This is incredibly difficult for me to talk about. I feel, I don’t know, ashamed, I guess. Like I’ve somehow failed as a parent. When I was growing up, I thought my parents hated me.

I never wanted that for my daughter. I wanted her to know how much I loved her. That my love was unconditional.

I’ve never felt as proud as I did the day she came into this world. It was almost like looking into a mirror. She had my eyes. My ears. Our noses were practically identical. And her smile, God, it was like nothing else mattered in the entire world.

I wanted her to have that same pride in herself. I never wanted her to ever feel any self-hatred. That’s another thing my parents made me feel. I didn’t get their pride. I didn’t get their love. I got cold stares. I got nights where I couldn’t sleep because Mom’s cries were so loud.

I didn’t ask for my family. I didn’t ask to be assigned to them. They were supposed to accept me, and they failed, miserably.

I guess the universe has a strange sense of humor because now, it’s like my daughter can’t accept herself.

She doesn’t hunt with me anymore. She tries to suppress her urge. She doesn’t do the cute little growl she used to do as a baby. I bet it’s 10 times as impactful now, but I wouldn’t know because she just refuses to practice.

She won’t even climb trees anymore. She’d rather hide out at home. Curled up in the dark, pouting to herself.

Of course, I try and comfort her, try and make her realize she should be proud of who she is, but she just rejects me. It seems like that’s all life is for me. Rejection from the people who are supposed to love me.

She tells me I “wouldn’t get it,” whatever the hell that means.

She hates her skin, so she tries to cover it up. She hates her teeth, so she refuses to smile. She even wears beanies that she stole from humans to cover her pointy ears.

That’s something I guess I can respect. At least she’s causing harm to them, even if it’s just with something as simple as stealing. I just wish she’d steal something useful like meat rather than clothes and makeup.

That’s something I never quite understood. Makeup clearly makes shedding more difficult. Why would you want life to be harder than it already is? I mean, we already have to hide out in the woods.

I guess that’s not my place, though.

It’s starting to get more concerning, however. It was already hard to watch her cry because she felt different. Now I have to watch her quite literally alter herself to fit into “social norms,” as she calls it.

She’s already filed down her fangs. When she does hunt, all she has now are her claws, and those are much easier to get rid of than teeth.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not with the times. All I know is that I want her to be happy in the body she was given.

There are no female specimens left for her to look up to, and I’m just an old, out-of-touch Dad, apparently.

I hope this matter resolves itself. I’ll keep doing my best to get her to see that they’re the monsters, not us.

Until then, I’ll just keep reminiscing on the simpler times. I kept her shell, and these days, that seems to be the only thing that brings me peace.

Well, that and hunting humans.

Goodbye, My Dream

The train was rushing through the night.

Suddenly, a tiny cat's face appeared from a young woman's travel bag. The kitten looked around at the passengers with curiosity.

An elderly man smiled.

— May I tell you a story? — he asked.

The carriage became quiet.

— When I was a boy, there was a young milkmaid in our village. She was tall, strong, and beautiful. To me, she was the most wonderful person in the world.

I had a childlike love for her.

But my dream was a very unusual one.

I wanted to become a little kitten.

I imagined that one day she would find me, pick me up, hold me close, stroke me, feed me milk, and never let me go.

I felt that beside her there was no fear and no loneliness. There was only warmth, kindness, and happiness.

One day, our milkmaid finished secondary school. The collective farm sent her to study at an agricultural institute in Dushanbe.

I heard this news from my mother, who worked with her on the farm.

That whole evening I wandered around as if I had lost something precious.

At night I could not fall asleep.

It seemed to me that together with her, everything bright and beautiful from my childhood was leaving our village.

Hiding my face under the blanket, I cried silently.

Only before dawn did I finally fall asleep.

And I had a wonderful dream.

I dreamed that I had turned into a little kitten, and she decided to take me with her to Dushanbe.

We arrived at the airport.

During the baggage check, an airport employee suddenly noticed me.

— A kitten cannot travel without a special health certificate, — she said.

My milkmaid looked first at me, then at the employee.

— He is very gentle. Look how small he is...

The woman smiled.

Then she bent down, gently stroked my head, and whispered:

— All right. But keep him hidden under your coat collar so nobody gets frightened.

She carefully held me close.

I could hear her heartbeat.

And so we walked up the airplane stairs together.

When the plane took off, it seemed to me that my happiest childhood dream had taken flight with it.

...

Decades passed.

I lived a long life.

I saw many people, cities, and countries.

But sometimes I think that the happiest dreams are born only in childhood. Later, a person grows up, becomes serious, begins counting money, positions, and years... And childhood dreams quietly disappear.

The storyteller fell silent.

The train continued to rumble along the rails.

The kitten poked its head out of the bag again and looked carefully at the old man.

The old man smiled.

He slowly raised his hand and quietly said:

— Goodbye, my dream...

No one in the carriage said a word.

Everyone was thinking about their own childhood.

And the train continued rushing through the night, carrying passengers toward new roads and old memories.

I’m collecting real-life stories for a book about strange, creepy, and unexplained experiences.
If you’re comfortable sharing, I’d love to hear your story.
By posting your story here, you’re giving me permission to feature it in my book and future content. I’ll keep it anonymous unless you specifically ask to be credited.
Please share only true experiences, and include as much detail as you can. Any kind of strange, creepy, paranormal, or unexplained event is welcome.

Every day, I looked in the mirror. And what did I see? An ugly, and let's be honest fat kid. I was done, but just kept saying one more day! One more day! I went up to my bed and opened up TikTok. I scrolled on this sad video, and it had this song. By XXXTentacion, or whatever his name is. It was called Everybody Dies In Their Nightmares. For most, this was just a normal song. But for me, this changed something in me. I felt more powerful, driven, and with every "Don't go to sleep" I felt more anger and rage building up for staying the same this long. Right then, I laced up an old pair of Ons, and ran outside. The miles burnt like hell opened up. But that song kept playing over and over in my head. I couldn't stop. It became like that every day, morning after morning, running and running until I finally became what I wanted to be. Every small amount of growth in the mirror pushed me even more, and I pushed harder. Healthy meals, new gym membership, new haircut, new cologne, more work ethic, etc.
But after all this. I got the invite. The family reunion. I thought for a moment. Then accepted. Little did I know this would be the worst reunion of my life.
I walk in, and let's say everyone stopped talking. Extremely surprised. They said, "Wow! You look way different!" And I did. Fast forward, they make comments about how I am "not all that" and "to be off my high horse" as I sit there silentelu.
Whatever, I thought.
We all go on a pontoon over the Maumee River. The city lights look heavenly. My brother orders a local pizza from The Stubborn Brother Pizza Bar in Toledo, picks it up, and gets on the boat with it. We ride for a while, chat, and then he opens it and says, "Pizza! Come get it!"
Everyone flocks over to get it. I feel a pang of temptation, but I think of all my progress. I say no. I can't.
Everyone gives me a weird look and goes back to eating. I sit on the side of that boat and just watch the city. As I stare, the family one by one stops eating the heavily greasy pizza out of pure guilt.
We drive back. But as I think of those city lights, I think of the progress. And as X would say, Everyone Dies In Their Nightmares, but for me, it was the old version of me who did.

One day, Peter came running toward our house, out of breath, knocking urgently on the door.

I opened it, and he sat down on the ground, trying to catch his breath. Then he said in a broken voice:

"The Sam family... has returned."

I froze in place and turned toward my grandparents.

Mark the annoying boy had returned.

Truthfully... I felt happy. At least something would happen to break the monotony of my days. The memories of our childhood were still deeply planted in my mind, even after all those years.

My grandmother said:

"We should go visit them. I will bake them a cherry cake. Mark loves it so much."

I went upstairs to my room, put on my orange dress, and fixed my hair. Then we set off in the carriage my grandfather was driving, while memories of my childhood crowded my mind throughout the journey.

Before we arrived, my grandmother turned to me and said in a firm voice:

"Please... you are no longer a child. You are now a twenty-year-old young woman, so try to be calm."

I smiled and replied:

"Yes, ma'am."

The moment the door opened, I stood there amazed.

The house was no longer the same one I remembered. Everything inside was shining—the polished wooden floors, the crystal chandeliers, the elegant wallpaper... I felt as though I had stepped into another world.

Mr. Sam and his wife welcomed us warmly.

After a few moments, a tall young man entered, broad-shouldered and elegantly dressed.

I jumped from my seat without realizing it.

I began walking around him, staring at him in disbelief.

"Oh my God... Mark! How did you change like this?! You became handsome! Look at your muscles! Your hair... even your eyes look different! And where are your glasses?"

My questions poured out endlessly, while he simply looked at me in silence.

Suddenly, I heard a voice behind me say:

"Hello... Orange."

I turned around quickly.

And there stood the real Mark... with his glasses, his thin frame, and the same annoying smile that had never changed.

I looked between the two of them and whispered:

"Mark... then who is this?"

Mr. Sam laughed, placed his hand on the shoulder of the handsome young man, and said:

"This is James... my nephew."

I wished the ground would open and swallow me from embarrassment.

James smiled calmly and said:

"It's alright."

As for Mark, he walked toward me, pulled my braid just like he used to do in our childhood, and said with a laugh:

"See you later... Orange."

Everyone burst into laughter.

But I looked at my grandmother, and from the look in her eyes, I felt as if a fire was burning inside them from the intensity of her anger..🥀S

Sarah ✏️

Once upon a time, or however these stories are supposed to go, there was a dastardly spirit referred to as The Adversary, or Satan for short.

This mischievous spirit didn’t like humans very much. Having been a crowned prince of Heaven, an ancient guardian over all of creation, and his father's most beautiful prior invention, he felt a little… conflicted. He wasn’t happy seeing those he watched over being promised the kingdom he thought he would inherit.

But then, pride does go to people's heads.

Funnily enough, after being thrown into a hellish lake of fire (see what I did there?), he found himself worshipped more now than before, just with a few extra scorch marks on his sides.

Many foolish people see themselves going to hell, no matter what they do. So, they think, “Hey, if I'm going anyway, why not go with a little style?”

They assume that if they get all snug and cosy with our pretty little devil, then they might get some special treatment when they finally arrive. Except... It doesn’t end up quite as “special” when people have been doing exactly that for more than 100 thousand years.

So where does our protagonist finally show up?

-

One day- (well, days don’t quite exist in hell, but stay with me)- the Devil finally decided to partner up. With so many wives, husbands and everything in between, he chose to create an heir for himself and his kingdom.

Angels and demons cannot reproduce amongst themselves. But being that people can, it has been known for the two to mix. How convenient.

This is where we get Christine – our little “Anti-Christ.”

But as with all good stories, it can't be that easy.

Turns out, the Antichrist doesn’t really… exist. Or at least, not how we interpreted the scripture.

It's mostly just fake “messiahs” trying to turn people away from Christ and towards themselves, sometimes working for the Devil. The typical fake celebrities, controlling the media, and whatnot.

Those in heaven shake in their feathers, waiting for the end of the world and the day the heavenly father calls for Armageddon. They really don't like that she's here.

Hell, especially her father, lather themselves up waiting to see what dastardly deeds she will do… impatiently.

