u/Everblack_Deathmask

This is all going to sound so unbelievable, but I need to talk about this because our town is on lockdown until further notice.

My friend Trent and I weren’t looking for trouble. We got high off our asses and just wanted to get some food. That’s it. That’s how this started. But with the way the world has been going lately, I’d rather you hear what actually happened from me instead of whatever story the news decides to feed you.

I was fused to the couch, aimlessly watching the news anchor ramble on about politics while Trent sat next to me. “I feel like they’re always mad about something.”

“It’s the news,” I muttered, my body feeling like the juice inside a lava lamp. “That’s their whole thing.”

We sat there for a while, listening to the low volume and reading the closed captioning so that our zonked asses could keep up with what was going on.

When the channel cut to commercial, Trent got up. “Dude, check this out.” Trent went to his room and came back with an assortment of coupons. “Talk about the motherlode of options am I right?”

He set them on the coffee table in front of me. I took a closer look at them, only to be met with disappointment. “You do realize most of these are expired right?” I pointed at the various dates, ranging from yesterday to a whopping three months expired. “So much for options.”

“Coupons are like window shopping.” He smiled dumbly, his eyes completely bloodshot. “They’re suggestions with confidence.” 

“Fifty milligrams of Indica really got you feeling philosophical, huh Socrates?” 

“Nah.” He smirked. “It’s got me feeling like I haven’t eaten in at least ten business days.” 

“Well let’s figure something out then.”

“Chicken sandwiches?” Trent asked.

“We had that last week.” 

“Chinese?” 

“That doesn’t sound good right now.” 

“Tacos?”

“I had horrible stomach cramps the last time we had tacos man.”

“Aw. Do you want me to order you some French cries?” Trent shook his head in slight annoyance. “You’re more indecisive than my parents trying to plan a vacation.”

“I mean, we are roommates,” I shrugged. “We’re basically halfway to being a bickering couple.”

“Touché.” He didn’t even look up at me. “What about Italian?”

“What Italian place do you know that’s going to be open at two in the morning?”

“Oh…good point.” He stared at me blankly, his last two remaining brain cells fighting for third place as he picked up another coupon from the table and squinted at it.

“The Raveyard,” he read slowly with heavy eyes. “‘Buy one, get one ‘Graveyard Smashburger free.’ That sounds… stupendous.”

I laughed at his choice of wording. “You really wanna go to that retro horror themed place with the weird graveyard out back?”

“Yeah! Why not? We’ve never been.” His eyes widened with excitement. He was practically frothing at the mouth. “Don’t you want to bite into a mouth-wateringly delicious patty with melted cheese right now?”

My stomach growled, providing an answer before the words could even leave my mouth. “Abso-freakin-lutely.”

“Sick.” Trent fist-pumped the air as he grabbed his keys from the countertop and shoved the coupons into his pocket. “Let’s boot, scoot, and boogie. I’m starving.” 

I went to turn off the TV, but right as I did so, the late-night news anchor began talking about something that made my stomach churn.

“The suspect has not been located. Residents of the Silver Grove complex are advised to remain indoors as the search for Jonah’s killer remains at large.”

After the breaking news announcement, they put a grainy picture on the screen. It was an image that was more than likely pulled from a security camera, but it was enough to get a decent profile.

He had the kind of face that would never stand out in a crowd. I don’t know if it was the graininess of the footage or the lighting or what, but his eyes appeared to be an unnatural color. Most disturbingly though was all the blood. It covered almost every inch of his baggy clothing.

I pressed the power button on the TV remote, and watched the screen go black. “Should we listen to the news?” 

“Fuck no.” Trent dismissed, dangling his keys. “If people listened to the news we wouldn’t be in half the shit we find ourselves in. Let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve got a case of the serious munchies.”

I didn’t argue. I just followed him to the car. In hindsight, I should have listened to my gut and suggested we stay home, but instead, we left our apartment complex and embarked on a late quest to The Raveyard.

“Hold On Loosely” by 38 Special served as the soundtrack for our drive down the various empty  streets toward our destination. The kick drums thumped in the speakers, drowning out the rumbling of my stomach that could have easily registered on the Richter scale.

After a fairly brief drive, we rolled up to the restaurant. The big neon burger flickered in the darkness of the night, a beacon of hope for our cravings as we pulled up to the skull-shaped speaker box in the drive-thru. My mouth salivated at the thought of stuffing some burgers down my food-deprived gullet. 

We sat idly in the car, staring at the plethora of options on the menu and pondering just how much we were about to blow on food. When we finally decided what we wanted, Trent rolled down the window and stuck his head out the car.

“Hey, uh…” He trailed off before remembering the task at hand. “We’re ready to order.”

We were greeted by nothing but static and…wheezing? It was faint, but unmistakable.

“Great customer service.” Trent said impatiently. “Are you going to take our order or what?”

I couldn’t help but feel a little concerned at the noise. “Are they having an asthma attack or something?”

“They can walk it off. Might just be a newbie’s first day.” Trent pulled his head back into the car. “We’ve all been there.”

“Don’t joke like that man.”

“I’m not joking. It might just be the speaker.” He stuck his head out again. “My friend and I want to order. Is everything alright in there?”

There was no response, but the wheezing sound persisted in the static.

“Sounds like someone forgot to turn off their headset while on the John.”

“Maybe they’re busy on the inside?” I thought aloud.

Trent scanned the parking lot with sarcastic puzzlement. “Yeah…the place sure is packed to the gills. I know you’re not the brightest crayon in the Crayola box Tanner, but use that noggin of yours.”

Without warning, the speaker crackled to unsuspecting life as the sound of a scream pierced the air before falling completely silent.

A cold shiver ran down my spine. “I’m not tripping am I?”

“No. I heard it too.”

Trent stepped on the gas and pulled forward to the first window. What we saw left us confused and horrified. Smeared all over the cracked drive-thru window was blood. It dripped down the glass as slowly as molasses.

Trent unbuckled his seatbelt and stuck his body halfway out the car to peer through the window. “Surely they’re fucking with us.”

I tensed up in my seat. “If they are, this is one fucked up prank.”

For a solid five seconds, Trent stared inside before recoiling back inside. The color had completely drained from his face. “We need to go inside and check on everyone.”

“Are you crazy? What did you see?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he floored it out of the drive-thru, parked the car, and immediately barreled out the driver’s side door towards the entrance. I followed in hot pursuit, well aware that we were treating all the red flags like checkpoints.

Upon entry, we were greeted with the familiar saxophone motif of “Urgent” by Foreigner.

“Urgent…urgent…emergency.” reverberated throughout the seemingly vacant restaurant as my eyes surveyed the carnage. The interior looked like it had been hit by an F-5 tornado. Chairs were overturned while plastic trays, paper wrapping, and half-eaten burgers and fries were strewn all over the black and white chessboard-like tile floor. The fryers in the back emitted a sound similar to a rattlesnake’s rattle. 

Trent swallowed nervously. “Let’s take a quick look around and get the hell out of here.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” I said, following Trent as he made his way towards the registers. “We should call the police and leave it to them.”

“Why? So they can do nothing?” Trent hopped over the counter and gestured to me to do the same.

I complied but as my feet touched the floor, I felt my balance slip and would have fallen to the floor had Trent not managed to catch me in time. When I regained my footing, I realized that my shoes were making a noise similar to stepping in a rain puddle. 

My gaze shifted to the floor below me. I was stepping in a thick pool of blood. Dark red smears stained the floor, reflecting like gasoline from the bright, white lighting overhead. 

Despite the grisly sight, there didn’t appear to be anybody else around. 

“What the fuck happened here?” 

A thunderous crunching sound answered my question, startling the both of us. It sounded like someone chomping on concrete.

“Stay quiet.” He whispered, following the crimson streaks across the floor towards the back. I trailed closely behind.

We peeked our heads around the corner, and discovered the source of all the noise.

Squatting and tearing into the mutilated corpse of an employee on the ground like a gluttonous lion was a man. 

Have you ever seen images of what a blood eagle looks like? Imagine that, but from the front of the body. That’s what I was looking at on the ground as the man kept consuming every bit of flesh he could get his hands on. The bloodsoaked clothes hanging from his lanky frame looked familiar.

That’s when it dawned on me.

It was the guy from the news. 

Jonah’s killer.

I covered my mouth to stifle a scream, and as I did, a metallic thumping noise could be heard coming from somewhere behind us. Then, a cry for help.

“IS SOMEONE THERE?! GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Before I could even blink, the man’s orange eyes had locked onto me. His skin resembled a cheese pizza if the cheese had been mostly scraped off, and he reeked like roadkill.

Trent and I bolted back the way we came toward the entrance. My pulse quickened as my legs carried me with a speed I didn’t know I possessed. Trent barreled over the counter and floundered to his feet, but before I could do the same, the man grabbed my ankle and pulled me toward him. The plastic tubs containing condiments clattered to the ground as my body was dragged back across the counter. 

I hit the floor hard. The remaining air in my lungs escaped in a ragged burst as the man dug his knees into my chest and grabbed my throat. I flailed about, trying desperately to remove his hands and free myself. He opened his mouth, and I watched as coagulated blood and strips of skin landed on my face like a rancid rainfall. 

Before he could close the distance and tear into me, Trent vaulted over the counter, and cracked a plastic tray from the lobby floor over the man’s head.
His teeth chattered in response to getting clocked, and his grip on my neck relented as he turned his focus to Trent.

“Run, Tanner!” He cried out, swinging the plastic tray wildly in an attempt to keep the man at bay. I sat up from the ground and gasped for air, watching Trent as he backed up towards the fryers. The man rasped excitedly as he gripped the plastic tray in Trent’s hand and fought for control of it. 

I had to think fast and do something, but what? 

I noticed the plastic containers resting on the ground next to me. Treating them like weapons, I picked them up, and charged towards the man and began raining down the hardest swings my body could muster.

PING. PING. PING.

The man turned slowly, registering my blows as nothing more than an inconvenience at best. My distraction was enough for Trent to wrap his arms around the man’s body to try and restrain him. 

“HEH…HEH…HEH…” The man panted as he thrashed around violently. Trent buckled behind him, struggling to keep his grip.

“I can’t hold on much longer!” He screamed, his arms loosening with every frantic movement the man made.

The fryers crackled behind me, and that’s when I realized what we needed to do to get us out of this immensely fucked up situation.  

“Move!” I commanded.

Trent released the man and dove to the ground next to me as I grabbed the fryer basket with both hands. The metal handle scorched my palms instantly, but adrenaline bulldozed through the pain.

The man whipped toward me with those glowing orange eyes, and I hurled the basket upward. A tidal wave of golden grease erupted from the fryer, and the oil hit him with a wet splash.

His howls of pain sounded like a thousand dying pterodactyls screeching directly into my skull. The man staggered backwards, his bloody fingernails clawing vigorously at his blistering, bubbling skin. He slammed into the stainless steel counter behind him hard enough to dent it before charging in a blind frenzy toward the drive-thru window. He crashed through it shoulder-first, causing shards of glass to fly everywhere.

He hit the pavement hard enough to skid across the parking lot like a stone skipping across water. The neon lights of The Raveyard burger sign flickered across his twitching body in pulses of jaundiced yellow.

Trent and I watched him writhe and clutch himself for several moments before he rose from the ground, and sprinted off into the night on all fours like a wolf. We just stood there in shock while the music in the lobby droned on behind us. 

“Dude…what the fuck was that?” I asked, looking at Trent with horror.

“I don’t know, but we need to go. Now.”

“HEY! YOU OUT THERE! HELP ME!” The voice we had heard from the freezer earlier was calling out again.
I walked toward the freezer, but Trent stuck his arm out to stop me. “Hell no, we’re not sticking around any longer. Not after that.”

“Someone needs our help. We can’t just leave them here.” 

I opened the freezer door and a cold mist rolled out, revealing a teenager inside blinking at us like we were a figment of his imagination. His black work shirt and pants were covered in blood. 

“C-c-c’mon. G-g-go.” He shivered as he walked out, clutching himself for warmth.

“Is there anybody else here?” I asked, my eyes landing on his nametag that said: Raimi.

His eyes landed on the various smears and pools of blood around the restaurant floor. “N-n-not anymore.”

We escorted him out of the restaurant and toward our car. Before we could even buckle our seatbelts, Trent peeled out of the parking lot and sped off down the street.

Not a word was said for a while. Music served as our only comfort in the aftermath until “(Don’t) Fear the Reaper” began to play from the speakers. Thinking that it wasn’t exactly the most appropriate song for the situation, Trent flicked the volume dial to zero, and the car returned to silence.

A few moments later, I decided to ask. “What happened back there?”

Raimi let out a nervous laugh as I glanced at him in the rear view mirror. “To make a long story short, just another day in customer service.”

“Sure as shit didn’t look like it.” Trent gripped the steering wheel tightly. “We’re going back to our place and calling the police.”

And that’s what we did. We returned to our apartment, called the police, and gave our accounts of what happened that night. When we finished explaining every last excruciating detail, they took Raimi back home to his parents. That was a couple of days ago.

Ever since our story was made public, the town has gone on lockdown. That hasn’t stopped the news reports from downplaying our experience as a “contained incident”.

They announced that a “thorough” investigation was under way, but The Raveyard made a statement saying that they were not liable for the events that transpired in their store. I’m not buying that bullshit for a second. There’s definitely something fishy going on here.

They haven’t found the guy yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they do. I hope they bring this madness to an end. I’m tired of being holed up in this apartment with Trent. I love the man, but sometimes a guy just needs his space.

If you know anything about what’s going on in Ashhaven, please tell me. I doubt this will be the last time we hear about Jonah’s killer or The Raveyard.

And as fucked up as this sounds, I still wonder how those Graveyard Smashburgers would have tasted that night.

This is all going to sound so unbelievable, but I need to talk about this because our town is on lockdown until further notice.

My friend Trent and I weren’t looking for trouble. We got high off our asses and just wanted to get some food. That’s it. That’s how this started. But with the way the world has been going lately, I’d rather you hear what actually happened from me instead of whatever story the news decides to feed you.

I was fused to the couch, aimlessly watching the news anchor ramble on about politics while Trent sat next to me. “I feel like they’re always mad about something.”

“It’s the news,” I muttered, my body feeling like the juice inside a lava lamp. “That’s their whole thing.”

We sat there for a while, listening to the low volume and reading the closed captioning so that our zonked asses could keep up with what was going on.

When the channel cut to commercial, Trent got up. “Dude, check this out.” Trent went to his room and came back with an assortment of coupons. “Talk about the motherlode of options am I right?”

He set them on the coffee table in front of me. I took a closer look at them, only to be met with disappointment. “You do realize most of these are expired right?” I pointed at the various dates, ranging from yesterday to a whopping three months expired. “So much for options.”

“Coupons are like window shopping.” He smiled dumbly, his eyes completely bloodshot. “They’re suggestions with confidence.” 

“Fifty milligrams of Indica really got you feeling philosophical, huh Socrates?” 

“Nah.” He smirked. “It’s got me feeling like I haven’t eaten in at least ten business days.” 

“Well let’s figure something out then.”

“Chicken sandwiches?” Trent asked.

“We had that last week.” 

“Chinese?” 

“That doesn’t sound good right now.” 

“Tacos?”

“I had horrible stomach cramps the last time we had tacos man.”

“Aw. Do you want me to order you some French cries?” Trent shook his head in slight annoyance. “You’re more indecisive than my parents trying to plan a vacation.”

“I mean, we are roommates,” I shrugged. “We’re basically halfway to being a bickering couple.”

“Touché.” He didn’t even look up at me. “What about Italian?”

“What Italian place do you know that’s going to be open at two in the morning?”

“Oh…good point.” He stared at me blankly, his last two remaining brain cells fighting for third place as he picked up another coupon from the table and squinted at it.

“The Raveyard,” he read slowly with heavy eyes. “‘Buy one, get one ‘Graveyard Smashburger free.’ That sounds… stupendous.”

I laughed at his choice of wording. “You really wanna go to that retro horror themed place with the weird graveyard out back?”

“Yeah! Why not? We’ve never been.” His eyes widened with excitement. He was practically frothing at the mouth. “Don’t you want to bite into a mouth-wateringly delicious patty with melted cheese right now?”

My stomach growled, providing an answer before the words could even leave my mouth. “Abso-freakin-lutely.”

“Sick.” Trent fist-pumped the air as he grabbed his keys from the countertop and shoved the coupons into his pocket. “Let’s boot, scoot, and boogie. I’m starving.” 

I went to turn off the TV, but right as I did so, the late-night news anchor began talking about something that made my stomach churn.

“The suspect has not been located. Residents of the Silver Grove complex are advised to remain indoors as the search for Jonah’s killer remains at large.”

After the breaking news announcement, they put a grainy picture on the screen. It was an image that was more than likely pulled from a security camera, but it was enough to get a decent profile.

He had the kind of face that would never stand out in a crowd. I don’t know if it was the graininess of the footage or the lighting or what, but his eyes appeared to be an unnatural color. Most disturbingly though was all the blood. It covered almost every inch of his baggy clothing.

I pressed the power button on the TV remote, and watched the screen go black. “Should we listen to the news?” 

“Fuck no.” Trent dismissed, dangling his keys. “If people listened to the news we wouldn’t be in half the shit we find ourselves in. Let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve got a case of the serious munchies.”

I didn’t argue. I just followed him to the car. In hindsight, I should have listened to my gut and suggested we stay home, but instead, we left our apartment complex and embarked on a late quest to The Raveyard.

“Hold On Loosely” by 38 Special served as the soundtrack for our drive down the various empty  streets toward our destination. The kick drums thumped in the speakers, drowning out the rumbling of my stomach that could have easily registered on the Richter scale.

After a fairly brief drive, we rolled up to the restaurant. The big neon burger flickered in the darkness of the night, a beacon of hope for our cravings as we pulled up to the skull-shaped speaker box in the drive-thru. My mouth salivated at the thought of stuffing some burgers down my food-deprived gullet. 

We sat idly in the car, staring at the plethora of options on the menu and pondering just how much we were about to blow on food. When we finally decided what we wanted, Trent rolled down the window and stuck his head out the car.

“Hey, uh…” He trailed off before remembering the task at hand. “We’re ready to order.”

We were greeted by nothing but static and…wheezing? It was faint, but unmistakable.

“Great customer service.” Trent said impatiently. “Are you going to take our order or what?”

I couldn’t help but feel a little concerned at the noise. “Are they having an asthma attack or something?”

“They can walk it off. Might just be a newbie’s first day.” Trent pulled his head back into the car. “We’ve all been there.”

“Don’t joke like that man.”

“I’m not joking. It might just be the speaker.” He stuck his head out again. “My friend and I want to order. Is everything alright in there?”

There was no response, but the wheezing sound persisted in the static.

“Sounds like someone forgot to turn off their headset while on the John.”

“Maybe they’re busy on the inside?” I thought aloud.

Trent scanned the parking lot with sarcastic puzzlement. “Yeah…the place sure is packed to the gills. I know you’re not the brightest crayon in the Crayola box Tanner, but use that noggin of yours.”

Without warning, the speaker crackled to unsuspecting life as the sound of a scream pierced the air before falling completely silent.

A cold shiver ran down my spine. “I’m not tripping am I?”

“No. I heard it too.”

Trent stepped on the gas and pulled forward to the first window. What we saw left us confused and horrified. Smeared all over the cracked drive-thru window was blood. It dripped down the glass as slowly as molasses.

Trent unbuckled his seatbelt and stuck his body halfway out the car to peer through the window. “Surely they’re fucking with us.”

I tensed up in my seat. “If they are, this is one fucked up prank.”

For a solid five seconds, Trent stared inside before recoiling back inside. The color had completely drained from his face. “We need to go inside and check on everyone.”

“Are you crazy? What did you see?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he floored it out of the drive-thru, parked the car, and immediately barreled out the driver’s side door towards the entrance. I followed in hot pursuit, well aware that we were treating all the red flags like checkpoints.

Upon entry, we were greeted with the familiar saxophone motif of “Urgent” by Foreigner.

“Urgent…urgent…emergency.” reverberated throughout the seemingly vacant restaurant as my eyes surveyed the carnage. The interior looked like it had been hit by an F-5 tornado. Chairs were overturned while plastic trays, paper wrapping, and half-eaten burgers and fries were strewn all over the black and white chessboard-like tile floor. The fryers in the back emitted a sound similar to a rattlesnake’s rattle. 

Trent swallowed nervously. “Let’s take a quick look around and get the hell out of here.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” I said, following Trent as he made his way towards the registers. “We should call the police and leave it to them.”

“Why? So they can do nothing?” Trent hopped over the counter and gestured to me to do the same.

I complied but as my feet touched the floor, I felt my balance slip and would have fallen to the floor had Trent not managed to catch me in time. When I regained my footing, I realized that my shoes were making a noise similar to stepping in a rain puddle. 

My gaze shifted to the floor below me. I was stepping in a thick pool of blood. Dark red smears stained the floor, reflecting like gasoline from the bright, white lighting overhead. 

Despite the grisly sight, there didn’t appear to be anybody else around. 

“What the fuck happened here?” 

A thunderous crunching sound answered my question, startling the both of us. It sounded like someone chomping on concrete.

“Stay quiet.” He whispered, following the crimson streaks across the floor towards the back. I trailed closely behind.

We peeked our heads around the corner, and discovered the source of all the noise.

Squatting and tearing into the mutilated corpse of an employee on the ground like a gluttonous lion was a man. 

Have you ever seen images of what a blood eagle looks like? Imagine that, but from the front of the body. That’s what I was looking at on the ground as the man kept consuming every bit of flesh he could get his hands on. The bloodsoaked clothes hanging from his lanky frame looked familiar.

That’s when it dawned on me.

It was the guy from the news. 

Jonah’s killer.

I covered my mouth to stifle a scream, and as I did, a metallic thumping noise could be heard coming from somewhere behind us. Then, a cry for help.

“IS SOMEONE THERE?! GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Before I could even blink, the man’s orange eyes had locked onto me. His skin resembled a cheese pizza if the cheese had been mostly scraped off, and he reeked like roadkill.

Trent and I bolted back the way we came toward the entrance. My pulse quickened as my legs carried me with a speed I didn’t know I possessed. Trent barreled over the counter and floundered to his feet, but before I could do the same, the man grabbed my ankle and pulled me toward him. The plastic tubs containing condiments clattered to the ground as my body was dragged back across the counter. 

I hit the floor hard. The remaining air in my lungs escaped in a ragged burst as the man dug his knees into my chest and grabbed my throat. I flailed about, trying desperately to remove his hands and free myself. He opened his mouth, and I watched as coagulated blood and strips of skin landed on my face like a rancid rainfall. 

Before he could close the distance and tear into me, Trent vaulted over the counter, and cracked a plastic tray from the lobby floor over the man’s head.
His teeth chattered in response to getting clocked, and his grip on my neck relented as he turned his focus to Trent.

“Run, Tanner!” He cried out, swinging the plastic tray wildly in an attempt to keep the man at bay. I sat up from the ground and gasped for air, watching Trent as he backed up towards the fryers. The man rasped excitedly as he gripped the plastic tray in Trent’s hand and fought for control of it. 

I had to think fast and do something, but what? 

I noticed the plastic containers resting on the ground next to me. Treating them like weapons, I picked them up, and charged towards the man and began raining down the hardest swings my body could muster.

PING. PING. PING.

The man turned slowly, registering my blows as nothing more than an inconvenience at best. My distraction was enough for Trent to wrap his arms around the man’s body to try and restrain him. 

“HEH…HEH…HEH…” The man panted as he thrashed around violently. Trent buckled behind him, struggling to keep his grip.

“I can’t hold on much longer!” He screamed, his arms loosening with every frantic movement the man made.

The fryers crackled behind me, and that’s when I realized what we needed to do to get us out of this immensely fucked up situation.  

“Move!” I commanded.

Trent released the man and dove to the ground next to me as I grabbed the fryer basket with both hands. The metal handle scorched my palms instantly, but adrenaline bulldozed through the pain.

The man whipped toward me with those glowing orange eyes, and I hurled the basket upward. A tidal wave of golden grease erupted from the fryer, and the oil hit him with a wet splash.

His howls of pain sounded like a thousand dying pterodactyls screeching directly into my skull. The man staggered backwards, his bloody fingernails clawing vigorously at his blistering, bubbling skin. He slammed into the stainless steel counter behind him hard enough to dent it before charging in a blind frenzy toward the drive-thru window. He crashed through it shoulder-first, causing shards of glass to fly everywhere.

He hit the pavement hard enough to skid across the parking lot like a stone skipping across water. The neon lights of The Raveyard burger sign flickered across his twitching body in pulses of jaundiced yellow.

Trent and I watched him writhe and clutch himself for several moments before he rose from the ground, and sprinted off into the night on all fours like a wolf. We just stood there in shock while the music in the lobby droned on behind us. 

“Dude…what the fuck was that?” I asked, looking at Trent with horror.

“I don’t know, but we need to go. Now.”

“HEY! YOU OUT THERE! HELP ME!” The voice we had heard from the freezer earlier was calling out again.
I walked toward the freezer, but Trent stuck his arm out to stop me. “Hell no, we’re not sticking around any longer. Not after that.”

“Someone needs our help. We can’t just leave them here.” 

I opened the freezer door and a cold mist rolled out, revealing a teenager inside blinking at us like we were a figment of his imagination. His black work shirt and pants were covered in blood. 

“C-c-c’mon. G-g-go.” He shivered as he walked out, clutching himself for warmth.

“Is there anybody else here?” I asked, my eyes landing on his nametag that said: Raimi.

His eyes landed on the various smears and pools of blood around the restaurant floor. “N-n-not anymore.”

We escorted him out of the restaurant and toward our car. Before we could even buckle our seatbelts, Trent peeled out of the parking lot and sped off down the street.

Not a word was said for a while. Music served as our only comfort in the aftermath until “(Don’t) Fear the Reaper” began to play from the speakers. Thinking that it wasn’t exactly the most appropriate song for the situation, Trent flicked the volume dial to zero, and the car returned to silence.

A few moments later, I decided to ask. “What happened back there?”

Raimi let out a nervous laugh as I glanced at him in the rear view mirror. “To make a long story short, just another day in customer service.”

“Sure as shit didn’t look like it.” Trent gripped the steering wheel tightly. “We’re going back to our place and calling the police.”

And that’s what we did. We returned to our apartment, called the police, and gave our accounts of what happened that night. When we finished explaining every last excruciating detail, they took Raimi back home to his parents. That was a couple of days ago.

Ever since our story was made public, the town has gone on lockdown. That hasn’t stopped the news reports from downplaying our experience as a “contained incident”.

They announced that a “thorough” investigation was under way, but The Raveyard made a statement saying that they were not liable for the events that transpired in their store. I’m not buying that bullshit for a second. There’s definitely something fishy going on here.

They haven’t found the guy yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they do. I hope they bring this madness to an end. I’m tired of being holed up in this apartment with Trent. I love the man, but sometimes a guy just needs his space.

If you know anything about what’s going on in Ashhaven, please tell me. I doubt this will be the last time we hear about Jonah’s killer or The Raveyard.

And as fucked up as this sounds, I still wonder how those Graveyard Smashburgers would have tasted that night.

This is all going to sound so unbelievable, but I need to talk about this because our town is on lockdown until further notice.

My friend Trent and I weren’t looking for trouble. We got high off our asses and just wanted to get some food. That’s it. That’s how this started. But with the way the world has been going lately, I’d rather you hear what actually happened from me instead of whatever story the news decides to feed you.

I was fused to the couch, aimlessly watching the news anchor ramble on about politics while Trent sat next to me. “I feel like they’re always mad about something.”

“It’s the news,” I muttered, my body feeling like the juice inside a lava lamp. “That’s their whole thing.”

We sat there for a while, listening to the low volume and reading the closed captioning so that our zonked asses could keep up with what was going on.

When the channel cut to commercial, Trent got up. “Dude, check this out.” Trent went to his room and came back with an assortment of coupons. “Talk about the motherlode of options am I right?”

He set them on the coffee table in front of me. I took a closer look at them, only to be met with disappointment. “You do realize most of these are expired right?” I pointed at the various dates, ranging from yesterday to a whopping three months expired. “So much for options.”

“Coupons are like window shopping.” He smiled dumbly, his eyes completely bloodshot. “They’re suggestions with confidence.” 

“Fifty milligrams of Indica really got you feeling philosophical, huh Socrates?” 

“Nah.” He smirked. “It’s got me feeling like I haven’t eaten in at least ten business days.” 

