Some people claim feeling any “dark emotions” is bad for us.

There are whole industries surrounding the positive mindset philosophies in all of their forms, and many gurus in those fields have walked away rich.

While it is true there is good that can come from having a positive outlook, that’s not all there is to life. Sometimes we suffer traumas and grief because life gets out of our control.

The dark emotions we feel are there for a reason, though that reason might not be apparent on the surface. They are there to point out something we need to pay attention to.

Taking things from the physical perspective.

If we look at it from a physical view, pain is there to let us know when something has gone wrong. It might be a cut, an infection, or a splinter. It could be cancer or a cracked tooth. One way or another, though, the pain shows itself because it’s the body’s way of pointing out something being incorrect in the body.

Anger, jealousy, heartbreak, loss... these things have a reason to exist, as well. They have a purpose, and it’s our duty to track down the cause. Just like any physical pain, we have to follow the trail of breadcrumbs to see the “why” of it being there.

I think anger, for instance, is a tool. It’s there to give strength to foster changes necessary to make things better. Righteous anger has been a potent catalyst for change in society as a whole.

There are times where, for a while, that anger becomes directed toward our own selves for “allowing ourselves” to go through the things we have.

In that sort of case, it’s stemming from a form of grief.

It’s okay to feel it. It’s part of the healing process.

Traumas, I believe, follow the same pathways as grief. It might be we are grieving for the way we used to be, the person we were or who we could have been had the traumatic event not occurred.

It’s complex, and it’s part of what makes us “humans trying” instead of “human being.”

I’ve been through a lot of abusive situations in my life. One ex-wife, for instance, spent five years verbally and physically abusing me. It took that long before I could find a safe way to exit the situation, because I feared for my life the whole time.

Even after finally escaping, though, I spent years in fear and anger, not knowing how to find a path of healing from it all.

I was angry with her, of course, but even more so at myself. I directed a lot of rage at the person I was, because I allowed myself to get into the trouble to begin with.

I think a lot of folks can relate to that self-loathing. It’s trauma, wearing the mask of grief.

The roads traumas take become familiar.

Even after the dust inside settles and you think you’re healed from it all, it can still rear its ugly head and bite you when you’re not expecting it.

When traumas occur, there are pathways laid out in the psyche. These paths or roads are sort of like those you take when you go home from work or school.

They’re familiar, almost comforting (even if it sounds strange to say traumas can feel comfortable). Just like with that road home, it’s easy to be lulled, and fall asleep a little as you go along.

You’re driving down the road and suddenly you’re home (or in your trauma) without realizing how you got there.

It happened because the path is so familiar.

Traumas and griefs never heal. They merely scab over, waiting for the time when we’re exposed to the things that caused them to begin with. When that happens, we’re right back into it all with the fury it always had.

A positive perspective can be good, but it’s not everything.

While I agree being positive is a good thing, and can assist us in certain ways, it, like anger, is a tool in our workshop. It’s there when we need it, but you can’t carry it with you all the time.

We still need to pay attention to the things in the darkness that lie in wait. We must be vigilant against them so we recognize when it’s happening as it crops up.

If we don’t, we risk living those griefs all over again.

It’s okay to feel sorry for ourselves for a while. We need to acknowledge that the person we were before the traumas occurred will never come back again. That being is gone, but we can move forward with the experiences. We can learn from them and take care we never allow ourselves to fall prey to those things again.

Maybe with these things in mind, we can all find new ways home.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

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I don’t know how long I have been standing here, or what brought me to this place, but I am grateful for it, nonetheless.

I am grateful, because I can see him, as he eats his dinner alone in the small café. Even this far across the street, with the dregs of the city and a dirty window pane between, I can still recognize him.

How can I not? He’s the one who killed me.

My cover had been blown; I knew it as sure as I knew my smile was loaded and ready to go.

I had been foolish and careless, the best way to get yourself in trouble when you are under cover. I knew where my target was. I knew his name and his face and was ready to go through the kitchen into the living room of the house to complete what I had been assigned months before.

They all had gotten to know me as a low-rent drug pusher – I was good at making that little trick of the trade work in my favor. It was one of the reasons I was given the assignment to begin with.

I was dressed in the usual scum-bag clothes they had become accustomed to seeing me in, and when the guard my target always had on staff saw me, he waved me on in with a smile.

When I saw the smile drain from his face, I knew something had gone terribly wrong.

Such a rookie mistake, one that never should have happened, but I had been distracted by that pretty new officer assigned to the front desk. You know how it is; the right smile in the right moment can lead you to your doom.

The guard was looking at my waist and, when I looked down as well, I knew there was no going back.

There was my ID, hanging out of my pocket. Stupid regulations requiring all officers to have their ID showing at all times when in the precinct, combined with my foolish moment at the desk, led to the guard shouting a warning that a cop was in the house.

Hell broke loose with all its fire coming down on my head and I knew I was done.

If only I had my gun…

The bully boys got me to the ground pretty quickly, though I think I did enough damage to at least one of them to make their day a memorable one. The butt of the gun put my lights out before I could say a word.

The room I woke in was cold and dark. I realized quick it was the walk-in freezer the cooks used. They stored everything in there before making the meals for the small army the boss had around him most of the time.

That man, DiNardo, was there in the room with me, staring embers into my eyes. My head ached a little too much to really care.

I was seated in a small chair, with my arms tied behind and my lower extremities strapped to the legs of it. The man was sitting before me, with my ID loosely hanging from his hands. He kept making it sway as he held it. I couldn’t help but stare at it.

The taste of blood was heavy on my tongue and I could tell at least one of my teeth had been cracked to bits by the gun that slammed into my face. The pain of it was just as strong as the ache in my head.

“You failed me,” he said, finally. His voice was loud in the enclosed space. “I do not like to be disappointed.”

“Me either. Why don’t we just call it even?” It was hard to speak, but I knew I was damned either way.

DiNardo stood, the chair creaking as his weight was taken off of it. He was not an obese man, but his large frame was still a little more than the small wood frame could handle.

He stepped to the door and motioned to someone outside. I could see one of his lieutenants handing him something before DiNardo returned to stand before me. The rope hanging from his hand was thin, but looked strong enough.

“I guess I will see you in hell, DiNardo.” I spat at him with everything I could muster up; watching the glob of spittle and blood was over his nice suit and tie was more rewarding than I thought it would be.

I was still laughing when the rope went around my neck. “You’ll get there first,” was the last thing I heard before the lights went out again.

So now, here I stand. Is “stand” the right word for it? I don’t really have legs anymore, at least as far as I can tell. But it’s a close enough approximation.

I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t even know for sure what I am anymore, but I am certain of one thing.

I will make him pay, any way I can.

I might even be able to laugh in his face again, one last time, as I drag him to Hell.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

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Want art that’s actually art? Hand-painted, zero AI, made by a human who has been doing this a while. Profile pictures, story art, book covers—if you can imagine it, I can paint it. Drop a comment, DM, or email ira@originalworlds.com

Let me start this off with the disclaimer that I, personally, am disabled. Therefore, my bias toward a subject like this will probably come out in force.

While the debate within the United States regarding what should be considered acceptable when it comes to minimum wages goes on, there are subsets within that debate that seem to be glossed over, or forgotten.

One of those cases is in regard to how much disabled Americans can be paid at a minimum.

It’s couched within the Fair Labor Standards Act (or FLSA), which puts strictures in place relating to how employers are allowed to pay their workers, depending on that worker’s situation.

As an example, if a young person, still within the education system, is hired at a business, that business is allowed to pay them less than what’s considered “minimum wage,” especially if that student is part of a vocational program. They’re also allowed to pay them less if they work within the retail environment, or agriculture and places of higher education.

It also allows for employers to pay less wages to those whose performance is impacted by physical or mental impairments, including those relating to age or injuries.

In order for a business to pay those workers less, all they need to do is request Certificates from the Department of Labor, which are not that difficult to obtain.

While this part of the FLSA was designed to ensure disabled workers would still be hirable by businesses, giving them further opportunities to work, it seems to me a deeply flawed and unfair practice.

Some organizations, especially charitable, non-profit ones, take extreme advantage of this particular setup. As an example, Goodwill has been shown to pay their disabled employees as little as 22 cents per hour in recompense for the work they do. That wouldn’t even pay for the gas to get the employee to the location, let alone be something to try to live off of.

It all puts into mind the flaws within the system. Businesses already get a lot of tax breaks when it comes to servicing disabled people. The IRS, for instance, has the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, giving employers quite a break when it comes to hiring people within these target demographics.

They also have access to the Disabled Access Credit every year, in which small businesses with less than 30 employees and earning less than $1 million per year can get a non-refundable money drop, if they have accessibility in mind.

According to the IRS page relating to the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, they designate businesses can qualify for it for each employee who falls under the following categories:

An employer may claim the WOTC for an individual who is certified as a member of any of the following targeted groups under section 51 of the Code:

• the formerly incarcerated or those previously convicted of a felony;

• recipients of state assistance under part A of title IV of the Social Security Act (SSA);

• veterans;

• residents in areas designated as empowerment zones or rural renewal counties;

• individuals referred to an employer following completion of a rehabilitation plan or program;

• individuals whose families are recipients of supplemental nutrition assistance under the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008;

• recipients of supplemental security income benefits under title XVI of the SSA;

• individuals whose families are recipients of state assistance under part A of title IV of the SSA; and

• individuals experiencing long-term unemployment.

