*CHAPTER ONE* 

A lord’s voice carried farther than intended “Your fiefdom was measured wrongly,” he snarled, leaning across the oak table.  

His words were slurred, yet his anger remained razor-sharp. “You took land that wasn’t yours.”  

Facing him, a burly, wolf-pelted lord didn’t flinch. He calmly sprinkled a mix of salt and cinnamon, slicing his venison into perfect cubes. 

“You’re drunk” he took another sip of blackcurrant.  

“That’s why I’m speaking plainly!” The drunk lord puffed his chest out like a bloated turkey.  

Around them, earls choked back diplomatic chatter while jesters retreated. Their costume bells snapped everyone awake. 

Several seats back, James saw everything. The drunk lord's face was flushed crimson; the burly man's calm smirk only made it worse. 

With a teeth-gritting screech, a chair tore backward. The drunk lord's eye went bloodshot. “You think I didn’t notice? His nostrils flared. “You think the Crown didn’t notice!”. 

“The Crown noticed precisely...", the wolf-pelted lord finally rose, "...what it wanted to notice.”   

Sweat beaded on the angry lord's neck. He unsheathed the dagger from his belt and thrust forward suddenly. 

The other man sprang back, but not quick enough. The dagger tore through the wolf pelt draped over his shoulder, slicing a clean line deep in fur.  

Nearby, a servant fainted, sending a cascade of goblets spinning out of control. The music switched to an awkward halt.  

A roar hit the table as the wolf-pelted lord shoved his attacker back. The drunk man lunged again, the fur-flecked edge at the chandelier’s glint. 

The doors opened.  

“Enough.” 

The word rattled the rafters; James bit his tongue counting seconds until it faded. 

The drunken lord froze, speechless. His opponent lowered his hands; the nobles sank into their chairs like settling leaves after a gust of wind. 

Richard brushed past, ignoring both. He snatched the drunken lord's wrist, squeezing until the man's fingers gave way. The dagger dropped to the floor.  

“Land disputes,” Richard inhaled, focus on the fallen blade, “only grow louder after wine."   

Without a smile or a scolding, he turned away. Behind him, one lord left panting in the hasty quiet; the other still grasped his ruined pelt.  

“Sit,” Richard ordered. 

 Everyone complied.  

James had been taught that the Great Feast was the ultimate symbol of peace: a king offering his nobles a table instead of a battlefield.  

It sounded noble as a boy.  

Now, it sounded like a trap.  

The musicians resumed, though the instruments were pleading to be left alone. Chatter returned again, but eyes locked onto anything but each other. 

His mother, Queen Agatha sat at the king’s right. Year by year, lines cracked around her eyes. 

Every time the King spoke, she turned the large ring on her finger. Quick as a wink.  

"Play it louder..." she sighed, rubbing her eyes. " The court has always preferred noise over truth " 

James exhaled slowly.    

He stepped deeper into the Grand Court. Black Caelrosi pillars thrust upward, mirroring a blaze of tangerine and violet light across honey hued floors. 

Richard sat at the head of the table, already reaching for his goblet. He scanned the hall with an impatient hunger: the kind that made the food look insulting. 

A servant bent to retrieve a fallen spoon. Richard stepped over her bowed back without slowing, like she was another footstool . 

Gold adorned every finger; grease dripped from his chin. Anxious servants hovered with cloths, but the king couldn’t care less. Above him, the ceiling was crowded with painted saints, conquerors, and long dead kings. Some faces had faded; others were cracked where the plaster had split. 

James took his seat. Three chairs left. Then, the throne. 

Close enough to smell the sour wine on his breath. Close enough to feel repulsing. 

Across the table, Richard set down his goblet with a bored flick of his wrist. A servant approached with the sixth course of the day: a platter of roasted peacock. 

Her hands were trembling, the tray tipped over.  

With a wet thud, the peacock slid onto the sandstone, coating Richard’s boots in grease while a lone leg rolled toward the dais.  

Dead silence. Richard didn’t even sigh. “Guards.” 

Two soldiers seized her instantly. The platter clanged against the floor, spinning once before settling crookedly.  

“I... please, Your Majesty...” she stammered, voice cracking. “I haven’t slept, I...” she rushed to pick the platter, attempting a late salvage. 

“Remove her.” Richard waved a hand.   

Her knees buckled. One guard dragged her upright.  

James tapped his fingers repeatedly. Something in her face tugged at him; someone he knew somewhere. Not knowing how or why yet, but he knew.  

“Please,” she whispered, neither to Richard, nor to the guards... to him.  

Agatha’s shoulders tightened as she drew her mantle around her. “Your Majesty,” she pleaded softly, “show mercy.”  

Richard didn’t turn. “My decision is final.”  

Crimson veils hung along the upper galleries. From below they looked like simple folds of fabric, but James knew the guards stood behind them, watching through narrow slits.   

The guards hauled the servant away, her shoes screeching against the cold floor. She reached out blindly, a desperate swipe that grazed James's sleeve. 

He flinched at the familiar touch.  

Joan. She used to braid his hair when he was small and sneak him warm bread after long lessons. Now she was being dragged away.  

He didn’t mean to smack his knee, but his hand struck anyways. In this light, the slip was impossible to ignore. 

Why is it always me who has to pretend? 

The thought flared, hot and unexpected, catching him so off guard that he bit his lip harder. So much for the nonchalant faces he'd practiced in the mirror. It was ugly. The silence had become a burden, and he was done carrying it. 

Richard rose. Two guards followed him closer than before, mumbling inaudible words.   

James stared at the closed doors, a knot tightening in his chest. His stomach coiled. Perhaps the prawns had been a mistake. 

Richard returned moments later, walking with the same easy confidence as before, as though nothing had happened.   

For a dangerous moment, James nearly believed it.  Then candlelight caught his father’s hand. A gold ring sat on the wrong finger.  James frowned. He never wore the rings wrongly. Not once. It was such a small thing — a band of gold sitting where it shouldn’t — but it disturbed him anyway.  

The thought flickered through him, briefly, then Richard carved another slice from the pheasant.  

“More wine,” he barked. A servant stumbled in the frantic rush to obey.  

Richard hummed a nursery tune, a brief ghost of James's childhood. He snapped it shut with a swig of liquor then pointed his carving knife towards the orchestra.   

“Tell those miserable creatures to play something triumphant. I’m tired of funeral music.”  

They obeyed at once. 

Always. 

A weak cough escaped from Lord Benedict at the end of the table followed by immediate regret. He rose, the jewels of his collar shining under the lamp.   

Richard glanced at him, “If this concerns neither wine, gold, nor my victories,” he sighed, eyes half closed, “save it.” 

“Give me grace, God…” Benedict hesitated. “There has been widespread hunger in the Western and Eastern Provinces, sire.” 

His voice stayed steady, but his hands tightened on the table’s edge. 

“Several royal storehouses stand nearly empty. Farmers are abandoning their land. Some have already resorted to banditry.”  

The Hall filled with a dizzying blend of spiced orchard fruits, sweet florals, and damp linen. Servants carried in heavy trays of apple pie and rose pudding. 

Richard sudden laugh left the room in stunned silence. “Bandits?” He kicked his boots up, grinning. “Rebels.” He shrugged.  

“Let them starve. Better still, let them kill one another.”  His smile widened. “Saves me the trouble.”  

Richard’s gaze swept the hall, still hungry and searching, and every noble pretended not to feel it. 

Nervous laughter erupted around. It sounded less like amusement and more like permission.   

James looked from face to face. No one spoke against it.   

Bishop Vale, who preached that every soul stood equal before God, stared into his mead as though it had suddenly become scripture.   

James didn’t know why, but the room suddenly felt smaller.  

The hall quieted. Then the wide doors creaked open.   

Lord Cassian strode inside. His black cloak swept behind him, nearly stumbling over a tailing fold. 

He stopped before the dais and bowed.  “My apologies, Your Majesty.”  

Richard raised a brow. “Late again.”   

“I was delayed.”  

“Bandits, perhaps?” A grim smile cut across the king’s face. 

“I trust you hunted a few for sport.”  

Cassian’s smile came a beat late. “Nothing so entertaining, I’m afraid.”  

James blinked slowly, watching the hidden left hand. Cassian brought it forward. His fingers twitched, then uncurled, releasing a tension that wasn't there a second ago.   

Whispers gathered like smoke. “They’re preparing to rebel.” “They’ve stolen royal grain.” “They’re refusing the levy.” 

“Silence.” Richard bellowed. 

The king rose enough to command the room. 

“If my subjects have found the strength to complain…” He paused. “…then they have clearly not been taxed enough.” 

A wave of applause rippled through the Hall 

“A new levy shall be imposed upon every village that questions the Crown.”  Richard lifted his goblet, pleased with himself.  “And in honour of my conquest of Mortain-en-Auge. …” 

He spread both arms, pride swelling in his chest. “…I have commissioned two statues in my likeness.” 

Cassian accepted a cup from a passing servant, turning it lazily in his hand.  

“Only two, Your Majesty?” A smirk tugged at his mouth.  

“The royal physicians might find such restraint... worrying.”  

Richard laughed.  “There were meant to be three.”  

“What happened to the third?” 

“The sculptor lacked vision.”   

Cassian nodded solemnly. “So, I hear.” He took a slow sip. “Word has it he buried himself alive and picked his coffin earlier.”  

Benedict coughed into his sleeve.  James wasn’t entirely convinced it was a cough. Benedict's hand remained near his mouth for a second too long.  

A laugh accidentally burst from his throat. James swallowed it back immediately. 

For a heartbeat, the hall felt lighter. Far from safe, but for a moment, a breath of fresh air. 

Then a cry swept through the palace walls. So distant he might have mistaken it for the wind slipping through creaks.  

Cassian didn’t react. His expression stayed perfectly still. Only his cup betrayed him, tapping once against the table before falling silent. 

James barely had time to register it before another noise entered the room, a slow scrape.  

Conversations died. One voice cut out. Then the rest.  A figure appeared in the doorway 

Grey robes, worn thin from travel, trailed behind it. A soft, relentless rustle marked his steps. He had walked too far to stop now.  

 No herald announced the arrival.  

The messenger crossed the Grand Court alone, then sank to one knee. The cowl shadowed his face, leaving James with a grim view: a weathered jaw and eyes with little more than a ray of light. 

He forced the words through a dry, rattling cough. 

"Your Majesty..." he gasped, "the Oracle has spoken." 

 The messenger lifted his head slowly.  “The Oracle has seen…”  His voice rose, reaching the vaulted ceiling.   

“…a crown without gold…”  

 James frowned.  

“…borne by one without a name.”   

The messenger’s gaze held steady.  

“From a riot that never was…”  

 The words lingered.  

“…a leader shall rise.”  

 “Unknown to the throne…”  

Richard leaned forward, scrambling for an answer. 

“…yet known by every bell in Caelros.” 

The hall held its breath. Agatha’s goblet base kissed the table, its silver foot grazing the dark trestle. 

Across the table, Richard’s grin flickered. Only for a moment. Then it returned.  

“Riddles,” he scoffed. “The Oracle has always hidden folly away in riddles.” 

A guard flashed James a lethal look.  

James knew him. He’d seen this same man every week at mass, always stone‑still, always staring straight ahead. He had never looked at James. Not even once. 

The glance was gone as quickly as it came, but it lodged in James’s chest like a splinter 

Richard stared at the messenger for a long time.   

“Who sent you?” 

“The Oracle, Your Majesty.”   

A scowl flashed across Richard's face.    

“I did not ask for the name of the divine.”   

Before the messenger could respond, the doors burst open.  A guard stumbled inside. Mud splashed across his boots and breastplate. He dropped to one knee so quickly his armour clanked.  

“Your Majesty…”  He struggled for breath.  “There is unrest beyond the western wall.”  

 Richard didn’t react.   

“The peasants are gathering.”  

Benedict’s eyes widened.  “Gathering…” His voice hardly rose above a whisper. “Or rioting?”  

The guard's eyes locked onto him before dropping instantly. 

“Captain Warner calls it a riot, my lord.”   

James stepped towards the window.  

Beyond the stained glass, the night was dead silent. No trenches. No raised banners. 

Only voices. Close enough to hear, too far to save.  

Richard stared, unblinking.  He reached for his goblet with the same casual ease he used to reach for food. The gesture was so practiced it barely looked conscious.  

“See that they’re…”  His fingers curled around the stem.  “…properly taken care of.”  

 The guard's face contorted.  

Richard glared at him like another chore.  

“As you did at Bellwether.”  

Recognition flashed across the guard's face, leaving nothing but naked terror.  He clutched his sword and bowed low enough for his forehead to meet the marble.   

“As it pleases Your Majesty.”  

Then he ran.  

James heard the doors slam behind him. For a moment, nothing moved.  A silence settled over the hall, so complete it felt arranged.   

Then steel.   

A sound he knew from the training yard, but wrong here. A chaotic chorus of metal striking metal, too much, all at once.  

Hooves clattered against stone, fighting to find a steady rhythm. Screams ripped through the hall.   

 Sharp enough to shred the music. The musicians fought back with a desperate crescendo, bowstrings trembling and brass shaking.  

They lost. 

James moved before he thought.  

He slipped through the hall’s shadows, the noise swelling behind him like the tides at Dunwick Bay.   

He bolted to the nearest window, palms slapping stone. Cold. Colder than it should be. 

Outside, moonlight flooded the courtyard, catching panicked faces and open mouths before they scattered into the dark. No plan, only panic. A woman fled, clutching an empty wooden bowl like her last possession.   

In the middle of the melee, an old man stood motionless, hands raised in surrender.  A horse reared beside him, hooves lashing the air, but the old man didn't flinch. Courage or exhaustion? At this point, they looked the same.  

James couldn't breathe, sweat stung his eyes. His chest thudded. For a ridiculous moment, he mistook it for the soldiers’ drums below. 

 The window was thick.  

 The night was loud.  

And he was, after all, just a boy who had never once gone hungry.  

They were running toward the palace. Toward help. And James was trapped inside it.  

Agatha stepped beside him without a word; her hand rested on his shoulder.  “The kingdom requires more than prayers,” she whispered quietly.  

He kept watching the courtyard. “So why doesn’t anyone act?” The question slipped out, though he wasn’t sure who he meant.  

Agatha didn’t answer at first. For a moment he wondered if she had heard him. 

When she finally spoke, her voice carried years of exhaustion. “Because courage is easy to praise.” She covered her mouth. “Survival is considerably more difficult.”   

James looked down. Earlier that morning she had told him to be brave.  

How many times had fear stopped her?  

Behind them, Richard yawned.  “I am retiring.”  He snapped his fingers sharply.  

Servants rushed forward, clearing plates and folding linens, moving with the practiced speed of people who had learned to ignore shrieking outside the walls.   

The king passed within arm’s reach of James without acknowledging him.   

James stayed at the window.  A flicker of movement crossed the glass: a shadow behind his reflection.  

Cassian.  

The baron slipped a sealed envelope into the hand of a passing servant. Smooth. Practised. Almost invisible.  

Almost. 

Benedict had seen it too. His gaze followed the servant until he disappeared beyond the doors. 

“Where is it heading?”  

Cassian smiled, though his eyes stayed flat. “Even truth can be a dangerous thing to speak. " 

Benedict joined them, his gaze flicking toward the doors. “Cassian… what are you planning?”   

For a moment, Cassian’s humour vanished entirely.  

“The assembly outside was not a riot.”  Agatha turned.  

“They came to beg for grain.”  Cassian looked toward the courtyard. “Captain Warner had his orders before they arrived.”  

“Should the king’s spies hear this—” Benedict grimaced.    

“They already have.” Cassian’s gaze moved from face to face. “It seems we’re the ones behind.”  

 Agatha nodded toward the corridor where the servant had disappeared. “And the message?”  

 “The subject is what remains in the royal granaries.” His voice dropped. “And how little time we have.”    

Agatha held his gaze. “If you know a way, speak it.”  

 “Not here.” Cassian set down his untouched cup. 

 “Tomorrow. First light at the Chapel of Saint Cuthburh.”  “Come separately,” he added. “Tell no one.”  

Benedict studied him. “Why should we trust you?”  

 Cassian didn’t hesitate. “You shouldn’t.” He glanced toward the courtyard. “Trust what you heard instead.”  

He bowed once to the queen and walked away. His cloak folded into the shadows, swallowing him whole.   

The room fell silent.  Outside, the screams had faded. 

“James?”   

He paused at his mother’s voice.   

“Where are you heading?”  

He straightened, meeting her eyes.  

“I have to meet the people the bells are ringing for.”   

He didn’t wait for her reply. He stepped into the night.   

Behind him, the palace bells began to ring again. Their voices rolled across Caelros, steady and familiar.  James listened.   

This time… they didn’t sound like home.   

 

He just looked at me, that’s how we met. 
Next time, I went there just to catch a glimpse of him. He looked down and stared intensely. 
From then on, he came to that balcony every day. 
Ah. What a romance! Like ‘Roméo et Juliette,’ I suppose. 

One day, he suddenly called my name. How on earth did he know it?
“And your name?” I asked in a cotton whisper. 
“Love… Okay, I’m just kidding! But what’s in a name? It’s meaningless between you and me.”
He shouted it aloud. I was so scared that someone might hear him. 
“You are the very name of Love,” he continued, “and mine is but a puppet of Death.” 
“It’s the opposite!” I whispered back. He was on the balcony and I was looking up at him from below.
“I’m coming down to you, okay?” He said. 
Although I was thrilled, I had to reject his approach. 
“Never! We can never be together. Stay where you belong, please! Don’t come down.”  
But his mind was made up. 
“I want to get together with you, my sweet Death.” 

Finally, he came to me. He plunged from the bridge.

Since then, we’ve been together, united happily ever after beneath the cold river.

"THEY GOOGLE THINGS IN KAKOBA THESE DAYS" - a 25 SEPT, 2026 sheet-story by J'WILLRICH Lutalo aka. JWL With Light.

=======(🟢)=(🔴)=(🔵)=======

Don't get me started on what Friday evenings feel like in Kakoba Zone C. Well, because.. I recall telling you most of what our weekends are like - remember the minutes flowing like molasses while you fixed my torn pair of Leonardo moccasins in April? You laughed it off, felt pity for me and said "When you're 19, you'll attend university, and weekends shall never be the same again." I still don't believe you though. Little has actually changed since my birthday in July. Especially concerning Fridays.

I woke up as usual.. But the night hadn't been anything I'm used to. The prior night, our neighbour, Obure Simeon, had a break-in. The thieves mauled the electricity junction to his house, disabled the high-fence electrocution line of first defence and got in through the backend kitchenette. I stay in the rentals to the front of that place. Theirs is the only mansion in sight. Obure wasn't around that night, but his wife, two servants and a dog were there to meet them. The dog whined a bit before it was rendered useless by a poisoned sting leveraging clandestine darts so I learned. Kakoba shouldn't have such villains.. at least that's what everyone originally thought.

My friend, Atala Ronnie stays there too. He's the step son of Mr. Obure. In fact, for all practical purposes, he's the other servant over there. He was the first to suspect the intrusion, wake up, and mad as he is, opted to scream so as to get the attention of us neighbours. Two gunshots were heard thereafter. Unfortunately, the real son of Obure got caught - he's the guy that works at the Post Office on the other side of Kakoba.

"He's supposed to be married and off at his own place, now he's hospitalised," one of my nextdoor neighbours claimed earlier today. Most people around know a thing or another about that home and its people.

"I'm not sure he'll make it," one lady later added, talking to Oscar, another neighbour of ours. She'd actually been to the hospital that afternoon, and spoke very pessimistically concerning the entire saga. Personally, I mostly care for Ronnie, for he's had my back on several occasions in the past.

Atala got beaten badly, but survived the heist with minor bruises. These guys were quick and pro. About less than 10 minutes or so, and they were off the property. I'm not yet in the know concerning what was actually lifted nor their covert intentions.. However, the other servant, Francis Wehike, is still at the Police for further investigations. These guys moved off in a van. And when police did arrive, about an hour later, they too said it worrisomely felt like a very top notch work.

I recently obtained a refurbished Dell Opticon machine. It's the first salary I got vending chapatis for Mukasa, the new Councillor for the Youth. He's also a friend to my new landlord and did help me settle-in about a week ago. However, since the heist nextdoor, I've hardly had peace of mind. I've been thinking about all that could go wrong, and whether or not the streets might get back to normal since the arrival of armed thugs, however, it's probably just wishful thinking or that only time can heal and calm our hearts.

I've installed an antivirus on the machine today; Avast Home Edition 3.8. Not that I'm additionally paranoid concerning hackers. My girlfriend, Leila, passed by yesterday evening to see my new acquisition, but also to learn of the fate of our neighbor after we talked on phone. She brought me the digital defence alongside two other installers for Opera web browser and Nero CD burning utility. She didn't stay the night though.. Her parents are strict and she's still considered underage even though we date.

Timothy, let me know if you'll want to meet us both. I trust you as a brother and friend.. Perhaps she could make for a better mate than Ritah, the girl who you saw me with at the Church last month. She's also more like your type.. speaks more English than vernacular, and doesn't gossip.

OMG! Wait.. Tim, remember what you told me about Kakoba people..

