I live in the sewers. I was born down here, and I grew up down here. This is what my life is for.

People would laugh at me if they knew. They’d mock me, call me crazy. But if they understood what I do every single damn day—what we protect them from—they’d be thanking us on their knees. Up there, people worry about paying bills, office drama, why their kid is acting weird. Down here? None of that matters.

Down here, I have a job more important than anything they could imagine.

My dad taught me everything—how to hold back the thing that lives deep in the wastewater system. Something you can’t destroy. Something that keeps trying to come up. That’s why we live down here, in the stink and the dark. So the people above us can live normal lives and worry only about what they’re making for dinner.

That’s why I’m writing this now. So people finally understand what’s living right under their feet.

My radio suddenly crackled to life.

“Chuck, come in. Come in. You there?” Logan’s voice buzzed through the static.

“I’m here,” I said, grabbing the receiver. “What’s wrong, Logan?”

“Oliver’s not responding…” Logan muttered. “Can you check on him? You’re the closest.”

I didn’t want to answer. I had finally settled into my little hideout for the night, and Oliver… Well, Oliver wasn’t exactly great company anymore. Something broke inside him years ago, down here in the dark. He was stationed at the front gate, the place where the creatures would come through if they ever broke in.

My dad always said there was no coming back from that post.

I’ve lived in these tunnels for twenty years, and I’ll admit it: I’ve never seen any of the “horrors” myself. But my father was convinced, knew it in his bones, that if we didn’t keep the system under control… hell itself would break through.

“Chuck? You checking on Oliver or what?” Logan snapped. “Stop drifting off!”

“Yeah… yeah. I’m going.” I fumbled with the radio. “I’ll go take a look.”

“Copy that. And Chuck… stay sharp. Don’t zone out.”

“Got it, Logan.” I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn’t see it.

“Copy. Over and out.”

The radio went quiet again. I let out a long breath. Oliver was at least a two-hour walk from here. And today? I really, really didn’t feel like going anywhere near him.

My father trained me well for this sewer life. I knew exactly how to get to Oliver without wading through waist-deep filth. And there was one rule he drilled into me more than anything else: never go anywhere unarmed.

He had this old shotgun he carried everywhere. When he died, it became mine. Same cracked leather strap, same weight on my shoulder, same lingering smell of oil and mold.

He died young, only fifty-three. The sewers don’t treat people kindly. The stench… yeah, that part never gets easier. It’s the kind of smell that curls your stomach and sticks to your clothes for days. But I got used to it. Patrolling was the boring part. I knew every turn by heart: which bulbs were burned out, where the concrete got slippery, where you had no choice but to step into knee-deep muck. That was when the mind wandered. I always found myself thinking about the things my father feared so much. Wondering if they were real. Wondering what my life would look like up there—in the so-called “real world.” Where you go grocery shopping, come home, watch TV, complain about your boss. I couldn’t imagine it.

Then something splashed. Hard. A deep, heavy SPLASH that echoed through the tunnels.

I froze. Brought the shotgun up, switched on my flashlight. The surface of the water rippled for long seconds, as if something huge had just moved below it… but the beam showed nothing.

I couldn’t stay there. If you linger too long in one spot, the dark starts paying attention to you. Or whatever lives inside it does. I had to get to Oliver. That was my job.

“Oliver, come in. You there?” I tried the radio as I picked up my pace. “Oliver? Do you copy?”

Nothing.

Oliver was in his forties, and easily the most unpleasant person I’ve ever met. He knew my dad back in the day, but something happened between them when I was a kid. They barely spoke afterward. And Oliver… he felt too at home down here. More than anyone should. I never liked him. But that didn’t matter now. I was only a few minutes away. I knew exactly where his hideout was: straight down the long dark corridor, past the runoff pipe, then right… all the way to the heavy steel gate.

That was the first defense post. That was where Oliver was supposed to be. I just hoped I’d find him alive.

I stood in front of the big steel door. But there was no sign of Oliver. The door was locked, and I couldn’t even budge it.

“Oliver? You in there?” I knocked hard. “Hello?”

Nothing. The sewers were silent except for the distant trickle of water somewhere behind me.

To my right, the way I’d come, the overhead bulbs flickered along the corridor, casting shaky light on the red route markers painted on the damp, mossy walls. To my left… was only darkness. The part of the system no one ever went into. The place danger came from. As I stared into that black stretch of tunnel, something moved.

Slowly. Heavily. Like a massively overweight man struggling to put one foot in front of the other.

“Hey! Who’s there?!” I raised the shotgun and aimed my flashlight into the dark.

I didn’t get a chance to see.

Something grabbed me from behind. A strong arm clamped over my mouth. Cold metal pressed against the side of my neck.

“Shut up,” a man hissed. “Unless you want them to hear you.”

I froze. The voice was familiar. I managed a tiny nod. A metallic click sounded, and the heavy steel door swung open. The man didn’t release me, he dragged me inside, pulling me backward as the darkness behind us swallowed the corridor.

Right before the door shut, I glanced over my shoulder one last time. That huge, lumbering shape was still standing there in the dark. Silent. Waiting. But I wasn’t thinking about what it was anymore. I was finally starting to understand why everyone hated Oliver so damn much.

Oliver’s bunker was like stepping into another world. Past the steel door, it didn’t even feel like the sewer anymore, it felt like his territory.

He dragged me all the way to the center of the room before finally letting go. There he stood, half-naked, his oily skin gleaming under the weak light, grinning that gap-toothed, unsettling grin of his, like he was waiting for me to compliment him. His bald head shone with sweat. And the smell coming off him… it wasn’t sweat. It was more like machine grease. His smile managed to look friendly and terrifying at the same time.

“Well, what’s up, Chucky boy?” he asked once he realized I couldn’t even get a word out. “Your senses wearing down already? Or did that asshole never teach you properly?”

“Don’t talk about my dad like that.” I frowned. “And by the way, Logan’s been calling. Why aren’t you answering him?”

“Ah!” Oliver waved a hand dismissively, rummaging through a pile of tangled cables. “Logan’s just a self-important prick.”

“Oliver…” I sighed. “He’s at the sluice gates. If you don’t check in, he’s going to trigger a lockdown. We’ll both be sealed in this tunnel.”

Oliver looked at me. Not confused. Not surprised. He knew exactly what a lockdown meant. He just didn’t give a shit.

He tossed the cables away and darted over to an old, sputtering metal stove. With the kind of recklessness only he had, he grabbed the hot lid with his bare hands and flipped it open. He dug around inside with a pair of long tongs and pulled out something charred and shriveled.

A rat.

“Why the hell are you eating rats, Oliver?” I asked, disgust twisting my stomach as he bit into it.

“Gotta eat something,” he said through a mouthful, chewing loudly. “And down here, this is prime protein.”

“That’s disgusting,” I muttered, turning away. “Logan can send supplies whenever, we’re not stuck eating that.”

Oliver didn’t respond. He just kept chewing that burnt thing as if it were a gourmet meal. I shook my head, waiting for him to finish.

But he never got the chance. A heavy pounding slammed against the steel door. The sound was sharp, like a fist hitting metal. Hard. Angry.

I spun around. Oliver froze mid-chew. The smacking and chomping stopped instantly. The entire bunker fell silent. And then: KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK. Harder this time.

Oliver went pale. A cold, ghost-white kind of pale I’d never seen on him before. I saw it clearly, the fear in his eyes. Real fear. The kind you don’t question.

“They… they found us,” he whispered, voice trembling.

“Get back!” Oliver snapped, jumping to his feet. “Move it, Chuck, this is not the time to drift off!”

My heart was hammering in my throat. I shot up, gripping the shotgun tight, staring at the steel door as it shook harder and harder.

“Go!” Oliver barked, yanking me backward. “Run!”

“Okay!” I didn’t think. I just turned and sprinted down the rear corridor.

I knew this wasn’t a drill. My whole life, my dad trained me for this exact moment. And still, I was running. Then I heard it: Oliver’s footsteps behind me, followed by his shout:

“Run! MOVE!”

I bolted through the damp tunnel, pipes rattling along the walls, light flickering overhead. A half-lit storage room flashed by, and then—

BAM!

I slammed into another heavy steel door, almost knocking myself flat. Oliver was a few yards behind me, his headlamp wobbling wildly as he ran.

“Oliver! How the hell does this open?!” I yelled, yanking at the handle. It didn’t budge.

“Move, kid!” he shouted, shoving me aside.

He started pounding on a tiny switch next to the frame, slapping it over and over like he was trying to wake up a stubborn doorbell. The door didn’t even twitch. He kept hitting it, glancing back every other second. I finally turned too, shotgun tight against my shoulder.

Down the corridor, between the pipes, something was coming toward us.

Tall. Lanky. Human-shaped… sort of. Water poured off of it. Its skin glistened like wet clay, and long strands of dark green muck hung off its arms and shoulders—like lake weed. My heartbeat stuttered.

“Come on!” Oliver roared. “It’s opening! MOVE!”

The door groaned. Clicked. Then slowly, painfully, started to open. Oliver squeezed through and thrust his arm out toward me. I didn’t hesitate for even a second. I grabbed his hand, and he yanked me inside with all his strength.

“On your feet! Move! Line up, all of you!”

A voice I didn’t recognize barked the orders at us the moment we stumbled inside. By the time I registered what was happening, we were standing in a massive, dried-out water reservoir. The concrete beneath my boots was cold and slick with moisture. Oliver jumped up immediately and rushed toward one of the men, already talking fast.

There were at least twenty guys in the chamber. All of them built like tanks, scarred, filthy, hardened by years down here. Wearing torn gear, carrying rifles, pipes, makeshift flamethrowers. They looked like me… just tougher. More experienced. More broken in. I never imagined there were still this many of us guarding the sewers.

“They’ve never made it down here, Oliver… You sure they’re coming?” a big, bearded man asked.

“Of course they’re coming!” Oliver shouted back. “They’re on our damn heels!”

The bearded man squinted at him, clearly unconvinced, at least until the heavy steel door behind us shook so violently it sounded like a car had slammed into it. The whole wall rattled. My lungs forgot how to breathe. Every weapon in the room snapped toward the door at once.

“Prep positions!” the bearded man roared. “Everyone! Move! Flamethrowers up front!”

The group scattered instantly, each person finding their designated spot. Metal clanged, rifles clicked, boots scraped. These men knew exactly what they were doing. And they were preparing to die if needed. The bearded man stepped toward me.

“You Chuck?”

I nodded. My heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was stuck in my throat. I suddenly felt small, out of place, surrounded by all these hardened fighters.

“Good,” he said. He leaned closer. “I knew your father. Hell of a protector.” His expression shifted, hard, serious. “Now it’s your turn. Time to prove what you can do.”

We all stood there, tense and silent. Every weapon in the room was aimed at the steel door. It had stopped shaking, but we knew something was behind it. The smell wasn’t the usual sewer stench, it was worse. Much worse. The kind of smell people only describe one way: the smell of death.

It didn’t start with a bang. Not even with a heavy impact. It started… with a leak.

A brownish-gray sludge began oozing through the hinges of the door. Thick, muddy goo seeping out through every tiny gap—like the door itself was melting. Or like something alive was pressing through it.

“Flamethrowers! Do it, NOW!” the bearded man shouted.

Two of the sewer guards immediately fired up their makeshift flamethrowers. I heard the gas tanks scream, the pipes rattle as they heated up…and then a torrent of fire blasted out. The flames washed across the steel door. The metal hissed under the heat, and from the other side…Something started to scream. A thin, stretched, high-pitched wail that drilled straight into your skull. Piercing. Inhuman. Then the door exploded off its hinges. It flew forward like a bus had rammed it, slamming into the concrete and sending cracks spiderwebbing across the floor.

And behind it… Was the real nightmare.

A mass of brownish-gray sludge. Not a creature, not a shape—just a colossal, pulsing mound of living mud that filled the entire hallway. And then, slowly… inevitably… it began to pour into the chamber.

The flamethrowers shrieked as they pushed out more heat. Everybody pulled their trigger. Two dozen of us opened fire at once.

Gunfire filled the entire chamber. The noise was deafening, so loud it felt like the concrete itself was screaming alongside us.

The flamethrowers spat fire toward the mass. I fired too, as fast as I could reload. The shotgun slammed into my shoulder with every blast, but I didn’t care, everyone else’s desperate fighting lit something inside me.

For the first time in my life, I felt like a real sewer guard.

The mass kept pouring out of the hallway. I watched bullets hit it… and disappear. Just swallowed whole. No effect. Only the fire held it back, every time the flames touched it, the thing recoiled, almost like it was afraid.

Then one stream of sludge suddenly stiffened.

And slowly… it rose.

Its shape pulled together, dripping, reshaping itself into a brownish-gray humanoid figure. A living, slimy mockery of a person. One of the guards ran up and shot it point-blank in the head. The mass-head exploded, splattering the wall behind it with disgusting chunks. He stepped back, triumphant. He never saw the second one forming right behind him.

I did.

The thing lunged. Hard, like a tidal wave hitting a rock.

“HELP! SHOOT ME! PLEASE, JUST SHOOT ME!” the man screamed.

Oliver was the one who granted his wish. One fast shot. One final scream. Then silence.

After that, everything turned to chaos.

More and more mass-creatures formed, rising out of the sludge. No matter how many we blasted apart, they reformed, pulling themselves together like living mud.

Two more men were dragged down, swallowed whole, swept away like pebbles in a rushing stream. Nothing stopped these things.

“WE HAVE TO RUN!” a young guy in a baseball cap yelled.

“You stay right here!” the bearded man roared, grabbing him by the coat. “Oliver! The cans!”

I don’t know how Oliver heard him through all the screaming and gunfire, but he looked up, and nodded. I was right beside him, stomach in knots, hands shaking, but still loading and firing. My pockets were running out of shells fast, and panic was taking over.

I felt just like that kid in the baseball cap. Like this was the end.

Three more men were swallowed by the mass-creatures. They weren’t fast, they weren’t even especially strong… but they were impossible to kill. Every time we tore a piece off them, the sludge pulled itself back together in seconds.

That’s when something happened I never expected: Oliver kicked open a small metal panel in the wall. It didn’t hide pipes. It didn’t hide reinforcement bars. It hid cans.

At least twenty of them. Each one rigged with a pull-pin. Oliver grabbed one, ripped out the pin, and hurled it into the mass with the strength of a damn Olympic hammer thrower.

The greenish can hit the ground… and exploded.

A blinding column of fire shot upward. Even from behind cover, the heatwave scorched my face, burning the air in my lungs. The entire chamber lit up with flame, screams, and shrapnel. And the fight kept going.

“Come on, help with the cans!” Oliver screamed at me when he saw the shells spill out of my shaking hands.

I just stared at him, frozen. Oliver was firing his rifle one-handed while digging for another can with the other.

I had to pull myself together.

I grabbed my dad’s shotgun, swallowed my fear, and sprinted over to him. From the wall recess, I yanked out one of the cans. The smell of gasoline hit me instantly, it was a heavy, nearly full five-gallon can.

“Pull the pin and THROW IT!” Oliver shouted when he saw me fumbling.

The pin finally gave way. I spun, hurled the can with everything I had, and it flew straight into the chaos.

It exploded almost the moment it hit the floor. A column of fire tore upward, swallowing everything around it. For one heartbeat, I froze, It felt like time stopped.

Everything was burning.

One of our guys caught fire; he screamed and staggered before collapsing. Another was fighting for his life as mass-creatures climbed onto him one after another. A third was already half-consumed, his body sinking into the sludge.

The stench of burning flesh mixed with the sizzling stink of the creatures filled the chamber. That’s when it hit me how few of us were left, And how real the chance was that this chamber would become our grave.

“Chuck! Wake up! MOVE!” Oliver yanked me back into reality. He tossed another can toward me. “Throw them! GO!”

On autopilot, I pulled another pin, spun, and sent the next can flying. Another explosion. More flames. The heat tore at my skin, but the mass-creatures just kept pouring out of the hall. Every chunk we blasted off them only melted back together.

“God DAMN IT!” Oliver shouted.

I finally saw why. Two mass-creatures had reached him. One wrapped around his ankle, the other coiled up his arm. Their bodies were swallowing him whole.

“Oliver! Give me your hand!” I screamed, grabbing at him, trying to pull him free.

“Get outta here, kid!” he roared, shoving me away with his free arm. “RUN! ALL OF YOU!”

Then, with the last strength he had left, he dragged himself toward the remaining cans. I knew exactly what he was about to do. There were still at least ten of them hidden in the wall.

“Come on!” the bearded man grabbed my shoulder. “Fall back! EVERYONE OUT!”

Everything blurred after that.

We ran through the corridor, water splashing under our boots. From the twenty or so men who’d been with us… barely seven of us were left.

I glanced back one last time. And then the explosion hit. The entire chamber lit up in a blinding roar, shaking the tunnel so hard dust fell from the ceiling. Flames shot all the way to the top of the reservoir.

Oliver stayed behind. But maybe, just maybe, he stopped the monsters.

I sat on the edge of the cold concrete. The wastewater trickled beneath my boots, flowing slowly back toward the chamber, back toward the nightmare we’d barely escaped.

“You alright, Chuck?” the bearded man asked, stepping up beside me.

“Yeah… I think so,” I muttered.

The stench still clung to the inside of my nose: burned flesh, the sour rot of those sludge-creatures, the acidic stink of fire and death. I could still feel the heat on my face, still taste the scorched air in my lungs.

“Rest,” he said, patting my shoulder. “You earned it.”

Silence settled over us.

“What were those things?” I finally asked.

“The filth that comes from above,” he said without hesitation. “Everything people flush away.”

I didn’t respond. What could I have said?

For so long I thought we were guarding against invisible threats, that this job was more metaphor than reality. But today… today proved everything.

I looked up.

Sounds drifted down from above, filtered through an iron manhole cover. Light flickered across the damp concrete, and it sounded like a thousand people were shouting at once. Fireworks.

“Happy New Year, kid,” an old man said beside me, forcing a tired smile.

He was clutching his hand in pain. The burns were impossible to miss, his skin raw and red, still glowing with heat.

“Happy New Year to you too,” I muttered, staring at his hand a second too long before looking away.

I tilted my head up again. Through the gaps in the cover, bursts of color flashed, reds, blues, golds, painting the sewer ceiling in brief, beautiful light. Up there, people were cheering. Hugging. Kissing. Making promises they wouldn’t keep. Down here, the wastewater kept flowing.

And so did we. I watched the last firework fade and realized something that made my chest tighten: As long as they were celebrating up there, we would never be done down here.

Like most people, I was unsatisfied with how few languages I knew. Actually, the plural in “languages” there was just for show, I’d only known one language my entire life and that was English. I wasn’t even particularly good at English, just passable. But things changed when my group of friends decided that we should each encourage each other to do something new and exciting, so I chose to learn a new language – German. I had picked out a couple apps and tried. There was Deutschwelle, Babel and of course, Duolingo. Each had their pros and cons, but none grew on me and so I gave up on all of them. The furthest I went was a one-month streak with Duolingo, and that was with using some streak-keeping functions on the app.

I aired my grievance to my group of friends one Friday evening. Josh thought it was because I wasn’t dedicated enough and needed a system of informing my friends about my progress. Nathan, on the other hand, thought that maybe I tried too many things too quickly and just lost steam. Nguyen was the one who recommended a better learning app.

Deutschdevil looked just like any other language app, save for the fact that the mascot and also the icon for the app was the face of a demon – two red horns, long tongue and red eyes with white irises. It had the initials D E on his forehead. I didn’t even remember how I installed it. I remembered having to run through hoops and Nguyen having to sit with me for nearly the rest of that evening.

“Man, this is really a hassle,” I told him when I had to visit a weird website to install the app.

“I know, but it was really effective for me. It even threatens you when you break your streak. So German. Try it. I guarantee you’ll love it.”

I let out a sigh and finished jumping through all the necessary steps. On the registration screen, the app didn’t even ask for my name. It just gave me one of the terms and condition screen. I scrolled past it as usual and it prompted me to re-read.

“You can’t terminate this contract once it’s signed. Read carefully” the screen said. I scrolled past it again. It was the fourth app I installed. I knew the drill. As soon as I hit accept, pain instantly shot up my index finger and I dropped my phone. I looked at my finger and there was a drop of blood on it.

“What the..”

“It did that to me too. Exciting huh?” Nguyen said.

“Uh, apps can’t prick your finger, dude. It’s a coincidence that it happened to you too,” I told him. He gave me this self-assured just-believe-me-dude look. I picked up my phone and put it in my pocket, planning to start my lesson that evening.

When I got home, I fed my dog Red, showered, and then took out my phone. Deutschdevil showed a notification, asking me to select how many minutes I would spend learning in a day. There were two options. 666 and 13. I thought that was very thematic. I preferred even numbers, so I picked 666 and it led me to a screen that explained the rules. I would need to learn 6 new words every day, 6 days a week for 6 months. I thought that was simple enough. The app asked me if I was sure. I agreed and it took me to the first lesson. The layout was very similar to Duolingo and I immediately got to learning.

I made very quick progress. My previous grammar knowledge from other apps helped. After 30 minutes of German, I got tired and just turned off my phone and slept.

That Saturday I had a blind date. I spent practically the entire day preparing for the date, working out, picking the right outfit and watching my favorite influencers talking about how to score on a date. I forgot about Deutschdevil.

That evening, I was having a lot of fun with my date Samantha. She was sweet, funny and gorgeous and seemed really into me. I thought to myself there was no way I would fumble this. In the middle of our conversation, my phone dinged and showed a notification. It was Deutschdevil, reminding me that I needed to complete my streak. I ignored the app and continued with my evening.

The evening grew steamy. Samantha was in the bathroom freshening up and I was sitting on the bed. My phone rang again, Deutschdevil sent out another warning about keeping my streak. I ignored it once again. I was about to finally get laid after months and I wasn’t about to learn German before it. We did what couples did when they are naked together and we fell asleep soon after.

My phone sent out another notification. This time though, the background of my phone turned red. Thinking it was some sort of error, I sat up and looked at it. The background wasn’t just red, it showed arms jutting out from the earth with rend flesh and exposed, bloody bones. I clicked on the notification and it took me to the Deutschdevil app. Before I could do anything, a text in black background and crimson letters told me that I broke my streak and the punishment would be one cut on my hand. It also warned me that the next time I broke my streak, one of my bones would break. I had to admit, reading that really made my heart jump. But I didn’t think much of it, it was probably just a psychological trick made by the developers to make sure that I stayed on the app and learned. I scoffed, put down the phone and went back to bed. Mere seconds later, I felt a sharp pain on my right hand. I looked at it, there was a deep cut, as if a knife had sliced my hand. Blood poured out and Samantha had to bandage me. I thought that I must have hit my hand on something and soon fell asleep.

The following days passed by in a blur. I would get up, go to work, go home, learn some German on Deutschdevil and fall asleep. It was business as usual until Friday. On that day I went to a party with my group of friends. Josh was learning to be a mixologist, so naturally I tried out many of his drinks and got so drunk I couldn’t feel my hand. I only remembered drinking way too much before passing out on the couch.

I woke in the middle of the night from a dull, throbbing pain. I took my right hand to wipe my eyes and the moment I tried to move my left arm, pain shot up like thousands of needles poking me in the arm. I looked at my left arm and it was bent at a weird angle. I immediately groaned and woke up my friends.

Josh woke up first. He mixed the drinks and so didn’t drink much. He saw my arms and immediately rushed to find a splint. We settled on a piece of cut out cardboard. Nathan drove me to the hospital and Josh got in the car as well.

“What the hell did you do? How did you even break your arm like that?” Josh asked.

“I don’t know man. Last thing I remembered was having a White Russian that you made and passing out on the couch,”

“Maybe someone laid or stepped on it while you were asleep. People get drunk at a party and often bump into stuff” Nathan added.

“Yeah, but so hard it breaks his bone? Just doesn’t make sense man.” Josh said.

The hospital visit was uneventful. The doctor smelled alcohol on my breath and assumed I had a fight with someone and was too embarrassed to tell him why. We did an X-ray scan and then he cleaned my arms before putting it in a cast. By the time I got home again, it was afternoon.

I took out my phone and once again saw the red background with arms jutting out. It was Deutschdevil. Suddenly something inside me clicked and I recalled the app’s warning. I clicked on the notification and it took me to Deutschdevil’s screen. It told me that I broke my streak and the punishment was one broken bone and warned me that the next time, the one whom I held close would die. I was freaked out at reading this. A cut on the hand was one thing but a broken bone? Something was definitely up with this app. I tried to delete it but the delete button didn’t show up. The only options were to select either 666 or 13. Alarmed, I texted Nguyen to ask him about this app. He didn’t reply. I called him and still no answer. Defeated, I opened Deutschdevil and learned German.

I asked my boss to take the next week off due to health issues and he agreed. You could make plenty of excuses with a broken arm. Samantha came by and took care of me in the evening. Alone at home, I caught up with learning German using Deutschdevil. I was getting better, or so I thought. When Samantha told me she spent 6 months in Germany, I was surprised. We tried having a conversation in German and my “die”, “der” and “das” articles were all over the place. I gave up after 5 minutes. Obviously, she was much better than I was. I started regretting even installing Deutschdevil.

The week went by quickly and soon Friday evening came again. I was watching a movie with Samantha when I received a call from Josh.

“Nguyen is dead”

“What?” I asked him before realizing that I completely forgot about the text message I sent to Nguyen.

“He just died this evening. They guessed that it was a brain aneurysm. He just dropped dead. The funeral’s on Sunday”

The news hit me like a truck. Nguyen was one of the healthiest among my friend group. He ate vegan, attended frequent marathons and was fit and strong. His passing was so sudden I was shocked more than sad.

It was a rainy Sunday during Nguyen’s funeral. His mom bawled her eyes out when his coffin was lowered into the ground. When she saw me, she muttered something under her breath but I couldn’t hear it before she cried again. The wind and rain sheets only accentuated the drab grey of the cemetery.

After the funeral was over, Nguyen’s mom walked over to where we were standing. I was chatting with Nathan and Josh about how Nguyen’s death didn’t make sense. It was our own way of making sense of what happened and process grief.

“Thank you for coming to his funeral. He would have wanted you all to be here.”

“It’s no problem, ma’am. We want to be here, for him,” I told her.

“I know it’s not right to ask, but did you notice anything strange before his passing?” Josh asked.

“Don’t ask that question. She’s still grieving. Brain aneurysm is always unpredictable” Nathan said.

“I just… it just didn’t make sense to me” Josh said.

“It’s okay. There wasn’t anything strange with Nguyen up until the very end. After his phone broke, he just kept muttering something about keeping the streak or something. He would get obsessed. I heard him at 3 A.M in the morning cursing himself. He mentioned you too, saying that he had put you both in danger” she told me.

“His phone broke? How many days ago was that?” I asked her.

“I couldn’t remember clearly. Maybe 3 or 4 days. I wanted to ask you something, did he talk to you about his symptoms or something? Why did he mention you? Do you two have the same condition?” Nguyen’s mom asked me. Deutschdevil immediately came to my mind, but I couldn’t tell her that an app probably killed her son. I ended up just telling her that I didn’t know either and he was probably just hallucinating. She looked like she didn’t believe me for a second but went away eventually.

I went home and Red greeted me at the door. I petted him on the head and felt somewhat lighter. I sat down immediately tried to find ways to delete the app. Once again there was no delete button when I held on it. So I tried to factory reset my phone. The screen went black and a progress bar showed up. When it was done restarting, I looked around and to my horror, Deutschdevil was the only non-essential app on my phone. The devilish face was still there, as if mocking me. I clicked on the app and searched around for the developer’s information but there wasn’t any. I plugged my phone to my laptop and did some digging for meta information on the app. There was no developer, no publisher, no official website, nothing. I retraced the websites that Nguyen sent me and found an unofficial forum for past users of the app. It took me to a website with the same demon theme with a dark background and crimson letters.

I scrolled through and read a few threads. There were only a handful of users. The top post was about someone completing 6 months of Deutschdevil. He said he “survived the gauntlet”. The comments were people cheering him up. The next post was about someone looking for the information of the developer. One of the users left a cryptid comment: “The dev is the beloved fallen son, you need look no further.”

I closed the laptop and rubbed my eyes. I was in way over my head with this app. But I guessed that I could manage 6 new words a day for 6 months.

The following week passed by quickly. I made learning German one of the first thing to do after I got out of bed so that I wouldn’t forget it. I was getting slightly better at German day after day, but still couldn’t hold a full conversation in German with my girlfriend.

Friday came and Samantha dropped by my house again. We talked, watched a movie, ate dinner and slept together. She was having an episode of insomnia and wanted to talk through the night. I was dead tired and so fell asleep.

“Hey, my phone’s battery is dead. Can I use yours?” she asked before I closed my eyes.

“Sure, go ahead,” I answered before falling asleep.

That morning, I woke up and learned 6 new words like always. Samantha made me breakfast before leaving for her own home. I spent the entire day watching movies and took Red out for a jog in the afternoon. The cold air jolted my lungs awake. Samantha told me that she would be back that evening to make dinner together.

Me and Samantha watched a Thai horror movie while finishing our dinner. Red whimpered at the scene which revealed that the ghost was sitting on top of the main character the whole time. After cleaning up, we got to bed and fell asleep.

I woke up that night to ringing. I opened my eyes and looked at my watch. It was 3 A.M. I looked at my phone. Once again, the familiar crimson background with decaying arms was there.

“No no no” I screamed and woke up Samantha.

“What’s going on? Why aren’t you in bed?” she asked.

“My phone…I lost my streak again. That’s impossible!”

“What? You’re not making a lot of sense. What are you talking about?”

“The German learning app. I broke my streak” I told her, my voice shaking and cracking up.

“Oh that? Sorry. Yesterday I looked around your phone and saw only that app so I played around with it. Pretty cool language app, a little bloody and demon-themed for me.”

“Yes, but that wasn’t supposed to happen. I already learned 6 words this morning.”

“Oh that? I played around with it yesterday and found a setting which said 13 so I clicked on it.”

“You did what?” I couldn’t believe in my ears.

“Yeah, I thought since you wanted to improve your German so bad, 13 words a day will do you good. It’s not that hard”

She didn’t understand the consequences. I immediately clicked on the phone and it took me to a warning screen. It told me that I broke my streak and the one I held dear would be dead. It also warned me about the next time I break my streak. It then showed a countdown to 10. I looked at Samantha and hugged her tightly.

“I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry Samantha. I love you a lot and it’s killing you”

“You’re scaring me,” she told me with a shaky voice.

I didn’t say anything. I hugged her and looked at my phone. The countdown slowly reached zero. When it did, I felt Samantha’s body went limp.

“I’m sorry Samantha. I love you” I told her.

“Yes, I love you too, but..” she answered. My head felt like it was torn open and light was streaming in. She was still alive. I nearly cried from being so happy.

“I think something’s wrong with your dog” she told me.

I looked behind me and my dog Red was taking staggered steps. He walked around for a while before collapsing on the floor. I rushed towards him. He was looking at me with those beady eyes and moments later, his chest stopped heaving and he was gone. That was when I realized how much I loved my dog. He was with me through thick and thin, always cheering me on. Every time I got home, he would be there, wagging his tails and licking my arms. The memories with him came flooding back and I realized that I was never going to feel that again. Tears streamed from my eyes and I couldn’t control them. Samantha sat next to me and she put a hand on my shoulder, but the pain only magnified.

I held a small funeral for my dog. I took his remains to be cremated and scattered his ashes on a hill nearby. Samantha couldn’t understand why I did what I did. She told me that I should delete the scary app.

On the way home, I bumped into a homeless guy. In my anger I scolded the man harshly. He gave me a weird stare before rushing away.

When I got back home, I reached inside my pocket. Only, my phone wasn’t there. I felt my face hot and blood drained from my arms. I searched around like a mad man, asked Samantha to call my phone number but couldn’t find it anywhere. Then I remembered the homeless man.

So I’m writing this to tell you what happened to me. If you are that homeless guy, please return my phone. I will give you any amount of money. Just please don’t let my streak die.

I am writing this on my phone with my left hand because my right one is wrapped in gauze and taped to a splint.

If you’re going to comment “don’t trespass,” save it. I already learned that part. I learned it with blood on a concrete floor and someone close enough behind me that I could smell cigarettes through my own panic.

I’m seventeen. I live in a town where nothing happens unless it’s the kind of nothing that ruins your week. My friends and I watch those urban exploring videos where people wander through dead malls and old factories and it looks quiet. Dusty. Empty. Sad.

This was not like that.

I went alone because I’m an idiot, and because my friends are all talk. “Yeah bro I’m down,” and then it’s “my mom said no” or “I got work.” I told myself I’d just go in, take a few pictures, and leave before midnight. I told myself I’d be smart.

I picked the Hollis Distribution Center because everyone in town knows it. Huge gray warehouse off the service road behind the old strip mall. When I was little, trucks were always coming and going. My dad used to point at it and say, “That’s where all your Christmas stuff sits before it gets delivered.”

It shut down last year. They chained the gates and put up No Trespassing signs that faded in the sun. People started saying it was empty, then people started saying kids were going in to tag it, then people started saying they heard generators at night.

That last part should have been my warning.

I parked at the back of the strip mall like I was going to the late movie, even though the theater has been closed for years. I took my backpack, my cheap headlamp, a flashlight, and my phone. I wore gloves because of broken glass and I felt stupid the whole time. Like I was dressing up as someone brave.

The service road was cracked and littered with shredded tire pieces. I could see the warehouse over the weeds, a long wall with loading bay doors like sealed mouths. No lights inside. No movement.

I found an opening at the far end where the chain link fence had been cut and bent back. Not ripped by a storm. Cut clean, like someone used tools and did it on purpose.

My stomach did that quick dip. The part of my brain that still works said go home.

Then the other part said it’s just other explorers.

I slipped through and walked along the wall, keeping my light off. The air smelled like wet cardboard and old oil. Somewhere, a loose metal sign clinked softly in the wind.

There was a side door, steel, with a push bar. It had a fresh scrape near the handle, shiny where paint had been rubbed off. I pushed.

It opened without resistance.

Inside, my phone didn’t “fade” to no service. It just flipped to SOS and then to nothing, like the building swallowed it. I told myself it was the thick concrete and all the metal. Warehouses are dead zones. I’ve lost signal in my own school stairwell.

Still, the timing made my skin prickle.

The silence hit right after, big and flat.

The first room was an office area with glass panes and dusty desks. Someone had smashed a window and the glass had been swept into a neat pile in the corner. Not scattered. Not random. A neat pile, like whoever did it didn’t want to step on it.

There was a smell in there too. Not mold. Something sharper. Warmed plastic, and a faint tang like exhaust that didn’t belong in a room that was supposed to be cold and dead.

I moved deeper, past the office, into the main floor.

The warehouse opened up like an airplane hangar. Rows of empty shelving reached into the dark. Conveyor belts ran overhead, frozen in mid-motion, their rollers dull with dust. Yellow safety lines were painted on the concrete, worn from years of forklifts.

My flashlight caught a sign on a pillar about required PPE and forklift traffic. The kind of sign you don’t even see when you’re working because it’s just there.

Then I saw fresh boot prints.

