A Familiar Face

Photo by Aditya Sethia on Unsplash

I heard once, don’t ask me where, that our brains remember the faces we encounter, even those we only see in passing. That’s why we dream about strangers, only to pass them days later on a street corner or in a supermarket aisle. Supposedly, it is our subconscious playing games. But mine doesn’t just play games. It remembers.

It’s not a gift, though it may sound like it is to some, but not to me. I remember every single face I have ever seen. Some of them I only ever saw once. Still, I can see them now as clearly as I did then. Their pores, their scars, the twitch of their mouths forever trapped in my head.

Sometimes they visit me in the quiet hours of the morning, right before the light leaks in through the blinds. I’ll blink, and there they are: someone I passed on the platform a decade ago, mouth open in a stifled scream, eyes fraught with fright.

I remember a man in particular with a crooked tooth who sold umbrellas outside the station and a teenager in a green hoodie who had a bruise shaped like a thumb beneath his jaw. I never learnt their names, but I see them when I close my eyes for some reason.

I suppose it started early. Or maybe I was born with it. The remembering, I mean. But that is not the worst part. The worst part is the reading. It’s like my mind plays fortune teller every time I lock eyes with someone and, magically, I’m in their heads reading their bloody minds.

But I don’t really read their minds. I just get this feeling, I guess, deep in the pit of my gut? It tells me things I shouldn’t know. Terrible things. Like the rape, the murder, the cruelty human beings were capable of. The rot each of us carries within.

I know what this sounds like to some, but it’s not magic, not some sixth sense that should be studied in a lab. It’s real – real enough that I can’t look away, can’t turn it off, can’t un-know what I know. You’d be surprised how many people wear masks that barely hide the rot underneath, how many smiles morph into a grotesque rictus when you look at the wrong time, and how many eyes linger a little too long.

I didn’t tell anyone at first. Not because I thought they wouldn’t believe me, but because I didn’t want this to be real. Thought I could somehow pretend I was normal if I kept this curse to myself.

When I was younger, maybe twelve or thirteen, I told my mum I didn’t like how the neighbour looked at me. I said he had ‘the same eyes as a stray dog.’ She laughed it off and thought I was being dramatic or maybe cute. A week later, he was arrested for stalking a woman who lived down the road. Coincidence, right? That’s what I tried to tell myself, too. But it kept happening. People I avoided turned out to be dangerous, and people I was drawn to turned out to be broken. Like me.

Some people wear their pain on their skin, you know, while others hide it. That was my reality, as well, and so, I never spoke about those horrible visions to anyone. Instead, I kept my head low and watched, collecting faces like a graveyard collects the dead. But I never found one quite like mine; I stared at mirrors for years, thinking maybe it would come to me, that same recognition I got when I saw others. But all I ever saw was a blur behind the eyes. A blank. A stranger. Like I’d been erased.

That’s when the doubt crept in. What if the reason I couldn’t read myself was because a face like mine did not exist? Or maybe I was protecting myself by forgetting something terrible? I started dreaming about that. Not nightmares. Just some random dreams where I’d stand in a crowd of all the faces I’d ever seen, and every single one would look at me. 

There was one face I saw over and over in those dreams.

A little girl.

She never said a word or anything of that sort. Just stood there, barefoot in the snow, hands at her sides, hair soaked and clinging to her cheeks. Sometimes she looked up at me. Sometimes she didn’t. But she was always there. The same place, the same posture. Still as a photograph. Still… as the dead.

I used to think she was part of my imagination. A fragment of memory that didn’t mean anything. But I don’t think like that anymore, not after what happened, that is.

Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. This curse, this memory thing, whatever you want to call it, it wears you down over time. At first, you think you can handle it. You tell yourself it makes you more aware, more cautious, maybe even smarter. You avoid danger. You see through lies. You see through people. Should be a gift, right?

I wished it were.

But then something changes, you know? You stop wanting to see.

You stop wanting to know. You close your eyes on the street, turn your head on the bus, and keep your gaze pinned to the floor at the market. You start hating crowds, not because you’re anxious, but because you don’t want to bring more faces home with you. You start seeing shadows in every expression, secrets in every crooked smile. And you start imagining people looking back at you through the walls, through reflections, and through closed lids.

And eventually, you wonder if the danger was never them.

It was always you. Always you…

Mountain Hunt

Photo by m wrona on Unsplash

Evadore Hill was located in the southwest corner of Bellford County. A secluded settlement far away from the nearest civilisation.

The handful of people who lived there were part of a tight-knit community of farmers, fishermen, and herders in the foothills of one of the larger mountains in the area.

Its mountainous scenery and solitary atmosphere made a name for itself among local tourists, who either camped on the outskirts in the summer or stayed over in one of the many mountain huts during the wintry months.

I lived my entire life in this highland and never ventured outside the mountains. My parents conceived me when they were in their late 40s, so I grew up as an only child in a population that mostly consisted of the elderly.

My mum passed away giving birth to me. I didn’t know much about her; my dad was a man of few words and showed me some tough love growing up so that I wouldn’t need a motherly figure in my life. 

I spent most days helping my dad out in the mountain hut we inherited from my great-great-grandfather back in the 1950s. The workload was moderate for a young woman in her mid-twenties. 

My dad, who neared his 80s on the other hand, carried boxes from the storage shed to the kitchen, prepared meals for the hikers two times a day, and gathered logs to fire the hearth all by himself. 

While I wasn’t as strong as I looked from the outside, I took it upon myself to secretly gather firewood every night as time allowed.

My dad didn’t like me roaming around in the wee hours though, so I snuck out only when I knew he had dozed off.

Naturally, I knew my way around these mountains like the back of my hand and never encountered anything remotely scary.

Our community lived in harmony with nature and the animals dwelling in these highlands for such long that the beasts, which consisted of mostly deer, goats or brown hares, stayed at bay. 

Sometimes, however, you’d cast a glimpse at the morning sky and see an eagle hunt for prey. But they weren’t nocturnal birds, and you could hardly find one hovering in the night sky.

It was an unusual night and an even more unusual day when I snuck out to gather firewood as per my routine. This being the middle of winter, we weren’t expecting hikers, so I spent most of the day reading a Choose Your own Adventure book. 

I think it was sometime after three o’clock that my dad knocked on my bedroom door upstairs and said we had a guest.

Since my dad had arthritis in his knees, he asked if I could fetch him some ingredients for pumpkin soup at the storage shed. 

Even though I actively looked around the hut at the time, I never saw a glimpse of the guest, due to the unusual time frame. 

Then came nightfall. As per routine, I took with me a thick rope, a cane basket, a flashlight, gears to hook onto the rugged mountains just in case, and a rusty axe that belonged to my deceased mum.

By the time the clock struck one in the witching hour, I had cut off just enough wood to call it a night and return to the hut.