So, as you can see, there are already things in place that make it “easier” for businesses to hire employees who would otherwise be overlooked. It behooves them to think twice about rejecting that application, because they can, in the end, actually benefit quite a bit from the hire.

Unfortunately, because so many of the aspects of the Minimum Wage debate are being vocalized, the fact this particular part of the debate is lost is saddening to me. There is a need for change within the whole environment, when it comes to what can be considered a “living wage.” However, there are literally people working here and now within what would be classed as near slave-wages, and few seem to talk about it.

Meanwhile, employers take advantage of these tax breaks and Certificates in order to legally - wrongfully? - get away with it.

It is, after all, Federal law, and we all know how much businesses love to follow that to the letter. Right?

So, maybe in the future, as you talk about what changes you’d like to see happen, let’s not forget about the ones who are so deeply impacted by this in the here and now.

Some of us don’t have the voices to say it aloud.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

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Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

Want art that’s actually art? Hand-painted, zero AI, made by a human who has been doing this a while. Profile pictures, story art, book covers—if you can imagine it, I can paint it. Drop a comment, DM, or email ira@originalworlds.com

Mother washed my sins
Water cold like a knife
Said the pain would save me

It just kept me quiet

Every hymn a chain
Tied around my chest
She said it’s best

I learned to pray
It just took some bleeding
Then I learned to kneel by breaking

Fathers hands a scripture
Pressed into my skin
He called it holy

I had no other word

I carved an altar
With a razor’s touch
It gave me the chapel

I never had

Hallowed be my wounds
They’re the only gospel
I can believe

Listen to the song below. Yes. 100% me. Me singing, me playing, etc:

THANK YOU FOR READING!

If you enjoyed today’s journey into Original Worlds, there are ways to keep the daily stories flowing:

🚨 Subscribe right now and I will instantly send you a FREE full-length horror novel! It doesn’t matter if you’re free or paid. EVERYONE gets this book!🚨

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Want to dive deeper into Original Worlds? If you love these daily stories and want to unlock the full cinematic experience, here are two ways to support the madness:

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☕ Bribe the Voices in My Head

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👑Give Me Everything

Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

Want art that’s actually art? Hand-painted, zero AI, made by a human who has been doing this a while. Profile pictures, story art, book covers—if you can imagine it, I can paint it. Drop a comment, DM, or email ira@originalworlds.com

Do you realize what you have done?

Those words haunt me, taunt me in my sleep, my every waking moment. I hear them echoing down the corridors I walk, calling to me from every alleyway I pass. I cannot get away from them. I cannot hide from them.

They encircle me and enfold me, and before them I am powerless to do more than run away, the guilt biting at my heels.

But the words have no more meaning to me than my name. No more meaning to me than the strangers faces I pass every step of the way. I am a man apart, a man forsaken, and I do not even understand why.

Do you realize what you have done?

“No,” I answer back. “How can I? I do not even know who I am.”

I know I am a haunted man. I know that the signs and wonders I could claim to do with a mere thought, in my younger days, have ceased, and that I am perhaps nothing more, now, than a cackling idiot in a rest home, awaiting my next change and turn to the sunlight.

I don’t know for sure, you see, because I think I left my sanity somewhere in the streets that are silent now, and perhaps all that I see is nothing more than mere flights of fancy in my eyes.

I see people around me as I walk these streets. These desolate avenues that carry no more commerce than the dust that flies in the wind. Dust that will be bought and sold by merchants of passion and glory that we all thought we could have been.

But no longer.

No longer can we claim to be victorious and virtuous; we’re more like vacuous and drooling, babbling to each other, those who are left, about the days gone by, and wondering if mankind will survive.

I am confused, and lost within my own mind, and I am unsure of where to walk to next. Each street that I pass by, each house an empty shell, and there seems nowhere left to go to find a breath of solace in this desiccated and fried world I have been left upon.

Perhaps I will just sit and wait for the moment of blessed release, sit and be comfortable in the shade, with my hat pulled down and cigarette in my hand, unlit, and waiting for someone to come by with a match.

Do you realize what you have done?

I cannot face what I have done, I think, because what I have done is more than I can bear.

The people I pass by... all these faces of strangers to me, how can they leer at me so accusingly? How can they claim with their voiceless blame that I am the one to do this to them? Children gather around me and throw stones.

Always I think they will be the killing blow. Always I think that this time, this time they will hit. This time they will free me from the endless stream of accusations and lies. But they always miss.

They throw the biggest they can grasp their dirty fingers around, and fling them with all their little might, but never can they hit. Isn’t that proof of my innocence? Isn’t that enough for them?

Innocence? Innocence is nothing more than a viewpoint.

Everyone is guilty of something, sometime. No one can claim they have no blame. No, not even I, who cannot even think straight. Maybe that’s the proof of my guilt?
But guilty of what?

Do you realize what you have done?

No! I do not realize, and I do not want to listen anymore!

So I walk on, I abandon my hopes of a murky shadow in a corner to hide my face, to keep me away from what has become an endless stream of wake, walk, sleep, wake..

The streets are growing dark now, and I know that night approaches. Yet another night with no answers, and a day filled with the gleeful chittering of children, mocking me as I walk.

The night brings with it its own horrors now. Now that... what? Now that things have changed in the world?

Now that the world has passed through the strange travails that beset it for so long. Now that the way of life we were always so proud of, so set to protect, and so desperate to hold on to, has gone the way of the dodo, into eternal night.

Yes, that was a bad time. I remember now, not many survived those days. They seem so long ago, and I guess they must be, given the state of decay I see around me now, but it seems such a short time ago. Seems like only yesterday, really, when I...

When I did what I did.

Do you realize what you have done?

Perhaps I do, a little. I remember, a little, that the night does seem to bring its own answers to questions I would rather be left unasked.

Nightfall, and with it comes the sound of insects, skittering out around the deserted streets. Insects grown larger because of the largess they have found in the corpses that have been left behind, corpses left to lie unburied, unknown, and unmourned.

How many? An amazing amount, given the way the world passed through its trouble, given the way that I saw it all happen from that control room so long ago.

Voices, voices calling out the orders, calling out the time and levels and strange symbolism grasped in the mathematics that were required to push us away from that horror that awaited us.

Voices calling out for the buttons to be pushed, the levels to rise, the power to flow, and then, the final button, the final solution intended to save us all from the fate that we had been sealed with.

The last hope. The last clarion call of heroics and the indomitable will of the human spirit.

And that final button, laying under my hands, ready to be pressed, begging for the pressure of my hand to complete its destiny, to become what it had been intended to be since its manufacture…

To be an object in motion.

Much like this world that I now stand upon. This world of terrible agony and deep sorrow. And regret, yes. Great regret at the fact that we had no choice, and in the end? That it made no difference whatsoever to the fate of mankind.

Yes, the night brings answers with it, as I look into the sky and see nothing but blackness. No stars twinkling in their beautiful mystery, no more guiding lights to bring the sailors home. No more light of the moon to make lovers weep. No more lovers.

And the voices, calling from the chambers of the earth, calling from the valleys and hills, crying out in agony, calling out in one loud voice to me, saying, Do you realize what you have done? But they do not know, nor will they ever, in their sad and untimely change of bodies, in their endless scream, that I had no choice in what I did.

Yes, I remember it clearly now. As clear as the black night that has come across me once again, on this walk of mine.

The dark star. The black death that was edging its way closer and closer to us, and assuring the destruction of all of us, the instantaneous burst of desolation that was sure to happen. It had come as a shock to us all, those of us who were in the know, as we used to claim. Those who had a stake and a chance to perhaps save us one more time, from the unknown.

They called me in, they briefed me on what was to come, showed the trajectory of that black death coming to us, and I saw in only a moments time that it would not miss. That it was going to happen, and that there would be nothing we could do to make it go away. Nothing we could do to make it shift into another path, and save us all.

Still... there was a chance. There always is a chance, when the human spirit is involved. When that monstrous and powerful will is put to the task of ensuring its survival.

And so, the plan.

The plan. What a mighty and horrific word that could be, a blessing and a curse at the same time, when it is placed in the hands of the good and the bad. Which were we, I wonder? Which would the infinite deem us worthy of? A place among those who valiantly tried, or those fools who did not listen to reason?

A little of both, I think. A little of both was in us all on that day in that brightly lit, endlessly loud, control room. The voices calling out, screaming orders, shouting percentages and figures and one voice calling above them all, one voice calling out…

Do you realize what you have done?

… that there was a problem, and to stop the countdown, stop the countdown, stop the...

But that mechanical part, that wonderful machine that was my body, already moving forward, already pressing ahead in its motion to complete its destiny, to do what it had been born to do, to move. The button underneath had no chance. It was mashed into itself, pressed into itself, turned into that position that would make it all come to life.

Come to life. Go to death.

No difference, in the end. No change in status, no deliverance from the darkness. Just a flash of light, and the voices calling out and calling out and calling out, echoing throughout my brain, What have you done?

Answers to questions better left unasked come in the night, indeed, and I know that I am helpless before the onslaught of memory and dream, memory and reality, and memory and what is now the broken remains of this endlessly desolate, destroyed planet of ours.

Did we shift?