“Well let’s figure something out then.”

“Chicken sandwiches?” Trent asked.

“We had that last week.” 

“Chinese?” 

“That doesn’t sound good right now.” 

“Tacos?”

“I had horrible stomach cramps the last time we had tacos man.”

“Aw. Do you want me to order you some French cries?” Trent shook his head in slight annoyance. “You’re more indecisive than my parents trying to plan a vacation.”

“I mean, we are roommates,” I shrugged. “We’re basically halfway to being a bickering couple.”

“Touché.” He didn’t even look up at me. “What about Italian?”

“What Italian place do you know that’s going to be open at two in the morning?”

“Oh…good point.” He stared at me blankly, his last two remaining brain cells fighting for third place as he picked up another coupon from the table and squinted at it.

“The Raveyard,” he read slowly with heavy eyes. “‘Buy one, get one ‘Graveyard Smashburger free.’ That sounds… stupendous.”

I laughed at his choice of wording. “You really wanna go to that retro horror themed place with the weird graveyard out back?”

“Yeah! Why not? We’ve never been.” His eyes widened with excitement. He was practically frothing at the mouth. “Don’t you want to bite into a mouth-wateringly delicious patty with melted cheese right now?”

My stomach growled, providing an answer before the words could even leave my mouth. “Abso-freakin-lutely.”

“Sick.” Trent fist-pumped the air as he grabbed his keys from the countertop and shoved the coupons into his pocket. “Let’s boot, scoot, and boogie. I’m starving.” 

I went to turn off the TV, but right as I did so, the late-night news anchor began talking about something that made my stomach churn.

“The suspect has not been located. Residents of the Silver Grove complex are advised to remain indoors as the search for Jonah’s killer remains at large.”

After the breaking news announcement, they put a grainy picture on the screen. It was an image that was more than likely pulled from a security camera, but it was enough to get a decent profile.

He had the kind of face that would never stand out in a crowd. I don’t know if it was the graininess of the footage or the lighting or what, but his eyes appeared to be an unnatural color. Most disturbingly though was all the blood. It covered almost every inch of his baggy clothing.

I pressed the power button on the TV remote, and watched the screen go black. “Should we listen to the news?” 

“Fuck no.” Trent dismissed, dangling his keys. “If people listened to the news we wouldn’t be in half the shit we find ourselves in. Let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve got a case of the serious munchies.”

I didn’t argue. I just followed him to the car. In hindsight, I should have listened to my gut and suggested we stay home, but instead, we left our apartment complex and embarked on a late quest to The Raveyard.

“Hold On Loosely” by 38 Special served as the soundtrack for our drive down the various empty  streets toward our destination. The kick drums thumped in the speakers, drowning out the rumbling of my stomach that could have easily registered on the Richter scale.

After a fairly brief drive, we rolled up to the restaurant. The big neon burger flickered in the darkness of the night, a beacon of hope for our cravings as we pulled up to the skull-shaped speaker box in the drive-thru. My mouth salivated at the thought of stuffing some burgers down my food-deprived gullet. 

We sat idly in the car, staring at the plethora of options on the menu and pondering just how much we were about to blow on food. When we finally decided what we wanted, Trent rolled down the window and stuck his head out the car.

“Hey, uh…” He trailed off before remembering the task at hand. “We’re ready to order.”

We were greeted by nothing but static and…wheezing? It was faint, but unmistakable.

“Great customer service.” Trent said impatiently. “Are you going to take our order or what?”

I couldn’t help but feel a little concerned at the noise. “Are they having an asthma attack or something?”

“They can walk it off. Might just be a newbie’s first day.” Trent pulled his head back into the car. “We’ve all been there.”

“Don’t joke like that man.”

“I’m not joking. It might just be the speaker.” He stuck his head out again. “My friend and I want to order. Is everything alright in there?”

There was no response, but the wheezing sound persisted in the static.

“Sounds like someone forgot to turn off their headset while on the John.”

“Maybe they’re busy on the inside?” I thought aloud.

Trent scanned the parking lot with sarcastic puzzlement. “Yeah…the place sure is packed to the gills. I know you’re not the brightest crayon in the Crayola box Tanner, but use that noggin of yours.”

Without warning, the speaker crackled to unsuspecting life as the sound of a scream pierced the air before falling completely silent.

A cold shiver ran down my spine. “I’m not tripping am I?”

“No. I heard it too.”

Trent stepped on the gas and pulled forward to the first window. What we saw left us confused and horrified. Smeared all over the cracked drive-thru window was blood. It dripped down the glass as slowly as molasses.

Trent unbuckled his seatbelt and stuck his body halfway out the car to peer through the window. “Surely they’re fucking with us.”

I tensed up in my seat. “If they are, this is one fucked up prank.”

For a solid five seconds, Trent stared inside before recoiling back inside. The color had completely drained from his face. “We need to go inside and check on everyone.”

“Are you crazy? What did you see?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he floored it out of the drive-thru, parked the car, and immediately barreled out the driver’s side door towards the entrance. I followed in hot pursuit, well aware that we were treating all the red flags like checkpoints.

Upon entry, we were greeted with the familiar saxophone motif of “Urgent” by Foreigner.

“Urgent…urgent…emergency.” reverberated throughout the seemingly vacant restaurant as my eyes surveyed the carnage. The interior looked like it had been hit by an F-5 tornado. Chairs were overturned while plastic trays, paper wrapping, and half-eaten burgers and fries were strewn all over the black and white chessboard-like tile floor. The fryers in the back emitted a sound similar to a rattlesnake’s rattle. 

Trent swallowed nervously. “Let’s take a quick look around and get the hell out of here.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” I said, following Trent as he made his way towards the registers. “We should call the police and leave it to them.”

“Why? So they can do nothing?” Trent hopped over the counter and gestured to me to do the same.

I complied but as my feet touched the floor, I felt my balance slip and would have fallen to the floor had Trent not managed to catch me in time. When I regained my footing, I realized that my shoes were making a noise similar to stepping in a rain puddle. 

My gaze shifted to the floor below me. I was stepping in a thick pool of blood. Dark red smears stained the floor, reflecting like gasoline from the bright, white lighting overhead. 

Despite the grisly sight, there didn’t appear to be anybody else around. 

“What the fuck happened here?” 

A thunderous crunching sound answered my question, startling the both of us. It sounded like someone chomping on concrete.

“Stay quiet.” He whispered, following the crimson streaks across the floor towards the back. I trailed closely behind.

We peeked our heads around the corner, and discovered the source of all the noise.

Squatting and tearing into the mutilated corpse of an employee on the ground like a gluttonous lion was a man. 

Have you ever seen images of what a blood eagle looks like? Imagine that, but from the front of the body. That’s what I was looking at on the ground as the man kept consuming every bit of flesh he could get his hands on. The bloodsoaked clothes hanging from his lanky frame looked familiar.

That’s when it dawned on me.

It was the guy from the news. 

Jonah’s killer.

I covered my mouth to stifle a scream, and as I did, a metallic thumping noise could be heard coming from somewhere behind us. Then, a cry for help.

“IS SOMEONE THERE?! GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Before I could even blink, the man’s orange eyes had locked onto me. His skin resembled a cheese pizza if the cheese had been mostly scraped off, and he reeked like roadkill.

Trent and I bolted back the way we came toward the entrance. My pulse quickened as my legs carried me with a speed I didn’t know I possessed. Trent barreled over the counter and floundered to his feet, but before I could do the same, the man grabbed my ankle and pulled me toward him. The plastic tubs containing condiments clattered to the ground as my body was dragged back across the counter. 

I hit the floor hard. The remaining air in my lungs escaped in a ragged burst as the man dug his knees into my chest and grabbed my throat. I flailed about, trying desperately to remove his hands and free myself. He opened his mouth, and I watched as coagulated blood and strips of skin landed on my face like a rancid rainfall. 

Before he could close the distance and tear into me, Trent vaulted over the counter, and cracked a plastic tray from the lobby floor over the man’s head.
His teeth chattered in response to getting clocked, and his grip on my neck relented as he turned his focus to Trent.

“Run, Tanner!” He cried out, swinging the plastic tray wildly in an attempt to keep the man at bay. I sat up from the ground and gasped for air, watching Trent as he backed up towards the fryers. The man rasped excitedly as he gripped the plastic tray in Trent’s hand and fought for control of it. 

I had to think fast and do something, but what? 

I noticed the plastic containers resting on the ground next to me. Treating them like weapons, I picked them up, and charged towards the man and began raining down the hardest swings my body could muster.

PING. PING. PING.

The man turned slowly, registering my blows as nothing more than an inconvenience at best. My distraction was enough for Trent to wrap his arms around the man’s body to try and restrain him. 

“HEH…HEH…HEH…” The man panted as he thrashed around violently. Trent buckled behind him, struggling to keep his grip.

“I can’t hold on much longer!” He screamed, his arms loosening with every frantic movement the man made.

The fryers crackled behind me, and that’s when I realized what we needed to do to get us out of this immensely fucked up situation.  

“Move!” I commanded.

Trent released the man and dove to the ground next to me as I grabbed the fryer basket with both hands. The metal handle scorched my palms instantly, but adrenaline bulldozed through the pain.

The man whipped toward me with those glowing orange eyes, and I hurled the basket upward. A tidal wave of golden grease erupted from the fryer, and the oil hit him with a wet splash.

His howls of pain sounded like a thousand dying pterodactyls screeching directly into my skull. The man staggered backwards, his bloody fingernails clawing vigorously at his blistering, bubbling skin. He slammed into the stainless steel counter behind him hard enough to dent it before charging in a blind frenzy toward the drive-thru window. He crashed through it shoulder-first, causing shards of glass to fly everywhere.

He hit the pavement hard enough to skid across the parking lot like a stone skipping across water. The neon lights of The Raveyard burger sign flickered across his twitching body in pulses of jaundiced yellow.

Trent and I watched him writhe and clutch himself for several moments before he rose from the ground, and sprinted off into the night on all fours like a wolf. We just stood there in shock while the music in the lobby droned on behind us. 

“Dude…what the fuck was that?” I asked, looking at Trent with horror.

“I don’t know, but we need to go. Now.”

“HEY! YOU OUT THERE! HELP ME!” The voice we had heard from the freezer earlier was calling out again.
I walked toward the freezer, but Trent stuck his arm out to stop me. “Hell no, we’re not sticking around any longer. Not after that.”

“Someone needs our help. We can’t just leave them here.” 

I opened the freezer door and a cold mist rolled out, revealing a teenager inside blinking at us like we were a figment of his imagination. His black work shirt and pants were covered in blood. 

“C-c-c’mon. G-g-go.” He shivered as he walked out, clutching himself for warmth.

“Is there anybody else here?” I asked, my eyes landing on his nametag that said: Raimi.

His eyes landed on the various smears and pools of blood around the restaurant floor. “N-n-not anymore.”

We escorted him out of the restaurant and toward our car. Before we could even buckle our seatbelts, Trent peeled out of the parking lot and sped off down the street.

Not a word was said for a while. Music served as our only comfort in the aftermath until “(Don’t) Fear the Reaper” began to play from the speakers. Thinking that it wasn’t exactly the most appropriate song for the situation, Trent flicked the volume dial to zero, and the car returned to silence.

A few moments later, I decided to ask. “What happened back there?”

Raimi let out a nervous laugh as I glanced at him in the rear view mirror. “To make a long story short, just another day in customer service.”

“Sure as shit didn’t look like it.” Trent gripped the steering wheel tightly. “We’re going back to our place and calling the police.”

And that’s what we did. We returned to our apartment, called the police, and gave our accounts of what happened that night. When we finished explaining every last excruciating detail, they took Raimi back home to his parents. That was a couple of days ago.

Ever since our story was made public, the town has gone on lockdown. That hasn’t stopped the news reports from downplaying our experience as a “contained incident”.

They announced that a “thorough” investigation was under way, but The Raveyard made a statement saying that they were not liable for the events that transpired in their store. I’m not buying that bullshit for a second. There’s definitely something fishy going on here.

They haven’t found the guy yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they do. I hope they bring this madness to an end. I’m tired of being holed up in this apartment with Trent. I love the man, but sometimes a guy just needs his space.

If you know anything about what’s going on in Ashhaven, please tell me. I doubt this will be the last time we hear about Jonah’s killer or The Raveyard.

And as fucked up as this sounds, I still wonder how those Graveyard Smashburgers would have tasted that night.

This is all going to sound so unbelievable, but I need to talk about this because our town is on lockdown until further notice.

My friend Trent and I weren’t looking for trouble. We got high off our asses and just wanted to get some food. That’s it. That’s how this started. But with the way the world has been going lately, I’d rather you hear what actually happened from me instead of whatever story the news decides to feed you.

I was fused to the couch, aimlessly watching the news anchor ramble on about politics while Trent sat next to me. “I feel like they’re always mad about something.”

“It’s the news,” I muttered, my body feeling like the juice inside a lava lamp. “That’s their whole thing.”

We sat there for a while, listening to the low volume and reading the closed captioning so that our zonked asses could keep up with what was going on.

When the channel cut to commercial, Trent got up. “Dude, check this out.” Trent went to his room and came back with an assortment of coupons. “Talk about the motherlode of options am I right?”

He set them on the coffee table in front of me. I took a closer look at them, only to be met with disappointment. “You do realize most of these are expired right?” I pointed at the various dates, ranging from yesterday to a whopping three months expired. “So much for options.”

“Coupons are like window shopping.” He smiled dumbly, his eyes completely bloodshot. “They’re suggestions with confidence.” 

“Fifty milligrams of Indica really got you feeling philosophical, huh Socrates?” 

“Nah.” He smirked. “It’s got me feeling like I haven’t eaten in at least ten business days.” 

“Well let’s figure something out then.”

“Chicken sandwiches?” Trent asked.

“We had that last week.” 

“Chinese?” 

“That doesn’t sound good right now.” 

“Tacos?”

“I had horrible stomach cramps the last time we had tacos man.”

“Aw. Do you want me to order you some French cries?” Trent shook his head in slight annoyance. “You’re more indecisive than my parents trying to plan a vacation.”

“I mean, we are roommates,” I shrugged. “We’re basically halfway to being a bickering couple.”

“Touché.” He didn’t even look up at me. “What about Italian?”

“What Italian place do you know that’s going to be open at two in the morning?”

“Oh…good point.” He stared at me blankly, his last two remaining brain cells fighting for third place as he picked up another coupon from the table and squinted at it.

“The Raveyard,” he read slowly with heavy eyes. “‘Buy one, get one ‘Graveyard Smashburger free.’ That sounds… stupendous.”

I laughed at his choice of wording. “You really wanna go to that retro horror themed place with the weird graveyard out back?”

“Yeah! Why not? We’ve never been.” His eyes widened with excitement. He was practically frothing at the mouth. “Don’t you want to bite into a mouth-wateringly delicious patty with melted cheese right now?”

My stomach growled, providing an answer before the words could even leave my mouth. “Abso-freakin-lutely.”

“Sick.” Trent fist-pumped the air as he grabbed his keys from the countertop and shoved the coupons into his pocket. “Let’s boot, scoot, and boogie. I’m starving.” 

I went to turn off the TV, but right as I did so, the late-night news anchor began talking about something that made my stomach churn.

“The suspect has not been located. Residents of the Silver Grove complex are advised to remain indoors as the search for Jonah’s killer remains at large.”

After the breaking news announcement, they put a grainy picture on the screen. It was an image that was more than likely pulled from a security camera, but it was enough to get a decent profile.

He had the kind of face that would never stand out in a crowd. I don’t know if it was the graininess of the footage or the lighting or what, but his eyes appeared to be an unnatural color. Most disturbingly though was all the blood. It covered almost every inch of his baggy clothing.

I pressed the power button on the TV remote, and watched the screen go black. “Should we listen to the news?” 

“Fuck no.” Trent dismissed, dangling his keys. “If people listened to the news we wouldn’t be in half the shit we find ourselves in. Let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve got a case of the serious munchies.”

I didn’t argue. I just followed him to the car. In hindsight, I should have listened to my gut and suggested we stay home, but instead, we left our apartment complex and embarked on a late quest to The Raveyard.

“Hold On Loosely” by 38 Special served as the soundtrack for our drive down the various empty  streets toward our destination. The kick drums thumped in the speakers, drowning out the rumbling of my stomach that could have easily registered on the Richter scale.

After a fairly brief drive, we rolled up to the restaurant. The big neon burger flickered in the darkness of the night, a beacon of hope for our cravings as we pulled up to the skull-shaped speaker box in the drive-thru. My mouth salivated at the thought of stuffing some burgers down my food-deprived gullet. 

We sat idly in the car, staring at the plethora of options on the menu and pondering just how much we were about to blow on food. When we finally decided what we wanted, Trent rolled down the window and stuck his head out the car.

“Hey, uh…” He trailed off before remembering the task at hand. “We’re ready to order.”

We were greeted by nothing but static and…wheezing? It was faint, but unmistakable.

“Great customer service.” Trent said impatiently. “Are you going to take our order or what?”

I couldn’t help but feel a little concerned at the noise. “Are they having an asthma attack or something?”

“They can walk it off. Might just be a newbie’s first day.” Trent pulled his head back into the car. “We’ve all been there.”

“Don’t joke like that man.”

“I’m not joking. It might just be the speaker.” He stuck his head out again. “My friend and I want to order. Is everything alright in there?”

There was no response, but the wheezing sound persisted in the static.

“Sounds like someone forgot to turn off their headset while on the John.”

“Maybe they’re busy on the inside?” I thought aloud.

Trent scanned the parking lot with sarcastic puzzlement. “Yeah…the place sure is packed to the gills. I know you’re not the brightest crayon in the Crayola box Tanner, but use that noggin of yours.”

Without warning, the speaker crackled to unsuspecting life as the sound of a scream pierced the air before falling completely silent.

A cold shiver ran down my spine. “I’m not tripping am I?”

“No. I heard it too.”

Trent stepped on the gas and pulled forward to the first window. What we saw left us confused and horrified. Smeared all over the cracked drive-thru window was blood. It dripped down the glass as slowly as molasses.

Trent unbuckled his seatbelt and stuck his body halfway out the car to peer through the window. “Surely they’re fucking with us.”

I tensed up in my seat. “If they are, this is one fucked up prank.”

For a solid five seconds, Trent stared inside before recoiling back inside. The color had completely drained from his face. “We need to go inside and check on everyone.”

“Are you crazy? What did you see?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he floored it out of the drive-thru, parked the car, and immediately barreled out the driver’s side door towards the entrance. I followed in hot pursuit, well aware that we were treating all the red flags like checkpoints.

Upon entry, we were greeted with the familiar saxophone motif of “Urgent” by Foreigner.

“Urgent…urgent…emergency.” reverberated throughout the seemingly vacant restaurant as my eyes surveyed the carnage. The interior looked like it had been hit by an F-5 tornado. Chairs were overturned while plastic trays, paper wrapping, and half-eaten burgers and fries were strewn all over the black and white chessboard-like tile floor. The fryers in the back emitted a sound similar to a rattlesnake’s rattle. 

Trent swallowed nervously. “Let’s take a quick look around and get the hell out of here.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” I said, following Trent as he made his way towards the registers. “We should call the police and leave it to them.”

“Why? So they can do nothing?” Trent hopped over the counter and gestured to me to do the same.

I complied but as my feet touched the floor, I felt my balance slip and would have fallen to the floor had Trent not managed to catch me in time. When I regained my footing, I realized that my shoes were making a noise similar to stepping in a rain puddle. 

My gaze shifted to the floor below me. I was stepping in a thick pool of blood. Dark red smears stained the floor, reflecting like gasoline from the bright, white lighting overhead. 

Despite the grisly sight, there didn’t appear to be anybody else around. 

“What the fuck happened here?” 

A thunderous crunching sound answered my question, startling the both of us. It sounded like someone chomping on concrete.

“Stay quiet.” He whispered, following the crimson streaks across the floor towards the back. I trailed closely behind.

We peeked our heads around the corner, and discovered the source of all the noise.

Squatting and tearing into the mutilated corpse of an employee on the ground like a gluttonous lion was a man. 

Have you ever seen images of what a blood eagle looks like? Imagine that, but from the front of the body. That’s what I was looking at on the ground as the man kept consuming every bit of flesh he could get his hands on. The bloodsoaked clothes hanging from his lanky frame looked familiar.

That’s when it dawned on me.

It was the guy from the news. 

Jonah’s killer.

I covered my mouth to stifle a scream, and as I did, a metallic thumping noise could be heard coming from somewhere behind us. Then, a cry for help.

“IS SOMEONE THERE?! GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Before I could even blink, the man’s orange eyes had locked onto me. His skin resembled a cheese pizza if the cheese had been mostly scraped off, and he reeked like roadkill.

Trent and I bolted back the way we came toward the entrance. My pulse quickened as my legs carried me with a speed I didn’t know I possessed. Trent barreled over the counter and floundered to his feet, but before I could do the same, the man grabbed my ankle and pulled me toward him. The plastic tubs containing condiments clattered to the ground as my body was dragged back across the counter. 

I hit the floor hard. The remaining air in my lungs escaped in a ragged burst as the man dug his knees into my chest and grabbed my throat. I flailed about, trying desperately to remove his hands and free myself. He opened his mouth, and I watched as coagulated blood and strips of skin landed on my face like a rancid rainfall. 

Before he could close the distance and tear into me, Trent vaulted over the counter, and cracked a plastic tray from the lobby floor over the man’s head.
His teeth chattered in response to getting clocked, and his grip on my neck relented as he turned his focus to Trent.

“Run, Tanner!” He cried out, swinging the plastic tray wildly in an attempt to keep the man at bay. I sat up from the ground and gasped for air, watching Trent as he backed up towards the fryers. The man rasped excitedly as he gripped the plastic tray in Trent’s hand and fought for control of it. 

I had to think fast and do something, but what? 

I noticed the plastic containers resting on the ground next to me. Treating them like weapons, I picked them up, and charged towards the man and began raining down the hardest swings my body could muster.

PING. PING. PING.

The man turned slowly, registering my blows as nothing more than an inconvenience at best. My distraction was enough for Trent to wrap his arms around the man’s body to try and restrain him. 

“HEH…HEH…HEH…” The man panted as he thrashed around violently. Trent buckled behind him, struggling to keep his grip.

“I can’t hold on much longer!” He screamed, his arms loosening with every frantic movement the man made.

The fryers crackled behind me, and that’s when I realized what we needed to do to get us out of this immensely fucked up situation.  

“Move!” I commanded.

Trent released the man and dove to the ground next to me as I grabbed the fryer basket with both hands. The metal handle scorched my palms instantly, but adrenaline bulldozed through the pain.

The man whipped toward me with those glowing orange eyes, and I hurled the basket upward. A tidal wave of golden grease erupted from the fryer, and the oil hit him with a wet splash.

His howls of pain sounded like a thousand dying pterodactyls screeching directly into my skull. The man staggered backwards, his bloody fingernails clawing vigorously at his blistering, bubbling skin. He slammed into the stainless steel counter behind him hard enough to dent it before charging in a blind frenzy toward the drive-thru window. He crashed through it shoulder-first, causing shards of glass to fly everywhere.

He hit the pavement hard enough to skid across the parking lot like a stone skipping across water. The neon lights of The Raveyard burger sign flickered across his twitching body in pulses of jaundiced yellow.

Trent and I watched him writhe and clutch himself for several moments before he rose from the ground, and sprinted off into the night on all fours like a wolf. We just stood there in shock while the music in the lobby droned on behind us. 

“Dude…what the fuck was that?” I asked, looking at Trent with horror.

“I don’t know, but we need to go. Now.”

“HEY! YOU OUT THERE! HELP ME!” The voice we had heard from the freezer earlier was calling out again.
I walked toward the freezer, but Trent stuck his arm out to stop me. “Hell no, we’re not sticking around any longer. Not after that.”

“Someone needs our help. We can’t just leave them here.” 

I opened the freezer door and a cold mist rolled out, revealing a teenager inside blinking at us like we were a figment of his imagination. His black work shirt and pants were covered in blood. 

“C-c-c’mon. G-g-go.” He shivered as he walked out, clutching himself for warmth.

“Is there anybody else here?” I asked, my eyes landing on his nametag that said: Raimi.

His eyes landed on the various smears and pools of blood around the restaurant floor. “N-n-not anymore.”

We escorted him out of the restaurant and toward our car. Before we could even buckle our seatbelts, Trent peeled out of the parking lot and sped off down the street.

Not a word was said for a while. Music served as our only comfort in the aftermath until “(Don’t) Fear the Reaper” began to play from the speakers. Thinking that it wasn’t exactly the most appropriate song for the situation, Trent flicked the volume dial to zero, and the car returned to silence.

A few moments later, I decided to ask. “What happened back there?”

Raimi let out a nervous laugh as I glanced at him in the rear view mirror. “To make a long story short, just another day in customer service.”

“Sure as shit didn’t look like it.” Trent gripped the steering wheel tightly. “We’re going back to our place and calling the police.”

And that’s what we did. We returned to our apartment, called the police, and gave our accounts of what happened that night. When we finished explaining every last excruciating detail, they took Raimi back home to his parents. That was a couple of days ago.

Ever since our story was made public, the town has gone on lockdown. That hasn’t stopped the news reports from downplaying our experience as a “contained incident”.

They announced that a “thorough” investigation was under way, but The Raveyard made a statement saying that they were not liable for the events that transpired in their store. I’m not buying that bullshit for a second. There’s definitely something fishy going on here.

They haven’t found the guy yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they do. I hope they bring this madness to an end. I’m tired of being holed up in this apartment with Trent. I love the man, but sometimes a guy just needs his space.

If you know anything about what’s going on in Ashhaven, please tell me. I doubt this will be the last time we hear about Jonah’s killer or The Raveyard.

And as fucked up as this sounds, I still wonder how those Graveyard Smashburgers would have tasted that night.

This is all going to sound so unbelievable, but I need to talk about this because our town is on lockdown until further notice.

My friend Trent and I weren’t looking for trouble. We got high off our asses and just wanted to get some food. That’s it. That’s how this started. But with the way the world has been going lately, I’d rather you hear what actually happened from me instead of whatever story the news decides to feed you.

I was fused to the couch, aimlessly watching the news anchor ramble on about politics while Trent sat next to me. “I feel like they’re always mad about something.”

“It’s the news,” I muttered, my body feeling like the juice inside a lava lamp. “That’s their whole thing.”

We sat there for a while, listening to the low volume and reading the closed captioning so that our zonked asses could keep up with what was going on.

When the channel cut to commercial, Trent got up. “Dude, check this out.” Trent went to his room and came back with an assortment of coupons. “Talk about the motherlode of options am I right?”

He set them on the coffee table in front of me. I took a closer look at them, only to be met with disappointment. “You do realize most of these are expired right?” I pointed at the various dates, ranging from yesterday to a whopping three months expired. “So much for options.”

“Coupons are like window shopping.” He smiled dumbly, his eyes completely bloodshot. “They’re suggestions with confidence.” 

“Fifty milligrams of Indica really got you feeling philosophical, huh Socrates?” 

“Nah.” He smirked. “It’s got me feeling like I haven’t eaten in at least ten business days.” 

“Well let’s figure something out then.”

“Chicken sandwiches?” Trent asked.

“We had that last week.” 

“Chinese?” 

“That doesn’t sound good right now.” 

“Tacos?”

“I had horrible stomach cramps the last time we had tacos man.”

“Aw. Do you want me to order you some French cries?” Trent shook his head in slight annoyance. “You’re more indecisive than my parents trying to plan a vacation.”

“I mean, we are roommates,” I shrugged. “We’re basically halfway to being a bickering couple.”

“Touché.” He didn’t even look up at me. “What about Italian?”

“What Italian place do you know that’s going to be open at two in the morning?”

“Oh…good point.” He stared at me blankly, his last two remaining brain cells fighting for third place as he picked up another coupon from the table and squinted at it.

“The Raveyard,” he read slowly with heavy eyes. “‘Buy one, get one ‘Graveyard Smashburger free.’ That sounds… stupendous.”

I laughed at his choice of wording. “You really wanna go to that retro horror themed place with the weird graveyard out back?”

“Yeah! Why not? We’ve never been.” His eyes widened with excitement. He was practically frothing at the mouth. “Don’t you want to bite into a mouth-wateringly delicious patty with melted cheese right now?”

My stomach growled, providing an answer before the words could even leave my mouth. “Abso-freakin-lutely.”

