Surprise! Happy Birthday! And that makes ten...

I run upstairs and start up the computer. I click on the little Google icon and open up Scratch. I had been working on a new project the other day and I look through My Stuff. Then I see it. My project hadn't saved and all I saw was that fucking orange cat staring back at me. I open it up to see if anything saved, but there is no code at all. "Fuck." I mutter as I get to use the restroom.

When I get back I realize that the scratch cat moved. At least I think I did. The coordinates still said 0, 0. "What the hell" I ask? I go to a new tab to search if it's a glitch, or what. I put in, 'scratch cat move no code'. Before I click enter I see it in the corner.

That godamned cat. How the hell did it get in here, I think. I race back to bthe scracth tab and see it nearly off the screen. "Holy Shi.." I begin. I hear footsteps, but unlike anything I've ever heard. I look back at the screen. The scratch cat is completely gone.

I suddenly realize what the footsteps are. I look behind me and there it is. The thing is 7 feet tall and oddly 2D. Don't look away. I tell myself. "Come down and help with dinner, Niles" my Mom says. I look away and realize my mistake to slow. I run.

I know I'm not fast enough. the halls blur and become blank, white, sheets. I don't dare to look behind me. I only run. I get tired and look behind me. It's gone. I walk back the way I came but the view stays the same. I'm stuck. I lay down and see that it was above me the whole time. It's too late to do anything the thing jumps down, I scream. Pain. Blood. It's funny even while dying I notice I am staining the ground. aw too bad for whoever cleans it, how inconvenient. I know I should be dead, why aren't I. //Maybe It's just a dream and I- //

Niles Faukten was found dead in the halls of the MIT campus in Massachusetts despite living in Oklahoma. Death Caused by multiple Bites and Scratches. The previous log was found on his Personal Computer After the incident.

I am trying my hardest not to think about it. Lurking just over my shoulder, nesting in the corners of my perception, marking its territory in most of my waking moments. Our survival in the concrete jungle is a matter of routine: wake up, drink coffee, forage for wealth, feed on helpless prey. It’s neither intrinsic quality nor foreign parasite but an involuntary reflex.

One that eats people if I think about them too long. I keep thinking I can save them. Warn them I’m not who they think I am. If only I weren’t so damn slow. If only I were fast enough to see them face me and save them from doing so. I wish I had the strength to shut myself away from the world. Seal it away in a modern day sokushinbutsu. The valiant dies but once. I have a thousand yet to go.

I confess, I’ve never seen it in person. Only what it shits out. Their acrid stench burns my throat and their shape offends my eyes. The silhouettes pretend at familiarity, at family and friends I would recognize in a dream – but the full images betray the nightmare, sketched out in sulfurous crayon and filled in with the colors of a porta-potty. Their eyes bore through mine: beady balls of toxicity in the middle of a crushingly colorless void. I try not to touch them when I can; when I have to, I try not to think about how their fingers against mine are more stained fabric than flesh.

I know the world isn’t supposed to look this way. I’m not sure if the things it eats are only in my dreams or in my waking nightmares. I’m afraid to ask. I don’t even have a benchmark to gauge my memories by: half of them include its waste products as don’t. I’m afraid to bet on my future when it might already be poisoned by my past. But I want to experience this world. I want to be a part of it. No matter how wretched life is, we need it.

Don’t look at me! Too late…

I like to consider myself a gourmet.

I'm just an average Joe, living paycheck to paycheck in a crappy apartment. I don't sit in Michelin-starred restaurants, blowing hundreds of dollars in cash on tiny portions. I live off whatever I can pay for from the local supermarket with what remains in my wallet after rent, utilities, etc.

Assorted variants of ramen. Dinosaur-shaped nuggets. Those tacky value packs of frozen peas, corn, and diced carrots.

It ain't much, but I make the most of it. I savor every bite of food, enjoying the product of my labor in its entirety. I feast like a king every day in my rather empty kitchen.

Recently, I've found a way to expand my palate even further.

The mind is an incredible thing. Did you know that you can accurately imagine what it feels like to lick any surface you look at? Incredible. In my free time, I scroll through my social media feed in search of splendorous dishes. Fuel to inspire my mind. Food for thought, literally.

I surrender myself to my mattress rather early, usually by 9PM. I have a special alarm app installed in my phone, set to softly vibrate at intervals to gently nudge me to lucidity.

Tonight's menu? Stuffed zucchini with bacon, cheese, and mashed potatoes. Mushroom pizza doused in truffle-infused oil. Roast turkey with a cranberry sauce.

Words cannot describe the taste of these imaginary delicacies. These are flavors that remain far beyond the reach of chicken soup ramen and TV dinners. Perhaps the most incredulous part of this whole thing is that I can eat as much as I want. I engorge myself on endless plates of ambrosia, drowning myself in the finest of wines.

A palace fit for a gourmet.

Sadly, all good things come to an end. I do have to wake up for work, after all. The feast will have to wait until my return. Of course, I wouldn't be so silly as to forgo physical meals for figments of my imagination. I still eat my three square meals a day, a stark decrease in quality, to be sure, but it is an inevitability I tolerate.

The day goes by like a blur. I got yelled at a few times in the office. I don't think I really paid attention to who I was being reprimanded by. All I could think about was what I would have for dinner while I gulped down some curry flavor noodles. I think I'm craving seafood today. Yes, a seafood platter would do nicely. I think I'll also hav—

I feel a dull pain… somewhere. I think I'm on the floor. How did I..? Maybe I'm hungry. That's not right, I definitely just had something to eat. I had curry noodles. I—

I see an unopened pack of curry noodles on the floor, scattered amongst various other groceries I had picked up earlier. I try to sit upright, but I just can't seem to summon any strength to get up. I am hungry. I grab the pack of noodles. I barely tear the packaging open. There is nothing in my stomach. I try to bite down on the brick of uncooked noodles. It refuses to break off into a smaller chunk. I am starving. I bite down. I bite again. I bite. I bite. I.

A platter of lobster thermidor appears in front of me. To my left, grilled Pacific saury with a side of white rice. To my right, a pot of bouillabaisse, steam rising from a rich broth. Beyond them, a banquet table extending far beyond my sight, hidden under a myriad dishes, each more exquisite than the last.

I feast.

My parents always talked about having “real life friends” like it was some sort of additional plane of existence. An ascended form of happiness. They always told me “you need to get out more” and “you need to meet more people” with this condescension like I don’t know what human interaction even is.

And I admit, I’m a bit of an introvert. But what they don’t know is that the world is changing. Connection takes many different forms. Facebook friends, twitter mutuals, skype contacts. Hell, if you just count the number of people I talk to over discord, I probably have more friends than my extended family combined!

It feels great to be able to just pop on my phone whenever I want and be bombarded with friendly messages.

Is anyone out there?

There’s rumbling outside my house…

Does anyone here know how to amputate a leg?

EMERGENCY: This is an announcement from the EMERGENCY EMERGENCY EMERGENCY

And it just brightens up my day. It’s like having a whole little community in my pocket. I just know that if I was gone, these people would ask what happened to me, and then decide that I probably died and move on and that’s called making an impact.

But no, apparently that’s not good enough for my folks. “It’s just not the same” they said. Which I disagree with quite vehemently. Then they counter with “you wouldn’t know” and I just sit there and giggle to myself, because they don’t know that I do know. Because I have one IRL friend I keep as a secret.

He stays in my closet so I don’t have to go outside to see him. So I have a community in my pocket and a friend in my closet! He doesn’t say much, but he’ll watch me play video games sometimes! Really he’s great because I think he’s the only person who can stand the smell in here besides myself. All the shit and waste has piled up in my corner because I can’t go outside, but he doesn’t complain one bit!

Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly lonely, I’ll spend the night with him in the closet. He’s thin so there’s plenty of space for the both of us. His skin is soft, almost mushy. I can feel nice and safe when I’m with him. Nice and safe.

So no, mom and dad. I don’t need to “go outside” and “make real friends”.

I’ve got everything I need right here. Right in my bunker.

I was on the phone with Melanie when I got into an accident on the way to school. But anything you can walk away from can't be that bad, right? I walked home and my parents were freaking way out. So when the school bus came by I hopped on and went to school. Anything to get out of there.

It was hard to really understand the impact of what had happened, but everyone went over to my side of the bus when we passed the wrecked car. I'd run it straight into a telephone pole. The firetruck and ambulance were still there, and I rolled my eyes. Everyone always freaks out over dumb stuff.

At school my first thought was to find Melanie. I'd broke my phone in the accident and I needed to let her know I was ok. She always used to get on my case about talking on the phone while driving. When I found her next to her locker she wasn't talking to me at all. I hung around for a little while hoping she'd change her mind and then I grabbed my stuff and went to class.

The classes were just as boring as normal, but at least none of the teachers were making me answer questions. The big bruise on my forehead probably scared them off. Nobody seemed to even want to look in my direction.

