When a Life Becomes Background Noise

There’s something about background noise. If it goes on for long enough, our mind will get used to it and block it out.

Don’t believe me? Go to a busy Starbucks and spend a few hours there studying or reading. At first, you might be annoyed by all the noise, but after the first hour, you won’t even realize it’s there anymore.

It was the same with the scratching coming from the apartment next door. After a while, I’d merely blocked it out.

What I’d never been able to block out was the person living there, old Mr. Meier. He was one of the most unpleasant and nastiest people I ever met.

He seemed perpetually angry. It didn’t matter if kids were playing nearby or an old couple walking past his apartment. He’d be out on his balcony in an instant screaming and yelling at them. You could even see the saliva flying from his trembling mouth.

For what it’s worth though, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the old man’s vitality. At times he’d scream and yell at people for hours on end. Maybe this misanthropy was all he’d left? I’d heard that his wife had long died and he’d no other relatives.

Since I moved into my apartment, I’d ran into the old man countless times. The first time will always stay on my mind though. I was on the way to the grocery store, and he walked into my direction. For only a moment our eyes met, but that was enough to get him going. He asked me what I was looking at and when I didn’t answer, he told me to get the hell out of his way before he’d beat the living shit out of me with his cane. I stepped aside and looked after him utterly dumbfounded. At the time I had no clue what was going on with the old man.

After a while I came to learn that this was his normal for him.

To be honest, I was never afraid of the old man. No, I was mostly amused by his antics.

After a while, it even felt as if old Mr. Meier and I started bonding a bit. At least in the way that he called me a bloody cocksucker when I greeted him in the morning.

It must’ve been last summer when something curious happened. One morning I walked past his balcony, and the old man wasn’t there. After a few days I started to get worried, and once a week was over, I thought the worst had happened. I’d never seen an ambulance or heard anything from the neighbors however. Could it be that everyone ignored it?

After another week I was proven all wrong. One day I saw the old man leaving his apartment. I almost couldn’t trust my eyes. He looked completely different. Mr. Meier hadn’t been a fat man, but he used to be stout. Now he was thin, haggard even and his skin was almost translucent. I knew something was wrong as he dragged himself past me without so much as attempting one of his usual insults.

As the days went by the old man’s condition started to improve. Week after week his cloth filled out again, and before I knew what had happened, he was back to normal. Even his skin got his old color back, and soon enough he walked with more vitality than ever before. It was nothing short of miraculous.

Even though the old man was back to his old self, one thing had indeed changed. He didn’t scream at people anymore. Instead, he ignored them, almost as if he’d decided to spend his remaining days in solitude. The only thing I could still hear from his place was the scratching I’d mentioned before.

It seemed to be there almost always. It didn’t matter if I made coffee in the morning or watched a movie on Netflix. The low, quiet sound of something scratching against the wall seemed to be ubiquitous. It was really creepy, but after a while my mind blocked it out. I’d completely forgotten about it until last weekend.

I was sitting in front of my computer, watching one of the stupid new shows on Netflix. Suddenly I heard a sound from the wall I shared with Mr. Meier’s apartment. When I turned around, I saw something poking through the wallpaper. At first, I thought it was a nail, but no, it was a… spoon?

Right at that moment, the scratching behind the wall started with renewed intensity. The spoon poked through the wallpaper again and again before a brick was pushed forward. It crashed to the floor, leaving a ragged hole in the wallpaper. At first, it was only one, but then more and more bricks clattered down. I watched the surreal event in a sort of trance, almost unsure if it was real. Finally, I saw a pair of haggard, dirty hands reach through the small hole. They broke apart more and more of the wall before a man started to crawl headfirst into my apartment.

I screamed up in terror and fled outside. In an instant, I called the police and told them what had happened. They were confused by what I told them, to say the least, but still agreed to send someone over.

Once they were here, I followed them back into my apartment. In there we found the body of a dirty old man lying on my living room floor. One of his hands was still closed around a metal spoon. Only now did I recognize him as Mr. Meier.

An ambulance was called, but it was clear that the old man had overexerted himself and died due to a heart attack. When the police asked me why he’d do something like this, all I could answer was that I had no idea.

It shouldn’t remain the only mystery in this case.

When the police checked out the apartment next door, they found that most of it consisted of a sort of holding cell. It was completely sealed off except for a small hatch. In it they found a tray of half-eaten food. The hatch was much too small for a person to get through, however.

Other than that there was no way into or out of the room. At least until the old man had created one himself.

The walls of the room were covered entirely in insane markings and writings. Some were crosses or religious symbols, yet others were depictions of demons and unnamed horrors. Even the floor was covered in the same, insane markings. Some of them were obviously scratched into the surface, others were written in blood or even feces. It was the work of a madman.

The police questioned many of the other inhabitants as well as me. Our stories were all the same though. The old man had lived all by himself, and no one had ever visited him.

The last question they asked me was about the scratching, but I couldn’t tell them much about it.

After all, my mind had blocked it out because it was nothing but background noise.

Waving

I’ve always loved the snowy plains of my home area.

It’s so different here. There’s a sense of vastness to it.

Each year my brother Markus and I take the long trip back. It’s become a sort of tradition to us. We go on a long hike to the cabin and spend the weekend there. We usually reminisce about childhood and play our old board games.

When Markus asked me if he could bring his girlfriend Melanie along, it took me a while before I obliged.

Melanie had been enthusiastic at the outset. After an hour on the long hiking track, that had all changed.

“Ugh, couldn’t we just drive there?”

“And miss all that?” I said spreading my arms in a wide arc.

“It’s just snow, Steve! I don’t get what the big deal is.”

“Come on babe,” Markus interjected, putting his arms around her. “Isn’t the view nice?”

“I guess so, I’m just so tired of walking,”

I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. I’d warned her that it was a long trip to the cabin, but of course, she hadn’t listened.

“We can take a break once we reach the resting area, okay?” I tried comforting her.

“And how long is that?”

“About another half hour or so.”

As she sighed behind me, I heard Markus laugh.

While the two of them were teasing each other, I went ahead a bit and let my eyes wander over the white plans around us. It was so beautiful and quiet. How often had we played out here as kids I wondered for a moment?

“Hey, what’s that over there?” I heard Melanie ask from behind.

I turned back to find her and Markus looking over at a forest at least half a kilometer away from us.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“There’s someone over there.”

I couldn’t make out much, and it took me a while before I saw who she was referring to. There was a person at the edge of the forest. Must be another hiker or one of the forest workers.

“Look! He’s waving at us,” she exclaimed before she raised her own arm to return the greeting. “Hello over there!”

“I doubt he can hear you,” Markus said.

“It doesn’t matter! I’m just nice!”

For a while, the figure continued to wave, and Melanie waved back a few more times. After a while, whoever it was seemed to be satisfied and vanished between the trees again.

We continued on, and about ten minutes later Markus walked up to me.

“So did you read it yet?”

“Eh, what do you mean?”

He rolled his eyes at me.

“You know what I’m talking about, dad’s novel!”

“Well, I started it, but I haven’t gotten far yet,” I admitted.

“Come on, Steve, he worked so hard on it, the least you can do is read it, okay?”

“Guys? I think he’s following us.”

“Who is?” I Markus asked turning around.

“That guy from before. I just saw him over there!” With that she pointed to a stretch of forest to our left.

“You sure it’s the same guy? It could be just another-“

“Yes! It looked exactly the same, and he was waving towards me again.”

“Well, that’s what you get for waving at strangers.”

“That’s not funny, Markus! Seriously, what if it’s… I don’t know some psycho or something?”

Both Markus and I started laughing.

“It’s probably another hiker,” Markus said trying to calm her down.

“Yeah or it’s someone from the village who thinks it’s funny to fuck with people,” I continued. “God knows Martin would do this exact thing, right?”

“He so would,” Markus agreed.

“What? Who’s Martin?” Melanie asked, staring at us.

“Just a friend from our childhood. One of the weirdest guys we ever knew.”

As we continued on, Markus and I started to tell Melanie a bit more about our adventures with our friend Martin. Soon enough we’d all forgotten the mysterious person who’d been waving towards us and were laughing and joking around again.

I’d just started another tale when we reached the small resting area. It wasn’t much, nothing more than a bench under a wooden overhang. By now we could already see the small, forestry hill on which the cabin was located.

“My legs are killing me,” Melanie complained as she slumped down on the bench next to me.

“Well, we’re still only halfway there,” I joked. She gave me a ‘You can’t be for real’ face. When I saw it, I burst out laughing. “It’s only about twenty more minutes, we’re almost there.”

“Fuck you, Steve!” she yelled at me and started to hit my shoulder before she started laughing as well.

“I totally believed you, idiot,” she yelled. Suddenly she jumped up from the bench. “Oh my god guys, look, deer!”

With that, she rushed back to the path, took out her phone and started taking pictures.

“So much about her legs,” Markus whispered.

“She’s a nice girl,” I finally said smiling at him.

“Yeah, I’m glad I met her.”

I asked him how exactly the two of them had met. Markus had barely started the story when Melanie came running back towards us.

“He’s back again!”

This time we didn’t need to ask who she meant.

“He was over there, ahead of us, near this old ruin or what it is!”

Markus was by her side in a moment. “Are you serious? Over there?”

I stepped towards them and looked ahead. On the foot of the small hill there were the remains of an old building. That’s where she’d seen him?

“Come on, it’s probably nothing. Maybe he saw us resting here and decided to give us a last greeting. Maybe he thinks we’re from the village, too.”

“I don’t care! It’s creepy, that’s what it is!”

“If he comes near you, I’ll beat the shit out of him,” Markus promised her in a serious voice.

“Come on, let’s get going. No reason to wait here and argue about it. Whoever it is might be long gone anyways.”

Melanie said nothing. Only once we’d gotten closer to the old ruin I heard her again. Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper.

“It can’t be. There’s no way…”

When I turned towards her, I saw she’d stopped in her tracks. Her face was a mask of disbelief.

“Babe, what is it?”

“How can he be this tall?” she almost screamed, pointing at the walls that remained of the ruin.

“He was way taller than these! I thought the walls were only a meter or so tall, but, but…” she broke up.

I looked at the old ruin. The two walls that were still standing were almost three meters tall.

“You probably saw it wrong, we were so far away, so-“

“I know what I saw, Markus! He was standing right here!”

I couldn’t help but wonder what she’d seen. It had to be an optical illusion or something. What else could it be? Still, I started to feel a bit unsettled about the whole thing myself.

“Let’s go to the cabin. If there is someone following us, we’ll be safe there.”

For a moment Melanie wanted to say something, but then she merely nodded.

It wasn’t much longer before we arrived at the cabin. I saw that Melanie’s eyes were still daring around, scanning the trees, searching for some giant figure.

Two twists of the key and the door sprang open. The place was exactly the same as Markus and I had left it a year ago.

“It shouldn’t take long before the place warms up,” I said as I stepped to the fireplace.

While I was busy to use what few logs were inside to start a fire, I heard Markus speak to Melanie in a low voice. I saw her nodding a few times before she began to sort through her things.

As I heated up some coffee, Markus went upstairs to look for our games.

When I brought Melanie a cup of coffee, I found her on the phone, browsing through Facebook.

“Really?” I asked her. She looked up at me for a moment before she put her phone away. “Fine, I put it away, there’s no internet out here anyway.

For a moment she pouted, but then she started laughing and took the cup of coffee from my hands.

A few minutes later Markus came back with the huge box that held our old games. Most of it was the simple board games we’d played as kids, like Monopoly.

There was one other game though, the one we’d created ourselves. It was a sort of Dungeons and Dragons board game. It was nothing fancy. You just moved over a board, battled monsters and who defeated the final boss first won.

Still, even as adults, the two of us loved playing this silly thing. Even Melanie was eager to join in. It wasn’t the game itself that was interesting, it was the stories we had about it.

After the first round was over, I decided to go outside and get a bit more firewood. There had only been a few logs left next to the fireplace, so if we wanted to keep the fire going, I’d to get a few more.

I put on my thick winter cloth and boots and went outside.

It had gotten dark outside by now. During the day the area was a beautiful winter wonderland. At night, it was nothing short of creepy. I pushed the thought that we were completely alone out here as far to the back of my mind as I could.

With quick steps, I hurried to the stack of firewood next to the cabin and started to pick up log after log. I couldn’t help but look around every once in a while and listened to the sounds of the night. There was a slight breeze that gently shook the trees back and forth.

Just as I picked up the last of about a dozen logs, I heard a crunching sound nearby. It sounded almost as if someone was walking through the snow. I jerked around and looked, but no one was there. It was most likely an animal. Or hell, maybe some snow had fallen off a branch nearby.

I walked back toward the front door. I was halfway there when I heard it again. As I turned around this time, I could have sworn I saw a shadow between the trees. I felt the hair of the back of my neck stand up. For long seconds I watched the trees to the left of the cabin.

“Need any help?” Markus suddenly called out to me. I almost jumped up, and half the logs tumbled off my arms.

“Jesus Christ! Don’t do that!” I yelled.

Markus started laughing and walked over to pick up the ones I’d dropped. “You’re always so scared in the dark, it’s hilarious.”

I was about to tell him what I thought I’d seen when I noticed Melanie at the door behind him. I shook my head and decided to drop the target. It must’ve been my imagination or the light from the house playing a trick on me.

“I warmed up some mulled wine,” Melanie said as we stacked the logs next to the fireplace.

“Great, thank you!” I said as I took off my boots and rubbed my hands against each other.

The mulled wine was almost too hot to drink, yet I took a big sip. It warmed me up in an instant. I’d always loved the stuff.

For a while we sat together, talking and joking before Melanie said she was getting a bit sleepy.

“Guess it was all that walking today.”

“Come on, I’ll show you our room.” With that Markus led her upstairs.

While the two of them went up, I walked back to the small stove. I heated up a bit more of the mulled wine and refilled my cup. Suddenly I heard a noise again. It was muffled, but it sounded almost as if something was scratching against the side of the cabin. Must be the branches of the trees, I thought.

As I stood at the stove with my cup, I started to wonder. Wasn’t there only a slight breeze? This was a bit too loud, wasn’t it? I felt the same sense of dread wash over me once more. What if there was someone out there?

“I hope you heated up some for me as well,” Markus called out to me from the stairs.

“Not going to join her in bed?” I asked grinning at him.

“Nah, maybe later,” he answered, “there’s something I want to talk to you about, something important.”

“I know, I know, I really should read dad’s book, it’s just-“

“No, it’s not about that, it’s about the cabin. Dad wants to sell it since no one is using it anymore except for us.”

“Wait, what? This place is our cabin! We’ve spent so many winters here, and he wants to sell it like this?”

“Well, we’re only ever here once a year, so I get where he’s coming from.”

“That’s not the point!” I almost yelled at him. “What about all our memories!”

“Hey, calm down,” Markus said raising his hands, “but dad’s got a…”

He trailed off, and I saw him look around. I’d heard it too. The sound was back again, this time it was louder. It was almost as if something or… someone was scratching along the wood outside.

“What the hell’s that?”

There it was once more.

“I’m going to have a look,” I said. Markus was right by my side, putting on his shoes as well. “You’re not going out there alone!”

I nodded and picked up the old, iron fire poker. Then we tiptoed to the front door. A quick look out the window showed us nothing but the dark of the night and trees slowly shaking in the wind.

“Shit,” I cursed.

A moment later we stepped outside.

Had that guy been stalking us and sneaking up on us in the middle of the night? Fucking hell! This was seriously creepy. I raised the fire poker, ready to beat down on any deranged asshole trying to jump me.

I’d barely taken a few steps when I saw something move near the corner of the cabin. It was gone as quickly as I’d seen it, but I knew someone was there.

“Shit, that’s right below her window,” Markus whispered.

“Go and get her! If it’s really that guy again…”

For a moment he hesitated, then he nodded and went back inside.

“Who’s there?” I called out. “What the hell are you doing here?”

No answer.

There it was once more, the crunching of snow, the scratching on the wood.

My hands were shaking as they clutched onto the fire poker. I jumped around the corner, ready to yell, only to stop dead in my track.

There was something there. It was no man though, and neither was it an animal.

It was a giant, hulking figure, leaning forward against the house. It must’ve been at least four, if not five meters tall. I saw long, claw-like fingers. They were almost digging into the woodwork as the thing pressed its face against the window.

I stood there, staring up at the impossibility in front of me.

“What in the…” was all I could bring out.

Right at that moment the thing’s head jerked in my direction. Its face was simple, too simple. It looked almost as if someone had sewn a face on a piece of cloth or a bag. The lower part ripped open, and the creature let out a high-pitched scream.

It raised its arms before it brought them crashing down against the woodwork and the window. Wood and glass exploded under the force.

I heard chaos erupt inside of the room above. I heard Markus’ and Melanie scream up in terror. In a second the thing’s arms vanished inside the gaping hole that had once been a window. I heard Markus yell something before his screams cut through the night. They continued only for moments and culminated in terrible blood curling wail. Then everything was quiet again.

I couldn’t do a thing. I was frozen in terror. I took a single step forward but then cringed back. The fire poker slipped from my hands as I slumped down in the snow.

For a moment the thing looked over at me. It didn’t seem malignant anymore, it looked almost… happy.

Finally, it turned from me towards the trees. Within seconds it had vanished again.

Before it was gone though, I’d seen that it had been holding something in his giant hands.

It had been Melanie’s limp body.

Dusty

They were stern and strict old people. I believe love was a word that didn’t exist in their vocabulary. It was always do this, behave, do that, don’t swear and so on.

I dared to not obey their rules? Better be prepared to be screamed at and punished. It wasn’t just once that I got slapped across the face.

It was terrible when I was a kid and stayed with them for the weekend. After dad’s death, when I came to live with them, it was hell.

I loved dad more than anything. My mom died when I was only six, and from then on he took it upon himself to bring me up and take care of me.

For young me, he was the coolest guy in the world. Dad worked as a freelancer, a sort of business consultant. Even though he had quite a schedule, he always found a way to spend time with me.

We also had all the video game consoles you can imagine. We had both the PS2 and PS3, the Wii and Wii U and even the Xbox 360. You wouldn’t believe how many hours I spent on those, glued to the screen, either playing alone or with dad.

One thing I remember was dad’s many visitors. There were always people over. I guess some of them were people he worked with, others that were around more often, must have been his friends. I thought it was pretty cool to hang out with grown-ups all the time.

The best part about dad was that he often took me along when he visited customers. He said he didn’t want me to sit around at home alone all day and that it was good to get to know people. Connections are the ‘name of the game’ he always said with a big grin on his face.