Pretty satisfied with myself, I hummed as I hiked through the fading mountain trail and was almost halfway up when I noticed that the lights were switched on. 

My dad, albeit up in years, was very stingy. It was the only trait of his that I disliked. Besides, I had never witnessed to find my dad awake upon returning home.

I put the basket away and scanned the vicinity with my flashlight. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

Still ill at ease, I sprinted the rest of the way up and left everything else behind but the flashlight. As I inched closer, I noticed that the front door was cracked open.

My heart stopped. Fearing the worst, I pushed the door open and looked around the hut. No one was here. 

“Dad?”

When I didn’t receive a response, I ran upstairs to the attic. The first thing that arrested me was the trail of blood on the floorboards leading into the ajar attic door. I broke off halfway up the wooden staircase and clutched to the bannister.

As I took a hesitant step forwards, a distant din reached my ears from the outside and I cowered in place.

A hooded figure entered through the front door. I held my breath, keeping my head low. The stranger, a guy whose face was completely covered up, took a gander at the rickety staircase, wiping his bloody hands with a towel, and then broke off momentarily.

“Anyone there?”

I tried to lower myself as much as possible as the footsteps approached. 

“Hello?”

Shutting my eyes, I wished upon the stars for a miracle. The floorboards creaked. I flew my eyes open, pushed the stranger down the stairs and ran into the attic.

Everything happened so fast. I turned the doorknob and locked the intruder out. When I shifted my eyes from the door to the carnage, my darting eyes landed on my dad’s lifeless body in a pool of blood.

He had been dragged from the top of the stairs to the far-right corner of the attic. I crouched beside him and shook him, convulsing out of control and fraught with horror.

But my dad remained unresponsive. A blunt object had hit his head from the side. I couldn’t see the murder weapon anywhere around. I flinched. The guy banged on the door.

“Hey, you! Open the door!”

I gulped. My frantic eyes scanned the attic, trying to find something – anything – to subdue the intruder but failed. We used the attic to accommodate the hikers, so my parents were very keen on locking everything that could potentially be used as a weapon out of sight and reach.

So I sprinted to the casement window instead and forced it open as much as I could. I pressed myself out of the gap between the glass and the window frame, as the intruder kicked his way into the attic.

I jumped out just as he broke in. Luckily, I landed on a heap of haystacks and didn’t break any bones, although I got scratched on the side of my abdomen.

When I looked up, the hooded guy was staring at me from the half-open window.

With no other option but to fetch my axe, I dashed down the mountain trail and hoped that the intruder couldn’t see in which direction I was headed towards in the pitch-black dark.

I tripped at some point, my feet catching onto something, perhaps a rock, and rolled down the trail until I managed to clutch onto something on the wet grass and dug my nails into the soil.

My little adventure must’ve been audible, for the next thing I knew was the sound of footsteps rushing down the trail.

Stumbling back on my feet, I veered off the main trail, ditching my plan to fetch the axe, and trekked as far away from the main trail as I could. 

I found a hiding spot under an uprooted tree and cowered under it not long after. The guy had at that point stopped dead at the main trail I had just veered off from.

His voice was audible from this distance thanks to the echo. While I was in great distress, influenced by the adrenaline coursing through my veins, I found the guy’s distant voice disarming for reasons I couldn’t account for.

He was speaking as if he were talking to a child playing hide and seek in the dead of night.

“Can you hear me? Listen, I know what this looks like. But there’s a misunderstanding. I’m- I’m not whatever you think I am, okay?”

I cast a glimpse towards the main trail, and the sudden beam of a flashlight blinded my vision. I recoiled and covered my mouth to stifle the gasp. 

“That man broke into my room and tried to kill me. I- I had to do something or else… or else I would end up like my sister.”

Frowning, I relaxed, blinking repeatedly. What in the world was he talking about? Why would my dad hurt him? It made no sense!

“Did you know that man? I heard he had a wife and daughter…”

I played with my trembling hands. The sound of approaching footsteps grew louder. Did he know I was here?

“My younger sister went missing on this mountain trail a decade ago. She complained of a headache and told her friends she would wait for them at that hut… but she wasn’t there when they returned to fetch her. That man told her friends she had never come to the hut.”

The footsteps briefly stopped. The beam of light focused on me. He knew I was there. 

“But you know what? She never left that mountain trail. The police found footage of her friends entering and leaving, but there’s only a record of my sister entering this trail.”

I shut my eyes. My heart was about to rip out of my chest. A lump formed in my throat, tightening around it and squeezing out the air in my lungs. 

“Her name is Ahu. Have you ever seen her around here? You must have, I’m sure. She- she should be your age.”

Bewildered, I stepped forward and locked eyes with the stranger. He turned off the flashlight. How did he… How did he know my name? Tears welled up in his eyes as he stared at me, his hands reaching out and his feet inching closer. I backed away. 

“Ahu…?”

“S- stay away from! I’ll- I’ll kill you if you come closer!”

He dropped his head. The tears running down his face were a haunting sight. His bleak mind seemingly occupied with dismal thoughts. When he lifted his head again, he was weeping like a child.

“I’ve waited so long to find you—”

“Cut the crap! Who are you? How do you know my name?”

“It’s me. Ahu, it’s me.”

“I said don’t come any closer!”

“What did he… What happened to you?”

Inching closer to the edge of the cliff we were on, I knew time was running out. He reached out his arms to me, trying to pull me closer. With a distorted expression on my hardened face, I backed away yet again.

“I said don’t…!”

As he lurched forward to embrace me, I stepped aside. The stranger hurled down into the abyss and merged with the darkness. I listened to the thud of his body hitting the rocks before returning to the main trail.

My mind was spinning like a top, and my thoughts were all over the place. I didn’t even notice I was barefoot until I reached the hut and entered the warmth.

Taken aback, I noticed the blazing hearth and looked up at the staircase.

“Dad?”

Dragging my feet across the grating floorboards, I grabbed the handrails and was about to ascend to the attic when I felt someone breathing against my neck.

As I turned around, someone hit me across the face with a rock and I collapsed at the bottom of the stairs.

My dad stooped over and beamed with his uneven and rotting teeth. He grabbed my arms and dragged me to the storage shed.

Despite his hunched and delicate frame, he placed my crippled body on the wooden table in the centre of the shed and secured my arms to it.

“Be a good girl and nothing will happen to you.”

I spoke in a whisper. “Dad? What are you…” His wide grin stopped me, something in those otherwise warm eyes turned cold. “Who… are you?”

“Your dad.”

“No, I…” As he injected something into my arm, my eyelids grew heavy and the beat of my heart slowed. “Why are you… doing this?”

Before everything turned dark, he whispered something that I would soon forget.

“Because I can. Now be a good girl and go to sleep. This time, you’ll be my wife.”

Fangs

Photo by Mikkel Amundsen on Unsplash

“You sure you got the right address? I don’t think anyone lives here, man.”