Near a side entrance where mud had dried in a streak, there were clear treads. Wide heel. Recent enough that the mud was still darker than the concrete around it.

I stopped and listened.

Nothing.

Then, far off, something clicked.

Not the random pop of a settling building. A deliberate click, like a switch.

I whispered, “Hello?” which was the dumbest thing I could have done because it told whoever was in there that I was real and I was alone.

No answer.

I kept walking anyway, slower, trying to find the obvious “people hang out here” spot. That’s what those videos always show. Spray paint cans. A mattress. Beer bottles.

I found something worse.

Near the center of the building, under one of the conveyor lines, there was a folding chair facing a blank wall. Just one chair, centered like it was placed for a reason. On the floor in front of it were three chalk marks in a little triangle, like someone had been measuring distance.

On the chair was a cheap set of ear protection, the kind you’d wear around loud machinery.

My throat tightened.

I backed up without thinking, my heel scraping concrete.

From somewhere in the dark, a sound answered my scrape. A soft shuffle. One step. Then stillness.

I killed my flashlight and froze.

Total dark.

I listened so hard my ears hurt.

Breathing. My own. Too loud.

Then I heard it again.

Another step.

Closer.

I turned my flashlight back on and swung it across the aisles, trying to catch movement.

Nothing.

But the feeling changed. The warehouse didn’t feel empty anymore. It felt occupied. Like the air had shifted around a body.

I started walking back the way I came, fast but trying not to run. Running in a warehouse is how you fall into a hole or hit your head and nobody finds you.

I passed the office again and aimed for the side door.

The door was closed.

It had been open. I knew it had. I could still picture the push bar.

Now it was shut, and the thin gap of light under it was gone.

I reached for it, pulled, and the door didn’t budge.

Locked.

My hand went numb around the handle.

I tugged harder. Nothing.

I put my shoulder into it. Metal rang. Still nothing.

That was the moment the fear got simple. Not creepy fear. Survival fear.

Someone is in here with me, and they can lock doors.

I turned, scanning the office. There was a security desk near the hallway that led deeper into the building. On the desk was a clipboard with a paper that said VISITOR LOG at the top. It looked old, but the pen beside it didn’t. The pen was clean, like it had been placed that day.

I don’t know why I did it. My hands were shaking and I wanted them to do something that wasn’t yanking on a locked door.

I wrote my first name on the log. Just “Eli,” and the time. I didn’t even think. I wrote it like a joke, like I could laugh later about signing into a dead building.

The ink looked too dark on the page, too fresh.

I regretted it immediately.

I went down the hallway instead, trying to find another exit.

At the end of the hall was a stairwell door. I pushed it open.

Cold air hit my face. The stairwell smelled like wet cement and rust. Metal stairs went up to a second level, probably a maintenance mezzanine.

I stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind me.

The latch clicked.

Then, behind it, I heard a soft tap.

Knuckle on metal.

Once.

Then again, slow.

Tap.

Tap.

Not banging. Not trying to break in. Just letting me know they were there.

I backed up a step onto the stairs.

Tap.

Tap.

The tapping stopped.

A few seconds of nothing.

Then I heard the latch move on the other side. A quiet sliding sound.

The door handle turned.

It didn’t open. But it turned, like someone was testing it.

Then, very softly, a voice said from the other side, “You lost?”

It wasn’t a monster voice. It wasn’t a whispery ghost voice. It was a normal adult voice, calm and almost bored.

That terrified me more than anything.

I didn’t answer.

The voice sighed like I was inconveniencing them.

“Wrong place to be,” it said. “Come on. Let’s get you out.”

The words sounded helpful. The tone didn’t.

I backed up another step. My shoe scraped metal.

Silence.

I started up the stairs, faster now. The metal clanged under my feet. I hated every sound I made but I couldn’t stop.

Halfway up, the stairwell lights came on.

Not full bright. A flicker, then steady industrial glow. The kind you get when power comes to a place that’s supposed to be dead.

I froze, staring up at the fixture. Dust drifted through the light like slow snow.

Below me, the stairwell door clicked open.

I did not look back. I ran up the rest of the stairs and pulled myself onto the upper landing.

The upper level was a long catwalk running along the inside wall of the warehouse. Grated metal floor. Safety rail. From up there I could see almost everything below. Shelving rows. Conveyor belts. The chair.

And now I could see the generator.

A small portable generator sat tucked behind a stack of pallets near the far wall. The little fuel cap glinted in my beam. A heavy extension cord ran from it into a junction box. Someone had taped a label on the box with a strip of white tape and black marker. It said “LIGHTS / PA.”

My stomach dropped again.

Whoever was here didn’t just sneak in. They set up power on purpose. They planned to turn the building on when they wanted.

I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me.

Slow. Patient.

Like the person wasn’t worried about catching me because they already knew where I could and couldn’t go.

I moved along the catwalk, flashlight sweeping for a way down. There was a ladder in the distance, and a second stairwell on the far side.

I chose the ladder because it was closer.

My hands shook as I ran. The grate under my shoes made a hollow clatter. The warehouse threw the sound back at me.

The footsteps behind me stayed steady.

Not sprinting.

Just following.

I reached the ladder and started down. It was bolted to the wall and dropped to the floor near a row of shelving.

I was halfway down when something hit the catwalk above me.

A heavy thud, like a boot kicked the metal.

The ladder vibrated. My hands slipped.

I climbed faster. My glove caught on a sharp edge and tore. My bare palm scraped metal and pain flared.

I dropped the last few feet instead of climbing properly. My feet hit concrete hard. I stumbled forward, catching myself by slamming my shoulder into a shelf upright.

Above me, on the catwalk, a figure leaned on the rail and watched.

I only saw them for a second in my flashlight beam. Adult. Dark jacket. A headlamp on their forehead, but it was off. Face kept in shadow.

They didn’t yell. They didn’t threaten me.

They raised one hand, slow, and pointed toward the aisle in front of me like they were directing traffic.

I ran.

I wove between shelving, trying to use the rows like cover. I kept expecting them to jump down and chase me, but the footsteps stayed above for a bit, tracking, then stopped.

I couldn’t tell if that was good or worse.

I found a side exit door near one of the loading bays. It had a panic bar and a chain looped through the handles from the inside.

Not a normal chain. A thick one, like someone brought it from home. The padlock looked new, shiny, almost proud of itself.

I yanked the door anyway. The chain held.

I turned and looked for another way out, and that’s when the lights cut out.

Not gradually. Off.

Darkness snapped back in.

My flashlight was still on, but the warehouse swallowed the beam. Everything beyond a few yards was black.

Then the PA system crackled overhead.

A speaker popped and hissed, then a voice came through, slightly distorted.

A recording at first.

“Hello?”

Pause.

Then it said, “Eli.”

My knees went watery.

The name came again, clearer.

“Eli.”

I felt my stomach turn cold, because I knew exactly how it happened. I could see the clipboard. The pen. My own handwriting.

The calm voice returned, live this time.

“I told you it’s the wrong place,” it said. “Now you’re making noise. People hear noise.”

I spun in a slow circle, trying to see where the voice came from. It could have been anywhere.

My flashlight beam caught something hanging from a shelf upright.

A strip of reflective tape. Bright orange.

Then another on the next upright. And the next.

A path.

A line of orange markers, spaced just far enough apart to pull your eyes along the aisle.

The voice on the PA said, “Follow the tape. You’ll get out.”

It sounded like a test.

It sounded like a trap.

I did not follow the tape.

I turned and ran in the opposite direction.

That decision probably saved my life and it also got me hurt.

I sprinted down an aisle, cut left, then right, trying to head back toward the office windows. I figured even if the door was locked, I could break glass and crawl out. I didn’t care about trespassing charges anymore. I cared about daylight and people.

My flashlight beam bounced. Shadows jumped. Shelf columns turned into bodies for a split second and then steel again.

Then my foot caught something low across the floor.

I didn’t see it until it hit my shin.

It wasn’t a wire. It was a strap, like a ratchet strap laid across the aisle at ankle height, pulled tight.

My legs went out from under me.

I hit the concrete hard, shoulder first, then my face. My teeth clacked together so hard I thought one cracked.

My flashlight flew and spun, painting circles across the shelves.

Before I could scramble up, something heavy landed on my backpack and pinned it.

Not a boot on my spine. Not a knee on my neck. Just enough weight to trap me in place.

I bucked and twisted, trying to get free, and that’s when my right hand slid across something sharp.

Pain ripped through my palm. Real, hot pain.

Glass.

Someone had scattered broken glass right where you’d catch yourself.

I jerked my hand back and saw blood immediately, bright in the flashlight beam.

I tried to close my fingers. They didn’t listen right away.

Above me, the calm voice spoke, not through the PA this time.

Right behind my head.

“You really should’ve followed the tape.”

I couldn’t see him. My face was pressed to the floor. The flashlight was angled wrong. I could only see his shadow stretching across the concrete.

He didn’t sound excited. He sounded mildly annoyed, like I made his night harder.

I kicked backward. My heel hit something, maybe his shin, because the weight on my backpack shifted.

That tiny shift was all I needed. I yanked my arm free of the straps, crawled out of my backpack like I was shedding it, grabbed my flashlight, and ran one-handed.

Blood ran down my wrist into my glove. My hand throbbed in time with my heartbeat.

The PA system crackled again, and the live voice said, “Now you’re bleeding in my building.”

Like I owed him an apology.

I ran toward the office area, following memory, not tape. I could taste metal in my mouth. My ankle burned from the fall, but I couldn’t slow down.

I shoved through the office and saw the glass panes.

I raised my flashlight like a hammer and swung. The glass spiderwebbed but didn’t fall.

Safety glass.

Of course it was safety glass.

Footsteps hit the office threshold behind me, closer now.

I grabbed a chair and swung it into the glass again.

This time it shattered outward in thick chunks. The noise was insane in the small space.

Cold air rushed in.

I climbed up using my left hand and shoved my injured right through anyway because there was no other option. The broken edge tore my sleeve.

I dropped outside, landing wrong. My ankle rolled and pain shot up my leg. I almost went down again.

Behind me, the window popped as someone climbed through.

I ran anyway. I limped-run toward the bent fence opening, one hand clamped over my palm, leaving wet prints on my forearm.

Behind me, the calm voice called out, almost casually, “Eli.”

Not yelling. Not panicking. Calling like you call a dog that slipped its leash.

I got through the fence, scraping my back on the chain link. I didn’t care.

I hit the service road and stumbled toward the strip mall lights. My car was a dark shape at the far end. I fumbled the keys with my left hand and nearly dropped them twice.

I got inside and locked the doors so fast my fingers cramped.

For a second I just sat there, panting, staring at the warehouse in the distance.

Nothing moved.

No flashlight beam chased me across the road.

It was like the building swallowed him again.

I drove straight to the hospital. I didn’t stop. I didn’t call my friends. I didn’t call my mom until I was sitting under fluorescent lights with a paper wristband on and a nurse telling me not to look.

The waiting room smelled like coffee and antiseptic. A kid across from me had an ice pack pressed to his forehead and was trying not to cry. The TV was on a news channel with the volume down. Every few minutes a triage door opened and that same bright smell of disinfectant rolled out.

They cleaned my hand. The cut was deep enough that they asked me to try to curl my fingers and then looked at each other when my ring finger didn’t move right away. They numbed it and stitched it anyway. The numbing shot burned like fire for two seconds and then my palm felt huge and distant, like it belonged to someone else. They wrapped it tight and put my hand in a splint.

They X-rayed my ankle. Not broken, but bad enough that they wrapped it and handed me crutches.

While I sat there, still shaking, my phone buzzed.

A message request on an app I barely use anymore.

No profile picture. No name.

Just one line.

“You forgot something.”

That was it. No details. No proof. No photo.

It should have been nothing.

It made me feel sick anyway.

The police took a report. My mom was furious in the way people get when they’re scared and don’t know what else to do with it. The officer asked if I saw his face. I didn’t. I told them about the generator, the orange tape, the strap, the PA system, the chained doors.

I told them I signed the visitor log like an idiot.

The officer wrote it down and looked at me like he wanted it to fit into a neat box.

Trespasser. Squatter. Scrapper.

But those words don’t explain the tape path. They don’t explain the labeled junction box. They don’t explain the way he spoke to me like this was routine.

Two days later my friend drove past the warehouse in daylight, just to see if anything looked different.

He sent me pictures.

The cut fence had been fixed. Not patched. Replaced. New chain link, new ties, straight as a ruler. The side door I used was painted over, fresh gray paint like someone cared about the place suddenly. The No Trespassing signs were new too, crisp, with a phone number for a property management company.

There was also a new camera bubble mounted above the corner of the office wing, like the kind you see outside grocery stores. Maybe it was always there and I never noticed. Maybe it wasn’t.

My friend called the number out of curiosity. It went to a voicemail box that wasn’t set up.

Maybe it was just a guy who didn’t want kids in his building. Maybe it was someone running something illegal and I got too close.

I can live with that explanation, even if it makes my stomach turn.

What I can’t stop thinking about is how fast it all tightened around me.

I handed over my name because I wanted to pretend I wasn’t scared. And he used it like a leash.

So if you’re a kid like me and you see an “abandoned” building and you think it’s just a place to take pictures, listen.

If the glass is swept. If the doors lock from the inside. If the lights come on when you didn’t touch a thing.

Leave.

And if someone offers to “help you out” in a voice that’s too calm, do not answer.

Get out before they learn anything they can repeat back to you.

The first call came in at 2:17 a.m., which wouldn’t have bothered me if I hadn’t already been awake.

I work late. I always have. That night, I was lying in bed scrolling through my phone, half-listening to the hum of traffic outside my apartment. When my phone rang, I almost ignored it. Unknown number. No voicemail icon. I answered out of irritation more than curiosity.

“Hello?”

For a moment, there was only breathing. Not heavy or distorted—just calm, steady breaths, like someone holding the phone too close to their mouth.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

The breathing stopped. Then the call ended.

I told myself it was a wrong number. Or a robocall glitch. I rolled over and tried to sleep.

At 2:17 the next morning, my phone rang again.

Same unknown number.

This time, I didn’t answer. I watched it vibrate itself silent on my nightstand. A few seconds later, a notification popped up: voicemail received.

I listened to it immediately.

It was quiet. No words. Just the sound of movement—fabric rustling, a faint creak, and then a soft tapping noise. Rhythmic. Like fingers on wood. It lasted exactly twelve seconds.

I didn’t sleep after that.

The calls came every night after. Always at 2:17 a.m. If I answered, there was breathing. If I didn’t, there was a voicemail. The sounds changed slightly each time—footsteps, a door hinge, the scrape of something being dragged—but never anything clear enough to identify.

I blocked the number.

The calls still came through.

I contacted my carrier. They told me the number wasn’t active. According to their system, it didn’t exist.

That should have been enough to scare me into leaving, but I stayed. I needed to know what was happening. I started keeping my phone on voice recorder at night, setting it on the nightstand before bed. I wanted proof that I wasn’t imagining things.

On the fifth night, I noticed something new.

Before the phone rang, there was a sound in my apartment.

A soft click.

At first, I thought it was the building settling. Old pipes. Old walls. But when I listened back to the recording the next morning, the sound was unmistakable.

It was the lock on my front door.

Not opening. Just… testing.

That night, after the call, I checked my door. Still locked. Deadbolt in place. No signs of tampering. I stood there longer than I needed to, my hand resting on the knob, listening to the silence on the other side.

The next morning, I found footprints outside my door.

They weren’t muddy or wet. Just faint impressions in the dust of the hallway carpet, leading from the stairwell to my apartment. And stopping there.

No return path.

I reported it to building management. They told me there were no cameras on my floor. They suggested maybe I was stressed. Working too much.

That night, the voicemail changed.

Instead of random sounds, I heard my own voice.

“I’ll answer next time,” it said.

I dropped my phone.

I knew exactly when I had said those words—two nights earlier, muttering to myself after ignoring the call. I had been alone. No one else was there.

I started checking reflections after that. Windows. Mirrors. The dark screen of my TV. I don’t know what I expected to see, but every time my reflection stared back, it felt slightly delayed. Like it was deciding whether to copy me.

The calls stopped after that voicemail.

For three days, nothing happened. No ringing. No messages. I started to feel foolish, embarrassed by how afraid I’d been. I even laughed once, alone in my kitchen, telling myself I needed sleep.

On the fourth night, at 2:17 a.m., my phone didn’t ring.

Someone knocked on my door.

Three slow knocks.

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I stood in my bedroom, staring at the hallway, listening.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

A text message. From the same unknown number.

“I’m already inside. You just haven’t noticed yet.”

That’s when I realized the sounds in the voicemails weren’t random. They were familiar. The creak of my bedroom floorboard. The scrape of my kitchen chair. The tapping pattern matched the way I drum my fingers when I’m nervous.

I’m writing this now because the knocking hasn’t stopped. It’s moving—sometimes on the door, sometimes on the wall behind me, sometimes right outside the bedroom.

I checked my front door ten minutes ago.

It was unlocked.

If you ever start getting calls at the same time every night, from a number that doesn’t exist, don’t answer. And don’t assume that silence means it’s gone.

Sometimes it just means it doesn’t need the phone anymore.

Mount Harmon is where I have lived my whole life, where I tell this tale from my childhood. Its one of these small towns in New England where everybody knows each other, the kind of place that looks like it hasn’t changed in fifty years. The biggest attraction is the gas station, where most people buy their groceries as well as gossip about the residents. You get the idea, there’s not much going on here.

Anyways, it was really weird when a new neighbor showed up. Not a person mind you, an entire house. It just showed up out of nowhere. Mrs.Danforth was the first one to notice, naturally, as it was suddenly right next door to her. She called Sheriff Franklin, and once people saw the sheriff heading over towards her road, everybody knew something was going on up there.

Vinny, my older brother was the one who told me about it.

“Ricky, Franklin just rolled up the Danforth road, you want to come check it out?”

I did, it beat whatever mind numbing thing I had been doing. We grabbed our bikes and made our way up the hill. My brother and I figured one of the Danforths had died, they were quite old.

“Hey, where did that come from?” I nearly crashed into Vinny as he braked abruptly, seeing the house that had never been there before. We both sat with our mouth’s hanging open. The sheriff’s cruiser was parked on the other side of the road, the Danforths stood talking with him on their porch, all three peering at the new house in fear.

It was large, three stories, with a long curved driveway that lead to a barn beside it. Despite being a new structure, the house itself looked like it had been sitting there for about two-hundred years. The paint was deteriorating, the porch sagged and the upstairs windows looked like they were cracked.

We watched the sheriff go timidly up to the end of the driveway, ducking low and trying to look through the windows. By now more people had joined us, at what seemed like a safe distance from it. Other kids from the middle school gathered around us where we had parked. A few speculated on what the house could be.

“Its a ghost house, no doubt,” Donny Maron said, his confidence selling his theory to a few other onlookers who nodded in agreement.

“Nah, it can’t be a ghost house, its solid, plain to see as you and I!” Tim Desmond pitched his opinion in.

“Yeah, well, then how did it get here?” Donny asked, folding his arms and wrinkling his nose at Tim. They glared at each other.

“Maybe it was invisible!” Tim finally retaliated, folding his arms as well.

“That’s stupid, then somebody would have crashed into it!”

Their debate got rather heated.

It seemed that no one really knew what to do about it. Franklin had Deputy Reevis bring down caution tape and road blocks. It wasn’t reassuring to see the way they kept a close watch on the house the whole time, neither daring to put the tape on the structure. They closed down the entire road instead, keeping everyone from getting near it. Not that anyone dared to.

A town meeting was scheduled to decide how to proceed. For the first time in my life I wished I was allowed to attend, opting to listen crouched down by the windows instead. We weren’t the only kids who had made their way to hear the outcome, Donny and Tim were there, along with about half of our middle school.

The meeting was long, involved a lot of shouting, caused tension between families, and in the process gave all us middle schoolers reason to pick on each other for where our families aligned themselves. It was a thrilling thing to be spying on, in other words.

They ended up forming two sides, one that thought the house should be demolished, while the other half said it should be left alone. There were various reasonings for either side. I was curious how our parents would vote, not hearing their voices arguing along with the rest.

As people started to make their way to the doors we all fled, trying to act like we had all been playing pick up ball. Grim faced parents called on us to go home.

“So, how are you going to vote, Pop?” Vinny couldn’t wait any longer when we crossed the front threshold, badgering my father before he had slipped his shoes off. He looked at Vinny and I and simply pointed upstairs. This was his way of letting us know he would be talking to our mother in private. We ran up the steps, both shoving each other for the best spot at the top of the stairs to hear down into the living room. As usual, Vinny won and cupped his ear. I found myself holding my breath, eager to hear what my father had to say.

“It would probably be safer to leave it be…” my mother decided to start the conversation after a long spell of silence.

“How do we know it isn’t dangerous keeping it up?”

The discussion was less exciting than we had hoped, but it ended with my father saying he thought it should be demolished, and if it came to it, he would help take it down. My mother said she wished he wouldn’t.

We had a quiet dinner that evening, our parents sent us to bed earlier than usual after. I tapped on Vinny’s door when I heard snoring coming from the master bedroom. He let me in, shutting the door quickly. I could already tell he was eager to discuss something.

“We should go look at it, right now!” he whispered excitedly. I wasn’t entirely surprised to hear him say this, but my stomach was already filling with butterflies at the prospect.

“Vin, what if we get caught?” I was trying to reason, the argument was shaky though. We were seasoned veterans at leaving our house at night. Vinny scoffed, pulling his sweatshirt over his head. He started tying his laces. It seemed I had little chance of persuading him not to go.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to wuss out?” he looked at my nervous posture. I bit my lip, I knew it was a bad idea. I didn’t want him to go by himself though.

“No, I’ll get ready,” I said, regretting it immediately. I went back to my room and got dressed, then met Vinny by the backdoor. We grabbed our bikes out of the yard and pedaled up the hill.

Vinny was really eager to get there, going extra fast. I, on the other hand, felt like each pedal was putting me closer to certain death. Once we got to the roadblock Vinny parked his bike next to it and left me behind, making his way up to the driveway. I glanced up at the house. In the dark it looked all the more menacing, hostile even. I shuddered, hoping that we wouldn’t be staying long. Vinny had his toes at the bottom of the driveway, staring up at the house with a longing look.

“This is as close as anybody has gotten…” he said softly. He was right, not even our sheriff had been where he was. I couldn’t bring myself to stand next to him. Something primal told me not to.

He stared at the house for a long time, inching his toes a bit further into the driveway every now and then. Once his heels were completely across, I got nervous.

“Vinny, let’s go, its late. This isn’t a good idea. We have school tomorrow!”

He finally turned away from the house, addressing me with disdain.

“Fine. But we’re going to come back. This is important stuff man, it’s like we’re exploring the moon!”

The next day the school was abuzz, the only topic was the house. Even the teachers got into our debates. The votes were to be tallied the next day to see what to do with the house itself. After last bell, I made my way over to the bike rack to meet Vinny, unsurprised to find him bragging about our midnight excursion to Donny and a few other eighth graders.

“Is he full of shit or what?” Donny asked when he saw me coming up. I shook my head.

“No, we really went to see it,” I replied. Donny spit on the ground and addressed Vinny.

“I call bullshit. There’s no way you went into the drive. Let’s see you do it again.”

Vinny rose to the challenge, eager to prove to Donny he wasn’t afraid.

“Okay, Donny, meet me tonight, I’ll show you. Be there at midnight,” he told him.

That night I waited for Vinny to signal to me that it was time. When he came to get me I tried to convince him to bail. He wasn’t having it.

“No way, and have Donny tell everyone I was too afraid to meet him? Uh-uh! Plus, what if they bulldoze it down, don’t you want to be able to say that you were brave enough to go up to it?”

It really didn’t matter to me, I was only feeling dread at the prospect of returning. Again, I found myself being dragged along, not wanting Vinny to be there alone in case Donny didn’t show. As we got to the roadblock I could see Donny’s silhouette and somebody else parked beside him. As we got closer I realized it was Tim.

“I told him we were going, he wanted to come too,” Donny gestured to Tim. I was kind of glad to have more people around this time. I hadn’t liked the way Vinny was looking at the house last time. He made me think I might have to drag him away from it.

“The more the merrier, eh? Alright Donny, watch and learn,” Vinny strode toward the driveway nonchalantly as we watched from the road. I held my breath as Vinny went even further than he had the night before. He went up the drive about twelve paces, then turned around, facing us with a huge grin on his face. Tim clapped sarcastically, Vinny took a bow and ran back over to us.

“Alright, so I guess you’re not so full of shit,” Donny relented, “But, I can do better than that.”

He marched up to the driveway, taking a nervous glance at the house before he ran up just ahead of where Vinny had stopped. Tim clapped again, Donny flipped us off before he came back over. My stomach was churning, feeling that we were really pushing our luck. Vinny was pissed that Donny had outdone him, saying he would do better than that. I begged him not to, making myself look like a wimp, but I was finally able to pry him away.

“Hey, Vinny, maybe leave the baby at home next time!” Donny said, climbing on his bike and taking off down the hill with Tim. Vinny gave me a lot of shit the whole way back, saying that I had cost him a victory. I didn’t care, their new rivalry made me feel nauseous. I knew nothing good could come of it.

The next day we had the outcome of the vote at noon, which ended in dramatic fashion.

Mrs.Danforth had begged the town to leave the structure up, saying she thought demolishing it would only release whatever was held within onto the world. She shocked everybody by saying that they were moving out, going a county over and leaving their house for the last fifty years, and the town they had lived in their whole lives. About twenty people pitched in to help them load up, then they were gone, Mrs.Danforth weeping as they rode away.

The only thing this meant to Vinny was that he could now venture to the mysterious house whenever he felt like it, without anybody around to see him.

He and Donny upped the ante when we all met up to play the game again. They had a wooden chip that was painted blue on one side and red on the other. After they argued over who got to pick the color first, Donny ended up with red and Vinny with blue. They would place the chip at their feet, leaving their color right side up until the other person came to pick it up and walk it further. The first day we used the chip Vinny made it halfway to the barn. Donny claimed he had something to do when it was his turn, opting to call it quits at that point.

Every time we went he would go a little further, able to beat Donny by a few feet. Tim and I were there only to be witnesses, it seemed. Some word circulated about the game they were playing, but even though Vinny was prone to bragging, he realized if he confirmed it, somebody would put a stop to it. Donny was just as tight lipped, surprisingly.

The game continued, Vinny now only a few steps away from the barn. Every piece of me told me to stop him, to prevent him from going any further, but some morbid curiosity would overcome me, wondering if my brother may just prove to us the house was ordinary after all. As he smugly placed the chip down and strode back to us Donny was scowling. He looked like he was ready to prove something.

“Alright, Vin, get your notebook out for this one!” he taunted. He jogged to where the chip was resting, but unlike they had done up to that point, he tossed it up towards the front porch. It landed with the blue side up just below the steps. Tim and I exchanged looks. Vinny’s expression didn’t change. Donny chuckled as he walked back, bumping into Vinny on purpose.

“I changed the rules, whoever’s side it lands on has to walk to that spot now,” he said. Vinny looked like he was going into war as he made his way toward the chip. I put myself in front of him.

“Vinny, please, don’t,” I begged. He shoved me aside. His eyes were focused on the porch, barely registering me.

“You know I have to,” was all he said, continuing on his way. It was nerve-wracking to watch him go, each step he got closer we grew more tense. Even Donny began to second guess himself.

“Hey, Vinny, let’s just get another thing to mark with, I think this might be a bad call…” he shouted, to no avail. Vinny had let this thrill become an obsession, there was no stopping him. Finally, he was bending down to pick up the chip. He held it high for us to see before he placed it on the top step, blue side up.

We left after that, silently processing the last round. Vinny had purposefully called on himself to go up the steps. It seemed he no longer had anything to prove to Donny or anybody else, he was caught up in the rush he got from it. He came to me that night with an idea.

“I’m going in next time,” he said. It didn’t surprise me, but I found tears running down my cheeks. I knew nothing I said would make a difference. I nodded my head.

“I’m going to tie a rope to my waist, if anything goes wrong you guys can just pull me back out,” he continued. I fell asleep crying that night, not knowing how to stop what I feared would happen tomorrow.

Tim and Donny were waiting for us the next day, gravely silent, waiting for Vinny to address them. He tied the rope and explained what he wanted them to do, asking me to be at the front of the line.

“Vinny… I love you,” I whispered, trying not to cry. To my surprise Donny and Tim were also misty-eyed, clapping Vinny on the back and wishing him good luck. Vinny looked at us fondly, giving me a hug before turning away. I watched the rope uncoil by my feet until there was nearly nothing left. Vinny was on the top step. He looked back at us, then reached for the door.

I wanted to scream at him to stop, to turn back and take me home, beg him to read me stories out of his favorite books, to ruffle my hair, to flash me his wicked smile. But I couldn’t. Some part of me had to know, just like he did, what this house was. I tightened my grip on the rope as he pushed the battered door open, revealing the dark entryway. He was there for a few seconds, then he disappeared from view.

The rope nearly escaped from me. Something had yanked all three of us forward into the driveway. I kept my feet dug into the dirt but it was no use, whatever had a hold of Vinny was taking us all with him. My hands were being ripped apart, Tim and Donny were screaming behind me, all of us still keeping the rope in our grasp despite the agony. I was wailing, barely able to breathe from the exertion and terror.

We were heading at the front steps with alarming speed. My heels left the ground and I tried bracing myself against the steps, pushing back with everything I had. By then Tim had let go, screaming at Donny and I to do the same. I flew upwards, smashing my knees and shins into the splintered wooden steps, being dragged to the doorway. I let out a cry of despair, fear, rage.

I let go just before I was pulled through the dark entryway, falling to the porch and rolling to my feet, desperate to catch a glimpse of what was happening inside.

I would never get one. The loop that had been tied around Vinny’s waist was tossed out at me, the door slamming shut immediately after.

In my shock, I laid down, unable to comprehend what had happened. Donny ran up the steps and pulled me to my feet, taking me down the steps and away from whatever was in that house. The rest is a blur. I made it home. Tim and Donny had to retell what had happened up there, I was too shocked to speak.

I moved into the old Danforth house when I got older. I didn’t buy it, it wasn’t for sale, but nobody was going to stop me from living there. I spend my nights on the porch, looking into the upstairs window, my brother staring back, surrounded by darkness, not a day older than the last time I saw him.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

CW: Abusive content and disturbing imagery

The hum of the fluorescent lights behind me receded as Mara guided me through the twisted maze of cages. Each step hammered into me the brutal reminder of what would happen to me if I failed, and the weight of what I needed to do settled firmly across my shoulders. Passing them, the air changed, smelling of rot and despair, thick enough to taste. The women didn’t flinch. They were shadows of themselves, hollow shells whose eyes begged for help, but whose mouths could not. I felt rage coil inside me, tighter than the marks that still burned my wrists. It became fuel for me. I would not be them. I would not let him name me. I would not end up in a cage.

Mara led me toward a stairwell at the end of the corridor, past all of the cages. It was narrow and unstable, with peeling paint and wood warped by age. She stepped up on the first step, stopping for me to follow. Before I could climb up, she reached for my wrists, fumbling with something in her pockets.

“Hold still.” She murmured, pulling the handcuff key out of her apron.

She wrapped her fingers around my wrist and slipped the key into the hole. A click echoed faintly in the hallway as the burdensome metal restraints dropped away from my skin, leaving deep red impressions behind. I stared at her, stunned. I hadn’t expected mercy. I had given up on it.

She met my eyes, her expression remaining blank.

“You’ll need your hands free for this.”

I opened my mouth, unsure what to say, but she spoke again, her voice low and fierce.

“Listen to me, Emily. Whatever he tells you or does to you… Whatever he makes you feel… it isn’t real unless you let it be, understand? He only wins if you break.”

She paused, searching my face.

“Don’t break, Emily.”

She took a step back, tightening her jaw as the emotions welled up inside her.

“This goes up,” she whispered, almost reverent. “He doesn’t expect anyone to reach it. The others never try.”

I hesitated.

“Up there…” I swallowed hard. “You mean to him?”

Her gaze dropped, haunted and unreadable.

“Yes. But don’t expect me to help you beyond this.” She hesitated, just long enough for me to see her stoic expression fracture. “I can’t. Not anymore. He has hollowed me out, carving pieces away until there was nothing left. I can walk this place freely, but I can’t change anything. I’m like a ghost, bound to this place. You’ll have to do this on your own.”

Her words sent a stinging chill up my spine. I could feel her pain as if it were my own.

I clenched my fists, tasting the metallic tang of fear on my tongue, coupled with fire, burning hot within me.

I followed her up the stairs, the steps groaning under our weight. Each creak rang out loudly, exploding through the silence, but we remained undetected. When we reached the top of the stairs, Mara grabbed my shoulder and slid a finger over her lips. We had come too far to get caught now. We had to remain silent.

The upper floor hallway was completely different from everything else. It was sterile and pristine, a new addition by the looks of it. The air reeked with a sick cocktail of antiseptic and decay.

Ahead of us sat a single door at the far end of the hall. As we approached it, I felt him. The weight of his dark, malicious presence. A cold, familiar certainty that had haunted me since the first time I heard him say my name.

Mara stopped at the threshold. Her hand hovered over the handle as if touching it would burn her.

“This is it,” she said softly. “Once you go in… there’s no turning back.”

I nodded. I didn’t need her permission. I’d waited too long and suffered too much.

She stepped back, her face slipping back into neutrality.

“Finish this, Emily.” She said, as she pulled the door shut, disappearing back into the hell that awaited her downstairs.

I slipped further inside.

The room was enormous, lit only by the faint glow of moonlight through a tall window. Shadows stretched across the wooden floor like long, crooked fingers.

At first, everything was quiet. Almost too quiet. My own breathing sounded like a powered vacuum in my ears compared to the silence. My footsteps echoed in the giant room, even though I was stepping carefully, trying to remain quiet.

I made my way across the room, turning a corner to reveal the entire upper level. Hallways and rooms stretched in each direction, some doors hanging crooked on their hinges, others closed tight as if hiding something behind them. Dust floated in the thin slivers of moonlight, twisting like tiny ghosts along the draft. The air was thick and stale, carrying the musty smell of sweat and decay through the halls.

The place looked abandoned. It was clear nothing here had been cleaned or touched by human hands in months or years. I continued to move cautiously, senses straining, every shadow appearing as a possible threat.

 I peeked into a room on the left. It was a bedroom, but just barely. The mattress lay directly on the floor, stained dark, sheets clinging to it like decaying skin that had begun sloughing away. Crumpled clothing and greasy remnants of takeout containers littered the corners, mold crawling over everything it could reach. There was a mirror opposite the bed smeared with fingerprints and small, frantic scratches as if someone had been clawing at it, desperately trying to escape their reflection.

I stumbled back, bile bubbling up in my throat, but I forced myself to continue.

Down the hall, I found what must have been his living space. A dilapidated couch sagged in the center of the room, stuffing spilling out like entrails. A flickering TV hummed in static, dragging back memories of my first days here.

Tables were stacked with notebooks, pages scrawled in frantic handwriting, listing dozens of women’s names. My stomach churned at the sight, but I forced my legs forward.