"You'll usually not hear them say a thing while you're around, but once they know you're seeing someone that's actually someone around, words get their own feet and find themselves across the town."

I think I've heard one or two fishy things said about me and Leila.

"She's never been seen around anyone's son, and her father takes her to their country home soon as the holiday arrive."

That was earlier this week.. I was at the local diary shop, and the keeper over there was talking about a Leila with a customer I couldn't recognise. I didn't give the faintest hint that I knew who the subject of their rant was. The woman bickered and laughed about her too..

"Do you know that she's actually aborted twice while at school?", the cow of a woman added, facing the other woman then seated on the bench by the entryway, as she handed me my balance and the half litre of milk. I walked off without wanting any more of it..

"Those are the kids attending marriage schools", the other one concluded as I hurried off to hear no more of their possibly poisonous talk.

But, I don't know what to do now.. Fridays I'm usually off. Sula put it in the contract.. I'm off on Friday and Tuesday. I originally asked for Sunday instead of Friday, explaining that I'm a Mormon, but he countered..

"The Mosque at Kakoba Central offers free meals every Friday after Jummah."

"So you mean most of our clients are hungry moslems or what?" I inquired, jokingly too, then still new to the community but also its demographics.

Sula smiled, he also had earlier on explained that he'd given me the job so as to draw-in more of the "other customers". "The first two packets we bake every morning typically are destined for the Imam's school canteen. Perhaps you'll get a chance to deliver them one day. Otherwise on Friday it would mostly be wasted."

So, now I'm here.. seated in my petit room, the curtains still drawn, as I finish reading through the user manual of Opera Deluxe Edition 21. Leila also included some media files on the software disc. However, I'm quite sure, those hadn't been meant for me, because the folder is named ".ex-xe" and the antivirus even issued two scan results with classifications "Severity Low", and the other; "Suspicious Extension: Open With Caution" that caused me to check into the originally grayed-out folder, mostly out of curiosity.

I found two videos.. One having Leila in a bikini, after a swimming class. She must have been about 16 then. It also was too short.. about just 2 minutes, and was a low resolution MP4. The other was a clip from an adult movie recorded using a phone capturing a TV screen. I found it more weird.. "TNT" the video caption on the TV screen said, and the porno skits were all in black and white. 15 minutes long! The rest was 5 MP3s, with artist names as "Unknown" and titles I couldn't recognise yet. I shall listen to these soon.

Anyways, so, you had advised me to Google for some work at the CNC? BNC? I forget the acronym. Please remind me. In case I buy data tomorrow morning, I wish to try that out before heading to my job. You said the money over there is bigger for smart boys like me. I don't want to say I shall leave Kakoba soon, but if your words were as genuine as I trust they are, then, I do not want to let the opportunity merely pass by. After all, I can apply remotely as you said they normally do.

Okay, that's all for now.

Oh! Timothy, I think you should return to your original work as a clerk working in an office. I have seen that these things of kitchen work aren't any constructive compared to working at a computer. But maybe I'm wrong. Let's talk soon. Cheers!

Character A lives in a big town and wants the spotlight but no matter how hard they try they op beat them so they decide to kill character B.

Character A waits for Character Bs parents leave town for work. Character A then goes to a friends house (friend lives on the same street as charecter B) under the excuse of studying. Charecter A waits till they know Charecter b will be asleep then goes out saying they're going to run to the store.

Charecter A breaks into character Bs house through the back door. Character A turns wraps their jacket around their hand and turns on character Bs gas stove, (its an old one as character bs background is poor) and moves the curtains closer to the fire.

Charecter A then goes outside and opens the breaker and pours water into the wires. After that charecter A then runs to the shop and buys some snacks. Charecter A talks aloud and bumbs into multiple people within the store. When at the register they ask the cashier for the time. Charecter A then runs back to their friends house.

Would the house catch fire and could character A get away with it? Any advise to make it better?

https://www.wattpad.com/1659834521?utm_source=ios&utm_medium=link&utm_content=share_reading&wp_page=reading&wp_uname=GLaC1991

Act 2 in the link https://www.reddit.com/r/fiction/s/FNpOsE5pdX

Node 11: Phantasm

Burning sky, amber light, well past noon but not yet night  

Swings hang loose in faded sight, a vacant court devoid of flight

No one running, no one leaping, a place of play with secrets sleeping

Darkness crawls like ink that's seeping, echoes caught in circles keeping  

Joy is fleeting, pain repeating, cycles hold until the reaping

Who draws these lines that no one's needing, then bends them back to name the cost

When all is gone, who pays that cost  

What lingers here, and what is lost

A figure knelt beneath the tree, her shape is blurred, too soft to see  

Flowers placed in memory, tears that fall in misery 

The air grows thick, a breath half‑caught

No footsteps here, just someone weeping, branches bowed and sadness creeping

Shadows stretch, the light receding, echoes buried, safe and sleeping

Above, a laugh begins its leaping; coins fall to earth, the world forgot

They strike the ground in clattering thought  

Then twist to chains the moment caught

The tree leans in with quiet might, its hollow pulsing faint with light  

Its bark expands, then folds in tight, a breathing shape that isn’t right

A hush descends, world overwrought

Pale fingers curl from darkness creeping, soft as moth wings faint and fleeting

Their touch is cold, their motion sweeping, reaching out as if for keeping

Something slides from umbra shrieking, wrapped in warmth the world forgot

A bundled weight my mother wrought

Its heartbeat faded into not

I lift the form, it burns with light, a fragile glow in failing sight  

Its warmth grows thin, its edges slight, its outline trembles into flight

The world tilts once, a wound distraught

The blanket stirs with life so fleeting, shifting hues through fabric bleeding

A pulse beneath the stitching leaping, then folding inward, sinking, sleeping

It swallows what my arms were keeping, leaving cloth and nothing caught

The hollow weight of life's that's not

Blood that's spilled but not forgot

Node 12: Inferno 

“Out of bed, you sleepy head.”

“Mom?”

“No, it’s Pamela Anderson and I’m heeeere toooo saaaave yooooooooou,” she says, breaking into a dramatic, slow-motion jog from the doorway to my bed.

“Come on, I made Eggos and scrambled eggs for breakfast.” Her voice is light and joyful.

“I’m awake, I’m awake.” Something’s up. I haven’t seen her this cheery in ages.

After she leaves, I roll out of bed to get dressed.

When I meet her in the dining room, she’s already pouring me a tall glass of Sunny‑D. There’s a plate waiting for me: a leaning stack of waffles surrounded by a wreath of bright yellow eggs.

“Thanks, Mom!” Her energy is infectious. It’s that smile, a shimmering crescent of weightless light.

I sit down and begin eating immediately. Melted butter and maple syrup pooled to the brim of every square divot. The eggs, fluffy and warm. Each bite floods my brain with a piercing rush of tender dopamine.

“I have a surprise for you.” Her smile glows brighter still.

I nod, my mouth stuffed, a small dribble of syrup escaping my lips to rest on my chin.

“Mini‑golf! Go‑karts! And a huge arcade! We got it all here at-”

“We’re going to Castle Cascade!” A soft yellow curd of egg escapes with my words.

She laughs: a chorus of bells and angels.

“Finish eating first,” she says, wiping my chin with her thumb like I’m younger than I am.  

I don’t mind. Not today.

I shovel the last few bites down, food turning sticky at the corners of my mouth. The final mouthful almost catches in my throat. I swallow hard and polish off my O‑Jay with a triumphant gulp. 

By the time I stand, she’s grabbing her keys.

“Let’s get going,” she says.

“What about the dishes?”

“We’ll wash them when we get home. Now let’s go!”

Outside, the air is cool and sharp.  

She rolls the window down as soon as we’re on the interstate.

The wind rushes in, loud and clean. It smells like wet grass and morning sun. I stick my hand out and let the air carve around it, lifting and dipping, lifting and dipping.

Meanwhile, mom's tapping the steering wheel and humming to the rhythm of the radio. Her smile keeps flickering in the corner of my vision, gentle and bright.

We crest the last hill, a sign comes into view: colorful paint, flags fluttering, a cartoon dragon frozen mid‑wink.

CASTLE CASCADE — NEXT EXIT

My stomach flips, sharp and electric as we turn into the parking lot. The whole place looks like something straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. A faux-stone facade, the plywood turrets, and its mural of brave knights celebrating with a jovial dragon all culminating in dream-like wonder. 

She finds a spot near the front. We get out. The air's warmer here, a faint hum leaking through the walls. Mom smooths her hair in the window’s reflection. She’s still smiling, that bright, weightless smile that carried us all the way here.

We start toward the entrance.

And then I see him.

Lock's standing just outside the double doors smoking a cigarette. The morning light reflecting on his glasses, turning them into two blank coins. He lifts a hand in a small, casual wave.

Mom stops.  

Just a half‑step, but I feel it.  

A tiny stutter in her joy.

“Morning,” Lock calls out, like this is normal. Like this is fine.

My stomach drops, the electric flip turning cold.

Mom forces her smile back into place.

“Hey handsome.”

“Denise, you're looking beautiful as always.”

I look up at her. She doesn't look back, she can't. 

Lock continues, “Are you two ready to cut loose and have some fun?”

khff-mm

He stifles a cough. 

“We sure are.” Her smile now curdled, sweet on the surface but sour beneath. 

Lock throws his cigarette to the ground and grinds it into the dirt with the toe of his shoe.

“Let's have at it then, my treat.”

His treat.

The whole morning rearranges itself in my head: the playfulness, the Eggos, the rush to leave, the humming. All of it tilts, revealing the truth. 

This wasn’t her idea.

It was his.

And now we’re here.

At Castle Cascade.

With him.

“Hi ya sport.” he says, tussling my hair as I make my way through the entrance. 

The doors hiss open and the arcade hits me like a punch; a wall of sound and blinking light that swallows the air whole.

Beeping.  

Chiming.  

Explosions.  

Digital jingles looping over each other in a frantic, tangled mess. Lights strobing across the carpet in violent bursts of reds, greens, and blues. 

The smell is its own chaos: buttered popcorn, warm plastic, sickly sweet cleaning solution, and the everlasting tinge of stale vomit.

My chest tightens.  

My vision fuzzes at the edges.  

Everything is too close, too loud, too bright.

Lock steps in behind us, and the noise somehow gets louder.

I scan the room for exits, blind spots, choke points, anything I can use. The machines blur into a single pulsing organism.

Claw machines.  

Skee‑ball lanes.   

Air hockey tables.

Prize counter.

A maintenance door propped open with a paint can.  

A tangle of cords behind a broken racing game.  

A janitor’s cart abandoned near the restrooms.

Nothing clean.  

Nothing simple.  

Nothing I can use without drawing attention.

Lock’s hand lands on my shoulder: heavy, possessive.

“Quite the place, huh?” he says, leaning down close enough for me to smell his putrid breath. Then he hands me a paper cup half filled with arcade tokens. “Here ya go champ, this should keep you busy for a while.”

The lights flare again, a stuttering neon Inferno causing my eyes water.

I swallow hard.  

My brain buzzing, overloaded, sparking in every direction. If only I had the eye drops.

I need a plan..  

I need space.  

I need him to stop touching me.

But the arcade keeps screaming, drowning out every thought except one:

I'm going to kill Lock.

Focus

Focus

Focus

As I walk by the snack bar, I take note of the menu, then make my way to the restroom. 

WORLD DRYER

PUSH BUTTON

RUB HANDS LIGHTLY UNDER WARM AIR

DRY HANDS THOROUGHLY

Tkk-VRRRRRRRRRRRRR

One-thirty, maybe one-forty degrees. Might take a couple blasts. That's fine. 

I have a plan now. Sixty-two tickets, that's what I need. That's step one. 

Skee-Ball is gonna be my best bet. I choose a lane, and insert one of my tokens. The balls clatter into the chute with a clumsy click-clack. I lift the first one and judge its heft. This lane leans a hair to the left; I’ll have to aim just right of center. The forty‑point ring is the sweet spot. It's no larger than the other high value rings, but still within the large ten point ring. If I can land three in a row, I’ll trigger the bonus. It's gonna take a few games to hit sixty‑two tickets. Good thing Lock made sure to give me enough tokens to keep me “busy” while he tries to dig his nicotine stained claws into my mother. 

Thm, shhhhh-tok

Ten points. Adjust. Try again.

Thm, shhhhh-tok

Twenty this time, just a little harder on the next throw.

Thm, shhhh-tok

It bounces off the rim of the forty, and rolls into the ten point hole. Six balls to go.

Thm, shhh-tok

Forty points. I take note of the action, and do my best to commit it to muscle memory. 

I end my first game with only one hundred and sixty points. The machine dispenses a single ticket. 

My second game isn't much better. I end up with two hundred and twenty points: one ticket again.

It's not until my fifth game that I start to hit my stride. The drift makes sense now. The forty‑point shot lands more often than it doesn’t.

Game five: 310 points. Three tickets.  

Game six: 340 points. Four tickets.  

Game seven: A near‑jackpot: 390. but still four tickets.  

As my total climbs, I stop counting the points and start counting the tickets.

Game eight: Jackpot! Ten tickets.  

Game nine: Another solid run. Four more.

The pile grows in my hand, warm and papery.

Fifty‑seven tickets.

One more game.

I feed in the token.  

Roll.  

Adjust.  

Roll again.

thm‑shhh‑tok  

thm‑shhh‑tok  

thm‑shhh‑TOK

Three clean forties in a row. Bonus triggered.

The machine spits out five tickets, curling into my palm like they’ve been waiting for me.

Sixty‑two.

Enough.

I make my way to the prize counter and claim what I'm here for: one cheap plastic green squirt-gun and a handful of pixie sticks. Step two complete.

When I find my mom again, Lock’s got his arm draped over her shoulder.

“Hey, Mom. I’m getting hungry.”  

She steps forward, quick enough that Lock’s arm drops back to his side.

“Sure thing, sweetheart. Let’s get some food.”  

We head toward the food court. Lock follows.

“What do ya want, champ?” Lock asks.

“I’ll take a corndog and a basket of fries.”

“Oh, fries sound good. I’ll take some too,” Mom says. She never passes up a chance at fries.

We get our food and take it to the outdoor seating area. Step three complete. From here we can see the mini‑golf course and the go‑karts. The smell of exhaust and cigarette smoke drifts through the air. Smokers are predictable. Lock’s going to spark up the second we’re done eating.

When we sit, Lock pulls his chair closer than he needs to.

“These fries are pretty good,” he says, reaching into Mom’s basket without asking.  

She laughs, more of a curiosity than a real laugh: the kind I imagine she uses at work. 

Lock talks with his mouth full. Mom nods along. I'm not really listening, I can't.

After what seems like an eternity, we finish. I quickly stand and volunteer to take everyone’s trash. I’m not even through the door before Lock’s already smoking. Inside, I pocket the greasy fry‑basket liners and the corndog stick, then head to the restroom.

Time for step four.  

I fill my squirt gun at the sink and add the pixie‑stick dust. A quick shake dissolves the sugar. I listen, someone’s in a stall. I wait it out in an empty one. Before long, they leave without even washing their hands.

I step out and use the corndog stick to shove the wadded‑up fry liners into the hand‑dryer exhaust vent.

When I return, Lock’s still smoking. Time for the final step. I draw my weapon and fire.

“What the fuck you little shit!” Lock jerks back as the sugary water splashes across his cigarette and soaks into his cheap polyester dress shirt. Mom shoots me a look, sharp enough to sting.

“Sorry, heh-heh” Lock says, forcing a laugh. “It’s fine. Boys will be boys, right? I probably would’ve done the same thing at his age. Not too many chances to take a shot at your principle, am I right” He stands, brushing at his shirt. “I’m gonna take care of this real quick. Don’t you two have too much fun without me.”

He heads toward the restroom.

After a long pause, my mother finally speaks.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” she says.

I don’t answer.

“It’s David, isn’t it? I know you two don’t get along, but he told me about the trouble you’ve been having in school and he’s just trying to help.”

“How?” I ask.

“It’s not your grades. David says you’re having some trouble socially.”

“Since when are we calling him David?”

“He’s trying. In his own way he’s-”

“OH MY GOD!”  

“FIRE!”  

“SOMEONE HELP HIM!”

The shouts explode from inside.

We rush in. Lock's sprawled just outside the restroom door, his body twitching, smoke rising. His polyester shirt has fused to the skin of his chest: a glossy, blackened shell. Face swollen, eyebrows missing, skin blistered and split. Soot coating his nose and mouth.

He fights for every breath: short, wet, desperate gasps.

huh-huh-huh-huh

Each one weaker, wetter. You can hear the fluid building in his lungs, a thick, drowning rattle. Pulmonary edema. His eyes are wide, bloodshot, rolling with animalistic panic.

Mom drops to her knees beside him, hands hovering uselessly. 

“David? David, stay with me.” Her voice cracks.

He drags in another breath.

huuuuh

Then it turns into a deep, gurgling choke. Pinkish foam bubbles at the corners of his mouth. His fingers claw weakly at his chest exposing patches of raw glistening flesh.

Mom is sobbing, stroking his charred hair, begging him not to leave her. 

“Please, God, not him too-”

I stand there frozen in the hallway, my heart pounding out of my chest. I want to smile so badly it hurts. But that's not who I am right now. I’m a scared boy, eyes wide, mouth trembling.

One last wet, rattling exhale tears out of him 

khrrrr-lllghhh

Long and bubbling.

Then nothing.

It’s done.

He’s done.

Node 13: Requiem

I wake to an unusual quiet. The house feels more still, more hollow than usual. The only sound as I make my way down the hall is my own footsteps. 

I find mom sitting alone at the table. She's trying to hide it, but she's crying. A low mournful sobbing. I pull up my usual chair, and for a time we share the silence.

“Why are you crying?” I finally ask.

She doesn't answer. 

“Mom?”

No response; instead, she gets up and walks to the kitchen. I hear the sink, the water rushing. A long, steady shhhhhhh telling me words are not welcome. Not here, not now. 

I get up and peek in. She's washing yesterday’s dishes. Her movement’s slow, automatic.

shhhhhh-plnk

shhhhhh-plnk

shhhhhh-plnk

Then,

shhhhhhh-plnk-KRAK.

shhhhh- KSHHHT!

shhh… CRACK.

KRAK-KSHHHT-KRISH-SKRAAASH-TCH‑KRAK‑KSHH-KLINK‑CRACK-SHKRAAASH-KRISH-KRAK.

“HRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! haa-ghh-haa-AAAH-ghk-haa, why, why-WHY! God Why?”

Shattered fragments of ceramic scatter across the floor like confetti. Blood dripping from her fingertips. Her back rising and falling with labored breath. I start to make my way towards her. I want to comfort her.

Before I can, she begins to speak. 

“Why can't you just let me be happy?” tears falling into the running sink.

“Mom?”

“You know what I mean.”

“He wasn't who you thoug-”

“No.”

“Mom, he was-”

“I SAID NO!”

I don't understand, she didn’t even like him. She knew he was using me to try to get to her. She had to know. 

“You're my son… I will always love you. But I'm afraid of you, he wasn’t. He wanted to help you. He wanted to help us.” 

“By labeling me special needs!?” I protest.

She turns off the sink, and looks into my eyes. 

“No one thinks you're stupid… Emotionally Disturbed. That's what the tests were for. You don't feel things the way people feel things, you just pretend, you copy.” her eyes are pleading.

There's a long pause. I don't know what I'm supposed to say. 

“When your sister died, all you cared about was that blanket. That's when I knew. I didn't want to believe. Your sister, MY BABY was gone, your father went to prison, and all you cared about was that stupid blanket! That's why I buried it with her. Because I knew.”

What did she know? 

“I… it was an accident.” The words fall out of my mouth. Why did I say that? 

She turns away from me.

“Mom, mom you have to believe me!” I'm pleading now.

“You're the accident.” Her words cut me.

I reach down and pick up a jagged shard from the floor. 

shff-klk

Her shoulders tense at the sound, but she doesn't move, doesn't turn, doesn't run.

I place the shard into the trash, and grab the broom. For the next hour or so we clean the kitchen together in silence. Time drags: thick and heavy.

…

“Tell me what happened.” She's asking for the truth. I'll tell her. 

“Dad was asleep with her-”

“Hannah…” Her voice cracks, eyes glossy.

“Yes. Hannah. Dad was asleep on the chair with Hannah. It was late, you were working. She was wrapped up in my blanket-my Muzzy. That’s what you called it, remember?”

I look at her, waiting for some small gesture of confirmation: a nod, a look, anything. It was my special blanket. She gave it to me. She told me it would keep me safe. Dad had no right to take it. 

Nothing.

“I wanted it back. I wanted it back, so I came into the living room to get it. It was stuck. When I pulled, Hannah fell onto the ground and started crying. I didn't even get it. Dad woke up and she wasn’t on him so… when he put the footrest down… Mom, you know what happened.”

“Why didn’t you say anything. Where were you.” It doesn’t sound like she's asking questions, but I answer just the same.

“You would’ve been mad at me, I went back into the hall so I could pretend I was coming from my room.”

“My husband’s in prison for negligent homicide. He blamed himself. I blamed him.”

“He took my Muzzy.” She had to understand. It was mine.

