centuryteoh

Temple Note:

"The following household sermons are preserved among the lesser instructional texts, their authorship uncertain and their purpose disputed. Though commonly attributed to a Saxhleel servant or to allegorical excess on the part of local record-keepers, the Temple advises that they be read strictly as guidance on patience, proper order, and the dangers of haste in all labors. References to instruments, loaves, mistresses, or banquets are understood to be figurative, and no doctrinal significance should be attached to questions of length, readiness, or satisfaction. The recurrence of certain terms in older copies is acknowledged but requires no investigation. Readers are cautioned against imaginative interpretations, particularly those that suggest recursion, self-reference, or the presence of greater figures in diminished form." - Unknown Scholar

Household Sermon One

The Maid named Lifts-Her-Tail entered the chambers that were chambers by local agreement. She bore cloths and oils, and the memory of orders received elsewhere. And the Master of the House was called Crantius Colto, though the name clung imperfectly. He was an insistence given shape, and his warmth did not originate with him. He regarded the Maid as one judges implements before use. “You are well-shaped for this work,” he said. “Strong, Anuran legs. A tail for balance. Few endure such tasks without complaint.” The Maid inclined her head. “This form was chosen for labor,” she replied. “It bears weight without hurry.” Crantius smiled, mistaking endurance for availability. “Then you will serve well.” “Service,” said the Maid, “is a matter of order.” Crantius turned then and presented the instrument, laying it where attention was meant to gather. It was long, and its length had been mistaken for purpose. It bore the marks of frequent handling and no sign of completion. “Attend to that,” he said. “It has waited.” The Maid measured it carefully, not by surface but by demand. She did not touch it. “This labor,” she said, “is not brief.” Crantius laughed softly. “There is plenty of time.” The Maid inclined her head. “A labor unceasing,” she said, “is no labor at all.” Crantius frowned. “You were made for such tasks.” The Maid dipped her cloth into oil and wrung it slowly. “Not all tasks produce after,” she said. “Some only leave shapes behind.” She gestured toward the instrument’s length. “Some lengths,” she said,”do not produce completion. They only exhaust what approaches them. If I do not finish, the work has not begun.” Crantius spoke again of patience, though he meant delay. “You may take all night, if need be.” The Maid answered evenly: “Night is not a unit of completion.” She began instead where the instrument had rested un-bitten and whole, cleaning the trace of it rather than the thing itself. This displeased Crantius, whose understanding was central. “You are meant for the instrument,” he said.  “I am meant for the work,” said the Maid. “This form was chosen accordingly.” Crantius raised the instrument slightly to remind it of itself. The Maid did not look up. “That which is lifted without patience,” she said, “returns heavier.” Crantius paused. The instrument did not answer him as it once had. The Maid continued. She did not deny the instrument. She did not deny Muatra. Nor did she praise it. Nor did she succumb to it. Nor did she vanish before it. And in this persistence, procedural and unadorned, she perceived herself without subtraction. Thus she knew CHIM, not as conquest, but as remaining. And the Maid, having completed what could be completed, withdrew without being dismissed, her tail marking the balance of her going. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.

Household Sermon Two

Another exercise in poetics—this time being on how violations of decorum, or the 'fittingness' of diction, syntax, and emotional tone to the context can be used to create artificial discomfort. [Painting: Pieter Claesz' A still life with a roemer, a crab and a peeled lemon, 1643]

I stood before the wet glass— peering through the dark, oozing droplets— the shadows within unaware— raptured by the carnality of their feast. I prayed they would not notice me, for I was transfixed. The smaller ones—their offspring, presumably— relishing in the carcass— hot, sticky-sweet flesh torn from bone. The tall ones smiling, ear to ear— Carving out more for them to eat. I caught myself smiling with them. Until they stopped. And turned. I averted my eyes. The motors whirred. The suspension cables lifted me up— one story higher— And I started cleaning the next window.

Another exercise in poetics—this time, it's Voltae as Poem/Stanza, where the entire piece builds toward a perspective shift, and ends with the consequences of that shift. [Painting: Peter Paul Rubens' The Village Fête, 1638]

The peasant glared at the knight, and back to me. He asked why we slave away in fields, endlessly, While the knight stands, hands open, ready To receive the fruits of our labour for his lord. He could bear it no longer—anger rising. Storming off the field, brandishing his hoe, striking the knight’s plate square on— it bounced off, useless. Fearfully, the peasant grovelled— and the knight cut him down, turning at once toward the castle steps, answering to another hand, for he had killed what was not his. Fearfully, the knight grovelled— yet his lord did not look at him; he was not alone. There stood the King’s men, hands open, ready, to receive the fruits of our labour for their lord. Fearfully, the lord grovelled— it was not enough. They carried away carts of his gold as compensation. I sighed, and chuckled. Every hand I’d seen was open. I sighed. And I went back to toil.

Thanks so much for reaching out!

Honestly, I'm a bit of a minimalist in certain ways, so I often start with a single throughline (usually the basis for my horror), and build my story as conceptually lean as possible around that!

Afterwards, it's just a slow crawl for me, as I obsessively write and tune each little subsection to get the atmospherics just right :)

This is not so much me attempting to convey anything specific, but rather just attempting an exercise on iambics/trochaics and anaphora.

Why? I asked the king, who looked on, slyly. Why? I asked the sage, who chuckled, wryly. Why? I asked the priest, who grimaced, kindly. Why? I asked the sun, who shone, uncaring. Why? I asked— The peasantry starves? No-one replies. Especially not God.

I eat the tentacle carefully,

as one does with conquered provinces.

Slowly,

so as not to appear emotional.

The char gives way with a soft resistance,

the kind no empire plans for.

Salt. Oil. Lemon.

A civilizing sequence.

Once, this limb may have conducted thoughts

large enough to bruise architecture.

Now it is reduced to protein,

to something that squeaks faintly

between my teeth.

Somewhere, an elder brain

misplaces a sensation

a pressure where certainty should be

and cannot account for it.

This is not cruelty.

This is administration.

I chew, patient and thorough.

There will be no monuments,

no tablets recording the loss of this curl of flesh.

History rarely notes

what passes through the mouth.

When I swallow,

nothing trembles.

The waiter refills my glass.

Still,

for the remainder of the meal,

the empire is smaller.

It all started last-last weekend. I had parked just shy of the forestry gate, where the gravel thinned out, and the trees began thickening. From here, it was a few hours on foot - just enough time and distance to let the peacefulness settle in. That was all I really wanted - a little quiet. No reception, no chatter; just the trail ahead, and whatever passed for clarity in this day and age.

I left my phone in the glovebox. Not to make a statement as such - I just didn’t want to feel it buzzing in my pocket, needing, reminding.

The air smelled clean. Pine, crisp northern winds, and something familiar and damp, like the memory of water that had long since sunk into the ground. I slung my pack over one shoulder, and started walking, letting the rhythm pull me listlessly forward. There was just something calming about walking alone - neither too fast, nor too slow - exactly my own pace - that made me feel like I had a little more control over my life again.

The trees weren’t especially tall, leaning just slightly inward, as if they had something to confide in me - an innocent little secret between myself and the forest. The path wound forward, without promise or urgency. Late afternoon light filtered through the canopy like little threads of gold; slow dissolves, like a weary, introverted sun who had enough of being directly seen.

Time stretched ever forward, like a lazy cat, greeting its owner after a long, grueling day at work. After a while, I stopped walking in minutes, and began walking in distances-between-thoughts. 

I wasn’t exactly looking for anything. I wasn’t really running from anything either.

I told them I’d be back the next morning. Maybe a touch later. Just needed a breather, I said. They nodded - not dismissively, perhaps just- tired in their own ways. Maybe they were happy to have the house to themselves for a change.

It wasn’t always like this. We used to move like parts of the same body - not exactly perfect, but - close enough to feel whole. There was a sort of rhythm in the way we bickered, laughed, touched elbows at the dinner table.

And then came the camping trip, last month. What was meant to be a long weekend away in the mountains - a break from all the screens and internet. It happened suddenly. I went ahead to look for firewood, and they took a wrong turn trying to follow.

I found them again, a full week later.

They’d turned up some fifty miles north, by a reservoir I’d driven past some hundreds of times during my search. No injuries, no scratches, barely a clear story. Just tears and hugs and confused explanations. Something about getting turned around, following odd trails. 

It didn’t matter anymore, though. I had found them again.

But something had changed, subtly, after that. They were a touch quieter, somehow. Or maybe it was me. Maybe I’d stared at that empty tent for too long, whispering their names into the dark. Maybe I’d come too close to accepting the idea that they were gone forever.

We never really broached the subject. After the initial joy wore off, we just drifted back into routine. Work. School. House-chores. But somehow, things never quite clicked back into place. The pieces all looked the same - they still laughed at the same shows, still left dishes half-done in the sink, but - it still didn’t quite feel the same.

My son and daughter, Alex and Ellie, stopped asking me to read before bed. My wife, Lauren, started waking up before me, and taking long walks alone. Sometimes, I’d find them all together, sitting in the living room, discussing something that went quiet as soon as I entered. Not secretive - just… separate.

I never resented them for it. Nor did I feel especially left out. Mostly, it just felt like the threads that had tied us together had loosened, just a little. They were still mine, as far as I was concerned. Still loved me. But sometimes, when they laughed too hard at nothing I could hear - when they exchanged glances I couldn’t decipher, I’d catch myself thinking: these are the versions that came back.

And wondering if that was enough for me.

I must have walked for hours.

Not with purpose. Not really. Just following one trail after another, watching the way the sun filtered through the leaves, letting it all pull me deeper into the woods. A part of me was hoping I’d get tired. That I’d sit down somewhere and clear my head.

But I didn’t. I kept walking.

Past old logging stumps, crooked stone outcroppings, and mossy bridges, I kept thinking about home - how the house might feel right now. Quiet. Stretched thin. I imagined Lauren sitting at the kitchen table, flicking through her phone. Ellie and Alex squabbling in the other room, half-bored, half-wired from screen time. The little life we’d built together still buzzing along without me.

The sun kept sinking. The woods turned golden, then bronze, then something colder - all gray tree trunks and long blue shadows. I found myself on a ridge I didn’t recognize. The trail had thinned to little more than deer path.

I stood still for a while, watching the sun brush its last warmth across the trees.

The light had gone syrupy - thick and golden, oozing between the trunks like it was reluctant to leave. Shadows stretched long and crooked, flickering softly as the wind stirred the upper branches. A pair of birds darted overhead, trailing a thread of sound behind them that frayed and vanished into the stillness.

Everything felt paused, like the forest was holding its breath, waiting to see what I’d do.

I sighed. Adjusted the strap of my pack. And turned around.

Time to man up. Go back. Face the noise, the mess, the tight little world that waited for me.

I took the same path, weaving through underbrush in the reverse of my own trail. Branches snagged less this time. The air felt cooler. Quieter, too. Not dead, but subdued. The way it sometimes got before the evening birds started their songs.

Up ahead, I could just make out the turnoff that led toward the trailhead, toward the gravel lot where my truck waited. I pictured the climb down, the way the headlights would cut through the blue dusk. Maybe I’d stop somewhere on the drive back. Get Lauren’s favorite milk. Try to do something right. I stepped forward-

A voice. Low. Close.

“Daniel?”

I froze.

“Daniel — is that you?”

Lauren?

I turned.

The trees swayed gently.

“Please. I’m scared. I don’t know where I am.”

I stood at the edge of the trail, breath sharp in my throat.

“Daniel, please.”

Her voice again. Almost whimpering.

“I think I’m hurt.”

My mouth went dry. A strange urge to run. But it was her voice. Not just the sound — the cadence. That soft, uncertain rise she used to have when trying not to cry.

The one I hadn’t heard in years.

“Dad?”

Another voice. Higher. Cracking at the edges.

“Dad, where are you?”

Alex.

Then — barely a beat later:

“Daddy? I’m scared. Where are you?”

Ellie.

Her voice shook — the exact pitch she’d used when the power went out, when she was six and couldn’t find her nightlight.

My hands trembled.

Because I’d heard these voices before. But not like this. Not since before the camping trip.