When the final bell rang, I tried to talk to Melanie again but she wasn't having it. But I was annoyed so I got on her school bus instead of mine. It was probably kinda stupid but I'm young so I get to be stupid.

She ignored me the entire way home. She almost cried a couple of times when I called her a bad name but she still gave me the silent treatment.

She got off the bus at her house and I didn't wanna be creepy so I waited for the next stop to hop off, then walked back to her house. When I got there I phased through the locked door and floated up the stairs to her room.

She still won't talk to me.

The thought experiment goes something like this: imagine Schroedinger's cat, except you are the cat. Every ten seconds, a secret coin is flipped, and you either live or die. If nobody observes what happens to you, you exist in a quantum superposition where you are both alive and dead. But the truth is, you are always observing what is happening to you. In those universes where you died, there is no longer anyone to observe what has happened. So in order for your point of view to continue, you must survive.

Or, think about it more like this. There's a railroad with an infinite number of switches. Down some lines, there is a sheer cliff. Go down those lines and you die. Go down the other lines and you get to keep on living. Now, instead of a switch, have each junction be a duplicator that creates two copies of your train and sends one down each path.

You're the copy that's survived every time.

Remember all those times that you had a close call with death, and thought to yourself, "Wow! That was a close one!" Each time, in another universe, you got a casket and a bouquet of lilies instead. For every universe where you turned around to talk to a friend and that drunk driver sped right through the intersection where you would have been a moment ago, there's one where you didn't and you got turned to paste on the road. For every universe where you walked through a kitchen and nearly tripped while holding a knife but didn't, there's one where your wife came home to find you with a knife in your own neck and a surprised expression on your stupid dead face.

You're in the universe where those things didn't happen. Because a copy of your train is still traveling, you're going to end up on it.

This leads to two conclusions, one hopeful, and one terrifying.

The hopeful conclusion is this: your life will last as long as the multiverse deems it possible to do so. If you have any chance of surviving a situation, you will survive it. You will have lucky break after lucky break and survive as long as you possibly can, up until the point where all of your railway lines go straight off the cliff, and you have no choice but to end your ride for good.

Here's the terrifying conclusion: your death will be as drawn out as possible. Between the choice of cracking your head and dying instantly after falling down the cliff, and surviving the fall but starving to death weeks down the line, the universe will pick the one that keeps you alive as long as possible Every. Single. Time. Put that gun to your head and pull the trigger, and you'll die 99 times out of 100… but if there's that 1% chance that the bullet misses the vital centers of your brain and leaves you paralyzed for decades hooked up to a machine, perceiving and knowing, but not able to act? The universe will shunt you into that line every time.

Like I said. It's a thought experiment. A lot of very very smart people have come up with lots of very very convincing reasons why it can't happen. But I've got a DNR on file anyway.

My wife's always been a heavy sleeper. Thunder, lightning, hail, blizzard, even a little earthquake when we were down in San Jose a few years ago. You name it, she sleeps through it. Ex-girlfriends of mine used to complain about my snoring, but my wife, God bless her, just snoozes right through it. It's cute actually.

If I wake up, in the morning I tell her about whatever it was that woke me and she always says, "Oh, was that all?" It's one of those things — was that all — you know, in-jokes, pieces of jargon couples have with each other. We've been married a while. It's like computer code by now, practically. Our own argot.

One time I didn't tell her, though. We'd had a quiet night in but I had some stuff going on at work, it was keeping me awake. I think it was a Friday, actually, but I was still thinking about Monday. It was one of those times. Couldn't switch off. I'd tried my usual tricks of counting sheep, a few old prayers I remember from when I was a kid, even that mindfulness thing I tried the app for once. Clear your mind, focus on your breathing. All that. Didn't work.

I rolled over and cuddled my wife for a while. We tend to sleep facing away from each other, so sometimes a quick snuggle helps settle me down a little. Yeah yeah, I know, you can keep your retching sound effects to yourself. She nestled into me and I just let my mind wander. It was a cool night, and I sleep in my boxers, so it was nice to feel her warmth against my skin, too. Relaxing. Restful. When I'd rolled over, the duvet slipped down and my back was open to the air. Hot and cold, you know?

Just as I was getting a little less focused, a little less hyperactive, a little more sleepy, I felt — man, this is hard to explain. Alright.

You know when you look at a math equation, a simple one like 34 plus 48 equals whatever, right? Maybe you can't do it straight away but you look at it for a few seconds and the numbers kind of click together in your head and you know it's, what, 82. It just makes sense. You know, right?

It was like that. All of a sudden, with my eyes closed and my wife sleeping soundly in my arms, I suddenly knew two things: a) I was being watched, and b) if I opened my eyes to look back at whatever it was, I would die.

Thinking back I don't know what was different. It was like being outside when the wind changes or you get a feeling it's about to rain because of the heaviness in the air and the smell of the ground. But there was no sound, no smell, no feeling — just a sudden, total certainty that if I opened my eyes to look at whatever it was that was watching me, I would die.

So I lay there, clutching my wife, feeling the blood draining from my skin, knowing death itself was watching me. That sounds dramatic, sorry. Whatever. It felt like hours but it couldn't have been more than a few minutes, I guess. I was slick with cold sweat, I could feel it dripping off me and seeping into the sheets. But I didn't dare move. I was barely breathing. I wanted to run, get out, take my wife, grab a baseball bat, whatever, but the thing I needed most of all was to not move and absolutely not open my eyes. Because I would die. You get it.

The worst was — I was starting to feel panic. Because I was sweating and I was sure I was going cold, I thought she would wake up. And she would open her eyes and then she would die. And it would be my fault and then I would die. I know it sounds completely insane but I knew it like the same way you know a stove is hot or a lake is deep. Do not move. Do not open your eyes. Do not move and you will not die. But God bless her, she just kept on sleeping.

Then I felt something on my back. Like a soaking wet knife or something, only it wasn't sharp. At least it didn't feel sharp. Like a leaky fountain pen or something. Narrow and wet. I don't know how something so narrow could be so wet. It was at the top of my spine, that little knobbly bit like a knuckle at the base of your neck. And then it started to move very, very slowly all the way down my backbone. I could feel it, every bump, every vertebra. Methodical. Always applying the same pressure. Leaving a trail of liquid behind, like a snail. It felt like I was being licked.

It got all the way down to where my tailbone met the band of my boxers. And it just stayed there. At that point I was convinced that was it. Whatever this thing was would just kill me now. Rip off my skin or something and we were both dead. I think I whimpered a little. Then our neighbors' dog barked, and whatever it was was gone.

Just like 34 plus 48 equals 82 — three minus one is two, I knew it was gone and I wouldn't die. I yanked on the lamp and looked around the bedroom. Nothing. Nothing at all.

I bolted to the bathroom, wheezing with fear, and doused my face in cold water. Splashed myself over and over again, my heart hammering out of my chest, thanking God, thanking whatever that I wasn't dead. That my wife wasn't dead. I ran back to the bedroom, my face still dripping with water, to check she was still…there. And she was. Exactly the same as before, her chest rising and falling, serene. Beautiful, too.

That was when I felt warm liquid seeping across the band of my shorts.

I padded to the bathroom, a knot in my stomach a mile wide, and stretched around to look at my back in the big mirror. Even with the door closed I was worried the noise I made at that moment would wake her up, but it didn't.

All the way down my spine, in a perfect line, right in the middle, was a thin trail of blood. My skin had been sliced open — like surgery, like I was being operated on, or like when you cook duck meat and score a line into its surface to let the grease out. I suddenly got a giddy sensation that I would see my own spine, like a morbid, fatal curiosity about what my bones looked like, but — God, I still remember the relief when I realized — it wasn't deep at all. That was when I started crying. I sat on the toilet and mopped up the blood with toilet paper until it clotted, weeping like a kid scared of the dark. I made a will that weekend.

I…didn't tell my wife what happened. Not exactly. I told her I couldn't sleep, that I took a shower to try to relax, that I tried to shave my upper back and I dropped the razor. Oh, was that all? She called me a blockhead and went about her day. I wish I had her calm.

Anyway, that was three months ago or so. I asked a few days later whether we could move house. I made up something about wanting more space, another room. We'd thought about it before. I've never done so much research so quickly. We're signing the lease this weekend — which was the fastest we could go without being in witness protection, or worse, telling her the truth.

I've never had that feeling again. I've not had any weird back injuries either. I still have to sleep there for another month, but I haven't slept properly since. I might have to get some sleeping pills or something.

Because then I definitely won't open my eyes.

I look at the stars every night.

Some people look to the night skies and feel dread. A sensation of being small, insignificant, and meaningless in the eyes of a universe larger than our minds can comprehend. I look at the stars and feel a sense of peace. I look at the stars and feel like there’s more out there.

You were the only person who ever understood that. You were the only person out here with me every night, tracing constellations with your fingers and laughing with me about life on other worlds or the existence of God. Even when you got sick you were out here every single night right beside me, rubbing the back of my palms with shaking thumbs.