“Sick.” Trent fist-pumped the air as he grabbed his keys from the countertop and shoved the coupons into his pocket. “Let’s boot, scoot, and boogie. I’m starving.” 

I went to turn off the TV, but right as I did so, the late-night news anchor began talking about something that made my stomach churn.

“The suspect has not been located. Residents of the Silver Grove complex are advised to remain indoors as the search for Jonah’s killer remains at large.”

After the breaking news announcement, they put a grainy picture on the screen. It was an image that was more than likely pulled from a security camera, but it was enough to get a decent profile.

He had the kind of face that would never stand out in a crowd. I don’t know if it was the graininess of the footage or the lighting or what, but his eyes appeared to be an unnatural color. Most disturbingly though was all the blood. It covered almost every inch of his baggy clothing.

I pressed the power button on the TV remote, and watched the screen go black. “Should we listen to the news?” 

“Fuck no.” Trent dismissed, dangling his keys. “If people listened to the news we wouldn’t be in half the shit we find ourselves in. Let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve got a case of the serious munchies.”

I didn’t argue. I just followed him to the car. In hindsight, I should have listened to my gut and suggested we stay home, but instead, we left our apartment complex and embarked on a late quest to The Raveyard.

“Hold On Loosely” by 38 Special served as the soundtrack for our drive down the various empty  streets toward our destination. The kick drums thumped in the speakers, drowning out the rumbling of my stomach that could have easily registered on the Richter scale.

After a fairly brief drive, we rolled up to the restaurant. The big neon burger flickered in the darkness of the night, a beacon of hope for our cravings as we pulled up to the skull-shaped speaker box in the drive-thru. My mouth salivated at the thought of stuffing some burgers down my food-deprived gullet. 

We sat idly in the car, staring at the plethora of options on the menu and pondering just how much we were about to blow on food. When we finally decided what we wanted, Trent rolled down the window and stuck his head out the car.

“Hey, uh…” He trailed off before remembering the task at hand. “We’re ready to order.”

We were greeted by nothing but static and…wheezing? It was faint, but unmistakable.

“Great customer service.” Trent said impatiently. “Are you going to take our order or what?”

I couldn’t help but feel a little concerned at the noise. “Are they having an asthma attack or something?”

“They can walk it off. Might just be a newbie’s first day.” Trent pulled his head back into the car. “We’ve all been there.”

“Don’t joke like that man.”

“I’m not joking. It might just be the speaker.” He stuck his head out again. “My friend and I want to order. Is everything alright in there?”

There was no response, but the wheezing sound persisted in the static.

“Sounds like someone forgot to turn off their headset while on the John.”

“Maybe they’re busy on the inside?” I thought aloud.

Trent scanned the parking lot with sarcastic puzzlement. “Yeah…the place sure is packed to the gills. I know you’re not the brightest crayon in the Crayola box Tanner, but use that noggin of yours.”

Without warning, the speaker crackled to unsuspecting life as the sound of a scream pierced the air before falling completely silent.

A cold shiver ran down my spine. “I’m not tripping am I?”

“No. I heard it too.”

Trent stepped on the gas and pulled forward to the first window. What we saw left us confused and horrified. Smeared all over the cracked drive-thru window was blood. It dripped down the glass as slowly as molasses.

Trent unbuckled his seatbelt and stuck his body halfway out the car to peer through the window. “Surely they’re fucking with us.”

I tensed up in my seat. “If they are, this is one fucked up prank.”

For a solid five seconds, Trent stared inside before recoiling back inside. The color had completely drained from his face. “We need to go inside and check on everyone.”

“Are you crazy? What did you see?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he floored it out of the drive-thru, parked the car, and immediately barreled out the driver’s side door towards the entrance. I followed in hot pursuit, well aware that we were treating all the red flags like checkpoints.

Upon entry, we were greeted with the familiar saxophone motif of “Urgent” by Foreigner.

“Urgent…urgent…emergency.” reverberated throughout the seemingly vacant restaurant as my eyes surveyed the carnage. The interior looked like it had been hit by an F-5 tornado. Chairs were overturned while plastic trays, paper wrapping, and half-eaten burgers and fries were strewn all over the black and white chessboard-like tile floor. The fryers in the back emitted a sound similar to a rattlesnake’s rattle. 

Trent swallowed nervously. “Let’s take a quick look around and get the hell out of here.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” I said, following Trent as he made his way towards the registers. “We should call the police and leave it to them.”

“Why? So they can do nothing?” Trent hopped over the counter and gestured to me to do the same.

I complied but as my feet touched the floor, I felt my balance slip and would have fallen to the floor had Trent not managed to catch me in time. When I regained my footing, I realized that my shoes were making a noise similar to stepping in a rain puddle. 

My gaze shifted to the floor below me. I was stepping in a thick pool of blood. Dark red smears stained the floor, reflecting like gasoline from the bright, white lighting overhead. 

Despite the grisly sight, there didn’t appear to be anybody else around. 

“What the fuck happened here?” 

A thunderous crunching sound answered my question, startling the both of us. It sounded like someone chomping on concrete.

“Stay quiet.” He whispered, following the crimson streaks across the floor towards the back. I trailed closely behind.

We peeked our heads around the corner, and discovered the source of all the noise.

Squatting and tearing into the mutilated corpse of an employee on the ground like a gluttonous lion was a man. 

Have you ever seen images of what a blood eagle looks like? Imagine that, but from the front of the body. That’s what I was looking at on the ground as the man kept consuming every bit of flesh he could get his hands on. The bloodsoaked clothes hanging from his lanky frame looked familiar.

That’s when it dawned on me.

It was the guy from the news. 

Jonah’s killer.

I covered my mouth to stifle a scream, and as I did, a metallic thumping noise could be heard coming from somewhere behind us. Then, a cry for help.

“IS SOMEONE THERE?! GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Before I could even blink, the man’s orange eyes had locked onto me. His skin resembled a cheese pizza if the cheese had been mostly scraped off, and he reeked like roadkill.

Trent and I bolted back the way we came toward the entrance. My pulse quickened as my legs carried me with a speed I didn’t know I possessed. Trent barreled over the counter and floundered to his feet, but before I could do the same, the man grabbed my ankle and pulled me toward him. The plastic tubs containing condiments clattered to the ground as my body was dragged back across the counter. 

I hit the floor hard. The remaining air in my lungs escaped in a ragged burst as the man dug his knees into my chest and grabbed my throat. I flailed about, trying desperately to remove his hands and free myself. He opened his mouth, and I watched as coagulated blood and strips of skin landed on my face like a rancid rainfall. 

Before he could close the distance and tear into me, Trent vaulted over the counter, and cracked a plastic tray from the lobby floor over the man’s head.
His teeth chattered in response to getting clocked, and his grip on my neck relented as he turned his focus to Trent.

“Run, Tanner!” He cried out, swinging the plastic tray wildly in an attempt to keep the man at bay. I sat up from the ground and gasped for air, watching Trent as he backed up towards the fryers. The man rasped excitedly as he gripped the plastic tray in Trent’s hand and fought for control of it. 

I had to think fast and do something, but what? 

I noticed the plastic containers resting on the ground next to me. Treating them like weapons, I picked them up, and charged towards the man and began raining down the hardest swings my body could muster.

PING. PING. PING.

The man turned slowly, registering my blows as nothing more than an inconvenience at best. My distraction was enough for Trent to wrap his arms around the man’s body to try and restrain him. 

“HEH…HEH…HEH…” The man panted as he thrashed around violently. Trent buckled behind him, struggling to keep his grip.

“I can’t hold on much longer!” He screamed, his arms loosening with every frantic movement the man made.

The fryers crackled behind me, and that’s when I realized what we needed to do to get us out of this immensely fucked up situation.  

“Move!” I commanded.

Trent released the man and dove to the ground next to me as I grabbed the fryer basket with both hands. The metal handle scorched my palms instantly, but adrenaline bulldozed through the pain.

The man whipped toward me with those glowing orange eyes, and I hurled the basket upward. A tidal wave of golden grease erupted from the fryer, and the oil hit him with a wet splash.

His howls of pain sounded like a thousand dying pterodactyls screeching directly into my skull. The man staggered backwards, his bloody fingernails clawing vigorously at his blistering, bubbling skin. He slammed into the stainless steel counter behind him hard enough to dent it before charging in a blind frenzy toward the drive-thru window. He crashed through it shoulder-first, causing shards of glass to fly everywhere.

He hit the pavement hard enough to skid across the parking lot like a stone skipping across water. The neon lights of The Raveyard burger sign flickered across his twitching body in pulses of jaundiced yellow.

Trent and I watched him writhe and clutch himself for several moments before he rose from the ground, and sprinted off into the night on all fours like a wolf. We just stood there in shock while the music in the lobby droned on behind us. 

“Dude…what the fuck was that?” I asked, looking at Trent with horror.

“I don’t know, but we need to go. Now.”

“HEY! YOU OUT THERE! HELP ME!” The voice we had heard from the freezer earlier was calling out again.
I walked toward the freezer, but Trent stuck his arm out to stop me. “Hell no, we’re not sticking around any longer. Not after that.”

“Someone needs our help. We can’t just leave them here.” 

I opened the freezer door and a cold mist rolled out, revealing a teenager inside blinking at us like we were a figment of his imagination. His black work shirt and pants were covered in blood. 

“C-c-c’mon. G-g-go.” He shivered as he walked out, clutching himself for warmth.

“Is there anybody else here?” I asked, my eyes landing on his nametag that said: Raimi.

His eyes landed on the various smears and pools of blood around the restaurant floor. “N-n-not anymore.”

We escorted him out of the restaurant and toward our car. Before we could even buckle our seatbelts, Trent peeled out of the parking lot and sped off down the street.

Not a word was said for a while. Music served as our only comfort in the aftermath until “(Don’t) Fear the Reaper” began to play from the speakers. Thinking that it wasn’t exactly the most appropriate song for the situation, Trent flicked the volume dial to zero, and the car returned to silence.

A few moments later, I decided to ask. “What happened back there?”

Raimi let out a nervous laugh as I glanced at him in the rear view mirror. “To make a long story short, just another day in customer service.”

“Sure as shit didn’t look like it.” Trent gripped the steering wheel tightly. “We’re going back to our place and calling the police.”

And that’s what we did. We returned to our apartment, called the police, and gave our accounts of what happened that night. When we finished explaining every last excruciating detail, they took Raimi back home to his parents. That was a couple of days ago.

Ever since our story was made public, the town has gone on lockdown. That hasn’t stopped the news reports from downplaying our experience as a “contained incident”.

They announced that a “thorough” investigation was under way, but The Raveyard made a statement saying that they were not liable for the events that transpired in their store. I’m not buying that bullshit for a second. There’s definitely something fishy going on here.

They haven’t found the guy yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they do. I hope they bring this madness to an end. I’m tired of being holed up in this apartment with Trent. I love the man, but sometimes a guy just needs his space.

If you know anything about what’s going on in Ashhaven, please tell me. I doubt this will be the last time we hear about Jonah’s killer or The Raveyard.

And as fucked up as this sounds, I still wonder how those Graveyard Smashburgers would have tasted that night.

This is all going to sound so unbelievable, but I need to talk about this because our town is on lockdown until further notice.

My friend Trent and I weren’t looking for trouble. We got high off our asses and just wanted to get some food. That’s it. That’s how this started. But with the way the world has been going lately, I’d rather you hear what actually happened from me instead of whatever story the news decides to feed you.

I was fused to the couch, aimlessly watching the news anchor ramble on about politics while Trent sat next to me. “I feel like they’re always mad about something.”

“It’s the news,” I muttered, my body feeling like the juice inside a lava lamp. “That’s their whole thing.”

We sat there for a while, listening to the low volume and reading the closed captioning so that our zonked asses could keep up with what was going on.

When the channel cut to commercial, Trent got up. “Dude, check this out.” Trent went to his room and came back with an assortment of coupons. “Talk about the motherlode of options am I right?”

He set them on the coffee table in front of me. I took a closer look at them, only to be met with disappointment. “You do realize most of these are expired right?” I pointed at the various dates, ranging from yesterday to a whopping three months expired. “So much for options.”

“Coupons are like window shopping.” He smiled dumbly, his eyes completely bloodshot. “They’re suggestions with confidence.” 

“Fifty milligrams of Indica really got you feeling philosophical, huh Socrates?” 

“Nah.” He smirked. “It’s got me feeling like I haven’t eaten in at least ten business days.” 

“Well let’s figure something out then.”

“Chicken sandwiches?” Trent asked.

“We had that last week.” 

“Chinese?” 

“That doesn’t sound good right now.” 

“Tacos?”

“I had horrible stomach cramps the last time we had tacos man.”

“Aw. Do you want me to order you some French cries?” Trent shook his head in slight annoyance. “You’re more indecisive than my parents trying to plan a vacation.”

“I mean, we are roommates,” I shrugged. “We’re basically halfway to being a bickering couple.”

“Touché.” He didn’t even look up at me. “What about Italian?”

“What Italian place do you know that’s going to be open at two in the morning?”

“Oh…good point.” He stared at me blankly, his last two remaining brain cells fighting for third place as he picked up another coupon from the table and squinted at it.

“The Raveyard,” he read slowly with heavy eyes. “‘Buy one, get one ‘Graveyard Smashburger free.’ That sounds… stupendous.”

I laughed at his choice of wording. “You really wanna go to that retro horror themed place with the weird graveyard out back?”

“Yeah! Why not? We’ve never been.” His eyes widened with excitement. He was practically frothing at the mouth. “Don’t you want to bite into a mouth-wateringly delicious patty with melted cheese right now?”

My stomach growled, providing an answer before the words could even leave my mouth. “Abso-freakin-lutely.”

“Sick.” Trent fist-pumped the air as he grabbed his keys from the countertop and shoved the coupons into his pocket. “Let’s boot, scoot, and boogie. I’m starving.” 

I went to turn off the TV, but right as I did so, the late-night news anchor began talking about something that made my stomach churn.

“The suspect has not been located. Residents of the Silver Grove complex are advised to remain indoors as the search for Jonah’s killer remains at large.”

After the breaking news announcement, they put a grainy picture on the screen. It was an image that was more than likely pulled from a security camera, but it was enough to get a decent profile.

He had the kind of face that would never stand out in a crowd. I don’t know if it was the graininess of the footage or the lighting or what, but his eyes appeared to be an unnatural color. Most disturbingly though was all the blood. It covered almost every inch of his baggy clothing.

I pressed the power button on the TV remote, and watched the screen go black. “Should we listen to the news?” 

“Fuck no.” Trent dismissed, dangling his keys. “If people listened to the news we wouldn’t be in half the shit we find ourselves in. Let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve got a case of the serious munchies.”

I didn’t argue. I just followed him to the car. In hindsight, I should have listened to my gut and suggested we stay home, but instead, we left our apartment complex and embarked on a late quest to The Raveyard.

“Hold On Loosely” by 38 Special served as the soundtrack for our drive down the various empty  streets toward our destination. The kick drums thumped in the speakers, drowning out the rumbling of my stomach that could have easily registered on the Richter scale.

After a fairly brief drive, we rolled up to the restaurant. The big neon burger flickered in the darkness of the night, a beacon of hope for our cravings as we pulled up to the skull-shaped speaker box in the drive-thru. My mouth salivated at the thought of stuffing some burgers down my food-deprived gullet. 

We sat idly in the car, staring at the plethora of options on the menu and pondering just how much we were about to blow on food. When we finally decided what we wanted, Trent rolled down the window and stuck his head out the car.

“Hey, uh…” He trailed off before remembering the task at hand. “We’re ready to order.”

We were greeted by nothing but static and…wheezing? It was faint, but unmistakable.

“Great customer service.” Trent said impatiently. “Are you going to take our order or what?”

I couldn’t help but feel a little concerned at the noise. “Are they having an asthma attack or something?”

“They can walk it off. Might just be a newbie’s first day.” Trent pulled his head back into the car. “We’ve all been there.”

“Don’t joke like that man.”

“I’m not joking. It might just be the speaker.” He stuck his head out again. “My friend and I want to order. Is everything alright in there?”

There was no response, but the wheezing sound persisted in the static.

“Sounds like someone forgot to turn off their headset while on the John.”

“Maybe they’re busy on the inside?” I thought aloud.

Trent scanned the parking lot with sarcastic puzzlement. “Yeah…the place sure is packed to the gills. I know you’re not the brightest crayon in the Crayola box Tanner, but use that noggin of yours.”

Without warning, the speaker crackled to unsuspecting life as the sound of a scream pierced the air before falling completely silent.

A cold shiver ran down my spine. “I’m not tripping am I?”

“No. I heard it too.”

Trent stepped on the gas and pulled forward to the first window. What we saw left us confused and horrified. Smeared all over the cracked drive-thru window was blood. It dripped down the glass as slowly as molasses.

Trent unbuckled his seatbelt and stuck his body halfway out the car to peer through the window. “Surely they’re fucking with us.”

I tensed up in my seat. “If they are, this is one fucked up prank.”

For a solid five seconds, Trent stared inside before recoiling back inside. The color had completely drained from his face. “We need to go inside and check on everyone.”

“Are you crazy? What did you see?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he floored it out of the drive-thru, parked the car, and immediately barreled out the driver’s side door towards the entrance. I followed in hot pursuit, well aware that we were treating all the red flags like checkpoints.

Upon entry, we were greeted with the familiar saxophone motif of “Urgent” by Foreigner.

“Urgent…urgent…emergency.” reverberated throughout the seemingly vacant restaurant as my eyes surveyed the carnage. The interior looked like it had been hit by an F-5 tornado. Chairs were overturned while plastic trays, paper wrapping, and half-eaten burgers and fries were strewn all over the black and white chessboard-like tile floor. The fryers in the back emitted a sound similar to a rattlesnake’s rattle. 

Trent swallowed nervously. “Let’s take a quick look around and get the hell out of here.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” I said, following Trent as he made his way towards the registers. “We should call the police and leave it to them.”

“Why? So they can do nothing?” Trent hopped over the counter and gestured to me to do the same.

I complied but as my feet touched the floor, I felt my balance slip and would have fallen to the floor had Trent not managed to catch me in time. When I regained my footing, I realized that my shoes were making a noise similar to stepping in a rain puddle. 

My gaze shifted to the floor below me. I was stepping in a thick pool of blood. Dark red smears stained the floor, reflecting like gasoline from the bright, white lighting overhead. 

Despite the grisly sight, there didn’t appear to be anybody else around. 

“What the fuck happened here?” 

A thunderous crunching sound answered my question, startling the both of us. It sounded like someone chomping on concrete.

“Stay quiet.” He whispered, following the crimson streaks across the floor towards the back. I trailed closely behind.

We peeked our heads around the corner, and discovered the source of all the noise.

Squatting and tearing into the mutilated corpse of an employee on the ground like a gluttonous lion was a man. 

Have you ever seen images of what a blood eagle looks like? Imagine that, but from the front of the body. That’s what I was looking at on the ground as the man kept consuming every bit of flesh he could get his hands on. The bloodsoaked clothes hanging from his lanky frame looked familiar.

That’s when it dawned on me.

It was the guy from the news. 

Jonah’s killer.

I covered my mouth to stifle a scream, and as I did, a metallic thumping noise could be heard coming from somewhere behind us. Then, a cry for help.

“IS SOMEONE THERE?! GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Before I could even blink, the man’s orange eyes had locked onto me. His skin resembled a cheese pizza if the cheese had been mostly scraped off, and he reeked like roadkill.

Trent and I bolted back the way we came toward the entrance. My pulse quickened as my legs carried me with a speed I didn’t know I possessed. Trent barreled over the counter and floundered to his feet, but before I could do the same, the man grabbed my ankle and pulled me toward him. The plastic tubs containing condiments clattered to the ground as my body was dragged back across the counter. 

I hit the floor hard. The remaining air in my lungs escaped in a ragged burst as the man dug his knees into my chest and grabbed my throat. I flailed about, trying desperately to remove his hands and free myself. He opened his mouth, and I watched as coagulated blood and strips of skin landed on my face like a rancid rainfall. 

Before he could close the distance and tear into me, Trent vaulted over the counter, and cracked a plastic tray from the lobby floor over the man’s head.
His teeth chattered in response to getting clocked, and his grip on my neck relented as he turned his focus to Trent.

“Run, Tanner!” He cried out, swinging the plastic tray wildly in an attempt to keep the man at bay. I sat up from the ground and gasped for air, watching Trent as he backed up towards the fryers. The man rasped excitedly as he gripped the plastic tray in Trent’s hand and fought for control of it. 

I had to think fast and do something, but what? 

I noticed the plastic containers resting on the ground next to me. Treating them like weapons, I picked them up, and charged towards the man and began raining down the hardest swings my body could muster.

PING. PING. PING.

The man turned slowly, registering my blows as nothing more than an inconvenience at best. My distraction was enough for Trent to wrap his arms around the man’s body to try and restrain him. 

“HEH…HEH…HEH…” The man panted as he thrashed around violently. Trent buckled behind him, struggling to keep his grip.

“I can’t hold on much longer!” He screamed, his arms loosening with every frantic movement the man made.

The fryers crackled behind me, and that’s when I realized what we needed to do to get us out of this immensely fucked up situation.  

“Move!” I commanded.

Trent released the man and dove to the ground next to me as I grabbed the fryer basket with both hands. The metal handle scorched my palms instantly, but adrenaline bulldozed through the pain.

The man whipped toward me with those glowing orange eyes, and I hurled the basket upward. A tidal wave of golden grease erupted from the fryer, and the oil hit him with a wet splash.

His howls of pain sounded like a thousand dying pterodactyls screeching directly into my skull. The man staggered backwards, his bloody fingernails clawing vigorously at his blistering, bubbling skin. He slammed into the stainless steel counter behind him hard enough to dent it before charging in a blind frenzy toward the drive-thru window. He crashed through it shoulder-first, causing shards of glass to fly everywhere.

He hit the pavement hard enough to skid across the parking lot like a stone skipping across water. The neon lights of The Raveyard burger sign flickered across his twitching body in pulses of jaundiced yellow.

Trent and I watched him writhe and clutch himself for several moments before he rose from the ground, and sprinted off into the night on all fours like a wolf. We just stood there in shock while the music in the lobby droned on behind us. 

“Dude…what the fuck was that?” I asked, looking at Trent with horror.

“I don’t know, but we need to go. Now.”

“HEY! YOU OUT THERE! HELP ME!” The voice we had heard from the freezer earlier was calling out again.
I walked toward the freezer, but Trent stuck his arm out to stop me. “Hell no, we’re not sticking around any longer. Not after that.”

“Someone needs our help. We can’t just leave them here.” 

I opened the freezer door and a cold mist rolled out, revealing a teenager inside blinking at us like we were a figment of his imagination. His black work shirt and pants were covered in blood. 

“C-c-c’mon. G-g-go.” He shivered as he walked out, clutching himself for warmth.

“Is there anybody else here?” I asked, my eyes landing on his nametag that said: Raimi.

His eyes landed on the various smears and pools of blood around the restaurant floor. “N-n-not anymore.”

We escorted him out of the restaurant and toward our car. Before we could even buckle our seatbelts, Trent peeled out of the parking lot and sped off down the street.

Not a word was said for a while. Music served as our only comfort in the aftermath until “(Don’t) Fear the Reaper” began to play from the speakers. Thinking that it wasn’t exactly the most appropriate song for the situation, Trent flicked the volume dial to zero, and the car returned to silence.

A few moments later, I decided to ask. “What happened back there?”

Raimi let out a nervous laugh as I glanced at him in the rear view mirror. “To make a long story short, just another day in customer service.”

“Sure as shit didn’t look like it.” Trent gripped the steering wheel tightly. “We’re going back to our place and calling the police.”

And that’s what we did. We returned to our apartment, called the police, and gave our accounts of what happened that night. When we finished explaining every last excruciating detail, they took Raimi back home to his parents. That was a couple of days ago.

Ever since our story was made public, the town has gone on lockdown. That hasn’t stopped the news reports from downplaying our experience as a “contained incident”.

They announced that a “thorough” investigation was under way, but The Raveyard made a statement saying that they were not liable for the events that transpired in their store. I’m not buying that bullshit for a second. There’s definitely something fishy going on here.

They haven’t found the guy yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they do. I hope they bring this madness to an end. I’m tired of being holed up in this apartment with Trent. I love the man, but sometimes a guy just needs his space.

If you know anything about what’s going on in Ashhaven, please tell me. I doubt this will be the last time we hear about Jonah’s killer or The Raveyard.

And as fucked up as this sounds, I still wonder how those Graveyard Smashburgers would have tasted that night.

This is all going to sound so unbelievable, but I need to talk about this because our town is on lockdown until further notice.

My friend Trent and I weren’t looking for trouble. We got high off our asses and just wanted to get some food. That’s it. That’s how this started. But with the way the world has been going lately, I’d rather you hear what actually happened from me instead of whatever story the news decides to feed you.

I was fused to the couch, aimlessly watching the news anchor ramble on about politics while Trent sat next to me. “I feel like they’re always mad about something.”

“It’s the news,” I muttered, my body feeling like the juice inside a lava lamp. “That’s their whole thing.”

We sat there for a while, listening to the low volume and reading the closed captioning so that our zonked asses could keep up with what was going on.

When the channel cut to commercial, Trent got up. “Dude, check this out.” Trent went to his room and came back with an assortment of coupons. “Talk about the motherlode of options am I right?”

He set them on the coffee table in front of me. I took a closer look at them, only to be met with disappointment. “You do realize most of these are expired right?” I pointed at the various dates, ranging from yesterday to a whopping three months expired. “So much for options.”

“Coupons are like window shopping.” He smiled dumbly, his eyes completely bloodshot. “They’re suggestions with confidence.” 

“Fifty milligrams of Indica really got you feeling philosophical, huh Socrates?” 

“Nah.” He smirked. “It’s got me feeling like I haven’t eaten in at least ten business days.” 

“Well let’s figure something out then.”

“Chicken sandwiches?” Trent asked.

“We had that last week.” 

“Chinese?” 

“That doesn’t sound good right now.” 

“Tacos?”

“I had horrible stomach cramps the last time we had tacos man.”

“Aw. Do you want me to order you some French cries?” Trent shook his head in slight annoyance. “You’re more indecisive than my parents trying to plan a vacation.”

“I mean, we are roommates,” I shrugged. “We’re basically halfway to being a bickering couple.”

“Touché.” He didn’t even look up at me. “What about Italian?”

“What Italian place do you know that’s going to be open at two in the morning?”

“Oh…good point.” He stared at me blankly, his last two remaining brain cells fighting for third place as he picked up another coupon from the table and squinted at it.

“The Raveyard,” he read slowly with heavy eyes. “‘Buy one, get one ‘Graveyard Smashburger free.’ That sounds… stupendous.”

I laughed at his choice of wording. “You really wanna go to that retro horror themed place with the weird graveyard out back?”

“Yeah! Why not? We’ve never been.” His eyes widened with excitement. He was practically frothing at the mouth. “Don’t you want to bite into a mouth-wateringly delicious patty with melted cheese right now?”

My stomach growled, providing an answer before the words could even leave my mouth. “Abso-freakin-lutely.”

“Sick.” Trent fist-pumped the air as he grabbed his keys from the countertop and shoved the coupons into his pocket. “Let’s boot, scoot, and boogie. I’m starving.” 

I went to turn off the TV, but right as I did so, the late-night news anchor began talking about something that made my stomach churn.

“The suspect has not been located. Residents of the Silver Grove complex are advised to remain indoors as the search for Jonah’s killer remains at large.”

After the breaking news announcement, they put a grainy picture on the screen. It was an image that was more than likely pulled from a security camera, but it was enough to get a decent profile.

He had the kind of face that would never stand out in a crowd. I don’t know if it was the graininess of the footage or the lighting or what, but his eyes appeared to be an unnatural color. Most disturbingly though was all the blood. It covered almost every inch of his baggy clothing.

I pressed the power button on the TV remote, and watched the screen go black. “Should we listen to the news?” 

“Fuck no.” Trent dismissed, dangling his keys. “If people listened to the news we wouldn’t be in half the shit we find ourselves in. Let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve got a case of the serious munchies.”

I didn’t argue. I just followed him to the car. In hindsight, I should have listened to my gut and suggested we stay home, but instead, we left our apartment complex and embarked on a late quest to The Raveyard.

“Hold On Loosely” by 38 Special served as the soundtrack for our drive down the various empty  streets toward our destination. The kick drums thumped in the speakers, drowning out the rumbling of my stomach that could have easily registered on the Richter scale.