Did we sidestep into that separate reality, the way we thought we would? The way the insane amount of mathematics and physics showed that we should? Did we avert one disaster, only to cause another?

The answer to that is simple.

Simple, because I simply have to look up, to find that question blatantly answered, loud and clear. Yes, a shift did happen. But to where we thought we would end up? No, to another, perhaps one or two steps away.

So tiny in the sight of man, so small on the scale of what we had accomplished over the millennia we had been around. And yet, large enough by far on the quantum scale to send us far, far, into a reality that should not be.

How many days have I wandered, now? How many times have I walked these streets, the faces surrounding me, the ghosts of what we had been, what we were, and what we were to become, all of them at once calling out to me, blaming me, accusing me of my heinous crime against them all.

I am a guilty man, marked with the blood of an entire species. No. More than that. Of an entire planet. All life, everything changed in that one moment, that one infinitely long second, when that simple finger of a man created it all.

Ghosts… Voices…

Do you realize what you have done?

Yes. In the end I do know what I have done. Perhaps tomorrow, with the light of day, I can forget.

Even for a moment. An infinite moment, finger in the air above the button. When one man created it all.

I know what I have done.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

If you enjoyed today’s journey into Original Worlds, there are ways to keep the daily stories flowing:

🚨 Subscribe right now and I will instantly send you a FREE full-length horror novel! It doesn’t matter if you’re free or paid. EVERYONE gets this book!🚨

📖 Claim My Free Horror Novel

Want to dive deeper into Original Worlds? If you love these daily stories and want to unlock the full cinematic experience, here are two ways to support the madness:

☕ Drop a tip in the Ko-Fi Jar: Fuel the creative chaos! As a thank you, any tip automatically unlocks a 1-month VIP pass to my paid tier.

☕ Bribe the Voices in My Head

🌌 Upgrade to a Paid Subscription: Want to just live here? Get full, permanent access to Author Readings, Special Episodes, full-cast audio with music scores, deep lore, and my embarrassing gushing.

👑Give Me Everything

Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

Want art that’s actually art? Hand-painted, zero AI, made by a human who has been doing this a while. Profile pictures, story art, book covers—if you can imagine it, I can paint it. Drop a comment, DM, or email ira@originalworlds.com

You’re not the first to come through those doors, you know…

Many have entered into these halls with the thoughts that they were safe, they were going to be fine when the morning light came. Yet their voices have fallen silent.

I wonder, my dear friend, do you think you’re safe? Do you think you’re going to be fine when the dawn breaks over the horizon and the new day begins?

Or will you, like many others before you, find yourself lost in the halls here, doomed to wander throughout eternity?

Like that poor lost soul there.

You see her? She’s right there. Well, perhaps your eyes are not opened enough yet for her to be clear, but I bet if you were to pay attention, those hackles on the back of your neck would be telling you she’s nearby.

You might want to move aside. She’s walking through the hall now, and her touch can be… cold.

Here. Let’s go into the library. It’s a place I have always considered safe, though in this place that’s a relative term.

There’s a book right there on the table. Can you pass it to me?

Thank you.

Now, dear one, I must warn you. There are things you will hear that will be disturbing. They will make you, perhaps, wonder about your existence, about the things that you hold most sacred.

They might even make you a little afraid.

That’s okay. Fear is not something dangerous. It’s there for a reason. It’s there to tell you when something is wrong, when something is waiting just beyond the shadows, waiting to reach out and touch you with the icy embrace of death when you least expect it.

Fear is, itself, not dangerous at all.

No, it’s the things men do when reacting to their fear that are dangerous.

Fear can, indeed, be useful. It’s there as a survival instinct. The groaning in your gut when a shadow is passing over you… is it there because of some deep fear of the dark? Was that fear left there, passed down through the generations of your ancestors who huddled together inside the cave as the howling wind and cackling wolves paced about their home?

Is that all it really is? Jumping at shadows?

Or is that shadow actually the ebony cloak of death incarnate, come to drag you beyond the void from whence none return?

The shadows are real. The dread coursing through your veins is real, too., and it is a beacon to those who are waiting just beyond the dark, slavering over their moment to come. Their moment to feed…

Those fleeting moments of joy are all the creatures of the night have to hold on to.

Can we not sympathize with them as they are doomed to walk through eternity without ever knowing the reality of a human touch, that hesitant second when an agonizing decision must be made, and both choices are devastating?

Yes, even the darklings, the creatures of the dank and decay, have to deal with such moments and, we should ask ourselves, dear friend, if they are monsters in spite of those untenable choices, or if, in reality, it is we who are the denizens of darkness.

After all, every moment of our lives are spent based on making those same choices, are they not?

Yes, sometimes decisions are horrible, and the terrifying repercussions of them can last an eternity.

What most humans don’t think about—what they avoid thinking about—is the fact from the moment of their birth, they are on their way to the yawning grave.

Every breath taken, every heartbeat, is one more check mark on the tally of life, and all lead to the inexorable moment when the veil of darkness enshrouds the mind and the spirit is loosed from the body, set free on the shores of that ocean all are destined to cross.

Why fear that which all of humanity has gone through? Why be afraid of the very places our ancestors have long ago walked and our descendants are inevitably already making their way towards, perhaps before they are even a gleam in the eye?

When all must walk on that particular path of the unknown, is there really reason to fear?

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Helping a young elf get through a bit of growing pains—especially if that elf is a punk with more weight on her shoulders than spikes—can give you a lot to chew on, and it’s been with me for a week now.

I almost walked past the fire escape on the second floor, but the light was wrong.

Too silver. Too still.

When I leaned out, Chloe was sitting on the grating in bare feet, holding one of her jacket studs like she was trying to decide whether to put it back or throw it into the alley.

She knew I was there. She told me once, with those long Elven ears of hers she could hear a footstep 2 floors away, even with The White Stripes pushing through her speakers.

Her ear twitched a little, but she said nothing, staring at the silver stud pinched between her fingers, rolling it slowly, over and over.

I’ve seen Chloe hurting before, though she did her best to put on a “fighting front.” You get to know things better, though, if you spend even a little time with her. She’s not a bad kid... just going through a lot.

Kid. It’s such a strange way to put things for a being who is over 130 years old and has seen more than I ever have, but that’s just the awkward teens for her people.

It took me only a minute of watching her through the opened window to know she was maybe not in trouble, but maybe also didn’t really want to be alone.

So, I climbed through the window, the fire escape giving its best groan under my feet as I stepped closer to her.

She didn’t look my way, but scooted over a little. I took that as an invitation.

It was still a while before either of us spoke. I didn’t want to broach anything, because I didn’t know what things were about, and she seemed to still want to hold whatever was in her mind at arms-length for a bit longer.

When she finally opened her mouth, the words fell out like they were from a distance. You know? Almost-bored, in the way you finally spit out the cud you’ve been chewing on for weeks because you’re just so tired of chewing it.

“How do you know if you left because you wanted to, or because you just didn’t know how to stay?”

Oh.

That.

So, I think I wrote to you before, back when Chloe first came to The Wickery, about how she was doing the whole elf version of the Amish Rampashpring-a-something-or-other, right? The Amish send their teens out into the rest of the world to give them a chance to confirm that they really do want to remain Amish.

I guess the elves have something similar, but for them, it’s to go out and “be a human” for a little while so they can get a feel for how we are supposed to be “handled.” Makes sense, I guess, if you’re a species who is long-lived but short-on-population, sharing a world with another species who has more people than sense and tends to have less regard for others-not-them than a piece of gum.

The thing is, she’d been on her own particular one for, I think, longer than they usually allow, and that, maybe, was starting to weigh.

I let my hand rest on the metal bar in front of me, the peeling black paint cool to my touch. “You want me to answer that? Or did you just need to say it out loud?”

I caught the slight curl of her smile before she took a deep breath. “Yeah. Maybe a little of both.”

She spent the next few minutes telling me it wasn’t that she was homesick or something along those lines. It was in that kind of way someone is just a little too much; you know? Defensive about it. But I didn’t push her on it.

When she finally got past that, though, she said it’s more that the rebellion had lost its audience, and what was the point of being a rebel without someone to watch you do it? What’s the need for a costume when the rest of the party has stopped caring you’re wearing one and has moved on to the next piece of cake?

The jacket. The buttons. The boots she had kicked off and set aside when she came out to sit. Were those her? Or were those just the “her” she thought others needed to see?

She came here to be something she never had been before, and, at first, back home, that felt like it was exactly what she needed most.

Now?

Now, to her, it only felt like another day.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard Chloe speak so many words in one sitting in the entire year I’ve known her, and I wasn’t really sure how to answer.

In ways, it made me think of my own time at The Wickery.

I couldn’t really tell you then, or even now, whether I really chose to be here. Was it a door that opened and I stepped through? Or had the door been waiting all along, and I never really had any other option?

You remember what things were like when we were kids. Neither of us had a choice about getting stuck in Meadowbrook Academy. My mother getting...

Well.

My mother passing away was not a choice.

But The Wickery? I’ve always told myself this place was my choosing.

But...

Sitting on a fire escape at three in the morning with a 130-year-old punk elf whose existential crisis left her wondering if she was running away from something or towards another, I realized I was not as sure of my own options as I used to be.

