In Dreams
I’m sure that everyone can relate to the falling in love dreams. You know the kind. Where you’re asleep but you find the woman or man that is perfect for you, you fall in love, build a life together, and all of that, only to wake up and realize that you’re alone in your bed with nothing but the throbbing memories of fantasy in your heart? The kind where you walk through an entire day in a sort of haze because your brain doesn’t quite know how to separate what you felt from what is real. The kind where you actually ache over someone that did not exist and never will.

Compared to what I have now, that would be a blessed relief.

See, I used to dream about those moments all the time. Countless women would go through my mind, take a little piece of my heart, and dance off into nothingness with the sound of that damn alarm in the morning. It would hurt and I would be unhappy all day, but that would fade. Until Shannon, that is.

It was just one of those standard dreams with a cute blonde woman. It was when I woke up that the problems started. Throughout the day, she would come back into my mind and tinker with things. Little things at first. For instance, I was trying to text a friend about a date that was coming up, but I felt her change the name of the date to Shannon instead of whatever it actually was. I had to apologize for that one.

Since then, she’s gotten more and more insistent. When I fall asleep, she’s there, waiting, and she perks up when she sees me. I could have been about to dream of something else – anything else – but she takes me by the hand and leads me back into living the life we’ve been building. It’s to the point that even a nightmare would be preferable to the agonizing sameness that I’m experiencing. I don’t want to sleep anymore, simply because it sends me back to the routine.

That’s bad, I know. She’s not real. I need to see someone to get it resolved. All of those things are true and yet, when I close my eyes, she’s there and wanting to go to brunch or adopt a puppy or even ready for a couples’ retreat.

What’s worse, though, is what has been happening lately. I’ve taken to using pills that knock me out without the possibility of dreams and somehow that’s been effective. Waking up is the problem, because when I do, I notice that things around my room are different. My lamp has changed. There are bobby pins scattered across my dresser. Even my sheets are a different color.

What scares me the most is what’s happening at the moment. See, I just woke up. I’m on my side, facing the wall, but I can feel something different now.
​
It’s someone’s back and it’s pressed against mine. 

Nowhere Man
It starts when you wake up. It doesn’t matter the day or time. It happens randomly. You open your eyes, still misted over with sleep, and realize that you are no longer in your nice warm bed. The blankets are gone and you have no pillows. You are flat on hard, rocky ground that pokes and prods your back. There is a moment of confusion, of course. When you went to sleep, you were safe and sound at home, content in the knowledge that you would wake up in the same place in which you drifted off.

The fog of rest clears when you peer at the sky and feel the icy grip of fear surround your heart. There is no ceiling, white and popcorned with little dots of plaster. No ceiling fan or lights. Hell, there is not even a blue sky above you. Not that being outdoors would have been much of a comfort, but the existence of a baby-blue expanse looming overhead would have provided some sense of grounding in reality. That is not the case, though. Above you is a sky that is undeniably red. You try to think of words to describe it that don’t upset you. Ruby. Crimson. Cherry. None quite fit, however. There is, of course, one word for the color that is perfect.

Blood.

Now, the liquid that runs in your veins is pulsing and you feel yourself hurtle to your feet as you survey your surroundings. Honestly, you wish you hadn’t. Around you is nothing but rocks – sharp, jagged, and colored rusty-brown-red. In the distance, you see hills spiking into the horizon like angry teeth. There are no birds flying. No animals running around through grass. Not even the sound of wind whistling over natural barriers. There is no sound, save the pounding of your terrified heart and the air pouring in and out of your lungs in great, deep gasps. You recognize nothing around you, but ahead of you sits one undeniable fact, nearly screaming at you from the matted dirt of a path.

You need to walk.

You trudge off, being careful to avoid any rocks or pitfalls, and find yourself relishing the crunchcrunchcrunch of your feet on the path. The sound breaks up the oppressive silence in a way. It’s almost musical to your ears. You walk and walk until it seems there will be no end and then – and only then – do you reach the table.