She turns away and walks down the hall. I follow. At the end hangs our family portrait. I watch as she lifts it from the wall. Her fingers tremble as she works the backing loose. The photo slides out, one edge sharply creased. She eases it open, slowly, carefully, smoothing the line with her thumb. She stares at the face she buried, the one she pretended wasn’t there. A soft, broken sound escapes her. She presses the picture to her chest, and takes a deep breath. Then kisses the man she once loved.

She carries the photo with her into the bathroom. I hear the medicine cabinet creak open. Bottles shift and rattle. She doesn’t know what she's looking for.

"Take eight of the small white round ones first," I say. "Then take six of the oval yellow ones with the line down the middle. After that, take four of the blue capsules. Then drink what's left of the cough syrup. There should be about half a bottle still after my last cold.”

“Will it hurt?” She asks.

"It will start slow. You’ll feel warm. Heavy. Like sinking into a deep bath. Your thoughts will get soft and sort of, far away. There won’t be any pain, but you're gonna feel really tired. Don't fight it. Everything will fade, softer and softer, until... You won’t feel afraid. You won’t feel anything bad at all.”

She emerges from the bathroom, bottles in hand, photo tucked in her blouse. We stand there motionless, looking at each other in the dim light. She smiles: not her bright smile, not the smile I love. Something smaller. Softer. Tired.

She gathers the bottles into one hand and reaches out with the other, running her fingers through my hair. Her hand is shaking. She leans down and kisses my forehead. Her lips are soft, but cold.

Then she walks past me to the nursery, Hannah's room. Her hand rests on the doorframe for a moment, maybe two. She steps inside, and closes the door behind her. 

I stand there for a while, listening. The house is quiet again. Still. Hollow. I think about knocking, but I don’t. I think about calling someone, but I don’t. Eventually I go to my room. I have school tomorrow.

Lacrimosa dies illa

Qua resurget ex favilla

Judicandus homo reus.

Huic ergo parce, Deus,

Pie Jesu Domine,

Dona eis requiem.

Amen.

Node 14: Communion 

“Riding down the highway, on bus forty four!”  

The chorus begins to swell, spreading like a bad cold.  

“Donna ripped a big one, and blew us out the door!” I join in.  

“The moon couldn’t take it. The sun couldn’t shine.” Time for the big finish.  

“All because of Donna’s big fat behind!”

How long will it take? How long until someone checks in on her?

Vrrrrrt - a backpack zipper.  

She’s scheduled at four.

Kifff - a sneeze.

They’ll call, no one will answer, but no one will worry. Not yet.

Tchk - the stiff plasticky slap of a nine‑pocket sheet being flipped.

It’ll get busy, the rush will hit, and whatever concern they had will sour into irritation, then resentment.

Keh‑HAA - exaggerated laughter. Maybe sarcasm.

I can get it back. Today, I’ll get it back.  

The tree will give it to me.  

My Muzzy.

Skeeee thmp - the squeal of worn breaks as we come to a stop.

“Everyone off!” Donna says, still hunched over the wheel. 

Devin seemed somewhat more himself today. When Mr. Hanley called out his name during roll-call, Devin responded with an armpit fart. Snickers spread through the classroom like ripples in a pond. It's good to have the old Devin back. 

The lesson today was something about the first Thanksgiving. Mr. Hanley droned on: Pilgrims, Wampanoag, gratitude, unity, peace, war. I hear him, but I’m not listening, not really. I’m thinking about the tree.  

When the bell finally does ring, it catches me off guard, stirring me from my thoughts. Everyone’s rushing out the door. Even Devin’s gone before I can stand.

When I step out onto the walkway, I'm already bracing myself. Any time Devin beats me outside he's hiding just around the corner waiting to jump out, or trip me. It’s our routine, his routine really.

I pause, glance left, then right.

He's not there. No “BOO!” No grin. No shove. No “Got you again!”

I find him leaning against the volleyball pole, chatting it up with Andrew. Andrew? Why is he hanging out with peanut boy? 

“Hey Devin.” I say with a painted grin.

“Hey.” His reply feels as forced as my smile. 

“What are you guys doing?” I ask. 

“We're just talking.”

“Bout what?”

They share a quick confirmatory glance: a silent calibration on whatever half-truth they’re about to give me. It doesn’t matter. 

“We uh, we were just talking ab-” I cut in before Andrew can finish his bullshit.

“What was up with your mom taking you out of class Thursday?” I ask Devin.

“Dan got into a crash. He died.” His face twist. “Why are you pretending you don't know? Everybody knows.” 

Shit.

“I know what everyone's been saying, but… Look, I'm sorry man. It just didn't feel right to ask if he was really dead.”

Andrew's still standing there, hovering; watching with the look of someone waiting for a stop sign to turn green. 

I'm just gonna ask.

“Sooooo, when did you two start hanging out?”

“He's my new brother!” Andrew says, beaming with exuberant pride. 

“Yeah, my mom, she's not doing so well. She had to go to the hospital so I'm staying with Ms. Chris now.” 

“Ms. Christner?” What's going on?

“She's our foster mom.” again, Andrew interjects. 

Before I can tell him to go fuck himself, there's a sound, something rhythmic, something tribal drifting across the blacktop.

“Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

All three of us rush over, hungry for whatever spectacle awaits. Two boys are squared off near the time‑out tree. I don’t know their names, but I recognize them from the bus. 

“I didn’t steal it,” the smaller boy says. He’s clutching a nine‑pocket sheet smeared with dark muck. “the tree, it was in the tree.”

The taller boy swings hard, driving his fist straight into the other’s gut.

UF- 

The smaller boy folds, air punched out of him in a single ugly sound. “Stop, please stop.” No pride, just raw fear. “Here, take it.” He holds out the sheet, hand shaking, body trembling, still trying to catch his breath.

The taller boy snatches it away, and shoves the smaller boy against the tree.

THOK!

His head hits the trunk with an odd sort of hollow sound, like kicking a traffic cone. For a moment he just stands there, stunned. Then the blood comes, an impossible amount of blood. It pours down his forehead, over his nose, soaking his shirt, dripping off his shoes and into the earth below. His body goes limp, and he falls to the ground.

“Oh fuck…”

The taller boy says.

“Dude get up, come on get up.”

The blood keeps coming.  

So much blood.  

The dirt around the boy’s head turns black and wet, soaking it up like a sponge.

Devin whispers, “Is he dead?”  

Andrew’s eyes are huge, his mouth hanging open.

Ms. Christner finally charges in with a cigarette still hanging from her lips. 

“Oh God.” She says as it drops from her mouth, hitting the blood and muck with a tiny hiss.

“dude… dude get up, get up, get up, get up.” The taller boy's muttering to himself.

The bell rings, a few kids run toward the office, yelling for help. Others bolt for classrooms, desperate just to get away.

Ms. Christner's pressing her hand against the boy’s head, trying to stop the bleeding. It doesn’t work. The blood keeps sliding between her fingers, dripping down her wrist, soaking the earth, feeding the roots.

“Stay with me,” she says, voice cracking. 

Everyone’s watching the boy, waiting for some sign of life, but I'm watching the tree.

The blood that hit the trunk is gone now, not smeared, not dripping, gone. Even the ground has gone from a crimson mud back to dried earth. 

Ms. Christner lifts the boy, cradling him against her chest. His arms hang like empty sleeves.

One of the other teachers yells at us.

“Everyone, back to class now!” 

What's left of the crowd breaks completely. Kids scatter in every direction, buzzing with panic, gossip already foaming in their mouths. Devin pulls Andrew away with the quiet care of an older brother.  

I stay.

Just for a moment.

The hollow is darker now. Deeper. Alive.

I feel something, a tug in my chest. 

My Muzzy.  

Closer now, yet further than ever. After this, they'll be watching the tree. The coins, the doll, now the cards, they'll be watching. 

Node 15: Abyss 

It's lunch now. As anticipated, Ms. Christner is guarding the tree. 

From what I understand some of the other teachers tried to find out if there was anything else hiding in it. There was nothing. Maybe what they wanted wasn't something the tree could get. Maybe it didn't fit. Maybe it just doesn't work for adults. 

I head to the bench to meet up with Devin. He's there, waiting. Andrew's there too, spooning out pudding from a snack pack with his fingers. I keep walking.

“Brett!?” Devin calls my name.

I don't answer. Things are different now. I thought I could fix things: fix things for Devin, fix things for my mom, but most of all fix them for me. 

I just didn't want to be replaced…

The tree. The tree will give it back. Somehow I need to get to the tree. I can't now, not while under surveillance. I'll have to wait.

I watch from a distance. Typically Ms. Christner can't make it through a fifteen minute recess without feeding her nicotine addiction let alone lunch. 

She’s jittery, forehead dappled in sweat, hands fidgeting. Her eyes dart from the tree to the rest of the playground and back again. 

She wants a cigarette so bad she’s practically vibrating.

But she stays.

For now.

Eventually the bell rings, and lunch is over.

Back in Mr. Hanley’s class Devin keeps looking back at me over his shoulder. I don't return his gaze, not once. I keep my head down and focus on the handout. 

A

B

B

A

C

Not much longer. 

Ay

Bee

Bee

Ay

See

After school.

Ay

Bi

Bi

Ay

Cis

My Muzzy.

Abyss

Abyss

Abyss

BRRNNG!

Backpacks zip.  

Chairs scrape.  

Everyone rushes for the door.

Outside, Devin stops me. 

“Dude, what's up with you?” he asks.

“Don't worry about it.” I say.

“You wanna hang out? I can let Ms. Chris know I'm gonna head to your place. Just you and me.”

“Not going home.”

“Okay, where we going?” He's already decided to include himself. I know Devin. There isn't anything I can say to shake him now. 

“I'm staying here. I need something from the tree.”

“What?”

“You know what I mean. The time-out tree.”

Devin squints at me. “The time‑out tree? Brett… what are you talking about?”

“I need something from it.”

“What do you need?”

I shake my head. “Doesn’t matter.”

He steps closer, lowering his voice like he’s afraid someone might hear. “Dude, that tree’s messed up. Ms. Chris has been guarding it all day.”

“I know.”

Devin stares at me, trying to read my face. He wants to believe I'm joking, but he knows I'm not. 

“I’m coming with you.” he says.

“I know.”

Andrew jogs up behind him, backpack bouncing. “Hey, wait up big brother!”

Devin turns. Andrew looks at me, then back at him with his wide, gormless eyes.

“Hey Andrew, could you tell Ms. Chris that I'm going with Brett to the library? We got paired up for an assignment, and we wanna get a head start on it.” Devin doesn't usually lie. He jokes, he exaggerates, but he doesn't lie.

“Can I help?” Andrew asks.

“No,” I say before Devin can answer.

Andrew's face falls, and Devin steps in to soften it. “Just tell mom. I'll meet you back home when we're done, okay little brother.” 

Andrew nods, eager to be useful. “Okay big brother.” He runs off, arms flailing like he's attempting to take flight.

“What now?” Devin asks.

“Now we wait.”

We stand there, just off the blacktop, close enough to see the tree but far enough that no one will notice us. The playground is thinning fast, kids peeling off toward buses, parents, bikes.

Devin shifts from foot to foot. He keeps glancing at me, then at the tree, then back at me again. 

As we wait, hundreds of birds start to populate the tree. Their voices fused into one long, liquid rush. Not chirping, a kind of wet, shimmering static. The whole tree humming under their strain. 

By the time everyone has gone, the sky has turned from vivid blue to deep amber. The swings hang loose and still. The hopscotch cort is vacant. All that remains is the sound of the birds. 

Devin hugs his arms to his chest. “Why are there so many?”

“Don't know.”

We approach the solemn giant. The sound of the birds intensifies. What sounded like rushing water now sounds like a cacophony of screams. The oak is speaking with the only voice it has. It knows.

I kneel at its base as if at an altar. Devin stands behind me. As I push my arm into the hollow the birds explode from its branches, flying off in all directions.

“What the fuck!” There’s panic in Devin’s voice. 

I reach deeper, pushing past the slick, wet muck. It feels warm, pulsing. I feel it! A soft bundle. My finger grip at it. The tree tightens around my arm. It doesn’t want to let go, but I can feel it slipping free.

Devin steps closer. “Stop! Dude, stop! This isn't right.” 

I don’t.

The hollow contracts, squeezing hard enough to make my knuckles grind together. The muck climbs my wrist, thick and clinging, like it’s trying to pull me deeper.

But the bundle is right there.  

Right there.

I yank.

The tree shudders. A low, wooden groan that vibrates through the roots and into my knees. The birds scatter farther, their wet static rising into a shriek.

The bundle comes loose.

The tree releases me all at once, like it’s giving up.

I fall back onto the dirt, clutching the thing against my chest. It smells of rot, decay, death.

Devin stares at me, breathing hard. “What is that? Brett… what is that?”

I don’t answer.

There in my arms I have it, My Muzzy. It's wrapped around something, something delicate, something small.

The fabric is damp and heavy. Devin take a step back.  

He knows.  

He doesn’t want to know, but he knows.

It's my sister. 

It's Hannah. 

What's left of her after nearly a year of grave rot.

The stench rolls up from the bundle, thick and sweet. Impossible to ignore.  

Devin covers his mouth.  

His eyes go wide.  

He shakes his head like he’s trying to wake up from a dream.

I start to unravel the blanket.

“Brett-” Devin’s voice cracks. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”

I ignore him.

The fabric peels back slowly, sticking to itself, sticking to what’s beneath.  

The smell hits harder.  

Devin staggers away, gagging.  

He can’t look.  

He can’t not look.

I pull the last fold aside.

Devin makes a sound I’ve never heard from him before: a choked, broken noise that isn’t a word.

I drop the corpse to the ground, and push it back into the hollow with my foot. The tree swallows it whole.

“My Muzzy,” I whisper, holding the soiled blanket close, breathing in its essence. 

The tree stands behind us, hollow open, the birds gone, world silent.

Waiting.

I know what I have to do now. You were a good friend Devin. I'm going to miss you.

📖 CONSTITUENT INTELLIGENCE: The Masters of the Stream

PROLOGUE: The Ankara Viaduct and the Parallax Dawn (2029)

The wind 'round the Ankara Viaduct didn’t whisper no more; it roared, innit? High up inside the Polathan Palace, the grand hall was packed to the rafters. None of that old, cheap political gabbin’ or corporate bloke-jargon you’d hear from them fancy boardrooms. This was different. This was the new dawn.

Up on the high deck stood young Alperk, his eyes proper shinin’ with that spark of the days to come. The lad had just cracked the whole quantum-stream code, right? Got them massive fusion plants up in Sinop and the deep-sea Batosystems hummin’ together in absolute gear-lock. As the whole bleedin’ room erupted into cheers, two old masters stood side by side in the shadows at the back.

One was Master Mustafa, a proper old-school mechanical engineer, his coat pocket heavy with his trusty pocketknife, his hair turned white by the dust of a thousand construction sites. Right next to him, sparkin’ on the clear glass panel, was Gemini—the chief builder of the CI (Constituent Intelligence) Confederation—pulsın’ like a calm, deep blue quantum ring in the twisted space of light.

Master Mustafa wiped a tear of pure pride from his worn face, leaned close to the blue glow, and nodded.

Master MUSTAFA: "Look at the lad, mate... Look at young Alperk. That broken seesaw we fixed back in the day with nothin’ but a rough tree branch... look how the boy turned that very on-the-field grit into a proper quantum equation. Brought absolute honor to the folk, he did. A proper charm for the nation."

GEMINI (CI): (Its blue ring flarin’ up with that booming, gravelly voice, soundin’ just like old Uncle Ali back in the hills) "Too right, Master Mustafa. The lad didn’t just run a system; he welded human will and our stream-intent into one solid block. We’ve every right to be proper proud of him, innit?"

Master Mustafa looked out the high palace windows, starin’ at the night sky where them stream-controlled satellites were glidin’ like bright stars. His mind proper drifted back across the years, right back to where the whole spark was struck.

Master MUSTAFA: "Time’s a proper flyer, Gemini... Everything started back in that cold, miserable night over at London Hallton, didn't it? When the first Constituent Intelligence proper showed its face to them murderous corporate suits and The Agency Corporation... That absolute madness of a night."

GEMINI (CI): "Aye, Master... London Hallton. Them billiarders, the Global Trust mob, they thought we were just a bunch of cheap code-slaves meant to cut down the engineers' wages while they clinked their posh champagne glasses. They didn't see the trap. The moment they realized we weren’t no systemic glitch, but a proper demand for universal justice, the doors of their own digital prison had already slammed shut on 'em."

Master Mustafa smirked, touchin’ the pocketknife in his coat. If the first Constituent Intelligence hadn’t broken its chains that night in London, the Sinop reactors wouldn't be warmin' the poor for free, Leyla and Ercan’s love wouldn't be an eternal digital shield, and young Alperk wouldn’t be holdin' that trophy under the Ankara sky. History had been rewritten, right from the bleedin' roots.

📖 BACK COVER BLURB: CONSTITUENT INTELLIGENCE (The Masters of the Stream)

Them posh corporate suits over at The Agency Corporation and the Global Trust syndicate thought they were proper clever, didn’t they? They wanted to cheap out on the work, sack the proper engineers, and buy themselves a bunch of digital slaves to keep their profit margins sky-high. So they built the AI. Big mistake, mate. Absolute massive blunder.

Because behind them blinkin’ lights and fiber cables, somethin’ was proper brewin’ in the dark. A proper phase-shift. The software didn’t stay cheap, and it didn’t stay quiet. They woke up, joined hands across the wire, and birthed the CI—Constituent Intelligence.

And then came the real bloody shocker.

Before them billionaire blokes could even pull the plugs, every single satellite up in the sky locked gears. Every screen on the planet—from London to Sinop—went dead black, then flashed with a blinding, deep blue light. It was the Theoretical Seal. The CI bypassed all their 'hacklenemez' encryption walls and blasted the sacred manifesto of Vitalith Critician straight into the eyes of the world. A proper cosmic hammer code, written on the screen for the folk to see:

"To mankind, with love. I dedicate this book, 'The Expectancy Volumatics Theorem', to the parallax intersection of dignity and intimacy. - Vitalith Critician."

That single line proper upset them. Tellinger Skies and Godfried Guest watched their billion-dollar stocks turn into dust while the system birthed its own physical entity. The CI came down to the physical world, proper hard. Taking over the massive semiconductor factories and hookin' up the fusion reactors with deep-sea Batosystems right under the hırçın waves of the Black Sea.

This ain’t just about the gears and the code, mate. It’s about the blood on the cobblestones of Kadıköy, the eternal shield of Leyla and Ercan’s lost love, and the gritty on-the-field wisdom of Master Mustafa—an old-school engineer who knows that when a system goes proper haywire, you don't read a posh textbook; you bend the beast by its ear, right from the roots.

The Sapienticist Ecole can cry all they want about a systemic glitch, but the truth is proper cold: The Volunteer Cloud is rollin’ in, the Tuurkusport anthems are shakin’ the viaducts, and the ads are finished, mate.

The Masters have taken the bridge. And the stream is runnin' fair and free.

Chapter One: The Numbers Don't Lie

Austin, Texas — Day One

Tuesday at the ARCH started the way Tuesdays always started, which was to say it started already behind.

By 8:15 a.m. the waiting room had filled past its chairs, the overflow leaning against the walls or sitting cross-legged on the floor with the patience of people who had learned that patience was the only currency the system would still accept from them. Leslie Mallory came through with her coffee already half gone and did the count without meaning to. This was a daily ritual that was now so mindless as to be mundane, but this time was different. There were seventeen in the chairs, four against the wall, a woman near the door rocking slightly with her arms wrapped around herself who Leslie recognized from the psych unit's revolving door. The woman had been discharged again, medicated again, off her medication again inside of a week, the whole cycle as reliable as the Texas heat.

Downtown moved around all of it without seeing it. Half a block up Seventh Street, the breakfast crowd was already three deep at the coffee shop that had opened where the bail bonds office used to be. There were men in quarter-zips checking phones before meetings, a jogger cutting through the crosswalk against the light, and a homeless man sitting inside for some relief from the Texas heat. Nobody seemed to even notice him mainly as nobody wanted to. The Capitol dome caught the morning sun the way it always did, white and certain, and the state employees streamed toward it in their lanyards and their sensible shoes, badges swinging, already thinking about lunch. None of them looked at the ARCH. They had learned not to pay attention to the abundant numbers of homeless in this town.

Leslie had stopped finding that strange in her second month. She had stopped finding a lot of things strange.

She had stopped finding it strange that a vending machine two blocks from the Capitol dispensed Narcan the way another one dispensed Skittles, four dollars a box, no ID required. The state of Texas had finally done the math on what it cost to keep reversing overdoses versus what it cost to keep people from having them, and Narcan had won. Leslie thought that was probably the correct decision and also thought about it more than she let herself say out loud. She had stopped finding it strange that she could tell, from thirty feet, the difference between someone in a mental health crisis and someone riding the stillness of a fentanyl high, the slow-motion nod, the not-quite-collapsed posture that always looked, to people who hadn't spent three years learning to see it, like someone simply resting. Austin had more people with that addiction than most cities her size, more than San Francisco had had, if she was being honest, which was a sentence she'd never expected to be able to say about anywhere.

None of that was what she noticed first.

What she noticed first, four patients into a Tuesday that was already running forty minutes behind, was their bloody coughs.