So I just said, “I’m not sure the two things are as different as we want them to be. Maybe you left because you were never told you could do otherwise,”

We both went silent then, and kept that way for a little while, two beings from drastically different worlds sharing a cold metal grating two stories up in a city neither of us had been raised in.

When she eventually broke her silence again, it was with a tip of her head to the side.

“You know, it’s strange... but sometimes, when I’m sitting here, I can smell lavender.”

She took a deep breath.

“Did I ever tell you there was a big patch of lavender just down the road from my house growing up? I’d smell it in the night. Kinda cool.”

Chloe was still sitting there when I went back inside and headed down to the basement. The stud was still in her fingers, but maybe since then she’s put it back on the jacket.

I don’t know. But she didn’t answer her question that night, and neither did I, and even now, a week later, I still haven’t faced my own version of it.

How do you know if you stayed because you wanted to, or because you just didn’t know how to leave?

That kind of question is a little less like a weight, and a little more like just... something you carry.

I think there’s a difference.

Probably.

Write again soon,
Gary

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MORE APARTMENTS OF THE DAMNED STORIES:

Janice. It had been Janice. But there was no way it could be her.

I killed her ten years ago.

“Hello mother.”

My stomach dropped as the words flowed out of the phone and I dropped it. The plastic case skidded across the newly-tiled kitchen floor.

I stared at it, terror oozing through every vein in my body as the white light of the screen faded away to black, the phone turning off once more.

It was her. There was no way it couldn’t be her. The voice, so sweet and high pitched, was hers, and the echoes of those two simple bits of the past caught my breath up.

Janice. It had been Janice. But there was no way it could be her.

I killed her ten years ago.

She had been a sweet girl, once. It was only after she hit her teenage years I started to notice just how wrong she was becoming.

It was small, at first. Getting testy with me, her snarky comments at everything I said or did chalked up to nothing more than the passing phase all teenage girls seemed to go through after puberty hits. Most girls spend their childhood wanting to be so much like mommy, and then desperately want to separate themselves from anything that could be construed as “mom?” as soon as their flow began.

Maybe it had something to do with them becoming women, themselves, and subconsciously knowing they would, one day soon, have to take on the responsibility of a family, themselves. Maybe it was just nature forcing a girl to become the woman she would be, and they feel a primal need to become their own person.

I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist or anything. I just know I did it to my own mother, something I regretted later in life, once I realized she had been right in the things she tried to teach me.

Especially after Janice grew more into her figure. That’s when things really turned to hell.

The sarcasm turned to venom, her lips spewing the worst vitriol I could ever imagine. And I was angry. All the time angry. Things she would say or do would haunt me from the minute I woke to moment I fell asleep again, each day becoming worse.

It wasn’t like she was hanging out with a bad crowd or something. No drugs I could ever discern or, when things got desperate, find in her room. The words, “I hate her, I wish she would die,” were strewn through her diary like a mad poet on the worst bender.

I started to believe I had given birth to a demon child, one who didn’t show its’ true colors until it was far too late to do anything about it.

I had to do something about it. My poor, deluded husband refused to see anything wrong with her. He just tried to write it off as I did at first, a simple stage of the evolution of a child. He didn’t see how she really was when he wasn’t around. Oh no, ever the daddy’s little angel when he was near.

I swear I could see her eyes change the moment he entered the room, switching off the demon and turning on the little girl charm for her protective daddy. Night and day in an instant.

I tried. I really did. I would arrange dates for us to go out and do something together, trying to build some bridge of communication between us, something of memories we could both cherish as she and I grew older. I found out, through her father of course, who her favorite band was, and bought tickets for the two of us to go see them.

That was a nightmare. She disappeared into the crowd when I was not paying attention and I could not find her for hours, trying to scream her name above a flock of maniacal fanatics worshiping the din coming from the stage.

When I finally did come across her again, I had to drag her away. The security guards even stopped us, thinking I was trying to kidnap my own child, until we got into some better light and they saw the family resemblance. They still ogled us as we walked through the exit doors, though, wondering, I am sure, how a mother could do that to her child.

Janice, ever screaming and crying about how I was ruining her life, did her best to give me the worse headache ever the hour-long drive home. I swear I have no idea how her throat lasted so long.

I know what you’re probably thinking. Why didn’t I spank her, or try to discipline her? It’s not that simple.

My own father and I had a rough relationship. My early years were spent with him drinking to the point he was incoherent most of the time, and it was only later, after the drinking stopped, that I could forgive him the bruises and scars those whiskey-binges would inevitably bring to me.

It’s hard raising a child when you’re doing your best to break the cycle of abuse, and I did not, no matter how bad things got with Janice, want to do to her what my dad did to me.

By the time we got home from the concert she was, as always, put back together again, walking through the door and smiling for her father who was just getting ready for bed, himself. Sure, I told him about what happened after the lights went out, crying into his shoulder as he tried to console me for what he claimed must have been a misunderstanding between Janice and I. Couldn’t I have been mistaken in what happened? Couldn’t Janice have told me she was going to go get something, and in the noise and heat I missed it? And then when I did find her, and made such a big deal out of it, couldn’t Janice have, maybe, been in the right for being angry with me?

Snowed. She had him completely wrapped around her little fingers.

Oh, of course he would talk to her in the morning, try to see if he could smooth out the rough edges of what happened and get us back to family tranquility. Sure, he would do that for me. He always did.

Right.

After a year of this kind of thing, I began to feel like a prisoner in my own home. Captive to the interplay between the two of them, her abuse and his gas-lighting my anger and frustration over the things she was putting me through.

The day the dam finally broke was so hard.

She had come home from school angry. Usually, I would get a little bit of a break before her tirades would start, an hour or so for her to put herself together again after getting home, grabbing a bite of food and so on before the demon would show up. I used to try to ask her how her day went, to get some sort of line of communication going on, but that was a long time ago. I had grown to dread those moments between her coming home and her father showing up from work.

See, by that time, my life had become a living hell, an endless stream of violent words without action, hatred pulsing with guilt over what I had become. I was living with my father all over again, endlessly trying to remain a mouse, unseen and unheard, so the wrath would not come down on me.

Fear of your own child is something no parent should ever have to endure, yet there I was stuck with the lot fate had given me.

I had gotten to the point I could weep no more, the tears weighing me down. I could see the trails of salt beneath my eyes, so much had flowed. When I looked in the mirror, that is. I had come to dread even that, not liking the person I saw behind my own eyes after so long being abused.

Instead of her normal routine, Janice started in on me right away. “You’re such a stupid bitch,” were the first words out of her mouth, slamming her bag down on the kitchen table.

Instant anger, my eyes flashing around instinctively, readying myself for an attack.

“Don’t start with me,” I shouted the same thing I had said so many times before. It never did any good.

Oh she was in rare form, though. “I kept telling you I needed the pink one, but you got the blue.”

Ah, the “pink one” argument again. This was, of the color of shirt she needed for gym class, the apparent only choice she the “it crowd” saw in school, out of the myriad other colors available. But they had been sold out of that color by the time I was able to get to it, all the other kids apparently thinking the same thing.

“I told you, they were out, damn it. Back off. I tried my best.”

A hideous laugh seeped from her mouth. “Are you kidding me? God, I swear, I can’t believe I have to have you as a mother.” She turned her back to me, slapping her hand against the bag laying half-opened on the table. “I swear, I wish I could get rid of you and just be with dad.”

Even though I had heard those same words coming from her before, something about the tone of it this time seemed different. Flavored with something I couldn’t quite put my fingers on. It didn’t have the scent of the normalcy I had become accustomed to from her. No, this time, it was like the demon inside of her had, truly, come to have enough of me.

Or maybe something else, something even worse, in my mind.

Whatever it was, I felt something inside of me snap. There was, a moment before, the angry red tinged with the despair of being saddled with this situation, something I was so familiar with I could feel it on my skin.

The next moment, there was nothing of it, a sensation of almost… calmness washing through me.

I moved, then, my hand grabbing a long towel that was resting near the stove. Her back was still to me, still mouthing words I could no longer hear. The whiteness in my mind grew deeper, instinct taking control.

I saw, though it seemed I was not controlling them, my hands wrap around the ends of the towel tightly, spreading the cloth wider as my legs pushed forward. The towel lifted, before coming down again over her head and around her neck.

Her blond hair pulled into my opened mouth as I inhaled, bracing myself as I yanked the cloth tight, bringing her body into mine as the force of it pulled her backward.

The words she was spewing cut off instantly, leaving only remnants as the shock of it coursed through her own veins, turning into small chuffs as she tried to gag in a breath. Her arms moved with a frenzy, scrabbling at my arms trying to pull the towel away from her neck, but I redoubled myself, bracing my feet harder on the linoleum tiles of the clean floor, gritting my teeth hard with the effort of keeping the thing, and myself, in place.

My lips did move, though, and I think words were trying to come out, but I could not recognize them. It was not my body anymore. The broken person I had been all my life seemed to finally explode out in the fury of the moment, and there was no stopping it now.

I’m not sure how long it took. A minute or an hour could have passed before I felt her body slump, the final beat of the slight pulse I had been feeling in her ebbing into nothingness.

I eased her down, the towel coming away from her neck, my own staring into her still-opened eyes, the shock in my body beginning to turn into a tremble.

It was only then the white flames within me subsided, and I began to fathom what I had done.