It is out of place, to say the least. Short, thick, and wooden, it sits with two buttons on it. Below the buttons, there are words. The button on the left is labeled ‘Break’. The button on the right? ‘Someone Else’. You stare, confused, before you take in the rest of the scene. Near each button is a thin sheet of rock with carvings on them. One has all. The other has none. A choice. Your hand hovers over the buttons, wavering on your decision.
​
Finally, you slam your hand down.

Paint It Black
Mikhael had a problem. He didn’t ‘do’ mirrors. Didn’t own them. Didn’t use them. Ever since he was little, mirrors had held a strange sort of sway over him. They fascinated him with a sort of dark fury. When he was a baby, he would stare into the mirror on his mom’s dresser for hours, just looking at himself. Playing games and talking and laughing with his reflection. It was cute when he was little. It became less so when he got old enough to understand that what he was seeing was just himself, but continued on undaunted.

When his parents finally sat him down and explained that he wouldn’t be allowed to play his mirror games anymore, he cried. It felt, to him, like he was losing a part of himself. Still, he behaved himself and did what he could to move on with his life. The loss lingered, but he knew that it was for the best. After all, it was just a reflection. So, from that point on, he would use the mirror for its intended purpose. He would brush his hair and fix his clothes and ignore the pulsing desire in his heart to start another game. When he saw the disappointment on his reflection’s face, he knew that it was only the same look plastered on his own.

It was when he turned thirteen that he noticed some discrepancies in what he saw in the mirror. He was still clean-shaven, being unable to grow any facial hair, but his reflection wore a wispy blonde mustache. When playing basketball, he fell and cut his forehead, which healed into a visible, scar, though his reflection did not show it. There were enough differences to make him feel uneasy, to the point that he would stop looking into mirrors.

His reflection, though, didn’t like being ignored and made its feelings known. Late at night, he would hear banging on the glass and force himself not to look over to see his angry reflection staring at him. He would cover the mirror with a towel at night and, in the morning, it would be on the ground in shreds. He would turn it around and would find that it had been returned to its usual place when he woke up. He even broke it once, to no avail. It was whole in the morning.

Finally, he did the last thing he could imagine. He took thick, black paint and slathered on coat after coat until the glass was covered with inches of dry color. At last, he felt a kind of peace and was able to move on with his life. Until last night.

He awoke in the middle of the night to a scratching sound. It took a moment to register, but his stomach dropped when he realized what he was hearing. With horror, he looked over at the mirror and saw, right at the corner, a shiny, reflective patch that had been scraped away.
​
From the inside.

Landslide
I assume that everyone has different fears than I do. Not just because I’m a unique individual, but because I don’t have the usual phobias that others have. Spiders and snakes are cute. I do handstands on top of cliffs. I work as a professional public speaker. I scuba-dive in the ocean for fun. There’s just one little fear that keeps biting at the back of my brain.

I’m scared of avalanches. Landslides. Anything like that. I know, it sounds silly, but something about them just grips me by the spine and won’t let go. Before you start thinking that I’m claustrophobic, it’s not that either. I go spelunking weekly, I’ll have you know. The prospect of being buried alive isn’t fun but that’s not really what scares me so much.

It’s the inevitability that freezes my bones. It doesn’t happen all at once. It’s not like a car crash that goes from zero to in the ICU or a fire that kicks off in a home with greasy rags. It’s not an instant thing. It takes time and there’s no way to escape.

Picture this. You’re hiking or skiing or just generally having a good time out in the world instead of curled up in front of the TV. You’re out in fresh air, exploring the planet we’re blessed with. Then, you hear a rumble. At first, you think it’s an oncoming storm. Great! Storms are wonderful to be out in. The rain pouring down, soaking you to the bone? Delicious. The thunder, or what you thought was thunder, doesn’t stop though. It keeps rumbling and, in fact, starts to get louder. The ground under you starts to shake and you see little fragments of the surroundings – snow, pebbles, whatever – trickling down the slope you’re standing on. The rumble gets louder and louder and you start to run as best you can. You’re hurtling down the hill as fast as your legs can carry you, being careful not to trip.

