The Devil's Playground, Vol. 4: 20 Tales of Terror to Keep You Up at Night
Date: 2024-06-30 04:00:00+00:00
Description: Welcome to volume four of The Devil's Playground, a damning collection of horror stories for only the most desensitized of deviants.In these 20 tales of dread, you will experience a host of horrors that leap from the pages to turn your life into a waking nightmare. There are killers who collect corpses, demented families living on farms, disturbed children with homicidal tendencies, and bloodthirsty cannibals stealing limbs for food. Told with a mixture of horror, humor, terror, and trepidation, these twenty stories may leave a crack in what you call reality. So beware. Once you step foot on t
Publisher: Five Brothers Publishing

The Devil’s Playground, Vol. 4

20 Tales of Terror to Keep You Up At Night

Matthew Doggett

Copyright © 2024 by Matthew Doggett

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this book to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

This book was written entirely by a human. No generative AI was used in the creation of this novel.

Cover design by James at GoOnWrite.com

Contents

Dedication

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A Note From the Author

1. The Butcher

2. The Klepto Killers

3. Cold Feet, Warm Blood

4. Careful Where You Glamp

5. Adopting Evil

6. The Murder Tapes

7. The Horror I Just Witnessed Will Change the World

8. Dark Work on the Dark Web

9. The Poker

10. The Xbox Killer

11. The Babysitting Job to Die For

12. We Stopped at the Wrong Diner in the Middle of Nowhere

13. Last Words

14. The Procedure

15. Slugged

16. 21st Century Psycho

17. The Accident

18. Camp Clear Lake

19. I Don’t Feel Sorry for What I’ve Done

20. The Commute from Hell

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Also By Matthew Doggett

About the author

This one is for all those members of my Advanced Reader Team who read and review my new stuff. You guys help me out so much, it’s impossible to overstate how important you are for a successful book launch. I can keep writing in large part because of your support.

You know who you are.

Thank you very much.

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Head over to MatthewDoggettAuthor.com/Horror to get an eBook of five free horror stories when you sign up for my face-meltingly awesome email list!

You’ll get freebies, deals, and exclusive content by being a subscriber. And your face won’t melt unless you want it to — promise!

A Note From the Author

The stories in this book were originally written for the Dr. NoSleep podcast. If you’ve listened to that horror podcast, you’ve probably heard these stories. Many of them also aired on the Dr. NoSleep YouTube channel, accompanied by animations. I have made minor changes where necessary to enhance the reading experience.

This is also where I warn you: These stories contain cursing, gore, torture, and graphic depictions of violence.

Enjoy :)

The Butcher

I’m just finishing up my work when I hear the vibrational hum of the garage door opening below the master bedroom. I whip my head up, looking at the windows that face the street. The blinds are drawn, but I see the bright flash of headlights around their edges. Someone’s pulling into the driveway.

Despite all my years doing this work, panic still threatens to overtake my reasoning mind. Panic never helps anything. But the woman isn’t supposed to be home yet. Not for another hour.

Stay calm, I tell myself. Pack up and get out and stay calm.

I turn my attention back to the task at hand, thankful that I’m nearly done already. If she’d come home five minutes earlier, I would’ve had to abandon the payment. And my client wouldn’t have been happy about that.

With no time to do anything else, I pull my bloody gloves off and toss them down next to the payment. Then I wrap up the payment and stick it in my special backpack. I don’t have time to clean the tools, so I put them back in their pouch, still bloody.

Below me, in the garage, a car door shuts.

After stuffing my tools into the front pocket of my backpack, I pull my mask down over my head. Then I pull on a fresh pair of gloves and retrieve my suppressed pistol from where I set it at the foot of the bed.

The door from the garage opens downstairs, and I hear footsteps on tile. I pull my backpack on and move out of the master bedroom as quietly as I can. The floor creaks under my weight.

“Babe?” the woman calls from downstairs. “You still awake?”

I move down the hall toward the stairs. A light over the stairwell comes on, and I duck into the nearest doorway, which belongs to a home office. I ease the door almost closed, leaving a crack of about three inches.

Then I notice the clock on the wall. It’s forty-five minutes later than I thought. How? How the hell did I lose forty-five minutes?

“I had to get out of there,” the woman says. “Stacy was driving me nuts. She never stops talking about her kids. And it’s always the same stories, over and over again. God. This is why I don’t want kids.”

The woman’s voice grows louder as she comes up the stairs.

I position myself behind the door, pointing my pistol at the flimsy wood. I don’t want to have to kill this woman — she didn’t do anything wrong. She doesn’t owe my client anything. Not like her husband does — or did, now that I’ve collected payment. But if it comes down to it, I’ll have no choice but to kill her.

She slows as she comes to the home office doorway. Maybe she’s not used to seeing the door partway closed. Maybe it’s always open. Or maybe she senses me here, behind the door. One thing I’ve learned in all my years working this job is that people can sense when danger is nearby. Most of them are pretty bad at recognizing that sense for what it is, but not all of them.

I hear her stop in the hallway. “Babe?”

I slip my finger into the trigger guard. And wait. If the door moves, I’ll have no choice but to shoot.

A long moment passes.

There’s a creak as the woman moves down the hallway, away from me, toward the master bedroom.

When I’m sure she’s several feet away, I open the door and peer out, seeing her back. She turns into the master bedroom as I slip out of the office and head down the stairs.

As soon as I reach the first floor, a scream pierces the previously quiet house.

I slip out the back door, and the woman’s screams are dampened slightly. As I move toward the back fence, I put my gun away. By the time I jump the fence and traverse the neighbor’s yard, the screams are barely audible at all.

My vehicle, a late-model minivan, sits just where I left it, parked on the street in the middle-class neighborhood.

I put my backpack in the cargo area, get in, and start the engine.

I don’t hear sirens until I’m a mile away from the house.

***

The meeting place is outside a construction site on the south side of the city. Since it’s the middle of the night, the site is empty. I pull up in my other car, a 2010 Honda sedan. As always, I have false plates on the car. I’ll use it for two more meetings before I sell it and get another sedan of a different year and a different model.

I can see that my client is already here, parked outside the locked fence where the skeleton of a building sticks out of the ground, begging to be made complete with flesh and a purpose.

I already have my mask on. It’s not like the simple ski mask I wear on my jobs. It’s a realistic silicone mask of an old man with gray hair and a gray mustache. The kind made by visual effects people in Hollywood.

My client is wearing a similarly realistic mask, but his is of a bald Black man. I know he’s white because I’ve seen his hands, but otherwise I have no idea what he looks like. And I don’t want to know. Just like I don’t want him to know what I look like.

I pull up next to his truck, pop the trunk, and get out.

“Close one?” he asks.

“How’d you know?” I say, pulling the box out of the trunk.

“Apparently the guy’s wife glanced out the window and saw someone hopping her back fence. Someone dressed in black and wearing a backpack.”

“She came home an hour early,” I lie, not wanting to admit I lost track of time. “Couldn’t be helped.” I step over and put the box on his open tailgate.

He shrugs. “Just afraid you’re losing your touch.”

I look into his eyes. They’re brown and carry the weight of a challenge.

“If you’re not happy with my work, just say so. I’m ready to terminate this relationship. I’ll survive. I always do.” It’s a bluff, but one I’m willing to make after the night I’ve had.

My client smiles, the lips of his mask moving slightly upward with the motion. “No need. These things happen. Just … this kind of work gets to people after a while. I’ve seen it happen. Some people can only take it for so long.”

“I’ll be sure and let you know when it’s getting to me,” I say.

“That’s just the thing. Most people don’t realize it until it’s too late. And then they crash and burn. Or they get caught.”

I shrug. “That’s why we take precautions. I’ve never seen your face. I don’t know your name. All I know is that your money spends. Speaking of which …”

My client looks into my eyes for a long moment before reaching into a back pocket and pulling out an envelope. He hands it to me.

I pocket it and turn back to my car, shutting the trunk. As I’m about to get into the driver’s seat, my client says, “I’ll have another one for you next Friday.”

“I’ll be ready.” I get into the car and drive off.

***

My steak sizzles on the grill on my back porch. Near the steak is a line of hotdogs for the kids.

I glance over the grill to see the kids playing in the pool, laughing and splashing each other. My wife sits reading a book on a lounge chair next to the pool — but far enough away that she doesn’t get splashed.

The smell of cooking meat makes me nauseous for a moment. I force the feeling down and take another swig of my beer.

The table on the porch behind me is ready with condiments and plates and drinks. I shout for my kids to get out and dry off. It’s almost time to eat.

My wife starts rallying our three children — two boys and a girl — out of the pool. They come reluctantly.

Soon, we’re all sitting down to eat.

As I cut into my steak, bile creeps up my throat. I have to swallow it down. I push the steak aside, no longer hungry at all. My wife looks at me from across the table, one eyebrow raised. She doesn’t know what I do for a living. All she knows is that it’s not on the up and up. We have an agreement. Bless her heart, she doesn’t ask questions. As long as I keep bringing the money home.

I think about what my client said two nights ago. About how people don’t realize that the work gets to them until it’s too late.

After finishing off my beer, I shake my head. No, I tell myself. No way. I’m good at what I do. It doesn’t bother me. Never has. Maybe I’m coming down with something. A stomach bug.

I glance at the steak again, thinking of the feel of the rare meat in my mouth. I jump up from my seat and step to the side of the porch before the vomit comes up.

“Are you okay, Daddy?” my daughter asks.

I can sense my whole family looking at me as I spit stringy ropes of saliva into the grass. “I’m okay,” I say. “Just a little sick. Eat your lunch.”

My wife steps up beside me and rubs my back. “What’s going on?” she whispers. “You sick?”

“I’m fine,” I say. “Too much beer today.”

I know she doesn’t believe me. Probably because I don’t believe it myself.

***

The grift is simple. Disturbingly so, really.

See, most people think that you can’t be tracked on the dark web. But that’s not true. Sure, it’s hard to track people — to see what they’re doing on those parts of the internet that aren’t accessible by traditional means. It’s hard, but it’s not impossible.

And my client knows how to do it.

The people he targets are those who go onto the dark web to get their kicks. And I’m not just talking about buying drugs or ordering prostitutes.

The people he targets are those who visit sites that specialize in disturbing pictures of minors or have videos of people being tortured and killed. Some of these people visit sites that allow their users to vote in real-time on what happens to the poor bastard who’s being tortured.

Then my client hacks their computers and collects information on them. Once he has enough info, he blackmails these people, threatening to release their dirty secrets unless they pay him.

Most of them pay up. But those who don’t get a visit from me.

And I collect payment from them no matter what.

But it seems I’m losing my touch. And I’m afraid I’m going to have to do something drastic to be able to keep doing my job.

I can’t lose a step. I can’t make mistakes. I have to act with surgical precision. Otherwise, I’ll be locked up or killed, leaving my family to fend for themselves.

I can’t have that.

I won’t let it happen.

But as I’m working on the latest job, I find that I’ve lost time again. I’m in the man’s bedroom, and the clock on his bedside table reads 9:32. Somehow, I’ve let half an hour slip by. I should’ve been out of the house by now, payment snugly in my backpack.

And although this guy doesn’t have a wife or kids or a live-in girlfriend, he does have associates that he was supposed to meet at nine o’clock. His are the kind of associates who will come calling to see what’s up.

The kind of associates who carry guns all the time. And who won’t hesitate to shoot an intruder.

Turning back to the task at hand, I force myself to focus. I’ve made it most of the way through the man’s lower left leg. I don’t have to worry about him waking up — the drugs I gave him will last for another hour at least. But that’s not what I’m worried about.

I need to be done and gone in the next five minutes.

The leg comes off, and I leave the tourniquet where it is above his knee, staunching the flow of blood. I’m not trying to kill him. I just want to collect payment.

Granted, some of the targets die from blood loss if they don’t wake up to call 911 or someone doesn’t discover them. But I’m not about to shed tears over pedophiles and psychopaths.

I transfer the severed lower leg off the bloody plastic sheeting on the bed and onto a clean sheet of plastic on the floor. As I put the leg down, I hear a shout from outside.

“Yo, Leroy! Where the fuck are you?” a man shouts.

“Answer your goddamn phone!” another man calls.

The doorbell dings repeatedly and there’s loud knocking. “Leroy!”

I finish wrapping the leg in plastic and then put it in my backpack, which is also a cooler with dry ice in it to keep the meat fresh.

Maybe they don’t have a key, I think. Just as soon as I finish the thought, I hear the front door open.

I put the bone saw and my other tools, still bloody, in their pouch. Then I put the pouch in my backpack. I do the same with my bloody gloves. I’ll just have to get another new backpack. There’s no time.

“Leroy, your car’s outside; I know you’re here,” one of the men from downstairs shouts. “What the hell are you doing?”

I zip up my backpack and pull out my silenced pistol, setting it aside while I pull the straps over my shoulders.

The house I’m in is a McMansion, and I’m on the second floor in the master bedroom. I can hear the two guys walking around downstairs, their voices low now. Maybe they sense something’s wrong.

After pulling my ski mask back on, I creep out into the hall. I’m hoping to do the same thing I did with the last job. Hide and wait for them to pass, then make my escape.

I choose a door and step into a room that’s empty except for a huge TV affixed to the wall and a large, lavish couch.

I close the door to a crack, step back a couple of feet, and aim my pistol at the door, listening. It doesn’t take the men long to finish searching downstairs and start upstairs. They’re silent now. They know something’s wrong.

“Stay here,” one of them says when they reach the top of the stairs.

Shit.

I turn and look at the two windows in the room. They look out over a sheer drop to hedges below. Thinking it’s my best way out, I slowly unlock and slide one open before a shout comes from down the hall.

“Jesus Christ, they took his leg!”

“What?!” the guy outside my room calls.

“Search the house!” the other man shouts.

The screen has to be popped out for me to get out the window, and there’s no way to do it quietly. I push the screen out, wincing at the noise it makes.

Then I stick the gun into my back waistband before I climb out the window. I’m lowering myself down when the door to the room bursts open. A man wearing black slacks and a maroon silk shirt barges in, lifting his gun as he sees me.

I drop just before he fires, landing awkwardly in the bushes below. I quickly grab my gun and point it up at the window. As soon as the guy pokes his head out, I fire, purposely hitting the side of the window frame and making him duck his head back in.

Knowing I’ve bought myself some time, I extricate myself from the bushes and walk backward through the yard, firing twice more at the open window when the guy tries to get a bead on me.

As I make it to the gate that leads to the paved alley behind the house, I hear the guy inside yelling about where I am and where I’m going. I back through the gate and start to run, suddenly noticing that my left ankle is messed up. I must’ve twisted it when I landed in the bushes. Thanks to the adrenaline, I haven’t felt it until now.

Ignoring the pain, I limp-run down the alley and turn right at the exit, heading for my van parked on the parallel street.

Reaching the van, I jump in the driver’s seat, tossing my backpack into the seat next to me and keeping my gun handy. I start the engine and hit the gas. Before I’ve made it ten yards, an SUV comes screaming around the corner behind me, rocking on its struts.

I take a left out of the neighborhood, the SUV gaining on me. A glance in my side mirror shows me a man hanging out the passenger window, gun in hand. I duck just as he fires. The van’s window shatters with the bullet’s impact.

Sticking my gun out the window, I fire wildly at the oncoming SUV. And I get lucky. A couple of my shots hit the vehicle’s windshield and the SUV swerves. It jumps the curb and smashes into a light pole doing nearly eighty miles an hour. The crash causes the SUV to flip, and the guy hanging out the window flies out and smacks the pavement like a ragdoll.

“Jesus,” I say, looking in the rearview mirror as the scene of the crash fades into the darkness behind me. “Too close. Too damn close.”

***

“You’re right,” I say to my client two hours later. “I think I’m losing it. I can’t go on like this. I’ll either end up dead or in jail.” I’ve calmed down considerably, but I’m still pretty jittery.

“So what?” my client asks. “You’re quitting?”

“No,” I say hesitantly, looking at my client’s eyes, nestled in his realistic mask. This time, he’s wearing a mask of a middle-aged white man with a beard and thin brown hair. I’m wearing a mask of a fat bald white man.

We’re at the back of a truck stop, well away from the diesel trucks and passenger vehicles gassing up off the highway in these late-night hours.

“What are you saying?” my client asks.

“I’m saying that I think I have a way to get my head right again.”

“I’m all ears,” he says.

I tell him what I’m thinking. It takes a few minutes. But when I’m done, he considers it for a long moment before nodding. “Okay,” he says. “If you think it’ll help, I’m fine with it.”

“Great,” I say. “That’s great. I’ll sort it out right now.”

***

I force myself to get out of bed at eight the next morning. Saturday. I can hear my wife and kids downstairs in the kitchen, and I smell sausage cooking. It’s a sickening smell.

I get dressed in my pajamas and limp down for some quality time with my family. I’m lucky to be alive. I can’t imagine leaving my family to fend for themselves. Sure, I’ve put money away, but it will only be enough to last them a couple of years, max.

I have a life insurance policy, but it won’t pay out if I get killed during the commission of a crime.

It’s not like I’m good at anything else. Nothing that will pay what I earn now.

So it’s not like I have a choice. I have to find a way to keep doing my job. Even if that way sounds like the most repulsive thing in the world to me.

My wife and three children sit at the dining room table, their plates loaded with meat and scrambled eggs.

“Oh, did we wake you?” my wife asks. “I wanted to let you sleep.”

“No,” I say, smiling at her. “You didn’t wake me.” I step over and grab the plate left out for me. The notion of eating meat sounds awful, but the eggs look good.

As I step over to the stove to serve myself some eggs, my eyes land on an empty Ziplock bag sitting in the sink. My mouth falling open, I set the plate down absently and grab the bag out of the sink to inspect it. There’s smudged writing on the front of it in marker. So smudged you can’t tell what it says anymore.

Empty bag still in hand, I rush over to the freezer and yank it open, getting down to my knees to look at the very bottom shelf, where I stuck the bag of human thigh meat I brought home last night.

It’s gone. I’m holding the bag in my hand. I wrote “Do not eat” on it, but it must’ve smudged when I stuck it in the freezer.

I get to my feet and turn to face my family. I watch as my youngest son sticks a forkful of meat into his mouth, chewing happily.

My daughter is already almost finished with hers.

My wife looks at me strangely. “Were you saving that meat?” she asks. “I’m sorry. The kids were craving sausage this morning and that was all we had.”

I drop the bag to the floor. My plan to get over whatever work blockage I’m experiencing was to eat some of the meat. I wanted to prove to myself that it was just meat, like pork or beef or venison. To prove to myself that I could face my fear. That the meat I took off people — the meat that my client sold via the dark web — was nothing more than an incredibly rare delicacy.

But I never meant for my family to eat any of it. Never in a million years.

Swallowing hard, I turn back and grab my plate with a shaking hand. I load up the rest of the eggs and meat.

Trying my best to smile, I join my family at the table.

My kids chat as they finish eating, excited for a fun Saturday.

I gather up a mound of meat on my fork and bring it to my mouth, hand shaking badly.

I choke back a gag as the protein hits my tongue. I extract the fork and chew. It tastes like … veal.

I swallow and go for another bite. This time, I don’t gag.

Meat, I think to myself with excitement. It’s just meat.

“Are you okay?” my wife asks. “You looked ill for a minute there. Now you look … content.”

I finish chewing and swallow my bit of human thigh. Then I sit back and look at my wife. “I’m fine,” I say with a smile.

And I mean it.

The Klepto Killers

I guided the steering wheel to the right, skirting the white line that shone under my SUV’s headlights.

My left leg bounced as if on its own, my bladder screaming for release. I’d chugged a big Rockstar, not to mention the water I’d been sipping on all evening, trying to get rid of the last remnants of my hangover.

It was the kind of hangover that could drive a man to quit drinking for good. Or at least until the memory of the gut-puckering, tongue-fuzzing, bowel-rumbling experience was a distant memory.

But as I pulled into the rest stop, slowing down from 80 miles per hour to 15, I was living the hell that all problem drinkers face. I was right smack in the middle of it, bleary-eyed and hang dogged.

And all I could think about was having another drink to take the edge off.

Stupid or ingenious? I couldn’t tell. Not really. I wasn’t thinking straight.

I pulled into a space in the rest stop parking lot. Across the way, separated by two low brick buildings that housed the bathrooms, I could see several semis parked in the truck area. Their running lights were on against the dark.

But there were only two other cars on my side of the rest stop: an old Trans-Am with a black trash bag taped over the clearly broken passenger side window, and a listing blue-and-silver farm truck with rust spots on the body.

I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised to find that both the Trans-Am and the Chevy truck were no longer running and had been parked at this rest area for days or weeks, abandoned by their feckless owners.

I certainly didn’t see anyone else around.

Not that I was looking hard. As soon as my Expedition came to a stop, I slammed the thing into Park and jumped out into the cloying desert night, hustling to the restroom like I was crossing the finish line in the 400-meter dash.

The day’s heat hadn’t yet dissipated, and I felt sweat sprout up on my skin before I’d even taken four steps. This trend continued when I reached the swampy bathroom. And as I emptied my bladder, I found that I was releasing an almost equal amount of liquid from my body through my sweat glands.

This was why I was heading east, out of this spiky, unforgiving desert. One reason, anyway. The other reason had to do with a certain thing I’d done when I was drunk. A certain thing I didn’t want to think about.

As sweet relief drained my anxiety, I pushed these unpleasant thoughts aside and focused on who I would be when I got to North Carolina. It was time to start fresh. Time to stop drinking. Time to become a responsible adult, for Christ’s sake.

I was grateful for the lack of a mirror above the bathroom sink; I didn’t want to look myself in the eyes. Not for a long while. Not until I crossed the Mississippi, at least.

After washing and drying my hands, I headed back outside, got back into my Ford, and fired up the engine.

As I pulled out of the spot and started back toward the highway, I glanced to the right and saw a man in a wife-beater, a black hat, and sweatpants running between the two brick buildings. His considerable belly swayed as he huffed and puffed his way toward me.

I put my foot on the gas, not in the mood for a conversation with some broke-down trucker. Let his trucker pals help him, I thought. And as I eased the speed up, the man waved at me, yelling something I couldn’t make out over the sound of my engine and the blasting air conditioner.

Shaking my head, I turned my attention to the road. Once I was back doing 80, I set the cruise control and took my foot off the gas. The mile markers passed. I rubbed my eyes and yawned.

Damn caffeine had already worn off.

As I glanced in the rearview mirror, a freezing hand wrapped around my heart. There was someone in the car with me. In the back. I’d just seen them duck their head down as I glanced into the mirror — nothing more than a dark silhouette, but clearly a person’s head.

Tensing in my seat, I looked at the glove compartment, thinking about the two screwdrivers I had there. They were the only weapons I had, aside from a rinky-dink pocketknife in my pocket.

Knowing I had to pull over, I resolved to do it quickly. I had no choice. I couldn’t keep going while someone was sitting back there, plotting to kill me when the time was right.

My pulse was thrumming, each heartbeat like a hammer hitting my brain from the inside.

I guided the wheel to the right, slamming on the brakes even as my tires went over the rumble strip on the shoulder. Moving as quickly as my recovering body would allow, I put the vehicle in Park, got one of the screwdrivers from the glove compartment, removed my keys, and jumped out of the vehicle — almost getting pancaked by a passing semi-truck.

After slamming the door and scrambling around to the other side of the SUV, I stood in the sand among the spiky roadside plants, pointing my screwdriver at my Ford like it was a gun.

“Get out!” I shouted. “I know you’re in there! Get out!”

Thanks to the dark and my tinted windows, I couldn’t see what was happening in there. Shutting my door was a stupid move. It had turned off the interior lights.

I wanted to step up and open the back door, but I was afraid I’d be greeted by a killer clown wielding a giant cleaver. Or a hulking monstrosity ready to rip me apart with his bare hands.

What if he has a gun? I thought, backing up as I gulped down my fear.

The back passenger door suddenly opened, the overhead lights coming on inside the Expedition. A young woman was backlit as she stepped out of the vehicle, hands up and empty.

She wore grimy cutoff jean shorts and a baggy sleeveless T-shirt. And she was barefoot. Her thick brown hair was a mess, cut short and styled only by her sweat and the wind. Her arms and legs were dirty, like she’d been living in the desert for days without a tent or a sleeping bag or a morsel of food.

Underneath the grime, I saw an attractive young woman. And I was reminded once again why I was leaving the desert in search of greener pastures.

“What the hell are you doing?” I said, still pointing the screwdriver at her. “Is there anyone else in there?”

She shook her head, big green eyes peering at me from under bushy eyebrows.

I already felt myself cooling, grateful it wasn’t some muscle-bound psycho serial killer.

Don’t be so quick to dismiss her as a threat, a voice inside my head warned.

“Well, what are you doing? Why’d you get in my Ford?”

She looked back west, toward the rest area several miles behind us. “They’re after me,” she said in a voice so low I could barely hear her.

“Who?” I asked.

The hydraulic hiss of brakes tore my attention away from the hollow-eyed woman. A semi-truck was slowing in the right lane as it approached us, hazards blinking. The woman and I both watched as it pulled onto the shoulder ahead of my Ford.

When I looked at the woman, she jumped back into the Expedition and shut the door.

“What the hell is this happy horse shit?” I said to the dry air.

The trucker I’d seen at the rest stop ran around the front of the semi and started back toward me, his belly swaying like a pendulum ticking away the seconds until his impending death from heart disease.

I moved over toward the SUV as the guy approached. He didn’t look happy.

“What do you want!?” I shouted when he was close enough to hear. I was still holding the screwdriver out.

He saw the tool and slowed, putting his hands up in mock fear. “Back it down, man,” he said. “I ain’t a screw, and you ain’t never worked a day of construction in your life.”

“What do you want!?” I said again, backing up as he continued forward.

“Didn’t you see me flagging you down back at the pisser?”

“No,” I lied.

He stopped just ahead of me, an arm’s length away. “Bullshit. You looked me right in the pearly whites, goddammit.”

“Fine. I saw you. What’s the big deal? Do you know me?”

Moving as fast as a jungle cat, the trucker stepped forward and slapped the screwdriver out of my hand. Then he jammed his forearm into my throat and slammed me into the side of my Ford, rocking the vehicle on its struts.

Suddenly, the woman’s comment about someone being after her seemed like the truth instead of crazy talk. I could feel the cartilage in my throat creaking as his forearm cut off my oxygen.

“I saw that skinny little thing slip into your Ford after she ran away from my truck,” he said. “She took my wallet! That’s why I was tryin’ to flag you down, you sumbitch.”

To my left, the back door of the SUV opened a few inches, and a delicate hand came out holding a beat-up billfold. “Don’t hurt him,” the woman said. “He didn’t know.”

The trucker swiped his wallet and then let me go as the woman shut the door. I slid down the side of the SUV, rubbing my throat and breathing in big gulps as I sat.

“She told me she was a sleeper creeper,” the guy said, going through his wallet to make sure everything was there. “She’s a damn liar.”

“What’s a sleeper creeper?” I asked from the ground, just to be saying something. I’ve never been much of a fighter. More of a runner, really.

“A lot lizard,” the guy said. “A streetwalker. A prostitute. She told me she was a whore. But when I pulled out my willy whang, she grabbed my wallet and ran. I’ve a mind to call the police on her.”

I got up off my ass and brushed off my pants. “And tell them that you were soliciting a prostitute in a state where prostitution is illegal?”

The guy glared at me, putting the wallet in a back pocket. “I said I’ve a mind to, not that I’m going to.” He paused. “Good luck with that one. She’s crazy as they come.”

He turned and headed back to his truck.

I searched for the screwdriver for a minute among the tough shrubs and grasses, but I soon gave up.

Stepping to the back door, I opened it and looked in at the woman who was sitting on the seat, hugging her legs.

“Get out.”

“They’ll find me,” she said. “They’ll kill me.”

“Who? If it’s not that trucker who’s after you, who the hell is it?”

“The Klepto Killers.”

The name rang a bell. The Klepto Killers had been all over the news as young women turned up dead along the I-10 corridor. They’d killed something like a dozen women, a family of four, and even a couple of cops who’d pulled them over while they were dumping a body. Apparently, it was two guys — a rarity among serial killers.

“Really?” I said, unbelieving. “You were caught by the Klepto Killers? And you escaped?”

She nodded.

It was all bullshit. “Get out!” I yelled.

“Please! My name’s Adriana. I’m twenty-three. I’ve been homeless for six months after leaving my abusive boyfriend. You have to believe me! I’m telling you the truth. The Klepto Killers won’t stop until they find me. That’s why they call them Kleptos! They once followed a woman who escaped all the way to her parents’ house. And they killed them all! Once they choose you, they never let you go.”

There was a pang of truth in her words. And dammit if I didn’t have a soft spot for women. Especially those in trouble. Then again, that was how I’d gotten myself into trouble time and again.

I sighed. “Where do you need to go?”

“Anywhere. Far away. Where are you going?”

“North Carolina,” I said.

“I’ve never been there. I don’t have any friends or family there. It’s perfect.” She managed a smile, and it melted what defenses I still had up.

“Okay,” I said. “But you gotta help keep me awake.”

Her smile grew bigger, and she showered me with thank yous.

She transferred to the front seat while I got in the driver’s seat. As I pulled back onto the highway, Adriana asked me my name.

“Joel,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Are you okay, Joel? Does your throat hurt?”

“I’m good,” I said. “I let him do that to me. I didn’t want to have to hurt the guy.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. Why did I always do this around pretty women? It was a curse.

But she went along with it, even though anyone who looked at me could tell I wasn’t built for fighting. I was rail-thin with stooped shoulders and huge feet. But I was tall, which had managed to keep me out of many fights in my life.

She reached out and touched my arm. “Good. I’m glad you’re okay.”

***

“Wait,” Adriana said as I took the exit. It was nearly two in the morning, and the nearest headlights were a good mile behind us.

“What is it?” I asked.

“We can’t keep going?” she asked. “Just a little further?”

“I’m under a quarter tank and I don’t know where the next station will be,” I said.

“You’re sure no one’s following us?” she asked.

“I mean, people follow you on the highway. That’s kind of how it works. But I was varying my speed like you said, so I’m pretty sure everyone who was behind us either passed or turned off.”

She didn’t look convinced, but she nodded her acceptance as I turned toward the well-lit gas station. It was fairly empty but for two cars — one at a pump and one parked in a spot out front. I couldn’t see the pumps on the opposite side of the station, but I wasn’t too worried about it.

There was nothing else but empty desert landscape in the immediate vicinity. Just the lone gas station, a beacon of civilization against the beastly night.

“Don’t you need to pee?” I asked, lining up my fuel tank with the pump.

“Yes,” she said. “But only after you make sure it’s safe.”

“Okay,” I said, opening the door. “I’m gonna pump the gas first, then I’ll check around.”

I paid at the pump and stood there as I filled my tank. Glancing over the top of the SUV into the station, I glimpsed a woman behind the counter. I could only see her head, given the layout of the place, but it was enough to put me at ease.

At the next line of pumps, a white-haired man finished pumping and drove away in his sedan.

When the pump finally clicked off, I put everything back in its place and headed inside to check the station over for Adriana.

As I moved, I glanced at the windows again. I could no longer see the woman behind the counter.

Pushing through the gas station doors, I looked around for her. Maybe she’s in the bathroom, I thought.

But as I moved to the other side of the store, I brought the other set of pumps into view. Sitting at one of the pumps was an old Trans-Am with a trash bag over the passenger side window. The same vehicle I’d seen back at the rest stop.

Fear swelled inside me, and I turned to head back the other way. Passing the counter, I glanced down and saw a person’s hand on the floor. Changing my angle to peer over the counter, I brought the female cashier into view. She was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, dozens of stab wounds in her chest.

Outside, Adriana screamed.

I burst through the doors, bringing my Expedition into view. A man in black sweats, grimy black work boots, and a demon skull mask was at the side of my Ford. He wore black latex gloves, and he held a machete in his right hand.

He looked over as the door chime sounded, his grinning mask sending paralyzing terror through me. He turned back toward the window and brought the machete’s handle down on it, shattering the glass as Adriana screamed and scrambled over the center console into the back.

I took a step back, telling myself this wasn’t my fight. Maybe if I didn’t put up any resistance, he wouldn’t kill me. Better yet, I could run. I could run out into the night, disappearing in the desert until morning.

Taking a step backward, I resolved to do just that. I wanted to live. I didn’t want to die violently for some woman I barely even knew.

Moving toward the back of the station, I had a flash of memory from the night before. A flash of a man beating a woman who screamed and fought on her bed — the bed I’d been sharing with her until her husband showed up.

“Ex-husband,” the woman had told me after we’d met at a bar. “We’re separated,” she’d said when I asked about the pictures hanging up in her hallway.

“And he won’t show up here?” I asked drunkenly, not really caring about the answer. I had my hands up under her shirt, and she was working on undoing my belt.

“He better not. I have a restraining order against that bastard.”

After that, there was no more talk of her husband. He was certainly the last thing on my mind — until I heard the front door slam.

Before the woman — her name was Trina — could say anything, I jumped off the bed, gathered my clothes, and hid in the closet. I could hear her ex-husband yelling as he came stomping down the hallway.

I looked through the cracked closet door as he started in on her with his fists. And I did nothing. I got dressed as the man wailed on her, and I darted out of the closet when his back was turned.

He heard me and chased me out of the house, but I had a head start. And when I jumped into my SUV, he yelled that he was going to find me and kill me. “I’ve got your license plate!” he said as I took off. “You better be lookin’ over your shoulder because I’m comin’ for you!”

Somehow, I’d made it back to my extended-stay motel room without killing myself or anyone else. I passed out and slept for nearly twelve hours before waking in a panic, packing my few possessions, and getting the hell out of Dodge.

But now here I was again, running away as another woman was attacked by another man. Only this time, there was no doubt of the outcome. Adriana would die. She would be brutally murdered.

Unless I did something to stop that from happening.

Flushed with a sudden resolve and determined to use it before it went away, I spun around to go back into the gas station. I wasn’t going to run, though. I was going to get something I could use as a weapon.

But as soon as I turned around, the door flew open, the chime sounding. I stood in the doorway’s path, and it was clear in the split second it took my brain to comprehend what I was seeing that the man in the zombie scarecrow mask meant to slam me in the face with the gas station door.

The door didn’t hit me in the face. It bounced off my foot — I mentioned I have big clown feet, didn’t I? — and hit the other Klepto Killer as he tried to step out. It wasn’t much of a hit, but it gave me the moment I needed to react.

I turned, slamming the door into the guy with my shoulder, clamping him against the door jamb. He had a big kitchen knife stuffed in his belt, which he managed to reach down and grab with his free left hand.

He brought it up, clearly meaning to slice me open with it. I reached up and grabbed his wrist with both hands, still leaning my weight against the door to keep him pinned. He was in an awkward position, his left hand clearly non-dominant. Using both my arms, I yanked his arm down as with all I had, also shifting my weight enough to bring my left knee up as high as I could.

My knee hit his elbow perfectly as I yanked his arm down, folding the appendage the wrong way with a ripping, cracking sound.

The knife clattered to the concrete as the man behind the mask screamed out. I reached down and grabbed the knife as the guy tried to pull out of the door. But once again, I kept him in place with my long body, preventing him from getting enough leverage to move the door.

I jammed the blade up under his ruined left arm, stabbing him in the side. It was a frenzied stabbing, and I quickly lost count of how many times I plunged the knife into him. When I stopped, there was blood everywhere, and the man had gone limp. So when I stepped away from the door, he collapsed like a house of cards in a windstorm.

Knife in hand, I turned back around, seeing that the man in the demon skull mask was no longer at my Ford. The front passenger window was broken, but I couldn’t see if Adriana was still inside or not. I had no idea whether she was alive or dead.

I ran up to the Ford, glancing inside and seeing that the front seat was empty. As I stepped to the back door to open it, the greatest pain I’ve ever felt shot up my left leg. I looked down to see Demon Skull’s head sticking out from under the SUV, his machete buried in the side of my left leg.

Yanking the leg away, I turned to run. But the Klepto Killer was faster. He pulled the blade back and slashed out at my other leg, severing tendons.

I collapsed to my knees, losing the knife in the process.

The killer got out from under the car as I crawled away, screaming in pain as my blood poured out of the leg wounds.

“Turn around,” the man said, poking me in the back with the tip of the blade.

I rolled over and looked up at him.

“You killed my brother, you piece of shit,” he said, raising the machete for the killing blow.

I raised my arms, knowing that he’d simply cut them to pieces to get to my head, but unable to help myself.

His muscles tensed as he started the first chop — but a hand came out of nowhere. A hand with a screwdriver in it.

The flathead screwdriver sunk deep into the side of the Klepto Killer’s head through his ear, causing him to freeze.

Adriana, who’d snuck up behind the man, let go of the screwdriver and stepped aside, which brought her into my view.

The Klepto Killer teetered, turning around to look at his assailant. He still had the machete held up. But with his left hand, he reached up and touched the tool sticking out of his ear.

He dropped the machete and walked toward the back of the station. He didn’t get far before collapsing.

I looked up at Adriana, who smiled weakly. She had several minor cuts on her arms, but she seemed okay otherwise.

“You found my other screwdriver,” I said.

She nodded. “And now I’ll find you a first aid kit.”

She moved quickly past me, kicking the other dead Klepto Killer as she went through the door to find stuff to bandage me up.

I looked out past the lights of the gas station. The heat of the day was finally dissipating. A cool breeze blew across the dark, unforgiving expanse.

And for a moment, the desert looked beautiful to me. It looked like the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Cold Feet, Warm Blood

Her drawn face was flanked by curtains of stringy grayish hair. Her teeth were yellow, although straight, as she smiled at me.

“Welcome to our home, Dylan,” she said.

There was a man behind her, standing near the staircase. He was in shadow, but I could tell that he was tall, and he had shaggy white hair. Hunched over, he murmured something that I couldn’t make out.

“Thank you, Mrs. Lynch,” I said, trying not to stare at the man in the shadows. I glanced to my right at Jerry, but he’d turned toward the crowded coat rack and was busy hanging his black-and-blue coat.

“Please, call me Lilith,” she said, leaning slightly toward me, her bony hands clasped at her pelvis. Her eyes dragged slowly down and then back up my body.

I nodded politely, suddenly feeling like I wanted to be anywhere but here. Then I remembered the bags. “Oh,” I said, turning to Jerry, “I can go get the bags while I still have my coat on.”

Jerry flapped a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get them later.” Jerry was my roommate at Indiana State. He stood about six inches shorter than me, with black hair, pale skin, and a rodent-like face. It was our freshman year, and we’d only known each other for a few months, but he seemed nice enough. A bit quiet. But then, so was I.

I looked around the entryway of the ancient farmhouse as I removed my coat. To the right was the dining room. Old handcrafted dining set. Dusty paintings. Embroideries about home and love and warmth that somehow seemed out of place. Incandescent light bulbs bright in a deer-antler chandelier.

From where I was, I could see a slice of the kitchen through the dining room. Formica countertops and a dishwasher made sometime in the middle of the last century.

I hung my coat up and stepped toward the edge of the large entryway mat.

“Ah, I’m sorry, Dylan,” Lilith said, holding one slender hand up like a traffic cop. “If you could please remove your shoes.”

I looked down at my feet, then at Jerry’s. He was still wearing his boots. Lilith had on a pair of worn tennis shoes under her paisley-patterned dress. Even the silent, hunched man under the stairs — Dylan’s father, I assumed — had on boots.

“Uh, okay,” I said, unwilling to make a fuss. It was their house, after all. I was just a guest.

As I untied my shoes, the man came out from the dark area abutting the stairs. He peered over Lilith’s shoulder with watery eyes. His skin sagged off his face, jowls wiggling slightly as he moved. He wore brown work pants and a maroon-and-red flannel shirt.

“Slice and dice,” he said in a gravelly voice. “Christ and rice.”

I looked up at him. His gray eyes met mine and held them until I looked away. Seeking some explanation, I glanced up at Jerry. But my friend just looked down at me blankly, as if waiting for me to take off my shoes so he could show me around.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Dylan,” Lilith said suddenly. “This is Jerry’s father, Glen. I’m afraid he’s not having one of his best days. Don’t mind him.”

“Oh,” I said, “right. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, dear! Did Jerry not tell you about him?”

I shook my head.

Lilith glared at her son, who seemed to realize we were talking about him.

“What?” Jerry said. “It’s just Dad. It’s not like he’d do much talking, even if his brain wasn’t mush.”

“You stop that right now!” Lilith said, her tone serious.

“Sliced and diced,” Glen said again, still staring at me. His gaze seemed hungry.

I pulled off both my shoes and quickly straightened. “Okay. How about a tour, Jerry?” I asked, wanting to get away from the old man’s gaze.

“Yeah, follow me. We’ll start upstairs.”

I followed Jerry up the two short flights of creaky wooden stairs. I glanced over the railing, back toward his mother and father as I went. Lilith was holding her husband’s hand, whispering in his ear. Glen had turned and was watching me go up the stairs.

I suppressed a shiver.

“This is my room,” Jerry said, opening the first door on the right. There was a single bed, an old wooden desk, and an array of books, magazines, and CDs. I wondered where the television and video game consoles were. It looked like a room from a bygone era before the internet and cellphones and endless entertainment at your fingertips.

He stood in the middle of the room, looking around silently.

“So, what is it?” I asked finally. “Dementia?”

“What?” Jerry said, turning around.

“Your father.”

“Oh. No, don’t worry about him. He has his bad days. Let me show you where you’ll be sleeping.”

The floor creaked with every step as we moved across the hall. It was drafty and my feet were freezing, even with my socks on. I wondered why they’d made me take my shoes off. Jerry was still wearing his.

He opened a creaky door and stepped into a dim room. There was a twin air mattress on the floor with a sleeping bag and pillow on top. The single window in the room looked out at the dark bulk of a barn hunching against the windswept night. Next to the bed, on the wood floor, was a single lamp. There was no other furniture in the room. A small door in the wall opposite the bed surely belonged to a closet. By the looks of the rest of the room, I doubted there was anything in it.

“My mom made it up for you,” he said.

“Thanks,” I managed.

“Bathroom’s down the hall,” Jerry said, pointing. “Dinner will be in a few minutes. Why don’t you wash up? I’ll go get the bags.”

I nodded and walked down the hall to the door Jerry had indicated. It was closed, like all the rest of the doors. I knocked lightly and then opened the door as Jerry went downstairs. As I stepped into the bathroom, I felt a cold wetness soak into my socks. I looked down at the black-and-white tiled floor. I was standing in a small puddle of water.

I’d always been kind of a nervous kid, and things hadn’t gotten much better as I finished high school. The few times I’d spent the night over at a friend’s house as a kid had ended with me calling my parents in tears. I couldn’t ever seem to get past the strangeness of other people’s houses. And there had always been something to scare me enough to make me want to go home.

Usually, it was nothing more than the house settling or someone else moving around at night while I was trying to sleep. But my imagination had a tendency to run wild, reinforcing the homesickness and putting me over the edge.

Moving into the college dorm had been a feat by my standards. And coming to spend the holiday weekend at Jerry’s house was a huge step for me.

But I was starting to feel the familiar tinge of unease that had gripped me on every other sleepover. And as I stood in the puddle of water, my socks wet and feet cold, I felt my composure cracking.

The house was anything but warm. Not only in terms of temperature, but also in terms of emotion. The place didn’t seem like a cozy house that a loving family lived in. It seemed like a building that people occupied. Nothing more.

On the few road trips I’d taken in my life, I’d passed many farmhouses similar to this one. From the car, they had always seemed so snug, their windows glowing orange with comfort against the chilly night. I would picture what life was like for the people in those homes. They struck me as warm little pockets, their walls keeping out the cold winter nights.

This house was just the opposite. It seemed to be a reflection of the cold, desolate night outside. As if the inhabitants of the house — Jerry’s family — couldn’t muster the energy to keep the coldness out. They let it seep in. Maybe they liked it this way. Maybe they thrived in it.

Suddenly, all I wanted to do was leave.

But I couldn’t leave. It was out of the question. My own home was several hours away, on the other side of the state. And I hadn’t driven. I didn’t have a car. Jerry did. To leave, I would have to beg him to drive me the four hours home. Or I’d have to ask my mom or dad to come get me.

I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t let myself.

As I looked into the mirror, seeing my painfully plain face and my dull brown eyes, I told myself I was being a baby. Sooner or later, I’d have to toughen up. I couldn’t go running home to mommy and daddy every time I felt uncomfortable.

“Stop being a little bitch,” I whispered at my reflection.

I heard someone coming up the stairs, so I turned and shut the bathroom door. Then I peeled my wet socks off and found a scratchy towel from the cabinet to soak the puddle up.

I couldn’t tell where the water had come from. There didn’t seem to be a leak from the toilet or sink, so I assumed someone had accidentally splashed it out of the sink. Probably Jerry’s dad.

I hung the towel over the shower curtain rod, used the toilet, then washed my hands. I didn’t want to leave my wet socks hanging in the bathroom, but I didn’t see an alternative. I draped them over the rod, next to the towel.

While using the toilet, I heard whoever had come upstairs go back down. I figured it was Jerry, dropping our bags off. But when I left the bathroom and looked into my room, there were no bags.

I moved across to Jerry’s door, which was closed, and knocked lightly. When I didn’t hear him answer, I tried the knob. It was locked. On further inspection, I noticed that the knob had a key slot. It could be locked from the outside.

Moving back across the hall, I inspected the door to my room. There was no lock. Not on the outside. Not on the inside.

By the time I got back downstairs, my feet felt numb with the cold. There was no carpet in the whole house, it seemed. There were baseboard heaters, but it didn’t feel like they were on. Maybe they didn’t work at all.

