Speaker 1: I moved to Bellweather three years ago after my mother passed.
It wasn't a decision so much as inertia. Her house
was paid off, and I didn't have anywhere else to be.
It was one of those towns where people wave when
they drive past, even when they don't know you where
The dinerstaffs still remember your order, even if you've only
been there once. I'd been picking up work where I
could substitute teaching, mostly sometimes weekend shifts at the library
when the high schooler's flake. No One asked many questions.
They liked that I was dependable. I liked that they
didn't pry. There was a quiet stillness to this place,
a hush that settled behind the curtains. Half the houses
were empty, the other half held people who seemed to
have calcified their routines. Church on Sunday, groceries on Wednesday,
yard work until the first frost, and then radio silence
until spring. Sometimes I think the town is like a
snow globe someone shook a long time ago. Now all
the glitter had settled, and we were just sitting in
the stillness, pretending it was still beautiful. That's what made
the painting so strange. They held the town's art competition
in the converted church hall, same place we used for weddings, funerals,
polling days, and bake sails. You could still see the
old crucifix outline on the far wall, faded where the
sun used to hit it before someone painted over it
with a coat of beige. I wasn't supposed to be judging.
I filled in because the usual guy came down with shingles,
and someone remembered I taught high school art for one
semester before they cut the budget. They said I had
a good eye, which is a polite way of saying
I'm quiet and not prone to arguing. Most of the
entries were what you'd expect, oil landscapes of fields following
a Bob Ross's tutorial, water color portraits of dogs that
all looked like they were melting. A kid submitted a
clay sculpture that collapsed in the box on the way in.
I liked that one best, at least it was honest.
Then I noticed the butterfly just hanging there. It hadn't
been there before, Maybe it was snuck in during the
bustle of the event. It was dead center, no name
or frame just canvas and a butterfly. I've seen photo
realistic paintings before, hyperrealism, surrealism, digital rendering. This wasn't that.
It wasn't just real looking. It was real feeling. That's
the only way I can describe it. It looked like
it had been pinned there while breathing, and the instant
the brush touched it, it forgot how Its wings were open,
blue so deep it made black look loud. The body
was textured in a way that made you think about
words you hadn't used in years, velvet, bone, oil. Nothing
behind it, just a blank, white void, like it had
been painted unto the idea of a canvas instead of
the thing itself. People started crying, not everyone, but most,
just here and there. People sniffled behind me. A woman
put a hand over her mouth. Even the mayor, the
one who always made a point to say how he
didn't get art, stood with his hat in his hands, nodding.
I stood in front of it for ten, maybe fifteen minutes,
trying to see what they saw, but nothing came. I
felt fine. I wasn't moved like the others were. I
felt outside it, like I never got the memo. Eventually
I muttered something I think it was incredible work or
nice piece, and drifted back toward the refreshment table to
get some air. That's when I saw Alice. She was
standing a few feet from the painting, Pale, maybe seventeen, hoody,
with stretched sleeves, scuffed sneakers. She was motionless, eyes locked
onto the b to fly. She looked like she'd forgotten
how to blink. I watched her longer than I should have.
At first, I thought she might have fallen asleep standing up.
Then I thought she might be crying. She wasn't doing either,
just staring with the same expression I'd seen on a
man at his wife's funeral. Not grief exactly, but reverence,
like something old was ending and she'd finally accepted it.
I cleared my throat as I approached, Hey, you're right.
For a moment, she stayed silent, blinking slowly. Then she
looked at me, really looked, and said softly. I didn't
know he could feel like this. I thought I missed
my chance. Then she turned back to the butterfly, and
I just stood there, not knowing what the hell to say.
In the days after the art show, the town felt lighter,
that's the only word I could think of. There was
no energy in the air, as if someone had gone
around in the night and loosened some invisible knot in
everyone's chest. People who spent years avoiding each other were
suddenly talking again. I saw two brothers, the Wickcomb boys,
hugging in the middle of main Street, like one of
them had come back from war. Missus Halpin brought a
pie to her ex husband's place, and he cried on
the porch until she hugged him. The Hendersons, who'd barely
spoken since Christmas, were holding hands at the grocery store,
smiling like teenagers. Everything felt softened. The whole town had
been washed in warm water, kindness blooming everywhere, fast and quiet,
like the way mold creeps into dry wall, spreading before
you notice it's there. But I wasn't feeling any of it.
I kept waiting for whatever hit everyone else to catch
up with me, some sense of clarity or relief, or
even just a nudge. Instead, it all passed through me
like I was made of glass. Even Jacob was different,
and he's about as stubborn as they come. I stopped
by the garage one afternoon to say ay, and found
him leaning back in a lawn chair outside the bay doors,
eyes closed, smiling at the sky, as if some one
was telling him a story only he could hear. Hey,
I said, nudging his boot. You're right, He blinked, like
I pulled him out of a dream. Never better. He said,
feels good, you know, like something finally broke loose. What
did I asked? He just laughed, a small, private laugh
that made me feel like I'd missed the joke. When
I asked him about the painting, he smiled again and
said it was something, wasn't it. He looked past me,
like something across the street was calling him. I turned
to look, nothing was there. I walked home feeling hollow.
It wasn't just the painting that bothered me. Now, it
was me. Why hadn't I reacted like everyone else? What
was wrong with me? I could look at that thing,
a thing everyone else treated like a revelation, and feel
absolutely nothing. That question kept bothering me long after I
got home. Later that evening, as I was locking up
the school after a PTA meeting, I heard footsteps echoing
down the hall. It was Alice, wearing the same hoodie
with the same distant stare, but this time her cheeks
were flushed and her eyes had that shimmering look I'd
seen on half the town. She stopped in front of me,
breathing like she'd run all the way here. I didn't
think you would choose me, she whispered. Her hands were trembling,
but she didn't seem scared, more like she was overwhelmed.
I haven't even told her I love her yet? Who
I asked? She glanced past me toward the doorway. Another girl,
tall blonde, one of the basketball kids, was standing there,
staring into the dim hallway with the same dreamy, softened
expression most of the town I'd been wearing. Alice didn't
answer my question. She didn't need to. She just smiled,
small and shaking, and said again, I didn't think it
would choose me. I started noticing the gaps. That's how
it felt, like blank spaces in a song everyone else
had learned the lyrics to. People would speaking low, tender tones,
like they were sharing something sacred. But every so often
i'd see someone watching from a distance, unmoved out of
step like me. The first was the man in the
rusted car behind the hardware store. I'd seen him before, sure,
just one of those forgotten fixtures you stop noticing until
you have a reason to. He never begged or spoke,
just sat in the front seat of that sun bleached buick,
windows fogged from the inside, watching the world pass After
the painting, the town shifted, softened like over ripe fruit,
but he didn't change at all. He just sat there,
a statue in denim and dust. Once I passed close
enough to catch his eyes through the glass, he was
staring straight ahead, unblinking, as if waiting for a radio
signal only he could hear. I raised a hand in
an awkward half wave. He didn't return it, just kept staring.
There was the widow, missus Laurie, who walked the cemetery
each morning before dawn, always the same path, the same
three headstones, her husband, her son, and someone else I
didn't recognize. Most mornings, I saw her from my kitchen window,
dark coat trailing behind her like smoke, and buried deep
in her sleeves. After the butterfly showed up, I started
watching more closely, wondering if, like everyone else, she'd stop
to stare at strangers with those new gentle smiles. But
she didn't. She moved the same way, slow and rigialistic.
She never looked up. I tried catching her eye one morning,
brought a coffee in a paper cup. She didn't take it,
just looked at me like I was interrupting a conversation
I couldn't hear. And then there was Nathan. He ran
the post office, usually polite, efficient and dry as toast.
I didn't know much about him beyond the story. Every
one knew he had been alone his whole life, never
found a partner in this small town. In the week
after the painting, when couples danced barefoot in the park
and strangers confessed decades of buried affection, Nathan still walked
his usual loop, with mail tugged tight to his chest,
jaw locks shot, like he was keeping something from escaping.
I thought, for a second there might be something between us,
some shared understanding, like warvette who never served in the
same war but still recognize the look in each other's eyes.
I tried to speak to him once and throw a
line about how strange everything had gotten. He paused, nodded once,
and wore away. The others didn't speak at all, barely
above the bare minimum for conversation. I wondered if this
is how I looked the whole time I was here.
To me, I was laying low, being inoffensive. Was I
just as sour as the others not chosen? I kept
wondering if it was a coincidence, or if we were
all missing the same piece, something simple, something everyone else
had that made them worthy of whatever this was. Eventually
I stopped one morning when I saw missus Lorry sitting
in the church pews. She wasn't praying, just sitting facing
the blank wall where the painting had been. I sat
a few rows behind her at the silence stretched between
us until I couldn't take it anymore. Why aren't you
like the others? I asked, my voice barely carried across
the empty room. She didn't look back, just shifted a
gaze slightly upward toward the ceiling beam because she said softly,
there's no one left for me. It wasn't bitter, wasn't
sad even. It was just the truth. And suddenly the
space inside my chest felt colder than it had all weak.
It started with the lights, people standing on their porches,
faces lit by candles they hadn't held. Seconds before I
saw the first group from my window around midnight, six
of them walking single file down Main Street. They weren't speaking,
but they were humming something low and wordless, not a melody,
I recognized. It sounded more like a memory past mouth
to mouth. The next night there were more couples holding hands,
parents with children, teenagers, moving like they rehearsed the steps
in some school auditorium long ago, and just now remember
the choreography. They didn't look possessed. That's the part I
kept coming back to. There was no glassiness in their eyes,
no twitching or convulsing, no signs of strain. They looked grateful, calm,
like they were doing exactly what they were meant to do.
Alice was with them. She walked barefoot through the grass,
arms loose at her side, her face tilted up to
the stars, like she expected to be lifted at any moment.
She looked so alive, in hurt to watch her. I
followed some nights, stayed far enough back to pretend I
wasn't spying. They never turned round, never acknowledged me. Then
on the fourth night, I saw the dancers middle of
the town square, a man and a woman twirling slowly
in the pool of light. Beneath the lamp post, the
bodies close enough that you couldn't tell whose feet were leading.
The man's shirt was soaked with something. I thought it
was rain at first, but then I saw the dark
streak trailing down from his eye blood, a slow, steady trickle,
like a tear that got tired. No one seemed alarmed.
Beeple walked past without blinking. One man even clapped, as
if it were a performance. That's when I started writing
it all down, not for posterity, for sanity. I needed
to make it make sense. Dates, names, times, descriptions, how
many people, what they did, how long it lasted. But
the more I tried to track it, the worse it got.
It was like trying to trace smoke with a pencil.
I gathered all my notes, thoughts, and theories and went
straight to the authorities. But no matter how much I
urged them to action, the sheriff just stared through me,
a soft smile on his face. I think what angered
me was how sincere it was. He wasn't mocking me.
Gone to whatever was going on. Nothing added up. I
stopped writing and just watched. One night, I saw Alice
sitting alone at the edge of the pond, reflection trembling
in the water. I decided to speak to her. She
looked up when I got close, smiled soft and tired.
Why are you doing this, I asked, her smile didn't falter.
She stood gently. Then she reached out and touched my cheek,
not with pity, but with something that felt like an apology.
He must be so lonely, she whispered, to have no
one worth blooming for, And then she walked into the dark,
and I just stood there, still, not understanding whether she
was trying to comfort me or mourn me. I went
back to the church looking for missus Lorry. I don't
know why, Maybe because she was the only one who
ever answered me without smiling, like she knew something I didn't,
Or maybe because I still believed, stupidly that there were
a few of us left who hadn't changed and were
still sane. The doors were open, candles lined the pews
like sentries, wax pulled onto hymn books no one was reading.
I found her sitting in the same spot she always did,
back straight, hands folded. I sat beside her, close enough
that I could hear the quiet creak of her breath.
She didn't look at me, not right away, just kept
a gaze fixed on the far wall. I turned toward her.
What is it? I asked? What does it want? She smiled.
That was the first thing that told me something was wrong.
It wasn't bitter or distant or hollow. It was radiant,
lit from within, the way they all were once it
touched them. Then she said, so softly, I almost missed it.
It finds what still aches, She whispered, that's all it
needs her wound you've grown used to holding. Her voice
had changed to in cadence, like it had been set
to music. I couldn't hear. She finally turned to look
at me, and for a moment I thought she might
take my hand, but instead she just said, you never
learned how to ache, did you. Then she stood slow
and graceful and walked up the center aisle, her fingers
brushing each pew like a rosary. She had found the ache,
and I was alone again, and now I couldn't even
trust the silence I shared with her. The others, the
ones like me, had thinned out. The man in the
buick was gone, His car sat empty, door left ajar
like it stepped out for a moment and forgotten where
it was going. Nathan had closed the Boast office early
three days in a row. No one complained. I stopped
by once and saw him through the back window holding
something small, but I couldn't shake the fact that it
looked like a weapon. I kept wandering around like a
tourist in my own life, watching, listening, wondering if it
was too late to be chosen, wondering if I'd missed
whatever subtle invitation had passed through everyone else's blood. One night,
I found myself at the edge of the park, just
beyond the lights. Couples walked barefoot in the grass. Teenagers
sat in circles, head bowed, foreheads pressed together. You could
hear quiet songs, not full melodies, just threads of harmony,
rising and falling in time with the breeze. I sat
alone on a bench and tried to mimic it, the closeness,
the warmth I imagine someone sitting next to me. I
tried to picture what it might feel like to have
a memory that made your chest hurt in that beautiful,
horrible way, But there was nothing there. It was like
trying to start a fire with wet wood waiter at
the cafe, I ran into Maya. I hadn't seen her
in years, not since she graduated. She'd drawn quiet, strange
things that made the other students nervous. Now she was older, settled,
but still had that look like she was always five
seconds ahead of the rest of us. She offered me
a seat. We talked lightly at first, then slower. At
some point I told her everything, not just about the
painting or the others, but the hollowness, the fact that
I've been watching all of it from the outside, like
a man pressing his face to the glass of her
house he used to live in. She listened, really listened.
Then she looked at me with something like sympathy, something
like pity. I think you want to be in love,
she said, But you never learned how. I didn't argue,
She said to coffee, set it down, and added, I
think you don't want to be alone when it happens.
When what happens? I asked. She silently looked out the
window at the people walking in pairs bathed in amber light,
faces turned up toward a sky I hadn't been able
to look at directly in days. It wasn't quiet anymore,
not in the way it used to be the stillness
of a town half forgotten, with dust settled in windshields
and dogs barked at nothing. Now the silence felt intentional, sacred,
like everyone was holding their breath, waiting for the next
note in a song they'd only heard in dreams. They
started looking up more. It was subtle at first, heads
tilted just slightly toward the sky, as if something faint
was humming above the clouds. But now people sat in
fields at night, eyes wide open, mouths parted, Couples lay
naked on blankets, fingers threaded together, whispering things I couldn't hear.
They said they were ready. I found drawings scratched onto
the bark of trees, crude spirals, insect wings, cymbals that
looked like musical notation but didn't follow any rhythm. I
knew behind the library someone stacked bones in a perfect spiral.