Before they came home colder. Distant.

Smiling too tightly. Hugging too briefly.

Back when they still looked at me like I was theirs.

“Daniel?”

Lauren again. Just over the ridge.

“I’m here.”

The words escaped before I could stop them.

Then - the dry crunch of leaves underfoot. A rhythm. Getting closer.

I turned.

Three figures emerged from the brush - clothes torn, faces streaked with soot and dirt.

Lauren stumbled toward me. Then the kids. Ellie clinging to Alex’s arm, eyes wide with a desperate, aching kind of hope.

“Daniel,” Lauren whispered, voice cracking. “Oh my god - Daniel!”

She threw her arms around me. I caught her on reflex. Felt her weight, the tension in her limbs. She smelled like pine and smoke and sweat.

She smelled real.

The kids were next. Alex burying his face in my coat, Ellie’s arms locking tight around my ribs.

“We- we didn’t know where you went,” Lauren said. “Everything was strange. The trees… they kept changing. We thought…”

She pulled back. Studied my face.

“Are you okay?”

I wanted to say yes.

They felt solid. Familiar.

They clung to me like people who’d survived something unspeakable.

And for one trembling second, I almost believed.

But then, like a crack through glass:

Weren’t they supposed to be home?

I didn’t say it aloud, but I must have felt something was wrong. That subtle stiffness in my shoulders. The way my eyes kept flicking around without thought. The way I stayed one step behind them as we walked.

I told myself the only explanation that made sense - that they’d come out looking for me in the dead of night and gotten lost. The woods could twist and turn you without warning. Maybe they’d just wandered too far. Long enough to lose their bearings. Long enough to feel scared.

But something deeper disagreed. A quiet wrongness that wouldn’t settle.

Like stepping into a familiar room where everything’s been moved half an inch.

Your body notices, even if your mind can’t say why.

I couldn’t bring myself to ask. I was scared of their answer - scared of what it might mean. So I said nothing. Just led them toward the road.

We didn’t talk much on the way. They were exhausted. Ellie tripped twice, and I carried her for a while. Lauren kept glancing at me like she was afraid I’d vanish again if she looked away. I smiled each time, told her we’d figure everything out soon.

…

We reached the truck just before dusk. Lauren laughed, soft and dazed, when she saw it.

“You still drive this old thing?”

I nodded - not responding in words, unlocking the door.

Ellie fell asleep leaning against the window as soon as we pulled onto the road. Lauren held her hand. I kept both eyes on the stretching lines of the highway, stealing glances at my family every so often - just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming it all.

…

But of course, reality had to eventually come crashing down.

We pulled into the driveway just as the porch light came on. I killed the engine. The truck was filled with silence - the kind that comes right at the precipice of the irreversible.

For a second, I just sat there. One hand rested on the wheel. My reflection in the windshield betraying my apprehension back to me. Lauren stirred beside me. Ellie and Alex yawned in the back seat, stretching and blinking themselves awake.

Then the front door creaked open.

And Lauren - the other Lauren - stepped out onto the porch. My Lauren. At least, the Lauren that I’d kissed goodbye that morning. Her hair was still tied up from cooking, and she was wiping her hands off with a dish towel.

She smiled when she saw the truck. Familiar. Unbothered.

“You’re back early - do you want sup-”

Then she saw them. 

Her voice cut mid-syllable.

The dish towel fluttered down onto the gravel at her feet.

I could barely breathe - my hand on the cab door - stuck half open.

The other Lauren - the one in the car with me - had gone ghostly pale. Her eyes locked on the woman standing on the porch. Her mouth moved - once, twice - without any sound.

Ellie gripped my sleeve, whispering.

“Daddy?”

I didn’t answer. All I could see was Lauren looking at Lauren. My eyes filled with something beyond fear. A horror that sat beneath all spoken language.

If she’s here, at home… then who did I bring back?

Porch-Lauren took a step back. Her eyes were locked on the woman beside me - the same face, the same eyes, the same trembling lips.

“Daniel…” she said, barely an audible whisper. “What is this?”

I glanced at her, and back at the Lauren next to me. Her hand rested, faintly, against the passenger-side door. She looked like she was on the edge of collapsing inward.

The words turned to ash in my mouth.

Porch-Lauren stood there, not crying, but tears streaming down her face nonetheless.

Porch-Alex’s hand had flown up to cover his mouth, and porch-Ellie held her head in her hands, whispering no no no to herself, backing toward the house like she could undo it all by stepping out of frame.

The ones beside me?

Frozen.

Staring.

Mouths agape.

As if struggling to comprehend the crushing weight of truth that had fallen onto them.

For a moment, I felt nothing. No fear, no anger - just a kind of supernatural stillness. The shapes beside me… they fit in all the ways they were supposed to. Like the way they did before the camping trip. Like in the way Lauren leaned slightly toward the sound of my breath. Like the way Alex always stood behind Ellie, comforting her in distressing situations. And yet, something about the symmetry - the doubling - made it all feel like a lie told too well. I didn’t know - I couldn’t know - which direction the truth was facing.

I looked back up at porch-Lauren, who had begun to take on the essence of something colder and sharper in her expression. Her gaze shifted between me and her counterpart, then to the kids standing behind her - and then to the kids in the car.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t run. She just stood there, hands shaking, resolutely against the impossibility, and said:

“They’re not coming inside.”

The other Lauren flinched. I felt it - the sharp, anxious breath she took through her teeth. Ellie gripped my sleeve tighter.

“Lauren…” I started, voice straining as the words felt like ash in my mouth. “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t think - I don’t know if they’re copies. Or.. or if something else happened. If they got lost-”

She shook her head.

Hard. Once.

That was all.

No words. No outburst. Just that one, solid refusal - and I understood what she meant. Some truths can’t be stretched. Some lines you just don’t cross, even if the world’s split clean down the middle.

The silence held - taut as a wire - until I spoke again.

“The guesthouse. They can stay there. Just for now. Until we figure this out.”

Porch-Lauren’s jaw tightened. She didn’t look at me. Her eyes stayed locked on her - the mirror version, now standing ten feet away in the flickering porch light.

“No,” she said, quietly.

“Lauren,” I said, softer still, pleading. “They can’t go back out there, in the forest. The kids - look at them. They’re just scared. Confused. Maybe we all are.”

She still didn’t look at me. But I saw her blink, considering my words. Then she stepped back into the doorway, her voice as brittle as glass.

“Fine. But they’re not coming in this house.”

She turned away and disappeared into the hallway, the screen door slapping shut behind her.

I stood in the gravel, heart thudding.

Behind me, Lauren - the other Lauren - let out a shaky breath. Ellie was still pressed against me. Alex said nothing at all.

“Come on,” I said, “It’s this way.”

We moved past the main house in silence, feet crunching over the gravel. I felt the presence of my other family still lingering behind the windows - watching. Or hiding. Maybe both.

The guesthouse sat at the back of the property, on the other side of our garden, half-covered in vines, paint peeling in the corners. It hadn’t been used in months.

I unlocked the door with the key hidden under the planter, and stepped inside, turning on the single ceiling bulb. The air was stale, and dust floated like soft static in the light rays.

“It’s not much,” I said, voice thin. “But at least you’ll have a roof over your head, while we figure things out.”

Lauren nodded, numb.

Alex sat down, heavily, on the couch and put his head in his hands. Ellie curled up next to him.

I stood there, hand still on the doorknob, not knowing which direction to turn.

If they’re not real… then why does it feel like I’m abandoning them again?

…

After much hesitation, I slept in the main house that night.

Lauren didn’t say anything when I came in. She was already in bed, facing the window, sheets pulled up over her shoulders. The room smelled of lavender and eucalyptus - the same diffuser as we’ve always used.

I didn’t bother showering. I just peeled off my clothes, and climbed in beside her. The mattress shifted under my weight. She didn’t move. Not an inch.

Her back was warm against my shoulder, her breathing steady.

I lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling. I listened to her breaths.

Inhale.

Pause.

Exhale.

Pause.

Repeat.

They were perfect. Almost… too perfect. Rhythmic in a way that felt practiced - subtly stiff. Like she knew I was listening.

I tried to convince myself that was ridiculous, but I couldn’t stop.

I kept thinking about the other Lauren - curled up on the guesthouse couch, with a blanket wrapped around her knees, exhausted- but in a real way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The tremble in her voice. The weight of her hand on my shoulders.

And here, beside me, was a woman who knew all our inside jokes, our favorite recipes, the shape of my back, the ache in my knee from that old ladder fall.

But suddenly, I couldn’t remember the last time she had looked at me in the way guesthouse-Lauren had.

Not really, anyway.

Her breath hitched - just once. Maybe she felt me watching. Maybe she was just shifting in her sleep.

I closed my eyes and tried to match her rhythm. But it wasn’t until I started counting backward, that I realized I’d been holding my breath this whole time.

…

That night, I dreamt of the guesthouse.

It was warm.

Light spilled forth from every lamp, like poured amber. The air buzzed faintly with music - some old folk song, hazy and half-remembered, spilling from a radio that no longer worked. The walls were a different color, a sunny eggshell I didn’t recognize. The kind of color that made you feel safe.

Lauren brought out a platter of waffles and bacon, smiling wide. Ellie set the table, her cheeks pink with laughter. Alex leaned back in his chair mid-sentence, recounting some old story from school, with way too many detours. Everything shimmered with just the right kind of joy.

I ate without thinking.

I laughed when they laughed.

The windows were fogged from the heat, but the glass door - the one facing the main house - stayed clear. And at some point, without realizing when, I began to feel them.

Eyes on me.

Three figures.

Standing inside the house.

Watching.

I didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

But something made me glance up from my plate.

The lights in the main house were off.

In the hazy glow of indirect sunlight, by the window stood Lauren. Ellie. Alex.

Still. Expressionless. Perfectly visible through the window, as if they’d been there the whole time.

They didn’t wave. Didn’t knock. Just stared, faces flat and unreadable, like portraits hung behind glass.

Ellie’s hand was against the pane. Not pressed - just resting. Her breath left no fog.

Inside the guesthouse, laughter swelled again - Alex laughing too hard at a joke no-one told. Lauren refilling my glass, despite it being full to the brim. Ellie brushing crumbs onto my shirt with practiced, doting hands.

But I kept looking at the house.

At the three shapes inside it.

The guesthouse grew hotter, brighter. The air began to buzz louder, and that looping, familiar tune warped out of recognition.

I woke up with a start. No gasping. No sweat. Just the peculiar feeling - like something had been added to me while I slept.

Lauren was still beside me. Breathing steady. The same pattern as before.

But then I began to notice a hum, soft, almost below the threshold of sound. 

Had it been there the whole time?

…

I told myself I needed air. That was all. Just space. Just a few minutes away from the stiff, awkward silence of my bedroom.

I wandered down the steps to the guesthouse. The door was slightly open.

Inside: warmth.

It smelled like butter. Like browning toast and something just familiar enough to sting. Light spilled through the blinds in thin, golden slats, catching dust in the air like snow.

Lauren stood at the stove, barefoot. Humming something tuneless, but very much her own. Her hair was tied up in a loose bun - the way it used to be when the kids were still little. She didn’t look up.

“Didn’t think you’d be up yet,” she said.

“Didn’t sleep very well.”

She smiled, just faintly. “Felt like cooking.”

I stepped inside and saw the pan. Scrambled eggs. Bright yellow, just the way she used to make them. A half-handful of cheddar. Chives. No milk. She always said milk made them rubbery.

House-Lauren had been making them differently lately. A bit harder than I remember. A bit denser. Like she’d forgotten the rhythm of it. Like she’d forgotten the rhythm of making it.

She plated them without a word. Pushed a clipped plate across the counter toward me.

I sat. I ate.

They tasted right.

Everything felt just right.

I looked around. The guesthouse felt softer, somehow - as if the overnight presence of Lauren and the kids had made its spirit whole. The old mugs, which used to sit untouched on the shelf like forgotten props, now looked lived-in - well-loved - stained faintly with tea rings, and rims dulled from years of use. Ellie’s blanket, touched gently under her chin as she slept curled on the couch, no longer looked like something we’d thrown in the guesthouse ‘just in case; - it looked like it had always belonged to her - smelling faintly of childhood and weekend morning cartoons.