Turning into the dining room, I nearly collided with Lilith. “Oh, I was just going to call you down,” she said. “It’s dinnertime.”

There were a few dishes on the table, surrounded by four place settings. Jerry and Glen were both sitting down already, staring up at me.

“Jerry, did you bring my bag in?” I asked him.

“Oh, shoot. I knew I was forgetting something,” he said. “I’ll do it first thing after dinner.”

“Well, it’s just that my socks got wet and I—”

“Your socks got wet?!” Lilith exclaimed, looking down at my bare feet. “Bring them down after dinner and I’ll dry them. But we need to eat quickly before the food gets cold. This is a drafty house, you know.”

She corralled me to the seat across from Jerry, then took her place across from her husband.

As I sat down, I caught a whiff of the food. It smelled awful. There was some kind of pink-and-white meat dish that I didn’t recognize, along with steamed green beans and mashed potatoes. I assumed it was the meat dish that reeked.

My stomach roiled, and I wasn’t sure that I could eat it without vomiting.

After a moment of looking down at the food, I realized that no one was serving themselves yet. I looked up to see all three pairs of eyes peering at me.

“This may sound strange to you,” Lilith said, “but we like to say a little something before we eat.”

“That’s not strange,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” she said. “It’s important to us that our guests join along. We use the old tongue, and it makes some people uncomfortable.”

“Oh,” I said, not sure what to make of this. I looked over at Jerry, and he rolled his eyes, smiling.

“Do you mind?” Lilith asked.

“No, I guess not. What do you want me to say?”

“Erelath erkbart thullium saluoady,” she said. “It means bless this nourishment. Glen will say a few words, then me, and then Jerry. Then we’ll all say erelath erkbart thullium saluoady. Okay?”

“Sure, I guess,” I said.

“Can you repeat it back to me?” she asked.

“Erelath erkbart thullium saluoady.”

“Very good!”

I smiled and turned my head to look at Glen. I had my doubts about his ability to say anything coherent. But when I looked at him, he smiled at me and reached a hand out. He clasped my right hand in his left. Lilith took my other one. It struck me how cold their hands were.

When the circle was complete, Glen closed his eyes.

He spoke maybe a dozen words in a language I didn’t understand. Then Lilith spoke different words. And Jerry said his part, which, as far as I could tell, was completely different from what his mother and father said.

They opened their eyes and looked at me, and we all said, “Erelath erkbart thullium saluoady,” at the same time. Right as I finished the words, I felt a frigid gust of wind sweep over me. For a moment, I thought the front door had blown open.

I freed my hands and hugged myself. “Did anyone else feel that?” I asked.

“Feel what, Dylan?” Lilith asked.

Just as soon as it had come, the chill was gone. I could tell by listening that the tenor of the wind hadn’t changed; no door was open.

When I didn’t answer, Lilith smiled her ghastly smile and said, “Thank you for doing that. It means a lot to us. Not everyone is so accepting, you know.”

“Sure,” I said. “You’re welcome.”

Lilith stood and stepped toward me, grabbing the meat dish and spooning some of the foul-smelling food onto my plate. “Say when,” she said.

“That’s enough, thank you,” I said. She did the same with the green beans and mashed potatoes.

“Dig in!”

I ate the green beans and mashed potatoes but stayed away from the meat dish. Lilith glanced at my plate several times before I worked up the courage to taste the dish. I didn’t want to offend her by not eating any of it. My parents had raised me better than that.

With a small bite of the stuff on my fork, I brought it tentatively to my mouth. Holding my breath, I took the plunge — and nearly gagged. It was putrid and cold. It tasted raw and gamey. Swallowing with effort, I did my best to keep my composure. Then I set my fork down and took a drink of my water, trying to wash the taste out of my mouth.

I looked at Jerry’s plate and saw that he’d eaten his portion of the stuff. Same with Lilith and Glen. Then I looked at the casserole dish it had come in, noticing that the food had been disturbed in two separate places. The side closest to Glen was missing a sizable portion. But on the opposite side, closest to Lilith, there was only one small scoop taken out. About the size of my serving.

I tried to remember which side she’d served me from, but I hadn’t been paying that much attention. If she had served me from that side, why would she then serve everyone else from the other side?

“Is that all you’re going to eat?” Lilith asked.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said. “I’m stuffed. It was very good. Thank you.”

“Hey, you ever played Chirema?” Jerry asked, pushing away from the table.

“No, what’s that?” I said, happy to be off the subject of food.

“Follow me,” Jerry said, standing up and heading around the table. “Thanks for dinner, Mom.”

“Yes, thank you,” I said, standing up to follow Jerry.

We went across the entryway hall and through a sitting room to a door. Jerry opened it and started down a set of concrete stairs into an unfinished basement. I stepped onto the first stair and stopped. Stop being a little bitch, I thought. Stand up for yourself.

“Hey, Jerry,” I said. “My feet are really cold. I need to get some socks on. Can we get my bag first?”

Jerry turned, already near the bottom of the stairs. “There are all sorts of old clothes down here. I’m sure there are some thick wool socks. Maybe even some slippers.” Without waiting for a response from me, he turned and disappeared into the dark basement. After a long moment, a light came on, allowing me to see the concrete floor and the insulation between exposed wall studs.

Sighing, I made my way down the steps, turning in time to see Jerry disappear behind a metal shelf loaded with odds and ends. Normal basement stuff cluttered the space, although there was one area near a wall that was cleared. There was a blue tarp on the ground, and a water bottle hanging from the ceiling on a string.

I looked around for a few minutes as Jerry rummaged through boxes, presumably looking for socks for me.

“What is this game you’re talking about?” I asked, wandering over toward the tarp and the water bottle.

“Chirema. It’s really funny. You’ll like it.”

As I stepped onto the tarp to look at the plastic water bottle, I could feel that the ground wasn’t smooth like the rest of the basement. Taking a step back, I bent over and grabbed the edge of the tarp, lifting it and looking underneath. There was some kind of design—

“Sorry, no socks,” Jerry said from right next to me. I jumped, dropping the tarp and letting it fall back to the floor. A sudden flush of anger made me want to shove Jerry. To punish him for sneaking up on me.

Stop being a little bitch.

“Okay,” I said, my heart thumping. “Well, I’m going to go back upstairs and get my bag so I can put on some socks.”

“Let’s just play one round of Chirema,” Jerry pleaded. “It’ll take five minutes, max.”

“No,” I snapped. “My feet are freezing. Your house is frigid, but you don’t know, do you? You’re wearing shoes. Everyone is wearing shoes but me!”

Jerry and I stared at each other as a long moment passed. My anger fizzled away.

Overcome with embarrassment at my harsh tone, I turned to leave. To head upstairs. But Jerry reached out and grabbed my arm, his grip ‌tight. “You’re going to play the fucking game with me because it’s my fucking house and you’re a fucking pushover,” Jerry said in a deep, slithery voice that I had never heard before.

I was shaking as my emotions bubbled up to the surface, having a hard time processing what Jerry had just said to me.

“You’re right,” I said, averting my eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ll play the game with you.”

“Good,” Jerry said, smiling and talking in his regular voice. He let go of my arm and explained the game he called Chirema. Really, it was just the water bottle dodging game that was so popular on the Internet. As far as I was concerned, he could call it whatever he wanted. I was just ready to get it over with so I could get my feet warm again.

I sat on the tarp and put on a blindfold that Jerry had produced from a pocket. He pulled the water bottle back and told me when he was releasing it so I could try to dodge it.

The first round, I got hit in the back of the head pretty quickly. The second round, I did a little better before getting hit in the face. I asked to stop, but Jerry insisted on one more round. I waited for him to tell me when he was going to drop the bottle, but there was only silence for several long moments. Then I felt a sudden wetness on my head.

I reached up and ripped off the blindfold, seeing Jerry standing over me, chuckling. He had a little metal vial in his right hand. He held the water bottle — still attached to the string — under his right arm.

“What the hell is that?” I said, reaching up to touch my wet hair.

“Oh, relax, Dylan. It’s just water.”

“It doesn’t feel like water,” I said. It didn’t. It was slimy. “Is this your idea of a joke?” I got up from the tarp and the uncomfortable ground underneath.

Jerry stared at me for a moment as he let the water bottle out from under his arm. It swung gently on its string. I wanted to smack him, but I didn’t. Instead, I turned to head upstairs.

“Don’t be such a little bitch,” Jerry said.

I spun around and shoved him, sending him tripping backward. He dropped the vial as he fell back into a cardboard box, collapsing the top with his weight. Getting quickly back up again, he lunged at me, shoving me down. I landed hard on my back, sucking in a couple of harsh breaths while I considered my next move. I glared up at Jerry, who was standing over me, a sneer on his face.

“Fuck you, Dylan,” Jerry said. “Little bitch.” He turned and stalked toward the stairs, yanking the pull cord on the single light, leaving me in total darkness as he went upstairs.

I sat for a long time, shivering from the cold and the adrenaline. I felt like crying. Like curling into a little ball and sobbing. Somehow, I felt like the whole thing was my fault.

I wanted to run upstairs and say sorry to Jerry. To beg him to forgive me.

Or to punch his lights out. Shove some of that foul-smelling meat dish into his face and down his throat.

But I knew I wouldn’t do any of those things.

After a while, I pulled myself together, gathering the nerve to go back upstairs and get my stuff out of the car so I could change. Whatever weird liquid he’d poured on me had gotten on my shirt.

I got up and made my way back upstairs, my hair still dripping.

When I walked through the sitting room, I was surprised to find the whole first floor of the house dark and silent. I didn’t think I’d been downstairs for long. Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. But there was no Lilith doing cleanup. No Glen sitting by the fire, talking nonsense.

I went over to the entryway and looked at the small table there. I thought Jerry had put his keys on the table earlier, but they weren’t there. I looked at my shoes and my coat. Maybe the car’s unlocked, I thought.

So I pulled on my shoes and my coat and stepped outside into the freezing night. Snow flurries stung my face as I walked out to the gravel driveway. There wasn’t much snow on the ground, but the way the wind was blowing, I thought a storm was rolling in. A blizzard, maybe.

I tried the doors on Jerry’s car, but they were all locked. So I trudged back inside. Without taking off my shoes or coat, I went up the creaky staircase. Jerry’s door was closed, so I stepped up to it and knocked. There was no answer.

“Jerry,” I said. “I need to get my stuff.”

Nothing. No answer.

“Come on, man. This is ridiculous. Just let me get my stuff and you can ignore me for the rest of the weekend.”

Silence.

I took a deep breath. “Okay, listen. I’m sorry. I apologize for losing my temper, okay?”

There wasn’t so much as a grunt or a shuffling footstep from the other side of the door. “Fine,” I said, lowering my voice. “Fuck you.”

I stepped away from Jerry’s door and looked down the hall. The other doors were closed. There was no light coming from under them. I wondered what time it was. So I pulled out my phone and saw that it was just after eight. Pretty early for everyone to be in bed.

Then I noticed that I didn’t have any service. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I said.

I moved into my room and shut the door behind me. Someone had turned off the lamp on the floor next to the air mattress, so I used my phone’s flashlight to light the way as I turned it on. I stripped off my coat, shoes, and my wet overshirt, then got into the sleeping bag.

That feeling of homesickness suddenly swarmed me, intensifying. It was as if the night had expanded away from me, erasing the world and leaving me all alone in this house in the middle of nowhere.

Opening my phone, I navigated to a photo album and scrolled through pictures of my parents from the vacation we’d gone on before I left for school. There were several of us on the beach. A few others were taken by me from the backseat of the rental as we joked and laughed.

Trying to hold these good times in my head, I set my phone down on the floor and closed my eyes. I just had to get through this long weekend. Then everything would be okay. Compared to this place, my dorm room seemed almost like home. And I was sure Jerry and I would patch things up. People fought sometimes. That didn’t mean they hated each other.

Drowsiness crept up on me, and, eventually, sleep took me.

***

Something dripped on me. On my face.

I was back in the basement again. On the tarp, with the blindfold over my eyes. And Jerry was pouring something on me again. But moving seemed impossible. I tried to raise my hands to take the blindfold off, but they were too heavy. As If they were coated in concrete.

I tried to speak, to tell him to stop, but the words didn’t want to come out of my mouth. They got stuck in my throat.

Something dripped into my mouth. Coppery. Warm.

My eyes shot open, and I looked up to see that I was still in the upstairs bedroom. Glen was leaning over me, a hunched silhouette backlit by the hallway light.

“Slice and dice,” he said. “Erelath erkbart thullium saluoady.”

Something else dripped down out of his hands, hitting me on the cheek. As he leaned closer, I saw he had a knife. Shouting, I scrambled away from him, falling off the air mattress and knocking the lamp over. I kicked my legs and shouted for help as I tried to free myself from the sleeping bag. The whole time, my eyes were fixed on the knife held in Glen’s right hand. He’d cut his left hand open. It was blood that had dripped on me. On my forehead and my cheek and in my mouth.

“Get him away from me!” I shouted, finally getting out of the sleeping bag and standing crouched in the corner.

Lilith suddenly appeared in the doorway. “What’s wrong?” she said, moving toward her husband.

“He’s got a fucking knife!”

“Oh, dear, oh, Glen,” Lilith said, snatching the kitchen knife away from him and inspecting his cut hand. “What will I do with you?”

Both of them were in strange pajamas that reminded me of religious robes. Lilith guided Glen out of the room. I stood in the corner for a moment, breathing heavily. Then I hurried over to the door and shut it. Padding to the closet, I opened the door in search of something I could prop against the bedroom door to keep anyone from coming in. But there was nothing in the small closet. Just dusty shelves.

Moving back to the bedroom door, I yanked it open and went down to the bathroom, spitting into the sink to try and remove the taste of Glen’s blood. I wet a rag and scrubbed the drops of blood off my face.

As I was getting ready to leave, Lilith appeared in the doorway. “I’m so sorry, Dylan,” she said. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s sick.”

“What if he cut me?” I said. “What if he killed me with that knife?”

“Oh, he would never!” Lilith said, clearly offended. “He wouldn’t!”

“You just said he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” I said. “He could do anything.”

Her sunken eyeballs peered out at me for a long moment, then she shook her head. “Why don’t you come downstairs? I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and we can both calm down. Hmm?”

“No,” I said. “No, I’m going back to bed. And I’m going to set that lamp next to the door so it will fall over if Glen comes into the room.” Shoving past her, I made my way down the creaky hallway.

“Please, Dylan,” Lilith said behind me. “Please, let me apologize with a cup of tea.”

I ignored her, slamming the bedroom door and grabbing the lamp, yanking the cord out of the wall. When I had knocked it over earlier, only the lampshade had crumpled. The bulb was intact. But there was no socket close enough to the door for me to plug it in. So I worked in the dark.

I looked briefly for my phone, finding it under the mattress, which I moved to the other side of the room. I wanted to be as far away from the door as possible.

But while I worked to rearrange the room, I heard Jerry’s door open, followed by footsteps heading downstairs. After a few minutes, I could hear two more sets of footsteps heading down the creaky steps.

They were all going downstairs. Why?

I had a sick feeling in my stomach. All the things that had happened to me this night couldn’t all be a coincidence, could they?

Something scratched at my subconscious as I stood in the middle of the dark room, the cold from the wood floor soaking into the soles of my feet.

After a few deep breaths, I realized I was listening for the murmurings of speech from downstairs. I couldn’t hear any talking, which seemed strange. It bothered me. I wondered what they were doing down there.

Standing on my tiptoes and moving as lightly as I could, I headed over to the door and moved the lamp out of the way. I opened the door slowly and stuck my head out. I could hear the faint sounds of lowered voices. Whispers, barely audible.

But I couldn’t hear what they were saying. So I moved out of the room and into the hall.

Testing each step before I put my full weight into it, I crept down the hall without making any noise. I stuck to the edges of the hallway, where the wood wasn’t as worn and creaky.

Then I did the same thing as I came to the stairs. Testing. Stepping only at the edges. Going slow.

When I got three steps from the first floor, I stopped and listened hard. They were in the kitchen. I could hear what they were saying. Barely.

“But he sat willingly on the tarp, right?” Lilith asked. “You didn’t force him? If he didn’t do it of his own free will, it won’t work.”

“No, Mom,” Jerry said. “I didn’t force him. I know how this is done.”

“Boy, you were only thirteen years old the last time we did this,” Glen said in a harsh whisper. “You don’t know shit.”

There was a moment of silence. My heart thundered in my chest. I wasn’t sure what I was hearing, but I knew it wasn’t good.

“Okay,” Lilith said. “Okay, it’s fine. I’ll bring the tea up to him. I’ll convince him to drink it.”

“What if he doesn’t drink it?” Jerry asked. “What then?”

“He will,” Lilith said. “He will. I can sweet-talk him. He’s a momma’s boy, isn’t that what you said? So only a momma’s touch will work.”

“When the time comes,” Jerry said, “can I be the one to do it?”

Glen laughed cruelly. “You wanna do it? Last time, you cried for a week. Or don’t you remember that?”

“I was thirteen, Dad,” Jerry said. “I’m an adult now. I should be able to finish the ritual.”

“Are you sure, honey?” Lilith asked. “It’s an awful lot of blood. And it’s harder than it looks. You really have to use some muscle to pierce the skin.”

The blood drained from my face. They were talking about killing me.

“I’m sure,” Jerry said. “That idiot shoved me. I want to be the one to finish it.”

“It’s okay with me if your dad says it’s okay.”

“Fine,” Glen said.

“So how long will it take after he drinks the tea?” Jerry asked, sounding excited.

“About an hour before the sedative takes full effect,” Lilith said.

I looked across at the entryway, where the jackets and coats were all hung up. And I realized with terror that I’d left my shoes and coat upstairs. I’d never brought them back down after going out and trying Jerry’s car earlier.

There was no way I was going back upstairs. I needed to get out of this house. Now. I had my phone in my pants pocket, but I was still barefoot and only had an undershirt on.

Quickly scanning the coats on the rack, I determined that Jerry’s clothing was too small. But Glen’s might just work.

It was my only chance. Otherwise, I would freeze to death.

I stepped down one more stair. But in my haste, I hadn’t tested the step first. It creaked under my weight.

I froze as the whispering from the kitchen stopped.

Oh no.

I held my breath and listened.

A floorboard in the kitchen creaked.

Someone was coming.

I lunged off the step, racing toward the coat rack and the shoes underneath.

“Stop him!” Lilith yelled from behind me.

Footsteps thudded toward me as I grabbed a large black coat and stuffed it under my left arm. I grabbed a pair of boots that looked to be around my size, and then I was out the door and running through the heavy snowfall.

The pain started in my feet almost immediately. The biting wind seemed to blow right through me.

I heard huffing from behind me, and I knew I couldn’t stop to put on the boots and coat. So I kept running, going back around the house, toward the barn.

All I could think about was finding a weapon. And the barn seemed like the best option. So I ran to the small side door and lifted the latch, ducking quickly inside. There was a rack of tools just inside. I could barely make them out in the darkness. I dropped the coat and boots and grabbed a shovel. Just as I spun around with it, the door opened.

Jerry pulled his head back just in time to avoid being hit in the face by the shovel. He jumped back and slammed the door, and I heard him run away, yelling, “He’s in the barn!”

I knew Jerry would be back soon. They would get bundled up against the cold and come back.

I had to do something. Anything.

Feeling along the wall next to the door, I found a light switch and flipped it. The barn was suddenly bright from three bulbs positioned on beams in the middle of the space. There wasn’t much to it. It was more of a large storage shed than a place to hold animals.

There was a separate area walled off at the back. Otherwise, there was a tractor in the middle of the space, along with other, smaller pieces of machinery.

I pulled on the boots and tied them tight. Then I dressed in the coat, zipping it up all the way. Ditching the shovel, I picked up an ax instead. And I headed toward the back of the space to see if there was a good place to hide — or maybe a back exit. There had to be a town somewhere nearby. Or a neighbor I could ask for help.

I opened the door in the back wall and stepped through — and froze.

The concrete slab in the middle of the narrow back room was stained with what looked like dried blood. There were restraints hanging from chains attached to the beam overhead, on either side of a single lightbulb. And on the floor, flanking the bloodstain, were two more restraints. Together, they would be used for wrists and ankles.

On the back wall, directly across from me, an old tapestry hung. There were pictures and writing on it. I couldn’t understand the writing, but the pictures were very familiar.

The first one showed a boy removing his shoes on a strange mat, then proceeding barefoot through the following images. The next one showed the same boy speaking, with lines coming out from his mouth to represent words. The following image showed the boy eating some kind of pinkish food. Then it showed him sitting on a strange design while another figure — a man — poured something on his head.

The second-to-last picture showed the man dripping blood on the boy’s face from a cut on his hand.

The last picture detailed the boy’s disembowelment by the man while hanging spread-eagled against a wall.

Above the tapestry there hung an ancient-looking dagger. Its handle was wooden and carved in the shape of a sneering demon with pointy ears and small eyes.

I remembered the words Lilith said while I listened from the staircase: “If he didn’t do it of his own free will, it won’t work.”

The night’s events flashed in my head. From taking off my shoes and then my socks to saying the strange prayer and eating the terrible meat dish. Then Jerry convincing me to sit on the tarp and play the stupid game before he poured something out of a vial onto my head. I remembered the half-glimpsed design carved into the floor under the tarp. And finally, Glen dripping blood on my face and in my mouth.

It was all there on the tapestry. And I had done it of my own free will. I hadn’t been forced to do any of it, even if I was asleep when the blood dripped on me.

The water in the bathroom had been put there on purpose. Jerry had refused to get my bag or provide any socks. The whole confrontation in the basement might’ve been a setup. If it hadn’t been that, he would’ve manufactured something else. Something so he could storm off to his room and ignore me so I couldn’t go out and get my bag.

It was all a carefully constructed ritual. A ritual I had done willingly, with little prompting.

The last thing they needed to do was kill me. The tea Lilith was going to bring up to me had been spiked with a sedative that would make it easier to get me out here to the barn.

But here I was, of my own free will.

The light above me suddenly went off. Someone was in the barn.

I moved away from the open doorway, toward the side of the narrow room. The whistling sound of the blizzard blowing through the front barn door was all I could hear.

There were no footsteps. No rustle of clothing. I held the ax in front of me, facing the dark doorway from the side. My eyes were still adjusting to the gloom. All I could see were different shades of blackness. All I hoped was that I could spot whoever stepped through the door.

But no one stepped through.

I waited, hearing a faint creaking sound from the wall next to me. I thought it was just the wind moving the wooden wall.

Then something fell on my ear. Just a momentary feeling of nothing more substantial than dust, irritating the small hairs on my right ear.

I glanced up as the figure crashed down on me, realizing with stark terror that there was no ceiling to this room. The wall was a partition separating the rest of the barn from this back section. And as the person hit me — I couldn’t tell who it was — I realized they had climbed over and dropped down on me.

The shrill and sickening pain of a blade piercing my skin just behind my right shoulder caused me to drop the ax as I was crushed to the ground.

“I’ve got him!” Lilith screamed from on top of me. I heard the shuffling of feet from the other side of the wall. Panic and adrenaline coursed through my veins, the pain in my upper back sharpening the knowledge that it was time to fight or die.

I’d fallen on my stomach, and Lilith straddled my back. Feeling ahead for the ax handle with my right hand, I reached back with my left and gripped the knife embedded in my back.

Jerry’s mother wasn’t concerned with the knife. It was only designed to stun me. To shock me for long enough that they could get the jump on me. She slithered her thin and ropy arms around my neck from behind, aiming to choke me out.

They couldn’t just kill me. They had to string me up by the restraints and disembowel me. Otherwise, all their work would be for nothing.

I gripped the small kitchen knife and pulled it out with a grunt. Sensing movement ahead of me, I swung the blade out in a savage arc. Glen cried out as the blade cut into one of his ankles.

Lilith screamed and doubled her efforts, making it so I couldn’t pull in another breath. I brought the knife back the other way, jamming it into the area directly behind my head. I felt it sink into flesh. A moment later, Lilith’s arms loosened, and I pulled a sweet breath in.

As I pulled the blade out, a gush of warm wetness poured onto the back of my neck.

Glen was cursing just ahead of me. And as I threw off his fatally wounded wife, I realized I could see him. My eyes had adjusted. He was sitting ahead and to my left, gripping his bleeding ankle.

As I got to my knees, the movement caught his attention. He looked over to see his wife bleeding profusely from her neck.

I lunged at him with the knife. He caught my wrist in his hands, and we struggled for control of the weapon.

As I fought with the old man, I was vaguely aware of Jerry stepping into the room behind us. The scrape of the metal ax blade on the concrete floor sent my senses into overdrive. Jerry had the ax.

Glen was on his back, and I was on top of him. Our hands were gripped around the knife as he tried to turn it toward me, and I tried to do the same to him. We scrambled around, wrestling on the ice-cold concrete floor. Jerry, I knew, was waiting for an opening.

“Hold him steady!” he shouted at his father.

Glen shifted his left hand to my neck to do just what his son said. I knew what was coming next. The ax blade would swing down and hit me in the back of the head. It probably wouldn’t kill me. Not right away. They’d still have enough time to truss me up and gut me.

I knew what was coming next.

So I did something about it.

My neck was still coated in Lilith’s blood, and I knew Glen’s grip was tenuous. But I didn’t pull away. That would’ve been the wrong thing to do. Instead, I flexed my core and whipped my head down, toward Glen.

It worked.

His hand slipped off my bloody neck and I was suddenly chest-to-chest with him, my right ear level with his right. Like we were hugging. I’d twisted the knife blade to point in a neutral direction just before making my move, so neither of us felt the steel pierce our skin.

But Jerry had already seen his chance. He’d swung the ax. Only my head was no longer there. It had moved. Down and away, to the left. So there was nothing to stop the ax blade as it continued in its path and slammed into Glen’s face with a crunch.

I rolled off Glen quickly, even as Jerry screamed and dropped the ax. I came up with the knife and crouched, facing off against Jerry. He looked at me with the wide, frightened eyes of a child. But they were childlike in appearance only. There was nothing underneath. Only darkness. A void inside him. A void that would allow him to perform human sacrifices once every five years for some twisted ritual passed down through the generations.

His eyes hardened. He lunged down, toward the ax. But he wasn’t fast enough.

I crashed into him knife-first as he gripped the ax handle. He went down hard, the back of his head slamming into the concrete. His hand went limp, and the ax clunked to the floor. I moved back on my hands and knees, leaving the knife where it stuck out of his lower abdomen. The pool of blood slowly expanding from his skull told me that it was done. That and the blank look in his eyes.

I sat on that frigid concrete floor for a long time, shivering from the cold and the adrenaline. I felt like crying. But not from sadness or some deep-seated discomfort with confrontation. No, I felt like crying with relief. But I didn’t.

I shifted to my knees and went through Jerry’s pockets. When I found what I was looking for, I walked out of the barn. The snow flurries stung as they struck my face. I crunched around to the front of the house. And to Jerry’s car.

I unlocked it and grabbed my backpack. I brought the bag inside the house, shutting the door behind me. Picking a seat in the sitting room, I took off Glen’s boots and then rooted around in my bag for a pair of socks. I pulled them on and wiggled my toes, reveling in the comfort.

I already felt better.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” I asked the drafty farmhouse.

No one answered. They were all dead.

Careful Where You Glamp

The sound of an engine approaching perks my ears up. At first, I think it’s nothing to worry about. Sound travels far in the wilderness on a still day.

But as the noise gets closer, I grow nervous.

Stepping out of my RV in one of only four designated campsites tucked back into this remote section of national forest, I look down the road.

And before long, I see a sleek black RV that puts my ten-year-old model to shame. As the vehicle approaches, I catch a glimpse of the driver. He’s a younger guy, probably late twenties. There’s a woman about his age in the passenger seat, her bare feet propped on the dash.

Maybe they’re just stopping. Maybe they’re lost. Surely they won’t be staying here tonight.

All four of the campsites have obvious signs attached to trees that say, “Camping by Permit Only.” And I know they don’t have a permit. I know that because I bought all the permits for the next three nights.

I raise a hand in greeting. The man looks right at me, something like disgust coming over his face.

He doesn’t wave back.

Stepping back into my RV, I watch through one of the barred windows as the big black vehicle that probably cost as much as a mid-range house continues past the campsites and heads to the turnaround.

Yes! They’re in the wrong spot. They’re leaving.

But they don’t leave. They pull into the spot across the way, facing out instead of in. This puts their door facing mine across the dirt road.

These aren’t fully functioning RV spots. Meaning there are no electrical hookups and no sewage. So it doesn’t matter which way you park in the pull-through spots. Given the lack of electric and sewer, I’m hopeful these people won’t be staying the night.

If they are planning on staying, I’ll have to leave. I won’t have a choice.

It’s early afternoon now, so I better decide quickly. Which means going over to talk to them.

I mull this over for a few minutes while making some preparations for the night.

I’ve never been great with confrontation. Never been a huge fan of people, either. So when I finally get up the courage to go talk to them, I step out of the RV and immediately hear loud moaning from across the way.

My ears are rather good these days, but you could be half-deaf and still hear those two having sex. The only reason I didn’t hear it in my RV is because I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to soundproof the thing.

I head back inside and continue preparing for the night. I check the chains in the back room to make sure there are no visible fractures. I make sure there’s plenty of meat ready to go in the fridge.

When I glance out a window, I see the man standing in his boxers outside his RV, drinking a bottle of beer.

No time like the present.

Stepping out, I raise my hand and smile as I walk across the dirt road. The guy gives me that disgusted look again.

“Excuse me,” I say. “Sorry to bother you. I was just wondering how long you were planning on staying in that spot?”

The guy smiles. For a second, I think this is going to be a nice conversation. Then he speaks. “The fuck do you care?” he says, still smiling.

So much for that.

“Well, you see that sign there?” I ask, pointing at the Camping by Permit Only sign on the tree. “I happen to know that all the permits have been fulfilled for these sites.”

“Yeah,” the guy says, sneering now. “One of them was fulfilled by me.”

I shake my head. “No, it wasn’t. You see, my friends will be coming here,” I lie. “They’re the ones who paid for the permits for the next three days.”

Suddenly, the woman appears in the open RV door, wrapped in a plush bathrobe. “What’s going on, babe?” she asks.

“Nothing. This old asshole says we need a permit. Says his friends are coming later. Says that they have the permits for all these spots.”

“I don’t see anyone else here,” the woman says.

“Me neither,” the man says. He turns and chucks his beer at the sign on the tree, shattering the bottle.

Then he steps up to me. “Fuck off back to your shitty trailer. I don’t want to see your ugly face again, you hear me? When your friends show up — if they even exist— then they can take it up with me and the twelve-gauge I have in the RV. Got it?”

The woman giggles.

Heart thudding, I turn and hurry back to my RV, shutting the door. I should leave. I should just go and find another spot.

But I know these woods well. It’ll take me at least two hours to maybe find another spot. By then, the sun will nearly be down. It’ll be cutting it close.

I don’t have a choice. I sit down in my driver’s seat and I’m about to crank the engine when the sound of heavy bass comes from across the way. I turn and peer out the front passenger window. The man and woman are dancing in front of their trailer to the music blasting from inside.

As they dance, they’re both flipping me off and laughing.

I take my hand off the key.

Maybe I’ll stay.

***

I wake up to the sound of chirping birds. Bright sunlight spills through the open door of my RV. I’m lying naked on the floor next to the door. My head is pounding. My skin is crackly with dry blood.

Turning to look at the room at the back of my trailer, I see that the reinforced metal door has been broken. From where I am, I can see the chains and shackles. They’re undamaged. Because I never put them on. I do remember that.

Getting to my feet with a groan, I stumble out of the RV, still naked. And I look across at the luxury RV.

The door has been ripped open, the claw marks clearly visible in the metal. As I get closer, I see the man’s severed head jammed onto a broken branch next to the Camping by Permit Only sign.

All I get are flashes of memory, but it’s enough. I don’t have to go inside the trailer to know that the woman is dead, too, her insides torn out by sharp teeth and claws, the good organs eaten.

I still have the savory yet metallic taste from her liver in my mouth.

I hurry back to my RV, pull on some clothes, and crank the engine.

I need to find another place to camp. A secluded one. Plus I have to repair the door to my cage.

After all, there’s another full moon tonight. And there’s no telling what I’ll do during a full moon.

Adopting Evil

Jude looked around the living room, green eyes big and reflecting the sunlight from the windows. He clutched a Batman action figure in one hand — I’d never seen him without it during the whole adoption process.

My wife Alina and I stood nearby, smiling and giving the nine-year-old some time to get used to the space. This was his first time in our home, after all — his new home. We’d only ever met at the adoption place for supervised meetings to make sure we were a good fit for each other.

Glancing up at Alina, I saw the joy in her face at having a child in the house. I stepped over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She looked up into my face, eyes watery with forming tears.

She put an arm around my waist, and we watched as the small-for-his-age child walked over to the couch and sat down. He looked up at the television on the wall. From what we knew about his history, he likely had never had access to a big-screen TV or a video game system like the one I played to wind down from work.

But we had to be careful about limiting his screen time. From all the reading we’d done — mostly Alina — we knew that these first several months would be hard on all of us. Adopting a child wasn’t something to be taken lightly, but I was confident it would come to be a rewarding and fulfilling experience.

And the look on my wife’s face was a great start.

We’d managed to have a child during the first year of our marriage. But the unthinkable happened. When our son was six months old, he died in his crib.

I was dragged from sleep one morning when I heard Alina screaming in our room. I jumped out of bed, fearing the worst as I saw Alina next to the crib in the corner of our bedroom. And when I saw the limp infant clutched to her chest, those fears came true.

After an investigation, the cause of death was ruled as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Of course, we’d heard of SIDS, but we never thought it would happen to us. We had no risk factors usually associated with SIDS. But still, our son Adriel was ripped away from us. And for all our modern science and healthcare, no one could tell us why the child had died.

Saying it was SIDS was like saying there was no cause that they could find.

The death tested our marriage. It bent, but it never broke. And after five years, we felt some semblance of normalcy. We started discussing the possibility of trying again.

But Alina became fixated on the fact that SIDS was more likely to happen to a subsequent child if it had already happened to another. She came to think that her womb was cursed and that any child she brought into the world would die before it reached its first birthday.

We considered adopting a baby, but Alina had a tough time imagining that any baby we adopted wouldn’t just die in the crib.

So we settled on adopting an older child. And eventually, we found Jude.

He’d seemed like a sweet and shy kid on all our visits with him. He’d had a tough life, as did most foster kids. His mother had died giving birth to him, leaving him with only his older brother and abusive father. After the older brother had been seen at school with bruises and scars on his arms, child services was called. And it didn’t take them long to see that both boys were being beaten regularly by their father.

When it was clear that they would be taken into foster care, the older boy disappeared. There was some question as to whether the father had killed him, or he’d just run away. There was no solid evidence for either explanation. All we knew was that he hadn’t been heard from in the year Jude had been in foster care.

When we got to know him as much as we could, Alina and I were confident we could provide Jude with a loving, nurturing home and a good life.

On that first day, when we brought him home, I knew it would be a tough adjustment for all three of us.

But I had no idea how terrible things would really get.

***

“Nico!” Alina’s shout from the backyard caught my attention. I was trying to get Jude to eat what we heard was his favorite breakfast food: eggs with hash browns and ketchup.

Leaving Jude sitting at the table with his mouth firmly shut, I moved out the back door to where Alina was standing with her coffee in one hand and the garden hose in the other. It was her habit to come out into the backyard every morning to water the little garden we had growing.

But as I padded over into the grass, I saw what had prompted her to shout at me like she did. It was an animal. A rabbit. Our yard backed up to a lush greenbelt, so rabbits were a common sight in our neighborhood. And given that our fence was a bit old and in need of repair in several places, we often saw them in our yard.

But we’d never seen one like this. The rabbit was dead. Its head had been smashed, and the implement that had done the smashing lay discarded nearby.

Alina pointed at the shovel. “Did you leave this here?”

It took me a moment to unwrap what she was really saying, and it surprised me. “Are you asking me if I killed that rabbit with the shovel?”

Alina paused. “No. Of course not …”

We both peered over our shoulders to see Jude standing in the doorway, clutching his Batman action figure in his left hand. He stared at us with a blank look on his face.

“You don’t think …” I began.

“No,” Alina breathed. “No way.”

What we didn’t say aloud was that there wasn’t any other logical explanation.

Alina gently questioned Jude about whether he’d been outside during the night, unwilling to ask him outright if he’d killed the animal.

He simply shook his head.

We wanted to believe him so badly.

But that was only the start of the trouble. It got worse. Much worse.

***

We adopted Jude at the beginning of summer, so there was no school. Alina worked from home as a product manager for a large tech company. But knowing that we would be adopting, she’d saved up vacation days so she could give him her full attention for the first month he was with us.

Then it would be my turn to take a month off afterwards.

So two weeks after we brought Jude home, Alina was still the one at home with him all day while I was at work.

When I was pulling into our neighborhood just before four on a Friday afternoon, I saw Alina at the corner of our street, looking around frantically.

Fear blooming in my chest, I pulled over and rolled down the window. She looked in at me, terrified face wet with tears. “He’s gone!” she said. “I went to the bathroom for five minutes and when I came out, he was just gone!”

“When?” I asked. “Did this just happen?”

Alina nodded. “I just ran out here. I’ve been calling for him, but he hasn’t answered.”

“Okay. Get in. We’ll drive around and find him. He must be here somewhere.”

Alina got inside the car, and we drove down our street, windows down, shouting his name.

“Maybe he’s back in the greenbelt,” I said. There was a paved path through the several-mile stretch of greenbelt directly behind our house. About two hundred yards down the street from our house, there was a greenbelt entrance — a sidewalk that ran between two houses to get to the stretch of public land.

As we pulled up next to the entrance, we looked down to see a small gathering of people where the sidewalk met the paved pathway at a T. Thinking they’d found Jude, we both jumped out of the vehicle and ran toward them.

There was a man and a woman in jogging clothes, along with a teenage boy with a skateboard under his arm. They were all looking down at something.

The trio looked up as we approached.

“Is this your dog?” the man asked, gesturing at the black-and-brown Yorkshire terrier lying in a puddle of blood on the paved pathway.

My throat constricted as I remembered the rabbit in our backyard. And I thought about how animal cruelty was often a sign of deep-seated emotional trouble.

I just shook my head, but Alina said, “Have you seen a little boy? Sandy hair, green eyes? Wearing a Batman T-shirt?”

The man and woman shook their heads, but the teenage boy just looked at us and then back at the dead dog. It was hard to tell through the fur, but it looked as though the animal had been stabbed to death.

Alina moved past the group and started shouting for Jude on the greenbelt.

“Sorry, we’re trying to find our —” I paused for some reason. “Uh, son. Our son.”

Alina had chosen a direction, so I moved off the other way, shouting for Jude.

Pretty soon, I came to the spot behind our house. Something occurred to me, and I pushed through the fifteen yards or so of vegetation between our back fence and the pathway. At the fence, I stood on my toes and looked over into the yard.

Jude was sitting on the back patio, playing with his action figure.

“Jude!” I said. He looked up but said nothing.

“Stay right there!”

“Okay,” Jude replied and went back to playing with his toy.

I pulled my phone out and called Alina, telling her I’d found him. I said I would keep him in sight until she got the car and got back to the house.

That done, I started looking for a way over the fence. There was no gate at the back because the vegetation was so thick. It was too tall for me to jump, but many of the boards were warped. And I found a couple next to each other that were loose enough for me to pull back and fit through — barely.

Clothes now dirty, I got through the fence and moved over to Jude.

“Where were you, buddy?” I asked.

“Here,” he said.

“Here in the backyard?”

Jude nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

I sat and studied him until Alina ran through the house and into the backyard, wrapping Jude in a hug. “Oh my God, I thought I’d lost you.”

“He says he was back here the whole time,” I told her. “Did you look back here?”

“Of course I did!” she said, stroking Jude’s hair. “Of course.”

Alina had left the back door open, and I heard our doorbell ring. Leaving Jude and Alina in the backyard, I moved through the house and opened the door.

The teenage boy with the skateboard stood there. He had jet-black hair and wore a ratty T-shirt and jeans.

“Yes?” I said, realizing he must’ve followed Alina as she drove back. “Is this about the dog?”

The kid glanced behind him at the street, then turned back to me. “Yeah,” he said. He seemed reluctant to tell me why he was standing on my front porch.

“I don’t know who the dog belongs to. I’m sorry,” I said.

“No,” the kid said. He paused. “Did you find your son?”

“Yes,” I said, unsure where this was going. “Why?”

“And he’s wearing a Batman shirt? He has brown hair?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the thing is … See, I live down the road in the cul-de-sac, and I was just skating on the greenbelt, and I saw a kid like you described. He was on the greenbelt. And he was walking away from that dog. I mean, I didn’t see the dog at first, but then I saw it. And there was no one else around. The dog was still … moving when I saw it.”

I just stared at him, remembering the rabbit once again.

“And,” the kid said, “I’m pretty sure I saw a knife in his hand. Like a kitchen knife.”

***

“It’s impossible,” Alina said as we lay in bed that night. “He’s such a sweet boy. He couldn’t do such a thing.”

“Alina, we have to consider the possibility that it’s his doing. I mean, how else would you explain the rabbit, let alone that poor dog? And why is there suddenly a knife missing from the kitchen? I couldn’t find it anywhere. Honestly, we’re lucky that kid was discreet about it. Otherwise, we might be dealing with a very angry dog owner right now, demanding answers we don’t have.”

“I just can’t believe it. I can’t.”

“We need to keep a closer eye on him. I don’t want to believe it either, but we have to take this seriously.”

“My mother will be here tomorrow,” Alina said. “Should we tell her?”

“I think so,” I said. “She’ll be here for what, a week?”

“Ten days,” Alina said. She sounded on the verge of tears.

“We should definitely tell her. She can help observe his behavior while she’s here.”

Alina nodded reluctantly. We both turned off our lights and tried to sleep.

I stayed awake for a long time. When sleep was finally coming for me, I turned onto my side, facing the door. And I saw that the door had been opened about six inches. Through that gap, I could’ve sworn I saw Jude standing out in the dark hall, watching us sleep.

I reached up and turned on the light. And when I looked back at the door, there was no one there.

Getting up, I moved down the hall to Jude’s room and peeked inside. He was in his bed, facing the wall.

I went back to the room and shut the door. And locked it.

***

Alina’s mother, Jeanne, showed up the next afternoon. She would be staying in the bedroom Alina normally used for her office.

She doted on the boy at first. But later that evening, Alina took her aside and told her about our suspicions. After that, I could tell that Jeanne was a little distant in her interactions with the kid, even if she didn’t really mean to be.

We kept a close eye on the boy with Jeanne’s help. And for about a week, nothing strange happened. Jude still wasn’t opening up to us, and I wasn’t sure he ever would. If there was something really wrong with him, I figured he wouldn’t ever become a true part of our family.

And to be honest, I didn’t want him in my family if he was going around killing animals. Despite all this, I still had hope that it was all some mix-up or a series of coincidences.

But what happened next made me realize without a shadow of a doubt that something was truly wrong with Jude.

As I was going to bed around ten that night, I’d made sure everything downstairs was locked up tight before checking that Jude was still in bed. We’d tucked him in earlier, but I always checked to make sure he was still there before finally going to bed myself.

Jeanne had gone to bed around nine in the bedroom/office right across the hall from Jude’s room.

For the first hour or so, the house was quiet. But around eleven o’clock, while my mind was still going around in circles about Jude, I started hearing low thumping sounds. I thought they were coming from the hall. I got up once to check and found Jude still in bed. Jeanne’s door was still closed.

So I went back into my room to try and get some sleep. It seemed like every time I approached the precipice of sleep, something brought me back out of it.

I glanced at the clock, groaning softly to see it was nearly one in the morning.

A shout came from out in the hall, followed quickly by a series of thumps. I sat up in bed, and Alina propped herself up. “What was that?” she asked.

“I think it was your mom,” I said, implications dawning on me.

We threw the covers off and rushed out of the room. I flipped on the hall light at the top of the stairs, and we looked down to see Jeanne lying awkwardly at the bottom of the staircase.

I went and got my phone, calling 911 while Alina went to help her mother.

While I was still on the phone, I hurried down the stairs to try and comfort Jeanne as the ambulance came. We didn’t want to move her, thinking we could hurt her even worse.

Gasping in pain, she gestured for us to get closer. When we did, she whispered, “He pushed me. I was going to get a drink of water and I felt him push me.”

All three of us looked up the staircase to see Jude standing there, peering down with wide eyes.

***

I sat slumped on the couch in the living room, exhausted from the night’s ordeal. Jude was watching cartoons on the television, smiling as if nothing was wrong. The frenetic visuals and keening sounds from the show drove like spikes into my temples.

Alina had accompanied Jeanne to the hospital, riding in the ambulance. She’d called me about an hour ago, saying that her mother had broken an arm and a hip and cracked a couple of ribs.

While I was listening to this news, I stared at Jude where he sat on the couch. I’d never felt so much anger toward a child before. I hadn’t imagined it was possible.

But at the same time, I felt pity. His outward appearance and all the behavior I’d observed were at odds with the things he’d done. I tried to imagine him stabbing a dog, smashing a rabbit, and pushing my mother-in-law down the stairs, and I struggled to do it. It just didn’t make sense to me.

I jerked from my seat as the doorbell rang. I knew it was a social worker; I’d called the adoption agency as soon as they were open. And while I’d immediately started talking about dissolving the adoption, the woman on the phone talked me down and agreed to send someone out first thing to see what could be done about the situation.

Reluctantly, I agreed.