Bird bones maybe, or squirrels or something that once spoke.
A few houses at windows open and candlelight flickering, like
hearts beating and sink. I passed one porch where letters
were being burned one by one into a metal basin.
Love notes, I think, or maybe confessions. No one seemed
afraid except me. I found Jacob outside the old grocery store.
He was standing still, head tilted back, his hand resting
gently on the car handle, like he'd forgotten he was there. Jacob,
I said, too loud, Come with me. He blinked slowly,
then smiled that same warm, distant smile everyone wore. Now,
come where away? I said, just out of town, anywhere,
a day even, just to see if it breaks whatever
this is. His smile didn't falter, but his eyes showed
signs of mourning. Please, I said, I don't know what's happening,
but it's not right. It's not He stepped forward and
put a hand on my shoulder. There was real pain
in his face, sorrow of something I had no knowledge of,
like I was in the wrong for thinking this. You're
not being punished, Darren, You're just not part of it.
That hurt more than I expected, because there wasn't a
drip of malice. It was pure truth, and truth doesn't bruise,
it carves. He turned and walked back inside, leaving me
with nothing but the sound of insects buzzing in rhythm.
I swear i'd never heard before that night. I walked
to the edge of town. There's an overlook where the
grass gives way to gravel and you can see the
train tracks disappear into nothing. That's where I saw them.
Two people, a man and a woman, sitting on a guardrail.
I recognized them. Both neither had changed. They were like me,
always had been watching things from the outside. They weren't speaking,
just holding hands like it was the last rope tying
them to something real. Then the woman began to cry,
not from pain or fear, from relief, and the man
he smiled, just barely, but it was the start of
a smile that comes from surrendering to something beautiful you
were once terrified of. I watched heart hammering as they
began to succumb to the phenomenon, and for the first
time since this all began, I felt something split in me,
grief because whatever they were becoming, it was never meant
for me. It happened just before dawn. I hadn't slept,
not in days, really, just drifted in and out of hours,
like a body floating on cold water. I'd been walking
the town again, hoping the movement would give my mind
something to grip. But when I turned onto main street.
I knew something had changed. They were standing still, all
of them. The changed frozen mid step, mid conversation, mid breath.
A couple sat on a bench, foreheads touching. A teenager
stood on a porch of the book half open in
her hands. The mayor was parked at a stoplight Dora Ajar,
his head tilted toward the sky. None of them moved.
Their eyes were wide and wet, the expression you see
in old church paintings. Mouths parted just slightly, as if
they were hearing something so beautiful they couldn't survive the sound.
I stood in the center of the square, surrounded. The
air felt thick, like it was vibrating, just out of
tune with reality. My ears rang from the pressure. Something
was happening, Something was here. They looked up, every single
one of them, in perfect unison, tilted their heads toward
the sky, not in panic, but in recognition. Whatever they'd
been waiting for had finally arrived. And then they began
to bloom. It started with a shiver, a ripple through
the crowd, like a breath held and released at once.
Shoulders loosened, mouths parted, ice softened. Something pulling at them
from somewhere, very far away. Then the first tear opened.
I saw it happen to a man near the fountain,
a thin, perfect line splitting down the center of his chest,
as gentle as if someone had unzipped a coat. There
was no struggle, no gasp. His skin just parted. The
flesh eased back on its own, curling outward. Muscle followed
it slid out in long, warm ribbons, thick glistening strands
peeling away from bone, like silk loosened from a spool.
Each sheet slowed downward, with soft, wet sounds, layering itself
at his feet. His heart sat exposed for a moment,
pulsing like a bright stone. Then it softened too. Around me,
the rest of the town began to open. I could
hear it, that quiet pealing, that almost tender separation of
skin from the living thing inside. It didn't sound violent,
more like fruit being opened by steady hands. A woman's
face split along a jawline, a child's spine pussed free
in a slow arc, vertebra by vertebra, and men's aunts
shed their muscles in draped sheets, leaving the pale gleam
of bone beneath. None of them screamed. They didn't even flinch.
The tendon stretched like strings being pulled taut, then snapped
with little pops, playful in how small they sounded compared
to the enormity of what was happening. Fingers loosened from knuckles,
cheeks peeled from skulls, ribs unfolded like petals. There was
no blood, not a drop. Everything emptied itself, cleanly, quietly,
as if their bodies had been waiting for this, as
if the machinery of being human had turned off its
alarms and unlocked all its doors, and through all of
it their expressions, God, they looked euphoric. A woman whose
eyes were already clouding over smiled like someone had just
told her she could finally go home. A teenage boy
leaned into his friend as his sternam opened, and they
both laughed, breathless and relieved. Before their laughter dissipated. Couples
held hands as their bodies melted. Parents stroked their children's
hair even as their own faces fell away. Some closed
their eyes, others raised their arms to the sky, as
if embracing something descending toward them. No one ran, no
one begged, no one tried to stop it. They welcomed it.
Spines collapsed into soft white powder. Skulls folded inward like
drying paper, bones crumbled at the slightest breeze, becoming dust
before they even touched the ground. I stood there and
watched it all, watched the town peel itself open and
spill into the air, like light escape in a cracked shell,
and something in me twisted painfully, not from the horror,
but from the unbearable truth threading through every smile, every sigh,
every peaceful surrender of the body. They were happy, every
single one of them, happy in a way I had
never been. And suddenly I understood I never could be,
and that, more than the skin and the bones and
the dust swirling in the dawn light, was what shattered me.
Then something rose from the center of the stillness. A shimmer,
at first like oil and water, like air warping over
pavement on a hot day. Then wings, massive, translucent, veined
like stained glass. A body that flickered between forms I
couldn't hold on to, not long enough to name, eyes
like multifaceted mirrors, a head that never stopped turning. It
wasn't the butterfly from the painting that had just been
a door. This was what had been waiting behind it.
It rose from their remains, built from them somehow, not
their flesh, but what had been inside it. Love, familial, partnership, desire,
all of it shaped and reflected into something too beautiful
to be real. It flew soundless, weightless. It drifted over rooftops,
trailing sparks of gold behind it, like the last light
of a dying sun. It passed above me and did
not touch me, didn't even pause. I stood, I shouted,
I'm here. I said, I'm still here. It didn't slow.
I saw them, I watched, I understand, now still nothing.
I dropped to my knees, coughing in the dust. My
hands trembled, flecks of bone and ash clinging to my
skin like snow. I tried to cry, but the tears
didn't come. I tried to pray, but my voice was hollow.
I tried to plead, but I had no one to
plead for, just me, And for the first time, it
hit me all at once, all the quiet years, all
the nice dinners, all the polite, acceptable small talk, all
the chances I'd had to love someone, to ache, for
someone to need, and how I'd missed every one. I
collapsed into the ash, completely from emptiness. I whispered into
the remains of a thousand open hearts, I'm still here,
I'm still me why. And the dust stirred around me,
just faintly, and I heard it from inside, like something
had cracked open in the back of my skull, just
wide enough to let the words in, because there's nothing
in you to transform. And then the wind blew, and
the ashes, the ones I never knew how to love,
scattered into the morning. They found me three days later.
I was still sitting there in the square, half buried
in ash. It had settled into my hair, into the
folds of my clothes, into the cracks of my palms.
I don't think I moved the entire time. Maybe I slept,
Maybe I didn't. The days blur when there's no one
left to tell you that time is passing. When the
rescue crews arrived, boots crunching through what used to be
neighbors and classmates and people I borrowed jumper cables from,
I didn't react. A man knelt in front of me,
asking questions, my name, if I was okay, what I remembered,
But his voice was muffled, sounding like he was speaking
from underwater. Staring at the ground, the dust shifted every
time I breathed, little clouds lifting, swirling, falling again. If
I stared long enough I could almost imagine faces in it.
Not their faces, just the impression of all the love
they carried, hovering for a moment before dissolving again. Eventually,
someone asked what happened here. I thought about lying or
saying I didn't know, but the truth rose in my
throat before I could stop it. They were loved, I said.
My voice cracked. That's why they got to leave. The
man frowned at me. To him it was nonsense, and
maybe it was, but it was the only thing that
made sense to me anymore. They weren't killed. They became
something they had always been reaching toward, and I didn't.
In the days that followed, they kept me in a
hospital an hour out of town, clean sheets, tiled floors,
a window that looked out over fields that had never
known what happened in bell Weather. Nurses came and went.
The psychiatrist sat by my bed and tried to get
me to talk about trauma and massysteria, but every time
I closed my eyes I saw them, Alice's smile opening
like a second sunrise, Jacob lifting his head to the
sky as if greeting an old friend, The way couples
held each other as their bodies unspooled into light. They
weren't afraid, they weren't alone, they weren't left behind. That
last one hurt the most, because somewhere, beneath the horror
and the dust and the quiet, gnawing loneliness, something else
had taken root to me, something I didn't want to name.
I was jealous, jealous that they had someone, anyone whose
love reached deep enough that it could echo into whatever
came next. I didn't, and that was why I remained.
People keep calling me lucky, They say I survived, that
I was spared. But every night, when the lights dim,
I lie awake in that hospital bed and wonder about
the truth of it, the sharp aching contradiction. If they
are gone and I'm alive, I have another chance at love.
But if I never had it to begin with, if
no one ever felt that way about me, if I
never felt it toward anyone, then is it even possible
with this second chance? And if I did somehow learn
to live this feeling. Would I be whisked up into
the sky or was that all just the one off
Some mornings, I hope the answer will come. Other mornings,
I hope it won't, because the world feels wrong with
this knowledge, too quiet, too flat, like someone drained all
the color or turned off the part of the sky
that used to watch back. And sometimes, when I'm honest
with myself, I wonder whether they were the lucky ones,
the ones who got to bloom, the ones who got
to go, the ones who weren't left behind to figure
out how to start loving in a world that suddenly
feels too big, too empty, and too late. But I'm
still here, I'm still me. Maybe that means something. Maybe
it means nothing at all. The party was two weeks ago.
I stole a few beers when the adults weren't looking,
and shared them with Lucy Sitkins. Away from the crowd.
She drank hers greedily as we sat beneath the bow
of a low tree, speaking low so no passers by
could hear. Every time we whispered, we tilted our faces
a little closer and close, sir. There was a moment
when I thought she was going to rest a head
on my shoulder as she told me about how she
wanted to be a vet, and my heart skipped as
they debated, putting my arm around her waist. It was
all cut short when her father, Larry, stood in front
of everyone in the party and forced the beer cand
down his throat. I didn't see it. I only heard
the cries that had us both sitting upright beneath the branches.
By the time we got back to the party, the
adults escorting the kids away and ambulance sirens were fast approaching.
Dad was there, and he told me to take my
little sister home. The grim and frightening lock on his
face made me forget Lucy and the smell of beer
on her breath. I try hard to remember if she
ate from the barbecue. Sometimes I think she didn't. Other
times I swear I can picture her biting into a burger,
and it's so vivid I think it must be a memory.
It's moved. Either way, I'll never see her again. I
felt a little gross when I went into school the
next day and asked around if the stories about a
dad were true. When my father got home the night
of the party, he hadn't spoken to me or mom.
He just went to bed and didn't tell us what happened.
Come morning, I saw some of the older kids by
the schoolgates and overheard them talking. The details made my
stomach churn, but I wanted to know more. I didn't
want to act all excited about something terrible, but this
felt like the kind of thing people would be talking
about for years. Larry Sitkins had swallowed a beer can,
shoved it down his throat like a damn bog and
strict eath in an egg. At least that's how one
kid described it to me. There was more, of course.
He'd praised Satan before slitting his own throat, got and
drunk and fallen hard onto the ground while chugging a beer,
tried to catch the can midair. Someone had punched him midsip.
There were lots of variations and what happened and how,
but there were only theories that got turned into rumors.
A lot of us were just trying to make sense
of it. Larry was a pretty run of the milk guy.
He was a landscaper who made lame jokes at kid's
birthday parties. He was about as nondescript as they came
at least as far as a bunch of teenagers were concerned.
We got halfway through the day before mister Stroup shut
the bleachers on his neck. He was in front of
the cheerleaders. There were ambulances again, crying girls and boys,
and even some of the teachers. Most of them just
looked confused, except for mister Stroup. I managed to catch
a glimpse of him as I jogged over to find
out what all the screaming was about. He looked empty
of all thoughts and emotions, and his head sat at
a crooked angle. I figured that was how people must
look him and dead. But apparently he'd been like that
during the act. He'd walked up, perched his neck between
the slatted benches, and hid the remote button to slide
the bleachers closed whole time. He was just like Jordan's
stupid locking even as the metal mechanism crunched vertebrae and cartilage.
I later learned Larry had been like this too when
he killed himself. He was getting ready to pop the
tab on a fresh beer when he simply stopped, looked
up to the sky, then forced the whole thing down
his throat. In a single world, shattering moment. I didn't
know it back then, but there were others just like
Larry had missed the strobe. A barista in a coffee
shop steamed half the s skin on her arm while
keeping eye contact with the guy in the drive through.
A doctor had the local clinic used the biopsy needle
to inject air straight into his own heart. Lots of
people shot themselves, but not one of them aimed for
the head. That's a weird touch, if you think about it.
These people obliterated their torsos or limbs with high powered
rifles at point blank range. No reason, offered, just a
vacant expression as they deleted bits to their bodies and
left nothing but ragged stumps. There was no school the
next day, which was the only real clue I got
about how panicked the local authorities were. Wouldn't be long
before the national authorities joined in on the panic too,
but that would come later that morning. My parents left
the house at nine point thirty for a meeting at
the town hall, and they dropped me off at my
grandma's on the way. I waited for them to leave
before I told Grandma I was heading out. It was
a hot day and She only nodded her approval as
she sat reading with my sister. She hated seeing me
play video games and always encouraged me to go make
my own adventures outside. I had no plans, didn't even
want to see any of my friends. I thought a
lot about missus Strab's face as I crossed empty farmer's
fields and walked into the woods. I'd been to an
open casket funeral once. It was for Father Denis, who'd
christened me as a baby, not that I remember anything
about him, except his stony face resting gently in the
soft white folds of his casket's interior that seemed so
long ago and so sterile that the thought of it
was a bit sad, but not a whole lot else.
But mister Strab's face had frightened me, with his swollen
lips and bulging eyes, alive one moment and dead the next,
with only pain to separate the two, And yet he
looked so bored, hanging there from his own broken neck,
still wearing those ridiculous red shorts he always had on
no matter the weather. It took time to recognize that
seeing a dead body had freaked me out. I felt
like it shouldn't have messed me up as much as
it did, and I guess that's why there was a
little bit of anger mixed in with all those thoughts
in my head. It's also why I pushed on through
the woods until the trees began to thin, marching in
the humid summer heat, until my t shirt was soaked
and my legs ached. I wanted to feel tired, wanted
it so the only thing I could think of with
my throbbing hamstrings and sunburnt forehead. It ended when I
reached the tracks. Shaggy rocks and boulders rose steeply on
the opposite side. Only other ways to go were left
into town or right into a dark tunnel, its mouth
bristling with ivy. At least the air coming from it
was cold, so I took a second to stand and
catch my breath, feeling the sweat cool and evaporate as
the wind billowed gently out of the darkness. I wasn't stupid,
though I paid close attention in case I heard the
sound of any passing trains, and when I didn't hear one,
I raced off the tracks as quick as I could.
