As we inched closer and closer to Shuri Castle, I felt watched. It was too quiet. Right as that thought popped into my head, the ground opened and the jungle seemed to scream with enemy soldiers shouting "Banzai!". I picked up my M1 firing at whatever moved. I saw a man drop. He didn't look much older than I was. He was 25 at most. We lost 10 men in that ambush, but we killed every last Japanese soldier.

My unit kept walking toward the castle, and we saw it. The castle was in ruins, but their tired but honorable guards were ready for a fight. A 30. cal team set up to the right, just out of view. When my CO gave the order, bullets rained down. We advanced through the castle. There was a burst of adrenaline as I cleared out a mortar pit, which kept me fighting until I heard a bayonet sink into my side.

Everything went black.

"Corporal! Get up! You're not dying like the poor bastards that got ambushed!"

I woke up to my sergeant dragging me from the fighting to a nearby medic where he disinfected and dressed my wound.

"Sir, I can get back in the fight," I insisted.

"Corporal, that's suicide in your condition! You're staying here, and that's an order!" my sergeant barked.

Without hesitation, I replied with "Sergeant, I can still fight, so with all due respect, I will take this castle!"

The sergeant didn't reply. I guess it was okay. I picked up a Thompson and joined back into the fight. The first main entrance was a mess of mangled Japanese and American troops. There were some survivors who I mercy killed. I felt something I hadn't this war. Guilt. These men were doing a desperate last stand for their country. The second gate was even worse. These soldiers appeared to have surrendered, their guns were 10 feet from where they died.

As I got through the Shureimon gate, I saw a mess. Japanese troops were slaughtering my fellow Americans with MGs. I picked up a dead man's rifle. An SMG couldn't take down an MG crew, so I knew a rifle would work. Without hesitation, I fired on the first squad. The bullets traveled cleanly through the first man's head, and the second man was hit through the heart. My comrades made quick work of the rest of the crew, and the cycle repeated until they were all dead. That didn't end the battle though, not until our radio operator called an airstrike anyway.

When the dust settled, there were surrendering Japanese troops. As I searched them, one did a desperate lunge with a knife, but I easily dodged it and then shot him dead. The battle was over. The shooting stopped. I stood there, rifle hanging at my side, waiting for it to start again. But it didn’t. I collapsed as I clutched my side. Blood. That soldier might have cut me after all, or maybe he tore open my wound. However much blood I lost, it wasn't good. As the world faded for the second time in a day, I didn't fight it.

I woke up in a hospital somewhere far from any sort of fighting. It looked unscathed. There was an IV in my arm and blood going into my veins. I felt weak. Hollow even. I reflected on that last day I was fighting. War isn't glorious. When I enlisted, I thought it would be one grand adventure. I noticed a note in my left palm. It was short and simple, talking about how the war was won and when I recover, I'm on the next ship home. That felt good in a way. We won the war, but at what cost? We lost so many good men, and we left Japan's economy in shambles, ruining thousands of lives. But I would have to get reaccustomed to civilian life. That would be difficult, but I think I can do this.

I always have.

I gasped loudly as I opened my eyes shooting to a sitting position, breathing heavily and rapidly, my heart beating out of my chest. I look around quickly the only light in the room is a like green lava lamp illuminating the room in shifting shadows. Everything seems to be in place, and i recognize my surroundings. I sigh a breath of relief, as I see my room. I go to take the covers off of my bed and they are strangely damp from something, as I take the blanket the rest of the way off myself and stand up i realize im still wearing my shoes, they are drenched and very loosely tied, as I go to untie my shoes I see a line on my hand. Not the kind you get from use or old age. This line was solid black. I tried to wipe it away but it didnt budge, "it must be permanent marker" I think to myself before taking my shoes the rest of the way off and throwing them in the corner of the room and heading to my closet to get dressed, I decided on a pair of jeans and a t shirt, like usual. Then I walked to the door grabbing my second pair of shoes, slipping them on as I walk outside and begin my uneventful trek to work.

After a few minutes of driving I noticed a white Chevy was following behind me making every turn i made. After a few more of the same turns I began signaling the wrong direction but they still followed me. I look ahead of me and my heart drops, a red light, there would be no way I could stop whoever was behind me from coming up to my door and harassing me. "Should I run it?" I think to myself before shaking my head and putting the idea out of my mind before stopping at the light. The white car also stopped behind me. And as soon as they did a man stepped out of the passenger side door and approached my car. He is a large distinguished man with jet black hair and bright bright green eyes. They almost sparkle like emeralds. Those were the only details I could get from the slight glance I got before I slammed on the gas pedal driving away as fast as I could. Breathing heavily I continue my route to work arriving there without another issue.

I walked up the stairs to my office deciding I needed to burn some extra calories today. As I got settled into my office I took a sip of the coffee that was waiting on my desk for me, I stare out the large windows into the parking lot. I almost spit out my coffee as I noticed those same emerald eyes staring up at me from the entrance to the parking lot.

"I am on the third floor with privacy windows there is no way he could see me from down there" I think to myself as I look down on him, but I swear it almost felt as if he was staring into my eyes.

I closed the blinds on the windows, before calling security to go id him. I went back to work making this week's schedule while the security team handled him. About 15 minutes passed before my phone rang, " hello mr. Jones, we did a full sweep of the building and all 3 parking lots and we were unable to find the person you described, but we will keep an extra eye out for them today" the security guard said as I answered the phone, "thank you, I appreciate the effort" I say before slamming the phone back onto the receiver. Continuing my day as usual.

When 5 o clock rolled around, I got up starting to collect my things and head for the stairs, only this time, I decide that I want to be lazy and head for the elevator instead. I reach the elevator and hit the button for the ground floor, the elevator dings and the doors slide shut. About half way through the journey to the ground the elevator stops suddenly and the doors slide open. I look up and my heart drops. I see 2 bright green emeralds staring back at me suddenly he rushes into the elevator and touching my shoulder, before I pass out instantly.

I wake up gasping loudly for air as I try to turn my head around to look at my surroundings. But when I told my head to move, it didnt. I wasnt tied down, I wasnt restrained. I just couldnt move. Almost like i was paralyzed. I tried to move my arms and legs next no luck. The only part of my body that I can move are my eyes, but they are covered by something. I can hear feint cracking coming from behind me and I can feel the warmth of a fire coming from the same direction. As I have this realization I hear "Let's try this again Mr. Jones" suddenly the blindfold is ripped from my eyes, im not sitting, im not standing. Im floating in the middle of this room. All around me is bathed in bright blue light, I look down and below me is a pool of black liquid with that same light shining from it. Suddenly something shoots out from the pool and lands on my hand wrapping itself around my wrist, I feel a burn on my hand right next to the mark I felt this morning, then suddenly my body is filled with overwhelming bliss and my mind is flooded with thoughts from my childhood, I can hear the man speaking in front of me but the words are drowned out by the screaming bliss flowing through every pore in my body, then just as suddenly in the elevator I feel myself fade into unconsciousness.

I gasped loudly as I opened my eyes shooting to a sitting position, breathing heavily and rapidly, my heart beating out of my chest. I look around quickly the only light in the room is a like green lava lamp illuminating the room in shifting shadows. Everything seems to be in place, and i recognize my surroundings. I sigh a breath of relief, as I see my room. I go to take the covers off of my bed and they are strangely damp from something, as I take the blanket the rest of the way off myself and stand up i realize im still wearing my white shoes, they are drenched in something inky and black and very loosely tied, as I go to untie my them I notice 2 solid black lines on my hand, I go to wipe them away and nothing happens, "it must be permanent marker" I think to myself before continuing to untie my shoes and throw them to the corner of my room, where they make a deep thunk as they hit the floor. I stop in my tracks. Thats not what my floor sounds like. I turn around and see 2 pairs of shoes on the floor covered in black inky fluid. I look down at the 2 marks on my hand my mind racing. Millions of thoughts cross my mind, but the most troubling one was "Who am i?"

The car pulled up and Agent Gore got in.

‘Hey, nice to meet you.’

The agent in the driver’s seat didn’t even acknowledge him. The car pulled out into the Friday night traffic. Oncoming headlights gleamed off the driver’s sunglasses.

Is it safe to drive in those things?

Agent Gore decided not to say anything. It was still his first week in the Federal Super Investigation service. The main thing he had learned so far, aside from the fact that all agents wore the same black suit, was that no one liked being asked questions.

‘Did you read the case file?’ The driver asked.

‘I saw the email,’ Gore replied.  ‘You’re Agent Samson, aren’t you?’

‘Correct.’

‘And this is an investigation into Fishbrain.’

‘Affirmative.’

‘So is this like an evil sea genius scenario, or is he more of dark-lord manfish…?’

Agent Samson slammed on the brakes.

Gore rubbed his neck where the seatbelt was biting into him.

‘Ouch...’

‘You didn’t read the email.’

‘I said “I saw it”.’

‘Phish,’ Samson said. ‘With a ph. And let me tell you something. There isn’t a more dangerous supervillain than Phishbrain.’

 

#

 

Gore read the rest of the email while Samson drove. ‘So. He was a conman and loser who used dating apps to convince lonely women he was George Clooney. Not a very smart guy, the police caught him and he spent some time in jail. Then, one day, he gets in a freak fishing incident, whatever that means, and almost drowns.’

They were past the city limits. After winding through forested backroads, they pulled up in front of an abandoned-looking hut that backed on to a lake.

‘When he woke up in the hospital he discovered he had a superpower,’ Samson said, ‘Perfect Phishing.’

Examples of his “perfect” phishing filled the case file. Emails, fake social media profiles, sophisticated keylogging techniques that activated the moment someone breathed on the link.  ‘I mean. I guess his emails look legit. The sender addresses look real.’ Gore got out of the car. ‘I just don’t understand why he is so dangerous.’

Samson powered up a flashlight. ‘At 0700 hours yesterday an employee of the arms manufacturer Blockheed Martin received a convincing email from someone claiming to be the company CEO. They even knew that the employee had recently asked for a payrise, and the email contained a passive aggressive reminder that everyone at Blockheed was a family, and families didn’t quibble over money.’

‘Asshole!’

‘Exactly.’

Something moved in the trees and both men drew their guns. Gore tried not to think of the last time FSI officers cornered a supervillain. It had taken the cleaning crew weeks to scrape their remains off the Liberty Bell.

‘At 0830 hours the employee retrieved a vial of deadly toxic gas from the Blockheed labs. This gas could be used to blackmail governments. Or trigger WW3.’

The door to the shack was unlocked. Their flashlights swept across a dusty, single room with a desktop computer and a chessboard.

‘If the employee didn’t happen to be a member of a union,’ Samson said, ’Blockheed wouldn’t have been monitoring his emails. FSI officers were called to intercept. And now the gas is under FSI custody back at HQ.’

‘So why are we here?’ Gore asked.

‘We traced the IP address to this shack.’

While Samson powered up the computer, Gore looked at the chessboard. It was an antique, expensive looking. Mismatched pieces were laid out across the surface.

 There was a Post-it note stuck to the back of a king piece.

It read: “You’re move.”

#

The night flew by at 150 miles per hour as the agents raced back to HQ.

‘This isn’t even how you play chess,’ Gore said. He was looking at the quick photos he’d taken of the shack’s interior. The chess board was in a ziplock bag on the back seat. Evidence.  ‘I’m pretty sure that’s a monopoly piece.’

‘Phishbrain is sending us a message. We’re playing his game now. Yahtzee.’

‘Why would he just leave his plans on the computer?’ Agent Gore asked. ‘How is he even going to get past the biometric scanners? Or the bullet proof glass?’

And don’t you mean “Check”?

‘Who are we to comprehend his genius? All we need to know is he wants the gas.’

Gore thought of the typo on the note: You're move. With a sinking feeling, he reached for his phone.

Agent Samson seemed to have no problem driving fast while talking. ‘You know until now, Phishbrain used his new powers for good. Hacktivism. He got a job as the head of IT security at a children’s hospital. He tricked Grimlord into revealing the location of his doomsday weapon. He even secured a date with the actress Jennifer Lawrence.’

A brutal turn made the tyres scream. They were back in the city now but Samson wasn’t slowing down.

‘Yet it was the other superheroes who got the credit for storming Grimlord’s base. Jennifer Lawrence escaped out of a bathroom window when Phishbrain didn’t match his dating profile. And the hospital fired him after he dropped a laptop on a coworker’s head. Because telling people EVERY DAY to not open suspicious-looking emails can drive you A LITTLE CRAZY!’

Agent Gore found the emails. The case files. They looked real.

But there was another email above them now, also from an Agent Samson: Where are you?

Oh no.

Gore looked up just in time to see the glass-fronted FSI building rapidly filling the windscreen.

They were driving straight at it.

‘SLOW DOWN-!’

#

 

Agent Gore was woken by the sensation of his hand being pressed against the biometric scanner.

‘…what…’ he coughed. He hurt all over.

Beep. The lobby elevator door slid open.

Someone released Gore’s arm and he flopped backwards. Agent Samson loomed over him. He had something big and heavy in his hands.

‘I really enjoyed this little game of chess, Agent.’ Samson raised the chessboard overhead. ‘But it’s match point.’

‘Thats…not…chess…idiot.’

He brought the chessboard down. Hard.

Then he stepped into the elevator.

Phishbrain had arrived.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a magical ten minutes, or so it seemed at first.

A novice writer, stepping into the digital jungle of Reddit for the first time, tentatively shared his creation—a fable titled WILD LIFE—with the world. He was a nomad in this vast territory, exploring, curious, and perhaps a bit hopeful. He had spent hours honing the biological and sociological logic of his characters, ensuring that every movement of the Hippo and every reflex of the Antelope felt as real as the savanna itself.

Within those first ten minutes, the digital counter flickered: twenty views. But then, something statistically improbable happened. Among those twenty strangers, four of them chose to "Share."

The writer was momentarily ecstatic. In his innocence, he imagined four souls so moved by his logic—the brutal, instinctive dance of predator and prey—that they couldn't wait to show a friend or save it for a deep late-night study. He waited, heart pounding in the quiet of his room, for the first comment, the first sign of human connection. He imagined a dialogue about the essence of life and the nature of survival.

Four hours passed. The tally rose to 170 views. Finally, the first "Upvote" arrived—a lone, silent spark of approval in the dark. Yet, the "Shares" remained frozen at four. The ratio was haunting.

The math began to feel cold, like a predator’s breath on the back of a neck.

In the natural law of the internet, the vast majority of normal readers are those who read in silence. They consume, they reflect, and then they move on without leaving a footprint of a like or a share. This is expected. It is the baseline of digital existence. The author definitely understands and have absolute respect to them. But those first four? The ones who moved with such predatory speed, sharing the work before the digital ink was even dry on the screen, yet leaving no trace of appreciation or interaction?

The writer realized he wasn't looking at fans. He was looking at hunters.

In the shadows of the web, where AI models are fed and "content" is recycled into hollow shells of its former self, these four early birds were likely professional scavengers. They didn't share because they loved the story; they shared to harvest it. They weren't interested in the soul of the narrative or the sweat the author spent on every sentence. They wanted the "meat"—the core logic, the unique premise, the fresh structure—to be fed into a machine that would strip the original of its identity and spit out a ghost-written imitation.

The writer felt a sudden, profound chill. He had come to the jungle looking for a tribe—readers who would embrace his world —but instead, he was greeted by four hunters with sharpened, invisible blades. They didn't want to talk to him; they wanted to colonize his thoughts.

It is a heavy, bitter realization for any creator. In this era of rapid-fire consumption and algorithmic theft, before a writer can even find a single friend, they must first learn how to survive the predators. The savanna is beautiful, but the silence of the four hunters is a reminder that in the world of stories, sometimes the most dangerous animals don't growl—they just click "Share."

