Sticks and Stones - Part 3 of 3

 

Photo by Dylan Hunter on Unsplash

3

Reluctantly, Christoffer started for the dumpster and climbed into it without looking back. And then, for a long time, nothing happened. He must’ve stayed in the container for several minutes when he finally dared to lift the lid and stick his head out, at which point, it had become dawn and the sky was painted in the shades of twilight.

Neither Betül nor Farouk was around when he climbed out, stinking worse than he could smell. But their absence was not the only perplexing thing. All around him, scattered at random, were what he could only call human body parts in all shapes and colours, as well as different stages of decay. Even the soil beneath his feet was full of bits of flesh here and there, sticking to his shoes like glue.

But before he could wrap his head around what had happened during those hours he stayed hidden in the container, he staggered back only for something to get caught underfoot, something that he immediately recognised upon picking up. It was a stone, one that belonged to Farouk. But what was it doing here?

He retraced his steps back to his apartment, taking in the bloody carnage all around him but unable to make sense of it. But the worst had yet to come, only he didn’t know then. When he finally arrived at the third-floor landing, the door to his apartment gave way without resistance and unlocked. Inside… nothing. Only traces of blood – a lot of it – on the striped wallpapers, on the floorboards that had become swollen. Neither his mum nor Reila was around, though. In their stead, something else was.

In the kitchen was a large pot bubbling away. As he crept closer, each step warier than the last, he lifted the shaking lid and came face-to-face with a stew made of human body parts. One of the severed fingers had a ring on it, one his mum had been gifted by his deceased father and never took off. This realisation made him stagger back, and his breath became shallow and laboured, and that was exactly when the living room door slammed shut with a deafening bang across the kitchen.

He whipped around and sprinted out the gaping front door, not looking back even once, not until he made it safely out of his apartment and was back outside. When he looked up at the third floor, however, a faceless shape waved at him from the kitchen window, and he fled that instant, springing wherever his feet took him. Once he came back to his senses, he was back at the site of the dumpster, or rather, back inside it, counting the seconds, wishing upon the stars for a miracle that this was only a nightmare and that he would soon wake up from it.

Once nighttime came, however, nothing changed. Stuck in a bad dream with nowhere to go, he climbed out and picked up more stones on the damp soul, and as if to keep himself from losing his senses completely, began to play by himself like a madman.

He must’ve played for several hours by the time he noticed the approaching footsteps and quickly hid back inside the container. Through a small gap, he saw the homeless people returning, each one of them chewing on a human body part. They settled at the dumpster site and drank all night, oblivious to his presence, and when morning came, they left.

This repeated for a few more nights, with the homeless people returning to the container with human body parts and then leaving only to return the next night. One morning, however, instead of waiting in dread for dusk to come, Christoffer decided to follow the homeless people who seemed to be unaware of him, no matter how much noise he made.

They wound up a dark pathway through an empty field or some kind of overgrown pasture no longer used and kept walking for hours on end without respite. And when darkness fell once more, the pathway came full circle, and they were back at the site of the dumpster, only now Christoffer knew where the source of all those human body parts came from.

During this nocturnal walk with no aim or purpose, the homeless people picked up wooden sticks now and then, and by the time night came, those sticks became human body parts. But the homeless people weren’t even aware of this, for they were far gone and unsound of mind to think straight and get back to their senses to realise they were caught in a loop of some kind, reliving the same day over and over, and somehow, he had ended up in that loop, too.

By the second week, he decided to pick up some sticks himself to quench his growing hunger, and although the sticks tasted weird and gamey, like rotten flesh, he did not mind since he knew the sticks were anything but human. The taste even grew on him after the fourth fortnight, and he ended up joining the homeless people, who did not mind him following them around and mimicking them.

Then, one night, as they were having a feast by the fire, something that had never happened happened. One of the homeless people turned to him as they were about to get back on their feet and follow the dark pathway till dusk. This was the first time they ever talked or acknowledged him, as if mimicking them had somehow allowed him to become visible again.

“You stay here, climb the container.”

And so he did.

When morning came, he climbed out only to find himself back in the normal world, no longer bound by the time loop. But several years had passed since then, although he had stayed the same age as when he disappeared. Everyone he knew had long since either passed away or moved to another place – everyone save his good friends Betül and Farouk, who had grown grey and as old as the hills.

They recognised him immediately, although it took him a second to recognise them. None of them could explain what had happened that night, only that he disappeared after climbing into that dumpster. Betül had told the police what had happened, but the police refused to believe her story, and so he was registered into the system as another runaway. When they asked what exactly had happened during the time he was away, he couldn’t tell the truth – or rather – the whole truth.

The two of them passed away not long after this fated reunion, dying almost a week after one another. The entire neighbourhood was in mourning during the funeral, and Christoffer had attended it with those stones that Farouk always carried with him, the ones he found in the nightmarish loop. But as he was paying his respects to his two friends, he heard a familiar rustle in the clump of bushes near the Muslim cemetery, and he decided to take a look at what it was.

There, hiding in the bushes, were some wooden sticks arranged in a neat circle. Without realising it, he picked some up and started chewing, slowly making his way back to the funeral attended by the whole neighbourhood. When they saw him approach, they gasped collectively and pointed fingers at him. When he looked down at the stick, it had turned into a human leg dripping with fresh blood.

Then… a chilling scream.

A woman rushed from the clump of bushes with a child in her arms, one of its legs missing. When she saw him, with his teeth still dug into the tender flesh, she let out another bloodcurdling scream, and before he knew it, the people around him tackled him to the ground and kept him there until the police arrived. When the police asked for his name, he gave them the one his parents gave him, but they wouldn’t believe him, saying he couldn’t have stayed this young after all those years.

Now he was locked up in an asylum, counting the days. His psychiatrist said he had been cured of his illness and that he would be able to return to normalcy once the related paperwork had been sent off to court. In the meantime, to kill some time, he played stones by himself and occasionally chewed on his own arms to satisfy his hunger. Once he returned home, the first thing he would do was to climb into the dumpster. That way, only a child stupid enough to come near a place like that would go missing, and the police would write them off as simple runaway cases.

Sticks and Stones - Part 2 of 3

 

Photo by Foad Roshan on Unsplash

2

“Argh! I told you guys to listen to me! My mum’s going to kill me!”

Betül and Christoffer locked eyes, both apologetic, as Farouk crouched down in defeat and looked devastated as the phone kept ringing in the background. He lived two blocks away from themand would have to walk for several minutes in the gloom to get home.