Your chest is burning with exertion as you run, slamming into trees and bushes as you go. The rumble is louder now. It’s right at the edge of hurting your ears. You hear snapping and crashing as the environment is swallowed and broken by what’s coming. You pause a second to look up and your stomach lurches. A wave of snow or mud is rolling at you and there is nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. All you can do is stand there as you’re swallowed by the world. If you’re lucky, you die right away from the impact. If you’re not, you get to feel yourself slipping away, unable to move.

I’m being careful, though. I live in an area that is completely flat. I avoid skiing or hiking now. Everything I do is designed to keep me safe. There’s just one problem. My company is having a retreat this weekend up in the Rockies. It’s compulsory. I can’t avoid it.
​
And I can hear the rumble already.

White Rabbit
The jokes get old quickly, of course. Hey, Alice, can you take me to Wonderland? Hey, Alice, can you show me your Cheshire Cat? Hey, Alice, are you on your Red Queen? The same tired quips by the same uninspired, witless, boring men and women. All of them are exhausting and there’s no recourse because, hey, they’re joking and you don’t want to be a ‘mad’ Hatter, do you? It’s almost enough to drive one to take drugs to go down that hole for real. It doesn’t happen, though, because why give them fodder?

It’s what happens next that’s so perplexing.

It’s waking up with a rabbit on your chest. Not one in a waistcoat with a pocket watch and monocle and an annoying look on what passes for its face. No, just a normal rabbit with white fur, long ears, and a twitching pink nose. Cautiously, you extend a hand and pet it and it’s soft and warm and the anger that surrounds your heart melts just a little.

You ignore the snark and jabs that come from when they find out you own a rabbit now. You don’t seem to care anymore. Your little buddy mellows you out, calms you down, and makes things seem smaller than they really are. You know something isn’t quite right about it – random rabbits out of nowhere should terrify you – but you simply can’t be bothered.

So, when the coworker that gives you the most grief and in ways that could be considered borderline harassment disappears, you think nothing of it. People disappear all the time. They have accidents or simply leave their jobs. It’s a natural part of life. Besides, he was enough of an ass that his presence missing from your workspace is a breath of fresh air. You can’t see anything wrong with it. When you get home, your rabbit friend is curled up, sleeping on the couch. He looks adorable and you could swear that he looks a little chunky. It’s just his fur, though. You’re sure of it and time goes on as usual.

Soon, though, there’s another disappearance and this time it’s a bit more concerning. This time it’s one of your friends from the office. She made a light-hearted joke about a Jabberwocky that was actually pretty funny and you laughed. She loves her job and has a good family, so her going missing is of real concern.
When you get home, you just want to curl up with your friend and worry, but he’s sleeping again. This time, you can tell that he’s not just fluffy. He looks almost swollen. You want to worry, but it doesn’t look like he’s sick or injured. It just looks like he’s eaten a big meal.

This is your life now. You try to ignore the obvious, but when a joke is made, the person disappears and your little buddy gets bigger and bigger.
​
It wouldn’t be so bad, you think, if he weren’t growing hands.

Isolation
Helena never really liked people. In fact, being around them would make her stomach turn with anxiety and stress. It wasn’t that people themselves were a problem. It’s that they provided no guarantees of anything and Helena was nothing if not risk-averse. So, she would stay inside, day after day, avoiding human contact and maintaining her safety in her routine. The same time waking up, the same meals, the same television shows on repeat over and over, the same one drink of gin before bed, the same bedtime. It was neat and calm and predictable.

When the doorbell rang one day, then, she nearly fainted from the disruption. It was not only unexpected but unwelcome. This wasn’t like getting a phone call she had been dreading, like from the bank or anywhere else to whom she owed bills. This wasn’t even the forced contact of the few people she considered friends coming over and sharing a meal or a drink and talking about their lives which she could not relate to in the slightest. This was completely out of the blue and it shook her down to the very marrow of her bones.

With trembling in her muscles, she approached the door and asked who it was. From the other side, a voice – low, smooth, calming – responded that he was someone who knew how to help her finally get away from people. This gave her pause. Not because it was a stranger, but because she had rarely shared her desires with anyone. Not even her friends knew. For him to somehow know that she wanted to be truly isolated, free from social obligations and niceties, was concerning and yet…something in his voice relaxed her and she opened the door.

