Lawman
A drop of scarlet fell into the dust.
Hauke ignored the bullet hole in his side and kept reloading. There would be time to bleed later.
He sat in a battered wooden chair under an awning, with one leg draped over its arm, eyes staring intently down the dirt road. A rhythmic metal clicking came from the guns he held as he filled their cylinders with fresh shells. But his eyes never left the road. There was no need; his hands worked without thought.
Beyond the awning, the sky was bare, the town was still, and the planet’s twin suns blazed with fury. Heat shimmered off the hard-packed dirt road running through the center of Aeos, and sweat made tracks down Hauke's face through the dust. Gehenna was technically a moon, though larger than most planets, stark and strange, a waterless desert world of jagged black mountains and sunbaked hardpan on the edge of Alliance space—on the edge of nowhere.
Most who worked at Deepcore's mining facility called the moon The Withered Lands. An apt name Hauke thought, for a place of perpetual sunlight and crushing heat. A place barren of life. No where any but a witling would wish to call home.
He was only here because corporate greed put this lonely settlement on a fringe world otherwise deemed uninhabitable; corporate greed and a ready supply of desperate people - the disillusioned and the displaced, the utterly broken. For most, their lives were a legacy of misery, and they left behind a past they hoped to forget. There was never a shortage of such expendables in a galaxy riddled with crime and war. No one would miss them. No one cared. That's why the outlaws chose this shit hole to put down roots. There were vulnerable people here, a flock of sheep placidly going about their daily lives as the wolves circled, and no Alliance security to protect them. Easy pickings.
Hauke shook his head and slid another round into an empty chamber. Shame, really. These are decent folk. Better than the other sewers he’d policed.
Then he shrugged.
Good people they might be, but it didn't matter. It should, but it didn’t. They were expendable. Everyone was, after a fashion, even Hauke.
Every worker who stepped off a Deepcore transit shuttle into the dust and the heat was undeniably corporate fodder, disposable flesh to be used and discarded like soiled toilet paper. Deepcore made no bones about this practice, nor did they bother with any pretense that their workers on Gehenna were anything but company fodder. Why should they? No one with wealth enough to matter was paying attention. Nobody in the Core gave two shits about a bunch of dregs dying on the Fringe. Who would? Alliance authorities? Funny. The money-made politicians in the halls of power wouldn't waste a bucket of piss on what they deemed rats squabbling for the right to live in society's sewers, filthy beggars and low-born rabble best ignored by their betters. Why waste resources cleaning them out when, given enough time, disease and starvation would do the job for them?
Hauke snapped his pistol's cylinder up into its housing and gave it an experimental spin. The smooth, well-oiled clicking that came forth drew a smile across his sun-roughened face. It was a warm and comforting sound, like a fireplace in winter. If you took care of your guns, they would take care of you.
Hauke favored the classics over the garbage that companies were peddling these days, six shooters from an era lost in time. They were reliable, never overheated or shorted, and were effective on anything that ever walked or crawled in the mud - given the proper ammo. The thunder of their song sent even the most hardened criminals fleeing for cover.
He paused his reloading and studied the brass casing he held. It was a Spartan Arms Blacktip, called shatter rounds on the streets. They were expensive, hard to come by, and highly deadly. And illegal. The speed loaders clipped to the tac-belt circling his waist held the same rounds. Even a Treskori's thick armored hide offered little protection against these babies.
Movement caught the corner of his eye and drew his attention to the north.
A small Dazkani woman darted out of a nearby alleyway and across the street, a lavender-skinned child in tow, rushing for a two-room cabin very much like his own. Her tan robes were trimmed in black and embroidered across the shoulders in her house pattern. Each frantic step revealed flashes of light purple flesh on a muscular thigh where the robes were divided down the side.
His eyes followed her progress.
Then the cabin door slammed shut behind them, and she peered out through its only window with jet black eyes full of fear.
Hauke shook his head. Though he didn't blame the people of Aeos. They were afraid, and for a good reason. Outlaws calling themselves The Reapers, with blade and barrel and cruel ways, had taken by force what little joy these people had found and made each day a misery. Then came Hauke and his revolvers, claiming to be the answer, though they only saw another killer here to sink his teeth into their town.
Eyes watched from windows and doorways across Aeos. He could feel their itch upon his skin, too many eyes and wringing hands awaiting the coming confrontation. If the Reapers won today, they would turn their ire upon the people of Aeos. Things would get ugly. Fast. No wonder they were worried. Hauke was just one man against dozens of killers. He smiled. That almost made it an even fight.
Whatever happens today, he thought, absently running an oilcloth over his gun and his eyes over the town. These people would do well to cut their losses and make for the inner systems far from Deepcore and outlaws and the wild lawlessness of The Outer Fringe. They would live longer and be happier for it.
He took up his second pistol, its nickel finish reflecting sharp flashes of silver in the sunlight.
Brass casings fell at his feet.
Deepcore was supposed to be the shining star of the mining industry, a leader among leaders whose policies demanded quality of life for all its employees and family-first values that resonated down to the lowest janitor. A good PR story, Hauke thought. Tall tells for the gullible and chronically stupid.
Anyone with two brain cells fighting for third place should understand it was all a carefully crafted illusion, a shiny veneer overlaying the odious truth, the plots, the lust for profits, treacherous ways corps did business.
Hauke's fingers moved with practiced grace, and the clicking continued. Red dripped from his side.
How many politicians must have been bought over the years to maintain such an elaborate facade? How many innocent people were stuffed into early graves to protect the dark secrets? His frown deepened. Too many.
In his experience, corruption was a disease that most often began at the top and snaked its way down through long-sitting senators and middling managers, black tendrils of rot coiling through the layers of a midden heap. Parasites, all of them. Getting fat and rich off the blood and tears of ordinary folk who want to live in peace and enjoy what few comforts they can afford.
But Hauke knew there was no such thing on the Fringe. Not on Gehenna. Not for the dregs, anyway. His stomach twisted, and he slowly ran the oilcloth over his second gun. Not in this galaxy.
He lifted his eyes and scanned the area. Aeos was a town built with the cheapest fiberplast factory Prefabs Hauke had ever seen. The kind of flimsy boxlike structures meant only for a temporary settlement, never a permanent city. Some buildings still showed faint traces of the original terracotta red from the factory. But most gleamed bone white in the harsh sunlight, pitted and wind-worn like the skeletal remains of some long-dead titan strewn across the sand. When the town died, like those before it, Deepcore would erect another on the sands that held its corpse. Even Gehenna could not stop profits.
Off to the west, the dark silos and rumbling machinery of the vast mining operation loomed over Aeos like a cruel overlord, uncaring of their suffering and singular in its purpose. Columns of thick black smoke rose from its inner workings to stain the sky, and an endless procession of thick-hulled barges—laden with ore until their sides bulged—strained for orbit. Day and night, the Impervium ore flowed from Gehenna's mines to fatten the pockets of Deepcore's elite back in the heart of the Corporate Alliance. Here was a state-of-the-art operation save three things: no drones, no automated equipment, and no modern conveniences; Aeos was built with shithouse parts. Profits again.
Even the barges were operated by organics, with no autopilot or AI-driven software. The moon's electromagnetic something-or-other interfered with guidance systems, so they did everything the old-fashioned way. And then there was Gehenna's powdery dust. It held magnetic particles that worked their way into the delicate inner guts of electronics and advanced machinery, sparing no circuit or wire. That's why they needed flesh and blood workers to do the job—blood sacrifices laid out upon the corporate altar.
As for Aeos itself, there was little else to it. Flat-roofed cabins with tattered awnings shading tiny porches crowded either side of the road. A few dilapidated parts shops and rundown diners, a large closed-air market beside a cluster of tall water tanks beaded with sweat. A sprawling communications array. A small starport built on a nearby plateau just outside town, made hazy by blowing dust. There were no Sky Towers rising from sprawling cityscapes, or manicured parks to bring beauty to this desolate place. No holographic skyways filled the night skies with the endless glittering lights of air traffic. None of the high-tech glitz and glow he was so accustomed to seeing on even the poorest of Alliance worlds. Aeos was sterile and rundown, abandoned by hope.
But today, that changed.
Hauke glanced at the upper edge of his augmented vision. Twenty past eleven local time, Gehenna time. His jaw muscles tensed, and he climbed to his feet, spinning his pistols into their holsters.
Time to settle an old score.
All was quiet as he stepped out into the dust-blown street, the laughter of children at play gone silent and the hustle and bustle of the little mining town strangely absent. Indeed nothing stirred but the wind, which briefly transformed the approaching outlaw into a grainy silhouette etched into the swirling dust.
Threiner.
The name came to him unbidden, a harsh whisper in his thoughts. A sudden surge of heat rose in his chest, an electric quickening of the heart. This was the culmination of a decades-long search and perhaps some small comfort for an old wound that had never fully healed. He'd come here to take the outlaw back to Ryari Prime to face Alliance justice, alive or maybe dead. It didn't matter.
Behind Threiner, a massive cerulean sphere twice the size of Jupiter filled the sky. Layer upon layer of milky clouds and swirling blue eddies drifted across its surface, vibrant hues muted behind a thin white haze. It rose from behind jagged black peaks that cut across the horizon, and he had to tilt his eyes to take it all in; an immense orb haloed in shimmering silver rings spreading wide across the sky. Hyperion was its name, a titanic gas giant and the largest planet in the A-9 system. A trick of its size, or perhaps Gehenna’s atmosphere, made Hyperion appear close enough for him to touch, as though Hauke could reach out and swirl a finger in the layers.
At last!
A voice rose from the stillness of his mind. A familiar voice. Peace for your father. Peace so that we can sleep. The heat in his chest blazed into a blinding thirst for vengeance, a wildfire out of control. It tried to overwhelm him. He shook with the effort of holding it back, teetering on the edge of sanity. His hands trembled as they inched toward his guns, fingertips brushing aged ivory handles—eager to let them sing.
Why do you fight me? The voice said. He is our enemy. An outlaw. A murderous swine who's earned a thousand deaths. That it should be by your hand can only be seen as justice—a just thing for all his victims.
No…I…
Think. The voice was a silken purr, a whisper of falling gossamer across his skin. It caressed him with seduction. Think of all who cry out from the grave. They cry out for vengeance! Who would hear their silent words? Give them justice. Give them peace. Kill Threiner. Kill him now!
No! Hauke's shout was a silent snarl, teeth bared, face twitching. He would not dishonor his father's memory or his badge. It was unthinkable! He was an Alliance Marshal, a man sworn to justice like his father before him. And justice was what he meant to have. Not murder.
Save your twisted words, brother. I'll not hear them.
The voice retreated like the battering waves of a storm that suddenly lost their fury and fell back into the sea. It took all of his strength to stuff the voice back down into the hollows of his mind, where it waited, lambent eyes in the dark. You will see in time that I know you, even if you do not know yourself. We are the same, brother, the voice whispered.
When Hauke was sure he'd mastered himself, he took a step forward. Then another. Another.
There were forty feet between them when he stopped and angled his body toward the outlaw. "Surrender, Threiner," he raised his voice to carry the distance and over the low moan of the wind. It sounded strange coming from his mask, a slightly electronic resonance. "Lay down your weapon. Now."
Their eyes locked, and the outlaw only scowled.
Threiner was Treskori, so he wore no mask over those hideous reptilian features; his species required none. Their robust systems quickly adapted to nearly any environment, something humans did not share.
Without a mask, Hauke would be light-headed in less than a minute, air drunk, it was called. Nausea would rack his gut a short time later. Things would begin to dim, to shut down, starting with his ability to reason. Walking and talking would become a chore. Then he would collapse in the sand, delirious and confused, lungs gasping in the burning air. Darkness would come shortly after, a soulless void to consume his world. In the end, he would have no strength to call for help or the wits to understand what was happening to him. Not a fate to be envied.
Threiner's slitted black-and-yellow eyes bore into Hauke's, and for a tense moment, they held in a silent struggle. Neither moved or blinked, still as statues. Only the wind gave voice, twining its fingers through Hauke's shoulder-length hair and shifting the dust between his boots. Then Threiner's scaled lips slowly peeled back to reveal serrated teeth in a vile show of contempt. It was meant to frighten him and mock him, the cruel smile of a predator toying with its prey.
Hauke wasn't impressed. He'd seen his like before, many times, and they all bled the same with hot lead in their hearts.
Yet an eight-foot Treskori with the speed of a gazelle was nothing to take lightly, a genuine threat. So Hauke remained cautious in case Threiner decided to rush. The outlaw held a heavy plasma cannon at his side in one massive three-clawed fist, tapping it idly against a thick trunk of a leg. One blast from that cannon would leave a basketball-sized hole in Hauke's chest if it left anything at all.
Threiner glared at him with supreme confidence. In Treskori culture, strength and size were the ultimate deciding factors, especially in battle. Yet even with a Treskori's great strength, that weapon—typically found mounted on assault vehicles—would be slow to wield, slow in a fight where speed mattered. Hauke resisted the urge to smile. Speed kills.
Threiner's eyes narrowed into suspicious slits, following Hauke's eyes down to the plasma cannon, then snapping back up. A sneer that would have frozen helium slowly spread across his face. There was no armor or personal shielding that could defend against that weapon. And Threiner knew it.
Speed kills.
Hauke's hands drifted to the weathered leather holsters belted low on his hips and the nickel-plated revolvers waiting within. Immaculate they were, with quick-draw barrels and feather lite triggers for rapid fire. Their song was blood and death, and he had no doubt they would sing it soon. Engraved In fancy script along each barrel were the pistols' names, Justice and Virtue, exquisite artistry by the hand of a master gunsmith. These rare treasures were passed to him by his father with a lineage tracing to the days of his father's great-grandfather and beyond. A time when outlaws roamed the untamed west, and lawmen hunted them wherever they hid.
Threiner turned his head slowly, deliberately keeping one evil eye on Hauke, and spit a huge gob of green-tinged saliva into the dust, then snapped his glare back into place.
"Be smart, Threiner," Hauke said, though every inch of him hummed on the razor's edge of violence, and every fiber hoped Threiner would twitch that cannon in the wrong direction. "And you might live to see the outside of a prison cell again one day." The mouthpieces back in the Core wanted Threiner brought back alive if possible. Alive was better for the holovids the senators wanted to run. But if Threiner even breathed wrong, Hauke would not hesitate.
"No surrender, human," Threiner's deep hiss was full of malice, and vast musculature rippled across his shirtless bulk. "Pain. Much pain for you." From his great height, Raim Threiner glared down at Hauke as though looking at an insect he meant to crush under his boot—a naturally occurring, ever-present scowl that twisted his ugly face beyond hideous.
Threiner turned his head and spat again. "Pain," he said, scraping the sharp tip of an ebon claw across his throat scales. "All pain for you." Threiner's massive plasma rifle still hung idle at his side, barrel pointed at the ground, unmoving. But his free hand clenched into a fist. Sunlight glittered off thousands of small granular scales covering his skin like viridian glass, and a low growl issued deep within his throat, an ominous rumble that would have sent lesser beings running. But Hauke had seen it all before, and he stood firm, his jaw set, hands poised and ready. Whatever was going to happen would happen. Nothing could change that now.
Abruptly Hauke realized that Threiner was doing his best to hide a nervous edge. And rightly so. Confidence was a necessity if you wished to stay alive in this business. But blind arrogance would get you killed.
Most in his business had heard the tales of the human Lawman with lightning in his hands and ice in his veins. Most believed it was nothing more than a fairy tale, something cooked up by the Badges to keep little outlaws awake at night. Yet something must have clicked in Raim's little lizard brain. Perhaps it was the bullet-riddled bodies of his gang strewn about and already rigid in the sunlight, posing as corpses pose, that made him understand the legendary Lawman now stood before him.
"Surrender," Hauke repeated, his tone hard and flat. The icy look in his eyes said there would be no further chances. His hands hovered over his guns. Sweat stained the crown of his wide-brimmed bolero. Red dripped down his side. A sudden wind rippled folds into his shirt, kicking up a dirty haze. Everything went quiet. He could hear his heart, feel its fire surging down to his fingertips. His eyes narrowed, but he willed himself not to blink.
His hands itched to rip the guns from their holsters and let them sing. It would be so easy. Threiner wouldn't have time to process that Hauke had pulled steel before he died. His hands trembled. But he would give the outlaw a chance to lay down his weapon. He always did.
His father once told him that a man's honor was all he truly possessed. All else could be taken away or destroyed. Material possessions and riches would become someone else's when you died. In time, even your spouse. But your honor, your legacy, was yours to keep forever. This was made all the more important in a galaxy rife with treachery. A man's honor was sacred. His father had believed that, and so did Hauke. He had killed outlaws, true, more than a few: humans, Treskori, even Jasei. If they broke the law, killed, raped, or pillaged across The Alliance, he hunted them down. Most had surrendered peacefully.
For those foolish enough to pull on him, things had always ended badly; this he did not deny. He was ruthless and cunning, as one must be to survive hunting the galaxy's worst. He would not waste time with denials. He would not pretend to be righteous. He had never found a sense of pride or pleasure in the violence. He was a professional. He did not kill for joy. He only killed when given no choice. Even Raim Threiner, his father's killer, deserved his day in court. That was justice. That was how the system worked. He would bring this vile creature back alive if he could. The rest was up to Threiner.
"No surrender, human," Threiner repeated, breaking into Hauke's thoughts and rolling his broad angular head atop an even wider neck. Only seconds had passed since he first spoke. A transverse crest of bony spikes connected by a thin membrane of leathery flesh fanned up across the crown of his skull, rattling and bristling with anger. "Much pleasure to kill you, Marshal scum shit."
His response did not surprise Hauke.
The plasma rifle started up, and Hauke's hands flashed. There was thunder and smoke, time slowed.
Threiner lay on his back when the smoke cleared, slitted eyes staring blindly at Gehenna's twin suns. Four massive holes leaked green down his chest and pooled in the sand. Hauke's pistols roared again, and two more holes erupted in Threiner's head. Better to be sure than pay the price of folly.
Guess the senators weren't going to get their holovid back in the Core. Well, piss on them. Hauke was a lawman, and there were no politicians here.
People emerged from their shacks, peering plaintively up and down the streets. Their eyes were still fearful, but something else kindled behind them.
Hauke turned, gleaming pistols still in hand and lifted his voice to carry.
“People of Aeos,” he scanned their faces, and saw hope dawning where before there was only despair. “Raim is dead. The Reapers are dead. You are free.”

Hey there everyone I (23M) am pretty new to the fragrance world. Ive always worn fragrances since I was a pre teen, but they were always gifts, and not something I chose for myself.
Before getting into this I had two main bottles. Montblanc Legend EDT and Tommy Hillfiger Endless Blue. The Montblanc one was my signature scent, but I felt I wanted something more Me.
I recently bought YSL Y EDP, it smells pretty great, though I made the mistake of applying it like it was the Montblanc one. This thing is potent, I felt like I was a radioactive madlad while wearing it, the thing wouldn't come off. I went to sleep, still smelled like it, woke up, still smelled like it, took a shower, still smelled like it. It was somewhat annoying. But when applying it less (1-2 sprays) it smells very soft and I love the apple notes. It's growing on me, and I'm gravitating towards it more and more.
Well after discovering this sub, I went through a rabbit hole, looking at peoples collections, their best lists, and overall recs. I then made a list.
So far I have tried:
Chanel Bleu - This one had a stronger opening than I thought, it was pleasant, but I was expecting something a bit more chill. The dry down though, it's amazing, very mellow, and great for everyday wear. Would consider buying
Dior Sauvage - Wanted to see what all the hype is about. The opening was absolutely terrible for me, way too harsh, and not pleasant at all. An hour later it was still a bit harsh, the dry down was very good though, and I liked it a lot. I don't think I'd get it since it takes way too long for it to get good.
Terre d'Hermes EDT - I don't know if I became nose blind since I tried on the last two, but I couldn't smell this one at all. I smelled a bit of the opening, but after a while it's like I didn't spray anything. I have to try this one again.
Since my nose couldn't take it anymore there were a lot of fragrances I didn't manage to try on, these were:
Replica By the Fireplace
Azzaro Most Wanted
Valentino Born in Roma Intense
Givenchy Reserve Privee
JPG Le Beau Paradise Garden
My goal is to have a minimalist collection, something like this:
Signature Scent: Current is Montblanc Legend EDT, BDC might replace it when it's done
Spring: YSL Y EDP, Terre d'Hermes could fit here if I like it more than the YSL (would finish the bottle first)
Summer: Don't have one
Fall: Current is Tommy Hillfiger Endless Blue, looking for something better
Winter: Don't have one yet
If you guys also have recs for each one of this, feel free to share them, and I'll add them to the try on list.

(No spoilers pls)
From the person that was stuck at endless cannion
So, last night I was able to face the Owlks, and got used to the jumpscares which made it way easier to go through them, and today I got to the mural and I’m so glad I didn’t use the easier path because it was so fun getting through the harder path.
Anyway, I got to the mural and went into the elevator, went down into the hidden archive AND WAS ALREADY HYPED, but then there’s that one reel.
WHAT
ITS A FUCKING SIMULATION??
AND I COULD JUST DO THAT WITH THE ARTIFACT ALL ALONG??
I literally have no words, I love this game so so much
So, because of that I could explore way faster the other places, got my spine broken by the owlks at the fireplace Tried again and discovered the other hidden archive and that I can just FALL OUT OF THE WORLD like fucking MINECRAFT but then there’s a sea and then I can FINALLY blow off one of the seals.
I’m loving all of the simulation thing, I’ll stop for now cause I don’t want it to end that soon, but tomorrow I’ll try and enter the well and see how it goes.
Again, thanks for the tips on my other post! They were all really helpful ::)

The first night in the old Victorian was a love letter whispered by the wind through creaking floorboards. We, Sarah and I, young and in love, saw only the charm – the dusty chandeliers, the ornately carved fireplaces, the sprawling rooms that promised endless laughter. The realtor, a wiry woman with eyes that seemed to hold ancient secrets, simply smiled and said, "This house has a soul." We laughed, naive fools, dismissing it as a quirky sales pitch.
The laughter wouldn't last. It started subtly. A shiver snaking down my spine in the dead of night, a feeling of being watched from unseen corners. Then came the groans. Low, guttural sounds that seemed to emanate from the very walls, like the house itself was straining under an unseen weight. Sarah, ever the optimist, blamed settling wood, but the unease gnawed at us both.
One night, something shifted. It was 1:13 am, etched into my memory like a brand. A bone-deep cold seeped in, and the comforting weight of the walls vanished. In its place, an infinite, inky blackness stared back at me. Sarah screamed, a high-pitched sound that clawed at my sanity. The whispers started then, a cacophony of voices, each one a different shade of malice, slithering into my ears. It felt like a million minds pressing against mine, threatening to shatter it.
We huddled together, whimpering prayers into the void, until a sliver of dawn light peeked through the nonexistent window. Exhausted and terrified, we clung to each other, the once-charming house now a grotesque caricature of itself. This became our nightly routine – the chilling transformation at 1:13 am, the soul-crushing whispers, the desperate clinging to sanity until sunrise.
Days were a blur of exhaustion; nights, a waking nightmare. We researched the house, the town, anything that could explain this torment. We found nothing but hushed whispers about the "Old Soul Manor," tales of restless spirits and madness that clung to the place like cobwebs.
One night, fueled by sheer desperation, I fumbled for my phone, searching for a distraction, anything to break the suffocating silence. My finger landed on the music app, and on a whim, I hit play on the first playlist – a collection of mellow tunes we'd enjoyed on countless road trips. The first few notes were swallowed by the whispers, but then, something magical happened.
The house… relaxed. The groans subsided, the whispers retreated into the darkness. The nonexistent walls flickered back into existence, a comforting barrier against the unseen. We stared at each other, disbelief battling with a sliver of hope. Was it just a coincidence?
The next night, at the witching hour, I hit play again. Silence. Blessed, beautiful silence. It was like a switch had been thrown, plunging the house back into a normal state. Over the following days, we tested it repeatedly. Every time, the band, “convenient royalty” played (we found a CD player at a thrift store, a lifeline)it silenced the house's nightly tantrum. It became our armor, our shield against the encroaching darkness.
Weeks turned into months. The house remained mostly docile, though it never truly felt welcoming. We were prisoners, not guests, bound by the strange power of the band. But it was a small price to pay for sanity. We settled into a fragile routine, the music a constant companion, a soothing balm against the ever-present unease.
Then, disaster struck. One night, the familiar whirring of the CD player sputtered and died. Panic surged through me, cold and immediate. Sarah noticed my white knuckles clutching the remote. "What's wrong?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.
"The CD player," I choked out, the terror blooming in my chest. "It's broken."
At 1:13 am that night, the house woke up. The familiar groans echoed through the halls, louder, more menacing than ever before. The whispers returned, a rabid crescendo of voices hungry for vengeance. We huddled in the living room, the darkness pressing against the door like a ravenous beast. For the first time, there was no music to fight back the tide.
The house went ballistic. Furniture toppled, picture frames shattered on the walls. A spectral gust of wind slammed a bookcase against the wall, inches from where Sarah was huddled. We screamed, a desperate plea lost in the cacophony of the awakened house.
Suddenly, a deafening crack. The ceiling light fixture sputtered, showering sparks before plunging us into complete darkness. Then, an unseen force grabbed me, lifting me off the ground. I screamed, thrashing wildly against the invisible grip.
Just as abruptly, I was slammed back onto the floor. Gasping for breath, I scrambled to my feet, my hand brushing against Sarah.

Sarah was huddled in a corner, her face pale in the moonlight filtering through a broken window. Tears streamed down her cheeks, fear mirrored in her wide eyes. The house, no longer content with its display of power, seemed to be waiting.
"We need to get out of here," I croaked, my voice raw from screaming. The whispers intensified, a chilling chorus urging us on, beckoning us towards the unseen horrors that lurked in the darkness.
We stumbled blindly through the wreckage, the air thick with dust and the metallic tang of fear. Each step felt like a desperate gamble in a game rigged against us. Reaching the front door, I fumbled with the lock, my fingers clumsy with terror. It finally clicked open, and we spilled out onto the porch, gasping for the cool night air.
As soon as we were out, the chaos within subsided. The screams of the house died down, replaced by an unsettling silence. We didn't dare look back. We just ran, hearts pounding a frantic rhythm against our ribs, until we reached the safety of a friend's house miles away.
The next morning, we returned, armed with flashlights, hoping to salvage some of our belongings. But the house felt different. Cold and empty, devoid of the malevolent energy that had haunted us for months. The broken CD player lay on the floor, a silent testament to our ordeal.
We never went back. We found another apartment, a tiny, unassuming place, but it felt like a palace compared to the Old Soul Manor. Sometimes, late at night, I still hear whispers in my dreams, snatches of a million voices promising revenge. But the music, the music of Kings of Convenience, remains our anchor, a constant reminder that some melodies hold a power beyond comprehension, some songs are more than just music – they are a lifeline to sanity in the face of the unknown.
The Old Soul Manor still stands on the outskirts of town, a silent sentinel shrouded in mystery. The townsfolk whisper about strange lights in the windows sometimes, disembodied voices on the wind. But for us, it remains a chilling reminder of the night the house woke up, and the music that held the darkness at bay, until it couldn't anymore.

EDIT: Thanks for the concern of the few of you who texted.... Just for those asking I never included this when I was talking to you guys because I was still frantic and confused and scared but up until recently, in our newly bought place we never really had a stable internet connection.. wherever we were staying there was 4G connectivity and the 4G is capped so when it runs out it runs out. if that makes sense. buying a CD is cheaper. keeping it playing costs no data and it doesn't stop unless of course the damn thing decides to break and fling us into the abyss