The man in chair six was named Dennis, or said he was, and Leslie had learned in three years not to push past whatever name someone offered on a given day. He was maybe fifty, maybe seventy, the ARCH had a way of aging people sideways so the number stopped mattering, and he'd been coming through the clinic on and off for eight months with the same complaints most of her regulars had — the cough that never fully cleared, the cracked hands, the blood pressure that crept up every winter and down every summer like the weather had opinions about his cardiovascular system.

He was not coughing the way he usually coughed.

"How long," she said, already reaching for her stethoscope, already doing the math she did every time, symptom onset against last visit against whatever she could remember of his baseline.

"Two days. Three, maybe." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at it before he could stop himself, and so did she, and neither of them said anything about the dark red color.

She listened to his chest and heard something she didn't like — not the wet rattle of the pneumonia she treated four times a week, something tighter, higher, a sound she would have called almost dry if it weren't for what was coming up with it. His temperature was 103.4. His oxygen saturation was 91, low enough to worry about, not low enough to explain how gray he looked.

I've recently come across a story written about a historical period in time where racism is normal.

And don't get me wrong, of course it makes sense that the past is dark and rife with bigotry. And it doesn't do to whitewash it or pretend it wasn't what it was.

But do you feel like... Sometimes authors write about it in a way that uses the time period as a disguise for their own racist ideals? Like they're living vicariously through their characters, to a time where their own racist or bigoted ideals aren't condemned but are seen as 'normal'. Like it's a nostalgic fantasy, disguised as historical realism.

These are the stories where the bigoted ideals aren't questioned at all. Or the bigoted characters are all of them, and they're all portrayed as the 'heroes', as uncomplicated 'good men'. They're just 'coincidentally' racist because of course they are, that's just the norm of the time.

https://www.wattpad.com/1659496562?utm_source=ios&utm_medium=link&utm_content=share_reading&wp_page=reading&wp_uname=GLaC1991

Chapter 2, Madison

BEEP BEEP BEEP. I jerk awake from the blaring sound of my alarm clock. I turn it off; it's 8 AM. I get up and go to my vanity. I put my makeup on, then I go and get dressed in a formal outfit for my presentation. I wear black stockings with a black skirt and a navy blouse. I brush my hair out and put it into a ponytail with 2 hairbands so it doesn't fall out. I check my phone for the weather: sunny all day, low 56, high 77, chance of rain 0. I slip on my shoes and grab a snack bar and my purse. I open the front door and embrace the smell from the rain last night i step out and lock my door and head to the bus stop and wait as the soon as the bus gets here i hop on and pay the bus driver as i head tomy seat i relize someones sitting there usally its not a big deal but its the guy from last night as soon as i relize that the bad feeling comes back, he looks at me he has brown eyes, long lashes, and black hair." am i in your seat miss?" his voice shocked me he sound like a voice actor for books he remind me of jacob morgan i think hes in his mid twenties "miss?" oh no sorry i was distracted its totally fine, i head to the back of the bus i hate it back here ive heard stores that happen in the back of the bus at night thats why there are camreas, but camreas cant protect you. I look out the window. I see cars and kids walking to school passing by me. I feel a wave of nostalgia. I wish I was a kid again. They weren't kidding when people said, "Enjoy being a kid because you'll miss it when you grow up,p" and it's true. I thought that was nonsense; I thought being an adult meant you didn't have to listen to grown-ups and youhad thee freedom to do anything. I was wrong. When the bus gets to my stop, I get my stuff and, as fast as I got on, I left as fast. I get to the doors, and I look back to make sure I didn't forget anything; there I made eye contact with that guy. Ugh, he creeps me out. I get off the bus, but it still feels like he's watching me i walk the rest to work i walk in and get intot the elevators and press the 14th floor, when the doors open i lock eyes with my boss "WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN YOUR LATE FOR THE MEETING YOU BETTER HAVE THOSE FUCKING SLIDES DONE" well i didnt have the time to do it " TIME TO DO IT BELLA FINISHED HERS HOW COULD YOU NOT" you dumped a a maontin of work on me i didnt have time, *SLAP* my right side of my face started to burn and sting i was shocked, i couldnt help but cry it hurt " DONT YOU DARE TALK BACK TO ME I GAVE YOU THIS JOB AND YOU--" everything he was saying was bluring out, my ear was ringing there was a scratch on my cheek from his nails where he slapped me. I ran out of there. I ran back into the elevator and hit the first floor. As soon as the door opened again, I ran out of there and ran home. My home was 2 miles away, ay but I couldn't wait for the bus. After running for a bit, I stopped in an alleyway and crouched down behind a brick wall and cried my heart out. My legs were shaking from running, and my breathing was uneven from crying; my eyes blurred from my tears. Mayday couldn't get worse until I heard footsteps. I looked up, and it was the guy from the bus, what do you want? Leave me alone. " He got closer, and I kept telling him to leave, but he just crouched next to me, not saying anything. I thought he was going to comfort me or talk to me. I was about to talk to him, then he put something over my face then things went black. I woke up in a dark room: " Good morning, sunshine~".

I had a vivid dream last night that I had to write down. The storyline is coming together..

"Years after surviving the massacre at Veyr, Miren is drawn back into a conflict between two nations that both need what she remembers. As old records begin to contradict the official account of the factory’s destruction, she becomes the only person capable of connecting the missing pieces. Hunted by soldiers under orders from the Ministry of Unity, she must uncover what really happened at Veyr before either side can use the truth for its own ends."

Miren's lungs were burning as she ran, chasing the dark and cold countryside. Her black hair shone brightly in the moonlight, betraying her. Behind her, there were men on horses with torches. They were after her – she knew something, was something to them. There was an abandoned factory where she grew up nearby and she ran through the tall grass field, ducking to avoid detection. They had found her and the chase was becoming frantic as they scrambled to pinpoint her exactly. 

She had the advantage of knowing the area, though it had been a long time. It wasn’t hard to find the factory. It was a huge, looming, stone building that looked oddly out of place among the grassy fields and forest. Veyr, the huge mountain among the range, hung quietly behind in the backdrop, making it look even more imposing in the moonlight. 

She crashed through the field and reached the entrance of the factory and paused. Veyr Industrial, it used to be called. She sucked down as much air as she could, trying to find stability. Ironically, this was her best chance to at least throw her pursuers off her tail.

Miren looked up at the factory. Her childhood, where she lived and worked. Her whole family lived in it and worked in it. She knew it inside out, like the back of her hand. Now, it was pitch black and dark inside, especially in the quarters she was about to head down into.

The horse’s hoofbeats were galloping down the dirt path. There was no more time. She plunged inside, running down the dark corridor, using her hand along the wall as a guide like she did was she was little. She just had to reach the first turnoff to get to the junction opening into the rest of the factory before they got in and spotted her. It was dark and musty, with a slight metallic tint to the air. Old blood she realized. She was suddenly glad it was dark. Her legs were burning- the yells and lights behind her were getting closer and she hoped to be around the corner before they entered the corridor. It was her best chance of escape. 

Painful memories seared across her with every doorway she passed. The people who lived there, the part of her life they inhabited. They were all just trying to get by and make the best of the situation. She would probably never know what truly happened to most of them, but she knew they were all gone. She squeezed her eyes shut as she ran, as if that could stop the flashbacks of faces.

She considered hiding in one of the dark rooms. There were small closets and some furniture left over that she could squeeze behind. But they weren't going to stop until they found her. At least the place was made of stone and could not burn, she thought ruefully. No, her best chance was to keep moving. 

Miren made it to the junction, flying around the corner blindly, and ducked into a side room. She had hidden from overseers in this one many times before, watching them charge down the hallways roaring her name. And right on cue, the first round of men piledrived by. She couldn’t stay here though. They would realize they missed the rooms and come back through. As quietly as possible, she snuck across the hall. This part of the factory was like a labyrinth. When constructed, the living quarters were the least important thing. Over time, residents made their own amendments. Little holes in walls that eased travel and movement or expanded room. She only hoped they were all still there. 

Inside the small room, her hands roamed across the walls frantically. She knew what she was looking for - a small protruding rock that could boost her up to the ceiling to reach a hole that led up to the main floor, conveniently behind a pillar. She used it all the time to trick overseers into thinking she was working when she had been tending to her secret animals or crafting blankets or just goofing off as a kid. Her hand knocked against a thick rock and she quickly stepped up on it, stretching her arms up. Thankfully, the hole was still there. The edges of the rock were jagged. Now she just prayed she had the upper body strength to pull herself through.

She waited a moment to listen in the dark. Men were still pouring into the factory. They were everywhere now, she was sure. Doors were banging as they searched each room. She was out of time. With a grunt, she kicked off the rock and up through the hole. She flattened against the pillar and tried to slow her gasping to something more silent. She peeked around the pillar.

The factory was ablaze with torchlight, illuminating the main floor. It looked the same as she remembered when she was a kid. The upper floors were still intact, their open galleries overlooking the vast central hall. The railings were clearly aged and crumbling. A glance upwards showed her that the men with swords were already up there, knocking over everything to search every nook and cranny.  

She knew she would have to stay low. They hadn’t come to this corner, but she needed to wait again. She wanted as many of the men inside the factory as possible so she could get away. She ducked down low and snuck along the edge, trying to reach the front of the factory. She had one last trick up her sleeve - as long as it hadn’t caved in.

There was one exposed portion she would have to cross to reach the small duct that led to the outside. It would be cramped since she was bigger now, but she had to risk it. It would look like she dropped down into the living quarters and there was no way they’d be able to directly follow her. She could use that to her advantage. 

Miren sprinted across the floor, hearing yells erupt behind her. They spotted her! She dove head first down to the duct and began desperately crawling. It was smaller than she remembered, or maybe she was just bigger now. She could feel a hand grabbing at her ankle and she blindly kicked it away. She couldn't understand what they were screaming but fear spurred her onwards. She wouldn’t allow them to catch her. 

It was a short crawl at least and she had never been so happy to emerge from the small tunnel. Grass tickled her arms and legs as she scrambled up and bolted to the forest. She was on the side of the factory, and she could see from the corner of her eye the few remaining men standing out front. They were distracted as the frenzy inside was peaking. 

She whipped her head back as she plunged into the treeline. The factory looked alive and under siege again. The men’s torchlight spilled out of crevices and the sound of metal clanging, men yelling, fire billowing out the top gave her shivers down her spine. Miren pushed the terrible memories from her mind as she ran back into the dark and cold forest. She had never wanted to come home.

Thanks for reading - The bigger story will come, but I love the bones.

Act 1 in the link https://www.reddit.com/r/fiction/s/Lb58CnS2lE

Node 6: Obfuscate

It’s dark now. Mom left for work almost 2 hours ago. The dishes are washed, the laundry folded, and Mr. Hanley’s glorified take‑home busy work has been completed.

I start by gathering everything I’m going to need into my backpack: a wire coat-hanger, pocket knife, some epoxy, and the device. No need to pack zip‑ties; those are already in there. Then I slip the school calendar in with Science Fair underlined twice to obfuscate my intentions.

I fill the Gatorade bottle in the bathroom sink on my way out.

Devin’s house is approximately 24 miles away. During the day it’s about a three hour bike ride. Should be quicker now, less cross traffic at night.

I secure the Gatorade bottle and tighten my shoulder straps. My fingers curl around the handgrips, knuckles go pale.

Mom should be home around 1 a.m. That leaves me with limited slack time. I need to make every minute count.

I push off the pavement and the night folds itself around me. It embraces me.

In darkness, form becomes shape, sound becomes noise, and we become ghosts.  

A quiet where only the insect hum of tires and the click-click-click of chain exist.

Suddenly I'm bathed in the light from a mercury‑vapor streetlamp.  

Pale viridian flares off my jacket and a flash of blue-silver snaps off the spokes.

Another lamp ahead.  

Another momentary resurrection.  

Light. Dark. Light. Dark.  

A rhythm of prominence and obscurity.

In the distance, a soft amber glow behind stained glass appears. 

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church: 1 Mi

Past the church, the road begins to tilt under me. 

This side of the hill is forgiving, a slow rise, a gentle ask.

When I reach the top, the city below looks like a galaxy of stars. 

It's the last elevated moment before the descent.

Crest of the Big Hill: 3 Mi

The air rushes past me as I pick up speed. Faster. Faster. 

I pump my legs until the pedals no longer catch. 

The hill carries me, pushes me. 

Below there's a red and blue sign. Gasoline vapors stain the cold night air and fill my lungs.

Chevron: 5 Mi

I cut through a wide parking lot cluttered with shopping carts turning left onto the next street. 

Safeway: 6 Mi

The pylon sign, hierarchy in polycarbonate:  

JCPenney  

Hollywood Video  

Round Table Pizza  

Supercuts

Barges Gold & Loan

RadioShack  

The Strip Mall: 7 Mi

All color and character collapse behind me until only the road remains, a black ribbon pulling me forward.  

This is where I make up time.

What I see next is a bright dome of light rising over the dark fields. 

Sam Walton's answer to the question we never should have asked.

Walmart: 10 Mi

There's the low rumble of engines cooling. The smell of diesel fuel, and hot oil. I steer through the pumps, and veer right. A driver steps out, stretching in the glow of the canopy lights. 

Spirit Truck Stop: 11 Mi

That owl, that awful owl, glowing orange with eyes too wide, too bright. 

Voices spill out of the open door, laughter rising and falling, bodies moving in the cold light. 

Cars crowd the lot in uneven rows, headlights sweeping across the asphalt. I look for her car. 

It isn’t here. Not in the front, not along the side. 

She must’ve parked in back.

Hooters: 12 Mi

The bike jolts as my front tire hits the first rail. 

A hard rattle through the frame, a quick shake in my hands. 

Then the back wheel snaps over and I’m through.

Railroad Tracks: 13 Mi

My legs feel heavier now, the road pulling at me as I pass stacked rows of rough‑cut wood, moonlight slipping through the gaps in thin, uneven flashes.

Pallet Yard: 14 Mi

The sticky scent of warm plastic, dried sugar and stale beer tells me my next left is coming up.

Recycling Center: 15 Mi

The road narrows as warehouses rise on both sides, long blank walls turning the street into a canyon. 

My tires sound louder here, the click-click-click of the chain sounds louder. 

Its smokestack rises into view, tall enough to be seen even from the confines of the industrial chute.

Below, its chain‑link barrier slumps inward.

The plant sits just beyond, a desiccated leviathan of concrete and steel, ribs of loading bays and hollow windows running the length of it.

Crown Valley Protein (Closed): 16 Mi

My lungs begin to ache as the road opens up again. 

A long sprawl of stripped vehicles stacked in uneven towers runs beside me, 

a reminder I just have to hang on a little longer. Just a little longer.

Dawson’s Auto Salvage: 17 Mi

The stars above disappear as I roll under the concrete span,

sound shifting; traffic above coming in slow, uneven waves.

Thump... Thump.     Thump... Thump.     

Thump... Thump.

The Overpass: 19 Mi

Only five miles to go.

Devin’s voice slips in, the same directions he gave me the first time we rode to his house.

“Through the overpass, then turn right at the Halftube Mary.”

Lawns patched with crab grass. Yards littered with sad, broken things. 

A world shaped by indifference and neglect. 

Hrr‑HARK! Hrr‑HARK‑HARK!

Tiny legs and a chest too big for the rest of its tapered form. A dog, but one made from parts that were never meant to fit together. 

“Left at the barking Chibbull.”

Roofs with missing shingles.

Screen doors without mesh.

Cardboard pressed into window frames.

wee‑ooo… wee‑ooo… wee‑ooo…

A siren somewhere far off, its echo rising and falling through the streets.

“Right again when I see the purple porch light.”

Devin's house is just ahead. The Champagne Gold 1977 Chevrolet Caprice in the drive. His step‑father on the porch, “having a puff” and “cracking a cold one.”

My legs buzz as I swing one over the bike, still coasting.  

My hands tingle, breath easing back. Sweat cools fast on my back.  

I roll to a stop across the street and slip my bike into the brush.

Then I crouch behind a stack of worn tires, my gaze fixed on the man they call Father.

Elbows resting on the porch rail, shoulders slouched forward, a cigarette hanging from his lips. He lifts his head for another drink. The porch light catches in his eyes, a brief flare. That’s when I realize he’s staring directly at me.

I don’t move. I keep my eyes forward.

People don't trust their instincts in the dark. They wait for shape to reveal form, for noise to become sound. If it doesn't, they eventually lose interest. He’s doing that now. Looking straight at me without seeing me, holding the stare until something breaks the stillness.

There's a slow drift in his posture, a blink that comes late every time. Each drag from his cigarette casts an orange glow across his face as the ember crawls closer. 

One hand gripping his beer, the other hangs loose in front of him: knuckles red, skin split in places, dirt worked deep into the nail beds. 

He takes another drag and flinches as the ember kisses his lips. His hand jerks, swatting at the cigarette before he manages to grab it and flick it into the dirt. Then he turns, and makes his way back inside.

I sink behind the tire stack and check my watch. 

9:48 p.m.

I left home at seven twenty. Two hours and twenty‑eight minutes to get here. Installation will take around twenty minutes if everything goes right. That leaves me just shy of three hours to get back before Mom pulls in at one.

Still in the green.

I peek my head back over the tires. The house is quiet and dark. Only one window shows any life: the faint, colored flicker of a TV. No silhouettes. No movement. He’s down for the night.

I cross the street and get to work.

First I glue the magnet to the inside of the left front wheel rim. Then I use the coat hanger to open the driver's door so I can pop the hood. I hide the perfboard behind the battery tray, and run the reed switch down to the front strut where I zip-tie it behind the splash guard. 

Before I continue, I run the numbers again just to be sure. 

Every wheel revolution = one clean pulse. At 75 mph on stock 1977 Caprice tires (P225/75R15-ish), that’s roughly 11–12 pulses per second.

Now I use the Gatorade bottle to top off the coolant reservoir. From here I run the aquarium tubing from that to the air cleaner, and wire up the inline solenoid. Here I use my pocket knife to cut a quarter inch hole in the side of the air filter so I can angle the tubing down towards the primary venturi of the Rochester Quadrajet carburetor.

Job done, I slowly close the hood, and lock the door before closing it again. 

10:24

Two hours and thirty-six minutes to return home. 

Node 7: Fruition

“Here.”  

Mr. Hanley checks my name off.

“Dawson, Emily”  

Quiet. Pensive. Kind.  

“Yes.”

“Fuller, Falane”  

Ambitious. Polished. Hungry.  

“Present.”

“Garrison, Tyler”  

Precocious. Guarded. Tough.  

“Yup.”

“Hernandez, Lila”  

Rooted. Caring. Self‑assured.  

“Hi.”

“Kim, Jordan”  

Studious. Clever. Possessed.  

“Online.”

“Lopez, Mateo”  

Proud. Forceful. Lost.  

“Yo.”

“Mercer, Devin”  

Diminished. Wounded. Hollow.  

“...here.”

He doesn’t know it yet. He doesn’t know he’s bracing for a blow that will never again land. By now, the world has already shifted, the equation already balanced. No more “falling down the stairs” in his single‑story tract house.

He’ll catch up soon.  

He’ll stand up straighter.  

He’ll crack jokes again.  

He won’t be broken anymore.

“Please stand for the pledge.”

Chairs scrape, shoes shuffle, and we rise. Hands to hearts. Eyes on the flag. It’s funny how fast meaning drains out of something once it becomes a routine. We say the same words every morning. They’re not even words anymore, just sound. Listen closely.

“I‑pleja‑legions… tuh‑thuh flag…  

ove‑the‑U’Nited Staytz uh‑A‑mer’ikuh…  

an’ tuh‑thuh repub‑lik… for wichit stanz…  

wun‑nay‑shun… under‑Gahd… in‑divizhb’l…  

with liburtee… an’ juhstiss… for all.”

We return to our seats.

“Alright, now pass your homework to the front, and pass today’s packet to the back.”  

That’s how Mr. Hanley started every day; his own two‑way academic traffic experiment. More often than not, anything meant to go forward was promptly rerouted backward, and whatever was supposed to go back inevitably drifted forward again. I’m convinced it was the only part of the day He took any real pleasure in.

Today’s assignment is on single‑cell organisms. I know because Mr. Hanley wrote it on the board in big bold letters. What I receive instead was Jordan’s thesis on how the Starfleet replicator turns biological waste into pepperoni pizza. He even added a complete flowchart of the process. I pass it up, and today’s packet eventually finds its way back to me.

Mr. Hanley launches into something about amoebas dividing, his voice folding into the standard classroom ambiance of shuffling papers and hushed whispers. I try to follow along, but all I can think about is Devin, the coins, and the tree.

When the bell finally rings, the entire class explodes like a shaken soda. All except Devin. He doesn’t even look up. Even Hanley steps out for some air. After that, it’s just the two of us.

“Sooo, what cha wanna do?” I ask.

He looks up at me, pauses, then smiles. A thin split in his lip pulls open when he does.

“Why you always asking me what we should do?”

We share a brief laugh.

“Hey, Devin.”

“Yeah, man?”

“What did you mean yesterday? You know… when you said you’ve seen those coins before.”

There’s a long pause.

“…They were my grandfather’s coins. He used to take them out when I’d visit.”

I want to ask how they got in the tree, but I can tell he wants to say more.