I peeked at the towering mansion behind the steel gates for the second time.

The walled garden stank of rotted roots even from this distance, so I rolled up the car windows and breathed through my shirt as I spoke on the phone. 

Something about the boarded-up windows, pillared porch and the dilapidated state of the massive building gnawed at my conscience. 

“Come on, dude! Chickening out or what?”

“Who did you say called?”

“Some girl. I didn’t get her name.”

“And she called me by my name?” I said, looking around the darkness-shrouded vicinity. “If this is some fucked up prank, I’ll—”

“Not only that, dude! She called you by your real name.”

“You’re the only one who knows that, asshole.”

“That’s exactly my point! Look, if you don’t want to do this, fine. But if she’s telling the truth and those fuckers beat us to it, I’ll kill your fucking ass!”

I placed the phone on my other ear, rolled down one of the windows and scanned the outside.

“I don’t see a damn thing, goddammit! Where’s the girl—”

The call disconnected as the phone slipped through my fingers. I spun my head and looked in the direction of the banging.

Only when I noticed the contour of a young woman in her early twenties did I stop holding my breath and relax my shoulders.

She motioned for me to roll down the window.

“Hey, Mikail is it?”

“You’re the one who called us here?”

She stooped over and leaned in. Taken aback by how close she got, I turned my face away and felt my cheeks burn. What was up with that smile? She looked as if she knew me or something.

“You’re not getting out, huh?”

“What?”

“I don’t bite, you know.”

I gulped. I wasn’t much of a ladies’ man and the few girlfriends I had over the years were people I knew from my childhood.

While I had a decent face and a large build, I had sustained some trauma growing up, which rendered me incapable of talking to girls. Not anything serious, just the usual getting-rejected-by-a-pretty-girl-in-public kind of stuff.

“Do I know you?” I asked as I stepped out of the car and followed her to the steel gates. She hesitated before answering, as if she was considering how much she was going to let me on.

“I don’t think so.”

“But we’ve met before?”

She let out a laugh, “Why do you think that?”

Without letting me respond, she unlocked the steel gates and ushered me in through the wilted garden swarmed with flies wherever I rested my eyes.

Something about her bugged me but I couldn’t put a finger on what it was. Most of all, how did she know my real name?

As we approached the pillared porch on the verge of collapse, I couldn’t keep my thoughts to myself anymore.

“You called the channel and asked for me. You knew my name.”

She came to a halt as she was about to open the weathered door and turned to face me. Her cocked head was a mix of confusion and amusement.

“Everyone knows your name, Michael.”

“You didn’t say that a moment ago.”

“Hmm? What are you talking about?”

I dropped my eyes as I tried to find the right words. She was feigning ignorance. But I wasn’t the type to let people off the hook so easily. 

“True, everyone knows me as Michael on the channel. But you called me by my birth name; you called me Mikail.”

The smile across her face faded away as she straightened her neck. Her expressionless face was an enigma, a box of secrets that chilled me to the bone.

When the smile on her face finally returned, I followed her emerald eyes as they kept avoiding my brown ones. What was this feeling?

I turned around as her eyes locked onto something behind me. The next thing I knew was a blur of motion before everything turned black. 

Ring, ring. I snapped awake upon hearing the distant sound of my phone ringing. Seated on a wooden chair in the middle of a dark and damp place, my hands were tied behind me.

Something dripped on my forehead. I looked up. Startled, I jolted up only to fall sideways to the wet stone ground with my legs bound together. Panicking. 

The ceiling was suspended with untold limbs, some ripped apart, others disfigured beyond recognition.

When my heart calmed down, I scanned the darkness my eyes got accustomed to and noticed that I was behind bars.

What in the whole world was going on? I spun my head to the right, realising too late I wasn’t the only one in the damp cell.

“Took you long enough, man. Want a joint? Keeps you alert.”

The smoke got all over my face. The dude in the corner wasn’t tied up, but he was hardly skin and bones. I could see the ribs through his hole-riddled shirt drenched in grime and sweat. 

“What- what’s this place?”

“You’ll figure it out soon enough. Sure you don’t want some of this goodness—shush! Can you hear that? They’re coming! Quick! Get back in the chair before they see you!”

I followed the shrill screams growing louder with wide eyes, unable to move an inch. My limbs froze, and my mind became a muddled mess.

The joint guy crawled and helped me back on the chair, which was barely sturdy enough to carry my weight.

Fearing the worst, I let my neck hang from the chair and shut my eyes in time with the rising bars.

Something stooped over me. The stench of the saliva hitting my face and trickling into my half-open mouth almost made me twitch. 

Whatever leaned over me now headed to the other guy. Where were they taking him?

The poor thing screamed his head off, begging for his life. I had to shut out all sounds to keep his pleas from getting to me.

Only when the bars dropped did I dare to open my bloodshot eyes.

I looked around in the cell, searching for anything that might help me out of these tightening ropes.

That was when I saw it, just inches from the bars. A shard of glass. With newfound energy, I jumped my way to the bars and let my eyes land on the glass on the other side. I wouldn’t be able to reach it in this state, though.

Blood dripped on the tip of my nose. I peeked up. A suspended leg, with some flesh still hanging on, greeted me. Fuck! I stood on my toes and bit on the bone that stuck out, desperately trying to pull it down.

As the rotten flesh gave in, the bone slipped out and hit the wet ground. I was so focused on the task at hand that I didn’t notice I was being watched from the other side.

When the footsteps finally reached me, I grabbed the bone with my toes and jumped back to the chair. I then slid the bone slightly under it and pretended to be unconscious again. 

I flinched as something hit the bars repeatedly, screaming at the top of its head like a wild animal. When the thing finally retreated, I got back to work and managed to bring the shard of glass closer to the bars.

At this point, I was drenched in cold sweat and several minutes had passed by. I cut myself free and tried to unlock the cell. It didn’t budge. 

Now more panicked than ever, I looked around myself in the cell to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I was.

There was some sort of vent I could fit through on the right-side wall. If I were quick enough, it would take me only ten minutes to climb up the suspended limbs and reach the vent. 

As I was having these thoughts, the moment of truth came much sooner than I anticipated. This time, they were coming for me, I just knew it. 

I placed the chair close to the wall and climbed up to the vent while keeping myself steady on the suspended limbs.

When I finally made it to the vent, I looked down and locked eyes with a morbid creature. Its cocked head displayed a mix of confusion and amusement. Its fangs bloody and sharp, even from this distance. Then it came to life.

“Mikail, where you going? The fun’s only begun.”

Without looking back, I escaped through the vent and made it to the walled garden. They had slashed my wheels, so I ventured into the dense woods instead and spent the night there, cowering behind an uprooted tree for hours on no end.

As soon as the sun rose above the horizon, I hightailed it out of there and managed to reach the path that led to the city.

