Fifty Two Bad Stories

I had always been someone of no importance. I came from a family of 12 other brothers and sisters, and not even our parents could seem to tell us apart. Though I spent all my time living in a hectic crowd, I hated being around other people and savoured any chance of time alone that I could get. When I was old enough, I ran away from that crowded house as quickly as I could—though I wasn’t sure any of them noticed that I left—and moved to a quiet cottage far away from civilization. There, I could have all the alone time that I so desperately needed.

Every morning, I woke up and breathed in the cool air that was mine and mine alone. It was a simple existence—I learned how to grow and hunt my own food so that I rarely needed to go to the nearest town. I survived all by myself, and the sweet silence of solitude made it all worth it. My hair grew long and my fingernails sharp. I was becoming something of a creature of my own creation. There was no need to conform to the standards set by an overpopulated society. I could just be me.

I lived like this for years. I knew everything about the land and every one of its creatures. It was pure bliss. My big family was a far off memory of another time that I harboured no nostalgia for. I was going to town less and less as I grew older and wiser—there wasn’t anything that I couldn’t handle myself. I learned how to mend my clothes and even how to fix the roof after one particularly nasty winter. There was nothing that anyone could do to help me beyond getting in my way. Knowing how great it could be on my own, it was clear to me that I could never go back to that crowded house and burdensome civilization. This was the life that I was always meant to have.

I went on long walks through the feral lands that surrounded my home every day. Listening to the chorus of birds and critters of all sorts always made me feel at peace. They could be very loud at times, but it was nothing compared to the shrill shrieking of children and constant roaring of heavy traffic. Here, I could finally speak and be able to hear my own voice. I liked to greet any creature that I came across on my walks, but never stopped to talk. Like me, they just wanted to be left alone.

I was on one of those walks today. It was a gorgeous spring day and the air was filled with the joyful mating calls of nature. I picked some mushrooms to make with dinner and stumbled upon a small patch of beautiful yellow flowers—some of which I braided into my hair. My heart was full of gratitude for the life I lived and to be apart of this small world. But the clouds were creeping across the sky and I hurried home to beat the rain. By the time I made it back, they sky had gone completely grey and I couldn’t help noticing that the air had gone still and quiet. It was as though all the life of the earth had been drained away.

As I approached my cottage, I noticed a figure standing by the cherry tree out front. I stopped in my tracks—nobody ever came out here. I hid and took a moment to examine him through the brush. There was something strange about him and I wasn’t sure that I could trust him. The pink blossoms fell delicately around him as he stood perfectly still facing my home. He seemed just a foot too tall as well. It gave me such an awful feeling in my stomach and I had this sense that something was very wrong here. Then, when I noticed the rope around his neck, I knew the feeling was correct.

I got up and ran towards him, but he was already gone. His face had turned purple and his body rigid. I had no idea who this man was and where he had even come from. As I cut him down and laid his body in the pink petals that lined the ground. I removed the rope from his neck and through the purple hue of his face, I noticed that he looked somewhat familiar. His face eerily resembled that of my father’s, but much younger. A shiver ran through my whole body.

Was this one of my brothers? But there was something about the face that didn’t fit any of them—though it had been years since I had last seen anyone from my family. I began frantically searching his pockets for any sort of identification. Though I always hated living in that cramped house, I did care for my family and could still mourn their loss. I really hoped that it wasn’t one of them. How had he even been able to find me? And why had he come all this way just to die?

In the inside pocket of his suit, I found his wallet. My hands trembled as I opened it and I sniffed back my tears. There was his ID Card right there when I opened it. My eyes darted away, unwilling to look the dead man in the eyes, but I they slowly returned to the picture when I knew what I had to do. There was not a doubt in my mind that I knew this man and a pang hit me in the chest. Next to the picture was his name. The last name was mine and I could no longer hold back my tears, but I had to keep reading—I had to know.

Through the tears in my eyes, I finally read his first name. My eyes widened and I took in a sharp breath. It couldn’t be. I reread the name over and over again, but it just didn’t make any sense. The tears in my eyes dried as I looked down at the man. I knew him well—possibly more than anyone, and yet he seemed like a complete stranger to me. The dead man laying before me was me. Same name, same date of birth, and even the same eye colour. Though his hair was short and his clothes were new, we were one and the same.

I continued flipping through his wallet. Inside was a recent photo with myself and my parents. We were all smiling, but there was a shadow cast over my eyes. Was this the me that never left? That continued living in that house no matter how much I hated it? I placed my hand on the dead man’s chest and immediately understood his suffering. Why did he stay? He could have had the solitude he had always dreamed of. I wondered if I could have saved him if I had just come back sooner, but he must have been gone before he had even got here.

I set to work on digging the grave under the cherry tree. There was the strangest sense of emptiness in my chest as I dug deeper and deeper. I placed the dead man’s body—my body—in the grave and I whispered a quiet prayer for his soul. Once I finished the burial, I removed the yellow flowers from my hair and placed them on the fresh mound of dirt. I hoped that this me, from whatever world he came from, could finally find peace in the quiet earth. He could rest easy now.

I had been driving for hours when I finally found a light in the darkness that would lead me to a new life. There was no looking back at the past now—at who I was or what I had done, but only the dim lights of the small town on the horizon. I squinted at the words on the welcome sign in the light of the car’s headlights as I went by, but the sign was so old and faded that I couldn’t make out the name of the town. It seemed oddly poetic to me that after leaving who I was behind, I should find myself at a town with no name.

The town seemed a little run down as though its glory days were far behind it—if it even had any to begin with. The paint was flaking off all of the houses and a lot of windows were boarded up. My guess is that it must have been a mining town at one point and was never able to learn to be anything else once the industry died. Now it was only the old, the stubborn, and the lost that remained. The place was on its way to becoming a ghost town, which seemed like just the right fit for me as I started my brand new afterlife.

The only place still open was the bar. It was called Valentine’s and its red neon sign stood above the town like a flickering beacon. I parked my car on the street and headed inside. There was a sad country song playing about a widower gunslinger playing on the jukebox and the handful of patrons seemed just about as sad as they sat at their individual tables. I walked up to the bar and ordered a water. I spent the last of my money on gas and couldn’t afford a beer. The grim bartender narrowed his eyes and shook his head before pouring me a beer anyway.

“You smell like smoke,” he said as he slid the sticky glass in front of me.

It caught me off guard and I tripped over my own tongue before I could tell him that I couldn’t pay for the beer. He didn’t seem to care too much either way and was already two steps away minding his own business. I sniffed my hair and sure enough, it was still laced with the remnants of smoke. The smell made my stomach tighten and I took a long sip of the bitter beer to numb the feeling. Next thing I knew, the glass was empty and my mind was fogging over. It felt good to let myself slip away.

The bartender left me alone most of the night, but would occasionally pour another beer in my glass whenever he saw fit. He never once asked me about money or really even spoke to me at all. It was nice not being forced into conversation because I had yet to think up a new backstory for myself, and I could just be yet another stranger in the bar. As my mind became more and more foggy, I could feel my cheeks starting to warm up and a smile creep across my lips. I was now a nobody. What happened before happened to someone else. I was free.

“Sun’s coming up,” the bartender pulled my glass away. “‘Bout time to head home.”

I looked over at the frosted glass window on the front door to of the bar and noticed a slight pale blue light shining through. I looked around and there was no-one else in the bar. How long had I been in here? I furrowed my brow and scrunched my lips in a dramatic display of confusion that could only be fuelled by too much alcohol. The music had been shut off and the bartender was already busy counting up the till. I wasn’t sure where else I could go. I certainly couldn’t drive, but it seemed so embarrassing to sleep in the car parked directly outside of the bar where I had just spent the whole night drinking.

“I don’t have one,” I tried to sound serious, but there was still a slur to my voice.

The bartender sighed and looked me over. I had been on the road for a few days, stopping here and there, but without the money to pay for a room, I had mainly been sleeping in my car by the side of the highway and washing my hair in the sink of a gas station bathroom. I was a mess, and that was even without mentioning the bruises on my neck. I turned my face away and felt that awful anxious feeling rising inside me. I was disgusting and a poor excuse for a woman, a voiced echoed in my mind, and now I was truly a monster.

“That car out front yours?” he broke the silence that was slowly beginning to smother the room.

“Yes.” I still couldn’t look at him.

“I’d get rid of it if I were you. Man was murdered a few counties over—the house was even burned to hide evidence. Awful stuff. Anyway, the suspect is said to be driving a car that looks just like that one. So I’d get rid of it if you don’t want pigs breathing down your neck.”

I looked back towards him—suddenly feeling very sober.

“Or at least change the plates,” he added.

“Yeah. Awful,” I slowly rose from my seat and began backing away towards the door. “Maybe I should…”

As I turned to leave, he called out to me once more. I ignored him and reached for the door.

“There’s a cot out back if you need someplace to sleep,” he spoke up a little louder and my hand paused on the door.

“And I could always use another hand ‘round the bar if you’re ever looking to pay back your tab,” he smirked.

I turned to look back at him and studied his expression. He shrugged his shoulders. It made no difference to him. My knees were shaking as I began walking back towards the bar. I wasn’t sure what to say. My lip was starting to quiver and my eyes were starting to burn with tears. His smile faded and he let out a long breath.

“My Old Man,” he stammered. “He did really bad stuff to my Ma.”

One tear fell from his eye, sending a crack down his cool expression. He furrowed his brow and seemed to shake a thought from his mind before looking back at me completely serious.

“You’ll be safe here.”

One of my earliest memories was the day my Father sent me away. I could still see the tears in his eyes so clearly and feel the sounds of chaos in my ears. While everyone was running around the town screaming; he took me to a quiet corner, handed me a bag of whatever few provisions that he could scramble together along with the coat off his back, and told me to run deep into the woods until I could no longer hear the noise of the town. I was so young and scared, I hesitated before taking my first step, but as we heard the loud boot steps of someone coming towards us, he gave me a hard shove past the tree line. He started shouting at whoever was coming as I ran into the cover of the forest. His voice was abruptly cut short, but I kept on running. That was the last time that I ever saw my Father.