Those on earth dread her very sight, noticing the red glow behind her eyes, petrified they'll wake up with her sharp thangs in their necks. They expect something big.

But her?

Well, like most young adults, she has her own ideas.

-

She has set her sights on one thing: money.

Actually, she is working at a few small part-time jobs.

Firstly, a small chicken shop, a cinema and a bookstore.

So, you might be asking, why did she choose something so wickedly, so horrifically, so terribly… normal?

Well, bringing the “foretold” end of the world turns out to be quite a bit of effort, and she “ain't bout all dat”.

Surprisingly, it's way easier to just tick off everyone, heaven, hell and earth alike! How? By doing nothing and watching anime all day. Why not let them fight it out?

Maximum seething, minimal effort, and plenty of time to eat noodles. All a good day's work.

So how about we see what she's up to?

A small fried chicken shop on the outskirts of the city opens for the lunchtime rush.

“Have you seen the new girl?”

A young woman, on the smaller side, asks her cool “trendy” co-worker, whilst hiding behind the kitchen counter.

“Who, her?” He looks at our red-haired menace with a sly, playful smirk.

-

Christine fixes her little hat, standing at the main counter. She stands tall, now motionless, as stiff as an iron rod. Her eyes have a happy, cutesy expression.

Her face? A wide impish grin spreads ear to ear.

“She's just standing there…”

The man replies, “Well, duh, there's no customers yet.”

A quiet, mousy man hesitantly interrupts, “No… She's right. She is kind of stiff. Like, too stiff.”

“HEY!” He calls out, trying to get her attention.

No reply.

“New girl!” The daring man tries again.

“Max, leave her alone,” the woman says nervously.

Christine's mischievous smile remains still, shining wide in the freshly cleaned glass.

“Hot stuff!”

Christine's haunting face slowly turns towards the group, her body still fixed front and centre.

Max’s half-lit cigarette falls from his bottom lip.

She turns back to the glass.

“You shouldn’t smoke in here!”

Her eyes give an innocent, playful glint, talking through the reflection. Her expression remains just as horrifying.

-

Stacy looks in terror. Her chest tight, heart turning cold.

“The Fuc…”

“Shut up, Ben,” Max says sternly, deflecting his feelings.

Time ticks on. Still, the door remains closed.

Half asleep, head resting on his palms, Max notices someone walk past. “Damn, 3 PM already?”

A strange-looking goth man stands by the door, creepily looking through the window.

“Hey, Stacy! I think ur date is here?” Max jokes.

“Shut up, jerk,” she replies harshly, still hiding away.

The man stays still, staring at Christine from the side.

“Well? Is he going to come in or what?” Max waits impatiently.

The goth man walks in, his eyes fixed on Christine.

He struts to the counter and slams down a bloodied, dead chicken, with barbed wire and bones sticking out.

“Hello >:),” she says, emotionless with her unwavering grin.

“Your dad wants to talk to you,” he states sternly.

“You know we sell those cooked, right?” Christine says.

“HO hoh!” Max bellows a deep laugh. “No way! I have someone perfect for you!”  He smirks back at Stacy.

-

He teases, talking over the whining from behind.

Christine picks up the bloody mess, moving it to the side.

“Ring Ring…” Max jokes, struggling to hide his unease.

The goth man leaves. No orders, no explanation; he walks away as mysteriously as he arrived.

“Okay, WTF was that?” A voice emerges from behind.

Ben walks over, angry and annoyed. He checks the window to see he's actually gone.

He looks at Christine, who is totally unfazed; her expression has yet to change.

Stacy is horrified at the chicken laid on the counter she spends hours scrubbing to perfection every morning.

“Seems the new girl has made a friend,” Max jokes.

“And I thought I was the freak magnet,” he says with a teasing nudge. The others annoyingly huff, looking with a strop on their face, knowing he is talking about them.

Christine takes the chicken from the squealing mess and places it into her rucksack.

The group look on in shock. So much that even Max is brought to show some discomfort for once.

“Guess you're keeping that? Huh…”

“Wait, you know that guy?” Another screams.

-

A week or so later, Christine takes on a new role. The most demanding one yet.

Wails and screams wallow strong, and fill the halls.

Christine stands over with a hammer in hand, grimacing at the sight.

Her smile widens harder as her arm swings down.

The coffee machine gets a large thump on the side.

“Begone, fault!”

It gets more thumps.

“Thou shalt not hinder my sales quota!”

~ Tap tap tap ~

“I think you're making it worse,” Max states, grinning from the side.

He stands smug, not having needed to do any work.

“Silence,” she says cold and soulless. Her eyes lay cheery above her menacing grin.

Tap tap tap

Then suddenly, Whoooosh…

The dreaded matcha machine is back in order.

Stacy and Ben arrive, putting on their aprons.

-

“You guys ever think it’s weird we have all the same jobs?” Ben ponders to the group.

“I mean, we're not even teens anymore. We're like all 20 now…”

“Pffff,” Max dismisses. “It pays, doesn’t it?”

“This town is short on young staff,” Stacy notes, looking upon the empty cinema lobby.

“Yeah, but not of weeiirdos,” Max moves to playfully ruffle the top of Christine's hair.

She turns, giving him a stare as sharp as thorns from hell itself. “Maybe not,” he thinks to himself.

“What kind of weirdo wants a hot matcha coffee when watching a movie anyway?” He deflects.

An ominous presence haunts the lobby.

A strange, cloaked woman has entered the doorway.

“Never mind,” he adds.

She pulls out a dagger; the tip shines in the light.

“Uhhhh…”

“Oh, Bennnn? Think it’s your shift,” he says with a devious grin, trying to stick the job onto someone else.

Christine stands tall, unbothered; the reflection glints in her cheery eyes.

“Hello >:)”

-

The woman grows closer.

“Tickets at 5.99,” she tells the stranger.

“I wish to give an offering to you,” says the cold voice.

“Cash or card?” Christine responds unfazed.

“Wha… No! I want to prove I am worthy.” The woman teases her skin with the blade. The edge trails along her arm, close to drawing blood.

“Haloumi is 4.99 extra :)”

Her typical robotic tone offputs the cloaked stranger.

“I… Better come back.” She runs away, embarrassed.

Max, previously nonchalantly hiding in the corner, suddenly slams his palms on the counter.

“Okay, new girl… How the hell did you out weird that psycho?”

His finger pokes her face. Christine playfully tries to bite it back with her classic quiet growl.

“Yannnn >:)”

Stacy's soft voice squeaks from the kitchen window. “Why do I think this will be a regular occurrence?”

“How long until they date?” Ben says.

The two look at each other and laugh in the background until they wheeze. They have no idea who this new girl is, but know this is only the start of what’s to come.

For context, my aunt hasn't always been like this, but ever since she's had a baby, she never holds or takes care of him. She always gives him to my grandma or to two of my other aunts. Even her husband has told my other aunt that she shouldn't get married just to end up taking care of their son.

She also screams at my grandma whenever she doesn't do something exactly the way she wants. My grandma is sick, and she doesn't stand up for herself. In my country, it's inexpensive to hire a caretaker for a baby, but they still expect my grandma to do everything. On top of that, there's basically no one available to take my grandma to the hospital.

Any tips for revenge?

For months, Jane’s pregnancy had been deemed perfectly normal. But as her delivery day drew near, she just had a nagging, sinking feeling that something was deeply wrong. When labor began and she arrived at the hospital, she repeatedly begged her doctors for a C-section, pleading that she felt "something was off." Each time, the medical team refused, insisting her labor was progressing as expected.

Once in the delivery room, her premonition violently materialized. Jane began to hemorrhage uncontrollably, and her blood pressure plummeted. Her heart stopped not once, but twice on the delivery table as the medical staff scrambled to save her.

Amidst the life-saving chaos, the doctors finally discovered the hidden culprit: a dangerous, localized medical condition. Because the baby’s position had completely obscured this area, routine ultrasounds had been unable to detect the hidden threat. It was only through the emergency response that her true condition was exposed.

Jane survived and delivered a healthy baby, but the emotional and physical toll of her near-death experience left an indelible scar. She is now suing the hospital and her attending medical providers, arguing that their stubborn refusal to listen to her maternal intuition and her pleas for a C-section constituted medical negligence.

I am currently 14 years old. This story happened almost a year ago. It was August 2025. My girl best friend was about to transfer to my school, and one of her friends transferred there too. At first, everything was alright. We became friends, and we hung out every day at school. Slowly, I started to develop feelings for my girl best friend’s friend (my former girl best friend). By October, my feelings had become serious. I had never been in love that much in my entire life. I know I was young, but it still felt real. Everything between us was really good. We hung out alone at school because my former girl best friend turned out to be talking badly about us. We both hated the same people, liked the same people, and everything seemed to be perfect. We went trick-or-treating together on Halloween, and the night was amazing. I always walked her home from the bus, even though it meant I had to walk an extra hour to get home myself. I also got up early just so we could take the bus together in the morning. In December, I went to my home country with my dad. At night, we called for eight hours straight, and everything still seemed perfect. Then my birthday came (23.12.2011). I was having dinner with my dad when it turned midnight, and she texted me immediately. I really thought she liked me too. I thought there couldn’t be a better day to confess than January 1st, 2026. A few days before I confessed, we had one of the best hangouts ever. I truly believed she loved me too. Then I confessed. Big mistake. She ignored me for five days, only to tell me, “I like you too, but only as a friend.” I had struggled with my mental health even before I met her because my girlfriend had died by suicide in 2023. When she rejected me, everything got so much worse. I felt like I wanted to die and nothing else, but I’m still here. On her birthday (10.01.2013), she decided to completely ghost me, both in real life and online. I’m really not proud of what I did afterward. I don’t think it was okay. I was just really angry, angry that she had given me the feeling that she loved me and then suddenly didn’t want to talk to me anymore. Looking back now, I understand her. Sometimes people just don’t want to be friends anymore. Anyway, I asked a friend of mine to pretend that he was in love with her and then dump her. She asked me why I had done something like that, and after she asked me, I realized how wrong it was. I was genuinely sorry, and I kept asking for her forgiveness. Eventually, we became friends again for a few months. I never really lost my feelings for her. Then she told me that she had found a boyfriend. I was devastated, but I didn’t say anything. Now it’s summer break. Until six days ago, I still wanted her. Then I met my beautiful, perfect girlfriend. I never thought someone could be so sweet and kind. I have honestly never loved anyone the way I love her. Since then, my mental health has gotten a lot better. I stopped smoking, and all I want now is to be with my girlfriend. She is everything I could ever ask for. I don’t really know why I’m posting this. I think this is just my way of letting go of my past so I can finally stop thinking about it and focus on the most amazing girl I’ve ever met.

My wife has always had a fascination with the occult. To be honest, we both have—our love of all things eerie is one of the first things we really bonded over as a couple—but while I am more interested in such a thing from a distance, my wife is much more… hands-on. She likely would have become an archaeologist, had her interest skewed more toward the historical and less toward the disturbing. While I like to watch creepy documentaries and make the occasional trip to a haunted museum, my wife likes to come face-to-face with as many macabre and unsettling objects as she can find. She likes to touch them, inspect them, analyze them… and even collect them.

