《My Eyes!》


 Thief

    I''d been drinking a bit too much that night and awoke in a muddled stupor, dragging myself to the kitchen and downing a tall glass of water to mediate my upcoming hangover. After gagging the water back, I wiped my mouth and switched the faucet on again to refill the glass. As the water rushed into the glass, I glanced out of the window hanging above the kitchen sink and saw the thing staring at me from the black of night. I caught its glowing yellow cat-like eyes and my glass ran over while I was holding it. I was frozen, unable to scream.


    At some point I managed to shut off the faucet while maintaining that stare and sat the glass in the sink, forgetting its existence. The eyes moved through the darkness out on the black edges of my backyard. I can''t say how I know it, but that thingknewI was keeping it in my eyesight and so it came closer. It stalked through my yard until the motion sensor light attached to the corner of the outside of my home clicked on and exposed its veiny blue flesh. The face was misshapen and folded in upon itself so that there seemed to be no mouth there, but that wasn''t it at all. Its mouth was flaccid, and its lips were pursed tightly. It simply had no teeth. It mushed its blue lips back and forth, no doubt rubbing its gums together in feverous anticipation. Anticipation of what, I can not say.


    After pressing its perplexingly flat hands against the window above the sink, mere inches from my face, it cantered into the night on all fours. The thing¡¯s arched spine showed its individual vertebrate in great detail as it went beneath the pale moon.


    I shuddered and wrapped myself into a burrito on my bed, attempting to persuade myself the night¡¯s events were due to the fact that I was tired and coming off of a hard bender; I almost convinced myself as I came to a feverish burning drunk-slumber that it was nothing more than a half-cocked delusion.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    I awoke with my two front teeth missing. Had I injured myself at some point in my previous bleary stupor? As I peered into my open mouth in the bathroom mirror, I recalled the monster from the previous night. The gums where my teeth had been were tender but without blood. I was aghast, mortified, confused.


    My tongue found the space all day long and continuously prodded it without any conscious effort.


    That night, I sat in the kitchen and waited for the thing to come back.


    Sometime between midnight and one, I saw those glowing yellow eyes. This time, they moved manically like an excited dog. It took no time for the thing to come straight up to its station and press its hand against the kitchen window. I glanced at the back door leading from the kitchen and made sure it was locked. The eyes watched me, but my attention was drawn from them to its mouth. The damned thing was smiling! It had two fresh teeth at the front of its mouth like a bunny rabbit.


    "You sonofabitch." I whispered at the glass between us. It did not burst through the window as one might expect it to. I harbor no fantasies that it is too weak to break the glass. It simply waits until I sleep.


    I drank coffee and tried staying up all night. Just as the sun illuminated my home, I drifted off to sleep, so sure that I''d conquered the time it could infiltrate the premises of my home.


    I came to sometime in the evening and was immediately struck by an overwhelmingly strange taste in my mouth. As I worked my jaw, I came to the realization that my gums were coated in benzocaine. I had not a single tooth left in my mouth. I''m not proud to admit that I cried for a short while, clinging to my pillow, and pacing through my home like a sad, toothless troglodyte.


    I waited for the thing to come again.


    It did, this time moving to the window with a full devilish grin. My skin crawled. I was pissed. I was shaking; be it from anger or terror, I don''t know. As it pressed its uncannily flat hands against the glass of the window and clawed at it, I noticed something. The thing had no fingernails.


    I cannot sleep.

 Fingers

    I work in sewage management, and it is about as luxurious as it sounds. I deal with shit all day. Literally. It pays the bills, I suppose.


    I''m relatively new in the field, only having worked in it for the past couple of weeks. Lots of the older guys like to pick on me, calling me green around the gills or a little too mannish for a girl. Normally I respond with a nice big middle finger. This attitude caused me to fit in immediately, though I don¡¯t think my coworkers¡¯ snide comments about me being mannish are totally unwarranted. I helped my grandpa on the farm when I was a little girl. I worked under the table when I was sixteen, helping fill pillows down at the local textile factory. Needless to say, my hands are larger and coarser than most women my age.


    As it turns out the majority of people raise a fuss over raw sewage backing up into their homes before they worry about anything else. Most of the job doesn¡¯t involve backed-up sewage though. Most of my duties revolve around maintenance so that that very thing does not happen.


    It wasn''t long till I heard rumors of the Fingers Man that lives in the tunnels under the streets and beneath our feet.


    Gordy, one of the burly foremen that supervise teams was the first person I ever heard tell tale about the Fingers Man. It was lunch time and we all sat on the side of the road, hidden from passerby behind the work truck while munching on packed sandwiches and balancing on busted plastic milk crates. The sun was still high in the sky, but the truck''s shadow rebuffed some of the heat.


    There were four of us. Me, Gordy, John, and Joaquin shot the shit while guffawing through hunks of food.


    "You see anything strange down there yet?" asked Gordy while looking at me.


    I shook my head while nibbling into a juicy tomato that hung over the bread. "Just rats."


    "Rats are the least of your worries, ya''know."


    I raised an eyebrow at him while he tossed his empty sandwich bag into the cooler between his legs. I''d yet to see this kind of attitude pour out of him. Most of the time Gordy could be described as a jolly old soul. Always cheery, always patting the belly beneath his beard that led down towards his belt like a cartoon dwarf come to life. John and Joaquin both sat quietly. No laugh could be heard. Only the zooming of cars passing by on the road met my ears.


    "You never seen anyone else down there?" he asked me, stone cold seriousness exuding from him as he craned forward over his knees and pushed his hands together.


    This was strange. I was sure it was some kind of prank. They were hazing me, of course. That was the only explanation. "Like the boogeyman?" I wiggled my fingers at him, mimicking a ghost.


    He coughed into his hand. "Erhm. Yeah''. Something like that. Sure, I guess you could call him that if you''d like."


    "Him?" I asked.


    "The Fingers Man."


    "The fingers man?" I cracked a grin.


    "He normally shows up when you''re alone."


    "Bullshit."


    Joaquin jumped in. "He''s telling the truth."


    I looked at the three men sitting in the circle with me. Only serious faces peered back. Apparently both John and Joaquin both lost their appetites, because they put away their unfinished lunches, John lighting a cigarette. "There ain''t no damned fingers man in the sewage tunnels."


    "I seen him," that was John, "He moves so fast sometimes, you''re not even sure he was there at all." He sighed. "Must live on the rats and waste down there." He grimaced at the thought of this and flicked the ash from the tip of his cigarette.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Gordy brushed his beard with an open palm. "For real. It''s wild. You''ll be focused on a burst pipe or looking for a spot to step without getting piss in your boot and then bam, he''s there." He smacked his palms together.


    I went all doe eyed. "Oh really? Well I hope that one of you big strong boys will be there to rescue me if he ever comes for little ol'' me." I laughed at the bunch of them.


    Gordy grinned at me, shaking his head. He stood, tossed the empty milk carton he was sitting on back into the truck, stepped over to me and said, "Back to work, Stacy." while patting me on the shoulder.


    Later that night, I found it hard to use the toilet in my apartment. I kept staring into the bottom of it, wondering whether or not I would see fingers poking out from the bowl, beckoning me to take a seat. I was being ridiculous. I knew that. Still I hovered without touching the porcelain while urinating.


    I made my boyfriend spoon me all night, but I could not sleep a wink.


    The next day, I hopped in the shower, rode up to the station, and geared up.


    First on the docket was a simple repair job so I went out alone with Gordy, still rubbing my exhausted eyes while he drove. Apparently, a pipe had sprung a leak that was long overdue for fixing. I had to go down, apply the sealant, wait for it to dry, then come back up and mark it off as done. Easy peasy.


    I donned my headlamp and belt while Gordy set up plastic cones and removed the manhole. The entry point was in an alley way so Gordy would stay above ground and keep a look out. Very much not OSHA approved, I''m sure.


    I moved down the ladder while clicking the light on my forehead. Once I reached the walkway, I looked around. There was the familiar sound of dripping fluids and the echoing sound of my own footfalls. I slipped into my mask and goggles. This was something I should have done before going down and I regretted not doing so immediately. The stench was cringe inducing and flooded into my lungs. I''ll be smelling it well into the next life.


    The walkie came alive on my hip with Gordy''s voice, "Look alive down there." Long pause. "I know you thought I was kidding, but if you see him, you come right back up."


    I pulled the walkie to my mask and blew the loudest raspberry I could manage. Hazing the new blood. I''d seen that happen before in plenty of social circles, but at a certain point, they''d have to drop the act.


    I found the leak quickly enough. Without much ado, I got to work, kneeling, and applying the sealant from its spray canister. I had to be careful so as to not get any on me. That stuff is nasty. The sealant made quick work of the leak. I waited patiently for it to dry, ten minutes, then applied another coat.


    It sounded as though a rock ricocheted from one of the walls a bit further into the tunnel. I turned my head and my light followed.


    He stood there at the end of the tunnel where it split in opposite directions. His eyes glowed yellow like a cat''s in the light. He had his back turned towards me, but his head was tucked in between his legs and he stared at me with his head next to his misshapen genitalia. Long dark hair flowed down to his ankles.


    "You get it?" Gordy''s voice chattered through the walkie.


    I didn''t dare move.


    We stared at each other for a moment in that dark tunnel. I swallowed dry so hard I could feel my jawbone click into place.


    He leapt onto my walkway, maintaining his strange stance, still watching me through his legs. I could focus on nothing but the sound of the sewage sludging by in the bottom of the tunnel. I couldn¡¯t move. I urged my legs to take me away. They wouldn''t.


    "Stacy. Full disclosure. You''re freaking me out." I could hear apparent panic coming from the walkie.


    I don''t know when he¡¯d gotten so close to me, but there he was, within arm¡¯s reach. I could see him clearly, more than ever. The skin was covered in lesions and scarring. The hands expanded out over his arched and twisted back. The fingers stood out against the darkness like massive wings, stretching out three feet each.


    "Goddammit Stacy! I''m coming down!" said Gordy through the walkie.


    Without my permission, my hand grabbed the canister of sealant. I sprayed the demon-thing squarely in his eyes.


    No reaction. The fresh coat of sealant dripped from his upside-down face. He stayed in place.


    His fingers were bending towards me. He was going to grab me whole.


    I began stepping backwards slowly, expecting that he would lunge at me at any moment. He never did. His fingers bobbed, still extending towards me.


    I walked backward towards the entry point, never taking my eyes off him.


    I climbed the ladder, always maintaining eye contact as I moved. As I lost sight of him and pulled myself to the surface, I saw him wiggling his fingers at me like a spooky ghost.


    That''s the boogeyman.


    We closed the manhole. I was in shock.


    Gordy grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. "Stacy. Did you see him?" he sputtered out while his face twisted into a beet red.


    "Take me home." I said.


    Every time I''m alone in the bathroom, I see a long finger that breaches the surface of the water, beckoning for me to take a seat.


    I think he''s hungry and I won''t feed him.

 Ingrown

    When I was younger, I was shy and would let my hair grow out to about my shoulders so that I could cover part of my face with it. Call it what you will, but it always felt like a physical barrier between me and the outside world, however inconsequential it may have been. I caught all sorts of flak for it. My parents would incessantly pester me about cutting it; others in school would make fun of me for looking like a girl and sometimes bigger kids would pull it. As I grew older and joined an anarchist rock band, the problems with my hair grew into positives and with that, I grew a little more outgoing. Girls loved it and I have to admit, it did look way cooler when I head banged. After school, and well after I''d left the garage band, I got a job in retail and worked my way into management. All this time I kept my long hair until it became unmanageable and I was forced to use a hair tie to wrangle it into a neat ponytail. It reached my waist.


    Time went on.


    I remained single and lived a relatively solitary lifestyle beyond my work and online gaming. I''m not sure what it was, really. I don''t know what made me keep my hair. Maybe it was to serve as a reminder to my young rocker days or maybe it felt nice to have people comment on its shine. I liked it. I liked brushing it before work. I liked surprising people when I let it down and shook it around.


    But the other night I had a terrible nightmare where I was at the dentist. The dentist stood over me as I lay confined to his chair. He was looking down at me, shaking his head. "Tsk tsk tsk. No good." He said. I was confused and wanted to run from his office, but when I looked down to the restraints on my arms, I saw I was pinned to the arm rests by giant bolts pushed through my forearms. This made me struggle more. The dentist hardly seemed to notice my shaking howls. He went over to one of his cabinets and withdrew a big green bib, coming back over to gently place it underneath my chin. "All better. Yes?" he asked while grinning. His teeth were iron prosthetics.


    He pulled at some device above my head, swiveling it around until it was positioned right in front of me. It was a hose, and he began feeding it into my mouth and down my throat until I could feel it in my stomach. He flipped a switch somewhere on the device and suddenly I couldn''t breathe. I heard a whirring from somewhere behind me. He was sucking the air right out of my body. I could feel my lungs deflating as I gasped and struggled. Just as my vision began to blur, I awoke.


    I shot up in bed and looked around. As the familiar setting of my bedroom''s shadows quelled my anxiety, I noticed that there was something in my mouth. I pulled at the thing and felt something come up with it, straight from the center of my chest. I choked and gagged, reaching for the light on my bedside table. Flipping it on, I looked down at the thing hanging from my lips in awe. It was my own hair. I positioned myself on the edge of my bed and mentally prepared for what I was about to do. I grabbed the hair with both hands and tugged it hard until the thing attached to the other end stopped somewhere in the back of my throat. I strained but was forced to stop when it felt like the thing would rip out my esophagus. The thing anchoring my own hair inside of me was simply too big and I let go of it, feeling it slide back down my throat until it rested somewhere in my chest again.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I went to the bathroom and flipped on the light, inspecting myself in the mirror. I looked pretty foolish with the ends of my hair stuffed into my mouth. Without even thinking, I reached for the scissors I kept for trimming split ends and sliced through the mass of hair easily enough. I sat the scissors down on the bathroom counter and attempted to steel myself against this predicament with long, deliberate breathes. The hair must''ve started a tickle because without meaning to be, I was caught up in a bout of coughing and hacking and dry heaving. With a long-panicked gasp, the newly cut ends of my hair shot down my throat and disappeared. I felt the thing they were clinging to slide down into the pit of my stomach.


    I felt sick and tried to throw up into the toilet, but nothing came. I tried convincing myself that it was just a hallucination or bad dream and nothing more, but every time I did I felt it slosh around in my gut or examined that the hair from the top of my head was barely past my shoulders. This served as evidence that I had indeed cut it. I called out of work and moved through my house like I had the flu. I made myself some breakfast but ended up throwing it out. The thought of putting something on my stomach made me nauseous.


    I went back to the bathroom and could''ve sworn that my hair had grown past my shoulder blades. This startled me but I figured I must not have accurately assessed where my hair was last.


    The next day my hair dragged along the floor and every step through my apartment felt like I was tearing through hair fibers. Allow me to explain. It felt like it was inside of my muscles and that every movement I made forced the hair inside of my body to snap so that every step I took was accompanied by almost inaudible pops similar to the sound you might hear if you pluck a hair out of your head.


    The day after that, I wasn''t even sure that my eyes had opened after waking, but that was simply because it had begun to grow from the corners of my eyes and hang down over my cheeks. Plucking the stringy wet hair from around my eyes was arduous due to the fact that every time I got a good grip on a hair to tug it out, I felt a shiver down my spine like metal. I''m no doctor, but I think the hair on my head is now growing inwardly, into my skull, and through my brain. It''s growing into my body. That doesn''t sound so bad, right? Well it''s growing out from underneath my fingernails until they die and fall away. My toenails are all gone, I think. I have at least one nail left on my right hand, but it''s hard to see through all of this hair.


    I''m sorry. I have to go. With every breath, I can hear that same popping sound from before. It will only be a matter of time until it constricts my breathing altogether, but I have a plan.


    I''ll be using gasoline.


    If there''s one thing I''ve learned having lived years with long hair, is that it hates excessive heat.


    Wish me luck.

 The Corner Store

    Everyone knows the corner store. Most people walk here it''s so close. Most people say, "I''m just going to run down to the ''corner store''". I''m sure you know it.


    He tossed his change across the metal counter and I counted each individual coin while gritting my teeth in a smile. He casually checked his phone while I slid each penny across the counter into my hand. After the coins were counted, I handed him his pack of cigarettes and he walked away while slapping the small rectangle across his palm. I said, "Have a nice day." He responded with nothing and I clenched my fists, putting my head down to stare at the ground while saying hello to the next customer in the line.


    I was nothing if not a good worker.


    This was a relatively normal day for me. Innumerable customers filing into the store, treating me like garbage. Less than garbage really. Like I was invisible. I was less-than, infinitely.


    The tinkle of the bell introduced a prominent member of the local church with her curly white hair and jam-jar lenses resting over her thin nose. She lumbered through the store for an hour and a half with a collapsing vertebra like some Lovecraftian horror. She brought her cans of cat food to the counter and told me to bag each individual can in their own separate plastic bag so that it would be easier for her to carry. There were twenty-four of the round tin objects and with each new bag I slid across the counter, a new customer accumulated in the line behind her. My nostrils flared. My eyes bulged. She stopped and told me a five-minute joke where she forgot the lines along the way. The line grew longer. I briefly imaged strangling the life from her; I could see the life energy leave her small wrinkly body. She left and I greeted the next customer.


    As day turned to night, I watched the meat dogs rolling over each metal cylinder, leaving sweat marks across them. The overhead florescent flickered and I sighed, studying my face in the reflection of the sneeze guard.


    As I reached for the glass door to lock it, a large man brushed through the entrance, through me. "Walk much?" He said, straightening the red ball cap on his head. I went to stand behind the register. We should have been closed a minute ago.


    There was no car in the parking lot but my own, illuminated by the glow of a streetlight.


    He proceeded to shop for fifteen minutes, pushing the small black wire buggy across the ancient carcinogenic tiles.


    I crouched behind the counter and waited.


    He came to the counter and pressed the small metal bell. I did not move from my hiding spot. He lifted the metal bell from the counter and began slamming it over over over over over over over over.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    I stood, broom handle in hand and jabbed the thing into his throat with all of my strength. I heard a strange cartilage-shattering noise. He toppled backwards, reaching at his buggy for support, but it was on wheels and he instead only pulled his beef jerky, dog treats, duct tape on top of himself. He reached for his throat, gurgling, gasping, groping at the empty air in front of him. Then he was still. I rounded the counter to kick his foot and be sure he wouldn''t be getting back up. No signs of life.


    I smiled.


    After counting the day''s earnings and pocketing the fat stack of green backs, I destroyed the much-outdated videotapes the boss used to survey the store using magnets and a hammer. I hid the body in the foundation, and slammed my face against the hard metal counter, sending out a rush of hot red blood down over my white work shirt. Then I phoned the boss. "We''ve been robbed." I said.


    After assuring my boss I''d be fine, and speaking with the police, I told them the assailant was wearing a red ball cap. They told me they''d find him. He couldn''t have gotten far, of course.


    I drove home, washed myself, and slept like I''d never slept before.


    I awoke early, got ready for work, and went on my way. The previous night''s shenanigans were behind me.


    After locking up the front, I rounded the back of the store to the small, latched opening at the base of the building''s foundation. I dragged the body from its hiding spot and pulled it in through the back.


    At some time or another, the corner store must have made its own tubed sausages because all of the equipment was still there. I removed the flesh from his stinking body and began making dogs. I ground his bones. Everything else I could not use, I returned to the hiding spot.


    The following day, I set the new sausages out on the rack and let them cook. The tubing bubbled strangely, but overall, the aroma was warming, and the regulars took notice. I sold half his body the first day. The second day, he was gone.


    I would be lying if I said I hadn''t indulged. What can I say? They were better than expected.


    The second night, the nightmares started. They were about a man trapped in my stomach. He was small. Small enough to fit inside of my abdomen. He cupped his hands together and attempted to yell up my throat.


    After going into work, some regulars tinkled that little bell, asking if I had ''anymore of those new dogs''. I shook my head. They left in a huff, crossing their arms.


    "I had that crazy dream again last night," I overheard two customers speaking from an aisle over, "Me too." Responded their friend. "Let''s go see if they''ve got those tasty sausages."


    The man in my dreams began pushing his fingers into my muscles, scratching, clawing, trying to free himself. I awoke with bruises across my abdomen and it hurt to stand upright. We sold out of Pepto and Antacids.


    I woke from the nightmare of the man in my stomach, covered in sweat. Not sweat. Blood. There was an index finger sticking from my belly button, from inside me. I winced, studying it in the mirror, and pushed the finger back inside.


    I showered and wrapped my midsection in gauze; sitting on my bed, I tried to logic myself out of my predicament. I had unleashed something. I had to feed it.


    After closing up for the day, a familiar face peered in through the glass door with hands cupped around her face. She had curly white hair and wore glasses. "You still open?" she pleaded. I unlocked the door with a smile.

 To Armin, My Friend

    He was always such a nice neighbor. He was always sure to ask if he was being a bother while throwing a party. He was always sure to keep his trashcans neat on the curb. He was always sure to give me a smile and a bold wave whenever catching my eye on his way out to the car for his morning commute. It was nice to have such a nice neighbor. I could always catch him in a full suit or a Mr. Rogers cardigan. He was so ideal. So quaint. So sweet and charming from afar.


    He was foreign but spoke my language so eloquently and with conviction that no one would have guessed it beyond a handful of words. He would twirl the end of one side of his mustache and push his glasses up on his nose when he would come by my home and give me a warm meat pie. He would smile with his eyes and tell me it was a secret family recipe from his homeland. My god they were the most delicious, flaky, juicy meat pies I''ve ever had. He said he would make them from scratch. The hunks of meat were so tender and smooth they would melt in your mouth, I swear! He would say the word ''friend'' a lot when speaking with me. He would reference me as such all the time and I knew he meant it.


    We would share his meat pies together at the breakfast nook in my home with two tall glasses of fresh milk and talk about this or that. He would say, "Friend, you have a bit of schmutz on your cheek there." and I would wipe the meat pie juice away with a cloth napkin and smile at him. We would do that at least once a month and it was the most wonderful time. He would talk about his homeland and always start with the words, "Friend, you know I love this place, but sometimes I miss my home." I would nod and listen to his magical words well into the twilight. On more than one occasion I would break open a bottle of brandy and we would talk and talk and talk and god he was such a good neighbor. When he would leave, he would always say the same thing, "Friend, you be good, alright?" I would wave him on and sleep with the salty hunks of meat from his pie warming me throughout the night while I dreamed of the beautiful man living next door.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    He would clip his hedges in a large and floppy sunhat and wipe his forehead and see me watching him. Want to know what he would say? He would say, "Friend, come out of the sun. It''s so hot out." and we would sit on his front lawn under his beautiful maple tree and sip lemonade and yes, of course, he would bring out a fresh meat pie and we would have such a time!


    Then he showed me ''how the sausage was made'' so to speak. He would cruise the local parks and bring home the men looking to get their rocks off. He would lead them into the bedroom and inject them with a needle while I watched from the closet. He assured them the contents of the syringe would intensify the pleasure they would feel. In all reality, it kept them totally awake but unable to respond while he ground their bones and shed their flesh. Would you like to know what he would tell me? He would tell me, "Friend, it keeps the meat tender to have them watch." He would smile at me with those beautiful gray eyes from behind those gold rimmed glasses and I would force a sheepish grin in response. The pies were even more delicious than before. It is true what they say about having a more intimate relationship with your food. It makes all the difference.


    One day I looked out of my window and saw the blue lights warbling outside of my dear friend''s home and knew he wouldn''t be coming back. I only wish I could have told him how much he meant to me. Our time together was wonderful. I read in the paper that he had perhaps fled back to his homeland. This makes me smile every time I think about it. He would say to me, "Friend, you know I love this place, but sometimes I miss my home."


    This was such a beautiful thought in the back of my mind. The lot next to mine has stayed vacant and I do miss seeing him over there, but something has happened that overjoys me. I received a package in my mailbox. It was a pan with a warm meat pie wrapped in saran wrap. The paper taped to it said this, "For my friend."


    I know he is still at large, and it makes me so giddy to know that my best friend is out there doing what he loves. He very well might just pay you a visit and call you ''friend'' too. In fact, I just know he will!

 Lamp

    It sits in a glass box in the center of my father''s study.


    He died two weeks ago. My father was found right here in this very room, slumped over in his chair, onto his desk. I was the one that found him and immediately called 9-1-1, but even as I tried to revive him by shaking his rag-doll form in a panic with the operator on the line, I knew he was well off and dead.


    It sits in a glass box in the center of my father''s study. A thick leather-bound text sits upon a podium before the glass box, cataloging the exceptional item''s past.


    We buried my father; my mother was distraught, weeping uncontrollably so that she had to be removed from the congregation during his wake. I imagined she would throw herself onto the casket as they lowered the old man into the ground, but she reserved herself to sit in the hot car alone. I threw a bit of dirt into the hole, listening to it strike the hollow surface of the black coffin. I could hear the whispers of others though. Speculation over my mother''s hysteria had not been lost on me, so it came as no surprise to me that our closest friends and family thought she''d spilled her marbles.


    It sits in a glass box in the center of my father''s study. Some paranormal enthusiasts have said the ornate making of the thing was smelted from a jinn''s lamp; some historians say it was mixed in the gold that hung from the neck of Rasputin in the original form of a religious cross. No one knows its true origin.


    I didn''t like finding my father like that one bit. He''d been having his evening tea as he wrote in one of his innumerable journals. My mother had said so. My father had spilled his cup across the desk, leaving a brown stain all across his many white papers. His eyes bulged from his head. His neck was purple. Initial speculation was some kind of strangulation or asphyxiation. Due to the marks, the detectives marking off the room in yellow tape pondered over the strange death. They said he was most likely choked by a pair of strong hands given the bruising around his neck. No sign of a real struggle though. Beyond the red scratch marks as he attempted to free his airways with his fingernails. So, that theory is no good. Poison seemed a better lead.


    It sits in a glass box in the center of my father''s study. The first known picture of it is old and faded within white borders. The gold lamp rests on a small table in the foyer of an art-deco themed home of a boisterous broker. He''s smiling with his young newborn son and young wife. The thing stands out against the decor of the rest of the room in the photo. His name was Howard Pullman. He dismembered his family with a cleaver and a meat tenderizer one week after they''d posed for the picture.


    My father adored artifacts, items of old, strange happenings and stories. It was the newest addition to his collection of books and miscellaneous possessions. My parents loved the thing. It cost quite a pretty penny, but they''d told me over the phone that it was well worth it. When they sent me a photo of the thing, it looked like a dusty busted old lamp to me.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    It sits in a glass box in the center of my father''s study. The earliest account of the thing''s existence is from an old bit of folklore involving an electrician''s apprentice that had grown smitten with the daughter of a baker. The electrician''s apprentice bought a beautiful, ornate, shapely, stunning lamp at auction cheaply, sure that he could fix its wiring issues rather easily. After returning home, the apprentice sanded off its paint only to find the thing was made of pure gold through and through. Overjoyed, he thought he could present it to the baker as a gift and earn his favor and perhaps court the baker''s daughter. The baker''s shop that doubled as the family''s home went up in flames, killing everyone. Blaming himself for his love''s death, the apprentice hanged himself.


