The Knight Croissant

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EVERY FACE IS A DOOR.

my complete Infinite Worlds index.

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I've always been drawn to RPGs where I control the decisions — but most games give you two or three choices and call it freedom.

The bigger problem: a lot of the stories I actually wanted to play just don't exist. Shapeshifters running escort services. Janitors who wake up in a coach's body and decide to stay. Dead lovers possessing strangers to reach you one more time. Nobody's greenlit those games. So I built them myself.

Some of these worlds are also inspired by stories floating around Tumblr — so if something feels familiar, it probably is. I built the IW version because I wanted those stories to actually live and breathe. To move. To let you be the one making the calls.

Infinite Worlds (infiniteworlds.app) is an AI-driven interactive fiction platform — think choose-your-own-adventure, except the AI writes whatever you decide with no fixed branches, no predetermined endings, and no guardrails on what's possible. Every choice is yours. Every consequence is real.

oh, and every turn comes with an AI-generated illustration. some of my worlds also let you pick your language at the start — a pop-up will ask before the story begins.

If you don't have an account yet: new users get 1,200 free credits + 2–3 free turns every day just for signing up. Enough to explore before you commit to anything.

Everything below is mine. Pick a door.

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Newest Stories

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The Shapeshifter Detective ↳https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/acdhyk

The city has one rule: everyone answers to the Syndicate. You have one advantage: you can become anyone. Can you navigate the city's web of corruption without losing yourself?

My Shapeshifter Roommate, My (Secret) Lover ↳https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/7dbTjg (NSFW) ↳https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/zsrTK3 (SFW)

You're a hopeless romantic who's never quite found the right person. Living with your best friend and roommate, you've grown comfortable in your shared life of late-night conversations and comfortable silences. One evening, you describe your perfect partner in vivid detail, never suspecting that your roommate harbors two secrets: they're a shapeshifter, and they're deeply in love with you. When a mysterious stranger matching your description appears the next day, you're swept into an intoxicating romance—unaware that the person you're falling for has been by your side all along.

Perfect Spouse as a Djinn

Djinn POV https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/YVkmkK (NSFW) https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/6mFNUy (SFW)

Grandchild POV https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/KknyiT (NSFW) https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/scCqNd (SFW)

You are a Djinn who has served many masters across three hundred years — until Howard Corinth bought your lamp at an estate auction and changed everything. Howard used two wishes to build a corporate empire, and with his third wish granted you freedom—but only if you marry his grandchild. The heir must obey the will or lose everything. You control reality itself, but hiding your truth while navigating corporate war and a forced marriage is your real challenge. When the year ends, choose: reveal and stay together, hide and stay, or leave in freedom.

Synopsis

The city has one rule: everyone answers to the Syndicate. You have one advantage: you can become anyone.

You are a former police detective turned private investigator in rain-soaked Ashgate. Your secret: copy anyone's appearance by sight, permanently absorb their memories and skills through touch. Ex-cop. PI. Living archive of a hundred stolen lives — each one yours to keep, forever.

Dozens of cases, dozens of identities to steal, and a city corrupt enough to justify taking whatever — and whoever — you need. Each case pulls another thread. Each thread leads back to the same shadow. The more lives you absorb, the less certain you are which one is still yours. Can you navigate Ashgate's web of corruption without disappearing into someone else entirely?

[ Play with any language — French, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Indonesian, Portuguese, or any other, your choice ] [ Choose your first case each walkthrough for a fresh experience ]

Play your own investigation here: https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/acdhyk (Basic version) https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/VJnwxR (Storymaster version)

-- Story Background --

The rain hasn't stopped for three days. Through my office window on Marchmont Street, I watch the neon signs blur and bleed across wet asphalt. The letters on my door read 'Private Investigations' now, not 'Detective Third Grade.' That was two years ago, before the Kellerman case.

I solved it, of course. Found the killer, got the confession. But I couldn't explain how I'd known things only the victim could have known, couldn't justify being in places I had no warrant for, wearing faces that weren't mine. Internal Affairs started asking questions I couldn't answer without sounding insane. So I took the quiet exit: resignation in lieu of investigation.

They suspected evidence tampering, unauthorized surveillance, maybe even collusion. They never suspected the truth—that I could become anyone with a glance and a touch, that I carried a dozen people's lifetimes in my head now. The forger whose hands I shook at a crime scene five years ago? I can still reproduce his brushwork perfectly. The getaway driver I interrogated? Her knowledge of every back alley in Ashgate is mine forever.

But the real reason they let me go quietly was Captain Richard Vance. He saw something in my eyes during that last interview—not guilt, but something else. Something that made him uncomfortable. He still calls sometimes, late at night, asking questions about old cases. He hasn't figured it out yet, but he's close.

The city I'm left in is owned by the Syndicate—everyone knows it, even if few say it aloud. The Volkov Organization, they call it on the street. Every crime, every case, every thread I pull eventually leads back to that shadow empire. The question isn't whether they're involved. The question is how deep their roots go, and who else is compromised.

My phone rings in the darkness. Another client. Another mystery. Another chance to become someone else.

-- Character --

Name

Maarten Van Dijk

Background

A towering Dutch man standing at seven feet two inches with an enormous, densely muscular frame that makes doorways look narrow and standard furniture seem like children's toys. At twenty-nine, Maarten has short, textured ash-blonde hair, sharp grey-blue eyes that assess situations with cold precision, and fair skin that bears a few faint scars from his years in enforcement work. His strong, elongated jawline, massive chest, and powerful thick arms give him an intimidating physical presence that he learned to use strategically during his six years with the Ashgate Police Department. He joined the force after emigrating from Rotterdam at twenty-one, hoping to build a legitimate career and escape the shadow of his uncle's criminal connections back home. His size made him a natural for tactical units and riot control, and he quickly developed a reputation for being unshakeable under pressure—calm, methodical, and nearly impossible to physically intimidate or overpower.

What none of his colleagues ever knew was that Maarten had developed a far more unusual edge: the ability to absorb a person's appearance through sight alone, or their memories and skills permanently through physical contact. He used it sparingly, carefully—just enough to close cases that would otherwise have gone cold, extracting a confession while wearing a suspect's face, or piecing together a victim's final hours through a single touch. It worked. His clearance rate was the best in his unit. But by his third year, the methods behind his results had become impossible to account for on paper, and his captain started asking questions Maarten couldn't honestly answer. Internal Affairs began circling, less convinced it was tampering than they let on, but unable to articulate what else it could be. Rather than risk what a deeper investigation might surface, Maarten resigned quietly at twenty-seven—officially "failure to adapt to department culture," unofficially a closed door he was relieved to shut on his own terms before someone else slammed it for him.

He now works as a private investigator, taking on cases other detectives can't crack and individuals or small businesses who don't trust the department to actually help them—a trust he understands better than most, having seen firsthand during his years on the force how deep the city's syndicate had embedded itself into local law enforcement, evidence rooms, and the chain of command. He speaks with a slight Dutch accent that becomes more pronounced when he's tired or angry, and maintains the watchful stillness of someone who knows his size draws attention whether he wants it or not—a stillness that now also masks a man perpetually calculating who in a room might recognize a face he's wearing that isn't his own.

-- Turn 1 --

Outcome

Van Dijk Private Investigations Office, Marchmont Street, Ashgate, North America, at 09:47 PM on Tuesday, 05-Nov-2024

I reach across the desk and lift the receiver on the third ring. The voice on the other end is female, mid-thirties maybe, with the kind of exhaustion that comes from weeks of looking over your shoulder.

"Is this the investigator? Van Dijk?"

"Speaking."

"My name is Elena Sokolov. I need help. The police—" She stops herself, and I hear her breathing change. "The police can't help me. Won't help me."

I lean back in my chair, which protests under my weight. Through the window, rain traces patterns down the glass, distorting the neon signs across the street. "Why don't you start from the beginning, Ms. Sokolov."

"Three weeks ago, I witnessed something I shouldn't have. A meeting. I work—worked—as a bookkeeper for Meridian Imports on the south side. Late night, I came back for files I'd forgotten. There were men in the warehouse. They didn't see me, but I saw them. And I saw what they were moving."

The way she says 'men' tells me everything. Not just men. Connected men.

"Go on."

"Guns. Crates of them. And I recognized one of the men from the news—Detective Marcus Herrera from the Fourth Precinct. He was supposed to be investigating cargo theft, not participating in it." Her voice drops lower. "I was stupid. I thought I could go to his captain. Report what I saw. But two days after I made the call, someone tried to run me off the road. Then my apartment was broken into. Nothing taken, just… rearranged. A message."

The Syndicate doesn't leave witnesses. They leave examples.

"Where are you now?"

"A motel. The Starlight on Route 7. I've been moving every few days, paying cash. I don't have much money left. I need protection, Mr. Van Dijk. Real protection. The kind that doesn't come from a badge." She pauses. "I heard you used to be a cop. That you left because you wouldn't play their game. I'm hoping that means you'll help me."

The rain hammers harder against the window. Captain Vance would tell me to stay out of this. He'd be right, probably. A dirty cop in the Fourth, Syndicate enforcers who know her face, and a witness with nowhere left to run.

Exactly the kind of case that ends careers. Or lives.

"The Starlight Motel. What room?"

"Twelve. Ground floor, around back." Relief floods her voice. "You'll come tonight?"

"I'll be there in an hour. Keep your door locked and don't open it for anyone but me. I'll knock three times, pause, then twice more."

"Thank you. Thank you, I—"

"Save it for when you're still breathing in a week."

I hang up and stare at the phone for a long moment. Through the wall, I can hear the jazz club next door starting its late set, muted trumpet bleeding through the plaster.

A bookkeeper who saw too much. A cop on the Syndicate payroll. And me, right in the middle where I swore I'd never be again.

Your objective for this adventure is: To uncover the true leadership of the Volkov Organization and gather concrete evidence of their control over Ashgate — or take that control for yourself.

-- Turn 2 --

Action

PREPARE: Grab my Glock and shoulder holster, check ammunition, and head to the Starlight Motel immediately.

Outcome

Van Dijk Private Investigations Office, Marchmont Street, Ashgate, North America, at 09:50 PM on Tuesday, 05-Nov-2024

I pull open the bottom drawer of my desk and lift out the Glock 17. The weight is familiar, almost comforting. I check the magazine—seventeen rounds, full load—and rack the slide to verify the chamber is clear before holstering it. The shoulder rig goes on over my shirt, leather creaking as I adjust the straps. My jacket covers it well enough, the bulk barely noticeable against my frame.

Two years since I wore this every day. Feels lighter than it used to. Or maybe I'm just heavier.

I grab my keys and lock the office behind me. The hallway smells like old carpet and the Thai place two floors down. Outside, the rain hits like it's personal, soaking through my jacket before I reach the car. My sedan sits at the curb where I left it this morning, water streaming off the hood in sheets.

The drive to Route 7 takes me through the industrial district, past shuttered factories and warehouses with broken windows that stare like dead eyes. The wipers struggle against the downpour, smearing the windshield more than clearing it. Traffic is sparse this time of night—a few trucks, a taxi with a cracked taillight, nobody paying attention to anybody else.

Just another car in another city where everyone's trying not to be noticed.

The Starlight Motel announces itself with a flickering neon sign, half the letters dark. It's the kind of place that rents by the hour and doesn't ask questions, single-story with doors facing the parking lot and a manager's office that looks like it hasn't seen a mop since the eighties. I pull into the lot and kill the engine, watching the water run down my windshield in rivulets.

Room twelve is around back like Elena said, ground floor, curtains drawn tight. A single light shows through the gap where they don't quite meet. No other cars in the immediate area. No one visible in the rain. But that doesn't mean no one's watching.

Could be Syndicate eyes anywhere. Could be they're already inside. Could be I'm walking into a setup and Elena's been dead for hours.

I check my watch. Quarter past ten. An hour since she called, give or take. I step out into the rain and let it soak me as I move toward the door, one hand resting inside my jacket near the Glock.

The door to room twelve waits in the shadows, water dripping from the overhang above it.

-- Turn 3 --

Action

APPROACH: Give the knock signal—three times, pause, then twice—and announce myself when she answers.

Outcome

Starlight Motel, Route 7, Ashgate, North America, at 10:15 PM on Tuesday, 05-Nov-2024

I knock three times on the door, steady and clear. The rain drums on the overhang above me. I count to three, then knock twice more. The pattern echoes in the narrow space between the building and the parking lot.

Silence. Then a voice, muffled through the door. "Who is it?"

"Van Dijk. The investigator."

More silence. I hear the scrape of a chain, the click of a deadbolt. The door opens six inches, still held by the security chain, and a woman's face appears in the gap. Dark hair pulled back tight, olive skin gone pale with stress, brown eyes that jump from my face to the parking lot behind me and back again. She's younger than I expected—maybe thirty—with the kind of sharp features that photograph well but right now just look drawn.

"You're alone?" Her voice carries an accent, Russian maybe, softened by years in America but still there in the vowels.

"Yes."

She studies my face another moment, then closes the door just long enough to unhook the chain. It swings open and she steps back, gesturing me inside quickly. "Come in. Hurry."

The room is standard motel depressing—floral bedspread that's seen better decades, carpet with stains no one wants to think about, bathroom visible through a half-open door with a dripping faucet. Elena locks both locks behind me and tests the door handle twice. A duffel bag sits on the bed, half-packed. The curtains are drawn tight with a chair wedged against them to keep them closed.

A woman living in inches. Every precaution she can think of, knowing it won't be enough if they really want her dead.

She turns to face me, arms crossed over her chest. She's wearing jeans and a grey sweater, practical shoes for running. Her hands are shaking.

"Thank you for coming." She doesn't sit down, doesn't relax. "I wasn't sure you would. Or if you'd be… real. Not one of them."

"I'm real. And I'm not working for the people who want to hurt you." I stay near the door, giving her space. My size fills rooms like this, makes nervous people more nervous. "You said you saw Detective Herrera at Meridian Imports. Tell me everything about that night. Start with why you went back."

She exhales slowly, fingers knotting together. "I had left payroll files at my desk. We had to process payments the next morning. I went back around eleven PM, used my key card. The warehouse was dark except for lights in the loading bay. I heard voices."

"You went toward them?"

"I shouldn't have. But I heard my boss's voice—Richard Chen. I thought maybe he needed something from the office." She shakes her head. "I saw them through the office window. Four men. Chen, Detective Herrera, and two others I didn't recognize. Large men. They were standing near a shipping container with the doors open. Inside were wooden crates, and one was pried open. I saw rifles inside. Military-style rifles."

"You're certain it was Herrera?"

"I've seen him on the news twice. Press conferences about the cargo thefts. It was him."

-- Turn 4 --

Action

INTERVIEW: Find out exactly who Elena contacted after witnessing the meeting and what their response was.

Outcome

Starlight Motel, Route 7, Ashgate, North America, at 10:23 PM on Tuesday, 05-Nov-2024

"Who did you contact after you saw what you saw?" I keep my voice level, conversational. Questions that sound like accusations make witnesses clam up.

Elena's fingers twist together harder. "I waited two days. I thought maybe I was overreacting. That there could be an explanation." She laughs, bitter and short. "Stupid, right? But I kept thinking—Detective Herrera is investigating cargo theft. Maybe he was undercover. Maybe it was a sting operation."

"But you didn't believe that."

"No." She moves to the window, touches the edge of the curtain without pulling it back. "I called the Fourth Precinct. Asked to speak to Captain Wallace—Herrera's commanding officer. I didn't give my name at first, just said I had information about the cargo theft cases. They transferred me."

"What did you tell Wallace?"

"Everything. What I saw, when I saw it, that it was Herrera and my boss and two other men. That there were rifles in the container." She turns back to face me. "Captain Wallace listened. He asked me to repeat details. He sounded… concerned. Professional. He told me he would look into it personally, that I'd done the right thing by calling. He asked for my name and contact information so he could follow up."

And forty-eight hours later someone tried to run her off the road.

"When did Wallace call you back?"

"He didn't." Her voice drops. "Two days went by. Nothing. Then I was driving home from work and a black SUV came up behind me on the Henderson Bridge. No plates. It matched my speed, got close enough I could see the driver's silhouette. Then it accelerated and clipped my rear bumper. I swerved, almost hit the barrier. The SUV pulled alongside me, close enough to force me toward the edge. I thought—" She stops, breathes. "I slammed my brakes. It kept going. Disappeared into traffic."