Her collection started out small, beginning with her deceased grandmother’s favorite necklace and continuing with a few ominous objects that have been in her possession since long before we ever met. She kept them in a little box that her “spiritualist” friend had blessed for her, claiming to have imbued the container with protective qualities. I wasn’t so sure that her friend actually possessed the otherworldly know-how to adequately ward off the forces of evil, but my wife had insisted that her collection had never caused her any problems, and I found her assortment more fascinating than I did unsettling, so I decided to give her friend the benefit of the doubt and I accepted that the items in question were about as safely sealed away as they could be.

My wife brought this collection with her when we moved in together, and it remained with us in each new apartment that we found ourselves in. It didn’t grow much during those first few years—she’d only add a new object to it once in a  blue moon, and even then she would only collect objects that could fit within the ever-shrinking space inside of the blessed container—but this selectiveness quickly went out the door as soon as we bought our own home.

Our new house came with a large, finished basement which was complete with more rooms than we had any use for (sometimes living in the boonies really pays off). My wife asked if I would be okay with her using one of these subterranean chambers as a new space for her collection. At first I was put off by such an idea, but I acquiesced when she said that her friend had already agreed to come by and bless the place so it would be ready to contain the ghastly assortment. I wasn’t particularly assured by this, but I figured her friend had done well enough with the first container, so I decided to put a little more faith in her this time around.

This would prove to be a huge mistake.

Once her “containment chamber”, as we started calling it, was good and ready, my wife christened the place by moving all of the objects from her box onto one of the room’s shelves. Her original collection served as the chamber’s only occupants for our first few months in the new house. It took us a while to fully unpack and adjust to our new place, during which time she had little opportunity to even consider her macabre assemblage. Her friend came by to bless the place every now and again, but the containment chamber stood largely untouched for a decently long while.

But then one day she brought home the first new object, and the expanded version of her collection began to take shape.

She had just returned from a trip to the supermarket, but she came inside with more than just a few bags of groceries in her hands. After putting her groceries away, she pulled a disk-shaped object out of her backpack. The object was wrapped in several layers of parchment paper sealed by a string tied around a bundle of sage. She untied the string and unwrapped the item to reveal an old, faded mask with a pale complexion and a blank, expressionless face.

The mere sight of the mask was immediately unsettling. When I asked where she had gotten such a thing, she explained that she had stopped by a thrift store down the street from our house that she had been meaning to check out since we’d moved in. At first she didn’t find much inside, and she was preparing to leave when she came upon something that had caught her eye. Tucked away in one corner of the store, hidden behind several twisting layers of shelves, was a wall labeled “Cursed and Haunted Items”. All of the objects on this wall were locked behind a glass barrier, and she had to request the assistance of the shopkeeper in order to open the case. She asked the shopkeeper if the sign was legitimate or just a strange marketing strategy, and he assured her that each object locked behind that window was “verified” to have been plagued by some sort of curse, hex, spirit or entity—malevalent or otherwise. Not many folks bought anything from that shelf, for obvious reasons, but anybody who did needed to be informed of the potential danger that those objects posed.

My wife was one of those unique few who was drawn to the unsettling objects on that equally unsettling shelf. She took an immediate interest in that mask, and she bought it without hesitation. I was less than thrilled to see such a thing casually sitting on our kitchen table as if she had bought it at Target, but she assured me that the lasting effects from the sage that had been used when wrapping the mask would keep any evil at bay until she could safely secure the object inside of her containment chamber. Again I acquiesced despite my reservations, and again I have come to regret this decision.

The mask’s presence didn’t seem to change anything at first, and for a while I assumed that her friend’s blessing had done its job. I largely forgot about the thing, and I wound up resigning it to the same place in my long-term memory where I keep all of my wife’s spooky objects: out of sight, out of mind. I wouldn’t need to think about it again for another month or so, until my wife made another visit to that thrift store, and returned with a new item to add to the dreaded collection.

The object in question was a ceremonial dagger that was either Mongolian or Mesopotamian in origin (my wife couldn’t say for sure, since the shopkeeper kept going back and forth between the two when talking about it). She didn’t and still doesn’t know much of anything about antique blades, but she liked the look of the thing anyway, and so into the containment chamber it went. I’ve never come in direct contact with it, but my wife insists that the weapon’s hilt is especially cold to the touch, even when held while wearing thick winter gloves. To this day I’ve been perfectly fine with taking her word for it, as I have no interest in verifying this fact for myself.

The next object she brought home was the diary of a Revolutionary War soldier. The shopkeeper was able to give her some information about its origins while he rang her up. He had turned it to its last marked page as he told her about it, and had directed her to the final paragraph, which was interrupted mid-sentence by a dark-brown splotch on the paper. Apparently the soldier in question had been midway through an entry when an unexpected cannonball removed his head from his shoulders. Luckily his diary had managed to survive the incident with minimal spatter over its pages, which is how it eventually ended up in my wife’s collection. She displays it opened to that final page—an act that is especially macabre, even for her—and she insists that sometimes, when she walks by it, she can hear the sound of a scribbling pen echoing through the air. I’ve passed by the book a handful of times on the odd occasion that I find myself in the containment chamber, and I have never heard such a sound.

Resting next to the journal, sandwiched between two bookends, is a 16th century Icelandic grimoire said to contain powerful necromantic spells and secrets, although this cannot be confirmed because the book has been intentionally sealed shut with wax and it cannot be opened without running the risk of destroying its contents. I’m not so sure I believe in any of those necromancy rumors, but looking at it for too long does tend to fill me with an odd sense of dread that I’m unable to properly explain. I can’t help thinking about death and dying whenever I’m near it, but I’m sure that’s just because I’m aware of its allegedly sordid origins, and my imagination is merely filling in the gaps that its presence creates.

Among the more disheartening items in the collection is a century-old photograph of a random mother, father and daughter sitting on a stone bench in what appears to be their backyard. It didn’t come from the thrift store’s Cursed and Haunted Items section, but my wife felt bad that such a memory had been abandoned by the descendants of its former owners, and so she opted to bring it home. While not officially labeled as haunted, I must admit that since she brought it into our house, I’ve started hearing the sound of a giggling child playing in the park across the street at all hours of the night. All glances out the window have revealed the park to be just as dead as the people in the picture are, and yet the sound of childlike merriment persists. I try not to think about it too much.

The next object is actually one that I brought home after my own trip to the thrift store. It’s an Edo-period wakizashi said to have belonged to a samurai of much renown—and also of much infamy. He was a particularly violent man, and the blade now in our collection had supposedly been used to take the lives of dozens if not hundreds of his opponents, before a single dishonorable act resulted in him turning the weapon on himself in a final display of ruthless savagery. It rests next to my wife’s Mongolian or Mesopotamian dagger, and I swear that I can sometimes hear the sound of metal scraping against metal when I walk by the containment chamber door.

Money became a little tight after I bought the wakizashi, which resulted in the collection remaining stagnant for close to a year. Our dry spell was finally broken when my wife came home with a steering wheel once belonging to a certain mid-century automobile that had met a rather unfortunate and infamous end. It is by far the most high-profile item in our collection. For some reason the shopkeeper decided to give it to her for dirt cheap, and we’ve determined that we’ll be able to turn a rather large profit on the thing in the future, should we choose to sell it. It remains in our collection for the time being, and ever since buying it I’m now occasionally awoken from my sleep by the violent, harsh sound of screeching tires that may or may not be the work of our obnoxious neighbor a few houses down.

I don’t remember when my wife bought it, but at some point a German gramophone found its way into the collection. I asked her about it a few months ago, and she seemed to be under the impression that I had been the one to buy it—but seeing as I have no memory of this, and also because it’s not really the kind of purchase that I would make, I think she must have been mistaken. The thing doesn’t work either way, but that hasn’t stopped me from hearing crackly, old-timey music drifting from our home’s air vents from time to time. The music always comes while I’m in the shower, when the sound of rushing water is just loud enough for me to wonder if the music I’m hearing is real, or if it’s  just a figment of my imagination.

This is hardly an exhaustive list of the items in our strange, little collection. I have yet to mention my wife’s late-19th-century desk that was the only surviving object in a schoolhouse fire, or my set of vintage leather jackets that were present at the scene of a brutal double-homicide in a clothing store in the early 1950s. The point of me bringing up all of these examples is to illustrate just how vast the collection is. We have objects from all over the globe and from all different eras, all of which share a single thing in common: they all now rest in our containment chamber, which is precariously sealed behind a thin wooden door in our basement. And recent events have led me to believe that bringing all of these potentially bedeviled objects together under one roof and placing them all into the same room may have been the biggest, dumbest mistake of our lives.

As the collection has grown, I’ve noticed a certain presence in our house that has grown with it. It used to be much easier to overlook—to pass off as some vague feeling with no discernible origin—but each new addition to our grim repertoire has only made it that much more powerful, as well as that much more difficult to ignore.

At this point I will say that I firmly believe we have placed too much trust in my wife’s “spiritualist” friend. Her rites and incantations may have been enough to keep our collection in check back when it was a small assemblage of vaguely spooky objects, but the collection has clearly grown to a point where it has become too formidable for her blessings to properly contain it. Each new object adds to a collective surge of dark energy that has been whittling away at whatever mediocre shell that woman placed around the containment chamber, and that dwindling barrier is clearly set to shatter at any moment. I don’t think any of us—my wife, her friend, or I—are ready for what is bound to happen once the thin veil between those objects and our home is finally destroyed.

I’ve already started noticing strange things; ghastly manifestations that continue to seep through the ever-crumbling wall that stands between us and that amalgamation of wickedness. Things around the house will disappear, only to recorporealize in a completely different part of the building days or even weeks later. Voices will call out to me from rooms that are not occupied by a single living soul. I see figures out of the corner of my eye; sinister shadows that stand down the hall or in doorways and which disappear the moment I turn to look at them. Phantom smells and sounds and thoughts will assault my mind at all hours of the day; they transport me back to memories that I’ve never lived, and which I never should have had access to. Our home has never felt so inhabited, despite us hosting fewer guests these days than we ever have before.

Most of these experiences are less than what I would consider pleasant. Many of them are fairly innocuous, but some of them—a number that is on the rise—are actually quite concerning, to say the least. Loud noises, much like the screeching tires, will cause both of us to shoot out of bed in the middle of the night. The smell of death and decay and rot will waft so strongly through our home that we will be forced to go outside just to enjoy some breathable air; upon returning, we will be left with a residual scent that will linger for hours or even days. We are plagued by visions of horrific actions and tragic destinies that we cannot prevent or overcome—all we can do is hopelessly watch as they transpire right before our very eyes, again and again and again and again.

Things came to a head the other night when I was awoken by my wife, who was caught in a storm of heavy, inconsolable tears. After taking some time to calm her down, I managed to get her to tell me the source of her distress. She’d had a nightmare—or maybe she had already been awake—of her grandmother whispering horrible things in her ear about how she was in the midst of being tortured in the deepest depths of hell for sins that she had not confessed to or atoned for in life. The sound of the old woman’s agonized wails had forced my wife into the fit of hysterics that had ripped me from my sleep. Neither of us got any further rest that night.