    The wiring in the lamp when it had come into my father''s possession was kaput. After some tinkering, my father proudly showed it off to me, clicking the little switch at the thing''s neck. The light came on. He was so pleased with himself. I didn''t understand my father''s obsession with the stupid old lamp, but he would admire the thing constantly. After taking some time to read through the journals laid out over his desk, I found he''d taken to writing poetry in the name of the lamp. It''s disturbing to see his handwriting speak in these ways.


    A fireman retrieved the lamp from the rubble and brought it home without anyone else in his crew noticing. The fireman''s wife left him, and he was found with a bullet through the chest, his body rotting in a dumpster. The lamp disappeared for some time. It reappeared in Howard Pullman''s family photo.


    It sits in a glass box in the center of my father''s study. I received a call from the detective working my father''s case. The toxicology report had returned, and the detective wanted to inform me that the case was quickly becoming a bonified murder investigation.


    Howard Pullman had commented in passing with one of his colleagues that he felt like he was losing his mind. Mr. Pullman said he was more irritable and shorter tempered. He speculated that he was most likely over stressed from work. Most workaholics don''t blow off steam by murdering their entire immediate family. The lamp passed through a series of other unhappy events until a notable point in the era of bell bottoms and winged hair. A pilot came into the lamp''s possession and she apparently expressed hallucinations and irrational anger to her therapist. Her boyfriend was found with a slit throat in their shared apartment after she flew a Pan Am 747 into the side of a mountain. Survivors of the fiery crash attested that the pilot had been screaming hysterically over the intercom. When questioned about the sorts of things she was saying, one issue was made abundantly clear: she was fixated on a solid gold lamp.


    It sits in a glass box in the center of my father''s study. The detective told me they''d also tested the tea he''d been drinking. The same poison was found both in his body and spilled across his desk. Every evening, my mother would bring my father his tea. She''s humming in the kitchen now. I can hear the tinkle of a metal spoon stirring the contents of a ceramic cup. She called to me and asked if I want some tea.


    I am frozen in fear as it sits in a glass box in the center of my father''s study. The unplugged lamp''s light flickers alive impossibly.

 The Dancing Arms Sing

    They are smooth and feminine and fly through the air like delicate pale samaras.


    I am alone when I hear them. Coming from the study. Two beautiful dancing arms; they rise above me and carry me across the floor like a string-less marionette in their siren''s song.


    They pull me over the dining room table, into the foyer, and romance me across every floor. Cool blue veins run from their bodiless shoulders down to their icy grip around my neck. They careen me every which way until all that I know is them. Beautiful and haunting.


    The music whistles and echoes through my home, my heart drumming with the glorious beat of an angelic crescendo. Their song runs up from my toes and into the hairs around my ears then back down like water. They caress me and hold me in ways that no other lover ever could.


    Their fingertips play an invisible piano down my spine. The song comes through me in waves of sublime fire and just as I feel I might explode in a fervor; they crane me over softly and hold me gentler.


    There is no heaven. No hell. No end or beginning of life. No summer rosebuds or autumn leaves. Only those delicate pale arms that sing to me in the night and drive me into the purest fits of pleasure.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    I feel their song in my bones as they lead me to the second story window and cradle me over to the balcony. My knees are weak. They are as cold as the winter wind; I dance with them in a trance, sure that there has never been anything before them and surely there couldn''t be anything after. Those two divine creatures are my world, and the music that comes with them, the language painted on my soul.


    I know them as I always have. They do not creep or bump in the night, they simply dance in their melancholy way. They fill me with the joy one is sad to know, and in knowing it I am all the more woeful when it ends.


    We move together as one around the balcony and get caught in the breeze, allowing it to carry us like blades of grass along the hard ground. But with them, there is no ground. And so, it is with me.


    Abruptly they leave me, just as they''re about to dance me over the edge to my death. The mood changes sharply and I know that''s what they want. The arms want me to fall.


    I miss them every passing day that I don''t hear their song in these halls. I hope they will be back and that terrifies me.


    Now that I know them, I know I''ll ache for an eternity without them. Like a soldier away from home, I call to them when I am lonely. But they follow the heed of no man''s words. They''ll take me when they want, and I''ll be happy for it. I''ll be helpless.


    I''ve tried for a long time to remember their haunting song.


    But I hear it again now and I know I''ll have my chance to dance with them forever.

 Astro Dog: The Little Green Man and the Protein Hound

    The surface of Mars was ridiculously expansive, the apex of wilderness truly. The blanket of stars in the sky didn''t really seem to be a blanket at all. They were like great shining jewels in the deepest sea. All black with twinkles of white reaching through the vacuum of space. In a way, it made one feel not at all alone while being lonely all at once. The energy of the stars was there, sure, but they themselves were not, and the absence of them was all too much.


    Samantha Rogers, astronaut, pioneer, short woman, and all-around bookworm floated lazily through the air as she came to a rest at the back of a great hill. Her boots left deep spots in the soil where she landed and the descent itself took the breath out of her. It wasn''t a stress on her body but rather the slow way she went didn''t give her a particularly good inclination as to when she would touch the ground.


    Slowly she hopped towards the P.O.D. so that it looked like she was perpetually falling through water. Inside of her helmet she could hear the tunes of Mozart and it was wonderful. In the least, it did take her mind off of the weird thing that the gravity on Mars seemed to do to her insides. All the time, her guts were full of worms, writhing and twisting. And the music, really any constant noise to help fill the void on the surface took her mind from the weird things going on within her. The P.O.D. project had taken much longer than any of them had ever thought it would. Actually, it took longer than even the Scepter Agency themselves ever would have considered. The P.O.D. itself was a domed shelter full of its own kitchen, sleeping and living quarters, and bathroom. It had dual hatches on either end of a long hallway. The P.O.D. had held up against the elements, the dust storms, the fluctuating temperatures. Samantha was sure that she''d be dead by now. By her math she''d tallied months ago, she was sure that she would''ve starved to death by now. But she wasn''t alone in the P.O.D. so she didn''t. She was able to sustain herself on the others.


    Anyway, she''d been wrong. That was the important thing. She was alive. That''s all that mattered. She spent her time now reading and listening to music to keep her mind preoccupied so that she wouldn''t have to think about the rest. She would write sometimes, and even on a few rare occasions, she attempted to breach communication with earth, but it was to no avail. Ever since the lights had gone black on the planet and the telecoms shit out, she''d heard nothing from home. Even if she were able to contact someone back there, what would she find? She couldn''t think about what the darkness on the surface would mean. Samantha couldn''t fathom it except on the most subconscious levels of her mind. And it sucked that she couldn''t just bring these thoughts to the forefront. Samantha wondered if she was the only living person left. In the whole world. In all of the universe.


    Who could know?


    Arriving at the P.O.D. entrance, she slowed her bounce and finally stopped, putting her gloved hands against the frame of the sliding doors while catching her breath. The sun was edging up the horizon and she could feel the temperature rising in her suit. The orb of glass around her head was fogging over and she could feel sweat beading up and rolling down her nose. As she entered the pin code on the panel next to the doors, she thought maybe she''d watch the sun crest over the edge of mars. She loved doing that.


    There weren''t many things that she loved anymore, so she took this moment of little contemplation and ran with it. Sometimes she would reminisce in her head about the time she''d spent on Earth. Or maybe she would drift into a state of thought so obscure that she would never be able to put them into words or align them in a way that she could pass said thoughts off to another person. But it wasn''t any of these things that she cared about when staring off into the sunrise; the thing she cared about the most was that it made her thoughtful and thoughtless all at the same time. Very Zen.


    Passing through the depressurizing chamber, she heard the hiss of the air passing into the room and lifted the glass fishbowl-like helmet from her head and deposited it on a shelf. Then she went through the arduous task of peeling her suit from her body and hanging it up on the hook below the shelf where her helmet sat. She slicked her shoulder length hair back. It clung to the back of her neck.


    As she stepped through the second set of doors, she shivered and rubbed her arms. "Lights." And then there was light, and it was good. The overhead bulbs illuminated the main room that shared a floor with the kitchenette in the corner. In the wall behind the couch that she''d turned into her permanent sleeping quarters, there was a door left open. Through the small doorway Samantha saw a toilet and sink; she knew the tub was in there somewhere. But the weird thing about the bathroom wasn''t what was inside. After she went to the door and peeked in, she saw there was nothing notable within. No. No.


    The weird thing about the bathroom was that she didn''t remember leaving the door open. That sort of thing had been happening to her more and more frequently. It had started out as nothing more than a moved spoon or fork. They were easy to misplace, of course. But then much larger things moved around in the P.O.D. chambers. Samantha couldn''t chock it up to the pure coincidence. No, it wasn''t anything like that. Sometimes she would leave a room and come back to see a table or chair that had moved clearly across the room.


    There were two things that could be going on. She was either going mad (considering recent events, that wasn''t entirely unlikely) or there was a presence. But she wasn''t one for the supernatural. So, she liked the thought of going crazy more than being visited by some otherworldly entity. Ghosts. Gaseous Aliens. Things like that. She didn''t like that. It seemed so impractical. No, being insane was better.


    As the sliding door to the bathroom clicked shut behind her, she sighed and plopped down on the couch. "Bay window." And the wall in front of her, only a few feet away, shifted away to the left and gave way to a view of the rising sun. Only a sheet of glass stood between her and the vast emptiness of space. But there was the sun. The nearest star. It was kind of wonderful for her to think about, really.


    After gazing out at the sky for either hours or minutes, she stood and walked to the kitchenette. Then she checked the time like she always did as she passed the little battery-operated digital clock on the counter. And she stopped herself and looked down, moving past the clock. It didn''t matter. Earth time was irrelevant up here. Even more so now than before. Time was even more of a lost concept when there was only one person to pay attention to it. "What was it even there for anyway?" she asked the empty coffee pot. Speaking aloud like that- it helped her to cope with the powerful nothing she felt. Making noise, listening to music, watching the few movies in the P.O.D., and sometimes talking to herself loudly as though there was a full-fledged conversation going on between, she and herself.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    There were never any disagreements when it was just her. That was nice.


    She opened the fridge and scanned its insides. Empty. Nothing inside. Samantha knew that. She didn''t even know why she''d checked the fridge. Habit? The food- real food anyway- had been gone for weeks. When the last can of pears was gone, she had no choice but to turn her attention to the corpses. Samantha was able to fry up sheets of flesh like pork chops or bacon after cutting away the spoiling parts of her now dead astro-mates. The thing that nauseated her the most was the fact that the human meat on a frying pan smelled delicious. Just like the scent of brunch drifting from the kitchenette when Bernadette was still alive.


    Yes, there had been other astronauts, three. Of course. Dr. Bernadette Horowitz, P.O.D. Physician and unofficially named cook of the P.O.D. after she''d lost a sure poker hand to Hal. Captain Halburt Lexington, the commanding officer of Mars Mission Thirty Seven, had been a very handsome man; his hair was trimmed to perfection so that it looked like a wavy small pompadour; his eyes were a twinkling blue and his voice was as strong and solid as his jaw-line. The last and perhaps most unimpressive member of the team, physically speaking, was Engineer Larry Moroche. Larry was the one Samantha knew best. Samantha and Larry were both private contractors on the Scepter Agency''s payroll for less than half a decade combined. They''d leaned on one another socially for most of the journey up to Mars, becoming quick friends.


    Larry was as wiry and shy as Captain Hal was broad and conventionally heroic. So, it was no surprise when the two traded barbs with one another, and eventually blows.


    She was hungry. Samantha knew what she would have to do. She took the long knife with innumerable teeth from the drawer underneath the kitchen counter and went to the bathroom. She shivered and rubbed her arms again; she kept this room colder than the rest. Like a walk-in freezer. Or meat locker. For a minute it was like she was locked in the small room with the dead bodies and she thought about running away. Stuck. Taking the two long and hesitant steps toward the bath, she peeked under the shower curtain draped over the tub and saw the macabre mess of limbs and severed heads. Disgusting. But she wasn''t ready to die. She couldn''t face it. She knew what she had to do. So, she put it out of her mind and imagined she was somewhere else altogether. Samantha had gotten rather good at doing that. Grinding away at the meat like some medieval surgeon or butcher was never fun.


    The first few times had been difficult. And not just because she was pulling human meat away from its bones, but because she didn''t know exactly how to cut along with the grain of the meat. So, the flesh always tore away in strands. But this time, with practice, her handiwork showed experience.


    The remains were covered in all of the salt she had in the P.O.D.''s pantry to help preserve it. It wasn''t a lot really. But it seemed to do the job fine.


    Recovering the tub with the shower curtain, she went back to the kitchen, being sure to shut the bathroom door behind her.


    Within an hour or two, she''d cleaned, prepped, and cooked the meat on the little stove top over the counter. It was nice. It filled the room with a smell that made Samantha''s mouth water.


    She sat at the table near the coffee pot and dined voraciously, like an animal. The first few times she''d eaten pieces of them, it had been in small bursts, like a bird. And she could never eat more than just a little at a time. A few bites every day. But she started to waste away and if she were going to make her way out of this predicament alive, she couldn''t go on malnourished. So, each time, she learned to stomach it better. She imagined it was a cut of prime rib from a sit-down restaurant back home. Or maybe it was her very own mother''s roast. Really, when she closed her eyes, it could have been anything.


    But my god, wasn''t Bernadette tender. Samantha thought she remembered something in Anatomy about women having a thin layer of fat that men didn''t have. It was like the choicest cut. Marbling. They called it marbling, didn''t they? Something like that.


    It was weird how eating once brought her pleasure. Now it brought on thoughts as such. It was kind of funny to think about. If she had examined someone else doing this sort of thing with some objectivity, she would have called them insane. And maybe she was. Samantha couldn''t be sure. Insane or not, Bernadette definitely tasted the best.


    "What are you doing there?"


    The voice made Samantha nearly jump out of her seat and choke on her food. She swallowed hard and gagged a little then sat upright in her chair and looked around the main area of the P.O.D. She couldn''t believe it. At first glance, scanning the room, she didn''t see anything out of place. Or anyone. Then it dawned on her. Next to the couch, the bathroom door was wide open, and standing in the doorway was a small green man with his forearm propped against the frame. He couldn''t have been any taller than three feet. Laying just under his large, squat nose was a wide mouth pulled back into a grin with long, tombstone teeth. "Nothing." Said Samantha.


    "Oh really?" asked the green man, coming across the main chamber''s floor. The big window to his right seemed to catch his eye and he turned to it. "Sun''s pretty, isnt'' it?" She nodded and he peeked over his shoulder at her. "Looks different up here though, doesn''t it?"


    She nodded again. "Who are you?"


    "Ah, ah, ah," He waved his little green finger. "Not important, Sam."


    She looked down at the human chop on the plate before her. "Well you have me at a bit of a disadvantage."


    "That''s such a trite social convention to use right now, don''t you think?"


    "I guess so." Another slow bite.


    "Besides, I would say that you are in the least advantageous spot in the whole world right now. So, what''s it matter to add one more disadvantage to the list?"


    "I guess it doesn''t matter a lot."


    "Exactly." The little man extended his right arm to the wide window. "Quite a view though." His words whistled out and she nodded. Then he hop-stepped eccentrically toward her table and took up in the seat across from her.


    "So," she began, "So you''re the one that''s been moving stuff around when I''m not here."


    The little green man shrugged. "What can I say? I didn''t like the arrangement."


    Samantha nodded. "Are you hungry?"


    He grimaced, leaned forward to look at her plate and shook his finger at the stuff. "Not for that, thank you."


    It was her turn to shrug at him.


    "So, what happened here?" he asked her.


    "What do you mean?"


    "What''s forced you to resort to this?"


    The room was quiet for a moment and she found herself pushing the food around with her fork. "Well it wasn''t easy getting here. Kind of turned on a dime."

 Astro Dog: Prefabricated Omni-Domicile

    Samantha remembered it pretty well. It had only been a couple of months. Back when she was able to actually use the tub for other things. Normal things like showering or shaving her legs.


    It was a typical afternoon. Samantha was reading a book on the couch, Larry was sitting on the floor with his back propped against the furthest arm of the couch, tinkering with his watch. Bernadette was pacing in the kitchen, listening to music with her headphones in and taking stock of the kitchen and planning dinner. Then there was Captain Hal in his private quarters at the end of the hallway that broke off adjacent to the bathroom. And it was the Captain that stormed into the main chamber and disturbed the rest. Bernadette pulled her headphones off, Larry sat his watch on the floor, and Samantha looked up from the page she was on.


    "Have any of you tried contacting anyone recently?" asked Hal.


    "How recent?" asked Larry.


    "I don''t know. Within the past half hour."


    Everyone else shrugged as if to say no.


    "Come to my room, there''s something you guys might want to see."


    The four of them crowded into Hal''s small quarters and he sat at his desk in front of his computer monitor with each of them lining his shoulders. He tried logging into the Scepter database. Nothing. Then he tried logging into his own personal chat to call his family. Nothing.


    "Wait," Larry pushed his way onto the keyboard. "Let me just pull up a few of the satellites."


    "What good will that do?" Bernadette leaned in.


    "Well, public channels. Things like- well the channels that Scepter uses could be down for maintenance. That could make sense. But it can''t just be a coincidence that everything''s down. Private communication networks. It just wouldn''t make any sense. It couldn''t be. The whole Eastern Seaboard''s down. It has to be some kind of error on this end. Something like this couldn''t have happened." The smaller man was talking fast. Jittery even. And he was shaking. This unsettled Samantha terribly. Larry was never the courageous type; he was always the logical, rational, cool-headed one. If Larry thought it was bad, it probably was.


    And then he pulled a map of the western hemisphere up on the monitor and she knew exactly what he meant. It was almost surreal, but she watched as the little communication blips or lights that illuminated the screen were blown into darkness by large sporadic circles. It was as though someone was scrubbing away big areas of earth''s broadcasting networks with the wave of their hand. Everything that meant anything to the human race was disappearing with every blink.


    Hal pointed at the screen. "What''s this mean?"


    Larry shrugged and leaned out of the larger man''s way. "Could be several things. Global meltdown? It doesn''t seem to be slowing. Nuclear disaster maybe? I don''t know. I can''t tell you without being on the surface. And everything is shut down on this end. I don''t know what to tell any of you. It''s either bad or it''s the fucking apocalypse."This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "C''mon," Bernadette fondled the headphones wrapped around her neck. "It can''t be that bad. That''s impossible. It''s probably just something wrong with the hardware. Maybe a satellite went down. It could be that, right?"


    "I wish it could be," Larry shook his head, uncomfortably twiddling his thumbs. "But even if it were the satellites, Scepter would have directed another one in our direction to tell us what''s happened. It''s the protocol they have in place for this sort of thing. And if it''s satellites going down, it''s definitely more than one. It looks like we''re down by at least half by now on the western hemisphere. And it''s still going. We''ll see."


    Hal spoke up. "Larry," he pointed at him. "I want you on this monitor. Keep doing your thing here. See if you can get ahold of anyone down there. See if we can get a message out. Even if it''s an S.O.S. or something like that. I''m serious. I don''t want you off this monitor until we hear something from the outside world." He rose and let Larry take his position at his desk. "Bernie, dear, get dinner ready." Hal tapped the physician on the shoulder and mustered a toothy grin. "This will all be fine. It''s nothing to get worked up over until there''s a problem we can deal with. We''ll probably get word that there was some kind of major malfunction with the hardware down there and that''s all. I''m sure it''s nothing to worry about." Before Hal left the room, he turned and looked at Samantha. "Oh, I want you to bring your gear in here and see what you can do to help Larry. I need you two to figure this out for me."


    After Hal and Bernadette left and it was just Samantha and Larry, she turned to him and finally asked the words she''d been meaning to ask the entire time. "Is it really as bad as you think?"


    "Let''s just say it''s not. Well, if it''s not, then that means that the last three years I''ve spent with the Scepter Agency has meant jack shit and they might as well fire me." A moment of silence entered the room. Neither of them was moving. Both of them just stared at the monitors all askew on the Captain''s desk. "What really gets me," said Larry, "Is Hal''s total lack of interest in this. It''s like he doesn''t even mind. Which either makes him an idiot or ignorant. He''s either too dumb to care or doesn''t know enough about how our network works. Either way, it''s not good."


    "Give him a break." Samantha took a sip of coffee. "It''s literally his job to boost morale. Like the sea captain with the red coat so that his crew mates won''t see him bleed."


    "I certainly hope you''re right about that. If it''s just some kind of game he''s trying to play with us so that we won''t panic, I guess it''s working for the most part. I just wish there were a sliver of worry."


    Samantha reached across the gap in between their chairs and grabbed Larry''s wrist. "I wouldn''t worry about him so much. If anyone has anything to worry about back home, it''s Hal. He''s got family down there." This was true. Hal was newly married with twins.


    "I suppose you''re right." Larry shrugged. "God, I hope I''m wrong."


    They heard Bernadette scream from the other room. "Oh my god! Oh my god!" The words were shrill like the violin in a horror movie.


    Samantha bolted down the hallway with Larry on her heels. What they saw next stopped them in their tracks. Samantha literally heard Larry''s sneakers squeak against the floor.


    Bernadette had revealed the giant window in the main chamber to expose the blue floating orb of earth in a black nothingness. She''d used the window''s telescopic feature so that every little detail on the sphere was visible. Hal walked around the counter of the kitchen to stand with the others. Everyone was silent. It took a moment for Samantha to realize what she was looking at, but once it clicked in her head what it was, she lost her breath. Springing up all across the face of earth were little lights. She knew what the lights were. They all did. It was like watching someone set a ping pong ball on fire with gasoline. Hal crossed the room and pressed the panel near the window. The wall crossed the glass and closed completely.


    "Dinner is ready." He told them.


    Earth was dead and every person in the room knew it.

 Astro Dog: King of Shit Mountain

    Sitting in the floor before the couch, Bernadette rolled the dice. "One, two, three, four, five, six," She moved her piece around the board game. "Go directly to jail, do not collect two hundred dollars. Shit."


    Samantha was sitting Indian style on the other side of the board game. "I wouldn''t worry about it. You own all the blues and greens."


    "Yeah-yeah." Bernadette shook her head.


    Within the week that had passed, the four astronauts¡¯ duties had completely gone down the drain. None of them cared to go on doing anything beyond cleaning their new permanent home and picking up trivial hobbies like board games and movie night. It was peculiar how they didn''t really comment on the state of their world. They just went on the way that people do. But it was clear to anyone with eyes and time to sit and think that their micro-socio makeup was deteriorating. And yet not one of them did a thing to stop it.


    Hal was drinking. Everyone could smell it on him. Their wine stock was short by a lot. His words were slow and slurred from time to time. Samantha was even sure that she''d seen him with a bottle of Irish whiskey. Drinking straight from the mouth of the bottle. Probably Hal''s own personal drink for when the mission was a success, and they could go back home. The man had grown quiet. He didn''t seem to care about morale anymore. He was prone to angry outbursts. Hal and Larry argued over the predicament. But only once. And after that, there was no more talk of it.


    From then on Larry stayed locked up in his quarters, staring at his computer screen. The man began treating his mates as though they had the plague. It was rather unsettling for Samantha. She felt totally out of rhythm not having Larry there to joke around with or nod to whenever tech talk came up. No, she was forced to socialize with Hal and Bernadette. Larry had only come out of his room to watch a single movie with them since the telecoms went down. And since the... Larry didn''t seem to want anything to do with humans. He literally had audience with the entire human race and that fact seemed lost on him. Or maybe it wasn''t, and that''s what kept him locked away. The few times Samantha saw him outside of his room in full light, she saw that he wasn''t bathing. Acne was springing up on his forehead and his face was glazed with light as though he were always sweating. Oily skin. This made her feel bad for him.


    Bernadette was doing a bit of socializing out of the norm herself. It seemed that the physician and the captain were each inviting one another to the other¡¯s bed during sleep time. Samantha thought that was peculiar. Perhaps the most peculiar thing out of all the rest. But there was a lingering thought in the back of her mind. Hadn''t she read somewhere that one of the steps of grief was sex? Something like that; she was almost sure of it. What was the harm in it though? Really? Samantha couldn''t think of one reason why it was wrong, but it felt like they shouldn''t be doing it at all. Desecrating the whole old world. Something like that. But without people around and their ideologies to follow, what did actions matter without judgements in place and principles and authorities there to cling to wrong doings? The world they''d all known had only existed because others had said it existed and they just happened to agree for the sake of it.


    She shook it from her head and picked up the pair of dice to roll as Hal staggered over to the couch and nearly fell over the game board. But instead of falling he plopped down and examined the two women at his feet. Samantha could smell him. It was strong this time. Maybe stronger than it had ever been. He leaned forward and fondly rubbed Bernie''s right shoulder. Bernadette smiled back at him and rubbed his knee.


    "Wait!" Larry rushed into the room, screaming. The room turned their attention to him. He looked like a madman; his hair was wild and standing on ends in sprigs, his eyes were wide and bloodshot; his hands were shaking. "I''ve got it." He shook a piece of paper with scribbles all over it. Eureka! thought Samantha.


    "What are you talking about?" Hal tried standing but couldn''t seem to get the hang of it.


    "We could- we could begin terraforming. We don''t have the structures, but we could build them over time. Of course depending on how long the P.O.D. will last. I don''t know. It could work. It could work. Really. Start with colonization. We take our fruits and vegetables we have in stock and start growing our own crops. That''s all it takes. We''ll ration food. We could start working on structural maintenance and maybe even additions to the P.O.D. in time. After all, we''ve got two engineers here. It''s not much granted, but it''s a start. It''s a start. Then we could- we could discuss re-repopulation."


    "What? What the fuck are you talking about?" Hal was standing now with both of his hands clenched into big balls. "Repopulation? Are you insane?"Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "That''s just a small part of the plan." Larry took a step back. "We could always talk about artificial insemination."


    "Get the fuck out of here." Hal pointed past Larry. "Get out!"


    "Just listen. We need to make some kind of plan to establish order. While you have all be-been worrying about much of nothing, I''ve been trying to think of something that could pull humanity out on the other side of this all."


    Taking a few steps toward the other man, Hal started breathing heavier. Samantha saw Hal reaching towards his hip. "Don''t you get it? We''re fucked. Humanity is irrelevant. We were just a passing fucking fancy on the wind. Don''t you understand? We''re just a blink in the universe."


    "But it doesn''t have to be that way. We can do something. We can try to-to do something to stop us from dying out. It''d be foolish not to try!"


    "Just shut up! I don''t want to hear this. No one does. Do you really think it matters? Even if we worked our fingers to the bone, we wouldn''t be able to make it back home. Can''t we just die in peace?"


    "Hal," Larry''s eyes were wide. The paper had fallen out of his hand like a feather and he had taken a few more steps away from the other man. "Why are you pointing your blaster at me?"


    Tears were running down Hal''s face. The arm extended with the blaster was bobbing furiously. "My family died down there! Fuck you!"


    "Please. I''m sorry. I''ll just go back to my-


    "What? Go back to your room and scheme some more? Go back to your room and draw up crazy plans of a hopeless dream? I don''t think you''ll be doing that."


    "Just-


    Bernadette rolled the dice as Larry hit the floor. Hal returned to the couch and sat, watching the two women play their board game.


    By the time it was Samantha''s turn, and she was shaking the dice in her hand, Larry had gasped and gurgled for the last time.