As I was told, I ran deeper and deeper into woods and away from my home. The noise grew louder before it went quiet. There was more screaming and occasionally I would hear a clap of thunder—though the sky was clear. I didn’t realize I was crying at first until my vision clouded up and I could hardly see the tree trunks just ahead of me, but I kept on running as fast and as far as I could. Though I had still yet to realize what was going on, I knew that it could very bad for me if I were caught. It was as though all of the monsters of my nightmares had been reified and were chasing me down. I couldn’t stop until I was safe—until I found silence.

As the voices faded and the thunder stopped rumbling, I allowed my feet to slow. I was deeper into the woods than I had ever been before. It was then that I truly met silence for the first time. There was the delicate rustle of the breeze blowing through the leaves and the creaking of branches, but there was an unmistakeable sensation of absence. The world I had once known was taking its last breaths. I was all alone now, with only the silence to keep me company. The two of us would walk side by side for a very long time.

Seasons passed and I taught myself how grow up on my own. Eventually, I found my way to the other side of the woods and stepped into a world that smelled of smoke. There was not another living soul in sight or even any small creatures wriggling on the ground. I was standing in what once could have been a small village, but all that was left of the homes were their foundations. I asked the silence what had happened to everyone that lived here, but it did not answer—it never did. There was nothing useful left to take amongst the stone and ash, so I continued on my way.

Since having to leave my home so long ago, I had hoped to find another town to settle in, but time and time again, I was only finding the rubble of where towns once stood. Occasionally, I would find a still standing roof that could provide shelter for a night or two, but it would never be a place that I called home. I wondered if my own home town was gone now too, but it had been so long, I wasn’t sure that I knew the way back to find out.

In one of those nights beneath the decaying roof of an abandoned house, I thought back to my Father and wondered what had happened to him after that day. Part of me liked to hold onto the hope that he was still out there looking for me, but after so many years without seeing another living thing, I wasn’t so sure anymore. As I huddled next to the small fire that I had made in the damp hearth, I started to cry. The silence would not console me that night.

The next morning, I awoke in a crumpled ball beside the hearth that had since burnt out. There was a slight chill coming in through the broken windows that signalled the creeping approach of winter. Though there was no avoiding the march of time, I could still feel a knot tighten in my stomach at the thought of it. Winter was always the worst and I still considered it luck that I was able to survive each winter of my life. Hopefully, I would be lucky again this year. I fished through the old bag my Father had given me on the day I left and pulled out his heavy wool coat. It was nearly in tatters now, but it was finally beginning to fit.

As I gathered my things and made my way towards door-less frame, I noticed scratches in the wood floor. They were in long jagged rows as though someone had been dragged outside. I ran my fingers along the lines and felt the years of dirt and grime. Whoever had left these marks, they were long gone by now. Silence lingered in that empty house before I let out a deep sigh. I stepped outside and looked out over the barren grey world to decided which way to go next, but it was beginning to feel as though all roads lead to nowhere.

Winter charged towards me like a great white beast. The snow was unending and as it grew higher, it became that much harder to push myself forward. The silence thrived in the winter and the only thing that I could hear was the laboured sound of my breathing. My Father’s coat could only do so much to keep out the cold. The wind found every single hole in the wool and plunged in sharp coldness into my body. I hadn’t been able to find any food for a few days because everything had been buried beneath layer after layer of snow. I had accepted the inevitability of death long ago, but I still kept fighting year after year. Though I was now beginning to wonder if my luck had run out.

I was growing very tired when I noticed something strange in the air. There was a tickle in my ear and I looked around to realize that the silence was gone. It was a voice travelling on the wind. It had been so long since I had last heard a voice that wasn’t my own and despite my exhaustion, I couldn’t help running towards it. There was an undamaged cottage on top of a nearby hill with a warm glow in its windows. I pushed myself harder than I could take to get up that hill, but I couldn’t stop now.

By the time I reached the door, I was crawling on my hands and knees. The voice was clearer and I could now hear that it was the voice of a woman singing. With my numb fingers, I pushed open the door and felt a burst of heat coming from the fireplace inside. I tried to speak to whoever was signing, but I could no longer move my jaw. I was nearly too weak to move, but I was able to pull myself towards the fire. As I leaned myself up against the stone of the fireplace, I noticed a record playing on a nearby table. It had been so long since I had seen one of those things. There was no-one here after all, but at least the music was nice.

I was getting so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open. I tried to keep myself awake, but my body was weak and needed rest. I sat and listened to the woman singing and it reminded me of better days from long ago. I remembered sitting by the fire with my Father and listening to records on stormy nights so that I wouldn’t be afraid. I still found it comforting now. As the needle reached the end of the record, I felt my head drop and my eyes fall shut. Outside, I could hear footsteps approaching the door that I had left open, but by the time they stepped inside, I was already gone.

The rain had been keeping me locked inside for days. The world outside my bedroom window was grey and caked in mud, and with each day, it was feeling more and more as though the sun had just abandoned me. The power had gone out a couple of days ago and had yet to be fixed. The cold was beginning to seep in through the windows. Waking up to a dull darkness every morning had begun to eat away at my energy and soon enough, I was spending most of days stuck in bed and waiting it all to end. Whatever it may be.

No matter how much I slept, I was always exhausted. As I laid in my bed, my mind would shift between sleeping and waking that I wouldn’t even notice. Eventually, the two states melded together until I could no longer tell what was real and what was the fantasy of a very mundane dream. Whether I was asleep or not, the tapping of rain on my window was constant and poked its way into any form of consciousness. Sometimes, it was loud and nagging; while other times, it was comforting like a friendly knock on the door. Whatever personality the rain had that day, it would not allow me peace and quiet no matter what.

As days went by and the rain was still not showing any sign of stopping, I could no longer bring myself to look out the window. All that I could do was stare up at the dark bulb in the ceiling light and wait for it to turn back on. My body was slowly melting into my mattress and I had become so weak that I could no longer roll over. I lost track of the last time that I had eaten, but I could smell the food rotting in the fridge. There were times where I would open my eyes to discover that the light was back on and I had to energy to get up again, but sure enough it would just be another dream. It made me want to cry, but there were no tears left inside of me.

I lost track of the days and weeks. I began to feel as though the whole house had been submerged in water and I had only so much oxygen left. In one of my dreams, a crack formed in me bedroom window and water began pouring in. I felt like I was Alice in Wonderland and couldn’t stop laughing at the absurdity of this life. When I woke to my usual dry bed, I couldn’t tell if I was disappointed or relieved. I still wished the rain would go away, but part of me wished to be washed away along with it.

I had become one with everything: my bed, the rain, the darkness. Whoever I was had long since faded away. I could no longer feel the pains of hunger or the constant exhaustion—it was all just little drops of water on my window. My mind emptied and I realized that I was calm. There was no breath in my lungs or blood in my veins, but instead the creeping cold of flowing water. I could let go at any moment and let myself be taken by the current. I could let it all end if I wanted to.

Almost abruptly, I could feel warmth on my eyelids. As I opened them, I saw a bright light up above me. I thought it was the sun at first, but as my old familiar bedroom came into focus, I realized that it was the ceiling light. There was no longer any tapping on the window and everything was eerily still. It had finally come to an end, but I still found myself unable to move out of my bed. All of the pain was slowly creeping back into my skin and I realized that I really did miss the rain. I looked up at the shining lightbulb and cursed its warmth. Then, I breathed out all the air in my lungs and let my eyes fall shut for the last time.

“Wakey wakey!”

A voice rattled in my ears as the blurred reality came into focus. At first, everything was grey, but the haze soon gave way to sharp stripes of white and black. I squinted at the unfamiliar surroundings and wondered if I was still dreaming. Slowly, I could feel sensation of the cold floor beneath me creeping into my skin and then the ache of bruises that hadn’t been there before. It all felt too real to be a dream, but if this was really happening, where was I? I lifted my head off the ground to look around and noticed a pair of legs standing next to me.

“Good morning, Peaches,” the voice spoke again.

Morning? Was it really morning? There were no windows that I could see and the only light was coming from the fake warmth of the flickering bulb. I tried to lift myself off the ground, but as I began to move my arms and legs, a sharp pain reverberated through my body and out my mouth in the form of a yelp. The legs did nothing to help me—in fact, they gently rocked back and forth as though my pain was funny to them. I tried to lift my head a little more to see the rest of my captor’s body, but at that moment, their boot came swinging towards my head and pinned it against the ground.

“Easy there,” the voice chuckled. “we wouldn’t want to hurt ourselves.”

Another yelp escaped my lips as I felt the side of my face press into the floor. There was no way this was actually happening. My vision was going blurry again as tears filled my eyes, but I did my best to keep my focus on the striped walls. The vivid lines flooded my attention and for a moment, there was no pain. My mind emptied and ignored everything else. But then the boot twisted and I felt a slight ripping sensation in my ear that brought me back down into my body. Everything was so painfully real.

I opened my mouth to speak, but the pressure on my face made it impossible to move my lips. I wanted to ask where I was, why I was here, who they were, and why they were doing this to me, but everything gurgled out of my mouth along with some red-tinted saliva. The boot then released itself from its hold on my head and rested on the ground beside me. I tried to speak again, but the tears that filled my eyes were now clawing at my throat. My captor squatted down beside me and wiped the spit from my chin.

“Sorry peaches, you’re going to have to speak up.”

“Peaches?” I spat.

My Mother used to call me Peaches. Everyone thought it was so cute, but I hated it. She only used it when she was talking down to me and her smile was always crooked when the word left her lips. Even though I was just a child, she always had to make it clear that she was superior to me. I wasn’t sure why she chose the name, but I later learned that she had a dog named Peaches that died when she was young. I hadn’t talked to my Mother in years, but every now and then, a member of the family would call me by that name thinking it was a joke and it would leave a terrible ache in my chest.