The Striking Serpent

Nefarian Serpine stood at the door of his home, his hand on the knob, as he calmly quelled the violent urge to murder the man that had been set on his tail since he’d landed in this damned dimension. Traveling his home Dimension torn apart by endless war and death with the dopplegangers of old foes under the threat of death or worse, he had always known that they had been tasked with ending his life if he stepped over the line. But returning to this new Dimension had also confirmed the suspicions he had privately held since the journey: he was supposed to have joined those rotting corpses back home. While the others had been rewarded with favour and praise, he’d been cast to the shadows, a hidden shame. Despite helping destroy the portals that his old master, his old friend, had built in order to survive so that this world would be free of the Draugr scourge, he had been gifted with constant surveillance.
Mevolent.
The memory of the Elemental caused a ripple of something foreign go through Nefarian’s body. Something that made his skin go cold and his chest constrict slightly. Sighing deeply, he shook the feeling away and walked out into the bright day, immediately sensing his hidden shadow moving in synchronicity with him. His lip slightly curled in disgust, he made his way to the Roarhaven markets. His shadow had become sloppy recently, his presence having become far more discernible, almost to a point where Nefarian was beginning to wonder if it was even the same shadow.
As he walked in the clothes he’d purchased for himself, for the clothes delegated to him by the High Sanctuary were of poor design and poorer dimensions, and he felt far more comfortable in rich leather and soft silk, his pocket jingled softly with the monthly allowance given to him by the Sanctuary. Just another way to manipulate and control him. The jingle within his pockets provided a song that lured in more shadows, but these ones he didn’t care about, for the neglected children of the dead did not threaten him.
As he walked, he milled over his situation. Though Sorrows was no longer Supreme Mage, Creed left a broken man in hiding and Bespoke dealing with militant sorcerers, Serpine knew he was a target. Already the victim of a dozen attacks, ranging from physical assault, attempted murder and flying bullets, Serpine had grown more and more frustrated. The City Guard weren’t willing to help him, Pleasant and Cain laughed at him, and all of those who had attacked him had fled before he could deliver some painful retribution.
‘Not that it was so easy, anymore.’ Serpine thought mournfully. Despite the new hand Cain had granted him, he still experienced the phantom memory of the hand he’d once had. That beautiful red that glistened and shone alongside his magic, which vibrated with the screams of its victims. When the skeleton had cut it off, he’d felt a fragment of his Soul break away from him, and it had left a hole in him ever since. A hole he’d patched with a cold hatred and determination that carried him forth. But he’d heard tales of the version of him that was from this world. Another Serpine who wielded multiple forms of magic with cruelty and mastery. A version of him who had been free to experiment and revel in magic. Another thing the rebels had taken from him.
As such, he’d long since decided that living a static, immobile life in a city of sorcerers who hated him was not something he approved of. Nefarian Serpine was a proactive creature, always on the move and on the hunt. He was looking for a way to escape this city and make his way back to the place he’d always called home: His castle.
Walking down the street, he didn’t bother to react to the townsfolk as they recoiled from him, or as they made faces or performed threatening gestures. None of them mattered, and none of them posed a threat. He did keep his eye on the scattered members of the City Guard though, most of whom glared at him with unflinching hatred. He allowed his eyes to pass over them, mentally noting them but not sparking their hostility by directly challenging their stare. Today was not a day to tempt their wrath, for today, Nefarian was prepared to reclaim his freedom once more. After months of planning, he was finally ready. Ignoring them, he walked over to a vendor, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw a City Guard approaching. This had happened too many times for his liking, but they’d been smart enough to always do it in public, refusing him the dignity of retaliation. But this one was different from the others. His boots weren’t laced up the way others were, and he wasn’t wearing the City Guard stripes properly, overlapping when they should’ve rested side-by-side. And even from a distance, from his peripherals, Nefarian saw the Guard’s eyes darting from left to right, never truly focussing on him. Whoever this man was, he wasn’t part of the City Guard.
Remaining calm, having already prepared for such an occasion, he pinched a few of the coins out of his pocket and placed some of them onto the vendor’s table, selecting a red apple from the assorted food items and turning on his heel, winking at the small children milling nearby. Sensing opportunity, they followed and he let them, and he made his way over to meet his hunter halfway.
“Stop, civilian!” The imposter ordered, his hand straying towards the baton strapped to his waist. As he did so, his coat moved, and the cold steel of a dagger winked at him as it caught the morning sun.
Nefarian raised an eyebrow and took a bite out of his apple, raising his right hand to wiggle his fingers at the imposter. As he’d expected - and hoped - the man flinched at the sight of the gloved right hand, and Nefarian opened up his left hand, allowing the coins within to spill onto the ground between them. The effect was instant, as the children on the street scrambled to procure their share of the riches, and there was a swarm of bodies that separated Nefarian from the man. Giving his stalker a sweeping bow, Nefarian turned and began walking in the opposite direction, beelining for an alleyway he’d taken note of days prior. As he neared the alleyway, the fingers on his left hand twitched, and he felt the icy cold tendrils of his magic curl around his arm, and he sent the purple vapour snaking on the cobbled ground towards the barrels stacked against the brick wall. He continued walking, his eyes on the small mirror he’d attached to the wall the day before, and he saw another figure further up ahead. His eyes flickered to the grate on the street a few steps away from him, even as he heard his city guard imposter behind him turning the corner. He looked at the mirror, seeing the man walk past the barrels, and he yanked his hand across his body and the barrels fell and scattered. The figure up ahead started running forward as Nefarian heard the man behind him trip over the tumbling barrels. Undeterred, he carried onward, taking another bite of his apple before pegging it at his new adversary. The man howled but continued forward, and Nefarian stepped into the arc of a punch, seeing the discipline and power behind it, and used it to his advantage. Shifting his feet, he swung the man sideways, knowing he would reach out to the wall with his remaining arm and miss the grate at his feet. Nefarian guided him all the way, ensuring that his foot wedged itself in between the bars.
The man grunted in pain, and they looked at each other. “Need a hand going down?”
Nefarian lashed out a kick into the man’s ankle, snapping it and letting the man fall further into the grate, his entire leg now broken with a compound fracture and stuck within the iron bars. Nefarian loomed over the screaming man, quelling the quick surge of excitement that rose within him. Business first.
“Who sent you?” He demanded. He winced, taking a step back and running a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. That was a bit sudden. It’s been a while since I’ve been in this position, and I’m a little rusty. Usually there’s more exposition, talking, getting to know each other.”
“Please… please just… just let me go.” The shock of the injury had erased the pain and left him shaking.
Nefarian held up his hands in mock indignation. “Hey, I’m not the one keeping you here. Blame the grate that you carelessly stepped in.”
“You shoved me into it!”
“Actually, I tried shoving you into the wall. You stepping into the grate was just what I wanted to happen. Now,” Nefarian kneeled down beside him, “I don’t have my right hand anymore. Not the one that can torture someone without all the messy business. Which means we’re going to have to improvise.”
Nefarian reached out, grabbing hold of the exposed bone bleeding through the skin, and tugged. The man opened his mouth to scream, and Nefarian shoved a bundle of rags into his mouth, silencing him. He waited calmly for the man to stop thrashing, watching the blood trickle over his pale knuckles, the vividness of the colour mesmerising him for a moment. Once the man had calmed himself, he removed the makeshift gag.
The man spluttered, and Nef smiled at him. “See what I mean about getting to know each other? Just from that little tug, I discovered your pain tolerance, the warmth of your blood, the pitch of your screams. That’s the beauty of torture and pain - you get to know someone in a way no one else can.”
“You’re sick,” his would-be killer spat. “You’re a twisted, demented monster.”
“Who’s in control of your nervous system,” Nefarian replied. “Now, I’ll ask you the question again. Who sent you?”
“I don’t know! I swear I don’t know. But he sent a dozen or so of us, all hired muscle, telling us to stop you. He’s some bastard in the underground tunnels marketplace. Old. Looks like someone tried to melt his face.”
“An ugly one then?” Nefarian murmured. “And a dozen of you?”
“Roughly.”
Nefarian rose to his feet. “Well, thank you for -”
He heard a scraping sound from above, and the quick breath of someone preparing themselves. He twisted around, his purple vapour already coiling up to intercept the leaping figure from above. The new assailant found himself tethered by the vapour, and Nefarian watched as his trajectory was abruptly cut-off, introducing his new opponent to the ground with a satisfying crunch. In his peripherals, he saw his friend in the grate watch the entire spectacle with a surprised look on his face.
‘Great,’ he thought. ‘A party crasher.’
Keeping the man ensnared with his vapour, the purple coils sending chills up his arm and down his spine, he approached with cautious curiosity. “So. My shadow finally decides to step out into the light, and discovers that it burns. And who, may I ask, are you? Because I’ve been making all sorts of friends today, and I’m beginning to fill up my quota.”
The man managed to raise his head, and glared at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Ahh,” Nefarian nodded to himself. “You’re one of the slow ones. What I mean is, I’m thinking I’ll kill you, because my tolerance has reached its end with the lot of you trying to end my life. And at least this guy,” he pointed behind him, “didn’t stalk me for days on end. For some, that’s romantic. Others, it’s creepy. I found it creepy.”
“I… I think you should kill him and let me live.” Said grate man weakly.
Nefarian turned to him. “You stepped into a grate and broke your leg. You don’t get a say in this.” He turned back to his shadow.
The man in question, whom Nefarian noticed was wearing a ridiculous outfit designed to hide his features and physique, struggled for a moment. “Let me out of this Serpine,” he growled, “or the Sanctuary will throw you in a cell to rot.”
Nefarian knelt down, so his face was aligned with his shadow’s. “I’ve been doing this a long time. Interrogations. Experiments. For fun. But the consistent thing about it, regardless of the reason, were the stages of emotions that people went through. Of course there was first defiant anger, a certain belief in their durability. Now, for a Sanctuary agent, you haven’t done the greatest job of tailing me, have you? I’ve gone missing a few times. Given you the slip. Left you dangling. It must be embarrassing for you, having to come up with random crap to cover for it.”
“And at first it amused me. The whole cat and mouse game. I did it quite a lot, back in the day. It’s… fun, being the mouse for a change. But then I started getting attacked, and the game very quickly lost its appeal.” He leaned in, his right hand flexing.
The man’s eyes flickered down to his hand, and there was a flicker of fear that was replaced by gloating. “Don’t you bluff me, I know you lost your hand in the other Dim-”
His gloating ended in a choke as Nefarian lashed out, clamping his hand around the man’s neck, rage coursing through him. “That skeleton had no right for what he did. Dragging me back into that wasteland with that device attached to me. Cutting my hand off. And then he comes back and is celebrated. For what? He didn't succeed in killing Mevolent. He lost one of his own and he tortured and mutilated me. You know who blew up those godforsaken portals? I did. You know who retrieved the Sceptre of the Ancients? Me! Can you guess who helped them get into Mevolent’s palace in the first place!! It was me!” He took a moment, and, noticing the man turning blue, let go of his neck and closed his eyes, quenching his anger. It wouldn’t do for the occupants of the bar beside them to get curious about the loud noises around the back.
Nefarian sighed, and he glanced back at the man in the grate and realised he’d fainted from the pain. Walking over, he frisked him, finding the prize he was searching for. Shifting his body so his shadow couldn’t see what he was doing, he slipped the object into his jacket.
“Well, you have my undivided attention at least,” he turned slowly. A predator’s grace. “We’ve even passed the next stage! Denial, which is a crucial development here. Because soon, once the blustering and the bluffing and the false bravado has passed, there isn’t much left but fear. But before you become a blubbering mess, I have a question for you.”
The robed man said nothing, just staring warily, his face slowly receiving colour after going pale during his outburst.
“I brought us here for a reason . I was hoping it would stimulate your memory, since we both have a history with this alleyway. I was attacked, last week, by someone here. We struggled for a little bit, not because I was struggling against my assailant, but because I was curious,” Nefarian dipped his head lower, his eyes fixed upon the robed man’s. “I was curious as to what you would do, my shadow. If you’d react.”
The man swallowed, his eyes darting sideways looking for help. None came, and his eyes went back to Nefarian’s emerald green. “It’s…. It’s not my job to help you out of every struggle you find yourself in, Serpine. The Sanctuary instructed me to follow you, make sure you weren’t doing anything illegal, and that was it. If you’re looking for a nicer answer as to why I didn’t help you last week, go find it somewhere else.”
A tilt of the head. A narrowing of the eyes. Triumph coursed through the snake as he caught the mouse in the trap.
“Now, that’s interesting,” Nefarian said softly, revelling in the other man’s fear, “because there was no fight last week. And I’ve never come down this alleyway.”
“Then it must of been another alley-”
“No, it wasn’t,” Nefarian hardened his voice. “Whoever you are, you aren’t the same shadow I had a few weeks ago. That shadow was competent, quiet, gave me a challenge whenever I managed to evade them. They kept up. But then things changed. The shadow became slower. More predictable. Noticeable. You.
The robed man started to tremble. “Please. Please, just… I had to. He made me do it!”
“He, who?”
“The old man from the underground hall!”
Nefarian nodded to himself and got up, looming over the man. “Ahh, now this part is particularly delicious. Where not one but two stages of the procedure present themselves. Grief and pleading. Where you have lost all hope and have developed the ridiculous notion of reaching my empathy. My kindness. As if I hadn’t been causing pain for hours by that point. You’ve grown hopeful, deliriously so, hoping that I will stop.”
“And this is usually the part where the mind games begin. I let them have that hope. Pretend like I’ll let them go. Give them a second chance. Tell them I won’t kill their wife and child right in front of them. And as soon as I see that glimmer, I tear them down,” Nefarian tilted his head. “What’s the saying? It’s the tallest trees that fall the hardest.” He brought out the prize he’d acquired from the man in the grate, and the dagger’s sharp edge shone.
A single tear slid down the man’s cheek. “No…”
Nefarian nodded. “The last stage was acceptance. Not many reach that far, so don’t feel too bad.” He stepped forward, and with a practiced flick of his hand, slashed the dagger across the man’s throat. Despite the speed of which the cut occurred, his mind caught onto all the tugs and tears as the dagger caught on hardened flesh and tore through the tracheal wall. He watched the blood seep out like a fountain, and he felt that delicious warmth spread from his spine to the rest of his body.
Kneeling, he left the knife near the grate man’s hand and reached over to his exposed bone, wrenching it further. After a moment, he nodded. He was experienced enough to know when a pool of blood was one that none came back from.
‘An old man. A horribly burnt face.’
A face swam into his vision. It was a familiar one.
Kneeling down, making sure his knee didn’t scrape the ground - he didn’t enjoy the idea of getting his attire dirty - Nefarian scooped up his apple and held it before him. For a moment, he examined it, seeing the dirt and dust covering it. Then his sight shifted, and he quietly examined how the vivid red blood on his hand mixed and disappeared into the fruits red colouration. He felt his stomach growl softly, and with a noise of contempt, he tossed the apple into a nearby bin as he began walking. Leaving the two corpses where they laid, he wrung his hands, watching the warm crimson lifeforce of the pair flying away. He was unduly worried, for the bar beside the alleyway was well known for its violent, drunken brawls, and Nefarian was confident that the scene would be viewed as yet another drunken mishap gone terribly wrong. The blood stains that had inevitably appeared on his gloves and cuffs of his sleeves on the other hand…
As he passed one of the windows of the bar’s kitchen, he snatched at the kitchen towel that rested there. Passing it over his face and scrubbing at his glove and his cuffs until they were reasonably clean, he tossed it into a nearby drainage pipe and, after briefly checking his shoulder, moved into another alleyway. He walked down the dark alleyway, its once red brickwork covered in dark grime, moss and dirt, with flecks of what seemed to be old blood almost giving the brickwork back its red colouration. Empty bottles of drink littered the ground, some broken, some whole, sitting alongside random pieces of litter. Of course, sigils had been carved at the entrance of the alleyway, which, for any passerby, made the alleyway appear to be simply another alleyway - pristine, with some mess to avoid suspicion.
Approaching the iron door at the very end, he knocked once. After a moment, a voice emanated from within. “Who did that?”
“I, the One Who Knocked.” Nefarian said clearly. He mentally rolled his eyes at the passcode and took a step back. After a moment, he heard bolts being thrown open and locks turning, and the door opened before him.
Entering, he was immediately hit with the smell of magic. It was intoxicating, the smell of raw magical power and dangerous chemicals that bubbled and boiled in various corners of the grand space. Dimly lit, with clouds of scent covering the ceiling, he walked through the large hall, navigating past various merchants and makeshift market stalls and stores. There weren’t many down here brave enough to attempt jostling or haggling him, and many found their eyes darting down towards his gloved right hand. Fewer, but still some, in the crowd couldn't help but admire his features. Handsome, with a regal aura emanating from behind eyes that burned with passion and danger. Down here, danger was attractive. And threatening. It invited challenge.
But none came and he walked freely. In the Underground, magic was explored like nowhere else in the world. Inhibitions were loose, morals were staggeringly low and magic was seen being used at every corner. Nefarian could only assume that the musicians and radios stationed at certain places were playing music, for they were being vastly drowned out by the store owners and shop keepers that yelled and called out for the crowd’s attention, waving bottles of potions, fistfuls of magic and food items that looked like it would give you ulcers. There were promises of enhancing one’s magic through ‘Splash,’ a drug that Nefarian had discovered and had temporarily enjoyed, before realising the nasty side effects of fluctuating magic levels. Signum Linguists walked around acting like beacons, promising the utmost quality tattoos and sigil inscriptions for relatively low prices.
Further down, Nefarian skirted around the fighting pit, where Enhancers fought for the favour of the crowd and large sums of money. A sensitive had set up a small stall offering to glean into the future and a necromancer was offering his services as a hitman. There were bars filled with people of all disciplines and ages, laughing and cheering and occasionally fighting. Dancers spun around and swayed their hips, sparkling skin and bright flashes of colour from sigils on their hips winking out from the dim-lighting of the bars. Down here, anything went and the law held no jurisdiction.
But there was a type of enforcement that held the people in check. Men and women dressed in rough attire, not mingling, not conversing. They in equal parts stood out like they didn’t belong, and yet acted and moved like this was a natural place for them. Over the past few months, Nefarian had witnessed them dragging struggling and screaming people away, destroying shop stalls and taking whatever they wanted without paying. They were the enforcers and the bullies, and their master didn’t care how they acted as long as they kept the Underground in check. Nefarian had tried looking into them, but the urchins and beggars he’d bribed and connected himself with had turned up nothing but a black hole. However, he’d managed to evade them so far, and so they weren’t his primary concern.
Sticking to the middle of the crowd to avoid being accosted, as well as keeping a hand near his purse to deter pickpockets, he had reached halfway across the hall before he saw his intended target. A small, old man with peeling skin and mottled arms that gave him the appearance of a horrifically burned individual who’d never truly recovered. Nefarian watched him as he approached, seeing him carefully and methodically move his wares around his table. Acting as Nefarian had always known him; a man of cleanliness and pickiness, which is why he’d selected him for the job he’d had in mind. But reaching closer, he began to notice other signs. A slight shake in his hands. A slight sheen of sweat on his forehead. Despite appearing to be heavily focused on the contents on his table, his eyes darted all over the place, concentrating on faces as people walked past. The calm demeanor that had always exhuded from the man was utterly absent, replaced by an air of trepidation, caution and fear.
Inwardly, Nefarian sighed. Though he’d always been a solitary creature at heart, it had been nice speaking to someone who hadn’t tried killing him immediately. But he’d always suspected he’d be let down eventually - the vendor was selling to the black market, afterall. Flicking his wrist to slide his sleeve up, he tapped his wrist as if he were checking his watch, and a sigil lit up briefly on his skin. Looking at the vendor, he saw the man jerk up, and he stooped briefly to check something underneath the table. Nefarian imagined he was using the cameras under his stall, augmented by magic and connected to his house, to check the alert they were most certainly emitting. Nefarian imagined, with a small smile on his face, that the vendor was currently seeing his house burning, courtesy of a few sigils carved in strategic areas.
“Please, sorry, I have to-” The vendor struggled his way through the crowd, desperately making his way towards one of the exits. After a moment, Nefarian followed, and as he met the jostling crowd, he raised his gloved hand slightly, reaching over and tapping a sigil on his forearm, and there was a muted flash. When the transformation was complete, leaving his hand prickling, his eyes flickered back up, a smile with teeth creeping onto his face.
The chase. It had been so long since he’s experienced the adrenaline rush of hunting. Not that it was really a chase in the traditional sense. Whereas the vendor struggled through the teaming crowd examining wares at various stalls and leisurely walking through the hall, Nefarian cut through like a shark's fin through the surface of the ocean, the crowd backing away and spreading apart as they recognised him. Emerging out from the underground lair from one of the many exit’s, Nefarian took a moment to breathe in deep. The magic in the Underground was intoxicating, too an addicting point. It would be far too easy to disappear down there forever.
Rolling his shoulders, Nefarian began following the scrambling vendor, keeping his distance and looking around as if simply on a walk. Though the house was far, the smoke trailing up into the sky acted like a beacon. Slowly moving away from the main thoroughfare of the main streets and going deeper into the isolated houses of the wealthy, isolated by lengthy driveways and lush vegetation, Nefarian followed the vendor straight to his house. With elementals living in a city of magic, one didn’t need to wait for the firetruck or the experts to arrive, but they weren’t able to prevent the house from becoming a crumbling skeleton of what it once was.
He watched the vendor stumble into the remnants of his home, frantically scrounging for anything that may have survived the inferno. Nefarian watched him for a moment, keeping an ear out for any potential witnesses. Though a part of him wanted to hang back and admire his handiwork, he knew to make this quick, before the City Guard came investigating. Making his way forward, he placed his left hand on what remained of the doorway, feeling the warmth scalding his flesh slightly. After a moment, he stepped one foot into the house, and the sense of deja vu hit him from centuries ago.
“Hello Vector.”
The vendor seemed to freeze, his hands twitching slightly over a ruined picture frame lying on the ground. Turning slowly, Vector spotted Nefarian standing before him and his knees gave out. “Mr… Mr Serpine. What… what are you…?”
“Doing here? Well,” Nefarian gestured around him, “a house burning to the ground caught my attention. I must say, I was a bit surprised to find out that it was your house.”
Vector looked up at him silently, then, stiffening his lip, he picked himself back up. “And I suppose our meeting here was a coincidence?”
Nefarian saw the false bravado on the other man’s face and laughed. “Ok fine, I’ll drop the pretense. I knew this was your house because I followed you here. Because I looked at all of your treasured family photos while I carved sigils into the walls of your home. This,” he spread his arms out, gesturing to the house, “was entirely planned. But its execution was entirely up to you, my friend.”
“You set my house on fire!”
Nefarian shook his head and held up a finger. “Vector, you had a very simple task laid out ahead of you. Getting me out of this goddamned city. But my money wasn’t enough for you was it? Someone else paid more.”
“I have expenses, Serpine, and you’re not as scary as you’d like to believe yourself to be,” Vector said, his balled fists slowly glowing yellow. “Go die in a hole somewhere.”
“Oh, don’t worry about expenses, I’m pretty sure the fire took care of those. As for being scary…” he started walking forwards, raising his right hand.
Vector made a noise of disdain, but his feet carried him away from Nefarian until his back was against his fireplace. “I thought you’d dropped the act, Serpine. We all know what happened to-” His voice cut off as Nefarian pulled the glove off of his hand, revealing a glistening, red skinless hand. Nefarian reached out, clamping his right hand around Vector’s throat, and held him there.
“You have a job that I paid you to do,” he whispered, “and you’re going to do it, or you’ll go out the way you came into the world. Screaming.”
Vector managed a nod, gurgling some kind of affirmation. As he nodded, Nefarian attached something to the man’s arm, letting his sleeve slide back down. He backed away and let Vector drop, coughing and spluttering.
“Come now, we have to leave.”
Vector shook his head, remaining on the ground. “You’ll just kill me, and if you don’t, the people who want you gone will.”
“And leave a body to be traced back to me? I don’t think so. You do this for me, we walk in different directions and never have to deal with each other again. And you’re a resourceful man, I’m certain you’ll be able to keep yourself alive.”
“You burned my house to the ground and threatened me with death. I have nowhere safe to go now. Why should I do anything for you?”
Nefarian smiled, kneeling down to look Vector in the eyes. “Because all of this could have been avoided if you’d simply done as I asked. Because right now I’m here and they’re not. Because the pain disk on your arm will leave you screaming for hours, unable to be taken off unless I deactivate it or,” Nefarian tilted his head, “you cut your arm off. It’s up to you.”
Vector seemed to deflate before him, and he sighed. “Ok. Ok. I’ll take you to the castle. Get into my car.”
“My castle.” Nefarian corrected. “And your car, that’s this mobile object, correct?” He asked as he reached the silver automobile.
“Yes, get in.”
They began driving, and as they reached the gate, Nefarian asked the burning question that hadn’t been answered. “Who paid you?”
Vector’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. “You have to unders-”
“I don’t want to hear the apologies and promises. They’ll mean nothing to either of us. Just spit the name out,” he held up the pain device’s controller, and the vendor grimaced.
“Christopher Reign is the man who had me paid.”
As they reached Shudder’s Gate, Nefarian’s mind raced. He knew of this man, but had never personally met him. ‘That’ll have to change,’ he thought to himself.
The vendor bribed the man at the gate and they continued forward, and as they drove on, Roarhaven fast becoming a solitary dot in the distance, Nefarian finally felt the vestiges of something he hadn’t felt in centuries. Freedom.

I yelled and woke with a start. Sweat dripped down my face. My breathing was hard and desperate. I could have sworn I had just been falling. The stickiness of sleep meddled with the cogs of my mind. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the gloom of my bedroom and I found myself alone, safe and warm. No danger here. My heart rate slowed and I chuckled nervously. Soon all fear had seeped from my mind and all memory of my dream had faded. I rolled out of bed and shivered. Quickly I pulled on a sweater and put on my furry slippers. It was cold in this cabin in the middle of the forest. Although internal plumbing and an electric generator had been added, there was still no central heating. This did not bother me much because I always enjoyed having an excuse to light the fire in the living room. I absolutely loved traditional fireplaces.

I was whistling happily in the kitchen, sipping on a glass of cold water as I poured fresh coffee beans into my electric grinder. The sound and smell of coffee being ground always made me content. As my coffee brewed in my French press I cracked two eggs into a bowel and began to whisk. Fifteen minutes later I carried a steaming hot cheese omelet and large mug of coffee out onto my front veranda. I stood in the open doorway, surveying the beauty of the outdoors in the early morning light. The air was cold and fresh; pregnant with complex mixtures of pine and lavender scents. I looked up to see the sky was a deep blue and devoid of all clouds. The thin, dark silhouettes of the trees that surrounded the cabin stood silent and ominous in the soft half-light of the morning. White coats of frost sparkled and melted on the grass as the sun climbed and brightened. I could hear the distant sound of the stream and the call of morning birds.

I sighed deeply with satisfaction and sat down on my wooden chair. This is what I loved more than anything. More than the city that bustles and bursts with busy human lives. More than squeezing myself between strangers on the tube. More than the sickening smell of the streets and the soulless lack of any natural sounds. In the city there were no crickets, no owls, no frogs. Out here there was an abundance of beauty. The trees were so patient and still. So very different from the rushed, ill-mannered commuters I had as my usual morning partners. I definitely preferred the trees. I took another deep breath. I blew on the steam that rose from my coffee mug and sipped cautiously. The coffee was rich and delicious and scalding hot. Perfect. I began to eat my omelet letting the serenity of nature continue to wash over me. My mood had not been so elated for many months and I was seriously thinking that I should move here full-time. Currently I was working as an English teacher and had decided to come out here to work on my novel and take a break from the city. From my life. Once my excellent breakfast was complete I walked back inside and decided to start a fire to warm up the cabin. As I stooped to check the small wicker basket near the fireplace, that should contain the dried firewood, my eyebrow arched when I found the basket empty. Huh? I could have sworn it was half-full yesterday. Puzzled, I picked up the basket. Soon I put on my large, worn black coat and made my way outside.

The frosted ground crunched under my large leather boots as I waded through the woods. Finding dry branches for the fire would be fairly difficult at this time of day as most of the ground was damp by now. However, my plan was just to dry them out in the oven before I used them. After spending a few minutes stooping to inspect sticks of various sizes and dampness I finally filled the basket. “Ok, time to go home.” I muttered aloud eagerly as I rubbed my hands together. The air was still cold enough to make my breath visible and I rubbed my hands together. Suddenly I stopped. I did not recognize where I was. But how? I had been exploring the woods for days now and not one time had I gotten lost.

My eyes darted back and forth and my head swiveled in confusion. Very soon a creeping panic began to climb from my stomach up into my lungs. My heart began to thump loudly. I looked up at the sun, the voice of my old man ringing in my mind, “Learn to navigate by the stars and sun and you’ll never lose your way”. I smiled, remembering his warm eyes and loud laughter. I missed him. I closed my eyes, concentrating. “Ok, that must be East, so that means I should walk…” I stretched out my arm and hand, index finger pointed. I turned on my heel. “North. That way.”

After a few moments I found my path blocked by a sudden sheer drop. I was facing an enormous quarry. My face blanched. “What… where the hell did this come from?” Again, panic seeped into my blood. “There aren’t any bloody quarries around here!” I moved forward to peek over the edge and peered down. The drop must be at least fifteen meters! I looked from left to right and saw no stairs or bridges. How the hell was I supposed to get across? My confusion grew and grew. Then I froze. There, lying at the bottom of the quarry, was a mangled body. The light in the sky was still too young to properly illuminate the quarry’s depths, but I could tell it was a body! My eyes bulged and my mouth opened wide with astonishment. “Jesus! Hello? Are you okay down there?” I yelled. Nothing but cold silence pressed against my ears. Suddenly I noticed a path that I had not seen before. It started to my right and wound down the slope before me. Quickly I started hurrying down towards the person; maybe I could still help? Soon I was at the bottom and I ran up to the body that lay still on the ground. As I got closer and the sun grew brighter I stopped dead. The body that lay crumpled at my feet was – me. “No way. There is just absolutely no way!” I shouted. I trembled as I took a step backward. My foot slipped on a large stone and I felt myself begin to fall to the ground.

Suddenly I yelped and my legs kicked out. I blinked in the sudden darkness and found myself on my sofa in the cabin’s living room. “What the hell? It was just a dream?” I said out loud as I sat up. I felt the softness of the couch cushions beneath me, I could smell the citrus scents leftover from the wash I’d given them recently. I stood up, my breathing still fast. The large windows showed a stormy afternoon. Rain pelted the glass heavily and the wind howled loudly. “What the hell? It was just a dream?” I repeated. I checked my watch. It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. I raked my brain, trying to figure out what was happening. But the details of my dream were fading. “I was in the forest looking for firewood. Then I found that body in the quarry.” It had been so real. I felt quite disoriented. Was I truly awake now? Or still asleep? And that body? What had been so terrible about it? The dream had already seeped away. I couldn’t remember.

Still confused I made my way quickly towards the front door. Just as I opened it there was a deafening peal of thunder and a bright fork of lightning lit up the darkling sky. My mouth dropped open. There, just beyond the veranda, as if it had always been there, was the quarry. That cliff! I closed my mouth. “But… how…” Ignoring the icy rain, I walked towards the edge and once again peeked over. In the cold light of another flash of lightening I saw my own body twisted and broken on the ground below. I gasped. My mind reeled. My heart fluttered. “What is going on?” I yelled looking around for some sort of explanation. When I looked back down again my face turned white. The body, my body, was gone. Suddenly I felt the eyes of a stranger on my back. A feeling of dread crept up my spine. A twig snapped. I spun around.

I stood face to face with my shadow. But he did not look like me. Not exactly. Darkness coated his body like a skintight suit and I could not tell what he was wearing. He may have even been naked for all I know. I could see most of his face and hair, but his eyes were cloaked entirely in semi-circles of shadow which fell below each of his brows. He seemed utterly unconcerned about the storm. “You poor thing. You poor, wretched thing.” When he spoke, his voice was not mine. It was deep and commanding, yet gentle. His words came out slow and calm, almost lulling, “I caught you as you fell. You can be at peace forever. But you must choose now.” He stretched out a tenebrous hand and pointed toward the edge of the cliff. Suddenly I noticed something new appear in his hands. It was a book. It was my book. The one I had been writing. Had I already finished it? Or had I just started?

He turned to one of the middle pages and read, “‘Life is the antithesis of peace. Death is the antithesis of suffering.’” He snapped the book closed and turned again to face me, “How trite. Yet, so often the plainest truths are. All you want is peace, is it not? You are right in thinking that life can never provide this.” A cold smile curled his lips. “Even the living forests you so admire are crawling with suffering and conflict. Even the trees that appear so peaceful, so still, are wordlessly fighting each other for light. Racing against each other to claim their own space. It is the nature of the living to struggle.” Confusion fought with terror in my mind. I stammered. “I…I don’t understand. What is this place? Who are you?” Suddenly the man robed in darkness leapt at me and clasped my wrist, “You know who I am”. Small, pale crimson lights flared to life like ignes fatui in the depths of his sockets. He began to pull me towards the edge. “No! Wait!” I shouted, digging my heels into the mud. But he was too strong. He snarled, “Isn’t this what you wanted?” and before I could stop myself I was crying from desperation. Then with a strength that could not be human he lifted me above his head, and threw me over the side of the quarry. Lightning flashed as the air rushed through my hair. I screamed as I plummeted to my death.

I yelled and woke with a start. I heard the soft beeping of monitors. I felt the scratchy linens of a hospital bed beneath me. Pain followed swiftly and exploded through my limbs. My voice was croaky and dry as I spoke, “Where…what the hell…what happened?” A nurse rushed to my side. “It’s alright love, you’ve ‘ad a bit of a tumble. Doctor’s got you all sorted. Just rest now”. Her voice was warm and comforting, like a cup of tea.

My memory returned to me slowly. My family did not own any cabin in the forest. The day of the accident I had been jogging in the woods and took my usual route near the abandoned quarry. I remember exactly what had happened. For a long time, I was overwhelmed with my work and underwhelmed with my life. I wanted nothing more than to finish my novel and bail on all my other responsibilities. My father had also recently died after a long and horrible fight with cancer and it was the first time I realized that at my age life stops providing and starts taking. I realized that soon all those things, all those people, I could once rely on were not going to last forever. An invisible fire was lit in my flesh and I felt my time was rapidly running out.

I jogged far, leaving the city limits. As I stood at the edge of that quarry, panting, my sadness hanging on me heavily, I had, for a moment, contemplated jumping. As I stared down, I imagined my broken body at the bottom of the cliff. Then, like in all my low moments, I let the cold inhumanness of the universe fill me up. With my eyes closed all I could hear was my mother crying over my father’s corpse. All the constant knocking of debt collectors on our door. All I could see were the endless medical bills flooding the postbox. All I felt was loneliness. A horrible, unrelenting, unsolvable loneliness. I had no great love, no amazing career, and my writing would never be good enough to publish. All I could feel was the gaping hole my father had left behind. It hurt. For just a moment I convinced myself I did not belong here anymore. My lips trembled. I walked right up to the edge. I felt my sadness swell in my chest. I clenched my fists tightly. I imagined taking a single step forward. It would be so easy. I imagined the air rushing past me. Falling to my doom. I imagined the horrible pain of the impact. But I also imagined the peace that would come after. A peace I craved. I imagined a picturesque cabin in the woods. A beautiful fireplace. A shelter from the city. A place where I could rest. It was in that moment of contemplative despair, before I could fully commit to the act, that the old unstable ground of the quarry crumbled beneath my feet and I had slipped from the edge and fell. Only the shadows were there to catch me.

Recovery was slow. My mother and sister came to visit me multiple times and made the stay at the hospital bearable. How many dreams had I had? How much had I awoken and then re-awoken? Could I be sure I was truly awake now? As I pondered this I tried to remember. But all I could recall was that very last dream. Those dark horrible eyes. The terror of that very last fall. In that moment, I had realized what I wanted. Now I felt rejuvenated in a way I had not felt for many years. The exhaustion of my spirit had finally been ameliorated. I actually looked forward to getting out of bed. I actually wanted to go to school again. My passion for teaching was reignited. Soon after my recovery I even managed to get my novel published but did not make much money.

Many years have passed since my fall and I’m in my 60s now and retired and have never married. I now know that those dreams were not just dreams. That phantom I confronted has remained with me. Whenever the stresses of life pile up and I become fatigued, he comes to me. He still waits for me. He is real. I see his eyes covered in shadow. Tiny pinpricks of crimson flicker therein. At first, I only saw him rarely; glimpses in dreams. As time went on and I grew older and weary of the world once more I began to see him in the corner of my room every night. What’s worse was that in those moments when I feel the lowest I found myself craving the solitude of that cabin. The peace it brought with it. All this I craved despite the price.

Last week I attended my mother’s funeral. It was a small affair, most of her friends having died many years before. I saw my sister there with her husband and children. They are so happy and full of life. I feel a pang of jealousy but also relief. My life was always to be a solitary one. My sister and I cried during the service. When we chatted later we tried in vain to comfort each other. I returned alone to my home in London while she returned home with her husband and children to Edinburgh. I really missed her a great deal.

Since the funeral I see him constantly. Often his shadow-hidden hand stretches out and he holds a revolver. But he does not mean to shoot me. No. He holds the revolver’s ivory handle toward me. Sometimes he holds out a hangman’s noose. Sometimes it’s a long, ornate dagger. Most recently he holds out a canister of helium gas. And a plastic bag for my head. Each time he does this I resist him. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I even yell at him to leave. His face remains dark, stony and enigmatic.

None of this would scare me quite so much if I had not just realized one terrible detail. What turns my blood to ice from fear is that every time I see him he is infinitesimally closer. How had I not noticed before? Perhaps it was a kindness. Gooseflesh runs down my neck as I see him standing insidiously in my cold bedroom. He is near the edge of my bed now. He is patient and has respected my choice so far. Nevertheless, he holds out that same revolver. That same noose. That same dagger. I tremble with fright because I know I will not be able to resist him much longer. Perhaps soon I’ll know if this was all a dream too.

