In the depths of a sprawling mansion, nestled among the ancient trees, lived a man named Victor. His imposing residence, once filled with life and laughter, had now become a haunting echo of its former glory. Victor, a solitary figure, found himself tormented by his own demons—fears of failure, hopelessness, and a creeping anxiety that seemed to consume his every waking moment. One fateful evening, as Victor roamed the dimly lit corridors, a flicker of movement caught his eye. A shadow danced along the walls, followed by the scuttling of tiny legs. His heart quickened, and a cold sweat dripped down his brow. There, on the edge of his vision, he glimpsed a monstrous spider—a creature of nightmares that seemed to defy the laws of nature. Its body was massive, its legs extended like jagged daggers. The creature's eyes glowed with a malevolent hunger, and its chittering whispers echoed through the empty halls. Victor's heart pounded in his chest as the arachnid vanished, only to reappear in his periphery moments later. The spider, an embodiment of his deepest fears, haunted him relentlessly. It appeared in his dreams, its presence seeping into every waking thought. He became consumed by an overwhelming sense of dread, his sanity hanging by a thread. Night after night, the spider grew bolder, inching closer to Victor's refuge. Its presence was suffocating, a constant reminder of his fears and failures. Each time he caught a glimpse of its monstrous form, his anxiety deepened, suffusing his soul with an oppressive darkness. Determined to regain control, Victor sought answers within the depths of his mansion. He delved into forgotten tomes and ancient scrolls, desperate for a way to rid himself of the haunting spider. The pages whispered tales of curses and malevolent spirits, but offered no solace. One evening, as Victor stood before a hidden bookshelf, a revelation struck him—a single volume, concealed behind a layer of dust. Its faded title, "Conquering the Shadows Within," beckoned to him, promising a glimmer of hope. The book revealed an ancient ritual, a desperate gambit to overcome one's deepest fears. Driven by desperation, Victor gathered the required ingredients—a vial of his own blood, a lock of hair, and a fragment of his shattered dreams. In the dimly lit chamber of his mansion, he performed the ritual, the air crackling with dark energy. As the final incantation left his lips, the very fabric of reality seemed to tear asunder. From the shadows emerged a grotesque creature—a reflection of Victor's inner turmoil and the manifestation of his darkest fears. The spider, magnified tenfold, towered over him, its looming presence threatening to devour him whole. But in that terrifying moment, a fire ignited within Victor. His fear transformed into determination, and he refused to succumb to the torment any longer. With a newfound resolve, he armed himself with a flamethrower—an instrument of destruction forged from his defiance. The spider lunged, its fangs dripping with venom, but Victor stood firm. He unleashed a torrent of flame, the searing heat consuming the arachnid's monstrous form. Its chittering cries filled the chamber, echoing through the mansion's hollow halls. As the flames engulfed the creature, Victor watched his fears crumble to ash. In the aftermath, Victor surveyed the scorched remains, his breath ragged. The weight of his anxieties lifted, replaced by a newfound sense of liberation. He had faced the horrors that lurked within, conquering the darkness that threatened to consume him. With the spider vanquished, Victor's mansion seemed to awaken from its slumber. Light returned to the once-dim corridors, and life echoed through the long-forgotten rooms. As the shadows retreated, Victor's spirit soared, no longer held captive by his fears. From that day forward, Victor embraced life with a renewed vigor. He opened the doors of his mansion, welcoming others into its restored grandeur. The haunted echoes were replaced with laughter and joy—a testament to one man's journey through darkness and his triumphant emergence into the light. And as the sun dipped below the horizon, casting its warm glow upon the mansion's walls, Victor stood in the doorway, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. He had conquered his fears, vanquished the spider, and emerged from the depths of his own despair—a beacon of hope for all who struggled with their own shadows.


Verity turned the key in the driver’s door of her red Taurus. It unlocked with a snick. She opened the door and pressed the unlock button to let her boyfriend Daniel in. The pair settled in on the tan seats. Daniel shivered; the leather was cold through his jeans. The trek across campus to the student parking lot had left them both chilled, and while the car provided protection from the wind, it did nothing to actually warm them. Verity turned the key in the ignition; the car whined a bit before it came to life. Classical music streamed softly out the speakers. “I think I failed the chem exam,” Daniel said as they waited for the engine to warm up. 			Verity rolled her eyes. “You say that every time and come out with an A.” “No, seriously, this time I think I really fail…can you hear that?” Daniel interrupted himself. Verity shook her head. They went back and forth about Daniel’s chemistry insecurity, and his math insecurity, and his geography insecurity.

“Well, Mr. Straight A’s, when you start failing a class like I am in Calculus, then you can talk to me about academic anxiety.” “You’re not failing Calculus. You have a C. Do you hear that?” Daniel looked to his left, to his right, then to his left again trying to find the source of the sound.

“I don’t hear anything,” Verity said, laughing. He looked like he was going to cross a street. “And a C is totally failing.” “It’s not failing. And we’re only, like, barely past midterms. You have time to bring it up. Professor Sparling is big on extra credit. Last term, Fred —you’ve met Fred, right?— skipped half the semester and turned in enough extra credit to scrape a passing grade. And, really, you don’t hear that?” “A C is the same as an F to my parents. And, no, I still don’t hear whatever it is.” Finally the engine was warm enough to go. Verity shifted into reverse and backed out of her parking space. Her tires spun in the gravel and for the brief moment before they gained traction she thought she’d somehow hit a patch of ice. The university’s parking lot was huge. They made several turns before making it to the paved section of the lot. It took two more turns before they finally reached the driveway that lead out onto J Street. Daniel flicked on the heater and held his bare hands up in front of the vents.

“Why is it so cold? It’s only October,” complained Daniel as Verity turned east toward town.

“Because global warming is a hoax. It’s actually global cooling. The whole thing is orchestrated by the Chinese to get the United States to stop working on technological advancements and come up with alternatives to plastic straws and diesel engines instead, and possibly freeze to death in the process.” Daniel chuckled. Verity’s sense of humor was one of his favorite things about her. That, and her smile. He looked at her hands on the steering wheel and envied her thick, blue gloves.

“Did you make a list of everything we need for the project?”

“I thought you did.” “I guess we should make a list then so we don’t forget anything.” Daniel wrestled his phone out of the zippered pocket of his jacket. He pulled up the Notepad app and typed with one hand, leaving the other in front of the vent. “Styrofoam balls, toothpicks, paint,” he listed off. “Notecards, you don’t hear that?” “I hear the engine and Beethoven’s Fifth.” “It’s a ticking.” “It’s a ringing in your ears. Write down ‘paintbrushes’.” Daniel typed that in, then switched which hand was in front of the vent. Verity gently braked and rolled to a stop at a traffic signal.

“We need a thin Sharpie, too,” Daniel added to the list. “Seriously, you don’t hear that?” Verity shook her head, paused, and held up a finger. Possibly she did hear it. The light turned green and the sound of the car accelerating overshadowed anything she may have heard. “Not knowing what that noise is is going to kill me. When you stop at the 9th Avenue stop sign, stay stopped until you hear it.” Three blocks later Verity stopped the car at the intersection of J and 9th. She checked her mirror, and when she saw no one behind her, she kept her foot on the brake and listened. She inclined her head and scrunched up her face in concentration.

“I finally heard it,” she said, easing onto the gas and turning right on the one-way street. “Maybe the CD in the player is vibrating?”

Reluctantly, Daniel moved his hand from in front of the warm air long enough to hit the power button on the stereo. The music cut off; the pair listened.

“I still hear it,” said Daniel. He left the CD player off, however, in order to better hear the noise. He also didn’t want to move his hand again. His fingers were finally starting to feel less like sausages. “Maybe it’s the heater,” Verity suggested. “Turn it off and see if you hear it.” “I will freeze to death if I turn the heater off,” protested Daniel.

“You will not. Just give it a try.” He argued back, “I heard it before the heater was on.” “Well, I didn’t. Give it a try.” “Absolutely not.” Verity sighed and turned the heater knob to off. She didn’t understand why a Louisiana boy would come to rural, upstate New York for college. Especially one that was such a baby about the cold. “I still hear it. Can we turn the heat back on?” “You hardly listened at all.” “It’s incessant and annoying. I can’t believe you can barely hear it. I’m going to get frostbite.” Verity scoffed but turned the heat on anyway. They’d been in the car long enough for it to warm up considerably; Verity knew, though, that Daniel wouldn’t be comfortable until she was absolutely roasting.

“Has Walmart always been this far away?” “No. Last week it was a five minute drive instead of fifteen. Walmart was bored Friday night, didn’t have a date, so it got up and walked a few miles.” “How much longer, Ver? I think pneumonia’s creeping into my lungs.” “We’ve been driving for about seven minutes, and you’re not getting pneumonia. You’ve been blasting the heat for those seven minutes and it’s gotta be at least 60 degrees in here by now and you’re wearing a heavy coat for cryin’ out loud.” Daniel harrumphed. The native New Yorker he was in love with would never understand the plight of his thin Southern blood. The constant tick was grating on his nerves, bothering him almost more than the temperature. “Did it just get louder?” he wondered aloud. “Turn the music back on and drown it out.” “I need to know what it is.” “Why?” Verity did not understand his need to know. Annoyances were meant to be dealt with, circumvented, counteracted. How was prolonging it to satisfy curiosity better than just making it inaudible? She could barely hear it anyway. Daniel’s commentary about it was more annoying than the actual sound. She turned a sharp left onto Hill Road, which, though narrow and twisted, had not the slightest bit of incline.