You were in so much pain. Your eyes had clouded over, your lips cracked. So I described the skies to you every night. Every single dot of light above down to the final detail, and we would trace those stars together hand in hand. You would joke with hoarse words about how you’d be a star soon. I would smile, doing what I could to keep my eyes from betraying me.

You’re still here with me. Even as I hold up a limp hand and trace the constellations you loved, even as my musings on what comes next are met with hollow silence, you’re still here with me every night. They’re beautiful, aren’t they? You’re beautiful, aren’t you? How lovely it is that we can share these special moments. How lovely it is that they’ll never end.

We look at the stars every night.

The day of the parade was cool and misty. The downtown area was decorated with pumpkins, corn stalks, and faux-human mannequins. The widest road was blocked off for the parade of pre-calamity cars. Most of the cars were parked neatly along the street. Some battered and rusted. Some pieced and 'Frankenstein'd' together. A few looked as new as they were pre-calamity because some fortunate soul found an underground parking garage. From what little the monsters knew about the pre-calamity era, the cars were all mostly from the "20s". Today's main event of the festival was an auto show.

Judges walked and waddled to each car and spoke with its owner, taking down names, and inspecting the entries. Crowded around one car, the festival goers gawked. There was a clear circle 16 feet around the car made by the on-lookers. Some pale faced, some bursting with excitement and curiosity, no one dared to cross the invisible line around the peculiar car and owner. A judge approached the crowd. Xe squeezed through them, excusing xyrself and announcing that the crowd needed to disperse. At the front of the circle xe saw the car. A black 1971 Hurst Oldsmobile. Starry eyed xe knew who would win the show but as xyr eyes trailed downward xe disregarded xyr previous thought. If the event today was a costume contest the owner was a sure win. The owner of the car had the best human costume. His costume was more impressive than the car; xe let out a "Wow.".

Terror gripped xyr and xyr palms sweat. It was almost too convincing especially alongside such a rare find. Xe took in a deep breath and raised xyr foot. The monsters directly next to xyr looked at xyr in panic. The judge brought xyr foot back into the circle and reconsidered xyr thoughts. Xe felt compelled to not cross the circle. Xe shook xyr head and cracked xyr knuckles. Xe picked xyr foot up and stepped over the line. A cool breeze fluttered and the mists thickened.

Xe put on xyr best smile. Unfortunately, xyr face contorted and grimaced, "Hello I'm Ghut Ret; Judge Number 9," xe reached out xyr claw. The owner tentatively reached out his hand and shook the judge's claw.

"I'm Brad Bakerson," he flashed a confused smile.

Ghut wrote down Brad's name, "What are you entering into the show?" xe asked.

"A 1971 Hurst Oldsmobile," Brad beamed.

There were more questions Ghut was meant to ask but xe got the creepy notion that xe should leave. Xe handed Brad their number in the parade. Brad and the car gave xyr the heebie-jeebies, "Thank you for your submission Mr. Bakerson. And good luck!" xe waved and slowly walked backwards into the crowd.

Brad flashed a confused smile again and chuckled nervously, "If I had known that the festival was doing a costume contest I would've dressed up."

Ghut froze.

Brad continued, "The festival really went all in this year, huh?"

Ghut thought for a moment, gathering xyr thoughts. Xe must've misheard Brad.

"Yes, we did and th-thank you!" Ghut stuttered, turned around and hastily pushed through the crowd.

When it was time for the cars to parade down the road, monsters flocked the route, primarily around the judge's stand. Seating areas were packed 2 monsters to a seat if possible. There was a really good pre-calamity themed entry.

-with the best human costume! mutters floated above the crowd.

The typical entries paraded passed the stand. This year they added more solar panels to their cars. Clapping politely, the crowd was in anticipation to see the ancient car. As the car rolled passed the judges stand the crowd fell silent. Right out of found, human monster movies; the gasoline guzzling, tail-fin sporting, ancient car placed a spell over the crowd. Those closest to the street stepped back as the car passed. The owner, Brad, waved to the judges and crowd. He smiled nervously. The costume was almost too good and left the crowd both amazed and horrified. Brad drove by scaly and furry faces of shock, horror, curiosity and excitement. The only sound was the car's engine.

Mists rolled across the major intersection. As the car rolled into the mists, the car and Brad looked progressively more transparent. The crowd let out a cacophony of shock and awe. A few monsters ran off into the mists. They could not locate the car that had driven away.

When it came time to announce the winners, Ghut noticed the lack of Brad. Ghut announced the winners. Reading the announcement for first place, xe nauseously looked over the crowd, weirdly hoping to see Brad. "For first place and best in show goes to Brad Bakerson owner of the 1971 Hurst Oldsmobile. Everyone was silent and watched with panicked and excited eyes.

Ghut cleared xyr throat and repeated xyrself louder, "FOR FIRST PLACE AND BEST IN SHOW GOES TO BRAD BAKERSON OWNER OF THE 1971 HURST OLDSMOBILE!"

Silence.

Brad Bakerson was absent.

The judges shrugged it off and the show continued. They congratulated the attending owners. The crowd dispersed eagerly back into the midways and carnival rides. They begged to forget the event. Later, the monsters who had seen the human and car denied that the event ever took place, and chalked the year's botched placements on mismanagement.

Everybody has a bedtime ritual.

I call myself 'everybody' these days; it's the little things that help you cope. I need all the help I can get, today.

First I walk down to the perimeter, and rake up all the twigs and leaves that fell down during the day. If something's out here stumbling around while I'm drowsy in bed, I'd rather not be alerted.

Next I duck into the makeshift barn, and pasteurize some milk. This is the longest part of the ritual, but it's also the most important. On my way back out I muzzle the cow, which I admit isn't very nice, but if they get after her I definitely won't want to hear that.

Heading through the palisade again, I leave some flowers for Melanie on the safe side of the gate. Don't know if she actually liked flowers, but it's the only thing I'm in no danger of running out of and I haven't heard any complaints. They're always gone in the morning.

Up the hill to my cabin on the cliffside, where the generator's running. I switch it off. No idea if they can hear it, but that's not the kind of science experiment one indulges in lightly.

In the front door, grab some cinnamon and nutmeg out of my larder and stir it into the milk to taste. There's a word for this drink, but it's a stupid-sounding word, and I think I can safely claim total dominion over spoken and written language at this juncture, so as far as I'm concerned this is now called hot-milk-with-other-stuff-in. Mug in hand, I climb the ladder on the maypole in the centre of my little compound and swing up onto the attached platform, then take a seat on the simple oak bench. It's time to watch the light go out, and the lights come on.

The show begins slowly, hesitantly, pinprick-by-pinprick after the sun sinks past the distant treeline. I'm not talking about the stars, you understand. I've got an excellent view over the walls from my lofty perch, and one by one as dark falls over the woods I can see the lights beginning to flash over oak bark and thistle, searching slowly, methodically, clumsily for… well. You can guess what for.

Sometimes I face the other way and watch the lights appear over the water, over the roof of my cabin and the chalk cliff it's squatting on. I watch them sink. Sometimes they sink out of sight, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're still glowing down there for days. You'd think they'd have learned they can't swim by now.

The narrow shafts of white are increasing in number, clumsily canvassing the forest in vain. Melanie used to laugh at me for thinking they'd ever find us, but then, she didn't know. She wasn't there when I was just a kid, before everything else happened, and my dead grandmother turned up hungry and feral down the block every night before I fell asleep. I wonder what my parents thought was happening. A desperately unfunny prank? I wonder what would've happened if the cops had ever caught her. But she was always gone by midnight, because kids sleep easy. Comparatively.

There's another, and another. My people are out in force tonight. This witnessing is part of the ritual; Melanie never understood that, either. Never understood why I found it comforting to see them out there, my little multitude, my civilization. I like to think that if our positions were reversed now, she'd get it, but maybe not. I was the whimsical one, she was the one who knew how to pasteurize milk. Of course, back then the milk didn't matter so much. It was for breakfast. We had better ways of falling asleep. I used to laugh at her for taking the pasteurization so seriously — in my view, the two of us had to have pretty remarkable immune systems. Something on the order of two in seven billion. She used to boggle at the math, at how lucky we were. I guess it would've blown her mind to think that one of those lucky two had already been… special, before the bacteriological winnowing even began.

Of course, if our positions were reversed there'd be nobody wandering around out there at all. I wonder if she finally understood that, in the end. I wonder if she saw my grandmother, or my college roommate who hanged himself in our closet in second year, or my best friend Rob with the fast car and poor judgement, or…

I focus on the lights, and the little thrill of terror and homely recognition they bring. They're finding each other now, and I wonder if they're having a chat. Comparing notes. The search pattern is gradually closing, though they're still a long way out. I want to let them play a little longer, but I'll have to focus my mind. I can keep it occupied during the day, but once the sun goes down and the shadows lengthen in my brain, things get dicey. That's how it always was, even before the Great Sniffling. I once pulled an all nighter, in third year, studying for some test I can barely remember now and probably failed, and they found some poor freshman in pieces in the gym showers across campus the next morning. Somebody swore they saw my old roommate shuffling down an unlit side path. I couldn't let him go…

I've been on this train of thought before, and I know where it's headed, so I finish the milk toddy — fuck — and scramble back down the pole. I'm feeling light-headed and warm, and I need to capitalize on that while it lasts.