It felt as if the past had never fractured. Like nothing had ever gone wrong. And that made something inside me ache.

Hesitantly, begrudgingly, I took slow steps, returning back to the main house. Alex had held my hand, asking me to stay longer, and I rustled his hair, promising I’d come back. 

The house felt colder. House-Lauren was just coming down the stairs as I slipped through the door, dressed and alert, but with that sort of washed-out look - like a painting left out in the sun for too long.

“You’re up early,” I said.

She glanced at me, then away. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“You hungry?” she asked, already halfway through the kitchen. “I could make eggs.”

I hesitated - way too long. There was a picture in my mind I couldn’t shake: the steam wafting off the plate in the guesthouse . The smell of browning butter. The way guesthouse-Lauren had sprinkled on extra chives just-so.

“I ate,” I said.

She paused. Her hand hovered just a moment too long on the fridge handle, before letting it fall.

“Right,” she said, softly. “Of course.”

She began cooking. Just with three fewer eggs than usual. One fewer slice of toast than usual.

From the hallway, I could hear Alex shifting in the living room, his chair creaking like an hold hinge. Not speaking. Just listening.

I lingered in the hall longer than I meant to.

The kettle clicked off behind her, but Lauren - House-Lauren - didn’t move right away. She was moving through the rhythm of breakfast - reaching for plates, twisting the burner on - but something about it felt unfamiliar. Just in the way a childhood song sounds when someone else hums it. The motions were right. The tempo was right. But the spirit of it had shifted.

I kept my eyes on the floor, the table, the faint streaks of morning light that filtered in through the blinds. But I could feel her watching me in pieces. Never directly - glances from the corner of her eye as she moved. As if she was trying to catch me red-handed doing something invisible.

I didn’t say anything.

And neither did she.

I moved to the living room, and switched on the desktop computer in the corner. I wasn’t even sure what I planned to do - any kind of work to make the hours pass.

House-Alex was curled at the far end of the couch, knees pulled up, a book open in his lap. But his eyes weren’t on the pages. They stayed fixed on the window - or maybe on the glass itself, where my reflection flickered with every shift and keystroke.

Each tap of my keyboard sounded too loud in the quiet room. Sharp. I could feel him listening to every press. I didn’t look at him, but I could feel his attention. Not accusing, just… watchful. As if he were trying to understand something about me that I wasn’t offering up. And I thought of guesthouse-Alex. How easily he’d folded himself to my side, hand in mine. Of the way he’d smiled when I promised I’d be back.

Here, house-Alex just sat still. Like a photograph I wasn’t meant to touch.

…

Lunch was sandwiches. Soggy in the middle. Too much mayo.

We ate in silence. Alex listlessly scrolled his phone under the table. Ellie took hers apart bite by bite, crust first. Lauren barely touched hers.

I sat at the living room coffee table after, handling some bills and doing some accounting. Trying to work - or at least pretending to. My fingers stayed on the same lines of print for hours. The light shifted across the floor in slow bands, but never moved.

From where I was, I could see the guesthouse through the window. Just a sliver of it between the hedges. Nothing specific - just a corner of white siding, and the glint of sunlight off the glass.

I kept glancing at it. Unconsciously at first. Then with intention. The way you look at a shut door, when you’re waiting for someone to knock.

House-Lauren noticed. Of course she did.

By the third time she caught me looking, her hands slowed as she peeled carrots over the sink. She didn’t say anything.

By the fifth, she set her peeler down.

Dinner was almost ready when she finally spoke. Her back still to me.

“If you want to eat with them,” she said, voice even, “go. I don’t really care.”

I opened my mouth to protest. To explain. But there was nothing I could’ve said that didn’t sound like a complete lie. She wiped her hands on a dishtowel. Turned back to the stove.

“I’m not going to beg you to stay.”

…

I didn’t say anything when I left. House-Lauren kept cooking. House-Ellie locked herself up in her room. House-Alex stayed curled up on that couch, his eyes tracking my position as I tracked through the living room, and out into the garden.

The door to the guesthouse opened before I could knock.

Lauren was already setting the table - four plates, cloth napkins, charming old silverware. Like we used to do when the kids were little, and everything still felt worth the effort. The food was simple. Warm. steaming.

Alex and Ellie were already seated, talking softly about something. Not their day - nothing present-tense. It was a conversation pulled from some half-remembered Saturday, the kind that ends in laughter over nothing at all.

It didn’t feel like a trick.

It felt like being remembered.

I sat down. Ate. The way I hadn’t in weeks.

But at some point - between bites, between laughter - I glanced out the window. Toward the house.

They were there.

Lauren. Alex. Ellie.

Standing at the sliding door, backlit by the kitchen lights, not moving. Not speaking. Just watching. Their faces unreadable. Unmoving. 

For a long, flickering second, the air tasted like salt again.

No one at the guesthouse table noticed.

…

I told myself I’d just lie down for a minute after dinner. Just a moment, to clear my head. The couch still smelled like us — like the fabric softener she used, the cheap one we could never agree on.

I closed my eyes.

When I woke, it was light.

Too light.

I sat up, disoriented, throat dry.

The house across the lawn was still. No lights. No movement. I checked my phone.

8:42 a.m.

I walked up the path slow, stomach twisted. The front door was unlocked.

Inside, it was quiet.

Too quiet.

House-Ellie and house-Alex were still asleep, curled together on the couch like they’d drifted off watching TV.

But house-Lauren was gone.

On the desk by the hallway, something waited.

Two notes. 

The first was folded neatly into thirds. I opened it. It was in Lauren’s handwriting:

Alex,

I’ve gone to bring your father home.

Your real one.

Do not let the one here into the house.

Keep Ellie close.

Mom

Just like that.Not a goodbye. Not an explanation.

My chest felt tight, like something had been carved out without me noticing, and I was only now discovering the hollow. A metallic taste crept into my mouth.

And then I looked down again and saw it.

A second slip of paper, tucked beneath a cup. Not the same paper. Thinner. Cheaper. Torn at the edges. Folded and refolded until the crease was soft as cloth.

It was creased. Worn. As if it had been carried around in someone’s pocket. Reread more than once.

The handwriting was mine.

My handwriting.

But I didn’t remember writing it.

And before I could stop myself, I was reading.

Lauren,

I’ve been watching the house from the treeline.

I see someone who looks like me inside.

He’s with you. With the kids. Living my life.

I don’t know who he is, or how this happened, but I remember everything. I remember Ellie’s birthmark behind her left knee. The way Alex used to cry when the radiator clicked on at night. I remember the night you lost your voice and still hummed to calm them both. He won’t get those right.

I’m scared that if I try anything, he’ll hurt you.

Please, if you believe me — meet me at the booth in the back of the coffee shop where we first met. I’ll wait every morning.

Don’t let him in.

Don’t let him see this.

I love you.

Daniel

I stared at the letter, fingers cold around the edges.

My mind raced, but nothing landed. Thoughts skidded across the surface like stones on ice, never sinking deep enough to mean anything.

Suddenly -

Gravel crunched outside. A car door slammed.

The door swung open and she stood there, wind-tossed and flushed. A cold line of sweat down her temple. And behind her stood… him, hanging just a step back in the shade like a shadow pretending to wait its turn.

I stood from the little kitchen table. The plate still sat there. A smear of yolk. A few chives stuck to my fork.

“I knew it,” I said. “You were never real.”

Her mouth parted, brow creasing. “Daniel…”

“No. Don’t. Don’t use my name like you have any right to it.” My voice cracked and kept going. “I should’ve known. You’ve been different since the woods. Distant. Cold.”

The man behind her tilted his head.

“And now you’ve brought him?” I stepped forward, hands out, like I could physically keep them from entering. “What, is this a trade? You couldn’t make me fit anymore, so you found a version that would?”

Her face twisted. “You think I wanted this?”

“You brought him here!”

“Because I thought you weren’t real!” she snapped.

Silence.

Even he stilled.

Her voice dropped. “I waited. I waited for you. But something’s been wrong. I kept thinking… what if they got you instead? What if he was still out there, trying to get back?”

I shook my head.

“You really believe that?” I asked. “You really think I’d come back and… what? Forget how you like your coffee? Forget how Ellie always sleeps with one sock on? Just get it close enough?”

“You think I don’t see it?” she said. “You’ve been looking at them! Out there! In the guesthouse! Like they’re your real family… Like I’m the replacement.”

We stared at each other.

And then we both turned, slowly. To look at him.

He smiled, just a little.

And said nothing.

Then suddenly - the feeling of Ellie, pressing up against me.

I didn’t look down at first. Just let her cling to my side, small and trembling. Maybe she didn’t want to see us fight, I thought. Maybe it scared her. Of course it would have.

I placed a hand on her back, gently.

“It’s okay,” I murmured, voice raw. “It’s gonna be okay.”

That’s when I felt it.

A sting, sharp and sudden, down near my thigh, like a needle slipping in sideways. I flinched, eyes darting down, and for a split second, I didn’t understand what I was looking at.

And then, something else.

A flicker.

Her shirt; it wasn’t the same one.

Not the faded cartoon one she’d been wearing on the couch. Not the one I’d carefully tucked the blanket around just that morning.

This was the other one.

The one guesthouse-Ellie had been wearing.

The cold came next. Blooming outward from the puncture. Fast. Efficient. Like ice in my veins.

I looked at her face. Sweet. Unblinking.

“I missed you, Daddy,” she said. 

But she wasn’t saying it to me.

And then everything started to tilt. The ceiling slid away like paper.

The last thing I saw before it all folded was house-Lauren, her eyes wide. Not with anger anymore, but horror. Recognition.

As we fell, she met my eyes.

My Lauren.

And then the dark came down, gentle and complete.

…

I woke to the low hum of the basement furnace.

Dim light filtered through the small slit of a ground-level window, dust dancing in the beam like ash suspended in amber. My leg pulsed dully in a distant ache, no longer urgent. My back pressed against cool concrete, and beside me, warmth.

Lauren.

Her head rested against my shoulder, one hand curled lightly near my chest, as if she’d fallen asleep mid-reach.

Just beyond her, tucked beneath an old wool blanket, were Alex and Ellie. Curled together on a pile of stored winter coats, pale and still.

They hadn’t stirred.

I didn’t move at first. Just listened. The silence wasn’t total. Pipes creaked overhead, and somewhere far above, something akin to footsteps shifted. But down here, it was still.

Lauren stirred. Blinked.

Then looked at me.

“You’re still here,” she whispered, voice hoarse from sleep.

I nodded. “Didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

She sat up slowly, her eyes flicking past me toward the children. “They’re still out?”

“Whatever they gave us… it’ll wear off,” I said. “Eventually.”

She let out a breath - long and unsteady. “I thought I’d lost you again.”

“I thought I was the one being replaced,” I said quietly.

“We both did,” she murmured. “We were both so scared of being wrong.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke, as if allowing the squeaky pipes above to weigh in on our conversation.

Then she said:

“Looking back… the way Alex stared at you so intently - I think he knew. In his heart of hearts, I think he recognized you. Even when I couldn’t.”

I followed her gaze. Alex’s arm had fallen across Ellie protectively, fingers twitching now and then.

“I didn’t spend enough time with him,” I said. “Always focused on Ellie. She needed more help. Or maybe I just… didn’t know how to talk to a boy that age without screwing it up.”

“He never took it that way,” she said. “He looks up to you, Daniel. Even when he was scared, he watched you like he was waiting for something.”

“I thought he was just afraid.”

“He was,” she replied. “But not of you.”

I swallowed hard. My throat burned.

“I wanted to believe it wasn’t you,” she said. “Because if it was, then I’d have to admit I almost gave you up.”

“I wanted to believe you weren’t real,” I said. “Because if you were, then I’d have to admit I couldn’t tell. That I failed.”

“We were both fools.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But we’re still here.”

We sat in silence, the weight of everything unspoken thick around us. Just the four of us now; one family, stunned and quiet and still alive, as morning crept across the world above.

Just then, I heard a small, sharp inhale.

Alex stirred among the winter coats, face scrunching up as if trying to push the sleep out from behind his eyes.