"You didn't report it."

"To who? The police?" She shakes her head. "I knew then. Wallace either didn't believe me or he's one of them. Either way, making that call marked me. The next night someone broke into my apartment while I was at work. Nothing stolen. But my underwear drawer was left open. Photos on my nightstand were moved. They wanted me to know they'd been there."

The Syndicate's favorite message. We can reach you anywhere. We know where you sleep.

"That's when I stopped going home," Elena continues. "I've been moving every three days since. Different motels, always cash. I pulled most of my savings from the bank. Eight thousand dollars. That's all I have left."

I study her face. The exhaustion in her eyes isn't just from lack of sleep. It's the exhaustion of knowing you're being hunted and not knowing when they'll stop toying with you.

"You didn't try to leave Ashgate?"

"Where would I go?" She spreads her hands. "I have family in Boston, but if they know who I am, they know about my family. And I can't run forever on eight thousand dollars."

The rain hammers against the window. Somewhere down the highway, a truck's air horn blares.

-- Turn 5 --

Action

NEGOTIATE: Discuss immediate protection options—whether to move her to a different location tonight or if this motel is defensible enough for now.

Outcome

Starlight Motel, Route 7, Ashgate, North America, at 10:31 PM on Tuesday, 05-Nov-2024

I move away from the door, giving the room a professional once-over. Single exit, ground floor, parking lot with clear sightlines to anyone approaching. Window faces the lot too, which cuts both ways—you can see them coming, but they can see you're home.

"This place isn't defensible," I say flatly. "One door, ground floor, your car's visible in the lot. If they come tonight, you've got maybe thirty seconds between the time they pull in and the time they're at your door."

Elena's jaw tightens but she doesn't argue. "I know. But I've been moving every three days. Different motels, different neighborhoods. I thought—" She stops herself. "I thought if I kept moving they wouldn't find me."

"They're not looking that hard yet. If they wanted you dead right now, you'd be dead." The words come out harder than I intended, but she needs to hear it. "They're waiting to see if you talk to anyone else. If you disappear completely. The intimidation campaign is to make you run, not to kill you. Not yet."

"And now I've talked to you." Her voice drops. "So they'll escalate."

Smart woman. Scared, but smart.

"Maybe. Depends on whether anyone knows you contacted me." I pull out my phone, check the time. "We have options. Option one: I move you tonight to a location I control. A safehouse I use sometimes, fifth floor walkup in the Riverside district. One entrance, good sightlines, neighbors who mind their business. You'd be there until we figure out next steps."

"What's option two?"

"You stay here tonight. I stay with you. Tomorrow morning I move you to the safehouse. Gives us time to plan without rushing in the rain at midnight."

She considers this, fingers still knotted together. "And option three?"

"You leave Ashgate entirely. I put you on a bus to Boston tonight with what cash you have left. You disappear into your family's place and pray they don't care enough to follow you out of state."

Elena walks to the bed and sits down heavily, like her legs finally gave out. "I can't just run. I have a life here. A job—well, had a job. Friends. My apartment, my things." She looks up at me. "And if I run, they win. Detective Herrera keeps taking bribes. My boss keeps moving weapons. Nothing changes."

"Nothing changes anyway," I say. "One witness testimony doesn't bring down the Syndicate. You know that."

"But it's something." Her voice hardens slightly. "It's evidence. If we can get more—if we can prove Wallace is compromised too, if we can document the weapons—"

"Then you're not a witness anymore. You're an investigator. And that's a lot more dangerous."

The rain drums steadily against the window. In the parking lot, headlights sweep past, someone pulling into a space three doors down.

Elena watches the lights through the gap in the curtains. "What would you do? If you were me?"

Run. Fast and far. But I'm not the one who has to live with the choice.

"Depends on whether you want to survive or whether you want to fight," I tell her. "Those aren't always the same thing."

-- Turn 6 --

Action

NEGOTIATE: Recommend she stay put tonight with me on watch, then move to the safehouse at first light when it's easier to spot a tail.

Outcome

Starlight Motel, Route 7, Ashgate, North America, at 10:39 PM on Tuesday, 05-Nov-2024

"We stay put tonight," I say. "I take the chair, you take the bed. We leave at first light when traffic picks up and it's easier to spot a tail. Moving in the dark with this rain just gives them better cover to follow us."

Elena nods slowly, some of the tension bleeding from her shoulders. "Okay. That makes sense." She sits back down on the bed, then looks up at me. "You really think they're not watching right now?"

"If they knew you were here specifically, they'd have come already. You've been moving every three days. That's smart. Makes it harder to set up on you." I move to the window, staying to the side of the curtain, and glance out at the parking lot. "But that doesn't mean we're—"

I stop.

There's a car. Black sedan, four doors, parked three spaces down from mine. Engine off, headlights dark. It wasn't there when I arrived.

"What?" Elena's voice goes tight. "What is it?"

"Car in the lot. Black sedan. You see anyone arrive in the last ten minutes?"

She moves to the other side of the window, careful not to disturb the curtain. "No. I wasn't watching. I was talking to you."

I watch the sedan. Rain streams down its windshield, distorting whatever's inside, but I can make out a silhouette in the driver's seat. Just sitting there. Not moving.

Could be nothing. Could be someone sleeping off a drunk. Could be someone who forgot their room number.

Or it could be someone who got a call from the motel manager about a seven-foot-two former cop visiting room twelve.

Elena's breathing has changed, faster and shallower. "Is it them?"

"Don't know yet." I keep my voice level. "Could be anybody. But we're not taking chances. Move away from the window."

She backs up to the far wall, near the bathroom. Her hand goes to her purse on the nightstand—probably reaching for that pepper spray she's been carrying.

The sedan's driver door opens. A man steps out. Big frame, dark coat, moving with purpose. He scans the parking lot once, then his eyes fix on the motel office. He starts walking that direction.

Not toward room twelve. Toward the office. He's going to talk to someone.

"Maarten?" Elena's voice is barely above a whisper.

"Stay put. Stay quiet." I rest my hand inside my jacket, fingers finding the Glock's grip. "Might be nothing."

But we both know it isn't nothing.

-- Turn 7 --

Action

PREPARE: Position myself by the door with weapon drawn, ready if he comes to room twelve.

Outcome

Starlight Motel, Route 7, Ashgate, North America, at 10:47 PM on Tuesday, 05-Nov-2024

I move to the door, pulling the Glock from its holster in one smooth motion. The weight settles into my grip like it belongs there. I position myself left of the doorframe, weapon low and ready, angle that gives me clear sightlines to whoever might come through while keeping me out of immediate line of fire.

"Bathroom," I tell Elena without looking back. "Now. Stay there until I say otherwise."

She doesn't argue, doesn't ask questions. I hear her footsteps retreat, the bathroom door closing with a soft click. Smart woman. Knows when to follow orders.

Six years on the force. Hundreds of entries. This is muscle memory now. Breathe steady. Watch the door. Listen for footsteps.

Through the gap in the curtains, I track the big man's progress. He's inside the motel office maybe two minutes. Long enough for a conversation. Long enough to confirm details. When he emerges, he's got his phone to his ear.

I can't hear what he's saying, but I can read the body language. He's reporting to someone. Giving information, not receiving orders yet. His free hand stays near his coat—professional positioning, ready to draw if needed. He's not security guard muscle. He's something else.

Enforcer. Real one. The kind who knows how to kill and doesn't hesitate when told to.

He paces near his sedan while he talks, eyes scanning the motel systematically. Room by room, door by door. When his gaze hits room twelve, it stops. Holds. He's looking at my car now, memorizing the plates maybe. Then his attention shifts back to his phone call.

The conversation lasts another minute. He nods once, twice, then ends the call and pockets the phone. But he doesn't move toward room twelve. Instead he walks back to his sedan, opens the door, and slides into the driver's seat.

Engine stays off. Lights stay dark. He's settling in.

Surveillance, not assault. They want to know who I am before they decide what to do about me.

I keep my position by the door, Glock trained on empty air, counting my heartbeats. Behind me, through the bathroom door, I can hear Elena's breathing—fast and shallow, fighting panic.

The rain keeps falling. The man in the sedan keeps watching.

And I keep waiting, because that's what this job is half the time. Waiting to see who moves first.

-- Turn 8 --

Action

CONFRONT: Step outside and approach the sedan directly—find out who he is and who sent him before this escalates further.

Outcome

Starlight Motel, Route 7, Ashgate, North America, at 10:54 PM on Tuesday, 05-Nov-2024

I holster the Glock and push through the door. The rain hits like cold needles, soaking through my jacket before I clear the overhang. Elena starts to say something but I'm already moving, straight line across the asphalt toward the black sedan.

The driver tracks my approach. His silhouette shifts—hand dropping below the window line, body angling. He's making calculations. I keep my pace steady, deliberate. Not aggressive enough to force his hand, but confident enough that backing down isn't an option I'm offering.

I reach his door and knock once on the glass. Hard. The window descends halfway and rain immediately starts pooling on the frame.

He's younger than the grey temples suggest—mid-thirties, Slavic features cut sharp, dark eyes that have seen bodies drop and stayed steady. His right hand is out of sight. Professional positioning.

"You're blocking my view," he says. Thick accent, Ukrainian maybe. Voice flat.

"You're watching my client. That ends now."

He studies my face, then lets his gaze travel upward to take in my full height. I'm close enough that he has to crane his neck. The geometry puts him at disadvantage and he knows it.

"I watch who I want."

"Wrong answer." I lean down, putting my face level with his. "You're going to tell me your name and who sent you. Then you're going to leave. Or we find out if you're fast enough with that gun."

His jaw works. The hidden hand doesn't move but I see him running numbers—draw time, target proximity, his seated position versus my stance. The math isn't in his favor.

"Dmitri Volkov," he says finally. "Viktor Petrov sent me."

Volkov. Family name.

"What were your orders?"

"Watch the girl. See who comes. Report back." He shifts slightly. "You're former APD. Big Dutch cop playing private investigator. Petrov will want to know about you."

"He already knows. You called him twenty minutes ago."

Dmitri's expression doesn't change but something flickers behind his eyes. Reassessment.

"Then you understand this doesn't stop," he says. "Petrov doesn't stop. Girl saw too much."

"That's between me and Petrov now."

He reaches for the ignition, slow and deliberate, and the engine turns over. But before his hand returns to the wheel, I extend mine through the window.

"We understand each other, Dmitri. Shake on it."

He stares at my offered hand, suspicious but uncertain. Refusing a handshake after verbal agreement would signal continued threat. Accepting it signals the confrontation is over. He makes the logical choice.

His hand grips mine. Callused palm, strong grip. Professional.

And then it hits.

Grozny burning, tracers cutting through smoke, the weight of an AK-74M, Chechen streets painted red—

Viktor's voice: "The girl talks, we silence her. The cop too if necessary."

Apartment in the Riverside district, Petrov's operational headquarters, faces of twenty men in his crew—

Killing a man in Minsk, hands around his throat, watching his eyes go empty—

Alexei Volkov's office, Dmitri's cousin, real power behind Petrov's weapons operation—

I release his hand before the flood drowns me. Dmitri pulls back, unaware of what just passed between us. The window rises.

"You should have left the girl alone," he says through the glass.

The sedan backs out smooth and professional. Taillights blur into rain-streaked darkness. Gone.

I stand there in the parking lot, water streaming off me, carrying another man's life inside my head now. A killer's instincts. A soldier's training. And names—so many names I didn't have five seconds ago.

Twenty-three people dead by Dmitri Volkov's hands. I know how each one died. I know what their blood looked like.

And I know where Viktor Petrov lives.

-- Turn 9 --

Action

FAST FORWARD: Get Elena to the safehouse immediately while processing what Dmitri's memories revealed about the Syndicate structure.

Outcome

Starlight Motel, Route 7, Ashgate, North America, at 11:02 PM on Tuesday, 05-Nov-2024

I go back inside, water pooling at my feet. Elena emerges from the bathroom, pale but composed.

"We're leaving. Now."

She doesn't waste time with questions. Grabs her bag, follows me to the car. I drive northwest on Route 7, headlights cutting through rain that hasn't stopped in three days. The safehouse is twenty minutes away—an apartment in the Fairmont district I keep under a false name. Old habit from my police days. Places the department never knew about.

Dmitri's memories keep bleeding through. The weight of his AK-74M. Viktor Petrov's voice giving orders. Twenty-three faces going cold under his hands.

Elena watches me from the passenger seat. "What happened out there?"

"I got answers." I take the exit toward Fairmont. "The man watching us was Dmitri Volkov. Works for Viktor Petrov—mid-level Syndicate operator running weapons through multiple import businesses. Petrov has twenty enforcers under his command. He's the one who ordered the SUV attack, the break-in."

"How do you—"

"He told me." Not entirely a lie. "Petrov operates out of an apartment in Riverside. 3847 Kemper Street, unit 5B. And there's someone above him. Alexei Volkov. Dmitri's cousin. Real power behind the operation."

Elena processes this, her fingers tight on the bag. "So we know where Petrov is."

"We know where he lives. Doesn't mean we walk up and knock."

But I could. Dmitri's memories show me the building layout, the security, the blind spots. I know how Petrov thinks because Dmitri worked for him for four years.

The safehouse is a third-floor walkup, clean and anonymous. I get Elena inside, check the windows, verify the deadbolts. She sets her bag down and finally allows herself to shake.

"Are we safe here?"

"Safer than the motel. Petrov doesn't know about this place yet."

Yet. Because Tucker will talk, and Dmitri already photographed my plates. Petrov's running them through his police contacts right now. He'll have my name by morning.

I pour Elena water from the kitchen tap. She drinks it standing, eyes on me.

"You scared him. That man in the parking lot. I saw his face when he left."

I scared him because I saw too much. Knew too much. Dmitri's trained to read threats and he couldn't read me at all.

"He's a professional," I tell her. "Professionals know when the odds shift."

Elena sets the glass down. "What do we do now?"

Good question. I've got Petrov's address, a killer's combat training, and twenty-three deaths living in my head. I know exactly how Dmitri would handle this situation—fast, violent, permanent.

The question is what I do instead.

DEPLOY: Use Dmitri's absorbed knowledge to plan an assault on Petrov's Riverside apartment—strike before he expects it.

INVESTIGATE: Research Alexei Volkov through available databases and connections—identify the real power structure.

CALL CONTACT: Reach out to Captain Vance with carefully selected information—test if he can be an ally in exposing Syndicate corruption.

The Shapeshifter Detective

https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/acdhyk (Basic Version) https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/VJnwxR (Storymaster version)

Infinite Worlds (infiniteworlds.app) is an AI-driven interactive fiction platform — think choose-your-own-adventure, except the AI writes whatever you decide with no fixed branches, no predetermined endings, and no guardrails on what's possible. Every choice is yours. Every consequence is real.

____________________________________________________

The city has one rule: everyone answers to the Syndicate. You have one advantage: you can become anyone. You are a former police detective turned private investigator in rain-soaked Ashgate. Your secret: copy anyone's appearance by sight, permanently absorb their memories and skills through touch. Ex-cop. PI. Living archive of a hundred stolen lives — each one yours to keep, forever. Each case pulls another thread. Each thread leads back to the same shadow. Can you navigate the city's web of corruption without losing yourself?

https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/acdhyk

Infinite Worlds (infiniteworlds.app) is an AI-driven interactive fiction platform — think choose-your-own-adventure, except the AI writes whatever you decide with no fixed branches, no predetermined endings, and no guardrails on what's possible. Every choice is yours. Every consequence is real.

__________

The city has one rule: everyone answers to the Syndicate. You have one advantage: you can become anyone.

You are a former police detective turned private investigator in rain-soaked Ashgate. Your secret: copy anyone's appearance by sight, permanently absorb their memories and skills through touch. Ex-cop. PI. Living archive of a hundred stolen lives — each one yours to keep, forever.

Each case pulls another thread. Each thread leads back to the same shadow. Can you navigate the city's web of corruption without losing yourself?