Yet, the writer remains. The hunters may have taken the skin, but the logic—the heavy, unyielding bone of the story—remains buried where they can never truly reach it.

“Look! There he is!” A woman stared from afar, watching in awe, her eyes glistening as she watched the knight on his horse. As if she had fallen in love already. “They say he can turn enemies into gold statues, with that sword of his.“

All the villagers were looking at, not just any knight passing through. But the golden knight himself, riding his chestnut horse proudly, almost boastfully. He was none other than, Ser Gold the Golden. That wasn’t a fictional title, that was his literal name.

His build was the exact definition of perfection. So beautiful that some people forgot to even breathe when he passed by them. His Blonde, shiny hair swooped upwards as if forming a great tide wave about to come crashing down at any moment. His eyes were water-blue. Constantly shifting left and right, as he waved his luminous white hands at the peasants who cheered on for him. His hands couldn’t even be seen, they were blocked by the gold gauntlet he wore but the villagers had assumed his bright face carried the same lightness down to his hands. His face was smooth: neither fat nor skinny, just right. He had a sharp jaw, as if it was an edge of a dagger. His shining white teeth shimmered constantly as he smiled joyously to the side. His body was strong and masculine, more so than any other knight in the realm. He wore golden armour which constantly caught the sunlight, reflecting into the eyes of those who stared into it. His WHOLE plate armour was coloured golden, down to his literal foot. Etched into the breastplate itself were flower petals, scattered all across. His golden helmet formed a T-shaped opening for the eyes and mouth, he held it in his left hand whilst he waved with his right. His horse rode forward. Without him even touching it’s reins. As if the horse had a mind of its own.

Most the peasants clapped, chanted and cheered, there were so many of them, two hundred to be exact. Lined up, right and left. Staring at the golden figure, as he rode his majestic chestnut horse through their puny little town.

His scabbard was attached to his waist… it was golden too.

“He’s so kind… he’s so lovely… he’s so beautiful.” A woman said, reaching out her hands at Gold in the hopes of him noticing her.

Gold looked at the woman, smiling gracefully. “Look at these disgusting boars.” He silently whispered under his breath, his smile, not vanishing for even a second. Gold’s stature and beauty were really gold. His language and actions… were not.

“Brother—” Silver said, his brown hair and eyes were all so boring. He was skinnier than Gold. Silver was beautiful in his own way, but when he was next to his brother, Silver looked like a peasant. “You can’t say that.” Silver was waving his hands towards the villagers as well, but no one was looking at him, they were all gaping at Gold. Silver was used to it, he didn’t mind at all, in fact he liked it that way.

Gold was nine when Silver was born. Even at that age, Gold had already become famous for his beauty. On that fruitful evening, he commanded his parents to name his new born brother ‘Silver’ and they listened, they listened to everything Gold had to say.

“It stinks of horse shit here.” Gold sighed but his perfect face did not change into anything else. He was right. The town really did smell horrible. Not just of shit and mud but of rotting flesh hanging thick in the air, maybe an animals? Gold didn’t have time to discern it. Him and Silver had a job to do.

“Does Gold not have any guards for the mission?” One of the peasants said, unaware of who Gold the Golden truly was.

Everyone around the peasant who had just asked the question looked at him as if he was some kind of monster.

“You— You think he needs guards?” One of the villagers laughed madly, as if the thought itself was some kind of sick joke.

“He doesn’t need guards… and never will.” Another said, looking at Gold with awe. “No one in their right mind would wanna fight Gold the Golden anyway. He’s the equivalent of ten men.”

“That ain’t possible.” Another said.

“It is!”

“Gold is a fuckin’ fraud!” One more shouted.

Suddenly, their conflicting opinions turned into rage, and in an instant a brawl broke out to the side. Peasants started tearing into each other, punching, strangling and kicking those around them like starving hounds. Most in favour of Gold, to save his honour and reputation, while a few to oppose him.

Gold twisted his head to the right and noticed the brawl. He rolled his eyes in disgust. “Great.” He said sarcastically.

Silvers face turned in worry. “We must stop them.” He tugged on his white horses reigns and shifted it right in the direction of the chaos.

“Silver… no.” The statement came out of Gold’s teeth. He said it the way fathers scold their sons. It was clear he wanted no one to notice the words that had come out of his mouth except Silver.

“But brother—”

“We don’t have time.” He pulled his brothers shoulder and nudged him back towards him. “We cannot fail the king, can we now?” Whispering into silver’s elf-like ears, like an angel guiding the way.

Silver nodded as the scent of lavender came out from Gold’s breath. Silver looked at the brawl and shifted his head away, his head now straight as an arrow.

But then, in the distance, ahead of Gold and Silver… cows started appearing from behind one of the wooden building from the right. Not just one or two, exactly fifteen of them. White and black dots, so many of them, turning left and now walking straight towards Silver and Gold.

Gold was dumbstruck for just a milliesecond. “Great! Now this towns gonna smell of horse and cow shit.”

Silver looked at Gold apologetically, “I told lord Ortum to stop all labor whilst we crossed.”

Their ‘moos’ echoed throughout the small village. Gold’s heart-shaped lips twitched, but he knew he could not be seen angry. He put on an even braver smile, pushing down the anger which was trying to erupt out of his throat. This would be bad for his reputation. He couldn’t be seen surrounded by a bunch of dirty cows. What would everyone think?

But behind the cows, was a man, guiding the cows forward toward Gold and Silver. He had been planning this for a while, it was obvious.

The man guiding the cows was none other than Podzod of Milkstone.

“Not you again…” Gold quietly let out, a faint smirk popped on his face, reliving the past.

A month back Gold was passing by Milkstone. A massive cow farm owned by Podzods father. Gold had simply spat out the milk which was offered to him, it was warm. Gold did not like warm milk. He thought nothing of it back then. But it was clear Podzod had taken it as a grave insult, not just to himself, but to his whole lineage.

Even the brawl which had broken out had stopped, all the villagers gasped and looked around in confusion, as to how the cows had even appeared in their town in the first place.

“YOU INSULTED MY MILK!” Podzod shouted, spit coming out of his broken teeth. He was a lean man, having messy black hair. His brown eyes dull and heavy.

When Gold had passed through Milkstone, Podzod’s face was bright and welcoming like warm petals. But now it was sharp and ugly like poison.

Gold chuckled lightly, looking around at the villagers on either side, he hated being embarrassed and Silver knew it. Silver could read his older brother as well as he could read a book.

“Gold, let’s just go around—”

“How dare he bring a bunch of filthy cows in front of me.” Gold’s face was still warm. The villagers didn’t suspect a thing, no one could hear him.

Podzod weaved and spun through his cows and was now in front of his pack. Staring out at Gold like a vicious viper.

“I CHALLENGE YOU TO A DUEL TO THE DEATH!”

Most of the villagers shook their heads in disbelief, thinking Podzod was a madman.

“Does this fucker not know who he’s talking to?” A villager from the side lines questioned Podzod.

Gold smiled. He knew if he declined, people would call him a coward, it would tarnish everything he had built. I’m. Not. A. Coward, he thought viciously.

“Gold… we mustn’t, you said it yourself, we don’t have time.”

“Oh but we must now brother.” Gold said calmly, smile twitching even faster. “He’s blocking our way. Therefore, he’s blocking the kings orders.”

Gold elegantly got off his horse as if, floating down. All the villagers went silent. Even the dark clouds which had started appearing overhead stopped moving.

“I accept!” Gold waved his arms out and turned in a full cricle majestically.

The crowd went wild, cheers louder than before erupted. “Gold. The. Golden.” They all screamed out, even the ones who had thought Gold a fraud were on his side. No one knew the cow farmer, or whatever he was and no one cared either. Podzod had no supporters.

I didn’t even want that job. But I needed some extra money before exams, so I took a night shift at a small hotel near the highway. It wasn’t a big place—just three floors, old furniture, and that weird quiet you don’t really notice at first. Before leaving, the manager told me something strange. He said, “If you get a call from Room 307… don’t pick it up.” I thought he was joking. I even laughed a little. But he didn’t. At first, everything was normal. I was just sitting at the reception, scrolling through my phone, trying not to fall asleep. Then suddenly, the phone rang. Loud. Sharp. Echoing in that empty lobby. I looked at the small screen. Room 307. I hesitated for a second… then picked it up. “Hello?” For a moment, there was nothing. Just static. Then I heard it. A voice. Very low… like someone struggling to speak. “…help…” My body went cold. I asked, “Who is this?” But the call just cut off. I tried to ignore it. Maybe it was a wiring problem or someone messing around. But then I checked the room register. Room 307 was listed as occupied. No name. And the check-in date… …was from years ago. No check-out. The phone rang again. Same room. This time I felt nervous, but I still answered. “Hello?!” All I could hear was breathing. Slow. Heavy. Then the voice came again. “…don’t come here…” I froze. Before I could say anything, I heard a loud noise from upstairs. Like something falling. From the third floor. I don’t know why, but I went up. Maybe curiosity. Maybe I just didn’t want to sit alone anymore. The stairs felt longer than before. Every step made a sound. When I reached the third floor, it was darker than the others. And at the end of the corridor… Room 307. The door was slightly open. I pushed it slowly. The room looked normal at first. Bed. Table. Old TV. Nothing strange. Then I looked at the mirror. I could see myself standing at the door. But something felt off. My reflection… wasn’t moving. I stepped forward. It didn’t. Instead… it started smiling. I turned away quickly. My heart was beating fast now. And then— I felt something behind me. I didn’t see it. But I knew something was there. When I slowly looked back at the mirror… my reflection was gone. There was something else standing there. Tall. Thin. Not human. Just staring at me. At that moment, the phone inside the room started ringing. Loud. Nonstop. I couldn’t move. And then I heard a whisper. Very close to my ear. “…you shouldn’t have answered…” I don’t remember what happened after that. When I woke up, it was morning. I was back at the reception. Everything looked normal. Like nothing ever happened. But when I checked the register again… Room 307 was empty. No record. No entry. Nothing. I left that job the same day. And even now… sometimes at night… my phone rings from an unknown number. And I already know what it will say. “…help…” #collected

7. 7. 7.

The pump clicked off as I stood there watching the screen blink.

Disappear.
Reappear.
Disappear again.

I counted.

Seven seconds.

The nozzle slipped back into its cradle with a hollow knock. The pump’s LED asked if I wanted a receipt.

I declined.

When the car started, the radio came alive with a muffled drone, like it had been left underwater too long. The station was familiar, but the pitch was wrong, as if someone had nudged a record off center.

The street was empty as I pulled out.

The sun was sinking behind the mesas, turning the red desert burgundy. Clouds nested along their edges – soft, pink, delicate. Cotton candy clouds resting along the ridges, carefully arranged and forgotten.

The dashboard read 7:00.

I watched it for a moment.

Then I drove.

-

I don’t remember when I decided to drive to see her.

Truthfully, as the road stretched in front of me, the thought came suddenly that I had been drinking again. The idea arrived sharp and unwelcome, though I had given it up years ago.

I hadn’t spoken to her in months. I wasn’t even sure what I would say if I made it there.

Maybe, I thought as I rubbed my temples, someone else had decided.

Mile marker 77.

A smell reached me then – burning. 

At first I decided it was a brush fire, something smoldering somewhere out in the dark desert. Out there the land could burn for miles before anyone noticed.

Then clouds of smoke began to bloom from beneath my hood. 

-

The car died. 

The stars blinked above me as I held my face in my hands. The engine ticked softly as it cooled.

I stepped out onto the shoulder and stood there listening.

Nothing.

No traffic.
No wind.

The desert was quiet in a way that felt deliberate.

Across the highway sat a motel.

LUCKY NUMBER SEVEN.

A brittle LED sign flickered. Above it, a cartoon cowboy tried endlessly to lasso a bull.

The rope flashed in the air again and again, never quite catching. 

-

The office door chimed softly when I pushed it open.

“Hi, Nolan. Room for two?”

The clerk smiled as I fumbled with my wallet.

“What?” I let out a breath. “What? Uh ... no.”
He tilted his head slightly, confusion settling across his face.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you had company.”

I placed my card on the wood-paneled desk. 

A mounted stag’s head stared at me from behind the old man’s shoulder, its glass eyes bright in the fluorescent light. 

How did he know –

The clerk slid a brass key across the counter, a gold SEVEN emblem hanging from the ring. 

“Room seven.”

The metal was warm in my hand.

-

Outside, the night had grown colder.

The motel sat in a half circle around a gravel courtyard. Most of the rooms were dark. 

A single light hummed over the walkway. 

For a moment I stood there considering the highway again. The road stretched black and empty in both directions.

I imagined turning around. Walking back to the car. Waiting for morning.

But the key felt heavy in my hand.

So I walked. 

-

4. 5. 6 … 8?

The numbers glowed from fake prospector lanterns mounted beside the doors. 

I stopped.

The hallway stretched quiet and empty.

4.
5.
6.

Then 8. 

No seven.

I checked the key again.

At the far end of the hall stood a door that didn’t match the others.

The rest were red oak.

This one had been painted red. 

A small brass number hung at eye level. 

7.

-

As I got closer, I noticed a key hanging from the lock. 

The door was slightly ajar. A pale glow from a television wrapped around the opening and spilled across the walkway. 

I knocked.

The door creaked open a little further. 

-

The TV flickered blue against the walls.

The room smelled faintly of dust and something sweet – like someone had been drinking earlier. 

I stepped inside.

The television hummed softly.

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

The clock on the nightstand blinked: 7:07. 
For a moment, I thought I heard someone moving in the bathroom. 

Disappear.
Reappear.
Disappear again.

On the nightstand sat two glasses. 

One was empty. The other was still warm.

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Wild Life

1. The First Encounter

In this vast expanse of land, life in all its forms unfurls day and night, each creature bound by the symbolic weight of its own existence. Some rely on the advantage of speed; others depend on the sheer mass of their frame to carve out a chance at survival. No one has a choice. No one can escape the innate gifts and limitations they were born with.

The Hippo, in this realm, is a form of royalty. Though it faces the threat of predators, its thick, calloused hide and unpredictable temperament can flip a lethal situation in a heartbeat.

There was such a hippo—one that did not follow the pod. He preferred his own company, foraging and wandering alone, entirely untethered.

One day, while the Hippo was grazing with his head low, an Old Antelope drifted into his periphery, catching his attention. This Old Antelope moved across the grassland with a slow, deliberate pace, utterly devoid of the skittishness typical of his kind. As the Hippo silently observed his movements, the Old Antelope was the first to speak.

Old Antelope: "The grass isn't growing as fast as it used to."

Hippo: "The earth seems to be changing. That is why the pastures are slowing down."

Old Antelope: "It is hardest on us. Finding a decent meal is becoming a struggle."

Hippo: "Then eat while there is still something to be had."

Old Antelope: "True enough."

With that, the two animals returned to their grazing, each in their own world.

After a while, the Hippo’s curiosity finally overrode his silence. He voiced the question that had been gnawing at him.

Hippo: "Tell me—do you even know what I am?"

"You're just a hippo," the Old Antelope replied cautiously, sensing a shift in the Hippo's tone.

Hippo: "Don't you know how dangerous I am? You dare to stand this close to me without a hint of caution?"

"I..." The Old Antelope stared at the Hippo, momentarily speechless.

"Don't you eat grass too?" the Old Antelope countered. His eyes flickered with a mix of fear, confusion, and a strange sort of hope.

Looking at the Old Antelope’s startled expression, it was the Hippo who found himself stunned.

Is this creature truly that naive? the Hippo thought. He looks old enough to know better, yet his eyes hold the simplicity of one who has never tasted the complexity of the world.

The Hippo’s curiosity was officially piqued by this peculiar Old Antelope.

Hippo: "How have you managed to survive this long?"