    Time passed in the P.O.D. quickly. Surprisingly, no one seemed all that phased by the death of Larry. It was very underwhelming. Something that Samantha could never have accounted for. Death was a thing she''d never before been comfortable with. But now- it was just a tedious thing to care. During this time, Hal grew more and more irritable; circles encompassed his eyes thickly, he was quiet mostly with small and extremely volatile explosions of brief violence. It was odd. The way they all came to understand this hierarchy. Hal was like the great bulldog in the corner that no one bothered. They hadn''t debated as a group as to what to do with Larry''s body, so they kept it. They could have pushed him into space, but what good would that have done? Besides, it was good to keep his corpse. It was as though he were still there with them. The place smelled of course, like rotting meat, but nevertheless they propped him in a chair or on the couch; sometimes they sat him with his head on the counter of the kitchen. He was like a gooey dummy once the rigor mortis passed. A few times, Samantha was positive that she heard Hal actually carrying on a conversation with the dead man from down the hallway.


    It was all very strange and dream like. Only in the brief moments that Samantha had to herself during sleeping hours, was she finally able to step back from the situation psychologically and think about it all from a perspective- a perspective like the one she had before. Sure, it was fucked. The old world was gone. The new one was nothing more than a few lonely astronauts abandoned on Mars. She surely couldn''t talk to Bernadette about her feelings. The physician was too close to Hal. Bernadette followed the man around the P.O.D. as though she were being lead on an invisible leash. And there was no way in hell that she could ever talk to Hal in any rational way. So, sure, Samantha feared for herself and for her life in ways. But sometimes she wished it were all over. Who knew? Maybe the Oxygen would shut down while they were all sleeping, and they would all pass on to the next life without a worry. Maybe Samantha could give fate a push in the right direction by sabotaging the life support herself. But that was just it. She couldn''t. She just couldn''t. She wasn''t ready to die. Call it fear or the will to live of a small mammal holed up in a hard place- or whatever else you''d like really. But what it was for her was hope. Maybe there was hope. The kind of hope Larry had tried talking about before he died.


    As time passed, food was beginning to deplete. They''d had no plan in place for food beyond their rations. Hal didn''t seem to care. Neither did Bernadette. But every morning for an awfully long time, Samantha could smell the bacon wafting down the hallway towards her bed chambers. Somehow life went on without any reason for it. And when Samantha would walk down the hallway in her slippers to see Bernadette craned over the stove and Hal kicking back on the couch she thought that perhaps it had all been a terrible dream and the crew could all go back to cracking jokes and being friends. But as she would sit at the counter with her head in her hand and her elbow on the counter she would glance over and see Larry''s dead gaze looking at her from across the room where he sat by the bathroom on the floor. Then she would know it was all real. It was real and Larry was dead. He wouldn''t be coming down the hall after her to join the others for breakfast, because he''d been there all along.


    It went smoothly but very waywardly. The way that a painter feels from locking himself in a room for prolonged periods of time to complete a masterpiece. Complete depression. Around the people Samantha had thought of as family were now the ones she felt most alone with. And so, she was alone. They all were.

 Astro Dog: A Discussion of Ethics and Good Food

    "So, what happened to the others?" asked the little green man.


    "I killed them."


    He raised his eyebrows at the woman across from him. "Why?"


    Samantha pushed the plate off to the side of the table and leaned in on her arms. "One night, Hal decided that Bernie wasn''t enough," she shrugged, "He advanced on me. I declined. He tried forcing it and I stabbed him. Then- well- Bernadette was distraught. She lost her mind, I guess. She came at me and I stabbed her too. I killed them both."


    "Don''t you feel bad about it?"


    "I guess. I mean I felt pretty terrible over it at first, but then it just fell to the back of my mind. And now even when I do think about it, it doesn''t really bother me. She always seemed so nice. Bernadette, I mean. She was the only one I was ever able to talk to about girl stuff. But by the time she was gone in the head. By the time they had all lost their minds it was said and done. It didn''t matter anymore. They might as well have been zombies. Hollowed versions of themselves. As clich¨¦ as it all sounds, that''s what it was."


    "Still. Isn''t it wrong? Doesn''t it feel wrong?"


    "The world''s grey. It''s not black and white. Especially with no one there to say what''s what. What is wrong relative to nothing?"


    The green man whistled at her. "So, what are your morals relative to?"


    "Others?" she seemed to ask herself, "Others." Then she nodded.


    "So, then the basis for what you deem right and wrong is what others think is such? So, without society you have no morals? You seem to throw the words around like they''re trivial."


    "Aren''t they?" she asked.


    "I don''t know. I don''t think these are things decided by community alone. Community righteousness is only the woven compromise. It''s a broken system that way. But individual ethics and the code by which you and you alone live is what truly matters." This time he shrugged his little slim shoulders. "And seeing as there seem to be no other humans, you have not only your own right and wrong to deal with, but the compromise of society as well. You are the last. You are all now. So, what is to last in human nature beyond their population? Should you diverge down the path of things you''d thought were wrong prior to all of this? But who am I to say that? If you say that these things are relative to people in general, then why can they not also be subjective to you? I think it is for you to decide."This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "You''re losing me. I don''t understand what you mean."


    "I think you do."


    "If I''m hearing you properly, you''re saying that I as the last of my kind am here to make a testament to my race in the last hours of who we are? You think that I should decide for the whole race because I am all of it?"


    "Either that or you should succumb to all out chaos. But you don''t seem to be ready for that sort of that thing. Chaos on the community level works because of the irrational decisions of many people, but chaos is impossible within a single person. How can you break any rules if there are none to be broken? And how can you lay down the laws if you are the only one to follow them? You are stuck. And so, you must nudge in either direction. Insanity or will. That''s what I see you split at."


    "This all seems a bit superfluous to me. What''s the meaning?"


    "What''s the meaning? Really? Stop and think for a moment. Did you ever really know the meaning? Even before all of this? You could have always argued that it was irrelevant and relative to other things. I think it''s funny how you people always give in on stout and dear philosophies when you''re put in a hard spot." He scoffed at her. At least she thought it was a scoff. His mouth was oddly shaped, but the noise that came out of it sounded similar. "You just excuse yourselves to save yourselves."


    "So wrong and right exist because we say it exists? And when no one''s there to know the difference, it''s gone."


    "Or it was there all along and you found it. Then you lost it when it became acceptable to do so."


    Samantha stood and huffed, rounding the table, and passed the funny little man with the plate in her hand. "I''m not going to sit here and be lectured by myself." She tossed the plate in the fridge and turned. When she turned the little man was sitting on the kitchen counter with his legs swinging like a child''s.


    "But I''m not yourself. When are you going to realize that I''m not some figment of your imagination?"


    "And now I suppose you''ll draw me into some philosophical debate about what''s real and what''s relative to being real."


    "No."


    "And you''d argue whatever side I''m not on just so that you can play your little mind games."


    "No." He said.


    "Well, I''ve something for you. It''s all irrelevant when you think about it. When it comes right down to it, none of it matters. This little talk we had- well, nothing comes of it. What I can say is this: my family and friends are all dead."


    The little green man looked over his shoulder and then back at her. "Were they delicious?"


    In a moment she swung at him. Her body tilted forward and landed on top of the counter. Samantha slid and fell onto the floor, looking around wildly, but the little fellow was gone. "Where''d you go?"


    No answer.


    A wisp of hair fell in front of her face and she blew it away in a sigh. "Gone, huh?"


    Still no answer.


    "Alright, then I guess I''ll be in my room if you need me."

 Astro Dog: This is Grim

    Once the others had been tucked away neatly in the bathroom, her worries of the smell in the main chamber were gone. The thought of shooting them into space crossed her mind, but she thought that would be a little wrong. Something inside of her insisted that there still might be a chance for rescue. How was she to explain that her other three mates¡¯ bodies were drifting somewhere in the vacuum of space? But really, that wasn''t the thing that bothered her most of all. Initially it made her feel sick to her stomach to get rid of their remains, but then time went on and she realized her rations wouldn''t last forever. And then there was another reason altogether why she didn''t want to get rid of them. How was she to explain that her other three mates¡¯ bodies were missing pieces?


    Samantha and Larry at one time had discussed the idea of getting off the rock in secret, but nothing came of it. Larry was entirely convinced that they''d miss earth entirely with the ship''s guidance system down. There was no one on the other side to receive them. It would be completely up to luck. That scared her. No. It was better to be where she was than to be listing through space infinitely. So just the thought of it was out of the question.


    So, she was stuck. And she knew that but recounting the events and reminding herself that she was stuck was the only thing that kept her company. It kept her grounded also. Constantly it reminded her that nothing was going to change.


    After the little green man left her to her thoughts, Samantha swept her feet from room to room and moved her hands sporadically in her pockets. She gritted her teeth and intermittently breathed heavily through her nose.


    Before, when she was still on earth, she would never have called herself a deep thinker. To be completely honest, most people probably would not have. Her time was filled with karaoke, drinking, long nights of studying, and finally scrolling through her news feed while lying awake in bed for hours. For the most part, Samantha was not the philosophical type; she was not the scholarly reader but rather the leisurely consumer; she was not the unbiased kind. No, Samantha had been struck with the super-stimuli of everything around her and was terribly normal. Then the curtains were pulled, and she was left alone. Her life, in many ways, changed drastically once she was alone. Not just in the physical world, but also the mental. She realized that once things were quiet, she could hear herself think. Irrelative to the situation she was in, it was kind of nice to play her thoughts over and over until they evolved in ways that she was satisfied with. It was only when she took old memories from creases in the mind she didn''t even know existed and replayed them over and over in her mind''s eye that she grew bored of them. And boredom led to increased mundane activities. When those activities reached their end, she finally succumbed to madness. Oddly enough, she knew it too. It came in bursts.


    At first, she talked to herself and although that in itself was not enough to let on that she was gone in the head, it was something of a start. Then the things in the P.O.D. started moving around on their own. It was odd. Things she didn''t even notice at first. Small things. Then larger objects like the couch or a chair or stool. That''s when she knew she''d gone mad. The rational side of her knew that things like that didn''t just happen all on their own. Maybe she''d been secluded for so long that she''d decided to mix things up a bit. Could it be that Samantha herself was the one that moved everything around? Could she have forgotten about it? Was it truly as simple as that? That''s when the little man showed up and really made her think.


    Was it possible that she''d eaten rancid meat?


    No. She couldn''t think about that.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Helpless. Hopeless.


    None of it mattered anyway. Once their bones were picked clean or maybe even after all the marrow was gone, (if she cared to take it that far) only then would she finally face the thing she''d been hiding from. She was fucked from the beginning of it. They all were. No one was coming. Some part of her knew that.


    What was a person to do when they were knocking on death''s door? When they were just waiting for it. It made her life seem totally worthless. She could go on and on about how she could have or would have done things differently, but not even that would matter. Nothing mattered. And wasn''t it funny that up until the point in life that she was forced to face her own mortality- at that moment she realized that her life had been leading up to it the entire time? She''d been on a track. This was where she was meant to be. Maybe. Maybe she''d lost it. Maybe. She couldn''t be sure. But one thing she knew, and it might have been the saddest part of it all, was that this fraction of her life was a synopsis of all the years she''d lived. It didn''t matter if she had twenty minutes or twenty years. She was going to die. And with it being so close to the end she had no other choice but to actually think about it. It was as though she''d fallen right in the sweet spot. Just enough time to think it over and just enough time for it to never mean a thing.


    Think. Think. Think goddamn it.


    And then there was that. Did thinking about it at all help? Was it relevant? Was it ever?


    She didn''t want to die. She was going to die.


    Finally, she came to the main room and sat on the couch, staring up at the wide window looking out at the nothingness that was space.


    Samantha was fidgeting with something between her knees. It was odd. She kept toying with the trigger. There was no hiding it in her movements; she was nervous. Her thoughts ran wild. Then she heard it. She heard the thing she''d been waiting for.


    "There you are." The little green man materialized adjacent the couch, snugly curled up on a fat chair.


    "Here I am."


    "Did you think about what we''ve talked about?"


    "Sure. I have."


    "And? Have you come to any conclusions on any of the matters?"


    "Not really. Yes."


    "What do you mean?" he asked.


    "What I mean is that it''s all relevant and irrelevant."


    "You sound crazy."


    "Maybe I am. I don''t know anymore. But it''s what I believe. Now, you''ve talked at me all you''ve wanted. I think it''s time I''ve had my say. I might come on a little heavy handed, but I''ve got something to say. It doesn''t matter and it does. It''s all a matter of perspective. I can regret going to university and busting my ass for years just for the opportunity to go to Mars. I can be glad for what I''ve done. But the world doesn''t change on hindsight. We''re like marbles drifting around. Ricocheting, I think. We strike a surface and then our destinies are determined by our trajectory. So no. Good. Evil. It''s all the same thing. It just depends on how we hit the surface. It''s odd to say. But I''ve come to terms with it. I know what I''m going to do."


    "Is that so?" The little man eyed her for a moment and shifted in his seat. Now it was his turn to feel uncomfortable. "What''s that then?"


    Quickly and without pause, Samantha stood from the couch, outstretched her arm, and fired Hal''s blaster at the window. The first beam bounced off of the glass with the second beam splintering it. Wind whipped around her hair, tugging her towards the crack in the window; her feet were sliding against the floor. Then she fired again and in a millisecond the window was gone and so was she.


    For a moment she drifted over the sand of Mars. It was nice. She felt like an angel. Then her eyes swelled and watered and she fell face first on the ground, sliding. Finally, her body came to rest at the base of their ship. There was a part of her that wanted to run inside, but she couldn''t. So, when she brought her body up on both arms like a woman in a strange yoga position, her arms gave out and her face fell back in the soil.


    "Alright."

 B & B

    It was always a dream of mine to run a quaint bed and breakfast out in the middle of the Mississippi wilderness, a place where new couples and high-end clients could take a load off if only for a little while. I¡¯ve known this ever since I was a little girl. I¡¯d help my mama run the diner and watching the satisfied faces of our patrons always brightened my day. Pleasing is a passion of mine, slaving away over a stove, mixing batter, constructing all manner of goodies from what I can find in the kitchen, wonderful stuff. It pleases me to please others. So, after I¡¯d saved enough money, I set out and looked for a place to call my own. There it was, near a lake, over budget, and two stories tall. I didn¡¯t care. I took out the loan and busted my hump to make it the place of my dreams.


    Managing the place was slow going at first, but eventually, I was turning a profit and it seemed like everything was falling into place.


    It was only late at night when I was sitting on the porch and staring out into that lake that I would feel my stomach churn and gooseflesh dot my arms. Something about the surface of the water reflecting the black shadows. I can¡¯t explain it. Normally I would wrap myself up in a thin cardigan and break out the bottle of gin I kept hidden under the counter. This served to quell my strange anxieties of being so far from civilization.


    As I was idly tending the desk and staring out the window, a terrible thunderstorm broke overhead. I watched as a couple, probably honeymooners if I had to strike a guess, slammed their doors shut in the muddy lot and darted to the front porch of my little inn; they dodged puddles as the man held his jacket over their heads.


    I greeted them at the door, offering a towel to dry them off with. They thanked me and approached the counter. I took their information, ran their card, had them sign a few documents, and handed over their key. I listened to them rushing up the stairs to find their room.


    As thunder rolled, the front door shot open, slamming into the wall; I jumped in response. There in the doorway, illuminated by a flash of lightning, stood a man in a fine pressed suit, black irises, clenched jaw, absolutely soaked through. I¡¯d not seen him approaching. He was stunningly handsome. I rounded the counter, offering him a towel. He took it, grinning at me with a flash of beautiful white straight teeth. ¡°Sorry.¡± He said, motioning to the doorway.


    ¡°No worries,¡± I said, shutting the door and inspecting the wall, ¡°No damages, so don¡¯t worry about it.¡±


    I went to the counter and rifled through some papers. He ran the towel through his hair and around his neck. ¡°This is a nice place you¡¯ve got here.¡± He said.


    I beamed at the compliment. ¡°Thank you!¡± I positioned the card reader on the counter, twisting it to face him.


    Sitting the towel down in a nearby chair, he looked at the small electronic device. ¡°I don¡¯t think so.¡± He said.


    My face was frozen in a shocked in expression and I¡¯m certain he noticed. ¡°It¡¯s standard procedure.¡±


    ¡°No. I will not be using a card.¡± He began rifling through his jacket pocket as I protested. He passed ten one-hundred-dollar bills across the table. My hands wavered, but eventually reached across the table to take the money. ¡°I will not be filling out any of your paperwork either.¡± He was obviously of the upper-class sorts I¡¯d intended to attract upon opening my little inn. Although he pronounced his words with efficiency, there was an accent there that eluded me.


    I stammered, trying to look for a rebuttal. I felt the thickness of the bills in between my fingers as I ran the currency marker across them.


    ¡°I assure you; they are quite real.¡± He flashed those pearly whites. ¡°Now please, I¡¯ve paid. If you¡¯d be so kind as to hand me my room key, I will leave you to your work down here.¡±


    I looked over his shoulder, through the window to the muddy lot where only the couple¡¯s car and my own sat. ¡°Where¡¯s your vehicle?¡±


    ¡°A town car dropped me off.¡± His smile was infectious though he was mildly irritated. ¡°Please Miss, my key.¡±


    I passed him the key and he disappeared up the stairs. After I was sure he¡¯d gone to his room, I put on a snuggly cardigan and poured myself a bit of gin.


    My bedroom was directly adjacent the office on the first floor. As night came, I poured myself into my nightgown and tossed and turned in my bed restlessly. Something about that man in the suit did not sit right with me. It occurred to me as I was staring at the ceiling that I¡¯d not even caught his name. I tried pushing this out of my mind, but at that very moment I heard a creaking sound coming from above. It took me a moment to remember that the room I¡¯d given those newlyweds was directly above my own room. Crap. I popped in my ear plugs so as to block out the noises of their ridiculous lovemaking. Then the dust above began coming down on my closed eyes. Hey, I get it, people have to do what they have to do, but it¡¯s still a bother when you¡¯re trying to sleep. I threw the sheets over my head.


    The sound of a small porcelain figure on my bedside table rocked off and struck the floor, bursting to shards. That was it. I popped out the ear plugs and could hear the moans of pleasure coming from upstairs as though it was happening in my own room. There also came the grinding noise of the bedframe legs sliding across the wooden floors and the thumping sound of the headboard against the wall. What the hell?Stolen story; please report.


    Enough was enough.


    I ran upstairs, fully intending to pound on their door, but when I reached the second story, I found the door already ajar. I approached, slowly at first then with an overwhelming anger. They could at least shut the damn door! I pushed my nose in through the crack and saw the young couple going at it, glistening in the moonlight spilling through the window on the far wall. Her hair was wrapped in his fist and her fingernails dug into the headboard. Each slam was followed by her moan and then his brutish grunt. Pictures flew from the walls as they went and yes, indeed, the bed slid along the floor. I could already see that they¡¯d accomplished knocking one of the lamps in their room to the floor. It lay there, belly open and wires exposed.


    I was furious.


    Just as I was about to clear my throat, something caught my eye. It was the man with the black irises, the fine pressed suit. He stood in their room, in the corner near the window. He was watching them eagerly, licking his lips. His hair clung to his head and his suit still showed signs of splotchy moisture. I was horrified as I put a foot behind to begin my retreat. As I did, the floor beneath me creaked and those awful eyes shot to meet mine. They pierced right through me and he ran his tongue over his upper lip, removing the sweat there.


    I ran like the dickens and locked myself in my bedroom.


    The following morning, I was exhausted. I think I must have fallen asleep around three o¡¯ clock in the morning but I can¡¯t be sure. All I know is that when my alarm went off, I wanted to slam my head into the wall. Instead, I brewed myself a cup of coffee and set about straightening the garden of flowers I kept out front. When the couple emerged from the inn, taking the steps slowly with shaking legs, I twisted around to confront them.


    ¡°I understand you two might be a little,¡± I looked for the right word, ¡°Excited. But please respect the room. I¡¯ve put a lot of work into this place and I hate to see things go wrong with it.¡±


    The man¡¯s eyes were bloodshot, and he maintained a pair of gray bags above each cheek; the woman hid her mouth behind flat palms. They both looked exhausted. The man nodded, saying something along the lines of, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, we¡¯ll pay for any damages. I¡¯m so sorry.¡± and they rounded the inn, no doubt searching for one of the delightful trails the grounds had to offer. I peeked around the corner and saw them dip down a path into the forest; the woman¡¯s shoulders shook, and the man put an arm around her. Was she crying?


    For some unfathomable reason I felt bad for them. They looked awful.


    I turned my attention back to the garden just as the man in the suit took the front steps, rounding the same corner. He said nothing as he passed by me. In fact, I¡¯m sure he didn¡¯t realize I was there at all. His dress shoes made a squelching sound with every step and his limbs gave me the distinct impression that he¡¯d never been given the opportunity to use them properly. Maybe he was tired like the other two. I¡¯m not here to kink shame. If that¡¯s what people are into, that¡¯s fine. I just wish they¡¯d kept the racket down.


    After watching him disappear down the same trail the couple had taken, I rushed upstairs, first to the couple¡¯s room to inspect the damage. There were indeed marks where the bed¡¯s legs scratched along the floors surface. I sighed at this and went about cleaning up the glass from the pictures they¡¯d strewn about and the busted lamp. This was ludicrous. I would most definitely be charging this to their card. Christ.


    Then I moved to the suit man¡¯s room and as I suspected, it was fairly clean and orderly. I did catch a strange fishy smell though and when I removed the sheets from the bed, I saw that he had used it at some point during the previous night. The bed was soaked through in sweat? No, it was like filthy water. As I inspected the sheets, my suspicions were confirmed. I found clumps of algae clinging to the cotton.


    I replaced the bedding, washed the ruined set, then sat on the porch, sipping from my coffee cup. It was cold out. I wanted to cuss and scream but didn¡¯t.


    All three of them returned just before the sun fell over the trees, first the couple, then the man. I swear the suit man was dripping water wherever he went. After I heard them return to their rooms upstairs, I examined the wet shoe marks he¡¯d left behind, sneering, and wiping them up.


    The second night, I pushed the ear plugs in deep without hesitation. I was going to get some sleep before they did their business that night. I was sure of it.


    Again, the scraping of their bed¡¯s legs was too much, and I flung my covers off, moving to the stairs. I was met by the suit man. He stood at the top of the second story landing. I¡¯d nearly not seen him in the dark and so when he spoke, I flinched and almost tumbled down the stairs, ¡°Good evening.¡± He said.


    ¡°H-hello.¡± I tested warily.


    He motioned to the noise coming from the room behind him, ¡°They are rather enthusiastic, wouldn¡¯t you say?¡±


    I swallowed hard. ¡°Who are you?¡±


    He shifted so that I could walk past him, removing a kerchief from his pocket and dabbing away the water coming off his face, ¡°You really ought to be sure they¡¯re not breaking anything.¡±


    Finally, after choking on my own breath, I said, ¡°W-what are you?¡±


    ¡°You should check on your guests.¡± He urged. ¡°They are your responsibility after all.¡±


    I moved past him, his breath reaching out to chill me. Keeping him in my periphery, I slowly skirted to the cracked doorway, pushing the door in. There they were, same as the last, unaware of the world around them. The bed frame slammed into the wall, leaving drywall craters with each shift. The man was going full speed, the woman clinging on for dear life as her back arched even more wildly than before. Neither of them noticed me standing there because neither one of them could have. They had no heads. They¡¯d been mathematically removed. Perfect. Yet their bodies were suspended in this animation. Thick hot blood shot from their necks in unison with their movements. I felt sick. My knees gave out. I fell to the floor, covering my mouth, weeping. ¡°Oh my god!¡± I screamed.


    I along the floor to shut their door, turning to face the suit man, but he was gone. Shakily, I moved to the second story window at the end of the hall, scanning the lot below, and trying to push the sounds of the newlyweds from my mind. There walked a black figure, out to the lake. He carried something in each hand stiffly by his sides. I knew what those somethings were.


    He walked into the lake as calmly as someone going for a stroll and disappeared incrementally beneath the surface of the water with each step till he was gone entirely.

 Doll House

    Necrophilia: Obsession with and usually erotic interest in or stimulation by corpses.


    We would dig the corpses up, rinse them down in the bed of Cletus¡¯s Ford, then set about removing the boring fat bodied worms.


    We would brush their hair and spray them down with disinfectant, making sure to replace any rotting cavities among the flesh with silly putty; it had a shiny quality but worked well enough to distort the lines between the dead and the living.


    We would replace the eyes with glass ones and then we¡¯d prop them up in our establishment. Each girl got their own room with its own theme. They were like beautiful dolls by the time we were done with them.


    We would take the pay from the strange men that would show up at our counter and everything was filmed in case one of these guys had the idea that they should report us to the authorities. If they stepped foot into our establishment without doing the dirty, we¡¯d roll their corpses into the girls¡¯ old dirt homes and dismantle their vehicles, selling the parts to the unscrupulous junkyard down the way.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    We would clean the girls after each visit. That was normally Cletus¡¯s job, but I caught him using one of the dolls on the video feed. I had to start watching him on the cameras to make sure he wouldn¡¯t fuck with our business. You don¡¯t dip into your supply Cletus, goddammit!


    We received all sorts of callers for the girls: businessmen, pastors, widowers. All sorts. One time, a patron tried to take one of the girl¡¯s fingers as a keepsake. We took one of his and he behaved from there on.


    We devised a pully system in the attic so that we could treat the dolls more like marionettes. This way we could not only charge for the entry fee, but if they wanted an erratic disjointed dance before the sexy time, they could pay extra for that too. Business was booming, but I still had to keep an eye on Cletus. That stupid bastard would fondle them when I wasn¡¯t looking or worse yet, he¡¯d try to plug them. Ugh.


    I watched the video feed one night when he was supposed to be cleaning the room with the theme, ¡°One Night in Paris¡±. Can you guess what that doll¡¯s name was? He began dancing with the fucking girl, pulling her in close around the waist. He didn¡¯t even notice when the door opened, and the other girls entered. Paris shoved him onto the chair and the girls held him down as she ran his pocketknife across his throat. I almost lost my lunch watching the decaying bodies kill him like that. In the end, I think he got what he deserved.


    I put him in the ground and forgot it.


    I dig the bodies up, rinse them down in the bed of my Chevy and set about removing the boring fat bodied worms.

 T-Pose

    Alex was always a rambunctious sort. He would keep me around as a look-out whenever he would break into people¡¯s homes or keep me in mind whenever he had an eight ball and everyone else had already ducked out of the club for the night. I am an addict, plain and simple. Alex is my dealer, but he was often inclined to hand off that beautiful white powder to me simply because I kept him company, and I would leave while coming down from a high without ever spending a red cent. Also, I was much less fidgety than most of his cliental; so, we¡¯d often find each other on those black nights and shape out a few lines, speaking erratically about all the cool things we could have done with our lives. Really though, we were a couple of bug-eyed sweaty junkies smacking our lips to fantasy.


    When I met up with Alex at his house, he said he had a job for me, I didn¡¯t even question it. I went for it. I knew we¡¯d ride our faces like skateboards into oblivion. God, I wanted it.


    Alex was of wealthy stock and his home reflected that. He was a real well-to-do kid with all the new video games and a brand spanking new Charger in the driveway. His dad was an overly monied dentist and now that Alex was well out of high school and proving to be a royal fuck up, the dentist simply tossed money at his son and never asked where it went.