I really don’t remember much about those trips. Most of the time dad would meet up with his customers, and I’d sort of tag along. I was never there for the actual business talk. It was super dull dad told me. It wasn’t a problem though. Most of the time someone else was around, and I’d often ended up hanging out with them, playing video games or watching movies. The cool thing was that it was often games and movies for grownups. Things like Postal or Soldier of Fortune. I also got to stay up much longer than other kids.

Another thing I remember is that dad seemed to share my animosity for my grandparents. It was quite often that he’d make a snide remark about them when we were there. Quite often we had a good laugh about those ‘silly old people’ when he took me back home at the end of the weekend.

I remember one specific night. I was watching cartoons on the TV when dad arrived to get me. To this day I don’t know what happened, but I suddenly heard grandpa scream at dad.

“I dare you! If you ever do it again,” he screamed at dad. Dad just laughed in his face, and we left without another word. Outside I asked what had happened, but he said the old man was just ‘being silly again’.

To this day, I vividly remember the night the police showed up at my grandparent’s house. I was on the couch, playing on my new 3DS when the door rang. I thought it was dad, but instead, I saw two police officers.

After a while, the two of them and my grandparents walked into the room. I could see the sad look on their faces. It was grandma who started talking and told me I’d be staying with them from now on.

When I heard that dad had been a car accident on the way to pick me up, I freaked out. I cried, screamed and didn’t want to believe it. I don’t remember much else of the night. It was more like a hazy fever dream to me.

In the end grandma was right. They took me in. A lot of things changed. No more games or movies for grown-ups and no more staying up after dark. Fun was exchanged for homework and supplemental lessons. Game consoles were replaced by books and soccer.

Looking back now I can’t say how often we fought. There was not a week with me getting off at them about their stupid rules and their boring house. In return, I was often yelled at and pretty much perpetually grounded. It didn’t help much. I often snuck out, tried to run away or spent the night at a friend’s place. Of course without ever informing them about it.

When I was old enough to attend high school, I told them I wanted to be out of the house and get an apartment of my own. It took another half year before they finally yielded.

It was mostly due to a government support program for students and my part-time job that I could afford it. What little money my grandparents felt guilty enough to send my way wasn’t nearly enough to pay rent. How cheap can you be, I thought back then. Once I was done with high school, I went on to university. My grades weren’t the best, never had been, but it was more due to a lack of studying then ability. It was our school’s counselor who actually urged me on and motivated me to try.

When grandma died two years ago, I felt nothing. Sure, I attended the funeral, but it was more a formality than anything else. There were no tears, no emotions.

—

It was two weeks ago that grandpa called me. It was late in the afternoon, and I’d been busy studying for exams when my phone rang. Annoyed I took it out expecting it to be one of my friends. When I saw that it was grandpa, I hesitated for a few seconds before I answered.

“What do you want, grandpa?” I asked in an annoyed voice. “You know I’m busy.”

“Oh Johann, I know you’re busy and all that, but could you visit me this weekend? I’d like to talk to you about-“

“Oh come on, this weekend? I’ve got exams coming up and all that! Not like I can just up and go!”

“The cancer is back,” he said in a quivering voice.

Suddenly I felt awful for being so cold. I could hear his labored breathing at the other and of the line, waiting for me to say something. I reminded myself that he wasn’t the stern old man of my childhood anymore. No, he was nothing but a lonely, dying man.

“Sure thing, grandpa, I’ll be there.”

“Thank you, Johann, you know I-“

I hang up without listening on. It was more of an old reflex than an actual conscious decision. Old habits die hard.

—

It was a couple days later, on Saturday morning that I arrived at the house. I was flooded by unwanted nostalgia. I hadn’t been here since grandma’s death, yet the place still felt wrong.

When grandpa opened the door, I knew the cancer hadn’t come back recently. He was haggard and thin, his skin translucent and bluish. He smiled when he saw me and motioned for me to go inside.

“There are a few things I wanted to talk to you about. I know you’d rather be anywhere else right now. Can’t blame you. Claudia and I were never-“

He broke up and started coughing violently. For a few moments, I just stood there and watched, before I took a step towards him. As I said, old habits die hard.

“You know, your mother, she used to be such a good girl. Probably a bit too sheltered by us, a bit too naive. Once she was old enough, she chose a bit of a different life and so-“

“Is this really about mom? I know all about her already. I don’t know why you’re starting with this old story again, but…”

I trailed off as I saw his eyes. They were hard, yet sad. Finally, I sighed and let him continue.

“She was searching for something else, you know? Can’t blame here, really, she wanted adventure, danger. That’s why she chose guys like, well, like your dad. She always had a talent of picking out those bad apples.”

I rolled my eyes. I knew grandpa never liked dad. What was this all about though?

“We didn’t know about the drugs. It was only when your mother died that we found out. Had we known earlier, I’d have done something, we’d have done something…”

“What drugs? What are you talking about?”

“You wouldn’t know boy, would you? You never had any idea what your dad did, right?”

“Oh come on, is this what you called me here for? Another one of your rants about dad? Wasn’t it enough that you spent all those years going on and on about him? And now it’s drugs? Really? I know you hated him, but this is just low!”

I realized I’d jumped up from my seat and how loud my voice had gotten. Still, I didn’t sit back down. I stared at the thin old man in front of me, shaking my head.

“I can’t believe this. You called me here for that? You know what, this was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come.”

I turned towards the front door when I heard grandpa call after me.

He stood in the door of the living room, holding something. My eyes grew wide. It was Dusty. The stuffed little doggie that mom had sewn for me when I was a little boy. I thought he’d gone lost all those years ago. How the hell was grandpa holding him now?

“Where the hell,” I started.

Memories came flooding back. I’d always had Dusty. It had been the only thing that still reminded me of mom. He’d always been by my side. Until the night dad and grandpa had that fight. We’d left so quickly, jumped into the car and drove off. I thought we’d lost him somewhere.

“Why do you have him?”

He held him out to me. “It was for the best boy, we had our reasons, we-“

I didn’t wait for him to finish.

“How dare you! How dare you took him away! I’d thought he was gone for good! Yet, yet, all those years, you’d hidden him!?”

I ripped the stuffed animal from his hands.

Grandpa said nothing. He was quiet. I saw the tears well up in his eyes. I didn’t say a thing. I simply turned around and left.

This time, I told myself, for good.

—

It was about a week and a half later when I couldn’t sleep. I picked up Dusty from the place I’d found for him in my room. I smiled as I looked down at him. He was so roughed up and dirty by now. I remembered my mom’s voice and her face as she’d handed him to me.

“He’ll always watch out for you,” she’d said and then asked me what I wanted to name him. Dusty, I’d said.

Right at this moment, I felt something on his stomach. Under the fur, I felt something else. It was a sort of slit.

I turned him around to get a better look and noticed a hidden little zipper. It was almost invisible due to the fur. Had it always been there?

I carefully pulled it open and found a pocket. Why…? I couldn’t help but put my hand inside and soon found something. I pulled out a number of pages, written in fine print and a few other, smaller pieces of paper. For a moment I wondered if these pages could be by my mom, but then I noticed grandpa’s handwriting.

I sighed and almost threw it aside in an instant. Then, as I got mad, curiosity got the better of me, and I started reading.

I knew you wouldn’t listen to me, Johann. I can’t blame you after all that has happened. I wish there had been a different way, an easier way to reach you. I just want to explain to you why Claudia and I did what we did, why we acted the way we did.

I crumbled up the letter and threw it across the room. Really? Even now? Even here he was giving me this shit? Were these words anything but stupid excuses for how they treated me?

I picked up the other notes next and was about to throw them away as well when I saw a small newspaper clipping. In a moment my eyes had scanned the headline.

Tragic death, young woman (28) dies due to overdose

Why was that here? Why did grandpa put this in? It was from an article from a popular German tabloid. The date was… March of 2004. That date, I knew it, but how? In a moment it clicked. Wasn’t that when mom died?

I skimmed the rest of the article within a few moments. It wasn’t long, barely two paragraphs in total. A young woman overdosed in her home, had to be taken to the hospital and unfortunately died there. It said she left a young boy, aged six and a husband behind. The husband was under suspicion of ownership and trade of illegal substances.

My hands started shaking. What the hell was this? I read the article again and again. The name, Natalie M.

Natalie Müller, mom’s name. Boy aged six, the age I was at the time. The clipping fell from my hands. No freaking way. This had to be fake somehow.

Once I’d entered the name and date into Google though, there was no doubt. Mom’s death had not only been mentioned in the tabloid but also in half a dozen other, local papers. It was real.

Grandpa had mentioned drugs and an overdose. Had he told the truth?

I went to pick up the crumpled up letter and started reading again.

Your mother’s, Natalie’s death, it came out of nowhere. We’d always known your father wasn’t good for her, but it was her life. We never thought it would get that far. To this day, I’m blaming myself for it. There’s not one night when I wish I’d done something. If I’d only looked more closely. Shouldn’t I’ve noticed something? Maybe if we’d cared more for her after she left?

When we learned about what had happened and what your dad was involved with, we pressed charges of course. Nothing ever came of it. The investigation took too long, no one cared. Most of all, there was his uncle in real estate. I’m sure he paid people off to save his own goddamn reputation. Couldn’t risk people found out that his nephew was a junkie! The only thing we were able to get in the end, was the right to see you for the weekends, nothing else.

You have to understand how hard it was for us. Seeing this man and having him come into our house. How we had to endure his smug smile, his attitude, his behavior, his smell, and his bloodshot eyes. We never wanted to see this goddamn junkie again, and there he was each weekend.

Worst of all was that with each year, with each month even, you looked a little more like him, behaved like him and spoke like him. We couldn’t help it, boy. I’m so sorry. We tried so much to love you, but we failed. We wanted to get you away from him, but the custody battle was a never-ending mess.

I lowered the letter again. What the hell was he talking about? Dad hadn’t been a junkie! There was no way!

One by one the memories crawled back into my mind and like a spider weaving a web, I started to connect the dots of doubt.

Dad had always been smoking, hadn’t he? Looking back now, I remember him calling them his ‘funny cigarettes’ every once in a while. All those people who came over, who were they? Dad had said business associates, home calls, meetings and so on. Then why did they spend the day drinking and playing Xbox? And all those phones he owned. Why’d you need more than one business phone? Why did he own almost a dozen?

Those visits as well… I’d never thought about it, never remembered much about them. Now, the memories came back. Fat Mario, the half-naked drunk guy who always smelled weird and watched all these strange Japanese movies. Bobby, who said he wanted to be a professional gamer one day and owned all the newest games. Sure as a kid it was awesome watching weird movies or playing games. But what sort of business would you do with guys like that?

There were so many more things that came to my mind now and which didn’t add up. The groups who hang out at our place. The fact that I was always sent to the next room.

It all pointed to a much, much different story. Only I never thought about it, I never saw it like that. I trusted dad and always believed… Fuck! What the fuck was this?

I read on as grandpa explained their struggle with me and the custody battle. How hard the whole situation was on them, especially grandma. And then I learned the truth about the night dad and grandpa had fought, the truth about dad.

That day your father had red eyes as usual, and he was in a terrible mood. He merely dropped you off, threw us his backpack and drove away without another word.

You acted just like him. Rushing past us to the living room, to play with one of those Gameboy things. You always had one of those glued to your face.

It was your grandma who found Dusty in your backpack. She got him out to bring him over to you, and that moment something dropped to the floor. It was a small plastic bag, containing a couple of pills. Your grandma, bless her soul, didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was those damned drugs. I took Dusty from her, found the zipper and half a dozen similar bags inside of him.

I knew what was going on. You’d always been talking about those people you went to with him. Oh, I asked him, but it was always the same lies. ‘You can’t expect the boy to sit home all day, Uwe’ or ‘it’s good for him to meet other kids’ and so on. I knew it was all lies, but I’d never thought he’d go that far.

Dusty had always been by my side I remembered. I took the little doggie everywhere. He was always hidden away in my backpack. Dad had told me so many times to keep him close.

“It’s what your mother would’ve wanted. That’s why she made it for you. He’ll always protect you.”

I picked up the small doggie again and looked at it. It was the perfect hiding place, wasn’t it? Who’d suspect a kid’s stuffed animal?

I sat there, crushed, shaking with rage. I wanted to scream. I beat down on my desk with my fists over and over again before I slumped back into my chair.

Dad had never cared for me I realized. Never. He kept me around because I was useful. I was his little mule, a safe way to get his drugs from one place to another.

The night when grandpa took Dusty away, it was to protect me.

“I dare you! If you ever do it again,” he’d screamed at dad.

I never understood what was going on. I didn’t care. Now I knew what he’d meant. That evening he’d realized how dad used me and exploded at him.

Of course it hadn’t stopped dad. I remember how he was always tinkering with my backpack after that. He said he made it cooler looking by adding on some patches, but I was sure he did other things. And I, being the child I was, was so happy about it. I felt awesome wearing my backpack. If only I’d known.

I read on to find out that dad hadn’t died in a car accident that night. Instead, he’d been out and got into a fight with some local thugs. No one really knew what happened exactly, but it was written off as related to drug money.

After that, you came to live with us. There was no one else to take care of you, so custody fell to us by default. Your grandma was so happy she cried tears of joy when she got the news. Now, she said, everything would be better.

I knew we tried too hard, boy, and we didn’t treat you well. I guess we wanted to make up for what happened with Natalie. To protect you from following in the same path as she and your father did. That’s why we were always so strict.

We always wanted to tell you, but how could we ever hope you’d understand all these things? It was much easier to go on that way. We knew you hated us, but there wasn’t much we could do. We never wanted to hurt you, Johann. I hope you find it in your heart to forgive us one day.

Love, Grandpa.

With that, the letter ended. The tears were streaming from my face. The world had just come crashing down on me, swallowed me up and spat me back out an empty, emotional mess.

I sat there, reading the letter over and over again, hugging Dusty. This was too much. It was too goddamn much.

I thought about all the things I’d said to my grandparents, about all the things I’d done. The things I could never take back. I remembered grandma’s funeral and how I’d acted. Most of all, I thought about how terrible my visit to grandpa had ended two weeks ago.

I don’t know when I drifted off to sleep. The moment I woke up though, I picked up the phone and dialed grandpa’s number. There were so many things I wanted to say, so many things to apologize for. I was already on my way to the car to visit him when the call finally connected.

“Grandpa, I’m so sorry, I’m going to come-“

“Hello, Johann,” a female voice answered. I recognized her as their neighbor Mrs. Mathe.

“Oh dear,” she started to speak with shaking voice, “I didn’t know how to reach you, I’m so sorry…”

I didn’t listen anymore. I didn’t have to. The phone dropped from my hand.

I knew, I was too late.

I Should Have Never Attended the Annual Bonfire Market

Oh, the farmer’s markets. They have a charm of their very own.

In times of industrialized farming, giant supermarket chains, and online stores, they feel like a remnant of the past.

At a farmer’s market, you can still interact with traders face-to-face and buy fresh produce as well as homegrown vegetables.

It was one curious flyer that drove me to such a market last summer.

It was a flyer of the ‘Annual Bonfire Market’. It was supposed to be held at a small, rural village. When I checked Google Maps, I saw that it was about an hour and a half away from my home.

The flyer didn’t specify much. It mentioned the date and location and that it was supposed to start at five in the afternoon.

Two things caught my interest. First how professionally the flyer was made. Second, that at least a hundred different market traders were attending. It seemed to be quite the event.

After thinking about it for a while, I decided to take my chance and attend.

You see, during the summer my sales usually plummet. There’s not much you can do about it. What most people are looking for are cold drinks or other refreshments. People like me, who are selling meat products, are out of luck.

There are a few events that can still net you a profit, even in summer, but those are few and far between.

So whenever I find out about a new event, I at least attend it once to see if it’s worth the effort. This ‘bonfire’ event made me think of meat and barbecue, so it sounded promising.

When I arrived at my destination, I was quite a bit confused. It had stated that the event was held in a small village, but I saw nothing but a single building: a huge, old farmhouse.

Was this the place? I double-checked the address, but I was, without a doubt, in the right place. My confusion only left me when I noticed the other cars and sales-vehicles nearby.

I parked my truck near the farmhouse and started to search for the organizer. I’d had no way to call or register beforehand, so I wanted to make sure that they allowed newcomers to attend as well. I was pretty sure they would. In all my years as a market trader, I’d been sent away only a few times.

There were quite a few people around, some as lost as me, others busy with preparations.

It didn’t take long for me to spot a stout, balding man, walking from group to group, gesticulating and giving instructions. I was sure I’d found who I’d been looking for.

“Hey there, my name’s Meier. I’m selling salami products. I’m not a registered participant of your event, but I’m sure you still have a place for me available, right?”

The man measured me up and down with his tiny, bead-like eyes before a sly grin appeared on his face. He licked lips once, twice and then, opened his mouth to speak. I saw blackened, rotten teeth.

“Oh, not registered yet, well, you’re not alone my friend,” he said, almost slurring every word.

I don’t know why, but his way of talking and his whole demeanor was pure weird. I’d seen quite a few strange characters over the years, but no one like him. He rubbed his hands almost constantly and I could see that they were sticky. His cloth, too, stuck to his greasy body. It was nothing short of disgusting, and I had to fight the impulse to inch back.

“Now, now,” he finally said, “I’m sure we’ll find just the place for you.”

With that, he led me towards a nearby dirt path and ushered me forward. I did my best to always be a few steps ahead of him so he wouldn’t touch me.

“Well, why don’t you put up your stand right over there, next to one of our other newcomers?”

He pointed at another man who was busy setting up a market stand a bit further down the path.

“Eh, okay, thanks. What about the car? Do you have a designated parking area or something?”

For a moment the man looked at me a bit puzzled, as if he didn’t understand my question, then he shrugged.

“Should be fine if you park it next to the market stand,” he answered disinterested before walking away.

For a moment I looked after the guy, shuddering as the image of his disgusting teeth and greasy skin popped back into my mind.

“The hell’s wrong with that guy,” I mumbled to myself.

Once I’d driven down my car, I started to unpack. The owner of the market stand next to me was quite a few years older than me. He greeted me with a handshake and introduced himself as Martin.

“You never been here either?” I asked him as I unloaded my truck.

He shook his head. “Found out about the whole thing a couple of weeks ago. Wouldn’t even have come here if it wasn’t for the wife. She said I should go and try and, well, here I am. Guess we better make the best of it.”

I nodded. “Well let’s hope any customers show up at all. Feels like we’re in the middle of nowhere… I thought it was supposed to be in the middle of a village and not a random farm?”