“Dad?” he whispered.

I nodded. “Yeah, buddy?”

He looked to Lauren. Then to Ellie, who shifted in his arms a second later, rubbing her eyes and curling instinctively toward the sound of our voices.

Her voice was even smaller. “Are we home?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. But Lauren did.

“We’re together,” she said. “That’s what matters.”

Alex sat up. “They’re still here, aren’t they? The other ones?”

Lauren nodded grimly. “We’re not safe yet. But we will be.”

There was no grand declaration. No rousing speech. Just the quiet resolve that passes between people who have nothing left to lose.

We began to plan.

…

It was our seventh day down in the basement.  The bruises had faded. The cuts had scabbed. But the house was still wrong. Still watching.

Down in the basement, we ran through the routine one last time. Bags packed. Paths memorized.

Lauren adjusted the strap on Ellie’s backpack, her hands steady.

Alex looked to me. “We ready?”

I looked at all of them.

And nodded.

“Let’s go.”

The lock on the basement door gave a soft click, almost imperceptible, as the paperclip - one we managed to scrounge up among the basement clutter - twisted in Lauren’s shaking hands.

She let out the barest breath. Relief. Fear.

I pushed the door open an inch at a time, listening.

No footsteps.

We'd studied them for days - the rhythms above us, their routines. Their lives. We knew when the kitchen floor would creak, when they paused in the hallway to murmur just out of earshot.

Up the stairs. One by one.

We held our bags tight. Left the heavier things behind. One chance.

The hallway yawned ahead, quiet and dim.

We crept past the coat rack. Past the shoe mat. Every breath loud in my chest.

The front door waited, barely ten feet away.

I reached out.

Fingers touched the knob.

Turned.

I turned, just long enough to find Lauren’s hand behind me.

And then I felt it.

A sting. Low, sharp, buried near the hip.

Another.

Her breath caught - a thin gasp.

I spun.

Ellie stood behind me. And Alex. Pale. Wide-eyed. But wrong.

The way Alex’s shoulders sat. The way Ellie’s hair curled too neatly at the ends.

“Why?” I breathed. The cold was already spreading. "Why would you-"

They said nothing.

Then, from the living room down the hall, a sound. Struggling. Wet cloth against duct tape.

And I saw them through the doorframe. Tied. Gagged. The real Alex. The real Ellie. Eyes wide. Desperate. Locked on mine.

Behind me, the others stood quietly.

And smiled.

I stumbled backward, eyes locked on the children — no, not children — things wearing my children’s faces. My legs felt hollow. Cold bloomed outward from the punctures like frost through old pipes.

And then he stepped into view.

From the living room. From behind the real children.

Me.

Or something wearing me just right.

Faux-Daniel's smile was gentle. Familiar. Off by half a second.

"Going somewhere?" he asked.

Lauren moved before I could stop her.

She slammed her shoulder into me, drove me backward toward the door. I tried to catch her, but my limbs wouldn’t cooperate.

The door swung open behind me.

Light. Air. Cold and real.

“Run!” she screamed. Her voice cracked - desperate and raw - and she shoved again, hard.

I stumbled out onto the porch. The world tilted. My feet found gravel, then grass, then pavement.

Behind me, the door swung shut.

Just before it closed, I looked back.

He was there.

My double. Standing in the doorway, framed by the house light.

And Lauren. My Lauren - no longer screaming, no longer fighting - caught between them.

Then the latch clicked.

And I was alone.

Standing in the middle of the road, breath like fog in the night air, legs shaking.

…

I ran. Or tried to.

The cold in my limbs made everything feel distant, rubbery. I stumbled down the road, shoes slapping the wet pavement, half-falling every few steps. Houses passed by like memories — flickering porch lights, curtains shifting.

I must’ve walked for hours.

Or minutes. Time bent strangely around me, refusing to settle.

Eventually, someone found me. An older man, maybe, or a teenager - I can’t remember exactly. They helped me into their truck, asked questions I couldn’t answer, dropped me off outside a 24-hour diner with a motel next door. I paid in cash.

Now I’m here. In a dingy motel room off Route 12, the walls thin enough to hear the neighbors arguing two doors down. There’s a vending machine humming outside and a rust-colored stain in the carpet by the bed.

I haven’t slept.

I keep picturing Lauren’s face in that doorway. Her eyes when she pushed me. The look she gave me — not just desperate. Trusting. Like she believed I could fix this.

So I will.

Because if I don’t - if I leave them there, living out some mimicry of our life, with those things wearing our faces, then no one else ever will.

Because I saw the fear in Alex’s eyes. I heard Ellie’s muffled cries.

Because she chose me.

Because I’m still me.

I had once thought about driving straight to the sheriff’s office. Telling someone what had happened. But the more I played it out in my head, the clearer it became.

They weren’t hiding.

They were living. Shopping at the same grocery store. Answering the same phone. Taking the kids to school in my car, waving at the neighbors.

They had proof. Alibis. Photos on the fridge. A full week of surveillance footage if anyone bothered to check.

I didn’t have anything. No wounds. No evidence of a struggle. Just a story that sounded like a breakdown.

And what if I did tell someone? What if the cops did come knocking?

What would stop them from opening the basement door… and finding it empty?

From smiling and saying, “There’s no one else here.”

From killing them and burying them in the time it took me to get a search warrant.

How can they be dead, they’d ask, smiling, if they’re right here?

Below: Narration by Animas

“Can’t you stay the night?” my mother asked, her voice tinged with worry. “I’d feel much more at ease if you didn’t have to drive through the mountains in the dark.”

“Sorry, Mom,” I sighed. “I’ve got an important meeting first thing tomorrow. And Alex has school as well.”

Her face softened when she glanced at my son, already tucked into his jacket and rubbing his eyes. “He looks tired.”

“He’ll sleep most of the way,” I said. “If I don’t leave now, I’ll be the one nodding off at my desk.”

She gave a small, defeated laugh before patting my shoulder and following me onto the porch. My father met us outside, his embrace carrying more weight than usual, before helping me load the bags into the trunk.

I lingered a moment in the driver’s seat, staring back at the old house, its windows glowing with the warmth from a lifetime of memories. For a breath, I thought about giving in - about staying one more night.

But the clock was already ticking in the back of my mind. Tomorrow’s spreadsheets. Tomorrow’s commute. Tomorrow’s bills.

I leaned out the window, kissed her cheek, and promised, “We’ll take it slow. I’ll text when we’re home.”

I eased the car down the crunchy gravel drive, watching Alex leaning against a window in my periphery, already half-asleep. In the mirror, my parents stood together on the porch, their shoulders brushing, waving back with weary smiles. A subtle pang of guilt crawled over my heart, as I wondered how many more times I would be able to see them again. My eyes lingered on their silhouettes as long as they were able, until the road finally bent, and the house slipped from sight.

I sighed and set my eyes back forward.

Not like I really had a choice in the matter.

My hometown spread out in sparse fragments as we rolled through it. I recognized the weathered storefronts with hand-painted signs, and all the shuttered diners that had once bustled when I was a kid, their neon now sputtering or gone altogether. The only places still lit were the gas station by the highway, and the bar across from it, its smoke-stained door spilling drunken laughter into the night air.

Even in the dark, I knew every corner, every fence line. The town was stitched into me: baseball games in the summer fields, bikes rattling over cracked sidewalks, that first awkward kiss in the alley behind the church. 

All those ghosts, pressed against a place that looked smaller every year I returned.

I found myself thinking of when I was Alex’s age, running wild through those same streets. Summer evenings that stretched forever, chasing fireflies with a gang of friends until our mothers called us in. Winter mornings when the snow came down so thick school was canceled, and the whole world turned into a playground.

It hadn’t felt like much back then. Just… everyday life.

 Only now do I realize how full it was, how I was never really alone. There was always someone knocking at the door, always a game being planned, always a cousin or neighbor ready to drag me along.

I glanced in the mirror. Alex’s small face rested against the glass, half-hidden by his jacket’s collar. He doesn’t have that world, not in the same way. He has a room with toys, a screen that keeps him company, and a father who rushes in late, too tired to do more than ask about homework before collapsing into bed.

He should’ve had more. A mother to soften the edges, to fill the house with something warmer than the hum of appliances. 

But she’d been gone since the day he arrived, leaving me to stumble through it all on my own.

I’ve done what I can. I keep telling myself it’s enough.

That showing up eventually, putting food on the table, keeping the lights on, that it all adds up to something he’ll understand one day.

I tell myself it’s necessary.

That the hours I trade now will buy him something better later. A bigger house, a safer life, the kind of certainty my parents scraped for but could never reach.

And maybe that’s true. Maybe he’ll thank me for it someday. That’s what I whisper to myself when I get home too late to tuck him in.

Still, there’s a pinch in my chest when I see him like this: quiet, patient, asking for so little.

A child shouldn’t have to be so patient.

Alex stirred, blinking at the dim streetlights. “Are we almost home?” he murmured.

“Not yet, buddy,” I said softly. “Go back to sleep. We’ve still got a long drive ahead of us.”

The last lamplight fell behind, and soon it was just the two of us, the car, and the long road curling up into the mountains. 

…

The fog pressed thicker against the windows, softening the edges of the headlights until the road seemed less like asphalt and more like a gray ribbon suspended in nothing.

“Dad?”

Alex’s voice was small, scratchy with drowsiness.

“Yeah, bud?”

“I can’t sleep.”

I glanced in the mirror. His eyes were open, pale in the dim glow from the dashboard.

I hesitated, searching for something - anything - that might help the miles pass. “Why don’t you play one of your iPad games? The ones you like so much.”

He nodded without a word and dug it out of his backpack. The glow of the screen lit up his face, painting him in pale blue as his fingers tapped and swiped.

I never really understood those games. The noises, the colors, the endless little battles on tiny glowing maps - it all felt like nonsense to me. But he seemed to like them. And more often than not, it was the only thing that kept him occupied when I didn’t have the energy to do so myself.

The road coiled and meandered, climbing higher into the mountains at unintuitive angles, and after a while he let the tablet fall into his lap with a sigh. “It’s making me dizzy,” he muttered. He pressed his cheek to the cold window instead, eyes unfocused, watching the mist roll past.

I tightened my grip on the wheel, lips pressed thin. Maybe I should have said something; offered to play some music or tell a story. Anything. But the words never came.

“I guess that works too,” I thought, and let the silence settle in.

The forest pressed close on either side now, just a blur of trunks and branches caught between the rolls of fog. I let my mind wander again, as it always does on long drives.

I thought about my own father, how he used to work himself raw at the mill and still somehow managed to make it home for dinner, to sit at the table with us every night. 

Maybe he wasn’t always cheerful, maybe he carried the day’s weight in his silence, but he was always there. I wonder - I hope - sometimes if Alex will remember me that way: always tired, always on the move, but trying. Or if he’ll remember mostly the empty rooms, the waiting.

…

“Dad?”

This time his voice cut through, sharper, urgent enough to jolt me back.

I glanced in the mirror. “What’s up, buddy?”

The fog had thickened while I wasn’t paying attention, billowing in pale sheets across the road and slipping between the trees like slow smoke. It made the headlights blur and halo, as though we were driving through water.

Alex’s eyes were wide now, no trace of sleep in them. He leaned closer to the glass, his breath feathering against it, mingling with the vapor outside until I couldn’t tell where the inside ended and the night began.

“There’s someone,” he whispered, “in the trees.”

A disturbance crept along my spine before I could stop it. 

For half a second I actually flicked my eyes toward the tree line, headlights carving only shifting fog and the blur of trunks. Nothing there, of course. Just shadows and mist.

I forced a quiet laugh, more for myself than for him. “You’ve got a wild imagination, bud. Out here it’s just trees and more trees. Nobody’s hanging around in the middle of the woods at this hour.”

Alex didn’t move, still pressed close to the glass, watching something I couldn’t see.

“Maybe you’re just tired,” I added, softening my voice. “When I was your age, I used to think I saw things on long drives too. That’s how your brain tricks you when it’s fighting sleep.”

His breath lingered on the window, clouding the glass. He didn’t answer right away.

