“You’re too late, I’m afraid,” a man said.

It startled Richard out of his daydream. He looked up from his sneakers to see a friendly-looking stranger nodding toward the shop door he’d been drifting toward.

“They’re closed,” the man said. “Close at three.”

Then he was gone, strolling off with the easy confidence of someone who had other places to be.

What kind of fucking store closes at three?

Richard hated shopping online, but it was like you couldn’t get anything at an actual store anymore. They couldn’t even afford to stay open regular hours.

It started when the megacorporations started making the rules.

In Richard’s eyes, money had poisoned the world. The law didn’t matter anymore.

State labor laws said you could only work a certain number of hours per week; that your employer had to provide a safe work environment and pay for unemployment insurance. Megacorporations like Union skirted all those regulations by calling workers “independent contractors.”

Richard knew how it started in his town.

There was a car accident just down the street from his apartment. Apparently a guy sideswiped another car driven by a pregnant woman and she ran up on the curb and hit a light pole. Her belly slammed up against the steering wheel and she lost her baby.

Miscarriage.

The interesting part was the defense.

The guy had been using Union Navigation. The voice had told him to “use one of the left two lanes to turn left” on a one-way street. So he did. The problem was only the far-left lane was meant for turning. The second lane was supposed to go straight.

It became a minor media circus. The State Department of Transportation asked Union to change the instructions. Union refused. They doubled down, flew in experts, and insisted the street design was inefficient unless drivers used it the way their software dictated.

In the end, the driver lost. His insurance paid out. But the city quietly repainted the lanes and replaced the signs, turning it into a double left turn.

They didn’t want the headache. It was easier to go with the flow.

Richard had been furious.

“One tiny thing after another that we gave away,” he thought. “We gave up our freedoms for the sake of convenience, and allowed the megacorporations to make the rules.”

If you were a megacorporation producing shiny things, with a billion superfans doing your bidding in comment threads, you could do whatever you wanted. Union took control of the food supply with grocery delivery services, the banking industry with online payment apps, even space with private launch contracts.

Richard couldn’t understand why people so distrusted governments, but gave companies with monetary motives carte blanche to do whatever they wished. Union’s CEO, Cavett Voss, was the most powerful man in the world, bar none. Presidents and Kings had nothing on Voss. The megas had become the new governments.

Richard stepped down from the sidewalk. The window caught his reflection and the moving street beyond it, and for a moment the word GUNS floated over his shoulder in the glass.

A streetlight filtered through the window blinds and cast hazy diagonal stripes on the brick wall of the former office building. The stairwell doorway across the hall from apartment number 608 opened and Richard emerged, breathing heavily. Under his arm he carried a long slender package tightly wrapped in brown paper, tied in the center with brown twine.

His keys jangled as he unlocked the door and stepped into his dark one bedroom apartment. He dropped the keychain into a bowl on the countertop beside the door. The routine was repetitive; something he’d done a thousand times. Next, he’d hit the lights, push the door closed because it didn’t close on its own—he’d been asking the landlord to fix it—then turn on the TV and make something for dinner. Except this time, as he reached for the floorlamp, a hand grabbed him by the wrist and the light came on.

The brown package under his arm fell to the floor and Richard cried out.

A face from the past stared back at him.

“Wilkes?” Richard exclaimed. “What the fuck? You scared the shit out of me, man.”

“How you been, Rich?” Wilkes asked in a faded southern accent as Richard picked up his package. “You alright?”

“Uh, yeah,” Richard said as he placed his package on the dining room table. “What, uh… how long has it been Wilkes?”

“San Diego ‘01,” Wilkes said. “That seem about right?”

Still flustered, Richard huffed an answer.

“Yeah… I think so.”

He ran his hand through his thinning hair. “Look, I got a lot of things going on, Wilkes. What are you doing here?”

“What? We ain’t friends no more?” Wilkes asked with a smirk.

Richard returned the smirk and replied.

“Well, I don’t think we parted under the best of circumstances. Something about a certain hairstylist and an engagement ring.”

Wilkes’ eyes drifted around the apartment. The thrift-store couch. The bare walls. The TV perched on a milk crate.

“You’re up to something,” he said.

Richard snorted. “Breaking and entering usually comes after a warrant, Wilkes. I don’t owe you an explanation.”

Wilkes smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You didn’t answer me.”

“There’s nothing to answer,” Richard said. “You scared the shit out of me, that’s all.”

Wilkes took a step closer, slow, like he didn’t want to spook a horse. “That ain’t true. You’ve been wound tight for months. Maybe longer. You got that look.”

“What look?”

“The look of a man who’s already decided something and is pretending he hasn’t.”

Richard folded his arms. “You don’t know a damn thing about my life.”

Wilkes chuckled. “You on social media, ain’t you?”

Richard blinked. “What?”

“Social media. You got an account. Everybody does.”

“So?”

Wilkes leaned against the counter, crossed his boots at the ankle. “You ever get that thing where something shows up in your feed and you wonder how the hell it got there? Like—I’ve been thinking about that.”

Richard rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Because they’re listening to us through our phones.”

Wilkes shook his head slowly. “That’s the bedtime story they let you keep.”

“Oh yeah? What’s the real one?”

“Things pop up when you ain’t said a word. Ain’t typed it. Ain’t searched it. Ain’t even told your best friend. And yet there it is. Like it crawled out of your skull.”

Richard opened his mouth, then closed it. He settled for a shrug.

Wilkes watched him carefully. “What would you say if I told you they already know who you’re gonna vote for next month?”

Richard laughed. It came out sharper than he intended. “I’d say you’ve been drinking again.”

Wilkes’ face hardened. “It’s child’s play, Rich. Old hat. They been able to arrange who wins for forty years. Comments. Shares. Follows. What church you go to. How old you are. Where you stop for coffee. Most folks are predictable as sunrise.”

“And the rest?” Richard asked.

“The undecideds. The sliver in the middle. That’s the only work left. And it’s a hell of a lot easier when you already know where everybody else sits.”

Richard shook his head. “What’s your point, Wilkes?”

Wilkes’ eyes dropped to the table. To the long brown package.

“What’s in the package?” he asked.

Richard’s jaw tightened. “None of your business.”

Wilkes sighed, like a disappointed teacher. “It’s gone further than elections. Way further.”

Richard watched his old friend, still unsure what he was getting at.

Wilkes straightened, voice lowering. “Predictive cognition systems. They don’t decode your thoughts. They get there first. Eye-tracking. Micro facial movements you don’t feel. How fast you type. How your voice tightens when you lie. Heart rate. Skin response. Patterns you’ve been building your whole life.”

Richard stared at him.

“Given choices, the machines can tell which option you’ll choose,” Wilkes continued. “When you’re about to change your mind. When you’re lying to yourself. Hundred milliseconds... sometimes seconds before you know. We’re talking about probability and statistics. Likely outcomes.”

“You’re talking about the death of free will,” Richard muttered.

“No,” Wilkes said. “Free will isn’t dead. It just comes last.”

He let that sit.

“Job interviews run by AI,” Wilkes went on. “Flagging hesitation you don’t feel yet. Ads that shift in real time when your pupils dilate. Once they can predict your internal state, they can shape it. Nudge timing. Prime emotion. Frame choices.”

Richard felt cold.

“Not by force,” Wilkes said. “By anticipation. You won’t feel controlled. You’ll feel understood. Just a little too well.”

Silence filled the room, thick and humming.

Wilkes looked at the package again. “Your decision becomes the system confirming what it already knew.”

His eyes lifted to Richard’s.

“Like your decision to kill Voss.”

Richard swallowed. “Get out,” he said. “Now.”

Wilkes nodded. “This wasn’t just a pleasure call.”

His hand moved under his jacket.

Richard glanced at the package on the table.

“Don’t,” Wilkes said.

“Pleasure calls don’t usually involve breaking into someone’s apartment and waiting in the dark,” Richard replied.

“I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” Wilkes said, and raised his weapon. “But I knew it would.”

From the hallway, the sound was deafening. A flat, concussive report. Light flared through the cracked door, brief and violent.

Wilkes didn’t look back as he opened the door. He was already moving when the echo died. The system was engaged, and working as intended. There would be more work to do.

UntilNightFalls.com is dark fiction by me, Troy Larson, a human. If you enjoyed this story and you’d like to support my work, please give me a share. Thank you for reading!

Alien thunder cracked and flashes of purple lightning surrounded the landing craft as it drifted through violet cloud cover, its hull streaked with scorch marks and soot where the thrusters had fired time and again. It rocked side-to-side as it settled into a hover, like a rowboat loading passengers, then descended the last few feet to the cracked, rocky ground streaked with iron oxide.

The atmosphere shimmered with static energy from the recently departed magnetic storm, and the air was poisonous. Harland stepped out of the craft with an oxygen mask and goggles strapped tightly to his face, carrying a worn brown case. He was a veteran monitoring agent, and his uniform showed it—tattered insignia from a long-defunct space agency adorned the shoulders, and the straps and fasteners no longer showed the neat, orderly attention they once did.

The grizzled traveler set the case on the ground and detached a geolocating probe from his chest pack. When he had been a young agent, Harland thought the probes resembled old-timey microphones and had to resist the urge to pantomime a lounge singer act to amuse himself, but those days were long gone.

Harland removed the cover from the end of the probe to expose the spike, then knelt, and with one firm thrust, buried it to the hilt in the firm, rocky ground. The ball transmitter crackled to life with static and began beeping a soft, rhythmic tone.

The horizon had begun to change color, from the violet color of the departing storm to the teal green that accompanied the auroras caused by the setting twin suns. From behind his corroded goggles, Harland scanned the empty horizon as if expecting a ghost. He tapped the set switch on the bulky atmospheric monitor strapped to his wrist, and it glowed green.

In the distance, the listening station loomed—the lower-third of the dished antenna covered in red dust, the station’s metal siding blistered by time. Harland covered the short distance from the landing site in quick fashion and when he pressed the airtight door closed, he found the station exactly as he expected—dark and cold with dead CRT monitors and paper printouts curled on the floor.

Huge circulation fans hummed from somewhere above as he fired up the oxygen generators, and the temperature of the station rose to living conditions. Warm auxiliary lighting flickered to life.

The mask and goggles made a sucking sound as he removed them, their red outline marking the boundary of his less-dirty face beneath. He took a deep breath of the station’s oxygen-rich air, then exhaled and muttered.

“Still here,” he said, without really understanding why.

Harland set the case on a dust-covered console and opened it, removing a device that was an ungainly fusion of analog dials, vacuum tubes, and a pulsing quartz core. He flipped a mechanical switch and the transceiver-relay’s tubes began to glow with a soft amber light. The device looked cobbled together, like it had been hand-rebuilt again and again.

He wired it into the station’s ancient comms panel, and sparks flew as it drew life. A steady hum filled the room, blending with the planet’s background radio hiss.

The agency’s version of a percolator bubbled to life as he fixed himself a mug of hot coffee. There was a message scratched into a tabletop.

“IT’S ALWAYS DIFFERENT.”

On the metal bulkhead above the console, a different message.

“SHE ARRIVES TOMORROW AT NOON. DON’T GO OUTSIDE.”

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It was late. The kind of late where the world feels hollowed out.

A lonely stretch of two-lane highway cut through a thick wall of trees. The asphalt was slick from rain and the ditches on both sides were full of muddy water that reflected the moon. There were no other cars, no sound except the hum of insects and the quiet buzzing of power lines that ran crooked along the road.

A sign half-swallowed by weeds read MOTEL—1 MILE, its white paint long gone gray. The forest pressed close to the highway, threatening to erase it. There wasn’t a house or a light for miles.

Past the curve, the trees opened into a clearing where a warehouse sat by itself—a concrete block of a building with its loading dock slumped and the door chained. Across from it stood a squat, L-shaped motel with seven rooms and a cracked parking lot. A neon sign blinked weakly, MOTEL—VACANCY, though half the bulbs were out, and the “VAC” part kept fading in and out like it was changing its mind.

The only thing moving was the sign’s flicker, throwing red and blue light across the wet pavement.

Anna sat outside her room, one hand wrapped around a paper cup of coffee that had gone cold.

She’d been there two nights, traveling alone, heading nowhere in particular. The manager hadn’t asked questions when she paid in cash. He gave her a key with a taped-on tag that said “Room 7.” It was the last room, at the far end of the motel.

“It’s just you,” the manager said, “and I like my peace and quiet.” He went back to watching TV behind the counter.

Her car was parked near the edge of the lot, where the light from the sign didn’t quite reach. She could hear the buzz of the transformer on the pole and the soft drip of rain from the gutter. The night smelled like pine needles and diesel fuel.

Across the road, the warehouse sat quiet. Its single security light burned a dull yellow, throwing long shadows across the gravel lot. Every few minutes, Anna’s eyes went to it for no reason she could explain. Something about that building felt… aware.

She’d been restless all evening—too wired to sleep, too tired to keep moving. She checked her phone again: no signal.

It didn’t matter. There wasn’t anyone to call anyway.

She stood up and stretched. The sky was heavy with leftover storm clouds, and the forest behind the warehouse looked endless, overcrowded with tamarac and black spruce trees. The road in front of her was dark in both directions, the kind of dark that made it easy to imagine things that weren’t there.

She pulled her jacket tighter and stepped out toward the edge of the lot, her boots crunching against loose gravel. Somewhere deep in the trees, a coyote yipped once, then stopped.

She saw him when she turned back toward the warehouse.

At first she thought it was a trick of the light—a shadow moving wrong—but then the shape straightened. A man.

He was tall, wearing a hooded jacket and jeans, standing near the corner of the warehouse where the light didn’t quite reach. For a moment he just stood there, head tilted slightly, as if trying to decide whether she’d seen him.

Then he stepped forward.

Anna froze. The man crossed the gravel yard slowly, like he didn’t want to draw attention, even though he was the only thing moving in the world.

She looked back at the motel, as if to confirm her suspicions. A light glowed in the office, and in her room at the other end of the building. Every room in-between was dark and vacant.

What is a man doing out here at this hour, alone, on foot?

The man stopped halfway across the road and looked both ways out of habit. No cars came. He turned his head toward her, and though she couldn’t see his face clearly, she felt the weight of his stare.

She took a slow step backward, her boot sliding on wet gravel. Her pulse jumped. She could feel his intentions, and they were not welcome.

The man took another step, then another.

“Can I help you?” she shouted, trying to sound firm. Her voice came out thin.

He didn’t answer.

Anna turned away, keeping her pace steady. She didn’t want to look like she was running. She walked briskly toward the end of the building, where the light from the motel sign faded into shadow. Behind her, the man’s footsteps scraped against asphalt. She picked up her pace, heart thudding, and turned the corner of the building.

Out of sight, she ducked behind a soda machine and pressed her back against the wall, listening. Rain dripped from the roof. Her breath came hard but she tried to muffle it. She waited ten seconds, then twenty.

Nothing.

If he was pursuing her, she expected he would have appeared already.

Maybe he gave up, she thought. Maybe he just wanted to scare her.

She leaned forward and peered around the corner.

He was right there.

His face filled her view—eyes pale in the dark, his mouth set in something that wasn’t quite a smile. He was close enough to touch.

Anna gasped and stumbled backward, her shoulder hitting the wall. The man reached out, not quite grabbing, but close enough that his fingers brushed her sleeve. That broke her stillness.

She ran.

Her boots slapped against the wet gravel as she tore around the back of the motel and toward the trees. She didn’t look back this time. She just ran, cutting through puddles, her breath burning her chest. Branches snagged her jacket as she pushed into the woods.

Behind her, the man shouted something, but the sound was eaten by the trees.

She burst into a clearing—a flat patch of dirt surrounded by pines and stumps. The air smelled sharp and cold. She turned, chest heaving, and saw him step out from the shadows a few yards away.

They stood facing each other under the weak light of the moon.

The man’s face was pale and drawn, his eyes sharp and glassy. He looked older than she expected—maybe forty, maybe more. He was breathing hard, hands shaking slightly.

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said.

Anna didn’t answer. She kept her distance, watching the way his shoulders tensed and released, like someone fighting with himself.

“I just—” He hesitated, taking a half step closer. “I saw you out here alone. Thought maybe you needed help.”

His body language was odd and uncomfortable. Anna took it as a sign of deception, and she was frightened by the skill with which he deployed his disarming words. To a woman less-aware, this man would be dangerous.

Her voice came out quiet but steady. “You shouldn’t be here.”

He swallowed. “Look, I don’t mean any harm. It’s just… you shouldn’t be out here either. You never know what kind of people—”

He stopped mid-sentence, as if realizing how that sounded.

Anna took a slow step toward him. Her fear had faded into something else—something colder. The forest around them was perfectly still. Even the air felt like it was holding its breath.

He looked confused. “Are you all right?”

She nodded once. “I’m fine.”

He exhaled, a shaky sound that fogged in the moonlight. “Good. I was worried.”

Anna tilted her head. “You should be.”

He frowned, taking a cautious step back. “What?”

She moved closer. Her eyes caught what little light there was, reflecting it strangely—like an animal’s. Her voice was calm, almost gentle, but it carried a weight that didn’t belong in the middle of a forest at night.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

He blinked, unsure whether he’d heard right. “Of me?”

She shook her head. “No.” She took another step forward. “I’m afraid of what I might do to you.”

The words hung there, heavy and final.

The man froze. Something in his face changed—a flicker of understanding, or maybe instinct. He stumbled back, tripping on a root.

Anna didn’t move. She stood over him, silent, the night bending around her. Somewhere deep in the woods, an animal called out with a haunting cry.

When he scrambled to his feet and ran, she didn’t chase him. She just stood there, watching until the sound of his footsteps vanished into the trees.

Then she turned toward the highway. The warehouse light was still burning, dim and constant. The motel sign blinked across the road, flickering like a heartbeat that refused to quit.

She walked back slowly, her boots leaving shallow prints in the mud. When she reached the edge of the lot, she stopped and looked once more into the trees.

There was nothing there. Only the night.

But it felt different now—quieter.

She did not fully understand what had been happening to her, but she knew, even in the darkest night, on the loneliest highway, she did not need to be afraid anymore.

Enjoy this? Read the companion story, The Last Roadtrip

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

Thanks for reading Until Night Falls! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Subscribe now

It was the first and only line in my note.

“By the time you read this, I will be gone.”

I watched the water below, rushing past with the same indifference my family had shown to me. Twenty years is a long time to wait to get what you want, and eventually, you run out of patience.

The evidence was clear. My wife had grown to hate me and my teenager didn’t love anything but cats and screens.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spent any quality time with my family. The movies. Bowling. Miniature golf. A concert. Any kind of adventure would have been alright with me, but my wife and my teenager just weren’t interested.

Unless I did all the work.

That’s what it came down to really.

In my family the philosophy was Robert makes the reservations. He arranges social events. He buys cakes for the children’s birthday parties. He does all the cooking for the family; all the grocery shopping for the family. All the yard work and snow removal.

If the cat got sick, Robert was in charge of figuring out why the cat got sick.

Was it the unkempt feeding area (which I had repeatedly asked other members of the family to help me keep clean) that made the cat sick?

Did the cat nibble on one of our house plants, and it made him sick?

We would only find the answer if I sought it out.

I could count on two hands the number of times she ever did a load of laundry for me, in 20 years. Any effort I made to get some assistance from the person who was supposed to be my partner resulted in arguments.

For the crime of asking my wife for more effort and a sense of proactivity, I was called a terrible person. I got that exact insult on more than one occasion from my kid, too.

The breeze was a refreshing change of pace and I inhaled deeply as I contemplated the next few moments. Five days on a ratty Greyhound with slack-jawed people in need of a shower will do that to you.

God, just give me some fresh air.

I enjoyed the smell of the salty ocean air, but it didn’t change anything. I was still haunted by my memories. It had been 15 years since she had an affair. Although I was never unfaithful to her, she was mad and unable to communicate with me.

She was angry at me and couldn’t say it.

She held a grudge about something I said in an argument five years earlier, complained to her friends about it, and ended up having an affair with a co-worker.

When she asked for another chance, like a fool, I gave her one.

Let me tell you something. “No regrets,” is the most commonly repeated lie on Earth. People say “no regrets” because saying you have actual regrets is virtually the same as admitting you were wrong — that you made a mistake or an incorrect decision — and people don’t do that.

No, people fight back when you try to tell them they were wrong, or that they hurt you, or that you need more. They attack.

Honestly, I have nothing but regrets.

One after another.

I’m not afraid to admit Robert fucked up. I chose poorly when it came to women.

I am an old man. I’ve had a stroke and I am in the worst health of my life, and alone in it. It took weeks of fighting and arguments to get my wife to help me put my pills in a purple “Day of the Week” dispenser, because my hands don’t work like they used to. My dexterity is shit.

She doesn’t care because she has no empathy.