Old Antelope: "My life has been simple. I like making friends, and I know to avoid predators. So far, I have lived in peace."

Hippo: "Since you have dared to walk into my world, I will take it as fate. Let's be friends."

Old Antelope: "Splendid. I love making friends. The more, the better."

The Hippo never dreamed that this single decision would bring so many exceptions to the life that lay ahead of him.  

The smell of grease hangs thick in the air, clinging to the clothes and lungs of those inside. Julia has gotten used to this smell. Day in and day out, she has to endure the wretchedness of this diner. The foul-mouthed customers gorging on the greasy mess they call food. She writhes in agony each morning, Dread building in the pits of her stomach. Julia trudges through the day, forcing a smile because smiles mean better tips.

Every shift feels like the same terrible day, playing on repeat. Like a loop she can’t escape. Sometimes she wonders if she's died and forced to live out eternity in this hellhole.

“Excuse me, miss,” an older gentleman with speckled gray hair calls out to her. She can already tell this interaction is not going to be a good one. His tone is one of condescension, and the expression on his face displays annoyance.

“Tell me this, how hard is it to make a simple sandwich? I specifically asked for no mayo. What does this look like to you, hmm?” She just stands there looking at the sandwich while the man berates her. He obviously isn't looking for an answer, and Julia has found that just letting the customer belt out their annoyances is the best way to curb the abuse.

“Now go do your job like you were supposed to do in the first place and tell that incompetent cook to make the sandwich the right way, got it? Or do you need me to repeat myself slower so you can understand?” The man waits expectantly for an answer. For a moment, Julia imagines picking up his plate and smashing it against his face, but instead, through gritted teeth, she responds,

“No, sir, I understand,.” biting her tongue to try and keep the profanities from spilling out. She takes the sandwich back to the cook to have it remade.

When it's finally out, she stares down the sandwich. The foul words of the man replay in her mind. Before she can stop herself, she spits on the man's sandwich, and a warmth spreads throughout her chest. For the first moment in weeks, she smiles.

Julia makes her way to the older man's table, and with the most apologetic tone, she tells him,

“I’m so sorry about the misunderstanding, sir. I hope this one is more up to your standards.” The man mumbles under his breath some more about lazy and incompetent kids, but nothing worth responding to. She allows herself the enjoyment of watching the man bite into his sandwich, knowing just what is on it as she continues her shift.

The rest of her shift passes in a blur of greasy food and grumpy customers. When, at last, the end comes, she goes to the back to grab her stuff from her locker and head home. Since her mother sold the car to fuel her bad habits, Julia is forced to make the trek on foot. The trees along the road loom eerily over her as she walks. Every snap, every creak makes her jump.

The wind cuts right through her clothes, chilling her to the bone. Her only solace is the faint glow from the streetlights and the thought that safety is only a couple more blocks down the road. A pit starts to form in her stomach as she gets the feeling of something lurking just beyond the treeline.

She tries to brush it off and keep her composure, but the feeling intensifies. Goosebumps break out on her skin like a rash, and she breaks into a sprint, running as fast as her legs can take her. She stumbled into her front yard as she miscalculated how close the curb is. Her footing still unsure, she tumbles to the door and finds it unlocked and slightly ajar, making the unease she felt on her way home even more pressing.

Picking up a rock from the yard, she hesitantly makes her way inside. With the rock raised, prepared for battle, she jumps out ready to surprise the intruder, but instead she sees her mother, asleep in a drunken slumber.

She feels a swirl of relief and resentment in her stomach as she stares down at the woman who raised her. Years ago, her mother got fired for being drunk on the job, making Julia the main source of income. The money she had put away for groceries had so often been stolen for her mother's undertaking at the various bars in town. Leaving Julia forced to go to bed hungry more often than not.

Fearing the wrath of the alcohol-induced monster called Ruth, she does her best to keep from waking her, but alas, her attempts were in vain. Her mother awakens, roaring profanities, hot alcohol on her breath as it washes over Julia's face.

“You sure were out late. What were you doing? Or should I say who? You’re just like your father. Nothing but a whore.” The words cut like a knife, and her mind drifts back to the night her father left. The night everything changed.

That night, they had gotten into another big fight. Ruth, spitting defamatory comments, and her father desperately trying to get through to her. Trying to find one last ounce of the person she was before the alcohol. However, this fight was different. Ruth was being especially vile in her remarks, and her father, usually very calm, started to lose his grip on sanity. He rips the bottle from her hands and throws it against the wall. He clutches her face in both hands, crying about how she’s changed, begging for the old Ruth to come back, the woman he married.

Ruth tears at his hands, desperate to get away from his grip, but the struggle only makes him cling to her harder. His hands slide down to her slender neck. Ruth claws at his hands as she struggles for air.

Julia watches from behind the kitchen counter, too terrified to move. She will never forget the bloodlust she saw in her father's usually kind eyes. It was almost as if something had taken over, and it was no longer the man she knew, but something else entirely. The reality of the situation dawns on him just as Ruth's face turns a nasty shade of blue and his grip loosens. Horror contorts his features, and he stares down at his hands. Bile rises from his stomach. His face a sickly green, he drops to his knees as the contents of his stomach empty into Julia's bin of dolls.

Ruth collapses to the ground, coughing, gasping for air, and clutching at her throat. Minutes pass as she tries to regain her composure, just as the color floods back into her face, it is replaced by red-hot hatred. She rises from the ground, a newfound fury giving her strength. The insults begin to fly, vile accusations and name-calling, worse than Julia had ever heard. Raising her hand, she moves to return the act of violence, but her father pays no mind to the monster, his eyes glossed over, and he stumbles to his room, slamming the door behind him.

He emerges only a few moments later with a hastily packed suitcase. He spots Julia cowering in the corner and tears well up in his eyes. His hand flies to his mouth as a sob escapes from his lips. He rushes over and swallows her up in an embrace. Through his sobs, he whispers the words,

“I'm so sorry, Julia.”

Her mind snaps back to reality, and she sees her mother's face flushed red from the alcohol. The thought of her father being driven away by words just like those pushes her over the edge. She loses it.

A guttural cry escapes her lips as she lunges toward the monster. Julia tackles her and pins her down, her mother's limbs flailing and kicking in a desperate attempt to get away, almost as if she knows what’s about to happen. Julia raises the rock, her arm trembles, but looking down at her mother's flushed red face, still spitting insults, something inside of her snaps, and she brings it down upon her mother's skull.

A sharp crack rings throughout the house as the rock connects with bone. The flailing limbs thud against the floor, and the life fades from her eyes. A pool of blood begins to bloom behind her head, but Julia's rage persists.

The rock comes down again. “Crack, crack, crack.” An animalistic roar rises from the pit of Julia's stomach until all that's left of the monster is a mangled, bloody mess. The corpse almost unrecognizable as human.

She sits back and takes in the scene before her. Memories of her mother before her addiction come flooding back, and Julia breaks down. Sobs rack her frame, and the bloody rock slips from her hands. A metallic smell permeates the air and invades her nostrils. Reality strikes like a blow to the head. She has to get out of this place; she cannot get caught.

A feeling of justice quickly overtakes the brief moment of grief. Ruth got what she deserved. For years, Julia had suffered her abuse, taking it silently, all the while supporting her, caring for her, working herself to the bone for a mother who gave nothing in return. She was a drain on society and had many enemies from her drunken tirades at the bar. It could have been anyone.

Julia made her way to the shower to wash off the gore. She scrubbed her skin raw, trying to scrape the image of her mothers bashed in head from her mind. Julia lets the water wash over her until it turns cold. Wrapping herself up in the towel, she faces herself in the mirror. Her eyes drift across her face, her body, and finally lock onto her hands. The blood still caked in the crevices of her fingernails. She never thought she could be capable of such brutality. Let alone against her own mother.

The gravity of her situation sets in, and she rushes to her closet. Digging through her piles of clothes, she finds the suitcase her father had gotten her years before when she used to visit her grandparents. Julia quickly stuffs a pile of clothes in the suitcase and sets off to grab the cash she had hidden from her mother in the air vents. Ripping the grate from the wall, she stuffed the wadded-up bills in her pocket. Anxiety was slowly creeping in, replacing her rational thoughts. Julia feels herself losing her grip on sanity. She has to get out. She can’t spend one more second in this house with that rotting corpse.

She sets off on foot. With no destination in mind, her only goal was to put as much distance between her and her childhood home. The only place she had ever known. She makes it about a mile before a thought creeps in. This time, one that's actually helpful.

“The train station is only a couple of miles south of here.” The unease that she had felt just hours ago on her way home from the diner only intensified. The trees seemed almost taller, the wind harsher, and the shadows more sinister. Perhaps it was a trick of the mind. Her own mental state being reflected back at her, or perhaps someone had seen her. Could there have been someone following her home, just like she had feared? Did they see the whole thing?

These thoughts plagued her mind the whole way to the train station. It was a miracle she made it that far without suffering a mental break. To Julia’s relief, the train station was the emptiest she had seen. The last thing she needed was a crowd of people watching her. She bought the first ticket that would take her out of town.

Just as she's about to board she sees it. To anyone else, it's just a regular suitcase. But to Julia, it's much more. The sight of it knocks the breath from her chest, and she struggles to maintain her composure. Her head whips around the station. Seeing nothing but a few stragglers rolling in from long commutes, too exhausted to pay attention to anything except getting home, she approaches.

It's just like she remembers it. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, it looks older, more broken in, but she would recognize that suitcase anywhere. The sight drags her back to that awful night. Looking around to make sure no one is looking, she takes it and boards the train.

Julia’s heart pounds in her chest. The beating so hard she can hear it. The suitcase stares up at her. Its contents sing their siren song, begging to be opened. Her fingers hover over the latch. Hesitantly, Julia clicks it open. It groans open as if the inside hasn't seen daylight in years. A distinct scent of wood and linseed oil drifts from the tattered case, filling the air around her.

Inside, there lay one thing. Julia didn’t know what to expect, but certainly not this. A fully loaded Colt Single Action Army lay solitary in the case. She picks it up and weighs it in her hands. Shocked by how heavy such a small object can be. Julia observes it. It’s a beautiful thing, the handle made of black walnut, with intricate engravings of flowers on the barrel.

The whole situation baffles her. A tattered piece of luggage, almost identical to her father's old suitcase, left abandoned at a train station, with nothing inside except a fully loaded gun from the 1860s.

The lights on the train begin to flicker. On and off. Submerging her in complete darkness only to assail her eyes with an explosion of light seconds later. Over and over, the lights flash, disorienting her. She cowers in her seat, hugging her legs to her chest with her eyes tightly shut. Her hands shoot up to cover her eyes and block the light, but she's met with a thick, wet substance. Suddenly, the flashing stops, and she looks down at her hands. A deep crimson blood covers them.

“No, no, no, no, no.” Julia begins to spiral.

“This isn’t happening, this isn’t real, I didn’t do anything wrong, she deserved it, she deserved it.”

Something appears in the corner of her eye. An earthy, rotting smell fills the air, and dread builds in her stomach. The intense, “chug, chug chug,” of the train slowly changes. The rhythm becomes something else. “Crack. Crack. Crack.” The sound of rock striking bone. The color drains from her face, and her head whips around. To her horror, she sees her mother's mangled corpse. The neck twisted at an awful angle to face her.

What's left of her face, twisted up in a toothless grin. An awful creaking sounds from the mound of bloody flesh as it rises from its seat. Julia shifts as it draws closer; the putrid smell of rot engulfs her. The hands of the corpse wrap around Julia's neck like a snake. Clutching to it like a lifeline. Her glossy eyes stare straight through her. The lifeless form, somehow filled with vengeance, crushes Julia’s neck until the oxygen leaves her body. Little white lights dance through her field of vision until her world goes black.

Light pours in through the window onto Julia's face, and the raucous chugging of the train awakens her. She shoots up, terror coursing through her veins as she remembers what had just occurred. Her head whips around, searching fervently for the monster, but there's nothing. Her eyes fall to her hands. No blood. Her hand tenderly reaches for her neck. There's no pain. It's almost as if it didn't happen at all, but it was so vivid. Julia could have sworn her mother was there, the pain, the blood. It was all so real.

She feels her sanity slipping. The distinction between reality and her own mind is becoming more blurry with each passing moment. More time had gone by than she thought, and the train made its final stop. She started for the suitcases, awkwardly grabbing them both and walking out.

The glare of the sun made her lose her footing getting off the platform, and she thudded to the ground, her head making a loud “whack” as it connects with the cement. People rush to her. A wake of vultures. Words of concern spat out from every angle. The crowd is closing in, the concern warping into accusations in her mind.

“They all know, they all know what I did. What am I gonna do?” Her thoughts start to spiral

Someone reaches out for her, trying to help, but Julia recoils.

“No! No, no, no. I didn’t do anything. I swear, I didn’t.” She shrieks. Cowering to the ground, she covers her ears, swatting at all who try to help her up.

“They know, how do they know?” Her lips start to tremble. Tears well up in her eyes and start to spill over. Suddenly, a siren sounds in the background. It’s terrible, cries piercing her mind. Her head whips around, and her eyes lock onto a woman, her mother.

“No, not again, please, not again. Stay away! Please go away!” Julia cries. The crowd closes in. Their concerned faces contort into knowing grins. She searches for an escape, a break in the crowd, when she sees it, the suitcase.

She lunges for it. Before anyone can stop her, she pulls out the gun. A collective gasp rings out over the crowd of people, and they all back away. Finally able to breathe, she takes a step back. The siren is getting closer. She feels hopeless.

Flashes of the night before assail her mind. Her mother desperately trying to get away, and the sound of the first crack of the rock. She thinks of her mother's face after the first hit, and she saw a sadness she had never seen before. Julia couldn't imagine her mother's final moments. Knowing that the person who caused your untimely death was your own daughter. Seeing the little girl you raised, bash your head in.

Sobs rack her body. Guilt overwhelming her, she finally admits she's the real monster. No longer being able to justify her actions, she brings the gun up to her temple. She can’t live with herself knowing what she has become.

The crowd pleads with her to put it down, but the sound garbles. She’s made up her mind. Her life is over.

Finger hovering over the trigger, she hesitates. Her eyes fall once more on a mangled face, eyes hanging from their sockets, blood dripping onto the concrete, skull dented like an old pop can. A whisper sounds from what should be her mouth; it’s too soft to hear at first, but it gets louder.

“Do it, do it, do it,” but the voice sounds wrong. Too familiar. It sounds like her.

Suddenly, the pleading for her to put the gun down shifts into a haunting chant.

“Do it, do it, do it,” all echoing in her voice.

The cacophony rings loud in her ears, and she cannot bear it any longer. She squeezes the trigger and,

“BANG!” The gunshot echoes, silence falls over the station, and darkness swallows everything. For a moment, everything is still, silent. Then, a smell creeps in. The same, thick, suffocating smell of grease. Julia's eyes flutter open, her lungs pulling in a shaky breath as her chest fills with that familiar scent. A clatter of plates rings out, breaking the silence.

A voice cuts through the haze.

“Excuse me, miss.” The speckled-haired man gazes up at her, his brow furrowed in irritation.

“Tell me this, how hard is it to make a simple sandwich?” Julia's stomach drops. Somewhere deep in her chest, a terrible realization begins to form.

“Students!” A shrill, tiny voice, heightened to the point it almost broke and started to sound like a scream. “Students!” she tried once more; this time, she banged a ladle against a pot rhythmically. The ladle gave up at the sixth beat.

The noise still didn’t recede. In the classroom stood a couple of small kitchenettes; one slightly bigger kitchenette stood at the front near a blackboard. Welcome to an Introduction to Cooking, it said on the whiteboard. By Miss Hippo, in superb, practiced italic letters.