Which is what brings me to my reason for telling this tale. After a long, emotional conversation, we have come to the difficult decision to get rid of our entire collection of cursed and haunted objects. But we don’t want to simply return all of these items to the thrift store where they will sit festering for an unknowable number of years (this option will soon no longer be available to us anyway, as the shopkeeper recently informed us of his unexpected intention to shut the place down and move out of state). We also don’t want to risk throwing them all away, thus potentially invoking the wrath of whatever entities are attached to them. For this reason, I would like to send out a plea for help from anybody who reads this. If either you or somebody you know has the means to properly contain this collection, and would also be willing to take it off our hands, please let me know. We want to be rid of all of this stuff as quickly as we possibly can. We wish to wash our hands of the collection that we have spent so much time and money gathering. I fear that if we wait for much longer, it will wind up becoming far too late for us to see this plan of ours through. In fact, it might already be too late. These objects seem to have a tendency to lay down roots and attach themselves to anybody foolish enough to take them in. It’s entirely possible that my wife and I are already far too involved with this collection, as well as whatever malevolent force has glommed onto it. Getting rid of all of these terrible objects might not end up benefiting us at all, but we have to try to free ourselves from this ever-deepening nightmare before it swallows us completely.

At this point I don’t know what else we can possibly do.

Chapter 13 — Blood

Sunday.

The shop opened at eight.

I was there at seven fifty, glasses on, keys in hand, the shutter going up with its usual reluctant noise. The morning was cool and specific — the kind of Sunday morning that knew what it was and wasn't pretending to be anything else. Empty street. Distant traffic. The tea stall across the road not yet open.

I went in and started the opening routine.

The medicine was in my bag.

I knew it was in my bag. The tablet strip and the two small bottles of drops were tucked into the front pocket where I had put them so I wouldn't forget. Sunday morning dose — one tablet, one drop each eye.

A customer knocked on the shutter before I had finished the opening check.

I let them in. Prescription, straightforward, two minutes. Then another customer behind them, and then the newbies arrived in a cluster at eight fifteen with their usual morning energy, and then Boss called with a supplier question that took ten minutes to resolve, and then the morning was simply happening the way mornings happened and the bag was on the shelf behind the counter and the medicine was in it and I had not taken it.

By the time I remembered it was eleven.

I looked at the bag.

Looked at the customer approaching the counter.

Later, I thought.

---

The newbies noticed the glasses at around nine.

"Boss," said the one nearest the door, whose name was Arjun and who had the specific quality of someone who noticed everything and felt compelled to comment on most of it. "Are those glasses."

"Yes," I said.

"Since when."

"Recently."

"Do you have bad eyes."

"Temporarily."

"How temporary."

"Arjun," I said. "The cold medicine display needs restocking."

Arjun looked at the cold medicine display, which did not obviously need restocking, then back at me with the expression of someone who understood he was being redirected and had decided to accept it for now.

He went to restock the cold medicine display.

The other newbie, Priya — quieter, sharper — waited until Arjun was gone and then said, without looking up from the inventory sheet, "Eye strain?"

"Yes," I said.

"From studying?"

"Among other things."

She nodded and went back to the inventory sheet. No further questions. I had always appreciated that about her.

---

The group chat was active through the afternoon.

Takashi: ran through the mountain section four times. pretty solid now.

Hana: I've reviewed the document again. everything is in order.

Reo: — an audio message, forty seconds long.

I played it between customers, one earbud in, the shop noise around me.

It was Reo running the presentation. Not the mutter, not the corridor rehearsal — properly, the volume and pacing of someone addressing a room. He got one transition slightly fast but caught the rhythm before it became a problem. The plains section, which had started as a YouTube documentary and a wall of words, came out of his mouth as something coherent and even interesting.

I typed into the group.

Mikey: Reo that was genuinely good.

Reo: I know

Reo: I've been telling you

Takashi: he's been practicing since yesterday

Reo: I practice when it matters

Hana: it matters tomorrow

Reo: exactly

Emma's message came through at four.

Emma: everyone ready?

Takashi: ready

Hana: ready

Reo: born ready

I was mid-prescription when the message arrived. I finished the prescription, handed it across, waited for the customer to leave.

Mikey: ready. get some rest tonight everyone. tomorrow will be fine.

Emma: okay. good luck everyone.

Reo: we don't need luck we have mikey

Mikey: you need both

Reo: fair

---

The shop closed at eight.

I did the closing routine — floor check, register, locks, shutter. The street outside had gone from Sunday afternoon to Sunday evening in the way streets did, the light lower, the tea stall doing its last business of the day.

I picked up my bag.

The medicine was still in the front pocket.

I stood there for a moment in the closed shop, the shutter half down, the evening coming in from the street.

Tomorrow, I thought. I'll do both doses tomorrow morning and it'll be fine.

I went home.

My mother had food on the stove. I ate. She asked about school and I told her the presentation was tomorrow and she said good, you've been working hard. I said yes. She said sleep early tonight. I said yes.

I went to the study room. Opened the project folder. Went through the structure once in my head — Emma and Hana opening, me and Takashi on the details, Reo closing. Clean. Logical. We had practiced enough that the shape of it was automatic.

I closed the folder.

Looked at the bag.

Tomorrow, I thought again.

I set an alarm for six and went to sleep.

For the first time in two weeks, I was asleep before midnight.

---

Monday.

The alarm went off at six.

I got up, showered, ate the breakfast my mother had left covered on the counter. Put on the school clothes. Checked the project folder one more time — not because anything had changed overnight but because checking was its own kind of preparation.

Picked up the bag.

The medicine was in the front pocket.

I was halfway to the door when my mother called from the other room asking if I wanted her to pack something extra for lunch since it was a big day. I said yes. She said give me two minutes. I waited at the door with my bag over one shoulder, checking the time, thinking about the presentation order, thinking about whether Reo had slept properly, thinking about whether the sketches had survived being in the folder or whether I should have used a harder backing.

My mother came out with the extra lunch.

I took it. Said thank you. Left.

The medicine was in the front pocket of the bag that was now on my back as I walked to school.

I didn't think about it once.

---

The morning had the specific quality of a day that knew it was going to be significant.

Or maybe that was just me.

The group was already assembled when I reached the classroom — all four of them, which never happened, which meant they had all left home earlier than usual without coordinating it. Takashi was reviewing his notes with the focused expression of a man who had taken the mountain section personally. Hana had the document out, reading it one final time with the calm of someone who had prepared thoroughly and knew it. Reo was standing near the window, lips moving slightly, the presentation running its quiet internal loop.

Emma was sitting at the desk with her bag in her lap, not reviewing anything, just present. She looked up when I came in.

"You're late," she said.

"I'm exactly on time," I said.

"We were all early," she said. "So you're late."

I sat down. Reo came over, dropped into his seat, and said, "Ready?"

"Ready."

That was the whole conversation because there was nothing else that needed saying.

---

Mr. Kenji took attendance. Classes happened. I was present for them in the technical sense — I wrote things down, I answered when asked, I kept my eyes open. The presentation ran its loop in the background, the shape of it automatic by now, not something I had to think about so much as something that was simply there, available.

My eyes were fine.

Slightly dry, maybe. The kind of dry that came from classroom air and not enough water and being on the edge of concentration for several hours. Manageable. I blinked. Filed it away.

---

Lunch.

The group gathered with the particular energy of people who had been waiting all day for a specific thing and were now an hour away from it. Lunch boxes open, the conversation moving the way it did when everyone was comfortable — Takashi making a comment about someone else's presentation in the morning session, Reo providing commentary, Hana saying something that made Emma cover a laugh with her hand.

I was eating and listening and feeling, for the first time in several weeks, that the specific weight of the project was almost gone. One hour. One presentation. And then it was done and we had done it well and that would be that.

Reo said something about Takashi. Takashi responded. The response escalated. Reo escalated back. I was laughing — actually laughing, the kind that arrives without permission, the kind that had been less frequent lately than it should have been.

Reo turned to me. "You, settle this. Who do you think—"

He stopped.

I was still laughing. I registered that he had stopped mid-sentence and I registered the expression on his face and I registered that Emma's expression had changed and Hana's and Takashi's and I thought — stop messing with me, what's behind me, why is everyone—

I wiped my eyes.

One hand came away wet.

The other came away red.

I looked at both hands.

The laughing stopped.

---

The washroom.

Reo had me up and moving before I had fully processed what was happening — hand on my arm, pulling, the classroom door, the corridor, the washroom at the end of the hall. Takashi somewhere behind us. The door swinging open, the tap, cold water, the handkerchief.

I pressed it against the eye and looked at the mirror.

Reo was standing beside me. Not speaking. The not-speaking was worse than the speaking would have been.

"It'll stop," I said. "Ten minutes."

"Mikey." His voice was quiet. Controlled in the way of someone who had decided to be controlled because the alternative was not useful. "When did you last take the medicine."

I looked at the mirror.

"Mikey."

"Friday," I said.

The silence that followed had a specific quality.

"Friday," Reo said.

"I forgot Saturday. And Sunday. And this morning."

Another silence.

"You forgot," he said.

"I was busy," I said. "The shift on Sunday and then the presentation and I just—"

"You forgot," he said again. Not a question. Not accusation. Just the word, sitting there, doing its work.

"Yes," I said.

Reo put both hands on the edge of the sink. Looked at the mirror. In it I could see his jaw working slightly, the specific movement of someone choosing words carefully because the first available words were not the right ones.

"You do this," he said finally. "You carry everything. You manage everything. You make sure everyone else is fine and then you forget to be fine yourself." He looked at the mirror. "I'm not angry. I need you to know that. I'm not angry."

"You seem angry," I said.

"I'm worried," he said. "There's a difference. And you would know that if you ever let anyone worry about you properly instead of hiding things in your bag."

I looked at the handkerchief.

The bleeding was slowing. Eight minutes, maybe. It would stop.

"There are five minutes until lunch ends," I said.

"I know."

"The presentation—"

"I know," he said. "We'll go. We'll do it." He straightened up. "But you're going to stand here for five minutes and you're going to let this stop properly and you're not going to walk back in there smiling like nothing happened. Not to me. You don't have to do that with me."

I looked at the mirror.

He was right.

I had been about to do exactly that.

"Okay," I said.

---

We stood there in the quiet washroom, the tap still running, the sounds of the school outside the door, and I let five minutes be five minutes without trying to manage them into something else.

"Go," I said after a moment. "Tell them to start setting up. I'll be there."

Reo looked at me.

"I'll be there," I said again. "I just need to clean up. Five minutes. Go."

He went.

I rinsed my face. Folded the handkerchief. Looked at myself in the mirror for a moment — red eye, tired face, the glasses slightly crooked from where I had pulled them off at the sink.

I straightened the glasses.

Took a breath.

And walked out.

Emma and Hana were in the corridor. Emma looked at me and I gave her the thumbs up and she looked at me with the expression that said she was going to have things to say about this later and she turned and went toward the classroom. Hana followed.

I stood in the corridor for a moment....

​

I loved a man... whose very presence was enough to make my heart restless.

I loved a man... every time I saw him walking toward me, I hid my scattered glances among the faces around us, afraid my eyes would betray what my heart could not.

I loved a man... after a long, exhausting day at work, he would cross my mind as I lay in bed, and somehow, he would make me smile.

I loved a man... whose sky-blue shirt could brighten my entire day.