I quit broadcasting after this incident and retreated from social media altogether. My fans were heartbroken, and many demanded to know what had happened to me that night.

I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t even tell the guys.

It kept ringing.

I kept hearing my phone ring. Even in my dreams. Like a never-ending nightmare, I felt my blood sucked dry each night as if those fangs bore into my skin.

Maybe they did. I couldn’t tell what was real or a hallucination anymore.

Something dropped on my face.

I looked up. 

“There you are. Mikail.” 

Hide and Seek

Photo by Rajan Shendre on Unsplash

“Hey, you good, buddy?”

I snapped back to reality as my older brother, Daniel, tapped my shoulder. We stood at the edge of a coniferous forest close to the farmhouse. My older sister, Theresa, had already disappeared into the depths.

It hadn’t snowed in these parts of the country for over a decade. The towering trees were blanketed in powdery snow. We plodded through the cold terrain to come all the way up here from the farmhouse despite the frigid weather. 

This would be the first time I played hide and seek here. My brother and sister were both a couple of years older than me and had explored every nook and cranny with our dad before he passed away three years ago.

It was a rite of passage to set out to the forest and play hide and seek. I always wanted to join them growing up, but when Dad passed away I couldn’t even look in the direction of the forest without shuddering. I thought I never would. But Danny told me to have courage – to face my fears, and so I did. 

None of our relatives came to my dad’s funeral. Mum took care of everything on her own, from the paperwork to forking out for the headstone.

Danny and Mr Hunter, my dad’s best friend and partner, buried him in our garden, while Theresa took care of me and the livestock.

Mr Hunter and Dad were both deployed to Iraq back in 2003 and have been close friends ever since. They settled in the countryside after the war, in a modest settlement, and made a living through animal husbandry.

Mum couldn’t bid farewell to him. She slept through the funeral and didn’t come out until everything was over. She cried a lot that day. I was only nine years old back then, but I still recalled every single detail of that day as if it happened just yesterday. 

My sister said something in the forest took him while they were playing hide and seek. I didn’t know if she said this to scare me or if she was being serious. Danny said she was lying, that Dad simply passed because his heart gave out and stopped.

It was in our genes, he said, Grandpa Joe bit the dust from a heart attack too. It was only a coincidence that he was playing hide and seek with them at the time. But something about the way Theresa said those things made me ill at ease. It didn’t feel like she lied. Not at all. 

I lifted my gaze off my feet as my sister showed up at the wooded trail out of thin air, just a few steps away from the leafless blueberry bushes. Danny released his grip on my shoulder and asked why she returned so soon. There was no way I’d ever forget what she replied. 

“You two won’t believe what I found! Hurry! Danny!” 

“What’d you find?” Danny said as she veered off the trail and disappeared into the wilting clump of bushes. He was about to say something else when we both became rooted to the spot and looked ahead of us in the direction of the chilling scream.

My blood ran cold. Even if Danny tried hard not to lose his cool in front of me, I could tell that he was far from calm. His otherwise gentle eyes flickered, detached from reality, and unable to focus on anything.

“Tess? Stop messing around and get your ass over here! You’re scaring Mickey! Theresa? Tess!”

“Is… is she okay?”

Danny looked at me, hesitating, as the silence continued.

“I’ll go bring her back. You stay here, okay?”

“And if you don’t return?”

“Of course, I will, buddy! You know Tess! She’s probably just messing around. I’ll beat some sense into her, all right? You stay put!”

He was halfway down the wooded trail, inches from disappearing behind the dense bushes when a thought suddenly occurred to me.

“Hey, Danny! Daniel! Daniel—”

“What is it, buddy?”

“What if it becomes dark?”

“What’d you say?”

“DARK! What if it becomes DARK?”

“I can’t hear you! Just stay put and—”

He saw something. I couldn’t see what it was from this angle, but something beyond the clump of blueberry bushes caught his attention. Moreover, something about the way he moved became unnatural, as if he had just seen something he couldn’t make sense of.

He peeked at me one final time and then veered off the trail, venturing deeper into the forest in the same direction Theresa went. That was the last time I saw him. They both went missing. They still are today. 

I waited there the entire night, just as Danny said I should. When Mum found me the next morning, Mr Hunter and two other farmers from our village were with her. Had they arrived a few hours later, I would’ve kicked it from hypothermia.

The deputies searched the entire vicinity, every nook and cranny, and left no stone unturned. But they found no trace of my brother and sister. And just like that, the two most important people in my life faded away under mysterious circumstances. 

I relived that day every single night. Twenty long and harrowing years passed since then. I missed them. I still do. I named my firstborn after my brother.

There wasn’t a day when I did not think of them. They were always on my mind, somewhere hidden in the most secluded parts of my brain. 

Something took them that day. The same thing that took Dad. There was no doubt in my mind that my sister told the truth. And the truth is, had I not hesitated and entered the forest that day, I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale.

I’d wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night sometimes and not remember a thing. Then I’d hear Theresa’s voice calling me, begging for help, screaming her head off. She was in so much pain, in so much agony. Why was she in pain? Why…? I’d probably never know. 

Then I’d see my brother, smiling, and reassuring me that there was nothing I could’ve done differently that fateful day. Behind him, I’d see a tall figure whose face was blanketed in shadows. I couldn’t if it was Dad or the thing that forever changed the course of my life. But I liked to think it was the former. It had to be. 

My brother’s and sister’s disappearance, however, was far from an isolated incident. Seven people, most of them tourists in search of the supernatural, faded away too. 

I heard from Mum who still lived there that the sheriff blocked up the entire forest to keep the ghostbusters at bay. While there were still some trespassers in search of adventure now and then, the incidents stopped dead.

I didn’t know what made that thing stop from hunting unsuspecting victims, but one thing was sure: I would never play hide and seek in the forest again. And if you’re reading this, you shouldn’t either – especially after sunset. 

Human Animals

Photo by William Gullo on Unsplash

I cut ties with my estranged parents when I left home in my early twenties, and I hadn’t spoken to them since. As a second-generation immigrant, I wanted to distance myself from my Muslim roots as much as possible to pursue a career in show business.

Although I had built a significant fan base over the years, I never landed a lead role. With bills piling up, I had to take a part-time job at a downtown funeral home to make ends meet. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the job, but I was grateful for the steady income it provided.

While the job required me to work long hours, it was the nature of it that left me feeling drained by the end of the day. Washing the corpses and preparing them for their loved ones took a serious toll on my psyche. No amount of soap and water could remove the stench of death that hung in the air for days. It clung to me like a foul, invisible cloak.

During my first week, Mr Ahmad helped me get used to the routine tasks, so we did everything in pairs. As time went on and I settled into my role as a budding autopsy technician, he entrusted me with maintaining the funeral home and handling the deceased.