“Hah, thought the same thing,” he started, “tell you what, I thought I’d gotten the wrong address. Drove around in circles until I gave up and asked someone.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t follow the wrong damned dirt path and end up in the middle of the forest like me. Was pure luck that I found my way back out. Damned Google Maps didn’t help me one bit!”

When I stood there, in front of him, cursing like that, he burst out laughing.

We kept up the chit-chat for a bit while we both readied our market stands and put up our goods for display.

As I kept looking around, I noticed that there were only about two dozen traders here in total. The flyer had promoted it as this grand event with at least a hundred. Where was everyone? What I saw here was barely at the level of a small weekly market. How could this be a special, annual event?

I wasn’t the only one who seemed to have doubts. Many of the other participants looked as skeptical as me.

Once I’d set up everything I decided to have a quick look around and find out where the toilets were.

When I arrived back at the old farmhouse, I saw that people had been quite busy. There was now a massive bonfire in the center of the yard. Next to it was an on open meat smoker, on which various, different pieces of meat were presented. Some seemed smoked already, others were still raw.

As I made my way around, I noticed the stares I got from a tall, lanky guy. He’d been busy cutting apart a chunk of meat when he saw me and eyed me curiously. I tried to smile at him, but his empty stare was a bit unsettling. As I walked on, I could tell that his eyes were following me.

I was about to enter the door of the farmhouse to look for the toilets when I almost ran into the organizer.

“May I help you?”

“Oh, I just had a look around. You’ve got quite the selection here,” I started, “but I was wondering where the toilets are.”

“The toilets,” he said in a pensive way, almost as if he’d trouble to remember. All the while the skinny butcher kept looking over at us.

“Tell you the truth, my friend, we’ve got a bit of a problem in the back. It’s all clogged up at the moment, you see. If it’s not too much to ask, why not go over there, by the trees?”

I waited for him to reveal the joke, but he didn’t say anything else. All I saw was the same grin he’d shown me before.

“To tell your market participants to piss against the trees,” I lamented to Martin once I was back at my market stand.

The older man thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world. He kept telling me it would’ve been much worse if I’d to take a shit instead. I couldn’t help but join in with his laughter.

To be honest, I wasn’t bothered by taking a piss outside, I was a guy after all. It was the lack of organization and the disinterested behavior that dumbfounded me. None of it was normal.

Time moved on, soon it was five and soon a quarter past five. Wasn’t the event was supposed to start at five? Where the hell were the customers? Was this whole thing a bad joke?

It was another couple of minutes later when I saw a group of people walking down one of the many dirt paths. Did they walk here? We were in the middle of nowhere. There are no houses anywhere nearby as far as I could tell.

As they approached my market stand, I greeted them and present them my samples, but they didn’t even look at me. It wasn’t just my stand though, they ignored all of them. Instead, they made their way straight to the farmhouse and soon vanished out of sight.

“They sure have great customers here,” Martin joked next to me.

As the hours ticked away a few more groups arrived, but they all went straight for the farmhouse. We got a few stares, but that was about it.

I saw that one of the other traders was about to start packing things up. Within moments the stout organizer was next to him, pleading with him.

“Things only really start when the bonfire is lighted, my good friend. Most people won’t even arrive before the sun set. Come, stay a bit longer! I promise you won’t regret it!”

From my market stand I watched the spectacle and listened. I sighed and took a look at my phone. Sunset was in about an hour. Might as well wait a bit longer.

As the sun slowly set the whole place seemed to become completely engulfed in darkness. There were no street lights or flood lights around. The only sources of light I could see where the few market traders who’d brought their own.

This twilight created the illusion that the whole place was shrouded in darkness. It felt almost as if this entire area was now isolated from the rest of the world.

Because of this, the arrival of new people came almost as a surprise. The organizer seemed to have told the truth, things only got going now, that it was dark. Before it had only been a handful of people who’d trickled in, now dozens if not hundreds arrived.

As I stared at these groups I thought I saw a few weird things here and there. A few times I caught glimpses of shrouded, hunched over figures. In the dark, it was almost impossible to make out how tall they were. For a moment I thought the outlines below their shrouds were shifting.

It wasn’t only these shrouded figures that were a bit strange. The people, in general, seemed to be a bit… different. Their faces, their demeanor, almost everything made them appear as if they were inbred. It was almost as if they were a step lower on the ladder of evolution. As bad as it sounds.

After a while, I shook my head. It must be the lights which were playing tricks on me. Hell, I’d been to a ton of village fairs and markets and to be honest, people in rural areas are always a bit different. Not that I ever minded it, they were still friendly and jolly people.

Here things felt different. I don’t know what it was, but the atmosphere felt strange. It was almost as if there was an odor of insincerity in the air. As if you know that all those people here were just pretending. What it was they were pretending though, I couldn’t say.

My thoughts were interrupted by a noise coming from the farmhouse. Moments later I saw how light erupted from the yard in front of it. They must have lighted the bonfire. As if to prove me right I heard how loud laughter and the sounds of excitement and exuberance cut through the air.

It was clear enough that I’d not sell anything right now. There were only a few lone stragglers that still arrived, but those too hurried to the bonfire.

It was soon that my curiosity won me over. I told myself I’d have a quick look around and go watch the bonfire as well.

Making my way to the yard was quite the feat. The whole area was utterly overcrowded with people. Once I’d made it, I took a glance towards the bonfire, but I couldn’t see much. There were way too many people in front of me. The only thing I saw were long, wooden sticks that were held towards the flames, roasting big chunks of meat.

I watched for a while, but then I saw the open door of the farmhouse. Not going to piss against a tree again with all those people around. I was sure they’d unclogged the toilet by now.

I had a look around the small entry room, but it was almost entirely empty. Haphazardly I decided on the hallway to my right to look for any sign of a toilet. As I walked on, I saw nothing. There were a few rooms, but their doors were either locked, or they were empty. Finally, the hallway led into a vast, dark area. I couldn’t see a thing though.

After a short while of fumbling around the walls, I found a light switch. The moment I hit it I realized that I was in a storage room for the meat. All around me carcasses dangled from meat hooks. The smell of flesh was almost suffocating. I was about to turn around and leave the room when my eyes focused on something that shot ice through my veins.

There, right at the back, dangling from a huge meat hook was without a doubt a human torso. I saw the bloodied neck, the shoulders, as well the stumps were the legs would’ve been.

I stood there, frozen, telling myself this must be a joke. It was a prop to scare the kids or play a trick on trespassers who snuck in here. There was no way this could be real. I looked through the room to convince myself. It was clear that all the other pieces of meat in here were animal carcasses, right?

They were not.

There was another torso to my left, a lower body at the far right and a bit down the row dangled a lonely leg. Did this mean all those other chunks and pieces around me were the same as well? Were they all… human?

Dear god, what was this place? What had I stumbled upon here?

I couldn’t think. All I could do was stare at the horror around me in disbelief. There was no way, was there? This had to be-

“Goddamnit, who the hell’s in there? Is that you Rainer? I thought I told you if I ever saw you nibbling on one of them again, I’d beat the living shit out of you!”

Oh god, someone was coming! What the hell do I do? I almost rushed towards the exit of the room but realized I’d run straight into whoever was coming. I took a few steps back into the room, then a few more, then I hurried to the back.

I couldn’t see any other exit, no doors, no windows, nothing. I had to hide. But where could I even hide? Right then I saw an old, metal cabinet. Within moments I ripped at the doors and thanked God when they opened. I was inside in a second and closed them behind me again.

It didn’t take long for someone to step into the room. From the small slit between the doors, I could see who it was. The skinny butcher who’d measured me up before.

“Now where the hell are you…?” he asked with not just a bit of malice in his voice.

As he looked around and scanned the room, I didn’t dare move. I didn’t even dare to breathe, afraid he’d hear it. I felt like an animal in front of a headlight, like prey in front of a predator.

The empty eyes of the guy wandered from carcass to carcass, and he slowly started to step into the room.

Oh god, please don’t let him notice me, I prayed. Please don’t let him notice me. I repeated this over and over in my head. Then a new thought popped into my mind. Did he know I was here?

He stepped further and further into the room, pushing the meat, no the bodies aside as he did. With each step, he got closer to the cabinet. Any moment now, I thought, any moment now.

I almost screamed out, almost jumped from the cabinet in blind panic, when I was saved by a boy. He suddenly stumbled into the room. The skinny butcher jerked around, walked towards him and slapped him across the face.

“Didn’t I tell you to turn the damned light off in here? What are you even doing back here? If you did grab a bite again, I dare you…”

“But I did-” the boy started.

He didn’t get to finish what he was going to say because the organizer’s booming voice was heard from the hallway.

“What’s the hold-up, we need another one, quickly, a woman this time!”

“Right away,” the skinny butcher answered. “Get this one over there,” he yelled at the boy, and when he didn’t move right away, he slapped him again.

Still sitting in the cabinet, I watched as the boy took down part of a female body and carried it out of the room. The skinny butcher stayed for a bit longer. He looked over the bodies, counting them.

“Not too many left, guess it’s time for the main event soon.”

With that, he turned off the lights and left the room.

I can’t say how long I sat inside the cabinet. I was shaking, shivering and trying my hardest not to hyperventilate. Any moment now, I thought, the lights would turn back on and I’d see the butcher’s face right in front of the cabinet. Or the stout organizer would drag me from it with his greasy hands to sink his black, rotten teeth into my flesh.

For long minutes I fought to keep the fear at bay and to keep myself from panicking. Only once I’d calmed down and had made sure no one was around, did I dare open the doors of the cabinet.

With light steps, I made my way back into the hallway. I’d barely crossed the first few meters when the same boy from before came running into my direction.

He stopped and stared at me. His eyes were wide and almost empty. I could see that his head was hard at work trying to decipher the situation. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, which made my heart skip a beat.

“Men are to the right, women to the left, got that?” I said in as hard a voice as I could muster.

For a few nerve-wracking seconds he stared at me, thinking, but then he seemed to give up, nodded and ran past me.

I almost dropped to the floor as the strength left my legs. I slumped against the wall, breathing heavily.

I couldn’t rest though. I had to go on. I had to get out and stumbled onward.

Outside the noise rose up again. It became jubilation as I heard hundreds of voices scream up with excitement. It turned into a wild cacophony before the sounds of utter chaos erupted from outside.

I was back in the entry room. I took one step towards the door, but they’d see me, wouldn’t they? No way could I risk that.

Instead, I stormed down the other hallway. There had to be a different way out! I went for the first door I saw, but it was locked. The next one I tried led me into a room that was trashed and almost entirely covered in blood. I almost vomited at the sight.

I almost threw the door shut again when I saw the butcher in the entry area. I almost jumped into the room, hoping he hadn’t seen me.

At that moment I saw something. Lying on the floor in the room was an old, dirtied jute shroud. The same type those figures wore.

I’d no idea if it would even work, but there wasn’t anything else I could do. I picked it up and quickly shrouded myself into it, hoping I could trick them and get out of here.

“Who’s over there? I dare you, Rainer, if you’re fooling around again, I-“

He broke up when he saw me. His face distorted for a moment and he inched back a step.

“Oh, I didn’t… it’s served outside, there’s nothing in here anymore,” he said in an almost scared tone.

I didn’t say anything. Instead, I pulled the jute shroud as close around me and hurried outside.

I stopped in my tracks when I actually saw the horror that was going on. I’d seen the bodies, sure. I’d heard the organizer call out. I knew what must be going on. Yet seeing it for real was different.

I saw the wide eyes and open mouths of the visitors. I saw how they stared at the body parts and chunks of meat roasting on the long wooden sticks. Human body parts and human meat.

The bright fire revealed the true nature of their faces. I’d thought of them as inbred, but they couldn’t possibly be human. Their mouths were too wide, their faces too different. Those people, no, those creatures here, were something entirely different.

They pushed against each other, reached out into the flames to get the glistering piece of meat. I felt nauseous watching as they gorged themselves on human flesh. They smiled in ecstasy as grease and blood ran down their misshapen mouths and faces.

Some looked more like humans, while others were caricatures. They had long mouths with giant teeth and swallowed arms and legs whole. A few were as small as children, and yet others reminded me of beings from myths and folklore.

Worst though, were the things hidden under the shrouds. Only once did I catch a glimpse of one of them. I saw a disgusting, leathery face with a beak instead of a mouth. Just for a short moment did the one eye of the creature focus on me, before it turned back to the chunk of meat it was holding.

I had to get away from here. It was only a matter of time before I’d get noticed!

As best as I could, I made my way through the cannibalistic monstrosities around me. I squinted my eyes, to not see what was going on and focused only on the edge of the crowd. That’s where I had to go. That’s what I had to reach.

Each step was worse than the one before. It meant pushing on against nightmarish creatures and new surges of terror. I desperately held on to the shroud, which had been ripped away almost twice. I ebbed forward step by step, but as I reached the edge of the crowd, I realized that the nightmare wasn’t over.

Guess it’s time for the main event soon.

That’s what the butcher had said. As I saw the area around the farmhouse, I knew what the main event must’ve been. I had been us, the traders.

As I looked on, I saw the remains of market stands and sales vehicles. The whole area must’ve been overrun by the frenzied mob due to its thirst for human flesh.

The air was heavy with a stench that I wouldn’t dare to describe. For a moment I couldn’t fight the urge to vomit, then I forced my body to move on.

Here and there I saw a few stragglers. Creatures feeding on the few pieces that remained of the market traders.

I heard screams from nearby, proof that someone else must still be alive. I didn’t dare to look.

It wasn’t long before I found the remains of my market stand.

My breath was ragged, coming out in hard intervals as I dragged myself towards my car.

It looked as if it was still undamaged. I prayed that I was right, I prayed.

A quick look around revealed that there were only a few creatures around. They were searching through the nearby meadow, most likely for the one market trader that hadn’t been around, me.

Finally, I reached the car. With one swift motion, I hit the key to unlock the door, ripped it open and jumped inside.

It took me only a moment to start it, but I’d already been noticed. The first of the creatures rushed towards the car and hit the door right when I locked it. In berserk fury the thing beat down at it. There was the heavy creak of metal before the glass window exploded into a thousand pieces.

I hit the gas, but for a moment the car didn’t move, then monstrosity outside had to let go.

I exhilarated the car and sped down the dirt path. I was past the remains of the market stands, then I was at the farmhouse, then I was past it. I was about to thank god for having made it, when I saw something standing next to the road ahead.

It was one of the shrouded figures. Within a moment the shroud flew up into the air. I heard a bloodcurdling scream of rage and fury. Before I closed my eyes and hit the gas, I saw it. I saw the nightmarish truth of what lay hidden under these shrouds. It was a giant, hulking mixture of human, bird and something else. There were too many limbs, there was scared, bulging flesh and feathers. Eyes closed and high on adrenaline, I floored the gas. I heard the scratching of claws, the tearing of metal and for a moment I was sure that was it. That the thing had caught me in its grasp.

But I wasn’t stopped. The car rushed on, and I heard the thing rage behind me. I didn’t dare to look back.

I didn’t look back for as long as I drove on. It was long past midnight when I finally dared to stop the car. Via the navigation system, I made it to a nearby petrol station. It was from there that I called the police and reported the whole incident.

I’m not sure what I’ve told them that night. I must have been a nervous wreck, babbling and yelling about cannibalistic murders.

I can’t remember for how long they questioned me.

When they finally went to check on the farmhouse, they found it completely abandoned. Nothing was there. No people, no cars, no market stands, nothing. Worst of all, no proof that anything had happened.

For the past half year, I’ve seen a shrink. He’s been trying hard to convince me that my story can’t be true. What I thought I saw that night hadn’t been real. He’s telling me there were no creatures and no murders. It was all in my head.

I really want to believe him. I want nothing more than to accept that it was all just my own delusion, a hallucination conjured up by my own mind.

I can’t anymore though. Now that the new year started, I decided to attend markets again.

It was just yesterday that I saw a stout, balding man who was giving out fliers. The moment his small-bead like eyes focused on me, I knew who he was.

The moment he gave me a sly grin and revealed his blackened, rotten teeth, I knew he’d recognized me as well.

Fertilizer

The moment I had signed the sales contract for the old farmhouse I’d been happier than I was in years.

You see, in life, I did everything right. I headed the advice of my teachers and parents. After I’d finished school, I went on to university and got my degree in business. I graduated with honors and started working at a fancy company. After a decade and a half, I’d climbed high enough on the corporate ladder to be head of the sale department. It meant quite the salary, but also more responsibility and more hours on the job.

During these years I moved into a newer, fancier place every couple of years, bought more luxuries, but spent less and less time home enjoying it all.

With each passing year, I grew to hate my life a bit more. I hated my job, my apartment and even the overcrowded city I lived in. I was yearning for a break and for some quiet and solitude.

When my uncle Dennis died, I was surprised to be named the sole benefactor. Apparently, he had no other relatives but me. Selling most of his property I left me with a substantial sum. With the savings I already had, I decided it was time for a change.

I had long dabbled with the idea of moving to a rural area. Growing my own vegetables, get a few chickens and live a self-sustaining lifestyle far away from the big city sounded nice.

It had always been something I was interested in, a sort of fantasy. Reality was different. There were always deadlines to make, projects to finish and contracts to discuss and sing. Time moved along, and year after year I did nothing.

Now though, enough was enough. I didn’t want to end up like the people who’d finally made it to retirement only to realize that they were now too old and feeble to follow their dreams.

When I quit my job, my boss was surprised and flabbergasted. Of course, I still had my termination period of four weeks, but most of that time was spent to make adjustments.

While my boss was busy finding a replacement for me, I started to look around for a promising property. After a week of searching, I found it. It was an old farmhouse with quite a few plots around. It was located in a small village near a mountainous area. Until two years ago it had been owned by a woman, but after she’d died her son had put it up for sale.

When I visited the place, I saw that it was old and not just a bit run down, but I was sure all this could be fixed.

My last day of work arrived quickly.

It was a few weeks later that I finally signed the sales contract and started to move what few belongings I wanted to keep to the old farmhouse. Once I’d put together some sort of temporary living quarters, I decided it was time to move in.

I tried my hands at remodeling the old house myself, but I was soon reminded that I never had any talent using my hands. In the end, I gave up in frustration and contracted a company for it.

It took another couple of weeks, but once they were done the place looked nice, cozy and modern.

After the repairs on the chicken crop were finished, I bought half a dozen chickens and a roaster.

Being woken up by him in the morning reminded me of those childhood days I spent at my grandparent’s farm. The nostalgia flooded over me in pleasant waves as I drank my morning coffee.

By now I decided it was time to visit what few neighbors I had. To the north of me, quite a bit away lived an older lady and next to her a middle-aged couple whose kids went to middle school. After my initial introductions, I didn’t have much to do with them.