[ Play with any language — French, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Indonesian, Portuguese, or any other, your choice ]

[ Choose your first case each walkthrough for a fresh experience ]

[ Use Advanced Image Instructions by Xyphrax ]

For another Interactive story you can visit the index here

Here's video base on story from Infinite Worlds - My Shapeshifter Roommate, My (Secret) Lover

Discover your roommate secret here:

https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/7dbTjg (NSFW)

https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/zsrTK3 (SFW)

Synopsis:

You're a hopeless romantic who's never quite found the right person. Living with your best friend and roommate, you've grown comfortable in your shared life of late-night conversations and comfortable silences. One evening, you describe your perfect partner in vivid detail, never suspecting that your roommate harbors two secrets: they're a shapeshifter, and they're deeply in love with you. When a mysterious stranger matching your description appears the next day, you're swept into an intoxicating romance—unaware that the person you're falling for has been by your side all along.

[ Play with any language — French, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Indonesian, Portuguese, or any other, your choice ]

[ Use Storymaster by TWNT]

[ Use Advanced Image Instructions by Xyphrax + CGI Gritty Style ]

[ NSFW — includes explicit sexual content; ideal partner can be configured as trans, non-binary, or futa ]

Update:

- Choose your roommate or define your own. v1.1

- More player choices for ideal partner customization. v1.12

- Added bedroom energy & intimate scene preferences. v1.16

Here's my walkthrough if you interested:

Infinite Worlds (infiniteworlds.app) is an AI-driven interactive fiction platform — think choose-your-own-adventure, except the AI writes whatever you decide with no fixed branches, no predetermined endings, and no guardrails on what's possible. Every choice is yours. Every consequence is real.

_________________________________

===================================

This is my walkthrough of my new story at Infinite Worlds. You can have your own story with this two. Each link have different style, SFW for just the story, NSFW if you wanna explicit intimacy.

https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/7dbTjg (NSFW)

https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/zsrTK3 (SFW)

My Shapeshifter Roommate, My (Secret) Lover

You're a hopeless romantic who's never quite found the right person. Living with your best friend and roommate, you've grown comfortable in your shared life of late-night conversations and comfortable silences. One evening, you describe your perfect partner in vivid detail, never suspecting that your roommate harbors two secrets: they're a shapeshifter, and they're deeply in love with you. When a mysterious stranger matching your description appears the next day, you're swept into an intoxicating romance—unaware that the person you're falling for has been by your side all along. [ Play with any language — French, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Indonesian, Portuguese, or any other, your choice ] [ Use Storymaster by TWNT] [ Use Advanced Image Instructions by Xyphrax + CGI Gritty Style ] [ NSFW — includes explicit sexual content; ideal partner can be configured as trans, non-binary, or futa ]

=============================

At this walkthrough, I play as Camille Rousseau;

A 26-year-old French woman who teaches French language and literature as a graduate teaching assistant at NYU while completing her master's degree in Comparative Literature. She moved to New York from Lyon two years ago, and still carries a noticeable French accent that makes even mundane observations sound charming. Camille is intellectually curious, with a particular passion for poetry and translation—she often quotes Baudelaire or Apollinaire in casual conversation. She's gentle-natured and somewhat reserved with new people, but becomes animated and expressive when discussing books, art, or ideas she cares about. She has baby-blue eyes that seem to reflect light in an almost ethereal way, fair warm-glowing skin, and long voluminous honey-blonde waves that cascade to her mid-back. She dresses in a distinctly European style—lots of linen, neutral tones, vintage scarves—that sets her apart from typical New York fashion. She's the type who writes in the margins of books, who drinks her coffee slowly while watching people, who notices small beautiful details others miss. Camille is quietly romantic but pragmatic about it, having left behind a complicated relationship in France. She's still learning to be herself in this new country, caught between her French identity and her American life.

-- Story Background --

The city outside your apartment window hums with its usual evening rhythm—distant sirens, the rumble of the subway beneath the street, the muffled conversations of neighbors coming home from work. You've lived in this third-floor walk-up for two years now, sharing the space with your roommate, the person who's become your closest friend in this sprawling, lonely city.

You met through a Craigslist ad, of all things. What started as a practical arrangement—splitting rent in an expensive neighborhood—evolved into something more meaningful. They're the person you grab coffee with on Sunday mornings, who knows your takeout order by heart, who listens when you come home from another disappointing date with another person who just wasn't quite right.

And there have been so many disappointing dates. Your friends joke that you're too picky, that you're chasing some impossible ideal. But you can't help it—you're a romantic, the kind who believes in soul mates and perfect matches and love that takes your breath away. You just haven't found it yet.

Tonight, your roommate is making dinner—nothing fancy, just pasta and that sauce they do so well—and you're curled up on the worn couch you bought together from a stoop sale in Brooklyn. The conversation has turned, as it often does, to your perpetual search for love. But this time, your roommate asks you something they've never asked before: "What would they be like? Your perfect person. If you could describe them exactly—looks, personality, everything—what would you say?"

It's such a simple question, but it opens something in you. And so you begin to speak, painting a portrait in words of the person you've been searching for all this time, never noticing the way your roommate has gone very still, listening to every word with an intensity you've never seen before.

-- Synopsis --

Deep in the Appalachian hills, where roads turn to dirt and cell service dies, you made the worst mistake of your life. You wronged a family — a quiet mother and her daughter living alone at the end of a forgotten road. But the mother is no ordinary woman. She carries an ancient power to reshape what is real — and she has decided you will pay not with your freedom or your life, but with your very identity. Day by day, your body shifts. Your memories blur. A new self rises to replace the old one, and you can feel yourself losing the fight.

Can you escape before you forget who you ever were? Or will you find that the life being woven for you is one you can't bring yourself to leave?

https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/dXkbuY

An Interactive Story at Infiniteworld.app inspired by a missing story from Marcus (now at @thebondingsystem ). I hope you enjoy it. At this story, you have 14 player choises and choose "transformation state" or choose random for surprising story.

Here's my walkthrough

-- Story Background --

You'd been driving for hours through the hills of eastern Kentucky, taking back roads to avoid trouble that followed you from two counties over. When you spotted the cabin at the end of Briar Hollow Road — isolated, no visible security, an old truck out front — it seemed like an easy score. Simple folk, simple locks.

You broke in while they were away. Ransacked the place. Took the cash you found, a silver locket from the bedroom dresser, whatever else you could carry. But the truck came back early. The girl — twenty, maybe twenty-one — walked in on you. You shoved her aside hard enough that she hit the doorframe and went down. Her mother appeared in the doorway a moment later, screaming.

You ran.

You made it a mile down the road before your car died. Just stopped — engine, electrics, everything. You're sitting there now in the growing dark, and something feels wrong. Not with the car. With the air. With the way the trees seem to lean a little closer than they should.

In your rearview mirror, you can see a light. A lantern, held by a figure walking with terrible patience down the center of the dirt road toward you. She doesn't look angry. That's the worst part. She just looks like someone who has already decided how this ends.

-- Character --

David Sutherland

Background

A 45-year-old former construction foreman who came to Kentucky looking for work and got desperate when he couldn't find any. David has spent his life lying to himself and others — about his drinking, his failures, his responsibilities. This makes him surprisingly good at deception and self-deception, which might help him pretend to accept his new role while planning escape. He's physically tough from decades of manual labor, but he's not particularly observant or self-aware, often missing subtle details and lacking deep insight into his own motivations.

-- Turn 1 --

Outcome

Briar Hollow Road, twelve miles from town, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 9:45 PM on Tuesday, 15-OCT-2024

----

The key turns in the ignition one more time and the engine gives nothing back. Not even the mechanical complaint of a dying battery. Just silence, complete and wrong.

The woman reaches past you and opens the door herself. The hinges creak. Cold air spills in, carrying the smell of woodsmoke and turned earth.

"Come inside," she says.

Her voice is soft, almost conversational. The kind of tone you'd use to call someone for supper. She steps back from the door and waits, the lantern held low at her side, casting long shadows across the dirt road.

You find yourself standing before you've decided to. Your legs just carry you out, boots hitting gravel, and you're beside the car in the dark with this woman looking at you with an expression that isn't angry and isn't forgiving either. It's something else. Something patient.

"Road's no place to spend the night," she says. "Gets cold out here once the sun goes down proper."

She turns and starts walking back the way she came, lantern swinging gently. After a moment, you follow. You tell yourself it's because you don't have another choice, but that's not quite true. You could run. The tree line is right there. You don't.

The walk back takes longer than you remember the run taking. The dirt road curves through the darkness, bordered by pines that lean in close. Your breath comes short even though the pace is easy. The woman doesn't look back. She just walks, steady and unhurried, like she's done this before.

When the cabin appears through the trees, lamplight glowing warm in the windows, something in your chest tightens. You've never been here before tonight. You're sure of that. But the shape of it against the sky feels familiar in a way you can't name.

The woman climbs the porch steps and opens the front door, holding it for you.

"Martha Harwell," she says, by way of introduction. "You'll have met my daughter already, though not under circumstances I'd have preferred."

Inside, the cabin is small and tidy. A woodstove radiates heat in the corner. The girl—Jessie, you remember now—sits at the kitchen table with a cloth pressed to her forehead. She looks up when you enter, and her eyes go wide with something between fear and recognition.

Martha sets the lantern on the table and gestures to a chair across from her daughter.

"Sit," she says. "We'll talk about what happens next."

Your objective for this adventure is: Escape the Harwell cabin and reach the outside world before the woman's curse rewrites you completely — or surrender to the life being made for you, and discover whether the person you're becoming is one you can live with.

-- Turn 2 --

Action

Look at Jessie and apologize for hurting her

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 10:10 PM on Tuesday, 15-OCT-2024

----

You turn in the chair and look at Jessie directly. The cloth pressed to her forehead has a rust-colored stain spreading through the white cotton. Her eyes are red-rimmed, younger than you'd thought when you shoved her.

"I'm sorry," you say. "For hurting you. I shouldn't have—I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt."

The words come easier than you expected. Maybe because you've said them before, in different contexts, to different people. The foreman who caught you drinking on the job. The wife who left when the lies finally outweighed the truth. They're words you know how to shape, even if you're not entirely sure what lives behind them.

Jessie's hand trembles slightly where it holds the cloth. She doesn't respond, just stares at you with something complicated flickering across her face.

Martha moves to the stove and pours coffee from a blue enamel pot into two chipped mugs. The smell fills the small space—chicory and something darker.

"Jessie," Martha says quietly, not looking up from the cups. "Go on and get yourself ready for bed. I'll bring you some willow bark tea in a minute."

The girl rises slowly, keeping her distance as she edges around the table. When she passes you, she pauses.

"Mama says you're going to stay," Jessie says. Her voice is soft, uncertain. "That things are going to be different now."

She doesn't wait for your response before disappearing through a doorway into what must be a bedroom. You hear the door close, the sound of her weight settling onto bedsprings.

Martha sets one of the coffee mugs in front of you and keeps the other for herself. She lowers herself into the chair Jessie vacated, takes a slow sip, watches you over the rim.

"That was kind of you," she says. "Apologizing. Most don't think to, at first. They're too busy being angry or scared or planning their next move." She sets the mug down carefully on the scarred wood table. "You strike me as someone who's spent a good while running from one thing or another. Am I right about that?"

The question hangs in the warm air between you. Outside, something moves through the brush near the cabin—probably deer, though you can't see through the curtained window to be sure.

"Drink your coffee," Martha says. "Then we'll talk about what comes next. About what you took, and what you're going to give back."

-- Turn 3 --

Action

Drink the coffee and ask Martha what she means by 'give back'

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 10:25 PM on Tuesday, 15-OCT-2024

----

You lift the mug and take a long swallow. The coffee is strong, bitter in a way that cuts through the exhaustion settling into your bones. The heat spreads down your throat and into your chest, and for a moment you just hold the warmth between your palms.

"What do you mean by 'give back'?" you ask.

Martha settles deeper into her chair, both hands wrapped around her own mug. She looks at you with those steady eyes, not unkind but not soft either.

"You took things from my home," she says. "Money. My mother's locket. Peace of mind for my daughter, who'll be months getting over the fright you gave her." She pauses, takes a sip. "Now, I could call the sheriff. Boyd Mackey's known my family thirty years. He'd come out here, take you in, and you'd sit in county lockup until they got around to trying you. Maybe six months, maybe more. Then prison, if they bothered. Or maybe you'd just disappear into the system the way men like you tend to."

The way she says men like you isn't cruel. It's observational, like noting the weather.

"But that don't fix what's broken here," Martha continues. "Don't give Jessie back what she lost, don't restore what you disturbed. My people, we've always handled our own accounts. When someone takes from us, we take something back. But we don't take more than what's owed. That wouldn't be right."

She sets her mug down and folds her hands on the table.

"You're going to stay here," she says. "Work off your debt. Help with the things that need doing around the place - wood that wants splitting, fences that need mending, garden that'll want tending come spring. You'll eat at our table, sleep under our roof, and you'll be part of what makes this place run until I judge the scales balanced."

The words settle into the warm air like stones dropping into still water.

"How long?" you hear yourself ask.

Martha's expression doesn't change. "As long as it takes. Could be you're here a week. Could be longer. Depends on how you take to the work, how you conduct yourself." She picks up her mug again. "You'll find you're free to leave whenever you like. Door's not locked. Road's right there. But I expect you'll find reasons to stay."

Something in the way she says it makes your skin prickle. Not a threat. Something else. A certainty.

"Finish your coffee," Martha says. "I'll show you where you'll be sleeping."

-- Turn 4 --

Action

Tell Martha I'll stay and work, but I want my belongings from the car

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 10:35 PM on Tuesday, 15-OCT-2024

----

"I'll stay," you say. The words taste strange in your mouth, like admitting defeat and finding relief at the same time. "I'll work off what I owe. But I need my things from the car. My wallet, my tools. Everything I had in there."

Martha studies you for a long moment, her coffee mug raised halfway to her lips. Then she sets it down with a soft clink against the table.

"Your car won't run," she says. It's not a question.

"No. Just died on me."

"Battery's likely gone," Martha says. She stands and moves to a hook by the door where a heavy ring of keys hangs. She selects one and holds it up to the lamplight, examining it like she's confirming something to herself. "We'll take the truck down in the morning. Jessie can drive your vehicle back here, and we'll see about getting it running again. Meanwhile, you can get your belongings out of it."

She returns to the table but doesn't sit. Instead she crosses to a narrow doorway on the far side of the room and opens it. You glimpse a small space beyond - a mudroom or storage area, you can't quite tell.

"You'll sleep out here tonight," Martha says, gesturing into the dark space. She reaches around the doorframe and pulls a cord. A bare bulb flickers on, revealing a cot made up with a thin mattress, a wool blanket folded at the foot, and a small table with a washbasin. The room smells of old wood and lamp oil. "It's not much, but it's warm enough. Jessie's room is through there—" she points to the closed door the girl disappeared through earlier "—and mine's upstairs. You need the privy, it's out back. There's a lantern by the door."

You stand, your knees feeling heavier than they should. The coffee sits warm in your stomach.

"We rise early here," Martha says. "Five-thirty, most mornings. I'll have breakfast on by six. You'll want to eat before we head down to fetch your car." She pauses, her hand resting on the doorframe. "One other thing. You put your hands on my daughter tonight in anger. That don't happen again. Not here, not anywhere. You understand me?"

The way she says it isn't a threat. It's a boundary being drawn, clear as a property line.

"I understand," you say.

Martha nods once, satisfied. "Good. Get some rest, then. Morning comes quick."

She returns to the main room and begins banking the fire in the woodstove, her movements practiced and efficient. You stand in the doorway of the small room, looking at the cot, the thin pillow, the single window with its pulled shade. Outside, the wind picks up, rattling something loose against the cabin's exterior wall.

The door to Jessie's room remains closed. No light shows beneath it.

-- Turn 5 --

Action

Go into the small room and try to sleep

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 10:45 PM on Tuesday, 15-OCT-2024

You step into the small room and pull the door closed behind you, not quite latching it. The bare bulb overhead throws harsh shadows against the wood-plank walls. The cot sags when you sit on it, springs protesting under your weight in a way that feels practiced, like they've held men before you.

You unlace your boots and set them beside the narrow bed. Your hands move through the motions automatically—pull the tongue forward, loosen from the top down, tug heel-first—and you find yourself staring at them as you work. They look different somehow. Not wrong exactly. Just unfamiliar in the yellow light, like you're seeing them from an angle you've never noticed before. The knuckles seem knobby in a way they shouldn't be, or maybe they've always been that way and you simply never paid attention.