He treated me as if I were truly his son – even giving me a place to stay when I couldn’t pay rent and got kicked out of my one-room flat. But he had a biological son, one he missed dearly and grieved every waking hour. Whenever Mr Ahmad prayed, he asked me to join him, and together we prayed for Allah to forgive his son’s sins and welcome him into janat – paradise.

His son was one of many who lost their lives in 2023. His death was gruesome – nothing was left of his body. The flames singed his flesh, liquefied his organs and skin, and reduced him to ash in the dead of night at a displacement camp. He was brutally murdered and became one with the twinkling stars, crying blood. That year, the world watched in silence – and some even cheered – as yet another atrocity was etched into history.

Locals buried the dead in shallow graves, hoping for an end to the occupation – but even the dead weren’t allowed to rest in peace. The entire place was bombed into oblivion, razed to the ground, and the few who still fought for freedom were deported to the desert and left to die.

Several weeks passed since the siege that tore through his homeland when Mr Ahmad was finally allowed to enter the country and bring back what was left of his son to the United Kingdom. That poor man begged his occupiers for entry like a dog – a barking dog devoted to its torturers. And for what? Just to enter his country. Or what remained of it.

I couldn’t imagine what that would feel like – to be denied access to the very place your ancestors called home for centuries – by radical forces who twisted scripture to justify the unimaginable, claiming superiority over the very lives they erased. What a joke.

The previous employee said Mr Ahmad’s son left behind a widow and two children, but their whereabouts were unknown. They were most likely murdered – just like all the other women and children in the occupied country, whom the occupiers claimed were human shields.

It’s always the women and children – treated like dirt, denied opportunities, subjected to Islamophobia and racism, and seen as weak and oppressed because of a single cloth on their heads. When was the last time a Muslim woman harmed anyone? When she refused to remove her headscarf to enter a bank or get a job at an airport?

Whenever I thought about what happened in 2023 – and how the world watched – I felt my blood run cold. What sort of people could kill with such cruelty? Leaders with skeletons in their closets, trying to dominate every corner of the Middle East? Power-hungry icons rewriting the truth to suit their image? Artists and moguls backed by shadows we’ll never see? Or people so corrupt they turned the vulnerable into pawns – trading dignity for dominance?

Then again, what else could it be? Nothing else made sense. Only the most twisted minds, consumed by power and greed, could justify the murder of children – children they’d rather destroy without remorse than spare from being used as human shields. Their crimes should be carved into history – not erased – so future generations can marvel at how evil once wore a suit and tie.

Where was I? Ah, yes, now I remember.

All Roads Lead to the Hollow (aka. The Communion)

Photo by Joshua Kettle on Unsplash

Elena vanished during the darkest hour of the night, when the world outside lay mute beneath a veil of thick June mist. Gone with the biting wind. Just… gone.

It was 1999. I was thirteen back then and still wet behind the ears. The old house, nestled at the end of a winding country lane, had always been surrounded by secrets, but that night it was different; the shadows themselves were listening in every corner, conspiring about something.

She, my younger sister, was in bed when I retreated to my room, tucked beneath the patchwork quilt Mum stitched for her before the days turned grey and the past became a distant memory.

When I woke up later that night, her bedroom door stood ajar, and the sheets inside lay flat and empty. There were no signs of a struggle, no broken windows, and no disturbed furniture. Nothing, at all. And Elena was gone, just like that, as if she had never existed.

Mrs Berkeley, our maid, told the detectives she had checked in on her shortly before midnight, said she was sleeping soundly, that there were no disturbances, no strange visitors, or late-night wanderings. But she left out something. Something very important.

That night, I had wet the bed again. It was a secret of mine, one I kept from everyone else, though I always got caught. It all started after Mum fell ill. Dad’s sudden passing during his deployment to Afghanistan took its toll on her, more than any of us could foresee or prevent. That unspoken grief hollowed her out completely, and anger became the only thing that kept her alive.

Anyway, ashamed of what I had done yet again, knowing what my afflicted mother would do if she found out, I crept out of my room with the soaked sheets bundled in my bony arms and descended into the basement, careful not to wake anybody, and that was when I noticed Elena’s door ajar. At the time, however, since I was too occupied with my own issues, I did not think much about it.

The air was damp down there, always had been, but I preferred it to the slap of Mum’s belt or that disappointed look on her face. That was when I heard it and recoiled so fast that the sheets slipped from my grasp out of confusion. Who on earth could be down in the basement at such an odd hour?

Footsteps. Two sets. They came from the hallway up the rickety stairs, groaning under my weight despite my skinny frame. One belonged to Mrs Berkeley, I had no doubt, since she always dragged her slippers wherever she went. The other, on the other hand, I couldn’t quite place. It was heavy and unfamiliar, and it belonged to someone I had never met before.

I ascended the stairs with wary steps just enough to be able to crouch and peer through the gap between the basement door and the doorframe, where soft lights spilt through and Mrs Berkeley’s voice grew clearer by the second. She stood just outside the door, whispering to someone I couldn’t see, someone out of sight, or maybe she spoke to herself?

But before I could grasp what she was saying in such a hushed tone, a shadow stretched across the floorboards and came into my line of vision. I jumped up so fast that, had I not grabbed onto the bannister, I might have fallen down the stairs and this story not come to be.

I couldn’t tell why, but that strange shadow arrested me in ways no words could truly capture. It was like… like it wasn’t the shadow of a human being but something else entirely, something that had long since lost its human shape and become… almost disfigured.

When they moved on. Finally. I waited until the footsteps faded before I crept back up again as my frantic heart pounded violently against my ribcage, threatening to rip out of my chest any second.

The hallway was darker than it had been when I went downstairs and colder, too, for some reason, like someone had turned the temperature down within minutes and chilled the entire place on purpose. But it wasn’t just cold as one might think reading these words, but more like the chill of death as it sets in and turns the body stiff and icy to the touch.

I reached for my doorknob, inches from the safety of my room, when something breathed down my neck and broke me off. When I whipped around, my breath caught in my throat, my frantic eyes unable to focus, something compelled me to glance at Elena’s room at the time. Even to this day, I’m not sure what exactly made me do that, only it did.

A muffled scream rose beyond the cracked bedroom door, like someone gasping for air beneath a pillow pressed against their face, struggling to catch their breath but unable to fight off the force they were put under.

My hand on the doorknob trembled, but I could not move, not right away. It was as if some unseen force had crippled me and numbed all my senses. This strange numbness lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like several hours had passed when I finally snapped out of it.

I had barely turned, ready to run to Elena’s room, when a dark silhouette spread across the opposite wall, swelling larger and more menacing with each passing second. It was the same shadow I had seen through the basement door, and now it was in my sister’s bedroom, advancing into the hallway. Advancing towards… me.

Continue. 

11/9

Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash

Darkness engulfed the vicinity in the wake of the raging storm. Only when everything lay in ruins did the silence finally settle.