To the south lived an older couple, the Richters. They lived in a huge old farmhouse. They used to be farmers themselves when they were younger but had since retired. They were nice and assured me they’d help me out if I ever had any problems.

After that, there was only one person left, the old man living to the farm east of me. It was an old farmer who I guessed was in his late fifties or early sixties. He owned the fields adjacent mine. Only a small dirt road divided our properties. I’d seen him from afar a few times, but whenever I’d greeted him, he’d ignore me. His face was hard as if carved from stone, his lips were always pressed together, and he had a perpetually angry expression.

The moment I walked over towards his farm, he tried his best to ignore me yet again. When he saw that I walked towards him, he turned to me. His face showed that he’d rather do anything else, but talk to me.

“Hello, I’m Daniel Langscheidt, I bought the-“

“Know damn well who you are. You’re the guy who bought Lisbeth’s old house and made it all fancy and what not.”

“Eh, yeah, nice to meet you.”

With that, I held out my hand for a greeting. He didn’t budge or even look at the hand I was awkwardly holding out in the empty air between us.

“Why’d you move here?”

“Oh, I was going to try my luck at farming. I always wanted to grow my own,” I broke up as the old man burst into laughter.

“You? Farming? Your hands are as soft as a girl’s! This land is tough! I tell you right away that you won’t grow a damned thing here. We don’t need to city folks like out here! Pah!”

With that, he spat on the ground in front of me and without another word made his way towards his shack.

For a while I stood there, looking after the old guy. I was nothing short of surprised and dumbfounded. Why’d he thrown so much hate at me? What the hell was his problem?

More than a bit mad I want back home. What had I done to get this type of reaction? In the end, I told myself that he was most likely a miserable old fool, who hated himself and people in general. Not my problem.

From that point onward I tried my best to get the farm going. My knowledge was limited though, minimal. The internet with its endless information is fantastic, but it was all second-hand knowledge. I soon realized that if I ever wanted to learn how to do anything, I’d to get my own hands dirty.

I started with the old ladies small garden and planted a variety of different vegetables. The month after that I got the old greenhouse running again.

I soon had to learn that real life was no Harvest Moon. Running a farm and growing vegetable was tough. Needless to say, things didn’t grow well at all.

It was at a later meeting with Hans Richter and his wife that I learned that the ground here wasn’t the best anymore. They didn’t know what it was, but almost everyone had trouble getting things to grow here. You’d need a lot of care and fertilizer if you wanted to succeed.

A decade ago a few small time farmers were still living here. As things got harder, most of them abandoned the trade. Some turned to raise livestock, others changed to different professions.

There was only one, single person whose fields were still flourishing, Old Werner’s.

It turned out that Old Werner was no other than my next door neighbor. When I told the Richters how my introduction with him went, they both started to laugh. Werner was a bitter old man. He didn’t like people and had lived alone most of his life. He was a very solitary man. When I asked if something happened to him, they both said no. It was just how he was. I’d be best for me to ignore him. That’s what everyone else did anyway.

As I’d said, I took things slow, worked the garden, studied different types of seeds, how to take care of crops and many other topics. It was early summer by then, so much too late to actually sow anything on the fields. So I let them lay fallow for the year.

As summer moved along though I was surprised to see how the old man’s fields were bursting with rip grain and vegetables. Sure, they told me the old man was doing alright, but what I saw was more than that. No, he seemed to be doing pretty damn well. I could barely get a couple of tomato plants to bear fruit in the greenhouse, yet he had fields of them!

Harvest came and went. I was frustrated at my own inability to grown anything but also impressed at how well he was doing. I didn’t like it one bit.

As summer turned to autumn, there was one thing I found a bit strange. I often caught the old guy driving out in the middle of the night and returning back home a few hours later.

I’d noticed it by accident when I was out one night. I’d decided to take a walk in the mild autumn air and to gaze at the stars. I was on my way to the local viewing platform when a car approached me from behind. Its headlights were off, and it sped past me, yet I was sure I’d seen old Werner.

I didn’t think anything of it, yet I wondered why he drove around without his headlights on. My first thought was that he forgot them or hell, he might just be an asshole who liked to scare people.

In time I learned that the old man was making these ominous trips frequently. Always in the middle of the night and still without his headlights on. There was no other explanation, he was trying not to get noticed.

Well, to be honest, it was none of my business, and I told myself to ignore him and his weird antics. Yet, I couldn’t help but find it unnerving. I started to wonder what reason he had for this strange nightly trips. I didn’t help that he kept it up all autumn and continued well into early winter. It was a sheer mystery to me.

Once the new year began and spring came around I started to do the same as all other farmers: I started working my fields. I got quite a few stares and scoffs from old Werner. Many snide remarks were directed at me, or I’d see him laugh his ass off when things didn’t work out for me. To tell you the truth, I tried my very best to stay above this petite behavior. Every once in a while though I couldn’t help but yell back something similar.

I’d had a few very long talks with Hans Richter, and he’d been paying me the occasional visit. He helped me to get things going, advised me on when to sew what, what fertilizer to use and so many other important things. I have no clue what I’d have done without him. He was a godsend.

Still, it didn’t matter all too much. Things just didn’t grow. Each day I walked the fields looking at rows upon rows of barren earth. Only here and there a few lonely plants were growing. Old Werner’s fields, on the other hand, were thriving, and of course, the old man wasn’t shy rubbing it in.

“You city folks just don’t have it in you, that’s what it is,” he’d shout over at me and start laughing.

At other times he was a condescending asshole, pitying me. “That’s as far as you’ll get. If I were you, I’d give up while I still could. No reason to keep trying.”

I hated that damned old man.

One day, after I’d watered the few lonely plants that were growing, he came over to pull another one of his nasty jokes.

“Shouldn’t water them too much, don’t want these few plants you accidentally got to grow to go to waste, do you?”

“How the hell do you do it?” I asked instead of reacting to his remark.

He just stared at me.

“How come your crops are growing so well when no one else can do it? And don’t give me this city folk bullshit, everyone else tells me they’ve got trouble as well.”

The old man’s face started to distort into a knowing grin, yet he said nothing.

At that moment I remembered how often I’d seen him walk the fields with these unnamed bags of fertilizer.

“Is it that fertilizer of yours?”

“Heh, not as dumb as you look,” he answered.

“So what sort of fertilizer is it? Do you make it yourself? What do you put into it?”

The old man burst out laughing.

“You think I’m going to tell you a damn thing about it? Oh, I don’t think so!” he said spitting on the ground. “This is my very own, special formulae. You’ve no idea what I’m going through to make it, to perfect it! Before I’d tell anyone, especially you, I’d rather have the devil take me away!”

Without another word, he turned around and stormed back to his farm.

As the weeks went on, most of my fields should stay barren. The old man’s were covered in lush green like they’d been the year before. What the hell was in that fertilizer of his, I wondered.

It was sometime later when I visited the Richters that I saw the local newspaper on the kitchen table. I halfheartedly opened it, and an article caught my eye.

“Middle-aged woman still missing since last autumn.”

The article was about a woman, a mother of two, who’d gone missing on a hiking trip in the nearby area, last year. When I started reading, Susan, Hans’ wife came over.

“Such a sad story… I wonder why it keeps happening.”

“Hold on, what do you mean?”

“Oh, it’s those hiking paths near the mountains. Each year people vanish there. The authorities say its slippery slopes and people aren’t careful enough. Why they don’t close it off?!”

“It really is something,” her husband said,” they always warn hikers and climbers, but people won’t listen. A mother of two, what was she even thinking?”

I listened to them and learned that more than a dozen people had gone missing near the mountain range. Last year it hadn’t only been the woman, but an older man as well. They said it was almost inevitable that people went missing there. Of course, people talked to the local council, but they didn’t listen. The normal hiking paths and climbing locations were safe and secure, and there were enough warnings about straying from them.

As I listened to them, there was something in the back of my mind. Something I couldn’t quite grasp.

Only when I returned home and saw Old Werner, stalking around his fields, did I remember what it was. The woman had gone missing in autumn. Wasn’t that the time when he went on all those trips?

I realized what my brain was trying to put together. The more I thought about it, the more everything did fit together. He drove out in the middle of the night, headlights off, to an unknown location. And there was this special fertilizer of his.

For a moment I couldn’t help but imagine Old Werner out on the hiking paths at night searching for lonely wanderers to turn them into fertilizer.

What was I thinking? I almost burst out laughing at my own ridiculous idea. This was not a movie, this was real life!

Somehow though I couldn’t completely get rid of the idea. I don’t know why I did it, but I started to spy on the old man. It might have been my frustration. It might have been boredom. It might have been the resentment I felt towards him. I’ not sure.

It was not that I believed in my idea. It was way too far-fetched. I told myself that all I wanted was to figure out how he grew his crops and what sort of fertilizer he used. I knew I was only lying to myself though. Now, I thought there was more about this old fool, his strange behavior and that fertilizer of his.

The more I thought about it, the more I was able to convince myself.

Whenever I saw him out in the fields, applying his fertilizer, my thoughts went back to the same topic. I told myself to stop and leave it alone, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t long before my curiosity turned into an obsession and I started to take tabs on him. I took notes on how often he went out, when he got up in the morning, how long he stayed up in the evening and many other things. It wasn’t like I had much else to do anyway. Most of my fields resembled a barren wasteland anyways.

After a couple of weeks, I had his whole routine written down. I knew pretty much everything that went on at his farm.

So I was more than a bit surprised when I saw him drive out with his car in the middle of the night on Saturday. He hadn’t done that in the past five weeks. It was by sheer coincidence that I’d even noticed it. It was already early morning when he returned.

I saw him get out of his car, but instead of going back inside, he went to the back of the car and opened the trunk. I the dark of the night, hunched behind my window, I pressed my binoculars against my head so hard, it hurt. My whole body tensed up, and I didn’t dare move or breath. In horror, I watched how Old Werner dragged something out of the trunk. It was long, big, and covered in a thick blanket. I watched as he heaved it over his shoulder.

As he took a first step towards his hack, I saw something long and thin dangle from the pack.

Oh, Jesus Christ, I thought. Don’t tell me… Was that what I thought it was? Had I really seen it? No, I must be wrong. I was seeing things. Maybe I’d imagined it. But what I’d seen dangling… It couldn’t be. I thought back to the woman in the newspaper article. Was this another one? Another victim? Another ingredient for his fertilizer?

I had to go there and find out more. I should take a look at the shack. The moment I saw how Old Werner returned from his shack, all thoughts about going there left my mind.

It was dark, but in the moonlight, I could clearly see that his hands and lower arms were covered in something. I saw his dark, angry expression as he made his way back to his house. My whole body was filled with fear. For the first time in my entire life I was honestly and utterly terrified.

I couldn’t help the urge to hide as soon as he’d walked back to his house. I knew there was no reason for it. The old guy couldn’t possibly see me. I had the lights off, and I was way too far away from him to notice anything at the windows.

Once he’d vanished inside, I started to calm down, at least a bit. My mind was still a crazed whirlwind of contradicting ideas. One part of it said I was stupid and nothing was going on. The other part told me that Old Werner was a crazed serial killer. Even in bed I couldn’t calm down and took me a long time till I actually fell asleep.

When the rooster awoke me in the morning, I was thankful that the few hours of sleep I’d had were undisturbed and free from dreams about bloodied old men.

While I was drinking my morning coffee, I watched his house as I’d done every morning for the past weeks. As if nothing had happened last night, the old man went out to take care of his fields.

Had this guy really murdered someone last night and dragged the body into his shack? As I sat there, I was almost shaking with curiosity. I had to find out, I had to.

I knew that every week, on Sunday evening, he spent an hour or two at his shack. During that time he most likely mixed up his fertilizer. Once he was done, he went back to his house and most likely straight to bed. This might be the best chance to see what he’s up to in there.

The whole day I was antsy and couldn’t sit still. I made plans what I’d do, how I’d approach and how I’d find a bloodied body lying on the floor of the shack.

When the day finally turned to night, I turned off the lights in my house to give him the impression I went to bed early. He’d believe it, I was sure. Us city folks don’t work as hard as he did, was what he most likely thought in his arrogance. All the while I sat at my window watching him with my binoculars.

My cue was when the lights of the shack turned off, and the old man went back into his house.

I dressed in all but black, and after waiting for another half an hour, I made my way outside.

With low and quiet steps I made my way over to his place. For the first time, I wasn’t mad at how well his corn had grown. It allowed me to get near his house without having to hide much.

Once I was closer, I checked out his farm from between the corn. The lights were off. There were no sounds, and nothing was moving. It was clear that the old man must have gone to bed. To be on the save side, I still waited for another ten minutes.

When they’d passed, I rushed to his shack. My heart was beating heavily when I’d made it, and everything stayed quiet.

I wasn’t too surprised to find the door locked by a padlock. Even I knew that there was no way that I’d be able to open it. I hadn’t imagined that I’d be lucky enough to find the door unlocked anyways.

No, I went for the window of the shack that I was able to see from my house. I knew it would be locked too, but it was one of these old wooden windows. It consisted of two shutters and was only held shut by a metal bolt in the center. I might be able to pry it open wide enough to loosen the bolt and open it.

I pried away the two shutters from one another until I could fit my finger in-between. At that point, I knew where the shutter was. I’d to be careful. If I broke the window, the old man would hear me without a doubt. After a nerve-wracking minute of toying around with a couple of tools, I finally loosened the bolt, and the window opened.

I scanned the window frame and the area below. Once I saw that there was nothing I could topple over, I climbed inside.

The shack was larger than I imagined. For now, all I saw were shelves filled with tools and various other things. Step by step I made my way through the place, scanning it. In the end, I took out a small flashlight I’d brought, to give things a closer look.

There was a sort of mixing station at the end of the shack. To be honest, it was nothing but an old workbench, but on it was an assortment of things. There were containers of various chemicals and fertilizers, a sack of bone meal and a few bags of his complete fertilizer mixture.

As I looked on, I noticed something next to the workbench. It was a sort of metal composter as well as a freezer united cramped into the corner next to it. The composter was quite modern. It was most likely one of those that helped to quickly compost organic material. I’d read about them.

My skin started to crawl as I stared at it. I took a deep breath, and after toying with it for a bit, I figured how to open it. The instant it opened I almost vomited. The smell alone was enough to make me retch.

When I looked inside, I saw bloody guts and a few pieces of half-rotten meat.

“Fucking hell,” I cursed and stumbled back in shock and disgust. I crashed straight into the assortment of containers on the workbench. A number of them clattered to the ground in an ear-shattering noise.

My eyes grew wide. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. You goddamn idiot, what the hell did you just do!? I turned off the flashlight and waited. Oh god please, I hoped. Please make him stay asleep.

I waited for almost half a minute, praying that Old Werner would stay asleep. My prayers weren’t answered. My heart almost stopped when I heard the front door of his house open.

“Goddamnit, what’s going on out there? If it’s you damned kids again…”

He said nothing else. Oh shit, did he see the window? I tried to think, tried to remember if I’d closed it after me, but I couldn’t. For all I knew, the two window shutters might still be wide open.

“Is someone there?” I heard his voice. Then his footsteps came closer.

“I dare you, whoever the devil you are, show yourself!”

I didn’t move. I hoped against all certainty that he’d go back to his house, but only a moment later I heard him from the side of the shack.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

He must’ve seen the open window. I could already hear him rummage with the padlock!

Now or never I thought. There was no way I could explain this to him. I was back at the window, tried to get up, but before I could do any more than to put my foot on the window frame the door opened. In one swift motion, he hit the light switch and saw me standing there, dressed in all black, trying to flee the scene.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN MY SHACK!?”

Then the smell hit him and his anger turned to pure rage.

“YOU. YOU. YOU GODDAMN…” but in his rage he couldn’t even finish his sentence anymore. In his blind rage he picked the first tool he could, a rake, and came swinging after me. There was no way I’d make it out in time. I barely ducked away and fled to the back of the shack.

“No, don’t! I swear I saw nothing! I only,” but I didn’t get the chance to finish as I had to dodge another hit of the rake.

Finally, he saw the open composter and the disturbance on the workbench.

“You just had to know, did you? You couldn’t let it be. Do you have any idea what I went through to finish this? One decade, one whole decade… and now you’re trying to steal it?!”

What the hell? Had he just admitted to what I thought he had?”

“That’s it! You’re the last person to EVER barge in here, I swear it!”

And with that, he threw the rack to the ground and came at me himself. He almost jumped me and only now did I realize that Old Werner might have been an old man, but damn was he strong. A life of farming had made his body stout and hardened his muscles. All I was able to do was to struggle against him and keep him from overpowering me. I clung to sheer desperation, as I was pushed back against the workbench.

His eyes were wide open, and a moment later he raised one of his hands and hit me square in the face, once, twice. When I stumbled, he closed his hands around my neck.

I couldn’t breathe. Only at this moment did I realize that he was really going to kill me. I was going to die. Stars appeared in front of my eyes, but there was nothing I could do. I twitched in his iron-hard grip, grasped blindly around for something, anything. My hands closed around something hard and cold. With all the power I could muster I swung it into the direction of Old Werner. There was a nasty sound, and the old man screamed up.

Only when I swung it a second time did I see what I was already holding. It was an old mallet. For a moment I saw the surprise in his eyes, and his grip loosened, only to close once more even harder. In his fury, he wasn’t just trying to strangle me anymore, no he was going to break my neck by sheer force. Again and again, I hit him with the mallet. After three more hits, his grip finally loosened and he slumped down and fell to the ground.

As I looked down at his head, I saw a nasty inward bump at the top where I’d hit him. What I was most surprised though was all the blood that still kept gushing forward.

Time stood still. As if in a trance I watched the blood flow from his unmoving body. It must have been only seconds before I realized what I’d done, but to me, it felt like an eternity.

The bloody mallet clattered to the floor, and I pushed old Werner’s body away from me.

I started shaking, almost screamed up. I’d killed him. I’d murdered someone.

I had done the right thing though, hadn’t I? He’d have killed me. He killed others! The guts, the meat, the freezer! There was no doubt! And I’d done it in self-defense!

When I opened the freezer, my world crumbled apart. What I found inside wasn’t a corpse. Neither was it body parts. It was a dead animal. In the freezer were the remains of a deer. Part of its lower half was missing, and his innards were carved out. The blood and the guts I’d seen!

What about the arm I’d seen last night though? It must have been… but then I saw the legs of the deer. What I’d seen had been a long, thin, body part. Only the dark of the night and my imagination had transferred it into the arm of a person.

Dear god, what had I done? Had this old guy really done nothing more than to create some sort of complicated organic fertilizer?

Right at this moment, my instincts activated and I turned to run. I’d already made it to the door of the shack when my mind started to work again. What the hell was I doing!?

