottle like I was about a bludgeon and intruder to death with it.

As I'd come to expect, there was no one in the room, but there was a new message on the mirror. This one was bold. the easiest to read of any of the messages I'd received so far. It was three words long. I see you. Some awful amalgam of fear, confusion, and anger made my stomach a churn. Ultimately, the latter emotion rose above the rest. I hastily dried off and threw on some clothes.

Then grabbed my phone from where I'd left it on the bathroom counter. I punched in Anders' number and glared at the damn mirror as I listened to the phone ring again and again. I had started to think it was too late for him to be awake when he suddenly picked. up. He started to ask me how I was faring in my new lodgings before I cut him off. I need you to tell me if there's some way that a person could be getting into the house, I said. Every night, I check every window and door. I check every cupboard, closet, and cabinet, and still things are amiss. You need to let me know if there's some entry point that I'm not aware of. Anders didn't seem to entirely understand what I was asking. What? What's getting in?

You'll let me know if you're having any rat troubles. My last tenant before you had some rat trouble sometimes. Yeah, sure, I've got rats besides the doors in the windows. How else could they begin in? Well, there's the vents, of course. There was a chimney once, though we had it sealed up a good long while ago. And there's also the crawl space, of course, though I'm sure you've already poked around down there. Though I knew the home had a crawl space, I'd never had much reason to investigate it. I was never able to find the entrance, even after ripping up all the carpeting in the house. Likely, hardwood had been installed over the access door, making it an unlikely point of entrance. for an intruder. How do I get down to the crawl space? Yes, you should give the crawl space a gander.

I barely stopped myself from smashing the phone at the counter. I plan to. Where can I find the entrance? That'll be on the floor of the bathroom closet. I looked around the room. Surely I'd missed hurt him. Either that or he was confused again. What? I know. It's an odd place for it, but it's only there because that room didn't always use to be a bathroom. The bathroom doesn't have a closet. Sure it does. Just to the left of the vanity. I looked at the mirror, at that long, oversized mirror. I always found it odd for a bathroom of that size to have a built-in floor-to-ceiling mirror. What was it that Anders had said that when he first visited,

that something had looked different about the bathroom? Setting my phone down next to the sink, I stepped up to close the glass. I spent a few moments feeling around the frame, looking for a halatch. Then I grabbed the portion of the right side of the frame and two hands. After one hard yank, the mirror swung open like a door, revealing a large walking closet. Anders was saying something on the other end of the line, but I was too stunned to answer.

There was a square-shaped hole at the back of the closet, which I assumed led down to the crawl space beneath the house. The closet for was littered with all kinds of trash, filthy sheets, fast-food containers, beer cans, and I realized some of my own items. Little things I thought I'd misplaced. A sock. A toothbrush, a comb,

and a small frame photograph of me, sister and our old family dog. I crouched down to pick up the photo, perched in the doorway as I studied my younger smiling self. I heard Anders saying my name over the phone, except the voice didn't sound much like Anders at all. It was too deep, too clear, too close. When I looked up, a man was peeking out at me from the hole in the floor. He smiled at me. His eyes wide and pupils blown. His smile so wide it looked painful, and his hair long and matted. He was only visible from the neck up, and the harsh lighting making it look like a disembodied head was grinning at me

from the back of the closet. Horrified, I rose to my feet and ran. I didn't stop running until I made it to the car, which I promptly drove to my sister's house. The next day I drove to the police station to file a report. An officer met me at the house to check the scene, and I showed him the hidden closet, which indeed had an entrance to the crawl space.

My best guess was that the intruder was entering my crawl space from the small door on the side of my house. He'd likely been squatting in the house during the year in which it sat unoccupied, and when he saw it was being prepared for sale, he disguised the closet door so to keep a little room for himself. Why he decided to stay or why he was leaving me messages, I can't say. From his actions and from what little I saw of him,

I think it's safe to assume that he wasn't of sound mind. Unfortunately, the man was never found. For all I know, he's still in that same neighborhood. Hell, he might even be in that same house. I moved across the county afterwards and have lived in super, apartment's ever since. The thought of living in a big house with all those rooms and corners and places to hide gives me the creeps. It's not just houses that the incident soured for me, but mirrors as well. These days, when I visit a friend or stay at a hotel, I always have to

carefully inspect the bathroom mirrors, shining a light directly into their faces and tapping a finger against the glass. Because the worst detail of the whole ordeal was that, when revisiting the bathroom of the police officer, I stepped into the old closet, closed the door and looked into the mirror. Instead of the mere back in, I saw the officer's face on the other side of the glass. This is your Uber Eats driver. Answer. Please. I'm scared.

If you're reading this, I need you to find a way to contact my local authorities for me before sunrise. You're probably asking, what the hell? And very much justified. Let me start by saying my name is not important, but for story purposes, I'll go by Richie. And I was supposed to be enjoying some fucking day. bank barria tacos right now at my girlfriends, but now here I am holding a cut-cone knife as I write this from the closet in my parents' room. Laura's parents' mansion sits alone and secluded on the outskirts of the Dallas Metroplex, nestled in one of those rich suburban

landscapes where silence is as thick as the evening fog. We're supposed to be enjoying our last few days before heading back to college, smoking, drinking, hot tub activities that aren't important. If only I had listened. No, like, really. listened. Richie, are you even hearing me? Laura's voice cut through my distraction. I mumbled something. My attention split between her

and the Uber Eats notification on my phone. This is your Uber Eats driver. ETA is 20 minutes. Bet, I replied half-heartedly. Thanks again. It was past 2 a.m. and Laura was drunk. White claw in hand,

mid-sentence about our communication issues from this past semester, and we never truly listened to each other. The irony here would be fucking hilarious if any other situation other than this one tonight. You don't know my rising sign or even my favorite vegetable. And it's not like I'm telling you these things all the time. I'll give her that.

Babe is brash as she is chatty. Then she looked me dead in the eyes and asked, What's even the code to get in the front door? I confidently told her I knew it, but here's the truth. I didn't. Was it 00203 or 00308? I wasn't sure, but I wasn't about to admit that to her. I'm a great listener, I told her, forcing to smile.

My phone buzzed again. A text from the Uber driver. Hello, this is Diego for with Uber. Can I call you? I only half saw the message. Laura was still talking and I was still not listening. We started to argue, the usual dance of a relationship stretched in by distance and miscommunication. She'd been tossed out again if I knew her simple code to access her house and, again, I deflected.

Baby, you let me in every day since we started dating. Why would I need to know that? Then another text came. This one finally caught my attention. Answer, please. I'm scared. Something felled off. I told her she was right as I stepped into the kitchen to call Diego. His voice was timid, shaking. Hi, hi, this is Diego. I'm your driver. I have few tacos.

Okay, thanks, bro. This is all I can try to muster since I hate small talk. You good? I hit a deer, he said. What? But when I got out to check, there was nothing there. He paused. Then added something that made my skin crawl. Then I saw her, a woman standing by the road, she had this long dress facing an open field. Her back was turned to me. I tried to calm him down, chalking it up to creepy dust driving in Dallas backwards.

Hey, you know how Dallas County treats their homeless man? Probably just a lady wandering out past the city. I'll give you a good tip, bud, I said. She'll get my jack in the box to me. But Diego wasn't letting me go. Sir, I've seen her twice now, he whispered. I'm sorry? She was standing at the stop sign at ten miles.

I saw her again just now before calling you, Amigo. She was on a billboard railing just standing there, always with her back turned. I could hear Laura in the background asking what was taking so long. Diego was praying now muttering in Spanish. His fear was infectious, crawling through the phone line and into my bones. Look, I'm almost there, he said. Can you mute me outside? Walking over to my book bag, I grabbed my gun just in case.

What the hell are you doing? She caught me as I started to tuck my smith into my back pocket. I put Diego on mute and caught her up to speed, which immediately caused her to laugh. Vagrants are everywhere. He needs to chill out. And you? She added, grabbing for my gun. Give me that out.

You know how my parents feel about that. I didn't argue with her and handed it over. It's her house anyway. Yet something didn't feel right. Sir? Fuck, I forgot Diego. Diego? I said quickly on muting and putting him on speakerphone for both of us to hear.

Hey, sorry, I was grabbing my shoes. Are you here? Silence. Diego. Silence still. With him, still on, I checked GPS. He was here, right outside. Then he finally said something, something you never want to hear at 2 a.m.

The woman. Diego forced out in almost a whisper. She's here, my friend. My heart was in my ass now. Diego, where is she? She's on the roof. Back turned, Amigo. How?