Also, everyone in their neighbourhood knew that his mum was really strict. She had become so after having lost her husband in a work-related accident seven years ago, and so they feared that she might actually thrash Farouk as a form of discipline for not returning home in time to take his epilepsy pills.

Christoffer, “Hey, don’t beat yourself up too much, dude. You can just stay over at my place, and I’ll have my mum call yours, say that you had a seizure and couldn’t make it home?”

Farouk looked up with misty, bloodshot eyes.

“Then she’ll only get more upset!”

“No, I think Chris has a point. Would you rather she thinks you’ve spent the night at the playground?”

“Of course not! Are you mad!? She’ll kill me if—”

“Then, it is decided,” she said, gesturing at Christoffer. “Hey, lend me a hand and let’s bring this idiot to your place.”

“What about you?” Christoffer said as they each wrapped an arm around Farouk, who was still quite out of it to even lift a finger or move on his own.

“I’ll be fine. My apartment’s not too far from your place.”

“No, I meant, like, won’t your parents, I don’t know, say something?”

“My parents? No, why would they? It’s not like it’s the first time,” she said, changing the subject before he could inquire further. “You had a little sister, right? What was her name, again?”

“Reila,” he said, adding, “she’s not really my sister, though.”

“How so?”

“My mum remarried when I was a toddler to some Japanese guy, who dated her for the green card and then, yeah…”

“Oh, I see. But I thought you two looked pretty close the other day.”

“The other day?” Christoffer repeated, adjusting his grip on Farouk, who was dragging his feet through the pavement with a hollow look on his face as if his whole world had shattered and fallen apart right in front of him.

“Yeah, at the supermarket. You know, the one near the gas station.”

“Ah, right! Yeah, Mum brought us along grocery shopping, but I wouldn’t say we’re that close.”

“Really? Why not, though? You guys must’ve basically grown up together, like real siblings, no?”

“Reila can be… difficult, sometimes, you know?”

“Difficult? Like to elaborate on that one? How difficult can she even be for you to say this?”

“Hard to explain… Not sure where to start…”

“Well, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just thought you looked close, but—”

“It’s just that she creeps me up, sometimes. Especially as of late. I’m not sure if it’s because she’s older or her teenage hormones acting up, but…”

“But?”

Christoffer cast a look at Farouk as if to make sure the other was too lost in his own misery to pay attention to their conversation.

“It’s like she’s possessed. I keep seeing her wake up at night, going through the entire fridge. Mum thinks I’m the one doing that and won’t believe me.”

“And your step-dad?”

“He’s, uh, not around anymore. Been dead for two years already.”

“Oh, sorry ‘bout that. I didn’t know…”

“Don’t be.”

“And you and your mum’ve been taking care of her all this time?”

“Yeah…”

“Wow, I’m not sure my mum would do that,” she said matter-of-factly before suddenly coming to a halt and seeking his confused eyes. “Hey, did you just say she was going through your fridge every night?”

“…Yeah, why?”

“So, basically, she’s hungrier than usual? Right?”

“I’m not following.”

Betül let go of Farouk and helped him settle on a wooden fence, which only reached to their ankles at either side of the pavement.

“Lamia! She must’ve been possessed by her!”

“I said she was going through the fridge, not eating children, dude.”

“Yeah, so what? Maybe that’s just how it begins? And then, when the hunger grows, she might—”

“Betül! Hemen buraya gel!”

They both turned in the direction of the kiosk just around the corner, where the silhouette of a dumpy woman with a hijab made some angry gestures at Betül. It sounded like her mum, it even looked like her from this angle, but why was her face completely swallowed by the darkness? Not to mention the way she moved her arms seemed so… stiff? Unnatural, even.

“Is that your mum?”

“I…”

“Betül!”

“Hey, you okay?” Christoffer said. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“Huh? No, I’m… I’m fine. I’m just… confused.”

“Confused?”

As she was about to reveal what was going through her mind, Farouk suddenly rose to his feet between them. In a trance, he then pointed in the direction of the corner where the silhouette was, before going into a seizure with his eyes rolled back into the sockets. They barely caught him in time, and when the worst of the convulsions were over, the silhouette in the corner was gone, too.

“What… what was that?” Christoffer managed, his voice cracking. “Hey, talking to you, Betül! What the heck just happened?”

“I’m not—”

She never finished her sentence, or rather, could not. A nauseating odour arose from the kiosk, right at that shadowy corner, the smell a cross between charred flesh and the sweet and greasy smell of swine mingling. Then, that voice came again, this time from somewhere behind them, and Farouk went into another seizure.

“Gel! Gel! Gel!”

Behind them was nothing but darkness and several apartments lined up on one side. But not for long. Through the shadows, where the eyes could not penetrate at nighttime, several figures emerged, their chilling voices repeating like a broken record the same words over and over again.

“What do they say? Betül!”

“Come,” She met his bewildered gaze, just as fraught with dread as her own. “They are telling us to come.”

“Come? Come where?”

“I-I don’t know! How would I—”

“Reila?”

Betül followed his eyes back to the strange figures moving closer and closer to them by the second, and that was when she saw the girl she had seen at the supermarket the other day. But like her own mum, the girl’s features were hardly visible in the gloom, as if her entire body had been drowned in a sea of shadows and become one with the darkness.

And as Christoffer was about to rush towards her, Betül seized his arm. “What are you doing? Can’t you see it’s not her?”

“…What?”

“Look at them, look carefully! See, Farouk’s there too! But he’s here, isn’t he? Whatever these people are, they are mimicking people we know, trying to lure us closer!”

“How is… how is this even possible? What’s going on?”

Betül, on full alert, “Now’s not the time for asking questions! If we don’t move any time soon, we might not make it!”

“Make it?”

“Listen,” she said, “we have to hide. And that quick!”

“But where? Look at him.” Christoffer gestured at Farouk, who had finally stopped convulsing but was still unconscious. “Does it look like he can move to you?”

“Who said we’re bringing him with us?”

“Uh—what?”

“Quick! Hide in that dumpster over there! Hurry!”

Christoffer followed her gaze to the corner and arched his brows.

“Isn’t that where those homeless—”

“Stop asking questions and just go! Hurry!”

“What about you?”

“I’ll try to distract them! Now go! Go, Chris! Go!”