I opened the door to find a middle-aged woman with a plump face, dressed in a pantsuit. Her auburn hair framed her face and swayed as she bobbed her head. “Hello, Mr. Romero,” she said. “I’m Terri Vargas.”

We shook hands and I showed her in.

“Hello, Jude,” Terri Vargas said when we stepped into the living room.

Jude turned and looked at her briefly before returning his gaze to the television.

“Have you been filled in?” I whispered in the woman’s ear.

She nodded. “I believe so. There have been … incidents. But you can’t prove he was responsible for all of them, is that right?”

I scoffed. “We can certainly prove that he pushed my mother-in-law down the stairs.”

“I didn’t think anyone saw it,” she said. “Isn’t that right? Not even your mother-in-law?”

“There was no one else in the house,” I said. “And she felt him push her. There’s no other explanation. It certainly wasn’t my wife or me who pushed her.”

“Of course not,” Vargas said. “That’s not what I mean. I just like to err on the side of caution when it comes to these things.”

“‘These things’? Does this happen a lot?”

“No. Poor choice of words. I’m sorry. But I would like a couple of hours alone with Jude, if you don’t mind.”

I gestured at the boy. “Please,” I said. “I’m going to pick my wife up from the hospital and maybe get something to eat — if she even has an appetite after the night we’ve had. We’ll be back to discuss options with you in two hours.”

“Sounds good. Thank you, Mr. Romero.”

As I went out to the garage, I thought I heard a thump from upstairs. I paused and looked up, wondering what could’ve caused the noise. Then I shook my head and shrugged it off, thinking it was a byproduct of my stress and exhaustion.

Twenty minutes later, Alina and I were sitting in the car in the hospital parking lot. I’d gone inside to see Jeanne, but she was unconscious and needed to sleep after being in surgery.

So Alina and I left, and I filled her in on what had happened with the social worker. It was only then that I realized I hadn’t even told her I was planning on calling the adoption agency.

“I want to go home,” she said, glaring at me. “Now.”

“Alina, you can’t seriously want to keep him. He pushed your mother down the stairs!”

“You talk about him like he’s a dog or something,” she said. “I don’t know what I want, but I’m not ready to give up on him. He’s just a child. We can help him.”

“Baby—”

“Take me home!”

Realizing I wouldn’t convince her of anything, I started the car and headed back to the house.

By the time we got back, it had only been about forty minutes since I’d left. The garage door was still open; I had forgotten to close it when I left. So I pulled in and we got out without a word.

We moved into the house through the laundry room. It was quiet. I heard no talking and no television. And then there was a sudden, piercing cry from the living room.

Alina and I rushed into the room to see Jude in the corner, hugging his legs to his chest, hands bloody.

On the floor nearby, between the couch and the coffee table, was Terri Vargas. She was lying on the floor, shirt and suit jacket drenched in blood, knife wounds all over her body.

And sitting on his knees next to her was the teenage boy who’d come to the house to tell me he’d seen Jude shortly after the dog was killed on the greenbelt. His hands were covered in blood, and he was looking up at us with a shocked expression on his face. There was a bloody knife sitting on the carpet nearby.

Jude was screaming, “He killed her!” repeatedly.

Alina screamed at the sight of the dead woman, and she rushed toward Jude to protect him. The teenager jumped to his feet and ran toward the back door.

After a moment of shock, I ran after him. He made a beeline directly for the damaged part of the back fence — the same place I’d managed to fit through on the day the dog was killed.

But as he tried to squirm through the opening, I caught his legs and yanked him back into the yard.

He whipped a fist at me, striking me in the side of the head. He managed to get one of his legs free and kicked me in the chest. I fell back but quickly recovered, lunging toward him. Abandoning the fence exit, he squirmed from my grasp and ran back toward the house. And I immediately saw what he was heading for. The shovel was propped up on the wall under the patio.

Scrambling up to my feet, I sprinted toward him, hoping to get there before he reached the shovel.

But I didn’t.

He grabbed it and swung it at me. I ducked back and the spade flashed through the air an inch from my face. As he moved to swing it back the other way, I rushed him, bringing up an arm to protect my head as the wood handle hit me. It was a weak hit, and I slammed him back into the side of the house. I punched him once in the face and then wrenched the shovel away from him, jamming the handle up against his throat to keep him there.

“Call the police!” I shouted to Alina.

“Okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the kid gasped. “But I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”

“Who are you?” I asked, puzzle pieces starting to take shape in my mind.

“I’m Jude’s brother,” he said, half-choking.

I moved the shovel down and put it against his upper chest instead of his throat. “His brother? The one who ran away?”

The kid nodded. “Yeah, but —”

“So you’re the one who’s been doing all this? Why? Are you trying to ruin your brother’s life? What’s wrong with you?”

“I didn’t do it! I didn’t do any of it,” he said, whining and sniveling. I didn’t believe a word he said. He’d just tried to kill me, after all.

As I thought about it, it all made sense to me. This kid was trying to make his brother as miserable as he was. Their father had really done a number on him. But I realized my wife was right to second guess what we were seeing. Jude was innocent. He was the sweet kid we thought he was.

But then I remembered Jeanne being pushed down the stairs. How would he have done that? Suddenly, the strange noises I’d been hearing in the house came to mind.

“Have you been living in my attic?”

The kid paused, looking at me through teary eyes.

“I can just go up and look for myself. I’m sure you’ve left some evidence.”

“Okay,” he said. “Yes. I have been. But it’s not what you think—”

“Yeah, right,” I said. There were two different attic access panels in the house. He could’ve easily slipped out and pushed Jeanne down the stairs, then let us think it was Jude.

“You told him not to tell, didn’t you?” I asked. “Jude knew you were here the whole time, but you convinced him not to tell us.”

“No!” he cried. “Just listen to me, please. Just listen.”

Against my better judgment, I listened to his story. It was the story of a guilty teenager who’d been caught red-handed and was grasping at straws so he wouldn’t spend his life in prison. And I didn’t believe a word of it.

The first responders arrived not long after and arrested the kid. The woman was dead; there was nothing they could do for her. But they checked over Jude for wounds — he’d been bloody when we found him. But they found no wounds on him.

The police interviewed all of us, including Jude, who talked more in one sitting than I’d ever heard before. He told the detectives that his brother, Aden, had come from upstairs and stabbed the woman repeatedly and then tried to force the bloody knife into Jude’s hands. Jude had just dropped the knife and moved away from his brother when my wife and I came into the room.

He also said that his brother had come into his room and hid under the bed just after Jeanne fell down the stairs. Jude had walked out to see what happened, which was when we saw him at the top of the stairs.

“And why didn’t you say anything about your brother being in the house?” the detective asked.

Jude cast his eyes down. “He said he’d hurt them if I told anyone.”

Sobbing, Alina hugged him to her chest.

We left the house soon afterward, heading to a hotel for the night. The place was a crime scene and the detectives said they would likely have people there for much of the day and into the night.

But before we left, I got into the attic and found a skateboard, a sleeping bag, a backpack, and a grocery bag of food trash. I made sure to tell the police about it.

At the hotel, we had room service and watched a movie. Jude seemed to be opening up a little bit more. I guessed that the stress of having his brother around all that time had made him closed off. It was so nice to see him opening up to us.

At bedtime, Alina and I slept in one of the beds and Jude in the other.

In the dark of the room, I found myself staring up at the ceiling, thinking about the story Aden had told me before he’d been arrested.

He’d said that Jude was dangerous. He said that the only reason he was hanging around was to protect me and Alina.

When he came to the house to tell us about the dog, he was hoping it would be enough to make us get rid of Jude. He couldn’t just come out and say Jude was dangerous; he knew we’d never believe him.

So he was waiting, biding his time until he could give us the evidence we needed to see Jude for what he really was.

He even said that it wasn’t his father who had abused him. He said it was Jude. He said he would wake up to Jude hitting him with a baseball bat in the middle of the night.

And that the bruises they’d found on Jude’s body when the social workers had first gotten involved were wounds inflicted on Jude by Aden in self-defense. They’d blamed the father, but it was really Jude’s doing.

It was all Jude.

When Aden realized he would be put into foster care with his brother, he knew it wouldn’t be long before Jude actually tried to kill him. So he ran away.

He said that Jude was the one who’d stabbed the woman to death and that Aden had been trying to help her when we came in. And he’d only attacked me with the shovel because he panicked, knowing we wouldn’t believe him.

I went over his story in my mind, thinking it through. Something about the dark of night made me consider it more than I had when Aden first told me.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought it might be the truth.

I sat up in bed and looked over toward my adopted son. He was sitting up in bed, his back perfectly straight but his head turned toward me.

He smiled in the darkness. “Goodnight, Daddy. Sleep tight.”

The Murder Tapes

I see the box full of tapes from across the store. Even though it has been shoved under a table in favor of more desirable items like an old VCR/DVD player combo and a genuine Walkman CD player, I can tell it’s new. I can tell because I stop by this thrift store five days a week on my way home from work. And I’ve never seen that banker’s box full of VHS tapes before.

Stirrings of excitement form in my belly as I think about all the footage contained in that box. Chances are it’s just old recordings of TV shows from the 80s and 90s, back before there was such a thing as TiVo, let alone streaming services.

But if I’m lucky I’ll find some home footage I can use in my film project.

Without hesitation, I grab up the box of tapes and march directly to the front. As soon as the cute cashier with the lip ring and green hair finishes checking out an old lady, she looks up and smiles at me.

“Hey, Max,” she says. “Find something good today?”

“I did, Cindy,” I say. I always make sure to say her name because I read somewhere that saying a girl’s name lets them know that you remember them. That you see them. And just maybe Cindy is a perk of coming to this particular thrift store, even though it’s slightly out of the way compared to the Goodwill on 4th.

“At least I hope I did. Won’t know for sure until I watch them.”

She studies the box for a moment. “Are you going to watch them all?”

“Eventually,” I say. “I usually put a video on in the background while I make dinner or work on other school stuff. I only really pay attention if something interesting comes on.”

“Oh, right,” she says. “You’re in film school.”

“Yeah,” I say, flattered that she remembers.

“You like horror flicks?”

I smile. “I’m a bit of a horror snob, actually. Pretty picky.”

Cindy sticks a hip out and tilts her head. “What’s your favorite?”

“Overall favorite? Impossible to say. But for fun, I love Videodrome. For pure scares, The Thing.”

“Cronenberg isn’t all that underground,” she says. “And which The Thing are you talking about?”

“1982, of course. Carpenter.”

“Okay, I’ll allow it,” she says with a hint of humor.

“You’ll allow it?” I laugh. “What are your favorites?”

“Excuse me!” a man says from behind me. I hadn’t even noticed he was there. I was so focused on Cindy that I was oblivious. “I’d like to check out, please.”

“Right,” Cindy says. “Sorry!” She smiles at me and then looks at the box again. “I can’t find a price on this thing. How about you give me a dollar and we’ll call it even.”

“A dollar?” I say. “Are you sure?”

She shrugs. “This box came in with a bunch of other stuff from some storage unit. I honestly think my manager was about to throw it away, but I may have convinced him to keep it … for you.”

I swallow, not believing my luck. Let’s just say that I’m about as far from a Don Juan as you can get. I had a girlfriend in high school, but since then it’s been crickets in my love life. It doesn’t help that between work and school I have 80-hour weeks, of course. “Yeah, okay,” I say, pulling a dollar out of my wallet and giving it to her.

She rings it up and then turns back to look at me. My palms are suddenly sweaty. Am I really going to do this?

“Uh, if you, uh, give me your number, we can finish our conversation,” I say, glancing at the increasingly angry man behind me.

“I’d like that,” Cindy says, extending a strip of receipt paper out of her register. She jots her number down and sticks it in the box. We smile at each other as I lift the box and head out.

I put the box in my passenger seat and get into the driver’s seat, reaching over and digging the piece of paper out. I grin at the phone number and the little smiley face above it. Instead of a regular smiley face, though, Cindy has drawn the face with Xs for eyes above the smile.

***

Recalling a scene from the movie Swingers with Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, I contemplate texting Cindy. I’m home now, the box of videotapes next to my TV and her phone number in my phone.

In the movie Swingers, they talk about how long to wait before calling a woman whose number you get. If I remember correctly, they say two days is the standard.

Yeah, right. There’s no way I can wait two days to text her. Besides, that was the nineties. Things have changed, right?

It’s not the cool thing to do, but I send her a joking message about how her favorite horror movies better be good.

A minute later, I read it over again and mutter, “Stupid,” before setting the phone aside so I don’t do anything else dumb in the next hour.

Then I move over to the box of tapes.

The labels on the tapes only have numbers. There are no words on them at all. Their cardboard sleeves don’t have any handwriting, either.

I stick the first one into my VCR and start it up as I begin making dinner. My studio apartment is small enough that I can watch my TV from anywhere except the bathroom.

Getting out my cutting board and setting it on the small dining room table that takes up much of my kitchen, I glance up at the images on the TV.

At first, I think I’m watching some old public access show. There’s a backdrop with sloppily drawn green hills, a couple of bulbous trees, and a blue sky with a yellow sun in the corner.

A woman who looks to be about my age comes into the frame from the right. She’s wearing a long-sleeved white dress with a bonnet and carrying a curved staff in front of her with both hands. She’s supposed to be Little Bo Peep.

She’s side-on to the camera, so I can’t see her face thanks to the bonnet. But she moves stiffly into the middle of the screen.

From the other side, a naked man wearing a lamb mask comes into the frame crawling on all fours and making sheep noises.

I’ve been watching this with a frown on my face as I chop onions for dinner, but now I freeze. “What the hell?” I say, thinking that I’ve bought a box full of someone’s home sex tapes.

But then the woman turns toward the camera, and I catch a glimpse of her face. I drop the knife on the table and move around, getting closer to the TV.

The woman’s mouth is taped shut, and her eyes are absolutely brimming with fear. I can see now that her hands have been bound at the wrists with white rope, which was obscured by her long-sleeved dress.

She grips the staff in both hands, but it’s pretty clear that the thing’s made of flimsy plastic.

The man comes up to her, his hairy belly hanging down and his genitals flapping, and rubs against her leg, still baaing. She winces and whimpers as he gets to his knees and paws at her.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I contemplate turning it off. I don’t want to watch this anymore. But I know I can’t turn it off yet. It could be evidence of a crime.

So I move forward and sit on my couch. And I watch the video as things turn worse for the woman.

By the end of it, I feel like I’m going to vomit. The woman is still alive, but I’m sure she wishes she wasn’t.

The video stops and my TV screen goes blue. My apartment is silent as I think over the implications. The footage is clearly evidence of a crime. But the man never showed his face. He was wearing the mask the whole time. He had no identifying marks that I could tell.

I need to bring these to the police.

But before I do that, I need to see what else is on these videos.

My hand shakes as I put the video labeled “2” into the VCR.

This one is of a different location. There’s no cartoonish backdrop. Only a gray cinder block wall. And a woman chained up on a mattress covered in slippery plastic. I’m sure it’s the same woman from the first video.

She’s screaming against her gag and thrashing, but the chains around her arms are fixed to an anchor in the wall behind the mattress.

The man comes on screen like a shot, making me jump. He’s still wearing the lamb mask as he falls on top of the woman, plunging a knife into her stomach.

I jump up from my couch and nearly knock the VCR over as I slap at the Stop button. Then I run to the bathroom and vomit stomach bile into the toilet.

I’ve seen so many horror movies — many of them pretty gruesome — but there’s something about seeing a person actually being killed on screen. It’s awful. Terrible. Unfakeable.

It’s the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen.

After wiping my mouth, I get up and grab my phone from the table. I need to call the police and see what they want me to do with these videos. See if I need to wear gloves or something or just not touch them at all and let a detective come get them.

But as I pick up my phone, I see there are three texts from Cindy. I’ve been so worked up I completely forgot I messaged her when I got home.

It strikes me as strange that there are three messages from her, but I don’t pay it much mind. Thinking I’ll just ignore the messages for now, I go to unlock the phone. But as I do, I see the preview of the first message and something about it strikes me as strange.

There’s a smiley face emoji followed by the words “Let’s talk about it in person…” That’s all of the message I can see.

It’s the emoji that strikes me as strange. Remembering the smiley face with Xs for eyes on the piece of paper she gave me, I open the messaging app and read all three messages.

The first one is: “Let’s talk about it in person. You up for a drink?” It was sent twenty minutes ago, about fifteen minutes after I sent the initial message.

The second text has a note of desperation in it: “I’m off work now. How about that drink?” It was sent ten minutes after her first message.

The third and final message was sent two minutes ago. And as I read it, I know something is really wrong: “I can come over to your place if you want. We can watch some of those tapes you bought. If you haven’t already watched them.”

I stare down at the phone, the implications swirling in my brain. It’s not Cindy, that much is clear. The smiley emoji was the first clue. I barely know her, but I know that she would’ve sent a skull or a ghost or even the scream face emoji. But not the run-of-the-mill smiley face.

Then there’s the last message. Not only would Cindy not volunteer to come over to a perfect stranger’s house — I know she’s too smart for that — but there’s also the matter of asking about the tapes. Fishing to see if I’ve watched any of them yet.

The realization is unshakable. The person messaging me with Cindy’s phone is the man from the tapes. Somehow, they were accidentally given to the store. He realized it and tracked them down. But by the time he got to the store, they were already gone.

Now he’s scrambling, trying to find out where I live.

I put the phone down, wishing I hadn’t opened the text. Now he’ll be able to see that I’ve read them.

Now I have to answer, otherwise I’ll make him suspicious. And I need to buy some time so I can get the police involved. God knows what he’s done with Cindy and the other thrift store employees. Maybe they’re already dead.

After thinking for a moment, I pick up the phone and type out a message: “I would love a drink, but I have a bunch of homework tonight. Haven’t watched any of the tapes but if you’re free tomorrow we can check them out then.”

I send it, thinking it’s believable enough.

The two little check marks turn blue, indicating that it has been read. I wait, but I don’t know what I expect. Maybe a message saying that tomorrow will be fine, no problem.

But that’s ridiculous. And the message that does come through proves that I didn’t think things through.

It’s a picture message. Of Cindy, stripped to her bra and on a grimy mattress coated in plastic, her hands chained up. I can’t see the whole scene, but I’m willing to bet that the chains are affixed to a cinder block wall with an anchor.

She has tape over her mouth and her mascara is smeared down her cheeks.

A second message comes in. It’s a selfie of Cindy and a man in a plastic sheep mask. His obscured face takes up half the frame, and Cindy’s terrified face takes up the other half.

It’s followed quickly by a third message that reads: “Bring ALL the tapes to 8th and Western. Text me when you’re there. If you don’t make it in twenty minutes or if I see a cop anywhere near that intersection, your friend is dead.”

My stomach cramps as panic constricts my throat. 8th and Western is a twenty-minute drive when there’s zero traffic. And it’s only approaching nine o’clock. There will be traffic.

I grab my keys and get the box of tapes. I’m out the door before I remember that there’s still one in the VCR.

Precious seconds tick by as I eject the tape, put it with the others, and then rush outside to my car.

***

I pull up to a gas station at 8th and Western with a minute to spare. I still have VHS tapes spread all over my passenger seat from what I was scrambling to do while driving. My glove compartment is still open, too. It’s a miracle I didn’t crash.

If the guy is watching, he’ll know something’s up if he sees me putting all the tapes back in the box. But I have a feeling he’s not here.

I text Cindy’s number with one word: “Here.”

A moment later, another text comes through. “Drive to 10th and Western. There’s an alley halfway down between 10th and 11th. Turn right into the alley and place the box in the first dumpster on your right. Then leave. Once you’ve done that, go to 4th and Riley and send me a picture of the Mr. Taco restaurant sign. You have ten minutes or she dies.”

I pull out of the gas station. As I drive, I put the tapes back into the box and then sweep the pieces of broken black plastic off the seat.

By the time I turn into the alley, I have the box looking normal again. I stop and put the box into the dumpster, placing it on top of a bunch of foul-smelling trash bags and produce boxes.

Glancing around, I get back into my car and then drive away.

When I get to Mr. Taco, I snap a picture of the sign and send it. There’s no answer.

And I know there won’t be. I’ve done what he wanted. Now, he’ll disappear again. And so will Cindy. There’s no way he’ll let her go.

Of course, I’ve known that all along.

On my phone, I exit the messaging app and go to the Find My Phone app. I open it up and watch the screen. The blue dot on the map is moving, heading down Western, passing 13th Street. I-85 is a quarter mile away. That’s where he’s going.

I pull out of the Mr. Taco parking lot and head toward the interstate.

***

I got the idea from some movie. No Country for Old Men, maybe. Of course, it’s certainly not the only movie that features a tracking device hidden in an important object. I can think of a dozen others.

It didn’t take much to break the tape reels out of one of the VHS tapes. At a stoplight, I simply pulled a screwdriver out of the tool chest I keep under my passenger seat. I put the videotape between my legs and lifted the flap to expose the film with one hand. With the other hand, I jammed the tip of the screwdriver down to break all the little plastic pieces.

When that was done, I turned the tape over and shook it over my passenger seat, still holding the flap open. Little bits of black plastic came out, but not the two film reels. They were held in place by two little metal arms inside, which would allow them to spin in place when the tape was played.

The light turned green, and I hit the gas. With one hand, I put the tape back between my thighs and shoved the screwdriver down into the casing, digging it around so I could pop the reels out one at a time. I pulled the first one out and tossed it into the footwell, the film stringing out behind it. Then I got the second one out and tossed it after the first.

Still driving, I grabbed my old phone from the glove compartment. I keep it in there because the camera is decent, and I always like to have a backup camera wherever I go.

After powering it on, I navigated to the Find My Phone app and made sure everything was set so I could track it. Then I slipped the phone into the gutted VHS tape and slipped the tape back into the cardboard sleeve. Then I dug a bunch of the other tapes out so I could put it deeper inside the box.

Moments later, I pulled up to 8th and Western.

Now, as I look at my phone, I see that the guy is heading toward the outskirts of town. He’s off the highway, driving through an industrial area. I’m about a mile behind him.

As I get off the highway, I notice that the dot hasn’t moved in a bit. And as I close the distance, I have to assume that he’s stopped.

When I get close, I pull over on the side of the road and study the map. It looks like he’s at a warehouse on the next block over.

I know he’s liable to kill Cindy if he hears police coming. That’s how it always happens in the films. Maybe he’ll kill her and then himself before the cops can storm the place.

I get out of the car with my small tool kit. I’m thinking about the chains around Cindy’s wrists, and how I’ll hopefully be able to free her with something in the kit.

My phone in one hand and the tool kit in the other, I move down the street, sticking to shadows as best I can. It’s an industrial area, and business is done for the day. The dark warehouses loom silently. The faraway hum of the highway is the only sound other than my soft footfalls on the gritty sidewalk.

Slowing as I come to the property, I peer around the corner of the adjacent warehouse, looking down the driveway. A small brick warehouse is set back from the road, a newish minivan parked in front near the double doors.

It must be the place. I unlock my phone and look at the map again to confirm. Then I change apps, my thumbs flying across the touchscreen. When I’m done, I put the phone away and return my attention to the warehouse.

When I see no movement, I hustle forward, keeping the van between me and the grimy front windows flanking the door.

The van is empty, so I kneel behind it for a minute, watching and listening. I see nothing. I hear nothing, other than the blood rushing in my ears and the steady insistent hammer of my heart.

Quietly opening the tool kit, I select the utility knife from within. It’s a thin kind, with snap-off blades. But it’s better than nothing. I extend the blade out about two inches and hold the tool in my hand as I rush toward the building, tool kit still in my left hand.

I try the door. It opens, and I peer inside, seeing nothing but a dusty office area. The only light spills through a doorway at the back of the office, down a short hallway. I’m sure it’s the door to the warehouse area.

I move cautiously, feeling a sickening thrill of excitement. I don’t know how many times I’ve fantasized about something like this. About being the hero who beats the odds to save the girl and dole out justice.

But that doesn’t keep my stomach from clenching or my palms from sweating.

Gazing into the warehouse through the open door, I spot Cindy there, at the side of the space. She’s just as I saw her in the picture; chained up and lying on a plastic-enclosed twin mattress. Work lights on tripods are set nearby, shining down on her.

After peering around and not seeing the guy, I step into the space. Cindy sees me. Our eyes meet.

I can’t help but smile, the joy of playing the hero momentarily drowning out the fear.

Then there’s a footfall from directly behind me. I spin around, slashing wildly out with the utility knife. But before my arm can even complete its arc, something slams into my chest. I feel the structure of my body change, but there’s no pain as I gaze down at the ax sticking out of my chest. It’s in there deep.

I try to pull in a breath, but my lungs spasm and I cough up blood. The man stands in front of me, hands still on the ax handle. He’s wearing a sheep mask over his jeans and zip-up sweatshirt.

“Baaa!” he says. “Baaad boy!” Then he laughs, yanking the ax out of me.

Dropping the tool kit and the utility blade, I stumble back and fall to the concrete floor.

Turning my head, I see Cindy getting up from the bed, dragging the chain still fastened around her wrist. The anchor that was in the wall is still attached to the chain. Somehow, she got it out of the wall. Maybe she just pulled it out. Maybe dozens of girls like her loosened it over the years.

And as I watch her dash for the exit, I realize I was never the hero in this story. I was only a supporting character. This is Cindy’s story. She’s the hero — the heroine. She’s the one—

My thoughts stop cold as the man appears in my tunneling vision, chopping into Cindy’s neck with the ax. She falls to the ground, so much blood spewing from the wound.

“Baaaa!” the man says before kicking Cindy in the stomach.

I can feel the pain now. It’s coming on like a semi-truck barreling into a crowded playground. There’s no stopping it.

And in the stark light of immense pain, I see how dumb it was to think I was anything more than another human, subject to the cruel whims of the universe. I’m not a character in a story. I have no plot armor. Things don’t magically work out for me.

And nor do they for Cindy. She’s no different.

But then again, the man in the sheep mask is no different, either. He doesn’t get a happy ending.

Because I texted 911 with this warehouse’s address and a brief sentence about a serial killer here. I included the picture of Cindy the guy sent me, to make sure they hurried.

And I can hear the sirens now. They’re close. Very close.

The Horror I Just Witnessed Will Change the World

It was supposed to be our last call of the twenty-four-hour shift.

Neither of us thought it could be the last call of our lives.

Zach and I were eating when we got the call from dispatch. “3320, please head to 543 Shelton Road for a potential heart attack call,” she said over the radio.

We looked at each other. “Shelton Road?” I said. “Where the hell is that?”

Zach shook his head before telling dispatch we were on our way. He wrapped his greasy burger up, flipped on the lights and siren, and maneuvered out of the fast-food restaurant’s parking lot.

Meanwhile, in the passenger seat, I was scarfing down the rest of my burger, knowing it would be cold later if I didn’t finish it now. Nothing worse than a cold, soggy burger.

As I ate with one hand, I punched the address into the ambulance’s computer. It was rare that we got a call on a road we didn’t recognize. Both Zach and I had been working these streets for nearly ten years. And I couldn’t ever remember a call on any Shelton Road.

As the map pulled up on the screen, Zach looked at it. “Huh,” he said. “Strange. I thought that whole area was abandoned.”

I chewed the rest of my burger before answering. “What do you mean? Like an abandoned neighborhood?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s all fenced off and everything. I’ve heard all kinds of conspiracy theories about it. Frank said he knows a guy who heard a bunch of creepy chanting from that place one night.”

“Oh, Frank said. Then we know it’s true,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Hey, man,” Zach said. “Even a broken phone is right twice a day.”

I laughed. “You’re mixing your metaphors. A broken phone is never right. You’re thinking of a clock.”

“What the hell is a clock?” Zach said.

I shook my head, chuckling. “You suck.”

Zach laughed. “Seriously, when will you learn? It’s just too easy to get you. I bet you reply to all those wrong number texts you get on your phone, don’t you?”

“No,” I said. “Well … actually, I did just send some compromising pictures to an incredibly attractive young lady. I’m sure it’ll be fine, though.”

Zach and I fell into laughter. This was our routine. We entertained each other. We were at a point where we could joke around while still racing toward the call, lights and sirens going. It was all second nature to both of us.

Besides, laughter was how we dealt with the stress of the job. Given all the terrible stuff we saw, it was a soothing balm.

Following the GPS, Zach made a turn off Webster Avenue and onto a road we passed by nearly every night but had never actually gone down. Suddenly, everything clicked, and I realized where we were headed. “Oh, man, I know where we’re going. I totally forgot about this place. What’s it called … ? Praesidium Park?”

Zach snapped his fingers. “That’s it! I couldn’t remember. I knew it was a weird name.”

I had heard stories about the place back when it was abandoned just after the 2008 financial crisis. Word was the investors took a huge hit and couldn’t finish construction. Although by that point, they’d already built twelve mansions in the place. It was way out, separated from town by fields and trees that were eventually supposed to be turned into shopping centers and such.

But since the whole thing had gone belly up, the houses had been gated off and left to rot where they stood.

Zach slowed as we turned onto Shelton Road. The headlights picked out the entrance to the proposed community up ahead. Although I’d expected to see a simple chain-link fence around the place, there sat a sturdy-looking brick wall there. The two wrought-iron gates were wide open, greeting us like a gaping mouth.

I figured they must have built the fence around the place before starting on the houses. Surely they wouldn’t have built a brick wall around the community after the money dried up.

“I wonder if it’s some kids,” Zach said.

“I was thinking the same thing. But it’s a heart attack call?”

Zach shrugged. “Maybe they were doing drugs and one of them just thinks he’s having a heart attack.”

We rolled through the gate, and, seeing that the GPS didn’t have a direct location of the house, we started looking at numbers on the massive three-story mansions that lined the road.

“543,” Zach said, pulling over to the left. I looked out his window at the house and saw that one of the three garage doors was open. A black SUV sat inside.

“What the hell?” I said. “Is someone living here?”

“Let’s find out,” Zach said, throwing the ambulance in park and reaching back for his flashlight.

I grabbed the trauma kit along with my own flashlight and jumped out, following Zach up the concrete walkway through the dirt yard.

Considering the place had been abandoned for fifteen years, it didn’t look too bad from the outside. The windows were even intact, although dirty. Of course, there was no light coming from inside.

Zach knocked on the door with the butt of his flashlight. “EMTs!” he called. “Hello?”

There was no answer.

He reached out and tried the door, but it was locked.

“Garage?” I asked.

Zach nodded. “Garage.”

We walked through the dirt yard to the driveway and started up toward the three-car garage, which was set back from the front of the house. We both clicked on our flashlights.

“Look at that,” Zach said, pointing his beam at the spot on the SUV where the license plate was supposed to go. It was blank.

We moved into the garage, shining our flashlights around. I looked inside the SUV, half expecting to find it occupied. It was empty. But I did see a two-way radio installed in the dashboard, similar to the one we had in the ambulance.

“Maybe Frank was right,” Zach replied. “Maybe there really is some strange stuff going on here.”

We moved toward the door to the house, noting that the garage was empty other than the SUV. Zach reached out and tried the knob. It was unlocked.

We moved through a mudroom and into the unfurnished house. There wasn’t even carpet or light fixtures in the place.

“Paramedics!” I called. “Anyone here?”

No answer.

“You take the top floor, I’ll take the second,” Zach said as we found the stairs.

We searched quickly, calling out occasionally, but found nothing. No signs that anyone had been here.

We met back downstairs and looked around the rooms on the bottom floor we hadn’t searched. That was when we found the door to the basement. It was sitting slightly open, and there was an electronic keypad on the wall next to the doorway. The numbers glowed green with an interior light.

“How does this thing have power?” I asked. “And why do you need a keypad lock for your basement?”

I noticed that the two deadbolts were sticking out of the door, as though they’d automatically extended at some point. But since the door wasn’t closed, they were useless.

Zach swung the door open and shined his flashlight down the metal stairs. The stairwell went down to a landing, then turned and seemed to go down even further.

“How deep is this basement?” Zach said.

“Help!”

Zach and I both twitched at the call from down in the basement. It was a man’s voice, tinged with pain and desperation.

Then we were moving down the stairs without so much as a glance at each other. We’d found our patient, and all we were concerned with was getting to him.

We made it to the first landing and turned, heading down to the second. As I looked down the dark stairwell, I slowed, my mind trying to figure out where the hell we were.

There was no basement that I could see. There was nothing but a square concrete shaft going down further than my flashlight beam could reach. The metal staircase twisted around the sides of the shaft all the way into the deep darkness below. Looking over the railing and down the gap in the middle of the shaft made me feel nauseous. I’d never liked heights.

As we started down the third segment of stairs, we spotted a man lying on the opposite side some two levels below us. We rushed down toward him, getting a better picture of him as we got closer.

Dressed in a gray suit, his legs were on the stairs down while his back was on the landing. He was holding his left arm to his chest. As we got closer, I could tell that the jacket was darker around the limb because it was soaked in blood.

He also had a nasty gash on the side of his head, indicating that he’d been struck by something.

We knelt next to the man, who looked to be in his late thirties.

“What’s your name?” I asked, checking his head while Zach concentrated on the arm.

“Who called you?” the man asked. “Who told you to come here?”

“We got a call about a heart attack,” I said. “That wasn’t you?”

The man shook his head. As Zach tried to get his arm away, the man yanked it back. “Don’t touch me! I don’t need medical help. What I need is for you to go down there and find it. I think it landed a few levels down.”

Zach and I looked at each other.

“Find what?” I asked.

“The failsafe,” the man said. “Somehow, it got to him. I don’t know how, but it did.”

“What did?” Zach said. “The failsafe?”

“No, dammit,” the man snapped. “Him, my partner. Gerald Patterson. It got to him.”

“I don’t understand,” I told the man.

He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is getting the failsafe. You” —he looked at me— “go down and see if you can find it. And then bring it back up. I’m going to have your partner help me up to my vehicle.”

“I think we just need to get you to a hospital,” Zach said.

The man laughed without humor. “You don’t get it,” he said, moving his right arm. Before I could react, he shot his hand under his jacket and came out with a pistol, which he pointed at Zach.

“Wow, okay, man,” Zach said. “We’ll do what you say. Just put the gun down.”

This wasn’t the first time we’d had a gun pulled on us, but that didn’t mean we were used to it.

“What am I looking for?” I asked. “What does the failsafe look like?”

“You’ll know it when you see it,” the man said. “It’s covered in my blood.” He still had the gun trained on Zach.

“And what if I don’t find it?”

“Then none of this matters anyway,” he said. “Now go. Hurry.”

I stood, leaving the trauma bag next to the guy as I started down the stairs.

“Oh,” he said, “and if you see anyone or anything else down here … run.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I shouted, losing it for a second.

“Just go!” he said, jabbing the weapon toward Zach.

“Alright, alright, I’m going.”

I scanned the stairs with my flashlight as I moved, my boots clanking faintly on the metal grating. When I was three levels down from where the man had been, I looked up and saw that he and Zach were ascending. I couldn’t really see them well through the metal stairs, but I could see the illumination from Zach’s flashlight.

A heavy clank sounded below me. I swiveled my flashlight down, looking around. “Hello?”

I shined my flashlight beam straight down into the darkness below, but I still couldn’t see the bottom.

Once again, I started down the stairs, looking for the failsafe, whatever the hell that was.

As I rounded another curve in the staircase, I saw a man slumped in the corner of the landing diagonally across and down. He was wearing a suit, just like the other man.

I tried to remember the partner’s name. “Gerald?” I said.

He was positioned awkwardly face-first in the corner. I made my way down toward him. “You okay, man?”

He made no move. No indication that he was even alive.

As I got closer to him, I saw something just beyond him, lying on a stair. It was some kind of small electronic device with four dime-sized buttons, all in a line and connected by wires.

And it was covered in blood.

Ignoring it for the moment, I turned my attention back to the man. I was just a few feet away from him now, but something — an insistent buzz at the base of my skull — kept me from getting any closer.

Then someone whispered in my ear.

I flinched, turning that way, expecting to see someone standing right there. But there was no one.

The whispering came again, this time in my other ear. I flinched away again. I couldn’t understand the words. At least, not consciously. They were definitely foreign, and the voice that spoke them sounded more like a thousand voices all pressed together.

Still, some part of me seemed to be struggling to understand them. As though they were speaking not to my conscious, logical mind, but to some more ancient part of me.

Chills rippled up my spine as I shook my head.

Clenching my teeth, I moved over to the man, my training taking over. “Are you okay?” I asked, grabbing him by the shoulder to turn him.

Something moved under my hand. No, not something. Some things. Like he had hard, ball-shaped muscles that were moving independently under my fingers.

He turned, revealing his face and his exposed chest under his ripped shirt.

Every inch of his skin from his forehead to the base of his rib cage was covered in eyeballs of various sizes and colors. They blinked at me, their pupils all seeming to expand and contract under my flashlight beam.

I reeled away, my back hitting the railing.

The man got to his feet in one fluid motion, as though he were attached to a string that had just been pulled up.

The whispering grew louder in my mind, each strange word slithering in through my ears and seating itself in some deep, dark part of me as the man approached.

I screamed, shaking my head and striking myself in the skull with the flashlight, bringing a moment of sweet clarity.

Lunging for the failsafe, I grabbed the device but tripped, falling down the stairs to the next landing. I was on my feet again in an instant, the pain of the fall delayed by adrenaline.

The man walked toward me, the dozens of eyes trying to puncture me. I could feel them. They were trying to see the real me. And I knew if they did, that would be it. They were working with the whispers to take control of me. To poison me.

I could feel it, and it felt like someone digging around inside me with a thousand tentacles, all prodding, poking, searching for weak spots.

I jammed the failsafe in my pocket and climbed up onto the metal railing as the man with the eyes approached. As I got to my feet on the top railing, I teetered, the black pit in front of me suddenly all too real.

Then I jumped.

I tossed the flashlight in mid-air, sending it to the next landing up — the one I was reaching out for.

Both hands freed, I grabbed the bottom crossbar on the railing, my legs swinging and chest striking the edge of the landing. As I pulled myself up, I risked a glance over my shoulder, seeing the eyes walking up toward me. That’s all they were. Just eyes. There was no man there. Not any longer. They were just eyes. Staring eyes.

I dumped myself over the railing and grabbed the flashlight. And I ran.

I could still feel the eyes on me even as I lurched up the steps, taking them two or three at a time. The whispering had intensified, and I could hear little else.

But when I was three levels from the top, something broke through the noise. It was a shout from above.

Shining my flashlight, I looked up and saw Zach just as he threw himself over the railing.

I stopped running and screamed in dismay, but it was no use. He struck the railing of the level above me, bones crunching as he bounced off and continued to fall, crashing into another railing, and another as he tumbled into the darkness like a rag doll.

Movement behind me brought me to my senses, and I resumed my mad scramble up the stairs, the eyes following at a steady pace.

As I reached the top of the stairs, I realized I was yelling, trying to drown out the maddening whispers infecting me.

The last few steps were excruciating as I fought against myself. That voice — those voices — were telling me to follow Zach. They were telling me to jump. To kill myself as a sacrifice to whatever was down there, waiting in the darkness.

I saw the man waiting at the top of the stairs, and I realized that he was yelling too. Yelling for me to get up there. To ignore the voices.

When I made it to the doorway, he grabbed me and pulled me through, slamming the door shut behind me. Then he pushed me out toward the garage.

“Make it stop!” I cried. “Make them stop! They’re in my head.”

“The failsafe!?” he yelled, pushing me along as he limped behind me. “Did you get it?”

I pulled the device out of my pocket and handed it to him as we got into the garage. He took it and then got in the driver’s seat of the SUV while I got in the passenger’s seat.

The tires spun as he reversed, bumping down into the street and whipping the wheel so we were facing the exit. As he sped out toward the gate, he punched a long sequence on the buttons of the device.

I realized faintly that the thing had been implanted in his forearm. That was why his arm was bleeding. The other guy — Gerald — must’ve cut it out.

But something was still bothering me. If the man next to me hadn’t called 911, who had? If it was Gerald, and he was already infected with the voices, then why would he call? It didn’t make any sense.

We sped through the gate. Once we were a hundred yards away, the man stopped with the SUV facing more or less back toward the abandoned housing development.

He finished the sequence on the failsafe and then stared out the windshield.

I stared out, too, the whispers still loud in my head, still poking and prodding at me.

We waited.

The ground rumbled, faintly at first, then growing in intensity.

“God help us all,” the man next to me said. “It didn’t work.”

Before I could ask him what exactly didn’t work, the ground in the housing development ruptured. The house we’d been in split apart, the front half falling forward and smashing into the roiling ground.

“Your buddy must’ve been the last one it needed. The last sacrifice,” the man said, his voice faraway over the sound of the ground rupturing and the voices growing ever louder in my head. “It couldn’t get to me,” he said. “Couldn’t make me kill myself. So it called you guys.”

I stared ahead as something bulged from the ground, massive in scope and defying the imagination.

The head that came out was made almost entirely of eyes, with the occasional whipping tentacle sticking out of the unruly mass.

It was followed by a colossal and deformed black arm, the hand of which smashed one of the still-standing houses as if it were an anthill.

As the massive beast pulled itself out of the ground, it fixed dozens of its eyes on us.

The dark truth enveloped me, tearing apart all the false conceptualizations of life and the world and the universe. Those eyes saw into me and found the only thing that was there to find when all the rest was gone.

It showed me the folly of life and the only way forward even as it broke me apart, discarding all those things it didn’t need.

I was faintly aware of the man next to me pulling out his gun and putting it in his mouth. But by the time he pulled the trigger, my awareness was being shredded.

The monster extricated itself from the shaking ground, eyes still fixed on the SUV.

But it was no longer looking at me.

Its eyes were my eyes, its voice my voice.

There was no separation between us.

It was me. I was it. We were one.

And soon, everyone else would join us.

Dark Work on the Dark Web

I’ve been on the dark web for a long time. I’m in my late twenties now, but I realized as a teenager how useful the dark side of the internet could be.

I’m not just talking about using it as a source of entertainment, although it certainly is useful for that.

No, I’m talking about the grind. I’m talking about business opportunities. I’m talking about ways to make big money — much more than you could make in most jobs.

But don’t get me wrong, it’s not easy. It takes a certain type of person to do what I do. Because what I do isn’t exactly legal.

You do have to learn some shit upfront. But it doesn’t take nearly as long as going through four years of college and then working another ten or twenty years climbing the ranks of some soulless company that makes non-biodegradable straws or poison chemicals or some other weird shit like that.

Honestly, the hardest thing to learn is how to hide your money from the IRS. It’s not easy — unless you have a team of accountants who already know all the tax loopholes. For us little people, it’s not easy. But it’s doable.

This is why I keep a part-time day job. It gives me tax cover, so I stay anonymous in the IRS’s eyes.

And then there’s the fact that you have to be adaptable. I don’t do just one thing on the dark web. I take many jobs. I wear many hats.

This latest one involved getting the blueprints for a certain bank. I couldn’t have done the job back when I first started messing around on the dark web. It took some finesse to get it done, but I did it. What the client does with the bank blueprints isn’t my problem.

I got paid in bitcoin and I walked away. That was it.

Then again, I’m a bit of a rarity as a dark web entrepreneur. I’ll do just about anything, whereas most other people like me specialize in one or two things.

I spend a little time every day perusing the job boards to see if there are any I want to apply for.

And as I’m doing it, I come across a job listing that actually surprises me.

The headline reads: Looking for test subject for experimental medical procedure. Great pay! Huge bonus for ideal subject!

The reason it surprises me is because one of the first jobs I ever applied for had a remarkably similar listing. Almost word-for-word, actually.

But in all the years I’ve been working on the dark web, I’ve never seen another listing like it.

Until now.

I click on the listing to get more information.

It’s pretty much the same as the one from years ago, back when I was just a 16-year-old kid.

I read through it carefully, paying particular attention to the amount of money they’re offering.

Once I’ve read the posting twice, I sit back in my chair, shut my eyes, and think about the job.

This is my process. The job is posted on a site that’s like the dark web’s version of Upwork. In fact, it’s called DarkWork. Yeah, real original. But there’s one big difference. Unlike Upwork, not just anyone can get on DarkWork. You have to be invited.

But I managed to get an invite within a year of establishing my presence on a few of the less elite dark web job boards and forums. So I’m considered a top-rated talent on DarkWork.

So if I want to keep that talent badge, I need to be careful about the jobs I take. If I take a job and then don’t finish it or mess it up, it hurts my rating on DarkWork. And I don’t want that.

So I keep my eyes closed for a good five minutes, thinking about the job and what it will entail. I also go over how I got the job done back when I was sixteen.

I cringe, thinking about how sloppy I was. How reckless. How it’s a miracle I didn’t get caught.

I’ve learned so much since then.

Part of me thinks this job is too much of a risk. It’s certainly not what I normally do. But the money …

I know I can do it. There’s no doubt in my mind. It’s just risky. It will mean a lot of exposure.

But the money …

I take a deep breath and open my eyes.

Then I reach for the mouse and click the little button that says “Apply.”

***

I’m driving east on Interstate-80, passing grimy semi-trucks that are such an integral part of the economy’s arterial flow.

It’s been two days since I applied and one day since I got the job. The interview process was pretty short, given my reputation and the anonymous reviews from past clients on DarkWork.

It culminated in a video call through the DarkWork app, which automatically blurs both parties’ faces and distorts their voices. Still, I wore a disguise, just in case.

The man I talked to gave me the pertinent information after he agreed to hire me for the job. He gave me a detailed description of the kind of test subject they’re looking for, along with an address and a phone number and a window of time in which the delivery should be made.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that the job was to take place in my old hometown. After all, the medical industry has a huge presence there. It only makes sense that some unscrupulous researchers would be performing their illegal work in facilities there. Every industry has people like that.