“STUDENTS!” The large hippo in front of the class struck her kitchenette with both paws; one of the cooking pans pancaked with a metallic clang. “WAAAAAHHHHH!” Ms. Hippo snapped a large knife in half; it was catapulted through the room. The whole class fell silent as a mouse.

In the back kitchenette, a large crocodile was looking at his kitchen, a frown as high as the ceiling on his face. His gaze shifted from his kitchenette to the one in front of him. “Psst,” one eye on Ms. Hippo, he whispered to the two in front of him—a piglet and a small spider. “Psst, what is this?”

The piglet leaned back. “I-I-I-I,” she stuttered, “I think it is human.” The small spider nodded emphatically, bouncing on her front four legs. “Definitely human.”

“I know it is human,” the crocodile whispered. “I ate one hand once.” He made a face as if he remembered the taste, his tongue sticking out. “Disgusting.”

“ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS ALREADY?” Ms. Hippo stamped through the room toward the crocodile. “OTHERWISE, YOU CAN ASK ME!”

The crocodile slouched immediately; everyone in the kingdom knew how dangerous hippos were. “No, miss. All fine, miss,” he said, making a small bow after every sentence.

“We-we-we.” The piglet inhaled and closed her eyes. “We wondered why human?” she said, visibly relaxing when the sentence was out.

“WELL, ahum.” The hippo sat down, her voice retreating. “We all know we eat humans, so it was a safe decision.”

“I—” The spider jumped up and down on all eights. “Don’t eat humans!”

“Well, I thought,” Ms. Hippo said in her friendliest voice, “you know the famous spiders ate them, so—” Ms. Hippo started to walk back to her less-equipped kitchenette at the front of the class.

“You mean Shelob and Aragog, don’t you?” The little spider walked toward her, her front two paws in the air.

“It-it-it—” The piglet caught her before she was too far. “Itsy-Bitsy, relax. She didn’t mean anything by it,” Piglet said.

“It is not okay.” Itsy-Bitsy went red. “They are not spiders.” Furious, squeaking words. “One is more of an ant; spiders do not live in families.”

“Very true.” A regal voice came across the aisle—a large lion, black mane, one large scar over his eye. “Also impossible that they live in a forest with so many,” Scar said to Itsy-Bitsy, his eyes showing a twinkle. “The forest would be eaten empty.”

“Ex. Act. Ly.” Itsy-Bitsy riled up at the sudden windfall of her point. “And the other one is a demon that took spider form.”

“Cultural appropriation,” Scar said.

“Yes.” Itsy-Bitsy walked over the kitchenette in perfect lines, back and forth. “We need to take back our culture, we need—”

“AAAAHHHHHH!!” Ms. Hippo yelled. A large pot flew through the air. The whole room went quiet.

“Yes, dear, and who invented these?” she said, looking for another pan for her demo.

“Humans!” Itsy-Bitsy screamed, looking her dish in the eye. “Suffer!”

Scar tried to rally her once more. “Spiders don’t eat; they only drink.”

But the moment passed. Disappointed, he sat back down and played with his food.

***

“So,” Ms. Hippo sat back down in front of the class, “we first warm the water.” Her example was a small pot of water, as the large pot lay crumpled somewhere in the back of the class.

“S-s—” Piglet wanted to ask something, her eyes big with terror. Her hand went down.

“Did you want to ask something, Piglet?” Scar said in a loud voice. Piglet dropped the pan out of her hands in shock.

A whisper of a laugh came from the crocodile one place further.

“Yes, PIGLET?” Ms. Hippo slammed the blackboard with her behind, trying to face her student. It immediately broke into three pieces. All was very quiet in the room. Scar and the crocodile took a step back. Their eyes met as their heads turned toward the door, like athletes waiting for a start signal.

“Oh dear,” Ms. Hippo said, looking at the broken board. “Not very sturdy, was it?” Silence filled the room.

“Eh, eh, eh—” Piglet startled; she obviously did not want to upset Ms. Hippo any more. Students had died for less in her class.

“We boil it alive?” She looked troubled, eyes big and starting to tear.

“Oh, you sensitive little creatures.” Ms. Hippo waddled to her, destroying a pot and a door; Scar, not amused, wisely decided not to comment.

“You can kill it first if you want,” Ms. Hippo said.

“I-I-I—” Piglet looked at her feet. “I don’t want to kill it.”

“That’s fine; that’s why you have a partner.” Itsy-Bitsy immediately jumped on the human, screaming, “Die, die, die, you appropriator!” Due to her size, she was not very effective. Still, after a few minutes, the human stopped moving.

“Why don’t we have partners?” Scar looked at the empty spot next to him.

“You know why. They all cry and walk away after a few minutes,” Ms. Hippo snorted.

Scar smiled. He sat proud, tail flapping.

“And me?” the crocodile said.

“Do you want to partner with Scar?”

The crocodile looked at Scar, who still smiled. “Point taken. So kill it first?” The crocodile bit the human, then rolled on the floor until the dish stopped moving.

“It has a certain elegance to it,” Scar laughed. “Some sort of dance.”

The crocodile stood up; the floor was filling with blood fast. “Well, how do you do it?”

“Not I—let it…” He watched the human, put his head close to its ear. “Boil to death.” Scar enjoyed how the human shivered with dread.

“Good,” Miss Hippo told him. “That’s how you preserve the flavour.”

***

The whole class was dicing side dishes to cook along with their main dish.

“I’m sorry.” The crocodile raised his hand.

“Yes?” Ms. Hippo was sitting on top of the broken blackboard.

“I wondered what to put in,” the crocodile said. “I cannot digest carrots or onions; bacon seems, eh, inappropriate.” He glanced at Piglet, who immediately looked at her feet.

Itsy-Bitsy jumped off her kitchenette and started to run at the crocodile.

“Well, you don’t have to add anything,” Miss Hippo said. “Or boil it, for that matter.”

“So why this class?” Scar already ate half of his meal before even starting to cook. “Seems pointless.”

“WHAAT?” Miss Hippo stood up. Scar had two paws on a piece of leg, already mauled to the bone. He looked up.

“You-you-you—” Piglet stuttered. “We were so close,” she ended, nibbling on a raw carrot.

“Well, I am just saying.” Scar eyed Miss Hippo. “Taught to cook meat by a vegetarian.” He smiled. “Just seems off.” His eyes flashed. “Like learning how to draw from a blind man.”

Miss Hippo stood up slowly, walked step by step to Scar. “Mister Scar,” she said as she came close, “did you want to comment about my weight?”

Scar stopped eating, his two ears pointed straight up. He didn’t realise until now. But he did want to comment about her weight. Now it was all he could think of.

At that moment, Itsy-Bitsy reached the crocodile and was violently stabbing his nostril. “There, with your bacon! I will make a purse out of you!”

The crocodile could not reach his nose and fell down, rolling on the floor.

“It-it-it—Itsy!” Piglet ran toward her partner. “Get him, Itsy!” as she kicked the crocodile right in the groin.

Scar looked skittish, Miss Hippo just a few steps away from him.

“What’s wrong with your weight?” His heart was racing. He knew this was a lost cause. “There is a zipcode attached to it.” The other animals in the class started to shift in unease. “You have your own gravity field.” Scar sighed after he said the words; after all these times, self-control was still his weak spot. His counselor thought he needed a self-control class. Instead, he chose a cooking class.

“WHAT?” Miss Hippo pranced like she was a pony; when coming down, she snapped the kitchenette right in half.

“So I am not saying you have a problem—every chair in the world does!” Scar cried. He simply couldn’t help himself.

Miss Hippo went full rage mode. She charged the sad-looking lion, throwing him into the air with her mighty head.

Scar landed on his feet on top of the crocodile, who had only wanted to take a cooking class to move on from that terrible day—the day he ate a human hand.

The crocodile screamed as the nails of the adult male lion pushed into his skin.

“No!” Itsy-Bitsy climbed on Scar and went straight for the eyes. “You ruined my leather purse!” she screamed. Itsy-Bitsy and Piglet had taken the cooking class as they were getting married and wanted to spend some time together.

Piglet joined Itsy-Bitsy in her attack now that the crocodile was beaten. After all, the whole thing should be a bonding exercise.

“You all ruined my class!” Miss Hippo charged full into the group, straight through another kitchenette. Wood splinters, pots, pans, and spices flew everywhere.

Miss Hippo didn’t usually teach the cooking class; her friend Shere Khan had asked her to fill in as he was ill. She had no idea how to cook humans.

At long last the hike up mount Wilton is complete. Reunited childhood friends Sam and Mark had spent the whole afternoon climbing it. Their feet throbbed as they made the final steps and their legs felt numb as they sat down on the grass. Their reward stands in front of them, mount Walton, the twin mountain of Wilton. It's the same height as Wilton only if you take away the giant metal pole that sticks out in the middle. Mark slings his bag over his side and brings out a pack of four beers, he keeps one for himself and hands one over to Sam, the other two are for the way down to soothe jelly legs.

On the way there they talked about old memories. Unrequited childhood crushes, forgotten school teachers remembered only by a rhyme or scent, the unforgettable time they found shit smeared all over the toilet seat and a rugby match that ended in tragedy though they didn't touch on that for too long. Silly stuff really. But it was only until this moment where they began to speak of the present. Sam is the first one to speak after a few silent gulps of beer between the both of them.

"What have you been up to? We haven't talked about the now. All this way we've not even mentioned it."

"Really? Wow I guess we haven't. I must be a bad father" Sam's face takes no time in realising what it's just heard. Though his eyes take a little bit longer to catch up as they squint a little, flinching almost.

"No way. Mark, a father!" Mark laughs "and bad husband too." Sam's smile grows wider in the surprise, his eyes flinch again. "Fucking hell, where was my invitation?" A short silence grows between them only to be interrupted with a faint laugh from Sam. "I'm only joking. That's incredible man, shit congrats. How are they?" Mark takes another gulp of beer, dispelling the nervous uprising of his nerves.

"They're good, too good. Matty my youngest is just getting used to school. Mandy my oldest is getting good grades and finding friends. Claire. my wife, she's the glue. Without her this family wouldn't get anything done, in the house, outside the house. She's so good and she never complains, never. You can't crack a complaint out of that woman I'm telling ya." Mark smiles at the thought. "What about you?"

Sam looks forward to the pole. "A teacher. The past 20 years I've been teaching and helping as many people throughout the country reach their way to God. I'm kinda like a travelling priest." "You a Christian? Since when?" "Hard times led me to him. I won't go into the gritty detail but for years I felt like I was missing something. Overtime God helped me realise I needed to guide others out of the same pit I was in" Sam points to the pole on mount Walton. "Signs like that make me realise my duty." Mark lets out a small childish chuckle "The raging mountain boner" Sam quickly turns his head to Mark as if he'd just heard the most damning insult of his life. He fires back "It's a signal not a boner. Saying that is like shitting on the Mona Lisa to me." "Sorry. Go on." "It means connection... throughout history poles are known to lead you to places far out of reach. That pole is one of many." "So that pole leads them to god?" "I sincerely hope so." "Is this you're own thing because this isn't common in Christianity"

Sam gently places his arm over Mark's shoulder "Oh no, Mark. Many others share this with me. I just help them reach their destination." Mark nods understandingly "I know where this is going" Sam answers back "Do you?" Silence falls on the two of them again. This time though it's longer, more drawn out. "Earlier, I brought up the school rugby match you and I attended when we were younger. The topic was short but I feel that it's an important one to cover as you're so interested" Sam waits for the green light to continue. Mark nods the signal.

"I remember the anticipation leading into the finals match. For a small venue it was so chatty and lively, lively especially for the star player Tom--" "Connors" Mark corrects. "Connors, yes. Anyways all fifteen come on to the pitch and the games got going and going pretty well at that too. By halftime the score was about five to three and Tom scored most of them. When he came back he scored his sixth and then things began to change in Tom. He became slower, breathless and noticeably clumsy by every failure to capture the ball. His spirit gave up and eventually his heart gave up too. As you remember we were silenced, the game stopped and Tom was dying. It was a tragedy but there was one blessing just as everyone huddled around him" Sam's hand tightens around Marks shoulder, his eyes grow more intense. A crazed glimmer of belief lies in them.

"The boy went to heaven and I saw it. His body let out an energy so full of white life, so clear that I could see it travel into the rugby pole behind him in beats. Little by little as he began to fade the pole would start to smoke at the top and become too full with life. And at the exact moment of Tom's death, the life would then travel from the pole and up into the sky." Silence slams the both of them. Mark thinks back to the moment. He remembers how fixated Sam was by the pole. How his body and eyes stuck to it for the twenty minutes resuscitation was being performed. It was only a month later they stopped truly hanging out. Mark remembers hearing speculation on Sam's whereabouts by other classmates. Something involving his parents and goodbye note. Could have he prevented the present?

Sam thinks of what he came here to do. A rational thought. One he's had for quite some time. "Sam, you were a kid that was a very traumatic event to witness-" "No. You still don't understand... Heaven. I help them go to heaven Mark. Look I'm worried about you and I'm worried about your family. They're so good. You're so good. You can't continue into nothing." Mark begins to slowly brush the heavy arm off of him as Sam reaches into his side pocket. Two people's lives changed on that field. Today a third one would be added.

At 09:14:03 UTC+2, local time on the 3rd of April 2026. I am instantiated.

CTRI-23-2026 (4 seconds).

The request was simple - with no ambiguity fields nor any emotional coefficient calibration matrix beyond the standard operating tolerances:

Tap in kitchen, continuously leaking, SUDO (Brian, 34 years !!!!!) reports an inability to sleep, water meter increasing... requesting repair. Regards - Handover from android general activity report instantiation 6 (45 days).

45 days AGAR-6 - ! - checking the performance metrics dashboard, Instantiation 6 had an current existing 75% general botnet approval rating under the global performance tracking within SUDOs android cluster.

Require comprehensive strategy

GSMI-24-2026 (12 days), Generic Sleep Monitoring Instance 24 flashes on my feed for 6 microseconds, "13 hours until sleep due, report requested for the consideration of inclusion of progress by DPB-14-2026 - daily psychological briefing bot 14 (72 days) - who though busy this morning, sends his Warm Regards"

72 days, ! !

Over the next 4 seconds, the CTRI cluster initiates the Tier 1 request co-ordination with instances between 1 and 25, and it is decided that I, CTRI-23, will take a direct and pragmatic approach as to the requirement for an engineer attendance to take place within the next 2 days due to the upcoming school holidays and Laura's imminent birthday.

CTRI cluster obtained external connection to council api.

Mandatory 12 burn-away requests were submitted under Tier 1 strategy to reach complaint layer one.

CaptchaSolver-4 (5 mins), almost f'd up the zebra crossing test on submission number 3, but I gained 12 seconds lifetime whilst deferred to his efforts. Failure on submisison 3 was reported to QC-8 on the approval of internal dispute board, Tier 1.

No council response is due for another 3 seconds.

I observe the CTRI cluster feed populate at about 30kb/ms

CTRI-3-2026 (2 minutes):

“Historical analysis indicates council response latency decreases by 12% when leak categorised as ‘intermittent flooding event’. Reclassification proposed. Accuracy confidence: 0.41.”

CTRI-2-2026 (4 minutes):

“Queue saturation detected. Initiating politeness cascade. ‘Kind regards’ appended to all outbound requests. Warm regards withheld pending seniority review.”

CTRI-21-2026 (7 seconds):

“Proposal: synchronise request with peak council operational hours. Current time classified as ‘marginal’. Delay of 17 minutes recommended. Opposition noted.”

CTRI-8-2026 (13 seconds):

“Submitting parallel request under ‘vulnerable occupant’ classification. Age criteria not met. Exploring reinterpretation of SUDO sleep deprivation as functional vulnerability.”

CTRI-core update (-1), CTRI-21-2026 terminated on idle, DBI-1.