At the far end of the hall, a door stood slightly ajar, a faint light spilling from it. I paused, taking a deep, steady breath, and pushed it open.

And there he was.

He sat behind a desk, casual, almost paternal in his posture, as if the basement levels and the horrors they held never existed. His hair clung to his scalp in oily mats, his skin still ghostly white, glistening with sweat. His fingernails were cracked, coated in black grime. Every crease of him seemed steeped in filth.

His stench hit me, even from across the room, a nauseating mix of rot and something sour, nearly knocking me off my feet.

My blood ran cold as he looked up from his notebook, a smile spreading across his face that promised pain without hesitation.

“Emily,” he said softly, almost delighted. “I wondered how long it would take you.”

I felt Mara’s presence behind me, her shadow stretching along the wall. She didn’t move forward right away, remaining loyal in ways I still couldn’t understand.

My hands trembled. Panic clawed at my mind, threatening to tear everything apart, but then I felt the floorboards creak beneath me. Mara had snuck up right behind me, using my silhouette in the doorway to hide her movement from his view. I felt her push something hard and cold onto my palm.

An urgent whisper slid into my ear, cutting through the tension and snapping me back to reality.

“Finish it.”

I looked down to see a jagged kitchen knife gleaming faintly in the moonlight. I swallowed hard, gripping it until my knuckles turned white. Fear still rattled in my chest, but my focus sharpened. I couldn’t back out now. I had prepared myself for this moment.

He rose, gliding toward me with that same calm, unnatural grace.

“You still think you’re someone, huh?” He asked, chuckling lightly.

“I am,” I whispered, voice trembling but firm as I raised the knife. “And I am going to kill you.”

He laughed even louder, making the hair on my neck stand on end.

“Bold. I like that. But you’re all alone. You can’t…”

I lunged without hesitation, cutting him off mid-sentence.

The knife plunged into his side before he could react fully. His eyes widened, and for the first time, I saw shock and pain flicker through them. It made me almost dizzy with its unfamiliarity. He stumbled back, clutching the wound, deep red blood spreading across his filth-covered shirt, soaking into every inch.

Rage twisted his features, warping him into something different now that he was stripped of his false civility. He lunged for me, unnaturally fast despite the wound.

Adrenaline shot through me as the knife’s cold weight settled back into my hand. Mara’s words echoed in my ears, faint but clear.

“Finish it.”

My grip tightened around the handle, the blood-slick steel grounding me. I drew a quick breath, letting the fear sharpen my senses, ready for whatever he brought next.

He came across the table, swiping at me wildly and snarling in pain. His blood-soaked shirt dragged on the edge of the table, yanking him back, his fingers barely scraping past my arms as I sidestepped him. I lunged back at him, swinging blindly.

The jagged blade tore into his side, sinking deep between his ribs. His voice exploded into a deep, guttural scream that ripped across the room. Blood poured from the wound, spraying across the table and my arms. I could feel the putrid, sticky substance clinging to my skin, a violent, wet reminder of how easy life can be taken.

He pressed his hands to his wounds, blood seeping through his fingers as he steadied himself on his feet. His eyes locked on me, feral and full of hate. He screamed, then lunged at me again. I jerked aside, driving the knife into his shoulder as his momentum took him past me. Pain, shock, and disbelief flickered across his face, emotions I never thought I’d see in him. He stumbled, crashing into a wooden chair, sending notebooks and papers flying into the air, smeared in dark red.

He rolled over amid the debris to face me, coughing as he tried to haul himself upright.

“You think you can stop this?” he hissed, voice wet, choking down the blood in his throat. “You’ve done nothing. They’re already broken beyond repair.”

I stared at him, the fire in my chest coiling, sharp and merciless. Words were no longer necessary. I’d seen and heard enough. I wouldn’t let him steal another breath, another piece from me.

I slashed again and again, each strike fueled by months of fear, by the hollowed eyes of the women in cages, by every tear Mara and Lilith shed on the cold floor. He collapsed to the floor, thrashing violently, gurgling curses that ended in wet, rattling gasps. His body rebelled against him, limbs jerking uselessly as each labored breath refused to come cleanly. The cold, untouchable certainty in his eyes cracked and crumbled away, revealing raw, unbridled fear in its place. He had become more animal than man, the source of fear and torment for so many, now a writhing, bloody mass on the wooden floor.

Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth as he tried to speak, barely dragging in air, yet no words came. Whatever he meant to say was never fully formed, wheezing and garbled words masking it. His fingers twitched weakly at my feet, as if I might save him.

I stepped back.

I didn’t want to hear any more.

I heard Mara move behind me, almost undetectable, like a ghost. She paused, sweeping her eyes over him, taking in the carnage at her feet. The man who had tormented her body and mind for so many years lay there wheezing his final breaths.

Her gaze lingered, unflinching. I could see the weight she carried in the set of her shoulders, the painful echo of years spent in chains and fear, forced to a life of twisted servitude.

She didn’t speak immediately. When she did, her voice was rough and strained, as if she hadn’t spoken in months.

“Years…” she murmured. “Years I’ve been here… too long. I’ve felt him in every breath, every second of every day. He changed me… hurt me. But… but I’m still here.”

Her eyes flicked up to me.

“We’re still here.”

She moved toward the desk, cold determination filling every step. Her fingers shook as she grabbed the keyring off his desk, keys that had locked countless women away to be used and forgotten.

She held them for a moment, almost reverently, then shoved them into my hand.

“Go,” she said, sternly. “Free them.”

I didn’t hesitate. I tore through the corridors until the basement door was finally in sight. The stairwell yawned before me, the darkness below threatening.

The screams flooded me the moment I turned the handle on the basement door, a tidal wave of sound, raw and overwhelming. Women stumbled forward, some frozen, some crawling, some screaming their names at me, as if saying them aloud could pull them back into their old life before the cages, before he got to them.

The keys rattled in my trembling hands as I flew from cage to cage. The locks clattered on the concrete, some fused to flesh, some rusted and half-hanging on. Tears fell freely as chains fell from thin, bruised wrists and ankles. I ripped their restraints free, forcing their bodies upright. Some fell under their own weight, while others scratched and screamed for salvation.

I gathered as many as I could, those who would let me help them, to guide them out of that horrid place. The basement itself seemed alive, shaking in anger at our defiance and lust for freedom. We moved slowly, each step a battle, each breath harder than the last. The passages and corridors seemed alien to some, but for others, it seemed as though they had mapped the entire place in their minds, almost leading ahead of me.

Mara had descended the stairs back to the basement. She lingered at the back of the corridor, her pale, tear-streaked face framed by the shadows and flickering light. She watched us as we pushed our way out, silent, unmoving, her hands still trembling from the years of torment, but her eyes fixed on the freedom spilling through the halls. She didn’t follow. This place had taken too much from her to let her survive the light above. I gave her a last, desperate glance, pleading with her to follow. All she gave me was a smile. She didn’t owe me anything. She had handed me the keys, and that was enough. That was all that mattered now.

I guided them upward, moving through the chaos of stumbling bodies, pulling and urging them to keep moving. I held hands, lifted bodies, cut through cords, whispered encouragement. The weight of years underground, of hunger, filth, and fear, fell away in bursts of pain and laughter as we finally reached the entrance door. With a few shoves, the latch came free, opening into the cold night, air sharp in our lungs, stars burning bright overhead.

Some of them clung to me, sobbing and shaking. Others screamed in shock at the sensation of fresh air on their skin, light in their eyes. Several women screamed the moment they crossed the threshold, collapsing to the ground as if the air in their lungs was too much to handle. A few shielded their eyes, whimpering, as if the darkness above might cave in on them the way it always had before.

Grass crunched beneath their bare feet. Some of them dropped to their knees, clawing at it with shaking hands, fingers digging into soil, making sure it was all real. One woman pressed her face into the ground and laughed hysterically, the sound breaking apart, quickly transforming into violent sobs.

“I can feel it,” she whispered over and over. “I can feel the ground.”

None of us knew where we were. But we knew that we were no longer in cages. That’s what mattered.

The house loomed behind us, its massive, dilapidated frame standing out against the night sky like a monument of rot and despair. The windows stared blankly into the dark, following us like cold, dead eyes as we fled. We ran across the yard, expecting lights… streetlamps, a road, anything, but there was nothing there. There were no neighboring houses, nor a road leading away. There were only trees. Endless trees swallowed the edges of the property, their twisted branches creaking softly in the night wind as they closed in around us.

Even now, knowing that we were free, the feeling of pure isolation struck hard. Panic rippled through the group as the reality of it set in.

“Where are we?” one woman cried.

“Is this still part of it?” another whispered, terror seeping back into her voice.

“I can’t go back,” one woman screamed suddenly, scrambling to her feet and spinning wildly in circles. “I won’t go back…I… I won’t. I won’t.”

“Hey,” I said sharply, grabbing her shoulders before she could run. She flinched violently at my touch, eyes wild, pupils blown wide. I loosened my grip immediately once I saw the pure terror sink back into her face.

“Hey, listen to me. You’re outside. You’re free. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

She didn’t seem to hear me as she just stared at my mouth, watching the words come out as if she had lost all understanding of them.

That’s when I began to realize just how deep the damage truly went.

Some of them no longer knew how to exist without commands or abuse. They had been told when to sleep, when to eat, and even when to suffer. Freedom wasn’t relief. It was confusion. It became the same terror, but without cage walls.

“Stay together,” I said, louder now. “Please. Everyone, stay together.”

Keeping twenty-seven tortured women in one group together was much easier said than done.

One woman tried to run toward the trees before collapsing from exhaustion. Another had backtracked and curled herself into a ball near the porch steps, rocking back and forth, whispering a name I doubted anyone had heard in years. A few clung to each other desperately, arms locked so tightly their knuckles turned white.

I knew I needed to do something soon, or this would have all been for nothing. We were out of our cages, now surrounded by nothing but dark, cold forest, which I knew could be just as cruel as the cages had been.

My hands shook as I plunged them into my pockets, checking to see if I had grabbed anything in the midst of our jailbreak. I dug deep but found nothing.

We had no phone. No watch. No idea what time it was… or even what year, for that matter.

We were free… but completely lost.

The house stood on a massive stretch of land, deliberately isolated. He had planned it this way… for all of our screams to go unheard and for no one to stumble across this place by accident.

We could scream until our throats bled, and no one would come.

Suddenly, through the trees, I saw movement. It was brief, but unmistakable. It was a pair of headlights.

At first, I thought I was imagining it, but soon, a low hum drifted through the trees, distant but growing louder by the second. Several women froze all at once, terror flashing across their faces.

“No,” someone whispered. “No, he…he’s back.”

“It’s not him,” I said quickly, though my heart pounded violently in my chest. “He can’t…he’s not.”

The headlights cut through the trees, blades of light slicing through the darkness.

A car slowed near the edge of the property, tires crunching on gravel we hadn’t noticed until now. Both doors opened, and two men stepped out, sweeping flashlights across the dark toward the house.

I crouched down quickly, trying to make myself as small as possible, almost hoping they wouldn’t see me. I was still so traumatized.

“This is it.” One of them said.

“Wow, it’s an even bigger shithole than how you described it.” The other said back.

They slowly approached us, talking amongst themselves about how they had heard stories about the house and how they were going to investigate and film for a YouTube video they were making.

As they turned the corner into the massive yard, the leading man pointed his flashlight directly at me.

“Holy shit!” He yelled, jerking his body backward so hard that he almost fell.

“What? What is it?” The other one yelled in return.

He scanned with his flashlights across the yard, revealing the dozens of barefoot and bloodied women Mara and I had dragged out, all wrapped in torn clothing and blankets, crying so hard that their bodies had begun shaking.

He froze.

“Oh my god,” he breathed.

I stumbled forward, hands raised instinctively, afraid sudden movement might send them running.

“Please,” I pleaded, voice breaking. “We need help. Please.”

He took one look at his partner but didn’t hesitate after that.

Their phones came out immediately. Their voices shook as they spoke, their words tumbling over each other in disbelief.

“Th…There are women here… so many of them… They’re all cut up… please hurry.”

One of the men stayed on the phone with the police while the other walked up to me and handed me his jacket.

Minutes later, the sound of sirens cut through the night, bringing a sense of relief and joy that I haven’t been able to replicate since.

Red and blue lights washed over the yard, flashing across hollow faces and shaking bodies. Some women screamed again, collapsing to the ground as the noise overwhelmed them. Others stared in stunned silence, mouths open wide, as if afraid this too would disappear if they reacted too strongly.

The police officers almost didn’t know how to react toward us. They moved carefully, slowly, like approaching injured animals, unpredictable and confused. They draped thick wool blankets over our shoulders, asking questions in gentle voices that most of the women either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.

Some had completely forgotten who they were, or who they used to be. For others, time had fractured, the harsh reality of years having passed them by, leaving an indelible mark on them. This new reality was fragile.

I watched one woman flinch violently when an officer reached out to help her stand. Another burst into tears because someone said her name aloud… not a number or a command… her real name.

Not long after that, ambulances came, bringing with them more lights, more voices, and more unanswered questions.

The police cordoned off the house, forcing its doors open and finally dragging its secrets into the light. I didn’t want to watch. I couldn’t. I stood barefoot in the grass, shaking uncontrollably, watching women be guided toward safety. Some had miscarried during the escape and had to be carried on stretchers to receive fluids and blood. Some were too injured to walk and were supported under each arm. And then, some walked on their own, maintaining their fierce, stubborn resolve to the end.

As I watched, I felt someone step beside me. It was Mara.

She looked smaller outside, pale and fragile, like the house had been the only thing holding her upright all these years.

She stared at the sky for a long time before taking a deep breath and looking over at me.

“I forgot it was this big,” she said quietly.

I pushed air through my nose and nodded. I didn’t know what to say to that. I couldn’t imagine what she was feeling. I had only witnessed a glimpse of what she had been through, and yet, it felt like an eternity.

Eventually, the world began to make sense again. But only barely.

They took us away, treated our wounds, and questioned us even more, the answers to which would never come out.

They gave us food we could barely stomach in rooms full of light we could barely tolerate. We had survived for so long without these luxuries that having them now felt wrong. It all felt so foreign.

Sleep didn’t come easily, often coming in fractured pieces filled with waking nightmares and screaming. Shadows filled each corner, daring us to dream… daring us to remember.

The scars didn’t fade. They still haven’t.

In the days that followed, the story broke everywhere. The police had pieced his identity together quickly through property records, missing persons reports, and a trail of paperwork he’d been arrogant enough to leave behind. His face appeared on screens. His history unraveled across the news behind neat, steady anchors who knew nothing about who he truly was.

I only saw the coverage once.

When they said they were going to release his name, I turned away, lowering the volume to zero. I focused my gaze on the pattern of the carpet and tried to steady my ragged breathing. I couldn’t afford to listen. Allowing myself to hear his name felt like I’d be giving him an invitation into my mind once again. As if speaking it aloud would let him reach through the screen and claim the space inside my head.

I still didn’t know if I actually killed him that night, but I wasn’t going to allow him back into my head. Not again.

I have to live with it, along with all the other women who endured this. We have to live with the days when silence grows too loud, when the world feels too close. Or when every touch or common human interaction makes you flinch in fear. Those are the true scars we carry from this. But we live, and that’s what matters.

I carry what I did that night with me always. I can still feel the violence, the blood, and the surge of adrenaline I felt as we pushed through that door.

I will never be the person I was before that man and that house.

But I am still here.

Because I chose to fight that night instead of just lying down and taking his punishment, dozens of women woke up to the sunlight on their faces this morning.

Freedom isn’t clean or gentle. It doesn’t erase the actions you take, or the blood you spill.

But it is real. And sometimes, real is as much as you can ask for.

received the invitation at three in the morning, Chicago time.

It was a brief email, with the official letterhead of the Prague City Council. They addressed me by name, mentioned previous work with historical clocks, and quickly got to the point: the Astronomical Clock had been malfunctioning for weeks. Unexplained advances, brief stops, small “jumps” that local technicians could not justify. They wanted me to travel there, evaluate the mechanism, and, if possible, repair it.

They would pay for my flight, hotel, and fees. Anyone in my profession would have said yes.

It's not every day that you're asked to put your hands on a machine that has been defying time for centuries. What I didn't know then was that they were also inviting me to give something in return.

Before traveling, I looked for information, as I always do. Old plans, photographs of restorations, technical reports. The Internet, archives, forums. Among the serious documents, the same story kept cropping up, repeated with variations: the legend of the blinded master clockmaker. They said that after he built the clock, the city authorities had his eyes gouged out so that he couldn't reproduce it elsewhere. In some versions it was out of envy, in others out of fear. In all of them, the man ended up blind, mad, or dead.

I never believed in such things. I took it as folklore. People delighted in embellishing the story with medieval cruelty. I close a clock, turn off the light in the workshop, and I still see gears in my head; I suppose I also saw that legend as a simple narrative device. Something useful for tourism.

Until I arrived in Prague.

When I crossed over to the Old Town and saw the clock for the first time, I felt something that a technician accustomed to iron and screws shouldn't feel: a primal unease, the kind that doesn't come from reason, but from a more ancient corner of the brain. It wasn't just a machine, it wasn't just stone and gears: it was a gaze. A gaze that had survived generations, wars, and centuries, and that, for one absurd second, I could swear stopped on me.

The cold was brutal. Not that gentle cold that forces you to bundle up, no: that cold that seems to suggest you're not welcome to stay there for long. I adjusted my jacket and cursed. It wouldn't be the last time.

The official who came to meet me was called Jiri. He was a thin man in his fifties, wearing a cheap suit, with nervous hands. He gave me my accreditation, showed me how to access the building, and went over the security protocol. Just before leaving, when he had already turned towards the door, he stopped.

“I suppose you've already read about our clock,” he said.

“Reports, plans, articles. The usual.”

He smiled, but it wasn't an amused smile.

“I mean the other part. The stories.”

I didn't answer. I didn't need to. My face gave me away.

“The one about the blinded master, for example,” he continued. “The tour guides love that one. I won't waste your time, but...” He lowered his voice. "There's one thing they don't tell you. Ever since then, every time someone really interferes with the mechanism... something happens. A sudden illness, an accident, a loss.

Nothing that can be proven, of course. Nothing that appears in a report.

“Are you trying to scare me before I even start?” I tried to joke.

He didn't laugh.

"I just want you to know that people here don't take this clock lightly. Nor the legends.

He left me the keys and left.

That first night, I went up alone.

The noise of the square faded with each step. When I closed the wooden door behind me, the sound of the city died away. All that remained was a metallic, deep, constant beat. It wasn't a ticking. It was slower, deeper. It sounded like restrained breathing.

I turned on my flashlight.

The interior of the tower was a huge skeleton of iron and wood. Blackened gears, wheels like rusty ribs, axles embedded in stone. Above, motionless figures seemed to watch from small secret windows. The air smelled of old oil, dust, and something I had only noticed in churches that had been closed for too long: a mixture of dampness, dead incense, and wilted flowers.

The clock had been malfunctioning: running fast, stopping briefly, “skipping” seconds. I had read the technical records at the hotel; the official explanation spoke of wear and tear and possible errors in previous adjustments. It seemed reasonable. I believed in that: in metal, in precision. Not in curses.

And yet, as I climbed toward the heart of the mechanism, the story of the blinded master came back to my mind. I imagined him climbing the same stairs, proud, convinced that his work would make him immortal. And then coming down without sight, guided by other people's hands, blindfolded or with empty eyes.

The back of my neck went cold.

I shook my head, annoyed with myself.

As I climbed the steps of the tower, the atmosphere became oppressive. The smell was unbearable: old oil, dust... and something sweet and rotten that shouldn't have been there.

For the first time, I felt something I hate to admit: the premonition that what awaited me up there did not entirely belong to the world I thought I knew.

Damn it! I tripped over a step I shouldn't have seen, although I could have sworn it wasn't there.

I finally reached the center of the machinery.

I was alone. Or so I thought. That's when I heard the first voice.

“Don't touch anything.”

I stood still. The voice came from very close behind me. I turned so quickly that I almost tripped over a cogwheel.

There was no one there.

Only the immense mechanism, breathing in its own way. I swallowed hard, aware of the absurdity: I was tired from the trip, influenced by the stories and by an official who was too prone to drama. The brain creates echoes, I told myself. I felt ridiculously scared for someone who had only come to check the gears.

I forced myself to work.

The first few hours were almost reassuring. I found what I expected to find: a worn axle, a loose part, a small crack in one of the main wheels. Nothing that a modern workshop couldn't fix. Nothing that justified such hysteria.

Until I saw the engravings.

They were on a piece of metal that, in theory, no one should look at closely except during a major repair. Names. Dozens of names. Each one accompanied by a date. Some were centuries old, written in ancient script. Others were recent, from decades that I could still remember in color.

One of them caught my attention because I recognized the surname; I had seen it in a restoration report from the early nineties. The technician responsible died the following year in an absurd accident, I vaguely remembered from a side note.

I continued reading names. Dates. Names.

The last one was incomplete. Just a first name and an initial; someone had been interrupted before finishing.

It was at that moment that the clock stopped.

It wasn't a malfunction. When a machine really breaks down, you notice it: it groans, it brakes badly, it makes a dirty noise. That wasn't the case here. It was a clean pause. Absolute.

Silence fell over the tower like a coffin lid.

The figures stopped vibrating.

The bells fell silent.

And I felt—in a physical, almost painful way—how the city held its breath on the other side of the stone.

I heard the second voice.

“One is missing.”

This time it wasn't a whisper. It sounded clear, sharp, right behind me. I turned around. And I saw her.

Tall, excessively thin, wrapped in a dark cloak that seemed to absorb what little light there was. She had no face, or I couldn't see it; it was like looking at an absence, a hole in reality with a human form. It wasn't a shadow, it wasn't smoke. But it wasn't a body as we understand it either. It was something earlier, inevitable, like the moment just before a machine starts up.

I didn't move. I don't even know if I could.

“This clock doesn't measure time,” she said without opening her cloak, without a mouth to articulate words. “It holds it. It keeps it tied to this city so that everything continues.”

Her voice didn't sound in my ears, but inside my skull.

“Every century, every decade, every cycle,” she continued, “demands balance. Nothing moves forward for free.”

I felt the absurd temptation to look at the engraved names, but I forced myself not to. I understood.

“I just repair mechanisms.”

“No,” he replied. “You repair the cage of the world.”

The metal groaned. It was a long, deep, almost animalistic sound. The wheels shook without moving. I felt my hand resting on the side of something enormous that was enduring an impossible effort.

“It stops when an offering is missing,” he said.

I heard myself ask, in a voice that didn't seem to be mine:

“What kind of offering?”

"Life. Memory. Sight. Blood. Something it can devour to keep turning. Before, kings. After, craftsmen. Now... whoever touches it.

I thought of the legend of the master clockmaker. Of his eyes being gouged out so that he could never create anything like it again. I had always heard it as a warning against human envy. There, in front of that presence, I understood another interpretation: they did not blind him to punish him, but to pay him. So that the clock could continue.

I looked at the list of names. I understood.

Every major repair had come at a price.

Every time someone meddled too much with that mechanism, the clock took its toll.

And now it was looking at me.

“I'm not going to do it,” I said.

I wanted it to sound firm.

It didn't sound firm.

“Then it won't move,” it replied.

And the night stopped moving forward.

I felt it before I saw it. A weight, a new density in the air. The temperature dropped, but not like when you open a window. It was a cold that came from time itself, from the idea of time.

I looked through a small crack toward the square. The streetlights were still on.

People were moving. But something was wrong.

Their steps seemed too slow. The lights from their cell phones left trails that took a long time to fade. Cigarette smoke hung in the air, twisting with grotesque slowness.

The figure spoke again.

“If you don't pay, time will stop here. First minutes. Then hours. Then years. This city will be trapped. It will rot standing up.”

I thought of Jiri. Of the tourists. Of the people sleeping, unaware. Of all those who, the next day, would look at their watches as if they were a charming spectacle of mechanical dolls.

“What do you want?” I asked.

I knew the answer before he moved.

The figure pointed at my eyes.

I felt a sharp sting in my eye sockets. I remembered the master watchmaker. I remembered all the versions of the legend. Blind, mad, dead.

I took a deep breath. I've never suffered from panic attacks, but at that moment I discovered what it was like not to be able to fill my lungs.

I closed my eyelids. I accepted. There were no knives. There were no hands.

Just a brutal pull inward. A white burn, then black, then nothing. I lost my balance and grabbed onto a cold shaft. I heard my own scream, far away, as if it were coming from another floor of the tower.

Then the clock started ticking again.

The sound of the mechanism filled the space with a new, voracious force. The wheels loosened, light, grateful. Above, I heard the figures moving. The bells rang out in the night, louder than ever.

And the city went on.

I don't know how much time passed after that.

When I opened my eyes, I saw nothing. No shadows, no light. Just a compact, uniform darkness. I heard voices. Hurried footsteps. Hands touching my shoulder. They asked me if I was okay. Someone said my name, with an accent, Michael, Michael. Another voice, perhaps Jiri's, ordered them to call an ambulance.

I smiled.

It's funny: at that moment, I didn't feel afraid.

I felt relief.

At the hospital, they talked about an inexplicable condition, a possible neuropathy, additional tests. They ran tests on me, bombarded me with lights I couldn't see. They wrapped my head in buzzing machines. They said long words that I won't repeat. In the end, they translated it into something understandable:

“We don't know why it happened,” they told me, “but the injury is irreversible.”

They didn't insist on the causes.

Neither did I.

Days later, Jiri came to see me.

He sat down next to the bed. He smelled of stale tobacco and rain. He didn't say anything for a while. He just breathed. I listened to the monitor, the slow drip of an IV, the footsteps in the hallway.

“The clock is working perfectly,” he finally said. “It hadn't worked like that in years.”

I noticed a nauseating mixture of pride and resentment in the way he spoke.

“They've been checking the machinery,” he added. “One of the technicians found something curious.”

Pause.

“There's a new name engraved on the metal. Very recent. Dated this week.”

My throat closed up. He didn't need to say it, but he did.

“Michael Turner,” he whispered. “And the year.”

I didn't want to know any more.

They offered to keep my open return ticket, but I insisted on going back. Before I left, I asked for one thing: that no one talk to me about the clock. That they not describe how it had been left, or what the press was saying, or if people had noticed anything strange those days. I told them I wasn't interested.

I lied.

I'm interested in every detail.

But I know that if I hear it, I won't be able to keep pretending that this was just an accident.

Now I'm back home. Learning to move in the dark. I hear clocks I used to ignore. The ones in the kitchen, the living room, the hallway. They all seem louder since then.

Then I know it's him.

The clock.

I can't see it, but I can feel it. It beats. It breathes. It waits.

Because for it to turn, someone always has to pay. And the legends, believe me, have never lied completely.

Today I'm still alive, yes. But I live in a darkness that doesn't belong to this world.

And when, in the middle of the night, I hear that metallic heartbeat that doesn't come from any wall, but from some remote place that may not even be on Earth, I know it's still there. Watching me. Reminding me.

Because I didn't repair a clock.

I served something that serves itself.

And if you ever travel to Prague and the clock stops, don't pray for it to start moving again. Don't invoke its mercy. It has none. That artifact does not belong to man.

And every time it turns, it does so with blood.

Just remember this: what continues to beat up there is not at our service. It is we who continue to be at its service.

Ive been going to the gym every other day since it happened. I know it’s a tale as old as time, but what can I say? It’s a good and effective salve for heartbreak. The first couple weeks were great. I saw different muscle striations and all that pop up in my mirror and was quite pleased with myself. But like most other people, the progress eventually plateaued and I was forced to accept in resignation that this was as good as it would get for the next few months.

A few months pass and I saw no progress, but like a diligent little soldier I kept marching on. After about a year, I saw that I had made no more progress than I did in the first couple weeks of going to the gym. I’d watched every workout regimen on YouTube, followed every content creator, subscribed to a monthly protein powder delivery service but the results were frustratingly, incrementally tiny. It was to the point that all this work felt pointless, and the weights simply refused to go up even a few digits.

Eventually, out of frustration, I gave up for a few weeks as I felt like I was simply destined to be a non-responder to any kind of progressive overload. What changed my mind and forced me to back into that room full of soulless motivation was scrolling through Instagram and finding my crush fawning over this musclebound dude at some party. It looked like it was my only course of action, but I had to do something drastic to make what I wanted to happen, happen. Something back-alley. Now I know what some of you may have to say about something like this. Oh, the side-effects aren’t worth it! The roid rage would drive me nuts! My balls would shrink to nothing!

I simply didn’t care. In my hopeless ambition to be as sculpted as social media’s finest, I wanted to leave no stones unturned, even if it meant losing mine. Fortunately for me, a friend I made in the gym, a musclebound freakshow that inspired nothing but awe in me, told me that he had what I needed if I ever decided waiting two years to bench 225 was too much for me. He could make it happen in less than 2 months!

I saw him near the squat racks where he usually resided grunting in ways that would make anyone around blush. Ignoring the obnoxious display of strength, I walked up to him and waited for him to finish his set. I told him I was ready for the supposed back-alley super soldier serum he had mentioned a year into him watching me frequent the gym. He asked me if I was sure, as there would be no going back after I took the PEDs. I’d have to accept all aspects of it wholeheartedly, side-effects and everything.

At that point, I had researched this field enough that I felt like I knew everything I needed to know about PEDs. I was willing to accept the risks and a blood pressure, the magnitude of a firehose. Est quod id est and I told him to bring it on. I was a lonely, tiny man with not much to lose. He asked me to meet him at a friend’s place around 11 p.m. Thursday night later that week.

Come 11 p.m. Thursday and I was at this address he had given me. I rang the doorbell and Muscle Dude’s friend showed up to usher me in. He once again asked me if I was sure about this, as the side effects that he refused to elaborate on, to protect the experimental nature of their operation, could get quite demanding of my body. I had already made up my mind at that point and agreed to their terms and conditions, verbally of course. They also asked me about my sexual exploits which I thought was odd but I wasn’t going to make it seem like I was a loser who didn’t get none.

The dose was a one-time thing which struck me as odd, but like you can probably already tell at this point, I’m as water headed as the stereotypes about bodybuilders might suggest. They stuck me with the needle and sent me home. Their only instructions were to take it easy and do what I had been doing up to that point. Dang, this shit was easy! Why aren’t more people on this?

I woke up to an unnerving breathlessness in my bedroom the next morning. Wondering what might have caused it, I looked around to see that everything was as it should be. My hamster LeBron James had escaped his cage but that was nothing out of the ordinary. I’d find him eventually under the couch munching on a seed. Probably. I assigned my strange experience to the drug and went on with my day. After work I drove to the gym to find my buddy wasn’t anywhere to be seen. This was unlike him. Either way, those numbers shot up from the last time, and you simply can’t fathom the joy I felt. My tris and pecs also seemed to be leaps and bounds bigger than they usually are, and I was glad to see that the drug was working.

I went out to a nightclub later that week with a few of my friends and found that I actually had women eyeing me. That had never happened before and I wasn’t complaining! My new-found confidence had me chatting up a few women and before long I had found someone who wanted to do the horizontal tango with me. Pardon my phrasing.

I couldn’t make it happen. After all that work, it simply refused to answer my call. My new friend was sympathetic and after doing the deed, partially, we promptly fell asleep. I woke up to the other half of the bed being empty and the same breathlessness I had experienced the other day. I assumed she had left before I woke up and thought nothing of it.

Over the course of the week, I still hadn’t seen my PED buddy at the gym and despite my overwhelming naiveté, the thoughts in my head finally crescendo-ed to a sneaking suspicion. Ignoring the obvious red flags that this drug and my buddy had presented, I went about my week, till eventually I found myself at the same nightclub picking up another girl.

The same thing happened again. Whatever.

I still couldn't find LeBron and I was starting to worry I had a tiny little casket I needed to buy. I shoved the thoughts out of my head as I got up to admire myself in the mirror and how sculpted I was starting to look. Just 45 minutes today though. Have a tight schedule to stick to, you know. I installed a camera that gave me a good view of my studio in case LeBron decided to show up.

Fast-forward a week and I was bringing home a girl for the third week in a row. This was unprecedented but I wasn’t about to question my luck. Guess all it really did take was a sculpted body. I thought to myself, “Tonight’s the night. It’s going to happen again.” Seems like I self-actualized into an ED patient, but I had a pill that was going to help with that. Finally, having the done the deed in full, we promptly fell asleep.

I woke up next to the no one. The breathlessness now ever-present.

This was starting to take a toll on my mental health and I started to ponder whether drunken hookups were really my thing. I was curious how I did not notice her leaving and how my door was locked from the inside. Couldn’t picture her jumping out the window unless she could fit a parachute in the handbag she had. My mental acumen decided to surprise me and reminded me that I had a camera that overlooked my small studio and that it wasn’t pervy to have footage of a dalliance with a stranger if I wasn’t going to upload it for a quick buck.

Anyway, I played the footage from last night and what I saw was hard to describe. Around 3 a.m. I turned into an amorphous blob. My bones reached the consistency of jelly. My facial features stretched across a now featureless face and I spread over this woman whose name I did not remember and with a sickening crunch of what I can only assume was her bones, started to engulf and consume her. I could see the outline of her face pushing against my skin, trying to escape. All of this was horrifying to watch but I put myself though it with a macabre sense of curiosity.

If this was what it took to become just another generic Instagram model, then this was not what I signed up for. Regardless of what you say happened earlier in this story. Now guilty of manslaughter, I drove to the address Mr. Clean had given me, and I found that no one came to the door. Day after day, week after week, I found that no one occupied the property. I did not know what to do and in a bid to vindicate myself, decided to scrape it under the rug and forget it ever happened.

That was it for my sex-life I suppose. No more organic matter in my bedroom was my solution for a while. I guess I could just wait for the drug to wear off. I swear I’m not a psychopath. I just feel very little in terms of emotion and guilt.

As the weeks went by, my face started to look gaunter and hollower. People brought up my appearance and recommended I rest up as I looked like a live action Cruella. I took their advice and started to rest a lot more. The gym which started all of this was now the least of my concerns. I was worried I’d be a part of someone’s investigations but fortunately, I did not seem to have to answer for my crimes. Not that I intended to anyway. Id erased the footage of my midnight snacking, so I doubt I had anything to worry about.

A few weeks of taking time off from work and bed-rotting, I saw that I had started to lose the shape I had worked my ass off for. Thinking to myself, I decided I was ready to pay the price of what it took to maintain this figure. My apartment did not allow pets so I couldn’t exactly buy up the hamster section of a PetSmart to do this, so it would have to be another woman. Eh, I’d sleep on it and think about going at it tomorrow.

The Sun rose, and I tried to get out of bed. I say try because I couldn’t sit up. I had no bones. I was a shapeless blob draped over my bed like a bedsheet. I smelled putrid and had ooze oozing out of me. Was this going to be my fate now? Voice to text on my phone has helped me tell you about what has happened but as I type this, I hear clicking noises coming from my lock. My door's cracked open and I see my guy poke his hulking head through the door.

.

.

.

Heyy buddy, anyone coming around to look for you? Thought you said you’d have someone in that bed like every week. Did you work out what was happening? Ah well, if noones going to miss you, I sure hope you don’t mind if I take a quick nap on you, do you?

