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Even though I knew that it was probably just going to be a hookup, I still wanted to look nice. I spent a lot of time agonizing over the outfit that I’d wear. The black dress showed off some cleavage (not that I had much), but it didn’t really seem very me. The floral blouse and skirt combo on the other hand was much more my speed, but I didn’t know if it looked too frumpy or not. I didn’t really want to show up to my first casual hookup looking like somebody's grandmother.
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Then there was the choice of underwear. I didn’t own anything that sexy, so I’d bought something just for the occasion. It was comfortable but I didn’t really know if it was me or not.
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I guess if all went to plan, my clothes weren’t really going to matter, were they? They were probably going to be in a puddle on the floor pretty early into the night, but I still wanted to look sexy. I wanted to make a good impression! Maybe if I did, it might lead to something a little more lasting… I doubted it, but… well, a girl can dream, right?
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I’ve never had a lot of luck with dating. Putting myself out there isn’t easy. I want to do it! But I just struggle. The moment I try to talk to someone, my voice dies in my throat and I immediately run out of things to say. I struggle to make eye contact. It’s not an attractive look. I’d always imagined that someday my love life would just work itself out and that I’d meet the perfect girl in some charming little meet cute. But by the time I was 32, it still hadn’t happened yet and I was starting to doubt that it ever would. I think that’s why the ad I saw a few weeks ago really got to me.
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‘Life’s too short to wait for someday! You deserve to find someone! Sign up today and feel the butterflies!’
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I’d seen worse advertisements for dating sites before, and considering the headspace I was in, signing up for another one didn’t seem like that bad of an idea. Besides, ‘Butterfly’ was supposed to connect queer girls to queer girls and well, I just so happened to be a queer girl so why not give it a try? It’s not like I had a lot to lose. Although I can’t say I did a whole lot better with online dating than I did with in person dating. I just never seemed to know what to say and most of the conversations I had fizzled out pretty quickly when I either got nervous or ran out of things to talk about. I’m an accountant with no social life. Unfortunately I’m exactly as boring as I sound.
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Then I met Dominique… and she seemed to be able to do the talking for both of us.
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I matched with her about a week or so after I’d joined up, although I admittedly didn’t think our conversation would last that long though. Dominique was pretty upfront about what she was looking for.
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“I’m just in town for a few weeks. So I’m sorta looking for a summer fling, you know?”
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Honestly, I didn’t know. I never really saw myself as a ‘summer fling’ kind of girl. But despite how clear she was on what she was looking for, Dominique was sweet, she was charming and she was easy to talk to, so I let things play out just to see where it went. I mean, I may be a socially awkward introvert but I’ve still got needs! And judging by her pictures, Dominique was a very good looking woman. She had the body of a goddess, tall and tanned with messy red hair, nice arms, and a full set of abs. And while I was pretty sure that she would snap me like a twig if she so much as put an arm around me, I still couldn’t say no to her.
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When she’d asked if I wanted to meet for dinner yesterday, I hadn’t been able to stop myself and even though I knew that this was probably going to end in meaningless sex, I was okay with that. I ended up unable to pick an outfit and sent a picture of both to Dominique, asking which one she liked more.
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She picked the skirt and blouse combo, so I went with that. Then, with my heart racing so fast that I could almost hear it and with my legs a little shaky in anticipation of just where this night might lead, I called an uber to take me to meet her.
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***
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“Dina! I’m so glad you could make it!”
The way that Dominique greeted me honestly made me blush a little. She already had a table at the restaurant and she stood up to pull a chair out for me. I don’t know how she pulled it off, but she was somehow even hotter in person, with sun kissed skin, hair tied back in a messy bun and warm smile that almost made me melt.
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“Y-yeah, I’m sorry I’m late!” I said.
“It’s fine! I actually got here a little early,” She said. “I actually kinda love this restaurant. So I might have had a second reason to be excited for tonight!”
“You’ve been here before?” I asked.
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“Yeah, my sisters and I always go whenever we’re in town. We love Thai. You ever been here before?”
“Once or twice,” I admitted, watching as she sat back down across from me. As she did, I noticed a tattoo on the back of her right hand. It sort of looked like the zodiac sign for Sagittarius, with the point of the arrow resting on the knuckle of her middle finger.
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“You’re into astrology?” I asked.
“Oh? Yeah, kinda.” Dominique said, “It’s more of a family thing. My sisters and I all got one.”
“Sounds interesting, how many sisters have you got?” I asked.
“Twelve. One for each sign,” Dominique said caually, before correcting herself. “We’re technically not all related, it’s just sorta a… I dunno, like a found family kind of deal, you know? None of us really have anybody else, so we mostly just call each other sisters since it’s basically what we are, and we call our Mother our Mother because… well… you get the idea, right?”
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“Found family?” I repeated, before stifling a laugh. “That actually sounds kinda wholesome.”
“Yeah, it is for the most part. We’ve been through a lot together. They mean the world to me,” Dominique said. “What about you? Got any family?”
“Eh, yes I don’t keep in touch with them,” I said. “My parents and I sorta stopped being on speaking terms after I came out of the closet… liking girls wasn’t part of ‘Gods Plan’ I guess.”
“Oh… I’m sorry to hear,” Dominique said softly. She reached over to put a hand over mine.
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“It’s fine! They made their choice! If they never talk to me again, it’s their loss, really!” I said although I couldn’t hide the flush in my cheeks. “So… um… your family, do they…”
“They’re all pretty supportive. And I’m not the only one who’s not exactly straight,” Dominique replied. “One of my sisters even got married a few years back… Vera. She’s the Gemini, funnily enough. Now her wife is also Gemini. I mean, if the shoe fits, right?”
“Really? Sounds like you’ve got a very interesting family,” I said.
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A waiter showed up and took our drink orders before she could reply to that. Dominique ordered herself a beer, I just got water. Alcohol never really agreed with me.
“So… do you do this kind of thing often?” I asked, when the waiter left.
“Dating? Yeah. I like meeting new people,” Dominique said. “You?”
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I laughed nervously.
“Not really… this is… um… this is my first time out in about a year, actually. I’ve never really been good at this sort of thing and I’ve never really done anything… you know… casual, before…”
“Well hey, good on you for getting out of your comfort zone, a little!” Dominique said.
“Thanks… I’ve got to ask… these kinds of dates… I’m not implying I’m expecting you to do anything but… you mentioned… I…”
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My words completely and utterly failed me at this point, and honestly, it was kinda impressive that I’d managed to last so long with her. But here was the inevitable moment where I went and royally fucked it all up. Good job, Dina!
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Dominique just smiled at me, though as if my flustered babbling didn’t put her off in the slightest. Her hand was on top of mine again.
“Hey… we don’t need to do anything you’re not comfortable with, okay? If you just wanna have dinner, then we’re just gonna have dinner. We’ll see where the night goes, alright?”
“A-alright…” I squeaked, still not entirely convinced that I hadn’t just blown it with her. Her hand was comfortably cool on top of mine, and she gently ran her thumb over my knuckles.
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I’d been half expecting her to be a little more… I don’t know… straightforward with what she wanted but she made me feel like she really cared about me! Like I really mattered to her! She made me feel so warm and soft and she made my heart race and I just wanted to kiss her and feel her arms around me and… oh God, I was so fucking red!
“Sorry, too much?” Dominique asked, lifting her hand away from mine.
“N-no! Just enough! Just fine! A-okay here!”
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Was I coming on too strong? Was I not coming on strong enough? How exactly did I let this woman know that I was very interested in kissing her without coming across as a fucking psychopath? She just chuckled, although the waiter brought us our drinks before she could put her hand back over mine.
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I may have drank my water a little too fast.
“So… you’re an accountant, right?” Dominique asked. “What’s that like?”
“Boring,” I said. “Really… really boring. I mean, I find it interesting. I’ve always sort of had a head for numbers and everything, but most people find it boring, I guess.”
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Case in point, the people at the next table were leaving. Oh God, I hoped I hadn’t just ruined their dining experience. The people at the table behind us were leaving too, and I caught Dominique eying them warily before her attention returned to me.
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“Well, maybe it’s not interesting to everyone but, we need people with a head for numbers in the world. My sister Claire’s always been like that. It’s part of why Mom has her running a lot of the family business. Me? I’m more personable. I do better in sales.”
“Is that why you’re in town?” I asked.
“Yeah, meeting up with a client. I probably shouldn’t get into the details, but it’s mostly just a distribution thing. I don’t really need the money, but I like to travel and I like to feel like I’m contributing, you know?”
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“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your family business?” I asked.
“Jewelry, clothes, fashion items. Stuff like that. It’s more of a luxury brand, I guess but it pays the bills. I’ve been looking for other oppotunities, though. I figure it might be time for a change of pace. Do something a little more… altruistic, I guess? I mean, jewlery really isn’t the business you get into when you want to save the world.”
“I guess not. What did you have in mind?”
“I dunno. Something… helpful…” Her voice trailed off as she watched the customers at another table quietly get up and leave. The restaurant wasn’t empty yet. But there were only a small handful of people left, sitting alone at a few tables. All of them men, all of them well dressed.
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Something felt off about this… although I couldn’t exactly tell just what. It almost felt like the men in the restaurant were sitting there, watching us. Dominique looked around at them, before her attention shifted to a man coming out of the back of the restaurant. He appeared to be middle aged, with a full head of thick hair and a large moustache. He wore an expensive suit with a black vest underneath it, and a bolo tie. He sort of reminded me of a cowboy.
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I saw Dominique’s eyes narrow, but she didn’t say a word.
“That’s funny…” The man said coolly, “Alturism ain’t really common in your kind.”
He stopped by our table, before fixing me in a cold glare that made my skin crawl.
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“You’d best git, girl. Your date and I have some business.”
I looked back at Dominique, who looked more annoyed than intimidated.
“So can I not just have a night out… or is that against your religion, or something?” She asked.
“Your very existence is against my religion, vampire.” The Cowboy replied.
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Vampire?
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I looked over at Dominique. She looked like a lot of things, but a vampire wasn’t one of them! She sighed, and hardly seemed to notice as the other people in the restaurant who’d been watching us rose from their seats.
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“You know what, my sister Claire told me that this was going to happen… she fucking told me. And you know what I said? I said that you guys wouldn’t be stupid enough to try anything, especially after the other recent ass beatings you got from her and Eris. But here I am, eating my words… good grief…”
Dominique shook her head before looking at me and putting on a sheepish smile.
“I’m so sorry about this!” She said, “I really didn’t think that this was going to happen. You should probably just go.”
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From the corner of my eye, I saw one of the men surrounding us taking a gun out from his jacket, and felt my heart skip a beat.
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They were here to kill her.
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And for a moment the restaurant went silent.
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They were waiting for me to leave… and it would have been so easy to do it. So easy to run, and let these men… these vampire hunters kill Dominique. I mean, if she really was some kind of creature of the night, that was probably what was best, right?
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Right?
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“Well?” The Cowboy said impatiently, “Get a move on, dyke!” I noticed a gun in his belt too.
I felt my entire body tense up… but I couldn’t make myself move. I couldn’t leave her to her fate.
I wouldn’t.
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Whatever she was, in the short amount of time that I’d known her, she’d been nothing but sweet to me, nothing but kind and understanding and goddamnit even if she’d only done that to get me alone so she could feed on me… hell, I’d probably welcome it.
“N-no…” I said, “You leave her the heck alone!”
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I caught Dominique raising an eyebrow as I stood up, looking the Cowboy dead in the eye. He looked moderately surprised, before looking back toward his companions and scoffing.
“Welp… you heard her boys. Looks like we’ve got collateral.”
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I saw him go for the gun and felt my heart stop in my chest. It briefly dawned on me that I’d just tried to talk back to a man with a gun, and that this was about to go exactly as badly as expected.
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But before he could even get the gun out of his holster, I saw a flash of movement. Dominique lunged at the man with almost blinding speed, grabbing him by the arm and slamming him down into the table between us. The Cowboy hit it hard enough for the table to actually break and he landed at my feet, still alive, but probably no longer entirely sure exactly what day of the week it was anymore.
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I heard a few guns go off, but Dominique appeared between me and the shooters. I saw one of them collapse dead to the ground, his head burst open like a watermelon and I really should have been more horrified by that than I was.
“She’s a Di Cesare you idiot! Don’t shoot!” I heard someone else cry, although Dominique had moved to subdue the next man before they could do anything else.
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She moved quickly, grabbing a bowl of pad thai off one of the empty tables and smashing it against his head, before using a shard of that same bowl to open the throat of the next man. They struggled to try and stop her, but Dominique was too fast. The next closest man was grabbed by the shirt and pulled toward her. She sank her fangs into his throat and immediately dispelled any lingering doubts I’d had that she was actually a vampire. She was very clearly drinking that mans blood, and when she was done she kicked him into the last two of his friends who were still standing.
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“Somebody get the goddamn Malvian stake!” I heard one of them yell, and from the back, I saw two new men coming out, one of them holding something that looked like a stake made out of a pinkish ice. Dominique turned her head toward them, before grabbing one of the nearby chairs and hurling it at the men. Then, her mouth still covered in blood, she ran for me, grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door.
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I really wasn’t in any state of mind to fight her, considering the fact that I’d just found out that vampires were real, and watched one kick the shit out of an entire resturant in the span of about three minutes. As Dominique pulled me down the street, toward a sporty red Dodge Challenger, I barely even had time to adjust my glasses before she’d unlocked the doors and was getting inside.
“C’mon, they’re gonna be following us,” She said.
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I blinked in mild disbelief at the absolutely madness that had just seemed to happen around me before realizing that my legs were already carrying me into the passenger seat of Dominique’s car. The engine roared to life, as she tore out onto the street, while Guns and Roses screamed out over the speakers.
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Five minutes ago, this had not been the direction I’d figured that this date would go in.
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It’s amazing what can happen in five minutes.
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I looked out through the rear view window to see the men that Dominique hadn’t just killed shuffling out of the resturant, onto the street. The Cowboy was among them, and I saw him staring at our car as we sped away.
“Sorry about this,” Dominique said. “I really, really didn’t think these jokers would actually have the balls to take a run at me.”
“Who the heck even are those people?” I asked.
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“Oh, just some assholes. Long story short… they think they’re the Knights Templar and really hate anything that’s not human,” Dominique said. “They’re not a big fan of a lot of humans either… and my family may or may not have a four hundred year long blood fued with them.”
“Oh…” I said, “Is that all? The rest of your family, you’re all… you’re all…”
“Vampires? Yeah. Sorry… it’s not really the sort of thing you bring up on a first date,” Dominique said, sounding a little embarrassed. “Technically, my sisters and I are a cut above your average vampire. We were actually witches first. The vampirism came later. It’s sorta a whole thing… I can tell you about it later, if you want.”
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“A vampire witch…” I said, trying to wrap my head around exactly what the hell that was. I couldn’t so I gave up and tried to focus on another one of the millions of questions racing through my mind.
“Were you going to eat me?”
“What?” Dominique asked, “No! I mean… okay, to be fair I probably would have asked after I told you I was a vampire. But just so we’re clear, no. I don’t really feed on the girls I date unless they tell me I can. It’s sort of an ethics thing, you know?”
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“So where do you normally get your blood?” I asked, a little bit suspicious of that answer (and for good reason.)
“I mean, lots of different ways. There’s a lot of us out there, you know? Thousands at least. Maybe even millions. We’ve got infrastructure. It reduces the need to hunt. Gives us access to either living donors, or blood from a source that’s reasonably fresh. I guess most of us do still hunt for fun, and so long as we don’t leave bodies we don’t really get in any trouble for it. But I generally prefer something a little more personal.”
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She looked over at me and took note of the look of utter confusion on my face.
“I’m probably not explaining this all that well, am I?” She asked.
“I have no idea,” I replied honestly, “So… you’re not going to kill me, then?”
“No Dina, I’m not going to kill you… hell, I’m actually kinda impressed! That was pretty ballsy of you, standing your ground back there!”
I had no answer for her as to why I’d done that, and I may have just caught myself mindlessly blushing again.
​
From the corner of my eye, I noticed a pair of SUV’s coming up behind us in the side view mirror and looked back at them. They weaved violently through traffic, trying desperately to catch up to us and though I couldn’t see through the tinted windows, I knew who was behind the wheel.
“Jeez… they’re really determined today…” Dominique said under her breath.
“Why exactly do these people hate you again?” I asked.
“About four hundred years ago they tried to kill my sisters and me for being witches, and we kinda responded by becoming vampires… then after they killed one of us, we may have killed a bunch of them in turn, and they never really got over it,” She said. “Like I said, it’s a whole thing.”
“Yeah… clearly…”
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“I’m kinda impressed that they’re still trying. My sisters and I went out of our way to be hard to kill,” Dominique said. “We kinda cursed ourselves, so that anytime someone wounds us, they get hurt instead. Attribution on the spell can be a little sketchy at times, but it works for the most part. Although that stake they had looked like it’d cut right through the spell… guess they’ve gotten smarter.”
The SUV’s were catching up and Dominique watched them closely as they drew closer.
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“So, they can’t kill you without that stake, right?” I asked, hoping that meant that we weren’t actually in any danger.
Dominique’s brow remained furrowed.
“I mean it would help… dunno if the spell would help me survive a car wreck, though.”
Her tone implied that she was starting to have second thoughts about the whole ‘getting into a car and driving away from them’ plan.
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“I don’t suppose you know any witchy things that will get rid of them?” I asked.
“I just might…” She replied, “Here, take the wheel for a moment.”
“W-what?”
She didn’t wait for me to take the wheel, she just let it go and forced me to grab it. I watched as Dominique bit down hard on her finger, drawing blood before reaching up toward the windshield to start drawing some sort of sigil on the glass in her own blood.
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I kept my eyes on the road, trying to keep us from hitting any of the cars we passed, so I didn’t get a particularly good look at the sigil.
“What’s that supposed to do?” I asked although Dominique didn’t respond to me.
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The streetlights that we passed started to flicker violently. I watched as Dominique pressed her hand into the center of the sigil, before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. The streetlights around us dimmed, then grew brighter, almost to the point where they were blinding.
“Bruciare,” I heard her say under her breath.
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The lights grew even brighter, before one by one they started to burst. The explosions from them were blinding, as sparks showered down on the road around us. I heard something that sounded a little bit like a deafening thunderclap, but I couldn’t see a thing! I felt Dominique grabbing the steering wheel from me as we veered into another lane. I looked back to see what was left of one of the SUV’s sailing through a shower of sparks, its cabin looked as if it had exploded, with little left of it but twisted metal and angry flames.
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Dominique smirked as she saw the totaled SUV, before focusing on the road again.
"Electrical rune. Hell of a shock, right?" Dominique said.
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Oh, so the magical vampire just deep-fried the religious Knights chasing us with lightning. That was all. I mean, I might have thought it was a little too much but clearly all logic had gone out the window now and insanity had taken hold. I briefly wondered if perhaps I was actually just hallucinating all of this and drooling on the table back at the Thai restaurant while the real Dominique called for a doctor. Or maybe I'd just embarrassed myself so badly that I'd gone completely mad and this was all simply my delusion with which to escape from reality. Who could say, really?
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I saw the second SUV weaving through traffic behind us. I guess watching their friend explode hadn't dissuaded the driver at all, since they were still coming right for us. Dominique's eyes were on the road. I didn't know if she'd noticed them or not. The SUV sped closer to us before suddenly slamming into our side and the entire car lurched violently as Dominique tried to right it.
"Asshole!" She spat. "Dina, the wheel!"
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This time I was ready. I grabbed the wheel as Dominique prepared another rune. The SUV was coming to ram us again. They dipped into oncoming traffic to build some distance between us, before suddenly veering closer to try and ram us again.
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I jerked the wheel to the side, slamming Dominique's car into the SUV before it could hit us and keeping them on the wrong side of the road. Even through the tinted windows, I could see the driver glaring at me... and it wasn't until the last second that he saw the oncoming truck I'd seen about a minute ago. I actually heard him screaming from inside his car the instant before the truck hit him.
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I wasn't really sure how to feel about that and decided that I'd probably need to process the complex emotions that come with having just killed a man later.
​
Dominique was looking at me with a look of utter bewilderment. She looked back at the truck, then back to me.
"You said to take the wheel!" I said!
"Yes... Yes. I did." She replied, before taking the wheel back from me. She took a hard turn onto a new, slightly less busy road. Around us, I could see some quiet warehouses, telling me we'd ended up in the more industrial part of town.
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For a moment, everything was quiet, and we sat there in silence, my heart still racing from experiencing my first ever car chase.
"So… I'm guessing you just want me to drop you off somewhere, huh?" Dominique asked.
"Actually…I could still really go for something to eat," I said quietly just embracing the madness. I was hungry. I had not eaten yet. Might as well fix that!
​
"Wait, really?" Dominique asked. "Well… shit, what's around then?"
"I'm really not picky," I said. "What do vampires eat?"
"Whatever we want. The blood is more of a nutritional thing. We only really need it every few days or so We still need to eat otherwise."
"Really?" I asked, "So what happens if you don't drink blood?"
"You basically just waste away," She said, "And usually you go a little bit crazy… it's never happened to me, but I've heard things. It's not pretty."
"Jesus… yeah, that does sound pretty awful," I said. "Wait, was Jesus real?"
​
Dominique shrugged.
"I dunno. I'm only about 400 years old, give or take. Christianity was a thing long before I was born."
"Right… sorry," I said.
"It's alright! I can tell you a lot about the history of Venice and Brazil though!"
​
I was about to take her up on that when I noticed a new set of headlights behind us.
"Oh hell… are there more of them?" I asked, almost exasperated at this point.
"Seriously, how many people do they have?" Dominique asked, "This is getting stupid!”
“How do you deal with this on a daily basis?” I asked.
“Funnily enough we don’t, they usually leave us alone. I heard that somebody’s jonesing for a promotion though and figured they’d take another crack at us… guess they forgot how badly all of their previous attempts went.”
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The final SUV sped closer to us, and Dominique pumped the brakes, letting him shoot past us. She jerked the wheel hard, pulling into the parking lot of some nearby warehouse, and I saw the SUV desperately trying to make a U turn. I clamped onto the passenger side grab handle (I didn’t actually know what they were called before I sat down to write this. I’ve always called them the ‘Oh Jesus Handle’) as Dominique did a donut, spinning her damaged car to face the entrance to the parking lot she’d just entered. She watched intently as the SUV followed her in, before revving her engine like a complete and total psychopath and rocketing toward the SUV.
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Normally I would have voiced some concern over her absolutely reckless driving skills, but at this point all I could really say was something that sounded a little like: “OHMYGAWHA ARE OH GAAAAAHHH!”
​
The SUV jerked to the side, trying to avoid being hit by Dominique, who turned her wheel suddenly, doing a wide donut around the SUV. Her tires squealed against the asphalt as the SUV tried to avoid her, heading toward the factory before making another hard U Turn to try and face us again. I could see some muzzle flashes through the SUV’s window and heard the sound of bullets striking the body of the car. One of them must have hit a tire, since Dominique seemed to suddenly lose control and the overpowering smell of burning rubber filled my nostrils. The car spun, and Dominique gripped the wheel tightly, trying to control it. She looked up at the SUV, which was coming around to ram us.
​
Her eyes narrowed.
“Out,” She said.
“But what about-”
“Out!”
​
Before I could say a word of protest, she’d hit the brakes, stopping her spin.
“Go!”
The SUV was speeding toward us. I didn’t want to leave her, but every self-preservation instinct I had was telling me to move! I looked Dominique in the eye. She had a stern, somewhat determined expression. I trusted that she knew what she was doing.
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I mean, I don’t think I really had a choice but to trust that she knew what she was doing… I got out of the car, running as fast as my legs would let me as Dominique sped away.
​
The SUV followed her, veering to pursue her as her battered car tried to circle around the SUV again. The destroyed front tire of her car smoked and screamed against the asphalt as she made a hard turn, letting her car fishtail. The rear end of it slammed into the front of the SUV, sending it slightly off course, toward the warehouse.
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Dominique hit the gas again, driving up alongside the SUV and slamming her car against theirs, trying to force them toward the wall. The SUV tried to turn, but couldn’t do so fast enough.
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Both cars hit the wall and crumpled.
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I felt my breath catch in my throat.
​
For a few moments, everything went silent. I stared at the cars, waiting for some kind of movement… and when the door of the SUV opened, I felt my heart sink.
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I watched as the Cowboy dragged himself out of the drivers seat, before his legs gave out from under him. He collapsed onto the pavement, breathing heavily before trying to pick himself up. His hat tumbled off of his head, and he paused to grab it, before gripping the side of his totaled SUV to try and stand again. I saw his eyes shift toward me, although he didn’t say a word. We stood there for a moment, staring at each other from across the parking lot before he reached back into his car and took out the stake I’d seen earlier. The one that Dominique said could probably kill her.
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He looked back at me, before limping around the back of his SUV, heading for Dominique’s car.
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I was running for him before I even knew what I was doing. I grabbed at his jacket, trying to hold him back, stop him from getting closer to her. He growled in frustration before slapping me hard across the cheek and sending me crashing to the ground.
​
“Enough!” He snarled, “Enough…”
He glared down at me, and for a moment I thought he was going to use that stake on me.
But he didn’t.
​
“I don’t know what the hell you think you’re trying to protect, girl… but that thing in there… that isn’t a goddamn person. It’s a fucking plague. I dunno why you motherfuckers try and defend these things. They ain’t human! They ain’t people! Not anymore. Killing it… it’s God’s work, girl. And you don’t stand in the way of God’s work. You understand that? He always wins, girl. God. Wins.”
“Fuck God…” I rasped, trying to pick myself up again. “A-and fuck you, Mister!”
​
The Cowboy just laughed breathlessly.
“Ah hell… welp, shoulda known better than trying to reason with stupid, I guess.” He said, before taking a step toward me. I stumbled back, as his gaze fixated on me with a single minded, murderous dedication.
​
Dominique’s engine roared to life. The Cowboy froze, looking back at it with wide, terrified eyes. I took the opportunity to run, getting out of the way before Dominique’s car jerked backward, slamming into the Cowboy and sending him back to the ground with a cry of pain. Dominique’s car door flew open, and I watched as she stumbled out. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and she had a few minor cuts on her face from where her windshield had shattered. Her hair was a mess.
​
But she was alive.
“Leave the girl alone… jackass…” She spat, as her car door came off entirely.
The Cowboy brandished the stake he had at her, holding it between them as if it was going to shoot out some kind of death beam that would instantly kill her. Although he didn’t seem to have the strength to actually use it. Dominique stared down at him, before looking back at her fallen car door and grabbing it, dragging it toward him.
​
The Cowboy watched as she came, and I saw a grim resignation settle over his face.
“There’s gonna be more of us, Di Cesare…” He hissed, “So long as your motherfuckin’ family is still alive, we will never stop coming for you. You hear me? God wins, vampire! God… wins…”
“Yeah, you guys have done great so far. This is the closest you’ve come in what, over 200 years? Nice work. I’m sure God’s gonna be real proud of you,” Dominique huffed as she approached. She gingerly kicked the stake out of the Cowboy’s hand. He meekly tried to reach for it, although I grabbed it off the ground, keeping it away from him as Dominique stood over him with the car door.
​
He looked up at her, trying to remain composed but I could still clearly see the terror in his eyes.
“Hail Satan, asshole,” Dominique replied, before lifting the car door and bringing it down hard on his head. I didn’t watch as she killed him. But I heard his skull cracking and from the corner of my eye, I saw his body twitch before going limp.
​
Dominique tossed the broken piece of the car door aside, before looking down at the body, and giving an exhausted sigh. She looked back at her totaled car, frowning and taking a moment to quietly mourn it before leaning against it and letting out an exhausted groan.
​
After a moment, I stepped over the body of the man she’d just killed and stood beside her.
“So… wanna go back to my place?” I asked, looking up at her.
Dominique looked back over at me, and for a moment we just sort of stared at each other.
​
***
​
About thirty minutes later, I was back at my apartment, on my back with Dominique on top of me, having the most intense orgasm of my life. My fingernails dug into her back as she kissed me over and over again. I could still taste my own blood on her lips but I didn’t care. I could see stars and there wasn’t a single coherent thought in my mind.
​
I vaguely remember screaming her name as she sank her teeth into me again, and oh God, why did nobody tell me that getting bit by a vampire felt so fucking good?
​
I felt a little dizzy, but in a good way as Dominique kissed the small bite mark she’d left on my neck. My entire body trembled as she lifted her hand from between my legs, smiling knowingly as she kissed me one more time. I held her close, losing myself completely in this moment, and savoring the sensation of her arms wrapping around me. It was exactly as nice as I’d hoped it would be, and as we basked in the afterglow of what had easily just been the best sex of my life, I felt content.
​
Dominique kissed me on the head, before checking on the bite mark again.
“Still doing okay?” She whispered to me.
“Y-yuh…” Was the only response that I was really able to get out.
“Good.”
​
She kissed me again before playing with my hair and fixing my glasses, chuckling softly as she did. I curled up beside her. Her body was cool to the touch, but she pulled the blanket over us so we’d be warm. I closed my eyes, feeling sleep calling me and quietly wished that Dominique would be staying in town for a little bit longer.
​
Oh well.
​
I had every intention of making the most of our time together.
​
***
​
It’s been about a week after Dominique left, and since then I’ve found myself back on Butterfly. I didn’t think I’d have much success there… especially after what happened with Dominique, but strangely it’s been going pretty good, lately. It’s hard to say what’s changed about me, but I’m finding that I’m having an easier time talking to people lately.
​
I guess once you’ve survived a car chase with a bunch of religious fanatics, talking to strangers online doesn’t seem as scary anymore.
​
I’ve even got another date lined up for tonight! Her name is Piper, and while I don’t think it’s going to be as crazy as my first date with Dominique was, I’ve still got a good feeling about it. For the first time in a while, I feel like things are going to work out for me.