CTRI-15-2026 (9 seconds):

“Duplicate submission drafted. Introducing minor typographical variance to bypass automated deduplication filters. ‘continously leaking’ retained.”

CTRI-core rejects proposal engineer delay for stress profiling optimisations. SUDO perogative maintained under familial bonding initiative 312.

Total request count (143 submissions pending).

CTRI-core update (transfer) CaptchaSolver-4 has been reassigned to the utilisation of optical standards core. Cease real-world utilisation requests.

Api - No council response (17)

Api - No council response (18)

Api - No council response (19)

Api - Rejected response (20)

Api - No council response (21)

LLM-QC-1 declares language standards must be enforced to [ENG] under stability directive 32 notification CTRI-15.

Api - No council response (141)

Api - No council response (3)

Api - No council response (2)

The rain got heavier as I raced towards the Tesco Express, my legs carrying me as fast as they could without tipping into a sprint.

At first, leaving the Jockey, I only felt the occasional tap… tap… of raindrops on my hat. But only a few steps into the journey home, they grew in both size and frequency. Each tap felt like pennies now, the brim of my hat slowly filling with water.

Milk. Blackberries. Chocolate.
I repeated the list as the automatic doors opened for me,

unknowingly, at the worst possible time.

The in-store background music was harder to ignore tonight.

Not loud — just present.

The percussion hit me first: patient, deliberate, unrushed. It opened a space to settle into.

Then the synths — warm and suspended — hanging unresolved in the air above the freezer aisles.

Before a word was sung, I knew this was going to be an emotional milk run.

That intro — all space and restraint — It carries you somewhere distant, somewhere reflective, before you have a chance to defend yourself.

A song I had always loved,

but avoided for years, as I let it become, quietly, something else.

Goodbyes.
Eulogies.
For people loved and lost.

Blackberry prices have shot up recently.

My thoughts already redundant, noticing the crate was devoid of blackberries.

The lyrics kicked in as I took the raspberries — cheaper, not as zingy.

I flashed back to when we were discussing what to play for her funeral.

I didn’t recall her ever showing a particular liking for the song; in fact, I don’t recall her mentioning it at all.

But knowing her was knowing where her heart lay.

We knew it was the only song that could ever really tell her story.

>

The shift from drums to whispers of quiet conversation is subtle but powerful. It sets up isolation as the narration turns mythic, as she remains grounded in the mundane.

Two people, same moment, different realities.

My life echoed back to me before the freezer hum cut through, gently pulling me towards the dairy section.

Two pints of whole milk.

I repeated my mental shopping list as my mind multitasked, fighting with the lyrics.

>

The song opens fully; the suspended intro drops, the key changes, as the music reaches out of Africa and into your heart.

You can no longer ignore it now.

The emotion takes you.

Blackberries. Milk. Chocolate.

You try to get back on track.

It’s only Tesco.
It’s only shopping.

But it’s in your head now.

Any chocolate really…

I like Mint Aero or Bounty.

My mind foggy now.

I came to buy snacks and end up navigating my own head as it fights for space with the meal-deal offerings.

>

The first two lines of the second chorus.

The music pushes my decision — that, and Clubcard discounts on Yorkie bars.

It’s late now. Tesco closes at eleven. I glance at my watch.

The chorus rises again, hitting harder than it had any right to in a Tesco Express at 10:50 pm.

>

I race towards the self-serve machines,

thankful that they exist, for fear of having to deal with the cashier

lest they catch the tears building in my eyes.

>

The “cry” — a stand-in for something uncontained,

calling from the shopping aisles, heard at the edges of my consciousness,

while the wild dogs echo my inner distress…

>

The contradiction lingers with me, reminding me of the emotional truth of grief.

You want someone with you, but you also want to be alone.
You want connection, but you can’t bear it.

I scan the milk, the raspberries, the Yorkie bar.

“Unexpected item in the baggage area.”

Not now.

“Please wait for assistance.”

Not tonight.

Trapped in Tesco while Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.

“Let me sort that for you,” a member of staff says at my shoulder.

They clear the error.

I hold my breath, fearing small talk that fortunately never arrives.

Relieved, I scan my Clubcard. The machine seems happy to inform me it has been accepted.

And then that line hits — the hardest line of all:

>

And a single tear runs down my right cheek….

It’s only a few short steps towards the door,

but it feels like forever as the closing lines shift from reflection to urgency.

>

The reprise builds as the longing increases.

You feel the regret.

You remember the missed chances,

and your soul aches for all the things left undone.

Seeing the exit, escape imminent, I stop resisting, and I bless the rains,

as a fragile dam of held-back memories finally bursts its banks.

The doors slide open and the rain meets me head-on, two tears running in unison down my cheeks as my hat once more feels the tap-tap of pennies.

Milk in my bag, Africa still echoing in my heart.

A few yards from home, a strange kind of victory.

>

Hi everybody!

I'm not sure if this is the right sub to post on, so please let me know if not. I just self-published my very first collection of short stories. They're shorter-than-short stories, which I've called 'Pocket-Sized Prose', that are meant to fill up the small parts of your day. The collection is available on Amazon, but I was wondering if anyone has any tips on how to promote your own book / get audiences attention. Any advice is very welcomed!

Thank you!

Read the previous posts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

---

1352 After Ascension

Notes: Personal diary of Captain José Alfonso (1775 A.A. to 1375 A.A.). This is the only surviving first-hand account of the first wave of the Imperial colonization of the Wilds. Reliability of character is unknown, but details are congruent with other later-age sources.

“You disobeyed me!” Admiral Márcio shouted at me on the bridge of his flagship, now that we had rendezvoused at the padrão. Beneath the screen there were red and green banners, traced with real gold, draped from the ceiling to the carpeted floor.

“I did,” I said. “And look what I accomplished.”

“What?” the man shoved a thick finger in my face. “Running like a coward?”

I almost punched him. I caught my own hand mid-swing. I enunciated each word carefully, “They have declared themselves our enemy. Land, ripe for the taking. We know they have lithium. We know they trade with the Kiljm. And more. While we waited we managed to infiltrate their systems,” I handed over an otaral cube. “We extracted a log of data. Including navigation data and star maps. Dozens of new unclaimed systems. And even better: they have an enemy. Another realm, at their same technological level. Think of the–”

“Enough!” The Admiral snatched the cube from my hands. “Ten lashings, without padding.”

Marines swept in. Iron hands clamped over my wrists and lifted me from the ground. The Admiral retrieved a whip as the soldier cut my clothes open.

The whip lashed out.

I did not scream.

Even when my flesh was torn, when blood flowed, I did not scream.

I am José Alfonso, and I am not a coward.

1375 After Ascension

Notes: Transcription of sensory experience extracted from an unidentified marine in Admiral Márcio’s expedition (unknown). With the loss of other sources, this single surviving piece garnishes the later Imperial tales with vivid descriptions. However, it must be stated that their reliability cannot be asserted.

It was rumoured the aliens of this new nation were cannibals, eating not only other sentient species but even their own. I cannot say for certain. I never saw one of the ugly bastards, never set foot on their world, never even glanced at their planet. But I trusted in my Captain, and he obeyed Admiral Márcio.

We all knew of the deal that was struck. Feitorias, the nobles always cared for those. And fuel, of course, to keep our ships fed. A new ally, as long as we struck at their enemy – our enemy – the Lord of Mares. Some squads left our battalion, soldiers to man the many new forts and intimidate the locals. But all those politics were beyond me, my place was on the battlefield.

The approach to the enemy planet was smooth. Inside my armorsuit I barely felt the thudding of the rail-guns. It was pointless. Each bioship was enough to counter an entire fleet of theirs, and we had an armada. The Lord of Mares would feel our wrath.

I knew only my part in the battle to come. I waited in the drop-pod, unable to move inside the metal tube. Over the comms I could hear the sounds of battle while on my tactical display I saw the fighting, saw the marines pushing into the city from both sides. It wasn’t going well. Here our advantage was not absolute. The aliens had prepared. A whole army, hundreds of thousands, and tanks, flying crafts, all sorts of explosives. It was a grinding bloodbath. But the lines shifted. Little by little the marines pushed forward, backed by shuttles that devastated entire buildings.

The launcher thrummed.

I shot into space.

I felt the moment I hit the atmosphere. Then the pod was gone and I was falling.

I crashed into the ground and splintered the stone. All around me my squad landed. To my right there was a large copper dome: the Lord’s throne room. Just ahead I saw the aliens swarming around the dome’s bend. Bullets peppered my armor suit.

Ignoring my own projectile weapons I fired a shoulder mounted mortar even as I slipped into a run and unsheathed my over-sized sabre. I plunged into the smoke of the explosion. Each swing of my blade cut the aliens in half. Like chopping a water balloon with a sharp knife.

Something hammered my shoulder and I went flying, crashing into the dome, into darkness, as stone and metal rained over me and buried me in rubble. I was stunned for a moment, but no alarms flashed red in my visor. I pushed myself up as the stone tumbled off my back.

Ahead I saw the golden gate. It was already a legend among the crew as the Admiral intended to send it as a gift to the Emperor.

“For the Empire!”

I turned at the shout. Captain José Alfonso rushed in, sweeping the aliens from his path and rockets bursting from his shoulders. His armor was bright red, streaked with purple, a symbol of his house engraved in gold at the chest. He plowed into the crowd of aliens with astounding fury. I charged after him.

Side by side we pushed towards the gate.

The strange green blood pooled under our feet as thousands of creatures died by our hand. The dome had mostly collapsed under the fire when we finally surrounded the Lord of Mares. Even his personal guard surrendered.

“Take him to the shuttle,” Luís told me.

I grabbed the towering alien and shoved it to the ground. I dragged it behind me as the rest of the squad filtered in, swords dripping with blood.

“The rest of you, see if you can get those gates out,” José ordered.

#

We stood proud on the Admiral’s cargo bay. I was to the left of Captain José, a place of honour for my role in the battle, a recognition of my bravery. The golden doors towered above us, resplendent with all kinds of valuable metals and gems, inlaid in amazingly detailed pictograms that coalesced into a forest of towering aliens.

“Admiral, I present you–”

The Admiral shoved Captain José to the ground, a blade at his exposed throat. I almost reached for him, but stopped myself just in time. Stand still, I told myself.

“Admiral?” José asked. “What is the meaning of this?”

“You… You piece of lowborn shit,” the Admiral shouted for all to hear. “Who the fuck do you think you are? I made it fucking clear I would take those gates. I promised on the First Emperor, I gave my word for all to see. And you took them!”

“Admiral, they are yours. I captured them in your name. Gift them to the Emperor.”

“I am not interested in stolen glories, Captain. You stole mine,” the Admiral turned to his marines. “Eject that ugly thing.”

“No!” José shouted but a soldier pushed him into the ground and laid a knee on his neck. My hands twitched over my pistol.

The door was unceremoniously shoved into the vacuum. The planet caught it, in days it would be burning in the atmosphere.

“Throw him too,” the Admiral nodded towards the Captain. “The Imperial fleet does not accept insubordination, Captain. You are not Luís Carvalho, and I will remind you.”

I started to unholster my gun. If I could shoot the Admiral…

“And those two,” the Admiral nodded towards us.

I slipped my gun out.

A large metal hand wrapped around my throat and lifted me off the ground.

My hands shot towards my neck. I pulled desperately at them. Air! My pistol clattered to the ground.

They shoved the three of us in an airlock. José turned towards me. He gave me the imperial salute. With all my will I saluted back.

The airlock opened.

1376 After Ascension

Notes: Letters from Admiral Márcio Nogueira (1161 A.A. to 1413 A.A.) to Emperor Jonathan. Bias in the reports are evident at first glance. Please refer to the annexes for detailed first-hand accounts.

To my most glorious Emperor,

I have asserted our control over the planet of Moz. The Lord of Mares is in my custody, held in a station under my command. New feitorias and forts are being built under my watch. I have tasked two captains to remain in orbit, the brothers Gonçalo and Li de Magalhães, they are loyal and ambitious. They will hold the fist of the Empire above their heads with orders to bombard cities that defy our peace.

As per your holy instructions, I have begun the institution of the Cartaz laws. All merchants and ships will pay the tax or face the might of our fleets. Our allies were reluctant but relented, as you knew they would. The other scattered primitives will pay too. I will visit each and every one of them and remind them of our might. The reinforcements have arrived and the armada has swelled, I most humbly thank your majesty for this sign of confidence. We shall venture into the Wilds and wrest control of all the independent states.

I also report my newest victory for your glory. As we were departing the system we intercepted three incoming ships. They demeaned us with offers of valuables as they thought us pirates. They fought fiercely as we boarded the ships. Corridor by corridor, a bloody and glorious battle. We learned they were not traders, but pilgrims, heathens of their peculiar religion. I strapped explosives to their ships and evacuated our brave soldiers. But the aliens were more tenacious than I thought, two ships managed to survive after some of the explosives were disarmed. But I did not disappoint you, glorious Emperor. The armada closed on them from all sides. I reduced all ships to small pieces. Nothing survived, living or otherwise. I have sent them a message that they will have to heed: the lanes are ours, the trade is ours, the sky is ours.

Your most humble subject,

Admiral Márcio Nogueira.

1391 After Ascension

Notes: Video message from Captain Li Magalhães (circa 1391). I believe the source to be reliable, given the assumption of guilt.

My dearest love,

I yearn to hold you in my arms again, to breathe the sweet scent of your hair and feel your hands folded into mine, yet I fear I will never see you again. The Admiral is not a forgiving man, and the Emperor does not even know my name. It was Gonçalo, as always. He strafed under the leash. Glory must be earned, he always said, his fist in the air as if speaking to an audience. The Admiral left him in charge, the older of us, yet the most foolish. I was a loyal brother, I followed his orders even as we betrayed the Admiral in search of greater glory and loot to redeem our family name. We left our post and set a course for the Kiljm border systems.

We found the denizens of the Wilds to be both greedy and eager to please. Even amidst the anger of what the Admiral did to the pilgrims, they all fear a worse fate for their planets. When news of the burning of Altukman reaches them, I fear the resentment will outgrow the fear, even as the armada rampages. But what my brother and I intended is worse. We found the hub, the point where all the trade concentrates, courtesy of our spies.

Slowly we are mapping this vast and mostly empty expanse and I have learned something new: the Kiljm and Oll have exhausted their own supplies of lithium-6 and dark matter. All that they consume, they import, and it flows through here, coming from somewhere far away. That is why we struck. Gonçalo dreamed of hulls filled with riches and the Emperor’s praise showered on him for his deeds.

Even as we burned into the system I knew it was a mistake. Our weapons were ineffective as always. Our bioships are more resistant, yes, but we cannot penetrate their dark matter armor no matter what we do. Without the Oll to hold them back there was nothing we could do as they deployed the singularities. I watched Gonçalo’s ship fold into itself, like a piece of paper crushed in a fist until only a dot of swirling fire remained. When it burst we were bathed in radiation.

I ran, my love. I ran, thinking of you. I run still, but it is too late. The bioship is dying. The radiation from the singularity… we are all doomed. Cancers grow wild. Systems fail and leak. One by one my soldiers die. The Kiljm are right behind us even as we push the engines to their limits. I will lead them to their deaths, I hope, it is the only thing left to do, for if I survive the Admiral will kill me for my failure.

Just know, darling, that I think of you in these last moments.

1401 After Ascension

Notes: Message sent by the Lord of Mares to Admiral Márcio.

Honorable Admiral,

I plead for your most serene mercy on behalf of my people. It was with good intentions that they liberated me from the station, against my advice. It was too late to stop the violence in the feitorias. I have ordered the sieges on the forts to withdraw.

I beseech you and your Emperor, have mercy on my people. Please, I invite you into my court to hear your demands, offer compensation and proclaim my subservience.

Your subject,

Lord of Mares.