Laura rolled her eyes, cocking my gun. She grabbed her jacket and headed out, telling me to stay inside and be ready to call nine one just in case. I'll get the food and chuckle on the driver, she said. If someone's on the roof, call the cops. Babe, I'll just go grab it. No, I got it. She stopped in a drunk stare. Besides, at least I know my code. With a smirk that's a checkmate, my girlfriend headed outside. Through the door camera, I watched her approach the car. Back on with Diego, I thanked him, and told him Laura was on her way. Her nonchalance made me realize how silly this seemed. A woman on the

roof? Did he really hit a deer? Or just trying to get a fat tip with a bizarre story? That's when I got more silence from Diego. Hey Diego. You there? My girlfriend is walking up. Hello? I could hear Laura approaching on his phone. Is anyone? Her voice cut off. What the fuck? Did he attack my girlfriend? Was there really a woman outside? I ran for the door when? I heard a laugh. Not Laura's laugh, someone else laughing or trying to laugh and sound human. I stopped in my track, something in me told me not to open the door. Diego. Silence on the other end.

Diego. More laughter. It sounded like neither male or female. Laura? My phone lost signal. The Wi-Fi flickered. Then the lights went out. Fuck.

The only light left in Laura's mansion was the camera security panel at the front door. I ran to it assuming it must have had its own connections separate from the house. I tried the panic button in big red digital letters, but the panel was unresponsive. yet the camera was just fine. What was happening? And there she was, on the camera. Laura. Back turned to me.

In the driveway, Diego's car sat with his hazards blinking. I could barely see, but his car doors were all swung open, completely empty. Laura, I called through the door, Mike. Stop playing around. She didn't respond. Babe. Silence. She didn't move a muscle.

Babe, communication. Remember that? Not a word as the bright hazard lights. flashed on and off, on and off. Laura didn't move for what felt like an hour and then, like a puppet on a strange marionette. She lifted her hand out. The way her, she twisted her arm made me force myself to assume it was just a camera glitch. I heard a weird crackle as she then stuck out one of her crooked finger and started pressing door codes.

Zero, zero, zero, zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one. Buzz rejected. Babe. 0.000. 3. Buzz. Rejected. Babe, do you need me to let you in?

0.004. Buzz, rejected. She continued one code after the other. So here I am. In her parents' closet with her mom's steak knives. My gun was last with her. My phone will suddenly not connect the security system is inoperational to send help, and yet the only thing keeping her from getting in.

and I still hear her downstairs. Pressing buttons. Buzz, reject. You don't listen to me, rings through my ears from every time she ever told me that since we started dating. And now I'm sitting here, accepting she was right. I could have just admitted I don't listen and how I could do better. In hell, even asked her what the house code was, but now look at me. In 002028, I'm reeling as I try to remember.

Laura knows the code to her own home. Whatever that is outside. does not. And it's only a matter of time before it gets it right. Area 51 is a distraction. The real prize is in eastern Alaska. So by this point, everyone is no doubt well aware of the Area 51 memes and all the hubbub surrounding them. Apparently, over one million people are set to storm the perimeter on September 20th of this year. Should be interesting. But let's be honest for a second. I doubt it will happen. And even if it did, even if by some ridiculous miracle they managed to overwhelm the most powerful military on earth

and infiltrate a top secret base, I don't think they would be exactly thrilled with the results. I'll just come right out and say it, I guess. Area 51 is a red herring. It's a distraction, and it pretty much always has been. Nothing out there but sand, reclusive scientists, and some crusty-ass lake at this point. I mean, think about it. If Area 51 is one of the most top secret in covert black scientists, sites in the world, then why does everyone know about it? How secret can a secret be if everyone knows

the secret? For God's sake, even Obama acknowledges its existence a while back. That's the whole point of it. They want you distracted, so you don't look for the others. But why take my word for it? Who am I anyways? Just some pleb on the internet that decided to cash in on a trend for some clout and perhaps a bit of that sweet, sweet karma, right? Well, yes, but actually no. That may be who I am now, but I was once a person of particular interest to the United States government. Most people knew me as Mr. Blue, not my real name, but it is easier to pronounce. I used to be a pilot, did that for many years, and loved every second of it. I tell you, there's nothing quite like soaring through the skies and breaking the sound barrier for the first time. You might crap your pants a little,

but it's all part of the experience, really. Now, unfortunately, the type of work I did was above top secret, and for all of our safeties, I cannot go into further detail on what I actually did, or who I actually worked for. One day I was out on a classified reconnaissance mission in a certain area where I should not have been. I'll apologize here for the vague details of certain things, but you got to understand. The things I'm about to tell you are beyond top secret. They would kill me ten times over for uttering a word of it. So here's to hoping that doesn't happen. Anyways, the mission was going as planned. When suddenly my instruments started going berserk on my dash. Air pressure inside the cabin just plummeted, and the speed and fuel consumption gauges looked

like they were playing ping pong with each other. Everything began to rattle like crazy, and my alarms erupted into a symphony of irritation. Next thing I know, I see this bright light soar past me at an ungodly speed. The shock wave was produced was so violent that it shredded the hole of my craft. In a split second, I went from casually flying along to suddenly regaining consciousness as I plummeted head first towards the ground. at terminal velocity. I managed to pull my shoot before I splattered, but as I touched down, I almost wished I hadn't. There I was met by an awaiting entourage of at least two dozen men in winter camo suits and masks. They all pointed their weapons at me and screamed in a language,

which I recognized as English. I tried my best to calm them down and appear unthreatening, but that didn't stop them from wrenching me into a pair of handcuffs and hauling me into one of their APCs. They began to drive away, and the real severity of the situation hit me. I was not going to be saved. The people I worked for had never said it, but it was always well known that if you ever were captured, then you were pretty much on your own. With that in mind, I had no real incentive to keep my mouth shut

since they started interrogating me. It may seem cowardly, but I was not about to be brutally tortured for a former ally, which would never come to bail me out. Yeah, the government really says they don't torture people, but trust me. When they really wanted to know something, there's no tactic too extreme. And they really wanted to know something.

So I told them about who I worked for, what my mission was, where I grew up, all that jazz. It was all fabricated, but they took the bait regardless, thanks to their severe distrust of the Russians at the time. They were actually pretty cool after that. I mean, they wouldn't let me leave their custody, but that was better than me dead, or at least it was at first. They transported me away from my initial interrogation place into a secure facility somewhere nearby. I was blindfolded the whole time, but from the rumbling of multiple vehicles, sounds of doors sliding open multiple times, and the distinct feeling of my stomach dropping, I could tell they were taking me somewhere deep underground. Soon after that, I stepped off the elevator and they removed my blindfold.

The leader was a guy with a stern face, thick gray beard, and eyes that looked etched from concrete. He wore a black suit with some symbol upon his heart pocket that I didn't recognize. He stepped in front of everyone and outstretched his arms while staring me in the eye. Welcome to your new home. An ever so slight grin. This episode is brought to you by Activia. You might already be eating yogurt, but not all yogurts are created equal. Activia contains over one billion probiotics per serving to survive and reach the gut alive.

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which seemed to stretch out further than I could see in multiple directions. They led me down the hall on the right, past dozens of locked corridors and rooms before ushering me into a cell. My handcuffs were moved soon after, and the door slits shut behind me. The same man that had welcomed me to the facility, then approach the window and push the intercom button. We appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Blue.

I don't believe there is any reason why our time spent together has to be unfriendly. I apologize for all this, but you must realize that this is a necessary precaution we must take. I hope you understand. I took a moment, then nodded back to him. Wonderful. We'll have dinner set to you soon. If you require anything, then please notify one of the guards outside of your quarters. And with that, he and his little entourage,

turned and strolled down the hallway. That was my very first night in the facility I eventually came to know as F-E-Z. I don't think it's the official name, but I heard several personnel at the base referred to it by that acronym over the years. I still don't know exactly what it stands for. Forbidden, enclosed zirot, forsaken evil zoo, forced ejaculation zeal, fabulous elf zombies? The best I could really come up with was fortified Experimaltazone. It makes the most sense, too, all things considered. At first, it wasn't actually too bad. The staff was nice.

They cooked great food, and there was plenty to see around the base. Although, every once in a while, I would hear the screams just barely echoing through the fence. They interviewed me probably 100 more times after that. We were especially interested in the craft which I was piloting. The craft, in question, was one of our own top secret technologies. but unfortunately it had been blown to smithereens by whatever that light was. So I couldn't tell them much about it. It took years of incarceration there, but eventually the staff came to trust me almost as

much as they did their own comrades. We would laugh and joke with one another, and soon enough we became what some might even consider to be friends. I became especially close with one of the scientists there named Kevin. Kevin was a smart guy, comical too, and explained quite a lot of things to me. He and I would spend hours talking on countless occasions. He was my only real glimpse into what was happening in the outside world. He'd bring in books and movies for us to enjoy together.