My captor let out a laugh. A chill ran up my spine as I realized that I recognized the voice, but I couldn’t place it. My head was ringing in pain and even the stripes on the wall seemed to wobble. Though my captor was now squatting down right beside me, I still couldn’t lift my head to see their face. Some unseen force was pulling my chest deeper into the floor and I was certain that I would eventually be swallowed up, but I did my best to speak again.

“Who are you?” my voice rasped.

The voice let out another laugh. “Oh Peaches, you never really were that bright.”

They reached out towards me and pinched my cheek. I was once again reminded of my Mother, but the voice wasn’t quite her’s. The hand was cold on my skin and the pain was sharp. Then, for just a moment, the fingers seemed to pass right through me—as though they were never there at all, but it was just my body starting to go numb. The distinct white and black was turning back into grey, and I felt myself beginning to slip away. I could no longer feel the cold floor or the aching bruises—only the pain in my head remained. I was becoming nothing.

“Nothing,” the voice chimed in. “that’s exactly what you are.”

The room slowly began to spin and I realized that I was being turned over. As I rolled over onto my back, the light of the flickering lightbulb pierced into my eyes and out the back of my skull. I winced in pain, but the light was quickly overshadowed by the silhouette of my captor. I could just make out the faintest outline of their face, but my mind couldn’t make sense of the details. My head was pounding in agony and for a moment, it was as though I were looking down at myself and I hated what I saw.

“You are nothing, Peaches, just like Mommy used to say.”

The pain worsened as the last of me began to fade away. I found myself begging for the embrace of nothing, just so that it would all stop. In those last few moments, the face above me came into focus. It was smiling that awful crooked smile of my Mother, but the face was entirely my own. The pain never stopped and the nothing never came. I was completely alone with who I was and what I had become.

It never stopped raining. I hated the rain and always had, though I could no longer remember why. I often used it as an excuse to lock myself from the big grey world—I would tell myself to wait until a sunny day, but sure enough the next day would only bring more rain. And so I began collecting dust as I sat at the kitchen table watching the rest of the world fade away from me. The phone stopped ringing and the food all turned to crumbs. If only the sky would clear and I could have just one sunny day, then I could fix everything, but the greyness in my heart was only growing.

From the kitchen window, I could watch the whole world pass by. There was a busy street below my building the flowed like a river of people and cars. Did they know where they were going, or were they just letting the stream carry them to the ocean? I hated crowds and I didn’t like the idea of being swept up in the rapids just for leaving my front door. And with all the rain we were having, the roads were all flooded—making the river slightly less metaphorical. All of those people out there living their lives despite such awful conditions while I hid away in my solitary cave. I didn’t know how they could be so strong or how I had become so weak.

There was one source of warmth in this cruel cold world. On the other side of the raging river, there was a small cafe. Its design was something out of a fairy tale and there were always freshly made cakes in the window. It had opened a couple of months ago, but I had yet to go. Still, I watched the place every day from my kitchen window and fantasized about stepping through the door. I never considered myself to be the cafe type, but this one was special because every morning, a certain girl would unlock its doors and get to work arranging the cakes in the window.

I didn’t know her name, or what her face looked like up close, but there was something about her that just made the raging of the river calm. I loved the way that she walked so effortlessly and with the slightest bounce in her step as though there was always music in her mind. Every day was sunny to her and she had never even heard of the colour grey. I envied her endlessly—she was free. I wanted to talk to her and see her smile, but the other side of out rain soaked street was wider than the earth itself.

As I sat at my kitchen table that morning and sipped the last few drops off coffee from my last few grounds, I watched her approach the cafe as usual. The street was still relatively calm at this time of day and she didn’t need to fight her way up stream. As she dug out the key from her pocket, something must have grabbed her attention and she looked up. For just the briefest moment, we made eye contact and I felt a break in the grey cloud of my chest. Maybe she was the sun that I was looking for after all.

I looked down at my empty coffee cup knowing that I would need to get more soon. The cafe didn’t open for another hour, but by then it would be close to rush hour and I would have cross the unforgiving river. I stood up from my place at the table and paced around my kitchen. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad and the rain wasn’t even that heavy today. But I couldn’t deny that I was scared. I continued pacing back and forth until the clock on the oven read 8:00 and the open sign of the cafe was lit. It was time. I slipped on my shoes for the first time in forever, and stepped out my door.

The crowd wasn’t really that bad and there weren’t many cars on the street. The giant river was nothing more than a babbling brook. It didn’t take long to find an opening to cross and next thing that I knew, I was standing on the other side of the road. The fairy tale cafe was just within reach now, and so was the sun. As I went to open the door, a noticed a sign taped to the window that I hadn’t been able to read from my upstairs window: Help Wanted.

I stepped inside and there she was behind the counter greeting me with a smile. All at once, the clouds in my chest disbursed and I felt the warm glow of the sun. The air smelled of coffee and cake. It felt so good to be out of my bubble. She asked me if I was ready to order something, but I couldn’t seem to get the words to form correctly in my mind. I was happy and it finally felt like the future was bright. She asked me again with another smile and the words inside me began arranging themselves. I smiled back at her and let the world fall from my lips:

“Hi, I’m here about the job.”

I could still see my Mother’s face in my dreams. It was her amber coloured eyes that always stood out to me; they were so warm even as everything else about her began to change. I remembered the tears that fell from them on the day she was forced to leave and it would always be at that moment that I would wake up from my dream. I couldn’t stand seeing her cry like that. Even though I was just a child then, I still carried all the guilt of not being able to save her and every morning I would awaken with my heart broken all over again.

It was the same on this particular morning, as well. My eyes fluttered open to see my hand reaching out to nothing but the bare ceiling above me. I was alone with nothing but the cold damp air of early spring to greet me. I could feel the unfriendly wind seeping in through the cracks in the stone walls. I wrapped my bedquilt tight against my chin, but nothing could keep out the cold of this town. Outside, I could hear the bell-chime signalling me to get out of bed, but even though winter was now barely over, I still found the process so difficult.

When I was finally able to get up and dressed, I made my way out the kitchen door and felt the full hatred of the cold air. The family I worked for were kind enough to allow no-essential servants the day off on Sundays, but I always found the sky to be greyest of Sundays. It was too cold of a day to practice my drawing in the park, but I just needed to be out of the house after a long week beneath the stairs. At least a walk would do me some good. I buttoned up my coat and headed towards the road.

The sound of my footsteps on the cobblestone echoed down the empty road. The air was oddly still for a Sunday. The town was usually bustling with people enjoying their day off, but today there was no-one else in sight. I wondered if that meant another showing signs of the curse had been discovered. The days where those poor souls were dragged to the edge of town and shunned to the woods were always treated as a day of mourning. They were likely to die out there on their own, but they were losing their humanity—letting them stay was too great a risk.

I realized that I had stopped walking as my mind drifted off to darker days. I did my best not to remember the day my Mother was shunned, but no matter how hard I tried to force it down, the images were always clawing away at the back of my mind. At the time, I was still too young to understand the changes as they began to consume her. I never once saw her as a cursed monster because she was always just my Mother. Even through the long fangs, her smile was always warm to me. As her amber eyes began to sharpen, they always kept their loving gaze. I now know why she was forced to leave, but understanding could never heal the holes in my heart.

The family I worked for were well off enough to afford private tutors for their children and allowed me to sit in on some of the lessons when I was still young. Though the curse was common knowledge to everyone in town, I was able to learn a little about what happens if someone is allowed it stay after becoming a monster and that my Mother likely would have ripped my flesh into ribbons without mercy. There was no cure and eventually she would have ceased to be my Mother, but I liked to think that she would have been able to overcome it. I picked up my feet and continued on down the road knowing that I would never really know for sure.

It was said that we all had the curse in our blood—that our ancestors made deals with devils and that we were still paying the price for until this very day. I’ve thought about this a lot. One day, the curse would take all of us and we would eventually all be monsters. The thought of becoming a monster scared me, but somewhere down the line, I realized that it was useless to fight against what you are. If we were all monsters deep down, what was the point of shunning those who had already turned? No matter what she was, I loved my Mother and I was certain that she had felt that way for me.

Somewhere on the grey wind, I could hear the sound of a woman screaming. My chest began to ache in knowing that it was likely another shunning taking place. I hated the sound of the desperate screams to be saved from what was sure to be their death. I raised my hands to cover my ears, when I heard the sound of another voice screaming. Then came more from all directions through the town. Desperation was everywhere now. Not too far a head of me, a young woman came running out into the cross roads. She tripped and fell forward, but before I could do anything to help her, something was upon her.

A dark winged creature came swooping in from overhead and down onto the young woman. She screamed as its jagged maw widened and then the sound stopped with an awful crunch of blood and bone. I took a step back and looked up to see more dark shapes flying in the grey skies overhead—monsters. The sounds of distant shrieks grew louder and the cold air began to smell of rust. None of them died out there in the woods—they were just waiting.

The creature looked up at me and a piece of torn flesh slipped out of its mouth on a long string of red drool. Though it was definitely a monster, there was something oddly still human about it. There was a poisonous hatred in its eyes that could only be festered out of betrayal. With its long claws, it began crawling across the stone towards me. I took another step back before the thing leapt up into the air and flew towards me. I screamed and began to run, but as I turned, there was another creature behind me. This was it, wasn’t it? This was how I was going to die?

I closed my eyes just as the flying creature was about to descend onto me. I waited to die, but death never came. I heard a loud thump of flesh crumpling against the stone and an inhuman whine of pain. I opened my eyes again to see the creature laying in pool of blood before me, and the other creature standing above it. I tried to crawl away, but I couldn’t stop myself from sobbing. The other creature looked up at me and I immediately threw my arm up in a pathetic attempt to shield myself. A claw brushed itself against my palm and then its long fingers wrapped themselves in mine.