Innocent lost. Tissues of hanging, singed flesh, were scattered all about. Burns. Wherever you rested your indifferent eyes.

A pang of ache, a feeling of sympathy was too much for those doomed and at the mercy of the wicked. The heavens turned upside down, and in the blink of an eye, humanity lost. Gone. Was it ever there?

Seeking solace in a cartel of lovers. Blood-thirsty lovers. What’s the point of innocence when a ring of murderers seeks to destroy it? Food. Object. Sex. There’s no innocence in that. The disfigured limbs come alive: “You did it, you did it.”

Island of Secrets, you did it. Sucked the blood dry and took out the innocent. A prominent author? A respected comedian? A leader with a penis-shaped brain? A senile old man?

The cartel of murderers. The ring of sex trafficking murderers. The cartel of lovers.

The wicked who see the innocent with detached eyes, objectifying even the most vulnerable:

“What’s the fun in a child but tearing it apart, ripping it to pieces and sucking its blood dry? Innocent meant to die.”

You did it, you did it, you did it. One day, the tide will turn. The sky turn bright. The innocent seek vengeance. Blood will splatter. On your insides rotten.

This is not the end.

But it will end with your heads impaled in a cemetery of singed limbs, singing:

“I told you, I told you! Now we’ll tear your insides rotten apart. Then set it on fire.”

Abaddon, or the Collapse Within (aka. Asgerald Hill)

 1

The road to Asgerald Hill wound through the desolate countryside, veiled in morning mist and forever trapped in silence. Towering trees of varying sizes, some uprooted and others as old as the snow-capped mountains, loomed on either side of it. Truth be told, I had not expected the chill to settle in so early in the season, nor for the clouds to hang so low over the mountains, pressing down as though the sky itself wished to hide this godforsaken place.

I slowed the car as the gravel path gradually became uneven, the crunch beneath the tyres giving way to the hush of dew-covered earth. Not long afterwards, the denseness cleared, the rolls of mists perished, and the trees thinned – and there it stood again.

Time had not been kind to the guesthouse, nor had it tried to be. Its skeletal frame sagged and the once-vibrant paint I recalled so vividly from my childhood peeled in long, curling strips. Even the boarded-up windows blinked solemnly in the overcast light, as if they too had been lost to the passage of time, while ivy along the western flank pulsed in a sinister tune to the mournful cadence of the breeze.

But it was not the dilapidated exterior, nor the wretched memories threatening to consume me, that broke me and kept me rooted in place like a puppet pulled by invisible strings. What truly consumed me was flower, the hauntingly beautiful rose before me. There, nestled beneath the low wall that marked the boundary of the garden, it bloomed hauntingly. It should not have survived the jaws of winter, least of all in this infertile soil.

I stepped out of the car, advancing towards it as if my feet had a mind of their own. It drew me in, pulled me closer as if it once were my companion in the darkness, the only beacon helping me out from within the abyss. I crouched, close enough to feel its sorrow deep in the marrow of my bones and took a deep breath in, feeling the crisp air stir every fibre of my being. A tightness wrapped itself around me at that moment, a sudden ache blooming in my chest and catching me off-guard. I dared not touch it, for reasons I could not understand, but something about it betrayed a past encounter – and that thought alone made me recoil.

In a way, the rose seemed to know me. It had witnessed my birth and childhood, seen every part of my existence, even those I could no longer recall. But not only that. Its drooping petals mocked my resolve, telling me I had no business here. Whatever I had forgotten of the past should remain forgotten it whispered, that the secrets of this place were too great for my mind to bear.

But I did not heed its warning. I had come here to find the truth, to find the peace I had never known. The never-ending nightmares had already taken their toll, leaving me unable to discern reality from imagination. What if those nightmares were fragments of the past, clawing their way back? The only way to stop them was to face my demons, cruel or dangerous as they might be! I had been sick for far too long, afflicted and broken. I deserved peace of mind, the ability to fall asleep without fear! I was… only human, skin and bones. Why must I endure this pain when the solution lay before me?

I rose back to my feet and let my gaze settle on the goodly structure. Not even a single warmth shone through at that moment, not even the false comfort of nostalgia. The only thing I felt was a shiver shooting up my spine and an innate dread of someone – or something – watching me from the other side.

The wind picked up, rustling the dry blades of grass like whispers in an unfamiliar tongue. My gaze lingered on the house’s entrance still, where the warped gate swung subtly to the cadence, singing a most macabre and wretched tune. Right then, without warning, a memory pressed against the edge of my mind and a voice called me by a name I no longer used. I blinked it all away; I had to, for my own sanity. It was too soon, too soon for those memories to resurface.

I walked the path towards the garden wall, each step heavy and suffocatingly loud in the stillness. The flowerbeds were overrun, yet there was a strange symmetry to the disarray, with the hedgerows curved in gentle arcs and the gravel holding the imprint of old footsteps. The shed stood to the side, its roof barely holding under years of rain and neglect; the door had collapsed inwards, exposing a dark hollow, filled with tools too rusted to identify.

My feet moved before my thoughts caught up; I crossed the garden one step at a time, the weight of the air deepening with each laboured breath. The guesthouse loomed closer still, its breathless silence wrapping around me like an old friend. I stopped at the porch and the wind stilled. I looked back once more, back at the rose, its petals now trembling as if bracing for something inevitable, telling me to not to take another step.

But I did not listen, why would I?

The rotting floorboards groaned beneath my weight, and the stench of damp, decaying wood filled my lungs, making them burn and sting, and the door gave way under my light touch, as if it had anticipated my visit all along.

The first thing that arrested me was the floating dust that had fought its way through the boarded windows, and the way the light seemed to arch unnaturally, leaving the corners especially dark and the strands of light unusually bright. Then I felt it deep inside: this was no welcome, no blessing. Every shadow, every speck of dust, every string of light was a witness to the past, or rather, my past.

It would be a lie to say I did not wish to return to my car, that I did not fear what awaited me in that choking silence, but curiosity and the need for closure weighed heavier still, and so I stepped through the doorway, and the once-swinging door came to a slow stop, cloaking the entire guesthouse in pitch darkness.

Dysphoria

Photo by Max Griss on Unsplash

I knew I liked boys in a different way than I did girls when I was about eight years old. Being raised in the late 90s, however, has not been easy. 

People had prejudices against my kind, they still have to a certain extent today, but it wasn’t like I could control the way my mind and body worked.

I prayed for untold nights – weeping – asking God to save me from this disease, but he didn’t. I was beyond salvation.

My desires grew with every passing year, and I considered suicide at one point in my early adolescence. Why was I like this? It wasn’t natural, I wasn’t supposed to like men.

But I did. I did… and I wished I didn’t.

 When I was forced to come out back in middle school, life turned from bad to worse really quickly. There was this guy I liked, his name was Shaun, and he was the only one who ever spoke to me at school.