Sticks and Stones - Part 1 of 3

 

Photo by Luca Maffeis on Unsplash

1

”No! You missed it, dude!” Farouk snapped as the huge piece of stone failed to hit the smaller ones lined up on the sandy ground, rising to his feet from where he was crouched and utterly devastated that his team was losing. Again. “How can you even miss it twice in a row!?”

Betül rolled her eyes before picking up the carefully chosen stone with the uneven edges, one she had successfully used over the course of a year without once missing the mark. That is, until today. She couldn’t say what it was, but something felt off. Whether it was the overcast weather, the increasingly darkening sky, or just something innately inside her, she did not know, but whatever it was, it made her skin crawl and mouth run dry like her whole mouth was made of sandpaper.

Christoffer, on the other hand, was a team of his own and older than them by a year. He celebrated his miraculous win with his signature gesture, shaking his shoulders in an Egyptian dance and making loud noises to annoy Farouk on purpose – going as far as turning his back to them and shaking his butt like a real Arabian belly dancer.

“Woohoo! Losers!” he said, making a huge ‘L’ with his hand, before extending his hand. “Now give me everything you stole!”

Farouk, cheesed off, “Stole!? We won it fair and square, you little—”

“Hey, easy, you two! And you,” Betül said with a firm voice as she turned to face Farouk. “Give the guy back his stones and shut it.”

“Uh… what’s with her?” Christoffer mumbled.

“Do I look like I know?” Farouk said. “Here, these were yours, right?”

Christoffer studied each piece of stone as if it were a jewel. Farouk had fetched from his pockets a full of valuables and picked up three jagged stones seemingly at random. It was a mystery how those huge stones even fit into his pocket, not to mention on top of all those smaller ones in there, too.

“Yeah, seems like it,” Christoffer said, placing the stones inside his folded shirt since he did not have pockets of his own. “When on earth did you even win all those stones? You have no social life or something? No school?”

Farouk lifted his head with a proud smile, so much in fact that Betül thought for a brief moment that his crooked nose would stay suspended mid-air and wanted to smack him back to his senses. But she didn’t do that, of course.

“Dude, like, who do you think I am? I am the Farouk!” he said. “I always have time for victory!”

“Victory?” Betül repeated, her tone laced with sarcasm. “More like defeat! Besides today, have you ever truly won without my help? Like ever?”

Farouk met her sarcasm head-on, his eyes narrowing and lips curling into a pout. “You’re seriously going to live as if stuck in the past? What matters,” he said, grinning wide, “is what we win today, in the present. Which means, I win. Not you, sor-ry!”

“You’re so dumb, you know that?”

“Who you calling dumb!?”

As the two teammates were about to clash and get into a huge fight, one in which Betül would emerge as the winner since she was larger in build than Farouk, who hardly had any meat on him, Christoffer nimbly intervened and separated them before they could start throwing punches.

“Yo, calm down, you two! Hey, you guys hear me!? Geez! Stop it! Both of you!”

Betül ran a hand down her hair as she was the first to retreat, before Farouk too calmed down enough for Christoffer to stop holding him back. “You guys are craaaazy. How did you even end up being friends?”

“Friends? More like enemies!” Betül said, adding. “I recruited this idiot after seeing him win once, and then he just kept losing ever since!”

“You mean twice! I won twice!”

“Dude,” Betül exclaimed as she realised what he was referring to. “Winning against those homeless people… you call that a win? Like, seriously!?”

“Well, you didn’t dare, remember?”

“Yeah, but only because they are homeless, duh!” she said, adding in one single breath before he could interrupt, “and don’t act like you don’t know the rumours, you idiot!”

“What rumours?” said Christoffer.

“Don’t mind her, they’re just rumours!” said Farouk. “See! Nothing bad happened to me!”

“Just because it didn’t happen that one time, doesn’t mean it won’t happen ever! Just how stupid can you even be?”

Farouk glared, rolling up his sleeves to throw another future punch when Christoffer interrupted. “Hey, guys, what rumours?”

Betül and Farouk both turned to Christoffer at the same time as he was about to repeat himself, both of them seeing red and too furious to explain stuff to him. “SHUT IT!”

“Uh, what?” Christoffer said, the tone of his voice giving away just how offended he was at being shouted at out of nowhere. “You guys… got some loose screws or something? Dude, I was just asking.”

Betül, now a tad calmer. “You haven’t heard the rumours? Is that it?”

“Why would I ask if I knew?”

Betül then exchanged a knowing look with Farouk before gesturing each of them to come closer, so that they hunched down in a tight circle of three.

“I’m not sure where the rumours come from or who spread them,” she whispered, dragging each word on purpose to get her words across. “But I don’t doubt them. Not even for a second.”

Farouk, “Me neither.”

Christoffer, utterly confused, arched his brows low and whispered, “What do you mean? You’ve… seen something?”

Betül drew a deep breath before finally speaking, letting her brown eyes sweep over the two boys for the briefest of moments as if to prepare them for what she was about to reveal.

“I was walking home from school one day two years ago. My sister was sick, so this was my first day going home on my own, and as you both know, our apartment is right around that dumpster those homeless people hang out at, drinking and pissing all over themselves. Like, ew, so, so disgusting… Anyway, so I was walking home, and then I felt something strange, like someone watching me. So, I looked around…” She paused, letting the silence stretch on for a tad longer than either of the boys wanted. “And, then I saw one of those people was staring straight at me!”

“W-What happened next?” Farouk croaked.

“Then he waved me over, of course!”

“And did you?” asked Christoffer.

Betül broke the tight circle. “Of course I didn’t, idiot! If I did, would I be here, you think?”

“I don’t get it. What’s this whole rumour thing, then? To me, it just looks like the guy wanted to chat or something…”

“It hasn’t been long since you moved here, right?” she said.

“Yeah, it’s been about four months or so. Why do you ask?”

Farouk, “There was this girl, let’s call her Ida for convenience. One day, as she was walking home from school, she disappeared. Just like that! The whole neighbourhood tried to find her, but when night came, she was reported missing to the police. According to the rumours, someone saw her talk to one of those homeless people before she vanished!”

“She was… never found?”

“No,” Betül said, “she wasn’t! The police wrote off her case as a typical runaway, but the poor girl was only eight years old when she went off the radar, only two or so years younger than what we are today.”

“You think… there’s some truth in those rumours, then?”

“Of course!”

“But didn’t you,” Christoffer turned to face Farouk, “just say that you played and won against those homeless people? If the rumours were true, then you wouldn’t be here, would you?”