    As I approached the U driveway with my hands stuffed into my hoodie and my eyes hidden behind massive aviators, I could see the curtains near the door shift; before I even had the chance to put my foot on the first step of the stairs of the front concrete porch, the door swung inward and Alex was rubbing his arms jittery, exclaiming, ¡°It¡¯s about fucking time you decided to show up.¡± He ushered me in and told me to take off my shoes. I did. He rushed me upstairs to his bedroom and locked the door behind us. The black light posters and lava lamps and stench made it feel like I¡¯d entered another world totally opposite from the one on the other side of the door.


    I settled on the bed and he lit a cigarette, his hair standing on end and his eyes rolling around wildly. Often it would be that I would sit and wait my turn with that shiny piece of broken mirror. He¡¯d clack the straw against it and just as I was sure he was about to pass a line my way, he¡¯d set the mirror on the dresser and I¡¯d hang my head.


    ¡°This fucking guy,¡± said Alex, ¡°This fucking guy stole from me, you understand? The gall of some people man, I fucking tell you. Doesn¡¯t he know who I am? He knows. He fucking knows!¡±


    I wanted him to stop talking. I shot him a dirty look, but he didn¡¯t notice. Having the shades on did come in handy occasionally, didn¡¯t they? I¡¯m telling you, I really am, all I wanted to do that day was drugs. I never had any intention of murdering anyone. I¡¯m no killer. I¡¯m just a harmless junkie.


    So, Alex continued talking about some sad sap that rolled up to his house and got a little baggie o¡¯ boogie down. Every time Alex held up his hands to show the size of the hypothetical bag, it grew bigger and bigger. The injury swelled with every passing moment and as I listened, Alex grew further emboldened. He wanted to do something. I could feel it. Maybe swing the little pea shooter he kept under his bed in the guy¡¯s face. Show him who¡¯s boss. Something like that. Scare him a little. Remind him of exactly who he was messing with. That might be fun. With a little dope, of course. Hallelujah. Apparently, the man that had wronged Alex had gotten the drugs he wanted, but he¡¯d peeled out of Alex¡¯s driveway without ever paying.


    ¡°That sonofabitch!¡± Alex slapped his knee and passed the mirror. Finally! I took my turn and absently listened to the young man that could scarcely be called a friend. I nodded along. God, I would nod along forever if he didn¡¯t notice I used that straw like a Shop-Vac. I pinched my nose and blinked rapidly. ¡°We need to do something! We gotta¡¯, we gotta¡¯,¡± Alex was pumping his arms back and forth. He stopped then pivoted to looked at me. He snapped his fingers. ¡°We gotta¡¯ kill em¡¯!¡±


    I¡¯d heard Alex talk like this a million times before and so my nodding head continued in its way. He rummaged beneath his bed and removed the wee pistol; I¡¯m not sure what model. He cocked it, waving it around the room. I didn¡¯t move. I wasn¡¯t scared. This routine was normal. If he shot me, he shot me. I was in the mood to play a bit of fantasy myself, wanting to show how much of a hard-ass I was.


    I stood and started flexing my muscles, pumping my fists. ¡°Yes! You have never been so right about something in your entire life.¡± I grabbed him on the shoulder and shook him. I could feel the tendons beneath my fingers; they were taut, guitar string tight. ¡°Let¡¯s do it!¡± I was maniacal. I was ready for it. ¡°Let¡¯s show this kid who he¡¯s been fucking with! I¡¯m on board!¡± These words would serve to be the very worst I¡¯ve spoken in my life.


    *


    Decked to the nines in black, we shimmied along the hedges in the moonlit night. This neighborhood was worse than Alex¡¯s. What with the crummy infrastructure, untended lawns, graffiti. We moved quietly, cursing at every snapping branch, or shuffling of leaves. As we sidled up to the windowsill and peered in through the window, Alex shifted the gun into the back of his britches. My heart was pounding in my ears and the residue from the coke was beginning to leak down the back of my throat and it tasted like shit. It always did that to me. I spat and received a quick smack to my arm. I turned to look at Alex. He held his index finger up to his lips. I gave him the universal gesture that roughly translated to: fuck, I didn¡¯t mean to do that.


    The living room strewn with garbage, incense sticks, mottled furniture, and beer cans was framed by the window we looked through like a hanging picture. Could have been in a gallery if it weren¡¯t so sad. There he was. That sad sap. The thief. He slept on the couch in the blue glow of the TV. We had no plan. I knew that. What were we going to do? Kill him? Surely not really. We¡¯d stalk around his yard for a while and work ourselves into a tizzy, then we¡¯d go back to Alex¡¯s and smoke a bowl to end the night. It always helped to come down with a bit of THC. That sounded nice. Like a glass of warm milk or something.


    But as I turned to look at Alex, he was gone and around the corner. I followed and peeked around the edge of the house. He was standing on the front porch. What a fucking mad lad he was, I¡¯ll tell you that much. I tried waving him over with a giggle escaping me. Alex turned to look at me and gave me a look I¡¯ll never forget. It was animalistic. It was hell coming from his eyes. I¡¯d never seen that look before; I swear to god.


    Then he knocked on the door sharply with his knuckles. An innumerable number of seconds passed, and no one answered. I started to call out to him. I wanted to leave now, but he was a determined soul to be sure. He lifted his hand into a ball and began banging the flat of his hand against the thick metal door. Every single time it struck the door, I could feel my stomach come further up the back of my throat. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to jump into his body telepathically and force him to walk back to the shadows, but I am no superhero.


    He must have been knocking for a solid minute before someone answered. All I heard was the mumbling-tired voice of a man, ¡°What the hell? Oh, it¡¯s you.¡± I couldn¡¯t see the young man, but I could hear the arrogance in his voice. Alex did not hesitate. He removed the pistol from the back of his pants, pointed it straight out in front of him, and I saw the flash of the light from the end of the barrel illuminate Alex¡¯s wild face before I heard the shot. I almost pissed myself right there on the spot, I swear to god.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Stuck between rushing up to the crime scene and running away, I couldn¡¯t move. My feet were staked to the spot and just as I was working up the courage to bolt, Alex turned, sober, and pointed the gun in my direction. ¡°Don¡¯t even think about it.¡± He said. I stepped from the shadows with my hands up.


    ¡°C¡¯mon, you know me. I wouldn¡¯t leave you.¡± I heard my voice but couldn¡¯t feel the words coming.


    ¡°That¡¯s right. I do know you. And I know you wouldn¡¯t take off without helping a friend.¡± He put the gun in the back band of his pants. ¡°Now help me gather this sack o¡¯ shit up.¡± He gestured to the feet of the man. I circumvented the porch and saw it. What a mess. ¡°You get the head.¡± Said Alex. I grimaced and followed the order.


    *


    The car ride was quiet, so I tried fiddling with the nobs of the radio to fill the empty cool night air. ¡°Quit fucking with my stereo.¡± Said Alex, swatting at my hand. I pulled my hand away and rolled the passenger window down, letting the wind bellow in and cool my sweating body.


    He¡¯s fucking insane. I¡¯ll tell you that. I always thought Alex was a bratty guy that liked drugs, nothing more, nothing less. But he¡¯s a fucking psycho and I saw it for the first time that night.


    We drove way out into the woods and dug a shallow grave. As I wiped the sweat from my brow and tossed the shovel to the side, I fell onto my ass and took in great big heaving gasps for air. It¡¯s hard to dig a grave. It¡¯s even harder to dig a grave when you don¡¯t have proper lighting, and I would hardly call the soft moon shafts coming in through the canopy ¡®proper lighting¡¯.


    Alex popped the trunk of that pristine Charger and the interior light illuminated the hardening dead expression of the man. His face was frozen in one of pure surprise. Not terror exactly. It was like he was forever expressing, what are you gonna¡¯ do? Shoot me? Yes, yes, we were apparently. It took a few moments of staring into the open trunk before I realized it was coated in a thick blue tarp. I hadn¡¯t noticed it when we¡¯d initially deposited the guy¡¯s body. Holy shit. This was premeditated. Alex had planned this the entire time. There I was egging him on, and he was genuinely going to kill a man. I felt a pang of guilt as we rolled him into the hole; he made a sound like cord wood.


    ¡°Hard parts over.¡± Said Alex, tossing me a shovel. ¡°Get to work if you don¡¯t wanna¡¯ spend the rest of your days in a six by eight.¡±


    We spread the dirt over the hole and packed it down with our feet.


    Sitting in the parking lot of the McDonald¡¯s and slurping on a fountain Coca-Cola sure was a surreal moment, I¡¯ll tell you that much. Alex was back to his normal self. He¡¯d asked if I was hungry. I wasn¡¯t. But a soda pop sounded good. He¡¯d come back to me sitting in the car with a big brown bag and a tray of drinks. He ripped into chicken sandwich after chicken sandwich. ¡°Something about killing a man!¡± He sighed over his sandwich, ¡°It really gets your primal self revving or whatever. Starves me.¡± Starves your soul, I thought.


    He dropped me off at my place and I took the steps to my apartment. I bathed for the first time in days and on my way through the kitchen, I thought about going through the stash I kept in the cookie jar atop the fridge but didn¡¯t feel like it. I sat on the couch and fell to sleep.


    *


    When I woke up and looked at the clock, it was still dark. After checking my phone, I saw I¡¯d slept an entire day away and it was night again. Like I said, it¡¯s hard to dig a grave. I reached over to the coffee table to withdraw a roach from the ashtray. Maybe I could sleep the next day away as well. That¡¯d be nice. Just then, I received a series of texts from Alex:


    Are you fucking with me?


    Dude, are you outside?


    I swear to god, if you¡¯re fucking with me, I will take you out. You know I¡¯ll do it.


    Me: What are you talking about?


    Alex: There¡¯s someone outside. One sec.


    Me: Everything alright?


    Alex: Yeah. Just some asshole knocking on the door.


    I checked the time. It was just past midnight. Who the hell could be knocking on his door at this hour? You know what? I couldn¡¯t care less. Fuck that psycho. I put my phone on silent and tossed it on the table. Eyeing the roach in the ashtray, I opted to turn on the TV and watch informercials instead. Those smiling ladies talking about jewelry made me forget my worries for a while and I kept my eye on the screen as I went to the kitchen area of my apartment and poured myself a bowl of Cookie Crisps. As I went back to the couch, I saw my phone had a few new notifications, but I refused to check them. I ate the cereal and stretched out on the couch after placing the bowl on the coffee table.


    I wanted more sleep. Like Alex needed food, I needed sleep. I wanted to forget it; no more chest beating and coke bloat for me, thank you. Alex could play his little games and leave me be. What would he do? Shoot me? I chuckled to myself, but this was quickly followed by a genuine creeping suspicion. No. I have too much on him. I would write a note and leave it somewhere in the apartment. Just on the off chance I went missing any time soon, the authorities could read it and know it was probably Alex. I guess that doesn¡¯t matter anymore.


    *


    I awoke and checked my phone again. Still dark out. It was around two in the morning. I had over thirty messages from Alex and at least ten missed calls. What the hell? I ran through the messages. Some of his messages included:


    Dude. Don¡¯t fuck around. Are you outside!?


    You¡¯re freaking me out. You better answer.


    Okay. Maybe it¡¯s not you.


    Got him. I scared him away, I think. Pick up!


    Don¡¯t answer your door.


    He¡¯s not fucking dead!


    Why isn¡¯t he fucking dead?


    The last one sent a chill up my spine:


    Coming over. Answer your door.


    ¡°What the fuck?¡± I asked the empty room. A knock came on my apartment door and I jumped, dropping my phone to the floor with a clatter. I swallowed dryly. ¡°Hello?¡± I whispered then coughed. ¡°Hello?¡± I asked louder.


    A man¡¯s voice answered. ¡°Yes. Open.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Here. For. You.¡±


    ¡°Alex?¡± It wasn¡¯t Alex. I knew that. I really did.


    ¡°So. Cold. So. Alone. Open.¡±


    I was frozen to the couch. ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Why. Open. Dirt. Is. Cold. Help.¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°Please. Help.¡±


    It was at this moment that I could feel hot tears rolling down my face. A whimper escaped me. ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Cold. Help.¡±


    ¡°No.¡± I softly hushed. ¡°Please.¡±


    ¡°Yes. Please.¡± Said the voice.


    I crossed the room on bobbing knees, and I could feel my entire body grow cold from the anticipation. The peephole was right fucking there. I leaned in, feeling the cool touch of the door, and pressed my face against the peephole.


    There he was.


    Bullet hole just above his left eye oozing with dark red blood. Worms squirming their little fat bodies from the man-made orifice. I gagged and held my wrist up to my nose. I could smell him through the door. He was just standing there in the dull yellow hallway. Blank eyes. The most unsettling part was that he had his arms outstretched in a rigid T-pose. His nose twitched. I think he was smelling me right back.


    His lips parted unnaturally, as though he weren¡¯t sure how to speak. ¡°Help. Please. Cold.¡±


    I reached for the nob, dead bolt, and sliding chain, making sure they were locked. They were. I backed away from the door and sat on the couch, lifting my phone from the floor. I could still hear him from the other side of the door.


    ¡°Answer. Your. Door. Please.¡± He said.


    I dialed Alex¡¯s phone and waited and waited and waited. Nothing. I tried again. Still nothing. I scrolled through the messages he¡¯d sent me. He¡¯d been stalked. Had Alex been killed? Was he dead? I don¡¯t know. What am I to do?


    I sit here on the couch with a butcher knife, watching the door. I have a knife and it makes me feel a little safer, but Alex had a gun. The door doesn¡¯t rattle in its frame, but the man on the other side doesn¡¯t stop talking.


    Cold.


    Help.


    Coming.


    Answer.


    Your.


    Door.

 Entangled Weeaboo

    I''m writing this in an impoverished town at the foot of a famous Japanese mountain.


    As a younger man, I''d lived in America, watching anime, reading manga, learning Japanese. I was an insufferable ass. Perhaps it was cultural appropriation... I prefer the term Japanophile as it seems to show a profound love of the country and culture while also maintaining some semblance of its stranger quirky connotations. It''s weird, sure. Leave me alone. I just really love Japanese culture and I don''t feel the compulsion to defend it any more than that.


    I met my girlfriend on a forum posting website sometime last year. It wasn''t long after we''d started facetiming that I booked a flight to her home, deciding to leave all of my life (what little there was of a life) behind. Everything that I needed was ahead of me. Most of the people back in America tend to think of me as an Otaku or a Weeb and honestly, I don''t care.


    Yumi met me at the airport with her grandmother. I attempted to do all of the proper introductions as best I could while speaking to her grandmother in a broken version of her language. The older woman nodded along, tapping her cane, and smiling at my flustered behavior, easing my worried anxious mind. I know the language, but I still sometimes have a difficult time with it if anyone speaks it too quickly or uses lesser known words often. As the older woman led Yumi and I out of the airport, I could hear her saying something like, "He will do nicely." She approved. Nice. It seemed as though she liked me and to be honest, that was one of the things I''d been worried about as Yumi had told me that her grandmother was rather proper and strict.


    We loaded into an old van with Yumi in the driver seat, her grandmother in the passenger seat, and me sitting in the back. I happily stretched my legs and settled into the dizzying effects of jetlag. Yumi explained as she drove into the countryside that I would be staying in the guest room while I settled in. Without even thinking, I blurted out that I had believed we would share a room. Yumi was an adult woman. There was no reason for us to be separated. I was being a guy, I know. I honestly wanted to fall asleep in her arms on my first night in my beloved Japan. But as I mentioned this, her grandmother shifted in her front seat, squinting at me.


    Yumi laughed this off so as to break the tension. "No. You can''t do that until we''ve married."


    Married? She''d never mentioned anything like that before. I nodded at her grandmother and put my rumination aside. "Yes. Of course. I''m sorry." I assumed that she said this to quell her grandmother''s anxiety. Who knew? Maybe she really did feel like she didn''t want to sleep with me until marriage. That was fine too. I loved her after all.


    The van took us alongside rice paddy fields and bamboo patches and beautiful draping trees that I couldn''t recall the names of off-hand. Yumi had previously told me that she lived with her grandmother in a secluded farming community and so this didn''t bother me initially, but each time the van turned a corner, I expected Yumi to call out that their home was just up ahead and that we''d be able to rest soon. This didn''t happen. The van continued and the shadows drew longer. By the time we approached the small abode, my eyes were fluttering my dreams into existence and the moon was well in the sky.


    I pulled my luggage from the van, hoisting it up the wooden porch steps of the home. Her grandmother led me to a bedroom, sliding the door open and ushering my tired body into it. For sure, I''d thought that sleeping atop a tatami mat would take some getting used to, but it wasn''t long before I was asleep.


    I woke up about an hour later to the smell of hot tea. After checking my phone and seeing it was only 11:00pm, I left the room, sliding the door shut ever so slowly and carefully so as to not wake anyone. I tiptoed to the kitchen in my white socks, the smell of tea wafting in my direction.


    It was Yumi, craning over the kitchen counter and reaching for a spoon hanging just above the sink. "Hey." I said.


    She jumped, slipping forward, and knocking the wooden spoon from its resting place. Yumi looked at me with wide stunned eyes then relaxed. "Oh, it''s you." She said coldly.


    "Couldn''t sleep?" I asked.


    She shook her straight black hair from side to side. "Sometimes I have a hard time sleeping so far from civilization. So, I''ll make some chamomile. Tends to knock me right out."


    I smiled at her and approached her. "I''m glad to be here. I was tired earlier."


    She nodded. "I''m glad you''re here too." I went over to where the spoon had fallen and picked it up, handing it over to her. "Would you care to join me for my nighttime tea?" she asked.


    The two of us took a metal tray containing our small cups and the teapot out onto the cool porch. It was peaceful, even if a little creepy. I come from the city and so anytime I''m out in the countryside, regardless of locale, I''m always unsettled by the noises of bugs, wild animals, rustling bushes. Give me the sound of blaring traffic and screeching tires any time you''d like. We shared the drink, munching on butter cookies and holding hands.


    "I don''t like it here." she said absently.


    "Really? You said over the phone that you enjoyed living with your grandmother."


    "I do, but it''s this place. It just doesn''t feel right."


    "I think I know what you mean."


    We sat quietly for a little while longer, finishing off the tea with our eyelids now drooping and our yawns coming more frequently.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "You sure you don''t want to share the night together?" I asked.


    "Some other night." She gave me a smile that almost hid the fact it was forced.


    "Po, po, po."


    Her complexion paled and her hand felt absent in my own. At first, I''d thought she had been the one making the noises.


    "Po, po, po."


    I twisted in my seated position and glanced out towards the forest in front of us. There, just before the trees, was a tall line of overgrown bamboo that went out in either direction, only splitting for the driveway.


    "Po, po, po."


    "Let''s go inside." said Yumi.


    I saw the white hat of a tall figure with black hair just peeking over the very top of the bamboo. Let me explain to you why this was so startling. The bamboo at its highest was seven feet high. The perpetrator must have been a giant.


    "Okay." I said, helping her move our tea equipment into the house.


    I couldn''t sleep for the rest of the night. I''d heard that bit of folklore before. That was Hachishakusama, a demon that tended to kidnap children; it was an old legend. I''d read about it years ago on some internet forum and although I''d never considered myself a believer in the supernatural, there was no denying the similarities.


    Every sound in the dark room gave me chills and just as I was about to close my eyes and succumb to the pillow, I could see a tall slender figure cut out from the moonlight of the nearby window; it began tapping on the glass, repeating "Po, po, po, po, po."


    At breakfast, Yumi and I recounted the story of the previous night to her grandmother in great detail, with me adding that I''d been tormented while trying to sleep by the ghastly thing.


    "Foolish children believing in such foolish tales. No wonder you''re not ready to marry." said her grandmother while looking up from her tamago gohan. The old woman rapped her chopsticks against the bowl. "Calm your nerves if ever you hope to be a good father."


    I sheepishly ate my food and decided to go for a walk on my own.


    This trip was not going the way it was supposed to. I walked down the dirt driveway, kicking rocks with my hands in my pockets. I heard quick footsteps coming after me from the direction of the house and I spun quickly, sure that the tall pale woman-thing was coming after me. It was Yumi and I felt my shoulders relax.


    "I''m sorry about that." she said, matching my pace.


    "It''s alright." I sighed a long sigh and put my hand out for her to hold as we walked. She crooked her arm into mine and rested her head on the end of my shoulder.


    "Hachishakusama." I let the name fall into the open air in front of me.


    "Don''t," I felt her tense beside me, and I could feel her nails actually press into my bicep. "Don''t say that name."


    "So, the demon is real? You believe that?"


    She shook her head. "Only kids believe in ghosts, right?"


    "Right."


    That night, I woke up to the same strange tapping on the window. "Po, po, po."


    I looked directly at the window. I could actually see the details of her. Long black hair that hung all the way down to her knees. Her white hat. Her smiling black eyes. Her distinct mannish voice. "Po, po, po."


    That''s when I noticed that there was something under the blanket with me. As I pushed the covers away in a hurry, I grimaced. My body and the tatami mat were covered in black dirt or ash. I scrambled from the bed, slipping through the door as quickly as my body would allow. Once in the hallway, I steeled my nerves and tried controlling my breathing. Then I heard it. At first, I thought it was the demon, but it wasn''t. The sound was coming from the grandmother''s room. Chanting? I moved down the hallway in my boxers, approaching the bedroom door. I could smell incense. And something else. Sulfur.


    I could hear the old woman''s voice through the door.


    "Life for life.


    Soul for soul.


    Take what you need.


    Leave us be."


    My breathing picked up and it felt like a gerbil was running on a treadmill in my guts. I half expected to have a small varmint protrude from my mouth.


    I slid the door gently in its frame, peeking in through a crack. The old woman sat in the center of her room. There was a black ashy substance covering her forearms and hands. She held an incense lantern in her hands above her head. Sitting across from her was Yumi, on her knees and praying.


    "This is fucking crazy." The sentence came out before I could even comprehend what I''d done.


    Yumi''s head shot to meet my eyes. The eyeballs in her skull were pitch black. She opened her mouth and long strands of black hair began spilling out of her maw. The hair whipped around in a frenzy, as though it had a mind all its own. I gagged at the thought of having something like that in my own mouth. The long black hair kept coming. And kept coming. The hair was coming towards me. The old woman stayed entirely static. Her chanting was over, but she maintained her closed eyes and concentrated demeanor. Yumi craned over onto her hands and knees, choking out the hair. Then pale dead fingers squirmed their way out from between her parted teeth.


    Then came an entire forearm. Then a shoulder. Then a head. "Po, po, po."


    Hachishakusama palmed the floor with struggling erratic motions as it pulled itself from the insides of my girlfriend. "Po, po, po."


    I slammed the door shut and ran for my life. I pelted down the hallway, out the front door, down the driveway, through the rice paddy fields. I ran until my chest was on fire and my legs began to spasm.


    Every sound in the countryside''s open air caught my attention and so it was that every step I took forward in my tired state was soon followed by a look over my shoulder.


    I walked all night and was eventually picked up by a startled farmer sometime after the sun began to peek over the horizon.


    Moneyless and pantsless, he pitied me, giving me a pair of spare trousers. The farmer gave me a ride to the nearest town and I''ve since been taken up in the kindness of strangers.


    I tried calling home yesterday. I asked to borrow a local shop''s phone. After picking up the receiver and dialing the number out, I expected to hear my mom''s voice. Instead, it was Yumi.


    "Hello? Please, come back. I love you. I miss you. Please, come back."


    I stayed silent on the line.


    Yumi giggled and the sound over the phone ceased. Then, "Po, po, po."


    I hung up the phone and left the shop.


    I see Hachishakusama in every passing reflective surface. It follows me everywhere I go. I can''t sleep. When I eat, it violently comes back as viscous sludgy black vomit. Every time I catch my reflection, she''s standing closer to me, her lips parted and coming for my mouth. No one else sees it. Even as I sit in this run-down internet cafe, I can see her in the shine of the computer monitor.

 Dragonflies

    I remember when I was a child my dad would tell me and my brother of the urban legend about dragonflies. For those of you unaware of the strange nature of the dragonfly, allow me to fill you in. Apparently, if you¡¯re a child out too late, dragonflies can sense it and will attempt to punish you by sewing your mouth, eyes, nose, and ears shut with their tails. Imagine that for a moment. A bug that might fly directly into your face and quickly sew your head orifices shut with little provocation. Walking through the woods or some overgrown field, you happen to disturb a dragonfly perched atop a blade of long grass and have it attack you, leaving you blind, deaf, unable to scream, unable to breathe. Horrific. It gives me chills just thinking of it.


    My big brother and I would always turn our noses up at this and frown, sure that our dad was telling us tall tales to make sure we would come home when the sun went down. That was it. But our dad persisted and would go into graphic detail about some kid he¡¯d gone to school with.


    My dad, when he was a child, would go down to an empty lot often with a group of neighboring kids. They would dig in the dirt with sticks to imitate pirates sketching out crude maps to a treasure, they would pitch rocks at one another and whack them away with sticks, they would take up in all manner of play. However, there was this one kid that no one ever invited to their deserted lot. This boy¡¯s name was Tanner, and no one liked Tanner. He would always insert himself into their play time and almost always ruin the fun for everyone. He wasn¡¯t exactly a bully from what I¡¯ve gathered in my father¡¯s description, but he often whined and was a right party pooper. Whenever Tanner would be excluded from their activities, he would run home and tell his parents all about the miscreant children¡¯s endeavors. Then so it would be that their setting fire to an ant hill would be put to a stop and the tom boy who¡¯d brought her dad¡¯s matches to play with would be grounded.


    In particular, my dad hated Tanner but whenever he would tell stories about that time in his life, he always seemed to look back on Tanner as a sort of tragic figure. As an adult, my father could see the cruelty in himself and his peers whenever they excluded the boy. ¡°Kids can be cruel,¡± my dad would say, ¡°But I reckon that¡¯s just the way things go.¡±


    He would revel in telling me and my brother the sorts of misadventures that him and the other children would get into and we would always listen with great attention as we¡¯d grown up in the age of the internet and it was helpful in some nebulous way to hear about a time gone by when kids would play with dirt and marbles and that was enough somehow. It was simply neat.


    The aforementioned tom boy, named Rachel, was the girl who¡¯d given my father his first ever kiss at the age of eight behind an old honeysuckle bush. The other children found out and endlessly teased both into never speaking to one another ever again. I remember when our dad told us that bit, I stuck my tongue out and gagged, but my brother who was a few years older than me elbowed me and listened intently to our old man. That was also the day we learned of the dragonflies.


    We were riding in the car to visit the oncologist. Our mother sat in the driver seat, maintaining eye contact with the road. Our dad twisted in his seat to face me and my brother in the back, his bony frame and bald head and tired eyes moving, hands motioning as the story unfolded.


    He and a few of the other kids in his neighborhood had just bought a new explicit music CD from a teenager and were returning to their lot, to their makeshift ¡®tin¡¯ shack they¡¯d constructed with old sheet metal and branches to listen to the thing on a collective battery powered stereo. They were all overly excited to learn a few new curse words. As the group walked along the sidewalk, Tanner fell into step with them, pestering my father with question after question. ¡°Where¡¯d you get that?¡±, ¡°Why¡¯s that lady on the cover wearing no clothes?¡±, ¡°Where you guys going?¡±, and finally, ¡°I¡¯m going to tell my parents if you don¡¯t¡¯ let me listen to it too!¡± They had no choice but to let Tanner into their shack if he promised to shut his yap and not touch their stereo. Tanner protested, but ultimately agreed to this arrangement.