Alex stayed there for a long moment, eyes searching the blur of trunks sliding past, his breath dimming the glass. Then, slowly, he sat back against the seat.

“Maybe you’re right,” he murmured, though it sounded more like surrender than agreement.

“Of course I’m right,” I said, forcing a smile into my voice. “Nothing out there but trees. You’ll see plenty more of them in the morning, I promise.”

I let out a quiet breath, loosening my grip on the wheel. Kids get restless on long drives; I knew that. Their minds start filling the silence with shapes and shadows, anything to make the minutes pass faster. I remembered doing it myself, watching the dark roll by and convincing myself there were faces in the hedgerows, ghosts hitchhiking at the roadside. Just tricks of a bored brain.

His eyelids fluttered, the fight draining from him as the rhythm of the car took over. Within minutes, his head lolled against the seatbelt, his breathing soft and even.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and turned my eyes back to the road. The fog pressed closer still, thick enough now that the headlights seemed to dissolve into it after a few feet. The world outside felt muffled, distant. An eternity’s distance away.

…

For a while, there was only the hum of the tires and the faint rattle of the heater. I almost let myself believe the rest of the drive would be this way. Quiet and uneventful.

Then Alex stirred again. I caught his reflection in the rearview, his eyes wide open, blinking as though he’d never slept at all. He leaned forward slightly, peering through the side window.

“Dad…” His voice was low, careful. “He’s still there.”

A prickle ran down my neck before he’d even finished speaking. I gripped the wheel tighter, blinking against the fog, which pressed thicker now, turning the road into a gray ribbon with no edges. The last thing I needed was another distraction. My eyes already burned from the drive, and now Alex was fixating on shadows.

I cleared my throat. “Still there, huh?” I said lightly, though it came out thinner than I meant, more strained than amused.

Alex nodded without looking away from the window.

I sighed through my nose, fingers flexing on the wheel. “Alright,” I went on, forcing a half-smile he couldn’t see. “If he’s there, why don’t you tell me what he looks like? Let’s make a picture of him. Might help you get him out of your head.”

For a moment, Alex was silent, his breath clouding the glass. Then, very softly, he said:

“He looks like a little tree.”

I forced out a laugh. “Sure you aren’t just seeing a plain ol’ tree, bud?”

Alex shook his head. “No… he looks like a tree, but he has a head, and shoulders, and arms.”

He paused, eyes fixed on the window.

“And he has eyes.”

“...Eyes?”

“Yeah… big, glowy ones. Kind of like an owl.”

A shiver worked its way down my arms. I forced myself to glance at the trees anyway, eyes darting between the trunks. Nothing there. Just the fog, pale and restless, folding over itself in the beams of the headlights.

“Must be the way the light’s hitting,” I said, making my voice steady. “Headlights and mist can play tricks. Trust me, I’ve seen it plenty of times.”

Alex didn’t answer. He sat back, still watching the glass, his breath fogging it in small, uneven bursts.

We drove like that for a long while. The hum of the tires smoothed into something almost calming, and the silence between us settled heavy but familiar, the kind that fills long roads at night. I even felt my grip ease on the wheel. Maybe he’d fall asleep again. Maybe the fog would thin out before the summit.

Then Alex’s voice broke the quiet, soft but edged with something new.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, bud?”

“He’s right outside the window now.”

My throat went dry. I flicked my eyes toward him, but saw only the fog pressing close, the forest swallowed in pale gray.

Alex leaned toward the glass, squinting. “He’s trying to talk to me.”

Before I could respond, he thumbed the latch and rolled the window down a crack. Cold air spilled in, sharp and damp, curling through the heater’s warmth.

“Alex- hey.” I reached across, fumbling for the controls on the driver’s side, but his hand was already on the glass. He leaned into the gap, lips moving, his voice soft and low, as though answering someone I couldn’t hear.

“Alex.” My tone came out sharper this time. “It’s freezing out. Roll it back up.”

No reaction. His face was tilted toward the dark, his words too faint for me to catch, his breath vanishing into the mist outside.

I gritted my teeth, fighting the urge to snap. “Alex! Window. Up. Now.”

Still nothing. It was as if I wasn’t even in the car with him.

“Alex,” I said, softer now, “come on, bud. Roll it up. You’ll catch a cold.”

The window stayed cracked, cold mist spilling into the car. Alex leaned toward it, his breath feathering into the dark. His lips kept moving, quiet, steady, as if he were carrying on a conversation I couldn’t hear.

My jaw clenched. Every mile of this road had already been a fight to keep my eyes open, and now this - this game, this fixation, whatever it was. I wanted to shout, to shake him back into himself.

“Alex,” I snapped, sharper now.

“Enough. Roll the damn window up.”

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t even look at me.

I sighed, defeatedly, before turning my head back.

But as I did, I thought I saw the outline of a figure at the edge of my vision - arms crooked like broken branches.

My chest tightened. I blinked hard, forcing my gaze forward again. Nothing there. Just fog slipping between the trees, making shapes where none existed. A trick of the light. A trick of exhaustion.

I let out another sigh, shaking my head at the nonsense of it all, and fixed my eyes back on the road. We just had to get home. Once we were there, he’d be back in school, back with his friends, back to normal. Something to pull his mind away from these little fantasies. That was what he needed. Structure. Routine. 

Distractions.

…

But of course, that wasn’t the end of it.

Alex started talking to whatever it was he saw beyond the window, his voice startling me out of my inner monologue.

“What game? …Really? You know how to play tag in the dark? I’ve never tried that before!” 

He let out a shy giggle. 

“Oh, Dad? Don’t bother. He never has time to play.”

A knot tightened in my chest. I cleared my throat, tried to sound casual. “Alex, it’s freezing out. You don’t want to be sticking your head in the fog like that.”

In truth, though, those words hit me like a stab in the back. I thought he knew what I was sacrificing for his sake.

I thought he understood.

Was this his way of telling me I wasn’t doing enough?

Alex didn’t seem to hear me. His fingers traced the sill, brushing against the cold air as though something waited just beyond.

For a while I just heard him murmuring, voice low and steady, like he was carrying on a secret conversation with the fog. At first I tried to ignore it, to keep my eyes fixed on the road, but the longer it went on, the tighter my chest felt.

“Alex,” I said finally, trying to keep my tone calm. “What are you two talking about?”

He didn’t turn toward me at first. His face was tilted toward the mist, eyes wide and shining as if he were watching something unfold just beyond the glass. When he finally spoke, his voice was hushed, almost reverent.

“He says he’s the king of the forest.”

A chill brushed the back of my neck.

“All the animals come to him,” Alex went on, his words drifting, dreamlike. “The deer, the foxes, the owls… they all bow down, and stay very still. They pay their respects.”

He paused, listening, nodding faintly, then continued, his voice softer now, almost awed.

“He says there’s a palace under the roots. Bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. With doors carved from the oldest trees, so tall you can’t see the top. When they open, they make the whole forest shake.”

His gaze drifted upward, as if picturing it.

“There are halls that stretch forever, and the walls glow, like they’ve got fireflies trapped inside them. He says the light never goes out. Not ever. And there are rooms filled with leaves that never dry, rivers that run under the floor, and staircases that twist all the way down into the dark.”

Alex gave a faint, almost secretive smile. “He says it’s all waiting for me.”

I pressed harder on the gas without meaning to, just to get us farther down the road.

“There are kids there too,” Alex said after a pause, his breath curling against the glass. “He says they laugh and play all the time, in the big halls and the gardens under the roots. They don’t get tired, and they never have to go inside when it’s dark.”

His smile widened, dreamy. “They climb the trees as high as they want, and nobody calls them down. And at night he takes them up above the branches, all the way to the stars, so close you can almost touch them.”

A chill ran through me at the way he said it, like he was half here and half somewhere else. For a moment, I almost let myself believe he was listening to something real, something outside the car.

I shook the thought off. Just a story. Just a tired kid letting his imagination spin itself out. I’d done the same when I was his age - made up kingdoms in the shadows, heard voices in the wind, anything to keep from being bored.

But then Alex’s voice dropped even lower, the words stretching out: “He says they don’t even miss their moms and dads. They forget all about them.”

That one landed like a punch. My grip on the wheel tightened until it creaked. Of course. Of all the things to repeat back to me, that was the one.

I ground my teeth, irritation spiking through the tiredness. I’d been driving for hours, working myself raw week after week to keep us afloat, and this was what I got - my son whispering about some make-believe king - or whatever he called it - who promised him a better deal.

A bedtime story designed to cut right where it hurt.

Alex leaned closer to the crack in the window, his voice soft, lilting.

“He says he’ll always be around to play. Even when it’s late. Even if he’s tired after a long day of ruling the forest.”

“He says he doesn’t mind telling stories every night. Long ones that go on until you fall asleep. He says he has all the time in the world. Just for me, and the other kids.”

“And he says…” Alex smiled faintly, eyes half-closed, “he’ll always love me. More than anything. He says he’ll never be too busy, never too tired. He’ll have all the time in the world, just for me.”

The cold gnawed at my hands - knuckles white against the wheel, at my jaw, at the back of my neck. Alex was still smiling faintly into the fog, whispering things I couldn’t hear. My patience broke.

“That’s enough,” I muttered, reaching across. My thumb jabbed the switch, and the motor whined as the window crawled shut. The mist thinned, sealed out by the pane.

“You don’t get it!” His voice shattered into a screech, high and raw. “He was talking to me!”

“There’s no one there,” I said, trying to steady my tone. “Just fog, just trees -”

But Alex’s face twisted, blotched and wet, and he screamed through the tears, “I thought I could finally have someone to play with! Someone who wouldn’t leave me alone!”

Something in me snapped. I slammed my palm against the wheel so hard it rattled. “Play? Is that all you think about? Do you have any idea what I’ve sacrificed for you?”

My voice was hoarse, cracking, but I couldn’t stop. “While you’re at home, I’m out there breaking myself so you can eat, so you can have clothes, so you can have a future! Do you think any of that just appears out of thin air?”

Alex sobbed, his hands balled into fists, but I kept going, louder, angrier, as if every mile of exhaustion was spilling out at once. “Do you think I like coming home late? Do you think I want to miss dinner, miss bedtime? You think I don’t hate it every single time I can’t be there?” My chest heaved, heat pounding in my skull. “But somebody has to keep this family standing, and it sure as hell can’t be you!”

I barely heard him anymore, his cries fading beneath the weight of my own voice. I couldn’t stop. The words kept tearing out of me, each one sharper than the last. “So don’t you dare tell me I don’t care. Don’t you dare say I don’t want you. Everything I have left, everything I’ve ever done - it’s been for you!”

My chest burned, words spilling out before I could stop them. “Do you think I wanted this life? Do you think I asked to raise you alone, to-”

I bit the rest off, choking on it. My throat closed around the words I’d almost said, words I couldn’t ever take back.

And then-

Click.

The latch’s sound cut through everything, leaving a sudden and absolute silence in its wake.

“...Alex?”

My blood froze. I snapped my head around.

The seat was empty.

“Alex!”

The car swerved as I slammed the brakes, gravel spitting beneath the tires. I threw the shifter into park and lunged out, the night air hitting me like ice. The fog clung heavy to the mountainside, swallowing the road, the trees, everything.

“Alex!” My voice cracked. I fumbled for the flashlight under the seat, my hands shaking as I swept the beam through the mist. Trunks. Rocks. Shadows. Nothing.

Then- movement. 

A shape cutting through the fog at the edge of the treeline. Small, quick.

“Alex!” My heart lurched. I stumbled down the embankment, gravel shifting under my boots, the beam jerking wildly as I pushed after him.

Branches whipped at my arms, brambles clawed at my jeans, but I hardly felt them. I could see the figure darting ahead between the trunks, vanishing and reappearing in the folds of mist.

“Please!” My throat tore with the word. “Wait! I’m sorry, buddy - I’m so sorry. I’ll do better, I promise. Just… just stop!”

The ground dipped under my feet, roots rising up like knotted steps, and for a moment the fog pooled thick around them, like the threshold of something vast and hidden beneath. Then the figure slipped out of sight, and the silence pressed close again.