“Yeah, but I was not by myself! All the neighbourhood kids were there too! Just imagine if I’d been there all alone?” Farouk shivered at the thought. “I’d be long dead!”

“Still, something doesn’t add up. Maybe the police are right? Maybe she just—”

“An eight-year-old runaway?” said Betül, adding before he could protest. “Come on, dude! Get real! No kid that age runs away, unless…” Betül gestured them to come closer again, closing the circle, “…something else happened to her.”

“Like what…” Christoffer said, his voice cracking from the growing dread in the air around them. “…exactly?”

“You two ever heard the story of ‘Lamia’?”

“Lami—what?” said Farouk, who was getting increasingly unsettled by the stuff they were discussing as the sun fell below the horizon every passing second in the background, casting the entire playground in deep shadows.

“It’s originally a story from Greek mythology, one only a few know, and luckily for you two, I’m one of those people in the know…”

“So?” said Christoffer. “What’s the story about?”

“Okay, so there was this super pretty queen named Lamia, and Zeus, the king of the gods, liked her – like, liked liked her – and his wife, Hera, got soooo mad. She was jealous and made Lamia go totally nuts! She took away her kids and made her into this scary children-eating monster!”

“Children…”—Farouk, peeking over his shoulder at once as if something had moved in the deepening shadows and crept closer to them—“…eating monster?”

“And get this, you two,” she continued without missing a beat. “Lamia could never close her eyes, like ever, so she just wandered around all night, looking creepy and sad and angry. Then she started stealing kids from their beds, and she’d eat them! Eat them all!”

As she said the last sentence, she raised her voice on purpose, and Farouk almost had a heart attack as he jolted up with a gasp and took shelter behind Christoffer. Christoffer, although equally scared, tried to play it cool.

 “What a stupid story. Why would a monster from Greek mythology even be here, in our neighbourhood? Stop making up stuff just to scare Farouk—”

“But I’m not making any of this up!” she interjected.

“Everyone knows you’re a bookworm,” Christoffer said. “You’re just telling us stories you’ve read! Anyone can see that, so stop pretending!”

Betül, “I didn’t read about it anywhere! I swear! I heard it from someone!”

“Really? Like from whom? Come on, go ahead. Tell us!”

Farouk, sensing the growing tension between those two, with his weak and antsy voice, then tried to intervene. “Hey, uh, maybe we should go home now? It’s getting dark and—”

“I-I promised not to snitch!”

“Promised!?” snapped Christoffer. “Since when do you keep your promises?”

“Are you saying I don’t?”

“Just admit it, Betül! You’re just making stuff up to scare us!”

“I already told you—”

“Guys, listen to me, it’s getting really dark and—”

“Shut up!” they both said in sync.

And for a while, the heated conversation continued back and forth with neither of the two backing off or throwing in the towel, not until the streetlights on the playground turned on and they found themselves way past their curfew, at which point it was too late to rue the day because Farouk’s phone now rang and pulled the three friends back to reality.

A House Built on Bones - Part II

Photo by Derek Story on Unsplash

A groan escaped her as she regained consciousness and tumbled out of the bloodstained Persian rug. Her body was weak and covered in fresh bruises as she pushed herself onto all fours and retched.

She coughed up a thick and grimy liquid – a mix of the mud forced down her throat and oxidised blood from her dislocated jaw, which restricted her movement as she struggled to open her mouth and steady her breathing.

The first thing she noticed, once she calmed down, was the pungent stench emanating from the swollen, dilapidated floorboards. As she tore at the floor with her bare hands, the body of a decapitated corpse greeted her.

Startled beyond belief, she recoiled and crawled away, her dislocated jaw hanging loose as she held it in place with her free hand. Only then did she fully take in her surroundings.

It was that apartment again. Apartment 17.

But there was no time to question how she ended up here. Before she could process anything, a cold hand seized her neck and slammed her down from behind. As she fought to break free, the person who brought her here and dislocated her jaw shoved her into a cardboard box. Folded tightly and with no room to move, she listened intently as the perpetrator sealed the box.

Then – silence.

But not for long.

A foul odour wafted towards her from within the cramped, dark space. Slowly, she turned her stiff neck and locked eyes with a young girl. Her jaw dislocated in the same way, and she… was grinning at her – as if she knew something Jamala didn’t. Then, before she knew it, the disfigured child lurched forwards in the cramped space and held her in a chokehold. 

She screamed – or tried to.

The next thing she knew, upon shutting her eyes, was the steady hum of an engine running in the background. She opened her eyes, only to realise she was no longer trapped in the cardboard. She was on the move, inside a train compartment, and sharply accelerating.

Panic surged around her as passengers scrambled towards the emergency exits, desperately trying to escape the out-of-control train. Seconds later, the first impact – a massive crash from the locomotive – reached her compartment and sent her slamming against the window.

Once again, she found herself hurled out and plummeting straight into the roaring sea below. She shut her eyes. When she reopened them, she was back in the driver’s seat of her Togg, holding her phone to her ear with trembling hands as that familiar voice spoke to her from the other end of the line.

“Do you believe me now, Detective?”

“This… this is…”

“Possible. You witnessed it yourself.”

“Those people I saw, the corpse in the floorboards, the girl in the cardboard, and the passengers of that train… They were real?”

“They once were. And that girl you saw in the cardboard—”

“Hawwa Mirza.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

“I… I couldn’t see his face, I…”

“Neither did Hawwa. What she saw, what she experienced in her last moments, you did too.”

“That corpse I saw on the floor – that was you? Did your niece see you before she… passed away?”

There was no response to this. Jamala switched ears, the anxiety mounting with every passing second as her mind cleared, and she pressed on.

“When did your parents disappear, Mary?”

“I don’t know. I never met them.”

“Your brother, he… Did he do this to you, to Hawwa?”

“He’s not working alone, Detective. Even if you solve this case and prove his guilt, these murders won’t stop.”

“Then why are you telling me all this?”

“That hole…”

“What about it?”

“What did you think of it?”

“What I thought of it? I… I don’t think I understand.”

“I left a clue in the train for you. Maybe you can find it.”

“A clue – what clue? Mary? Mary!”

The line went dead.

This time, it remained silent. Not even Mike called.

She racked her brain, trying to connect the significance of the train crash to the Mirza family murder case, but nothing stood out in her slowly fading memories.

She didn’t recognise the panicked people running around her, nor the vast landscape the train passed through. Yet she was supposed to find a clue? It was madness!