Its skin was warm and soft. The creature raised its other hand and carefully wiped a tear from my cheek. My whole body was still trembling with fear, but as I looked up at the cursed monster, I felt my fear begin to fade. It looked down at me with a pair of warm amber eyes that I had been dreaming of since I was a child. The sharp fangs smiled down at me and I started to cry again. The creature pulled me in and held me close. I think that it was crying as well. She was still in there, and she still loved me.

The world was cold and dark. I stood in a seemingly endless wine-coloured hall without any recollection of how I had gotten there. The air around me felt heavy and sharp as though a spiked wall were closing in on me. I was completely aware of who I was and what I was feeling, but lacked the understanding to put the pieces together. It was only as a brief ripple traveled through me that I was able to feel the warmth of the mattress beneath me and realize that it was all a dream. The end of the hall seemed to stretch even farther away from me and my feet began taking their careful steps towards it. I was not in control and I had no choice but let the dream lead me to where it wanted me to go.

To the left of me was a long parade of ashen glass windows breaking up the delicate symmetry of the hall. They were adorned with cast-iron black bars, but they stood guard on the interior side of the window. The bars shined in a way unlike the usual dull black metal, and even showed a hint of dark iridescence on their scales. It was then that the metal bars began to writhe and slither away from their position at the window. The snakes took their position before me on the stained carpet and escorted me down the hall towards my unknown destination.

After what felt like a thousand steps, the hall no longer seemed so endless and the window snakes hissed to signal that we were getting closer. Despite how close I was coming, I could never make out what was at the end of the hall. All that I could see was a creeping darkness slowly eating away at my vision and sure enough, it wasn’t long before I was devoured as well. For a brief moment, I was exposed to a silence unlike anything I had experienced before until a soft glow filled my vision and the sound of a rattled breath in my ears.

I was now in an oddly angular room whose tall vaulted ceilings were lit by the flicker of a flame I couldn’t see. The warm air smelled sweet and I looked down to see a garden of blue roses at my feet. There was a sort of eerie beauty to their unnatural colour and I couldn’t resist the urge to reach down and pluck one from the ground. Just before my fingertips reached the softness of the petals, I noticed many thin white threads growing from the palm of my hand and towards the rose. I tried to pull my hand away, but the roots had already latched onto flower and began turning the pedals black. As the rose wilted, the white roots were already moving onto the rest of the garden. It wasn’t long before the beautiful scene had been completely smothered beneath the fungal cloud of death.

“And they say I’m careless with life and death,” a voice chuckled.

I looked up to see a man sitting on an ornate chair in the centre of the room. I hadn’t noticed him there before, but he seemed to have had his focus on me the entire time. As I stepped through the itchy white softness towards him, I did my best to examine his features, but my mind just couldn’t seem to make sense of it. In fact, it was as though the man had no face at all—just a paper thin layer of skin that was stretched taught over what might have once been the outline of a face.

As though he could sense my confusion, he leaned in closer towards me and titled his head at all kind of angles to give me a better look at his faceless face.

“Who are you?” I stammered.

“Who?” replied the face without a mouth. “Usually people call me What.”

I watched for a sign of movement of lips as he spoke, but the surface of his face remained flat. “What…” my throat seemed to close even tighter. “…are you?”

A chuckle once again echoed around the room and for just a moment, I was certain that I could see teeth scraping at the inside of his skin.

“If I told,” he leaned in closer. “I would have to kill you.”

He reached towards me and brushed a long finger against my cheek. His touch was as cold and as smooth as a stone at the bottom of a river. Even though I could not see it, I could feel him smiling at me. A shiver rippled through my whole body and I took an involuntary step back. He leaned back as well and rested his square shoulders against the chair. His whole body stiffened and he crossed his arms over his chest. It was no longer the time for jokes.

“Lucky for you, I’m at least able to show some restraint,” he shrugged. “And as it so happens, I’m far too busy this evening. In fact…”

His head perked up and shifted around as though he were looking for something.

“Can you hear that?”

I couldn’t at first, but as I closed my eyes to focus, I could hear a far off sound of ringing. I opened my eyes to find myself laying in bed. The sound was the telephone ringing and it was much louder now. I could no longer feel the warm comfort of my bed, but instead that awful chill still rippling through my body. I rose to my trembling feet and made my way towards the phone. As I picked up the receiver, for a moment I thought I could hear laughter on the other end before the sound turned to crying.

“It’s Grandma,” the voice choked and I realized it was my sister. “Somehow she got in the night… They found here at the bottom of the river.”

My sister’s words were incomprehensible after that. I felt my legs give out and I just sat there on the floor listening to her cry. I didn’t know what to say until I felt a tear run down my cheek. As I went to brush it away, my hand stopped against my skin. On my cheek was a distinctly cold spot, just about the size of a finger print.

It was finally a bright and clear morning after days of oppressive rain. The local children, who had spent all that time cooped up in their homes, were already out playing in the sun by the time I stepped out to head to the Town Hall that morning—they just couldn’t wait a single moment longer. I let out a sigh as I fiddled with the buttons of my stiff dress and remembered those same carefree days of my childhood. A smile crept up on my face when I thought of all the pretty white dresses that my Mother refused to let me wear because I would always get them dirty while on my many adventures. I really did miss those days.

As was usually the case, I was the first to arrive at Town Hall. The Mayor was practically a ghost to this town, and more often than not, I had to cover all of his duties. I unlocked the big wooden door of the Town Hall and headed inside. It wasn’t that much of an extravagant building: there was only the one big room separated into a waiting area, and the office area where the Mayor and I had our desks. My desk faced the front door where I was to always greet villagers with a smile and address any of their concerns. With the Mayor’s desk behind me usually empty, I often felt more like the village babysitter than his assistant.

I switched on the lamp at my desk and checked for any messages, then I grabbed the broom to sweep the front steps outside. All of the mud from the rain had dried into dirt and now it needed to be cleaned. Off in the distance, I could hear the echoes of laughter from the children. I thought of my Mother always having to clean up after me growing up. I wondered if she would be proud of me now—always seeming to be cleaning up one mess after the other. There just wasn’t time for me to be messy anymore.

I didn’t notice the laughing stop or the air get quiet. I was so focused on cleaning up the dirt and everything that I had to get done that day was cycling endlessly through my mind. It was just as I was about to turn and head back inside, when I heard one of the children scream. Soon afterwords, there was the sound of heavy little footsteps sprinting down the road. I set my broom against the brick wall of the Town Hall and stepped onto the road to see what was going on to see a group of children running down the road towards me.

“What have you done this time?” I asked as I stood in front of them crossing my arms.

The children came to a stop and attempted to catch their breaths.

“We found something weird,” one child said between gasps.

“Out in the swamp!” another child added.

I furrowed my brow.

“You should not be playing out in the swamp. It’s not safe for children out there,” I scolded them while remembering my many adventures of my own out in the swamp as a child.

“But… but…”

I leaned down to look at them with narrow eyes. The children were definitely shaken, but there was something more to their expressions. Behind the fear in their eyes, was just the tiniest glimmer of excitement. They really had found something out there in the swamp. I remembered the stories that used to be passed around about the swamp when I was young and how there was supposed to be a monster living there, but the grownups decided to stop telling that story once a child drowned out there. When I was a child, I had always hoped that I would see it someday, but as I grew older I assumed that it was just a story and stopped thinking about it. Now, I had almost entirely forgotten about it until that moment.

“Okay then,” I sighed. “Let’s see what you found.”

The children gasped and looked up at me with eyes wide. They hesitated.

“Go on!” I waved my hand.

The children took off running towards the swamp, but quickly slowed their pace when they remembered that they had a grownup in their midst. They led me through the secret paths that I used to know so well and the muddy soil of the swamp. I picked up the skirt of my dress so that it would not get dirty, but my boots were already ruined. I tried not to think about how badly I was going to smell for the rest of the day. It was a wonder that my Mother even let me play out her—though I wasn’t sure if I had ever actually asked.

They led me around the deep areas towards the to where the water formed a pond. In its centre was what appeared to be a massive covered boulder. I didn’t remember there being a boulder here, but it had also been so long since I had ventured so deep into the swamp. I scanned the area for any signs of monsters, but other than that boulder, it was just the same old swamp. I looked down at the children with a skeptical frown on my face. They still seemed quite frightened despite there being no monster.

“Well?” I cocked my head.

“It was moving earlier,” one of the children stammered.

“What? The rock?” I scoffed.

“Yeah. Up and down. Like it were breathing”

I looked back up at the quiet boulder. The murky waters of the pond seemed perfectly still around it. There didn’t seem to be anything strange about it, but something must have spooked the children. I tried to fight the adult side of my brain and think about what child me would do in this situation. I let go of the skirt of my dress felt my fingers through the mud until I found a nice stone that fit comfortably in the palm of my hand. I smiled and curled my fingers around it. Taking aim, I lobbed the stone at the boulder and watched it bounce off and into the water.

Nothing. As the ripples in the water faded, I let out a sigh and once more looked back at the children. I was quite disappointed, but I had to put my adult face back on. The children still had their eyes fixed onto the boulder and weren’t moving. Then, their eyes began to widen and as I opened my mouth to ask them what was wrong, a loud roar came storming into my eardrums. I spun around to see a massive dripping creature standing where the boulder had been. It was coated in the green and brown slime of the swamp making it difficult figure out its exact shape, but on its face were two sunken black eyes and a gaping mouth.

The children all ran away screaming—leaving me on my own to face the Monster. My whole body was shaking and I couldn’t seem to force my legs to move. The Monster roared at me again and I could smell the horrid stench of its hot breath in the air. My heart raced quicker and quicker, and my lungs felt as though they were going to explode. Then I realized something, I wasn’t afraid. In fact, I was the most excited I had ever been. I had been waiting for this moment for my entire life. I laughed the Monster right in its face and reached down to grab another stone.