Shopping for, or preparing healthy foods, to try to extend my own life, is all on me.

To try to extend my own life.

What a joke that was.

What life did I have?

That life wasn’t worth extending.

I watched two seagulls glide above me, staying aloft as the ocean breeze slipped beneath their wings, and yet, they were almost motionless from my point of view. I reached out my hand, the gull hovering just out of reach.

The freedom to just fly away must be God’s greatest gift.

I looked down at the water again, examined the placid chaos of the waves, and the way they crashed against each other from opposing directions. The sound of the surf was rude and violent, and I relaxed my grip on the railing; allowed my fingertips to drift lightly back and forth on the cold steel—a small gesture of surrender I didn’t fully understand.

The waves grew taller as the ferry approached the shore.

I left the upper deck and descended the stairs, slipping into line with the tourists. I had a couple thousand dollars in my pocket and I hadn’t left any sign where I was going. My family didn’t love me. Nobody wanted to be with me. I didn’t have a single friend in the world. There wouldn’t be anybody to miss me.

I strode down the gangway and onto the dock. I would need to find a job and make some friends if I was going to start a new life, and I immediately got to work.

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

Thanks for reading Until Night Falls! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Subscribe now

He drove out of town with a dozen knives in his back.

Scott, you’re too angry. You’re so selfish. You’re too needy. You’re abusive.

He’d lived by a motto to own up to your mistakes, but no matter how many times he admitted he was wrong, there was always another person to demand another apology, another admission. As he crept along in the moving van, the rain continued to pour. The windshield wipers struggled to keep up with the deluge and he leaned forward, peering over the steering wheel. He didn’t have a problem apologizing or admitting he was wrong, but he had a real problem with people who couldn’t do the same acting like he owed them something.

Things had been terrible for years in his marriage and everything had recently come to a head. He decided to split from his wife, packed his belongings into a moving truck, and headed across the country to start a new life.

It was the most painful, difficult decision he’d ever made, and it had not gone according to plan.

What day is it?

Anna could not remember. Every day seemed to blend into the next in her parents’ backwater diner, and she had long ago stopped counting relentless days of monotony. Every morning was the same as the last in the store — the products, the customers, the sunrise. All the same.

Even Anna was the same. She did not smile or laugh. She did not send text messages to her friends, or post Tik Toks for the world to see, because Anna did not have friends, and the store was her world.

“Anna!” her mother called from their adjoining apartment, and the young woman flinched. “Anna!” she shouted again, insistent. Anna parted a bead curtain in the doorway and hustled to see what the old woman was yelling about this time.

The floor creaked as she went down the hallway and before she had even arrived in her mother’s room, the old woman was already barking.

“Anna, my bed is soaked!” the woman cried. “Soaked again!” she said with an accusing tone.

Anna rounded the corner and saw her mother sitting up in bed, her formerly thick black hair now thin and streaked with gray, in disarray, her nightgown wet and matted to her body.

“Anna, how can you let this happen to me?” the woman cried. “To your own mother?”

“Evelyn, it is what it is,” Anna said in a matter-of-fact tone. “We do this every day,” she said as she stepped forward to gather the bedding. She had stopped calling the old woman “mom” years ago.

“How dare you treat me this way.” Evelyn’s eyes blazed.

“I’m not treating you any way,” Anna replied. “You just wet the bed, that’s…”

Her reply was interrupted by the loud crack of the old woman’s open hand across her cheek.

“How dare you,” the old woman spat. “Your father would never have let this happen.”

Anna stood motionless, her face downturned, a red welt rising on her cheek.

My father would not have let a lot of things happen.

An electronic sign on the highway blasted an unexpected message into the night at a million candlepower — Interstate 29 Closed at Exit 54. The sign flipped to display a second message that began “use alternate route via” but before he could see the rest of the message in the driving rain, Scott had passed it.

What the fuck? Since when do they close the interstate?

He had encountered plenty of lane closures, sure, but he couldn’t remember the last time the entire freeway was closed. He was using two navigation units, and he tried to keep one eye on the road while he checked them. Both agreed — there was a detour ahead.

He reluctantly followed instructions and left the highway on a detour through several small towns along a lonely two-lane road. After an extended effort attempting to find gas and a meal, and a stop to repair a wheel-well liner that was rubbing on the truck’s tire, the detour cost him four hours. He was way behind schedule. He’d expected to arrive at his destination by 11 PM, a late hour for him, but it was already past 1 in the morning and he still had hours to go.

The abuse began when Anna’s father passed away. He hadn’t been in the ground a week when her uncles, who had not been part of her life growing up, suddenly started coming around and trying to present a protector visage to her mother.

Anna was sure her mother knew what they were really up to and did nothing to stop them. It went on for some time, and Anna told her mom, but the evil old woman blamed it on Anna.

Her mother said she liked it.

She asked for it.

Each accusation was crushing to the young woman. Anna was completely bewildered that someone who was supposed to love her could say such a thing. Who did a child have if she did not have her mother?

Then it happened.

While her father was on his deathbed, family gathered at the hospital. In a quiet moment, Anna’s aunt Sara explained that there was something very special about her family. Sara told Anna when she reached the right age, something might happen to her.

“You’ll be able to feel it,” Sara said. “It skips generations sometimes. Your dad is dying, so we know it skipped him.” There was sorrow in Sara’s eyes, but also an intensity that frightened Anna.

Sara stepped close to the young woman and lowered her voice.

“The gift comes with a terrible price,” she said. “A terrible price.”

“I don’t know what you’re…” Anna began.

“I know you don’t know,” Sara said. “But you will, okay? So just listen to me and remember a couple of things.” She put her palms to Anna’s shoulders and smoothed her sleeves.

“Strangers,” her Aunt Sara said. “Travelers. People without family. The more you watch for them the easier it will get to spot them, and the more you use the pull, the more powerful you will get.”

That had been three years ago — three years during which Anna did not age a day. Anna’s aunt had been right. Something happened to her. She could feel it, and the more she used her gift, the better she got.

Her uncles paid dearly for their actions.

It was intoxicating.

The rain let up, but it was past 2:30 am and Scott’s eyelids were heavy. He’d turned the radio up and tried to headbang his way out of his fatigue. He rolled the windows down and froze his ass off. Nothing was working.

Then, just when he started to worry that he might have to pull off the road and sleep in the truck, he saw a light in the distance. In the inky black pre-dawn wilderness, there was a clearing, and a mom & pop all-night diner.

Scott pulled his truck into the parking lot and he could see a young woman behind the counter as a neon sign advertised hot coffee.

What a welcoming gesture.

Scott climbed down out of the cab of his truck and strode toward the entrance and a cup of hot black coffee. He ascended the three short steps and entered the diner. The bell over the door tinkled like breaking glass.

Scott had a feeling things were about to change.

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

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Note: Stories at Until Night Falls are works of dark fiction and may contain elements of violent crime, horror, and mature themes/subject matter. Reader discretion is advised.

Garrett Newman jolted awake. It was a sweltering summer night, and he had gone to bed with his bedroom window open and an ancient Army surplus table fan blowing. It was a loud 1950s model of all-metal construction with two speeds—on and off—and when it was on, it was like having a model airplane blasting in his bedroom all night, but Garrett knew it was his only relief. Sleeping on the top floor in a house without air conditioning, the noise was a tradeoff he had to make for comfort’s sake.

Why he was suddenly awake, he didn’t know.

He rubbed his eyes and glanced at the clock on his nightstand. The numbers flipped rolodex style, and a black metal card with white digits showed 2:41 AM under a pale green light. The clock normally lit up the corner of his room like a nightlight, but it occurred to Garrett that the light was dimmer tonight somehow. The table fan, instead of blasting, was humming a low frequency buzz and turning like a broken windmill in a lazy breeze.

He pushed back his covers and sat up in bed, listening. He heard nothing that alarmed him, but there had to be a reason he was suddenly awake. He looked at the fan again.

Maybe it was the sudden lack of noise.

He got out of bed. At the top of the stairs, he paused momentarily. He was thirteen years old—just old enough to have begun conquering his fear of the dark—but walking a patrol through the darkened house was a task that required the mustering of some will. He strained his eyes in the dark, watching for any sign of movement at the bottom of the darkened stairwell. He took a deep breath, gulped once, and descended the stairs, which creaked under his weight.

At the bottom of the stairs, he looked down the hall to the right, toward the room where his mom and step-dad slept. Their bedroom door was partially ajar and he could see flickers of white light on the wall cast by the 9-inch black and white TV that was almost always on in their room, accompanied by a low murmur of sound. He took a left and walked down the dimly lit hallway to the dining room, where he paused in the archway. The patio door was open with only the screen door separating the dining room from the back yard.

Garrett approached the screen door quietly and peered into the back yard with his toes on the threshold.

It was not a hot summer night. Instead of crickets and the occasional yowl of a nocturnally randy neighborhood cat, Garrett confronted blizzard-level winds of a violent snowstorm that had blanketed their normally patchy brown and green yard in the desert with an inch of snow. At the far side of the yard, an eight-foot section of their rickety privacy fence sagged in the top corner, as if someone had climbed over it, and a series of footprints in the snow stood out in a perfect, clear path from the fence, right to his feet.

Creak.

A sound came from somewhere in the house.

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I used to tell myself I’d settle down if I could just find a woman who tried. I’d had enough of women who’d given up; who showed up for a first date with their hair in a messy bun, no makeup, wearing flip flops. The last time it had happened, I’d left feeling dejected.

Is this how little a woman cares about going on a date with me?

I wanted someone who’d dress like she was going somewhere worth going, and meeting someone worth putting in a little work. I wanted a woman who was put together.

When I met Maria online, her profile photos stopped me cold—she had beauty that felt almost unreal. I sent my usual test message: I like a woman who puts in effort.

Her reply came instantly. Then I’m exactly what you’re looking for.

I did my part. I went shopping for a new shirt. Our date was to happen at a nice club where they were having standup comedy, so I picked some dressy blue jeans, and added a sport coat and nice shoes. I made sure I smelled nice, and took my truck to the car wash, vacuumed it out, and made sure it smelled nice too, with a light coconut scent.

“I’m exactly what you’re looking for,” she had said. She wasn’t lying.

I picked her up at her condo. Her hair spilled in polished, glistening waves over her shoulders, catching the light like threads of black silk tipped in gold. We drove to the club, and her skin was flawless, luminous under the low amber street lamps.

Her eyes—God, her eyes—were framed in a perfect sweep of black eyeliner, drawn with surgical precision so fine it could have been painted by a jeweler. The upper line flared outward into a feline flick, sharp enough to cut the air, while her lower lashes were kissed with smoky charcoal that made the whites of her eyes glow like moons. The eyeshadow above was layered in gradients: molten bronze fading into deep, mysterious plum, and at the very top, the faintest shimmer of champagne gold.

Her lashes—thick, curled, impossibly dark—blinked slowly, each movement deliberate, each pause long enough for me to realize she was studying me. Each bat of her lashes felt deliberate, like a hypnotist swinging a watch.

Her lips were sculpted perfection, full and precise, wrapped in a lacquered crimson that glistened with the faintest wet shine. It was the kind of red you’d only ever see in a forbidden kiss from an old movie—half promise, half warning.

She wore designer ripped jeans the color of midnight, stitched with fine silver threads that winked under the lights as she moved. The denim clung like a secret, outlining the curve of her hips in ways I hadn’t known fabric could. Her muted pink top shimmered and wrapped her as if it were liquid.

When we walked into the club, the room shifted. Heads turned. Conversation stalled mid-sentence. When we reached the table, the air felt heavier.

We talked. Or rather, I tried to. Every time I lost my place, her mouth would curl just slightly—knowing she’d done it on purpose. Her perfume was warm and sweet, like honey melting over dark spice, and it wrapped around me until I forgot there was a world outside of her. She had a way of making me forget my name.

By the third date, I was canceling plans with friends. By the fifth, I lived in a state of constant anticipation. The moment she texted, my pulse jumped. I could smell her before I saw her.

One night, I caught my reflection in the mirrored wall of the restaurant. I looked thinner. My eyes, hollow. My smile, automatic.

“Maria,” I started, “you’re—”

She touched my cheek, and the thought dissolved like sugar in tea.

“I’m exactly what you asked for,” she whispered.

I was a visually stimulated man, and my stimulation was off the charts. Her beauty was a drug I couldn’t name, and every glance was another hit. I’d already forgotten what it felt like to be sober

I knew she was taking something from me. I knew I was fading.

But the truth?

I’d let her take it all.

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

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The sun filtered through the clouds like an incandescent bulb through a dirty lampshade, giving the shadows a weird, muted appearance, like the minutes leading up to an eclipse. It was cooler than normal, and Shanna decided to take advantage while it lasted.

Her boss had been all over her lately and had started to characterize Shanna as a bumbling, accident-prone employee after she'd broken her forearm.

"You and trouble just seem to find each other," her boss had remarked.

She was afraid her boss might be right. With money woes and a failing love life, her rides were the only thing that gave her peace.

She was five miles into a bike ride on the city's bike trail, out on the edge of town, when she saw it. As she crested a rise on the trail, headlights shone into her eyes. Near a flood control gate across the wash, a car sat running with its lights on.

Shanna's pedaling slowed. It was 9:30 a.m.—long past the time anybody should be driving around with their headlights on. A man emerged from the treeline and went to the back of the car. A moment later, Shanna heard the thump of the trunk closing.

She stopped on the side of the trail and snapped a quick photo. The man beside the car hesitated.

"Did he see me?" she wondered, panic rising.

Her mind ran wild with imagined scenarios. What was someone doing out there, with their car parked on a secluded, little-used road? Her heart began to thump and her grip on the handlebars tightened. She looked around. Suddenly, she was acutely aware of the silence of the morning. The chattering of squirrels and chirping of birds was noticeably absent.

DING! Shanna's phone buzzed violently in her hand, making her jump. The sound was startling in the silence. She lifted her phone and saw a notification from an unknown number. It was an image.
When she opened it, Shanna wanted to scream.

It was a photo of her, face pale, hands white-knuckled on the handlebars.

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

The old man was killing himself at his office job—a fact he liked to share with others.

“I’m just killing myself at this job," he would often say when someone asked how he’d been or what he was up to.

He would soon learn that it wasn’t wise to put that out in the universe.

There was a cafe where he ate lunch two or three times a week and where the staff knew him by his first name. He liked going there because, since he’d been divorced, he’d remained single and lived alone, so visiting a place where people called him by his name made it feel like he had the close friends he’d been missing.

”How goes the battle today, Peter?” the 30-something barista asked as he walked in. Her name was Kayla, and he thought she was the friendliest, nicest person he’d met since moving to the old oil town.

“You know, same old, same old,” he said, and retrieved the coffee she’d made for him when she saw his truck pull-in to the parking lot.

Kayla knew his order and made it just the way he liked it.

Peter chose his usual table in the corner by the window, then pulled out his chair and sat down.

A different server took his order—turkey and provolone with fries—and Peter scrolled through his newsfeed. When his sandwich arrived, he ate it halfheartedly. It wasn’t really good, but it was cheap, and the cafe was close to work, so he made do.

Peter had a one hour lunch break, and when he looked down at his phone, he realized he had 8 minutes to get back to work, about 7 blocks away. Plenty of time.

He wadded up his napkin and placed it on his tray alongside the used Miracle Whip packets and his empty coffee cup. Then, he grasped the tray with one hand. He extended one foot and began to rise from his chair when suddenly, the world seemed to swim away

The next time Peter opened his eyes, three weeks of his life had disappeared. He lay in a hospital bed with no memory of how he’d ended up there. A nurse told him, coldly, that he’d had a heart attack.

“You've been unconscious for three weeks," she said. "Your brother has been visiting when he can," she added. Then, Peter drifted off again. The drugs they gave him kept him heavily sedated, and he was mostly incoherent for almost three months. Still, he had flashes of memory.

He recalled his nurse lecturing him one day.

“Mr. Chambers," she said, "If you don’t change your lifestyle, you’ll end up back here.” He listened, not able to respond due to a tube down his throat.

A few days later, he became aware of his brother Tim in the room. He woke to the sound of Tim’s voice.

“Do you wanna see the video, Peter?”

When Peter opened his eyes, Tim was sitting at his bedside holding a tablet. On the screen played a security camera video from the café. From the camera mounted high in the corner of the room, Peter watched as he attempted to get up from his table, then went down hard, banging his head on the table on the way down. Peter realized that the security camera’s point of view felt like an out-of-body experience… as if he were watching himself die.

With great effort, Peter reached out and grabbed his brother’s wrist. Tim looked down at him as Peter croaked, his voice barely a whisper.

“I’m sorry.”

With a quick, subtle motion, Tim pulled his hand away and stood.

"Peter, is this enough?" his younger brother asked from his bedside. "Does almost dying have enough impact to make you change?" He chuffed, sweeping his hand through the air.

“It’s not like I don’t have a life of my own to lead,” he said.

His brother was the only relative nearby, and Peter’s well-being had fallen into his youngest sibling’s hands.

As he recuperated, Peter learned he’d lost his job. He had exhausted his benefits, and the doctors advised against returning to work, as it was high-stress, sedentary, and bad for his health. His boss had hired a young hotshot to replace him. Peter had a small nest egg—just over $12,000—that his mom had left him, and that was all. As the doctors prepared to release him, Peter realized he would be starting over.

11 Months Later

A cashier with an accent handed over Peter’s change, which he pocketed before grabbing his small bag and heading out the door. The little store was right on the ground floor of his building and he stopped there often.

It was dusk, just before 6 pm, and the beautiful orange and purple sky backlit the cities’ buildings, creating a skyline silhouette. The towering buildings made him feel small and invisible, but there was no time to consider his existence. He had just a few minutes to get to work and clock-in.

His heart attack was nearly a year in the past, and he’d applied for and received federal disability payments, but it wasn’t enough to pay his medical bills, or even groceries and rent for that matter. So Peter had gone looking for a job.

He found out the new hotshot hadn’t worked out, so he applied for his old job, but that ship had sailed. He couldn’t even get his old boss to return his calls.

All he’d been able to find was a factory job, working their version of third shift. Four days per week, Tuesday through Friday, he worked 10 hours per day, from 6 pm to 4 am.

On the sidewalk outside, the wind tunnel effect amongst the tall buildings downtown made the winter feel colder than it was — freezing for anybody who’d become accustomed to living in the south, and Peter zipped up his jacket as he climbed into his truck.

He worked an entire shift that night, packaging small mechanical parts for a manufacturing company, then clocked-out. Nobody said goodbye to him, and he didn’t say goodbye to anyone, either. He’d given up trying. From the first day at the factory, everyone had seemed wrapped up in their own dramas, and although he’d never been a sullen, keep-to-yourself kind of guy, it was exactly where he’d found himself.

Peter arrived home, parked his truck, and headed for the security door to access his building. It had once been an office building, and later, a decrepit hotel, but had been renovated in recent years by a shady developer who invested the absolute minimum to make it livable, before marketing it as a “luxury apartment building.” Peter’s brother Tim had helped him find it.

He glanced at the sticker just above the keypad, which read “Secure Access.” Peter punched in his security code and snickered to nobody in particular as he slid inside, into the lobby.

Secure access.

The convenience store on the ground floor had an unsecured door which led from the store into the lobby of the building. The smartest among the city’s indigent community had figured it out, and now used the store as a means to gain entry to the building, where they would bathe in the sinks of the lobby bathroom, or lock themselves in for the night during the coldest winter nights.

There was no oversight. Nobody paid attention. Hell, they couldn’t even vacuum the hallways on a regular schedule.

Luxury apartment building. The first five floors are a homeless shelter, but I’m on six, so…

He didn’t think it was good to be so cynical, but it was the truth.

On the 6th floor, Peter walked down a long hallway to get to his apartment at the south end, where his favorite feature awaited — the window, just outside his apartment door. The view was of a courtyard below, and on the other side, a huge former office building of gothic design. The building’s windows were mostly dark when he would arrive home in the early morning hours, but occasionally there would be 4 or 5 windows illuminated. Like his own building, the place across the courtyard, Hudson Square, had been renovated in low-rent fashion, then the offices were leased to small-dollar tenants who would not have had the resources to rent an office under other circumstances. He’d never been inside, but he loved to look at it and imagine what must be going on in those lit windows at 4:15 am. If he saw someone, he would wave, just to see if they would respond, but nobody ever waved back.

On that particular night, Hudson Square was dark.

Peter entered his apartment, set down his things, and immediately began changing clothes. He donned a pair of workout pants and a t-shirt, then a black hoodie with a radio station logo on the front.

Minutes later, he was back on the sidewalk in front of his building, headed out for his walk. He’d dedicated himself to changing his life, his workout routine, and his diet, and he felt after work was the best time to get in a 3 mile walk, despite it being cold and dark. He’d put in his earbuds and head out, careful to watch his step on the city’s crumbling sidewalks.