After a fairly brief drive, we rolled up to the restaurant. The big neon burger flickered in the darkness of the night, a beacon of hope for our cravings as we pulled up to the skull-shaped speaker box in the drive-thru. My mouth salivated at the thought of stuffing some burgers down my food-deprived gullet. 

We sat idly in the car, staring at the plethora of options on the menu and pondering just how much we were about to blow on food. When we finally decided what we wanted, Trent rolled down the window and stuck his head out the car.

“Hey, uh…” He trailed off before remembering the task at hand. “We’re ready to order.”

We were greeted by nothing but static and…wheezing? It was faint, but unmistakable.

“Great customer service.” Trent said impatiently. “Are you going to take our order or what?”

I couldn’t help but feel a little concerned at the noise. “Are they having an asthma attack or something?”

“They can walk it off. Might just be a newbie’s first day.” Trent pulled his head back into the car. “We’ve all been there.”

“Don’t joke like that man.”

“I’m not joking. It might just be the speaker.” He stuck his head out again. “My friend and I want to order. Is everything alright in there?”

There was no response, but the wheezing sound persisted in the static.

“Sounds like someone forgot to turn off their headset while on the John.”

“Maybe they’re busy on the inside?” I thought aloud.

Trent scanned the parking lot with sarcastic puzzlement. “Yeah…the place sure is packed to the gills. I know you’re not the brightest crayon in the Crayola box Tanner, but use that noggin of yours.”

Without warning, the speaker crackled to unsuspecting life as the sound of a scream pierced the air before falling completely silent.

A cold shiver ran down my spine. “I’m not tripping am I?”

“No. I heard it too.”

Trent stepped on the gas and pulled forward to the first window. What we saw left us confused and horrified. Smeared all over the cracked drive-thru window was blood. It dripped down the glass as slowly as molasses.

Trent unbuckled his seatbelt and stuck his body halfway out the car to peer through the window. “Surely they’re fucking with us.”

I tensed up in my seat. “If they are, this is one fucked up prank.”

For a solid five seconds, Trent stared inside before recoiling back inside. The color had completely drained from his face. “We need to go inside and check on everyone.”

“Are you crazy? What did you see?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he floored it out of the drive-thru, parked the car, and immediately barreled out the driver’s side door towards the entrance. I followed in hot pursuit, well aware that we were treating all the red flags like checkpoints.

Upon entry, we were greeted with the familiar saxophone motif of “Urgent” by Foreigner.

“Urgent…urgent…emergency.” reverberated throughout the seemingly vacant restaurant as my eyes surveyed the carnage. The interior looked like it had been hit by an F-5 tornado. Chairs were overturned while plastic trays, paper wrapping, and half-eaten burgers and fries were strewn all over the black and white chessboard-like tile floor. The fryers in the back emitted a sound similar to a rattlesnake’s rattle. 

Trent swallowed nervously. “Let’s take a quick look around and get the hell out of here.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” I said, following Trent as he made his way towards the registers. “We should call the police and leave it to them.”

“Why? So they can do nothing?” Trent hopped over the counter and gestured to me to do the same.

I complied but as my feet touched the floor, I felt my balance slip and would have fallen to the floor had Trent not managed to catch me in time. When I regained my footing, I realized that my shoes were making a noise similar to stepping in a rain puddle. 

My gaze shifted to the floor below me. I was stepping in a thick pool of blood. Dark red smears stained the floor, reflecting like gasoline from the bright, white lighting overhead. 

Despite the grisly sight, there didn’t appear to be anybody else around. 

“What the fuck happened here?” 

A thunderous crunching sound answered my question, startling the both of us. It sounded like someone chomping on concrete.

“Stay quiet.” He whispered, following the crimson streaks across the floor towards the back. I trailed closely behind.

We peeked our heads around the corner, and discovered the source of all the noise.

Squatting and tearing into the mutilated corpse of an employee on the ground like a gluttonous lion was a man. 

Have you ever seen images of what a blood eagle looks like? Imagine that, but from the front of the body. That’s what I was looking at on the ground as the man kept consuming every bit of flesh he could get his hands on. The bloodsoaked clothes hanging from his lanky frame looked familiar.

That’s when it dawned on me.

It was the guy from the news. 

Jonah’s killer.

I covered my mouth to stifle a scream, and as I did, a metallic thumping noise could be heard coming from somewhere behind us. Then, a cry for help.

“IS SOMEONE THERE?! GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Before I could even blink, the man’s orange eyes had locked onto me. His skin resembled a cheese pizza if the cheese had been mostly scraped off, and he reeked like roadkill.

Trent and I bolted back the way we came toward the entrance. My pulse quickened as my legs carried me with a speed I didn’t know I possessed. Trent barreled over the counter and floundered to his feet, but before I could do the same, the man grabbed my ankle and pulled me toward him. The plastic tubs containing condiments clattered to the ground as my body was dragged back across the counter. 

I hit the floor hard. The remaining air in my lungs escaped in a ragged burst as the man dug his knees into my chest and grabbed my throat. I flailed about, trying desperately to remove his hands and free myself. He opened his mouth, and I watched as coagulated blood and strips of skin landed on my face like a rancid rainfall. 

Before he could close the distance and tear into me, Trent vaulted over the counter, and cracked a plastic tray from the lobby floor over the man’s head.
His teeth chattered in response to getting clocked, and his grip on my neck relented as he turned his focus to Trent.

“Run, Tanner!” He cried out, swinging the plastic tray wildly in an attempt to keep the man at bay. I sat up from the ground and gasped for air, watching Trent as he backed up towards the fryers. The man rasped excitedly as he gripped the plastic tray in Trent’s hand and fought for control of it. 

I had to think fast and do something, but what? 

I noticed the plastic containers resting on the ground next to me. Treating them like weapons, I picked them up, and charged towards the man and began raining down the hardest swings my body could muster.

PING. PING. PING.

The man turned slowly, registering my blows as nothing more than an inconvenience at best. My distraction was enough for Trent to wrap his arms around the man’s body to try and restrain him. 

“HEH…HEH…HEH…” The man panted as he thrashed around violently. Trent buckled behind him, struggling to keep his grip.

“I can’t hold on much longer!” He screamed, his arms loosening with every frantic movement the man made.

The fryers crackled behind me, and that’s when I realized what we needed to do to get us out of this immensely fucked up situation.  

“Move!” I commanded.

Trent released the man and dove to the ground next to me as I grabbed the fryer basket with both hands. The metal handle scorched my palms instantly, but adrenaline bulldozed through the pain.

The man whipped toward me with those glowing orange eyes, and I hurled the basket upward. A tidal wave of golden grease erupted from the fryer, and the oil hit him with a wet splash.

His howls of pain sounded like a thousand dying pterodactyls screeching directly into my skull. The man staggered backwards, his bloody fingernails clawing vigorously at his blistering, bubbling skin. He slammed into the stainless steel counter behind him hard enough to dent it before charging in a blind frenzy toward the drive-thru window. He crashed through it shoulder-first, causing shards of glass to fly everywhere.

He hit the pavement hard enough to skid across the parking lot like a stone skipping across water. The neon lights of The Raveyard burger sign flickered across his twitching body in pulses of jaundiced yellow.

Trent and I watched him writhe and clutch himself for several moments before he rose from the ground, and sprinted off into the night on all fours like a wolf. We just stood there in shock while the music in the lobby droned on behind us. 

“Dude…what the fuck was that?” I asked, looking at Trent with horror.

“I don’t know, but we need to go. Now.”

“HEY! YOU OUT THERE! HELP ME!” The voice we had heard from the freezer earlier was calling out again.
I walked toward the freezer, but Trent stuck his arm out to stop me. “Hell no, we’re not sticking around any longer. Not after that.”

“Someone needs our help. We can’t just leave them here.” 

I opened the freezer door and a cold mist rolled out, revealing a teenager inside blinking at us like we were a figment of his imagination. His black work shirt and pants were covered in blood. 

“C-c-c’mon. G-g-go.” He shivered as he walked out, clutching himself for warmth.

“Is there anybody else here?” I asked, my eyes landing on his nametag that said: Raimi.

His eyes landed on the various smears and pools of blood around the restaurant floor. “N-n-not anymore.”

We escorted him out of the restaurant and toward our car. Before we could even buckle our seatbelts, Trent peeled out of the parking lot and sped off down the street.

Not a word was said for a while. Music served as our only comfort in the aftermath until “(Don’t) Fear the Reaper” began to play from the speakers. Thinking that it wasn’t exactly the most appropriate song for the situation, Trent flicked the volume dial to zero, and the car returned to silence.

A few moments later, I decided to ask. “What happened back there?”

Raimi let out a nervous laugh as I glanced at him in the rear view mirror. “To make a long story short, just another day in customer service.”

“Sure as shit didn’t look like it.” Trent gripped the steering wheel tightly. “We’re going back to our place and calling the police.”

And that’s what we did. We returned to our apartment, called the police, and gave our accounts of what happened that night. When we finished explaining every last excruciating detail, they took Raimi back home to his parents. That was a couple of days ago.

Ever since our story was made public, the town has gone on lockdown. That hasn’t stopped the news reports from downplaying our experience as a “contained incident”.

They announced that a “thorough” investigation was under way, but The Raveyard made a statement saying that they were not liable for the events that transpired in their store. I’m not buying that bullshit for a second. There’s definitely something fishy going on here.

They haven’t found the guy yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they do. I hope they bring this madness to an end. I’m tired of being holed up in this apartment with Trent. I love the man, but sometimes a guy just needs his space.

If you know anything about what’s going on in Ashhaven, please tell me. I doubt this will be the last time we hear about Jonah’s killer or The Raveyard.

And as fucked up as this sounds, I still wonder how those Graveyard Smashburgers would have tasted that night.

This is all going to sound so unbelievable, but I need to talk about this because our town is on lockdown until further notice.

My friend Trent and I weren’t looking for trouble. We got high off our asses and just wanted to get some food. That’s it. That’s how this started. But with the way the world has been going lately, I’d rather you hear what actually happened from me instead of whatever story the news decides to feed you.

I was fused to the couch, aimlessly watching the news anchor ramble on about politics while Trent sat next to me. “I feel like they’re always mad about something.”

“It’s the news,” I muttered, my body feeling like the juice inside a lava lamp. “That’s their whole thing.”

We sat there for a while, listening to the low volume and reading the closed captioning so that our zonked asses could keep up with what was going on.

When the channel cut to commercial, Trent got up. “Dude, check this out.” Trent went to his room and came back with an assortment of coupons. “Talk about the motherlode of options am I right?”

He set them on the coffee table in front of me. I took a closer look at them, only to be met with disappointment. “You do realize most of these are expired right?” I pointed at the various dates, ranging from yesterday to a whopping three months expired. “So much for options.”

“Coupons are like window shopping.” He smiled dumbly, his eyes completely bloodshot. “They’re suggestions with confidence.” 

“Fifty milligrams of Indica really got you feeling philosophical, huh Socrates?” 

“Nah.” He smirked. “It’s got me feeling like I haven’t eaten in at least ten business days.” 

“Well let’s figure something out then.”

“Chicken sandwiches?” Trent asked.

“We had that last week.” 

“Chinese?” 

“That doesn’t sound good right now.” 

“Tacos?”

“I had horrible stomach cramps the last time we had tacos man.”

“Aw. Do you want me to order you some French cries?” Trent shook his head in slight annoyance. “You’re more indecisive than my parents trying to plan a vacation.”

“I mean, we are roommates,” I shrugged. “We’re basically halfway to being a bickering couple.”

“Touché.” He didn’t even look up at me. “What about Italian?”

“What Italian place do you know that’s going to be open at two in the morning?”

“Oh…good point.” He stared at me blankly, his last two remaining brain cells fighting for third place as he picked up another coupon from the table and squinted at it.

“The Raveyard,” he read slowly with heavy eyes. “‘Buy one, get one ‘Graveyard Smashburger free.’ That sounds… stupendous.”

I laughed at his choice of wording. “You really wanna go to that retro horror themed place with the weird graveyard out back?”

“Yeah! Why not? We’ve never been.” His eyes widened with excitement. He was practically frothing at the mouth. “Don’t you want to bite into a mouth-wateringly delicious patty with melted cheese right now?”

My stomach growled, providing an answer before the words could even leave my mouth. “Abso-freakin-lutely.”

“Sick.” Trent fist-pumped the air as he grabbed his keys from the countertop and shoved the coupons into his pocket. “Let’s boot, scoot, and boogie. I’m starving.” 

I went to turn off the TV, but right as I did so, the late-night news anchor began talking about something that made my stomach churn.

“The suspect has not been located. Residents of the Silver Grove complex are advised to remain indoors as the search for Jonah’s killer remains at large.”

After the breaking news announcement, they put a grainy picture on the screen. It was an image that was more than likely pulled from a security camera, but it was enough to get a decent profile.

He had the kind of face that would never stand out in a crowd. I don’t know if it was the graininess of the footage or the lighting or what, but his eyes appeared to be an unnatural color. Most disturbingly though was all the blood. It covered almost every inch of his baggy clothing.

I pressed the power button on the TV remote, and watched the screen go black. “Should we listen to the news?” 

“Fuck no.” Trent dismissed, dangling his keys. “If people listened to the news we wouldn’t be in half the shit we find ourselves in. Let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve got a case of the serious munchies.”

I didn’t argue. I just followed him to the car. In hindsight, I should have listened to my gut and suggested we stay home, but instead, we left our apartment complex and embarked on a late quest to The Raveyard.

“Hold On Loosely” by 38 Special served as the soundtrack for our drive down the various empty  streets toward our destination. The kick drums thumped in the speakers, drowning out the rumbling of my stomach that could have easily registered on the Richter scale.

After a fairly brief drive, we rolled up to the restaurant. The big neon burger flickered in the darkness of the night, a beacon of hope for our cravings as we pulled up to the skull-shaped speaker box in the drive-thru. My mouth salivated at the thought of stuffing some burgers down my food-deprived gullet. 

We sat idly in the car, staring at the plethora of options on the menu and pondering just how much we were about to blow on food. When we finally decided what we wanted, Trent rolled down the window and stuck his head out the car.

“Hey, uh…” He trailed off before remembering the task at hand. “We’re ready to order.”

We were greeted by nothing but static and…wheezing? It was faint, but unmistakable.

“Great customer service.” Trent said impatiently. “Are you going to take our order or what?”

I couldn’t help but feel a little concerned at the noise. “Are they having an asthma attack or something?”

“They can walk it off. Might just be a newbie’s first day.” Trent pulled his head back into the car. “We’ve all been there.”

“Don’t joke like that man.”

“I’m not joking. It might just be the speaker.” He stuck his head out again. “My friend and I want to order. Is everything alright in there?”

There was no response, but the wheezing sound persisted in the static.

“Sounds like someone forgot to turn off their headset while on the John.”

“Maybe they’re busy on the inside?” I thought aloud.

Trent scanned the parking lot with sarcastic puzzlement. “Yeah…the place sure is packed to the gills. I know you’re not the brightest crayon in the Crayola box Tanner, but use that noggin of yours.”

Without warning, the speaker crackled to unsuspecting life as the sound of a scream pierced the air before falling completely silent.

A cold shiver ran down my spine. “I’m not tripping am I?”

“No. I heard it too.”

Trent stepped on the gas and pulled forward to the first window. What we saw left us confused and horrified. Smeared all over the cracked drive-thru window was blood. It dripped down the glass as slowly as molasses.

Trent unbuckled his seatbelt and stuck his body halfway out the car to peer through the window. “Surely they’re fucking with us.”

I tensed up in my seat. “If they are, this is one fucked up prank.”

For a solid five seconds, Trent stared inside before recoiling back inside. The color had completely drained from his face. “We need to go inside and check on everyone.”

“Are you crazy? What did you see?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he floored it out of the drive-thru, parked the car, and immediately barreled out the driver’s side door towards the entrance. I followed in hot pursuit, well aware that we were treating all the red flags like checkpoints.

Upon entry, we were greeted with the familiar saxophone motif of “Urgent” by Foreigner.

“Urgent…urgent…emergency.” reverberated throughout the seemingly vacant restaurant as my eyes surveyed the carnage. The interior looked like it had been hit by an F-5 tornado. Chairs were overturned while plastic trays, paper wrapping, and half-eaten burgers and fries were strewn all over the black and white chessboard-like tile floor. The fryers in the back emitted a sound similar to a rattlesnake’s rattle. 

Trent swallowed nervously. “Let’s take a quick look around and get the hell out of here.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” I said, following Trent as he made his way towards the registers. “We should call the police and leave it to them.”

“Why? So they can do nothing?” Trent hopped over the counter and gestured to me to do the same.

I complied but as my feet touched the floor, I felt my balance slip and would have fallen to the floor had Trent not managed to catch me in time. When I regained my footing, I realized that my shoes were making a noise similar to stepping in a rain puddle. 

My gaze shifted to the floor below me. I was stepping in a thick pool of blood. Dark red smears stained the floor, reflecting like gasoline from the bright, white lighting overhead. 

Despite the grisly sight, there didn’t appear to be anybody else around. 

“What the fuck happened here?” 

A thunderous crunching sound answered my question, startling the both of us. It sounded like someone chomping on concrete.

“Stay quiet.” He whispered, following the crimson streaks across the floor towards the back. I trailed closely behind.

We peeked our heads around the corner, and discovered the source of all the noise.

Squatting and tearing into the mutilated corpse of an employee on the ground like a gluttonous lion was a man. 

Have you ever seen images of what a blood eagle looks like? Imagine that, but from the front of the body. That’s what I was looking at on the ground as the man kept consuming every bit of flesh he could get his hands on. The bloodsoaked clothes hanging from his lanky frame looked familiar.

That’s when it dawned on me.

It was the guy from the news. 

Jonah’s killer.

I covered my mouth to stifle a scream, and as I did, a metallic thumping noise could be heard coming from somewhere behind us. Then, a cry for help.

“IS SOMEONE THERE?! GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Before I could even blink, the man’s orange eyes had locked onto me. His skin resembled a cheese pizza if the cheese had been mostly scraped off, and he reeked like roadkill.

Trent and I bolted back the way we came toward the entrance. My pulse quickened as my legs carried me with a speed I didn’t know I possessed. Trent barreled over the counter and floundered to his feet, but before I could do the same, the man grabbed my ankle and pulled me toward him. The plastic tubs containing condiments clattered to the ground as my body was dragged back across the counter. 

I hit the floor hard. The remaining air in my lungs escaped in a ragged burst as the man dug his knees into my chest and grabbed my throat. I flailed about, trying desperately to remove his hands and free myself. He opened his mouth, and I watched as coagulated blood and strips of skin landed on my face like a rancid rainfall. 

Before he could close the distance and tear into me, Trent vaulted over the counter, and cracked a plastic tray from the lobby floor over the man’s head.
His teeth chattered in response to getting clocked, and his grip on my neck relented as he turned his focus to Trent.

“Run, Tanner!” He cried out, swinging the plastic tray wildly in an attempt to keep the man at bay. I sat up from the ground and gasped for air, watching Trent as he backed up towards the fryers. The man rasped excitedly as he gripped the plastic tray in Trent’s hand and fought for control of it. 

I had to think fast and do something, but what? 

I noticed the plastic containers resting on the ground next to me. Treating them like weapons, I picked them up, and charged towards the man and began raining down the hardest swings my body could muster.

PING. PING. PING.

The man turned slowly, registering my blows as nothing more than an inconvenience at best. My distraction was enough for Trent to wrap his arms around the man’s body to try and restrain him. 

“HEH…HEH…HEH…” The man panted as he thrashed around violently. Trent buckled behind him, struggling to keep his grip.

“I can’t hold on much longer!” He screamed, his arms loosening with every frantic movement the man made.

The fryers crackled behind me, and that’s when I realized what we needed to do to get us out of this immensely fucked up situation.  

“Move!” I commanded.

Trent released the man and dove to the ground next to me as I grabbed the fryer basket with both hands. The metal handle scorched my palms instantly, but adrenaline bulldozed through the pain.

The man whipped toward me with those glowing orange eyes, and I hurled the basket upward. A tidal wave of golden grease erupted from the fryer, and the oil hit him with a wet splash.

His howls of pain sounded like a thousand dying pterodactyls screeching directly into my skull. The man staggered backwards, his bloody fingernails clawing vigorously at his blistering, bubbling skin. He slammed into the stainless steel counter behind him hard enough to dent it before charging in a blind frenzy toward the drive-thru window. He crashed through it shoulder-first, causing shards of glass to fly everywhere.

He hit the pavement hard enough to skid across the parking lot like a stone skipping across water. The neon lights of The Raveyard burger sign flickered across his twitching body in pulses of jaundiced yellow.

Trent and I watched him writhe and clutch himself for several moments before he rose from the ground, and sprinted off into the night on all fours like a wolf. We just stood there in shock while the music in the lobby droned on behind us. 

“Dude…what the fuck was that?” I asked, looking at Trent with horror.

“I don’t know, but we need to go. Now.”

“HEY! YOU OUT THERE! HELP ME!” The voice we had heard from the freezer earlier was calling out again.
I walked toward the freezer, but Trent stuck his arm out to stop me. “Hell no, we’re not sticking around any longer. Not after that.”

“Someone needs our help. We can’t just leave them here.” 

I opened the freezer door and a cold mist rolled out, revealing a teenager inside blinking at us like we were a figment of his imagination. His black work shirt and pants were covered in blood. 

“C-c-c’mon. G-g-go.” He shivered as he walked out, clutching himself for warmth.

“Is there anybody else here?” I asked, my eyes landing on his nametag that said: Raimi.

His eyes landed on the various smears and pools of blood around the restaurant floor. “N-n-not anymore.”

We escorted him out of the restaurant and toward our car. Before we could even buckle our seatbelts, Trent peeled out of the parking lot and sped off down the street.

Not a word was said for a while. Music served as our only comfort in the aftermath until “(Don’t) Fear the Reaper” began to play from the speakers. Thinking that it wasn’t exactly the most appropriate song for the situation, Trent flicked the volume dial to zero, and the car returned to silence.

A few moments later, I decided to ask. “What happened back there?”

Raimi let out a nervous laugh as I glanced at him in the rear view mirror. “To make a long story short, just another day in customer service.”

“Sure as shit didn’t look like it.” Trent gripped the steering wheel tightly. “We’re going back to our place and calling the police.”

And that’s what we did. We returned to our apartment, called the police, and gave our accounts of what happened that night. When we finished explaining every last excruciating detail, they took Raimi back home to his parents. That was a couple of days ago.

Ever since our story was made public, the town has gone on lockdown. That hasn’t stopped the news reports from downplaying our experience as a “contained incident”.

They announced that a “thorough” investigation was under way, but The Raveyard made a statement saying that they were not liable for the events that transpired in their store. I’m not buying that bullshit for a second. There’s definitely something fishy going on here.

They haven’t found the guy yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they do. I hope they bring this madness to an end. I’m tired of being holed up in this apartment with Trent. I love the man, but sometimes a guy just needs his space.

If you know anything about what’s going on in Ashhaven, please tell me. I doubt this will be the last time we hear about Jonah’s killer or The Raveyard.

And as fucked up as this sounds, I still wonder how those Graveyard Smashburgers would have tasted that night.

A couple of weeks ago, the cravings began. I’ve been hungry before, but this felt different. Something primal deep within me was begging to be fed. It whispered the same word over and over again like a mantra:

Meat.

But I didn’t just desire any meat. I wanted human flesh. 

I wanted to feel it peel away between my teeth like the skin of an apple. To savor every last bit.

The cravings wouldn’t leave me alone. The intrusive thoughts crawled around in the back of my mind like an infestation of cockroaches. They bled into every waking moment of mine. While I ate, while I paced around my apartment, while I watched TV. It never stopped.

Full meals weren’t appetizing to me anymore. Pasta, steak, pizza, none of it sounded or looked appealing. I would take pounds of raw hamburger meat out and let it thaw, watching it intently as frost gave way to condensation. 

Once the packages had fully thawed, I tore into them, devouring them all like a man possessed. The aftermath made my kitchen floor look like someone had dumped buckets of chum everywhere. 

The next stepping stone was my neighbor’s cat. It was perched on my windowsill, ripe for the picking. It tasted better, but every bite just reinforced what I already knew: this wasn’t what I wanted. 

It was a reminder that persisted until I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

I held out as long as I could before I finally gave in a week later.

I started with my arm. I took a kitchen knife, cut off a small chunk of flesh, and scarfed it down. It was succulent. It was beautiful. It was food. But one bite was simply not enough. 

I treated myself like a human jack-o-lantern. Carving, slicing, and pulling myself apart to satisfy my hunger. Blood is splattered all over my walls and furniture. The rotten remnants of my old appendages are scattered around the kitchen in piles that rival my dirty dishes.

No matter how much I hack off, my limbs always rejuvenate themselves. I don’t know how, but I’m not complaining. I’m my own self-sustaining buffet.

I’ve eaten every part of myself I can. I’ve even tried cooking it—seasoning it, but the constant experimentation still wasn’t enough.

It smells like a slaughterhouse in here, but I’ve honestly gotten used to it.

Tenants have knocked and complained about the smell. Especially Jonah.

“It reeks of death,” he remarked one evening, his voice muffled through the door.

I never liked him, but I’ll give him credit where he’s due. He’s persistent. He keeps stopping by to check on me. 

“Are you alright in there?”  

“Do you need help?”

“Talk to me. I’m here for you.” 

No, you’re not. I don’t need your help. I don’t need anybody’s help. What I need is to be left alone. I want to—no, I need to eat. 

I just have to keep eating, and I do. I choose not to respond. Every second I spend listening is a second I’m not eating. They need to stop getting in my way.

I don’t remember the last time I left my apartment.

Monday? No—Thursday. It doesn’t matter. Every day feels the same. Must keep eating.

The more of myself I eat, the more I yearn for something…different. Flesh that is not my own. I wonder what that would taste like? 

I don’t know, but I want to.

There’s someone outside again.

Jonah?

I think I’m going to finally answer the door.

A couple of weeks ago, the cravings began. I’ve been hungry before, but this felt different. Something primal deep within me was begging to be fed. It whispered the same word over and over again like a mantra:

Meat.

But I didn’t just desire any meat. I wanted human flesh. 

I wanted to feel it peel away between my teeth like the skin of an apple. To savor every last bit.

The cravings wouldn’t leave me alone. The intrusive thoughts crawled around in the back of my mind like an infestation of cockroaches. They bled into every waking moment of mine. While I ate, while I paced around my apartment, while I watched TV. It never stopped.

Full meals weren’t appetizing to me anymore. Pasta, steak, pizza, none of it sounded or looked appealing. I would take pounds of raw hamburger meat out and let it thaw, watching it intently as frost gave way to condensation. 

Once the packages had fully thawed, I tore into them, devouring them all like a man possessed. The aftermath made my kitchen floor look like someone had dumped buckets of chum everywhere. 

The next stepping stone was my neighbor’s cat. It was perched on my windowsill, ripe for the picking. It tasted better, but every bite just reinforced what I already knew: this wasn’t what I wanted. 

It was a reminder that persisted until I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

I held out as long as I could before I finally gave in a week later.

I started with my arm. I took a kitchen knife, cut off a small chunk of flesh, and scarfed it down. It was succulent. It was beautiful. It was food. But one bite was simply not enough. 

I treated myself like a human jack-o-lantern. Carving, slicing, and pulling myself apart to satisfy my hunger. Blood is splattered all over my walls and furniture. The rotten remnants of my old appendages are scattered around the kitchen in piles that rival my dirty dishes.

No matter how much I hack off, my limbs always rejuvenate themselves. I don’t know how, but I’m not complaining. I’m my own self-sustaining buffet.

I’ve eaten every part of myself I can. I’ve even tried cooking it—seasoning it, but the constant experimentation still wasn’t enough.

It smells like a slaughterhouse in here, but I’ve honestly gotten used to it.

Tenants have knocked and complained about the smell. Especially Jonah.

“It reeks of death,” he remarked one evening, his voice muffled through the door.

I never liked him, but I’ll give him credit where he’s due. He’s persistent. He keeps stopping by to check on me. 

“Are you alright in there?”  

“Do you need help?”

“Talk to me. I’m here for you.” 

No, you’re not. I don’t need your help. I don’t need anybody’s help. What I need is to be left alone. I want to—no, I need to eat. 