    Quickly, they settled onto the furniture they¡¯d scavenged from the nearby woods: an old stool, a moldy recliner, and a particle board table. They inserted the CD and powered the stereo on, headbanging and dancing like little idiots. My father told this bit with his trademark smile and even my mother in the driver seat was cornered and had no other option but to grin solemnly, gray.


    ¡°Of fucking-¡°started my dad, but upon feeling my mother tense her shoulder, he rephrased, ¡°Of course that rotten Tanner started skipping songs on the CD.¡± My dad threw his hands up, even after all these years, he was vividly upset with the child.


    That¡¯s when my dad started slapping Tanner¡¯s hand whenever it reached out for the silver button on the old stereo. The feeling in the shack was palpable and visceral. A fistfight was brewing and every one of the children knew it. Finally, Tanner reached out one last time to skip another song and my father slapped his hand and Tanner, red in the face and teary eyed, grabbed the square black box with speakers, holding it over his head. ¡°Fine!¡± screamed Tanner before slamming the thing against the dirt floor. It shattered and the song died into a creaking sputter.


    The group had had enough and shoved Tanner from their clubhouse so that the little boy went head under feet and straight into the ground. Tanner began crying and slinging dirt into a frenzy, tossing it into their faces. ¡°You guys are nothing but a lot of bullies, you know that? All you ever do is pick on me! Bunch of jerks.¡± He spat out a mouthful of dirt, wiping his dusty cheeks. My dad, not too proud of this recollection, jumped onto Tanner¡¯s back and sat on him. The other children followed suit and began sitting on the screaming boy. ¡°I can¡¯t breathe,¡± he would shout. No one cared. They¡¯d had enough of the brat. He began hyperventilating and kicking and punching. It was funny at first, but knowing they couldn¡¯t keep him down forever, they got off the boy and let him scramble away. ¡°You¡¯re crazy!¡± He screamed at them. ¡°You could¡¯ve killed me!¡± He spit and wiped at his face again.


    That¡¯s when they began throwing rocks at the boy. Most of them were light tosses to be sure, but one of them connected with the side of Tanner¡¯s face, sending out a rush of hot red blood. Tanner looked at his hands now covered in the stuff and cried even harder. Then he ran from the group, across the empty lot, and disappeared through a hole in the fence where beyond only the forest was.


    ¡°That was the last we saw of him,¡± said my dad. ¡°None of us ever said anything about it, but I know we all felt bad about it. The police asked us lots of questions the following day. Turns out he died in those woods. Our parents stopped letting us go out to that lot after that.¡± My dad sighed and this was followed with a wet cough quickly transforming into a gasp for air until his eyes were full of water and his hands were shaking. After regaining control of himself, he continued, ¡°Rumor spread that the dragonflies got him because he got lost and couldn¡¯t get out of the woods before dark.¡±You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    My brother, wide eyed asked, ¡°Why did they say that?¡±


    Our father shrugged. ¡°They said he was found with everything sewed up.¡± He motioned with his bony index finger to emulate the motions of a dragonfly sewing his face shut. Noticing our small, horrified expressions, he put both hands over his chest, all crisscross, and closed his eyes with his tongue stuck out. It did extraordinarily little to lighten the mood.


    When our father died, my brother grew distant, stopped playing with me, and started hanging out with other teenagers while I still colored in my SpongeBob crayon book. I was left alone, confused by the whole world and always waiting for my dad to come home. I would tug on my brother¡¯s shirt, pleading to do things like we used to, perhaps hoping to create adventures like the ones our dad told us of. I would be met with a swift knuckle to the forearm and my arm would hang limp by my side for a few brief seconds with tears pooling in my eyes.


    Mom, always the resilient type, withdrew emotionally and it is only in retrospect that I am aware that she was trying to hold herself together. I honestly believe that she thought she was doing the right thing, not wanting to destroy us all in her own grief. She worked, cleaned, absently lived her life. That always makes me sad.


    This is what I remember.


    ¡°I hate you!¡± screamed my brother, as my mom held up the small bag of marijuana she¡¯d found stowed in between his mattress and box springs. It was all so vivid; she¡¯d confronted him and his troublemaking ways. I hid in the corner of the doorway to his bedroom. ¡°Fuck this.¡± He said, shoving past her. He nearly stumbled over me in the hall, but upon seeing me there, he stopped and put his hand on my shoulder. ¡°I¡¯m leaving and I¡¯m not coming back,¡± he started to move away, but it seemed that something occurred to him and he turned to look at me full on crouching to meet my eyes. ¡°I love you.¡± I was stunned. He pulled me into a brisk hug and left out the front door.


    I could hear my mother crying through the wall that night. I wanted to comfort her. I wanted to go to her and tell her it was alright. I wanted to let her know that he was just lashing out. I was ten.


    That night, I crawled out of bed long after I was sure that mom had gone to sleep. I crept through the house and into the living room, withdrawing an old photo album from the cabinet near the fireplace. It was covered in dust and I laid it out over my lap as I sat in the armchair with my father¡¯s outline infinitely pressed into it. On the first page, there was a happy family of three and the mother had a swollen belly beneath her sundress. She was giving the grinning man in the photo a smirk and eyeroll as he snapped the photo. This was in a park. The little boy there was forever posed in a laugh with squinted eyes, his head lolled back. I flipped through the photo album and watched the grinning man grow thinner and thinner, but that smile stayed the same. His smile was always there. It seemed that everything else around the mouth changed, including the people.


    The boy developed pimples and an icy angsty stare, the mother¡¯s expression hardened into a stony resolve that broke my heart, the younger boy no longer in his mother¡¯s womb grew from a chubby baby into a round faced boy with a confused look on his face. The man still smiled.


    As the pictures came to an end, the pimply boy, now a teen, wore all black and painted his fingernails. The mother stopped letting her hair fall into a frizzy wavy mess and instead opted to wrangle it into a tight ponytail to expose the deepening creases across her forehead. The round-faced boy looked at his father with admiration. The man smiled still.


    The last picture was of a water eyed family crowded around a slim man in a hospital bed. The man¡¯s skin clung to his skull like the thin paper they wrap gourmet sandwiches in. The mother was pole stiff next to the bed, looking directly into the camera and holding the man¡¯s finger with a limp grasp. The teen¡¯s cheeks were stained with mascara. The round-faced boy stood next to his brother, looking at the tiles of the hospital floor. The man in the hospital bed pointed at his chest with one hand and held the other in a thumbs up fashion. His bruised eyes expressed that he was not worried about the surgery. It was everything else around the mouth that changed.


    I shuffled the last photo out of its page and held it up to the first. In between, there was a story here that only we could know. All the sudden, everything made sense to that confused looking round-faced boy as he sat in his father¡¯s armchair.


    A sound clattered from the kitchen and I jumped, dropping the book onto the floor, and pulling my scared feet underneath my bottom. After a moment of complete silence, I shifted from the chair and scampered across the living room to peek into the kitchen. The room was pitch black save the moonlight splashing in from the sliding glass door that led onto the back patio. I could feel the blackness all around me like little bugs. Hissing in through my teeth, I smacked the light switch near the threshold and kept my eyes fixed to the glass door as the overhead bulb spit light onto the patio. I could see something moving out there. Something humanoid and shifting and black against the kitchen light. I held my breath and slowly, deafly moved across the tiles. As I reached the glass door, I put my face against it, cupping my hands. Nothing.


    Then the dark figure sprang to life, smacking against the door and rattling it in its frame. I tumbled backwards, falling over one of the wooden kitchen chairs, scrambling to flee the monster. I trod across the room, hiding at the edge of the threshold, and turning to look back. I saw a hand grasp for the handle and the light shone it was pale and it had painted fingernails. I gasped and rushed back to the glass door, unlocking it, and sliding it open.


    My brother fell into the kitchen, face down, hands scrambling all around, feeling. His body contorted and he clawed at his downturned face. I reached out to touch his shoulder and he recoiled, turning to expose his face to me. I let out a shrill stiff cry.


    His mouth, eyes, nostrils, and ears had been sewn shut in a tangle of thick black thread. He reached out for me and I could see his cheeks turn purple and swell. He grabbed at my legs and I backed away in terror, still screaming. Then he fell limp.


    I could hear my mother moving through the house. She stomped into the kitchen, obviously prepared to hand out discipline. When she saw my brother lying lifeless on the kitchen tiles, she stopped dead in her tracks before springing to action, trying to shake him back into existence.


    We buried my brother and lived on, putting it away so that it¡¯s one of those things that we rarely withdraw and discuss. My mother softened after his death and we keep in touch. Whenever I visit, we talk about everything besides my dad and brother. As time goes on and her mind has started to slip away, she opens more. The most recent time I joined her for dinner, she told me to be careful of the dragonflies. For a long time, I thought that maybe I was the only one that had recalled the story from my father¡¯s childhood, but it seems she does too.


    I miss them every day and still time¡¯s arrow marches forward. Now that I have children of my own, I tell them the story of Tanner and the dragonflies. I¡¯m not quite the storyteller my dad once was but I give it my best and it scares them well. I hope it does.

 Light Felt

    He crawled through his cave with hunched back and pale eye, always wondering of the world above, of the place with all the light. He went along, catching every crack in the wall by remembrance, knowing exactly where to go with no sight before. This fell-over being was a man, a human, he had all the right parts to be called homo-sapian, but there was a kind of sway in his walk, a kind of scratchy felt in his throat when he opened his mouth to speak in the guttural tones of the underworld, the tunnel people.


    The wise ones warned him not to go past a particular checkpoint; listen to them and not think of the possibility of never seeing, never knowing what was out there.


    So, this man went along in his rags that barely covered a person of past-time comfortably. Only loin and bits of chest with torn and tattered blanket. Dirt was in the air, in his lungs, in his soul. There was a kind of magic in the darkness, in the world of unknowing and the world of under-everything. These were his people, down here was his life but he was too curious, too ready for what was waiting for him beyond this crevice.


    He was afraid no more of a glorious light that glistered faintly through the cracks, into a world so cold and lonesome and secluded. He was pale and blinded by the scape of underground caverns; some organic, some made with the old mechanics, the reliable sources of a drilling life.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    But he was going, he was ready for what awaited him up there; he came to the steps that were built to never be ascended thereafter. He stepped up and began crawling ever onward in a weird weary silence where his nails, both hand and foot, scraped the wood of the staircase built so long ago.


    He was compelled by long years in the mines, long time in the place with no thing called sun; there was no definition for the thing in the language they spoke blindly to one another. It was sad; if one were to see him smile and notice the yellow crescent that was his teeth glow as bright as the warm earth then one might know his pain. He grew with power, going quicker, his sharp teeth gnashing at the thought and his slender nails clawing away as dirt was again under heel. He found the touch of door and it was metal. With no key or great word, he turned the big nob of the thing and it swung outward, letting him gander upon some dream, letting him see what he had only imagined for the time it had taken him to grow from what was an adolescent to what he was then and there.


    He was happy and then the blue fire ball''s rays in the sky swept his skin and melted his flesh, peeling back everything, exposing him for the purest thing he was, muscle, vein, lovely blood. The crimson boiled so quickly that it dissipated straight from his body without ever falling.


    His smile faded in ash before he realized what happened. In moments, the only thing left was a set of smoking cave-dweller''s cloth. He was gone and a pile of dust blew away in the little wind that came over the hell of a globe.


    He was with the light and would always be now; he danced in peppered love that marinated the dry cracks of what was left of flecked rock.

 Terminal

    This place was encompassed entirely by sandy shores with a single cove on the northern face; this here grotto was overgrown with vegetation at the mouth and within its throat, deeper, deeper, there curiously flowed a mystique that was yet to be discovered. The sand upon this circular coast was quite plain and insignificant- like any other. There was a squat mountain in the center of this island, nearly perfectly picturesque in comparison to most entire ranges elsewhere; higher than the peak, there was mist and all, thicker than the thickest human-witnessed fog. Over the face of this small isle that stretched in all directions for several miles, where there was not the mountain nor the sandy shores, there was a forest with patches of flat-lands all helter-skelter about the body of the seemingly faerie-infested wood. On the southern sands of the shore, there lay a full-grown man on his side, curled into a smallish ball of a form. Mr. Peculiar then began to stir. He looked about his surroundings quickly with wild, way-ward eyes and what he found did not seem to suit him at all; his icy blue irises showed a true fear. No recollection was before him and no somber trail led him in his stupor. Upon his palms, he felt sand and began clumping some in vigorous fists as he let a belt of coughs echo from him. Mr. Peculiar gasped in air for the first time, again. He smelled an ocean, and the sand, and even whispering whiffs of whiskey from his own clothes, especially around his collar. He was drenched in sweat and salt water and for a moment, he wondered why. Why? Why was he wet? Had some unfortunate shipwreck been the antagonist of his demise? Mayhap a storm- perhaps another calamity. He did not know. And after that conceptual moment passed, he didn''t really care anyway. ''What the fuck?" was all that he said, wiping his dry lips. It genuinely was the phrase that summed up his oddly confused state in entirety; t''was a question, indeed, an inquiry to the universe with no verbal response. Even if he somehow did find an answer to his question, he would not have been able to interpret Destiny''s parted lips to any human degree. He began to stand up but rocked on his knees then fell hard onto his ass. His shirt was a deep blue and his trousers a fading brown. Finally, Mr. Peculiar did stand fully with a frown that bordered a melancholy sadness- a sorrow- he did not understand, and one he wished to never know. But he knew it still without quite remembering.


    Something about a crash, crumpled metal, and all. Had he been behind the wheel? Yes. Undoubtedly it was-


    Mr. Peculiar hoisted his trousers higher onto his hips, because they were too big for his frame. He hated that. He hated most things and that''s how he perceived most of the world nearly all the time, a simple succession of desolation within his very own chest; he didn''t know why he felt that way, maybe he was a pure victim of circumstance and all that. Maybe he was something more. He hoped, for that''s all he owned in that space of not knowing too much, not enough. His eyes, bluer than the waters out there, stared indifferently at the dancing, swirling waves that sprayed his face within the more uproarious bouts that struck unto itself. Thus, he made his way inland without paying any particular mind to where he went, but he was drawn onward, nevertheless.


    -his fault. Yet there was no fault or guilt he felt, for he was the only to perish. A bottle up turned followed by squealing wheels of an automobile.


    Mr. Peculiar began a stroll through the inland wood and smelled the scent of amaranths and lilies and other wondrous smells never smelled before. The light was high in the sky and luminescence flowed through the canopy in misshapen shafts of yellow gold that caught his face here or there. He shunned the light with the back of his hand. After a time, he sat with his back to what seemed a draping willow and contemplated for a spell. What an isolated purgatory this was. His orbs flickered lazily, his lids fluttering, and a strange breeze blew past him- through him. He fell to an ill and restless sleep. Once hugged in this crazed embrace of solitude, he groaned near violently.


    No protection and that was probably the start of the trouble after all. Sex was dull and worse whilst wearing it. Then came the wail of a babe and within the midst of mediocrity, he found true love. This, he recalled in the corridors of interlapping dreams, woven from the threads of his life. There he was then, a quilt of mottled cloths. And he wrapped himself around this child, showing his real self for a while, with all those half-smirks and smiles.


    When he opened his eyes, it was pitch black all around him. In fact, when his eyes came wide, he was not sure they were open at all. But they were, and after a while, after his vision adjusted, he saw shadows moving in the darkness. They were lumbering figures that moved and danced like daemons of a Dagon ode. They were many and not too far away either. He swallowed slowly and heard it in his ears. He hoped they didn''t. He shimmied his back up the trunk of the willow as he stood. Never before had so much sweat sprung over his body. His clothes clung to him. A knot on the trunk must have been driving directly into the small of his back, because his spine tingled straight up to his neck, and though there was nothing there, it felt as if something was breathing down his collar. Within these moments of watching those creatures move, he remembered memories of a childhood where, at night, all things came to life to haunt one from the depths of ravine-like closets; it was in the places of the mind where these thoughts rested that absolute fear was locked within. Mr. Peculiar thought of bedtime stories that were too frightening and oh the lightning on storming nights. His stomach churned and his groin muscles tightened. He covered his mouth to save his heavy breathing from the things'' ears, if they had any, and strained his eyes whilst craning his neck forward to get a better look at the gangly group of outlandish ghouls. Hounds of hell they surely were, fighting amongst themselves, gnashing, clawing, and the noise was sickening but low in volume, nearly inaudible. It was slime upon slime, sliding with no friction but the lubricant itself did cause a sticky slapping sound. He saw half quadrupeds with glistering skins coated in a membrane of veins and cartilage. They moved amongst themselves before him like a bustling wave with tentacle-appendages that plumed from their arched backs, swaying to and fro unmelodically as though they bustled awkwardly uncoordinated through a massive orgy. He saw no eyes. Still these monstrosities were unwary of his existence. Though these things were shining in their coat of gross lubrication, he did not spy any source of light, even from the sky. He wondered how they managed to rebound so brightly with no logical torch. But, of course, abso-fucking-lutely, the core of who he was, a breed of human purely, he was indescribably driven to be curious. So, he remembered faintly that he''d left something in his pocket. He rifled through his pocket and withdrew a small metal lighter. Mr. Peculiar gave it a strike, but nothing came forth. He glanced at the things; they still rustled vigorously in their same way. All he wanted was a better look at something so fantastically wild. He wanted to see them and their build entirely. On the second strike, he did. Regret flushed over his body in a hot-cold stimulation. Every single one of these beasts stood absolutely still and stared at Mr. Peculiar with eyeless sockets that ran like tunnels to the backs of their skulls, and there, there was no light. Yes, the glow he held in outstretched hand washed a golden color over a large spherical area, but when that gold reached these beasts'' drilled ocular, orbless holes, the color ceased quite definitively, like darkness incarnate. For an eternity and a half, not the slightest sound escaped from any place. He was positive within the moments that passed that he could not breathe. Finally, he gasped and ran with no particular guide, with no intention save parting the distance between himself and the beasts. He rounded the trunk of the willow, bounding through its dangling branches, bumbling, and bustling past thickets like a man with hell on his heels. The lighter had gone out and darkness was a villain in those fitful moments. He heard them as he went. He heard them directly behind him and they were fast, ravenous. Nowhere to go, he continued onward, not daring to slow or gander over his shoulder. The wood whistled past him as he bolted further out of it; growls and howls followed him in a chorus. He began laughing and hooting with them- as though he were one. His muscles ached and he was intoxicated from his own madness. Something warm flowed over his face, something he did not understand. How long had it been since he wept aloud? He couldn''t be sure; it would be awfully hard to determine, but it felt as though it must have been too long. His shoelace caught on an unseen, uprisen root and he tumbled into a wide, circular field where the grass was none too tall. Cantering, crawling to his feet, he went to the center of that naturally occurring stage where all the trees could see. There, he spun, both hands clenched at his sides. There, Mr. Peculiar made his stand. They encircled him, rotating in a line round his vicinity, closing. He began lunging at them in a faux manner, bearing his teeth against them. A few showed hesitance in their formation. His resolve stood solid. The beasts came at him, one by one, but he was unmoving and as each struck his flesh, they disappeared, dissipated straight away into a flash and mist of ash. With each creature gone, the sky grew a brighter hue of blue. With the last one vanquished and the field conquered against the innumerable Horde, he yelled at the grand, cloudless sky above, then looked down at the ground, then at the grime they''d left him coated in. Mr. Peculiar dusted himself off then sat more pondersome than previously so. He thought, and he thought hard but grasped at only frayed edges of a life before that one.


    Something, something more seeped into his mind of that aforementioned past that forced him to wonder through the halls of cruel remembering. And truth came with it. There had been a fight- nothing physical of course- an argument really. He''d looked upon his wife''s eyes. ''I''m not happy,'' was all she had said to spur it. In the exchange of words that followed, he was enlightened with a sickness. She''d began swelling a second time by no fault of his. Mr. Peculiar responded with anger, trepidation most prominent. He''d tried taking the bundle, his child, in his arms, but she snagged it from him. He left then, vowing to return. He was pissed and drunk when he died.


    After a while, he stood from the ground and saw a mount to the northern horizon. ''I''ll climb it,'' he said to no one; his words fell from his mouth, irresolute. Under the skin, he was undoubtedly nonplussed by what had occurred only a while before, but if anyone were to see him in those moments after the assault of the Horde, they may guess he was going for stroll. For you see, his eyes were like well-woven walls of indistinguishable will. He was more powerful than any manifestation of shadows spawned forth from him. And anyway, he wasn''t fazed by the morbidity of the situation on the surface because he had faced far fiercer amounts of darkness; that was the only solution to something so absolute anyway- facing it. It''s what it came to. Soon, as he went, he came on a massive, sprouting tree at the edge of the wide field that he''d yet noticed. Among it, he felt puny. Swaying in little winds, bobbing from the tips of the trees'' wiry fingers there were little plump fruits that looked to glister with a dew though there was no explanation for the sparkling droplets. Here, he ate to his content. The fruits were sour and went down slowly. He plucked extra, polishing them on his shirt then depositing them in both pockets. He went on, into the forest, watching the peak of the mountain- his destination- until it was gone entirely, hidden by a canopy of Fall colors. Although he was pleased that he''d not perished against the night-fiends, no smile lay slain upon his lips, but instead they were mealy and stretched into a kind of grimace. He was terribly thirsty; his lips were dry and cracked and he could feel blood beginning to pool in the elongated ridges forming over his mouth. The fruits he''d downed were juicy but somehow didn''t suffice. Mr. Peculiar wished for water- maybe something with more of a burn to it- but heard no running streams or falls. The temperature was fine in the wood he trod through, however something weighed over him, making him dab at his brow. Yes, he thought of his immediate surroundings, but he hoped more prominently than that, that his sense of direction was faring well. He ate another fruit from his pocket and tossed the core over his shoulder. In what seemed no longer than a few hours, he came to the base of the mount. In the very least, he could only assume that''s where he was, because the earth was rockier and more solid. He had to take deeper breaths as he continued, and the ground seemed to slant more. The trees about were growing less dense, though the canopy stayed thick. Through sparse openings of the leaves overhead he saw bits of light shining through into the cozy colors below. And he sometimes saw what he hoped to be the peak of that foreign mountain. His hopeful queries came unveiled as the wood dispersed absolutely, as though in a mathematically fine line. And he was crawling hap-hazardly rather than walking upright. ''It''s not so tall,'' he told himself with a cracking smirk. But he ascended with this illusion in his head. How was he to know? It really hadn''t looked so tall. But something about it made it not so. The mount was an easy prospect to any unknowing soul. Finally, he was climbing, and his knees ached in unison with the webbing under his flesh where his arms and shoulders met. His lightly calloused hands felt tender against the abrasive rock-face and his footing seemed to grow looser with each hoist- as though he were teetering at the pit of everything and he might just slip and fall forever. That''s when he truly began to question the magic of the mountain. Mr. Peculiar gazed upward and saw that he was not nearly halfway up the side of the thing. He started to think of it differently, the mount. After all, it had seemed small, seeing it from down there on the ground. Then something urged him to look down. And he did. From where he was, the base was a million miles away. But he went. Very shakily, granted, but he pursued this goal, nevertheless. The idea of failing sickened him worse than that great altitude, so he felt compelled to rid himself of that ailment. He shook off cowardice like a cloak. ''C''mon, you can do this. Don''t you dare give in," he whispered this like an incantation. Over and over. His fingers bled, but he did not give in. He strove, foothold after foothold. Repetition. Breath after heavy breath.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    He''d gone to the store with winos out back; the one that was filthy and smelled like shit. He recalled a smile- a mask- as he''d entered. Once he was a true patron, he galloped back to his compact car. He stared at the crumpled brown bags with glass necks sprouting and snatched a bottle up. His intention was to forget. A quarter of the swirling dark amber liquid was gone from that container before he finally drove away. By the time he had a moment to realize he didn''t know where he was going, it was too late. He drew a face of wicked sadness. That''s when he assumed that on some level, he''d decided to-


    One last lurch brought him over the wall face of the mountain and he was only one small slope away from a serpentine trail that rested thirty yards lower than the pointed peak; this trail was cut into the mount and circled round to the opposite side. He walked the small slope then mounted the walkway. Sweat dripped from him all profuse. Mr. Peculiar followed the trail.


    -kill himself.


    He stopped and wiped his forehead; wasn''t it supposed to be cooler at higher altitudes? He stood there, thinking of this new revelation. Had he really killed himself? It seemed so silly now. And why was it so hot up here? He possessed too many wonderments at once. His feet carried him forward, ever onward to some unknown destination. What did he hope to achieve while following this strange pull that the island had over him? For the first time up so high, he saw the island''s landscape more so. It was wonderful. It was beautiful. It was expansive. But the detail he most prominently noted was that although he was risen above everything, it did not seem that the ground below was so very far away. While climbing, it was such a perilous fall, yet from where he stood then, it was little more than a slight tumble. Illusions or some other trickery of the like was all that he could assume of that life after life. He rounded the circumference of where the mountain met the cut walkway fully and saw what awaited him there. A little further onward, the trail dropped off at a ninety-degree angle, but before that, a staircase ran into the side of the trail from the right that led downward, opposite the side he''d come from. As he came upon the staircase to his right, he saw the steps were of some transparent material. The steps'' edges were rounded, dulled, and worn slippery as though they''d been there a long time and many others had walked them, descending to their own Destiny. And so, there went Mr. Peculiar, descending to his. He walked warily, wearily down the case. It seemed he might slip at any moment, but the case held steady and the rubber of his shoes did not slide against it. There was a bit of a reflection to that glass-like, aqueous looking stone that made up those steps, and he saw his shadowy form in them. He noticed that his reflection looked confident, but he didn''t feel like that. He felt terrible, like at any moment, something bad was going to happen to him. His breathing grew more rapid as he met the halfway point on the staircase, and he didn''t have the faintest idea why. He gazed up at the sky, cloudless; he did find the time to smile queerly but stopped himself when he realized he was doing it. The sky was bright after all. Hadn''t that canvas up there been blotted with a thick fog not too long ago? He thought it had but could not remember. Recollections were not his forte as of late. On the last step before his feet would strike solid, grassy ground, he stopped and peered over his shoulder from where he''d come. The case of translucent nature was changing and rising, starting from where it met the mountain and the change continued, descending toward him. As the case rose to the sky above, it turned to some mist. Soon, it was blanketing the sky and it was clouds. He stepped from it, turning his body, craning his neck backward, blue eyes averted to a blue sky changing quickly. Though this happened, no gust rambled. The last step disappeared upward. The blanket above grew dark and so did the landscape. He was in awe with his hands stuffed in his pockets, fidgeting in them nervously, searching for something and finding nothing. Perhaps he was looking for rationality in a circumstance without. It was beautiful and terrifying, like good art, because it pulled the thought of the fragility of the physical world from him and made it an actual manifestation before him. He saw nothing in that strange night phase. He had nothing to cling to in it, save his nervous sweat. There was a cold in the air that actually passed through him again. Before he could even grow comfortable with the night, a gash of light spilled open from the sky. It was a dry lightning continuously zig-zagging above. Within one of these flashes of light, he saw the image of himself and stumbled onto his bottom; in the next flash, he saw nothing where, only moments before, he''d seen his own form. There was no doubt about it, what he''d seen was himself- something had been slightly off, however. What he''d seen was his own face, but instead of eyes, there were a pair of twinkling crimson spheres sunken into a more drawn and haggard head. Those eyes- if they could be called that- had an extreme luminescence about them. It had been like standing before a mirror that distorted one''s self into a daemon. Hadn''t his teeth been exposed by a wide and crazed grin? His immediate recollection assumed they had been. Hadn''t his teeth looked more viscous? Elongated perhaps? It didn''t matter though; it must''ve been only another illusion, some non-existent doppelganger. It could not have been possible, his mind evidently summed up. It was an impossibility, simple as that. To cling to the last bit of sanity he owned, Mr. Peculiar refused to believe it within the realm of any reality. His mind was nearly gone, but he hung by an elusive thread that whipped to and fro, forcing him to re-find it all the time. Even though there seemed to be no physical danger amongst the dark and erratic bursts of powerful light, something, some intuition willed him to search the immediate area of ground around him with his fingertips, hoping for something to don as a projectile to launch at anything that deemed itself a presumable threat. At first, he felt nothing but thin strands of dream-like grass- but finally! There was something. It was immobile, he couldn''t lift it. It was flesh covered. He turned to face it. Then came a spurt of lightning, illuminating his surroundings. And he saw that thin, drawn face again, only inches from his own. It was smiling. When the area went dark, he still saw those incandescent red eyes floating in nothing, like the lanterns strapped to Death''s caleche. The eyes, they wavered but did not disappear. Mr. Peculiar jerked from his doppelganger''s frosty hand, spastic, but the daemon twin gripped up his hand and squeezed with the burning ferocity of a thousand shifting tectonic plates. Mr. Peculiar tried to scream but not even a whistle of air escaped his throat. He could not look away from those eyes fit to be burning coals. And so, he was a prisoner to them, locked away within that stare; there was no word to express that tingling terror. He was finally forced to face the fire that was a part of him. But it wasn''t who he was, only an isolated beast partitioned from the rest of who he was as an entity; however, within those silent moments, he forgot this and believed himself and the daemon were one and the same. And in that idea, he became lost.