So after many months of endless house viewings and bidding wars and rejections, my offer was finally selected for this single story house in Flower Mound, Texas, built in 1998. The home inspection was today, and as a FIRST TIME home buyer, I'm posting to get some advice on whether I should go through with this purchase.
Per sq ft, the house is about $250, so definitely not cheap for this area. But I really like the location and the layout of the house.
There were a long list of things in the inspection report, but the major issues that concern me are below. What do y'all think?? Even after reviewing the list I still want the house. Any thoughts on the drainage issue and the tilting? Do you think that's too serious??
1) Downsputs of water at the back of the house were located so close to the house that the rain water was collecting to the back right corner of the house. The house was also observed to be tilted down about 5 inches in that back right corner. The inspector recommended the drainage to be re-routed away from the house. Looks like the seller is aware of this and says they are getting it fixed. I had thought about creating a concrete patio in the backyard anyway, and the inspector said if I can make a slight slope away from the house it will resolve the issue. There are drainage issues in front of the house too, so re-routing will need to be done there as well.
2) The tilt in the back right corner (likely caused by the drain of water going there) raised foundation concerns so I'm getting inspection done on Monday. The inspector did not see any visible evidence of foundation issues from the house, but because of tilting he said it is possible that they recommend putting a few piers in that back right corner.
3) No front or side gutters - cost money but can be done.
4) Kitchen tiles some cracked and not well bound - could be a foundation issue or the tilt. I was gonna get new tiles anyway.
5) Few windows have broken seal and are foggy
6) Fireplace doesn't turn on. The damper was missing they had shoved a few towels up there to close the gap.
7) Wood fence is old and sealant is needed
8) Gas Pipe bonding wire missing - who do I call??
9) Fire ants present - need to call pest control

Hey there, fellow explorers! Today, we've got some exciting news to share with you - a team of researchers recently stumbled upon a rare and unique species in the wild: an original bolt-together house! Yes, you heard that right - a house made entirely of bolts and pieces that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
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Now, you're probably thinking, "What on earth is an original bolt-together house?" Well, let me break it down for you. This innovative concept takes the traditional idea of building a house and shakes it up a bit. Instead of using the usual bricks and mortar, this house is constructed using a series of pre-fabricated panels and parts that are bolted together on-site. It's like the Ikea of housing - simple, efficient, and totally customizable.
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But what makes this discovery truly remarkable is its rarity. You see, only a handful of these bolt-together houses exist in the wild. They're like hidden gems waiting to be uncovered by adventurous souls like the researchers who stumbled upon this one. And let me tell you, when they laid eyes on it for the first time, they were absolutely blown away.
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The beauty of the original bolt-together house lies in its versatility. It can be assembled and disassembled with ease, making it perfect for those who crave a nomadic lifestyle. Imagine being able to pack up your entire house into a few crates and set up camp wherever your heart desires. It's the ultimate freedom, wrapped up in a neat little package.
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But functionality aside, the design of these houses is simply stunning. With clean lines, minimalistic details, and a futuristic vibe, they're like something out of a sci-fi movie. And the best part? You can customize them to your heart's content. Want a skylight in your bedroom? Done. Prefer a cozy fireplace in the living room? Consider it done. The possibilities are endless when it comes to designing your very own bolt-together house.
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So, what does the future hold for these rare and unique species in the wild? Only time will tell. But one thing's for sure - they're bound to shake up the housing industry in a big way. Who knows, maybe one day we'll all be living in our very own bolt-together houses, with the freedom to roam wherever the wind takes us.
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In conclusion, the discovery of the original bolt-together house is a true testament to human ingenuity and creativity. It's a reminder that innovation knows no bounds, and that sometimes, the most extraordinary things can be found in the most unexpected places. So here's to the pioneers who dare to think outside the box and push the boundaries of what's possible. Who knows what other wonders await us in the wild?
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And there you have it, folks - a glimpse into the fascinating world of the original bolt-together house. Until next time, happy exploring!

I yelled and woke with a start. Sweat dripped down my face. My breathing was hard and desperate. I could have sworn I had just been falling. The stickiness of sleep meddled with the cogs of my mind. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the gloom of my bedroom and I found myself alone, safe and warm. No danger here. My heart rate slowed and I chuckled nervously. Soon all fear had seeped from my mind and all memory of my dream had faded. I rolled out of bed and shivered. Quickly I pulled on a sweater and put on my furry slippers. It was cold in this cabin in the middle of the forest. Although internal plumbing and an electric generator had been added, there was still no central heating. This did not bother me much because I always enjoyed having an excuse to light the fire in the living room. I absolutely loved traditional fireplaces.

I was whistling happily in the kitchen, sipping on a glass of cold water as I poured fresh coffee beans into my electric grinder. The sound and smell of coffee being ground always made me content. As my coffee brewed in my French press I cracked two eggs into a bowel and began to whisk. Fifteen minutes later I carried a steaming hot cheese omelet and large mug of coffee out onto my front veranda. I stood in the open doorway, surveying the beauty of the outdoors in the early morning light. The air was cold and fresh; pregnant with complex mixtures of pine and lavender scents. I looked up to see the sky was a deep blue and devoid of all clouds. The thin, dark silhouettes of the trees that surrounded the cabin stood silent and ominous in the soft half-light of the morning. White coats of frost sparkled and melted on the grass as the sun climbed and brightened. I could hear the distant sound of the stream and the call of morning birds.

I sighed deeply with satisfaction and sat down on my wooden chair. This is what I loved more than anything. More than the city that bustles and bursts with busy human lives. More than squeezing myself between strangers on the tube. More than the sickening smell of the streets and the soulless lack of any natural sounds. In the city there were no crickets, no owls, no frogs. Out here there was an abundance of beauty. The trees were so patient and still. So very different from the rushed, ill-mannered commuters I had as my usual morning partners. I definitely preferred the trees. I took another deep breath. I blew on the steam that rose from my coffee mug and sipped cautiously. The coffee was rich and delicious and scalding hot. Perfect. I began to eat my omelet letting the serenity of nature continue to wash over me. My mood had not been so elated for many months and I was seriously thinking that I should move here full-time. Currently I was working as an English teacher and had decided to come out here to work on my novel and take a break from the city. From my life. Once my excellent breakfast was complete I walked back inside and decided to start a fire to warm up the cabin. As I stooped to check the small wicker basket near the fireplace, that should contain the dried firewood, my eyebrow arched when I found the basket empty. Huh? I could have sworn it was half-full yesterday. Puzzled, I picked up the basket. Soon I put on my large, worn black coat and made my way outside.

The frosted ground crunched under my large leather boots as I waded through the woods. Finding dry branches for the fire would be fairly difficult at this time of day as most of the ground was damp by now. However, my plan was just to dry them out in the oven before I used them. After spending a few minutes stooping to inspect sticks of various sizes and dampness I finally filled the basket. “Ok, time to go home.” I muttered aloud eagerly as I rubbed my hands together. The air was still cold enough to make my breath visible and I rubbed my hands together. Suddenly I stopped. I did not recognize where I was. But how? I had been exploring the woods for days now and not one time had I gotten lost.

My eyes darted back and forth and my head swiveled in confusion. Very soon a creeping panic began to climb from my stomach up into my lungs. My heart began to thump loudly. I looked up at the sun, the voice of my old man ringing in my mind, “Learn to navigate by the stars and sun and you’ll never lose your way”. I smiled, remembering his warm eyes and loud laughter. I missed him. I closed my eyes, concentrating. “Ok, that must be East, so that means I should walk…” I stretched out my arm and hand, index finger pointed. I turned on my heel. “North. That way.”

After a few moments I found my path blocked by a sudden sheer drop. I was facing an enormous quarry. My face blanched. “What… where the hell did this come from?” Again, panic seeped into my blood. “There aren’t any bloody quarries around here!” I moved forward to peek over the edge and peered down. The drop must be at least fifteen meters! I looked from left to right and saw no stairs or bridges. How the hell was I supposed to get across? My confusion grew and grew. Then I froze. There, lying at the bottom of the quarry, was a mangled body. The light in the sky was still too young to properly illuminate the quarry’s depths, but I could tell it was a body! My eyes bulged and my mouth opened wide with astonishment. “Jesus! Hello? Are you okay down there?” I yelled. Nothing but cold silence pressed against my ears. Suddenly I noticed a path that I had not seen before. It started to my right and wound down the slope before me. Quickly I started hurrying down towards the person; maybe I could still help? Soon I was at the bottom and I ran up to the body that lay still on the ground. As I got closer and the sun grew brighter I stopped dead. The body that lay crumpled at my feet was – me. “No way. There is just absolutely no way!” I shouted. I trembled as I took a step backward. My foot slipped on a large stone and I felt myself begin to fall to the ground.

Suddenly I yelped and my legs kicked out. I blinked in the sudden darkness and found myself on my sofa in the cabin’s living room. “What the hell? It was just a dream?” I said out loud as I sat up. I felt the softness of the couch cushions beneath me, I could smell the citrus scents leftover from the wash I’d given them recently. I stood up, my breathing still fast. The large windows showed a stormy afternoon. Rain pelted the glass heavily and the wind howled loudly. “What the hell? It was just a dream?” I repeated. I checked my watch. It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. I raked my brain, trying to figure out what was happening. But the details of my dream were fading. “I was in the forest looking for firewood. Then I found that body in the quarry.” It had been so real. I felt quite disoriented. Was I truly awake now? Or still asleep? And that body? What had been so terrible about it? The dream had already seeped away. I couldn’t remember.

Still confused I made my way quickly towards the front door. Just as I opened it there was a deafening peal of thunder and a bright fork of lightning lit up the darkling sky. My mouth dropped open. There, just beyond the veranda, as if it had always been there, was the quarry. That cliff! I closed my mouth. “But… how…” Ignoring the icy rain, I walked towards the edge and once again peeked over. In the cold light of another flash of lightening I saw my own body twisted and broken on the ground below. I gasped. My mind reeled. My heart fluttered. “What is going on?” I yelled looking around for some sort of explanation. When I looked back down again my face turned white. The body, my body, was gone. Suddenly I felt the eyes of a stranger on my back. A feeling of dread crept up my spine. A twig snapped. I spun around.

I stood face to face with my shadow. But he did not look like me. Not exactly. Darkness coated his body like a skintight suit and I could not tell what he was wearing. He may have even been naked for all I know. I could see most of his face and hair, but his eyes were cloaked entirely in semi-circles of shadow which fell below each of his brows. He seemed utterly unconcerned about the storm. “You poor thing. You poor, wretched thing.” When he spoke, his voice was not mine. It was deep and commanding, yet gentle. His words came out slow and calm, almost lulling, “I caught you as you fell. You can be at peace forever. But you must choose now.” He stretched out a tenebrous hand and pointed toward the edge of the cliff. Suddenly I noticed something new appear in his hands. It was a book. It was my book. The one I had been writing. Had I already finished it? Or had I just started?

He turned to one of the middle pages and read, “‘Life is the antithesis of peace. Death is the antithesis of suffering.’” He snapped the book closed and turned again to face me, “How trite. Yet, so often the plainest truths are. All you want is peace, is it not? You are right in thinking that life can never provide this.” A cold smile curled his lips. “Even the living forests you so admire are crawling with suffering and conflict. Even the trees that appear so peaceful, so still, are wordlessly fighting each other for light. Racing against each other to claim their own space. It is the nature of the living to struggle.” Confusion fought with terror in my mind. I stammered. “I…I don’t understand. What is this place? Who are you?” Suddenly the man robed in darkness leapt at me and clasped my wrist, “You know who I am”. Small, pale crimson lights flared to life like ignes fatui in the depths of his sockets. He began to pull me towards the edge. “No! Wait!” I shouted, digging my heels into the mud. But he was too strong. He snarled, “Isn’t this what you wanted?” and before I could stop myself I was crying from desperation. Then with a strength that could not be human he lifted me above his head, and threw me over the side of the quarry. Lightning flashed as the air rushed through my hair. I screamed as I plummeted to my death.

I yelled and woke with a start. I heard the soft beeping of monitors. I felt the scratchy linens of a hospital bed beneath me. Pain followed swiftly and exploded through my limbs. My voice was croaky and dry as I spoke, “Where…what the hell…what happened?” A nurse rushed to my side. “It’s alright love, you’ve ‘ad a bit of a tumble. Doctor’s got you all sorted. Just rest now”. Her voice was warm and comforting, like a cup of tea.

My memory returned to me slowly. My family did not own any cabin in the forest. The day of the accident I had been jogging in the woods and took my usual route near the abandoned quarry. I remember exactly what had happened. For a long time, I was overwhelmed with my work and underwhelmed with my life. I wanted nothing more than to finish my novel and bail on all my other responsibilities. My father had also recently died after a long and horrible fight with cancer and it was the first time I realized that at my age life stops providing and starts taking. I realized that soon all those things, all those people, I could once rely on were not going to last forever. An invisible fire was lit in my flesh and I felt my time was rapidly running out.

I jogged far, leaving the city limits. As I stood at the edge of that quarry, panting, my sadness hanging on me heavily, I had, for a moment, contemplated jumping. As I stared down, I imagined my broken body at the bottom of the cliff. Then, like in all my low moments, I let the cold inhumanness of the universe fill me up. With my eyes closed all I could hear was my mother crying over my father’s corpse. All the constant knocking of debt collectors on our door. All I could see were the endless medical bills flooding the postbox. All I felt was loneliness. A horrible, unrelenting, unsolvable loneliness. I had no great love, no amazing career, and my writing would never be good enough to publish. All I could feel was the gaping hole my father had left behind. It hurt. For just a moment I convinced myself I did not belong here anymore. My lips trembled. I walked right up to the edge. I felt my sadness swell in my chest. I clenched my fists tightly. I imagined taking a single step forward. It would be so easy. I imagined the air rushing past me. Falling to my doom. I imagined the horrible pain of the impact. But I also imagined the peace that would come after. A peace I craved. I imagined a picturesque cabin in the woods. A beautiful fireplace. A shelter from the city. A place where I could rest. It was in that moment of contemplative despair, before I could fully commit to the act, that the old unstable ground of the quarry crumbled beneath my feet and I had slipped from the edge and fell. Only the shadows were there to catch me.

Recovery was slow. My mother and sister came to visit me multiple times and made the stay at the hospital bearable. How many dreams had I had? How much had I awoken and then re-awoken? Could I be sure I was truly awake now? As I pondered this I tried to remember. But all I could recall was that very last dream. Those dark horrible eyes. The terror of that very last fall. In that moment, I had realized what I wanted. Now I felt rejuvenated in a way I had not felt for many years. The exhaustion of my spirit had finally been ameliorated. I actually looked forward to getting out of bed. I actually wanted to go to school again. My passion for teaching was reignited. Soon after my recovery I even managed to get my novel published but did not make much money.

Many years have passed since my fall and I’m in my 60s now and retired and have never married. I now know that those dreams were not just dreams. That phantom I confronted has remained with me. Whenever the stresses of life pile up and I become fatigued, he comes to me. He still waits for me. He is real. I see his eyes covered in shadow. Tiny pinpricks of crimson flicker therein. At first, I only saw him rarely; glimpses in dreams. As time went on and I grew older and weary of the world once more I began to see him in the corner of my room every night. What’s worse was that in those moments when I feel the lowest I found myself craving the solitude of that cabin. The peace it brought with it. All this I craved despite the price.

Last week I attended my mother’s funeral. It was a small affair, most of her friends having died many years before. I saw my sister there with her husband and children. They are so happy and full of life. I feel a pang of jealousy but also relief. My life was always to be a solitary one. My sister and I cried during the service. When we chatted later we tried in vain to comfort each other. I returned alone to my home in London while she returned home with her husband and children to Edinburgh. I really missed her a great deal.

Since the funeral I see him constantly. Often his shadow-hidden hand stretches out and he holds a revolver. But he does not mean to shoot me. No. He holds the revolver’s ivory handle toward me. Sometimes he holds out a hangman’s noose. Sometimes it’s a long, ornate dagger. Most recently he holds out a canister of helium gas. And a plastic bag for my head. Each time he does this I resist him. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I even yell at him to leave. His face remains dark, stony and enigmatic.

None of this would scare me quite so much if I had not just realized one terrible detail. What turns my blood to ice from fear is that every time I see him he is infinitesimally closer. How had I not noticed before? Perhaps it was a kindness. Gooseflesh runs down my neck as I see him standing insidiously in my cold bedroom. He is near the edge of my bed now. He is patient and has respected my choice so far. Nevertheless, he holds out that same revolver. That same noose. That same dagger. I tremble with fright because I know I will not be able to resist him much longer. Perhaps soon I’ll know if this was all a dream too.

Disk Space Occupied: 4,979.94 MB

Greetings, Dovah brethren.
I'm still evolving the mod list, so I'll gladly accept any suggestions on which mods I should replace, add, or remove, or if I'm missing any patches.
I used this guide to organize the load order. If you happen to have a better LO, feel free to suggest it.
The mod list stays completely true to the vanilla nature of Skyrim, only expanding on its game mechanics and immersion with overhauls, quality-of-life changes, and a crap-ton of additional content like Legacy of the Dragonborn, Interesting NPCs (3DNPC), and then some.

• NEW CONTENT
  
  • The mod list is tailored around Legacy of the Dragonborn, injecting over 200 hours of new gameplay into your Skyrim experience. This comprehensive mod breathes new life into the game, enriching it with immersive quests, unique artifacts, and a meticulously designed museum that serves as the focal point of your adventures.
  • Go on epic quests with mods like Moonpath to Elsweyr, Wyrmstooth, The Forgotten City, Moon & Stars, and more. These mods add massive new adventures, taking you to exciting new places and challenging you with thrilling quests that feel like official DLCs.
  • Interesting NPCs (3DNPC) offers tons of new characters throughout Skyrim, each with their own stories and voices. These NPCs breathe life into the game, making every encounter feel unique and immersive. With quality voice acting, they'll leave a lasting impression on your new journey through Skyrim.
• PERK & COMBAT OVERHAULS
  
  • Dive into a world of endless possibilities with a whopping total of 276 new perks. These additions open up a treasure trove of opportunities, allowing for a multitude of viable character builds.
  • Mods that make fighting and movement feel more natural, increasing the complexity of fights, and making them more interesting and challenging in an intuitive and balanced manner for all combat styles. It is highly recommended to bump up the difficulty to at least Adept, you wuss.
• HORSE & FOLLOWER OVERHAULS
  
  • Expanded barding and an encumbrance system with mobile storage make your trusty steed more than just a mode of transportation – it becomes a reliable companion capable of carrying your burdens, just like your housecarls. Additionally, you get mounted combat, training your horse's attributes, buying horses for your followers and customizing their appearance, and more.
  • You can have 32 customizable followers and up to 5 followers simultaneously. Level them up, equip them with tailored outfits and spells, and fine-tune their combat styles to suit your strategic preferences. Whether you prefer a balanced party or specialize in specific roles, the robust follower system offers unparalleled flexibility, giving you a feeling to CATCH 'EM ALL.
• SANDBOX & REPUTATION SYSTEM
  
  • Procedurally generated emergent gameplay that utilizes the radian quest system, creating the ultimate sandbox feeling with endless opportunities for countless role-play experiences.
  • Different choices have different consequences. Your character will gradually earn fame or infamy, affecting your relationship with factions that can level up, expand territory, secure resources, and be slain, completely independent of the player.

LOAD ORDER

MASTER FILES

• Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch [USSEP] (381.35 MB)
• Legacy of the Dragonborn (870.08 MB)
• Interesting NPCs (3DNPC) Part 1 (1,005.9 MB)
• Wyrmstooth (286.61 MB)
• Enhanced AI Framework (3.2 MB)
• Organic Factions SSE (8.7 MB)
• Simple Workaround Framework (6.92 MB)

FOUNDATION

• Unofficial Creation Club Updates - October Pack [XB1] (122.32 KB)
• Unofficial Creation Club Updates - Dwarven Armored Mudcrab [XB1] (9.15 KB)
• Legacy of the Dragonborn / Hall of Wonders and Anniversary Edition Patches (99.39 MB)
• Legacy of the Dragonborn Museum Exterior Fixes (405.8 KB)
• Legacy of the Dragonborn / Wyrmstooth Patch (103.11 KB)
• Cutting Room Floor (11.49 MB)
  • Legacy of the Dragonborn / Cutting Room Floor Patch (99.69 KB)
• Interesting NPCs (3DNPC) Part 2 (475.88 MB)
  • LOTD / Interesting NPCs Patch (186.79 MB)
• Cheat Room (XB1) (1.28 MB)
  • Telekinesis Arrow Added Fix (2.46 KB)
• Guard Dialogue Overhaul (XB1) (2.23 MB)

USER INTERFACE

• Lore-Based Loading Screens [XB1] (56.36 KB)
• SkyHUD - Dissonance Preset by Fhaarkas (470.59 KB)
• Atlas Map Markers SE (387.44 KB)
• Quest Eraser -- Remove Quest Objectives from Your Journal (35.93 KB)

QUEST ALTERATIONS

• The Choice is Yours (1.42 MB)
  • The Choice Is Yours - AE Patch (114.02 KB)
  • LOTD / The Choice is Yours Patch (28.94 KB)
• Even Better Quest Objectives - EBQO SE [XB1] (959.6 KB)
  • Even Better Quest Objectives - Cutting Room Floor Patch (16.05 KB)
• The Paarthurnax Dilemma (1.04 MB)
  • Even Better Quest Objectives - Paarthurnax Dilemma Patch (3.5 KB)
• Stones of Barenziah Quest Markers [XB1] (15.46 KB)

CRAFTABLES

• Aetherium Armor and Weapons Compilation[XB1] (79.34 MB)
  • LOTD / Aetherium Armor And Weapons Compilation Patch (1.48 MB)
• Bandolier: Bags and Pouches Classic XB1 (21.16 MB)
• Cloaks of Skyrim [XB1] (95.55 MB)
  • LOTD - Cloaks of Skyrim Retextured Patch (850.85 KB)
• Wearable Lanterns [XB1] (3.22 MB)
• Ars Metallica (258 KB)
  • LOTD / Ars Metallica Patch (927 Bytes)

GAME MECHANICS

• Morningstar - Minimalistic Races of Skyrim [XB1] (36.49 KB)
• Sacrilege - Minimalistic Vampires of Skyrim [XB1] (3.39 MB)
• Growl - Werebeasts of Skyrim [XB1] (707.21 KB)
• Evenstar - Minimalistic Standing Stones of Skyrim [XB1] (95.21 KB)
• Summermyst - Enchantments of Skyrim [XB1] (10.32 MB)
• Convenient Horses [XB1] (52.88 MB)
• Amazing Follower Tweaks (14.97 MB)
• Zim's Immersive Artifacts (21.96 MB)
  • Legacy of the Dragonborn / Zim's Immersive Artifacts Patch (2.82 KB)
• Enhanced Atronachs - With Levelling and Luminosity (50.12 KB)
• Wear Multiple Rings (18.72 KB)
• Circlets with Mage Hoods [XB1] (9.97 KB)
• Unread Books Glow SSE (102.95 KB)
  • LOTD / Unread Books Glow Patch (350 Bytes)

PERK OVERHAULS

• 50 pct More Perk Points [XB1] (2.53 KB)
• Vokrii - Minimalistic Perks of Skyrim [XB1] (1.87 MB)

MAGIC ADDITIONS AND OVERHAULS

• Odin - Skyrim Magic Overhaul [XB1] (45.94 MB)
  • Odin - Vokrii Compatibility Patch [XB1] (78.46 KB)
• Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim [XB1] (72.53 MB)
  • Apocalypse - Vokrii Compatibility Patch [XB1] (11 KB)

ITEM AND LOOT LEVELED LIST

• LOTD Collectors and Vendors (163.87 KB)
• Dynamic Dungeon Loot (DDL) [XBOX ONE] (1.82 MB)
  • Legacy of the Dragonborn / Dynamic Dungeon Loot (DDL Patch) (10.48 KB)

WEATHEATMOSPHERE

• 2021 Obsidian Weathers and Seasons (2.59 MB)

LANDSCAPE

• Bigger Trees (3 MB)
• Darker Distant LOD Lite (1.88 MB)
• Treeslod_23 [XB1] (3.62 MB)
• [XB1] Insignificant Object Remover (1.42 KB)

COMBAT

• Wildcat - Combat of Skyrim [XB1] (640.05 KB)
• Half Stamina While Blocking (601 Bytes)

SKELETON

• Visible Favorited Gear (6.25 KB)
• XP32 Maximum Skeleton+Realistic Ragdolls and Force (1.97 MB)
• Belt-Fastened Quivers - XPMSSE Edition (330.82 KB)
  • BOLT QUIVER FIX Belt Fastened Quivers (241.77 KB)
• R.A.S.S. (Shaders and Effects) (25.54 MB)

IDLES AND ANIMATIONS

• Immersive Movement (8.38 KB)
• The Ultimate Dodge Mod - XP32 Compatible (11.97 MB)
• VioLens - A Killmove Mod SE [XB1] (1.25 MB)
• Athletik Combat - Realistic Movement and Dodging (3.98 KB)

RE-TEXTURE

• LeanWolf's Better-Shaped Weapons SE XBox (24.12 MB)
• aMidianborn: Book of Silence 1k (175.89 MB)

AI

• Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul [XB1] (6.23 MB)
• Realistic Conversations ( XB1 ) (3.89 KB)
• Realistic AI Detection Medium [XB1] (4.25 KB)
• Skyrim Reputation (81.17 MB)
• YOU DON'T KNOW ME - No NPC Greetings [XB1] (258 Bytes)

NPC IMMERSION

• Diverse Guards Skyrim for Xbox One (18.21 MB)

LIGHTING

• Legacy of The Dragonborn - Lighting Mod (6.71 KB)

AREA EDITS

• Legacy Safehouse Plus (150.49 KB)
• LOTD Follower Room Fireplace Add-on (4.07 KB)
• LOTD Vanilla Player Homes Displays (10.01 MB)
• The Notice Board [XB1] (2.83 MB)
  • LOTD / Notice Board Patch (88.62 KB)
• Missives (1.18 MB)
• Glowing Ore Veins 300 (7.11 MB)
• Bridges of Skyrim[XB1] (2.72 MB)
• Point The Way (1.11 MB)
• Master The Summit [XB1] (676.85 KB)
• [XB1]Lampposts of Skyrim: Special Edition (319.4 KB)
• Carriage Stops of Skyrim XB1 (112.5 KB)
  • Carriage Stops of Skyrim - Survival Mode Patch (983 Bytes)
• [XB1] skyBirds - Airborne Perching Birds (18.56 MB)
• [XB1] Birds of Skyrim (24.27 MB)
• [XB1] Birds And Flocks (454.87 KB)

UNIQUE ITEMS ADDED TO LOCATIONS

• Royal Armory - New Artifacts SE XB1 Edition (3.22 MB)
  • Legacy of the Dragonborn / Royal Armory Patch (32.02 KB)
• Books Books Books [XB1] (1.08 MB)
  • LOTD / Books Books Books Patch (21.03 KB)

QUESTS

• The Forgotten City [XB1] (133.44 MB)
  • LOTD - The Forgotten City Patch (308.05 KB)
• Moonpath to Elsweyr SSE (111.37 MB)
  • LOTD / Moonpath to Elsweyr Patch (5.42 MB)
• Moon and Star - XB1 (66.61 MB)
  • Moon and Star: Immersion Patch - XB1 (109.49 KB)
  • Legacy of the Dragonborn / Moon and Star Patch (9.06 MB)
• Konahrik's Accoutrements [XB1] (90.79 MB)
  • Legacy of the Dragonborn / Konahrik's Accoutrements Patch (617.49 KB)
• Glamoril - The Maze of Labyrinthian (146.32 MB)
  • LOTD / Glamoril - The Maze Of Labyrinthian Patch (996 Bytes)
• Skyrim Sewers Bundle (32.49 MB)
  • LOTD - Skyrim Sewers Patch (9.87 MB)
• Faction: Pit Fighter (30.38 MB)

MAP

• A Clear Map Of Skyrim And Other Worlds - No Roads & No Clouds Edition (9.52 MB)

BOTTOM LOAD ORDER

• Command Your FoV (6.5 KB)
• Alternate Start - Live Another Life (9.23 MB)
  • Even Better Quest Objectives - Alternate Start - Live Another Life Patch [XB1] (9.53 KB)
  • Relic Hunter- Guildmaster Start (LOTD Alternate Start Option) (8.66 MB)
• Relationship Dialogue Overhaul - RDO [XB1] (113.81 MB)
  • RDO - AFT Patch [XB1] (174.13 KB)
  • RDO - CRF + USSEP Patch [XB1] (7 KB)

INSTALLATION

First, you have to uninstall everything and clear the cache. Here is how you do it.
Press the Xbox Home Button and navigate to My Games & Apps > See All > Games. Press the settings menu on Skyrim and navigate to Manage Game and Add-Ons > Saved Data > Reserved Space and erase it.
Now physically press and hold the Xbox console power button until it completely shuts down, unplug the power cable, and wait a whole minute. This clears the console's cache and ensures mods are deleted properly and ghost space does not exist.
Using your computer or mobile device go to the main Bethesda website, remove everything from the Library and Bookmarks, and then add everything from this mod list.
Go back to the game and open Creations, wait for everything to load properly, ensure all the Anniversary Edition content is downloaded, press the settings button, and click Download all Creations in my Library. This will download all the mods one by one. Make a cup of coffee. Once the download is done, organize the load order according to this post.
!!! IMPORTANT !!!
When you start a new save, stay inside the prison room until you configure all the mods to prevent conflicts. I suggest creating a hard save for each race inside the prison room once you finish configuring, to avoid wasting time doing it all over again.

KNOWN ISSUES

If you have any questions, I highly recommend visiting the Discord server Vaults of Ysgramor.

• Konahrik's Accoutrements:
  
  • When fighting the dragon priests they appear purple due to lack of textures. The Legacy of the Dragonborn / Konahrik's Accoutrements Patch causes the issue. The only workaround I can think of is disabling the patch when you start a new save and enabling it only after you finish everything that has to do with Konahrik's Accoutrements.
• Sewers of Skyrim:
  
  • You need to disable LOTD - Skyrim Sewers Patch for the Steel Dragon Claw to appear in the sewers of Solitude. You can re-enable it when you pick up the dragon claw.
• Hearthfire:
  
  • When building in Windstad Manor, everything instead appeared in Lakeview Manor. This might be caused by a mod that alters the spawn points for these houses. I read online that Birds of Skyrim or the other two might be responsible. I'm checking it out.
• Amazing Follower Tweaks:
  
  • When changing cells the followers sometimes appear naked. You either wait till they come to their senses or unequip and re-equip a single piece of gear. This is most probably caused by toggling the equipment manager.
• Convenient Horses:
  
  • When fast traveling or using "Call Horse" power your previously used horse (not all of them) is also summoned. I'm trying to search the internet for solutions.