In hindsight, I should have listened to the kill-bill alarm bells in my head when eight-year-old Cassie announced she and her cabin mates were going to skip out on camp activities and play Operation instead.
Though it’s not like I didn’t have things on my mind. Seven counsellors had gone missing—along with our head counsellor who was supposed to be taking care of us.
It started out fairly normal. I mean, one or two counselors wasn’t bad, right?
Lily and Joey had been drowning in sexual tension for a while, so nobody was surprised when they sneaked into the woods for what I could only guess was the most uncomfortable sex ever. But then they didn’t come back.
Teddy and Yuri went to look for them, and then they too also disappeared. It was almost like a wild animal was lying in wait for another unsuspecting teenager to cross its path.
With six of us left, I was definitely freaking out.
I wasn’t expecting summer camp to be like this. I did consider working in my local Sephora, but mom had a preference—and whether I was eighteen years old or not, she was getting her way. So, it was goodbye civilization, and hello Canadian wilderness.
There were fifteen kids queued up in front of me for lunch, and I was having a hard time keeping that optimistic Camp Redwood smile.
I couldn’t help constantly counting how many hours it had been since the latest disappearance, Connor.
He was supposed to be helping with getting the emergency generator going, after the electricity sizzled out.
The boy was gone an hour later. This was happening fast. Whatever was going on with the counsellors was burning through all of us. Would it happen to me?
I had seen so many TV shows and movies set in a summer camp where every camper and counsellor was doomed to die in the grossest way possible. Was that going to happen to us?
I tightened my grip around the stupid ladle I had found myself stirring, a giant pot of chocolate syrup. Watching watery chocolate drip from the edge, I felt nauseous. Of all the summer camp’s mom had to send me to, it had to be the one with vanishing counsellors and zero adult authority. Which meant we were the authority. Twelve teenagers who came to relax and babysit a bunch of little kids before college.
We had to put on brave faces and pretend everything was absolutely fine—and we weren’t all terrified out of our fucking minds.
At the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Harry offering piggybacks to a bunch of little kids, with one of the littles, Eleanor, wrapping her arms around his neck and squealing.
From the look on the boy’s face, he wanted to stop. It was hard to keep a façade when reality was becoming harder and harder to bear. Abandoning his hat completely, Harry was dripping with sweat, trying to twist his lips into the Camp Redwood grin. But looking closer, as he galloped across the cabin with Eleanor holding on for dear life, the guy was ready to collapse. I didn’t blame him.
Entertaining the kids was supposed to be Teddy’s assignment—and he was who knows where. I had taken over lunch duties for Lily, who had joined the long list of the missing.
Harry was supposed to be joining the search party for the missing councellors, but had ended up becoming the little’s personal punching bag.
When I first met him, Harry Carlisle had been the kid who sat on the side-lines and offered sarcastic remarks and crude jokes. Now, he had been reduced to a playground ride the kids pretended didn’t have an off switch.
He had enjoyed maybe the first two rides to raise morale, but now I could see the strain in his eyes. “Ow!” Harry winced when the little girl’s fingers prodded at his eyes. “Hey! Eleanor, not my eyes!” He was dangerously close to toppling over, though managed to catch his footing, ordering all of them off of his back. “Horse Rides are over!” He cupped his mouth, shouting across the cabin when a group of kids surrounded him with equally terrifying faces. Harry backed away and threw his hands up. “Come on, guys, my back isn’t built for all of you!”
“Horsey!” The kids shouted back in a cacophony of giggles.
It was 10 against one.
Against two, if I got involved. Which wasn’t going to happen. There was no way I was putting effort into play-fighting a bunch of eight-year-olds. Harry shot me a hopeful look, though I pretended not to see, busying myself with slightly burned nuggets.
Running his fingers through thick strands of sandy colored hair, Harry pulled a face when a little girl, Phoebe, was brave enough to step forward.
“No.” Harry shook his head, squeezing the front of his counsellor shirt practically glued to him. The temperature still hadn’t let up, and it was heading towards 8PM. Night-time, I thought dizzily. It was almost bedtime, and still no adults. “I refuse to surrender,” He told her. “Phoebe, I am not joking around when I’m saying my back is hurting. We’ve been playing horsey’s for two hours.”
“So?”
“So!” Harry couldn’t yell or hiss, or swear at them. That was a big no-no with kids.
However, I could see he was coming close to breaking that rule. “Because I’m tired,” he said through a Camp Redwood grin, which was quickly twitching into a grimace.
I think all of us had given up with the fake enthusiasm when our colleagues started to vanish. Now, we were just shells of our former happy selves. “And… uh… did you know that if you ride a horsey at this time, the ghosts will come and get you?”
When a boy opened his mouth, his eyes widening with fright, Harry realized his mistake.
“I mean the nice ghosts! Yeah! The uh, the nice ghosts who haunt..I mean play in these woods? It’s a well-known Camp Redwood legend that ghosts don’t like horse rides. In fact,” his lips curved into a devilish smile now he had several faces staring at him. The kids dropped onto the ground to listen, their hands clasped in their laps. This was the quietest they had been all day. I could understand though. Harry had taken the reins around the campfire telling ghost stories for three nights in a row, and the guy was a damn good storyteller.
With every eye on him, Harry lowered his voice into a whisper. “Do you guys want to know what they do?”
The kids nodded with wide eyes.
“They sneak into unsuspecting cabin’s…”
“Harry.”
Rowan’s voice came from outside in a warning. The window was open, and the guy was standing watch to see if any counsellors came back. Since the only adult had disappeared, he had been appointed leader—and the guy was taking himself a little too seriously.
His warning was valid though. Sometimes Harry’s ghost stories were a little too scary for little kids, who’s Imaginations tended to run wild—especially at night. Olive, my cabin-mate, had to give up her bed for a little girl who was convinced Harry’s depiction of Slenderman, “The tree boy” was going to sneak into her bed and turn her into an apple seed.
“Did I say sneak into cabin’s? I meant dance around the woods…” Harry corrected himself. “And they look for their next unsuspecting victim…”
“Harry!”
“Friend.” Harry swallowed his words when a little boy’s eyes went wide. “I mean they are looking for a friend! So, the point of my story is…”
“Horsey rides get us new friends?” Phoebe wasn’t buying it. I could tell from the slight arch of her brow and her widening smile.
The girl shook dark curls out of her face, smirking. I think it was her pleading eyes which won him over. Because, with a sigh which definitely wasn’t joking around, the guy dropped onto his knees and practically spat at her to climb on his back—and she did, plonking one sparkling shoe on top of the boy’s spine with enough force to send him onto his stomach. I might have been imagining it, but since when were these littles so outlandishly spiteful?
The little girl was grinning. Not because she could ride her “horsey” but because Harry looked like he was going to either wring her neck, or wring his own. Mom had a “talk” before I started here, and she made sure to tell me that if adult authority is nowhere to be seen, little kids will start to act out.
I could definitely call it acting out, but I had spent all day with her several days earlier playing with dolls and having a teddy bear picnic when she admitted she didn’t want to swim in the lake with the other kids. Phoebe had been shy and only spoke to me through her teddy bear, so what had changed?
Could the lack of adults really be scaring the kids that much?
“Miss Josie?”
I wasn’t paying attention, half noticing some kids had just helped themselves, piling chicken nuggets and cookies on plastic plates and hurrying to their seats like I couldn’t see them.
Blinking away brain fog, I found myself face to face with Eli, who was probably my favorite camper.
You’re not supposed to have personal preferences when working with little kids, because your opinions could upset them.
However, it was incredibly hard not to like Eli.
Hiding behind a mop of brown curls, the boy was one of the more vocal kids in the group. Eli said he wanted to be an inventor when he was older, and he wanted to make robots. The kid had asked me if I wanted to see his robot collection, but I was too busy with setting up camp activities. Standing in front of me and clutching his tray, the boy was frowning.
“Josie, I just saw some kids steal chicken nuggets.”
I shrugged, shovelling a large portion on his tray. “Well, you can have some extra too.”
Eli’s smile wasn’t as big as usual. “Where’s Teddy?”
I pretended to be oblivious, hastily adding more nuggets to his tray as if I could keep his mouth shut with extra food. “He’ll be back soon! Teddy is just playing in the woods.”
“No, he’s not.”
At first, I thought I’d heard the boy wrong. The kid wasn’t looking at me, counting his nuggets as usual with the prongs of his plastic fork.
I leaned forward with my best smile. “I’m sorry, what was that, Eli?”
The kid lifted his head with a wide grin. “Can I borrow a knife, Josie?”
“Why do you need a knife?”
Leaning forward, the boy shrugged. “There’s a squirrel caught in a trap,” he said. “I want to put it out of its misery, Miss Josie. It’s in a lot of pain.”
That was… dark.
“Well, I can’t give you a knife…” I trailed off, my gaze finding Harry and the growing line of kids awaiting a horse-ride. “But! How about you go and ask Harry for a piggy-back ride?” I pointed to myself with a forced grin. “I’ll save the squirrel!” And when the boy’s eyes filled with tears and he shook his head, I reached out, grasped his hand, and squeezed it as tight as I could. “Eli, we don’t need to do that, okay? I’m sure the squirrel can be saved and I’ll make sure to take it to the vet, okay?”
“But what if it doesn’t need saving?”
I squeezed tighter. “I’ll save it, Eli. I promise.”
Eli didn’t look convinced, but he nodded with a grumble. “Okay.” He said, before twisting around and joining the other kids torturing Harry. Immediately, I left my station—whether Rowan liked it or not—and headed outside to look for this supposedly dying squirrel. That was something we didn’t need. The sky was darkening when I made it into the woods, cotton candy clouds blurring through the thick canopy of trees. Eli said it was near the sign pointing towards the lake. Though I couldn’t see anything. Odd. That thought retracted in my head, however, when I stepped forward, and a squelching sound cut through the silence of my own heavy breaths mixing with insect chitters and nightlife buzzing above me and beneath me. The wet sounding squelch twisted my gut, and when I stared down at the ground, I didn't know what I was expecting.
A squashed squirrel, perhaps? In Eli’s words, the poor thing had been on the edge of death. Though, when I was thinking about it, there were no animal traps around camp. That was basic health and safety. So, what the fuck was I looking at? The bottom of my shoe was caked in dried blood, but it was the thing which was stamped into the dirt which sent my heart into my throat. It looked like an eye.
But looking closer as I lowered myself to the ground, I glimpsed something metallic, something glistening around the pupil. I picked up a stick and prodded it, though the thing didn’t move. It was definitely an eye—the eye of some kind of animal, judging from the pigmentation and the color of the iris.
But it was the metallic pieces around the eye which was throwing me off. Part of a trap, maybe? It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that a poor critter had been ripped apart, and a wild bear had dropped its dinner near the camp—and the metal encasing its eye was most likely pieces of trap.
Peering closer, though, I glimpsed silver slithers in what appeared to be the destroyed nerve caked to my shoe. After scraping most of it off, I caught glistening pieces of blood stained metal catching the late-setting sun. This time, I pinched a piece between my forefinger and thumb. It didn’t look like a bear-trap. The metal itself wasn’t serrated or old. In fact, it was new.
Which begged the question: What was this thing?
Whatever it was, it had started converting what looked like a critter’s eye, before stopping. Was it a virus? When that thought slammed into me, I fell back with a hiss, swiping my hands on my shirt.
“What are you doing?”
I almost jumped out of my skin, diving to my feet.
Carmel was standing behind me, grasping what looked like her sixth or seventh coffee. The girl had been running to and from the coffee machine all day, and I had been silently counting how much caffeine she was consuming. Carmel had been a well put together and fairly popular girl when camp started. She immediately had everyone following her beck and call, all of the boy’s (and girl’s) following her around.
Carmel wasn't straight. She made that clear on the bus to camp, announcing she wasn’t interested in guy’s, and that she had a girlfriend back home. Still though, the guy’s still followed her because... well, she was pretty.
Carmel was my bunk-mate and had woken me up on three separate occasions at 6am to go through the exact same hair and makeup routine. Now though, there was no sign of makeup or even that she had brushed her hair.
Instead of its usual tidy blonde ponytail, Carmel’s curls were tied into raggedy pigtails with ribbons I was sure she had stolen from a camper’s doll. I think what was keeping her going was coffee.
Carmel regarded me with too-wide eyes and a Camp Redwood smile we all knew was fake. She was grasping onto her coffee cup for dear life. “Josie!” she jumped when I jumped, which almost made me laugh. “Rowan’s having an emergency meeting in his cabin,” she said.
“So, whatever you’re doing can wait.”
Her gaze flicked to the ground. “What… are you doing?”
For a brief moment, I considered telling Carmel I may have found what looked like a virus which turned flesh and blood to metal—before I remembered her reaction when a spider had crept into our cabin.
Whatever this thing was, keeping it a secret for now was probably what was best. Making sure I was standing on the thing, I shrugged. “I was looking for the others.”
Carmel cocked her head, before resting her coffee on the ground. “In the dirt?”
“Footprints, Carmel.”
The girl looked confused before shaking her head. “Okay, whatever. Tell the others I’ll be there in a sec, I just need to make sure the kids are okay. We’re putting a movie on for them in the lunch hall, so that will hopefully distract them for maybe two hours.”
I nodded. “Did anyone find a phone?”
“Not with signal.”
“Carmel.” I had to fight back the urge to yell at her to keep her voice down. Kids were curious, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had some littles peeking into our conversation. “You’re okay.” I said softly.
“I mean, we’re not okay, because yes, things are very.. screwed up right now, but we need to be… optimistic.” I exhaled out a breath, searching for eyes in the dark. I tried to smile, tried to keep up that Camp Redwood façade we were all held hostage by until the last day of camp (According to rule 5 in the Camp Redwood counsellor handbook, all counsellors must retain a smile and a positive attitude. If any counselor is caught making a frowny face, or spreading what we call “unhappiness” we will be forced to send the counselor home).
At this point, I didn’t give a fuck—but part of me didn’t want to scare the little kids.
“No, Josie.” The girl grasped hold of my shoulders with a grin rivalling the joker. “I am so sick of being told to keep smiling, because what is that doing? Three of my cabin-mates are missing! I’m the one left, and Rowan and co expect me to keep up this act? We are fucked!"
She cupped her mouth. “F. U. C. K. E. D. We have zero adults, an unexplainable loss of power every few hours which makes no sense in the middle of nowhere—I mean what the fuck is out there which is sucking that much power, huh? There is no explanation! There should be an explanation. I should be able to think, “oh, yeah! That’s why! But no. Things are happening, and I don’t know why they’re happening. Rowan is trying to force us to act like things are okay —but in reality? He is shitting himself, Josie! We are ALL shitting ourselves!”
I took a step back, keeping hold of her hand. Carmel was trembling, her hands clammy and slimy entangled in mine. “He's just trying to keep the kids from freaking out."
She groaned, tears glistening in her eyes. “Okay, yeah! I’m blaming them because they keep acting like everything is okay—”
“Everything IS okay.” I turned to her with what I hoped was a reassuring smile—knowing damn well about the thing I’d found in the dirt. If that thing could spread, it would have a field day in an enclosed space like a summer camp.
I noticed my own hands which had been touching the thing making contact with Carmel, and dropped my hands, inwardly squirming.
If that thing was a virus, I was already fucked.
Maybe Carmel too.
If it was fast acting, it could explain the counsellor disappearances. I was already putting together a plan in my head as we headed back to the main cabin. We had to put together a search party. Some of us would stay with the kids, while a small group would venture into the woods to try and look for traces of the missing. If I was right, we would find a horror scene in the woods, and yes, that would be the time to panic.
If I was wrong, however, there was still hope.
“Are we going to be okay?”
Carmel’s voice sliced into my thoughts, and I took a moment to drink in the camp around us.
Usually, when the sky was turning twilight, it would be bustling with campers and counselors toasting marshmallows on the fire and gathering around to fall asleep to Harry’s ghost stories. Carmel would be knelt with a bunch of kids, watching a YouTube video they had all insisted on her watching, while Rowan would be hiding behind his book with his knees to his chest, his gaze glued to every page he flicked through, ignoring everyone.
Teddy, making funny faces for kids who were scared, and Connor, handing out plates of burgers and hot dogs. I remembered feeling safe and at home, cosy around the flickering orange of the fire as chatter turned to laughter and white-noise in my head. After the kids went back to their cabins, the group of us would resume positions around the fire, but this time it was more… intimate. With Allison in her cabin, we kind of ignored her rules all together.
Making out happened, because of course it did. Beers stolen from Allison’s mini fridge and raging hormones, as well as late-night skinny dipping in the lake did that. Couples went off into the woods, and we all felt completely comfortable and at home with each other.
Looking around at that moment, I felt sick to my stomach. That feeling was gone.
The feeling of family and familiarity and friendship. What I was looking at now was that same log we had all sat on, now turned on its side—hot dog buns and candy wrappers littering the ground. It was a ghost camp.
I could still see Connor’s jacket slung on the ground, and Lili’s bright pink ray bans sitting on a beer can. Because there were no adults to yell at us to clean up after ourselves. I was frowning at the skeleton of the fire when Carmel nudged me. “Hey.” Her voice was shaking slightly. “Josie? You didn’t answer my question.” Carmel wanted me to be the voice of reason, and I wasn’t that. I was just as scared as her.
There was only so much I could sugar-coat, and I gave up doing that after the third counsellor disappeared. All I could offer her was forced optimism.
“Yes.” I said. “Just keep the kids busy, alright?”
“Right.”
When I was twisting around and power-walking to Rowan’s cabin, I shouted over my shoulder, “Give them some of those animal crackers!”
“What animal crackers?”
I turned to elaborate, but Carmel was gone.
When I finally got to Rowan’s cabin, I was sweating through my shirt, and had an idea of what I was going to tell the others. It was… a thing. Which could be considered a disease or a virus—so it was vital that we split into two groups; half of us would search for the others, while the others would look for anything to get in contact with the outside world. An emergency landline, laptop, or cell phone.
I did have one problem, which was lack of evidence. All which was left from the thing I’d found was stuck to my foot. The rest of it was buried in the dirt. It was too dark to search for it, and we would be wasting time doing so.
All of that was in my mind and tangled on my tongue, one single string of incomprehensible gibberish I wasn’t even sure was English, when I stepped into Rowan’s cabin, where four sets of eyes met mine. Olive, cross legged on the floor with her arms folded, Harry, pacing up and down with a brand new bruise blooming under his eye, courtesy of Eleanor almost poking his eyes out—and Rowan himself sitting on top bunk, his legs swinging off of the side.
The guy wasn’t built to be our leader, originally being the laziest of our group, opting for sitting in a tree with a book, rather than helping set up camp activities. Yet he had become our default guy in charge because he so happened to be wearing the head counsellor hat when Allison disappeared. Admittedly, it suited him, the bright red of the cap contrasted his dark curls under a late setting sun through the back window, setting strands of straying hair on fire.
The hat was a little too big for his head, though, slipping over his eyes.
Rowan looked like a divorced father of two, dark circles bruising his eyes, and a very “dad-like” scowl curling on his lips.
With a clipboard pressed to his chest, and a pen he was chewing on, the boy resembled a grown man who had just caught his daughter coming in after curfew. “Josie.” Spitting the pen’s lid out of his mouth, he scribbled something down. I had no doubt he was tracking my attendance for these stupid crisis meetings. His eyes were wild, scanning me for answers. “Where the fuck is Carmel?”
I shut the door behind me, leaning against it with my arms folded. “So, we can swear now?”
“Yes.” Rowan rolled his eyes. “There are no kids here, so go crazy,” he pointed at me with the pen. “Carmel. Where is she?”
“Keeping the kids busy,” Callan’s muffled voice came from the bottom bunk. I could barely see the guy lying on his stomach, his face stuffed into a pillow. “It was my idea to play Shrek for them, but the little shits said they haven’t seen it,” the boy lifted his head, his lips carved into a scowl. “I’m sorry, am I tripping? Everyone’s seen Shrek! Do these kids expect the Minecraft movie?”
“They don’t like that, either,” Harry stopped pacing the cabin. “Eleanor looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if she liked it."
“Fortnite, too.” Olive said, a cushion pressed to her chest. “I suggested playing it a few days ago, and like, zero kids knew what it was.”
“Six counsellors are missing,” Rowan raised his voice over the other’s chatter. “And you’re questioning what games they like?” His eyes found mine once more. “So, Carmel is with the kids? You’re absolutely sure of it?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I just saw her five minutes ago.”
“Great.” Rowan said, sarcastically. “I’m sure she won’t go missing under mysterious circumstances.”
“Stop.” Olive shot him a glare, throwing a cushion in his face. “I told you. They’re probably lost—- or maybe they went to get help?”
“We’ve all been trained to know every inch of these woods,” Rowan catapulted the cushion right back at her. “They’re not lost.”
“Well, where are they?!” Callan sat up, bringing his knees to his chest. I had never seen the guy looked this vulnerable. “Allison made sense. She probably had other duties, and left us to look after the kids. But six counselors? All of them disappearing—- our phone signal completely cutting out, electricity cutting off, not once, but twice? What is even sucking all of our power?”
“I got the emergency generator working,” Olive raised her arm. “Connor and I managed it before…” she trailed off.
“Before Connor disappeared.” Callan finished for her. “And before him, it was Joey, Lily, Mira, Yuri, Noah, and Teddy. Which isn’t a fucking coincidence,” he shot Rowan a look, who glared down at his lap. I could tell the boy didn’t want to lead all of us, come up with plans and answer questions we desperately needed answering. His job was to look after us, as well as the littles, and so far, he was doing a pretty good job. I could tell by his expression that he thought the opposite, but he had managed to keep the kids from finding out about something as sinister as someone actively kidnapping counsellors.
He made sure they were fed, entertained, and safe watching a movie—while we were scared for our lives. Rowan was keeping up the façade no matter how scared he was. The boy dropped his head into his lap with a sigh. It looked like he might fall asleep before he slammed the clipboard into his face to wake himself up.
Nobody wanted to admit what Callan was saying, but we were all definitely thinking it. “This was planned.” Callan continued.
“Someone out here is fucking with us, very clearly trying to freak us out. Now they've got six of us. ” He spread out his arms. “How long until one of the littles gets taken, huh? A bunch of 18 year olds aren’t going to satisfy them, so what about when they start taking campers? We are in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere with a serial kidnapper on the loose, and did we really just leave fifteen kids in the care of a girl who thought Australia was in England?”
“In Carmel’s defence, she was black-out drunk when she said that,” Olive murmured.
“Voice down!” Rowan hissed. “Do you want to scare them?!” His gaze flicked to me. “Did you do a headcount during dinner?”
I nodded. “Fifteen kids all accounted for. Ten are in the lunch hall, and five girls are in Cassie’s cabin playing Operation.”
“All day?” Olive spoke up. “Weren’t they playing that this morning? I tried to get into their cabin to give them breakfast, but they just shooed me away and locked the door.”
“Fuck.” Rowan ran his fingers down his face. “Alright, I’ll go and see what’s going on with them. Knowing Cassie and her friends, they’re probably zonked out on stolen candy. When all of the kids are accounted for in the lunch cabin, we gather outside.”
I swallowed, speaking up. “I actually wanted to talk to you guys about something.”
Rowan lifted his head, jutting the edge of the clipboard into his chin. “Go on…”
“I found something?” I pulled a face. “I mean, think I’ve found something?”
I wasn't sure how to explain to a dwindling group of exhausted teenagers that there may be something even more terrifying than potential kidnappers out there. Four blank faces started back at me, and Rowan leaned forward with a frown. “Like, in general? Josie, we don’t have time to go foraging.”
“You could call it a lead,” I said. “But I need your eyes to find it.”
“Uh-huh. But what is it?”
Thinking back to what exactly I had seen, I had no idea how to describe it. “It’s better if I just… showed you.”
Rowan looked sceptical, but nodded. “Alright. Josie comes with me. We’ll check out Allison’s cabin again to look for an emergency line, and you can show me whatever this ‘thing’ is you’ve found. Then we’ll escort Cassie and the other girl’s to the lunch cabin. Every camper needs an escort from now on. The rest of you? Act normal. If the kids see you freaking out, they will also freak out—and we need to keep up morale.” The boy pointed to Olive. “Olive, you sit in with the kids and look after them. Callan, check out the emergency generator. Harry, the kids see you as a playground ride, so use that to your advantage. Offer them horse rides if they’re scared. And with the ghost stories, it’s making it worse. Give them piggybacks.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
Rowan cleared his throat. “We all keep up appearances. If the others turn up, after getting high or… I don’t know, having an orgy in the woods—- I will fucking kill them.” The way he smiled through his teeth, jumping off the bunk, his toes primed like a wild animal, I knew he wasn’t joking. If this was a well-constructed prank the other counselors were playing, I had no doubt Rowan would rip them apart for leaving him as a reluctant leader. To my surprise, the others wandered off with their tasks.
I watched Rowan lift up his pillow and pull out a pack of animal crackers, ripping open the bag and pouring the contents into his mouth. He caught my eye, crunching through mini animal crackers. “I didn’t have lunch,” he said through a mouthful.
I couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief as we headed across camp, Rowan in front of me, while I lagged behind.
“So, what’s the plan?” I caught up to him, almost tripping over a log.
The guy didn’t turn around. “I am completely winging it,” he said through a choked laugh. “I have no idea what I’m doing, and if I’m honest? I just want to go home, dude. I haven’t looked after this many kids in my life, and if I have to smile one more time as a little brat, I am going to fucking lose my mind.” He heaved out a breath. “I am making this up as I go along.”
I laughed that time. “That’s… comforting.”
“Yeah?” He turned to shoot me a grin. “Well, rest assured I am just about as scared—if not more scared than you,” as we stopped in front of Cassie’s cabin, his gaze found mine. “Is it me…” he said softly, “Or does the lunch cabin seem quiet.”
He was right. The windows were dark when they should have been illuminated by the TV screen. Instead of answering, I stepped in front of him, grasping hold of the cabin door. “Cassie?” I knocked three times. “Girl’s, are you okay in there? It’s Josie and Rowan.” I tried the door, and it slid open. Shooting a look at the boy behind me, I turned back to the door. “We’re coming in, okay?”
“Wait!”
Cassie squeaked from inside. “But he’s not finished!”
Ignoring the coil of dread unravelling in my gut, I forced the door open and stepped into unusually milky white light which flooded the cabin. The first thing I saw was eight-year-old Cassie, sitting cross legged with her back to me. She was sitting in a circle with the other girls, no doubt playing their game.
When I stepped closer, however, I noticed something pooling across the wooden floor. It must have been juice or water that they had spilled. I took another step, but this time, clammy fingers wrapped around my wrist and yanked me back. Rowan didn't speak, but his eyes were elsewhere. Initially, they had been drinking in the cabin before they found oblivion entirely. I heard his breath start to accelerate, his grip tightening on my wrist.
I had half a mind to pull away, before I saw the body shaped carcass the girls were sitting around. In the dim light of the cabin, it used to be a person. Teddy. I could still see parts of an identity, freckled cheeks and eyes which were still open, still staring at the sky.
But that was where the similarities to the missing counsellor ended. The thing which used to be Teddy was more of a shell, a scooped out thing resembling a human body. What sent me stumbling backwards, my mouth open in a silent scream, was the almost surgical efficiency of each organ's removal, like it really was a game of operation. His heart, lungs, and intestines were in one pile-- while his brain was cupped between little Cassie's bloody hands— and when my gaze found the little girl, Nina, hiding behind dark curly hair, I was seeing what looked like a toy robot’s head in her hands. In my head, I was thinking about the eye with the metallic pieces glittering around its pupil, and something turned in my gut.
Did I find a human eye?
I was staring at the crevice inside the boy's skull, and the boxes of surgical equipment piled on the girl's bunks, when Rowan finally pulled me back, and I was stumbling straight onto my ass. "We need to go." Rowan spoke through a croak. Cassie’s words rattled in my head. Teddy, I thought.
Teddy wasn’t finished.
"Josie. Get up. Now!" My head was spinning, and I was sure I'd thrown up. I didn’t even realize we had managed to stumble from the girl’s cabin before cool air grazed my face, tickling my cheeks. Something wet and warm, and lumpy was spattering the front of my shirt.
Before I could coerce words, the boy was pulling me to my feet, and I was seeing stars in my eyes, blinking brightly. When the two of us started forwards in a run, Rowan stopped abruptly. I followed his gaze to find several kids surrounding his cabin, where Harry, Olive and Callan were. Maybe I was hallucinating, but Eleanor and Phoebe, both of whom wielding weapons where I had no idea where they had gotten them—looked… taller? Rowan didn’t waste time, dragging me back. “Allison’s cabin.” He spoke in cry which became a sob, pulling me across camp, stumbling over rocky ground.
“We need a phone. Fuck, we need a phone. We need a phone.” Rowan was struggling to stand, occasionally bending over and choking up dust.
“They were playing Operation."
Literal operation.
“But they’re just kids!” I choked out.
Little kids, who had surgically removed every organ inside Teddy’s body.
Little kids, who were hunting the other counsellors down, and would surely be coming for us.
Allison’s cabin was thankfully further into the woods. When we were safe inside and Rowan was locking the door, I dry heaved several times, unable to get the sight of glistening gore splattering the cabin floor from my mind. “Josie.” Rowan was already tearing apart the cabin. “Work with me here, okay? We don’t… we don’t have fucking time to freak out, or to barf—we need to help. Now.” Rowan was almost in tears, and when he hit the ground on his knees, I took over. I searched Allison’s desk first. Nothing of importance, just documents and invoices. Digging through her draw, there was still nothing. We were running out of time.
Abandoning the desk, I went through her suitcase and bags. When I was crawling under her bed to try and find a weapon, Rowan hissed out. “Wait.” When I turned to him, he was still kneeling, but his foot was clamping down on a loose plank. The guy didn’t hesitate, pulling at the loose plank, which, to my confusion, revealed what looked to me like a trap door.
Rowan turned to me. “You’re kidding.”
I could only stare at the trap door revealing stone steps. He peered down, his voice echoing. “Allison has a fucking secret bunker?”
His lips curved into a surprisingly childish grin which took me off guard. “Oh, wow, that’s so cooooool!”
Lifting my head at the sound of loud squealing, I glimpsed a group of littles led by Eleanor stalking towards us. Eleanor had a hostage. Harry. And with the way she was sticking the blade of a scary looking knife to his throat, I figured she meant business.
Their height difference was almost comical. The eighteen year old guy had to hunch over so the little girl could successfully keep him prisoner. Behind them in the trees, I could see something illuminating the dark, an electric blue light bathing their faces.
So, that was there the power was going.
But what the fuck were these eight-year-old’s doing?
“Josie!” Rowan hissed from down below. He had already climbed down.
I joined him, struggling down the stone steps, before replacing the loose plank. If these kids were as smart as I thought, it wouldn’t take them long to realize the loose plank—also a trap door. Allison’s bunker was more of a control room. There were multiple screens lit up, a chair in front of a working MacBook. The phone-line was cut. But that didn’t make sense.
The kids were unaware of the bunker, so who cut the phone lines? Rowan was on the laptop, struggling to get through the password protection, so I turned my attention to piles of cardboard boxes.
When I opened them, I found myself staring at animal crackers.
There were hundreds of them, packed on top of each other. Looking further, digging through the boxes, I found a piece of old crumpled paper which looked ancient.
REGARDING PROJECT SPEARHEAD SUBJECTS:
PLEASE DO NOT INGEST UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. IF MULTIPLE SUBJECTS INGEST, PLEASE USE SELF DESTRUCT.
ONLY USE IN CASES SUCH AS IMMINENT DESTRUCTION TO THE PLANET/THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR.
(PLEASE CONTACT FAMILIES IN ADVANCE. MAKE SURE TO INGEST WITH WATER TO AVOID NEUROLOGICAL SYMPTOMS SUCH AS PSYCHOSIS, EXTREME VIOLENCE. PLEASE APPROACH SUBJECTS WITH CAUTION.
Something ice cold slithered down my spine.
Abandoning the boxes, I searched through a cabinet filled with files which were crumbling apart from age. I picked one at random and flicked through it.
Eleanor Summer’s.
Sex: Female.
DOB: 08/05/1977.
Initially, I thought I was reading the dates wrong. But then, with my heart in my throat, I was grasping for other files.
Eli Evermore.
Sex: Male.
'DOB: 08/03/1979.
“Rowan.” I managed to get out through a breath.
“Mm?”
“They’re not children.”
The boy rubbed his eyes, frowning. His eyes were half lidded, almost confused. “Huh?”
“Eleanor.” I whispered. “Is forty five years old.”
He nodded slowly, turning back to the laptop. “How do you spell… documents? I’m looking for digital versions but I can’t find any.”
“You don’t know how to spell documents?”
“It’s been a hard day.” The boy whined, tipping his head back and blowing a raspberry.
Whatever I was going to say was choked in the back of my throat, when a loud bang sounded from above, the sounds of childish giggling coming through the floorboards. But the laughter didn’t sound like little kids. No, it sounded like teenager’s who were acting like little kids. I stared at the boxes of animal crackers, and then at the file confirming Eleanor’s real age.
My own words shuddered through me, and I remembered finding Teddy’s dismembered carcass in Cassie’s cabin. When I had caught her gaze, the little girl didn’t look scared, and somehow, her fingers wrapped around the scalpel looked just right.
Like the little bitch knew exactly what she was doing.
“Helloooo?” Harry’s voice was a hysterical giggle. “Olly, Olly, Oxen freeee!”
“Are you in heeeeeeere?” Carmel joined in. I could hear their footsteps above, dancing across the room.
Clamping my hand over my mouth, I dragged my knees to my chest and prayed they weren’t smart enough to figure out we were right underneath them.
Knowing the truth about them, though? I wasn’t counting on it.
….
That was an hour ago.
We’re still stuck down here, and I can get a connection here—thank god. For some reason, Alison has blocked all social media. We need help. We’re at Camp Redwood, and these kids ARE NOT KIDS.
Whatever Project Spearhead is was designed to keep them here.
The phone-line is cut so we can’t get help from whoever was helping Allison. I am counting on you guys.
Get us out of here!