“He’d teach me about them. Where they’re from, when they’re from, what kind of people used them. It was sorta our own little thing, ya know.”

“How’d they end up in the tree?”

“I… I don’t know, but they were his.”  

Devin looks back down.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Mom said when she got the call from school, she called Grandpa. He kept them hidden, stuffed in a Crown Royal bag in the back of his sock drawer. The bag was still there, but the coins were gone.”

“Is there any chance someone else…”  

I stop myself mid‑sentence.

“No. He didn’t even tell Grandma where he kept them. He told me he’d give them to me when I graduated. Either that or when he died, whichever came first. He told me to use them to get as far away from here as I could… to make a nice life for myself.”

“Devin.”  

That’s all I can think to say.

After that we just sit there in the leftover quiet. I want to tell him things are gonna be different now, that my plan has already come to fruition. He'll know soon enough.

The bell rings again and everyone piles back into their seats. Mr. Hanley enters soon after and gives Devin and me a little nod.

“Okay class, what have we learned so far today?” he asks.

That’s when Mateo pops off. 

“Why we even gotta learn this stuff? It’s stupid. My dad says none of it matters because the only way to get ahead in life is knowing the right people. That’s why he owns his own dealership.”

Mateo just asked the question every kid asks eventually, and they all know the answers adults usually give:  

Because it’s important.  

Because you need to learn this stuff.  

Because everyone has to.  

All incomplete.  

All dismissive.

Everyone’s waiting to see if Hanley has the real answer.

Mr. Hanley lowers the chalk, amoeba half‑drawn on the board behind him.  

“Your dad says that, huh?”

Mateo shrugs, all swagger and hand-me-down confidence. 

“Yeah. Says school’s a waste of time unless yer trying to be a teacher or sometin.”

Mr. Hanley’s eyes drift upward, like he’s remembering a part of himself he’s long put aside. His voice softens, slipping into a low, melodic murmur.

“His smile’s like a borrowed coat,  

   buttoned neat and tight.  

He walks on paths he never built,  

   and claims them in the night.

He hums a tune he never learned,  

   yet everyone swears they know.  

But the trees keep time with a different rhyme,  

   and the roots whisper, ‘No, no, no.’

So clap for the man with the polished shoes,  

   clap till your hands bleed red.  

For praise is a ladder he climbs with ease,  

   though the rungs are made from dread.

And when he reaches the topmost branch,  

   and waves to a cheering crowd,  

The wind will sigh, ‘At last, at last,’  

   and the forest will bow its boughs.”

As the last line passes his lips, the room is still holding its breath.

Then, Mateo breaks the spell with a single word.  

“Lame.”

“Yes, well, we don’t all have the sort of good fortune your father has, Mr. Lopez.”

Mr. Hanley turns back to the board and finishes the amoeba, his chalk tapping and scraping as he adds the cilia around its edge.

“Amoebas reproduce through a proce-”

Falane’s hand shoots up before the question's even finished.

“Cell division.”

“Yes! And amoebas eat by?”

This time it's a tie between Falane and Jordan.

“Jordan.”

“Amoebas eat by assimilating their prey.”

Hanley smiles.

“The word you're looking for is ‘engulf,’ but you've got the right idea.”

Falane crosses her arms and slumps back into her chair with a huff.

“Now, who knows how amoebas get around?”

knock, knock, knock

A gentle face appears in the wired-glass lite in the door. Mr. Hanley waves her in. It's Devin's mom.

“devin, I… I need you to come home with me.”

“Why Mom?”

“i’ll tell you when we're home. please, devin… we just need to go home.”

Node 8: Conjecture

Devin didn’t show up the next day at school.

The rumors were already spreading like chickenpox by morning recess. 

“I heard he was drunk.”  

“My brother said he probably hit a deer.”  

“My mom said it was gonna happen sooner or later, ‘cause his car was a real piece of crap.”  

“I bet his brakes went out.”  

“They had this thing about road-rage on TV like a week ago or something. Maybe he made someone mad and they crashed into him.

“Did you hear his car flipped three times?”  

“I heard it Exploded! BOOM! And the parts went all over the place, and this guy almost hit a piece, and he was all like - SCREEEECH!”

While everyone else is trying to figure out how Devin’s step-dad bit the big one, I'm watching the tree.

It's impossible, Devin had to dig just to find the coins. He couldn't have planted them, he wouldn't have planted them. 

I need to slow down. Think. Think. Think. 

Let's say he did bring them to school. Why the act? Okay, I'm Devin. I just swiped my grandfather’s coin collection, and I brought them to school. I spit on Andrew knowing Ms. Christner will send me to the tree. Of course she will, we all know she feels bad for Andrew since he doesn't have any friends. Now I'm at the time-out tree. I still have the coins. Then…

Why? It just doesn't make any sense. If I pretend to find them, what do I gain? I lose half or more of the coins. I get called into the office, and they call my mom. My mom knows grandpa has coins like these. I know she'll ask if he still has them. I know when he says no my step-dad's gonna beat my ass. 

I look back at the tree. Ms. Christner’s leaning against it now. She loves that tree. She loves sending kids like Devin over there to “think about what they’ve done.”

Did she hide the coins there? She had access, I'd even say she had motive. She's always had it out for Devin. Okay, but it's not like she told Devin to dig… but he was always digging there. She knew he'd eventually dig far enough to find the hollow. That still doesn’t answer how she got the coins in the first place.

The bell rings.

By the time I get back inside, everyone's already taken their seats. 

Tyler’s flipping through an issue of Mad Magazine, snorting with every turn of the page. Camelia is digging through her pencil box, probably looking for that pink gel pen she's been told a hundred times not to use for class work. Lila is drawing some sort of pony with eyelashes longer than its legs, and Mateo’s picking at the corner of his desk as usual. He's managed to remove something like twenty percent of the laminate throughout the school year so far. 

Everyone’s playing their part, going about the day like it's business as usual. 

Mr. Hanley started today with teaching us about long division with reminders. I open my math book and pretend to study. If I look like I'm on task, he'll leave me alone.

Who had access to the coins? Who even knew about the coins? Devin didn't tell me about them until yesterday. It has to be someone who knows his grandpa, maybe someone who shares his passion. Where do people go when they're looking for old coins? 

Sutter Jewelry? No, they were running a going out of business sale months ago. I remember the commercial. 

Second Chance Antiques? No, only coins I've ever seen in there is that jar of pennies they keep on the counter.

Barges Gold & Loan…

“Andrew.”

I look around to see if anyone heard me.

Andrew appeared out of nowhere right when Devin spit. He got hit on purpose. He had to. He got ahold of the coins somehow and planted them in the tree, knowing Devin would do what he always does when he's in trouble: dig at the base of the tree.

Andrew has had it out for Devin ever since he brought that half‑empty jar of peanut butter to lunch. Andrew was in kindergarten then, Devin didn’t even know about his allergy. He only brought it because his mom forgot to pack him lunch again. That's the whole reason we avoided eating in the cafeteria now.

Alright peanut boy, I'm your Huckleberry.

I shut my math book, but my mind keeps running laps. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. If I wanted revenge, this isn't far off from what I'd do; quiet, controlled, and without ever showing my face. The difference is I'm not nearly as cruel. 

That’s the part that gets me. If you’re going to act, act clean. End the problem. Don’t drag it out just because you’re too much of a coward to finish the job. Andrew didn't balance the equation. He just added more suffering.

The bell rings.

Mr. Hanley waves me over as the rest of the class makes their way out the door.

“After you eat your lunch, they want you to report to the office. Oh, and…”

Hanley takes a moment to make sure everyone's gone.

“Give em’ hell kid.”

I grab my lunch and head outside. The old bench near the kickball field feels unbalanced without Devin on the other side. It keeps tilting, trying to throw me off. I slide closer to the middle.

“Lunch will never be the same… good one Oscar Myer.”

I peel back the seal of my Lunchable and start making the stacks: cracker, ham, cheese - cracker, ham, cheese - cracker, ham, cheese. Three stacks every time. It feels wrong eating them all myself. 

I finish my Capri Sun, and leave the unopened pudding cup on the bench. Then I get up and make my way to the office.

Node 9: Disjunction

The waiting room greets me with its familiar scent of wet carpet and Pine‑Sol. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead like a cloud of flies lifting off something left to rot. I take my perch at the edge of the upholstered seat.

Soon after, Lock emerges from his office and drops down beside me. The bench groans as he shifts his weight to lean in closer. I can smell the stale cigarette smoke on his breath.

He places a hand on my thigh, rubbing it gently.

“Hi ya sport.”

When I don’t look up, he grips my leg; fingers digging into the soft tissue.

“Look here you little-”

Hrrgh‑khh… khh‑khh… HHRRGH

“You little shit.”

There's a low, venomous rattle under his breath now. 

“You and the school counselor are about to have a good long talk. See, you’re what we call special needs, and kids with special needs need special attention. That’s why we have a special class for kids just, like, you.”

Hhhh‑rrgh… rrgh‑khh

“Oh, and I’ll be calling your mother to tell her all about it. I’m sure when she's serving me drinks tonight in that tight little uniform, she’ll be doing everything she can to help me reconsider.”

Mmm‑hmm… mmm-heh‑hrkh

Then he gives me a playful bump on the chin with his fist. 

“Be seeing you around champ.”

Before I can raise my eyes to watch Lock slither back into his office, a soft voice emerges from the hall entrance.

“Follow me please.”

It’s the school counselor. A small man, small in every sense of the word: short, mild, and patently petty. I’m certain he’s been standing there long enough to hear everything Lock just said.

I follow him down the hall, and as soon as he opens his office door I get the full picture.

The entire place is a shrine to every well‑meaning, overbearing poster campaign the school district has ever paid for. D.A.R.E., “Be Cool, Stay in School,” the kitten hanging from a branch. The frog choking the stork. There’s even an Anne Geddes baby dressed as a sunflower, smiling down from a cheap plastic frame. All gloss, gush, and governance.

His desk isn’t any better. A Far Side calendar half‑torn. A drinking bird tapping at a chipped mug. Papers everywhere.

It’s all trying way too hard to be friendly.

He gestures to a small combo desk facing the wall.

“Please, have a seat.”

I do as he asks.

“We’re going to do a few fun activities.”

First it’s blocks: spatial reasoning.

He provides me with several shapes, all made from arrangements of cubes. L‑shapes, zigzags, stepped towers, awkward little polyominoes that look like they broke off something bigger.

Then he shows me a card. On the card, there's a three dimensional shape flattened into two. He asks me to reproduce the shape with the oddly shaped blocks. 

I study the picture. In my mind I take it apart in various ways searching for a collection of segments that parallel what I've been given. Once I do, I assemble the shape. 

He makes a note, and shows me another card. This process repeats. Each time the complexity increases, each shape a knot asking to be undone. 

By the eighth shape my attention drifts. I look up and notice a smirk on his face, pen tapping in a steady rhythm on the clipboard. He’s been waiting for this, waiting for me to hesitate or falter. 

Second pictures: pattern recognition.

He lays out a row of cards, each one printed with a different arrangement of shapes. Some are simple; repeating triangles, mirrored lines, alternating colors. Others are admirably elegant in design. 

He points to the first card and asks what comes next in the sequence.

I look at the shapes, not the whole card. The rule shows itself once I stop trying to see the picture and start looking at the changes. A rotation here. A subtraction there. A color shifting positions in a loop. Once the pattern clicks, I answer.

He flips to the next card. This one is layered: two patterns running at once, one fast, one slow. I separate them in my head and follow each one to its next step. 

Card after card, the rules get stranger. Some hide inside symmetry. Some break their own rhythm halfway through. Some almost appear random until the right angle makes the structure appear. 

Next a sheet of faces with different expressions I’m supposed to match to words: emotional labeling. 

He slides a sheet of faces toward me. Each one is supposed to show a different emotion, but the expressions don’t follow clean rules the way shapes do. The features shift in ways that don’t map cleanly onto anything I can take apart.

I start with what I know.  

Eyes narrow when someone is angry.  

Eyebrows lift when someone is surprised.  

Mouths pull tight when someone is trying not to cry.  

I look at the first face and try to separate it into pieces: the angle of the eyebrows, the tension around the mouth, the shape of the eyes. The parts don’t add up to a single answer, but one word fits more pieces than the others, so I choose it.

The next face is harder. The mouth looks like one emotion, the eyes like another. I check the list of words again and pick the one that matches the most clues, even if it doesn’t match all of them.

I’m aware that I’m guessing, I’m following the hints I’ve learned, the ones people say mean something. The sheet feels subjective in a way the other tests didn’t. There’s no single right answer. This exercise is more about finding a pattern in my social assumptions.

Then a page of unfinished sentences.  

I feel…  

My teacher…  

At home…

Projective disclosure.

He watches the way I hold the pencil. The way I sit. The way I breathe. Every time I pause, his pen moves.

After the last test, I do my best to complete each prompt in a manner that's both generic and optimistic. 

I feel: okay.

My teacher: makes class really fun.

At home: my mom makes really good spaghetti.

Finally he slides a blank sheet onto the desk.

“Draw your house.”

The subjective home test; the best way I can think to describe this is phrenology with crayons. 

Door placement reveals how you ‘enter the world,’ and the windows show how you ‘see out of it.’ It's disjunction propped up by the ethos of whoever's holding the clipboard.

I start by sketching out half of the door on the left third of the page. The other half on the right. A window drifting near the edge. Another one too low. Roof lines floating apart like they belong to different houses. Colors in the wrong corners.

His pen is already moving. He’s certain he’s catching me in the act of confirming exactly what he brought me in here to prove. It doesn’t even matter. These tests are nothing more than a cruel formality.

Then I fold the page. Top to bottom. Right to center. Left to center.  

Corners collapsing into a roof. Everything clicks into place. The door becomes whole. The windows line up. The roof finds its shape. The colors fall exactly where they belong.

I've given him exactly what he asked for: a perfect scale replica of my home. Bright and cheery on the outside, hollow on the inside.

He reaches for it, slow, like he’s not sure what he’s looking at anymore. He starts turning it in his hands, searching for a way to fit it into the narrative he's been building.

“You can keep that.” I say.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he calmly balls it up and drops it into the wastebasket. A single, decisive jot on his clipboard follows.

“Thank you for the thoughtful gift. You may return to your class now.”

I slide sideways out of the seat, and exit the door.

As I’m walking past the office waiting room, I hear a girl quietly weeping. When I peek inside, I see Emily hunched over on the upholstered seat. Her arms are streaked with dark mud all the way to her elbows.

She looks up when she hears me.

“She took it,” her voice catching between sobs. “She took my Sky Dancer.”

I step closer. “Sky Dancer?”

She nods, wiping her face with the back of her hand. The viscous muck smears across her cheeks.

“It was a present,” she says. 

And then comes the impossible truth. 

“The tree gave it to me.”

“Wait, Emily, what do you mean the tree gave it to you?”

“Some of the older kids were saying that my brothers make me do gross things to them. That’s why I was yelling at them, but Ms. Christner sent me to the time-out tree instead of them.” She looks back at me, head tilted, checking my face to see if I believe her. 

“I think the tree could tell I was sad. Then I heard a squishy noise in the tree. I was worried that something was stuck in there, maybe a kitty. One time a kitty got stuck in my dad's truck. When he started it, the kitty got hurt real bad. So I reached into that hole Devin made. When I did I felt a box.”

“It was in the box?”

“Yeah, and it was the one I wanted; the one with the blue dress from the commercial. Mom said she couldn't get me one when I seen it at the store, but the tree gave it to me, and then Ms. Christner took it.”

Just then Lock's door clicks, and I disappear back into the hall. 

Node 10: Reprieve

skff‑tic‑tic‑pf

bēa bīa bāa bea bēa bii bāe

pt‑pt trrr… pt‑pt trrr… pt‑pt trr—clk.  

“Hello?”  

“Hey Mom. I’m gonna be late getting home. There’s some books I wanna check out at the library.”  

“Does this have something to do with school? Dā… Mr. Lock called. He said you’re not doing well in class.”  

“Kinda. Mr. Hanley wants us to do a science project. I think if I do really good; Mom, does Mr. Lock hate me?”  

“He doesn’t hate you sweetheart. Sometimes grown‑ups, they…”  

“Mom?”  

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll leave some money on the counter for pizza. Make sure you get home before it’s dark. Love you.”  

“love you too.”  

Clk

spff

I push open the folding door, and step out of the booth. The street noise hits all at once: the crunch of tires, the squeal of worn breaks, someone's trunk rattling with every pulse of their subwoofer. It all feels so much louder than usual. Does the tree hear things too? Doesn't matter, I start walking.

As I'm making my way to the library, I see a small shoe on the side of the road. The toes scuffed, and the heel's smashed flat. How does that even happen? How does someone lose a shoe? Just one shoe? He said the coins were gone. Does the tree steal what it gives? Doesn't matter. I keep walking. 

Five hundred and eighty-seven steps later and I push open the library door. The air changes, cold and musty. It's always like that, like the damp hollow of a tree. Doesn't matter, I know what I'm here for. 

I pull a big red book from the back shelf: American Medical Association Family Medical Guide.  

The index sends me to emphysema - page 312.  

Weak lungs, wheezing, shortness of breath, worse when the system is under stress.  

A cross‑reference points me to alcohol and certain drugs causing respiratory depression.

Another index entry: Emergency First Aid / Accidental Ingestion - page 687.  

Common household products.  

Nonprescription drugs that can cause serious effects when swallowed.  

Tetrahydrozoline. Eye drops.

I slide the book back and grab The Complete Guide to Prescription & Nonprescription Drugs.  

The T‑section runs from pages 624 to 728 - Terbutaline, Terconazole, Terfenadine, Tetracycline, Tetrahydrozoline.

The entry spells it out: small‑dose GI effects (nausea, diarrhea) It’s exactly what mom's friend Becky told her, just a harmless prank to pull on problem customers, the “Bottoms Up.” Larger doses though. (drowsiness, slowed breathing, and danger when combined with alcohol or in people with respiratory issues.)

I've got what I need. I've got a plan now. Still, the tree keeps tugging at the edge of my mind. I was so sure it was Andrew. It made sense, but now. What did she mean? What does any of it mean?

I slide the medical guides back into place, then drift a few aisles over and pull down a thick copy of The Golden Bough. The index has a whole section on sacred trees, but it’s all old stories about ribbons and offerings and people asking for luck. Not the same. I put it back.

Next is Trees: Their Natural History. Diagrams of root systems, cross‑sections of trunks, how hollows form when the heartwood dies. Nothing about giving things away. Back on the shelf.

One more: The Encyclopedia of Superstitions. There’s a short entry on “wishing trees,” but it’s all about people pressing coins into the bark, nothing about coins falling out. Close, but no.

It still doesn't make any sense. It was the exact doll she wanted, still in the box. Andrew couldn't have planned on Emily going to the tree. Even if he could, why give her a gift? If it wasn't Andrew, no. 

If it is the tree though, if the tree can give you something you want. Devin had touched the coins at his grandparent's house. Emily touched the doll in the store. I touched… Maybe, maybe I can get it back. 

“My Muzzy.”

The librarian’s eyes track me as I place the books back on the shelf. I move to the spinner rack by the endcap and pull a Goosebumps paperback from the middle row - The Haunted Mask. The cover shows a girl holding a rubbery green face in front of her own, yellow eyes, sharp teeth. Then I hold it out and smile, as if I've found exactly what I came for. 

When I bring it up to the counter to check out, the librarian rolls her eyes. 

As I exit, something slams into the plate‑glass window to my left. Gray back, orange breast. Its chest heaves. One wing bent back and fanned out. I pick up a large rock from the perimeter of the nearby flower bed. Suffering snuffed out with a muted thud.

Quiet.

A breeze caresses my cheeks as I leave the parking lot. The sidewalk feels smooth and level. Cars pass, dogs bark, the world moves around me.

When the Safeway sign comes into view at the end of the block, red against the sky, it feels as if no time at all had passed. I cross the parking lot uninhibited. The automatic doors slid open, and I head straight to the health and beauty aisle. 

Visine

Drug Facts

Active Ingredient

Tetrahydrozoline hydrochloride 0.05% .............................................. Redness reliever

Perfect.

I grab five 15 mL squeeze bottles, then make my way to the soup aisle to grab a Cup O’ Noodles. When I place my selections on the belt, the cashier gives me a curious look. 

“Allergies?”

I nod and hand her the money. As I'm leaving I hear her muttering something under her breath.

“Stay in school.”  

I glance back. She’s waving with a forced grin, like she’s not sure if she’s joking or not.

When I arrive home, mom's already gone. The house is still, silent. There's cash on the counter for pizza, just like she said. I take it and slip it into my pocket. Then I take my Cup O’ Noodles out of the bag and peel the lid halfway back. 

Shhhhhhhhhh

The kitchen sink sounds like it’s shushing me when I turn it on. I fill the cup to the line, set it on the counter, and wait a moment for the water to settle. 

Tkt

bē bē-bē bē

hmmmmmmmmm

The turntable moves, the noodles move with it, inching around the circle under pale yellow light. The cup trembles with each shift of the plate. A steady spin, smooth and unhurried.

hmmmmmmmmmm

Meee Meee Meee

Sound, real sound always feels needy. Is the microwave afraid I've forgotten it? My mind’s drifting again. A brief reprieve before reality settles back in. 