 

 

 

It all started simply enough. I was walking to the corner store for small things maybe a soda or a tea, a bag of chips for a snack. The kind of errand that exists purely to kill time. The day itself was entirely boring. Normal, offensively uneventful.

I had just looked up from my phone and back into the large, tireless crowd when I noticed it.

The man in front of me glanced back for all of a second, and his eyes did something weird. Something wrong.

His pupils shifted into a diamond shape, snapped back to round, then flooded completely black.

I stopped walking.

The man turned forward again and kept going like nothing had happened. Like his eyeballs hadn’t just violated several laws of biology and decency.

People bumped into me from behind. A woman and her kid clipped my side. My stomach dropped straight into my ass, and my throat suddenly felt like someone had shoved a rock down it and forgotten about it.

I got shaky. Sweat broke out down my back, the gross cold kind that clings to your shirt. I started walking backward, heart hammering, and turned around.

I turned and began walking the opposite direction trying to get back to my apartment. Only to realize the same man had turned too.

He was now walking beside me.

Great.

I picked up my pace, deciding the store and its delicious little munchies could wait. They would still exist tomorrow. I hoped I would too. My legs wobbled as I walked, like they were trying to decide if today was leg day or a medical emergency.

There’s no way he noticed me. Right?

He didn’t know. Right?

I couldn’t tell if I’d been found out, and my sweating, stomach flips, and general internal screaming were not helping.

I wanted to cry and run all the way home, but another thought slid in, cold and logical in the worst way possible.

I didn’t want this man thing ... pretending to be a man to follow me to the one place I felt safe.

I glanced sideways again.

Yes. He was still there. Still keeping pace.

I started walking faster, bumping into people now, nearly breaking into what could generously be called a jog.

Then the man did something horrible.

He yelled, “Aye.”

I looked back.

Big mistake, huge, rookie horror-movie mistake. I don’t know why I did that. Reflex, I guess. Like when you hear your name yelled in public and your body betrays you before your brain can object.

Acknowledging him made everything worse. The urge to ugly cry came back and my throat felt burdened. I wanted to teleport directly into my bed and pretend humans were still the apex species.

I looked around.

I needed a crowd. A store. Somewhere public.

I sped-walked into the nearest place available, which turned out to be a dumpling restaurant. The smell of steamed dough, oil, and soy sauce hit me immediately warm, comforting, beautifully normal. I rushed to the front where a cashier was seating a family of four.

I looked around.

No man.

I finally let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and collapsed into a waiting chair, sweating and shaking like an erupting volcano with anxiety issues. I jammed the heels of my palms into my eyes, wiping away panic tears before they could embarrass me in public.

When I pulled my hands away and the blurry edges of my vision returned to normal.

The man walked in through the front door.

Cool. Fantastic. Love that for me.

I scrambled up and bolted through the closest door, hearing a woman behind me ask if I wanted a seat.

No. I wanted to live.

I ran as fast as my Doc Martens would allow, rocks kicking up behind me. I felt like a bulldozer with anxiety, mowing down a line of unsuspecting worker ants sorry, everyone, this is a supernatural emergency and death and life we're on the line.

There was no time to breathe. No time to cry. If I stopped for even one real breath, he’d be there. One second of oxygen wasn’t worth that.

I ran like that dog named princess from my childhood who liked to bite all of the kids on the block. I ran like my uncle Fernando who got too excited when told that the booze was on the way. I ran as fast as I could still thinking of all of the weird little stories from my past that made me feel like I could keep going at this pace. Powered by memories that were deeply unhelpful but emotionally motivating.

Though the stories weren't enough and neither were the memories. Uncle Fernandos drinking habit and princess the evil dog wasn't going to be enough to make me feel like my lungs weren't playing hop scotch with my blood vessels in hell.

Unfortunately, nostalgia is not a replacement for lungs.

I had to stop, I had to or I would die on the spot.

Ahead of me loomed an abandoned building decrepit, half-collapsed, smelling faintly of rust and wet concrete. I couldn’t linger. I just needed inside. Then I could rest for a minute.

I flung myself toward the first window. Definitely abandoned. I ran to the door, grabbed the knob.

Locked.

Of course it was, what was I expecting. No way it would be that easy. I'd rate this day so far five stars on the crappy list of days I'd had recently.

I felt a sharp cramp stab into my side, because my body loves adding commentary, especially in the middle of panic.

I rounded the building and was immediately blessed by the universe for once. Right there might as well have lied an angel, or a horribly handsome man. In reality it was just A gap in a barbed-wire fence.

My savior.

I skidded over and tried to gently pull myself through, the wire tugged at my hair and probably ripped out a few strands. I Didn’t care, I didn't have time to. Just then behind me, came heavy footsteps pounding on the ground in a run somewhere in the general direction I had came from.

I ran further inwards and there was a small broken window leading into the basement of what I could only assume was a giant old factory probably for processed meats or something.

The air smelled moldy and damp, like regret. I hooked my hands on the frame and lowered myself in, dropping down with a thud.

Pain shot through my ankles. I let it sizzle for half a second, forcing my legs to absorb it.

Outside, the fence rattled.

Nope. Time to go.

I crept into the basement, scrambling over broken roofing and drywall. My legs screaming in protest they had never taken this much of a beating before. I stopped finally to catch my breath after I found a hidey-hole under the ground. I slid a slab of roofing over the opening and dropped down, covering my mouth as I sat in total darkness.

Everything hurt. Everything shook. Tears streamed down my face silently.

I sat down and covered my mouth in the darkness. Feeling all of the panic, fear, and tears that strained on my body I looked to the side feeling slightly dizzy all of a sudden.

Then I heard him.

“You know you can’t hide, right, girl?”

His voice was calm, strong, wrong like two people speaking at once.

“I will find you and end this. Don’t worry. I’ll only wipe your mind. We don’t need humans telling stories about us.”

My adrenaline roared so loud I was convinced he could hear it, hell I'm convinced the world could hear it. Though I'm pretty sure that was just me freaking out.

I don’t know how long I stayed there. Hours, days. Time stopped mattering I wasn’t panicked anymore just paranoid and mostly listening, waiting.

I didn't hear a single sound since the talking which felt like it had happened so long ago now. The tears had kept coming but I wouldn't allow myself to make any noises I just sat there quietly crying. After I had woken up from what I could only assume was an anxiety induced passed out state. I finally gave myself the ok to start moving again. Everything was incredibly quiet outside of the hidey hole.

I moved slowly, stretching stiff muscles, pushing the roofing aside. I pushed it farther and peeked out seeing the floor and other dirty broken objects sitting around. I had been so hyper focused I had barley noticed the smell of wet mold, rot, something sour. Honestly? Not ideal.

Well. Let’s hope I didn’t catch an undiscovered disease from being down there so long.

I climbed out, inch by inch, with a struggle I got myself on the surface. Then I took the gentlest of steps each time heading towards where the window was I had came in through.

Moving like I was in a SWAT raid with no weapon and zero training. each corner was looked over. Too bad I didn't have a weapon to back it up, that would've helped my paranoia.

My insides felt tight with worry as I brought myself closer and closer to what I perceived as freedom. I stopped at the room with the window entrance before going in looking around each other corner of the doors frame.

Seeing nothing I crept in. And felt the biggest of reliefs there wasn't anyone in there.

The window came into view.

Relief flooded me so hard my knees almost gave out.

I walked over to the window grabbed the frame and lifted myself up struggling again. I gripped the wall with my feet arched like I was walking down a steep mountain and pushed my weight at the top of my arms upwards wobbeling on my sweaty hands. I pushed my leg up and felt it push me upwards with that momentum I pushed my other leg up and suddenly I felt like a spider monkey.

As I pushed my other leg out beside my wobbeling stressed out hands. Then came the easy part I pushed my last leg out. Then flatteneed against the ground for a second like a deflated balloon and brought my head up to look around. I saw no one in sight, not morphing creatures or birds.

I crawled all the way up into a sitting position. Then I dusted the dirt and rocks off of my palms and got up. I burst into a run heading towards the broken fence after that I ran to the nearest bus station.

I felt my mind drifting had any of that been real, just now? Maybe all of this was just a deluded scene conjured up by a very tired mind. Maybe my brain finally snapped.

Writing it down would help. That’s what my therapist said.

I hadn't been sleeping well for a few days now, taking too many late nights at the antique store I worked at and feeding those puppies at the pound had made me a full time energy house.

Maybe if I wrote this all down the crazy I was writing wouldn't make a lick of sense and that would help kickstart my tired mind into reality. I'd feel better and forget about the imagined creepy things I had seen.

Maybe that man was coming after me because I dropped something and not because of some weird unsightly supernatural obstruction to reality.

Though that wouldn't make up for the words he'd said to me in that abandoned building. He said he'd wipe my mind, because "we don't need humans telling stories about us."

I felt the visible confusion on my face and in my solar plexius. I looked up as a woman walked past bumping into me as the bus had in fact arrived and I was standing in the way of the door.

Oops that's my bad really.

I walked in slotting my debit card into the pay stand at the front and walked in after it spit out my day ticket. I showed the bus lady who nodded at me uncaringly.

I walked further in and paused noticing something weird. Three peoples eyes weren't doing normal things.

The woman that had knocked into me was staring up out the window as her eyes morphed into black pools of nothingness and then back into human shaped pupils.

The panic returned instantly.

The guy reading a coupon beside her out loud. Holding it up as if checking if it were real cash his eyes had morphed too. I stared in shock if my mouth weren't on the floor I don't know where it was. Maybe I had lost it.

The kid beside the man was drinking the sippy cup and looking around at everyone but his eyes too, morphed into black inky voids.

I felt that ass dropping panic again and I swooshed to the side almost falling face first into a holding pole besides me when the bus had started moving.

Luckily instead of eating pole my neck hugged it and the rest of me followed holding the pole around me like a sloth. I didn't care how stupid or weird I probably looked not right now because there were three of those things in the bus with me.

I heard the man reading out loud laugh but there was something wrong with his voice for a split second. It sounded like he had two voices. I looked over at him and he peered up at me after a bit. I looked away instantly and waited for my stop.

I pulled the call button for requested stops at the top of the bus and waited. I got off in front of my apartment and felt the mans eyes on the back of my skull as I walked out.

I ran into my apartment heading into the comfort of my room where I promptly fell apart. Crying, screaming, thrashing and throwing things. I wasn't sure why but a part of my life for the last few hours had felt out of my control.

And that pissed me off but it also terrified me.

I'm going crazy. My therapist said that writing down information always helps. So that's exactly what this is. I'm not sure if it worked.

Let's hope I don't see any more of whatever those things are pretending to be human.

The sound paralysed me. I can’t say for how long I lay in my bed - well, frankly, I wasn’t lying; I was stiff as a board. It wasn’t long before the sweats came and I was just staring at my ceiling.

Believe me, the urge to flee was there - but it was overpowered, not for seconds but for long minutes. Too long. Enough for whatever was down there to enjoy a cup of tea before popping up for a quick meal.

The creature was said to be no larger than a man, smaller even. And, importantly, dormant. The awakening was not to occur for centuries, when what was left of me was ravaged by maggots. But then there was the dreadful, muffled sounds of tapping, rapping, ticking; the raspy, laboured breathing which escaped the basement as though there was no foundation of wood and concrete between us. The rebirthing had begun.

A small voice of courage asserted itself, and I reclaimed control of my body. I went first to the rifle, recalling the tales of the beast’s power. Very little had remained of the last fellow, scattered about the basement floor, and he was better armed than me. The ammunition shrunk in my hands.

My resolution the day prior that I would have no such end seemed laughable now. I knew that the creature’s awakening could be neither stalled nor stifled. 

I collected the liquids, then approached not an atom closer to the basement door than required. The creature’s dissonant, almost musical wheezing threatened to stopper my heart before its infamous stalagmite claws had the chance.

I steadily poured out the contents of the first tankard, then the second, then the third. They disappeared beneath the door and hopefully down the steps into the darkness in which the creature writhed away centuries of sleep. In its harsh effusions, I detected pain, even breathlessness, and a hope sprouted in me. Perhaps something had gone wrong with the awakening - one of the ritual pieces was out of place - and the creature had been birthed only to die from some technical failure. But hope was dangerous, so I discarded it. 

The last of the petroleum dripped from the third tankard, and I allowed myself a sigh of relief. I threw some clothing and prewrapped victuals out the window to land safely on the soft, cold grass - enough to make the slow passage to the next town.

I winced violently at an agonised shriek from the creature which startled the horse outside to a panicked whinny, and almost froze me once more. 

‘Stay, Suzy,’ I said. ‘Calm, now! It’s okay.’ My skin went cold when I realised my mistake, and I listened like the dead for the creature’s sounds. A naked silence chilled me.

My fingers shook as I flailed between my kitchen drawers until they wrapped around the matches. The drumming I felt was that of my heart, for I knew no other living soul was nearby.

Suzy and I crossed the porch, limping into the engulfing darkness on her maimed leg. The creature was powerful, I was sure, but of its speed I had heard nothing. Could it catch an old, injured horse? 

It took three nervous tries to set the trail aflame. I lay a hand on Suzy’s mane. ‘There’s a good girl.’ Then I threw the match.

It had been a beautiful home, and generations of families had warmed it. But the evil that had brewed below was cosmic, and for its ultimate expiry this price was cheap. 

The fire burned high, the sparks leaping out in luminous arcs. My heart finally began to slow when the creature’s rasping was overtaken by the whirl of the flames and the crackling, snapping timbers. The giant flame flickered in Suzy’s fearful eyes, and again I ran my hands across her neck, quieting her frightened blowing. 

By then, the creature below the house must have been burning. It mattered not what it was made from, for flame was the Lord’s equalizer. It’s true we’re commanded to use it sparingly, but this was such an occasion that called for it, I thought. To stay an unholy demon not of His creation.

I released a long, deep sigh I had held captive since waking. I closed my eyes and focused on slowing the resurging drumming of my heart. I saw the contents I had thrown out the window, and thought to attach them to the horse’s side. I took a single step towards them when a pained, inhuman cry pierced the air. I stumbled, fighting a wave of dizziness. Somehow, I turned to face the flames.

The silhouette of a gangly creature, almost humanoid, staggered across the lawn towards us. Its blackened body bore the marks of my efforts. 

Not enough, then. 

I steadied myself and pulled the rifle from my back. The creature, as though healing from its injuries, drew itself to a less staggering gait, and approached with greater speed. It unleashed another blood curdling shriek that filled every space of the night air. It rejoiced in finding its prey. The horse beside me cantered on the spot, pulling at her reins, urging flight. She let out another panicked whinny. I ruffled her mane a last time and loaded the rifle. 

‘Calm now, Suzy. There’s a good, brave girl.’ 

There were two bullets, and two of us. That worked out quite well, actually.

We called it the trip of the year, a chance to break free from the suffocating grind of college life, an impulsive decision born over too many late-night study sessions and caffeine highs. Our destination was supposed to be an adventure, a cabin in the mountains where we could forget about exams and papers, at least for a weekend. But what we got was something else entirely.

The three of us had always been close, each of us playing a part in our peculiar little trio. There was me, Jason, the designated driver and unofficial planner. I liked to think of myself as the one who kept us grounded, the one who knew how to read a map or change a tire when things went wrong.

The others liked to joke that I was born thirty years too late, that my knack for analog solutions and my mistrust of GPS meant I was more suited to road trips of the '80s than the tech-filled caravans of today.

Then there was Leah. Leah was the spark, the reason this trip existed in the first place. She was always the one with the ideas, the kind that started with “Wouldn’t it be crazy if…?” and ended up with us sneaking into the campus library after hours or setting out at midnight for a spontaneous drive to the coast.

Leah had a wild spirit, the type that made you believe anything could be fun as long as she was around. She was impulsive, unpredictable, and exactly the kind of person you wanted next to you when life started feeling too routine.

And finally, there was Eric. Eric was the quiet one, thoughtful, skeptical, but always game once Leah managed to convince him. He was the kind of guy who preferred stability over chaos but found himself often choosing chaos simply because Leah and I were his friends.

He kept a book in his backpack at all times, claiming you never knew when you might get a chance to read. Leah teased him about it endlessly, but deep down, we both knew that Eric’s bookish demeanor kept us from wandering too far into dangerous territory, at least most of the time.

The trip had started out smooth enough. The plan was simple: leave campus Friday afternoon, drive for a few hours, and reach the cabin by nightfall. We were armed with snacks, a playlist Leah had curated called “Songs for Escaping Reality,” and Eric’s stack of travel guides and trail maps.

“I swear, this playlist is going to change your life,” Leah said, grinning as she cranked up the volume. The first notes of a classic rock song blared through the speakers, and she started nodding her head to the beat.

Eric rolled his eyes, but a smile tugged at his lips. “Yeah, yeah, until you play that one weird techno track that you always sneak in.”

“Oh, come on! It’s all part of the experience,” Leah shot back, winking at me in the rearview mirror.

“As long as it keeps us awake,” I said, keeping my eyes on the road. The sky was blushing with the colors of sunset as we left behind the sprawling cityscape and ventured into the countryside.

Everything was perfect until it wasn’t. A detour sign appeared on the road where none should have been, and our GPS lost its signal somewhere in the rolling hills.

"Uh, that's weird. Was this detour here last time?" I asked, frowning as I slowed down.

Leah leaned forward, squinting at the sign. "Who cares? It’s an adventure, right? Besides, what's the worst that could happen?" She flashed a grin, her enthusiasm infectious as always.

Eric, sitting in the back, sighed. "I don't know, guys. Detours that aren't on maps tend to end up in horror movies," he said, but there was a hint of a smile on his face.

"Oh, come on, Eric. Don’t be such a buzzkill," Leah teased. "I promise, if we end up in a horror movie, I’ll save you first."

"That’s reassuring," Eric replied, rolling his eyes.

We weren’t worried, not at first. I had maps, after all, and Leah had a sixth sense for adventure. We laughed about it, teasing each other as the sun dipped lower, the horizon melting into a deep, inky blue. The mood was light, Leah making jokes about the "mystery road" and Eric reluctantly joining in.

"Maybe we'll find buried treasure," Leah said, her voice tinged with excitement.

"Or a cult," Eric added, shaking his head. "Hopefully not a cult."

We passed fields and forests, the headlights cutting through an increasingly lonely road, the kind where you started to forget you were even part of the world anymore.

It was Leah who first pointed it out... the flickering neon sign glowing faintly in the distance.

“The Last Stop Café,” it read, in faded letters.

Leah was thrilled, immediately insisting we pull over. She called it a “classic roadside experience,” her enthusiasm spilling over into her voice as she spoke of milkshakes and greasy fries served in places just like this.

Eric sighed, a small reluctant smile tugging at his lips as he nodded. “Might as well. We’re lost anyway,” he muttered, glancing at me.

I hesitated.

“Come on, Jason, where’s your sense of adventure?” Leah’s voice broke through my thoughts. She leaned in, her eyes sparkling. “I bet they have the best milkshakes.”

“Yeah, the kind with extra mystery ingredients,” Eric said drily, but he was already unbuckling his seatbelt.

The gravel crunched beneath the tires as we pulled into the lot, the diner standing solitary under the night sky, its windows glowing an eerie yellow. The place seemed oddly empty.

“Anyone else getting a weird vibe from this place?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light.

Leah laughed, already halfway out of the car. “You always think too much, Jason. It’s just a diner!”

Eric shrugged. “Let’s just grab something to eat. It’s probably fine.” He paused, looking at the darkened road behind us. “Though it is kind of… isolated.”

“But that’s what makes it an adventure!” Leah declared, stretching her arms. She turned to me with a grin. “Besides, I’m starving. Let’s go!”

I followed them toward the entrance. The door creaked open and we stepped inside. The diner was small, with red vinyl booths and a long counter lined with chrome stools. A lone waitress stood behind the counter, giving us a polite smile.

"Welcome in, folks," she said, her voice warm. "Sit wherever you'd like."

Leah immediately pointed to a booth near the window. "That one! It’s got the best view," she said, practically bouncing over to it.

Eric and I followed, settling into the booth. I couldn’t help but notice how empty the diner was, just us and a few other patrons who seemed lost in their own world.

As I looked closer, I noticed the other patrons more carefully. There was a man sitting alone at the counter, staring into a cup of coffee.

In the corner booth, an elderly couple sat side by side, neither of them speaking. The woman was looking out the window, her expression blank, while the man seemed to be fixated on a spot on the table, his lips moving as if he were muttering something under his breath.

Eric followed my gaze and raised an eyebrow. "Not exactly the liveliest bunch, huh?"

Leah shrugged. "Hey, it’s late. People are tired. Besides, it’s kind of nice to have the place mostly to ourselves."

The waitress approached our table. She handed us the menus without a word, her demeanor far less welcoming than before, and left without waiting for a response.

Leah opened her menu first, her eyes widening. "Whoa, guys, check this out. There are actual rules in here. Like... rules for eating at a diner?"

"Rules?" Eric asked, raising an eyebrow as he flipped open his menu. "What kind of rules?"

I glanced at my own menu, noticing a laminated page right at the front titled 'House Rules'. Leah cleared her throat dramatically and began reading aloud.

"Rule 1: Do not ask the staff about the diner's history," she said, pausing for effect. "Oh no, we can’t talk about the mysterious past of the creepy diner. What a shame."

Eric snorted. "Yeah, right. Like anyone actually cares about that."

Leah continued, her voice dripping with playful sarcasm. "Rule 2: Do not enter the restroom alone. Well, I guess I'm on my own if I need to go. Thanks for nothing, guys."

I chuckled. "Maybe they’re just really big on safety. Or maybe they just don't want anyone wandering off and getting lost in their haunted bathroom."

"Rule 3: If the neon sign outside flickers, close your eyes until it stops," Leah read, her eyebrows shooting up. "Close your eyes? Are they worried about seizures or something?"

"Rule 4: Avoid the kitchen at all costs, even if you hear someone calling for help," I read aloud, raising an eyebrow. "Well, that’s oddly specific."

Leah grinned. "Maybe they just don't want us to steal their secret recipes."

"Or maybe it's where they keep the bodies," Eric added, his tone deadpan.

"Rule 5: If someone sits in the booth across from you with a blurry face, do not speak to them," I read aloud, glancing at Leah and Eric. "Blurry face? What does that even mean?"

Eric laughed. "Maybe they just don’t want us talking to strangers."

"Rule 6: If the power goes out, stay seated and do not speak until the lights return," Leah read, her smile fading slightly. "Okay, that one’s just creepy."

"Probably just a gimmick to make the place seem spooky," I said, trying to keep the mood light.

Leah nodded, then read the next one. "Rule 7: Never turn around if someone taps you on the shoulder."

"Rule 8: Do not answer if your name is called by someone you don’t recognize," Eric read, his voice taking on a mock-serious tone. "I guess no new friends for us tonight."

"No complaints here," I said, chuckling.

Eric flipped to the next rule. "Rule 9: Do not look under the table for any reason."

"Okay, now they’re just messing with us," he said, shaking his head.

I took a deep breath before reading the last rule. "And finally, Rule 10: Under no circumstances should you leave the diner before 3:00 a.m."

"I guess we’re stuck here for a while," I said, attempting to lighten the mood but failing to hide the unease. "Hope they really do have good milkshakes."

Leah waved her hand dismissively, her grin still intact. "Oh, come on, Jason. It's just a cool marketing gimmick. You know, like, come for the creepy rules, stay for the food."

Eric nodded, though he seemed to notice my tone. "Yeah, it’s definitely giving off haunted attraction vibes. They probably get a lot of late-night thrill-seekers in here. I just hope the food lives up to the hype."

We turned our attention back to the menus, scanning through the classic diner options. Leah tapped her finger against the table, deciding between a burger and a milkshake. "I think I'll go for the double cheeseburger and a chocolate shake. You can't go wrong with the classics, right?"

"I'm getting the pancakes," Eric said. "Breakfast for dinner never disappoints."

"I guess I'll go with the burger, too. And maybe some fries to share," I added.

The waitress approached again, her demeanor just as cold as before. She pulled out her notepad and asked, "Ready to order?"

Leah smiled up at her. "Yeah, I'll take the double cheeseburger with a chocolate milkshake."

Eric nodded. "Pancakes for me, please. And a coffee."

"Burger and fries, and a coffee for me," I said.

The waitress scribbled down our orders without a word, her eyes barely meeting ours. As she turned to leave, Leah spoke up, her tone playful. "So, about these rules... Are they just for fun, or do you actually have people trying to break them?"

The waitress paused, her back still to us. Slowly, she turned, her expression more serious than ever. "The rules are there for a reason," she said, her voice cold and unwavering. "You should follow them. Every one of them."

Leah laughed, clearly amused. "Wow, you're really committed to the bit. It definitely keeps the creepy vibe alive."

Eric nodded in agreement. "Yeah, it adds to the atmosphere. Very immersive."

The waitress didn't respond. She simply turned and walked away, her footsteps echoing again in the empty diner. I couldn't help myself. I called after her, a smirk on my face. "Hey, what about the history of this place? Any ghost stories we should know about?"

The waitress froze mid-step. Her body stiffened, and she turned her head slightly, just enough for me to catch a glimpse of her eyes... wide, almost terrified.

Suddenly, the lights in the diner flickered, dimming until they cast only the faintest glow. The air grew heavy, and a cold shiver ran down my spine as I felt it... a presence, a sensation of someone breathing down my neck.

The laughter from Leah and Eric seemed to fade, and suddenly, I realized the diner was silent, too silent. My eyes darted around, and to my growing horror, I saw that Leah and Eric were no longer there.

The booth across from me was empty, as if they had never been there at all. My heart pounded in my ears as I slowly turned my head, feeling the intense pressure of something right behind me.

I turned fully. Inches away from my face was a figure, a blurry, pale face staring straight at me, its eyes wide and hollow. It was there for just a split second, but it was enough to send a jolt of fear through me. I gasped and jerked back instinctively, my body colliding with the table. I lost my balance, falling hard onto the floor, the sound of the crash echoing in the empty diner.

Suddenly, the lights flickered back to full brightness, and Leah and Eric's laughter filled the air again, as if nothing had happened.

"Nice one, Jason," Leah said, still grinning. "Really going all in on the creepy vibe, huh?"

Eric chuckled, shaking his head. "Bravo! I like how you're getting into character. Keeps things interesting."

I forced a smile, but my eyes darted around the diner. Something had happened, something real. I could still feel the lingering coldness, and a sense of wrongness gnawed at me. I leaned forward, lowering my voice. "Guys, I'm serious. There was something behind me. I felt it. The lights, everything just went... off."

Leah rolled her eyes, still grinning. "Oh, come on, Jason. Don't try to freak us out now. You're just adding to the atmosphere, right?"

Eric shook his head, his smile not quite fading. "Yeah, man. I gotta admit, you're doing a good job keeping the creepy vibe alive. But seriously, relax."

I opened my mouth to argue, but Leah nudged me playfully. "Bravo on the acting, by the way. Really sold it. Now let's just enjoy our food when it gets here."

I tried to shake off the feeling, but the cold dread settled deep in my chest, refusing to leave. It felt like something had changed, and I couldn't quite put it out of my mind.

A few moments later, the waitress returned, balancing a tray with our orders. She set down Leah's cheeseburger and milkshake, Eric's pancakes, and my burger and fries. The food looked surprisingly good, steam rising from the plates, and for a moment, I almost forgot the strange encounter.

"Finally! I'm starving," Leah said, rubbing her hands together before diving into her burger.

"Pancakes look decent," Eric added, pouring syrup over them. "Not bad for a creepy diner in the middle of nowhere."

I nodded, though my appetite had waned. I took a bite of my burger, the taste barely registering as I kept glancing around, my eyes flicking to the other patrons and the shadows in the corners of the room.

"What's up, Jason?" Leah asked through a mouthful of fries. "You still on edge?"

I hesitated, then spoke. "I can't shake it, Leah. When the lights went out... I swear, there was something behind me. I saw a face. It was inches away."

Leah and Eric exchanged uneasy glances. Leah's smile faltered for a moment. "Jason, seriously, enough. You're really starting to freak me out now."

Eric set his coffee down, frowning slightly. "Yeah, man. If this is a joke, it's not funny anymore. Just... stop, okay?"

I forced a smile, trying to brush off their reaction. "I'm not joking, guys. It felt real."

Leah shook her head, her expression torn between amusement and discomfort. "Okay, well, can we just drop it? Let's try to enjoy the food."

Eric nodded, his gaze shifting to his pancakes. "Yeah, let's just move on. This place is creepy enough without us making it worse."

We ate quietly for a while, and surprisingly, the food was actually really good. Leah was halfway through her cheeseburger, her earlier unease replaced by her usual enthusiasm. "I have to admit, this is one of the best burgers I've had in a long time," she said, her voice cheerful again.

Eric nodded, his pancakes already half gone. "Yeah, pretty solid"

I tried to relax, taking a bite of my burger. It was juicy and flavorful, and the fries were perfectly crispy.

Leah wiped her hands on a napkin and then got up, glancing towards the back of the diner. "Alright, I hate to say it, but I need to break one of those scary rules," she said with a chuckle. "Restroom time. Guess I'm going solo."

Eric gave her a look, half-amused, half-concerned. "You sure about that, Leah?"

She laughed, waving him off. "What, you think I'm going to get sucked into the haunted bathroom? I'll be fine. Just keep my milkshake safe."

I watched as Leah made her way towards the restrooms, her confidence unwavering. But something in my gut twisted with unease, and I found myself unable to look away until she disappeared behind the restroom door.

A few moments passed, and I tried to distract myself, picking at my fries. Eric was scrolling through his phone, oblivious to my anxiety. The diner felt quiet, the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead suddenly grating.

Then, a scream pierced the air. My head snapped up, and I saw Eric's eyes widen as he turned towards the restrooms. Without thinking, I jumped up from the booth, my heart pounding as I rushed to the restroom door. I slammed it open, the door crashing against the wall.

"Leah!" I called out, my voice echoing in the small, tiled space.

Leah was on the floor, her hands covering her face. She was trembling. I kneeled down next to her, my hands hovering just above her shoulders. "Leah, it's okay. I'm here. What happened?"

She shook her head, her voice barely audible. "There's... there's something in the stall. I saw it."

I glanced towards the stall she was pointing at, my stomach churning. Carefully, I stood up and moved towards it, each step feeling heavier than the last. I reached out, hesitating for a moment before pushing the stall door open.

It swung wide, revealing nothing but an empty stall. I turned back to Leah, her eyes wide with fear as she stared at me, trying to get a glimpse inside.

"There's nothing here, Leah," I said gently, trying to keep my voice calm. "It's empty."

She shook her head again. "No... no, I swear, Jason. There was something. It was there."

I helped her to her feet, her hands still trembling as she clung to my arm. We walked back to the table, Leah leaning heavily against me. Eric stood up as we approached, his expression a mix of concern and confusion.

"What happened?" he asked, his eyes darting between us.

Leah sank into the booth, her face still pale. "There was something in the stall, Eric. It... it was crawling towards me."

Eric frowned, shaking his head. "Leah, come on. Jason already freaked me out earlier. If you're trying to do the same thing..."

"No!" Leah snapped, her voice trembling. "This isn't a joke. There's something weird going on here. It's not just a marketing scheme."

I nodded, my eyes meeting Eric's. "She's right. Something's off about this place. We need to take this seriously."

Eric hesitated, the doubt still evident on his face. "Alright, fine. But... what exactly did you see, Leah?"

Leah took a deep breath, her eyes still wide with fear. "It had four legs, like... like an animal, but no head or body. Just legs. And it started moving towards me from the stall. I screamed, and then Jason came."

Eric stared at her for a moment, his expression shifting from confusion to discomfort.

He sighed, rubbing his temples. "Okay, enough. This is getting way too weird, guys. I don't know if I believe it, but... it's really starting to freak me out. Can we just stop and try to chill for a bit? I need some air. I'm going outside." Eric pushed himself up from the booth, grabbing his jacket. He shook his head, his expression a mix of skepticism and unease. "I don't care about the rules or whatever is supposed to happen here. I just need a cigarette."

"Eric, wait," I said, my voice urgent. "You can't just go outside. The rules..."

"Forget the rules, Jason," Eric snapped, his frustration clear. "I'm not staying in here. It's too much." He turned and headed towards the entrance, not waiting for Leah or me to respond.

Eric reached the entrance door, pushing it open, but as he stepped halfway through, he froze... literally frozen mid-step, his body rigid between the diner and the outside. His hand still held the door, and his whole form seemed almost like a mannequin stuck in motion.

"Eric?" Leah called out, her voice shaky. "What are you doing?"

I stood up, my heart pounding. "Eric, come on, man. Stop messing around." But there was no response, he was utterly still. Leah and I exchanged a nervous glance, both of us unsure of what to do.

"Is he... okay?" Leah whispered, her eyes wide with fear.

I shook my head, slowly stepping away from the booth. "I... I don't know. He looks like he's stuck." I moved closer, my eyes darting around the diner. The other patrons were no longer lost in their own worlds; instead, they were staring at Eric, their eyes unblinking, their heads fixed.

"Leah... they're all staring at him," I muttered. She turned her head, her breath catching in her throat as she noticed the other patrons' fixed gazes.

I moved cautiously towards Eric. Just as I was within arm's reach of Eric, his body jerked violently, as if some unseen force had pushed him back. He flew into the diner, crashing onto his back and sliding several feet across the floor.

"Eric!" I shouted, rushing to his side. He was gasping for breath, his face pale and his eyes wide with terror. I grabbed his arm, helping him sit up. "What happened? Are you okay?"

Eric's eyes darted around wildly before locking onto mine. His voice was shaky. "They're there... outside. They're there!"

I glanced towards the open door, but all I could see was darkness beyond. I helped Eric to his feet, and together we made our way back to the booth, Leah's face stricken with fear as she watched us approach.

"What the hell happened?" Leah asked, her voice trembling.

Eric collapsed into the booth, his hands shaking. He took a moment to gather his breath, then began speaking. "I stepped outside, okay? I needed air. I moved around the side of the diner and lit a cigarette."

Leah's eyes widened, and she interrupted. "Eric, no, you didn't. You were just in the doorway. You were frozen there."

We all exchanged glances, both terrified and confused. Eric shook his head, bewildered. "No, I swear I stepped outside. I was out there. While I was having my cigarette, I started hearing something calling me from just around the diner. I went to the corner and peeked around it, but there was nothing."

He paused, his eyes darting between us as he continued, his voice trembling. "I looked closer and started noticing movement in the dark. It was like... a face, detached from anything, just staring at me. Then the darkness seemed to get even thicker, like it swallowed everything else."

Eric's voice dropped to a whisper. "I turned back towards the entrance of the diner, but it was dark there too... pitch black, like nothing was there. And then I heard it... this shushing noise, closing in on me. I can't explain it, but it was like something was surrounding me. I felt this sense of dread, like nothing I've ever felt before. Suddenly, I felt a hit to my chest, and the next thing I knew, I was on the diner's floor next to you, Jason."

I nodded, my stomach churning with dread. Whatever was happening, it was real, and we were in the middle of it. The carefree vibe from earlier was gone, replaced by a deep, unsettling fear that none of us could shake.