He was tall and slim and dark in every way one could imagine. He smiled at her when he saw her and brilliant white teeth glinted down at her. He introduced himself as a Mr. Berry and told her that he solved problems that most people were unable to tell anyone else. He explained how he had heard of her concerns through a friend of a friend of a friend that he had helped long ago and that she was not the first to need his gentle hand. He asked if he could come in and she agreed.

Over the next couple hours, she explained, using her voice more than she had in years, her desire to really be alone and he nodded sympathetically. He knew all too well her feelings but had found a way to bring them to life. Relieved, she smiled and he asked if he could have some coffee. When she stood up to get some, he placed a hand on her head and everything went black.

When she awoke, she was confused as she could not see anything or hear anything. Had he done what he promised? How could she be truly alone?
​
That’s when she reached up and felt the wood of the coffin lid.

The Stranger
I am not here. I have never been here. What you see when you speak to me is a figment of your imagination. Rather, it’s a fiction that I’ve chosen to create for you. You see a friendly man or a quiet man. You see a handsome man or a man with a few noticeable scars. You see an angry man or a calm man. Every time you see me, I will be different and every time you notice, I will be the same as you remember. You’ll be confused for a moment, but only a moment, as your memory shifts and warps and molds the clay of reality to fit what you are seeing.

Do I have a real face? It’s hard to say. It’s been so long that ‘real’ may have slipped away like sands on an endless desert. Was I tall or short or fat or thin or any of those markers people use to define others? It’s unclear, even to me. Truth be told, I don’t myself remember.

Or, perhaps more accurately, I don’t remember myself.

It doesn’t really matter in the end, though. I can be who you want me to be. If you want me to be. All it takes is desire and we’ll be off to the races. I can be your boyfriend or brother or boss or coworker or whoever you need me to be in the moment. I will build a life special-made just for you and put it on display to help you however you want. I will be a spectacular jewel in the crown of your life, if only you ask me.

I come, however, with a dear price.

As with all things, nothing is free. There is always a catch. Always a give-and-take. I am not different. I will give you the world you want on a silver platter for as long as it needs to be yours. In return, though, I will receive something precious from you, and it will always, always be the same thing.

Your face.

It is curious to me how people will bargain and beg and plead for something different when the bill comes due. I lay the terms out in specific, agonizing detail at the beginning because I believe in playing fair. No grift. No tricks. No hidden clauses designed to trick you out. I do not take. I simply require the fulfillment of our deal. Some people run. It’s a natural impulse and I do understand. It doesn’t matter, though. As fast as you run, I will be faster. As deeply as you hide, I will find you.

I want you to know something. I believe it is important that you know it. There is no malice in my heart. No vendetta against you. It is not personal. It never has been. But we made a deal. I did my part and now you owe me yours.
​
It’s as simple as this: I have a collection and it needs to grow. 

I’ve Got You Under My Skin
When someone dies, they never really leave you. You have pictures and videos and memories galore. You have objects that remind you of moments that you shared. Places that bring back pleasant – or maybe not so pleasant – times where you were together. They are gone, but they are not forgotten, although time and life sand down the edges of memory into a pleasant sort of blurry. Usually.

But what happens when they don’t want to leave?

It happens slowly, almost like an afterthought. You wake up one morning and find out that you’ve scratched yourself during the night. Maybe an arm. Maybe on your leg. Maybe your stomach or something else. It happens. Fingernails can grow sharp, after all, and you move around in your sleep. Nothing to worry about.

The worry comes when it happens again. And again. And again. It happens night after night after night and you start to see something forming. A pattern? No. It’s too irregular for that. At the same time, though, it’s not completely random. No, that’s silly. It’s just bad luck. You clip your fingernails short, short, almost too short. Little drops of blood on your fingertips, but at least you won’t scratch yourself anymore.
It keeps happening, though. Something starts to emerge from these scrapes that have gotten deeper and deeper. Something coherent. Letters. Words. A sentence maybe. It will always be the same, though. The same words in the same order.

Coming. Back.