He kept me updated on everything. And over the next 30 years, we developed a close relationship that I would always treasure. It must have displayed some kind of intellectual potential because they eventually started asking for my input on various curiosities stationed throughout the base. They only did it because I had sworn them completely loyal. It would never be allowed to leave the base anyways, but for me, it was just nice to feel included. The base itself was absolutely colossal. They always blindfolded me during transports at any location, but one time I caught a glimpse of the buttons in the elevator. There had to be at least 50 of them on that panel.

I remember the first time they showed me one of the lockdown blocks. There were guards posted at every cell, and I heard some very strange noises emanating around me as we traversed the halls. I thought for sure they were about to show me some horrendous. tremendous beast from the depths of hell and prepared myself accordingly as the howls of unseen things echoed throughout the halls. The lead scientist, Dr. Roosevelt, rolled back a two-day mirror curtain and my heart froze with anticipation. In the cell before us, there was nothing more than a human girl in a gray jumpsuit. She was young, maybe five years old or so, but there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary about her. I looked to Dr. Roosevelt, and he flexed his

cranial muzzled before pressing a button. I heard the sound of gas seep into the room. A few ten seconds passed when the girl suddenly shrieked like a banshee. Her head tilted back and I saw jagged needle-like teeth emerge from her mouth. Her jet black eyes then lurched towards us and she lunged at the window. She struck it hard and fell back to the ground, snarling and hissing like some ravenous jackal. Dr. Roosevelt then pressed the button again, cutting the gas and posing a question. You ever seen anything like her, Mr. Ballou? All I could do was shake my head slowly as I watched the young demon child's talk about on the other side of the glass.

They found her in the woods outside of Whitehorse with a freshly disembowed man. She was eating him and appeared unaffected by the sub-zero temperatures. I suddenly felt like vomiting, but I said nothing, only stared back at the unusual, gruesome little girl. What the hell was she? Unfortunately, I never was told anything else about her. and I doubt the personnel knew much more anyways. It came to show me a lot of very strange things over the years. A giant brownish, orange-haired primate that walked upright and seemed to respond to facial movements.

A humanoid-shaped being that was only detectable via infrared equipment. A golden chest that would instantly kill anything that touched it. A 10-foot-tall creature wrapped in vines that emitted bouts of radiation and blended into environments with perfect camouflage, a monstrous fish at least 80 feet in length, frozen in nitrogen. Various abhorrent creatures that I'm guessing were the results of relentless genetic tampering. I've never seen anything like it. All of the monstrosities housed there in the secrets buried in their possession. They also asked for my advice on a certain paradoxial phenomenon that had plagued them as well.

They told me that for decades there have been hundreds of unsolved cases of human disappearance that seemed to defy all explanation. Young children would be found on cliff edges that they could not have possibly reached, while old and frail people would be discovered dozens of miles away from where they were last seen only a few hours later. Most of them would never be found at all, though. I could almost see the fear dripping from their eyes

as they relayed case after case of the recorded incidents, and it was clear, although not said, that they had no idea what the cause was. Unfortunately, neither did I, as it was the first I'd ever heard of the bizarre phenomenon. I told them honestly that I didn't believe my former allies were responsible, but I don't know if that made them feel better or worse. Throughout all my years there, I'd always found one thing peculiar.

After all the weird and terrifying things they showed me, there was never any mention of extraterrestrials. That's why everyone thinks these black site facilities housed after all, but nevertheless they made no mention of it. They made me smile a bit when I thought about it. because they had no idea how close they were. The closest thing they had was this weird tentacle creature with a ringed set of teeth in its mouth.

It looked almost like an eel, but possessed four iridescent green eyes in a ring around its head. It didn't live in the water either, but instead slithered around on the ground in a very swift and very unsettling motion. They said its DNA resembled nothing like anything they have ever found on earth before,

hence the reason they believed, but were not certain of its otherworldly origins. Kevin and I got this. back to talking in his quarters one night as the rest of the crew retired for the evening. He shared with me a bit of his brandy, and we were content to just chat as friends late into the night. He told me a lot about himself that he had never mentioned before. He showed me pictures of his wife and his son that had been taken from him. Kevin admitted his son had died in a car crash a couple years back while his wife passed two years later of cancer. It broke my heart to hear that,

and I felt sorrow for my dear friend of some 30 years. Kevin was in his early 50s, but you'd never know it with the enthusiasm in his voice. It was during that conversation, Kevin ended up mentioning something I found particularly interesting. He told me that he believed that if an alien species existed and were advanced enough to traverse the galactic canopy and reach Earth, then they would obviously be quite intelligent. He said he didn't believe in any of the Hollywood depictions of doomsday aliens hell-bent on destroying humanity. He thought they'd be a lot more subtle than that. Think about it. You find something intelligent which represents almost no threat to you,

and the first thing you do was try to kill it? Kevin asked skeptically, as I considered his words for myself. That'd just be a waste, and no species that fancies themselves as advanced beings would do something so brash. At least I hope they wouldn't. He chuckled slightly and it shot me a knowingly look mixed with a unique intrigue that almost glistened in his gray eyes. Even if they thought we were destroying our own planet or something, why would they care? There are trillions of other planets in the Milky Way alone. They could pick any of them if they wanted natural resources. I chuckled to myself, almost sensing where the conversation was headed.

It's not the planet's weep. Thereafter, I replied. Kevin snapped and pointed his finger at me as his face lit up. Exactly. They'd want to study us, learn how we operate, how we organize, and how we live. Kevin's hand motions turned eccentric and saw his access badge jostle around his neck. He took another sip of brandy and continued. They'd probably learn more about us than we even know about ourselves.

I mean, granted, they have to be more intelligent. They could learn up close, understand how humans work. They'd have no need for bloodshed when they could simply incubuspicuously integrate into human culture. They have no doubt master the art of altering their biology. They disguise themselves as humans. I mean, there's nothing when compared with the tech they used to get here, you know? He paused from his enthused monologue and wiped the steam off his glasses. I just sat back content to let him continue, as I found it fascinating that he could know so much.

Aliens. They're not warlords. They're poets, architects, authors, musicians, beings that wish to create. It is the ultimate calling for an entity so powerful. Kevin took a deep breath and reveled in his own explanation. His speech had turned a bit slurred, and I could see his eyes floating lazily in their sockets. He then met my eyes and a look that he had. had never skiven to me before. It was a look that seemed to shed all sense of formality and pose a

question which he had long since suspected the answer to. You're not really from Russia, are you? The sudden accusation caught me off guard, and I felt my stomach drop like a lead weight. I didn't say anything, and Kevin just scoffed. You had everyone fooled, and I mean, I was too for the longest time. You have to... had, had a suitable backstory, authentic sounding accent, all the alibis you gave us checked out. He paused and clasped his hands in front of him. You look so authentic too. There's one thing you missed.

One thing that you just can't fake. He looked me deep in the eyes and fell silent. He didn't have to say it, for I already knew what he meant. The eyes are impossible to truly fake. That night, your craft was shot down. What were you doing here? Kevin and I maintained a prolonged eye lock before I finally responded. Reconnaissance?

For the first time in decades, I dropped the Russian accent, as it was clear there was no longer any reason to lie to my dear friend. And what did you see? Kevin stared into the very depths of my soul as he asked, and I spoke the truth. Beauty. poetry, creators much like us.

Kevin just stared at me for the longest time, as if he were weighing my soul in his mind. I wondered what he planned to do since he had found out, but I didn't ask. Kevin eventually smiled and rose to make his way to the cell door. He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a black steel pistol with a long snout. I slowly met his gaze and he chuckled. Mr. Blue, do you wish to go home?