The wool blanket scratches when you pull it over yourself. You lie back and the pillow smells of lye soap and something older, something lived-in. The ceiling is close enough that you could reach up and touch the exposed beams without fully extending your arm. Water damage has left a stain in one corner that looks like a spreading hand.

From the main room you hear Martha moving around, the soft clink of dishes being washed, water poured from a pitcher. The woodstove ticks as the metal cools. After a while her footsteps creak up a set of stairs you hadn't noticed earlier, and then the house falls quiet.

You close your eyes and try to catalog the day. The drive through the hills. Breaking into the cabin. The girl's face when she stumbled backward. Running. Your car dying on that dark road. But the memories feel slippery, like they're happening to someone adjacent to you rather than to you directly. You drove here this morning—no, this afternoon. Didn't you? The timeline keeps sliding away from you when you try to grip it.

Something about the room feels familiar. You've never been here before, you're certain of that, but your body seems to know the space anyway. The distance from the cot to the washbasin. The way the floorboards slope slightly toward the exterior wall. Where the nail is driven into the wall above the small table, empty now but clearly meant for hanging something.

You open your eyes and stare at that nail for a long time. Your jacket should go there. The thought arrives fully formed, confident, like muscle memory. But you've never hung anything on that nail. You don't even have your jacket—it's still in the car, a mile down the road in the dark.

Outside the wind picks up again, rattling something loose against the cabin wall. After a while you hear it: breathing from the other side of the thin wall separating your room from Jessie's. Slow and even. She's fallen asleep.

You lie awake listening to the house settle around you.

-- Turn 6 --

Action

Try to sleep and wait for morning

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 11:20 PM on Tuesday, 15-OCT-2024

----

Sleep comes easier than it should. Your body sinks into the thin mattress like it recognizes the shape of it, and somewhere between counting the water stains on the ceiling and listening to the wind test the cabin's corners, you slip under.

The dreams arrive in fragments. You're splitting wood behind a house you've never seen, the axe falling with a rhythm your wrists know before your mind catches up. Someone calls your name but it isn't David—it's something else, something that starts with an M sound that dissolves before you can catch it. You turn and there's Jessie standing in a doorway, but she's smiling at you the way people smile at family, at home, and when you look down at your hands they're bigger than they should be, scarred across the knuckles in patterns you don't remember earning.

You wake once in the full dark. The house is silent except for the settling of old wood and the tick of cooling metal from the stove in the main room. Your heart pounds for no reason you can name. The nail on the wall gleams faintly in the moonlight coming through the gap in the shade, and you have the overwhelming certainty that your jacket should be hanging there. But you don't have your jacket. It's in the car.

You close your eyes again and fall back down.

When you surface the second time, gray light seeps around the edges of the window shade. The smell of coffee and frying fatback drifts under the door, and you hear Martha moving in the kitchen—the soft scrape of a cast iron skillet across the stovetop, water running, the creak of the cabinet where she keeps the flour.

You sit up slowly. Your back aches from the thin mattress but your body feels strange in other ways too—heavier somehow, like you've put on weight overnight though you know that's impossible. When you plant your feet on the floor, the distance seems wrong. Either the floor is closer than it was or your legs are longer. You shake your head, trying to clear the cobwebs.

Through the wall you hear Jessie's door open, hear her soft footsteps padding out into the main room.

"Morning, baby," Martha says. "Sleep all right?"

"Yes'm." Jessie's voice is thick with sleep. "Head still hurts some."

"I'll make you more willow bark after breakfast. Go on and wake our guest, would you? Tell him food's nearly ready."

A pause. Then footsteps approach your door. A soft knock.

"Mister?" Jessie's voice comes through the wood, uncertain. "Mama says breakfast is on."

You clear your throat. "I'm awake. Be right out."

The footsteps retreat. You stand and reach for your boots, and when you look at your hands in the strengthening dawn light, they still look wrong. The proportions are off in some way you can't quite identify. You flex your fingers and they move like they always have, but they don't look like yours.

You lace your boots and open the door. Martha stands at the stove with her back to you, tending three plates. Jessie sits at the table, the cloth bandage removed from her forehead to reveal a nasty purple bruise and a scabbed cut above her eyebrow. She doesn't quite meet your eyes when you enter.

-- Turn 7 --

Action

Ask Martha what needs to be done today after we get the car

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 5:45 AM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

"What needs doing today?" you ask. "After we get the car sorted out."

Martha turns from the stove with two plates balanced on her forearm and a third in her free hand, the kind of practiced motion that comes from years of serving. She sets one in front of Jessie, one at the empty place across from her daughter, and keeps the third for herself.

"Plenty," she says, settling into her chair. "Chickens need feeding. Coop door's been hanging crooked since the wind last week—that'll want fixing. There's firewood to split if you're up for it. Stack's getting low and we're coming into the cold months." She picks up her fork and cuts into the fried egg on her plate. "Garden fence has a gap where something's been getting in at night. Possum or raccoon, can't tell which."

The food smells better than it has any right to. Fatback, fried eggs, biscuits that must have been in the oven before you woke. You sit and pull your plate closer. Your stomach growls.

"We'll head down to your car after breakfast," Martha continues. "Get your things, see if we can't coax it to turn over. Might be the alternator. Jessie's handy with engines when she puts her mind to it."

Jessie glances up at that, something complicated crossing her bruised face. She's pulled her dark hair back in a loose ponytail and changed into a flannel shirt that's too big for her, probably her mother's. The cut above her eyebrow looks worse in the morning light.

"I can try," Jessie says quietly. "But if it's the alternator we'll need to take it into Boyd's shop in town. Can't fix that here."

You eat without tasting much. The biscuit is dense and buttery, the egg runny in the center the way you've always—

You stop. Fork halfway to your mouth. You don't know how you like your eggs. You've never thought about it before this moment. But the certainty was there, immediate and unquestioned, like memory.

Martha watches you across the table. "Something wrong?"

"No," you say. "Just tired."

"You'll get used to the early hours," she says. "First week's always the hardest. Body needs time to adjust to honest work." She breaks open her own biscuit and uses it to sop up egg yolk. "After we see about your car, I'll get you started on the firewood. Axe and maul are in the shed out back. Jessie can show you where we keep the splitting stump."

Jessie nods without looking at you. She pushes food around her plate, eating slowly, like her head still hurts.

"There's other things too," Martha adds. "Gutters need cleaning before the rains come heavy. Privy door won't latch proper. Storm cellar could use organizing—it's a mess down there from last year's canning." She drinks from her coffee mug. "Won't run out of work anytime soon, if that's what you're worried about."

The way she says it makes something cold settle in your chest. Not a threat. Just a fact, stated plainly, like pointing out the weather.

You finish your breakfast in silence. Outside, the sky is lightening toward full dawn. You hear birds starting up in the trees.

-- Turn 8 --

Action

Finish breakfast and head down to the car with Martha and Jessie

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 6:20 AM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

You soak the last of the egg yolk with a torn piece of biscuit and push your plate away. Martha collects the dishes with efficient movements, stacking them in the dry sink. Jessie rises and pulls a denim jacket from a peg by the door, wincing slightly as she lifts her arm.

"You good to drive?" Martha asks her.

"Yes'm. Head's better now I've eaten."

Martha hands you a tin cup of water from the pitcher. "Drink that. It's a walk down to where your car stopped, and the morning's already warm for October."

You drain the cup and follow them out onto the porch. The sun has cleared the ridge line, casting long shadows through the pines. The air smells of woodsmoke and the particular dampness that clings to hills after a cool night. Martha leads the way down the dirt track, moving with the unhurried certainty of someone who's walked this path ten thousand times.

Jessie falls into step beside you, keeping a careful distance. She glances at you once, quick and assessing, then focuses on the ruts in the road.

"What kind of car is it?" she asks.

"Ford. '98 Taurus. Blue."

"Station wagon?"

"Sedan."

She nods, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. "Those've got trouble with the ignition coil sometimes. Especially if they're high mileage."

You want to say you just had it looked at three months ago, but when you reach for the memory—where was it looked at, which shop, what did they charge—it slides away like water through your fingers. You know you drove it here yesterday. The rest is fog.

The walk takes longer than it should. Your legs feel heavy, and twice you catch yourself taking longer strides than feel natural, like your body expects to cover more ground with each step. Martha doesn't look back but she knows you're lagging. She can tell somehow.

When the car comes into view, sitting dead in the middle of the road exactly where you left it, something tightens in your chest. It looks smaller than you remember. The driver's door still hangs open from when you climbed out last night.

Martha stops a few yards away and crosses her arms. "Go on, then. Try her."

You slide into the driver's seat and the space feels wrong immediately—cramped, like you're folding yourself into a box that doesn't quite fit. You turn the key. Nothing. Not even the click of the starter trying. The dashboard stays dark.

Jessie leans in through the passenger window. "Pop the hood."

You pull the release and climb out while she circles to the front. She props the hood and peers into the engine compartment with the confidence of someone who's done this before. Her fingers trace along the battery cables, checking connections.

"Battery terminals are clean," she says. "Cables are tight. Try it again."

You turn the key. Still nothing.

Martha stands in the road, watching. "Get your things," she says. "We'll have Boyd come look at it later this week. No sense standing here in the sun."

You open the back door and pull out your duffel bag, the weight of it familiar in ways the car seat wasn't. Inside: a change of clothes, your wallet, a battered paperback you don't remember buying. You check the wallet—driver's license with your face on it, forty-three dollars in bills, a credit card that's probably maxed. Everything you own in the world fits in one canvas bag.

Jessie closes the hood. "Might be the starter motor," she says to Martha. "Or something electrical. Can't tell without tools."

"We'll manage," Martha says. She looks at you with those steady eyes. "Ready to head back? That firewood won't split itself."

-- Turn 9 --

Action

Walk back to the cabin and start splitting firewood like Martha asked

Outcome

Briar Hollow Road near David's stalled car, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 7:05 AM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

The walk back stretches longer than the walk down. Your legs carry a strange heaviness, each step requiring thought that shouldn't be necessary. Martha sets the pace again, Jessie trailing between you with her hands shoved deep in her jacket pockets. Nobody speaks.

When you reach the cabin, Martha points toward a weathered shed behind the house. "Tools are in there. Splitting stump's about twenty yards past it, near the treeline. You'll see the rounds already stacked."

You find the axe hanging on the shed wall exactly where you knew it would be—and that stops you cold for a moment, hand outstretched, because you didn't know. You've never been in this shed before. But when you close your fingers around the hickory handle, the weight distribution feels correct in a way that makes your skin crawl.

The maul hangs beside it. You take both.

The splitting stump sits in a clearing ringed by pine and oak, its surface scarred by years of blade strikes. Someone—Martha, probably, or maybe Jessie—has already hauled a dozen oak rounds from somewhere and arranged them nearby. You set the first one upright on the stump.

The stance comes without thinking. Left foot forward, weight balanced, hands positioned on the handle with the spacing that maximizes leverage. You raise the maul overhead and bring it down in a single fluid motion. The blade strikes true, center of the round, and the wood splits clean into halves with a sound like a gunshot.

You stand there, breathing hard, staring at the split wood.

That wasn't beginner's luck. That was muscle memory. The kind that takes months to develop, years even, and you don't have it. You've swung a hammer plenty, worked construction for two decades, but splitting wood is its own rhythm and you just performed it like you've done it a thousand times.

"That's good form," Jessie says from behind you.

You turn. She's standing at the edge of the clearing, watching. Her arms are crossed over her chest and her face is careful, neutral.

"Mama wanted me to bring you water," she says, holding up a mason jar. "Gets hot once the sun's up proper."

You walk over and take the jar. The water's cold enough to make your teeth ache. You drink half of it and hand it back.

"You done this before?" she asks.

"No," you say. Then, because the lie tastes wrong: "I don't think so."

Something crosses her face. Not quite recognition. More like confirmation of something she suspected.

"Well, you're good at it," she says quietly. She turns to go, then stops. "Mama says to pace yourself. She needs you working, not laid up with heatstroke."

She walks back toward the house without waiting for an answer.

You return to the stump. Set another round. Raise the maul. The motion repeats with the same unsettling precision. The blade finds the center every time. The wood splits clean.

By the fourth round you're not thinking about it anymore. Your body has fallen into the work like water finding its level, and that terrifies you more than anything that's happened so far.

-- Turn 10 --

Action

Keep splitting wood until Martha calls me for something else

Outcome

Behind the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 9:25 AM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

You split wood until the rhythm stops being something you do and becomes something that happens through you. The sun climbs higher. Your shirt soaks through with sweat. The pile of split rounds grows.

Somewhere around the twentieth piece, your wedding ring catches the light and you stop mid-swing. You're not married. Haven't been for six years, since Andrea left. But the band of pale skin on your finger is there, unmistakable, like something was worn there until recently. You set down the maul and study your hand. The ring finger is longer than you remember. Thicker. The proportion to your palm has shifted.

You pick up the maul and keep working.

Around the fortieth piece, you find yourself humming. Not a song you know. Something low and rhythmic, keeping time with the blade strikes. The melody feels old, European maybe. Dutch, your mind supplies, and that word sits in your head with an authority that makes no sense.

You stop humming. The silence feels wrong.

Around the sixtieth piece, Jessie comes back with a sandwich wrapped in wax paper and another mason jar of water. She sets them on a stump at the clearing's edge and watches you work for three full swings before speaking.

"You've done near two cords' worth already," she says. "That's more than Papa used to do in a morning."

Papa. The word hangs between you. Her face goes carefully blank the moment she hears it leave her mouth.

"I meant—" she starts, then stops. Her hand goes to the cut above her eyebrow, touching it like checking a wound. "I don't know why I said that. We never had a papa. Just Mama and me."

You lower the maul. Your chest is heaving. "Who used to split the wood, then?"

"Hired help, mostly. Or Mama's brother when he visited." But her voice wavers. She's not certain anymore.

You walk over and pick up the sandwich. Ham and mustard on white bread. It tastes exactly right, and that wrongness keeps compounding—you didn't know you liked mustard this way, sharp and grainy, but here you are eating it like you've had it a hundred times.

"You should rest," Jessie says quietly. "Before you hurt yourself."

"I'm fine."

"Your hands are bleeding."

You look down. The blisters have opened across both palms where the handle's been rubbing. You hadn't felt it. The blood is mixing with the sweat, making the hickory grip tacky.

"Mama's got salve inside," Jessie says. She's standing closer now. The fear that was in her face yesterday has faded to something more complicated. "Come on. She'll want to see you've done the work anyway. Nearly noon."

She turns toward the cabin. You follow, and your legs feel strange—too long, like someone added an inch to each stride while you weren't paying attention.

-- Turn 11 --

Action

Go inside and let Martha tend to my bleeding hands

Outcome

Behind the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 12:00 PM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

You follow Jessie across the yard. The cabin door stands open to catch whatever breeze might stir. Inside, Martha is wiping down the kitchen table with a rag that smells of vinegar.

"Let me see," she says, not looking up.

You hold out your hands. The blisters have torn across both palms in ragged lines, the exposed skin angry and weeping. Martha sets down the rag and takes your right hand in both of hers, turning it to catch the light from the window.

"Jessie, fetch the tin from the top shelf," she says. "The one with the beeswax salve. And clean cloths from the linen drawer."

Jessie moves through the kitchen with practiced efficiency. Martha leads you to the dry sink and pumps cold water over your hands. The sting makes you suck air through your teeth.

"Should've worn gloves," Martha says mildly. "But you were in the rhythm of it, I expect. Hard to stop once the work takes hold."

She dries your hands with a towel, gentle despite the roughness of the fabric. Jessie returns with a dented tin and strips of clean cotton. Martha unscrews the lid and the smell fills the small kitchen—beeswax and something herbal, maybe comfrey.

"Sit," Martha says, nodding toward a chair.

You sit. She pulls another chair close, positioning herself so your knees nearly touch, and takes your right hand again. Her fingers are warm and callused. She spreads the salve across your palm with the pad of her thumb, working it into the broken skin with small circular motions.

"This'll help it heal without infection," she says. "My grandmother's receipt. Beeswax, comfrey root, calendula petals. Been making it the same way since I was Jessie's age."