I've got a pretty decent bed. Nobody thought to loot the mattress stores, so there was no shortage of free bedframes once the shouting and shooting and puking died down. Just had to find one that wasn't occupied, take it apart, drive it out to the country with the rest of my supplies in my beat up old sedan as the gas ran out and I declined to head back for more. I didn't want to stay in the city. I knew that the end of the world wouldn't end my problems; they'd been with me this long, they were in it for the long haul. A few weeks later, Melanie found me. I guess she'd had the same idea. She was running from ghosts, too, just more metaphorically than I was.

I wish I'd been able to explain it to her, so she'd really understand it. I wish we hadn't had that fight, wish she hadn't gone down to sleep in the barn beyond the palisade. I really, really wish she hadn't gotten off that parting shot, that cryptic remark about how we'd have some things to talk through in the morning. I've wondered what those things could have been for almost a year, now. I've considered all the clichés. But the morning never came for her, of course, because I couldn't get to sleep. Sick with worry, her down there, me up here. When I finally realized it was too late, well… it was too late.

I found most of her. Not all, but most.

I suppose I do sleep easier now, with only me to worry about. It's not much of a comfort, but it does simplify things.

I shift positions restlessly. Sleeping alone is, on the balance, better than sleeping with someone else most of the time, but a body likes to have the option. I certainly don't miss the close conditions in the refugee camps, where they kept the mathematical outliers, where you couldn't so much as shift your legs without kicking some other poor sod. I wish I hadn't gone there. I should've driven out to the woods as soon as the flies started dropping. I'd lived a sheltered life, kept to myself, entirely by design. I'd only ever had a few friends, precious few family members. Memories were dangerous, and I didn't want more. If I hadn't thrown in my sorry lot with all those people, if I didn't remember them still, then Melanie…

This isn't working. I'm not falling asleep. It was a mistake to dredge this up, but I had to work through it somehow. It used to be enough to hammer it out on the typewriter, back before my last ribbon ran out. I tried whacking the keys anyway for a few days, but it barely helped. Then I wrote it all down manually, which lasted until every scrap of paper and every inch of floor was covered in graphite; the paper and pencils ran out at the same moment, yesterday afternoon, and I fed every sheet into the wood furnace to cook my last supper. The last supper I had, I mean. I didn't eat much today.

My stomach growls.

As I shift onto my back, I realize the milk has nearly finished moving through my system. I have to pee.

Well, fuck that. It's all well and good to watch them on the horizon, but they'll be moving in now, and I don't want to get caught with my pants down. I can hold it. I can keep my eyes shut. I've slept almost every night of my life, and I consider myself something of an expert. I can do this.

I can't do this.

Vaguely bemused at how little pressure it takes to snap a brittle twig, I get out of bed, walk to the door, and throw it open. Memories be damned, I'm taking that piss.

I've never emerged from the cabin before morning before. Through the gaps in the palisade walls I can see so many goddamn lights, it's like there's a truck convoy with their high beams on just beyond the first rank of oak trees. They're everywhere, and they're still getting closer. I swear I can hear them whispering, softly. To each other? To me?

I walk to Melanie's garden, and water her blueberries. It's a relief. You learn to savour every source of relief, in a situation like this; it's the little things that help you cope. So few of the little things are left, these days.

Basically none.

When I'm done, I stand on the packed earth between the cabin and the palisade, considering. I'm wide staring awake now, and the light through the cracks is shining on the grass, the maypole, the garden, my feet. I wonder what'll happen if they find what they're looking for. Maybe it'll be different for me than it was for Melanie. I knew these people. Maybe they'll only want to talk.

Maybe she's with them.

Maybe she'll remember what she wanted to tell me.

“Welcome to Subway.”

He came in briskly, as many do at lunch hour. It wasn’t unusual. He was my height—a little under six-foot. I don’t remember his clothes. They were normal-looking. A bit innocuous, if anything. He walked up to the counter.

“What can I get you today, sir?”

I looked at his face. Stubble, like he hadn’t shaved in days. He was looking down at that moment, with the bill of his baseball cap obscuring most of his features. I couldn’t see his eyes.

“Get me a six-inch on wheat.”

His response was gruff, almost dismissal. Like he was just saying it to say it. It was a little weird, sure, but nothing I hadn’t seen before. He still hadn’t looked up.

“Sure. What kind of meat?”

It took a second for him to respond like he spaced out. Then he was back.

“Turkey.”

We moved down the counter.

“Cheese?”

He had one hand awkwardly positioned behind his back like he was holding on to something. The way his clothes were made I couldn’t see if there was anything in his pockets. He still wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“Yeah. Provolone.”

Same absent tone. My alarm bells went off. I knew something was wrong. This guy was acting strange—there was nobody else around. It was the middle of the day but that doesn’t matter if you are about to get robbed.

“You want it toasted?”

We always ask if they want it toasted. Standard procedure. We ask for the bread, the meat, the cheese. Then we ask if they want it toasted. I knew if he answered yes I’d have to put the sandwich into the toaster—which would require me to turn around. The last thing I wanted to do with this guy was to turn my back on him. I figured if he was going to rob me, he’d wait for me to turn around.

Didn’t matter. He spoke up before I had to make a decision.

“Can I tell you something? I hurt someone today. Real bad.”

I didn’t respond. Not at first. I’ve had my share of strange customers. You get a little bit of everyone out here at some point, y’know. I had an itch telling me to phone the cops, but something felt off. I decided to press him.

“What do you mean… are you alright?”

“He had it coming. Son of a bitch followed me home from work. Wouldn’t say anything when I told him to get lost. Didn’t even scream when I hit him in the face. Must’ve been stupid or something. Asshole hit me back but I never saw him swing. Something was wrong with him. He had the weirdest expression the whole time, and he was wearing all this shit so I couldn’t get a good look at his face. Went inside to get my phone and call him an ambulance since I messed him up bad, but he was gone by the time I got back. Weirdest thing was I felt like I’d seen him before. Like I knew who he was.”

He said some more, but I was only half-listening. Something outside caught my eye.

I noticed… well I guess it was a man, though he was noticeably different. He was standing out past the parking lot, back where the asphalt meets the tall grass before the trees. He was in an odd position, with his arms rigid and hanging a bit out from his body. It was strange, which was why I noticed him in the first place. All black—jacket, cap, glasses, everything. The man at the counter must’ve seen him in a reflection somewhere because as soon as I noticed the guy out there, he turns around. Panicked, but fluid. Like he’d done it before. I hear him mutter under his breath.

“…Fuck. Shit shit shit. How did he—”

He turned back to me and looked me straight in the face. I could see his eyes now, red and bloodshot. He pulled his hand out from behind his back. It clutched a dirty steel revolver.

“Give me five minutes. Don’t call the cops.”

He was out the door before I could respond. He got halfway down the lot before he started yelling something. I couldn’t make out the words. The two men stood facing each other for a while before the other one took a step forward. The man with the gun shouted something in response and flaunted his pistol.

The other stepped again. Pistol yelled something. The other stepped, Pistol yelled. Again and again. Then the gunshot. One, like the crack of a whip. Made me flinch instinctively. The other was hit in the shoulder, but so was Pistol. Both at the same time. Somehow.

Pistol stumbled back, clutching his bleeding arm. He half-yelled half-whimpered something before firing again, this time hitting the other's leg. Pistol dropped to the floor, now bleeding from a leg wound. The other kept walking at a steady pace even though I could see the blood shimmer off his clothes.

I called the cops, of course. Told them there was a shootout, someone was hurt. What else was I gonna do? I was barely nineteen. My mind couldn’t wrap around how Pistol was shot twice by a guy with no gun, or how the other was still walking across the pavement, or why I haven’t seen anyone but these two for at least an hour in the middle of a Tuesday in San Diego.

That’s when Pistol starts to get up. He’s bleeding bad, but I figure the adrenaline is making him move. He crawls his way back to the storefront, and I go to open the door for him. We got a first aid kit in the break room but nothing to handle something of this caliber.

He’s whimpering something about the man out there. He’s saying he's not right. I’m telling him the cops are on their way. Pistol grips my collar and tells me he’s seen something like this on TV once. People getting stalked for days on end by familiar strangers, only to disappear without a trace soon after. Doppelgänger. I remember, he said something about a doppelgänger. I remember his next words vividly:

“It’s my double. Can’t kill it. To kill your double is to kill yourself.”

I tell him to sit tight while I go grab the first aid kit. He protests, I tell him it’s just around the corner.

I leave for ten seconds tops to get the kit. I come back and he’s gone. No man outside. No blood. All fucking gone.