I nodded after pausing to think for a moment. Kevin looked over his weapon and primed it for use. I hope your allies can forgive us. Without another word, he flashed his security badge and the locks on the door gave away. He motioned for me to rise and follow, and so I did. Kevin glanced back and forth down the hallway, but due to the late hour, there was no one around. He and I sprinted down the corridor and onwards, to one of the security booths. He flashed his badge as I hid just out of sight. He entered the room

and I heard the noise of a brief scuffle before two bright flashes ended it. Kevin reemerged with wild eyes and beckoned me to follow. He and I dashed down the hallway and reached the massive main shaft elevator soon after. For the first time I entered without a blindfold and Kevin punched the button to the top floor and the security code required to power it. Security system will be down for a good half hour, but automated distress beacons have already been activated. That gives us about eight minutes. Kevin dropped the clip from his pistol and popped in a fresh one. I saw spackles of blood on his glasses and cheek, and I frenzied look in his eye. Here, take this. He reached out his hand and held something which I had not seen in decades, the old radio for my craft. I took it,

and he and I met eyes as the elevator door opened. It was back to running after that, but he was back to running after that, but a few minutes of it, we had reached an underground parking facility. Kevin quickly unlocked a nearby vehicle, and the two of us hopped in as we fired it up. The engine roared to life, and Kevin accelerated through a lot. A moment later, and we exited the underground facility, and I saw my version of the night's sky in over four decades. There were men stationed at the perimeter gates that attempted to stop us, but Kevin didn't flinch. He crashed right through the wire fence on the perimeter.

causing multiple lights to activate in our wake. I heard a siren blaring behind us and the silhouettes of people dashing throughout the snow. There's a suit in the back, put it on. I did as he requested without question and fit the snug polyester garment over my body. It covered every square inch from foot to the nape of my neck and felt incredibly comfortable.

There's a dial on your right side. You can use it to mask your body heat. They're going to be after you. He tossed a map into my lap and continued barking instructions. You can contact you. your friends with that radio, right? His eyes flashed to me as he slid onto the main road and away from the compound. Yes, Kevin nodded. Make your way north. They won't be expecting that. There's a

river up there about 30 miles away through the forest. Once you find it, head east until you find a small town. Ask the guy at the post office for Mr. White. He's a friend of mine who's agreed to help you. He'll take it from there. I tried to digest the flow of information as best as I could and remain confident. It had all just happened so suddenly. I stashed you some MREs in the bag. Should last you a good couple of weeks. Kevin then swerved around a corner and reorientated us into a new dark road.

In the sudden influx of adrenaline, a sudden thur occurred to me. What happens to you? Kevin didn't seem to want to acknowledge that question. Forget about that. Just get back to your people. Behind us, a flurry of light suddenly ascended into the night sky, the whirling sound of rotary blades then pierced the tranquil canopy

of the blustery night. Shit, I had hoped I could get you a bit farther than this. He suddenly slammed on the brakes. My head lurched forward and the car spun back and forth along the icy road. Take this too. He handed his long barrel pistol over

and I hesitantly took it. He and I then met eyes for one final time. This is where we say goodbye, Mr. Blue. Why? Why are you doing this to me? Kevin sighed and I saw he, certain sorrow swirl in his ironclad pupils. He stayed silent for a moment, and only when the sounds of approaching engines grew louder, was he spurred to reply, you don't belong here, you don't belong in a cage. I don't know where you come from, but I want you to see the ones you love

again. His eyes began to water, and he josted his neck before looking me in the eye one final time. I hope you don't think of us as captors or kidnappers. I hope you see us as you see yourself. I hope. I just hope you can understand. A single tear then rolled down his out cheek. I put my hand on the shoulder. I always have, and I always will. Thank you, Kevin. I then held out my hand and he grabbed it tight as we shared one final moment before I ventured into the blizzard. The journey from then on was long and arduous, with me spending weeks charging through snow and frozen forests. Hounds, men, and machines pursued me for days, but somehow I was able to elude their efforts. The terrain was brutal, unrelenting,

but eventually I managed to find the river which Kevin had mentioned. By that point, all of my pursuers had long since gone silent. I followed the river and found the town, and soon after the man known as Mr. White, he was a kind man and gladly invited me into his house to avoid the agents. It is there that I have been ever since, awaiting my allies' arrival. They were stunned to hear from me again.

but not as stunned as I was to find out the radio is still functional. They weren't entirely sure whether they could even trust me anymore, but I didn't leave them much of a choice when I threatened to go public and expose them to the world. They finally agreed, but admitted it would be months before they could reach me. I expected as much, and thankfully Mr. White allowed me to stay with them and await their eventual arrival. I found out soon after that my dear friend Kevin,

to whom I own my freedom in life, have been found deceased. The authorities ruled an S-word, gunshot wound to the back of the head, but obviously, I have my doubts about that. It truly broke me to learn one of my true friend's demise, but I knew it was what he expected. I like to think that is the way he chose to do it.

And furthermore, it is the reason I am here posting this now. Kevin's legacy deserves to live on, and this is the only way I know how to do it. And with that, we have come full circle to this. this message. You are reading right now. To address the original topic, Area 51 is indeed a ruse. Kevin held a lot of power in his previous role, and he told me all about the operation. The real prize is the F-E-Z, my former prison, somewhere in eastern Alaska, buried beneath the snow with all sorts of horned things in its clutches. If you're going to storm anywhere, that should be

the place. just remember to pack a coat Kevin was a smart man brilliant even if you've managed to make it this far then I'd like to think you are someone like him brave curious and with an almost innate sense of wonder

that cannot be satisfied it is my hope that Kevin's ideas will live on through you my allies would never approve of this message but I know now that they are wrong truth is something that all sentient beings should be allowed to perceive despite how unpleasant it may to be here it

It was Kevin's belief that the beings he knows that aliens are already here, that instead of murdering humans as is often portrayed in stories, they would blend in, take keen interest in human culture, society and art, write books, poetry, music, in hopes of connecting to something truly extraordinary, something that reminds them of themselves. If Kevin is right, then maybe one day you'll even stumble upon such a story for yourself. Maybe you'll think it's nothing more than a work of fiction to entertain you for a while. Maybe the author of said theoretical story would seem like nothing more than your run-over-of-the-mill internet user.

He probably wouldn't just come right out and say it because that would be entirely too corny. You would probably just leave you the pieces and hope that you can understand the truth for yourself. Maybe you truly are like Kevin, drawn to mystery and prepared to entertain the fantastic. Maybe you'll just dismiss the implications of the words before you'll just dismiss the implications of the words before you because you don't dare believe something so outlandish. Because in the end, truth is not the problem. Belief is. Maybe someone will understand who, or more importantly, what I really am. Maybe it will be you. Either way, I've been away for a very long time. It is time

for me to go home. Thank you, Kevin. I will always uphold our agreement. facts you should probably know. Here are two facts you should probably know. Fact the first, when a human being is driven into a corner, you should never underestimate the levels of stupid and dangerous they will resort to in order to escape. Fact the second. If a deal seems too good to be true, it is. Normally, I wouldn't be the kind of guy you should be taking advice from.

If I wrote an autobiography, it would be called Jesus wept. but in this very specific instance, I have some valuable experience. It started as most tragic stories tend to with a series of short-sighted mistakes. About a decade or so back, I was a few years out of college and trying to build a life for myself. I was single, educated, and driven, all the qualities someone needs to succeed in life. Well, not the single part, but you get the idea. I had prospects, some real potential, but like Oscar Wilde once said, I can resist anything except temptation.

Yeah, I was an English major. I didn't get hooked on meth or corn or anything like that. No, my vice was the thrill of chance. Gambling was the greatest rush I'd ever experienced. Just giving up control, letting the gods of probability and randomness decide your fate. I got hooked, kept going to those damn casinos night after night. Looking back, I was naive. I was foolish.

It would take an idiot, blinded by a lust for sensation, to not realize another crucial fact. The house always, I repeat, always wins. To make a long, painful story short, at the tender age of 24, the local pit bosses had taken me for all I was worth and then some. As a result, I was indebted to some unsavory characters who were not all that keen on giving me some leeway on the money I owed them.

I managed to pull together just shy of $100 in a week doing odd jobs, but that was a fraction of a fraction of what I was in for. At the time, it seemed like a better idea to just piss away what money I had at a local bar, rather than carrying on my sad little exercise in futility. So that's exactly what I did. And by virtue of a few gallons of the cheapest spirits you can possibly imagine, I can't remember a great deal of what happened after that. Next thing I know, I'm waking up in a puddle behind the, the bar, having been turfed out for making an ass of myself, the electric buzz of the neon

signs above my head felt like I was taking a power drill to the frontal lobe, while the cold, filthy water below my face helped to sober me up a smidgen, just enough to make me aware. It was right then, in my lowest possible moment that I met him. Hey there, buddy, he said, his voice pleasantly cheerful and melodic. You look like you need a help in hand. thankfully I've got two. There was a gentle tug on both of my shoulders, pulling me upright. He leaned me against the wall.

I could finally take a better look at him. To begin with, I wondered if I was hallucinating. He seemed so strange, so out of place. My good Samaritan was about six and a half feet tall, but he was built like a pack of uncooked spaghetti, a long, lean, string bean of a man. That being said, the black and white pinstripe suit he was wearing still somehow managed to be form-fitting, like it was just painted directly onto a featureless body.