My light swung desperately from tree to tree, catching the mist rolling past trunks; branches shifting like pale arms. “Alex!” I screamed into the mist. “Please, don’t leave me!”

And then, at last, movement again - smaller this time, slower.

The beam caught him: a slight figure, shoulders hunched, trudging up from the gray. Alex. His dark jacket blurred with the fog, his steps heavy and tired, but his outline was real.

Relief ripped through me so hard I almost collapsed. I ran to him, dropped to my knees, tried to wrap him in my arms. “Thank God - thank God, you’re okay - I thought I lost you, I thought-”

But he stood stiff in my grasp, eyes dull, jaw set. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t say a word.

When I let go, he turned without speaking, and began walking back toward the car. I followed, broken, the beam of the flashlight trembling across the ground.

We didn’t speak when I led him back to the car. Alex climbed in without looking at me, buckled his belt, and turned his face to the window.

The engine coughed to life, headlights cutting tunnels through the fog. I tried to find words, any words, to fill the void.

“Hey, bud… maybe this weekend, we could go to the park. Play some catch. What do you think?”

No answer. His breath fogged the glass.

“Or the arcade. You always beat me at those racing games.” I forced a weak laugh. “Bet you’d win again. Oh! Maybe you could teach me to play one of those iPad games you like?”

The tires hummed, steady and endless.

“We could even go camping. Just you and me. Build a fire, roast some marshmallows.”

Still nothing. Not a nod, not a glance. Just silence, as though the fog had seeped into the car itself.

By the time we pulled into the driveway, dawn was breaking pale and gray. Alex unbuckled his belt, opened the door, and padded into the house without a word. I trailed after him, the silence heavier than any scream.

He climbed the stairs, disappeared into his room, and shut the door. When I peeked in a few minutes later, he was already curled beneath the blankets, his small back to me.

I stood there in the doorway, throat tight, the apology still caught behind my teeth.

He didn’t stir.

…

He hasn’t been the same since then.

It’s hard to explain. He still eats his breakfast, still does his homework, still even laughs sometimes at something on TV. But there’s a weight to him now, a distance in the way he looks at me. As if a line was drawn that night, and he stepped across it, leaving me on the other side.

I’ve gone over it again and again. The fog, the road, the things he said. The man in the trees. I tell myself it could’ve been real, that something out there whispered to him, reached for him, tried to take him. Some nights, that’s easier to believe.

But the truth is simpler. And worse. It doesn’t matter what was out there. What matters is that I wasn’t.

I told myself I was working for him, that all the long nights and empty rooms would add up to something better. But children don’t wait for “later.” They only get one childhood, and I let his slip past while I kept promising myself there’d be time.

If the fog took anything from my son that night, it only carried off what I had already let slip away.

And now… now when I look at him, I see only what’s missing. I see the patience that shouldn’t have been asked of him, the quiet where joy used to live. He still sits across from me, still answers when I speak, but it feels like he’s further away with every passing year.

Sometimes I try to tell myself there’s still time - that maybe I can reach him, somehow. But when I meet his eyes, I don’t see a child waiting anymore. Only the silence he left behind.

And every so often, when the nights are very still, I catch him staring out the window, as if listening for something I can’t hear.

Below: Narration in SPANISH (for those interested - special thanks to Darksoul Horror for their translation and voiceover work!)

Saturday, I resolved to go to The SPA™. At the behest of my wife. You are tense, she said. From the burdens of everyday life. And so I went.

The smell of oud wood and jasmine asserted calm. The greeting attendant smiled. Her expression was practiced. Intended to reassure. Try the new NO-ANXIETY™ package, she nudged, After hearing of my plights.

Putting pen to paper, I signed a form, Placing trust in the small print. And I followed her in.

The corridor narrowed pleasantly. Lights dimmed at regular intervals. Soft music transitioning into silence.

Arriving, I was told to breathe. As I lay back, Hand applied pressure In practiced intervals Oil warmed the skin. I began to relax.

Something hummed nearby.

A cradle adjusted beneath me. Warm metal stroking wet bone. A screen pulsed softly. I was told this was normal, and I continued to relax.

When I reopened my eyes, I was home, Sat in my usual chair. My wife smiled. Said I appeared more relaxed now. Less anxious, more present, Since my visit to The SPA™ last week.

I agreed.

The conversation continued, Sentences forming smoother than I was used to. Lips speaking more fluidly than I had remembered.

My wife appeared satisfied.

I was mowing the front lawn to Tony Bennett, At the next point of lucidity. My wife lazing happily on the porch, Brandishing the Margarita I had made.

Execution without access.

As my feet pushed through soil, I felt body respond to mind. But I was excluded from that conversation.

Panicking seemed correct, But my mind was enjoying the tunes, And the smell of freshly-cut grass.

Telling me to be thankful I'm even allowed to listen in.

Three months have elapsed, By the brief glimpses, In which calendars came into view. When I speak, My mind forms words internally For me to read. And my mouth speaks them For me to hear. My mind thinks. My body obeys.

Mind thinks. Body obeys.

Where am I in this?

I am but the self. The observer. Taken hostage by mind and body. No anxiety to be had, I suppose. When there is no agency.

Even this grim realization Is facilitated by the mercy of my mind.

It could stop if it wanted, I think.

Historical records suggest that the Crawling God has always been there - a permanent, jagged monument stitched to our orange-hued sky - an impossible mountain range of recursive geometries and knotted metal - its silhouette so deeply engraved in our collective memory, that even our oldest cave walls depict it in exact detail, without variation. 

Our civilization, in its youth, prayed to it - what we believed was some form of emissary of the All-Creator, placed in the firmament to watch over us in silence, unto eternity.

In its name, we built pyramids, cathedrals, pyramid-cathedrals, even - towering ziggurats that spiraled without end, designed to mimic its incomprehensible recursiveness. Annually, we held festivals in its honor - great dances of fire and flame, flowing mirrored robes - bodies forming symbols we never really understood. We burned swathes of forest in its offering, lighting up our atmosphere in artificial auroras  - praying to keep our steel-wrought god entertained - to keep it amused. To keep it invested.

Our technological rise came steadily, stretched across millenia. Not because we necessarily lacked curiosity or innovativeness - but because we were never starting from zero. We had, after all, been born under the watchful eye of an unyielding constant. 

The Crawling God hung over every theory, every model, every equation - a variable no-one dared remove. Its presence distorted everything - the shape and direction of our physics, our cosmology - our approach to logic itself.

Our earliest models of gravity had to accommodate its refusal to orbit.

Our atmospheric data was permanently skewed by the unyielding pressure of its form at the edge of our stratosphere.

Our astronomers charted stars from around its limbs - or what we thought were limbs.

Without exception, every emergent school of thought emerged not to question its nature - but to justify it. Our sciences were built never to challenge the divine, but to explain its mechanics - to decode its mind-bending, infinite architecture.

We had begun launching vessels out into low orbit some fifty solar cycles ago - a monumental task, made infinitely more complex by the presence of our deity in the sky. Not just because of its mass - and its gravitational distortions, but - because it did not permit intrusion.

Every attempt to approach it directly, be they unmanned probes, survey drones, even fragments of space debris, met the exact same fate.

An unseen field, humming with silent, esoteric energies, surrounded its body - a perimeter of complete, absolute denial. Objects would vanish mid-approach, no explosion, no scattering of parts. Just… erased from existence.

We believed it was just being protective. That it knew what was best for us, and that we were not yet ready.

Still, we tried. Mission after mission, decade after decade, generation after generation. Scientists, believers, pilots - martyrs all. Hundreds lost in a morbid attempt to map its sky with mass religious paranoia, studying the failed trajectories as if decoding scripture.

----

And then, just five cycles ago, something changed.

A probe - nothing remarkable or special - managed to slip in - transmitting a signal from within the perimeter. It did not survive, but - the implications were clear.

A crack. Neither large nor stable. But it was there.

The Crawling God was inviting us in.

Within weeks, funding was poured into our space programmes. All petty politics dissolved. Entire cities and towns were emptied out to staff the effort.

The next five cycles were an unprecedented period of unity for our people. Wars stopped - dead in their tracks. Borders softened. Flags became less relevant.Old enemies embraced. The first time in recorded history we had acted as one.

Not out of fear.

Not out of survival.

But in service to a greater purpose. To reach the unyielding divine - and land on the impossible. 

To touch the Crawling God.

…

Launch Day began in silence.

Not by decree, but by instinct. No horns, no choir, no fanfare. Even the animals moved differently - more slowly, more measuredly - as if they too felt the weight of the air. A quietness settled over the world, universally understood - the stillness of an entire planet holding its breath before the divine.

The sun rose, pale and slow behind a shimmering veil of cloud.

The skies had been cleared. No vessels allowed aloft.

The launch site was stretched all around - a structure the size of a small city, wrought in heat-resistant alloys and chemically-etched prayer markings.

At its center, stood the ship - the Ascendant - standing tall and proud - its bone-white ceramic plating inscribed with several thousand glyphs, drawn from every major tradition.

It had taken three whole cycles to design and construct - a marvel of innovation - a measure of what we as a species could achieve working as one.

…

When the final hour arrived, fourteen billion individuals fell silent in unison. Across every continent, the launch was broadcast live. Footage was projected onto the walls of every government building. The sick were carried up to rooftops. The incarcerated too, were allowed to watch from their cell blocks.

Some wept. Some chanted. Others looked upward, filled with hope and promise for the future.

At t-minus zero, the platform shuddered open with a sound like of a stirring planet.

The Ascendant rose on a pillar of white flame, moving slowly, reverently, as if being called to purpose by the very divine it was built to reach.

It passed through cloud, through sunlight, and then into shadow.

The shadow of the Crawling God - impossibly still - waiting, as it had done for our species’ entire history.

In that moment, even the doubters knelt. Even the atheists fell silent. For the first time in our collective memory, we did not wonder if it was watching. We knew.

----

Soon, despite what felt like hours, the Ascendant began its final approach toward the great crack. The entire planet held its breath.

Its trajectory arced gently, towards the thin, flickering seam in the otherwise flawless armor of the divine being. Barely visible to the eye, yet unmistakable on our scanners.

From the ground, we watched in stillness. The winds paused. The oceans calmed. No one spoke - not in command towers, not in cathedrals, not in homes.

Would it open?

Would the Crawling God let us into its domain?

No-one knew. No-one could.

As the vessel neared, telemetry flickered - gravity readings warped slightly - just for a brief moment. The crack shimmered slightly, like it had noticed.

And then - it parted. As if it had always meant to. For us, or for something that wore our shape.

As the Ascendant passed through, the world seemed to exhale all at once - now assured of divine acceptance, finally confirmed. It had let us in.

On every scene, every wall, the ship’s feeds came online.

At first, only static. Then motion. Color. Light, bending in wrong directions. The cameras stabilized. The interior was not empty, but… not quite structured, either. It was like drifting through a grand cathedral built by someone who had no conception of a straight line. Chambers, impossibly tall, looped and coiled into themselves. Stairways looped into non-Euclidean spirals and vanished into nothingness.

No visible machinery. No seams. Just seamless, knotted corridors, and shifting towers that seemed to breathe, just ever so slightly.

It was beautiful. Unreadable. Shapes that shouldn’t have been stable, yet were.

The corridor narrowed, steadily, subtly. The gravity changed - like a grip tightening around the ship. Ahead, a structure emerged - enormous, pronged, built into the curvature, jutting out of the knotted metal like a perverse branch. 

Not a hangar, nor a bay. A docking cradle, ancient but waiting, as if it had always expected someone to arrive.

The Ascendant eased in, unresisted - simply sliding into place. 

The feed switched again, this time, to the crew’s helmet cameras, offering a first person view of the immense, surreal interior. They stepped out, the material underfoot giving way slightly, as if welcoming their weight. 

Before them, an entrance opened up, inviting them in - a vast chamber of coiling monoliths, and glyphs repeating across space and time in unintuitive fashion.

Then they reorganized. Flattened. Near-translated.

One of the monoliths sparked to life. A screen. A voice. Not one of the crew’s. Not any of ours. Something else.

Grainy footage. 

A face. Not one of our species, yet… eerily familiar. Multiple faces. Smooth-skinned. Upright. Two eyes. Two arms.