Once the call was done, I loaded up my SUV and hit the road. I drove for nearly nine hours yesterday before stopping at a hotel. Now I’m just a few hours away from my destination. Once I get there, the real work begins.

As I drive, I can’t help but go over the first and only other time I did this kind of job. It’s strange, looking back at your teenage years.

At least it is for me. As a rule, I tend to avoid looking back. You dwell on the past, you miss the present and shirk the future.

It’s probably one reason I do what I do. I don’t let the past creep in on me. I don’t let it occupy my thinking any more than is necessary to learn and move on.

But now, as I drive down the interstate with the lulling hum of tires on the road and the purr of the engine putting me into a kind of trance, I think back to that job. And I smile faintly at the reckless folly of youth.

***

While most teenagers would lie to their parents about the party they were going to or about whether they’d been drinking or smoking while out with friends, I was a little different.

I got along pretty well with my peers, but I didn’t spend much time with them outside of school. I didn’t have any close friends. I preferred to spend my free time alone, doing my own things.

So when I asked my parents if I could borrow the car to go to a get-together one Friday night, they didn’t ask questions. They just said yes. I could see in their faces that they were excited I was finally making friends.

I had just gotten my license, so I was legally able to drive. And when I left the house around eight that night, I actually did go to a party. But I didn’t stay long. I just wanted to make an appearance. Then I slipped out and went to meet a kid from school named Nathan.

Like me, Nathan was a loner. He was socially awkward and maybe even on the spectrum. So when I approached him earlier that week to ask if he wanted to go see a movie, he seemed excited about the prospect.

He didn’t question me when I told him he would have to keep it a secret from his parents because I wasn’t allowed to leave the house after nine o’clock.

“If you tell your parents who you’re going with, you could get me in trouble,” I said. “So better to just not tell them at all. Do you think you can sneak out without them knowing?”

“Oh, yeah,” Nathan said. “I walk around my neighborhood at night all the time. They don’t know.”

It was perfect. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

So when I pulled up behind the gas station down the road from Nathan’s house, I wasn’t surprised to see him there waiting for me. He got in the car and showed me the candy he’d bought at the gas station in preparation for the movie.

I smiled and pulled out of the lot.

When we got on the highway going in the opposite direction of the movie theater, Nathan asked where we were going. I told him there was a new theater.

That shut him up for a good half an hour. But when we pulled into an empty parking garage next to a research park, he knew something was up.

“Is this a theater?” he asked, although I could tell by his tone he knew it wasn’t.

“Yeah,” I said, stopping momentarily to grab a ski mask out of the door pocket and pull it down over my head. “It’s a movie theater.”

Nathan looked at me with wide, unbelieving eyes. Fear flooded those brown eyes then. It was like I could see it as clearly as blood spilling into water. Like the time I’d killed my neighbor’s cat out by the stream in the woods. The blood mixing with the water; the fear spreading through Nathan’s eyes.

I stared at him, waiting for him to do something. It was as though I were detached from the situation somehow, watching from outside my own body as a casual observer. Like I was watching a movie. I cherished the terror that came over him and yet I was able to note that terror objectively and without emotion. I was two people at once.

It was the first time I’d ever experienced something like that. But it certainly wasn’t the last.

Strangely, Nathan didn’t reach for the door handle. He didn’t unclip his seatbelt. He just stared at me, at once believing and incredulous. Maybe he was two people at once then, too. It was a shame neither of them was man enough to do anything. I would’ve enjoyed a little fight from him.

Not that it would’ve helped his situation.

I reached into the door pocket and pulled out a big kitchen knife I’d stolen from a Walmart earlier that week.

I pressed the knife blade to his neck and told him if he moved, I would kill him.

Then I drove up through the empty parking garage to the fourth level, where there was one vehicle parked there. It was a large white van. A Ford Econoline.

Two men in masks got out of the van as we approached. I parked across the aisle, backing into the spot so I could make a quick getaway if I needed to.

But I didn’t need to.

Everything went as planned.

Looking back on it, I realize it just as easily could’ve been a sting. I could’ve been arrested by FBI agents when I went into that garage.

Like I said, I was a stupid, reckless kid.

But it all worked out. Nathan blubbered and cried as the men took him. They locked him in the back of the van, paid me in cash, and then left.

I drove back to the party and pretended like I’d never left. It was my alibi.

And it worked like a charm.

Nathan’s disappearance was front-page news for about a week before fresher news took its place.

The police questioned me at school. Apparently, someone had seen me talking to Nathan at one time or another. But I was ready for that. I had a whole story in the chamber about how I felt sorry for the kid and asked him if he wanted to sit at the table with me and my friends, but he’d said no.

I’d even planted the story among my “friend” group so if the police asked around, they would have the thing confirmed.

That was it.

Nathan never came back. He was gone. Eventually, he was forgotten — by everyone but his parents, anyway.

Nothing ever came of it.

That was when I knew I could make a good living on the dark web.

I wasn’t wrong.

***

But I’m not a sixteen-year-old kid anymore. I don’t hang around with teenagers. Which is what makes this current job more of a challenge. The job is to get a Caucasian male between sixteen and eighteen years old with a healthy body fat percentage.

Not the easiest thing in the world to do. Also not the hardest.

It helps that I know the area. I know where kids hang out. Or at least I know where kids hung out when I was a kid.

And it doesn’t take long to see that not much has changed.

I find a kid that fits the bill pretty quickly, hanging out with friends at a park near the high school. After a few hours of watching and following, the kid finally breaks off from his friends after they go to a nearby coffee shop.

He walks along the sidewalk, apparently going home. It’s getting late, anyway. It’s dark out. And the stretch of sidewalk he walks along is secluded.

The abduction doesn’t take long. It helps that I have a big gun to threaten him with.

I get him into the vehicle and then spray an aerosolized tranquilizer into his face. He’s out cold in less than a minute.

I’m slightly ahead of schedule, so I stop and get a bite to eat on the way to the meeting spot. No sense in going hungry if you don’t need to.

***

The meeting spot is behind the mall, which is shut down for good, the stores empty. Twelve years ago, it was still going strong. But now everyone gets everything online. Malls like this one are a dying breed.

Which is why it’s such a good meeting place. With nothing in the stores, I’m confident the exterior cameras aren’t recording anything.

Still, I take my usual precautions before I reach the spot. I change license plates and put false racing stripes down the center of the vehicle. When I’m done with the job, I’ll take the magnetic stripes off and trash them.

Of course, I also wear a mask. Only this time, I’m not wearing a black ski mask. This time, I’m wearing a realistic silicone mask of a light-skinned Black guy. Over that, I wear a surgical mask and a ball cap.

It’s a disguise upon a disguise.

I drive around to the back of the mall, seeing that there’s a single Ford Econoline van sitting in the parking lot behind the Sears automotive entrance.

I cruise up to it slowly, my pistol in my lap.

There’s a single dark figure in the driver’s seat, but I can’t make out their features. It looks like a man, given the size and build.

I pull to a stop a safe distance away, then put the vehicle in Park. But I don’t get out. I wait for the man in the driver’s seat to approach me. Safer that way.

But there’s no movement.

I glance at the kid sprawled on my backseat, still unconscious.

Something isn’t right here.

I look across at the van. Still no movement.

Maybe he’s waiting for me to get out?

I think about the money that must be in that van somewhere. I would hate to leave this job now, after I’ve taken all the risks.

“Fine,” I mutter to myself. “I’ll get out first.”

I turn off the interior light, so it won’t come on when I open my door. Then I step out with the pistol in my right hand.

I stay by my open door, looking across at the van.

No movement.

“We going to do this, or what?” I ask, starting to lose patience.

Still nothing.

I step around my door and toward the van. “You fucking with me?” I shout.

I don’t need to put up with this shit. Thinking I’ll just take the money from him and go, I stalk toward the van, raising my pistol as I near.

But as I get close enough to see some details of the man sitting in the driver’s seat, I freeze. It’s a dead man. His neck has been cut open, but not recently. There’s very little blood on his dark shirt and none that I can see in the van’s interior. But I don’t stick around long enough to find out what the hell is going on.

Forgetting about the money, I turn to run back toward my vehicle. I hear the crunching of feet on old asphalt from behind me, coming from the back of the van. I turn, raising the pistol as my fear ramps up.

Before I can pull the trigger, a huge dark figure smacks me in the face with a tire iron. I lose my grip on the pistol and trip over my own feet. The back of my head slams into the asphalt, and my vision goes black.

***

Even before I open my eyes, I can smell the blood.

An air conditioner kicks on somewhere, and I feel a manufactured breeze touch my skin. As I open my eyes with some effort, I look down to see I’m strapped into a wheelchair and wearing only my underwear.

Looking around, I see that I’m in a hallway with thin blue-gray carpeting and bare beige walls. There’s a dead woman lying in a puddle of dried blood a few feet away.

“You’re awake,” a voice says from behind me. It’s a man’s voice, raspy and delicate, the words spoken slowly. “I’m so glad.”

I turn to look over my shoulder at the speaker, but something that feels like a metal hand grabs my head and prevents me from completing the move with a steely grip.

“Face forward,” the voice says.

I do as he says, but not because I’m afraid. I’m not. I’m patient. I can get out of this. I know I can.

He removes the metal implement from my head and starts pushing the wheelchair down the hall. “At first I wasn’t sure it was you,” he says. “That mask you were wearing was very realistic. They didn’t have those when we were kids, did they?”

“So it’s you,” I say, not asking. “Nathan.”

“Nathan,” he says, pronouncing each syllable as if tasting the words. “No, I don’t think so. That name means nothing to me.”

Near the end of the hall, he pushes me through a set of double doors and into the bright lights of a surgical suite. There are two dead bodies on the floor, both of them men, both of them brutally murdered.

He guides the wheelchair around the two bodies and past the surgical bed to the wall. Again, he clasps my head so I can’t move it. But he reaches over my shoulder and presses a panel on the wall, which pops open. The hand that he uses — his left one — has strange tubes protruding from it, maroon liquid flowing through them.

He punches in a sequence of numbers on the keypad behind the panel. When he’s done, there’s a mechanical sound and a hidden door pops open from the wall.

He wheels me back, making room as the door slowly opens on its own.

“This is where I have lived for the last twelve years,” he says, still standing behind me. The door has revealed an eight-by-ten room with a bare toilet and a thin mattress on the floor. It wouldn’t pass muster as a prison cell. Would probably violate a whole host of human rights.

“If you think I’m going to beg, you’ve got another thing coming,” I say. “And if you think I’m going to apologize, you’re fucking crazy.”

“I’ve been given pretty much every disease you can think of over the years. I’ve been cured of some of them. Others are killing me. I’ve had my whole body disassembled and reassembled. I’ve been dead for a grand total of half an hour. I’ve experienced more pain than most humans who have ever lived. So no, I don’t think you’re going to apologize. But you will beg.”

I scoff, but as soon as Nathan stops talking, he steps around in front of me. I look up into his face — if it can be called that — and for the first time since being abducted, I feel terror.

“Jesus Christ!” I say. “What the hell…”

As Nathan smiles, he reaches toward me with his right hand, which is a crude collection of medical implements held together with surgical ropes to make a hand.

I’m so focused on that strange metal hand that I don’t see his other hand until it darts toward my neck with a syringe. I feel the needle enter my neck. A moment later, he pulls the now-empty syringe back.

A few moments after that, blackness takes me again.

***

“I don’t have long to live now,” Nathan says. His voice comes out of the darkness as I claw myself back from unconsciousness, fighting against the side effects of the drugs he gave me.

“So I knew the doctor would be needing a new test subject. I heard him talking about it. I knew that it would be my only chance to make things right. I just never really thought it would be you to bring him another subject. Not after all these years. But no matter who it was, I was going to take my anger out on them.”

He pauses, choosing his next words carefully. “You know, all this time, I didn’t think there was any rhyme or reason to the universe. But the fact that you’re here now makes me think there is … I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

I manage to pry my eyes open, and I raise my head and look at myself.

I’m strapped to the surgical table instead of sitting in the chair. Only that’s not strictly true. Because part of me is sitting in the chair. My lower body has been separated at the hips, and the bloody limbs sit in the chair as if waiting for the rest of me.

The pain becomes apparent as I look down at where my legs used to be.

Nathan steps in front of me, his hideous and deformed face grinning grotesquely.

And as he goes to work on me, I find myself apologizing and pleading and asking for his forgiveness.

Mostly, I find myself begging for mercy.

But I don’t get it.

The Poker

The screeching sound of door hinges is followed by a smack. I can’t help but jump, even though I know it’s coming.

As I leave the bedroom of the secluded cabin, I look back at my wife, Teresa, who’s pulling her pajamas on with a terrified look on her face.

I know I locked the front door. I know it with 100% certainty. And now it’s open, the wind blowing it into the wall.

At least I hope it’s the wind.

Ever since we got to the cabin several hours ago, strange things have been happening. The door suddenly opening while we were trying to sleep is just the latest.

They were little things, most of them. Little enough that we could shrug them off. But now, I’m not so sure. My heart races as I poke my head around the corner to look at the front door.

A breeze slams the door into the wall again.

I look around the cabin’s dark main room, seeing shadowy lumps of furniture.

I grope around for a moment until I find the hallway light switch. But it doesn’t work. Just like the bedroom light didn’t work when I tried it only moments ago.

This is not good.

Creeping into the room, I spot the fireplace tools and then rush over and grab the heavy poker. Then I run to the front door and slam it shut.

I know I locked it. I know it.

After looking around for a minute to make sure all the windows are closed and locked, I head back to the bedroom.

Teresa stands just inside the bedroom door, hugging herself in her pajamas. I’m about to ask her what she wants to do when I glimpse a face staring in through the bedroom window. It’s a ghastly pale face with wide cloudy eyes and a mouth stuck in a yellow-toothed grin.

Fear shoots like a rocket inside, exploding panic in my head.

“Move!” I shout, reaching forward with my free left hand to grab my wife. As we move out of the room, the masked figure ducks away from the window.

“What?” Teresa shouts. “What is it?!”

“There’s someone out there,” I say. “We need to go.” I grab the keys from the kitchen counter, and we run out the front door.

I whip my head in every direction, looking for the masked figure, but all I see are dark trees.

We get to the Toyota SUV, and I unlock it with the fob. As we get in, I hand the fireplace poker over to Teresa and start the car. The wheels kick dirt and rocks into the undercarriage before they gain traction and we reverse down the narrow, tree-lined drive.

As we go around a gentle bend in the dirt driveway, I see the figure standing in the middle of the path. Teresa looks back as I reflexively slow down.

“Go!” she screams. “Just go! He’ll move.”

She’s right. I jam on the gas and barrel toward the guy, still turned in my seat to look out the back window.

But the guy doesn’t move. Not at all. At the last moment, I lose my nerve, thinking how it could be some kid just pulling a prank. After all, he hasn’t actually threatened us. Not explicitly.

The wheels lock as I slam on the brake pedal, but it’s too late. The Toyota skids on the dirt and slams into the guy. His head cracks the back windshield before he’s pulled under the vehicle.

As the SUV finally stops, I look into Teresa’s eyes. “Holy shit, I hit him.”

“Just keep going,” she pleads. “We’ll go to the police. Just don’t stop. Keep going.”

“I just hit a person,” I say, eyes staring through her. I put the vehicle in park and reach for my door handle.

“Jacob, no! Don’t get out. Please, don’t get out.”

“I might have just killed a man,” I tell her, my voice stripped of emotion. “I need to see.”

I step out of the vehicle and crouch to look at the man. But I quickly see that it’s not a man. It’s a dummy. I can see the pole that was used to make it look like it was standing. Given how it cracked my back window, I figure it’s one of those heavy, lifelike dummies they use in movies.

“Jacob!” Teresa screams. I hear the sound of running footsteps and look over my shoulder to see a figure dressed the same as the dummy sprinting toward me, giant knife in hand.

I jump back into the driver’s seat and go to shut the door, but the guy catches it with one hand. He slashes me with the knife, gouging a wound in my left arm. Panicking, I put the vehicle in reverse and go to hit the gas. But before I can take my foot off the brake pedal, something flashes past my face from the passenger’s seat.

The tip of the fireplace poker sinks through one of the cloudy white eyes of the mask and into the real eye beyond. The guy freezes, knife still held up as though he’s about to cut me again. But he doesn’t.

Blood seeps down the guy’s neck from under the mask. Teresa grunts as she jams the poker further in until the hooked part presses against the mask.

The guy drops the knife and stumbles back, pulling his head off the poker. He falls into the woods at the side of the driveway.

I look over at my wife, the bleeding gash in my arm suddenly forgotten.

“Can we go now, please?” she says, smiling weakly.

The Xbox Killer

The fist to my face knocked a couple of my teeth loose and whipped my head sideways. I was taped to a chair, but I certainly wasn’t feeling like James Bond. I didn’t have any special training or a hard-nosed attitude. In fact, I was scared shitless. I wanted to cry, but at least I stopped myself from doing that.

“Keep your fucking mouth shut,” the guy who punched me said. He was wearing a black mask, but I could tell he had white skin underneath. And a reddish beard.

The other two guys in masks stood back behind him, watching me with cold eyes. It was too dark on that side of the room for me to glean any clues about what they looked like. Not that I wanted to know. I learned from movies that it was best not to see the faces of the people doing shady shit to you. It meant there was a chance you’d make it out alive.

I didn’t know where I was. The room looked like it belonged in a house undergoing renovations. There was no carpet, but I could see the glue left behind on the subfloor. Half the walls were exposed beams, while the other half had fresh drywall in place.

So a house, probably. An older one.

I looked around, unsure what else to do. I thought about asking what they wanted from me again, but I didn’t want to risk another fist to the face. So I kept my mouth shut.

And then someone walked into the room. Someone I recognized.

I started moving in my chair, screaming and trying ineffectually to break out of the layers of tape. The guy with the reddish beard walked behind me. I heard a click and then felt a sharp knife blade pressed to my throat.

All this from playing video games, I thought. What a joke. What a poor fucking joke. I was about to die because I liked to play video games.

***

My favorite games were mostly first-person shooters, but I also enjoyed some racing games. Xbox was my outlet and had been for many years.

As an introvert, it was also the most socializing I did when I wasn’t forced to — like when I was at work. I liked being able to join a party with my friends, many of whom lived in different states, and still have a good time joking and talking while playing.

While other guys in their late twenties were going out to bars and trying to get laid, I was playing Call of Duty or Battlefield at home. Not that I didn’t want to get laid. I’d just never liked being around a bunch of people. And I’d never been good at talking to women.

I’d had a couple of girlfriends in high school and college, but nothing serious. And I was pretty successful, running client accounts at a digital marketing agency.

But by the time I was done with work every day, all I wanted to do was sit down on my nice couch and play some Xbox. So that’s what I did most of the time.

Then, one day, a friend of mine from high school who had moved to Indiana after graduation brought someone new into a party chat. There were five of us on, playing Call of Duty Vanguard, when Danny came on with a new player, gamer tag FlowerPower94.

“What’s up, everyone,” Danny said over the chat. “Your best player is here. Oh, and I brought a friend from back in the day. Everyone, this is Nora Duran.”

Everyone said hello, welcoming her to the party. The name rang a bell somewhere in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t place it.

“I hope you don’t suck, Nora,” Shane said, half-joking.

“Funny,” she replied. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”

That brought some chuckles from my friends. She had a sweet voice that was kind of velvety when she was talking low. It’s a little sad, but I immediately started wondering what she looked like, picturing a brunette that was hot, but not hot enough to be out of my league.

“Hey Dean,” Danny said, talking to me. “You remember Nora? I think you guys met once or twice back in the day.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Sorry, Nora. Your name is familiar, but I can’t place it,” I said.

“How dare you, Dean?” she said, clearly overselling it. “I’m heartbroken that you don’t remember me from meeting me over a decade ago!”

“What, did you guys hook up or something?” Shane said, chuckling.

“Yes, we did,” Nora said, her tone serious.

I’d been laughing, but I stopped immediately. I hadn’t been a particularly crazy high schooler, but there were definitely some nights from that time in my life that I couldn’t remember, thanks to booze and weed. So I started searching my memory, wondering if I really could have hooked up with a girl and not remembered it. Likewise, all my friends went silent, too. The way Nora had said it was so sincere, it shut everyone up.

“No, I’m just kidding,” she said finally. This got some genuine laughter, even from me.

“Holy shit, you had me worried there,” I said. “I thought you were going to tell me I had a kid next.”

There was silence from Nora, and for a moment I thought I had offended her. But then she laughed softly and said that I’d dodged a bullet.

As we played, Nora, Danny, and I talked about the night that Nora and I had met. It wasn’t anything special, just a dumb high school party. Nora went to Corona Del Sol High School, while my friends and I went to Marcos de Niza. Both schools were pretty close to each other in Tempe, Arizona.

Slowly, the memory came back into focus. I remembered her being a pretty girl that was definitely out of my league back in high school. Who knows what she looked like now, years later, but I remembered her being a brunette.

That night, we played late. Before I knew it, all my friends had signed off and it was just Nora and me talking and playing games. Turned out we were both still living in the Phoenix area. Before she signed off for the night, she told me it was nice talking to me and that we should get together sometime. I said sure, thinking she wasn’t really serious, that it was just one of those things people say.

When I signed on the next day to play, I felt a pang of disappointment when I didn’t see her. I kept hoping she’d play that night, but she never did.

The next night, she did join our party while we were playing the new Halo game, and we stayed up late again, chatting way past when all my friends signed off.

“So when are we going to get together?” she asked.

“Oh, you were serious?” I said, laughing.

“Yes,” she said, a smile in her voice. “I wouldn’t suggest it if I wasn’t serious.”

“Well, I’m up for it whenever. I work weekdays from eight to four, so any other time is fine.”

“Great. How about you come pick me up on Friday and we’ll go do something,” she said. “What’s your phone number? I’m going to text you.”

I gave her my phone number, then asked, “What do you want to do?”

“I’ll leave that up to you,” she said. “Goodnight, Dean.”

She signed off. A minute later, I got a text from her, saying she was excited to see me again after so long.

I was excited, too.

She didn’t play any more games with us before Friday, but we did text back and forth a few times. She sent me a picture of her, which only made me nervous about the date. If anything, she’d gotten prettier than what I remembered from back in high school.

She insisted I send her a picture, so I did, trying to get my best angle, which was ridiculous because she’d soon see me in person. She replied to my picture with a heart-eyes smiley face emoji.

Friday came around, and I left my house around seven, headed to the address she’d given me. It was a house in a neighborhood in Gilbert, about seven miles from where I was living in Tempe.

Like many houses in the Phoenix area, hers was tan stucco with a red tile roof. It was one story with a garage. There was no grass in the front yard, which was normal for the desert. Instead, there were native plants that could survive on little water planted in gravel the same tan color as the house.

I parked at the curb on the quiet residential street and walked up to the front door. The sun had set about a half-hour ago, but it was still warm out. I rang the doorbell, hearing the chime sound inside the house.

I stood there for a long minute, then rang the doorbell again.

Another thirty seconds passed, and I heard no movement in the house. I knocked and then pulled out my cell phone and texted her, telling her I was at the address she’d given me. Just to make sure, I walked back out and checked the numbers on the facade next to the garage.

Yep. Right house. I looked at my phone. There was no response, so I put it away.

I knocked and rang the doorbell one more time, then I decided I’d leave. Either she forgot about the date, or this was some strange prank. Maybe I’d snubbed her in high school or something, and she was still mad about it all these years later. That didn’t seem plausible, though. I wasn’t the type of guy to snub a pretty girl. Not then, and not now.

As I walked to my car, the residual heat from the Arizona sun making me sweat, another thought popped into my head. What if something had happened to her? What if she was still in there, unconscious from slipping in the shower or some other accident?

I stood at my car, looking back at the house for a long moment. Then I tracked around it, marched up to the door, and turned the handle. The door opened.

“Nora?” I called, stepping into the entryway. I immediately saw signs of a struggle. There was an overturned shoe rack just inside the doorway on the right, the shoes spilled all over the hardwood floor.

“Hello?” I called, stepping further into the house, my heart rate shooting up like a bottle rocket. There was a door to the kitchen on my left, a hallway on my right, and a small living room straight ahead, the back of a couch facing me. A splash of red caught my eye from the right; blood smeared on the hallway wall.

I moved toward the living room, but I looked right to see down the hallway. I didn’t want to go that way, because I thought someone might still be in the house. But I needed to look.

There were more blood smears along the hall, and a couple of framed pictures had been knocked down.

By now, I was close to the living room, but I hadn’t looked there yet. I knew I had to call the police. I probably should’ve done that as soon as I saw the blood smear.

Pulling out my phone again, I glanced to my left, my angle giving me a full view of the living room over the back of the couch.

I yelled out and dropped my phone upon seeing the woman lying on the living room floor. Her eyes had been gouged out, leaving behind only hellish bloody sockets. But her eyes weren’t completely gone. They had been put in her mouth, gazing out from between her teeth, wide and dead and unblinking.

The woman was wearing a pink T-shirt that was stained with blood from the stab wounds all over her abdomen. Two fingers on her right hand had been broken, as evidenced by their jaunty angles.

I knew it wasn’t Nora — this woman looked nothing like the picture I had on my phone — but that didn’t make it any less horrifying.

Snatching my phone off the floor, I fled the house, dialing 911 as I went.

***

The police held me for questioning for several hours. I guess it’s pretty common in murders for the same person who “finds” the body to be the killer. But once they determined that I’d been at work when the murder happened, they cleared me and let me go.

They’d taken me into the station in a squad car, so I had to get an Uber back to my car at the house. There were still crime scene people there doing their thing. I knew they hadn’t found Nora’s body in there. And I gathered through the questioning that they assumed she’d been kidnapped. The blood on the hallway wall was hers, apparently.

They didn’t seem hopeful that they’d find her alive.

I didn’t feel like gaming when I got home. In fact, I didn’t feel like doing anything. But I did text Danny to tell him about everything that had happened. Since he was the one to invite her to our gaming sessions, I figured he’d want to know.

“Jesus, that’s terrible,” he texted back. “That’s insane. They killed her roommate?”

“Apparently it was her roommate, yeah,” I messaged back. Then something occurred to me. “How did you two hook up again?” I asked.

“Remember Jonas from school? I don’t think you were friends with him. He hit me up out of the blue on one of the gamer forums I frequent. He mentioned Nora in passing one time, and I asked how she was doing. He invited her to the chat, and we started talking.”

I thought about that. The only Jonas I could think of was a shady guy who’d always showed up to school zonked out on some drug. I couldn’t remember his last name.

“Jonas who?” I messaged back. “The druggie?”

“Yeah,” Danny messaged. “Jonas Welch. Although he tells me he’s sober now.”

I told Danny thanks and that I’d keep him updated if I heard anything.

That night, as I tried to sleep, I couldn’t stop picturing that woman — Nora’s roommate — with her eyes gouged out and placed in her mouth. It was strange. I started thinking that it wasn’t a normal way to kill someone. It seemed like a message or something.

Or maybe I just watched too many movies.

Still, I couldn’t sleep. So I did a search for that kind of killing, and I was surprised at the results. According to Google, the eyes in the mouth thing was the signature of a particularly nasty drug cartel. The Jimenez Cartel.

A news story dated a week earlier explained that the Jimenez cartel was at war with the Marquez cartel. And that it had been spilling over the border, especially into Arizona, where much of the drugs came through.

So why would they go after Nora and her roommate? It didn’t make sense. Unless they were involved in something shady.

When I finally fell asleep, I’d promised myself I’d try to contact Jonas Welch to see what he knew. I thought I could help the cops out by bringing them some new information. Granted, they probably already knew it, but I felt compelled to dig a little deeper.

I had this silly feeling that it was what Nora would have wanted me to do. She seemed like the kind of woman that her man would fight for. It was silly, but I suddenly felt like I could be that kind of guy. I’d always wanted to be that kind of guy. The kind who steps up and actually does something, instead of just sitting on his hands, waiting for other men to do the work.

Nora had awakened something in me. And I liked it. I just hoped she was still alive. If she was, I’d find her. And I’d do whatever I could to save her.

***

Finding Jonas on Facebook wasn’t hard. We had several mutual friends, and he had probably shown up in my “Suggested Friends” feed many times over the years. I’d just never paid much attention.

But I was paying attention now. I sent him a request and waited. It was Saturday, so I had no work.

I started researching handguns. I learned that, as an Arizona resident, there was no waiting period to get a handgun — as long as I passed the background check, which apparently took minutes at most. I wouldn’t need to register the gun, and I wouldn’t need a permit to carry it concealed on my person.

While I was doing this, I started fantasizing about rescuing Nora from her captors. In my mind, it played out like a movie. The good guy up against the odds but prevailing in the end.

There was a little voice in the back of my head that told me life wasn’t like the movies. I shrugged it off, seeing no reason why I couldn’t train with a handgun at a firing range and become proficient. How hard could it be, anyway?

Before long, I got a notification on my phone saying I was now friends with Jonas and that I could message him. I did just that.

“Did you hear about Nora?” I sent.

The little green dot on Jonas’s picture told me he was online. And soon enough, the three little dots told me he was typing.

“Hey man. Been a while,” he messaged. “No, what’s up with Nora?”

“She’s been kidnapped. The cops are looking for her, but I figured I’d ask you about it since you hooked her and Danny up recently. Do you know if she was into anything dangerous? Like anything to do with drug cartels?”

The little dots came up again.

“Woah, dude,” Jonas messaged. “Holy shit. You serious? No, I haven’t even seen her in a long time. We just talk about games in forums mostly. Cartels? That doesn’t sound like her.”

“Do you know what she did for a living?” I asked.

This time, the three little dots didn’t come up immediately. And when they did, I found the message that followed strange.

“I’d just let the cops do their thing, man,” the message read. “You don’t want to mess with the cartels. Or was her roommate’s death not enough for you?”

I read back through the messages, confirming that I hadn’t said anything about her roommate. I supposed he could have read about it in the news, but then why did he lie and say he didn’t know what happened to Nora?

“So you do know what happened,” I messaged. “Why did you tell me you didn’t?”

Again, the little dots didn’t appear for several minutes.

“Just drop it,” the message said. And then Jonas went offline.

This didn’t stop me. I messaged him right back, saying, “Tell me what you know, Jonas. I’m not going to stop. I’ll give the cops your name if you don’t tell me what you know.”

I waited for him to message back for several minutes, but then I decided I needed to be proactive. I needed to buy a gun.

A couple of hours later, I returned home with a Glock 19 and a box of 9mm ammo. I had fired the gun at the indoor range attached to the gun store, getting a feel for it. It was definitely harder than I thought it would be, but this didn’t dissuade me.

Checking my phone again, I saw Jonas hadn’t messaged me back. I was starting to think that my threat hadn’t worked.

Unsure what else to do, I fired up my Xbox and started playing. I joined a Call of Duty team deathmatch game and was playing well for a little while until some player named MC123 came on. It seemed like every time I turned around, he was there, getting a headshot on me.

After several rounds of this, I received a message from him. “Drop your little investigation or the game will come true.”

“Who is this?” I messaged back. “Jonas?” But the player was gone. I thought about the gamer tag. MC123. Did MC stand for Marquez Cartel?

I left the match and stood up, picking my new gun up off the coffee table. I went to the window, separated one of the shade slats, and looked out at the street. It was late afternoon, and there wasn’t a whole lot of traffic. Everything looked normal.

I went back and sat on the couch, trading the gun for my phone. I messaged Jonas again, asking him if he’d just threatened me on Call of Duty.

When my phone vibrated, I figured it would be Jonas texting me back. But it wasn’t. It was a text from a number I didn’t recognize. The message had a Google Maps street view image of my house. There were no words. Nothing but the picture. The threat was clear enough.

I swallowed hard and picked up my gun, feeling like I was in over my head. I no longer felt like the capable man who could prevail against all odds. I just felt like me again. Introverted, normal, and alone in a house. Anything could happen to me. Anything.

Panicking, I texted the number back, saying, “I have a gun.”

I sent it, but it didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, as I read it again, I thought that it sounded like an invitation.

So I quickly typed out another message: “I’m calling the police.”

I sat on the couch, gun in my right hand and phone in my left, waiting for a response. None came.

The next few hours passed with torturous slowness. I didn’t hear back from Jonas or the nameless number. I didn’t get back on Xbox Live again, either, for fear that MC123 would be on there, waiting for me.

I was dozing on my couch when I heard something outside. Like the crunch of boots on gravel. I still had my gun in my hand, and I jumped up from my couch, making it to the window quickly. As I lifted one of the wooden shade slats, a dark figure passed in front of the window. I didn’t know if it was a man or a woman. It was impossible to make out any features. It just looked solid black.

I jerked back, my heart thudding in my ears so loudly that I thought I wouldn’t hear it if someone broke one of my windows. Gathering my wits, I stepped back up to the window and lifted the slat again, peering left and right, seeing no figure.

Shaking with adrenaline, I moved to the door, unlocking it and yanking it open, then stepping outside, gun first. It was dark; the sun had set hours ago. The orange glow of streetlights provided some illumination.

I went left first because that was the direction the figure had gone when it passed by the window.

As I came to the corner of my house, I pivoted around, seeing nothing but my brick fence.

I went across to the other side of the house and did the same thing, seeing no figures. As I went back toward the front door, I heard a sound from the street — like a whimper. Turning my head that way, I saw a woman walking her dog. She stared at me, her eyes flicking from the gun up to my face as she doubled her pace and hurried along.

I’d left the front door open when I went out but made sure to close and lock it when I made it back inside.

I thought about calling the police, but I saw two problems with that. One, I was starting to think the black figure was a figment of my imagination. Two, I thought that calling the police might be enough of an excuse for those threatening me to make good on their threats.

So I sat back on my couch, trying to decide whether I should involve the police. As time passed and the adrenaline faded away, I felt myself growing sleepy again. So I laid down and closed my eyes, my gun resting on my chest, cupped gently in my right hand.

I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up there was a masked man looming over me, a gloved hand slapped over my mouth, and my gun was nowhere to be found. Something pricked my leg, and pretty soon I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. Sleep sucked me under like quicksand.

***

When I woke up again, I was taped to a chair in an unfinished room. There were three guys in masks, one of which was leaning down in front of me, slapping my face and telling me to wake up.

“Where am I?” I said. “What do you want?”

“Shut up,” the guy said.

“Just tell me what you want, and I’ll do it!” I said, nearly screaming.

The guy hit me, knocking a couple of my teeth loose and whipping my head sideways. The pain was overwhelming. All the bravado and bluster I felt back in the safety of my home — back when I convinced myself I could actually help find and rescue Nora — was gone. I wanted to cry. I was afraid I was going to piss myself.

“Keep your fucking mouth shut,” the guy who punched me said. I noticed his reddish beard through the mouth hole of his mask.

Footsteps echoed from outside the room. I could see that the carpet had been torn up in the hallway, as well as in the room I was in. The lack of carpet, combined with the fact that many of the walls were naked down to the studs, made the footsteps much louder than they would have been.

And a moment later, I realized that the woman’s high heel shoes making the noise were also to blame.

I looked up and into Nora’s face as she came into the room. She looked just like the picture she’d sent me, only better. She wore a tight blue skirt, a white blouse, and a sparkling necklace that looked like it cost as much as my car.

I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but I knew that she’d played me somehow. I started rocking and shaking in my chair, anger turning me into that person I’d wanted to be. Of course, it was too late to save myself; I knew I was dead. The tape held, like I knew it would. I was doing nothing but wasting energy.

The man with the reddish beard stepped behind me and soon I felt the blade of a knife pressed to my throat. I stopped moving.

Keeping her gaze on me, Nora walked up, stopping a few feet away. She shook her head sadly, her flowing brunette hair swaying with the motion.

“Why did you have to go snooping around?” she asked me. “I picked you because I didn’t think you would have the balls to do that very thing. I guess a lot can change over the years.”

“What is this?” I said. “Why me?”

“Didn’t I just tell you?” she said. “I needed someone who I wasn’t really associated with to call the police. They wouldn’t have believed it, otherwise.”

“Who? The police wouldn’t have believed it?” I asked.

Nora shook her head. “Look, Dean,” she said. “I’m not going to explain to you my plan like some villain in a movie, okay? All you need to know is you fucked up. You should’ve just gone back to your sad little life. But you couldn’t, could you? You went and bought a gun. You started asking questions. This is on you.”

“I don’t understand. Why me? Why not just have your neighbor call the police or something?”

“I could have, but—” she stopped suddenly, then cocked one hip out and put a hand on it. “You really don’t remember me, do you?” she said.

“I remember you,” I said. “Vaguely.”

“God, isn’t that just how it goes?” she said. “I’ve been hating you for all these years, meanwhile you don’t even fucking remember me? I would be furious if I didn’t know you were about to die a slow and painful death.”

“Listen,” I said. “I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry, okay? I never meant to hurt you. I was a different person back then.”

“Whether you meant to or not doesn’t matter. It still happened.”

“So what was it? What did I do?” I asked her. I was thinking hard, trying to remember, but nothing came to mind. Certainly nothing that was worth getting killed over.

“You got my baby killed,” she said.

“What?! No fucking way. You’re thinking of someone else. You’re wrong.”

“No. It was you,” she said. “It was a house party. I can tell you the exact date, but I doubt you’d remember. We met early in the night. A couple of hours later, you stumbled into the bedroom where I was fucking Max Miller. You don’t remember that?”

I shook my head. “What the hell does this have to do with me killing your baby?”

Nora stepped up to me, gesturing for the guy with the reddish beard to move the knife from my throat. Once he did, she grabbed me by the neck. “Just fucking shut up and listen,” she said. She choked me for a minute, a small smile on her face, then let me go just when my vision was going out.

I gasped for air and coughed as she continued.

“Oh, you backed out of the room, saying you were sorry. But then what did you do? You went downstairs and told my boyfriend about it.” She paused for a moment, looking into the past.

“You remember Devon Arnold? He had a bit of a temper. But he didn’t do anything that night. I mean, aside from going upstairs to see for himself. It was the next day when he took it out on me. He beat me so bad that I had a miscarriage and had to have my uterus removed. I didn’t know I was pregnant until they told me at the hospital that I’d had a miscarriage. But that was it. My last chance. Of course, you wouldn’t have known, would you? We went to different schools, after all. And you were oblivious to it all. In your own little world. Oblivious to the consequences of your actions.”

I was speechless. I couldn’t believe it. I had no memory of this. And even if I had, it was insane. Of course I felt bad about the inadvertent consequences but blaming me was insane.

“I didn’t even know Devon was your boyfriend,” I said. “You said yourself we went to different schools. How the hell would I know that? Shouldn’t you blame Devon for beating you up instead of me for accidentally telling him you were cheating on him?”

“Devon got his a long time ago,” Nora said. “But all this shit is incidental. I wasn’t about to come to your house and kill you or anything. I could have done that at any time. But some very bad people are after me now. And I knew I had to get away. To make them believe I was dead. And if they came to you for questioning … well, that was a bonus. But then you had to keep digging into it, asking questions. So now I get to do the thing myself.”

I suddenly realized that Nora — or one of these guys — had killed her roommate to make it look like the Marquez Cartel had done it. She wanted to throw both the police and whoever else was after her off her trail.

Nora looked at the guy with the knife who was still standing next to me and held out her hand. “Jonas, give me the knife.”

I realized that the guy was Jonas. That he was part of this whole thing, too. “Jonas?” I said to him as he stepped around and handed her the knife.

“Shut up,” he said to me.

Nora stepped up to me and dragged the knife down the side of my face, cutting a gash in my left cheek. I screamed out as she smiled.

Then there was a sound from out in the hallway — a loud bang, like a door being kicked open. The two guys in masks at the back of the room pulled out pistols and moved into the hallway. What could only be a shotgun blast blew a bowling-ball-sized hole in the first guy. Bullets from a semi-automatic slammed into the second guy, blowing his head apart. He fell in the doorway.

Nora and Jonas were standing behind me, cursing, their voices high with fear. Jonas had a gun pointed over my shoulder. They were using me as a human shield.

“You will not get out of here alive, Nora,” a man’s voice called from the hallway. He spoke English with a Mexican accent. “Tell Jonas to put the weapon down now, and we will go easy on you. We just want the money.”

“Shit,” Nora said. “Shit, they were watching this asshole the whole time.” I knew she was talking about me.

“Do not make me wait,” the voice said from the hall.

“Put the gun down,” she said to Jonas, loud enough for the guy in the hall to hear.

“What?” Jonas said. “You’re kidding.”

“He has a thing for me. I can talk to him,” she said, whispering this time. “Just put it down or we’ll both be killed.”

Jonas tossed down the gun.

“Okay, the weapon is down,” Nora said.

Two Hispanic men wearing slacks and pastel polo shirts came into the room, one of them with a semi-automatic rifle and the other with a shotgun. They pointed their weapons at Jonas and Nora.

One of them spoke in Spanish. A moment later, a man with a gray beard and a matching gray suit stepped into the room.

“Nora,” he said, shaking his head like a disappointed father. “Come here. Step forward. Both of you.”

Nora and Jonas stepped forward, their hands up.

“You can put your hands down,” the man said. “Step forward. I want to see you.”

As Nora stepped forward, I noticed that she still had the knife. It was tucked in the back waistband of her blue skirt.

“What were you thinking, Nora?” the man said, closing the distance. “Why would you steal from me when you could just ask?”

“She has a knife!” I called out. “In her waistband.”

The man with the beard looked at me as though he was seeing me for the first time. Then he turned back to Nora.

“Is this true?” he asked.

Nora nodded.

“Let me see it.”

As Nora reached back to retrieve the knife, she looked at me. I could see nothing but hate there. She pulled the knife out and handed it to the man, handle first.

The man looked it over as if it was a piece of jewelry and he was trying to determine its value. He looked slowly from the knife to Nora, and back again.

Then he jammed the blade into Nora’s throat, right under her jaw. He grabbed the back of her head with the other hand, and brought his face close to hers, ignoring the blood that was getting on his hands and his suit. Nora convulsed and made wet, muffled coughing sounds.

“No one steals from the Jimenez Cartel,” he said.

Nora answered by spitting up a bit of blood onto her chin. He pulled the knife out, but still held her up with one hand, staring into her eyes as she bled out. Then he let her go, and she crumpled to the floor.

Jonas had a shotgun pointed at his chest, so he could do nothing but watch.

The man with the gray beard turned his attention to Jonas. He told him to take off the mask and then drop his pants. Jonas refused, and the guy with the shotgun blew off his right hand.

Jonas fell to the ground, gripping his right wrist and screaming.

The three men started in on him. When they were done, they had removed Jonas’s genitals and shoved them into his mouth. It took him a long time to die. Nora had gotten the better end of the bargain.

Finally, as Jonas sat convulsing in an expanding pool of his own blood, the man turned his attention to me.

He walked up with the bloody knife in his hand and crouched in front of me, looking into my eyes.

After a long moment, he said, “Thank you, Dean. You have been most helpful. I appreciate you telling me ‌she had this knife.”

I nodded. “Sure.”

He smiled. “When the police get here, tell them it was the Jimenez Cartel, yes? Tell them this is what happens when you steal from the Jimenez Cartel. I’m sure there are men on the police force that need to hear those words.”

“I—I will,” I managed.

He smiled and clapped me on the shoulder.

Then the three men left. By the time the police showed up, both Nora’s and Jonas’s blood had expanded across the floor to my feet.

I threw away those bloodstained shoes when I finally got home.

The stitches in my face were uncomfortable, but after seeing those four people murdered in front of me, I felt like a scar on my face was a small price to pay.

As I walked into my living room, I saw the Glock 19 on my couch. I smiled.

I was definitely keeping the gun. And I was going to get proficient with it. Fast.

The Babysitting Job to Die For

The sun was setting as I trudged down the street, crossing into the section where the big, new houses were. They lined the street like monuments to their owners’ success.

These were certainly more than just places to live. Some of them seemed like fortresses, with stone walls and electronic gates. I could smell chlorine in the air from backyard pools, and I glimpsed lavish and well-tended front yards through the occasional open gate or the rare house that had no such enclosure.

The abode I stopped in front of had a stone wall and a simple metal gate. I opened the gate and walked through, looking up at the home. It was a new-looking colonial-style house that was three stories tall. The roof had dormer windows protruding from it on the third floor, comforting orange light coming from them.

I headed down the walk flanked by pristine grass. Uniform bushes sat hunched between towering pine trees at each edge of the yard. I wondered how much money Ms. Cabrera spent on landscaping each month. And that got me wondering how much the house was worth.

Not that I was complaining. After all, it’s not every day that a seventeen-year-old kid gets offered $25 an hour to babysit for four hours. Even though I’d been reluctant to take the job, my mom had made it clear that I didn’t have a choice. Once I got used to that, the hundred extra dollars started sounding pretty good.

I didn’t really know the kids or the mom, Ms. Cabrera. I’d only heard my parents talking about her and her two kids. Ms. Cabrera was my mom’s boss, and she’d been divorced for something like two years. She was finally getting back into the dating scene. Apparently, she and my mom were pretty tight — at work, anyway. She’d never been to our house as far as I knew.

As I walked up the steps, I was able to see into the house through the front doors. The set of double doors was made of black metal bars in ornate designs, backed by clear glass. Through the glass, I could see the marble-floor entryway and a staircase leading to the second floor.

I rang the doorbell, and a few moments passed before a beautiful dark-haired woman wearing a tight-fitting tan dress came to the door. She smiled through the glass and then unlocked the door and opened it.

“You must be Kyle,” she said, offering one petite and manicured hand. “I’m Isabella.”

I shook her hand and stepped inside. We did the small talk stuff for a minute before she took me into a high-ceiling dining room area where two children sat, obediently eating their dinner.