    He had laughed and cried and loved and longed.


    But he''d also hated and punished some who had wronged him.


    But he''d asked for forgiveness and been grateful to those that had forgiven him and spoken of his humility for doing so.


    Had he meant it though? Probably not. It was a farce, another happy face to show people. Another mask of just contemplation. It had been in jest, no doubt.


    But no! That''s not possible; he did remember goodness and love and all the rest. He''d been a righteous person. He didn''t steal and he gave all he had away to those with less. He''d sacrificed his own life to aid those that he believed he only brought misery to.


    Lies! It had been a selfish act. He only wanted the pain and self-loathing to cease. It had been for him and no one else.


    But he had been human only, a fragile minded being that had a hard time differentiating beliefs and truths. His intentions were sound!


    So, he stood and fought, ripping his arm from the daemon''s gripping fingers. ''No!'' he screamed. A flash of lightning. He looked down at the perverted and deformed version of himself still sitting. The daemon looked so small, wiry, and fragile. It creeped to a standing posture as well and lurched towards him, bony grey fingers extending with no nails. Those red eyes were fading to some hue of pink. Mr. Peculiar''s hands slipped around the thing''s thin neck and he fell upon it, clenching its neck-flesh as tightly as he could muster. It was a while before he realized he was yelling some indistinguishable language as the light behind the daemon''s eyes faded to black. And then he was grasping nothing in gauntlets of strangulation, and the light was back, and he couldn''t remember why he was on the ground at all. So, he was standing again. He looked at the spot he''d been only moments ago, there on the ground. Nothing lay there. He laughed curiously. No weight rested on his chest and no trickles from a past life passed unto him. In this ignorance, he was bliss filled, like a man doped from a proper dosage. Then he felt the will of the island again, urging him to go only a little further north. He followed this invisible pull with no real sound thoughts or inquisitions of his position. He continued, passing through the beautiful, tranquil forest. Everything was quiet; not even buzzing insects could pierce the silence. He traveled through the wood like a man through a dream. After a spell of walking, the soles of his shoes struck the sand of the northern coast. He threw his shoes off happily, walking the coast barefoot. Then his sand covered toes ascended the steps of an ancient dock. Docked there was a single, two-man rowboat. He stepped into it cautiously as it rocked in the waves. He unharnessed the rope, and it was off with no visible push nor tug into the depths of the calm ocean. With no navigator nor oar, it rode along the coast at no distance further than forty yards, eastbound briefly, circumnavigating the shore. He enjoyed this funny, little magically propelled boat. Searching through his pockets, he plucked out a fruit and bit into it. This time, it tasted sweet, as sweet as ignorance. After a time, he very nearly dozed, but his eyes came open at the sight of the wide mouth of a dark grotto. The air seemed different there. Mr. Peculiar breathed deeply as the boat went into the cavernous cove, inhaling a breeze of Aether. That air was thicker. The grotto''s ceiling lit up and the stone there reminded him of the same material that had been the make of the staircase descending from the mountain. Only, the stuff lining the ceiling glowed as though magic was more powerful there. He smiled. Even though Mr. Peculiar rode the boat into the place known as Oblivion, still, he smiled.

 Stolen Eye

    I awoke in the hospital with lacerations all down my arms; they were wrapped but as I stirred, the stiffness in my forearms was apparent and when I moved them around, I felt a throb from them in my ears. A nurse came to my bed and assured me everything would be fine. Nothing made any sense, and I became totally unmanageable, swinging my arms and legs out in wild directions. Terror overtook me and the healthcare professionals¡¯ faces took on oblong qualities, swirling into gray clay with oval black eyes. I screamed and one of those things strapped my arms down. My mind swam and the dope took me.


    My time in the hospital was confusing as they attempted to figure out my identity. They tried asking me, but I was at a loss. Anytime I tried to recollect anything from the previous days, it felt like firecrackers were going off in my mind. Blinding pain rattled from my teeth down to the pit of my stomach.


    ¡°You¡¯ve lost an eye.¡± Said one of the doctors, shining a light into my one remaining eye, watching the pupil dilate.


    ¡°Shit, that¡¯s rough,¡± said the nurse, stroking his furry cheek.


    ¡°Language.¡± Said the doctor.


    ¡°How¡¯s that possible?¡± I blinked my one eye, looking around the beige room.


    ¡°Don¡¯t know yet.¡± The doctor clicked the flashlight off. ¡°How¡¯ve you been feeling?¡±


    ¡°Sore.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s to be expected.¡± He looked at me over the clipboard. ¡°How¡¯s the appetite?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s returning.¡± I said.


    ¡°Good.¡± He flipped the pages. ¡°And you¡¯re sure you don¡¯t remember anything?¡±


    Firecrackers. I massaged my temples and grit my teeth. ¡°No, sorry.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s alright. Your memory should return with time.¡±


    ¡°Can you figure out who I am?¡± I asked, reaching out to grab the doctor¡¯s arm.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    ¡°We¡¯ll try.¡± He sighed. ¡°Just rest for now.¡± Beyond the doctor¡¯s shoulder, the nurse offered a stiff smile.


    They left me alone in the hospital room. Maury was on the TV. Some new man was screaming about how his baby mama was a ho fo¡¯ sho¡¯. I changed it to the weather.


    I stirred my Jell-O cup with the plastic spoon then popped the remainder of the treat into my mouth, forcing it back and forth through my teeth before finally swallowing it. After being sure that no one was watching me, I toyed with the bandage around my head, lifting up the bit around where my left eye had once been. I shifted to catch my reflection in the clear vase near the plastic hospital bed. What met me there was a wide-open wet hole. I audibly recoiled from it.


    Who am I?


    Feverish dreams took me again. Visions of thin limbed beings with insect eyes, blinking from around the sides of their heads. They approached me. I was in a specimen jar. They tapped on the glass, pointing, and laughing with mini thin mouths.


    What sort of fucked dream was that?


    I was sweating. I was back in the hospital room. It was pitch black, so it took me a moment to realize I wasn¡¯t still asleep. I blinked and flinched at visions of those alien creatures. Was I going mad? I grabbed the frame of the bed, gripping it tight, like I was afraid I¡¯d be pulled straight up through the ceiling.


    I blinked and they were back for the briefest of moments.


    Taking my forefinger and thumb, I pressed my right eye open wide. The hospital gown clung to my chest. Was I sweating? Everything was so floaty and disorienting. I threw my head over the side of the bed and up-chucked orange Jell-O with bile. It hit the floor wet. I fell back to the bed and put my hand to my chest. Flashes of light buzzed around in front of my face. I bit my tongue and finally closed my right eye.


    I was in the specimen jar again. There were two creatures there, laughing at me. One of them disappeared while the other waited patiently. Just beyond them stood a solid metal wall with portholes to infinite space. The thing returned with a flat reflective rectangle and held it up so that I could see it through the murky glass of my jar.


    There I was. Nothing more than a veiny eyeball with a bit of optic nerve trailing out the back. ¡°What are you?¡± I asked, knowing full well they were millions of miles away.


    One of the thin creatures cocked its bulbous shining head to the side as though it had heard my question. Then a moist lipless grin spread across its face and it put up its hands, jumping at me. I flinched and threw myself off the bed, hitting the hard tile floor with all of my weight on an elbow. I groaned but was sure to keep my right eye open.


    I see them all the time. At least with half of my eyes.


    They dance in front of my specimen jar and speak to me in a language I¡¯m not sure how I know. They¡¯re coming back, they tell me. I tremble as I write this. I can see a blue orb, my planet, through one of the portholes of their alien craft.

 Periphery

    I''m writing this because things started moving around my house and my wife didn''t acknowledge it. It all started about a month ago; I couldn''t find my cell phone anywhere one morning while I was getting ready for work. My wife called it and I heard that distinct Star Wars "Imperial March" ringtone coming from the bottom of my closet. I found the phone next to my work boots. Something dawned on me then. I don''t own work boots. I work in an office. When I asked my wife about it, she insisted I''d had them for years.


    A few days after the cell phone incident I found a pair of lawn gnomes sitting on my kitchen counter when I got up late one night for a drink of water. This puzzled me. I thought about waking my wife to ask her about these one-foot-tall interlopers but decided to take them out on the back patio and smash them with the meat tenderizer that hangs on the cabinet next to the sink. The gnomes were full of brightly wrapped candies from brands I didn''t recognize. I ate one of the candies. It tasted like ashes. For the rest of the night, I lay next to my wife in bed, unable to sleep. My eyes were wide open when the alarm went off. Me and my wife set to making breakfast together and I noticed the gnomes'' smashed remains were gone from the back patio. My wife never mentioned them.


    When I asked her if she was the one that clogged the toilet with a toilet paper roll, she looked at me funny. When I found my laptop in the garage, she said I was being forgetful. When I asked her why our cat was hanging by its neck in the tree out back, she reminded me that we never owned a cat and besides, the thing hanging in the tree was a dog. I took the strangled animal out of the tree and buried it. The next day, when I was scanning the backyard for the poor animal''s grave, it was gone. Nothing but plain level grass where the thick mound of dirt had been just the day before.


    I didn''t know what was happening, but I had the distinct impression my wife was lying to me.


    I found a roll of floss wrapped around the ceiling fan blades in the den, the coffee pot was in the freezer, and all of my socks had been replaced with nearly identical ones. That last one actually made me rethink everything. I thought that maybe I was the one acting crazy, but I tell you right now that these new socks didn''t feel right. They felt like they were pulling at the skin between my toes with every step. I threw the socks out and bought several new packs. The next morning, they were replaced again by whatever had been moving stuff around the house. I started wearing my shoes without socks. I try to wear flip flops when I can.


    About a week ago I noticed that my wife''s normally soft and playful brown eyes were now a startling blue. I started sleeping on the couch much to my wife''s protests.


    Four or five days ago I woke up with a distinct itch taking over my left wrist. In my sleepy stupor I scratched and scratched and then felt the warm thick feeling of blood on my fingertips. I jumped into a sitting position on the couch and studied my left hand. Along the circumference of my left wrist there was raised pinkish flesh and thread. Something had replaced my entire left hand while I was asleep. I rubbed alcohol and antibacterial ointment over the wound then wrapped my left hand in saran wrap and tape. I don''t want it moving around without my permission. When I showed this to my wife she laughed and told me not to worry so much. I tried calling my parents several times that morning as they always had a way of calming me down whenever I would get worked up, but my phone told me that their number had been disconnected. When I dialed the police, they didn''t pick up. When I called the emergency number there was nothing on the other end but when I really tried hard to listen, I swear I could hear a man crying faintly from somewhere far off.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    My wife''s left and right eye were hazel and green, respectively. I noticed this when she pecked me on the cheek on her way to work.


    Later that day I found a pi?ata sitting on the kitchen counter. I smashed the thing open and soil and grass and the carcass of a small animal fell out.


    After cleaning up the mess in the kitchen I called out of work and looked desperately in the attic and the basement for anything suspicious. Someone had to be doing this to me. Well someone or something. I didn''t care. I just wanted to find the thing that had been haunting me. Whether it be a gremlin or a homeless person playing some macabre prank on me. As long as I could find the source to all this madness, I could peg it and just know. Somehow, I thought that if I knew what was doing this, I would somehow feel better about it. I would have a direct and understandable antagonist.


    Thoroughly moving old boxes and Christmas decorations out of the way, I finally went to the ground level of my house and sat at the kitchen table defeated but overall satisfied that no one else was in the house with me.


    You know how it is when you sit and stare at a particular point for a while and your eyes go out of focus? Well that''s what I did. I was staring at the tile lines that run straight up to the bottom of the fridge and underneath it when I saw him standing there. Looming and short and only for a brief moment, but I fucking saw him. Just out of the corner of my eye. He was standing next to the kitchen sink. I can''t say for sure because the man there was little more than a vague silhouette, but I feel as though he was smiling; he wasn''t outright grinning mind you, it felt like a knowing smile. Like he''d shown himself on purpose.


    I spun and turned to look at the spot he''d been standing only moments before but there was nothing but open air there.


    I left the house. My wife hasn''t called me, and I''ve not returned since. I''ve been driving around aimlessly, muscling down gas station food and barely sleeping in roadside motels. Sometimes I can see him sitting in the passenger seat when my eyes are focused on the road.


    I''m writing this from my car while parked at an overlook in upstate Pennsylvania. I can''t tell you how difficult it is to type this out with one hand. Consider this a warning. I think I''m going to sleep heavy tonight. I don''t know what else to do. He can replace the rest of me. Maybe I''ll wake up whole.


    If things turn up in places you don''t remember putting them, be careful. If you feel as though someone is watching, you just out of your line of sight then it''s already too late.

 Professional Voyeur

    I


    People at their most vulnerable help me get my rocks off. There is no way to pretty that up in the slightest, so I don''t intend to.


    It started years ago when I found cam girls on the internet. I could interact with them, pay them, demand certain sexual poses from them for the money, but at a certain point, that felt too similar to regular pornography. It wasn''t enough. There wasn''t any kind of risk to it. I might as well hire a prostitute. I wanted the real deal. I wanted the amateur quality that you can''t get out of porn or cam girls. I wanted reality. Vulnerability. A person''s essence. I wanted to know them better than anyone else. It''s really quite beautiful.


    So, I took the huge windfall of cash after my father''s passing and bought an apartment complex with wide hollow walkways hidden within the walls for maintenance workers to shimmy through. Perfect.


    I renovated the place, making the hidden walkways more comfortable, drilling holes in the ceiling over every bedroom, setting up surveillance equipment. I would have people paying me to prey on them. Within six months after the initial purchase of the property, I was able to begin looking over applicants. The first several were families or single men. I pondered as to whether or not I should shred these applications but figured it may look strange if the entire complex was occupied by single women. I did not want to draw any attention. The background checks and paperwork were easy enough.


    Ten rooms. Two of them with single women. One blonde. One red head. I watched them when they showered. I watched them when they would get ready for work. I watched them when they slept sometimes. It was orgasmic. The sheer pleasure I received from looking upon their still forms while they lay in their beds is beyond description. That was the beginning, really. Then I moved on. They bored me. Of course, I moved on to the men. Then the families. Don''t get your panties in a bunch, you freaking saints. I never watched the children shower or use the bathrooms. I never watched the children sleep. They were strictly off limits.


    But the things that men do, and yes, it''s mostly the men that do it, are lots of fun to watch. When they believe they are entirely alone, and they strip themselves down to their skivvies and click over into the incognito mode on their phones or computers. Some of them like to look at the strangest things. Delightful. It may make your skin crawl, but it makes mine ripple and quiver.


    I¡¯d taken up in one of the units. The only one on the very top floor. It was a nice place. I''d had the workers take all the walls down so that I had one massive floor to myself. One corner had my desktop with the monitors. When I wasn''t squeezed into the walls or ceilings of my tenant''s living quarters, I was sitting there. I made sure that the door to my unit was very secured with its many locks.


    Then that urge I''ve lived with my entire life came back. Looking in on those people was no longer enough. I exercised my right as their landlord to check in on the units while they were away. Sometimes I would eat cereal out of their cabinets or curl up in their beds. The smell of these strangers was intoxicating. I wanted to swallow their sheets and choke on them. I wanted to strip down and have them walk in on me with my birthday suit entirely exposed to them. How delightful.


    I hid in the red head''s bedroom closet. She was messy, using the closet sparingly, instead opting to drop her articles on the floor like some mish mash rug of sporadic clothing. I stayed in there for two days without her knowing it, using one of her tall leather boots as a waste receptacle. I am sure she will find it soon enough. How delightful.


    I stole one of the male tenants¡¯ cats. He notified me of it, and I responded that we had a zero-tolerance policy on pets. He dropped the issue immediately, stuttering something about how he was just cat sitting. Don''t worry. I keep the cat in my fish tank.


    Sometimes I take the blonde''s tennis shoes and wear them around town. I know I''ll be caught one day. I know it, but don''t care. That''s a part of the allure, don''t you understand? It''s so delightful.


    For about the last week, I''d taken a hiatus from tormenting my tenants from the shadows. My unit needed to be cleaned as I''d been so entirely preoccupied on this titillating hobby of mine. I wiped the dried fluids off the underside of my desk. I mopped and did my laundry. The strong smell of freshly cut onions stuffed beneath my arms had begun to follow me everywhere I''d go. A well-respected landlord of this little community couldn''t be going about like that, now could he?


    I found a camera lens in the drain of my shower. It was something I''d almost missed, but it was there. It shined, peeking at me from the little metal cross section in the drain. Strange. I had never implemented any surveillance in my own unit.


    The demo of the shower was quick work. I removed the plastic tub and found that the camera was attached to all manner of wiring underneath. They ran into the walls and upon further inspection, I found that one of the wires ran the length of the wall in my unit until it exited the inside of the wall again through a hole I''d never noticed before. The wire ran directly into the back of my computer. I''d never seen the port. It wasn''t ethernet. It wasn''t USB. I couldn''t find anything online about the kind of wire I was dealing with at all. I rebooted the computer and found a program on the desktop I''d never seen before. It pulled up a video feed.


    There was gaunt sickly man sitting in a swivel chair at a desk with too many monitors. The camera was peering in at him from somewhere behind. I lifted my arm over my head while looking at the monitor. The man in the feed did the same.


    It was me.


    I moved across the room, watching the man in the feed mimic my motions. Where was that damned camera? It took a little trial and error and a lot of me looking back at the monitor to see where I was relative to the camera angle, but I eventually found the thing snugly tucked away in the vent on the wall opposite the desk. It was well beyond my understanding of tech. The camera was no larger than my thumb.


    The small camera smashed into a thousand tinier pieces as I pelted it against the wall. The speakers at my desk squeaked and I dashed back over to the desk, sitting in my swivel chair. The screen was black now. I alt f4-ed out of the program and it stuttered before closing.


    I then went to the surveillance program I used on my tenants and clicked it open. All of the monitors came to life at once with live video feed from the units below. Eyes stared back at me from all of them.


    In shock and awe, I reared back in the chair and flipped onto the floor. Slowly, I crept back over the edge of the desk to look at the feed. They were dead eyes. No. They were never alive. They were all mannequins. Motionless, porcelain white skin, staring through those illusive cameras I''d set up. I moved to the nearest window and peeked out through the blinds. The complex''s parking lot was empty except for my own blue Mazda.


    I shut the computer off, trying to get my breathing under control.


    After staring at the blank screens for about an hour, I decided to physically check in on my tenants. Apartment after apartment. Nothing but frozen mannequins. Some of them were pressed against spots that I knew had hidden cameras, some of them were in the middle of daily routines they would never finish. One stood over a plate of scrambled eggs at a kitchen counter. Another lay in bed with their eyes staring directly up into the ceiling.


    I retreated back to my unit, being sure to secure every single lock in the door. I turned the computer back on and clicked from camera to camera. Every single mannequin was gone.


    Instead there was a message scrawled on paper and placed in front of each of the cameras. The word repeated in every frame, in every frame.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    Hi. Was all it said.


    My stomach churned. My mouth was dry. The familiar smell of thick sweat broke out. This was not delightful.


    II


    I skittered away from the desk and ran through my apartment unit, searching the vents for cameras. There was an audio recording device attached to the back of my TV, there was a camera in one of the cereal boxes in the cabinetry above the sink, there was a strange metallic thing inside of my pillowcase. I collapsed back into my swivel chair, exhausted. Looking over the innumerable wires and mics and lenses lying haphazardly over the desk rained a futile disposition down on me. This wasn''t all of them. This wasn''t even the tip of the iceberg. It seemed that everywhere I looked had some new surveillance device hidden. How long had they been there? How long had my tenants been spying on me?


    Without even thinking, I threw the mess of wires off the desk, allowing everything to clatter to the floor. I unplugged my computer and monitors then double checked the locks on my door. They were secure. This was fine. Everything was fine. No one was going to burst into my room and force me onto my knees at gunpoint. No one was going to tie me up and murder and burgle me. Everything was fine.


    I settled into my chair and rolled over to the window once again, staring out at the apartment complex''s parking lot. Still, the only car there was mine.


    Nighttime was approaching and the shadows in my apartment went long. I microwaved some ramen and sat at the window, watching, waiting. At some point, one of the tenants would pull into the parking lot and set my worried mind at ease. Isn''t this the thing that I''d always wanted? No, of course not. The thrill of being caught was something always in the back of my mind, sure, but not this. I never intended to actually be found out! This was too much. I slurped my noodles and stayed sentry at the window.


    No splash of headlights over the ground beneath the window, no straggling tenants, nothing but birds fluttering among the trees lining the parking lot. Silence. Then the hooting of an owl. I wasn''t sure it was there at all then it hooted again. There was an owl sitting directly to the left of the window, perched outside on the ledge lining the bottom of the window. I stared it. It spun its head totally around and stared at me. I slurped another noodle as it watched me. We maintained this staring contest for quite some time before it decided to make another noise. It hooted. I sat the bowl of noodles to the side and opened the window, putting out my hand. The owl hopped closer to me, still staring at me. There was something about its eyes. It blinked and the camera lenses inside of its head refocused. My heart skipped a beat and I reached for my bowl of hot noodles, throwing the bowl at the owl. The bowl bounced off of the wall of the outside of the building. The owl dove from the ledge and pushed the air beneath it with its stunning wings before spasming and falling to the ground.


    I watched the still form of the outstretched bird below apprehensively.


    Grabbing a kitchen knife and holding it close to my chest, I scampered down the stairs, taking them three or four at a time. I exited the building, searching the dark ground for the dead bird. I found it and dragged it by a wing to one of the overhanging lights speckling the sides of the complex. I flipped the thing over and hunkered down over its corpse, prying its eyes open with the kitchen knife. They were cameras. I dug at the side of one of its eyes with the tip of the knife, attempting to dislodge the camera inside of its skull. The sound of the knife against the insides of the bird¡¯s face made a metal scraping sound, affirming my thoughts that this bird was some kind of new age spy drone. That''s what it was. That explains it. Delightful.


    I popped the camera out with a satisfying clank of the mechanical gears shifting and pulled the ball lens out of its socket.


    "Oh goddamn!" I looked up and saw an older man with wispy hair standing on the sidewalk. He wore shorts and carried two jogger''s weights, one in each hand. He wiped his forehead with his arm and sent the sweatband their rubber-banding off his head. I stood and began to approach him with the knife at my side. I wanted to ask him if he was one of the people spying on me but as I walked towards him, he dropped the weights and broke into a full sprint down the sidewalk.


    "Come back!" I called after him. He was lost immediately by the dark night.


    I returned to the unmoving bird and withdrew the camera from its skull and an endless cord came with it. I sliced the cord and took the camera with me as I returned to the complex.


    Quickly, I moved back into the building and ascended the stairs until I came to the top floor where I saw my door ajar. My whole body was cold.


    The walls were covered in sticky notes. They all said the same thing. Hi.


    I swiped the notes away with the flats of my hands.


    The owl seems to have left some oily residue on my clothes from me messing around in its internal mechanisms. I''ll have to get myself cleaned up. How delightful.


    III


    I wandered through my apartment, sure that my tenants had been playing some cruel joke on their helpless landlord. How terrible. How crude. How dare they?


    In a game of cat and mouse where I had assumed the role of the cat, I was suddenly feeling smaller and smaller in this macabre game of shifting rules. Looking over the sticky notes I''d knocked to the floor, I noticed something strange. They all seemed to have been written in the same style, meaning that a single person had set to the arduous task of writing the word ''hi'' thousands of times. What kind of sick mind would do this? I had to laugh at myself on that thought. My sick mind would have, wouldn''t it have? I''ve never been normal. The thought that I had totally lost touch with reality was not beyond me, but that was the very reason I was sure I''d not spilled my marbles. Of course not.


    All I had to do was sit and think about what my next moves would be. Did I even have any? The expansive top floor of the apartment complex began to feel as though it was shrinking all around me and so I concentrated on my breathing and participated in something approximating meditation, but it was hard doing what with all of the notes staring at me. I moved through the apartment, sweeping the notes off the walls and floors into a large trash bag. They were even all over the inside of my fridge. Was it a real possibility that I had written them and forgotten? No way. I would not even allow myself to fall into the spiraling pit of paranoia that would send me into. Of course, I had not. Of course, they had cameras everywhere. I need only to pull the owl''s eye out of my pocket to be sure of that.


    As I was cleaning up the apartment and berating myself for being such a sick pervert, music began to play all around me. Subtle at first but growing in measure. I touched my hand to the walls and felt the drywall vibrating. There must have been speakers in the damned walls. It was some jazz number with piping horns and wild piano, but it never grew to the point that I would call it unsettling or torture. If anything, I would have called the music calming.


    "Alright you bastards!" I screamed at the walls, "You''ve had your fun! Now come out and face me!" The music coming from the walls began to swell mildly in response. "A man is not your puppet! I am not your goddamn plaything! I''m not." The last two words fell out of my mouth as though I weren''t the one saying them at all and as they hung there in the air before me, I was confronted with the thing I''d known all along. This was revenge. I''d known it of course.