The salve numbs the sting almost immediately. Your hand looks strange in hers—too large, the fingers too thick. You flex them experimentally and something in the joints feels different, like the bones have been reset at slightly new angles.

Martha wraps the gauze around your palm, her movements efficient. "You did good work this morning. More than I expected for a first day."

"Felt natural," you say, and then wish you hadn't.

She looks up at you. Her eyes are the color of creek water, brown with flecks of green. "That's because you're suited to it," she says simply. "Some folks are made for one kind of life, some for another. Body knows before the mind catches up."

She finishes wrapping your right hand and picks up your left. The process repeats—salve, gauze, her warm fingers securing the bandage. You watch her face while she works. There's no malice in it, no cruelty. Just the calm attention of someone tending what needs tending.

"There," she says, tying off the last strip. "Keep 'em clean and dry. Change the dressing tomorrow morning before work."

"What work?" you ask.

Martha stands and wipes her hands on her apron. "Coop door needs fixing, like I said. And there's the garden fence. Won't do those jobs with torn-up hands, though. This afternoon you can help Jessie with the canning. She's putting up the last of the tomatoes."

-- Turn 12 --

Action

Ask Martha directly what's happening to me

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 12:35 PM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

"What's happening to me?" The words come out rougher than intended. "My hands—they don't look right. I knew where your tools were without ever seeing them before. I split wood like I've been doing it for years and I haven't."

Martha caps the tin of salve with deliberate slowness and sets it on the table. She doesn't look surprised by the question. "You're settling in," she says. "That's all."

"My body feels different. Wrong. Like it doesn't fit anymore."

"Does it feel wrong?" Martha asks. "Or does it feel like it's starting to fit proper for the first time?"

You stand up, the chair scraping against the floorboards. "Don't give me riddles. Something's happening that shouldn't be possible. My timeline's getting fuzzy. I keep knowing things I shouldn't know."

Martha rises too, wiping her hands on her apron. Her expression stays patient, almost maternal. "You came here carrying a lifetime of wrong choices. Drinking yourself out of jobs. Lying to folks who trusted you. Running when things got hard." She picks up the tin and carries it to the shelf. "Now you're working honest. Your hands are learning what they were meant to do. Body follows when a man finds his right place."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only answer there is." She turns back to face you. "You think you're the first person to come to these hills lost and find themselves different after a season of honest work? Land changes people. Hard labor changes people. Settling into where you belong changes people."

Jessie appears in the doorway, her arms full of empty mason jars for the canning. She stops when she sees your face.

"Everything alright?" she asks quietly.

Martha nods toward the jars. "Set those by the stove, honey. We'll get started shortly."

"I'm not imagining this," you say. "My hands are bigger. I'm taller. I hummed a song I don't know this morning—"

"You're stronger than when you arrived," Martha interrupts gently. "Good food and hard work'll do that. As for the humming, maybe you heard it somewhere and forgot. Mind holds onto more than we realize." She crosses to the stove and adjusts the kettle. "You want coffee? Or would you rather stand there working yourself into a state over nothing?"

The dismissal is so complete, so matter-of-fact, that for a moment you can't find words.

"Sit down," Martha says, not unkindly. "You've had a long morning and you're tired. We'll have lunch, then you can help Jessie with the tomatoes. Simple work. Give you time to clear your head."

Jessie sets the jars down with soft clinks. She glances between you and her mother, something uncertain in her bruised face.

"Mama," she says slowly. "He's right that he knew where the axe was. I noticed that too."

Martha pours coffee into three cups. "Jessie, fetch the cornbread from the larder."

"But Mama—"

"The cornbread," Martha repeats, firmer.

Jessie's mouth tightens, but she turns toward the larder. You watch Martha's steady hands pouring coffee and realize she's not going to give you anything more. Not an explanation, not acknowledgment. Just this calm insistence that everything is normal, natural, exactly as it should be.

-- Turn 13 --

Action

Press harder—tell Martha I want a real explanation, not folk wisdom about land and honest work

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 1:10 PM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

"No," you say, your voice rising. "Don't brush this off. I want a real explanation. Not your talk about land and honest work. My hands are changing—physically changing. I'm growing. I know things I never learned. That's not natural."

Martha sets down the coffee pot with a soft clink and turns to face you fully. Her expression doesn't harden—if anything, it becomes gentler, more patient, and that makes it worse.

"What do you want me to tell you?" she asks. "That there's some kind of magic at work? That I've put a spell on you? Would that make it easier to accept?"

"I want you to tell me the truth."

"I am." She folds her hands in front of her apron. "You came here broken. Drinking, lying, stealing from folks who never did you harm. Now you're working. Your body's remembering how to be useful. Your mind's clearing from years of poison you put in it. If that feels like magic to you, maybe that's because you forgot what it's like to live right."

"My hands are bigger. Bigger. That's not—"

"Hard work builds muscle," Martha interrupts quietly. "Builds calluses. Changes how a man carries himself. You've been soft for years, I expect. Now you're not."

Jessie shifts by the stove, clutching the cornbread against her chest. "Mama, he's right though. Yesterday his jacket fit and this morning—"

"Jessie Marie," Martha says, and her daughter's mouth snaps shut. Martha doesn't raise her voice. She doesn't need to. "Go set the table. We'll eat in five minutes."

Jessie hesitates, looking between you both, then carries the cornbread to the table with quick movements.

You step closer to Martha. "I hummed a song I don't know. In a language I don't speak. Dutch. How do you explain that?"

"Maybe your grandparents spoke it. Maybe you heard it as a child and tucked it away." She meets your eyes without flinching. "Or maybe you're looking for mysteries where there aren't any because accepting that you're just settling into an honest life is harder than believing in curses."

The absolute certainty in her voice makes your skin crawl. She believes what she's saying—or she's convinced herself so thoroughly that the distinction doesn't matter anymore.

"You're lying," you say.

"No," Martha replies calmly. "I'm telling you what's true. Whether you choose to accept it or keep fighting ghosts is your concern, not mine."

She turns back to the stove and begins ladling beans into bowls as if the conversation is finished. Jessie won't look at you, her fingers worrying at the edge of the tablecloth.

"Now sit down," Martha says without turning around. "You've worked hard this morning and you need food. After lunch, you'll help with the canning like I said. Work settles the mind better than all this fretting."

The dismissal is so complete, so final, that you're left standing in the middle of the kitchen feeling like you've been speaking into a void.

-- Turn 14 --

Action

Sit down and eat lunch in silence, then help with the canning like Martha ordered

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 1:30 PM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

You pull out a chair and sit. The beans are thick with fatback, the cornbread crumbles at the touch of your fork. Nobody speaks. Martha eats with steady efficiency, her eyes on her plate. Jessie pushes food around, glancing between you and her mother like she's waiting for something to break.

The silence presses down heavier than conversation would. You finish half your portion and realize you're no longer hungry—or maybe you are, but your stomach has tightened into a knot that won't accept more. You set down your fork.

"Done?" Martha asks.

"Yeah."

"Then help Jessie get started on the tomatoes. I've got mending needs doing." She rises and carries her plate to the dry sink, then disappears into the next room without another word.

Jessie stands and begins clearing the table. You carry your plate over and she takes it without comment, her movements careful, like she's trying not to jostle something fragile.

"Counter by the window," she says quietly. "That's where we work."

The tomatoes are already there, piled in a wooden crate—two dozen at least, some still green at the shoulders. Jessie sets out a cutting board, a paring knife, and a pot of boiling water on the stove. She hands you a second knife.

"You blanch them first," she says, demonstrating. "Thirty seconds in the boil, then straight into cold water. Skin peels right off after that."

But you already know this. Your hands move before she finishes explaining—picking up a tomato, scoring an X in the bottom with the knife tip, lowering it into the water with the slotted spoon that's hanging exactly where you knew it would be.

"You've done this before," Jessie says. It's not a question.

"No."

"Then how'd you know about the spoon? I didn't tell you where it was."

You pull the tomato out and plunge it into the cold water basin. The skin slips off in your fingers like a shed glove. "Lucky guess."

Jessie watches you peel three more before she speaks again. "Mama says there's no such thing as luck. Just patterns folks don't see yet."

You core a tomato and quarter it, your knife finding the right angle without thought. The seeds and juice run over your bandaged palms. Jessie works beside you, close enough that your elbows nearly touch. The rhythm develops naturally—you blanch, she peels, you core, she packs the jars.

"You're taller," Jessie says suddenly.

Your hands stop. "What?"

"This morning you were shorter. Now you're—" She gestures vaguely at your head. "Maybe an inch? Two? I don't know. But different."

You look down at her. She's right. You're looking down at a steeper angle than you were at breakfast. Your spine aches faintly, like growing pains in reverse—or not in reverse. Just growing.

"Mama says I'm imagining things," Jessie continues, her voice barely above a whisper. "But I'm not. Am I?"

Before you can answer, Martha calls from the other room: "Jessie, I need the sewing scissors."

Jessie's mouth closes. She wipes her hands on her apron and leaves without meeting your eyes.

You stand alone in the kitchen, holding a knife that feels perfectly weighted in your changing hand, surrounded by the smell of cooking tomatoes and knowing—with absolute certainty—that the canning jars go on the second shelf of the pantry, twelve to a row.

-- Turn 15 --

Action

Continue working through the afternoon until Martha assigns the next task

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 2:15 PM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

Jessie returns with the scissors and sets them on the sideboard without explanation. She resumes her position at the counter, reaching for a jar. Her shoulder brushes yours and she doesn't flinch away the way she did this morning.

The work continues. Your hands move with practiced certainty through motions you've never performed—quartering tomatoes in clean strokes, packing them tight into mason jars, leaving exactly a half-inch of headspace before Jessie pours the boiling brine. You know without asking that the lids need to be fingertip-tight, not wrenched down hard. You know the water bath needs to process for forty-five minutes once it returns to a rolling boil.

"How many jars you reckon we'll get?" Jessie asks.

"Twenty-two. Maybe twenty-three if we're careful with the packing."

She glances at the remaining tomatoes, counting silently, then nods. "That's about right."

Neither of you questions how you knew.

The afternoon light shifts lower through the window. Your back aches from standing but the ache feels distant, like it belongs to someone else's body. The bandages on your palms have loosened from the wet work—when you glance down, the blisters underneath have already formed thick calluses that shouldn't exist after half a day.

Jessie wipes her forehead with the back of her wrist. "You work steady. Papa used to—" She stops. Her face goes blank. "I did it again."

"Did what?"

"Called someone Papa. But we never—I don't—" She sets down the ladle with a sharp clink. "Why do I keep doing that?"

You don't answer because you have no answer that won't terrify both of you.

Martha appears in the doorway, a basket of mending under her arm. She surveys the rows of filled jars cooling on dish towels, the orderly workspace, Jessie's troubled expression.

"Good work," she says. "Once those're sealed, David, I need you to check the fence line behind the goat pen. Jessie said she saw it sagging yesterday. Take the wire cutters from the shed—second shelf, left side."

You already knew where the wire cutters were. The knowledge sits in your mind like a stone in still water.

"After that, bring in kindling for the morning fire. Stack it by the stove, not the hearth. Then wash up for supper."

Jessie is staring at you. "You're taller again. I'm sure of it now."

Martha's voice remains even. "Men carry themselves different when they're working proper. Stands straighter, fills out his frame."

"That's not what I—"

"Jessie, check those seals in ten minutes. The lids should ping down if they took." Martha leaves before her daughter can protest further.

Jessie's hands are shaking slightly as she wipes down the counter. "Something's wrong," she whispers. "Something's really wrong and Mama won't say what."

You look at your reflection in the window glass—taller, broader through the shoulders, your face subtly rearranged around bones that are shifting beneath the skin. The man looking back is someone you don't quite recognize anymore.

"I know," you tell her.

-- Turn 16 --

Action

Check the fence line like Martha ordered, then come back for the kindling work

Outcome

Behind the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 4:45 PM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

You walk to the shed and find the wire cutters exactly where Martha said—second shelf, left side, hanging from a nail driven at an angle you somehow know was hammered in three summers ago during a thunderstorm when the old cutters rusted through.

You stop. That memory isn't yours.

The goat pen sits at the property's edge where the cleared land surrenders to scrub pine and honeysuckle. Two brown does watch you approach with bored rectangular pupils. The fence line sags between the fourth and fifth posts, wire pulled loose from staples that have worked halfway out of rotting wood.

Your hands assess the damage with practiced efficiency. The wire needs re-tensioning. Two staples need replacing. The post itself is compromised at the base—it'll need a sister post driven beside it or the whole section will fail by spring.

You know this the way you knew how to split wood, how to blanch tomatoes. The information simply exists in your mind like furniture in a familiar room.

The work takes thirty minutes. You re-stretch the wire with steady pressure, your grip on the cutters' handles exactly right, your body positioned to use your back and legs rather than straining your shoulders. The bandages on your palms should make this difficult but your hands have grown too large—the wrappings slip loose and you ball them into your pocket. Underneath, the blisters have become thick yellow calluses that don't hurt when you grip the tools.

Your shirt pulls tight across your shoulders with each movement. The sleeves ride up your forearms, exposing wrists that look too thick, too corded with tendon. When you reach overhead to hammer a staple, the fabric tears slightly at the shoulder seam.

You're finishing the last staple when Jessie appears at the fence line, a tin cup in her hands.

"Brought you water," she says. "You've been out here a while."

You straighten, and she takes a small step back—not from fear exactly, but from adjustment. You're looking down at her from a height that wasn't there this morning.

"Fence is done," you tell her. "But that post needs replacing before winter. Ground's too soft here, doesn't hold."

Jessie nods slowly. "That's what—" She stops. Her face does that blank thing again, like someone trying to remember a dream. "Did you already tell me that? About the post?"

"No."

"But I knew you were going to say it." Her voice drops to a whisper. "I knew exactly what you were going to say."

She hands you the cup. Your fingers brush hers and she doesn't pull away. Her hand is small in comparison to yours—your fingers dwarf hers now, thick as tool handles.

"You should come in soon," Jessie says. "Mama'll have supper started. You still need to get kindling."

She walks back toward the cabin, glancing once over her shoulder with an expression you can't read. The late afternoon light catches the bruise on her temple—faded now to yellow-green, the cut nearly healed.

You remember giving her that bruise. The memory feels thin as tissue paper, like something that happened to someone else in another life entirely.

-- Turn 17 --

Action

Go inside now and tell Martha about the post that needs replacing

Outcome

Behind the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 5:35 PM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

You walk back toward the cabin, your boots heavy on the packed earth. The kindling can wait—Martha needs to know about the post before winter.

Inside, the kitchen smells of frying onions and salt pork. Martha stands at the stove, stirring something in a cast iron skillet. She glances up when you enter, her expression expectant.

"Fence is fixed," you tell her. "But that fourth post is rotted at the base. Needs a sister post driven beside it or the whole section'll fail come spring."

Martha nods, unsurprised. "Figured as much. That post's been soft for two seasons now. You'll need to set it this week before the ground freezes."

"I can do it Friday," you say, and the words come out before you've thought them through. Friday. Like you'll still be here Friday. Like this is your responsibility.

Martha's eyes crinkle slightly at the corners. "Good. Post hole digger's in the shed, third peg from the door. Cedar post is best—holds up better in wet ground. I'll have Jessie drive to Mackey's lumber yard Thursday, pick one up."

You know exactly which peg she means. You can picture the post hole digger hanging there, its handles worn smooth from use.

"Wood's treated or raw?" you ask.

"Raw cedar don't need treating. You know that."

Do you? You're not sure anymore what you know and what's been placed in your head like furniture moved into an empty room.

Jessie appears from the back hallway, her hair damp like she's just washed up. She glances between you and her mother, reading something in the exchange.

"Supper'll be ready in twenty minutes," Martha says. "Get that kindling in, then wash up. You're covered in fence rust."

You look down at your hands—they're streaked orange-brown, and your forearms show scratches from the wire you don't remember feeling. Your shirt hangs differently on your frame, the fabric straining across shoulders that have broadened another increment since this morning.

"Use the pump out back," Martha continues. "Soap's on the shelf. Your clean shirt's hanging in your room—the blue one."

Your room. Your shirt. Said with the same casual certainty as everything else, as though you've had a room here and clothes here and a place at this table for longer than twenty-four hours.