Cops showed up ten minutes later. They combed the place and sent me home. I couldn't watch the security tapes, they took those with them. The whole thing never showed up in the news or the paper, either. I quit my job, moved back in with my family. I started thinking I made the whole thing up, to be honest. To cope with repressed trauma or some shit.

That was three years ago. I’ve never told this story to anyone, except now. Call me crazy, sure, but what I saw that day is the best explanation for the things I’ve seen as of late. A stranger in the corner of my eye, just out of sight—a stranger that's starting to look real familiar.

Patrick Mondel.

He has been described as an auteur, a virtuoso, a modern genius – the Leonardo Davinci of a whole new medium.

He has also been described as a sensationalist – someone using the medium of art purely as an aid to his own image, rather than in pursuit of meaning or emotion. He’s been criticised, denounced, attacked, cancelled; his work has been deemed ‘blasphemous,’ ‘immoral,’ ‘unfit for the public eye.’

Others have called him a psychopath.

The day I arrived, he was dressed in red.

“Come in! Glad you’re here so early, I have a big day planned.”

Mondel escorted me through the house and towards the basement – his art studio, supposedly. We walked through a maze of corridors, up and down flights of stairs. Then, we reached it.

“What a place!” I exclaimed. “Do you live here alone?”

“I share it with my wife,” he replied.

“How wonderful. I would love to meet her if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t mind, but I’m afraid she may. She rarely meets strangers.”

“I see.”

We continued into the studio. It was a large black room, segmented by sliding doors.

The corners of the room were lined with red. I asked why.

"Red is passion. Red is pain. Red is blood, red is life," he explained. "What other colour would I use?"

Considering his style of art, it was more than appropriate.

"Speaking of, here's something I've been working on."

He walked to a dark material draped over something, and with a flick of the wrist, flung it into the air.

It was a finished painting, larger than me, depicting a series of violent rituals on a red planet, the sky swirling with crimson clouds.

"Is this…"

"Yes," he affirmed. "The red is acrylic with blood as the base; the orange is a mix of that paint and bone marrow, and the varnish is of aqueous humour and clear acrylic sealer."

"I…"

"I know. Different in person?"

"It feels almost alive."

He laughed at that.

We walked on, moving through his gallery. I had little time to admire each one, but I will describe them here as best I can.

‘Epitaph’ depicted a group of skeletons; their bones were clumsily placed on the dirt below – I could not tell where one began and the other ended. Of course, Mondel used a ground-up bone paste as the base for his paint.

‘Elephant guts, tomorrow’ presented an abstract ‘elephant’ being disemboweled by a dark figure. Crows had been painted emerging from the wound; some eating their way out, some flying desperately in an attempt to flee. He did not specify the painting materials used.

‘Deus ex carne’ was more interesting. A wireframe structure covered in a thick blanket, pulled tight. The blanket had been painted on, showing some form of strange anatomy – an unreal combination of wires, gears and human organs. I stared for a while.

Soon, he stopped me at a much larger exhibit. Something underneath its cover hummed, like an engine. A sculpture, evidently.

He removed the cloak and revealed it.

A pulsating amalgam of flesh and bone towered above me. It was connected to a nearby metal apparatus, which pumped liquid through steel tubing.

I was stunned.

“What’s this one called?”

“This one is Edward Poyle,” he pointed to a specific bone structure. “This one is Gracie May, this one is Martin… ah I forget the name.”

“What?”

A moment hung in the air.

Then.

“I’m only messing with you,” he laughed. “It’s called ‘Fracture.’ Subject to change, though.”

“Ah…” I exhaled. “And where do you acquire such…”

“Flesh? Meat? Bone and brawn? At the morgue of course. Where else?”

"And… they just let you take them? What about the families?"

"You'd be surprised how many people are donating their bodies to art nowadays."

"How many?"

"Take a look."

Another sliding door. Each one grander than the last.

“This,” he bellowed, “is my workshop.”

My view opened onto an atrium filled with people. None of them moving, none of them breathing. It was as if I was in a living mausoleum.

The corpses lying in front of me were not all intact. Some were dismembered: their organs strewn across the room in intricate patterns; bones organised in place of mosaic stones.

“What do you think?” The man spoke with pride.

“I’m… it’s a lot.”

“It’s true. An artist can never have enough material.”

Material? Is this what he called material?

The woman in front of me lay still. Her eyes had been removed, a pair of giant marbles resting in their place.

A person was propped upright on a frame, like a scarecrow. Their hands and feet had been swapped, and their ribcage was open. I had a clear view of their now-metal heart.

Another man had simply been skinned and gutted. Like a fish.

“Oh don’t worry about him.” Mondel had clearly noticed my expression. “He’s dead!”

“…”

“But really, I will put his components to good use. Look.”

He gestured to something I hadn’t previously seen. It was a hanging rack, but instead of clothes, there were skins of different sizes, colours. Some were joined together in inhuman meshes reminiscent of webs. Some had wings stitched onto them.

“If you want we can move on. This place is not for the faint of heart.”

I could no longer reply. Was he truly serious? Or was he joking around, playing a cruel game on me, waiting to see when I would break?

He looked at me expectantly. I grinned in reply – a false grin, but I could only hope – never once taking my eyes off of the table.

These bodies looked fresh. Too fresh. I felt like I should trust him, but deep beneath this house, in this basement full of death, what was stopping me from joining them?

I had long since stopped caring about the meaning of the art I was looking at. It was all sensations, colours, masses of pulsating flesh and bone and gristle. The souls of people ground into art supplies. I shivered. Art should not pulsate.

“I… may I use your bathroom?”

“Why of course! Just walk up the stairs, on your left.”

I excused myself, my hands shaking behind my back. The stairs were long, and I could hardly suppress my fear. As soon as I knew I was out of sight, I ran. I met a junction. Right, left. I backtracked through the maze of stairs. Left, left again. Was it a right turn here? Please say I could – wait.

A head, poking around the door. It was the face of a woman.

"Hello?"

No reply. The door creaked open, and she stepped out.

"Go." She said quietly, gesturing to the right.

I paused. Was this his wife?

"Go now! Please." Her mouth moved unnaturally – as if she was forcing the words to come out.

"Thank you…"

I moved past her, but she remained still – her eyes the only feature betraying life.

I would leave that place soon after. A few turns and the door was there. Yet, her face would not leave me.

Unlike Mondel, she looked well-kept and clean: her teeth were perfect, aligned in white rows; her eyes a mesmerising red hue, and her face was pale, as if she had awoken from death. One could call her beautiful – almost. Despite her beauty, the thing that bothered me the most was her skin. There were no wrinkles or imperfections; no contours, moles or freckles, except for one thing. Small incisions at the base of her jawline, the sides of her nose and under her eyes, stitched over – fresh, not yet scarred. And something I only noticed upon looking back: no matter her facial expression or position of her head, the skin remained taught.

Like a canvas stretched across a frame.

Have you ever been a member of Scouts? Alright, well, imagine a bunch of teenagers, say twenty people between fourteen and eighteen, meeting in a shitty church hall for two hours every Friday evening. You come along, chat with your friends for an hour and do some apparent team building for the rest of the time. Oh yeah, and you get badges for doing some stuff or whatever. Astronomy, Camping, Cooking, all that kinda crap.

Our group did some good stuff every so often. Mostly camping in the wild for a week or two every year. I remember this summer camp, must have been fifteen. Yeah, we were in Norfolk that time, I was fifteen. So, we're in this field for a week; chopping firewood, cooking our own food and doing some competitions and games at night.

The last night, the leaders said we were going to play hide and seek in the woods. They handed out whistles in case we got lost and said the last one to be found could rest and wouldn't have to help with packing up tomorrow morning. Everyone perked up at that.

Three seekers were chosen at random and the rest of us ran off, every man for himself. After a few minutes, I heard the warning whistle and knew the seekers had entered the woods.

Running through the woods is a weird feeling. The moon and stars mean that it isn't purely dark, but the grass and rocks and trees all have this sheen to them, like they're stuck in some other world. A world with greys and damp greens, no whites or blacks. I fled, cursing every branch or twig I stepped on, though I knew I was leaving the sounds far behind me with every step I took. I went in random directions, backtracked, even stood still behind a tree to catch out any pursuers. I made sure I never accidentally ran back to the campsite by checking the compass on my phone.

What? They never took our phones away, as long we weren't trying to shirk our jobs.

Anyway. I heard the seekers' whistles shrieking every time they caught one of their prey, blaring into the night. Every time I'd add a tally to the list in my mind. One, two, three… Thirteen, fourteen. Eventually, I knew there were only two of us left and I was determined to be the last. I'd stopped running at that point, wasn't much of an athlete at the best of times. I just kept silently plodding along in the shadows, until I reached the wrong clearing.