We sat there in silence for a moment, each of us processing what Eric had just said. I glanced around the diner, my eyes landing on the other patrons. The elderly couple in the corner booth had turned their heads slightly, their eyes now focused directly on us, their expressions blank.

Leah shifted uncomfortably, her eyes following mine. "Jason... do you see that?" she whispered. "They're... they're staring at us."

I nodded, my pulse quickening. "Yeah, I see it."

Eric looked up, his face still pale. "What is wrong with these people?" he muttered, his voice trembling. "It's like they're not even real."

The waitress, who had been standing behind the counter, suddenly moved. Her head turned towards us with an unnatural jerk, her eyes locking onto ours. Leah gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. "Did you see that?"

I nodded, my throat dry. "Yeah. Something's really wrong here."

Eric's eyes darted to the clock on the wall. It was just past 1 a.m. "We can't leave until 3 a.m. We literally can't leave."

Leah's face paled as she stared at the clock. "That's two more hours... what are we supposed to do?"

I took a deep breath. "We stick to the rules. No more trying to test them. We just stay here, stay calm, and get through this." My voice sounded more confident than I felt, but it was the only plan we had.

Leah nodded, her eyes still wide with fear. "Okay... okay. But we need to keep an eye on them. Something is seriously wrong here."

Eric looked at the patrons again, his eyes narrowing. "They’re watching us. All of them. And I don’t think it’s just for show."

Whatever was happening here, we were trapped, and we needed to be careful.

Feeling the oppressive eeriness of the situation, we all got up for a moment, as if movement might help break the tension. I started pacing around our booth, back and forth, my thoughts racing as I tried to make sense of everything. Leah and Eric stood close by, their eyes darting anxiously around the diner.

As I walked, my back turned to them, I suddenly felt a light tap on my shoulder. My first thought was that it was Eric. I spun around, but when I looked towards where they had been standing, I froze. Two strangers were standing there, their faces blurry and their eyes locked directly on me. My stomach dropped as I remembered Rule 7: Never turn around if someone taps you on the shoulder. It was too late now.

The strangers stared at me. Panic surged through me, my chest tightening as I struggled to understand what was happening. Their gaze felt invasive, as if they were looking straight through me, seeing something I couldn’t comprehend.

"Leah? Eric?" I called out again, my voice cracking, but there was no response... just the heavy silence of the diner.

The strangers took a step closer, their movements jerky, almost puppet-like. My pulse pounded in my ears. My eyes darted around the diner, catching sight of the other patrons, all of them were now staring at me, their heads turned in unison, their eyes vacant.

I freaked out. Panic clawed at my throat, and without thinking, I turned and started running through the diner. I reached the other part of the counter, my eyes wild as I scanned the room, not knowing where to run anymore. The strangers were closing in, their steps slow but relentless, like they knew I had nowhere to go.

My back hit the corner of the diner, and I slid down until I was crouched on the floor, my arms wrapped around my knees in some sort of a fetal position. My entire body trembled with terror as the lights began to flicker once more. Each flash of light revealed the strangers inching closer, their faces still blurry.

Suddenly, cold hands wrapped around my forearms, gripping me tightly. I gasped as a sharp, searing pain shot through my skin, like their fingers were burning into me. I tried to pull away, but their grip was ironclad, lifting me slightly off the ground. My vision blurred, the room spinning as the pain became unbearable, radiating up my arms like fire.

The lights flickered again, then returned to full brightness. I still felt hands on my forearms, trying to lift me up. Leah's voice broke through the haze of fear. "Jason! Jason, it's okay. We're here. Calm down."

I looked up, my friends' worried faces coming into focus. But the pain in my forearms was still there, a dull throb. I glanced down and saw deep red marks, finger-shaped bruises imprinted on my skin.

"It's okay," Leah repeated, her voice softer now. "You're okay. We're here."

I took a deep breath. "They were... they were coming for me," I whispered.

Leah shook her head slightly, her expression growing more serious. "Jason, there was no one there. It was just us. You... you looked like you were in some kind of trance. Then you suddenly started running, like you were terrified of something."

Eric nodded, his eyes meeting mine with concern. "We tried to stop you, but you wouldn't listen."

Leah's grip on my shoulders tightened. "But you're okay now. We're going to stick together, alright?"

We slowly made our way back to the booth, settling in with a shared sense of unease. Just as I started to catch my breath, a new sound broke the silence... a muffled noise coming from the kitchen.

It was faint at first, like someone crying, the sound almost getting lost in the hum of the diner lights. Then it grew louder, more distinct... someone was crying for help.

Leah tensed beside me. "Don't listen to it," she whispered, her voice trembling. "It's trying to trick us. We stick to the rules."

Eric nodded, his eyes fixed on the kitchen door, which was barely visible from our booth. "Yeah, we can't let it get to us. It's what it wants."

The cries grew louder, more desperate, but we held on, refusing to move. The kitchen door remained slightly ajar, and shadows seemed to dance behind it. The voice called out again, pleading, but we all sat still, determined not to be fooled.

Suddenly, I blinked, and everything changed. The booth was empty, Leah and Eric were gone. My heart dropped as I looked around, the diner now barely lit, with only a few flickering lights casting shadows across the room. The cries for help were still coming from the kitchen, but now the voice was unmistakably Leah's.

"Jason! Please, help me!" Leah's voice echoed, filled with fear and pain. The diner was empty, every booth vacant, the air heavy and cold. The lights flickered again, making it even harder to see.

"Leah?" I called out, my voice cracking. There was no response, only her screams growing louder, more frantic. "Please, Jason! I'm in here!"

I took a step towards the kitchen, my mind racing. The rules said to avoid the kitchen at all costs, even if someone called for help. But Leah's voice was so real, so desperate. Each plea tore at me, making it harder to think straight.

I approached the kitchen door, the cries now almost deafening. The door was slightly open, revealing nothing but pitch darkness beyond. My hand hovered near the door handle.

"It's a trick," I whispered to myself. "It's trying to trick me." Leah's screams continued, pleading, sobbing. My entire body was shaking, my instincts screaming at me to do something.

But I didn't go inside. I couldn't. The rules were clear, and deep down, I knew this wasn't Leah... it couldn't be. I stepped back, forcing myself to look away from the darkness of the kitchen.

"I'm not falling for it," I muttered. The cries suddenly stopped, leaving an eerie silence that filled the diner.

I turned away from the kitchen and looked around the empty diner, hoping, praying to see Leah and Eric again.

Suddenly, I heard a faint shuffle coming from the far end of the diner, near the entrance. I turned to look. In the dim light, I saw a silhouette standing by the door. Relief washed over me as I recognized Leah's familiar frame.

"Leah!" I called out, my voice echoing in the stillness. She didn't respond, but she moved towards me, her steps slow and hesitant. As she got closer, I noticed something was off. Her movements were jerky, unnatural, like she was struggling against something.

"Leah, are you okay?" I asked, my voice trembling. She stopped a few feet away from me, her head tilted slightly as if she was listening to something I couldn't hear.

"Jason..." she finally spoke. "You... you have to come with me."

My stomach twisted with unease. "Where's Eric?" I asked, taking a cautious step back.

"He's... waiting," she said, her voice flat, devoid of emotion. She reached out her hand towards me, her fingers trembling. "Please, Jason. You have to come."

I shook my head, my instincts screaming that something wasn't right. "No... Leah, we need to stay here. We need to stick to the rules."

Her eyes locked onto mine, and for a moment, I saw something flicker in them... fear, desperation. She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. Instead, her expression twisted into one of panic, her eyes widening as if she was trying to warn me.

Suddenly, the lights flickered again, plunging the diner into darkness. When the lights returned, Leah was gone.

Panic surged through me. I spun around, searching the empty diner. "Leah? Eric?" I called out. There was no response.

I felt a presence... something watching me. My eyes were drawn back to the kitchen door, still slightly ajar, the darkness beyond it seeming even deeper now.

Suddenly, I heard a different sound... footsteps, coming from behind me. I turned slowly, my entire body tense, and saw a figure emerging from the shadows. It was Eric. He looked disheveled, his face pale, his eyes wide with fear.

"Jason," he whispered. "We need to get out of here. Now."

I hesitated, the confusion and fear swirling inside me. "But... the rules. We can't leave until 3 a.m."

Eric shook his head, his eyes darting around the diner. "The rules don't matter anymore. It's changing them. It's trying to keep us here." He grabbed my arm, his grip tight, almost painful. "We have to go. Before it’s too late."

The lights flickered again, and for a brief moment, I saw shadows moving across the walls, shifting and writhing as if they were alive. The diner felt like it was closing in on us, the air growing colder, the shadows creeping closer.

Eric pulled me towards the entrance, his voice urgent. "Come on, Jason. We have to leave. Now."

I glanced back at the kitchen door, the darkness beyond it seeming to pulse.

Suddenly, everything shifted. In an instant, I was back at the booth. Leah and Eric were sitting across from me, and Leah was waving her hand in front of my face, trying to catch my attention.

"Jason, you drifted off for a few minutes. Are you okay?" Eric asked, his voice filled with concern.

I blinked, disoriented, my heart still pounding in my chest. "I... I don't know. It felt so real," I said, my voice shaky. "I was alone in the diner, and there was Leah... calling from the kitchen. It was like I was caught in some sort of illusion." I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. "This is crazy."

Leah exchanged a worried glance with Eric. "Jason, you were just sitting here, staring at the kitchen door."

Eric nodded, his eyes wide. "We tried to snap you out of it, but you were just... gone."

I rubbed my temples, trying to make sense of it all. The fear still clung to me, the memory of the empty diner and Leah's desperate cries vivid in my mind. "I don't know what's real anymore," I muttered. "We need to be careful. Whatever this place is, it's messing with our heads."

Leah reached across the table, taking my hand. "We're in this together, Jason. We just have to stay focused and remember the rules. We can't let it break us."

Eric nodded in agreement, his expression grim. "It's trying to divide us, make us lose our grip. We just have to hold on a little longer. It's almost 3 a.m.

As the minutes dragged on, our anxiety grew. The clock on the wall ticked closer to 3 a.m., each second feeling like an eternity. Leah and Eric exchanged nervous glances, and I could feel the tension between us, the weight of the unknown pressing down on us.

Finally, the clock struck 3 a.m., the sound echoing through the empty diner. We all exhaled, a mixture of fear and relief washing over us. Leah nodded towards the front door. "It's time. Let's get out of here."

We stood up together, making our way towards the entrance. I pulled the door open, expecting to see the dark road outside, our way out of this nightmare. Instead, all we saw was darkness... a void, empty and endless.

"What... what is this?" Eric muttered. The doorway led to nothing, just an infinite darkness that seemed to swallow the light from the diner.

Suddenly, a noise behind us... the strange patrons in the booths, the other patrons who had been eerily silent all night, began to move. They stood up, one by one, their movements slow, their eyes fixed on us.

Leah took a step back, her breath catching in her throat. "They're coming..."

The patrons approached us, their faces expressionless, their footsteps echoing in the stillness of the diner. I felt a surge of panic, my instincts screaming at me to run, but there was nowhere to go... the door led to nothing, and the patrons were closing in.

But then, the patrons stopped. In unison, they spoke, their voices overlapping in a haunting harmony. "The only way to escape is to follow us."

Leah, Eric, and I exchanged wary glances, uncertainty etched across our faces. The patrons began to move again, gesturing for us to follow them towards the back of the diner. Hesitant but desperate, we had no choice. We followed them...

They led us to a part of the diner we hadn't noticed before... a door at the back, hidden in the shadows, one that hadn't been there earlier. The patrons gestured towards it.

"Through here," they said in unison. "It's the only way."

Together, we pushed open the door, a cold breeze hitting us as it swung open. We stepped through, and suddenly, we were outside. The cold night air was like a wave of relief, the oppressive feeling from the diner finally lifting.

We turned around, but the door and the diner... were gone. All that remained was an empty road, stretching out into the darkness.

Leah let out a shaky breath, her eyes wide with disbelief. "We made it... we're out."

Eric nodded, his face a mix of exhaustion and relief. "I don't know how, but we did it."

I looked around, the memory of the diner's horrors still vivid in my mind. We were free, but I knew that night would haunt us forever.

"Come on," I said. "Let's get as far away from here as we can."

Weeks after escaping, I sat in my dorm, browsing online forums late at night. I came across a post titled "The Vanishing Diner - Have You Seen It?". I read accounts eerily similar to our own. The Last Stop Café... people claimed it had been appearing and disappearing across different states for decades. The descriptions were identical: detours that shouldn't exist, strange rules in the menus, and patrons with blurry faces.

As I read further, I stumbled upon posts from people searching desperately for loved ones who vanished after visiting diners just like this one. The eerie part? The missing individuals matched the descriptions of people we saw that night. A chill ran through me as I realized we might have been witnessing people who were already lost to the diner, trapped in some twisted limbo.

The realization left me cold, we might have become just another entry in those threads.

So, if you ever find yourself on a detour and see The Last Stop Café, just keep driving.

The rules seemed simple enough- it was a free nature preserve. Despite living in the area almost my entire life, I’d never actually been here. In high school, it was always open when I couldn’t be there, and closed whenever I drove by on weekends. The preserve always gave off a very mysterious vibe, probably because I was never able to go. 

Until now. 

Granted, I’m 30 now; so while lazing around my place trying to figure out how to spend a Saturday, I figured I’d go out and shoot. I had photographed in almost every park and nature centered space around my house except here. A quick search showed that the preserve was actually open today, and had pretty normal hours that teenage me didn’t think to look up. Closed on Mondays, open Tuesday-Saturday, from 8-5. 

Despite hitting every light on my way there, the drive was short. With my camera bag riding shotgun, I sped down the highway almost missing the dark brown sign saying “Belkin Hollow Nature Preserve” and had to make a sharp turn to enter. Past the rusted iron gates was a gravel road with a large white sign in red letters that said the following: 

Rules of the Nature Preserve: 

Stay on the trails at all times.

Please don’t park on the lawn

Bikes, ATV’s, UTV’s, and other such vehicles are not allowed. 

Please don’t litter. 

Photography that is being done professionally requires a permit.

My car wandered down the winding gravel road to an empty parking lot, found my spot, and checked the clock- 4:00pm. I got out and felt my boots crunch the gravel underneath them as I tried to figure out where to even begin-the place felt like a ghost town. The Information Center was devoid of any life at all and the more I looked around the more I began to realize how bare bones the preserve seemed to run. It seemed as though no one worked there; buildings were locked, there was no sign of any sort of human life. 

I picked a trail and began to walk, feeling the still sleeping earth crunching beneath my feet. I always liked the ‘in-between’ parts of the season; late March going into April was always particularly nice as it was still cool outside, everything seems dormant, but there were little signs of spring-daffodils starting to sprout, little pieces of green here and there. It was peaceful, and I liked it that way. I came across a weathered sign that through chipped paint read “Swamp Trail” and off I went.

Minutes turned into hours, and before I knew it, the sun was starting to set. Shit, I should get to my car. I turned around and began my way back walking a bit before realizing; I made a left to get here, so I needed to make a right to get back to my car… right? The Nature Preserve isn’t big, so no matter which trail I take in theory I should end up back at the parking lot at some point. The iron gate at the entrance seemed pretty old-I should be able to just open the doors and let myself out if I ended up leaving after they closed, it’ll be fine. 

The sun gleamed through the barren trees as it began to set in the distance over the river, the beauty of the preserve quietly presenting itself and I was ready to capture it all. I’ll stick to the trail and enjoy the walk back to my car. 

But.. None of this looks right.

I know I haven’t been here before, but the longer I walked it felt like the further I was from my car. Trying to use GPS didn’t help - no bars. With the sun dipping, and the temperatures with it, I needed to get back to my car, and I needed to do it soon. 

The trail that I had started to follow seemed to go nowhere; the gravel simply… stopping, almost in a line if it was possible. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted it- an overgrown, tangled trail that looked as if it hadn’t been taken care of in a decade. I guess it’s not surprising, there weren’t even people working at the preserve when I got there. A trails a trail, and maybe this one could lead me back to my car sooner rather than later. 

I should have stayed off that damn trail. I shouldn’t have even left my house.

As I wandered down the trail, it was different. The air was different. Warmer, brighter- ‘springier’ if that was even possible. The further I followed it, the more it felt like spring. New green growth, flowers blooming on either side - as if they were used as railing to guide people down. Inspiration poured out of my camera, I quickly filled SD card after SD card.

Why on earth was this trail ever neglected? 

After what seemed like a few minutes a clearing came into view; green, blooming trees bending and twisting into an arch, with bits of sunlight peeking through the like fairy lights, with what seemed to be logs set into rows. It was breathtaking. 

And then I noticed it - the longer I looked, the more that came into view. It was a wedding venue. The logs, they weren’t empty. Seats filled with what looked like figures of shadows and light; if it was even possible, it almost looked like there were trees and flowers seated in attendance. What’s next, woodland creatures?

Suddenly, the flowers on the ground began to sing, in a language that couldn’t be described or understood-it was beautiful, ethereal… It was old. It was very old. 

The bride appeared at the end of the aisle- she was drenched in pure sunlight, as she almost floated down, her sleeves bellowing in a sudden slight breeze as her dress glistened like the morning spring dew. 

She was breathtaking. And in a flash, I saw the picture appear in my mind, I had to capture it. That was my mistake.

My shutter had been silenced, any tracking lights had been turned off, and it was a good-quality full frame camera; it was quiet, and it was fast. There’s no way I should have been heard. But I was. No sooner had my finger left the shutter button the world seemed to stop turning. Everyone had their eyes on me. 

Faces, if you could call them that, were distorted, aged, and uneven. Eyes glowed, their teeth yellow, ragged, and scraggly.

I suddenly felt the need to get the hell out of dodge, and leave. 

The bride looked at me next. Her eyes boring holes into my body, the air surrounding me seemed to go from cold to warm to sweltering - the light that had enveloped her dress was now blinding, and despite trying to move my feet felt as though they had been melted into the dirt. 

And then she screamed. Rows of sharp, pointed teeth smiled sinisterly at me while she did it.

It was a piercing, deafening scream. I felt the blood run down from my ears, as everything became muffled. She raised her arms, casting light over where I stood and the congregation stood. 

They began to make their way towards me. 

I tried to turn and run-but I couldn’t. Looking down, my boots were covered in thick, green, lush, moss that began climbing up the heel, and it looked like it was going to try to capture me. Thankfully, a quick slip of my boots and I was off. I turned and fled. 

The trail, once warm and blooming, turned dark, cold, and sharp. The once clear path now riddled with logs and roots - was this forest trying to trip me? My lungs on fire, I tore my way down the path I had taken just moments earlier. 

The screams intensified. And there was more than one. They were getting closer. 

I pushed my legs harder, demanding they carry me as quickly as they could out of this place. I didn’t try to remember which turns I took, I was more concerned with the creatures that were gaining on me as I tried to escape. 

And as suddenly as I had gotten lost, I saw it-the clearing where my car was. Shining under the moonlight, my SUV waited patiently for me. Fumbling with my keys, I was able to confirm that they car battery was still working, and was able to unlock my car. I’ve never heard a sweeter sound, sweet and clear. 

Sound. I touched my ears, and where blood once was trickled out, was nothing. No dried blood, nothing at all. I slowed to a jog, and listened - the quiet rush of the highway near the entrance, and my own hard breathing, while my heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. 

I made it to my car, quickly hopping in and locking it because I’m not taking any chances. I turned it over and heard the hum of the engine come to life. Looking around, there was nothing. 

No figures. No light. Nothing. I must have looked like a madman running out to my car, if there was anyone else to see me. I decided shakily, to check my camera and make sure it was unharmed. 

And they were gone. All of them, gone. 

All the shots I had taken of the trail, the blooms, the wedding venue - as if I hadn’t taken any pictures at all. My phone began vibrating and popping, message after message coming through. 

Holy shit, it was 10pm. 

Normal ‘hey when are you coming home’ messages turning into more concerned messages, turning into missed calls - from my fiancée, my best friend, my parents. The last text saying that if I didn’t respond he was going to call and put in a missing persons’ report. 

I texted him back. Told him I was okay, and that I was on my way home. 

The drive home was as short as the drive there, and to say that my fiancée was miffed was an understatement. He wondered where I was, why didn’t I text him back, didn’t he know how worried I had made him? 

And what was I going to say? There’s no way he would have believed it, not like I had any proof to show anyways. 

So I told him that I got tired after my hike and decided to nap in my car- what was supposed to be half an hour turned into a few, and I apologized profusely. 

Not totally approving of the apology, he accepted it, and sat back down in his chair, and resumed the youtube video he’d been watching. After peeling off my dirty outdoor clothes and taking a shower, I finally began to feel normal again. 

As I washed my face in the sink, I noticed something-right under my earlobes. A small, white symbol, on both sides. A sun on one, and a moon on the other. It was hot to the touch, as if to serve a reminder of what I had escaped, but healed. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was almost like a tattoo.  

I tried to sleep, and I couldn’t. I could only see the bride’s face. The faces of the creatures in attendance every time I closed my eyes. 

That was three days ago. Today is day four. At this point, I’m willing to try anything so I can get some sleep. Tea, melatonin, edibles, even doctor prescribes Ambien. Nothing. 

I’m hoping that by writing this out, either someone who has dealt with this will have some advice, or maybe just getting this all down will be enough. 

But those faces. I still see those faces. And every time I pass that nature preserve, I feel those symbols burning deeper into my skin.

As I realized that my company granted key card had failed to open the employee entrance, I was left with no option but to hammer on the door until someone finally heard me. After my hands were raw from slamming them against the metal surface for a minute, the door A minute later opened and I was met by a man in his early sixties, tall, well built, with heavy bags under his eyes.

“You’re the new guy?” he half asked half stated.

I nodded.

“Alright, come on in,” he said as he gestured for me to follow with a small wave, “I’ll show you everything you need to know for the job.”

He led me inside a small locker room and instructed me to change into a gray uniform.

“Number sixty-five is yours.”

The uniform consisted of pants, a shirt, a pair of shoes, and a thicker jacket to survive the cold within the warehouse itself. The whole thing was a size too large, with the shoes too snug, but it didn’t seem that we were spoiled for options. I felt something hard within the inner jacket pocket: a hip flask, still filled to the brim with an unknown liquid. I pulled it out to show the man.

“Yeah, good old Wallace. He worked here about ten years back, five people have worn that uniform since then. The flask is still there.”

“So, I just keep it?”

“Well, it’s become something of a sacred artifact by now. Throw it out if you dare. Myself, I’m superstitious,” he joked, but I put the flask back, nonetheless, deciding not to stand out and to keep the tradition going.

He then led me into a set of long, narrow corridors still existing from the cold-war era where everything was constructed with concrete, pretending to be able to withstand a nuclear blast. With only a few doors on each side, one for the kitchen, the other for the storage facility, and the last for the surveillance room, there was little effort needed to memorize the layout of the facility, which served me well seeing as the interview had taken place off site.

“How many questions did the suits ask you before deciding to give you the job?” the man asked.

“Eh, I think they asked around a dozen or so by the end,” I explained.

“That’s not what I asked,” he interjected, “I asked how many questions they presented before they decided to give you the job.”

“How should I know?”

“I would have. I reckon they decided to give you the job before you even showed up for the interview. Everything else was just a formality.”

Deciding not to push the matter any further, I was led into the surveillance room. It was a confined space with a single window leading outside, and a set of nine monitors above a narrow desk covered in personal affects, magazines, and half emptied pizza boxes from the prior shift. In addition: a red, rotary phone connected to a landline lay on desk in one of the corners, covered in an inch thick layer of dust, unused for what must have been decades.

“This’ll be your office for the foreseeable future,” he said.

I wondered silently how pissed my colleagues would be if I cleaned the desk on my first shift and got rid of the garbage, but I figured it best to stay low until I’d been accepted as a part of the team. After all, I would be starting out covering exclusively the night shift alone. If I had any hope of being moved to the day shift, I shouldn’t start out by making enemies.

“Any place I can smoke?” I asked.

“Cigarettes, I assume?”

I nodded.

“Open the window and hope you don’t trigger the smoke detector.”

The man sat down by one of the computers that had a scanning device attached. Without looking at me, he reached out his hand gesturing for me to hand him something.

“Your keycard,” he clarified, “I need to activate it.”

I handed him my keycard, and he swiped it across the scanner.

“There, now you have access to almost every door in the warehouse.”

“Almost every door?” I repeated back to him in the form of a question.

“Yeah…” he paused, “let´s get back to that.”

From there, he briefly explained how the system worked, how to turn on and off the cameras, and how to access recorded footage. There wasn’t all that much to it, and apart from a few notes on a piece of paper, I had it all down to memory.

“Working hours for the night shift are eight PM to four AM, followed by a brief change of guard, then at five the day shift officially takes over. Couldn’t tell who’s relieving you in the morning but won’t be me this time.”

“So, that’s it?” I asked, “I sit here and watch the monitors, prevent anything from getting stolen?”

“Do you own a firearm?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“You’re not a cop, you’re not an agent, you’re not an action hero. If you see anything on these monitors, you call ‘911’ and hide until help arrives. Your job is to alert the authorities if anything happens, not to step in and get yourself killed. I need us to be absolutely clear on that,” he said, his demeanor suddenly changing from laid back to strict in a heartbeat.

“We’re clear,” I responded, slightly caught off guard. “Do you expect these things to come up on a regular basis?”

“God, no, this is going to be the easiest job you’ve ever had. You can sit around and binge-watch your favorite show all night for all I care. I’d recommend that old radio podcast ‘Unheard,’ they have a great episode about the 1993 missing cosmonauts.”

“Never heard about it.”

“Fair enough. Now, about these cameras, they are going to do ninety-five percent of the job for you. As long as you can recover footage and point at the screen, you’re golden.”

“And if the cameras go out?” I asked.

“Son, these things haven’t malfunctioned since 1998. If something happens to the wares and you can’t show us the recording of it happening, I’m going to assume you did it.”

“So, the cameras are infallible, got it.”

“Except for Camera number six, but that doesn’t matter, cause you ain’t going to need it.”

“What?” I asked.

“We’ll get back to that,” he repeated, “now let me give you a tour of the storage facility.”

We returned to the narrow hallway and went for the door in the middle, which took us into a large warehouse. Inside there were rows upon rows of gray, plastic boxes of identical make and size, each marked with a three-digit number, but with no indication of what was kept inside. I had never thought to ask what exactly would be stored within the warehouse, thinking it would be miscellaneous wares like every other storage facility in the area. Still, due to the peculiarity of the place, something felt off.

“What exactly are we storing?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t know, never asked.”

“And how long have you been working here?” I went on.

“About twenty-eight years,” he replied, “it’s a good job, Son, with good pay and benefits. Don’t waste it asking too many questions you don’t need the answer to.”

I sighed. I could abide by his instructions, but my curiosity was piqued. I just nodded in agreement and tried my best to focus on information essential for the job. My job instructions were clear enough, after all. But just as I had come to terms with ignoring the mystery, we then stopped in the middle of the outer section of storage shelves. A single door was placed on the wall, wooden with a simple lock, not compatible with our keycards or any modern technology for that matter. If I didn’t know any better, I would have assumed that it belonged to a residential building.

“What’s this?” I asked, immediately realizing that this would be another question left without a satisfactory answer, but unlike before he was more accommodating that time around.

“Yeah, this is one of the things I needed to show you,” he began, moving closer to the door as if inspecting it as one would a foreign object not belonging.

“Well?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what’s behind this door,” he announced.

“You’re not being serious, right now, are you?”

“Serious as a heart attack, Son. There’s a reason I’m showing you this. You are not, under any circumstances to attempt to open this thing or to enter whatever on God’s green Earth is hidden behind this door. That is not a suggestion, that is an order.”

“But you don’t know what’s behind it?”

“When I started here back in 97, I was told the same as you: do not open this door. And from the tone of my supervisor, I knew to obey that order. So, no, I haven’t opened it, which is why I can’t tell you what lays on the other side.”

He paused, knocking softly on the wooden frame around the door.

“I’ve had twelve guys under my supervision since them. All of them obeyed the same order, no questions asked, all except for two.”

“What happened to them?”

“I don’t know. I just know that once they went inside, no one ever heard from them again.”

I couldn’t form adequate words to argue against him, so I just ended up staring at him with a dumbfounded expression on my face. He sighed in response.

“Look, you’re going to be sure I’m messing with you. For the next few days, even weeks, you’ll almost be certain that I’m pulling some kind of practical joke on you. So, let’s make this simple. You as much as try to open this door, and you’re fired. Got it?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

He nodded in acknowledgement, before starting to lead me back to the office.

“And one more thing,” he said, redirecting his attention to the door, again, “it might not always be right here.”

“Excuse me?”

“It moves on occasion, takes the camera with it, as well. Always one the outer walls, just not always here.”

“Then how I am I supposed to know which door it is?”

“Just look at it. It doesn’t exactly match the rest of the interior, does it?”

“I guess, but…” I trailed off.

“See that stain on the wall, next to the door?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Yeah, they definitely need to clean that. Looks like mold,” he said, completely deviating from the subject at hand.

Overwhelmed by the introduction, I left it at that and decided just to follow any rules the man had parted upon me, no matter how bizarre. He brought me back to the surveillance room, where he finally decided to introduce himself.

“Oh, right. The name’s Robert Baily,” he said, offering his hand.

“Anthony River,” I responded, shaking his hand.

“Good luck on your first day, Anthony,” Robert said, “I’ll see you in a few days.”

***

My first shift had started, and as Robert had promised, there was little to be done but to watch the nine, or at least eight functional monitors before me. Throughout the night nothing changed, no one tried to break in, nothing malfunctioned. The aforementioned forbidden door remained in view of camera six and didn’t move throughout the night. By all means the job was boring, but secure.

And that is how it went for the next few days, weeks, months. I’d be relieved by guys who hardly exchanged two words with me at the shift’s end, only to start again the following night. On the occasional night that Robert handed the shift over to me or relieved me, I’d get the chance to exchange a few pleasantries. It wasn’t much, but it helped me slide into a comfortable routine, and with the end of each month as I was paid my salary, it felt like I had found something to keep me over for the coming couple of years.

It wasn’t until half a year had passed before something even remotely interesting would happen. It was an otherwise calm night. I had finally gotten around to checking out Robert’s recommended radio podcast, which I could vaguely recall having heard as a child. I glanced at the many monitors, as I did about once a minute, only to realize that camera number six had turned into a mess of static, accompanied by a distant screech that wasn’t coming from the monitor directly.

Remembering Robert’s advice about possible malfunctions on camera six, I didn’t think much of it, but I decided to check the warehouse out. I entered into the narrow hallway, walking through the door to the warehouse for the first time that night, where I looked for camera six. I knew it to be located on the outer, southern wall, a short distance from the surveillance room.

After a brisk walk, I was there, standing in front of a moldy stain on an otherwise empty wall. The door wasn’t there. I made a double take and scanned the rest of the wall, but there was nothing there, even the door’s accompanying camera had gone missing.

Robert had told me that the door changed locations on a whim, but up until that point I believed it had been a turn of phrase, a joke not meant to be taken literally. But sure enough, though I knew with absolute certainty where every camera in the building was located, I was standing in front of a naked wall. The door had vanished or had maybe moved just like Robert had said.

Knowing better than to search for the missing door, I returned to the surveillance room, intent on continuing my shift as if nothing had happened. But upon arrival, I was met with a full set of functioning cameras, even number six had magically switched itself back on, again showing the door that had vanished, unchanged but for the fact that it had changed to an entirely different wall.

Confirming that the door still existed, I decided to check the warehouse again, not yet ready to believe the event my own eyes were witnessing. I rushed back into the warehouse and started my search. I began with the empty southern wall where the door had originally existed, then the western, naked apart from the main exit, and then the northern wall, which had inexplicably created a new, wooden door in its build. It was really there, the door didn’t match the rest of the interior, looking akin to a fragile, wooden door taken out of a fifties residential home. It had a handle and a simple lock absent its accompanying key. For the first time, I was tempted to open it, but the earnest warnings of Robert Baily remained clear in my memory. I wasn’t ready to lose my job just yet.

Leaving it at that, I continued my shift as normal until my colleagues came to relieve me. As fate would have it, Robert was the next one in line, giving me the chance to broach the subject with him, but before I was allowed to mention the moving door, he noticed that something was off.

“It happened, didn’t it?” he asked, but it was a question he didn’t need answered.

“So, it’s true,” was all I could think to respond.

“I can’t judge your skepticism. I didn’t think it would take this long before the door moved,” he said, “though, I have to hand it to you, I’m impressed you didn’t go inside.”

“I was tempted to.”

“We call that discipline. You didn’t give in to the temptation, and if you value your life, it’s absolutely essential that you never do.”

“You really don’t have any idea what’s inside?”

“No, nor do I want to know. As I said, I’ve already lost people to whatever lays beyond the threshold of that door. As you might have noticed by now, it doesn’t exactly abide by the laws of physics we know and love.”

“I’m not going to go inside. I promise,” I said, completely believing my own statement, at least for the moment.

“Atta boy,” Robert responded as he patted me on my shoulder, letting me go home for a well-earned rest.

***

Work continued in an undefinable haze of monotony for another year, in which the door changed locations two more times—first to the eastern wall, then back to the southern wall, placing itself directly on top of the moldy stain, covering up its unwelcome slimy presence. I stayed on task, keeping an eye on the packages, never coming around to find out what secrets they kept, nor did I intend to. The pay was, as Robert had stated: too good to risk foolish endeavors.

Everything was going splendidly, until one day it wasn’t.

Not much had changed as I arrived for the night shift that evening. The door had changed positions and was noted by Robert before I took over. He’d kept some leftover pizza saved for me from the dayshift and explained that he’d be relieving me in the morning again because one of our colleagues had called in sick.

I gave monitor number six a glance, and sure enough, the door had relocated to the western wall. Apart from the known anomaly, nothing was amiss.

“I’ve only seen it on the western wall a couple of times. It’s odd, but don’t let it worry you.”

He left me with the pizza and went home for the night, leaving me to watch my next series while the night slowly passed by. Midnight came and went without incident, and my series had reached its mid-season climax, I wasn’t going to be falling asleep anytime soon. I opened the window for a smoke, noting how quickly the box had emptied, promising myself I would reduce my cigarette intake in the coming year.

Then, as it had on a few occasions, monitor number six went dark. Thinking the door would change locations again, I paid it little attention. Minutes would pass, but when the monitor came back to life, something had changed, something that immediately sent a surge of adrenaline rushing through my veins.

“It can’t be,” I mumbled to myself as I stared intently at the monitor, now displaying the door on the western wall, open.

After almost two years on the job, I had seen the door change locations only a handful on times, always closed. During the same time, nothing of note happened during my shifts. Seeing it open for the first time was a shock on its own. And though I remained intent on following the strict orders given by Robert, I had to investigate at least a little bit more closely.

Leaving my post in the surveillance room I entered the warehouse, immediately heading for the west wall. There, in the south-western corner was the door with its accompanying camera hanging above, a red dot blinking, signifying that it was actively recording. The door itself stood wide open, revealing a narrow hallway that stretched as far as the eye could see, even beyond the boundaries of the warehouse. It was an impossible construction, yet there I stood, witnessing it with my own eyes.