I grew up in a world of light. I ran barefoot in open fields and never even knew what it meant to be afraid. The community that I was raised in was one of happy faces and brotherly love. It felt as though we were all part of one big family and that I was a child that belonged to all of them. There was no darkness in those days because the word of our Father fought the darkness away. He was our Faith and our Leader—the one that made everything possible. But the darkness would not be kept away forever and one day our Father left us to fight alone.

The day existed as a blur in my memory. I remembered sitting with my parents in the main hall as we all ate breakfast together. The hall was usually buzzing with chatter during meals, but that morning everyone was silent. I didn’t like the silence and I made faces at my parents in the hope of getting them to laugh, but only my mother smiled weakly. Then came the sound of a commotion outside and a man came running into the hall. Everyone looked at him expectantly, some even standing to see him better as the man began to speak:

“We found him,” his voice echoed over the quiet room.

Murmurs began to spread and my parents shared a look of relief on their faces, but then the man started to cry. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground like an old doll. The room fell silent again as everyone listened to the man weep. I had never seen an adult cry before and I could tell that something was very wrong. I looked to my parents and my mother was holding back tears as my father squeezed her hand. I wanted everything to stop so that we could go back to smiling again, but I felt that if I were to say something now, I would get in trouble for breaking the silence.

“The bridge…” the crying man uttered between gasps for air. “He’s gone.”

Then it was chaos. My memories of this day became a hazy black scribble on a clean piece of paper after that moment. I remembered the sound of screaming, but none of the words. I remembered the sky being overcast, but not what happened to the body. All at once I discovered a darkness that had never existed to me before. As a child, I wasn’t even fully aware of what death meant or what it meant if someone took their life. My whole upbringing was based around the reality that the Father was the reason for our existence—that his life meant our lives, but then he was gone.

The next thing that I was able to remember was seeing several members of the community standing out in the fields and looking up at the sky. This could have been the same day, or even was week later. I wasn’t sure what they were doing or what they were waiting for, but a lot of those people ended up leaving shortly after—whatever they were waiting for, it never came. We no longer ate our meals in the main hall, but scrounged up what we could and ate in our own homes. I never saw any of my friends after that, and the community that has raised me no longer knew what to do with one another.

My parents talked about some of the others going to visit the bridge, but they tried to avoid doing so in front of me. I knew that the bridge was the only way in and out of the community, so I assumed that when someone didn’t come back, they had just decided to leave. Though I began to notice the river that the bridge crossed over began to smell and we were no longer allowed to drink the water. My mother was one of those who eventually decided to visit the bridge. I asked my father when she would be coming back for us, but his only answer was that he was sure we would see her again someday.

Though many left the community after the Father’s passing, my own father decided to stay. Though the main hall eventually fell into ruin, the people began opening their doors again. We would often have people over and talk about the good times, but not one of them would mention the Father. Even the river began to clear up and we were able to drink the water again. I made new friends and we played out in the fields together, but I felt strange going outside without my shoes. Those early years of my childhood began to feel like a dream that I had long since woken from, but part of me would always be afraid to go near that bridge.

Some years later, when I was older and just the slightest bit rebellious, I snuck into the old main hall and into that nearly forgotten dream while my father was tending to his garden. There were still bowls on the tables from when we had breakfast that morning. In fact, there were so many tables there that it was hard to imagine a time that there were so many people living in our community. At the front of the long empty room, there was a dusty picture that hung on the wall. It was bigger than a window and seemed to watch over all of the tables. Behind all the dust was the face of a man, old and withered, but still smiling. I could tell that he must have been someone important to us, but I couldn’t recognize him at all.

My Mother was very young when she gave birth to me. When I grew older, and did the math in my mind, I realized that she was almost too young. She was practically a child herself and when I was just a baby, my Grandmother had raised us both. There was never a Father in my life—only these women and their secrets. Though despite being raised by my Grandmother for the first few years of my life, I had no memories of her. I wasn’t even sure of her name. My Mother never talked about why she moved us out of the home we both grew up in, but she never looked back.

The childhood that I did remember was spent in a one bedroom apartment in a rust-coloured building. My Mother worked several jobs and the only time that I was every really able to spend time with her was when she would crawl into bed exhausted in the middle of the night. She would kiss me on the head as I pretended to be asleep and then I would listen to the sound of her breathing until it slowed. Sometimes I would cry after she fell asleep because there was so much that I wanted to talk to her about, but I was afraid that she would get mad at me if I woke her. This was my life with her until eventually I grew too big for us to share the bed comfortably anymore. Then she started sleeping on the couch.

As my friends at school became more interested in dating and parties, I found myself wanting to spend more time at home. I had no urge to be rebellious. I could have dated any boy, girl, or whoever I wanted and gotten away with it. I could have even come home stumbling drunk on a school night, and my Mother wouldn’t have known. But I craved to be with my Mother. I wanted that same relationship that everyone else had with their moms. I wanted to tell her about my crushes or cry in her arms after being bullied for my tattered clothes. I hoped that by staying home more often, I might catch a glimpse of her between shifts, but even if I did, there was never enough time to talk.

On one afternoon, I came home from school to find an envelope had been slid under our apartment door. Usually, our mail was put in the mailbox at the front door of the building, but someone must have come in to deliver it directly to our door. The envelope was almost the colour of wheat, but the colour rubbed off beneath my fingertips and I realized that it was just dirt—but there weren’t any other finger prints on it besides mine. It was addressed to my Mother in handwritten black ink. I didn’t recognize the return address, or even the name of the town. Usually, the only mail my Mother got was bills, but this one seemed special. I left it on the kitchen table for her to find when she got home.

The next morning, I woke up to find her sitting at the kitchen table holding the envelope in her hands. She was usually gone for work by the time that I woke up, but there she was. She had a distressed look on her face as she looked through the contents of the envelope. I opened my mouth to ask her what was wrong, but I realized that I didn’t even know how to talk to her. I stood there hesitating until she finally noticed me there and spoke up.

“I’m going to be leaving town for a few days,” her tone was very dry and serious.

“Oh…” I wasn’t sure what to say next and the room fell silent again until I was finally able to ask: “Why?”

“My Mother passed away and I need to help with the funeral,” she answered without meeting my eyes.

“Oh.”

She left later that day. That evening, I sat in the emptiness of the apartment and felt an odd sense of loneliness begin to sit in. I was used to being alone here, but there was always the comfort in knowing that my Mother would be coming home at night. As I laid in the bed that we used to share together, I found myself unable to sleep. I looked out at the moon in the night sky wondering why I was always so cursed with being alone. As I watched, a dark cloud passed over the moon and smothered out all of its light. Then a bolt of lighting carved itself into the black sky—it reminded me of a tree root. As the rain began to fall, I was finally able to fall asleep.

I awoke the next morning with that same empty feeling. As I paced around the apartment, it dawned on me how strange it was that my Mother didn’t offer to take me to the funeral. It was my Grandmother, after all. And this could have been a chance to really get to spend some time with my Mother. I cursed myself for just standing there when she told me the news. I could have just asked to come. Maybe she thought that I didn’t want to go. Maybe she thought that I didn’t care about her. Or maybe she didn’t care about me.

I fished the envelope out from the trash and looked up the town on the map. It was far out in the middle of nowhere, but I could at least take a train part of the way there. I wanted to go to this funeral, whether my Mother wanted me there or not. I wanted to know my family—where I came from. I dumped my books out of my backpack and packed some clothes. My Mother had left her one black dress behind, and I figured that I could take it because I didn’t own anything nice enough. Then I left the apartment, and walked to the train station.

It was already nightfall by the time I got off the train. I checked the map again, and began walking in the direction of the town. It was nothing but empty fields and the stars above between me and my destination, but I marched onward. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but my feet had grown numb as they trod through the wet mud of last night’s rain. Then, by the light of the early morning dawn, I could just make out a cluster of homes surrounding a grove of trees. I knew this place.

The closer I came, the more memories began pouring into my mind. I remembered those trees, and how my young Mother forbade me from ever playing in them. I remembered her and my Grandmother fighting a lot. I remembered once waking up in the middle of the night to find my Grandmother standing in the room with me—just watching—and then my Mother finding us. She took me out of my bed and I slept with her that night so that my Grandmother didn’t disturb us. I think that was the night before we left.

As I approached the town, I could hear voices coming from within the trees. They were all muffled, but it sounded like a bunch of people shouting. Then, I heard my Mother’s voice. She was screaming as though she were having a nightmare. I began running as fast as my numbed feet would allow towards the trees.

“Where is she?” a man’s voice demanded.

“I wont let you have her!” my Mother cried.

“We’ll all die because of your selfishness” shouted another voice. This one I could also recognize. It sounded just like my Grandmother, but she was supposed to be dead, wasn’t she?

I hesitated before entering the trees as I remembered my Mother telling me never to go in there. Oddly enough, the trees seemed more withered and grey than I remembered—as though they were dying. I could make out figures within, and heard my Mother scream once more.

“Stop!” her sharp voice gurgled

“It wouldn’t have to be like this if you did what you were told for once,” my Grandmother snapped back and I once again remembered their constant arguing when I was a child.

I couldn’t stand the pain in my Mother’s voice and broke through the forbidden barrier into the trees towards her. Then, I saw my Mother. They were pinning her up against a tree and wrapping her limbs around the branches. My Grandmother was standing before her draped in green robes. There were others as well that were on their knees with their heads bowed low. It was as though it were some kind of ritual. Fear pinned my feet to the ground, but as I heard my Mother’s bones begin to snap, I refused to be afraid anymore. I couldn’t let them take her away from me.

“Stop it!” my voice cracked with tears as I screamed.

Silence.

One by one, they turned to look at me. I saw my Grandmother’s eyes widen and my Mother let in a sharp breath. Slowly, my Grandmother began walking towards me with a smile on her face and her arms stretched wide. My Mother started struggling again and screaming with tears in her eyes. She was telling me to run away, but soon my Grandmother blocked my view of her.

“There you are, child, we were worried that you wouldn’t come,” she smiled and placed her hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t touch her!” my Mother screamed.