Should I call the police? What would I tell them? That I broke into his place because I thought he was a serial killer? That he attacked me after that and I killed him in self-defense? Would they even believe me? In that outfit?

No, it was much more likely that they thought I’d broke into his shack, he found me stealing his stuff, and I killed him. Or hell, that I came in here and killed him. I’d made it no secret that I hated him.

Shit. Shit. Shit. What the fuck should I do?

First I turned off the light in the shack. Was there anyone nearby? There’d been so much noise! As I watched and listened, I remembered that no one else lived near enough to have heard anything. The only person who’d heard anything would’ve been no other than me.

I went back inside, closed the door of the shack and then the window. I checked the wood splintering on the window and tried my best to get rid of it and make it sound as natural as possible.

After that, I put everything back that the old guy had pushed off the shelves in his onslaught.

Finally, there was the old guy himself. Was he really dead? I awkwardly touched his neck to see if there was any pulse. Then I looked at his head again and wondered what the hell I was even doing.

For a while, I wondered what to do, but then I saw his huge fertilizer bags. Old Werner might have been strong, but he was still a scrawny old man. The irony was not missed on me when the old man’s body was almost a perfect fit for it.

I pushed the body bag to the front of the shack and then started to meticulously clean up the blood. First I wiped up the floor and the workbench. Then I checked every notch and cranny and used one of his many chemicals to get rid of any blood spatters. I checked the whole place multiple times over. I had to make sure there were no blood splatters left anywhere. Only then did I open the door again.

Once again I checked the area. Sure, it was dark and not even thirty meters to the cornfield. Yet, I knew if anyone should see me carrying a bag of fertilizer through his yard the night before he went missing… I couldn’t risk it.

When I was sure that I was completely alone, I sprint to the edge of the cornfield with the heavy bag over my shoulder. Once I’d made it, I stumbled forward for a few more meters, but luckily avoided to crash to the ground.

For a moment my head was spinning, and I almost passed out from the sheer exhaustion.

I rested the bag between the cornstalks and ran back to the shack. The whole place smelled of the chemicals I’d used. Once more I went through it, using water to clear away the residue of the chemicals.

I also closed off the composter and the freezing box. Before I did that though, I got part of the animal meat, cut it to pieces and ground it up with the mallet.

I added the ground up meat to the composter. I made sure to leave the bloodied and dirtied tool on the workbench. I had to make it look as if it was the last thing the old guy had done.

At this moment I noticed something else. A notebook was stashed away in a small shelve above the workbench. When I opened it, I found that it contained the old guy’s notes on how to create his special type of fertilizer. It was pages upon pages of ingredients with detailed instructions.

I skimmed one of the pages, and it specified how certain ingredients had to be gathered. On the next one, he clarified that deer meat was best during their mating season, in autumn or early winter.

That must’ve been the reason for his secret trips. He was getting deer meat for his fertilizer. All he’d been doing was trying to keep his formula a secret.

Once I was outside again, I closed the padlock, careful not to leave any fingerprints on it.

Carrying Old Werner’s body over to my house took quite a while. Every ten meters or so I had to take a break. Once I’d made it, I hid the body down in my basement.

After that I went back to the cornfield, to make sure there were no tracks or blood splatters anywhere.

It was an hour or so before dawn when I was finally done with everything. I was utterly exhausted and pretty much fell into my bed.

The next day was a blurry mess for me. I spent most of it in bed, curled up under my blanket. Murder is not something from which you move on with your life. You just can’t.

It was only in the evening that I remembered his little notebook. Reading through his notes was the only thing helped me to turn my thoughts away from what I’d done. It’s not an understatement that the topic of fertilizer saved my sanity that day.

I carefully went over every page. I knew damned well that I’d not be able to turn my harvest around. I might try my luck in the greenhouse though, and if that would be a success, I could prepare for next year.

During the next days, I procured quite a few things: a composter different fertilizers, chemicals, bone mean and a variety of other ingredients.

One thing I was missing though and that I wasn’t sure how to get was deer meat, but I knew I had a substitute for it in my basement. It was still quite fresh, and most importantly, I had to get rid of it.

It was a nasty piece of work as you can imagine. I almost vomited every couple of minutes. Due to the heat, Old Werner’s body had been rapidly decomposing. I almost vomited the moment I saw his bloated, squishy corpse.

Eventually, though I got used to it. I grew numb, or I was already. There is one thing though, I told myself over and over again. This was not a person. This was a hunk of meat, nothing more. Once I cut it up though, it became pieces. The blood, the flesh, the bones, it all became things. And that way it got easier. I didn’t mind anymore. Grinding Old Werner up had become nothing but work in the end. Gruesome work, sure, but still only work.

It took me the better part of two days, but after that, I’d ground up the old guy’s remains. Finally, I added them to the other ingredients in the composter.

It was about a week or so later that the police arrived at my doorstep. I’d never seen an officer like that. Old, tired, and most of all, utterly disinterested in what was going on. He asked me a few questions. The typical ‘when have you last seen him’ and other similar ones. I answered them truthfully, and the guy said he’d be back if he needed more information.

He checked the old guy’s property, the shack, the house. The only thing he noticed was that Old Werner must have gone out in the middle of the night.

It was clear that this officer didn’t give a shit. He didn’t care what happened here in this small village. He concluded that Old Werner must’ve walked off and vanished in the middle of the night. They put together a search party, but it was only a few people, and they never found out a thing. Old Werner became just another name added to the list.

After this, his house was put up for sale, but no one seemed to show any interest.

It’s now late in the year, and the fertilizer I’ve created has developed nicely.

Six weeks ago, I upgraded the greenhouse for winter farming. Since then things have grown well, really well. The tomatoes are big, ripe and almost bursting with flavor. The old man had indeed created a splendid recipe.

What’s more interesting though, is that I can’t help but notice how fast and strong the plants have grown. They look even healthier than Old Werner’s. It might be the unique conditions in the greenhouse. To be honest, though, it might be due to my own little addition to the fertilizer.

As I’m typing this out, I can’t help but laugh at the grim irony of the situation. The one way the old man was able to improve his fertilizer even further was by becoming part of it himself.

My Friend Discovered Something Reality-Defying in His House

Until a few weeks ago I’ve been blissfully unaware of, well, almost everything. I went to work every day, loved movies and games and hang out with people, mostly my friend Greg.

Speaking of the devil, it’s because of him that all this changed. It was a couple of weeks ago when he called me after yet another long day at work.

“Yo, Steve, can you come over to my place? I gotta show you something.”

“Ugh, can’t it wait, dude? I was at the store all day today, like seriously, I’m exhausted.”

“No way man, get your ass over here right now! I even got us a couple of cold beers.”

Well, it was the last point that sold it for me. It was Saturday evening anyway, so why not have a bit of fun and a few drinks.

It was half an hour later that I arrived at his house and he ushered me into a storage room on the ground floor. What I saw was a large, dark hole on the ceiling.

“What in the…” I asked him.

“Haven’t gotten the slightest clue.”

I turned to him frowning.

“Okay man, don’t start with this shit, I’m not in the mood, what’s that thing?”

He shrugged. “I’m not fucking with you, really. It was just there one day, puff. Completely out of nowhere.”

“Really? Who’s going to believe that type of story? Can’t you at least try to be convincing?”

“Okay, hold on.”

With that, he rushed out of the room.

“What the hell are you doing?” I called after him, but he didn’t react.

Moments later I heard him on the stairs.

“You hear this?” he yelled from upstairs and soon I started to hear him stomp on the floor right above me… and above the hole.

“Freaking hell,” I pressed out and stepped a bit closer. If he was in the room above, shouldn’t I be able to see him? Shouldn’t I be able to see the room? How was everything just darkness? All the while I continued to hear his stomping above me. There had to be some stupid trick to this.

“So, how are you doing it?” I asked once he was back.

“What do you mean?”

I sighed. “This whole thing! How the hell did I not see you when you were up there? Where you even upstairs? Really, man, I’m not in the mood for-“

“There’s no trick,” he cut me off.

I looked at him and rolled my eyes.

“Come on man, at least hand me a freaking beer or something. Did you really invite me over to play this shitty joke on me?”

Five minutes later we sat in the living room, both holding a beer in our hands.

“So what you’re telling me is that this thing, this hole, was just there one day?” I asked in a monotonous, bored voice.

He took a sip of his beer, then nodded.

“And you just ignored it?”

Another sip, this time followed by a shrug.

I didn’t know what to say anymore. This was by far one of his dumbest attempts of… whatever this was.

“Well, I checked it out of course,” he started after a short while. “Used a lamp, but its plain dark, nothing to see at all. Used a stick, but it goes on forever.”

“What do you mean, it goes on forever?” I asked laughing. “You know, there’s something called the ceiling.”

“It’s gone, I guess.”

“So what you’re trying to tell me is that there’s a hole in your ceiling that leads upstairs, yet I’m not able to see-“

“No, that’s not how it works, dude. The stick’s just gone. There’s no hint of anything upstairs.”

“What the hell are you trying to say!?”

I was getting utterly frustrated with him.

“Exactly what I just said. I can push the stick in however far I want, but upstairs, you won’t see a thing.”

This was it. I was done. I had enough of this whole stupid topic.

“Ok, alright, fuck you asshole,” I cursed and got up, “Can’t believe this shit.”

I made my way to the stairs.

“Haha, Greg, you got me to go upstairs to check out this stupid hole, great job, you really got-“

I broke up. I’d entered the room upstairs right above the storage room, but there was not the slightest hint of a hole. Nothing. For a moment I tried the floor here and there to see if Greg had somehow hidden it, but nothing. Everything was as solid as it could be.

“How in the hell,” I wondered out loud.

“Told you there’s no trick,” Greg said from behind me suddenly.

“Jesus fuck, man,” I yelled at him, “don’t scare me like that!”

“Come on, I’ll show you something.”

With that, we went downstairs, and he brought out a sort of tripod-like contraption he’d built.

“What are you doing now?” I asked, but soon he brought in a long wooden stick and raised it towards the dark hole in the ceiling.

I watched and saw how the stick vanished inside the darkness. Further and further he pushed it inside before he mounted it on the contraption to fasten it in place.

“That should be at least a meter. You saw it, right?”

I nodded and followed as he led me upstairs. Once we reached the room, I saw that there was still nothing. No hint of any stick.

As I stood there, I started to believe that maybe, somehow, he really wasn’t trying to trick me. I mean it was Greg, he’d not be able to pull off a prank this elaborate. What this meant though was that this whole thing was… real?

Once we got down again, Greg showed me that the stick was still inside. He took the contraption away, lowered the stick and handed it to me. As I held it I turned it here and there, but there was nothing wrong with it, it was a completely normal, wooden stick.

Out of nowhere, an impulse overtook me, and I raised the stick into the hole myself. It vanished, unobstructed by the ceiling or the hard wooden floor that should be above.

For a moment the blood in my veins turned cold, and I felt goosebumps all over my body. If this was actually real, then what the hell was it?

In a second I lowered the stick again. As the shocking reality overtook me, I dropped it and retreated from the room.

Greg who’d been watching me started to grin.

“I reacted just as you did, shit’s pretty creepy.”

“Creepy? No dude, this is surreal. How the hell,” I broke up and stared at him.

“Like I said, it appeared a couple of days ago. Came out of nowhere, don’t know why or how. Everything was normal, and then one day, I walk in there, and it’s there.”

I said nothing.

“At first I was as crept out as you are. Didn’t sleep for two whole days, but nothing ever happened.”

“How’d you know that? You’ve been watching this thing all day, every day?”

“Nah,” he laughed, “I put up cameras, see,” with that he pointed at two webcams.

“Connected them to the computer and it’s been recording ever since. Put them up a couple days ago. Bet you’d do something similar, right?”

“To be honest, I’d probably burn the whole damned place down, no joke.”

At that, we both laughed. His laugh was genuine, mine more than a bit forced.

I was happy when we finally retreated to the living room. I wanted nothing more than to bring at least a bit of distance between me and this weird hole.

“So, did you call someone about it?” I asked hesitantly.

“Who’d you want me to call?” he asked me with not a bit of sarcasm in his voice, “Mulder and Scully? The Man in Black? The freaking Ghostbusters?”

“I don’t think the Ghostbusters would-“

“Oh yeah? So what about Agent Cooper?”

“Agent who?”

“Agent Cooper? Twin Peaks?

“The hell’s Twin Peaks?”

“Only one of the best shows of all time?”

“Why the fuck are you talking about a freaking TV show!? You’ve got a freaking reality-defying hole in your storage room!”

“I mean the show really is-“

“Goddamnit Greg, shut up!”

“Alright, alright. But come on, what do you think would happen? They’d probably kick me out of my house, detain me and turn this whole place into a freaking government facility and use it to build weapons and god knows what.”

“Wait, what?”

“You know, like in this one movie, the one about the conspiracy and the FBI.”

“You sure, you’re not talking about the X-Files again?”

“Fuck if I know,” he cursed and took another sip of his beer.

I did the same.

In the end, I stayed a bit longer. I had another beer, and after Greg annoyed me about it for a few minutes, we watched the pilot of Twin Peaks together.

I tried my hardest, but I couldn’t stay calm and concentrate. I was antsy. My eyes constantly wandered from the TV screen to the doorway of the storage room. Any moment I was expecting some weird and twisted thing to come barging out of there. How could Greg stay so calm? Hell, how could he stay here at all?

I was really relieved when I said goodbye to him and left the place behind. As I made my way home, I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder, again and again, to see if his house was still there. Every few meters I felt as if there was nothing but a giant, dark hole lurking behind me.

There was something else though. All this anxiety and fear was more and more pushed aside by a burning fascination and curiosity.

—

Throughout the next week, I didn’t hear much from Greg. We kept in touch via WhatsApp, but we mostly sent each other silly jokes, memes and other nonsense. I kept asking him about the hole, but he said it was all the same. Nothing had happened.

He told me he threw a few things in to see what would happen: Some returned, others didn’t.

When I read this, I was about to protest, but knowing him, he’d not care. I closed the chat window and left it at that.

It was shortly after noon on Saturday when he asked me if I was interested in doing a few experiments. He wanted to figure out more about this weird hole.

I was already on my way to his place when I answered that I was in.

I couldn’t say why myself, but over the past week I’d grown more and more fascinated. I definitely wanted to know more about this thing. It was as if it had a power over me and was able to drown out the voice of reason or push it to the back of my mind.

When I arrived at Greg’s place, he greeted me with a beer in his hand and handed me another one.

I stared at him, then at the beer and sighed before I took it.

“How are you so goddamn calm?”

“Guess it’s because I got used to it.”

“You got used to a reality-defying hole in your own, freaking house?”

“Yeah, guess so.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but then closed it again. I had to fight the impulse to throw my arms up in frustration if only to not spill my beer.

Greg led me back to the storage room. Without saying a word, he threw the bottle cap of his beer into the hole. It vanished and didn’t return.

“What the hell man? What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, what if something weird happens? You’ve got no clue what this thing is, right?”

“Nah man, been doing this all week, beats the garbage can any day.”

I was again, at an utter loss of words and could only watch as he left the room.

“Hold on,” he called out to me from somewhere.

He came back about a minute later with a camera mounted on a stick. When I saw what he was holding, I couldn’t help but grin.

“Wait, is that a freaking selfie-stick, Greg?”

“Oh fuck off, it used to be Karen’s,” he replied.

“Of course. That’s your get to answer for everything these days, isn’t it? ‘Is that your lingerie over there, Greg? No, that was Karen’s’ ‘What about this make-up, Greg? Karen forgot it here.’”

“Just shut up, dude,” he yelled at me when I started to laugh.

The moment he lifted the camera, the mood in the room changed. I was quiet in an instant, and all thoughts of jokes and silly remarks were banished from my mind.

My whole body tensed up as I watched Greg lift the camera to the edge of the hole. Nothing. After a few more seconds, he pushed it into the hole. Higher and higher he raised it, and I was again reminded of how surreal all of it was.

Greg held the camera up for a good half minute before he lowered it. Once he had it in his hand again, I came over to his side to catch a look at it.

Everything was alright. The power was still on, it was still recording, and it was completely undamaged.

Greg stopped the recording, and the two of us sat down on the couch to watch it.

On the one hand, I was filled with anticipation on the other I was more than a bit afraid of what we’d see. We were both quiet and watched as the camera view moved closer to the hole. Finally, darkness engulfed the screen, and all sounds stopped.

Second after second passed in complete and utter silence.

Every moment I expected the darkness to open up and reveal an impossible alien landscape or to see some sort of creature jump up in front of the camera. There was nothing though, only darkness. I was on edge nonetheless until the camera returned to our world.

“Well, that was exciting,” I mumbled. Greg next to me said nothing.

We did a couple other tests after this. We mounted a thermometer on Greg’s selfie-stick. The hole didn’t seem to have any effect on it at all, or the temperature was the same as it was here.

We also tried a night vision camera, but again, there was nothing to see. The only change was the slightly green hue of the recording.

Greg even mounted a piece of meat on the stick and let it rest in the hole for five minutes or so. I’d no idea what he expected, but I was happy when the meat returned completely unscathed.

It was early evening when the two of us heard a ‘meow’ and saw a tabby walk into the room.

“Karen left the cat behind as well?”

“Really dude? Really?” he asked with an annoyed expression on his face.

“What?”

“Just forget it,” he said in frustration.

He got up and walked over to the cat to pick it up.

“Well hello there, little guy, you wanna see something cool?”

“Dude, what are you doing?”

He didn’t say anything. Instead, he held the cat in his hands and walked over with it to the storage room.

“Hey man, you aren’t thinking of anything weird, are you?”

He looked at the cat in his hands for a moment before he turned to me and smiled.

“No, no, of course not,” he said and put the cat down gently.

Then he ran off to somewhere and got a step ladder. He put it right below the hole before he went to grab the cat again.

“Why’d I ever do anything weird with my ex’s cat?”

With that, he stepped on the ladder.

“Ok man, come on, stop it. We’ve got no idea if this is safe!” I said as he continued up the ladder.

“Yeah, but I guess I’ve just found a way on how to figure it out.”

“Greg, seriously? Are you freaking kidding me? What if something happens? Fuck man, it might suffocate or, I don’t know, burst into flames!”

“Shut up, I don’t give a shit about this stupid cat. We’ve spent this whole day, and we haven’t found out a damn thing! So maybe, this way, we can at least figure out something.”

I said nothing. He had a point about figuring out what this thing was, but still, using the cat… that’s just wrong.

“Well do what you want, but I’ll have no part in it.”

“Whatever.”