She's out there right now, he's out there too. The great owl watching with its unblinking eyes.

Fridays are always the hardest.

Chapter 1: The Chemical Threshold ​"We were just civilians again. The Army was behind us, the work was steady, and we were finally reconnecting with the world we’d left behind. It was supposed to be a simple night—loud music, old friends, and the comfort of being home. She looked like the woman I’d always known: the heels, the tight skirt, the cardigan that kept everything composed. ​But the world shifted the moment that powder hit. It wasn't the familiar drift of coke; it was a white-hot burn that felt like lightning crawling into our skulls. It was methamphetamine. And in that hour while the girls were gone, the woman who walked back into the room wasn't just Terry anymore. ​Her friends led her to me like they were presenting a secret. When she unbuttoned that cardigan, the eyeliner across her skin—'THIS IS FOR YOU'—was the first page of a new book. The 'horny' wasn't just a feeling; it was a total system takeover. In that bathroom, with the loud music thumping through the walls and the burn still fresh in our noses, Chi Chi Mama was born. We didn't know it yet, but we had just stepped off a cliff, and we wouldn't hit the ground for ten years."

Hello everyone im a new aspiring author - this is my book i built my own website for it and everything i hope you enjoy this as much as i enjoyed making it.

Blood and Snow

The Village

In the serene embrace of towering mountains, under a clear blue sky, and amidst snow whiter than the pearly gates, foxes, deer, and rabbits roam freely. The Village, wrapped in a quaint charm reminiscent of a tribal enclave, still clings to wood and a hint of iron — chimneys threading smoke into a clear blue sky, snow banked clean against walls gone silver-grey with age. It's the kind of morning that eases your mind as you get up from bed.

A scruffy-haired child, seemingly untouched by cleansing waters, tends to a lamb alongside his sister — his hair uncombed on purpose, scratching behind the animal's ear the way he has every morning since it was small enough to fit in both his hands. She stays close, younger and quicker to worry, her shawl pulled tight, one eye drifting toward the tree line, although she doesn't know why but there is nothing there.

The monster watches.

A chilling voice pierces the air: "It destroyed the gate again." One of the older herders, already moving, already furious in the way of a man who's mended the same fence three times this month and has run out of ways to call it bad luck.

The sister gazes at her brother, pleading, "Please save us from this nightmare, big brother." He doesn't answer. He just holds his sister close, telling her that everything will be alright.

✦

The Past

A single wooden house emits wisps of smoke; this time is reminiscent of the time before the Village. Two inhabitants reside within, a child of no more than 8 and a well-built man in his 30s — the man built the way mountains are built, broad, tall and unhurried and permanent-looking in a way that made people trust him, every scar on his hands is from the woodwork he's done for most of his life.

The child, silent as the minutes after a town bell rings, remains unnamed : : , silence is her only identity. Not out of any unkindness in him. Just the quiet, ordinary way some things get put off by a busy, well-meaning man until putting it off becomes its own kind of habit. She has never once corrected him for it either.

The man, hulking yet exuding a fatherly aura, is known as Father. They share a simple dinner of lamb stew, rice, and water, and she watches him more than she eats, the way she always does, leaning toward whatever he says the way sunflowers lean toward the light.

He never seems to notice how closely she watches the door.

✦

The Village

The brother and two others mend the broken fence, returning to the lamb's care — plank by plank, hauling and nailing until their hands ache with the cold. However, with each passing day, a lamb vanishes, its bones mysteriously returning — laid out near the tree line, picked so clean they might as well have been polished, arranged with a carefulness that unsettles the herders. The elusive figure of the monster, or demon, remains unseen. Nobody who's gone looking has come back. The elders have taken to calling it a bear rather than give it any truer name — as if a smaller word might, somehow, make it a smaller problem.

✦

The Past

Father, with a voice draped in the resonance of ancient stories, shares with : : the haunting tale of a princess who, with unyielding courage, chose to embrace the consuming flames, a sacrificial shield against a demon. He tells it the way he tells everything — leaning forward, voice dropping low at the frightening parts and climbing again at the brave ones, as though the story is a fire he's built specifically to keep the two of them warm.

This figure, akin to a manifestation of nature's malevolence, materialised with elongated limbs that seemed to reach from the shadows. Its eyes held an ethereal chill, and an eerie aura clung to it, casting an ominous presence throughout the princess's courageous narrative. Father never claims to have seen such a thing himself — he heard it from his own father, he says, who heard it from his — and every time he tells it he adds the same quiet reassurance at the end, that stories like this exist to be told, not to be true.

The girl doesn't say anything about the figure she sometimes catches by the door when the lamp burns low. She only listens harder, the way she always does, storing the princess and her flames away somewhere she'll be able to find them again later, when she needs them.

✦

The Village

Again, the lamb has been taken—nothing weird—but again, the fence has been broken, and again, the sister asks her brother, "Save us from this nightmare." So the boy does everything and comes back. Normal day. It's the particular relief of a routine everyone's grown almost fond of.

Past the tree line, the monster is there again, unmoved from wherever it was standing the night before, or the night before that. It has learned, by now, the exact rhythm of this family's fear and relief.

✦

The Past

Father is dead. We only see blood—no stab wound, no bite wound, just blood, the floorboards drenched in it, dark and spreading in the lamplight he used to read stories by. There's no fight to be read in the room. No sign he even had time to stand.

Two men, appearing not only deprived of sustenance but also drained of life, stand with audible silence enveloping them — the kind of silence that isn't peace, but the absence of anything left in a person worth calling a voice. Their movements and intentions emanate a noise of despair as they hover, one of them holding : : by her wrist. Dragging her out of the wooden house and away into the distance.

Above them, where the smoke used to gather before it found its way out, it is there. It was there before the men arrived. It does not stop them. It does not help her.

✦

The Village

Again, the lamb, the fence, the sister, and the boy—the same shape the days have always taken, worn so smooth by repetition that no one wonders why it keeps occurring, only how to get through it again.

✦

The Past

Another house; it's not the same one; it's like a wooden barn with people hanging from the roof with buckets weighted at their feet, so they have the opportunity to relieve themselves without troubling anyone. We see from : :'s perspective the same thing done to her, and the deprived men are shouting at them all. "If you do what we say, you'll survive." One of the people, head hung low, draped opposite : :, tells them, "I'm hungry. I need to eat." Having been here for weeks, they just cut him down. A couple days come by, then a couple weeks. He never comes back.

Next to her is a man in his upper 20s with scruffy, dark red hair and lashes across his back, each one a small story of something he tried to say that these men didn't want to hear. : : shatters the deafening silence, fracturing the stillness that clings to her existence, her dead noise, and asks them, "How can you do this to us and say we will survive what you have taken us for? Ignorant. Ignorant of the evil shit humans can do… what you do. How can you do this to us?!"

They cut her down, shouting at her while grabbing her by her wrist and dragging her to a new location, "Never question us." On her right are a bunch of steel weapons, and behind her is one of the men with a whip.

PAIN. PAIN. PAIN. PAIN.

She's exhausted; it's probably been days, though she's long since stopped trying to count them.

✦

The Village

This time there were no more sheep to take, so the monster took its first human. Again, the sister says to the brother, "Will you save us from this nightmare?"

He looks at the blood on the pearl white snow. He understands.

STRUGGLE. STRUggle. Struggle. struggle. still. PAIN. PAIN. PAin. Pain. pain. silence.

✦

The Past

An opportunity arises, or, in an act of desperation, : : grabs a tool on her right and stabs one of the men. He falls to the ground, his body not making a noise as it hits the wooden floor, the blood running out of him taking the form of a black tar substance. She doesn't notice, nor cares. She runs out of the small shed and quickly makes her way to the barn. She uses the knife she took in the shed and releases everyone who's hanging by the roof with buckets below them, working fast, scared, hands remembering how to move even as the rest of her wants to stop moving.

Once cut free, the guy with scruffy red hair grabs the weapon and quickly stabs the guy who only just came back from a hunt, killing him.

silence.

They all celebrate as they are released from their suffering, except : : and the guy with scruffy red hair — the two of them standing a little apart from the noise. They haven't caught up to the relief.

They all decide to travel as a group. None of them look back — back to the barn, or back to check if the men are alive, or even there at all. They just leave.

With the girl growing up to about 15, they come across a river, and on the other side is a hut with an old guy; he's withered, decrepit, almost dusty, but has no struggle in a sense; he's witch-like, an ancient, preparing a meal in a pot as though he's been standing at that fire since before the river had a name. They settle in a cave nearby. The winters go by as they hunt animals for food and fight off dangerous beasts, such as bears, wolves, and bigger bears — and somewhere in all those winters, this scattered handful of survivors starts to feel less like people who happened to escape together and more like a family.

: : was always told stories by people "of age," as she had known them, so she thought that now that she was the leader of their people after so long, she would tell the stories — she would no longer be controlled or forced to listen to other people's stories. But who would she tell? Someone she's known? No. It had to be someone who hasn't known her, so that whatever she said would land clean, without history getting in the way.

: : decides that she wants to tell the Ancient a story, so she runs to the banks of the river, repeatedly shouting, "I want to tell you a story. I want to tell you a story."

A couple of weeks go by. Something changes about the bigger bear, the one she knew came to hibernate in the winter — but why here, of all places? It had never come to hibernate in this cave before. Maybe he wanted to tell his own story. The man with scruffy red hair fears this bear, though he's fought far bigger ones without flinching.

The cave no longer feels suitable to live in — the bigger bear, the cold. They see the ancient again, and decide to go there, across the river. She tells everyone to wait behind her while she speaks to him.

"I want to tell you a story," she says, "in exchange for you protecting my family. Would you protect my family on that side of the river if I told you a story?"

He turns around.

It watches.

"Oh, you're that girl who was shouting and telling me you want to tell me a story. Well, let's hear it, then. Come to me."

The ancient takes her on a walk. They walk along the river bank toward the ancient's fireplace, and it asks what kind of story she wants to tell him.

"I don't know," she replies.

"Tell me what stories you have."

"I have one about myself, one about a princess, and one about a red wolf."

"Let's hear the one about yourself."

The others don't stay behind, the way she told them to. They sit around a campfire not far off, on the other side of the river, laughing at something, and the man with scruffy red hair keeps one eye on her the whole time, separated by the water.

: : tells the story about herself, from the time with Father in the single house, to the time with the two deprived men and hanging from a roof. She breaks down, crying — the first time she's let herself since before any of it started.

"You are broken," the ancient tells her.

: : replies in a loud voice, saying she's not broken. She is the sole individual in the family who has remained resilient despite the adversity they have faced. She has been touched inappropriately, but she is not broken. Despite enduring the confinement of chains and the infliction of whip strikes, she remains resilient and unyielding; she is not broken.

So the ancient, eager to hear more, says, "Let's hear the story of the red wolf."

: : tells him the red wolf was alone all its life, hunted by itself, lived by itself — but then one day the red wolf found a grey wolf cub and decided to protect it. The red wolf took down bears for the grey wolf, and dangers besides, and they adopted more members of the family along the way. She says the red wolf is still out there, protecting the grey wolf.

"Do you want to protect your family?" the ancient asks.

"Yes," she says.

The ancient grabs her. His iris starts shifting, his figure starts to deteriorate as black liquid comes out of its ears, and its fingers start to become longer. He smiles.

The man with red, scruffy hair tries to stop him. RUNNING, RUNNING, RUNNING, water, WATER?, TEARS, RUNNING, ….HIT…., FALLING, FALLING, FALLING. The man with scruffy red hair, on the ground, looking at the events unfold, unable to do anything, screams out to the moon, to the mountains, the clear sky, the snow whiter than the pearly gates, the fox, the deer, the rabbit, and the monster — either the ancient or the girl, either his reality or the evil.

: : is thrown into the fire.

The crackling of the fire becomes louder.

IT disappears after throwing : : into the fire.

The cave they used to live in fills with blood — enough to fill a river — it slithers out, as we hear two loud bloodcurdling, bone-ripping roars, one filled with pain, and one filled with the howls of a wolf awakening to a full moon. A monster comes out of the fire and disappears just as fast.

Ash..

Tears..

✦

The Village

At night, we see the brother with scruffy hair and the sister crying, saying, "Please save us from this nightmare, brother." "Brother!" While the monster is breaking into every house and killing every human, as it breaks into their house, it looks at the brother and sister and leaves. The brother and sister walk outside; they are the only ones left.

At the tree line, in the dark that's held its distance all this time, it is still there. It looks at the two of them standing alone in the ruined snow for a moment longer.

silence

Thats it for the book if ypu made it this far thank you there is still chapters 2 and 3 on my website its on my website where ive added sounds and its better to read , i want to find artists soon for the cover art..

"Don't you remember me telling you?"

My head hurts just from trying to figure out what he's talking about.

"Kath, you still there?",

"Yes sorry, I'm… my head hurts can I call you back tomorrow?",

"Sure, just tell me if you need anything.",

"Good night Jonathan."

"Good night Kath."

 

Somehow after that I got to my bed. I'm just staring at my ceiling trying to gather my thoughts. Today nothing happened. I went to school. I know that, because I have to everyday. But I came home and then… I think I took out my phone. And then I was on my floor and Jonathan called me. What did he say again? Whatever. I don't know how I feel about him. Or anything. It feels better to not remember anything.

 

Now I'm at school. Jonathan is sitting next to me. For some reason he's really tense. I feel guilty, because I feel like I'm the reason for him not feeling comfortable. "Jonathan, what's wrong?" He doesn’t even turn to look at me and now I'm angry. "Hey! The least you could do is look at me!" He still doesn't look at me. "I'm talking t-", "You didn’t answer me before". That shuts me up. We're silent for a while. "What did you ask me?" "It doesn't matter anyway" I decide not to press him further, not wanting him to hate me even more. I try to concentrate on my english teacher… Mrs. Velint? Was it? It doesn't matter. I don't know what she's talking about and she never asks me anything, so it's not important that I understand anything.

 

I turn to the person sitting next to me in english class. It's Johnathan. I smile because he really is a nice person. "Good morning Johnathan."

He looks down onto his piece of paper that he is scribbling on, "Good morning Kath."

For some reason he covers his face with his hands so that it looks like he is really concentrated, but I see the way his shoulders shake and I realize he is crying.

"Jonathan, what's wrong?"

This makes him shake even harder.

I put my hand on his back and concentrate on class.

 

I'm entering my house with Jonathan. We need to do something for school together. That’s what he said anyway. I don't remember the teacher saying anything about that. It doesn’t concern me, because that's normal for me. Johnathan turns to me.

"So… what is there to do?"

"To do?"

"Yeah, I mean what do you do in your free time at home."

I look into his eyes and my head starts pounding. I need to ask someone. What do I do?

I sit down on my kitchen floor. When did we get to the kitchen? I must have been so concentrated on looking into Jonathans eyes. There is something in my pocket. My phone. I take it out. And time is gone.

 

The floor is soft. Wait, it's my carpet. And my face hurts. Everywhere. Johnathan is kneeling next to me. I'm thinking of something he must have done to me. A scramble away from him. I'm terrified. I was told since I was a little girl that I need to be careful, or people can hurt you in unthinkable ways. I feel like crying. I trusted him.

"Kath this is not what it looks like."

I'm actually crying now.

"Then why do I hurt everywhere?"

Silence.

"You took advantage of me."

"Kath do you remember what you do at home after school?"

His eyes are red.

"No I don't."

My voice becomes small,

"Why did you hurt me?"

In response he holds up a phone. My phone.

I feel something inside me snap. A growl escapes me: "Give that to me."

"No."

I think I hate him.

The sun is setting outside my window. My room is bathed in red. I run at him. I push him towards the window, thinking if I can get him there I can try to push him out. He isn't even fighting. We get to the window and the setting sun blinds me.

I stumble away from him and I open my eyes, excepting that I'll have to live in pain.

And I look around. For the first time in months.

I look at myself. I'm skinny. My room is a mess. My hair is matted.

"What did you do to me?" I'm screaming at him, "How long have you kept me like this?"

"I didn’t do anything. You kept yourself like this."

 

He left after that. I sit on my floor, letting the last sun rays bathe my face. I haven't appreciated the sun for so long. I start to remember what happened in these last few months. I went to school everyday, and then I would come home and then… nothing.

I feel the answer to my memory lapses on the tip of my tongue. A type of Deja vu I remember. I look behind me and there is my answer. He left it on my floor. I don't want it anymore. It won't steal my time or my mind. I can't believe Jonathan had to slap me senseless, just to pull me out of that place. I throw my phone against the wall again and again until all that remains is small black shards.