My Grandmother began leading me forward and I realized that all the others were smiling at me now too. The ones that were pinning my Mother released their grips and her body dropped to the ground. I rand towards her and nobody stopped me—they parted to let me through. She was trying to reach for me, and I could see the tears pouring from her eyes. I dropped to my knees and held her tight, but it was as though she were pushing me away. Then I felt a set of arms gently raising me up and away from my Mother.

I was placed up against the tree. My Mother tried to stop it from happening, but her body was too weak. Then my Grandmother approached me and drew a symbol with a stick on my chest. They grabbed my arms, and began wrapping them around the branches like vines. My Grandmother then began speaking in a language that couldn’t understand, but could recognize. Then they grabbed onto my legs. I was being bent and twisted in ways that a person wasn’t meant to and it was agony. My eyes welled with tears, but somehow the pain didn’t seem so bad knowing that it was happening to me and not my Mother.

At some point, I must have passed out, and when I came to, I found myself unable to move. I examined my body and found that I could no longer tell what were my limbs and what were branches. My body was being swallowed into the bark. As I looked around at the other trees in the grove, they seemed to have knots in them that looked like face. They were people once, and soon I was going to be like them. I tried to struggle, but the bark was closing in around me.

The grove slowly started turning green again, and life was brought back to the town. I grew tall and strong and bore fruit for everyone to eat. My Mother came to visit me every day. Even though she was sad, she would sit and talk with me until night came. I could never say anything back to her, I think she knew that I was listening and I found comfort in that. Even after what happened, I was happy. My Mother and I could finally be together.

Amos’ overflowing laughter bubbled around the walls of our little home. He was not yet old enough to help with the morning chores, but he loved to watch me as I cleaned. I liked making faces at him while Granny wasn’t looking as a way of keeping him entertained, but sooner or later, he would no longer be able to contain his laughter and would always give the game away. And once Amos started laughing, there would be no way of stopping him. It was so loud that one could likely hear the sound on the other end of the valley. Finally, Granny let out a sigh and admitted defeat in knowing that she would once again have to finish all the chores on her own.

“You know, dear, I was thinking of cooking up some jam later,” she spoke in her usual overly sweet tone. “Why don’t you take your brother up the hill to pick some berries?”

“Of course, as long as you don’t mind,” I had to pretend as though I wanted to help clean, but Granny was already helping Amos with his coat.

I grabbed one of the woven baskets and flashed a quick wink over at Amos before the two of us headed out the door. We skipped down the path through the field where our parents were working. They heard Amos’ giggling and rolled their eyes. I could tell that they couldn’t wait for us to grow up, but they would have to wait just a little longer. I stopped to tell them that we were only headed up the hill to get berries for Granny, but by the time I finished my sentence, Amos was already halfway up the hill. You always had to keep an eye on that one.

Time slipped by as we were up on the hill. We picked berries until our basket was overflowing and snacked on the rest. Once our bellies were full, we laid in the grass and watched the clouds until the sun was low in the sky. Then Granny’s voice came echoing up the hill signalling that it was already time for dinner. I got Amos up and wiped the purple stains from his lips with my apron. I reached for his hand to lead him back down the hill, but he wouldn’t budge. He seemed suddenly distracted by something.

“Why can’t we ever go down the other side of the hill,” he asked as he looked down at the dark tangled mass of branches at the base of the hill where the grass was no longer green.

“Because Granny said we can’t go to woods on our own. She said there are monsters in there that will eat us if we get too close,” I gave his arm a gentle tug. “You don’t want to get eaten, do you?”

At that moment, a painful wailing sound broke through the trees and climbed the hill to our ears. We both looked at each other and screamed before running down the safe side of the hill towards the house. Berries came tumbling out of the basket and by the time we made it back, the basket was half empty. I handed the basket to Granny as I stepped through the door. She looked down at the basket and then at me. She licked her thumb and rubbed the corner of my mouth with her eyebrow raised.

“Hopefully you didn’t spoil your dinner,” she smiled.

We all sat down at the table for dinner. As Granny led the prayer, Amos just couldn’t seem to sit still. He kept looking to the doorway, and when prayer was finished, he wasn’t touching his stew. Granny noticed right away that something was off with him.

“What’s the matter Amos?” she asked. “Don’t like my cooking?”

He looked up at her with his big trembling eyes, “We heard a monster screaming from the woods.”

Granny looked up at me and I nodded. She let out a deep breath and set down her spoon.

“That must have been the Frog Man,” she began.

“The Frog Man?!” Amos nearly leapt up out of his seat.

“Yes dear, the Frog Man. He’s a lonely spirit who lives in a pond deep in the woods. The story goes that he was once a normal man in love. Him and his lover used to sneak away to the pond to be together, but one day, his lover never appeared. He waited and waited—calling her name. Eventually, his words turned to croaks and his body started to change. Now he lives at the pond and is forever calling out in sorrow for his lover to return to him.”

“He’s lonely? A monster?” Amos asked.

“Of course,” she said. “Anything with a heart can feel loneliness.”

Amos looked down at his stew and pushed around a chunk of potato with his spoon. He didn’t say a word for the rest of the meal and barely had a drop of his stew. I nudged him with my elbow to eat his dinner so our parents wouldn’t get cross, but it was as though he didn’t even notice me there. After dinner, he wasn’t even in the mood to play. He just went right off to bed without a single word.

That night, I had a dream about the Frog Man. He grabbed Amos in his big slimy arms and swallowed him whole. I woke up with a start and looked over to Amos’ bed to find that it was empty. I sat up and my heart started racing as I looked around the room for any sign of him. I whispered his name, but he didn’t answer. It was still quite dark out and I couldn’t imagine going off alone this late, but then I remembered Granny’s story and how strangely he started acting when he heard it. I thought about waking one of the grownups, but I didn’t want them to worry, and it was always my responsibility to keep an eye on him. I quickly got dressed and put on my boots, and stepped out the door as quietly as possible.

I stood on the top of the hill and called Amos’ name. The woods looked like a writhing black mass in the moonlight, but there was no reply. I took a deep breath and put one foot before the other as I slowly began making my way down the other side of the hill. A breeze blew through and it almost looked as though the branches were reaching out towards me. It took everything in me to keep moving forward. Then a familiar croaking wail came through the trees to greet me and my knees gave out. I wanted to give up and cry, but I slowly rose to my feet. I had to find my brother.

The noise grew louder as I continued the deeper into the woods. I kept calling out for Amos, but he still wasn’t answering. I had hoped that I would find him along the way, but now I was beginning to worry that the Frog Man may have already gotten to him. Eventually, the wailing started sounding differently—it was more disjointed and maybe even more human. What if that meant he had found Amos? What if that was the sound of the awful monster chewing? I broke out into a sprint towards the sound. Then I could hear Amos as well. His voice was loud and sharp. My nightmare was coming true, but I still had to save him.

I broke through the trees and arrived at the pond. There was Amos with his feet splashing in the murky water. I went to yank him out of the water, when I realized that he was laughing. Then, I saw this big slimy creature with a wide mouth and bug eyes emerge from the surface. I screamed for Amos to run away, but couldn’t stop laughing. The creature was laughing too. Amos waved at me between his giggles and told me to meet his new friend. I approached the pond, but wasn’t about to start trusting this thing. The Frog Man seemed to back away as I came closer.

“It’s okay,” Amos reassured the creature. “That’s my sister.”

I carefully sat down beside Amos, but wasn’t ready to start putting my feet in the water just yet. The Frog Man slowly swam towards me and I flinched. The creature seemed to flinch as well and let out a soft cry. Had I hurt it somehow? Amos smiled at me and turned to make a funny face at the creature, and before I knew it, the two were laughing again. The Frog Man crossed his big bug eyes and inflated his cheeks. A chuckle escaped my lips as well and I realized that there was nothing to be afraid of.

“He was lonely,” Amos whispered to me. “So I figured he just needed a friend.”

In my hands I was holding a photograph. It was an old looking picture: black and white and faded. At first glance, it wouldn’t even look all that interesting, but my hands were trembling as I looked down at the image. And the black and white face looked back at me with a sharp grin that seemed to turn the air around me into ice. I was looking at a photograph of something that didn’t exist—or so I thought. It burned my finger tips, but I couldn’t seem to let go. It was pulling me in.

When I first found the photograph, it looked like any normal person. I assumed that it was just some distant relative, but when I flipped the picture over to see if there was anything written on the back, all that I found was the word “DEVIL” written in a rushed and desperate scribble. I couldn’t help letting a laugh escape my lips as I wondered what this person had done to earn such a title, but when I turned it back around, I saw that the face had changed. It appeared to be laughing at me, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I could hear its voice. The laugh sounded deep and cruel at first, but then it was joined by a whole chorus of laughter and memories of being the shy kid at the playground came flashing before my eyes.

The laughter calmed as did the expression on the face. The image was changing right in my hands, but I could never it happen—as though it were looking back at me waiting for my eyes to blink. The face continued to change, not just its expression, but the whole face itself. One moment it would look like an actor that I had seen on TV, and the next it would look like the first girl that I ever had a crush on. The faces weren’t always human either. Amongst all of the painful memories, there would be the image of an odd-eyed goat, or a snarling lion. And occasionally, the face would take the form of creatures that I had never seen before. Whether or not this was the actual Devil, I couldn’t be sure, but it was certainly something evil and it loved the attention.

When I was finally able to break free of the picture’s hypnotism and let go of it from my hands, it fell to dusty floor like a rock. My fingertips were still burning, and when I went to look at them, I noticed tiny blisters in the skin. The stuffy attic air smelled of smoke and I found that I could no longer breathe. I looked down at the word “DEVIL” scrawled on the back of the photograph that had landed face down in a perfect circle free of any dust. I wondered if I should show it to the others or just destroy it. Either way, I definitely didn’t want to touch it again.