It honked as it came past another day. I might
have worried that I was going to get in trouble
for playing in the rails, But all I could really
think of was the thing I'd seen lying by the tracks.
It had been lit up by the train as it
came roaring out of the tunnel not far from the entrance.
In the strange silence after the train had gone, there
was only the dim light of the setting sun to
see inside the tunnel, and everything looked the same, all clothes,
broken bottles, discarded crates, trash strewn around wherever it found space.
But I knew what I'd seen in the harsh white
light of the train's passing beam, and it was a
hell of a lot more than garbage. I'd seen a
man who was lying face down. There had even been
a hand, bright and pale like the moon in the
night sky. I was sure of it. I didn't know
what to do, not right away. I was afraid and
didn't want to go inside. But I couldn't pretend I
hadn't seen anything either. I tried shouting to them if
someone down there heard me. They gave no sign of It.
Wasn't until I stepped into the darkness and let my
eyes adjust that I confirmed there really was a man
lying down in there. He was draped across the tracks,
and he didn't have any legs, and judging by the
way the bloodstains had turned the collar brown, he'd been
there for a while. Hell, half a dozen trains must
have gone right over him, thinking he was just an
odd bit of cloth or something that if they saw
anything at all in that time it dried out a little.
He wasn't a mummy or anything, but the blood on
his stumps and coming out of his mouth looked more
like jelly than corn syrup. I was sobbing by this point,
crying hard as I tried to make sense of what
I was meant to do, while also feeling like all
of this was terribly unfair on me. There was a
moment where I could almost feel myself wanting to be
a kid again, a proper one, little one who doesn't
have to do things, one who can get upset and
scream and run away. I'd only just started to appreciate
how badly I'd been messed up by seeing mister Stroup,
and then God went and dropped that kind of nightmare
into my lap. Teeth stained black with blood and open
eyes that looked at nothing. It felt like a nightmare,
not just the moment with a body, but everything else too,
Everything since that beer beneath a tree had felt like
it wasn't part of reality anymore, but nightmares end. I
was outside, gasping, vomiting, crying my eyes out when I
heard something shuffle in the tunnel I'd just run out
of Part of me thought that a sound must mean
someone was alive and close by, and that meant I
wasn't alone. Another part of me thought something else. Entirely,
it was the part of me that took over and
stopped me crying and making any more noise. My mouth
turned dry as a desert, and all of a sudden,
I was no longer hot all over, but cold, freezing cold,
and my legs were back pedaling away from the tunnel
with short, quiet steps. The noise persisted. It was the
shuffle of something getting dragged over gravel and old plastic bags.
It had a rhythm to it that was slow. The
word that springs to mind is when I got taught
in biology class a long time ago, locomotion. Something down
there was moving, It was moving towards me. It sounded
slow and broken and feeble, but that didn't matter. Somehow,
even though I knew it wasn't completely insane, I just
knew what was going to come out of that tunnel.
I knew it the way the rabbit knows the wolf,
or the hand knows the spider. But still, when I
saw him crawl out of the dark and into the light,
I screamed so loud i'd have a sore throat for
the next few days. It was the man from the tracks,
and even though he moved, he was not alive. I
tried telling myself that he couldn't have been dead, because
only living things move, but that was nonsense. He dragged
his bloody, legless torso with one working arm while the
other lay dislocated across his back, the fingers of both
hands curling as he heaved himself along, and that face,
that same empty, gawking expression, just like mister Strabs. He
wasn't alive. He was a dead thing, and that made
him some kind of impossible monster. I turned and ran,
and screaming through the trees. Whole time I could only
think of the thing that was behind me and was
trying to close the distance. It didn't matter that it
was slow, didn't matter that I ran for over an hour,
didn't even matter that I wasn't sure if I knew
my way home, or even running in the right direction.
All that mattered was putting one foot in front of
the other until there was nothing left inside me. Time
turned funny, seconds moved into strange staccatos, until eventually I
collapsed on legs made of rubber. Then I dragged myself
into an old hollow tree to hide, and that was
where I lost all consciousness. When I woke up, the
sun had set and it was dark. I vomited some,
then found my way back to the beaten path and
stumbled achingly through the cold night air my grandma's farmhouse.
Dad was sick. My grandma screamed something to this effect
at me as she held down his right arm while
my mother tried to grip his head in her blood
sleck hands. He resisted with dumb determination. My little sister cried,
watching the scene like a shell shock soldier. There was
grunting and sobbing, and suddenly a bang. Then a puff
of plaster rained down onto my head, and everyone began
to yell and shriek a little louder. Dad had a
gun that was what my grandma was trying to wrestle
out of his hands. She held a knife, and that's
why there was blood, but I didn't know whose it was.
I wasn't sure what she was planning to do with
it until she tried to use it to cut his
trigger finger off. The scuffle resulted in another bang, and
a window exploded outwards. I finally ducked and grabbed my sister,
rushing her into another room, but there were three more explosions,
and each one broke something inside me. By the time
I heard my name being called, I was half deaf
and twitching at things that weren't there. My sister pleaded
for me to come back, her pink fingers grasping for
me as I put her down, But my mother was
shouting for me to come help, and I wanted to
keep my family safe. She told me to get something
to tie that up while she and my grandma used
both arms the pin each of his wrists to the ground.
His hands bled weakly as my grandma used every inch
of her strength to simultaneously pin him and stop the flow.
He thrashed beneath them, his movements languid and easy, but
I could tell it was a struggle for them to
keep him down. As I ran to the garage, I
saw the gun on the ground with Dad's severed finger nearby.
I kicked it out of reach before returning shortly with
the rope my grandma used to tie the garage door
open during hot summers. Mom tied the knots. My grandma
tried talking to my dad, and it was one of
the few times in my life I saw her as
the woman who'd once changed his diapers. She was so
soothing and tender, and her constant muttering that everything would
be okay seemed so fragile. She was scared for him.
Mom just did everything in her power to wrestle some
safety out of the moment. Only once his arms were
secure behind his back and she was confident he wasn't
breaking free, did she stand back, put her hands behind her,
and then immediately hunch forward and sob Call an ambulance,
my grandma told me, and she walked into the other
room to get my sister. Before I got on the phone,
I briefly hugged my mom, who didn't seem to notice.
I rasked a glance of my dad, who didn't look
at anything at all. Dead eyes glazed vacantly at nothing
as he fought to free his arms. When he finally
looked at me, it was no different to how he
looked at the floor or the wall. I didn't go
to school the next day either. Some men from the
government came to take Dad in the morning, and Mom
ordered me to my room. When they arrived, she asked
them a thousand questions, but their replies were short and stern.
All I managed that over here were a few muffled phrases,
Please stay put, ma'am, someone will be in contact with you. Shortly,
when I ran to my window to look at them
walking down the drive, I saw that they all wore masks.
One of them saw where I was staring. I thought
he was going to wave, but he didn't. There was
a biohazard symbol and their clothes. After they left, Mom
focused on making dinner and looking after my sister. She
kept me close the whole time, barking anxious questions whenever
I tried to leave the room. Where are you going?
Just the bathroom? Oh okay. Then it felt like she
was painting normality into tissue paper, desperately afraid of breaking it.
I tried my best to seem like I was okay.
Last thing I wanted was to feel like some kid
who needed his mommy. We mostly just talked about mundane things,
but it was hard for both of us. The only
time the atmosphere seemed to change was when she asked
me something strange half way through dinner. Did your father
when you both went hunting a few months back? What
did you do to the meat? I don't know. I shrugged.
Dad took care of all that. Why the men who
took him asked a whole bunch of questions about it. Then,
with a fragile smile, have ye done your homework? They
told me your teacher would send you some assignments on line.
Just like that, the thin pretense of normality came back,
but I was left with a wriggling feeling in my stomach.
It didn't go away as the evening marched on. In fact,
it only grew worse until I found myself in bed,
rolling from side to side and thinking about Mum's question.
The men who bundled Dad off hadn't seen like the
kind who messed around. They must have had some idea
of what was going on, So why ask about the meat.
On some level, I knew the moment she'd asked me
why it was relevant. Dad loved to hunt, and he
always brought meat to parties and barbecues. Wasn't it obvious
he'd brought something back from the woods, hadn't he? I
hadn't gone hunting for a long time, nearly three months.
Every time he'd asked, I'd refused, and I think he
knew why. On the very last trip, Dad shot three deer,
but we only took back two, one for us, one
for the town barbecue. The thirty shot, but we left
it on the forest floor because by the time it
had died, I was pale and shaking, and even Dad
couldn't keep the tremor out of his voice. Neither of
us had expected the deer to stand on its hind
legs and walked towards us like a man. Its gait
a heavy, broken thing as it lumbered over the forest floor,
and it had kept coming even after Dad shot it
six more times. One of the rounds struck it in
the head, but still it shambled forward on two misshapen
legs as his brains painted the ferns in pestilent gray.
When it finally fell. Even Dad had gone pale, and
in the silent aftermath, I had to go off and
be sick in a bush. After that, we cut the
trip short. Dad walked me gently back to the truck
where the two deer we shot and trusted earlier that
day lay waiting in the pickup. I don't think either
of us even remembered they were there until later. He'd
still ask me if I wanted to head out with
him each weekend, but he never seemed surprised when I
made some excuse. The only time we talked about it
was not long before the barbecue, when he drove me
to school one day. He didn't deal with it head on.
He skirted the topic. Sometimes deer get sick, he told me,
a little like old folks do. Remember Grandpa, He got
real scary towards the end, inn't he Well, dear get
sick too, But we don't have to worry same way.
You couldn't catch what Grandpa had, Well, we can't catch
what the deer have. Us. Humans are safe, just an
uncomfortable part of nature. It had come out of the blue,
or at least it seemed like it. I figured it
was Dad's way of trying to get me back on
board with hunting. I knew he liked me going with him.
I'd liked it too, at least until I saw that
deer walk toward me on two legs. But lying in
my bed that night, after Mom had gone to sleep,
I started to wonder if maybe he hadn't really been
trying to convince me, Maybe he carried a little doubt
in himself about something he was gonna do. What if
he'd been trying to convince himself it was okay, too, dear?
I tried remembering what they'd been like. I hadn't shaked
them after we got in the truck. Why would I
seemed as normal as any others as we tied them down?
But I hadn't really been paying attention either. I'd been
hunting since I was seven. Helping Dad was automatic to me,
And to top it off, I hadn't known what I
was meant to be looking for. I squirmed beneath the
sheets and tried so hard to remember every detail of
that trip. Most of all, I tried to remember what
the first two deer Dad had shot were like. They'd
gone down so quick, they'd seemed normal, But Grandpa had
been sick with Alzheimer's a long time before he got scary,
and I had to figure the same could be true
for those deer. Who was to say the one on
hind legs was the only sick creature in the woods
that day. I couldn't have force these thoughts out of
my head with a crowbar. At some point I accepted
I wasn't getting any sleep that night, and I settled
down to torture myself some more until I realized it
didn't have to be that way. Dad had an old
freeze in the shed, and he sometimes kept meeting there,
not for long, and usually not for eating. He'd use
it for things he'd wanted to skin, or tried to
make a trophy out of it, which he rarely did
since Mom didn't like that kind of thing in the house.
But if the deer weren't in the freezer in the
kitchen or the garage, then they might be in the shed.
And if I did open up that chest and saw
two deer bodies in there, that meant whenever was going
around and making people hurt themselves couldn't have come from
our little hunting trip. I snuck out of my room
as quiet as I could. Mom was on the phone
with my grandma and she was crying. I stopped by
a door and listened to see if maybe they knew
something I didn't, But after she started talking about how
scared she was, I just felt bad and moved on.
At least it meant she was too busy to notice
me creeping down the stairs. I never liked the shed
at the end of the yard. It was rarely used,
even by my dad, who kept the lawn mower and
some old junkin there. It wasn't the kind of place
he kept food, but I had this feeling he didn't
keep these deer with the rest of the meat he
got from hunting. As I opened the back door and
looked over the shadow covered yard, I found myself thinking
about the tunnel and what I'd seen back there. With
everything that had happened, since I'd done a good job
of convincing myself it had never really happened. The man
with no legs who dragged himself out of the darkness
had become little more than a half remembered nightmare, a
moment out of time that was incompatible with all logic
and reason. But suddenly it was back with me. All
the emotions and thoughts that raced through my head as
I stared at his rotten flesh and glassy eyes. The
walk to the shed was uneasy, I thought the urge
to turn around. The entire way there. Each step was
like walking on feet made of the lead. At the door,
I paused with my hand poised by the lock. The
house seemed so distant behind me, and I became painfully
aware nobody knew I was alone and out in the dark.
Inside was nearly pitch black. My phone helped me light
it up a little, but I didn't touch the nearby
switch in case Mom saw it from a window. Cobwebs
hung low from the ceiling, and shadows crawled across the
floor and walls as I moved closer to the freezer.
The entire time, I kept expecting something to happen. I
even imagine that deer rising from beneath the lid, pushing
it open to stand unnaturally tall on its hind legs,
where he looked down at me with the same dead
eyes I'd seen in my father. The thought scared me
so bad I nearly hyperventilated myself straight into a panic attack.
But before I had time to really worry about any
of that. I found my hand on the freezer's latch.
I pushed it open and looked inside. The misty vapors
cleared to reveal a pile of meat and fur encrusted
with ice. It was only one head visible, but I
so badly wanted confirmation that there were two animals in
there that I took a deep breath and reached in
to try price some of it loose. Some of it
came away from the sides with a sound like duct tape.
But no matter how deep I rooted in that mound
of bone, antlers and rock hard flesh, I couldn't see
a sign of the second deer. He dad really served
everyone sick man was that while Larry Sitkins had missed
the stroup and all those other people had killed themselves.
The thought made me feel ill. I slammed the freezer
shut and walked back to the door in a daze,
trying with all my might to swallow the painful weight
that settled in my gut. I had one foot outside
when the freezer door rattled against the latch. The entire
world spun around me. My heart sank, and my skin
froze in a sensation that was growing increasingly familiar. I
turned to face the sound, both hands braced against the door,
and watched as the latch slammed into the lock once more.
The light inside the chest came on for the briefest moments,
and I glimpsed thrashing fur and teeth. Then it happened
again and again, and each time I saw bits of
hoof and bone and strange musket that frightened me so
deep I fell down onto my ass and didn't even
realize when the latch finally gave way, the lid flew
open and stayed there. Light poured out of the box,
and I waited, breath held, for that thing to emerge,
to come roaring out of sight and bear down towards
me on unnatural legs. But nothing happened. The silence stretched
on ford seemed like an eternity, until at last there
was a crash, louder than any before, and the entire
freezer rocked back and forth and slowly fell over. The deer,
or parts of it fell out with a hard, wet thumb.