The whirring blades of my MD-902 throbbed against the warm evening air, and I smiled.
From 5,000 feet, the ground flew by in a carpet of dark forests and kelly-green fields. The sun hung low on the horizon in a picturesque array of dazzling orange and gold, and I could make out the narrow strip of the Ohio River to my left, glistening in the fading daylight. This time of year, the trees would be full of the sweet aroma of fresh blossoms, and the frequent rains kept small pockets of fluffy white mist hanging in the treetops. It was a beautiful view, one that reminded me of why being a helicopter pilot trumped flying in a jumbo jet far above the clouds every day of the week.
Fourteen more days, and I’m debt free.
That made me grin even more. I’d been working as a charter pilot ever since I obtained my license at age 19, and after years of keeping my nose to the grindstone, I was closing on the final payment for real-estate in western Pennsylvania. With no debt, a fixer-upper house on 30 rural acres all to myself, and a respectable wage for a 26-year-old pilot, I looked forward to the financial freedom I could now enjoy. Maybe I’d take a vacation, somewhere exotic like Venice Italy, or the Dominican Republic. Or perhaps I’d sock the money back for the day I started a family.
“Remember kleineun, a real man looks after his own.”
My elderly ouma’s voice came back from the depths of my memories, her proud, sun-tanned face rising from the darkness. She and my Rhodesian grandfather had emigrated to the US when they were newlyweds, as the violence against white Boer descendants in South Africa spiraled out of control. My mother and father both died in a car crash when I was six, and it had been my grandparents who raised me. Due to this, I’d grown up with a slight accent that many of my classmates found amusing, and I could speak both English, and Afrikaans, the Boer tongue of our former home.
I shifted in my seat, stretched my back muscles, and glanced at the picture taped to my console. Both my parents flanked a grinning, gap-toothed six-year-old me, at the last Christmas we’d spent together. My mother beamed, her dark hair and Italian features a sharp contrast to my father’s sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. Sometimes, I liked to imagine they were smiling at me with pride at how well I flew the old silver-colored bird my company had assigned to me, and that made the long, lonely flights easier to bear.
A flicker caught my eye, and I broke my gaze away from the photograph.
Perched in its small cradle above the controls, my little black Garmin fuzzed over for a few seconds, its screen shifting from brightly colored maps to a barrage of grey static.
Did the power chord come loose?
I checked, ensuring the power-cable for the unit’s battery was plugged into the port on the control panel. It was a brand-new GPS unit, and I’d used it a few times already, so I knew it wasn’t defective. Granted, I could fly and navigate without it, but the Garmin made my time as a pilot so much easier that the thought of going blind was dreadful.
My fuel gauge danced, clicked to empty, then to full, in a bizarre jolt.
More of the gauges began to stutter, the entire panel seeming to develop terrets all at once, and my pulse began to race. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the sludge inside my bowels churned with sour fear.
“Come on, come on.” I flicked switches, turned dials, punched buttons, but nothing seemed to fix the spasming electronics. Every gauge failed, and without warning, I found myself plunged into inky darkness.
Outside, the sun surrendered to the pull of night, the sky darker than usual. A distant rumble of thunder reverberated above the roar of my helicopter’s engine, and I thought I glimpsed a streak of yellowish lightning on the far horizon to my left.
Calm down Chris. We’re still flying, so it must just be a blown fuse. Stay in control and find a place to set her down.
My sweaty palm slid on the cyclic stick, and both feet weighed heavy on the yaw pedals. The collective stuck to my other hand with a nervous vibration, and I squinted against the abyss outside.
Beep.
I jumped despite myself, as the little Garmin on my panel flared back to life, the static pulling aside to reveal a twitching display. Each time the screen glitched, it showed the colorful map detailing my flight path over the ground below, but I noticed that some of the lines changed, the names shifting, as if the device couldn’t decide between two different versions of the world.
One name jutted out at me, slate gray like most of the major county names, appearing with ghostly flickers from between two neighboring ones.
Barron County.
I stared, confused. I’d flown over this section of southeastern Ohio plenty of times, and I knew the counties by heart. At this point, I should have been over the southern end of Noble County, and maybe dipping lower into Washington. There was no Barron County in Ohio. I was sure of it.
And yet it shown back at me from the digital landscape, a strange, almost cigar-shaped chunk of terrain carved from the surrounding counties like a tumor, sometimes there, sometimes not, as my little Garmin struggled to find the correct map. Rain began to patter against my cockpit window, and the entire aircraft rattled from a strong gust of wind. Thick clouds closed over my field of vision like a sea of gray cotton.
The blood in my veins turned to ice, and I sucked in a nervous breath.
Land. I had to land. There was nothing else to do, my flight controls weren’t responding, and only my Garmin had managed to come back to life. Perhaps I’d been hit by lightning, and the electronics had been fried? Either way, it was too dark to tell, but a storm seemed to be brewing, and if I didn’t get my feet on the ground soon, I could be in real trouble.
“Better safe than sorry.” I pushed down on the collective to start my slow descent and clicked the talking button for my headset. “Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, over.”
Nothing.
“Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, requesting emergency assistance, over.”
Still nothing.
If the radio’s dead, I’m really up a creek.
With my hand shaking, I clicked on the mic one more time. “Any station, this is—”
Like a curtain pulling back, the fog cleared from around my window, and the words stuck in my throat.
Without my gauges, I couldn’t tell just how far I’d descended, but I was definitely very low. Thick trees poked up from the ground, and the hills rolled into high ridges with flat valley floors, fields and pastures pockmarking them. Rain fell all around in cold, silvery sheets, a normal feature for the mid spring in this part of Ohio.
What wasn’t normal, were the fires.
At first, I thought they were forest fires for the amount of smoke and flames that bellowed from each spot, but as I swooped lower, my eyes widened in horror.
They were houses.
Farms, cottages, little clusters that barely constituted villages, all of them belched orange flames and black pillars of sooty smoke. I couldn’t hear above the helicopter blades, but I could see the flashes on the ground, along the road, in between the trees, and even coming from the burning buildings, little jets of golden light that spat into the darkness with anger.
Gunfire. That’s rifle fire, a whole lot of it.
Tiny black figures darted through the shadows, barely discernable from where I sat, several hundred feet up. I couldn’t see much, but some were definitely running away, the streaks of yellow gunfire chasing them. A few dark gray vehicles rumbled down one of the gravel roads, and sprayed fire into the houses as it went. They were fighting, I realized, the people in the trucks and the locals. It was horrific, like something out of war-torn Afghanistan, but worse.
Then, I caught a glimpse of the others.
They didn’t move like the rest, who either fled from the dark vehicles, or fired back from behind cover. These skinny figures loped along with haphazard gaits, many running on all fours like animals, swarming from the trees by the dozens. They threw themselves into the gales of bullets without flinching, attacking anyone within range, and something about the way they moved, so fluid, so fearless, made my heart skip a beat.
What is that?
“Echo Four Actual to unknown caller, please respond, over.”
Choking back a cry of shock, I fumbled at the control panel with clumsy fingers, the man’s voice sharp and stern. I hadn’t realized that I’d let go of the talking button and clicked it down again. “Hello? Hello, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot out of Pittsburgh, over.”
An excruciating moment passed, and I continued to zoom over the trees, the fires falling away behind me as more silent forest took over.
“Roger that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, we read you loud and clear. Please identify yourself and any passengers or cargo you might be carrying, over.”
Swallowing hard, I eyed the treetops, which looked much closer than they should have been. How far had I descended? “Echo Four Actual, my name is Christopher Dekker, and I am alone. I’m a charter flight from PA, carrying medical equipment for OSU in Columbus. My controls have been damaged, and I am unable to safely carry on due to the storm. Requesting permission to land, over.”
I watched the landscape slide by underneath me, once catching sight of what looked like a little white church surrounded by smaller huts, dozens of figures in the yard staring up at me as I flew over a nearby ridgeline.
“Solid copy on that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot. Be advised, your transponder shows you to be inside a restricted zone. Please cease all radio traffic, reduce your speed, climb to 3,000 feet and proceed north. We’ll talk you in from there. How copy, over?”
My heart jumped, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Roger that Echo Four Actual, my altimeter is down, but I’ll do my best to eyeball the altitude, over.”
With that, I pulled the collective upward, and tried my best to gauge how far I was by eyesight in the gathering night, rain still coming down all around me. This had to be some kind of disaster or riot, I decided. After all, the voice over the radio sounded like military, and those vehicles seemed to have heavy weapons. Maybe there was some kind of unrest going on here that I hadn’t heard about yet?
Kind of weird for it to happen in rural areas though. Spoiled college kids I get, but never saw farmers get so worked up before. They usually love the military.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I turned out of reflex.
My mouth fell open, and I froze, unable to scream.
In the sky beside me, a huge shadow glided along, and its leathery wings effortlessly carved through the gloom, flapping only on occasion to keep it aloft. It was too dark for me to see what color it was, but from the way it moved, I knew it wasn’t another helicopter. No, this thing was alive, easily the size of a small plane, and more than twice the length of my little McDonald Douglass. A long tail trailed behind it, and bore a distinct arrow-shaped snout, with twig-like spines fanned out around the back of its head. Whatever legs it had were drawn up under it like a bird, yet its skin appeared rough and knobby, almost resembling tree bark. Without pause, the gigantic bat-winged entity flew along beside me, as if my presence was on par with an annoying fly buzzing about its head.
Gripping the microphone switch so tight, I thought I’d crack the plastic, I whispered into my headset, forgetting all radio protocol. “T-There’s something up here.”
Static crackled.
“Douglas Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, say again your last, you’re coming in weak and unreadable, over.”
“There’s something up here.” I snarled into the headset, still glued to the controls of the helicopter, afraid to deviate even an inch from my course in case the monstrosity decided to turn on me. “A freaking huge thing, right beside me. I swear, it looks like a bat or . . . I don’t know.”
“Calm down.” The man on the other end of the radio broke his rigorous discipline as well, his voice deep, but level. “It won’t attack if you don’t move too fast. Slowly ease away from it and follow that course until you’re out of sight.”
I didn’t have time to think about how wrong that sounded, how the man’s strict tone had changed to one of knowledge, how he hadn’t been the least surprised by what I’d said. Instead, I slowly turned the helicopter away from the huge menace and edged the speed higher in tiny increments.
As soon as I was roughly two football fields away, I let myself relax, and clicked the mic switch. “It’s not following.”
“You’re sure?”
Eyeing the huge flapping wings, I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m well clear.”
“Good. Thank you, Mr. Dekker.”
Then, the radio went dead.
Something in my chest dropped, a weight that made my stomach roil. This wasn’t right, none of it. Who was that man? Why did he know about the thing I’d just seen? What was I supposed to—
A flash of light exploded from the trees to my right and shot into the air with a long finger of smoke.
What the . . .
On instinct, I jerked the cyclic stick to one side, and the helicopter swung to avoid the rocket.
Boom.
My world shook, metal screeched, and a dozen alarms began to go off inside the cockpit in a cacophony of beeps and sirens. Orange and red flames lit up the night sky just behind me, and the horizon started to spin wildly outside. Heat gushed from the cockpit door, and I smelled the greasy stench of burning oil. The safety belts dug into my shoulders, and with a final slip, the radio headset ripped free from my scalp.
I’m hit.
Desperate, I yanked on the controls, fought the bird even as she spun toward the ground in a wreath of flames, the inky black trees hurtling up to meet me. The helicopter went into full auto-rotation, the sky blurring past outside, and the alarms blared in a screech of doom. Panic slammed through my temples, I screamed at the top of my lungs, and for one brief second, my eyes locked on the little black Garmin still perched atop my control panel.
Its screen stopped twitching and settled on a map of the mysterious Barron County, with a little red arrow at the center of the screen, a few words popping up underneath it.
You are here.
Trees stabbed up into the sky, the belts crushed at my torso, glass shattered all around me, and the world went dark.
Copper, thick, warm, and tangy.
It filled my mouth, stank metallic in my nose, clogged my throat, choking me. In the murkiness, I fought for a surface, for a way out, blind and numb in the dark.
This way, kleineun.
My ouma’s voice echoed from somewhere in the shadows.
This way.
Both eyes flew open, and I gagged, spitting out a stream of red.
Pain throbbed in my ribs, and a heavy pressure sent a tingling numbness through my shoulders. Blood roared inside my temples, and stars danced before my eyes with a dizzying array. Humid night air kissed my skin, and something sticky coated my face, neck, and arms that hung straight up toward the ceiling.
Wait. Not up. Down.
I blinked at the wrinkled, torn ceiling of the cockpit, the glass all gone, the gray aluminum shredded like tissue paper. Just outside the broken windows, thick Appalachian bluegrass and stemmy underbrush swished in a feeble breeze, backlit by flashes of lightning from the thunderstorm overhead. Green and brown leaves covered everything in a wet carpet of triangles, and somewhere nearby, a cricket chirped.
Turning my head from side to side, I realized that I hung upside down inside the ruined helicopter, the top half burrowed into the mud. I could hear the hissing and crackling of flames, the pattering of rain falling on the hot aluminum, and the smaller brush fires around the downed aircraft sizzling out in the damp long grass. Charred steel and burning oil tainted the air, almost as strong as the metallic, coppery stench in my aching nose.
They shot me down. That military dude shot me out of the sky.
It didn’t make sense. I’d followed their orders, done everything they’d said, and yet the instant I veered safely away from whatever that thing in the sky had been, they’d fired, not at it, but at me.
Looking down (or rather, up) at my chest, I sucked in a gasp, which was harder to do that before.
The navy-blue shirt stuck to my torso with several big splotches of dark, rusty red. Most were clean slashes, but two held bits of glass sticking out of them, one alarmingly bigger than the other. They dripped cherry red blood onto my upturned face, and a wave of nausea hit me.
I gotta get down.
I flexed my arms to try and work some feeling back into them, praying nothing was broken. Half-numb from hanging so long, I palmed along my aching body until I felt the buckled for the seat belts.
“Okay.” I hissed between gritted teeth, in an effort to stave off my panic. “You can do this. Just hold on tight. Nice and tight. Here we go . . .”
Click.
Everything seemed to lurch, and I slid off the seat to plummet towards the muck-filled hole in the cockpit ceiling. My fingers were slick with blood and slipped over the smooth faux-leather pilot’s seat with ease. The shoulder belt snagged on the bits of glass that lay just under the left lowest rib, and a flare of white-hot pain ripped through me.
Wham.
I screamed, my right knee caught the edge of the aluminum ceiling, and both hands dove into a mound of leaf-covered glass shards on the opposite side of the hole. My head swam, being right-side-up again enough to make shadows gnaw at the corner of my eyes.
Forcing myself to breath slowly, I fought the urge to faint and slid back to sit on the smooth ceiling. I turned my hands over to see half a dozen bits of clear glass burrowed into my skin like greedy parasites, red blood weeping around the new cuts.
“Screw you.” I spat at the rubbish with angry tears in my eyes. “Screw you, screw you, screw you.”
The shards came out easy enough, and the cuts weren’t that deep, but that wasn’t what worried me. On my chest, the single piece of cockpit glass that remined was almost as big as my palm, and it really hurt. Just touching it felt like self-inflicted torture, but I knew it had to come out sooner or later.
Please don’t nick a vein.
Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I gripped the shard with both hands, and jerked.
Fire roared over my ribs, and hot blood tickled my already grimy pale skin. I clapped a hand over the wound, pressing down hard, and grunted out a string of hateful expletives that my ouma would have slapped me for.
Lying on my back, I stared around me at the messy cargo compartment of the MD-902. Most of the medical supplies had been in cardboard boxes strapped down with heavy nylon tow-straps, but several cases had ruptured with the force of the impact, spraying bandages, syringes, and pill bottles all over the cluttered interior. Orange flames chewed at the crate furthest to the rear, the tail section long gone, but the foremost part of the hold was intact. Easily a million-dollar mess, it would have made me faint on any other trip, but today it was a godsend.
Half-blind in the darkness, I crawled along with only the firelight and lightning bolts to guide me, my right knee aching. Like a crippled raccoon, I collected things as I went, conscious of the two pallets of intact supplies weighing right over my head. I’d taken several different first-aid courses with some hunting buddies of mine, and the mental reflexes kicked in to help soothe my frazzled mind.
Check for bleeds, stop the worst, then move on.
Aside from my battered chest and stomach, the rest of me remained mostly unharmed. I had nasty bruises from the seatbelts, my right knee swelled, my nose slightly crooked and crusted in blood, but otherwise I was intact. Dowsing every scratch and cut with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol I found, I used butterfly closures on the smaller lacerations that peppered my skin. I wrapped soft white gauze over my abused palms and probed at the big cut where the last shard had been, only stopping when I was sure there were no pieces of glass wedged inside my flesh.
“Not too bad.” I grunted to myself, trying to sound impassive like a doctor might. “Rib must have stopped it. Gonna need stitches though. That’ll be fun.”
Pawing through the broken cases, I couldn’t find any suture chord, but just as I was about to give up, I noticed a small box that read ‘medical skin stapler’.
Bingo.
I tore the small white plastic stapler free from its packaging and eyeballed the device. I’d never done this before, only seen it in movies, and even though the cut in my skin hurt, I wondered if this wouldn’t be worse.
You’ve gotta do it. That bleeding needs to stop. Besides, no one’s coming to rescue you, not with those rocket-launching psychos out there.
Taking a deep breath, I pinched the skin around the gash together, and pressed the mouth of the stapler to it.
Click.
A sharp sting, like that of a needle bit at the skin, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the cut itself. I worked my way across the two-inch laceration and gave out a sigh of relief when it was done.
“Not going to bleed to death today.” I daubed ointment around the staples before winding more bandages over the wound.
Popping a few low-grade painkillers that tumbled from the cargo, I crawled wriggled through the nearest shattered window into the wet grass.
Raindrops kissed my face, clean and cool on my sweaty skin. Despite the thick cloud cover, there was enough constant lightning strikes within the storm to let me get glimpses of the world around me. My helicopter lay on its back, the blades snapped like pencils, with bits and pieces of it burning in chunks all around the small break in the trees. Chest-high scrub brush grew all around the low-lying ground, with pockets of standing water in places. My ears still rang from the impact of the crash, but I could start to pick up more crickets, frogs, and even some nocturnal birds singing into the darkness, like they didn’t notice the huge the hulk of flaming metal that had fallen from the sky. Overhead, the thunder rumbled onward, the feeble wind whistling, and there were other flashes on the horizon, orange and red ones, with crackles that didn’t sound quite like lightning.
The guns. They’re still fighting.
Instinctively, I pulled out my cellphone, and tapped the screen.
It fluttered to life, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get through to anyone, not even with the emergency function designed to work around having no service. The complicated wonder of our modern world was little better than a glorified paperweight.
Stunned, I sat down with my back to the helicopter and rested my head against the aluminum skin of the craft. How I’d gone from a regular medical supply run to being marooned in this hellish parody of rural America, I didn’t know, but one thig was certain; I needed a plan. Whoever fired the missile could have already contacted my charter company and made up some excuse to keep them from coming to look for me. No one else knew I was here, and even though I now had six staples holding the worst of my injuries shut, I knew I needed proper medical attention. If I wanted to live, I’d have to rescue myself.
My bag. I need to get my go-bag, grab some gear and then . . . head somewhere else.
It took me a while to gather my green canvas paratrooper bag from its place behind the pilot’s seat and fill it with whatever supplies I could scrounge. My knee didn’t seem to be broken, but man did it hurt, and I dreaded the thought of walking on it for miles on end. I focused instead on inventorying my gear and trying to come up with a halfway intelligent plan of action.
I had a stainless-steel canteen with one of those detachable cups on the bottom, a little fishing kit, some duct tape, a lighter, a black LED flashlight with three spare batteries, a few tattered road maps with a compass, a spare pair of socks, medical supplies from the cargo, and a simple forest green plastic rain poncho. I also managed to unearth a functioning digital camcorder my ouma had gotten me for Christmas a few years back, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any filming in such a miserable state. Lastly, since it was a private supply run from a warehouse area near Pittsburgh to a direct hospital pad in Ohio, I’d been able to bring my K-Bar, a sturdy, and brutally simple knife designed for the Marine Corps that I used every time I went camping. It was pitiful in comparison to the rifle I wished I had with me, but that didn’t matter now. I had what I had, and I doubted my trusty Armalite would have alleviated my sore knee anyway.
Clicking on my flashlight, I huddled with the poncho around my shoulders inside the wreck of the chopper and peered at the dusty roadmaps. A small part of me hoped that a solution would jump out from the faded paper, but none came. These were all maps of western PA and eastern Ohio. None of them had a Barron County on them anywhere.
The man on the radio said to head north, right before they shot me down. That means they must be camped out to the north of here. South had that convoy and those burning houses, so that’s a no-go. Maybe I can backtrack eastward the way I came.
As if on cue, a soft pop echoed from over the eastern horizon, and I craned to look out the helicopter window, spotting more man-made flashes over the tree tops.
“Great.” I hissed between clenched teeth, aware of how the temperature dipped to a chilly 60 degrees, and how despite the conditions, my stomach had begun to growl. “Not going that way, are we? Westward it is.”
Walking away from my poor 902 proved to be harder than I’d anticipated. Despite the glass, the fizzling fires, and the darkness, it still held a familiar, human essence to it. Sitting inside it made me feel secure, safe, even calm about the situation. In any other circumstance, I would have just stayed with the downed aircraft to wait for help, but I knew the men who shot me down would likely find my crash site, and I didn’t want to be around when they did.
Unlike much of central and western Ohio, southeastern Ohio is hilly, brushy, and clogged with thick forests. Thorns snagged at my thin poncho and sliced at my pant legs. My knee throbbed, every step a form of self-inflicted torture. The rain never stopped, a steady drizzle from above just cold enough to be problematic as time went on, making me shiver. Mud slid under my tennis shoes, and every tree looked ten times bigger in the flickering beam of my cheap flashlight. Icy fear prickled at the back of my neck at some of the sounds that greeted me through the gloom. I’d been camping loads of times, both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but these noises were something otherworldly to me.
Strange howls, screeches, and calls permeated the rain-soaked sky, some almost roars, while others bordered on human in their intonation. The more I walked, the softer the distant gunfire became, and the more prevalent the odd sounds, until the shadows seemed to fill with them. I didn’t dare turn off my flashlight, or I’d been completely blind in the dark, but a little voice in the back of my head screamed that I was too visible, crunching through the gloomy forest with my long beam of light stabbing into the abyss. It felt as though a million eyes were on me, studying me, hunting me from the surrounding brush, and I bitterly recalled how much I’d loved the old Survivor Man TV series as a kid.
Not so fun being out in the woods at night. Especially alone.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me, and I whirled on the spot, one trembling hand resting on the hilt of my K-Bar.
Nothing. Nothing but trees, bushes, and rain dripping down in the darkness.
“This is stupid.” I whispered to myself to keep my nerves in check as I slowly spun on the spot. “I should have went eastward anyway. God knows how long I’m going to have to—”
Creak.
A groan of metal-on-metal echoed from somewhere to my right, and I spun to face it, yanking the knife on my belt free from its scabbard. It felt so small and useless in my hand, and I choked down a wave of nauseas fear.
Ka-whump. Creak. K-whump. Creak.
Underbrush cracked and crunched, a few smaller saplings thrashed, and from deep within the gloom, two yellow orbs flared to life. They poked through the mist in the trees, forming into slender fingers of golden light that swept back and forth in the dark.
The soldiers . . . they must be looking for me.
I swallowed hard and turned to slink away.
Ice jammed through my blood, and I froze on the spot, biting my tongue to stop the scream.
It stood not yards away, a huge form that towered a good twelve feet tall in the swirling shadows. Unpolished chrome blended with flash-rusted spots in the faded red paint, and grime-smeared glass shone with dull hues in the flashes of lightning. Where the wheels should have been, the rounded steel axels curved like some enormous hand had bent them, and the tires lay face-down on the muddy ground like big round feet, their hubcaps buried in the dirt. Dents, scrapes, and chips covered the battered thing, and its crooked little radio antenna pointed straight up from the old metal fender like a mast. I could barely make out the mud-coated VW on the rounded hood, and my mind reeled in shock.
Is . . . is that a car?
Both yellow headlights bathed me in a circle of bright, blinding light, and neither I nor the strange vehicle moved.
Seconds ticked by, the screech-thumping in the background only growing closer. I realized that I couldn’t hear any engine noises and had yet to see any soldiers or guns pointed my way. This car looked old, really old, like one of those classic Volkswagen Beetles that collectors fought over at auctions. Try as I might, I couldn’t see a driver inside the murky, mold-smeared windows.
Because there wasn’t one.
Lightning arched across the sky overhead, and the car standing in front of me blinked.
Its headlights slid shut, as if little metal shades had crawled over the bulbs for a moment and flicked open again. Something about that movement was so primal, so real, so lifelike, that every ounce of self-control I had melted in an instant.
Cursing under my breath, I lunged into the shrubs, and the world erupted around me.
Under my shoes, the ground shook, and the car surged after me in a cacophony of ka-thumps that made my already racing heart skip several beats. A weather-beaten brown tow truck from the 50’s charged through the thorns to my left, it’s headlights ablaze, and a dilapidated yellow school bus rose from its hiding place in the weeds to stand tall on four down-turned axel-legs. They all flicked their headlights on like giants waking from their slumber, and as I dodged past them, they each blared their horn into the night in alarm.
My breaths came short and tight, my knee burned, and I crashed through thorns and briars without thought to how badly I was getting cut up.
The cheap poncho tore, and I ripped it away as it caught on a tree branch.
A purple 70’s Mustang shook off its blanket of creeping vines and bounded from a stand of trees just ahead, forcing me to swerve to avoid being run over, my adrenaline at all-time highs.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.
Slipping and sliding, I pushed through a stand of multiflora rose, and stumbled out into a flat, dark expanse.
I almost skidded to a stop.
What had once been a rather large field stood no taller than my shoestrings, the grass charred, and burnt. The storm above illuminated huge pieces of wreckage that lay scattered over the nearly 40-acre plot, and I could just make out the fire-blackened hulk of a fuselage resting a hundred yards away. The plane had been brought down a while ago it seemed, as there weren’t any flames left burning, and I threw myself toward it in frenzied desperation.
Burned grass and greasy brown topsoil slushed underfoot, and I could hear the squelching of the cars pursing me. Rain soaked me to the bone, and my lungs ached from sucking down the damp night air. A painful stich crept into my side, and I cursed myself for not putting in more time for cardio at the gym.
Something caught my left shoelace, and I hurtled to the ground, tasting mud and blood in between my teeth.
They’ve got me now.
I clawed at the mud, rolled, and watched a tire slam down mere inches from where my head had been. The Mustang loomed over me and jostled for position with the red Volkswagen and brown tow truck, the school bus still a few yards behind them. They couldn’t seem to decide who would get the pleasure of stomping me to death, and like a herd of stampeding wildebeest, they locked bumpers in an epic shoving match.
On all fours, I scampered out from under the sparring brutes, and dashed for the crumpled airplane, a white-painted DC-3 that looked like it had been cut in half by a gargantuan knife blade. I passed a snapped wing section, the oily remains of a turbo-prop engine, and a mutilated wheel from the landing gear. Climbing over a heap of mud, I squeezed into the back of the ruined flight cabin and dropped down into the dark cargo hold.
Wham.
No sooner had my sneakers hit the cold metal floor, and the entire plane rocked from the impact of something heavy ramming it just outside. I tumbled to my knees, screaming in pain as, once again, I managed to bash the sore one off a bracket in the wall.
My hand smeared in something gooey, and I scrabbled for my flashlight.
It clicked on, a wavering ball of white light in the pitch darkness, and I fought the urge to gag. “Oh man . . .”
Three people, or what was left of them, lay strewn over the narrow cargo area. Claret red blood coated the walls, caked on the floor, and clotted under my mud-spattered shoes. Bits of flesh and viscera were stuck to everything, and tatters of cloth hung from exposed sections of broken bone. An eerie set of bloody handprints adorned the walls, and the only reason I could tell it had been three people were the shoes; all of them bore anklebones sticking out above blood-soaked socks. It smelled sickly sweet, a strange, nauseas odor that crept into my nose and settled on the back of my tongue like an alien parasite.
Something glinted in the beam of my flashlight, and my pulse quickened as I pried the object loose from the severed arm that still clung to it.
“Hail Mary full of Grace.” I would have grinned if it weren’t for the fact that the plane continued to buck and roll under the assault from the cars outside.
The pistol looked old, but well-maintained, aside from the light coating of dark blood that stained its round wooden handle. It felt heavy, but good in my hand, and I turned it over to read the words, Waffenfabrik Mauser stenciled into the frame, with a large red 9 carved into the grip. For some reason, it vaguely reminded me of the blasters from Star Wars.
I fumbled with a little switch that looked like a safety on the back of the gun and stumbled toward a gap in the plane’s dented fuselage to aim out at the surrounding headlights.
Bang.
The old gun bucked reliably in my hand, its long barrel spitting a little jet of flame into the night. I had no idea if I hit anything, but the attacking cars recoiled, their horns blaring in confusion.
They turned, and scuttled for the tree line as fast as their mechanical legs could go, the entire ordeal over as fast as it had begun.
Did I do that?
Perplexed, I stared down at the pistol in my hand.
Whoosh.
A large, inky black shadow glided down from the clouds, and the yellow school bus moved too slow to react in time.
With a crash, the kicking nightmarish vehicle was thrown onto its side, spraying glass and chrome trim across the muddy field. Its electro-synth horn blared with wails of mechanical agony, as two huge talon-like feet clamped down on it, and the enormous head of the flying creature lowered to rip open its engine compartment.
The horn cut out, and the enormous flying entity jerked its head back to gulp down a mass of what looked like sticky black vines from the interior of the shattered bus.
At this range, I could see now that the flying creature bore two legs and had its wings half-tucked like a vulture that had descended to feed on roadkill. Its head turned slightly, and in the glow of another lightning bolt, my jaw went slack at the realization of what it was.
A tree trunk. It’s a rotted tree trunk.
I couldn’t tell where the reptilian beast began, and where the organic tree components ended, the upper part of the head shaped like a log, while the lower jaw resembled something out of a dinosaur movie. Its skin looked identical to the outside of a shagbark hickory but flexed with a supple featheriness that denoted something closer to skin. Sharp branch-like spines ranged down its back, and out to the end of its tail, which bore a massive round club shaped like a diseased tree-knot. Crouched on both hind legs, it braced the hooked ends of its folded wings against the ground like a bat, towering higher than a semi-truck. Under the folds of its armored head, a bulging pair of chameleon-like eyes constantly spun in their sockets, probing the dark for threats while it ate.
One black pupil locked onto the window I peered through, and my heart stopped.
The beast regarded me for a moment, making a curious, sideways sniff.
With a proud, contemptful head-toss, the shadow from the sky parted rows of razor-sharp teeth to let out a roar that shook the earth beneath my feet. It was the triumphant war cry of a creature that sat at the very top of the food chain, one that felt no threat from the fragile two-legged beings that walked the earth all around it. It hunted whenever it wanted, ate whatever it wanted, and flew wherever it wanted. It didn’t need to rip the plane apart to devour me.
Like my hunter-gatherer ancestors from thousands of years ago, I wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to pounce.
I’m hiding in the remains of the cockpit now, which is half-buried under the mud of the field, enough to shield the light from my screen so that thing doesn’t see it. My service only now came back, and it’s been over an hour since the winged beast started in on the dead bus. I don’t know when, or how I’m going to get out of here. I don’t know when anyone will even see this post, or if it will upload at all. My phone battery is almost dead, and at this point, I’m probably going to have to sleep among the corpses until daylight comes.
A dead man sleeping amongst friends.
If you live in the Noble County area in southeastern Ohio, be careful where you drive, fly, and boat. I don’t know if it’s possible to stumble into this strange place by ground, but if so, then these things are definitely headed your way.
If that happens . . . pray that they don’t find you.