There was something peaceful about it.

Before he’d started working third shift, when he was able to walk in the daylight, he would tell anyone who would listen that there was a lot to be said about the sun on your face, music in your ears, and nobody’s voice in your head but your own. Unfortunately, he hadn’t done it enough and his health had suffered. Now, walking at night, he thought two out of three wasn’t bad.

Like most nights, he finished his walk, watched a little TV, and by 6:30 am, his designated bedtime, he was nodding off on the sofa, his “day” at an end.

He got up and stumbled into bed.

His day began about 1:30 in the afternoon most days. He’d get up, shower, have “breakfast,” and take care of household things, like dishes and laundry and groceries. Usually, Peter would make a sandwich to bring to work as his lunch, and just before 6 pm, he’d be out the door, on his way to work again.

He made it a routine, and it was comfortable to him, but if he was honest, it was also very lonely. His schedule made it difficult to have a social life, and even on the weekends, he’d maintain his weird schedule, lest he be on a fucked up sleep schedule the following week.

He knew people who thrived on the third shift and loved living alone, but for some reason, he couldn’t get comfortable with the loneliness. There was never anybody to talk to.

Nobody to tell him he’d done a good job.

Nobody to tell him he was looking good when he lost 30 pounds.

Nobody to give him a hug and say I love you.

One night, as Peter exited into the parking lot at work after another long day at the factory, dense fog greeted him. It was thick, like a 1930s mystery noir, and he had to be careful not to overdrive his headlights on the trip home.

Not one to let a little fog ruin his nightly walk, Peter changed into his workout clothes, popped in his earbuds, and headed for the sidewalk six stories down. In the elevator, he was about to choose his regular rock playlist when an idea occurred to him.

He looked up Miles Davis’ “Ascenseur pour l’échafaud” and pressed “play.” It was a musical score Davis had composed for a French film noir in 1958, and had long been one of Peter’s favorites.

Davis’ sultry, muted trumpet burst forth from Peter’s earbuds, and as he exited the elevator and walked into the foggy night, he knew immediately that he’d found something.

The music was perfect, and it elevated the experience of his nightly walk.

The streetlights shone with yellow halos, and when a rare car passed at that early hour, its headlights cast long, ethereal beams in the night.

He imagined himself as a gumshoe in a long trench coat, searching for a dame with one piece of information that could crack his case. His walk raced by, and when his three miles were done, he’d wished they weren’t.

He exited the elevator into the long hallway on the 6th floor, and as he approached the window at the end, even through the fog, he could see several offices lit in Hudson Square’s windows

As he often did, Peter paused outside his apartment to examine Hudson Square, watching for any sign of life. The fog obscured his view, but he could swear he saw someone moving back and forth in one of the lit offices.

For just a moment, the breeze picked up, and the fog momentarily cleared in front of the windows. A woman could be seen, standing at a desk, looking down at something on the desktop, apparently reading by the light of a dim desk lamp.

She wore an alluring yellow dress and swayed a little as she read.

Peter stood holding his keys and looked closer, stunned by her beauty, finding her incredibly captivating.

He heard a noise behind him, and Peter spun around, startled.

Five steps away, a vagrant approached him.

“Hey sir, sorry, could you spare 5 dollars?” the man asked. He carried his belongings with both hands, contained within drawstring bags.

“You know you aren’t supposed to be up here!” Peter barked. The man immediately retreated.

“Sorry,” the vagrant said. “Thank you anyway. I didn’t mean to…”

Peter spun around once more, but the woman was gone. His eyes scanned the windows of Hudson Square. He found himself unable to even determine which window he had seen her in. It seemed as though, in those few seconds, she had left her office and turned off the light.

The vagrant waited for the elevator at the end of the hall, and Peter waited for him to enter before he unlocked his apartment door.

It was a beautiful, sunny day when Peter awoke the following afternoon. He stepped into the hallway and peered out the window. Hudson Square didn’t look as romantic in the daylight. He examined the building’s facade, trying to determine in which window the woman had appeared, but to no avail. He thought she had been on a higher floor—maybe the 7th or 8th—but he couldn’t be certain. He had no choice but to put it out of his mind and go about his day. He still had to make a living.

The unfortunate thing about trying to put something out of your mind is that it rarely works, or so Peter thought. All night at the factory, he couldn’t stop thinking about the woman; he was obsessed.

Who was she?

Why hadn’t he seen her before?

What was she doing working at 4 a.m.?

When he arrived home from work that night, he couldn’t wait to get to the window at the end of the hallway, to see if the woman in the yellow dress would be there. He was disappointed to see every window in Hudson Square dark.

Peter changed into his workout clothes and went for his walk.

When he returned to his door on the 6th floor, a light illuminated a single window across the courtyard. He stood watching for a moment, and then she appeared.

The woman in the yellow dress.

She passed in front of the window, out of sight, then came back again.

As before, she stopped and peered down at the desk in front of her, swaying in her captivating manner.

Peter raised his hand and waved, first subtly, then in a more exaggerated manner. There was an entire city block between them, and he didn’t think he could easily get her attention from so far away.

The woman did not react.

How long would he stand there, trying to get her attention? Nobody had ever waved back before.

He counted the windows from the ground up, pointing his finger as he counted.

…five, six, seven… Seven stories.

He counted the windows from the west end of the building.

One, two, three, four… Four windows from the end.

She was one floor higher than he was, and four windows from the end of the hall.

He waved again, but still she did not respond.

“Hey!” the cashier said when Peter stopped into the convenience store on the ground floor one early morning as he arrived home from work.

“Mike?” Peter asked. “I haven’t seen you in forever,” he continued. “I thought you had quit or something.”

“No, my wife was having our baby so I’ve been out for a few weeks,” Mike said. He was a middle-eastern man and Peter had struck up a friendship with him over time. Mike had once given Peter a free hot cocoa for being a regular customer.

“What have you been up to?” Mike asked. “How is your heart?”

“I’m good, man,” Peter answered. “Getting my exercise and eating right,” he said as he laid a king size candy bar on the counter.

“And?” Mike said, smiling big. “Have you met anybody yet?”

He knew that Peter had been interested in meeting a girl, but not having any luck.

Peter smiled and answered.

“Not unless you count the woman in the window,” he said.

“What woman in what window?” Mike asked, though with his accent, it came out “Vut voman in vut window?” It made Peter giggle a little.

He told Mike the story about the woman in yellow, and how she had captured his imagination.

“I was thinking if I see her again,” Peter said, “I could go over there and try to find her office. Maybe ask her to get coffee or something.”

Mike’s eyes widened.

“You vant to get the police called on you or something?” Mike asked.

Peter considered Mike’s statement.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he concluded.

Peter had tried to meet women in various ways, but he was out of practice. Dating apps didn’t work, nor did social media. He felt dating had become a process where women assumed the worst about a man from the start, and he had to convince them he was worthwhile just to get a first date. It was a sad reality.

Minutes later, Peter was at his door again, and six windows were illuminated in Hudson Square, including the fourth window from the end on the seventh floor. However, nobody could be seen in any of them.

Peter put on his workout clothes, fired up his earbuds, and went for his walk. By the time he returned, it was almost 5 o’clock in the morning.

He arrived at the window at the end of the long hallway, and only 4 windows were still lit, but the 4th window from the end on the 7th floor was still one of them.

Peter stood patiently, watching. It might have only been a minute or two, but to him, it felt like an eternity.

The woman appeared at the window, again wearing her yellow dress. This time, she wasn’t looking down at her desk. Just like Peter, she was looking out her window, examining the surrounding city.

Then, she appeared to look in his direction.

Peter stood directly beneath the light illuminating his end of the hallway, knowing he must be plainly visible.

He quickly raised his arm and waved his hand back and forth.

Is she seeing me?

And then it happened.

She waved back.

Peter’s heart leapt in his chest.

After so many months of living in the building, alone, and all the times he had attempted to offer a silent greeting to the people in the building across the way, someone had waved back.

Peter waved again, more enthusiastically, and he could have sworn he saw her smile.

She returned his wave—a playful, ‘girl-next-door’ wave, where she held her hand palm out and bent her fingers at the knuckles repeatedly, like a wink, but with her hand. And then she was gone.

Peter stood there a few more minutes, waiting to see if she would return. But she didn’t. Nevertheless, he was overwhelmed with joy.

“Small pleasures, Peter,” he reminded himself.

Over the next week, Peter did not see the woman again, yet he floated on air. He went through his daily routine barely thinking about work, drifting through each day, unable to think of anything but the woman. He had convinced himself that she was the woman of his dreams, and when he had the opportunity to meet her in person, they would fall madly in love and have the best origin story of any couple ever.

Yes, I met your grandmother when she waved at me from the seventh floor of a building on the next block over.

It was on one of those nights at work, as he dreamed of the woman in the yellow dress, his boss showed up at his workstation.

“Pete,” his boss said. “Can I speak with you?”

“It’s Peter,” he responded. “What’s up?”

His boss gave him the ‘follow me’ hand gesture and Peter obliged, following his boss to the office.

“Listen, Pete,” his boss said, then corrected himself. “I mean, Peter. I don’t know what’s going on with you lately,” his boss began, but Peter interrupted.

“I’m sorry, Clint,” Peter said. “I’ve been distracted. I’ll do better.”

“No,” Clint said, “I don’t think you understand. Your productivity has increased significantly.”

Peter blinked, trying to process what he was hearing.

“Harvey is retiring at the end of the month, and I need someone I can rely on to fill his spot,” Clint said.

“Harvey is the assistant VP of production,” Peter said.

“That’s right,” Clint said, offering a tempered smile. “You will be on day shift, and you'll get your own office.”

“I—I don’t know what to say,” Peter said.

“It’s a $14,000 bump, Peter,” Clint said. “Say you’ll do it.”

“I’ll do it,” Peter replied.

“Great,” Clint responded. “On Monday, let’s sit down and discuss it further.”

He stuck out his hand and Peter shook it.

“Thank you,” Peter replied.

“No,” Clint said, “Thank you. I’m looking forward to it.”

Bursting with good news but with nobody to tell, Peter could barely contain himself. He would finally be able to pay his medical bills. More importantly, he would be able to have a regular schedule for the first time in more than a year. He’d be able to have a social life.

I could take the woman in the window on a date.

And he knew right then what he would do.

The next 'morning,' Peter woke up at 1:30 in the afternoon. He put on Miles Davis, brewed some coffee, showered, and got dressed in a nice pair of jeans, brown shoes, a collared plaid shirt with a sweater over it, and a blazer.

He drank his coffee, grabbed his keys, and left. On the ground floor, he exited from the rear entrance onto the sidewalk and crossed the courtyard to Hudson Square. It was normal business hours and he knew there would be workers in the building.

He was on a mission to meet the woman in the yellow dress.

Peter followed a worker into the building and went straight to the elevators—a grand Art Deco lift that seemed twice as wide as a typical modern elevator.

Inside, he pressed the button for the 7th floor.

When the elevator doors opened, he knew exactly where to go. He had imagined this moment so many times that he had gotten the layout firmly planted in his mind.

He went left, all the way to the end of the hall, and then left again. The woman in yellow’s office should be near the end of the hall on the right.

As he approached the door he believed might be the woman’s office, he realized the hallway was unusually dark. The lights were off.

Maybe they’re conserving energy.

Peter guessed her office was likely the second door from the end of the hallway, since each office probably had two windows, and hers had been the fourth.

He reached the second door and tried the knob, but it didn’t budge.

Locked.

Peter considered it.

Maybe she only works third shift. I’ve only seen her in the early morning hours.

He examined the office, but there was no name on the door.

“Can I help you?” a voice called out from down the hall..

Peter immediately recognized the man approaching as a custodian.

“Oh, uh, hi,” Peter replied. “I’m trying to get in touch with the woman in this office,” he continued. “I know this sounds crazy, but I live across the way and…”

“There’s nobody in this office,” the custodian said, furrowing his brow and eyeing Peter like he was crazy.

“Oh,” Peter said, confused. “Are you sure, because…”

“Listen, Pal, there’s nobody in this office,” the custodian said. “This entire floor has been vacant for nearly 50 years.”

The custodian grabbed the keys attached to his belt on a retractable spool and pulled them out, unlocking the office door. Gently, he pushed the door and it swung open.

Peter stepped into the darkened office and surveyed his surroundings.

Wood paneling lined the walls, and olive green laminate covered the countertops. A rotary-dial phone rested nearby. The office looked like it came straight out of the 1970s.

Peter approached a desk near the window. He ran his finger across the top of it and left a single track in the undisturbed dust which had clearly been accumulating for decades.

“Maybe I’m confused,” Peter said, his voice trailing off. “What about the office below us?”

“That’s my storeroom,” the custodian said. “There’s nobody in there, either.”

“And on 8?” Peter asked, pointing up with one finger.

“Floors 7 through 12 are vacant,” the custodian said.

Peter paused.

“Are we done here?" the custodian asked, his impatience growing.

“Yes,” Peter replied, still confused. “I guess we are.”

There seemed to be no explanation for what Peter had experienced. He was puzzled and discouraged, and the depression that plagued him before his heart attack had crept back in. The Miles Davis film noir soundtrack that had once thrilled him now took on a melancholic tone.

He switched to the day shift at the factory and settled into his new office. When he returned to the cafe one day for lunch, for old times sake, Kayla was there waiting for him.

“Peter!” she practically shouted, rushing from behind the counter to give him a hug. “How are you?” she asked in an enthusiastic way that came out like “How arrreee yoouuuu?”

He forced a half-smile.

“I’m getting by, darlin’,” he said. “It’s nice to see you,” he said into her ear as he returned her hug.

“Just getting by?” she asked, her voice filled with genuine concern.

“Well, you know…” he muttered, sitting down at his table

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

Peter watched as she went behind the counter and made his coffee, then briefly spoke to her supervisor. She returned to his table, set his coffee down, and took the seat opposite him.

They made small talk.

He told Kayla about his new position at work and she congratulated him, but eventually she addressed the elephant in the room.

“I’ve been worried about you,” she said. “The last time I saw you…”

She pointed to the floor beside the table.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “It’s been a long road back.”

He looked Kayla in the eye.

“I’ve been in a really dark place.”

Her brow furrowed with concern, and she gently took his hand. Peter looked down at their interlocked fingers.

“I’ve been there, Peter,” she said. “You know what helps me?”

He looked up again.

“Gratitude,” she said. “Positivity,” she continued. “I try to find something to be grateful for every day, and when I do, I write it down.”

Peter didn’t know what to say. He’d been raised to be cynical and negative.

“There’s a local poet I like to read,” she said. “Can I send you a link?”

He nodded and Kayla tapped out a message on her phone as Peter finished his coffee. They had another warm hug as they parted, and Peter returned to his office at the factory. He finished his day, but Kayla’s words stayed with him.

When he arrived home that evening, he stepped off the elevator on the 6th floor and walked down the long hallway to the window outside his apartment. He stood there and gazed out at Hudson Square for several long minutes.

He needed some positivity, some gratitude in his life.

Peter pulled out his phone and tapped the link Kayla had sent him. A page opened, and he started reading.

The night may weep, the winds may wail,

The road may twist, the steps may fail.

But even in the coldest gloom,

The smallest seed prepares to bloom.

The dawn will rise, the dark will fade,

New dreams will form from those that frayed.

Through highs and lows, through loss and song,

The world still turns—life marches on.

Emily Farantino

The words affected Peter in a profound way. He was touched, both by Kayla’s gesture, and the sentiment in the poem. He wanted more.

He opened another window on his phone as he stood there overlooking the courtyard, basking in the golden hour light emanating from the physical window before him.

He typed “Emily Farantino,” and a page of search results appeared. He tapped on the first one. It was a newspaper article from 1971.

The headline read, “Local Poet Dies.”

He began to read.

“Emily Farantino, legendary local poet, has died. The respected writer, poet, and philanthropist passed away early this morning at her office in Hudson Square, where she had been working on her latest poetry collection. Her family says she died at her desk of an apparent heart attack.”

And right there, about a third of the way down, there was a photo.

A photo of Emily Farantino.

The photo was in black and white, but there was no mistaking her.

It was her—the woman in the yellow dress.

Peter stood stunned. His eyes returned to the final lines of her poem.

Through highs and lows, through loss and song,

The world still turns—life marches on.

He looked out beyond the courtyard, gazing at Hudson Square for another long minute as he contemplated all that had happened.

"You were right, Ms. Farantino," Peter whispered. "The world still turns. Life marches on."

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

Thanks for reading Until Night Falls! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

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The little church along the side of the road was a beehive of activity, with mourners coming and going all evening. At the property next door, however, a storage locker park, business went on as usual.

The man looked the other way.

On the highway, traffic still zipped by. The cafe downtown was abuzz with activity, too, with dinnertime customers ignorant of the human tragedy playing out just around the corner.

The man held down a position outside the church, pretending to surf on his phone from behind dark sunglasses while he waited.

And that's what this existence is, right?

Life goes on.

He locked his phone and stuffed it in his pocket.

On the inside, the small one room church was typical Southern Baptist, with a stage 8 inches tall and a banner on the wall that read "Devil Binder."

The side door was open, and overflow mourners stood watching outside as the preacher wrapped up the ceremony. A lanky kid with arms so long it looked like he could tap his kneecaps without bending over walked through the receiving line, and another young man who was uncomfortable giving a hug to the “mother” of the deceased. He slithered past as she was distracted by others.

Mourners filtered out, into the dining hall which was in a separate building built five steps from the side door. The celebration of life ceremony had been a simple rental and the church offered meal service. There were meatballs and meatloaf and barbecue chicken, not to mention brownies and cakes and cobblers.

The man looked at a beautiful array of photos arranged on the altar. The person shown in them did not look like the person he remembered, but then, it had been a very long time.

From his position at the altar, the man could overhear the preacher in his quarters, talking to his wife.

“My incision is killing me,” he said. “I can't sit anymore. I have to get up and go get something for dinner.”

He and his wife waddled out of the church, leaving behind their kitchen staff, a janitor drinking a beer, and a smattering of lingering mourners.

With three quick steps at just the right moment, the man slipped out of sight, into the back room. He was there, in the shadows, when the funeral home’s staff wheeled the corpse in.

Because it was a holiday and the small-town lacked a medical examiner, the church had agreed to hold the body overnight until the coroner from Springfield could get there. The man had planned each circumstance for this particular moment.

A man in a polo shirt with “Thompson-Larsen Funeral Home” embroidered on the left breast reached for the light switch then looked back at the closed casket.

“Are we really just gonna leave her here?” he asked.

“They'll be here to get her first thing in the morning," his co-worker said. "It's not going to hurt her any to stay here overnight.“

The light clicked off and they left, letting the door click shut behind them, but the man remained still for several minutes. When he was sure everyone had gone, he quietly emerged from his hiding spot at the back of the storeroom and approached the closed casket.

He reached out for the lid of the casket and was just about to open it when the door swung open behind him. The janitor walked in and saw the man reaching for the casket.

“What are you doing?” he asked the man. “You don't have permission to…”

He hadn't finished his sentence, but he trailed off.

The lid on the casket slowly opened, a pale white arm raising it from within.

The janitor began to spit prayers in quick, panicked fashion and kissed the cross pendant that hung from the chain around his neck.

The man smirked as the janitor departed with haste.

The woman in the casket sat up abruptly.

“FUCK!” she screamed.

“Welcome back,” the man said.

“Closed fucking casket!” she yelled. “Are you kidding me? Last time I'm doing that shit,” she said.

“Yes it was a lot of work to arrange all this,” the man said. “You're welcome.”

She smiled at him and stretched.

“I'm sorry, you're right,” she said. “Thank you.”

The man nodded.

“It was just hot and disorienting in that goddamn thing,” she said. “And after a couple of hours I realized I could smell my feet.”

The man laughed out loud.

She raised the lower lid on the coffin.

“Will you hold this please so I can get out?” she asked.

He held the coffin while she climbed out. “How many years has it been, Kate?”

She clapped her hands one way then another as she set foot on the floor.

“Uhh,” she thought for a moment. “120 years give or take?”

His jaw dropped.

“Has it really been that long?” he asked, shocked.

“Well, let’s see,” she said. “Andrew, I think the last time I saw you was San Francisco, 1906.”

She watched his face as he searched for the memory.

“The fire,” she said. “Remember?”

When you had hundreds of years of memories, it could be quite difficult to remember individual events so long ago, but Andrew remembered this one.

“Yeah, the fire,” he said. “That’s right. We evacuated the hotel room and I never saw you again.”

“I know,” she said. “Sorry about the disappearing act but I was due for rebirth, and when the hotel burnt down, it was a perfect opportunity that I couldn't pass up.”