As she pulled into the driveway on Street 19 and turned off the engine, she hesitated to step out of the car. A thousand thoughts clouded her mind. She needed those extra minutes to calm her nerves and put on a fake smile.

James Hopkins, her husband, planted a wet kiss on her cheek as she stepped into the hallway. His hands were loaded with savoury dishes and glasses of wine. She hung her jacket on the coat rack and set her leather bag on the floor before sitting at the round table.

“You’re late…”

“Uh, are the kids asleep?”

“Hmm. You never answered.”

She smiled as he placed the cutlery in front of her, then took a seat across from her with a wide smile. At first, she didn’t know what to say or how to explain what had happened, but she decided it was pointless to reveal the whole truth.

“Been busy. That case I mentioned the other day? It seems like it’s going to be one hell of a ride. There’s just too—”

“Oh, that case with the terrorist?”

“Terrorist?”

“Hmm. I thought I read the suspect had converted to Islam or something.”

“How does that make him a terrorist, James? I was raised in a Muslim household too, you know.”

“But you’re not a Muslim, are you? You didn’t choose your parents. That guy, on the other hand, chose to become a Muslim. Let that sink in.”

“I didn’t know you were an Islamophobe, considering you married me. How did you keep all that pent-up rage inside all these years?”

“Me marrying you isn’t the same as that fucking piece of shit. He’s a human animal; you’re not.”

“Because I chose not to live as a Muslim?” She couldn’t help but smirk as she stood up, her appetite gone. “You must be kidding me…”

“Sit down.”

“I’m tired—”

“Sit the fuck down, bitch!”

As he overturned the table, sending the dishes crashing to the floor, it was the first time she’d witnessed such delirious rage. James had never raised his voice at her, let alone acted this way. They had married after two years of dating back in ’88. He had been her instructor at the police academy, but they hadn’t got involved until after her graduation.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me? What the fuck’s wrong with you!” She stepped back as he advanced towards her but quickly regained her composure and stood her ground. Her deceased father always told her to never back down or show weakness in front of a man, never to give him a reason to believe she feared him.

“Calm down and speak so I can understand. You’re gonna wake the kids up!”

“You sympathise with those fucking animals, don’t you? What? Why are you looking at me like I’ve lost it, huh? Did those Muslim genes get to your head?”

She turned her face away as he relentlessly jabbed his accusing finger at the side of her head, harder and harder with every passing second. She couldn’t grasp the cause of his sudden shift in behaviour.

How could someone hate another person or group to the point of losing all control? The man in front of her, with his bloodshot eyes, was not the person she married. This was a side of him she’d never seen before, and it terrified her.

As she grappled with these thoughts, Mary Mirza’s voice echoed in her mind. Before she knew it, she was back on the accelerating train, observing the panic rising around her for the second time.

In the chaos, a shrill scream pierced through the air, but it wasn’t a scream of panic – it was the distressed cry of a child in need of help. Through the rushing crowd running in the opposite direction, she followed the cry to an empty wagon and stopped at an occupied WC.

Seconds later, the WC door opened, and a younger version of her husband stepped out. They locked eyes for a brief moment before he shoved her aside and ran off, adjusting his belt and shirt.

When she pushed the door open and stepped inside, she met the lifeless body of a naked child, blood pooling between her exposed legs. Then, the first bang reverberated through the back wagons as the front of the train collided with something up ahead. The force hurled her against the sink, and she fractured her skull. Less than half a second later, another loud bang echoed throughout the train, and she perished.

“What? You’re crying now?”

She stared directly into his eyes as he spoke, his tone dripping with disdain.

“I didn’t know I was married to a monster… How come I never knew?”

“Monster…? You fucking lost it or what? The only monster I know is people like you – human animals who deserve no mercy or forgiveness!”

She wiped away her tears and turned her back to him. But as she did so, her husband yanked her by the hair and slammed her into the wall. Disoriented and struggling to comprehend what was happening, she barely regained her footing when he punched her to the floor and began hammering her head over and over again.

When the punches finally stopped, she found herself unable to lift her head or move her stiff neck. Blood mixed with her hair as her husband dragged her to their bedroom.

He shoved the cabinet aside, then fetched a hammer from the shed outside. With brutal efficiency, he made a thin, narrow hole in the wall. As he removed the debris, she braced herself for what she knew was coming.

He pointed the hammer at her.

The first blow landed, followed by several others that utterly mutilated her face and skull, rendering it unrecognisable. Bits of flesh from her face scattered across the floor, quickly becoming a feast for the creatures to scavenge.

As the hammer continued to break her apart, limb by limb, she remained conscious. But she felt nothing. Her vision blurred with streaks of blood from her exposed brain – or what was left of it.

He aimed the hammer at her neck next.

Then – nothing. For a while.

When she opened her eyes again, she found herself trapped within the remnants of her severed body. The pieces that had once been her now lay scattered on the floor, and the broken cabinet and narrow hole in the wall served as her tomb.

Through the gap in the cabinet, she witnessed her husband, Mr Cohen and Mr Sandersson engage in a grotesque and depraved orgy. They remained indifferent to the bloodstains and pieces of flesh strewn across the floor – even relishing in the horror.

Extending her dismembered hand, her fingers twitched as she sought help, but the horrific moans soon overwhelmed her, drowning out every sound.

She then saw her youngest daughter standing in the doorway, a look of confusion and fear evident in her eyes. Desperate, she reached out to her, warning her to stay away but no words escaped her disfigured lips.

It was too late.

The monsters seized her daughter and dragged her into the bedroom, and as her husband glanced at her one final time, he closed the cabinet door with a suffocating thud.

A House Built on Bones - Part I

Photo by Christian Chen on Unsplash

The overturned car skidded to a halt after ploughing through an acre of land, flattening several wheat fields, and smashing into nearby hay bales. Smoke billowed from the mangled engine before an explosion erupted, engulfing the wreckage in flames.

By 2:34 a.m., nearly two hours after the first fire truck arrived at the scene, the fire finally subsided. The dispatched police officers, however, were unable to locate the driver. The entire area, including the heavily damaged highway, was cordoned off to preserve evidence, but the investigation yielded no results.

Despite extensive CCTV footage coverage and a dedicated search team, however, the driver remained missing, and his whereabouts could not be traced. These unusual circumstances fuelled conspiracy theories on online forums, but the worst was yet to come.