Daniel left her why unanswered and opened the glovebox looking for loose items that could be rattling. He pulled the car manual out. Under it he found three old insurance cards, a tire-pressure gauge, five nickels, a Dum-Dum lollipop, and a wrapper with chewed up gum. He pulled all of it out and listened for the noise. Still there, tick ticking away. He dumped everything back into the glovebox. He smacked his hand on the dashboard in frustration. “Yeah, that’ll help.” “C’mon. Help me figure it out.” Daniel groped around under the seat and in the pocket of the door. Then he turned his attention to the center console. There was only one thing inside. “Why do you have a Savage Garden cassette? You don’t have a tape deck.” “I took everything out of my old Toyota when I bought the Taurus. That car had a tape deck. I never really thought about it after I dropped it in.” “Do you have a clock in here?” Daniel asked suddenly. Verity pointed at the dash. “Not that one. Like a wind up clock.” “Why would I have a wind up clock in my car?” “You have a cassette tape in your car. I’ll take that as a no on the clock. How about a clock watch?” “A clock watch? As opposed to what, a sundial watch?” “Like a tick tock watch, not a numbers watch.” “Tick tock watch? How old are you? The words you’re looking for are analog and digital.” “Fine, Smarty Pants. At least I’m not failing Calculus.” “Harsh, and no, I don’t have a watch.” “Sorry. Well, not really since you know I’m joking. That noise is going to kill me, if hypothermia doesn’t get me first.” “Stop being so dramatic. We’re almost there. We’ll get out of the car, go shopping, you’ll forget all about the noise, and we probably won’t even hear it on the way home.” They pulled into the parking lot a minute later. Verity put the car in park in one of the closest spaces. Daniel grabbed her hand before she could reach for the key. He shushed her when she tried to protest. She looked at him expectantly. He finally gave up and shrugged. Verity turned the key. Without the sound of the engine in the background, the noise became more pronounced. Verity had expected it to stop. Daniel thought it sounded faster.

There was a blinding flash and terrifying roar as the bomb detonated under the hood. Verity threw her arms out, but they didn’t stop the concussive force or hail of shrapnel. Daniel was stunned still as the world exploded around him and fire rolled through the car’s cabin. His last fleeting thought was, ‘Thank God it’s warm here.’


If there were ever an utterly inappropriate time to suddenly remember the song "The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round"- It was definitely after the bus you were in ran someone over. Jolene thought as she unconsciously white-knuckled her bat. She looked back at the rest of her team as they all registered varying degrees of horror. It wasn't enough to survive a drive back from the NCAA softball tournament in Iowa, but to run someone over once they arrived on Del Playa boulevard? That was just fate delivering a bloody middle finger. The rest of the hand belonged to the NCAA after they revoked the medals after Darcy and the rest of the outfield tested positive for iguana testosterone. Jolene knew to have an Australian on the team was going to be trouble, she didn't think it would cost her the championship medal her senior year though. Tom, the portly driver, yelled and immediately slammed the bus to a halt. He sprung out of his seat like someone had rung the dinner bell. He opened the door, only to feel the teeth of a foaming frat boy sink into his generous neck. Tom's face twisted in pain and surprise as his blood across the first few windows of the bus. A fresh round of shrieks tore through the bus as Jolene stared in horror as four other button-ups joined the frat boy in his dinner snack. Smoke and screams rippled through the Del Playa Boulevard as the rhythmic bass of the Del Topia festival failed to drown out the immediate chaos. "Bats up, ladies!" Jolene barked at the rows behind her. Thirty pieces of hardwood popped up as she cautiously approached the open door that claimed Tom. "This isn't a drill, no bunts or short swings. These guys are animals out here, and we need to carve a path to the clubhouse." The screams surrounding the bus grew louder as it joined the sound of hundreds of desperate feet. "We don't know what's going on outside these doors, so new rules are in play. If they don't have a bat, they don't matter! Let's go!" Jolene shouted as she jumped into the chaos and cracked the first button up in her way. The rest of the team, clad in their warm-ups and bats followed her out the door. A few girls on edge shoved frantic runners away before Jolene took point and headed towards Uyesaka stadium. Darcy guarded the back as Jolene heard her outback insults cut through the din. "Move it, you fucking sheep! We're all screwed if you don't lift those knees, Brenda!" Jolene couldn't help but cackle as she delivered another homer as a sorority sister lunged at her face. "No rushing for me!" She howled as her Louisville slugger connected with a vicious crack. Jolene wasn't called Captain Thunder for nothing. The team fell into pods of threes as they broke through the crowd to campus. Their championship ears filtered out the screams like game day noise. The only voices that cut through the white noise were Darcy's and Jolene's. Their alternating barks kept the team on the path past the Storke field as they neared the stadium. The campus grounds opened up on all sides. They neared the relative security of the double reinforced doors of the clubhouse when a ragged girl with a single Birkenstock lunged at Jolene. Dani pivoted into the girl, and hip tossed her to the ground. The girl clawed onto Dani's ankle and took a bite before Jolene brought her bat down. "What the fuck?!" Dani screamed as Jolene pulled her up and hobbled towards the locker room together. Dark blood left a trail of pain that the rest of the team was careful to avoid. "Lock the door, Darcy! We don't want any of those psychos coming in." Jolene roared as Darcy shepherded the last of the team through the door. Stranded like the Maccabees, Jolene knew the team couldn't stay in the clubhouse forever. She looked around at the ashen faces that filled the once spotless room. Bats covered the floor as the girls stared at one another for answers. Answers that Captain Thunder didn't have.