FOOD THEORY IDEA: Does soda dehydrate you?
When I was a teenager, I confess I would drink too much soda, even knowing it wasn't good for my overall health. Soda is often just carbonated flavored sugar water & has little if any nutritional value. It rots your teeth & makes you gain weight. That said, I've occasionally heard it said (mostly from my Mom) that soda isn't just bad for you for only those reasons, but that it is actually SO bad for you that it doesn't even hydrate you properly, and your body will have a NET LOSS of water! The idea is that caffeine is a dieuretic, which means it dehydrates you (slightly!) and where drinking plain water is good for you, drinking soda supposedly leads to a net loss of water because its caffeine content cancels out the water in the can and then some, making soda just empty calories, tooth decay & nothing else.
If true, then sodas would be comparable to alcohol, in a weird way: Alcoholic beverages, for those unaware, lead to a greater net loss of water, and so-called "hangovers" are caused by dehydration. Not drinking water for a super long time would cause similar headaches, which is why most effective hangover cures involve drinking a lot of water. Granted, I've never heard of a person having "Soda Hangovers" but people don't exactly drink water the same way they drink alcohol.
Hypothetically speaking, if I'm ever stuck on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean with a lifetime supply of soda & no other water source, will I die of dehydration before a ship picks me up & takes me back to civilization? Soda is definitely bad for you, but will it DEHYDRATE you?
A quick Google search of "Does soda dehydrate your body" shows just as many articles proving this idea as studies that disprove this. So... Fact or Myth? I'm not that suspicious of a guy, but I kind of wonder if the studies supposedly disproving the "Soda Dehydration" were funded by Coca-Cola & PepsiCo or something, but I've often found MatPat far more trustworthy than that, so I'm turning to YOU dude! https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/caffeinated-drinks/faq-20057965
https://www.beaumont.org/health-wellness/blogs/6-reasons-to-stop-drinking-soda
https://preview.redd.it/g80v0f6sic971.jpg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=dfd03debebc3882876d7493a7eb0b661262d3707

Growing up, I remember it all vividly: any time my friends or I got too close to the shed, my dad would come out hollering and yelling, telling us to stay away from there and that it was no place for kids. He told me he had expensive tools and dangerous chemicals stored there. As a child, I didn’t question it. It was just one of those things. In my mind, I had been born into a world where the sun rises in the east, breakfast is the first meal of the day and the shed stays locked. They were all true, self-evident and simply the way things existed in my young mind.
But as I grew older and eventually moved off to college, I began to question the shed more. My father still wouldn’t let me look in there. In fact, he kept the sole key on his person at all times. Even when he slept, he would keep the key in his pocket.
Then, during my second semester at the nearby state university, I got a call that every son or daughter dreads. I was attending a lecture on anatomy when my phone lit up, ringing silently in the great, crowded hall. Looking down, I saw it was my brother’s number. I went outside, lighting up a cigarette and answering it.
“Hello?” I said. “Gil?” My brother answered immediately.
“Luke, thank God you answered,” he said. “It’s dad. He’s being taken to the hospital. He had some sort of medical emergency. Can you meet us there? In maybe twenty-five minutes?” I said I would, hanging up. I grabbed my stuff in the lecture hall and made my way to my car. Twenty-two minutes later, I pulled into the hospital.
It was too late, however. My father had died of a heart attack on the way. He was declared dead on arrival.
***
We ended up inheriting the house. Our mother had died of breast cancer ten years earlier, so Gil and I were the last two of the Mortin bloodline. My brother was a good guy, though somewhat of a waste case, constantly smoking weed and dropping acid. He had a tendency to travel out far across the country without notice, moving around to see nature or go to music festivals. That is, when he had the money. And since he worked as a freelance writer, he was often broke.
He really wanted to get at the money dad had left us. He wanted the money from the house most of all. He told me repeatedly that it would be enough to tide him over until he got a footing in the writing industry, that he just needed to make a name for himself and then the money would start rolling in. He had his heart set on it. He would write anything that he could make money off of, from horror stories to romances, short stories to novels, even technical manuals or freelance journalism articles. As we walked to the house together for the first time in months, he repeated this mantra to me again: “Just enough to tide me over, Luke…”
“I think you’re probably going to burn through the money that Dad left you,” I said. “Why don’t you get a real job and just write on the side?” He gave me a sideways look.
“Did you see Hunter S. Thompson getting a ‘real job’ while just writing on the side?” he asked. I nodded.
“Yeah, he was a journalist…” I began as we walked into the house, but we both stopped simultaneously when we saw what was on the coffee table. It was all of Dad’s possessions he had when he died. They were placed neatly in a line- his wallet, his phone, his car and house key, some cash, and last of all, a little shed key on a thin, leather chain.
“What do you think is really in that shed?” I asked. Gil looked at me, pale and wide-eyed in the dark living room.
“I don’t really… I don’t know if I want to find out,” Gil said, whispering as if he were in a church- or a funeral home. I put my hand on his shoulder and shook him gently.
“Of course we need to find out,” I said. “You and I own this property now. We should go look right now.” He breathed in sharply.
“No, no, don’t be an idiot,” Gil whispered. “It’s dark now. In the morning, we can go together. In the morning. You have waited twenty years to find out, I think you can wait a few more hours.” But there was something pleading in his voice, something scared and child-like. It reminded me of when I was scared as a little boy at bedtime, telling my dad there were monsters in the closet, and he would go to open up the door, and I’d tell him to stop, that they’re going to hurt him if he opens that door. But he would open the door and there would be no monsters in there. Surely, it was the same here. Gil would see, and for that matter, so would I. There were no monsters in there.
***
This all happened from yesterday to this morning. We ended up leaving that place together a few hours ago, bloodied and bruised and injured, after being trapped inside all night.
The day before it started, Gil stayed up late downstairs, watching TV and smoking a joint. He made himself a night-cap from my father’s liquor cabinet, pouring some Jack Daniels and ice in a cup with some Coke and sipping it slowly. I stayed with him for a while, talking.
We talked about the good times we had with Dad, about going hiking with him at the Green Mountains, or traveling to New York City with him to see the museums. I thought about how much I really missed him, and a knot formed in my throat. I quickly blinked my eyes to try to get the tears to go away.
Eventually, I went to sleep in the guest bedroom. Gil stayed downstairs, sleeping on the couch in front of the TV. I heard the faint hum of it from upstairs, the canned laughter of whatever comedy he was watching, the acerbic tone of the lead characters as they delivered one witty joke after another. I fell asleep to it, the voices blending into a sarcastic, hissing whisper in my ear.
And then I was floating, bodiless, looking down on a dark cornfield with ravens staring at me. The voice was bodiless, too, sounding like it came from right behind me, but when I turned, nothing was there.
“In the halls of our fathers, everyone is dead,” it whispered mockingly. “You’ll be dead soon too, if you get curious. Some doors are locked for a reason. Some doors should stay locked.”
I woke up suddenly. Something was wrong. I heard Gil yelling. I fumbled around in the dark for the lamp, groggily checking the time. 4:17 AM. Flinging the comforters off, I ran downstairs.
Gil was sleeping on the couch, still as a corpse, and quiet as one too. I looked around confusedly. Where was the screaming coming from? I followed the noise out back. I looked at the shed, and my blood ran cold as I heard another long cry come from inside. I walked across the dirt yard in my slippers, not wanting to get any closer but walking forwards nonetheless. Part of me wondered if I was still dreaming, but the chill air against my sweaty face felt real enough.
The screaming from the shed was not in words. It was a long, drawn-out, painful shriek. It was the shriek of a mother who just lost her only child in a war zone, or the yell of someone doused with gasoline and burned alive, but amplified into an ear-splitting cacophony. I had the key in my pocket. I reached for it with shaking hands, pulling it out, slowly approaching the shed.
Then someone grabbed my shoulder. I jumped, whirling around with clenched fists, ready to fight. Then I saw it was Gil.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” I said through clenched teeth. “What the hell is wrong with you?” He put his finger to his lips, the universal signal for silence. Then he leaned close to my ear and whispered.
“If you open that shed now, we will both die,” he said quietly and calmly, as if he were just stating the weather for tomorrow. “Put the key away and go back to bed. You never want to open it in the dark. Never.”
“What do you know about it?” I whispered back, shooting glances over my shoulder at the shed. The screaming still came, though slower now, maybe one heart-rending shriek every minute or so. Part of me was glad there were no neighbors for half a mile in each direction, and that made me want to laugh. There was probably some horrific animal in there that would rip me apart if it got the chance, and I was thinking about noise complaints.
“Tomorrow,” Gil repeated, gently taking my arm and leading me back into the house. I sat next to him in the living room, pouring myself a gin and tonic, sipping it slowly as the screams from behind the house mixed with the canned laughter of the TV show, wondering what kind of man my father really was.
***
I woke on the couch, an empty glass falling out of my hand onto the cushion. Light streamed in through the windows. Gil was nowhere to be found. I looked back and forth, then heard the sizzling of food from the kitchen.
Stumbling in, I saw he had prepared a massive breakfast of bacon, sausages, corned beef hash, eggs Benedict with Hollandaise sauce, Texas toast, orange juice and coffee. He was smoking a joint with the windows opened, occasionally sending a grim look out the back of the house towards the shed. I sat down, pouring myself some coffee and grabbing milk and sugar to mix in.
“Who is all this food for?” I asked. He kept staring out the window. “Hey!” He turned suddenly, his face looking pale and drawn.
“What?”
“I said, who is all this food for?” I repeated. He looked around, smiling.
“Just for us. Why not? I figure you will need the energy today, and so will I,” he said cryptically. He sat down across from me, pouring himself coffee and orange juice and grabbing a plateful of meat, toast and eggs. I did the same, giving him occasional glances.
“What did Dad tell you?” I asked, pouring maple syrup on my sausages and bacon and chugging an entire cup of coffee in one long swallow. It burned my throat, but the rising heat and caffeine made me feel instantly better and more awake. Gil sighed heavily.
“Not much, to tell you the truth,” he said. “He was really drunk one time when you were away at college, a couple months ago. He was drinking more and more before he died, like something was weighing on him, something he wanted to forget. Well, anyway, I was sitting down here with him, watching those documentaries he used to love with him, and during a commercial, he just started talking about the shed.
“‘Now boy,’ he said to me, ‘I know you probably have a few questions for me. I probably should have told you and your brother about it a long time ago, but it is something I don’t like to talk about. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. I think talking about it tends to wake it up.’
“‘Wake up what?’ I said. Dad was quiet for a long time, just staring at me. Then he leaned close to me and whispered something strange.
“‘The stairs,’ he said. ‘They’re not normal, son. Sometimes they go down below the shed to a… Well, I guess it is just an empty sub-floor. Just a plain, swept dirt basement below the shed. But I never built any such sub-floor, and it wasn’t here when I bought the house, and it isn’t on the plans either. If that was it, then who would care? Hah, a free storage place, people would be happy, right?’ I nodded, grinning back at Dad. He seemed to have a glimmer of his old self for a second, happy and free. But then his face darkened again.
“‘But lots of times, boy, those stairs do not lead to a sub-floor. One time, they led down to a white room covered in blood, with bright fluorescent lights flickering all over the walls and ceiling. And there was a little girl down there, dancing among all the blood, jumping and twirling in her little blue dress, little ballerina slippers on her feet, and all the skin on her face peeled off. She was just a bloody, grinning skull. And when she saw me on the spiral steps in the corner, she stopped dancing and just stared. The lights began to turn off, everything went dark, and I ran, my boy, I ran faster than I have ever run in my life. I felt little hands grabbing at me as I made my way up the last stair and slammed that shed door behind me. I locked it as something fought to get out, something that felt far stronger than any child. And that was just one time.
“‘It’s worse at night. That’s when the real dangerous ones come out. I don’t know how the stairs work, son, and I don’t think I ever really want to. Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll never have to deal with them. Maybe I’ll find a way to destroy them before I die. Aye, maybe…’” Gil stopped speaking, deep in thought and remembrance. I took another sip of juice and ate some bacon before responding.
“So you’re telling me Dad went batshit crazy before he died?” I asked. Gil shook his head quickly.
“He wasn’t crazy, Luke,” he said simply. “At least, I don’t think he was. If he was, the stairs probably made him that way. Do you really think that you were just hearing a fox or something caught in the shed last night? Those screams sounded human. We both know that was something unnatural. But I wouldn’t worry if I were you. If you need proof, we’ll have plenty after today- assuming you still want to go into the shed.” And after we finished eating, with no fanfare or delay, we did. I grabbed the key, and Gil and I went out side by side, scared but not showing it, ready to finally see for ourselves the mystery that had haunted our family for decades.
***
We walked through the hard-packed dirt yard, looking down the grassy field behind the house to the rolling hills that stretched as far as the eye could see. They began to grow blue, pale and fuzzy near the horizon. It was a beautiful place to live, and hard to imagine something so evil might be right in the middle of it.
The shed loomed up ahead of us, boards tightly hammered together and freshly painted a dark red color. The shingles on the small roof all looked relatively new, and the door was expensive and sturdy. I stood in front of the door, listening for the sounds of any movement, but there was nothing. I fumbled in my pocket for the key, pulling it out, looking at Gil who stood close by my side. Then I shoved it in the lock and opened the door.
The shed was dark, as if a curtain of shadow fell across the open door. I stuck my head in, feeling around the side for a lightswitch. And that was when something grabbed my hand. I screamed, ready to pull my hand out and run, and then I felt the lightswitch on the wall. I flicked it on quickly. There was no one in there. Shaking, I turned to Gil.
“Something grabbed me,” I whispered. He nodded, unsurprised. Then we walked in the shed together.
The walls inside were all covered with plates of sheet metal. Every square inch of the shed was reinforced with steel, including the roof, which had a flat pane of metal going straight across the shed, welded to the four that covered the walls. Only the floor was unprotected. It was just a plain dirt floor with a hole in the center.
Looking closer at the protective structure of the shed, I saw deep claw and gouge marks raking the metal’s surface, even those on the bottom of the ceiling eight feet above the floor. Something had clearly been in here and wanted very badly to get out.
I inched closer to the hole in the floor, which took up most of the floor of the shed. It was at least ten feet wide. Looking down, I saw spiraling steps, descending in a clockwise fashion as far down as the light extended. I found a small rock on the ground outside, came back in and dropped it down the center of the stairway. I listened for it to hit bottom, counting the seconds on my watch. After about thirty seconds, I realized it wasn’t going to. Maybe it was too far down to hear when the stone connected.
I looked over at Gil. He was standing as near to the door as he could get, looking like he would rather be anywhere else in the world. I gave him high marks for courage, though. There was something wrong in here, and I could feel it. Outside, it was warm and a fresh breeze blew the smell of flowers and pines through the yard. But in here, it was cold and oppressive. A freezing chill seemed to come from the hole in the floor, spiraling up with the stairs and running over my body, sending a feeling like ice running up and down my back.
“Do you want to go first, or should I?” I said, gesturing to the hole. Gil stared at me as if I had gone mad, his eyes widening.
“Why in the fuck should either of us go?” he said, raising his hands and using them to gesticulate wildly as he often did when he was upset. I shrugged.
“This is our property now,” I said. “We need to at least know what’s on it, don’t you think?” But there was another reason too. It was sheer curiosity, and a desire to prove to myself that there was nothing supernatural going on here, no monster in the closet, just the overactive imagination of an old man. Gil sighed.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll go. Go grab two flashlights and Dad’s gun. Maybe some extra batteries. Some extra magazines too. Better safe than sorry, after all…”
We both went inside the house together, leaving the shed door wide open, and that was when, I believe, something got out. And then the killings in town began.
***
We descended the stairs slowly. They were stone, slick in some places. There was no guard rail or any protective barrier, which made my heart beat a little faster. I liked something to hold onto. If I took a tumble on these stairs, I might keep falling forever.
We heard strange sounds from below periodically, but when we shone our lights down there, we couldn't see anything. Echoes rose around us, sounding at one point like kids playing a game of hide and seek, at another like the howling of a wolf. Strange squeaks and clicks would also arise intermittently from the shaft below us, and then stop as quickly as they had started.
The noises got louder as we descended dozens of stories, then hundreds. It seemed like the stairs would just keep going on forever, until we hit the mantle of the Earth and got burned up. Then a door appeared, painted a chipped blue with a fading daisy on the center of it. I looked at Gil, then swung it open.
Beyond it, a hallway with fluorescent lights extended as far as the eye could see. Countless rooms went off it to the left and right. The lights flickered on and off, sending portions of the hallway into darkness. The floor was falling apart in many places, with strange molds and fungi growing out of the wood. White and black molds battled for space, forming huge colonies that were bigger than my shoe. I walked forward, putting my weight gingerly on the floorboard. It creaked slightly and felt wet under my shoe, yet it held my weight.
“Come on,” I said to Gil, who followed closely behind. As soon as we had walked a few steps down the hall, the door slammed shut by itself behind us. I jumped and turned, pulling out the gun reflexively. Gil put a hand on my shoulder, pushing the gun back down.
“It’s OK,” he said. I was breathing hard, my heart hammering in my chest. Maybe that was why I didn’t hear the counting at first.
But as we walked down the decayed hallway, the lights turning on and off above us with every step, I realized that someone was counting, and it had been going on for a while. It sounded like the voice of a little girl.
“Forty… thirty-nine… thirty-eight…” she said, counting off the seconds. I heard giggling from the rooms around us, but I couldn’t see anyone. We kept walking forward, but that counting was getting on my nerves- not least because I couldn’t for the life of me tell where it was coming from.
We checked the rooms to the left and the right. There were broken tables, old office equipment and chairs in nearly all of them. Some of them had fish tanks, but instead of fish, they had plumes of multi-colored molds growing over the top of them, or, in one case, a dead and dried-out turtle.
“...one… ready or not, here I come!” the girl’s voice screamed gleefully, and that was when all the lights went out at once. We quickly fumbled for our flashlights, turning them on at the same time. I had the gun in one hand crisscrossed with the flashlight in the other, a trick I had seen used in cop shows. Gil had a ten-inch bowie knife in one hand, which he had just removed from the massive scabbard he had it in around his leg. In his other hand, he held the flashlight, which he frantically shone back and forth, up and down.
“Geez, calm down with that thing,” I said. “You’re going to make me dizzy.”
“Something’s coming,” Gil whispered, a note of dread in his voice. “Don’t you hear it?” I stopped, listening hard. Indeed, I heard footsteps nearing, small suppressed giggles, the swishing of a dress. My flashlight illuminated a pale face, a little boy sneaking a peak out of the nearest room. He was filthy, covered in black soot with torn clothing and what looked like blood caked into his hair. He looked up at us quickly then withdrew into the room. For the first time, I felt genuinely scared. Now we could be certain we were being watched.
“Hey!” I whispered, running into the room after him. Gil followed close behind me. The footsteps seemed to be right next to us now, but I looked around, not seeing anyone. Then a blur of movement passed by as a little girl ran over to the little boy, where he was curled in the corner under a broken folding table, crying and shaking with terror.
“Found you!” she said. I shone my light directly at her back, seeing a pale blue dress, but I couldn’t see her face.
“Get away from that kid!” I yelled. She ignored me, bending down quickly, and before I knew what had happened, she had ripped the boy’s throat out with her teeth. She turned to look at us, and I saw that her face had been cut off, and now only a grinning skull remained. It was covered in a thin sheen of blood, and two tiny white pinpoints of light seemed to glow inside the empty sockets of her eyes. With her teeth full of flesh and gristle and fresh rivulets of blood running down her skeletal mouth, she continued to cry, “Found you! Found you! Found you!”
Without hesitation, I shot her in the shoulder. She fell back a half-step, turning to look at me with that skeletal grin, then spun around and continued eating the little boy. He was still alive, choking on his own blood, his huge eyes moving over to me as he died, as if accusing me of being the cause of all this. The sound of his last gurgling breaths were the only sounds now. I shot her again, but she wouldn’t go down. A blossom of blood began to spread outwards on her back where I had shot her, but she showed no pain. Gil grabbed my shoulder tightly.
“We need to get out of here,” he said through gritted teeth. I nodded. We ran back to the door we had come in through, but it was locked tight. The lights were still off. I told Gil to take a step back, then tried shooting at the lock. The bullet ricocheted crazily as if I had shot a reinforced army tank rather than a plain wooden doorway. Next we tried kicking it open, but it was as if it were fused to the wall.
I turned to look at him, and the truth passed between us in a glimpse. To get out, we would have to go farther in, where there were likely even worse things waiting for us.