I just have to keep eating, and I do. I choose not to respond. Every second I spend listening is a second I’m not eating. They need to stop getting in my way.

I don’t remember the last time I left my apartment.

Monday? No—Thursday. It doesn’t matter. Every day feels the same. Must keep eating.

The more of myself I eat, the more I yearn for something…different. Flesh that is not my own. I wonder what that would taste like? 

I don’t know, but I want to.

There’s someone outside again.

Jonah?

I think I’m going to finally answer the door.

A couple of weeks ago, the cravings began. I’ve been hungry before, but this felt different. Something primal deep within me was begging to be fed. It whispered the same word over and over again like a mantra:

Meat.

But I didn’t just desire any meat. I wanted human flesh. 

I wanted to feel it peel away between my teeth like the skin of an apple. To savor every last bit.

The cravings wouldn’t leave me alone. The intrusive thoughts crawled around in the back of my mind like an infestation of cockroaches. They bled into every waking moment of mine. While I ate, while I paced around my apartment, while I watched TV. It never stopped.

Full meals weren’t appetizing to me anymore. Pasta, steak, pizza, none of it sounded or looked appealing. I would take pounds of raw hamburger meat out and let it thaw, watching it intently as frost gave way to condensation. 

Once the packages had fully thawed, I tore into them, devouring them all like a man possessed. The aftermath made my kitchen floor look like someone had dumped buckets of chum everywhere. 

The next stepping stone was my neighbor’s cat. It was perched on my windowsill, ripe for the picking. It tasted better, but every bite just reinforced what I already knew: this wasn’t what I wanted. 

It was a reminder that persisted until I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

I held out as long as I could before I finally gave in a week later.

I started with my arm. I took a kitchen knife, cut off a small chunk of flesh, and scarfed it down. It was succulent. It was beautiful. It was food. But one bite was simply not enough. 

I treated myself like a human jack-o-lantern. Carving, slicing, and pulling myself apart to satisfy my hunger. Blood is splattered all over my walls and furniture. The rotten remnants of my old appendages are scattered around the kitchen in piles that rival my dirty dishes.
No matter how much I hack off, my limbs always rejuvenate themselves. I don’t know how, but I’m not complaining. I’m my own self-sustaining buffet.

I’ve eaten every part of myself I can. I’ve even tried cooking it—seasoning it, but the constant experimentation still wasn’t enough.

It smells like a slaughterhouse in here, but I’ve honestly gotten used to it.

Tenants have knocked and complained about the smell. Especially Jonah.

“It reeks of death,” he remarked one evening, his voice muffled through the door.

I never liked him, but I’ll give him credit where he’s due. He’s persistent. He keeps stopping by to check on me. 

“Are you alright in there?”  

“Do you need help?”

“Talk to me. I’m here for you.” 

No, you’re not. I don’t need your help. I don’t need anybody’s help. What I need is to be left alone. I want to—no, I need to eat. 

I just have to keep eating, and I do. I choose not to respond. Every second I spend listening is a second I’m not eating. They need to stop getting in my way.

I don’t remember the last time I left my apartment.

Monday? No—Thursday. It doesn’t matter. Every day feels the same. Must keep eating.

The more of myself I eat, the more I yearn for something…different. Flesh that is not my own. I wonder what that would taste like? 

I don’t know, but I want to.

There’s someone outside again.

Jonah?

I think I’m going to finally answer the door.

We as a species are creatures of lingering regrets.

We constantly think of the things that we didn’t do, the opportunities we missed out on, the alternatives to the choices we have made, and the haunting question of “what if”.

I am no different, and that is what brings me here to share my experience today.

I have had a “what if” question that has persisted in my head like a broken record. It has lingered in the darkest recesses of my mind like a cockroach and has continued to fester there to the present day.

What if we had just come forward with the truth?
The answer to this question is not for the faint of heart.

What I am about to describe is just as much a detailed recollection of events as it is a confession. What you choose to believe is entirely up to all of you but I need the truth to be out there in order to repent.

This all started a few months ago when I began communication with the dead.

Now, this grave endeavor wasn’t in vain mind you. The main reason I entertained this idea and participated was because I was desperate.

You see, I have lost a lot of people in my life. People I wished I could see again and communicate with that were no longer here.

What I desired most was closure with my loved ones and friends, and death had taken that from me.
That is until Jane and I were cleaning our basement out one day.

We were moving some miscellaneous junk strewn about the basement to the garage for donation or the trash. It was nothing more than a typical cleaning project that neither of us wanted to do, but it had to get done.

As I was cleaning out a particular corner of the basement, I stumbled upon a box containing an ouija board.

Now, I didn’t remember ever purchasing or acquiring an ouija board, and I know for certain Jane wouldn’t have either. She was not a fan of creepy things in the slightest.

How it ended up there was a complete mystery. My immediate thought was to just throw it away, there was no reason for us to have it.

It’s not that I didn’t believe in the paranormal or anything, I had an experience years ago that made me a believer. I just didn’t think it was an item that should continue to be in our household.

That is when a thought crossed my mind. One that I should have never begun to entertain the idea of.
What if I could speak with those people I never got a chance to speak with again?

This was an idea that intrigued me at the time.
Reconnecting with people that were once in my life and knowing that there was a life beyond death provided a strange comfort to me.

I can’t explain it but in that moment, I felt like I was compelled to use the board a ince I had found it.
After pondering things over for a moment longer, I had made my decision.

In hindsight, I should not have made a decision of such magnitude so recklessly but regardless, my mind was made up.

I placed the ouija board back where I had found it, pretending that I hadn’t seen it and proceeded to go about my day acting as if I hadn’t seen anything.
Tomorrow when I got home from work and while my wife was still working, I would use the ouija board.

And that is exactly what I did.

From that day forward for months I spent that two hour time period before Jane would get home from work downstairs in the basement communicating with the deceased.

My usage of the ouija board granted me the ability of being able to talk to my mother, my father, my grandmother, my grandfather and anyone else I so desired to talk to.

We discussed the afterlife, my life, and what I had never gotten to when they were here on this soil.
It was a relief unlike any other and I was grateful to be able to break the barrier between the living and dead to talk to my loved ones.

It began so innocently with them. All I ever intended was to talk to them and to get some closure, but it became an addiction.

I couldn’t stop using the ouija board.

Overtime I had started inviting random spirits to conduct a conversation with me.

It became therapeutic for me when I would ask these spirits questions and learn about them in addition to the unknown and beyond.

Despite my morbid fixation on conversing with the dead, I never let anything get out of hand.

My habit was always restricted to that two hour window I had and I was always going to be in control of the situation.

Yesterday though, that all changed.

I was going about things like I normally did with the ouija board. The candles that circled me illuminated the basement as I was called out, “Are there any spirits here, that want to communicate at this time?”
My words echoed throughout the basement as I patiently awaited a response from beyond the grave.

Some time had passed before the planchette I had my hands placed over began to shake. Slowly, it moved over to the word “Yes”.

I nodded my head and inquired, “Who am I speaking to?”

Once more the planchette began to move and glided over the letters “G”, “R”, “A”, “C”, and “E”.

I felt myself grow cold as if I had stepped in foot into a meat locker. My eyes widened in horror. That name…

“Grace? Why are you communicating with me?”

My words hung in the air like a fog as I anxiously waited for the spirit to answer. I could feel my heart pulsating very fast and I did my best to take deep breathes to slow its frantic pace.

A moment later, the planchette moved to a series of letters that spelled out the word “return”.

“Return? What do you mean by this?” I inquired, my eyes darting around in the darkness surrounding the candles I had lit.

Silence overcast the basement and nothing was heard besides the thunderous thumping of my heart.
I had never experienced anything like this in the months I had used the ouija board. I had never felt such an ominous and dark energy that contaminated the room like a plague.

I glanced back down at the planchette, wondering if there was ever going to be a response when a gust of wind snuffed out the candles.

I blindly looked around, the darkness enveloping my vision as I felt the perspiration form on my forehead from fright.

It felt like I was being watched but by who, I could not tell. It was a feeling that lurked as I felt an icy, cold hand grip my shoulder.

I stood still as a statue, rooted to the spot in horror as a voice whispered a command into my ear.

“Run.”

That’s when my adrenaline kicked in and I bolted up the stairs. I closed the basement door behind me and went up to Jane and I’s room to hide and calm down.
I didn’t move from my place in our bedroom until Jane had come home from work.

I didn’t dare tell her what had occurred, the last thing I wanted her to feel was unsafe and scared in the comfort of our home.

I collected myself and went downstairs to greet her and resumed the evening like it was any other.
When it was time to call it a night, I waited for her to go upstairs before going back down and hiding the ouija board.

I would take care of its disposal in the morning while Jane still slept. In the meantime however, I was going to catch some much needed rest and put this whole bizarre fixation of mine behind me.

I promised myself from that moment onward that I would never communicate with the dead ever again.
My weird addiction to the ouija board had to end for the sake of my sanity and well-being

The room was painfully quiet in the early hours of the morning, almost as if time itself had stopped entirely.
Darkness cloaked the room like a massive blanket as I lay next to Jane. A faint light creeped in through the window, allowing for little visibility of the various pieces of furniture in the bedroom.

My eyes scanned the room for a moment for any anomalies before resting my gaze upon her. She was still sound asleep, her breathing rhythmic as she continued to dream in peace.
Her arms were wrapped around me lightly like vines on a tree trunk. I slowly wiggled free from her grasp and rolled on my side.

I was still in a dazed state, my eyelids fighting a losing battle to stay open as I became self-aware of my heart beating against my rib cage. It thudded rapidly, like I had just been engulfed in a nightmare.
I couldn’t remember if I had been dreaming or not but it must not have been important if I couldn’t remember, right?

That’s what I told myself as I closed my eyes and wrapped myself back into the sheets like a cocoon.
I lay still for a while, waiting for sleep to overtake my conscious. When it seemed as though I was about to doze off, my cell phone that was on my night side table lit up like a Christmas tree and began to ring.

The vibration of the device buzzing on the table grated my eardrums as I let out a groan of frustration.
I sluggishly reached out and silenced the phone without even acknowledging who it was. I turned to my wife to see if she had stirred at all but thankfully to my delight, she had not been ripped from her slumber.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I looked at the time, 3:03 am.
“Give me a break.” I muttered irritably to myself as I turned back over hoping to get some sleep. The idea of having to go to work on just a couple hours of sleep was not a pleasant thought.

The last thing I wanted to do was daydream about dreaming.

I closed my eyes and tried my best to silence my thoughts but not even a moment after I had nestled into the warm embrace of the sheets, the phone rang again.

My eyes shot open and I lunged out into the void of darkness to silence the phone.

“Good God, can I just get some rest?” I buried my head under the blanket and face planted into the pillow, not wanting to think, see, or hear anything until 6 am sharp when I absolutely had to be awake.

The sound of my phone going off seconds after my face connected with the pillow indicated that someone was still trying to get in touch with me.
I begrudgingly lifted my face from the pillow and squinted to look at my phone which shone like a beacon of light on the bedside table.

I exhaled angrily as I yanked the phone from its place on the table and stared down at the screen.

My heart immediately sunk as I read the name of the person who was vehemently blowing up my phone.
Grace. It was the same name that was spelt out on the ouija board earlier.

I was confused, how was a spirit contacting me outside of the board? Was this the spirit that I thought it was?

I chalked it up to it all being a strange coincidence and put that dreadful thought to rest.

I hit decline on the call and not even a second after I did, the phone began to ring again.

This person doesn’t give up, I thought as I pressed decline call.

The phone lit up and hummed violently as Grace continued to call again and again.

I promptly kept declining the calls as they came through and I was able to eventually block the person, resulting in a blissful silence falling upon the room.
I gently placed the phone back down and was about to lay back down when I noticed Jane sitting up, looking at me in pure confusion.

In the midst of all the chaos, I neglected the fact that the constant noise of my phone and I would have woken her.

“What is going on?” She asked as a yawn escaped her lips.

“Nothing Jane, it was just some stupid scam caller or something. I took care of it.” I reassured as I returned to my place beside her in the comfort of our bed.
As soon as she and I began to get comfortable, the familiar humming sound filled the air indicating that my phone was going off.

“Apparently you didn’t.” She quipped as I snatched the phone from its resting place and messed with its settings.

I was perplexed. I had blocked this person, so how was the same number calling? I decided to take matters a step further and turn my phone off.

I held the power button on my phone and watched the brand logo light up on the screen before dimming and blacking out completely.

“There. Now I did..” I breathed a sigh of relief as I returned to Jane’s side and gave a light smile. “That was way more complicated than it needed to be.”
We shared a laugh as we both lay on our backs and snuggled together under the sheets.

“I noticed. Seems like you got a stalker.” She teased as she wrapped her arms around my torso and placed her head on my chest.

“Who wants to stalk someone like me though?”
“I don’t know, you tell me?” She raised her head to look me in the face and raised a slight brow jokingly.
In that moment, I wanted to tell her the person’s name but decided it was better to withhold the information.

There was no need to bother her with something as small as a name in the grand scheme of things.
Before I could give a reply to her question though, my phone rang yet again.

This time Jane and I both sat straight up in bed, immediately alarmed at what we were hearing.
“You…you turned that off right?” She asked with a concerned tone, her face peering over at my bedside table.

“Yeah! I…I turned the phone off. Did you not see me turn the phone off?” I felt like my arms weighed a thousand tons and my fingers shook as I took the phone and brought it to my face.

I stood there and just stared at the brightly lit screen, the name Grace striking fear into my heart.

“Grace? Who is this Grace and why is she calling you? It’s three in the morning.” Jane said, clearly agitated and suspicious of the fact that another woman was calling me in the early hours of the morning.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to answer and figure out what the meaning of this is.” I pressed accept on the phone call and brought it up to my ear.

“Listen, I don’t know who you think you are but-“ I was interrupted by a burst of static that sounded like a radio trying to find a proper frequency.

“Hello? Is anybody there?” I asked as I glanced over my shoulder at Jane who appeared to be a nervous wreck.

She looked how I felt internally but I needed to be strong for her. I didn’t want to look scared, but it was hard not to be. This whole thing was certainly strange.

“Put it on speaker.” Her voice trembled with a worried tone. I nodded my head and pulled the phone away from my ear.

I pressed the speaker button and we both listened with racing hearts as the static continued to blare. This noise persisted for a while before a faint voice crept through.

“Hello?” The voice was weak but there was no mistaking it, someone was on the line.

“Yes? Hello? Who is this? How did you get my number?” The questions poured out of me at a rapid fire pace as I was trying to rationalize the scenario we found ourselves in.

There was no response to anything I asked and instead we were left to listen to the static deafeningly sounded from the speaker.

The moments we spent waiting for a response seemed to drag on in dog years but eventually the voice returned, this time much clearer.

“This..is…Grace.” I felt my blood turn to ice. Every word pierced my skin like a hunting knife as I looked over at Jane who shared the same horrified expression as myself.

I felt my grip loosening on the phone as the world seemingly spun around me. This couldn’t be real, none of this is real.

“Leave us alone!” Jane’s voice broke the silence between the two of us. She seized the phone from what little grasp I still had and tried to decline the call.
No matter how many times she attempted to hang up though, the call would not end. If anything, the static sound got louder and louder forcing Jane and I to cover our ears.

As quickly as the static noise raised itself to ear-piercing decibels, it stopped.

Jane and I were afraid to breathe as we listened to the phone for any signs of life besides our own.

I could feel my limbs trembling from the fear and adrenaline. I was afraid to move in any capacity.
I clenched my eyes shut and prayed for this to end. I could feel Jane’s face hovering above my shoulder and I could hear her trying to stifle cries of terror.

The silence on the other end of the line was somehow more deafening than the static coming through just moments ago.

It was not to last however as the voice returned and spoke clear as day from the other end of the line.

“I’m here.” The voice stated in an aggressive rasp before the phone call suddenly ended and the screen went to black.

Jane and I sat in the darkness, paralyzed by our own fear. We weren’t sure of what to make of what had just happened. It was like a piece of fiction had come to life. There was nothing fictitious about this however.

This was the gravity of the situation coming crashing down upon us. There was a reason why that name had sounded so familiar earlier downstairs with the ouija board.

The voice on the phone all but confirmed our suspicions. She and I locked eyes in horror and I felt myself shiver at the revelation.

The spirit from the ouija board and the voice on the phone were the same entity.

It was Grace, our daughter we had killed ten years ago.

We as a species are creatures of lingering regrets.

We constantly think of the things that we didn’t do, the opportunities we missed out on, the alternatives to the choices we have made, and the haunting question of “what if”.

I am no different, and that is what brings me here to share my experience today.

I have had a “what if” question that has persisted in my head like a broken record. It has lingered in the darkest recesses of my mind like a cockroach and has continued to fester there to the present day.

What if we had just come forward with the truth?
The answer to this question is not for the faint of heart.

What I am about to describe is just as much a detailed recollection of events as it is a confession. What you choose to believe is entirely up to all of you but I need the truth to be out there in order to repent.

This all started a few months ago when I began communication with the dead.

Now, this grave endeavor wasn’t in vain mind you. The main reason I entertained this idea and participated was because I was desperate.

You see, I have lost a lot of people in my life. People I wished I could see again and communicate with that were no longer here.

What I desired most was closure with my loved ones and friends, and death had taken that from me.
That is until Jane and I were cleaning our basement out one day.

We were moving some miscellaneous junk strewn about the basement to the garage for donation or the trash. It was nothing more than a typical cleaning project that neither of us wanted to do, but it had to get done.

As I was cleaning out a particular corner of the basement, I stumbled upon a box containing an ouija board.

Now, I didn’t remember ever purchasing or acquiring an ouija board, and I know for certain Jane wouldn’t have either. She was not a fan of creepy things in the slightest.

How it ended up there was a complete mystery. My immediate thought was to just throw it away, there was no reason for us to have it.

It’s not that I didn’t believe in the paranormal or anything, I had an experience years ago that made me a believer. I just didn’t think it was an item that should continue to be in our household.

That is when a thought crossed my mind. One that I should have never begun to entertain the idea of.
What if I could speak with those people I never got a chance to speak with again?

This was an idea that intrigued me at the time.
Reconnecting with people that were once in my life and knowing that there was a life beyond death provided a strange comfort to me.

I can’t explain it but in that moment, I felt like I was compelled to use the board a ince I had found it.
After pondering things over for a moment longer, I had made my decision.

In hindsight, I should not have made a decision of such magnitude so recklessly but regardless, my mind was made up.

I placed the ouija board back where I had found it, pretending that I hadn’t seen it and proceeded to go about my day acting as if I hadn’t seen anything.
Tomorrow when I got home from work and while my wife was still working, I would use the ouija board.

And that is exactly what I did.

From that day forward for months I spent that two hour time period before Jane would get home from work downstairs in the basement communicating with the deceased.

My usage of the ouija board granted me the ability of being able to talk to my mother, my father, my grandmother, my grandfather and anyone else I so desired to talk to.

We discussed the afterlife, my life, and what I had never gotten to when they were here on this soil.
It was a relief unlike any other and I was grateful to be able to break the barrier between the living and dead to talk to my loved ones.

It began so innocently with them. All I ever intended was to talk to them and to get some closure, but it became an addiction.

I couldn’t stop using the ouija board.

Overtime I had started inviting random spirits to conduct a conversation with me.

It became therapeutic for me when I would ask these spirits questions and learn about them in addition to the unknown and beyond.

Despite my morbid fixation on conversing with the dead, I never let anything get out of hand.

My habit was always restricted to that two hour window I had and I was always going to be in control of the situation.

Yesterday though, that all changed.

I was going about things like I normally did with the ouija board. The candles that circled me illuminated the basement as I was called out, “Are there any spirits here, that want to communicate at this time?”
My words echoed throughout the basement as I patiently awaited a response from beyond the grave.

Some time had passed before the planchette I had my hands placed over began to shake. Slowly, it moved over to the word “Yes”.

I nodded my head and inquired, “Who am I speaking to?”

Once more the planchette began to move and glided over the letters “G”, “R”, “A”, “C”, and “E”.

I felt myself grow cold as if I had stepped in foot into a meat locker. My eyes widened in horror. That name…

“Grace? Why are you communicating with me?”

My words hung in the air like a fog as I anxiously waited for the spirit to answer. I could feel my heart pulsating very fast and I did my best to take deep breathes to slow its frantic pace.

A moment later, the planchette moved to a series of letters that spelled out the word “return”.

“Return? What do you mean by this?” I inquired, my eyes darting around in the darkness surrounding the candles I had lit.

Silence overcast the basement and nothing was heard besides the thunderous thumping of my heart.
I had never experienced anything like this in the months I had used the ouija board. I had never felt such an ominous and dark energy that contaminated the room like a plague.

I glanced back down at the planchette, wondering if there was ever going to be a response when a gust of wind snuffed out the candles.

I blindly looked around, the darkness enveloping my vision as I felt the perspiration form on my forehead from fright.

It felt like I was being watched but by who, I could not tell. It was a feeling that lurked as I felt an icy, cold hand grip my shoulder.

I stood still as a statue, rooted to the spot in horror as a voice whispered a command into my ear.

“Run.”

That’s when my adrenaline kicked in and I bolted up the stairs. I closed the basement door behind me and went up to Jane and I’s room to hide and calm down.
I didn’t move from my place in our bedroom until Jane had come home from work.

I didn’t dare tell her what had occurred, the last thing I wanted her to feel was unsafe and scared in the comfort of our home.

I collected myself and went downstairs to greet her and resumed the evening like it was any other.
When it was time to call it a night, I waited for her to go upstairs before going back down and hiding the ouija board.

I would take care of its disposal in the morning while Jane still slept. In the meantime however, I was going to catch some much needed rest and put this whole bizarre fixation of mine behind me.

I promised myself from that moment onward that I would never communicate with the dead ever again.
My weird addiction to the ouija board had to end for the sake of my sanity and well-being

The room was painfully quiet in the early hours of the morning, almost as if time itself had stopped entirely.
Darkness cloaked the room like a massive blanket as I lay next to Jane. A faint light creeped in through the window, allowing for little visibility of the various pieces of furniture in the bedroom.

My eyes scanned the room for a moment for any anomalies before resting my gaze upon her. She was still sound asleep, her breathing rhythmic as she continued to dream in peace.
Her arms were wrapped around me lightly like vines on a tree trunk. I slowly wiggled free from her grasp and rolled on my side.

I was still in a dazed state, my eyelids fighting a losing battle to stay open as I became self-aware of my heart beating against my rib cage. It thudded rapidly, like I had just been engulfed in a nightmare.
I couldn’t remember if I had been dreaming or not but it must not have been important if I couldn’t remember, right?

That’s what I told myself as I closed my eyes and wrapped myself back into the sheets like a cocoon.
I lay still for a while, waiting for sleep to overtake my conscious. When it seemed as though I was about to doze off, my cell phone that was on my night side table lit up like a Christmas tree and began to ring.

The vibration of the device buzzing on the table grated my eardrums as I let out a groan of frustration.
I sluggishly reached out and silenced the phone without even acknowledging who it was. I turned to my wife to see if she had stirred at all but thankfully to my delight, she had not been ripped from her slumber.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I looked at the time, 3:03 am.
“Give me a break.” I muttered irritably to myself as I turned back over hoping to get some sleep. The idea of having to go to work on just a couple hours of sleep was not a pleasant thought.

The last thing I wanted to do was daydream about dreaming.

I closed my eyes and tried my best to silence my thoughts but not even a moment after I had nestled into the warm embrace of the sheets, the phone rang again.

My eyes shot open and I lunged out into the void of darkness to silence the phone.

“Good God, can I just get some rest?” I buried my head under the blanket and face planted into the pillow, not wanting to think, see, or hear anything until 6 am sharp when I absolutely had to be awake.

The sound of my phone going off seconds after my face connected with the pillow indicated that someone was still trying to get in touch with me.
I begrudgingly lifted my face from the pillow and squinted to look at my phone which shone like a beacon of light on the bedside table.

I exhaled angrily as I yanked the phone from its place on the table and stared down at the screen.

My heart immediately sunk as I read the name of the person who was vehemently blowing up my phone.
Grace. It was the same name that was spelt out on the ouija board earlier.

I was confused, how was a spirit contacting me outside of the board? Was this the spirit that I thought it was?

I chalked it up to it all being a strange coincidence and put that dreadful thought to rest.

I hit decline on the call and not even a second after I did, the phone began to ring again.

This person doesn’t give up, I thought as I pressed decline call.

The phone lit up and hummed violently as Grace continued to call again and again.

I promptly kept declining the calls as they came through and I was able to eventually block the person, resulting in a blissful silence falling upon the room.
I gently placed the phone back down and was about to lay back down when I noticed Jane sitting up, looking at me in pure confusion.

In the midst of all the chaos, I neglected the fact that the constant noise of my phone and I would have woken her.

“What is going on?” She asked as a yawn escaped her lips.

“Nothing Jane, it was just some stupid scam caller or something. I took care of it.” I reassured as I returned to my place beside her in the comfort of our bed.
As soon as she and I began to get comfortable, the familiar humming sound filled the air indicating that my phone was going off.

“Apparently you didn’t.” She quipped as I snatched the phone from its resting place and messed with its settings.

I was perplexed. I had blocked this person, so how was the same number calling? I decided to take matters a step further and turn my phone off.

I held the power button on my phone and watched the brand logo light up on the screen before dimming and blacking out completely.

“There. Now I did..” I breathed a sigh of relief as I returned to Jane’s side and gave a light smile. “That was way more complicated than it needed to be.”
We shared a laugh as we both lay on our backs and snuggled together under the sheets.

“I noticed. Seems like you got a stalker.” She teased as she wrapped her arms around my torso and placed her head on my chest.

“Who wants to stalk someone like me though?”
“I don’t know, you tell me?” She raised her head to look me in the face and raised a slight brow jokingly.
In that moment, I wanted to tell her the person’s name but decided it was better to withhold the information.

There was no need to bother her with something as small as a name in the grand scheme of things.
Before I could give a reply to her question though, my phone rang yet again.

This time Jane and I both sat straight up in bed, immediately alarmed at what we were hearing.
“You…you turned that off right?” She asked with a concerned tone, her face peering over at my bedside table.

“Yeah! I…I turned the phone off. Did you not see me turn the phone off?” I felt like my arms weighed a thousand tons and my fingers shook as I took the phone and brought it to my face.

I stood there and just stared at the brightly lit screen, the name Grace striking fear into my heart.

“Grace? Who is this Grace and why is she calling you? It’s three in the morning.” Jane said, clearly agitated and suspicious of the fact that another woman was calling me in the early hours of the morning.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to answer and figure out what the meaning of this is.” I pressed accept on the phone call and brought it up to my ear.

“Listen, I don’t know who you think you are but-“ I was interrupted by a burst of static that sounded like a radio trying to find a proper frequency.

“Hello? Is anybody there?” I asked as I glanced over my shoulder at Jane who appeared to be a nervous wreck.

She looked how I felt internally but I needed to be strong for her. I didn’t want to look scared, but it was hard not to be. This whole thing was certainly strange.

“Put it on speaker.” Her voice trembled with a worried tone. I nodded my head and pulled the phone away from my ear.

I pressed the speaker button and we both listened with racing hearts as the static continued to blare. This noise persisted for a while before a faint voice crept through.

“Hello?” The voice was weak but there was no mistaking it, someone was on the line.

“Yes? Hello? Who is this? How did you get my number?” The questions poured out of me at a rapid fire pace as I was trying to rationalize the scenario we found ourselves in.

There was no response to anything I asked and instead we were left to listen to the static deafeningly sounded from the speaker.

The moments we spent waiting for a response seemed to drag on in dog years but eventually the voice returned, this time much clearer.

“This..is…Grace.” I felt my blood turn to ice. Every word pierced my skin like a hunting knife as I looked over at Jane who shared the same horrified expression as myself.

I felt my grip loosening on the phone as the world seemingly spun around me. This couldn’t be real, none of this is real.

“Leave us alone!” Jane’s voice broke the silence between the two of us. She seized the phone from what little grasp I still had and tried to decline the call.
No matter how many times she attempted to hang up though, the call would not end. If anything, the static sound got louder and louder forcing Jane and I to cover our ears.

As quickly as the static noise raised itself to ear-piercing decibels, it stopped.

Jane and I were afraid to breathe as we listened to the phone for any signs of life besides our own.

I could feel my limbs trembling from the fear and adrenaline. I was afraid to move in any capacity.
I clenched my eyes shut and prayed for this to end. I could feel Jane’s face hovering above my shoulder and I could hear her trying to stifle cries of terror.