At the scene, an undamaged gift box was discovered containing the folded remains of a young girl, believed to have been around six years old at the time of her death. This prompted the investigators to uncover a gruesome homicide at the suspect’s apartment.

In an apartment block south of the West World Centre on Street 54, police officers discovered the remains of the suspect’s estranged wife and sister during the night between Thursday and Friday.

The gruesome modus operandi was never disclosed, but leaked police cam footage revealed an apartment in chaos, with the ex-wife’s remain on full display. These videos were circulated on the darknet for a hefty price, further amplifying rumours of foul play and dragging conspiracy theories into the public eye.

Meanwhile, the attorney in charge issued a meticulously prepared arrest warrant, and the suspect was added to Interpol’s Red Notice.

Five weeks after the suspect’s disappearance, a crime TV show explored various theories about his escape. It suggested he may have diverted attention with the car accident, based on accounts from undisclosed eyewitnesses. Some claimed to have seen the suspect leap from the car moments before it overturned, while others described witnessing a bluish light in the night sky seconds before the vehicle veered into the wheat field and erupted into flames.

Two decades later, the new owners of the farm near the accident site unearthed the suspect’s remains while digging a well for underground water.

The subsequent autopsy revealed blunt-force trauma to the victim’s body and skull. However, the findings failed to connect him to the car accident. Pathologists concluded that the suspect had not died as a result of the crash.

It was impossible to determine whether the blunt-force injuries occurred before or after death, either. The pathologist was unable to analyse sufficient fluids to assess the concentrations of various components in the deceased’s bloodstream, stomach, or bowel contents at the time of death. The only certainty was the absence of bruises and fractures typically associated with violent traffic collisions.

This unexpected discovery reignited public interest in the long-closed case, sparking demands for a reinvestigation. In response to public outcry, a special task force was assembled. However, they were directed to adhere to the original case as no other viable leads emerged to warrant further inquiry.

Lead detective Jamala Hopkins, with extensive experience in the Violent Crimes Team, was put in charge of the special task force.

Hopkins began her career in the late '80s and climbed the ranks over twenty years, witnessing firsthand how the higher-ups often covered up crimes in exchange for promotions and financial rewards.

Righteous in her own way but cautious not to jeopardise her position as a loving mother of two daughters, she had no desire to re-investigate the case, despite the troubling autopsy report and the deleted files that suggested something was amiss.

Her resolve wavered on the evening of 9 January 2025.

Ring, ring. On the other end of the line was a young woman in her mid-thirties who introduced herself as Celine Mirza.

Jamala, the daughter of a Somali writer and an American businessman, was working late in her office when the first of several phone calls came through. It was a late Friday night, and she had already sent her secretary home. All incoming calls were redirected to her office, as was routine – though not at this time of night.

“Is this Detective Jamala?”

The voice was unfamiliar, one she couldn’t place.

“This is the Southwest Police Station. We’re unable to—”

“Detective, this is the only surviving member of the Mirza family.”

Unable to recognise the voice, Jamala leaned in and pulled out the file she had tucked in her drawer just a few hours earlier.

“I’m not sure if I—”

“I heard you’re re-investigating my family’s case, Detective.”

“Uh, I’m afraid I can’t—”

“He didn’t do it, Detective! He didn’t! He’s innocent! You have to listen to me!”

“Mrs Mirza—”

“It’s Ms And I’m not lying! I can prove it!”

Jamala chewed her lip, casting a glance at the clock on the wall. It was a habit she’d developed over the years, biting her lips whenever stress overwhelmed her, especially when she didn’t like what she was hearing.

“I understand. Would you like to give a witness statement? You can reach my colleagues at this number between nine and—”

“I saw it… with my own eyes.”

Jamala paused, her thoughts clouded with doubt about the case and her inner conflict. She was already beginning to suspect that Jacob Mirza had been framed, but the desire to seek justice was warring with the uncertainty gnawing at her.

“What did you see, exactly, Ms Mirza?”

“Detective… do you believe in the supernatural?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I—can we talk in person?”

Jamala glanced at the clock again, noting that half an hour had already passed, and she was nowhere near finishing the report she had started two hours ago.

“I’m not allowed to speak with witnesses outside working hours, especially not without a partner. I’m sorry. Can you request a formal witness—”

All that remained of the unexpected phone call was the constant static on the line.

As she set the phone down and prepared to continue typing, a sudden thought struck her – one so urgent it made her stop everything and storm out of the office.

She hurried down the stairs, racing towards the empty parking lot, dialling a close friend of hers still working with the Violent Crimes Team.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mike, it’s me, Jamala. I need you to do me a favour.”

“What, at this hour? Did something happen?”

“That case they put me on. Do you think you can find the autopsy report of the girl they found in the box?”

“Why? Is everything—”

“Please, just—can you do it or not?”

She unlocked the car.

“It’ll take me twenty minutes to get back to the station. You got time?”

She briefly put the phone down and checked the time.

“Sure. Hit me up ASAP.”

“Hey—”

She hung up.

Hitting the road at this hour, yet heading in the opposite direction of her home, was not something she was used to. Nearing her fifties in this profession, she hadn’t been out in the field or chasing criminals for a very long time.

But the thrill of a sudden call, of hitting the road no matter the time, and of saving the day was something her younger self would have relished. The older woman staring back at her through the rear-view mirror, however, didn’t share the same enthusiasm for the risks that came with it.

Fifteen minutes into this unusual journey, she got her first call from Mike.

“You got anything?”

“Depends on what you need.”

“Gimme her name.”

“Name?”

A brief pause followed. In the background, the sound of turning pages echoed as Mike realised what she meant.

“Hawwa Mirza.”

“Who identified her?”

“Uh, hold on. From what I can see, it’d be... uh, the stepdad.”

“No DNA tests requested?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“And the attorney in charge?”

Another silence followed, filled only by the rustling of papers.

“Joe Hallberg.”

“The guy who was newly appointed to the Supreme Court?”

“Positive. Why? What’s going on? What does all this have to do with—”

“Check Hallberg’s background, like how many cases he’s handled between 1996 and 2021, and how many of them—”

“You know I don’t have the authority to do that.”

“I know I’m asking too much, but… Mike, please. Help me out just this once, okay?”

A short pause followed this.

“All right, then. Send me a message with everything you need. And, Jamala, be careful.”

She paused. They both knew that in this profession, being careful was never enough, especially when you had to defy the very people who had granted you the authority you were now misusing to seek justice.

“Sure. You, too.”