Something Ive been writing for a couple of months. I'd really love some feedback! The story is kinda long. “Vinse Hannibal et non seppe usar' poi / Ben la vittoriosa sua ventura” -Petrarch, Sonnet 82 For a while now, there has been a beautiful woman named Eva. But everyone who knows Eva simply calls her “The Mannequin," owing to her astonishing beauty. Photographers from across the world have captured her soul thousands of times. She appears in magazines and medicine commercials, smiling and poised like a statue. Armies of photographers keep watch over her with soldierly diligence. Their mission is to catch her every pose. The seasons cycle passed her at a lethargic pace, while she sighs in boredom. Day after sickly dying day searches for room to bury itself in the skyline outside the studio window. The Mannequin wants nothing more than to be taken out of time: an almost-sexual experience to stem the hole which slowly drains her resolve out on the cold linoleum floor of the studio. Uncaring, the stiff-faced photographers illuminate her figure with their solar camera flashes. The camera shutters click, over and over. Meanwhile, she poses forlornly on a couch to make ends meet. It occurs to The Mannequin that she's forgotten what butterflies feel like. She thinks to herself that she's been caught in the monotony of the fashion world for too long, and she lets out another sigh. Her sapphire eyes finish their seductive gaze to contemplate the freezing, cream-colored floor. Her painted lips curl into a frown. She is lonely, but the photographers refuse to notice. Instead, their bulky professional cameras flash rapidly, irradiating the set like stars outlining her night black satin dress. They grunt like apes and cackle like hyenas, shuffling their feet around her with unyielding stares. The Mannequin can rarely see the studio past the line of photographers. They have her cornered. She is confined to a prison of human walls. Because of this, some of the photographers with a better eye for the camera shiver with orgasmic delight. They notice her captivity through their camera lenses, and they grin like newlywed grooms. She does not speak their language, nor does she share an eye for exploitation. The Mannequin knows only of her existence and the automatically visible. In the past, the Mannequin had dreams of being free. She thought that she saw ways out, cracks in the human wall that encases her. She’d marvel at glimpses of freedom, collecting the thin beams of white light that crawled through the prison walls and excitedly leapt to her eyes. The Mannequin would lose herself in such wild daydreams. Her mind wandered like a nomad on the Siberian steppe. She dreamt that she could transform into an agile mouse who could navigate the labyrinth of cold and shuffling loafers on the studio floor. But this was futile, only possible in the painted universe of the mind. As shape-shifting was hopeless, she dreamt up elaborate schemes and daring escape plans. She told herself stories of an intense battle with the photographers. One by one she’d beat them with their tripods and bite their makeup-caked faces, tearing off dry chunks of flesh until the parasitic vampires bled to death. But those too were dreams, and nothing more. The Mannequin thought these things were unfitting of her: so grievously barbaric that she couldn’t fathom acting on her daydreams. She couldn't imagine leaving. This was the photographers’ goal. They guarded her with vigilance, ensuring her dreams stayed up in her head and out of her hands. She would never leave them. “Miss, we need you to stand.” barked a round and sweaty tomato of a man. The Mannequin noticed breadcrumbs and bits of strawberry stuck in his unkempt beard. Her eyes wandered down to the camera strap on his swollen red neck. She wished it was a noose. The Mannequin stood up straight like she was told. She shrunk her hands into fists, sternly placing them on her hips. Head held high, she rolled her eyes away from the blinding camera flashes. The photographers eagerly scattered around her to capture her poses. She felt powerless to defy them in any other way. The Mannequin noticed it was difficult to move her legs. Her heart began to beat with the rhythm of a nervous drum. She shivered slightly, but she didn't know why. The Mannequin does not know herself. She knows only of her existence and the automatically visible. Her eyes began trickling tears, and she sighed for the third time that morning. The Mannequin began to feel the weight of her head upon her neck. A bubbly glaze filled her perception, like her skull was full of ginger ale. She was very dizzy. More tears welled in her eyes and drowned them in a pool of sorrow. Her legs felt unable to support her weight a second longer, and her hands softly unclenched. Her knees buckled under the weight of her form, and the Mannequin collapsed. She lay limp and unconscious on the studio floor. The photographers collectively shrieked like rabbits being torn apart by falcons. They leapt around in a frenzy, beating their chests like apes and crying confusedly like children abandoned in a supermarket. In a dream she opened her eyes. The Mannequin laid on a grassy slope in a vast field. A serpentine blue ribbon unwound down and around gentle green slopes, humming a soothing white hiss. It sprayed cool droplets upon the rocks and crevices around its belly. Scaly fish flickered in and out of the humid haze, scattering the Sun's rays with silvery cyan scales. In the distance, she saw towering rocks watching over the unkempt field. The cracked white crag cried a millennium of human tears onto the riverbed below. Millions of gallons poured forth onto helpless stones sanded from birth into smooth pebbles, weak enough to break with the hand of a strong man. Amidst the easy emerald pasture loomed a terrifying lighthouse. Water tumbled out from the windows in frantic flows filling full the rolling river below. The blue rope knotted itself around the lighthouse like a noose encircles a neck. A small rowboat sat tethered to a dock on the riverside. The Mannequin started towards it with a drive of curiosity that she couldn't place her finger on. The river flowed calmly into the endless garden, carving it up like a butcher to a pig. Turquoise threads traveled throughout the pasture like tentacles from an octopus, sucking away the leaves and trees with uncaring efficiency. The Mannequin watched as the river calmly carried multicolored flower pedals and bright green leaves on its back in a beautiful rainbow film that stretched across its surface. She rowed her boat through the kaleidoscope and her eyes teared at the thought of destroying such a sight. After quite a bit of rowing, she arrived at the lighthouse's dock. The Mannequin trudged over rocks to reach the door. She noticed it was detailed with a bronze plaque, engraved with the following: “We are laid asleep / In body, and become a living soul: / While with an eye made quiet by the power / Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, / We see into the life of things.” -William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey The Mannequin looked at the engraving with a puzzled complexion. She knocked on the door and found it open, with stairs leading down an impossible depth. She started her descent into the darkness of the lighthouse. Following what seemed like an eternity, she reached a door at the bottom of the stairs. Just as with her wall of photographers in the studio, small pylons of light leapt out through the edges of the doorframe and climbed onto her eyes. She opened the door. Mounted upon the drywall next to the door was a small plastic bottle of crystalline hand sanitizer. Beside the hand sanitizer was a red plastic bin. It was filled with needles, and the bin seemed shrunken and boxy too. The Mannequin felt like a Barbie doll in a playhouse. She thought that she recognized the room as a doctor’s office. Her stomach growled quietly, and she felt a discomfort rise into her throat. The Mannequin realized that she hadn’t eaten at all that day. She recalled the morning's breakfast cart at work. The caterers bring in wide arrays of breakfast foods each day: tart pineapple slices, sweet oranges, bright green apples, firm strawberries, and a different dish each day: yesterday, bagels. Today, the caterers brought in soufflés. The Mannequin woke up later than usual. She sleeps on a small and lumpy bed in a little closet that grows out from the studio like an ugly mole. Loud noises scare the photographers, so she doesn't keep an alarm. This morning, no one had bothered to wake her. For this, she was partially thankful. Her loneliness keeps her awake until the early hours of the morning, and consequently she doesn't get much sleep. Her well-rested bliss was quickly interrupted when she met the morning breakfast cart. It had been raided to its metal bones. Food scraps littered the floor in an apocalyptic mess. She scoured the lower rungs of the cart for any surviving bits of breakfast, but all she could find was a chocolate soufflé wrapped in thin black paper. Her soufflé hadn't risen properly, and she found it far too sweet for her tastes. The Mannequin decided not to eat breakfast that morning, and she went to adorn her night satin dress. Back in the doctor's office, her eyes wandered to the large plastic clock hanging on the wall. Its narrow black hands began to express noon as her attention sharply turned to the door. Then the doorknob began to rattle. The office door slowly rolled on its hinges with a loud creak. It reluctantly came to a halt several inches from the door frame. A small and bony hand grasped the rotting wooden slab, shaking like an old man scared of death. Whether it shook out of fear or age, she couldn’t tell. The Mannequin knows only of her existence and the automatically visible. Perhaps she was projecting. “Right. What do we have here?” croaked an ancient voice. It radiated across the room in a sweet and slackening tone. A spotted head peeked into the examination room. His wrinkly dome was covered in bleach-white relics of a forest of hair. There was a pause for several seconds, a space filled with such confusion that there was no room for words. “Where am I?” she pleaded. The Mannequin’s eyes examined him cautiously. His forehead was scarlet and sweaty. The overhead lights made the man's cheeks glimmer, and a rose-colored hue that spilt over to his nose flushed the man's porous skin. His nose, she thought, was thick and swollen. Timid beads of sweat trickled down his face, but his warm smile spelt no signs of exhaustion. She mused to herself that he looked like a cherry. “What do you mean?” asked the man. His snowy mustache twisted somewhat as he bit his upper lip. The old man set down his ancient wooden clipboard with shaky hands and he cocked his head at her in a gesture of confusion. Then she froze for a moment. Neglecting to reply, The Mannequin examined the stubby man before her. He wore an ancient lab coat covered in fruity stains. His coat's breast pocket was embroidered with the name Puglisi in small cursive text. Taking note of her bewilderment, Dr. Puglisi began to counsel her again. “Well, miss?” he begged inquisitively “The lighthouse. Where are we?” “Yes; We’re in a lighthouse.” he joked “Is something amiss?” “Never mind.” she mumbled. A focus in her eyes illuminated a moment of shy embarrassment. The Mannequin shifted back onto a cushion against the wall. “Right.” Dr. Puglisi said, “What can I help you with today?” “I can’t recall how I got to the field outside.” she muttered with hesitation. “No memory at all?” he replied “None.” “Hmmm” he grunted as he picked up his clipboard. Then the doctor quickly began to scribble notes with a rotted old pencil. “Can you tell me what you do remember?” “Well,” she began, “the last thing I recall, I was at work, and I felt very ill.” She shook her head and gently shrugged her shoulders. Dr. Puglisi continued to feverishly note her condition. “Miss..” he said, his voice drifting as he flipped through papers on his clipboard “Eva.” she replied firmly for the first time that day. “Right. Have you been in an accident recently? Did you hit your head?” “No, why?” “I’m just doing my job” he replied as he continued to make notes, “how are you feeling today?” Her eyes began to water again. With hot tears rolling down her cheeks The Mannequin struggled to open her mouth and speak. “Well...” she began, trying so hard to control her sobbing. The doctor locked his inquisitive eyes on her, expressing a level of intrigue she knew too well. Perhaps, this time, it was with a different motivation than what she was accustomed to. "I feel so horribly exhausted.” she sobbed “It’s the sort of feeling you get when you can't eat anymore. And yet, there's still food on your plate. I grapple with the feeling that this life doesn’t belong to me." Dr. Puglisi faced his sobbing patient in silence. His eyes wandered down towards the floor, and then he tapped his shoe on the linoleum tile, over and over in spidery bursts. “Hmmm.” he grunted again, placing his hands on his hips. The ceiling lights overhead hummed electric hymns. He passively watched her rub her reddened eyes with tight fists. “I’m sorry about this” she said With unsteady hands the doctor reached into his coat pocket, and then he furnished her with a white handkerchief. Reluctantly, she trained her eyes on him and accepted. The doctor smiled warmly. She smiled back in the same fashion. “Where do you work?” he inquired with a relaxing sweetness. “I’m a model.” “Why don’t you quit?” The Mannequin’s eyes stared somber at the floor. She crossed her hands and set them in her lap. The overhead sodium lights continued their buzzing, and Dr. Puglisi rested his pen in his breast pocket. In the light of the doctor's office, the pair faced each other with sewn lips. There was a pause for several seconds, a space filled with such little confusion that there wasn't any need for words. Then Dr. Puglisi broke the quiet blanket wrapped around them to demonstrate his understanding. "Hmmm" he grunted. "Money is money, I suppose." "A couple of months ago," she replied. "I signed a contract in the hope that I could pay for my mother's funeral expenses." "I see." he added, "But that's over now." "She's been in the ground for nearly a year." "I'm sorry." he muttered indifferently. "We weren't very close." "She is your mother." "Exactly." she contended. The Mannequin's eyes drooped down to engage with the floor. She had an especially sad gaze. Dr. Puglisi's calm medical visage remained unbroken. "Don't blame yourself" he added. "There is no justice in car accidents" she sighed, "Enough about this." "When does your contract expire?" he begged. "In a couple of months. They like to keep me in the studio around the clock." "I'm sure that they wouldn't mind if you visited the doctor's office." "Someone will reprimand me, I'm sure." "I think you need to start sending out resumes" he joked. Before she knew it, The Mannequin began to cry again. Her eyes drooled fountains of slim tears. The Mannequin's face flushed with the doctor's cherry red hue behind her hands. "Doctor, why do I feel so sad?" "Is it your mother?" he begged, placing his hand on her shoulder. "I think it was at first. But it's grown so much since she passed, and every day the thought of her death hurts less and less." "Your job, then." "I want to leave them," she cried "but it's so unlike me and how I've treated them since I started work there." "Tell me" he began, "First of all, how do they treat you?" "As if I'm not even human!" she exclaimed, "I can't leave the studio, I can't talk, I have to stand like a statue, unmoving for hours at a time." "Hmmm" he remarked, jotting notes on his clipboard, "Second, how do you respond?" "As politely as the situation allows, of course!" she replied. Her tone was stern for the second time that day. "Finally, do you have freedom?" "Yes.” she declared, "Of course there is. All humans have free will.." "Interesting." he responded, clicking his pen to a close and placing it gently in his breast pocket. "I believe I have a diagnosis." he smiled. "I'm listening." "You don't have any teeth" he gasped. The doctor's mouth began to sputter like an old car exhaust. He laughed heartily and collapsed to the floor. Laying on his back, the doctor continued to cackle. "Doctor!" she exclaimed in a moment of utter confusion. "What's so funny?" Dr. Puglisi's laughing fit was interrupted by sudden choking. The Mannequin felt a balloon form in her mouth. The pair vomited teeth, and the doctor's incessant giggle grew in intensity. It was intermittently interrupted by choking and coughing. Tooth after tooth poured from his mouth into a mound on the cold floor next to his head. The Mannequin screamed in horror, and she resumed her cascade of tears. Her tongue pressed something hard and sharp up against the roof of her mouth. In the same fashion, she began to spit out her teeth, only she wasn't laughing. In the foggy dream, her choppy sobs seemed to merge with the yellow buzzing of the overhead lights. Her red face swirled and blurred with the sodium glow. Dr. Puglisi's white lab coat melted into the creamy floor tiles. The essence of the blue cushion bred with the endless black of her satin dress. All the colors in the room seemed to swirl into a kaleidoscopic palette around her. The hues danced around one another in galloping loops. Seconds smoothed Dr. Puglisi's haunting laugh into sweet chocolate symphonies. The Mannequin felt weightless, unbounded. Her terror was heightened to the uncut raw acidity of feeling that's only attainable in a dream. The orchestra of laughs tumbled over itself. At first, certain sections sped ahead of each other, until minutes later every instrument in the ensemble played a different tune. The bright hues of the doctor's office mixed into earthy tones. Her cherry red complexion and the lemon yellow lights became a deep pumpkin orange. The blueberry cushion dissolved into her black dress to concoct the color of a night sky polluted by the lights of a sleepless city. Dr. Puglisi was many hues sewn into one patchwork. He melted into a black puddle that dispersed over the cool white floor and climbed the walls like ivy on a brick façade. The bottomless black grew to envelope the room. The black mass climbed The Mannequin's legs and up her figure. Suddenly the bustling city slept. She wept profusely. At last, her field of view was enveloped in perfect black and her ears filled with the discordant symphony of screams. The Mannequin opened her eyes. The Mannequin awoke to find herself laying on her stomach. She woke up with her head turned to the side and pressed up against the chilly linoleum floor. She saw the labyrinth of shuffling loafers once again. For fear that she might be stepped on, The Mannequin sat up. Without delay, her ears collected loud and childish screams. She thought the photographers' shrieks sounded like injured infants. In view of the army of loafers milling about the studio, she crawled back upon her knees. The Mannequin retreated to the couch to avoid the panicked mass of grown men with cameras. In consequence, the photographers noticed her movement. They halted immediately. By the time all of them had processed that The Mannequin has awoken, it was as if nothing at all had happened. The photographers resumed capturing her image where she sat. It was with great passion and fervor that they skittered about the hopeless model. She attempted to regain her senses, at once bewildered and frightened by the dream she had, and equally angry at her captors. In contrast, the photographers picked up their intrigue off the tile. They once more begged at her figure with cold and haunting inquisition. The Mannequin's face scrunched into an angry frown accordingly. "In due time," she thought "all will be well. I need patience." Her stomach growled for the second time that day. The Mannequin looked at the studio's lunch cart. She started towards it, but was quickly rebuked by the photographers. They shrieked their dying rabbit screams in an uncanny symphony. In spite of the haunting cacophony that filled the room, she continued to the food cart. The Mannequin felt her heart race. Her hands began to shake in fear. A photographer stumbled towards her like a baby learning to walk. She rushed back to the couch. Her stomach growled once more. The discomfort returned to her throat as it was in her dream. She felt the teeth in her mouth slowly slide passed each other like interlocking puzzle pieces. The gears ground together in her head and she stared at the line of photographers with unwavering sincerity. She wanted to eat. They ceased taking photos and stared back at her with an unsure retaliation. The Mannequin started towards the food cart again. The photographers growled and murmured amongst themselves. She grabbed a bag of chips and walked past the wall of photographers towards the studio door. The chimps began their howling and stomping. The Mannequin felt like a new person. Now Eva, she opened the door and walk outside for the first time in months. Eva quickly shut the door and turned away. Fists pounded on its thin wood frame and crying could be heard inside. Outside, the city overflowed with people who were too busy to notice her plight. She lifted a chip to her lips and her finger touched one of her teeth. Eva’s eyes began to water. She dropped the chip and clasped her hands together. A smile began to wiggle its way across her face. She had forgotten how exhilarating it feels to really smile. The former mannequin turned her head towards the cityscape. The lethargic pace of the studio had faded from her perception. Time seemed to speed up before her eyes. The sky flooded with the melancholy pale blue of winter. Then the sky's sea evaporated into the hot red desert of summer’s sunset. A cavernous empty feeling as black as her dress filled the sky in the ocean's absence. The Moon rose, and light shrank back into the street lamps and neon signs. She saw trees weep their leaves and claw at the dark emptiness above amid an uncaring city. “Help!” she could almost hear them cry, but no one above would reach back.