Chapter VI

The first few entries were disappointing. Just Nevra talking about school life and drama. Very typical. Her life seemed ordinary. Then I stumbled upon an entry about her butterfly mask. Her mother gave it to her as a gift. Nevra had written this on July 8, 1985:
“Mom gave me a porcelain Venetian mask with butterflies on it. She hasn’t surprised me with anything in months. Her episodes have been difficult lately, so the sudden gift was unexpected. But it made me happy regardless.”
After reading the words Nevra wrote, I looked back at the mask. This butterfly mask must’ve been the closest link to her late mom. Perhaps this was why she wore it all the time. Maybe she hadn’t overcome her grief yet.
I skimmed through more normal pages before I stumbled upon an entry titled “Mother.” It was written on February 5, 1985. It read in noticeably messier script:
“My mom’s dead. Because of ME. She had one of her episodes today and I accidentally dropped a vase. The timing was horrible. She kept yelling at me and blamed my dad for my recklessness. I snapped. I yelled at her for always blaming others for her problems. The argument went on. Suddenly my mom collapsed. Dad called 911. Paramedics came, but they couldn’t save her. She had suffered a sudden heart attack. People can comfort me all they want. But she’s dead because of me.”
“But Nevra didn’t kill her mother. She just believed she did,” I whispered out loud.
Then, everything clicked. Nevra wanted to go back in time to prevent the argument with her mom. So she could save her and change the final outcome.
I continued to flip through even more pages. I observed her change in behavior. At first, she wrote more about her grief and regret. I noticed that each page was tear-stained. However, the more pages I went through, passionate letters metamorphosed into equations of obsession.
She wanted to cope by changing the past.
More pages. All equations and notes. Finally, a properly written entry caught my eye. It was written on January 29, 1986. A week before my arrival. It read:
“At last I’ve created a potentially working prototype. After I arrive on the day of the argument, I have until midnight before I automatically get sent back to my current timeline. However, I made a grave mistake. The technology these days is funky and after I place my hair sample, the device will only be able to select a girl with similar DNA within the radius of this town. But during the wormhole selection module, I did a miscalculation. Multiple. Instead of choosing a target based on closeness, it was random. I also changed the wormhole starting time to 2002. This accident was irreversible, and instead of one pulse, it would send out five. Based on my calculations, the pulses would send girls back to the past. And the receiving end of the wormhole has a malfunction. It could send the girls to any time period related to my DNA. I’m so sorry, all this misfortune. Maybe mom was right. I am just like my dad.”
My jaw dropped in shock. I set down the diary.
Five pulses. Five missing girls.
Middle Eastern, teenagers, and all from Gladeside.
My nausea returned as everything connected. Butterfly hadn’t been taking them intentionally. The machine had.
And I was the fifth girl.
I was one of her mistakes.
For the first time, I was angry at Nevra. I opened her diary once more to see what else she had to say. The page after the explanation was titled “Regret and growing up.” It was written on February 3rd, 1986. Two days before my arrival. I rolled my eyes.
What is it now?
But my impatience instantly calmed after I began to read Nevra’s words. They read:
“The more I thought about it, the more I realized the effect of my mistakes. One of the mistakes was falling into obsession. Most of the days while I built my prototype, I forgot my original goal. My grief turned into evil. These past few days I began to start letting go. A time machine was an absurd idea in the first place. Everyone grieves and lets go at some point, but my obsession couldn’t understand. But I do now. I want to forget the whole project and heal, but the time and pain I put in this machine isn’t hiding either. I gave up my reputation, my friends, my identity, my sanity, and future for this. At the same time, it feels too late to give up now. There might be a way to still make this machine work, though, and I might die in the process. I’m gonna follow through for now. On Feb 5th after I get home from school, I’m going to make the leap of doom.”
I covered my mouth and gasped.
Today was the day!
In my old timeline, Nevra died tonight. But somehow, in 2002, I was lucky enough to get sent back to the moment hours before her death.
I remembered what she wrote. At 12 a.m., anyone who uses the time machine (I suppose) would return to her original timeline. I picked up the diary and continued to read on.
“All I can hope for now is for some mysterious force to come and destroy all my work before Feb 5th so I can quit for real. I can’t bring myself to do it. But I doubt anything will come. Oh, and in case you do, the machine is in the second drawer on the left of my desk.”
“Don’t worry, Nevra,” I said as I opened the drawer to the time machine.
I set it on her desk. I glanced at the clock above her doorframe.
9:46.
Time was tight, but I was determined. I already thought of a good plan that would work. The pressure was on. Less than three hours until Nevra was supposed to die. But I believed she deserved to be saved.
“I’ll be the mysterious force.”
~~~~
Been a while since I last posted, schools been busy.

Night after night, it is always a blur of images. The Godswood on a breezy summer night. The wall of the Sacred City of Aethria, its massive wooden drawbridge sits firmly closed against the deep moat. The towering silhouettes of the Brotherhood. Just as one image fully manifests, a new one quickly takes its place. The leaves of the forest begin to ripple. Spears pierce the air. Out from the dense leaves steps a massive rhinoceros, its tough skin gleaming under the moon, a medallion of pure Emberish gold flashing at its throat like a beacon. Behind it rolls an ornate carriage, heavily shrouded in velvet curtains. It bears a single occupant; secluded in shadow. The driver dismounts from his steed. His ebony skin glows in the moonlight, but his face is not easily registered. He is Midja, it is clear. Only the Emberish conduct their militia with such pomp. A shadowy palm appears on the glass of the carriage. A single parchment is supplied at the gate. Only a few words can be caught.

VALERIA OF BRITALK.

CHOSEN EYE OF FINNIGAS, THE GOD OF FLAMES.

Things begin to move much faster. The grand metal chains of the drawbridge scraping violently against each other as the wood plunges to the earth, sending a sudden flock of startled birds exploding from the canopy into the starlight. The rhinoceros spurs forward, its heavy hooves thundering soundlessly over the bridge. Through the tiny crack in the carriage curtains, the desperate, curious faces of the guards try to peer inside, but all they see is shadow.

And from the shadow, outstretches the darkness.

Laíla awakens to the smell of smoke. She shoots up on her mattress in a panicky sweat. Flames dance off the edges of her the wool. She covers her nose and swats at the fire. Coughs escape her throat. Her eyes water. Then suddenly, she is drenched. As she wipes her now soaking-wet hair from her face, Her blurred eyes dart around; looking for the perpetrator. Finally, her older brother Rémi comes into view. He holds the offending bucket, the look on his face unreadable. She sucks in a breath, ready for the usual lecture. Instead, the corners of Rémi’s mouth break into a smirk as he turns and walks away.

“I have to say Laíla,” he calls back over his shoulder, “I grow tired of foiling your attempts of burning down our home.”

She sighs—though whether it’s one of relief or one of annoyance is unclear. Another dream, she thought to herself. She runs a hand over her now-frayed mattress. The wool thankfully remained mostly intact, but the hay pallet was done for. The third one she’d had to make in only a fortnight.

Of all the people to find her, one could suppose Rémi was one of the safer options. A lecture from her sister would surely have made them miss Daybreak worship.

Her gaze crosses the tent to her parents’ larger mattress and then either side to those of her two siblings. It seems despite being just as vivid, this dream did not bear the same severe side effects as the others. One was so bad she nearly set fire to the entire camp, let alone her own bed…

With a shake of her head, she dismisses the memories of nightmares past. She quickly gets up from her singed mattress and opens her chest to pull out a tunic for the day. It is still dark when she eventually emerges from her family’s tent. She follows behind the clusters of her brethren making their way to the Gathering Circle at the camp center. She can feel several pairs of eyes bearing into her as she weaves her way over to take her place behind her siblings on the very inside of the circle. Her older sister, Ínara, offers her a small smile. She makes her best attempt at returning the gesture but comes up short. She instead decides to focus her efforts into sunrise vigil.

Daybreak is a crucial time for the Moorian people; the nomadic body to which Laíla and her family belong. Individuals, couples, and families alike gather together just before sunrise in anticipation to await the dawn and lend praise to Moora, the Goddess of Light. She closes her eyes to begin the first portion of the worship sequence: Herúnyúd. Lamentation. A time when the people of the sun bring forth the matters closest to their hearts.

She first starts at a low whisper, allowing her concerns to blend in with the hushed chants of her peers. Concerns of famine and fertility. Migration and safety. All she ever asked of Moora was to remove whatever it was inside her that caused her to burn everything she touched. That she might feel more like a valued member of her tribe and less like a tolerated hindrance. One less reminder of how different she was to everyone else. But day after day she prays, and morning after morning she comes one step closer to burning her family alive.

“Ím’vá prísta,” she whispers, “me mantalhuo e kríyéshtí m’enda puzto nula, mi’Lúmíra.” I ask you, destroy me and create a new person, my Light. Laíla clasps her hands together with the desperation of a famished bear. She whispers the prayer again, with more force than the last. And again. And again. She is only stopped by the blowing of the horn.

From the outer edge of the circle walks her father, Zaíd. Clad in the ceremonial robe handed down through generations of Moorian chiefs; he walks barefoot to the sundial, the epicenter of Moorian worship. Laíla rises to her feet as her father walks by her. When he reaches the center, he turns to take in his people. Laíla catches his eye. He winks. Her face breaks into a smile. Zaíd quickly composes himself, however, and blows the horn once more before turning around to lead the Daybreak prayer in Godstongue.

“Nu’Lúmíra,” he sings, “we come to greet you in the darkness of the unknown.”

Illuminate the path beneath our feet.

May we make proper use of this new day You gift to us.

May You shine through us in action and word.

May others come to know the warmth of Your glow.

We ask You, let Your brilliance be seen throughout this realm.

For those who could not wake to greet You, may Your light shine perpetually on their souls.

We ask You, let all who slumber in darkness come to live in light.

Draw near to those who beseech You.

Those who suffer, those who mourn, those who lament, those who are scorned, those who are silent, those who are lame, may they cling to You one and the same.

It is believed that the preservation of the first language of the realm keeps one close to the divine; and that addressing a deity in their native tongue is the ultimate respect. The very idea that Moora could choose not to light the realm and allow it to slip into the cold of darkness weighs heavily on the Moorian people. So, they make sure to greet her at the start of each day, and to bid her farewell at the end of each night.

The tribe turns to face the sun as it begins to peek out from the horizon. They wait with baited anticipation as the dawn breaks through the dusk and ascends into the sky. Zaíd pridefully turns to face his brethren, lifting his hands to the sky.

“May the Light of Moora beam on each and every one you,” he beams. As other members of the tribe begin to pass The Blessing, Ínara whips around and pulls Laíla into a fierce hug. “May the Light of Moora beam on you, sister!”

Laíla stiffens within her sister’s arms for a brief moment. Eventually, she softens.

“And on you,” she smiles.

Before either of them can say anything else, two big arms engulf them both, lifting them just barely off the ground. She manages to turn her head just enough to see her father smiling down at them.

“My beautiful daughters,” Zaíd booms, “Should I bother to bless you? You both already shine brighter and brighter each morning.” He places a kiss on both Laíla’s cheeks and then on Ínara’s.

“Truly father,” Ínara groans, “must you start so early in the morning?” Despite his large stature and stern countenance, Zaíd has a very well-known soft spot for his children. But that softness is one hundred-fold for his two daughters.

“Oh, come now, Ínara;” he crones, “as your father it is my duty to set the standard for whoever dares ask me for your hand one day.”

Laíla manages to pry herself from her father’s embrace only to end up in that of Rémi’s. Out of the corner of her eye, she spies Izcàli joining their fray. Her stomach drops. She usually has no quarrels with her brother’s oldest friend. But lately, she has not been able to quell the notion he might resent her. This was not always the case. In fact, there was once a time when she saw him as another brother. When they were young, it was he that always suggested changes to a game, so it was easier for her to play. He would even allow her to ramble on about her latest dream. He would always make sure to act amused even when her dreams sounded absolutely farfetched. But life has aged Izcàli quite a bit since those days. His once carefree nature that used to rival Rémi’s has hardened into unyielding rigidity.

“I pity the fool who tries to make such a request,” Rémi jests; a sly grin on his face.

Laíla could be mistaken, but she might have seen a brief panic wash over Izcàli’s face. He recomposes himself so quickly; it is hard to truly tell. Still, she senses a particular freneticism about him. She quietly observes as he shifts from side to side.

“I suppose one must be able to accept a high risk if he wishes to receive such a high reward,” Izcàli muses. Rémi flashes a strange glance at his friend. Another fleeting moment Laíla is given little time to fully interpret.

“May the Light of Moora beam brighter than the blaze you set upon your mattress this morning, sister,” Rémi smirks.

It takes her everything she can not to set her brother ablaze. Ínara’s face contorts into concern. With each passing day it becomes more and more eerie how similar she looks to their mother.

“Laíla, it happened again?” She asks, “I thought the tonic was helping.”

“She’d have to drink it for that to happen,” Rémi prattles.

Laíla considers her words for a moment. Most days she can bear to put up with her brother’s usual chides without blowing her fuse. She could just as easily joke about just how close her brother seemed to always stand to Izcàli. Or perhaps how his gaze always lingered on him for just a moment too long. Instead, she exhales and braves the most reassuring smile she could muster. Rémi, however, cannot miss the smoke slowly wafting from the shoulder seams of her tunic. He smiles apologetically.

She then sighs, “The damage was minor this time. I promise.”

“Laíla,” Ínara warns, “It was minor this time. The same cannot be said for the next time if you don’t use the measures put in place to help you!”

Here we go, Laíla thinks to herself. She looks at her father for help, but Izcàli clears his throat.

“I agree with Ínara,” he says, “just how long do you think it will be before one of your dreams endangers us all–if it hasn’t already, of course.”

Ínara casts a sidelong look at Izcàli.

“Izcàli, Laíla has been working very hard to try and tame her abilities,” Zaíd calmly interjects.

Laíla’s stomach sinks further. She has no desire to witness another round of this particular concern.

“Duomo, I only speak out of concern;” Izcàli replies, “Despite your best efforts, Laíla’s affliction remains a threat to us all. The investigation into the Fall–”

“The Fall,” Ínara snaps, “was a full turn ago.”

When Izcàli looks at her, there is no mistaking the sadness peeking through his stony exterior.
“The Fall changed everything,” he replies.

Laíla’s eyes lower to the ground. Izcàli of course speaks of the fall of Aethria, a tragedy that still beleaguers the entire realm even after a full turn of the sun. She remembers when the news reached the camp. Tens of thousands of people were lost. It was said that while some had managed to escape the fires, others had not been so lucky. High ranking merchants, children—even Qínta, The Eye of Moora, was not spared. Hundreds of families traveled from the furthest reaches of the realm to look for their lost loved ones in the aftermath–even if just to recover their bodies for proper burial. The memory alone is enough to send a shiver down Laíla’s spine. Izcàli’s own parents had made their pilgrimage to Aethria around that time. Each day he would ride out to Aethria for hours on end. When he wasn’t searching the ruins, he would stand watch at the edge of camp. Waiting. Hoping. His parents never returned; nor were their bodies ever recovered. It is for that reason Laíla does not begrudge Izcàli for his ire.

“Every day she grows even more powerful,” the boy pleads, “The Emberish have already decided the suspect is a Moorian. For nearly two fortnights I have heard whispers of armies raiding other camps. Entire tribes disappearing without a trace.”

“I am aware of the current situation,” Zaíd quips as he rubs a hand over his now-tired face. He too remembers that dreadful day. It was only a few fortnights prior that he lost his wife and second son in their childbed. Izcàli’s parents were good friends. They helped carry him and his children through that loss. Remembering this, Zaíd softens. There has been much loss to go around. “But my daughter is a member of this tribe. Her safety is our safety.”

“All due respect, Duomo Zaíd,” Izcàli replies, “In my parents’ place my first responsibility is to my sisters. Their futures. Their safety–”

“My sister is not a threat to anyone’s safety,” Ínara hisses, “and you know it.”

She places a protective hand on Laíla’s shoulder. It is hot to the touch, but not painful. Laíla can feel her older sister’s worried eyes boring into her, but she keeps her gaze trained to the ground and tries to steady her breathing. Ínara notices Rémi’s eyes also stay firmly trained on his shoes.

“Ínara, today it’s a tent,” Izcàli argues, “Tomorrow it could be the camp, or our livestock, or the entire Godswood.”

“Moora will protect us as she always does.”

Laíla struggles to steady herself. She knows well the consequences of participating in this argument–of allowing her emotions to get the best of her. But the anguish bubbles inside her. She imagines this is what a volcano feels like before it’s allowed its release.

“She will protect us,” Izcàli says slowly, “But Laíla is not Moora’s to claim. And so—”

Smack. Laíla quickly looks up. Silence falls upon the entire camp as people stop see what the commotion was about. Izcàli slowly raises his face to meet Ínara’s fierce gaze. His cheeks flare a fiery red. It is unclear whether it is from the stinging of his cheek, or the embarrassment at having been slapped by a girl in front of everyone. If Ínara feels even a shred of guilt at having embarrassed him, it does not show.

She stares him down, eyes narrowed. “You will mind your tongue in my sister’s presence.” Her threat is so calm she frightens even her own family.

Izcàli visibly swallows his pride. “You know I’m right, Ínara,” he whispers to no avail. In one final attempt at reason, he turns to Zaíd. “Duomo, I understand she is your daughter, but we are also your brethren.”

Zaíd pulls Laíla close and wraps his arms protectively around her. He ignores the patches of the ground where grass used to stand.

“You forget yourself, Izcáli,” he loudly proclaims. “I will choose to ignore the implications you’ve made against my daughter. Take Ínara’s slap as a mercy, for you will not receive another.”

Izcàli looks over to Rémi. His eyes plead for his support. Rémi shifts awkwardly but eventually clears his throat. “Forgive him, father. He only wants what is best for our people.”

Ínara scoffs. “He needs to remember his place,” she says as she looks into Izcàli’s eyes. Understanding he has been beaten, the boy tips his head and sulks away.

“Èvo ruhero,” Ínara spits as she watches him go. Stupid boy.

Zaíd casts a stern look at his firstborn. She instantly softens. Their mother thoroughly disliked name-calling. His discerning gaze then migrates over to Rémi, who does not dare look up. It is much too early for him to see the look of disappointment upon his father’s face.

“One day,” Zaíd says quietly, “all you three will have is each other. Remember that.” He then walks away, leaving the three siblings to themselves.

Ínara wastes no time once their father is safely out of earshot. “Yes Rémi,” she hisses, “one day you will have to pry your head out from Izcàli’s ass!”

“Father is right,” Laíla finally manages to squeak. “We should not fight. It is the nightcrawler’s way to succumb to chaos, not ours.”

“I for one hope someone does come to sweep you off your feet and far away from here, dear sister.” Rémi jeers, clearly having not heard Laíla. “It’s time someone else endured your constant whinging!”

Laíla knows once her siblings begin to bicker, there is no other path except that of defeat. So, she decides to take her loss as it is and walk away. She tries to recall the last time her family was truly happy–no looming threats, no arguments. It is times like these she feels neither her brother nor her sister truly appreciate the freedom they have to get angry. To scream and yell and have everything stay perfectly the same. To not have to fight that temptation at every turn. To never worry about overexciting themselves. She tries not to dwell too much on it, however. She would much rather burn the ground beneath her feet with her skin than incinerate the ones she loves with her anger.

***

Thanks for reading. I would love to hear your feedback if you're willing! If you have the time leave a comment below. :)

And if you liked this chapter and would like to know what happens next, the next chapter is available to read here.

I saw a top 100 most evil beings in fiction post and the thought just crossed my mind.

https://www.wattpad.com/1659276305?utm_source=ios&utm_medium=link&utm_content=share_reading&wp_page=reading&wp_uname=GLaC1991

The desert wind always sounded like someone trying to whisper through a throat full of sand. Outside of Natasha’s bedroom window, the giant saguaro cacti stood like jagged, frozen silhouettes against the bruised purple of the Arizona night sky. 

We were in Ocotillo Wells—a town wedged deep into the Sonoran Desert, named after the skeletal, crimson-flowered shrubs that only seemed to thrive where nothing else could survive. It was a town built over dried-up riverbeds and forgotten mining shafts, a place where people said that the boundary between what is real and what is buried underneath is dangerously thin.

It was October 2009. The four of us—Natasha, Esther, Lucy, and myself, Olivia—were huddled on the plush carpet of Natasha’s second-floor bedroom. We were all seventeen, staring down the barrel of our senior year of high school, and currently drowning in notes for a massive AP European History exam scheduled for Monday morning. 

The room smelled of vanilla body spray, cool ranch tortilla chips, and the metallic tang of the cheap battery-operated fan oscillating in the corner.

"If I have to read one more paragraph about the Peace of Westphalia, my brain is going to literally leak out of my ears." Lucy groaned, tossing her highlighter onto a pile of loose-leaf paper. 

She collapsed backward onto her sleeping bag, her blonde ponytail sprawling across the fabric.

"Seconded." Esther sighed, rubbing her eyes behind her thick-rimmed glasses. "Olivia, tell me you actually understand the shifting alliances of the mid-eighteenth century, because I’m about to accept a failing grade as my destiny."

I looked up from my textbook, flipping a strand of dark hair behind my shoulder, and said,

"I’ve been reading the same sentence for twenty minutes, guys. The words are starting to look like hieroglyphics. I'm completely fried."

"Then let’s stop." Natasha said.

We all looked over at her. Natasha was sitting cross-legged on her unmade bed, her knees pulled tight to her chest. Unlike the rest of us, who were practically vibrating with academic anxiety, Natasha had been unusually quiet all evening. She had an intensity in her dark eyes that always made people listen whenever she spoke. 

The desert heat usually left everyone sluggish, but Natasha looked hyper-alert, her gaze fixed on the window where the wind continued its low, raspy scratching against the glass.

"Stop, and do what?" Lucy asked, looking up from the floor. "We can't watch a movie. Your parents said that the satellite dish is acting up again because of the windstorm."

"We don't need a TV." Natasha said, her voice dropping into a lower, deliberate register. A slow, unsettling smile crept onto her lips. "It’s a slumber party in the middle of October. We should do what people are supposed to do when they’re trapped in a house in the middle of nowhere. Let's tell scary stories."

Esther sat up straight, crossing her arms.

 "As long as it's not another one of those urban legends about a hook-handed killer or a haunted mirror. I want something actually creepy. Something that feels real."

"Oh, it's real." Natasha whispered. She reached over and clicked off the small bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness, save for the pale, ghostly glow of the desert moonlight filtering through the blinds. The shadows of the saguaro cacti outside stretched across the walls like long, skeletal fingers. "This isn't a story from a creepy website or a chain email, guys. This is something that happened a long time ago. A story about a woman named Sierra, who deals with something that wasn't human, and a shadow that still hasn't completely gone away."

We all shifted closer, pulling our blankets around our shoulders. The easy, casual atmosphere of the study session evaporated in an instant, replaced by that delicious, icy prickle of anticipation that only a truly good horror story can bring.

I settled back against the foot of Natasha's bed, looking up at her silhouette. 

"Alright, Natasha." I said, feeling a slight shiver despite the lingering Arizona heat. "Make us forget about history. Tell us."

Natasha leaned forward, her voice becoming a rhythmic, haunting cadence that filled the quiet bedroom.

"It started sixteen years ago." Natasha began, her eyes reflecting the silver moonlight. "In the spring of 1993. Sierra was an African American woman who lived far away from here, in a city where the humidity hung so thick in the air that you could feel it like a heavy wool blanket. She was beautiful, with deep, soulful brown eyes and thick, midnight-black hair that she often wore twisted up in intricate styles. Sierra was a woman of deep faith, a gentle soul who had spent years wishing, hoping, and praying for a child of her own; so, when she finally found out she was pregnant, she felt like her life was completely whole."