Bits of his chin and face shattered on the hard
packed ground, sending little shards of meat and bones Skating
across the floor on melting streaks of blood. Some of
them even reached my feet. The thing inside moved with
the sound of snow crunching beneath your feet, its thick
neck and broken head twisting side aside, scanning the shed's
interior with faulty eyes. I've never seen anything move like that,
not before or since. This was worse than the man
in the tunnel, worse by a thousand times. The deer
was still mostly frozen, but some impossible force was making
the crystallized water in its own cells, and the result
was skin that rippled like tissue, and muscle that cracked
and crunched as they tried to flax and contract. It
lifted its head and tried to scream. The breathy sound
that left its fuzzy black lips made my heart start
skipping beats while my bladder entered. I couldn't help it,
couldn't stop myself, and when I looked down and saw
pieces of melting flesh starting to writhe and wriggle, I
tried with all my might to stifle the cry building
up in my throat, but it escaped as a desperate,
high pitched wine. The deer turned its head towards me
with a violent swing, another breathy shriek, and then it
began to thrash its stiff and frozen legs in a
terrifying attempt to get closer. To say it had a
predatory look would be inaccurate. Anyone who's seen a predator
in action knows that nature is mostly indifferent when it kills.
A bear tears into its prey with the same dull
look of someone opening the McDonald's. Predators don't hate the
things they're hunting for this thing, I could feel its hatred,
its malice. It was nothing like what I'd seen in
my dad's eyes, or even the eyes of the man
in the tunnel. But it had spent months in that box,
hadn't it. This was the disease when you skipped three
months ahead. Anger, hatred. Jeez, I couldn't even say if
it was going to eat me. That's what you think
when you see a zombie, right, It's going to try
and take a big bite out of you. With this
frozen clump of hair and meat and brained lips, dragged
itself across the floor with an expression like murderous rage,
the look of someone ready to beat another living thing
to death using its own hands if it had too
unable to face it A moment longer, I dragged myself
back unto my feet and fled, shutting my eyes as
I entered the cold night air. I made it three
steps before I slammed into my dad. It was like
I'd run full speed into a tree. I pounced back
and hit the earth, pain flowing at my cocksis as
my father loomed over me. He'd felt cold for the
brief moment where we made contact. My mind blocked out
the sound of something hideous scrambling in the shed behind me,
and the entire word narrowed until it was just the
face of the man who raised me, looking down with pale,
dead eyes. Dad. He swallowed and briefly examined his hands.
I think I'm dead, he muttered, almost as if he
was talking to himself. When did I die? I pulled
myself up and grabbed his hand. He was cold, but
his pulse was still raising. I could even see the
veins in his forearms. Throbbed sickeningly. Dad. Are you okay? Dad? Dad?
Are you okay? They told me I'm sick, he said,
his eyes gazing vacantly at the empty space behind me.
I think they're right, but there's more. He looked at me,
the intensity of his gaze so powerful that I let
go of his hand and took a step back. For
the first time in my life, I was scared of him.
I'm not alone in here, he said, his voice pleading
for help. Slowly his expression twisted into a grotesque mask
of agony and desperation. Oh jeez, it isn't just me
in here. I tried to move, but he was a
big man, and his arms wrapped around me like steel bands. Dad,
I cried, struggling to pull myself loose as he sobbed
louder and louder. Dad, jeez, you gotta let go. There's
the shed door burst open. I managed to turn around
just enough I could see what came out, and I
felt an urgent terror crawling at my flesh. The deer
had pulled itself loose from the freezer, and now it
stood in the doorway and two legs. Its body looked
all wrong in that posture, like when you twist the
limbs around on a doll. Probably not far from the truth,
thinking about it, Dad didn't react, but I began to
scream as the nightmare coalesced around me, my father gripping
holding me in place as that horrible thing lurched towards
me on two legs. It moved like clamation or a
puppet show gone wrong, but it was quicker than I feared.
As each step brought it closer, I found myself losing
what little control I had. I started to scream, started
to shriek. I beat at my father with my fists,
but he didn't budge an inch. My clenched hands just
bounced off his strong shoulders, and it was like I
was trying to hurt a punching bag. I started to
swear too, started to scream things I thought were bad,
then worse, then so bad. I'm not even I'm sure
I can blame other people for putting those words in
my head. I told my dad I hated him, called
him the worst names under the sun. All that commotion
got the attention of others. Neighbour's lights started coming on.
My mum emerged from the back door, wrapping a robe
around herself as she squinted at us in the dark.
What the hell is going on? She cried as she
stumbled towards us, But when she saw that deer, she
started screaming too. I don't know why, but I thought
that other people appearing would help somehow, that us two three,
half a dozen people came stumbling into open lawns, peering
over wist eye fences. It had stopped the slow but
inevitable onslaught of that monster. It did no such thing.
I had to listen to their confused shouts and cries
or gesturing and begging for help the entire time, the
sound of the creature over my shoulder getting closer and closer. Meanwhile,
my hands tried to pry away my father's thick arms,
but each time I got leverage, he simply flexed and
his grip tightened around me. He was muttering something the
whole time, but I couldn't hear it. Finally, my mom
screamed and ran, swinging an old rake at the space
behind me. I heard the impact, the splintering of the
wooden handle. Then she stumbled backwards, and I had to
twist to get a look at the deer that was
now just six or seven feet away, the spokes of
a rake still sticking out of his face. A monster
looked right at me and opened its mouth, and I
swear to God who was going to talk? But right
then someone shouted, for the love of God, Alice, get
away from that thing. Alice was my mother's name, and
she fell to the floor just seconds before an explosion
broke the night, silencing all voices and shattering the deer's
head like a crystal ball hitting the ground. My heart
raised so fast I thought for a moment I was
gonna die. Then I looked down at Dad and finally
heard what he'd been mumbling this whole time. It's in
us and it wants us. It's in us and it
wants us. It's in us and it wants us. There
isn't much left of Dad these days. I got to
visit a couple of times. Fat lot of good it did,
as far as I'm concerned. He died that day in
the kitchen when he first tried shooting himself. They're treating
us in this special hospital. Mom was real upset that
visitations are limited, but I think it might be for
the best. Her and my sister tested clean. Most people
did I didn't. Mom snug me this phone a couple
of weeks ago, and I've been using that to write
funny thing is one of the orderlies saw me on
it a few days ago and just laughed. I think
that maybe the government aren't too worried about this story
getting out. And first I didn't really get why until
I started actually putting all this down into writing, got
to the part where that halfman came out of the tunnel,
and I realized, no one's gonna believe me. Still, I
gotta try, partly because I want to protect people. Whatever
this disease is, it's a hell of a lot more
than some twisted brands. And I think the government knows
that Dad certainly did. Most Invector did too. That's why
they killed themselves. They wanted out. The voice that comes
with this illness is like it's like if your brain
is just words in a book and then someone DipEd
that book in a full kind of used motor oil.
You just want to give in hand it all over.
It wants your body, So whatever you do, you don't fight,
that's worse, give it up. In hindsight, we should have
let Dad kill himself. What he went through was well,
it was probably a lot worse than the others who
got to die. I sometimes think about going into his
room with a pillow, but security is pretty tight around him.
As for me, infection is still in its early phase.
It takes everyone differently, and for me it's taking quite
its time. They think it's because of my age. Still
I can sort of feel it under there growing. I
think it's why I'm writing this. Me to this sickness.
It lives out in the woods, way way out in
parts of the soil where the sun hasn't shone in
millions of years. It's old enough to remember a time
you could walk from Appalachia to what's now called Glasgow.
And it's been fumbling around out there, in the brains
of deer and other things. The sickness tells me. This
tells me it's learning about this new world. Tells me
about how mind tastes. For most of all, it tells
me it's getting closer. Camp Grinlow shut down the year
after our last summer there. I remember the envelope arriving
at the house, the way my mom read it twice
before setting it down. That was it no more. Summer.
I met Max and Annie there. We were cabin three,
our first year, packed in tight with five others, none
of whom we talked to anymore. We weren't friends right away.
Max never shut up. He had a comment for everything
and laughed hardest at his own jokes, which I found annoying.
Annie was a nerd She knew all the counselor's names
by day two. One night, Max and I snuck out
during rest hour to pull a prank on Cabin seven,
and he caught hers slipping out and followed. We got
halfway there before a flashlight being caught us across the clearing.
Max bolted, I froze. Annie stepped in front of me
and said she had dropped a bracelet somewhere near the
trail and we were helping her look for it. The
counselor bought it and we did get written up. Then
we became close friends. After camp, the three of us
kept in touch. We borrowed our parents' phone, sent letters,
and eventually got our own phones. For a while, we
barely saw each other. Then we ended up at colleges
close enough to take a train. After that, it just stuck.
Max found a clip of joint video of the camp
on a hiking channel and sent it to our group chat.
The place looked gutted. Most of the cabins were collapsing,
and the docks were reduced to their frames. My stomach dropped.
All the things that made the place feel alive. Campfires,
night hikes, the games we played were gone. My phone
buzzed with a message from Annie. I kind of miss it.
He missed, cold showers and sunstroke. Max replied, I miss
what it was like being there, She wrote, with you two.
The chat went quiet after that. I typed something and
deleted it. A few minutes later, Max replied with we
should go, and he replied seriously, Yeah, why not one
night camp like we used to? I thought Max was
messing around. Then I thought about it and didn't hate
the idea. We'd had fun there as kids, so why
wouldn't we now Going back as adults felt strange but
also kind of exciting. Can we just do that? I asked? Yeah?
Why not? We've still got tents, still know how to
build a fire, bring somerhmallows, tell stories, play the odd games.
He replied. There was a long pause, then Annie sent fine,
but if it rains, I'm sleeping in the car, and
that was that. As I pulled up, I noticed Annie
her car was already pulled up off the gravel loop.
When I arrived, parked just far enough from the oar
of growth to keep her tires clear. She was out
of the car, arms crossed, lips pressed. I waved through
the windshield, parked beside her, and stepped out. The air
was cool, and there was a slight breeze that blew through.
You're late, she said, not looking up. You're early, I grinned.
She gave her half smile. Maybe I just won the race.
Here the trees and closer than I remembered. The old
sign that used to say Camp Grinlow in thick green
letters was just a frame, now dangling splinters. And he
strolled over to the pit with a bell used to
hang poking at the weed to the foot. He checked
the cabins yet, I asked. She shook her head. By myself,
no way. I figured we'd do it together. Ten minutes
later we heard the crunch of tires and Maxi's car
rounded the bend. He parked crooked and got out, already
chewing gum and wearing a huge grin. Took the scenic group,
he said, slamming the door. And by scenic, I mean
I stopped twice because I thought I saw a bear.
One was a stump. One might have been a bear.
He brought the tent right, and he asked. He patted
the trunk and snacks and an old speed. He looked around,
nodding slowly. Weird, how it feels smaller. It's not, I said,
We're just bigger. Speak for yourself, Max said, adjusting the
waistband of his shorts. I peeked in eighth grade, we know,
and he joked. We started toward the fire pit, catching
up on each other's weak The trail was still there,
with the trees leaned in low, branches low enough to
catch his shoulders, and he walked ahead of us, eyes
on the ground, stepping over roots. To the left, the
mess all looked worse. The windows were gone and it
was missing a door. It was strange seeing it all
like this. When we were kids, this place felt permanent,
like it would always be waiting for us, just as
we left it. But now the buildings sagged under their
own way, paint stripped by years of weather and abandonment.
When we reached the fire pit, he looked almost untouched.
The benches had sunk a little, but was still there.
The stones were scattered, but familiar, scorched black. The way
we remembered. Still here, I said. Max dropped his bag
beside a bench and stretched his arms overhead. Not bad,
I thought we'd be pitching tents in a field of
used needles. We stayed silent for a moment, letting it
sink in. Max broke the silence first. All right, who's
up for some marshmallows? He pulled a bag from his
pack and tossed it on the bench. I dug out
some skewers we brought and passed them around, and he
knelt near the fire pit, clearing away old ash and leaves,
and we got the fire going. The wood was dry enough,
and the smoke drifted upward in lazy streaks. We roasted
in silence at first, letting the heat take the edge
off the air. Max burned his first one entirely black,
and proudly aided him two bites. Annie laughed at him
and methodically turned us over the flame until it rowned perfectly.
You guys, remember that game, I asked statues and songs.
Max's mouth was full, but he mumbled something that sounded
like a yes. Annie nodded her eyes on the fire.
I don't remember who made it up, I said, oh,
counselor Reid, Annie piped up, of course, you still remember
his name. Max rolled his eyes. The rules started coming
back in pieces. One person stood at the end of
the field with their back turned, humming a tune. Everyone
else had to move toward them if they caught you moving.
When they turned around and the hum ended, you were out.
You used to cheat, Annie said, jabbing a skewer into
Max's arm. Please, I played to win, Max said, it's
called having tactics, pushing people, tripping them, whatever it takes.
You pushed me twice, she whined, Both times you deserved it.
You were getting cocky. I was eight exactly. You needed humbling.
You didn't win, though, I added, no one once. No,
you didn't, Annie, and I said in unison. Max held
up his hands. Look, just because my brilliance wasn't appreciated
doesn't mean it existed. Annie said. We laughed for a second,
and it was like we'd never left. The fire crackled low,
dipping into the quiet. Max leaned back, looking up at
the darkening sky through the trees. Annie picked at the
edge of a marshmallow bag, folding and unfolding the plastic
in a lap. Then came a familiar tune, but this
time it was a whistle. Annie sat upright. Oh kay,
I know ye hit ye speak a Max? Max tilted
his head. Y're kidding, right, that's not me? Seriously, I asked,
ye didn't cuwe something up on your phone? He held
it up. Battery's almost dead. Been saving it. We all
turned toward the trees where the sound had come from.
The tune came again, the same rhythm we'd been talking about.
Max gave Annie a look. You didn't rig something, some
timer or remote thing. She scoffed. Do I look like
I brought a fog machine too? You brought back up marshmallows?
He said, Anything's possible. He looked from one to the other,
then grinned, all right, when do you plan this? Fess up?
Annie snorted. If I went to that much effort, I'd
be filming your reaction. Then it's you, Max said, pointing
at me. You've been quiet, not me, I said, I
figured it was you. We stood there for a moment,
the whistle drifting through the trees again. Shall we play?
Max said, with a smirk, we might as well. Annie
raised an eyebrow, Oh you're serious, What are you scared?
He grinned. No, she huffed, brushing past him. I just
don't want to humor your prank. We stepped into the clearing.
It hadn't changed much, the same wide circle that funneled
into a straight part into the trees. It was marked
with half buried stones, grass pressed low in patches. Max
rolled his shoulders like it was warming up for a
race as we walked forward toward the sound off in
the trees. Then the whistling stopped and we froze in place,
grinning like idiots, and he glanced over her shoulder and
mouth still got it. Max had one foot lifted in
the air. This is weirdly fun. A second later, the
whistle started again, and this time we sped walked. Max
bumped in to me while trying to get ahead. Annie
was already a few strides ahead of both of us.