Pinpricks of light illuminated the wayward ship against the interstellar void. The long, slender vessel proudly bore decades of wear on its white and grey hull. Scars and black scorch marks broke long stretches of its smooth surface. Collisions with minute objects could gouge marks into the hull traveling faster than light, and thousand-degree kelvin spikes were the mildest effect of a perturbed warp field. Past its prime but far from disrepair, it fell through space at sublight speed with patient grace. All external lights were dark, and the engine was cold as the void it traveled in. Seemingly lifeless, it was far from the nearest star – a single speck on the black velvet of space, growing imperceptivity closer. A common exploratory ship could spend five years charting the Deep, but the *Holiday* averaged ten. To spend years in a metal can separated from civilization, safe for the typical twenty crewmembers, could provoke the worst in humanity. It was not uncommon for ships to set course into the Deep and never return, but five years was considered the limit to human endurance in the endless reach past colonized space. Deep Sickness was more a rumor than a fact, but veterans of these expeditions knew better; it stalked their crew in every voyage. The symptoms were hard to see for outsiders, or new crew, but they assaulted everyone with indifference. When the fifth year was closing, some people chose to not see it – hiding behind the eyes. The plague of suspicion beyond diagnosis. Real onset was never reported, presumptively dooming the poor voyage to never return. Emptiness was a presence the crew could feel, and the hollow fact that they might never return spared no one’s peace of mind. Within the aft of the vessel, the second crew stirred as their rotation was about to begin. A room petered to life, the walls lined with twenty adjacent chambers, two high and ten long, separated by a neat row of lockers. Lights dimmed to life as displays for each cabinet activated. The suspense pods entered the final revival phase. Damage to soft tissues had been mended and adrenaline restarted their hearts. Each opened simultaneously, sliding second crewmembers out from the sensory, injection, and encumbering suspension equipment they had been under for five of the last nine – except for one remaining sealed. \- Captain Dracard opened his eyes and eased himself upright on the ice tray. The ambient air felt lukewarm on his exposed body. Disorientation would fade in a few minutes before he could get to the shower without hurting himself, but he had to fight the urge to go sooner. He could feel each of his bones like icicles inside his body – which wasn’t wrong, since his body was 10C but hard tissues were still closer to 0. The antifreeze serum kept crew mostly intact through the process, but it was really just another pain in the ass. One more expedition contract and Dracard would retire to a colony and leave this life behind. Still sluggish, he climbed down from the second row using the tray below him after Levingston got up. Amanda Levingston was his first officer for the last two voyages, and he had a hard time keeping his eyes to himself before and after being put on ice. Sometimes he would allow himself a couple brief glances at the attractive crewmembers, but he did his best to stay professional. With Levingston it was more than professionalism, though. On the last expedition their chemistry was more akin to family and he resolved to keep it uncomplicated. As the rest of the crew staggered into the shared showers, Dracard began his mental workouts to prepare for duty. Recounting street names, colonies and moons, all sorts of places and things along with a few riddles mixed in helped him break the bends after suspension. The practice was tried and true, so he was the first to realize they were missing someone. Adnan Montgomery did not wake from stasis. Standing in front of the chamber, Dracard read the display diagnostics: tissue regeneration failure. He was braindead, caused by an occasional fluke in the process. A null percent risk did not deter many people, but it accounted for over 1,000 annual deaths in interstellar travel. At least his family could collect the insurance. The Science Officer was a quiet one, on his first tour of the Deep, so Dracard could not feel any grief. But it meant their new charting data wouldn’t be sorted until they returned now. Something else felt off, but he couldn’t place the source of the feeling. The other 18 crew began leaving the showers with renewed life, a bounce in each step and chatter filling the air. Many took a moment to give homage to the lost crewmember before going to their lockers and getting dressed. They joked with each other or looked through their personal affects, trying to distract themselves from the loss and prepare for work. Dracard was half-dressed himself when he caught himself staring into this locker, at nothing in particular. “I like to think about how half of our pay is for five years of sleeping,” Levingston spoke over someone’s dirty joke that was at the periphery of his awareness. Two of the engineers, Jacobs and Muhammad, were talking about old sexual conquests from their downtime on different colonies. “Yeah, it almost makes the trip worth it when we only gotta work half the time.’ Dracard answered. He couldn’t force a smile to meet her. Whatever bothered him was almost at the head of his awareness. It was something bad. Jacobs rolled up a towel and slapped Riggs on the ass while she was reaching into her locker, prompting a hellish rebuke with a wrench to his stomach. Levingston yelled at him from her own locker, but it was clear Riggs had the situation under control. “Guys always animals after thawing? It’s someone new every time. Daws and Easler did the same shit last up.” Her question went unanswered as Dracard’s gaze fell on the room exit. The door was closed and the hallway dark. Pulling his jumpsuit a little higher on his waist, he deftly walked to the door. “Drake? Dracard? Captain?” Levingston pestered him as he ignored her. Using his full mental capacities, he valiantly tried to form a thought but could only continue forward as time slowed with each step. A question was on his mind, which footfall levied to gently prompt the thought to come forward. The door opened for him, following with the hallway lights switched on. A sinking feeling filled his chest and panic overwhelmed him as he stood in the doorway, staring at the blank wall ahead of him. *The first crew is missing.* It must have been at least a minute that he stood there, because Levingston was behind him now, trying to get his attention quietly. “Drake… Talk to me. Please just fucking say something.” She said hushed. Dracard felt his blood drained like he was in stasis again. Levingston understood now, too, and was trying to stay calm. More importantly, she was trying not to be noticed by the other crewmembers. When Dracard looked at her he could not conceal his expression. A pale face, unfocussed eyes that looked unable but begging to cry. Her expression matched his own for a moment as she looked away, then pushed him into the hallway letting the door close behind them. “No Drake. We’re not going to die here. We. Are. Not. Going to fucking die.” She spoke barely louder than a whisper and pressed a finger hard into his chest, clearly trying to convince the both of them. Finally collecting himself, Dracard placed his hands on her shoulders and moved her an inch back. “Listen to me,” his voice was clear and confident, resolved to be the captain she needed; what everyone was going to need. “We are going to face the hardest challenge of our lives,” he continued as boldly as he could muster. “The first thing we need to do is figure out what happened to First Crew. But whatever will happen to us from here on has already been decided, Amanda. There are scarce few moments in history where people are tested the way we will be, the first time anyone beats the odds. “All we can do, Amanda, is our very best. And that is all we will focus on, the two of us. Because if that is not enough, then our fate is already sealed whether we know it or not. Come to terms with that, because we can’t show the others. They can’t think there’s a chance we won’t make it, because that will doom us for sure. Can you handle this?” Levingston tried to stifle the terror in her eyes as he spoke to her but each sentence dropped like an anvil. She wanted reassurance that they would survive the journey, but in hearing his sobering truth knew he was right. Whether they would survive or not could well be out of their hands, but there was still a chance they might return home. “We need the crew to level their heads before they hear the news,” she suggested. Crew shifts alternated every year, and suspension was supposed to lower their stress hormones so they could spend longer in the Deep, but everyone was at their limit. Three fourths of this shift was meant for returning home, so the crew’s optimism would soon be ripped from their mental wellbeing with the like a predator tearing live flesh from its prey. “Good idea. And Amanda, if they don’t have faith in us, then they’re going to break like...” He bit his tongue and looked down the hallway toward the rest of the silent ship. “Like first crew did…” she finished his thought. They observed the crew from the closed door. Some of the men were still harassing Riggs, Chrisjen, Tali and Gao even though they were mostly covered now. Besides Riggs, the women teased them right back, but she preferred dealing bruises where they were earned. In all, they looked to be having fun. When ten minutes passed and neither Captain nor first officer interrupted their jeers, they noticed Dracard and Levingston outside the room and finished dressing. Dracard entered the room with Levingston close behind, prompting a somber mood among the men and women who had just been euphorically looking forward to beginning the trip home. He asked everyone to form a huddle between the lockers and their suspense chambers. They locked arms around him. Deep crews had their own culture of being close together and sharing contact to stave off the feelings of isolation. Everyone locked arms and began to sway while Dracard began an old voyage song. *I left the oceans, I left the breeze,* *…Got only the dirt left on my knees…* *I said my prayer, made my wish,* *…To see her again, that gorgeous bitch…* *And like a good husband, I know I’ll return,* *…To see the sky, taste sweet air, and then…* *I’ll promise my wife, to stay and be dear* *…Till like a good sailor, I’ll leave her again!* The cheer settled and Dracard stepped back. The huddle broke and most of the crew’s posture showed they knew hew as about to share bad news, but they assumed it would be related to Montgomery. Riggs said something to Jacobs and Mohammad, who had a hard time concealing their somber reaction. Everyone waited for him to continue as he searched for his voice. “This is no one’s first time in the Deep. We all set out here knowing the risks, knowing that not everyone returns. It is with sorrow that I report to you that first crew is unaccounted for.” He waited for the reaction to subside. “I do not know their fate, but if they have not reported for stasis, I suspect all hands have been lost. We will perform our duties, and we will see home again. Most importantly, we will trust each other. As soon as we figure out what’s happened here we will immediately embark on the return.” Everyone steeled themselves, pondering the information that was missing. They all knew rumors about Deep Sickness, and it was the only explanation for an entire crew going missing. But also no afflicted ships ever returned to tell fact from fiction. Some rumors were about radiation causing debilitating mutations, or even monsters in the Deep. Most rumors were just about crew going crazy and killing each other or destroying the ship. At least, as far as they could tell, their vessel was still intact. “We will proceed with caution and remember our training,” the Captain continued, “imagination can be as fatal as a system failure, so stay alert. Levingston and I will go straight to the bridge. I want groups of three or four to explore the rest of the ship and meet in the messroom before reporting to your stations. That is all.” No one had the guts to ask questions as an uncomfortable silence made the room stale, so Levingston broke the silence for morale. “Do you think we’ll be on time returning home?” It was a stupid question, but it was all she could manage. “I think we can count on some leniency if we’re late, but if we woke up on time then we can scrap the expedition schedule and get underway as soon as this is behind us. Salvaging the expedition ought to be worth a good bonus.” He appreciated saying something optimistic. Leaving the crew with their orders, Dracard exited the room with Levingston, both trying to exude an air of confidence. Others soon followed and he heard someone jogging to catch up to him. Riggs had patiently waited for them to separate from the others so she wouldn’t be overheard. “Captain.” “Speak your mind.” He didn’t put on a facade for her; she was too intuitive to be fooled and he trusted her anyways as one of his oldest shipmates. “What are our odds, sir.” Riggs hesitantly asked. “They are exactly what we make them.” He was trying to be optimistic again, but Riggs knew if he tried any harder it would be lying. “Sir.” She answered plainly and stopped where she stood, turning to wait for Jacobs and Mohammad. He could faintly make out her deflection when they asked her why she chased after him. “You asked what makes us animals out here…” Dracard was sure no one could hear them speak. “I know. Let’s not talk about it.” She knew the signs as well as he did, she was a quick study. Crews are more rowdy after getting used to each other’s company, but after years alone they got impulsive… and then *wild*. “We’re going to have to.