I yelled and woke with a start. Sweat dripped down my face. My breathing was hard and desperate. I could have sworn I had just been falling. The stickiness of sleep meddled with the cogs of my mind. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the gloom of my bedroom and I found myself alone, safe and warm. No danger here. My heart rate slowed and I chuckled nervously. Soon all fear had seeped from my mind and all memory of my dream had faded. I rolled out of bed and shivered. Quickly I pulled on a sweater and put on my furry slippers. It was cold in this cabin in the middle of the forest. Although internal plumbing and an electric generator had been added, there was still no central heating. This did not bother me much because I always enjoyed having an excuse to light the fire in the living room. I absolutely loved traditional fireplaces.
​
I was whistling happily in the kitchen, sipping on a glass of cold water as I poured fresh coffee beans into my electric grinder. The sound and smell of coffee being ground always left me feeling content. As my coffee brewed in my French press I cracked two eggs into a bowel and began to whisk. Fifteen minutes later I carried a steaming hot cheese omelet and large mug of coffee out onto my front veranda. I stood in the open doorway, surveying the beauty of the outdoors in the early morning light. The air was cold and fresh; pregnant with complex mixtures of pine and lavender scents. I looked up to see the sky was a deep blue and devoid of all clouds. The thin, dark silhouettes of the trees that surrounded the cabin stood silent and ominous in the soft half-light of the morning. White coats of frost sparkled and melted on the grass as the sun climbed and brightened. I could hear the distant sound of the stream and the call of morning birds.
​
I sighed deeply with satisfaction and sat down on my wooden chair. This is what I loved more than anything. More than the city that bustles and bursts with busy human lives. More than squeezing myself between strangers on the underground train. More than the sickening smell of the streets and the soulless lack of any natural sounds. In the city there were no crickets, no owls, no frogs. Out here there was an abundance of beauty. The trees were so patient and still. So very different from the rushed, ill-mannered commuters I had as my usual morning partners. I definitely preferred the trees. I took another deep breath. I blew on the steam that rose from my coffee mug and sipped cautiously. The coffee was rich and delicious and scalding hot. Perfect. I began to eat my omelet letting the serenity of nature continue to wash over me. My mood had not been so elated for many months and I was seriously thinking that I should move here full-time. Currently I was working as an English teacher and had decided to come out here to work on my novel and take a break from the city. From my life. Once my excellent breakfast was complete I walked back inside and decided to start a fire to warm up the cabin. As I stooped to check the small wicker basket near the fireplace, that should contain the dried firewood, my eyebrow arched when I found the basket empty. Huh? I could have sworn it was half-full yesterday. Puzzled but not at all alarmed I picked up the basket. Soon I put on my large, worn black coat and made my way outside.
​
The frosted ground crunched under my large leather boots as I waded through the woods. Finding dry branches for the fire would be fairly difficult at this time of day as most of the ground was damp by now. However, my plan was just to dry them out in the oven before I used them. After spending a few minutes stooping to inspect sticks of various sizes and dampness I finally filled the basket. “Ok, time to go home.” I muttered eagerly as I rubbed my hands together. The air was still cold enough to make my breath visible and I rubbed my hands together. Suddenly I stopped. My eyebrows furrowed. I did not recognize where I was. But how? I had been exploring the woods for days now and not one time had I gotten lost.
​
My eyes darted back and forth and my head swiveled in confusion. Very soon a creeping panic began to climb from my stomach up into my lungs. My heart began to thump loudly. I looked up at the sun, the voice of my old man ringing in my mind, “Learn to navigate by the stars and sun and you’ll never lose your way”. I smiled, remembering his warm eyes and loud laughter. I missed him. I closed my eyes, concentrating. “Ok, that must be East, so that means I should walk…” I stretched out my arm and hand, index finger pointed. I turned on my heel. “North. That way.”
​
After a few moments I found my path blocked by a sudden sheer drop. I was facing an enormous quarry. My face blanched. “What… where the hell did this come from?” Again, panic seeped into my blood. “There aren’t any bloody quarries around here!” I moved forward to peek over the edge and peered down. The drop must be at least fifteen meters! I looked from left to right and saw no stairs or bridges. How the hell was I supposed to get across? My confusion grew and grew. Suddenly I froze. There, lying at the very bottom of the quarry, just near the cliff’s bottom, was a mangled body. The light in the sky was still too young to properly illuminate the quarry’s depths, but I could tell it was a body! My eyes bulged and my mouth opened wide with astonishment. “Jesus! Hello? Are you okay down there?” I yelled. Nothing but cold silence pressed against my ears. Suddenly I noticed a path that I had not seen before. It started to my right and wound down the slope before me. Quickly I started hurrying down towards the person; maybe I could still help? Soon I was at the bottom and I ran up to the body that lay still on the ground. As I got closer and the sun grew brighter I stopped dead. The body that lay crumpled at my feet was – me. “No way. There is just absolutely no way!” I shouted. I trembled as I took a step backward. My foot slipped on a large stone and I felt myself begin to fall to the ground.
​
Suddenly I yelped and my legs kicked out. I blinked in the sudden darkness and found myself on my sofa in the cabin’s living room. “What the hell? It was just a dream?” I said out loud as I sat up. I felt the softness of the couch cushions beneath me, I could smell the citrus scents leftover from the wash I’d given them recently. I stood up, my breathing still fast. The large windows showed a stormy afternoon. Rain pelted the glass heavily and the wind howled loudly. “What the hell? It was just a dream?” I repeated. I checked my watch. It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. I raked my brain, trying to figure out what was happening. But the details of my dream were fading. “I was in the forest looking for firewood. Then I found that body in that quarry.” It had been so real. I felt quite disoriented. Was I truly awake now? Or still asleep? And that body? What had been so terrible about it? The dream had already seeped away. I couldn’t remember.
​
Still confused I made my way quickly towards the front door. Just as I opened it there was a deafening peal of thunder and a bright fork of lightning lit up the darkling sky. My mouth dropped open. There, just beyond the veranda, as if it had always been there, was the quarry. That cliff! I closed my mouth. “But… how…” Ignoring the icy rain, I walked towards the edge and once again peeked over. In the cold light of another flash of lightening and rumble of thunder, I saw my own body twisted and broken on the ground below. I gasped. My mind reeled. My heart fluttered. “What is going on?” I yelled looking around for some sort of explanation. When I looked back down again my face turned white. The body, my body, was gone. Suddenly I felt the eyes of a stranger on my back. A feeling of dread crept up my spine. A twig snapped. I spun around.
​
I stood face to face with my shadow. But he did not look like me. Not exactly. Darkness coated his body like a skintight suit and I could not tell what he was wearing. He may have even been naked for all I know. I could see most of his face and hair, but his eyes were cloaked entirely in semi-circles of shadow which fell below each of his brows. He seemed utterly unconcerned about the storm. “You poor thing. You poor, wretched thing.” When he spoke, his voice was not mine. It was deep and commanding, yet gentle. His words came out slow and calm, almost lulling, “I caught you as you fell. You have made a half-choice. You can be at peace forever. But you must choose now.” He stretched out a tenebrous hand and pointed toward the edge of the cliff. Suddenly I noticed something new appear in his hands. It was a book. It was my book. The one I had been writing. Had I already finished it? Or had I just started?
​
He turned to one of the middle pages and read, “‘Life is the antithesis of peace. Death is the antithesis of suffering.’” He snapped the book closed and turned again to face me, “How trite. Yet, so often the plainest truths are. All you want is peace, is it not? You are right in thinking that life can never provide this.” A cold smile curled his lips. “Even the living forests you so admire are crawling with suffering and conflict. Even the trees that appear so peaceful, so still, are wordlessly fighting each other for light. Racing against each other to claim their own space. It is the nature of the living to struggle.” Confusion fought with terror in my mind. I stammered. “I…I don’t understand. What is this place? Who are you?” Suddenly the man robed in darkness leapt at me and clasped my wrist, “You know who I am”. Small crimson lights flared to life like ignes fatui in the depths of his sockets. He began to pull me towards the edge. “No! Wait!” I shouted, digging my heels into the wet grass. But he was too strong. He snarled, “Isn’t this what you wanted?” and before I could stop myself I was crying from desperation. Then with a strength that could not be human he lifted me above his head, and threw me over the side of the quarry. Lightning flashed as the air rushed through my hair. I screamed as I plummeted to my death.
​
I yelled and woke with a start. I heard the soft beeping of monitors. I felt the scratchy linens of a hospital bed beneath me. Pain followed swiftly and exploded through my limbs. My voice was croaky and dry as I spoke, “Where…what the hell…what happened?” A nurse rushed to my side. “It’s alright love, you’ve ‘ad a bit of a tumble. Doctor’s got you all sorted. Just rest now”. Her voice was warm and comforting, like a cup of tea.
​
My memory returned to me slowly. My family did not own any cabin in the forest. The day of the accident I had been jogging in the woods and took my usual route near the abandoned quarry. I remember exactly what had happened. For a long time, I have been overwhelmed with my work and underwhelmed with my life. I wanted nothing more than to finish my novel and bail on all my teaching responsibilities. My father had also recently died after a long and horrible fight with cancer and it was the first time I realized that at my age life stops providing and starts taking. I realized that soon all those things, all those people, I could once rely on were not going to last forever. An invisible fire was lit in my flesh and I felt my time was rapidly running out.
​
I jogged far, leaving the city limits. As I stood at the edge of that quarry, panting, my sadness hanging on me heavily, I had, for a moment, contemplated jumping. I had thought about it often before. As I stared down, I imagined my broken body at the bottom of the cliff. Then, like in all my low moments, I let the cold inhumanness of the universe fill me up.
​
With my eyes closed all I could hear was my mother crying over my father’s corpse. All I could hear were the endless calls from the funeral home asking for their money. All the constant knocking of debt collectors on our door. All I could see were the endless medical bills flooding the postbox. All I felt was loneliness. A horrible, unrelenting, unsolvable loneliness. I had no great love, no amazing career, and my writing would never be good enough to publish. All I could feel was the gaping hole my father had left behind. It hurt. For just a moment I convinced myself I did not belong here anymore. My lips trembled. I walked right up to the edge. I felt my sadness swell in my chest. I clenched my fists tightly. I imagined taking a single step forward. It would be so easy. I imagined the air rushing past me. Falling to my doom. I imagined the horrible pain of the impact. But I also imagined the peace that would come after. A peace I craved. I imagined a picturesque cabin in the woods. A beautiful fireplace. A shelter from the city. A place where I could rest. It was in that moment of contemplative despair, before I could fully commit to the act, that the old unstable ground of the quarry crumbled beneath my feet and I had slipped from the edge and fell. Only the shadows were there to catch me.
​
Recovery was slow. My mother and sister came to visit me multiple times and made the stay at the hospital bearable. How many dreams had I had? How much had I awoken and then re-awoken? Could I be sure I was truly awake now? As I pondered this I tried to remember. But all I could recall was that very last dream. Those dark horrible eyes. The terror of that very last fall. In that moment, I had realized what I wanted. Now I felt rejuvenated in a way I had not felt for many years. The exhaustion of my spirit had finally been ameliorated. I actually looked forward to getting out of bed. I actually wanted to go to school again. My passion for teaching was reignited. Soon after my recovery I even managed to get my novel published but did not make much money.
​
Many years have passed since my fall and I’m in my 60s now and retired and have never married. I now know that those dreams were not just dreams. That phantom I confronted has remained with me. Whenever the stresses of life pile up and I become fatigued, he comes to me. He still waits for me. He is real. I see his eyes covered in shadow. Tiny pinpricks of red-light flicker therein. At first, I only saw him rarely; glimpses in dreams. As time went on and I grew older and weary of the world once more I began to see him in the corner of my room every night. What’s worse was that in those moments when I feel the lowest I find myself craving the solitude of that cabin. The peace it brought with it. All this I craved despite the price.
​
Last week I attended my mother’s funeral. It was a small affair, most of her friends having died many years before. I saw my sister there with her husband and children. They are so happy and full of life. I feel a pang of jealousy but also relief. My life was always to be a solitary one. My sister and I cried during the service. When we chatted later we tried in vain to comfort each other. It was then I began to mention the strange man I’d been seeing. But my voice died in my throat as I looked up.
He was there with us at lunch, standing behind me. I saw him in the mirror. My sister saw him too. She yelled, leapt out of her seat and fell to the ground when she saw him. “Oh my God, what the hell is that?” she screamed. Then, just as swiftly as shadows retreat from light, he was gone. “But how? What was? Who was that?” she asked loudly, eyes wide, the other people attending the restaurant had stopped eating to watch us, obviously confused. My sister was pale and I stood to help her to her feet, “Now do you believe me?” Lunch ended there.
​
Flustered and disturbed we returned home. I returned alone to my home in London while my sister returned home with her husband and children to Edinburgh. She seemed a lot less shaken up once she’d met with them at the station. I wonder if she’ll tell them what she saw?
​
Since the funeral I see him constantly now. Often his shadow-hidden hand stretches out and he holds a revolver. But he does not mean to shoot me. No. He holds the revolver’s ivory handle toward me. Sometimes he holds out a hangman’s noose. Sometimes it’s a long, ornate dagger. Most recently he holds out a canister of helium gas. And a plastic bag for my head. Each time he does this I resist him. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I even yell at him to leave. His face remains dark, stony and enigmatic.
​
None of this would scare me quite so much if I had not just realized one terrible detail. What turns my blood to ice from fear is that every time I see him he is infinitesimally closer. How had I not noticed before? Perhaps it was a kindness. Gooseflesh runs down my neck as I see him standing insidiously in my cold bedroom. He is near the edge of my bed now. He is patient and has respected my choice so far. Nevertheless, he holds out that same revolver. That same noose. That same dagger. I tremble with fright because I know I will not be able to resist him much longer. Perhaps soon I’ll know if this was all a dream too.

Mainlander אסטרוט
Fear found me for the first time in a while as I clung to the steel railing of the ferry, so aptly named the Calm Waters. The spray from the choppy ocean covered my face as I tried to hold in the last remnants of my lunch inside my ever-expanding stomach. The skipper, or ferryman, had assured me that the ride from the mainland would be short and easy-going, but that was before the wind picked up and hammered the side of the small, barely seaworthy vessel, knocking it to and fro with God's tempestuous will. The rocky outline of the shore, only a hundred paces away, gave me a sick reminder of the danger I faced and my inability to control the elements.
The unyielding rocks of the shoreline formed what, at first sight, appeared to be an island with an empty and bleak coastline, a barren landscape with an equally empty disposition to the world, as if calling to no one and expecting no one to arrive. If you stayed around long enough, into the month when the waters around the island receded, you would see an impassable bridge of stone connecting Dent Island to the mainland. The only way to Dent was via ship and only during certain times of the year when the water was high enough to cross over the bridge and into a secluded bay, hidden from the terrors of society. Protected by the elements, it was a perfect place to waste away and never return.
"Mr. Lewis," the skipper of the ferry called down to me over the spray and concussion of the ocean as we fought our way through tight channels of pointed and toothy rocks hiding just below the rolling waves like enemies waiting for the opportune moment to strike.
"I expect us to land within a few minutes or so. Get away from the railing before you end up overboard," the grizzled and dirty skipper of the Calm Waters called out to my back as I lay over the rusted steel railing of the ferry, praying for relief as I stared deeply into the deep blue and green of the waters parting for the hull of our ship, almost as if they were guiding us towards safety with their tumultuous movement.
As I didn't answer, the captain left me to my own devices. Boats, even at the calmest of times, made me seasick, reminding me of the war and the sickness reminding me of my father and his drinking. My father used to have a glass of brandy after a long day, not a large one, but also not a small one. It was his ritual, and to him, it was the small moments that made him feel alive. For me, it was the results, the feeling of completion. My time in the army had taught me everything my father had forgotten.
Things such as drinking, gambling, and even the odd cigar disagreed with me. When I was a young man, I discovered that these things did very little for me, while others around me flocked to them with the passion of those who are demented. An empty existence is found in such vices. A pure life is the only way to happiness.
The ferry fell off a large swell of water, and I felt my stomach convulse and surrender the last of my lunch to the churning swell of the ocean below. I wiped my mouth, straightened my jacket and tie, then turned back towards the skipper and the seat I had purchased to cross to Dent Island only a short time ago. I gripped the small metal bench with both hands and stared out over the horizon.
The town of Dent came into steady, if unreliable, view. From my research, this island was as treacherous as they come. Its coastline was dotted with ship sinkers that hid below the writhing water, and only the most experienced or most foolhardy captains dared to traverse its waters.
I wondered which type I was as I watched the captain hoot and holler as he spun the wheel of his barge in time with the waves. Truly an individual, I thought, as I closed my eyes and thought of the Valkyries of the ancients, unafraid and stalwart as they forged onward for Odin, earning their place among his trusted in Valhalla.
The town of Dent sat squat on the landscape, but at least it had some structure. Solid ground would be agreeable to me, no matter the desolation of its contents or its inhabitants.
The ferry came in to dock just as the rain hit. It came in a curtain of fury that shocked me as it pierced through my clothes, soaking me through.
No one greeted us in the rain at the dock, and when we bumped into shore, I jumped to the dock and secured our mooring line with a simple knot. The skipper joined me and pointed with his gnarled, brown finger to a large building at the far end of town.
"I will be back in two weeks, Mr. Lewis. I won't be able to return until then, when the water is high enough for me to cross," the skipper said as he took the wad of bills I handed him.
"I shall await your return with the vigor of a younger man," I said through the rain.
I grabbed my duffel and headed inland, already feeling better on the solid ground of Dent. The village of Dent was held together by a small goat fence and only contained two or so dozen shacks with fishing supplies covering their yards. The rain vanished as quickly as it came, leaving me with a wet disposition and a sour feeling in my stomach.
Now that the rain had come to ruin my already depraved mood, I noticed the town of Dent had a strange odor about it: fish, dung, and what I could only hope was cows and not the people of Dent.
I examined this tiny, insignificant village as if it were a particularly disgusting thing I found on the bottom of my boot, and had the displeasure of scraping off with a rock or stick, all the while cursing my bad luck for stepping into it without looking.
Looking at Dent, I surmised their main dish would be fish, which was my least favorite food. The smell, the taste—I would have to find a decent place with supplies, as I brought some supplies but not enough for two weeks. I needed to find the Manor and get to work. The sooner I accomplish what I was paid for, the sooner I can return to civilization and enjoy a nice steak at the Humidor's Club. A hotel with a pool would make my night right about now, but I resolved to head to the building on the hill the skipper had pointed to. It was the only building in the village that looked as though it held more than one room, shaped in an interesting way, almost like a barn. It held an ember light that shone through the cracks of the closed windows and door. As I approached the building, I heard the dull din of many conversations overlapping each other. I shouldered my duffel and went in.
The doors opened into a loud room full of shoddy wooden tables and chairs that looked on the verge of collapse, and from what I could see, so did the residents of the chairs. I felt like a ghastly figure standing in the doorway, dressed all in black.
"Mainlander," a few of the people muttered as I held my kerchief up to my nose in a polite way of avoiding the initial wave of the room's smell. Everyone in the room was filthy, and they smelled of fish. I was not particularly fond of dirt and grime, so I carefully picked my way through the room, avoiding people's stares. I'm sure I was quite the oddity, as I wore only the newest styles from the mainland, and my current outfit, even if wet, was finely cut and dyed a deep black. My shirt was formal white, and my tie was the pièce de résistance, a slightly darker black than ever seen before. This piece was dyed for days, allowing it to almost shine with black.
I approached the bar and used my kerchief to dust off one of the grimy stools, but then decided against sitting and used my boot to push the dingy item to the left while I filled in on the right.
An ancient-looking man, who reeked of beer and fish, actually slept face down on the bar in a puddle of what I could only assume was spilled ale.
"What's your drink, governor?" the barkeep said as he cleaned a filthy glass with an even filthier rag. The man seemed to be examining me and my slicked-back hair and proper manners as if I were a disgusting parasite who had hopped onto his bar, but he would still probably serve.
"Nothing for me tonight; I simply ask for directions," I stated over the chatter in the room, having to strain my voice to be heard.
"Directions to where? You're in the only place 'round here that matters, at least," the barkeep said as he set the glass down on the bar.
"I'm looking for Mistwood Manor; I hear it's somewhere near here," I said, raising my voice again.
The room fell silent behind me, and even the man who was sleeping on the bar sat up and looked around wildly before toppling backward off his stool, where he promptly slipped back into unconsciousness. His limp hand landed on my boot, and I moved slightly out of the way, thinking about how I had to get new boots now that these were soiled.
The room was deathly silent, and I wondered what had happened. Everyone was staring at me in a shocked manner, as if I had just told them all I was the king of the new world.
"I have a writ here from the mainland, from my benefactor. My name is Mr. Jack Lewis; I've come to deal with the property for the recent purchaser, to document the need for repairs and refurbishment. I expect to be in town for a few weeks; I humbly ask for your cooperation," I said, knowing my role and the way to sway a room quite expertly.
To my surprise, the room stayed quiet. No one said a word, and many people started returning to conversation, which I considered for a moment to be quite odd and untoward of them.
I turned back to the bar and the barkeep and said to him, "Maybe I will have to order something. I'd take milk if you have it."
The barkeep grunted slightly at me and pulled a pitcher from under the bar. My eyes bulged as I noticed the milk hadn't been kept cool, more than likely spoiled. I reached my hand out to block the barkeep from filling the glass, but he snatched it up and poured a fair measure of it into the dirty glass he had been cleaning.
"Ah, cheers then," I said dumbly as I grabbed the glass but didn't drink out of it. Why had I ordered this? It's disgustingly unhygienic, and I won't abide by it. It may touch my hand, but not my lips. My stomach and body would be tainted by the foul liquid. I had some clean water and rations in my bag; now I just needed to leave.
"I can give you directions there, Mr. Fancy," a voice said behind me, giving me an excuse to put a dollar down beside the milk and turn to the person speaking.
It was a man with a large, red bushy beard. Foam from his beer still stained his beard, but he looked hardened. He looked like a man who wasn't afraid of business or throwing a punch.
"I'll give you directions, directions off this island, and trust me, it would be doing you a favor. None of us go near the manor; word is it's unnatural. They say that the dead are seen within its walls, and you best not tread there, or the gates of hell will open up to swallow you down," the ginger-bearded man said with a straight face.
"Is this some kind of joke? A ghost story? If you would please just tell me how to get to Mistwood Manor, I would be much obliged," I said, trying to steer the conversation towards something more civil, grounded in reality, and not in small-town superstition.
"Mainlander," some of the people muttered as I spoke. None met my eye but the ginger-bearded man.
"You know not what you seek, but I won't stop you, mainlander. There is a trail behind here. Follow it, and it will take you to the Manor. You'll know by the large wrought iron gate. Don't say I didn't warn you."
I left the bar without another word or thought to anyone, leaving the milk glass full in my haste, but I paid no heed. These people were satanic bigots. The further away from these superstitious fisherfolk, the better.
I found the trail the man had spoken of and hefted my duffel bag onto my back. To my luck, the trail sloped downwards, and my feet flew down the trail without much effort. As I walked, the trees gave way to empty fields of grass, almost as if the world had ended its painting at the tree line and instead gave birth to a more empty and dinghy kind of life. After a slight turn around a hillock, a large manor came into view, bars of iron enclosing the property, some bent or missing completely. A small stone fence lay before it but had fallen to disarray, pieces strewn to and fro in my path.
A large iron gate, bent inward slightly by something, lay connecting the road to Mistwood Manor. A small mailbox made of painted redwood lay just outside the gate. The true prize was what lay beyond. Mistwood Manor was spectacular, a large modern mansion with beautiful stonework, a beautiful cobblestone road leading up to the front door of the house. On the main floor, the manor had large arching windows covered with wooden shutters, locked tight as if keeping the beauty of the world inside where none could reach it. The house was dark brown with black accents, the stonework and pillars all made of the same black stone. Truly masterful work, as the entrance to the building portrayed what looked like a demon's mouth, sharp stone spikes encircling it in a majestic way.
Although the place had been abandoned for years, it was still in good repair, almost shockingly so considering the area was known for storms and such. As I examined the windows, I dug in my pocket for the key to the building. My employer had made sure that I had the key before leaving; it was the only way into the house.
I approached the door to Mistwood Manor and stuck the key in the hole. It seemed to stick ever so slightly as I went to turn it, and I removed the key before trying again.
No luck. I bent down to examine the keyhole and could see the light shining through into a dark room with a white tiled floor.
I stood and jingled the key around the lock while pushing on the door. With a sudden pop, the door opened, and I went spilling into the manor.
I stumbled into the foyer of Mistwood Manor, catching myself before falling completely to the ground. The air inside was stale, carrying a musty odor that hinted at years of neglect. Dust particles danced in the dim light that filtered through the boarded-up windows. Despite the dilapidated state of the entrance, the grandeur of the mansion's interior was evident.
The foyer stretched out before me, adorned with intricately carved wooden furniture covered in dust sheets. A grand staircase curved gracefully to the upper floors, its banister polished to a dull sheen by the passage of time. Paintings adorned the walls, their once vibrant colors now faded and peeling.
I took a moment to collect myself, my eyes scanning the room for any signs of life or movement. Satisfied that I was alone, I retrieved a flashlight from my duffel bag and switched it on, casting a beam of light into the darkness.
With cautious steps, I began to explore the manor, each creak of the floorboards echoing through the empty halls. Rooms lay dormant, their furnishings covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. It was clear that no one had set foot in Mistwood Manor for quite some time.
As I ventured deeper into the mansion, the atmosphere grew increasingly oppressive. Shadows danced on the walls, playing tricks on my mind and causing my heart to race. Despite my rational nature, I couldn't shake the feeling of unease that permeated the air.
Eventually, I reached what appeared to be the main living quarters of the manor. The rooms here were more lavish than those below, with ornate furnishings and elaborate decorations. Yet, even amidst the opulence, there was an undeniable sense of decay.
I made my way to the master bedroom, the door groaning in protest as I pushed it open. Inside, the room was shrouded in darkness, the only illumination coming from the faint moonlight filtering through the curtains.
I felt as though this room exuded the darkest of energies. It was well past dark, and I needed to find a suitable room for the night. I closed the door to the master bedroom with a click, allowing the room to sink back into the isolation it craved.
I retreated through the house to the bottom floor. As I made my way down the main staircase, the boards creaked in protest and seemed to flex under my feet. I made a mental note for replacement and inspection.
Towards the back of the house, around the staircase, I found what looked like a servant's kitchen. The furniture and supplies, covered in layers of dust, still looked well-maintained, albeit simple in design. A large ornate door led out the back, but I opted for a smaller wooden door that led into a modest sleeping quarters with two small beds and a solid-looking fireplace. I placed my duffel on the bed farthest from the door and began vigorously removing all dirt and dust from the room. In one corner, I found a broom and duster, which I put to good use. I had to exit through the back door to unlock the wooden shutters of the kitchen and my new sleeping quarters. The old wood reacted stiffly, as if disturbed from its long hibernation, but submitted as I secured them against the hooks set in the stonework of the house.
I managed to open both windows easily and began dusting and sweeping all the dirt and grime out of the two rooms. After a few hours of sweaty work, I was satisfied with the portion of the house I had claimed and the cleanliness of that area.
I tried to turn the tap to use some water to wash off some plates and cups for myself to use while here, but the pipes only groaned and banged like a ghost locked in chains below. Not a drop fell from the tap, and I sighed in frustration. The stove was a simple wood-burning one, but I decided to leave such attempts for the morning. I left the kitchen window open but retreated to my new room and closed the door with a click; the latch fell into place, and I made myself busy removing the items from my duffel. I had enough clean drinking water and food for about three days, maybe four if I stretched it. I also had some fresh batteries for my flashlight, a pack of matches, a few fresh articles of clothing, and my notebook in which I would record my findings of the house. Mistwood Manor had electricity, and I could see the switches on the walls, but none of them actually worked. I wondered if the old building ran on a generator.
As I lay down in the bed closest to the open window and turned my flashlight off, a clock somewhere in the house chimed ten times. I checked my own watch and found the clock off by almost one minute. Odd, but I pushed it from my mind and settled down to sleep after a long day.
I fell asleep rather quickly, which was odd for me. I always had trouble sleeping in strange or unfamiliar places. Tonight, however, as if the manor sang me the quietest of melodies, I fell into a deep, deep sleep.
I woke quite suddenly, thinking someone was beside me. My eyes opened, and I forgot where I was for a moment. No light shone through the window now, and my room had been plunged into semi-darkness. In the corner by the door and fireplace, my heart dropped as I saw someone standing, enveloped in shadows. My hands trembled as I reached for my forgotten flashlight on the bedside table. I fumbled with the light, and it dropped to the floor before I grabbed it and shone the beam into the offending corner. I jumped as the beam lit up the room, revealing that I was quite alone. Nothing was in the corner; it was bare and empty, just stone and mortar.
As I swept the beam around the room, a sound made me jump in panic. Footsteps echoed above me, seeming to move across the squealing wooden floorboards. I kept the beam trained upwards, my hands shaking, making the light jump around the room as another of the boards creaked in protest. A small hole in the floor caught my eye, and I shone the beam into it while standing on the spare bed in the room. The ceiling was low, and I was able to stick my eye right up to the hole. The room above was filled with empty shadows that flickered as my flashlight shone through the gaps in the wood.
I removed my eye from the hole, chalking it up to an old house that was just settling. I'm not sure if I believed it or not, but I went and sat on my bed, wrapping myself in the thin blanket. I kept an eye on the hole in the floor, with my back leaning against the stone.
A small creak sounded directly above me, and I flicked the light to the spot. Something was directly above me; I could see the shadow it cast through the cracks. There was no way that this was the house; there must be some squatter living in the top part of the house.
My eyes jumped back to the hole, and my heart stopped for a few beats as a single red-rimmed eye glanced back at me for a moment before disappearing.
"Aha," I yelled to the floor as the creaking above resumed, as if they were running.
The sounds moved from the room into the kitchen, and I tore the door open, following the footsteps into the main hall. I ran as fast as I could to the bottom of the stairs, but the creaking wood changed direction before I got there. I shone the beam from my flashlight up the stairs and dashed up the regal wooden staircase. The weak boards groaned and flexed as I made my way, but held firm as I dashed up the stairs, preparing to evict whoever had moved into this property. My army training took over, and my initial fear disappeared; this was nothing supernatural, but something much more mundane: a tramp or thief who had taken refuge in my boss's newest purchase, a target to be removed.
As I made my way into the lavish living quarters at the back of the house, a door slammed forcefully, making the house echo and shudder. I now had the intruder cornered; the only way he could escape now was if he jumped from the upper-story windows.
As I made my way down the hallways, decorated with thick carpets and antique side tables, I saw the door. It was like a warm invitation, golden and regal, looking like the bedroom of someone quite fond of themselves. As I approached the door, in the shadows of an alcove, a loud grandfather clock donged in my ear twelve times. I almost dropped my flashlight but kept steady.
"Burst my bloody eardrums," I thought as I tried the handle to the door.
Locked, of course. No force or luck would get me through this door. I had left the house key in my room; it was worth a try to open this door. I made my way back to my room through a series of hallways that confused me; they seemed to keep moving around. I swore that the stairs were through a certain direction, but maybe I had been panicked. As I descended the stairs, they groaned in protest. The seventh stair down cracked slightly as my foot touched it, and I made a mental note to skip that one from now on.
I made it to my room to retrieve the house key and searched in my duffel for the last item I had packed and didn't think I would need.
My M1911 pistol from my days in the army felt good in my shaking hands. Never before had I used this outside of active duty, but tonight it seemed like a sound idea. I made my way through the kitchen when I heard it again, the floor above me creaking loudly. I took off through the kitchen, crashing through the door to the stairs. In moments, I was at the bottom of the stairs; in a rush, I made my way up the stairs, making sure to skip the seventh. As my boot landed on the eighth stair, it cracked loudly. I stumbled, and my 1911 and the key fell from my hands. They both tumbled down the stairs, and my legs were trapped. I could feel empty space below as I kicked and tried my best to pull myself up and out of danger.
My chest kept slipping through the hole I had made in my haste, and I clung desperately to the ninth stair. In my horror, I heard the floorboards once again, this time moving towards me, coming down the hall slowly, emerging from the deadly darkness that now plagued me. My flashlight had fallen down the hole when I first fell, and my eyes slowly adjusted to the suffocating darkness.
"Hello?" I called out into the air, but the footsteps never paused, never faltered; it sounded like the hooves of Satan as he marched down the hall. Boom! They crashed louder and louder. I could hear glass breaking and wood splintering; something came flying from the dark and went crashing over the bannister to the floor below. Just as the noise peaked, and I watched in panic as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the sounds stopped just as they reached the junction between myself and the hallway.
All I could hear was my own breathing, my heartbeat thudding away as I tried to understand what was going on. I was surely losing my mind.
"Relax, Jack, this is all in your head," I thought to myself as I began slowly pulling myself free from the stairs. I managed to wiggle free a small amount thanks to the sturdiness of the ninth stair. A loud creak sounded on the stairs above me; with a shocked look, I glanced upwards, but nothing was there. Then the next stair creaked, and I could see dimly through the darkness that it bent as if a great weight was upon it.
Creak went the next stair, and the next, as I struggled to pull myself free. In a surge of adrenaline, I managed to pull myself to my feet, but now I stood in front of whatever invisible entity stood in front of me.
The creaking stopped, and I felt out with my hand as if trying to feel something that wasn't there.
"GET OUT!" A demonic voice screamed in my ear, and for a moment, I saw a ghastly visage of a woman covered in blood and wearing a large white dress with dead, decaying flowers in one hand. Her face was pressed so close to mine I stepped backward in habit when my foot found nothing but air. I fell backward, and my back met the rest of the wooden stairs; the sudden impact broke them all, and I fell through into the darkness. My back slammed again into a wooden platform, and I crashed hard against the final stone flooring of a cellar. My vision went dark as my head thumped callously against the stone, and I slipped into nothingness.
Chapter 2
Darkness enveloped me, a void unlike any other I'd known. It lacked reason and feeling, an abyss that consumed all. To exist here, in this darkness, felt like fear itself had manifested to block my very being, completing the world in its own twisted emptiness, filled with despair and destruction. It was as if my soul had abandoned my body, leaving behind a trembling shell, defiant yet futile.
I awoke in a haze, my eyes functioning but my body refusing to respond. Pain pulsed through my left leg as I was dragged down a dim, filthy hallway. Each jerk sent my head crashing unceremoniously against the ground.
I lay helpless as something dragged me, its form elusive. A hefty man, clad in a stained white shirt, flickered in and out of existence before me. His head bore a festering wound, grotesque yet somehow mortal. Half of his skull caved in, yet he moved and muttered, lost in his own world.
Step, step, shuffle. His feet echoed as I screamed inwardly. My mind screamed commands, but my body remained inert, arms flailing dead above me as I was dragged deeper into the earth. Roots and rocks littered the soil around me, a testament to our descent far below the surface.
"No, Mother, I found this one. He lay dead in the cellar, among the fancy wine barrels and rats," the man muttered to himself, oblivious to my presence.
"Yes, Mother, quickly. Then back to work," he responded to an unseen inquiry, his voice ragged and distant.
Step, step, shuffle. The rhythm of his movements echoed in my mind, a relentless march towards an unknown fate. Firelight danced ahead, casting eerie shadows in the chamber where we arrived. A precipice awaited me, a pile of bones and decayed corpses greeted my gaze below.
As I fell, darkness reclaimed me. Loose dirt cascaded down, suffocating me, covering me completly in fractions of a minute it ignited a panic unlike any other. I fought against the encroaching darkness, but it was futile. My lungs burned, craving air, while the edges of my vision dimmed, tempting me with warmth and oblivion.
"Don't give up," a child's voice whispered behind me, a fleeting reminder of hope.
With a surge of strength, I clawed through the earth, gasping for air as I broke the surface. Horror seized me as my fingers brushed against decaying dead bodies i was surrounded by death in a burial pit.
In an instant, the firelight vanished, leaving me in total darkness. Fear gripped me anew, my every move haunted by the touch of cold bones and the stench of decay on me.
With trembling limbs, I pulled myself from the pit, the stench of death clinging to me like a shroud. I knew I had to cleanse myself of this filth, to rid my body of the grime and decay that threatened to consume me.
The chamber had descended into an impenetrable darkness, devoid of even the faintest glimmer of light. I reached out, feeling for any sign of escape, my fingers finding purchase on rough stone as dirt rained down upon me.
A lump formed on the back of my skull, a painful reminder of the journey I'd endured. Ignoring the pain, I pressed onward, driven by a primal instinct to survive.
My mind raced with thoughts of escape, of fleeing this house of horrors and finding sanctuary in the world above. I traced the walls of the tunnel, searching for a passage, any passage, that would lead me back to the surface.
Step by agonizing step, I moved forward, my injured leg protesting with every movement. The tunnel seemed endless, its walls closing in around me, threatening to crush me beneath their oppressive force.
Memories of my time in the army flooded my mind, reminding me of us moving through the trenches at night, hand on shoulder to the man before us so we could find our way through.
Now, I did very much the same; in my mind, I could feel the men in front of me in the darkness. It gave me a renewed will, and I descended further into the maddening dark.
A cellar greeted me with a small amount of light from the hole above where I had fallen. My weary body examined the gash in the wood of the manor that I had made, and my foot clinked against something metallic and solid.
With joy, I grabbed my flashlight and flicked the switch, illuminating the evil of this manor and providing much-needed solace. I aimed my dented savior around the room and marveled at how something as simple as a light could drive away all my impure thoughts. All the things that I feared mere moments ago were gone.
My beam swept over the exit up a pair of rickety-looking stairs. To my hesitation, I didn't want to trust another set of stairs, but I needed to be free of this place. The tunnel I had come from looked like the gates of hell, like a demon had torn its way free from the earth. Large unnecessary gouges torn at the stone of the cellar like a great hand had reached through to grab an empty vessel such as myself.
In a dusty, cobweb-filled corner, my light shined off something metal. The flickering metal caught my eye, and I dug into the boxes, removing an old silver box with ornamental legs and intricate designs on the lid and side. It was a beautiful piece, and the lid opened easily on unseen hinges.
Inside, resting upon a velvet bed of purple fabric, was a small black book with the letter A embossed on the cover. I slipped it into my pocket and closed the lid. With little ceremony, I dropped the beautiful silver antique into the junk-filled boxes.
When I turned back to the stairs, something in the room was wrong. I couldn't place my finger on it, but something was wrong. My chest felt tight, my mind fuzzy and full of doubt.
Torchlight came from the tunnel, the demon mouth now looked as though it would spew flames into the very room I now stood.
The light was bright now, and I knew the grave digger had returned seeking me. I fled up the wooden stairs two at a time, caution thrown to the wind as I slammed my shoulder into the wooden door. The knob was old and stuck tight.
It wouldn't turn; over my shoulder, the light grew brighter and brighter until it seemed as though the demon itself had come. I heard the step-step shuffle of his gait as he came closer and closer to the end of the tunnel.
Until the light disappeared altogether, it vanished as if nothing was there to begin with. The cellar fell into sad darkness, heavy with woe and emptiness as if devoid of reason.
The door still wouldn't budge, and my flashlight kept a solemn vigil to my back as I worked at loosening the ancient doorway.
That's when I heard it behind me. Step step shuffle, step step shuffle. Moving closer and closer through the room. My flashlight showed me nothing as I glanced around behind me. I almost dropped it in fear as I banged against the cellar door as hard as I could. Throwing my weight into it.
Step step shuffle, then the step of a foot on the wood. A large boot mark burned into the wood leaving it black and smelling of cinder. As the ghostly figure approached closer, I threw myself against the door, praying with all my might for salvation. Step step up the stairs, the invisible grave digger came stalking up behind me.
With one final crash, I slammed through the cellar door. The door frame breaking as I burst from the door into the main floor of Mistwood Manor. I turned and felt something breathing heavily behind me.
A ghostly figure stood a few steps into the cellar, a deep head wound caved in the left half of his face. A grimy blood-stained shovel rested on his shoulder. His other hand reaching out to grab my leg.
I slammed the door in his face unceremoniously and began pushing a large armoire in front of the section of the wall that held the cellar door.
The wooden frame banged and surged with the grave digger's attempts to break through. With luck, the hallway was just small enough for me to place my feet across to the other wall and brace the armoire with all of my strength.
Somewhere in the manor, the grandfather clock chimed six times, very sadly almost as if remiss. Like it was calling to a lost lover that promised it would return.
"6 a.m.," I thought to myself, as the final chime rung.
As if on cue, the rattling behind the door stopped dead. Sunlight began to shine through the shutters on the windows, and I breathed a sigh of relief as the night had officially ended and Mistwood Manor fell silent for the first time in hours.