Half an hour later, she pulled the car over and shut off the engine. Gazing out the window, she studied the apartment that had once belonged to the suspect, now slated for demolition as part of the government’s “reconstruction project” for neglected neighbourhoods.

The abandoned apartment felt unnervingly silent. As she gently pushed open the entrance door, it creaked loudly, the vibration from the unlubricated hinges reverberating through her fingers. The first stench that hit her was the odour of old urine.

From the peeling walls to the uneven staircase, the entire apartment was stained with things she didn’t want to identify. But the brown splatters told her that someone had either lost their life or been subjected to great torture here.

The suspect lived on the third floor at the time of the accident. According to official records, he had recently moved to the neighbourhood after a divorce. From once working a corporate job with a good salary, he lost everything overnight.

His ex-wife cited his heavy drinking as the reason for the divorce, which had developed somewhere between five and seven months before the homicide.

There was no official explanation for why the suspect began his drinking binge leading up to the crime. However, a colleague later confirmed his destructive drinking habits, attributing them to the stress of the cut-throat corporate environment.

This statement, however, would later be contradicted by another colleague, a 21-year-old graduate student working as an intern at the corporate headquarters. She chose to remain anonymous during her testimony and revealed that the suspect believed his ex-wife cheated on him.

When asked how the conversation had come about between the then 21-year-old intern and the 43-year-old suspect, she revealed that the suspect had confided in her after dining out as a team – two weeks before the accident. Unprompted.

While this scenario seemed plausible, especially given the suspect’s heavy drinking and deteriorating mental state, the lead detective at the time interpreted it as evidence of an affair between the two, despite the lack of any concrete evidence to support such a relationship.

This alleged affair, when forwarded to the attorney in charge, garnered far more attention and weight than it should have. With this alleged evidence, it became possible to construct a highly calculated motive for the suspect’s alleged murder of his daughter and estranged wife. However, it revealed little about why the suspect would have killed his sister or taken such extreme measures six months after his divorce was finalised.

While the attorney couldn’t provide satisfactory answers to these questions, the jury and judge, lacking any other evidence, concluded that the suspect was the most likely perpetrator. He was sentenced to the death penalty upon arrest.

Now, standing in front of apartment 17, with all this fresh in her mind, she observed the battered door that had been vandalised. It was then that she received another call from Mike.

“Hello?”

“Jamala, you’re not gonna believe this!”

“Why? What’d you find?”

“Okay, so from what I gathered from the records, that Hallberg guy is hella suspicious. He’s been the attorney in charge of 129 cases, 27 of which have been flagged.”

“Flagged?”

“Yeah, as in, you know, fabricated evidence, for which he’s served—”

“Hold on a second! Are you saying he was convicted of faking evidence?”

“I told you you’d be surprised!”

“But how? Why didn’t they revoke his license?”

“That’s the tricky part. I don’t know how he got away with it, but he did.”

“And the other thing?”

“Oh, yeah, nothing connecting Hallberg to Mr Cohen – the stepdad. But I found something else you might find interesting.”

“Which is…?”

“Do you remember the farmer who lived on the property at the time of the car crash? What his name was?”

She blinked, racking her brain to recall. “Uh, should be Dan Sandersson if I’m not mistaken. Why?”

“Well, that’s what he’s called now.”

“He changed his name?”

“Only the surname. It used to be, wait for it, Hallberg.”

“How sure are you? Could be a coincidence, no?”

“You call having the same parents a coincidence, too?”

“Okay, let’s say that’s the case. What does it prove?”

“You’ve lost your touch, my friend! Listen, what if I told you the stepdad and the farmer have a history?”

“History?”

“Yeah, dating back to the 80s. Dan Hallberg was put on trial for sodomy but was never formally convicted. And the best part? His alleged lover is suspected to be a certain guy, 16 at the time, referred to as minor C in the official records.”

“So, the stepdad is gay?”

“And has, well, some kind of connection to the Hallbergs.”

“When did the accident take place again?”

“1997. A time when people like that weren’t accepted.”

“You think the wife – uh, Mrs Mirza – knew about Mr Cohen’s, uh, preferences?”

“Knew? You mean, did she catch them in the act.”

“You think Mr Cohen killed those who could expose him? And then made it look like a jealousy-driven homicide? But that doesn’t explain why the suspect’s sister was found dead at the scene.”

“Well, that’s the part I don’t get. According to several of Mr Mirza’s colleagues, he hadn’t had contact with his sister for years, dating back to the 70s. She’d been reported missing ever since and had previously been listed as a runaway up until, you know, the discovery.”

Jamala briefly looked away, her eyes lingering on the battered door. A thought crossed her mind then, one that made her shudder.

“Where did they find her remains?”

“Curiously – she was the only one not in plain sight. The cadaver dogs sniffed her out through the decaying walls, which had been hidden behind a cabinet. To give you a mental image, the detectives at the time thought she’d been placed inside a hollow space within the floorboards, likely due to the high amounts of sewer water from the clogged and malfunctioning pipes and then moved over to the hole in the wall later on.”

“And the state of the body?”

“Pretty well-preserved, from what I can see from the pictures in the case file.”

“So, no autopsy was done on her?”

“The attorney didn’t think it was necessary, since the rate of decay matched that of the ex-wife and daughter.”

“So, we can’t say for sure that it’s the sister, can we, or when she passed away?”

“No, but everything points at her, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“They found an identification card on her, but it was like in poor condition – hardly legible. Still, I don’t think the body belongs to someone else. Just a hunch.”

“But you said Mr Mirza moved into the apartment recently? Six months after the divorce was finalised?”

“Correct. But he didn’t buy this place. He inherited it from his parents.”

“So, he would have had access to this place since the 80s – or 70s, even?”

“Yeah, and here’s another rabbit hole for you: Mary, the sister, was rumoured to be working the streets.”

“That’s… new. How old was she when she disappeared?”

“Seven.”

“Her parents sold her off? From what age?”

“According to witness statements from the neighbours, since she could walk.”

“Sick fuckers… Where are they now?”

“There’s no record of them since the missing person report was filed.”

“And the body they found in the wall? How old was it?”

“The tissue development and subsequent damage suggest she was between 30 and 45 when she died. That’d be about 30 years after she was reported missing.”

“She was kept alive all these years?”

“Are we thinking the same thing?”

“Without an autopsy report to confirm, whatever we think is pure speculation. But to answer your question, yes. I think the suspect kept her here.”