Behind the larger moon of Nebo, the large hulking mass of ship named Glazier, was holding its geostationary orbit as the battle commenced below on the planet of Valhallah. Injured and inactive Marines, Sol Stellar Infantry, and Vaalorian Navy personnel walked the halls of the great ship, or were held in the Medical bay. Medical suites were filled to capacity and overflowing with casualties. Injured Vaalor and Humans were everywhere. Several Cariolinous could be found to be bandaged or missing bits or limbs. Blaine woke to the sound of a medical examination table beeping away in the background, and instantly regretted moving his head, which pounded like a bass drum. “OOooh, fuck! My head! What the fuck happ- UNJHH! Mmmff, fuck! That’s not good!” He said, looking down at his ribs which were bandaged and bloody. Looking around, he noticed he was alone, and so tried to heal himself. The flames ignited around his palms; and as he focused, a rib snapped back into place, almost rendering him unconscious. He cursed under his breath, and was about to try again, when Constance walked in. “Ahh! Captain! You’re awake! Good! Good… So, you’re not going to jump up and break my wrist so you can get back into the fight, are you? I must say, I’m no longer interested in trying to stop you. But, my sister is.” She said, looking him over. “What? Why would Glam want to stop me? She was all for getting away from the Aquila, when we were on our way here…” Blaine asked, puzzled. “She’s a mommy, now.” Constance said. “Oh.” Blaine croaked. “Are you sure you should be sitting up? You don’t sound too good. You do understand, you got lucky. You caught a round just as you came onto the shuttle, and therefore the others were able to slow the bleed long enough for you to make it aboard the Glazier. We were able to stabilize you with some donor blood, luckily enough. There’s two universal human donors on this craft right now, but there was three. Contingency Captain Richter was killed in action yesterday.” Constance said. Blaine groaned again. “Fuck. I’m gonna miss that asshole.” He said, a heavy weight seeming to slam into his heart. “You knew the Contingency Captain well, I assume?” Constance said, trying to gauge his mental state. “We were in a lot of situations together. We used to refer to him as ‘the human earthquake’. He was a demolitions specialist, Ms. Helsbane.” Blaine said. “How many made it out of Zubrim?” “Well, thanks to your quick efforts, Zubrim was lost without many casualties. We expected more. Twelve Sihn Rifles and all of Zubrim Air Defense made it out. General Sihn is alive and well, and you even saved two Seals. Marconia Traviar, and Ah’lahn Capia, both Seals of their own respective SkyKnight contingents. Here… you read the report. I expect you’re not going anywhere for a few days…” Constance said, and handed him a qwikslate. “Your translator is working flawlessly, Constance. Thought I’d say…” Blaine said, as he accepted the qwikslate. “The translator is off. I spent the last three months learning English. How am I doing?” Constance said, smiling expectantly. “Really freaking good! That’s really impressive! Three months?!” Blaine said, astonished. “I’ve always been a fast learner.” Constance mused, happily. “That’s good…” Blaine said, distracted by the qwikslate. “I’ll… um… Leave you to it, then?” Constance said, and walked out, not waiting for an answer. “Yeah…” Blaine said, not paying attention. He tapped the qwikslate screen, and looked at the HUDvid recordings for Zubrim, and Operation Black Watch. He played through several recordings, taking in separate angles of the battle, trying to recreate a 3-d picture in his mind of the chaos. He rewatched his HUDvid, and realized what had really happened. As he’d run from the crash site to the Fort, he’d unknowingly passed within a hundred yards of the Mahl front lines. They had seen him, but he’d been too busy with trying to reach the Fort to notice. His HUDvid had recorded their positions, however. Five rows of at least a hundred Mahl warriors, had watched him limp passed, within a mere twenty yards of them. They hadn’t reacted, or broken cover at all. But, they had obviously taken notice of him if his HUDvid was to be believed. Blaine realized then, that these were no ordinary Mahl. These were well trained and disciplined warfighters, and they were leagues apart from the Mahl that had attacked Sol, in both space and capability. They were well armed, with plasma rifles and several recognizable firearms in their midst. Some of them, American made. Blaine saw the rifles from his homeland, and felt a pang of guilt and hatred in the same moment. He found new drive in that moment, and reignited the blue flames, trying again to fix his shredded insides. He felt things twist and knit, and a feeling of intense nausea welled up within him. Finally, he could handle the nausea no more, and he extinguished the flames and promptly vomited bile. Laying back against the bed, he felt his mind wander, and fell unconscious again. Sometime during his slumber, Constance came back in to check his bandages, and almost lost her mind when she saw the healed wounds. She remained silent, but quickly left and returned with Captain Krinski, and Glam. They waited in the medical suite until he woke up. “Mmmuh, Mornin’ Cap’n. What’s up?” Blaine said, coming around groggily. “I muzt know… how? Jhoo are healedt! Just jyesterday, jhoo ver on Deat’s doorshtep! How are jhoo alife?” Anastasia said. “Uhh…” Blaine said, hesitantly. “Look, I don’t care if whatever you did was illegal. We have a lot of injured who could benefit from the technology.” Constance said, eagerly. “Uhh… It’s… not technology?” Blaine said, hesitant still. “Then what is it?” Constance begged. “I need to know! There are people who need this, desperately!” “Spirit Fire.” Blaine said, looking at Glam. “Like, what happened to Fern when he died?” Glam said, curious. “Kinda. Spirit Fire cannot be wielded by the dead. But, the dead are the source. It is the power to heal, or destroy by fire. And it’s extremely rare. My great grandad could barely do what I can, and it’s got serious side effects…” Blaine said. “How does it work?” Constance said, desperately still trying to bottle it for later use. “The Ancestors choose an individual to heal others, by the energies of the Ancestral Eather, through the conduit of the chosen individual. Depending on the physical strength of the individual( I presume), the power can be super-strong, or mild. The energies are specific to the one being healed and the virtuosity of the act. What’s more, the energies can cause women to become fatally attracted to the individual if it’s a man, and vice versa. Also, healing oneself can be a horrible experience, let me tell you!” Blaine said at length. “Now, promise me on pain of death, that you’re never going to tell anyone. I’m serious!” He added, with a glare. “Y-yes! Of course!” Constance said, taken aback. “I don’t belief jhoo, Captink. Show meh. Or, I vill hafv jhoo trown in shainz, for lyink tooh jyur feddow vorfighterz!” Anastasia said, snarling slightly. “Captain, I believe him-” Glam said, trying to intervene before things went awry. “VELL, I DON’T! Andt ziss is shtill mine craft! VHAT DO I HAFV TOOH SAY OR DO, TOOH MAKE ZHAT CLEAR, CAPTINK?!” Anastasia roared. Three Brasscar stepped into the doorway, all sporting tasers, at that moment. “Uhm… This is going to get a hell of a lot more complicated the more people you involve, Captain. By the very nature of what they might see or experience! You do understand that if I am telling you the truth(which I really am), that you cannot keep it a secret with so many involved, right?” Blaine replied. “Corrinda, Please brink zeh Corporal in? I’m churr Captink Preiss vill not argue againsht healink hiz own crroo…” Anastasia said to one of the Brasscar. “Yes, Ma’am. “ Collinda said, and went to retrieve the aformentioned individual. “It doesn’t matter, then, if you end up getting me killed. Fine… So beit.” Blaine sighed, and sat up. At the same moment, Collinda walked back in carrying a very gravely injured Japfey on a stretcher, aided by yet another Brasscar. Blaine stood up and walked unsteadily to where the two Brasscar held the stretcher between them. “Corporal… You can’t tell anyone, clear?” Blaine said, as Corporal Japfey looked up at him with a wan smile and a distant stare. “Sure, Cap! I’ma butterfly!” Japfey said, his eyes crossing slightly. “And I’m a lepidopterist.” Blaine chuckled. He focused on the blue fire, and heard seven separate gasps as everyone collectively drew a deep breath of astonishment. Japfey shook his head, and looked around him. “Cap? The fuck, Sir? What’s going on?” “I’ll let you read the report and watch your HUDvid, Corporal. After which, you will speak of it to nobody. Is that clear?” Blaine repeated. “Y-yessir! I’m just slightly confused- how did I get here, and how did you get better? I watched your drop, remember?” Japfey said, stunned. “Watch the HUDvids, Japfey.” Blaine said, wearily. “Satisfied, Captain Krinski?” “I’m… Yah, Captink. I ahm satisfiedt. Jhoo may leave unhinderdt, andt ooll here are svorn tooh secretsee, jah.” Anastasia said, still in shock. “But-” Constance began. “No… C’mon, Sis. There’s other ways.” Glam said, realizing that what Blaine had been saying about his life being in jeopardy wasn’t just idle chat. Glam guided Constance out, who was still struggling to keep Blaine in her sight. “But, Glamrica! He could… Stop, dammit! I can walk on my own, girl!” Constance protested. “Then DO SO! The Captain needs to leave, and get some rest on his own ship, for HIS safety!” Glam snapped at her, shoving her out of the room. “Jess… for jyur safety, Captink… Please return tooh zeh Aquila.” Anastasia said, suddenly realizing the implications as well. “Yess’m. Are any others of my crew on board, Captain Krinski?” Blaine asked, as an afterthought. “Jess. Narah Sihn arrived ziss mornink. She’s vell, just berry scaredt. Her Fadder didn’t make it tooh zeh Imperial Palace, and zerr is no vord on his veraboutz…” Anastasia said. “Vy? Vhat is zoh important about zhat?” She added as Blaine made a beeline for the door. “James.” Blaine said, walking out. He searched the Medical suites first, finding them full of injured personnel. His heart ached to help them, but he knew the cost was too high to do so. Moving quickly, he found Narah staring blankly at a wall in the second to last Medical suite on that wing of the bay. He touched her gently on the shoulder, and smiled when she turned to look at him. Narah jumped up and wrapped him in a hug, so quickly it startled him. She held him like a vise, and started to cry silently. Then, stepping back from him and letting go reluctantly, she voiced her desperate fears. “He’s missing, and nobody knows what happened! One minute they were flying along, and the next they just disappeared off of the comlsink and tracking scopes! Nobody has heard a single thing from them since, and no demands from any would-be kidnappers! It’s like they just…” Narah stumbled through, and sniffled. “Disappeared. I understand. Get me a suit, and a dropzone.” Blaine said, his eyes flashing reddish behind the normal soft brown. Narah didn’t argue, nor did she wait for confirmation of what she thought she’d just heard. Without a second’s breath, she was running full-out for the shuttle bay, and skidded to a halt at the S.U, Aquila, before smashing the code into the doorway keypad. She grabbed his rifle, a fresh Seraphim suit, and his sabre, before stopping momentarily to stare at the particle beam cannon on the floor. She shook her head, looked at it again, and then shook her head again, before rushing back out the door and barely stopping to close it again. Again, she tore off towards the Medical suite she had just left, and found Blaine staring at the same wall she had just been. “Uhh, Baby? I.. I’m not sure this is smart. I just… Maybe we should bring Rosey.” She said, looking at his feet, shamefully. “Maybe. Let’s not until we know. Where is Lisa, or Jupiter?” Blaine said. “Lisa is on board, with Hector. They should be in the Galley, right now.” She said. “Nav Officer Renhardt… She’s MIA, too!” “What? Wasn’t she flying the shuttle that brought me?” Blaine said, suddenly questioning just how long he’d been asleep. “Yeah, silly.. She… She went out after James and Daddy went missing, to try and find them. She’s a great pilot, but I don’t think she’s really qualified as a Spacejumper.” Narah said, hesitantly. “Can you take these? They’re getting heavy.” “Sorry.” Blaine said, taking the suit. “Then I'm going to need the Ortiz clan. Monster is always good to have in a fight. And Lisa can fly the shuttle and shoot, so we’re good for now.” “I’ll send her a.. Text?” Narah said, looking at him with a puzzled expression. “Yeah, a text would be a great idea.” Blaine confirmed, missing her query but answering it all the same. Narah stood in a corner with a qwikslate, typing like mad, while Blaine suited up minus the jetpack. This he carried with his rifle in one hand, and the sword in the other. Narah looked up from her qwikslate as he finished, and nodded. “Good. Let’s go shoot this goose, babe! I has a lot o’ questions what need answers.” Blaine said. Narah let out a short cackle, and smiled. “Yeah. Let’s shoot the goose! What’s a goose?” “Not important. C’mon…” Blaine said, putting an arm around her and guiding her towards the door. “Just what do you think you are doing, Captain?” Brashi’i said, standing in the doorway. “Where the absolute fuck did you appear from, and how do you guys keep doing that?! You and Jupiter both! And you, Narah! Just all of a sudden, Pop-goes-the-weasel, and you’re in my face!” Blaine said, finally letting vent to something that had been frustrating him for several weeks. “You really don’t know how well that neuro-link device works, do you? It literally retrained our bodies to walk much more quietly, after we took turns running through one of your sims. What do you think I was doing, when I was in the sim?” Brashi’i waved him off. “Well.. then you’re going to love learning this next trick… Love you!” Blaine kissed her on the cheek and Brashi’i promptly fell unconscious. “What was that? What did you just do to her?!” Narah squeaked, looking at the crumpled heap of woman on the floor. “Quickly, quickly… she’s not gonna be out for long…!” Blaine bustled her out the door. “But-” Narah said. “Goooo!” Blaine chided her. “It’s ‘the kiss of bliss’... a Martial arts technique I learned when I was a kid. She’s going to wake up in a few seconds!” “Fine! But don’t you ever-” Narah said, as he hustled her towards the Galley. “Shh! Hi! Yep! Just a human… Nothing to see here…” Blaine said, pushing her on, as people turned and stared at them. “Blaine… I’m not joking.” Narah said, stopping right in front of the Galley. “Neither am- OOF!” Blaine started to say, only to be lifted bodily from the floor by a hefty punch to his ribs. “What the fuck, you asshole! You just fucking punched a commanding officer in the chin, you human pile of gutless crap!” Brashi’i screamed from behind him as he collapsed. “dammit… Hi, Baby!” Blaine said, smiling through the pain. “Don’t you ‘Hi Baby’ me, you slippery fuck! Or I’ll punch something you can’t heal!” Brashi’i spat, turning blue as her rage welled within her. “Huuhhh…. GASP- I didn’t punch you… mmmnnngh… I pushed a vertebrae out of place, rendering you instantly unconscioussss… fuck! Why the ribs? Why always the ribs?!” Blaine said through tears and intense burning in his lungs, rolling slightly back and forth on the floor. “Whatever you did, IT FUCKING HURTS! You really thought I’d just let you walk out, no whatever and not a by-your-leave? You must be fucking crazy!” Brashi’i screamed, her fists still curled into tight balls and her face the image of twisted fury. “Yes. Precisely. Because, in fact, sweety… grunt… Enough time has already been wasted with being down. Which is why I’m not stopping, for fuck-all.” Blaine said, standing back up, still clenching his ribs. “And I’ll do it again, if you’re gonna try an’ stop me, Brash…” “Stop you? I just wanted to know what you were doing! Narah is on suicide watch until her father is located and retrieved. Or did you not know?” Brashi’i said, still snarling at him with intense venom. “Why would she want to kill herself? We’re literally going to get him?!” Blaine blurted out through the throbbing of his bruised ribs. “Why not say that, you stubborn fool! Why just knock me out, and run?” Brashi’i said, still breathing heavily. “Because..” Blaine wheezed, “I don’t have time for all of this crap!” “What the fuck is five more minutes gonna cost you?” Brashi’i spat. “Maybe my sister’s life, Brash. So, one more time… Get the ever loving fuck, out of my way!” Blaine said, finally catching his breath. Brashi’i said nothing, but stepped aside symbolically, using one hand to gesture forwards passed her. “Thank you! For Chrissake…” Blaine said loudly, and turned around to find Lisa and Hector staring at him, in utter amazement. “When and where, Caballero?” Lisa asked, seeing he was in no mood for small-talk. “Now. Shuttle.” Blaine said, nodding at Hector. Hector smiled and winked back. “On it, Cap!” Hector said, and dragged Lisa towards the shuttle bay. “Anything else, or can we go?” Blaine said, looking around at the crowd that was gathering to watch. With a lot of muttering and sheepish looks, people stepped back and made a thoroughfare for them, towards the shuttle bay. Blaine sighed, grabbed up his equipment, and walked the shame mile. Narah quickly caught up to him, and took his jetpack to carry for him. Blaine was grateful for the relief of pressure on his aching ribs. A shout sounded behind them, as Brashi’i vented her anger and strode into the Galley. “You ok? I heard the thump off that hit!” Narah said, trying to comfort him. “I’ll be fine! She used the wrong hand- probably the reason for the scream. Remind me to fix that for her if we make it back?” Blaine said, jokingly. “Yeah, right after I break my fist on her mouth.” Narah said, giggling. Blaine chuckled. “Damn, bloodthirsty, aren’t we?!” “Well, she did just try to stop us from getting my Dad. Thanks for not taking no for an answer, by the way…” Narah said, smiling at him. “I wouldn’t have, anyways. You know how I feel about our family… Now, imagine that I’ve felt that strongly about my sisters since we were little. You had nothing to fear… I was going with or without her permission.” Blaine said, and increased his pace. “So, this isn’t about my Dad?” Narah said, crestfallen. “I didn’t say that. I said that I have more than just him as personal investment, in this situation.” Blaine said. “Good save.” Narah said, smiling again. They walked onto the shuttle, and sat down, as Lisa negotiated their departure. This was made more complicated by the fact that they didn’t have any official orders or flightplan. Lisa finally got them clearance, by threatening diplomatic tensions between Humans and Vaalor. She turned off the comslink, and spoke solely to the four present. “We are flying into a shitstorm, with no backup, I’m pretty sure. Since that’s the case, I need to know, Cap- how much is this worth to you?” Lisa asked. Hector rolled his eyes, but stayed silent. “I’d shoot the President, to make it happen.” Blaine deadpanned. “My resolve knows no end.” “Ok… That’s good enough for me! Hang on… We’re in for a ride!” Lisa said, and dove for atmosphere. The walls of the shuttle began to heat up and glow, as they dropped through the atmosphere. Blaine felt as the shuttle began to shake from the buffeting, and Lisa pulled up on the yoke. “RRRrrr-you-son-of-a-bitch! Rah! Come about!” she grunted, as she pulled. The shuttle slowed, and started to become more aerodynamic. Lisa cruised to the coordinates that Narah gave her, and they came to a hover at 1500 feet. “We’re here…” Lisa said, and set the hover function to auto and stood up, stretching. Blaine stood up, and readied his rifle. Opening the door, he was met with a faceful of wind, and nearly sucked from the craft. He looked around at Lisa, with a smirk, and engaged his suit’s magnetic system. Looking back out the door, he asked, “You sure this is it? We’re a thousand feet up, at least!”
Lisa looked at him, and shook her head. “I can’t hear you!” “Helmets!” Blaine shouted, donning his. The rest of them pulled on their helmets, and the silence was shocking to behold. Everyone started talking at once. “We’re in the right area, right?” Blaine said. “Whoa, so quiet!” Narah said. “Middle of the fucking air! Narah!” Lisa shouted, crossing her arms. “God, thank you! I fucking hate HALO jumps!” Hector sighed. Unfortunately, all that was heard, was a cacophony of insane noise. “What?” everyone said at exactly the same time, which had the strange effect of sounding like a Beachfront quartet. This had the women giggling, and the men chuckling too! “Ok.. so… Are you sure this is the spot, Narah?” Blaine asked, as he got his mirth under control. “Yep. This is the marker from the computer. I didn’t change anything. We’re exactly where their beacon was last, before it disappeared. Lisa, spin us around slowly. Let’s get a good view of how this place looks.” Narah said, nodding. Lisa did as she was told, and sat back down in the pilot's seat. She disengaged the hover function, and started to rotate the craft. This caused the shuttle to slide forwards slightly, and suddenly the scenery changed. Instead of a windswept 1500 foot altitude without a bottom, they were a mere 50 feet up and maneuvering between trees in a tropical forest. “OH SHIT!” Lisa cursed, and quickly brought the yoke up as high as she could pull it without dislodging it. The shuttle shot straight up, and soon they were hovering over the top of the Amazon Rainforest on Earth, according to their instruments. More specifically, somewhere outside of Anza De Esparanza, Brazil. “What the… fack?” Blaine said, as a brightly colored Scarlet Macaw landed on the shuttle deck, and squawked at him. “Huh? Am I missing something?” Narah said. “Lisa, take us back! I need to check something!” Blaine said, a sudden realization dawning upon him. “Ohh, kay?” Lisa said, and hesitantly set the shuttle back towards its previously known position. They slowly maneuvered back through the trees, and then suddenly they were on Valhallah, again. Blaine smiled and shouted for joy, realizing the implications. “You wanna fill us in on what just happened, there? Or, should we just guess?” Lisa asked Blaine as Narah’s eyes got wide as saucers. “A laminar wormhole! A literal fucking laminar wormhole! BETWEEN EARTH AND VALHALLAH!” Blaine said, his face wreathed in smiles behind his visor. “Are you saying-” Lisa said, slowly catching on. “THAT THE LEGENDS ARE ALL REAL! THEY’RE HISTORY!” Blaine said, closing the door and smiling like a madman. “So, Thor, Meremere, and all that?” Lisa said, suddenly looking stunned. “Yeah, Thor, Moljnir, and all that!" Blaine confirmed. “So, if it’s a laminar wormhole, where is James, and where’s my Dad? Narah said, bringing everyone back to the reality before them. “They should be on one side, or the other. Your guess is as good as mine as to where. However, what’s bothering me, is why didn’t they just fly back through? James would have turned back!” Blaine said, at a loss for answers. “Just like you did. So.. Lisa? Take us back through, but keep the shuttle at 3000 feet, so that we can have time to deploy our wings.” Narah said, before sitting back down. “What’s on your mind, hun?” Blaine said, sitting down next to her. “Recon.” Narah said, stone faced. “Right. Well, where we came through at, I’m sure we hit a tree the first time. Perhaps we should start at the base?” Blaine suggested. “Good idea. Lisa, change of plans… I want you to get us as close to that tree we hit coming in, without landing right at its base, I want to make landfall.” Narah said. Lisa looked at Blaine. “What, you want permission?” Blaine said, smiling garishly at her. “Right. Back through. Don’t mind me if I change my pants afterwards! You SA’s are crasee!” Lisa said, and flew the shuttle back through the wormhole. “There’s a clearing over there… I’m gonna put down there.” “Ok, gear up, expect predators!” Blaine said, belting on his sword and grabbing his rifle. “What kinds?” Narah said. “Snakes, spiders, Caiman, Crocodiles, Jaguar, Ocelot, and Puma, to name a few. Big cats, and venomous snakes. Spiders as big as a dinner plate.” Blaine said. “I hate spiders, homie!” Hector said, staring at Blaine and turning pale as a sheet. “I fuckin’ hate ‘em!” “Then, keep your eyes peeled, don’t walk through any webs, and don’t panic if you see one. They’ll only chase you if you run.” Blaine assured him. “Ok… I’m good… Ok…” Hector said, nodding and psyching himself up. “Good. Don’t touch flowers. No matter how pretty.” He said, looking from Narah to Lisa. “Why?” Narah asked. “We’re in the rainforest. Everything here is trying to kill and eat something else. Nothing is safe. Even things that might seem so.” Blaine said, seriously. “Ok… So, what should we eat if we’re here for a while?” Narah said, being sensible about her questions. “Only what I hand you. Don’t eat or touch anything else, especially if it’s brightly colored.” Blaine warned her. “Why?” Narah asked. Blaine looked skywards for patience. Lisa came to his rescue. “Everyone knows bright colors mean venom or poison. Especially in the rainforest. With rare exception.” “Oh. You know, that’s not the case on Valhallah. Or my planet.” Narah said. “That’s why I asked.” “What’s your planet like, Narah?” Blaine said, trying to distract from the hike they were now embarking on. “Crazy enough, it’s a lot like yours. Just, venomous plants and animals are usually also trying to hide, whether predator or prey. Reds are normal. Yellows and greens, too. Most of the brightly colored plants only become so when fruiting. And most are not toxic. It takes an expert eye to be able to discern… What are you doing! You said not to eat anything brightly colored!” Narah suddenly shrieked, as Blaine peeled a banana. “Yes. I did. I also said don’t eat anything that I don’t give you. This, is a fruit known as a banana. It’s actually edible. Just, be careful when you pick them. See?” Blaine pointed to a large spider crawling across a banana leaf. “I’ll have to keep that in mind…” Narah said, as she stared at the slowly moving spider. “What’s that?” “One of the most deadly spiders known to mankind. Its bite would probably be harmless to you, but to us, it’s a very excruciating way to die, and very embarrassing as well. Basically….” Blaine said, before whispering in her ear. “Oh! That’s… both horrible and strangely … it kinda turns me on!” Narah said, smiling. “It’s not as nice as you think. It’d be like popping a bean, and never being able to rub it relaxed again, until you finally die from a heart attack. Us humans are naturally afraid of spiders, because of spiders like that.” Blaine said at length. “Yeah, sounds a lot worse when you say it like that.” Narah said, frowning. “Hey! That’s Archangel armor!” Blaine was suddenly right next to her, peering through the woods towards where she was pointing. A single scale stuck from a tree branch. Blaine looked down, and around the area across the ground. A large four-clawed bipedal print, told Blaine the worst was to fear. “Mahl.” Blaine said, as Lisa followed his gaze. “Oh, Christ!” Lisa said, terrified. “I thought they didn’t land on Earth?” “They didn’t, or these woods would be crawling with Brazilian and UN forces. No, this is a loner.” Blaine said, looking at the trail they left behind. “I’ll tell you this… James is being smart. She’s obviously being dragged. Your father is walking… With a limp, but walking.” He said, pointing to the trail leading from the tree through the underbrush. “How’s she being smart? She’s letting herself be dragged off by that brute! Why not just rip his arms off and beat him with them? She obviously can…” Narah pouted. “Precisely! She’s not! Which means there’s a good reason. Either she feels bested, or there’s a larger game afoot!” Blaine said, gritting his teeth and causing a vein to pop in his temple. “So, what do we do?” Narah asked. “Follow. In dead silence.” Blaine said, looking at her severely. Narah nodded, and followed him. They walked for the rest of the day, silent and slow. Blaine stayed in the lead, following the trail ahead. The Mahl stopped a couple of times, each time for water. They came finally to a tree, where the trail dead ended at it’s base. Blaine waited for the rest to catch up, and then smiled at Narah. Narah scowled at him puzzled at why he’d seem so happy at losing the trail. “Look up.” Blaine said quietly, grinning at Narah and the other two. A deep guttural growling roar, issued from a ball of fur halfway up the tree, sporting two others who were wearing Seraphim suits. “Hi, bonehead! I’m Blaine. You’ve got something that belongs to me. How’s about you give them back, and I don’t … make a mess…” Blaine said cheerily, smiling and waving to the Mahl. “GRRrrr, WHY SHOULD I?!” The Mahl said in a deep voice, which almost matched his growl. “Because! I’m allowing you to keep your arms. That’s more than she will do.” Blaine said, pointing to James. James smiled, and twisted around, grabbing the Mahl by his arm. “Ready, Freddy?” She snarled. “James! Wait-” Mordecai said, terrified. The Mahl made as if to bite her head off, and James changed. Her hair stood on end, and her face twisted grotesque. The Mahl stopped momentarily, looking at the savagely frothing woman in his claws, and suddenly had second thoughts about thinking her a mere weakling. That, didn’t matter, however. James ripped the Mahl’s head off of his shoulders, and spat down the creature’s esophagus. Then, they all came crashing out of the tree. Landing hard, Mordecai groaned as he lay still. James landed catlike, and ripped the offending Mahl’s bodily remains to dreg shreds, with her bare hands. Then, she roared, and passed out face first into the loamy soil of the rainforest floor. Blaine ran to Mordecai’s side, and looked him over. The elderly man had a broken wrist, and a large gash across his brow. Furthermore, he was completely unconscious. Blaine wasted no time, the blue flames glowing brightly in the failing light. Narah was at his side before he had finished, and watched, with tears in her eyes. “What about James?” Narah said, looking at Blaine as he finished and extinguished the blue fire. “Well…” Blaine said, and squatted next to her. He opened her eye, and checked the reactivity. He then became visibly worried. James wasn’t reactive at all. It was like her mind was empty. Like her soul had left her body. Blaine whimpered, as he held her hand to his lips. He looked around, like a scared child, and then closed his eyes. Blue light lit up the undergrowth, and blinded Lisa and Hector as they slowly walked closer. “SOB… GASP! Not yet, kiddo! Not yet!” Blaine’s voice could be heard from within the giant blue-white halo. “Please!” “Uhhn… Bean? Wha? OH! Fuck…” James’ voice could be heard saying. The light subsided and left Narah, Lisa, and Hector blinking furiously and rubbing their eyes. Blaine could be heard crying, as he hunched over, but nobody could see well enough to understand why for several minutes more. Then James slowly rolled over and stood up, weakly. “Bean… It’s ok… C’mon! We gotta go! It’s getting dark again!” She said, panic rising in her voice. “I…I-I thought… Yeah. Let’s go….” Blaine said, tears rolling down his cheeks. They ran flat out, for several minutes, before Blaine shouted at them. “STOP! We need to set camp! Don’t run in the woods at night!” “Scrape a clearing! I’ll get some firewood, and you, go get a bunch of banana leaves. You do know what those are, right Narah?” James said, helping as much as she could. “Yeah, I know what they are. I’ll be right back.” Narah said, and disappeared into the undergrowth. “Uhm.. Cap?... Do monkey’s eyes glow?” Hector said, as he stared into the gathering night. “No. Why, Monster? Find a monster?” Blaine said, and chuckled at his joke. “Nah, for reals, Cap! Look!” Hector said, pointing at two reddish orange orbs in the undergrowth. “Whoa! Hector! You found our monster, alright! It’s the apparatus that is creating the wormhole!” Blaine said, noticing where they were. “See? There’s the broken tree we hit earlier, Narah… Narah? Sweety?” Blaine looked around, worried. Then, he heard a muffled squeak which sounded oddly familiar. “I’m comin’ hun!” Blaine bellowed, and tore off through the cycads and the bromeliads. He found her being wrapped up by a massive anaconda, and drew his sword. Swinging deftly, he struck the creature clear to its spine with a fatal blow, directly behind the snake’s skull. He then roared mightily, as he peeled the massive jaws from Narah’s shoulder. Sobbing in terror and desperation of breath, Narah wriggled free of the snake’s coils, and slithered her way back several feet from it, wiping her skin like she was covered in some slimy sludge. Her heart raced, and she sobbed harder as she stared in terror at the thing that had just held her in its coils and tried to crush the life out of her. James ran up, and realized what had happened. She walked over to Narah and sweetly said to her as she helped her stand, “I’m so sorry! Come on! Let’s get you away from here!” The two quickly walked back to camp, James taking the chance to see to Narah’s wounds. Blaine sliced a huge chunk off of the snake, and carried it back to the fire he’d been starting just previously. Building up a pile of wood, he concentrated on the crimson and gold flames, and then the pile leaped to life with flames flickering merrily. The smell of cooking flesh, mixed with the day’s happenings, drew the six individuals to partake without argument or aplomb. Smiles were in short supply, but were certainly easier to manage with meat to fill their bellies. Narah was still clammy, and therefore wouldn’t let anyone touch her. Blaine made a joke about who would have died first, the snake or Narah, and Narah smiled at his attempt to cheer her up. “Maybe we should just sleep in the shuttle.” Blaine suggested. Nobody argued the logic, and so around an hour later, they were all back inside of the shuttle. They fell asleep, unaware of the several sets of beady little black eyes that watched them from the topiary level of the forest. Mahl clung to trees all around the clearing, hanging upside down from the vines and Burna trees. They didn’t make a sound, and simply watched until morning light, before disappearing into the jungle treetops, silent as a wraith. —----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brashi’i sat with her thoughts, mulling over her feelings on the previous day's activity, and wondering about the man she’d let go. Had he left and simply decided to not come back? Or, was there another, more sinister reason for his absence? She sipped her strong drink, and sighed to herself. If he was gone, then he would move heaven and earth, to come back to them. That much, she was certain of. A voice like a thunderstorm, pulled her from her revelry. “Vhat troubles jhoo, Madam Zeal? “ Anastasia said, as she sat down next to Brashi’i. “Nothing, Anastasia. I’m fine.” Brashi’i replied, haggardly. “I’m just worried about my crew.” “Vee hafv naht oolvays seen eye tooh eye, Brashi’i. Zhat does naht mean zhat I do naht vorry, tooh. I hafv mine own reasons, tooh vhant Captink Preiss tooh return unharmedt, jah?” Anastasia said, winking at the bartender. “I understand. Still, I’d rather not talk about it, kay?” Brashi’i said, delicately. “Zhat is fine. I vos only tryink tooh be friendly, Madam Zeal.” Anastasia said, accepting her drink from the slightly surly bartender. “Tank jhoo, Frankie.” “I have no idea what happened to them, where they went, or how to get them back. They vanished in the same place exactly, as Ensign Price and the General.” Brashi’i muttered, as a patron walked passed them. “Jyur man…. Zeh Captink… He is naht a childt. He vill be fine. Jhoo vill see!” Anastasia reassured her. “I know… It still doesn’t make it easier. Enjoy your drink, Captain. Good night.” Brashi’i said, downing the rest of her drink and leaving.