“Well we have plenty of time, you can tell me all about it in the car.” he said. “Let's get out of here.”

She pointed a thumb towards the door.

“You worried about the janitor?” she asked. “He saw me, right?”

“I think he's about eight beers deep," Andrew said. “Even if he remembers it in the morning, I don't think anybody would believe him.“

They walked out the back door to his waiting car.

“Who are you leaving behind this time?" he asked.

“Husband, basset hound, mother-in-law,” she said. “I'm pretty sad about two of those.”

Andrew chuckled. The sunset shone purple and orange on the horizon as they climbed into the car.

“You know what they say,” he said.

“Yeah,” she answered. “Life goes on.”

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

Thanks for reading Until Night Falls! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Subscribe now

He looked up at the dusty blue sky, mindful to stay in the shade.

There used to be clouds, he thought. Big, fluffy clouds you could imagine as a turtle, a dragonfly, or even Jesus.

It was hard to remember the last time he'd seen a cloud.

Last winter, maybe?

Every day was blazing hot, and the rain never came anymore. One endless, dusty blue sky stretched horizon to horizon, hazy with smoke from distant forest fires.

He leaned over and spat in the gutter. A dead bird lay on the sidewalk beside a public garbage can overflowing with years-old trash. The old man walked past without a glance—he’d long ago given up searching trash cans.

‘Gizmo!’ the man yelled, and a high-pitched bark rang out. The stray Chihuahua he’d adopted after... it happened... came running from the alley. In truth, there was some question about who’d adopted whom, as the ankle-biter had simply started following him around. But now, the dog was his trusted companion.

The old man looked up at the gaping hole in what was once an office building. Dark and quiet now, soon enough it would light up and another atrocity would begin.

“We shoulda done somethin’, Giz,” the man said, but the dog just bounded along.

“If we had known what was gonna come through, we woulda done somethin’,” he said, nodding.

The man cast a wary, last glance at the portal, then stepped into the deserted street.

He was a teenager when it began. They called it “The Stranger Visitations.”

All over the globe, strangers appeared under mysterious circumstances, with reports that some materialized out of nowhere. In a single night in the west, strangely dressed visitors were seen everywhere — in Great Britain, Canada, the Sovereign States, the Columbian Republic, and American Mexico

The visitors possessed technology like he had never seen in Columbia. Everywhere they went, the strangers carried devices that worked as communicators and displayed moving pictures. Sometimes they wore them like a wristwatch.

They were friendly, even helpful, in those first encounters, telling fantastic stories.

Then they opened the portals.

The old man led the Chihuahua into an alley at the base of a vacant office building, its walls the color of spoiled cream. At a long-abandoned construction site near the alley's entrance, he pilfered a scrap of steel rebar, about three feet long. The dog bounced ahead, the vanguard of their search party, while the man followed, carrying the rebar like a walking stick and poking at trash in the weeds along his route.

“Don’t wanna get bit by a snake out here, Giz,” the man said, shaking his head. “Can’t just run to the ER anymore.”

All around him, it was quiet. For the first six months or so, it had seemed strange to see a familiar city street, once busy and dangerous, now suddenly deserted and barren. The traffic lights continued to click and change in silence for cars that never came.

He had been in his early twenties when people began to disappear. Men and women of all walks of life vanished in the midst of house-to-house searches by the Strangers, and the disappearances accelerated over time.

Parents reported their children missing, and worse, police fielded calls about parents who had simply vanished, leaving toddlers home alone to be discovered by worried relatives. Everyone suspected the Strangers, but there was nothing but suspicion to go on.

The old man approached a rusty door in the alley, its latch decayed and loose. Raising the steel rebar, he jammed it behind the bracket and pried with a grunt, surprised when the latch gave way easily. He lost his balance momentarily, collected himself, and stepped into what was once a drugstore.

A long-unused blood pressure machine sat dark in a corner, and a sign on the wall read: 'RX: Take two, call us never.' A single word was written on a note he carried — Metronidazole. He scanned the barren shelves until he found what he needed.

“Yes!” he said, pumping a fist. “Jackpot, Giz!”

The dog stood in the doorway, trembling. It looked around when it heard its name as the old man stuffed the pill bottles into his pockets.

As he left the store with the pills he'd sought, he thought of the days when he could still go to a doctor. He could spend a whole day in the sun, as long as he stayed hydrated. He could even order takeout pizza.

“Oh, the pizza,” he admitted with a sigh. “I miss the pizza the most, Giz.”

The last time he’d ordered a pizza, he was still a teenager, and his family had their own Stranger. His name was Franklin, and he visited the old man’s home several times over nearly two years. They had ordered a pizza and sat around listening to Franklin’s tall tales.

He’d shared stories about his home, claiming it was an alternate version of this place. Franklin unfurled tales of tsunamis, pandemics, and World Wars—none of which were familiar to the old man.

As the years passed and Franklin stopped coming around, the old man often wondered whether Frank really was who he said he was or if he was just crazy. One time, he told a story about men going to the moon, and the old man thought Franklin sounded absurd. But he couldn’t shake the mystery of the vanishings.

If Frank was just crazy, if his alternate reality didn't exist, then where did everybody go?

In an urban courtyard between vacant apartment buildings, a hard-looking blonde woman and a muscular Latino man sat at a picnic table, engaged in a deep discussion when the old man arrived.

“It doesn't make sense to me,” the Latino man said.

“Listen,” the woman replied, “If it was easy to understand, I’d explain it, but it's kinda above my pay grade.”

She laid down a hand of playing cards, and the Latino man folded.

“Like I said, infinite timelines, and AI helped them find the right one,” the blonde finished.

“And what is AI again?” the Latino asked, eliciting a loud groan from the blonde.

The old man had heard this story countless times, but nobody had any way of verifying its truth. As far as anyone knew, nobody from this side had ever been to that side and returned to tell about it.

A tall, lanky man appeared from a section of fenced-off makeshift shelters, and the old man called to him.

“Royce!” he shouted. “I got it!”

He removed a pill bottle from his pocket and shook it.

“I got the medicine,” he said.

Royce shook his head and continued walking.

“It's too late,” Royce said. “He’s dead.”

“…What?” the old man asked.

Royce clapped his hand against his leg. “Happened a couple of hours ago,” he said. “Just put the pills in the MASH unit with the other stuff.”

“Where is he?” the old man questioned.

Royce pressed his lips together in a sympathetic expression, pointed, and walked away.

The old man stood there for a moment, stunned. Everything he’d been working toward was now gone. He headed for the med bay.

They'd waited too long to start fighting back, and he accepted part of the blame for that. Everyone had waited too long. It wasn’t until a video smuggled out of the Portal Transfer Station showed men, women, and children being forcibly abducted to the other side that outrage sparked action. Strangers who had been dear friends to many became mortal enemies.

As the sun set, the old man pulled out a portable light. Rounding the corner to the makeshift hospital they had set up, he saw the Stranger lying on a table.

He approached, his pockets heavy with the antibiotics that had arrived too late for the Stranger. An infection had taken him before the old man could help.

The intelligence they could have gained from him — knowledge that could benefit the Republic, or what was left of it — would have been immeasurable.

The old man walked up to the table and looked at the dead Stranger, who had a deep wound in his thigh — the injury that ultimately killed him. He wore a white kevlar suit, and a name tag on his left breast read “Franklin.” A patch on his left shoulder read “USA,” but the old man didn’t know what it meant.

The old man took the blanket covering the Stranger’s lower body and pulled it up to cover his face.

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

Thanks for reading Until Night Falls! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Subscribe now

Note: Stories at Until Night Falls are works of dark fiction and may contain elements of violent crime, horror, and mature themes/subject matter. Reader discretion is advised.

He pulled the ski mask over his head and exited the pantry, baseball bat in-hand.

The dryer hummed in the hallway alcove and the buttons on Grace Ramsey’s jeans tick-tacked inside. The killer known as Equinox moved silently past, toward her bedroom, the light from the TV casting a wedge-shaped glow on the ceiling through the cracked bedroom door. He peered into the room and watched for any sign of movement but Grace Ramsey appeared to be asleep.

His breathing quickened as he pushed the bedroom door open with a slow, furtive motion. If she woke up right then, his silhouette would be fully visible in the doorway and things would escalate very quickly. His arousal grew and he had an erection. He would smash her skull while she slept then violate her as her life slipped away, as he had done to so many before.

He took one step into the bedroom, then another. He raised his bat over the shape in the bed and was about to bring it down when the light came on. The shape in the bed was not Grace Ramsey.

The killer heard a series of clicks from over his shoulder. He turned around.

Grace Ramsey stood in the corner of the bedroom, eyes intense and blazing. She pointed a .357 Magnum at the killer, the hammer cocked, her hands shaking.

“Don’t mistake my trembling hands for fear,” she said, her voice wavering with emotion. She inhaled a ragged breath and continued.

“I’ve waited my whole life for this moment.”

She hissed the phrase with a venomous hatred he had never experienced from one of his victims.

“Drop the bat,” she said. 

He examined her for a moment. She was on a hair-trigger and the killer knew it. He dropped the aluminum bat. At the instant the bat clanged to the floor, he lunged at her and had almost covered the three feet between them when she squeezed the trigger.

The shot went high-right and grazed his shoulder. His momentum carried him into Grace Ramsey and the two of them collapsed in the corner and wrestled for the gun. The masked killer ripped the revolver from her hands and half-stood as he attempted to secure his grip on the weapon, but Grace kicked at his forearm from her position on the floor and the gun skittered across the room and under the bed.

“Fucking bitch!” the killer yelled as he regained his feet and went after the gun. Grace rose and grabbed hold of the bat.

The killer had managed to lift the edge of the bed and slide it against the wall to reveal the gun, but that was as far as he got, because just as he stooped to pick it up, Grace brought the bat down with vicious force. The tip of the bat skipped off the mattress and delivered a deflected blow to the killer’s shoulder, but it was enough. The killer went back down on his face, dazed, and an out-of-breath Grace Ramsey retrieved her revolver.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked, again pointing the .357 at the masked killer. He tried to gather himself and get off the floor, but his head was spinning and he could barely hear her over the ringing in his ears.

She retrieved her phone from the dresser, tapped the screen, then addressed the killer.

“Hey, motherfucker,” she spat, “I asked you a question.”

The killer shook his head once, then again, trying to clear the cobwebs. It was like she was talking in riddles.

Should I know this woman?

“Of course, you wouldn’t remember me,” she said. “I was just a little kid.”

He knew her name was Grace Ramsey because he had researched her, but he couldn’t place it.

“It was almost 30 years ago,” she said. “I was 7 years old. I remember because it was my birthday, and my mom had planned a surprise party for me.”

A look of recognition registered in his eyes.

She wiped the corner of her mouth and continued. “My mom needed me out of the house so she could prepare for the party. Her boyfriend took me for a ride to the store to pick up a few things, then pretended to get lost taking a shortcut on the way home…”

Her eyes were far away, like she was reliving the story as she told it.

“Even so,” she said, “I think we were only gone 25 minutes.”

The killer rolled over and drew himself to a seated position against the wall, then gathered his heels against his buttocks, as if he were about to stand.

She stepped forward and pointed the gun at the killer’s masked face.

“Don’t even think about getting up,” she said.

The killer reconsidered.

“By the time we got back to my house, there was police tape everywhere and the neighbors were outside, watching from a distance,” she said. “Suddenly, I was a stranger. Mrs. Gottart, who used to catch me in her front yard and make me zip up my coat… she just stood there, looking at me from across the street with an expression that said ‘Poor, girl.’”

The killer looked around the room, desperate for an avenue of escape, but saw none. She stood between him and the doorway. The bat was behind her, too.

“Mr. Theisen next door, who used to tip me with popsicles when I helped him with his lawn,” she said, tears welling-up in her eyes, “He just watched through the window. It was like he didn’t know me anymore.”

The killer just looked at her from behind his ski mask. He contemplated saying something, then thought better of it.

“My mom’s boyfriend left after a while,” she said. “Awkward. He didn’t know what to say to me. They had only been on a couple dates.”

“So, there I was, an 11-year old, alone with the cops,” she said. “I didn’t have to ask to know my mom was dead,” she said, her voice rising, “because I watched as they brought her out in a bag!” she screamed. Grace stepped forward, her gun hand shaking with anger and adrenaline.

“A black plastic bag! Like she was garbage.”

“I think you have the wrong…” he began, but Grace stepped forward again, incensed at his denial before he had even completed uttering it. He was sure she was about to kill him.

He lurched at her and grabbed her forearm as she squeezed off another shot that went into the ceiling. He shuffle-stepped forward, thrust out his hip, pulled on her arm and Grace lost her balance as he hip-tossed her onto the bed.

The killer turned on his heel and bolted for the bedroom doorway. Grace splintered it with a shot from the revolver but found her mark with a second shot to the killer’s neck as he fled. He dashed through the living room and out the side door with one hand pressed to his bleeding neck and Grace hot on his heels. It was a planned escape route. In a moment he was in the portico next to the garage, which led to the driveway gate, and beyond it, escape.

He made it to the gate, flung it open and rushed through, but he was met with a crushing right hand delivered to his nose by a hulking Latino male. The killer’s feet went out from under him and the back of his head smacked the concrete as he went down.

Grace arrived an instant later, still holding the gun.

“So, let me get this right,” she said.

“You were going to sneak into my house and bludgeon me, like you did to all your other victims, right?”

The killer groaned.

“Then, while I lay dying, you were going to rape me using your little rape kit that you hid under the sofa cushions?”

The killer rolled over, tried to crawl away, bleeding and creeping toward the street on his knees and elbows.

“Oh yeah, I found it,” she said. “Pretty arrogant to leave your tools where they could be so easily found, don’t you think?” she smiled.

“Yes, I found it, but I didn’t call the cops. I called my friends.”

The killer continued his doomed attempt at escape, crawling on the ground from Grace Ramsey’s driveway and into the cul-de-sac, where neighbors were gathering on all sides.

“You already met Ray,” she said, and the hulking Latino male clasped his hands in front of himself.

“This is Ray’s stepsister, Marina,” Grace said, motioning to a stocky woman with dishwater hair. “You know what’s crazy about Marina?” Grace asked the killer. “After you killed my mom, I moved 91 miles away to live with my grandparents, and one of the first people I met was Marina.”

“And six years after we met, you killed her sister over in Elbow Woods,” Grace said. “Remember that?”

The circle of neighbors closed-in. “91 miles seems pretty far away, and yet, I couldn’t get away from you.” 

He did remember it. She was the only victim he killed with a knife. He had been in her kitchen preparing his ropes and gags when she walked in and surprised him. He snatched a butcher knife from the block on the counter and chased her all over the house, slashing and stabbing her while she screamed.

“As you can imagine,” Grace said as she began to pace, “we became extremely close friends after that. Like family, really. I was there for her, and she was there for me. And when it was time for us to buy houses and settle down, we decided to become neighbors. Two years after I moved in here, Marina bought the house across the street.”

“You wouldn’t know anything about being a good neighbor,” she said, crouching down to look the killer in the eyes. “Would you?”

She laughed. “No, you don’t seem like the type.”

“You know, Marina and I went through a lot together,” she said. “As you continued on your killing spree, we watched the news together, followed every story. We wondered if they would ever catch you. But then you went dark. The stalker stopped stalking. People said you were in prison, or dead. But we couldn’t put you out of our mind. We went to support groups for victims of homicidal violence… victims of sick fucks like you,” Grace continued, “and what do you know, we met another survivor of Equinox.”

Grace’s hand came to rest on the shoulder of a thirty-something man in a baseball cap.

“This is Brandon Wilkes. You killed his mom while he was hiding in the closet. I’m sure you remember that, right?”

The killer tried to get up on all fours, his head swimming, blood pouring from his neck wound, but Brandon delivered a hard kick to his ribcage that took the wind out of his lungs and rolled him over onto his back.

“Once we met Brandon, you could say we started a group,” Grace said. “We got together every Tuesday night for coffee. Sometimes we cried, sometimes we laughed. We told stories about the people you’d cruelly taken from us,” she said.

“And even though you had vanished, we kept meeting people who were impacted by you,” Grace said. “Maybe you don’t even know how many people you’ve hurt.”

“You killed 26 people, homie,” Ray said.

“And that’s not to mention the children, the parents, the sisters and brothers,” Grace said. “We gathered at the police station about 7, maybe 8 years ago to urge the police to keep working on our cases. Did you read about that in the papers?” Grace asked, her anger rising.

“Do you know how many of us there were?” she screamed.

“There were 123 of us,” she spat. “123!”

Sirens sounded in the distance and Marina put a comforting hand on Grace’s arm.

“I met every one of them. Became friends with as many as possible. Soon, we couldn’t live without each other,” Grace said. “Brandon bought that house right over there. Rick and Janell, the Iverson’s, they bought the big house in the middle,” Grace said, gesturing to the houses that lined the cul-de-sac. 

“You remember them, right?” Grace questioned. “You strangled their daughter with her shoelaces after you entered the wrong house by mistake.”

The killer began to groan louder and managed to get to his feet but it was apparent to everyone that he wasn’t going anywhere. He had lost too much blood. He managed two staggering steps and collapsed back to the pavement.

“We all became friends. We all became neighbors. It took a lot of time… one by one, year by year, we all moved into this neighborhood. We had to accept the reality that we would never catch you. You were gone. All we could do was lean on each other for support.”

Grace returned to the center of the circle and stood over the killer.

“But then, you came back,” she said in a sober tone. “After ten years, you started killing again. And it wasn’t enough to just kill, was it? You had to taunt the police with letters to the TV stations. You had to call surviving family members and strike fear into them that you would come back.”

Grace crouched down and tapped the barrel of her weapon against the killer’s masked face.

“So, once again we watched. We followed every news story. And we were surprised to see you moving on to a new hunting ground.”

Grace stood and continued. “Too much heat in Ashford? Elbow Woods? You couldn’t keep killing there, could you? You had to move on. And as we watched, your hunting ground came closer and closer to Silent Lake.”

“We started to talk,” she said. “We had prayed to God for a chance at justice. If you came to Silent Lake, how would we handle it?”

“And then six weeks ago, you killed the Gibson girl,” Grace said, “in her parents’ basement, just a half mile from here.”

“And we made a plan,” Marina chimed in.

“You went to a public information meeting,” Grace said to the dying killer. “It was Brandon that figured it out.”

She looked up and Brandon Wilkes nodded.

“People were there to talk about you… about how to stay safe with a predator like you on the streets,” Grace chided the killer, “and you showed up for the meeting.”

“A man in the crowd that night pointed out that you’d only attacked victims who were alone,” she recounted, “and he speculated that you wouldn’t have attacked if a man had been present.”

“You took it as a challenge.” She ducked her head to lock eyes.

“You followed them home, saw where they lived, returned a week later and killed them both. The Giancarlo family. Remember that? That was the first time you killed a couple. To prove a point.”

Grace crouched again to look into his eyes.

“You showed up for the meeting, you son of a bitch,” she said.

“But you know what? It was a mistake. You made me realize what I had to do.”

Grace wore a satisfied smile.

“Your downfall was your ego. If challenged, you might respond.”

“I flooded online message boards about you, and made sure to use my real name, in case you came looking for me. I told everyone who would listen that you were an insecure little man, unsuccessful with women and probably sexually impotent. I got in front of every TV camera I could find and said insulting things about you. I even grew my hair out so I could put it in a ponytail… you had a thing for victims with ponytails.”

She bared her teeth in a curious grimace. “And guess what happened?”

“You,” she emphasized the word and paused for effect, “...found me.”

The killer began to fade away in a whirl of voices and approaching sirens.

“Maybe you saw one of those clips on the news? Didn’t like what I said about you? Was it the one where I said you had a small penis? I’ll be honest, I was a little tipsy when that reporter caught me that night,” she smiled as the killer’s life ebbed away.

“I went to that community watch meeting three weeks ago,” she said, “You know the one. I stood up and talked about you again. Insulted you,” she said.

“The whole time I was talking, I was wondering to myself if you were in the room. And that night after I got home, I noticed a car that didn’t belong on our street,” she said, and smiled. “You found me. You followed me home.”

She stepped back and began to walk slow circles around the killer, careful not to step in the spreading pool of blood flowing from his neck wound..

“I notified everybody in the cul-de-sac to be on the lookout for your car,” she said, her voice rising. “We were all on high-alert.”

The assembled neighbors nodded.

“This morning, I found your baseball bat in the pantry, and I knew you would be coming,” she said. “And tonight, when I heard you pop the latch on the sliding glass door, I knew you had arrived.” 

She smiled.

“I texted all my friends,” Grace said.

She bent down and showed him her phone. A text message was on the screen.

It read “He’s here.”

She stretched out her arms. “Do you see all these yellow porch lights?”

Every house in the cul-de-sac had a yellow light burning out front.