No, you don't understand. A natural clearing isn't really clear, there's no definite boundary of growth. The trees just peter out and there's this weirdly shaped gap in the growth, filled with tiny, barely growing ferns and a few moss-drowned rocks. Artificial clearings? You still get evidence of nature, even when people finish their work. Rotting tree stumps, shavings if it's recent enough. Artificial clearings are neat, but there's still the evidence, discoloured grass, broken twigs and branches.

This clearing was different; it was neat. A perfect circle, filled with luscious grass, not a stone or animal burrow to be seen. The air felt still, but not by chance, like it was supposed to be completely silent. As I walked into the centre, I felt like I was being targeted. Not by the seekers or any people, but something else, like something was resting in that clearing and wanted me out.

I looked up at the sky. I still don't know why, maybe I felt that if I looked at those familiar constellations, I could calm the fear in my stomach. It didn't work.

I don't know why I wasn't more scared, but as I stood there, in that clearing with a small, orange plastic whistle hanging listlessly around my neck, all I felt was a brief confusion. There was nothing in that sky. No moon, no stars and no clouds. As I stared upwards, all I could see was a vast, black firmament.

I didn't want to look away. I thought that if I looked away, something worse would happen. Maybe an animal would attack me, maybe I'd leave, trip and crack my head open on some rock in the rest of the woods. Maybe the sky would open and all the light would come gushing back, all those stars and planets and the moon, and I'd be stuck in that clearing, staring back up into the gaze of the endless sky.

I don't know how long I stood there, transfixed and fearful. But, eventually, I saw something. A small, brief line of light. A shooting star.

I watched it arc across the sky. Thin, quick, but so bright. The light cheered me, it calmed me after the dark. And then? I saw more. I saw two, three, seven, ten, at a time, arcing across that firmament. They flew longer, faster, brighter, until that darkness was engulfed by the light of their trails. Until I couldn't even count their numbers. Until my eyes seemed to be burned out of my skull.

Did I close my eyes? I don't know, I think so. It didn't make any difference though: the trails were engraved on my eyelids. They blazed in the darkness of my skull and that of the universe, fragmented lines of fire, ice and rock.

I stood there for an aeon. When I came to, the stars, the moon were there in the sky, no meteors or shooting stars to be seen. I stumbled out of the clearing and walked back to the campsite. The other guy won the game, apparently. I didn't care, I walked into my tent, clambered into my sleeping bag and fell unconscious immediately.

The rest of the camp was uneventful. We packed everything up and drove home. I looked onto the Internet for any reported meteor showers in the area surrounding the campsite. No reports of anything. Nobody saw what I saw. It didn't exist.

I've talked to some people over the years. Either I had a seizure, a dream or a drug-induced hallucinations. I don't believe that. I have no reasoning, it's entirely possible I had a single seizure at fifteen, which never repeated throughout the rest of life. Maybe I secretly managed to obtain drugs and forgot the name of my supplier for the next two years. Maybe I just fell asleep in the biting cold on wet grass. I don't know.

All I know is that every few weeks after that incident in the clearing, I wake up in my bed, sweating and panting. I feel so utterly scared and there's pain in my head, like a wildfire in my skull. But I don't remember what I was dreaming about.

All I remember is the darkness.

It started with the tank of swimming insects.

No, I mean, first it started with the job opportunity. Pet sitting or housekeeping or whatever the fuck it truly is, well, it isn’t so bad when you’re in a sleepy suburban neighborhood. Every horror film has you fucked in a remote estate. Here people walked their dogs.

The owner was a nice enough fellow, although I found myself irreducibly distracted by his fingernails. There was an unsettling smoothness to them, and their short length. Despite their neat trimmed quality he kept picking at them, clicking them together in a way that was triggering my misophonia something fierce. He was older, short and roundish, and very very hairy. Like Bigfoot hirsute. With his girth and his hair he looked like an egg rolled along a barbershop floor. And those nails! I couldn’t stop thinking about them.

The first sign something was off, after the Hairy Egg has left, was the lack of any clocks. Even the stovetop and microwave clocks were disabled. There was otherwise nothing disturbing or even offputting about the rest of the furnishings, but the clocks bothered me. Why wouldn’t he need them.

Maybe it had something to do with the driveway. When I first arrived at the house it was very early in the morning, and yet the Egg was there to greet me. My second night, desperately trying to use my phone as a clock, I saw lights pull in. Is the Egg back? But I could have sworn in my sleepy state that it was my car pulling into the driveway. I dismissed it as absurd and went back to sleep. My car was already in the driveway.

I found the tank the next morning. In a dingy back office crowded with yellowing issues of Hustler magazine it sat on a rustic stand. The water inside was crawling with dozens of loathsome swimming…arthropods? I hesitate to give them any other name. A bit like caterpillars and a bit like beetles with long flapping wings and hundred of legs all thrashing through the water. They were climbing on top of each other, eating each other, each frantic to find room in the five gallon prison. The glass front of the tank was a busy crash of movement and the surface a boiling wave. After an uncomfortable thought of what they would feel like under my fingernails, I closed the door and shook it off. These are pets. They’re pets goddamn it, why else would I be here? Under my fingernails, please! It was a drunk’s thought.

The third night the stars began to looks different. So do the houses nearby. Sleepiness, surely, I thought.

The next day I thought I found one of the insects in my breakfast cereal. It turned out to be a regular caterpillar. My phone refused to display the time. I sighed.

I built a machine that would give me quantum immortality.

The setup was simple. At every point where there would be a chance of me dying, my consciousness would — instantly, cleanly, perfectly — transfer to a different timeline, the one in which I narrowly survived. It was almost obscenely easy to do, once I figured out the trick to it. You see, quantum mechanics is not about reality, but that strange, unexplainable quality — of consciousness. The multiverse is less an infinite assembly of parallel worlds and more an ocean of intermingled strands of sentience. Controlling the branch you end up in is just a matter of modulating your own wave to just the right frequency to jump to the right level.

I have put a pistol against my head and fired it a dozen times over, only to find the bullet jam on the sixth try, every time. I have set myself on fire. I have jumped in front of trains. A 50% chance of death. A 99% chance of death. A 99.999% chance of death. I live every time. I started small. I lived in my means, only using my immortality to escape my worst mistakes. Then I found myself seeking life-and-death situations more and more. I did them until they began to feel numb, and then I would raise the stakes, raise the danger, the assurance of total destruction. And every time I'd instead get that intoxicating, instant rush in my system, the kind you get from staring down death and winning.

I am certain I have drifted now between thousands of timelines — maybe millions — all of which were not meant for me. My probability of existence has decayed to an infinitesimal nothing.

Every time it happens, I fall unconscious. For just a moment.

I'm not sure why. But for that moment, right as I survive a car crash or a deadly disease or a fall from a building, my head spins with the weight of a million many-worlds as I pull myself to my feet. Like all the blood rushes to my head. I want to throw up.

There's something they don't tell you about quantum immortality. Why you never hear about it even though it is so, so easy to do. There is something about it deep in reality's fabric that is very deeply wrong, warped, deformed. You see, when you change the energy of one wave, another one somewhere logically has to replace it. I am not transferring my soul to the place that I live on. I am switching its places.

I am sorry to the other versions of me that I have usurped, the millions of timelines I have killed in search of my next rush. I could not stop even if I wanted to. Every new world I wake up in is always more numb to me than the previous one. Every split leads to a universe that is a little less real to me than the one before. I need my next rush. I need it to be more dangerous, more painful, more certain of death than the last one. There is no drug in the world that is better than survival. Nothing, in any universe, feels the same anymore. What choice do I have? I have to pull the trigger and jump again.

I know that reality is recognizing me more and more as an aberration every time I do it. I can feel myself fading just a fraction more, so small that you wouldn't even notice. And after an infinite number of near-death experiences, maybe I will finally be completely gone.

I built a machine that would give me quantum immortality. It would prolong my death over an infinite period of time, drawing it out, racing ever closer to an asymptote that it was designed never to reach.

I wonder what happens to the selves that die in the blast at every split in the river of my blood. I never witness the moment of my death. I simply jump ahead.

I have an idea.

Because every time I sleep, I die over and over again in my dreams.

I hate kids.

Sorry. Don't mean to be a downer. They're just so… loud, you know? And they never stop pestering. Never. They just take and take and take, and whine and whine and whine. So when Sarah told me she was pregnant, I wasn't exactly over the moon about it.

Of course, she wouldn't consider a termination. Or adoption. Nope, she was bound and determined, and of course we had The Fight again, except this time the matter was a lot more pressing, wasn't it? Things were said, and things were thrown, and she walked out.

I lived alone, back then.

We still met occasionally, to talk about things like child support. Child support. Made my skin crawl. Not even the financial aspect. I could afford it pretty easily. No, it was the idea of my hard-earned cash going to some squirming little turd that bothered me the most. Some parasite on society that would only scream and shit, shit and scream, while everyone was fucking cooing over it.

Last time, I might have accidentally let something fall into her coffee.

I think I did a pretty good job of acting surprised when she called me, and acting supportive, and saying I was so sorry to hear it, and that of course she could move back in with me. Hah. She always was a pushover when she was sad.