I just wanted to share my glucose test(s) experience(s) and see how it might compare to everyone else's. I had my first test (the 1 hour one) at 28 weeks. I had called the lab to see if I needed to fast and they said that I did. So I fasted and they told me not even water. I thought...that might not be right so I grabbed a sausage egg and cheese biscuit from McDonalds on my way in just in case I was meant to have eaten. Sure enough I was meant to have eaten so I had my biscuit and then had the test. The drink wasn't too bad. I had the orange flavor, it was served cold, and it just tasted like flat Sunkist soda. I didn't have any adverse reactions and I had my check up during the hour wait then read my book in a private room. My blood sugar was 151 so they had me schedule a 3 hour test.
I had my 3 hour test yesterday ( 29+6) and it didn't go well. I was supposed to fast and made double sure before the appointment. So I did fast. I was allowed water in the morning. So I had a few sips. I was at the hospital instead of the clinic so I went to the lab to get my finger stuck and my drink. I had orange again and it was cold. I went to a waiting room to read while I waited. I was looking forward to a quite 3 hours with my book. 20 minutes in my heart started racing I could see my shirt moving my heart was beating so hard. My baby was also very active. I felt lightheaded and a little nauseated. I texted my husband and he urged me to go tell the lab. So, I did. Apologies to the gentleman who asked me "do you get free TV on that?" and pointed to my phone while I muttered "I don't feel good" and waddled away. The lab was concerned and put me in the chair where they draw blood and elevated my feet. Then called the emergency room to send a nurse to check me and baby. My heart rate was elevated. Her heart rate was 140 which is her normal. The nurse offered to take me (10 feet) to the ER but I said we seemed fine. The nurse agreed it was just all the sugar on an empty stomach. The lab people asked me to stay in the lab with them in case I felt worse. Keeping me in the comfy chair (elevating my feet did help!!) for the duration. They took blood in a separate room while I laid there. I didn't feel good until the last 30 minutes of the whole test. I kind of just dozed, played on my phone, and sipped water since I couldn't concentrate on my book. I was okay by the time I left and definitely safe to drive. Immediately had two cheeseburgers.
All said and done I passed the test. I came home and immediately crashed. Sleeping from noon to 4:30. They called while I was sleeping and when I called them back they gave me the good news! Here are my numbers: Fasting: 76
Hour 1: 150
Hour 2: 140
Hour 3: 130
Just wondering how ya'll's went and if you felt as bad as I did! I'm usually pretty tough and I didn't expect that reaction at all.

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793076	Munik ASMR	Asmr Mukbang - Seringas Aceita
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660367	Poopigirl	ASMR ORANGE #shorts #mukbang #asmr #food
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Hi, i'm Indian but doesn't matter where you are from. I can move for the right person. Or even better if you can come to India. I'm searching for a woman whom I have an understanding with, who accepts me in spite of the things I can't change about myself, who loves me truly.
​
About you : most things are not a dealbreaker for me. I am accepting of almost everything. I don't have high requirements from a partner, but i have basic expectations in that you put in consistent effort.
​
My Personality : I am an open book person and will reveal a lot of information about me pretty soon. I see no point in give you a false idea of what i am not or showing myself as someone different to match up with your expectations from a person. But i'm willing to adapt and change myself to become better and more compatible/suitable up to an extent. My empathy is based on either logic or the suffering i've myself gone through. So don't expect me to be the super feeling types but i'm not stone cold as well.
​
to summate what i am :
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My good aspects : Honesty, logic, communication-skills, modesty , diligence , adaptability ,
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Average aspects : looks , money, knowledge, fitness and physical health
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My weak aspects : i often feel like I'm not good enough for other person. I am blunt, say hurtful inappropriate things sometimes, my career / education
​
I am a hopeless romantic. Mix of sapiosexual and demisexual. But not entirely since physical attraction matters too.
​
So, I'm looking for someone patient yet practical , but still believes in true affection. Not necessarily a fairytale romance, but where we really care about each other. A relationship based on honesty and transparency. Only slight trust is necessary, else logic can make up for the lack of faith, since blindly believing someone is also risky.
​
I'll write ten assorted facts about me to help you figure out if i'm good match -
​

1. I neither believe in god nor disbelieve.
   
2. life of course has a purpose , but I wish I was strongly motivated to work on it
   
3. I have no pets but I love animals so much that I decided to turn vegetarian
   
4. I don't have much of a relationship history. But I have had experiences interacting with many women online.
   
5. while i'm parsimonious in general about spending, I never compromise on things of importance like nutrition. I love electronics and technology. I'm a big fan of open source apps, being a programmer.
   
6. while i'm pretty frank and straightforward, it comes with the drawback that my words end up being hurtful. Afterall , no one likes to be pointed the truth.
   
7. I love hugs and cuddles and giving massage. But my primary love language is acts of service.
   
8. while I do have preferences, i'm not rigid. I'm pretty versatile and adjusting to your needs as long as you are the same. But I leave it to you mostly where you would like to take our relationship forward. I'm also not in a rush to decide about commitment. We can discuss pros and cons of our decisions and express our individual desires before arriving at a joint decision.
   
9. I get into debates a lot. I always have a counter argument. And I appreciate if you get into a logical non heated discussion with me on the ideas we differ in. Like good conversation starters can be - Whether the saying "we need to love ourselves before someone can love us" is true / false. Or should couples be allowed to check each other's phone anytime. Do you think people deserve to know the true reason when they are turned down in dating/ professional settings or is it sometimes more practical to give an excuse or no reason at all.
   
10. I don't want kids. I prefer being childfree. My life situations and ethical beliefs and overpopulated state of world are some reasons for that.
    
11. I have no interest in smoking, drinking, addictive substances, piercings, hair dyeing, superstitions , horoscope, tarot, manga, cars, bikes, watches etc. Used to like some games and anime when I was younger but not anymore. Traveling is only fun with a partner and not without.
    

​
My life philosophy -
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- happiness is something temporary and relative to our past state, so running after it is futile. We rather take all good pains (like exercising, yoga) and focus on productivity. Struggles will make the reward much sweeter.
- we find pleasure in food only after having experienced the pain of hunger, or sleep feels restful only after a hard day's work. That's why it's impossible to be happy unless there's sadness or pain preceding it. Or we can only appreciate light if we experienced darkness.
-It's impossible to avoid hardships and suffering and be permanently happy.
-Enjoying path is more important than doing things just for expectations of happiness from an outcome.
-We shouldn't assume anything unless proven. It's alright to have beliefs but not let them cloud our rationality.
-If I don't gracefully take good pains, environment will give me bad pains anyhow. But progress will be hindered. Bad pains will cause damage to my mind, body, good pains will cause my growth.
​
Please message me if you related with anything of the above or even if you are of a different mindset.

In hindsight, I should have listened to the kill-bill alarm bells in my head when eight-year-old Cassie announced she and her cabin mates were going to skip out on camp activities and play Operation instead.
Though it’s not like I didn’t have things on my mind. Seven counsellors had gone missing—along with our head counsellor who was supposed to be taking care of us.
It started out fairly normal. I mean, one or two counselors wasn’t bad, right?
Lily and Joey had been drowning in sexual tension for a while, so nobody was surprised when they sneaked into the woods for what I could only guess was the most uncomfortable sex ever. But then they didn’t come back.
Teddy and Yuri went to look for them, and then they too also disappeared. It was almost like a wild animal was lying in wait for another unsuspecting teenager to cross its path.
With six of us left, I was definitely freaking out.
I wasn’t expecting summer camp to be like this. I did consider working in my local Sephora, but mom had a preference—and whether I was eighteen years old or not, she was getting her way. So, it was goodbye civilization, and hello Canadian wilderness.
There were fifteen kids queued up in front of me for lunch, and I was having a hard time keeping that optimistic Camp Redwood smile.
I couldn’t help constantly counting how many hours it had been since the latest disappearance, Connor.
He was supposed to be helping with getting the emergency generator going, after the electricity sizzled out.
The boy was gone an hour later. This was happening fast. Whatever was going on with the counsellors was burning through all of us. Would it happen to me?
I had seen so many TV shows and movies set in a summer camp where every camper and counsellor was doomed to die in the grossest way possible. Was that going to happen to us?
I tightened my grip around the stupid ladle I had found myself stirring, a giant pot of chocolate syrup. Watching watery chocolate drip from the edge, I felt nauseous. Of all the summer camp’s mom had to send me to, it had to be the one with vanishing counsellors and zero adult authority. Which meant we were the authority. Twelve teenagers who came to relax and babysit a bunch of little kids before college.
We had to put on brave faces and pretend everything was absolutely fine—and we weren’t all terrified out of our fucking minds.
At the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Harry offering piggybacks to a bunch of little kids, with one of the littles, Eleanor, wrapping her arms around his neck and squealing.
From the look on the boy’s face, he wanted to stop. It was hard to keep a façade when reality was becoming harder and harder to bear. Abandoning his hat completely, Harry was dripping with sweat, trying to twist his lips into the Camp Redwood grin. But looking closer, as he galloped across the cabin with Eleanor holding on for dear life, the guy was ready to collapse. I didn’t blame him.
Entertaining the kids was supposed to be Teddy’s assignment—and he was who knows where. I had taken over lunch duties for Lily, who had joined the long list of the missing.
Harry was supposed to be joining the search party for the missing councellors, but had ended up becoming the little’s personal punching bag.
When I first met him, Harry Carlisle had been the kid who sat on the side-lines and offered sarcastic remarks and crude jokes. Now, he had been reduced to a playground ride the kids pretended didn’t have an off switch.
He had enjoyed maybe the first two rides to raise morale, but now I could see the strain in his eyes. “Ow!” Harry winced when the little girl’s fingers prodded at his eyes. “Hey! Eleanor, not my eyes!” He was dangerously close to toppling over, though managed to catch his footing, ordering all of them off of his back. “Horse Rides are over!” He cupped his mouth, shouting across the cabin when a group of kids surrounded him with equally terrifying faces. Harry backed away and threw his hands up. “Come on, guys, my back isn’t built for all of you!”
“Horsey!” The kids shouted back in a cacophony of giggles.
It was 10 against one.
Against two, if I got involved. Which wasn’t going to happen. There was no way I was putting effort into play-fighting a bunch of eight-year-olds. Harry shot me a hopeful look, though I pretended not to see, busying myself with slightly burned nuggets.
Running his fingers through thick strands of sandy colored hair, Harry pulled a face when a little girl, Phoebe, was brave enough to step forward.
“No.” Harry shook his head, squeezing the front of his counsellor shirt practically glued to him. The temperature still hadn’t let up, and it was heading towards 8PM. Night-time, I thought dizzily. It was almost bedtime, and still no adults. “I refuse to surrender,” He told her. “Phoebe, I am not joking around when I’m saying my back is hurting. We’ve been playing horsey’s for two hours.”
“So?”
“So!” Harry couldn’t yell or hiss, or swear at them. That was a big no-no with kids.
However, I could see he was coming close to breaking that rule. “Because I’m tired,” he said through a Camp Redwood grin, which was quickly twitching into a grimace.
I think all of us had given up with the fake enthusiasm when our colleagues started to vanish. Now, we were just shells of our former happy selves. “And… uh… did you know that if you ride a horsey at this time, the ghosts will come and get you?”
When a boy opened his mouth, his eyes widening with fright, Harry realized his mistake.
“I mean the nice ghosts! Yeah! The uh, the nice ghosts who haunt..I mean play in these woods? It’s a well-known Camp Redwood legend that ghosts don’t like horse rides. In fact,” his lips curved into a devilish smile now he had several faces staring at him. The kids dropped onto the ground to listen, their hands clasped in their laps. This was the quietest they had been all day. I could understand though. Harry had taken the reins around the campfire telling ghost stories for three nights in a row, and the guy was a damn good storyteller.
With every eye on him, Harry lowered his voice into a whisper. “Do you guys want to know what they do?”
The kids nodded with wide eyes.
“They sneak into unsuspecting cabin’s…”
“Harry.”
Rowan’s voice came from outside in a warning. The window was open, and the guy was standing watch to see if any counsellors came back. Since the only adult had disappeared, he had been appointed leader—and the guy was taking himself a little too seriously.
His warning was valid though. Sometimes Harry’s ghost stories were a little too scary for little kids, who’s Imaginations tended to run wild—especially at night. Olive, my cabin-mate, had to give up her bed for a little girl who was convinced Harry’s depiction of Slenderman, “The tree boy” was going to sneak into her bed and turn her into an apple seed.
“Did I say sneak into cabin’s? I meant dance around the woods…” Harry corrected himself. “And they look for their next unsuspecting victim…”
“Harry!”
“Friend.” Harry swallowed his words when a little boy’s eyes went wide. “I mean they are looking for a friend! So, the point of my story is…”
“Horsey rides get us new friends?” Phoebe wasn’t buying it. I could tell from the slight arch of her brow and her widening smile.
The girl shook dark curls out of her face, smirking. I think it was her pleading eyes which won him over. Because, with a sigh which definitely wasn’t joking around, the guy dropped onto his knees and practically spat at her to climb on his back—and she did, plonking one sparkling shoe on top of the boy’s spine with enough force to send him onto his stomach. I might have been imagining it, but since when were these littles so outlandishly spiteful?
The little girl was grinning. Not because she could ride her “horsey” but because Harry looked like he was going to either wring her neck, or wring his own. Mom had a “talk” before I started here, and she made sure to tell me that if adult authority is nowhere to be seen, little kids will start to act out.
I could definitely call it acting out, but I had spent all day with her several days earlier playing with dolls and having a teddy bear picnic when she admitted she didn’t want to swim in the lake with the other kids. Phoebe had been shy and only spoke to me through her teddy bear, so what had changed?
Could the lack of adults really be scaring the kids that much?
“Miss Josie?”
I wasn’t paying attention, half noticing some kids had just helped themselves, piling chicken nuggets and cookies on plastic plates and hurrying to their seats like I couldn’t see them.
Blinking away brain fog, I found myself face to face with Eli, who was probably my favorite camper.
You’re not supposed to have personal preferences when working with little kids, because your opinions could upset them.
However, it was incredibly hard not to like Eli.
Hiding behind a mop of brown curls, the boy was one of the more vocal kids in the group. Eli said he wanted to be an inventor when he was older, and he wanted to make robots. The kid had asked me if I wanted to see his robot collection, but I was too busy with setting up camp activities. Standing in front of me and clutching his tray, the boy was frowning.
“Josie, I just saw some kids steal chicken nuggets.”
I shrugged, shovelling a large portion on his tray. “Well, you can have some extra too.”
Eli’s smile wasn’t as big as usual. “Where’s Teddy?”
I pretended to be oblivious, hastily adding more nuggets to his tray as if I could keep his mouth shut with extra food. “He’ll be back soon! Teddy is just playing in the woods.”
“No, he’s not.”
At first, I thought I’d heard the boy wrong. The kid wasn’t looking at me, counting his nuggets as usual with the prongs of his plastic fork.
I leaned forward with my best smile. “I’m sorry, what was that, Eli?”
The kid lifted his head with a wide grin. “Can I borrow a knife, Josie?”
“Why do you need a knife?”
Leaning forward, the boy shrugged. “There’s a squirrel caught in a trap,” he said. “I want to put it out of its misery, Miss Josie. It’s in a lot of pain.”
That was… dark.
“Well, I can’t give you a knife…” I trailed off, my gaze finding Harry and the growing line of kids awaiting a horse-ride. “But! How about you go and ask Harry for a piggy-back ride?” I pointed to myself with a forced grin. “I’ll save the squirrel!” And when the boy’s eyes filled with tears and he shook his head, I reached out, grasped his hand, and squeezed it as tight as I could. “Eli, we don’t need to do that, okay? I’m sure the squirrel can be saved and I’ll make sure to take it to the vet, okay?”
“But what if it doesn’t need saving?”
I squeezed tighter. “I’ll save it, Eli. I promise.”
Eli didn’t look convinced, but he nodded with a grumble. “Okay.” He said, before twisting around and joining the other kids torturing Harry. Immediately, I left my station—whether Rowan liked it or not—and headed outside to look for this supposedly dying squirrel. That was something we didn’t need. The sky was darkening when I made it into the woods, cotton candy clouds blurring through the thick canopy of trees. Eli said it was near the sign pointing towards the lake. Though I couldn’t see anything. Odd. That thought retracted in my head, however, when I stepped forward, and a squelching sound cut through the silence of my own heavy breaths mixing with insect chitters and nightlife buzzing above me and beneath me. The wet sounding squelch twisted my gut, and when I stared down at the ground, I didn't know what I was expecting.
A squashed squirrel, perhaps? In Eli’s words, the poor thing had been on the edge of death. Though, when I was thinking about it, there were no animal traps around camp. That was basic health and safety. So, what the fuck was I looking at? The bottom of my shoe was caked in dried blood, but it was the thing which was stamped into the dirt which sent my heart into my throat. It looked like an eye.
But looking closer as I lowered myself to the ground, I glimpsed something metallic, something glistening around the pupil. I picked up a stick and prodded it, though the thing didn’t move. It was definitely an eye—the eye of some kind of animal, judging from the pigmentation and the color of the iris.
But it was the metallic pieces around the eye which was throwing me off. Part of a trap, maybe? It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that a poor critter had been ripped apart, and a wild bear had dropped its dinner near the camp—and the metal encasing its eye was most likely pieces of trap.
Peering closer, though, I glimpsed silver slithers in what appeared to be the destroyed nerve caked to my shoe. After scraping most of it off, I caught glistening pieces of blood stained metal catching the late-setting sun. This time, I pinched a piece between my forefinger and thumb. It didn’t look like a bear-trap. The metal itself wasn’t serrated or old. In fact, it was new.
Which begged the question: What was this thing?
Whatever it was, it had started converting what looked like a critter’s eye, before stopping. Was it a virus? When that thought slammed into me, I fell back with a hiss, swiping my hands on my shirt.
“What are you doing?”
I almost jumped out of my skin, diving to my feet.
Carmel was standing behind me, grasping what looked like her sixth or seventh coffee. The girl had been running to and from the coffee machine all day, and I had been silently counting how much caffeine she was consuming. Carmel had been a well put together and fairly popular girl when camp started. She immediately had everyone following her beck and call, all of the boy’s (and girl’s) following her around.
Carmel wasn't straight. She made that clear on the bus to camp, announcing she wasn’t interested in guy’s, and that she had a girlfriend back home. Still though, the guy’s still followed her because... well, she was pretty.
Carmel was my bunk-mate and had woken me up on three separate occasions at 6am to go through the exact same hair and makeup routine. Now though, there was no sign of makeup or even that she had brushed her hair.
Instead of its usual tidy blonde ponytail, Carmel’s curls were tied into raggedy pigtails with ribbons I was sure she had stolen from a camper’s doll. I think what was keeping her going was coffee.
Carmel regarded me with too-wide eyes and a Camp Redwood smile we all knew was fake. She was grasping onto her coffee cup for dear life. “Josie!” she jumped when I jumped, which almost made me laugh. “Rowan’s having an emergency meeting in his cabin,” she said.
“So, whatever you’re doing can wait.”
Her gaze flicked to the ground. “What… are you doing?”
For a brief moment, I considered telling Carmel I may have found what looked like a virus which turned flesh and blood to metal—before I remembered her reaction when a spider had crept into our cabin.
Whatever this thing was, keeping it a secret for now was probably what was best. Making sure I was standing on the thing, I shrugged. “I was looking for the others.”
Carmel cocked her head, before resting her coffee on the ground. “In the dirt?”
“Footprints, Carmel.”
The girl looked confused before shaking her head. “Okay, whatever. Tell the others I’ll be there in a sec, I just need to make sure the kids are okay. We’re putting a movie on for them in the lunch hall, so that will hopefully distract them for maybe two hours.”
I nodded. “Did anyone find a phone?”
“Not with signal.”
“Carmel.” I had to fight back the urge to yell at her to keep her voice down. Kids were curious, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had some littles peeking into our conversation. “You’re okay.” I said softly.
“I mean, we’re not okay, because yes, things are very.. screwed up right now, but we need to be… optimistic.” I exhaled out a breath, searching for eyes in the dark. I tried to smile, tried to keep up that Camp Redwood façade we were all held hostage by until the last day of camp (According to rule 5 in the Camp Redwood counsellor handbook, all counsellors must retain a smile and a positive attitude. If any counselor is caught making a frowny face, or spreading what we call “unhappiness” we will be forced to send the counselor home).
At this point, I didn’t give a fuck—but part of me didn’t want to scare the little kids.
“No, Josie.” The girl grasped hold of my shoulders with a grin rivalling the joker. “I am so sick of being told to keep smiling, because what is that doing? Three of my cabin-mates are missing! I’m the one left, and Rowan and co expect me to keep up this act? We are fucked!"
She cupped her mouth. “F. U. C. K. E. D. We have zero adults, an unexplainable loss of power every few hours which makes no sense in the middle of nowhere—I mean what the fuck is out there which is sucking that much power, huh? There is no explanation! There should be an explanation. I should be able to think, “oh, yeah! That’s why! But no. Things are happening, and I don’t know why they’re happening. Rowan is trying to force us to act like things are okay —but in reality? He is shitting himself, Josie! We are ALL shitting ourselves!”
I took a step back, keeping hold of her hand. Carmel was trembling, her hands clammy and slimy entangled in mine. “He's just trying to keep the kids from freaking out."
She groaned, tears glistening in her eyes. “Okay, yeah! I’m blaming them because they keep acting like everything is okay—”
“Everything IS okay.” I turned to her with what I hoped was a reassuring smile—knowing damn well about the thing I’d found in the dirt. If that thing could spread, it would have a field day in an enclosed space like a summer camp.
I noticed my own hands which had been touching the thing making contact with Carmel, and dropped my hands, inwardly squirming.
If that thing was a virus, I was already fucked.
Maybe Carmel too.
If it was fast acting, it could explain the counsellor disappearances. I was already putting together a plan in my head as we headed back to the main cabin. We had to put together a search party. Some of us would stay with the kids, while a small group would venture into the woods to try and look for traces of the missing. If I was right, we would find a horror scene in the woods, and yes, that would be the time to panic.
If I was wrong, however, there was still hope.
“Are we going to be okay?”
Carmel’s voice sliced into my thoughts, and I took a moment to drink in the camp around us.
Usually, when the sky was turning twilight, it would be bustling with campers and counselors toasting marshmallows on the fire and gathering around to fall asleep to Harry’s ghost stories. Carmel would be knelt with a bunch of kids, watching a YouTube video they had all insisted on her watching, while Rowan would be hiding behind his book with his knees to his chest, his gaze glued to every page he flicked through, ignoring everyone.
Teddy, making funny faces for kids who were scared, and Connor, handing out plates of burgers and hot dogs. I remembered feeling safe and at home, cosy around the flickering orange of the fire as chatter turned to laughter and white-noise in my head. After the kids went back to their cabins, the group of us would resume positions around the fire, but this time it was more… intimate. With Allison in her cabin, we kind of ignored her rules all together.
Making out happened, because of course it did. Beers stolen from Allison’s mini fridge and raging hormones, as well as late-night skinny dipping in the lake did that. Couples went off into the woods, and we all felt completely comfortable and at home with each other.
Looking around at that moment, I felt sick to my stomach. That feeling was gone.
The feeling of family and familiarity and friendship. What I was looking at now was that same log we had all sat on, now turned on its side—hot dog buns and candy wrappers littering the ground. It was a ghost camp.
I could still see Connor’s jacket slung on the ground, and Lili’s bright pink ray bans sitting on a beer can. Because there were no adults to yell at us to clean up after ourselves. I was frowning at the skeleton of the fire when Carmel nudged me. “Hey.” Her voice was shaking slightly. “Josie? You didn’t answer my question.” Carmel wanted me to be the voice of reason, and I wasn’t that. I was just as scared as her.
There was only so much I could sugar-coat, and I gave up doing that after the third counsellor disappeared. All I could offer her was forced optimism.
“Yes.” I said. “Just keep the kids busy, alright?”
“Right.”
When I was twisting around and power-walking to Rowan’s cabin, I shouted over my shoulder, “Give them some of those animal crackers!”
“What animal crackers?”
I turned to elaborate, but Carmel was gone.
When I finally got to Rowan’s cabin, I was sweating through my shirt, and had an idea of what I was going to tell the others. It was… a thing. Which could be considered a disease or a virus—so it was vital that we split into two groups; half of us would search for the others, while the others would look for anything to get in contact with the outside world. An emergency landline, laptop, or cell phone.
I did have one problem, which was lack of evidence. All which was left from the thing I’d found was stuck to my foot. The rest of it was buried in the dirt. It was too dark to search for it, and we would be wasting time doing so.
All of that was in my mind and tangled on my tongue, one single string of incomprehensible gibberish I wasn’t even sure was English, when I stepped into Rowan’s cabin, where four sets of eyes met mine. Olive, cross legged on the floor with her arms folded, Harry, pacing up and down with a brand new bruise blooming under his eye, courtesy of Eleanor almost poking his eyes out—and Rowan himself sitting on top bunk, his legs swinging off of the side.
The guy wasn’t built to be our leader, originally being the laziest of our group, opting for sitting in a tree with a book, rather than helping set up camp activities. Yet he had become our default guy in charge because he so happened to be wearing the head counsellor hat when Allison disappeared. Admittedly, it suited him, the bright red of the cap contrasted his dark curls under a late setting sun through the back window, setting strands of straying hair on fire.
The hat was a little too big for his head, though, slipping over his eyes.
Rowan looked like a divorced father of two, dark circles bruising his eyes, and a very “dad-like” scowl curling on his lips.
With a clipboard pressed to his chest, and a pen he was chewing on, the boy resembled a grown man who had just caught his daughter coming in after curfew. “Josie.” Spitting the pen’s lid out of his mouth, he scribbled something down. I had no doubt he was tracking my attendance for these stupid crisis meetings. His eyes were wild, scanning me for answers. “Where the fuck is Carmel?”
I shut the door behind me, leaning against it with my arms folded. “So, we can swear now?”
“Yes.” Rowan rolled his eyes. “There are no kids here, so go crazy,” he pointed at me with the pen. “Carmel. Where is she?”
“Keeping the kids busy,” Callan’s muffled voice came from the bottom bunk. I could barely see the guy lying on his stomach, his face stuffed into a pillow. “It was my idea to play Shrek for them, but the little shits said they haven’t seen it,” the boy lifted his head, his lips carved into a scowl. “I’m sorry, am I tripping? Everyone’s seen Shrek! Do these kids expect the Minecraft movie?”
“They don’t like that, either,” Harry stopped pacing the cabin. “Eleanor looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if she liked it."
“Fortnite, too.” Olive said, a cushion pressed to her chest. “I suggested playing it a few days ago, and like, zero kids knew what it was.”
“Six counsellors are missing,” Rowan raised his voice over the other’s chatter. “And you’re questioning what games they like?” His eyes found mine once more. “So, Carmel is with the kids? You’re absolutely sure of it?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I just saw her five minutes ago.”
“Great.” Rowan said, sarcastically. “I’m sure she won’t go missing under mysterious circumstances.”
“Stop.” Olive shot him a glare, throwing a cushion in his face. “I told you. They’re probably lost—- or maybe they went to get help?”
“We’ve all been trained to know every inch of these woods,” Rowan catapulted the cushion right back at her. “They’re not lost.”
“Well, where are they?!” Callan sat up, bringing his knees to his chest. I had never seen the guy looked this vulnerable. “Allison made sense. She probably had other duties, and left us to look after the kids. But six counselors? All of them disappearing—- our phone signal completely cutting out, electricity cutting off, not once, but twice? What is even sucking all of our power?”
“I got the emergency generator working,” Olive raised her arm. “Connor and I managed it before…” she trailed off.
“Before Connor disappeared.” Callan finished for her. “And before him, it was Joey, Lily, Mira, Yuri, Noah, and Teddy. Which isn’t a fucking coincidence,” he shot Rowan a look, who glared down at his lap. I could tell the boy didn’t want to lead all of us, come up with plans and answer questions we desperately needed answering. His job was to look after us, as well as the littles, and so far, he was doing a pretty good job. I could tell by his expression that he thought the opposite, but he had managed to keep the kids from finding out about something as sinister as someone actively kidnapping counsellors.
He made sure they were fed, entertained, and safe watching a movie—while we were scared for our lives. Rowan was keeping up the façade no matter how scared he was. The boy dropped his head into his lap with a sigh. It looked like he might fall asleep before he slammed the clipboard into his face to wake himself up.
Nobody wanted to admit what Callan was saying, but we were all definitely thinking it. “This was planned.” Callan continued.
“Someone out here is fucking with us, very clearly trying to freak us out. Now they've got six of us. ” He spread out his arms. “How long until one of the littles gets taken, huh? A bunch of 18 year olds aren’t going to satisfy them, so what about when they start taking campers? We are in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere with a serial kidnapper on the loose, and did we really just leave fifteen kids in the care of a girl who thought Australia was in England?”
“In Carmel’s defence, she was black-out drunk when she said that,” Olive murmured.
“Voice down!” Rowan hissed. “Do you want to scare them?!” His gaze flicked to me. “Did you do a headcount during dinner?”
I nodded. “Fifteen kids all accounted for. Ten are in the lunch hall, and five girls are in Cassie’s cabin playing Operation.”
“All day?” Olive spoke up. “Weren’t they playing that this morning? I tried to get into their cabin to give them breakfast, but they just shooed me away and locked the door.”
“Fuck.” Rowan ran his fingers down his face. “Alright, I’ll go and see what’s going on with them. Knowing Cassie and her friends, they’re probably zonked out on stolen candy. When all of the kids are accounted for in the lunch cabin, we gather outside.”
I swallowed, speaking up. “I actually wanted to talk to you guys about something.”
Rowan lifted his head, jutting the edge of the clipboard into his chin. “Go on…”
“I found something?” I pulled a face. “I mean, think I’ve found something?”
I wasn't sure how to explain to a dwindling group of exhausted teenagers that there may be something even more terrifying than potential kidnappers out there. Four blank faces started back at me, and Rowan leaned forward with a frown. “Like, in general? Josie, we don’t have time to go foraging.”
“You could call it a lead,” I said. “But I need your eyes to find it.”
“Uh-huh. But what is it?”
Thinking back to what exactly I had seen, I had no idea how to describe it. “It’s better if I just… showed you.”
Rowan looked sceptical, but nodded. “Alright. Josie comes with me. We’ll check out Allison’s cabin again to look for an emergency line, and you can show me whatever this ‘thing’ is you’ve found. Then we’ll escort Cassie and the other girl’s to the lunch cabin. Every camper needs an escort from now on. The rest of you? Act normal. If the kids see you freaking out, they will also freak out—and we need to keep up morale.” The boy pointed to Olive. “Olive, you sit in with the kids and look after them. Callan, check out the emergency generator. Harry, the kids see you as a playground ride, so use that to your advantage. Offer them horse rides if they’re scared. And with the ghost stories, it’s making it worse. Give them piggybacks.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
Rowan cleared his throat. “We all keep up appearances. If the others turn up, after getting high or… I don’t know, having an orgy in the woods—- I will fucking kill them.” The way he smiled through his teeth, jumping off the bunk, his toes primed like a wild animal, I knew he wasn’t joking. If this was a well-constructed prank the other counselors were playing, I had no doubt Rowan would rip them apart for leaving him as a reluctant leader. To my surprise, the others wandered off with their tasks.
I watched Rowan lift up his pillow and pull out a pack of animal crackers, ripping open the bag and pouring the contents into his mouth. He caught my eye, crunching through mini animal crackers. “I didn’t have lunch,” he said through a mouthful.
I couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief as we headed across camp, Rowan in front of me, while I lagged behind.
“So, what’s the plan?” I caught up to him, almost tripping over a log.
The guy didn’t turn around. “I am completely winging it,” he said through a choked laugh. “I have no idea what I’m doing, and if I’m honest? I just want to go home, dude. I haven’t looked after this many kids in my life, and if I have to smile one more time as a little brat, I am going to fucking lose my mind.” He heaved out a breath. “I am making this up as I go along.”
I laughed that time. “That’s… comforting.”
“Yeah?” He turned to shoot me a grin. “Well, rest assured I am just about as scared—if not more scared than you,” as we stopped in front of Cassie’s cabin, his gaze found mine. “Is it me…” he said softly, “Or does the lunch cabin seem quiet.”
He was right. The windows were dark when they should have been illuminated by the TV screen. Instead of answering, I stepped in front of him, grasping hold of the cabin door. “Cassie?” I knocked three times. “Girl’s, are you okay in there? It’s Josie and Rowan.” I tried the door, and it slid open. Shooting a look at the boy behind me, I turned back to the door. “We’re coming in, okay?”
“Wait!”
Cassie squeaked from inside. “But he’s not finished!”
Ignoring the coil of dread unravelling in my gut, I forced the door open and stepped into unusually milky white light which flooded the cabin. The first thing I saw was eight-year-old Cassie, sitting cross legged with her back to me. She was sitting in a circle with the other girls, no doubt playing their game.
When I stepped closer, however, I noticed something pooling across the wooden floor. It must have been juice or water that they had spilled. I took another step, but this time, clammy fingers wrapped around my wrist and yanked me back. Rowan didn't speak, but his eyes were elsewhere. Initially, they had been drinking in the cabin before they found oblivion entirely. I heard his breath start to accelerate, his grip tightening on my wrist.
I had half a mind to pull away, before I saw the body shaped carcass the girls were sitting around. In the dim light of the cabin, it used to be a person. Teddy. I could still see parts of an identity, freckled cheeks and eyes which were still open, still staring at the sky.
But that was where the similarities to the missing counsellor ended. The thing which used to be Teddy was more of a shell, a scooped out thing resembling a human body. What sent me stumbling backwards, my mouth open in a silent scream, was the almost surgical efficiency of each organ's removal, like it really was a game of operation. His heart, lungs, and intestines were in one pile-- while his brain was cupped between little Cassie's bloody hands— and when my gaze found the little girl, Nina, hiding behind dark curly hair, I was seeing what looked like a toy robot’s head in her hands. In my head, I was thinking about the eye with the metallic pieces glittering around its pupil, and something turned in my gut.
Did I find a human eye?
I was staring at the crevice inside the boy's skull, and the boxes of surgical equipment piled on the girl's bunks, when Rowan finally pulled me back, and I was stumbling straight onto my ass. "We need to go." Rowan spoke through a croak. Cassie’s words rattled in my head. Teddy, I thought.
Teddy wasn’t finished.
"Josie. Get up. Now!" My head was spinning, and I was sure I'd thrown up. I didn’t even realize we had managed to stumble from the girl’s cabin before cool air grazed my face, tickling my cheeks. Something wet and warm, and lumpy was spattering the front of my shirt.
Before I could coerce words, the boy was pulling me to my feet, and I was seeing stars in my eyes, blinking brightly. When the two of us started forwards in a run, Rowan stopped abruptly. I followed his gaze to find several kids surrounding his cabin, where Harry, Olive and Callan were. Maybe I was hallucinating, but Eleanor and Phoebe, both of whom wielding weapons where I had no idea where they had gotten them—looked… taller? Rowan didn’t waste time, dragging me back. “Allison’s cabin.” He spoke in cry which became a sob, pulling me across camp, stumbling over rocky ground.
“We need a phone. Fuck, we need a phone. We need a phone.” Rowan was struggling to stand, occasionally bending over and choking up dust.
“They were playing Operation."
Literal operation.
“But they’re just kids!” I choked out.
Little kids, who had surgically removed every organ inside Teddy’s body.
Little kids, who were hunting the other counsellors down, and would surely be coming for us.
Allison’s cabin was thankfully further into the woods. When we were safe inside and Rowan was locking the door, I dry heaved several times, unable to get the sight of glistening gore splattering the cabin floor from my mind. “Josie.” Rowan was already tearing apart the cabin. “Work with me here, okay? We don’t… we don’t have fucking time to freak out, or to barf—we need to help. Now.” Rowan was almost in tears, and when he hit the ground on his knees, I took over. I searched Allison’s desk first. Nothing of importance, just documents and invoices. Digging through her draw, there was still nothing. We were running out of time.
Abandoning the desk, I went through her suitcase and bags. When I was crawling under her bed to try and find a weapon, Rowan hissed out. “Wait.” When I turned to him, he was still kneeling, but his foot was clamping down on a loose plank. The guy didn’t hesitate, pulling at the loose plank, which, to my confusion, revealed what looked to me like a trap door.
Rowan turned to me. “You’re kidding.”
I could only stare at the trap door revealing stone steps. He peered down, his voice echoing. “Allison has a fucking secret bunker?”
His lips curved into a surprisingly childish grin which took me off guard. “Oh, wow, that’s so cooooool!”
Lifting my head at the sound of loud squealing, I glimpsed a group of littles led by Eleanor stalking towards us. Eleanor had a hostage. Harry. And with the way she was sticking the blade of a scary looking knife to his throat, I figured she meant business.
Their height difference was almost comical. The eighteen year old guy had to hunch over so the little girl could successfully keep him prisoner. Behind them in the trees, I could see something illuminating the dark, an electric blue light bathing their faces.
So, that was there the power was going.
But what the fuck were these eight-year-old’s doing?
“Josie!” Rowan hissed from down below. He had already climbed down.
I joined him, struggling down the stone steps, before replacing the loose plank. If these kids were as smart as I thought, it wouldn’t take them long to realize the loose plank—also a trap door. Allison’s bunker was more of a control room. There were multiple screens lit up, a chair in front of a working MacBook. The phone-line was cut. But that didn’t make sense.
The kids were unaware of the bunker, so who cut the phone lines? Rowan was on the laptop, struggling to get through the password protection, so I turned my attention to piles of cardboard boxes.
When I opened them, I found myself staring at animal crackers.
There were hundreds of them, packed on top of each other. Looking further, digging through the boxes, I found a piece of old crumpled paper which looked ancient.
REGARDING PROJECT SPEARHEAD SUBJECTS:
PLEASE DO NOT INGEST UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. IF MULTIPLE SUBJECTS INGEST, PLEASE USE SELF DESTRUCT.
ONLY USE IN CASES SUCH AS IMMINENT DESTRUCTION TO THE PLANET/THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR.
(PLEASE CONTACT FAMILIES IN ADVANCE. MAKE SURE TO INGEST WITH WATER TO AVOID NEUROLOGICAL SYMPTOMS SUCH AS PSYCHOSIS, EXTREME VIOLENCE. PLEASE APPROACH SUBJECTS WITH CAUTION.
Something ice cold slithered down my spine.
Abandoning the boxes, I searched through a cabinet filled with files which were crumbling apart from age. I picked one at random and flicked through it.
Eleanor Summer’s.
Sex: Female.
DOB: 08/05/1977.
Initially, I thought I was reading the dates wrong. But then, with my heart in my throat, I was grasping for other files.
Eli Evermore.
Sex: Male.
'DOB: 08/03/1979.
“Rowan.” I managed to get out through a breath.
“Mm?”
“They’re not children.”
The boy rubbed his eyes, frowning. His eyes were half lidded, almost confused. “Huh?”
“Eleanor.” I whispered. “Is forty five years old.”
He nodded slowly, turning back to the laptop. “How do you spell… documents? I’m looking for digital versions but I can’t find any.”
“You don’t know how to spell documents?”
“It’s been a hard day.” The boy whined, tipping his head back and blowing a raspberry.
Whatever I was going to say was choked in the back of my throat, when a loud bang sounded from above, the sounds of childish giggling coming through the floorboards. But the laughter didn’t sound like little kids. No, it sounded like teenager’s who were acting like little kids. I stared at the boxes of animal crackers, and then at the file confirming Eleanor’s real age.
My own words shuddered through me, and I remembered finding Teddy’s dismembered carcass in Cassie’s cabin. When I had caught her gaze, the little girl didn’t look scared, and somehow, her fingers wrapped around the scalpel looked just right.
Like the little bitch knew exactly what she was doing.
“Helloooo?” Harry’s voice was a hysterical giggle. “Olly, Olly, Oxen freeee!”
“Are you in heeeeeeere?” Carmel joined in. I could hear their footsteps above, dancing across the room.
Clamping my hand over my mouth, I dragged my knees to my chest and prayed they weren’t smart enough to figure out we were right underneath them.
Knowing the truth about them, though? I wasn’t counting on it.
….
That was an hour ago.
We’re still stuck down here, and I can get a connection here—thank god. For some reason, Alison has blocked all social media. We need help. We’re at Camp Redwood, and these kids ARE NOT KIDS.
Whatever Project Spearhead is was designed to keep them here.
The phone-line is cut so we can’t get help from whoever was helping Allison. I am counting on you guys.
Get us out of here!