The photograph had been stuck between the pages of an old book when I found it. The book itself was as big as a tome and bound in black leather, but as far as I could tell, all of the pages were completely blank. It was in a box of odds and ends typical of any grandmothers’ house—doilies and all. I was prepared to write-off the whole box as trash, but the book caught my eye and I just couldn’t resist peaking inside. It was only now that I realized just how out of place the book was with the rest of my grandmother’s things. It stood out like a sore thumb in the clutter of the attic as though it were just begging to be found.

My Grandmother had always a bit of a hoarder. Not in the kind of way where you might just find a dead cat beneath decades old newspapers, but more-so in the way of collecting souvenirs of a long life of happy memories. She was the last of her generation, and when she died, the rest of the family was left to sort through those memories—I just happened to draw the short straw and was stuck cleaning the creepy attic. I knew my grandmother well. She was a gentle soul who was well known at the local church and could kill you with one look if you ever used the Lord’s name in vain. This book, and photograph, and Devil, just didn’t belong in this house.

I wrapped a doily around my hand and picked up the photograph as though I were taking a pan out of the oven and slid it back between the pages of the empty book. I decided to take the book downstairs to show my Uncle and see if he recognized it. My chest was pounding as I carefully climbed down the attic stairs and I had the awful sense of dread that I was being watched. The sounds of laughter echoed through my mind. I was never the religious type, but I was beginning to wonder if I should have listened to my Grandmother and gone to church more often.

The house was silent and empty. I called out for my Uncle, but there was no reply. Even my always-loud brothers had gone quiet and the radio was switched off. I navigated through the darkened hallways that were so warm and full of life when I was a child and found them to be nothing like I remembered. They coiled into themselves like a labyrinth of locked doors and I couldn’t seem to find my way to the dining room where my Uncle was supposed to be packing up the china. I was lost in a house that I had known all my life.

None of the doors would open no matter how had I tugged at the doorknobs. It felt as though I were going around in circles, but I never found myself back at the attic. The image of Hansel and Gretel leaving breadcrumbs behind them as they made their way through the deep dark woods came to mind, but I had no bread crumbs with me. I looked at the book in my hands and was tempted to start ripping out the pages when I noticed that I could now read the cover. I began flipping through the pages and realized that I could understand the writing, but the pages and the cover were still completely blank. And yet, page, after page, after page, all that I could see was the word “DEVIL”.

I continued turning corners down that hallway until it felt as though my legs were going to give out. Then, came the sound of lock click and a creaking hinge just beyond the next corner. I called out once more for my Uncle and thanked him for not abandoning me before rounding that final corner. I found the end of the hallway, but it was not my Uncle waiting for me there. Instead, I was faced with an open door. Beyond it was nothing but darkness and it pulled me closer with the same power that drew me to the photograph. I debated turning back, but that would just lead to a dead end. I had no choice, but to cross that threshold.

The door shut behind me and I found myself completely suffocated by darkness. There was no floor beneath my feet, but I could no longer tell if I even still had feet. This was definitely no part of my Grandmother’s house, or maybe even the material plane, but then where was I? In the darkness before my eyes a face came into focus that gave me my answer. A familiar cruel laughter rang through the void. The face before me was the very same from the photograph: The Devil.

There was only one thing that I was sure of in this weird little world we lived in, and that it must have been an absolute nightmare for my Mother to raise me. She dreamt of being a house wife with a white picket fence, and of a blue-eyed perfect daughter that she could dress up like a doll. In stead, she became just another pregnant teenage girl in our too-small town without a ring on her finger. I was also far from being that blue-eyed doll she wanted—in fact, I broke every doll that she ever bought me. I was messy haired tomboy who had what she liked to call “unconventional” interests. Though I was never sure if I could ever forgive her, I could somewhat understand why she left me.

My favourite books were supposedly the kind that were not meant for little girls to read. My Mother wanted me to be a princess and I wanted to be a vampire. While in elementary school, I would come home with stack of stories about murders and hauntings tucked under my chin. I was never sure what gravitated me towards those subjects, but I always found an interest in the fears of others. Whenever I tried to talk to my Mother about the things I read about, she would get very pale and ask me why I couldn’t be a normal little girl. After a while, she started ignoring me when I spoke to her. Maybe by locking herself away, she could imagine herself living a better life with a normal child.

One day, while walking home from school, I found the head of a dead crow laying by the roadside. The pure black feathers seemed so pretty to me and I couldn’t resist taking it home with me. I found one of the dolls that I had ripped the head off of and put the crow’s head there in its place. I made a black gown out of construction paper feathers for her and gave her a small crown. She looked more beautiful than any boring normal doll. I was so excited that I couldn’t help wanting to show her off, but when I went to show my Mother, she looked absolutely disgusted and threw it in the trash. That was the first time in my life that I felt ashamed of who I was.

The next morning, I woke up to a quiet apartment. Her closet was empty and her toothbrush was gone. I wondered if she had just gone to work early that morning, but when I walked down to the diner where she worked, they said that she had called and quit. I sat in the silence of the apartment for the rest of the day waiting for her to come home, but she never did. She had finally given up on me. I walked over to the trash and fished out my crow-headed Queen—she was all that I had now.

I continued living there on my own until the landlord came to collect rent. Next thing that I knew, I was talking to the police and being sent to live at one foster home after another. I learned not to let my new families see my doll and so I hid her under my pillow until it was time for bed. She sang me to sleep every night and always listened to my worries. The various foster families that I had lived with over the years were never able to get used to my strangeness, but my Queen was always there for me.

I grew too old for toys, but I could never leave her behind. When I was finally old enough to live on my own again, she was there to listen to me complain about work and the noisy neighbours. Some days, it was as though I could hear her speaking back to me and we would have long conversations into the night. Even as an adult, I had a hard time relating to others and making friends, but I had her and she was all that I needed. We talked and talked until her voice no longer seemed like an illusion. She was real and she was mine.

“I know where your Mother is,” she told me one evening in a voice as clear as a bell.

I had long since given up on trying to find my Mother and the all of years spent without her slowly eroded away at any love that I had once felt for her. And yet, looking back at my Queen as she spoke those words to me, I was reminded of the look of disgust that my Mother had on her face when I first showed the doll to her and how she threw it in the trash. She had thrown me in the trash as well. It was at that moment that I realized that I hated my Mother.

“Where?” I asked my Queen.

I arrived at a big house with a white picket fence in the next town. It’s pink shingles reminded me of a dollhouse. I knocked on the door and a pretty little girl with bright blue eyes answered. She smiled at me and called for her mother to come to the door. The sound of heels clicked down the hallway, and there was my mother. She looked so beautiful, but in the same way that candy was delicious and yet still made your teeth fall out. Her dreams had finally come true. Here she was with her beautiful house and her very own doll to play with, but I wasn’t a part of this happy dream.

“Do you remember what you used to do to dolls?” a voice whispered to me.

I did. My Mother’s nightmare had returned and this time it would be her that would end up thrown in the trash.

The sound of screaming kept me up at night. Behind the house was a patch of forest with a river running through it, but I never heard the calming winds through the leaves or the rushing water—only those awful banshee shrieks. I was told that it was just foxes or maybe racoons, but there was something about the sound that shook me to the very core. The screams sounded as though they were coming from just the other side of the glass of my window, and each night they seemed to creep even closer to the pane. Until one morning, after a long restless night, I found tiny cracks in the window glass.

I was half delirious when I got up and saw the broken glass. My eyes were heavy and sore from days without sleep and my life was beginning to feel like a waking dream. I didn’t remember seeing the cracks the previous day, but I had also been avoiding looking out that window since the screaming started. That morning, however, there was something different in the air of my bedroom. The window now had a sense of magnetism that pulled me towards it. As I ran my fingers over the cold glass, it began to look as though the cracks were making the outline of a face.

One of my fingers must have run over a sharp edge because a small amount of blood flowed out of the tip and into the cracks. I didn’t feel a thing and when I pulled away my hand to check it for cuts, there was nothing there—not even a smear of blood. The image of the face in the glass was clearer now that it was outlined in red. It looked like absolute agony. Its mouth was stretched into a wailing scream and I felt a shiver run up my spine. I could almost hear the screaming in my head.

I didn’t clean up the blood or call someone to fix the window. Instead, I immediately left the room and collapsed on the cold hardwood floor of the hallway. My chest was pounding at the inside of my ribcage as I attempted to get myself up off the ground. I was feeling suddenly very afraid, but I wasn’t sure why. It was as though someone were right there behind me watching me struggle. My eyes were getting blurry and I realized that I was crying. It felt as though I were going to die on that floor, but I managed to get myself up and sitting with my back against the wall and trying to catch my breath. My brain was spinning in my skull and all that I wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep, but the screaming was even louder now as it echoed down the hallway.

I tried to remember my life before the screaming started and my last restful night of sleep, but nothing seemed to come to mind. The sound had crept in through my ears and into my mind. It gorged itself on my brain until there was nothing left and then it made its home in my hollow skull. I wasn’t sure what kind of person I used to be or if I was even still a person at all. I had lost my life to that sound and now I was nothing. I wanted to be free of it, but then what would I be without it?

When I finally got myself off of the ground, I felt a sudden rush of light headedness and pressed my hand against the wall to steady myself. The woodgrain looked as though it were pulsating beneath my feet like a hundred little snakes. I felt sick and needed to lay down, but I was afraid to go back to my room and face the window. Keeping my hand on the wall, I dragged myself down the hallway towards the living room, but the screaming was still following me. When I finally made it down the hall and threw myself at the sofa, I looked back at the dark hallway and noticed a long smear of blood on the wall in the shape of a handprint. My hand was clean.

The sofa was stiff and uncomfortable. The room was spinning around me and I could feel the awful scream vibrating in my ear. It was no fox that I was hearing, I realized at that moment, but it didn’t quite seem human either. It was something unnatural and not of this time or place. I wondered if the sound itself was some kind of creature that was slowly eating me away to stay alive, or if I was even hearing anything at all. Whatever it was, it would certainly kill me, but I didn’t want to die. I wanted my life back.