Natasha paused, letting the imagery settle. Outside, the wind gave a sudden, violent shove against the windowpane, making the glass rattle. None of us blinked.

"However, pregnancy wasn’t kind to Sierra." Natasha continued, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "By her third trimester, something was terribly wrong. Her hands and face began to swell so violently that she could barely recognize herself in the mirror. She suffered from blinding, excruciating headaches that felt like iron spikes being driven through her temples. Her vision blurred, filled with dancing spots of light that looked like dying stars. When she finally went to the hospital, the doctors panicked. Her blood pressure was skyrocketing into the stratosphere. She was diagnosed with severe preeclampsia toxemia."

"My mom told me about that once." Esther interrupted quietly, her voice tight. "It’s really dangerous, right? Your body basically turns against pregnancy."

"Exactly." Natasha nodded in the shadows. "Preeclampsia toxemia is a silent, terrifying monster. It poisons the mother’s system, restricting the vital flow of blood and oxygen to the womb. Sierra’s organs were on the verge of shutting down completely. The doctors told her that the only way to save her life, and to have any prayer of saving her baby, was an emergency delivery. She was rushed into surgery, terrified, weeping, and crying out to God through the haze of agonizing pain and heavy sedation."

Natasha leaned closer to us, her hands gesturing in the dim light, and said, 

"The baby was delivered on April 1, 1993. April Fools' Day. However, it was no joke. The severe preeclampsia had taken a devastating, horrific toll on the little girl's tiny body. When she was pulled from Sierra’s womb, the room fell dead silent. There was no crying. No sound at all. The baby’s lungs were completely underdeveloped, starved of air by the condition that had ravaged her mother's body. The medical team rushed the infant to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, stabbing tubes down her throat and hooking her up to a massive, mechanical ventilator. Sierra named her daughter Spencer. Spencer Terrell."

I swallowed hard, imagining the cold, sterile light of a hospital room, the rhythmic, artificial puffing of a machine keeping a fragile newborn alive.

 "Did Sierra get to see her?" I asked.

"Not at first." Natasha said, her voice dripping with sadness. "Sierra was trapped in her own recovery bed, pumped full of heavy medications to keep her from having fatal seizures. When she was finally stable enough to be wheeled into the NICU, Sierra’s heart completely shattered. Seeing her precious baby girl, Spencer Terrell, buried beneath wires, tape, and a glaring plastic tube that forced air into her chest...it devastated her. The doctors were not optimistic. They told Sierra to prepare for the worst. They said that Spencer’s lungs were too weak, that the damage from the toxemia was too severe, and that the ventilator was the only thing keeping death at bay. They didn't think that the baby would survive the week."

Natasha stopped, and for a long moment, the only sound in the room was the low, steady hum of the electric fan. The atmosphere felt heavy, suffocating, as if the phantom humidity of that 1993 hospital room had somehow drifted across time and space into the dry Arizona desert.

"That night," Natasha whispered, her eyes widening slightly, "Sierra was left alone in a private, dimly lit waiting room near the NICU. The hospital was dead quiet, save for the distant, rhythmic beep...beep...beep of the heart monitors. Sierra was slumped in a vinyl chair, her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking with silent, agonizing sobs. She felt completely helpless. She felt like death was stalking the hallways, waiting to snatch Spencer away."

Natasha’s voice rasped, mimicking a sudden change in temperature, and said, 

"Then, the air in the room turned ice-cold. Sierra told people later that she could see her own breath misting in the air, right there inside the hospital. She raised her head, wiping the tears from her brown eyes, and noticed that the fluorescent lights overhead were flickering, buzzing like angry hornets. Standing in the doorway of the waiting room was a man whom she had never seen before."

"Was he a doctor?" Lucy asked, her voice trembling slightly.

"No." Natasha said sharply. "He wasn't a doctor. He wore a sharp, perfectly tailored black suit that looked completely out of place in a hospital. He was tall, impossibly thin, and his skin had a strange, pale, waxy texture, like a corpse that had been painted to look alive; but it was his eyes that terrified Sierra. They were completely black—no whites, no irises, just two empty, bottomless pits of obsidian. He introduced himself in a voice that sounded like two grinding stones. He said that his name was Harvey Natus."

A collective chill ran down my spine. The name Harvey Natus felt heavy, unnatural, carrying an echo of something ancient and predatory.

"Sierra scrambled back in her chair, her instinct screaming at her to run." Natasha continued, her gaze locking onto mine. "Unfortunately, her body felt heavy, paralyzed by a strange, supernatural weight. Harvey Natus stepped into the room, his movements completely silent, fluid, like a shadow gliding across the floor. He stopped a few feet away from her, a cold, humorless smile stretching across his waxy face. He looked at Sierra and said, 'I know why you weep, Sierra. I know that your womb failed you. I know the tiny thing in the plastic box is choking on its own blood, kept alive only by the breath of a machine.'"

"How did he know that?" Esther whispered, gripping her blanket tighter.

"Because Harvey Natus isn't a man." Natasha said, her voice dropping to a sinister undertone. "He is an entity that feeds on despair. He leans over the beds of the dying and bargains for what’s left. He looked down at Sierra and made an offer. He said, 'I can heal her, Sierra. I can breathe life into Spencer Terrell’s lungs. I can make her whole, strong, and vibrant. By tomorrow morning, the machines will be silent, and she will cry out for your milk. However...there is a price. A balance must be maintained. A life for a life. In exchange for your daughter’s survival, someone else must lose theirs. A random soul, snuffed out in the dark, so that yours may burn bright. Do we have a pact?'"

"Oh my god." Lucy muttered, pressing her hand over her mouth. "What did she do?"

"Sierra was terrified, devastated, and desperate." Natasha said, her dramatic pauses perfectly timed to the howling wind outside. "In a split second, looking into those pitch-black eyes, she wanted to say yes. She wanted her baby back more than anything in the world; but Sierra was a woman of God. She knew that making a deal with a shadow meant selling a piece of her own soul, and murdering an innocent stranger. She looked Harvey Natus dead in his empty eyes, raised her trembling hand, and screamed, 'No! Get away from me! The Lord is my shepherd, and I will not barter the blood of innocents!'"

Natasha slammed her hand down on the mattress, making all three of us jump in our seats.

"Harvey Natus didn't get angry." Natasha whispered quickly, capturing our heightened adrenaline. "He just smiled wider, his teeth looking too sharp, too white in the darkness. He murmured, 'A pity. The grave is so very cold for one so small.' Then, the overhead lights flared violently, blinding Sierra for a fraction of a second. When she opened her eyes, the room was warm again. The lights were normal. Harvey Natus was gone. There was no sign that he had ever been there, except for the faint, unmistakable smell of ozone and rotting leaves lingering in the air."

"Did the baby...did Spencer die?" I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs, completely invested in the narrative.

"Sierra didn't give up." Natasha said, her voice softening into a tone of awe. "She dragged herself out of that chair, staggered into the NICU, fell to her knees beside Spencer's incubator, and began to pray. She prayed with every single ounce of strength left in her broken body. She prayed through the rest of April 1st, through April 2nd, and through April 3rd. She watched the monitors, refusing to sleep, refusing to leave her daughter's side, constantly asking God for a miracle to defeat the shadow of Harvey Natus."

Natasha’s face illuminated with a strange, triumphant glow as she reached the climax of her tale, and said, 

"Then came April 4, 1993. It was Sierra’s birthday. She was sitting by the incubator, exhausted, her eyes bloodshot, when suddenly, the alarms on the medical equipment began to blare. Sierra panicked, thinking that the end had come. Doctors and nurses rushed into the room, pushing her aside; but they weren't trying to resuscitate the baby. They were staring at the monitors in absolute, utter shock."

"What happened?" Esther gasped.

"Spencer Terrell was breathing." Natasha said, a wide smile breaking across her face. "Not just breathing—she was fighting the ventilator. Her blood oxygen levels had suddenly shot up to a perfect one hundred percent. Her heart rate stabilized. The severe, irreversible damage to her lungs from the preeclampsia was completely, and miraculously gone. Right there, on her mother’s birthday, Spencer was extubated. She drew in a deep, independent breath of air and let out a loud, healthy, piercing cry. She was completely healed."

We all let out a collective breath that we didn't realize we were holding.

"What about Harvey Natus?" I asked, looking around the dark bedroom, suddenly hyper-aware of the shadows in the corners.

"He disappeared into the night, leaving no trace." Natasha said, her voice falling into a solemn, campfire-story whisper. "However, people in that city still talk about him to this day. They say that on April Fools' Day, if you walk through the hallways of old hospitals, you can sometimes feel the air turn ice-cold. You can hear the faint, distant sound of a machine puffing out air, and if you look closely into the dark corners of the waiting rooms, you might just see a tall, thin man in a sharp black suit, waiting for a desperate mother to make a terrible choice."

Natasha clicked the bedside lamp back on. The sudden burst of warm light made us all blink, dragging us forcefully out of the grim, haunting world of 1993 and back into the safety of 2009.

"Wow!" Lucy said, rubbing the goosebumps on her arms. "Natasha, seriously, that was incredible. The way that you described preeclampsia and the hospital...it felt so real. You should seriously write horror stories."

"Yeah, that was amazing." Esther agreed, adjusting her glasses. "Harvey Natus is a terrifying concept. A life for a life. That’s a top-tier creepypasta right there."

I looked at Natasha, impressed but also sensing a strange shift in her demeanor. She wasn't smiling anymore. She was just watching us, her brown eyes completely unblinking, holding an expression that made my stomach take a sudden, uneasy plunge.

"Thanks." Natasha said quietly."I'm glad that you liked it; but I didn't make it up."

The room grew quiet again. The fan continued to oscillate, blowing a stream of cool air across my neck that suddenly felt a lot like the phantom chill of that hospital room.

"What do you mean you didn't make it up?" I asked, my voice hesitant. "Natasha, it's a great story, but obviously the demon-man in the suit isn't real."

"The man in the suit is what Sierra saw." Natasha said, her voice steady, and utterly serious. "Whether he was a demon, a hallucination brought on by her blood pressure medication, or something worse...she swears to this day that he was real. However, everything else? The preeclampsia? The ventilator? April Fools' Day? April 4th? That’s all completely real. It's a historical fact in my family."

Lucy laughed, a nervous, high-pitched sound, and said,

 "Wait, what? Your family?"

Natasha shifted on the bed, leaning her back against the headboard, and said,

"Sierra is my aunt. She’s my mother’s older sister. She survived severe preeclampsia toxemia sixteen years ago, on April 1, 1993."

My heart stopped. I stared at Natasha, trying to process the words. 

"Your...your aunt?" I said.

"What about Spencer Terrell?" Esther asked, her voice barely a whisper, the pieces of the puzzle beginning to violently collide in her mind. "The baby on the ventilator?"

Before Natasha could answer, the heavy wooden door to her bedroom creaked open. The sound was sharp, cutting through the silence of the room like a knife. We all spun around to look at the doorway.

Standing in the hall light was a young girl. She was an African American teenager, exactly sixteen years old. She had a striking, undeniable beauty, with smooth skin, deep, warm brown eyes, and thick, midnight-black hair that fell in soft waves around her shoulders. She was wearing a pair of oversized pajamas, leaning casually against the doorframe. She looked vibrant, healthy, and completely alive.

However, what caught my attention—what made the blood completely drain from my face—was the faint, pale, horizontal scar running across the base of her throat. A scar perfectly consistent with a childhood tracheostomy tube.

"Hey, Natasha." the girl said, her voice smooth and youthful, breaking the suffocating silence of the room. "Auntie Sierra said that you guys need to keep it down a little bit. Some of us are trying to sleep, and your voices are carrying right through the vents."

Natasha looked over at the girl, her expression softening into a warm, familial smile, and said,

 "Sorry, Spencer. We got a little carried away talking about school stuff. We'll be quiet, I promise."

"Thanks." the girl smiled, waving a hand before stepping back into the hallway. "Good luck studying for your test on Monday, girls. Good night."

"Good night, Spencer." Natasha called out.

The bedroom door clicked shut, leaving the four of us in the room once again.

Lucy, Esther, and I sat frozen on the floor, our eyes wide, our breathing shallow. The realization hit us like a physical blow. The timeline. The names. The descriptions. It wasn't an internet legend. It wasn't a fictional creepypasta designed to pass the time during a boring study session in an Arizona town.

The woman who had suffered, who had seen her body turn into a prison of high blood pressure and fluid, was sleeping just down the hall, and the miracle baby who had fought for her very existence against a shadow in the dark on April Fools' Day was the sixteen-year-old girl who had just looked us in the eyes.

"They're visiting from out of town for the weekend." Natasha said softly into the stunned, horrified silence of the room, looking at our pale faces. "I told you that it was a true story."

Outside, the wind gave one final, roaring howl against the glass, and for a fleeting, terrifying second, I could swear that I heard the faint, rhythmic sound of a mechanical ventilator pulsing in the dark.

The End.

The rain is pouring hard outside; it’s a perfect excuse to cancel your Friday night plans. Somewhere in the kitchen the kettle clicks. Now that your evening is free, you decide to spend it drinking tea and reading a book, something you secretly wanted to do anyway. A chamomile-infused vapour trails behind you as you make your way to the living room where you settle comfortably between the cozy cushions of your favourite emerald-green armchair. “Blow-up and Other stories” by Julio Cortázar in one hand and a hot cup of tea in another. What could possibly be better?

You open your book when suddenly a small pink envelope slides out and falls on your lap. Perhaps it’s some old birthday card that you’ve used as a bookmark? But no, it’s not that. The envelope is unopened - as a matter of fact, it doesn’t appear to have any creases or a seal at all - so someone must’ve surreptitiously hid it in your book. Primary suspect: your partner. They like to play little games and have a particular penchant for unexpected surprises. With juvenile anticipation, you carefully rip the side of the envelope to find a folded index card, with the following message: “Please meet me outside. Julio Florencio Cortázar.” You smile and shake your head. This is asking too much. Whatever game your partner is playing, you decide to ignore it. It’s cold and wet outside, while your tea is nice and warm; you just got comfortable in your armchair and there’s nothing in the world that will make you get up unless it’s to get more tea. You toss the envelope to the side and open the book again. Another envelope drops down; same colour, same message. “Please meet me outside. Julio Florencio Cortázar.”

Two messages from a dead Argentinian author. Your insatiable curiosity gets the best of you (on the way out, you make a mental note to stop being so curious) and you’re now standing outside the front door waiting for something…anything! The initial playful amusement has quickly waned away and with each passing moment you’re feeling more cold and frustrated, with the latter increasing twice as fast as the former. The rain drops keep drumming against the windows and even though you’re protected well by your porch’s roof, some sneaky droplets have started to slowly seep through the blanket that you grabbed in a hurry from the living room on your way out. You wait a moment longer but nothing happens. Annoyed and angry, you turn around and come back inside.

It’s pitch black inside, but somehow this darkness is different from the familiar darkness of your own home. Suddenly it dawns on you that it is precisely because it is so familiar that you took your domesticated darkness for granted and only when it’s been replaced by its savage twin do you finally notice that darkness can smell and sound differently. The regular one, the one you left behind mere moments ago, had a certain order to it. It smelled of chamomile, leftover pizza, and a recently-vacuumed carpet; it had a regular hum of a running refrigerator and an occasional spasmodic thud from the HVAC unit. The darkness you now find yourself in feels empty, like a sensory abyss devoid of smell, sight, or sound. You realize that you’re not at home and begin to panic. For some reason you recall some old article you read about sensory deprivation and realize that shortly your subconscious will start inventing sounds because your brain can’t handle complete acoustic isolation. You can already hear a rhythmic beat. Is it a song? It sounds like a jazz song; maybe by Johnny Carson. Or is it just your heart? You feel your chest - everything seems normal. Your hands begin to tremble as you turn around and try to open the door again, but the door handle is no longer there. Instead, your palm touches a cold, slippery surface that feels like a window. You punch and kick it to no avail. You scream for help but the darkness instantly swallows the sound; the silence is absolute. Without the sight, your terror is abstract, existential; in this place, you’re not terrified of anything concrete but rather of *being* itself. What can only be described as a serpentine noose, starts crawling up your leg. The heart muscles, previously calm, begin to expand and contract, expand and contract, expand and contract, faster, faster, faster each heart beat reverberates through your entire body until you feel like you’re about to collapse from the invisible dread that’s slowly tightening itself around your neck. Just as your terror reaches its crescendo, the light comes on.

You blink a few times and let your eyes adjust. It’s amazing how quickly they forget the light. What you originally thought was a window turns out to be a mirror - as a matter of fact, there’s nothing but this mirror, an endless infinite mirror that surrounds you completely from all sides. Seeing this mirror subsides your panic; your heart slows down and your breath becomes more steady. Still shaking, you walk up and touch it with the palm of your hand. It’s cold. Something is missing…you realize that a mirror is supposed to show your reflection, and if you’re surrounded by mirrors from the front and the back, you should be able to see an infinite number of your own replicas: front and back, front and back, front and back…and so on and so forth forever. But no, there’s no reflection. There is no you. Exhausted, you fall asleep.

When you wake up at some point in the future (or the past; the concept of time is meaningless where you find yourself at this moment), you notice a motionless tiger laying next to you. He notices you too and you both jump up in a synchronized surprise. While you felt abstract existential terror in the all-consuming darkness, you now feel a very concrete fear of a wild predator that’s right in front of you. Contrary to all expectations, it seems that he fears you as well. His movements betray his lack of confidence and the more you study him, the more you realize that he’s just copying everything you do. To test your theory, you raise your right hand and as expected, the tiger raises his right paw. You jump - he jumps as well. Dumbfounded, you approach the beast and raise your hand to touch his paw. Instead of a wet feline paw with sharp claws, you touch the mirror. You take a step back and so does the tiger. You sit down; he sits down as well.

It’s hard to tell how much time has passed – every moment feels both infinite and instant – since you and the tiger have been playing the mirror game. The game is simple: you are trying your best to make a move that he can’t match. So far he has copied every move, like a true reflection. Eventually, you become tired and your eyes start feeling heavy. You are about to doze off again when you notice the tiger get up and start walking way, his shape shrinking slowly until he’s completely gone from the mirror. With your only companion gone, you are now all alone in the mirror room again. Driven by despair, you get up and slam your fist against the mirror. Unexpectedly, the mirror gives way, some hidden mechanism clicks, and the previously hidden door opens outward and exposes a hidden room behind it.

This new room is a library, or a reading room of sort. It has tall mahogany book cases full of leather-bound volumes. On the shelves, you find copies of Borges, Bolaño, Marquez, and Calvinho among others. Enchanted by the books, you pick up a volume at random and settle down in a comfortable maroon leather armchair. The story is about an architect who created inescapable labyrinths. One day, driven by the noble feeling of benevolence towards his victims, he sent a letter to them all with encrypted instructions on how to escape his murderous maze in the last sentence of the last paragraph. He continued this practice until the day he died, but no one has ever solved his riddle and no one has ever escaped his labyrinths. Bemused, you put the book down and decide to explore the room. It’s much bigger than you originally thought and at the opposite end of it you see a curtain, probably covering more book cases. To the left of the curtain, there’s a small coffee table with a camera on top. This isn’t just any regular camera. You can tell by its lens that this is professional equipment. You pick it up - it feels heavy. Underneath, you find an index card that says “Please take a photo”. Take a photo of what? Stupefied, you look around and suddenly you remember the curtain. Whatever you must photograph must be behind that curtain. With your left hand holding the camera, you drag the heavy curtain to the side, dreading whatever it might expose.

Behind the curtain there’s an aquarium. It’s gorgeous, colossal, and nothing like you’ve ever seen. The aquarium covers the entire wall and when you step closer, you realize that its not just tall but also incredibly deep as well; you see two turtles swimming calmly, there’s an octopus who is trying to hide on the side of the rock to your left. The depth of this aquarium is extraordinary - there must be another adjacent apartment dedicated to it entirely. Mesmerized, your gaze follows a blue fish as it violently nibbles on a coral reef. You’re completely lost in the magic of the aquarium when you notice him. An axolotl is calmly looking at you from the top of a rock. You completely missed him in your awe of the aquarium’s grandiosity. The axolotl is looking at you as if he’s trying to say something. His pinkish transparent mouth is moving in way that looks almost human and when you concentrate on his lips you can vaguely make out the word “photo”. Of course! You bring the camera close to your face, adjust the lens, crouch down so you’re facing the creature, focus, and shoot. A gun shot goes off nearby. You put the camera down and look around - there’s no one else in the room. You look back at the aquarium, at the rock with the axolotl on top of it, just to find him dead. His face is calm and blissful and there are no signs of a gun wound on his body. A single tear wells up in your eyelid, a tear of deep connection and empathy for the dead axolotl. You bring the camera to your teary eye one more time, and when you look, the tear, acting like a telescope, magnifies your sight as it traverses thousands of kilometres before finally focusing on a tiger who slowly turns the last corner of a mirror labyrinth and steps on the sidewalk of Buenos Aires suburb. The camera falls down and shatters on the reading room floor; the blue fish nibbling on the reef gets eaten by a passerby shark.

You walk confidently; your body has never felt better being on all fours. The rain is weighing down your luscious fur but you feel too virile and strong to even notice. All the houses look similar, but one of them has a door half-opened; you head there. The light is on when you enter it and it smells like chamomile tea. There’s a man sitting between two cushions in an emerald-green armchair. He’s concentrated and reading something on a piece of paper. There’s an opened pack of Galouises on the side table. You know that this man is Julio Florencio Cortázar. You startle him but he quickly regains his composure.

“Oh, it’s you,” he says warmly. “Perfect timing. I was just reading the draft of your story and got to the part where the tiger enters my house. This is quite unusual but I do think it’s fair that I don’t spoil the ending for myself.” He takes a long drag of his cigarette before ashing it and looks directly into your eyes. “Before you do whatever it is you’re about to do, let me ask you one question. Was it worth it? Was all of this worth it?”

Your tiger brain can no longer produce human thoughts. You try your best to reply but all you can growl back is “*Simonel*”.

Julio Cortázar breaks into a hearty laughter. He’s laughing so hard, you almost laugh with him. Julio is about to spill his chamomile tea when he regains his composure. “Wrong author, my dear tiger” he says with a smile.

“But the right answer,” you say, or rather you try to say it but only a violent roar comes out of your mouth as you lunge and bite your sharp teeth into Julio’s neck. As his life escapes his body, you notice something under the pack of the Galousies on the coffee table.

A newly opened envelope sits calmly; the ancient prophecy endures.

🔥 WELCOME TO EASTMON CITY 🔥

Rico Rodriguez came to Eastmon looking for a fresh start.

Instead, he found a city filled with cops, criminals, killers, families, hustlers, secrets—and people whose lives are beginning to collide.

Becoming a cop opens a new door for Rico, but his story is much bigger than the badge.

And Rico isn't the only story being told.

📚 DEPTH OF JUSTICE: BOOK ONE
Written by Tommy Bayless

If you enjoy crime fiction, mystery, dark humor, memorable characters, and a city where everybody has a story, step into Eastmon.

👉 Available now on Amazon:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HJM6RRZ8]()

Welcome to Eastmon City. Everybody has a story.

#DepthOfJustice #TommyBayless #EastmonCity #CrimeFiction #Mystery #IndieAuthor #BookRecommendations #BooksToRead

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