I loved a man... his eyes, his hair, even the veins on his hands.

I loved a man... who called me "my lady." Though I belonged to no one, those words never angered me. Instead, they quietly found a place in my heart.

I loved a man... every time he came to collect his order, I served him with every kindness and every silent piece of love I had, though he never knew.

I loved a man... and I wish I never see him again.

I loved a man... and I wish he had never walked through that door.

I loved a man... and I wish that the very moment my eyes met his, the moment my heart trembled for the first time, had been erased from my life.

I loved a man... who has a wife and a beautiful child.

I loved a man... who never saw me as anything more than a restaurant employee.

I loved a man... and in my eyes, he was the finest man on earth.

I loved a man... and I fell into the trap of a trembling heart.

I loved a man... who made me leave everything behind—my future, my life—and return to my mother's home, because I knew that if I stayed, I would destroy whatever remained of me.

And here I am, in a new city, beginning again... with a heart wrapped in barbed wire, so it will never rush toward someone it can never have.

I loved a man... who destroyed my life without ever meaning to.

The fault was mine... and the heart was mine.

For no one has power over where the heart chooses to belong.s🥀

Sarah ✏️

A turneqet and such maternal care
The chair and a neat little trashcan
Taken from a clean powder room
I had a view of the green backyard

She must have been 55 or so
Diana with a cancer bleeding her
I can remember pink
Maybe the pills she sold to B to make the universal poverty easier

Or maybe her energy of womanhood tells me that in my memory

She fed my needle crackle and to be honest
It didn’t do much
And maybe she knew that
Loving and lying to protect me and give my fist of bills to herself as profit

B next to me with dark face tattoos and scarification
Such a stark contrast to the woman
Weathered arms and veins and stiff fingers
A dishonest boy who tried to be fine

He wasn’t
He called for help so I didn’t have to see him swinging in the back forest once
But cruel because he could
And sometimes because he had to

Ernest Tubb’s son idling a house away

He was drinking and probably thinking of nothing

Which Way the Neck Turned

There was a time when I thought the old proverb sounded rather crude:

"The husband is the head, and the wife is the neck. Wherever the neck turns, the head follows."

As the years passed, I came to realize that while the wording may be blunt, its meaning is remarkably true.

Layla's father-in-law became seriously ill. The doctors gave him a terrifying diagnosis—cancer.

Night after night, Layla could not sleep. She was deeply worried. Yet it seemed that what frightened her most was not the disease itself, but the cost of treatment in America, which could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And then the neck turned.

Her husband, Qodir, the head of the family, said,

"We'll have my father operated on back home."

And that is exactly what they did.

The old man was admitted to an oncology hospital in his homeland. The operation failed to save him. A few days later, he died and was buried there.

Several years passed.

Then Layla's own brother was diagnosed with the same terrible disease. Doctors in his homeland had little hope of saving him.

Once again, the neck turned.

Qodir arranged the invitation papers, brought his brother-in-law to California, and admitted him to a good hospital. He underwent surgery, and contrary to all medical expectations, he not only survived but lived for another ten years.

But the story did not end there.

Year after year, almost all of Layla's relatives immigrated to America. For each of them, there was an invitation, assistance, and support.

Yet not a single one of Qodir's relatives ever came.

Not because he had no brothers, sisters, or nephews.

Not because they did not need help.

But because the neck never turned in the opposite direction.

And the head never looked where no one directed it.

Since then, whenever I hear that old proverb, I no longer smile.

Instead, I think that the happiest family is the one in which the neck is able to turn in both directions—and the head never forgets that justice begins with loving all of one's relatives equally.

It does. Injustice erodes away at communities. It erodes quality of live for entire regions.

It drags every person down. It will keep every good thing in life suppressed and unavailable for anyone to access.

it doesn't just impact one person.

it robs communities of every good thing that person could have done if they were not crushed under the weight of corruption.

Why are things getting worse and worse and worse for everyone?

There are no good people left to stand up for injustice. None.

Cops here ignore child trafficking. The fed looks the other way when it comes to medical fraud that encourages traffciking of children.

Abuse women, children, your role in authority? No one cares. What does that lead to?

The schools are underfunded, teachers lack any qualifications they legally should have to handle special needs kids, they have no resources they are legally required to have.

The mental health clinic? Well they will induce mental health episodes in clients so they have to call the emergency number and they can cash those extra after hours checks.

Whose going to correct them or stop them? Women are barely surviving trying to process abuse, kids are not getting any support for their trauma induced behavioral issues, and corrupt officals are indulging in the towns suffering.

Injustices pile up. The rot they bring festers. it spreads. it infects.

It's a disgusting place to be. In this town.

This town that condones, supports, and encourages people to abuse women and children. Anyone who reports child abuse, abuse against the vulnerable, or fraud is labeled "mentally unwell". While getting zero help for anything, don't even have a person at the house and they will file paperwork saying they were there for fraud schemes the police are helping to protect.

It's no wonder this town also has a growing list of unsolved homicides. Those they can't hide reports of.

The rest of the crime, like i said, if you never take a report, you never have to worry about closing a case.

The message is clear: if you try to get the people hurting you to be held accountable, YOU are the only one to get any consequences.

The agencies I have called outside of this town have also done nothing.

It floors me. how many HUNDREDS of government officials over the past few years actively CHOOSE to toss their oaths out the window and decide that women and children victims are irrelevant and do not deserve any help.

I honestly think the UN should set up locations in all major cities for legal support to sue the government over fraud, refusal to investigate crimes, abuse/discrimination of vulnerable populations - there is presently exactly NOTHING i can do as every institution has thus far utterly failed me.

​

I returned to my chair quietly, without saying a word.

My eyes moved between my grandmother, Mr. Sam, and the crystal chandelier hanging in the middle of the guest room. It looked like frozen snowballs from February—bright, sparkling, and beautiful.

We sat together, lost in conversations about the past, old memories, animals, and everything in between.

Later, we returned home after Mr. Sam gave us a gift—a silver vase.

My grandmother was so happy with it, and seeing her joy made me feel relieved.

At least... she wouldn’t argue with me tonight.

We returned home exhausted.

I went upstairs to my room and threw myself onto my bed.

I didn’t feel anything after that until morning, when the sound of the rooster woke me.

Sometimes, I feel that rooster exists only for me... as if his purpose in life is to annoy me...🥀S

Sarah ✏️

**Some wells grant wishes. This one keeps the receipts.**

A man named Duane calls me on a Thursday morning, apologizing before he’s said more than his name, the way a lot of my clients do, like they’ve already rehearsed being told no.

He and his wife bought a farmhouse outside Wentzville a year ago, twelve acres, an old stone well near the tree line that the inspector called decorative and told them not to worry about. For the last two months, things have been showing up in it. Not falling in. Showing up, sitting on top of the water when there was nothing there the day before.

“What kind of things,” I ask, and I already have my pen out.

“The first one was a hairbrush. My wife’s grandmother’s, the one that got lost in the move from her old house years ago. We never found it, figured it got left behind or thrown out by accident. It was just sitting there on the water one morning, dry. Not floating on top the way a hairbrush would float. Sitting, like the water was solid enough to hold it.”

I ask what else.

“A photograph. One of our wedding ones, the one we lost when a hard drive died a few years back. We never printed it. There’s no copy of it anywhere, and there it was, dry, on the water, like somebody printed it fresh and set it down gentle.”

I ask him if he’s taken anything out.

“No,” he says, too fast, and then quieter, “my wife wants to. She says if the well is giving things back, we should let it. I don’t like it. I don’t like touching anything from that well and I don’t like that she wants to.”

I tell him I can come Saturday.

He hesitates before he answers, and when he does, his voice has dropped to something closer to a whisper, like he doesn’t want to be overheard saying it out loud in his own house.

“There’s one more thing. Three nights ago I went out to check on it, middle of the night, couldn’t sleep. There was a shape in the water. Not a reflection. I had a flashlight and there was no moon and nothing to reflect. A shape, looking back up at me. It didn’t move while I watched it. I didn’t stay long enough to see if it would.”

I get to the property Saturday afternoon, while there’s still good light left. The well is old, fieldstone, a little over waist height, no visible mechanism for drawing water anymore, just an open mouth with a low wooden cover that Duane says he started using after the hairbrush.

His wife, Carol, meets me at the edge of it. She’s polite, but there’s an eagerness underneath it that makes me uneasy before she’s said a word, like she’s already decided what answer she wants from all this.

“I know how it sounds,” she says, before I’ve asked her anything. “But it’s given us back things we lost. Things that mattered. I don’t understand why that has to be frightening.”

I ask her if she’s tried taking anything out of the well yet.

She glances at Duane before she answers, which tells me more than the answer does. “Not yet. He asked me to wait until you’d seen it.”

I look into the well myself before we go any further. The water is dark, farther down than I expected for a well this size, still in a way that unsettles me more than movement would have. Water fed by a spring or a current shifts, even slightly. This doesn’t. I don’t see anything on the surface. No hairbrush, no photograph, nothing but my own reflection looking back up at me, distorted slightly by the depth, longer in the face than I actually am.

I ask them both what they know about the well’s history. Neither of them knows much, just what the previous owner mentioned in passing during closing, that the well was old, older than the house that had been built and rebuilt twice on the property, and that locals used to throw coins in it a long time ago, back when Wentzville was smaller and had more of that kind of habit in it.

That detail sits with me longer than it should. A wishing well isn’t unusual, not out here, not in a lot of old rural properties with a source of standing water on them. What’s unusual is a wishing well that gives anything back.

I spend the afternoon at the county historical society before it closes, going through what little they have on properties in that part of the county from the late 1800s. I find one reference, brief, almost a footnote, to a drowning near a farm well matching roughly the right location, a hired hand in 1891, no further detail, no name I can find attached to it in the time I have. Drownings in wells were rare enough, even then, that it’s the kind of detail that would have made the local paper and then been forgotten by everyone except whoever kept the paper’s back issues.

I go back to the farmhouse that evening and ask if I can stay to observe the well overnight. Duane says yes immediately. Carol hesitates before agreeing, and I notice she doesn’t offer to keep me company out there, the way most clients do out of politeness if nothing else.

I set up a folding chair a comfortable distance from the well, close enough to see the surface of the water with a flashlight, far enough that I’m not standing directly over it. My recorder runs from a spot on the wooden cover I’ve propped open just enough to point the microphone down into the shaft.

Nothing happens for hours. I check the water periodically, nothing on the surface, nothing changed. Around one in the morning, the temperature drops the way it always does in cases like this, and I feel it first in the ground under my chair, a cold that has nothing to do with the night air, coming up from below rather than settling down from above.

I stand and look into the well. There’s something on the water now that wasn’t there thirty seconds earlier. A ring of keys, old, the kind of iron ring and iron keys nobody’s cut in a hundred years, resting dry on the surface of black water like it’s sitting on a table.

I don’t reach for it. I’ve learned that much, at least, from cases that went worse than this one before I learned better. I watch instead, and after a moment, the keys sink, slowly, straight down, disappearing into the dark without a ripple, like the water only ever surfaces things when it wants to be seen giving them.