I yelled and woke with a start. Sweat dripped down my face. My breathing was hard and desperate. I could have sworn I had just been falling. The stickiness of sleep meddled with the cogs of my mind. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the gloom of my bedroom and I found myself alone, safe and warm. No danger here. My heart rate slowed and I chuckled nervously. Soon all fear had seeped from my mind and all memory of my dream had faded. I rolled out of bed and shivered. Quickly I pulled on a sweater and put on my furry slippers. It was cold in this cabin in the middle of the forest. Although internal plumbing and an electric generator had been added, there was still no central heating. This did not bother me much because I always enjoyed having an excuse to light the fire in the living room. I absolutely loved traditional fireplaces.
I was whistling happily in the kitchen, sipping on a glass of cold water as I poured fresh coffee beans into my electric grinder. The sound and smell of coffee being ground always left me feeling content. As my coffee brewed in my French press I cracked two eggs into a bowel and began to whisk. Fifteen minutes later I carried a steaming hot cheese omelet and large mug of coffee out onto my front veranda. I stood in the open doorway, surveying the beauty of the outdoors in the early morning light. The air was cold and fresh; pregnant with complex mixtures of pine and lavender scents. I looked up to see the sky was a deep blue and devoid of all clouds. The thin, dark silhouettes of the trees that surrounded the cabin stood silent and ominous in the soft half-light of the morning. White coats of frost sparkled and melted on the grass as the sun climbed and brightened. I could hear the distant sound of the stream and the call of morning birds.
I sighed deeply with satisfaction and sat down on my wooden chair. This is what I loved more than anything. More than the city that bustles and bursts with busy human lives. More than squeezing myself between strangers on the underground train. More than the sickening smell of the streets and the soulless lack of any natural sounds. In the city there were no crickets, no owls, no frogs. Out here there was an abundance of beauty. The trees were so patient and still. So very different from the rushed, ill-mannered commuters I had as my usual morning partners. I definitely preferred the trees. I took another deep breath. I blew on the steam that rose from my coffee mug and sipped cautiously. The coffee was rich and delicious and scalding hot. Perfect. I began to eat my omelet letting the serenity of nature continue to wash over me. My mood had not been so elated for many months and I was seriously thinking that I should move here full-time. Currently I was working as an English teacher and had decided to come out here to work on my novel and take a break from the city. From my life. Once my excellent breakfast was complete I walked back inside and decided to start a fire to warm up the cabin. As I stooped to check the small wicker basket near the fireplace, that should contain the dried firewood, my eyebrow arched when I found the basket empty. Huh? I could have sworn it was half-full yesterday. Puzzled but not at all alarmed I picked up the basket. Soon I put on my large, worn black coat and made my way outside.
The frosted ground crunched under my large leather boots as I waded through the woods. Finding dry branches for the fire would be fairly difficult at this time of day as most of the ground was damp by now. However, my plan was just to dry them out in the oven before I used them. After spending a few minutes stooping to inspect sticks of various sizes and dampness I finally filled the basket. “Ok, time to go home.” I muttered eagerly as I rubbed my hands together. The air was still cold enough to make my breath visible and I rubbed my hands together. Suddenly I stopped. My eyebrows furrowed. I did not recognize where I was. But how? I had been exploring the woods for days now and not one time had I gotten lost.
My eyes darted back and forth and my head swiveled in confusion. Very soon a creeping panic began to climb from my stomach up into my lungs. My heart began to thump loudly. I looked up at the sun, the voice of my old man ringing in my mind, “Learn to navigate by the stars and sun and you’ll never lose your way”. I smiled, remembering his warm eyes and loud laughter. I missed him. I closed my eyes, concentrating. “Ok, that must be East, so that means I should walk…” I stretched out my arm and hand, index finger pointed. I turned on my heel. “North. That way.”
After a few moments I found my path blocked by a sudden sheer drop. I was facing an enormous quarry. My face blanched. “What… where the hell did this come from?” Again, panic seeped into my blood. “There aren’t any bloody quarries around here!” I moved forward to peek over the edge and peered down. The drop must be at least fifteen meters! I looked from left to right and saw no stairs or bridges. How the hell was I supposed to get across? My confusion grew and grew. Suddenly I froze. There, lying at the very bottom of the quarry, just near the cliff’s bottom, was a mangled body. The light in the sky was still too young to properly illuminate the quarry’s depths, but I could tell it was a body! My eyes bulged and my mouth opened wide with astonishment. “Jesus! Hello? Are you okay down there?” I yelled. Nothing but cold silence pressed against my ears. Suddenly I noticed a path that I had not seen before. It started to my right and wound down the slope before me. Quickly I started hurrying down towards the person; maybe I could still help? Soon I was at the bottom and I ran up to the body that lay still on the ground. As I got closer and the sun grew brighter I stopped dead. The body that lay crumpled at my feet was – me. “No way. There is just absolutely no way!” I shouted. I trembled as I took a step backward. My foot slipped on a large stone and I felt myself begin to fall to the ground.
Suddenly I yelped and my legs kicked out. I blinked in the sudden darkness and found myself on my sofa in the cabin’s living room. “What the hell? It was just a dream?” I said out loud as I sat up. I felt the softness of the couch cushions beneath me, I could smell the citrus scents leftover from the wash I’d given them recently. I stood up, my breathing still fast. The large windows showed a stormy afternoon. Rain pelted the glass heavily and the wind howled loudly. “What the hell? It was just a dream?” I repeated. I checked my watch. It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. I raked my brain, trying to figure out what was happening. But the details of my dream were fading. “I was in the forest looking for firewood. Then I found that body in that quarry.” It had been so real. I felt quite disoriented. Was I truly awake now? Or still asleep? And that body? What had been so terrible about it? The dream had already seeped away. I couldn’t remember.
Still confused I made my way quickly towards the front door. Just as I opened it there was a deafening peal of thunder and a bright fork of lightning lit up the darkling sky. My mouth dropped open. There, just beyond the veranda, as if it had always been there, was the quarry. That cliff! I closed my mouth. “But… how…” Ignoring the icy rain, I walked towards the edge and once again peeked over. In the cold light of another flash of lightening and rumble of thunder, I saw my own body twisted and broken on the ground below. I gasped. My mind reeled. My heart fluttered. “What is going on?” I yelled looking around for some sort of explanation. When I looked back down again my face turned white. The body, my body, was gone. Suddenly I felt the eyes of a stranger on my back. A feeling of dread crept up my spine. A twig snapped. I spun around.
I stood face to face with my shadow. But he did not look like me. Not exactly. Darkness coated his body like a skintight suit and I could not tell what he was wearing. He may have even been naked for all I know. I could see most of his face and hair, but his eyes were cloaked entirely in semi-circles of shadow which fell below each of his brows. He seemed utterly unconcerned about the storm. “You poor thing. You poor, wretched thing.” When he spoke, his voice was not mine. It was deep and commanding, yet gentle. His words came out slow and calm, almost lulling, “I caught you as you fell. You have made a half-choice. You can be at peace forever. But you must choose now.” He stretched out a tenebrous hand and pointed toward the edge of the cliff. Suddenly I noticed something new appear in his hands. It was a book. It was my book. The one I had been writing. Had I already finished it? Or had I just started?
He turned to one of the middle pages and read, “‘Life is the antithesis of peace. Death is the antithesis of suffering.’” He snapped the book closed and turned again to face me, “How trite. Yet, so often the plainest truths are. All you want is peace, is it not? You are right in thinking that life can never provide this.” A cold smile curled his lips. “Even the living forests you so admire are crawling with suffering and conflict. Even the trees that appear so peaceful, so still, are wordlessly fighting each other for light. Racing against each other to claim their own space. It is the nature of the living to struggle.” Confusion fought with terror in my mind. I stammered. “I…I don’t understand. What is this place? Who are you?” Suddenly the man robed in darkness leapt at me and clasped my wrist, “You know who I am”. Small crimson lights flared to life like ignes fatui in the depths of his sockets. He began to pull me towards the edge. “No! Wait!” I shouted, digging my heels into the wet grass. But he was too strong. He snarled, “Isn’t this what you wanted?” and before I could stop myself I was crying from desperation. Then with a strength that could not be human he lifted me above his head, and threw me over the side of the quarry. Lightning flashed as the air rushed through my hair. I screamed as I plummeted to my death.
I yelled and woke with a start. I heard the soft beeping of monitors. I felt the scratchy linens of a hospital bed beneath me. Pain followed swiftly and exploded through my limbs. My voice was croaky and dry as I spoke, “Where…what the hell…what happened?” A nurse rushed to my side. “It’s alright love, you’ve ‘ad a bit of a tumble. Doctor’s got you all sorted. Just rest now”. Her voice was warm and comforting, like a cup of tea.
My memory returned to me slowly. My family did not own any cabin in the forest. The day of the accident I had been jogging in the woods and took my usual route near the abandoned quarry. I remember exactly what had happened. For a long time, I have been overwhelmed with my work and underwhelmed with my life. I wanted nothing more than to finish my novel and bail on all my teaching responsibilities. My father had also recently died after a long and horrible fight with cancer and it was the first time I realized that at my age life stops providing and starts taking. I realized that soon all those things, all those people, I could once rely on were not going to last forever. An invisible fire was lit in my flesh and I felt my time was rapidly running out.
I jogged far, leaving the city limits. As I stood at the edge of that quarry, panting, my sadness hanging on me heavily, I had, for a moment, contemplated jumping. I had thought about it often before. As I stared down, I imagined my broken body at the bottom of the cliff. Then, like in all my low moments, I let the cold inhumanness of the universe fill me up.
With my eyes closed all I could hear was my mother crying over my father’s corpse. All I could hear were the endless calls from the funeral home asking for their money. All the constant knocking of debt collectors on our door. All I could see were the endless medical bills flooding the postbox. All I felt was loneliness. A horrible, unrelenting, unsolvable loneliness. I had no great love, no amazing career, and my writing would never be good enough to publish. All I could feel was the gaping hole my father had left behind. It hurt. For just a moment I convinced myself I did not belong here anymore. My lips trembled. I walked right up to the edge. I felt my sadness swell in my chest. I clenched my fists tightly. I imagined taking a single step forward. It would be so easy. I imagined the air rushing past me. Falling to my doom. I imagined the horrible pain of the impact. But I also imagined the peace that would come after. A peace I craved. I imagined a picturesque cabin in the woods. A beautiful fireplace. A shelter from the city. A place where I could rest. It was in that moment of contemplative despair, before I could fully commit to the act, that the old unstable ground of the quarry crumbled beneath my feet and I had slipped from the edge and fell. Only the shadows were there to catch me.
Recovery was slow. My mother and sister came to visit me multiple times and made the stay at the hospital bearable. How many dreams had I had? How much had I awoken and then re-awoken? Could I be sure I was truly awake now? As I pondered this I tried to remember. But all I could recall was that very last dream. Those dark horrible eyes. The terror of that very last fall. In that moment, I had realized what I wanted. Now I felt rejuvenated in a way I had not felt for many years. The exhaustion of my spirit had finally been ameliorated. I actually looked forward to getting out of bed. I actually wanted to go to school again. My passion for teaching was reignited. Soon after my recovery I even managed to get my novel published but did not make much money.
Many years have passed since my fall and I’m in my 60s now and retired and have never married. I now know that those dreams were not just dreams. That phantom I confronted has remained with me. Whenever the stresses of life pile up and I become fatigued, he comes to me. He still waits for me. He is real. I see his eyes covered in shadow. Tiny pinpricks of red-light flicker therein. At first, I only saw him rarely; glimpses in dreams. As time went on and I grew older and weary of the world once more I began to see him in the corner of my room every night. What’s worse was that in those moments when I feel the lowest I find myself craving the solitude of that cabin. The peace it brought with it. All this I craved despite the price.
Last week I attended my mother’s funeral. It was a small affair, most of her friends having died many years before. I saw my sister there with her husband and children. They are so happy and full of life. I feel a pang of jealousy but also relief. My life was always to be a solitary one. My sister and I cried during the service. When we chatted later we tried in vain to comfort each other. I returned alone to my home in London while she returned home with her husband and children to Edinburgh. I missed her a great deal too. I often thought about our growing up together.
Since the funeral I see him constantly now. Often his shadow-hidden hand stretches out and he holds a revolver. But he does not mean to shoot me. No. He holds the revolver’s ivory handle toward me. Sometimes he holds out a hangman’s noose. Sometimes it’s a long, ornate dagger. Most recently he holds out a canister of helium gas. And a plastic bag for my head. Each time he does this I resist him. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I even yell at him to leave. His face remains dark, stony and enigmatic.
None of this would scare me quite so much if I had not just realized one terrible detail. What turns my blood to ice from fear is that every time I see him he is infinitesimally closer. How had I not noticed before? Perhaps it was a kindness. Gooseflesh runs down my neck as I see him standing insidiously in my cold bedroom. He is near the edge of my bed now. He is patient and has respected my choice so far. Nevertheless, he holds out that same revolver. That same noose. That same dagger. I tremble with fright because I know I will not be able to resist him much longer. Perhaps soon I’ll know if this was all a dream too.

​
https://preview.redd.it/tsq6lwliydxc1.png?width=922&format=png&auto=webp&s=5aa0071daf494141eac47ef8a75f3f6decf54a33
I yelled and woke with a start. Sweat dripped down my face. My breathing was hard and desperate. I could have sworn I had just been falling. The stickiness of sleep meddled with the cogs of my mind. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the gloom of my bedroom and I found myself alone, safe and warm. No danger here. My heart rate slowed and I chuckled nervously. Soon all fear had seeped from my mind and all memory of my dream had faded. I rolled out of bed and shivered. Quickly I pulled on a sweater and put on my furry slippers. It was cold in this cabin in the middle of the forest. Although internal plumbing and an electric generator had been added, there was still no central heating. This did not bother me much because I always enjoyed having an excuse to light the fire in the living room. I absolutely loved traditional fireplaces.
I was whistling happily in the kitchen, sipping on a glass of cold water as I poured fresh coffee beans into my electric grinder. The sound and smell of coffee being ground always left me feeling content. As my coffee brewed in my French press I cracked two eggs into a bowel and began to whisk. Fifteen minutes later I carried a steaming hot cheese omelet and large mug of coffee out onto my front veranda. I stood in the open doorway, surveying the beauty of the outdoors in the early morning light. The air was cold and fresh; pregnant with complex mixtures of pine and lavender scents. I looked up to see the sky was a deep blue and devoid of all clouds. The thin, dark silhouettes of the trees that surrounded the cabin stood silent and ominous in the soft half-light of the morning. White coats of frost sparkled and melted on the grass as the sun climbed and brightened. I could hear the distant sound of the stream and the call of morning birds.
I sighed deeply with satisfaction and sat down on my wooden chair. This is what I loved more than anything. More than the city that bustles and bursts with busy human lives. More than squeezing myself between strangers on the underground train. More than the sickening smell of the streets and the soulless lack of any natural sounds. In the city there were no crickets, no owls, no frogs. Out here there was an abundance of beauty. The trees were so patient and still. So very different from the rushed, ill-mannered commuters I had as my usual morning partners. I definitely preferred the trees. I took another deep breath. I blew on the steam that rose from my coffee mug and sipped cautiously. The coffee was rich and delicious and scalding hot. Perfect. I began to eat my omelet letting the serenity of nature continue to wash over me. My mood had not been so elated for many months and I was seriously thinking that I should move here full-time. Currently I was working as an English teacher and had decided to come out here to work on my novel and take a break from the city. From my life. Once my excellent breakfast was complete I walked back inside and decided to start a fire to warm up the cabin. As I stooped to check the small wicker basket near the fireplace, that should contain the dried firewood, my eyebrow arched when I found the basket empty. Huh? I could have sworn it was half-full yesterday. Puzzled but not at all alarmed I picked up the basket. Soon I put on my large, worn black coat and made my way outside.
The frosted ground crunched under my large leather boots as I waded through the woods. Finding dry branches for the fire would be fairly difficult at this time of day as most of the ground was damp by now. However, my plan was just to dry them out in the oven before I used them. After spending a few minutes stooping to inspect sticks of various sizes and dampness I finally filled the basket. “Ok, time to go home.” I muttered eagerly as I rubbed my hands together. The air was still cold enough to make my breath visible and I rubbed my hands together. Suddenly I stopped. My eyebrows furrowed. I did not recognize where I was. But how? I had been exploring the woods for days now and not one time had I gotten lost.
My eyes darted back and forth and my head swiveled in confusion. Very soon a creeping panic began to climb from my stomach up into my lungs. My heart began to thump loudly. I looked up at the sun, the voice of my old man ringing in my mind, “Learn to navigate by the stars and sun and you’ll never lose your way”. I smiled, remembering his warm eyes and loud laughter. I missed him. I closed my eyes, concentrating. “Ok, that must be East, so that means I should walk…” I stretched out my arm and hand, index finger pointed. I turned on my heel. “North. That way.”
After a few moments I found my path blocked by a sudden sheer drop. I was facing an enormous quarry. My face blanched. “What… where the hell did this come from?” Again, panic seeped into my blood. “There aren’t any bloody quarries around here!” I moved forward to peek over the edge and peered down. The drop must be at least fifteen meters! I looked from left to right and saw no stairs or bridges. How the hell was I supposed to get across? My confusion grew and grew. Suddenly I froze. There, lying at the very bottom of the quarry, just near the cliff’s bottom, was a mangled body. The light in the sky was still too young to properly illuminate the quarry’s depths, but I could tell it was a body! My eyes bulged and my mouth opened wide with astonishment. “Jesus! Hello? Are you okay down there?” I yelled. Nothing but cold silence pressed against my ears. Suddenly I noticed a path that I had not seen before. It started to my right and wound down the slope before me. Quickly I started hurrying down towards the person; maybe I could still help? Soon I was at the bottom and I ran up to the body that lay still on the ground. As I got closer and the sun grew brighter I stopped dead. The body that lay crumpled at my feet was – me. “No way. There is just absolutely no way!” I shouted. I trembled as I took a step backward. My foot slipped on a large stone and I felt myself begin to fall to the ground.
Suddenly I yelped and my legs kicked out. I blinked in the sudden darkness and found myself on my sofa in the cabin’s living room. “What the hell? It was just a dream?” I said out loud as I sat up. I felt the softness of the couch cushions beneath me, I could smell the citrus scents leftover from the wash I’d given them recently. I stood up, my breathing still fast. The large windows showed a stormy afternoon. Rain pelted the glass heavily and the wind howled loudly. “What the hell? It was just a dream?” I repeated. I checked my watch. It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. I raked my brain, trying to figure out what was happening. But the details of my dream were fading. “I was in the forest looking for firewood. Then I found that body in that quarry.” It had been so real. I felt quite disoriented. Was I truly awake now? Or still asleep? And that body? What had been so terrible about it? The dream had already seeped away. I couldn’t remember.
Still confused I made my way quickly towards the front door. Just as I opened it there was a deafening peal of thunder and a bright fork of lightning lit up the darkling sky. My mouth dropped open. There, just beyond the veranda, as if it had always been there, was the quarry. That cliff! I closed my mouth. “But… how…” Ignoring the icy rain, I walked towards the edge and once again peeked over. In the cold light of another flash of lightening and rumble of thunder, I saw my own body twisted and broken on the ground below. I gasped. My mind reeled. My heart fluttered. “What is going on?” I yelled looking around for some sort of explanation. When I looked back down again my face turned white. The body, my body, was gone. Suddenly I felt the eyes of a stranger on my back. A feeling of dread crept up my spine. A twig snapped. I spun around.
I stood face to face with my shadow. But he did not look like me. Not exactly. Darkness coated his body like a skintight suit and I could not tell what he was wearing. He may have even been naked for all I know. I could see most of his face and hair, but his eyes were cloaked entirely in semi-circles of shadow which fell below each of his brows. He seemed utterly unconcerned about the storm. “You poor thing. You poor, wretched thing.” When he spoke, his voice was not mine. It was deep and commanding, yet gentle. His words came out slow and calm, almost lulling, “I caught you as you fell. You can be at peace forever. But you must choose now.” He stretched out a tenebrous hand and pointed toward the edge of the cliff. Suddenly I noticed something new appear in his hands. It was a book. It was my book. The one I had been writing. Had I already finished it? Or had I just started?
He turned to one of the middle pages and read, “‘Life is the antithesis of peace. Death is the antithesis of suffering.’” He snapped the book closed and turned again to face me, “How trite. Yet, so often the plainest truths are. All you want is peace, is it not? You are right in thinking that life can never provide this.” A cold smile curled his lips. “Even the living forests you so admire are crawling with suffering and conflict. Even the trees that appear so peaceful, so still, are wordlessly fighting each other for light. Racing against each other to claim their own space. It is the nature of the living to struggle.” Confusion fought with terror in my mind. I stammered. “I…I don’t understand. What is this place? Who are you?” Suddenly the man robed in darkness leapt at me and clasped my wrist, “You know who I am”. Small crimson lights flared to life like ignes fatui in the depths of his sockets. He began to pull me towards the edge. “No! Wait!” I shouted, digging my heels into the wet grass. But he was too strong. He snarled, “Isn’t this what you wanted?” and before I could stop myself I was crying from desperation. Then with a strength that could not be human he lifted me above his head, and threw me over the side of the quarry. Lightning flashed as the air rushed through my hair. I screamed as I plummeted to my death.
I yelled and woke with a start. I heard the soft beeping of monitors. I felt the scratchy linens of a hospital bed beneath me. Pain followed swiftly and exploded through my limbs. My voice was croaky and dry as I spoke, “Where…what the hell…what happened?” A nurse rushed to my side. “It’s alright love, you’ve ‘ad a bit of a tumble. Doctor’s got you all sorted. Just rest now”. Her voice was warm and comforting, like a cup of tea.
My memory returned to me slowly. My family did not own any cabin in the forest. The day of the accident I had been jogging in the woods and took my usual route near the abandoned quarry. I remember exactly what had happened. For a long time, I have been overwhelmed with my work and underwhelmed with my life. I wanted nothing more than to finish my novel and bail on all my teaching responsibilities. My father had also recently died after a long and horrible fight with cancer and it was the first time I realized that at my age life stops providing and starts taking. I realized that soon all those things, all those people, I could once rely on were not going to last forever. An invisible fire was lit in my flesh and I felt my time was rapidly running out.
I jogged far, leaving the city limits. As I stood at the edge of that quarry, panting, my sadness hanging on me heavily, I had, for a moment, contemplated jumping. I had thought about it often before. As I stared down, I imagined my broken body at the bottom of the cliff. Then, like in all my low moments, I let the cold inhumanness of the universe fill me up.
With my eyes closed all I could hear was my mother crying over my father’s corpse. All I could hear were the endless calls from the funeral home asking for their money. All the constant knocking of debt collectors on our door. All I could see were the endless medical bills flooding the postbox. All I felt was loneliness. A horrible, unrelenting, unsolvable loneliness. I had no great love, no amazing career, and my writing would never be good enough to publish. All I could feel was the gaping hole my father had left behind. It hurt. For just a moment I convinced myself I did not belong here anymore. My lips trembled. I walked right up to the edge. I felt my sadness swell in my chest. I clenched my fists tightly. I imagined taking a single step forward. It would be so easy. I imagined the air rushing past me. Falling to my doom. I imagined the horrible pain of the impact. But I also imagined the peace that would come after. A peace I craved. I imagined a picturesque cabin in the woods. A beautiful fireplace. A shelter from the city. A place where I could rest. It was in that moment of contemplative despair, before I could fully commit to the act, that the old unstable ground of the quarry crumbled beneath my feet and I had slipped from the edge and fell. Only the shadows were there to catch me.
Recovery was slow. My mother and sister came to visit me multiple times and made the stay at the hospital bearable. How many dreams had I had? How much had I awoken and then re-awoken? Could I be sure I was truly awake now? As I pondered this I tried to remember. But all I could recall was that very last dream. Those dark horrible eyes. The terror of that very last fall. In that moment, I had realized what I wanted. Now I felt rejuvenated in a way I had not felt for many years. The exhaustion of my spirit had finally been ameliorated. I actually looked forward to getting out of bed. I actually wanted to go to school again. My passion for teaching was reignited. Soon after my recovery I even managed to get my novel published but did not make much money.
Many years have passed since my fall and I’m in my 60s now and retired and have never married. I now know that those dreams were not just dreams. That phantom I confronted has remained with me. Whenever the stresses of life pile up and I become fatigued, he comes to me. He still waits for me. He is real. I see his eyes covered in shadow. Tiny pinpricks of red-light flicker therein. At first, I only saw him rarely; glimpses in dreams. As time went on and I grew older and weary of the world once more I began to see him in the corner of my room every night. What’s worse was that in those moments when I feel the lowest I find myself craving the solitude of that cabin. The peace it brought with it. All this I craved despite the price.
Last week I attended my mother’s funeral. It was a small affair, most of her friends having died many years before. I saw my sister there with her husband and children. They are so happy and full of life. I feel a pang of jealousy but also relief. My life was always to be a solitary one. My sister and I cried during the service. When we chatted later we tried in vain to comfort each other. I returned alone to my home in London while she returned home with her husband and children to Edinburgh. I missed her a great deal too. I often thought about our growing up together.
Since the funeral I see him constantly now. Often his shadow-hidden hand stretches out and he holds a revolver. But he does not mean to shoot me. No. He holds the revolver’s ivory handle toward me. Sometimes he holds out a hangman’s noose. Sometimes it’s a long, ornate dagger. Most recently he holds out a canister of helium gas. And a plastic bag for my head. Each time he does this I resist him. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I even yell at him to leave. His face remains dark, stony and enigmatic.
None of this would scare me quite so much if I had not just realized one terrible detail. What turns my blood to ice from fear is that every time I see him he is infinitesimally closer. How had I not noticed before? Perhaps it was a kindness. Gooseflesh runs down my neck as I see him standing insidiously in my cold bedroom. He is near the edge of my bed now. He is patient and has respected my choice so far. Nevertheless, he holds out that same revolver. That same noose. That same dagger. I tremble with fright because I know I will not be able to resist him much longer. Perhaps soon I’ll know if this was all a dream too.