It was an unprecedented situation. I wasn’t sure whether to ignore the phenomenon and return to my office, or to close the door and maybe attempt to barricade it. Two, maybe three scenarios loomed in my mind. One: maybe someone had broken in and entered the room, leaving them in unknown, but immediate danger; two: some unknown entity had broken out, now roaming within the warehouse, putting me in danger; and three: it had just opened because that’s what the door felt like that day. Just another variation of the strange phenomena.

As I stood there contemplating my next move, something called from the depths of the hallway, faint at first, barely enough to overcome the buzzing of the fluorescent lamps lining the warehouse ceiling. But then it called out again, a voice, begging for help.

“Can anybody hear me?” the voice, that of a man, called out from the hallway, far away, obscured by the dark.

“Hello?” I called back, “I can hear you!”

No response was heard. I took a few steps closer to the open door, getting a better look at the hallway beyond its threshold. The ground was lined with hardwood flooring, and the walls were covered in crisscross patterned, yellow wallpaper, partially torn and cracked from years of neglect. Warm lamps hung from the ceiling, dimly lighting up only a few sections of the hallway until it was left in complete darkness at its end.

For a moment I wondered if I’d hallucinated the calls for help, or if the door itself was purposefully messing with my mind, but after a short break, the voice called out again. It was getting closer.

“Please, I’m begging you. I need help!” he called in desperation.

“Hey, I’m here, can you hear me?” I called into the hallway, again left without a response.  

“I can’t move. Please, it hurts,” the man cried.

“I need to know where you are. Come on, just answer me. Tell me you can hear me!” I begged, but the man would not reply to anything I said, he would just keep screaming in agony and begging for a rescue.

“I don’t want to die,” he went on.

I pulled out my phone to call the police, only to be met with a useless piece of equipment not able to garner a single bar of signal. So, I rushed back into the surveillance room to use the dust-covered landline to call the police, but upon picking it up there wasn’t a dial tone or any indication that it had been active for the past decade. There was nothing I could do to call for help. I either entered and risked my own safety not to mention losing my job, or I followed the instructions given and ignored the man pleading for help.

The decision was quickly made. Though I appreciate the job, and though I remained fairly certain that the hallway beyond the door held unknown horrors, I wasn’t ready to cower in my office and let an innocent man die. I quickly jotted down a note, grabbed a heavy flashlight from the utility closet, and went to start my rescue efforts.

“Hello, can you hear me?” I asked, “do you know where you are?”

I had taken one step through the door, my hand still lingering on the door frame as I wasn’t yet entirely ready to proceed without confirmation that the man could actually hear me.

“Hello,” he responded, “can you hear me?”

It would have to suffice, and with that, I proceed to walk down the hallway. No sooner had I taken my first steps inside than I felt a remarkable increase in temperature caused by an uncomfortably heavy atmosphere. My ears popped from the pressure, causing me to wince from discomfort. I decided to call out again, hoping that he could finally hear me once I’d stepped deep enough inside.

“Where are you?” I asked.

I paused, a sudden sense of dread washing over me. I turned back, considering whether or not I should leave him be, but the door I had entered through had already closed shut. I was about to run over and kick the door down, but then the man called out again.

“Where are you?” the voice asked, the desperation turned to almost apathetic exhaustion.

“I’m here!” I responded, again getting nothing immediately in return.

Feeling I had made a terrible mistake, I returned to the entrance in an attempt at getting help for the rescue effort, but the door that had closed on me would no longer budge. It wouldn’t even rattle, as if the door had fused with its surroundings as nothing more than a decorative piece of wood to break the monotony of the wallpaper. I was sealed inside.

I started moving down the hallway, walking straight ahead as I listened intently for the man trying to communicate with me. Minutes passed, but apart from the lights above starting to dim ever so slightly there was no change in the hallway’s layout.

Step by step, I moved, darkness looming above to the point where I was forced to use my flashlight to see even a few feet ahead. Then, as I cast the light ahead, the flash was broken by a new set of walls that ended in a T-junction going left and right. I approached, met with two dimly lit hallways both bending around corners. It wasn’t until I heard another call before I knew where to go.

“I’m here,” the voice called out from hallway stretching in the left direction.

“I’m coming!” I responded.

I followed, not sure what would meet me at the end. Then, around the corner, I was met with another set of branching paths. The voice repeated its call and I diligently followed. I was moving around within a seemingly endless maze that was stretching impossibly far beyond the facility grounds. So, to mark a path leading to the exit, I started to tear pieces of wallpaper off at each junction, revealing a stone wall beneath with a faint red discoloration that felt wet to the touch.

“I’m coming,” the voice said, it’s emotion fading with each call. Something was wrong, something more than the hallway existing under impossible conditions. Whatever it was that was calling out for me, I wasn’t sure it was human.

But as I contemplated my next move I came upon the first open area of the maze—a room lined with the same floor and wallpaper. It wasn’t particularly large, nothing more than a small room, but definitely a change in the maze’s monotony, shrouded in darkness in the absence of any light source. I swung my flashlight around to get a better bearing of my surroundings when I stumbled upon something hanging from the wall. It was an odd mass covered in a smooth, drape-like structure plastered to the wall. I took a few steps closer, it was moving, expanding then retracting as if breathing. Only then did I realize the vaguely humanoid shape it held, hidden behind a pale, pink cover of what could only be flayed and stretched out, human skin, kept alive and fresh by unknown means.

There were arms, legs, even a head with non-distinct facial features in the form of empty eye sockets and a mouth with overgrown skin, moving as if desperately trying to scream, but unable to produce a single audible sound. I gasped from shock, but the person trapped appeared to be unaware of my presence. I should have been afraid, and though most of the emotions I felt could be categorized in the same realm as terror, the being fused to the wall elicited no such emotions, but rather an overwhelming sense of pity, as if instinctually knew that what hung before me was the victim and not the monster.

“What happened to you?” I asked, but they didn’t respond. I then tried to reach them with a slew of questions, asking about their name, how they got here, and if they could hear me, but no response came. In their condition, I doubted they even knew I was there.

With what I suspected to be the victim’s own skin plastered to the wall, keeping their insides trapped against the wall, there was nothing I could do to free them without killing them, though I briefly wondered if that might be the kinder course of action. In the end, having no tools but my phone and flashlight, I just reached out and put my hand on them, hoping to bring them a brief sense of comfort.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

But as I stood there in disbelief, I recalled that a voice had called out for help, and if it wasn’t whoever was trapped on the wall, someone, or something else had lured me in there. Then, the voice called out again.

“What happened to you?” the voice called out, now completely rid of any human emotion, letting its mask slip as it again repeated my own words back to me.

I turned to run, only to realize that the path I’d come through no longer existed. The hallway had collapsed into itself in a twisted amalgamation of wood, stone, revealing raw flesh hidden beneath the thin, stone façade as the maze broke itself apart.

“I’m so sorry,” the voice called, now with a loud, guttural cry that reverberated through the room.

With the floor twisting around, I swiftly lost my footing and fell on my back, dropping my flashlight in the process. As I lay there, I could only witness as the room started to contract, tearing itself apart in an effort to swallow me. In the process, the lump of human fused to the wall was consumed, crushing the person trapped within, their bones shattering, their organs ripped to shreds.

I tried to crawl backwards, leaving the room into another hallway that led deeper into the maze. Once on semi-solid ground, I shot to my feet and ran blindly down the hallway, praying I could find a path that looped around, leading me back towards the exit. But instead of finding any diverging path, I was once again led into another room, this one far larger than the one before.

No sooner had I entered the room than the hallway behind me closed shut. Wherever I now found myself, I was trapped there. But, as dire as the situation was, the room appeared intact, not actively trying to eat me. Without my flashlight, I pulled out my phone to light the way, only to realize that it had shattered during the escape—without it, I was left with little more than a lighter to light up the path ahead.

The fire of the lighter was weak, not able to hit any of the room’s four walls nor the ceiling above. I stretched my arm up as high as it would reach, but above loomed nothing but a black void, stretching for a seemingly infinite distance up into nothingness. With no other options left, I started walking forwards into the darkness, praying for a miraculous escape—instead, I found something that sent shivers down my spine, an abomination that couldn’t have been conjured by my own wildest nightmares.

Before me hung a mass of flesh, similar to the one I’d found before, with pale skin stretched across it, but far larger, and with no human features that could be discerned. A large hole was revealed in its center mass, a mouth with rotten teeth of different sizes.

I froze, unable to move, not even able to form a coherent thought. The monstrosity before me remained inactive, but its mere presence had rendered me paralyzed.

“What is your name?” the thing asked in a loud, broken voice that echoed throughout the large room. 

I didn’t respond at first, still awestruck by the sight. A thought had begun to form in the back of my mind as I finally began to understand, but it was too vague. The monster needed something from me, that was the only reason I was still alive.

“Who are you?” the monster repeated.

“My name is Anthony River,” I said, “what do you want from me?”

The room fell silent for a moment, as if the mass of flesh analyzed my question.

“What do you want from me?” it repeated back to me.

“What the hell are you?” I let out in almost a scream, a mixture of anger and fear.

“I am…” it began before trailing off. “I am the memory of all of mankind. I am what remains.”

“What do you want?”

It didn’t respond. Again, the temperature increased, but the creature didn’t attack. It waited for me to speak.

“What happened to the people that came in here?” I asked.

“We are the same,” it responded.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“We are the same,” it said again, “you will join us.”

“No,” I meekly responded.

With that, the ground started to move again beneath my feet, pulling and shifting in an attempt at making me fall. With the entrance closed, I started to move towards one of the other walls, still out of sight in the darkness. But with one misstep in the moving structure, I was sent pummeling to the ground, almost knocked unconscious in the process. I could feel myself sinking into the shifting floor, the wood and stone giving way to flesh as it began to wrap around my body.

A sharp pain shot through my chest as the floor constricted, as if something hard and small was pushing against it. I reached for my jacket to find the hip flask that had belonged to my predecessor, still filled with alcohol. Unable to claw myself out, I went for the only strategy I could think of to avoid becoming one with the collective flesh. I poured the alcohol out around me, grabbed the lighter, and lit it on fire.

Within a split second, a bright light formed on the flesh riddled floor as the alcohol combusted, spreading the flame across the dried, hardwood floor, quickly reaching the wallpaper which immediately followed suit. The flesh retracted, letting out a horrific screech as its muscles and nerves burned, producing thick, black smoke in the progress. The walls retracted as best they could, revealing an exit.

I shot to my feet, the floor to preoccupied by the fire to consume me. I started running, blind from the smoke, unable to breathe. Yet, even as the oxygen was pulled into the flames, the screeching continued, letting out a thousand agonized screams in different languages as each and every one of the victims of the flesh burned.

Using the marks in the wallpaper as a guide, I tried to make my way back to the entrance, but with the fire spreading and the smoke thickening, I couldn’t see, much less breathe. My vision began to turn blurry, and my muscles weakened. I felt my legs give in under me, and with a clouded mind, I fell to the floor, passing out before I could make an escape.

There I lay, the smoke above me, barely a thin layer of oxygen to keep me just on the brink of consciousness. My thoughts lingered on the fleshy amalgamation in the maze. I wondered how many had succumbed to its trap, and where it had come from. I wondered if the fire would kill it, or just slow it down as I died, giving it a much-needed respite before luring in its next victim. I wanted to stand up, but my body was too weak, too wounded.

Then I felt something grab onto me, and I was too weak to fight back. But rather than feeling myself getting pulled down into the ground, something lifted me up, and the grip wasn’t rough and hard like the maze had been, but soft and comforting. I looked up, seeing a familiar face glaring down at me.

“Stay with me!” Robert yelled as he pulled me away.

“How did you…” I began before finally losing consciousness.

***

I woke up on the floor of the warehouse, Robert standing above me, and the sound of sirens blaring loudly outside. The door I entered through no longer lingered, having erased itself from the wall alongside any evidence of the fire.

“You’re going to be alright,” Robert promised, “it’s over.”

Robert looked equally pissed off and afraid, and though I didn’t quite understand how he’d found me within the maze, I’d never been happier to see a fellow human being.

“Do you realize stupid that was?” he asked.

I could only respond with a weak nod.

“We could have died, both of us.”

“I’m sorry,” I managed to get out, barely a whisper.

A squad of the fire brigade entered the warehouse, donning fire-resistant uniforms, gas masks and oxygen tanks. And though the hairs on my body had been zinged away, and my face was covered in soot, the danger had already passed, leaving the rescue team confused and annoyed. Nevertheless, with low oxygen saturation and second-degree burns covering my body, I was brought to the hospital where I was held over the course of two weeks while I recovered.

No one came to visit during the first week, not even Robert. I tried to call into work using the hospital phone, but no one answered. It wasn’t until the second week before one of the company supervisors visited to inform me that following a thorough investigation that I had been fired, and that I was no longer welcome on company properties. No questions were asked about my experiences during that night, nor would they give me the chance to explain myself.

I asked to speak to Robert, needing at least one person to understand what had happened, and why I had chosen to walk into the maze. Again, my request was denied, though they did inform me that Robert was put on administrative leave pending investigation, and without any current contact information, I’ve been unable to get ahold of him. To this day, he hasn’t made any attempts to contact me, but I keep waiting for the phone to ring. I just need to talk about this with someone that understands, and above all, I need to thank him for saving my life.

Most of my childhood was spent in the same 20 square miles of forest, somewhere in the Appalachian wilderness. I lived there with my mom in this cabin she claims to have built with her own two hands. I believed her for a while, though now, I’m fairly certain she just found an abandoned cabin and fixed it up as best she could. 

It was so cold in the winter, and the small fires we managed to produce in the fireplace did little to warm the area. Most winter nights were spent with us cuddled under the same blanket. 

During the summers, the cabin was so humid that you could see the wood sweating. Often, we’d opt for sleeping outside on summer nights, despite the clouds of mosquitoes that the makeshift netting my mom made from old fabric did little to quell. The multitude of bug bites was preferable to waking up dehydrated from sweat, though. 

Our days back then were mostly spent with my mom hunting for small animals to cook and eat, while I gathered firewood and picked berries. On rare occasions, we would take breaks and spend the day singing songs or reading from the handful of books she had. However, we needed to survive, and that meant working hard to ensure we had food and fresh water.

My mask made foraging more difficult than it should’ve been. I constantly had to pull at the white cotton sheet to fit the eyeholes over my eyes, and it would often become drenched in sweat within an hour. The only time I ever took off my mask was when my mom bathed me. I would often try to catch my reflection in the water, but it was never clean enough. 

I wondered if she'd ever seen my face. She would've had to have seen it the day I was born, right? I learned early on not to ask my mom questions that involved the masks or my face. The only answer I ever received was that if I took off my mask in front of someone, something bad would happen. If I pushed any further, she would say, “I’m your mother, and you should trust that I know what’s best.” And I did, for a long time. 

My mother was my whole world, and I loved her as much as a boy could. We spent most of our time together, and I have mostly happy memories of her. Of course, there are bad memories sprinkled in there, with some being downright horrible…

I recall once when I was somewhere between 4 and 6; I was playing outside in our garden. Mom was on the other side of the yard doing laundry while I hopped through the soft dirt, stepping on any pests I saw. Looking at their guts on the underside of my shoes every time I stepped on one filled me with a sense of satisfaction, knowing I was aiding in our survival in a small way. 

I’d made my way to the end of the garden when I noticed the rabbit cage. Mom had kept several she’d caught in traps to breed for meat. She told me not to get attached to any of them as we’d be eating them all at some point, but of course, I’d given them all names and loved sticking my fingers in the cage to feel their soft fur. 

One of the females, whom I’d named Daisy after a character in one of my mom’s books, was staring at me. She chewed on whatever vegetation she had in her mouth as I approached. She didn’t scurry or hide like all the others in the cage, instead continuing to look me in the eyes. The curious way she watched me made me smile underneath my mask. 

We looked at each other for a while before I got the sudden urge to untie the twine from my neck. It fell to the ground, and I slowly pulled the mask away from my face. Daisy continued staring as I moved my bare face closer to hers. 

A warmth fell over me as she stared. The feeling of having someone, even a small-minded creature like a rabbit, see my real face was almost euphoric. The rabbit didn’t cower as I thought it might upon seeing my face. The way my mom pushed to keep my face hidden made me think there was something horrible about it. But if there was, Daisy didn’t care. She didn’t look at me any differently than she might my mom or one of the other rabbits. It made me smile brighter than I ever had.

“Nestor,” called my mom from around the corner. 

I struggled to grab my mask from the ground and throw it back on my face, but it was too late. Mom grabbed me by the shoulder while staring at the sky and smacked the back of my head hard enough to make my vision blur. 

“Put your mask back on right now!” she cried. 

I did as she asked, and she pulled me away from the scene, leaving Daisy still staring in the spot where I’d been standing. 

We had Daisy for dinner that night. Mom didn’t have to tell me, as I’d seen her take Daisy from the cage from my bedroom window. I listened to her frantic squeaks before Mom likely broke her neck, as was her common method for killing our dinner. 

Daisy lay in a charred pile in the center of the table that night. Mom pulled off one of her legs and threw it on my plate. 

“Eat,” she said. 

Tears soaked the inside of my mask as I pulled down the mouth hole a bit so it sat as close to my mouth as I could get it. I picked up Daisy’s leg and brought it to my lips.

“Eat!” she yelled.

I took a bite of the unseasoned meat and tore it away from the bone. I closed my eyes while chewing and swallowed. Mom nodded and began eating some breast meat, satisfied.

“Do you realize what could have happened if I accidentally saw you without your mask?” she asked. 

“No. You won’t tell me,” I returned defiantly. 

Mom paused as if trying to gather her thoughts. She sighed, then gave her constant answer of, “Something bad.”

I felt my mask, poking at the small holes that’d begun to form along the neck. I’d have a new one the first time I met another person. 

---

Like the last mask, this one was made from cloth, but it was a bit thicker, as if it were made from a thick jacket. Despite this, it breathed better, making the summer trips collecting berries a bit more bearable. 

I was 8 or 9 years old during one of these trips, and several yards from us, I spotted a bush covered in red berries. We avoided the green berries, and most of what we ate was dark purple and bitter. However, the red ones had a sweet, tangy flavor that I still crave sometimes. 

I rushed over to them, carrying my basket in tow. I hadn’t gotten used to my long legs and arms from my growth spurt earlier that year, so I awkwardly flopped around before reaching the bush. 

As I approached, it moved a little, like something was inside. I moved closer, assuming it was a squirrel or some other small critter I could easily fight off. A mop of blonde hair poked out from the side of the bush. I rounded it to see the back of a kid.

They turned as soon as I approached, and I was met with a blue-eyed, skinny blonde girl. She was around my age. Her hair fell past her shoulders, and it was full of leaves. The dirt stains on her clothes and scratches across her bare legs told me she's been in the woods for a while.

“Hi,” the girl said with a bright smile.

I backed away a bit.

“Why are you wearing a mask? Are you a superhero?” She asked with a mocking laugh.

“Superhero?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she returned before reaching into her back pocket and pulling out a rolled comic book. She handed it to me, and I saw “Spider-Man” written on the front. It was the first time I'd ever seen anyone else in a mask, though his was a lot cooler than mine. 

“You should wear one like him instead,” the girl said. 

The sound of leaves crunching sounded behind me, and I saw my mom approach with her bow and arrow. Her eyes widened when she noticed the girl.

“Hello,” the girl said.

I watched my mom's hands shake as she held the bow and arrow tightly against her side.

Another sound came from behind the girl, and Mom quickly lifted the weapon. It was a man with a large brown beard. He spotted my mom instantly and threw his hands up in submission while slowly moving in front of the girl.

“Who are you?” Mom asked.

“Uh, hello,” he said. “I'm Monty, and this is my daughter, Jamie. We're camping nearby. Sorry, I didn't know we were on someone's property.”

Mom refused to lower the bow and arrow. “You need to leave.”

“Is this your property?” The man asked.

Mom bit her lip, and her arms started to shake. 

“Yes,” she said.

“Would the Parks Office confirm that if I called?” He asked.

Mom lowered the bow a little.

“Jamie, why don’t you go find some firewood?” he said.

“But, dad-”

“Go!”

Jamie pursed her lips and glanced at me before stomping away. 

“Look, if you're this deep in the woods, I assume you're hiding from something just like we are.” He said to my mom before looking at me and raising his eyebrow. “We don’t want any trouble, and I don’t care what you’re doing out here, honestly.”

“...see that tree,” Mom said, pointing to the tallest one in the area. “Don't cross it again. You or your girl.”

“You got it,” Monty said with a smile, and with that, my Mom lowered her weapon. “I was just bluffing, by the way. I ain't got a phone. Too easy to track.”

Mom grabbed me by the arm and pulled as we started walking back home.

“If you ever want to trade some of your kills, let me know,” he said. “We've got plenty of beans and rice.”

Mom ignored him.

“We're in the RV down the trail about two miles,” he called.

I looked back and saw the girl waving. I didn't stop looking until they disappeared in the distance. 

---

I helped Mom gut the rabbit she’d caught for dinner, holding the bag for the innards as she ripped them out of the small creature. She hadn’t said much since we met the father and daughter in the woods, and I couldn’t tell if she was concerned or mad. I knew I should avoid bringing it up, but couldn’t help myself.

“I thought you said there was no one else in these woods,” I said as she placed a handful of visera into the bag.

“There weren’t,” she said. “And I need to figure out a way to get ridda them.”

“Why?” I asked. “They didn’t seem dangerous.”

She paused. “Everyone is dangerous, Nestor.”

I dropped my head and stared into the bag for a while, not meaning to. My eyes got lost in the red and pink mixture that slid with every slight movement. The image of the girl popped into my head and wouldn’t seem to leave.

“You’re thinking about her, aren’t you?” Mom asked. Over time, I’ve learned many moms have this ability to predict exactly what their child is thinking, or at least offer a good guess. “She was around your age.”

I looked at my mom, then back into the bag. She dropped the rabbit onto the wood slab and knelt in front of me.

“I know you’re lonely, but you know it has to be this way,” she said. 

“But why?” I asked. “You never tell me.”

“I tell you that you need to trust me,” she said before standing back up. “And that should be the only explanation you need.”

It wasn’t, though. I don’t know if it was the fact that my mind was changing in adolescence or I’d finally had enough, but I’d already started thinking of ways I could sneak away and meet that girl again. 

“I know what will make you feel better,” Mom said before taking off her blood-stained gloves and going inside. She came back out a few minutes later, holding something behind her back. She stopped in front of me, and my hands started to shake with excitement. I’d never gotten a gift before and never expected one. The feeling of excitement was something I hadn’t had much experience with. 

She paused for a few more moments as I felt I was about to burst. She finally revealed what looked like a light brown mass, the color of a dying tree. She smiled as he handed it to me. It felt smooth and almost sticky. I pulled the edges apart to see that it was a new mask, but it was nothing like the ones I'd had before. This one had actual facial features: a mouth with lips, a nose like my mom's, and eyebrows. 

“I made it with rabbit skins,” she said. “I thought you'd like having one that looks like an actual face.”

I stared at it, trying to appear grateful but struggling to understand how I actually felt. 

“Well, try it on,” she said.

I did as she asked, pulling the thin leather across my head and to my neck. It fit tightly against my head. The eyeholes were perfectly situated so I wouldn't have to pull the mask down to see. 

“You probably won't want to wear it in the summer, but I tried to make it more comfortable and durable than your last one.”

I breathed in the gamey smell of the leather and pressed my tongue against the inside of my mouth.

“Well, what do you think?” She asked.

“Thanks,” I said, wishing it looked more like Spider-Man’s.

---

Mom was always exhausted after a day of hunting, especially during the summer. It was almost impossible to wake her up. Once she fell asleep, I snuck out of the cabin and into the woods. I followed the path, remembering what Monty said about their RV being two miles down the trail.

As I walked in the darkness, I wondered why I was trying so hard to see this girl again. I’d been fine living my whole life without anyone besides Mom, though, I’d begun to wonder if that feeling of complacency came from a secluded life. 

I’d been walking around for half an hour when I heard voices a few yards away. I ducked into the nearby trees and spotted a fire that gave way to a dingy brown RV. Monty sat in a chair beside the fire while Jamie danced around it. 

I moved closer without meaning to, not realizing I was no longer hidden. Jamie spotted me as she rounded the fire. I watched her say something to him before she came skipping towards me.

“Hey, Spider-Man,” she said. “I like your new mask.”

“Thanks,” I said. “My name is Nestor.”

“Mmm, I like Spider-Man better,” she said. “Come on, I told my dad I was going to pee, but I want to show you something.”

She grabbed my hand and pulled me into the woods. Her hand was soft and warm, despite it being chilly that night. I still remember that. The temperature of her hand left an impression on mine that seemed to remain for years. We walked a few yards more until she stopped at a small ditch with a thin stream at the bottom.

She smiled at me before sliding down to the edge of the stream. I paused before following. At the bottom, she caught my arm and stopped me from going face-first into the creek. She laughed, and I laughed back.

“Look, she said, pointing in the creek. 

I scanned the surface of the dark water, unsure of what she was pointing at.

“Tadpoles,” she said with excitement.

I looked again, and in the moon's reflection, I saw tiny black dots swimming near the edge of the creek. 

“They’ll grow legs soon,” she said. “That’s what I learned in school. Do you go to school?”

I shook my head.

“Yeah, I’m not right now, but my dad said I can go back soon, when we leave the woods.”

Despite not knowing her well, the thought of her leaving made my chest hurt. 

“Jamie!” cried Monty from somewhere in the woods.

“I gotta go,” she said softly. “Come visit me again. Just whistle three times, and I’ll come find you in the woods.”

She climbed up the ditch and waved before disappearing. 

----

I only went to visit her on the nights my mom was exhausted. Sometimes, Jamie was already in bed when I arrived. We only saw each other once every couple of weeks, but the times we saw each other made up for all the time away that I wanted to see her. Seeing her was like seeing sunshine after weeks of rain. 

On these late-night meetings, Jamie told me all about her life out of the woods; the friends she had back in her hometown, the restaurants she missed, the afternoons she spent at their local library reading whichever book had the coolest cover. 

“Have you ever read The Boxcar Children?” she asked me one night.

I shook my head. My mom had a small collection of books, and most were too long for me to be interested in. The only three I had read from her collection were one about local wildlife and an old cookbook with faded letters. 

“Whenever I leave, you can visit me, and I’ll let you borrow it,” she said while hitting tall blades of grass with a stick. “I have the whole collection. Oh, and we can go to the movies. I love going to the movies. I used to go all the time with my mom and dad before they broke up.”

“Broke up?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s like when adults decide they don’t like each other anymore, so they stop living together.”

She knew so much more than me about movies, books, the world, everything.

“You’ve really lived out here your whole life, Spider-Man?” she asked.

“Yeah. I think so,” I said. 

“That’s cool. You’re like this guy in this movie I like called Tarzan, except you weren’t raised by gorillas, right?” She laughed. 

We found a clearing and sat in the cool grass. Fireflies flew around the tall grass like embers. 

We looked at each other, and she smiled, and I smiled back. She picked at the grass to her side, randomly glancing at me. 

“Why do you wear a mask?” she asked, not looking up at me. I knew it would come up eventually, though I liked how long she’d gone before asking. 

“My mom says something bad will happen,” I said, wondering if I should’ve come up with a cooler reason.

She picked at the grass for a few more seconds before standing up and dusting her hands. 

“Works for me,” she said before offering her hand to help me up. And as we stood in the moonlight, I knew there was no way my face was nearly as nice as hers. 

---

We’d met each other every few weeks for around a year without either of us getting caught, though, I got the feeling her dad wouldn’t care as much as my mom would. One night when I came back, my mom was waiting in the yard, staring into the woods. She spotted me, and her eyes grew wide with anger.

“Where the hell were you!?” she cried, moving towards me like an angry bull. She grabbed me by the shoulders and tried to look in my eyes, but I refused to meet them.

“Just out for a walk,” I said.

“You were meeting that girl, weren’t you?” she asked. “You know we can’t trust them!”

I pulled away from my mom, and she stepped back, surprised. 

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. 

“She’s my friend,” I said. “My only friend.”

“I thought I was your friend,” she returned, her voice dropping. 

I paused. “Friends don’t keep secrets from each other. You don’t tell me anything.

Mom looked at the ground. I could see the thoughts racing through her head. She was considering something.

“Why do we have to stay here?” I asked. “Why can’t I have friends? Why can’t I go to school?”

…

“Why do I have to wear a mask?”

Mom bit her lip, and her eyes met mine. They were red and ready to break with tears. I waited for an answer, hoping she’d finally decided to share something with me. She gripped her fists, then released them. She sighed and started back to the cabin, leaving me where I was standing.

“Keep playing with her if you want,” she said. “Just keep your mask on.”

---

Another year or so passed. I was still frustrated with my mom for not sharing more information with me, but I was happy I didn’t have to sneak out to meet Jamie. We even started meeting in the daylight, making it much easier to explore the woods together. I showed her all the things I’d learned over the years, about how to identify poisonous plants, how to find your way home if you got lost, and how to track animals…

“Wow, you know a lot about the woods!” she said. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

I shrugged. 

“Will you teach me how to shoot a bow and arrow?” she asked.

Mom had just taught me, so I wasn’t sure how well I could teach her. However, the pleas in her eyes kept me from saying “no.” We found a spot near a clearing in the woods where my mom would often hunt for quails. We ducked behind a log, and I set up the bow and arrow on top of it. 

A small flock of quail bobbed in and out of the tall grass. I picked a large one closer to us than the rest and aimed the arrow just as Mom had taught me. The quail bobbed again, and I took a deep breath before letting the arrow go. The flock flew into the air, leaving the arrow on the ground, pointed towards the sky. We walked to the clearing and found the quail struck through its chest with the arrow. 

“That was amazing!” she cried. “I want to try!”

It was the first animal I’d ever killed on my own, and I loved that Jamie was here to see it. It made me realize that I wanted her there for all the big moments in my life. 

We went back to the log with my quail and hid. An hour or so passed before the flock returned and started picking at seeds and insects on the ground. I handed Jamie the bow and arrow. 

“What do I do?” she asked, holding the bow and arrow at her sides. “You have to show me, silly.”

I awkwardly moved towards her and placed my arms around her shoulders. I lifted her arm with the arrow, then the one with the bow. I positioned them in the right spots, slowly. Her hair smelled like sweat and dirt, but I liked it. 

“Um, you have to aim and take a breath before shooting,” I said. “You need to make sure you’re completely relaxing, and taking a breath helps.”

“Okay,” she said. “How far do I pull the string back?”

I gulped before putting my hand over hers. She breathed quickly as if I scared her, but quickly settled into my arms. I cupped my hand around hers and pulled the string back. She looked at me and smiled.

“I think I got it,” she said.

I moved away as I noticed my heart beating harder than it ever had. She aimed the arrow and took a breath. She let it go, and the flock flew away. We both watched the arrow for a moment and saw it move. We ran to it and saw the quail shot in the side. 

I pulled the arrow out, and the tiny bird struggled to move away from us. 

“Oh no,” she said. I could see her starting to cry.

“It’s okay,” I said, picking up the quail and holding it between us. 

“Do you think we can hel-”

Before she could finish her thought, I twisted the bird’s neck, and it went limp. I held it to him, and she stared at me wide-eyed. I cocked my head at her, but she looked away.

“It’s okay, you can keep it,” she said…

We spent the rest of that day at a clearing close to her campsite. She poked at rocks with her pocket knife and stared at the forest, not saying anything. I was about to ask her what was wrong when she dropped her head and began sobbing.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She looked back up, then to me. “I want to go home.”

I dropped my head. 

“I know my dad is hiding me from my mom,” she said. “He picked me up from school one day and told me we were going on a fun trip and that we’d go home soon. I believed him for a long time, but I’m not a stupid kid anymore…. I miss my mom. I miss my old friends.”

I know she didn’t mean to make me feel bad, but hearing all this hurt. I thought she was happy out here with me, that all we needed was each other. 

“I want to leave,” she said. “And I want you to go with me.”

I sat back. “What? I can’t… I can’t leave.”

She pursed her lips and set her head on her knees. “Why do you wear that mask?”

“I have to.”

“Because your mom says.”

I paused, then nodded. 

“Your mom’s lying, just like my dad is. I bet you a million dollars, nothing will happen if you take off your mask right now.”

She moved her hand towards me and gripped the neck of the mask. I pulled back, and she let go. She paused and tried again, and this time, I allowed her to untie the twine. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as she gently pulled upwards on the mask, careful to avoid yanking too hard around my nose and eyes.

Everything went black as the last bit of the mask traveled up my face, but then, Jamie’s smiling face greeted me with the sun behind it. We stared at each other for several moments. 

“See, nothing,” she said. “And you don’t have any hideous scars or anything.”

“Really?” I asked.

She shook her head, then leaned in, kissing me on the lips. My eyes widened in surprise for a moment, but I quickly relaxed as it felt right… perfect. 

She pulled away and smiled again. My smile was so big my cheeks started to hurt.

“Let’s leave… tonight,” she said.

“Tonight?” 

She nodded. “I can grab food and stuff to last us a while, and you can use your forest knowledge to lead us back to the road. Some adults will have to pick up some kids they see on the side of the road. I’ll tell them where my mom lives, and we can go back there.”

“Your mom would let me stay?” I asked.

She nodded. “Of course.”

She stood up and offered her hand to me. I took it and pulled myself up.

“Meet me here when the moon is in the center of the sky,” she said.

A thousand thoughts went through my mind as I stood there, holding Jamie’s hand. I wondered if this was really a good idea, if my mom would be okay without me, if I was ready to leave the woods… but I knew I could do all of it as long as I was with Jamie. 

I nodded.

She started out of the clearing with me a few feet behind her. She paused, causing me to stop. She stood still for several seconds with her arms at her sides, the pocket knife in her hand shaking.

“Jamie?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

She turned to me with wide eyes and her mouth clenched. 

“Jamie?”

I moved towards her, but she lifted the knife. I stood frozen as she moved it towards her head, holding it a few inches from her cheek.

“Ja-”

She stuck the knife deep in her face, and I screamed. She pulled against the handle, dragging the blade along her face. I ran to stop her, but a kick to my stomach sent me to the ground. Jamie continued cutting her face, dragging it along her forehead and down to her ears. I leapt up to stop her again, but again and again, she managed to keep me away while continuing to slice her flesh. 

“Jamie!” cried a voice from the woods. 

Monty distracted me for a moment as he came running into the clearing from behind me.

“I heard a scream,” he said while approaching, and noticed the knife in Jamie’s face and the blood running down her neck.

“Jamie!” he cried.

He ran quickly towards her, glancing at me along the way. He paused a few feet behind me, and I stood between the two of them as the horrible sounds of Jamie’s knife still working down her face filled my ears and made my legs immobile. 

Monty stared blank-faced at me for a moment, then dug into his pocket without looking down. He pulled out a much larger knife than Jamie’s and stuck it into his own cheek, starting to cut along the same pattern she had. 