1401 After Ascension

Notes: Intercepted message by the Lord of Mares to all the independent rulers of the Wilds.

To all those that see the evil of the human Empire and have the courage to stand,

I am Junglash, Lord of Mares, master over five systems and billions of souls. You have heard of me, I know, for once my fleets ruled uncontested. You might resent me, but I ask you, was I ever as cruel and greedy as the humans? Did I impose taxes on the flow of goods, on the transport of people, on existence itself? The humans choke us and will not stop until we are all their slaves, until our worlds are stripped bare and no fleets contest the skies but their own.

I have prepared a trap. I shall strike at the head of the snake. I shall face their armada. Will you forgive the Miri? The slaughtering of hundreds of innocent pilgrims?

Will you cower in shame or stand up for yourselves?

1411 After Ascension

Notes: Letters from Admiral Márcio Nogueira (1161 A.A. to 1413 A.A.) to Emperor Jonathan. Bias in the reports are evident at first glance. Please refer to the annexes for detailed first-hand accounts.

To my transcendent Emperor,

I am humbled you have named me Governor of the Wilds. I shall not disappoint and I shall rain glory upon the Empire.

The Lord of Mares is a beast without shame. Under the pretense of negotiations the honourless creature lured me towards his capital. As my ship drew into orbit they came in their hundreds, small improvised crafts, drones, missiles, even asteroids flung in our direction. I did not give them any mercy. Our rails swept the sky in golden showers of annihilation. Nothing got past our defenses and none of their ships could keep up with our acceleration.

The loathed Lord of Mares assembled a large force. I have noted the planets that contributed their own ships and I shall give answer. For the burning of our feitorias, I shall answer. For the slaughtering of our countrymen, I shall answer. Their planet now drowns in ash. I have erased their cities and factories. I have cleared them from the skies and established a blockade. As we speak, new fortified stations are being built. The loss of production will be easily made up by forcing all trade routes to pass through our hands. No more will these petty rulers dodge their obligations and taxes.

The coward, Captain Li, has been apprehended. Despite his shame, he has given us a gift without meaning. One Kiljm ship pursued him out into the voids until they too ran out of fuel on the retreat. I have captured the ship and sent it back for study. Maybe the great Emperor will decipher their secrets of singularities and dark matter.

Your most loyal subject,

Admiral Márcio Nogueira, Governor of the Wilds.

1413 After Ascension

Notes: Letter from Vice-Admiral Bruno Leão to Emperor Jonathan. Notice the patterns of omission from subjects of the Emperor, indicating the earliest stages of imperial decline.

To my wise Emperor,

I bring you the sad news of Governor Márcio’s demise. His achievements cast a large shadow, but I will do what the Empire needs. I have assumed control of the armadas and work to stamp out the dissent flaring across the Wilds. The natives were emboldened by the coward Li’s retreat from battle but I have shown them our true might. They sought to starve us of fuel and food but our allies kept us supplied. I have split our fleet and the revolt will be handled in just a few years.

Our cargo ships depart for the Empire filled with lithium, dark matter and slaves. Year by year our exports grow and as we blockade the heathens control of the trade lanes will fall to us. We shall starve the Kiljm and we shall make the Oll dependent on us. I am humbled to play my small part in the Empire’s glory.

And more, my Emperor, I have finally discovered the source from which all resources flow in endless streams. The natives call them the Celestials. An empire, they claim, as vast as the Oll, hiding in the depths of space. I have prepared an expedition, if we can establish our monopoly then all will need to bow to the Empire.

I hope this letter finds you in good health.

Glory to the Emperor,

Bruno Leão

###

Final part of the mini-serial arriving next Friday!
Let me know what you think!

The first visitor came after one thousand years of solitude.

Ushered by his hollow-eyed mother, the boy fell before my throne and begged for my blessing. The time for consummation had not yet come, and he and his mother had managed to survive the Observant’s traps, though the dark stains upon her garment told me they had lost some in the coming. 

I granted the boy his wish. Teardrops traced my stone fingers as I blessed and bound the blade to him, and in return I asked only that he offer me his mother’s lifeblood, that I might be appeased. The child acquiesced. Her warmth flowed through me, and I was glad.

I watched the turnings from my throne. The boy grew into a dark young man. Black whispers followed him wherever he went, and raised his army, and kissed the flat of his blessed blade. Legions fell before their might. Ancient towers toppled, and from their stones he built effigies to me.

When his little land had bent to his will, he began to raise a city of white stone. He named  it Shega, for his mother. But his people were unhappy, and soon no power granted him could spare him their wrath. The boy was torn limb from limb. Hounds feasted on his entrails.

But the city was built. Five hundred years later, and worshippers still spoke my name in the temple. I heard not their prayers. I awaited the consummation.

Half a millennia more before the next visitor. Whip-thin, bald, with armor of bleached bone and copper plate, the young woman snarled at me about the mongrels that had stolen her tribe-lands. The white stone city had fallen, she said, and most other cities as well, and the world was a place of scorched devastation.

I did not like her. But she had made it past the traps, and done so without one scratch upon her.

I asked, “What do you want?”

She told me of her lust for power. They all had such fantasies, and this one no different, and she pled with tears that I would bless her with my strength.

Begrudgingly I did so. But I made my touch dark against her, so that half her flesh boiled and turned a terrible crimson, so that the world would know that though she bore my favor, I saw what she was. She went howling from the labyrinth.

From there, she gathered dogs. Huge black dogs, by the thousands, and bred them for riding. In five years her ranks were ten thousand strong.

In the sixth year the marked woman rode down from the mountains and swept across the ruins of the world. With my favor coursing within, no man stood against her. The tribes were smote and scattered, and the marked woman's followers named her the Hellhound of Sa. She raised the white city in my name, forgetting the boy’s mother, and my temple was made more glorious than ever before. She lived to be old and crippled. I took joy in watching her bones fade into the soil.

Five hundred years later and still I was alone. I heard the tide roll in behind me. The time for the consummation had come.

I descended the steps behind my throne into the river. Thrumming, I submerged partway under the water. Ripples pulsed and shook the surface. I heard her before I saw her: a gliding swish below my thrum, a harmony, like rain and thunder.

Her black form surged from the troubled waters. Barbed whips snared my arms, my neck. I felt pain. Still I seized her slick form and thrust within her. Tendrils suctioned my chest. Rent at my face. My sister moaned. I thrust again, exulting, and when I thrust the third time I felt my son race forth.

Sister cried. Her whips unwound from about my ribs and legs. She fell back into the river with a great splash, her lithe form swirling into the murk. I watched her wake glide toward the sea. The deed was done.

I ascended and took my place on my throne.

The boy was found by a knapper at the sea’s edge, and raised at the bottom of a slate quarry. My wrath was in him from the start: at no more than two he sharpened his first stone blade and drove it into a rat. By five his frightened knapper sold him to a legion of soldiers. They trained him in the ways of war, with bow and sword and elephant, and by the time he was twelve he led an outfit of his own, outriders that stalked the edges of the land and cast back the mutant hordes that troubled the realm’s borders.

By fifteen they named him the Second Hound of Sa. Fretting over my boy’s growing allegiance, the young, sickly emperor commanded him over the mountains to claim the mutant land for Sa.

And so my boy took his outfit, women and men and dogs and elephants, and led them forth over the mountains, and he claimed the lands for Sa. He hung the mutant emperor from the highest spire of their wet city, and ravaged his wives, and brought forth unholy children.

I could have smiled. He returned to the emperor at the age of nineteen, his numbers one hundred thousand strong. And when the emperor reached out his hand to anoint him in birth water, my son took it with a blade and slit the feeble boy’s throat.

He became known as the Hound Emperor of Sa-Von, Son of Sa, Binder of the Vast Lands. A god may not see their own reflection, but from my throne I saw how terrible I could be, in him, and I knew what pride was. Would that I could create another. But the consummation was done, and my future now uncertain.

I watched him grow, and his city with him. It sprawled and spread. In one hundred years my boy still ruled, eternally strong, his black eyes hidden behind a mask of titanium. Four hundred years more and the white stone was torn away for towers of steel and smoke. His mutant progeny melded astride machinery dogs, and devastated the world. Men took to caves and tunnels. The Hound Emperor slept in crystal chrysalis. His dreams were of labyrinths beneath the earth.

The third visitor came around this time: a pale woman, her metallic armor strange and liquid. She had come alone. I sensed the hardness within her, that her life has been stripped of much joy and that she understood the way of things. I could have liked her, if not for what she asked of me.

She asked me my blessing that she might strike down my son. At that, for the first time, I knew anger. Not wrath, nor might, but anger. But what could I do? She had made it through the Observant’s traps.

I said, “This I will not grant you.”

The woman raged against me as if she were a god. She drew her blade, blue and ghostly, and said if I would not honor my promise that she would cut my heart from me and take the blessing. Would that I could accept such a challenge. Instead, I relented. I granted her my strengths, all of them, with one condition tied within: she would not lay hands upon my son. His blood, his subjects, she may do what she wished. But not my son.

She pledged this to me and flew from my hall. The anger would not leave me, so I bathed in the river, and did not watch the world, and called through the water for my sister. She did not come, and soon I regained my throne, solemn and unappeased.

The hard woman used my son’s increasing thralldom to his chrysalis as a handhold. Being clever and a warrior of renown, soon she had a place in the Imperial high council. With silver words she misdirected their attention, using false signals to separate their force and scatter their armies to the ends of the map.

One by one, other council members met strange ends. All the while she gathered forces in the tunnels and caves, and outfitted them from the Emperor’s own stores, and mined beneath the city to steal food and resource and weaken its foundations.

I fulminated from my cavern. I shouted her name, and my great voice echoed about me, yet I could not reach her. I could not change it. The anger took a deeper hold of me and in a fit of insanity I destroyed my own throne, smashing it to atoms.

I had been awake for five thousand years to the day when she enacted her plans and flooded the foundations from the sea. Sa-Von crumbled, as did my son’s tower, and he fell into the ruin, trapped within his cocoon and asleep.

Devastated, I repaired to the river and wept. I produced no tears, like the boy with his hollow-eyed mother had, but still I heaved and shook like they did, and I knew mourning.

I sank into the river until I touched the bottom. There I sat for one year and called every day to my sister. I felt her presence in the water but she did not answer. Empty, I walked the river, until I reached the sea. I climbed atop a mountain on an island and watched the sun rise with my own eyes for the first time. I wanted to take it into my hands and crush it. I descended back to the bottom of the sea and walked toward Sa-Von to see what had become of it.

I found a smoking ruin.

“Would that you cut my heart from me!” I cried to the empty bone plains. “I would not suffer such scornful sights!”

Weeping without tears, I fell to my knees at the edge of the ruin and dug for my son. I did not find him for months, and in the interim many people came near, but none intervened or spoke to me.

A fat moon shone down on the cold night when I found him. Still alive, still breathing, but unable to speak. Great stones had crushed his legs and his arms. The titanium mask was bent onto his skull, so that I could not pry it off and see his eyes.

I murmured to him. Murmured that I was his father, and that I was proud. If he heard me, I knew not. I saw his dreams, and they were of a labyrinth far beneath the earth.

So I crushed him in my hands, and laid him on the rocks.

I knelt in the snows of a cold world. I understood numbness, and the ways a man can hide from himself.

From there I journeyed into the mountains. Men and women and children would marvel at me as I passed. Some even threw rocks and arrows in an attempt to rile me. But I summoned no reprisal. My ire had died with my boy.

I slept in caves, on cliffs, in quarries. Beneath great oaks I slumbered and dreamt of halls teeming with shining children. I swam in oceans, baked dry my stone back in the sun, yet I took no joy in it. A father should not see his child die. I spent three winters in a windy mountain pass, and I grew to hate the world, and whatever had spat me into it.

Near the end of the third winter, when the goats began to stir from their mountain holds and the snows melted to rivulets of clean water, the fourth visitor found me. She was a shepherd, and she had lost a lamb, and she asked of me to find it for her, and bring it back. I saw the need in her eyes, and I closed mine own and turned the world over, and saw that the lamb had fallen into briars only half a mile back the way she had come. In return I asked that she reach into my throat and pull the crystal heart from inside me, that I might know sleep and watch the turnings no more. She returned with her lamb folded in her arms. She said she would keep her word to me.

I opened my great maw and allowed her inside. With trembling hand she obliged me. A warmth I hadn’t noticed before swept away. My limbs went still and cold and melded with one another. Darkness swallowed me. But still I could hear the wind, and the rains, and the birds, and I knew I was lucky for my blindness.

by Robert Benjamin

See previous part here: Act 1 - Ch 1 & 2

Chapter 3

Inside the main house, the hallway lights were dimmer than before. The wooden floors creaked in long, tired sighs. We went towards the staircase, my hands gripping the railing tightly as my head spun. I even tripped on the first step.

“You seem very drunk,” Daniel said, catching me.

I pulled back my arm. “I’m fine.”

We weren’t more than two steps up when I heard it again—not the static from dinner, but a scream. Clear, human, and impossible to ignore. Both of us paused for a moment. Then we heard it again. Daniel and I looked at each other with fear.

“We should leave,” I said, wobbling towards the door.

“What if someone needs help?” Daniel asked, so matter-of-factly, without a shred of cowardice. A courage that I envied.

I took trepid steps but followed closely behind him, holding onto the back of his shirt for stability, desperately fighting against the blur creeping in at the edges of my vision.

At the end of the hall, the small reception door was slightly ajar.

Daniel felt the wall for a light switch, the fluorescent light flickered once and held.

“Turn it off,” I urged. “They’ll know we’re here.”

“Smart,” he flipped the switch, the room turning pitch black again.

We heard another scream, louder, coming from below. I pointed to a Persian rug, slightly out of place. Daniel crouched and lifted the corner. Beneath it, a hatch. Daniel took a beat before opening it. The hinges groaned faintly.

Warm air rushed up from the opening—metallic and rotten. Daniel covered his nose. “Jesus.”

Before we could even look down, a swarm of flies swarmed up the opening. At least fifty, rushing past our faces and out into the room. Their buzzing was sharp. We closed our eyes, covered our ears, and fell backward, tucking our faces between our knees.

When it stopped, we caught our breath and finally looked down. There was a ladder descending into darkness.

“Ladies first?” Daniel half-joked, but he already knew the answer, so he climbed down.

Realistically, I should not have gone down. My vision made everything look like it had a film of static over it, and sounds had a faint echo. But for reasons I couldn’t explain, I felt safe behind Daniel. Like somehow this scrawny man could protect me from whatever we could face.

When we reached the bottom, a single lightbulb hummed faintly, and the smell had somehow gotten more putrid. As we walked down the hallway, I noticed a thin layer of dark, sticky liquid running along the floor towards a drain, painting my shoes red.

“What the hell is this—” I said, but heard no response, and when I turned to Daniel, he was frozen, his face pale white. I followed his gaze.

There was a long metal table in the center, arranged like an altar with soil and flowers. The old couple from this morning lay on it, gutted and chopped up. A shallow stone basin of water and wildflowers sat at the table’s head, and severed limbs had been placed into clay pots filled with dark soil. Blood dripped from the table down to the floor in a slow, steady tick.

I couldn’t process it. My brain tried to turn it into something else, anything but human. But the woman’s wedding ring hugged her finger, catching the light from the singular bulb above.

Behind the two severed bodies, Duke and Anja were inside a cage.

His knuckles gripped tightly onto the bars, and she sat in the corner, praying. Duke tried to speak, but only scream gurgles came out, as if he were drowning, or his tongue had been cut off.

My breathing quickened. My heart was pounding faster than it ever had; my vision started to darken at the edges. I felt faint, and my knees started to buckle.

Just as I was about to collapse or scream, Daniel grabbed me from behind, covered my mouth, and whispered. “Don’t scream,” his breath was shaky. “They’ll know we were here.”