It was every student’s dream. The ability to learn on the job. Studying was a thing of the past. Each morning he would wake up, his coffee already brewed, his toast just pushed down. He'd put on his slippers as the blinds slowly raised, Beethoven’s 9th swirling around his ear. He stretched out his arms and let out a small grunt before standing up and making his way to the bathroom. His half of the bed made itself behind him. He picked up his toothbrush and the screen lit up, ‘3,856,923 CREDITS’, ‘TOOTHPASTE?, 5 CREDITS’, followed by a green tick and red ‘X’, he pressed the tick and held his toothbrush in the small hole in the bottom of the screen, he watched as the number trickled down, ‘3,856,918 CREDITS’. About a second later exactly 0.25g of ‘Toothpaste’ dispensed onto the brush. He took the brush from the hole and brushed his teeth, as he prepared the razor. He felt around his temple to find the patch before raising the razor and shaving the light stubble that had grown over the weekend, excitement filled his veins, he was going back to work. His body filled with bliss every time he walked through the main entrance of the hospital, he shook with adrenaline as he threw on his white coat. Lights flickered, blinds crashed like waves on the windowsill, complete pandemonium. Barely sitting at a table in the cafeteria, squatting over the chair, ready to take off at an instant, tapping the side of his mug, scratching his neck, waiting for his call. “TOM!” he heard being called from the emergency entrance. He took off, busted through the café doors, almost knocking over a nurse as he barged past her, his shoes screeched on the hard, shiny floor around every corner. He didn’t utter a word to the nurse at the patient’s bedside, it was already set up, he tried so hard to hide his grin a tear fell down his cheek. He stuck the node to his temple and put on the hair net. It lit up like a firework display, and he felt it immediately, he knew exactly what it was, he’d felt it a million times before, but he leeched every second he could get. It was a heart attack, the feeling that your entire chest has been squished down into a thimble, it was agony, and he fucking loved it. He felt everything, but it wasn’t enough. He started going in on weekends, just pacing up and down the wards, the hospitals were short of staff, they took all the help they could get. He didn’t even need to wait any more patients asked for him, they came in one after another, Appendicitis, Lung Cancer, Brain Cancer, he found things the doctors weren’t even looking for, he was a lifesaver, a superhero. Over the course of the next few months, he saved hundreds if not, thousands of lives. Medical journals all over the world praised him, one of only 5 in the entire world, he dedicated his life to his craft. He even began taking the hair net home, for ‘experiments’. He’d use it in the bedroom, his wife was fine with it at first, but going from one orgasm at a time to two wasn’t enough, he wanted more, he started hair-pulling, slapping, then punching, grabbing, squeezing. He was a mess, it wasn’t long before she left him, leaving him alone, still craving, shaking, scratching. He began cutting himself, he couldn't go too far, he still had to go to work. But he was a doctor, he knew how far he could go. He wouldn't even remember most nights, he’d just wake up in a bathtub of blood and semen, take a quick shower and get to work as quick as he could. Of course, they noticed the scars, at first, they wouldn’t say anything, but his superiors grew concerned and forced him to leave, it was only temporary, a few months at worst but he knew he couldn’t last that long... Home alone with razors, knives, hooks, screws, he was a kid in a candy shop, and he couldn’t get enough. The more it hurt the more he wanted it, the deeper he went, but there was something missing, it just wasn’t the same. When a 7-year-old child is rushed into hospital screaming in pain, they’re terrified, scared for their life, he knew, he knew that anything he did, would be non-fatal. The pain was a mere side by now, the fear was the main course, and he was starving. He knew that only a few nurses patrolled the wards through the night, he also knew the door that was left unlocked for mere convenience, the paediatrics ward, it was so they could rush in if they heard a scream or if a child had a nightmare, it only opened one way but getting out didn’t even cross his mind. He snuck in through the back entrance, limping through the pain of last night's ordeal. He opened the door, 6 beds, 4 children, only one behind a curtain... he could barely contain himself. He hooked himself up, shaking in excitement, the hair net lit up, he felt nothing. He was furious. He wrapped his hands gently around the child’s neck, hoping to wake her, then he felt it, but it still wasn’t enough. He tightened his grip, she clawed at his hands, she couldn’t even scream. This was it, the high he had been chasing, fear, pain and death all stirred up into the perfect cocktail and he drank it all in one gulp. They found him the next morning, dead, by the child’s bedside, missing both ears, the tip of his nose, long slits down the back of his thighs, everything you can imagine and so much more, yet still, there he lay, the edges of his mouth raised in a sadistic, mocking grin.


“OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE SAME COIN” It always irked me that we had such drastic opposing opinions - as close as we were there wasn't much we could agree upon. I liked my hair short, and she liked hers long. If I wore a tracksuit, she'd definitely wear a dress. Though we always found some sort of a compromise and that's how we've managed to live in our little chaotic bubble that we call a friendship. The one thing we do agree on is that we love each other, no matter what. On the first day of the year I sat beside her, Anna, staring into the mirror. She had such smooth long legs, mine looked like ever-growing tree trunks. "Shut up Jen, they do not. I wish I had legs like yours," said Anna, I could tell she was only trying to comfort me but it felt nice. We used to do this often, sit in front of the mirror and just contemplate things. That day was different though, we stared at ourselves for so long that despite an exchange of any actual words, we came to an understanding that if we weren't happy with something then we should change it. "Maybe we can hit the gym tomorrow?" I said hoping she'd object but of course she was more willing than me. She said she always went anyway to which I nodded and changed the subject, considering she spends all her time with me it was hard to believe. The goal was to get fitter, to feel comfortable in the way we look. It felt daunting, but looking at Anna it felt achievable. To some degree it almost felt like she had already achieved it, and she was merely my coach, not that I minded much, it was nice to have some support. We would wake up every morning at eight and go for a run, every other day in the evening we'd try our best to go to the gym, sometimes by sheer force of will. I remember us even changing up our diet quite drastically, from eating fast food on a daily basis to eating salads and home cooked meals, I even picked up a few new cooking techniques. Though by the time May came around the corner things started to take a turn for the worse, like a never ending tide that was beelining straight for us. Anna decided that she would go down a different route with her workout regime, we argued back and forth for almost a week. There had been a morning after our run that we went to grab a coffee and a couple of guys walking past our table exchanged a glance with me followed by a catcall. "At least one of us is getting catcalled," she muttered, her face a stagnant frown. It felt good, that for once I was actually the subject of someone else's attraction but for Anna it meant something else. That she was no longer the depiction of beauty, a standard I and others had once held her to. She stood in front of my mirror, eyeing up her waistline back and forth over and over. "Anna you look fine, seriously. You shouldn't worry!" She shot a scowl my way and continued, staring into her dysmorphic void. The next month was hard. I sat beside her as she threw up meal after meal, holding her hair back as well as consoling her from her cold tears. As a form of a deterrent from throwing up, she began skipping meals too. For a while she even started to feel better, she would stare into the mirror in my room and bask in how good she looked, even though at times she was paler than I would have liked and considerably weaker. There were moments when she couldn't even bear to be around herself. We ended up going to a birthday meal for our mutual friend, during the dinner our friends kept approaching me to compliment my weight loss and obvious cosmetic enhancements. I could feel Anna's leg bouncing up and down beside mine, by the time the food came out she sat without an appetite. After a couple of bites, she darted off to the bathroom, me not close behind. There was nothing to get rid off but she dry heaved into the toilet until she could barely catch her breath anymore, her eyes almost bulging out of her head. I spent many nights on the verge of tears, what good was looking as good as I did now if the person I wanted to share with it most felt the complete opposite, almost like we were bound to remain opposite sides of the same coin. During the month of August my mother rocked me awake with a hopelessness that filled the room from the moment I woke up, we drove to the hospital without a moment of hesitation. I remember sitting at the side of the bed, stroking Anna's hand as she laid unconscious with a bunch of tubes attached to her. I began thinking back to when we made the decision to feel comfortable in our own skin, was this my fault? Had I pushed her to the edge she's currently standing on? Whilst I was spending my days shedding as much weight as I could and my body finally swaying in my favour, Anna saw something daunting in herself nobody else could see and took methods I didn't realise were as severe as they quite blatantly were now. A week later I slept alongside her, having eerie soul sucking dreams. I stood on a podium surrounded by people with conflicting opinions they had no qualms sharing. Between obscenities being hurled at me, there were also bits of food splattering in my direction. I kept looking for a way off the podium that had me vibrating with uncontrollable anxiety. Till a hand reached out to me from the crowd, it was Anna. She no longer looked as weak as she did in that bed, her figure to her entire demeanour seemed like it was coming from a source of pure self love. I stuck my hand out and she dragged me straight into the crowd that fell silent in an instance, and then I woke up. My eyes felt like they were sealed shut when I woke up in the hospital bed, I surveyed the room till I caught my mother and the doctor talking, "She needs emotional reinforcement from you and anybody else in her life that can provide it - otherwise she's running a two leg race with only one." My mother snapped around and noticed me awake, she wiped the tears from her eyes and grabbed my hand, kissing it over and over, "Anna, you're beautiful. So beautiful." Her sentence rang in my ear like an angel on my shoulder, singing over the devil sat on the other. "Anna can you hear me?" she said between sobs. "You don't need to do this anymore, you look perfect just the way you are... Anna?" In that moment I felt loved, I felt like even for just a second everything was going to be okay. —— I originally posted this on Reedsy ¬Discover more of my writing at r/silvacorner.


I am pathetic. Sitting here, under my favorite tree in the forest behind my house, I deduced that I am a complete coward. The books next to me were mocking me, so I glared even though it made no difference. My mother thought I was studying, hence the books. In reality? I was thinking. I had blown my only chance at actually scoring a date with the dreamiest boy in my senior class. Geeky old me had actually flirted with him, strung him along, poked myself in the eye repeatedly every morning in an attempt at eye liner and when the moment came? I choked. Literally. Note to all the attractive guys out there: don't ask a usually ignored virgin on a date when she's in the middle of finishing off her water at lunch. It screws with us. That was not an intentional pun, by the way. Anyway, here I sat, in the forest stuck with political science books that I had no intention of reading and a phone with too many text messages from a guy I thought would never talk to me again. I unlocked my phone to find a voicemail. To listen or not to listen, that was the question. Debating, I dropped the phone in front of me and stared. What did I want? Why couldn't I just say yes? What the hell was wrong with me? Groaning, I stood up, brushed off my sundress and picked a dandelion weed. With my books tucked into my side, I considered going back inside and consulting my mother. Instead the dandelion inspired me. It's tiny white spindles swayed in the wind and I decided to make a wish. Only a miracle would save me now. 'Give me the courage to say yes next time.' And I blew. I watched as the seeds floated along with the wind away from me. "Will you go out with me now?" I gasped and turned around, seeing the man who I had been plagued with thoughts of all day. I hadn't heard him crunching through the leaves as I had clumsily done. Being caught up in my own head could be all consuming sometimes. How did he get out here? In the distance, I heard my mother talking on the phone on the back porch and got my answer. He had come to my house. He still cared. "Well?" he said, looking awkward for the first since I had known him. His hazel eyes were squinted against the sun and he looked handsome in jeans and boots with a button up shirt. This time I breathed, opening and closing my sweaty hands. Do not choke, you can do this. Just react. Throwing my books behind me, I let modesty go to the wind and ran up to him, straight into his open arms. He twirled me around and laughed. I looked at where I had been standing and smiled secretly. I had my answer. As if in slow motion, the books fell to the ground like gravel, demanding my response. Without choking, I uttered the word my wish had granted me. "Yes.


Kyle Douglas is dying faster than most people. His genes are shot and he’s got more cancer in his chest than he’s got lung. Such a shame. When I told him the news he laughed so hard he coughed up blood. Good for him. Whatever he’s got there’s probably no treatment for. I say probably because we have no idea what he’s got. Whatever it is he got from breathing in that corpse dust on Mars. Whenever I go in to up Kyle’s morphine dosage (that’s what we do when there’s nothing left to do), I find myself talking to him about what it was like to be the first man to walk on Mars. He tells me that on Mars the gravity is weaker so it’s less tiring to walk around. The day Kyle fell from the sky was the day the media decided it was going to talk until we evolved to not have vocal cords. What he found on Mars was too good not to milk. The rover images that were transmitted to earth in the days after his return were stunning. Columns of red marble and crumbled statues of alabaster. The statue was of Atlas, or his martian equivalent, holding up the sky. Kyle got invited to speak on just about every single late night talk show in America. The invitations stopped when he started to cough up his lungs. I guess journalists must’ve collectively decided they wanted selective electro shock therapy because, while their coverage of the discoveries from the martian mission has remained consistent, they seem to have forgotten about the man who is dying from some illness we have no recorded cases of. Tourism companies have already started shipping off billionaires to get the privilege of breathing the same dust of the man who is dying from space cancer. The world will remember his discovery but not him for he will be forcefully forgotten because his fate does not align with the interests of those who control information. When Kyle opened the sarcophagus in the Martian Temple he saw himself staring back at him. I guess it makes sense that we would choose Mars. It is man’s nature to return home. A great man told me we were food for worms. A great martian told me we would be food for *Creatis Incelopathys*. That’s what we named the airborne disease Kyle contracted when he breathed the same air as that martian corpse. Don’t bother trying to make sense of the name, we gave something that we have no knowledge of an utterly nonsensical name in the hopes that its nature may reveal itself to us. We still have no clue why the cancer is spreading so quickly. I must remember to short the stocks of the businesses owned by the billionaires traveling to Mars to smoke the ground up bone marrow of their ancestors. Kyle tells me that he thinks he’s seen what happens next. That is to say, next after dying. He tells me he’s going to a world without pain or lies. I tell him that the morphine is causing him to hallucinate. I’ve already been forced to sign a non disclosure agreement by about twenty different corporations who funded the mission. “His body is ours and so is his fate.” they tell me. I suppose that’s appropriate, most of his cells are now infected by some disease they inadvertently caused him to get. When he’s lucid, I ask him who he sees when he sees what’s next. He tells me he sees his long dead love. I tell him she’s food for *Creatis Incelopathys.* He laughs.