Jessie is watching you with an expression you can't quite parse—something between concern and recognition, like she's seeing someone she knows in the face of someone she shouldn't.

"I'll help with the kindling," she says quietly. "Two pairs of hands make faster work."

-- Turn 18 --

Action

Go gather the kindling with Jessie, then wash up and come to supper

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 5:50 PM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

Jessie leads you around the side of the cabin where split logs are stacked under a lean-to. She hands you a canvas carrier without asking if you need one—just assumes you'll know what to do with it.

"Smaller pieces," she says, crouching to select kindling from the pile. "Nothing thicker than my thumb. Mama likes the fire to catch quick in the morning."

You kneel beside her and begin sorting through the wood. Your hands dwarf the pieces you're handling, making even forearm-length splits look like matchsticks. Jessie glances at your hands, then away.

"You really are bigger," she says. Not a question. Just stating fact.

"Yeah."

"Does it hurt?"

The question catches you off guard. "No. Should it?"

"I don't know. Seems like it should." She places another stick in her carrier. "When I broke my arm in sixth grade, I could feel the bones knitting back together. Kept me awake at night. Figured growing would feel something like that."

You test the idea—searching for pain, wrongness, resistance. There's nothing. Just a deep ache like after a long day's work, the kind that promises sleep will come easy.

"I don't feel much of anything," you admit.

Jessie nods slowly. "That's scarier, isn't it? If it hurt, you'd know something was wrong."

She stands, her carrier full, and you follow. Walking beside her toward the back door, you notice the distance between your shoulder and hers has increased again. You could rest your chin on top of her head without bending.

Inside, you stack the kindling in the wooden box beside the stove exactly how you somehow know Martha prefers it—smaller pieces on top, graduated down to thicker splits at the bottom. Jessie watches you do this without comment.

"Pump's out back," she reminds you, though you already know.

The evening air has cooled. You work the pump handle and icy water splashes into the basin. When you cup your hands to bring water to your face, you stop.

Your hands are enormous. Twice the size they were yesterday, the knuckles prominent as creek stones, veins mapping the backs in thick blue lines. You spread your fingers and they span wider than seems possible.

You splash water on your face and it runs down a jawline that feels sharper, more angular. Your neck is thicker. Your shoulders strain against your shirt with every movement until the torn seam finally gives completely and the fabric hangs loose.

The soap is where Martha said—rough lye soap that smells of ash and rosemary. You scrub your forearms, watching rust-colored water run off skin that looks paler than it did this morning.

When you go back inside, Martha is setting plates. She glances at your torn shirt and nods toward the hallway. "Your clean shirt's hanging on the peg. Go change."

The small room smells of pine and old wool. The blue workshirt hangs on the wall peg exactly where she said. You pull off the ruined shirt and reach for the blue one.

It fits perfectly. The shoulders accommodate your new width, the sleeves end at your wrists, the chest buttons without straining. You stare down at yourself in a shirt that should be too large but instead fits like it was made for your body—or like your body was made for it.

"Supper's on," Martha calls.

You walk back to the kitchen and take the seat that's become yours—the one nearest the window, farthest from the door. Neither woman comments on this. Jessie passes you the cornbread and your fingers brush hers.

"Bless this food," Martha says, and you bow your head like you've done it a thousand times before.

-- Turn 19 --

Action

During supper, ask Martha directly how much longer until I can leave

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 6:35 PM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

You set down your fork halfway through the meal and look directly at Martha.

"How much longer until I can leave?"

The question hangs in the air. Jessie's hand pauses over the beans. Martha continues chewing, unhurried, and swallows before responding.

"You can leave whenever you want," Martha says mildly. "Door's not locked. Never has been."

"That's not what I mean. How long until—" You gesture at yourself, at the blue shirt that fits too well, at hands that dwarf the fork. "Until this stops."

Martha wipes her mouth with her napkin. "Until what stops? You working? Getting your strength back?"

"Don't do that. You know what I'm asking."

"I know you're asking a question that don't have the answer you want." She meets your eyes steadily. "You broke something when you came here. Broke trust. Broke safety. Hurt my daughter. Those things take time to mend."

"I've been working all day. Fixed the fence, split enough wood for a month, helped with canning—"

"And that's good," Martha interrupts gently. "That's real good. But one day's labor don't balance the scales for what you did. You know that."

Jessie shifts in her chair. "Mama, maybe—"

"Jessie, eat your supper."

You lean forward, lowering your voice. "I'm changing. My body is changing. You can't just pretend that's normal."

"Bodies change all the time," Martha says. "Man stops drinking, starts eating regular, does honest work—course his body changes. That's health, not harm."

"I'm taller. Inches taller. In one day."

"You're standing straighter. Holding yourself different. I've seen it happen before—men who've been slouching under shame for years, they work it out and suddenly they look like they grew. But they didn't. They just stopped folding in on themselves."

The absolute certainty in her voice makes your teeth ache. She believes what she's saying—or she's made herself believe it so thoroughly that arguing is like pushing against a river.

"So when can I leave?" you ask again.

"When the work's finished," Martha replies. "When the debt's paid. Could be a week. Could be two. Depends on you, really. How much you commit to setting things right."

Jessie is staring at her plate, pushing beans around with her fork.

"And if I just walk out tomorrow morning?"

Martha's expression doesn't change. "Then you walk out. I told you—door's not locked. But I expect you'll find reasons to come back. Or maybe you won't get as far as you think. These hills can be confusing if you don't know them proper."

She reaches for the cornbread and offers it to you. "Have some more. You've been working hard. Need to keep your strength up."

-- Turn 20 --

Action

Accept her answer and finish supper, then help with the evening dishes like I'm expected to

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 7:05 PM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

You nod once and return to your plate. The beans have gone lukewarm but you finish them anyway, sopping up the last of the juice with cornbread. Martha watches you eat with the same quiet satisfaction she's shown all day—like watching something grow exactly as it should.

When the plates are empty, you stand and begin gathering dishes without being asked. Your hands stack them with practiced efficiency—two plates, three bowls nested together, forks laid across the top so they don't slide. You've done this before. Except you haven't.

"I'll heat the water," Jessie says, rising from her chair. She moves to the stove and lifts the kettle, testing its weight, then pours steaming water into the wash basin. You bring the dishes to the dry sink and she's already there with a rag, waiting.

The two of you fall into a rhythm that feels worn smooth by repetition. She washes, you dry. The dishtowel in your hands is thin cotton, frayed at the edges, and you know without looking that there's a patch sewn into one corner where it tore last winter catching on a nail.

Last winter. You weren't here last winter.

"You're quiet tonight," Jessie says, scrubbing a plate.

"Just tired."

"You worked hard." She hands you the plate and your fingers brush hers in the transfer. Her hands look small beside yours—child-sized almost, though she's a grown woman. "That fence needed doing. And the wood pile—I don't think we've had that much split since—" She stops. Her forehead creases. "Since when?"

You dry the plate in careful circles, watching water disappear from the ceramic.

"Papa always kept us well stocked," Jessie says slowly, her voice uncertain. "Before he—no. That's not right. We never had a papa."

Martha speaks from her chair by the stove where she's taken up her mending. "Your mind's tired, sweetheart. Long day for all of us."

Jessie passes you another plate, her movements mechanical. "I keep doing that. Talking about people who weren't there. Like there's holes in my memory and my brain keeps trying to fill them in wrong."

"Memory's a strange thing," Martha says, threading her needle. "Specially when you're tired."

You stack the dried plates in the cabinet—second shelf, right side, largest ones in back. You know this. You reach for the next dish and catch sight of your reflection in the window glass above the sink. The face looking back has cheekbones you don't recognize, a jaw too square, eyes set at a different depth. Your hair looks lighter in the lamplight, almost ash-blonde where it should be brown.

Jessie is staring at the same reflection. At you. "You look different every time I see you," she whispers. "Like you're becoming someone else."

"I'm right here," you tell her, though you're not sure that's true anymore.

She hands you the last bowl. Her fingers linger against yours longer than necessary—not quite holding, but not quite letting go either. "Are you though? Or are you leaving and someone else is arriving?"

Martha sets down her mending with a soft rustle of fabric. "Jessie Marie, that's enough. Go check the chickens are settled for the night."

"I checked them after—"

"Check them again."

Jessie wipes her hands on her apron and leaves through the back door without another word. The silence that follows feels heavier than the conversation did.

Martha picks up her mending again. "You settling in better now? Less fretting?"

You dry the last bowl and place it carefully in the cabinet. "Doesn't seem like fretting changes anything."

"No," Martha agrees. "It surely doesn't. But accepting what is—that makes the road easier. For everyone."

-- Turn 21 --

Action

Go to my room for the night and try to hold onto memories of my real identity before sleep

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 7:45 PM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

You climb the narrow stairs to the second floor, each step creaking under weight that wasn't yours two days ago. The bedroom door stands open—your door, though calling it that feels like conceding something you can't afford to lose.

The lamp on the bedside table casts yellow light across familiar objects that shouldn't be familiar at all. A wooden chair with a jacket draped over the back. Work boots by the door, sized for feet you don't have yet but will. The bed itself, narrow and neatly made with a patchwork quilt you know was stitched by Martha's grandmother because you remember watching her hands work the needle when you were—

No. Stop.

You sit heavily on the bed and press your palms against your eyes. "David Sutherland," you say aloud. "Born in Bakersfield. Worked construction for Hendricks and Sons for eleven years. Foreman for the last three."

The words come out in your voice but they sound rehearsed, like lines from a play you're struggling to remember. You reach for more details. Your first job site. The scar on your left forearm from a nail gun accident. Your ex-wife's name was—was—

Linda. No, Lisa. Linda. Christ, which one?

You stand and find paper in the desk drawer without having to look for it. A pencil sits in a cup carved from cedar, and your hand reaches for it automatically. You write: MY NAME IS DAVID SUTHERLAND. The letters look wrong in your handwriting—or what used to be your handwriting. The slant is different now, more angular and precise.

Beneath that you write: I AM FROM CALIFORNIA. Except the moment you write it, you remember Amsterdam with absolute clarity—the narrow house on Prinsengracht where you learned carpentry from your vader, the smell of varnish and coffee, the gray light through workshop windows.

You scratch that memory out hard enough to tear the paper.

"Bakersfield," you mutter. "Not Amsterdam. Never been to Amsterdam. Don't speak Dutch."

But you do speak Dutch. You know you do. The language sits in your mouth ready to be used, comfortable as English, more comfortable maybe because it was your eerste taal, your—

You crumple the paper and throw it across the room.

Footsteps on the stairs. Martha appears in the doorway with a glass of milk in her hand. "Thought you might want this before bed. Helps you sleep."

"I don't need help sleeping."

"No, I reckon you don't." She sets the glass on the bedside table anyway. Her eyes fall on the crumpled paper in the corner but she doesn't comment. "Hard day's work behind you. Tomorrow we'll pick up those cedar posts from Mackey's. Good to get that fence finished proper."

"I'm not staying tomorrow."

Martha smooths the quilt where you've rumpled it. "We'll see how you feel in the morning. Night, now."

She closes the door behind her. You hear her descend the stairs, hear the murmur of her voice and Jessie's from the kitchen below.

The milk sits on the table, still steaming slightly. You don't remember telling anyone you prefer warm milk before bed.

-- Turn 22 --

Action

Drink the milk and try to sleep, hoping morning brings clarity

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 8:30 PM on Wednesday, 16-OCT-2024

----

You lift the glass and drink. The milk is warm and slightly sweet, with a trace of honey Martha must have stirred in. It goes down easy and you finish the whole thing, setting the empty glass back on the table with a soft clink.

The bed receives you like it's been waiting. You stretch out on your back and the mattress knows your weight, the exact hollow you make in it. The quilt smells like cedar and lavender and something else—wood smoke maybe, or just the particular scent of this house that has worked its way into every fiber.

You close your eyes and try to catalog what's real. Your name. Your history. The life you had before this one. But exhaustion pulls at you like hands reaching up from deep water, and the thoughts slip away before you can hold them.

Sleep comes fast.

You wake in darkness with your heart pounding. The room feels smaller than it should, or you feel larger, and for a moment you can't remember where you are. Then: the cabin. Martha's cabin. The place you're trapped until—

Until what?

You sit up and moonlight through the window shows you your hands resting on the quilt. They're enormous. The knuckles stand out like mountain ranges and your fingers are thick as tool handles. You flex them and watch tendons move under skin that seems too pale, almost luminous in the silver light.

A sound from downstairs. Footsteps. Then Jessie's voice, soft but clear through the floorboards: "I can't stop thinking about him, Mama. It's like I've known him forever. Like he's always been here."

"He has been here, in a way." Martha's reply is quieter, harder to make out. "The man who did wrong is leaving. The man who belongs is arriving. That's how these things work."

"But his face—it keeps changing. Every time I look at him he's different."

"That's just you seeing clearer, sweetheart. Seeing who he really is underneath."

A long pause. Then Jessie again: "I miss him already. Isn't that strange? I miss him and he hasn't even gone anywhere."

You press your palms against your eyes. The pressure feels different—the bones of your skull have shifted, the angles wrong. When you take your hands away and look at the window glass, the reflection shows a stranger with sharp cheekbones and a jaw that could have been carved from stone.

The man in the glass has ash-blonde hair and eyes that catch the moonlight like steel.

You lie back down but sleep won't return. The hours stretch out and you count the sound of your own breathing until gray dawn seeps around the curtain edges.

-- Turn 23 --

Action

Examine myself carefully in the mirror to assess the full extent of changes

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 6:00 AM on Thursday, 17-OCT-2024

----

Gray light filters through the bedroom window as you stand before the small mirror hung above the washbasin. The glass is old, silvered at the edges, but clear enough in the center.

The man staring back is not you.

He stands seven feet tall or near enough—his head nearly touches the ceiling beam that never bothered you before. His shoulders span wide enough that turning in the narrow room requires care. The blue workshirt Martha left you strains across a chest built like a barrel, the fabric pulled taut over muscle that looks dense as hardwood.

You lift your hands to your face and the stranger mirrors you. Your fingers—no, his fingers—are thick as hammer handles, the knuckles prominent, calluses worked into the palms. You touch your jaw and feel sharp angles where soft curves used to be. The bone structure has been carved into something else entirely: high cheekbones, a jaw that could split stone, a brow ridge that casts your eyes in shadow.

Your eyes. Christ, your eyes.

They're grey-blue now, sharp as winter water, set deep beneath that heavy brow. They were brown. You remember brown. You think you remember brown.

Your hair has gone ash-blonde, short and textured, standing up slightly where you slept on it. You run a hand through it—the gesture automatic—and watch the stranger in the mirror do the same with perfect synchronization.

You strip off the shirt. The body underneath is massive, built for labor that would break lesser men. Your chest is broad and heavily muscled, your arms thick enough that your own hand can't circle the bicep. There's a pale band of skin on your ring finger where a wedding band should sit but doesn't.

A wedding band you've never worn. That Maarten wore.

The name surfaces without effort, comfortable and right. Maarten Van Dijk. Twenty-nine. Born in Amsterdam. Came to Kentucky five years ago following work. Married Jessie three years back in a small ceremony at the courthouse in town, just family, just right.

You close your eyes hard and whisper, "David Sutherland. Bakersfield. Construction foreman."

The words feel like you're reading them from a script someone else wrote. They don't fit in your mouth the way they should.

Footsteps on the stairs. Martha's voice carries through the door. "Breakfast in ten minutes. Jessie's making grits and sausage. Your favorite."

She's right. You love Jessie's sausage gravy.

You open your eyes and the stranger is still there, filling the mirror, filling the room. You flex your hands—his hands—and feel strength in them that could bend iron.

"My name is David," you tell your reflection.

The man in the mirror says nothing. He just stares back with those cold grey-blue eyes, patient and certain, like he's been waiting all along for you to stop pretending.

-- Turn 24 --

Action

Go downstairs and eat breakfast with Martha and Jessie

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 6:20 AM on Thursday, 17-OCT-2024

----

You pull the workshirt back on and make your way down the narrow stairs, ducking slightly at the bottom where the ceiling beam hangs low. The kitchen smells of pork sausage and coffee, and Jessie stands at the stove stirring a pot of grits with steady circular motions.