You’ll go and see a doctor, who will tell you that you need to just wear gloves at night to prevent scarring. Useless. You’ll go and see a therapist, who will tell you that you are wrestling with grief and guilt and need to address the root of the problem. Quackery. You’ll go and see a priest, who will tell you there is something evil taking place. You won’t want to believe it, but that makes more sense than anything else you’ve heard so far. You’ll ask how to fix it, how to relieve yourself of this burden. None of the answers will calm you, so you’ll leave, determined to fix it on your own.

Your answer is easy. It’s almost elegant in its simplicity, truth be told. You just won’t ever sleep again. It can’t be that hard, after all. Caffeine in near-fatal quantities, scary movies, loud noises, and everything else you can think of will work for a while. A few days, at least. It won’t last, though. Eventually, sleep will fall over you like a thick blanket and you will get fitful rest with pain over and over.

When you wake up, you’ll look down at the affected area in horror because the tone has changed. The scratches are gone, replaced by an angry gouge that has covered the bed with red. All you can do is look on in horror as the gouge gets deeper in front of your eyes. Then you see it and scream.
​
A finger pokes out of the hole.

The Night Has A Thousand Eyes
I love the day. I really do. The sun shines and brings warmth and life to everything. Birds sing and people move around their daily lives, unburdened with the knowledge that night will come and they will be seen. Not by their families or friends or loved ones or acquaintances or anything like that. Of course they will be seen or maybe not, depending on how much they choose to be alone. They just don’t know the fear I feel when dusk comes creeping over everything. The blue-gray blanket that signifies the oncoming terror.
See, I know something they don’t. I know that we’ve been lied to for years and years and years. Lied to or misled or whatever, but I found the truth finally. I know that high up above us, spattering the sky like little white blood specks, are the stars but they aren’t really stars. No, no. They aren’t balls of gas trillions of miles away. That’s what they want you to believe. That’s what they rely on. They need you to believe the lie because the truth would be too difficult for people to understand and grapple with, but I found out. Me. And now I know and I can’t tell anyone the horrible reality of things. We call them ‘stars’ but they aren’t really stars.

They’re eyes.

They watch us every night, track our movements, and report back to whoever is orchestrating things. I don’t know why. I don’t know that I’ll ever know. But I do know that they don’t like being watched back. That’s why I bought the telescope. It’s a weapon, in a way. Every night, I sit out on my deck under the false stars and watch them back. They can’t do anything when someone is watching. They have to maintain the façade, you understand. They have to act like the world is blind so that they can see. But I can see.

I first suspected something was up when I couldn’t sleep one night and went for a walk. Everywhere I went, I felt like someone was watching me, staring at me, examining me. I kept yelling into the darkness but there was never any response. That’s when I looked up and one of them made a mistake.

It blinked. I saw one of the stars disappear and then reappear a moment later and that’s when I knew.

They don’t like me knowing, though. They all watch me and know that I watch them and it’s starting to get to me. The constant scrutiny and waiting for me to slip up. I don’t know what they’ll do, but it’ll be something bad. Don’t you worry, though. I’m going to act first.

I have the knife right here next to me and when one of them blinks at me tonight, I’ll be ready. See, I figured it out. They only care when someone can see them.
​
So, I’ll stop seeing them. They can’t get me if I can’t see, after all.

So, given that Facebook has may or may not been deleted as a whole, I'm posting these here. 

I've decided that this October is going to offer me a new challenge. Every day, I will write a 500-word spooky story - not 499, not 501, ONLY 500 - and post it. I can't do anything else with it aside from those until the month is over. When it's done, we'll see.

Until then, please enjoy the first four days of The October Music. Day 5 will be up tomorrow morning.
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​Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me
You saw it, didn’t you?

The aching maw behind the world. High in the sky, blazing like a fiery beacon. New, glorious, glowing light from out of nowhere. It struck you as strange, didn’t it? Convenient, even. Yet, you held your tongue at first, for the sake of the people. Look at them. They were so happy!

They celebrated, the doomed fools. They called it a miracle. A second sun to warm the planet. To bring light to those shrouded in darkness. A blessing to ward off the impending heat death that worried so many. The fear of destruction was gone, replaced by a throbbing sense of hope and renewal.