The silence on the other end of the line was somehow more deafening than the static coming through just moments ago.

It was not to last however as the voice returned and spoke clear as day from the other end of the line.

“I’m here.” The voice stated in an aggressive rasp before the phone call suddenly ended and the screen went to black.

Jane and I sat in the darkness, paralyzed by our own fear. We weren’t sure of what to make of what had just happened. It was like a piece of fiction had come to life. There was nothing fictitious about this however.

This was the gravity of the situation coming crashing down upon us. There was a reason why that name had sounded so familiar earlier downstairs with the ouija board.

The voice on the phone all but confirmed our suspicions. She and I locked eyes in horror and I felt myself shiver at the revelation.

The spirit from the ouija board and the voice on the phone were the same entity.

It was Grace, our daughter we had killed ten years ago.

I’ve gone back and forth for a while on whether I should post this. I won’t share the names of the people involved (I will use aliases to protect their identities) or the town this happened in due to the ongoing investigation.

What I will tell you is what I experienced to the best of my ability. I know how this is going to sound, but I promise that every word of what I’m about to tell you is true — especially what happened after sundown.

On the edge of a small town, where cicadas droned in the trees and the air carried the sweetness of pine sap, Danny and I grew up together. He was the kind of kid who could make small adventures into epic ones.

Scavenger hunts along the reservoir trails, races up the old water tower, and ghost stories by flashlight in a backyard tent were just a few of my favorite memories with him.

All of that changed last fall when he and his dad Neil went on a hunting trip a few towns away. He was supposed to be back in time for his sixteenth birthday. Bad horror movies, video games, and lots of pizza were what we had planned, but that day never came.

Only his dad came back home.

I distinctly remember hearing his mother’s reaction when she realized her son hadn’t returned. Her scream tore across the yards between our houses, causing the birds in the nearby trees to scatter.

Neil had woken to an empty tent and searched the woods all morning before calling the police. Joined by volunteers from around town, they combed the area for days, but not a single trace of Danny was found. Word spread around town that Danny had vanished overnight.

Despite his dad being the last one to see him alive, and how strange it all was, no one questioned it too much. His parents were well liked, after all, and Neil also had old hunting buddies in the police department. They took his word at face value, and as a result, no charges were filed. The investigation went cold only after a couple of weeks.

Weeks blurred into months, and Danny still never turned up. I barely left the house. The sadness that crept into Danny’s home eventually seeped into mine.

Their house was nothing more than darkness breathing through the slats of the blinds day and night. Aside from the groaning porch swing and the clink of beer bottles hitting the ground outside, I respected the silence from next door. Even from my window, I could see the bags underneath his parents’ eyes as they sat out back late into the night. Eventually, they stopped going out altogether. I clung to the idea that they were only grieving, that everything was normal. But what happened at school one afternoon convinced me otherwise.

I remember my Calculus teacher Mrs. Parker had left a stack of graded papers out on her desk. When I went to staple my homework, the paper on top caught my eye. Danny’s name was scribbled on it in the same messy cursive I’d seen a hundred times before.

When I asked Mrs. Parker how Danny had turned it in, she simply said, “Oh, his mother dropped it off this morning before school started. He’s catching up on missed assignments from home.”

As she explained everything to me, I could only stare at his name written across the top of the page. I recognized the deep pressure grooves. He always pressed down too hard on his pencil when he was annoyed with his schoolwork.

It was unmistakably his handwriting, and that only made things worse. Instead of relief, all I felt was dread. If Danny was alive and turning in his homework, why hadn’t he reached out to me?

The thought unsettled me, but rather than press for questions, I nodded and went back to my seat. I tried to focus on my schoolwork, but the only thing on my mind was Danny’s paper.

A missing kid suddenly turning in homework should’ve been the talk of the whole town, so why wasn’t anyone talking about Danny at all? His parents didn’t seem like the kind of people to hide things, but I couldn’t help but feel as though everyone knew something I didn’t.

After school, I went to Danny’s in an attempt to get some answers. I knocked on the door, and his parents answered. When I had asked if Danny was home, they flat-out denied it, almost offended that I had even asked. When I told them I had seen his homework in class though, their tune changed completely.

“Oh…you saw.” Kathleen sighed. “We were…hoping to keep this private.”

Her smile faltered at the corners as her face tightened. “Danny contracted a severe viral infection in the woods and his immune system’s very weak. He can’t leave the house yet. We’ve been turning in his homework, so he doesn’t fall behind.“

“Well…can I at least say hi?” I asked, much to the dismay of Neil who angrily shook his head. His bloodshot eyes glared at me as he loomed behind Kathleen in the doorway.

“NO—“ His voice cracked like a whip before softening. “I mean, no. He can’t have contact with anybody right now. It’s too risky. When he’s healthy again, that’s when you can see him.”

Kathleen’s eyes darted around, looking to see if the coast was clear. “Please…don’t tell anyone. We don’t want people talking.” She whispered like she was afraid someone might overhear.

Before I could get another word in, they closed the door in my face. I stood there on the front porch for a while. I left more confused than when I first arrived.

When I eventually came home, I told my parents about my visit to check on Danny. They seemed irritated at the fact I had gone over there and “harassed” his parents about their son.

“He’s been gone for months; we thought he was dead! Why is nobody making a bigger deal out of this?”

But my question fell on deaf ears as my parents dismissed my concerns. Once again, I felt like the only one who was suspicious of everything. Frustrated, I went upstairs and spent the rest of the day in my room.

Sometime after midnight, movement in Danny’s room caught my attention. A towering, slouched silhouette moved slowly in the darkness behind his curtains. I watched a twitching hand pull the fabric to the side and tap on the glass once…twice…three times.

Moonlight flashed across two glassy eyes staring directly into my room. Before I could see more, the curtains shut. I shuddered as I struggled to rationalize what I had seen. I wanted to believe that it was Danny, but the height and movement didn’t match him.

For the sake of everyone involved and maybe for my own sanity, I let things be.

Every day played out the same way for the next few months. I pretended that everything was fine even when it wasn’t. Then, after what felt like a whole lifetime of waiting, Danny’s parents called. They said that he would be attending school again once spring break was over. I was relieved, as was everyone else when the news spread around town.

The end of spring break felt like it couldn’t come fast enough. When that day arrived, I got to school early and waited for him outside of our English class together.

I froze the moment I saw him again.

There he was, same freckles, crooked grin, and dark brown hair that barely brushed his eyebrows. It was like he’d never disappeared…except for the heavy crescents under his eyes and the way he stiffly walked. I just assumed these were side effects from the infection he had.

We picked up right where we’d left off before his hunting trip. Over lunch, I caught him up on everything that had gone on in my life since he had been gone. When I told Danny the rumors about him that ranged from a flesh-eating virus to alien abduction, he laughed so hard that chocolate milk came out of his nose.

It was fun getting to talk with him again. Eventually, I asked what his recovery had been like and he got very quiet, almost dismissive. He changed the subject every time it was brought up, so I stopped trying to talk about it.

I noticed Danny’s behavior grow more and more odd in the following days. He seemed to always be tracking the time when we hung out after school. During our walks around town, he would constantly ask what time it was—so often it became a nervous tic.

I’d also catch him glancing upwards at the sky, like he was monitoring its movements. Whenever the sun descended even slightly, his eyes would fill with fear. Even stranger was his mom’s car pulling up to my house the second it started to get dark outside.

There would be a single, sustained honk that would echo from the street, and Danny would grow pale instantly.

“Gotta go,” he’d mumble under his breath quickly before taking off. He never looked back when he hurried away into the night.

For a while, things sort of felt ordinary again. Those afternoons of video games and bike rides around town blurred together as weeks slipped by. Eventually, summertime arrived, but the heat only made things weirder.

For some reason, Danny still wore long sleeves, jeans, and a jacket during heat-advisory weather. I joked that he had turned into a vampire, but he just insisted that he was cold. This was a kid who used to go shirtless anytime the temperature broke 70. Now he dressed like it was the middle of January.

I shrugged it off, not wanting to ruin the fun of hanging out together. But then came the night that changed everything between us.

We were in my basement working on an allelopathy project for our biology class. My parents were at a blood drive, so we had the whole house to ourselves. I had just finished writing down our data when Danny asked me what time it was. I had seen the sky turn a bright orange color earlier, but I hadn’t checked the time.

When I pulled out my phone and told him that it was shortly after six, he looked like he was on the verge of a panic attack. The color had completely drained from his face. He trembled violently as he stared out the window, watching the orange light fade into dying rays of violet.

I wanted to dismiss the way he was acting, but something about the way his eyes locked on the fading light outside gave me goosebumps. It was like he was counting down the seconds before something awful happened.

“I have to go.” The remaining light slanted across his face, turning his skin almost translucent.

Before I could even question what was happening, he rose to his feet. He clutched his stomach, doubling over like he was going to hurl before sprinting upstairs.

“Danny! What’s going on?” I called out as he ran to the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

A few seconds later, a low cracking noise reverberated behind the door. It sounded like ice on a lake before it broke.

I softly knocked a couple of times. “Danny? You okay in there?”

I waited a few seconds for a reply, but there was no response. I pressed my ear against the door and heard a snap that resembled old wood bending towards its breaking point. Underneath it, grunts of pain and labored breathing.

If he hadn’t been acting so odd before, I would have assumed the pizza from our trip to the gas station earlier had made his stomach upset. But my gut was telling me that something was wrong.

My suspicions were confirmed when I heard the doorbell incessantly ring. I ran upstairs and opened the front door to see his mom, Kathleen. She looked frantic, more frightened than angry. She didn’t just walk, she lunged past me with a coat in her hands.

“WHERE IS HE?!” she questioned, her voice shaking.

“In the bathroom, but—”

Without hesitation, she marched down the hall toward the bathroom. Her keys jangled in her pocket as she pounded on the door with her fist.

“Danny! It’s Mom. Open the door this instant,” she called out, eyes wide with fear.

The sound of choked sobbing came from behind the door as it opened. In between the slight crack in the door, I thought I saw an arm with the color and texture of varnished wood. Danny’s mom obstructed my view, preventing me from seeing more as she barged into the bathroom.

She helped Danny put the coat on before pulling him into a hug. “It’s okay, sweetheart, I’ve got you.”

Moments later, they emerged from the bathroom. Danny had his head down the entire time Kathleen told me that Danny wasn’t allowed over anymore.

Afterward, she and Danny left, not even bothering to close the front door behind them. That was the last time he was ever over at my house.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I had just witnessed a crucial piece of a much larger mystery fall into place. Looking back, it seemed like nothing more than an awkward moment in our teen years. Something we could look back on and laugh at when we were older. Nothing could have prepared me for that evening to be the beginning of a goodbye, and yet the signs were all there. I had ignored them at the time because I didn’t understand them.

If I had known that night was going to be the last time he actually felt like my friend, I would have done and said so much more. The truth was that I had already lost him, just not in any way I could have ever imagined.

Danny didn’t come to school the next day, or in the days after. The texts I sent him stayed on “delivered,” and every time I called his house, I was told he was “resting”.

Days became weeks, and eventually, they stopped answering my calls altogether. After a month went by and I still hadn’t heard from Danny, I couldn’t take the silence anymore.

I wasn’t about to lose my friend again without a fight. I asked my teachers if I could drop off Danny’s homework, and when they agreed, I knew I finally had an excuse to check on him. I rode my bike over to his house and told myself that I’d be quick. I thought I heard a faint scream as I stepped onto the porch.

I assumed Danny was watching a scary movie as I rang the doorbell, but nobody answered. I rang again, and still nothing. The noise from inside grew louder and frayed my nerves.

“Danny?!” I shouted as I tried the doorknob. To my surprise, it turned with ease. Inside, plates of half-eaten food sat untouched beneath the flicker of a muted TV. Crumbs were scattered across the floor while mail was strewn across the kitchen counter. I left his homework on the kitchen table and searched the house.

My search eventually led me to the basement door. It was the only place that I hadn’t checked. When I opened it, I gagged at the bitter, chemical fumes that rolled out. My eyes watered as I took the stairs one at a time.

My foot slipped slightly on the slick floorboards, and when I looked down, the entire stairwell shimmered with a rainbow sheen like rain puddles under a streetlight. Why was there gasoline all over the place?

Each soaked stair squeaked under my weight as I did my best to not lose my balance. Halfway down, a screech morphed into an anxious whimper.

“Danny?” I called out into the darkness. I heard something moving as I rushed the rest of the way down and turned the light on.

The basement opened into a long rectangular room. At the far-right corner, the stairs emptied out near the far wall, giving me a full view of the room from an angle.

Bags of blood littered the floor. Some were collapsed and drained of all their contents, while others remained full. Old shelves and furniture lined the walls, all soaked with gasoline just like the stairs.

To my right stood a cluttered workbench; to the left, an old looking sink and laundry machine. A wooden frame braced with thick ropes and nails sat in the center of the concrete floor, positioned about ten feet away. The wood looked re-fastened in several places, as though it had been repaired more than once.

What I saw inside it made my legs lock in place, and my heart stop.

It was Danny.

His skin was covered in purple, almost green bruises and welts. He smelled like stale sweat as if he hadn’t moved in days. The clothes he wore hung off him as though they belonged to someone twice his size. Hidden under his hair were sunken eyes that struggled to focus on his surroundings.

“Dude,” I whispered, my shoes squelched in the gasoline as I frantically looked around for a way to free him. “Danny?”

Danny blinked, clearly disoriented. A weak moan left his cracked lips flecked with blood. He moved his head like he had heard my voice through water.

“You need to leave,” his words came out hoarse, like he’d been yelling for hours. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“What are they doing to you, man?” I stepped toward him, but he flinched backward. “Don’t worry, I’m going to get you out of here.”

“Don’t—don’t touch anything. They’re… they’re trying to help.”

“Help?” I snapped. “You look like a hostage. Your parents have you tied up in a basement! Danny, what the fuck is going on?”

He shut his eyes, and with clenched teeth, he wrapped his shaking arms tight around his ribs as if he were holding himself together.

“Leave…while you still can.” He replied weakly. He looked so scared, and that broke my heart in a way few things ever have.

Before I could say anything further, heavy footsteps thundered across the floor upstairs. Danny’s terrified breaths sloshed in his lungs as I comforted him.

“It’s okay, I’m not letting them hurt you.”

The basement door flew open, and Neil nearly tumbled down the stairs as he rushed to plant himself between me and Danny. Kathleen followed close behind, but lingered just above the bottom step. She was chalk-white and looked torn between retreat and descent.

Neil locked eyes on Danny, looking as though he had been shot in the chest. They stayed right in front of the stairs behind me, blocking our only exit.

“You shouldn’t be here!” He shouted, pulling me away from Danny.

“You’re abusing him!” I yelled. “Look at him! You’re starving him and keeping him tied up like an animal!”

Kathleen sobbed and gripped the railing. “You don’t understand. You need to get away from him.”

“I understand enough,” I shot back, wiggling free from Neil’s grasp to stand between them and Danny. “I’m calling the police.”

“No!” Kathleen shrieked. “No, no, no, you can’t. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“He’s scared of you!” I shouted as a loud crack split the basement air.

“Neil…it’s starting.” Kathleen whispered. I had never heard an adult sound that afraid before.

I whipped around to see Danny had collapsed into a fetal curl, his spine lifted upwards under the skin.

He was only a few feet away but close enough that I could hear every sound. Neil and Kathleen were wedged behind me at the base of the stairs. Neil’s breathing turned ragged as his eyes fixated on the vertebra that strained under Danny’s tightly pulled skin.

He struck the floor repeatedly with his fists, causing dust to rain down from the ceiling. I felt sick to my stomach as I watched my friend whimper in pain. Underneath his shirt, his shoulder blades jutted out. They sharply pressed against the fabric to get free.

A howl caught between human and monster tore itself from his throat. His fingers suddenly twisted at angles that no joints were designed to bend at. Both Kathleen and Neil flinched in unison at the sight. I stood there, mouth agape as the veins under his skin darkened into the color of old tree sap.

Tears trailed from Danny’s eyes as his skin rippled violently. His flesh split apart so loudly that the sound vibrated through the floor. I stumbled back a step, when I saw the panels of dark, lacquered timber underneath the torn skin. The polished wood gleamed as the boards slid outward in jagged, overlapping plates. The harsh crack of his bones nearly drowned out what he said next.

“Please! Not in front of him!” Danny screamed frantically. ‘I don’t want him to see me like this!”

Danny tried to speak one last time, but only the word “mom…” escaped his lips. The rest of his sentence became some unintelligible guttural sound mid-syllable.

With a force that delivered a splintering crack, his neck jerked to the side, making Kathleen wince. Then, Danny’s breathing stopped entirely, and his body went quiet and limp.

My knees knocked together uncontrollably as I struggled to stand. Kathleen backed up until her shoulders hit the concrete wall on my left. Her hand slid down the wall, as she pleaded, “not again… please not again.”

Neil reached a hand out toward Danny, but yanked it back when his jaw unhinged sideways. He lifted his head slowly, and snapped it back into place with a wet pop. A groan came from the ropes on the frame as they stretched, barely able to restrain Danny as he grew taller. A wooden moan came from within his body when the tendons in his arms stretched and pulled taut.

The gasoline on the floor under him rippled with each of his convulsions, reflecting light and shadows in trembling colors. His eyes, wide with apology, locked onto mine before the irises of his eyes ballooned, then vanished entirely into a pitch-black shine.

His gums split open, revealing serrated teeth that scraped and clicked forward inside his widening mouth. They rearranged and lengthened themselves at an alarming rate. The nails on his fingers bruised and shredded until they resembled miniature wooden stakes.

“Get away from him! Move!” Kathleen pressed herself against the far wall. Her shaking hands covered her mouth in a vain attempt to silence her distress. Neil stepped in front of me, trying to block my line of sight to Danny. Kathleen stood by Neil’s side and gripped his arm, knuckles whitening like it was the only thing keeping her upright. In her eyes, I could see fear, and the exhaustion of someone who had been through this too many times.

“What did you do to him?!” I asked, terrified at what I had seen my friend become.

“A vessel of flesh and wood for the soul and a life for a life to keep it whole.” Kathleen recited like a prayer. Danny yanked at his restraints, the ropes fraying beneath the growing strength of his new body.

“What?” it was all I could manage to speak.

“It’s what the person who promised to help told us. We saved Danny…but not completely.”

Neil grabbed me by the back of my shirt and pulled me towards the basement stairs. He became emotional as he tried to explain:

“Danny died. It was all my fault. I was cleaning the gun when…when he snuck up on me. My finger pulled the trigger out of instinct, and I ran home and told Kathleen.” He swallowed hard, fighting a losing battle to hold back tears. “We found someone, a craftsman who promised that Danny could be brought back.”

His hands shook as he wiped his eyes. “This craftsman built a ventriloquist doll in Danny’s image from the bark of the trees in the woods he died in. A life had to be taken in order to restore Danny’s. We refused to go through with it, but the ritual couldn’t be undone. So, Danny came back…but not completely. He’s normal during the day, but at night, he turns into that monster.”

“There is no cure, and we’ve done our best to contain him, but he’s becoming uncontrollable.” Kathleen added quietly.

“He can’t have anything except blood. I’ve had to steal bags of blood from my job at the hospital and the blood drive to keep him fed. His hunger is only getting worse.“

Neil suddenly pulled me into a hug, sobbing into my shirt. “We didn’t know. God, we didn’t know…”

Danny died. Those two words together were a concept that my brain refused to grasp, but my heart fully acknowledged. With teary eyes, I turned to face the monster that had taken over my best friend. When I looked into the black gleam of his eyes, I thought I saw a glimpse of my friend behind them.

“Help me…” the monstrous bellow rumbled from his throat. In that sliver of a moment, I swear he remembered me like I remembered him. Seeing Danny not in control of himself broke something inside of me. This was the kid I used to build blanket forts with. The one who used to pretend that our bikes were spaceships and make loud pew-pew laser noises as we rode around our street.

A part of me knew I shouldn’t have freed him, but the part that begged myself to took over. I rushed forward and tore at his restraints.

“No!” Neil cried out as he chased after me. “Don’t free him!”

But he wasn’t fast enough. The last of the ropes broke loose one fiber at a time, as Danny’s head turned toward us. Without hesitation, his mouth opened wide and he lurched toward us.

His arm clattered fiercely as he swung his arm and knocked me backward. My body struck the workbench with a force that felt like running into someone wearing a backpack full of bricks. Jars, nails, and tools toppled off and scattered across the gasoline-coated floor, pinging like metal raindrops.

Pain exploded all over my shoulders and back from the impact. But before I could even react, Danny was on top of me. I felt his sawdust-scented breath on my face as his claws raked across the skin of my forearm. Blood oozed from the wound as I screamed and tried to shove him back.

We struggled for a moment before Neil charged from my right and grabbed him by his left arm. He tried to pull him away from me, but that turned out to be a bad idea. Danny seized him around the torso and hurled him toward the bookcase on the right side of the room. The impact of the crash broke the bookcase and made warm droplets of gasoline fall from the rafters.

Danny lunged toward him again, crossing the room in only a couple of strides as Neil laid in the wreckage in a crumbled heap. Kathleen fumbled for one of the blood bags on the floor near the stairs. She waved it desperately in an attempt to distract their son.

“Danny! Danny please!”

He pivoted toward Kathleen, his limbs scraping against the concrete as he approached her in stiff strides. Thud… thud… THUD—each of his footsteps were heavier than the last on the oil-slick floor.

His head clicked like a puppet with too many strings being yanked at once as he faced her. He sank his teeth into her hand, the injury slicing her hand open. She collapsed to the floor as blood formed in a messy pool beneath her.

“Run! Go, now!” Neil cried out, using the remains of the bookcase to help lift himself back to his feet. He pulled a matchbook out of his pocket, and when I saw the matches, I understood everything immediately.

I ran towards the stairs, but not before I heard a match being struck.

The flame flickered faintly in Danny’s black eyes before Neil threw it toward the floor beneath him. My eyes followed its descent to the floor.

In mere seconds, the gasoline ignited.

With a booming whoosh, the fire roared to life right in front of Neil, completely overtaking him in a sacrifice by self-immolation. A wave of heat barreled across the room. Flames raced along the soaked trails on the floor in serpentine lines before climbing the walls, turning the stairwell into a pillar of fire.

Smoke drifted across the ceiling as Danny thrashed wildly, shrieking in agony as he burned. Kathleen crawled toward him on the basement floor, sobbing his name repeatedly as the flames consumed her. He didn’t even acknowledge her. Danny only knew two things in that moment, pain, and hunger.

I bolted up the stairs two at a time, using the wall to keep my balance as smoke followed behind. The acrid smell of burning wood and skin glued itself to my lungs as I exited the basement and stumbled into the kitchen.

Clutching my injured arm, I barely made it through the front door to safety before the heat engulfed the doorway behind me. The windows exploded outward, and shards of glass flew across the front lawn like a swarm of angry hornets.

Blood trailed down my arm, as I lay in the yard coughing up the ash in my mouth. The cold grass hugged my skin as I watched Danny’s burning silhouette in the basement window.

The brittle popping of glass filled the air as smoke permeated across the yard in thick, billowing waves. I wheezed with a force that rattled my whole body, and struggled to my feet.

My legs barely worked as I forced myself upright to run home. When I got inside, I fumbled with the phone so badly that I almost dropped it. I managed to dial 911 and report the fire to the operator, but not what I saw in the basement.

Just as I hung up, I heard Danny’s scream rip through the night air. It echoed for a while before being smothered by the roar of the blaze next door.

By the time I stepped outside again, the frantic, orange pillars of the fire had died.

Red embers and black ash rested in the crater where Danny’s house once stood. I stood on the sidewalk as neighbors gathered around in stunned silence.

I remember someone had asked me if I needed water, and another had asked if I was okay, but I didn’t respond to anyone. My eyes latched onto the others that poured out onto their lawns.

They murmured and pointed in disbelief at the aftermath. Somewhere in the distance behind me, I heard the approaching sirens wail, but the world felt muffled and distant.

Next thing I knew, I was sitting inside the back of an ambulance with an oxygen mask on. An EMT shined a light in my eyes and clipped something to my finger.

I felt the ice-cold touch of gauze press against my arm as one of the paramedics asked me where I had been during the fire.

I barely understood the question because of the blaring siren, but the last thing I remember was the lie I told before the ceiling swayed in slow motion, and everything went dark.

The news reports in the days that followed felt like a lie I was being forced to accept. Faulty wiring was deemed the official cause of Danny’s house burning to the ground. There was nothing about what I told the police, but admittedly, I withheld information. Not because I wanted to, but because I would sound like a lunatic if I told them about what truly happened that night.

Freeing my best friend who had turned into a monster would get me locked away in a psych ward before I could explain myself fully.

Despite the ongoing nature of the investigation, no remains nor evidence have turned up. Danny and his parents were declared missing by the police, but everyone around here believes they snapped under the pressure of their own secrets and ran. There was nothing to prove otherwise — just baseless speculation.

Maybe the speculation comforts everyone else, but not me. I know what I saw, but what’s even worse is that I know what broke loose. I shouldn’t feel any loyalty to whatever he’d become, but some part of me keeps trying to reassure myself that he’s still in there somewhere.

I keep replaying the moment I freed him, and the way his real voice forced its way out of his monstrous form just long enough to say, “Help me.”

I’m not sure if I saved him from a fate worse than death…or if I’ve dragged the rest of us into one.

What do I even begin to do? I want to confess what I know, but what would I even say? I can’t let Danny hurt anyone else, but I also know a part of me is selfishly protecting the memory of who Danny used to be. If I tell the truth, I destroy what’s left of that. That’s the choice I’m burdened with. So that’s why I’m here. I’m asking strangers online for advice that probably won’t save me or my town.

Every night since the fire, I’ve heard him. His joints creak outside, and the gentle tap-tap-tap on my window has followed shortly after. I have memorized the pattern. It’s Danny’s way of telling me that he’s still out there.

I never look, and I don’t want to. Because if I do, I won’t see Danny anymore. I’ll see the monster that I freed.

Before I explain what I went through, you need to know a little about me.

My name is Isaac, and I was religious up until I was a sophomore in high school. I lost my faith after realizing my family used God as a suspiciously conditional surveillance system instead of a loving savior.

When I finally had enough of my family’s antics, I left home. I worked three jobs just to stay afloat, but the exhaustion was worth it to afford college and a place of my own.

That was around the time I started coding PC mods. It gave me a sense of control I’d never had before. Coding became an obsession that led me into forgotten corners of the internet searching for games, mods, and anything that allowed me to experiment and reshape.

But my insatiable desire to tinker with digital worlds took an unexpected turn when I stumbled across a game called, V.I.R.T.U.E.

I never downloaded V.I.R.T.U.E.; it appeared on my desktop one day like it had manifested itself into existence. I shared the game’s link to some PC friends in a Discord group chat hoping for some answers, but nobody had a clue as to what it was.

My friend Jake guessed that it might have been some indie developer’s first game, lost to time. Another friend, Travis, suggested that it might have been an abandoned project from a now bankrupt gaming company. Personally though, I thought it was something far stranger.

The mysterious file had a single executable labeled: \*\*VIRTUE.EXE.\*\* and it contained a readme that said:

\*“Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”\*

It was as unsettling to read as it was accusatory, but it wasn’t the only strange thing I uncovered. When I analyzed the text file’s metadata, it listed a “creation date” that predated my PC’s BIOS by nearly twenty-seven years. “The Witness” was the only thing listed in the author field.

I ran a few quick packet traces to see if the executable was communicating with a remote server, and while it was, the IP that was connected wasn’t a valid one I could access. The IP address was listed solely as \*\*∞\*\*.

It shouldn’t have been possible, but it was sending and receiving packets to somewhere I didn’t have clearance to enter.

I refreshed the trace multiple times and every time I did, the numbers would shift and rearrange themselves. It was like they were trying to assemble something.

Convinced that what was in front of me was a glitch of some kind, I dug deeper. I found no mentions of the file online, and there were no hidden metadata trails or source code comments that could pinpoint its exact origins. The data seemingly defied the logic.

When I opened the readme again, the text inside had been edited to read: \*“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.”\*.

Something inside me told me to delete the program and walk away, but I didn’t out of curiosity. I hovered my cursor over the executable before I double-clicked \*\*V.I.R.T.U.E.EXE.\*\*.

The best way that I can describe V.I.R.T.U.E. is to imagine the sandbox simulator gameplay of \*The Sims\* with a greater emphasis on morality.