Her braid bounced off her back with each step, her
arms pumping like she was taking it way too seriously.
Max laughed and tried to catch up. She's gonna win,
I said, not if I reach her, Max said, under
his breath, speeding up to get behind her. Grinning, Max
reached out and shoved Anny just enough to throw off
balance as she tumbled forward. The music stopped, and Max
froze with his arms stretched out. Max, she screamed, stumbling
forward as the whistling cut out. Her body seized, her knees,
locking neck, jerking upright. Her spine twisted so violently we
heard it pop. Her vertebrae bulged against the skin. Her
arms flung outward like she was being yang, and a
whake crack snapped through the air. Her body fell limp
on the ground. Annie I called out, horrified. Max remained frozen,
the grin on his face melted. I didn't push her
that hard. He stuttered, eyes frantic. Then the whistle started
back up, like nothing had happened. We both rushed forward,
dropping to our knees. Her body was curled unnaturally, one
leg twisted under the other, arms splayed out ahead of her.
Her face was frozen mid breath, eyes wide, mouth half open.
Max's hand hovered nearer but didn't touch. She's not I
started struggling to find my words. What the hell is happening?
Max sputtered. I leaned over, pressed my fingers into a neck,
but there was no pulse. I didn't know what I
was expecting. She's dead. The words felt like they didn't
belong to me, as if it wasn't real. Max backed up, shuddering.
Maybe she hit something, he said, looking past the body,
scanning the dirt for a rock or a branch or anything,
desperate for anything to prove he didn't hurt her. She
didn't hit anything. I looked at Max, felt my throat tith,
and you pushed her too hard. His head snapped toward me.
It was a joke. No, it wasn't my voice shock.
You killed her. His mouth opened, but nothing came out,
and watched it land on him all at once, the guilt,
the way of what he did. His jaw clenched. He
looked down at her again and backed away, like distance
would undo it. You always had to win. I spat
even now. The whistling stopped again. We both rose instinctively,
breath stalled half way in our throats, and his body
was inches away, broken and bent. I couldn't look directly
at her. I could a Max swallow, hard, chest barely rising.
His hands were clenched at his side's knuckles pale. The
air buzzed with pressure. I felt it in my spine,
in the tension creeping up my neck, every second stretched
longer than the one before. Then the whistling returned, same melody,
same distance, carried on the wind, like none of this
had happened, And my breath came out sharp and max broke.
He took two steps back, fists in his hair, eyes
wide like they were trying to blink away while we
were both seeing. No, no, no, no, no, this can't
be real. He began, his voice, pitched higher than I'd
ever heard it, words spilling out faster. She was fine,
I swear to God. I just we were messing around.
I didn't push her that hard. He turned from me,
walked a short circle, then spun back. His mouth moved
like he had more to say, but nothing came out.
His shoulders dropped. Then he hit his thigh with the
side of his fists so hard and made a dull thud.
She laughed. When I burnt the marshmallow. I was going
to give a grief for it. Later, he looked at
the clearing, then at me, and then up and the trees.
We were supposed to hang out this week and that's all,
not this. He swallowed, wiped his face roughly with both hands,
and took one glance at and his body. Then he
turned and said, screw this, I'm not doing this. Max. No,
he snapped, I didn't hurt her. I swear. He turned
and started walking back toward the campfire fast. Just as
he stepped over the stone edging, his body arked hard
like something. He yanked upward from his spine. The twist
was fast, and his feet lifted from the ground as
his back contorted violently. There was a low crack, then
a snap. Max's arms filed once, then dropped. His legs
folded in on themselves. He hid the ground. I screamed,
still crouched over Annie. He landed face down, limbs crooked.
From where I sat, I could see the base of
his neck bent too far. I blinked hard, stared at
the flickering light at the edges of the fire where
his body lay, crumpled and slack, and realization washed over me.
He hadn't killed Annie the way she fell and twisted.
There was no way that he did that, especially since
he met the same fate as soon as he left
the game boundaries. Fear sent pinpricks of electricity through my body,
and an ominous feeling washed over me. Whatever this was,
it wasn't natural, and it had something to do with
the game and the whistling. If I wanted to survive,
I had to play My hands, my back, my legs,
all of me trembled. When the whistling started back up,
it scraped across my nerves. I could still hear Ane's
voice in my head, Maxi's laugh. The bodies weren't even cold,
and I was already thinking like I was the only
one left. I pressed my hands into the dirt and
begged myself to keep breathing. This was real, this was happening,
and I had to finish it. I held my stance.
Every part of me wanted to run, to curl in
and myself to scream, but the rules were clear. I
couldn't move. It stopped, and it felt like the paws
dragged out. My knees were tight. I blinked once, slow
and dry. Then the whistling started up again. I forced
myself up and started to take shaky step after shaky step,
the distance between me and the whistling shrank. I could
make out a figure in the dark distance. Its arms
hung low and close to its sides. The space between
us was still wide. I didn't know how many rounds
there would be or how close I had to get.
But the thought of making it all the way forward,
reaching out and placing a hand against the thing's body
felt impossible. But that was the rule. You reached the
host and touched them, That's how you won. That's what
I had to do. The rhythm carried me forward again.
I moved with it, one step at a time, every
shift of weight, deliberate, every breath matched to the space
between each whistle. I was getting close enough now. The
thing ahead had shape. The dim glow of the campfire
passed through uneven slits carved deep into its chest, casting
faint beams into the undergrowth. Every time it exhaled, a
thin column of air passed through those holes, and the
whistle came with it. I felt a scrape along my spine.
My eyes kept drifting to the lines of its body,
the exposed ribs, the stiff posture, the way it stayed
fixed in place, like it was waiting for me. I
tried not to think about the final rule. Then I'd
have to touch it. Then my heel struck something, maybe
a root or a stone, buried just enough to catch
the edge of my foot. My balance pitched my arms
shot forward, but I was too slow. My ankle rolled
underneath me, and I landed hard on my knees and hands.
Pain searched up my leg. The ground pressed into my palms.
The whistle cut out, my vision blurred. My ankle throbbed
in sharp pulses, but I stayed frozen, arms shaking from
the fall. Dirt and rugs pressed into the raw skin
of my hands. Every second that passed made my chest tighter.
I could feel the pulse in my neck hammering against
the stillness. I started to imagine my death if I failed?
What part would break? First? Would it twist my head
like Max's or tear through me the way it had Annie?
And then what would anyone find us here? Would it
be days later, after the car sat too long in
the gravel pullen? Would the ranger's office even bother to
look past the sign? I thought about my parents. I
thought about Annie's mom. I thought about the three of
us walking to the missile on our first day, all
of us sunburned and tried to act cooler than we were.
Max had carried a plastic light saber in his's bag
and pretended it was an accident. Annie had rolled her
eyes and corrected the names of all the counselors when
we got them wrong. That first week we had barely spoken,
but somehow we'd ended up here years later together, and
now they were gone. The whistle started again. I clenched
my teeth and tried to push myself up a spiker.
Pain ran through my foot, white, heart and deep. My
ankle had twisted in the fall badly. I put a
little weight on it and felt the strain of my joint.
I would have to limp the rest of the way.
I'd have to keep perfect rhy, stay completely still, and
make it to the thing on a busted ankle. I
blinked the sweat from my eyes, swallowed hard, and started
forward again. The pain made it harder to tie my steps.
Each pause left more weight on the ankle than I
could stand, but I kept moving. I had to. The
distance between us was maybe thirty feet, now maybe less.
Every whistle came with a fresh sholt of dread, but
it also meant I was still playing, still alive. That
counted for something. I kept my eyes low, trying not
to look at it again. The way it stood so still, waiting.
Each breath it took dragged through his chest like wind
through loose panes. A few more rounds and I'd reach
it if I could hold my balance, if the ankle
didn't give. I moved again, half step, wait another. The
whistle stopped. I froze with my heel half way up,
struggling to settle it flat without shaking. The mouscle in
my legs seized. I could feel it trying to twitch,
trying to collapse under me. I let my heels sink gradually,
waited for the whistle to return, the sound of my
pulse louder than the crickets of the wind. The whistle
came again. I moved one step, then another. My ankle
buckled slightly, but I caught myself. I was close, now,
ten feet maybe less. The shape stood tall, still, arms
set close to its sides. Every breath it took pushed
another note into the air. I stopped, wait on one
foot and stead. I could almost see its hands, long
fingers curled slightly inward. My hand was slick with sweat.
I wiped it against my jeans, braced myself and stepped
forward again and again, five feet three, close enough to
see the seams between its ribs, the way the skin
held taut around the frame. There was a smell like
warm metal and moss. I felt it in my throat
one more step. I didn't want to see it any
clearer than I already had, didn't want to remember its
shape when I closed my eyes. Later, I kept them
open one last breath, then shut them tight and reached.
My fingers landed on something solid, and the whistle stopped,
stayed frozen, hands still pressed forward, every nerve wound tight.
My chest hurt from how hard my heart beat. The
pain in my ankle flared steady and sharp. Minutes passed
with no sound, no whistling, but I kept my palm
planted where it was, resting against it. But finally I
grew impatient, curious, so I peeled my eyes open. The
thing was gone, and I was touching a tree. It
took a few seconds for it to register that it
was just a trunk, tall and rough and solid, nothing
strange about it, no gaps in the wood. At first
I hoped I had imagined it all, But my ankle
still screamed hot and deep. And when I turned around,
limping slowly, dragging the weight of my body behind me,
I saw the truth. The fire still burned low. The
shadows flickered, and the bodies on my best friends right
where I had left them. Annie's twisted spine, Max's bent limbs.
The firelight danced over their skin like it didn't care
what had happened, like this was any other night. I
collapsed just outside the circle, legs giving out beneath me.
All at once. The emotions I had shoved into a
corner to stay alive came crawling back, flooding my chest
and throat too fast to stop. Then I sobbed from
the terror, from the pain, from the sick throb of
loss that settled into the center of my chest. I
cried for Annie and Max, for the marshmallows we didn't finish,
for the game never should have played. I cried because
I lived. Being a prison guard isn't easy. You have
to maintain control, control of routine, of unpredictable people, of yourself.
In a normal prison, there are so many factors to consider,
gang affiliations, smuggling, fights, and occasionally escape attempts. A lot
of people think the job is about strength, about control
through sheer force, and yeah, maybe in some prisons that works,
but not here. I work in a prison that's above
a normal prison, the place people send things that I
don't go anywhere else, Things that aren't supposed to exist.
Some of them used to be people, some of them
never were. Some of them no one knows what they
are not really. Scientists try to study them, administration tries
to classify them, but at the end of the day,
we're all just keeping them locked up and hoping that's enough.
My job is to make sure the vault stays closed,
and I do this through a strict routine and following
my guidelines to the letter. When you get started here,
there's one prisoner that every new person gets assigned the phaser.
Peeking into a cell, you'll see a man mid forties
looking ordinary as ever, however, periodically he will flash with
a bright light and blink to another section of the cell.
He was caught trying with telepatation technology, and from the
lack of usage in this facility, I can imagine it's
still far from being perfected. He's a reminder of the
consequences of dabbling too much into the unknown. It would
be oddly relaxing to watch if it wasn't for the
horrific screaming during and after he blinks, though sometimes it's
just muffled sobs when he's exhausted, so it's not too
bad to watch. Then sometimes he's lucky and he doesn't
blink for a few hours or even a day. But
some days are bad when it's just non stop with
how unpredictable and unstable he is. Sometimes he just disappears.
The empty cell will alert us if he's gone too long,
then someone is sent to investigate. He never actually leaves
the cell, not once has he ever teleported out of
the room, let alone the facility. Whatever. They line the
walls with his effective However, it's what we do that
is observed. When I was alerted, I waited outside and observed,
noting down any anomalies until he blinked back. But some
of the more proactive new recruits, ones looking to prove themselves,
rush in, armed and ready. The lucky ones get the
scare of their lives, and the man blinks back in
with a sudden flash, scaring the hell out of the
green recruit. Wherever the phaser goes, whatever he sees must
be horrifying. I would have thought he simply blinked forward
in time, delaying when he appears to us in the facility,
but the look in his eyes after a delayed blink
tells a thousand stories, ones which you'll never share. The
unfortunate outcome is when a guard stands where he appears
without fail contact with a blinking entity, even if just
brushing his arm as he blinks back, always favors the
one who blinked. The guard simply bursts into a huge
red mist. Since getting cleaners inside is an impossibility, the
phaser has to clean it up. Looking back, this all
feels like a test to see if a guard is
ready to handle the oddities contained here, a litmus test
for new recruits. Being too passive can lead a catastrophe.
Being too proactive can also lead a catastrophe. Sometimes even
a middle ground can be detrimental. You're tested every day
with your split second decision making skills, and it feels
like this is how they gauge us on our response.
The phaser is one of many prisoners dangerous by circumstance,
a repercussion of dabbling too far into untreaded waters and
being eternally punished. However, some prisoners are dangerous by choice.
In society, we've heard of people pushing themselves into great
feats archers who can hit a bull'seye then split that
arrow with a second one lift us geared to the
max holding weight that matches large vehicles. But what if
someone took it further? Prisoner X has a laundry list
of protocols. To simplify it, he essentially turned his body
into a living weapon, chemical, biological, technological, mentally, he dabbled
into every extreme to make himself the most dangerous person alive.
Through multiple surgeries, the scientists here have removed a large
portion of his internal weapons and contingencies. However, he still
has many that simply cannot be undone. His skin is
nigh unbreakable, hardened through means which our scientists are still
trying to figure out. Prisoners often have a running theme
of not talking, so there's still a lot unknown to us.