I could not stop staring into her eyes, even as the reflex to gag struck my throat. I closed my mouth, still unable to turn away as tendrils of bile came to my tongue. I swallowed it back, but her gaze remained locked on mine.

I searched those orbs, trying to find a hint of the demon I had come to know so well, but there was nothing. Even with them as wide as they were, I could sense something of the girl I once adored, my little angel peaceful and shy.

My hands trembling more, legs wobbling like an uncertain newborn deer, I bent down, my lips placing a kiss on her smooth forehead. A few stray strands of hair once again entered my mouth, but I didn’t spit them out. They came away from me as I brought myself back to sitting next to her, a sigh escaping my lips.

What had I done?

I was finally able to break the gaze flowing between us, and ripped my head away, the bile once more urging itself upward.

Oh god, what had I done?

It was only then I moved fully, bringing myself to my feet once more. Rushing to the bathroom, my hand in front of my mouth, silently praying I could hold it in long enough to get there.

My forehead smacked into the rim of the bowl as I went down on my knees and retched, the spew landing in the water with loud, wet splats. I hadn’t eaten much, thankfully, but it still seemed too much came.

I huffed, my breath catching in my throat as once more I threw up, and it kept going until I could do no more than dry heave. Even then, worms wriggled around in the pit of my gut, endlessly looping around in a circuit until my breathing changed from the huffing to heaving sighs, and, finally, morphed into a sob so loud I swear it could be heard a mile away.

I crumbled to the floor, covering my head with my arms as I wept, cold tiles pressing into my face.

I’m not sure how long I was there. Time seemed, for that brief period, to thankfully pause for me, gracing me with a precious moment for me to process what happened in those scant, fretful minutes between my demon child coming home and my final crazed actions.

How could I have done this? How could I, an otherwise sane, well-put-together person, have taken a life? And not just any life, but that of my own child. I couldn’t come to terms with it, the shock and adrenaline still coursing through me apace.

But then, after who knows how long I had been sobbing uncontrollably on the floor, the logical, reasonable part of myself began to take hold once more. A quiet voice, at first, slowly becoming louder in my ears, whispered that everything was going to be okay. I hadn’t done anything wrong, really. Couldn’t I see that? The child was more than a problem. She was out of control, and getting worse by the day.

She knew what she was doing, trying to play with me, just like my own father had done for so many years. I hadn’t been able to do anything to him, then. I was but a child, myself, defenseless against the brunt of an angry man with a quick fist and even quicker temper.

Janice was no different. Couldn’t I understand that? She was my father, the embodiment of all the hatred he contained. Even if he had finally cleaned himself up, he must have planted some kind of seed in me. Something that only came out when Janice was born, a worm inside of her that was malevolent, evil rot to the core.

It had to be that. Couldn’t I understand that? Couldn’t it be so? There was no way something like her could have sprung from me alone. My husband, Dennis, certainly wasn’t that way, himself. He was weak, even with Janice.

As that voice grew stronger, so did I. I started to comprehend what it had been trying to tell me subconsciously since the first spiteful arrogance Janice showed. She was something different. Maybe that voice was right, after all.

I hadn’t done anything more than defend myself. I hadn’t done anything more than what any reasonable human being would do to get away from an evil straight from the pits of hell itself.

I finally picked myself up off of the floor, wiping the tears from my eyes with the towel still clutched, forgotten, in my hand. I stared at it for a moment, the murderous thing sopping up the dampness from my cheeks, wicking it up into itself until there was nothing of my tears to be seen any longer.

I stuffed it in my pocket and returned to the kitchen, unsure of how I should proceed.

I couldn’t leave Janice lay there. Dennis would be home in a couple of hours expecting dinner and a kiss from his loving daughter.

No, I had to do something with her, and, as I stared at her body from the kitchen door way for more than ten minutes, I wracked my mind trying to figure out how to handle things. Where was that sure, steady voice now? Why was it silent when I needed its help now more than I did on that damn bathroom floor?

When an idea finally did come, I mulled it, turning it over and over in my head until I was sure any cracks it might have could be filled.

Then I started in.

I went outside and moved my car closer to the house, pulling up as near to the garage door as I could without hitting it. Normally, I parked on the street, leaving the garage for Dennis’ more expensive car to be protected in the one-car garage, but it wouldn’t look strange to anyone looking if mine was there.

I triple, quadruple checked to make sure there was no one around. It was the time of day most people, who did happen to be home, would have been eating dinner, so there were no kids running on the street. Not like there were many around, anyhow. The neighborhood was pretty quiet and sedate most of the time.

I left the car running and pulled the back door open, then went back inside.

As fast as I could, I grabbed some clothing from Janice’s dressers, shoving two pairs of underwear, a few teeshirts and a pair of jeans into the bag I grabbed from the table. Some makeup, and one of the stuffed dogs Dennis was always buying for her followed before I zipped the thing shut.

I closed the door behind me and sped to the kitchen once more.

I opened the interior door for the garage and tapped the button to slide the garage open before tossing the bag closer to the still-running car.

Her eyes were still open, and there seemed to be a glint there that was asking what I was doing, crying out at me in silence. My fingers closed them to shut her up. I swear I had seen that same look in my own eyes in the mirror when I was her age.

Keep moving. Don’t stop.

She was heavier than I remembered. It had been a long time since I tried to carry my child any distance, and without any assistance from living muscles, it make it that much harder. But I managed to pull her mostly to her feet and half-drug, half-carried her to the garage and, finally, to the car.

I put her in the back seat, strapping the belt across her lap and chest, before refreshing her hair a little bit. It had become quite mussy in the fray.

I closed the car up and went back inside for a brief moment to grab my purse and close the garage up. I locked the front door behind me as I left, trying hard to not stare around like a crazed woman who had just killed her daughter.

I slid myself into the front seat and breathed deep, steadying my nerves. God this was hard.

Before beginning the drive, I turned around in the seat and raised Janice’s arm, trying to arrange her so it would, if anyone happened to glance in the car as we drove, look like she was simply in the back seat asleep. That happened, right? Kids, even teenagers, fall asleep on car rides all the time. It wouldn’t look out of place.

The drive felt longer than it actually was, but that was probably due to my constant watchfulness. Every car was a cop, everyone I passed was staring at me, knowing what I did. Knowing I had my dead daughter in the back seat of my car.

I half expected Janice to pop awake the whole time, sure that she would pick a moment of vengeance, coming to life to drag me to the depths of hell I was sure I sent her. Would it have been well-deserved? Or was I judging correct when I felt I had done the right thing?

Twenty miles later, I was at the large park Janice loved to go to. I was surprised there were no other cars there by the time I arrived, but I guess being a weekday and most people still trying to come home and settle from work, there wouldn’t be much traffic. Not for a while, anyhow.

Still, I moved as fast as I could to get Janice out of the back seat and sling her book bag across my back. Just past the parking lot, the whole area became forest, and once I was in the first part of the tree line, it would be difficult for me to be spotted by anyone who happened to come along.

My luck held out, even more fuel to the thought I was doing the right thing. God had to be on my side. There was no way I could have gotten this far without it.

I remembered the last time we had come to these woods, back when we were still what would be considered a normal family. It seemed years ago, but, then, every bit of my life had become so protracted since Janice became possessed by whatever hell she fed on.

A little deeper into the woods was the familiar ravine-shaped indentation in the ground, a remnant, I think, of a wide creek that used to pass through the forest before drying up. Now it was a scar filled with dead leaves, fallen branches and other detritus.

And now it would cradle my child, too.

I put her down, laying her on her back and spreading her arms out like she had been defending herself against an attacker, and resisted the temptation to fix her hair.

I set her bag next to her and checked it to make sure none of my hair or other obvious things from myself were sticking to it. If there was an investigation, and I was sure there would be once she was discovered, anything on it could be explained just on the basis of my being her mother and our living together, but I didn’t want any more added on than needed.

I didn’t sit, tried to avoid putting my hands down on the ground, even, but my eyes could catch nothing that was overt about my presence there.

“Goodbye, Janice. I hope you can find peace.”

It felt strange to say the words, but with her laying there so quietly, with her eyes closed, she took on some of the aspects of the girl I had once known and loved, before she turned into the nightmare I had to live with.

Finally, shaking my head a little as I turned away from her, I began the trek back to the car.

There were drag marks here and there from where I had to put her down and pull her along, but those were soon hidden as best as I could manage by kicking some leaves and dirt around, scuffing up any indication of what the footprints would look like leading to her body. Shy of taking a rake to the whole thing, I hoped it would be enough to obscure my own prints, in case any cop got a bright idea of checking out my shoes.

There was still no one in the parking lot, and I breathed heavily as I jumped in the car and backed away from the woods. I drove slower than I probably should have the whole way home, but no one stopped me.

Dennis was still not home by the time I got there, so I parked in my usual spot and walked into the house. When I glanced at the clock, I saw I still had another half-hour to go before he would get there.

There was not much out of place, but I picked everything up as best as I could before remembering the towel was still in my pocket.

Damn it. How could I have forgotten the thing?

What was I supposed to do with it? I couldn’t just stick it in the laundry and keep it, knowing what I had done with it. Besides, when she was discovered, I was sure the cops would want to do a search of the house. There was no way I could just leave the murder weapon sitting around.