Right from the start, you weren’t in control of just a singular person, you were in control of a whole city.

The way it worked was that each time you started a new session, a random town would generate, complete with NPCs of various names, race, religious backgrounds, etc. Your main objective was to go about clicking these NPCs with the golden hand AKA your cursor. It was simple in terms of control, left click was to bless, and right click was to smite.

A running “Virtue Score” was displayed in the upper right-hand corner, indicating that every choice that the player made added or subtracted morality points.

The gameplay itself was immensely enjoyable, even if the morality of my choices sometimes felt questionable.

A corrupt politician lying through his teeth? Struck by lightning on his golf trip.

An angry customer who had to wait longer than a couple of minutes for their food at Taco Bell? I made their car stall on the interstate.

A kid helping an old lady put groceries in her car? I cured his dog’s leukemia.

Someone struggling to put food on the table? I made sure they got the call back from the job they had applied to.

V.I.R.T.U.E. was like some kind of karma machine disguised as a computer game. With each choice I made, I couldn’t shake the feeling of my parents’ eyes watching and judging my actions, waiting for me to mess up.

Every decision was the difference between earning their approval or being punished with their sermons about divine justice.

The sound effects weren’t helping things either. Whenever I would bless someone, the sound of warm, gentle chimes rang out, but when I would smite someone, the guttural rumble of thunder could be heard through my monitor’s speaker.

I decided to create two save files so that I could continue to test further. One was named \*\*“Mercy”\*\*, and the other was \*\*“Wrath”\*\*.

When I loaded \*\*“Mercy”\*\*, I solely acted benevolent. I blessed people when they were at rock bottom, gave poverty-stricken areas copious amounts of food, and made sure the headlines were softer overall.

When I switched to \*\*“Wrath”\*\* though, I was a menace. I made the stock market crash, summoned storms to destroy vast areas, and watched as crime rates skyrocketed to an all-time high across the city.

The dopamine rush was intoxicating, until the headlines in V.I.R.T.U.E. started coming to life.

I told myself that it was just the game pulling data from some random news API, but the story appeared on the website of my local news station.

A senator whose in-game counterpart I had punished barely ten minutes earlier had been struck by lightning on a golf outing.

More stories kept coming over the next few days I played.

A celebrity that I had cured of cancer in my \*\*“Mercy”\*\* file officially announced that her cancer was in remission due to successful chemotherapy treatments.

A suspect of a hit-and-run case that I’d smited earlier on the \*\*“Wrath”\*\* file had been involved in a lethal car accident after fleeing the police.

It had to be algorithmic coincidences or odd twists of fate —but the more headlines that poured in, the harder it became to deny the power that rested in my hands.

V.I.R.T.U.E. wasn’t merely simulating a world for gameplay; it was actively displaying a world shaped by my choices. Every blessing, smiting, and decision of mine created real consequences beyond the screen like I was rewriting the fabric of reality itself.

The headlines, the breaking news bulletins, and the parallels between my actions and reality…couldn’t be dismissed as coincidence. They were the product of my own hand, whether I wanted it to be or not, and that realization petrified me.

Despite my better judgment, I continued to play V.I.R.T.U.E., mesmerized by the power I wielded over that digital world. But then the game threw me a curveball, something that hit too close to home.

My younger sister Alice, who I hadn’t seen or spoken to since I moved out of my parent’s house several years ago, appeared as an NPC in the town.

Down a pixelated street over in a building by a nearby park, she rested in a bed.

Her sprite looked fragile and weak, just like my mother said she had been after the operation to remove the tumor from her brain.

I hovered the mouse over her character to view the game’s interface. The label that popped up offered no comfort. It simply read: \*“Ailing”\* and the health bar had dwindled so low that the red meter was barely visible, but still clinging to existence.

A notification appeared for another NPC, a man that I recognized as my grandpa Harold. I clicked on it and suddenly, I was brought to his kitchen. His character had his head down on the table, his sprites were riddled with gaunt and frailty.

The hunger bar next to his character was flashing with alarm, indicating that he was starving. I looked at the screen and felt the weight of a thousand decisions press down on me simultaneously.

I knew what the game was going to ask me before it presented the choice.

A text box appeared that asked: \*“Save Alice or Save Harold?”\*.

The cursor glowed a dim shade of gold as it hovered between the two choices. One click would save the life of my sister, and the other would save my grandpa.

My hand gripped the mouse as a dizzying thought spun in my head: Could I really play God, now knowing my decisions carried the weight of divine authority?

I tried everything in my power to avoid the choice. I mashed random keys on my keyboard, clicked everywhere around outside the dialogue box, and even launched a kill switch in the hopes of crashing the game.

My efforts were unsuccessful and resulted in the cursor to still hover between them. On the screen, I could see Alice’s and Harold’s pixels tremble, as if they knew I was hesitating with my decision.

I stared at their NPC counterparts for what felt like hours. Alice was young and had an entire life ahead of her while Grandpa Harold was eighty-two, half blind, and in pain more often than not.

That kind of decision should have been easy and made in a heartbeat. Spare the young, right?

But I thought about the moments of grandpa Harold teaching me to ride my bike, the nights we watched movies together, and the drives to go and get ice cream.

It was so easy to talk to him, and to be myself in a household that didn’t allow me to have an identity outside of my devotion to God. He never judged, he only loved unconditionally.

I also thought about Alice and how rare the kindness she shared with others was. The nights at my parent’s house where we confided in each other about our traumas meant a lot to me.

Hearing her talk about the kind of person she wanted to be before her sickness is something I will always cherish. Alice is the kind of good the world depends on. I regret letting family get in the way of us being close…but maybe there was still time to fix that, if I saved her.

I clicked between their names with the cursor, trying desperately to understand something I wasn’t supposed to.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard the sound of my dad’s voice reading scripture, \*“Love one another, as I have loved you.”\*

There was no verse about choosing which one you love more though.

Under the ambient audio of the game, a faint pulse of energy made the mouse in my hand vibrate. My father’s disappointed sighs and my mother’s scolding whispers cut through the game’s audio.

I could hear them telling me how every mistake would bring me one step closer to Hell as the air around me prickled with electricity.

The game wasn’t measuring my morality; it was reflecting it in that moment.

Guilt, long embedded in the deepest parts of me, rose to the surface, and with shaky breathing, I closed my eyes and tried to center myself.

The reprimanding voices, scathing words, and perceived judgments of my parents pressed down hard onto me like a trash compactor.

Time slowed to a crawl as the crushing weight of responsibility grew more and more suffocating. The nerves in my fingers shook with indecision and fear, the cursor lingered in between the choices before I made my decision.

In a brief, courageous moment, I clicked on the choice to save Alice’s life.

I watched as my sister’s health bar illuminated and surged a bright, jovial green. Her pixelated counterpart suddenly radiated with health as she straightened up in bed and smiled brightly.

I felt a rush of relief wash over me, my mind satisfied with the choice I had made. One person’s life had been spared at the cost of another. Even if it was only in this simulated world, I felt like a savior.

My thoughts were interrupted by the angry buzz of my phone on the table. I picked it up and saw a text message from my mom. Whatever good feelings I had subsided the moment I read the words above the usual flood of notifications.

\*\*“Hey honey, I hope you’re doing well. I know it’s been a while, but I just wanted to let you know that Alice’s surgery was a success, and the doctors have said she is stable and no longer in critical condition. I went to let Harold know but he never answered his phone. It’s been a while since we had heard from him so one of the other neighbors went to go check on him. They found him slumped over in his kitchen. It looks like he passed away from a heart attack.”\*\*

My body went slack from shock. The room spun around me like I was on an amusement park attraction I didn’t consent to ride. I stumbled backward from my desk, hyperventilating out of fear as my chair scraped against the floor.

The game flickered on the screen in front of me. I watched as the sprites of Harold’s character blinked out of existence, pixels drifting away like dandelion seeds in the wind. A moment later, and it was like he had never been there at all.

V.I.R.T.U.E. was doing more than creating hypotheticals, it was responding to them. Something as innocuous as an in-game decision had become increasingly more sinister with each input.

This went beyond simulation. Everything at my disposal had weight, power, but not the kind of power I wanted. It was something darker and more dangerous.

All I could do was think about the fact that fate wasn’t making the decisions anymore, the game and I were.

V.I.R.T.U.E. was slowly eating away at my soul, pulling me deeper into a philosophical hellscape I was mentally and physically not prepared for.

What was I doing? Was I saving anyone, or was I just tricking myself into believing that I could control everything, even death itself?

Every choice I had made up to that point raced through my mind as I mulled over them repeatedly. I weighed them against the consequences that I couldn’t fully grasp in the present and future.

The “good” outcomes and victories felt hollow or tainted by the game’s manipulation. The image of Harold’s pixels drifting away served as a haunting reminder of the power I possessed with one decisive click of my mouse.

My chest tightened with guilt at the realization that nothing would let me escape the reality of having crossed a moral boundary. I pulled my shaking hand off the mouse and went to bed.

I didn’t go anywhere near my PC for the next couple of days until I decided to get rid of V.I.R.T.U.E. once and for all. But when I tried to uninstall it, that’s when V.I.R.T.U.E. and my understanding of it, changed completely.

Instead of uninstalling like any other game would have, it simply regenerated back onto my desktop with a new note file attached:

\*"Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy".\*

I launched the game, opened my \*\*“Mercy”\*\* save file, and briefly reminisced over the carefully curated comfort of the familiar town I watched over.

At first glance, everything seemed exactly the way I had left it previously, except for the NPCs. Something was wrong with them.

They appeared to be unnaturally rigid on the sidewalks and streets, scattered about as if they were desperate to move but trapped in place. Their heads were all tilted skyward in unison, staring at a presence that the game’s code refused to properly render.

The lo-fi, ambient soundtrack of the game had been replaced with an oppressive, eerie melody that lingered in the air.

I moved and clicked the mouse frantically to no avail. V.I.R.T.U.E. wouldn’t respond to any key or input on my keyboard, the program appeared to be non-responsive. The screen remained fixated on the NPCs still staring skyward. The bizarre, distorted melody shifted into an unbearable cacophony before suddenly cutting off.

The silence was deafening, and it was only broken by the faint, thudding of my heart against my ribcage.

Cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck as my computer seized, flashing prisms and jagged shades of black and white,

Then, the screen crackled to life, showing off the darkened streets and stationary townspeople.

With horror, I watched a message gradually scroll across the screen in stark, white serif letters.

It simply said:

\*YOU ARE NOT SAFE FROM GOD HERE\*

Then in rapid succession, came the message again and again. Each iteration more distorted and disturbing than the last:

\*Y0U AR3 N0† S∆FE FR0M G0D H3R3\*

\*Y0U AЯΣ N0† S∆FE FR0M G0D H3RΞ\*

\*Y0U AЯΞ N0† S∆FΞ FR0M G0D HΞЯΞ\*

\*Y0U A̵R̶E N̴0̸T S̷A̶F̷E F̴R0M G̸O̶D H̵3R̶3\*

\*\*Ÿ̵̛̳̯̖̮͍́̔̽̇̑̀͛̇̈́̾͒̓̈́͂͂͊̑͘̚̚͠Ơ̷̡̢̰̺̺̩̔͌͐̃̀̄̋̓̋̽̑͑̓̿̕̕Ư̴̡̳̟̬͚̇̿̈́̏͂̓̋̒̓͂̅͘͘̚͘͝ ̸̛̝̩͇͓̗͔͆͋̍͂͛͊̾̿̑͊̕͘̕͝Ą̷̢̛̮̲̟͕̩͙͉̻͈̯̿̏̋͌̽̑̑̑̄̾̕͝͝R̶̨̨̛̛̳̮̯̹͔͖͔͎̪͚̘͎̈́́̄͋̀̈́͋̈́͂͐͗͘E̵̤̗̰̱͛́̀̄͑̇̾̀̕̕͝͝ ̵̤͋͛́̑͐̽̾̓͗̈́̈́̔͊͗̽N̸̨̝̟̙̻̳̖̟̮̹͑͛̏̇̍̍̀̈́͊̎͐̽͘͘Ǫ̸̢͎̲͕̠̦̈́̽̾͆͌̽̄̀̈́͒̚͘͝͠T̶̛̛̼̤̺͇̏̄̀̔̓͌̾͐̅́̽̾̀ͅ ̴̡̯̯̮͚̔̋̎̑̑̽͌̽̿̄̅̚͝S̷̨̡͎̫͍͚̈́́̑̓̾͊̏̈́̎̇̚͝Ā̸̛̹͍̰̝̘͔̗̻̬͂͗̈́̀̅̿͊̽͐̚̕F̷̠͔͎̹̫̹͚͍̞̐͊̀̏̾̏̓͋̾̑͗̾̕͝E̴̛̛̝͖̳̠̝͐̀̎̿͛̇͌̚̚͠͠ ̶͙͔̺̩̐̾̀͊͌̾͌͗̄̈́̋͛̈́̎͝͝ͅF̷̛̫͓̳̘̻̈́̄̿̔̿͊̿͂́̈́̎̇͐̍͝Ŕ̸̤̰̗͓͊͐̈́̄͛̀̑͑͊̀͝͠Ò̷̩͍̪͕͌̾̾̑͊̏̈́͗͆̑̀͘͘͠M̴̢̛͕̯͐̽̑́͂͆̿̓́̐̿͊̇̕ ̵̫͕͓̎͗̀̔͊̿͐̄́̓͐̕͝G̵̖͓͍͔͎̔͌͆̑͑͂̑̓́̚͘̚Ơ̷̛̛̞̯̪͕͌̽͗̿̽̍͋͂̕̕D̴͚̬̼̺͋̓̏̑̋̿͛́̈́̀̽̓͝͝ ̴̛̝̱͕̥͈̱͛̿͊͌͂͊̈́͑͗͗̕H̶̛̻͕̮͐́́͗͆̈́̿̑̈́̏̋̓̈́͊̚͝E̶͖͎̝̰̮̘̗̤̓̈́͋̐͆͌̿̈́͗̽̑̔͛͂͘͝R̷̛͚̳͖̺͕̹̺͍͋͗́̈́̈́̈́̿̅̔̔͌͗̚̚ͅĖ̷̡̨̢̡̻̺̘̞͎̝̠̗̹̮̍̏͛͗̀̑̄̽̓͊̔̚͝ͅͅ\`\*\*

The characters began to sluggishly melt and stretch downward in a thick, viscous liquid. With each drifting fragment, trails of ghostly white fire followed briefly before vanishing.

They struggled to maintain their form as the letters contorted and looped back on themselves.

I tried to close the game, but my cursor wouldn’t move. In fact, my cursor icon had dissolved, replaced by strange symbols that I couldn’t decipher.

\*\*Ÿ̵̛̳̯̖̮͍́̔̽̇̑̀͛̇̈́̾͒̓̈́͂͂͊̑͘̚̚͠Ơ̷̡̢̰̺̺̩̔͌͐̃̀̄̋̓̋̽̑͑̓̿̕̕Ư̴̡̳̟̬͚̇̿̈́̏͂̓̋̒̓͂̅͘͘̚͘͝ ̸̛̝̩͇͓̗͔͆͋̍͂͛͊̾̿̑͊̕͘̕͝Ą̷̢̛̮̲̟͕̩͙͉̻͈̯̿̏̋͌̽̑̑̑̄̾̕͝͝R̶̨̨̛̛̳̮̯̹͔͖͔͎̪͚̘͎̈́́̄͋̀̈́͋̈́͂͐͗͘E̵̤̗̰̱͛́̀̄͑̇̾̀̕̕͝͝ ̵̤͋͛́̑͐̽̾̓͗̈́̈́̔͊͗̽N̸̨̝̟̙̻̳̖̟̮̹͑͛̏̇̍̍̀̈́͊̎͐̽͘͘Ǫ̸̢͎̲͕̠̦̈́̽̾͆͌̽̄̀̈́͒̚͘͝͠T̶̛̛̼̤̺͇̏̄̀̔̓͌̾͐̅́̽̾̀ͅ ̴̡̯̯̮͚̔̋̎̑̑̽͌̽̿̄̅̚͝S̷̨̡͎̫͍͚̈́́̑̓̾͊̏̈́̎̇̚͝Ā̸̛̹͍̰̝̘͔̗̻̬͂͗̈́̀̅̿͊̽͐̚̕F̷̠͔͎̹̫̹͚͍̞̐͊̀̏̾̏̓͋̾̑͗̾̕͝E̴̛̛̝͖̳̠̝͐̀̎̿͛̇͌̚̚͠͠ ̶͙͔̺̩̐̾̀͊͌̾͌͗̄̈́̋͛̈́̎͝͝ͅF̷̛̫͓̳̘̻̈́̄̿̔̿͊̿͂́̈́̎̇͐̍͝Ŕ̸̤̰̗͓͊͐̈́̄͛̀̑͑͊̀͝͠Ò̷̩͍̪͕͌̾̾̑͊̏̈́͗͆̑̀͘͘͠M̴̢̛͕̯͐̽̑́͂͆̿̓́̐̿͊̇̕ ̵̫͕͓̎͗̀̔͊̿͐̄́̓͐̕͝G̵̖͓͍͔͎̔͌͆̑͑͂̑̓́̚͘̚Ơ̷̛̛̞̯̪͕͌̽͗̿̽̍͋͂̕̕D̴͚̬̼̺͋̓̏̑̋̿͛́̈́̀̽̓͝͝ ̴̛̝̱͕̥͈̱͛̿͊͌͂͊̈́͑͗͗̕H̶̛̻͕̮͐́́͗͆̈́̿̑̈́̏̋̓̈́͊̚͝E̶͖͎̝̰̮̘̗̤̓̈́͋̐͆͌̿̈́͗̽̑̔͛͂͘͝R̷̛͚̳͖̺͕̹̺͍͋͗́̈́̈́̈́̿̅̔̔͌͗̚̚ͅĖ̷̡̨̢̡̻̺̘̞͎̝̠̗̹̮̍̏͛͗̀̑̄̽̓͊̔̚͝ͅͅ\`\*\*

The words stretched across the ceiling, and coalesced into shapes writhing and bending at impossible angles, like a nightmare that didn’t obey the laws of physics.

No matter what I attempted, I couldn’t close the program. The demented mantra kept appearing on my screen.

I ripped the cord from the nearby outlet to unplug the PC from the wall, and when I did, the speakers hissed until silence fell upon the room.

The screen still glowed, indicating that there was still something powering it.

My PC monitor emitted harsh rays of light, dissolving all the pixels on the screen to reveal something alive and breathing in the depths of the spatial vertigo.

The walls of my room evaporated, leaving me to float in an endless black void…but I wasn’t alone.

Something descended from above, the air around me curved to acknowledge the arrival of a new presence.

That’s when I saw Him. It was God, or at least, what I assumed it was.

He was not the compassionate figure from the stained glass of my childhood, but a vast, shifting figure beyond comprehension.

He existed in the negative space between forms, as darkness and light converged into unfathomable geometries. I could feel the gaze from His conglomeration of shimmering eyes in every direction.

His mandibles glimmered with strands of light that bent in ways my mind couldn’t follow. God’s tentacled limbs of pure thought unfolded and expanded into the infinite space around Him.

One instant, he was a supernova weeping blood; the next he was a cathedral of carcasses. His presence was seemingly everything and nothing all at once.

Then, God spoke not with a voice, but directly into my mind.

“Your virtue is sufficient.”

It sounded like every prayer, curse, or plea humanity had ever uttered in any language collided into one blasphemous chord.

The tapestry of black that enveloped my surroundings dissolved as light poured through in massive, celestial pillars.

Reality caved inward on itself like a vortex as the game’s code suddenly bled across the surroundings.

Suddenly…I was everywhere.

My limbs twisted in erratic patterns and my bones snapped like tree branches. I screamed in agony as trillions of simultaneous feelings jammed themselves into my mind, one that wasn’t built for such a thing.

I heard everything in the world. I felt my eyes roll violently in my skull as tears streamed down my face. Frequencies crashed like tidal waves, each decibel sharp enough to split atoms, they folded over one another in my eardrums.

I heard prayers uttered in hospital rooms, primal sobs at a funeral, swears, laughs, sighs, whispers, screams…every sound, all at once.

I felt and knew everything God did in that moment. Love, rage, creation, annihilation, hope, despair, every concept ever conceived I held inside all at once.

I begged incessantly for the pain to stop as I tried in vain to reassemble back into my own form, but I was gone.

Every choice of mine reflected in unbearable clarity, and every emotion I had ever felt burned furiously in my veins like wildfire.

I realized in that moment, the incomprehensible burden that I was being asked to carry.

I didn’t just witness the universe, I became it.

My chest compressed like invisible hands were crushing every one of my ribs. Each breath I took felt like a razor blade slicing through my lungs with surgical precision.

The muscles in every part of my body convulsed against my will, and every tendon screamed as if I’d been running through an inferno and blizzard at the same time.

Emotions weren’t just feelings anymore; they each had characteristics such as color, density, and flavor. Sorrow was navy blue and tender as pulp while love felt like being submerged in honey.

My vision alternated between scorching white and asphyxiating black. The void around me exploded into a kaleidoscope of every color that spilled across my vision like molten glass, shifting and shaking like it were alive.

Seconds stretched with elasticity, branching into countless predetermined lifetimes. A deafening ringing filled my head that sounded like every anvil in existence being hammered at once.

I saw snippets of source code scroll across my vision. It was too fast to read, except for one fragment that engraved itself into my retinas:

\*if mercy == true: collapse(self)\*

“STOP!!! STOP THIS!!! PLEASE…I BEG OF YOU!!!” I pleaded until my throat shredded, my words dissolved into the infinite static of creation.

My body thrashed around in the weightless emptiness, every nerve fragile and sparking with feeling.

His impossible eyes peered upon me before he mercifully granted my request.

“You are not worthy to bear this.” His words echoed in my head, vibrating every molecule of my being as He receded into the darkness.

The universe once again doubled over onto itself, and I collapsed onto my bedroom floor.

The world around me had stopped spinning, I was solid again. I gasped on the floor of my bedroom, and felt myself with trembling hands, I had returned to normal aside from a bloody nose.

My room was intact, but my body ached with a pain that went deeper than muscle.

The computer screen glowed with life, V.I.R.T.U.E. hadn’t closed.

The golden cursor blinked in the center of the screen, and the Virtue Score flashed ∞ for a few seconds before it reset to zero.

With sore eyes, I saw a new message typed out onto the screen:

\*"You are unworthy to be called God even after doing all that is commanded. Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. Pass the burden."\*

Afterwards, the monitor went black, the mechanical hum of the fans fell silent, and the LED lights dimmed then fully darkened.

A cold shiver ran up my spine as I looked at the dead screen. My PC had completely crashed.

Fear was telling me that if I touched anything, the game would somehow bestow its omnipresent wrath onto me.

I pushed that fear to the side and surveyed the damage, and concluded that there was nothing that could be done to save my PC.

Every drive, backup, and piece of hardware was corrupted beyond repair, and no matter how many recovery tools I tried, nothing would bring it back to life.

It was as if my machine had been judged and found unworthy by the same omniscient presence I had.

I threw everything away to the scrap yard and waited until I had finally gathered up enough money to buy a new computer. When I brought that computer back to my room, I overhauled everything.

I reinstalled the OS, swapped out the hard drives, and replaced every last part I could think of. I told myself I had escaped, that it was finally over.

After a few days, it seemed as though the world had finally returned to the way it was before I ever found that game. It was like I had woken from a nightmare that had never really existed.

I believed that until I opened a blank document to begin typing this and saw that I had a notification.

Dread manifested itself in my stomach as I read what had appeared in the center of my screen.

\*\_V.I.R.T.U.E. file successfully transferred\_\*

He had not truly let me go.

V.I.R.T.U.E. hadn’t vanished, it had followed me back.

I know I sound insane, but I needed to confess this somewhere. Maybe the reason He let me come back was so that I could pass it on, but I won’t.

I cannot in good conscience allow this game to spread by any means, but what I can do is tell you this: some powers are beyond our comprehension and not meant for us.

The mere idea of us playing God should be left well enough alone. Some doors are meant to remain closed for a reason.

I understand now what Oppenheimer was trying to convey after he witnessed the power of his creation. Silence isn’t mercy, it’s aftermath.

I thought I could control the world, as I had in my previous simulations, but I was wrong.

I am scared of what will happen if someone else ends up with this game. If any of you know something I don’t, I need your help. Please…tell me what I need to do to destroy this permanently.

I’m not safe from God here.

Was everything worth it?

Before Championship Wrestling Promotions, I would’ve said yes. Now, I don’t know how to answer that question.

In this business, you expect the toll to be physical: torn ligaments, concussions, long nights on the road. That’s the lie that they sell you.

But the damage doesn’t stay in the ring.

It follows you home.

I was the youngest of three. Most nights, it was just me and my siblings, Johnny and Allison, while our parents worked. My dad came home smelling like motor oil and cigarettes, and my mom spent her nights working at the hospital. We didn’t have much, but we had enough.

That was my life growing up, and I never realized how fragile that normalcy could be until Johnny died. I was only ten when I learned he was hit by a drunk driver that fled the scene. They never found who did it.

My parents rarely spoke in the days following, and Allison locked herself away in her room. I just… moved on as best as I could. I buried myself in schoolwork and kept my head down. I stopped speaking altogether unless I had to. By sixteen, it was so bad that I couldn’t even order my own food. I’d sit in my dad’s pickup outside Burger King while Allison placed the order for me.

I’d rehearse the same line over and over. “Hi, can I get a number three with—” But the second I imagined being judged on the other end of the speakerbox, I’d tense up and stop talking. So, I’d wait until she told me it was ready, then drive through and pick it up like nothing was wrong.

But that all changed the day my dad got free tickets to a wrestling show from a customer at the auto shop he worked at.

It was a Friday night in a small civic center, and the place was deafening. Whoever stood in that ring was the center of the universe. I was locked in, clinging on to every cheer and boo from the capacity crowd as Buckeye Bobby squared off with Atlas the Titan. When Buckeye Bobby took a chair shot to the head and wore the blood on his face like war paint, the crowd came unglued.

As I watched the grisly spectacle, I noticed a man sitting on the other side of the ring across from me. With immense scrutiny, he studied the match, still as a statue.

I nudged my dad and pointed to where he was seated. “Dad, who’s that?” 

His eyes barely drifted away from the match. “That’s probably just one of the promoters or something.”

I knew better than to push, so I continued watching the match. When Buckeye Bobby went for an elbow drop, I glanced back to the man’s seat, but to my surprise, he was gone. I hadn’t seen him move. One second he was there and the next…he wasn’t. I surveyed the crowd, but saw no signs of him anywhere.

I didn’t see him again for the rest of the event, and I told myself that I had simply imagined him. But even that wasn’t enough to drown out what I had felt in that building on that night. Somewhere on the drive home, I decided that I wanted to stand in the middle of a ring and matter. I wanted to wrestle.

It was all I could think about for months, and when I finally worked up the courage, I told my parents. The moment the words “I want to be a wrestler” left my mouth, my dad was all for it. But my mom wasn’t about to let me get mixed up in that wrestling nonsense.

That was the beginning of their constant back and forth arguing. My dad believed that I should figure out the kind of man I wanted to be, while my mom insisted on a different career path. She didn’t want to see me physically broken with nothing to show for it.

My mom eventually gave in, but on one condition.

“You can pursue wrestling, but only if you graduate. If you still want to do this after high school, I’ll help you pay for wrestling school.”

I was dying to get inside a ring, so I agreed on the spot. What I failed to realize, though, was that getting through high school would be the easy part.

Shortly after I graduated, I started my training in a worn-down warehouse off Bischoff Street in Granbury. The place had no air conditioning, the boards beneath the ring threatened to give way, and the canvas resembled the skin of Frankenstein’s monster. It was bowling shoe ugly, but it became my second home. 

From sunrise to sundown six days a week, I trained until I threw up. Despite being exhausted and sore every day, I persevered. One night, I stuck around after hours to get in a few extra reps.

I was sprinting back and forth between the ropes with intensity. I threw myself into bumps, hit the mat, got up, and repeated the process. During one of my sets, I noticed someone seated placidly outside the ring on a folding chair. When I glimpsed in his direction, his features distorted, like the shadows weren’t giving me permission to look at him properly.

“Are you gonna keep going or what?”  My trainer bellowed from ringside.

I hadn’t even noticed him come out of the locker room. 

“Don’t you see him?” I asked. When I turned back to the chair, it was empty. 