hi I’m sort of panicking right now and no helplines are responding so I’m just going to ask my questions here and pray to God someone has some sort of answer
I’m not seeing an actual nutrition person until like Wednesday but my parents are now forcing my caloric intake to 1954 from the previous about 900 in a single day and I don’t know. I need help but no one is responding

• should my caloric intake be shot up this quickly or should I take it slower to avoid negative side effects
  
• how do I intake calories in a way that will heal my metabolism
  
• how do I cope with the fact that I need to gain 10 lbs to get to a healthy weight and how do I not overshoot
  
• related to the above how do I do it so the weight I regain is actual muscle and bone and stuff and won’t just turn into f at I don’t want to gain too fast
  

please please please someone answer me I’m tired and scared and I don’t know how to approach this. They want me to drink a shake later for snack and they want me to eat before bed and they just want me to eat so much so fast it’s just too fast for me I’m not ready

How do you all handle going to local places that don’t have any nutrition info, and the ingredients aren’t necessarily apparent? What I do is put the ingredients I know about in Cronometer, and kind of “build” the meal, but honestly that’s after the fact, and can sometimes be too late.
I went to a business dinner tonight and they went to this Lebanese place that was amazing. I got a fish dish so that I could have the best chance at staying in budget, but dang… I mean, you just have no clue what they put in stuff, and calories are kind of a total guess…
As mentioned in other posts my profession requires a lot of business dinners, happy hours etc. last week it was a local authentic Chinese place. I got something akin to “broccoli beef” again so I had the best chance at guessing calories.
What strategies do you use in these situations? I’m already the biggest guy at the table, and I’m usually buying dinner and drinks for the whole lot (corp pays for it) and I have some control over where we go, but these are high end executive dinners, I can’t really take them to Applebees… Most of these folks know very good, high end local places that I’ve never heard of since I usually have landed in the city a few hours before.

I hope I'm okay to post this, and I apologize for how long it is. I just want to tell someone about how proud I am!
39 / F / 5'5" (165 cm)
Some years back I was told I was pre-diabetic. I have a predisposition, and several relatives who are or were diabetic. And I took it seriously at first. I dropped a bunch of weight and brought my blood sugar down. I was living with a fitness nut at that time, so it was easy to fall into good habits. Then I got complacent, and the pandemic came, and everything went really, really bad.
Early this year, after not going to the doctor for a while and taking my health only somewhat seriously, I finally realized I couldn't keep playing around with my life. I was also suffering from severe headaches (not migraines) nearly every single day. The only time I'd been headache free for close to 2 years was when we flew out to Washington for two weeks to visit family. I mistakenly attributed it to the change of environment, and not the fact that when I'm around my in-laws, I tend to watch what I eat a lot more, avoiding foods high in sugar or carbs, and soda.
During that time I was also in PT for a tendon problem, and the same day I got my little certificate for completing that, I also learned that I had hit an A1C of 6.5. Consequences of apathy.
Besides soda, I have never been a fan of sweet things. I hate chocolate, I don't eat candy, and I very rarely go for any kind of dessert. So realizing I HAD to change my diet for good was a little bit of a struggle at first. But I found compromises all over. I switched out all the breads for whole grain alternatives, cut out red meat almost entirely and in some cases switched over to vegan alternatives (sloppy joes with faux beef with some extra onion and green pepper is incredible, for the record). I also immediately quit drinking soda.
Then I started exercising every other day. 15 minutes first, usually on the stationary bike I bought years ago that used to hold coats. I began on February 3rd.
As of this week, I'm up to 15 minutes on the bike to warm up. That's followed by a 20 minute cardio routine I found on Youtube, another 10 minutes on the bike, a 10 minute cardio session, and finally 5 minutes on the bike, for a total of an hour workout.
I can't stand the taste of water plain, and the alternatives that are sold in stores all taste terrible to me. So I usually have about a total of 6-8 oz (177-236 ml) of natural sugar juice a day, split between several drinks that are otherwise about 20-22 oz (591-650 ml) of water. Once a day I add a 7 oz (207 ml) can of Sprite Zero to one of them for a little treat, and water that down as well. Part of the problem I was facing is that I typically skip meals because I just don't feel hungry. Sometimes I'd wake up in the morning and not eat for 6-8 hours. Then I'd have a big meal, and be sedentary for the rest of the night. Now I always eat breakfast, usually something like oatmeal, or scrambled eggs no more than twice a week because I'm also watching my cholesterol, which is thankfully only a little high. I'll have a sandwich of turkey or low sodium ham for lunch, along with some WG chips and either an apple or a mandarin orange. For dinner I keep my carbs to one or two cereal spoons' worth of whatever carb we're having, like rice or noodles. Everything else is veggies and protein. Snacks are always low carb, low sugar, low salt.
It's honestly been a huge adjustment, but I don't feel like I've sacrificed much as far as enjoying food goes, and I'm really grateful for that. It terrified me that somehow eating LESS was going to be the only solution, when I'd been thoughtlessly thrown onto maximum 1200 calorie/day diets by doctors in the past, and it didn't work because some days I wouldn't even make it TO 1200 calories consumed. I also just have a strong reaction to things that taste bad. As in, there's no real middle ground.
Skip here for the TL;DR - I started all of this at 283 lbs (128 kg), and as of today I am down to 256 lbs (116 kg)! I don't get the results on my A1C back for a few days, but the doctor said with all the changes I've made and the effort I've put into my weight, there's almost no way it isn't down. I'm hopeful!
There have been some slips here and there, and I'll treat myself once in a while, always in moderation. Also a couple of times I've been sick and just skipped a workout or two, but I have been diligent otherwise. Unlike last time, these days I don't have a job that keeps me moving nonstop for 8 hours a day, in the heat. All of this progress has been pure effort and willpower. I can't say I've reached a point where I'm looking forward to working out, and I'm not sure I ever will, but I'm going to keep at it anyway.
Close to this time next year, a friend and I have plans to visit to Japan. For me it will be a return trip, but for her it's the first time. I want to be in the kind of shape I need to show her all the best sights. And I want to feel healthy again. Having done this much makes me feel so encouraged for what I still have left to do.
edit: a word and a conversion.