I look up in time to see Carol standing at the edge of the tree line in her robe, watching the well from a distance, not moving toward it, not moving away either. I ask her if she’s all right. She doesn’t answer right away.

“I threw something in,” she finally says. “Two nights ago. After Duane went to bed. I didn’t tell him.”

I ask what.

“My mother’s ring. She died in the spring. I wanted something back. I don’t even know what I wanted back, exactly. I just wanted to see if it would give me something for it.”

I ask if anything happened.

She’s quiet long enough that I think she isn’t going to answer. Then: “I heard her voice two nights ago, right after I threw the ring in. Out past the tree line somewhere, faint, like it was carrying from a distance. She said my name. Just my name, the way she used to say it when I was in trouble as a kid.”

I ask if she’s heard it since.

“Every night since. Closer each time. Last night it was right outside our bedroom window.”

I recognize that kind of escalation from other cases, and I don’t like what it usually means. I ask her if she’s willing to help me test something, and she says yes before I’ve finished asking, too fast, the same eagerness from that afternoon, undimmed by anything she’s just told me.

I have her stand at the well’s edge with me while I take a coin from my pocket, an ordinary quarter, nothing meaningful attached to it, and drop it in. We watch the water together. Nothing happens for almost a full minute. Then something rises, small, pale, and it takes me a moment in the poor light to understand I’m looking at a hand, not attached to anything I can see below the surface, palm up, holding the quarter I just threw in, offering it back the way you’d return a coin to a child who dropped it by accident.

Carol makes a sound I won’t try to describe. I don’t reach for the coin. The hand waits, patient, palm open, for longer than feels survivable to stand there watching it. Then, slowly, it closes around the coin and sinks the way the keys did, straight down, no ripple.

“It doesn’t give things back for nothing,” I tell her. I try to say it kindly, but there’s no soft way to say the rest of it. “Whatever it took from you when you threw that ring in, it’s not going to stop until it feels like it’s collected. Your mother’s voice getting closer every night isn’t a gift. It’s a collection notice.”

She doesn’t want to hear that, I can tell, but she doesn’t argue either.

I spend the next two days researching what I can about closing a well like this properly, the kind of research that involves a lot of dead ends and a few conversations with an old stonemason two counties over who’s dealt with something similar exactly once in forty years of work and won’t say more about it than that it needs to be filled, not covered, filled solid, and blessed or not blessed according to whatever the family believes in, because the blessing isn’t really the part that matters. The filling is.

Duane and Carol have it filled the following week, a full truckload of gravel and concrete poured under my supervision, the wooden cover pried off and thrown in first at my suggestion, on the theory that whatever’s down there should lose its opening before it loses its depth. I don’t know if that theory means anything. It felt right at the time, and nothing has come back to argue with it since.

Carol tells me, a month later, over the phone, that she hasn’t heard her mother’s voice since the day the well was filled. She sounds relieved when she says it. She also sounds, underneath the relief, like a woman who still isn’t entirely sure she’s glad she didn’t get whatever the well was working up to giving her, and I don’t push her on that, because I’m not sure what I’d say if she asked me the same question about myself.

I keep the quarter I threw in, the same one, because it never actually left my pocket. I only pretended to drop it. I’ve told exactly nobody that until now. I wanted to see what it would offer back for something it never actually received, and I still can’t explain why that hand rose out of the water holding the right coin anyway. Maybe it was never keeping track of the coin at all. Maybe it was keeping track of me, and gave me back exactly what I expected to see because that was the thing worth taking that night.

I don’t go looking for water like that anymore, not without a very good reason. Some debts, I’ve learned, get created the moment you start wondering what you’d be willing to pay.

​

Crocodile Tears

When I was little, whenever I got into an argument, I couldn't make myself cry. So I would pretend to cry instead, or place a few drops of water on my eyes to make everyone believe I was crying.

Crocodile tears.

Mark... my sworn childhood enemy.

We were ten years old, and I hated him because he would pull my braid as hard as he could whenever we played with the other children in the village.

He was arrogant, annoying, and skinny... and I didn't like him. I certainly didn't think he was handsome, either.

The years passed, and the children of the village all went their separate ways, each chasing their own future.

Everyone except me.

I stayed behind with my grandmother and grandfather.

The responsibility I felt toward them was like a fish bone lodged in my throat—I could neither swallow it nor spit it out. I simply couldn't leave them, no matter how much I wanted to.

So I remained in the village, living the quiet, simple life of an ordinary country girl.

My grandparents used to call me "Cherry Tree," because every spring I would spend the entire day among the cherry trees, wandering from one tree to another as though I belonged there more than anywhere else.

S..🥀

Sarah ✏️

I decided, recently, that I was in need of counseling. It’s like there are two voices in my head. They’re constantly arguing. They’re constantly fighting for the controls. But then again… who’s watching them fight?

Me? A third voice? Am I already one of the two? Am I both? Can this whole thing be boiled down to bad days and good days? Happiness and sadness? Anger and serenity?

It couldn’t be. If it was, surely I wouldn’t be having this conversation with myself. I wouldn’t be doubting my actions. But I guess I’m clear-headed enough to not defend them.

Although, it does beg the question: where does that reason go when I’m committing those actions? Where’s my logic? How come I only feel something after the fact?

Those questions keep me up at night. My guilt keeps me up at night. That’s why I decided to look into counseling. On one of those nights where my soul felt rotten. Where one voice had left me alone in the dark with the other just long enough for it to convince me.

But then, like clockwork, the other voice returned. Not in the form of thoughts. In the form of action. It was like a possession. There were no arguments. It was complete control.

It’s hard for me to stay away from them when I’m like that. I learn. I survey. I hunt.

Sometimes I’ll find them in a crowd, other times they will have been pre-selected. By who? I’m not sure. It gets foggy when desire is involved. I’m not sure whether to blame myself or the voice.

I only remember fragments after the deed is done. It’s like a shroud is placed over that specific, microscopic part of my brain. Like it’s trying to protect me.

But no matter how thick the wool is, the guilt remains. I never know why I feel it. At least, not fully. I just know that it makes me sick. It cripples me. I hide away from the world because the voice that commanded my hand flees from my mind.

Sometimes both of them leave.

Leave me alone. All alone. Empty. Then one or the other shows up. One tells me I can stop. I can do better. I can be better. The other tells me this is who I am. Who I’m destined to be. Tells me that I’m right at home. It’s like when I used to watch my parents fight when I was younger.

That’s one of the things I wanted to bring up at my appointment.

I think my childhood has a lot to do with how I am now. The way I think. The things I do. If I had to self-diagnose, I’d probably say it comes from a lack of control in my formative years.

My dad was much bigger than me. My mom was much smaller than me. When those two went at it, my mom was fighting an uphill battle.

I’d always run and hide anytime I heard Dad raise his voice because I knew that meant the belt was coming out. Me and my mom both feared that leather belt, but my mom, being the saint that she is, would often take the majority of the licks.

The guilt I felt over it was enough to drive me to tears.

One day, I guess Mom just had enough. She wasn’t gonna take it anymore. I remember she put me to bed early. She seemed more self-assured than she usually was on Friday nights. Those were usually the nights Dad would come home the drunkest.

Of course, he came home in one of his moods. I could already hear him screaming about nothing two minutes after he walked through the door.

Mom didn’t try to reason with him this time. I didn’t hear any “calm downs,” any “you always do this” comments. What I did hear was the cocking of my dad’s .38 Magnum.

I’d seen him shoot the thing enough to know what it sounded like, and I was not going to stay in bed while he murdered my mother.

Only… when I ran out of the room… the gun was in his face. Mom pulled the trigger before I could let out a single scream.

The sound of the shot. The image of my dad’s brain hitting the wood paneling of our trailer. The way Mom apologized to me profusely before calling the police on herself and waiting calmly on our front porch for them to arrive.

None of that has left me. Neither of the voices let it. It’s one of the few things they agree on. It’s a part of me.

And it was a part of me I was supposed to share with the counselor. My voice of reason had control long enough for me to set up the appointment. Long enough to evaluate myself before I went in.

I walked into the office feeling hopeful for once. The cold AC felt like heaven compared to the scorching heat outside. The lady at the counter greeted me with a charming, “Hello! You here for an appointment, hon?”

I signed in and sat at one of the chairs in the waiting room, browsing through one of the magazines from the coffee table because that’s what I imagined a normal person would do.

Five minutes went by. Then 10. Then 15 before the receptionist called out to me.

“She should be right with you, hon.”

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, my counselor poked her head into the waiting room.

“Daniel? Here for the 3:15?”

I stood up.

“Yep. That’s me.”

I couldn’t help but notice just how angelic her voice was. How smooth and soft her brown hair was. How well it complemented her absolutely stunning face. How much she… looked like my mother.

I didn’t know how to react to what I was feeling. It was like this tug. This urge that grew more and more impossible to ignore.

When we reached her office, the first thing she did was flip an hourglass on her desk.

“Okay, Daniel. I know you’ve been having some problems recently. You wanna describe those so that we can…”

Her voice began trailing off. My eyes kept darting from her to the hourglass. It was like I was on autopilot. I think I responded. I think she kept talking. I know the sand kept falling.

My mouth moved in response, but my thoughts never changed.

She was the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen. I could see the love in her eyes as she talked to me.

She just… she looked so much like my mother. Part of me loved her already. Another part of me hated her. Hated her for what she made me see. For how broken I am.

That hatred turned into anger. Her lips kept moving. She kept smiling. Everything felt like it was going in slow motion. Even the sand in the hourglass seemed like it was falling like snowflakes rather than sand.

My eyes darted to her. To the hourglass. Back to her. Back to the hourglass. The hour was almost up. Instead of making progress, all I felt was rage.

My eyes darted to something new.

A shiny pair of scissors in a pencil holder on her desk.

My eyes darted back to her.

She wasn’t speaking anymore. She looked at me… expectantly. Like she could read my thoughts. A smirk stretched across her face.

“Daniel,” she snapped. “You still with me, buddy?”

Desire kicked in. Things got foggy. I don’t know what happened.

All I know is when I came back, my hands were covered in blood. A pair of bloody scissors lay at my feet. My mother sat with her throat slashed in the desk chair in front of me.

The guilt rose in my stomach. I wanted to throw up, but I couldn’t. And God knows I tried.

All I could do was fall back into my seat, completely dumbstruck at the scene that lay before me.

My eyes began to well up with tears. My nose began to run. My head fell into my hands as I began sobbing uncontrollably.

I must’ve sat there crying for 5, 10, maybe 15 minutes before I heard a voice call out to me. I thought I was hearing things at first. But the more it repeated, the harder it was to ignore.

I lifted my head from my hands and felt my stomach tighten.

“Hon? Sorry about the wait. Don’t worry, though. She should be out momentarily.”

I was back in the waiting room. Same cold AC. Same old magazines on the coffee table. Same receptionist.

I had to have been losing my mind. I glanced around the room, tears still falling from my eyes.

As I looked around, my head jerked in the direction of the sound of a door opening.

My counselor poked her head into the waiting room.

“Daniel? Here for the 3:15?”

In Sadiya's neighborhood, an old man was drawing his last breaths. His family members, who had gathered around him, decided to call Sadiya. Sadiya was already aware of these matters, and for many days, she had been keeping her hand pressed against her heart.