“Kids, this is Kyle,” Isabella said. She stepped up beside the little boy, who had wavy black hair and big, dark eyes. “This is Diego. He’s eight years old.” Diego smiled at me and waved, his mouth full of green beans that he seemed to be forcing down.

“And this is Celeste. She’s six.” Celeste, who had long and straight black hair, looked at me shyly.

“Hi, Diego,” I said. “Hi, Celeste. It’s nice to meet you both.”

“Nice to meet you!” Diego declared before abruptly turning to his mother. “Can I be ‘scused now?”

“Finish your green beans,” Isabella said. “Then you can watch an hour of TV only.” She winked at me as she said this.

We left the kids to finish their food and Isabella took me around the house, explaining what she expected and showing me the place. It was a large house, and she didn’t even show me the third floor, which she said was mostly unfinished attic space, or the basement, which apparently contained a home gym.

Ten minutes later, we were standing next to the door to the garage. Isabella had her purse in one hand and the doorknob in the other. “I usually let them stay up until nine on Fridays, so please have them in bed no later than nine-thirty. I’ll be home by 11:00 at the latest.”

“Got it,” I said.

“You have my number. Don’t hesitate to call.”

“I won’t.”

“Thank you for this. I know you’d probably rather be hanging out with your friends on a beautiful Friday night like this one, so thank you. I appreciate it.”

I smiled. “No problem. I’ll take good care of them.”

But it would be a problem. I didn’t know it at the time, but it would be a big goddamn problem.

***

The doorbell rang as I was getting the kids tucked into bed. It was 9:45. I had just finished reading the painfully shy Celeste a story and was sneaking out of the room when the noise sounded throughout the house. Celeste’s eyes came open. “Who’s that?” she asked sleepily.

“I don’t know. Go to sleep.”

I left her door open a crack and the nightlight on in the corner of the room, just like her mom had instructed. As I moved down the hall in my socks, I glanced into Diego’s room. He was jumping on his bed. “Someone’s at the door!” he shouted, jumping up and down.

“Time to go to sleep, Diego,” I said. “Get under the covers.” He ignored me. So I used the voice my dad used to use with me, and I said, “Now!”

That did the trick. He quickly got under the covers, but he was still holding back a giggle. I couldn’t help but smile as I turned off his light and shut his door.

I came to the top of the stairs and looked down at the front door. A man stood on the front porch, peering into the house. He had chestnut brown hair with speckles of gray that shone in the porch lights. He wore a dark suit with a red-and-black tie over a white shirt.

His eyes came up and found me at the top of the stairs. A smile came across his face, and he waved at me.

Unsure what to think, I moved down the stairs and to the front door. But I made no move to unlock the deadbolt. “Yes?”

“Hey there,” he said. “You must be the babysitter. I’m Paul. The ex-husband.” He smiled as he said this last, rolling his eyes as if to say, You know how it goes.

I just nodded. I wasn’t sure what to do.

Paul’s face got serious. “Did Isabella not tell you I was coming by tonight?”

I shook my head. “No, sorry.”

“Well, that’s okay. I won’t be long. I just want to say a quick goodnight to my kids. You mind letting me in?”

I reached for the deadbolt and then stopped myself. Something didn’t seem right about this. “I think I better call her,” I said to him through the glass. “No offense, but … you know.”

“Right,” he said, pulling out his phone. “No problem. I’ll call her right now.”

Before I could say anything, he had the phone to his ear. I realized my phone was in the den, where the kids and I had been watching television for more than the prescribed hour.

“I’m gonna go get my phone,” I said.

Paul put a finger up and then said, “Hey, Izzy, it’s me. I’m here at the house to say goodnight to the kids just like we talked about … Yeah, you forgot to tell him … No, that’s okay. He’s a good kid. He did the right thing not letting me in without checking with you … Yeah, he’s right here. You want to talk to him? Sure.”

Paul held up the phone. “Here. She’ll clear it all up.”

It all seemed so reasonable. Just open the door and take the phone. Paul was a friendly guy. He knew Isabella’s name, and he knew that there were two kids, and he knew around what time they went to bed on Friday nights. It all seemed so reasonable. And I fell for it.

I unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door enough to reach out and grab the phone from him. He waited for me to take the phone before he made his move.

Paul shoulder-checked the heavy door, knocking it out of my grasp. He barreled in, shoving me backward. I couldn’t keep my feet and I tripped, sprawling on the marble floor and dropping the phone in the process.

Flipping around, I attempted to scramble to my feet. I wasn’t fast enough. Paul came up and kicked me in the ribs, sending a jolt of pain through my body. Then he grabbed a fistful of my hair in one hand and kneed me in the face. I felt my nose shatter before I lost consciousness.

***

The sound of crying brought me back to the land of pain and confusion and fear.

I opened my eyes, finding it hard to get my left one open because the eyelid was swollen. As I blinked to clear my vision, I saw I was in a gym. There was a treadmill, a rack of weights, and a few other pieces of gym equipment. I was in the basement.

And in a chair next to me was Celeste. She was taped to the chair, which I recognized from the dining room. She had a gag in her mouth, just like me. I was taped to a chair just a few feet away from the little girl, who was crying through her gag.

I looked around for Diego but didn’t see him anywhere.

I tasted blood in my mouth from my busted nose, but the bleeding seemed to be nothing more than a slow trickle. The handkerchief stuck in my mouth and tied tightly around my head was soaked in blood and spit, so I couldn’t help but taste the metallic liquid.

My arms were duct taped to the arms of the chair, and my legs were taped to the front legs. As I struggled feebly to free my arms, a sense of black despair settled on me. I had let the man in. I had let him in. And now, for all I knew, Diego was dead — or worse.

I had no idea if Paul really was Isabella’s ex-husband or not — or even if Paul was his real name. It didn’t matter. Not now. What mattered was getting out of the chair and calling the police. But of course, my phone was upstairs.

Celeste looked over at me, still crying. Our eyes met, and I saw the hurt there. I saw blame — or at least imagined I did. It was my job to protect them while their mother was gone, and I’d failed.

A thick sob welled up inside me, but I choked it back. I knew if I let it go, I would probably never stop crying. I needed to get free. Otherwise, I was as good as dead.

I forced myself to breathe deeply past the gag, to stop the swirling thoughts of despair in my mind, to focus on getting free.

As I breathed, I remembered something I’d seen on YouTube maybe a year or more earlier. It was one of those stupid internet challenge videos. One where teenagers record themselves doing challenges. And this one was about getting free from being duct taped to a chair.

In the video, one of the kids demonstrated how to do it. He said you were just supposed to yank your arms toward your chest, as if you were trying to hit yourself. In the video, he snapped the tape on the first try.

I straightened in the chair and breathed through the gag. And I yanked my right arm up toward my chest. Or tried to, anyway. The tape didn’t break. There was too much of it. But the movement, small as it was, seemed to do something. It loosened it, maybe.

I tried it again. And again. The tape came free from the sides of the chair arm, although it remained stuck to the bottom. Still, it gave me just a little more room to move. I was stretching it, little by little.

Biting down on the gag, I yanked my right arm a dozen more times before the tape finally ripped an inch. One more yank and my right arm was free.

I pulled the gag out of my mouth and quickly got to work unwrapping the tape from my left arm, and then from my legs.

Relief and fear swirled inside, fogging my thoughts. I ran over to the stairs, thinking of nothing but getting out of this house and finding help. But as I put a foot on the first stair, I stopped. Celeste’s cries brought me back to my senses, but only just so.

My whole body thrummed, and I found it a massive effort to keep from booking it up the stairs, making a beeline for the front door.

My last words to Isabella came to me: I’ll take good care of them.

Screw that, a voice in my head said. You don’t even know these kids. They’re not worth dying for. And that’s what’ll happen if you stay here. You’ll die. All of you will.

That voice was sweetly seductive. I wanted to heed its advice. I wanted to save myself. No one would blame me, would they? But I noticed something about that voice. Deep down, under and behind each word that floated fully formed into my head, was one driving emotion: fear.

It was my fear speaking. And only my fear. There was nothing else there. No empathy. No courage. No sense of duty. Just fear, pure and greedy.

I knew that listening to that voice — heeding its advice — would haunt me for the rest of my days. Even if I managed to get help and the kids walked away without a scratch, I knew it would haunt me.

After all, I’d told Isabella that I would take good care of them.

And goddammit, that’s what I intended to do.

Suddenly, my body wasn’t thrumming so hard. It wasn’t begging to run up the stairs.

That didn’t mean it was easy to force myself to remove my foot from that first step and turn around, but it wasn’t nearly as hard as stopping myself from running up the stairs.

As I walked over toward a still-distraught Celeste, I knew that I was doing the right thing. I knew because it wasn’t the easy thing. And I was confident that I would be able to hold my head up high for the rest of my life — even if that only amounted to a few minutes more.

Getting down in front of Celeste, I whispered, “Hey, it’s okay. I need you to stop crying. Can you do that?”

She made no indication that she’d heard me. She just kept crying.

Suddenly, I realized that might be a good thing. If I got her to stop crying, it might alert Paul that something was up.

I debated furiously for five seconds, wondering if I should leave Celeste here, bound to this chair, or if I should free her and take her with me as I went to search for Diego.

Making my decision, I got up and moved over to the weight rack, grabbing a ten-pound dumbbell, and taking it with me as I moved to the stairs.

The top of the basement stairwell came out between a large living room area and the kitchen. I stopped and peered around, seeing no sign of Paul or Diego.

The living room area wasn’t the same one we’d been watching television in earlier. It was a little less homely, with uncomfortable-looking furniture and a large gas fireplace under the big-screen television on one wall. I guess that was where the grownups got together, if the room was even used at all.

Thinking of getting my phone, I moved cautiously through the living room. I went down a short hallway and ducked into the den. My phone was gone.

The sound of a toilet flushing caught my attention. The bathroom door right down the hall opened. I looked around wildly for a place to hide. There was only one spot in the den, and that was directly behind the couch.

I got down behind the piece of furniture and gripped the ten-pound weight, listening. The sound of footsteps passed by the den and continued toward the other side of the house.

Toward the kitchen, I thought.

Getting up and creeping toward the large den entryway, I peered down the hall to see Paul move past the staircase to the second floor and into the kitchen.

I padded down the hallway and moved swiftly up the stairs, searching for Diego. I found all the rooms empty. The lack of any evidence of violence was a small comfort.

As I moved back down the stairs, I couldn’t help but look at the front door. It was right there. I could leave. I could go find help. I could save myself.

Breathing heavily at the bottom of the stairs, I looked around. I could still hear Celeste crying down in the basement, just faintly. I had no idea where Diego was. But I heard no evidence of him.

I crossed to the door and eased the deadbolt back. Then I opened it and ran out, still carrying the ten-pound weight.

I slowed as I got to the gate, reaching up to open it. Then I screamed for help as loud as I could.

***

Crouching behind a bush at the edge of the fenced-in yard, I watched as Paul came running up to the open front door.

He looked around in a panic, noticing the open front gate. I could almost see the wheels turning.

“Come on,” I whispered, dumbbell clutched in my sweaty right hand. “Come on.”

Clearly making his decision, he bolted down the walkway and out the open front gate. I jumped up and ran as fast and as hard as I could toward the front door.

The thudding of footsteps sent a blade of fear into my chest, and I glanced over to see a crazed-looking Paul sprinting back down the walkway to cut me off.

I stumbled, and for a moment I thought I was going to go down. But somehow I managed to keep my feet, and I lunged up the porch steps just a stride ahead of Paul.

Moving through the doorway, I dropped the ten-pound weight to the marble floor and spun around, slamming the door shut and locking it a split-second before Paul reached it. He slammed into the door with his shoulder, but it didn’t budge. It was sturdy.

He peered through the glass at me, his mouth twisting into a disturbed grin. He bolted away from the door and down the porch. At first, I thought he was going to run away, knowing I would soon be calling the police. But he didn’t. Instead, he took a right into the front yard. That was when I knew he was going for the back door.

I turned and sprinted through the house toward the set of doors at the back, made of glass and sleek black metal.

I reached them just before Paul did, finding the deadbolt unlocked. I locked it and stepped back, breathing heavily. Paul simply grinned at me as he stepped over to a set of lawn furniture on the back patio fronting an outdoor pool with a fence around it.

He grabbed one of the metal-and-mesh dining chairs from the table set and stepped back over to the door.

I moved back, eyes widening and fear burgeoning as Paul whipped the chair around and slammed it into the large glass panel in the door.

The panel shook but didn’t break. It was heavy, reinforced glass, and the chair was probably made of aluminum. Still, he tried a second time. It did nothing but bend the chair and scuff the glass.

Confident he wouldn’t be able to get inside, I ran to the kitchen to look for a phone. I knew some people still had landlines, which my parents had told me about, but I couldn’t remember seeing one in the house.

But as I got to the kitchen, I was distracted by something in the short hallway leading to the garage. It was Diego. He was taped to a chair and gagged, looking at me with wide eyes. His chair was situated directly in front of the door to the garage.

Suddenly, I knew what Paul’s plan had been. He was waiting for Isabella to get home. As soon as she walked through the door, she would see her son taped to a chair. Maybe Paul was planning on holding a knife to his neck. At that point, Paul could make her do anything he wanted. I figured that was when the real show would begin. And it wouldn’t be pretty.

But I’d thrown his plan into disarray. All I needed to do was call the police. Which meant finding a phone.

Glancing around the kitchen, I couldn’t see any landline. I noticed the time: 10:37.

Isabella would be getting home soon. But I couldn’t just wait for that. I could hear Paul still working to get into the house. He wasn’t giving up.

I grabbed a knife from a block on the counter, barely noticing that there was already a knife missing from it. Then I ran over to Diego. I pulled the gag out of his mouth and then went to work on the tape with the knife. “Do you have a cell phone, Diego?” I asked.

He nodded. Tears streamed down his cheeks, but he wasn’t sobbing.

“Where is it?”

“In my mom’s room. It’s only for emergencies.”

I thought this situation sure as hell qualified.

“Okay,” I said, cutting his leg binds and freeing him. “We’re going to go free your sister and then find that cell phone, okay?”

He nodded, standing a little uneasily.

As we went toward the back of the house, I noticed that Paul was no longer in the backyard. I couldn’t see him, and I heard no sign that he was still trying to break in. I hoped all the windows were locked.

We got downstairs quickly and freed Celeste. The three of us moved up to the second floor and into Isabella’s bedroom, which featured an attached balcony overlooking the pool in the backyard.

Diego went directly to the dresser and pulled open one of the drawers. After a few moments of searching, he stepped back and looked at me. “It’s not here.”

I was about to ask if he was sure when I noticed a yellow light coming through one of the bedroom windows. The window in question looked out over the front of the house. I moved over to it and glanced down to see a private security car parked just outside the house, the light bar on top of the vehicle was lit with amber lights all across it. They weren’t flashing but stayed steadily lit.

I couldn’t see whether the driver was still in the car or not. It was too dark.

Although I had screamed for help outside mainly in a ploy to get Paul to come out of the house, it seemed someone had heard it and called the local rent-a-cop.

“Stay here and lock the door,” I said to Diego. “I’ll be right back. Do not open the door for anyone but me or your mom, okay?”

Diego nodded and followed me to the door. He shut it and locked it after I stepped out.

Still holding the knife I got from the kitchen, I ran down the hall and to the top of the stairs. Peering down at the door, my heart fell a little when I didn’t see the security guard standing there.

Then I heard the muted tones of a conversation.

“Oh no,” I said, racing down the stairs and moving up to the front door. Through the glass, I could see the security officer talking to Paul. They were about halfway down the walkway. And given the look on the security guard’s face, I knew Paul was smooth-talking him. The guy didn’t look concerned at all. And why would he? Paul was dressed like every other professional in the neighborhood, with a black suit, white shirt, and a tie. He looked like your average successful suburban father.

I unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped out. “Hey!” I shouted. “Don’t listen to him! He broke into the house. Arrest him!”

The security guard turned to face me. As I was speaking, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Paul had reached around to grab something from his back waistband. And before I could warn the security guard, Paul was already swinging the implement around.

The kitchen knife flashed through the air and made a faint popping sound as it punctured the security officer’s throat, sinking up to the hilt.

Paul yanked the blade out. The security guard tried to scream, but he couldn’t. He brought his hands up to his neck, which was spewing blood all over the walkway and the perfectly manicured grass.

With one arm, Paul grabbed the back of the guy’s neck. He looked over at me as he jammed the knife into the guy’s chest and torso a half dozen times.

As the guy collapsed to the ground, I stepped back into the house and slowly shut the door. And I watched as Paul bent down and grabbed something from the security guard’s belt.

“Oh shit,” I said, seeing what the item was.

Paul dropped the knife and transferred the pistol into his right hand. I backed away from the door, panic constricting my throat as Paul checked the chamber. Satisfied, he did something with his thumb and then leveled the gun at the front door.

That snapped my panic-stricken paralysis. I jumped away as Paul fired the gun, the bullet shattering the glass. Now he could simply reach through and unlock the door.

I scrambled up the stairs and raced down the hall. There was nothing I could do to keep him from getting into the house.

My only thought was of protecting the kids. But I didn’t know how I would do that. I had a small kitchen knife. He had a gun.

As I ran down the hallway toward Isabella’s bedroom, I suddenly regretted staying to try and help the kids.

Because I was certain we were all going to die together very, very soon.

***

“Can you swim?” I asked Diego.

He looked at me with wide eyes and said nothing. Celeste was lying in the fetal position on the bed, sobbing softly.

“Can you swim!?”

Finally, Diego nodded. “Mom taught us in the pool.”

There was a loud bang at the locked bedroom door. Not a gunshot, but a punch or a kick. There was no time.

“Come on!” I said, stepping to the bed and grabbing Celeste. I had to set the knife down to lift her up.

I moved to the patio door with the girl in my arms, Diego following behind me. More banging came from the bedroom door.

Kicking the patio furniture out of the way, I stepped over to the railing and looked down at the pool below.

“Go, Diego!” I said. “Jump. Make sure you get your sister out and then run to a neighbor’s house as fast as you can, okay? Tell them to call the police.”

Shaking, Diego climbed over the railing. For a moment, I thought he was going to slip and fall, which would’ve caused him to hit the concrete. But he didn’t.

He positioned himself face-out on the other side of the railing.

“You can do it!” I said. He only had to jump out about three feet to clear the lip of the pool. I knew he could do it.

He jumped and splashed into the pool.

“Okay, Celeste,” I said, looking down at the girl. “I need you to hold your breath. I have to throw you down, but it’ll be okay. Your brother is waiting for you.”

The girl sobbed. Paul banged on the door. Then there was a gunshot, which caused me to flinch. He was shooting at the doorknob.

With no more time to waste, I twisted, bringing Celeste back, and then throwing her over the railing. She screamed as she fell to the water below. I stared down long enough to see her pop to the surface and take a breath. Diego was already swimming over to her.

I turned around, looking through the door at the knife I’d left on the bed. Then the bedroom door flew open, and Paul stepped into the room.

I looked around, thinking about jumping down into the pool. But I didn’t want to lead him anywhere near the kids, who were only now getting out of the water.

The roof, I thought. It was my only chance.

Gripping the support beam at the edge of the covered balcony with one hand, I launched myself up and balanced on the railing. I wasted no time reaching up over the awning and half-jumping, half-pulling myself up.

With my upper body over the awning, I could no longer see Paul. But I heard the gunshot, and I felt the structure of my right leg change. There was no pain at first, and a strangely emotionless voice in my head told me I’d been shot. Like it was talking about the weather outside. It’s sunny out, no need for an umbrella. You’ve been shot in the leg, probably going to be a big deal soon.

Gasping, I pulled my legs up onto the roof and rolled away from the edge.

For some reason, I thought Paul wouldn’t follow me. I thought I was safe. During my jump up onto the railing, I’d glanced down to see that the kids were no longer in the pool area. I guessed they’d already made it through or around the house. They were safe – or would be soon.

I looked down at my leg, seeing that the bullet had taken a chunk of flesh from the outside of my right thigh. It was bleeding badly, soaking my jeans.

Surely the police are on their way, I thought. All the gunshots, in a neighborhood like this, wouldn’t go unnoticed. I longed to hear sirens. I wanted this to be over. And as the pain came, I felt like I wanted to pass out.

Then there was a grunt from the corner of the awning. Paul’s face came up in tandem with the gun in his right hand.

Acting on nothing but instinct, I threw myself toward him from my sitting position, grabbing the gun just as he fired right next to my ear. An explosion of pain swept down my ear canal, but I kept hold of the gun. With my right hand, I managed to reach up to his trigger finger and fire the gun into the sky several more times in quick succession until it clicked empty.

A grimace of determined hate on his face, Paul reached up with his other hand, letting go of the grip on the support beam. He grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked, dropping his body weight and dragging me near the edge of the roof by my hair. I screamed out, letting go of the now-empty gun to place both hands against the rough surface of the slightly sloped roof.

It was what he’d been hoping for. He slammed the gun into my face, letting go of my hair at the same time. I screamed again and jerked back from him, head foggy and swimming with pain.

When I got control of my faculties again, Paul was on the roof, getting to his feet. He no longer had the gun. He meant to finish this with his bare hands.

I scrambled to my feet and ran up the steeply sloping roof, knowing that in a hand-to-hand fight, I would lose. A scrawny teenage kid like me against a full-grown man in a murderous rage? There was no way.

Paul chased me as I made it to the crest of the roof and slid down on the other side, toward the front of the house. There was a third-story dormer window protruding from the roof near the front edge of the house, which stopped my descent and prevented me from falling off the roof.

But Paul was coming down after me.

I flipped around on the roof to face him, unsure what to do. There was another dormer window about ten yards to my right, but the roof was so steep, I thought I might just fall off if I tried to run to it, especially with my injured right leg.

But as Paul came barreling toward me, I saw something that might be able to help me. Something that I’d been seeing all night and hadn’t given a second thought.

I braced my legs on either side of the small gable roof over the dormer window and put my hands out.

Paul’s hands were out too, and he gave me a shove as we came together. He was strong, and I fell backward, but I managed to grip something of his with my right hand. I gripped his tie.

As I fell backward, my body weight and momentum cinched the necktie around Paul’s throat and yanked him forward. He fell face-down onto the small gable roof as I tumbled back, my body falling off but my grip on the tie arresting my momentum.

I grabbed the tie with both hands as Paul braced his hands against the roof to keep from falling. It was instinct. But his face was already changing colors, the necktie digging into his throat through his collared shirt.

I swung from the tie, looking up at Paul’s face, which stuck over the edge of the dormer window. His eyes bulged, veins popping, blood vessels in the whites of his eyes rupturing.

Finally, he went limp. No longer bracing himself with his hands, he began to slide off the roof. I reached out with one hand and gripped the gutter at the edge of the roof, taking some of my weight off Paul’s body. But I was still pulling on the tie hard enough to keep choking him.

I hung there, one hand on the tie and the other on the gutter, breathing heavily. Headlights caught my attention, and I looked over my shoulder to see a car pulling into the driveway. It stopped and Isabella jumped out, staring up at me.

“Hey, Ms. Cabrera,” I said. “Your ex-husband stopped by.”

Her mouth hung open, and she brought her hands up to her face.

“Don’t worry, your kids are okay,” I said.

As if on cue, the kids came running out from the property next door, followed by what I assumed was the neighbor. “Mommy!” they screamed.

The three of them embraced as I climbed carefully back up to the roof. I shoved Paul’s body off the dormer window’s roof so I would have room to sit and catch my breath for a minute. His body slid off and fell to the yard below with a crunch.

As I sat on the roof, my face hurting and my leg bleeding, I thought about asking Ms. Cabrera for a raise.

We Stopped at the Wrong Diner in the Middle of Nowhere

“I’m going to punch in the address,” Shane said, reaching toward his phone, which sat dark in the holder to the right of the steering wheel.

“Not yet,” I said, reaching over from the passenger seat to stay his hand. “Just a little farther. Please.”

Ever since I’d been assaulted, Shane had been handling me with kid gloves. Most of the time, it pissed me off. But sometimes, I’m ashamed to admit, I used it to get what I wanted.

And right now, I wanted to stay out on these country roads for a little while longer. The sense of movement calmed my overactive mind, helping me truly relax for the first time in months.

“It’s almost ten o’clock,” Shane said. “How much longer do you want to drive around out here?”

“Half an hour, tops.” I looked at Shane, whose face was lit by the dashboard lights. I knew he would agree even before he did.

“Fine,” he said, half-smiling. “Half an hour.”

It had been my idea to move out of the city. But the catalyst hadn’t just been the assault. I’d been wanting to live in the country for many years. The attack and the subsequent months of rehab had only solidified the notion in my mind.

Shane and I had been together for three years, and I knew he loved living in the city. But I also knew he loved me more. At first, he’d been resistant to the idea. But when my mood stayed dark even months after I was able to walk without a limp again, he knew we had to make a change. For my sake.

I was glad for it. I’d been getting to the point where I was ready to leave the city, with or without Shane. Of course, I wanted him to come, but I was in such a deep, dark hole that I knew I had to get out.

So we’d made the arrangements with our respective employers to work remotely and found a little house outside of a town called Brightside.

Things were good for the first week as we got settled in. Our house was on a large lot surrounded by fields belonging to the family who was renting us the place. The nearest house belonged to that family, a quarter mile down the road.

But after the first week went by, I was reminded of that old saying: wherever you go, there you are.

Surprise, surprise, moving hadn’t magically cured my mental state. It seemed to have helped incrementally, but there was still a powerful darkness inside me. I still suffered from panic attacks and anxiety, despite the medication I was taking and the cognitive behavioral therapy I was doing with a therapist online.

But as Shane drove on the dark country road, I tried to put all that behind me. To be in the moment. I sank down in my seat and looked out the window.

Rows of yellowing corn swayed in the breeze, leaves pale in the bright moonlight. The cornfield ended at a swath of trees, then we passed an empty field, the crops having already been harvested.

I had no idea where we were in relation to Brightside. We’d started off driving in the late afternoon, taking random turns, and seeing where we ended up.

There was something peaceful about the open spaces and the seldom-seen people. Sure, there were houses here and there, and we shared the roads with vehicles on occasion, but there was still the sense that we were alone. I couldn’t get enough of that feeling. Alone and on the move. It was as close to freedom as I could get.

“Looks like there’s a town up here,” Shane said as we passed a sign that read “Chilton: 12 Miles.”

I sighed. “Yeah. How we doing on gas?”

“We could use some. I could use a snack, too.”

I agreed. I was getting hungry. We decided to stop in Chilton, get some gas and some snacks, and then head back home with the help of GPS.

But a few miles later, we came upon a diner on the side of the road. The lights were on, and a couple of cars were parked outside, one of which was a sheriff’s cruiser.

“Let’s stop and eat,” I said, liking the look of the place. It looked to be straight out of the fifties, with the whole boxcar aesthetic and the neon sign over the door that read “Tommy’s Diner.”

“Yeah, okay,” Shane said. “If they’re still serving. They might be closing up.”

“Worth a shot.”

Shane directed the car into the dirt parking lot and stopped nose-in next to the sheriff’s cruiser. On the other side of the lot were two more vehicles. One was a beat-up extended cab truck, the other an old Ford Bronco.

The shades were drawn over the diner windows, but I could see movement inside through the cracks around the shades.

We got our phones and wallets and stepped out into the warm autumn night. As we moved to the door, I heard a scuffing sound from the side of the building. Looking over, I saw a young man dressed in dirty, ill-fitting clothes step around the corner of the building. He was zipping up his fly, apparently having just relieved himself.

He froze as he saw us. His sandy hair was disheveled, his cheeks peppered unevenly with scruff. Shane didn’t see him, stepping forward to open the outer door for me. Not thinking much of it, I looked forward and continued walking. But as I moved toward the door, I glanced back at the young man. There was something in his eyes. Something that gave me a faint queasy feeling.

I moved into the diner’s waiting area, which had a padded bench on either side. Glancing through the second door before I opened it for Shane, I caught a glimpse of a man in a black apron standing behind the counter, staring toward the door. It took me too long to realize the look on his face was one of sheer terror.

Shane stepped through the second door and into the main area of the diner. “Hey there,” he said to the man in the apron as I stepped in behind him, letting the door fall closed.

Shane and I glanced to the left at almost the same moment. There was blood everywhere; splashed on the tile floor, across the stools at the counter, on the counter itself. Most of the blood was on the floor between the counter and the line of booths against the front windows.

A man in a sheriff’s uniform was lying face-up on one of the booth tables. A hatchet was embedded in his ruined face, and his chest had been hacked up with the weapon.

The apparent assailant stood next to the body, the skin around his mouth smeared with blood. He had dirty blond hair and a pronounced brow with deep and wide-set eyes, which were fixed on us.

Further back from this man stood another man with a shotgun in his hands. He had the weapon pointed at the cook behind the counter. The shotgun-wielder was older than the blood-smeared man, with a full light-colored beard but similar eyes and the same kind of pronounced brow as the first.

A young woman, presumably a server by her attire, sat on a stool directly across from the cook. I hadn’t seen her before because of the angle of the door. But her place there allowed the man with the shotgun to cover both her and the cook easily from where he stood.

I took all this in quickly. No one spoke. We all just looked at each other for what seemed like a full minute but was really just seconds.

I reached out and grabbed Shane’s shirt, pulling him back toward the door.

“Don’t move!” the man with the shotgun shouted as we moved into the waiting area. I pushed the outer door open to greet the barrel of a pistol.

“Git back in there,” the young man with the empty bladder said, gesturing with the pistol. But he wasn’t a man. He was still a teenager. Seventeen or eighteen, I now saw in the better light from the diner’s interior.

I let go of Shane’s shirt and put my hands up. We moved back into the diner at gunpoint.

The bearded man glared at the teenager as the three of us moved inside. It was plain to see that the kid’s job had been to keep anyone from coming inside, but he’d gone to take a piss just before we pulled in.

After a moment of glaring at the kid, the bearded man gestured with his head to the booth nearest us.

“Sit down,” the kid said, pointing to a booth two down from the one with the dead sheriff.

Shane and I sat down across from each other. The initial unreal shock of the situation was wearing off. My vision was swimming, my breath going rapid, my heart skipping beats as I slipped into the swirling despair of a panic attack.

“Hands on the table,” the kid said. “Flat on the table.”

I got my hands flat on the table and stared into Shane’s eyes, chest heaving. Shane edged his right hand forward, placing it over my left in a gesture of comfort.

“No touching!” the kid yelled.

“He’s having a panic attack!” Shane yelled back. “Can’t you see that?”

Over Shane’s shoulder, I watched as the blood-smeared man reached over and yanked the hatchet out of the sheriff’s face. He stalked over, shoved the kid out of the way, and slammed the hatchet down onto Shane’s right wrist, severing the hand.

Shane’s mouth fell open as he looked down at the injury. Blood pumped out of his wrist. His severed right hand still rested on my left. I was frozen in place, unable to do anything. I felt like I was dying, but at the same time, I felt dissociated from my body. Like I was watching the whole thing through someone else’s eyes.

Shane lifted his right arm, gripping it with his left hand as he screamed and turned toward his attacker.

The man raised the hatchet and slammed it into Shane’s head, cutting off my partner’s scream with the sickening impact.

Shane turned his head toward me, hatchet still embedded in his skull. A scream escaped me as Shane looked into my eyes. Blood welled up from around the blade, dripping down his face.

The young woman seated at the counter screamed. There was quick movement from behind her as the man in the apron made his move.

The man with the shotgun fired, and the blast took the cook’s head off before the man had even made it two steps toward whatever unknowable goal he had in mind.

My scream fell away as the hatchet man stepped over and backhanded the young woman. Her head bounced off the counter and then she slid off her seat to the floor.

The killer yanked the hatchet out of Shane’s skull and then turned to me, raising it over his head.

“No, Kade!” the bearded man shouted, staying Kade’s hand. “We’ll need them to trade for Momma. Keep them two alive. Get ‘em in the truck.”

The blood-stained man’s eyes drilled into me as I looked up at him. A drop of Shane’s blood fell from the hatchet and landed on the back of my right hand, which was still flat on the table. My left hand was wet with the blood that had poured from Shane’s wrist.

Kade lowered the weapon and then yanked me out of the booth with one powerful arm. He dug into my pockets and took my phone and my wallet.

The bearded man spat on the dead sheriff before stalking forward and grabbing the unconscious young woman by the collar of her work uniform. He dragged her outside with the kid following behind. Then Kade shoved me out the door after them.

They tossed the young woman into the back of the truck and then forced me to climb in and lie down next to her, my head touching a gas canister strapped into the corner. The kid and Kade got in with us, sitting on either side of the truck bed while the bearded man — their father, I was guessing — got into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

I no longer felt like I was dying as we drove along the road, heading toward the town of Chilton. I felt like I was already dead. Like I had somehow died but was still able to see out of my eyes, even though my body’s vital functions had stopped.

I thought the men would notice this whenever we got to our destination and discard me in a ditch. I would be trapped in my dead body for all eternity. And I would never get to see Shane again. I would never get to pass on to the next life because I had done nothing to save Shane, just like I had done nothing to save myself when I’d been attacked on my way home over a year ago.

The truck turned off the paved road and onto a dirt one, rocking on old struts as it sped across the poorly maintained road. I stared up from the truck bed. Trees flashed past under the stars. The moon beamed down, almost full.

The smell of gasoline from the can at my head mixed with the earthy scent of fallen leaves and road dust.

I closed my eyes, knowing I wasn’t really dead. But I wished I was. I wanted so badly to be dead so I wouldn’t have to put up with the shame of cowardice. So I wouldn’t have to deal with the fear and the pain and the uncertainty.

I figured I would get my wish soon enough.

***

The smell of animal feces came to me as the truck slowed and then stopped.

The engine noise died as the driver killed the ignition and then opened his door. “Jace, help your brother take care of those two,” the man said.

The younger man — Jace — nodded. “Yes, Daddy,” he said in a high voice.

The young woman was awake now and sobbing softly as they forced us out of the truck bed at gunpoint. I saw her name tag in the moonlight. Her name was Reese.

“Into the barn,” Jace said. I still hadn’t heard Kade speak. Maybe he didn’t — or couldn’t. But his expression said it all. He was itching to kill us just like he’d killed Shane and that policeman back in the diner. He still carried the hatchet, the blood drying in the night air.

I glanced around, seeing that we were on some kind of farm. There was a one-story farmhouse, a small grain silo, and a barn. All three structures looked run-down and sun-faded but still a good ways from falling apart.

Kade opened the barn door while Jace covered us with his pistol. The four of us walked inside. Kade shut the door behind us and flipped on a dim light bulb above the doorway. There were two mules in stalls on the right, and a horse in one stall on the left. They looked at us with mild interest as we entered.

“Stay there,” Jace said, pointing us to the front right corner of the barn.

Kade stalked to the back of the space and moved several bales of hay, uncovering a trapdoor in the floor. He opened the door, revealing a black maw.

“You,” Jace said, pointing at me with the gun. “Go.”

I looked at Reese, remembering how I’d been unable to move my hands from the table even after Shane’s right hand had been cut off. The young woman looked back at me, mascara running down her cheeks.

“What about her?” I asked.

Kade came racing over from the hole in the floor, reversing the hatchet and hitting me in the stomach with the handle.

I doubled over and fell to my knees. He kicked me in the ribs, and I sprawled on my back, helpless and groaning in pain.

Kade grabbed a handful of Reese’s hair with his free hand and brought her face to his. He licked the side of her face from her chin to her forehead as she whimpered and cried. And he stared down at me the whole time.

“Get in the fuckin’ hole before my brother kills you,” Jace said. “We really only need one hostage to trade for Momma, so don’t press your luck.”

I started to get to my feet, but Kade moved forward — dragging Reese along by her hair — and kicked me again.

“Crawl,” Jace said, speaking for his brother.

I crawled to the open trapdoor and looked down into the dark hole. I couldn’t see the bottom, and there were no stairs, no ladder that I could see.

Looking back over my shoulder, I saw Kade dragging the flat of the hatchet down Reese’s breasts and toward her crotch. “You motherfucker!” I screamed, thinking more about Shane than Reese in that moment.

I jumped to my feet and raced toward Kade, who shoved Reese roughly to the floor before turning toward me. A smile came onto his face as I closed the distance.

He easily blocked my roundhouse right and then kicked me between the legs. A spike of pain shot into my stomach, then another one through my chest as he hit me in the sternum with the hatchet handle.

Kade shoved me onto my back and knelt on my chest. He worked quickly, stretching my right ear out with one hand, and then swinging the hatchet down with the other. I felt the blade separate skin and cartilage as that side of my head turned into a ball of pain.

He made quick work of it and then brought my severed ear up, showing it to me. Then he stuck it in his mouth and chewed with a look of orgasmic delight on his face.

I screamed, bringing my hand up to the bleeding wound where my right ear had been.

Kade backhanded me and then flipped me over. He grabbed my belt and dragged me toward the hole, tossing me in without a moment’s hesitation.

I flipped as I fell, landing on my back. The impact knocked the breath out of me. As the door shut, robbing me of what little light there was, I tried to pull a breath in but was unable.

Through the cracks in the ceiling, I could tell that Kade was moving the hay bales back over the trapdoor.

Finally, I managed to pull a breath in, desperately gulping the air down.

Staring up at the darkness above, I fell into a kind of trance state. My body radiated pain. My right ear — or ear canal, as that was the only thing left — roared like a waterfall. Blood traveled down from the wound and soaked my hair.

I felt a pure and righteous anger brought on by that pain. It opened inside me slowly at first, trickling into me, changing me incrementally.

All the fear and the emotional pain and uncertainty I’d been feeling ever since being attacked on my way home a year earlier now had competition. At first, when Shane had been killed so violently and brutally, those emotions had simply been magnified tenfold. They had overwhelmed me, sending me into a catatonic state.

But as I lay in the darkness, the anger I was feeling seemed to grow more powerful. And I realized with something like clarity that I’d never felt angry after those men had attacked me, breaking my leg and fracturing my skull in their homophobic attack.

I’d felt despair. And dejection. And denial. I’d even felt guilty. It was absurd, feeling guilty for being who I was.

But I’d never felt anger toward those men. Not until I lay in the darkness, pain feeding me, nourishing that anger — that rage.

It had all come together later when I replayed the moments before leaving the bar that night. Shane and I had been together, hanging out with his coworkers. I had left early, knowing I had to work in the morning. And I kissed Shane goodnight just before leaving.

Apparently, the three men had been in the bar, and they hadn’t liked what they’d seen. They followed me out and attacked me as I cut through the park to get to the apartment. I didn’t even put up a fight as they closed in. The only thing I did was plead with them before their blows rained down on me.

I pleaded with them as they dragged me over to a large stone. They propped my leg up on the stone and then one of them stomped on it, breaking the limb. After that, all I could do was scream.

They might have killed me if someone hadn’t seen the attack and called the police.

Of course, they were caught. And charged with a hate crime. But through the whole thing, I hadn’t felt anger. And I should’ve. I should’ve been pissed off. I should’ve wanted revenge.

Well, now I did.

***

The pit was little more than a deep hole in the ground under the barn. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness so I could see the dirt sides of the hole. It looked like the pit had been dug with a machine, given the marks on the walls.

But I could also see something else. Up at the ceiling on the side opposite the trapdoor, there was a shallow divot between the ground and the ceiling. It looked like it had been created during a heavy rain — or maybe several heavy rains. The water had flowed under the barn and washed some of the dirt into the pit.

And while the divot wasn’t big enough for me to fit through, I thought it could be big enough with a little work — if the ground was soft enough for me to dig by hand.

After carving out a few small depressions to use as footholds in the wall below the divot, I climbed up and got to work. Holding on with one hand, I pulled all the loose dirt from the divot with the other, letting it fall between my body and the wall as I swept it toward me.

Once all the loose dirt was gone, I had to dig my hand into the tough ground to clear away more space. After several minutes of this, my hand was bleeding, but I had enough room to get into the space under the barn floor.

I managed to get into the divot with my back to the ground, enabling me to reach up and test the floorboards of the barn with my hands. I found a loose board and managed to shove it up enough to get it out of the way so I could work on the one next to it.

That one proved harder, but it came loose after a few minutes of working it up and down. A few more minutes got the third one in line loose, and I was able to climb out from under the floor and into the barn. I found myself in the small area behind the pile of hay bales over the trapdoor.

I replaced the floorboards as best I could, then moved around the pile of hay bales, toward the front of the barn. Not daring to turn on the light, I looked around in the dark, thankful for the narrow rays of moonlight coming in from around the barn doors.

While searching for a weapon, I came across a plastic lighter, a half-burned candle, and a pitchfork for giving the animals hay.

I pocketed the lighter and the candle, unsure when I might need to see in the dark. I took the pitchfork and moved back to the barn doors. The wound where my ear had been was no longer bleeding profusely, but it wasn’t as reliable as my intact ear. After listening for several long moments with my left ear, I opened the door and stepped out into the open.

The house was twenty yards to my right, so I went left and moved around to the back of the barn.

Peering at the side of the house, I watched for movement. The shades were drawn, but I could hear low talking when I angled my left ear toward the structure. I could see the occasional shadow move around at the edges of the shades.

From my spot behind the barn, I noticed a large silver propane tank about fifteen feet from the back of the house.

I ran to it as fast as I could, sliding down behind it for cover. Poking my head up over the tank, I looked at the back of the house.

Still unable to see inside, I knew I had to get closer. I wanted nothing more than to kill Kade — to kill all of them if I could. But I knew I couldn’t leave without Reese.

I crept up to a window and peered through a narrow crack at the bottom, between shade and windowsill.

The father was in the kitchen, a phone to his ear. He was yelling as he paced back and forth in the grimy room.

“Aren’t you listening to me, you little shit!?” he screamed. “I have hostages. You don’t bring my goddamn wife outta that jail and to this house right now, I’ll kill them both!”

There was a pause as he listened to the reply.

“I don’t give a shit about whether you have the authority to do it or not. You have the keys to the cell, don’t you!? So bring her here. You have twenty minutes before I start slitting throats.”

He brought the phone down, jabbed it with his thumb, and then slammed it on the table. Empty beer bottles fell to the floor.

“What did they say this time, Daddy?” Jace said, although I couldn’t see him from where I was.

“They’re giving me the runaround. Buying time till they can get a SWAT team here to kill us all. They must’ve found Sheriff McDowell. Pigs hate it when you kill one of theirs. I don’t think they’ll negotiate with us now.”

“What should we do?”

The bearded man stared down at the table for a long moment. “I guess we better run. I don’t see no way around it. We won’t be able to get your momma. She’ll have to do the time for slicing that uppity bitch’s face up.”

“What about the hostages?”

“We’ll take the girl with us. Let Kade kill the man.”

“Why does Kade always get to do it?” Jace complained. “I wanna kill him.”

“Well hell, Jace, I don’t give a shit. Go on and kill him if you want to. Just hurry up. And tell your brother to stop foolin’ with that girl. We’re leavin’ in ten minutes.”

“Yes, Daddy,” Jace said. I watched him pass through the kitchen, heading to the side of the house nearest the barn. I moved along on the outside, staying low, still holding the pitchfork.

I rounded the back corner of the house and peered through the narrow gap at the bottom of the window. What I saw in that room nearly made me cry out in horror, but I stopped myself before any sound escaped me.

Kade straddled Reese on a bed in the bedroom, looking down at her hacked-up body. He was naked and covered in her blood. And he had his hands inside her abdomen, squishing them around like a child playing with mud.

The door to the bedroom came open, and Jace stepped in. “Ah, shit, Kade! Daddy wanted to keep her alive.”

Kade didn’t seem to notice. He just kept playing with her insides, occasionally pulling a hand out to rub her blood on him.

Jace slammed the door. I stared at the gory scene through the gap at the bottom of the window until I heard the front door of the house shut. Suddenly, I came to my senses and ran across to the back of the barn, going around to the other side.

I heard Jace’s footsteps as he approached the barn door. I waited until I heard him step inside before moving around to the front. The door was open. I stepped carefully onto the wooden floor and followed Jace as he moved to the stacks of hay.

I could see that he had the pistol in his back waistband.

As I got closer, walking on my tiptoes and in step with him, my shadow, cast by the single bulb above the door, fell over him. I didn’t realize this until he rushed forward, reaching back for the pistol as he did so.

Acting on instinct, I bolted after him and thrust with the pitchfork just as he was getting turned around. I angled the tines up as I stabbed him, and they tore through the skin of his stomach, traveling up under his ribs as they ripped through his body.

Gun in his right hand about halfway to a firing position, he stared down at the tool sticking into his abdomen. He brought the gun up toward me, but I slapped it away before he could get the barrel pointed at me. The weapon clattered across the floor.

I pulled the pitchfork out, and blood came rushing out of him.

He fell back against the stack of hay bales. The life left his eyes moments later.

I darted over, traded the pitchfork for the gun, and moved out of the barn. Kneeling at the window again, I looked for Kade, thinking I would just fire the gun through the window and kill him. But he was no longer there. Only Reese’s mangled body was visible on the bed.

My rage wanted me to just run into the house, gun blazing. But I had never fired a gun before. I didn’t know the house. And there were two of them in there.

My missing ear throbbed. I recalled how fast Kade had been when I’d tried attacking him in the barn.

It was too risky.

An idea screamed into my mind. An idea driven by rage, but also informed by my job working in insurance.

I backed away from the house and returned to the barn.

And I put my plan into motion.

***

The lighter clicked, and a flame came to life at its top. I moved the flame toward the hay I’d spread out under the propane tank. The gas canister from the back of the truck sat nearby. I’d used it to douse the propane tank. So when I touched the flame to the hay underneath, it produced a whooshing noise as the gas-soaked hay lit on fire.