I plunged deep into the river, the force of the water carrying me sideways. My body tumbled in the rapids, water pushing and punching me in every direction; buoyancy smothered out by the weight. I found the bottom of the river. Rotating my feet, I pushed hard against the bed, and shot up, breaking the surface. I gulped down air as I saw the giant mouth of the man-made cave hovering above me. The water swept me into the darkness. However, ahead, I could see a thin halo of blue, a small patch of shade brighter than the total blackness around me. The spot grew bigger, until I could make out the cloud-covered night sky and the grassy banks on either side. As I emerged from the tunnel, the grass banks looked climbable, but the pace of the river was too much to make clinging on to damp grass an option. I looked around for something to grab onto when I heard a voice. “Ferdinand!” I turned to see Alessia standing on the river bank, pointing to a branch that overhung the rapids.I swam over to the bank and reached up, grabbing onto the tree. The force of the water was such that the branch bent slight, but it held. Alessia walked over and held out a hand, and with one fierce grunt she pulled me out of the water. My back hit the ground, as I lay there, panting. The cold night air latched onto my wet clothes, as my chest tingled with the dissipating heat. Alessia sat down beside me. Her hair was soaking, falling like a long black sheet from the sides of her face, stray hairs clinging to damp skin. She pinched at her water-logged clothes, trying to stop them clinging to her. “We need to get moving. We’ll freeze if we stay put too long.” I forced myself to sit up. “Now what?” “Find out where we are, and hopefully get off this godforsaken island.” We climbed up the slope. On top, the land was flat. The thick forest had disappeared, replaced by low lying shrubs that broke through compacted brown dirt. And everywhere, there were buildings. We were in the middle of a large settlement, encompassed by scattered one storey buildings with wood-panelled walls. All of them were derelict. Rot and erosion had done their work over a couple of hundred years. Trees grew through the broken floors inside, bursting out of holes in the roof. The worst of the homes were little more than piles of splinters, plants munching on the island’s history until there was nothing left of civilization to consume. What were once homes, businesses, offices, were now little more than shells reclaimed by nature Looking between the buildings though, in the distance, I could see a small glow of light, a gentle orange tone projecting against the greys and blacks above. It was the unmistakable glow of streetlights. “That’s… not nature,” I said, looking towards it. “None of this is,” Alessia replied, looking around in a full circle. “Any ideas of where we should head?” I tilted my head towards the light in the distance. “Whoever’s causing that probably ain’t friendly.” Alessia pulled back one corner of her mouth as she spoke. “Probably. But, at least for the first time we’ll *know* what we’re walking towards.” Alessia took a deep breath, the damp clothes heaving with her body. “I guess.” We started walking through the forgotten settlement, passing by the shadows of a former time. I eyed up the buildings as we passed, looking for clues as to what had happened. All I could tell was that while the town had been forsaken a long time ago, the buildings left standing were too rudimentary to be of the old world. These were homes built with available, local materials in the aftermath of the Archipelago’s birth. This town had been abandoned, but in the new times, not the old. We came to what was once a crossroads. Four clear paths stretched out at right angles between the buildings. In the middle, there was a small set of stones arranged in a circle, a raised bed of soil behind it. In the middle there was a metal pole that had listed over the years of neglect, the soil rising slightly at the base. Affixed to its top were of series of signs with crudely drawn paint. *CIVILISATION IS OUR SIN. RETURN TO NATURE.* *NATURE IS BEAUTY. TECHNOLOGY IS CORRUPTION.* Past a few more homes we came across an old fence. Where it met the road, there was a large gateway some three metres high, an arch across the top. From what I could tell, once upon a time, the arch likely displayed a town name or some other marker. But the details had rusted away so that only jagged edges could be seen. The gate’s hinges had long since rust away, and the gate collapsed. However, the two halves didn’t lie on the road where they fell. Instead they had been dragged off into the shrubs at either side. This path was cleared after the city had fallen. We passed a few more buildings, and yet more signs: stakes stuck into the ground; paint on the sides of homes; scrawlings drawn over metal and wood that once indicated something else - a storefront, a direction. *WE NEED ONLY WHAT NATURE CAN PROVIDE. ALL ELSE IS MALICE.* *We were not made to control our environment but to live in harmony with it.* *NATURE IS PEACE.* *Humanity must be one with nature. Only there can heaven be found.* Eventually the signs ended, and the lights that had drawn us were now distinct bulbs. Iridescent light breaking through the darkness of the night, casting across the street. We began walking more cautiously, our stance crouched slightly into the ground. I walked up to a building and leaned against it, feeling the firm wood push back against me. It wasn’t rotten. It was maintained, varnished, inhabited. The settlement was at the base of a steep valley with large hills on either side. There were perhaps only twenty buildings here, but they were also much larger than the derelict husks we had passed. Yet one structure still dwarfed the others. It was perhaps only a couple of storeys tall, though the lack of windows made it hard to judge. However, it was at least sixty metres in length, stretching out across the open dirt till its back met against the start of a steep incline at the edge of the forest. My eyes glanced across the construction till my vision caught something at the front. Peering between the buildings, tracing the dirt path at the edge of the lights, there was a point where the ground changed. It wasn’t stationary. Instead, it swayed, and glimmered, with soft tones in waves. “Water,” I whispered to Alessia. “It has to be the sea.” “Not much good if we can’t sail it,” Alessia said. “Still, you’re right. Head to the coast, see what we find.” We set off once more, skulking between the buildings, pausing every few metres to check for any other signs of life. However, we seemed to be alone. Whoever lived here was likely asleep, and we had to hope it would stay that way. Soon we came across an open courtyard covered in electric lights that lit up the square like a stage. Ahead of us was a fifty metre sprint through bright beams across the centre of the settlement. “We can’t walk through there,” I whispered. “We’ll go round the back of that one.” Alessia pointed to the giant building off to the right of the courtyard. “Okay.” I pushed off from our spot, but Alessia grabbed my hand, and pulled me back. “Wait.” “What?” I replied, my eyes darting around me as my back lay flush against the wooden wall. Alessia pointed out across the courtyard once more, down to where the water was. “There, look closely, there’s something in the water.” I followed her finger towards the rippling light, till I could see the black void where something sat on top of the sea. “A rock?” I shrugged. “No,” Alessia smiled. “Just above it, you can see something rocking back and forth. A mast. It’s a boat Ferdinand. A small one, but a boat.” “You sure?” “I’ve seen a thousand boats in night seas, I’d recognize that rocking anywhere.” She turned to me and punched my arm with a grin across her face. “Ow.” I rubbed the impact piint. “Okay. We’ve got to get there first.” “Sure. Round the back of the building, sneak across the far end of the courtyard, then finally, we can leave.” Alessia grabbed my shoulders as she said the last bit, her grin briefly morphing into laughter. “Let’s go.” We darted back across the dirt, trying to keep to the shadows, avoiding anywhere the streetlights touched. I glanced across the courtyard as I scampered, but still we remained in luck. We remained alone. I slid up against the large building. I stuck so hard to the wall I could feel the splinters scrape against my back and the vertical slats pressing against my spine. We continued round. At the back, none of the streetlights’ energy reached, and we were once more returned to the natural gloom. Black shadows crept across an indistinguishable ground. The forested hill encroached towards us, no longer held back by the power of human technology, confining us to the few metres’ sanctuary between the trees and the wooden wall to our left. As we walked along the narrow corridor I noticed a patch of ground that was lighter than the earth surrounding it. A momentary break, perhaps half a metre wide, where I could make out the brown earth from the black of the night. It was a ditch scraped out from the dirt. The bottom of the wooden panelling was snapped off as well, creating a hole through to the inside of the building. The electric lights inside leaked out of the space, filling the whole with its yellow hum. I stopped by the small channel, leaning in closer. I could see scratch marks. “You don’t think… the varg?” I said, my voice uncertain. “Nah,” Alessia whispered back, scrunching her nose. “Marks are too small. Fox, dog. But nothing like those things.” I stood back up and continued, turning the corner to the far side of the building. I walked maybe three or four paces when I heard the crunch of a foot against the grainy dirt up ahead. “Someone’s coming,” I whispered. I listened for half a second, trying to tell which direction the shoes were heading. A few more paces confirmed the fear - towards us. We turned and retreated to the back of the building, once more huddled in the darkness by the woods, the steep bank of trees leering over us. “Hello,” came a voice from the otherside of the building. The footsteps continued. The slow crunching of boot on dirt creeping closer. “What are you doing?” A second voice called out. “I thought I saw someone. Go let the others know. Someone may have come down the river.” The footsteps began again. This time walking down the side of the building. Then they went silent; shoes transitioning from hard ground to soft grass. They were heading our way. I knew it. Even if I couldn’t hear them. “Now what?” I whispered, trying to remain near silent while hiding the panic in my lungs. “Inside,” Alessia nodded to the small ditch. “Will we even fit?” “It’s that or run to the forest.” I looked at the trees. I looked at the black spaces between. And I imagined the snarling jaws that may be in them. “You go first.” Alessia bent down to the crack in the wall, lifting the wooden slats to create a few extra inches of room. I crouched down, prone on the floor, and began slithering through, trying not to audibly grunt as my body writhed along the dirt surface. My shirt snagged against the broken wood. I tried to pull hard against the friction with my arms, but it wouldn’t budge. One more pull, and I heard a tear. The smallest rip that sounded like a gun going off. However, now free, I wriggled through. As soon as I made it, I turned and lifted up the panel for Alessia to squeeze through. She bent down and began wrestling through the hole, her smaller frame making the squeeze that bit easier. As soon as I saw a hand make it through, I bent down and dragged her to the inside, her body scraping across the dirt. “You okay?” I asked. Alessia got to her feet and brushed herself off. “Yeah. What is this place, you think?” We were in a small room surrounded by crates. I walked over to the nearest one and stared inside. Empty bottles neatly laid out in a grid pattern. The next one had various glass jars placed as uniformly as they could be. “Looks like some kind of warehouse,” I said. To our left, I could see an archway at the corner of the room leading through to the next part of the building. I walked over and peered around the corner, the room was empty. This room was bigger. While crates lined the sides of the room, they were also dotted around the middle, placed in random positions. Along the walls there were doorways to other parts of the warehouse, the labyrinth slowly widening around us. Alessia walked off to one side, inspecting a few of the crates. She looked over the edge of one, and pursed her lips, letting out a long, silent whistle. “What?” I asked. “They're not short on weaponry.” I walked over and looked inside. It was filled with guns. Some simple pistols, others much larger than anything I’d ever seen, needing at least two hands to merely lift up. There was no sorting, no organization, just a large pile of ready-to-go death. A place to grab whatever took your fancy and head on out. Looking over I could see the next few crates were filled with ammo. Alessia bent down and picked up a pistol. “You ever fired a gun before?” “No.” I said, recoiling slightly. “I used one on Kadear, to threaten. But… never fired it.” “Then let’s hope to keep that record. But just in case.” She walked over to the ammo and picked out a box, loading the bullets into the gun. “You ever fired one?” I asked. “Never in anger. Nothing good can come from making killing easier. But right now…” She handed me the loaded gun and reached in and grabbed another similar looking pistol. “I’m not sure I even know how to use one,” I muttered, looking at the weapon in my hand. It felt heavy, and my sweaty palms were slick against the handle. “Point it at the thing you want to go away, and pull the trigger,” Alessia replied, loading ammo into her own gun. “It’s not that simple.” “I know. But right now, it might need to be.” I kept the gun in my right hand, holding it by the butt, keeping my finger as far away from the trigger as I could. We approached another archway. I peered round the entrance, checked the room, and snuck into another empty space. One step closer to the front of the building. My eyes were immediately drawn to a mess of cables on the left-hand wall. “You know what that is?” Alessia said. “We had one on Kadear at the Citadel. Distributes electricity.” I pointed to a thick cable that ran out of the ground up to the clutter of metal boxes and exposed wires. “Wherever they get their electricity from, comes in from there, then gets sent to everywhere else.” “Interesting, but…” “We need to make a break for it across the courtyard right? If we find the right line we could turn off all the lights outside. They’ll just think it’s a broken wire and we can use the darkness to escape.” “That will alert them to something being wrong,” Alessia said, rolling her head from side-to-side. “By the time they fix the lights we’ll be three hundred metres out to sea.” “You think you can figure out which wire is those lights?” “Maybe,” I said. I looked once more at the chaotic circuitry, a complex web I had no true hope of understanding. But I was determined that I could reason my way to a solution. The system was the same principle as the one I had seen on Kadear, though this one looked a lot more delicate. I remembered how that circuit had killed Mary. And the exposed wires, the frayed, burnt ends of metal, all made certain I kept my distance from the board here. From the top corner of the board, I saw a long snaking cable, stretch off across the wall. “Maybe that one…?” I said, trying to seem knowledgeable, but truthfully acting mostly off instinct. “See where it goes.” I traced the line until it buried through the wall. I followed it into the next room. I stopped and looked up. Ahead of me were five people. Their faces and skin were pale. They wore long white cassocks that flowed freely down from their shoulders, brushing against the ground, hiding their form, as though they floated. The woman at the head of the group, stared into my eyes, and raised her hand. She pointed towards me, a gun clasped in the ends of her fingers. The Leviathans. \ Next chapter released 11th November.