​This takes your writing into a much more mysterious and emotional direction. It feels like Sadiya possesses some kind of spiritual awareness or an intuitive gift regarding life and death, given how she already knew what was happening and has been holding her heart.

​"The old man in our neighborhood is about to pass away," Sadiya's mom said. Sadiya was sitting on her bed, looking as though she had just been waiting to hear those words.

​Sadiya arrived at the old man's house and was led to the room where his soul was lingering at the edge of life. "Please leave the room. If possible, go outside the house entirely," Sadiya told them.

​Once they were outside, one of the children asked his mother, "Mom, what is she going to do with Grandpa?"

​The mother couldn't find any words. She knew that in just a few moments, Grandpa would be departing from this world.

​"I know you cannot speak to me," Sadiya said, weeping as she stood by him. "But please forgive me. I don’t even know if this is what you want. But this is a curse that has been forced upon me."

​And then, she began to sing.

​As the melody fell upon the old man's ears, every single memory from his childhood to his old age began to play out clearly in his mind—memories that just moments ago had been clouded by thick fog. As the lyrics of the song flowed deep into him, his soul began to steadily detach from his body. Finally, his life slipped away completely.

​"I killed him," Sadiya muttered to herself as she walked out of the room.

​The family rushed inside. Everyone was drowned in grief, but they found a deep sense of solace knowing that his death had been entirely free of pain.

Like every other day, Sadiya came to her mother and burst into tears. "I took another life today, Mom..."

​Once she calmed down a few moments later, her mother tried to reason with her, explaining that God hadn't given a gift like hers to just anyone.

​"I wanted people to hear my songs, but not like this," Sadiya said.

​"You shouldn't stay sad like this. When you know that you are the only one who can do this, try not to let the grief get to you."

​"How can I not, Mom? When I said I wanted to sing, I never imagined it would turn out like this... and that's why Dad also..." Saying this, Sadiya burst into tears all over again.

Night had fallen, and her mother had gone to sleep, but sleep eluded Sadiya. She remembered her dad—how he would always encourage her to sing, take her to school, and teach her music. And when he was drawing his last breaths on that very bed, he had said, "Call Sadiya."

​Sadiya had arrived by his side, her eyes welling with tears. "Sadiya, I want to hear your song," he whispered. But the moment Sadiya began to sing, the very eyes that were watching her with a smile closed forever.

​From that day on, Sadiya stopped singing. But people began to talk about how Sadiya's song had given her dad a peaceful, comfortable death. Hearing those words, Sadiya started cursing herself from that moment forward. Eventually, whenever someone was on the verge of death in the community, the people would call for Sadiya.

Suddenly, her room felt freezing cold, and with a gust of wind from the window, she sensed a presence. Standing straight before her in the darkness was a figure clad entirely in black clothes.

​She opened her mouth to call out to her mother. "Stay quiet," the man told her.

​"Who are you? Don't come near me!" Sadiya cried, backing away.

​"I won't come near. I just want to talk."

​"Talk about what?"

​"I have been listening to your songs for all these years. I like them very much."

​"That's impossible! Anyone who has ever heard my song didn't survive."

​"I know," the figure replied. "Whenever you sang, I was present right there. You were just unaware of it. The dying person wasn't the only one listening to your song."

​"What... how is that possible?"

​The figure took a step forward. "The two of us are not so different."

​"Who are you?"

​"Death."

​"Death?! Have you come to take me?"

​"No. But I have brought a solution."

​"What kind of solution?"

​"You want people to hear your songs, don't you?"

​"Yes."

​"I can send you to a place that lies between the earth and the sky," Death said. "There are people there who will listen to your music."

​"Is that really possible? But if I go with you, I won't be able to come back, will I?"

​"No, you will return. That is entirely up to you."

​Sadiya thought about her mother, and then she thought about all the deaths she had brought upon so many people. In a hushed, trembling voice, she said, "Take me away from this world."

Sadiya stepped forward toward Death.

​"No!" Death shouted loudly. "Hold onto this!"

​He extended his staff toward her. The moment she grabbed hold of it, Sadiya was pulled along, swept away into the unknown alongside Death.

She arrived all alone in a dark hall. Long, towering walls enclosed the back and sides of the room, while a set of curtains hung up ahead. Massive pillars stood scattered around the space, fitted with yellow lamps that were angled perfectly to focus all their light directly onto the center stage. There wasn't a single sound in the entire place, save for the echo of Sadiya's own breathing.

"Death? Death?!" Sadiya called out, turning around frantically, but Death was nowhere to be seen.

​She noticed a microphone set up on the stage. Perhaps this is for me, she thought. She stepped up onto the stage and began to sing.

​A melancholic sadness filled the air, and Sadiya could hear the faint sound of instruments playing along.

​Sadiya kept singing. The yellow lamps began to flicker violently. Sadiya's own voice echoed back into her ears, but she didn't lose her pitch. She paused right before the chorus, noticing that the music was still playing—it had just grown soft and quiet, as if it were holding its breath, waiting for her to sing again.

​She resumed her song. Suddenly, all the lights went out, and in the pitch darkness, a single beam from a torch illuminated the curtain. As her voice rose again, shadows slowly began to move across the fabric. Shadows of a child chasing butterflies appeared on the curtain. The child grew older with every verse—running became walking, walking became a cane, and finally the figure simply sat beneath a tree, smiling. When the chorus ended, the tree shed its last leaf, and the figure faded into light.

Her song came to an end, all the instruments fell silent, and the yellow lights flared back to life. Tears were streaming down her face, yet a smile graced her lips. Suddenly, applause began to echo through the hall. She saw several hands emerging from between the curtains, clapping for her.

​"And here I was, wondering where everyone was," Sadiya murmured.

​Faces emerged one by one from behind the curtain. Some were old. Some were young. Some leaned on walking sticks. Every face seemed strangely familiar... They were all the people whose final song had been hers. The moment she recognized them, Sadiya ran toward them without a second thought.

​"Please forgive me!" she wept. "You are all here because of me."

​"We have been waiting for you," they replied gently.

​Just then, a man stepped out from behind the group. It was Sadiya’s father.

"Papa!" Sadiya cried, throwing her arms around him. She buried her face against his shoulder. "Please forgive me, Papa... you left this world because of me."

​"That is not true, Sadiya," her father said gently.

"Our deaths were already destined for that exact moment. Because of you, we were able to leave the world in total peace."

​"Yes, that is why we lingered here—just to say thank you," another soul added.

​"We knew you must be carrying an immense weight of guilt," a third whispered.

​"Thank you, Sadiya," everyone said in unison. Slowly, their figures began to blur, dissolving gently into the air until they vanished completely.

​"Dad! Everyone! Where did you go?!" Sadiya cried out into the emptiness.

​"To Heaven," Death's voice echoed. "They refused to move on from this realm without thanking you first. That is why I brought you here."

"Just to thank me?" Sadiya whispered. She closed her eyes and drew a long, trembling breath for what felt like the first time in years. She looked around. "Where were you?" she asked.

​"I had to go and collect the souls of other people," Death replied. "That is my task."

​"Don't you do anything else?"

​"This is my only purpose."

​Sadiya looked closely at Death's face. Until now, it had remained hidden in shadow. Looking at him, she realized there was nothing terrifying about him. Death looked completely human. There was no cruelty in his face—only a beauty so calm that it made Sadiya question why people feared him at all.

​"I want to hold your hand," Sadiya said, taking a step closer to him.

​"No," Death commanded, immediately stepping back.

​"Why?"

​"Just as no living person can survive hearing your song, no one can touch me."

​"But surely I can touch you now?"

​"No. You are still among the living. Your mother is waiting for you."

​"But... will I never see you again?"

​"You will. When the time is right."

​"You told me earlier that we are exactly alike," Sadiya remembered. "Why?"

​"I do not remember when I was born. I exist solely for this duty," Death said softly. "Whomever I tried to extend friendship to, or whomever I drew close to, did not survive."

​"This is a curse," Sadiya said.

"This is my responsibility," Death said.

​Sadiya looked deep into Death’s eyes—eyes that were completely devoid of any emotion, yet carried a profound loneliness. "So, this is goodbye?"

​"Yes." Death extended his staff toward her once again.

​Sadiya looked at it, then smiled warmly. "When you come to take me for real... don't touch me. Because that time, I will be the one to touch you."

​With that, she grabbed the staff.

Sadiya’s mother, who had been holding her daughter's breathless body and weeping, was completely stunned when Sadiya suddenly sat up. "Sadiya!" she cried, pulling her into a tight embrace and sobbing with relief.

​"Everything is fine, Mom," Sadiya comforted her.

​Meanwhile, Death stood entirely alone, gazing out into the vast, empty darkness of the liminal hall. "They left, and now she is gone too," he whispered to himself. "Perhaps being entirely alone in this universe is a destiny reserved only for me."

​Many days passed. Now, when Sadiya sang for the dying, she no longer clutched her heart in painful guilt. Instead, whenever she began to sing, she would feel a familiar, subtle presence in the room. And every single time, she would smile, knowing that somewhere close by in the shadows, Death was listening to her.

every single time i have had tech issues when he comes over to help i swear that the computer is afraid of him! because whatever problem i had is just fucking gone! like huh?! he came over to help me with my laptop when he turned it on... no beeps! it was just the way i left it with no errors! WHAT?! HOW?!

So one time in school on my Chrome book I forgot to update for like a week and I was doing some research on the Minecraft update and I clicked on a reddit page and normally they are blocked so I tested it on other reddit sites and check Instagram stuff like that I told my friend on the bleachers ( note i was in gym class last day it was chill) I got on reddit they tried to go on it as well cause I thought its the last day of school and I thought they disabled light speed but no it was because I didn't update my computer so I just played pokerouge for the rest of the class and probably through the rest of the day.

Sweetie and I were married in the flower of our youth. I was a junior at USC and she had already begun her vocation as a nurse, or how I paid for the books in my senior year. One year after our we were married our daughter was born and I carried her to school with me. I went to work the week after I graduated and Sweetie was already working. We did that for 40 years and we built something.

We had accumulated and we had saved. We had raised and we had educated, and now suddenly we were headed down the road with no destination and no mandate to have one. We started saying things like "we can be homeless anywhere" within the first hour of an aimless drive.

Moon is the most comfortable car I've ever owned. I told her how tall and heavy I was and she adjusted my seats for perfect ergonomics. She recognizes I'm coming and fixes the chair for me, which massages at regular intervals. I turned into the captain of the starship Moon and learned how to monitor her systems. At a gas station, I absent-mindedly thought, "4 corners, yeah, that's the ticket. That will be fun," and opened what I thought was Bing and asked it about directions to the 4 corners from where I was. It kicked out a full itinerary, complete with how to park and a seamless transition to Moon's navigation. So we went.

We arrived, and it was mostly empty. All the displays, every amenity of the site, was ours to enjoy; we then ran around it and did so. On the way back to the car, a wind hit my back. It was the wind of a feeling best described by getting to go on Senior Ditch Day when your parents say you can go.

We stood at the corners of four states and picked the one we thought would be the most interesting we'd never gone to, and picked Colorado. When I got back to the car, I opened the window and asked it for a cool resort town in driving distance. It said Telluride, but there's this town not too far named Ouray. It was about 3 p.m., and I put Ouray in the navigation, put Moon on the highway, and said, "Mr. Sulu, all ahead warp 3."