I was sitting in the hospital waiting room blankly staring at a tv airing “The Price is Right”. My wife was in surgery. I was super bummed. I could not help blaming myself for being here. It was my fault my wife was in here, after all.
See, 2 weeks ago my wife had breast enhancement surgery and a vaginaplasty (to tighten it up). She was just supposed to get the boob enlargement surgery, but I managed to work out a package deal with the surgeon, Dr. Juan Suarez (though that is not his real name) in Tijuana.
Then, a week after the surgery, my wife’s boobs got infected. They were all red and swollen and lumpy, with yellow, stinky puss coming out. I told her she should just put some ointment on them and given it time to work. But she insisted on going to the hospital.
The bad part is that I had opening day tickets to see the Braves-Phillies game. So, I was really torn. I figured wifey could wait one extra day so I could go to the game. But, no! She had to be a total bitch and insist that I take her to the Emergency Room that day.
The doc diagnosed her with a serious infection and said she had to get her into surgery immediately. I thought, “Oh, Jesus Christ!!”. I explained to the lady doc about my baseball tickets. But just like a chick, she did not understand. She started telling me about something called “sepsis” and “necro-something or other”. I am thinking, “Man, this is one sick fuck. Here I am with the lil lady and this doctor-ette is talking about fucking dead people!!”
I started getting turned on, thinking that the doc was flirting with me. Normally, she would be nothing I would look twice at. But she was not gross, and I have not been able to bang wifey with all her complaining about being sick. So, yeah, I could throw-down a quickie on this doctor chick! So I deftly made my move.
After thirty minutes or so, the hospital police cut me loose and told me to go wait in Waiting Room No. 3. They also told me to remain at least 100 yards from Dr. Girlie until further notified. That really burned me up!! I mean, what a fucking bitch, to lead me on like that and then call the police when I respond to HER actions. Crazy bitch!!
So, here I am. Stuck at the fucking hospital on opening day, like a schmuck. I tried to get her sister to fly in from New York to be here instead. She is going to fly down, but she will not be here until tomorrow, the bitch!!
So I am sitting here by myself. I did manage to grab some of my watch collection to bring with me so that I could take wrist shots of my Rolexes and Pateks to post online. Between that and watching car crash videos on my phone, I have managed to keep myself entertained. But after 30 minutes, even THAT is getting boring.
Eventually, I called my buddy, Felix, to see what he was up to. It turns out that he and a couple of mutual friends were heading down to the titty bar for lunch and drinks. I was like, “You pricks!! You didn’t invite ME?!?” But Felix explained that I was supposed to be at a ball game. “Oh, yeah”, I replied.
I figured I would join the guys for lunch. Hell, it’s not like I can do anything for my wife. I’m not a doctor. Besides, she KNOWS I hate being bored. I figured I would only be gone like an hour or two. She would not even know I was gone.
Well, lunch at the titty bar turned into dinner. At around 7:00 pm, we got a couple of the girls to come back to my place to party. It did not take much to convince them, what with my charm and good looks!! Plus, Felix flashed a bag of white powder at them.
By midnight it was a real cool scene! Everyone was coked and liquored up. One of our buddies, Sebastian, is friends with a dude who plays guitar in a local band called “Devil’s Minions”. We got those dudes to the house to jam. Plus, the girls got some more of their stripper friends to come by!!
At some point that night I suggested that we go out back for a swim in my pool. This stripper named Mandy decided to skinny dip. She stripped off all her clothes and then climbed up the ladder to the diving board. She wanted to be first into the pool.
She went to the end of the diving board and shouted, “LOOK AT ME!!! LOOK AT ME!!!” The crowd started to chant, “DIVE!!! DIVE!!! DIVE!!!!” So, with a wide grin on her face, we all watched her tits bounce up and down as she dived into the pool.
“CLUNK!!!!” Came the sound as she took a header off the diving board and her skull connected with the concrete below. “OH SHIT!!”, I said, “We have not filled up the pool yet!!!!”
We debated on what to do. Some of my guests wanted to go on partying, but Mandy’s friends wanted to call 911. I sure as hell did not want any cops nosing around my place. So we compromised. I had to drive the bitch to the ER. I made them place garbage bags on my back seat so all the blood and stuff would not stain the upholstery.
We got to the hospital at around 5:30 am. “Ok, here you go!”, I said. But they wanted me to help get Mandy inside. I sighed loudly and then reluctantly agreed. Almost immediately we were surrounded by police and hospital security asking all sorts of annoying questions. The girls were all obsessed with Mandy, so they were distracted. I told the police that name was “Pablo Rodriguez” and that I do not speak English.
I had to follow them back into the ER. But at the first chance I had, I slipped away. Unfortunately, I got lost and could not find my way out of the labyrinth of endless corridors.
As I was walking down one hallway, singing “Psychsocial” by Slipnot, I heard my name. “Rod? Rod? Is that you?”, came the query from a female voice. I thought, oh shit…I found my way back around to Mandy. Fuck!!!”
But there was something familiar about that voice. Again it came, “Rod!! Rod?! Is that you?!?” I decided to stop and see who was calling me. I stuck my head inside one of the rooms. There was my wife, sitting up on a bed.
“Hey, babe!!! What are you doing here?”, I asked. She reminded me of the emergency surgery. I told her I was just kidding. “Where have you been, Rod? You have been gone for hours”, she asked.
I knew I had stepped into it. I had to be careful here, as I know a set-up when I hear one. She was laying a trap for me! Thinking on my feet, I deftly replied to her.
“I have been looking all over for you, honey!!! Those damn nurses gave me the wrong room number!!!”, I said. Now, you have to understand something about my wifey. She has very low self-esteem, which works out great for me!
“Honest, baby!! I have been walking around this Goddamn place for literally HOURS, desperately trying find my little poo-bear”, I added. She paused, considering my words. I waited to see if she would buy it. She did.
“Oh, you poor little baby!!! Come here and give me a great big hug!!!!”, she said. I obliged her. “Tell me all about your surgery, sweetheart. How are you?”, I asked.
Well, she launched into it. I paid attention to start with. But eventually my mind wandered. I started thinking about getting back to the party which was probably still raging back at the house.
“I’ll tell you what, since you are out of danger, I am going to go to the house and get some things to make you more comfortable”, I said. She replied, “Oh, you are so thoughtful!!!” She gave me a list of some shit. Then, I left and headed home.
The party was, in fact, still raging when I got home! Everyone was fucked up, the music was blaring, and there was a ridiculous orgy going on in the living room. A couple of people were layed out sick on the kitchen floor because they found my mother-in-law’s ashes in the urn over the fireplace and snorted them! LOL!!
The party went on and on. More people showed up. Police were called numerous times, then left. The booze flowed like water. At some point my wife showed up in taxi. I was like, “Babe!! You are supposed to be in the hospital! Remember, I am bringing you some of your shit to make you comfortable!”
“That was 3 days ago, Rod”. Frankly, she looked pissed. I said, “Yeah! I mean, uh, I know that! But I had to, uh …. organize this welcome home party for you, honey. Yeah!! Uh…. WELCOME HOME!!!”
Wifey paused as she looked around. Then a big smile erupted on her face as she said, “Oh, Rod!! You are soooo sweet! How did I ever get so lucky to have you?” I smiled back, and patted her butt.

I yelled and woke with a start. Sweat dripped down my face. My breathing was hard and desperate. I could have sworn I had just been falling. The stickiness of sleep meddled with the cogs of my mind. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the gloom of my bedroom and I found myself alone, safe and warm. No danger here. My heart rate slowed and I chuckled nervously. Soon all fear had seeped from my mind and all memory of my dream had faded. I rolled out of bed and shivered. Quickly I pulled on a sweater and put on my furry slippers. It was cold in this cabin in the middle of the forest. Although internal plumbing and an electric generator had been added, there was still no central heating. This did not bother me much because I always enjoyed having an excuse to light the fire in the living room. I absolutely loved traditional fireplaces.
I was whistling happily in the kitchen, sipping on a glass of cold water as I poured fresh coffee beans into my electric grinder. The sound and smell of coffee being ground always left me feeling content. As my coffee brewed in my French press I cracked two eggs into a bowel and began to whisk. Fifteen minutes later I carried a steaming hot cheese omelet and large mug of coffee out onto my front veranda. I stood in the open doorway, surveying the beauty of the outdoors in the early morning light. The air was cold and fresh; pregnant with complex mixtures of pine and lavender scents. I looked up to see the sky was a deep blue and devoid of all clouds. The thin, dark silhouettes of the trees that surrounded the cabin stood silent and ominous in the soft half-light of the morning. White coats of frost sparkled and melted on the grass as the sun climbed and brightened. I could hear the distant sound of the stream and the call of morning birds.
I sighed deeply with satisfaction and sat down on my wooden chair. This is what I loved more than anything. More than the city that bustles and bursts with busy human lives. More than squeezing myself between strangers on the underground train. More than the sickening smell of the streets and the soulless lack of any natural sounds. In the city there were no crickets, no owls, no frogs. Out here there was an abundance of beauty. The trees were so patient and still. So very different from the rushed, ill-mannered commuters I had as my usual morning partners. I definitely preferred the trees. I took another deep breath. I blew on the steam that rose from my coffee mug and sipped cautiously. The coffee was rich and delicious and scalding hot. Perfect. I began to eat my omelet letting the serenity of nature continue to wash over me. My mood had not been so elated for many months and I was seriously thinking that I should move here full-time. Currently I was working as an English teacher and had decided to come out here to work on my novel and take a break from the city. From my life. Once my excellent breakfast was complete I walked back inside and decided to start a fire to warm up the cabin. As I stooped to check the small wicker basket near the fireplace, that should contain the dried firewood, my eyebrow arched when I found the basket empty. Huh? I could have sworn it was half-full yesterday. Puzzled but not at all alarmed I picked up the basket. Soon I put on my large, worn black coat and made my way outside.
The frosted ground crunched under my large leather boots as I waded through the woods. Finding dry branches for the fire would be fairly difficult at this time of day as most of the ground was damp by now. However, my plan was just to dry them out in the oven before I used them. After spending a few minutes stooping to inspect sticks of various sizes and dampness I finally filled the basket. “Ok, time to go home.” I muttered eagerly as I rubbed my hands together. The air was still cold enough to make my breath visible and I rubbed my hands together. Suddenly I stopped. My eyebrows furrowed. I did not recognize where I was. But how? I had been exploring the woods for days now and not one time had I gotten lost.
My eyes darted back and forth and my head swiveled in confusion. Very soon a creeping panic began to climb from my stomach up into my lungs. My heart began to thump loudly. I looked up at the sun, the voice of my old man ringing in my mind, “Learn to navigate by the stars and sun and you’ll never lose your way”. I smiled, remembering his warm eyes and loud laughter. I missed him. I closed my eyes, concentrating. “Ok, that must be East, so that means I should walk…” I stretched out my arm and hand, index finger pointed. I turned on my heel. “North. That way.”
After a few moments I found my path blocked by a sudden sheer drop. I was facing an enormous quarry. My face blanched. “What… where the hell did this come from?” Again, panic seeped into my blood. “There aren’t any bloody quarries around here!” I moved forward to peek over the edge and peered down. The drop must be at least fifteen meters! I looked from left to right and saw no stairs or bridges. How the hell was I supposed to get across? My confusion grew and grew. Suddenly I froze. There, lying at the very bottom of the quarry, just near the cliff’s bottom, was a mangled body. The light in the sky was still too young to properly illuminate the quarry’s depths, but I could tell it was a body! My eyes bulged and my mouth opened wide with astonishment. “Jesus! Hello? Are you okay down there?” I yelled. Nothing but cold silence pressed against my ears. Suddenly I noticed a path that I had not seen before. It started to my right and wound down the slope before me. Quickly I started hurrying down towards the person; maybe I could still help? Soon I was at the bottom and I ran up to the body that lay still on the ground. As I got closer and the sun grew brighter I stopped dead. The body that lay crumpled at my feet was – me. “No way. There is just absolutely no way!” I shouted. I trembled as I took a step backward. My foot slipped on a large stone and I felt myself begin to fall to the ground.
Suddenly I yelped and my legs kicked out. I blinked in the sudden darkness and found myself on my sofa in the cabin’s living room. “What the hell? It was just a dream?” I said out loud as I sat up. I felt the softness of the couch cushions beneath me, I could smell the citrus scents leftover from the wash I’d given them recently. I stood up, my breathing still fast. The large windows showed a stormy afternoon. Rain pelted the glass heavily and the wind howled loudly. “What the hell? It was just a dream?” I repeated. I checked my watch. It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. I raked my brain, trying to figure out what was happening. But the details of my dream were fading. “I was in the forest looking for firewood. Then I found that body in that quarry.” It had been so real. I felt quite disoriented. Was I truly awake now? Or still asleep? And that body? What had been so terrible about it? The dream had already seeped away. I couldn’t remember.
Still confused I made my way quickly towards the front door. Just as I opened it there was a deafening peal of thunder and a bright fork of lightning lit up the darkling sky. My mouth dropped open. There, just beyond the veranda, as if it had always been there, was the quarry. That cliff! I closed my mouth. “But… how…” Ignoring the icy rain, I walked towards the edge and once again peeked over. In the cold light of another flash of lightening and rumble of thunder, I saw my own body twisted and broken on the ground below. I gasped. My mind reeled. My heart fluttered. “What is going on?” I yelled looking around for some sort of explanation. When I looked back down again my face turned white. The body, my body, was gone. Suddenly I felt the eyes of a stranger on my back. A feeling of dread crept up my spine. A twig snapped. I spun around.
I stood face to face with my shadow. But he did not look like me. Not exactly. Darkness coated his body like a skintight suit and I could not tell what he was wearing. He may have even been naked for all I know. I could see most of his face and hair, but his eyes were cloaked entirely in semi-circles of shadow which fell below each of his brows. He seemed utterly unconcerned about the storm. “You poor thing. You poor, wretched thing.” When he spoke, his voice was not mine. It was deep and commanding, yet gentle. His words came out slow and calm, almost lulling, “I caught you as you fell. You have made a half-choice. You can be at peace forever. But you must choose now.” He stretched out a tenebrous hand and pointed toward the edge of the cliff. Suddenly I noticed something new appear in his hands. It was a book. It was my book. The one I had been writing. Had I already finished it? Or had I just started?
He turned to one of the middle pages and read, “‘Life is the antithesis of peace. Death is the antithesis of suffering.’” He snapped the book closed and turned again to face me, “How trite. Yet, so often the plainest truths are. All you want is peace, is it not? You are right in thinking that life can never provide this.” A cold smile curled his lips. “Even the living forests you so admire are crawling with suffering and conflict. Even the trees that appear so peaceful, so still, are wordlessly fighting each other for light. Racing against each other to claim their own space. It is the nature of the living to struggle.” Confusion fought with terror in my mind. I stammered. “I…I don’t understand. What is this place? Who are you?” Suddenly the man robed in darkness leapt at me and clasped my wrist, “You know who I am”. Small crimson lights flared to life like ignes fatui in the depths of his sockets. He began to pull me towards the edge. “No! Wait!” I shouted, digging my heels into the wet grass. But he was too strong. He snarled, “Isn’t this what you wanted?” and before I could stop myself I was crying from desperation. Then with a strength that could not be human he lifted me above his head, and threw me over the side of the quarry. Lightning flashed as the air rushed through my hair. I screamed as I plummeted to my death.
I yelled and woke with a start. I heard the soft beeping of monitors. I felt the scratchy linens of a hospital bed beneath me. Pain followed swiftly and exploded through my limbs. My voice was croaky and dry as I spoke, “Where…what the hell…what happened?” A nurse rushed to my side. “It’s alright love, you’ve ‘ad a bit of a tumble. Doctor’s got you all sorted. Just rest now”. Her voice was warm and comforting, like a cup of tea.
My memory returned to me slowly. My family did not own any cabin in the forest. The day of the accident I had been jogging in the woods and took my usual route near the abandoned quarry. I remember exactly what had happened. For a long time, I have been overwhelmed with my work and underwhelmed with my life. I wanted nothing more than to finish my novel and bail on all my teaching responsibilities. My father had also recently died after a long and horrible fight with cancer and it was the first time I realized that at my age life stops providing and starts taking. I realized that soon all those things, all those people, I could once rely on were not going to last forever. An invisible fire was lit in my flesh and I felt my time was rapidly running out.
I jogged far, leaving the city limits. As I stood at the edge of that quarry, panting, my sadness hanging on me heavily, I had, for a moment, contemplated jumping. I had thought about it often before. As I stared down, I imagined my broken body at the bottom of the cliff. Then, like in all my low moments, I let the cold inhumanness of the universe fill me up.
With my eyes closed all I could hear was my mother crying over my father’s corpse. All I could hear were the endless calls from the funeral home asking for their money. All the constant knocking of debt collectors on our door. All I could see were the endless medical bills flooding the postbox. All I felt was loneliness. A horrible, unrelenting, unsolvable loneliness. I had no great love, no amazing career, and my writing would never be good enough to publish. All I could feel was the gaping hole my father had left behind. It hurt. For just a moment I convinced myself I did not belong here anymore. My lips trembled. I walked right up to the edge. I felt my sadness swell in my chest. I clenched my fists tightly. I imagined taking a single step forward. It would be so easy. I imagined the air rushing past me. Falling to my doom. I imagined the horrible pain of the impact. But I also imagined the peace that would come after. A peace I craved. I imagined a picturesque cabin in the woods. A beautiful fireplace. A shelter from the city. A place where I could rest. It was in that moment of contemplative despair, before I could fully commit to the act, that the old unstable ground of the quarry crumbled beneath my feet and I had slipped from the edge and fell. Only the shadows were there to catch me.
Recovery was slow. My mother and sister came to visit me multiple times and made the stay at the hospital bearable. How many dreams had I had? How much had I awoken and then re-awoken? Could I be sure I was truly awake now? As I pondered this I tried to remember. But all I could recall was that very last dream. Those dark horrible eyes. The terror of that very last fall. In that moment, I had realized what I wanted. Now I felt rejuvenated in a way I had not felt for many years. The exhaustion of my spirit had finally been ameliorated. I actually looked forward to getting out of bed. I actually wanted to go to school again. My passion for teaching was reignited. Soon after my recovery I even managed to get my novel published but did not make much money.
Many years have passed since my fall and I’m in my 60s now and retired and have never married. I now know that those dreams were not just dreams. That phantom I confronted has remained with me. Whenever the stresses of life pile up and I become fatigued, he comes to me. He still waits for me. He is real. I see his eyes covered in shadow. Tiny pinpricks of red-light flicker therein. At first, I only saw him rarely; glimpses in dreams. As time went on and I grew older and weary of the world once more I began to see him in the corner of my room every night. What’s worse was that in those moments when I feel the lowest I find myself craving the solitude of that cabin. The peace it brought with it. All this I craved despite the price.
Last week I attended my mother’s funeral. It was a small affair, most of her friends having died many years before. I saw my sister there with her husband and children. They are so happy and full of life. I feel a pang of jealousy but also relief. My life was always to be a solitary one. My sister and I cried during the service. When we chatted later we tried in vain to comfort each other. I returned alone to my home in London while she returned home with her husband and children to Edinburgh. I missed her a great deal too. I often thought about our growing up together.
Since the funeral I see him constantly now. Often his shadow-hidden hand stretches out and he holds a revolver. But he does not mean to shoot me. No. He holds the revolver’s ivory handle toward me. Sometimes he holds out a hangman’s noose. Sometimes it’s a long, ornate dagger. Most recently he holds out a canister of helium gas. And a plastic bag for my head. Each time he does this I resist him. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I even yell at him to leave. His face remains dark, stony and enigmatic.
None of this would scare me quite so much if I had not just realized one terrible detail. What turns my blood to ice from fear is that every time I see him he is infinitesimally closer. How had I not noticed before? Perhaps it was a kindness. Gooseflesh runs down my neck as I see him standing insidiously in my cold bedroom. He is near the edge of my bed now. He is patient and has respected my choice so far. Nevertheless, he holds out that same revolver. That same noose. That same dagger. I tremble with fright because I know I will not be able to resist him much longer. Perhaps soon I’ll know if this was all a dream too.

Back in 2022, I went through a drawn-out and ill-tempered breakup with my then-fiancée, Savannah. She’d been getting unusually close to one of her co-workers, and her behavior had suddenly shifted. I accidentally overheard one of her phone calls, revealing that the two of them were, in fact, having an affair. I confronted her about it, and she didn’t bother to hide it anymore. This was about a week before we were supposed to go on a couple’s retreat that we’d planned for months.
So instead of a 5-day weekend with my bride-to-be, it was aiming to be a miserable pity party. But hey, the deposit was non-refundable, and I needed space. I decided to go on my own while she packed her things. I couldn’t bear to watch our life being put into boxes.
I headed for Alaska.
 
Now, one might not think of Alaska as the first place to go for a vacation, but there are some amazing ski resorts up there. There was this one place that had a little bit of everything. A main lodge with a bar, a restaurant, and a gym. Nothing huge, but more than expected. Savannah and I had rented one of the many 2-man cabins, complete with a built-in sauna. Thing cost an arm and a leg, but it came with complementary champagne, so what the hell.
I got there an early Thursday morning. I checked in and explained to the receptionist that there wasn’t going to be a second person joining me. It earned me my first sympathetic look and an involuntary “oh”.
I was shown to my cabin. It was in a cluster with six other cabins, a straight walk from the ski lifts. One of the staffers showed me how to work the sauna (bucket and all), where to find linens, and how to order room service. Then they handed me the keys and sent me on my way.
 
Savannah and I got the place a little cheaper because of how far in advance we booked, so we had no idea that it was gonna be such a rough winter. There’d been a constant overcast for about a week, and we’d booked a little earlier in the year than one should – meaning it was oppressively dark outside. Even at the height of noon, all I saw was a grey-washed sun peeking through layers of clouds like a shy schoolboy.
There were a couple of others there though. In the cabin straight across from me were a pair of what can only be described as socialite hipsters. A man and woman in identical haircuts and matching outfits. They had customized prints on their shoulders with their Instagram tags. At first I thought it was some sort of joke, but every single time I saw them together they seemed to enjoy themselves immensely. Kinda made me feel bad for thinking less of them, to be honest.
There were two men in their 50’s. They weren’t an obvious couple, at first look, but you could kinda fill in the blanks to draw your own conclusions. I think they just wanted to get away – they didn’t even bring any skis. They seemed pretty chill, spending most of their time enjoying the amenities of the lodge.
There was one final couple next door. A man and woman in their early 40’s. I got the impression that they were parents enjoying a weekend away from their kids. They talked on the phone a lot and had to repeat themselves, referring to “your sister” and “your brother” in a way that only a stern parent could. I caught their names as Tyler and Ginger.
 
But out of everyone there, I think I was the one who stood out the most. This whole cluster was intended for couples, but the staff didn’t have the heart to ask me to move. It was clear that something had gone wrong, and they just wanted to look after me. I got a complementary breakfast, a couple extra chocolates on my pillow, and they always had this apologetic tone when speaking to me; like they were afraid that I’d break.
To be fair, a couple of times, I did. That first day, I spent most of my time in bed. I wasn’t even tired, I was just hurting from all the empty space and lack of noise. I kept going back to my socials to see if Savannah had posted anything. I kept updating, over and over again.
It was well over 7pm when I realized I’d spent all day doing nothing but wallowing in misery. I decided that I was gonna at least try to make the best of it. I let the battery on my phone run out and left it empty while I headed for the bar.
 
I didn’t spend too much time or money, but just enough to get a chat in with some of the guests. There were single people and friend groups there too, but only about a handful. By chance, I ended up spending the evening with my next-door neighbors; Tyler and Ginger. They confirmed immediately that yes, they were indeed exhausted parents. I offered them a sympathetic mojito, and after that, we were best friends.
Tyler was this enormous, lanky man. Easily 6’6 and bald as an egg. Ginger on the other hand barely reached 5’4. You could tell she’d been stressed; it carried under her eyes. That didn’t stop her from laughing herself silly at every stupid joke we made.
It might’ve been the Mojitos talking though.
 
Later that night, I ended up taking a smoke break with Tyler out back. I hadn’t smoked since college, but I figured now was as good a time as any to ruin my life a little. He handed me a lit Marlboro red, leaning against the railing. I’d been telling Tyler and Ginger about Savannah and our recent breakup, and he was in full guy-support mode.
“At least there’re no kids involved,” he sighed, sucking down his cigarette. “It gets hella complicated, you know. And fast.”
“But it’s worth it, right?” I asked.
Tyler grimaced, bobbing his head side to side, making a little unsure hand gesture.
“Depends,” he continued. “I mean, they’re gonna suck the life outta ya’. It’s gonna be every day, every way, all the time. There ain’t no ‘you’ anymore, it’s … ‘us’, you know.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I get it.”
He finished his cigarette, flicking it into the snow.
“But you can see it. You can see yourself in another person. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like… that’s you. And unless you really hate yourself, you can’t help but to love ‘em.”
“So it’s worth it then.”
Tyler snorted, heading back inside. He blew the last puff of his cigarette out his nose; or it might’ve just been hot air mixing with the cold night.
“I’m theirs.”
 
I stayed behind, looking over the dark snow. Nothing gleamed or glistened. It was like a frozen black ocean as far as the eye could see. Not a single star twinkling above. The entire resort felt like something lost in deep space; isolated and displaced. A monument to comfort in a subdued wilderness.
I could see the others debating what song to put on for karaoke. They were gonna drag me up there eventually too. I didn’t mind that much. I can do a decent ‘Killer Queen’. I turned back towards the endless snow a final time.
And I swear, something glimmered. And it wasn’t the snow.
Eyes?
 
I woke up close to noon the following day; the result of one too many drinks and not a single alarm set for the first time in years. I drank what felt like a bathtub’s amount of seltzer, threw up, and grabbed some take-away lunch from the restaurant. Got my wallet back too – not that I’d noticed ever losing it.
As I headed out, one of the receptionists stopped me. She gently grabbed my arm, excusing herself.
“Did you see a woman here last night?” she asked. “About 5’7, dark eyes, blonde hair?”
“No, uh… was she here with anyone?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” she smiled. “We think there’s an unregistered guest. She’s not your missing plus one, is she?”
I shook my head, causing a temporary motion sickness. I reassured her that I hadn’t seen anyone matching that description, and promised to let her know if I did. It was strange – she seemed a lot more worried than I thought one might be about an uninvited guest.
 
I took some time to actually go skiing that day. There’s something mind-clearing about plummeting down the slopes without a care in the world. No one to break your stride. Free reign as far as the eye could see. I lost track of time and ended up spending a little longer than anticipated.
That evening, I got to the restaurant just as they were about to close. I managed to sneak in an order for a plate of chicken carbonara, but I was the only guest left eating something. The others were at the tail end of dessert. That’s when I heard some commotion from one of the other tables. Looking up, I could see the two men from the other couple’s cabin.
It was a proposal.
 
The whole lodge erupted into cheers. Free drinks from the bar. Hugs and kisses all around – and I was stuck sitting there with my plate of pasta. To round out the proposal, there was a short firework display outside. Blue and green rockets against the coal-black sky; lighting up the snow like sand dunes of emerald and sapphire. It was beautiful. And I didn’t even get a good look of it.
As guests funneled back inside, I finished my plate. I was about to go congratulate the couple and join the budding party when I heard a knock. The restaurant staff were too busy closing up to notice it, but I saw someone outside.
She couldn’t have been older than maybe… 20, 21. She wore a thin black nylon jacket and a trucker cap, resembling some kind of catering crew. She gave me a little hand wave, pointing to the door.
“You mind letting me in?”
“Sure, yeah.”
Strange. The glass door was already unlocked. I thought she might’ve been locked out.
“Thanks,” she smiled. “Must’ve pulled at it the wrong way. Sorry.”
She pushed past me, but turned with a smile as she did. Her eyes weren’t just a dark brown – they were almost black.
“You should join us,” she smiled. “It’s gonna be fun.”
She disappeared into the bar crowd. Her smile faded behind a blonde ponytail the second she thought I wasn’t watching. It took me a moment to realize she matched the description of the woman the receptionist had been asking me about.
 
I tried getting a hold of a staffer, but they were running about like headless chickens. After a short but valiant effort, I decided to celebrate with the others. After all, it was Friday night, and I needed a reason to drink. Or a better reason, at least.
Things got a bit hazy around midnight. The newly betrothed were off in a corner, sharing a bottle of red. Tyler was trying his best to keep Ginger from a fifth cocktail. The hipster couple had retired early, choosing to spend the remainder of the night in their cabin. Other guests filtered out one by one, leaving a handful of people behind.
As I stumbled back to my cabin for the night, intent on spending some time in the sauna, I noticed the strange blonde woman in the distance. She was standing outside the hipster’s cabin, knocking on their door. She looked back at me with an expressionless face; her dark eyes looking like holes in the head.
I could tell something was off about her. I always could. But I didn’t know exactly what.
 
I spent the night in the sauna. Not by choice, but happenstance. I didn’t even start it, I just put my head down on a towel and blacked out. By morning, I was more hangover than man. It was also the only time the sun decided to peak out, if only to tease my retinas. I spent some time getting ready, munching on a couple of protein bars and chugging a bottle of orange juice I’d nicked from the open bar.
Just past lunch, I was the only one on my feet. I didn’t spot any other guests from the cluster, and all the cabins were closed. No sign of the strange blonde woman either. Maybe that was for the best.
But the more I wandered about, the more I noticed something was off. The ski lift wasn’t working, and most of the main lodge was locked. All the lights were off – both inside and out. The restaurant’s curtains were drawn, as well as at the bar, and the reception. The gym was locked with a “closed” sign out front.
 
I tried knocking, but no one opened. I tried the main lodge and the other cabins – nothing. I looked all over the resort, but it was all empty. The parking lot, the maintenance shed, changing rooms… everything was either locked up tight or empty. Something must’ve happened. One of the side entrances leading to the restaurant kitchen was not just locked but chained up.
Going back to my cabin, I checked my phone; only to remember that I’d let the battery drain. There was no power to charge it. The temperature was also going down; fast. It didn’t take long before I had to bundle up with a jacket, even indoors. By the time I realized I’d run out of options, the sun was already setting.
I sat on my bed with my legs huddled up against my chest, looking out the window. The snow had stopped glistening as the sun had, once again, wrapped itself with a cloud cover.
 
That’s when I realized what’d bothered me about that strange woman the other night.
There was no vapor coming from her breath. No hot mixing with cold.
It was as if she hadn’t breathed at all.
 
By nightfall, I could see movement in the distance. Doors opening, lights turning on. There was laughter coming from the main lodge. A few remaining fireworks from the other night flaring up into the night sky. Someone had cranked up the music in the bar a little too loud. Heat was coming back, and power was restored. I fumbled for my phone, plugging in the charger.
As I did, I spotted one of my neighbors through the window. One of the two older betrothed men. He looked ecstatic; skipping through the snow like a child. He lost his glasses as he haphazardly threw snow into the air, leaving an arc of snowflakes slowly tumbling back to the ground.
I walked up to the window, ready to call on him. I wondered where his fiancé was, but I only had to wonder for a moment.
His fiancé was dragging the headless corpse of the hipster woman behind him. Colorful jacket and all.
 
I crouched down, covering my mouth with my hands. I didn’t want a scream to slip out. I could hear my chest pounding in my heart; making me twitch with every beat. I felt my cheeks flush as my tongue went dry.
They dragged the body through the snow, their hands and faces covered in red. There was a long trail of blackened blood reaching all the way from the hipster cabin to the middle of the field. The two betrotheds kissed, laughed, howled, and cheered. They waved at someone off in the distance, screaming with joy.
And there was no vapor coming from either of them. No hot air mixing with cold.
They were cold as ice; and just as pale.
 
I saw it all from my bedroom window. Cleaners hanging bloodied linens out the windows like war banners. A woman throwing torn body parts off the roof of the main lodge. A gang of four restaurant workers set fire to the maintenance shed, dancing around it like shrieking primates.
The receptionist, who’d talked to me earlier, was wandering in a circle out near the back entrance. She had knives stuck through her arms and throat but was moving around like it was nothing; her back straight and her movements precise. Predatory. There was a glow in her eyes; a reflection of the raging arson. The pity I’d once seen in them were long gone.
I frantically dialed emergency services. As soon as the call connected, my mind went into a lockdown. I couldn’t decide whether to scream or whisper, so I ended up doing this strange wheezing. I had to repeat what I said three times to even identify myself. I have no idea what I even stuttered after that, but I managed to give them an address. I think I got the point across.
People were dead, and things were on fire.
 
There was a knock on the door.
My immediate reaction was to toss my phone halfway across the floor. I never hung up, I think. I figured whoever was outside might’ve heard the noise and came to investigate.
“Would you mind letting me in?”
The same voice as the other night. The blonde woman who I’d opened the door for at the restaurant. This time, I didn’t move. I didn’t answer.
“I thought I checked this building,” she chuckled. “Where’ve you been hiding?”
There was a whisper. Someone was with her. Then – a giggle.
“You slept in the sauna? No wonder we didn’t see you!”
 
I looked for something to defend myself with. There was a fireplace, but it was only decorative. There wasn’t even a fire poker. I grabbed my empty bottle of complementary champagne; it was heavy enough to cause some damage.
But as I looked at that closed door, all the fight ran out of me. There were so many of them out there. I counted nine in total, surrounding the building. Dark shadows pressing up against the window; none of which were fogging up the glass. Not a single breath. Not one.
“It’ll be quick.”
Her voice was muffled, but only barely. It would be so easy for them to break through. It was just glass. And yet – none of them did.
“Open the door.”
 
Of course, I didn’t. I grasped the bottle tighter hoping against hope for them to just… leave.
Instead, there was another knock. A slap on the windows. A few familiar faces with an unfamiliar glow in their eyes, looking my way.
“I heard you went through a rough breakup,” she sighed. “We’re a community. There’s no loneliness on this side of the door.”
Something in me snapped. It was one thing to hear someone talking, but now they were talking to me, specifically. Those words were meant for me, no one else. There was no way to trick myself into believing this wasn’t happening. A reflex made me throw the bottle against the door, but it was useless. The bottle thumped against it and rolled away. They all erupted into laughter.
A bloody handprint slapped against the window. Then another. Then an eager tongue, licking it up like a thirsty cat.
“Alright,” she laughed. “Then we’ll make you come to us.”
 