I snatched the pack of matches Dennis used to light the grill and one of my trowels from the garage and headed to the back yard. Near the far end of the fence, I dug a small hole and stuck the towel in it, then set fire to it.

It thankfully smoked little, and did not take more than a few moments to burn into char. I wished I had more time to try to light it up again and make it go away as much as I could but it would have to do.

I covered it all up, careful to replace the grass as best I could manage, before going back into the house to start a quick dinner cooking.

Of course, Dennis was concerned that Janice wasn’t home by the time he got there, but I played like she hadn’t come home from school. It wouldn’t have been the first time for her to not show up after school let out, going over to one of her friends before coming home. She had, after all, gotten into a little trouble over it a few times.

By the time Dennis and I finished eating, though, his agitation over the lack of her presence grew to the point he wanted to start calling any of her friends he could.

I played dutiful wife and mother, my concern written on my face. Oh yes, we should do that. We should ground her. He should really make an example of it this time.

It took a bit of effort to keep the smile off of my face, knowing he was not going to find her. Oh sure, I hated to see him upset, and knew even more was coming, but the thought that he was finally feeling a modicum of the misery I had been going through with Janice put a guilty pleasure through my veins.

No one had seen her or heard from her. Her friends hadn’t run across her since they were let out of school. Maybe she went to the mall or something?

All of these things, and more, came from the phone calls and it was another few hours before I finally offered that we might want to try calling the police. Maybe something had happened to her. Oh I put on the finest concerned face I could muster, knowing my act was only beginning.

They were called, and they did come. Just one, the first time, taking our statements and trying to reassure us that sometimes teenage girls will be teenage girls and do things on their own.

Was she into drugs or partying? Had she been hanging out with a bad crowd? Did she have any boyfriends?

I could tell they were standard sort of questions and he wrote the answers down in the little notebook he carried with him. Honestly, he seemed more bored by it all than anything, obviously having done this a few times before.

Oh but Dennis pushed him, stressing out that no one had heard from her and no, she wasn’t into anything like any of the things the officer was implying. At least, as far as he knew.

I didn’t say much, beyond acknowledging that she hadn’t come home and I was worried. This was more Dennis’ show than mine, after all.

Mine was yet to come.

By the time midnight rolled around, there were more officers there. Now they were concerned.

One of them, a younger guy, contacted someone from the school, and they managed to track down the fact that Janice had been dropped off. I caught a few sideways glances my way at that, but I gave them my prepared song and dance that I thought I had heard the bus, but was in the bathroom at the time. When I came out, Janice was not there, and I assumed she had either gotten off the bus and started walking somewhere else, or hadn’t ridden it at all.

Dennis confirmed it wasn’t the first time Janice had done something like that, his voice cracking with the strain of the situation he was obviously under.

Oh I played the good wife and mother. I made sure they all knew I was worried, concerned that something happened to her. Where was my baby? Where could she be?

It’s fascinating how the officers worked through everything. I hadn’t expected how thorough they were, since our town isn’t all that large, really. It’s not a one-light town, by any means, but most of the time the cops could be seen at one of the gas stations, bored out of their minds, on a Saturday night. Not much happened here that wasn’t brought in from outside somehow.

We provided pictures, they scurried away in hopes of tracking her down.

By the time morning light began to emerge along the streets, you could sense the change in them. They went from the rush of fretfulness to a more sedate and sympathetic ruse. Like they knew, with as much time as was passing away without hearing from her, the chances of getting her back slimmed.

I did feel a little badly for them. Most of them had wedding rings on, and were away from their own families while searching for my own. I used it to help me fuel the angst I was trying hard to maintain.

Neither Dennis or I slept that night. Both of us were drained with worrying, though his was, of course, for far different reasons than my own.

Around noon, one of the officers, whom I learned had some kind of rank, though I could not remember what it might have been, came to us with the news.

Dennis broke as the officer told us she had been found, but not alive. Someone had come across her in the woods at the park and called in.

From there, we went through the process of going to the hospital, where the town morgue was located, and identified her, then we were left alone for a little while.

I held Dennis, and when his tears were under control, he held me while my own flowed. Even now, looking back on it, I am shocked at the amount of grief I felt for the loss of Janice. Maybe knowing I was responsible added to it, but I could not help remembering her more as the little girl I adored rather than the monster she had become.

There was an investigation, of course, and both Dennis and I were interviewed about any potential part we might have played in her death… her murder. Again, I played the part of grieving mother, confused why they would be looking at us rather than searching for the monstrous being who could have done that to our little one.

My husband was more convincing than myself, I think, because they seemed to spend more time with me than him.

Still, their eyes began to move elsewhere, convinced that we had no involvement in the events leading to her death, and we were, for the most part, left alone to put our lives back together.

There were theories, of course, and I can’t tell you how many journalists shoved microphones in our faces trying to grab the newest, saddest sound-bite they could muster.

That was all ten years ago, and I think we managed things as well as we could in spite of the hell the outside world tried to put on us. Dennis had changed, and not really for the better, though I half-expected it would get that way. He adored Janice, and would have done anything for her.

I think he blames himself, though there are times I catch a sidelong glance from him and wonder if he, perhaps somewhere in the back of his mind, wonders if I had anything to do with it.

Everything of the past flashed through my mind, the hell, the guilt, all of it, as I stared at the phone resting on the floor.

There was no denying, the voice I heard come through the speakers was Janice. Two words, nothing more, and I was gripped with fear, the breath caught in my throat.

Was this some kind of prank? Was this some sick crank out to make a joke, finding some recording of her voice somehow?

My eyes finally moved to the window of the kitchen, the twilight outside barely peeking through the curtains I had hung only a few months before. Were they outside now trying to peek inward, laughing at their great prank?

I saw nothing, but I couldn’t move myself to open the drapes and check.

“Hello, Mother.”

I whirled, my heart leaping out of my chest, as the words I heard through the phone only moments before were spoken louder, this time behind me.

The living room was dark, but the small amount of light that did edge through the doorway to the kitchen back lit a figure who stood stock-still. It was too small to be Dennis, resting upstairs.

My hands didn’t move from my waist, paralyzed, somehow, with the intense fear that had become my entire being. I tried to open my mouth to scream, the highlights of blond hair seen even with the small amount of light the same as I saw that day I placed her in the dry creek bed.

The figure came forward, only a step, but it was enough to bring her into the full light of the kitchen, and even the breath in my lungs refused to come out, caught up in the pale eyes of the daughter I once loved and grew to hate.

She looked so much the same as the last time I saw her, laying still and lifeless on the gurney in the morgue, the only difference being her open eyes, which burned with a fury I was so familiar with.

Janice stepped again, and now that she was only a few feet from me, I could see the translucence of her skin. Something was missing there, the fullness of her body shriveled more than when she was alive, but my eyes flung up and down at the horror I could not overcome.

Move, damn it! my mind screamed, but I could not. I was trapped, impaled by her eyes and terror, pinioned to the spot I had been in when I first heard her words.

Her hands came from behind her, raising to her chest slightly outstretched, and I caught hold of what she carried.

Blue and white, soft and long, the same design and linen as the towel I used on her a year ago wafted in her hands like it was blown by a breeze I could not feel myself. She didn’t so much wrap it around her palms as it moved on its own, the length of it becoming taut as she sidled closer.

God damn it, move! The voice in my head screamed, and it finally seemed to break the paralysis I was under, forcing me to wrench myself around.

The garage door was only ten feet away.

My feet kicked into action, breaking away from the counter. Get to the door, get to the door. Get the hell out of this house.

Then the garrote went around my neck.

Like I was hit by a linebacker, my feet kicked out from under me and I fell backward, my momentum useless as I felt the coldness of her body against my own skin.

Oh that cold. Never, even when caught outside in the depths of winter, have I ever felt such a sensation. And it took over my whole being, pouring from her into me as if I was becoming nothing more than a block of ice. The laced towel around my neck heaved hard, instantly cutting off any breath I might have tried to take.

My brain began to dim as the blood in my veins was cut off with the choke.

The terror is already subsiding, maybe cut away from me with the breath she took. I can’t feel anything but for the glacier in my body seeping into every pore of me.

How? Why? None of it matters, I guess. I know the answers.

“Goodbye, Mother.”

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I buried my wife yesterday.

No, no. There is no sympathy required. I don’t need the unfeeling platitudes that always come with news like that. No need to waste your precious energy on such supplications.

You see, I hated my wife. Her being gone is a blessing, not a curse, and I am only too glad to have had it come. Finally, after twenty years of nagging, whining, and endless arguing, it happened. Just when I didn’t think I had the intestinal wherewithal to stand another moment, blessed relief came.

I was, as so often was the case, sitting in my easy chair in the living room, relaxing after yet another long day at work. Aren’t they all long days, though? Especially when you have to work with nothing but morons and liars, the dregs of humanity all congealed into one singular office, with you as the only shining beacon of reason and intelligence among the lot.

That’s the perfect explanation for Thomas Preston Office Supplies and Manufacturing I can give. The place is a dump, and I swear the only people that have been hired in after me must have been picked up from a dime store mannequin sale.

It had been a particularly horrible day, with my having to make up for the mistakes of not just Sally, the office tramp and consummate moron, but the main man, himself, Thomas. Of course he screwed up the biggest sale of the year. How could he not? Most of the time anymore, Thomas Preston spends his days drinking, ever since his wife left him. Was it depression over the loss that set the bottles in his hands?