Despite being a male, I was too feminine and weak, even more so than the girls in our batch. I thought Shaun was a real friend, someone I could confide in and tell my deepest secrets to, and so I did.

We were sitting at the rooftop of our school, chatting and having fun, when Shaun asked if I liked guys. I never made it obvious to him, or anyone for that matter, but I guess he could see through me.

Although I hesitated, I still told him the truth, and then he… he asked if I wanted to kiss him. And again, I said yes. I shouldn’t have. It was the biggest mistake I ever made.

The next day at school, everyone knew I was gay. The boys were especially harsh on me for this; they humiliated me in ways no kid should ever be subjected to and turned me into this miserable young man I now was. 

But I didn’t choose this, did I? Did those people really think I wanted to be what I was?

I hated myself. I hated every inch of my body. I hated this world, this society that deemed me a deranged and perverted sodomite.

But I didn’t choose this… It chose me. If I had the opportunity to get rid of this part of me – this part that made me so miserable – I wouldn’t hesitate for a second.

If only I had been born as a woman, then none of the things I’m about to tell would’ve happened. 

I shut my eyes momentarily and sighed from where I was crouching, my slender fingers running along the sharp blade in my hand.

When I opened my eyes, an older version of my first love stared back at me with darting eyes. His soft, kissable lips were taped, his cold, shaking limbs tethered and his body naked and vulnerable. I caressed him as a tear slid down his high cheekbones.

“It’ll be over soon, love…”

Even though I couldn’t discern what he was saying, I knew he pleaded with me to save him, to release him. I cocked my head. He looked so helpless, like a lamb at the mercy of a wolf, repeatedly begging me not to hurt him.

I wasn’t trying to hurt him; I loved him. Letting my eyes wander to his exposed abdomen, the sharp knife cut the tip of my finger by accident, the blood hit the wet ground between us as a smile crept on my made-up face. 

“Do you know what it feels like to be born like this? To feel like you don’t belong, that you don’t fit anywhere? I bet you don’t. If you did, would you have done what you did to me, Shaun?” 

His body convulsed as I reached out for his lower half, my rough hands tightening around him with deliberate force. 

“I’ll show you what it feels like… to be miserable, to feel like you’ve been born in the wrong body.”

I cut into his foreskin, taking my time skinning it, before slicing his penis off. 

“Soon, the two of us, we’ll be equal. You’ll love your new look. Shaun, my love, I’ll make a woman out of you.”

Although he put up a fight at first, he soon turned stiff and gave up all attempts to save his penis. As the warm blood pooled beneath us, growing bigger as I neared the end of his new beginning, he stifled the screams, trying to escape. 

I paused, inches from cutting off what remained of his penis, and lifted my eyes. His bloodshot, delirious eyes brimmed with tears. He was beautiful, and he was mine. 

“Do you know what? I’m gonna kill you after this, Shaun. I don’t want you to suffer humiliation like I did. Don’t want to create another me – another monster. I’ll show you mercy. Then I’ll turn myself in—what? I can’t hear you—hold on, I’ll take it off.”

“Just- just kill me, please! Kill me—”

I put the duct tape back on.

“I’m not a saint, you know. Why would I let you off the hook so easily? You reap what you sow, Shaun. That’s how this world is and this is how it’ll be, I don’t know, until Judgement day? If you believe in that sort of thing. So don’t look at me like that. You have to pay for your sins.”

I cut off his erect penis and placed it to the side. This time, Shaun screamed his head off and kicked around to be set free from the soaring pain. I wiped off the splattering of blood with the back of my arm; it wasn’t over just yet.

I sliced into him, crafting a neat hole, as the blood gushed out from all openings. When I was done, he had long since passed out and stopped breathing. A bitter grin curled up on my lips.

“So cruel… to just die on me like this. We didn’t even get to the fun part yet.”

I wiped the clotted blood on my shirt and picked up a blond wig from the built-in wardrobe in the basement. The size was a tad small, but I forced it down until it fit his square face. I posed him for the camera and snapped a picture. So pretty, just my type. 

I had always wanted to be a photographer. But my dreams were short-lived. Wherever I went, I was known as this feminine guy, who liked other men, derided like no other for something I had no control over. Like in a recurrent nightmare, there was no escape from this. 

Smiling bitterly, I kissed his cold forehead and lay my head on his stiff chest. The absence of his beating heart aroused me. I picked up his lifeless hand, and let the coldness embrace my lower half.

I lied to him; I wasn’t going to turn myself in. I was going to die in his arms now that we were both equals. If only I was a woman… then maybe none of this would’ve happened…

Another smile crossed on my hardened face as I was coming. The thought of the two of us on a cloudless morning out in the meadow somewhere far away from everything and everyone lingered in my mind.

Just the two of us, there, laying side by side, madly in love and free. I flew my eyes open and moaned.

If only I were a woman…

Bastard’s Lullaby

Photo by Bernd 📷 Dittrich on Unsplash

The single-lane road stretched far ahead in the distance. A sombre lullaby reverberated throughout the settlement at the very end of it.

As the arcane whispers picked up the pace, the high winds whistled through the uprooted belt of trees on the left side of the narrow road.

I peered through the rear-view mirror. Steve Kaplan. New York Times bestselling author aka. Piece of Shit. I blasted the stereo. That good-for-nothing screamed his head off in the backseat. 

Shit! The blood was going to splatter all over the place at this rate. I just renewed the covers, you son of—”Emergency alert! This programme is disrupted by the FBI. Attention! All roads blocked—”

“Fuck!” I hit reverse as the police sirens blared. Those pieces of shit sure keep each other’s back, huh!? I smirked as I noticed how quiet it became all of a sudden and stopped the car. 

“You think this is it, Stevie? That they’ve come to save your ass?”

I looked over my shoulder.

“Stevie… What? You’re crying like a little girl? How cute. Did you cry like that too when you—” I broke off and looked at the outside mirror. “Look, your friends are here! Hey, why don’t we take a photo to honour this moment? I’ll call it: ‘Crying bastard’. The folder? Let’s call it: ‘What makes me horny 101’. Oh, you don’t like that? You’d rather call it ‘What makes me horny, 0-1’? Nah? That doesn’t do it for ya? You like your girls in the womb, huh? Is that—”

“GET OUT OF THE FUCKING CAR! RIGHT NOW!”

I ducked as a bullet almost smashed my brain into the moulded carpet. When the shooting came to a halt, I started the engine and drove into the cornfield to my right. 

“Hey, you know that list? The one with your name on it? It wasn’t me. Fuck! You think I wouldn’t admit to it if I had leaked it!? I’d put my name all over it, Stevie! But it wasn’t me, okay? 

“Seems like I’m not the only one who thinks you’re a sick bastard. Oh, come on! Still crying, are we? You enjoyed yourself for this long, Stevie, uninterrupted – uninterrupted – for 30 fucking years! 30 years! You should’ve seen this coming, man!”