I ended the phone call, grinning. Turned out the light. Nice and quiet, just how I liked it. Almost silent, in fact.

Almost.

Except… just on the edge of hearing. The giggling.

Da… ddy?

Like I said, I lived alone.

Back then.

Everyone knows blinker fluid isn't real, right? At least not on modern vehicles. Silly me, thinking electric lamps require fluids to operate.

Well, but it is real.

If we want to get pedantic about it, "fluid" encompasses liquid, gas, and plasma; so halogen lamps and gas-discharge lamps in the blinkers have "blinker fluid." Go further back and you could find fuel-burning lamps on ancient cars, those stuff runs on literal fluids—though you can argue that those aren't really "blinkers" per se. But I'm not here to get pedantic.

I swear to God, blinker fluid (liquid, whatever.) is real.

It was back on the early 2000's. Our neighbor just got a spanking new car. It was shiny sleek maroon sedan, smelling like plastic inside and out. He was a smoker though, so the smell inside faded rather quickly, but it's still a new car in a rather poor neighborhood. All the kids wanted to get in it.

After a couple of weeks, we noticed that the car sometimes left wet tire marks. We told the owner about it and he got the tire, fuel, and oil checked, but there was nothing wrong with them. The wet mark wasn't oil or fuel spill either. Fuel would've been volatile and dry quickly, while oil would've felt, well, oily. It was definitely a water-based…something.

One time, when I was late for the drive, I swear saw its front lamps blink. Not like, repeatedly turn on and off, but the entire enclosure with the headlamp and the blinker closed and reopened like a massive eye.

I never told anyone about it; neither the other kids nor the owner. I started refusing to go on the drive, preferring to just watch from the side. The front lamps never blinked when it "saw" people around, but if I hide around the corner I could still see them stealing some blinks.

We moved away a while later. I don't know what happened to the guy with maroon sedan after that. I never asked. Maybe he is still there, still driving the maroon sedan with crying eyes.

There’s an obsession nowadays. Everything needs to be connected. You don’t even need to go outside to see it – I bet your house is all linked up. The device you’re reading this on, of course, but also so many others. A little device that you give commands to while it listens to what you do. Maybe you’ve got those lightbulbs connected to an app on your phone. A coffee maker set to turn on when your alarm goes off. Or maybe, god forbid, you’re one of those idiots with a digital lock on their house. But that’s what I’m trying to say – this obsession with linking everything together on a network that, frankly, no one really understands? Bad idea. I mean, this is just your home – but imagine if you applied it to something big. Something important.

[LEXINGTON] – This morning, Federal Bureau of Investigation officials released their statement and timeline of events this past week at Davis Hill Hospital in the small town of Morgan, Virginia. The extended crisis at Davis Hill Hospital came to an abrupt and horrifying end on Saturday morning, when local police and FBI were unable to retake the hospital’s systems from the hackers who had taken control on Thursday night with 344 patients and staff still inside. Per the hackers’ demands, authorities were given 36 hours to produce four million dollars in cryptocurrency and send it to a digital address, or risk the lives of all the hostages. Any attempt to gain entry into the hospital would be responded to “with lethal force – for you and the patients”.

Connection is good, but it comes with risks. It’s like… building a puzzle. Think of your surface area as your ability to do things, and your perimeter as your risk factor. The bigger the puzzle gets, the more things you can do – make your cars smarter and safer, control crime, offer lower prices. Become more efficient at everything. But as it grows, as you add more fancy bells and whistles, so too does your risk factor. The desire for efficiency isn’t bad in and of itself, but it is when you don’t even realize the openings you’re leaving for anyone with the right knowledge and no moral scruples. People like you don’t even stop to think about the opportunities and the access you’re handing to people like me.

Within hours, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team had arrived and taken command of the situation from the Morgan Police Department. Despite the warnings not to approach the building (which had been transmitted, like all of the hackers’ demands, through the hospital’s outdoor LED sign), FBI teams attempted to ascertain whether they could safely enter and evacuate the hostages from the ground level. In response, the FBI now believed the hackers malfunctioned the hospital’s MESA Segregated Airlock System, an emergency system intended to curtail the spread of highly-contagious airborne diseases. Through the large windows, teams watched as the oxygen was sucked out of rooms the system had been fooled into believing were empty, suffocating several administrative staff and nurses. Upon FBI HRT’s retreat, oxygen was released back into the rooms.

In 2013, a highly-organized group of men with machine guns drove a pickup truck into a transformer station in the Bay Area. Over the next twenty minutes, they systematically riddled 17 transformers full of bullets before leaving without a trace. The only reason the entire Bay Area didn’t black out is because the energy companies diverted power from their Silicon Valley stations. What I mean to illustrate is that if you’re planning a domestic terror attack, the smart money doesn’t go for big dramatic symbols. Smart money goes for the Achilles’ heel: out-of-date, unprotected and critical infrastructure. The highways and power grids that hold this collective building together. Seize those, and you lock everyone out of their usual tools: you set the playbook now.

Despite the initial setback and significant public pressure, attempts to gain access into the hospital or its computer systems continued throughout the night and the next day as the FBI Cybercrime Task Force also arrived as support. An initial attempt to land a team on the roof of the hospital using a helicopter was warded away by the threat of plastic explosives planted around the hospital, including on key infrastructure, being detonated. As proof, a small shaped charge on the helipad was detonated, collapsing it. Flyarounds by news helicopters confirmed that the magnetic locks on almost all of the hospital’s doors had been remotely activated, sealing patients and doctors in. Davis Hill Hospital officials have since claimed that this system was put in place as a security measure after a mass shooting event in 2014 in which five people died of their wounds, including the gunman. This design, popular in high-risk facilities such as hospitals, schools, and government buildings, has since come under harsh criticism.

Another thing – and you’ll forgive me if I get a little philosophical, right? The digital revolution has already removed a lot of the human element from our lives. And that’s not always a bad thing. Sure, you don’t always want to know your pizza delivery guy on a first-name basis. That’s fine. But there are times when the system doesn’t work. Times when you need to talk to a person to sort something out, and that’s no longer an option. So you’re trapped in this Kafkaesque maze of webpages and contact emails and e-forms that don’t help you a bit. And that’s not even mentioning how much of our social interaction is through screens these days. All I’m saying is that computers have robbed us of a lot of the face-to-face interaction that so many of our systems are built and predicated upon. So what happens when it’s suddenly and totally snatched away?

By Friday evening, officials were under the added pressure of ensuring that patients in need of daily treatment received their medications. However, a key failure in FBI negotiation process quickly became apparent: that there was no one to negotiate with. The lack of a human actor or any way to contact them meant it was impossible to offer concessions or exchanges, much less employ the complex behavioral reading and conflict deescalation that FBI hostage negotiators are trained for. Officials could only watch helplessly as the tally of infection and diabetic patients who were believed dead without access to their medication grew. In the days since, sources within the FBI have said that they believe the subsequently large death toll was partially due to this; in traditional hostage situations, the perpetrators seeing and hearing their victims made actively executing them more difficult and psychologically traumatic. In what has come to be called the Davis Hill Incident, the hackers’ physical distance from the hostages may have created a psychological detachment of the kind observed in drone operators: killings are easier to commit and process as dots or numbers on a screen.

The point of what I’m trying to say is that information is the world’s biggest double-edged blade. It can be used to do great things. Make our lives easier, more convenient, more efficient. Empower us to achieve things that would have been in the realm of pure fantasy only a decade or two ago. But it also complicates things. It’s not a panacea; it’s simply powerful, without judgment or morality. How good or bad it is depends on the person using it. And for everything great it can do, you can use data to do some truly terrible things, in part because no one stops to think about what they’re using and why. In that chaos, in that heat of the moment, they don’t stop to question their senses. Tell them anything and they’ll believe anything.

It is yet unclear who gave the order for tactical units to breach into the hospital despite the threat of explosives, but shortly after dawn on Friday, with only four and a half hours remaining for the ransom to be paid, FBI Hostage Rescue Teams made their move. Using rubber bullets, snipers shattered as many windows as possible to counter the MESA system while SWAT teams breached the doors and moved in, evacuating civilians before moving to the next floor. At this point, the FBI believes the hackers blew shaped charges in electrical lines, cutting the power to the facility. The hostage rescue teams were unable to save the lives of 29 patients who died when their life support systems lost power; 8 others suffered permanent hypoxic brain damage. By the time all patients were evacuated from the hospital and bomb squads moved in to sweep the building, 52 people had been declared dead. In the end, no explosive devices were discovered in the hospital.
First responders and rescued hospital staff immediately began administering first aid to patients who had gone several hours without critical treatment or medication, but almost immediately noticed adverse reactions. Nursing staff were the first to note they had no memory of certain patients requiring the treatments and drugs that the hospital’s database reported they did. At this point, the parting gift from the hackers’ became clear: prior to cutting the power, they had shuffled and scrambled the patient database, swapping medications between patients. In the chaos of triage, it was not immediately noticed. Misapplied first aid resulted in dozens of additional casualties, and at least 6 more fatalities. FBI officials have stated that they believe this act was meant purely to slow down and stretch thin law enforcement resources while hackers exfiltrated from the system.