But this makes him resistant to tasers and fire. Our
go too for Prisoner's subjugation. Instead, we have to periodically
drill a small hole into his neck, not an easy
feat with how thick his skin actually is, and put
on a collar with a reinforce syringe filled with enough
sedatives to put down an elephant. However, we still need
bodies to escort him from his cell to where he
needs to be. To say he is resistance of authority,
he is an understatement. One time he tried to make
a break for it, he waited for the cusp of
when he needed redrilling. His skin had hardened for his
neck to resist the needle just enough for him to
knock it away head down, just tackling the wall to
alter its angle. It took almost three full squads to
finally subdue him, many casualties taken. Despite his arms eternally
being bound, he was still proficient in killing in many
other ways. I was fortunately on a different shift, but
the deaths up to security and increased how often he
was drilled. Luckily, not all prisoners as strictly evil, so
I hear for being too aspirational. One man sits in
a cell low secure and minimal luxuries, which is a
lot compared to the many others living conditions here. We
call him the tinkerer because the Southern post title of
technomancer was too ridiculous for us to use. At first,
he was a menace, nothing too threatening, but he would
tinker with anything he could get his hands on. Guards
found their columbs missing from their belt, only to have
a strange signal beam out at everyone's radios. Up PDAs
would have strange bugs, only to find a signal was
sent to disrupt them. Though there were many anomalies on
a near constant basis, some potentially catastrophic. When it fell
into the category of technology shenanigans, it was easy to
know who the corporate was. Often we'd storm up to
his cell, subdue him and search the area, and each
time we'd find the makeshift array he'd made with the
scraps he'd found and destroy it, giggles coming between his
grunts as a guard held him down. Something we noticed, though,
was that when he did play with his tech, he
would happily stay in his room and tinker. This gave
us an idea. Periodically, we'd bring in a broken piece
of technology a laptop, tablet, phone, etc. Obviously we'd remove
anything that could cause issue, parts that could access the internet,
or simply remove a key item like the CPU. From here,
we'd bring it to him under the guise that we
wanted it fixed, and he'd tinker with it for days,
sometimes weeks. When he'd finish, we'd search his room in
case he held any parts. Often finding them and unbeknownst
to him, destroy it all we want, spooted it up
a fixed laptop he given us, adding back in the
CPU and battery, only for it to be an almost
completely different device set up for functions. We couldn't even
comprehend the brainchild of the madmen of technology, but we
kept up this routine because doing this satiated him. This
wasn't on any of the books. We guards often found
our own means through on ground observation to come up
with makeshift routines to make our lives easier. However, one
guard didn't get the full memo. He saw the tinker
as the guy that fixes things and brought him his
phone that wasn't turning on despite the facility being deep underground,
jammed up to the max for any outward signal by
location in technology. Within hours, a nuclear code was sent
and almost worked in setting off multiple missiles. A nuclear
warning was even sent out in Hawaii, which outwardly was
reported as a false flag, but we were close to
a real catastrophe. The guard was swiftly dealt with, earned
the tinkerers band from fixing tech for months, but he
wasn't unhappy with this. Every time we checked on him,
he still giggled about it thinking about what he did.
This tied him over until he was eventually allowed to
fix broken tech again with much more restrictions from then on.
There's one prisoner which I like, being put on shift
for causes no issues, needs no maintenance, just need to
keep an eye on him and note down any anomalies,
which there are never any of. This is because he's
stuck in a perpetual state of stasis. The story goes
that a strange signal was picked up in the basement
of a residential building. When a filled up team was
sent to investigate, they found him in this state, frozen
in time. Around him was an array of strange tech
computers linked together in complicated ways, and a bulking machine
mostly destroyed. Due to him not being able to cooperate
in any sort of questioning, he was up to the
investigation team to piece together what happened, and boy did
they find a strange story. Through logs on his computer,
they discovered that he had in fact found the first
legitimate means to travel back in time. Very illegal. We
have a few prisoners detained for even attempting to start
that project, but he have succeeded somehow he cracked the
code and put together the haphazard machine that lay destroyed
around him. But it's what he did with it which
is possibly the strangest thing I'd ever heard. Instead of
going back to make riches change a mistake in life
old history in a groundbreaking way visit a prolific historical
figure h hell see the dinosaurs, he instead went back
in time to kill his own grandfather. Guy was obsessed
with the grandfather paradox. It's strange how genius level intellect
has a correlation with absolute insanity. We only know this
from going through the logs on his computer. He detailed
his plan and specifically who he was after one Charles Vernon.
We checked the database and a Mattress fan Charles Vernon
had died in the late nineteen forties. No record of kids,
which means if it was his grandfather, he had successfully
killed him and stopped a parent from being born, causing
him to become a paradox. However, he didn't simply disappear.
Despite all the information we could find, so much more
is left a mystery. It's inconclusive whether the state's currently
in is because of the paradox, a side effect of
time travel, or self inflicted after getting the answers he wanted.
It's also unknown what happened to the machine, whether it
was a one time used kind of deal or something
he set up so that it could never be used
after him. But we're working hard on freeing him. He
studied a lot and tests are always being ran and
whether we could revert the condition he's in because throughout
all the logs there is nothing on how we built
the actual machine. So the scientists are hoping to unfreeze
him and prying this information out of him one way
or another. The science is above my pay grade. However,
I sometimes imagine what could have been done if one
went back with ambition, though someone going back with chaotic
contentions would be a terrifying thought. Maybe that's why he
never documented how it was made for why the machine
was destroyed. A large amount of duties are sectioned off
between different squads. What this means is that duties I've
mentioned which are in my rotation may infrequently or never
show up for other squads. We have no idea how
the criteria for this is made, whether it's some innoc
system of threat level or group based competency. God knows
what kind of demons others deal with, but hopefully I
am in a good rotation. But one duty, which is
universal between all groups is playtime. For this duty, I
dressed up in civilian attire very young, coded and drove
to a town called small Haven. Now, the facility is
located remote from any civilization, so this town itself is
in a town per se. It's actually an entire level
of the facility, widened enough to create a dynamic, functioning
town and tall enough that a realistic skybox could be made.
Everyone in the town is an actor, playing their part
twenty four to seven, never breaking character or for one
is her child. She lives with the family, though they
are technically actors, knowing that the town isn't real, they
are her biological relations. All in all, she lives the
perfect life, goes to school, plays with friends, visits extended family,
which are also moved into the facility town. The reason
for her detainment is simple. If she gets mad, she
goes nuclear, not in a hyperbolic way. She has enough
internal energy to flatten entire countries plural. It's too big
of an explosion to contain or isolate even if set
off remotely from the furthest point of land dead set
in the middle of the largest ocean, the tsunamies would
devastate large portions continents in all directions. We can't get
into space without risking hitting levels of stress that would
set her off before exiting the atmosphere. So she's stuck
in this facility under the guise of having moved to
a nice little town to start fresh. There are contingencies
set in place to make sure she never leaves. The
outer limits of the town are all abandoned factories or
run down ghettos, all designed psychologically to make them undesirable
to go to. Though abandoned might be the wrong turn
to use, considering how many trained snipers are stationed there
around the clock, all armed with long range sedatives. Even
the ghetto's population are all trained militia, scary looking people
to deter her wandering through, and armed to the teeth
with contingencies. She once wandered close through the outer limits
with no escort near by. It was reported that she
wasn't trying to make a break for it, but they
still implemented a fail safe. She was subdued, and when
found by her parents. She was told she fell asleep
wandering too far. Luckily she bought that and there hasn't
been an incident since. She has no idea what is
truly going on, and when I was selected for playtime duty,
it was my job to check on her. How this
duty works can be complicated with how closed off the
town is from the real world. Getting information reliably to
and from small Haven it is difficult. Every so often
a guard has to role play into town to check
on things. Sometimes we're an out of town counselor sent
in by the school administration to check on all the students,
sometimes for travelers car having trouble so stuck in town
for a few days. Seeing a new face also keeps
up the facade of the town's legitimacy, hiding the fact
that it is cut off from any real civilization. My shift, however,
was different. This was the first drafted long term visit,
and I was lucky enough to be the first participant.
Despite working in a facility in which you're physically tested
every day, with some guards covered head to toe in
unsightly scars, I've been relatively untouched, though there are given
items to look after ourselves in which I do the
bare minimum. I guess I just have to admit it.
I have a serious case of babyface. This hasn't been
an issue, but it must have been noticed because it
tied directly into my assignment. I was sent in as
a new high school student finishing off the last part
of the year. I was given a strict schedule to
shave and make sure I blended in. Alone, I would
stand out as slightly older, but amongst the crowd, I
blended in well enough. The education departments were mixed through
all years, segmented between elementary and high school, so despite
being years apart in the schooling system, I was able
to observe the prisoner on occasions. In class, I was
instructed that I did not need to participate in learning
unless observed by the prisoner, which never came up, and
so I used that time to take meticulous notes on
anything I observed. I learned her name was Emily and
that she got on well enough in school. However, there
was a plan of then. Since I was new in town,
Emily's parents invited me over for dinner, keeping up the
facade of a friendly, welcoming town. Alongside me was an
actor who posed as my mother. I handed over the
envelope containing the script to my mother and we studied
it together for hours to make sure everything lined up.
My mother played a single parent and I had lived
with my father for most of my life. However, she
came back into the picture through letters, and I had
decided to reach out and live with her for a
bit to mend our relationship. A believable story, and when
there was so small it would be hard to poke
holes in, we drilled the script, adding information for us
to sync up with in case anything else came up.
The meal went well because it was under the guise
of meeting new people, he managed to detail their family
life in a public setting. Overall, they reviewed well, and
I noted how stable everything seemed. However, unexpected to Emily's parents,
my mother pulled them to another room to crack open
a bottle of wine, something that kids couldn't participate in.
This left Emily and I alone for an in depth review,
away from the pressures of keeping up appearances with her parents.
This is something we struggled with in previous reviews, since
leaving a child alone with an adult stranger was something
hard to set up. Since I was perceived as a
youth rather than an adult. I was to extract any
useful information with this precious time frame and started slow
regoing over icebreakers, but this time in a more personal way,
asking how she really felt about life, about school, about apparents.
She opened up more than at the dinner table, all
of which was positive. The small Haven project was still
going strong. However, Emily went quiet after a while, with
a deep look of contemplation on her face. Rather than pray,
I let the silence hang, letting the pressure of social
cues eas her into opening up. However, rather than throwing
some thought provoking question back, she threw a curveball straight
into my face. I know it's all not real, she said, plainly.
If I had a drink in my mouth, i'd have
spat it out. Huh oh, what do you mean? I
stuttered back. I'd been composed before this, in control of
the conversation, following my orders to the letter. However, this
was veering so off script that I spat out a question,
hoping to steer things back to normalcy. I mean, it's
a simulation right this town. It's all avasad No, she muttered.
I froze my first instinct was the gas light the
hell out of her, make her feel crazy for even
thinking that, even though she was one hundred percent right.
But then a spark in my head told me that
if I argued against the point, this could cause unease,
which could turn to frustration anger, something I was instructed
over and over to never cause. So instead I probed,
what makes you think that, I asked curiously. I know
something's inside me, something I don't understand, something no one understands.
She said, solemnly. Ice ran through me. She wis to
never know about a condition. It was theorized that the
stress of keeping it in check could trigger her like
being constantly conscious of needing to breathe. She carried on
in my silence, I know everyone's an actor, pretending to
be part of this town, even my parents. They're my parents,
I know that, but they keep up a facade. This
was dangerous, and it was getting worse with every word
she spat out. She knew too much, but there was
no denying the conviction. In a voice, she was certain
there was no going back now, So instead of trying
to contradict it, I went for the answer I desperately
wanted for myself how do you know? I asked, not
some set up to flip the narrative. I needed to know.
Did someone talk? Did she sneak out without people knowing?
This information was vital? Whatever is in me, this energy,
it's changed. At first I heard buzzing. My parents thought
I was sick, pulled me from school for a bit.
But then it like famed into words. But they weren't
from people's mouths, it was from their heads. There when
all hopes I could reverse this, she could read minds.
As if this couldn't get any more terrifying. I wanted
to ask so much. My mind jumbled with so many questions.
I couldn't even stutter the first lines of the question. However,
she picked up on this. Of course she did. She
could hear everything I was thinking and answered before I
could say anything. Don't worry, I don't mind it, she said,
with a hint of glee. I coughed to clear my throat.
What do you mean, I asked. I needed confirmation, this town,
this life, I don't mind it. My parents are here,
my family are here. They love me. I know that
for a fact. That's the one thing that isn't a lie.
They're doing this for my safety, so I don't mind it,
she said, matter of factly. I eased up at this,
just accepted the situation. With everything in the open. We
ended up just chatting the whole time, talking like real humans,
something she probably liked and hadn't had in a long time.
Just before the parents came back in, she told me
to keep a new developments a secret, something which I
agreed to. Besides, she'd know if I lied with absolute certainty.
Since then, I've been the first reoccurring volunteer for playtime duty.
The story evolved that I've reconnected with my mother and
live in a split custody between them. My actor mother
is now family friends with Emily's parents, and so we
have a reason to see them when I come to
town to visit, and Emily and I have developed a
bond which is valuable to the prison. Playtime gives me
a much needed reprieve from the hectic nature of the prison,
but I'm always kept busy. Lately, I've been put on
feeding duty. The prisoner is the man in the hole.
His cell is simple, nothing extraist fitted to hold him,
at least what we can see. Despite his strange quirk,
he never leaves his cell, though it's sometimes hard to tell.
No one in my team has ever fully seen him.
Every time we visit his cell, there's always a new
hole somewhere on the floor, wall, even ceiling. The location
is always random. This is despite whatever is logically on
the other side. Beside his cell is another unoccupied room.
Under and above are other levels of the complex, yet
the adjoining rooms are never disturbed. The holes look almost cartoonish,
rubble piled up around the hole, or the edges frayed
up in an exaggerated manner, but the hole itself is
unnatural dark, regardless of how a light source is pointed
at it. When he speaks, it echoes like is far
deeper than what should be possible. They're closer to dimensional holes,
and when a new one appears, the previous one is gone,
not even a single scratch to indicate any wrongdoings. We
only knows in there because he would chatter to us
when we bring him his food, though we're always just
instructed to leave it on the floor and leave. Studies
have been done to figure out what the holes truly are. Items,
cameras and people have been sent in to investigate, but
whatever enters never leaves. If connected to a tether, it
is severed upon entry and swiftly lost, So for the
time being it is just a management and observation job.
One time we thought he escaped, a routine inspection was
sent with catering to deliver. However, no hole was found.
It was reported, and as the backup team was dispatched,
the guard found where he was. Giggling was heard from behind,
and when he turned he saw the edges of the
keyhole frayed out. Little giggles could be heard from the
tiny void. God knows how they do it, but the
external team have an uncannyability to detain these wild individuals.
They are either hyper elite individuals formed to make a
god squad or piled up with enough tech to take
down civilization as we know it. Either way they get results. However,
there's one prisoner which is an exception, Frank, because rather
than being detained, he simply turned himself in. We still
don't know where he's truly from. When asked, he gives
a different answer each time, always in a sarcastic tone.
But there are theories. Some are basic, like some form
of extraterrestrial origin, something he's some sort of genetic freak
given god likabilities through the genetic lottery. The most interesting
to me is that he's from a higher dimension, fourth
or fifth maybe either way. It's incomprehensible what he can do. Teleportation, flight,
spontaneous combustion, if you can name it, he can probably
do it. Because of this, he's entertained in a cell.
Nothing can hold him. Trust me, We've tried. So he
just wandered the facility looking for things to do. A
guard once took the last doughnut, and unbeknownst to him,
Frank suddenly decided that he wanted it now. If Frank
had asked, the guard probably would have given it to him. However,
Frank skipped the altercation entirely and went straight for retribution.
Frank turned the guard's head into a rose. From this
we discover that having a rose for a head is
guaranteed death, though it's technically unconfirmed since we only have
a sample size of one. When medical had a look,
it was intricate. It wasn't just the simple swap. The
roots of the rose had blended seamlessly with the veins
and arteries of the neck, extending down throughout the body. Now,
why did Frank turn himself in. Well, that question has
another tangent to really put things into perspective. See, this
facility is hidden, hidden, hidden, so many layers of secrecy
on top of more secrets, along with people eliminated along
the way, just to make sure this place isn't known about,
isn't able to be found, and isn't able to be tracked.