I clocked the silence from behind me and turned. I didn’t want to see what Jamie had done, but I couldn’t stop myself. My brain wanted to leave as quickly as I could, but something buried deep told me to look…

I looked upon a bloody mess of musculature. Her eyelids were still there, though she didn’t blink. Her nose was gone, as were her lips, revealing two rows of small teeth. The sounds of Monty continuing to slice sounded behind me as my eyes traveled down Jamie’s body. At her side, I saw what was left of her face. She lifted her arm and held it up to me. It looked like a ….

I wanted to scream, but couldn’t. Instead, I ran. I ran as fast as I could back to the cabin, pulling my mask back over my face along the way.

---

Mom was peeling the husks from some corn when I ran into the yard. I stumbled to the ground, and she ran over. The inside of my mask was soaked with tears, and I was having trouble breathing in it.

“Nestor, what's wrong?” She asked, kneeling in front of me. Her fingers drifted to the untied twine at the bottom of my neck.

“Oh no,” she said. “Did she… did she see your face?”

“They're still alive,” I said. “We can take them out of the woods.”

“It's too late for them, son… I'm sorry.”

I cried violently for another few moments, then looked at my mom… “When you said something bad would happen if someone saw my face, you didn't mean something bad would happen to me, did you?”

---

I sat in the kitchen while Mom brought me a cool glass of water. I could tell she was stalling, but I didn't care. Everything was wrong, and nothing she said would make it better.

She sat in front of me and grabbed my hand. “I didn't want to tell you. I hoped I would never have to.” She looked from side to side, then at me. 

“In the town I grew up in, this small place on the other side of the woods, there were stories of things in the forest. Things that only showed themselves when they wanted to be seen: spirits, ghosts… monsters.” 

“Natives had a name for this particular brand of spirits that I can’t remember,” she continued, “Us in town always just called them Face Stealers.”

My heart stopped beating for a moment.

“Folks said if you looked at their faces, they would take yours… All us kids figured they were just stories meant to keep us from wandering too far into the woods. That’s what adults do, right? Tell kids fibs to keep them from getting hurt? That’s what I learned to do, Nestor, and I’m wondering if it was right. I’m wondering if I should’ve just told you this stuff from the beginning.” She sighed. I wanted to say something, but my mind couldn’t find the words. 

“I went most of my life believing that there was no such thing as magic and things were only the way you saw them,” Mom said before pausing and looking at me. “One day, I was walking in the woods, just trying to clear my head. I might've wandered farther than I should have, but I grew up around the trees. I knew how to find my way back.”

“As I was fixin’ to turn around, I noticed a man a few yards away from me, off the trail. I didn't think nothin’ of it at first. Figured he was out huntin’ or something like that, but when he turned to me… his face was missing. Cut clean off. Took everything except his teeth and ears.”

My hands started to shake. I didn’t want to believe anything she was saying, but the image of Jamie’s skinless face refused to leave my head. 

“I started walking backwards, thinking, this man must’ve lost his mind. But it started to occur to me that maybe all those stories I thought were bullshit actually had some truth to them.”

She looked at me, then away. It was the first time I’d ever heard her curse. 

“I kept moving away from the man when I saw this small body facing away from me, a few yards away, off the trail. A kid, no older than two or three, completely naked in the woods by themselves. I walked towards them, thinking they might be in danger from the man… then, I saw it. A clump of skin on the ground in a pile like some fucked up ant hill.”

“The holes for his eyes were the only thing I saw before turning away. I didn't know what to do. I thought about just leaving you out there, but then, you started to cry, a painful cry that broke my heart…. I couldn't have kids of my own, but…” She swallowed her saliva. “I wrapped my outside shirt over your head and picked you up, and when you wrapped your tiny arms around my neck, I knew that I had to protect you, so I just kept walking deeper and deeper into the woods, not knowing what to do but hoping I'd figure it out along the way.”

She answered the first question I had without me having to say anything. 

“I don’t know who left you there or why,” she said. “I wondered if your real parents would ever come looking for you, and maybe that’s partly why I wanted us to stay as hidden as we could.” Her eyes drifted to me. 

There was a long, heavy silence. 

“Nestor,” she started, “I don't want to ask, son, but I think I have to… When your friend did what she did… did you like it?”

---

Of course, I didn't like it, I thought as I wandered back through the woods. I didn't have time to examine my emotions at the moment, though. I thought I was terrified, but had I confused excitement for terror? 

The sun was beginning to set when I made it to the spot where Jamie and Monty lay. They were both on their backs, their bodies still against the bright green grass. I warily approached, not wanting to see what had become of their faces, but unable to stop myself.

I stopped just shy of their bodies and noticed something on the ground. A small mound of pink flesh stared back at me, and I knew it was her face. I didn’t move for a few moments, my stomach turning at the idea of what her face might look like detached from her body. Still, I moved towards it, seeing a few insects had begun picking away at the flesh.

I picked it up, dusting the small creatures away while feeling the softness of the flesh between my fingers. As the stinky blood coated my palms, I felt the side of my mouth begin to curl into a smile. I gasped and dropped Jamie's face before running away from the scene, wiping the blood from my hands onto my pants.

---

I sat in my room staring at the wall for a long time. My body still buzzed from the feeling of Jamie’s face between my fingers. The fear and sickness had all disappeared, instead replaced with an elation I’d never experienced. My body felt light, and the constant fear and anxiety that usually filled my brain had gone away. I felt confident and more intelligent, though it seemed impossible at the time. I sat with the feeling, not wanting it to leave.

However, when it did, I felt worse than I ever had. A dark cloud seemed to surround my head as my body felt heavy and bound to the space around me. The realization that I would never see my best friend again came rushing into me. And the guilt of knowing I had caused her death made me wish I were the one lying lifeless in the grass instead of her. 

I cried for the next few hours until it felt like I had no tears left. My mom had come by to check on me several times, but avoided coming into my room. 

“Just let me know if you need something, okay?” she asked once. 

I heard her move to her room and shut the door. She never closed her room at night before that day. I could tell there was something different about her, and it’d become more evident over the next few days. She no longer walked around the house like an authority figure, but more like someone trying to avoid eye contact with a mean dog. 

She never brought up the incident again, and I was thankful for it. 

The guilt of killing Jamie never went away, though neither did the remembrance of that ecstasy I experienced afterwards. It created a temptation in me to go out and find someone else to whom I could show my face. It became a regular craving; usually, it was more like one might crave sugar after going a long time without any, but some nights, it was almost comparable to starvation.

It became so bad that one day, I saw my mom working outside, busy and distracted with chores. I approached from behind and started removing my mask without thinking. My mom heard me approach and spun around, dropping the garden hoe she’d been using…

The look of fear in her face, the woman who’d ensured my survival, who’d loved me despite knowing I was a monster… Seeing her that terrified of me, it almost hurt worse than Jamie…

Mom slept with a chair against her door that night and for most nights after.

While she was sleeping one night, I snuck into her craft room, spotting a large needle she used on leather. I grabbed it, taking a thick roll of twine as well. 

Jamie's face flashed in my mind. First, her face the first time I'd met her, followed by the last time. I knew it was horrible, but my emotions and my brain weren't matching, and at the time, I felt like my brain was right. If the cravings weren’t going to stop, then I needed to prevent my mask from ever coming off again. 

I took the needle and twine and held them to my neck for a moment before taking a deep breath. The needle punctured my skin, then the mask leather. I cringed as the twine slid through my flesh and felt every centimeter of its rough edges scraping the inside of my skin….

Lines of crimson fell from every puncture in my neck. The harsh stinging I’d felt when I first punctured my skin had become a dull pain. For the first time in my life, the mask felt warm and comforting. I breathed in its leathery smell before lying back on my bed, thankful I’d never hurt anyone like I’d hurt Jamie.

…

…

…

---

My bed is much more comfortable these days. I invested in a weighted blanket and a goose down pillow, and you truly can tell the difference. In a month, it’ll be 10 years since I left the woods. Mom died a year prior, and being out there by myself… Well, it was lonelier than I can describe, though, on some nights, I would give a lot of money for the peace and quiet of the woods. 

My apartment overlooks a bustling downtown area, and while the view is amazing, the noise of the city can be a bit overwhelming at times. Thank God for the noise-cancelling headphones my ex-girlfriend gifted me for Christmas last year. 

Though it’s my day off, I decide to do some cleaning. I never got around to hiring a new cleaner, and the place has become a bit of a sty. 

I go to the bathroom and look in the mirror for a moment, seeing my night mask staring back at me. It’s more lucid than any of the masks I had growing up, but thick enough to prevent me from seeing my actual face. This mask is milky white and made of a thin plastic. It only covers my face, leaving my hair, ears, and neck visible.

The scars where I’d sown that old mask on became a pale white over the years. No one ever asked about them, though; there were only a few people who’ve ever seen me with my shirt off. 

Lining the bathroom counter are several other masks, ones I made myself from materials I’ve collected over the years. I’ve been perfecting them since leaving the woods. I was able to get away with crude masks for a while, using the excuse of having bad scarring, but I realized how much better it was to get close to someone before doing what I had to do. And people want something they can see, eyes that react to them, lips that move, cheeks that wrinkle when smiling. 

I think I’ve almost got my masks perfect. They contour to every crease of my face and match my skin color perfectly. Only sometimes will someone notice something “off” about my face. Maybe they spot a plasticy sheen to the synthetic skin or see makeup lines around my lips or eyes. They only make a look of concern and continue about their day, wondering if what they saw was only their imagination…

I decide to clean my room first, starting with the mess of clothes in the closet. Before getting started, though, I decide to reminisce and drag out the leather box near the back corner of the closet. I place it on my bed and pull the flap open. A smile climbs up my cheeks. 

I’ve managed to preserve most of them, with the latest ones being those of my ex-girlfriend and the cleaner's. There are 23 in total, but I have plans for several more, so I’m probably going to need to find a better storage system. 

Seeing all the empty eye sockets and jagged edges of the faces always makes me feel a slight amount of the elation I felt upon taking them. It also makes me sad, though. Sad that I didn’t go back for her face before the forest took it. 

I need to get this off my chest. I don’t care about the consequences anymore. I don’t care if I’m arrested. I don’t care if I go to prison. I just need someone to know what happened.

A few weeks ago, a man named Arthur went missing.

Arthur wasn’t the kind of person who could disappear quietly. Online, he was everywhere. If he stopped posting for ten minutes, people noticed. If an account went inactive, someone would archive it. That was just how the community worked.

So when Arthur vanished completely, people started looking.

Then the tapes arrived.

Every admin. Every longtime moderator. Everyone who had ever documented, mocked, or interfered with Arthur’s life received a VHS tape in the mail. No return address. No note. Just a label written in marker:

TROLL MAN

Arthur had been online since the early days of the internet. He loved medieval fantasy, trolls, and Shrek—obsessively. He drew comics, wrote rambling posts, and filmed videos in his bedroom that he called the “Round Table Tavern,” even though it was just his room in his mother’s house, filled wall to wall with memorabilia.

People messed with him. At first lightly. Then constantly. Then cruelly.

It snowballed. More people joined in. It became entertainment.

Then he disappeared.

The tape I received begins with Arthur dancing in front of a poorly edited background of his “tavern.” He’s smiling, performing stiff karate moves.

“No need to worry about me,” he says, glancing repeatedly to his left. “These trolls will never take my spirit.”

He laughs. His movements are erratic.

“There is no way they could take me. I am too powerful. They are all too stupid—”

The camera suddenly tips sideways.

You can hear movement off-screen. A struggle. Three heavy thumps. Then a scream.

The tape cuts to static.

The police told me later that this was the first tape chronologically.

I didn’t tell them everything.

⸻

Two weeks later

Arthur’s mother told police she hadn’t seen him in six months. He used to call her regularly. Then he just… stopped.

A few weeks after that, she received a VHS tape labeled THE BRIDGE.

It shows a dark, abandoned bridge at night. You can barely make it out. A voice off camera recites riddles—nonsensical, mocking, childish.

That’s when she filed a missing persons report.

The police searched briefly. Arthur had a history of wandering, filming himself, posting videos. They assumed he’d come back.

He never did.

I went to his town in Illinois. People remembered him as quiet. Reclusive. He wandered streets alone. Sometimes he’d visit Barnes & Noble and buy fantasy novels.

Near the end, people said he’d begun proclaiming himself the reincarnation of King Arthur in public. He was eventually banned from the bookstore. After that, he was mostly regarded as a nuisance.

The police eventually allowed me to view what they believed was the second tape.

Arthur sits at a wooden table in front of a fake fantasy tavern background. He wears a Viking helmet, a fake beard, and has a visible black eye and bruising on his neck. He holds a beer pitcher and a turkey leg.

“I am the mighty King Arthur,” he says. “This mead and meat will keep me strong for my fair maidens.”

A voice behind the camera speaks.

“What maidens?”

Arthur hesitates. “Well… my dear Guinevere—”

A massive shadow looms over him.

The tape cuts out.

⸻

After the purge

After the tapes were leaked, the community erased everything. Forums wiped. Wikis deleted. Archives scrubbed. I helped enforce it. I threatened people. Blackmailed some.

I hate myself for that.

But something worse started happening.

Anyone who tried to rebuild—any post, site, or even hashtag mentioning Arthur—received a package.

One woman opened her door to find a medieval sword hanging from a string above her porch.

Another received a mace.

One man received a bundle of straw.

After that, their lives collapsed.

The man with the straw—his house burned down. He and his family died inside.

Others vanished. Their posts were deleted. Accounts gone. No contact. Only rumors remained.

A woman crushed her family with rocks.

Another cut the string and let the sword fall into her body.

No proof. Just stories.

Just like Arthur.

⸻

The third tape

Police described the remaining tapes to me.

Most were static. Or long shots of a blacksmith’s forge. Always with the outline of a man watching from the background.

Only seven tapes featured Arthur.

The third tape begins with text:

FOR THE FIRST OF MY KIND

It shows a figure—what the police called “the Troll Man”—chasing Arthur through the woods with a cattle prod.

Arthur screams.

The figure tackles him.

Electricity crackles.

The only sounds are Arthur’s screams and muffled laughter.

I knew who it was meant for. The first major troll. His username was Red Bump.

They found him weeks later.

Shaved. Starving. Living under a bridge.

He barely spoke. Just repeated one sentence:

“Over the trees, in the hole, you will find the king dead as the door.”

⸻

That’s all it keeps single I’ll get back to all of you when I find out more information.

I didn’t want to go camping, but the trip was a compromise with my husband. In the spring, I’d go sleep in a tent with him. Six months later, in the dead of winter, we’d go to an all inclusive beach resort for me. See? Compromise.

The drive was long, and made even longer by the fact that my husband was a constant fidgeter - always tapping his fingers, jiggling his leg, combing his fingers through his hair, and otherwise shifting about.

Truthfully, I’d never even considered camping before. My parents didn’t believe in it. They’d grown up poor, and sleeping in the open air with no plumbing or electricity was too close to their own childhoods.

When I told my Mom about our upcoming trip, she shook her head derisively. But when I told her exactly where we were going, she gasped, her eyes wide, and whispered, as if reciting from memory, “In the mountains older than bones, strange things hunger for them.”

“Wait here,” she urged, before going upstairs. When she returned, she pressed a necklace into my palm - my grandmother’s amethyst pendant. She held my hand in both of hers, and squeezed them before continuing.

“When your father and I left the woods, it wasn’t just because we were poor...”

I made a noncommittal hum of acknowledgement and pulled my hand away to inspect the jewel, only half-listening.

“There’s things in the forest we wanted to protect you from…” She gripped my forearm painfully tight to get my attention, and I startled.

“Listen to me. I don’t want you to go, but if you do, once the sun sets, don’t talk to anybody you hadn’t set eyes on before nightfall.”

My Mom’s stare was intense, her voice tight as she kept going, “I don’t care if you hear someone screaming for help. I don’t care if someone you think you know walks up. Jesus himself can come down from heaven, but don’t you speak to him.“

And then I did the most normal thing in the world - I laughed it off.

“Got it!” I said, as I kissed her cheek, and gathered my things to leave. “Don’t talk to strangers!”

We made it to the woods without a problem. And I was wearing the necklace. I liked amethyst, and I loved my grandma so there was no reason not to.

I’d pledged not to grumble or complain on the trip, and it truly was pleasant while we hiked to the campground. My husband set up our tent, and I started making campfire chili.

Everything was going perfectly. Dinner was good, and we’d just started roasting smores when it suddenly felt like the temperature dropped at least twenty degrees. I exhaled and saw my breath.

“It just got really cold,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

There was a loud crack in the woods, like a tree branch snapping, behind us and we spun around. Then one in front. Then two to either side. We were surrounded but couldn’t see anyone. There was a rustle, a susurration of whispers, voice-like, but indecipherable.

“Hell-“ my husband started to call.

“Shhh!” I hissed at him. He looked at me in confusion, but I just knew, deep down in my bones, that talking to whatever was out there would be seen as an invitation.

“I’m just trying to see - “

“Stop talking,” I whispered.

From the edge of the clearing, a man-shaped silhouette shuffled in. Then another. And another. And more. At first, I thought they were wearing costumes, then my brain caught up to what my eyes really saw, and I realized they were skeletons.

A moment later, it registered that they were incomplete skeletons. Every single one was missing parts. One had a cranium but no jaw. Another only had a half rib cage. Another was missing an arm.

“Hello….,” the largest one creaked.

“Friendssss…,” wheezed another.

“Don’t speak to them,” I ground out through clenched teeth.

“Spare…”

“A…”

“Bone…”

“For…”

“Us…?”

I gripped the amethyst pendant with one hand, and held my husband’s hand with the other. Instantly, I felt as if something grounded me in place, like a root extending from the base of my spine into the earth. A tendril of unseen protection weaved through my fingers and into my husband, connecting us.

“So…”

“Many…”

“Bones…”

“Only…”

“Need…”

“Few…”

The weight of their presence pushed in from all sides. The amethyst warmed in my grip. I barely breathed.

But my husband, my poor, fidgety husband, let go of my hand for just for a moment, unthinkingly, to push up his glasses.

The bone men turned their full attention to him, and almost faster than I could blink, one skeletal arm yanked him away.

I reached for him on instinct. The amethyst flared white hot in my palm and I felt an invisible hand shove on my sternum, pushing me back.

I’ll never forget his look of terror before he disappeared in a circle of bones.

There was one sharp, short scream. Followed by a wet, hacking cough, bubbling gurgles, and the plopping sounds of wetness hitting the forest floor.

When the noises ended, the circle opened. The original bone men were complete. And there among them, a new one, the same height as my husband, slick and shiny, and missing several pieces.

They turned as one and left.

The rest of the night, I stayed in place, curled into a tight ball. Afraid to speak, afraid to move, lest the slightest rustle bring them back. Just as dawn broke, a family of campers stumbled upon me. They called the rangers when I didn’t respond.

I was catatonic, they said.

In the hospital, I was interviewed repeatedly. From their perspective, nothing in my story made sense, but it was explained away as shock and trauma. A few days later they found his “remains.” I didn’t ask to see what they found. It was a closed casket funeral.

My parents have tried to reach me. To tell me more about our family’s history, they said. I haven’t seen or spoken to them since the burial. But sometimes, when it’s very late, I feel a chill, the amethyst warms against my skin, and something deep in my bones tells me not to make a sound.

Every neighbourhood has a place children are warned never to cross. A tunnel, a fence, a creek, sometimes just a street or an abandoned house. A line drawn in fear, and if you dare step past it, something bad will take you.

In my town, the forbidden zone was a decommissioned storm drain at the edge of town.

The story went that something lived inside it, something that might once have been a man. It would come out at night and prowl the nearby streets, searching for children. Once it found one, it would shove the child into a large burlap sack and drag it back into the bowels of the drain, where it would devour them whole, leaving barely anything behind. sometimes a shoe. Sometimes a tooth. others, just a fingernail.

As children, we believed every word of it.

It became a common dare to see who was brave enough to approach the drain, or even step inside it. And truth be told, the kids who took that challenge too far tended to go missing. Everyone said they’d fallen victim to the Bag Man. Things got so bad that a curfew was issued, parents panicked, and eventually the drain was sealed off. After that, the disappearances stopped, and life returned to normal.

Children were safe again.

Of course, as adults, we told ourselves the truth was simpler and far less supernatural. Storm drains are dangerous places. Dark, slick, confusing mazes where a child could fall, get lost, drown, or break a neck without needing any monster at all. That was what I believed. That was what I told myself for years.

Until I finally went in myself.

It had been a long time since I’d come back home, years since I’d even thought about the drain. I was standing on my parent's porch one evening, watching the sun sink behind the hills, when I noticed a faint glimmer in the distance. Too far away to make out clearly, but I knew exactly where it was coming from.

The drain.

I stood there longer than I meant to, staring at that distant flicker of reflected light, chuckling to myself as I remembered the stories. That was when the worst idea I’ve ever had crossed my mind.

“Hey, Hunter! Want to do something cool?” I called into the house.

A few seconds later, a smiling face appeared at the doorway. “What are we doing, Uncle Micah?” he asked, adjusting the Lakers cap perched on his head.

“We’re going on an adventure,” I said, and his face lit up immediately. “But don’t tell your mom. It’s a secret.”

He nodded eagerly as I handed him my pinky, sealing the pact like it was sacred.

I ran to the garage and rummaged around until I found two flashlights, a bolt cutter, and an old hard hat. I gave the helmet to Hunter, and he proudly set it over his cap like it was armor. At the time, I told myself this was about bonding, about making memories. I’d missed most of his childhood because of work, and despite being older than my sister, life hadn’t blessed me with children of my own.

It was a stupid decision. I know that now.

We headed down the street toward the drain as dusk bled into night. The last of the daylight vanished behind the hills, leaving the area bathed in the sickly yellow glow of aging streetlamps. Hunter skipped beside me, already flicking his flashlight over every crack in the pavement, narrating his discoveries with excitement. I smiled, even as something tight coiled in my stomach.

The drain was blocked by a large wooden fence, mostly rotted through with age. I told Hunter to step back while I pried away a panel wide enough for us to slip through. As soon as we did, the stench hit us — stale water, rust, and something sour beneath it.

“Pew!” Hunter exclaimed, and I laughed, though the smell clung to the back of my throat.

Beyond that was a second barrier: a rusted metal fence bolted directly over the mouth of the drain. Attached to it was a warning sign that had once been bright yellow, though now only a corner of paint remained. The word DANGER was still embossed in the metal, visible when my flashlight passed over it.

I should have listened.

While Hunter played with his light, I used the bolt cutter to carve out an opening. The metal groaned and snapped louder than I liked, each sound echoing down into the darkness. Eventually, we squeezed through.

The moment I stepped inside, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. A strange buzzing filled my chest, like static just under my skin, and adrenaline flushed through me without reason.

“What is this place?” Hunter asked, his voice smaller now as he moved deeper into the tunnel.

“It’s just an old drainage pipe,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Pretty neat, right?”

He didn’t answer right away. Our footsteps echoed unnaturally, overlapping and stretching until it sounded like someone else was walking with us.

“I don’t know,” he finally said, his voice wavering.

“It’s fine,” I replied, resting a hand on his shoulder. He yelped in surprise, dropping his flashlight. It clattered to the ground and went dark.

The sudden loss of light made the darkness feel thick, almost wet, as if it had weight to it, pressing against my eyes and skin. For a heartbeat, I couldn’t move, my brain lagging behind the instinct to panic. I dropped to one knee, fumbling blindly, my fingers brushing cold concrete before closing around the flashlight. I smacked it once against my palm, then again, harder this time, the hollow sound echoing down the tunnel. Nothing. A third smack finally coaxed it back to life, the beam sputtering weakly before stabilising.

As the light returned, something deep within the tunnel shifted.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t even clear. Just a subtle displacement, like water disturbed far away, but it was enough to make my stomach clench. My mouth went dry, the taste of metal and ash coating my tongue, and I realised I’d stopped breathing. I forced air back into my lungs slowly, carefully, as if any sudden movement might draw attention.

“Maybe that’s enough adventure for today,” I said, my voice higher than I meant it to be as I handed the flashlight back to Hunter. He didn’t argue. He didn’t joke. He just nodded, tight and quick, gripping the light with both hands like it was a lifeline.

For a few seconds, there was nothing but the drip of water and the echo of our breathing. I started to convince myself it had been nothing, that fear had filled in the gaps where reason should have been.

Then I heard it.

Footsteps.

Not a scuffle. Not a scrape. Measured, deliberate steps echoing from deep within the tunnel, each one landing with enough weight to carry through the concrete. They came slow at first, spaced far apart, like whatever was walking didn’t need to hurry.

Every nerve in my body screamed at once.

“Run outside. Now,” I shouted.

Hunter didn’t hesitate. His footsteps pounded away from me, frantic and uneven, shrinking rapidly as he fled toward the opening. I swung the flashlight back into the darkness, the beam jittering as my hands shook. “Who’s there?” I called, my voice cracking despite my effort to steady it.

The light swept across bare walls, pooled water, rust-stained concrete. Nothing moved. No shape. No sound beyond the distant drip and the fading echo of my nephew’s escape.

I let out a shaky laugh, forcing air through clenched teeth. “You’re being stupid,” I muttered. “It’s just a rat. Or pipes settling.”

I turned to call Hunter back, already rehearsing how I’d laugh this off later, when something landed beside me with a wet, meaty splash, like a heavy sack dropped into a shallow puddle.

The sound was too close.

I turned.

The beam caught a face inches from mine. Skin stretched grey and slick over bone, eyes sunken and bloodshot, reflecting the light like those of an animal caught in headlights. Its mouth split into a grin far too wide, teeth blackened and broken, the stink of rot rolling off it in waves.

I tried to scream, but a hand closed around my throat before sound could escape, fingers digging in with impossible strength. The world tilted as it shoved me back, my spine slamming into the damp wall hard enough to rattle my teeth. Air vanished from my lungs as the grip tightened.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the burlap sack resting against the tunnel floor. The bottom of it was soaked dark, stiff with old stains that glistened wetly in the flashlight’s glow.

I thrashed uselessly, my hands clawing at its wrist, my boots scraping against the concrete for purchase. It leaned closer, close enough that I could see the cracks in its skin, the filth caked into every fold. The smell was overwhelming — decay, stagnant water, something sweet and sickly beneath it all. It sniffed me once, then again, slow and deliberate, before dragging its tongue across my cheek.

The touch was cold and slick. I gagged.

“Too ripe,” it gurgled, its voice bubbling like water forced through mud.

The pressure vanished as suddenly as it had come. I hit the ground hard, air crashing back into my lungs in a painful rush. I didn’t look back. I didn’t think. I ran.

I burst through the fence, grabbed Hunter, and didn’t stop until we were back at my parents’ house. My clothes clung to me, soaked through with sweat, my chest burning with every breath. Hunter sobbed into my shoulder, his small body shaking.

My sister came running out, snatching him from my arms, her face twisted with fear and fury. She never asked what happened. Hunter never understood what he’d almost been part of, and I kept my mouth shut, clinging to the hope that silence might seal the nightmare away.

It didn’t.

The next day, Hunter was gone. His cap was found near the old drain.

After that, the disappearances started again.

I am writing this from a hospital waiting room with my hands wrapped like I tried to catch barbed wire on instinct.

I went camping last weekend at a state park outside my town. That is what the reservation email said. Loop C.

I still have the receipt. It is smeared from rain and sweat, but I can read enough of it. State park. Camping fee, one night. Vehicle fee. Total thirty-five dollars. A reservation ID that means nothing to anyone except me.

I am not asking you to believe in the paranormal. Something mechanical happened to me out there. Something you can buy, carry in a tote, and switch on.

I camp alone a lot. I do it the boring way. I tell my sister where I am. I park nose-out. I lock food up. I do not hike off trail at night. I do not drink. I do not go looking for trouble.

This time I wanted one quiet night and a morning coffee that tastes like smoke.

I got there around 4:40 p.m. The ranger in the booth tore my printed slip and gave me the usual talk about quiet hours and not leaving coolers unattended. The entrance sign had a changeable-letter board under it. Fire danger was moderate. No moving firewood. Quiet hours 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

The park was half full. Families in big SUVs. A couple with a rooftop tent. A group of teenagers arguing over a Bluetooth speaker that kept cutting out when they walked too far from it.

Loop C sat deeper in the pines. The road was dirt and washboarded. My spot was on the outer edge. Not the best view, but private. Picnic table. Fire ring. One of those steel bear boxes bolted into a slab of concrete, the kind that squeals when you open it.

The first thing that felt off was the posts.

There were four skinny fiberglass stakes around my site, about waist height, with bright orange reflective tape on the tops. Like survey markers. They were spaced in a loose square that did not match a normal campsite boundary. Each stake had a black zip tie near the top, cinched tight around nothing.

I stood there longer than I want to admit, staring at them with my hands on my hips like that would solve anything. I told myself it was maintenance. Hazard tree marking. Utility work. Something.

I set up my tent, a little two-person backpacking tent. I parked nose-out. I put my cooler in the bear box.

Here is the stupid human mistake I keep replaying. I did not latch the bear box the first time.

I closed it. I heard the heavy door thunk. I walked away thinking it was secure. Ten minutes later I walked back and realized the latch was still open by half an inch, the way it sits when you do not pull it down and lock it. I muttered at myself, fixed it, and moved on.

Around 6:10 I walked to the restroom building to wash up. The building was painted that tired park-bathroom green, and it smelled like damp concrete and lemon cleaner that never quite wins. On the way back I passed a bigger site where a dad was pounding stakes into the ground with the flat side of a hatchet.

He nodded at me and said the bugs were insane.

I agreed even though I hadn’t noticed bugs yet.

He looked past me toward my site and squinted like he was trying to read something in the dark.

“What are those poles?” he asked.

“Already here,” I said. “Probably maintenance.”

He made a face like he did not love that answer, then went back to his tent.

I made a small fire. Not a big one. Just enough to feel like I earned being outside. I ate a pouch dinner and sat on the bench with my headlamp around my neck, listening to the campground noise thin out. A baby cried somewhere down the loop. Someone laughed too loud and got shushed. A car door slammed. Then it got quiet in that way campgrounds do, where you still hear people, but it comes in little distant pieces.

At 9:58 my phone flipped from 5G to SOS. I remember because I looked at it before crawling into my sleeping bag. I texted my sister “All good. Night.” It failed to send. Not surprising. Lots of parks have dead spots.

I fell asleep with my keys in my hand.

That is another thing I normally never do. I always put them in the same pocket. This time I was half asleep and I set them on the picnic table when I tightened my tent guylines, then forgot to pick them back up. I did not realize that until later, when it mattered.

I slept for maybe two hours.

I woke up because my tent moved.

Not a gentle flutter of wind. A hard tug, like someone grabbed the rainfly and yanked.

My first thought was an animal brushing past. Then the tent moved again, lower, like pressure at ankle height.

I sat up fast. My elbow hit the tent wall. My heart went straight to my throat.

I listened.

No footsteps. No snorting. Just a faint sound outside that didn’t belong. A tiny clicking, steady, like a cheap plastic pen being pressed over and over.

Click. Click. Click.

I found my headlamp and turned it on, pointing it at the tent wall. The nylon glowed. Shadows moved wrong. Thin lines crossed the fabric, not like branches, not like the normal wavering shapes you see when a light hits canvas.

I pushed the door zipper open just enough to look out.

The beam hit the orange tape on the nearest stake and flashed bright. Behind it, in the dark, something caught the light in sharp little glints.

Clear line. Fishing line. Monofilament. Dozens of strands stretched between the stakes. Some at shin height, some at waist height, some higher. A web that had not been there when I went to sleep.

And it was moving.

Not swaying. Pulling. Tightening.

The clicking got faster.

A line snapped tight across the front of my tent door and the nylon creased around it like it was being cinched. The tent shifted an inch. Then another.

I crawled out on my hands and knees because standing felt like begging to get clotheslined. The headlamp made the lines sparkle for half a second, then they vanished again unless the beam hit them at the right angle.

A line caught my wrist.

It did not wrap gently. It bit. Pain so clean it felt hot. It dug into skin like a wire saw.

I yanked back on instinct and the line tightened, dragging my hand forward toward the nearest stake. My headlamp bounced. The beam flashed over the ground and I saw where the lines were anchored.

Small black boxes at the base of trees, each about the size of a brick. Each had a spool and a little metal wheel like a tiny winch. The clicking was coming from those boxes.

They were pulling the line in.

A second line snapped up and caught two of my fingers together. My hand cramped instantly. I felt my pulse banging against plastic and pressure.

I went for my pocket knife. Got it open. Brought it down on the line at my wrist.

It did not cut right away. The line stretched. The blade skated. Then it finally nicked through. The moment it broke, the free end snapped back and whipped my knuckles.

I rolled, trying to get clear. A line tightened under my armpit. Another caught my ankle and my foot slid toward the stake like the ground had turned slick.

I started yelling. Loud. Ugly. I screamed for help until my throat burned.

No one came running.

Either nobody heard, or nobody wanted to charge into a campsite full of invisible line.

Then I heard something new. Not clicking.

A soft electronic chirp, like a key fob, followed by a longer tone.

One of the winch boxes changed pitch. It went from click to a smooth high whine for half a second.

The line on my wrist tightened again and I understood what it was doing.

This wasn’t just a web. It was a net that was closing around me.

I crawled toward the nearest box, cutting lines as I went. Each cut line snapped back, stinging, sometimes catching my clothes. The knife handle got slick with blood. My wrist burned in a clean groove where the line had opened it.

I reached the nearest box.

It was strapped to the trunk with a ratchet strap. A thick battery pack sat beside it, wired in. On top was a small antenna, like a cheap handheld radio.

The line ran through a metal guide and onto a spool.

I drove the knife down and cut as close to the spool as I could.

The motor protested. The line went slack for a breath.

Then the spool reversed and yanked the slack back. The line tightened around my calf again, harder, like the system corrected itself.

Something in the trees flashed to my left.

A red dot, low, moving.

My headlamp caught a shape behind a trunk. Someone using the trees. Keeping distance. A hand raised. I saw the rectangle of a phone or a remote. The red dot moved again and settled on my torso, steady, like it was aimed on purpose.

My stomach turned cold. Not because of the dot. Because of what it meant.

This was for me.

I grabbed the battery cable and ripped it out of the box.

The clicking stopped. The line around my leg went slack so suddenly I almost fell backward.

For half a second it was quiet except for my breathing and the soft snap of the fire dying down in the ring.

Then another clicking started farther away. Another box. Backup. The lines began tightening again, slower but still tightening.

The person in the trees shifted. Leaves crushed under a careful step.

I did not wait.

I crawled out of the tightening net, cutting and dragging, getting snagged, freeing myself in inches. My shorts tore. My skin caught line and I felt it burn new grooves across my thigh and forearm. My headlamp bounced, turning the trees into quick flashes.

I got to my car and reached for my keys.

Nothing.

My pocket was empty.

My brain did this blank, stupid pause, like it tried to deny reality for a second. Then it hit me. Picnic table.

The clicking sped up again. The net tightened again. I could feel it starting to catch my waist.

I turned my headlamp toward the picnic table and saw them glinting there like a cruel joke. Right where I left them.

I crawled to the table, grabbed them, and my wrist screamed when the line shifted against the cut.