Hell, I would have given anything to have my wife leave me like that woman did, and I would have been drinking in celebration, not depression. That’s for sure.

Anyhow, I had to make amends with the client, bending over backwards with my dearest, “May I help you sir?” voice I could muster. Choked back bile the entire time.

Two hours. Two freaking hours on the phone with the man, wheeling and dealing, until he finally gave in and allowed us to sign him back on. I mean, granted, he didn’t have much of a choice but to use us if he didn’t want to have to go nationwide to search out his products. He wouldn’t want to do that, though. After all, part of his business was based around the whole “support local” and if it were discovered he was doing otherwise, it’d likely ruin his reputation.

I don’t know if he realized that was something I was aware of but it did give me great satisfaction to know I was the one in control of that conversation, regardless of how angry he felt.

That little fact was the only thing that kept me going.

I threw the order sheet at Thomas before leaving, telling him that was the last time I was going to pick up after his messes. Oh he was mad, but there is no way he’d get rid of me. Not after I just pulled his ass out of the fire.

Home, eat, maybe drink a beer and relax. That’s really all I wanted to do after the mess of a day I had been through. I guess fate had a different idea in mind, for me, though.

Doesn’t she always?

Beer in hand, easy chair underneath me, Susan came strolling into the room from the kitchen, her hair up in curlers and the scent of the crap she puts in it when she is trying to “do herself up” stinking even from the ten feet distance between us.

“Did you ask him about the raise?” Her slight frame casting an over-long shadow along the floor.

“I didn’t have time.” Another sip of my beer, the bitterness of it washing over my tongue not even close to the loathing I felt at the sound of her voice.

You might be asking yourself why I didn’t just divorce Susan if she grated me this much.

Easy answer. I couldn’t afford to. See, Susan and I had been together long enough that everything we had was tied with each other, to the point the cost of divorce would have left me ruined. It’s one of those unfortunate setups that happens sometimes. Too filled with animosity to stay together, too wrapped up in each other to separate.

But I had my golf games once a week, she had her circle of friends she would go out with every few days. I had work and she got to sit her lazy ass around the house all day. At least I got away for those few hours. It was something.

I tried to go back to ignoring her as best I could, taking another, deeper, pull from the bottle. It was nasty stuff, the kind of cheap beer that could barely be called palatable, but still strong enough to get a buzz on if you drank enough of it. Good enough for simple peons like myself, I guess.

I hoped Susan would leave the conversation at that and go back into the kitchen, but she came forward, instead, her eyes burning into mine.

“What do you mean you didn’t have time, David? We need that raise.” Her bare feet slapped against the hard wood floor as she approached.

“You could get a job, too, you know.” I did little more than whisper it, the argument so familiar to my lips, but she caught it anyhow.

Oh, yes. She heard it.

Her feet stopped mid-step, the ire spreading across her face in a heartbeat. “Maybe if you did a better job around there, you wouldn’t have to ask for a raise.” Her eyes gleamed, fairly spitting out the words. “They would just give it to you. Did you ever think of that?”

I stood, the bottle dropping from my hand, forgotten. The clanking of the glass against the wood echoed through the room, as the yellow fluid spread out. My own feet trounced the distance remaining between us.

“Do you really want to go there, bitch?” A few stray droplets of saliva flew to the floor. The words barked out in a staccato beat. “I work my ass off every damn day so you can sit here doing nothing, and you have the audacity to think I don’t do enough?”

She stepped backward only a pace, shock at the vehemence of my words reeling her a moment, but then, as a fighter in the ring, replanted her feet to stand stock-still.

“You think I don’t do anything? I take care of you, and everything in this house.” Her eyes glistened with a wet shine, but my own could not help focusing on the large droplet of my spit that was embracing her left cheek, remnant from my tirade. “I buy your clothes, your food, and clean up after you decide the best thing to do is get drunk to get through your day, and you think I’m lazy? Go sell that shit to someone else.”

Her last words were punctuated by pushing my shoulder with her hand. No, not her whole hand. Just the tip of one of her fingers. It wasn’t hard, but my head spun toward it like she had fired a bullet into my flesh.

In that moment, my mind blanked. A canvas, empty and awaiting the hand of a master with a brush rolled over the thinking part of me and all I could do was stare at the fingertip barely denting my shirt.

The next second, my arm moved, though I had no real control of it. No intention, no impulse as to where it would go or what it would do.

I lifted my eyes once more to the miserable face of the woman I had grown to loathe for twenty years, the anger again coming into place within me. I opened my mouth to spew more vitriol, but stopped short mid-inhale when I saw the redness on her face was no longer the blush of her own rage and animosity.

It was a bloom of crimson, which seemed to begin at the base of her nose. Her eyes, only centimeters away from that splotch of red, rolled upward, like she was hearing something and trying to place where it was coming from.

They rolled more and her mouth hung wide open, more acid on her tongue to come out at me, but she remained silent but for a strange huffing breathing coming from her throat.

Her hand dropped, smacking against the side of her hip and her legs wobbled as the red blip under her nose grew larger, becoming a slow trickle as it crossed the rim of her top lip and disappeared into her still-opened maw.

One of her curlers seemed to pull loose, falling slightly as I stepped backward, the anger from seconds before draining away into confusion over what I was seeing. The lacy white robe she wore was stark contrast to the flow of red that poured from her nostrils, but she still made no sound beyond the huffing breaths that still puffed away, though with each one they seemed to take on an almost choking overtone.

The blood leaking out started to patter against the front of her robe. One, then two, then a few drops at a time scattered and spread, the maroon mixing up with the white in a patina of spectacular irony. Susan hated red and refused to ever wear it, and yet, somehow, in these moments, it was the most beautiful color I had ever seen her use.

Then her shoulders sagged and her eyes disappeared into complete white as they completed their turn upwards into her skull. Her legs wobbled once more before letting go completely and she went down. Her head hit the floor with a wet smack, but there was no outpouring of agonized sounds from her. Just silence. Blessed silence, for the first time in so many years I could hardly believe it was happening.

Only a moment later, the pulling in and out from her lungs ceased as well, and even that part of her was gone.

It took a few minutes for me to move. I said nothing, just staring at the body of the woman I had once, long ago, loved enough to marry, the curlers in her hair gone askew in such a comical way I almost laughed.

When I did finally begin to take action, it was only to press my fingers to her neck, searching for any sign of movement beneath the skin. There was none, though she was still as warm as the last time I had deigned to touch her. God, how long ago had that been? Weeks? Months?

It was only then the confusion over what had happened to my wife set in.

I know what you’re thinking. I had hit her, struck her hard enough to cause damage to her brain or something. But that was the first thing I checked for. My hands were clean, no signs of blood or even redness from a strike. You would think, if I had hit her hard enough to kill her, I’d at least see some reddening on my skin, right?

There was none, nor did any appear there for the few minutes I sat there next to Susan, a strange sense of discontentment within me.

I followed up by looking all over her, trying to find any sign of what happened to this woman I had grown to despise, but there was nothing to indicate what really occurred. I even looked for bullet holes, can you believe that? After all, things happen. A stray bullet from a drive by even a block away could have somehow passed through the walls of our shabby little house and taken her off of my hands. But no. Nothing like that. Her robe was intact and, besides, I would have heard such a shot. Right?

The house had grown quiet. Even the television set, feet away and playing the soccer game, seemed hushed, the crowd dimmed and mournful.

What could I do? What should I do? Those thoughts circled around, over and over.

I couldn’t call an ambulance. What good would that do? She was already dead and gone, the body growing colder as I sat next to it. It would only serve to be a waste of time for them to come.

I certainly couldn’t call the cops. They would, of course, assume I had done something to her. The last thing I needed was for her to have some ironic last victory over me and have me spend the rest of my life in jail just because she couldn’t be bothered to die in a hospital or something.

I wouldn’t let her do that. Not when I had freedom so close to my grasp.

Really, there was only one thing I could do, and, though I didn’t want to have to spend my whole night cleaning up her mess, it would have to be done.

We are lucky enough to have one of the bigger back yards in our neighborhood, a matter of pride in this run-down hellhole we called home. Big enough, even, to have a small shed where I kept the lawn mower and some tools.

I went to the kitchen and grabbed some trash bags, thankful that at least she had decided to start getting the big, black kind. Thick, but they always seemed to be on sale. I grabbed three of them at first, but by the time I was done wrapping her body in them, strapping them together with duct tape and a handful of zip-ties, I needed another three. I had to make sure, after all, there was nothing of her showing when I put her in the ground.

Have you ever tried to dig a hole for a body? It’s hard work, I can tell you. It took me hours in the darkness, but the one advantage of living in a bad neighborhood is people mind their own business. If anyone did happen to glance out of their windows to see me in my back yard in the darkness, they would have simply closed the curtains and returned to what they were doing. No one wants to get involved and, after all, if there wasn’t something illegal going on every night around here, it was an off-night.

They didn’t even take holidays off.

By the time I finally tamped down the last of the dirt over her body, I was overheated, sweating like a pig in summer, and bone-weary.

But, you know, that shower afterward was, perhaps, the most glorious one I had ever taken. The dust and grime fell away in swaths, and I imagined it was also my hatred for Susan and my desperate desire to be away from her that came off with it, too.