    "Oh yeah?" I asked. I moved to the kitchen and picked up the meat tenderizer hanging on the rack there. I pivoted and swung the hammer-thing into the wall, smashing a great big hole into the drywall. Wires and metal fragments spilled from the wall as though I''d sliced open the gut of a pig. The circuitry was a sight to behold. Thick silicone wrapped around thin wires of all colors. I stepped from the wall and moved to my bed in the great big single room.


    The jazz played over my cries of desperation so that even I could barely hear them.


    Then came a familiar noise by the window next to the bed. A bird. I moved across the bed on all fours and swept the curtain of the window out of the way, exposing a group of the flying creatures hovering outside of the window without moving their wings. Some among the ranks were owls, sure, but there were also blue jays and robins and hummingbirds. All of their beaks were open unnaturally wide. That same hip jazz number bellowed out of their shallow metal bellies in a rattling cacophony.


    "Hi." Came a voice from the bird-speakers. My own voice.


    I remained in shock, unsure of what to say in response to this totally fantastical display.


    "You, no doubt, are wondering why this is happening to you. Why would this terrible fate befall such a stand-up member of society?" A pause where I am sure the voice stifled laughter. "Don''t you think it''s all so delightful?"


    *


    I don''t remember very much of how I came to this place. It''s so totally dark here and if there are any walls to this room, they are so far out of my sight that I''ve never seen them. No windows. Just a desk with a multitude of monitors and a chair that I am strapped in forevermore. I have access to anywhere on the internet. I can watch anything I want. But there is a program on this computer that has a video feed that I am so often drawn to.


    The feed has a gaunt looking man illuminated by a multitude of monitors. He looks sickly. He has no eyelids, and he watches something in front of him endlessly. No matter how often I click off of the feed, I am always pulled back to it.


    I can''t stop watching him.


    He can''t stop watching me.


    Delightful.

 Ears

    It began with an earache and a nap on the couch. You know those sorts of days where you while away the hours in front of the television, not feeling quite yourself, and hoping that a quick nap around noon will cure what ails you? It was like that.


    I awoke to a ringing in my left ear and a sharp pain. I could still hear but everything was muffled, and I attempted to flex my jaw and test the feel of it. This sent a lightning bolt down the side of my face and I recoiled onto the couch, wrapping my blanket around me as my eyes began to well up with tears. Then came the same feeling down the right side of my face and all the noise around me was underwater. My balance was thrown off and I was trapped in a dizzy spell.


    When my boyfriend came in through the front door of our home, I didn''t even realize initially that he was there at all. As he came into my field of vision, I jumped, startled. He gave me a strange, worried look and approached me, sitting on the cushion next to me and pushing the hair away from the left side of my face.


    "What''s that?" He asked me.


    I put my hand to my ear, feeling a cool dampness there that I had not noticed before. As I examined the stuff on my fingers, I saw it was brown and thick and gooey. "I don''t know." I said, exasperated.


    We went to the hospital and I was sent to a specialist to examine my ears. All the while, I sat as they poked and prodded me, feeling the brown ick roll down my cheeks and neck. They would dab at the stuff coming from my ears, going through boxes of wipes.


    The specialist was stumped. He told me that my eardrums had ruptured, but he couldn''t point to a specific reason behind it. I had no buildup of fluids in my cavities and I told him I hadn''t been prodding my ears with anything. He wrote me a prescription for pain medication and told me that he would conduct a minor exploratory surgery within the next few days. The doctor maintained his composure and did give me some hope that the pain I was suffering would not last forever.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I slept that night in a heavy tossing sweat. When I awoke, I was surprised to find that my boyfriend had not already gotten out of bed. He''d be late for work. I attempted to prod him in the side. He was stiff. I rolled him over and he looked up into my face in frozen perpetual fear, eyes bulging from his skull. That was when I noticed the bruising around his throat. I panicked and immediately burst into spitting tears. I tried shaking him. I tried screaming. Obviously, that did not work.


    The stuff began dribbling out of my ears violently and I tried plugging the sides of my head with our comforter. It wasn''t quite as thick as it had been. It was watery and sprung like plumber¡¯s leaks from my ears. I cupped my hands over them and ran to the bathroom, taking my phone with me in the midst of wild hysteria. I would call the police. That''s what I had intended to do. I was going to call them and tell them. Tell them what? Tell them that someone had broken into our home and strangled him to death in his sleep and I just didn''t wake up during the struggle because of my newly awful hearing. Sure. Makes sense.


    I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, pulling my hair back into a ponytail and letting out a weak moan as the stuff wet the collar of my PJs. I could feel it soaking through the cloth. I took the roll of toilet paper and pulled off a yard of it, holding it around my head.


    Then something happened. I heard a slippery sloshing sound. At least I think, as it has become exceedingly difficult to hear anything in the slightest. I felt something thicker. Something like ropes coiling in my head and I could feel blood vessels popping like mortar shells in my skull. As if on cue, I watched deep red liquid drip from my nostril and splatter perfectly onto a polished white tile.


    I looked back into the mirror. Protruding from my head on both sides were thick pink, whipping things standing out. The things pulsated and seemed to enjoy dancing around like lively seaweed. I turned my head to the side. They were a piece of me. They had murdered my boyfriend. I sat in the bathroom floor with my chin resting on my knees. I stared at the tiles and watched the wriggling shadows. They came from my ears.

 Dominatrix

    I¡¯ve always had an exploratory attitude towards sex. It truly blossomed from me going downtown with a few friends to check out the ¡®red¡¯ district; it¡¯s the spot downtown where the homeless find refuge, the drug pushers come out at night, the neon signs of the strip club illuminate the debris riddled streets. During the day though, it¡¯s the perfect place for yuppies to go and ogle the deviancies of the sexual underworld, cracking jokes and saying, ¡°That¡¯s what she said.¡± At every advert.


    Me and my friends went into a sex shop and I was immediately drawn to the leather and spandex section in the far back corner. There were thick ropey whips and gimp suits lining the walls. When I reached out and touched the rubber of one of the suits, I felt a chill run through me. Like something was awakening inside of me. It just felt so right even if I¡¯d been told it was wrong, a laugh, something to be ridiculed. So, for a laugh, I purchased a Dom outfit. All of my friends thought it was quite funny, but I could not wait to get home and try it on.


    I looked at myself in the mirror after returning home. All black, fishnets, long heel boots, militaristic shining cap, thick leather corset with shiny metal loops. It was too much; I rushed to my bed where my laptop rest and began ordering floggers, feather teasers, candles, and paddles. I would have denied that I knew what I was doing in the moment, but I knew.


    It wasn¡¯t long before I began chatting with people online about this newfound hobby. Tons of men would message me saying things like:


    Punish me!


    Step on my balls!


    Sometimes conversations would go on normally for a few days. At this time, I was only looking for information and trying to figure myself out. Then these normal messages would become sexy or nefarious:


    I know we¡¯ve been talking for a bit. Would you like to meet up and bend me over your knee?


    Or.


    I¡¯ll drink from a bottle while you change my diaper.


    I must admit, that last one was definitely not my thing.


    Within a few weeks of teasing guys online, I started meeting them in basements or hotel rooms. What a thrill that was! I swear, I would get so excited that I¡¯d leave bruises all down their naked bodies, thrashing the paddle against their soft peachy bums till they were tomato red. They were never allowed to come to fruition. But when I would get home, I sure would. It was electric, explosive; I would grip the frayed ends of a whip and bite my pillow. It was great.


    As with any niche, there are the fanatics that don¡¯t understand that moderation is the key to pleasure. I began getting mail from admirers, men would begin contacting me on LinkedIn, and a few times I received flowers at work from someone I¡¯d never met. I suppose you could say that I was beginning to make a name for myself in the community. It was both flattering and disconcerting, but as long as these things were manageable it would be fine, right?If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I ignored the red flags.


    They began showing up at my house and I had to have bars installed on my windows. Bigger locks were put on my doors.


    I am a receptionist by day, and one afternoon at work, my male boss dropped a stack of papers in front of my desk. He whispered, ¡°Sorry.¡± He pulled up the shins of his dress pants and got down on all fours, pointing his posterior in my direction. I kept my eyes glued to my computer screen, but no matter how I let my eyes lose focus, I still saw him shaking his rear end tauntingly back and forth out of my periphery. I did not report him to HR, because I did not want to be figured out by my friends and family.


    For a while I stayed off the online forums and chat rooms and put my gear in the closet, but it always called me back. Sometimes I would enter a private video call and command the man on the other end of the line. It was nice but not enough to soothe. I wish there were no stigma surrounding these things. That would have been nice. Or maybe the naughtiness was a part of what made it what it was.


    I stopped altogether at some point and forgot about it, trying to date normally. It was nice until I¡¯d had a few too many drinks out on a date with a really nice young man with sandy blond hair. Things were getting hot and heavy. He tried shoving me onto my bed and I pushed him over to straddle him. I was a bit angry. I did not want to be a helpless little nothing. In my swimmy-headedness I removed a flogger from my closet and struck him across the chest. He swatted at me, screaming, ¡°You crazy bitch.¡± He stormed from my home. I shouldn¡¯t have done that, I know, but it still hurt to hear him say that.


    Once again, I was drawn online. I started drinking more often. My divided life was no easy thing.


    I quit my day job and started working full time as a Dom. This only served to further isolate me.


    My world was filled with dark blank rooms and my ears were filled with the howls of men on the brink of pain and pleasure.


    It seemed that every time I would look out the window of my home, I¡¯d see the dark outline of a man standing on the sidewalk across the street. Sometimes there would be a crowd of them. I would check my door to make sure it was locked and break into a fresh bottle of alcohol.


    Then I awoke one night. It felt as though there were a set of eyes on me. Standing at the foot of my bed there was a figure with square shoulders. He wore the expression of a manic little boy glazed in the moonlight coming through my window. ¡°You¡¯ve been a bad girl.¡± He said.


    My jaw was hard to move, my cheeks were flushed, my skin crawled. ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    He faded into nothingness and I was stuck in a casing of fear, staring at the shadowy corner he¡¯d been standing.


    I did not sleep that night. I did not move from the spot in my bed. The inclination to pull the blankets over my head did strike me, but I didn¡¯t want to be blind and terrified.


    Sometime before dawn, I fell to a hot sweaty sleep.


    Things were normal for a few days. Until one night that I decided to peek out of my window in the den. There they were. A line of maybe ten or fifteen men, showing their bare asses, all on all fours; among them were my ex-boss and that sandy blond-haired young man. They looked over their arched backs, grinning maniacally. I cried. Should I call the police? Would they believe me? Other people passed the line of men without taking notice of them. Was I losing my goddamn mind? My arms sprung up with gooseflesh and I drew the blinds shut.


    As the night drew on, I could see the shadowy outlines of the men standing against the windows. When I peeked through the blinds, there they were, grinning, some toying with their chests.


    I just wanted them to go away.

 Flipping Nightmare

    The houses I flip have been normal. It''s easier than you''d think. After busting my ass and getting a business degree in college I continued bussing tables and looking for a place in the economy I could really sink my teeth into. For a long time, I wanted to open a bar. Then I wanted to open a chain of taco trucks. Neither of these things ever took off. Then something happened.


    My best friend invited me to tour a house she was thinking of buying. The place was a standard single-family home, but in the end, she decided it was probably too big for her. Alyssa is the minimalist type. Last I heard she was still in the market for a tiny home. While I was touring the house with her, I ran into a guy that was really intense. The guy was asking the realtor all sorts of questions about plumbing and electrical. He was handsome but had deep personal eyes underneath a neat crew cut. He noticed I was watching him and turned to introduce himself, putting his hand out. I took it; his hand was coarse and strong and broad.


    Me and Daniel went out on a few dates and slept together twice before he started showing me what he did for a living. He flipped houses. He''d briefly talked about it a few times over dinner, but this would be the first time I''d ever seen one of his projects. Everything in the ranch-style home was gutted. Wires were sticking out of the bare frames of the walls, there was no toilet or sink, and parts of the ceiling were missing. I spent lots of time with Daniel and learned a lot from him. His favorite thing to do was demo. He''d light a cigarette in between his grinning teeth and swing a sledgehammer against cabinets like John Henry competing against the steam engine. The majority of the time, Daniel was reserved and quiet, but when he was doing that kind of work, he was jovial and laughing straight from his stomach. He looked good doing it.


    We stopped seeing one another about two years ago; he just seemed disinterested or preoccupied with other things. Since then I''ve remodeled several homes and sold them at a decent enough profit. I paid down some of my loans and was feeling the pressure of the world start to lift a little. Then I looked into a property just outside of Austin, Texas. I was surprised. The realtor was attempting to get rid of the small one-bedroom home for the local government. Apparently, it had been abandoned. After looking over the property, I noticed that the kitchen had mostly been left bare. The carpet had been pulled up. It looked like someone had already done half the work for me. I figured this small house would be a quick project. It was an older property so I would still have someone come in and test the house for any pollutants.


    The process of buying the house was much shorter than I thought it would be. Normally it takes a few weeks, but the contracts showed up within a few days. This should have startled me, but this was to be a quick job, after all. Roughly two weeks after the initial tour I was already ordering tile and paint and light fixtures. By my estimate I could make a quick ten grand and take a small break before looking for my next house.


    Then I found the hatch in the cellar underneath an old rug. Immediately, images from the TV show "Doomsday Peppers" shot through my head. I won''t even lie. At that moment I was giddy. I thought for sure there was no way this could hurt the house''s resale value. After all the realtor didn''t seem to know about it. The house was old so maybe I was about to stumble upon some kind of bunker built way back whenever. I would still have to inspect what was underneath the hatch though. If this had been abandoned without anyone to maintain it then I could be looking at a real foundational problem. Still, I was excited about this.


    I jumped onto my hands and knees and attempted to pry the roughly hewn hatch with my fingertips but couldn''t get a good grip, so I ran up to the floor level of the house and found my prybar. The tool made quick work of the hatch. After shifting my body against the horizontal door and pushing it up with my knees burning, I stood and wiped my brow, looking down into the dark pit. There was a rusty wrought iron ladder that led down into an inky thick black hole that beckoned and threatened to swallow me whole. I turned on the flashlight of my phone and peered down. Even with the light pointing directly down into the hole''s open mouth, I could only see down a few feet more. The vertical tunnel''s sides were like one big pipe. I felt like Mario stepping down onto the ladder. What can I say? Curiosity got the best of me.


    I took a few steps down until the hatch was well above my head. It was difficult moving with the prybar stuffed underneath my left armpit and my phone in my right hand. I peered down again and still found no bottom. This was strange and a little scary, but in a fun way. I took a few more rungs down the ladder and stopped again, looking down. Then I heard a deafening clang and smash. Looking up, I saw that the tunnel had swallowed me up. I scrambled up the ladder, dropping the prybar and almost dropping my phone. I heard the sound of the prybar ringing against the sides of the tunnel, but I never heard it hit bottom. "Fuck. Fuck." I whispered.


    At the top of the ladder I banged at the closed hatch, attempting to push my fingertips in between the ground and the hatch. Nothing. I balled up my fist and tried slamming against the rough metal a few more times. Then I looked down. I''d need that prybar. Goddammit. My hands slick from the panic, I started shifting down the ladder slowly and carefully. The last thing I needed to do was break my legs.


    It took forever before I started hearing the sounds of dripping water plinking against metal from somewhere far off. I started taking the rungs two at a time, still careful not to lose my footing. Then I felt warmth in the air around me. It was like that feeling you get when someone is breathing down the nape of your neck, but this sensation ran over my entire body. I stopped on the ladder, looking down into the open air beneath with my phone''s flashlight.


    Then I felt a hot wind come blowing up from under me shortly followed by a thunderous roar that echoed throughout the chamber. I clung to the ladder and stayed that way for a long time, shaking. I was certain that some giant underground worm was going to slime its way up the tube to pull me into the darkness below. Ten or fifteen minutes passed before my arms and legs began to protest so I took the ladder down a few more rungs. Then a few more after that. I went slowly again, creeping with one hand on the ladder and one hand holding my phone''s light over the abyss. I don''t know how long it took before I finally saw ground, but when I did, I started picking up speed again and landed on the slippery concrete surface beneath the ladder.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    I pivoted all around quickly, searching for the prybar I''d dropped. I couldn''t find it anywhere. Panic set in and I had to force my back against the ladder and focus on my breathing, holding the phone''s light up into my own face. I took my surroundings into account and saw that I could either move left or right down a concrete tunnel. This wasn''t some underground bomb shelter. What it really reminded me of was sewer tunnels. The roof went up about ten feet; the walls were cracked and curved. Moss and vines and small streams of water decorated the walls. I knew I would have to find that prybar if I wanted to escape. I searched the ground around me again. Aside from a skittering insect that ran from the beam of my light, I saw nothing. Even though my prybar had fallen a fairly good distance, there was no way it could bounced that far away from the opening above me. I looked left and then right and couldn''t believe I was really debating on moving further into the tunnel network, but maybe there was another exit.


    After a riveting game of eenie-meenie-minie-moe, I started moving down the right bend in the tunnel, keeping my hand on the side of the curved wall and listening hard to every sound that echoed through this subterranean lair. Lair. That was the only word I could muster when really thinking about that place. It didn''t feel like anyone that had ever worked in sewage distribution had ever seen this place. This was not some metropolitan waterworks project. Moving through those tunnels more and more, I am sure there is a nefarious purpose to them. I walked, sure to always look over my shoulder. It felt like the tunnels were moving- changing behind me. I know that''s crazy.


    When I came upon the first chamber in this underground network I was in awe. It was about forty feet at its tallest domed point. In the center of this massive room, there was a tree with huge roots sinking into the concrete floor of the chamber. Its branches were gnarled and twisted upward unnaturally, it''s tendril-like roots reminded me of an octopus''s limbs, its bark was pitch black, and it had no leaves. I rounded the chamber with the tree in its center, sticking close to the wall. I could see that on the opposite side of the room there was another small opening. I followed it.


    It wasn''t long before I was totally lost and couldn''t remember the way I''d come. Eventually I came upon a staircase. It led down. Nope. Fuck that. Nope. So, I turned away and started moving through the network of tunnels again. Had I taken a left here? Or right? I couldn''t recall. I made my best guess, and I was constantly having to rub my arms and console myself into thinking that I''d chosen the correct direction.


    I rounded another curve in the tunnel and stopped in my tracks, pointing the light in front of me. I saw in the tunnel ahead, a shadowy form hunched over near the ground. I swallowed hard and felt my skin grow cold right down into the soles of my feet. Whatever it was, it hadn''t seen me just yet. I started backing away slowly, attempting to conceal myself in the curve of the tunnel, holding my breath. Just as I was losing sight of it, it reared up and I saw a pair of glowing cat-like eyes looking directly at me. I ran.


    It was gaining on me. I could hear the thing''s raspy breath echoing off of the walls and I swear its claws were scratching against the concrete with every quickening step. The slippery ground threatened to give my footing a tug, but I kept pushing through the network. My knees were burning, and a stitch was developing in my side. I craned around a corner and found the massive chamber with the tree. I cantered forward, jumping over the tree''s raised roots. I felt like I was running through an obstacle course with those damned pieces of vegetation clinging to my shoes. I slammed into the trunk of the tree and caught my breath, looking over my shoulder, the shadowy animalistic creature slid around the corner and my breath was caught in my throat. I kept running.


    I reached edge of the opening on the other end of the massive chamber and that''s when I felt it. Something struck me in the back. It stung and sent me spinning over my own feet. I slid across the concrete and onto my knees and whatever hit me rang metallically next to me. My phone fell out of my hand facedown somewhere in the cavern. I heard the thing behind me. I rolled myself over onto my back, attempting to scramble backwards on my bottom. I saw the vague shape of something coming towards me in the dark and steeled myself against it.


    The thing slammed into me and straddled my body, clawing at my clothes with coarse strong hands; I felt its nails ripping into the flesh around my collarbone. It growled and I recognized it. It was the same roar I''d heard when I was coming down the ladder. I slapped and swung at the thing and it batted my defenses aside easily. I began feeling around on the ground next to me for a rock or anything. Then my hand wrapped around a long flat metal piece of something. I swung the prybar out towards the thing and warm blood sprayed onto my face; it fell on top of me, unmoving. I shoved the creature off, and it rolled with a thud.


    I started moving my hands through the darkness, searching for my phone. I pulled it up and pointed the light towards the dead creature and saw it was a man. My stomach dropped and I quivered. The man was lying on his side, facing away from me. I stepped forward, moving him onto his back with the end of the prybar. I knew that face even with all of its changes. His once self-assured stare was now a milky blue next to the sharp wound near to his left ear, his clothes were ragged and falling away from him in places, and his skin was loose and starved. Looking at his bare hands and feet I saw that the nails there had grown out several inches. I rifled through his pockets and found a wallet. I had to be sure. Inside I found Daniel''s driver¡¯s license. I wish I could have cried. I wish I felt something sentimental in the moment, but my muscles were stiff, and my back was stinging from when he''d thrown the prybar at me. I came up to my feet the same way you might wake up from a nightmare.


    I made sure to keep his crumpled form out of my line of sight. After standing there in a daze for a little while, I walked away from the massive chamber with the tree, wiping Daniel''s drying blood from my face with the hem of my shirt. The tree room was relatively close to the hatch, I knew that. So, after a few moments I set off in the direction that I was sure I would find the ladder. I came to the tunnel where the ladder should have been. At first, I was sure that if I just went a few feet further, I would find it and finally be able to escape this place. Just a few more feet, c''mon. But the ladder had disappeared.


    I tried using my phone. The operator answered my call and after hearing the distress in my voice, she tried calming me down with general pleasantries. When I gave her the address to the house I''d been working on, the line cut off. I tried calling back again several more times to no avail.


    I''ve been wandering these concrete halls for hours now, and I¡¯m starting to get hungry.

 Mutant Mouth

    I


    His mother died giving birth to him and it was nearly impossible to forgive him for it, if that makes me something rotten then so be it. I wept dryly by her dying side, stunned, and as the doctors and nurses chided me out of my seat so as to attend to the paperwork for the mutant responsible for the death of the bloated woman lying in the plastic hospital bed in front of me. The doctors ushered her body away and brought me to the boy with ropy tumorous skin covering his mouth. They assured me that a procedure to remove the fleshy patch keeping his mouth shut could be exercised and they would just need me to sign off on it. I did and handed the cold and whimpering child with no mouth off to them, excusing myself to the bathroom. The primary physician seemed to regard me with some understanding pity but, how could he?


    I stood in the bathroom, stomping my rubber soles against the solid tiles beneath my feet. The man looking back at me from the mirror seemed to be much smaller than I remembered. I''d been so red and boisterous and ready for the family life. Now the man there slumped his shoulders and his hair seemed to be greasy and gray. His eyes, that of a stabbed bull in the arena, looking up and accepting death, terrified and darting.


    I briefly wondered what it would be like to kill myself. I could buy a gun, go home, paint the walls. This conclusion was wholly unreasonable, I know. This would leave the boy alone in the world. So, I was stuck. Adoption? Perhaps. Call it a grief induced confusion if you want, but I prefer to call it being taken away on a wave of extremes. High tide, low tide. Moving quickly between the proposition of acting as a good newly single father and being the bastard that ducks out when needed most. I was deeply sad. That is my only defense and that sucks.


    After washing my face in the deep bowl of the hospital bathroom, I wandered back down the lime green hallway to press my face against the window of the nursery where my son lay. He rolled back and forth, twisting his small and inconsequential limbs in all directions with his eyes wide open in terror, nostrils flaring. He wished to belt out a scream like any other baby might and yet was refused even that. The muffles came from him small.


    They cut him a new mouth and as he healed, it was almost easy to ignore the jagged look of his lips. The doctors assured me they would heal nicely with time and that I would hardly be able to even notice they''d ever been sealed shut.


    I took my son home and within the week I buried my wife. The funeral was brief and small. The baby did manage to cry out with its newfound mouth on that day. So, did I. I''d cry into my pillow as the small boy lay on the bed next to me. He would look up at me with curious blue milky eyes and the world would fall away for a little while.


    Time went by. Weeks.


    One morning I awoke to my alarm and was stunned to find that my baby wasn''t crying from his crib. I could hear him struggling in his haphazard blankets and I could tell he was attempting to muffle out a high-pitched babe scream. I darted to the crib, terrified that he was choking on something.


    As I looked down into the crib, I saw him staring up at me with those pleading blue eyes. He had no mouth. It had sealed itself over again. His nostrils flared hysterically, and his soft feet kicked out below his twisting torso. I panicked.


    I took my child up in my arms and rushed him to the kitchen, phone in hand, ready to dial 911. I could feel the boy thrashing in my arms and I almost dropped him but abandoned the phone instead. The cellphone shot from my hand and slid across the kitchen tiles. He was gagging and snot and vomit shot from his nose. The image of me holding the limp form of my dead baby in my outstretched hands shot through my mind and I decided that was not going to happen.


    It was quick enough work. I grabbed a long butcher¡¯s knife from the block on the counter and held him over the sink as I carved him a smile. Was I doing the right thing? The dam in his throat broke and the sink drain pooled with blood and vomit. I screamed. He screamed. I was terrified and sick to my stomach. I was immediately struck with how small I felt. Was this what being a parent was like? Surely no one else in the history of the world had ever had to perform such a macabre act on their infant.


    Tears streamed down my face as I patted him on the spine, and he choked up in the sink.


    Years passed.


    He would come up to me in the morning, I would brush his hair neatly, straighten his shirt, cut him a new mouth for the day and send him on his merry way. I would be lying if I said that the thought of sending him off to school with runny red lips didn''t eat me up most nights.


    Beyond his poor eating habits and his strange mouth problem, he was a lovely child. I swear, I can''t get that kid to eat anything. Sometimes after I make dinner, I find the contents of his plate in the trash. Although, he must be getting enough nutrition. He isn¡¯t wasting away.


    The first startling clue was when the dogs in the neighborhood started going missing. It wasn''t the craziest thing in the world to be sure but seeing as we live in a rather upscale gated community, it was definitely odd to have a dog burglar on the prowl. Then the dogs'' mutilated corpses would be found in undeveloped portions of the community or in sewer drains. Each of them had massive hunks of flesh taken from their bodies as though they''d been dined on.


    Speculation of wild coyotes or mountain lions ran rife through the neighborhood and I was sure to keep a closer eye on my boy so that he wouldn''t be munched up by some wily beast.


    I purchased him a puppy for his fifth birthday and he said something to me that chilled me to the bone:


    "Thank you, daddy, I''ve been so hungry!"


    I thought this was a strange quip and nothing more initially, but I sleep with the dog in my bed these days as sometimes I can see my son giving the poor thing a sideways glance with a twinkle in his eye.


    I''m beginning to wonder whether or not he was born without a mouth for a reason.


    II


    I''m starting to think I might have come across as a little melodramatic. I hope I was. Maybe. I don''t know. Every night, his mouth seals itself shut and every morning, I have to use a razor to cut it open. Other than that, he''s almost an entirely normal, sweet, wonderful, great, adorable kid. Almost.


    It is obvious to me that most kids love candy or ice cream and have a difficult time eating their vegetables. My son loves small animals. Not in the way that most children love small animals, mind you. He- he eats them. I''ve come to accept that now. I am sure that I have. I think. I found him kneeling over the body of a possum. Do not ask me how, but my son figured out a way to withdraw the poor thing''s solid tiny heart from the jagged spot in the possum''s chest. I looked over the dead animal and then back at my son. He stared at his shoes, sniffling.