I watched from beside the doorframe as he stepped up higher on the ladder. The cat, not understanding what was going on, stayed quiet, but not for long. The closer it got to the strange hole, the more restless it grew. It was as if the animal’s instincts told it that something was wrong.

I could see how the cat’s fur stood up and how it started to twist in Greg’s hands. Then it meowed once before Greg pushed its head into the darkness above.

It was no more than a couple of seconds before he lowered the cat again. The animal was furious and struggled against his grip. When the cat bit him, he quickly put it down and yelled after it as it ran away.

“Always hated that beast,” he said looking at his hand.

“You can be such an asshole, you know that?”

“Well fuck you, too!”

We ended up watching the cat for the next twenty minutes or so. There was apparently nothing wrong with it. It looked at the two of us skeptically, especially Greg. After a while though, it stopped being apprehensive and came over to us and let us pet it.

With that, we were back at square one. Nothing had happened at all. Whatever we tried had proven to do nothing. For all we knew, this was simply an empty hole. A reality-defying one, sure, but that’s about it.

In the end, we sat on the couch, quietly drinking another beer.

“Not much else we can do about it,” Greg mumbled to himself after a few minutes had passed.

“What are you going on about?”

“Well, someone’s gotta give it a try.”

I almost spat out all my beer as I heard him say that.

“Alright, I’m out. No way man. I’m not going near that thing.”

Sure, nothing had happened until now, but that didn’t mean it was harmless. What if that thing or whatever was hiding inside of it was waiting for us to put our hands in, or hell, crawl inside?

“Well isn’t that great Steve? You stay here all day with me, but once it’s about showing some balls, you pussy out. That’s so typically you.”

“Oh yeah? So why don’t you do it? It’s your house and your hole.”

We both looked at each other and were quiet.

“Lots?” Greg finally asked.

“Fuck no!” I yelled.

It was about a quarter of an hour later that we both stood on the small step ladder. Him on one side, me on the other.

“Okay dude, you’ve got to hold on to me and make sure that, well… fuck just make sure nothing happens,” Greg said in a voice more than a bit anxious.

“This is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done,” I replied shaking my head.

Greg said nothing.

Finally, he started to raise his left arm towards the hole but stopped a hand’s breadth below.

“You gotta hold on to my arm, asshole!” he yelled at me when I just stood there, watching.

“What? Fine, alright.”

With that, I raised my hands as well to put them around his arm. I wondered what this was supposed to do if some inter-dimensional horror grabbed onto him and dragged him away.

While I was still making up scenarios in my mind, he put his right hand under one of my elbows. Before I could even react, he pushed my left arm upwards with as much force as he could muster.

I didn’t have time to react. I watched in horror as my arm shot upwards towards the hole. In an instant, my hand, as well as lower arm, vanished in the darkness above. For a short moment, I could only stare at what Greg had done in disbelief. Then I screamed up in surprise and stumbled back down the ladder. I lost my balance and fell to the ground.

“ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE!?” I screamed at him. “What the fuck did you do!?”

“How’s your hand?” Greg asked in a low, matter-of-factly voice.

I raised it and saw that I’d instinctively clenched it. For a moment I just stared at it.

“Prickles a bit, but that’s about-” I broke up when my hand started to glow slightly.

I yelled up once more and held the hand away from me, unclenching it in shock. The moment I did, something fell to the ground. It was a small, dimly glowing orb that now rolled through the room.

As I looked from the orb back to my hand, I saw that the glow had vanished. Putting two and two together, I realized that it must’ve been the orb and not my hand that had been glowing.

I clenched and unclenched my hand, moved the fingers and then rubbed it with the other one. Nothing seemed to be wrong with it.

“Did you get this from..?” Greg asked and picked up the orb.

I stared at him as he held it in his hand, rolling it around while looking at it.

“It’s kinda heavy. How did you get it to glow like that?”

When I saw his face and his nonchalant behavior after what he’d just done, I exploded.

I walked over to him and pushed him against the wall of the storage room, hard.

“What the fuck did you just do you fucking asshole? We had no freaking idea what would happen! What if I’d lost my freaking hand or my whole arm? What if, I don’t know, that shit’s radioactive, and I’ll get cancer!?”

“Well, but nothing-” he tried to start.

“No. Shut the fuck up! Don’t you dare give me the ‘Nothing happened, so it’s fine!’.”

“You tricked me, asshole!” I screamed at him and pushed him against the wall once more. The orb he’d been holding fell from his hand and landed on the floor with a thump. It started to glow once more, this time a bit stronger.

Greg picked it up and brought it closer to his face.

“There seems to be something inside of it,” he said holding it up towards me.

“Gimme that,” I yelled and ripped it from his hand.

I stared at it for a moment, and I understood what he was saying. I thought I saw something inside as well. It pulsated again while I stared into it and it felt as if some sort of presence was staring back at me. No, that wasn’t it, it felt as if it was preying on me.

A wave of heat washed over me, and I was sweaty in an instant. In a surge of fear, I let go of the orb. Greg almost jumped forward to catch it and get it back.

“You know what Greg?” I started as I saw him like that, “Fuck this. Fuck you, fuck this hole and fuck this whole damn thing!”

With that, I gathered my things, put on my shoes and left his place. I was still fuming about what he’d done.

On the way home, I felt the urge to rub my hand once again.

Even when I was home, I was still mad at him. I thought about telling someone else about everything that had happened, but who’d believe me? ‘Oh hey, Greg and I found a freaking reality-defying hole at his place.” Yeah, no one, that’s who.

As I sat in front of my computer, my thoughts drifted to the mysterious orb again. I couldn’t help but feel the same surge of fear when I thought about that presence. What the hell had I pulled out of this hole?

That night I didn’t sleep well. I was haunted by surreal nightmares. In some, I was dragged into endless darkness by lurking shadows. In others, I saw glowing, golden skies above alien landscapes. The worst one was about preying evils who freed themselves from cubic prisons.

When I woke up, I was wet with sweat and more tired than before I’d gone to bed.

I decided then and there, sitting in my bed, shaking with fear, that I’d have nothing to do with this thing anymore. Whatever this thing was, it was in Greg’s house, and there it could stay for all I cared. If Greg called me again, I’d tell him to go fuck himself and that I wanted nothing to do with it anymore.

—

I was surprised when I didn’t have to do any of this. Greg didn’t contact me at all. A week went by and then another. After that much time, I grew a bit concerned. I usually couldn’t go a day or two without a stupid message by him. It was two weeks by now.

Sure he could be a goddamn asshole at times, but he was still my friend. What if something happened? What if that thing, that hole, had swallowed up his house? Was he even still-?

Wait no, that’s ridiculous. If anything like that had happened, I’d heard it on the local news or hell, read about it on Facebook.

In the end, I decided to drive by his house after work and see if everything was alright with him. I told myself once more that I’d have nothing to do with this whole thing, but I knew that wasn’t true.

Was it really concern for my friend or was it curiosity that drove me on again? I couldn’t tell.

When I found his house, as well as the neighborhood, still standing, I was relieved after all.

The relief vanished the moment I actually looked at his house. As I walked up towards it, I saw how a neighbor watched me with concern visible on his face. When he realized I’d seen him, he was quick to hurry off.

At first, I thought Greg had closed all his curtains, but when I got closer, I saw that it was something else. Had he boarded up his windows? Why?

I walked up to the front door, rang the bell and waited. I listened for a while, but there was nothing.

“Greg? You there? Hello?” I asked in a loud voice before I rang again, and then twice more.

Finally, I heard something inside and shortly after the door was unbolted.

It opened only slightly, and through the crack, I saw Greg’s face.

“Steve? That you?”

“Yeah what the hell’s the ma-?”

“Shush, get in!” he cut me off and almost pulled me inside.

Once I was in, he bolted the door again. For a few moments he kept listening, then he went to one of the boarded up windows and watched the outside.

After a few moments, I heard a sigh of relief. When he came back towards me, I could see how haggard and exhausted he looked.

“What’s the matter with you?”

Instead of answering, he grinned and led me to the living room.

My mouth hung open as I looked at the hundreds, if not thousands of dark, glowing orbs. I didn’t know what to say. Many times I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I was at a complete loss.

“Are those all…?” I was finally able to ask after almost a minute had passed.

“Yeah, there’s no end to them. I can just reach in and take them, one after another, again and again, and again.”

“Wait you did it too? Why?”

“Curiosity. I mean you were fine, right? And you found this glowing thing. It was fascinating, you know?”

“Yeah, but weren’t you worried? I mean, you pushed my hand in and-“

“Well no shit, of course I was. It’s just you get more curious. This thing is here. Every day it’s here, in the storage room. And every day I found myself there, looking at it, wondering what would happen. For days I could think of nothing else. I wondered if I’d find something as well. It was eating at me. I couldn’t sleep. And then, one day, I was finally ready to do it. And guess what, I found one of these orbs as well.”

“I get this, but why are you gathering them?”

He shrugged.

“Can’t really say. I mean I wanted to see if I’d find something else or… if something else would happen, but it never did. So I kept at it, and soon I had dozens of orbs lying around. After a while, I started to look at them and wonder about them. What are those things? Where do they come from? And most important of all, what’s inside of them. If you look close enough, you can see it. I think in some of them there’s even something moving.”

He went away and came back with something. I knew what it was before he even showed it to me. It was this weird, light prickling in my hand that told me.

“That’s the one you pulled out,” he said and held it up to me.

“Dude, I don’t really,” I started but broke up. I knew what I’d said, but now, seeing it in front of me like that I grabbed it instantly. I held it up in front of my eyes and stared into it. Oh yes, I thought, there’s something inside of it.

As I stared, I thought I saw a form inside. Then, I felt the same thing I’d felt before. Something inside this thing was looking back at me, and it recognized me. I felt as if the consciousness inside was probing me, scanning me. Fear came over me as I realized that whatever was inside was not only staring at me but also into me. I felt it call out to me inside my head in cryptic sounds and unnatural noises, all because I’d touched it. Or, I thought, because I brought it here.

I inched away and pushed the thing back into’ Greg’s hand.

“Jesus Christ,” I brought out and absentmindedly started rubbing my hand.

“It’s quite something, isn’t it?”

“It’s freaking scary, that’s what it is!”

“Scary? Maybe at first, but now, it’s nothing short of exhilarating.”

I glanced over at all those orbs in the living room as he talked. Some were glowing brighter than others, some seemed to be pulsating. The longer I looked at them, the more crept out I was. Were all of them the same? Was there something inside of every single one?

And then my mind realized the most important thing of all. This was not normal, none of it was. These things didn’t belong here. This was all wrong, surreal, and unnatural.

“I wonder what’s inside of them,” he finally said with a curious expression on his face. “You saw it too, didn’t you Steve? Those things inside? I can’t wait to find out what they are.”

As he said this his face contorted into an even stranger expression. I saw him walk back to the rest of the orbs, looking at them, touching them, caressing them. Then he picked up a few more and came over to me.

“Here have a look at those five, they are something else!”

With that, he tried to hand them over to me. I raised my hands in front of my chest and took a step forward.

“N-no way man, I’m good.”

For a second it seemed as if he didn’t know what to do, then he shrugged and started to stare into them himself. For a while he was quiet.

“I really don’t know how to do it, you know? I tried some things, but nothing has worked. Maybe we could do something together. What if there’s something valuable inside? We might be able to sell it off and-“

“Wait, hold on, you want to open these things? Are you freaking serious?”

How was he not scared of what’s inside? Did he not notice it?

“What if there’s some sort of creature inside? What if it’s dangerous? You’ve got no freaking clue! Did you ever think about any of that? Did you ever actually feel this, this, thing looking at you?”

“Of course I did, that’s the reason why I want to open them up! I, no, we have to. We won’t know what it actually is if we don’t do it. I’m sure there’s a way, and I’m sure whatever we find will be awesome!”

For a second I actually felt as curious about it as he was. I felt my mouth contort into a smile, and I was about to agree when I remembered what I’d told myself.

Don’t get involved.

I looked over at Greg again. I saw the glow in his eyes that was nothing short of an insane obsession. I looked at the surreal place his apartment had become. Then I gave him my answer.

“No way man, not this time. I’m not getting involved again.”

For a few seconds he stared at me, and I thought he was about to freak out or hell, jump me, but then he shrugged.

“Fine, suit yourself, but don’t come back crying if I find something great.”

“No worries,” I said and turned to leave.

Before I could make one more step, I felt as if a thousand eyes were watching me. I trembled with fear when I heard Greg’s voice once more.

“Not a word, to anyone, alright?”

It didn’t sound like him. It was contorted, emotionless, weird. It was not his voice, I realized.

I couldn’t turn around. There was no way I wanted to face him or these orbs again.

“Alright man, I keep quiet.” I said with a shaky voice.

He didn’t say another word as I stepped outside.

I didn’t get to see my friend Greg again. The next time I heard about him was a week later on the local news. At first, I didn’t know it was his house since the news segment only depicted the burnt down remains of a building. Only when they mentioned the address did I realize it must have been Greg’s.

As I listened, I found out that there had been an explosion in the middle of the night. It was of such magnitude that even some of the surrounding buildings were heavily damaged. Everything around the epicenter of the explosion seemed to have been evaporated. There was no hint of Greg, and no remains of his had been found.

The case is yet unknown. It might have been a gas leak, but some neighbors believe that Greg was up to something else, something as sinister and weird as his recent behavior. As an interview with one of his neighbors started, I turned off the TV.

I knew what really happened. I was sure that Greg must’ve succeeded in opening one of those orbs.

Ever since then, I’ve been wondering if this explosion did evaporate what was inside of these orbs as well. No, I’ve been praying it did.

Now, as I am sitting here though, rubbing my hand and trying to ignore those cryptic and unnatural sounds in my head, I know the answer:

The explosion released whatever was inside of those orbs into our world.

Grandma’s Penpal

Grandma died a week ago. I was devastated. I knew about the cancer, and I knew there was no hope at her age. Still, I refused to believe it. She was the nicest person I’d ever known, and after mom had died, she’d taken care of me. It was only thanks to her I could attend college.

Going through all the things she’d collected over the course of her life felt strange, like I was an intruder. Who was I to so simply decide what to keep and what to throw away? Yet it was necessary. I couldn’t hope to keep all of it. There was her collection of ceramic figurines, old photo albums of her and family, yellowed books, paintings whose colors had long faded, and so much more. One day, as I went through another box of memorabilia, I found one filled with stacks of letters.

As I looked through it, I noticed they were of varying state. Some were neatly tucked away, others seemed to have been crumbled up before she decided to keep them. When I gave them a closer look, I saw they were all sent by the same person, a woman named Elisabeth. Reading through them gave me this warm, fuzzy feeling. Elisabeth sounded like such a nice person, and I was sure she’d been a close friend of grandma’s.

As I checked the dates on the letters, I saw that the last one had only arrived recently, just shy of my grandma’s death, but others had been sent decades ago. I teared up as I stared at what must’ve been hundreds of letters. What was in front of me was a testament to a lifelong friendship between two women.

It was the middle of the afternoon when I read the very first letter. The topics ranged from serious to mundane. In one, Elisabeth gave advice on marriage and childbirth, in another, she talked about gardening and TV shows. As they got closer to the present day, they talked at length about the cancer that would ultimately be grandma’s demise. Elisabeth’s words never wavered and were filled with nothing but hope and kindness.

When I put the last letter away, it was long past midnight, but my decision had long been made. I was going to visit this Elisabeth, my grandma’s lifelong pen pal.

***

I wrote down the address I found on one of the last letters and started on my trip to the other end of the state.

When I rang the doorbell, a tiny old lady, almost half my size, and about my grandma’s age, opened the door. For a moment, she looked at me in confusion before she smiled.

“You’re Margaret’s daughter? No, you’re too young. Her granddaughter, then, right?”

I opened my mouth, but then closed it again, and nodded. The tiny old lady chuckled.

“You’re her splitting image! You look exactly like her when she was your age. Come in, come in. What brings you here?”

Before I could even answer, she hurried back inside and motioned for me to follow her.

“Well,” I finally started, once we’d made it to the living room, “I came to say thanks for being such a good friend to grandma over the years, and for all those letters you sent.”

“Nothing to thank me for, girl. It was the only thing I could do.”

“Because you were such good friends, right?” I asked, smiling.

At that, the old woman chuckled again, but this time it wasn’t merry. No, it was nothing but wicked. When she stopped, her face was distorted into a mask of purest spite.

“Oh, you silly girl. Friends? Oh no, I wrote those letters out of spite!”

“Wait, what are you talking about?” I asked, taken aback by her outburst.

“I did it to make her pay for what she did,” she almost spat at me.

“But those letters, they were all so nice.”

“Of course, that was the whole point! You see, little girl, Margarete and I grew up together. We were the closest of friends. But, oh, we were so different. Your grandma was smart, and even prettier, while I was nothing but a gray little mouse. She had it all, and I had nothing. At least, until I met Stephen. I don’t know why he did it, but the moment he asked me out, I was the happiest girl in the whole wide world. I got pregnant, Stephen proposed, and soon I was busy preparing for my wedding.”

For a moment, she smiled, reminiscing, before her face grew dark again.

“But your grandma, she had to ruin it all! You want to know what she did!? Well, the big day arrived, and Stephen didn’t show up.”

“How’s my grandma related to-?“ I started, but she promptly cut me off.

“Because it was her! She couldn’t take it! For the first time, I had something she didn’t. I had a fiancé, soon a husband, and even a family. She’d never had a serious relationship before! So instead, she seduced my soon-to-be-husband, slept with him, and he left me behind. Oh, how I pleaded with him to come back, told him I’d forgive him, but he told me he’d been in love with her all his life. I’d been nothing but a second choice! And now that he could have her…”

For a moment, she broke up, shaking, her mouth quivering in sadness and anger.

“Wait, but my grandpa’s name isn’t Stephen,” I blurted out.

“Of course not! She was never really interested in him! It was just another one of her petite little games. A few months later, she left him behind like every other guy before him. To him, though, it meant the world. He’d left everything behind for her, his family, his reputation, and even me. There was nothing left for him. They found him a few days later, dead. I remember little after that. They told me I had a breakdown, lost my mind as well as the child, and was hospitalized for the better part of a year. And all because of your grandma.”

I gasped at this revelation. All the power left me, and I slumped down in a chair. This couldn’t be true. She had to be lying!

“But those letters… why did you send them?”

Slowly, a smile appeared on Elisabeth’s face. It could almost have been benevolent, if not for the hint of mockery around the corners of her mouth.

“She came back to me years later. Told me she was sorry, and that she knew I must hate her, detest her even, and blame me for all that happened to her. But you know what I did? I told her there was nothing to be sorry about. There was nothing to forgive, not a single thing. No, I told her all was fine in the world with the brightest of smiles. You know why?”