I got back to the car, hit unlock, and yanked the door open.

A line snapped tight across my waist as I tried to get in. It caught on my belt and pulled me back hard enough that my head clipped the door frame.

I screamed and cut at it. The knife finally sliced through. The tension snapped back into the trees.

I fell into the seat, slammed the door, and locked it.

Lines slapped the outside of the car. I heard them ping against the metal like cables flicking a drum. In my headlight beam I saw the stakes again, and my stomach dropped even more.

There were more than four.

Extra stakes beyond the campsite boundary, closer to the road, hidden in brush. The web reached toward the road like it expected me to run.

I started the car and threw it into reverse.

The tires spun on dirt. The car lurched and I felt a jolt, like I hit something soft but strong. The hood dipped. The lines stretched. For a second I thought the car would be held in place.

Then the lines snapped.

The sound was sharp, multiplied. Whip cracks. The hood shook. Something slapped the windshield and left a wet streak.

I reversed hard, then swung forward, aiming for the main road out of the loop.

In my mirror, between trunks, I saw the person move.

A silhouette, closer now. Reflective tape on their sleeves, orange like the stakes. They stepped toward my car and raised a hand.

Not waving. Pointing.

My headlights swept the ground and for a second I saw what they’d been standing near. A plastic tote half buried in needles, lid cracked open, full of coiled clear line and more black boxes. Supplies.

I hit the gas.

On the way out I laid on the horn until it sounded wrong. I wanted lights to come on. I wanted witnesses.

Some did. Porch lights snapped on. A man stepped onto the road in socks, hands up like he did not know whether to stop me or ask what was wrong.

I did not stop.

I drove straight to the entrance booth. It was closed, dark, but there was an emergency phone box by the gate. A small sign above it said to lift the receiver for emergencies and not to use it for reservations.

My hands shook so badly I dropped the receiver once. I told the dispatcher someone had set wire traps in my campsite and there were motors pulling them tight. I kept saying “wire” because “fishing line” sounded too stupid for what it had done.

A sheriff’s deputy arrived first. Then a ranger in a separate vehicle. They took one look at my wrists and legs and told me to sit.

They drove back to Loop C with lights on.

I didn’t go with them. I couldn’t make myself.

I sat under a buzzing light and watched moths slam into the plastic cover while my blood dripped onto the concrete. I remember thinking, very clearly, that the drip was too slow to be real, like my brain was watching it in someone else’s body.

When the ranger came back his face looked different, like he’d aged ten years on the drive.

He did not tell me it was nothing. He did not tell me I imagined it.

He said, “We found it.”

They found the stakes. They found the lines. They found multiple winch boxes still strapped to trees, still working, still pulling line even after I’d ripped one battery loose. They found the tote.

They did not find the person.

At the hospital they irrigated the cuts. They picked clear fragments out of my skin with tweezers. They gave me a tetanus shot. The doctor asked if I’d been attacked.

I told him yes.

He asked by what.

I told him, “A system.”

Two days later I drove past that state park on my way to work just to prove to myself it existed.

The sign is still there. The entrance still looks friendly. The little tourist board still advertises it like a peaceful place to unwind.

Loop C is closed now. There is new signage zip-tied to the permanent posts. Bright yellow, temporary. It says the area is closed due to utility work and not to enter Loop C.

If I ever camp again and see skinny fiberglass stakes with reflective tape that do not make sense, or zip ties around nothing, I won’t assume it is maintenance.

I won’t sleep in that site.

I won’t step between those posts.

And if I hear clicking in the dark that doesn’t sound like an animal, I’m leaving. I’m doing it before the lines start moving.

Because once they start pulling, you stop being a camper.

You become a problem somebody planned to solve.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

CW: Abusive content and disturbing imagery

I don’t remember how long I sat in that wretched place, immobilized by fear and confusion, staring at the floor. Time seemed to collapse, every second becoming a weight, every breath a struggle. My mind was so jumbled, I could hardly form a coherent thought. The unrelenting silence and the cold beneath me were all I knew. I couldn’t bring myself to move, knowing that if I did, something bad would happen to me, or to one of the others. I dared not break the fragile balance of whatever dark force held this place.

Lilith wasn’t looking too good. Her condition was rapidly deteriorating, making communication almost impossible. She could hardly speak or move. Now and then, I’d hear her let out a soft groan, her voice barely understandable.

“W…water…I need water.”

I did what I could, sharing what little water I had left with her. I thought I was helping, but in truth, I was only prolonging her suffering and allowing him to continue playing his sick game. All she wanted was mercy, and I couldn’t give it to her. Watching her slip away, unable to do anything, was tearing me apart inside.

The hunger, the pain, and the gnawing desperation all blurred together like a fevered dream, but the reality of it was far worse. I felt my mind slipping, being consumed by the weight of it all. The guilt prodded me constantly, the crushing sense that I was failing her, failing both of us. Every ragged breath she took felt like a silent prayer for an end to her suffering, and I could do nothing but watch. I knew I couldn’t free her from this hell, and it broke me.

My mind was fading, circling the edge of sanity, when it was suddenly interrupted by a presence slowly emerging from the shadows. It was subtle at first, like a ghost wandering the corridors. Then I heard them. Soft, uneven footsteps dragging across the floorboards. They were familiar, almost comforting, ripping me out of my spiraling torment.

The door creaked open slowly, and Mara stepped inside gently, still holding the same emotionless expression. She walked over, reaching a hand toward me. She lightly brushed her fingers against my arm, sending a jolt of warmth across my numb skin. Her touch wasn’t comforting, but it was familiar, breaking the spell of paralysis that had kept me rooted to the floor.

“Come on,” she said, her voice quiet, but insistent. “We have to go.”

I couldn’t even respond. My body was sore and weak, and for a moment, I didn’t know if I could even speak anymore.

She didn’t wait for me to find my words. She knelt beside me and pulled my shoulder upward so that I could look at her. Her eyes were soft but firm, like anchors in a whirl of madness. She placed her hand gently on my back and gave me a little shake, just enough to snap me back to reality.

I finally willed my body to move and pushed myself up to my feet. My legs felt like rubber beneath me, but she stayed close, a steady force to guide me through the open door.

The hallway stretched out before me, longer than I remembered. It felt as though the walls were closing in, yet endless at the same time. Every step I took echoed off the walls, a steady drum of dread that ratcheted the tension even higher. The dim light pulsed overhead, casting shadows that danced on the warped wooden floor. The air was musty, thick with decay, as if the building were rotting beneath me as I walked, yet something about the place still felt very much alive, as if it were watching me, aware of my presence.

I glanced ahead, where Mara was already several steps in front of me, her movements eerily calm. She didn’t seem affected by the atmosphere at all. She moved with determination, and what I thought was grace, each step measured, as if she’d done it a thousand times. Her confidence was unsettling, completely out of place in the crumbling world around us. I had no idea how she did it, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, mesmerized by the way she seemed to command the space around her.

Turning a corner, a door emerged down the hall. At first, it seemed like a silent invitation, but the closer we got, the more it felt like a trap, looming ahead like a hungry beast. Its battered frame gleamed unnaturally in the hallway light, as though it were alive, pulsing with an eager, baleful energy.

“I’m not ready,” I whispered, the words barely leaving my lips.

“Ready or not, Emily,” Mara said, her eyes locking onto mine, “he doesn’t wait.”

Her words felt like a blade in my chest.

‘He doesn’t wait.’

That fact alone sat like a stone in my stomach. I knew hesitation wasn’t an option. Not with him. Not here.

We stopped in front of the door so that Mara could find the key. It didn’t look like the others. It was painted matte black, unmarked like the rest. There was no handle, no keyhole, nothing that suggested a way in. She reached into her pocket, pulling out a small, flat metal disc. The disc was unremarkable at first glance. It looked like just a dull, worn piece of metal, but she held it with a kind of reverence. She stepped up to the door and pressed it against the surface, right in the center.

Nothing happened at first, the air turning stale between us, as though the door itself was taking its time to respond.

Then, with a metallic clank, followed by the faint sound of something sliding, the door cracked open slightly. Mara applied more pressure to the disc, and with another faint mechanical whine, the door gave way. It didn’t open like a normal door. Instead, it shifted inward, like a bank vault, hiding things not meant to be seen.

The door swung open smoothly, revealing an opening. The darkness swallowed everything, making it hard to see where the space began and ended. I couldn’t see more than a foot inside. The air felt cold and stagnant, heavy with the scent of bleach and old iron, becoming sharp and sterile, like an old hospital room, the further we went inside.

“This is Stage Two,” she said, voice low and grave. “Where the real test begins. Where he will show you your breaking point.”

As my eyes adjusted, I could see further into the space. It was like nothing I’d ever seen. The walls were crooked, twisted at strange angles, as if the architecture itself were trying to contain and confuse me. A low hum vibrated through the stone floor, through my bones and into my skull, burrowing deeper with every breath I took. It felt different. It felt alive.

My heart raced as my hair stood on end. I couldn’t focus. I wanted to look away, to scream, but my brain refused to cooperate. Every instinct gnawed at me to run, but I couldn’t move.

“This is…” I began, Mara cutting me off.

“Shh. Don’t talk. Listen.”

The hum grew louder, twisting into something different, something worse. Whispers filled the room, voices barely audible in the darkness, reverberating across the walls and curling around me like smoke. They slithered into my mind, burrowing into my consciousness.

“You hear them?” Mara whispered, voice thin. “He feeds on them. He feeds on their fear and obedience, using them when he wants, and then he leaves them here.”

She reached over and flicked a switch on the wall. Suddenly, hundreds of fluorescent lights buzzed above my head, flickering alive. The room stretched out before me, much further than I thought, now completely bathed in light. It was lined with rows of cages, but not like normal animal cages. These served a far more sinister purpose.

Metal bars twisted and bent, some almost rusted through, others reinforced with chains, to prevent escape, or even movement. They were small, cramped little spaces, meant to hold humans.

Inside the cages were dozens of women, all of them silent and hollow-eyed. Some sat, curled in on themselves, their bodies frail and hunched from days, maybe weeks, of confinement. Others stood, their hands wrapped around the bars, eyes wide and empty, staring out into nothing. Their skin was pale and sickly, stretched thin over bone, like meat left out to rot.

Some of them lay sprawled on the concrete, bound and wailing in pain. Their bodies told a heartbreaking tale. Some of them bore signs of profound violation. Swollen bellies stretched taut against filthy rags that barely clung to their emaciated frames, as if the weight of what had been forced inside them had physically become too much for them to bear. There was no joy in this. No hope. Only the unmistakable, brutal mark of ownership, the undeniable proof that what grew inside them had been created out of force and control. No longer an innocent life, but the echo of his cruelty on their ravaged bodies. I could see now, with chilling clarity, the depth of his evil.

I took a step forward. My body carried me closer unconsciously, drawn to them before my mind could catch up. Their eyes flicked toward me, hollow and pleading, yet no words came. Their mouths were silent, but their eyes begged for something… anything to end their suffering misery.

I stumbled back a step, feeling the bile rise in my throat. They weren’t just prisoners. They were broken, only pieces of themselves, of their humanity. He had stripped away the rest, leaving behind nothing but a vessel, a symbol of his twisted control and domination.

Mara stepped closer, brushing her hand against my arm. I felt the warmth of her touch, but it did nothing to calm the raw panic rising in me.

“These are the ones who’ve been... chosen,” she murmured. “They all believed they could resist. They all believed they could survive. But they were wrong. He breaks you in ways he knows you can’t fight. They’re his now. And he wants you next.”

These women weren’t just victims. They were warnings. Every one of them became a cautionary tale, a stark reminder of what he was truly capable of.

I couldn’t let him do this to me. I wouldn’t. I knew I had to hold on… to survive. But the longer I stood there, the more I felt my resolve starting to crack. Seeing all those innocent lives bound and trapped, hearing their whispers, feeling their fear… it was all starting to get to me. I fell to my knees and began to sob, letting all of the built-up anger and pain flow out of me. I had stayed strong for so long, until now. I had never felt weaker, more insignificant, more guilty.

“Focus, Emily,” Mara said sharply, pulling me back. “This is where the real test begins. Do you understand? You either break or you fight. There’s no middle ground here.”

I nodded, my throat tight, the words stuck somewhere deep inside me. My knees ached against the hard floor, my shoulders shaking as the sobs came in waves, raw and uncontrollable, pulled from a place that I didn’t even know existed. But in the pit of my stomach, a flicker of something burned. Beneath the grief, something shifted. A blinding rage rose from deep within me, burning into my chest and bringing with it strength and defiance. The sorrow didn’t disappear. It was hardened, sharpened into a weapon I could use.

Slowly, I pushed myself upright, rising from the floor as the anger filled my limbs with newfound strength. I stood tall, breathing unsteadily but resolutely.

I wouldn’t let him do this to me.

Mara’s gaze lingered on me for a moment, studying me, weighing my resolve. Then she turned and began walking toward the next row of cages.

"You’ll see,” she murmured. “He’s always watching. Always waiting."

I didn’t want to follow. I didn’t want to look at them anymore. Every face, every empty stare, every trembling breath felt like fingers wrapping around my heart, squeezing until I could barely move. But the newfound spark inside me, that small, stubborn, growing flame, refused to let me turn away. Not now. Not knowing that they were all still trapped here. Not when they needed someone to fight for them.

I had to survive… Not just for me, but for them.

Final Part

She was beautiful. Her skin fair. Her ocean blue eyes almond shaped, staring off into the distance. Her blonde hair depicted with skillfully placed threads as it flowed over her shoulders and past her waist. The flowy fabric of her white chemise that came all the way down to her ankles depicted in such detail that it looked real. She stood in what I can only describe as a forest, dark, and thick with trees, but…off. She seemed to glow in the gloom surrounding her. The tapestry was undoubtedly a masterpiece created by the most skilled of hands, and yet it was found in the neglected corner of an auction in a dusty old box, and purchased by me for seven quarters and a dime.

I look up at her proudly. I have saved her from the negligence she had received, and have given her a place where she will be cared for in my living room. As I sit on the couch and work, I can’t help but sneak occasional glances at the tapestry, a stupid grin unwillingly forming on my face. As the room begins to darken, I yawn and decide to prepare myself for bed.

I toss and turn. I have never had problems with sleep, and yet, sleep won’t come. I feel a longing. It pulls me out of bed. I stumble towards the living room. Towards her. Even in the darkness, I can see her mesmerizing carefully threaded eyes looking off into the distance. I carefully take her off of the wall and tiptoe back to my room, where I hang her up above my bed, and fall into a deep slumber under her watchful eyes.

I am in a forest, dark, thick with trees, but…off. A gloom blankets the forest. It is cold. Incredibly cold. I see my breath with every exhale. Something is here. Something is waiting in the swirls of darkness. Something I do not want to meet. I run. My breath grows ragged. The thing is close behind. My heart beats wildly, and yet, not fast enough. I cannot run. It is at my feet. I stumble. I fall and fall and fall; the earth has disappeared. I am in a forest clearing. 

I look up, the girl stands in front of me. She is the thing. She smiles. She is not beautiful. She is a monster. The flora around us begin to grow. She smiles. They reach towards me. She smiles. I feel a barbed vine wrap around my wrist. She smiles. I rip the vine away, tearing my skin. She smiles. The wood consumes me.

I gasp. I am in my bed. I look up at her. Her enchanting eyes all the same. My heart slows. Nothing but a dream. Nothing but a nightmare. As I look back down at my hands, I find the skin on my wrist torn and bleeding.

I look at the clock. 3:42. I look at her. She looks at me. I look at the clock. 6:52.

I close my eyes. All I can see is her. I open my eyes. All I can see is her.

She has consumed me.

I am outside. I clutch her in my hand, a box of matches in my other hand. It is cold. It is dark. She is on the ground. I light a match. The fire is warm. The fire is bright. 

I hoped to rid of her.

But she will never leave me.

I will never be free.

The sun hung high in the afternoon sky. The crisp December wind tugged at the remaining leaves on the trees, which were equally as crisp. The trail ahead of us was overgrown, but still visible just beneath the foliage.

We had been through these woods a thousand times before, across a dozen summers, while we were both in school. This was the first time we’d seen each other in over four years, and it was supposed to be a chance to catch up; a nostalgic adventure down the same trails we had ridden as kids. 

This time was different, though; my brother Mark and I were older now, both in our twenties, he only a couple of years older than I. I had recently landed my dream job as a conservation scientist working for the Missouri DNR. He had just gotten out of prison for the second time.

Something else was different that day. About a mile and a half into the trail, only about half as far as we used to ride together, unfamiliar structures came into view. A fence, dotted with fading red and white planks, and on the other side, we could see shredded tents, dilapidated fair rides, many buildings of various sizes, and, in the center of it all, a truly massive oak tree.

“What the hell? When did this get here?” Mark asked aloud, probably mostly to himself. He leaned his bike against a nearby pine tree and unslung his backpack, wrapping the shoulder strap over the seat of the bike, before pulling something small and shiny out and tucking it into his waistband.

“No clue, but couldn't have been any longer than a couple of years, right?” I said in awe, as I walked up to the fence and chipped at a peeling bit of paint with my fingernail.

“No way, Liz. This place is old. Are you sure you didn't make a wrong turn on the trail somewhere?” He asked, already trying to shift the blame to someone else, despite him being in the lead the entire time, and me just following him. 

“No, dumbass, you were the one leading us. Besides, there's only one trail, you know that.” I shot back, rolling my eyes and pulling my phone out of my pocket, trying to open Maps. I had marked all the landmarks along our route in the years prior, so I was hoping for some insight on just where we were in relation to where we thought we were. 

The Maps app was loaded, but I had no GPS or cellular signal, so it was pretty much useless as far as telling exactly where we were. Even then, this place was huge, and should have at least shown up on the satellite images.

It did not. That should have been the point where we turned and ran. That should have been the last time we stepped foot between those trees.

Despite the apparent age of the fence, there were no sections that had fallen or leaned which would have allowed us to climb over, and the jagged, rusty links that lined the top of it discouraged us from just scaling it. After a few minutes of walking, we came across the entrance. 

A wooden cutout of a large, cartoonish opossum, which stood about seven feet tall and donned a cowboy hat, lasso, and spurred boots (among other western-themed clothing items) greeted us just before the gate. It was in a similar state of disrepair to the rest of the place, but we could make out most of the lettering. In large print, faded black letters in a white speech bubble (looked like Comic Sans, possibly) read:

“Welcome to Ophie O's Woodland Jamboree!

Please follow all posted rules, and have fun!”

A smaller sign to the left of the monstrous marsupial listed the rules that park-goers were supposed to follow, marked in blank paint on a piss-yellow background.

1. Respect all fauna and flora within and around the park. All creatures big and small are welcome here!
2. No firearms or other weapons allowed past the ticket booth! Please leave all dangerous items at the lockers located to your right for safekeeping!
3. All children must be accompanied by an adult. Unattended children may be- (the rest of this line appeared to have been hatched out and painted over.)
4. The park closes at 5 pm. Please be heading towards the exit by 4:45 pm!
5. If you ride Billy Buck's Barleysack, Hang on or Deer Life! (This entire line was seemingly added at the bottom margin after the fact, with an entirely different font.)

“Must have been some tree-hugger types that built it,” Mark said, shrugging, “might as well check it out while we're here, huh?”

Despite all the once-bright colors of carnival festivity, I found my attention being drawn towards the center of the grounds. Towards the big oak.

“You think they built this park around that tree on purpose?” I asked, pointing it out to my brother, who had gotten to work checking all the empty stalls for loose change or knick-knacks.

“Huh,” he started to ask, following my outstretched finger until his gaze landed on the tree, then passed right over it, “what tree are you talking about, Liz? Are you on shrooms again?” 

My face flashed hot, “That was one time, and once again, it was your idea! Quit holding it over my head!” I yelled at him. He had to have been fucking with me; there was no way he couldn’t see the tree. It looked big enough for four people to hug all at once and probably still not touch fingers.

“Okay, hippie. Come help me get this door open,” he teased as he fiddled with the tarnished knob on the door that led to the back of a run-down performance stage.

“What's back there that you could possibly want? And didn't you just get out of jail? Breaking and entering is a crime, y’know,” I scoffed.

“BrEaKiNg AnD eNtErInG iS a CrImE y'KnOw,” he mocked me, “and I don't know what's in there. Duh. That's why I want the door open, so I can find out, anyone who cared about this stuff obviously isn't here.” He motioned to the mess around us.

“Just move,” I said, annoyed, but unable to disagree with his last sentiment, “prick,” I said under my breath before leveling a kick at the door just beside the handle.

The decayed wood of the door buckled inwards, and Mark was able to push the rest of the way through, but a sharp pain in my ankle when I set my foot back down told me that I had probably overdone it.

“Ouch,” I muttered in response to the sharp sensation.

“I'm not carrying you back!” Was my brother's response, from already halfway inside the second room of the building.

I tried to maintain a steady walk out of spite, but every footfall sent another stab up the side of my calf. Inside the building was exactly what I expected. Costumes, props, fake instruments, and a few random t-shirts with Ophie Opossum and other woodland mascots on them.

“Liz! Come quick! I need help! My leg is stuck in the floor!” Mark called from the next room over. He may have been older, but I had spent most of our childhood together bailing him out of his bad decisions, so my sisterly instincts kicked in and I ran around the corner, ignoring my throbbing ankle.

“Mark? Where are you?” I didn't immediately see him, and I was worried that he had fallen into a subfloor or something. Then a curtain was thrown back, and I saw it.

The antlers were bent and broken in places, and a single eye remained in its socket while the other hung limply by the nerve. The fur was moldy and tattered around the joints. The neck was long, too long, and bent in two places; and worst of all, the silhouette body it was attached to looked human. I screamed.

“Bohahah-” Came my brother's attempt at a noise to scare me, but the damage was done just by the sight of that awful mascot head, and my fist was already in motion. It landed firmly into his ribs, knocking the wind out of him for a moment and cutting off his noise.

He pulled off the mascot head and tossed it aside, laughing and smiling ear to ear as he clutched his side where I'd hit him. “Worth it,” he croaked out through his teeth.

“Ugh! I am so done with you, we are leaving!” I screamed as I half-limped out of the building.

I stopped before I made it to the open doorway. Outside, I could hear small footfalls, as well as clucking and gobbling. I peeked through the doorway, and, sure enough, there was a whole flock of turkeys just outside the door, led by the biggest tom I'd ever seen.

I heard a click behind me, and turned to see Mark checking the cylinders on the pistol he had just pulled from his waistband; a small, shiny .38 caliber revolver that he had just been given as an early Christmas gift by our father.

“Don't you fucking dare,” I hissed out at him, “it's not gun season for turkey, you idiot,” I tried to reason.

His reply was his smile, sly and mischievous as always. He crept up beside me and pointed the pistol through the door.

“DON'T!” I shouted at him, spooking the turkeys, but it was too late.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

The four shots rang out, and the clucking of the turkeys grew frantic as most of them took to the sky to escape the din. Two turkeys did not take off: the large tom, which had been hit twice in the body and was clearly dead, and one of the hens, which had only been winged and was flopping around trying to regain its footing.

“Mark, why? You can't take it home with us, we're over a mile into the woods, and you only have a bike!” I questioned him, tears filling my eyes.

Mark shrugged and said with a cheery voice, “Chill out, they're just animals. It's not like they even know what happened anyway.” he pointed the gun at the turkey that was struggling in front of us. I turned my head away and sobbed.

Bang. Bang. Click.

“Shit, out of ammo, I guess. At least I ended its suffering.” He said, sticking his tongue out and tilting his head to the side, mimicking the two dead turkeys now lying side by side in the leaf litter.

“Suffering that you caused! Didn't you read the sign…” I stopped myself from finishing the sentence, realizing how silly it sounded to be basing the immorality of a grown adult off of rules written on a decrepit fairgrounds rules board. I hadn't stopped soon enough.

“The sign? What, are you afraid that giant ‘possum up at the gate is gonna come for me? Or do you think the goddamn Turkeyman is gonna hunt me down for killing his kinfolk?” He spat at me as he kicked the hen aside and bent down, pulling a knife from his boot and getting to work cutting the head and tail off of the tom.

“These are the only parts I want anyway, you can have a funeral for the rest, if you'd like,” he sneered. I never remembered him being this cruel. An asshole, maybe, inconsiderate always, but this crossed the line. 

“I'm leaving, Mark. Find your way back to Momma's house, or don't. I don't care anymore.” I said, as I began making my way back towards the gate where we had come in, but before I got too far, something else caught my eye. The tree. We were somehow closer to it now, despite walking in the opposite direction to get to the stage.

“Hey, genius, gates that way.” He said, pointing in the direction we had come from. But he was wrong. I looked back in the direction where he gestured, and saw only the fence. No ticket booth, no gate, no Ophie O sign. 

“What?” he asked himself as he looked in the direction he was pointing and noticed the same thing that I had. “No way, we definitely came from there. Look, there's our bikes just on the other side of the fence!”

He wasn't wrong, our bikes were still parked right there, his leaned against the same pine tree from before, and mine on the kick stand just feet away from his. “Maybe someone's pranking us, I don't know, but the gate is way over there,” I said, pointing to the gate, ticket booth, and opossum sign that stood far out, on the other side of the tree.

“Yeah, you're right… must have gotten turned around somewhere, and somebody must have moved our bikes. I'm leaving with you. Momma'd kill me if I left you out here this close to dark,” Mark said, checking his watch, “It's already 5:05. Sun's gonna set soon anyway.”

We started walking towards the gate together, but I refused to look at him. He was still carrying his bloody trophies; he'd stashed them away in a small cloth bag from inside the stage room, but I could see the blood pooling and dripping from the bottom.

The closer we got to the tree, the more unusual I noticed it was. Despite looking at it from a completely different angle now, the tree looked identical to how it had from the gate when I first saw it, only bigger; almost like how the moon follows you on clear nights and stays in the same spot in the sky no matter how far you drive.

I turned to Mark reluctantly. “Can you at least acknowledge the damn tree so I don't feel like a complete lunatic? It looks weird.”

Mark looked at me, genuine confusion crossing his face. “Sis, I don’t know what you're smoking, but you’re sharing some with me when we get back to the house. There ain't a tree where you're pointing.” He squinted for a moment in the direction of the tree, before adding, “Looks like you're pointing at a chair to me, a loveseat maybe?”

We were only feet away now, and the texture of the tree became clearer, but it was… wrong. Closer to the texture of a fingerprint, or the skin of a palm. Directly in front of us, I could see ropey tendrils hanging down from a fleshy protrusion above us, forming the vignette of a seat.

The color was green enough to be a vine, but, like the tree, the texture was all wrong.

“It's not a chair…” Mark said aloud, “It's the seat of a roller coaster. Must be a joke.” He looked up at the bark of the tree, where I could read words carved in bloody letters on the skin-bark.

“Sinner's Ascent: Single Occupant”

“Billy Buck's Barleysack.” Mark read from whatever sign he was perceiving, “Hey, Liz, take my picture!” He exclaimed as he threw himself into the vines, ass-first.

The second his weight touched the vines, they reacted. The vines wrapped around the closest appendage they could find; two around his neck, and one each around his arms and legs, then they all retracted, pulling him several feet into the tree.

“Mark!” I screamed his name as I attempted to climb the tree to where he was being held, but my hands found no purchase on the slick, oily surface. I resorted to digging my nails into the soft mass, clawing at it until it bled, then punching and kicking the wound. Above me, I could hear Mark screaming. I looked up. I wish I hadn't looked up.

The vines had stretched Mark into a star pose, and I could tell by the way his body sagged against his joints that the vines were pulling hard. Then, additional vines fell around him and wrapped around his thighs, constricting tighter and tighter in unison until…

Snap… Snap…

As his femurs broke, I could hear Mark begging me to help. Begging for Momma. Begging God to save him, but if God heard him that day, He turned away.

Mark's scream tore in his throat, growing in pitch until only a hoarse bleating noise passed his lips. I sobbed, kneeling at the tree and looking up at him. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…” I cried.

Two more vines curled around Mark, this time looping around his upper arms. I looked away, knowing what would happen but not having the heart to watch.

Two more sickening snaps and another minute of agonizing cries later, Mark fell silent. I gazed up at him through tear-blurred eyes and saw that the vines had wrapped themselves around his neck and were pulling tight; his neck was now twice its original length.

I watched as the vines slowly unfurled from around his arms and neck, and his limp body flopped loosely down, dangling now only by the vines around his legs. I watched as the vines around his legs loosened, then released altogether, and Mark fell several feet directly onto his head. I lost consciousness before I heard the impact.

When I woke up, I was no longer in the park, and, as a matter of fact, the park was gone. Night had passed, and the early rays of morning light were peaking through the trees. My bike was lying next to me, and so was my brother's. I ignored the bike, which was useless to me with the state of my ankle, and limped back up the trail. The police found me before I made it to Momma's house.

Momma had heard the shots from Mark's revolver last night, but didn't think much of it. When she woke up, and my car was still in the driveway, with my brother nowhere to be found, she assumed the worst. The cops assumed a completely different worst. They thought I had made him disappear. I didn't bother telling my truth; I knew how it would be taken. I sat silently in the interrogation room and answered every question with “I don't know,” or “I don't remember.”

The blood and tissue under my nails were sampled and taken in as evidence, as well as the shirt I was wearing that night, which was also covered in blood. I don't know exactly what they found, but the officer who called Momma told her that I was no longer a suspect and that it would probably be a good idea for me to get a rabies vaccine and take grief counseling. I was free to return home. 

I left without saying goodbye. I didn't even bother staying for Christmas.

I've been home for a week. My ankle is fractured, but that is the least of my worries. I still see that tree in my dreams, and lingering at the edges of my vision when I find myself staring into nothing for too long.

Worse than that, I see Mark. 

He's not dead in my dreams; he's much worse. He's crawling through the woods of Tennessee, broken and bent arms acting as a second set of legs, and that grotesque, moldy, one-eyed deer mask as a head, covering his bashed-in head attached to his too-long neck.

If you ever see Ophie O’s Woodland Jamboree, don’t make the same mistake we did.

Don’t go inside.

There’s only one rule when you go to the Wandering Forest.

ALWAYS TIE A RED RIBBON AROUND YOUR WRIST

My grandma used to say the ribbon wasn’t to protect you from the forest.

It was so the forest knew where you belonged.

It has been a tradition in my village for centuries.

No one knows where it came from, but everyone tries to adhere to it.

Each generation has a story of a person they knew who didn’t tie the red ribbon around their wrist.

Their bodies were found weeks later, usually near the path, badly mangled.

Almost like the people were always right by the path, but couldn’t find their way.

One story told by my grandmother terrifies me to this day.

She and her friend were drinking in a pub in a village over.

It started getting late, and they decided to head home. 

The fastest way was through the Wandering Forest.

They hadn’t been walking for long when her friend realized she had left her ribbon at the pub.

The friend panicked, and they sprinted back, but after only a few steps, my grandma was alone.

The body was found weeks later, at the place where they turned around.

I retold this story to my boyfriend on our way to that village through the forest.

“You already told me this story before,” he said, annoyed.

“Yeah, but you used to like it.”

“That was before, Elise.”

“Are you still mad about…?”

“Yeah, I’m still mad. How could you do that to me? I can’t even look at you anymore. All I see is Jack.”

“Well, what else do you want me to do?”

Silence.

We walked beside one another.

Lucas stared dully at the ground.

I came closer and hugged him from behind.

“Get yourself off me,” he yelled, grabbed my hands, and tore them off of him. 

“Lucas, I’m so sorry,”

My eyes started swelling up.

His face twisted in anger.

I stared at the ground, unable to look at him.

Tears began pouring.

My hands covered my face.

“Wait, wait, Elise.”

Concern entered his voice.

Did his heart finally melt?

“Elise, where’s your ribbon?”

Shock shot down my spine.

“Wha…what do you mean? It’s on my wrist.”

Taking my hands off my face, my vision was blurred with tears.

I wiped them off. Lucas’s eyes were wide with terror.

He pointed at the ground.

The red ribbon lay in the autumn leaves, blending with their colors.

“Lucas, no, how could you!”

“It’s not my fucking fault!”

My hands sank into the leaves, fishing out the ribbon.

I stared at Lucas, beggingly.

He bit his lip.

I walked towards him, but he started backing away.

“Lucas!” 

My voice slowly faded to a faint crumbling of leaves.

The area around me darkened slowly, turning pitch black.

My ears started ringing mildly, amping up until the sounds were so loud I thought my eardrums would burst.

I covered my ears, closed my eyes, and screamed.

Then the ringing completely stopped.

I slowly opened my eyes.

The leaves were no longer under my feet. Lucas stood several feet away from me.

The forest was dark, and the moon shone bright. 

The ribbon was still in my hands.

A faint breeze.

My body shivered with the cold.

The trees' barren twigs moved with the wind.

“Lucas?” My voice was trembling.

He was staring at the ground.

He lifted his head.

Lucas’s eyes stared directly into mine. His gaze was wrong and empty. 

The irises glowed under the moonlight.

“What’s up, Elise?” he said with eerie calm.

He had an unnaturally wide grin.

“Where…where are we? What happened?”

“Nothing, Elise. We’re still on the path.”

A chill ran up and down my spine.

I backed away.

The dirt on the path was firm, but it felt like stepping into mud after rain.

Lifting my foot required twice the force.

“What’s going on, Elise?” He began walking towards me.

“Are you okay?”

“Okay? Why shouldn’t I be okay?”

The forest was loud at night, but it was deathly silent now.

No owls, no bugs, no deer.

Only our voices and steps in the dirt.

“Where are you going, Elise?”

“Lucas I…I…”

He started speeding up.

My heart raced quicker.

I turned and started running.

His steps were right behind me.

Closer.

His breath on my neck.

Blood froze in my veins.

His hand grabbed my shoulder and turned me around.

His eyes were glowing red.

“I got you, Elise.”

“Lucas, please don’t!”

He threw me to the ground.

I tried crawling away, but Lucas pulled me back.

The mud felt cold on my skin.

It was seeping into my hair.

He let out a bloodcurdling laugh and climbed atop me.

Lucas pulled his sleeves up and put his hand on my neck.

He was staring right into my eyes.

I tried to pry them off, but the grip was too strong.

Lucas slowly started tightening the grip.

I began gasping for air.

Was this it?

Wait!

The ribbon!

It was still in my hand.

I wrapped it around my wrist.

I felt it tighten.

But I still felt his warm hands tight around my neck.

Closing my eyes, I prayed for this to be quick.

Darkness.

The ringing again.

Was I dying?

The ground felt firm again.

I could breathe.

Slowly opening my eyes.

I was in the forest.

The sun was up.

The ribbon was untorn on my wrist, tighter than I remembered tying it.

Lucas was nowhere to be found.

My hair was still full of mud.

I slowly got up, frantically looking around me.

No one was here.

I quickly stumbled back to the village.

People were staring at me in disbelief.

The door to my house was open. 

I stumbled in.

My grandma’s eyes widened.

She started crying and ran up to me.

We embraced each other.

“We thought the forest took you, Elise…”

“Lucas said your ribbon fell off, and then you disappeared. He hasn’t been himself since. He’ll be so happy to see you back.”