As we left the desert and began to ascend the mountains, I noticed, unusual for me, things heading up the hill. There were these gates that looked like they meant, unless you want a Donner Party experience, you should stop here, but they were open, and it was March, so we drove on into the night. After a while, Moon started relaying messages to me about how the roads were icy and she was adjusting her footing.

Night fell, and the two bad kids ditching school pushed up the mountain when something odd happened on Moon's navigation display. The road before me looked like someone had thrown a plate of spaghetti instead of roads, and at the same time, it began to snow. The automation that had kept Moon bisecting the lane perfectly between the lines checked out and said, "you're on your own, bruh." Within five miles, 5 mph was my speed limit, and I couldn't even see what was on the other sides of the roads, but I did see there were no *^%$#ing guardrails.

I went to the center line as if it were life itself. I put Moon directly over it, and as I couldn't see more than about 10 feet, I knew that line wasn't going over the edge. Sweetie said if she smelled nervous, she was getting out. I'm glad she couldn't smell it, but if you had placed a lump of charcoal in my bum, I would have squeezed a diamond for the next few hours as I went through switchbacks that made me question the sanity of the Colorado highway engineers.

Moon never wavered, and when big rigs came through, I eventually gathered the nerve and skill to let them by without, I think, too much profanity from their drivers. We went through 2 tunnels and around one last noodle, and there was an alpine village—my navigation telling me to make some lefts and rights that wouldn't lead to an inky abyss—which led to a Best Western Sweetie identified. Taking the bags to the room, I could really hear water moving, and I thought how well I would sleep that night.

My substitute clock still runs, and I woke up before the birds organized to tell anyone and walked out my door. I have been to the mountains in S. Cal. I used to go skiing in Wrightwood. I have been to Big Bear; I have been to Tahoe, and I was not ready for the real. I could not believe the idyllic, perfect American mountain town I'd fallen in. I ran around the lot of the Best Western, and in all 360 degrees was beauty beyond sublime; it had a brother singing John Denver and "Rocky Mountain High."

We spent a couple of nights in Ouray. We learned its You-Ray, I learned that road was called the Million Dollar Highway and that going down it unknowingly at night in a snowfall is an interesting choice for a dude from S. Cal. We dined we played and we say Ouray from one end of it to the other, we walked it's not that large. I also decided there was no way I was going back the way we came, so we went.

So, I'm old enough to have been on the tail end of the days of using FAX machines in office and on my first day a fellow assistant said "And you need to put cover on it with the name, lets see... Sarah Cockburn."[first name changed for the story]. We joked a the name for a second, I double-checked and said "Is that right right? Is that really her name?" The assistant was like "Yeah, I had to ask my first time seeing it, too."

The executive I'm working for later says to me, "Did you get the fax out? The one Sarah CLOCKburn?

I said yes, but I practically shit my pants. Did I just write "Cockburn" on fax meant to go to someone named "Clockburn?" The other assistant wasn't around, but I learned how to check paper files of past orders, so I ran over and checked almost every single one.

Her name was Cockburn. And as I'd later learn, the executive I worked for was a fucking idiot, because she said "Clockburn" the rest of the time I was there.

A girl on the run, a dystopian city that discards "pure" humans, and a search for her mother's eyes, if you're just dropping in, start at Chapter One to catch the chaos!

To everyone following along: Thank you for taking a chance on this story. It means so much that people are enjoying and connecting with Elara! I read every single comment (and lurker energy is totally valid too!), but if a scene makes you gasp, laugh, or want to throw your phone, I’d love to hear about it below. Your feedback genuinely shapes this journey. As always, reminder, next chapter drops Sunday night.

Let’s dive in!

Inherited Sins

All sounds inside my mother’s apartment fade into a pool of nothingness as cold realization strikes me to my core. I see his lips begin to move as his face contorts in confusion, but I feel my brain refusing all input.

My mother’s eyes.

I must be hallucinating. The endless hours of no sleep and constant stress wreaking havoc on my mind. He couldn’t possibly have her eyes. But it doesn’t stop the growing burn of recognition coursing through my veins.

I shakily inhale, managing mostly to gulp down enough air to speak.

“Your eyes… how..?” His confusion seems to increase visibly across his brow.

“Uh, what? My eyes? Well I just told you darling. Payment for my hand. The procedure was scheduled for super early this morning, actually. Black market doctor and all. They’d just come into these bad boys. Green is a rare sight, I know. No recovery time for this guy though, didn’t have any to spare really. Had to find the witness- uh, you, before…” His break in the rambling must’ve allowed him to feel the shock radiating off of me. 

“Are you okay?” My eyes are glazed over, unfocused, staring at the peeling paint from when my mother renovated a few years back. 

They… really are hers. All resounding doubt has been washed away. They must’ve gotten the eyes from discard and used them (I mentally grimace at the idea of “using” a piece of my mother) for his procedure. I had no intention of truly helping this man. Gathering whatever intel I could before sending him on his way? Absolutely. 

Yet, for the first time in days, I feel… hope. I can fix her. Her eyes are staring back at me now, urging and pleading with me for rescue. 

“I will help you.” I watch as my mother’s eyes instantly light up with joy. I continue just before he interjects his thanks. “On one condition… Your eyes. Once we finish, prove your innocence, you swap yours with my mother. I can explain more so it makes sense… But I need a yes or a no first.”

I look over and once again find him nervously stroking the back of his sun-kissed blonde hair. I hadn’t truly noticed his height before. Even sitting next to me, he towers above me. His long torso is a stark contrast to his easygoing demeanor. As I wait for a reply, I notice he seems to have a mental struggle of his own, both sides battling inside his head. Eventually, he nods. 

“Done. Tell me everything.”

Over an hour of detailing the worst 48 hours of my life later, we sit in silence. I allow him a moment to digest everything I relayed to him.

“That’s why you were scared when I pulled over. Because some guy threatened you?” I fight the urge to mention a man pulling over under a bridge at night with me in the backseat would always be a scary moment, but I simply nod. 

“What do we do now? I don’t know where to start…” I take a deep breath. “I know.. I know you need my help. But I want you to know how much it means to me, getting her eyes back. It might be the only thing to give me back my mother, so…” He smiles at me, it’s not an attractive smile by any means, but in this moment I feel genuine warmth from it.

“Lucky for you E, I happen to know EXACTLY where to start. I just needed to bring you with me!” I look back at him, confused, on both the random nickname and location, but before I can protest, he cuts me off. “Look I know this is… odd. But if we don’t figure this out, I go to jail and your mom is.. Well… gone I guess. We both need to get answers. We’ve got no reason to betray each other, yeah? I promise, trust me and I’ll trust you and we can do it. I just know we can!” 

Blind optimism is a quality that has been forced out of me one tragedy at a time, but he’s right. There is no other way, we have to trust one another. “Okay. Lead the way.”

The Phoenix complex used to be the busiest shopping mall in Ashfall. Movies. Golf. Arcade games. Clothes. Toys. You name it, they had a store for it. Growing up, it was one of the few places everyone belonged. 

Then the shift happened. 

Slowly at first, then all at once.

As modification became the ultimate status symbol, society’s tolerance for empathy and humanity eroded. Pures were quietly rebranded as "unclean." Dirty. Flawed. The modified elite began avoiding the concourses, or worse, coming solely to pick fights and assert their physical dominance over people who couldn't fight back. 

More of us were forced out of our jobs, replaced by “better employees”, or people more willing to conform to the new standards. Millions of unenhanced people lost their livelihoods to "better" versions of themselves. As evicted, broke, and jobless pures began sleeping in the shadowy corners of the mall just to stay out of the rain, the remaining stores shuttered their windows one by one. The polished marble floors gathered dust, the fountain dried up, and the glass atrium cracked under the weight of neglect.

What the city discarded as a rotting eyesore became a sanctuary. The forgotten bottom tier of Ashfall reclaimed the empty storefronts, turning dead department stores into makeshift shelters and black-market alleys. The Phoenix Complex didn't die, it became a safe haven.

I haven’t been in years, not since the original shopping center was shut down, but I’ve heard the stories. Rumors of a resistance compound hiding in plain sight. The black markets that will sell you anything your heart desires. The clubs where they… do more than dancing.

After convincing me this is the best location for answers, Cyrus parks the car in an unlit lot on the edge of town. He ushers me to follow and we make our way to what looks like the entrance to a storm cellar. He seems to sense my need to question, and simply smirks while waving his hand for me to follow. The dark staircase goes on longer than I’d imagined. Was it really this far down? I supposed using the front entrance as a child would offer a very different perspective than the rotting wooden doors hiding a hidden path.

“I haven’t been here in months, but this here is THE information hub of the city, got it? Everyone who knows anything? Right in these here halls. I would’ve come alone but… uh… you see, now that I’ve got these babies” He points directly at his eyes, the ones that aren’t his. “I know they’d be wary of me. I won’t pass any stupid biological scanner or anything. That’s why I have you, huh E?” I return a small smile as we arrive at the end of the staircase. 

I watch as Cyrus pulls the doors open, turns to me with a slight “Ta da” gesture, before a  flash of metal cuts him down, and I watch as his limp body lands on the floor. I cry out, instantly covering my mouth in hopes whoever just attacked him thinks he’s alone. 

It doesn’t work.

Three men with black bandanas across their mouths, and dark hats leaving only their eyes exposed appear in the doorway. 

My heart is thundering out of my chest. 

I begin to back up, and stumble, landing myself on the stair behind me.

They approach, each one carrying a weapon and wearing bulletproof vests. 

All I hear is my staggered pants and my blood thumping in my ears.

“I’m s.. sorry…” I stutter out. “I barely… I don’t… I don’t know that man at all, he just brought me here…. He was my driver and…” I'm trying to inch myself up the staircase one stair at a time as they make their way up to me.

I watch as they continue, one step closer.

“Please… I… I won’t say anything I swear…” Finally, they freeze, barely 3 steps below me. The tallest one in the middle, who I’d assume is the leader, steps forward.

“Elara” He makes a tsk tsk sound as he waves his finger back and forth. My whole body freezes at the sound of my name. “Stop. We know who you are, who he is, and why you’re here. We don’t care. Not one little bit, do we boys?” They chuckle as he looks over his shoulder to see his companions enjoying the show. He crouches on the stair right in front of me, and I brace myself, my arms raised in a feeble attempt at defense.

“Your mother owes us a pretty penny there, Miss Draven. Hear she can’t pay it anymore, poor dear. That leads us to you.” My mother? Was this “debt” her reason? 

He pushes my hair behind my ear gently with his hand and strokes my cheek. “Let’s go see the chief. We can figure out how we want to pay this off, shall we?” He leans close and whispers in my ear. “We do have multiple payment methods, after all. We aren’t monsters.” He pulls back and laughs again. 

I’m not sure what comes over me, but I spit in his face. 

His fist wraps itself in my hair. I scream as his other hand pulls me along, dragging me down the stairs. My cries for help and desperate writhing are no use. He pushes me through the doors, closing them behind us.

“We’re gonna have fun with this one, boys.”