The restaurant workers in the distance stepped up. They were using empty beer bottles from the other night, filled to the brim, with a rag on top. Molotovs.
I didn’t have time to go for my phone, and I couldn’t leave. The first place I could think of was the sauna. It was at least heat resistant. It could buy me some time.
I hurried into the sauna as the first heatwave pushed the door shut. Bottles were being thrown through the windows, shattering against the bedroom floor. They cheered, singing a scream rendition of ‘London Bridge’ at the top of their lungs. Blood-curdling falsettos.
Six bottles, one by one, added to an inferno. The smoke was already billowing into the sauna, staining my lungs.
 
There was no option left. I had to get out. I’d die if I didn’t.
I dipped my sauna towel in a bucket of water and wrapped it around my head. I tucked my arms into my jacket, covered my face, and considered my route. The shortest way was the window facing the rear; a sharp turn to the left, and then straight forward. I plotted it. I envisioned it. And as laughter drowned in the crackling flames, I felt my tears grow warm.
And I ran.
One step outside, and there was already something on me sizzling. Pain on my shoulders, like a searing sunburn. I could feel my skin flaking. I stepped down with my right foot, turned, and leaned into a sprint.
It wasn’t a conscious decision. I wasn’t as much running as falling with purpose. And as I crashed through the window, and air surged out around me, I threw myself into the snow by force of body weight alone.
 
I didn’t stop. Stopping meant death. Instead, I kept sprinting forward in a pace that knocked the breath in and out of my lungs like a piston. I threw the towel off my face, feeling the chill night air burn against my exposed shoulders. I was burned, but I couldn’t stop to check how badly.
Most of them were too busy howling and cheering to even care. Some of them were occupied with suckling on something raw and bloody; others were too busy enjoying each other’s company. Some of them were pointing my direction. One of them fired a gun, but the shot went wild. There was only one that remained focused and calculated. This wasn’t a game to her. This was survival.
I made my way around the side of the main lodge, following a blood-spattered trail in the snow. The ground was cluttered with miscellaneous furniture thrown from the second-floor window. I could see breathless faces peering out at me, but they didn’t seem to care. Maybe they thought I was one of them. Maybe they thought they’d already won.
Maybe they had.
 
As I rounded the corner to the parking lot, I saw a familiar face.
Ginger.
She was perched on the hood of a car in nothing but her underwear, barefoot, with the bloodied remains of Tyler splayed out in front of her. There were no tears in her eyes; just a blank-faced thousand-yard stare. She was holding up his left leg, licking an open wound clean as she pressed and prodded the dead veins for blood to squirt.
A crazy idea went through my head as I grabbed a handful of snow and stuck it into my mouth. I tried to calm my breathing as I stepped into her vision. Hiding my breath might trick her long enough to gain some distance.
 
There was visible confusion on her face. Maybe a hint of recognition. The snow kept my breath from turning to mist, making me look just as breathless as the rest of them. Ginger looked me dead in the eye as her face contorted into a snarl.
“He’s mine! Mine!” she shrieked. “He’s all mine!”
She observed every step I took. She sucked air into her lungs, as if to make herself look larger, making an uncanny reverse hissing noise. There was no vapor coming from her breath as she exhaled. There was no chase – she already had her meal. Like a house cat eating a Saint Bernard.
 
I had to get out of there. There had to be something I could do other than to run blind into the wilderness.
By the south corner of the main lodge, there was a pile of clothes. They smelled of turpentine, but no one had lit them on fire just yet. Maybe they wanted to add more to it before they did. I stuck my hands in there, letting the chemicals sting my open wounds. Rustling through discarded shirts and pants, some of which still had limbs attached, I managed to find a set of car keys. I held onto it for dear life, thanking whatever Gods may be for the little blue sunflower keychain I’d felt at the top of my fingertips.
The keys lead me to a campervan. There was a small picture of the two betrothed men above the glove box. Since I’d seen them out in the field, I figured I had some time before they came looking for it. I put the keys in the ignition, and my heart froze.
 
There was a knock on the driver side door.
“This is hardly a fitting domicile.”
Her.
I fumbled the keys, trying to get the thing to start. The campervan was probably older than me, and I’m not good with driving stick, but I didn’t have much choice.
“Invite me.”
“That’s… that’s just it, isn’t it?” I cried. “You… you can’t do it. You can’t come in.”
“You wanna bet?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Yeah, let’s bet. Let’s do it.”
I was just buying time. The moment the engine roared to life, I stepped on the gas. A bloodied hand squeaked against the window as I took a hard right turn, making the tires slip on the graveled road.
 
I saw it all in the rear-view mirror. The fires, and a gathering crowd. Some of them waved goodbye. Some cheered.
All of them rejoiced – together.
Breathless.
 
By the time I got to a nearby town, fire trucks had already passed me by. Once I talked to the police, they seemed to already know the story. To them, there’d been reports of arson. Several casualties. About eight in total. They had people on-site investigating.
But the people I’d seen out there, celebrating a massacre? They were never reported as victims, or suspects. In fact, they were seemingly just… innocent bystanders.
 
I have kept my eye on this for years.
Some of the firemen who got to the resort that night have permanently switched to night shifts. Most of those who survived that night have mysteriously vanished from social media; but they still pop up in posts, very much alive and kicking. I’ve seen people who look suspiciously similar to Ginger, and the two betrothed men. They didn’t fake their deaths or disappear; they just made themselves socially invisible. Slipped into the background.
All deaths were easily explained. Arson. All they found were burned bodies, and the fire marshal in charge seemed less than eager to delve deeper into the causes. Most of the eyewitness accounts were taken on face value. Strange how the fire marshal first changed to a night shift, then fell off the radar completely.
It was arson, end of story. No need to look closer.
And my 911 call? No one ever heard about it.
 
No wonder they didn’t bother to hide it all from me. I was never a threat. They’d already done what they came for. That one woman, the one who didn’t breathe, was the source of it all.
And to the best of my knowledge, she is still out there.
And she is not alone anymore.

Every night as I lay in bed, I heard the screaming, the shattering of plates and glasses as my mother and father fought and threw everything at each other within reach. They were drunk again, as usual. I just hoped the police wouldn’t come again tonight. I wished they could be happy.
Finally, around midnight, the voices started to fade. I felt my eyes closing as sleep came over me. But, just before I nodded off, I glimpsed a pair of eyes with black, slitted pupils peeking at me from the corner of the room. Beneath them hung a wide, grinning mouth. The mouth had dozens of triangular, razor-sharp teeth that glistened bone-white in the dim glow of the nightlight. Unattached to any visible flesh, the eyes and mouth floated in the air like wavering moonbeams. I sat up in bed, stuttering.
“What… what is this?” I whispered, staring deeply into glowing eyes. “Am I dreaming?”
“No, not dreaming, Alice. Just mad,” the thing hissed, its sharp fangs pulling apart. It gave a high-pitched, insane cackle at this. “We’re all mad here. But your father is the maddest of all, I’m sorry to say. Or, perhaps he’s just a little odd. It is hard to be sane every single day, after all…”
“Who are you?” I quietly asked as a shard of terror pierced my heart. A childish voice in the back of my mind screamed at me to simply pull the covers over my head and hide.
“The Cheshire Cat, of course. I’ll be your guide when you need me. Your adventure will be starting any second now, Alice…” His eyes glimmered brighter as a scream rang out from downstairs. I heard my father yelling, and then a gunshot rang out, shattering the night. Something heavy fell, thudding against the floor. “Ah, there it is. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, after all.”
“What’s happening?” I asked in horror. The Cheshire’s Cat’s glowing face faded like the embers of a dying fire, but his voice continued to speak in the darkness. Heavy footsteps started to ascend the stairs. Something cold and empty slithered through my heart as a feeling of dread overcame me.
“He’s coming,” the Cheshire Cat said in a gleeful tone, the voice coming from all around me. “If you want to live, jump out the window. You have ten seconds to decide.”
“Alice!” I heard my father yell drunkenly, slurring his words. “Come here, right now. I need to talk to you.” I jumped out of bed, slammed my feet into my shoes and flung open the window.
“Five seconds,” the Cheshire Cat said cheerily. I looked down from the second story. My heart dropped as I saw the fall. “Better jump, Alice. You don’t want your adventure to end before it even begins.” I heard a hand roughly grab the doorknob. I crawled out the window, slowly letting myself down by my arms.
My father flung the door open. The front of his white shirt gleamed with slick, wet blood. He had a black revolver in one hand. With wild, excited eyes, he scanned the room, stumbling forward. His head ratcheted toward the open window. For a moment, our gazes met.
“You bitch!” he screamed in rage, raising the gun. “You’re just like your mother, always trying to leave. I’ll show you, you stupid cunt…” As I let myself drop, a gunshot exploded through the night. The window above me exploded in a shower of broken glass. I screamed as the chill night air whipped around me. The garden below rose up to meet me. I felt like I was standing on the tracks as a train barreled down on me.
I hit the dirt hard, rolling as I landed. A bush with sharp branches clawed my shoulder and back, gouging out burning slices across my skin. I glanced up, seeing my father drunkenly leaning out the window, his eyes unfocused. A totally insane, ferocious expression twisted his face into something inhuman and demonic. I barely recognized him.
“Fucking bitch! Stupid cunt!” he screamed, firing the pistol twice more. One of the bullets smashed the lawn only a foot in front of me, spraying grass and soil everywhere. I shrieked, sprinting across the yard in my shoes and pajamas. The dewey grass soaked my feet within seconds. But I knew I had more pressing problems than shoes.
I glanced back at the house, seeing the window empty. A thick forest loomed at the edge of the property. A blanket of shadows covered it, and I could barely see a thing. But I knew I had no choice. I sprinted into the woods, blindly tumbling through prickers and grasping boughs.
A torrent of flickering orange light suddenly illuminated the night. As I descended deeper into the woods, trying to hide myself, I looked back at the house one last time.
I saw a raging inferno there. Long tongues of flame hissed and spit as they licked the dry wood, flowing over the walls like water.
And in front of the hellish flames, I saw my father, a dark silhouette with a gun, striding purposefully across the yard toward me.
***
As my eyes adjusted to the dark forest, I caught a flash of something white sprinting through the bushes. I nearly screamed, startled into a state of terror. The creature turned its pale, dead eyes toward me.
He towered over me, about six feet tall. He had floppy rabbit ears surgically attached to his mutilated skull. Black stitches ran over his face in jagged patches, keeping his rotting flesh together. His white fur had a rainbow of fluids soaked into it, from blood to orange and yellow pus to other things I could never hope to identify. New trickles of blood and pus continued to leak out from the stitches crisscrossing his body. In his arms, grasped between claws like those of a tiger, I saw an unconscious child. The child had a deep gash on its forehead. His head lolled from side to side like a ragdoll’s.
“I’m late…” the rabbit hissed at me, his cataract eyes glimmering with insanity as they shone white in the pale moonlight. “For, you see, I have a very important date. The Red Queen is expecting the blood of a child for her shower, as she does every full moon. What keeps the skin fresher and younger than the blood of a little one, after all?” His lips cracked apart in a wide grin, showing blackened gums mottled with sores. His pointed, needle-like teeth reminded me of some nightmarish deep-sea fish. I stood there, speechless, until the sound of cracking twigs and whipping branches not far behind me startled me back into action.
I started running, giving the insane rabbit creature a wide berth. I glanced back, seeing my father’s pale, sweaty face through the brush. His lunatic eyes flicked from side to side. He kept the gun held out in front of him, his arm swaying gently as if he were caught in some hypnotic state.
“Alice! Come here, right now! How dare you…” I only glanced at my father for a second before turning my gaze forwards again, but, by then, it was too late. In the panic of the moment and the darkness of the forest, I didn’t see the six foot wide hole that stretched across the earth like a gaping maw.
I gave a startled shriek as my foot dropped into empty air. Before I knew what was happening, I was slipping, my arms pinwheeling. I tried to regain my balance, twisting my body around. I saw the rabbit there only a few paces away, grinning at me, the unconscious, kidnapped child slung across his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
I fell backwards. The scream that tried to rip its way out of my throat seemed to get stuck there, and I could do nothing but stare blindly up as the rabbit lunged in after me with a cry of excitement. The last glimpse I caught of the forest showed my insane father stumbling toward us, still crying my name with drunken fury. The air whipped around me, the roar of it like the whine of a tornado shrieking in my ears.
The hole at the top shrank into a pinpoint as the rabbit and I fell downwards together into total darkness. We seemed to spiral around each other. No matter how I tried to pull away, the rabbit always seemed to be right there. The last glimpse I saw before the shadows closed in was the rabbit’s dead eyes flashing excitedly as he glared at me with a face like a corpse.
Then the shadows drew around me like a curtain shutting on a stage. Only my own screams and the ragged breathing of the rabbit surrounded me for what felt like an eternity. Slowly, my consciousness slipped away.
After that, I remember nothing for what felt like a very long time.
***
I awoke suddenly, inhaling deeply. I shivered, my teeth chattering as I looked around in confusion. I beheld an alien landscape stretching out to the horizon. Gently sloping hills of black earth loomed in every direction. There were no grass or plants visible, but giant red-and-white mushrooms the size of pine trees grew in clusters along the peaks of the rolling hills.
Streams of fire crisscrossed the landscape like rivers from Hell. The sun here drifted along the slit wrists of the horizon. It looked like a cold, purple ball of fire that gave off a soft, moon-like radiance but very little heat. Thin, silvery clouds covered the sky in rising plumes of pale mist. The entire world looked dark, all the colors eerie and saturated, almost like the desert at the end of a sunset.
I looked around for any sign of the surgically-altered rabbit creature or the unconscious boy he had been carrying in his arms or even, God forbid, my father. But I saw no signs of any of them.
On top of a nearby mushroom that loomed twenty feet in the air, however, I saw a familiar glint of glowing eyes, their slitted, dilated pupils looking down with insanity. The dragonfish-like teeth of the creature’s mouth shimmered in his eerie, ear-to-ear grin. Over the course of a few seconds, the rest of his body became visible as well, fading into view for the first time. I nearly gagged as I looked up in amazement. It was a disgusting thing to look at.
The Cheshire Cat was entirely hairless, his skin black and reptilian. Patches of his flesh were rotting away, and his tail had started to look like a stripped wire. White bones and infected veins writhing with maggots gleamed through the suppurating sores.
“Cheshire Cat,” I whispered, licking my dry lips, “what happened? Last I knew, I was falling… there was some… hole in the forest, and it seemed to keep going on and on forever. There was a rabbit, too, but not a normal rabbit. It was like a rabbit from a serial killer’s nightmare.” The Cheshire Cat laughed at this, but it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. It reminded me of the laugh of a man who just had his throat slit. It was gurgling and deep, and carried through the cold, dry air like a scream.
“The nightmares swarm across this world like a plague of locusts. The Red Queen’s evil and sickness has infected the very foundation of existence. The barriers between Wonderland and Hell itself seem to grow thinner by the day,” he said, but the glee never evaporated from his expression. Across the horizon, a thin, high-pitched scream rang out, full of pain and mortal terror. The Cheshire Cat’s head swung slowly toward the sound. I followed his gaze.
In the distance, I saw a narrow castle with razor-sharp turrets that disappeared into the silver clouds high above. Thin murderholes spiraled up the outside of the dark granite surface. A giant flag rippled softly in the cold breeze. I squinted, seeing a black flag with a red heart gripped in a skeletal hand. Drops of blood dripped out of the bottom.
“They call it the Chateau de Douleur,” the Cheshire Cat said by reason of explanation, “the home of the Red Queen. It sounds like another victim has fallen into her clutches.”
“What… another victim?” I stuttered, a sense of horror filling my body with a sick, weak feeling. The Cheshire Cat gave a slow, jerky nod. His eerie, gurgling laugh rang out suddenly, making me nearly jump out of my skin.
“The Red Queen seems to think that bathing in the blood of children will keep her young forever. She has an iron maiden set up above the royal shower. Every month on the full moon, her insane, sycophantic followers bring her sacrifices. Young children, boys and girls no older than five or six, usually. The younger they are, the more purifying their blood’s properties, you see.” The Cheshire Cat’s teeth gleamed as another, far weaker, scream rang out through the night. It was cut off suddenly. The eerie silence that rang out in the aftermath felt deafening.
“Ah, there it is. La petite mort- the little death,” he said gleefully, another laugh ripping its way out of his throat.
“I don’t see how that’s funny,” I said. “You think the Red Queen murdering children is funny?” As if offended by my change of tone, the Cheshire Cat’s rotted, black body started fading out, but his grin didn’t falter.
“I think that if you don’t start running soon, you will experience it firsthand,” the Cheshire Cat hissed, his voice echoing from all around me as the last gleam of his eyes faded away. “Beware. The White Rabbit draws near.”
***
I stumbled through the dark, cold world they called Wonderland. The black earth under my feet felt soft and smooth. The smell of the giant red-and-white fungi that covered the landscape like redwoods permeated the area, giving off a smell like mushrooms after a heavy rain. I went in the opposite direction of the Chateau de Douleur.
The pale, purple sun had started to disappear over the horizon. The night’s edge slid across the sky like a razor blade, plunging the world into darkness. Within a few minutes, I could barely see more than twenty feet in front of me. The silvery mist I had first seen in the sky now started spreading its ghostly fingers over the ground, covering the world in a blanket of pale fog.
I heard the White Rabbit before I saw him. In a harsh, dissonant voice, he sang. His voice carried all around me, raising goosebumps all over my skin.
“When the Queen’s eyes looked down from the sky,
They gleamed like the slit wrists of the sun.
Her pale face watches, her dead eyes dry.
Their small faces shriek what she’s done.
“I could not stop the children screaming.
And I could not stop the acid eating the dead.
I could not stop the dead men from dreaming.
I could not stop the voices in my head.
“Fragments of moonlight shine on a kitchen knife,
Crimson and ruby-red and gleaming,
But the rabbit knows no peace in life
When the children’s voices never stop screaming.”
As I ducked behind the giant trunk of a mushroom, I caught a glimpse of white fur with a spiderweb of black, garish stitches running across his back. Slung across the White Rabbit’s shoulder, the unconscious body of the child lay, the head lolling from side to side. The White Rabbit was heading in the direction of the castle. He continued bellowing out his disturbing, strange verses as his voice disappeared off in the distance. Exhaling deeply, I slunk out from behind the massive white fungal trunk. I stopped suddenly, a shard of dread piercing my heart as I saw what stood there before me.
A large man in a ripped-up walrus mask loomed over me, a blood-stained meat cleaver clutched tightly in one hand. The brown mask only covered the top half of his face. It had two giant white tusks jutting down past his chin. He had on a tight, soiled T-shirt that might have once been white but was now covered in a disgusting rainbow of stains. His fat belly protruded over his belt. The rolls of fat jiggled on his neck as he gave a strange, high-pitched laugh.
“They call me the Walrus,” he hissed through a mouthful of broken, rotting teeth, grinning at me. As he exhaled, I smelled rotten meat and the sickly sweet reek of infection. I backpedaled quickly in horror and revulsion. “I ate all the little ones, I did… my sweet little clams, the children of the damned…” He laughed at this, advancing on me. His dark eyes shone with insanity and hunger behind the eerie mask. With a greasy, muscular arm, he grabbed me by the neck.
I was put into a headlock and forced to stumble along behind him, my breaths coming in choking gasps. He pulled me into the mist. For a couple minutes, we went on like this. I continued struggling, trying to beat the giant man away with my hands, but he was too strong. When his grip loosened slightly, a powerful, echoing scream escaped my lips.
“Help me! Someone! Cheshire Cat…” I began, but he tightened his greasy, bulging arm around my neck, cutting off my wind. The world started turning white. A rising sense of animal panic swept through my body until the Walrus finally, mercifully, relaxed. I drew in a deep breath that tasted as sweet as honey, gasping and sweating.
“Don’t do that, my little clam,” the Walrus whispered with venom. His cracked lips had split into a furious grimace. His eyes shone with hatred. “You are courting death. Don’t you know sound draws on the Jabberwock?” He looked around nervously at the name.
As if in response, a high-pitched, animalistic roar ripped its way across the night. It reminded me of the screaming of a woman being burned alive. The echoes faded slowly, but with the mist so thick around us and the sky looking like a flat piece of slate, I couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction.
Ahead of us loomed a shoddy, one-room cabin. The Walrus murmured to himself, gnashing his destroyed teeth as he looked down on me hungrily.
“You’re a beautiful little clam,” he hissed. “I think you’ll make a nice meal for Mr. Walrus. Indeed, a very tender little clam.” With one greasy, dirt-stained hand, he flung the cabin door open and threw me inside. The smell of cooking meat, rotting flesh and feces smacked me in the face, so thick I could taste it in the back of my throat. I bent over, retching. The Walrus closed the door as quietly as he could, peering through a tiny, smashed window in the mold-ridden boards of the dilapidated cabin.
A little girl crouched in the corner, starved and shivering. On a rough, wooden kitchen counter, I saw small, dismembered fingers and eyeballs. Spools of intestines were rolled up like sausages next to them.
A raging fire in the fireplace flickered and danced, illuminating every corner of this cabin of horrors. Over the fire, a child’s torso roasted, the fats spitting and dripping in greasy, burning drops. It was just the torso, with a ragged patch of bloody neck. It ended at the navel, with pieces of torn organs hanging out and blackening.
“Into the cage, my little sweetie, my little honey,” the Walrus whispered, pushing me forward. I heard the strange animalistic cry again, this time much closer.
“Fuck you!” I screamed, pushing the Walrus away. I tried to run for the door, but in a giant, single bound, he tackled me to the floor. I began shrieking for my life, trying to claw at the Walrus’ eyes. He punched me hard in the face. I saw white spots, bright stars that flashed across my vision. As my head lolled and I tasted coppery blood dripping from my mouth and nose, the high-pitched scream came again from directly outside the door.
“Help!” I cried. The Walrus froze, looking up. His dead eyes flashed with horror and a deep, ineffable fear. That was when the entire front of the cabin exploded. Shards of splintered wood pierced my skin like tiny hornet stings. The Walrus jumped off me, backpedaling quickly toward the back of the cabin. I raised my head and met the eyes of the Jabberwock. Like a dragon from an acid fiend’s nightmare, it raised its powerful body to its full height, looming twenty feet above the ground.
The Jabberwock’s skin gleamed a slate-gray color. Hundreds of pencil-thin appendages hung down from its enormous, fish-like face. The slow, rhythmic tapping of the fetid slime that dripped from its body mixed with its powerful breathing.
Its flat, hungry eyes bulged out, dark and lidless, reflecting the bloody light of the fire. Its enormous lungs inhaled and exhaled as it stared at us, creating the same whipping of wind and fury that a barreling train might produce.
The Jabberwock’s neck slithered out, writhing and serpentine, like some ancient Brachiosaurus’ neck. Its head hung low below its shoulders as it moved forward in a jerky, crawling gait, its webbed, dragon-like feet sliding across the soft black soil of Wonderland like a berserk centipede. It opened its mouth, showing hundreds of spiraling teeth that pulsated and twisted like the mouth of some demonic lamprey. The Jabberwock tried to force its entire body through the crushed wall, crouching down and giving another high-pitched scream. Its black eyes rolled back in its head, showing bloody veins at the bottom.
The Walrus tried to sprint for a back window, but the Jabberwock’s neck slithered out. Like a toad grabbing a fly out of the air, its lamprey mouth struck out in a blur. It attached to the Walrus’ back with a sucking sound. Blood exploded from the back of the Walrus’ body, splashing the coarse floor and broken walls of the cabin. I started crawling away. The panicked, agonized shrieks of the Walrus carried through the air, accompanied by wet crunching and sucking sounds.
As the Jabberwock shook its head like a dog with a chew toy, spatters of blood from the Walrus’ mutilated body the inside of the cabin. The frail, trembling girl in the cage in the corner cowered back from the destruction. The Jabberwock’s tail whipped from side to side, long and tapering like the tail of a dinosaur. Sharp, bony spikes protruded from the ends.
With a tremendous crash that shook the ground, its tail smashed into the cage. The girl gave a squeak like a strangled rabbit as the cage soared across the cabin and crashed into a wall. She tumbled head over heels inside it. Then the cage’s door fell open with a clatter of metal. The girl crawled out, her stunned eyes sweeping over me.
I silently motioned for her to follow me. As silently as I could, I crawled through a massive hole in the collapsed front wall. I glanced back and saw her close behind, her skeletal arms pumping quickly. A glimmer of hope flashed across her sunken, haunted eyes, a look I remember even now when I lay in my bed a few days later.
As we got out to the black soil of Wonderland and the thick mists of its endless night, the cabin fell into a heap behind us. The Jabberwock continued to thrash in the rubble. The sounds of bones cracking and sucking followed us down the rolling hills.