“STOP THE CAR—”

I put the car in reverse, flooring it as I sped back in the same direction I came, before continuing down the road towards my destination. 

“Who- who are you? Where are you taking me? If it’s money you want, I’ll pay it, whatever you want – anything you want!”

I looked through the rear-view mirror. When did that piece of shit spit out the napkins? Huh? A grin curled up on my lips as I noticed he had swallowed them.

“Nothing’s disgusting when you’re the epitome of it, huh?”

“Where- where are you taking me? Please, I have a family—”

“Stevie, my man. Look outside! You know this place.”

With his hands tied behind him, he managed to take a glimpse out of the car window. 

“You like what you see? Come on, I know you do, Stevie. Now, you tell me, where are we?” 

“This- this is—how do you know? Who- who sent you?”

“Who? More like what.”

“W- what?”

I stopped the car. The human garbage lurched forward and rolled down from the backseat. With the sombre lullaby beating to the cadence of my heartbeat, I stepped out of the car and then yanked Steve out.

As I dragged his bloodied face on the hard ground, the sirens finally caught up to us. His breathing became irregular – shallow. On the verge of life and death.

I broke off as the door locked behind us. Trying to leave already you piece of shit? Not so fast. I smashed his brain out on the concrete floor before the grand finale.

“Look at you, so much better. You should try this look sometime.”

“What… what…”

“Folder 2, video 1: ‘Lucy’s final breath’.”

“Huh…?”

“You wrote about it in your book, Goddamnit! Wait, what did you call it, again? You know, the time that woman interviewed—oh, okay, here it goes: ‘It just came to me one day. Imagine what kind of life I lived for something like that to just… come to me.’ Does that ring a bell, bastard?”

“On… only fiction, I…”

“Come on. It’s just the two of us here. Tell the truth.”

“It’s… it’s not… I’m…”

I smirked, “You fucking shit… Still trying to protect your image, huh? The good ol’ family guy, the successful author with a goddamn conscience. But you’re not fooling me, Stevie. ‘Cause I know, man. You know I do.”

“No… no, I—”

I smashed his head on the concrete.

“Listen carefully, fucker. I don’t like games. And shit like you? I like you less. You get on my nerves, I’ll slit you until you come.”

A smile crept on his lips even before I finished my sentence. Smiling, are we? I pulled out a knife and stabbed his cheek, slashing it from the middle to the corner of his mouth. 

“My- my cheek—you psychopath! I’m going to kill you! I’m going to fucking kill you!”

I stood up and watched as he tried to crawl towards me. Pathetic bastard. I’m not the one who did all those things, was it?

I shifted my gaze to the front door as a loud bang reverberated through the dilapidated building. Steve came to a standstill, his eyes wide with hope as crawled towards the door with all his might this time.

His bloody smile was pretty, even hopeful, from this angle. Wait, should I just let him have his moment?

“You can do it, Stevie! Come on! Show them who’s the psychopath!”

 The banging stopped. I peered out from the window as the police gathered in the front garden. It didn’t take long before the FBI showed up, too. A line of bastards…

“I’mma give you one more chance, Stevie. You gotta listen to me this time, man. It’s pretty easy if you just do what I say.”

“W- what do you want?”

I crouched, “Now we’re talking.”

“What- what do you want from me?”

“Leak it.”

“W- what—”

“I’m talking ‘bout the video, ‘Lucy’s final breath’. Leak it. On your website and social media.”

“No. No, I- I can’t—”

“In return, I’ll spare you. Your face isn’t even in it, is it? We’ll catch the big fish. The public will celebrate you as a hero. Don’t you want that? And all that talk about your name on the list, it’ll die down.”

“And- and what do you… do you get out of this?”

“What do I get out of this? Nothing.”

“Then… then why?”

I stood up, “On the count of three. 1… 2… Stevie, make the right call now… 3—”

“I’ll do—”

He fell backwards, a gunshot right through his skull. A perfect shot. I put away the handgun as the commotion outside reached new heights.

“Too late, man. Better luck next time. Now, smile. *click* You’re gonna be famous.”

In the Walls

Photo by Pascal Meier on Unsplash

It’s only been a few weeks since I moved to this place. I’m already regretting it. The panelled walls are talking to me.

I should’ve listened to my sister and given this place up for sale. It’s in the middle of nowhere, in a dilapidated condition, and far from civilisation.

I thought I could fix up the shack and earn a profit on the margin. But things have been really odd these few days. It started with the tapping. I ignored the strange din at first. I tried to. I really did.

I worked my fingers to the bone trying to make this place work. My debt kept piling up. I was too deep into the mud to just succumb to my inane fears and make a break for it.

Then again, how could I know what awaited me? I was only human, made of dirt and composed of skin and bones. 

A hole in the peeling wall bothered me. It wasn’t there when I first got here. It gradually grew bigger. A perfect circle.

It would be a lie if I said I didn’t consider tearing down the whole thing. But I couldn’t. I tried, though. But whenever I made up my mind, something beyond the wall fixed its eyes on me. Through that hole. That massive black hole that beckoned me to challenge it. 

The whispers, however, were what really got to me. Man, that shit broke me! How do I put this without sounding crazy? Whatever it was, on the other side of the wall, it knew me.

I had these dreams, nightmares if you will, about these- these people I had never met before. They kept whispering the same thing over and over again like a broken record: ‘We come from the walls.’

My sister wouldn’t pick up her phone. I sent a message three days ago. I told her to pick me up, that I was scared to death and about to lose my damn mind.

Something about this place was off. It was as if I was cut off from the rest of the world and trapped in another dimension far from home and everything familiar.

I’ve been staring at the phone screen for hours, waiting tirelessly and rocking back and forth like a distressed child. The hole kept getting bigger. The whispers were louder now. I stopped sleeping. Hell, did I even breathe? 

Eyes. Several of them. Packed into that freaking hole! Those people, they talked with their eyes. They were trapped behind the crumbling walls and they watched my every move. 

I shouldn’t have come here. They were coming for me. I just knew it, I… Oh, god! I promised I’d buy Denise that doll on her sixth birthday and now I was—what were they gonna tell her? I recoiled and fixed my bloodshot eyes on the deepening hole.

Crawling backwards in a state of panic, towards the locked front door, a decaying hand stretched out from within the hole.

I clutched to the door and shut my eyes with a grimace, convulsing in place. The- the people in the walls escaped! I- I'm going to die! I'm going to die…? No! Oh, god, no! I don’t want to die here! I don’t—oh, god, please, I…

Hundreds of hands ripped my face off. 

When I flew my eyes open, the mouldering hands and the blinking eyes enclosed me from all directions. Profound darkness surrounded me. A single string of light shone through the narrowing hole. In the walls.