I stayed quiet, not able to utter a word.

“Because she could tell it wasn’t true. She knew it was a farce. What she wanted was closure, the truth, to move on and make good of the bad things she’d done. She cried and pleaded with me to admit it, but I only hugged her and told her it was fine. Oh, she was furious. She screamed and raged, and in return, I gave her nothing but kindness. She said she needed to hear it, but I never said a word. Instead, I told her I’d be her friend forever. It was the last time I ever saw her in person. About a month later, I sent her the first letter. I knew she was pregnant by now and was about to get married. So in this very first letter, I gave her a few tips on marriage, childbirth and children. I read all those books after all, I wrote, so it would be a shame if it was all for nothing. Of course, these letters were full of sarcasm, and I’m sure she must’ve noticed it.”

“Did she ever acknowledge you?” I asked, my voice nothing more than a whisper.

“Oh, but of course she did! When the letter arrived, I couldn’t believe it myself! She begged with me ‘Please Elisabeth, just say it!’ But I didn’t, of course, I didn’t. And soon I sent her another letter, and then another.”

For a moment, she cackled to herself before her eyes focused on me.

“Now how about I show you what else your oh so nice little grandma sent me?”

With that, and before I could answer, she hurried toward a cupboard and took out a stack of letters of her own. She searched through them meticulously before she brought one of them over to me.

I recognized grandma’s handwriting right away, but I couldn’t believe what I was reading. The letter was filled with nothing but rage and profanity. Grandma called Elisabeth a bitch, a horrible, evil person, and told her that everything had been her fault to begin with. Everyone had looked down on her, Stephen had never wanted her, and she was happy the child… At this point, I couldn’t take it anymore.

“This… this is terrible,” I mumbled. “How could she…?”

“Didn’t know that side of her, did you, girl?”

I only shook my head, but then I wondered about something.

“How did you keep this up for so long?”

When Elisabeth spoke again, it was with profound sadness in her voice.

“What else was there for me? My body was broken, I had no children, no trust, and certainly no hope for a family of my own. But I had her letters. Every insult, every profanity, and all her emotions; oh, I relished them. It made it all worth it!”

Her voice had changed once more. It was almost euphoric now. She hurried over to her stack of letters again and brought over one from just a few months ago.

I prepared for profanities, but this one was… different. It was a last, heartfelt plea by grandma. She wrote again that she knew she’d ruined Elisabeth’s life. She didn’t know why she’d done it. Back then, she was just a dumb young girl. All she wanted was to hear from Elisabeth, from her former best friend, that what she’d done was terrible. It was the last thing she wished for, to finally get closure. At least, now, Elisabeth could do it, couldn’t she? Now that the cancer was eating away at her body and mind. I felt tears coming to my eyes. My hands were shaking, but when I looked over at Elisabeth, the old woman was beaming.

“I wrote her the nicest, most empathetic letter I’d ever written. I told her it was all my fault. That she’d been right to send me all those ugly letters. It had all been me, and she, Margaret, wasn’t to blame for a single thing. She began to cackle again.

“Oh, I was her friend till the end. I never wrote a bad word about her, and never acknowledged what she did, never.”

In sheer revulsion, I watched as the body of the sad little creature in front of me began shaking, her cackling growing more and more intense.

“I’d never let her have it! I’d never give her the satisfaction of acknowledging what she’d done to me. She died never getting the one thing she begged me for so much: closure. And I know that hurt her more than anything.”

Something Happened at the Wind Turbines Near My Village

I’m sure you’re well acquainted with wind farms. They’re quite popular here in Germany, especially in the more rural areas.

One of them isn’t too far away from my small home village.

The first of the giant wind turbines was built more than a decade ago. Throughout the last years more have been added.

At night, you can always make them out due to their bright, red, obstruction lights, even during the sickest fog.

To be honest, I haven’t looked at them or their lights in the longest time. As a kid, they were the most impressive thing in the world, but the more they added and the older I got my interests shifted. Once I was a teenager it was all about parties and girls.

The past weekend I went out there by myself once again. For the first time, I looked up at the turbines. What I saw and realized at that time sent me home within utter, terrible fear.

You see back in summer and early autumn my friends and I used to hang out near the wind farm a lot. It’s one of our favorite spots to hang out all by ourselves.

There’s really nothing there. The turbines are constructed on small hills. The meadows surrounding them aren’t used by anyone. You can be all by yourself out there. It’s an ideal spot in the warm months to hang out, put up camp and spent a few nights out alone.

It was in the middle of June that I, my best friend Tom and our buddy Mike went out there. We’d haphazardly decided to spend the weekend camping out there and drink away the memories of a, particularly hard work week. On Friday evening we went out with two tents, our sleeping bags and enough booze to last us a week.

We didn’t do much on Friday. We had a few drinks, played some cards, but didn’t stay up too long. We were all pretty exhausted anyway.

On Saturday we got up soon after dawn. Tom and I had a slow morning, set up the grill and had a hearty breakfast, Mike start the day off drinking.

I didn’t mind at all. I was the last person to judge him on these things. What I wondered though was if it really was all about fun or if it was due to his recent break-up with his girlfriend.

By early afternoon Tom and I decided to join in with Mike, who was already pretty hammered at the time. He’d put on some music, was dancing by himself and seemed to have all but forgotten about us.

It wasn’t even an hour later that he’d fallen asleep in the middle of the grass.

While he was sleeping off his drunken stupor, Tom and I had a great time, relaxing and chit-chatting. That was until early evening when the weather suddenly changed.

It had been a hot and humid day, and the sky had gotten cloudier without us noticing. We only realized the change when it started to downpour.

We’d hoped to spend the evening outside, but instead, we were forced to retreat into our tents and wait for the rain to stop.

It didn’t take long before we heard some heavy cursing from outside and saw Mike stumbling around. It took him quite a while to understand what was going on before he finally found his way into a tent as well.

His cursing wasn’t only directed at the weather but also at us for just leaving him out there. By now though Tom and I were pretty drunk ourselves and had a good laugh at the whole thing.

I jokingly asked Mike if he wanted a beer as well, but he only grimaced, shook his head and rubbed his temple. Well, that’s what you get for your head start, I thought.

The rain continued to fall. While Mike was trying to overcome his hangover, Tom and I kept drinking.

It took almost an hour before the rain stopped. Dusk had already fallen, and a layer of mist engulfed the gentle, early evening.

The moment I went outside to rinse off my chair I noticed how thick the mist actually was. Everything that was more than a few meters away was completely hidden. The only thing I could make out clearly were our tents, the chairs and the bright, red lights of the wind turbines nearby.

If I’d been sober, I’d probably have found the whole scenario eerie and a bit creepy, like Mike. Instead, I opened my sixth beer and made fun of him for being unnerved.

We’d just rinsed off the table and started another round of cards when Mike interrupted us.

“Do you guys hear that?” he asked, his face serious.

“Yeah,” I answered, “I hear a dumbass asking stupid questions.”

“Oh fuck off, Eric,” he yelled at me before he started to listen again.

“What if it’s a wild boar or something? Don’t they come out into the meadows after downpours like that?”

“Jesus Mike, shut up, nothing is going on, and we’re trying to play our game,” Tom said annoyed.

In the end, Mike shrugged, but I could see he was agitated by something.

“It’s just the wind turbines,” Tom yelled at him after a few more minutes and threw an empty beer can into his direction.

When Mike winced, we both broke into loud laughter.

By now he was clearly annoyed at us, almost angry. Moments later he walked off and vanished out of sight.

For a bit, I wondered where he’d gone before my attention went back to the game. We finished one, then a second and then the third game without Mike around.

“Where’d he go? Think he left for good?”

Tom shrugged, took another sip of his beer and then started to deal the next round. As I picked up my cards though, I started to hear something as well. It was a low, distant rumbling.

“You hear that?” I asked.

“Oh come on, not you, too.” Tom cursed.

“But there’s something over there,” I protested and pointed at the area behind our tents.

“Yeah, wind turbines,” Tom laughed and pointed at the bright, red lights above us in the sky.

“No, that’s not what I mean,” I said and got up.

Tom groaned as I walked towards the tent ignoring his curses for me to come back and continue the game.

“If this is because you’re losing, then-” Tom started, when the tent a few meters away from me began to shake suddenly. It was as if someone was pulling at the guy ropes. Surprised I took a few steps back.

“See, I told you there’s-” I started as I turned around, but broke up when I saw something moving behind Tom.

Tom looked over at me and before he could even react a figure appeared out of nowhere and rushed towards him. The figure threw itself at him, holding something in his hand, grunting and moaning.

Tom screamed up in shock and surprise, dropped his beer and toppled over his chair, trying to get away.

I took the first few steps towards him when the figure burst out laughing. Seconds later Mike took off the stupid mask he’d been wearing.

“That’s what you get asshole! Hah!” he yelled at us.

Once Tom had gotten up he started to run after Mike in anger. The problem was, Mike was much too fast and most importantly, much too sober.

Finally, after a couple of minutes of this idiotic chase, the two of them settled back in their chairs. Mike finally decided to get himself another beer, but this time he drank it slowly.

While he sat there, with a triumphant smile on his face, Tom gave him the stink eye.

As I sat there, I couldn’t help but feel as if I was missing something. I tried to remember what it was, but couldn’t. The bottle of beer in my hand seemed to make fun of me and I gave up once more. Then something came back to me.

“Mike, how’d you shake the-” I started, but Tom cut me off right at this moment.

“Yo Eric, you lost the game, right? You know what that means!”

“Wait, no way, the game wasn’t over! It’s because Mike jumped out all of a sudden and scared you!”

“Hey, Mike,” I called out to him, but I saw that he was busy with something else.

He’d taken a sip of his beer before he turned his attention back to something else.

“Thirteen… Fourteen… Fifteen…” I heard him murmur to himself before he shook his head and started again.

“Hey, asshole, the hell are you doing?” I called out to him once more.

The moment Mike noticed that I’d been watching him, he shook his head.

“Nothing,” he answered, “just something that was on my mind.”

After that we just sat out there, chatting for a bit longer. It wasn’t long though before Mike decided to go to sleep.

I sat out there with Tom for a while longer, opened another beer and leaned back in my chair to relax with a last beer.

The next time I looked over at Tom, I saw that his chair was empty. As I sat there, I realized how uncomfortable I was. My clothes were wet, and I felt cold, freezing.

The moment I looked at my phone I realized that it was long past midnight. I must have fallen asleep in my chair. Freaking hell, I cursed at myself.

I was about to join Tom in our tent when I got an idea. Sure, I could go and sleep out here in my wet clothes, or I could make my way home. It was not even a half an hour walk, more like twenty minutes. Back home I’d have my warm bed and most of all, dry cloth. In my drunk state, I thought of my idea as ingenious.

Sure, Tom and Mike might be mad at me tomorrow for leaving them out here, but I really didn’t care about that at the moment. By now, my sole goal was to go and get home.

I picked up another beer for the trip, and after a slight detour due to the fog, I arrived home. Only a few moments later I fell into my bed.

It was the next day that all hell broke loose.

I woke up with a splitting headache, and at first, I’d no clue why I was at home and not out camping anymore. Only after a while did I remember my nightly walk home. I wondered how mad Tom and Mike were when they noticed I wasn’t around anymore.

When I checked my phone though, I saw that none of them had sent me any messages yet. Guess they didn’t mind I’d run off? Or where they still asleep?

Either way, I didn’t care. A freaking headache was killing me, and I tried my best to get back to sleep for the time being.

It was in the late afternoon that someone called my landline.

“Oh my god Eric, do you have any idea where Mike is?”

It was Mike’s mom. She seemed to be out of it for some reason.

“What do you mean, Mrs. Kadner?” I asked, “Hasn’t he gotten home yet? Are they still out there?”

“No! They aren’t! We’ve checked the site, it’s in total chaos! There’s no hint of him or Tom! What the hell were you doing out there?”

“Wait, what the hell are you talking about?”

I was suddenly wide awake.

“Mike didn’t get home and Tom neither! Tom’s dad went over there because Tom said he’d help him with the car. When he got there though, everything was destroyed!”

“Destroyed?”

“The tents, the chairs, the grill, everything!”

I sat there, not sure what to say. I explained to her that I had no idea since I left in the middle of the night. She didn’t listen and kept asking me over and over again if I knew where Mike was.

After I’d hung up, I started to worry as well, but knowing the two of them, I was sure they’d turn up eventually. Hell, it might indeed have been a boar that ran into the camp, and they booked it.

When Monday came around, and they were still missing, I grew a bit more worried.

By the end of the week, a police investigation was started. A month later, they gave up. Mike and Tom stayed missing. No hint of them was ever found.

I’ve been to the area around the wind turbines countless times, even long after the investigation had ended. I keep telling myself deep inside, that there must be some sort of hint that could explain it all.

I wish I never found anything.

When I was there on the weekend, I looked over the small meadows once more. It was a bit too late already. The sun was setting, and I knew I’d to give up my search.

It was at this moment that I looked up at the giant wind turbines next to me after so long.

I thought back to that summer night and remembered Mike. He’d been counting something, hadn’t he?

I began counting the wind turbines one by one. I came up at thirteen. Thirteen bright, red lights, shining high above me in the night sky.

And at that moment it hit me. I felt goosebumps all over my body and started shivering as I remembered something. Mike hadn’t counted to thirteen that night.

No, he’d counted to fifteen.

Spider Bite

I’m a little lost and not sure what’s going on here anymore. Things got a bit out of hand. I’m tired, anxious, but I just want to finish writing this all down.

This whole mess started only a few days ago, with a damned spider, as always.

You see, I suffer from a severe case of arachnophobia. I can’t even look at pictures of spiders without despairing and panicking. Even when I’m talking about them, there’s this lurking fear in the back of my mind.

One of my friends once thought it was hilarious to scare me with a plastic spider. It freaked me out so bad that I jumped up, rushed off and hit my head against the closet. I ended up needing three stitches and had to spend half the night at the hospital. Good going, Steve, you really outdid yourself there.

Now, where was I? Right, Saturday. I had planned to spend the weekend relaxing and unwinding, after a long and stressful week. This idea evaporated the moment I found a spider web. It was right next to a tiny hole in the door frame that led into the kitchen. I vacuumed it away and sealed the hole as best as I could.

I told myself, this was all that was necessary. My mind, of course, wouldn’t have it. Paranoia crept back into my mind like the imaginary spiders it told me had invaded my apartment. It wasn’t long before I started hearing the sounds of small, skittering spider legs.

It wasn’t half an hour later that I started to check the whole place. After that, I ended up vacuuming and cleaning the entire apartment, twice. My friends think I’m suffering from OCD, but that’s not it. I just can’t help but go through the place meticulously.

This time, like so many before, I found nothing, no webs, no spiders.

When I went to bed, I was still somewhat anxious. Finding nothing could mean there were no spiders around, but it could very well mean that I’d simply not found them.

Soon enough, my thoughts went in a different direction. What about that hole in the wall? Did it mean there were spiders inside?

I lay in bed, telling myself I was plain silly. There was no way spiders could dig, especially not through walls. Still, I felt the familiar rush of anxiety. My heart rate went up, and I started to feel dizzy like so many times before.

I must have laid in bed for at least an hour, occasionally shaking before I drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

I was woken up by noise all around me. As I lay in bed, it felt as if the walls around me had become alive. They were shaking and breathing. While I still tried to understand what was going on, I heard the sound of millions of tiny skittering legs. Then the walls burst open, and I was drowned under a wave of eight-legged horrors.

The moment I woke up I jumped off the bed, swatting and beating at my body before I realized it had all been a dream. I fell to the floor sobbing, hugging my body and cursing at my brain for conjuring up this nightmare.

I don’t remember how long it took me to calm down. Most of Sunday was a blur that I spend huddled up into blankets in the center of the living room. I was a shaking and shivering mess. One minute I told myself there were no spiders in the walls. The next I was listening for the tiniest sounds around me. I’m not sure if I even ate anything that day.

In the end, I must have passed out from sheer exhaustion on Sunday evening. When I woke up on Monday morning, I was mostly myself again.

I was still somewhat wary of the walls, but my panic attack had subsided. I guess my brain realized how silly it was to be afraid of them.

Somewhat tired and still scatterbrained I dropped my keys. They vanished behind a small cupboard in my hallway. Cursing at myself I crouched down to find them.

I reached out with my hand and felt around. Right at that moment, I felt something brush over it. I yelled up in surprise and pulled my arm back. Shock turned into absolute panic when I saw a spider sitting on my right arm.

I screamed, shook the arm and then started beating down at the spider with my left hand. I was out of it, hitting the arm over and over again, swatting to get rid of the spider. The moment it finally fell to the ground I stumped on it over and over again.

Only when nothing but a disgusting mush remained, did I rush to the bathroom. I let warm water run over my arm while scrubbing it desperately with a washcloth.

It was at this moment that I saw a tiny wound on my arm. At first, I told myself I was wrong. It had to be a mistake. I had scrubbed my arm too hard, nothing else.

After a while I couldn’t betray my mind anymore. There was absolutely no doubt:

It was a spider bite.

The moment I started attacking the spider, it must have bitten me.

My mind was running at lightning speed. What if it had been a poisonous spider? Was there poison pumping through my veins right at this moment?

I felt weird almost instantly. My heartbeat sped up, and I felt short of breath. The moment I stepped out of the bathroom I felt dizzy, so much that I had to lean against the wall for a moment.

In the hallway, I pushed the damned cupboard over, picked up the keys and rushed outside.

I needed fresh air, but most importantly there was a doctor’s office nearby. My body was shaking, and it felt as if my mind was slowing down. For a moment my vision seemed to go blurry.

I told myself it was my anxiety, a panic attack and that I had to calm down. There was this creeping voice in the back of my mind though, asking me “What if it’s poison? What if that spider was dangerous? What if you are dying right now? What then, Sandra?”

The first thing I remember after that is pacing back and forth at the doctor’s office. A nurse had hurried over to me, asking me what was wrong and telling me to calm down. I couldn’t stand still though. The moment I stopped, my heart rate went up, breathing became harder, and my arms and legs started to feel all tingly. No, I had to keep moving. Only after a while was I able to yell at her that I was bitten by a spider.

It took her a few moments to understand what was going on. Then she came back and gave me a small shot. She explained in a slow and soft voice that everything was going to be alright. Nothing bad was going to happen to me.

She sat me down and asked me if I remembered anything about the spider, like a mark on her. I told her I didn’t think so.