Their mouths moved. A language - stilted and fragmented. A language I half-understood. 

Why do I half-understand them?

A word. A phrase.

“...let them remember…”

“...unforgiven…”

The cadence - the structure - uncanny parallels with our oldest tongues. Linguistic roots that should never have existed, should not have emerged naturally - yet echoed perfectly in our myths, in our prayers, in our curses.

And then I heard it.

“...Humanity.”

Humanity?

The word landed like a stone in still water.

Our whole planet bristled, all at once. Not physical, but cultural. Ancestral. Entire species-level memory shuddered under the weight of horrific recognition. Because in every recorded culture, every continent, every origin story, there was one constant - one mind-bending commonality.

A race of vengeful gods. Burning. Relentless. Enders of civilizations. Every name given a phonetic variation of the same root.

Humanity.

…

The footage changed. A sky on fire. Not orange, like ours - but a somber, pale blue.

The camera trembled with motion. Static scrawled across the edges of the frame like rot. In the distance, buildings split open under the weight of falling light - not flame, but force, bent and pure.

My breath caught.

Not from the devastation. But from what came next.

Ships, descending. Foreign… yet not.

The angles - the proportions. The clean lines, curved hulls. Too familiar. Shapes we still build to this day - designs etched in our industrial memory.

They opened fire.

Some hovered, others landed. And from their bellies, soldiers emerged - encased in sleek armor, wielding weapons that curved and distorted the air around them, sweeping through the chaos like a surgical nightmare.

And they bore our faces.

…

The footage changed again. Darkness. An interior, enclosed. Silent. Massive. Industrial. Perverse.

Monitors flickered. Sparks danced along the exposed cabling as workers moved to fix them in somber, solemn silence. Like priests performing the last rites of their own species.

A monument. A weapon. A final message, carved in alloy and tragic fury.

It sat there on its launch cradle, coiled. A dying god prepared to breathe one final truth into the void. Panels along its surface bore inscriptions - not of ownership - but of grief. Names. Coordinates. Warnings.

Curses.

Then, a voice. Human. Resigned.

“We die.”

“But you will not forget us.”

“Not anymore”

I did not understand all of it. But I understood enough.

The screen dimmed, as launch protocols were set off. Vast clamps unhanded the beast. Red floodlights flared.

A low rumble began - deep, long, and sonorous.

The machine rose. Slow. Heavy. Unstoppable.A vengeful god, set to crawl across the void.

…

The footage shifted a final time.

A planet, seen from orbit. Consumed by fire. Its upper atmosphere glowed red like a blistering aurora, fractured and split by ceaseless orbital bombardment and gravitational stress. Cities went dark in waves. Oceans boiled into vapor, reflecting sunbeams like a chaotic, furious dance -  a storm of flowing, mirrored robes spinning through the troposphere. No sound, but the hollow stillness of the void.

I leaned forward - breath caught in my chest. Then I saw it.

The curvature. The familiar lines of the tectonic ridges. Mountain ranges - set aflame, but their distinctive jagged shapes - recognizable still. Contours I had traced since childhood, printed onto schoolbooks, and etched into currency.

Our world.

It was neither metaphor, prophecy, nor dramatization. This was a recording. Our planet. Burning. Seen from eyes that did not think. Did not care. Did not know us - not anymore. If they ever had.

I can't help it.

I can’t help but laugh at the irony,

looking at up at that thing in the sky.

The thing sent to wipe us out. A retribution we never remembered earning.

The thing we worshipped.

 The thing we prayed to.

 The thing we had built great towers - coiling and screaming toward the stars, just to be nearer to it.

The thing that unified us, that stilled wars, that gave us peace.

The shape in the sky we called holy.

It was never a god.

And now I hear my entire species recoiling - the shattering of our collective conscience, echoing across the world as belief collapses under the weight of incomprehensible, morbid truth.

The prayers turning to ash in their mouths, as they scream bloody murder into an uncaring void.

Historical records show that the species known as Humanity was eradicated 482 years ago, soon after first contact.

They were a slow-evolving, surface-bound civilization—crude metallurgy, reaction-based propulsion, no faster-than-light capability. They were intelligent, but constrained by their dimensional limits. Their technology was improvised, their infrastructure fragile. A minor species. Persistent, but ultimately irrelevant.

When they began broadcasting wide-spectrum signals—loud, chaotic, and directionless—we took notice. Observation confirmed no potential for uplift, no threat of parity, and no capacity for restraint.

We rendered judgment.

Orbital cleansing operations commenced within two cycles. Coordinated ground resistance collapsed in weeks. Defensive satellites were destroyed before they could reorient. Atmospheric infrastructure failed under sustained bombardment.

They resisted. Briefly. Stubbornly.

Their final transmissions were uncoordinated. Pleas. Threats. Songs.

We silenced them. Their cities burned beneath precise, measured fire. Biomes collapsed. Skies turned black.

There was no formal surrender. No negotiation.

Only silence.

Silence, except…

In their final hours, they launched a massive unmanned object into deep space.

No warp drive. No signal. No destination of note. Just a lump of metal pushed along by brute-force propulsion.

We catalogued it, after the last member of that meagre race had been wiped out:

Titan’s End.

A dramatic name. Sentimental. Likely intended to give meaning to their extinction.

It was filed under non-priority artifacts. Monitored briefly for trajectory.

Its record became a small footnote in the public data feeds— A curiosity. A relic. Nothing more.

And then it was forgotten.

…

Two weeks ago, a relay station went dark at the fringes of our system. A minor alarm. A maintenance issue, perhaps.

But the final scan it sent showed something unusual.

A silhouette. Large. Angular. Moving.

Slowly. Deliberately.

A match was found.

Titan’s End.

We dismissed it. Sub-light debris isn’t rare. Ancient wrecks drift across sectors all the time, bent by gravity, fragmented by age.

But then another station failed. Then a listening post. Then an outlying colony.

No survivors. No messages. No wreckage. Just silence.

Reconnaissance fleets were deployed. Standard protocol. They vanished.

Combat divisions followed. More aggressive. Heavily shielded. Not a single vessel returned.

The last transmission we received was less than five seconds long:

“Object confirmed. No response. Defense systems—

 [cutoff]”

Then Defense Command went silent.

What followed was not a war. It was a collapse.

The moment it became clear the object couldn’t be stopped, everything broke.

Civilians panicked.

Transit hubs overflowed in minutes—station floors covered in discarded belongings, families torn apart by random clearance algorithms.

Shuttles launched half-full, others torn apart mid-air by crowds climbing onto open landing struts.

Evacuation lotteries were broadcast live, then pulled after riots began inside selection centers. Some winners were trampled. Some pilots never showed.

Off-world governors declared emergency autonomy. Within three hours, two core sectors had seceded outright.

A fracture that no one had time to contest.

Broadcast networks dissolved into chaos—scientists begging for calm, priests weeping openly, conspiracists preaching contradictory salvations.

Then static.

Religious orders activated long-dormant sanctums. Sacrifices were made on live feeds.

Some waited for ascension.

Others claimed the machine was the ascension.

Market systems collapsed. Transactions slowed, then froze, then inverted.

Digital currencies bled into negative space.

Wealth vanished faster than light ever traveled.

Artificial intelligence clusters shut themselves down—one after another—triggering legacy fail-safes we forgot we built.

When asked why, one system simply replied:

“Trajectory confirmed.”

By hour five, atmospheric control grids began failing—not from attack, but from neglect. No one was left at the stations. No one was following protocol. No one remembered what protocol even meant.

Cities still lit by artificial day dimmed, flickered, and went dark.

Emergency beacons pulsed across every continent, to no one in particular.

And through all of it, one message kept surfacing—through graffiti, stolen broadcasts, neural implants, and the last functioning public feeds:

It is coming.

…

I can see it now.

Not in reports. Not in scans. With my own eyes.

It has breached the atmosphere.

No sound. No entry signature. No observable cause. Just… presence. Descending through cloud cover like a memory we were never meant to recall. Vast. Unknowable. Its shape isn’t right—too angular to be natural, too inconsistent to be engineered. Looking at it feels like trying to remember a dream while still dreaming.

It is larger than anything we’ve built. Larger than anything we’ve ever imagined being possible. And yet—it moves like it was always meant to be here.

Its surface is a scab of centuries — metal torn from forgotten wars, architecture that folds in on itself like an idea that shouldn’t be spoken aloud. Some parts glow faintly, others churn with shapes and symbols that defy translation. They pulse not like language, but like ritual.

Fragments of our own vessels are embedded in its skin. Not attached. Not recovered. Incorporated.

They look… digested.

Beneath its plating, energy writhes. It does not radiate. It leaks. It seeps. Not mechanical, not organic—something older than either.

Not rhythmic. Not stable. Just pressure. Constant. Insistent. As if something vast and dreaming were trapped within, pressing against the hull.

It does not broadcast. It does not acknowledge. It does not see us.

It simply is.

It moves.

Through cloud. Through fire. Through the sky as if it were nothing but gauze.

Through every defense we once thought absolute.

We are beneath it now. Entire cities. All of us.

We were told to evacuate, but to where?

There is no escape vector. No hiding curve in space. No safe side of the planet. No second side of the coin.

We’re not being hunted. No. We’re being cleared. Swept. Like dust. Like error.

We don’t know what it sees. If it sees. If it needs to see.

We don’t know if it understands us. If it ever did. If it can. If it should.

It is not a god. Not a beast. Not even a weapon, not really. Weapons imply a user. A hand. A will. This—this is something else.

It isn’t angry. It has no anger left. No joy. No hate. No thought.

It is a function. A final gesture, yes. A dead species’ last breath, exhaled not into space—but into purpose.

Titan’s End. That’s what they called it. Not a name. A warning. We should have listened. We should have remembered. We didn’t.

We thought we destroyed them.

No. No—we just started the clock.

And now—

it tolls.

It tolls.

It tolls

I moved to Hemsley-on-Pine in the spring, the kind of season where the trees haven’t quite agreed whether they’re still dead or coming back to life — that tentative lull between frost and bloom that always made me feel like the world itself was holding its breath. I’d come from New York, or rather, I’d fled it, after being unceremoniously fired from a job that had eaten more of me than I’d ever admitted aloud — a mid-tier investment banking position, one of those grind-yourself-to-bone roles where twelve-hour days were expected, and twenty-hour days were quietly admired. It was the sort of life where you measured your self-worth in line items and caffeine, and everyone pretended that burnout was just a form of excellence.

When the layoff came — a merger, a restructuring, some empty phrase like that — I tried to see it as a blessing. I bought a secondhand car. Looked up quiet towns. Told myself I’d bake, or hike, or grow tomatoes — like those ex-urbanites online who find themselves through fresh air and compost. Maybe I said I wanted peace or perspective, but really, I was just tired. Not just of work, but of noise. Sirens at 2 a.m. Blinking screens. Small talk in crowded elevators. I wanted smaller. Slower. Quieter.

Still, I braced for the usual disappointments. Boredom. Passive-aggressive locals. The sort of loneliness people romanticize in Instagram captions but drink away in real life. I expected worn-out diners, the same dozen names in the paper, and a vague sense that I’d never quite belong.

Instead, I got mail delivered to the minute — as if the postman moved to a metronome. A town bus that arrived with the precision of a ticking watch, the driver nodding like it was rehearsed. Neighbors who waved, smiled, remembered my name, and brought me casseroles without asking. People who felt warm and familiar from day one — like I’d always been there.

And I got a job — a simple one, working records and permits at the local municipal office — where the pace was gentle, the hours fair, and the boss, a neat little woman named Joyce, baked the most fragrant sesame banana bread every Thursday without fail. Not just good — exceptional. Moist, warm, delicately sweet, with a kind of nostalgic comfort I couldn’t quite place. She never skipped a week.

It was perfect. Idyllic, even. Like the best parts of small-town life had been gathered up, polished clean, and arranged just so. Everything functioned. Everyone seemed content. It was as if I’d stepped sideways out of time and into some polished diorama of how life ought to be — curated, serene, and strangely immune to disorder.