But you knew better. You saw the hunger boiling inside it. You saw the eyes fluttering open from an endless sleep. You saw the first blinks of consciousness after aeons of peaceful slumber. You felt the rumbles of a long-dead being stirring from the grave to feed.

You tried to warn them, of course. You had no hate then. You saw life as valuable and saving the world as a privilege and a duty. You were naïve, my child. They laughed at you. Mocked you. Debated publicly about placing you in care to keep you away from society at large. They called you crazy, of course. Why would they not? To speak such truths to a world desperate for the blissful lie is blasphemous and worthy of punishment. You poor thing.

You didn’t bother telling them that the moon grew jealous. Why spend that energy on ungrateful swine who imprisoned you for trying to save them? Instead, you watched as hateful pulses leaked from gray stone high above. You saw the moon grow brighter as it ate all the light it could stomach. Nobody noticed, save you.

You simply waited. Waited and watched as joy and exultation started to take on a tinge of concern. You saw the sun grow and little drops of liquid hate spit from it as you stared, defiant, at the raging, roiling light. Somehow, someway, despite the agony in your eyes, you knew that it couldn’t truly grow as long as someone was watching. You took up the mantle, despite their abuse. Generous to a fault, you always were. Even as the days grew dimmer and your vision slid into blurriness and shapes, you continued your watch. Nobody would have blamed you had you stopped, but you continued. Until today, that is.

It was this morning when you woke up blind, the world around you nothing but a sheet of black. You knew in your heart of hearts that today would be the day that the sun would feast. You stayed in bed and here you are, curled up, listening to the screams of terror and pain as they all run for cover from the starving rays. You hear their desperate prayers for night to come and know, with a smile, that darkness will bring no relief.

After all, the moon must feed as well.

 
Bad Moon Rising
It started so simply. Just one off-hand comment from a woman with sharp eyes. Easily dismissed. Easily ignored. Easily pushed aside as nothing but ramblings.

“Did the moon always have that crack?”

Everyone laughed it off. Why wouldn’t they? Something so permanent deciding to change is always going to be met with derision. Fixed points in the universe are just that: fixed. Never change. Never grow. Never incubate. They always stay the same and always will. They are a literal universal constant that can be relied upon, even in the midst of chaos elsewhere in the cosmos. Things like that are a comfort in trying times.
The tides woke people up, though. It’s one thing to hear a crazy person scream about a crack forming in the moon. It’s another entirely for the tide system to be altered. When high tide and low tide become always high and always crashing, screaming, drowning, attention must be paid.

It was the scientists, as always, who were approached first. What was happening? Concerned yells echoed in their ears as they frantically ran to their telescopes and tried to observe what lurked above. That crack the wild woman shrieked about was no myth. No fabrication from a broken mind. It was real. It was deep. It was dark.

And it was growing. Fast.

The governments were next. Leaders met and demanded answers. Demanded action, as if anything could be done. Foolish people with foolish designs of power. They expected others to close the crack, to seal it up, and to return the moon to its former dormant state. What they did not realize, could not comprehend, was that time is inevitable. You cannot stop the progression of time any more than you can stop the world from turning. When you are finished sleeping, you will wake up. Why would it be different for others?
Bubbling, whispered panic is manageable. It can be quelled or muted through comforting words from powerful people. It is when the sound of rock snapping echoes across the entire world that the panic, once so subdued, boils over and becomes dangerous. It amplifies when some sharp-eyed paranoic notices that the shape of the moon has changed. That it is no longer an orb, imperfect and cracked though it may have been.

It is difficult to comprehend when what you see appears to be a tail.

The response was, as one may expect, a complete breakdown of society. The air is filled with alarms and screams and honking and the sound of sirens everywhere. Smoke and fire are commonplace and everywhere you look are people trembling in fear and coming to terms with the end of the world.
Within it all, though, there is a tiny sense of morbid curiosity. We see the tail and how it moves, just slightly, in the nothingness of space. What comes next? An arm or a leg? A massive glowing eye?

Or will it be a mouth, hungry after an eternity asleep, ready to eat?