It was a few minutes later that the doctor came to see me. He assured me that there was no such thing as poisonous spiders here in Germany, at least not the lethal type. He even told me that the ones who actually were poisonous were rarely sighted in our area, if at all.

He took only a short look at my arm, smiled and told me nothing was wrong with it. The wound was small, and it looked like I’d only scratched it open myself. No sign of any poison. He prescribed me a sort of ointment that would help treat the wound and keep it free from infection.

What he was more concerned about was my mental state. He asked me if I was seeing a psychiatrist and if I was often suffering from episodes like this one. It wasn’t normal at all, not even when considering my arachnophobia.

I hated this type of talk ever since I was a little girl when my mom had dragged me from one psychiatrist to the next. I made a few excuses, ripped the recipe for the ointment from his hands and made my way out.

Once I’d gotten the ointment from a nearby apothecary I made my way back home.

When I opened the apartment door, it didn’t feel like home at all. It felt as if the place had been invaded by an invisible enemy that was lurking in the shadows.

I strode towards my bathroom, scanned each surface and then locked the door behind me. Once I felt safe, I started to administer the ointment. I know I used too much of it and bandaging up the arm was ridiculous. Still, it helped to calm me down, at least a bit.

When I still hadn’t been able to calm down by noon I gave my friend Lisa a call. I was pacing through my apartment as I waited for her to pick up. Lisa and I go back forever. We became friends back in middle school and have been hanging out ever since. We are even going to university together.

She and I couldn’t be more different. Lisa is the fun, outgoing type, while I’m an anxious introvert. The only thing we had in common was that we both smoked weed.

The moment she picked up I asked her if she had anything that could help me calm down. Maybe weed or maybe something else, something a bit stronger. I knew Lisa had a way of getting things. At first, she laughed at my freak-out over a mere spider bite. When I told her about my reaction though Lisa became serious. She said she’d come over later today and bring something that she was sure would help.

I stayed in the bathroom for a while longer, but then I finally risked making my way back to the living room and my laptop. At first, I went on YouTube, put on some music and watched a few random videos. Soon enough curiosity overcame me, and I looked up information about spider bites.

Oh god, the images I found. I was never one of those people who could look at gore, but what I saw there… I’m not sure what it was. It might have been an infected wound or something?

There was one thing I read that made me close the lid of the laptop in an instant. I read that spiders could lay eggs under human skin.

“That’s bullshit!” I said out loud.
“It’s an urban legend and nothing else. There’s no such thing. And even if, I’m in Germany, there’s no way we have anything like that here.”

When Lisa rang the doorbell, I almost jumped up.

“Jesus, what’s the matter with you?” she asked the moment I opened the door and she saw me.

“Can spiders lay eggs under human skin?”

“What the hell Sandra? What did you do, watch some shitty horror movie or something?”

“No, I read things on the internet, and-“

“Oh god,” she cut me off raising her hand, “that’s even worse. Don’t. Read. About. Things. On. The. Internet. Okay?”

“Yeah, but what if-“

“No buts! You’ll always find the worst cases online. I’m dead serious. A bump on the arm? You need an amputation. A slight headache? Dizziness? Brain tumor. It’s always the same. Rule number one, Sandra, especially for you, never google any symptoms online.”

“I know Lisa…”

“You’re fine silly girl, calm down, will you? Jesus, you’re a mess today.”

Lisa stayed over for almost two hours. She tried her hardest to tell me a couple of funny stories to take my mind off things. It helped, at least for a bit.

In the end, she’d brought me an unmarked container of pills. She told me they were anxiety pills that a friend of hers had given her.

“They’ll pretty much knock you out instantly, so be careful with them,” she’d said with a smile.

I told myself I’d wait till evening. If they’d really knock me out, it was a chance to get a good night’s sleep for once.

I put on a random Netflix show and tried to relax. While I watched a pretty cast of high school students talk about teenage woes, my mind started to wander.

Those things I’d read. Could they be real?

I pulled the bandages off my arm to have a look. I was scared of what I’d find and shivered before I removed the last layer. For a moment one of the gruesome images I’d seen popped up in my mind again.

What I saw was the complete opposite. It was a tiny, almost invisible swelling. There was nothing terrible about it at all. I almost laughed when I saw it.

When I pressed it for a bit some blood came out, and it stung a bit, but there was nothing weird about it. I started to tear at the corner of the skin for a bit. All it did was to make it sting more and increase the bleeding. After a while, I had to force myself to stop. I looked at what used to be a small wound and was now almost twice the size.

“Stop toying with it, you idiot,” I told myself.

While I put the bandages back on, I decided to take one of Lisa’s pills. Otherwise, I might start toying around with it yet again. I took out one, swallowed it and put the container back into my pocket. So much about waiting till evening, I thought.

It took about half an hour but I started to calm down, and soon I felt quiet, almost tired. I remember that I’d not eaten anything due to all my anxiety, but all I could think about was to lay down and rest. I told myself that I’d take a nap and eat something once I was awake again.

I’m not sure when exactly I’d fallen asleep, but it was already night time when I woke up again. I was all sweaty and suffering from a terrible headache. The moment I moved around in bed I felt exhausted and hot, almost as if I was burning up.

I made my way to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and took some Ibuprofen to fight the headache.

The moment I was about to go back to my bedroom, I noticed something strange. At first, I thought I imagined things, but then I saw something odd on my arm. It looked as if there was a bump below the bandages, all swollen up.

As I stared at it, the memory of a dream crept back into my mind. In the dream I had… no there had been something wrong with me. The moment I saw the bump on my arm again, memory flooded my mind.

I’d dreamed about spiders in my arms and legs, and being eaten alive by them. I clung to the sink, almost throwing up. I took another one of Lisa’s pills and told myself I should go back to bed, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t help it. I ripped the bandages off my arm and found a bump below. It was almost a sort of giant, pulsating blister. I gagged, and when I had a closer look, I saw something moving inside of it, below the skin.

I screamed up. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. I almost bumped into the door frame on my way towards the kitchen. I had dark spots in front of my eyes as I ran down the hallway and the moment I made it to the kitchen I slumped down on the floor. I felt dizzy, and my whole body seemed to be pulsating now.

The moment I could move again, I grabbed hold of a knife from the counter. It almost slipped from my hand twice while I stared at the disgusting bump on my arm. Something was definitely moving inside of it.

I didn’t hesitate another moment before I cut into it.

The pain was much worse than I’d thought. As the blood ran down my arm in warm gushes, I saw something else, something much, much worse.

First, it was tiny white things that came flooding forward with the blood. Then I saw the small spiders that came crawling out of my body.

The knife clattered from my hand, and I could only stare at it in horror and disbelief. The blood, the eggs and of course the small spiders that vanished below the skin and dug into my flesh again.

I fought myself up, put the arm into the sink and poured hot water over it. I clenched my teeth, but soon enough I could only scream in pain as the hot water scalded my arm. I hoped, no I prayed that it would wash out or burn up all those tiny spiders.

After a long minute of almost unendurable pain, I stopped and looked at the arm again. There was still movement, and I could make out tiny tunnels inside of my flesh.

I used the knife once more, this time to cut deeper. After a while, I didn’t even feel the pain anymore. I was all dedication. Dedication to finding the spiders inside of my arm. The more I cut, the more tunnels I seemed to discover. I carefully carved away the infected flesh. Tiny junks of flesh and piece of skin fell from my arm and onto the ground. I saw the eggs, the spiders, the tunnels. Only once I was sure none of it was left, did I stop.

By now I was shaking from a mixture of pain and exhaustion. My whole body felt cold, sweaty and tingly.

Putting the bandages back on was nothing short of torture. My right arm was now nothing but a hot, pulsating mass of pain. I blacked out at least once while I put the bandages back on. Around and around I put them. Once done, I noticed the deep gush I’d left in my own arm.

I felt sick, anxious and scared when I realized what I’d done. I was still bleeding, but had scalding my own flesh somehow lessened the bleeding? I had no idea.

I fought my way back to the bedroom. My arm was hurting so much it was unreal. Each step, hell even the slightest shift sent waves of pain through me.

Once back in my bedroom I couldn’t help but think about spiders again. What if they were still inside of me? Could it be? What if they were crawling through my arm right now, digging their tunnels deeper inside of my body?

That moment I felt another surge of anxiety and panic coming to me and took another one of Lisa’s pills. After that, I lay in bed for at least an hour, but I couldn’t sleep. There was the pain, but there was another thought.

What if that spider really came from inside of the wall? What if that spider had dug through the wall to get here? It would be so easy for its young to dig through flesh, right? Oh god, what if I’m actually right?

Still lying in bed with the low light of the lamp next to me, I started to take the bandages off once more. They were wet and sticky with half-dried blood and almost glued to my flesh. Would there be spiders again? Oh please let there be none, please, I prayed.

What I revealed was nothing but a gruesome mess of bloody flesh and whitish, scalded snippets of skin. There were no tunnels, no eggs, and no spiders. There was nothing.

I sat there shivering. Had I imagined things? Had I just seen something that wasn’t there and then done all… this? I didn’t know anymore.

I lay down again, but I’d barely closed my eyes when I felt an itch on my leg. My heart skipped a beat, and I was wide awake.

Had I brushed against it just now or was it something else? I turned on the night lamp and scanned my leg. There it was, on the side of my thigh, another bump.

Don’t tell me… oh god. What the hell, what the hell, what the hell! There’s no way! The moment I touched it though, I could feel the movement below.

It took me long, painful minutes to get back to the kitchen.

This time I cut without any second thought. I brought the knife down, and the moment the skin ripped open spiders started to spill out of me. I tried to hit them and swat them away before they were able to dig into my flesh again, but they just… vanished?

Had there ever been any? What if there are no spiders inside my leg? I have a fever, right? What if this is a dream? Is any of this even real at all?

But what if? I’m so sweaty and itchy all over. My body is trembling, and I am starting to feel numb. Are they going for my nerves? What if they do it so I can’t feel them anymore? So I think that I am okay?

Has it always been so cold in here?

Why’s there no pain anymore?

I’ve been typing this for a while now. I still have the knife, and I’m still digging. There’s sweat, wait no, blood, all around me?

I still see the spiders from time to time. Whenever I do, I cut. I feel like I’m slowly getting them. Most of them are in my right leg. So I’ve been busy. Digging and typing.

I feel like there’s few of them left anymore. That tingly sensation in my leg is almost gone now. By now I’m almost searching for them blindly. I’ve cut here and there, at random. My vision has gone too blurry to see them clearly.

I’ve cut so much. So much work. So tired. The skin is all tangled up and in stripes.

The blood still brings them forward. There’s so much of it now, but that’s good isn’t it? It means that a lot of them aren’t in my body anymore, right?

I can’t think all too clearly anymore. I’m a bit confused and exhausted, tired.

I think I’m going to rest for a bit.

She was Perfect…

The first time I saw her was two months ago, while she was grocery shopping.

She was not your typical pretty girl. You couldn’t really call her charming nor attractive. No, instead she was a bit mousy, a bit shaggy and scrawny. To me, that was perfect, exactly what I was looking for.

Her whole demeanor spoke volumes. She was a loner, an outcast, just like me. She dodged other people at the store, kept her eyes low, and her voice broke whenever she had to talk to someone.

It was only natural that I followed her.

We were on the bus only for a couple of minutes. She didn’t even notice I was there. It was just a couple dozen meters before we reached her home. It was a small house, a bit old, a bit rundown. How very fitting, I thought and laughed a bit.

Finding out her name wasn’t too hard and once I had that, I had a field day on the internet. Of course she had a Facebook profile, and of course, it was connected to Instagram. Both profiles were almost entirely empty. There were only a handful post and a couple of friends. Guess she wasn’t the social type.

Where I struck real gold was her LinkedIn profile. She was a web developer, working remotely, most likely from her own home. Just my luck, this whole thing was getting better and better.

Whenever work allowed it, I was near her house or stalking her on one the few trips she made. I did so for weeks.

I wanted as much information on her as possible. I had to find out when she got up, when she went to bed when she went out grocery shopping and anything else.

After a while, I’d gotten a steady grip on her daily routine. She wasn’t an early bird. I often noticed the first movement at her window around the ten-hour mark. At night lights stayed on till two, sometimes three in the morning. She went grocery shopping every late Wednesday afternoon and went to get her mail on Saturday morning.

There wasn’t much else to her life. No one ever came visiting her. There were no friends, no lovers, and no relatives. Hell, she didn’t even interact with any of her neighbors.

It was a week or so ago that something changed. By then I’d prepared everything. Friday was supposed to be the big day. I’d even taken the week off work to solely focus on her.

It was on Wednesday when I noticed a change in her routine. I was nearby, hidden, waiting for her to get ready for grocery shopping, as she did every week.

Nothing happened though. No doors opened, no one left, nothing, but solitude.

After half an hour I grew antsy, after a full one I was restless. Was she having a day off? But that didn’t fit her at all, she was so meticulous about time and routine.

I waited, but as the minutes passed on and on, I couldn’t see a hint of activity at the house. I started to get worried. What if something happened? For a moment I wondered if she’d somehow snuck out, but there was no way I’d miss her.

No, something must have happened. Maybe she was sick? What if it was something worse though? By god, what if she fell down the stairs or even worse, did something to herself? For all I knew, she could very well be the depressed type and… No, don’t think about this. Shit, I cursed, almost screamed up. That couldn’t be happing.

Finally, I decided there was no other way. I walked up to her door and rang the doorbell. I could pretend to be asking questions about home improvement or that I was doing a sort of survey. I put a story together in my head. As I rang the bell, I hoped that she’d open the door. To see this mousy, little face, the shaggy hair, and the scrawny body. Again though, nothing happened, and the door stayed close. Even after I’d rang the bell countless times.

I was all pins and needles as I walked off again. I had to go back I told myself, but I couldn’t just break down the front door. I thought about what I could do. All the while my mind started to be filled with horrible images, and I had to fight the urge to turn back.

I walked for a bit and then approached the small building from a different side. From here it wasn’t hard to get to the building without being noticed. There were enough trees and bushes nearby to hide me from view. Getting in would be even easier. The house was old, and she hadn’t invested in an alarm system or anything like that.

I was in within minutes.

The place was in pure and utter chaos. For a moment dread crept up inside of me. Had someone broken in? I rushed through the hallway, looking desperately for signs of a break-in. Soon enough though, I realized that this chaos wasn’t a recent thing. No, she seemed to be untidy. Well, that was an understatement, the place was a pigsty.

As I walked through the place, I found heaps of dirty laundry and trash bags. The kitchen counter was hidden under stacks of dirty dishes and empty take-out boxes. Her desk was a disgusting, sticky mess. The whole place had a sour, almost rancid smell to it. It was nothing short of disgusting.

There was one thing I couldn’t find in-between all this mess: her.

There was no hint in the kitchen or bedroom, neither in the living room nor in the bathroom.

I went through the whole place, checked the upstairs and even had a short look at the attic, nothing.

“Shit, where the hell are you, Maria?”

As if to answer my question, a low cry, or better a moan, sounded from somewhere. At first, I didn’t know where it came from, but then I found the basement door. It was cracked open a bit, and I could see a faint light coming from downstairs.

I made my way down the stairs one step at a time. My dear Maria must be down there, I thought smiling. Maybe she’d a bit of an accident and fell down the stairs? That moan though, she must still be alive. I felt the fire course through my veins as each step brought me closer to her. Beads of sweat appeared on my forehead due to the hot rush of anticipation. With each step the smile, no the grin on my face turned wider.

As long as she was still alive, all was well.

I was almost shaking with excitement when I made it down the stairs. Finally, I saw a figure at the bottom, a woman. Oh god, there she was! She was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall and the moment I could see her face I realized it wasn’t Maria.

“What the-” I started, but broke off when the woman’s eyes flashed open.

Her face looked exhausted, but when she saw me her eyes grew wide, and her face became one of desperation.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, “oh god, please, you have to help me.”

I could barely hear her, due to the low volume of her voice.

“Where’s Maria,” I asked her.

“My sister’s over there, in that room, she, she…”

She didn’t finish the sentence. I was alarmed instantly. I rushed over into the next room. The first thing I noticed was the greasy old bed, covered in wire. I didn’t get to even wonder about that, because then I saw Maria. She was on the floor, not moving, in a sea of her own blood.

It couldn’t be real. I told myself she was unconscious, that it wasn’t her blood, that she was still alive. The moment I saw her face and her dead eyes though, all those thoughts were evaporated. There was no doubt. She was dead.

And I was furious.

She’d been taken from me. My perfect Maria. Well, I thought, at least I’d thought she was perfect. I didn’t have a clue about this so-called sister. I didn’t know what was going on here and I didn’t care. All that mattered to me was that Maria was gone.

After a while, I got up and turned back to Maria’s sister.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I, I-” she started but broke up again, shaking her head, breathing heavily.

“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?” I screamed at her.

“I got free,” she finally whispered. “My sister, Maria, she was crazy, I know, no one will believe me, but she was! She chained me to the bed over there to make sure I’d tell no one about what she’d done back-“

“I don’t care about any of that. What did YOU do to HER?”

“The knife, I stabbed her, but I didn’t want to kill her. I swear, I didn’t want to…”

I could see the tears welling up in her eyes. She was crying now.

Knife, she’d said. It took me a few moments, but I saw it still lying in the pool of blood that had formed around Maria. For one more moment, I looked at her face, than at the knife. A simple kitchen knife, crude and ugly. I started to get furious again. Almost picked up the knife to exact revenge, but I told myself to calm down.

Instead, I turned around and smiled at her. For a moment she didn’t react, but then she looked up and returned my weak smile.

“Please, the police, please,” she whispered.

I went forward still smiling. Only now did I see the scar tissue all over her body. I saw the long cuts on her ankles. Oh Maria, you too tried your best, didn’t you?

“Don’t worry, I am going to take good care of you.”

Her smile vanished the moment I started to use my hands. I didn’t use them to help her, not to treat her wounds, no I used them to hurt her. I couldn’t use the knife laying in the pool of blood, and I didn’t have any of my perfect little tools with me. All I had was my hands, but I used them with the delicacy and the fury of a well-trained hunter. A hunter who’d just lost his prey.

She couldn’t even scream anymore. She was so exhausted, her throat so roughed up, that all she brought out were quiet moans and squeaks. All the while I used my hands to carefully work my way up and down her body, slowly turning her inside out. I tried my hardest not to damage anything that would kill her too soon.

In the end, she lasted another half hour. Very impressive, I thought, even though I’d held back quite a bit. It must have been tough, having been chained up down here, being tortured by your own sister.

In the end, I almost couldn’t be mad at her anymore for killing my prey. No, I had to thank her.

After all, she was able to satiate my hunger, at least for a while.