“You think Sandersson and Cohen killed the sister and buried her in that hole? Because she witnessed the murders or at least one of them?”

“After putting the others on full display?”

“What if they knew the discovery of her body would change the direction of the murder investigation? They’d want everything hinting at Mr Mirza’s innocence buried as long as possible, and when that failed…”

“They contacted Sandersson’s estranged brother to get rid of evidence?”

“That’s the only explanation I can think of.”

“No, something else is going on. That’s too simple and not in sync with all the other findings at the scene.”

“You think the suspect killed his sister, then?”

“Could be, too early to say. I need to see it for myself – that hole in the wall. I’ll call you again.”

Putting the phone back in her pocket, she crossed the apartment threshold, stepping cautiously. The thick stench of dust triggered a coughing fit, prompting her to quickly open one of the framed windows and inhale her asthma medication.

The cabinet remained in place, untouched. The detectives hadn’t secured it as evidence or demolished it after moving it to access the hole in the wall.

As she approached, she switched on her flashlight and placed it between her teeth, inspecting the hole with both hands. The remnants of the drilling still littered the area. But it wasn’t the state of the hole that unsettled her.

A narrow, thin canal – this could hardly be considered a hole. Even as she tried to squeeze into it, she realised only a malnourished person could fit into such a space. It would require unnatural, forced movements, broken bones, fractures to fit, and a crushed skull.

So why hadn’t Mike mentioned the bone fragments the dispatched team would’ve found at the scene? Why was there no record of the flattened skull, the disfigured and severely malnourished body? Nothing added up.

A phone call snapped her out of her thoughts. She answered it without checking the caller’s name.

“Hey, did you check—”

“Detective, this is Celine Mirza speaking.”

She quickly glanced at the unknown number on her phone screen before placing it back on her ear.

“This is my private number. How did you—”

“What do you think of it? That hole.”

Jamala paused and looked around the dark apartment, her senses on high alert. She slowly moved through the space, trying to determine if she was alone or if someone shared the space with her. Her fingers instinctively brushed the grip of her handgun.

“Now that I think about it, Ms Mirza, I don’t recall you being mentioned in the case report – nor was your existence ever disclosed in subsequent witness hearings. Who are you?”

There was no response to this. The silence stretched on, thick and heavy. She knew this silence was telling – Celine was hesitant, hiding something.

She was getting closer to something significant, but she also knew any rash actions at this point could be dangerous. She thus kept her cool and repeated her question.

“Who are you? Why did you ask me if I believed in the supernatural?”

“Do you, then? Believe in what you can’t see?”

“No. Now it’s your turn to answer mine.”

The line went dead.

Almost simultaneously, a loud noise pierced the silence. It sounded like something cracking in the ceiling. As she looked up, she soon realised the dire situation she was in. The entire building was collapsing on her.

She made it to the corridor just as the ceiling collapsed and blocked the entrance to the suspect’s apartment. With only minutes left to escape, she sprinted down the stairs and jumped out of the first-floor landing window.

The building tilted to the left as it collapsed, sending a storm of debris and dust through the air. Had she not parked her car further down the old parking lot, it would have likely been damaged by the force of the explosion that followed.

When Mike called a few minutes later, she was still not fully herself. But the incessant ringing forced her to get into the car and hit the road. Behind her, as she slowly drove off into the night, several people rushed to the collapsed building to locate the source of the loud bang, which must have felt like an earthquake.

She answered the phone only after she turned onto the highway.

“Hey, is everything—”

“Run a background check on Celine Mirza.”

“Celine… Mirza?”

She slowed the car slightly as she noted the change in pitch of his voice.

“You know her? She’s mentioned in the case report?”

“Uh, yeah, kind of. She’s… But why are you looking for her?”

“She’s called me a few times, saying the suspect is innocent. But something’s off. I don’t think she’s who she claims to be.”

“That’s impossible…”

Jamala glanced behind her through the rear-view mirror as a gust of cold air swept down her neck. Though she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, she couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling that she wasn’t alone.

“What do you mean? Mike?”

“Man, I don’t know where to begin… Remember I said Mary worked as a prostitute?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“So, apparently, she went by the name, you know, Celine. The investigators confirmed this through several witnesses – most of them her clients.”

“Are you saying I talked to a ghost? She was strange, I admit that, but the person I spoke to wasn’t dead.”

“Maybe it’s a prank? Kids these days, they’re on a whole different level.”

“Impossible. But even if that was the case, how could some kids have access to information only the police would know? And if we disregard all these strange circumstances, why would Mary use a fake name in the first place? It wasn’t like she was forced to sell herself through a third party, was it? Everyone in the neighbourhood knew and took advantage of her.”

“Beats me.”

She pulled over and rested her head against the headrest. Heavy snow began to fall from the clear sky, blanketing the area in a white veil. A ghost, huh? She smirked at the thought, shaking it off as quickly as it crossed her mind. There was no such thing as ghosts or apparitions.

In the background, the wipers cleared the windshield in perfect sync. The haunting melody held her senses for a few moments as the driving snow continued to cover everything around her.

She unlocked her phone and scrolled through the missed calls until she found the unknown caller displayed brightly on the screen. No phone number, no email address attached. She stared at it, trying to unravel the mystery behind the call. Then her phone rang.

“Celine Mirza?”

“What’s your answer, Detective?”

“My answer?”

“Do you believe someone like me can exist?”

“Someone like you?” She couldn’t suppress a bitter smile. Even entertaining such an idea seemed ridiculous. “I’m not talking to a ghost right now.”

“And if you are?”

“That’s impossible. Ghosts aren’t real, and they never will be. Throughout the history of mankind – whether we sprouted from Eden's garden or climbed down from the branches – no one has ever proven their existence.”

“A woman of science… But what if no science made by men can see us?”

She leaned forwards in her seat, scanning the dark surroundings, trying to detect any sign of someone watching her from the shadows.

“Then why don’t you prove your existence? Right now—”

Before she could finish, the car suddenly jerked forwards, flinging her out of the shattered windshield. She flew through the air for a brief moment before crashing into the frozen ground. Dizzy and disoriented, she blinked, seeing only a blur of motion in her peripheral vision, before she snapped into awareness of what was unfolding right before her eyes.

Unable to hit the brake in time, the oncoming traffic surged towards her badly damaged Togg, showing no signs of slowing down – likely due to the turned-off headlights and the deepening darkness.

BANG!

She squeezed her eyes shut and braced for the impact.