It would take generations of descendants to follow all the
trails in order to find this place, sifting through so
many dead ends and false leads. So when Frank strolled
up to the front door, it was a big deal.
Frank's reason for doing all this is the only thing
he said that I believe He was bored and what
sounds more fun than to mess around in the most
secret advanced place on earth? To him, this was a playground,
and we were his new playthings. At first, he was
an issue. His mischief often got people killed. When curious
a prisoner, he'd released them just to see what they
could do. When we were doing important procedures, he'd disrupt
them just to get a rise out of the staff.
He once flipped gravity in the whole facility just to
see what would happen. God knows who decided on the solution,
but whoever did deserves only the best in life. See
what got him to fall in line was to hire
him as a guard. Now, he's not really a guard,
not in the structural hierarchy sense. He was given a
special title, a uniform, and a list of duties. However,
the duties are a placebo replacing the blinker fluid in
a car kind of thing. But whenever he finished the task,
grand praise is given. We found that making him feel
important and blowing up his ego keeps and too preoccupied
to cause chaos. He's always awarded employee of the month,
despite that not really being a thing. Here. He's given
an office with a fancy door plaque, which I'm pretty
sure he does nothing with, and at the end of
every month he's given a large paycheck with a bonus
if he does well, which he gets every time. We're
not even paid for this job. The paste ups is
given are just printed pieces of paper with some made
up letterhead and lots of numbers, but he eats it up,
acting grateful, talking about how he'll treat his family when
he gets some time off. He doesn't have a family here,
by the way. I'm pretty sure that with a thought
he could turn the entire complex into a block of
solid gold. He has no use for money. There aren't
even shops here, but the whole charade just works. So
we never put a pin to his happiness balloon, and
it's came in handy a few times. There are a
few guards he's taken a liking to. He had a
stint where he acted like a sitcom character and chose
a few guards at random to I assume be side characters.
The friendship was entirely one sided, but with enough improv
he was satiated. However, one of the side character guards
was having an issue while detailing a prisoner. They slipped
their bonds and was about to cause mayhem, usually a
death sentence in here, when suddenly Frank came in and
swiftly put a stop to the situation. Right now, he's
not an issue. However, I fear that one day he'll
tire of this role and he'll switch back to causing
mischief or worse. A lot of prisoners scare me. In fact,
that could be an understatement. Every day our lives are
put on the line during the most menial of tasks. However,
one prisoner simply worries me. If a prisoner loses a
life here, all that is lost is potential discoveries. They
are both held captive for the safety of the world
and studied for the betterment of progress. But there's one
prisoner here, which, if incapacitated or worse, could spell the
end of the world as we know it, the first prisoner.
I've not been entirely truthful, more of a lie a mission.
I speak of this building, call it a facility and such.
But in reality, the building itself was an anomaly that
made this whole project possible, a building semi sentient and
fully self sufficient. It was a smaller building at first,
but its unnatural properties were soon discovered. When built upon,
each room tethers itself to all others in a conscious way.
If we want a room to be a cell, we
have to build it as such. Even when we use
the simplest of materials, its function is enhanced to what
the room is desired to be. It's difficult to grasp.
I don't fully get it myself. I'm paraphrasing from what
I pieced together from the technical jargon I was fared.
But it's how I've come to understand things. It's heart,
if you could call it, that powers the whole facility,
producing more than enough power for all the containment cells,
along with the many experiments running within the structure. This
was all kept under wraps. We didn't know any of
this until issues started coming up Lately. Concrete has been
crumbling in the far reaches of the building. Cell doors
aren't locking as tightly as before. Fortunately, the prisoners haven't
fully grasped how strained the building is, but with enough force,
escapes are possible. We have set up measures to keep
things in check, but it's through staff, and this introduces
a lot of elements of human failure. When observing the
degradation myself, it's always in the lowest levels of the compound,
or the furthest reaches of a floor. They have a
theory that the building is strained, bloated beyond its limits.
We are constantly adding more flaws, more rooms, more functions,
and whatever. This anomalous building is is finally struggling to
keep up, but we cannot stop. Every day there is
an influx of new prisoners fresh from the external team.
Threats that cannot be left unchecked in the outside world.
They need to be put in containment, and this is
the only place that can hold them. The prison started
as the first anomaly, the first prisoner, but when its
term has ended, it could spell danger when everything we've
collected gets out. Greg had always seemed untouchable. He was
the type of guy who could talk a cop out
of a ticket or drunk and half conscious, then somehow
get the same cop to drive him home. So when
his sister called me crying, struggling to get her words out,
I thought something had happened to their mom. When she
finally managed to speak, I had to ask her to
repeat herself. It turned out that the police found Greg's
body in his apartment after his boss called in a
wellness check when he didn't show up to work for
two days. The responding officers broke down the door and
found him in the living room. They wouldn't let the
family see the body. From what his sister had heard
when she had caught the officers on Braig discussing the scene,
his limbs were twisted, his spine curved like someone had
wrung him out from both ends, and his eyes were gone.
Whoever had done it was sadistic beyond belief there was
no forced entry or weirdly enough signs of a struggle.
The case was being ruled as suspicious, but that just
meant they didn't never clue who was behind it. Despite
having a wide net of friends, Gregg's funeral was small.
Only a few people made it in person. Jamie hugged
me outside the church. Her eyes were red and a
make up had started to smear, but she still looked
the same, sharp, blunt, unapologetic. The others were there, too,
raff and legs. We all grew up together back then.
We used the joke that we were stuck with each
other for life, and for the most part we were. Sure.
We drifted apart for a few years during college, but
we always ended up circling back. But now Greg a
part of us was a closed casket and a photo
on an easel. The priest mumbled his way through a
handful of generalities, though I didn't really listen. I kept
looking around the room, half expecting Greg to appear at
the back and make some sarcastic comments about how weird
it was to watch people cry over you. For a moment,
I thought I saw movement near the exit, but my
brain had been playing tricks on me since the night
I got the call. After the burial, we stood in
a loose, uneasy circle in the parking lot. None of
us seemed ready to go home. Then Jamie brought up
that night at the lake when Greg fell off the
dock trying to chug a beer upside down. We laughed.
Then the laughter felt wrong. I still don't get what
the hell happened, Ralph muttered. Nobody knew how to respond.
Our silent grieving was interrupted by a man in his
late forties wearing a plain suit with thinning brown hair.
He moved with a kind of tired professionalism that told
me he'd been doing this a long time. He stopped
just outside our circle and introduced himself, Detective Harlan. Sorry
to intrude. His tone was respectful. You were Greg Sutton's
closest friends, right. We all nodded. I was wondering if
I could ask a few questions. I understand today is
not ideal, but I found people tend to remember important
things in the hours after a funeral brings things into focus.
I know you people have he been interviewed and questioned.
I'm aware that none of you are deemed to be suspects,
but Jamie crossed our arms. Go ahead. Did Greg have
any enemies? I'm aware you've been asked this question before,
but are you absolutely certain there's no one from the past,
someone who held a grudge, maybe something that didn't seem
serious but could have been taken the wrong way. No,
Ralph said immediately. Everyone liked Greg. I don't mean dislike,
I mean resentment anyone he wronged, even by accident. We
looked at each other. I could tell we were all
thinking the same thing. No, I said, finally, not that
we know of. He nodded slowly understood. Did he mention
anything rained recently, unusual messages, people showing up where they shouldn't,
anything like that. He shook her head. Last question, does
the name Danny mean anything to you? There? It was
his tone hadn't changed, but I felt my chest tightened.
I glanced around. Everyone held the same expression as me. No,
Jamie said, doesn't ring a bell. The detective watched us
for a moment. I could tell he didn't buy it,
but he didn't press. He thanked us, gave us his card,
and walked off towards his car. As soon as he
was out of earshot. Ralph led out a shaky breath.
Danny true Low, I said a name I hadn't said
aloud in over a decade. Danny had been in our
class from sixth grade until the middle of sophomore year.
He was a thin kid with a quiet voice and
thick glasses. He was always hunged forward, like he was
trying to disappear. He didn't fit in, and we didn't
let him. To make it simple, we bullied the kid.
The last time we saw him, we did something that
was supposed to be funny. Adare Raff said he couldn't fit.
Jamie said we should find out. It was after school
and the hallway was empty. Gregg blogged the nearest stairwell
while I held the door. Danny fought harder than I
thought he would. He cried, screamed, and begged. It only
made us more determined. I remember the heat of his
shoulder press against mine as we forced him into a locker.
I remember the sound of metal slamming shot, the way
it echoed, and his fists pounding from the inside while
we walked away. I don't know how long it was stuck,
maybe until the janitor came in the next morning. Maybe
longer after that, he was gone, and that changed something
in all of us. The school didn't make a big
deal of it, which in hindsight, was to be expected.
One of the guidance counselors said he transferred. Some whispered
that his parents pulled him out after a breakdown. There
were rumors about his mom showing up in tears at
the principal's office, demanding to know what happened. We didn't
face any consequences, and we stopped thinking about him until now.
I don't think it means anything, Ralph said, could be
a coincidence. Some one with the same name. Jamie frowned.
He said, Danny, not the full name. Sure could have
been any Danny, But why Notarth did the detective bring
that name up in the first place? What if it
was him, though, Leg said. Ralph rolled his eyes. Jeez,
don't start, I'm serious. Leg said. He said the name
right after asking if Gregg had any enemies. That means something.
Ralph snapped, You really think some kid we bullied fifteen
years ago came back and twisted Gregg into a goddamn pretzel.
Ralph softened a little. We were bad, yeah, but we
were kids. I don't feel good about it either, he continued,
But that doesn't mean we jumped to wild ast theories.
Gregg's dead. That's horrible enough without spinning it into a
revenge fantasy. We don't even know if Danny's alive, Jamie
exhaled through his nose. Look, if it turns out something
more is going on, we'll talk to the cops right now.
We'd sound insane. You want us to bring up a
kid we bollied fifteen years ago in a murder case.
I shook my head, no, exactly. We agreed not to
bring it up again. We went home, each returning to
our separate houses under the glossed street light and the
silent orbit of patrol cars. I lay in bed for
hours with the covers pulled up to my chin, staring
at the ceiling and reminiscing. The next day, raph and
I were at his place, sitting on the couch of
the television on, though neither of us was watching it.
A game was playing, but the volume was low, yet
neither of us had the energy for small talk. We
hadn't seen Jamie since the funeral, and didn't talk about
Greg anymore, not because we were already moving on, but
because we didn't know how to carry the weight of
what happened, it sat between us like a third person
in the room. We were speaking about some things, trying
to crack the silence that loomed, when we were interrupted
by an incoming call on RAF's phone, his mom. He
answered it on speaker, Raf, she said, and a voice
cracked halfway through his name. Something happened at Lex's apartment complex.
He sat forward slowly, eyes narrowing, already braced. What do
you mean someone's dead? She said, it's bad. Have you
not seen the news? They said, She couldn't finish. We
both stared at the phone. Ralf asked for details. She
didn't have many. He hung up without saying goodbye, then
turned to me, pale and still we need to go
check up on Les. On the drive to Lex's place,
Ralph drowned his fingers on the steering wheel the entire time,
a nervous ticket had since middle school. By the time
we pulled up to the complex, who was blocked off
with poleae tape. Flashing lights turned the lot into a
mess of collar and shadow. An officer out front was
talking to a reporter. She asked if he was related
to the sudden case. The officer said they couldn't comment.
The reporter kept pressing. She mentioned the name. We weren't
expecting to hear les. We got back in the car
without saying anything. We drove straight to the police station.
Ralph ran to red lights. I didn't stop him. O
silence had turned heavy, and there was less shock and
more fear. Now we walked through the glass doors, and
we met with a sound of voices, paper shuffling, and
phones ringing. The front desk officer looked up, recognized us somehow,
and nodded us through without much hassle. Jamie was already there.
She sat in one of the waiting chairs near the front,
arms folded, foot tapping. Her hair was tied back in
a loose bun and looked like she hadn't slept. Her
face went stiff when she saw us. I heard already,
She said, did you Ralph nodded yeah. I wanted to
contact you guys, but I was in such a rush
to get to the police station. I was so scared
after finding count I. Jamie stood and walked down the
hall with us. I already told them we need to
talk to detective Harlan, he's in a meeting. This wasn't
a coincidence, I said, and I hated how thin my
voice sounded. This person is clearly targeting our group Danny,
Jamie said, biting down on the word. You think it's him,
I don't know who else it could be. We waited.
Eventually Harlan came out of a side hallway. His eyes
moved across the three of us before settling. He didn't
look surprised. He waved us into a back room without
a word. Once the door shut, Jamie spoke, first, we
lie to you about Danny. The detective nodded slowly. I figured,
Ralph stepped forward. We knew him a long time ago.
We went to school together. His name is Danny Truieloh
what happened? We bullied him, I said hard. It wasn't teasing.
It was full and cruelty. We pushed him out of
that school, maybe out of his mind. We locked him
in a locker and left him overnight. Then he was gone.
The detective took a breath and rubbed his jaw. You
didn't mention that, no, Jamie said, because well, we didn't
want to bring him up. We thought we were all
being weird of conspiracy theorists. You think he's doing this
after all these years. He was the last person we
ever hurt. I said, Danny going away changed us. We
felt guilty. He looked at the table, then back at us.
We've had that name at both scenes. Danny no other
traces or clues. Whoever did it definitely knew Gregg and
now Lex. If you're saying this person might be Danny Shruillo,
then that gives me something to go on. We'll start
pulling records and see what we can dig up. If
you think your targets, I'll make sure patrols stay in
your area in case this person comes back, find him.
Raf said, please. After we left the station, I couldn't sleep.
I kept picturing my dead friends. I waited until morning
and then started calling around. The high school secretary remembered me.
She didn't remember Danny, not until I gave her his
last name. I lied and told her it was for
an old alumni project. She gave me the principal's name
from that year and said he'd retired but might still
have some information on him. I contacted Raff and Jamie
about it, and we all tried getting as much information
as we could. Later that day, Jamie sent a message
in the group chat, and she told us she drove
to the local records office. She had a hard time,
but apparently she managed to get something. Danny's parents were
found dead in their home less than a week after
he moved. Both bodies showed signs of massive internal trauma,
blunt force and tearing. No weapon was recovered, and no
one was arrested. The case was marked undetermined and closed
after eight weeks. The report was cold and clinical. He
was relocated to a state facility new residents sealed per
court order. That was it. There was no trace of
him after that. It was as if he disappeared completely.
I stared at the block of take my phone. My
hands were shaking, but I didn't notice, and on my
phone started to slip from my grip. I used to
think guilt was something you felt in moments right after
something happened, or when someone confronted you about it. But
it wasn't like that. It spread. It pushed into your
ribs and your spine and made it hard to breathe.
I knew what we did to him was cruel. I
knew that for years, but I never thought about where
he went, or what came next, or who he had
become to survive. Jamie came over the next night. I
heard a knock and felt a flash of panic in
my chest before I saw her through the people. She
was holding two coffees in a tray and a fast
food paper bag. Her hands were shaking slightly. I let
her in and we sat in the living room with
the TV off. Keep hearing him, she said after a while.