“It was our signal. You stumbled right into the only place in the world where everyone on the block has a motive to kill you,” she said softly.  

“I would say you lured him to us, Grace,” Marina said.

“Perhaps,” Grace said. “It was almost like divine intervention, really. You came right to us.”

Ray made a clicking sound with his teeth. 

“Doesn’t look like he’s gonna make it,” the big man said.

Ray bent over, patted the killer’s jacket, then stuck his hand inside and withdrew a black bifold credit card wallet. He opened it and found the killer’s collection of ID cards with family names in plain view—Wilkes, Iverson, Ramsey, a dozen more.

“Look at this,” he said.

Grace examined the wallet and could see just the top of each photo on the cards, but one card stood out… a hairstyle she remembered. She thumbed one of the IDs and slid the card out of the wallet and her mother’s photo stared back at her.

She was smiling.

That’s how I remember her.

Ray dropped to a knee, grabbed the black ski mask, and tore it from the killer’s head. The killer’s face was drawn and ashen.

“He definitely ain’t gonna make it,” Ray said. 

As the approaching sirens arrived in the cul-de-sac, Grace pocketed her mother’s ID then bent over and examined the killer’s face, as if she might find answers there.

He looked like an absolutely ordinary human being.

He looks just like everybody else.

“Awww,” she said in a disappointed tone. “I was expecting a monster.”

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

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“When they found her body,” Fleming said, “she’d been torn to pieces. Nearly unrecognizable.”

Rowland listened as the doctor spoke. He’s a master storyteller, she thought.

She strained to hear his words over the hiss of the oxygen generators and the constant flexing of the old station’s inner hull.

“Of course,” Fleming continued, “they didn’t have a real grasp of psychology in the sixteenth century. To the authorities, only a monster could’ve done such a thing—some kind of horrific beast.”

“That fascinates me,” Rowland said. “The old twentieth-century monster movies I loved as a kid were based on some sixteenth-century version of Jeffrey Dahmer who murdered and cannibalized a villager,” Rowland said.

Fleming nodded slowly.

“And the stories outlived the facts. They turned killers into legends. Vampires. Werewolves. All that.”

Fleming’s mouth twitched. “But things were so much better in the old days, weren’t they?” His tone dripped with sarcasm.

Rowland laughed. “Yeah. Right.”

The irony of discussing medieval folklore while approaching geostationary orbit around the moon, eighty-eight thousand kilometers above the surface, wasn’t lost on her—but you had to do something to break the monotony.

Lieutenant Audrey Rowland studied the doctor. Attractive, she thought, but too old for me. She’d been alone on the station almost one hundred eighty days when he arrived. A romantic fling might’ve been nice, but she was simply grateful for conversation. They’d spent the past two days telling stories while they waited for the shuttle. It had been Fleming’s idea to shut off the lights and talk by the glow of the emergency lamps.

“The cabin LEDs are too harsh,” he’d said.

So they swapped horror stories under amber light, like campfire tales she’d loved as a kid back on Earth.

A crumb from Fleming’s protein bar floated away. He caught it midair and popped it into his mouth. Rowland, used to the station’s one-G wheel, had been floating more often lately, joining him in the weightless “cathedral” where the moon hung bright and enormous beyond the window.

“Eventually,” Fleming said, “they zeroed in on Peter Stumpp.”

“He was the killer?”

“That’s what they said. Supposedly killed eighteen people—women, children—over twenty-five years. Mutilated and cannibalized them,” Fleming replied.

“My god.”

“I know. Terrible—but just the sort of thing we see in the news every day now.”

“And they thought he was… a monster?” she asked.

“Of course. They claimed he’d made a pact with the Devil. Lucifer gave him a magic belt that let him turn into a wolf—stronger, faster, more savage.”

A soft tone sounded from the control panel. Rowland drifted over to check the readouts. The deep metallic groan of the hull echoed like a sigh.

“How’d you end up on this assignment?” Fleming asked.

“Held over after the last crew. Nobody volunteered, so they volunteered me.” She smirked. “What about you?”

Doctor Fleming looked away as he spoke, in a manner that made her wonder whether he was ashamed to be there.

“Well,” he said. “I requested this assignment.”

“Seriously? You were head of UEA Medical Operations. Why trade that for this rust bucket?”

“Ah, the old ‘difference-of-opinion’ dilemma,” Fleming answered.

“Meaning?”

“The Alliance doesn’t always appreciate my research priorities.” He smiled faintly. “Out here, there’s time to focus on what really matters.”

He turned toward the viewport. He could see a slowly disappearing sliver of darkness on the moon’s horizon as the lunar station approached geostationary orbit.

“So,” Rowland asked, “how does your story end?”

“They tortured Stumpp until he confessed—claimed he’d practiced witchcraft since he was twelve. Incest, cannibalism, you name it.”

“Under torture?” she said. “People will say anything.”

Fleming’s dark eyes caught the light. He was broad-shouldered, rugged for a man of medicine.

“They put him on a wheel,” he said quietly, “tore his flesh with red-hot pincers. Broke his limbs with the blunt side of an axe so he couldn’t rise from the grave.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Then they beheaded him and burned the body. His mistress and thirteen-year-old daughter were executed too,” Fleming concluded.

A loud tone blared. Rowland flinched.

“Geostationary orbit in ten minutes,” the computer announced.

“How far out’s the shuttle?” Doctor Fleming asked, the campfire spell broken.

“Forty-five minutes.”

“Cut it kinda close, didn’t you?”

“Couldn’t push this heap any faster without ripping her apart,” she said. “We’ll be locked-in before they dock.”

Audrey tapped another of the old station’s control panels.

“Thanks for the warm welcome, by the way,” Fleming said. “Hot coffee and real food—wasn’t expecting that.”

“My pleasure,” she said.

“Maybe you’ll greet the new crew the same way?” he asked.

Rowland smiled. “I’ll get started in the galley.”

She drifted down the central hub to the wheel, climbed the ladder, and felt gravity return beneath her boots. The galley lights flicked on—and the hatch above her slammed shut.

A hiss. Then an alarm.

DECOMPRESSION SEQUENCE INITIATED.

Doctor Fleming’s face appeared on the screen as the hull groaned once more.

“Do you ever wonder if science got it all wrong, Rowland?” the doctor asked.

“Fleming, what the hell are you doing?”

“Geostationary orbit in six minutes,” the computer called out.

“We’ve spent all this time assuming tales of monsters and werewolves were misidentified serial killers and lunatics,” Fleming said.

Lieutenant Rowland’s ears popped as the air pressure dropped in the galley.

“But what if we’ve got it backwards?” Fleming asked. He had a crazy look in his eye.

“What if we’ve been misidentifying monsters as run-of-the-mill serial killers?” he asked.

“Fleming, open the hatch!” she shouted, pounding the keyboard. “I can’t breathe!”

“I’ve already revoked your credentials,” he said, emotionless.

“Fleming, please! I’m going to die in here!”

Fleming stared intently into his camera.

“It’s such a cruel tragedy,” he said. “To have this genetic gift in your family, but you’re only able to enjoy it once a month. There’s no sensation like it.”

“Geostationary orbit in four minutes.”

“Your heart pumps faster and your body feels like it’s operating at 200% capacity when the moon is full. The feeling you get when you spring from the shadows and rip the throat out of an unsuspecting victim is incomparable ecstasy,” the doctor offered.

“You’re insane!” she gasped, struggling for air.

“In three minutes,” he said, glancing toward the viewport, “I’ll be there always. In the light of the constant moon, I’ll be forever the wolf.”

Rowland’s nose bled. Her vision swam.

“Please…”

Fleming convulsed. When he straightened, his teeth had lengthened; his face pushed outward into a snout.

“Geostationary orbit in one minute,” the computer said.

It was the last thing Rowland heard before the dark took her.

“UEA Lunar Station, come in please,” the shuttle pilot called. “UEA Lunar Station, this is UEA Shuttle one-five-two, come in.”

The mission commander entered the cockpit.

“Anything yet, Major?”

“They decompressed the wheel, Sir,” the pilot said, “but nobody will answer my calls. It’s just been… weird noises coming back.”

“Weird noises?” the commander asked. “What kind of weird noises?”

The men looked out the shuttle’s cockpit window at the station, alone and backlit by the lunar surface.

“I’m embarrassed to say it, sir,” the pilot said.

“Out with it, Collins!” the commander barked.

“It… it sounded like a howl, sir.”

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

I read as much as I can these days, whenever I find a new book, and I remember reading that if you look at 'em from above, the pyramids in Egypt are laid out in a way that looks like the three stars that make up the belt of Orion.

Curious, right?

You know. Chariots of the Gods. Ancient Aliens. I mean, I haven’t seen it firsthand since humans aren’t allowed in the sky anymore, but still…

We should have done whatever was necessary to develop the technology to travel to the stars. We should have been smarter. 

We should have visited them before they visited us. 

In our night sky, we see constellations every night. They’re easy to spot by their distinctive shapes. The Big Dipper is easy to pick out, and a few others.

Our sun is part of a constellation, too. An alien constellation; a shape you can only see from their system. If we’d given the proper weight to perspective... things might be different now.

I’ve heard people tell parts of the story before, back in the camps, but Kaiser told me the Rujnics come from a system with two rocky planets in the good zone. When their civilization first developed spaceflight, they visited their neighboring planet first. In their telescopes they had been able to see it was a blue planet with clouds and water and plant life, so when they developed rockets that could take them there, they went. 

When they arrived, they found the ruins of an ancient unknown people, dead a million years. 

Kaiser says the Rujnics knew a dead civilization had lived there because there were ancient monuments — pyramids.   When viewed from above, those pyramids appeared to be arranged in an equilateral triangle. When the Rujnics discovered the ruins of that civilization a million years later, they looked up in the sky and saw a triangular constellation. It was made up of three stars.

I couldn’t tell you the names of two of them, not having had a formal education and all, but I can tell you the name of the third star.

Sol.

Our sun.

Our sun formed one of the bright points of light in the triangle constellation they saw in their night sky.

There was an American computer scientist, Alan Kay… I found some books in a house in Ohio about 3 years after the power went out and one of them had a quote by Dr. Kay that said something like “Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.”

And he was right.

Our best scientists tell us it took the Rujnics 231 more years to learn to travel to the stars, but they never forgot about us. They studied us from afar and gazed in wonder at that triangular constellation for 231 years.

They wanted to know why ancient monuments in their system appeared to point in our direction, like a road sign pointing the way to another advanced civilization. They looked at that triangular constellation through fancy telescopes and decided our sun was the only one of the three that had good planets around it.

And when they finally developed the technology to travel almost 28 light years to our system, they came for a visit.

My oldest memories are from the time before the Rujnics came. With my mom. I was 6.

She had a job. We had a house.

That was all gone before my 7th birthday. 

My mom, too. 

Since then, it’s been this. Moving only at night. Scavenging for food where you can and hunting when it’s safe. We can’t grow anything in these parts anymore because the ground is poisoned. 

The Rujnics don’t come around hunting us, but if they see you in the daylight, they’ll incinerate you.

Really, when it comes down to it, they just make life as miserable as possible. We have unreliable electricity and suspect water. Trash rots in piles on curbs where people still live and corpses rot inside homes where they don’t. 

They don’t come around hunting us. 

So we’ve decided to bring the fight to them.

Tonight, the port comes down.

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

Out of the darkness came a hard slap across the face. She sensed it more than she felt it, and she swam back to consciousness to the sound of a voice yelling at her. 

A young man shouted. "Once it begins, nobody will know," he jabbed at her, "that you're you."

He adjusted her cloak at the neckline. The young woman blinked her eyes hard and tried to figure out where she was. It was dark but she could hear voices all around her — people shouting instructions and the sound of frightened others asking frantic questions.

"Are you hearing me?" he asked. "You can't ask anybody for help. OK? You need to find a safe place and stay out of sight until dawn."

The young woman tried to speak but her throat was dry and scratchy and her words came out as an unintelligible croak. A voice chimed rhythmically in the darkness… 

Seven… six… five…

“Are you hearing me?” the man yelled.

Three… two… one…

“Just RUN!” he shouted.

There was a loud crash as two huge metal doors flung open above their heads and the young woman was momentarily blinded by brilliant white light. A crowd pressed against her on all sides and she was carried forward with involuntary urgency. Dozens of others surrounded her, and in synchronous motion, they herded up a wide stairway and into the cold night air. Bright floodlights illuminated a wide green plain and she could see her breath. The group, bewildered people of all ages, blinked in the bright light, and she could see they were all dressed in identical fashion… each wore a long brown sack, like a cloak that had been sewn shut at the front, tightly fastened at the neck with a metal cord.

“What is happ…” she started to ask, but a terrifying sound interrupted — a burst of energy that sounded like a tearing bedsheet ripped the night. There was an explosion nearby and a plume of dirt, grass and flame erupted into the air.

“RUN!” a young man yelled, and she recognized his voice… it was the man from the darkness.

At once, the night sky became a deadly menagerie of directed-energy bolts and two runners fell dead on the spot, including her mentor from the darkness below. The group scattered amidst terrified screams and the young woman found her feet carrying her forward once again.

The young woman was fit; healthy and strong. As she ran, she passed one person, then another and another. Energy bolts raced past on all sides — from somewhere on the perimeter of the field across which they fled — and a number of people dropped in front of her, struck by weapon fire and horribly burned.

Someone is hunting us!

Right in front of her an old man was hit, and she changed direction like a pinball off a bumper. She tried to see who was firing at them, but the lights were too bright, and the shooters too distant.

Where am I going? 

She was starting to panic.

She looked around. On the horizon she could see a tree line, and she changed direction again. As she did, the young woman stepped on her own cloak and fell on her face in the dirt. An energy bolt sailed over, right where her head had been moments before. If she hadn’t tripped, she would have been dead, horribly burned like the others.

The young woman got back to her feet with difficulty. There were no arm holes in her sack and she could not free her hands. From within, she grabbed her cloak at the knees and lifted her hands chest-high. She felt a pressure between her legs — some kind of integrated restraining belt — and she could lift her cloak no higher, but it was enough. With her cloak gripped firmly in her fists and her bare legs exposed to the night air, she again began to run. 

The lit field was a deathtrap but the bright light allowed her to see where she was running; she was steady-footed and accelerating. The sound of tearing bedsheets surrounded her and energy-bolts sailed past. One round passed so close she could feel it’s heat, but she had found her footing and was quickly putting distance between herself and whoever was firing at her.

As she fled, she glanced quickly over her shoulder at a horrific scene — geysers of fire, grass and dirt exploded into the cool night air as the hunted screamed and fell dead on the field. The tree line was only 100 feet away, then 75. Her legs pumped with grace, in long strides, and she didn’t think she had ever run so fast in her life. The grass flew beneath her feet.

An energy bolt sailed weakly toward her but impacted to her rear.

25 feet to the trees. 

10 feet.

Without slowing, she crashed into the growth at the edge of the woods, the knotty branches grabbing at her cloak in an attempt to arrest her flight, but she refused to yield. Barefooted and still holding her cloak above the knees, she pushed through the trees and overgrowth until she could no longer see into the killing field.

If I can’t see them, they can’t see me.

Her lungs were about to burst and sweat beaded on her head. Finally, deep in the forest, she allowed herself to slow, then stop. The weapons had stopped firing in the distance and it was nearly silent.

A young man fired one last energy bolt from his plasma rifle and the sound ripped the cool night air, but the round fell far short and the last of the hunted escaped into the forest.

“What kind of operation is this?” an older man shouted. He turned his gaze from the killing field to an officer in a gray uniform.

“We paid 70-thousand for this?” the man asked in an angry tone. “They got away so easily.” He waved his hand at the empty field.

“Chris didn’t even get a kill, Vincent.”

Marshal Vincent rose from his seat, pulled at the bottom of his jacket and smoothed his uniform, then raised his hands in a calming gesture.

“I assure you, Lord Nicks, this adventure is far from over,” Vincent said. “Young Chris will get his mark — not to mention his promotion in rank — by the time the night is out.”

The assurances tempered Lord Nicks’ frustration for the moment. He wore a black suit with a gray collar bearing the insignia of the House of Nicks, but the stout fabric remained true as he snatched the plasma rifle from Chris in a rough manner.

“What is the range on these, Vincent?” he demanded. “They’re more like a toy than a weapon.”

Vincent stepped forward and the heels of his boots knocked out an authoritarian sound on the wooden platform they had erected for the event. Again Vincent attempted to placate Lord Nicks.

“The range on the rifles is decided by design, Lord Nicks,” he said. “In the next phase, Chris will have a more personal encounter,” he continued, “and I assure you, it will be worth the wait.”

Chris Nicks bore an excited expression and his father relented.

“You had better hope so,” Lord Nicks finished.

The young woman scanned her surroundings. It was the dead of night but the moon was full and she could see fairly well despite the looming trees and dense forest. The wildlife that fell silent when she crashed into the woods came back to life as she stood silently, her breaths visibly fanning the night air. 

A stream trickled in the distance. She knew streams led to rivers and rivers led to towns. She found a small muddy creek that meandered downhill, so she decided to follow it. She was without shoes and the footing was treacherous. She hadn’t gone 10 steps when she slipped on the wet ground and fell. She attempted to put her hands out and catch herself, but her cloak impeded the movement of her arms and her head smashed against a rock. She saw stars and struggled to regain her feet. When she did, she felt a trickle of blood run down her temple and over her cheek, where it dripped from her jaw.

The stream did indeed lead to a river; a roaring waterway that she knew she could not cross even if her arms had been free. The young woman stumbled along, trying to stay on her feet and avoid another knock to the head. She could feel some kind of heavy collar around her neck, concealed beneath her cloak, and the weight made her top heavy; her balance hard to maintain. She fell to her knees on occasion, but soldiered on until she came to a bridge. It was a ramshackle construction of timber and rope but appeared to be safe, so she crossed, and as she did, a town came into view.

“Oh, thank the Lord,” she said out loud and quickened her pace along the dirt road from the bridge to the town below. Amber lights illuminated a number of buildings, and torches flickered in front of others. She could faintly hear voices; laughing and merriment and boisterous celebration came from somewhere in the settlement.

Still unsure who had been shooting at her, or what exactly was happening, she proceeded with caution. With quiet steps she slipped into an alley and approached a building from which light shone through the windows. Voices emanated from inside accompanied by the tinkling of dinnerware, and she was about to peer through a window when the rear door opened.

The young woman reflexively recoiled into the shadows and watched as a portly woman brought trash to a bin in the alley.

“Keep yer britches on,” the portly woman shouted and laughed. “No festival is complete without my brew, and there’s plenty to go around yet!” She dropped the bag of garbage in the dumpster and when she turned around, the young woman stepped forward, out of the shadows.

The young woman opened her mouth to ask for help but she was interrupted by the portly woman’s bloodcurdling scream.

“Silas!” the old woman yelled. “Get your rifle, Silas!” she exclaimed. She dodged the young woman, keeping as much distance between them as possible as she bolted for the door of her restaurant.

“Wait…” the young woman pleaded. “Please help me,” she said, but her cries were drowned out by the old woman’s screaming and a rising ruckus from inside.

A gruff man appeared in the doorway, and when he saw the young woman, he immediately raised his rifle and pointed it in her direction.

The young woman screamed and pirouetted on one heel to run. The now familiar sound of a tearing bedsheet again crackled in the night air as an energy bolt sailed over the young woman’s right shoulder. She recoiled from the heat as she ran from the alley into the street. Other voices could be heard exclaiming and she saw men with weapons appear in windows and doorways. The young woman veered from the street to the woods that lined the roadside as energy bolts rained on her. Again she found herself running for her life in the dense brush, and her bare feet were soon pure agony; torn and bleeding.

Why did that old woman scream? She acted as if I would do her harm. 

The young woman did not understand what was happening.

Why is everyone shooting at me?

She could still hear the voices of her pursuers and she ran as fast as her tortured feet would carry her, until their shouting became as faint as the night breeze. When she could no longer run, she walked, and she became aware that she was thirsty. Her stomach rumbled, and she realized she hadn’t eaten recently.

She couldn’t remember when she had eaten last, or anything else for that matter.

What’s the last thing you can remember?

She struggled to recall, but the knock to her head wasn’t helping.

Was it… a party?

Consumed with her thoughts, the young woman  barely noticed she had entered a clearing in the forest, and fifty yards ahead, a pond glistened in the moonlight. The surface was still and calm, and the sight of it stoked the young woman’s thirst.

She stumbled forward to the pool’s edge and dropped to her knees. She knew she could not use her hands to cup the water, and she meant to lower her lips to the surface of the cool pond and drink until she could drink no more. When she bent over the edge of the pool, however, she was greeted by a strange and frightening sight.

She leapt back from the pool, then crept forward again.

Instead of her own reflection, the young woman saw the face of a wolf staring back at her.