Early last September I discovered among the exhibits in a local art gallery a sort of performance piece in the form of an audiotape. This, I later learned, was the first of a series of tape-recorded dream monologues by an unknown artist. The following is a brief and highly typical excerpt from the opening section of this work. I recall that after a few seconds of hissing tape noise, the voice began speaking: ‘There was far more to deal with in the bungalow house than simply an infestation of vermin,’ it said, ‘although that too had its questionable aspects.’ Then the voice went on: ‘I could see only a few of the bodies where the moonlight shone through the open blinds of the living-room windows and fell upon the carpet. Only one of the bodies seemed to be moving, and that very slowly, but there may have been more that were not yet dead. Aside from the chair in which I sat in the darkness there was very little furniture in the room, or elsewhere in the bungalow house for that matter. But a number of lamps were positioned around me, floor lamps and table lamps and even two tiny lamps on the mantel above the fireplace.’
A brief pause occurred here in the opening section of the tape-recorded dream monologue, as I remember it, after which the voice continued: ‘The bungalow house was built with a fireplace, I said to myself in the darkness, thinking how long it had been since anyone had made use of this fireplace, or anything else in the house. Then my attention returned to the lamps, and I began trying each of them one by one, twisting their little grooved switches in the darkness. The moonlight fell upon the lampshades without shining through them, so I could see that none of the lamps was equipped with a lightbulb, and each time I turned the switch of a floor lamp or a table lamp or one of the tiny lamps on the mantel, nothing changed in the dark living room of the bungalow house: the moonlight shone through the dusty blinds and revealed the bodies of insects and other vermin on the pale carpet.’
‘The challenges and obstacles facing me in that bungalow house were becoming more and more oppressive,’ whispered the voice on the tape. ‘There was something so desolate about being in that place in the dead of night, even if I did not know precisely what time it was. And to see upon the pale, threadbare carpet those verminous bodies, some of which were still barely alive; then to try each of the lamps and find that none of them was in working order – everything, it seemed, was in opposition to my efforts, everything aligned against my taking care of the problems I faced in the bungalow house. For the first time I noticed that the bodies lying for the most part in total stillness on the moonlit carpet were not like any species of vermin I had ever seen,’ the voice on the tape recording said. ‘Some of them seemed to be deformed, their naturally revolting forms altered in ways I could not discern. I knew that I would require specialized implements for dealing with these creatures, an arsenal of advanced tools of extermination. It was the idea of poisons – the toxic solutions and vapors I would need to use in my assault upon the bungalow hordes – that caused me to become overwhelmed by the complexities of the task before me and the paucity of my resources for dealing with them.’
At this point, and many others on the tape (as I recall), the voice became nearly inaudible. ‘The bungalow house,’ it said, ‘was such a bleak environment in which to make a stand: the moonlight through the dusty blinds, the bodies on the carpet, the lamps without any lightbulbs. And the incredible silence. It was not the absence of sounds that I sensed, but the stifling of innumerable sounds and even voices, the muffling of all the noises one might expect to hear in an old bungalow house in the dead of night, as well as countless other sounds and voices. The forces required to accomplish this silence filled me with awe. The infinite terror and dreariness of an infested bungalow house, I whispered to myself. A bungalow universe, I then thought without speaking aloud. Suddenly I was overcome by a feeling of euphoric hopelessness which passed through my body like a powerful drug and held all my thoughts and all my movements in a dreamy, floating suspension. In the moonlight that shone through the blinds of that bungalow house I was now as still and as silent as everything else.’
The title of the tape-recorded artwork from which I have just quoted was The Bungalow House (Plus Silence). I discovered this and other dream monologues by the same artist at Dalha D. Fine Arts, which was located in the near vicinity of the public library (main branch) where I was employed in the Language and Literature department. Sometimes I spent my lunch breaks at the gallery, even consuming my brown-bag meals on the premises. There were a few chairs and benches on the floor of the gallery, and I knew that the woman who owned the place did not discourage any kind of traffic, however lingering. Her actual livelihood was in fact not derived from the gallery itself. How could it have been? Dalha D. Fine Arts was a hole in the wall. One would think it no trouble at all to keep up the premises where there was so little floor space, just a single room that was by no means overcrowded with artworks or art-related merchandise. But no attempt at such upkeeping seemed ever to have been made. The display window was so filmy that someone passing by could barely make out the paintings and sculptures behind it (the same ones year after year). From the street outside, this tiny front window presented the most desolate hallucination of bland colors and shapeless forms, especially on late November afternoons. Further inside the gallery, things were in a similar state – from the cruddy linoleum floor, where some cracked tiles revealed the concrete foundation, to the rather high ceiling, which occasionally sent down small chips of plaster. If every artwork and item of art-related merchandise had been cleared out of that building, no one would think that an art gallery had once occupied this space and not some enterprise of a lesser order. But as many persons were aware, if only through second-hand sources, the woman who operated Dalha D. Fine Arts did not make her living by dealing in those artworks and related items, which only the most desperate or scandalously naïve artist would allow to be put on display in that gallery. By all accounts, including my own brief lunchtime conversations with the woman, she had pursued a variety of careers in her time. She herself had worked as an artist at one point, and some of her works – messy assemblages inside old cigar boxes – were exhibited in a corner of her gallery. But evidently her art gallery business was not self-sustaining, despite minimal overhead, and she made no secret of her true means of income.
‘Who wants to buy such junk?’ she once explained to me, gesturing with long fingernails painted emerald green. This same color also seemed to dominate her wardrobe of long, loose garments, with many of her outfits featuring incredible scarves or shawls that dragged along the floor as she moved about the art gallery. She paused and with the pointed toe of one of her emerald-green shoes gave a little kick at a wire wastebasket that was filled with the miniature limbs of dolls, all of them individually painted in a variety of colors. ‘What are people thinking when they make these things? What was I thinking with those stupid cigar boxes? But no more of that, definitely no more of that sort of thing.’
And she made no secret, beyond a certain reasonable caution, of what sort of thing now engaged her energies as a businesswoman. The telephone was always ringing at her art gallery, always upsetting the otherwise dead calm of the place with its cracked, warbling voice that called out from the back room. She would then quickly disappear behind a curtain that hung in the doorway separating the front and back sections of the art gallery. I might be eating a sandwich or a piece of fruit, and then suddenly, for the fourth or fifth time in a half-hour, the telephone would scream from the back room, eventually summoning this woman behind the curtain. But she never answered the telephone with the name of the art gallery or employed any of the stock phrases of business protocol. Not so much as a ‘Good afternoon, may I help you?’ did I ever hear from the back room as I sat eating my midday meal in the front section of the art gallery. She always answered the telephone in the same way with the same quietly expectant tone in her voice. This is Dalha, she always said. Before I had known her very long even I found myself using her name in the most familiar way. The mere saying of this name instilled in me a sense of access to what she offered all those telephone-callers, not to mention those individuals who personally visited the art gallery to make or confirm an appointment. Whatever someone was eager to try, whatever step someone was willing to take – Dalha could arrange it. This was the true stock in trade of the art gallery, these arrangements. When I returned to the library after my lunch break, I continued to imagine Dalha back at the art gallery, racing between the front and back sections of the building, making all kinds of arrangements over the telephone, and sometimes in person.
On the day that I first noticed the new artwork entitled The Bungalow House, Dalha’s telephone was extremely vocal. While she was talking to her clients in the back section of the art gallery, I was left alone in the front section. Just for a thrill I went over to the wire wastebasket full of dismembered doll parts and helped myself to one of the painted arms (emerald green!), hiding it in the inner pocket of my sportcoat. It was then that I spotted the old audiotape recorder on a small plastic table in the corner. Beside the machine was a business card on which the title of the artwork had been hand-printed, along with the following instructions: PRESS PLAY. PLEASE REWIND AFTER LISTENING. DO NO REMOVE TAPE. I placed the headphones over my ears and pressed the PLAY button. The voice that spoke through the headphones, which were enormous, sounded distant and was somewhat distorted by the hissing of the tape. Nevertheless, I was so intrigued by the opening passages of this dream monologue, which I have already transcribed, that I sat down on the floor next to the small plastic table on which the tape recorder was positioned and listened to the entire tape, exceeding my allotted lunchtime by over half an hour. By the time the tape had ended I was in another world – that is, the world of the infested bungalow house, with all its dreamlike crumminess and foul charms.
‘Don’t forget to rewind the tape,’ said Dalha, who was now standing over me, her long gray hair, like steel wool, almost brushing against my face.
I pressed the REWIND button on the tape recorder and got up from the floor. ‘Dalha, may I use your lavatory?’ I asked. She pointed to the curtain leading to the back section of the art gallery. ‘Thank you,’ I said.
The effect of listening to the first dream monologue was very intense for reasons I will soon explain. I wanted to be alone for a few moments in order to preserve the state of mind which the voice on the tape had induced in me, much as one might attempt to hold on to the images of a dream just after waking. However, I felt that the lavatory at the library, despite its peculiar virtues which I have appreciated over the years, would somehow undermine the sensations and mental state created by the dream monologue, rather than preserving this experience and even enhancing it, as I hoped the lavatory in the back section of Dalha’s art gallery would do. The very reason why I spent my lunchtimes in the surroundings of Dalha’s art gallery, which were so different from those of the library, was exactly why I now wanted to use the lavatory in the back section of that art gallery and definitely not the lavatory at the library, even if I was already overdue from my lunch break. And, indeed, this lavatory had the same qualities as the rest of the art gallery, as I hoped it would. The fact that it was located in the back section of the art gallery, a region of mysteries to my mind, was significant. Just outside the door of the lavatory stood a small, cluttered desk upon which was positioned the telephone that Dalha used in her true business of making arrangements. The telephone was centered in the weak light of a desk lamp, and I noticed, as I passed into the lavatory, that it was an unwieldy object with a straight – that is, uncoiled – cord connecting the receiver to the telephone housing, with its enormous circular dial. But although Dalha answered several calls during the time I was in the lavatory, these seemed to be entirely legitimate conversations having to do either with her personal life or with practical matters relating to the art gallery.
‘How long are you going to be in there?’ Dalha asked through the door of the lavatory. ‘I hope you’re not sick, because if you’re sick you’ll have to go somewhere else.’
I called out that there was nothing wrong (quite the opposite) and a moment later emerged from the lavatory. I was about to ask for details of the art performance tape I had just heard, anxious to know about the artist and what it would cost me to own the work entitled The Bungalow House, as well as any similar works that might exist. But the phone began ringing again. Dalha answered it with her customary greeting as I stood by in the back section of the art gallery, which was a dark, though relatively uncluttered space that now put me in mind of the living room of the bungalow house that I had heard described on the tape-recorded dream monologue. The conversation in which Dalha was engaged (another non-arrangement call) seemed interminable, and I was becoming nervously aware how long past my lunch break I had stayed at the storefront art gallery.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I said to Dalha, who responded with a look from her emerald eyes while continuing to speak to the other party on the telephone. And she was smiling at me, like muted laughter, I remember thinking as I passed through the curtained doorway into the front section of the art gallery. I glanced at the tape recorder standing on the plastic table but decided against taking the audiocassette back to the library (and afterward home with me). It would be there when I visited on my lunch break the following day. Hardly anyone ever bought anything out of the front section of Dalha’s art gallery.
For the rest of the day – both at the library and at my home – I thought about the bungalow house tape. Especially while riding the bus home from the library, I thought of the images and concepts described on the tape, as well as the voice that described them and the phrases it used throughout the dream monologue on the bungalow house. Much of my commute from my home to the library, and back home again, took me past numerous streets lined from end to end with desolate-looking houses, any of which might have been the inspiration for the bungalow house audiotape. I say that these streets were lined from ‘end to end’ with such houses, even though the bus never turned down any of them, and I therefore never actually viewed even a single street from ‘end to end.’ In fact, as I looked through the window next to my seat on the bus – on either side of the bus I always sat in the window seat, never in the aisle seat – the streets I saw appeared endless, vanishing from my sight toward an infinity of old houses, many of them derelict houses and a great many of them being dwarfish and desolate-looking houses of the bungalow type.
The tape-recorded dream monologue, as I recalled it that day while riding home on the bus and staring out the window, described several features of the infested bungalow house – the dusty window blinds through which the moonlight shone, the lamps with all their lightbulb sockets empty, the threadbare carpet, and the dead or barely living vermin that littered the carpet. Thus, I was afforded an interior view of the bungalow house by the voice on the tape, not a view from the exterior. Conversely, the houses I gazed upon with such intensity as I rode the bus to and from the library were seen by me only from an exterior perspective, their interiors being visible solely in my imagination. Of course my sense of these interiors, being entirely an imaginative projection, was highly vague, lacking the precise physical layout provided by the bungalow house audiotape. Similarly, the dreams I often had of these houses were highly vague. Yet the sensations and the mental state created by my imaginative projections into and my dreams of these houses perfectly corresponded to those I had experienced at Dalha’s art gallery when I listened to the tape entitled The Bungalow House. That feeling of being in a trance while occupying, all alone, the most bleak and pathetic surroundings of an old bungalow house was communicated to me in the most powerful way by the voice on the tape, which described a silent and secluded world where one existed in a state of abject hypnosis. While sitting on the floor of the art gallery listening to the voice as it spoke through those enormous headphones, I had the sense that I was not simply hearing the words of that dream monologue but also reading them. What I mean is that whenever I have the occasion to read words on a page, any words on any page, the voice that I hear saying these words in my head is always recognizable in some way as my own, even though the words are those of another. Perhaps it is even more accurate to say that whenever I read words on a page, the voice in my head is my own voice as it becomes merged (or lost) within the words that I am reading. Conversely, when I have the occasion to write words on a page, even a simple note or memo at the library, the voice that I hear dictating these words does not sound like my own – until, of course, I read the words back to myself, at which time everything is all right again. The bungalow house tape was the most dramatic example of this phenomenon I had ever known. Despite the poor overall quality of the recording, the distorted voice reading this dream monologue became merged (or lost) within my own perfectly clear voice in my head, even though I was listening to its words over a pair of enormous headphones and not reading the words on a page. As I rode the bus home from the library, observing street after street of houses so reminiscent of the one described on the tape-recorded dream monologue, I regretted not having acquired this artwork on the spot or at least discovered more about it from Dalha, who had been occupied with what seemed an unusual number of telephone calls that afternoon.
The following day at the library I was anxious for lunchtime to arrive so that I could get over to the art gallery and find out everything I possibly could about the bungalow house tape, as well as discuss terms for its acquisition. Entering the art gallery, I immediately looked toward the corner where the tape recorder had been set on the small plastic table the day before. For some reason I was relieved to find the exhibit still in place, as if any artwork in that gallery could possibly have come and gone in a single day. I walked over to the exhibit with the purpose of verifying that everything I had seen (and heard) the previous day was exactly as I remembered it. I checked that the audiocassette was still inside the recording machine and picked up the little business card on which the title of the exhibit was given, along with instructions for properly operating the tape-recorded artwork. It was then that I realized that this was a different card from the first one. Printed on this card was the title of a new artwork, which was called The Derelict Factory with a Dirt Floor and Voices.
While I was very excited to find a new work by this artist, I also felt intense apprehension at the absence of the bungalow house dream monologue, which I had planned to purchase with some extra money I brought with me to the art gallery that day. Just at that moment in which I experienced the dual sensations of excitement and apprehension, Dalha emerged from behind the curtain separating the back and front sections of the art gallery. I had intended to be thoroughly blasé in negotiating the purchase of the bungalow house artwork, but Dalha caught me off-guard in a state of disoriented conflict.
‘What happened to the bungalow house tape that was here yesterday?’ I asked, the tension in my voice betraying desires that were all to her advantage.
‘That’s gone now,’ she replied in a frigid tone as she walked slowly and pointlessly about the gallery, her emerald skirt and scarves dragging along the floor.
‘I don’t understand. It was an artwork exhibited on that small plastic table.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed.
‘Now, after only a single day on exhibit, it’s gone?’
‘Yes, it’s gone.’
‘Somebody bought it,’ I said, assuming the worst.
‘No,’ she said, ‘that one was not for sale. It was a performance piece. There was a charge, but you didn’t pay.’
A sickly confusion now became added to the excitement and disappointment already mingling inside me. ‘There was no notice of a charge for listening to the dream monologue,’ I insisted. ‘As far as I knew, as far as anyone could know, it was an item for sale like everything else in this place.’
‘The dream monologue, as you call it, was an exclusive piece. The charge was on the back of the card on which the title was written, just as the charge is on the back of that card you are holding in your hand.’
I turned the card to the reverse side, where the words ‘twenty-five dollars’ were written in the same hand that appeared on all the price tags around the gallery. Speaking in the tones of an outraged customer, I said to Dalha, ‘You wrote the price only on this card. There was nothing written on the bungalow house card.’ But even as I said these words I lacked the conviction that they were true. In any case, I knew that if I wanted to hear the tape recording about the derelict factory I would have to pay what I owed, or what Dalha claimed I owed, for listening to the bungalow house tape.
‘Here,’ I said, removing my wallet from my back pocket, ‘ten, twenty, twenty-five dollars for the bungalow house, and another twenty-five for listening to the tape now in the machine.’
Dalha stepped forward, took the fifty dollars I held out to her, and in her coldest voice said, ‘This only covers yesterday’s tape about the bungalow house, which was clearly priced at fifty dollars. You must still pay twenty-five dollars if you wish to listen to the tape today.’
‘But why should the bungalow house tape cost twenty-five dollars more than the tape about the derelict factory?’
‘That is simply because this is a less ambitious work than the one dealing with the bungalow house.’
In fact the tape recording entitled The Derelict Factory with a Dirt Floor and Voices was of shorter duration than The Bungalow House (Plus Silence), but I found it no less wonderful in picturing the same ‘infinite terror and dreariness.’ For approximately fifteen minutes (on my lunch break) I embraced the degraded beauty of the derelict factory – a narrow ruin that stood isolated upon a vast plain, its broken windows allowing only the most meager haze of moonlight to shine across its floor of hard-packed dirt where dead machinery lay buried in a grave of shadows and languished in the echoes of hollow, senseless voices. How utterly desolate, yet all the same wonderfully comforting, was the voice that communicated its message to me through the medium of a tape recording. To think that another person shared my love for the icy bleakness of things. The satisfaction I felt at hearing that monotonal and somewhat distorted voice speaking so intimately of scenes and sensations that perfectly echoed certain aspects of my own deepest nature – this was an experience that even then, as I sat on the floor of Dalha’s art gallery listening to the tape through enormous headphones, might have been heartbreaking. But I wanted to believe that the artist who created these dream monologues about the bungalow house and the derelict factory had not set out to break my heart or anyone’s heart. I wanted to believe that this artist had escaped the dreams and demons of all sentiment in order to explore the foul and crummy delights of a universe where everything had been reduced to three stark principles: first, that there was nowhere for you to go; second, that there was nothing for you to do; and third, that there was no one for you to know. Of course I knew that this view was an illusion like any other, but it was also one that had sustained me so long and so well – as long and as well as any other illusion and perhaps longer, perhaps better.
‘Dalha,’ I said when I had finished listening to the tape recording, ‘I want you to tell me what you know about the artist who made these dream monologues. He doesn’t even sign his works.’
From across the front section of the art gallery Dalha spoke to me in a strange, somewhat flustered voice. ‘Well, why should you be surprised that he doesn’t sign his name to his works – that’s how artists are these days. All over the place they are signing their works only with some idiotic symbol or a piece of chewing gum or just leaving them unsigned altogether. Why should you care what his name is? Why should I?’
‘Because,’ I answered, ‘perhaps I can persuade him to allow me to buy his works instead of sitting on the floor of your art gallery and renting these performances on my lunch break.’
‘So you want to cut me out entirely,’ Dalha shouted back in her old voice. ‘I am his dealer, I tell you, and anything he has to sell you will buy through me.’
‘I don’t know why you’re getting so upset,’ I said, standing up from the floor. ‘I’m willing to give you a percentage. All I ask is that you arrange something between myself and the artist.’
Dalha sat down in a chair next to the curtained doorway separating the front and back sections of the art gallery. She pulled her emerald shawl around herself and said, ‘Even if I wished to arrange something I could not do it. I have no idea what his name is myself. A few nights ago he walked up to me on the street while I was waiting for a cab to take me home.’
‘What does he look like?’ I had to ask at that moment.
‘It was late at night and I was drunk,’ Dalha replied, somehow evasively it seemed to me.
‘Was he a younger man, an older man?’
‘An older man, yes. Not very tall, with bushy white hair like a professor of some kind. And he said that he wanted to have an artwork of his delivered to my gallery. I explained to him my usual terms as best I could, since I was so drunk. He agreed and then walked off down the street. And that’s not the best part of town to be walking around all by yourself. Well, the next day a package arrived with the tape-recording machine and so forth. There were also some instructions which explained that I should destroy each of the audiotapes before I leave the art gallery at the end of the day, and that a new tape would arrive the following day and each day thereafter. No return address is provided on these packages.’
‘And did you destroy the bungalow house tape?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ said Dalha with some exasperation, but also with insistence. ‘What do I care about some crazy artist’s work or how he conducts his career? Besides, he guaranteed I would make some money on the deal, and here I am already with seventy-five dollars.’ ‘So why not sell me this dream monologue about the derelict factory? I won’t say anything.’
Dalha was quiet for a moment, and then said, ‘He told me that if I didn’t destroy the tapes each day he would know about it and that he would do something. I’ve forgotten exactly what he said, I was so drunk that night.’
‘But how could he know?’ I asked, and in reply Dalha just stared at me in silence. ‘All right, all right,’ I said. ‘But I still want you to make an arrangement. You have his money for the bungalow house tape and the tape about the derelict factory. If he’s any kind of artist, he’ll want to be paid. When he gets in touch with you, that’s when you make the arrangement for me. I won’t cheat you out of your percentage. I give you my word on that.’
‘Whatever that’s worth,’ Dalha said bitterly.
But she did agree that she would try to arrange something between myself and the tape-recording artist. I left the art gallery immediately after these negotiations, before Dalha could have any second thoughts. That afternoon, while I was working in the Language and Literature department of the library, I could think about nothing but the derelict factory that was so enticingly pictured on the new audiotape. The bus that takes me to and from the library each day of the working week always passes such a structure, which stands isolated in the distance just as the artist described it in his dream monologue.
That night I slept badly, thrashing about in my bed, not quite asleep and not quite awake. At times I had the feeling there was someone else in my bedroom who was talking to me, but of course I could not deal with this perception in any realistic way, since I was half-asleep and half-awake, and thus, for all practical purposes, I was out my mind.
Around three o’clock in the morning the telephone rang. In the darkness I reached for my eyeglasses, which were on the nightstand next to the telephone, and noted the luminous face of my alarm clock. I cleared my throat and said hello. The voice on the other end was Dalha’s.
‘I talked to him,’ she said.
‘Where did you talk to him?’ I asked. ‘On the street?’
‘No, no, not on the street,’ she said, giggling a little. I think she must have been drunk. ‘He called me on the telephone.’
‘He called you on the telephone?’ I repeated, imagining for a moment what it would be like to have the voice of that artist speak to me over the telephone and not merely on a recorded audiotape.
‘Yes, he called me on the telephone.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Well, I could tell you if you would stop asking so many questions.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It was only a few minutes ago that he called. He said that he would meet you tomorrow at the library where you work.’
‘You told him about me?’ I asked, and then there was a long silence. ‘Dalha?’ I prompted.
‘I told him that you wanted to buy his tape recordings. That’s all.’
‘Then how did he know that I worked at the library?’
‘Ask him yourself. I have no idea. I’ve done my part.’
Then Dahla said good-bye and hung up before I could say good-bye back to her.
After talking to Dalha I found it impossible to sleep anymore that night, even if it was only a state of half-sleeping and half-waking.
All I could think about was meeting the artist of the dream monologues. So I got myself ready to go to work, rushing as if I were late, and walked up to the corner of my street to wait for the bus.
It was very cold as I sat waiting in the bus shelter. There was a sliver of moon high in the blackness above, with several hours remaining before sunrise. Somehow I felt that I was waiting for the bus on the first day of a new school year, since after all the month was September, and I was so filled with both fear and excitement. When the bus finally arrived I saw that there were only a few other early risers headed for downtown. I took one of the back seats and stared out the window, my own face staring back at me in black reflection.
At the next shelter we approached I noticed that another lone bus rider was seated on the bench waiting to be picked up. His clothes were dark-colored (including a long, loose overcoat and hat), and he sat up very straight, his arms held close to his body and his hands resting on his lap. His head was slightly bowed, and I could not see the face beneath his hat. His physical attitude, I thought to myself as we approached the lighted bus shelter, was one of disciplined repose. I was surprised that he did not stand up as the bus came nearer to the shelter, and ultimately we passed him by. I wanted to say something to the driver of the bus but a strong feeling of both fear and excitement made me keep my silence.
The bus finally dropped me off in front of the library, and I ran up the tiered stairway that led to the main entrance. Through the thick glass doors I could see that only a few lights illuminated the spacious interior of the library. After rapping on the glass for a few moments I saw a figure dressed in a maintenance man’s uniform appear in the shadowy distance inside the building. I rapped some more and the man slowly proceeded down the library’s vaulted central hallway.
‘Good morning, Henry,’ I said as the door opened.
‘Hello, sir,’ he replied without standing aside to allow my entrance to the library. ‘You know I’m not supposed to open these doors before it’s time for them to be open.’
‘I’m a little early, I realize, but I’m sure it will be all right to let me inside. I work here, after all.’
‘I know you do, sir. But a few days ago I got talked to about these doors being open when they shouldn’t be. It’s because of the stolen property.’
‘What property is that, Henry? Books?’
‘No, sir. I think it was something from the media department. Maybe a video camera or a tape recorder. I don’t know exactly.’
‘Well, you have my word – just let me through the door and I’ll go right upstairs to my desk. I’ve got a lot of work to do today.’
Henry eventually obliged my request, and I did as I told him I would do.
The library was a great building as a whole, but the Language and Literature department (second floor) was located in a relatively small area – narrow and long with a high ceiling and a row of tall, paned windows along one wall. The other walls were lined with books, and most of the floor space was devoted to long study tables. For the most part, though, the room in which I worked was fairly open from end to end. Two large archways led to other parts of the library, and a normal-sized doorway led to the stacks where most of the bibliographic holdings were stored, millions of volumes standing silent and out of sight along endless rows of shelves. In the pre-dawn darkness the true dimensions of the Language and Literature department were now obscure. Only the moon shining high in the blackness through those tall windows revealed to me the location of my desk, which was in the middle of the long narrow room. I found my way over to my desk and switched on the small lamp that years ago I had brought from home. (Not that I required the added illumination as I worked at my desk at the library, but I did enjoy the bleakly old-fashioned appearance of this object.) For a moment I thought of the bungalow house where none of the lamps were equipped with lightbulbs and moonlight shone through the windows upon a carpet littered with vermin. Somehow I was unable to call up the special sensations and mental state that I associated with this dream monologue, even though my present situation of being alone in the Language and Literature department some hours before dawn was intensely dreamlike.
Not knowing what else to do, I sat down at my desk as if I were beginning my normal workday. It was then that I noticed a large envelope lying on top of my desk, although I could not recall its being there when I left the library the day before. The envelope looked old and faded under the dim light of the desk lamp. There was no writing on either side of the envelope, which was bulging slightly and had been sealed.
‘Who’s there?’ a voice called out that barely sounded like my own. I had seen something out of the corner of my eye while examining the envelope at my desk. I cleared my throat. ‘Henry?’ I asked the darkness without looking up from my desk or turning to either side. No answer was offered in reply, but I could feel that someone else had joined me in the Language and Literature department of the library. I slowly turned my head to the right and focused on the archway some distance across the room. At the center of this aperture, which led to another room where moonlight shone through tall, paned windows, stood a figure in silhouette. I could not see his face but immediately recognized the long, loose overcoat and hat. It was indeed the statue-like individual whom I had seen in the bus shelter as I rode to the library in the pre-dawn darkness. Now he was there to meet me that day in the library, as he had told Dalha he would do. At that moment it seemed beside the point to ask how he had gotten into the library or even to bother about introductions. I simply launched into a monologue that I had been constantly rehearsing since Dalha telephoned me earlier that morning.
‘I’ve been wanting to meet you,’ I started. ‘Your dream monologues, which is what I call them, have impressed me very much. That is to say, your artworks are like nothing else I have ever experienced, either artistically or extra-artistically. It seems incredible to me how well you have expressed subject matter with which I myself am intimately familiar. Of course, I am not referring to the subject matter as such – the bungalow house and so on – except as it calls forth your underlying vision of things. When – in your tape-recorded monologues – your voice speaks such phrases as “infinite terror and dreariness” or “ceaseless negation of color and life,” I believe that my response is exactly that which you intend for those who experience your artworks.’
I continued in this vein for a while longer, speaking to the silhouette of someone who betrayed no sign that he heard anything I said. At some point, however, my monologue veered off in a direction I had not intended it to take. Suddenly I began to say things that had nothing to do with what I had said before and that even contradicted my former statements.

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After my parents had moved to a new town, I was forced to make friends all over again. It was my last year in high school and I didn’t know anybody. I ended up finding a crowd of kids who liked exploring abandoned buildings and smoking weed. There were worse fates, I guess. It was far better than being the new kid with no friends at all.
I found the old house on the edge of town, far down a dirt road that seemed to serve no purpose. I was riding my bike at the time. The next day, while we were at school, I reported back to my friends about it during lunch.
“We’ll go tonight,” Mike said, grinning at me.
“Steve always finds the most random crap,” Howie said, looking down at his tray. “Remember the time you found that underground tunnel in the mental asylum?”
“Yeah,” I responded. “That was pretty bizarre…” But this new house would be far stranger than anything before.
***
Four of us ended up going. Mike was always the leader, and also the only one with the car. His parents were wealthier than any of ours and had bought him a Cadillac on his 16th birthday. He was also the giant among us, standing well over six feet tall.
Howie was chubby and short. He was always cracking jokes at the worst possible time and getting in trouble. But I loved having him around. He was always in a good mood, always trying to raise everyone’s spirits.
And then there was Lillian. She was, by far, the smartest among us.
She came out with us sometimes, always wearing goth clothing. This week, her hair was dyed black with red streaks down it; next week, it would probably be something totally different.
We pulled up in front of the house, Mike squinting at it through the windshield of his Cadillac.
“Holy shit, that place is huge,” he said. In the dark, all I could see was its silhouette. Everyone else stayed silent, simply staring at the place. A chill ran down my spine. In the dark, it seemed far more ominous than it had in the bright afternoon.
“I hope we don’t find a family of inbred meth-heads living in there,” Howie said. “What is this road even for? There are no other houses on it. It doesn’t seem to go anywhere.” I had wondered the same thing. We all got out of the car, gathering our supplies. Each of us had a headlamp we usually used for nighttime explorations. Turning them all on, the yard lit up all at once.
In front of the house, across the massive, unkempt yard, I saw a sign I had missed the first time I had driven by this place on my bike: “Absolutely no trespassing. Trespassers will be absorbed.”
“What the fuck?” Howie said, laughing. “‘Trespassers will be absorbed’? That’s a new one. Absorbed into what? The cosmic soul? Hell? Or maybe the Russian military?” I looked around, feeling watched. In the forest next to the house, I saw a pair of white eyes, low to the ground. Whatever it was skittered away as soon as I turned my headlamp towards it. Probably just a possum, I thought to myself.
“That sign is likely just someone’s idea of a joke,” Mike said, putting his massive hand on Howie’s back. “Why don’t you go first, motormouth?” Howie looked up at MIke, a look of concern crossing his fat, jovial face for a moment. Then he turned towards the house and began walking. We followed close behind him. I was next to Lillian.
“You grew up in this town, right?” I asked her. She nodded. “Have you ever heard of this place, or this road?” I thought back to the faded road sign we had seen when we pulled onto it. “I think it said Gnawbone Road.” She frowned slightly.
“No, but this town’s nearly a few hundred years old,” she said, pushing a strand of hair out of her face. “There’s probably a lot of places like this we don’t know about. One time, before you moved here, we found an entire graveyard in the forest. The trees and brush had nearly reclaimed it, but there were still dozens of tombstones mostly intact. There wasn’t even a trail to it. It was like the whole thing had simply been forgotten and left to nature.”
By this point, Howie had reached the house, going up the rickety, creaking stairs. The front porch wrapped around the house. Old Victorian turrets stood high, blocking out the stars and the dark, nighttime clouds. The peeling red paint of the house had mostly been worn away over time, leaving stained wooden boards peeking out underneath.
We followed close behind. I saw an old rocking chair on the porch, still moving back and forth. Must be the wind, I thought.
Howie put his hand on the doorknob. For a moment, I hoped that it would simply be locked, and then we could just turn around and forget about this whole thing. But it wasn’t. The door opened silently, swinging in.
“Holy crap,” Mike said behind him, looking over Howie’s head into the darkness. His headlamp moved up and down as he checked out the front chamber. “Look at the size of that chandelier!” Lillian and I moved up close behind him and Howie. A huge glass chandelier still hung from the ceiling, covered in spiderwebs and black dust.
Underneath it, a massive staircase went up to the next floor. Dust covered the floor. Among it, I saw footprints. They looked fresh. They only went in, I noticed. Whoever it was must have taken a different way out.
“It looks like we aren’t the only ones who have been here,” I whispered. The rest of them examined the footprints as well.
“Maybe it’s just a daytime caretaker,” Mike said. “Let’s go.” We all stepped in, closing the door behind us. A faint musty smell permeated the house, along with something more repulsive- something like rot and spoiled meat. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it was definitely there.
“OK, where are we going first?” Lillian asked, her voice calm and unbothered. I wished I could have that level of calm.
“Let’s go left,” Mike said, pointing. “It looks like there’s some sort of old library over here.” Ancient-looking books were stacked in shelves up to the ceiling. Many of them were water-damaged or falling apart. Lillian moved apart from us, examining them with a frown.
“Why would someone leave all these books here? And the chandelier?” she asked. I shrugged, coming up next to her.
“Maybe all that stuff is just worthless,” I said.
“And not a single homeless person or kid has come here to steal the stuff they left behind?” she said. She had a good point. She pulled out a random book. Looking over her shoulder, I saw the title: “Human Sacrifice and the Black Arts.” The one next to it on the shelf read, “The Teachings of Moloch.”
“Pretty weird,” I said. But Lillian was no longer listening to me. She had opened the book and was reading it with wide eyes. Turning around, I saw Mike and Howie had gone.
“Oh shit, Lillian,” I whispered. “We lost them. How in the hell could we lose them? They were just right here.” And then I heard screaming coming from another room nearby. She dropped the book and we began to run, turning our headlamps this way and that.
We ran into the kitchen and saw Mike sprawled across an old table, his throat slashed from ear to ear. He was still alive, gurgling, his eyes frantically moving from one end of the room to another. The table appeared to be drinking his blood. Every drop that fell on it disappeared into the wood. He began to seize, his eyes rolling back in his head. Within seconds, he had stopped breathing, his fingernails and lips turning blue under the intense glare of our headlamps.
“Howie! Where are you?” I screamed. I didn’t know whether Howie had killed Mike or someone else was in here with us. I couldn’t see how Howie would do that to any of us, though. My mind moved towards the latter idea.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Lillian said, her hands trembling. “We need to call the police. We need to get out of here.” She reached into her pocket for her phone, dropping it on the floor in her panic. She picked it up, turning it on. “No service.”
“Let’s just go,” I whispered. “You go first.” I put my hand on her shoulder, feeling her chest heave as she began to cry. “We need to go, now.” I spun her around and began pushing her towards the front door. I looked back one last time, and saw Mike’s body deflating like a balloon. His blood spilled out of him faster and faster- which seemed strange, since he had no heartbeat. The table appeared to be melding with his body, his head and chest liquefying and stretching out. Within seconds, he had disappeared into the house itself. All the blood and gore had been cleaned up. Even his clothes were gone.
I didn’t share this with Lillian. I just pushed her faster. We saw the door was closed. I ran past her, trying to open it, but it was locked. I kicked it as hard as I could, putting as much force in the area around the knob as I could, but it was like kicking a metal wall. I shrieked with the pain as the force of the impact ran back up my leg.
I checked my phone, my hands trembling. It said there were zero bars in the house. I tried to send a text out anyways, first to 911, then to my parents. Both failed to send. Perhaps it was the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere, or perhaps the house had some sort of metal that interfered with cell reception. But it seemed no help was coming. Lillian began to cry harder.
“No help is coming, no help,” she sobbed.
“Get it together,” I said through gritted teeth. “We aren’t dying here. We have to find Howie and get all three of us out together. Do you have a weapon on you?” She shook her head, then she pulled out a lighter. “That’s… that’s not really a weapon, Lillian.”
“Maybe if we start a fire in the house, then people will see it, and help will come,” she said.
“With us inside?” I asked, aghast.
“I don’t know, I don’t know…” she said, crying harder. “I don’t want to die here, Steve. It isn’t supposed to be like this.” I put my hand on her shoulder.
“Let’s go explore and find another way out,” I said. Then I thought of the windows. “Maybe we can smash our way out of the windows!” She perked up at this. “There was a fireplace in the library. I think there was an old fire poker set next to it. We could use it as a weapon, or smash out a window with it…” We both ran to the library, and indeed, there was a whole set of fire pokers. One of them had a curved blade on the end, while the other was straight and sharp. I gave her the sharp one and pointed to the front window.
“Try it,” I said, my hopes soaring. She grabbed the fire poker. Bringing it back like a baseball bat, she swung with all of her might. Just like the door, it bounced off, the sound of ringing metal echoing through the room. She yelped in pain.
“It’s like some sort of bulletproof plexiglass or something!” she yelled. “What is this place?”
“Grab the poker anyways,” I said. “It’s time to explore the upstairs.” We trudged through the eerie darkness, shadows bobbing and dancing across the hall as we made our way to the ornate staircase. Grabbing it with one hand, I slowly started to ascend. Then a scream pierced the silence. It sounded like Howie’s voice.
I started to run up the stairs, hearing Lillian close behind me. We turned this way and that, looking down an endless hallway with many rooms branching off of each side. This house seemed so much larger on the inside than it looked from the outside.
The carpet on the hallway showed snakes and vines. They began to writhe and undulate, the patterns moving on their own. They began to separate, snake heads peering out of the carpet as if they had come from underwater. Their slit eyes glowed in the light of the headlamps. They hissed, dozens of them slithering towards us at once. We weren’t getting past them, I knew. I turned and nearly fell down the stairs in my haste to get away, stumbling and grabbing onto the handrail as my back leg smashed into the wood. It sent a fiery jet of pain up my body.
Looking up, I saw Lillian still standing in place, horrified, her mask open in a silent scream as snake after snake coiled around her legs, going upwards. They bit into her flesh, spitting and hissing. Blood ran down her body. Soon she was covered entirely and fell over in the hallway, the mass of coiling snakes being dragged into the carpet by vines. As soon as her body had disappeared underneath the surface, the snakes and vines began to return to their original positions, and within seconds, I saw just a regular carpet again. She had been absorbed.
“Fuck,” I said, hyperventilating. I was all alone, I knew. I heard no more signs of Howie either. I thought about what to do. Desperate, scheming, I ran back towards the library. I felt in my pocket for my lighter, and grabbing a book, I began to pull pages out and run the flame under the corner. They caught quickly, the old, dried out paper going up in an inferno. I grabbed more books and tore out the pages, throwing them on the flames, intent on burning this house to the ground. The fact that I was still inside it didn’t register in my panicked mind. I knew that if I did nothing, I would die here. I had to destroy it.
Then from behind me, I heard a voice- low, jovial and mocking.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Howie said. I turned, seeing an expression of lunatic rage marring his face.
“I’m destroying this place,” I said. I paused for a moment, looking at him. “How are you still alive? Lillian and Mike are dead. The house ate them, I think.” He laughed.
“I know,” he said. “The house needs to be fed. It’s been in my family for generations. We always keep it well-fed in the end.” I gaped at him, uncomprehending. “You’ll be it’s last meal for the night…” He walked forward, pulling a bloody knife from his pocket. My fire poker was on the ground next to me. As he ran at me, the knife pointed straight out, I swung down, grabbing the fire poker and smashing it into the side of his head as hard as I could. I heard a crack when it connected with his skull. He fell, the knife clattering across the room, the flames bouncing off its stained metal surface.
The room behind me had begun to transform during our fight. Looking back into the shelves of library books, I saw them changing into a mouth. The wall opened up, the plaster morphing and melting. Two black eyes looked out at me, furious. Ancient, rusted nails formed into teeth. The wall began to bow outwards towards me. The fire grew larger in front of it, catching the carpet and wood now. I knew I needed to get out. But the door wouldn’t open for trespassers, and neither would the windows.
Suddenly, I had an idea. Sprinting away from the demonic face in the wall, I grabbed Howie’s unconscious body, dragging him by his legs to the front door. Using his hand, I gripped the knob. With a prayer, I tried to turn it- and the door flew open. Since he wasn’t a trespasser, the house wouldn’t keep him locked in.
Looking back at his unconscious body one last time, I swung the fire poker down on his head. I heard another crack as the side of his skull gave way, a jet of blood pouring out through the hole. I threw the weapon into the hall, running back towards the car. I tried the door, realizing it was locked. Mike had the keys on him when he had been absorbed.
Watching the house turn into a blazing inferno behind me, I began to walk down the dirt road- dirty, disheveled, and frightened, but alive.