Above his collar fastened to the top button and held in place by a large and ugly bowtie, sat a pale grinning head with black hair parted in the middle. Truth be told, my initial thought after properly taking in the side of him was as follows. Holy shit. I died in that puddle. And this is death himself, come to collect my pathetic soul. Sadly, that was not the case. I was, in fact, still alive. There we are, pal.

That's a lot better, isn't it? He said, kneeling down on the long, rail-thin-legs to look me in the eye. What have you feeling like a million bucks in no time? Never fear. Well, back then, I just assumed that it was my drunken mind playing tricks on me. I remember his eyes seemingly strange, yellowish. They had a kind of nuanced sheen to them, like Srella and Iris just melted together into a single, formless mass, eyes like goddamn egg yolks.

It's always such a shame to catch folks in a pickle. Such a shame, he said largely to himself, I think. Whatever happened to helping people out, you know? It's a good feeling. Who are you? I managed to choke out. The kind stranger smiled and turned his sulfuric eyes towards me. You're asking the wrong person there, amigo.

I'll tell you if I knew. honest he replied with her a laugh what's your name though Nate I said wondering if I was about to vomit or not Nate Wilson oh my god that's such an awesome name the stranger said as the sudden explosion of interest on his face told me that he wasn't faking his misplaced enthusiasm Nate Wilson it has a ring to it don't you think God what a great name you're a lucky guy Nate lucky to have such a great name Uh, uh, thanks, I guess.

There was a long, awkward silence after that. I sure as hell didn't know what to say, and the strangers seemed to more than content to just stand there and stare at me, grinning like a freak. It felt like it was my responsibility to break that irritating silence. Look, I... I really appreciate you helping me, buddy. I began.

Wait, you consider us buddies, he asked. His tone was at that stage, ambiguous. I mean, you saved me from the breathing alley water, so I guess so, yeah. This might seem hard to believe because I definitely didn't believe it at that time, but the stranger literally jumped up into the air and whooped loudly. A grown man behind a dive bar doing that. It was like something out of a strange dream that your one boring friend always wants to tell you about. That is fantastic, he said, grinning ear to ear like he just won the fucking lottery.

It's so wonderful to make new friends. He extended a spindly arm towards me, his hand open and his spidery fingers outstretched. "'What are there, friend, he said. And because that night wasn't weird enough already, you better believe I did.' "'That's what I'm talking about,' he said with another childish cackle, pulling me to my feet with disarming levels of strength. Through the power of friendship, anything is possible. Sure, he may have spoken like his only experience with the outside world was watching Saturday

morning cartoons, but he seemed innocent enough, a benign weirdo, just trying to help people along his way. Though, I must admit, the fact he was reluctant to tell me his name was somewhat of a red flag for me. Now, I'm going to be completely honest with you, Nate. He began as amber gaze turned downwards in what might have been embarrassment. There was a reason I followed you out here. It wasn't just a stroke of good luck. My heart immediately sank. I knew he was too good to be true. This was when he stabbed me. Cut me up, where my skin is a suit and turned the rest of me into makeshift lasagna. Nobody was ever heard that happy at that hour of the night if they had all their psychological ducks in a row. Well, if you're being honest, I said, swaying on my feet,

still too drunk to defend myself. Would that reason happen to be my murder? He seemed shocked at first, Then began to laugh. Do you think a murderer would be this friendly, he asked? Molestation then. Jesus, no, Nate, you're a good-looking guy, don't get me wrong, but you're really not my type. Then what does a guy like you have to do with a guy like me? I asked the needle on my internal emotive scale creeping from curious to irritated. Well, he paused again, as though searching for the problem.

words, he was looking at everything but me. The bar, you finally said. How much of what happened in there do you remember? Somewhere in the margin of, uh, nothing, I think, I said, now leaning against the wall for support. You were, uh, talking to the bartender. Loudly, he said, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. I wasn't eavesdropping, not at all. I just, I just happened over here.

You were talking about some kind of, money troubles? I'd almost forgotten about them myself, but the second he said it, all the memories came barreling into me like some nauseating tidal wave. I'd ranted and raved, screamed at the top of my lungs, debt, debt, debt. I got belligerent when I felt they weren't showing me enough sympathy. And when I get belligerent, I was rightly thrown out on my inebriated ass. Oh, oh, don't worry about those, I said.

my cheeks reddening with shame. That's not your problem. I'll deal with it. But Nate, you didn't sound like you could deal with it. What the hell is it to you, I snapped back. The stranger stopped talking and began reaching into his jacket. I got a sudden flash of paranoia that he worked for one of the casinos, and he's going to put a bullet between my eyes.

You're my best friend, Nate, he said. And friends are meant to help each other out in sticky situations, aren't they? He produced a stack of bills from a pocket inside his suit and passed it over to me. Will, uh, will this be enough? He asked. It was at this point that I was most open to the idea of this all being some crazy dream. With the curiosity of a madman, I quickly counted the money, this total stranger, calling me his best friend, had handed to me. 20 fucking grand.

It would bail me out. and then some. Oh, holy shit, I said, though I can't remember if it was out loud or in my head. I can't possibly accept this. Please do, he said with another ear-to-ear grin, you need an awful lot more than I do. A sober me might have been too proud to indulge him, but funnily enough, drunk me had a far more realistic take on my level of desperation. I was a desperate, desperate man. trapped in a corner.

Fact the first. When a human being is driven into a corner, you should never underestimate the levels of stupid and dangerous they were resort to in order to escape. But why was the only question I could summon? He smiled and shrugged. Because I like you, he said, and I like helping people. But you've only just met me. So what?

A friend is a friend is a friend. Why overthink it? I collapsed back against the wall, holding the stranger's 20 grand. It was a way out of my dire situation. I'll pay you back every penny with a fucking interest. I swear to God, I said. The stranger laughed. No need.

I've got no shortage of money. Just take it and bail yourself out, okay? Then promise me you'll stop gambling. There were big, swollen tears running down my burning cheeks. The stranger's kindness was baffling, but it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever experienced. He was a true saint in flesh and blood. I'll never gamble another penny, I said. Without another word, I lunged forward and hugged him.

A long, warm, tight embrace. By the end, I could feel his emaciated limbs wrapped around my back. Thank you so much, I whispered, my tears dripping onto the shoulder of his suit. What are friends for, right? When I finally prized myself off of him, I just couldn't stop laughing. It was nerves, probably. The stranger watched me a kind of eccentric joy burning in his big yellow eyes.

He seemed to like just observing. Oh, one more thing, he said, reaching into his jacket again. A little something I wrote up in the bar, just to help you out. He passed me a piece of paper, folded into the size of a pamphlet. I didn't even think to check at the time. I just shoved it into the pocket of my filthy coat and carriages. I needed that money. Lord knows I did, but I couldn't just take it without giving something in return. There must be something you want, man, I pleaded. Palms opened in deferrence to his generosity.

Anything. I owe you my life, man. Just name your price. I can't thank you enough. The stranger grinned and stroked his narrow chin in contemplation. Now that's an irresistible offer, he said, almost jokingly. you drive a hard bargain, Mr. Wilson. Leave it with me, okay? I'm sure I'll think of something. He began walking way after that, whistling, of all things. Sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows, as he did so.

Now I was laughing again, half out of giddiness, half an acknowledgement of the sheer strangeness of the events transpiring around me. Right then, as I sat outside a shitty bar, covered in dirty water, my own tears, and more than a little puk, I was the luckiest human being on the planet. What do you give to the man who has everything, I said aloud? The stranger looked over his shoulder at me one more time, his odd eyes met him mine. Almost everything night, he corrected. Almost everything. And just like that, the stranger was gone. Almost funny, isn't it? How someone like that can have such a profound impact on your life than just

up and disappear just as quickly. Like a comet, just trailing past. You only catch its life for a brief instant. Then it's dark again. Using the stranger's money, I paid off my gambling debts in full and still had a little left over. I swore to stick to my promise for my own sake and his. In the 10 years that have passed since that day, I haven't gambled a cent. Once I was all square with the house, I finally took a moment to check the piece of paper that he left me. At first, I only sort of skimmed it, and it didn't make a great deal of sense to me, just a list of dates from 2007 to 2017, each accompanied by a sentence fragment. It was only when I sat down and took a long, hard look at what those fragments actually were that I realized the stranger couldn't possibly have been human. No, he was so much more than that.