Gregg I nodded, yeah, I am. I haven't slept since
they found legs. I'm scared to close my eyes. I
feel like something is watching me when the lights go off,
I told her I felt the same. We laughed for
a second. The laughter came quick and shallow, with no
weight to it. We sound crazy, she said, probably are,
I replied. Then we went quiet again. The conversations after
was short and awkward, but it felt good to be
in someone's presence. I'm sure that's why she came over
in the first place. We parted ways shortly after that.
She texted me the following afternoon. The police approved it.
I'm going into Britain custody. They're placing me in a
secure prison unit. It's the safest place they've got. I
called her immediately, she didn't answer. Ten minutes later, she
sent a voice message, I'm sorry. I can't keep doing this.
I'm losing my mind. Every sound at night makes me flinch.
I barely eat. I'm scared I'll end up like Greg
and Lex, and I don't want to die screaming. This
place is safe and you guys should probably do the same.
I texted back that I understood. I told her we'd
miss her and that i'd stay in touch however I could.
She replied with her thumbs up and a broken heart emoji. Later,
Raph and I sat together in his living room. He'd
packed a duffel bag, but didn't know where he wanted
to go. He said he didn't trust any systems meant
to protect people. I didn't argue. I felt the same,
and we decided that we wouldn't be going into anything
like protective custody. He ended up crashing in my couch
that night. We made a deal to stick together for now.
We had each other, we had a weapon, and we
had police patrols circling the block. We tried pretending life
could go on. RAF kept sleeping on my couch and
I stopped logging into work entirely. We stocked up on groceries,
though most of what we bought stayed unopened. I didn't
say it out loud, but we both believed Jamie was
safer than us. She was supposed to be the one
that made it. The call came from the detective, not
the news. He didn't speak right away. I remember his
breathing more than his voice. He came through the speaker
like it'd been running or pacing. When he finally said
a name, my legs buckled. I sat down on the
floor next to the coffee table or raft stood frozen
by the door. They found her that morning, dead in
her cell. Her body was destroyed, and somehow there were
no traces. The prison's availlance system had failed overnight. All
footage from a wing was blacked out. Between three oh
two and three seventeen a m. Three guards were found
unconscious outside a unit, and again that name, Danny raph
and I sat in silence. After the call ended. He
put his head in his hands. I could hear him
whispering to himself. He didn't cry, but he shook hard
enough that the glass on the table rattled. Detective Harlan
came to the house later that day. He looked like hell, look,
he said, voice low. I understand you boys don't want
to be placed in police custody, not after what has happened.
But I say this as a friend, not as a
government body. Now pack your things and get the hell
out of here. We didn't reply, but he continued, I've
got nothing to go on, he said, solemnly. We're increasing patrols.
I've pulled favors for federal assistance with this person, who
he assumed is Danny Truillo, is skilled to a degree
I've never witnessed in my life. The thing's happening at
these scenes don't make sense. I've seen twenty year veterans vomit,
and what was left to that girl. He shook his
head and stood, we'll keep a car outside. But if
I were you, I damn it all to hell and
go as far away as you can. After the detective
left raph and I decided to follow his advice. I
brought up a plan, said we could go west, stay
with my cousin, disappear until this all blew over. We
wanted this case solved, we truly did, but we were
too scared, Ralph said going west would still mean being close.
Jamie was in a maximum security location, and Danny somehow
got to her. We packed our things, decided we'd start
the following morning. Drove until we reached the coast, and
then decided from there. I woke to the sound of
something pounding that night. It took a few seconds to
understand what I was hearing. My mind was still fogged
with sleep. I sat up and reached the gun instinctively.
I'd replayed what if situations hundreds of times in my
mind already. The pounding came again, three dull thuds somewhere
on the other side of the house. I called out
a RAF. No answer. I moved toward the hallway, keeping
the gun raised. I tried not to think about why
the air smelled sour. I tried not to think at all. RAF,
I whispered, still nothing. I reached the door to the
guest room and stood outside it. I could hear something
moving on the other side, a wet, dragging sound like
wet meat pulled across the wood floor. My fingers closed
around the doorknob. I turned it and pushed. The door
opened slowly, hinges creaking, loudly. The smell hit me first,
rot and bile. The room was dim. The blackout curtains
kept most of the light out, but there was enough
from the hallway to make out shapes. Raf was on
the bed, Oh what was left of him. His body
was bent in half, his spine cracked backward. One arm
had been torn, cleaned off, and tossed against the wall.
His jaw hung open from one hinge, the tongue swaying
beneath it. It, on the other hand, was hunched over him.
The creature looked up when I stepped inside. Its skin
was tight and gray, pulled so thin I could see
every bone beneath it. Saws ran up its back and neck,
leaking a dark yellow fluid that clung in thick strings.
Its arms were long, ending in hands that dragged down
to the floor. Each finger tipped in what looked more
like bone than claw. Its chest heaved with uneven, wet breaths.
It didn't move. I raised the gun and entered the
clip into its torso. Each shot hit, but it didn't
fall or seemed fazed at all. It stepped toward me
like the bullets had annoyed it. I turned and bolted
down the hallway. Behind me, the door exploded. I felt
pieces of it bounce off my back. The thing was
moving faster now I could hear its feet slapping the floor.
I reached the bedroom, slammed the door and locked it.
I grabbed the dresser and pushed it in front of
the frame, then the bookshelf. My breath came too fast.
My chest clambed down in waves. I could barely see straight.
I darled nine one one, but before the operator could
even pick up, glass burst behind me in an irruption
of sound and wind. It came in all at once,
the window imploding inward, sprang sharps across the room. Hands
grabbed me from behind. One clamped round my wrist, the
other gripped my shoulder. The next thing I knew, my
feet were off the floor and a voice was barking
into my ear. Move He dragged me through the broken
window frame, and I hid the lawn hard. My shoulder
slammed into the dirt. I rolled, tasting blood in the
back of my throat. Behind us, the bedroom door cracked open.
Get up, the man said, He bawled me again. We
ran through the yard, past the claps garden bed over
the gravel path that tore up my souls. My legs
moved on instinct, powered by nothing but fear. I didn't
even know what was going on anymore. There was a
car parked two houses down. We got to it, and
the man yanked the door open and shoved me inside,
before climbing in after me. He started the engine without hesitation.
It spluttered and groaned, but it roared to life. We
peeled away from the curb. I turned to the man
behind the wheel, heart pounding. What the hell was that thing?
I asked? And who even are you? He looked over
at me slowly. His face was worn down to the bone.
Deep creases were carved across his cheeks and forehead. His
eyes darker than I remembered anyone's eyes being, watched me
for a second, longer than felt comfortable. Me, Danny, he said.
My mind refused the process what he just told me.
This man couldn't be the same kid we stuffed into
a locker. This man looked like he'd walked through deserts
and lived in parking garages. His beard was wild, patchy
around the jawline, thick in the middle. His voice carried
gravel in every word. You're Danny Truilo. He nodded. Before
I could respond, he spoke again. I just want to
say I forgave you, he said a long time ago.
I wanted to speak, but I let him continue. I
used to lie awake every night, he said, back when
I lived at home. I used to pray to anything
that might have been listening. God, Od, demons, shadows on
the ceiling. I didn't care what it was. I just
begged for something to take them all away. Everyone who
hurt me, my parents, the kids at school, anyone who
made me feel smaller than dirt. His hands tightened, and
the steering wheel. And one night after you guys stuffed
me in a locker, I was more adamant that something
answered than ever before. And something did answer. He stared
ahead again, eyes glassy expression. Still he wasn't recalling it
like a memory. He was reciting it something he told
himself so many times the words had become carved into
the inside of his skull. For first to go were
my parents. I found them in the living room. My
dad's back was snapped in half. My mom she'd been
folded into the carpet. The police said it was some
kind of freak collapse. They moved me into a home
two towns over, and that should have been the end
of it. But it wasn't. He finally looked at me again.
He kept going every name I had ever whispered in anger,
every person I wished Harman, every curse I made with
tears in my eyes. It hunted them down, one by one,
sometimes years later, sometimes across the country. His voice dropped lower.
You were the last because you were far. That's it.
You lived too far. And it took time. I didn't
know what to say. I didn't know it would last
this long, he said. I thought it would burn out
or turn on me. I tried to keep ahead of it.
I really did. I moved every six months. I tried
attacking it, and every solution you could think of, I've
probably tried it. It didn't help. I'm sorry about Greg,
I'm sorry about Les Jamie Raff. I tried my best.
The car sat in silence for a long time. Danny's
story drifted through the air like a bad smell that
wouldn't leave. I turned toward him, my voice catching before
it escaped my throat. How do we stop it? He
didn't answer right away. He reached between the seat and
the center console and pulled out a dented metal thermas.
He unscrewed the lid and took a sip. The smell
that rose up was sharp and chemical. My stomach turned.
Preparing for years, he said, testing things. I don't know
if it's alive in the way you and I are,
but it reacts to pain. I've harmed it before, so
it can die. How I've built something that might work.
Ammunition soaked in a mix I've been tweaking for the
better part of a decade, silver powder, industrial salt, lye
iron fillings, and a few other things. He reached into
his pocket and took out a single round. The casing shimmered,
not with polish, but something deeper, something buried in the metal.
He held it between his fingers with care. I created
the first version of this bullet a few months ago.
I hate it, and that was the first and only
time I've ever heard it make a sound. My throat
was dry. How many of those do you have? Three?
And that's enough? Maybe? I leaned back, mind racing. Every
instinct in me was telling me to run, to take
whatever car I could find, and disappear into the back
roads until the fuel ran out, but there was nowhere
left to run. I'd seen what happened to people who
tried hiding. What do you need from me, I asked.
Danny looked over, his voice quieter. Now it needs bait,
and you're the last name left. I nodded. There was
nothing else to say. We made it to an abandoned house.
Eventually the porch leaned toward the dirt. We drove in
under the moonlight and killed the engine a few hundred
feet back to avoid drawing attention. Inside the house was worse.
The walls were covered in pages, scribbled diagrams, symbols, names, ingredients.
Half of them I didn't recognize. The other half made
my skin itch. There were dozens of shellcasings lined up
on a cracked bugshelf. A single mattress lay in one corner,
soaked through with old sweat. Danny opened a chest in
the back and pulled out the weapon. It was a
hunting rifle, heavily modified, with wire wrapped around the barrel
and scratches etched into the stalk. He held it like
a man holding a relic, not at aol. I'll take
the shot, he said. You stay in the center of
the room. Tried to distract it. We waited. Hours passed,
The moon drifted. Every sound made my muscles twitch. I
sat on the floor with the empty gun from my
house across my lap. It was useless now, but I
couldn't let go of it. At some point the wind died.
Danny raised the rifle without a word. The door exploded inward.
It moved through the door, leaving no trace behind. His
chest rose and fell in quick jerks. Plus spilled from
the holes in its shoulders. His head tilted as it
found me. Danny fired. The creature shrieked. A high, rattling
sound cut straight through my brain. It reared back, Smoke
rising from the impact point his chest streamed. The flesh
there blistered and pealed. It lunged. I ducked behind the
table while Danny reloaded the thing through the couch aside
and slammed its clawd hand into the floor I had
been seconds earlier. Wood split open. I rolled and kicked
out at its ribs. It didn't flinch. Danny shouted and
fired again. This time it hit the spine. The thing
screamed again, louder, and twisted in itself in mid air.
His body started to clapse inward. His torso folded over
its own shoulders, Cracking like ice under pressure, It swung
toward Danny. I moved before it could reach him. I
grabbed the fire poker from the hearth and jabbed it
into the side of its skull. Its head snapped to
the side, black icos spilling around the wound. The stench
hit hard, my eyes watered. Danny raised the rifle one
last time, fired into its throat. That did it. The
body froze, Its limbs trembled and bent inward, collapsing against
its own weight. A low moan echoed through the room.
Then it fell apart into ash. I dropped the poker
and stood, coughing through the smoke. Danny leaned against the wall,
one hand pressed to his ribs. The silence after the
creature fell apart pressed on the inside of my skull.
My ears rang not from the volume, but from the
vacuum that followed it. Dust drifted to the air where
it had been. Danny dropped the rifle and slid down
the wall. His knees gave out first, and he ended
up sitting on the floor with his back to the
crumbling dry wall. His breathing was uneven, and he had
one arm pressed against his ribs. I saw a line
of red seeping through his shirt, trailing down from beneath
his elbow. He looked up at me through strands of
sweat drenched hair. We did it, he said. I nodded.
I didn't have anything to say. My throat was raw
and my chest ached. Don He motioned for me to
come closer. I stepped over to him. He reached behind
and pulled out a revolver. He didn't lift it toward me,
he held it between his knees. I need you to
shoot me. I stared at him. What in the side?
Nothing vital enough to look real? I took a step back.
Why would I do that? Because the police are going
to needs and want to blame. They're not gonna take
this story and put it in a report. You know that.
He tilted his head and met my eyes. His voice
stayed calm. You shoot me. Tell them I lost it.
Tell them I killed your friends, came for you next.
You fought back, barely survived. I take the blame. It's over,
and you go home. That's insane. You've saved my life.
His gaze didn't waver I crouched next to him and
grabbed his arm. There has to be another way. There isn't.
He pressed the gun into my hand. No one's gonna
believe what we saw. You know that. You can barely
believe it yourself. I can see it all over you.
What we killed didn't leave proof. This nobody or explanation
you can give to the cops. They'll think you snap too,
unless you have someone to point to. I'm not doing this.
Danny leaned back and let his head rest against the wall.
His eyes closed for a moment, then opened again. If
you don't do this, they'll keep digging. He'll end up
locked away, worse blamed for it. They already think I'm
a ghost. Make it real. I sat there, gripping the revolver,
feeling its weight press into my palm. You don't owe
me this, I said. He didn't answer. I raised the
gun slowly, hands trembling. I aimed at the soft space
below his ribs. Do it, he said, I pulled the trigger.
Danny groaned and slumped sideways, one hand clamping down over
the wound. Blood poured between his fingers and darkened his shirt.
He didn't scream, He didn't even fall fully. He slid
until his shoulders hid the floor, then gave me a
small nod. Call them, he said, through his teeth, Tell
them it's over. I did. The sirens reached us twenty
minutes later. I stood outside, blood on my shirt, hands raised,
gun on the ground. They moved fast, weapons drawn, shouting commands.
I gave them the story Danny told me to give.
The detective didn't argue. Danny was loaded into an ambulance
under heavy restraint. I never saw him again. The press
latched onto the narrative, a local tragedy, her case with
decades of history. An unstable man allegedly traumatized by years
of bullying returned to take revenge. Authorities called it her revenge,
prey rooted in trauma and delusion. The public swallowed it whole.
I was left empty in a hollow. Everyone that surrounded
me was now dead. I spent a few months organizing
funerals and accompanying grieving parents and siblings. I would later
find out that Danny died in custody, wounds from the
bullet I had given him. I wrestled with that for
a while. I had killed him twice the first time
in a locker, and the second time with a bullet,
and I don't know which one I regret more