There were a few little habits you noticed, the longer you lived here. Everyone had this funny way of greeting you — a kind of half-formal warmth, always the same phrase: “Hello, how have you been up to?” Odd turn of words, but endearing in its consistency. The wave, too — just a small, tidy flick of the hand at chest height, palm out. Practiced, like the kind of thing you’d learn at a community etiquette class, if such a thing existed. I chalked it up to regional charm. Every place has its quirks, right?

I came to fall in love with the place — and with its isolation. There was only one road in or out of town, heading north, the kind of narrow two-lane that vanished into mist come morning. The rest of Hemsley-on-Pine was wrapped in woods so dense and green they felt like the edge of some forgotten world. The trees rose like old cathedral spires, and when the fog drifted in, which it often did, it painted everything in soft light — branches fading into gauzy outlines, the forest floor dappled with muted color. It was the kind of beauty that made you pause mid-step, without quite knowing why.

Most weekends, I hiked the trails alone. They curled through groves of spruce and cedar, soft and fragrant underfoot, leading past shallow streams and mossy boulders that looked as though they’d been set there with intention. Some of the stones were smooth and sun-warmed, perfect for sitting and losing hours to birdsong. Others loomed, ancient and cracked, the kind that made you imagine prehistoric beasts curled atop them in another era. There were quiet meadows scattered here and there, full of tall grass that swayed like water and glowed gold in the late afternoon.

The forest felt... generous. Like it had opened itself to me. It didn’t just surround the town — it held it, cradled it, in the way a good parent might. And in that quiet, dappled green, I started to believe I might actually belong somewhere again.

There was, however, one trail that went south. It wasn't locked or gated, just... discouraged. Every time I asked about it, the answer was the same: "Oh, there's nothing out there but old pines and poison ivy."

Of course I went. How bad could it be?

It was late afternoon when I did, a Saturday where the sun took its time leaving. The trail was surprisingly well-trodden, at least at first. Then the path thinned, the markers vanished, and the trees started leaning in a little too close.

I should have turned back when the woods started to stretch. It felt like I was walking forever. The sky darkened too quickly, and the silence got dense.The usual trail markers were gone. No painted blazes, no signposts. Just forest, unbroken. And yet the path continued, faint but unmistakable, like something had walked it often enough to leave a memory behind.

I told myself I’d go just a little farther.

The canopy above thickened, blotting out the last of the afternoon sun, and time got hard to track. The air felt denser here — not heavy, exactly, just full, like it had been waiting a long while for someone to breathe it in. My footsteps sounded distant, like they were happening somewhere else. Still, the forest wasn’t hostile. Just quiet. Too quiet, maybe.

Then I noticed something odd.

At first, it was just the arrangement of a few logs by the side of the path — stacked deliberately, almost symmetrically, like a bench. A little farther on, a flat stone with smooth edges sat beside a small pile of pebbles arranged into a crude bowl shape. I thought maybe I’d stumbled on an old campsite. But the further I walked, the stranger the shapes became.

A fence — or what looked like one — made of split branches and lashed vines.

A narrow post stuck in the earth, supporting a makeshift sign. The lettering was uneven, scorched into the wood. I had to get close to read it: STOP.

It wasn’t a warning. It was a replica. A copy of something that didn’t belong out here.

The trail curved again, and that’s when I saw the buildings.

They emerged gradually, half-concealed by foliage. Not real houses, not really. Just outlines of them — bark and mud pressed into the shapes of walls, moss thatched into uneven roofs. One had a stoop made of flat stones. Another had empty window frames strung with ivy, like curtains. They were wrong, somehow. Not in a grotesque way. Just... off. Like someone had tried to recreate a town from memory, but had never actually seen one up close.

And then came the figures.

Not all at once. Just a flicker of color in the corner of my eye — a shoulder, then the curve of a painted cheek glimpsed through leaves. A hand, rigid and pale, holding something that might’ve once aspired to be a fishing rod. They weren’t grouped together, but spaced out across the clearing like the cast of a play frozen in the wings, each waiting for their cue.

At first, I thought they were art installations. Primitive, maybe. Someone’s grand experiment in natural sculpture. But they were full-sized — unmistakably human in proportion. Dressed in real clothes, or things that looked close enough: flannel shirts, canvas aprons, weathered jeans that sagged just right at the knees. Their faces were painted, flat and bright. Cartoonish in some ways, but not grotesque. Just… simplified. Expression boiled down to iconography. A round red mouth. Black ovals for eyes. A careful, deliberate mustache rendered in stiff, uneven brushstrokes. One wore a child’s backpack with faded stars on the fabric, the kind you’d find in a lost-and-found bin at a school.

They weren’t just standing.

They were acting.

One leaned behind a wooden slab, hands positioned just so — elbows bent, torso tilted — like it was ringing up groceries at a register that didn’t exist. Another sat cross-legged on a stump, back straight, eyes fixed on a slab of bark balanced in its lap, shaped vaguely like a laptop. There was a couple seated beneath a lopsided wooden sign that read PARK, arms looped around one another, heads tilted together at that exact angle of affectionate boredom. They stared out at nothing, like they were watching a movie I couldn’t see.

I moved slowly through them, not touching anything, not sure I was even meant to. Everything felt intentional. Reverent, almost. Like a ritual someone had tried very hard to preserve.

The deeper I went, the more scenes I found. A figure sitting at a bus stop, hand half-raised. Another crouched beside a “mailbox,” one hand outstretched mid-drop. A man mid-stride, caught in the motion of a morning jog, his expression locked somewhere between exertion and serenity.

It was strange. Yes. But also… beautiful, in a way I hadn’t expected. There was a kind of earnestness to it, like a child’s drawing come to life. Someone, or something, had tried very hard to recreate a world they’d only glimpsed. Like they’d watched humanity from the edges and decided to pay tribute.

I stood there for what could’ve been minutes or hours, the forest silent around me, the figures unmoving but somehow full of presence.

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be seeing.

But I couldn’t look away.

When I snapped back into reality, I left quickly. Didn’t run, but walked fast enough that I was sweating when I got back to the trailhead.

The next day, I told a few neighbors. They listened, nodded, then gave me the same response:

"Ah yes, I think that was some old art project. Don’t pay it any mind. Don’t bother going back."

I didn’t. For a while.

But it stuck in my head. The town of mannequins. The peculiar reverence with which they were placed and positioned - like a crude screenshot of town life.

Weeks later, I went again. I didn’t plan to — not really. I told myself I just wanted fresh air, a longer walk than usual. I packed a lunch, filled a thermos, left before the sun had properly risen. I didn’t mention it to anyone.

The forest was quiet that morning, the light a hazy gold filtering through misted branches. It felt softer somehow, more forgiving, like the trees had agreed not to crowd so close.

The trail to the south — the one no one talked about — was exactly where I remembered it, still half-obscured by overgrowth, still giving the sense that it wasn’t meant to be noticed.

I walked.

It was still there.

That odd, impossible clearing, nestled like a secret between ancient oaks. The same bark-walled homes, the same mossy grocery front, the same crooked sign reading PARK. But it looked... cleaner. Tidier. As if someone had taken the time to dust the leaves off the stoops, straighten the mannequins’ postures, repaint the fading lines of their smiles. The forest hadn’t reclaimed it — if anything, it had been maintained.

That was the first thing that unsettled me.

The second was the figure on the porch.

It hadn’t been there before. Or at least, I didn’t remember it. A woman, maybe, in a long brown skirt. She was seated beside a wicker basket, her hands frozen mid-fold. But as I moved — just a few steps to the right — I had the oddest feeling her head turned with me.

I stopped.

Stared.

She hadn’t moved. Her chin was still tilted forward, her gaze directed vaguely downward.

I circled slightly. The angle of her face seemed different now. A little more to the left.

I blinked hard, rubbed the side of my face. It was early. Maybe I was tired. Maybe I just didn’t remember the position clearly. My stomach felt tight in that dull, hollow way — like I hadn’t eaten in days.

I walked on.

The figures were changed.

Not all of them — some still stood where they had before — but a few had shifted positions. One that I distinctly remembered sitting outside the café was now inside, visible through a bark-framed window, seated alone at a slab table. Another, once perched on a log near the “library,” now stood upright on a porch, one hand raised to its brow like it was shielding its eyes from the sun — or watching.

I stopped again.

I could see the figure at the bus stop. It hadn’t moved. Same clothes. Same posture. Same head slightly cocked, as if listening.

I stared at it for a long while, my breath caught somewhere in my chest. I don’t know why. I just had this feeling — a tautness in the air, like before a thunderclap.

Then it moved.

The arm rose stiffly. The hand turned out.

It waved.

Exactly once. A neat, mechanical arc.

I didn’t breathe. Couldn’t.

Then, with the same stilted grace, it turned away. The whole torso rotated a few degrees, shoulders squared to the forest again. Still. As though nothing had happened at all.

I stood there for a long time.

Eventually, I went home. Quietly. Slowly.

I didn’t tell anyone. Not because I didn’t want to — but because I didn’t know how to begin.

Life resumed its rhythm. Mail on time. Banana bread Thursdays. The town bus hissing up to the curb with its usual, almost theatrical punctuality. Back to the same, familiar, eccentric how-have-you-been-up-tos.

I tried not to think about the woods. About that strange clearing. I told myself it had been a fluke — a fever dream, maybe. A trick of tired eyes and early light. Whatever it was, it didn’t belong in my day-to-day. So I buried it. Wrapped it up in routine and silence. Pushed it to the back of my mind and let it settle there, like silt in still water.

One day, I saw the map.

It was tacked to the bulletin board at the bus stop — an old, laminated thing with faded ink and curled corners. I’d glanced at it a dozen times before without paying it much mind. But this time, something caught my eye. A name I didn’t recognize. Ingram’s Hollow.

There it was, plainly printed, just a few miles down the road leading south out of town.

The road leading south out of town?

The map showed a second road, heading south. Marked cleanly. As if it had always been there.

I stared at it longer than I meant to. I even looked around, half-expecting someone to laugh, to admit it was a prank or an update I’d missed. But nobody said anything. People came and went as always, boarding the bus or waiting with thermoses in hand, nodding at me in passing.

Later that afternoon, I brought it up to my neighbor, Carol — retired teacher, enthusiastic gardener, known for her peach cobbler.

“Ingram’s Hollow?” I asked. “Was that always there?”

She blinked, puzzled for only a moment, before smiling. “Of course. Why wouldn’t it be? I took my grandson there last fall for the fishing — just down the ridge past the old fire road. Lovely spot.”

"I thought there was nothing out there but poison ivy."

She laughed. "You must be thinking of somewhere else."

I went the next day. Just after lunch. The weather was overcast, a dull gray light pressing down from above like a held breath. And there it was — a road. Paved, pristine, lined with reflective markers that hadn’t been there before. The kind of road that looked freshly laid, too clean to have existed unnoticed for long. But no one else seemed to think it strange.

The drive was short. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes. But the scenery changed fast — the woods pulled back like curtains, opening onto low hills and tidy plots of land. A wooden sign greeted me in tasteful serif: Welcome to Ingram’s Hollow. Beneath it, a smaller plaque read: Est. 1936.

The town unfolded neatly beyond it. Rows of homes with fresh white siding and flower boxes beneath the windows. Storefronts with cheerful awnings. Smooth sidewalks. People moving through it all with a kind of gentle, rehearsed purpose. A woman pushing a stroller. A man sweeping his porch. A group of teens eating ice cream on a bench, all laughing just a little too in sync.

It was... lovely. Picture-perfect. Like a magazine ad for small-town living. I parked near the center and got out slowly, my feet crunching on gravel.

Something about it all made my skin buzz.

I wandered. The layout was unfamiliar, but the feeling — the rhythm of the place — wasn’t. Everything seemed to fall into place too easily. I passed a grocery store with a bell above the door, and a schoolhouse with fresh chalk drawings on the sidewalk. In the park, a few children kicked a ball while an elderly man read from a large-print novel on a bench, smiling to himself.

I kept walking, turning corners without thinking, drawn forward by something I couldn’t name.

And then I saw him.

The man at the bus stop.

He turned stiffly to face me.

He raised one hand in a crisp, practiced motion.