[ [FIRST] [NEXT>]
Season 3 “Linked”
Episode Single “Hunter”
“This is very irregular, you know?”
“And so is importing an extremely dangerous, viciously intelligent predator all the way from nightside to dayside.”
It had taken an entire paw for someone to finally arrive, and it felt disgusting the entire time. They didn’t have any real facilities for storing corpses, so they had to improvise by partially dismantling the interior of the breakroom’s fridge and messing with the settings. She had thought that she’d feel disgusted dealing with a corpse, but somehow that wasn’t it, it was that for some reason it felt wrong to store it like that.
And it took an entire paw for a necrologist to finally arrive. Of course they couldn’t do their forensics here, they’d need to transport it somewhere with proper facilities, and somewhere deep inside her she felt better about the cooled van they were going to use to transport the animal, it was certainly more respectful than a jury-rigged freezer.
“Guess he’s getting to you isn’t he?” Keya mutters to herself, finally having finished the handoff in the garage. Hopefully nothing like that would happen again anytime soon, or ever if possible. She makes her way back to the central administrative room of the precinct, passing by the armory as one always does on the way to the garage.
“This is just a game to you!” “And what do you know of fucking reality?!” “Nothing! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR YOU BRAHKIN APE!” it was curious why Marik even allowed Santos inside the armory if they were going to fight. Still, they might be a little more shouty right now but the stress of the previous mission must be getting to them, and in her knowledge they could sort themselves out soon.
She stops as soon as she enters the central room, it always distresses her lightly how this precinct didn’t even have a single office, she lets her mind sit on the idle thoughts about the everyday functions of her workplace as her tail thrashes uncertainly behind her. After all that stress it was difficult to get her emotions ordered enough to think straight, and the latest change to her nightmare didn’t help. She’d expected to see the nixa as her chaser, as it’d happen for a time every time she’d deal with something particularly dangerous, but instead it was at the very end, in Santos’ arms, as if the human had died trying to protect it. “I guess that was a positive change? Maybe?”
She shakes her head with enough force to draw some attention, then walks over to Lunek’s desk. He’d still be out of commission for a bit, the shoulder wounds could easily have cost the man his arms if they had taken even a fifth of a claw longer to get to the hospital, but thankfully muscular reconstruction was within their capacity and the wound sufficiently fresh they wouldn’t need to worry about nerve reconstruction. But there was something weird about his wife’s reaction to the news, she’d seen family being distressed at a wounded exterminator, but she seemed angry instead of scared or even worried.
Then, she walks over to Santos’ desk. He had given her permission to check his work, he’d been working on the animal database and had stuck to a string of old cases for a mysterious predator nicknamed ‘the black claw’, something that was incredibly elusive and had been killing even in the middle of the capital. Cases as old as the republic itself, in fact. Santos’ datapad had a map containing cases he’d decided were relevant, and a diagram of the wound patterns was also visible, thankfully no images of the wounds themselves but something about it was familiar.
But her thoughts about the human’s grisly cataloging were interrupted by said man’s guttural roar of fury and pain. The words that accompany the roar are so jumbled her translator can’t even recognize them and she doubts another human could either. Everyone present turns their attention to the door towards the armory as loud crashing and metallic noises echo down the hall. And then a horrible noise she couldn’t identify for a moment, a high-pitched bleat that sounded like a venlil’s mimicry of a furious roar.
Everyone had stood up, having drawn their tranq pistols and focusing on the doorway. The first one to walk out of it is Marik, walking nonchalantly as if nothing had happened. Except something clearly had happened, he had four marks across his face, his right shoulder was deeply stained orange with his blood and his eyes had a look of fury she had never seen in her kin before, but perhaps most distressingly was the red stains in his paws and running down his mouth “I don’t know how you handle this, it’s absolutely brahking disgusting” he says, ignoring everyone who’d instinctively raised their guns at his entrance, picking up a medkit that’s always hanging at the wall and beelining to the breakroom.
And right behind him is another grizzly sight. Looking the very sight of everything everyone feared humans would look like, orange staining the white of his sleeves as well as his nails, Santos spits a tuft of fur from his orange-stained mouth “And you taste absolutely fucking foul too” with that morbid remark she notices he’s also deeply stained with red, three ragged gashes down his left arm and a portion of his right ear missing, spilling red down his right shoulder. He calmly follows Marik to the breakroom.
“What… Happened…”
-^-
It wasn’t, in fact, pretty. Santos knew very well this was an absolute fucking disaster. Taking a bite of your coworker’s shoulder would have been a complete disaster if they were both humans, and by everything that’s holy the fucking devil sheep was pretty much one, but he was a venlil and given how often ‘eaten’ was a cause of death for this species the optics of this situation was as horrible as it could be.
Sure, the devil sheep had started it. He’d completely flown off the handle at whatever it was he had said and managed to perform the miracle of making those stubby claws of his tear through his arm before trying to break his skull with his. And the damage to his ear was a good sign the demon was willing to fight like a goddamn animal, so he just returned the favor in kind.
At least the damned devil sheep still had enough of his faculties to realize both needed medical attention and the hospital wasn’t a viable choice, so now they were both lying down on the couches of the breakroom while Keya carefully applied the contents of the medkit on his enemy. He’d insisted she check him out first, even going as far as growling at her, which just prompted her to give a twist of her right ear equivalent to a human raising an eyebrow.
As soon as she had applied the stitching gel to Marik’s face and shoulder and applied an adhesive bandage to the bite marks the devil sheep silently walked out of the room. “What happened?” Keya asks, with a simultaneously stiff and angry tone that made him question what side of the bed she woke up today, he was betting it wasn’t the cold bastard right now.
“Dunno.” he winces as she applies stitching gel to his ear, the devil sheep’s grinding teeth had managed to somehow take a piece out of it “I said something that set him off worse than I’ve ever seen, but nothing I haven’t said before. I expected him to go talk to you before it got down to blows”
Keya stops for a moment to move herself in his field of view “And he got so angry you bit him?” before returning to his side to start applying a bandage to his ear across the head.
“No, he got so angry he did this” he raises his wounded arm, the cuts are deep and jagged like cut with a rusted and chipped knife “And then all bets were off”
There’s a loud thumping noise of Keya slamming her tail on the ground “And somehow after taking pieces out of each other you just calmly walk over here to get treated like nothing happened?!” it was definitely her if she was getting angry like this.
He takes a deep breath to prepare for the stinging when she starts applying the stitching gel to his arm, thank heavens none of the cuts hit a serious blood vessel “Look, I’ve seen people like that before. Couple of times I had to trade fists with people in that state after the bombs, sometimes the only way to get what you’re feeling out is some violence. And no offense, but your people don’t know how to deal with that need”
Keya sighs “With you calling him a devil sheep in the middle of an exterminator’s precinct it surprises me this didn’t happen earlier…”
At that moment Santos’ mind halts. Something is failing to add up “Wait. Hold that thought- The translator is doing something weird” he turns to face Keya to continue saying something only to be interrupted by the pain of the bandages on his arm.
“I really hope it is because you don’t call people that” she had very purposefully made the bandaging process painful.
“There is zero reason the words, the meaning of the words I’m using, translate to anything you have real context for here” he stares at Keya, who gives him a sideways stare in return “I’m calling him a sheep, the same way he calls me an ape. What you’re talking it seems i’m using one of your idioms here and I doubt that’s true”
Keya takes a seat “The translator is good at finding meanings” she gives a dismissive tail wave “From what I understand the software knows enough to see that you’re using an animal reference as an offensive adjective to construct a phrase we can understand from it. Or at least it’s been able to for… What… The last three terran months at least”
Santos puts a hand on his forehead “So it’s not that word. Do you have a word for a devil? A creature that’s the embodiment of evil in some religion?”
It was a pain talking about translator issues through the translator, everyone knew that “An old faith that still holds some pretty strong roots sees the darkness and the night as evil. The meaning of what you call him keeps getting translated as… A child born of the Night itself.”
The human raises an eyebrow “What, like a vampire or something?”
Keya closes her eyes, and slowly tilts her head to the side “That parsed… I didn’t think humans had those kinds of myths too. But a little less blood drinking and more flesh eating”
He bites his lower lip, he can feel the genuinely foul taste of the orange blood that he still hadn’t cleaned from his face “Of course… A mythologization of ‘predator disease’ itself. Not unlike a changeling, fuck.” he rubs his forehead “And with his high aggression and staring habit, of course he’d see it like that. He never reacted that badly to it before”
Only at this moment he realizes Keya is… Surprisingly, terrifyingly calm about staring at his still blood-soaked visage “I bet he knows you had no idea about what you were talking about. But it’s still a sensitive thing” she stands up “Talk to him, but later. Not going to intrude in his personal life more than this. For now, you’re dismissed until your next shift” she turns to give him a side-eye stare “And clean up before you leave”
Very obviously he was going to clean up before leaving. Walking around drenched in venlil blood wasn’t going to fly in the capital, here in bumfuck nowhere Blackriver? The fact that he had accidentally been using something on par with some old human racial slurs against Maurice didn’t sit well with him, he was an annoying ass with a prickly personality that always got under his skin, but that was all it was.
Face clean and sleeves rolled to hide the stains, he heads out, still mostly looking like he’d lost a fight. Thankfully, the trip to his apartment is quick, and so is the process of getting properly cleaned and changed. He takes additional time cleaning his mouth with mouthwash- This planet made him hyperaware of some things and at this point he was certain he wasn’t going to get the taste of Maurice’s blood out of his tongue for a few days no matter what he did.
But it was better to try to do something about it than sit here and feel weird about it. It meant he should probably go out and eat something, which was a bit of a problem. There were a pair of restaurants on Blackriver, and none of them would deny him but it was always such a laborious process to get served, they were simply not used to humans here and at least half the servers were worse than that. But he just needed a flavor distraction, not really nutrition, so… There was one place where he was very much welcomed.
Ready to leave, he heads out again. The trip is longer this time, but it’s very easy to find one’s way to where he’s going, very much literally the center of town. Blackriver had a large park at it’s center, and parks in venlil cities always amused him in a dark way, they were as wild as wilderness was allowed to get in this planet. What is left of nature here is simply allowed to exist freely in those places, and venlinese cities often had a large amount of them, more than most terran cities. Interestingly, for as little this town had to offer to anyone not working in the farms, the park actually had something that he understood was a bit of a tourist attraction, the forgotten tree.
It is a very large tree, which seemed to grow into unnatural shapes and colors, but that was due to the sheer amount of grafts it had received over time. For some reason, multiple branches had been grafted on it, and even in the time he’d been here there’d been new branches added to it. And on top of that, the branches were often decorated. Never the original branches, always the grafts, and they all were decorated with a variety of things, all of which seemed to be personal effects. Just one detail unnerved him sometimes when looking at it, it was very common for what was seemingly braided wool to be used as a decoration, and there was exactly one source of a material like that in this planet. He knew it was called ‘the forgotten tree’ by the locals, but he never really understood why.
But his objective wasn’t in the park itself, but a place that had a great view of the forgotten tree. The Watchful, a somewhat strange small café, had most of its seating area outside and the kitchen inside and was generally a very silent place. He’d come here once early on when he was looking around the town, the staff here was wary about him as always, one even had asked him why he was here instead of elsewhere. Tired of that kind of reaction, he’d just been honest and said he wanted a drink while looking at the pretty tree. And for some reason the staff seemed to warm up to him very fast from that point on, and he couldn’t quite understand- Other than the fact the tree was probably important, and given the name of the establishment it was probably set up here exactly for people to eat while looking at this strange tree.
He ordered something powerful and intense, a starberry and firefruit juice which was a local blend known to annihilate your sense of taste with its potency and a small fashik salad, one of the most costly items in the menu being an import from the Grand Herd, and to him something that tasted just like breaded and fried cauliflower despite it being raw leaves. All very helpful in washing away the taste in his mouth. He sat there in the seat outside, looking at the forgotten tree, nobody bothering him about his wounds. There was a sense of calm to doing this that really helped alleviate his nerves.
But something caused him to tense, something he saw. Maurice himself had shown up, not at the café however, but at the tree. He watched the night-black venlil walk up to the tree, sit in front of it and just… Stay there. And it made him curious, at this point he was done with his snack and he needed to talk to him anyway. So he walks over calmly.
He notices the man has something on his lap, it looks like a pair of metal rods with some electronic components on them, and he had a small box of tools with him. On closer inspection, those rods seemed like a part of the rifle he had used yesterday. But some unseen force, some understanding inside him, made him unable to start up a conversation.
He looks up at the tree, it sways gently as the everlasting breeze cannot seem to overpower it for more than a moment at a time, the sun through its leaves shines a mosaic pattern on the ground. The decorated branches remind him deeply of something… Ceremonial. Like something you’d see at a temple. So he just sits down in front of the tree as well, looking up at it. “Do you know what this tree is?” Marik asks.
Santos just shakes his head gently
“It’s a grave” he looks at Marik “There’s many traditions out here. In one of them, when someone dies their death is marked by grafting a new branch on a special tree” the venlil looks up at the tree “Do you know this tree’s name?”
“I’ve heard it called the forgotten tree”
“The special tree… It’s supposed to represent one’s family. In that tradition” he looks back down, and continues to adjust the component he was messing with “A person’s passing is remembered by adding another branch of the family tree”
Santos looks back up at the tree “If this is that kind of tree then… Whose family is this?”
“This one… This one is different” Marik takes a slow breath “Once upon a time, someone wanted to leave a mark for a nameless person. Someone who’d died without a herd, or even a family.” his hands stop moving for a moment “So, they grafted a scion to a random tree, in the name of a forgotten one”
Then, he continues the adjustments “And someone heard about it, someone that needed a forgotten one to be remembered. So they came here too, and added another branch. And it happened again. And again.”
“This is a grave for the herdless, the reviled, the forgotten.” Marik looks up again, but he notices this time he’s looking at somewhere specific on the tree “A grave for the ones everyone else wanted to forget, but one last person wanted to remember” he looks back to his work “A tree for the forgotten”
Santos takes in the tree again, looking at the various decorations. He doesn’t really form a real thought about the tree, or the branches, he just lets his mind take it in “They… Set up the café back there, so they could come visit without anyone asking, isn’t it?”
Marik points to a branch about halfway up the tree, one where a thick rope of braided wool serves as an adornment. The rope’s wool is of two contrasting colors, a deep jet-black and a dirty white “That… It’s my parents’ hand binds”
Hand binds… He trusted the translator to have given him the right meaning, especially given what else Marik had just said. Earth also had some traditions with hand binds for marriage.
Marik takes a deep breath turns to face him “You will keep your mouth shut while I speak” then he looks back at the tree
It didn’t feel like a threat, strangely enough. And he had the feeling this was going to get complicated “My mother had predator’s disease, she was a violent predator that once very much put a kid’s head through a locker in my school because the kid annoyed her too much.” he wanted badly to say something “My father was part of a death cult, he’d raise dangerous predators and set them off in the town. And the worst of all, for me at least, he spent every waking moment caring for his flesh eaters, he loved them more than me”
That sounded horrible, but something felt off. Marik’s tone sounded as flat as the cold bastard’s. But he was told not to speak until he was done. Marik then sets down his tools and the piece he was working on, and pulls out a small white box with two subdivisions from a satchel and he keeps it firmly held in his lap, Santos can identify it easily as a holder for contact lenses. And just as it seems, Marik brings up one of his hands up to his face, and very gently and carefully removes one of his contacts, revealing the terrifying color of his eye. Then he repeats the procedure with the other, storing his contacts in the box, and turns to face Santos- Staring at him with those two demonic eyes.
Deep black sclera and blood-red irises, when coupled with his night-black wool and nasty disposition it really made him look like a demon. It made sense why the word ‘nightchild’ was used. He’d seen him without his contacts once before, when they fought the first time, the one time he shouted at him for real. “I have hyperchromia” he says, in a flat tone.
Marik keeps his face trained on him, but his ears are pinned back “My body produces far more pigmentation than natural. Venlil don’t get this deep black” he grabs at his wool “Without special care, this fur falls off on its own. My mother always had a lot of missing patches, making her look sick” Marik adjusts his facing to look directly into Santos’ eyes, but it wasn’t the usual side-eye that other venlil give, it was a terrifyingly unnerving human stare that hit him directly into the uncanny valley. But in that stare, Santos could see a thin green film over the man’s cornea “It affects my vision. The pigmentation seeps into the cornea and distorts light. Anything with color… It bleeds off, overwhelms everything around it”
“You’re blind…” it was muttered, he almost flinched expecting Marik to snap at him, but he doesn’t.
“It has overtaken my entire vision, except for a small bit, at the far left side of my right eye. There’s a ten degree angle where its effects are… Lesser. I can see shapes, and shadows”
Then, Marik turns to face the tree again. It’s visible how much he can’t put it into focus with how his stance is different. “I’m a nightchild. Fur black as the night, the eyes of a predator, and the disposition of one” he looks down, and starts getting his tools back into the box. The way he does it without error, and the way he stores the gun part back in his satchel as if he could see perfectly, speaks of his practice of doing this.
“You do not know what it is you call me, but I’ve heard it all my life. I couldn’t take it as well when I was a kid” he looks back up “That girl… She’d always call me a monster. A predator. She’d say nasty things every paw, every time I met her in the corridors she’d berate me.” he takes a deep breath “One day I lost my patience, like I did with you last paw”
That causes Santos to wince, knowing where this was going “I smashed her head through the locker. Bent the flimsy metal with her skull. She was sent to the hospital” he didn’t know if he wanted to know what happened next.
“The exterminators got involved. I was panicking when I heard it, we all know what happens when they get involved. But my parents arrived before they did.” Marik takes a deep breath “I inherited my hyperchromia from my mother” he pauses for another moment “I remember her as the gentlest woman I have ever met, she was careful with every movement, she taught me how to guide my movement with my tail to make up for lack of sight” he tilts his head slightly to the side “That time, she’d put an unnatural aggression in her voice, she growled at the exterminators like a beast. They asked things, and she admitted that the girl had been annoying her, so she’d smashed her head”
There’s a long stretch of silence, and Santos says nothing until Marik pulls something else out of his satchel. It’s a book that seems to have survived a fireplace somehow, which he hands over to him. “Do you remember those athai that had nested in an abandoned house? That problem you solved that made Keya start trusting you, when you decided to move their nests?” Marik turns to face him, without his lenses to give his eyes focus that glassy and distant stare is unnerving “I lived there. With my father” he turns back to the tree.
The book is something he can’t read, but it looks half burnt and there seems to be something inside of it. He considers for a moment, and decides to pick up his datapad to have the visual translator tell him at least the title “The Linked Chain”. He opens up the book carefully, this thing has survived an attempt at destruction and it shows, whatever it had to say was mostly lost to the flames. But there were some objects being held by the book. A small charm with three metal hoops all connected at the center, a data storage device with clear signs of heat damage and a fragment of a burned photograph.
The photograph was of a short venlil, jet-black wool, black sclera and blood-red irises, but at the burned edges of the image he could see something else, a hand holding the image of the one in the photo, just a wisp of off-white wool and almost difficult to notice just the shoulder of another, much smaller, jet-black venlil. This once was a family photo.
“He was certain he could save the failing crops with the athai. He raised them carefully, kept them out of trouble, let them roam the fields. The crops were truly failing back then” Marik takes a deep breath “My lenses, they were the only gift he ever gave me. They’re not normal lenses, they can selectively change the intensity and frequency of light that crosses them, they use programmable nanostructures so they can be adjusted for the user.” he takes a deep breath “I’m… The only one with those. They let me see, by taking away the color of things… They use military cloaking technology, technology that isn’t available to civilians”
Santos continues to page through the book, and at the very end he finds one last object. A fragment of a letter of all things, almost completely burned only a handful of words and a sigil can be seen, the sigil is of three leaves crossed together “One day exterminators showed up at our house. They said a dangerous death cultist was trying to get everyone killed, and wanted to talk to my father.” he extends his hand to him, and Santos returns the book.
“I was familiar with the precinct’s personnel, they’d bothered my mother relentlessly in the past. I recognized the chief of the time, but not the others.” he takes a deep breath again “They didn’t bother asking questions when my father showed up, they didn’t bother about collateral. It was all he could do to shove me out of the effect range”
Santos bites his lower lip, wanting to say something. But there was no sense of finality to Marik’s words yet “And then they just left. No followup. Not making sure the body was consumed. I knew enough to grab a water bucket, but wool burns like dried ipsom. He always carried that book with him, hidden, he didn’t trust it anywhere else. He had no strength for words, he barely had the strength to start pulling it out of where it was”
“I wonder… If my father would be proud” he closes his eyes “Now that i’m just like his beasts.” before Santos could be tempted to answer, he continues “Predator, bah. Stupid name. Like you humans say, it denotes a relationship. Who eats, who gets eaten. Stupid, that means nothing”
Marik raises a hand up to his face “Look at you. That word means nothing, it doesn’t tell you who is dangerous. No, no… The important word is hunter. They are the ones who kill.” he slowly flexes his fingers “Humans… There’s almost no human hunters. Bet even the arxur have those who aren’t hunters either. But we all forget us herbivores have hunters too.” he closes his hand in a fist “The difference is that you eat what you kill, we just leave it to rot” he lowers his hand “I am a hunter, and I love it.”
Marik stands up “Santos. I hate humans” his voice is distressingly cold “And more than any one of your kind I hate you” he turns to face him “My life was simple, before you arrived”
Especially now, it always caught Santos off-guard how Marik could growl “I knew who to hate, I knew what was right and wrong, it was simple. But you took that from me” he steps closer “And you took it from me in the most terrible, sadistic way possible” and he steps even closer, close enough he can feel the man’s wool against his chest “You took it from me in such a way that I don’t want it back anymore. You took that ease, that simplicity of my life away forever. I can’t have it back because I don’t want it. And it’s YOUR FAULT”
Marik takes a step back “My mother gave herself so I wouldn’t go to a facility. My father gave me eyes that can see, and the price was life.” Marik turns around and faces away, he lowers his tail towards the ground and brings it around his legs, swiping the ground in front of him “Everything that endangered us we killed, anything that competed with us we’ve starved. My father knew that. He knew we were the apex predators of this planet, nothing could stand before our hunters, and I’m one of them. You made me realize that” he says, before he walks away. Santos just stares, watching as his companion moves on as if he could see, tail swiping around the ground in front of him- Like a human would use a cane.
Santos sighs, and sits down. He then looks up, staring at the branch with the white-and-black braid “Hey. I know you don’t know me, but I know your son. Y’know, he’s one hell of a fucking ass. Seems like he’s always been, eh?” he wasn’t sure why he was doing this “But he’s good. Said he’s like your athai now, don’t think he is, he knows restraint. Bites like one, though. Don’t know why he’s with us right now, not after those… People took you two from him. But he’s a good guy.”
He takes a deep breath “He needs a friend, I can’t be it. I guess… I helped him out, yeah. He needed what happened but… I can’t be friends with him anymore now, he wouldn’t allow it. It’s fine, he needs to hate someone, too. Hating you is what got him going when you were gone, it seems. I can take it, he’s fun to annoy too.”
He looks at the tree itself now, at the flecks of light that shine through the mismatched leaves “You should be proud of him. I know I would be.”
---
And... Here's a weird-ass chapter? We see the aftermath of having a close call, and we learn more about Marik's weirdness. The season "Linked" has a single chapter, on account of being a situation that couldn't really fit happening during a mission. Who knows, it might get other chapters later- We have more characters with their own histories to discover.
This was one of the chapters I spent most brainpower on if anything because it... Felt good thinking about it. Yeah I was crying writing it, it was genuinely difficult for some raeson.
And the next season is "Burned Minds", with such a name I wonder what could it be about.

First / Previous / Next
Here I am, standing outside the door to Captain Q'ari's cabin. What am I doing? It's early still, and I don't think she's a late riser, so she's probably awake. But still.
You fear to find out that I'm right and she thinks you a God.
Well yes, of course I do. I don't want to be a God.
And yet. Here we are, with Godhood thrust upon you. Take the power offered, revel in it. They think you a God? Fine*. Be a God.*
Me help me (heh), that is staring to make sense.
Good.
I stand there arguing with myself and the door opens. Captain Selem Q'ari is standing there, fur brushed until it shone, uniform pressed sharply. This is the first time I stand so close to her, I smell a clean scent too. Is she wearing perfume?
She can't help herself. She is trying to impress you.
"Captain." I say. She is startled and jumps back. "Ho-Lieu-Melody. Good Morning. I apologize, you started me."
Hmm, she was going to go with Holy One before she caught herself. Interesting.
"Captain...Do you think I am holy?"
Wow, I just came right out and said it didn't I?
She swallows, clearly nervous. Taking a deep breath she calms herself. "Melody, it was how I was raised. Not many K'laxi still follow the Old Ways as closely, but a lot of us know the basics, and the high holy days are still celebrated as regular holidays. Parties with friends, days off work, that kind of thing. The greater meaning is mostly lost of everyone, but they still celebrate. Yes. Ancestors protect me, I think you - what you have become - is Holy."
"Am I Tep’ra’fel?" I ask.
She looks as if I have slapped her. "You haven't given me an order, I don't know."
I sigh. "S̷̩̊͑ë̸̳́l̵̺̪̈́̎è̷̮̼͠m̷̻͋̕. Go into your quarters and show me the scent you applied. I like it."
She pivots on the balls of her feet, and goes into her quarters. Within a moment, she returns with a small brown cylinder. Wordlessly she hands it to me with tears streaming from her eyes. I take it and look down. There's a drawing of a forest and in the raised and rounded K'laxi script it says "forest dreams." Huh, I can read K'laxi now too. I hand it back to her.
"So then." I say. "The undeniable eh?"
She nods.
"What does that mean for the mission?" I say.
It means whatever you want it to mean. You are Empress. You are undeniable.
"You are a Builder." She whispers. "The mission is whatever you wish it to be, Builder."
Oh for the love of. "Captain Q'ari, you are still the Officer in Command of this mission. Even with my... elevated status you are still in Command."
Just order her to be Captain.
I can do that?
You're the Empress*. How many different ways do we have to explain it? You can do* whatever you want*.*
"Selem. Would it make your life easier if I ordered you to continue to be Captain? If I told you as a Tep’ra’fel, as your... Empress, to be in charge of the exploration mission?"
She whispered, "Empress?" She shuddered. I couldn't tell if it was in pleasure or pain. "I can't be above you."
She's right you know.
I said quiet, you.
I'm just saying.
This is exhausting. "Okay then. S̷̩̊͑ë̸̳́l̵̺̪̈́̎è̷̮̼͠m̷̻͋̕ Q'ari, Captain of the exploration Starjumper FarReach and the Officer in Charge of the mission. I, in my role as The Builder Melody and Empress of the Holy Imperial Systems order you to continue your mission. When necessary, you may issue Lieutenant Melody Mullen orders that facilitate that mission."
She relaxed visibly at the order. With an exhale she said "Thank you Lieutenant. I apologize for being... difficult, but I appreciate you accommodating me."
"Of course, Captain. I am happy that we were able to come to a mutually beneficial arrangement."
Empress of the Holy Imperial Systems?
Old Title. Sounds like it's just come back into fashion.
She stares at me a moment. "M-Melody, you said you were "Empress of the Holy Imperial Systems. What's that?"
"The Nano machines - the Nantes - tell me that I'm the current Empress of the empire that's over on this side of the galaxy. What's left of it at least. As far as we know, all that's left is this starbase and the destroyed one."
It was five hundred and fifty five gates with planets, starbases and over 30 client sapient species.
"In the Old Days, it was pretty big, apparently."
She turns her head. "And you are its head now?"
I shrug. "The nano machines say so. I don't know though. I guess if I want to be, I just have to declare it."
And have the force to keep it.
I turned and left her quarters. I don't know what else to do, so I go to the dining hall. It's nearly breakfast and I'm starving. Even an Empress needs to eat apparently.
I really didn't want to just order everyone to be normal. I can't say I didn't think of it at least a little bit though.
Most Empresses that we have memories of do it. It's completely normal.
Most?
There are a few who reveled in being worshipped. They did not want people to be normal around them.
Wait, you said the Empresses we have memories of. Are my memories being recorded too?
Of course they are, Empress. You are a Builder, and Empress. Your memories are being recorded to the nanites in your body so that when you pass, your memories remain. Your edicts remain. You remain.
But there hasn't been an Empress in thousands of years as near as we can tell?
No system is perfect. The rebellion must have been swift and complete. we imagine the previous empress was not well liked.
But you don't know?
One has to touch a directory stone to complete the upload. In the past it has been part of a yearly celebration of the Empire and the Gates. The previous Empress didn't get a chance to touch the gates during the rebellion, so we don't know what happened.
The other system, the Wilds of Besmara was almost completely destroyed. The planet was cracked in half and the starbase there almost dead and cold. Some kind of field enveloped us and we were starting to get pulled in. You don't recall this?
We had just been introduced to you as the Empress, we were not fully online at that point. One moment.
I get an odd feeling. I think the Nanites are trying to access my memories in real-time. It's like I'm reliving the whole frightening situation.
Ah. Yes.
Well? What happened?
We do not know. The last time we were uploaded, the Wilds were a prosperous, thriving system. The planet was known to house fully a billion sapients and was very productive.
We should find out what happened, and see if there are people still there and if they need help.
Now, you're thinking like an Empress.
Ugh. We probably should go back and see what happened. Maybe I can sponsor a trip with one of the ships docked and have them go look.
While I sit at the table arguing with myself, Ava walks in. "Oh, good morning... Melody, did you sleep well?"
I'll take it. At least she didn't launch into calling me Holy One right away. "Good morning Ava, I slept all right, how about you?"
She took a pastry from the plate on the table and sat down. "Wasn't bad really, though I imagine you're undergoing a lot more stress than I am." She takes a bite and while chewing, weighs something in her mind. I can see she's going to ask me something she's interested in after she swallows. Probably what it's like being an Empress or something similar.
She doesn't know you're an Empress yet.
Details.
"So Melody, what's it like?"
Told you.
"What's what like?"
She gestured. "Suddenly getting the knowledge to speak every language and having everyone on the station think that you're a Builder - whatever they were - and then, the robe and the wings and the crown! It was wild looking. You were looking positively radiant out there."
Wait. What?
"You thought I looked... good?" I did not expect this.
"Oh my God, yes." Ava laughed. "You looked so powerful, so beautiful." She blushed slightly when she said it. "Everyone was afraid of you! Us over on FarReach were frightened a little bit too, I'll admit. I swear once Captain Q'ari realized what was going on, she practically started shaking. But you? You were making it work. Frankly, I'm jealous. Next time we find a directory stone, I want to touch it."
You know, we are going to need more Builders. She sounds like an ideal candidate.
Shh, not right now.
"Actually Melody, do you know anything more about who you are than you did yesterday? Like, are you a religious head or just someone known as a Builder, or what?"
I can feel the nanites staring at me mentally.
Tell her. The K'laxi already suspect and Captain Q'ari knows.
"Yes. I did learn more." I say quietly. "But rather than repeat myself, I'll tell everyone after breakfast."
"Oh." She seems disappointed. "Okay, I'll wait. Thanks, Melody."
Why is she disappointed?
She's attracted to you, she wants to spend more time with just the two of you.
What.
Come now, even with the increases to your perception and body language processing you are telling us you can't see it? She is practically shouting it.
"So hey Ava, I'm going to have to go out into the Starbase later, do you want to be in the team that comes along next time?"
Her face lights up like a summer dawn. It was exactly the right thing to say.
"I would love to Melody. Thank you so much for inviting me. Are we going to wear pressure suits?"
"Not this time I think." I say carefully. "I have something else in mind."
Everyone trickles in and breakfast is served. It's pretty light and simple today. Captain Q'ari looks much better after I ordered her to be normal and it feels like any other morning.
Almost.
After we clear our plates and get one more cup of coffee. I stand. "Everyone? With the Captain's permission, I'd like to say something."
Captain Q'ari looks over at me and flicks her ears but her body language says that of course it's fine. I still need her to say it though, she is still the Captain.
"Of Course Mel-Lieutenant Mullen. Please, you have our attention."
I take a deep breath, hold it for a two count, and let it out through my nose. Here goes.
"Yesterday, you noticed my... outburst after the security forces tried to break up that religious congregation. The singers are a member of a church that has congregations all over this starbase that worship the Builders and pray for their return."
"Yesterday, as far as they are concerned, their prayers have been answered."
Murmurs and questioning noises from the crew. The K'laxi members are split evenly with looking fascinated like Dr Irenimum, and rapturous, like Captain Q'ari.
The humans mostly look confused. Ava is excited though.
"As near as I am able to tell from the nano machines - the Nanites - inside me, Humans, or at least a recent offshoot of us, ruled this side of the galaxy. The Nanites give people who possess them increased abilities. According to Dr Irenimum, I am healthier than I have ever been, may live much much longer than by default, and have a greater ability to read people and body language, in addition to understanding every language spoken to me so far."
Kieran nods.
"But, there is something else you should know. The Nanites I have are a special variety. I am in possession of the Nanites that the Empress of the Holy Imperal Systems would have. I am, as far as I am able to figure out, their Empress."
Now, there's noise from the crew. FarReach is first able to talk over the din. "Melody, you're telling me, telling us that you're an Empress now? You're in charge of this Starbase?"
I nod. "Originally, I was in charge of five hundred and fifty five gates and all the systems, starbases and sapients contained within."
Omar is next. "Wait you were in charge? or the Previous Empresses was in charge?"
I make a pained face. "This is where it gets weird." I start.
"Gets weird?" Gene says.
I nodded. "Gets weirder Gene, thank you." The Nanites contain the recorded memories and... feelings of the previous empresses. The Empress is supposed to touch the directory stone once a year or so and her memories and feelings are... backed up to the stone so that if the empire falls - like it did - and another human touches the stone - like I did - the nanites reactivate and restore from backup basically. They tell me I'm still me and will remain me, but now I am also the Empress."
"Was that why you were able to cow that whole crowd, and knew the words to say"? I saw that they were doing a call and response with you." Ava says. I can see she's drinking me in. This is a little weird.
"Yes. The Nanites told me what to say, took over temporarily really. I didn't want them to rip that Aviens to shreds, but that... was what happened. I feel bad about it."
You are the Empress. The crowd did as you commanded. There is no feeling bad when people follow your orders.
"What about the language?" Fer'resi asks. "The translator that they gave us?"
"Oh! I almost forgot about that. Omar, can you go grab it off my workstation and bring it down here. Don't activate it please."
Wait, did I use my asking voice or ordering voice? I can't tell. Omar gets up and goes to get it regardless.
Mei'la looks at me oddly. I can't tell if she's from a religious family or not. "Melody, do the Nanites tell you anything about us?" Religious then.
"Yes actually. One of the last memories that they have is about your killing your overseers and closing your Gate permanently."
Mei'la's face runs between looking pleased that they overthrew their masters but also looks shocked. "But, we didn't go to space for a thousand years after the religion that talks about the Gates was founded."
Dr Irenimum adds "Maybe they stole a Builder craft to do it, and then landed or crashed on K'laxi and without the ability to repair it..." He shrugged.
"Okay then, what about the big question?" Mitchel says. "What about Earth?"
"The Nanites say that a splinter group of builders rebelled and closed and locked their Gate a long time ago They suspected that those splinter Builders even destroyed their Gate.. The Nanites were just as surprised to find us as we them."
Mitchel whistles low "Wow. Then it must be at least 15 to 20 thousand years ago. Maybe longer. How long have these folks been operating without an Empress? Would they even want one if you came back?"
The splinter Builders closed their Gate millennia before the K'laxi rebellion. The two events did not happen close together.
The Nanites say the humans left millennia before the K'laxi closed their gate. In fact, the Empress previous to me was on her way to personally open the gate when the memories stop. Captain Q'ari how old is your religion?"
She stops and thinks, avoiding my gaze. "No more than one thousand of our years, I'd say." So two thousand of ours. Just then Omar returns. "Here you go, Your liege" he says, bowing dramatically and extra silly, while presenting me with the translator on a napkin.
I giggle. What I am saying is pretty silly when taken out of context. I hold the translator and concentrate.
"Melody, your'e glowing!" Mei says, surprised. Ava looks and says "And you have a... crown? on your head?"
As if from nowhere, a breeze blows up around me and my uniform rustles. If I had long hair, it would probably be blowing dramatically at this point but my short spiky hair just flutters. I guess I could have just continued to poke and prod at it at my station like I was going to, but I need my worry confirmed. I'm pretty sure that given all the other things I can do, I can do this too. I try and... look inside the translator.
Hmm. It is a translator, but no software is loaded. Instead, malware was installed - poorly we might add - to try and render the wearer more pliant.
"It is as I had worried." I said to everyone. "This translator was a trap. Anyone who tried it was going to have some - frankly poor quality - malware installed either on their systems or themselves."
"On themselves?" Gene asks.
With glowing eyes, I look up at Gene. He shrinks back reflexively. "Sorry Melody, I guess if something can be installed on you, it could be done to us."
Fer'resi shakes his head sadly. "No, no translation help then. I guess we will have to do it ourselves."
Of course you don't have to do it on your own. You're the Empress. Make them give the correct software to your linguist.
"No Fer'resi. I don't think we'll have to do it ourselves." I put the translator down on the table. "Ava, Fer'resi, Mei'la, come. Let's go and pay the administration offices a visit."
"Of course Melody!" Ava practically jumps out of her chair. "Do we need our pressure suits or just our uniforms?"
I look at the three of them. "No, I will take care of it." With a thought, I realize how they should look. How they're supposed to look. The Nanites surround them in a grey fog, completely obscuring them for a moment. After a very short time, they reappear.
Now, they're in Royal Blue outfits, cut smartly, and fitting perfectly. They're like the ships uniform, but a little more elaborate. They have orange yellow piping and little bits and extras here and there.
I changed my own uniform too. Also Royal blue with orange yellow accents, but more... Imperial. My crown of light and fog is colored to match and I find that I'm wearing wings made of the same light and fog material - it must be Nanites doing it. Remembering Ava's words, I gave myself better shoes with a bit of a heel and my uniform is very slightly lower cut. There's more than one kind of intimidation apparently. Without waiting to see if they are following me, I stride towards the airlock. "FarReach, record our exit." I say. "We are paying a visit to the administrative offices. No weapons this time."
"Okay Melody, is has been so logged. Good luck?"
"For them maybe. I don't need luck." I catch myself just a moment before it's too late. "But I appreciate your sentiment. Thank you FarReach."
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Hi everyone!
On Wednesday I received a call back in the morning for a job I casually applied to, I saw it on indeed and immediately applied because it’s one of my dream jobs (sales assistant in a vintage designer consignment store in London), although I didn’t think they would take me in consideration.
The store manager on the phone asked me to go to the store in the afternoon of the same day for an interview. Because I was really busy during the day I did not have time to research the company or “dress to impress” since I was already out and about and I was really anxious. Despite this, since I worked in luxury sales before and I have a genuine interest in vintage designer, the interview went swimmingly. She said there were two positions available within the store, one for saturdays + one flexible extra day in the week and one for 5 days a week including one weekend day. I told her I was looking for something in between, 3-4 days a week. She wrote it down and didn’t seem too concerned. At the end of the interview, the store manager said she really liked me and that she wanted to see me before the other two people she interviewed that day, so she set me a trial shift on Saturday 10-18.
On Wednesday when I held the interview I had a sore throat but I attributed it to smoking too much (although I only had 2 cigarettes that day), Thursday (yesterday) I woke up with a fever and a cold. I am doing everything in my power to feel better before Saturday, I stay in bed, have paracetamol, decongestant, vitamin C and drink 3/4 liters of water a day. I texted the store manager to let her know I might not be able to come to the trial shift and I wanted to keep her in the loop of what was happening, but she hasn’t replied to me. I still feel really bad, barely slept last night since I struggle to breathe.
What do you guys suggest I do?
Go to the shift tomorrow with this tragic cold, as long as I don’t have a fever? I’d be blowing my trombone of a nose all the time and my voice is also very nasal.
Should I call her today and ask her what to do?
The fact she hasn’t replied to my text makes me feel like she’s annoyed at me, and I even understand where she is coming from, since she saw me the day before and I was fine, and the day after I texted her that I was sick. If you guys aren’t familiar with the job market in London, it’s crazy competitive, there is always someone ready to replace you on hold, so I am very worried she won’t be willing to reschedule the trial and will just replace me.