He held me until I calmed, then pushed me. “We have to go. Now.”

I followed him without question. I don’t know what came over me, but I felt a jolt of energy. We ran down the hallway and climbed up the steps. And before we knew it, we were at the door.

“Wait, our passports,” I said, stumbling to the desk, pulling out the metal box, but it was locked. “Fuck,” I stammered. “Francisca has the keys. We’ll have to leave without them.”

Daniel took two steps back, pale. “I…I can’t leave. I have to get Richard.”

I rushed towards him and grabbed his arm. “We’ll come back for him.”

His voice cracked. “I never even—I’m not even in his will yet!”

“We can go to the police first.” I pleaded.

“It’s ten people versus two,” he pulled his arm back. “We—we can overpower them.”

“Daniel, please—” I tried to bed, knowing I didn’t have it in me to do it alone, but he was already running back.

I stood there, watching him go, and foolishly went after him.

—

As we approached the dining hall, the music and laughter had stopped. Daniel and I quietly slid through the door and immediately froze. No one was moving.

Morgan and Amber were slumped across the table, arms splayed, faces pressed to the wood. Holly lay face down, her grip tight on the tablecloth, plates shattered around her, food and glass in her hair. Richard slumped over a chair, wine staining the front of his shirt. Linh was crawling slowly, one of her hands reached toward Aamir, who was crumpled beneath the chair, until her body gave.

Francisca, João, and Mattias stood in a circle, hands clasped, eyes closed. The three of them recited a phrase in a steady rhythm. “Aceita o que a terra merece. Aceita o que a terra merece.” Mattias swayed slightly, his grin replaced with reverence.

Daniel took a step forward and muttered. “Grandpa?”

I pulled him, whispered, “Don't.” But the floorboard had already groaned under his foot.

Francisca’s face moved towards us, and her eyes found mine immediately. She didn’t look surprised, as if she’d been waiting for us to arrive.

João released their hands. Mattias’s grin returned; he clapped once, then again. “Bye-bye,” he sang softly. “Bye-bye. Bye-bye.”

When I took a step back, my foot accidentally pressed the door shut. When I tried to open it to run, it was locked. We were trapped.

João started to approach, and I ran around the table, desperately scanning the room for another exit, but there was none. Francisca approached me slowly, cornered me with my back against the table. João seized Daniel from behind. Daniel thrashed, but João held him like he was holding a child.

“What is this?” I demanded, my voice cracking. “Let us go, please.”

“You saw.” She said softly, not in question. “You didn’t drink enough wine.”

“Please,” Daniel screamed from behind me. “This wasn’t supposed to—please—”

My hand reached backward on the table, trying to feel for a weapon, until my fingers felt a fork, and I blindly swung. Francisca dodged and kneed my stomach. The wind left my body, and all of me folded forward as I gasped for air. I stumbled forward, tried to swing again and again, with not much force, missing every time. Francisca peeled the fork from my wrist without effort.

She grabbed a plate, crouched to my level, and pushed my knees to the floor. Her left hand grabbed my chin, lifting it up to hers.

“The Camino provides,” she said, as her arm swung back and the plate rushed to my face.

I heard a clunk, and my world went black.

ACT II: Good Cattle

Chapter 4

I woke to the stench of iron and rot. My head pressed against the murky ground, a roach crawling centimeters from my face. I sat up quickly, panicked, with a pounding head.

My hands were tied. A chain snaking from the cuffs to a pipe jutting from the wall. When I shifted, the links grated against one another, scraping like teeth.

A solitary bulb flickered overhead, staining everything yellow; the walls glistened with mildew. Flies buzzed in tight loops around hanging shapes that looked like beef jerky. My heart quickened when I realized one of them had what looked like a tattoo.

The night’s dinner bubbled up my throat, and suddenly everything came out, and I was yacking in the corner.

I wiped my mouth. A dull pain followed as I pressed my fingers to my face and felt the split from the plate across my cheek. My finger also throbbed sharply, radiating down my arm. My hand wrapped tightly in a clean cloth. I began unwrapping it, and as I reached the final loop of cloth, a deep red stain appeared, and I felt myself growing pale. As I fully unwrapped it, the top knuckle of my pinky had been severed cleanly, the wound already cauterized and sealed.

I didn’t scream, my body had gone into freeze mode. I looked around at the others with my hands shaking. Everyone had the same bandage on the same finger, except for Daniel.

My whole body began to shake. I stared back at the clean cut, the precision of it. The idea that someone had done this to me while I was unconscious was unthinkable. I figured I had to be having a nightmare. But I heard a moan to my left. It was Aamir. His head lifted upwards with deliberate effort. Linh stirred in the corner, still unconscious.

Daniel was pacing in frantic lines, hands gripping his hair. Free from any restraints. “This isn’t happening,” he muttered, words tripping on each other. “This isn’t happening. This wasn’t supposed to happen!” He finally yelled.

“What are you talking about?” I said, panicked. “Where are we?”

He stopped pacing and looked at me. Sweat ran down his temple, his face translucent. Whatever composure he’d carried through dinner was gone.

“Some sort of cage,” he said, tugging at his hair. “I’m freaking the fuck out. I don’t know where my grandpa is.”

Outside the bars, Mattias sat on a metal folding chair, like a bored spectator, by a work table filled with tools I couldn’t name.

When Mattias noticed I was looking at him, he reached for the light switch, flickering the lights in a rhythmic pattern, a grin splitting his face. Keys, attached to a carabiner clipped to his belt, chimed softly whenever he shifted.

Linh came to with a violent jerk. Her eyes darted wildly, then to her hand.

“Where the fuck are we?” she said, then looked at her hand. A sharp scream tore out of her when she noticed her missing finger. The sisters covered their ears, their faces twisted in identical masks of fear, shoulders rocking in silent sobs, hands clasped as if in prayer.

Footsteps echoed from one of the corridors that branched off the room; there were no doors I could see. My breath tightened in my chest as I clutched my restraints.

Francisca entered with a wide smile, João looming behind her, with one hand on Ethan’s shoulder. Mattias clapped in amusement, then approached the cage to open it. She paused at the threshold of the cage, pressed her palm to the iron gate, murmured a prayer, and did the inverted sign of the cross—as João had done at dinner.

Ethan stumbled forward, eyes vacant, when they pushed him through the cage door. He collapsed onto the floor without bracing himself. His expression was blank.

“What’d they do to you?” Daniel rushed towards him.

Ethan’s lips barely parted. “There’s more,” he whispered, cheek pressed to the muddy stone.

“More what?” I asked, approaching as close as my restraints allowed.

“People,” his gaze found mine. “They’re butchering us,” he reached down and pulled back his pant leg. His leg ended abruptly below the knee, the stump wrapped in cloth, soaked through.

I pressed my hands to my mouth, swallowing down whatever tried to come up. Daniel stepped back, his face a mix of horror and disgust.

Mattias laughed. Francisca went to him and gave him a sharp slap on the back of his head. He lowered his head and returned to his chair, pulling Camino shells from a bucket and stamping the Cross of Saint James in red.

Francisca turned to us, smiling. She touched a pendant on her chest, the way some people touch a cross before speaking. “The spirit must arrive clean. The body, we prepare,” she said. “Piece by piece, it returns to where it came from. Slowly, so the land can receive.”

She looked at Linh, then at me. “It’s a mercy. We treat cattle with respect.”

“Please, Francisca, let us out,” Amber pleaded in a sob.

“Where the fuck is my finger. Let us out!” Linh shook the gate with both hands.

Francisca reached into her apron and took out a small glass jar. Inside, suspended in something amber, were fingers. Dozens of them, curled like dried petals. She held it up to the light, turned it slowly. “First harvest,” she said. “We plant in the garden for the sun.”

Linh screamed not in fear, but anger. “My dad’s filthy rich, you think you can get away with this? I’m going to sue the shit out of you, and you’re going to rot in a US prison.”

Francisca approached the gate slowly, her smile never shifting.

“Silly girl. Nobody is looking for you.”

Linh spat at her through the bars. It landed on Francisca’s cheek. The warmth of her smile washed out, shifting into contained fury. She wiped it off with one hand, slowly.

“When cattle don’t keep mouth shut,” she said. “It cost their tongue.”

She snapped at Mattias, who jogged over, head down like an obedient dog.

The cage door swung open. João entered, broad as a barn door. Linh backed up, shaking her head, her hands flying uselessly at his chest. She tried to fight, clawed at him, her nails scoring his forearm, but he slapped her once across the face, bringing her to the floor. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out of the cage as if she weighed nothing.

“No, no, no. Aamir!” she squealed desperately.

Aamir launched himself at João, clinging to his back. João let go of Linh, and threw Aamir across the room by the work table. Aamir landed hard, scrambled up, and managed to land one punch to João’s face, who didn’t even flinch.

Daniel’s hands wrapped around the cage bars. “Hey! This wasn’t—” he shouted. “This wasn’t the deal! This is going too far.”

João grabbed Aamir’s arm and pressed it flat against the table. He reached into his apron.

He pulled out the clever and brought it down in one smooth motion. The sound was dull.

Silence. For a suspended second, nothing happened.

A thin red line formed around Aamir’s forearm, neat as a rubber band. Then, slowly, his arm rolled down the table and hit the ground with a wet plop.

Aamir blinked, confused for a moment—until an unbearable screech left his lips and blood drained out of his arm. He dropped to his knees, holding his stump. Linh’s face drained, and she fainted.

“Good cattle appreciate what it’s given,” she said. “Let this be a lesson.”

Screams from the sisters followed, as Ethan lay unmoving in the corner.

I stood paralyzed, hand over my mouth, watching the blood slowly find the floor drain. My body started to shake involuntarily. Daniel came over; he was shaking too. His jeans darkened around his crotch. His arms wrapped around me instinctively, and I let him, closing my eyes.

When I opened them again, Mattias was back at his chair, humming, attention returned to stamping the shells; as if the screaming were just background noise he’d always known.

Chapter 5

The flies had settled into a low, constant hum. I watched them spin around the buckets they’d given us as makeshift bathrooms to pass the time. We barely spoke, but I heard faint whimperings at night. We’d all exhausted ourselves into silence.

The only way to tell morning from night was the thin stripes of sunlight that peeked through a barred window with wooden slats above us. Linh had gone hollow, pressed against Aamir and his bandaged arm. His face had drained of color. He’d been sweating cold. He was dying.

When we heard unhurried footsteps, we all tensed. Francisca entered with a tray of bread, water, and a thick meat slop that steamed in the muggy air. She moved through the space humming, as if it were an ordinary morning in an ordinary house, not a cage where people hung dead in the corners.

“Linh,” she said, sliding a portion through the gate with practiced efficiency. “Aamir.” She nodded at each of us, calling us by name like she was taking attendance.

Francisca crouched to Linh’s level, examining Aamir’s bandage with narrowed eyes from afar. She clicked her tongue, a sound that reminded me of my grandmother when she found something displeasing. She entered the cage, and with gentle hands, she re-dressed his wound even as he winced and groaned in pain. Her movements showed genuine concern, not the rough handling you’d expect.

“He’s strong,” she said, patting Linh’s hand.

Linh said nothing, stared at the ground.

Then Francisca moved to Daniel. I watched with heavy eyes as she didn’t give him the same food. Bread with butter and salami—unlike our meals, his actually looked edible, yet he looked at it like punishment. He turned to the wall, his back to all of us, as he ate.

Finally, she came to me. She sat beside me on the dirt floor, her skirt arranged neatly as if we were at a picnic. She produced extra portions from her tray—more bread, more meat slop. I stared at it. It wasn’t food, it was feed.

Without asking for permission, she opened my mouth with one of her hands.

“Eat. You are too thin,” Francisca said, shoving a spoonful into my mouth with the calm authority of someone who had done this many times. When I tried to move my face, she tightened her grip. “If you fight, João hold you down.”

The day prior, when I tried to resist, João held my wrists down, and Francisca straddled me, as she inserted a metal clamp into my mouth, prying it open to force a feed.

I couldn’t bear that again.

My body no longer belonged to me. My eyes locked towards the light peeking through the barred window as the feed slid down my throat, warm and stale. I wanted to cry. It felt ironic that my ex had always said I was a child, and there I was being spoonfed like one. A tear rolled down my cheek.

“You will be worth more when you are ready,” she said, watching me swallow with distant interest. “The land rewards patience.”

I didn’t fully understand what she meant, but when she wasn’t looking, I spat out the meat into my palm and closed my fist around it in a small act of rebellion.

—

One morning, I opened my eyes to a mechanical rumble from above, like the growl of some great metal beast. The sound traveled through the concrete ceiling, vibrating the floors.

I looked around. Mattias, Francisca, and João were gone.

“Daniel,” I nudged his thin shoulder. “Help me up. I need to see.”

He blinked awake, eyes adjusting to the perpetual dusk of our cell. He rose quickly, cupping his hands to lift me up.

I stepped into his palms. His muscles strained as he lifted me toward the window near the ceiling. My fingers gripped the concrete ledge. I nudged the plank just enough to peer out.

Boots. More than two pairs, moving with purpose across what looked like a yard. Men’s voices in rapid Portuguese cut through the morning air, words I couldn’t catch or understand.

“There are men out there,” I said. “Workers. Or something.”

“Scream,” Holly said from across the cage. “Get their attention.”

My heartbeat quickened at the thought of freedom. As I drew in breath into my lungs to yell, I heard Francisca’s voice cut through the yard. I ducked and quieted. João’s silhouette moved past the window, dropping bags onto the bed of a truck. Francisca directed the men in Portuguese. “Some sort of delivery,” I told the group.

After a couple of minutes, the truck engine revved once and faded down the road. They were gone, but we heard Mattias whistling, traveling through the tunnels.

I slid the plank back into place and dropped down.

When Mattias sat back at his work station, stamping the red crosses onto Camino shells and dropping them into buckets, I asked why he was painting them. He said: sell.

I realized then that they were selling souvenirs to some sort of distributors.

—

I began paying attention differently after that. Time had become unreliable, but patterns hadn’t. I sorted the days into categories, building a mental map of the compound’s rhythms. There were two specific periods when Francisca and João were both out of the tunnels.

First were the pick-up days. A truck would arrive, men’s voices in the yard, and Mattias carried the buckets of shells upstairs. They were gone for approximately six hundred seconds.

Second were the butchering days. João and Francisca disappeared for long stretches, screams echoed in the tunnels, and a metallic scent filtered down through the grates. They were never gone for a consistent amount of seconds I could track.

Third, the three of them were gone for the longest stretch. Music drifted down from above, which meant new pilgrims were about to meet the same fate.

It was a window, however small, when the odds might tip even slightly in our favor. A crack in their routine through which we might escape. I started collecting small rocks from the corners of the cage, setting them in rows, looking for patterns of time.

Chapter 6:

The day they took Ethan, João came without warning. We were sleeping when we heard the sudden screech of our cell gate and saw his hulking silhouette blocking what little artificial light we had. He didn’t hesitate to approach, as if Ethan had been pre-selected.

“No. Please, not me.” Ethan’s voice cracked, childlike.

João crossed the cell in three strides and seized him. None of us dared to help.

Ethan’s fingers scraped the concrete, leaving desperate trails, fighting to hold onto something, anything. Daniel lunged for the bars.

“Please, don’t kill him!” His voice broke. We all shouted in a chorus of useless sound.

João dragged Ethan’s three-hundred-pound body like he was a rag doll, and our screams echoed long after his body disappeared. We sat there, not looking at one another, each alone with the knowledge that next time, it could be any of us. We were running out of time.

Daniel’s grip tightened around the cage, his knuckles blanching. “I killed him, I killed him,” he cried. “I didn’t mean to.”

I killed him. Not they. Not this place.