As the matter continues receiving national attention, there is significant reconsideration on the continued value of the government’s stance of not negotiating with terrorists. The FBI’s official statement affirms their commitment to finding the perpetrators of the ransomware attack, who are still unknown and at large.

But hey, that’s just a hypothetical, right?

Over there. By the dining table.

I quickly glanced over. Nothing there, but perhaps through all of the subtle ambiance, I could have made out some whispers. Careful footsteps that tip-toed over creaky wooden floorboards, or tense breathing.

Better to be safe. Always.

I turned off the microwave heating up my meal and shuffled towards the dining table, ears straining to pick out the odd noise, though no matter how I concentrated, I could hear nothing. Only the soft pitter patter of rain and my own beating heart. Alone with my thoughts, what did I expect? For it to be different this time? To find a looming figure hiding in the shadows, ready to jump at me?

Look. Over there, the living room. Check.

There was a harrowing sense of dread that pushed against my chest without remorse, forcing the air from my lungs. With stiff limbs, I walked down the hallway to my living room, my path lit only by a dull beam of moonlight through the window. The light cast an eerie shadow against the wall, and for a moment, I thought I saw something moving in the darkness.

Ready to pounce, it's there. Waiting. Waiting for you to make a move. There's no way out of this one.

I froze where I stood, not daring to move an inch. My heart raced in my chest as I waited for whatever it was to show itself. When nothing happened, I took a step forward, and then another, and another, until I was out of the hall. I flipped on the lightswitch, squinting as the sudden harsh glare of fluorescent lights filled my vision.

Check. It doesn't hurt to be sure. Right there right below the stairs.

It was the pantry door. Locked, of course. I had also propped a chair against it. The world seemed to pause as I approached the door. One by one, layers of comprehension began to strip away from my mind as my surroundings faded. I no longer heard my dull footsteps as I approached the locked door, nor did I hear the rhythmic drops of rain beating against the rooftop. Even the sterile while lights that had previously flooded the room seemed to dissipate.

Listen. Carefully. Listen closely.

I stepped around the chair and placed my ear against the door. An old, dilapidated thing, with creaky hinges and chipped black paint that revealed the frail wood underneath. At first, all I could hear was the monstrous beating of my heart as it sent dizzying amounts of blood to my head. It was deafening enough to scatter my thoughts and deliver a rising bout of nausea as I tried so desperately to find silence.

Be quiet.

My body obeyed.

Breathing, uneven and hitched, came through from the other side, along with weak, yet desperate scratching. I looked down to find a set of crooked fingernails, jagged and uneven and with disgusting black grit buried underneath. Pale, skinny fingers jutted out from underneath the door. They clawed desperately at the floor, as if hopping to wear the wooden boards down.

"Please," came a weak, trembling voice. It was barely above a whisper, but I could hear the pleading in her voice. "Please… let me out…"

Still inside, then. Good. That's good. Nothing to worry about.

Despite the closed door, I could still plainly make out the palpable stench emanating from the other side. Disgusting, sickly rot consisting of excrement and fluids left to soak into the flooring. Every week, I would attempt to clean whatever leaked outside, yet the pungent scent would remain. It had only worsened as time progressed, first manifesting as an unpleasant sourness, only to become a revolting cloud of stagnating air that was nearly impossible to breathe in.

"God…" the voice bemoaned, "So thirsty. Please. A-Anything… God, help me. God, please."

How long had it been? A month, maybe. It wouldn't be for too much longer. It couldn't be for much longer. I used to be able to hear her cries all the way from my room. Those were the nights. Sleepless, stressful, it felt as if at any moment, her banging fist would finally smash a hole through that decrepit old door. Of course, she could only make such noise for so long; not once had I fed her, not since this whole mess started. Not even water.

I should feel bad, right? I mean, I'm keeping a person, or rather what I thought was a person, locked up like some kind of animal. But the truth is, I'm scared. I'm so fucking scared that I can't even bring myself to think of her as my wife. Every time I do, every time I think of that life, I remember her name. Her face. I see her as she was before: healthy, normal, beautiful.

Not true. She wasn't human, she was something else. Many times, I considered just finishing the job myself. Surely, she wouldn't be able to fight back. She sounded so weak, I could just… grab one of the cleavers from the kitchen. Or that old baseball bat in the toolshed. I could put an end to this nightmare.

Not human. Deceit. She wants you to try. She's crafty, sneaky, you don't know what she's capable of.

Right. It's easier this way. Has to be.

"Help," the voice said. Her fingers stretched out further, reaching towards my feet. "S-Sam, Honey, I know you can hear me. I know you're there. P-Please, just… let me out, fuck, just let me out. I c-can't live like this. I'm almost out of cans. They're so hard to open, Sam. It hurts."

"Be quiet. Don't say my name. Just die already, god damn it, don't do this to me. Don't be so cruel."

The voice inside started sobbing. It hurt like nothing else hearing her cry. I loved her, once. Before I realised what she was. I was fully prepared to spend the rest of my life with her. I didn't know whether or not to be thankful that she started to slip up. Little oddities here and there. The way her pupils seemed to change colour in the light, her insistence in cooking all of my meals for me, and above all, just the fact that everything seemed perfect. Too perfect. Like my life was a theatrical scene, something set and rehearsed. Only, I was the only one without a script.

Whatever she was planning to do to me, I never gave her the chance to execute.

"What were you going to do to me? What are you? Who else is in on this?" I hissed at the door. "Tell me. Tell me and I might let you out. I don't want to do this."

The voice inside said nothing, only continuing to cry. I grimaced, disappointed. She never answered my questions. Most of the time, her responses were full of feigned ignorance. But she was lying. I knew that much, I wasn't a fool.

"Nothing to worry about," I whispered to myself as I slowly backed from the door. Her pained voice faded to nothing as the gentle rain once more returned to my ears. I made my way back to the kitchen, careful to keep my footsteps light. I took my dinner out of the microwave, which consisted of half of a rotisserie chicken. It sat in a puddle of brown grease and oil, some of it partly coagulated in translucent chunks of fat.

I tore out a dry chunk of flesh with my hand and stuffed it into my mouth. It was room temperature and salty enough to make me pucker. Despite my distaste, I forced myself to swallow. It could be worse, I reminded myself. I could be locked inside of a dusty pantry, with nothing to eat at all.

Out of the corner of my eye, a shadow blinked in and out of existence.

She'd do anything to live. She would want nothing more than to get back at you.

"The door's locked."

Make sure. Have to make sure. Check, and listen carefully.

I placed my plate down on the kitchen counter and stared forward, eyes focusing on nothing in particular. It was quiet, but if I concentrated, held my breath…

She's opening the door. She's waiting to ambush you.

I nodded my head and retrieved a large steak knife from one of the kitchen drawers. I had to be careful, after all.

Just in case.

It’s true what they say — crime doesn’t pay.

I run through the wreckage of my life, hallways and doors and floors rushing past me like the trains of a subway. When I arrived at this stately manor of madness, I cannot say — I know only my trespasses, and that I have been here for a very long time. Long enough for an ordinary man to turn to dust, but that is not permitted for me.

Paintings stare at me with human eyes, pupils dilated perhaps in pleasure or hatred, lips spread into smiles and rictus grins. The rooms repeat mercilessly, foyers and bathrooms and bedrooms and kitchens relentlessly assaulting my senses as I run. If I turn back and run the other way, I do not find the same scenery. The only direction allowed to me is forward, and even with that I am not granted a destination.

It follows me. No, it chases.

I hear it baying in a distance not nearly far away enough — hunger pouring through its throat. I hear its paws smashing against the floor — doubtless heavy enough to shatter tiles and wood. Sometimes, I hear it speak, human words warped and slurred by inhuman jaws.

I smell it, the stink of it, wafting down the halls as a harbinger. The hound never loses my scent, as I cannot lose its scent.

I feel it, the vibrations in the floor, pulsing through the house with each step the hound takes. Each shake brings it closer.

Sometimes, I see it, at the end of a hallway or through the gap of a closing door — it’s slavering tongue or it’s staring eye, focused on me, hunting me. I do not know what will happen if it catches me, but I know that it must never catch me. For it to do so would be worse than anything I have endured so far. So I run, even as my feet are fire.

Through reflections on broken glass I see its handlers, the children who condemned me here, who tore away my false veils and revealed my inadequacy. Sometimes, I beg them for mercy, but images upon glass are not capable of such things.

This is my punishment. I know only that I have been here for a very long time… and my trespasses. In another life, this manor was once mine. Everything that torments me here is something that I have earned tenfold. Any bitterness on my part would be mere petulance.

But still, I cannot help but curse…

…I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.