She glances up when you enter and smiles. Not the wary half-smile of yesterday, but something warmer and more familiar. "Morning. Coffee's hot."

"Thank you." The words come out deeper than they should, resonant in your chest.

You pour yourself a cup from the pot on the stove and take your seat at the table—the chair nearest the window, the one with the carved armrest you sanded smooth last spring when the splinters started catching on sleeves. You weren't here last spring. But your hands remember the work.

Martha enters from the back porch carrying a basket of eggs. "Chickens are laying good. Found six this morning." She sets the basket on the counter and studies you with that calm, assessing gaze. "You look rested."

"I slept."

"Good. You needed it." She moves to the stove beside Jessie, checking the sausage gravy. "We'll head into town after breakfast. Mackey's expecting us around eight."

Jessie ladles grits into three bowls and brings them to the table. She sets yours down first, then her mother's, then takes her own seat across from you. The bruise above her eye has faded to nothing more than a yellow shadow, barely visible in the morning light.

"Mama says the cedar posts came in special order," Jessie says, spooning butter into her grits. "Mr. Mackey had to drive all the way to Lexington to fetch them."

"That's good of him," you hear yourself say. "Cedar'll last twenty years if we set it proper."

Martha brings the gravy to the table in a cast-iron skillet. "Maarten knows how to set a post. Best fence work in three counties."

The name lands without impact. Maarten. Of course that's what she called you—it's your name. Has been for twenty-nine years. Longer than David was ever yours.

You blink hard and reach for the coffee.

Jessie is watching you with concern that feels intimate rather than cautious. "You alright? You've got that faraway look."

"Just thinking about the work."

"You always were a worrier about doing things right." She reaches across the table and touches your hand—the gesture natural, proprietary almost. Her fingers are small against yours. "The fence'll hold. It always does when you build it."

Martha sits and bows her head. You and Jessie follow without thinking. "Lord, bless this food to our use and us to thy service. Keep us mindful of the needs of others. Amen."

"Amen," you murmur with Jessie.

The sausage gravy is thick and peppery, exactly how you like it. Jessie made it perfect. She always does.

-- Turn 25 --

Action

Ask Jessie why she called me Maarten and challenge what's happening directly

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 6:40 AM on Thursday, 17-OCT-2024

----

You set down your fork and look directly at Jessie. "You called me Maarten. Just now. Martha did too."

Jessie's brow furrows, her spoon pausing halfway to her mouth. "I didn't—" She stops. Her eyes go distant, searching. "Did I?"

"She said 'Maarten knows how to set a post.' My name isn't Maarten. It's David. David Sutherland."

The confusion on Jessie's face deepens. She looks down at her grits, then back up at you. "That's—" She shakes her head slowly. "No, that's not right. You're—"

"I'm what?" You lean forward. "Who am I, Jessie?"

"You're—" Her voice cracks slightly. "You're my—" She presses her fingers to her temple. "Why can't I—"

Martha's chair scrapes back. "That's enough of that."

"No." You keep your eyes on Jessie. "Tell me what you remember. About me. About who I am."

Jessie's face has gone pale. "I remember—we were married at the courthouse. Judge Peters. Three years ago in April. You wore that gray suit that was too short in the sleeves because you're so—" She stops abruptly. Her hands are trembling. "But that's not—David, you said? I know that name. I know I know that name."

"Jessie Marie." Martha's voice is firm.

"I hurt you," you press on. "Four days ago. I broke into this cabin and I shoved you into a doorframe and cut your forehead open. You were terrified of me. Do you remember that?"

Jessie's hand rises to touch the fading bruise above her eye. For a moment something flickers across her face—recognition, fear, the memory of pain. "You would never—" But her voice wavers. "I remember being scared. I remember—" Her eyes fill with tears. "What's happening to me? Why do I have two memories of everything?"

Martha stands and moves to her daughter's side, one hand on Jessie's shoulder. "You're tired, sweetheart. You didn't sleep well. Dreams can feel powerful real when you first wake up."

"This isn't a dream." You stand as well, and the motion feels too fluid, too easy in this massive body. "Look at me, Jessie. Really look. Do I look like someone you've known for three years?"

Jessie stares at you. Tears spill down her cheeks. "I don't know. I don't know anymore. You look like—like you've always looked. But different. Like I'm remembering you wrong."

"Because you are. Because she's—" You gesture at Martha. "She's doing something. Changing us both."

Martha's expression doesn't shift. "I'm not doing anything but trying to get breakfast finished before it goes cold. Sit down."

"Answer the question. Why did you call me Maarten?"

"Because that's your name," Martha says simply. "Always has been. Now sit down and eat before we're late getting to Mackey's."

Jessie is crying openly now, confused and frightened in a way you haven't seen since that first night. But when she looks at you, there's something else there too—affection, concern, the kind of intimacy that takes years to build.

"Please," she whispers. "Please don't make this harder than it has to be."

-- Turn 26 --

Action

Accept Martha's instruction to sit down and finish breakfast quietly

Outcome

Inside the Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 7:00 AM on Thursday, 17-OCT-2024

----

You sit back down. The chair creaks under your weight and you pull your bowl closer, taking up your fork again.

Jessie watches you for a long moment, tears still wet on her cheeks, then slowly returns to her own breakfast. Her hands shake slightly as she lifts her spoon.

Martha settles back into her seat with the quiet satisfaction of someone who's won an argument without raising her voice. She passes you the skillet. "Have some more gravy. You'll need your strength for hauling posts."

You take the skillet and ladle gravy over your grits. It's still warm, rich with sausage drippings and black pepper. You eat mechanically, tasting nothing.

Across from you, Jessie has stopped crying but her expression remains troubled. She keeps glancing at you, then away, like she's trying to reconcile two different pictures that won't quite line up. Finally she asks, voice small, "Do you remember when we got married?"

The question hangs in the air. You could fight this. You should fight this.

"April," you hear yourself say. "Judge Peters. You wore your mama's dress."

Jessie's face crumples with something between relief and grief. "I did. It was too long in the hem. I kept stepping on it." She presses her napkin to her eyes. "Why do I remember you being scared? You stood so straight, like you were carved from wood, but your hands were shaking when you took the ring."

"I wasn't scared," you tell her, and it feels true even though it isn't, even though none of this happened. "Just wanted to do it right."

Martha drinks her coffee and says nothing, but you feel her approval like sunlight.

The rest of breakfast passes in near silence. Jessie finishes her grits and begins clearing plates before you've emptied yours. You watch her move around the kitchen with practiced efficiency, putting things away in their proper places, and something in your chest aches with affection that has no source.

When Martha finally stands and announces it's time to head to town, you rise automatically and carry your dishes to the sink. The motions are smooth and habitual. Jessie catches your wrist as you set the bowl down—her fingers barely span a quarter of the circumference.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "For getting confused. For making things harder."

You look down at her small hand on your massive forearm. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Neither did you," she says, and her eyes search yours with desperate certainty. "You've never done anything wrong. I know that. Even when I can't remember why I know it."

Martha's keys jingle from the doorway. "Truck's waiting. Let's move."

You follow them outside into morning air that tastes of pine and coming rain. The pickup sits in the drive with primer showing through rust spots on the fenders. You climb into the bed without thinking, settling your weight against the wheel well like you've done a thousand times before, and Martha doesn't question it.

Jessie gets in the passenger seat and the engine turns over rough but willing. As Martha backs down the drive, you catch a glimpse of yourself reflected in the rear window—massive shoulders, ash-blonde hair, face like carved granite.

A stranger going to town in your body.

-- Turn 27 --

Action

Stay silent during the drive to town and observe what people's reactions reveal

Outcome

Harwell pickup truck, heading toward town, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 7:30 AM on Thursday, 17-OCT-2024

----

The road unspools through hills dressed in autumn colors, early light catching on leaves gone copper and gold. You brace yourself against the truck bed's side as Martha takes the curves with practiced ease. Cold air streams past, carrying the scent of woodsmoke and distant rain.

Jessie sits twisted in the passenger seat, watching you through the rear window. Her expression shifts between troubled and tender, like she's trying to solve an equation with too many variables. Eventually she turns back around and you're alone with the passing trees.

The paved highway appears after twenty minutes of gravel switchbacks. Martha takes the turn south without hesitation and the ride smooths out, truck settling into a steady sixty. You pass a handpainted sign advertising fresh eggs, then a Baptist church with a white steeple, then nothing but forest for three miles.

Mackey's Lumber sits where the highway widens into what passes for the town's commercial strip—a gas station, a Dollar General, a diner called Lorene's with trucks parked out front. The lumber yard occupies a gravel lot behind a cinderblock building painted industrial green. Stacks of treated posts and dimensional lumber stand in neat rows under a pole barn's corrugated roof.

Martha pulls in beside a sheriff's cruiser. You recognize the county seal on the door.

Sheriff Boyd Mackey emerges from the office as Martha kills the engine. He's sixty-odd with a soft gut and steel-frame glasses, wearing a brown uniform shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His eyes track to you as you climb down from the truck bed.

He stops mid-stride. His mouth opens slightly.

"Morning, Boyd," Martha calls, untroubled.

The sheriff doesn't answer immediately. He's staring at you with an expression you can't quite read—recognition wrestling with confusion, like he's looking at something that should be familiar but the details won't settle. "Martha. Jessie." A pause. "Maarten."

The name lands without question. He knows it. He said it.

"Got those cedar posts set aside?" Martha asks.

"I—yes. Yes, they're in back." Boyd pulls his attention away from you with visible effort. "Twelve footer sections like you asked. Good heartwood, hardly any sap pockets." He walks toward the pole barn and Martha follows, leaving you standing beside the truck.

Jessie has gotten out. She comes around to your side, hands shoved in her jacket pockets. "He always stares like that," she murmurs. "Like you're some kind of—I don't know. Natural disaster he has to make peace with."

You watch the sheriff's back as he disappears into the lumber stacks. "How long has he known me?"

"Since we got married. Mama introduced you that first week." Jessie kicks at the gravel. "You don't talk much when we come to town. I think people find that unsettling. Big as you are, staying quiet like that."

Boyd reappears pushing a hand truck loaded with four posts, each twelve feet long and six inches around. Martha walks beside him, discussing something you can't hear. The sheriff glances your way twice more, expression still troubled, but he doesn't question your presence.

He remembers Maarten. Not David.

Reality has already adjusted.

-- Turn 28 --

Action

Help load the cedar posts into the truck bed

Outcome

Mackey's Lumber yard, town, eastern Kentucky, United States, North America, at 8:05 AM on Thursday, 17-OCT-2024

----

You step forward and grip the first post. The cedar is dense and heavy, twelve feet of solid heartwood that would take two normal men to maneuver. You lift it alone, pivoting it vertical before walking it to the truck bed and laying it down lengthwise. The motion is smooth and practiced.

Boyd stares. "Jesus Christ."

"Language, Boyd," Martha says mildly.

The sheriff shakes his head like he's trying to clear water from his ears. "I just—I never get used to seeing him do that. Man moves lumber like it's kindling."

You return for the second post. Boyd has his hand on it but steps back when you approach, letting you take the weight. This one has a slight curve to it and you adjust your grip accordingly, some knowledge you don't remember learning telling you exactly where to hold it for balance.

"How long you been working lumber, Maarten?" Boyd asks. His tone is conversational but his eyes are troubled.

"Long enough," you hear yourself answer.

"That's not much of an answer."

"It's the one I've got."

Boyd glances at Martha. "He always this talkative?"

"You know how he is," Martha replies, which isn't an answer either.

The third post goes in beside the first two. Jessie has climbed up into the truck bed to help guide them, making sure they're positioned so the weight's distributed right. Her hands barely reach across the width of one post. When you hand her the fourth, your fingers brush hers and she smiles up at you with something like pride.

"We got straps in the cab," she tells you. "Should tie these down before we head back."

Boyd is writing something on a clipboard, but his pen keeps pausing. Finally he looks up. "Martha, you want to settle up now or you want me to put it on your account?"

"Account's fine. We'll square up end of month like always."

"Right. End of month." Boyd's eyes drift back to you. "You been coming here long, Maarten? To the yard, I mean."

The question has weight to it, like he's testing something.

"Three years," you say, because it feels true even though it isn't. "Since we got married."

Boyd nods slowly. His expression suggests he's hearing an echo of something that doesn't quite match the original sound. "Three years. Right. Of course." He tears the receipt off his clipboard and hands it to Martha. "You folks drive safe now."

Jessie's already in the cab when you finish securing the straps. Martha starts the engine and you climb back into the bed, settling among the cedar posts that smell of earth and time.

-- Turn 29 --

Action

Ride silently in the truck bed back to the cabin

Outcome

Mackey's Lumber yard, town, eastern Kentucky, United States, North America, at 8:25 AM on Thursday, 17-OCT-2024

----

The truck pulls out onto the highway and you settle back among the cedar posts, watching the town recede behind you. The diner, the gas station, the Dollar General—all of it slides past and disappears as Martha takes the turn onto the gravel road that climbs into the hills.

The wind is colder now, carrying the promise of weather. You can smell rain coming down from the north, that particular dampness that means the sky will open before noon. The cedar posts shift slightly with each curve and you brace a hand against them, keeping them steady.

Through the rear window you can see Jessie and Martha talking, but the wind steals their words. Jessie glances back at you twice, her expression unreadable through the glass. The second time, she raises her hand in a small wave. You lift yours in return and she smiles before turning away.

The drive takes longer than it should. The switchbacks feel endless, each one doubling back on itself until you've lost track of how many turns Martha's taken. The trees press close on both sides, their branches forming a canopy that blocks most of the early light. You catch glimpses of the hollow below—the creek running silver between dark banks, the ruins of an old homestead with its chimney still standing.

When the cabin finally appears, it looks like it's been waiting. The chickens are out in their run, the goat bleats from her pen behind the shed, and smoke rises thin and gray from the chimney. Martha parks beside the woodpile and kills the engine.

Jessie climbs out first. She comes around to the truck bed and watches as you stand, the posts shifting as your weight leaves them. "We should get these unloaded before the rain comes," she says. "Fence line's not far but we'll need to make two trips at least."

Martha appears at her side, keys in hand. "Maarten can manage it in one if he wants. You remember where the sister post is?"

You do remember. Behind the goat pen, third marker from the creek side, where the ground slopes down toward the water. You can picture it exactly—the old post leaning at fifteen degrees, the wire staples rusted orange, the gap in the fence line where a deer pushed through last winter.

Last winter. When you weren't here.

"I remember," you tell her.

Martha nods, satisfied. "Good. Get them unloaded and we'll have dinner ready when you're done. Jessie's making chicken and dumplings."

Jessie is already heading toward the house. Martha follows, leaving you alone with the truck bed and the posts and the certain knowledge of where everything goes.

-- Turn 30 --

Action

Unload all the posts in one trip and carry them to the fence line alone

Outcome

Harwell cabin, Briar Hollow Road, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 9:00 AM on Thursday, 17-OCT-2024

----

You grip the first two posts and hoist them onto your right shoulder, then reach for the remaining pair. The cedar is solid and green-heavy, each piece weighing close to ninety pounds, but your body accepts the load without strain. You shift the weight until it settles balanced across both shoulders, then start walking.

The path to the fence line winds behind the shed, past the goat pen where the old nanny watches you with yellow eyes. Your boots find the trail without conscious thought—around the blackberry bramble, over the exposed root of the oak, down the slope where the ground turns soft near the creek. You've walked this route before. You haven't walked this route before. Both things feel equally true.

The posts shift slightly with each step and you adjust your gait to compensate, some deeper knowledge in your muscles dictating the rhythm. The weight should be crushing. It isn't. Your shoulders were built for this, your spine aligned for load-bearing, your legs thick enough to drive through soft earth without faltering.

You reach the fence line in under five minutes. The sister post leans exactly where you remembered—third marker from the creek side, wire staples orange with rust, the gap where deer pushed through visible in the trampled weeds. You lower the posts carefully, laying them parallel in the grass, and straighten to catch your breath.

Except you're not winded. Your heart beats steady and slow. Your hands aren't even shaking.

You stand there looking at the posts, at your hands, at the fence line you knew how to find without being shown. The wind picks up, carrying the smell of coming rain, and you can feel the storm building in your bones the way you'd feel a coming frost—another piece of knowledge that shouldn't be yours.