I had a terrible nightmare and I couldn’t sleep afterwards. So, I transcribed my nightmare just for you right here! Agro whinnied as we reached the bottom of the canyon. I pulled on his reins gently, and gave him a reassuring pat. His instincts kicked in, bred over thousands of years, fight or flight. Good Agro. He was becoming unruly since dusk was falling over the canyon we found ourselves in. Also, he knew we were at the bottom of a canyon. Trapped. I dismounted Agro and pulled an apple out of my knapsack to ease his anxiety. A green apple. So help me god if I try to feed him a red one. We’ve been over this before. Argo ate the apple, at least content in his snack for the time being. I put my fingers to my mouth, and let it a shrill whistle. The only answer I receive are the echoes rebounding off the canyon’s walls. Silence. I sit down and pull out some smoked elk meet for myself. Agro and I enjoy our meals for the time being. A rustle in the bushes draws my attention. My hand instinctively goes to my belt loop. I feel the comforting leather grip of my bastard sword. I grip so tightly my knuckles whiten. I see movement, the rustling of a few leaves in the distance. Twilight draws near, but my excellent night vision allows me to at least see that there is some creature stalking me nearby. A blur of white fur rushes at me. My hand drops from the hilt of my sword, and instead reaches out in an embrace. My dire cat Daisy has returned from her patrol. She leaps into my arms and wrestles me to the ground. After our greeting I offer her food but she refuses. She has this strange look in her eyes, and she begins pacing. At first back and forth, and than in a ever widening patrol circle. I didn’t set her back on patrol, her instincts did. The winds had shifted. I now felt it too. My two animal companions, being in tune with the astral plane, of course sensed the shift a few minutes before me. The canyon grew silent yet again. My pets now sensed a real impending danger, and so did I. A low rumble shook the earth beneath me. An earthquake? Couldn’t be, it was too short in duration. Again. Boom. Boom. This could only mean one thing. The monsters had awoken. Impossible. I was reminded that winter had just started coming, as the brisk air hit my chapped lips. Our shaman assured us these beasts would lie dormant until at least the spring. A low growl revved up in the distance. Quiet at first, but it slowly grew in volume. The intensity peaked, and I could feel it in my bones as my inner ear and jaw vibrated. Then again, silence. It’s these silent moments that actually are the worst. The moments where you must plan, and think, and then ultimately make a decision. Noise tends to spur action, tends to trigger fight or flight, tends to be more comforting. Silence however is an insidious monster. Silence is malicious. Silence allows you to lose track of time. Silence gives you the chance to second guess yourself.


We ran screaming for the car. Jesse fell twice on the way. The first time I helped him up as he looked behind us. The second time I could hear the thuds. The water held in the pot holes were vibrating with each thud. Either he would make it to the car, or he wouldn’t.

I heard him scrambling and scraping on the wet asphalt trying to get traction in his Vans. Great shoes for boarding, terrible shoes for running away. “Shit, shit, shit,” I heard Jesse repeat over and over again as he loped for the car in flinging array of arms, legs, and stringy wet hair. I ran around the hood sliding in the rain and grasped the driver’s side door handle on my way down. Thumb pressed on the button; the door swung open as I went sprawling. I heard a thump as something hit the passenger door followed by rapid pounding. “Hurry man, you gotta unlock the door! It’s right behind me!” I climbed out of the puddle, using the door as support, unlocking the doors as I slid behind the wheel. Jesse quickly got in slamming the door and repeatedly hitting the lock button. I didn’t think locked doors would help us, but you have to give an A for effort. I smashed the ignition button and the Mustang roared to life.

We hydroplaned sideways as I gunned the gas. Jesse was yelling, “Terry we have to go! It’s gaining!” I gritted my teeth and hung on to the wheel for all I was worth, spinning the wheel madly to keep us out of a one-eighth where we would face whatever was chasing us. The Mustang peeled and fishtailed leaving us both screaming, but forward momentum was finally achieved. I never saw what was chasing us. As we pulled out of the empty warehouse parking lot a distraught screech could be heard. We sped down the street once the Mustang achieved purchase, and my white-knuckle grip on the wheel did not let up. I glanced back in the rearview mirror; I could still feel the thudding footsteps in my bones. I didn’t see anything, just rain glistening in street lights. Nothing was there at all.

Jesse turned around in his seat looking out the rear window, “Shit. We could have died Terry. Who would have thought the stories were true? Do you think it will follow us?” I glanced over at Terry, “How the hell should I know? I’m not a monster expert. I didn’t even believe the stories. You were the one who thought they might be true!” Jesse slid back in his seat as I turned a corner on three wheels. “It didn’t seem to be following us… Or at least I didn’t see it leave the parking lot. I think you can slow down now Terry and put your seat belt on if you’re going to drive like Steve McQueen.” I did another quick glance, “Thanks for the advice mom,” and rolled my eyes. We just escaped with our lives, but from what? I let off the gas after we were about a mile or so away and latched my belt, “Better?” Jesse was wringing out his hair in my floor board, “Yeah man. We don’t want to get pulled over by the cops after all that. I don’t think I could do another adrenaline dump tonight.” We were both doing that nervous chuckling you do when you recover from a trip before you smack the pavement. Like, “Heh, heh, that was close.” I drove to a park not too far from the neighborhood where Jesse and I grew up together. I needed to make sense of what had just happened and get a grip on myself before heading home.

I parked the car facing the water feature in the pond. The water feature was redundant with the rain still coming down. It didn’t matter any ways; the park was a dark Monte painting behind my windshield in the rain. I looked around the park before everything was smudged out of view to verify, we were alone. No lovers parking, no kids smoking joints outsight from mom and dad, not even a bird to be seen in the parking lot. Just my Mustang, just Jesse and me sitting in the pouring raining attempting to calm down after what we hadn’t really seen. Jesse blew out a sigh, unbuckled his seat belt, and folded forward in the passenger seat hugging his knees. I stared at him as I tried to get a grip on my own scared addled mind and process what had just happened. He turned his head to look at me through the curtains of his dark hair, “That was for real right?” I still had a firm grasp on the wheel, “Yeah. At least I know a heard something, and I know I felt something, but I didn’t see anything. Did you?” He sat back in his seat pulling his hair behind him, “I saw something. It was dark and huge, but through the rain that’s all I could see.” There was silence for a few moments, nothing but the patter of the rain on the roof of my car. I looked out into the shadows of the park. I could have sworn I saw something move in the dark gloom, but after a few more moments of nothing I decided it was my imagination. Terry interrupted my paranoid scanning of the park, “Should we tell someone? Like the police or something?” “Yeah, and what do we tell them Jesse? My friend and I were trespassing in the old, abandoned warehouse on 36th and this monster chased us out of there. No, I’m sorry officer we did not see what kind of monster it was. We only know it had to be big.” I rolled my eyes, “They’ll think we’re crazy or playing a prank. Either way, we will be the ones in trouble.” Jesse looked at me in disbelief, “But don’t you think people need to know? What if someone else goes out there and gets killed? How would you feel about that?” I turned in my seat to glare at him, “I tell you what Jesse, tell your parents and let me know how that goes. Ten bucks says they will say something about you being high and not go out there again.” Jesse glared back at me for a few moments before slamming back in his seat and saying, “I guess you’re right.” I shook my head in frustration, “Might as well go home now.” “Yeah,” Jesse said sullenly. I hit the ignition button, and the lights came on. Somehow the monster had found us. It started running towards my car. The quick thuds shaking the car and rattling my brain. I could not believe what I was saw. I reached for the gear shift, but the mechanics of how to shift left my mind in the moment of pure terror. The last thing I heard as the creature grabbed the roof of my car was Jesse saying, “What the…!”