I pulled myself up off of the sofa and stumbled to the kitchen. The sound was screaming louder now with ferocity and I could feel a warm breath against my ear. I fumbled my hands around the counters and hesitated as it ran over the hilt of a knife. Finally, I found a pencil near the memo pad. My heart was racing, but I could no longer tell if it was fear, or excitement. My fingers trembled as they wrapped themselves around the pencil. I remembered the face in the window, and for a moment it looked as though it were right there screaming at me. I steadied my hand, brought the pencil up to the side of my head, took a deep breath, and plunged it into my ear.

It felt as though my ear were being ripped in half as I dug the pencil deeper into it and didn’t stop until I could no longer hear the sound of the pencil scraping at my insides. Then, I moved onto the next ear. It didn’t seem to matter how hard I pressed down on the pencil, the screaming would not stop. Just a little more, just a little more, until I could feel my knuckle brushing up against my hair. I pulled out the pencil and could see that it was now red with blood. Still, the sound persisted.

I stumbled back up the hallway to my bedroom. Once again, I found myself steadying my hand against the wall. This time, there were handprints all over the walls—some old and some new. There was a darkness in the corners of my vision that was creeping closer to the centre as though it were some beast taking its killing bite. By the time that I made it to my room, my vision was nearly gone completely. I had to feel for the bed with my outstretched arms, and when I finally found it, I just let myself drop onto the mattress.

Then, I was in the darkness. I could no longer feel the bed beneath me or even the air around me, only the gnawing vibrations of the sound. I was becoming very cold and almost weightless. Then, I noticed tiny little cracks in the darkness before me. They came together with a silver glow into the image of a familiar face. It screamed at me in absolute agony and then I realized why the face was so familiar: it was my own. We screamed together, in the end. As I allowed the last pieces of me fall into the dark, I finally experienced for the first time in my life, silence.

It was my turn on watch. I hated watching the gate at night, but neither did anyone else in town and because there were never any volunteers, it was decided that each man of age would spend the night at the gate house once a month. It didn’t matter if you were sick, injured, or bleeding from the head; you had to watch the gate. No excuses. I wasn’t even allowed to bring a book to entertain myself as I waited for morning to come, or any other form of distraction. For the long hours of the lonely night, I had to focus on nothing but that old wooden gate and make sure that nothing got through.

The rain was leaking in through the thatched roof of the gatehouse and it seemed that no matter where I positioned my head, a heavy drop would land on my forehead in a steady rhythm. Some people would consider that torture, but at least it kept me awake. The dark clouds smothered the light of the moon and made it almost impossible to see anything beyond the glow of my lantern. In such darkness, it seemed like morning would never come at all. To me, that was the real torture.

The gate was something of a hold-over from the olden days. It was the only way in and out of the town, and it always remained locked at night. The wood it was built out of had long since rotten and cracked that it was a wonder how it was still standing, but no-one would risk replacing it. The gate was said to be magic and it protected our town from harm. But I couldn’t help always wondering, if the gate was magic, why did there need to be someone to watch it every night?

The rain was coming down in buckets now and I could barely hear myself think. It was still as dark as ever outside and I had no way of knowing how long I had been on watch for—only that it seemed like an eternity. The rest of the town had long since gone to sleep and I found myself having this eerie feeling that I was the only person in world at that moment. The feeling was quickly interrupted, however, when I heard a loud banging sound. I perked up my head and looked outside to see the gate rattling. There was something on the other side.

I grabbed my lantern and stepped out into the rain towards the gate. At first I told myself that it was just the wind, but as I grew closer, I could hear the sound of someone crying in the rain. It sounded like a frightened young child and they were begging to be let in. I quickly reached for the keys at my waist, but then remembered the one rule of the gate: it must never be opened at night. I stiffened my upper lip and told the child that I would have to wait until morning to let them in.

“Please,” the child cried. “There are monsters out here.”

I took in a sharp inhale. What was a child doing outside of the gate in the middle of the night? Any child from the town would have been raised better than that. And yet, here was this sad little child scared and alone in the middle of the night. I knew that there couldn’t have been actual monsters hiding out in the dark, but maybe there was a bear or some kind of big cat stalking about. The child was crying louder now and I could feel my heart starting to weaken. Monster or no, the poor thing could freeze to death in this rain.

“Please open the gate!” the child begged.

I couldn’t take it any longer. Surely the rest of the town would forgive me for opening the gate for a child. What kind of monster would I be if I wouldn’t? I told the child to hold on one more moment as I grabbed the keys and opened the many locks on the gate—some of which seemed hundreds of years old, while others looked brand new. When I finally opened the last lock, and pushed open the heavy gate, I could no longer hear the child. I raised my lantern to the darkness, but there was no-one there.

“Thank you,” a voice much deeper than a child’s whispered in my ear.

For most people, their earliest memory would often be of them as a toddler and that their mother’s would likely be never too far away. My first memory was of Mother, but I was well beyond my years as a toddler. I had just come home from school and I remembered seeing my Mother looking down at me from the kitchen. At first, it looked as though she was unusually tall, but then I noticed her feet hovering off of the ground. Her body was completely rigid, but swayed gently in a nonexistent breeze. She had hung herself with the cord of the ceiling fan, whose light caused a halo to shine brightly in the back of her head. To me, she looked like angel.

Then I blacked out—my Uncle later told me that I had fainted—and when I came to, everything that had existed in my life before that moment had vanished from my mind. I no longer knew who I was or where I came from. It was as though my entire childhood never happened and I had been born right at that moment. The only thing that I knew was that my Mother was gone. I had nothing and I was nothing. I didn’t know what would become of me.

Thankfully, my Uncle took me in. He was really the only family that I had left after my Mother was gone. He was actually quite wealthy and lived in a great big house—he even had maids. Though he was quite the busy man, he always made time for me. It was through him that I learned about my life and he even homeschooled me himself because he didn’t think that I was ready to go back to school just yet. Even though I had found myself living the good life, I still couldn’t bring myself to smile. I could barely feel anything at all. It was as though I was missing something.

My Uncle was a nice enough man, but he did have a temper. I was naturally rather obedient as a side-effect to my mental state, which meant that he would rarely be angry with me. I did everything he asked me to and believed everything he told me—so he liked me. However, every once in a while, a maid will accidentally drop a glass or something will not be folded correctly and his face would turn a flaming hot red. It was a quiet type of anger, but it was enough to make the maids nervous. They rarely showed any emotion on their faces, but I could always tell when they were scared.

There was one day where one of the maids had dropped a bottle of wine on the carpet and tried to get out the stain before he came up from the cellar, but the stain just wasn’t coming out. I was sitting there watching her as she did her best to remain calm as the sound of heavy footsteps echoed up from the cellar. Then, she ran. She tore off her heals and ran for the front door before two of the other maids stopped her. By the time he made it to the top of the stairs and saw the poor maid desperately trying to claw her way out of the other maids’ grasp, he could only let out a long disappointed sigh before he grabbed her by the wrist and lead her down the cellar steps that she would never walk back up. He never even learned about the stain.

I couldn’t help wondering what would happen to me if I ever made any mistakes like that—would I be taken down to the cellar too? I was never really quite sure what was down there, but my Uncle locked himself away there for several hours every day. I asked one of the maids about it, but they were never allowed to speak to me and when I asked my Uncle, he only said that he would tell me when I was older. Unfortunately, he never told me how old was old enough, and I would still ask about it now and then in case it was time. Eventually, on the last time that I asked, he was so fed up with the question that he almost became angry. His face turned that bright red as his fingers curled around the handle of a knife on the dinner table, but then his expression softened into what almost looked like a smile. He stood up from the table with knife in hand and carved a line in the wood of the doorway that was roughly his height.

“When the top of your head reaches this line, then I will show you what’s in the cellar” he declared before walking away laughing.

Every day, I would stand in that doorway hoping to see that the line had grown closer to the top of my head, but every day, it stayed in the exact same place. Weeks, months, and several Christmases had gone by, but I had yet to grow a single hair’s width. I was always stuck in that child-sized body in a great big house of grownups and all of them seemed to know something that I didn’t. It was so frustrating and I found myself wondering if there was more that I didn’t know. Then I remembered something that I hadn’t thought of in a very long time.

“Why wont you let me go back to school?” I asked him as we were going over the basics of molecular biology in one of my morning lessons.

“I told you, my dear boy, you’re not ready for school yet,” he answered without looking up at me.

“But wouldn’t it benefit me to be around other children my age?” I insisted.

He let out a long deep sigh and I thought that I could hear him mutter something under his breath: “There are no children your age.”

Without another word, he got up from his desk and left the study. He never ended lessons early. There was something about the exchange that didn’t sit right with me. He was hiding something from me—many things. Maybe everything. I called after him and followed him out of the study. He refused to acknowledge me which only made me shout louder. I needed answers. Why wasn’t I allowed to leave? What was in the cellar and what happened to the maids he sent down there? What happened to my memories? And finally, why did my Mother have to die?

He snapped and I finally saw his angry side.

“You want to know? Fine.”

He yanked me by the arm and swung open the cellar door. I was thrown forward into the darkness and landed hard at the bottom of the stairs. I was certain that my legs were broken, but I couldn’t see a thing. He slowly made his way down the stairs towards me and picked me up by my hair. I was dragged across the splintered floor towards a door that glowed around the edges. Then he threw me down, opened the door, and there I saw my Mother.

She looked exactly as I remembered her, only that her body was laying in pieces on a pile of dismantled maids. At that moment, I realized that the dress that she was wearing was the same as the other maids. It wasn’t just their dresses, but all of their faces were the exact same. At the end of her neck, was a mess of wires and plastic shards. I tried to stand and walk over to her, but as I looked down at myself, I could see a wire sticking out from where my leg had snapped.

“I had such high hopes for you, my boy,” I heard him say from behind me, “but alas, you’re just another failed experiment.”