It was a list of instructions specific down to the days, minutes, hours, and seconds, where to be and what to do in order to maximize success at that given moment. He'd left stock tips for companies that didn't exist, but would come into existence exactly when he'd predicted they would. He'd left exact instructions on which house to buy and how to get at the best price, clothes clothes to wear, jobs to take, friends to make. Fifth of October 2009, go to Starbucks in town, meet Jesse O'Brien, 3.51.17 p.m. Two years later, Jesse O'Brien became Jesse Wilson. The stranger had even engineered me meeting the love of my goddamn life. Precise to the exact

second we'd first make eye contact. I invested in the right stocks and, pulled out the wrong ones, avoiding company deaths and market crashes like some financial Houdini. My capital skyrocketed and my personal wealth just grew greater and greater. 8th of June, 2011, buy house 10 Aspen Way, don't rent. 6.14.43 p.m. And so I did. Jesse and I moved into that big, gorgeous house once our honeymoon was over. We were wealthy, healthy. and deeply in love, but something was missing. Something the stranger had accounted for too. 17th of August, 2012, conceived child with Jesse, 831.19 p.m. Our little girl is called April.

The stranger picked it, not me. She's four now, and I love her with all my heart. The stranger, a man who had known for less than an hour, had steered the entire course of my life in the best possible direction, out of nothing more than the kindness of his heart. He'd saved me. He'd saved all of us. Even though it'd been 10 years since that day and I was drunk out of my mind at the time, I remember every detail vividly. That's why, as I was walking down the street this morning, my arms full of grocery bags when I heard someone singing, sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. A few feet behind me, I recognized the voice instantly. Sunshine, lullipops, and rainbows.

Everything that's wonderful is what I feel one were together. His melodic voice sang, his tone screaming jovily. Brighter than a lucky penny, when you're near the rain just disappears. Dear, and I feel so fine. Without a moment's hesitation, I turned to face him. It looked like that strange, strange man hadn't aged a day in an entire decade. He even wore that same pinstripe suit that he had on the first night I met him. Just to know that you are mine, he finished the verse with a smile and threw open his arms.

Jesus Christ, I said, my face cracking into a smile impossible to hide. It's actually you. The one and only baby? He said with a laugh and a grandiose hand gesture. How's Jesse, by the way? I opened my mouth to answer, but he raised a hand as though to politely silence me. I'm sorry to drop in after. Gosh, has it really been ten years?

geez Louise time really does intend to get away from me he said anyway the reason I'm here is because I finally figured out what I wanted from you uh beg your pardon 10 years ago you said you owed me something anything he replied though I almost heard it back in my own voice as he said it I couldn't decide at the time but I think I now know oh of course it's wonderful to hear man I said my heart fills with a sudden trepidation. So, uh, what is it that you want? The stranger gave me that same ear-to-ear grin that he was wearing back behind the dive bar in 2007. Well, I've thought about it for a long time, Amigo, and I've finally made my decision, he said. I know what I want from you, Nate. He paused to take a step closer to me. His eyes were just as golden in the daylight.

I want your name, Nate. I almost laughed to begin with. but I soon realized he wasn't joking. He was deadly serious. My name? Yes, Nate, I've always loved your name. It's so wonderful, he said, wringing his hands with glee. See, I've never had a name myself, and it's always left me feeling a little left out, you know? I've wanted a name for so long, and I decided just recently that the name I want is yours, I think it'll fit me just right. This man had given me, my entire life. He saved me from getting killed by casino sharks back in 07, and every wonderful success I've had since I owed entirely to this decade-long itinerary. With all this in mind,

who was I to turn him down this last bat-shick crazy request? If you wanted to go around calling himself Nate Wilson too, what right did I have to stop him? Sure thing, buddy, I said with a smile. he leaned forward embraced me, almost crushing the groceries against my chest. You have no idea how happy you've made me. It's the least I can do after all you've done for me, I replied. The stranger, or rather Nate Wilson, extended another spidery hand towards me. Let's shake on it, he said. His voice elated, and I did.

We went our separate ways after that. I walked home, and he ran off into the city, singing and cackling with mirth. It brought me some peace of mind to know that my debt to him was finally repaid and that some simple token gesture was all that I needed to do it. When I arrived back at 10 Aspen Way, I saw April playing around with her hoil lawnmower in the front yon. I smiled and called to her, but she didn't respond. She was too wrapped up in her fictitious duties.

I made my way inside with the groceries. was in the kitchen cutting up carrots. Sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows blasted out the radio. Today just kept getting weirder and weirder. Hey, babe, I called to her, putting the groceries on the kitchen table.

You'll never guess who I ran into this morning. Jesse didn't respond. She just carried on chopping and hummed to the tune. Babe, uh, everything okay, I asked. Still no response. At this point, I was beginning to get a little worried. With a peculiar heaviness to my every movement, I walked over to Jesse and placed a tentative hand

on her shoulder. It just went straight through. Straight through her like a goddamn body and she was a hologram or I was. I recoiled with a sharp, short yelp and fell against the kitchen table. Again, no response from Jesse. What the hell happened? Honey, I'm home. I heard a familiar voice call from her hallway outside. Jesse suddenly parked up, turning her head towards the noise. Hi, sweetie, she said. We're out there for a while. I was beginning to get worried. The stranger walked into the kitchen, a smile stretched across his waxen face. Sorry about that honeybunny, he said. I met an old friend in town. We had a little catch-up. As he said that last part, he threw me a sickening wink with one of his piss yellow peepers. Huh? Jesse said. Anyone

I know? She leaned forward and gave the stranger a kiss. The kind of kiss she always gave me. Ah, nah, the stranger said with a chuckle. I don't think you've ever met him. I felt like my mind was going to implode. Nothing going on was making any kind of goddamn sense. The whole world had gone crazy. April called from outside, something about the grass. You mind taking over the carers for a check, babe. Jesse said to the stranger, I better go check on April. No problem, honey, he said, taking the knife from her hand and giving her another kiss. Jesse left the room, leaving just me and the stranger, all alone. I quietly fumed any chopped carrots. What the fuck is going on? I finally asked him when I'd gained the modism of composure required to do so. What have you done,

you crazy fucking weirdo. He carried on chopping the carrots. His eyes never left the chopping board. My name is Nate Stranger, he said. I'd really appreciate if you called me by it. In my state of fury, I tried to grab him by the shoulder and turn him to face me. I could actually touch him, but he wouldn't budge. It was like trying to move a mountain.

That's my name. This is my house. And that's my wife, I said to him. Rage and confusion rendering my voice. a crackly mess. I want you out of here and out my life. The stranger chuckled. See, that's where you're wrong, Slick.

All that changed hands, he said. This is Nate Wilson's house. Jesse is Nate Wilson's wife. And this is Nate Wilson's life. And by the terms of our recent deal, I'm Nate Wilson. And you, good buddy? You're nobody. I won't accept that, I yelled.

slamming my hand down on the kitchen countertop. Without another word, Nate Wilson rammed the knife through my hand. There was no pain, no blood. It just phased through, as though I no longer even existed. Word to the wise, stranger. Reality marches on, regardless of whether you accept it, he said, as I pulled my hand away from the knife. Everything you have. Everything you've tricked yourself into believing you earned. You got from my instructions. You never owned this life, stranger. You just rented it for me.

Peace by peace. Now, it's mine. And there's not a thing you can do about it. He sucked the knife into the chopping board and turned around to me. Except, of course, leave and let me, my wife, and my daughter get on with her lives. Do you understand, stranger? I stood in crushing silence for a minute or two. But can I see them again?

Sure you can. You can see them anytime you like, but only I can see you, just like up until around an hour ago, only you could see me. It doesn't feel good, does it? Being nobody. Being nameless. The gravity of it all was finally closing in. I fell onto my ass and began to cry.

God, it was so fucking stupid, I said. How did I fall for all this? Nate Wilson shrugged and ate a piece of carrot. But don't blame yourself, buddy, he said. I was waiting for centuries before I found someone who I could interact with. It isn't your fault you happen to be that person, or they had such an awesome name at the time. Well, my name. You were only going to waste a friend, though.

If I wasn't there that night, a heavy would have broken your legs the next day. You'd have gone into painkillers and OD'd a few months later. Nate Wilson becomes Gravestone Fod. What a waste that would have been, huh? But, but what do I do now? What I did, Stranger, Ney Wilson said, eating another piece of carrot with undue relish. Ask around, find someone you can talk to. Might be this afternoon.

Who knows? Sure could be a week. Month, year, decade, century. But I'm an eternal optimist. A century, I said. Trying to ebb the stream of tears flowing out of me. I can't wait that long. you'd be surprised, pal.