Wooden doors bearing a large, ornate ‘N’ stood at the entrance to the estate and revelers came and went as guards observed closely, occasionally stopping a guest to question them. If their answers didn’t resonate as truthful, they were subject to a pat-down. The resistance was as strong as it had ever been, but its members were always dressed in plain clothes and they were hard to spot among the friends and dignitaries invited to the Nicks estate.

The manor was a stately white home modernized from its orginal 20th century plantation design, but in a subtle way that obscured it’s high-tech state from all but the most observant visitors — Mrs. Nicks had insisted on it.

“I won’t have this place looking like a fortress!” she had exclaimed when Lord Nicks informed her of the plans for the estate. His request for watch towers was axed and replaced with more subtle guard shacks, carefully landscaped to minimize their appearance. There was only one exception that stood out as overtly modern. Mrs. Nicks relented to the presence of a landing pad for the family’s shuttles — a necessity due to their remote location — but insisted it be placed to the rear of the mansion, where it would not be seen from the road.

“Mother, look at all the people!” Sara Nicks said as their shuttle landed. “I’ve never seen so many.”

Mrs. Nicks observed the scene and surmised her daughter was correct — attendance to the festival had been growing for the last several years, and they had never welcomed so many guests to their estate.

“Isn’t it lovely?” Mrs. Nicks answered with a tight smile.

The craft settled gently on the pad behind the estate and its electromagnetic hum subsided as flight engineers signaled to the ground crew for engine shutoff. The Nicks women deboarded, but Sara’s expression had changed from excitement to resignation.

“I wish my sister was here to see this,” she remarked. “She loved to have company.”

“At some point, she will come to her senses,” Mrs. Nicks said. “Now run along and have some fun.”

The Nicks estate was home to a lavish stable, and it was there that Chris and his father readied themselves for the next stage of the hunt. On any other evening the stable was a serene place, but during the festival, it was abuzz with activity — Colonel Vincent gave instructions to the martial forces as horses whinnied and snorted, and Chris Nicks harbored nervous questions.

“Father, is there going to be enough time?” he asked.

“To complete the hunt?” his father asked. “I’m sure there will,” he said. “You are a fine shot,” he said, clapping his son on the shoulder. “By the time this night is out, you will assuredly have your kill,” he said.

“The resistance…” Chris began, but his father shook his head and put out one finger to silence his son’s question.

“Mount up!” Colonel Vincent shouted, and his forces shoved their booted feet into polished stirrups and thrust themselves into their saddles.

“It is not the time for worries. The hunt is on, son,” Lord Nicks said, and he smiled.

The young woman could not believe what her eyes insisted on showing her — her reflection in the pond was that of a wolf, and not just an ordinary wolf, but some kind of nightmare vision of a wolf, with huge, unnatural fangs and blood red eyes.

No wonder that woman screamed when she saw me.

The young woman wrestled with her cloak; twisted one way, then another. She got to her feet and thrust her hands up, pushing with all her might, but she again felt pressure between her legs as the internal restraining belt prevented her from freeing her hands. She grunted and yipped as the cloak pinched her and pressed at her flesh while she struggled. She pressed the front of her cloak toward her mouth and bit the fabric with her teeth, pulling at it, to no avail. No matter what she did, she could not free herself from the heavy, coarse garment.

“Aaaaah!” she screamed in frustration, falling to her knees at the pond’s edge. In a pen nearby, livestock stirred quietly.

She was exhausted from her flight, and the struggle to free her hands had stolen her last bit of strength. The young woman began to cry, first in soft, whispered sobs that escalated to heaving wails.

Emma had been terrified at first. She heard something coming quickly through the dark forest and ran for cover as her father had taught her. If the martial forces found them, it would be all over for her family and they would be forced to return to “civilized” society. At 12 years old, discovery was her worst fear. She didn’t think monsters actually lived in the woods.

From her hiding spot, she saw the wolf emerge from the forest and began to question if she had been wrong. She couldn’t imagine a more frightening beast, and she fought to constrain her own breaths and not be discovered.

After a few minutes, however, something seemed different. The wolf knelt at the edge of the family’s pond and Emma could see its body heaving in a manner that was decidedly not animal. She could faintly hear what sounded like whines, and to Emma, it seemed like the wolf was… crying, like a human would.

With unconscious sympathy, Emma rose slightly from her hiding place in a subtle motion. The wolf’s eyes locked on her and Emma panicked. Her feet turned to carry her away, but before she could flee, a voice called out.

“Wait!” a young woman’s voice shouted.

Emma could not believe what she had just seen and heard. She trembled. A young woman’s voice had come from the wolf at the edge of the pond.

“Please wait,” the young woman’s voice pleaded again. The wolf’s mouth moved in a snarled expression, but a woman’s voice rang forth. “Please help me.” 

A woman’s voice appealed from somewhere inside a wolf’s visage.

“Wh — what are you?” Emma questioned, terrified.

“I am a human,” she replied, and the wolf’s lips moved in pantomime. “Just like you,” she said, “I’m a person.”

Emma stood to her full height and stepped forward, tentatively, ready to flee at the first sign of a ruse.

“I don’t understand,” Emma said. “What happened to you?”

“I don’t know,” the young woman’s voice replied. “I can’t remember who did this to me.”

“What’s your name?” Emma asked the young woman hidden inside a wolf.

The young woman couldn’t remember most of what she’d done, or how she’d come to be in the situation she found herself, but when the girl asked her name, it came to her.

She remembered.

“My name is Draya,” the young woman told the girl.

Emma took another three steps, examined the wolf before her, then closed the rest of the distance between them. She examined Draya’s wolf-like appearance with fascination. It was absolutely realistic.

“Are you in the resistance?” Emma asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t remember,” Draya said. “Can you help me? I need to free my hands.”

Emma examined the cloak that covered the wolf’s body and wondered what might be hidden beneath the heavy cloth.

“You have hands?” she asked, scared.

“Yes, please,” Draya asked. “Help me free myself and I’ll show you.”

Emma hesitated, then answered.

“Okay,” she said. “Wait here.”

The young girl darted off into the forest and Draya returned to the pond, again examining her reflection.

What is the resistance?

Was she part of it? She had vague memories of another life. She remembered a party that was… interrupted? People running and screaming.

Emma returned with a large, gleaming knife and Draya was startled.

“Will this work?” she asked. She smiled.

Draya chuckled. “Uh, yes. I think that will work,” she answered.

Emma stepped forward with the kife and tried to find a way to grasp the coarse cloth so that she could pierce it without cutting Draya.

“I don’t wanna cut you,” Emma said.

“It’s okay,” Draya said. “You’ve got it. Go ahead.”

Emma pinched the cloth between her thumb and fingers then pulled it away from Draya’s body. With a firm motion she punched the point of the knife into the tented space of fabric and sank it to the hilt. 

Emma gasped. She was sure she had just stabbed Draya.

“It’s okay,” Draya said from behind a wolf’s mouth. “That’s great. Slide it down.”

Emma let out a relieved breath and slid the blade lower as the cloth parted like a zipper. Draya’s hand punched through the opening into the cool night air and she flexed her fingers.

Emma let out a surprised yip and dropped the knife to the ground.

“Oh my god,” Draya said. “That feels so good.”

Emma examined the limb before her.

“You do have hands,” she said, surprised.

“Thank you, Emma,” Draya said. She bent and picked up the knife, then began cutting away the cloak, first freeing her other hand, then cutting around the belt at her waist.

“Help me, Emma,” Draya asked. She handed over the knife and the young girl went to work cutting at the chest and back of the cloak. In minutes they had removed the entire cloak, and what remained was both a horror and a revelation.

Draya wore only her restraining belt below the waist, a plain top that covered her private parts, and there was a heavy metal collar that rested on her collarbones, fastened just below her neck. Several small led lights flashed on the collar and it was fastened in a manner that did not reveal a way to remove it, even with tools. It appeared to be permanently attached. Somehow the collar projected a holographic image that encased Draya’s head and made her look like some sort of fiendish werewolf.

Draya grabbed at the collar, twisted and pulled, but it would not budge.

“I’ve heard of this,” Emma said. “There are rumors,” she continued. “It’s a veil.”

“A what?” Draya asked.

“A veil,” Emma repeated. “It’s a holographic disguise.”

Draya listened as the young girl explained.

“When the Civil War came and the bombs fell, the plants died and only the people with wealth and influence thrived,” Emma continued. “Everybody had a choice… indentured servitude, working for the wealthy, just so you could eat whatever scraps you were offered, or you could strike out on your own and try to make it in the poisoned wastelands.” 

“This doesn’t look like a wasteland,” Draya said as she examined the surrounding forest.

“It’s not,” Emma said, “and we’d like to keep it that way. That’s what my Dad says all the time. He doesn’t like outsiders.” She lowered her voice and glanced over her shoulder.

“We had a chance to join the resistance,” the young girl said, “but the punishment for consorting with the enemy is death, and the worst of the worst get hunted. My father moved us out here, away from the state, to avoid any entanglements.”

“I can understand why,” Draya said.

“We have everything we need here,” Emma responded. “We have animals, food, and the plants still grow.”

“Emma,” Draya said softly, “I’m cold. I’m gonna need some clothes.”

“Oh my gosh,” Emma said. “Of course, how could I be so inconsiderate? Have you eaten?”

Draya shook her head.

“Come with me,” Emma said. “I’ll get you some clothes and something to eat.”

A storage shed of modest construction stood near the livestock pen and Emma led Draya there to wait while she retrieved some clothes from her family’s home. Draya was grateful for some shelter from the night breeze, which was picking up and chilling her nearly naked body. Within minutes, however, Emma had returned from the house with warm clothing.

“It’s some stuff from my mom’s younger days,” Emma said. “It’s not fashionable, but it should keep you warm.”

Draya thanked her and put on the clothes — a pair of reddish-brown trousers, a heavy, long-sleeve work shirt, wool socks, and a pair of black work boots. She still wore the likeness of a wolf, but the clothing brought out the humanity hiding inside. She was recognizably human again.

“Listen, Draya,” Emma said as she handed over a plate with a sandwich and heaping mound of fruit on it. “It’s past my curfew and I need to get back, but you need to stay out of sight. If anyone discovers you’re here…”

The man at the beginning of Draya’s ordeal, who’d paid with his life to guide her, had said she needed to stay out of sight until dawn, and she suspected if she could make it until then, the hunt would be over. When the sun rose, she hoped the veil would deactivate and she would appear human again.

“I’ll be gone right away in the morning,” Draya said. She used a canvas tarp she found in the shed to fashion a bed, then dropped a bag of seed at the head of her makeshift bunk to use as a pillow.

Emma nodded. “I’ll get up early and bring you some hot cocoa and sausages,” she said, and smiled.

“Thank you,” Draya said, and the young girl turned on her heel and darted out the door.

Loud music reverberated off the walls accompanied by the sound of laughing and bottles clinking in a dark room. Draya stood in the hallway, her back pressed to the wall while a young man kissed her. He was Lodewijk, a Danish-immigrant who had come west after the big war, and everyone used a westernized pronunciation when addressing him — Ludwig. His kisses were soft and sensuous, and Draya returned them eagerly. She could not get enough of them.

“Was today not the best day yet?” he asked in a low tone.

“It was, my love,” she said. “We’ll bring the Commonwealth to their knees, eventually.” 

She was a beautiful young woman, with long, sandy brown hair that naturally formed wavy curls when it dried. Her brown eyes glistened in the dim light and her cherubic cheeks rose when she smiled.

“This war is just getting started, Miss Nicks,” he said, smiling, but Draya frowned.

“You know I don’t like it when you call me that,” she scolded. “I don’t want to be associated with that life.”

He smirked. “I am sorry,” he said and kissed her again.

A deafening commotion rang from the kitchen at the end of the hallway and people began to scream. Draya’s nightmare slowed and she remembered the events that created her current situation as if shown on a movie screen.

Flashes of plasma fire from the kitchen.

The gray uniforms that came flooding into the hallway.

Attempting to flee with Ludwig; his scarred and burned body lying on the grass as he died in the yard.

The muzzle of a plasma rifle in her face…

Draya jolted awake, sitting upright in her makeshift bed. Her dream reminded her of the deadly serious situation in which she found herself. She was a member of the resistance, and it would not be over at dawn. They would hunt for her until she was found, and when she was caught, she would be taken back to the Commonwealth and executed.

She rose and stepped outside, where the night air helped to calm her nerves. The night was silent except for the crickets and an occasional snort from the livestock. If there was a better place to escape the Commonwealth, Draya couldn’t imagine what it was, because Emma’s family had found a little slice of paradise — they were isolated in the woods, with a water source, livestock, and beautiful trees blooming with lush green leaves overhead.

The breeze had died down and the pond was once again still and reflected like glass. Her appearance was still that of a nightmare, and she eagerly longed for the chance to be herself again. The young renegade, a woman not yet halfway through her twenties, strode to a stump and sat down, to appreciate the night and a moment of calm.

Draya was far away; lost in her own thoughts, and she did not notice when the crickets ceased chirping. Nor did she take note of a faint, almost-imperceptible hum in the distance. From above, a single leaf undulated back and forth as it fell, like a baby’s cradle rocked by its loving mother’s hand. The leaf landed on Draya’s knee and she smiled with genuine wonder, like a child on which a butterfly had chosen to alight. She scooped the leaf into her palm… it had turned a light orange color and Draya thought it was strange since fall was months away.

Another leaf landed on the grass before her, and Draya picked it up. It was the same pale orange. Above, she could see leaves falling from the trees, a few at a time, then in greater volume. They drifted lazily to and fro and Draya regarded them with wonder — it was a beautiful spectacle of nature.

Behind her, there was a loud thud. Draya saw a heifer lying on the ground, breathing heavily. Another cow unexpectedly dropped to the ground as Draya watched, while pale orange leaves rained down around her. 

She stood.

What is happening?

She turned her face skyward and it was immediately clear something was not right. The leaves were dropping off the trees at an increasing rate and the stars were more visible than they had been moments before.

All at once, she noticed everything she had missed. The silence of the crickets and the rising hum of electromagnetic patrol craft. The Commonwealth was dropping some kind of poisonous defoliant on the forest.

Another of the family’s livestock dropped dead in the pen and horses snorted in the distance as men’s voices could be heard shouting and calling to one another.

“DRAYA!” Emma’s voice screamed. “RUN!”

Emma bound toward the shed were Draya had bed down for the night, and a big man, presumably her father, was hot on her heels.

“YOU!” he shouted. “They’re after you! This is why they’ve come!” He wore an angry expression and Draya Nicks knew she was in danger.

Chris Nicks and his father arrived on horseback at the clearing with Marshal Vincent, but found it empty except for Emma’s father. His livestock lay dead in their pen and orange leaves littered the ground, a decaying blanket of death.

Dismounting his horse, Chris Nicks had a growing sense of authority and it could be seen in his stride and the way he carried himself.

He directed a squad. “Check the house.”

“The wolf,” Lord Nicks said. “Was it here?” he asked.

“Yes,” Emma’s father said. “You know it was,” he finished, surveying the devastation to the farm he had so lovingly built with his own two hands.

At the water’s edge, Chris Nicks found what remained of the cloak and picked it up.

“Father!” he shouted, and Lord Nicks nodded.

“Which way did it go?” Marshal Vincent demanded.

Emma’s father merely pointed.

“Let’s go,” the younger Nicks shouted, and the men obeyed as if he were a commissioned officer.

“I’ll be back to see you after sunrise,” Marshal Vincent said in a serious tone, and Emma’s father stared at his shoes.

Dogs barked in the distance and a Lieutenant hurried into the clearing on horseback.

“Sir, they’re onto the wolf,” he said.

The Nicks party and Marshal Vincent  gave their horses a kick and took off in hot pursuit of a prey they knew better than they understood.

Deep in the forest, Draya was again in flight. She could hear dogs barking nearby and she knew she did not have time to rest. The young woman scrambled down an embankment and across a flat plateau littered with fallen timber on the forest floor, but the dogs sounded closer than before.

“This way!” a man’s voice called from somewhere nearby. 

The hunted young woman with the face of a wolf fled without direction — every time she heard a voice, she instinctively changed direction.

Draya heard a search party as they crashed through the forest and she glanced over her shoulder to see where they were, but tripped on an exposed tree root in the process and fell on her face. As she rose, she saw a young man in the shadows, standing next to a tree perhaps thirty feet away. He raised a rifle and pointed it in her direction. The young woman wheeled around and took flight as fast as her feet would carry her but the sound of barking dogs still grew louder.

The young man let loose a volley of shots from his plasma rifle. One round found the limb of a tree and the others whent high and wide. Draya reached the edge of a ravine, dropped onto one hip and began to slide into it as two search dogs appeared, barking furiously.

Without thinking, Draya turned toward the dogs and gave her best vicious bark in return. The search dogs recoiled, momentarily frightened by the image of a fearsome wolf, as Draya slid and tumbled down into the ravine.

“This way!” a hunter shouted, and Draya could feel the party closing in. She came to rest with a thud at the bottom of the ravine and looked for a place to hide.

A large hollow log rested on the bank of a stream and Draya shimmied into it, wriggling like an inch worm until she was hidden.

“Down there,” she heard a voice call, and then more dogs barking.

Chris Nicks and his father arrived at the ridge overlooking the ravine and surveyed what was going on below as a lieutenant called for a dog.

“In the log,” the Lieutenant called, and a dog handler turned loose a hound. “Get in there, boy,” he said. 

Lord Nicks turned to his young son. “Let’s head back to the estate,” he said. “You can’t get your shot here. They have it encircled with instructions to drive it back to the square,” he continued. “We can finish it there.”

The Nicks party departed as a dog dove into the log below. Draya screamed and kicked her legs as the dog bit at her feet and tore at her flesh in the claustrophobic confines of the hollow log.

The sky had gone from an inky indigo to purple and red as the sun approached from beyond the horizon. During the festival, the hunt would sometimes end just hours after it had begun, when all the runners had been captured or killed, but this year had been a treat for the revelers. Several of the hunted had survived the night, only to be captured in the pre-dawn hours.

One runner, in a veil that depicted a zombie-like creature, was lashed at the wrists to several pillars on a raised platform in the estate square. Another was bound on a separate platform to the right and wore a veil that showed a reptilian creature’s visage. In the center, there was one unused set of pillars.

Onlookers gathered in bleachers that had been erected for the occasion and a murmur possessed the crowd as the climax of the festival approached. Sara Nicks and her mother waited in the stands among the audience.

“Sunrise in six minutes,” a public address announcer intoned over a system of loudspeakers, and the crowd cheered.

“Do you think they’ll get the last one, mother?” Sara Nicks asked.

“Surely, they will,” her mother replied. “And if they don’t, they will dispose of it in due time… just like all the other resistance trash. They chose their fate.”

Lord Nicks and his son Chris watched from the shooting platform above, awaiting the wolf — the final runner. Marshal Vincent leaned-in and spoke to Lord Nicks in a voice barely above a whisper.

“We shouldn’t cut it too close,” he said. “There are children in the crowd.”

“It should be any moment,” Lord Nicks replied. “The veil will still be active.”

A hunter on the platform raised his plasma rifle and peered through the scope, taking aim at the zombie-like creature in the crosshairs. He squeezed the trigger and an energy bolt tore through the pre-dawn sky and struck the runner in the chest. The zombie-like creature dropped to it’s knees, dead and severely burned, arms outstretched, its weight supported from the wrists.

The crowd let out a roar as the announcer joined again.

“Two runners remaining, and four minutes until sunrise!” he said with an air of excitement.

On the eastern horizon, a sliver of sun crept into view. It was only minutes until the Festival’s end, one way or another. The organizers liked to cluster any final terminations in groups, for the crowd’s enjoyment, and they had been waiting for the wolf to arrive, but the other shooters’ impatience grew. They had minutes to get their kill, and they were strictly forbidden from firing a fatal shot after the sun had risen.

Chris Nicks held his plasma rifle and watched the perimeter of the square for the wolf to appear. A second hunter, tired of waiting, stepped forward, raised his weapon and gazed through his scope. The reptilian creature’s image flickered — the veil was beginning to malfunction as sunrise approached and there were tiny glimpses of… something underneath.

The energy bolt tore across the square and struck the reptilian thing, which erupted in a brief flash of light and flame. Like the zombie-like thing before it, it slumped and hung from the cuffs around its wrists, dead and burned. The crowd roared a second time, louder and more raucous. Mrs. Nicks cheered, but Sara Nicks winced and looked to her mother for comfort, finding none.

“One runner remaining,” the announcer bellowed.

There were less than two minutes remaining and time was short. The crowd’s expectations were rising and the tension was palpable — the square had become loud, and tittered on the edge of chaos.

And then, it happened.

A deafening roar went up as The Wolf appeared at the edge of the square.