Standing up and backing away, I tossed the lighter aside and pulled the gun out. Then I started around to the front of the house.

As an insurance claims assistant, I did research for adjusters who were out in the field surveying damaged property to determine what the payout should be. My job was to assist these adjusters by gathering the pertinent research they needed to do their jobs.

About two years earlier, I’d been tasked with doing research after a propane tank storage facility exploded. During my research, I learned that propane expands when it gets hot. Although all propane tanks have pressure relief valves, there is only so much pressure they can release at a time. So if the propane heats faster than the gas can be released — like if there’s a fire around the tank — it can cause an explosion.

I didn’t know exactly how long it would take as I ran around to the front of the house. But I had checked the propane’s gauge before getting the hay. The gauge said it was filled to about 75%. So I didn’t think it would be long.

I knelt behind the truck and peered at the house, gun in my right hand. I could see the glow of the fire reflecting dimly off the trees behind the house.

I waited, hoping they wouldn’t look out a back window and see. Hoping they were too busy gathering what they needed to go on the run.

A tongue of flame shot up over the house — the relief valve venting gas straight up, which caught fire as soon as it exited the tank.

Sure they would come running out at any moment, I pointed the gun at the front door, thinking I would just empty the weapon when they came out.

A sound like the world tearing apart assaulted my ears as the tank exploded. The property brightened for the briefest of seconds before I closed my eyes and ducked down behind the truck.

I heard a cacophony of destruction and felt the shock wave wash over me, rocking the truck on its old struts.

Debris rained down around me, coming with the realization I’d underestimated the explosion.

I stood up and looked toward the house. The back of the structure was on fire. The windows had all been broken.

The front door opened, causing me to tense and bring the pistol up.

Kade stumbled out, hatchet in one hand. He was wearing jeans and boots but no shirt. The skin on the right side of his chest and face was blistered and bloody.

His eyes fixed on mine as he walked forward. I put my finger on the trigger but thought better of firing. He stumbled and fell to his hands and knees, dropping the hatchet. His entire back was covered in third-degree burns. There was a piece of metal sticking out of his back. It looked like a piece of the propane tank.

I figured he’d stepped up to one of the back windows and looked out. When he saw the fire, he turned to run just as the tank exploded.

He crawled toward me, groaning in pain. When he was close enough, I kicked him in the face. The scorched skin of his face ripped off like slow-cooked barbecue from the bone. He fell onto his back, but he didn’t die. He kept writhing and making noises for a long time as I watched the flames envelop the entire house.

The father never made it out.

By the time the SWAT team arrived, Kade was finally dead, and the house was close to collapsing.

***

After that night, I never felt anxious again. Not like I had before.

But one emotion never really went away. And I doubt it ever will. Even now, I feel the anger. Sometimes it’s subtle, other times it’s all I can do to keep it inside.

But I don’t mind. Feeling angry is so much better than feeling helpless.

Last Words

How long have I been here?

Kill.

How long have I been in this godforsaken cabin?

Kill her.

What happened? What is happening?

Kill her now.

“Shut up!” I scream. “Shut up shut up shut up!”

I’m standing in the hallway of a small cabin, facing a closed bedroom door. Sobs come from inside.

Suddenly, it starts to come back to me, like I’ve just awoken after falling asleep during a movie I’ve seen before. There’s confusion, sure, but it clears slowly.

The woman sobbing in the bedroom is my brother’s girlfriend, Olivia. She’s scared of me. I know she’s scared of me. But the why is still foggy.

It’s not her anymore.

That voice in my head. It’s not mine. I don’t recognize it. I feel exhausted, my muscles burning.

Olivia’s gone.

“Why are you doing this?” Olivia sobs. “Why?”

It’s a trick. Kill her.

The light in the hallway is poor. The window at the end of the hall is completely dark. I step over to it, raising my hands to look out. They’re caked with something. Shifting to bring my hands into the dull light of the single hallway bulb, I see that it’s blood. They’re caked in blood.

Why?

A soft breeze kicks up in the hallway, and a faint smell invades my nostrils. Almost like the scent of mothballs mixed with pine air freshener.

Forgetting about the window, I stumble down the hall toward the living room area, a headache hunkering down between my temples.

There, lying face down in front of the fireplace, is my brother. A hatchet sticks out of his back, and a pool of blood surrounds him, seeping slowly into the cracks between floorboards.

“He attacked me,” I say to myself, remembering the events as though they took place twenty years ago instead of hours or minutes ago. “He attacked me. There was something wrong with his eyes. They were white. He told me he wanted to swallow my soul. So I killed him.”

The soft creak of rusty hinges comes to me from the hallway, followed by the quick patter of footsteps.

A bout of insane laughter sounds from behind me.

I spin around and look down the dimly lit hallway, seeing that the door to the bedroom Olivia was in is now open.

There are only two other doors in the hallway — one leading to another bedroom and one to a bathroom. Both doors are open.

That high-pitched laughter sounds again. It’s insane. She’s insane.

She’s going to kill you. Kill you. Kill you.

“She’s going to kill me,” I say. Without thinking, I step over to my brother’s body and pull the hatchet out of his back.

I head for the front door and try to open it, but it’s stuck. It won’t open.

Moving to the window, I raise the hatchet and hit the glass with it. The hatchet bounces off, leaving barely a mark on the glass.

Kill her and you can leave.

My headache intensifies. The cabin grows hazy. The shadows get longer and darker. They dance insane jigs like creatures made of darkness trying to escape into this reality.

We should’ve never come to this cabin. I knew it was too good to be true.

We unleashed something.

Something evil.

There’s the sound of breaking glass. The patter of footsteps comes again, followed by that freakish laughter.

Kill her before she kills you.

“He won’t kill me!” Olivia shouts maniacally from the hallway.

I hear her running down the hall toward the living room. An impulse takes hold, and I grip the hatchet tighter. She won’t kill me. I won’t let her.

I run away from the front door, headed for the hallway. Olivia and I converge at the hallway’s end. She has a piece of broken mirror clutched in one hand, the glass biting into her skin, drawing blood.

Screaming, we raise our weapons and slam into each other, bouncing off and losing our footing. We end up sitting across from each other on the floor.

The hatchet is buried in the base of Olivia’s neck.

The shard of mirror sticks out of my chest.

Hers is the face of a demon, with white eyes and snarling discolored lips. But just before she collapses onto her back, that demonic face fades.

It’s because she’s dead, and the demon is no longer in her.

One of the wall panels in the living room suddenly opens on its own. I look over at it, unsurprised. As if I knew there was a secret passage hidden there all along.

“Am I in a movie?” I ask. But who am I talking to? Myself?

It seems like I am in a movie. The sense of déjà vu is unmistakable.

Go through there. It’s the only way out.

I struggle gingerly to my feet, trying my best not to jostle the shard of glass sticking out of me. I move into the dark passageway and see that it leads down a flight of wooden stairs. I take the stairs down and find myself in a cellar.

At the top of the stairs, the secret door closes.

There’s an elaborate stone etching covering the entire floor. Blood drips through the boards from above, splatting into the etched grooves of the strange carving.

Lit candles provide illumination, allowing me to see that there is no exit here. There is no way out.

As I turn around to head back up the stairs, my headache intensifies. I wrench my eyes shut and stumble.

Take it out.

There’s a sudden banging from upstairs, and the shrieks of unholy entities fill the air.

An image solidifies in my mind. One of Olivia and my brother Ethan at the top of the stairs, banging on the secret closed door. Only it’s not them. It’s their corpses, each inhabited by something very evil and very dead.

Take it out and you will stop it all. You will save the world.

I shake my head. “I don’t want to die.”

Take it out.

“No.”

The ground shakes under my feet and my headache multiplies. I scream out and fall to my knees on the etched stone slab.

The pain in my head makes the wound in my chest seem like a minor cut. The shrieks grow louder, and the earthquake becomes more violent.

Take it out and it will all be over.

I can no longer think straight. All I want is for the pain to be over. I reach up and pull the shard of mirror out of my chest. Blood pours out of the wound and into the channels in the stone slab.

I fall onto my side, feeling the life drain out of me as the shaking and shrieking fade away.

See, that wasn’t so hard, was it Frank?

Not too bad.

I told you, the easy part is drugging them and installing the implants. The gas we pump into the cabin only does so much. Sure, it makes them hallucinate, but people are stupid. They have to have a voice in their heads telling them what to do. We really came close to ending the world before we figured that one out. And let me tell you, modern technology has made this job a hundred times easier. It’s—

Uh, Bob?

What, Frank?

The mic is still on.

Oh, shit!

Yeah. He’s still alive.

Ah, it’s fine. He’s almost gone. Look at his vitals. Fading fast.

At least you didn’t lie to him about saving the world.

Yeah, that’s true. It’s for the greater good. The Gods demand their sacrifices. I just wish people would be willing to kill themselves to keep humanity going, you know? I don’t know what’s wrong with society today. Everyone’s so selfish.

Well, would you do it?

Hell, no, Frank! What, are you crazy?

I listen to all this with mounting rage, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve just been manipulated into killing my brother, his girlfriend, and myself.

But there’s nothing I can do. I’ve lost too much blood. I have no strength left in me.

So I do the only thing I can. “Fuck you, Bob. And fuck you, Frank,” I say. “You guys suck.”

As far as last words go, they’re not the greatest. But they’re better than nothing.

The Procedure

“This is not going to be as easy as taking a pill twice a day,” she says to me as I sit across from her on the couch.

I nod my head because that’s the response she expects from me. It’s the response that’s called for in this situation. A solemn nod of the head.

The words she speaks are clear — I can hear them and, on some level, understand them — but the fore of my brain is concerned with only one thing: how I look to her.

She’s probably disgusted. But she hides it well. That’s probably something they teach in psychiatry school. How to hide your disgust. How to keep an impassive face even when confronted with the dregs of humanity.

Like me.

The skin on my face feels loose and bumpy. I sweat a lot, especially around beautiful women. I’m sure there will be a couple of sweat marks on the couch when I get up to leave. My face is oily, but she probably doesn’t even notice that. What’s a little oil on a face as disgusting as mine?

Dr. Goodwin leans toward me over the notebook in her lap, propped on her crossed legs. “Mr. Carson, do you want to try it?”

“Yes,” I mumble, wondering what her husband looks like. He’s probably model-handsome and muscular.

“Okay,” she says, uncrossing her legs to get up. My eyes dart down to her knees, but they don’t part enough for me to get a glimpse up her skirt. Then I chastise myself for being such a disgusting person. I’m sure she saw me do it. I bet her skin is crawling. She probably feels uncomfortable. She probably wants to scream and slap me, but she won’t because she’s a professional. Or maybe she doesn’t want to touch my face, even to slap it.

Yeah, that’s probably it.

Maybe I should get another psychiatrist. A man. I doubt I could find one as ugly as me, but I could find an ugly one. That would make me feel a little better.

Dr. Goodwin steps over to her desk and opens a drawer. After a moment, she comes back toward me, stepping close and holding out something in her hand. I take it, seeing that it’s a sample pack of two triangular purple pills.

There are no markings on the underside of the small plastic packaging. No brand name. Just a strip of foil I could easily puncture with my fingernail.

Dr. Goodwin steps back over and sits down again, keeping her knees together. “Take those as soon as you can,” she tells me, looking at her watch. “I’ll go ahead and write you a prescription. You can fill it tomorrow if those two help you a little, okay?”

“What are they supposed to do again?” I ask.

“They should decrease your anxiety about your looks. But, as I said, I recommend seeing a specialist. Talking it out with him should give you an idea of what changes you may want to make. The pills are designed to help you through the process. Who knows, though? The pills may be enough for you while we continue to work together. Okay, Mr. Carson?”

“Okay,” I say, staring at the pills.

“Would you like some water while I write your prescription? You can take them now.”

“Uh, sure.”

The doctor stands up again and walks behind her desk. I try not to stare at her butt as she goes, but my willpower has never been great. “Shannon?” she says, pressing the intercom button on her desk phone. “Could you please bring Mr. Carson a cup of water?”

“Be right in,” Shannon says.

I really should get another doctor. Coming to this place gives me anxiety. Not only is Dr. Goodwin an incredibly attractive woman, but so is her receptionist, Shannon.

As the doctor writes my prescription, I extract the pills from the packaging. There’s a quick knock on the door and Shannon pokes her head in. She smiles at me on the couch as she walks in. It must be hard to smile at me when she probably wants to grimace.

She hands me the little paper cup of water. “There you go, Mister Carson,” she says.

“Thank you.”

“Anything else, Doctor?” Shannon asks.

“No, thank you. And you can leave the door open,” Dr. Goodwin says as she comes around the desk with a piece of paper and a business card.

I dump the pills into my mouth and gulp them down with the cold water, then put the paper cup on the coffee table. Grabbing my baseball cap from next to me, I pull it down over my head. It provides me with some manner of comfort when I’m out in public. Then I stand up, glancing down at the couch to see if I’ve left any sweat marks. Not this time. I guess my shirt and jacket absorbed all my sweat.

“Here’s the prescription,” the doctor tells me, handing me a slip of paper. “But you can’t go to your normal pharmacist for this one, okay? Only one pharmacy carries this pill. I’ve written down the address for you.”

“Okay,” I say, keeping my eyes fixed on the paper.

“And here’s the specialist’s contact information,” she says, handing me a business card. It says the man’s name is Doctor Reginald Massey. There’s also an address and a phone number.

I thank Dr. Goodwin and head out of the room. “See you Thursday,” she says.

Shannon is at her desk, and she smiles at me as I head out. I imagine her and Dr. Goodwin getting together to talk about how hideous I am after I’ve left the building.

It’s okay. I don’t blame them.

I take the bus home. As usual, a few people pity me enough to smile at me. Most everyone else ignores me, keeping their eyes down so they don’t have to look at me.

Getting off the bus near my apartment, I stop off at the Indian food restaurant Gina likes and order a dinner to go. Then I walk to my apartment building and catch the elevator to the fourth floor. After getting off the elevator, I pull my keys out, finding the right one and getting it ready. Then I head down the hallway, setting the food down in front of Gina’s door and knocking on it before hustling down the hall to my own door at the end of the hall.

I get the door open quickly and then shut it just as Gina opens hers. I turn and look through the peephole. She rolls her wheelchair out into the hallway, looking at the food first and then up to my door. “Thank you, Jerod!” she says, waving at my door. “Maybe one day we can eat together!”

It’s the same thing she says every time. But I know she doesn’t mean it. Who could have an appetite with me sitting across from them?

My heart thunders as I watch her. Even distorted through the wide-angle peephole, she’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, stylish glasses, a simple black blouse, and a black skirt over her legs. Somehow, the wheelchair makes her more attractive. I don’t know why. Maybe I have some sort of weird fetish. Probably.

After she picks up the food and rolls back into her apartment, I take off my jacket and shoes. I’m starting to feel something. Like a warm buzz in my stomach.

It must be the pills Dr. Goodwin gave me. It’s nice.

As I stand in my entryway, I look down at my arms. Some days they look too thin. Others, too hairy. And some days they just look … disgusting. There’s no other way to describe them.

But I could put up with my arms if I didn’t have this horrible face on my head. That’s what I really need: a face that doesn’t make people want to puke.

Still, as the warm feeling spreads slowly throughout my body, I can actually stand to look at my arms for more than a moment. Excited, I move deeper into my apartment, turning into the bedroom and walking through it to the bathroom. After flipping on the lights, I reach up and grab the corners of the dark blue sheet I leave draped across the mirror.

I pull the sheet down slowly. As I glimpse the top half of my face, I cringe away, raising the sheet back up and settling it back over the mirror.

Not even the pills can help me. Maybe they haven’t fully kicked in yet. Maybe I’ll try again in a little while.

Right now, I can’t stand to look at my hideous face.

***

There are no cars in the parking lot in front of the specialist’s office, which I find strange. Looking at the numbers on the building and then at the numbers on the card Dr. Goodwin gave me, I verify it’s the right place. I guess there’s a back lot for the employees’ cars.

I had to walk a good ways from the bus stop, forcing myself on with every step. I don’t like meeting new people. I don’t like seeing the pity in their eyes when they see me.

But if this man can help, if he can even make me somewhere near average looking, it’ll all be worth it.

The building is two stories tall, made of concrete and black glass. It’s square, imposing, and utilitarian. As I approach the front door, I see the words etched on the dark glass in white lettering: Reginald M. Massey, M.S.

Underneath, the practice’s apparent motto reads: “Bringing the real you out.”

Opening the door, I pass through a lobby area with stairs to the second floor on my left. There’s a desk, but it’s empty. Then I spot another glass-and-metal door straight ahead, just past the desk. Patients enter here, it says.

I push through the door, stepping into a musty-smelling waiting area with blue-and-gray carpet and black metal seats with navy-blue cushions. The seats line three walls of the square room, all facing a central pillar with three TVs on it, each facing one row of seats.

There’s no one else in the sitting room with me. And to the right, next to a closed wooden door, is an opaque sliding window. Underneath the window is a metal shelf with three clipboards on it. There’s a cup with pens nearby. Each clipboard appears to have paperwork on it.

Moving over to the window, I glance up at the one TV I can see. There’s a close-up of a single wide green eye, staring. It moves slightly, left and right. Then it’s replaced by a woman’s smiling mouth, with red lipstick and perfect white teeth.

As I turn away, just a little creeped out, the mouth speaks. “Welcome, Mr. Carson,” it says from three different sets of television speakers. It’s a woman’s voice, silky smooth. “Please choose a clipboard and fill out the attached forms. Dr. Massey will be with you as soon as you’re done.”

I look around for a camera, but I don’t see one. “Okay,” I say.

It takes me about ten minutes to fill out the paperwork. I can’t help but glance up at the television every so often to see if the eye or the strangely arousing mouth has returned. But there’s only a static image of a handsome man smiling at a beautiful woman who is draped around his neck.

When I’m done, I take the clipboard back up to the little shelf and put it down. When I sit down again, the eye is back on the screen, followed shortly by the mouth.

“Thank you, Mister Carson. Dr. Massey will be right with you.”

“Right,” I say.

The mouth on the televisions is soon replaced by a looped video of a handsome man looking into a mirror, smiling as he pokes and prods different sections of his face. He drags a finger along one eyebrow, then pokes gently at his cheek. He pauses, looks himself in the eye, and nods. Then he goes back to it.

What the hell is this place?

Reaching into my jacket pocket, I grab the bottle of pills I picked up from an equally strange pharmacy on my way over here. Dumping two of the pills out, I look at them in the palm of my hand. They’re not stamped with numbers or letters or anything, which is strange. At least, I think it’s strange. Maybe not all pills are stamped. After all, these are fairly unique. They’re purple and triangular.

I think about the pharmacy I had to go to. It was in the basement of a decrepit building off 3rd Avenue. There were all sorts of off-brand products hanging on the shelves in the cramped and moist room. Most of the products were covered in dust.

But it was the other people waiting for their drugs that really left an impression on me. There was a woman who looked as if she’d been in a terrible accident. Her face was deformed, sagging here and there while other parts bulged. She looked up at me with glazed eyes. I think she smiled, but it was hard to tell.

A man next to her looked like that GigaChad meme from the Internet. His chin jutted out too far, and his cheekbones were too prominent. It looked as if his lips had been arranged into a permanent smirk. Although his neck was skinny, his clothing bulged with oversized muscles that looked a little too round to be real.

I moved past these people to the pharmacist, who was a tall, bald man wearing a lab coat over an expensive-looking dress shirt and tie. He took my prescription slip and checked my ID with an air of impatience.

“Three hundred dollars,” he said.

“What?” I said. “Three hundred? What about my insurance?”

“Insurance doesn’t cover this medication.”

I stood there, wondering what to do. It was more than I’d expected to spend. It wouldn’t break me, but still …

Then I remembered the way the two sample pills had made me feel last night.

“You want it or not?” the pharmacist asked.

“Yes,” I said, pulling out my wallet and giving over my credit card. He ran it quickly.

“Five minutes,” he said, handing me back the card without looking me in the face.

The only two seats were taken, so I wandered, pretending to look at the dusty products on the shelves.

After a few moments, I felt a presence next to me. I looked over to see the blond woman with the messed-up face next to me.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Sandra. What’s your name?”

I smiled at her, realizing that I didn’t feel the same sense of embarrassment about my appearance that I usually did around people. “I’m Jerod,” I told her, offering my hand.

“Hi, Jerod,” she said with a wink. “I haven’t seen you here before. First time?”

Although we’d already shaken hands, she was still holding gently onto mine, her flesh warm and soft. The touch — combined with my lack of paralyzing anxiety and shame — was electric.

“Yes,” I said. “First time here.”

Sandra finally let go of my hand. I focused on her eyes, which were bright blue and kind of hazy. Her face didn’t seem like a real face at all, but a mishmash of flesh with no real cohesion or uniformity. “You’re quite tall,” she said. “I like that in a man.”

“Thank you,” I said. I was just thinking of a compliment to pay her when the pharmacist called out, “Ms. Francis!”

“Oh, that’s me,” Sandra said, turning away to go get her prescription. After she got her little white paper bag, she asked the man for a pen. The guy gave her one with an impatient sigh. She tore a strip off her bag and then bent down and wrote something on it.

After she gave the pen back, she walked over to me and handed me the slip of paper. It was her phone number. “Give me a call, Jerod,” she said, squeezing my arm. Then she walked off, heading back upstairs to the street.

The pharmacist called the Chad guy up, and then it was my turn. When I went back up to street level, I once again started feeling like a hideous freak. I pulled my baseball cap down lower and hurried to the bus stop.

***

As I sit, waiting for Dr. Massey, I pull out Sandra’s phone number and look at it. She is not what I would consider an attractive person, but there was something about her. Something magnetic. She certainly was confident. She had the swagger of a beautiful woman. I try to remember her body, but I was so focused on looking her in the eyes so as not to appear to stare at her disfigured face, I didn’t pay much attention to anything below her neck.

I imagine kissing those deformed lips, and a shiver runs up my spine.

Is that why I was comfortable around her? Because I think she’s uglier than me? Am I really that shallow? Ugly guys aren’t supposed to be shallow. It’s a bad combination.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the wooden door open. Glancing up, I see a square-jawed, middle-aged man in a lab coat. He looks like he should be playing a doctor in some soap opera instead of actually being one.

His immaculate teeth seem to sparkle as he smiles at me. “Mr. Carson,” he says. “I’m Dr. Massey. How are you today?”

“I’m good,” I mumble.

“What’s that? I can’t hear you when you mumble,” he says with humor.

“I’m good. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m just fine,” he tells me, grabbing the clipboard I filled out. “Let’s take a walk, shall we?”

I follow him through the door, down a hall, and into his office. He sits behind the desk and tells me to take one of the two seats in front of it.

“So, I’ve talked with Dr. Goodwin,” he says. “And we’re in agreement that surgery could be the thing for you. She told me you expressed interest, correct?”

“Yes,” I say. “If it helps me look better. I just don’t want to be ugly anymore. I can’t stand it. I can’t even look at myself in the mirror.”

Massey nods knowingly. “Yes, well, that’s often the case with my patients. But I just want to tell you one thing, Mr. Carson.”

“What’s that?”

“Why don’t you take your hat off to let me get a good look at you?” he asks.

Swallowing, my face burning with shame, I take the hat off and put it on my lap. Massey studies my face for a long moment, his eyes bouncing all over, before he says, “Yes, just as I expected.”

“What? Is that what you wanted to tell me?” I ask, my voice raw with emotion. “You just wanted to verify that I’m ugly?”

Massey leans forward, the humor falling from his face. “Mr. Carson, you’re not ugly. In fact, I would say you’re well above average, as these things go.”

He continues staring at me as I wait for the punchline. But it doesn’t come. Suddenly, I go from ashamed to angry.

“What the hell kind of place is this?” I ask. “Is this some kind of experimental therapy or something? You think just telling me I’m not ugly will suddenly make me forget all the twenty-nine years of my life? I know I’m ugly, okay? I know it. I know it better than anyone. So don’t fuck around with me, Dr. Massey. If you really are a doctor. And don’t give me any of that ‘eye of the beholder’ crap. That’s something ugly people tell themselves when they need to feel better about their miserable lives.”

Massey leans back in his chair and steeples his hands, peering at me. “Okay, Mr. Carson. I just had to be sure. And now I am.”

“Sure about what?”

“That this procedure is right for you. But I’m telling you right now, it’s not cheap. Your insurance will not cover it. But I can offer you a generous payment plan.”

Calming down, I pull my hat back on my head and look at Massey from under the brim. “How does it work? I mean, what are the chances of it working on me? Is it plastic surgery?”

“It is most assuredly not plastic surgery. If that’s what you want, I suggest you leave right now because I can’t help you. But what I can say is that my procedure has a 95% success rate. If that’s good enough for you, we can talk numbers. If not, then I can’t help you.”

“I’ve already talked to plastic surgeons,” I tell him. “They can’t do what I want. They can’t give me a new fucking face. So if you’re telling me there’s a 95% chance I won’t have to be ashamed every time I look in a mirror or go out in public, I’m willing to take that chance.”

“Good,” Massey says, the humor coming back into his voice. “I saw that you took the pills Dr. Goodwin prescribed you while in the waiting room, correct?”

“Yes,” I say, wary.

Massey looks at his watch. “Perfect. Let’s talk numbers and then get started.”

“What, today?” I ask.

“Yes, why not? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“I can walk out of here changed today?” I ask.

“Well, I’ll need to hold you until tomorrow. But in twenty-four hours, you can walk out changed, yes.”

I take a deep breath, excitement causing butterflies to flutter in my stomach. “How much does it cost?”

***

“I’m just going to strap you in,” Massey says to me as I sit in a medical chair in a small, tiled room. There are shelves of equipment behind me, and adjustable metal arms coming out of the ceiling over the chair. One of them has a light on it, but I don’t recognize the devices on the ends of the other two. There’s a television screen on the wall directly in front of me.

I’m dressed in disposable scrubs and Massey has shaved my head completely. After he straps my arms and legs to the chair, he tucks thick paper towels around my neck and under the back of my head where it sits against the seat cushion.

He steps away for a minute and then returns with a syringe. He sticks it into my arm and pushes the plunger. “Here we go, Mr. Carson,” he says with a smile. “You’re gonna love the new you.”

As my body gets tingly and my thoughts move like molasses, Massey steps to the television and turns it on. Then he moves out of my line of sight and appears a moment later, slipping something over my head.

I quickly realize it’s a virtual reality headset.

“Just remain calm. This is all part of the procedure,” the doctor says. A second later, pictures of my face start appearing, replacing the black in the virtual reality goggles.

“I don’t want to see this!” I tell him, my voice sounding strange to my ears. “I don’t want this!”

The pictures of me begin cycling faster and faster, and I realize they’ve all been taken either in Dr. Goodwin’s office or when I took my hat off in Dr. Massey’s office. I don’t recall seeing any cameras, but there must have been a lot of them, because they have my face from nearly every conceivable angle.

I feel a strap secured over my forehead, holding my head to the seat. “You’re going to feel a slight pressure on your skull,” Massey says. “Don’t mind the noise.”

The whirring of a drill starts up. “What are you doing?!” I cry. “What is that!?”

Just like he said, I feel intense pressure on the top of my skull, vibrating my head.

Regret and terror mingle in my chest as I realize he’s drilling into my skull.

I scream, the pictures of my face cycling even faster. But as they do, my face begins to change. Slowly, my features morph, melting here, bulging there, wrinkling in another place. It reminds me of that woman’s face. Sandra.

It’s hideous.

But the pictures continue, and soon half of them are of my normal face and half are of the distorted version.

The pressure on my skull has changed now, shifting from the outside to the inside. I realize he’s no longer drilling. He’s doing something else.

He’s messing around in my brain.

“You see, Mr. Carson, it’s all about perception,” he says as he works. “Perception is everything. Unfortunately, there also needs to be an ingredient of change, as well. I’ve found that if I change perception, but I don’t change the face, the procedure isn’t permanent. It fades. And we don’t want that, do we?”

My hands and feet twitch involuntarily. My mouth hangs open, drool dripping down my chin. I no longer have control of my own body. I can’t seem to close my eyes. I’m forced to look at the swirling pictures.

But a funny thing happens as I watch them. Half of the pictures change, slowly going from hideous to just plain ugly. The pressure in my head changes again, and half the pictures morph again, moving from ugly to average.

After another pressure change, I can hardly believe my eyes. Soon, half of the pictures of me are genuinely handsome. I still recognize the other ones, of my normal face, as they are. They’re disgusting. The face I’ve lived with for all of my adult life. Hideous. I hate that face.

But the other pictures … it’s me, but I actually look good. If I could laugh, I would.

Pretty soon, the pictures of the old me drop away, and all I’m looking at in the VR space are pictures of my new, handsome face. It’s a miracle. I never thought it would be possible.

The pressure in my head lets up, and I feel another prick on my arm. “That’s the first half done, Mr. Carson,” Massey says. “Now for the second. I’ll see you when you wake up.”

I feel a sense of sadness settle on me as the drugs take hold and my eyelids close on their own, robbing me of the joyous revelation of my new face.

***

“Mr. Carson?”

Dr. Massey’s voice cuts through the thick fog of the best dream I’ve had in a long time. In it, I was finally having dinner with Gina. We were eating her favorite Indian dish. I was making her laugh. Then, after dinner, we delved deep into serious conversation. We talked until the sun came up. And as we sat on her balcony, watching the sunrise, we kissed.

But it wasn’t real. It was just a dream.

My face is heavy as I open my eyes and look up at Massey. He smiles down at me, teeth gleaming. “How are you feeling?”

“Groggy,” I say. It’s hard to move my mouth. I reach a hand up toward my face, but Massey catches it.

“You have bandages on your face, Mr. Carson. Please don’t touch them. You can take them off tonight when you get home.”

“Tonight?” I ask, sitting up in the bed. I’m in a windowless room with medical equipment all around. There’s an IV line hooked up to my left arm. “It’s already been a day?”

“Yes, sir,” he says. “Just about twenty-four hours. When you’re ready, I’ll have a car service come to take you home. It’s included in the price.”

“Did it work?” I ask. “Did you make me … handsome?”

“You’ll have to tell me when you take the bandages off tonight. But I’m confident it did. You reacted just as I expected. I think it was a success. But, like I said, you’re the judge. Just keep in mind that you’ll still have some healing to do. I’m sending you home with some care instructions and topical ointment to put on your face, okay?”

I nod, wincing at the pain in my head. I reach up and feel a bandage on the top of my skull.

“Please, Mr. Carson, don’t finger your wounds. I’ve included care instructions for the staples in your head, as well. You’ll have to return in two weeks to have them removed.”

“Okay,” I say, getting out of bed.

Massey leaves me alone, letting me get dressed. Thirty minutes later, I’m back in my apartment. I go back to sleep for a few hours, and when I wake up, I read the care instructions.

I feel less groggy now, and I head to the bathroom to take off the bandages. I work slowly, leaving the sheet over the mirror until I’m fully done.

When the trash can is full of bloody gauze, I reach up to grab the corners of the sheet, my hands shaking. As I pull it down, I catch a glimpse of my forehead and then my eyes. I freeze, unable to believe what I’m seeing.

Then I let the sheet down all the way and look at my new face.

Pure joy floods my heart. I smile, even though it hurts. I’m not ugly anymore. In fact, I look good. It’s still me, but somehow it’s also a brand-new face. I don’t know how he did it, but he did. Massey’s a genius. He’s a goddamn genius.

And my face isn’t even close to being fully healed. It’s swollen in places and inflamed pink, but I can still see how good I look. It will only get better as it heals.

A sudden rush of delightful confidence lifts me up. I remember the dream I had, where I was having dinner with Gina.

Without so much as putting on my shoes, I march out of my apartment and knock on her door. “Who is it?” she says.

“It’s Jerod,” I say.

There’s a pause. “Really?”

I smile. She sounds pleasantly surprised. “Yes, really.”

She unlocks and then opens the door. When she looks up at my face, she jumps in her chair, sucking in a deep breath. It must be a shock to see me so handsome, after so many years of seeing the hideous me.

“What happened to your face?” she says. “Are you okay?”

I can’t help but smile. “I’m better than okay,” I tell her. “I’m amazing. And I’d like to have dinner with you this week if you’re free.”

She’s shocked into speechlessness for a moment. I’m sure she can’t believe how good I look. “Uh, yeah, I guess so,” she says. “Are you sure you’re okay, Jerod? You look …”

“I know,” I say, still smiling. “It’s amazing, right?”

I wait for her to say something, but she just stares at my face.

“So, when would be a good night for you?” I ask.

“I — uh — I’ll need to check,” she says. “I’ll get back to you, okay?”

“Sounds good,” I tell her. “Talk to you soon.”

I head back to my apartment, still beaming with confidence. It’s amazing. Simply amazing.

As the days go by, I feel like I have a new lease on life. I don’t hear from Gina, but I assume it’s just because my looks are intimidating now. It’s wild the effect a really sexy person can have. I know from experience.

I can see it in all the faces of the people I pass. Most of them look at me and then quickly avert their eyes. Like looking at the sun. It’s too much for them. This must be how movie stars feel all the time.

Some people, though, just stare at me, eyes wide and mouths open. They can’t believe someone so handsome exists, I guess.

People no longer smile at me, really. If they do, the smiles are strained. It’s because they’re in awe. I can tell. I always smile back, though. I remember how it felt when a really pretty woman would give me a genuine smile. It didn’t happen very often — most of the smiles were pitying — but it happened once in a while before I got this new face. And it made me feel fantastic.

So I smile. It’s the least I can do in return.

When I went back to see Dr. Goodwin for our second weekly session, I told her how good I felt. I thanked her, and she reminded me that I needed to keep taking the drugs she prescribed. When I headed out, I asked Shannon on a date. It was cute to see her grow nervous, clearly overwhelmed by the request. But she said it wouldn’t be appropriate since I was a patient. I told her I wouldn’t be a patient for much longer, and she said she would see when the time came.

No big deal. Her loss. I know I can get any woman I want with this new face of mine.

That was a couple of hours ago. Now I’m headed back to the basement pharmacy to get my prescription refilled.

As I get off the bus, heads turn to follow me. I smile at my newfound power. I smile a lot lately. It’s a nice change.

Stepping down into the pharmacy, I glance around and see the most stunningly beautiful woman I’ve ever seen sitting in one of the two chairs. She’s blond, with the face of a supermodel. Our eyes meet as I move past, and I can feel her gaze on me as I walk up to the bald and impatient pharmacist.

After I pay, he tells me, “Five minutes.”

I thank him and move over to the two seats. “Mind if I sit?” I ask the woman.

She beams up at me. “Not at all.”

“You look familiar,” I tell her as I sit down. “Have we met?”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” she says. Her blue eyes are brilliant, if a little hazy.

It’s the eyes that do it. “Sandra?!” I say.

“Yes!” she says, giggling. “And you’re Jerod, right? I’ve been waiting for you to call. But it looks like you’ve been busy getting some work done.”

I smile. “Yeah, I have.”

“You look fantastic,” she says.

“So do you,” I tell her. “Have you had work done, too?” She looks like a completely different person than when I saw her about a week ago.

“No, not since we met.”

I don’t know how that’s possible, but it’s not important. She’s gorgeous. I could stare at that face all day.

“How would you like to get a drink with me right now?” I ask her.

“I would love it.”

Slugged

Jennifer was my first love. My first unrequited love, I should say.

She was my babysitter for two years. Well, mine and my little brother Sam’s.

Unfortunately, the last night she babysat us was also the worst night of my life.

Everything started out well enough. Jennifer showed up on time, as always. My parents were a little on edge because they’d heard about a babysitter being killed in the next town over. The search for the little girl she’d been babysitting was ongoing.

But they had a work function they couldn’t miss. So they left Sam and me with Jennifer, who was three years my elder.

Of course, what seventeen-year-old girl would be interested in a fourteen-year-old dweeb like me? None. But that didn’t stop me from shooting my shot in the painfully embarrassing way only hormone-flooded teenage boys can.

I started off by asking her if she wanted to watch an R-rated movie, telling her nonchalantly that my parents didn’t know, but I watched them all the time.

When she politely declined, I hung around the table where she was doing her homework, peppering her with questions, totally oblivious to the fact that she was trying to study.

When my little brother Sam came into the room, I glared at him, trying to get him to scram. He ignored me.

“Jennifer? There’s someone outside,” he said. That was when I noticed he looked genuinely scared.

“At the door?” Jennifer asked, only half paying attention.

Sam shook his head. “In the backyard. He was trying to get me to come outside.”

That caught her attention. She stood up, tossing her pencil down and grabbing her phone. “Where?”

Sam led the way to the back door, and all three of us looked out into the dark backyard. I stepped over next to the sliding glass door and flipped on the lights.

“You sure someone was out there?” Jennifer asked.

“Yes.”

Sam didn’t have an overactive imagination, which Jennifer knew. She turned to me. “Davey, take your brother upstairs, would you?”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine. Just do as I say. I’ll be up there in a minute.”

Reluctantly, I did as she asked. We were halfway up the stairs when I heard her open the sliding glass door. “I’ve called the police,” she proclaimed to the backyard. “You better get lost before they get here.”

I knew she hadn’t called the police, but I was hopeful it would work.

Sam and I went to my room and started playing video games. When five minutes passed and Jennifer hadn’t come up yet, I decided to venture downstairs.

Sam wanted to come, but I told him to stay put.

I heard the television on when I was halfway down the stairs, so I figured she’d come back in and given up on her homework.

As I stepped into the living room, I saw Jennifer sitting on the couch, facing the television.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

She turned to look at me and smiled. “Come here and sit with me,” she said.

I had to keep myself from running. She’d never invited me to sit directly next to her before. Oh, the possibilities!

“What are we watching?” I asked, sitting down, our thighs pressed together. I felt all fuzzy and nervous inside.

Jennifer didn’t answer, so I turned to look at her. She was smiling at me, our faces less than a foot apart.

Something was different about her. It didn’t take me long to realize that it was her eyes. They were a much darker shade of green than normal.

I knew something was wrong. But in my hormone-clouded state, I wasn’t willing to accept it.

She reached one slender hand up and touched my cheek. Then she leaned toward me, closing her eyes.

Is this really happening? was all I could think.

And because of my disbelief, I kept my eyes open for just long enough to see her face transform in the blink of an eye. One second, it was the most beautiful face I’d ever seen. The next, it was a hideous brown-black face with large, wide-spaced black eyes. The face split open lengthwise to reveal a mouth full of sharp teeth and wriggling black worms.

I jerked my head away just before the mouth snapped closed, saving myself from a gruesome death.

Scrambling backward, I fell off the couch as the slimy monster lunged toward me. It was like a giant slug, wearing Jennifer’s skirt and top.

It moved quickly, throwing itself off the couch. I put my hands up, keeping the thing off me for the moment. But it was slippery, and its mouth snapped at me even as it writhed steadily out of my tenuous grip.

I was a goner. It was too heavy for me to throw off, and too fast for me to crawl away from.

My arms weakened, and its mouth grew closer and closer with every slimy snap.

Then, small pebbles hit my face, and the monster screamed, jerking away.

It slithered around the coffee table, still screaming, and headed for the back door.

That was when I saw Sam. He had a large container of sea salt from the pantry, and he was tossing the stuff on the monster.

I got to my feet and followed him as he continued throwing salt on the monster until it burst through the sliding glass door in a shower of glass and disappeared into the darkness of the backyard.

That was when I glimpsed Jennifer’s body, shoved haphazardly under a bush at the edge of the yard, her clothes stolen by the monster.

My heart broke right then, but I knelt and looked at my brother. “You okay?”

Sam nodded.

“How’d you know that would work?” I asked him.

“When he was trying to get me to come outside earlier, I thought he looked like a slug. Slugs don’t like salt.”

I smiled. “You’re the best brother a guy could ask for.”

21st Century Psycho

“So will you do it?” Robbie asks, twirling a pen in one hand while snapping gum in his mouth. “Are you my guy, Chuck? Are you there for me?” His smile sparkles, making me squint. “Can I count on you?”

I wonder briefly how much his teeth whitening regimen costs. He has his feet propped on the desk. I can see the logo in the soles of his shoes. They’re a special edition model. No way you can get those without a connection in the fashion world.

He’s waiting for an answer, so I drag my mind from the sludge of low-grade envy and look into his eyes. A dozen possibilities rush through my mind, only one of them good. Although good isn’t exactly the right word. Not in the moral sense.

Are those still a thing? Morals? I thought they were, but now I’m not so sure.

“Yes,” I finally say, forcing the word out of my throat like shoving a scared fat kid down a water slide.

His smile gets a thousand lumens brighter before it suddenly vanishes, letting my eyes relax as he pulls his feet off his desk and leans over. He peers over the marble-topped desk, his face reflected in its surface. Smooth skin. Plucked eyebrows. The perfect amount of facial hair.

“Thank you,” he says. “Seriously. This is important. For all of us.”

By “us” I know he means our team, which is made up of Robbie, me, two other guys, and one woman. Aside from Robbie, I’m the most senior.

“Now fuck off and get back to work,” he says, leaning back again, sunglasses-worthy smile back on his perfect and perfectly smashable face. The bastard. He has it all. And he’s only two years older than me.

As I leave his office, I tell myself that he was where I am now two years ago. If I play ball, do what I’m asked, and keep busting my ass, I’ll be where he is in just two years. 730 days. 17,520 hours. 1,051,200 minutes.

Of course, not all of that will be work time. I’ll be sleeping for some of it. For all the other hours, I’ll be commuting or social engineering or thinking about work.

Working. Sleeping. Schmoozing. Commuting.

Just two more years of this shit before I can finally relax a little and enjoy myself. I’ll be the goddamn boss. I’ll walk around like I have brass balls and a credit card made of solid fucking gold.

I nearly bump into Jayden, Robbie’s assistant, when I’m heading out of the reception room. “So sorry, Mister Braxton,” he says.

“Fucking watch it,” I tell him. His face falls, and I almost tell him I’m kidding, but I resist the urge. It’s good to keep the new guys on their toes. They have to pay their dues. We all do.

I walk down the hall toward the elevators, passing half a dozen offices just like Robbie’s, each with its own assistant. Management. The place smells like unlit cigars, freshly polished leather, and baby powder.

I’m only going down two floors, but I bypass the stairs and stop outside the bank of elevators. I like to look out the window at the city skyline stretching from horizon to horizon. It’s only two floors higher than the one I work on, but it seems like a hundred. I can see tiny cars bustling around in the bumper-to-bumper traffic below. I can see people moving along the sidewalks and crossing crosswalks.

The view of the city suddenly brings a wave of melancholy down on me like a tsunami on a quaint fishing village. I lean against the window, mouth suddenly full of hot saliva.

What the hell did I just agree to?

I feel ill.

Two years, I tell myself. Just two years.

“Heyo, Chucky, my man!” The voice comes from behind me. I straighten at the window before turning around to face the man.

Theodore Upton slaps me on the shoulder, a goofy grin on his face. “What the hell are you doing on sixty-seven?” he asks.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I say.

“Shit, bitch. I’m moving up here soon, man,” he says.

One of the elevators dings. Going down. Theodore must’ve pressed the button. We step on, joining five other people. We’re all going down, I guess.

“So it’s official?” I ask, reaching over to press sixty-five. “You got a raise?”

The door closes and the elevator moves.

“Well, no, not official official. You know how it is. Jerkoffs gotta jerk you around first, right? Wait! What am I saying? Of course you know how it is. You’re one of the guys who does the jerking, aren’t you?” Theodore belly laughs, turning to look over his shoulder to see if anyone else got the joke. Although it doesn’t really make any sense. Theodore and I have almost the exact same job, just on different teams.

I smile, clenching my teeth. Bile backs up into my throat and I cough once, choking on it before I swallow it back down.

“Whoa, you okay, man?” Theodore asks. “Relax! It’s just a joke.”

The elevator opens on sixty-five. Theodore and I step off and a couple of women step on.

“All right, asshole,” Theodore says. “See you later.”

“Hey, Teddy,” I say, stopping him before he heads to his shared office. “Has Hank ever asked you to do something you weren’t … comfortable with?”

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me? Like every day. What’s the problem, Chucky? Old Robbie ask you to burn some papers or something? He ask you to email some insider trading information to his latest fuck buddy?”

I don’t answer, but Theodore doesn’t wait long for me to say anything. “Dude, the only guys who get in serious trouble are the ones who don’t play ball. We protect our own.”

He turns and waves, heading down the hall. After standing there for a minute, I walk down the hall after him, avoiding eye contact as I pass a couple people.

Stopping outside of Theodore’s shared office, I look through the narrow window in the door. I can see down an aisle between the cubicles to an office with clear glass walls. There’s a man sitting in the cramped office, behind a desk. Theodore’s boss. Hank Westgate.

Hank has the same job title as my boss, Robbie, but he’s stuck in an office down here on the 65th floor because my team always puts up better numbers. That’s why Robbie gets the nice office upstairs. But Hank is jockeying for position, brown-nosing with some of the higher-ups.

It’s no secret he wants that office. And Robbie knows it.

Hank is looking down at his desk, but he seems to sense me. He brings his eyes up just as I step to my right.

I don’t think he saw me.

Even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. I turn and head back the way I came, going to my shared office.

***

“Well, dear, you can come home and stay with us again if you need to,” my mom says. “I’ve read that a lot of people your age are doing that. Things are different nowadays. Not like when your father and I were your age.”

I roll my eyes, walking down the street toward the club. I don’t really feel like partying tonight—my feet are killing me, and I can barely keep my eyes open—but I don’t have much of a choice.