Patience is something you'll learn being nameless. When you finally do manage to wrangle yourself a name, you'll appreciate it a little more this time. You'll make something of yourself. Fact the second. A fideal seems too good to be true. It is. So, is that it? I asked.

Is that all you have for me? Nate Wilson nodded. I'm afraid so good, buddy, he said. But you seem like a nice enough guy. I'm sure you'll figure something out. You can always depend on the kindness of a stranger's, don't you know? As the man, we'd just stolen my entire existence, carried on hacking up vegetables, I left the room, walking out of the kitchen, through the hallway, then out of the house entirely.

I stole one last look at Jesse and April. My, uh, no, his family. playing on the lawn, totally carefree. All smiles. They'd never even know that I was gone. Perhaps it was better that way, no heartache. I whispered a goodbye that they'd never hear and closed my eyes in a pointless attempt to shut off the tears I knew would be coming either way.

I sat off into the city after that, walking alone, in search of something, hell, anything to call myself. And that was that, the story of my un-naming. Perhaps Nate was right. Perhaps it was his life all along. Maybe he'll live it better. Live it kinder. He might be a better father, a better husband, a better Nate.

I don't feel so attached to that name anymore. But if you know all this now, that means one good thing. You can read what I'm writing. If you can read my words, perhaps you can hear them. And if you can hear them, perhaps you can reply. If so, I hope to hear from you soon. We have a lot to talk about. You and I, a lot to discuss.

I think I can do some great things for you, dear reader, dear friend. I'll help you out of any bond you need, and I'll barely ask for anything in return. Barely anything at all. My father-in-law is in prison for trying to kill me. Now I know he was trying to be kind. One year ago, my father-in-law tried to murder me.

He planned it beautifully, the trip up to the cabin in the woods that his family owned, pushing me into the dried-up old well, pickpocketed my phone, left a gun within the well that gave me the option of cane myself instead of starving to death, his twisted version of mercy, I guess. Either way, he would have got away with it. He hadn't accounted for the lost dog, though. Hadn't thought that a couple would come looking for a beloved pet who had erased off after a deer, that they would find me, half dead from starvation and dehydration,

holding the gun, contemplating it seriously after nearly three days in the well, fully aware that I was going to die of thirst before starvation. There had been no rain for days. When I woke up in the hospital, my wife Samantha was by my side holding my hands. Her beautiful face wet with tears. Despite my own physical pain, all I wanted to do was make her stop crying, so I softly took her hand and with great effort, raised it to my lips, and gave it a gentle kiss. I was so worried about you. What happened to you?

She begged me, green eyes bright with tears, the nurse came in and took my vitals, then told my wife that she should leave me to sleep some more. I was glad for the rescue because I knew once I revealed what it really happened to me my life's heart would break permanently. Her father had always been her favorite person. I met Samantha at work three years ago. She was the marketing executive where I was a software developer. We were both in her late 20s and I knew within 10 minutes of our first conversation that I was going to marry her. She was bright, funny, clever, and it didn't hurt that she was absolutely gorgeous with bright green eyes and long red hair. Four months into dating her, she met my family.

I come from a massive family where both my parents had four siblings each and then went on to have five kids together too. Our Sunday lunches are loud. Roshes, events at my folks' place with at least 20 people in attendance, but Sam was utterly charmed by my family, and my parents and siblings adored her. She fit right in like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Everything was going so well until Sam decided it was my time to meet. her only family member, her father. Cameron Joyce was a tall, burly man who dressed and looked like a

lumberjack. He lived in a neighborhood at the very edge of the suburbs, close to a big, wide forest. When he stiffly shook my hand, his blue eyes, ice cold, he sort of chill ran through me. After we walked into the two-bedroom house behind him, the first red flag should have been that there was no photos of Sam's mother. Not one. In fact, it was a little bit of the two-bedroom house behind him. The first red flag should have been that there was no photos of Sam's mother. Not one. In fact, if I truly thought about it, Sam never really spoke about her mother. I should have asked more questions about her, but I guess I always just assumed that the subject was too painful for her. The first time I thought her father was trying to kill me was a fleeting thought which happened that visit. A distinctly heard Sam tell her father over the phone

multiple times that I had a nut allergy. But when we sat down to eat, I started to feel my throat swell up. Sam's father watched me cough, slowly chewing his food. Of course, we had an heavy pen on us, but if we hadn't, I could be dead right now. Then it was the time right after our wedding when he knew I couldn't swim, but I am 90% sure he pushed me into the lake when the three of us were on the docks looking at his boat. The third time was the charm, though. If those hikers hadn't found me, I'm sure I would have died down in that well. You might be wondering why I chose to go to that cabin with a man I thought was trying to kill me because I really didn't think he was trying to kill me. My brain insisted that I had misread or misheard the situation. In both those

incidents could have been accidents. Also, Sam was keen her father and her husband and I just couldn't break her heart. I'll never forget the ride to the cabin. My father-in-law was a man a few words. So when he decided to tell me a story, I almost sided with relief that I didn't have to keep talking to fill the dead air between us. He kept his eyes on the road and said, There was once a boy who lived a happy life with his family in the forest. It was him, his three brothers,

his parents, his grandparents, his uncles and aunts and all his cousins. He didn't know much about the world beyond his family home, but he had a thousand things to do in the woods, so he never wondered. For a time, all was well, and as it should be, The boy and his family lived off the land, hunted and thrived.

Until one day on his 19th birthday, the boy saw the woman in white in the gut of the trees. Ethyl and shimmering. She glowed like a white will of the wisp. When he asked his mother about her, she told him to stay away from the woman. Then nothing good comes out of the woods on a sickle moon night. We were close to the cabin now, and as we approached it, a strange sort of feeling was beginning to crawl. up my spine, a sense of something being wrong, gripping me tightly.

The boy listened to his mother. Two days he did not go looking for the woman. On the third night, he found himself outside the house walking into the woods. As he drew closer, he saw the woman's face. Her gold hair shimmered all the way to her knees, ice-blue eyes and a lovely face that glowed with the promise of a forever. His mortal brain didn't understand. The woman offered him her hand. Entranched, he reached out, took it. He parked and turned off the engine of the car, but still wouldn't look at me. Instead, he stared ahead into the depth of the forest and he told me this eerie tale.

The minute he took that hand, the thing claimed him. They found him a year later at the top of a mountain living in a cave, naked and insane. Speaking a strange tongue in a language which had to be made up, What was terrifying was that both his legs from his knees downward were gone. And yet, the wounds had been cauterized, and someone or something had clearly been feeding him. His parents brought him home and tried to help him recover his mind. The doctors fitted him with prosthetic legs he kept hidden away, but the boy was never really the same again. When he began to slowly speak again, he spoke of a woman with a skull instead of a fetish.

face, a long skeletal crone's body. Fangs instead of teeth, clumps of white hair that fell out of her head, and milk white eyes, the eyes of a corpse. And then, finally, the ear-piercing scream. He fell silent, and then my skin was crawling. I asked him, what happened to him? My father-in-law broke out of this trance and looked at me, his expression unreadable. Let me show you how to hunt. The trial was short. My father-in-law was caught in possession of my phone and several other items that suggested what he planned to do.

His internet search history revealed extensive ways to murder someone. When they put Cameron Joyce in prison, my wife cried herself to sleep every night for a month. I think she blamed me for what happened, even though she never would say those words. I would catch her looking out for her apartment in the direction of the forest, which we could clearly see. She grew more and more forgetful,

wouldn't go to work, would sleep all day. Some day she wouldn't even brush her hair. Her face grew more haggard, and sometimes, when I saw her naked form in the bed in the moonlight, I could swear I saw her ribs through her translucent skin. Her sadness was going to devour her, and there was nothing I could do about it. One day I came home and she wasn't there,

and I looked for her everywhere. I don't know how I knew it, but somehow I knew she'd be at the cabin. I jumped into my car and sped there at full speed, not caring how many fines I would have to pay. I got there just before dark and I caught side of her. She was naked, her back to me facing the forest. Sam! I called her name as I got out of the car. She didn't turn to look at me. Instead she stood there, her messy red hair lifted by the breeze. I called to her again a deep sense of unease in my bones. Sam! Slowly she turned to face me.