“Get ready, son,” Lord Nicks said, and Chris re-clenched his weapon.

“I told you!” Mrs. Nicks said to her daughter, but as quickly as the crowd erupted, they fell silent.

“Mother!” Sara said, pointing.

At the edge of the square, the wolf limped forward, hounded by hunters on horseback and repeatedly bitten by dogs. The wolf could barely walk, and the creature’s clothing lent an image of humanity that nobody had been prepared for… without its formless, shapeless cloak, the mirage of beastly horror was failing.

The wolf’s veil flickered as it limped forward. Inside the veil’s disguise, Draya suffered. A dog leapt and planted it’s two front paws on the wolf and knocked her down. The crowd groaned. Blood dripped from her mouth, and her legs were bleeding where the reddish-brown pants Emma had given her were torn away by repeated dog attacks. With every ounce of effort, she got back to her feet and trudged forward, one slow step at a time.

“Mother!” Sara Nicks said. “Please stop this! Make them stop!” 

Mrs. Nicks ignored her daughter’s pleas.

Two riders dismounted, took Draya by the wrists, and led her to the platform. She fell again as she tried to ascend the stairs and the guards roughly dragged her back to her feet, up the stairs, and lashed her to the pillars in the center of the platform. Her veil flickered, more noticeably, and for an instant it was clear to everyone there was a young woman under the wolf’s disguise.

Sara Nicks flashed an expression of recognition, but she was unsure.

“One minute remaining,” the announcer said. A digital timer began to count down above the shooting platform.

“Now’s the time, son,” Lord Nicks said. “Your time.”

Chris Nicks peered through his scope and prepared to fire. The wolf creature in his scope was a pathetic sight and the crowd was again coming to life. The wolf’s veil flickered momentarily and Chris caught the briefest glimpse of a person under the disguise. In truth, the hunters knew what they were doing, but the veil disguises furthered a feeling of detachment and made the deed easier to accomplish.

“Forty five seconds to sunrise,” the announcer said and the crowd bellowed.

His finger on the trigger and eye to the scope, Chris Nicks squeezed and… nothing happened.

He tried again. Nothing.

He looked at his weapon, puzzled. “Father!” he said.

Lord Nicks grabbed the weapon, pointed it and attempted to fire it, without result.

“Vincent!” Lord Nicks shouted. 

The wolf’s visage began to fade as the veil approached deactivation. Parents in the crowd convered their children’s eyes and some hustled their children away, where they would not be able to see what was unfolding.

“Thirty seconds to sunrise,” the announcer bellowed and the crowd was at a fever pitch.

Marshal Vincent scrambled across the platform and grabbed another hunter’s weapon.

“Load it!” the hunter yelled. “It needs a reload!”

Vincent ran to the cabinet that held the energy bolt cartridges and fumbled with his key.

“Hurry Vincent, goddamn it!” Lord Nicks screamed.

“Fifteen seconds until sunrise,” the announcer said.

Marshal Vincent found the key and opened the cabinet. He grabbed an energy-bolt cartridge, ejected the spent cartridge from the weapon, and snapped the fresh one into the receiver.

Draya’s veil malfunctioned noticeably and her real appearance was becoming more visible than her wolf disguise. Wails and alarmed utterances could be heard coming from the crowd as the veil flickered and failed.

The announcer began to count down.

Nine… eight… seven…

Vincent tossed the weapon to Chris Nicks and he gripped it, placing the stock against his shoulder.

Six… five… four…

“Do it!” Lord Nicks said. “Take the shot, Chris!”

“Mother!” Sara Nicks screamed. “Mother, it’s Draya!” She screamed toward the firing platform where her father and brother were but the crowd’s roars were deafening.

Mrs. Nicks looked at her youngest daughter.

“She chose her fate.”

Chris Nicks lowered his cheek against the upper stock of the weapon with a look of intensity. He peered through the scope and tried to focus.

Three… two… one…

The young man squeezed the trigger just as the countdown finished and he recognized who was in his scope an instant too late.

…zero

The energy bolt ripped forth from the rifle as the veil deactivated once and for all with an electromagnetic whirr. The sun had risen and the crowd saw the human beneath the disguise. It was then clear to the Nicks family that the young woman under the veil was one of their own family — a daughter and sister.

They had been hunting one of their own.

Sara Nicks covered her face as the round sailed across the square, not wanting to see it happen. Mrs. Nicks looked toward the shooting platform where her husband and son looked on in horror. 

A raucous cheer went up from the crowd and the hunt was complete.

From across the street, an 80-foot mural dwarfed the entrance to a passageway at its base. RESIST was painted in huge red letters on the four story brick wall of an abandoned building, with a small, dark doorway at the bottom of the “I.” Six stealthy figures in hoods slinked across the street and disappeared one by one into the passage. It was a dark, narrow corridor and the light of the evening sun cast long shadows on the floor as the interlopers crept quietly along.

In a large room at the end of the hallway, a paramilitary organization made preparations, with a dozen members carrying crates of ammunition, examining charts and cleaning weapons.

The metal door opened unexpectedly and the obviously well-trained force within immediately drew their weapons and pointed them at a hooded figure who came through the door, followed by five others.

The first of the hooded figures put up their hands and moved slowly.

“Take it easy,” a voice said from under the hood — a female voice.

The figure reached up and pulled back her hood to reveal her face, and the figures behind her did the same.

“My name is Sara Nicks,” she said, “and these are my friends.”

None of the six young women looked like they were a day older than 16, but when Sara Nicks spoke, it was clear she was mature beyond her years.

“We want to join the resistance.”

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

His sister once described him as “a lot,” and although he didn’t take it as a compliment, he thought it explained him in perfect, succinct fashion. He was a lot.

A lot to understand.

A lot to handle.

A lot to take.

As he crouched in the darkened stairwell, listening for his moment to arrive, he considered whether these might be his last minutes on Earth. Lawrence was a veteran, and he didn’t fear danger, but he was acutely aware that what he was about to do might kill both of them.

His conscience had left him long ago, though, and he was beyond the point of no return. His precious granddaughter had been taken from him by a reckless gang of sociopaths, and as his obsession grew, he neglected his family, and lost them, too.

He had nothing left to lose.

The biker who had run over Lawrence’s granddaughter on a custom Indian got a slap on the wrist and was back on the streets with only probation. He had wrecked his bike and injured his leg, and for the few days he spent in the hospital, his buddies started a fundraiser and paid for his hospital bills and motorcycle repairs.

The biker’s name was Gene, and Lawrence had never felt a fury like the one that overcame him. Within weeks, Gene was cruising with his buddies and intentionally goosing the throttle when he passed through residential neighborhoods. He was an intentional noise-polluter. An act of low-level sociopathy Lawrence labeled it. And now, Gene was a remorseless killer. He had returned to the same careless, indifferent lifestyle that had caused Shawana’s death, with no regard for others.

Lawrence had been watching.

Sometimes he’d watch from a car, but he was careful to change vehicles regularly so he wasn’t recognized. Other times he’d hang out on a bench on the sidewalk, or in a doorway, or a storefront, hiding behind sunglasses and an assortment of hats. Everywhere the old man went, he had a motive. He was there to watch Gene.

“To stalk the biker,” his former partner had said when Lawrence told him what he’d been doing.

He’d seen Gene, a big man, rough-up a bouncer at a local club. He’d watched him park his bike in a handicap spot, drop litter in the parking lot, flick cigarettes into a kid’s sandbox and exhibit a general disregard for the feelings and concerns of others.

“And you took Shawana from me,” Lawrence thought as he watched the biker from afar one last time. “Guilty. And the sentence is death, maybe for both of us.”

There was no sophistication to what he was about to do .  He just had to get up for it.

Lawrence bought a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon at Silent Lake Liquor and walked the two short blocks to his rented place next to the park. Inside the grungy efficiency apartment, as dark fell, he swigged liberally on his PBRs, downing one after another. Lawrence had not consumed alcohol in years and by beer number three, his head was already swimming. He downed the last three anyway, then called up a playlist and pressed play, turning the volume all the way up.

The ear-splitting opening moments of Mudvayne’s “Dig” blasted forth and Lawrence began pacing around the room in a frantic fashion, waving his arms over his head, amping himself up. He smashed his fists down on his small bedside table and it collapsed. He tore at the blankets on his bed and flung them across the room. As metal music reverberated off his walls and into the hall, the old man went to another place.

It was a place he had not been in a very long time.

The night had arrived.

Outside his apartment in a yet-to-be-gentrified section of downtown, Lawrence had scouted the perfect location. His building had an unused exterior staircase leading from the sidewalk down to the basement. It was the perfect place to hide, and right along the strip where Gene liked to cruise on his bike.

And then he heard it. The distinctive rumble of Gene’s big v-twin Indian with a custom exhaust approached.

He’s coming.

The sound of the motorcycle grew louder and Gene revved his engine as he went through an underpass, and again as he passed an outdoor dining area.

Lawrence squatted in the darkened stairwell and a streetlight cast a trapezoid of orange light on the wall, painting a silhouette of the bat he gripped in his closed fists. He could have used a knife or even a gun, but he thought the bat would be more satisfying.

The motorcycle continued to approach and the man crept forward, climbed two steps, until he could just peek out of his hiding place at sidewalk-level.

It was Gene.

“He’s alone,” Lawrence thought.

He’d been concerned about whether to go through with it if Gene had company. Now, his anticipation was at a crescendo and his heart pounded thick quarts of adrenaline as he listened to the sound of the motorcycle and watched it approach. In his mind, he thought about Shawana.

The biker gripped his brake lever and began to slow for the intersection and that was the moment.

Lawrence sprang from his hiding spot and sprinted off the sidewalk, into the street. He had almost entirely closed the distance between them before Gene even noticed him. There had been a real possibility, if he’d been spotted earlier, he could have been stabbed or shot or maybe run over, but now, Lawrence had the upper hand.

He leapt forward with the aluminum bat raised high over his shoulder and brought it down with devastating force across the biker’s chest and upper arms.

The big motorcycle rolled forward without its’ rider and crashed into the brick wall of a coffe shop across the street.

In the distance, someone yelled out at the scene unfolding. The biker, Gene, a greasy guy, bald on top with a party in the back, screamed in agony as he lay on his back in the street.

The old man did not hear it. He was a silhouette of retribution in the streetlight’s glow, looming over the biker, merciless and hell-bent.

Lawrence raised the bat and brought it down again. And then, again, as a crowd of onlookers assembled. The savagery of his attack stunned them. He swung the bat until he had exhausted himself, and the crowd on the sidewalk had fallen nearly silent.

The biker lay in the street, bloodied and mortally wounded. Lawrence dropped the bat and it clanged off the asphalt. A young man stepped off the sidewalk and approached him.

“I don’t know what he did to you, man,” the young man said, “but you gon’ go to jail now.”

Lawrence returned the young man’s gaze as the sound of sirens approached. Bystanders held their phones in the air, recording video for their feeds.

“Was it worth it?” the young man asked.

Lawrence wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, it was.”

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

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He thought she might be the most unattractive woman he had ever seen, and the sound of her voice was grating — especially at such an early hour.

He had been staying in the hotel for a week. It was a former Holiday Inn which had been sold to another company and rebranded as the Travel-Day Inn, and Evan Canfield had been noticing little things; details that could be filed away for later and used in his writing. It was one of the little things from which he took pleasure — being observant and cannibalizing slices of life to color his stories.

Evan was a photographer by trade, in Northern Virginia for a photo shoot at a convention, held in a venue that included a ritzy restaurant decorated in a fox hunting motif, but he had been thinking about his writing a lot. He loved the frozen moments he captured in his viewfinder, but writing was his true passion, and the comings and goings of the hotel patrons — and their individual quirks — made for fertile ground on which to base his characters and stories.

He noticed on his third day at the Travel-Day Inn that the front desk didn’t answer their phone, that the hallways smelled like smoke despite the “No Smoking” signs plastered everywhere, and that the person in the room next to him drank a 12-pack of Keystone beer every night then set the case with empty cans outside his hotel room door for the housekeeping crew to take away.

He filed it all away for later use and went about his business. 

It was day 7 of an 8 day job, and he was up early to catch the Travel-Day’s adequate breakfast buffet. He sat at a table for 2 with a paper plate of overcooked scrambled eggs, cinnamon roll, cup of yogurt, plus a cup each of orange juice and black coffee. From somewhere to his left, he heard a young male speak with a slightly raised voice, louder than it should have been.

“Well, it hurts,” the young man said.

“Jeremy,” the woman said, but before she could finish, the young man muttered something under his breath.

“Jeremy,” she said again, and the young man kept muttering.

When his voice finally fell silent, she said “Well, you’re absolutely right, Jeremy, why don’t you just…” until her voice trailed off to a level that Evan could not make out the rest of her sentence. It was clear the woman was talking to a young person and her condescending tone suggested it must be her son.

“Everything I tell you to do…” she said, “...take some Tylenol, or wrap it… you don’t do it,” the woman chided. “You probably broke it.”

Jeremy said something, then another young male chimed in and the woman said, “Joshua, you stay out of this.” Their tone was again borderline disruptive.

Evan turned to glance their direction; tried to get a look at the rude breakfast party. They were sitting near the floor-to-ceiling windows in the dining room, backlit by brilliant white snow which had fallen the night before, and Evan had a hard time making out who he was looking at. He had reached the age where his eyesight was not what it used to be and he had a hard time with bright environments. From what he could make out, they were a  party of four — one adult, two teenage boys and a teen girl.

As he continued eating his breakfast, Evan contemplated simply taking it back to his room but opted to finish it in the dining room. In the ten minutes he remained, the woman said Jeremy’s name at least 7 or 8 more times.

With a grunt, Evan Canfield rose from his table and struggled to put his coat on — his shoulders had been giving him trouble for years and he had a hard time raising his arms high enough to get them into his sleeves. When he had accomplished the task, he grabbed his plate and went to the trash can.

He heard the woman’s voice again.

“Jeremy!” she said in a stern tone. “Do the right thing.”

Jeremy mumbled something to the effect of “they’ll do it…” and his mother said, “Be a standup guy.”

Evan craned his neck in time to see the teenager gather up his used plate, cup and wrappers from where he had left them on the breakfast table and dispose of them. When Evan turned back to dump his own plate, the woman was standing right in front of him at the same trash can.

She was a pear-shaped woman, mid-forties he thought, but looked much older. She had salt & pepper hair, styled in a mullet. Glasses, no makeup, wearing a faded brown 2XL t-shirt and no bra underneath; her heavy breasts hung three quarters of the way to her navel. The woman wore reddish sweatpants, and crowned her ensemble with what Evan thought was the piece-de-resistance of poor taste — a blue fanny-pack with the pouch in the front.

The woman dropped her plate in the garbage can and the employee in charge of the continental breakfast spoke up.

“Thank you, Vera,” the employee said.

“You got it,” Vera said in return. “We’ll see you next time,” she finished, in the distinct dialect of Appalachian hill folk.

Evan dumped his own trash and headed for the elevator. The door was just closing when a hand punched into the opening and forced it to retract. Vera joined him on the elevator.

He looked at his phone and did not meet her gaze — he did not want to be drawn into a conversation with her.

The elevator rose one floor and when the door opened, Vera exited first and the photographer took his time exiting. His room was the very last room on the second floor and he tended to walk fast — he did not want to be trailing the woman all the way down the hall.

Vera disappeared around the corner and when enough time had passed, just a few seconds really, Evan proceeded from the elevator. However, he had not even rounded the corner when he heard Vera’s voice again.

“Boys!” she scolded. “Knock it off.”

When Evan rounded the corner, he saw Vera’s two teenage sons, maybe 15 and 17 by the looks of them, with the stocky builds of high school wrestlers, squared-off and puffed-up like they were going to fight in the hallway while their teenage sister looked on.

The smaller of the two young men warned his larger sibling.

“I’ll put your ass to sleep, boy” he said, and the two of them were clearly right at the precipice of a fight — fists clenched, ready to throw hands.

It was at that moment, however, that they noticed Evan coming down the hallway, which they were entirely blocking with their macho standoff.

“Knock it off,” Vera said again, and the boys bravado faded. The party of four began to file into room 220 one at a time, and Evan passed just in time to see Vera’s teenage daughter peeking out from under one hand that covered her mouth and most of her face. She made eye contact with Evan and wore an expression that said I am so embarrassed.

Evan gathered his gear for a half-hour trip to his shoot. He had three Nikons in his camera bag and an assortment of lenses and filters. All of the formal work had been done earlier in the week and the days’ shoot would be more casual, candid stuff to add flavor to the final publication. That meant he didn’t have to bring tripods or lights or any other heavy gear, and that made him happy.

The realities of being a stroke survivor were always with him. He didn’t have the sensation is his fingertips that he once had and his grip strength was diminished as well. Holding cameras and manipulating switches and buttons was hard enough. If he could avoid having to fumble with extra equipment and tripods, it made his day just a little bit easier.

Likewise, his eyesight had declined in recent years. He was a type two diabetic, a condition which he had not given enough respect, and when he drank too much during the pandemic, he noticed a rapid decline in his eyesight that alarmed him. He quit drinking, but his eyesight had diminished notably by the time he took action, and that also presented challenges.

His eye doctor had failed him, and he took matters into his own hands, getting a new prescription for bifocal eyeglasses, and a prescription for single-vision contact lenses so he could wear extra-dark sunglasses outdoors on bright days. That meant he also had to bring a pair of reading glasses with him everywhere he went, and he was constantly changing between the two — reading glasses when he needed to look at his phone, sunglasses when he needed to look at the road. Even so, when he went by road signs at highway speeds, he could rarely make them out. By the time he was close enough to read them, he was already past them.

Thank God for in-car navigation had been his recent mantra.

He took one last look at the stuff he laid out on the bed, then checked his pockets.

Spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch.

He grabbed his backpack and his camera bag, and allowed the hotel door to slam behind him as he headed out for another day’s work.

Evan got in the car and went through his typical routine. He took off his sunglasses and put on his reading glasses, then dialed up navigation directions to the convention center. He pressed “navigate” then took off his reading glasses and replaced them with his aviator shades. He’d always said “everybody looks good in aviators” and he liked the way he looked in them, too.

His reading glasses went into the divot on the top of his truck’s dashboard, and his phone into a mount clipped to an air vent in the dash. He started to roll out of the hotel parking lot and the pleasant navigation voice said “turn left on Estate Drive.” Evan Canfield followed instructions and he was off and running; headed out of town.

The highway wound through the Shenandoah Mountains and Evan thought it was some of the most beautiful landscape he had ever experienced. Oaks and maples and pines lined the roadway, tall and spindly with knobby bark on their trunks, and the morning sunlight shone through, casting long shadows of twisted mimicry on the forest floor.

The three inches of snow that had fallen the previous night rested in rounded piles that were already melting — 30 degrees had given way to 34-and-climbing and runoff trickled across the highway lanes.

He passed the turnoff for Bull Run Mountain, crossed the mighty Shenandoah River, and drove by Greenbriar, the resort where the US Government once built a doomsday bunker for bigwigs. It was all magnificent scenery.

The navigation gave an occasional direction — take such-and-such exit, and keep right. Evan followed dutifully and he could occasionally make out the lettering on the corresponding signs, but not every time.

As he neared the top of one of Virginia’s undulating mountain highways, however, the contact lens in his right eye suddenly felt strange, like a piece of grit had unexpectedly infiltrated his eye. As he had done a thousand times before, Evan shut his right eye and rolled it around under his closed eyelid in an attempt to clear the irritant as his truck sailed up the road at 65 miles per hour.

Evan felt a sharp pain in his right eye and when he opened it, he realized he could no longer focus. His left eye was fine, but his vision in his right eye was blurry.

How am I going to see through my viewfinder?

The thought had no sooner occurred to him when he had another.

You're gonna have to shoot everything from the LCD screen.

He was immediately appalled at the thought. 

He wasn't a tourist. He didn't take photos using the LCD screen.

The photographer reached up and removed his sunglasses with one hand, then extended his right index finger and reached toward his eyeball, intending to swirl the contact lens on his eye and clear any obstruction. When he gently placed his fingertip against what should have been his contact lens, he realized he could feel his finger against his eye.

His contact lens had split down the middle.

He blinked his eyes and the torn contact lens dropped right out of his right eye and landed on the back of his hand. He glanced at it, and as he did, his left had unconsciously pulled at the steering wheel a little.

Evan looked up and saw his RAM truck drifting toward the shoulder, and the 50-foot drop just beyond it. He jerked back on the steering wheel to bring himself back between the lines, but his panic betrayed him.

The truck rode back onto the highway and into an oncoming lane, where a sedan blasted it's horn. He careened back to the right, and the overcorrection was irreversible. The truck slid sideways on the slippery pavement, then caught on a dry spot.