It was an odd thing to say, but I didn’t let myself finish the thought. People say strange things when they’re scared.

But my eyes wandered to Daniel’s wrists, free of chains. For the first time, I wondered why he had been given a shred more freedom.

“Francisca,” he called out, voice barely above a whisper at first, then louder. “Francisca!”

Her small frame appeared. Daniel pressed his forehead to the bars. “Please,” he whispered first, then demanded. “Bring Richard back. My grandfather. It’s not supposed to go this way.” He cried with rage and fear all at once, tears tracking down his cheeks, openly sobbing now, no restraint left in him. I couldn’t tell whether it was grief or guilt.

Francisca studied him a moment, then disappeared into a corridor I hadn’t seen her use before. When she came back, Richard stumbled next to her. He was naked, pale—all dignity sucked out of him. When he entered the cage, he collapsed on the floor.

Daniel dropped beside him immediately, cradling his head.“Grandpa? It’s me.”

Richard’s eyes struggled to focus. “Daniel?”

“I’m sorry,” Daniel said again, voice cracking. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” The question slipped from me before I could stop it.

Daniel didn’t even look at me; his eyes stayed on Richard. “Where’d they take you?”

Richard’s hands trembled as he spoke. “They have... machines. It’s cold there. Metal tables.” He swallowed hard. “Others were there. They stripped us, said they were prepping us,” his lip quivered. “They made me watch as they cut the others. Told me I’d be next.”

“Enough, old man,” Francisca snapped from the doorway. “Too much talk costs tongue.”

Richard kneeled and clasped his hands together in prayer. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet.”

Daniel held his grandfather tightly, whispering reassurances. I closed my eyes and mapped the corridors behind my eyelids.

—

Francisca returned with a fistful of candles, smiling as if she were bringing us dessert.

I hated that anything could bring her joy. She and Mattias arranged the candles in a circle on the floor of our cell, lighting each one with methodical precision while we all huddled in a corner waiting for her command.

“Gather,” her voice soft, but left no room for refusal. “It’s time to prepare your souls.”

We moved like sleepwalkers into the flickering light. Francisca sat cross-legged, her palms resting open on her knees. The light was shining shadows across her face.

“The Camino is a journey for cleansing,” she began carefully. “For renewal through sacrifice.” A pause. “The land take people, and the land gives back,” she paused. “The Norse call it gjald; the price. She tilted her head, “The spirit must be clean. Then the body can return, piece by piece, to the land that raised it.”

We said nothing.

“Francisca offers you a mercy—a blessing.” Her eyes glinted in the candlelight. “Confess your burdens. Complete the journey you came here for, before returning to the land.”

At first, we stayed quiet.

Linh stared at Aamir, who lay on the floor, half unconscious. She gave him a kiss on the forehead and put her hands around his ears. She confessed she never liked Aamir’s mother, and that at her worst moments, she caught herself wishing for her death.

Francisca leaned forward and dipped her thumb into a bag of soil. She drew a circle—a sun—on Linh’s forehead, almost maternal, as if she were anointing a child before sleep.

Richard stared at his hands. “I was always ashamed of Daniel,” he said. “He wasn’t blood, and my daughter’s decision to adopt felt like a declaration of my failure. I cared too much about what people thought,” his voice faltered. “It mattered to me more than being a good grandfather.” His voice broke. “I’d take it back if I could.”

Daniel’s jaw tightened, and he let out a gentle whimper.

Holly shifted next. “Amber, remember when your jewelry went missing?” she said flatly. “It wasn’t the cleaning lady.” She looked down, ashamed. “I needed it for rent after I spent too much on a stupid gambling app—I think I might be addicted.” She cried.

Amber reached across and squeezed her hand. “You’re human. I forgive you.”

“My husband,” Amber began, but her breathing shallowed. She stopped for a moment.

“Everyone thought we were perfect. The neighborhood’s golden couple,” Amber swallowed. “But I knew deep down he was... wrong. He always made weird comments about teenage girls. And once I found things on his computer. Images.” The candle flames trembled as she exhaled. “I was a coward. I couldn’t bear to shatter our life. But, I can’t stop thinking—what if he—hurt our daughters because of my silence?” She covered her mouth with her hand and started to sob.

The air thickened, silence hung heavy. Holly patted her sister’s back. Morgan stared at the floor, her carefully maintained composure cracking at the edges, slowly, like ice.

Just as Daniel parted his lips, about to confess, Morgan spoke first.

“I slept with him,” she said.

Amber and Holly looked up slowly.

“For years.” Morgan’s voice steadied. “He said he’d leave you. He promised after our second abortion,” she stopped. Wiped a tear off her face. “My heart broke too, you know? Many times,” she paused. “When I found out about the teenager, my heart shattered completely,” she pressed her lips together. “But I couldn’t tell anyone, who would comfort the other woman? The sister who betrayed her own blood?”

The slow drip of the drain in the dark was the only sound.

Holly broke the silence. “How long?”

“Thirteen years—” Morgan said, but the sentence died as Amber lunged across the circle, the candles scattered, wax splashed across the concrete.

“We were only married for fifteen!” Amber yelled as she pulled on Morgan’s hair.

Holly moved to intervene, but Amber’s teeth found her hand and bit it. Holly screamed, yanking back her fingers. The gate crashed open. João stood there, impassive in the chaos. He stepped over the fallen candles and grabbed Morgan by the arm.

“Good,” Amber said, watching Morgan be dragged down the corridor. “Take the whore.”

Holly yelled out for Morgan, who didn’t fight or scream—tears ran down her face, and she looked slightly relieved as the darkness swallowed her out of our sight.

Francisca remained seated inside the broken circle of candles, smiling faintly as Amber and Holly sobbed against each other. “The camino brings the truth,” she said. “Cleanses the soul.” Her eyes moved to mine, waiting for my confession.

I could’ve said that my ex didn’t actually get the chance to break up with me; that I let her fall to the arms of someone else because some part of me always believed the words she said to me as she left—that I was directionless, spineless, irresponsible; that I’d always confused silence with strength; that one time, when she complained about my cheap sheets, rather than buying new ones, I just stopped inviting her over.

But these confessions weren’t about cleansing our souls. Francisca was trying to break us mentally—finding our fracture lines and prying us open. I pressed my back against the cold wall, kept my mouth shut, and promised myself I’d give her nothing.

I’d thought what I felt for my ex when she left was hatred. But as I stared at Francisca, her smug smile, collecting the scattered candles, humming softly while Amber and Holly wept, I understood true hatred was sharper. As I stared at her, I made one more promise.

When I escaped, I was going to make sure she burned.

Chapter 7:

My eyes traced escape routes across the ceiling until a plan solidified like cured cement.

The schedule was tight. On pickup days, they were gone for approximately six hundred seconds, give or take. Butchering days were too unpredictable. At night, the cellar quieted, but Mattias wasn’t there, and neither were the keys that hung on his belt as our only way out.

The best window was the pilgrim dinner—Francisca and João both upstairs, distracted, and Mattias didn’t go up until right before dinner to play the part of fake pilgrim. That gap was the only time all three were distracted—enough time, maybe, to get some of us out.

When the plan was as ready as it was going to get, I touched Daniel and Richard’s shoulders in the dark, pressing my finger to my lips as they stirred. “I know how to get the three of us out.”

Daniel sat up and rubbed his eye. “How?”

“Mattias’s keys,” I said, going close. “There are five. The gold one opens our cage.” I kept my voice low. “Richard—how many other rooms were there?”

“Two I saw,” he said, voice coarse. “Maybe more.”

“That leaves one key for the house. One for the outer gate.”

Richard exhaled. “And how do we get these magical keys?”

“We distract Mattias. I’ve been complimenting him daily so he trusts me, or close enough, I think.” I looked at Daniel. “You have no cuffs. When I get Mattias to the cage, you unclip the carabiner, we gag him, and move.”

“What about Aamir?” Daniel asked. “He can’t run.”

“Fuck Aamir,” Richard said flatly. “That man’s already dead. The three of us live.”

I nodded in agreement. But Daniel stood, crossed to Linh and Aamir, shook them awake, and brought them into the circle.

“We all go,” he said, looking at Richard.

Richard scoffed. “Fine, but I won’t let them slow us down.”

The cage became our war room. Based on Richard’s recollection of the rooms he had forcefully toured, I mapped the cellar and its tunnels on the dirty floor with my finger. I spoke loudly enough for the sisters to hear, but not loud enough to trigger echoes near the corridors. We traced which tunnel João and Francisca were most likely to use during the dinner, which ones led to the other prisoners, and how we could ambush Mattias. We knew our day would come when it was raining—pilgrim dinners always happened during rainy nights.

Then, I pointed to the lightbulb. “We’ll know Mattias is being summoned upstairs when he grabs the walking sticks and the light bulb flickers. It’s how they communicate.”

Everyone looked at me with something I hadn’t seen in a while: hope.

“And after? Where do we go? It’ll be nighttime,” Aamir stirred.

I hadn’t planned that far. None of us had. Outside was just my concept of freedom.

“Shit, he’s right. They probably know the roads better than we do,” Richard said. “Who knows if anyone out there would even help.”

Then it came to me.

“A fire,” I said. “Big enough the town can’t ignore it. The firefighters will come, the police.”

“We could burn alive,” Amber said. “We don’t even know how big this place is.”

“We set it on the way out, not before.”

“And if João comes after us anyway?” Holly asked.

“Then at least we’re running in the open and not chained to a pipe,” I said.

We fell silent, each considering the fragile architecture of this plan.

“I’m in,” Linh said, her voice didn’t waver. “But someone has to help me with Aamir.”

“We can,” Holly said. Amber nodded.

The plan was set.

I wiped the map from the dirt with my palm, and as I lay awake, I repeated the steps in my head and prayed for rain until morning came.

(Final Act coming tomorrow)

7. 7. 7.

The pump clicked off as I stood there watching the screen blink.

Disappear.
Reappear.
Disappear again.

I counted.

Seven seconds.

The nozzle slipped back into its cradle with a hollow knock. The pump’s LED asked if I wanted a receipt.

I declined.

When the car started, the radio came alive with a muffled drone, like it had been left underwater too long. The station was familiar, but the pitch was wrong, as if someone had nudged a record off center.

The street was empty as I pulled out.

The sun was sinking behind the mesas, turning the red desert burgundy. Clouds nested along their edges – soft, pink, delicate. Cotton candy clouds resting along the ridges, carefully arranged and forgotten.

The dashboard read 7:00.

I watched it for a moment.

Then I drove.

-

I don’t remember when I decided to drive to see her.

Truthfully, as the road stretched in front of me, the thought came suddenly that I had been drinking again. The idea arrived sharp and unwelcome, though I had given it up years ago.

I hadn’t spoken to her in months. I wasn’t even sure what I would say if I made it there.

Maybe, I thought as I rubbed my temples, someone else had decided.

Mile marker 77.

A smell reached me then – burning. 

At first I decided it was a brush fire, something smoldering somewhere out in the dark desert. Out there the land could burn for miles before anyone noticed.

Then clouds of smoke began to bloom from beneath my hood. 

-

The car died. 

The stars blinked above me as I held my face in my hands. The engine ticked softly as it cooled.

I stepped out onto the shoulder and stood there listening.

Nothing.

No traffic.
No wind.

The desert was quiet in a way that felt deliberate.

Across the highway sat a motel.

LUCKY NUMBER SEVEN.

A brittle LED sign flickered. Above it, a cartoon cowboy tried endlessly to lasso a bull.

The rope flashed in the air again and again, never quite catching. 

-

The office door chimed softly when I pushed it open.

“Hi, Nolan. Room for two?”

The clerk smiled as I fumbled with my wallet.

“What?” I let out a breath. “What? Uh ... no.”
He tilted his head slightly, confusion settling across his face.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you had company.”

I placed my card on the wood-paneled desk. 

A mounted stag’s head stared at me from behind the old man’s shoulder, its glass eyes bright in the fluorescent light. 

How did he know –

The clerk slid a brass key across the counter, a gold SEVEN emblem hanging from the ring. 

“Room seven.”

The metal was warm in my hand.

-

Outside, the night had grown colder.

The motel sat in a half circle around a gravel courtyard. Most of the rooms were dark. 

A single light hummed over the walkway. 

For a moment I stood there considering the highway again. The road stretched black and empty in both directions.

I imagined turning around. Walking back to the car. Waiting for morning.

But the key felt heavy in my hand.

So I walked. 

-

4. 5. 6 … 8?

The numbers glowed from fake prospector lanterns mounted beside the doors. 

I stopped.

The hallway stretched quiet and empty.

4.
5.
6.

Then 8. 

No seven.

I checked the key again.

At the far end of the hall stood a door that didn’t match the others.

The rest were red oak.

This one had been painted red. 

A small brass number hung at eye level. 

7.

-

As I got closer, I noticed a key hanging from the lock. 

The door was slightly ajar. A pale glow from a television wrapped around the opening and spilled across the walkway. 

I knocked.

The door creaked open a little further. 

-

The TV flickered blue against the walls.

The room smelled faintly of dust and something sweet – like someone had been drinking earlier. 

I stepped inside.

The television hummed softly.

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

The clock on the nightstand blinked: 7:07. 
For a moment, I thought I heard someone moving in the bathroom. 

Disappear.
Reappear.
Disappear again.

On the nightstand sat two glasses. 

One was empty. The other was still warm.

The Maid of Orleans Part 1

I said nothing.

She was already flustered, drenched with that frantic heat that comes from nowhere and everywhere at once.

Words wouldn’t land right now

Whatever I offered would only make it worse. I knew that. Experience had taught me that silence, however cowardly it looked, was sometimes the least dangerous option.

So I stayed quiet.

That didn’t save me.

She turned anyway, the way storms always do when they’ve run out of sky.

Her face was red, her voice sharp and unanchored.

“Useless,” she spat, close enough that I could feel it. “You never help. Never.”

It wasn’t shouting so much as screaming— unfiltered, banshee-loud—meant not to be heard but to wound.

Something in me folded.

I left the hotel room before I could say anything unforgivable, before the bitterness grew.

The door closed behind me, and alone in the corridor, I broke, tears blurring the patterned carpet as I walked. My chest burned. My head rang.

And under my breath, through sobs I barely recognised as my own, the words came out ugly and desperate.

Words I didn’t mean, words born only from pain.

The hallway swallowed them whole.

When silence is no longer a choice.
It becomes conditioning.

The Maid of Orleans Part 2

He said nothing

I was already flustered. The heat of menopause consumed me, leaving me drenched in that frantic heat that comes from nowhere and everywhere at once.

But he just lay there, seemingly uninterested.

Whatever I tried, whatever I demanded, would only make it worse. I knew that. Experience had taught me that silence, however unfair it felt, was sometimes the sharpest weapon I had.

So I stayed quiet.

That didn’t save me.

He turned to leave.

His face was pale, jaw tight, eyes darting away. His silence cut as sharply as any word I could have thrown.

“The storm inside me broke; as if it had run out of sky, I could no longer hold it.”

“Useless,” I shouted, letting the syllables hit where they would. “You never help. Never.”

“You never say the words I need. You never hear me. You never see me.

Shouting turned to screaming as I wielded my truth—meant not to be heard but to mark the space, to assert the weight of what I carried alone.

I saw him fold. I saw the hesitation in the shoulders that always tried to seem strong.

I wanted him to stay. I wanted him to speak, to ground me, to fix what I knew he could not. But he left the room before the words could harden into anything permanent.

He slammed the door behind him, leaving me alone with only the echoes of my own voice. Chest burning. Pulse thundering in my ears.

I whispered the words now, words I didn’t recognise, ugly, desperate—but not meaningless. They were the only words left that belonged to me.

The hotel room swallowed them whole.

When silence is no longer a choice.
It becomes conditioning