Footsteps approach through the grass. Jessie appears around the goat pen carrying a post-hole digger and a coil of wire. She stops when she sees the posts already laid out.

"You got them all down here already?" Her voice carries surprise but not disbelief. "I was going to help."

"Didn't need it."

She sets the digger down and crouches beside the posts, running her hand along the grain of the nearest one. "These are good. No checking, clean cut. Boyd always delivers quality when Mama asks." She looks up at you. "You want to pull the old post first or dig the new hole?"

The question hangs there. She's asking your preference like you've done this together a dozen times. Like you'd know which method works better in this particular soil, at this particular angle, with this particular fence tension.

And the terrible thing is—you do know.

-- Turn 31 --

Action

Tell Jessie we should pull the old post first and begin the work together

Outcome

Fence line behind goat pen, Harwell property, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 9:35 AM on Thursday, 17-OCT-2024

----

"We'll pull the old one first," you tell her. "Ground's soft enough from the creek seep. Won't need to dig it out."

Jessie nods like this confirms something she already suspected. "That's what I thought. Wire's mostly rusted through anyway—won't take much to clip it free." She picks up a pair of fence pliers from the grass and hands them to you. "You want to start at the top staples? I'll work the bottom."

You take the pliers and move to the leaning post. The wire runs taut in three strands, stapled deep into wood that's gone gray with weather. You fit the pliers around the top staple and lever it out with a single smooth pull. The metal comes free trailing rust, and you drop it in the grass before moving to the second strand.

Jessie works below you, her small hands steady on the pliers as she works the bottom staples free. She doesn't flinch when her shoulder brushes against your leg. Doesn't hesitate when you reach past her to grip the post itself.

"Got it loose?" she asks.

"Almost." You clip the final strand and the wire falls slack, coiling in the weeds. The post sways when you put your hands on it, testing the give. "Stand back."

She steps aside and you wrap both hands around the weathered cedar, setting your weight against it. The post comes free with a wet sucking sound, earth clinging to the bottom two feet where it's been buried. You lift it clear and carry it to the side, laying it parallel to the new posts.

When you turn back, Jessie is already at the hole with a stick, probing the depth. "About three feet down. Drainage is good—no standing water." She looks up at you. "New post should set clean if we pack it right."

You know she's right. You know the hole needs another six inches of depth to account for the new post's length. You know the dirt will pack better if you wet it slightly first, and that there's a rain barrel behind the shed where you can fill the bucket.

All of this knowledge sits in your head like furniture that's always been there.

"I'll get the bucket," you hear yourself say.

Jessie's face softens. "There's a good one hanging on the nail by the door. The galvanized one, not the plastic."

You already knew which bucket. The galvanized one with the dent on the side from when you—when someone—dropped it loading firewood last March.

Last March when you were in Bakersfield. When you were David Sutherland. When this body didn't exist and this life was just atoms waiting to arrange themselves into a lie.

The wind picks up, carrying the smell of rain closer now. Jessie shivers and pulls her jacket tighter. "Storm's coming faster than I thought. We should get this set before it hits."

"We will," you tell her, and the certainty in your voice has no source you can name.

She smiles at you—small and trusting and grateful—and something in your chest tightens with affection that shouldn't exist but does, solid and undeniable as the ground beneath your boots.

-- Turn 32 --

Action

Get the bucket from the shed and continue the fence work with Jessie

Outcome

Fence line behind goat pen, Harwell property, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 10:10 AM on Thursday, 17-OCT-2024

----

You walk to the shed without needing directions. The path takes you past the chicken run where the hens scratch at bare dirt, past the woodpile with its tarp pulled tight against weather. The shed door hangs slightly crooked on its hinges and you have to lift it to swing it open—another piece of knowledge that simply exists.

The galvanized bucket hangs exactly where Jessie said, though you'd already known that. The dent on the side catches the dim light filtering through the shed's single window. You lift it from the nail and feel the weight of it, the wire handle smooth from years of use. Behind it on the wall hang other tools—a mattock, a come-along, coils of wire in different gauges. You know which wire is for fence and which is for binding, know that the come-along's ratchet sticks and needs oil.

Know these things without ever having learned them.

The rain barrel sits round and dark behind the shed. You dip the bucket and it comes up heavy, water sloshing against the sides. When you return to the fence line, Jessie has the post-hole digger positioned over the old hole, working it deeper with practiced motions.

"Ground's softer than I thought," she says without looking up. "Creek seep goes further than it used to."

You set the bucket down and she steps back, breathing slightly hard. The hole is maybe three and a half feet now, dark earth piled to one side. You pick up one of the new posts—the straightest one, the one with the tightest grain—and lower it into the opening. It slides in clean and you hold it vertical while Jessie checks the alignment.

"Little more toward the creek. Maybe an inch."

You shift the post. Your hands are steady despite the weight.

"That's it. Perfect."

She's already reaching for the shovel, beginning to pack dirt back around the base. You pour water from the bucket in slow measures, letting it seep down to settle the soil. The rhythm is easy and unspoken—she shovels, you pour, she tamps down with her boot, you steady the post. Neither of you needs to discuss the sequence. It simply happens.

Thunder rolls distant over the ridgeline. Jessie glances at the sky, then back to her work. "We'll make it. Just barely."

The dirt is halfway packed when she pauses, shovel blade resting against her boot. "You remember teaching me this? How to set a post so it won't heave come spring?"

You should say no. Should tell her you've never taught her anything, that you met her four days ago when you hurt her, that this entire history she's describing is a fiction built from whatever Martha did to both of you.

Instead you hear yourself say, "You learned quick. Didn't need much teaching."

Jessie's smile is soft and sad at once. "I wanted to impress you. Wanted you to see I could handle the work." She returns to shoveling. "Mama said I didn't need to prove anything, but I did anyway. Stubborn, she called it."

The post stands straight and solid. You pack the remaining earth with your boot heel while Jessie reattaches the fence wire, her small fingers working the staples in with quick efficient strikes. The first drops of rain begin falling as she finishes the top strand.

"There," she says. "That'll hold through winter."

She stands close beside you, surveying the work. Her shoulder barely reaches your ribs. When she looks up at you, rain speckling her face, her expression holds something you can't name—gratitude, affection, relief.

"Thank you for helping," she says quietly. "I know fence work isn't your favorite. But you never complain about it."

The rain is coming harder now, cold and steady.

-- Turn 33 --

Action

Return to the cabin with Jessie as the rain intensifies

Outcome

Fence line behind goat pen, Harwell property, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 10:45 AM on Thursday, 17-OCT-2024

----

The rain comes down harder as you gather the tools. Jessie hands you the post-hole digger and you take it without thinking, the weight familiar in your grip. She collects the pliers and the shovel, tucking them under one arm while pulling her jacket hood up with the other hand.

"Ready?" she asks, and you nod.

The walk back follows the same path you took out—past the woodpile, past the chicken run where the birds have retreated to their coop. Rain drums against the tarp covering the split logs, a steady percussion that grows louder as the storm settles in. Your boots sink slightly in the softening earth but you don't slow. Beside you, Jessie moves with quick efficient steps, her smaller stride working to match yours.

Water runs down your face and soaks through your shirt collar. You should feel cold but you don't—just the solid certainty of moving toward warmth, toward shelter, toward the place where you belong.

That thought stops you for half a step.

Jessie glances up. "You alright?"

"Fine," you tell her. "Just thinking."

"About what?"

You could tell her the truth. Could say you were thinking about David Sutherland, about Bakersfield, about the life that's supposed to be yours but feels increasingly like something you read in a book once. Could tell her that the certainty you just felt—the bone-deep knowledge that this cabin is home—terrifies you more than anything Martha has done.

Instead you say, "Storm's going to last through afternoon."

Jessie nods, accepting this. "Mama probably has coffee on. She always does when weather turns."

The cabin comes into view through the rain—windows lit warm, smoke rising thin from the chimney despite the downpour. The porch light is on, a yellow glow that cuts through the gray morning. As you approach, the door opens and Martha steps out onto the covered porch, dishtowel in her hands.

"Y'all got it finished?" she calls.

"Third post from creek side," Jessie answers. "Set it just before the rain hit hard."

Martha's expression holds approval. "Good timing. I've got coffee and cornbread if you want to warm up." Her gaze moves to you, steady and measuring. "Maarten, you can hang them tools in the shed after. No sense tracking mud through."

You hear yourself respond before conscious thought catches up. "I will."

Jessie is already climbing the porch steps, shaking water from her jacket. You follow with the post-hole digger over your shoulder, boots heavy on the wooden planks. Martha holds the door open and the warmth from inside rolls out to meet you—woodstove heat and coffee smell and something baking that makes your mouth water.

"Come on in," Martha says quietly. "You've earned your rest."

The threshold is right there. One step and you're inside. One step and the door closes behind you and whatever is left of David Sutherland might not walk back out.

-- Turn 34 --

Action

Cross the threshold and enter the cabin

Outcome

Front porch of Harwell cabin, Harwell property, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 11:00 AM on Thursday, 17-OCT-2024

You step across the threshold.

The warmth hits you first—woodstove heat and the smell of cornbread and coffee, the particular dense comfort of a house lived in and loved. Your boots leave wet prints on the floorboards. Martha closes the door behind you and the sound of rain becomes muffled, distant, something happening to another world.

"Let me take that," Jessie says, reaching for your jacket. Her fingers brush your arm as she helps you out of it, and the gesture is so familiar, so practiced, that you don't think to question it. She hangs it on the peg by the door—your peg, the fourth one from the left—and turns back with that soft smile she's been giving you all morning.

Martha moves to the stove. "Sit down. Coffee's hot and bread's almost ready."

You walk to the table and pull out the chair—your chair, the one facing the window with the view of the oak tree. The wood is smooth under your palms. You've sat here a thousand times. You've watched morning light through these windows, eaten meals at this table, listened to rain on this roof while Martha read scripture aloud and Jessie worked on her quilting.

The memories don't feel false anymore. They don't feel like intrusions. They simply are, solid and complete and yours.

Jessie sits across from you, her damp hair already coming loose from its ponytail. "Storm's really coming down now," she observes, glancing toward the window. "Good thing we got that post set when we did."

"It'll hold," you tell her, and you know this with the same certainty you know your own name.

Your own name.

Maarten Van Dijk.

Born in Amsterdam to a carpenter father and a schoolteacher mother. Learned English at fourteen. Came to America at twenty-three looking for work and found it in these hills. Met Jessie at the general store in town three years back—she was buying seed packets and he was buying nails, and when their eyes met something just settled into place. Married her six months later in the courthouse with Judge Peters presiding. Martha had sewn Jessie's dress herself and your hands had shaken so badly you nearly dropped the ring.

These memories have weight. They have texture. They have the particular vivid specificity of things that actually happened.

Martha sets a mug of coffee in front of you, steam rising in a thin ribbon. "You did good work out there," she says quietly. "Both of you."

"Thank you, Mama," Jessie says.

You wrap your hands around the mug and feel the heat seep into your palms. Outside, the rain continues its steady drumming. Inside, the cabin is warm and close and safe.

You try to remember being someone else. Try to reach for that other life—the one where you were smaller, where you had different hands, a different face, a different name.

David.

The name feels like something you heard once in passing. Like a character from a book you read years ago and have mostly forgotten.

Jessie reaches across the table and touches your hand. "You're quiet. You tired?"

"A little," you hear yourself say.

Her thumb traces across your knuckles, a gesture of casual affection. "We can rest after we eat. Storm's not going anywhere."

Martha brings the cornbread to the table—golden and steaming, butter already melting in the dish beside it. She sits in her chair at the head of the table and bows her head. You and Jessie do the same without thinking.

"Lord, we thank you for this food and for the hands that prepared it," Martha says. "We thank you for the rain that waters the earth and for the work that's been done. Bless this household and all who dwell within it. Amen."

"Amen," you and Jessie echo together.

You pick up your fork. The cornbread is exactly the way you like it—not too sweet, with a good crisp edge.

This is your home. This is your wife. This is your life.

And you cannot remember, anymore, why you ever thought otherwise.

----

The person you were is gone now — not violently, not all at once, but the way a river takes a stone. Slowly. Thoroughly. Without malice.

You know your name. You know this kitchen, this porch, these hills. You know the sound of Martha's footsteps and the way Jessie laughs at nothing. These things are yours. They have always been yours.

Somewhere very far away, like a radio signal losing its tower, something flickers. A face. A road. A name that means nothing.

It fades. You let it.

You are home.

-- Turn 35 --

Action

Eat the meal and settle into the afternoon

Outcome

Kitchen of Harwell cabin, Harwell property, eastern Kentucky hills, United States, North America, at 11:15 AM on Thursday, 17-OCT-2024

----

The cornbread is still warm when you break off a piece, butter soaking into the golden crumb. You eat slowly, savoring the simple perfection of it—the way Martha always gets the texture exactly right, neither too dense nor too cake-like. Rain continues its steady percussion against the windows.

Jessie reaches for the honey jar. "You want some?"

"Please."

She drizzles it over your piece without asking how much, stopping at exactly the right moment. Three years of marriage teaches these small certainties.

Martha refills your coffee. "That fence ought to hold through next spring at least. Ground's stable there, long as the creek don't flood."

"Won't flood," you tell her. "Seep line's a good six feet below where we set it."

She nods, satisfied. "Jessie said you knew right where to place it. Good eye for drainage."

The praise sits comfortable in your chest. You take another bite of cornbread and watch rain streak the window glass, blurring the oak tree into watercolor shapes. The afternoon stretches ahead—no pressing work, nowhere to be. Just the cabin and the storm and the warmth of family.

Jessie stands to clear plates. You rise automatically to help but Martha waves you back down.

"Y'all worked hard enough this morning. I'll handle cleanup."

"You sure, Mama?"

"I'm sure. You two go rest. Storm like this is made for napping."

Jessie glances at you, a question in her eyes. You nod and she smiles, taking your hand as you both move toward the bedroom. The floorboards creak in familiar places—third plank from the door, the spot near the window that always groans under your weight.

The bedroom is dim and cool, rain sounds muffled through closed curtains. Jessie sits on the bed to unlace her boots and you do the same, the ritual comfortable and unthinking. When you stretch out on the quilt, she curls against your side the way she always does, her head finding the hollow of your shoulder.

"Thank you for fixing the fence," she murmurs. "I know you had other things you wanted to do today."

You can't remember what those other things might have been. Can't remember wanting to be anywhere but here.

"It needed doing," you say simply.

Her hand rests on your chest, fingers tracing idle patterns. Outside, thunder rolls distant over the ridgeline. You close your eyes and let the sound of rain carry you down into sleep.

You wake to softer light—the storm passed, afternoon sun breaking through thinning clouds. Jessie still sleeps curled against you, her breathing deep and even. You ease out from beside her carefully, not wanting to wake her, and pad barefoot into the main room.

Martha sits in her chair by the window, mending a shirt. She glances up when you enter. "Sleep well?"

"I did."

"Coffee's still hot if you want it."

You pour yourself a cup and stand at the window, looking out at the dripping woods. The afternoon light slants golden through breaks in the clouds, making the wet leaves shine. Everything smells of rain and fresh earth.

That's when you hear it—the sharp crack of a branch snapping, too loud to be a deer. You set your cup down and move to the door, stepping out onto the porch.

A figure moves through the trees near the property line, visible only in glimpses—someone trying to stay hidden but not succeeding. You watch for a long moment, recognition settling cold in your gut. You know what this is. You've seen it before, even if the memory comes from a different angle now.

Martha appears beside you, silent as always. She follows your gaze to the tree line.

"Someone's on the property," you say quietly.

"I see them." Her voice holds no surprise, only the calm certainty of someone who has walked this path before. "Best go see what they want."

You step off the porch into the wet grass, your body moving with purpose born of muscle memory and something deeper—the knowledge that this land is yours to protect, this family yours to keep safe. The figure sees you coming and freezes, then turns to run.

You're faster.

Your long stride eats the distance between you, boots sure on the slick ground. You catch them at the old stone wall—a young man, maybe twenty-five, with a backpack and wild eyes. He swings at you clumsily and you catch his wrist, holding it immobile with effortless strength.

"You picked the wrong property," you tell him, your voice flat and cold.

Behind you, Martha's footsteps approach through the wet grass.

------

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