And that was when I saw her face, a skull, a distended jaw that. opened much, much too wide. That was when she let out an ear-piercing scream. A sharp pain burst through my head, and I immediately clapped my hands over my ears. I tried screaming my wife's name again, but all I could hear was the shriek that was starting to feel like someone was knifing my brain. My vision swam, and I stumbled backward. A dozen figures had approached from the woods. All of them was skull-like faces, impossibly distended jaws, and the same milk-white eyes that had replaced my wife's bright green ones. And they were all walking towards me. I didn't even think. I got into my car and started the engine. My ears bleeding from the sound of the

scream. I ran. Two days later, I'm couch surfing at a friend's after the doctors had dealt with one perforated ear drum. He told me I was lucky both my eardrums had him burst from the volume I was listening to music at. I just nodded and let them go on with it. There was a ringing in my ears I couldn't quite get rid of no matter how I tried. There was no way I could explain what I had happened in those woods to them. I'm waiting for the ringing and the headache to stop before I go looking for Sam again. This time I will take a gun. I'll find her and bring her home. I've already spoken to the police, but I know they just aren't as motivated to find her as me. My phone rings and I gingerly held it to my good ear. It's a

collect call from the prison. I accept it because who else could possibly give me answers. It happened, didn't it? My father-in-law's gruff voice made me nearly dropped the phone. I swallowed hard. Sam's gone, I said numbly. She's gone back where she belongs, he said. You're lucky. How am I lucky, I asked, bitter anger surging through me. She was my wife and your daughter.

That thing was no daughter nor a wife. He knows how to mimic being human. Why do you think I told you that story? His voice was low and even. My jaw dropped. Was he really suggesting he was the boy from the dark fairy tale he was told? You're cruel, disowning your daughter, trying to kill me. You should listen to me, boy, and listen good.

That creature was dropped at my doorstep a few months after I came home from the forest. It was an infant. Then it butchered my parents. I found pieces of them around their cabin for years, then proceeded to kill everyone related to me. It wouldn't let me die or kill me. And I couldn't figure out why until I realized it needed me, the way a parisor could. side needs its host. Finally, when everyone I loved was dead and buried, it needed more prey,

and it found you. I'll take pieces of you, then keep you alive to take pieces of everyone you love. It will feed on your pain as you live through your own horror show. I swallowed hard. He had lost his damned mind surely. What on earth was he trying to say? If I were you, I would take all my belongings and leave. Leave the state. Hell. the country. Don't ever look back. You hear me? Ever. With a sharp click, he hung up. I wish I'd listened to him. I wish I had decided that I needed to rescue my wife at any cost. Instead, I am sitting here in the dark, inside the old cabin looking outside the window. My fingers folded around the hunting rifle. A sickle moon gleamed silver, the only light in the jet

black night. And there inside the darkness, I think I see. see a figure shimmer. From a distance, she almost looks like my wife. Almost. Until her inhuman skeletal jaw distends. And she screams. I inherited my grandmother's lakeside house, but she never properly warned me. My grandmother, when she was alive, lived on an old farm on the side of a hill in a remote village in northern Sweden, right next to a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains. Whenever we were there, we would spend all day swimming or fishing for perch and crayfish. Grandmother was, however, always very assertive that we must never get out on the lake during the night, though she never gave us any reason.

I always assumed she was worried that something would happen while no one was around to help. Of course, time passes, and last year, so did my grandmother. My grandfather died when I was very young, so my grandmother's passing left the house empty, and neither my mother nor any of her siblings were interested in moving out to the middle of nowhere. I, on the other hand, work remotely most of the time. And even though I don't really expect to work the land, the solitude sounded quite appealing. Along with the old house itself, I inherited furniture, a tractor, some old farming equipment, and, of course, the small wooden rowing boat we would use when we were revisiting.

I have a single neighbor, a strange old man named Lennar, who lives in a small cottage further up the hill across the road from me. He mostly likes to keep to himself, but I have offered to let him use the boat if he wants to do some fishing, and to help out with clearing snow during the winter. One night after I had settled in and was mostly unpacked, I stood by the window in my bedroom looking out over the lake. The moon was peeking out over the mountain opposite and cast a beautiful glow on the still water. Suddenly, I was reminded of my grandmother's warnings not to go out on the lake during the night. Curiosity got the better of me, and I made my way down to the boathouse.

As I made my way down to the lake, I heard footsteps and a voice calling out behind me. startled I turned around to see Lenart he seemed flustered and asked me almost accusingly why I was going down to the boat house at this hour confused and a little annoyed at his sudden intrusion I told him that I felt like taking the boat out for a little midnight trip since this was such a beautiful night he insisted that going out on the lake during the night was unsafe have my grandmother not warned me in hindsight I feel extremely childish about this but his insistence just made me more motivated I told him that I was fully aware of the risk of taking a boat out of night, but that I was a grown adult and capable of making my own decisions. Lenard grumbled, and I could tell that he was very agitated. But he relented, and with a grunt and a dismissive wave, started making his way back up the hill. I pushed my boat out on the

water and jumped in. The water was very still, and the combination of the moonlight and almost complete absence of any sounds made from an incredibly soothing experience. I settled around the middle of the lake, perhaps 300 meters from the shore. At this point, I could see most of the houses in the village in the neighboring village, looking over towards my house. I suddenly realized that Leonard's cottage was entirely dark. He usually had some lights on it in the windows, so that was certainly odd, but I could only assume that he had blown a fuse. Around me, the stillness of the water was disturbed by bubbles, before I knew it the water was filled with frenzied activity, and with the lurched the boat suddenly started moving back towards the

shore. I was moving significantly faster than my rowing had taken me out into the lake, and I was holding on for dear life. I worried I would crash into the bow house, but I worried I would crashed into the bow house, but would ever push my boat along navigated it safely back to the spot where I would normally keep it moored and it slid softly back onto the land. I stood up, scared and confused, and looked around. Three dark and bloated silhouettes emerged from the water. In the moonlight, they almost look like soldiers and gilly suits, but they clearly wore no diving equipment. They approached swiftly and grabbed me. The creatures smelled vaguely of fish and decayed vegetation, and they spoke in a language I could not comprehend. I managed to make out a single word that was repeated multiple

times. Mermelaglard. They dragged me inside the boathouse. One of them looked me dead in the eyes and covered my mouth as it made me a gargle hushing sound. Its face was clearly not human. With bulging eyes without eyelids, two slits in place of a nose and no visible ears, I realized it was in fact not wearing anything. However, its leathery, dark brown skin seemed to mimic the appearance of decaying leaves. Of course, I was scared nearly out of my mind at this point, but for some reason I didn't attempt to flee. The creature seemed almost as scared as I was, so I complied and kept quiet. They turned off the lights and settled down around me. We waited in there for what felt like an eternity, but was most likely only a couple of minutes. The silence outside was suddenly

broken by a loud splash and the sound of wood splintering. I could hear that something was emerging from the lake, followed by heavy damp footsteps. From what I could tell, it seemed to be moving up the hill as the footsteps were getting more and more distant. As I sat in that boathouse, my senses turned to max by all of the adrenaline coursing through my body. The sounds of breaking glass and splintering wood reached us. Eventually, the footsteps returned, and whatever had come after us out of the lake, made its way back into the water. A couple of minutes later, the three creatures that brought me into the boathouse

quietly exchanged a few words. The one that had hushed me earlier, gestured that I was free to leave, and then they left. I could hear them going back into the water. I fell back against the wall and slid down to the floor as my adrenaline abated, and the fear truly set in. I didn't move from that spot until the following morning. My house looked like a crime scene. The front door, along with its frame, had been torn out of the wall

and lay several meters away on my lawn. Most of my windows and furniture was in pieces, and pools of water dotted the floor throughout the house. Lenard clearly knew more about the creatures that live in the lake. I resented that he hadn't been more forceful and stopping me from going out with the boat. However, logically I knew I wouldn't have believed him if he had started going on about monsters.

What was he supposed to do? Nevertheless, I marched over to his cottage and banged on the door until he eventually opened it. He seemed both surprised and relieved at us standing there, and he offered me a cup of coffee in an explanation. The lake is inhabited by a creature known as Mermaglard and creatures known as the Vitorna. Generally, they live together in peace, but they have very different opinions on us humans. Lenar and my grandmother used to spend time with the Vennorna, and they understood some of their language. Their word for human roughly translates as foolish ones. They say that humanity are not mature, and they mostly settle with observing us.

Mermalegard is an ancient creature that sleeps through the day and hunts her at night. He is resentful of humanity for settling around his lake, eating his fish, and is stirring me the darkness of the night with artificial lights. I still live in my grandmother's old house. Lenard has promised to introduce me to the Vennorna in their own time. I feel an obligation to thank them and to protect others from the Mermaglard. I will never go out in the lake during the night again, but I feel strangely safe to do so during the day. And all right, guys, that wraps up, mysterious Reddit stories.

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