    "Are you sad it''s dead?" I asked him.


    Maintaining eye contact with the ground, he shook his head.


    "Hey."


    Still, he looked down, rubbing the tip of his shoe into the grass.


    I reached out and grabbed his chin with my forefinger and thumb, pulling his watery face up to meet mine. "It''ll be alright, buddy." I said, hoping that saying it aloud would somehow make me feel better about it.


    I''m honestly terrified of the boy, but I cannot let him see that. I don''t want him to think that his father thinks he''s a monster. I also don''t want him to think about taking a nibble off me.


    I dug a less than perfect grave in the backyard after wiping the red grime from my son''s mouth and chucked the possum in, pinching it by its fur so that I wouldn''t have to touch any of the bloody mess. I made my son brush his teeth and floss. Then I put him to bed and settled in on the couch with Captain Trips lounging on my lap. Oh, sorry. Captain Trips is the puppy. He is fine. He is a good boy. I scrolled through google on my tablet while rubbing Captain''s soft ear absentmindedly. Gruesome images passed my eyes as I looked over picture after picture of disfigured children with medical issues. I''ve been looking up similar conditions in children, wondering whether or not there was a possible solution to his issue.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    There are plenty of children born with disabilities and sealed orifices. Did you know that some people are born without anuses? Doctors are left with no other options in these cases but to cut the skin covering the sphincter. That''s horrifying no matter how you slice it. I- I didn''t mean that to come out like that. You know what I mean. It''s terrible. I apologize to anyone that may have been born without an anus who read that.


    Anyway, yes, plenty of children are born that way. I''ve yet to find any children who''s orifices seal up overnight, every night. I''ve also yet to see any cases of children like that who have an insatiable hunger for small game.


    So, here''s what I''m thinking, and don''t laugh at me, please. I think there must be a paranormal reason behind all of this. There must be something going on here beyond human understanding.


    I was pulled from my thought as I felt a pair of eyes on me. It was my son. He was rubbing the corners of his eyes. His mouth has partially sealed shut so that his mouth was little more than a pinhole. After some motioning, I realized he was thirsty and so we went to the kitchen and I poured him a small glass of water, pushing a straw into his mouth. He slurped it down and I kissed him on the head, ushering him off to bed with a pat on the shoulder. At least that was something I never had to worry about. He''d never been a bed wetter.


    Captain was asleep on the couch when I returned, sighing heavy as I sat next to him.


    I resolved to think on it some more in the morning and lifted Captain off the couch, taking him to my bed and tucking him under the blanket so that his snout was well above the blanket. Even with my mind racing, I was able to sleep easily enough.


    I was startled awake by a high-pitched yelp. In seconds, I was wide awake, flicking on the lamp sitting my bedside table. My stomach churned and I felt sick and cold all of the sudden. I have never ever been so fucking scared in my life. There was my son at the edge of the bed, eyes wide, as though he''d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. It took a moment for me to realize it, but Captain''s tail fell from my son''s open mouth and the pup quickly shot over to my side of the bed, tucking his injured tail beneath him. My son had one of the large kitchen knives I usually kept in the wooden block near the sink in his hand. His mouth was open. He''d given himself a smile. His hand was not as trained as mine and so his teeth were exposed in a snarled and wriggly fashion. The knife clanged to the floor.


    "Hey." I whispered to him.


    "Hey." He whispered back.


    "What were you doing there?"


    "Nothing." He held back a quivering bloody bottom lip.


    I scooted across the bed, throwing the covers off, and grabbing him on his small shoulders. "D-don''t do that. Alright?" I was still whispering.


    He cocked his head to the side. "What do you mean?"


    "You scared me. Don''t do that." I nervously chuckled.


    He stayed quiet for a moment, looking absently around the room. Then his eyes shot up to mine. "You''re scared of me?"


    Even thinking of the way he said that now... It makes me uneasy.


    I started hiding all the blades in the house and making sure my bedroom door was locked tight.


    It was difficult to tell with his wonky lips, but I swear to you that when he asked if I was scared of him, he was grinning.


    III


    I took up hunting; I was hoping that perhaps raw fresh flesh could satiate my son''s growing hunger. The small traps I started setting up around the property were simple enough but trudging through the woods and looking for larger game is way more difficult than I could have ever imagined. I can safely say this: hunting is not my forte.


    Don''t worry, I brought Captain with me. I don''t think I could leave him at the house with the boy. He''s just a pup so it''s not like I could expect him to keep up with me on his own. Instead I''d deposited him in my backpack so that he could poke his snout out and enjoy the ride as I moved through the forest. I never did shoot anything though. I had the opportunity to once, but just as I was about to fire, Captain let out a whine and scared the young buck off. It darted into the brush and vanished completely, and I was left with nothing but a little puppy.


    "Maybe I''ll just give you to him then." I playfully said to the pooch. Of course, I wouldn''t.


    After giving up on that endeavor, I sat on a leafy embankment in the woods, drank from my canteen greedily and poured a bit into a plastic bowl for Captain. He''s a good boy.


    I knew I couldn''t bring my son with me on this trip, so I''d gotten him a babysitter. Telling the young girl of his special condition was strange, I''ll say that much. I didn''t tell her everything. I simply told her that he had a difficult time eating so if he fussed, she shouldn''t reprimand him. I also told her of his disfigurement. To this, she simply nodded and told me her price. I paid so that I could be left alone to go into the forest and hunt. But this had been a bust.


    The traps too proved to catch nothing. This is something I''d expected. We do have the occasional varmint, but given my son''s previous discrepancies, I''m fairly certain that small game tries to give our home a wide berth. Maybe that''s just me attempting to rationalize it though. Who knows?


    I never would have guessed the babysitter would die. I''m so sorry. She was a young fit girl, and I was certain that if my son had given her any problems, she could call me or she could overpower him. This was apparently not the case.


    Upon returning home sometime in the afternoon, I was jamming out to some Pearl Jam with Captain lazily stretching in the passenger seat. I clicked the garage door open and pulled in, sighing and preparing to relieve the young girl of her duties. I reached out for the door leading into the kitchen with Captain underfoot and as soon as I pushed the door in, I was slapped in the face with the stench of something not quite right. I''d smelled it before. Metal like pennies in my nose. It was strong and permeated throughout the house.


    I rushed through the kitchen, grabbing the threshold frame leading into the den to support my weight. There it was. There he was. He was crouched over the poor girl. She was possibly fifteen or sixteen. Too young for this. It took a long time for my eyes to comprehend what I was looking at. Long looping entrails torn to shreds. She looked up at the ceiling with a pale expression of fear plastered across her still face. Someone had finally died due to my incompetence. My son, upon realizing I was looking in at the mess he''d made, dropped her heart and it plopped to the floor soft and wet. His expression was one that probably matched my own. Wiping his hands and mouth down quickly, he looked at me while placing his hands behind his back.


    I was horrified. I was broken. I knew he couldn''t stop.


    It takes a really long time to get blood up. Especially when the blood has been sitting on the wooden floor long enough to settle in and stain. I tried using a straight mixture of bleach and water, but after the initial wipe down, there was little more that I could do.


    The world was a haze as I lugged the young girl''s body into the bathtub and took the hacksaw to her limbs. When you attempt to cut into muscle with little experience, it sometimes pulls away in thick strings; that''s something I never thought I would know. I had no idea what I was doing, but the legs and arms came off well enough after snapping the bones. The head was a different matter altogether. I couldn''t look at those eyes and so I shut them as I placed the saw against her throat. I removed the teeth and ground them into a fine powder. I still haven''t figured out what I''m going to do with the body. Burn it? I''m unsure. I am now a criminal. My whole life was spiraling. Still I knew what came next. I bagged the pieces and put them in my shed. Maybe I should¡¯ve called the police on myself.


    After this was done and I washed the tub down, I fetched my son and bathed him, washing the red residue from his body. We were quiet. I think he knew I was upset with him. Which, I mean, I was. This isn''t a part of the road for normal parents though. This wasn''t something I should have to do. This isn''t the sort of situation I was supposed to be in.


    "I''m sorry." He mumbled.


    "It''s okay, buddy." I told him. I forced a bright disposition over my whole face and body. "Wanna'' watch a movie?"


    He perked up. "Yeah."


    I put on Finding Nemo in the living room and we watched it together, laughing at the fun antics of the animated fish onscreen. When the DVD flipped back over to the main menu, he smacked me in the head with a pillow. I lifted him up by his ankles and swirled him over the couch, swinging him and dropping him onto the cushions in a fit of giggles. He put on his little plastic Batman mask and I sneaked through the dim house, playing the part of the newest escapee from the asylum. He would catch me, and we would be locked in mock mortal combat with one another. We would fall to the floor together in a barrage of laughter.


    "I got you daddy!" He shrieked as I would lay on the floor with my tongue stuck out.


    We played the board game Life until it was pitch black out. I''d long since turned my phone off as the phone calls from the girl''s parents had made it impossible to use it anyway. I let him win and he laughed in self-satisfaction.


    Then it was bedtime. I read him a chapter from Harry Potter and clicked his bedside table off, planting a firm kiss on his forehead. He rolled himself into a burrito and I could tell he was tuckered out.


    I passed Captain snoozing on the couch and I moved to the garage, popping the trunk of my vehicle. There it was. I took the rifle I''d specifically purchased for hunting.


    Before I could think my way out of it, I marched down the hall, checking the rifle and making sure the safety was off. I pushed in his cracked door, keeping the light off.


    It takes a really long time to get blood up. Especially when you''re cleaning it off sheets and bedding.


    I don''t know if I''m an evil man. I hope not.


    Please forgive me.

 Cat Shit

    It all started with Emma and the dreaded triple-dog-dare. We were bored and so we engaged in a game of truth or dare that eventually devolved into a simple game of dares. I, of course, dared her to do a handstand. She was wearing a thin summer dress and so when she pressed her upside-down legs against the wall, the hem of her dress fell over her face. I was a ten-year-old boy, but I suppose you could say I was developing early for my age. I knew exactly what I was doing. She was nine and as she scrambled back to a standing position, red in the face, she reared back her tiny fist and slammed into my chest. I laughed. She did not.


    "So, what''s my dare?" I asked through a fit of giggles.


    She straightened the edge of her dress and squinted at me through pouting lips. "I''ll tell you later."


    "You can''t think of one!" I proclaimed.


    "Can too!" She screeched.


    "Nuh-uh." I said.


    "Yeah-huh."


    The rest of our play session continued as normal, sitting around a cardboard square in the floor. "Sorry!" I said, slamming her plastic piece off the board.


    She flipped the game board and stomped away. Emma was always the melodramatic sort. I was only joking around. I was only ever joking around, of course. She just needed to relax. As her parents came to pick her up, we hugged one another and she grew red in the face as my dad said, "Awwwww."


    "Gross." She said.


    "Yeah." I grinned. "Emma''s gross."


    "I meant you!" She stammered, slamming her foot onto the hardwood floor.


    The adults laughed. I watched her go.


    It was summer and so the following day, my parents and me went to Emma''s house. Her parents greeted me at the door, and I noticed Emma poking her head around the edge of her father''s pant leg. She was wearing jeans and a look that could kill.


    We played in the backyard as our parents made drinks in the kitchen. Both mine and Emma''s family were of the idle wealthy, so our days were filled with our parent''s listless faces, gin and citrus coming from their smiling mouths.


    She took me to her small bedroom, painted in all things Cinderella and princesses. There was a new look on her face. Devilish? Without a doubt, there was a smile there I could not fully interpret.


    Emma had a cat named Emma. Confusing I know, but that''s what happens when you allow your eccentric child to name her pet. I pet Emma as she hopped on the bed and Emma watched me.


    "I know my dare." She said.


    "What?"Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    "My dare from yesterday."


    I sat Emma off the bed, and she scurried through the door into the hallway. "You can''t do that. That games over."


    "I''ll give you a dare if you let me have this one."


    I smiled. "Okay."


    She crossed the room, and I heard her slide something plastic along the floor. It was Emma''s litter box. Emma lifted a dry old crusty piece of cat poo up to me with it pinched between her thumb and forefinger. "Eat it."


    "Ew. No." I swatted her hand away. The turd darted across the carpeted floor and disappeared beneath the dresser.


    She stared at her feet, then the litter box, then me. "I double dare you."


    "No."


    A long pause followed before her eyes became clearer. "I triple-dog-dare you."


    Not the fabled triple-dog-dare. Anything but that. No one could back down from a challenge like that.


    "I get to dare you to do anything if I do this?"


    She nodded, a broad smile returning to her face.


    I walked over to the litter box and lifted the driest piece I could find, holding my nose with my free hand. "You promise?" I said.


    "Promise." She put out her pinkie.


    We interlocked pinkies and I opened my mouth, placing the feces directly onto my tongue. I gagged, but the taste was not what you might think. In fact, it was good. I swallowed.


    Emma ran away, squealing, "Ew. I can''t believe you did that." She disappeared down the hall.


    Emma stood in the doorway, flicking her tail, watching me with wide eyes. As though she knew what I''d just done.


    I never did get around to daring that little girl in return, but the memory scarcely left me. It was always there. The next time I was over at Emma''s, I found every opportunity to sneak away from the girl and our parents. They were like delectable treats. Honest. I would chew them and let the thickness of the pieces slowly run down the back of my throat. I cannot explain how good they are. In passing I would hear Emma''s mom say something to Emma''s dad about, "I think there''s something wrong with the cat. Can cats get constipated? I''m going to take her to the vet in the morning." I can''t say whether or not they ever did take Emma to the vet, but I can''t say I care either.


    I begged my parents for a pet. "How about a puppy?" My father would say. "Dogs are good for little boys like you. You guys could be best friends."


    I would shake my head and demand a cat.


    All throughout my teen years, I ate Whisker''s feces. Whiskers was a good cat. As I moved out on my own, I bought up several cats from the pound and became a recluse. I did not keep in touch with Emma. I didn''t have any friends. I know how this sounds. I''m some crazy cat man, shoveling cat shit into my mouth. But that, I tell you, is the life.


    Then Fluff got the worms and it quickly spread to all of my other twelve cats. I knew I should stop, but I couldn''t. It was too good. I''d learned how to plate it properly with garnishments and all. I would dig into the pile of thick brown curls. The worms hardly moved as I bit into them. How was I to know that parasites could jump species so effectively?


    I stared into my toilet bowl at my own defecation. A two-foot-long worm writhed in the runny shit there. I should have gone to the doctor. I should have stopped. What was I to tell my doctor? Yes, hello, I like eating cat poop, please help.


    The worms came from around the corner of my eyes. One at a time at first, then it was as though they''d found the exit and told their friends for the small things would spill out en masse. I would tug at the thin skin of my bottom eyelid and the wriggling tube-like bodies would fall from my face like tears. I stopped doing that.


    They come from every hole in my body. I could feel them moving. I don''t know why I''m not dead.


    My stomach bulged as though I were pregnant. It''s swollen and I rub it down with oil every morning. The stretchmarks are red and infrequently rip open; when they do, I cry.


    I want to stop. Even now, I feel hungry. I want to scream for help!


    I''m going to go have some dinner. Please, excuse me.

 Stairs

    When I was a child and I was forced to go to the basement of my parent''s house, I would always get the chills. After the initial comforting musty smell of the exposed ceiling and walls of the basement would subside, I would suddenly be stricken with a great and impending doom. Something was looking at me from in between the flat slats that served as the stairs. I always knew that. Although I didn''t see anything there, I knew that there was something waiting for me to leisurely make my way back up the stairs to the relative safety of the living room so that it could wrap its slender fingers around my thin ankles.


    So it was that anytime my mother had me deposit the laundry into the washer or dryer, I would prance down the stairs and keeping my knees high so that I could rush to the light switch at the base of the stairs. Without a doubt in my child''s mind, I knew that the thing was just about to grab me as I pulled the light''s cord. Somehow the little flickering lightbulb skipping into life was enough to keep the thing at bay.


    I knew this to be true.


    These were facts of life.


    Well into my teens, I took those steps three or four at a time to be sure to confuse the monster peering out from the spaces between each step. I was too clever for it.


    This was my own unspoken torture until I went to college. The stairs on campus were all constructed from concrete and so there was nothing to worry about when I would make the long journey from my dorm room to the communal laundry area. It was all good. Soon those stairs fell way to other childish fantasies, and I would only ever withdraw them in my nightmares.


    I got a job and an apartment, and they disappeared from my mind entirely. They were worse than a forgotten memory; they were a dark note slipped into the folds of my brain.


    After building my credit score, I went house shopping. With relentless intensity I searched for my dream house. I wanted for my success to reflect my hard work and perseverance, as ridiculous as that may sound. I wanted something nice. That is how I came upon a nice ranch style home with too many rooms and a deep dark basement. I was on cloud nine as I followed the realtor throughout the home, examining the faucets and closets and back lawn. Then she drew my attention to a door I''d not paid any mind to. But there it was. Sitting directly adjacent the fridge in the kitchen. My stomached flipped and I had something approximating an anxiety attack without exhibiting the symptoms to my tour guide.


    I gripped and twisted the realtor''s pamphlet between my hands in front of my thighs. When she asked me if I would like to look at the basement, I nodded and grinned through teeth that felt like they may burst into pieces. She flicked the light on and waltzed down the steps and I followed, feeling what can only be described as vertigo. The wooden steps were slats without backs. All of the sudden, I felt the sudden urge to burst past her on the steps and run to the bottom. I maintained my composure and asked her inconsequential questions about moisture accumulation and insulation. When I felt the bare concrete basement floor beneath my feet, I felt better, but not by much. I felt as though if I spun around and looked in between the spaces of each of those steps, I would see something, anything peering back at me.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I was being obtuse. I was an adult. I didn''t have to worry about monsters under the stairs. I steeled myself and saw that the space between the wall and the back of the stairs was completely open. I breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing could possibly hide under there. I felt foolish and folded the realtor''s pamphlet into a neat square and put it away into my back pocket.


    I closed on the house and moved into it rather quickly, realizing that the furniture that had filled my apartment to the brim left my new home looking much like a museum with all of its excess floor space. I had no use for all of the extra closets as of yet or the basement.


    The first few weeks went smoothly, and I had a new set of hoses and outlets installed in a spare room for my washer and dryer so that I would not have to use the ones in the basement.


    I was awakened by some rustling underneath me one night and felt my skin grow cold. Something struck me then. I hadn''t put anything in the basement. There were no stacked cardboard boxes down there. There wasn''t anything that could be making any ruckus down there. I don''t have pets and I don''t have a significant other.


    Slowly, I pressed my ear to the floor next to my bed and could hear what sounded like deep and wheezy breathing, like someone was suffocating. I could feel my groin tighten and I went lightheaded. I recoiled from the hardwood floor and exhaled and inhaled very deliberately to calm my nerves.


    I moved through the house and opened one of the boxes in the kitchen to find a glistening knife. That door next to the fridge seemed to beckon me. I switched the light next to the door that I knew would illuminate the floor down there. Swinging the door open, I found nothing. Nothing at all. I closed the door back, locked it, and flicked the downstairs light off.


    I slept hard for the rest of the night with that knife on my bedside table.


    A month or so passed after that and I put the basement out of my mind. That is, until I awoke once more to that strange arduous breathing beneath the floor of my bed. I went to the door in the kitchen, this time forgetting to bring anything to defend myself. I was sure I only needed to put my mind at ease. I would prove to myself once and for all that I was being a big baby. There are no such things as monsters that go bump in the night.


    I clicked the light on, swung the door open, and was met with nothing again. The cold air from the basement rushed up and I could feel my arms bubble up in gooseflesh. I had to do it. It should be put to rest.


    I ran down the stairs as much as one can actually sprint while on steps. I met the ground of the basement and spun around in all directions. Nothing and no one.


    The light flickered and I froze as I was submerged into darkness for a millisecond.


    My eyes shot to the open spaces between the stairs and I could have sworn I saw something lurking back there. What? I don''t know.


    Then the single lightbulb popped in its socket and rained down glass and eternal darkness. I scampered. I panted like an animal. I went on all fours and scrambled as quickly as I could back up to the dim light at the top of the steps. I slid onto the kitchen tile on my belly and slammed the door next to the fridge closed. The kitchen light allowed me to quell those insane childish thoughts and as the light emboldened me, I snatched a flashlight from the bottom kitchen drawer and swung the door open one last time and shone the light against the blackness of the basement.


    Upon the top step of the stairs, there were the unmistakable impressions of claw marks that were not there before. I no longer think my fear of stairs is unfounded.


    I intend to contact my realtor to discuss the terms for putting the house back on the market.

 His Face

    Every night, I''m haunted by the form of a little boy hunched atop my dresser. He stays hunkered there, wearing nothing more than a pair of tighty-whities and smiles at me. The little boy stays that way for hours and watches me as I lay in bed. Initially I believed I was experiencing some really strange night terrors, but I know for sure that I am fully awake when this happens. Then my mind wandered to the possibility that I was merely hallucinating. I no longer think that is the case either.


    He would giggle his child''s giggle when I would awaken from my deep slumber and then he would set about his nightly ritual of tingling my spine with his impossibly still muscles.


    Nights passed and finally, he did something that sent me reeling. He took a straight razor from the back band of his underwear and unfolded it slowly, letting the twinkle of the moonlight coming in through the window reflect off it. He would roll and twist the thing in his hands, toying with it and laughing. My mouth would go dry, unable to let out a peep.


    The little boy holds it above his head and then brings the blade down in a swift whistling arch. I must jump at this little demonstration because he is amused by my reaction. He follows this up with a broad smile then presses the end of the blade to his temple, dragging the laceration downward, underneath his chin, up around again to his other temple, then across his hairline until the bloody line meets the beginning. The boy follows this with a messy job of circles around the eyes and mouth. He does this all with a steady wrist. He folds the razor as his face drip drops its red nectar onto the floor below and he puts the blade away.


    "Do you like masks?" asks the boy.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I refuse to speak. Or my mouth refuses to cooperate.


    He presses his fingertips along the line the razor created and wiggles his nails beneath the skin, prying the flesh up. I can hear the popping protests of the tissue. He peels off his face and holds it out in front of his chest as an offering. When I recoil and squint my eyes, he flattens his palm and places the face out over it meticulously. He tosses the thing like a pie and it smacks and sticks to the opposite wall of my bedroom.


    I watch the face slide down my wall, leaving a trail in its path.


    When I look back to the dresser, the boy is gone.


    This has been what my nights consist of and I don''t know how much longer I can take it. My wall is covered in the macabre outlines of at least thirty faces. The skin has some quality to them so that they are impossible to remove from the wall. So, the drooping faces look on forever as I am unable to pry them from the drywall.


    I awoke, sure he would be waiting to conduct his game of scaring the ever-loving shit out of me. But he wasn''t there. I relaxed, my breathing felt normal, my eyes grew heavy once more. As I rolled onto my back, my heart caught in my throat.


    The little boy was perched on my headboard, staring down at me with that twinkle in his eye. No. The twinkle wasn''t in his eye. He was brandishing his straight razor in front of a wicked smile.


    He cut his face off and held it out in front of his chest, directly over my face as I looked on in abject terror.


    "It''s your mask!" spit the boy through dribbling blood.


    I don''t know how, but the courage lingered in me to jerk from the bed. I darted down the hall, out the door, into my car, and shot up gravel rocks as I floored it out of my driveway.


    When I worked up the courage to return home, I examined my bed. There''s an irremovable face on my pillow. The skin mask grew strange and knotty roots so as to better cling to the fibers. I shudder to think what would have happened if he''d dropped it on me.

 Skin

    Where do I start? For a long time, I thought I was a normal kid with a normal family and normal parents. Normal. That pretty much sums it up. But ever since I started this new dietary routine, things have gone from good to bad faster than you could blink.


    I was always a little heavy set. My mother called it big-boned and my father tried telling me I was getting fat. I don''t think I was fat, but I definitely was not happy with my size. Then I moved and got a job at a pharmaceutical firm, selling mostly diet pills. I can''t tell you how many people have laughed behind my back at the irony of that when they thought I couldn''t hear them.


    I stayed away from the stuff my company peddled, mostly because I didn''t like the idea of cheating for results, but then I met a guy, Derek. Well Derek seemed charming and funny and he genuinely seemed to enjoy spending time with me. Then, one night after taking a few too many shots at the bar, I invited him over. I didn''t hear back from him after that.


    That was a couple of months ago. Part of me thinks it''s because he finally got to see what I looked like without my clothes on. Another part of me, a louder part, screamed, "Fuck him!".


    I was standing in front of my mirror before work, looking at myself in my underwear, squeezing the places that protruded out just a little too much for my liking and I decided I''d finally had enough. I wasn''t going to do it for him. I was going to do this for me.


    So, I bought a few bottles of Cavequidvolunt, the newest and hottest diet supplement on the market and threw them in my car. I went jogging on a nearby trail after work and popped twice the recommended dose, swallowing the little pink capsules down dry.


    It felt satisfying running like that. I had a few people give me funny looks as I jogged past them, no doubt snickering at my sweat covered shirt, but fuck them too. This was for me. I was going to do it. I drove home that night feeling better than I had in years. This was the new me! I had this shit down pat and I was going to look fine as wine.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    The stairwell up to my apartment was a little harder to traverse than normal and I blamed it on the workout. I ate a granola bar before bed.


    When I woke up the next morning, I felt different and stripped out of my PJ''s to examine my body in the mirror. I''d dropped at least twenty pounds. That was impossible. The skin on my body was loose, sure, but the me that was underneath was beginning to take shape. I was like a statue of a goddess just ready to burst out from the big ugly slab of marble.


    With results like that, I figured I should double my double dosage and took four of those sweet little pills.


    I dropped weight like that for a couple of days, until I was dragging around a blanket of loose skin. But I was happy. I could finally call that surgeon my friend had recommended and get a little tuck!


    I was coming home from work, taking the stairwell up to my apartment one step at a time, and slipped halfway up. I stumbled and scraped my knee through my leggings and cursed aloud.


    I looked over my knee on the empty stairwell for a moment and noticed my left sock was covered in blood. I pulled my legging up and looked it over, taking off my shoe and sock. To my disgust I found that I''d stepped right out of the sole of my own foot! The skin stayed inside of the sock and as I moved it around it made a shcleeep sound.


    I hop-stepped up to my apartment and locked the door behind me, breathing hard.


    I stripped out of my clothes until I was completely naked and ran myself a bath, cleaning my now skinless foot with alcohol. I soaked in the bath while browsing Facebook on my phone, scowling at my friend''s wedding plans and my niece''s photos.


    My fingers started to get that spongey feel to them, and I stood out of the bath, reaching for my towel to dry myself off with. I smiled at my body in the bathroom mirror as I rubbed my back and bottom dry with that little motion you use to pull the towel from side to side. I shifted the towel around to get my front side and I heard something drop and wetly slap against the tile floor. I dropped the towel and turned around to find that all of the skin from my shoulders to the bottom of my ass-crack had slid away and formed a puddle on the floor.


    Since then, my arm and hand skin have fallen away into two neat little gloves. I don''t even feel when it''s happening at this point.


    But I have started to notice that my face is coming loose.


    I have to stop now. It¡¯s hard to type with such slick fingers.