“I’m not gonna wait for you to figure your shit out Jeremy! Either get it the fuck together or hit the showers!”

I simply nodded and resumed training like nothing had happened. I brushed it off, and didn’t think about it again.

The day I would be cleared for my first matches didn’t seem to come fast enough, until it did. Upon hearing the news, the excitement to prove myself was palpable.

Just as I was getting started, though, I hit the first of many roadblocks: a gimmick name so unfathomably awful that I thought it was a joke.

Freezy McChill.

The promoter swore to me that I could be an intimidating force with a name like that. I should have trusted my gut, but I tried my damnedest to make it work. I lost matches in mere minutes and got laughed out of the building night after night. That’s when I faced the music, Freezy McChill wasn’t championship material. If I wanted to survive, I had to reinvent myself.

While I was on an interstate headed from Tulsa to St. Louis, I started working on new character ideas. I needed someone formidable both in the ring and outside it. Someone who could command with eloquence. As I was in the middle of brainstorming, “Mr. Crowley” came on the radio. 

I’d heard the song a couple times before, but that particular time was different. The ominous, haunting organ conjured images of a person obsessed with black magic and the unknown. 

That’s how Mr. Aleister was born.

The first night I wrestled as Mr. Aleister was underneath a circus tent in southern Illinois. The crowd, if you could even call it that, were mostly family members, but that didn’t matter to me. When the opening notes of “Mr. Crowley” played, everyone’s eyes were on me. That was the first time I experienced the power of being a wrestler, and it was intoxicating. 

Over the course of the next several years, I wrestled wherever I could get booked. My payment for getting tossed around by guys long-in-the-tooth was fifty dollars cash if I was lucky. Most of the time though, I’d get a hot dog and a handshake.

On my way to North Dakota one time, I called my mom on my birthday to ask for gas money so I could make it to the next show. She helped, but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t have thoughts of quitting afterwards. But I didn’t. Wrestling fulfilled me. Nothing else made me feel alive. 

I wasn’t waking up in motel rooms and lacing my boots with dried blood in my mouth out of obligation. I believed that my pain had a purpose.

Eventually, my grind through the independent circuits paid off. I had successfully worked my way up from being a curtain jerker to a main event player. Along the way, I learned that locker rooms were like libraries, full of stories about injuries, infidelity, and promoters screwing guys over on pay. Most of them were just harmless small-talk or gossip, but some were heralded as bad omens.

I was in a cramped locker room in Kansas City when I first heard his name.

Keith the Kingpin had come up and patted me on the back. “Kid, did you see who was watching your match out there?”

“What are you talking about?” I laughed nervously, surprised by his tone. “There are always lots of people watching.”

The guys in the locker room exchanged looks as Iron Mastodon spoke next. “Mr. Hawkins. He made a surprise visit.”

“CWP? Big deal.” I raised a brow. “What’s the matter? Why’s everyone treating him like he’s Freddy Krueger or something?”

“Because he’s creepy as hell man.” Macho Malachi chimed in from across the room. “Don’t you know what happens when people get signed by CWP?”

“The same thing that happens to anybody else that signs with a company?” I rolled my eyes. “How the hell am I supposed to know?”

Juggernaut Jarrett took a seat next to me on the bench. “Mr. Hawkins is a living legend. If he’s got his eye on you,” he said, glancing down at his forearms resting on his knees, “you may or may not be living the dream soon.”

“The dream huh?” I reached into my locker to grab my duffel bag.

When I pulled out my clothes to change into, Jarrett added, almost casually. “Well, that depends on what your definition of a dream is.”

“Don’t listen to them!” Cobra Malone cracked as fiercely as a whip, fresh from showers with a towel around his waist. “It’s just a buncha heebie-jeebie bullshit and nothing more.”

“No, it ain’t,” Jarrett insisted. “Bad things happen to people at CWP.” He pointed towards the locker room door. “Have you ever felt like you’re being watched by somebody out there?”

“You kidding? When am I not?” I dismissed, patting baby powder under my arms.

“Mr. Hawkins is the kind of cat that stands out in a crowd.” Cobra peeked his head out from behind his locker door, “My buddy Randy is convinced he’s seen NASA photos of black holes that are brighter than that guy’s eyes.”

The locker room echoed with laughter when I asked. “What’s supposed to happen if he chooses you.”

Cobra closed his locker, and made his way past me. “You get to live that dream you were talking about earlier.”

I finished getting dressed and left the locker room. In the early hours of the morning a few nights later, I got a phone call. I don’t know what compelled me to answer, but something told me not to send it to voicemail.

“This is Jeremy.”

A moment passed, then several more. Right as I was about to hang up, a voice finally came through. “I expected something more grandiose from Mr. Aleister.” 

I sat up a little straighter in bed. “Very funny, who is this?”

“How rude of me not to introduce myself.” A light laughter came from the phone speaker. “You may call me, Mr. Hawkins.”

“CWP?” I replied, pressing the phone closer to my ear.

“I’ve had my eye on you for a while now. You’ve got talent.”

I rubbed my eyes, rotating my legs so that they dangled off the side of the bed. “You always call talent this late to chitchat?”

“Only the ones I’m serious about.” He spoke firmly. “You shouldn’t hesitate before answering the phone.”

The words caught me off guard, but intrigue gnawed at me. I got up and turned on the lights. “So… what exactly do you want to talk about?”

“You and I both know that sacrifices yield rewards for those who stick around long enough to see them.” His tone was comfortable, but it contained a gravelly warmth that both promoters and liars shared.

I leaned against the wall, ignoring my aching limbs. “Are you talking about money?”

“If you’re concerned about money, don’t worry. I’ll write all sorts of zeroes on your check,” His words oozed reassurance. “I'm offering more than that: consistent dates, primetime crowds, and the opportunity of a lifetime.”

The allure of his offer made my head spin. “I’ve got guys with better physiques than you. Guys who are reliable, clean, safe. But those qualities don't automatically make them the best.”

An awkward amount of time passed before I realized that his silence was an invitation to respond. “Why not?” 

“Because none of them appear to be on the verge of becoming something greater. You do.”

I pressed my forehead against the cool windowpane, letting his words sink in.

Suddenly, he asked. “What are you looking at?” 

I spun around. Was he actually watching me?

“What did you just say?”

“This isn’t just a contract, this is a new opportunity.” He said, completely ignoring my question. “You’ve given everything for a sport that hasn’t given much back. It’s time for that to change, wouldn't you say?”

“What are your terms?” My voice softened as a slow exhale escaped me. “Surely there’s a catch—"

“There are no catches.” He interrupted hastily. “Everything is standard: escalating pay over a five-year duration, covered travel expenses, and medical… within reason. You’ll also have input on your character and your matches. I don’t expect perfection from you, but I do expect results.”

His words smoothed over every doubt I’d carried throughout my time in wrestling. It was laid out so plainly that before I knew it, I found myself nodding. “If I say yes, what’s next for me?”

“You won’t regret anything.” He promised with confidence. “That’s what is next for you.”

“Alright, you have my attention. Send the contract, and I’ll read everything over.”

“You already have it.” He stated. “I made sure that it reached you.” 

“You don’t know where I am.” I drew in a deep breath to ground myself. “So, how would you have my address?”

His reply crackled through the phone, as if from a spirit box. “I know enough.”

“I’m sure you do,” I forced a small chuckle. “I’m guessing you spared no expense on overnight delivery?”

“It’s in the room. You walked past it when you turned on the light. Check the desk. Left drawer.”

The line went dead in my hands as my heartbeat thudded in my ears. I opened the left drawer of the desk, and there it was: the CWP contract, exactly where he said it would be. As unnerved as I was, I had no time to be afraid. I had to make everything happen as quickly as possible.

When my contract with my previous promotion expired, I flew to Rhode Island to meet Mr. Hawkins at CWP headquarters. The receptionist hardly acknowledged my presence, only nodding toward the office down the hall. A brief walk later, and I stepped inside his office to greet him. He sat behind the desk, perfectly still, in a charcoal suit that carried an almost magnetic darkness.

“I was wondering when you’d arrive,” he grinned, his eyes tracking my movements with the cold precision of a shark.

He didn’t need an introduction. I knew who he was. Not from his reputation, but from memory: he was the same figure I’d seen across the ring as a boy. There were no wrinkles on his face or strands of gray hair to signify aging. Time simply hadn’t laid a finger on him.

I didn’t answer and forced myself to look down at the last page of the contract lying between us. Printed pristinely at the bottom, waiting for a signature I hadn’t given yet, was my name. Confidence had become second nature over the years, but he genuinely gave me the creeps. 

I should have asked questions or walked out, but I didn’t. I wasn’t going to throw away an opportunity I might never get again. This was everything I had worked for. 

I hovered the pen over the signature line with an unsteady hand for what felt like an eternity. Eventually, I brought myself to sign my name and then promptly left his office. Had I thought about it longer, I might not have gone through with it at all.

Afterwards, I went home to celebrate with my family for the weekend. On the drive back, I rehearsed how I’d tell them the news, but every casual delivery ended up sounding like a worked promo. It didn’t matter how I broke the news however, they were proud as can be.

Everyone that is, except my mom. 

She said the right things and went through the right motions, but her eyes said otherwise. I wish she would’ve tried harder to hide it, but saying farewell never gets any easier. 

Then I went to where I’d always wanted to be, and carried that look with me.

CWP felt like the beginning of something extraordinary. I feuded with the likes of “Atomic” Angus Punk, Raging Raidjin, The Mortician, guys who forced me to bring my A-game every night. As quickly ask the opportunities came, though, so did the injuries. The matches grew more and more demanding, and there were times I could barely stand, let alone make it out of the ring.

No matter what punishment my body sustained, I was always cleared by the next show. I took that as proof that CWP was looking out for me, but in reality, I was confusing survival with success. 

Sleepless nights caused by my ever-growing pain felt justified as long as my star continued to rise. I was so focused on Mr. Aleister that I never stopped to think about what it was costing me to be him.

The night I wrestled my first televised match for CWP was when I truly understood the gravity of that cost.

Before my match against Thanatos, I paced around the locker room in my ring gear, steadying my breathing and imagining myself out in the ring. This was it. The moment I had been working towards my whole career. 

My thoughts were interrupted by my phone buzzing in my locker like an angry hornet’s nest. I pulled it out and I immediately became nervous when I saw my mom’s name on the caller ID. She never called me this late, especially right before a match.

“Hey,” I answered. “My match is going to be on soon. Are you and dad going to watch?”

“Jeremy…”

Her voice came out fragile, like she was afraid to speak more than she could say.

“What’s wrong?”

The crowd popped something I couldn’t see. The noise reverberated through the walls, causing me to almost miss what she said next. 

“It’s your uncle Dale.”

“What about him?” I asked, concern creeping into my voice. 

“He… he passed this afternoon.”

The world spun around me as the meaning of her words finally caught up to me.

“H-h-how?” I stammered. 

I didn’t need to see her to picture the tears pouring from her eyes. “It was a heart attack.”

With my back leaning against the wall of the locker room, I stared at my reflection in the dark TV screen across the room. In that moment I looked like someone else entirely.

“I just…” She sniffed weakly. “I wanted you to hear it from me before too much time passed.”

More cheers came from deep within the arena. 

All I could manage was, “Yeah.”

“I know tonight’s important. Uncle Dale would be so proud of you. You don’t have to—”

“No,” I interjected. “I’m… good.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Okay. Please be safe.”

“Will do, Mom. I love you.”

As soon as I finished saying goodbye, I hung up the phone. Before I could process the news alone, one of the producers called out from the other side of the locker room door.

“Aleister! You’re up in five man.”

I told myself it was just terrible timing, a cruel coincidence that happened to fall on the night of a new beginning for me. Minutes later, I went out there like it was business as usual. I didn’t have time to be Jeremy. I had to be Mr. Aleister.

I kept up with the house shows and televised appearances after his passing. I continued taking bumps, cashing the checks, and hoping that the chase for the next great moment was as good as the catch. But the more I pursued the spotlight to become the top guy, the harder life seemed to knock me down a peg or two.

The night my grandma’s house burned down, I defeated Rex Riot for the Intercontinental Championship.

The week my sister Allison lost her battle with cancer, I became number one contender for the world title. 

Every step forward in the ring cost me something outside of it. I tried acceptance, but then that gave way to avoidance: painkillers, booze, and bad habits. Nothing kept me numb for long. The more I spiraled, the less often I called home. 

It got to a point where I measured time by matches and angles instead of days or weeks. I wanted to quit so badly, but CWP always gave me just enough to stay. There was always another reason for me to keep going. 

It was a vicious cycle. One that finally caught up to me when I won the CWP World Heavyweight Championship. I had been chasing that belt for my whole career, and it became a night that defined me, but for all the wrong reasons.

The lights dropped to a deep indigo color as the opening organ notes of Mr. Crowley droned throughout the arena. When I emerged from behind the curtain, the red-hot crowd erupted. Signs swayed above the barricades, and camera flashes pulsed through the air like fireflies.

Those first steps? You never take them for granted. The fans don’t let you. Hundreds of voices chanted my name as I made my way down the entrance ramp. 

Inside the ropes, Dominic the Basilisk paced with restless energy. His unkempt chestnut hair glistened with sweat in the lights as he tossed it back. He gestured to the front rows with calculating eyes, mocking and provoking the crowd with a perfect mix of showmanship and intimidation. Like a seasoned heel, he knew exactly how to make the crowd hate him.

Our feud had become the biggest storyline in the company, and this was intended to be the payoff to months of bad blood. Everything was exactly how it was supposed to be. That is, until a teenager near the front of the barricade caught my eye.

It’s not unusual for people to stare at wrestlers like we’re superheroes or villains come to life. But I could feel his empty, almost lifeless eyes leering upon me as I played up my role as the babyface. I turned to fully acknowledge the crowd on that side.

He was gone.

I chalked it up to nerves and continued down the ramp, trying to lose myself in the atmosphere. When I got closer to the ring,  I saw the teenager again. Except this time, he was standing mere feet away from me. 

I remained in character and glanced around for security. Nobody else seemed to notice he was there aside from me. Now that he was closer, I recognized him. The curly brown hair, the blue and black flannel, the navy-blue jeans…it was what he’d been buried in.

It was my brother Johnny. 

His features contorted into a grimacing smile as I froze, my mind scrambling to convince me that grief was playing tricks on me. But he looked as real as everything else in the arena. A sea of camera flashes rippled through the crowd as my pyro detonated. The blast caused me to blink—and he was gone. 

My feet felt like they’d been weighed down with cinder blocks, but I forced myself forward. When I reached the steel steps, the crowd was chanting my name, the vibrations shaking through my boots.

“ALEISTER! ALEISTER! ALEISTER!”

I let them believe that my hesitation was deliberate and stared Dominic down. With my back turned to the crowd, I ascended the steps and stepped through the ropes. I marched toward my corner and gripped the top rope as the announcer began the introductions.

The referee stepped between Dominic and me to give us the usual pre-match instructions, but I barely acknowledged a word he said. My focus shifted to the turnbuckle in the corner behind him.

Johnny was sitting there, staring at me. The flesh of his face sagged and dripped down his broken neck viscously.

With a metallic DING, the bell rang. Without hesitation, Dominic charged across the ring and drove me to the mat. We rolled across the canvas, trading punches. I shoved him off, hit the ropes, and leveled him with a lariat. He sprang back up instantly, and we collided in a lockup, testing strength.

The hands I felt on me were ice-cold. Not Dominic’s. Johnny’s. I recoiled in horror, throwing off our timing for the next series of moves. 

“What are you doing?” Dominic muttered as we locked up again. 

“Shoot me into the ropes. I’ll break the headlock,” I whispered.

Three worked elbows later, and I was freed. He hurled me toward the ropes, but as I was running, Johnny was standing on the apron, his jaw unhinged like a snake devouring its meal. My momentum faltered and I stumbled mid-rebound. Dominic capitalized with an awkward looking arm drag, and we collapsed to the mat with an embarrassing plop, earning an audible groan from the audience.

“Get it together,” He hissed through clenched teeth. I grabbed the ropes and dragged myself up from the mat slowly, selling the move. I bounced off the ropes, ducked a clothesline from Dominic, and delivered a body splash.

The referee got into position and started the count.

“One.”

Dominic kicked out immediately, sending the crowd into a frenzy. We found our rhythm again; trading holds and counters seamlessly. 

During a headlock spot, he growled. “Irish whip into a boot.”

I powered out of the hold and gripped his wrist. We rose to our feet, and he whipped me into the ropes. As I was coming back toward him, he abruptly threw himself backward, selling a move that I hadn’t even gone for. 

I stood there, confused. Why had he done that?  

Instinctively, I reached down and shoved him under the bottom rope, following him to the outside. I delivered a few worked punches to his back, attempting to salvage what was left of the match.

On the outside, I called an audible. Dominic delivered stiff chops to my chest and guided me towards the steel steps. He lifted me above his head and slammed me down against them. I crumpled onto the ground, clutching my ribs, as the referee started the ten count.

Dominic hauled me up with ease and threw me back inside the ring. Once we wrapped up a sequence we had rehearsed earlier that night, I whipped him into the corner. I rushed forward to deliver my turnbuckle splash but came to a halt halfway across the ring. 

There was a gaping hole that split the canvas wide open. 

I looked down and saw Johnny’s casket buried beneath the dirt. When I looked back up at Dominic, there was a tombstone behind him.

Johnny’s name was engraved on it.

I staggered back into the corner, sweat stinging my eyes. The crowd relentlessly chanted and pounded against the barricades as I leaned against the ropes.

I waved off the referee as soon as he came over to check on me. Before I could move, I felt a presence perched on the top turnbuckle.

“Do you miss us?”

The voice came from inside my head.

“What?” I asked, looking up. 

Allison loomed on the turnbuckle, her face inches from mine. Tangled strands of hair hung like black vines, obscuring everything but her bloodshot eyes.

“Who the hell are you talking to?” Dominic’s angry tone shattered the illusion but not the immense dread that had found its way into my heart.

It all went downhill from there. Thoughts of Johnny and Allison consumed me, causing me to botch spots left and right. I was missing every mark I had trained for, making Dominic look bad by proxy. The closer we reached the finish, his frustration was unmistakable. 

I dropped him with a pile driver and went for the cover, but before I could, the arena became engulfed in darkness. A moment later, a suffocating crimson glow bled through the black, revealing a monstrous figure standing across from me. 

It moved sluggishly toward me, stopping only a few feet away from where I stood. I squared up and played along just as the light washed across its face. What I saw made my heart drop. 

The skin across its face was pulled so tightly against the skull that it looked ready to peel apart under the pressure. Its eyes were just shallow indentations, like thumbs pressed into soft clay. Beneath them, mandibles slick with gossamer strands of saliva twitched erratically. Every movement sent tremors rippling through its unnaturally muscled body, like something inside was trying to find an exit.

The crowd roared, expecting a dramatic payoff, but my body was paralyzed.

I tried to look intimidating as the figure took another plodding step forward, but something inside me snapped. Instead of a worked punch, I threw a real one. My fist connected with bone, and the figure teetered backwards. The crowd popped, thinking it was all a part of the show. 

They had no idea I was fighting for my life.

Beneath me, the canvas shifted. I glanced down and saw an outline moving just under the surface. I watched whatever it was slither underneath my boots and vanish as Dominic screamed. 

The sound confirmed my worst fears. There was no monster. 

I had given Dominic color the hard way —my fist had smashed his nose open. I had messed up everything. The referee darted between us, relaying new instructions through his earpiece. 

We were going home. 

I planted Dominic with a DDT and pushed through the finish as the referee slid into position. I hooked his leg, gripping it tightly with my shaky hands.

“One!”

“Two!” 

The crowd collectively held their breath.

“Three!”

DING. DING. DING.

“HERE IS YOUR WINNER, AND THE NEW CWP HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION… MISTER… ALEISTER!!!”

The announcer’s voice boomed across the arena as the crowd erupted into cheers. The referee placed the championship in my hands, and I raised it above my head, soaking in their approval. To them, I had achieved my dream. But as I stood there basking in my championship victory, I could still feel something moving beneath me. 

I forced myself to keep celebrating as Dominic rolled out of the ring. When I lowered the belt, he was leaning against the barricade, a disturbed look on his face. Blood poured down from his nose in a steady, ugly stream as I stood in the middle of the ring, going through the motions that neither of us believed.

We both knew the match had been a disaster, and the look he gave me made it clear. 

I may have won, but this wasn’t over.

I don’t remember much about the initial walk back through the curtain, just a flood of bodies swarming me with congratulations. Hands clapped against my shoulders as I walked by. A member of the crew handed me a bottle of water while another called it one of the most “unpredictable” finishes they’d ever seen.

Even now, that word has stuck with me. Unpredictable. Because that’s the only way to describe losing control of yourself in front of thousands of people.

When I got to Gorilla, Dominic was already there, blood still gushing from his nose. The white towel pressed tightly against his face was soaked through. We made eye contact with one another, and before anyone could react, Dominic got up in my face. “What the fucking hell was that all about?!”

Over his shoulder, Mr. Hawkins stood by the monitors. He hadn’t moved an inch from where he was when I went out for our match.  While everyone else hurried around us, he stayed stationary, watching intently.

“Hey!” He spat. “I’m talking to you! Were you trying to go into business for yourself out there?”

“Give him the chance to speak.” Mr. Hawkins demanded, his headset dangling from his right hand.

I didn’t answer right away. My ears were ringing like an explosion had gone off next to me. That thing…whatever it was, hadn’t fully left my mind.

“No,” I began. “That wasn’t…I didn’t mean for any of that to happen. There was something out there. Didn’t you see it?”

He let out a humorless guffaw. “The only thing I saw was an inflated ego.”

“I’m serious,” I insisted, grabbing his wrist before he could turn away. “There was a monster. You gotta believe me”

“Yeah, and I’m Peter fucking Pan.” He yanked his arm away. “Get the hell out of here with that bullshit.” 

He brushed past me with a scoff, leaving a thin trail of bloody droplets behind him. Shortly after, Mr. Hawkins stepped in front of me like he’d been waiting for the dust to settle. “You and I, let’s talk in my office.”

I didn’t object. I followed him down the corridor, the chaos of Gorilla fading the further we walked. By the time we reached his office, the noise of the arena had given way to complete silence. 

Mr. Hawkins took a seat, already composed. “You did well out there.” 

I shook my head.  “That was the worst match of my career and you know it.”

A knowing smile formed on his face. “I saw a crowd on their feet,” he said. “You were crowned champion. That was your moment. You should be celebrating.”

“To hell what the crowd thinks. Something was out there in the ring with us. I saw it with my own damn eyes.”

“And what exactly did you see?”

“My brother and my sister. They died, but they were there. And a monster too. That’s why I hit Dominic. I’m seeing things. Why?”

“Why?” He asked. “You’ve stepped into the ring countless times and given people a reason to believe in you.  Why are you questioning that?”

“I’m questioning you,” I shot back. “What the hell is this place?”

“This place,” his voice settled over the room like a cold mist as he gestured around him. “is exactly what you wanted it to be. Home.”

“This place hasn’t felt like that lately. My family…” I stopped myself, the next half getting caught in my throat. “Bad things keep happening to my family.”

“Loss has a way of refining people,”He spoke detachedly. “It clears away the unnecessary.”

I let out a bitter sigh. “You know all about losses, huh?” 

“Actually, I do. It's in your contract.” 

I thought about my brother. My uncle. My dad. Everything I’d already lost. “Are you saying…” my voice cracked. “Are you saying that you made this a part of the deal?”

“What I’m saying is that there is always a price to be paid. In business and in life.” He hunched over in his chair. “This is what you’ve signed up for. Did you forget that?”

“What? I…I didn’t agree to that.”

“You agreed to what sustains the life you live now.”

“You’re talking about my family like they’re expendable.” 

Mr. Hawkins folded his arms. “Aren’t they? You’ve certainly treated them that way.”

“That’s not true.”

“No?” He stood up from his desk and began to pace. “What about all the missed phone calls? The empty promises?”

I didn’t have a response. 

“That’s what I thought.” 

I swallowed the nervous bile creeping into my throat. “What if I walk away from this?”

He menacingly chortled. “You won’t.”

And he was right. I wouldn’t walk away. A few days later, I got a call from my mom while I was in a hotel room before a CWP show in Florida. My father had suffered a stroke. He passed not that long after.

I didn’t react for a while. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know how. I didn’t cry. I didn’t speak. I just stared at the gold shimmer of my championship belt laid across the bed in front of me, thinking about how he had been my biggest supporter from day one, and now he was gone.

After the funeral, my mom told me I didn’t have to go back to wrestling, that I had done more than enough to prove myself. When I asked her what she meant, she said, “You’ve given everything to everyone but yourself. I don’t want to lose you to something that can’t love you back.”

I thought about those words a lot when I arrived early for my first show back. The doors didn’t open for hours, but I figured I could use the extra time to warm up.

I was mentally rehearsing match spots in the locker room when I heard a rhythmic chanting coming from somewhere inside the building.

“ALEISTER… ALEISTER… ALEISTER…”

I wandered down the hallway and peeked through the curtain. The jaundiced lights revealed a cluster of local jobbers, standing shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the ring. Like a nest of worms stirred into motion, their bodies spasmed and writhed as the chanting in the venue swelled to a nauseating crescendo.

“YOU’VE STILL GOT IT! YOU’VE STILL GOT IT! YOU’VE STILL GOT IT!”

The louder the chanting became, the more violently the ring trembled. I waited for anyone in the ring to react to what was happening, but none of them did. The canvas bloated in jerky, uneven throbs. The ropes contracted and expanded with each pulse until a massive, pale hand breached the surface. Its fingers stretched outward, dripping a putrid, slime-like residue from the webbing between them.

An unsettling chorus echoed in my head.

“Go!” cried the living mouths that still knew fear.

“Stay!” begged the dead ones, rasping through pain long since forgotten.

A cold sweat broke out on my forehead as the hand lunged for the nearest man. He didn’t move when it gripped his ankle, and he didn’t scream as it dragged him down, his shoulders cracking against the mat. The ring swallowed him with a hollow splash, and the sound of stomach-churning crunches signaled more shapes emerging from beneath. One by one, the wrestlers were dragged beneath the ring, each disappearance accompanied by ravenous tearing and the sickening slosh of sinew.

A cacophony of voices surrounded me, yet every seat was empty. “THANK YOU ALEISTER! THANK YOU ALEISTER! THANK YOU ALEISTER!”

As soon as the last man was dragged under, the arena lights stabilized, the chanting ceased, and the ring returned to a normal, lifeless state. Right before I could turn away, a member of the production crew nearly bumped into me. 

“Hey,” he gave me a puzzled look. “You’re early.”

I looked at the ring then back at him, trying to mask the bewilderment on my face. “Where are the trainees? Weren’t they here earlier?” 

He shrugged. “They might just be running a bit behind. They’ll get here soon.”  

His reaction only reinforced the fact that I couldn’t tell anyone what I’d seen; the last thing I needed was to be labeled delusional and sent to a neurologist. Even when I finished my match and returned to Gorilla that night, the image of the ring, and what had emerged from it, lingered. 

Mr. Hawkins was waiting by the monitors, and I lashed out immediately. “I want out. I want out of my contract. I don’t know how you did it, but you’re not going to scare me into staying here anymore.”

Mr. Hawkins smiled gleefully. “Do you really think leaving will change anything?”

“I’m not scared of you.” I stood my ground.

He adjusted his cufflinks with trivial amusement. “You’re a terrible liar. You’ve always been scared. It’s why you were put on this path.” 

My voice wavered with trepidation. “Why did you seek me out?”

”Jeremy,” Mr. Hawkins murmured. “Do you really believe there was ever a version of your life where we didn’t meet?”

I knew better than to answer a question like that, so I didn’t. Following that interaction, everything changed in CWP. 

Creative had planned a long title reign for me, but those plans went up in smoke. I lost the belt cleanly to Dominic in a rematch that lasted mere seconds, and fell down the card drastically. Cheers became boos and then those boos became deafening silence.

But here I am, continuing to step into the ring and pretend that everything at CWP is normal. All I can do is do business, and hope that’s enough to not be noticed and left alone.

I don’t want to be taken by whatever I saw under the ring.

If there are any wrestlers, staff, production, or fans of Championship Wrestling Promotions who can corroborate what I’ve seen, I need you now more than ever.

I’ve got to go. My match is about to start. If I don’t come back, don’t let them tell you that this place is just wrestling. I’ll respond as soon as I can. Godspeed.