The Trees
There are different levels of being lost. There is being lost in a store, where you will always find your way out, even if the momentary panic is annoying. There is being lost in a city while driving, where every turn could lead you deeper into areas you should not go or to the street that will get you where you need to be. With that last turn comes blessed relief. There is being lost in the country, where every dirt road has the potential to lead into danger or to the highway which you so foolishly left hours ago.

With all of these kinds of being lost, though, there is the assurance, quiet though it may be, that you will eventually find your way home. That kind of lost will not go on forever and that brings a sort of calm in the midst of the anxiety.

There is another kind of lost, though, that offers no such peace. It is the lost you find yourself experiencing when you have plunged deep, deep, impossibly deep into a forest on a path you can no longer see. It is the lost where every tree spears the sky and bleeds a green canopy above you. Where you cannot know if it is day or night.

This lost is different. This lost has something else, something primal, buried within. The promise of familiarity no longer exists. You could walk and walk and walk and never find your way out. You could spend hours, days, weeks, months, even years wandering through the thick woods and never once glimpse the sun or any trace of civilization.

And those are normal woods.

What if you find those forests where something else exists? What if you find those trees that move and twist in the darkness to change your path and drive you deeper into them? What if you find a place where every step brings you closer to disappearing forever? It is possible to find places outside of the world where your fear and panic and despair soak into the soil and nourish the roots of trees ancient and patient. Those places that take the dark pits that scream at you of your doom and water plants that have existed and will exist from the rise of the universe to the snuffing of the cosmic candle.

You can fool yourself for a while, of course. Lie to yourself that you are just caught up in your animal instincts of fear and worry. You can maintain the fiction that you will be rescued for a long time. Days, even. Eventually, though, those false dreams fade away and you will find yourself grappling with the inevitable conclusion that you are trapped. At that point you will be faced with a decision that so many that have come before you have had to make.

Do you stop or do you continue? Life or death? Hope?

How will you respond when you now know there is no way out?

 
Fortunate Son
Tommy hated his older brother. Not for any normal reason, mind you. His brother was kind and friendly and everything that Tommy wanted to be. More than anything else, though, he was able to sleep normally. He would go to bed around 10 or 11 and wake up at 6 or 7, refreshed and ready to go and wouldn’t need a nap. Tommy, on the other hand, had a broken sense of sleep. Insomnia, they called it. Sometimes, he wouldn’t sleep for days and would start to slip into a light form of insanity. It was exhausting.

It felt like a curse, quite honestly. Like Tommy had been slapped with the inability to sleep out of some punishment for sins long since redeemed. Worse yet were the consequences in his daily life. He couldn’t hold down a job because of the erratic nature of his rest. Not to mention any sort of relationship he attempted was doomed from the start. It’s tough to maintain a sense of love when you’re falling asleep during sex or deep conversations, after all.

All things considered, Tommy felt like he had been dealt not just a bad hand, but the worst hand imaginable. In contrast, his big brother seemed to have gotten a royal flush. Perfect sleep. Perfect job. Perfect wife and family. Tommy loved him but, man, did he hate him too.

It was only when reports started leaking out about abductions in the middle of the night that things started to change. It was quiet at first. Subdued even. A college student here. An elderly person there. It seemed random. There would be quiet and then a scream and then quiet again. Sad, yes, but nothing deserving of more than a shake of the head and a pithy quote about how sad it is that the world has changed so much.

That’s when the President disappeared, along with the First Family.

The narrative changed then. People grew increasingly concerned about their safety. Gun stores ran out of products within days. Families locked themselves indoors, barricaded by furniture and their own creeping, pulsing panic. Tommy’s brother insisted, demanded really, that Tommy come stay with his family until it all subsided and he couldn’t think of a good reason to turn him down. So, after a little bit of packing, Tommy reluctantly moved into the guest room.

It was the third night of staying awake when Tommy heard the scuttling in the next room. Quietly, he crept out of bed and peered into the hallway. Something was there. Something big and black and chitinous. Something with a lot of legs. It turned when it saw Tommy and the two looked at each other before the thing went about its business. Tommy heard the screams from his brother and family, but did nothing except go back to bed.

As he lay there, curled up, he felt blissful sleep finally start to creep up on him and he smiled.
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Some guys just have all the luck.