“No, Mom,” I say. “That’s not at all what I’m asking. I don’t need to come home. I don’t want to come home. I mean, it would be nice to see you and Dad for a change, but I can’t make time for a vacation right now.”

“We haven’t seen you in so long,” she says in her best guilt-trip voice.

“I know. Once I get this promotion … Anyway, what are your thoughts on what I asked?”

I’m coming up on a homeless shelter with a line spilling out along the sidewalk. I forgot they were building another shelter here. Seems like there’s one on every block now. My tax dollars at work. Bunch of freeloaders.

Making sure I don’t get hit by a car, I cross the street to avoid the unwashed masses as my mom formulates an answer.

“It’s hard to give you an answer without knowing the specifics, Charles,” she says. “But I guess my advice is just to do what you think is right. You have a good heart and a good head on your shoulders. If it feels like selling your soul, then it probably is.”

“Yeah, but did you and Dad never have to do anything that you didn’t want to do when you were coming up?”

“Oh, sure,” she says. “Everyone has to do things they don’t want to do. I’m afraid that’s the way of the world. But you should never cross the line that—”

“Okay, thanks, Mom. I gotta go. Love you!” I hang up the phone just as I come up behind Theodore on the sidewalk talking to a couple of young ladies. This is exactly why I can’t stay home at night. Because guys like Theodore are always out here, generating connections and building up their social credit. If I stay home, I fall behind.

“Well, hello there, ladies,” I say, wrapping an arm around Theodore’s neck. “Are we ready to do some drinking?”

“Chuck, you old so-and-so,” Theodore says. “I was just inviting these two lovely ladies into Mephisto’s for a couple of stiff ones.” He waggles his eyebrows as he says this. The two women — clearly not from our social strata — giggle.

I introduce myself as we cross the street, learning that their names are Alabaster and Juniper. I resist the urge to ask if those are their real names or if they’re strippers.

Mephisto’s has two lines snaking down the block. The line on the left side of the door is populated by people like Alabaster and Juniper, hoping for a chance to get inside. Unfortunately for those people, no one who matters has to wait in line to get into the club.

The other line, on the right side, is populated mostly with people dressed in rags. It could be a line from the homeless shelter I passed, as though there’s been some sort of mistake. But there’s no mistake. These people are trying to get into the club. Just for vastly different reasons than the people in the left line.

Theodore leads the way as we approach the pair of bouncers at the doorway. I see Theodore shake his head once, very discreetly, as we approach. The bouncers open the door and let Theodore and me inside, but they stop the ladies.

We both turn around and look at them. Their faces are petrified, but there’s still some hope in them. They think we’ll be able to talk to the bouncers. To let them in. They think they’ll be the envy of the entire line of people trying to look like they don’t care whether they get in.

But they’re wrong.

“Oh, sorry, ladies,” Theodore says. “I forgot this place has standards.”

The embarrassment on their faces is priceless. We laugh as the door shuts, and we head up the stairs.

“Oh, man, that never gets old,” I say, ignoring a sudden bout of nausea. Must’ve been something I ate.

Mephisto’s is nine levels of dance floors, bars, lounge areas, and private rooms. The bouncers at the door occasionally let nobodies in to purchase overpriced drinks on the first floor, but it’s not where anyone wants to be. It’s kind of like a waiting area where the desperate mill about and hope to be brought upstairs.

Each floor has its own set of bouncers, controlling who can go up to the next level. The highest floor Theodore and I can get to is the fifth. We’ve heard wild stories about what goes on at the levels above, but we’ll have to wait to find out for ourselves whether they’re true.

Our bosses, Robbie and Hank, do their partying on the sixth floor, for the most part. But they sometimes come down to rub elbows with their lessers.

Which is what we do as we make our way through the club.

On the second level, we move through the thrumming dance floor and toward a bar at the edge of the room. Lights flash in time with the bumping music while people dance and chat and laugh.

We pass a line of booths on our left, where people wearing five-thousand-dollar outfits are served by people who don’t even have a thousand dollars to their name. The homeless people who’ve made it inside stick out like sore thumbs. Of course, that’s kind of the idea.

The founders of Mephisto’s had a genius idea to use homeless people as personal waiters for anyone who requests one. They work only for tips and the club doesn’t have to worry about pesky things like paying them an hourly wage or giving them tax documents or anything.

Apparently, the owners of Mephisto’s found some kind of legal loophole in the city’s laws that allows them to don charity status. The homeless people “volunteer” and take what they can get as far as tips.

Of course, things are a little different on the other, higher floors. Given what goes on up there, there’s a general consensus that the homeless who work on those floors will walk away with a decent chunk of change.

Theodore and I grab a drink and see who’s around. We stay on the second level just long enough to feel like we’ve been seen before heading up to the third. We don’t spend too much time here because there’s no one important around.

On the fourth level, we pass homeless people who’ve volunteered to work here. They act as human footrests or seats for patrons. Many of them are dressed in their underwear. Some dance in front of tables while the patrons laugh and throw dollar bills at them.

It really is brilliant. A win-win for everyone. The bar saves money, which it then passes on to the consumers, who then pass it on in the form of tips to the homeless people. Trickle-down economics at work.

Gotta love capitalism.

After stopping briefly on the fourth floor, we head up to the fifth, where the real action is at.

We find a private room with some of our co-workers inside, stepping in to a wave of shouted greetings.

The room features screens on all the walls showing camera feeds from the dance floor and bar outside, so we can see who’s here. It also has two large booths facing each other. On the wall under one of the screens and between the two booths is a homeless man with a bushy gray beard. His arms and legs are fastened to the wall with restraints. He’s dressed only in a ratty pair of underwear. I can see a bunch of fresh scars on his skin. He must be a regular.

“Well, who do we have today?” Theodore says, stepping up to the man. “I don’t recognize this one. What’s your name, man?”

The guy lifts his hanging head, shame seeming to spill out of his eyes with his tears. “Travis,” he says.

“Oh, Travis,” Theodore says loudly, looking around and getting laughs from some of the people in the room. “Nice to meet you.” Theodore turns away but then spins around and spits in Travis’s face. “You’re the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever met,” Theodore says. “You’re worthless and I would like to gut you with a knife right here and now. Nothing would make me happier.”

The room goes suddenly quiet at this outburst. We all look at each other before bursting into laughter. The party continues while Theodore pulls out a hundred-dollar bill and shoves it into the waistband of Travis’s underwear.

“Just wait until you get to the eighth floor, Teddy!” someone shouts. “I hear you can do that up there!”

Laughter ensues.

I know this is just the beginning for Travis. As the night goes on and people get more wasted, he’ll take much more abuse — both physical and mental. But he’ll walk away with a decent chunk of cash. Not enough to afford an apartment in this city, but still. Better than nothing. At least he’s working for a living and not just living off of handouts.

My nausea intensifies, and I look down at my drink. I don’t know if it’s something I ate or if there’s something in this damn drink that doesn’t agree with me. Either way, I set it down and head out toward the bathroom.

As I’m making my way toward the restrooms, I see Hank coming down the stairs from the sixth floor. Moving swiftly to my left, I duck behind a pillar so he doesn’t see me.

He must be calling it an early night because he heads down toward the fourth level. I follow at a safe distance, trailing behind him as he goes all the way down to the first level, where he stops and talks to a tall brunette woman in a sparkly dress. She throws her head back in laughter at something he says. She’s really laying it on thick.

I watch from the other side of the dance floor as they chat for a minute. The woman points up the stairs and pouts. She seems to want to go up there, and she thinks Hank will take her. She must not know the rules.

After a little more back-and-forth, they head toward the exit. I wait a few beats before following, stepping outside and looking to see which way they went. I spot them to the right, crossing the street to the next block.

That sick feeling in my stomach intensifies as I walk down the sidewalk, eyes fixed on Hank and the woman. They walk arm-in-arm. Every so often, the woman laughs loudly at something Hank says. If it’s genuine laughter, then I’m Elon Musk. Still, Hank doesn’t seem to mind. All he cares about is that she’s humoring him all the way to bed.

Putting a hand in my pocket, I feel the small knife I always carry. You never know when you’ll need to defend yourself on these grimy streets.

Ahead of me, Hank and the woman turn down a small side street. They must be going to her apartment because Hank certainly wouldn’t live in this part of town.

Fingering the knife, I turn the corner after them. I’m closing the distance. Every time the woman laughs her awful, fake laugh, I rush ahead, using the sound to cover my footsteps. So far, they haven’t looked back. They’re oblivious.

I’m about ten yards away now, walking on my toes so as not to make much noise. We’re alone on the street, and there’s an alleyway coming up on the right. They’re going to pass right by it.

Glancing behind me to make sure we’re alone, I think I see movement. Like a person ducking into a doorway to hide. Is someone following me?

I shake it off. Now’s my chance. They’re approaching the alley.

Pulling the knife out of my pocket, I flip the blade open and hide it behind my right thigh as I rush forward. “Hank!” I call.

Hank and the woman turn around. They’re right next to the alley. Hank looks at me with disgust. “What the fuck do you want, Braxton?” he says. He has no idea what’s coming.

I step up close, a pleasant smile on my face. I try to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach even though I feel like I might vomit at any moment.

“You dropped something,” I say, taking the knife from behind my leg and jamming it into his chest. Leaving the knife sticking out of him, I shift and punch the woman in the face. She totters backward and collapses into the alley, unconscious.

Turning my attention back to Hank, I’m pleased to see that he’s still staring down at the knife, dumbfounded. I grab the weapon with one hand and shove him into the alley with the other. He trips over the woman and falls onto his back.

I jump on him, stabbing him in a frenzy just to get it over with. After plunging the blade into him a good fifteen times, I lurch up and vomit against the alley wall.

“Oh, you asshole,” a familiar voice says from behind me.

I turn, vomit still dripping from my nose and mouth. Theodore stands there, looking down at his boss like he’s a plate of spilled food. “You fuckin’ asshole.”

As I look around wildly, a thousand thoughts rush through my mind. Do I kill him now too? How can I not? I’ll go to prison if I let him live.

Leading with the knife, I stagger toward him. He looks up at me. “You don’t waste any time, do you?” he says.

This stops me in my tracks. I stare at him in confusion.

“Dude,” he says. “How did you think I was going to move up to sixty-seven? Hank told me to kill Robbie. That’s what I was doing up there today. I was casing the place, seeing where I could hide. I know Robbie works late, so I figured that would be my chance. Of course, the bastard left early today. But damn, man. I guess you’re taking Hank’s spot now. Good on you.”

I spit bile and shake my head. “What? What the hell are you talking about?”

Theodore’s eyes narrow as he looks at me. “Wait, you’re not really broken up about this, are you?” He laughs. “Holy shit, man! You’ll never get ahead like that. Are you serious right now?”

Dumbfounded, I look down at Hank’s corpse. That sick feeling comes back, and I gag.

Theodore steps toward me. I raise the knife, and he stops. “Whoa, whoa, man,” he says. “It’s okay, dude. I’m not gonna hurt you or rat you out or anything. Just don’t stab me, okay?”

I lower the knife but keep it in my hand as Theodore puts his arm around me. “I don’t get you,” he says. “I mean, what about the homeless woman we killed last week? You fuckin’ cooked and ate a chunk of her ass. I’ve seen you kill dozens of people. What’s wrong with you?”

I shake my head. “Yeah, but all those people were poor or middle-class. They don’t count. They don’t matter. Hank, though … he’s one of us, man. He’s one of us. It just doesn’t seem right.”

Theodore giggles. “You still holding onto notions of right and wrong? How naïve can you get? Oh, but I forget you come from humble upper-middle-class beginnings. You’re a fuckin’ unicorn man. I always forget.” He sighs. “Just take my word for it, man. This is how things are done sometimes. Really. It’s all in the game.”

I don’t answer. Just stare down at the body.

“Remember what I told you today?” Theodore asks. “I said that the guys who play ball get taken care of, remember? And you’re playing ball. It’ll be fine. The guys at the top really love a cutthroat mindset. Literally.” He laughs, reminding me of the woman I knocked out. I look over to where she lies nearby, still unconscious.

Theodore follows my gaze. “You thinking what I’m thinking?” he says, turning to look at me.

I smile and nod.

“There’s the asshole I know and love,” he says. “I’ll help you hide this prick’s body and then we’ll take the girl and have some fun. How about that?”

I nod. “Yeah. Okay,” I say. “It’ll make me feel better.”

“Nothing like killing some poor dumb idiot to take your mind off work,” Theodore says, bending down to grab Hank’s feet.

He’s right.

As I step over to grab Hank at the armpits, I glance at the woman. She’s starting to stir. Thoughts of the fun we’ll have with her make that sick feeling in my stomach fade away.

And I think about moving up to the sixty-seventh floor. I think about going up to the sixth level at Mephisto’s. And then the seventh and the eighth and ninth.

I’ll get there, eventually.

You just gotta keep at it, I tell myself, hefting Hank’s body. Keep playing the game. Your hard work will pay off.

The Accident

I’m turning off the lights in the house when I hear the noise. It’s a giggle. And it’s coming from Layla’s room.

At first, I’m ready to just let it go. But then I think about the last time I heard her giggling. I had ducked my head inside the room with a smile on my face to look at my niece, hoping she was finally coming out of her shell. But what I saw made me think just the opposite.

She was sitting on her bed, her back to me, and hugging her doll tightly. The doll’s appearance made me step back from the door. I still hadn’t gotten used to it. Its eyes were completely white, its face cracked and distorted at the mouth, giving it a lopsided grin.

And as I stepped into the room, I noticed that Layla wasn’t just hugging the doll. She was squeezing it with all her might, her little body shaking as if she were trying to suffocate the thing.

When she saw I was in the room, she stopped, putting the doll down and looking mutely up at me.

I asked if she was okay, but she didn’t answer. She hadn’t spoken a word to me since her parents — my sister and brother-in-law — were killed in a car accident. But even before that, my sister had told me she thought something was wrong with Layla.

Poor girl. She’s had it hard. And she’s my responsibility now.

As I move up the stairs after turning off the lights, I’m not sure if I should peek into the room or not. Maybe the doll is some sort of coping mechanism. Maybe I should let it run its course. I tell myself if the creepy doll is getting her to giggle, it’s a good thing.

But I’m not so sure.

It’s been only a week since the accident — an accident Layla was there for. It’s a miracle she survived, given that both her parents died in the car crash.

The child psychologist I contacted told me it takes time. We have an appointment to see her tomorrow.

So I stop outside her door, which is cracked open a couple of inches, and peer inside. I can see Layla sitting on the side of the bed, her back to me. She’s looking across to the other side of the room.

I can’t see what she’s looking at, but Layla seems to be having a good time. She’s kicking her little legs and making humming sounds.

There’s a noise like a book falling to the ground from inside the room. My heart goes double-time because I’ve been watching Layla the whole time. She hasn’t moved.

Suddenly, I’m certain someone’s in the room with her.

I shove the door open to reveal the strange doll staring at me with its blank white eyes. It’s sitting on the little rocking chair next to the window. There’s a picture book on the floor in front of the rocking chair.

Layla moves her head slowly, turning to look at me. Her eyes are slitted, her lips pressed together.

Stepping into the room, I look around for signs of anyone else. “Is someone in here with you?”

Layla crosses her chubby little arms and looks away, blond hair whipping over her shoulder.

I fix my gaze on the doll. It still seems to be looking at me. Like its head has turned to follow me as I move around the room. But that can’t be possible.

A sudden rush of anger crashes against the inside of my skull.

Rushing forward, I reach out to grab the damn doll. To throw it into a corner so it’s not looking at me anymore. But before I can touch it, Layla releases a high-pitched scream from the bed.

As soon as I turn to look at her, she stops, staring up at me. “What?” I say. “What’s wrong?”

There’s a thump, and I look over to see the doll on the floor next to the picture book. As I reach down to pick both items up, Layla screams again.

Clenching my teeth, I grab the book and the doll and—

A blast of frigid air runs up my arm from the doll. My spine crackles as I wrench my head back, eyes rolling up into my skull as the world around me rushes away in a whoosh of schizophrenic colors.

I find myself in the back of a car. A familiar car. My sister Jenny’s sedan. My brother-in-law Mike is driving, and my sister sits in the front passenger seat, looking down at her phone. Layla sits in a toddler car seat in the back. The doll is in her lap, looking like a normal toy without the white eyes or the creepy grin.

I’m here, but not here. I have no form. I’m not sitting. Instead, I seem to be floating above the scene as the car drives along a two-lane highway.

Layla looks at her doll, then up at her father, and then out the windshield. The road ahead seems clear. There are several driveways leading to homes on either side of the small highway, but no cars for the time being.

Then I see a truck up ahead, backing out of one of the driveways on the right side of the road.

“Daddy?” Layla says.

“Yes?” Mike says, looking up into the rearview mirror.

“Look!” she says, holding up the doll and making it dance.

Mike’s eyes start to go back to the road, but Layla screams. “Look!”

The truck in the driveway isn’t slowing. I want to scream. To tell Mike to stop or to pay attention.

Layla throws the doll at the side of her father’s head. He wrenches his head away, jerking the wheel slightly but not nearly enough to get out of the lane.

Up ahead, the truck’s back tires bump onto the highway. Jenny looks up from her phone and screams, but it’s too late.

The sedan hits it going sixty miles an hour. Glass flies as the sedan skids sideways and flips, rolling twice before coming to rest upside down in a ditch on the other side of the road.

Jenny is clearly dead, the side of her skull bashed in. But Mike is still alive. He gasps, hanging upside down in his seat. Layla, who seems unphased and untouched, releases herself from the car seat and grabs a piece of broken glass. She crouches behind her father and uses the glass to open his carotid artery. Blood pours out onto the doll, which came to rest below him on the overturned roof of the car. Layla quickly grabs the blood-covered doll and moves out of the car.

As the vision fades, I can hear Mike and Jenny screaming, pleading for my help. I realize with sickening clarity that they’re stuck in the doll. Stuck there until the terrible wrong inflicted upon them is made right.

My legs give and I sit down hard in Layla’s room, letting go of the doll.

Chest heaving, I look up at the bed, but Layla’s gone.

I turn my head, seeing her step into the doorway from the hall, a terrible grin on her little face.

She has a knife in her hand.

And I know she plans to use it.

Camp Clear Lake

“Would you please shut up!?” I say from where I lay in the backseat, sunglasses over my eyes.

In the front of the SUV, Victor and Vicky sing even louder, laughing at my grumpy outburst. They don’t even have the actual song playing in the car. They’re not singing along; they’re just singing some song about how it’s good to be young and free or some other nonsense. And let me tell you, neither of them will be winning any singing competitions anytime soon.

When they’re done with the song, Vicky leans over from the front passenger seat and pulls Victor into a kiss. Ugh. I always think they should be brother and sister instead of boyfriend and girlfriend, so when they kiss it gives me the creeps. Of course, they’re not related. But they look and act so much alike that I sometimes think they were accidentally separated at birth and neither of them knows it.

“Watch the road!” I say, sitting up.

“Relax,” Victor says as Vicky pulls away. “Have a beer. There’s plenty in the cooler in back.”

“No way,” I say. “I’m never drinking again. At least not until this hangover wears off.”

We slow down on the near-deserted highway as we approach the turn toward camp. We pass the familiar sign that reads Camp Clear Lake, Established 1960.

“Carson, do you know who’s going to be here again this year?” Vicky says, chomping on a piece of gum she’s probably been chewing since Christmas. Before I can answer, she turns dramatically and looks at me with her baby-blue eyes. “Emily Wendover! Maybe you and her can finally hook up this year. Last chance!”

I roll my eyes, but there’s a nugget of truth to Vicky’s words. I’ve had the hots for Emily Wendover since my first year as a counselor at this camp. And since the camp only hires counselors who are between 15 and 18, this will be our last year here. Both Emily and I — plus Victor and Vicky — will be 19 next year. No more working at Camp Clear Lake. We’ll be going into the 1990s as official adults.

We drive down the sun-dappled dirt road, pine and oak trees towering over us. As we pull into the dirt parking lot by the main admin building, Emily Wendover and Rich Lenson come out of the wooden building.

Emily smiles and races down as Vicky jumps out of the car. The two girls squeal and hug, talking a hundred miles a minute. Victor looks at me in the rearview mirror and rolls his eyes. Despite my hangover, I chuckle.

I get out of the car and walk over toward Emily. But something stops me in my tracks. As Emily and Vicky separate, Rich steps forward and puts his arm around Emily’s waist.

My whole body goes cold. Rich grins at me, his stupid square-jawed face the most punchable thing in the world. Not that I would ever win a fight against the guy. I stay fit, but Rich is one of those guys who looks like he picked up a dumbbell the moment he came out of the womb, all bulging muscles and pulsing veins.

Victor comes up and slings an arm around my neck. “Ouch,” he says into my ear. “But — and I hate to say this — you snooze, you lose, buddy.”

“Hi, Carson! Hi, Victor,” Emily says. “What are you guys whispering about?”

“Oh, nothing,” Victor says, grinning.

Emily comes forward and greets me with a smile and a hug. She looks as good as ever. Tight cutoff jean shorts. A T-shirt that shows her trim midriff. Tanned skin, perfect teeth, brilliant green eyes, and dark hair tucked behind her ears. I’m kicking myself, knowing I should’ve made my move last year.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And to make things even better, we’re the five counselors who will be getting the camp ready for when the kids and the other counselors arrive in three days. It’ll just be us along with the owners — Rusty Pollard and his wife Darlene. I’m going to have to watch Emily and Rich be all cute and smoochy together.

Damn. Kill me now.

***

As I’m hauling my backpack and a bag of snack food to the cabin I’ll be sharing with Victor and Rich and the other male counselors, I pass Rusty and Darlene’s cabin.

Suddenly getting the feeling that someone’s watching me, I glance up, seeing one of the curtains on the second floor fall back into place.

It’s a little strange since Darlene and Rusty aren’t shy types. They’re both in their middle thirties, having inherited the place from Rusty’s father about five years ago. And they’re both pretty friendly and outgoing.

I shrug it off and keep trudging down the walking path. When I finally get to Oak Grove cabin, I push the door open and step inside. There are three sets of bunk beds on each side for a total of twelve beds.

None of them are made and the place smells musty. The windows are still closed, and the floor is dotted with last fall’s leaves that were blown under the door.

The door to the bathroom — which has two toilets and two showers — is closed. Selecting one of the top bunks near the bathroom, I set my bag of snacks down and drop my backpack to the floor.

There’s a squeak of hinges, and I turn to see the bathroom door opening a few inches. I left the front door open, but I didn’t feel a breeze.

Swallowing and telling myself not to be such a wimp, I step over to the door and push it slowly open until I can see inside. Leaning forward, I peer into the bathroom at the toilet stalls on my left. Something feels off. Like someone’s in here. If I didn’t know that Victor was back in the parking lot tossing a football with Rich, I’d think it was him trying to scare me.

I crouch and look under the toilet stalls, but I see no feet. The showers are to my right, and I have to push the door open all the way so I can see them. Both the opaque white shower curtains are closed.

Stepping forward, I reach my hand out and grab one shower curtain. As I pull it open on an empty shower, the other shower curtain is yanked open from the inside. Someone leaps out at me, screaming.

I jump back, nearly falling on my ass as I backpedal all the way over to the toilets. Darlene Pollard stands there just outside the shower, a stack of folded sheets and thin blankets held in one arm. She points and laughs at me, her face going red as she cracks up.

Her brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and she’s wearing overalls with an olive-green tank top. She’s an attractive woman, built like a gymnast, and almost as tall as me. She’s always been quite a tomboy. Not that it’s a bad thing. And it hasn’t kept me from having a little crush on her since the first time we met, back when I was a thirteen-year-old kid, the first summer she and Rusty came back to run the place for Rusty’s ill father.

Then again, show me a teenage boy who doesn’t have a crush on pretty much every woman he sees, and I’ll show you one whose hormones aren’t constantly raging out of control.

“I’m sorry,” she says, catching her breath. “I’m sorry, I saw you walking up, and I just couldn’t help myself. The look on your face!”

My face is hot, but I can’t help smiling. “You got me,” I say, shaking my head. “You’re gonna start this summer off with a dead counselor if you’re not careful. I almost had a heart attack.”

“Oh, you’re fine,” she says, chuckling. “I was just about to make the beds. Give me a hand?”

“Sure thing,” I say, following her out of the bathroom.

As we start making the bed, I remember the person in her cabin. “Is Rusty back at your cabin? I thought I saw someone in there when I walked by.”

“Oh, that must’ve been Riley,” Darlene says. “She’s Rusty’s niece. She’ll be staying with us for the summer, hopefully helping out around here a little bit.”

“Hopefully?” I say, noticing her emphasis on the word.

Darlene looks at me, seeming to consider her next words carefully. “Let’s just say that the girl has some problems. She’s not exactly the most sociable girl ever.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s seventeen. Her father — Rusty’s older brother — has been struggling with her for the past couple of years and he needs a break. He’s a single dad, after his poor wife died three years ago. I feel for the guy, but I’m not all that thrilled about having Riley around. She can be a handful.”

I nod, helping straighten the top sheet on the bed we’re making. And, because I’m such a goody-two-shoes, I say, “Well, let me know if I can help.”

“Thanks, Carson,” Darlene says. “I will.”

***

The sun is going down outside as we’re all finishing our dinner in the cafeteria. We’re all sitting at one long picnic table inside the large room. Even Riley is there, but she’s taken pains to sit far down from us. And she hasn’t said a word to anyone.

She’s pretty big for a seventeen-year-old girl, with thick arms and legs. She tries to hide her body with her clothes, wearing a blue-and-black plaid shirt and black jeans. She’s also wearing big combat boots. Her multicolored hair hangs over her face as she eats.

The rest of us — including Rusty and Darlene — sit together and talk. Even though they’re much older than us, they don’t seem all that different. We all get along pretty well, making each other laugh and talking about what has happened in our lives in the past year. Well, everyone but me, anyway. I try to put up a good front, but I’m a little distracted.

Emily and Rich sit together across from me, and I keep stealing glances at her, my heart aching. I’m in hell, and it’s going to be a very long summer if I can’t get over the self-pity I’m feeling.

Or maybe I can steal her away from Rich. That’s a laughable thought. I couldn’t even get up the nerve to make a move when she didn’t have a musclebound Ken doll attached to her at the hip.

“Well, you guys know the drill,” Rusty says during a lull in the joking. “We’ve got two more days to get this place in operating condition. It’s gonna be hard —”

“But it’ll be worth it,” the rest of us say in unison, knowing the words from every year.

Rusty lets loose a rumbling laugh. He’s a stout guy with a thick head of curly dark hair and a perpetual five o’clock shadow. He’s wearing coveralls, but he’s pulled the sleeves off and tied them around his waist, revealing a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, muscular arms, and hugely hairy armpits. He’s got the kind of rugged good looks that are often featured on paper towel rolls or in hunting magazines.

“Okay, you guys already know,” Rusty says. “I have confidence this place will look great when the parents arrive to drop off their precious little snots.”

We all laugh again. He doesn’t mean it — we know Rusty loves the kids. He’s just trying to make us laugh, and he does a good job of it.

After dinner, Victor and I are on dishwashing duty while Rich and Emily are tasked with getting the fire pit ready.

Darlene wanders off to work on something while Rusty and Vicky go to check the plumbing in the cabins to make sure everything is working correctly and there are no clogs or burst pipes or anything.

Riley sits at the table alone, just staring at her hands. We can see her from where we wash dishes in the two large metal sinks.

“What’s up with her?” Victor asks, a little too loud. “You fuck her yet?”

“Come on, man,” I say. “Don’t. Just leave her be.”

Victor makes a surprised face. “So you did fuck her!? Man, you work fast, my friend.”

Riley looks up at us, her face filled with rage. She gets to her feet in a huff and stomps out of the cafeteria into the twilight.

“You’re an asshole,” I say.

Victor just laughs.

By the time we finish up, there’s no hint of the sun outside. We discuss going to get our flashlights but decide against it. We can make our way in the dark. So we head over toward the lake — really just a big pond — where the fire pits are arrayed.

We have to go down a path through a thicket of trees. There’s a sliver of moon hanging overhead like a scythe ready to fall and cut into the earth. Crickets chirp all around us, and the occasional frog croaks from Clear Lake.

As we approach the fire pits, we see flickering flames through the trees. Emily and Rich already have the fire going.

Getting closer, I see that it’s just the new couple there. No one else has arrived yet.

“Where’s everyone else?” Victor asks. “I’m dying for a s’more.”

Rich shrugs his big shoulders. He seems upset. Emily sits on a log by the fire, staring into the flames and hugging herself.

A sudden hopeful joy rushes through me. They’ve had an argument. All is not well. This is good for me.

Then I realize how much of an asshole thinking that way makes me. I mean, if he makes her happy, I should be glad they’re together, right?

Yes, I should be. But I’m not.

And despite my best efforts, I can’t get rid of that hopeful joy as I move and sit down a few feet away from her on an adjacent log.

Rich goes back to poking the fire with a stick. His eyes dart over at Emily every so often.

“Jeeze,” Victor says, noticing the mood. “Who died?”

A sudden blood-curdling scream slices through the night air like a sharp knife through supple flesh. All four of us look over toward the cabins — the source of the scream — even though we can’t see them for the distance and the trees in the way.

“Who was that?” Victor asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, standing up. “We should go check.”

It was a woman’s scream, that’s for sure. So it could be Vicky, Riley, or Darlene.

Victor and I start off through the woods, heading back up the trail we just traversed. As we’re coming to the place where the trail leaves the woods, we see a figure hurrying through the darkness toward us.

“Vicky?” Victor says.

Vicky makes a small, frightened sound. “Jesus! Why are you guys out here without flashlights? You scared the hell out of me.”

“Why are you out here without a flashlight?” Victor asks. “And who’s screaming?”

Ignoring the first question, Vicky says, “Oh, that was just me. I was scared by some animal in the woods. I guess I’m just jumpy. First day of camp and all.”

“That was you?” Victor asks. “I’ve never heard you scream like that before. It sounded more like —”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Vicky says, pushing past us. “It was me, okay? Can we drop it?”

Victor and I look at each other through the gloom. “Damn,” he says. “Are all the women here suddenly on their period, or what?”

Shrugging, I turn and head back down to the fire. Victor glances over his shoulder toward the cabins and then follows me down.

The mood isn’t much better when we get back. In fact, it seems worse. Vicky isn’t her usual bubbly self. Like Emily, she just stares into the fire, even when Victor sits down and snuggles up next to her.

After several minutes of this, Emily stands up and announces that she’s going to bed. She’s moving up the trail before Rich drops his stick and rushes after her. “Emily, wait. Let’s talk about this,” he says as they move out of the illumination cast by the fire.

Emily says something, but I can’t make out what it is. Pretty soon, their voices are just muffled noises in serious tones, fading as they move farther away.

Then, just seconds after I can no longer hear them, there’s a scream. It’s Emily.

I jump to my feet and run up the trail, thinking Rich is hurting her. But as I’m running, Emily appears, sprinting toward me. She screams again, telling me to run. And that’s when I see that she’s covered in blood. It’s splashed all over her face and shirt.

Looking beyond her, I see Rich stumble down the trail, clutching his neck in both hands. Blood spurts from between his fingers. He makes a wet choking sound before falling straight onto his face.

Emily clutches my arm and yanks me back toward the fire. “RUN!”

A figure steps out of the trees, face obscured by what looks like a mask made of duct tape. There are holes for the eyes and a narrow slit for the mouth. I can’t tell whether it’s a man or a woman, but the figure moves like a man. He’s dressed in baggy blue coveralls — just like the ones Rusty was wearing earlier.

He’s holding a pruning saw in one hand, its thin but long blade covered in Rich’s blood.

“Rusty?” I say, unbelieving.

“Come on, Carson!” Emily says, yanking me back further as the man starts toward us.

Finally realizing the danger I’m in, I turn and run back toward the fire. But after we’ve taken only a few lunging steps, I glance back over my shoulder and see nothing but an empty trail and dark trees standing like silent witnesses.

Vicky and Victor stand next to the fire, holding each other and looking toward us.

“What happened?” Vicky asks, sobbing. “What was that?”

“We need to get out of here,” I say. “Someone just killed Rich. He cut his throat open.”

Vicky cries out, her words a jumble that I can’t understand.

“What?!” Victor says, clearly frightened but not wanting to show it. “Come on. I’m not gonna fall for this. Nice try, though.”

“I’m serious,” I say. “I don’t know who it is. It’s like he wrapped his face in duct tape.”

“Baby!” Vicky says, pulling herself together enough to speak coherently. “Baby, I need to tell you something. It’s—”

An arrow comes flying out of the dark woods, hitting Vicky directly in the left eye with a sick thump. She stumbles away from a stunned Victor, her remaining eye going wide. She reaches toward the arrow sticking out of her face, her mouth moving soundlessly up and down. Then she falls directly into the fire.

The figure approaches from the woods, stopping where we can just see him thanks to the light from the fire. He has another arrow nocked in a bow from the archery range. And as he pulls the bowstring back, I notice that he’s wearing thin work gloves on his hands — the same kind I’ve seen Rusty wear.

It looks like he’s taking aim at Emily. I jump forward and pull her out of the way just as the killer releases the bowstring. The arrow thunks into a tree nearby.

“Come on!” I shout at Victor, who’s just standing there, looking down at his burning girlfriend. “Victor! RUN!”

He snaps out of it and runs toward us. We go out into the woods, skirting the lake before circling back around to the main parking lot.

Although I’m sure the killer is following us, I can no longer see him. But that’s almost worse. As the three of us move into the parking lot, we’re glancing around, expecting him to pop out at any moment.

“We’re in a fucking horror movie,” Victor says, sobbing. “We’re all gonna die. The guys never survive. Never. It’s only one girl that survives. Just one girl.”

“Shut the fuck up!” I snap. “Tell me you have your keys on you.”

Victor shakes his head. “They’re in the cabin.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say, then I look at Emily, who’s still clutching my hand. “You wouldn’t happen to have Rich’s keys, would you?”

She shakes her head, beautiful face twisted in terror.

“Shit. I guess we’re going to the cabins. Maybe we can find Darlene and Riley and get them out of here before it’s too late.”

“How do you know it’s not Riley?!” Victor says. “It could be anybody.”

“I think it’s Rusty,” I say.

Victor shakes his head. “Why would Rusty kill any of us?”

“Why would anyone!?” Emily snaps. “Whoever they are, they’re fucking crazy.”

The sound of a snapping branch behind us makes me turn and look into the woods. I see nothing, and as I face forward again, Victor is running off toward the cabins.

“Victor!” I say. “Come back!”

But he just keeps running. Soon, he disappears into the darkness. Still holding hands, Emily and I run after him.

Emily trips over something and falls into me, sending us both to the ground. As I get up, I peer around at the dark woods, cursing myself for not detouring to get a flashlight after dinner. I see no evidence of the murderer. But I can’t see very far, so it’s not all that comforting.

I help Emily up and we resume our dash to the cabins. I’m afraid that Victor may just grab his keys and take off without us, so we go up the stairs to the cabin and rush inside.

I try to turn on the lights, but the switch does nothing.

“Oh great,” I say. I can’t see anything but the vague shapes of the bunk beds. “Victor?”

There’s no answer.

“Stay here,” I say to Emily, leaving her by the door as I go groping through the dark toward my bunk and the bag on top of it. Any moment, I expect a hand to come out of the darkness and grab me. Or stab me with a knife, slice me with an ax.

But nothing happens between the front door and my bunk. I dig through my backpack until I find my flashlight. With a click, a beam of light pierces the dark recesses of the cabin.

Whirling around, I shine the light in all directions, making sure the room is empty except for me and Emily.

Then I point the light at Victor’s bag on the next bunk over. The contents have been pulled out, as if frantically. I search for several long moments for the keys as Emily sobs in the corner. I think for a moment that he’s already gotten his keys and gone on his way. But we would’ve seen him going back toward the parking lot.

There’s a faint sound from the bathroom—a light thump.

I straighten, looking toward the bathroom door.

“Don’t go in there,” Emily says. “Please, Carson.”

“Victor might be in there,” I whisper. “And we need the keys.”

“Why would he be in there? Taking a quick bathroom break while we’re running for our lives?”

Ignoring Emily, I push the door open a foot, shining the light in toward the toilet stalls. When I see nothing, I crouch down and look for legs under the stalls. Empty.

Now for the shower stalls.

My heart thuds and my throat thickens as I step into the bathroom, pushing the door open to reveal the shower stalls. Both of the curtains are drawn.

I creep forward toward the right-hand stall. “Victor?”

When there’s no answer, I reach my hand out and grab hold of the curtain — and yank it open to reveal an empty stall.

Swallowing, I step to the other stall and yank the curtain open. Victor sits slumped in the stall, covered in blood. His legs are splayed and there are stab wounds all across his crotch. His eyes have been gouged out, and they sit on the drain like discarded marbles from a macabre child’s game.

His mouth hangs open, and inside I can see his car keys. They’ve been shoved nearly down his throat.

I have to turn away and breathe deeply to keep from panicking or vomiting or both. For a moment, I contemplate not getting the keys. But we need them. They’re our best chance of getting out of here.

So I turn back to my dead friend and reach toward his gaping mouth with my left hand.

“Carson!?” Emily shouts from the main room.

My hand in Victor’s mouth, I turn toward the bathroom door — and see two legs in the nearest stall.

Panic strikes me, and I jam my hand down my friend’s throat, grabbing the keys and yanking them out. As I turn to run out of the room, the murderer steps out of the stall, a massive hunting knife held in one hand.

Suddenly I’m transported back to the last football game of my career. It was against our rivals, the Cougars. And we were going to win if we could just stop them from getting close enough for a field goal.

I was a middle linebacker, and I saw the running back coming right for a hole in the defense. I ran right at the guy, dodging a blocker, and slammed into him. He went down well short of field goal range, and we won the game.

But that guy didn’t have a knife. And he hadn’t killed several of my friends.

Still, I have nothing else to do. I run forward and smash right into the guy with my shoulder. I can’t keep hold of the flashlight as we go down, but I manage to keep hold of the keys — they’re more important, anyway.

The guy goes down hard between the toilet stalls and the wall. I scramble up and run out of the bathroom, grabbing a shocked Emily as I race out into the night.

“Carson!” Emily says as soon as we’re out of the cabin.

“What?” I say, still jogging, pulling her along.

“Are you okay?”

There’s something in her voice. And all of a sudden, there’s a horribly sharp pain in my abdomen. I look down to see the hunting knife sticking out of my stomach.

“Oh,” I say, staring down at the thing.

“Look!” Emily says. “There’s a light on in that cabin. Maybe someone’s in there. Maybe they have a first aid kit. Maybe we’re not alone!” She pulls me toward the cabin — one that will be full of kids in a couple of days. Or would’ve been, anyway. Camp will probably be canceled this summer.

I open my mouth to object, to tell her we need to get out of here, but the words don’t come. Instead, I just stare down at the knife, unable to comprehend what has happened to me.

“Help!” Emily shouts as we run up the cabin steps. “Help us! Darlene? Rusty?”

She still doesn’t believe Rusty is the one killing us all. But I know better. It must be Rusty. It —

We step through the door to find Rusty lying naked on one of the bottom bunk beds near the door. His arms hang limp over the sides of the bed, and his underwear and T-shirt lie nearby next to an open toolbox. The pair of coveralls he was wearing earlier is nowhere to be seen. His hairy body is covered in blood. He’s been stabbed all over, but mainly in the crotch. The tool that did the damage — a screwdriver — is still sticking out of his mangled manhood, like a sick imitation.

Emily screams, but I can’t muster the energy. I’m starting to feel woozy.

We turn to go back out the door, but Emily screams again as we see the masked murderer there. He’s standing in the open doorway, gloved hands empty, eyes hard through the ragged holes left in the tape-mask.

Then, as the figure speaks, a sense of unreality settles on me. The voice that comes out, muffled slightly by the tape, is not a man’s voice. It belongs to a woman. A familiar woman.

“Have you come here to fuck him, too, Emily?” she says. It’s Darlene.

Emily and I back down the aisle between rows of bunk beds. Emily just shakes her head.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he was fucking all you little sluts,” Darlene says, stepping through the doorway. She pulls her gloves off and reaches up with one hand to unwind the tape as she continues talking. “I told him. I told him if I ever caught him with another woman, I would … go crazy. So when I saw him with that little slut Vicky, well … that’s just what I did.” She laughs insanely at this, ripping the last of the tape off her face. Her features have been distorted by the tape, making her look just as insane on the outside as she is on the inside.

“It was you?” Emily asks as we back up. “You’re the one who screamed?”

“That’s right,” Darlene says, stepping over and pulling the screwdriver out of Rusty’s crotch. “I came here and saw them fucking and I screamed. Vicky didn’t say a word. Just pulled on her clothes faster than anyone I’ve ever seen and ran down toward the lake. I bet she didn’t even tell you all what had happened, did she? I bet she didn’t tell her precious boyfriend, either.”

She steps toward us, now armed. We’re running out of room. “Rusty was pleading with me, still naked, still covered in her juices. He was trying to tell me it wasn’t what I thought it was. Can you believe that? I saw it with my own eyes, and he was trying to convince me I was wrong. So I reached into the toolbox and …” she holds up the bloody screwdriver.

“Then I pulled on his clothes so I could smell him as I killed all the little sluts and all the men that are just like him.”

Emily and I stop, our backs against the bathroom door. But I still have enough energy left to know that I need to keep Darlene talking. If she’s talking, she’s not killing us.

“So why the mask?” I ask, surreptitiously forcing the car keys into Emily’s hand.

Darlene smiles as she steps within arm’s reach of us. “I wanted you all to think it was Rusty, perfect Rusty, doing the killing. I wanted your last thoughts to be of the betrayal of Rusty killing you. Because that’s what I felt like when I saw him with her. That’s how I feel now. He killed me. And he killed all of you.”

She raises the screwdriver. I lurch forward and grab her arm, shouting for Emily to run. But I’m weak. I’ve been losing blood. Darlene jerks her hand away and stabs me once just above the collarbone. I scream in pain as she shoves me down.

But Emily is running. She has already crawled over one of the bunkbeds and is running toward the cabin door. But she’s not fast enough.

Darlene runs after her, sinking the screwdriver into Emily’s back just before she gets to the door. The woman yanks Emily back by her hair as the teenager screams. Emily hits the floor on her back, and Darlene straddles her.

I try to pull myself up, but my vision goes black for a second and I fall back to the ground. I watch helplessly as Darlene drives the screwdriver into Emily’s beautiful face again and again.

Getting to my hands and knees, I crawl toward her, thinking I’ll pull the knife out and slit her throat. But she sees me coming. She stands up from Emily’s body and walks over to me. I sit back on my legs, resigned to the inevitable.

“Time to die, you man-whore,” she says, raising the screwdriver.

There’s a wet thump, and Darlene jerks. Her eyes go wide, and she drops the screwdriver to the floor.

Then she teeters forward. I manage to move out of the way to avoid getting crushed as she falls to the floor with a resounding thud.

She has a hatchet sticking out of her back.

Riley stands in the aisle, breathing hard and looking down at Darlene. She’s bloody, her face cut in a couple of places. There are gashes in her upper chest and her thigh. They’re about the right size and shape for a hatchet blade.

“Come on,” Riley says, reaching over to help me up. I groan in pain as she gets me to my feet. Then she pulls my arm over her shoulders and helps me toward the front door.

“Keys,” I say, pointing at the keys still clutched in Emily’s fist.

Riley grabs them and we make the arduous journey to the parking lot.

“How?” I ask when we’re in Victor’s SUV.

“How what?” Riley says, starting up the engine.

“How did you survive?”

She shrugs, putting the SUV in reverse. “I was chopping wood for my own fire behind Rusty and Darlene’s cabin when I heard the scream. I came to see what it was all about, bringing the hatchet with me just in case. And then I saw Darlene stabbing Rusty. I ran into the woods, but she caught up to me, hitting me in the head with something. Then she took the hatchet away and chopped me with it.

“I must’ve passed out because I don’t remember anything until just a few minutes ago. I woke up and heard Emily screaming. I guess Darlene thought I was dead because the hatchet was still sticking out of me.”

As we drive down the road toward the highway, I slump in my seat. I know I won’t last until we make it to a hospital. I’m fading fast.

“Funny,” I say.

“What?”

“Victor was right. This is like the movies.”

“This is nothing like the movies,” Riley says. “This is real fucking life.”

“No,” I say, chuckling. “It’s like the movies. You know why? Because only one girl ever makes it out alive. That’s you. You’re the final girl.”

Riley rolls her eyes. “You’re still alive,” she says.

“Not for long.”

My vision fades and I feel myself slipping away. But before darkness takes me, I witness one more thing. One more terrible thing.

Darlene’s head pops down from the top of the windshield, smiling crazily. Riley screams as Darlene slams the hatchet down into the windshield.

Darkness takes me.

I Don’t Feel Sorry for What I’ve Done

The tires crunched on fallen pine needles and the loose dirt on the hard-packed road. We had the windows up against the cold mountain air.

Looking out the back passenger window of the Hyundai SUV, I saw piles of discolored snow under trees and in the lee of boulders. Hiding from the destructive sunlight. Clinging to life while all the other snow had melted away to nothing.

It hadn’t snowed up here in a week. But there was snow in the forecast. We’d planned it that way.

I looked over at Bobby, who lay slouched in the seat behind the driver. He was asleep, his forearms resting on his belly. Sometime during his nap, he’d pulled the long right sleeve of his shirt up. I’d watched him do it, his eyes still closed. Probably didn’t even realize he was doing it.

Once the sleeve was up, he scratched softly at a discolored wound on the inside of his forearm, near his elbow. His pale skin was dotted with track marks from where he’d injected heroin into his body.