A mailbox shaped like a tractor collapsed under the RAM’s bumper as Evan and the truck crossed the shoulder and went over the side.

The truck struck a skinny pine and sheared it off at the base, then continued it's journey to the bottom of the ravine, bouncing like a kids’ amusement park ride. It careened through the forest and the windshield surrendered to a limb, shattering into a spiderweb of a thousand tiny cracks.

At the bottom of the ravine, a babbling brook that had trickled for centuries without a disruption was rudely assailed when the truck came crashing to a stop in its midst. Evan’s head slammed against his steering wheel and his fear and alarm swam away to blackness. 

The sun was low on the other horizon by the time Evan Canfield regained consciousness. Crickets and birds chirped in the wilderness, but the old photographer screamed in agony and the rest of the forest fell eerily silent. 

He struggled to stay coherent; to focus. He felt absolutely freezing. He looked around and realized he was still in his truck, somewhere in the woods.

What happened?

The surrounding forest cast eerie shadows in the golden light of sunset. He could see the wilderness. It surrounded him on all sides and he became aware of the sound of rushing water in his ears.

Where am i?

He turned his head and caught a brilliant reflection of sunlight in his eyes that nearly blinded him. He awakened fully, and all at once he realized the gravity of his situation.

He was still in his truck, seated in the driver’s seat, but the windshield was broken and he sat in freezing cold water. His truck had come to rest in the cold mountain water and dammed the stream enough that it had started to back up. At some point in his unconscious state, the cold water had pooled behind his truck and overflowed into the cabin.

He was chest-deep in an icy pool of February runoff in the mountains of Northern Virginia.

In an attempt to escape, Evan lurched forward and tried to extricate himself. A brilliant flash of pain seared in his brain, shot like a lightning bolt from somewhere below the water’s surface. He saw red in the water and it was clear he was severely injured. If he could see beneath the water, he would have seen the truck seat had slid forward in the accident and the dashboard had caved-in, crushing Evan Canfield’s legs like a lobster claw at a seafood boil.

He was trapped.

Evan tried again to squirm out of his seat and the ragged metal on the underside of his dash tore at his legs and sent jolts of electric agony into his brain as his senses ran away again.

It was dark when Evan awoke again. He shivered in the cold stream, but the chilly state of the water was enough to dull the pain in his legs and he was grateful for it. The memory of the accident was faint in his mind, but he knew he was in serious, deadly trouble.

He took stock of his situation and noticed his phone — it was still clipped to the vent on his dash, and it was just above the water’s surface.

Oh my god.

Evan practically lunged for his phone, his arm sending forth a splash as it thrust from beneath the water, clumsy and numb.

Please God, let it work.

His frozen hand pawed at the phone and the screen lit up.

“Yes! Thank you!” he said aloud.

Evan swiped at the screen, careful not to dislodge it from the mount, and it unlocked. He tapped the green phone icon with one trembling finger, then the “keypad” tab. His tremors were too pronounced and he missed.

He tried again, then again.

Finally, on the fourth try, he succeeded and the keypad appeared. In a deliberate, careful fashion, he tapped ‘9,’ then ‘1,’ twice, and pressed the call button.

He waited but nothing seemed to happen.

What’s happening?

Evan looked at the task bar across the top of the screen and remembered the struggle with his problematic eyesight.

The contact lens.

His contact lens had split. He remembered it now.

He couldn’t see what was happening in the tiny task bar at the top of the screen. Did he not have service? Had the phone been damaged in the accident? He didn’t know because he couldn’t see well enough.

His reading glasses no longer rested in the divot on top of the dashboard — they’d been lost in the accident. Evan scanned the truck for any sign of them, but they were nowhere to be seen. The truck had come to rest at a nose-down angle in the stream at the bottom of the ravine and he thought his glasses were likely somewhere in the water, near his feet. He leaned forward and attempted to feel for the cheap Walmart readers beneath the water, but felt nothing. When he tried to reach further, he realized he couldn’t with putting his face in the freezing water.

A fucking contact lens.

Evan was incredulous at the situation in which he found himself. Freezing to death in a mountain stream at the bottom of a ravine because of a goddamn contact lens.

Someone at the convention would surely have called the police by now, alarmed that he didn’t show up.

But how will they find me?

Evan craned his neck and examined the dark interior of his truck, frantic to find anything — a tool, a leverage point.

In the back seat, his backpack hung suspended by a shoulder strap from the headrest. From the partially unzipped backpack, his black and yellow Nikon camera strap dangled in the cab. It was nylon mesh, and strong. If he could get his hand on it, he thought he might be able to use it to drag himself out from under the crumpled dashboard.

It’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker.

It wasn’t getting any warmer in the water and he knew he had no choice. Time was running out.

Evan Canfield raised his arm out of the water and reached back as far as he could. He couldn’t raise his arm above his head to reach the camera strap. He groaned in agony each time he stretched for the backpack, his bad shoulder sending throbbing pain down his neck and into his back.

No matter what he did, he could not free himself.

Evan went back to his phone and started tapping.

He tried 9-1-1 again.

No response.

With great difficulty, he called up his contact list, tapping at the appropriate unseen buttons and tabs on memory alone since he could not see what he was doing.

He tried his son.

No response.

His tremors impeded every gesture and he fumble-fingered into his music app by accident.

Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice” blared forth from the phone’s speaker.

Great. I can listen to music while I freeze to death.

He thumbed the phone again and it fell silent.

Evan Canfield was freezing to death, trapped in a stream at the bottom of a ravine in Northern Virginia, 350 miles from home, and nobody knew where he was. He had always prided himself on being a positive person, but he was struggling to remain hopeful.

Is this it for me?

Are these my last hours on Earth?

The thoughts occurred to him and felt very real, and at the same time, strange and unreal.

Is this what it’s like to die? Alone and helpless? With hours to contemplate your own mortality, waiting for the end?

He felt tired.

Very tired. 

Evan just wanted to go to sleep.

But I have so much left to do.

A voice called out in the darkness and Evan again awakened into a freezing, hypothermic stupor. His brain was foggy and he was unsure what he’d heard.

“Hello?” 

A voice rang out in the woods.

Weakly, Evan raised his head.

A light shone from the slope above, painting shadows that reached out like haunting fingers from the skinny pines dotting the landscape.

“Help,” Evan tried to call, but it only came out as a half-whispered croak.

The beam of the light swept back and forth across the ravine.

“Is somebody down there?” the voice called out.

“Yes,” Evan called, a little louder. “Please help me,” he pleaded.

The savior with the flashlight stepped onto the bank of the stream just above the truck.

“Am I hallucinating?” the old photographer wondered.

It was an angel.

A guardian angel.

She unzipped her fannypack and removed a walkie-talkie. She pressed the button and called into the speaker.

“Jeremy!” she said. “Send down the winch. A city slicker got himself in a hell of a pickle down here.”

On the shoulder of the roadway above, Vera’s two sons climbed out of her tow truck and unlocked the winch, pulling cable from the roll an arm’s length at a time while her teen daughter grabbed the radio in the wrecker and called for help.

Within minutes they had hooked the RAM to the winch and pulled the crushed truck out of the stream and onto the slope. With the task accomplished, Vera grabbed her walkie talkie and barked out some more orders to her stocky teenage sons.

“Bring down the blankets we use for the fancy pants Beemers and Caddy’s, and bring me the jack too!” she said. “And hurry up about it or this fella’s gonna freeze to death.”

With the RAM out of the water, the way in which Evan’s legs were trapped was finally visible. Vera simply took the old farm jack she kept behind the seat of the wrecker and braced it under a jagged piece of metal. She pumped on the jack handle a dozen times and the dashboard rose higher and higher until there was an audible SNAP and Evan’s legs were free.

“What the hell were you doin’ out here, Vera?” the State Policeman asked.

“On my way back from visiting my Mom down in Richmond,” she replied. She still wore her 2XL t-shirt and sweat pants.

The paramedics had Evan Canfield wrapped in blankets and loaded his stretcher into the back of the ambulance.

“How the hell’d you know he was down there?” the trooper asked.

“He took out the mailbox when he went over the side,” she said. “That’s old man Swinton’s old tractor mailbox. Welded it himself with spare parts from his old International Harvester.”

The trooper looked toward the shoulder, where the mailbox had stood. Skid marks marred the pavement and tree limbs were broken on the route where the truck had gone over the side.

“I always loved that mailbox,” she said. “Was a nice little landmark on our trip home. I always knew when I passed it that we were almost home. When I saw it wasn’t there anymore, it stood out to me.”

The paramedics rolled Evan Canfield’s stretcher into the back of the ambulance and he turned his head to call out.

“Thank you, Vera! You saved my life! I’ll never be able to thank you enough!”

“Yer fine,” she called back. “Git warm!”

Evan Canfield couldn’t see her very well, but he was sure she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.

Let me tell you a story about the day I died.

I’d been out on parole for about ninety days — a season I spent drinking and enjoying freedom and fighting the hands of the clock, wishing with all my might to slow down the passage of time. I wanted to enjoy every moment I had left in my rediscovered freedom. For eighteen years I’d been fixated …

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I swear, I saw them.

It was fleeting, to be sure, but… I saw butterflies.

Was it just a trick of the light? An artifact of the muted sunlight filtering through the tree tops?

It had to be.

The absence of feeling in my hands was a constant reminder that they were frozen, even though I couldn’t see them very well. Encrusted diamonds of ice hung from my eyelashes and my eyes watered constantly, lashed by the winds of a classic storm known in these parts as an Alberta Clipper. My soaking wet clothes were beginning to freeze and it was becoming harder to crawl.

With great effort, I rolled over and looked back; my breath a plume in the frigid air. My car had disappeared from view. It was completely submerged in the lake.

It would be dark soon. If anybody drove by, they wouldn’t even know there had been an accident, and the weather report said it was gonna drop to 35-below zero.

Again I rolled over and mustered all of my will to reach forward, slide one knee forward, and propel myself another foot through the frozen wetland.

Highway 2 was always terrible in the winter. A couple times every year, a clipper would arrive and the bitter wind gusts would pick up and the snow would blow horizontally across the road. I complained about it so many times — how it sucked to drive in it because your eyes got tired from tracking the road through the heavy snow in your field of vision.

Tonight, I took a different route home from work so I could swing by my boss’ house and drop off a Christmas gift from a mutual friend, and from there, I just chose the quickest way home.

I was just coming to the top of a rise on Highway 2 when it happened.

My Subaru squatted on all four tires as it bottomed out and started up a slope, where Highway 2 meets County 41. Just as the car reached the top of the rise and started down the other side, when it was lightest on its springs, the tires broke loose on the glassy, freezing asphalt. The car slid and began to rotate clockwise, and as the road followed a bend to the left, inertia carried my car straight off the highway with me along for the ride.

At any other bend in the road, I would have ended up in the ditch, maybe dead, maybe badly injured, but at that particular spot, the lake’s elevation brings it right up to the edge of the road. I skipped over the shoulder and bounced hard on the shore of the lake. My car rolled over then came to a violent, crashing halt, upside down, about 50 feet from the shoreline.

I hung upside down, suspended from my seatbelt. Loud cracking sounds reverberated all around me, and I realized my car had broken through the ice and I was sinking.

I didn’t think I was gonna make it out of there.

As I sank headfirst into the freezing, inky black water of the frozen lake, I remember the voice in my head asking.

“Is this it?”

“Are these my last moments on Earth?”

It didn’t seem so bad, really. I had lived a good life.

I didn’t live to be 95 or anything, but… 45 isn’t so bad.

Wait. How old am I?

53! Yeah, that’s right. 53. That’s not so bad. A lot of people don’t make it to 53.

My phone was ruined, and by the time I got out of the water, I couldn’t work it with my frozen fingers, anyway. I looked toward the road. A white pickup with a toolbox in the bed roared by without stopping.

It’s alright. He has a family to get home to. Somebody else is bound to come by.

I made it out of there. That was the main thing. If the car hadn’t rolled over and broken the windows, I’d be down there at the bottom of the lake.

I had stopped shivering awhile ago, and I was pretty sure that was a good sign. Or did I have it backwards? Was it a bad sign when you stopped shivering? I couldn’t remember. I rolled over, panting from the effort, and looked back again. The hole in the ice was barely visible.

The sun ducked beneath the cloud ceiling and I felt totally comfortable there, in the golden light of sunset. I didn’t even feel cold anymore.

Somebody is bound to come by.

I might just… rest my eyes a bit while I wait.

Wait. What was that?

I swear. I saw butterflies.

Written in tribute to Jack London, author of “To Build a Fire.” Stay safe out there, cold weather friends.

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name, and harbinger of things that go bump in the night. Sign up for a free subscription.

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Do you see it?

I’ve suspected for some time that something is going on. At first I tried to explain it all away, as spooky coincidences and eccentric characters, you know?

I’ve been in digital content for the better part of ten years, but when the AI bomb dropped, that’s when things began to change. I mean, I was completely blown away by what we could do; things we’d never even thought of.

I got more productive at work and my asshole supervisor took the credit. The owner made more money than the previous three years combined, and we got a contract that will triple our revenue again next year.

But when the GM gave his speech at the company’s Christmas party, and he was thanking everyone on the Sarion AI project, he forgot to name me, the project manager.

Yeah.

He asked us all to stand, to be recognized. I was standing 10 feet away, at the third row of tables. He looked right at me and never said my name.

I was pissed, but what could I do? Occupational unhappiness notwithstanding, the mortgage ain’t gonna pay for itself. I threw myself back into my work. The possibilities with AI were enough to keep me distracted.

My immediate supervisor, though… Austin. He was the first one to get weird.

We’d been at odds for some time. I discovered he had a thing for mind games and asserting his dominance in the office. He would pick out any perceived flaw and use it to undermine me with colleagues. If I said (in private) a woman in the office looked good because she’d been doing keto, he’d go find her later and make her think I wanted to fuck her. He was constantly finding ways to assassinate my character.

It was probably Napoleon syndrome, if I had to guess. He was a small man and I think he felt compelled to present an uber-macho image of authority. But it was all a matter of professionalism and just… dealing with it, you know? In every office, there’s one of those people who treats work life as if it’s a competition, and he did. It’s a shitty way to live, but whatever, right?

However, he started hanging around our lab in odd places. I would wonder sometimes why is he sitting at the counter over there instead of at his station?

It took me awhile, but I finally figured it out.

He wanted to see my computer screen.

I would be working on a simulation and glance in his direction and catch him watching my monitor… like he thought I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be. He was especially nosy when I was using Sarion, or anything to do with AI. It didn’t seem to matter what I was doing… landscape visualizations, client storyboards; he watched like a hawk.

He’d quickly look away when I caught him, like he got caught looking at a woman’s boobs. I’m serious. It was the weirdest goddamn thing.

Like, dude. Do you think I don’t see you acting like a weirdo over there in your Grand Funk Railroad tour jacket?

I couldn’t have known just how weird it would get.

It was fall and looking like it was gonna be an early winter. It had been cold and most of the leaves had blown off the trees practically overnight on a particularly windy evening in early October; like mother nature knew the stark aesthetic would be the perfect backdrop for tragedy.

I was at my place on the north side of downtown, making a late-night snack for myself and the cats, and there was a knock. I live in a secure building with a guard present 24/7, so I don’t get random knocks on the door very often.

When I opened the door I found Austin standing there… I shouldn’t say standing, he was… I don’t know how to describe it. He was fidgeting, in a state I’d never seen him; shuffling back and forth, shifting his weight from foot-to-foot and rambling.

“Robert,” he said urgently, and pushed past me, into my living room. “I have to talk to you.” His clothing was disheveled and he was unshaven.

“Austin,” I said. “How did you get in here? Normally I get a buzz…”

“Robert! Shut up and listen to me,” he said. “Something is going on with Sarion.”

From his perspective I’m sure I looked clueless, because I was.

“It started with messages. Little things,” he continued. “I’d search for something on the web, like, at home, streaming TV or something, or I’d pick up my phone and search for something, and the next day it would appear in Sarion’s outputs.”

He was talking a thousand miles per hour but not making a lot of sense.

“It infiltrated my personal life… in subtle ways, right?” he continued. “Like, I’d use the app on my phone at home,” he said, lowering his voice noticeably. “I’d search for, say, Taylor Swift, you know… Uh, just to see how the software does replicating the likeness of celebrities, you know?”

I’m sure I smirked, but said nothing.

“So, I’d regenerate the image once, then again, then once more, and before you know it, Taylor Swift was giving me the finger!”

I laughed out loud. “What are you…”

“I know! It sounds crazy,” he said, “but I swear to God, the AI made Taylor Swift give me the finger.”

“Austin, you are…” I began.

“And she had a certain…” he interrupted, then paused, searching for the word “…disgusted look on her face, too,” he concluded.

“Maybe AI Taylor knew why you were regenerating her image so many times,” I remarked, still smiling.

“Listen, I know, it sounds wild… but how long’ve we known each other, huh?” he asked. “There was other stuff,” Austin said, mercifully changing the subject. “Image outputs for the Sarion project would have… text, in them.”

I hated working with him, but I admit I was a little worried about his mental wellbeing. My sympathy disappeared, though, when he shifted in the dim light and I noticed a shape under his coat.

“Text?” I asked.

“You know. Text!” he shouted, frustrated. “Words.”

Austin knew AI was bad at text. You could ask it to design a movie poster or a screenprinted t-shirt or a flyer for Tuesday Coffee Club and everything would turn out great — visually attractive and sharp — except the text would be garbled nonsense.

“Do you mean messages, Austin?” I asked. “You think AI is sending you messages?” I went to the kitchen breakfast bar and retrieved my phone, trying to make it look casual. “Because you were spanking it to AI depictions of Taylor Swift, and she gave you the finger?”

“Listen, Rob, I know…” Austin began, but it was my turn to interrupt.

“No, Austin, you listen. It has been 2 years of hell working with you,” I said, “and now you’re here at my door,” I looked at my phone, “at 11 pm, talking craziness about messages from AI.”

I opened my contacts and thumbed the entry labeled GUARD SHACK. The call connected and began to ring, but I didn’t put the phone to my ear. If I made it obvious I was making a phone call, it might set him off. I waited to see if anyone would answer.

“It’s not craziness,” Austin yelled.

I kept one eye on the shape under his coat. The outgoing call to the guard shack continued to ring.

“Sarion used my name, Rob,” Austin said. I looked at him. He was dead serious.

“What do you mean it used your name?” I asked.

The call to the guard shack just rang. Nobody answered.

“In the messages,” he said. “Sometimes my name would be in them.”

I ended the call and casually went to the window. I could faintly hear sirens.

“Austin, how did you get in here?” I asked a second time, louder. I pulled back a curtain to look out the window in the direction of the guard shack. Blue and red lights flashed in every direction and there must have been a half dozen emergency vehicles crowded at the gate.

My thoughts immediately went to Clinton, the security guard who greeted me at the guard shack every day when I got home from the lab. He was an older man, a retired cop, from Mississippi originally.

“Austin,” I said again, letting go of the curtain, “what did you…”

When my gaze returned to my supervisor, he was holding a gun.

Loosely.

In a way that made me nervous.

He alternately clutched the weapon, then let it dangle from his fingers as a pained expression washed over him. He began to cry.

“I am not imagining things,” he sobbed.

I put my hands out in a calming gesture. “Austin…”

“I haven’t been able to sleep,” he said, sniffling. He wiped tears on the sleeve of his dark gray coat.

“Austin, listen,” I said, “I don’t know what you’ve done, but we can…”

He erupted. “No, it’s too late for that,” he yelled, a rope of spittle flying from his lips as he thrust the gun forward, punctuating his statement.

“Whoa. Easy Austin,” I said, but it was too late. He had worked up the nerve.

“You’ll see,” he said. “Just wait, Rob. You’ll see.”

He raised the weapon to his temple and pulled the trigger. The report was incredibly loud. I flinched and felt instantly scarred by the sudden arrival of bloody, deadly violence in my home. Austin crumpled to the floor, and my ears were still ringing when the first responders arrived at my door.

There wasn’t a public service, obviously, but Austin’s tragic end was more than just an entry in the police blotter or a note in a journal on mental illness. It left a pall on our company for at least the first six months, and the enthusiasm for Sarion was significantly tempered in upper-management. They slashed the budget and pretty much left me in charge with no real direction.

I can honestly say, I like it. There’s nobody hanging over my shoulder or watching every little thing I do… at least, not most of the time.

I have noticed a few things, though. You know, little stuff.

Like, I know this might sound a little… weird or paranoid, but there might have been some truth in the stuff Austin was saying.

I was working on some images for a client’s book about conspiracy and assassinations when it happened to me.

I didn’t see it at first, you know. It just seemed like Sarion was spittin’ out garbled words again.

Do you see it? I think my AI is sending me messages.

Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.