“Here’s the turn,” Gianna said from shotgun.

“Yeah,” Oscar said, slowing as we approached the driveway to the cabin. He turned on the blinker even though we were completely alone on the road. The clicking of the turn signal seemed loud in the vehicle.

I looked back out the window as we made the turn, listening to the tires crunch over pebbles and clumps of dirt. I thought about how long it would take for a pebble to break down and become a part of dirt. In that same vein, I thought about how long it would take a large boulder to break down into smaller pebbles.

Thousands of years, probably. Or tens of thousands.

So one week in a cabin wasn’t much. It was barely a blink when compared to that kind of timeline.

Just one week.

I looked over at Bobby, who was coming awake now.

Just one week, I thought. One long goddamn week.

“We almost there?” Bobby asked, pulling his sleeve back down to his wrist.

“That’s it right there,” Oscar said, pointing up the hill to the cabin just coming into view behind a group of pine trees.

“Nice,” Bobby said. “Looks pretty fancy. How much did this cost you guys?”

“It wasn’t too bad,” I said. “Besides, when’s the last time we all went away together like this?”

“It was 2016,” Gianna said. “When we went to Lake Meade. Remember?”

“Oh, Jesus,” Bobby said. “Don’t bring that up. I’d managed to forget all about that.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t forget,” Gianna said.

“I said I was sorry I don’t know how many fucking times,” Bobby shot back.

“Hey, okay,” I said. “Let’s not start this one off by yelling at each other, yeah? We’re here. It’s beautiful. Look at that view!”

Oscar pulled up next to the cabin, which sat on the top of a cliff, overlooking a wide valley across which we could see snow-tipped mountains. It was a magnificent view.

“Damn,” Bobby said. “That is nice.”

Oscar shut off the engine and opened his door, letting a rush of frigid air into the car. The rest of us followed suit, getting out of the car, and pulling our jackets on. The only sounds were the wind through the trees and the occasional bird chirping. The place was secluded all right.

That was the idea.

The four of us stood in front of the SUV, looking out over the sweeping valley. There were no buildings that I could see. Not even a road. It was National Forest land for miles.

One week, I thought, sneaking a look at Bobby. Just one week.

“Well, I need to use the bathroom,” Bobby said, clapping his hands together. “Got one in the chamber.”

Gianna and I shared a look. Did he really think we didn’t know? Did he think we were that stupid?

“Okay,” Oscar said, pulling out his phone. “I have the code in the email. I’ll go open the door.” He walked to the front of the cabin while Bobby got his ratty backpack out of the SUV.

Oscar hurried up the three steps of the rustic wooden porch. He didn’t want Bobby to see him put the code in. We had discussed it, Oscar, Gianna, and me. Just in case.

“I’ll come back out and help unload when I’m done dropping the kids off at the pool,” Bobby said, walking toward the house with his backpack.

Gianna and I said nothing. We knew he wouldn’t be out of the bathroom for at least twenty minutes. We’d be done by then. This was par for the course with Bobby since he had started using. Empty promises. Lies. Poor decisions.

But all those things paled in comparison to the other ways he was fucking his life up.

When Bobby was inside the house, out of hearing range, Gianna said, “Do you think a week will be long enough?”

“I hope so. Everything I’ve read says it should be fully out of his system in three or four days. Hopefully he’ll come to his senses after that.”

“God, this is going to suck,” she said as I opened the rear door to access all our supplies and luggage.

“Yeah,” I said. “It sure is.”

***

The cabin was about ten years old, two stories, and plenty comfortable. It was someone’s secluded getaway that was put on Airbnb when they weren’t using it. Probably a summer cabin. And it was the dead of winter right now.

The ground floor featured an open floor plan, with no walls separating the kitchen, living room, dining room, and entryway. The staircase to the second floor was near the front door, on the left side of the house. It led up to a balcony configuration, where you could look up from the living room and see the doors to two of the three bedrooms and the shared bathroom. The master bedroom was tucked away at the other end of the balcony from the stairwell.

The master bedroom was the only one with an attached bathroom, so that was the one we were going to put Bobby in. But not until we put our plan into action. If we offered him the master bedroom at first, he would know something was up.

So Gianna and Oscar took the bedroom initially.

When Bobby came out of the bathroom, well after we had already unloaded everything, he was clearly high. His eyelids were heavy, his speech slow, and his slouch more pronounced.

Enjoy it, I thought. Because come tomorrow morning, you’ll be done with that poison.

We got settled as evening approached, unloading the food we’d brought. The other supplies — stuff we’d brought specifically to help Bobby go through withdrawals — were hidden safely in the master bedroom. Vitamins, plenty of Gatorade, juice, and water. Melatonin, and some other supplements that were supposed to help make the process a little less excruciating. Plus crackers, protein bars, and soup.

The dining area, adjacent to the kitchen, featured a sliding glass door that looked out onto the back porch and the amazing view beyond. As darkness crept over the land, I stood and looked out that door, close enough to feel the cold trying to seep through the glass. Dark clouds loomed in the distance, blocking my view of the snow-tipped mountains on the other side of the wide valley. They were moving toward us. The forecast was right. We were going to get a snowstorm, by the looks of it.

The place had Wi-Fi and a backup generator, which was nice. The heater seemed to work very well, as the cabin was toasty. The master bedroom had a flat-screen TV on the wall with streaming capabilities. Bobby could watch movies while he went through withdrawals. Help keep his mind occupied.

But we would take his phone away. Because, technically, what we were planning on doing was illegal. False imprisonment, they called it. Holding someone against their will. Even if it was for their own good.

I watched the storm roll in as Gianna and Oscar started making dinner. Bobby lounged in the living room, nodding off on the couch with his phone held absently in his hand.

We had all been friends since high school, which seemed like an eternity ago. We’d kept in touch, although Bobby joined the military and had been gone on and off for four years immediately after high school.

When his contract ended, he’d come home, and we had all picked up where we left off. For a while, it was great. He was like a brother to me, so it was like having the family back together.

But then he started using. At first, he borrowed money and never paid it back. Then, things started going missing from our homes after he visited. Things that could be sold for a quick buck at pawn shops.

He got fired from his job. His girlfriend broke up with him. He got evicted from his apartment.

He’d been couch-surfing, staying at my house until I got fed up with him, then he headed over to Oscar and Gianna’s place and stayed with them until they got fed up. Then back to my place.

It wasn’t like we could turn him away. He was our friend. But we had to start locking up anything remotely valuable. When we confronted him about stealing from us, he would just deny and deflect.

He was like a different person. But I could still see the old Bobby in there. The guy who always had our backs. The guy who always had a smile and a kind word. The guy who wouldn’t hesitate to step up and take the blame for something he didn’t do, just to protect his friends.

He was still in there somewhere, and the three of us knew it. But we were at our wit’s end with him. We couldn’t just disown him or leave him to his own devices. We didn’t want him to live on the streets. He would end up in jail or dead before too long.

So we decided to take drastic action. We decided to get him clean ourselves. We decided to help our friend like he’d helped us over the years.

But we didn’t know what the hell we were getting into.

***

I stood on the back deck in three inches of snow, bundled against the cold. Snowflakes battered my face as the wind blew. It was nearly ten o’clock, pure dark outside, with the storm clouds blocking any moon.

The sliding glass door opened behind me. I turned to see Oscar step out onto the deck. “He’s in his room. Probably asleep by now. Haven’t heard anything from him in a while.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s give it another hour or so.”

“It’s freezing out here!” Oscar said.

I nodded, eyes squinting against the incoming snow. “Did you put the new handle on the door?”

“Yeah,” Oscar said. “We’ll be able to lock him in now.” We’d brought a handle for the master bedroom door that had a key lock on both sides. Now that it was installed, we only had one more thing to do to start the process. The biggest thing.

“Good,” I said, then looked back out at the night and the curtains of snow blowing on the wind.

Oscar was silent for several long moments, looking out at the darkness beyond the deck railing. “Are we completely sure about this? We can just make this a vacation. Maybe talk to him about it? Offer to help him pay for rehab?”

“Do you know how much rehab costs?” I said without looking at Oscar. “In-patient — which is the only kind that will work for him — starts at $12,000. I know you don’t have that kind of money. And neither do I.”

“Yeah,” Oscar said. “I just … this doesn’t feel right, now that we’re up here. I hate to do this to him.”

“I don’t want to do this, either, but I don’t see an alternative. He’ll thank us when it’s over and done with. But before that, he’ll hate us. We just have to get through the first three or four days. After that, things will get better.”

Oscar fell silent again.

I walked forward and looked down over the railing of the cantilevered deck. It was a good hundred-foot drop to the bottom of the cliff on top of which the cabin had been built. The tops of snow-covered pine trees were barely visible below.

Having never been a fan of heights, I didn’t stay for long. Although I’d come out on the deck earlier, just before the storm reached us, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to look over the edge. Something about the snow and the darkness now made it a little less scary.

It was a small feat of courage that I needed to give me confidence for what came next. I promised myself I wouldn’t break, no matter how much Bobby cried and begged and pleaded. I would stay strong for my friend.

And he would thank us for it later.

I turned around and walked past Oscar to the sliding glass door. I opened it, banged the snow off my boots, and stepped inside. “You coming?” I asked Oscar.

My question seemed to break him out of his trance. “Yeah,” he said, turning and coming inside with me.

Gianna glanced at us over the back of the couch, a book held in one hand. She smiled sadly. We all knew that things were going to be tough.

But we had no way of knowing just how tough they would get.

***

I opened the door to Bobby’s room slowly. Gianna and Oscar stood nearby in the hallway, out of sight, just in case Bobby woke up.

The room was dark, and I’d turned the hallway light off so it wouldn’t wake him up. The only light was coming from downstairs, providing just enough illumination for me to make out the layout of the dark room.

Bobby’s slow and steady breathing remained unchanged as I snuck into the room. He lay sprawled on the bed, fully clothed and on top of the covers, mouth open and eyes closed.

His backpack sat on a leather chair in the corner of the room. His other luggage was at the foot of the bed; he hadn’t unpacked anything yet.

I grabbed the backpack and moved out of the room to where Gianna and Oscar stood in the hallway. Setting the bag down and kneeling next to it, I searched its pockets for the dope.

Among other random odds and ends, I found a dozen syringes, some cotton balls, two lighters, and a spoon. No heroin.

“Shit,” I whispered. “It must be in a pants pocket.”

“So grab his pants,” Oscar said.

“He’s still wearing them!”

“Shit,” Oscar said. “Maybe we should put this off for now. Wait until he takes a shower or something.”

I shook my head. “Don’t tell me you didn’t smell him in the car. He hasn’t taken a shower in days. Who knows how much longer he’ll go.”

“We’re doing this now,” Gianna said. “If we let him use one more time, it will just take that much longer for the stuff to get out of his system. So here’s what we’ll do. We’ll all go into the room, quietly. You two will position yourselves on either side of the bed just in case he wakes up while I’m trying to find the drugs.”

“And what if he does wake up?” Oscar asked.

“Then you’ll hold him down until I have the heroin,” Gianna said. “If he makes a big deal of it, we’ll take him and put him in the master bedroom. If he wants to be calm and cool about it, we’ll give him free reign. For now. You still have the car keys on you, right?”

Oscar nodded and patted his pocket. “Not like he could leave, anyway. Not in this weather.”

“Keep them on you, anyway. Who knows what he might try if he gets desperate enough.”

Oscar nodded again.

Gianna looked at each of us in turn. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” I said.

Oscar hesitated and then said he was ready.

“We can do this,” Gianna said, grabbing Oscar’s hand. “This is for Bobby’s own good. This is a good thing we’re doing, even if it doesn’t seem like it right now.”

She let go of her boyfriend’s hand and looked at me briefly. I stepped aside to let her pass. She walked inside on the balls of her feet. Oscar and I followed suit.

Oscar and Gianna moved to the side of the bed closest to the door. Oscar positioned himself near the head of the bed, with a side table and the leather chair behind him.

I tracked around to the other side of the bed, being careful not to trip over Bobby’s luggage. I stood between the bed and the wall, waiting to see what happened.

Oddly, I wasn’t nervous. I thought I would be, but I wasn’t. In fact, I was kind of excited. Maybe because, deep down, I was mad at Bobby for stealing from me and being a mooch. Maybe I wanted him to suffer, just a little, for all the pain he’d caused us with his addiction.

I didn’t have time to analyze those feelings further, because Gianna reached slowly toward Bobby’s right front pocket to start her search. She felt the pocket from the outside, gently searching with her fingers.

She took her hand away and nodded at us. She’d felt something.

Oscar and I tensed slightly, holding our hands up to get ready as Gianna hooked her fingers into the pocket and proceeded to reach inside for whatever she’d felt.

Bobby’s eyes shot open in the dark. “What are you doing?” he asked, voice thick with sleep.

“Hold him!” Gianna shouted as Bobby went to grab her arm.

Oscar caught Bobby’s right arm and put his other hand on Bobby’s shoulder while I jumped up onto the bed and did the same on my side.

“What the fuck!?” Bobby screamed, thrashing to get free.

Gianna yanked her hand out of his pocket, holding up a small baggie with tan-colored powder in it. “Got it!” she said, stepping away and shoving the heroin in her pocket.

“Bobby!” Oscar shouted. “Stop fighting. This is for your own good!”

“Give it back!” Bobby screamed, his voice shrill and filled with terror. He fought against me, trying to slip out of my grasp. I leaned down further, getting closer, trying to keep him pinned down. He was stronger than he looked.

His legs were still free, and he jacked his left knee up, connecting with the side of my head. I fell against the headboard and then onto the floor between the bed and the wall.

There was a crash, and I heard Oscar shout.

“Bobby, stop!” Gianna screamed.

I got up just in time to see Bobby chasing Gianna out of the room. There was a scuffling sound, a brief scream, and then another loud crash that sounded like it came from downstairs.

Oscar scrambled to his feet as I ran around the foot of the bed.

I got to the bedroom door first, and I could see Bobby at the railing overlooking the living room, looking down, seemingly frozen. My heart started crashing around in my chest. It was suddenly hard to breathe.

I moved out into the hallway just ahead of Oscar. Both of us stepped up to the railing, one on each side of Bobby, and looked down into the living room.

Gianna lay on the hardwood floor below, next to a wooden table near the couch. The lamp that had been on the table was now on the floor a foot away from Gianna’s head. She was on her chest, her right arm trapped under her body, her head twisted awkwardly to the left. The one eye I could see was open but unmoving.

As the three of us looked down, blood began to spread out from under her head.

Oscar screamed and ran down the stairs. “Baby! Baby, are you okay?”

I watched, numb yet sick to my stomach, as Oscar dropped to his knees and caressed her hair while rubbing her back. When she didn’t move or talk, he shook her. “Babe?”

Still nothing.

He placed two fingers under her jaw and felt for a pulse. “No,” he said, shifting his fingers and feeling again. “No. No. No fucking way.”

Bobby turned to move down the stairs, but I grabbed him by the back of the neck. “Don’t you fucking move, Bobby.”

“I want to help her,” he said in a shaky voice.

“She’s dead!” Oscar shouted up at us, turning Gianna over and revealing the gash on the other side of her head where she’d hit the corner of the table. He pulled her onto him and hugged her. “She’s fucking dead!” Tears streamed down his face.

Bobby tried to pull away again.

“No!” I said.

“I’m going to call 911!” Bobby shook my grip off and turned toward me. “It was an accident. They need to know it was an accident. I didn’t mean to do it!”

“No,” I said. “I’ll call. You just need to sit down somewhere, okay?”

“Fuck you!” Bobby shouted. “It was an accident.”

He ran into his room and grabbed his phone from where it had fallen off the bedside table. I followed him inside and waited for him to stand up and turn around. When he did, I punched him as hard as I could in the face. He stumbled and fell back into the leather chair, unconscious.

I stood over him, breathing hard, my hand hurting. I stared at him for a long moment, until Oscar’s crying brought me back to reality.

I grabbed Bobby’s phone from the floor and shoved it in my pocket. Then I pulled my phone out and called 911.

***

There was no way anyone was getting up the mountain until the storm died down. So we had to wait. When I got off the phone with 911, I dragged Bobby to the master bedroom and locked him inside without his phone or any of his other possessions. Then, I managed to pry Oscar away and covered Gianna’s body with a blanket.

Gianna’s death seemed unreal to me. I couldn’t let it sink in. Not yet. Not while I was the only one thinking clearly. I felt the tide of emotions rising inside. But I dammed those emotions up. I couldn’t let them out. Not yet.

When the police finally came up and took over, I would be able to process the whole thing. But for now, I needed to keep it together. Because I sure as fuck wasn’t going to give Bobby his heroin back. Not after Gianna died for it.

So I was going to have to deal with him and with a distraught Oscar until the police could get up the mountain. They could determine what to do about it.

I had just finished using the hall bathroom when I heard the sound of something breaking from downstairs. I immediately rushed to the master bedroom to see if Bobby had somehow broken out. The door was still closed and locked.

I raced downstairs and found that Oscar had broken into a padlocked cabinet in the kitchen. He had a bottle of vodka upturned, the liquor bubbling as Oscar chugged it down.

“Jesus!” I said, snatching the bottle away from him.

Oscar got into my face, his eyes freezing me in place as he snatched the bottle back. “Don’t fuck with me, Andre. Not right now. The love of my life is dead, so I’m going to get nice and fucking drunk.”

“Okay,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “Just … try not to get alcohol poisoning.”

Oscar shook his head, walking over to the sliding glass door. The blizzard was still raging outside, the snow on the back deck well over a foot deep now. “I want to kill him,” Oscar said. “I want to fucking kill him.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I said. “It was an accident. If you kill him, you’ll go to prison.” I said this with conviction, but I wasn’t so sure it was an accident. Not really. I couldn’t see Gianna just falling over that railing. She’d had help. A shove from Bobby.

“I didn’t say I was going to kill him,” Oscar said. “I just said I wanted to. I know it was an accident. But that doesn’t change how I feel right now.” Oscar clenched his teeth, grimacing. “Goddammit.”

I had no idea what to say. I put my hand out. “Let me have a little bit.”

Oscar hesitated for a moment before handing me the bottle of vodka. I took a large swig out of it, grimacing as I swallowed. Then I handed the bottle back as the liquor warmed my stomach.

“We just need to wait it out until the storm stops,” I said. “Just keep our heads. When the police get here, we’ll see what they think about this whole thing.”

Oscar didn’t seem to hear me. He just swigged more vodka and looked out at the storm. After a long moment, he glanced over his shoulder at the shape of Gianna under the blanket. “I’m going upstairs,” he said as he turned to go.

“To do what?” I asked, following behind.

“To get away from my dead girlfriend,” he snapped.

Still, I followed him up. He turned into the first bedroom — the one that was supposed to be mine — and tried to shut the door in my face. I shoved it open and followed him inside. “Give me the key,” I said.

“What key?”

“Don’t play dumb with me. Give me the key, Oscar.”

Grumbling, he shoved his free hand in his pocket and came out with a key to the master bedroom door. He handed it to me, and I shoved it into my pocket. I now had both keys to the door.

“I’m going to keep watch,” I said. “Get some sleep if you can.”

“Fat fucking chance.”

I turned to go and then stopped. I could feel the sea of emotions inside, crashing against the dam I’d built. I just needed to keep it together for a while longer. A day. Maybe two. “I’m sorry this happened,” I said without looking back at Oscar.

He gave no answer, and I left the room, shutting the door behind me.

I grabbed the leather chair from Bobby’s room and set it in the hall outside the master bedroom. Slumping down into the chair and getting comfortable, I listened for sounds from inside. There was only silence. I started to worry that I’d hit him too hard, but quickly dismissed the concern. If I did hit him too hard, so what?

That sea of emotion swelled inside me, making the dam creak and shudder. I had to change my train of thought to avoid getting overwhelmed.

I settled in for a long wait. But then I remembered something. The heroin. It was still in Gianna’s pocket.

I crept down the stairs, steeling myself with every step. Kneeling beside her body, I gently lifted the blanket and grabbed the baggie of heroin from her pocket.

Looking around, I searched for a place to hide it. If Bobby did manage to get out of the room, he would assume one of us had it. So I figured hiding it was the better option.

I thought about flushing it down the toilet, but I figured the police might need it as evidence if they were going to charge Bobby with a crime. Some part of me hoped they would.

So I found a place to hide it. And then I went back upstairs and sat in the chair outside the master bedroom.

***

I was dozing off when Oscar nudged me. “Hey,” he said, bleary-eyed in the pale morning light coming through the front windows of the cabin. It was still snowing, I saw, but not as hard as last night. “Go get some real sleep. I’ll keep watch for a few hours.”

I considered this. My back was hurting from sitting in the chair all night. “Are you sober now?”

“Sober enough,” Oscar said. “Besides, you have both keys. Keep them. I’ll wake you up if I hear anything from him.”

I nodded and stood up. “He was awake around four this morning,” I said. “He begged for his dope for a while, but he didn’t try to get out or anything. We’ll have to give him some food and water before too long. But we both need to be here to do that.”

Oscar nodded. “Yeah, got it. Go get some sleep.”

I moved down the hall to the same bedroom Oscar had used. Sleeping in Bobby’s bedroom seemed wrong somehow.

I left the door open a crack and then laid down on top of the bed, clothes still on. I closed my eyes. Soon, I was asleep.

A crash from down the hall woke me up what seemed like minutes later. I propped myself on one arm, unsure if the sound I heard was from the dream world or the real one.

Then another crash came, followed by a scream of pain. It was real.

I got off the bed and rushed out of the room. As I turned the corner toward the master bedroom, Bobby crashed into me. He shoved me with one hand, and I tripped backward, falling to the floor, and smacking the back of my head on a railing post.

Bobby ran to the stairwell, gripping the newel post in his left hand as he whipped himself around and rushed down the stairs. I got to my feet and watched him yank open the front door and run out into the snow.

The color on the newel post grabbed my attention. There was a bloody hand mark where Bobby had touched it.

I looked at the bedroom door and saw that the door handle had been disassembled. I saw a couple of tools on the floor on this side of the door. The same tools Oscar had used to install the handle.

Rushing into the room, I noticed drops of blood on the carpet. The room was a mess, the bed disheveled, Oscar and Gianna’s luggage strewn around. But I saw no sign of Oscar until I came to the bathroom.

He lay sprawled in the bathtub, his legs hanging over the rim, half of the shower curtain pulled down as though he’d used it to try and keep himself up. He had one hand pressed up to his neck. Blood burbled out from between his fingers. His shirt was soaked.

Oscar looked up at me, eyelids heavy over tortured eyes, the life already fading from them. “He has my pocketknife,” he choked out.

A violent swirl of hate for Bobby nearly overwhelmed me. But I fought it. I let the dam keep the roiling seas back. I had to keep my cool. I had to save my friend. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to get the first aid kit.”

I rushed downstairs and found the first aid kit we’d brought. When I got back to the bathroom, Oscar was no longer holding his neck. His eyes were closed.

I dropped the first aid kit and leaned over, feeling for a pulse. There was none. Oscar was dead.

I walked downstairs like a zombie. I put my boots on, grabbed my coat, and stepped out the open front door. But once I was outside, I paused. Then I turned back into the house and grabbed the heroin from where I’d hidden it, taped underneath one of the dining room chairs.

I moved out into the front yard, following Bobby’s footsteps through the snow. They went to the SUV, but I was guessing the keys were still in Oscar’s pocket because the footsteps veered away.

I followed them through the gently falling snow, the beauty of the winter wonderland lost on me as I tried to keep that dam inside from breaking.

Bobby’s footsteps moved down the driveway but then turned into the woods before they reached the road. The snow was two feet deep in most places, with drifts even deeper here and there.

I trudged through the woods, hands in my coat pockets. Maybe he was circling back to the cabin to get a coat. Otherwise, he would freeze to death sooner rather than later.

Moving back toward the cabin, I decided to see if I could head him off.

I trudged past the SUV and toward the edge of the cliff that the cabin was built on. Then I turned left and walked along the side of the cliff, leaving plenty of room so I didn’t have to look down the sheer drop.

As I moved, I scanned through the trees, looking for my friend. After just a few minutes of walking, I saw him come out of the trees about fifteen yards ahead of me. He turned toward me — toward the cabin — and froze. He was hugging himself and shivering, but he still held Oscar’s knife in his bloody hand, the blade still out.

I took my hands out of my pockets to show that I was unarmed, then stopped when I was about ten yards away.

“He tried to kill me!” Bobby said in his whiny addict’s voice. “It was self-defense.”

“I believe you,” I said. “I just don’t want anyone else to die. You’re all I have left, Bobby.”

His face changed. “He’s dead?”

“You stabbed him in the throat,” I said. “Yes, he’s dead.”

“I didn’t mean to! He stabbed me first.” Bobby lifted his shirt and showed me a wound low on the left side of his abdomen. It was bleeding, but it didn’t look life-threatening.

“I said I believe you.”

“You’re not mad?” he asked.

“Of course I’m mad,” I said. “Two of my best friends are dead. But that doesn’t mean I want you to die, too. I don’t, okay? I came out here to bring you back. You’ll freeze out here.”

For a moment, Bobby’s eyes softened. But then they hardened again. “You’re going to lock me up in that room again.”

“No,” I said. “I won’t.” I reached slowly into my pants pocket and pulled out the baggie of heroin. “You can have this back. I don’t care anymore. Just promise me you won’t overdose.”

I saw the hunger come into my friend’s eyes. And I felt the roiling sea of emotions inside, pressing against the dam, sending cracks through the abutment.

Bobby moved forward, his eyes fixed on the baggie. But as he reached out for it, I moved it out of his reach. “Give me the knife,” I said. “And I’ll give you the heroin.”

Bobby nodded, eyes gleaming. He handed me the knife. The cracks inside the dam expanded.

I handed him the heroin.

“Okay,” I said, turning back toward the cabin. “Let’s go.”

I let him walk ahead a couple of steps as the dam let loose inside me, all the pent-up emotions from the night exploding, flooding into me, overwhelming me.

I jammed the knife into the side of Bobby’s neck and yanked it out quickly. As he pulled away, he tripped down to the snowy ground, falling on his face. I fell onto him, stabbing him in the back in a frenzy of rage. Tears dripped from my face and onto his back as he writhed and screamed, and I stabbed and stabbed.

When he finally stilled, the muscles in my arm were burning. I stood up from my friend and the bloodstained snow around his body. My legs shook and I fell backward into the snow. I made no move to get up. Instead, I breathed heavily and watched the flakes float down toward me.

The snow seemed to be falling faster now.

That was good.

I stared up for a long time, watching the snow, listening to the uncanny silence of the mountains, the faint cottony sound of thousands of snowflakes settling down on the fallen snow.

It was so nice. So peaceful in the silence immediately following death.

***

When the police arrived the next day, I told them what had happened. Most of what had happened, anyway.

I told them that Bobby had run off down the driveway after killing Oscar. That he’d headed toward the road. That I hadn’t followed him. That I hadn’t wanted to. I’d been too overcome with despair.

And I said he had never come back.

Enough snow had fallen to cover the tracks we’d made. Almost as if the violence near the edge of the cliff had never happened.

When I was finally allowed to leave, after many hours and many questions, I got into Oscar’s SUV and looked over toward the cliff where I’d killed Bobby. I wondered what would happen to his body, down there at the bottom of the cliff, among the trees.

Someone would find it eventually. It wasn’t an accessible area. There were no trails or campsites down there. I’d checked. But someone would find it. I just had to hope that, by the time it happened, his body would be too decomposed or ravaged by animals to be able to tell what had happened.

Even if it came back on me, I didn’t care. I didn’t feel sorry for what I’d done.

In my mind, it was nothing short of justice.

The Commute from Hell

I trudged off the train platform and onto the train, my earbuds blaring music so I could stay awake during the ride. All I could think about was getting home to my bed. I wanted to sleep for a day. But I couldn’t let sweet oblivion take me just yet.

I’d fallen asleep more than once on the 30-minute ride out of town, causing me to miss my stop. But it was hard to stay awake after working twelve-hour days six days a week for more than a year.

The goal was to move into the city, but it seemed like little more than a pipedream. I was the sole caregiver of my developmentally disabled brother, who was five years younger than me. He could do a lot of things on his own. He even held a part-time job at an adult daycare center in the city, helping with basic tasks. But he would never be able to live on his own.

That was okay. I loved my brother and wouldn’t dream of living without him. But that didn’t make me feel any less tired after my long workdays.

And it didn’t make my commute to and from the suburbs any less grueling.

The train was pretty much empty, as always. I’d noticed a man down the train platform who got into a different car toward the back of the train. He was a guy who often rode the same train, although we’d never exchanged greetings or anything.

I always kept my earbuds in, lacking the energy to talk to strangers.

I’d also noticed a couple of people in one of the forward cars as the train pulled up to the platform. A man and a woman, I thought.

But I had this car to myself. Which was fine with me.

As I pulled off my backpack and sat down, the train pulled away from the station. Then I leaned over and pulled my wallet out of my back pocket so I could sit evenly. I shoved the wallet into my backpack, as I did on every other train ride.

I got my ticket out and put it in the little metal bracket affixed to the seatback in front of me. I figured the conductor, who I was on a first-name basis with, would be by soon.

Then I sat back and struggled to keep my eyes open, the music blaring into my ears.

Someone touched my shoulder and I jumped, realizing as I sat up that I’d fallen asleep.

I looked up to see the conductor, Hassan Ojabe, smiling down at me. He waited for me to pull out my earbuds before speaking.

“Did you set an alarm?”

I shook my head. “Forgot.”

He tssked and shook his head. “I can’t always be around to wake you up, my friend. Better set one. We’re running right on time today.”

“I will.”

As Hassan was about to say something else, a thump came from the next car up, drawing his attention away.

“What’s going on up there?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Hassan said, looking toward the doors between cars. “I gotta go check. Take care, Wes. Set that alarm!”

“Yeah. Thanks, Hassan. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He moved off toward the next car. I watched him go through the first door, then lost him from sight as he went through the second and into the next car.

As I went to put my earbuds back into my ears, I heard a shout come from the car Hassan had gone into. Leaning out, I peered down the aisle. But I couldn’t see anything past the door. There was a small window in it, but my angle didn’t allow me to see through it with any sort of clarity.

Putting my earbuds back into their case, I thought that taking a walk around wouldn’t hurt. It would be hard for me to fall asleep on my feet.

Leaving my backpack in the seat next to me, I stood up on the gently swaying train. As I moved toward the next car in line, I was at an angle that would allow me to see through the small windows of the two doors between the cars. But the second window was covered with something, preventing me from seeing through.

I pressed the button on the first door, which slid open, revealing the small space between the cars.

As I stepped up to the other door, I could see that the window was covered from the other side with a newspaper page. Although most people read the news on their phones, I always saw a couple of older guys on my morning commute who read newspapers. And it was common for them to be left lying on seats for anyone else who wanted to read them.

What wasn’t common was seeing them blocking one of the door windows.

I pressed the door button and the portal slid open. Stepping through, I saw two pairs of feet sticking out into the aisle up ahead. The feet were hanging off the edge of the seats, like two people were sprawled out on adjacent rows, trying to sleep.

I saw no sign of Hassan anywhere.

Moving up toward the feet, I glanced over to see a man lying limply across two seats. His eyes were closed, and his plain white button-up shirt was covered in blood.

Panic building, I whipped my head to the left, seeing that there was a woman in the row across the aisle. She had stab wounds in her turquoise blouse, which was heavy with blood.

Taking a step back, I glanced once more at the man, jumping when I saw that his eyes were open, and he was smiling.

“Hah!” he cried, sitting up. “Got you! Oh man, the look on your face!” He laughed loudly as he stood up.

Relief swept over me, and I smiled, too, even though I was thinking about why someone would pull a prank like this on a stranger. Halloween wasn’t for months.

Then I started thinking about hidden cameras. Maybe this was a YouTube thing.

As the man stepped out into the aisle, I looked over toward the woman, expecting her to get up and join the laughter.

She didn’t move. And the wounds looked so real.

The man stopped laughing, and I looked up into his face. He was smiling at me, his big teeth, dull eyes, and narrow face giving him a kind of homely, simple look. His hairline had retreated far up his head, only adding to the look.

Expecting him to say something, I looked into his eyes. But he said nothing. His expression didn’t change.

The train swayed. We looked at each other for what seemed like fifteen seconds — a long time to be looking silently at a perfect stranger.

Finally, I cleared my throat and gestured at the woman. “She okay?”

That seemed to snap the man out of it. His eyebrows bounced and then his expression grew dark as he looked down at her.

“Rachel?” he said. “You okay, honey?”

She didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

“Rachel?” the man said, his pitch getting louder.

Something isn’t right here, I thought.

The man dropped onto his knees in the aisle, grabbing the woman’s arms. “Rachel!?” he screamed. “Noooo!!”

His scream turned to laughter after a long moment. I backed down the aisle, a horrible fear spreading through me.

He reached behind his back with his right hand and came out with a kitchen knife he’d had hidden at the small of his back. And he stood up as he continued laughing.

“Of course she’s not okay!” he shouted, turning to face me. “She’s fucking dead, you idiot! You killed her! You fucking killed her!”

He darted toward me, and I turned to run. I came to the newspaper-covered door, slapping at the button as his footsteps boomed toward me.

As the door opened, I slipped through sideways, eager for any advantage I could get. But it was no use.

Even as I punched the button on the other door, I knew the door behind me wouldn’t close before he got to it. Sure enough, I turned around and saw him moving swiftly through the open doorway.

Behind me, the second door opened. I backpedaled, hands held up, as the maniac barreled toward me.

As he closed the distance, something strange happened. It was almost like I stepped out of my body to see things from a different perspective.

It didn’t bring a sense of calm with it. I was still more scared than I’d ever been in my entire life. But I knew that it was time to fight or die. I had no formal training. I wasn’t a big guy by any means. The maniac had a couple of inches and probably fifteen pounds on me.

But that didn’t mean I was just going to give up and let him kill me. I had to fight. So I crouched on tense legs as he approached. He slowed slightly just before swinging the blade toward me.

I jumped back, but I wasn’t fast enough. The blade hit the edge of my right hand, opening my flesh.

As he was bringing the blade back the other way, the train started to slow, throwing us both a little off balance. We were approaching the Owens Street Station.

Shifting my weight, I kicked out with my right foot, aiming for his crotch. But he shifted quickly, and my kick glanced off the inside of his left thigh.

The train was slowing faster now, but I was barely aware of it as the maniac threw himself at me.

I managed to grab his right wrist in both hands, keeping the knife from plunging into my face. But he kept pushing, and I lost my feet, falling and slamming my head into the floor. The maniac landed on top of me, his weight forcing the knife blade down.

The tip of the blade entered my face on the outside of my left cheekbone. As we hit the floor, it continued down, cutting a ragged line down the left side of my face then stabbing through my ear and into the floor.

I was still gripping his right arm. Only now I was preventing him from pulling the arm back up so he could finish the job.

Hearing the mechanical sound of the automatic doors opening, I realized the train was fully stopped. We’d ended up right next to one of the two sets of doors in the train car, and the maniac turned his head to look out the open doors.

I turned my head as well, even though it caused the knife to tear through my ear.

There was a woman standing there. Not much more than a girl. Maybe eighteen or so.

She stood on the platform, staring through the doors at us, shock her only expression. Her eyes bounced between my face and my attacker’s.

Then the door closing chime sounded, and the doors started to slide close.

“Help!” I shouted just before the doors met. It was all I could think to do. Not that it would help me now. The next stop — my stop — was a good ten minutes away. There was no way I’d live that long.

When the train started moving again, the maniac laughed wildly and then resumed trying to pull the knife up. I still had both hands gripping his right arm.

Which meant his left arm was free.

He punched me in the face with his left fist, the blow painful but far from powerful.

Knowing I could take many more of those punches than I could stabs with the knife, I held on to his arm with all I had. My left hand was bleeding where he’d cut me, but the maniac was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, so the blood wouldn’t act as a lubricant for him to get free.

I could feel the cut along the side of my face bleeding heavily, too. It burned, and the hearing in my left ear was partially dampened by the blood flowing into the ear canal.

I needed a way to get him off me. A way to take the knife from him.

Otherwise, I was going to die.

The maniac hit me again with his left, then tried to yank his right arm free. He laughed crazily, bending down so his face was inches from mine. His hot breath washed over my face.

Before I realized with any sort of coherency what I was doing, I brought my lips together, gathered saliva on my tongue, and then spit into the maniac’s mouth.

His face went from gleeful-psycho-killer to disgusted-middle-aged man in an instant. And he paused, his muscles going slack with surprise.

Whipping my head up, I smashed my forehead into his mouth, feeling his front teeth fold inward with the impact. He jerked backward, and I let go of his arm, knowing that it meant getting him off me.

He fell back with the knife still in his right hand. He brought his left hand to his mouth, which was now filling with blood.

Scrambling up, I jumped over the row of seats on the right to get past him. Still partially in shock from the hit, he swung at me lazily from his sitting position, not coming anywhere close to hitting me.

For a moment, I thought about trying to end things right then, but he still had the knife, and he was still conscious. So instead of staying to fight, I ran.

This time, I got through both doors without him coming after me. I hurried past the dead woman on the seats. And when I got a few more rows up, something caught my eye.

It was Hassan. His throat had been cut and his body had been shoved into one of the rows.

Rage and sadness clashed inside me as I stood there looking down at the man who’d been nothing but kind to me. I liked Hassan. He was one of the good ones.

Behind me, the sound of the door between cars opening sent a warning jolt up my spine. Without looking back, I ran toward the front of the train. It was only when I got to the next set of doors between cars that I glanced over my shoulder.

The maniac was smiling again. But he’d pulled out his damaged front teeth, so there was a large gap in his smile. Blood poured down his chin and throat as he ran toward me, knife glinting dangerously in the overhead lights.

Slipping through the first door, I turned and looked for some way to lock it. But there was nothing that I could see in my panicked glance.

Moving through the second door, I peered around the empty car, searching for anything that could help me. Some kind of weapon I could use.

My eyes caught on the red of two emergency handles on one of the windows.

The windows were designed so anyone could operate them easily, even when stress and adrenaline were working against them.

I’d read the little stickers over the emergency windows so many times on my rides that I knew just what you were supposed to do.

All you had to do was pull the handles, remove the rubber, and then remove the window.

I rushed to the window and yanked down on the handles. The rubber around the window came out a few inches, and I yanked again to pull it down further.

At the back of the car, the door opened, and the maniac stalked into the train car. I let go of the rubber and grabbed the top of the windowpane, pulling it out with some effort.

Then I twisted and threw the thing at the maniac as he approached. The glass was designed not to break easily, and it didn’t disappoint. It struck the man, making him stumble back before it clattered to the floor.

Having bought myself some time, I climbed up into the window and looked at the ground rushing by below. We were going maybe forty miles an hour. There was a parallel track next to us, and as I glanced toward the front of the train, I saw that another locomotive was coming from the other direction.

I had only seconds to jump. And I had to pray I could get off the adjacent tracks in time to not get run over by the passing train.

Behind me, the maniac had recovered and was rushing toward me, knife ready to stab.

I jumped out the window.

Managing to hit the ground feet first likely saved my life. I landed in the middle of the adjacent track and my feet went out from under me, causing me to roll on the railroad ties, my head narrowly missing the hard metal track.

Pain shot through me, and the wind left my lungs in a whoosh.

The bright light from the speeding train lit my surroundings, and the train horn blared. The sound of heavy machinery filled my ears as the vehicle closed the distance.

Scrambling up, I launched myself off the tracks a split second before the train flew past.

Covering my head, I lay in the ditch next to the tracks and waited for the train to roar past.

When it was finally gone, I raised my head and looked around. The area was silent. Both trains had gone their separate directions.

In a moment of panic, I imagined the maniac lunging from the greenery on the other side of the tracks, bearing down on me to finish the job.

But the area remained silent as I got to my feet.

Pulling out my phone to call the police, I wasn’t entirely surprised to find that the phone had been smashed when I jumped off the train.

I limped to the side of the tracks and pushed through the foliage. After walking for five minutes into the neighborhood, I realized I wasn’t far from my house.

The siren song of my bed had never been louder. Once I got home, I could use my brother’s phone to call the police and the paramedics. Then I would wait for them to arrive in the comfort of my own bed.

As I limped down the silent street, I touched the cut on my face. It wasn’t bleeding so much anymore, although my ear was still dripping blood onto my shoulder, soaking my shirt. My hand wasn’t bleeding much anymore, either.

I still had my keys in my pocket, so I got into the house easily. My brother was asleep, and I didn’t want to wake him. The last thing I needed was him freaking out over my appearance. I would have to comfort him and calm him down.

That could wait.

I slipped into his room and grabbed his phone from the nightstand.

Then I called 911 and gave them the whole story. When that was done, I collapsed into my bed.

I slipped into sweet oblivion for what seemed like seconds when the sound of footsteps woke me up. I lifted my head off the bed and looked toward my bedroom door.

A man stood there, backlit by the hallway light.

At first, I thought it was a police officer. But then I noticed the backpack sitting on the floor next to his foot. It was my backpack. The one I’d left on the train. With my wallet inside.

The man reached over and flipped the light on.

The maniac stood there, bloody mouth grinning, knife glinting.

***

***

Thanks so much for reading The Devil’s Playground, Volume 4. As you can probably surmise, there are three other collections available on Amazon — each with 20 stories. They’re all free in Kindle Unlimited. Otherwise, they’re $3.99, which means they come out to about $0.20 per story. Not bad for hours of gruesome entertainment!

I also have several other novels out, so keep turning the pages to check those out. Your support means a lot to this indie author!

Now that I’ve finished my obligatory self-promotion, I have one thing to ask of you. If you enjoyed this collection, please take a few minutes to leave a review on Amazon. Even a couple of simple sentences can really help to get this horror story collection in front of other people who will enjoy it.

Thanks so much!

-Matt Doggett, Huntsville, AL.

June, 2024.

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Also By Matthew Doggett

The Undead Trilogy

A zombie apocalypse series with a dash of humor and a whole lot of blood. All three books are available on Amazon and free on Kindle Unlimited.

Praise for Undead Annihilation

“A ‘Must Read’ for end-of-the-world, we’re-all-gonna-die, zombie apocalypse story lovers!” -Reedsy Reviewer

“A work of genius. I’ve read hundreds of zombie books and this is now in my top 2.” -Amazon Reviewer

“This book is a MUST!”

“Not to be missed.”

“Undead Annihilation starts off fast and just keeps on going.”

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Horror Short Story Collections

4 Volumes with 20 spine-tingling tales each. Available on Amazon.

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Hole: A Small-Town Horror Novel

A teenage boy and his dog face a gruesome evil in this coming-of-age horror novel.

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The Trouble Series – Gritty Action Thrillers You Can Read in Any Order

Too Much Trouble

When a robbery gone wrong lands him in the middle of a cartel war, Trouble starts running out of options fast. And when these operatives cross the line and go after Trouble’s friends, only death will stop him from righting the wrongs and making the cartels pay for what they’ve done. Available on Amazon and free on Kindle Unlimited.

The Death Dealers

When he prevents a murder, Trouble is thrown into a twisted conspiracy that points to the most dangerous gang in Los Angeles. Available on Amazon and free on Kindle Unlimited.

The Deadly Divine

Trouble’s a one-man wrecking crew. When he crosses paths with a charismatic lunatic, can he blow away the murderous brainwashing? Available on Amazon and free on Kindle Unlimited.

Dead Man’s Hatch

Trouble works alone, busting heads and bashing bullies. But when he joins a crew of trained professionals, he becomes a target in a deadly revenge plot. Available on Amazon and free on Kindle Unlimited.

Kill Squad

Trouble infiltrates a domestic terrorist ring, posing as a white supremacist. The clock is ticking as he races to thwart their plot to destroy America.

Trouble

When Trouble stands up for what’s right, he finds himself in the crosshairs of an insane small-town sheriff with one goal: kill Trouble. Available for free when you sign up for my email list at MatthewDoggettAuthor.com/Trouble

About the author

Matthew Doggett bummed around the country writing nonsense until his 30s, when he decided to knuckle down write the Great American Novel. He hasn’t done it yet, but it’s on his to-do list. In the meantime he has written about vampires, zombies, werewolves, and other monsters. He’s also written stories about a loser on a motorcycle, among other strange and deliberate tales.

He’s the author of ten novels, three novellas, and over 200 published short stories on the Dr. NoSleep and SCP Experience podcasts. He’s also a proud member of the Horror Writers Association.

Despite the recent rise in AI-based writing tools some authors are using to help generate large chunks of their stories, all of Matthew’s books and stories are written entirely by him. He does not use AI tools to generate his stories, and has no plans for doing so in the future.

Stay in touch (and get a free book) by signing up for his email list at MatthewDoggettAuthor.com/Horror

Table of Contents

- Dedication
- Get Your Free eBook
- A Note From the Author
- 1. The Butcher
- 2. The Klepto Killers
- 3. Cold Feet, Warm Blood
- 4. Careful Where You Glamp
- 5. Adopting Evil
- 6. The Murder Tapes

- 7. The Horror I Just Witnessed Will Change the World

- 8. Dark Work on the Dark Web
- 9. The Poker
- 10. The Xbox Killer
- 11. The Babysitting Job to Die For

- 12. We Stopped at the Wrong Diner in the Middle of Nowhere

- 13. Last Words
- 14. The Procedure
- 15. Slugged
- 16. 21st Century Psycho
- 17. The Accident
- 18. Camp Clear Lake
- 19. I Don’t Feel Sorry for What I’ve Done
- 20. The Commute from Hell
- Get Your Free eBook
- Also By Matthew Doggett
- About the author