I didn’t give her any final words. I didn’t feel any were necessary. We had already spoken all we needed to say in the years we were together. No, all that remained between us was the deep craving to be done with one another, and it was simply a matter of her choosing to be the one to bow out first.

That’s okay with me. I still have a lot of life left in me to do whatever I want. It’d be nice to finally quit Thomas Preston Office Supplies and Manufacturing, to maybe throw a bag of shit on the desk and flip every single one of those sycophants off before walking out with a smile on my face.

I could get a job anywhere, do anything, really. Whatever my newfound freedom decided to carry me into was fine with me.

As long as I kept the house. That’s important.

Not just because of the body in the yard, of course. Can’t have some poor kid having fun in the backyard with a shovel and pail and run across a decaying finger or something.

No, though that is one of the best reasons for staying, I have one better.

I’m going to plant a nice, big rose bush above her body and make sure it gets the best of everything to grow. The thought of the blood red roses feeding on what remained of Susan would be the best twist of a knife I could give her.

I’ll have to go to the nursery tomorrow and talk to them about how to make them the best they can be.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

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Both my wife and I are disabled.

Although hers is from a long-term condition that began at birth, I’ve been on disability through Social Security for a longer period of time.

I’m blind and immunocompromised. She has half of a heart and is even more immunocompromised. She, thankfully, did not take as long to get approval as the 7 years it took me, but we’re glad to at least have some kind of income. Without it, we’d be screwed.

Here’s where the problems begin, though.

You see, we’ve been married for 14 years now. When we first decided we wanted to be together for our lifetimes, we debated heavily for months if actually getting married would be the best option.

I knew if we did get married, we’d take a hit. The government only allows a certain amount of income in the family and getting married would likely take us over that edge. If we went over that boundary? Well, I would lose my health insurance, she would lose hers, and we’d miss out on a lot of income.

We’re not allowed to save money. Doing so would push us through the margin and we’d lose income and insurance. We can’t have any sort of nest egg to help us, such as when needing a car repair or something worked on in our home. All we can do is pray and hold out hope everything we happen to own remains in good condition, because if it fails, we’re out of luck.

That also means that I, as a blind gal, who could really use a seeing-eye dog, cannot actually do anything to help myself get one. They cost a minimum of $10,000, and we’re not allowed to have even one-fourth of that in our bank account before losing the income.

So, that means the people who need that kind of help the most are actually never able to afford it. Sure, there are programs available to help, but they are all needs-based and difficult, at best, to get on the lists for.

We are, quite frankly, in enforced poverty because we cannot step outside of the boundaries imposed upon us.

One of our children has a lot of mental incapacities. They need treatment and medications. A lot of them. If we skirt the line of income, they lose their Medicaid and we’d have to pay out of pocket for it all. That would murder us. One medication for them alone would cost over $1300 a month. I’m “graced” with only receiving half that much in disability. It would be impossible to pay for that medication without assistance.

So, we remain stuck. We remain poor, because we have no choice.

When you’re disabled, you have to deal with a lot of things.

You have to take the brunt of the stigmas that come from outside of the household. You don’t work? You must be lazy. That stigma is even worse if your illness happens to be invisible.

Then there’s the depressions, the beating-yourself-ups, the horrible things you tell yourself in the middle of the night when no one’s around to hear. Those are killers, and they really don’t stop, even after you’ve accepted your conditions. They still have so much power over the perception you have of yourself and any sense of self-worth must be fought for daily.

Perhaps the worst part of it is you can’t have hope.

Taking myself as an example again, as a writer on a platform where I can earn money for my words and my brush strokes, I have to be cautious. Not for the things I talk about or paint, though. That part doesn’t really matter. I’m proud of what I create and talk about, as anyone serving stories to the public should be.

It’s that potential of income I have to be concerned with.

I love to write. I love knowing I can make a little scratch off of the words I pen and put out there for your consumption. Crafting fictional worlds, relating my history and experiences to help people out, knowing I’m leaving a legacy of language for my children. Those are things to take pride in, even if some days it’s difficult to get that self-satisfaction going.

But that hope comes with a price, and it’s a big one.

In the back of my mind (and on our financial papers), I always have to be aware the shoe can drop. I can’t actually, really, fully enjoy the successes like someone not on disability can. If you’re not disabled, if you’re not beholden to some governmental entity as a matter of your survival, it might be hard to understand.

I can’t enjoy it, because I have to have conversations with my wife about the fact my success might have to lead to our divorce. That’s not due to us drifting apart or me suddenly buying a BMW and going on a rampage.

Nope. It’s because if I make too much, she loses out on her insurance, I lose what little I am graced with, and we find ourselves in a worse financial bind than what we were before I started the journey.

I would have to divorce my wife, the person I love and adore with the fury a thousand suns could never match, because we are disabled and the two of us are expected to remain poor.

That’s a hard cross to bear, and I’m not alone.

Thousands of couples across the US alone go through conversations like this on a daily basis. Many people avoid marriage altogether because they’re in even more dire straits and would get screwed over before they had a chance to do anything.

It’s the reality we disabled people have to face, and it’s inhumane on every level.

I’m not sure what can be done about all of it. Universal income? Maybe. That, too, would come with some issues everyone would have to deal with.

Up the limits on what disabled people can earn before being stuck in this kind of situation? That, too, still leaves the issue of having to deal with a sect of people forced to live within a small bubble of acceptability.

I think that’s really the key to understand with all of this. Disabled people already have a lifetime of impairment on finding peace, security, and joy in life. We also have to fit within this tiny frame of what people who aren’t disabled say we should be ramrodded into, and screw you if you want to try to uplift yourself from it.

There has to be an equity somewhere. I’m just not sure what we can do to get there.

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Their eyes were all on me, and my own were on the gallows as she took the final, long steps up to the spot where she’d drop, and all of those eyes screamed I was the one who should be there, instead.

And... yeah. If it were me, I probably would be suspicious of me, too.

Damn it. I hated every second of it, but she—and I—deserved for me to watch it all.

I didn’t wear my usual little things. Most may not wish to admit, but we bards are connoisseurs of the gaud. We’re skilled at attention, both giving it and taking, as well.

But today... today was something else. Today was hers—and, yes, a little mine, but only as bearing last witness to a tragedy never meant to be.

I didn’t even look in the mirror as I smoothed out my shirt and readied myself for my own long steps to Gallows Run. Chill air met my skin as I stepped through the door of the Inn and my boots scraped softly along the cobbles of the streets to get there.

The city was as bustling and alive as it always was; the great throngs of people had their lives to run and the city to keep. I doubt many even knew the moments coming, and fewer even than those would actually make their own way to the Run to bear it witness.

I guess that’s the hardness of living in a city that’s living, and dying in a city that has seen more death than could ever be given name.

But even in those moments, I could feel eyes upon me. Even in those soft passages between buildings, I knew they were there. The Hand, the King’s chosen, embracing the shadows as they so often do, watching the bard the King, himself, deigned to protect and consider something...

Well... something.

Even I don’t know what.

They were good. They always were, and had to be, chosen by the King to protect himself and his assets, and I guess that’s the closest thing I could be called. These King’s Hand agents, these flittering and fluttering shapes, still did their job, still protecting one of His assets, even as I trod the cobbles to watch another of their own be executed for doing the same thing.

That contradiction wasn’t lost on me. It ate at me the whole walk and stayed even as I watched her near the ropes.

My eyes never left her own.

Not then, as she stepped to the noose at the center of the tall Ironwood, that great and horrible tool that held no purpose beyond carrying death in its teeth.

And I didn’t take them from her a week ago, either, in the moments she tried to kill me as I readied myself to close the Inn.

She was good. They all are good.

And the only reason I am alive now, in these moments with these little thoughts and aches, is because, I think, my Inn saved me.

The goblet fell, when it had no reason to fall, and it clanked loud against the stone of the hearth as it bounced away, and my gaze rushed across to it with my trained muscles instantly crouching to the ready. Too many hours, too many thousands of hours making myself ready for these small moments...

My eyes fell on her own, her dagger already raised and ready to come down into my back, and I never heard the barest hint of a whisper of any of it until that clang of metal on stone.

She was as well-trained as I, and, though the fight and grapples and gasps and constant heavy breaths from both of us went on for minutes, I don’t think I could have come away less scathed had it not been for Bula coming from the basement when she did.

My friend grabbed the long board she kept behind the bar and, a moment later, the woman—young, lithe, but perfectly honed—lay with her eyes closed on the cold stone floor.

I didn’t know it, then, in those moments Bula and I tied the woman up, and called for the City Watch, nor did I really realize it until much later, when the rumors began to spread, that the woman who attacked me was a member of the King’s Hand.

The confessions she gave to the Interrogates rang in my head as the rope went around her neck. I’d read them myself after I found them laying on my front step five days after she tried to kill me.

Who left them? I don’t know. I’ll probably never know. I understood, though, as I read them then, and even as I thought about her words as I kept my eyes locked on her own up on old Ironwood, I understood the reason still.

They were given to me so I could know everyone knew the truth, including me, and I wanted to damn them for it.

See, the woman was not wrong. Not really.

She, along with every other Hand out there, knew I was the King’s confessor. I didn’t want the “job.” I never did. It happened by accident, or by fate, or by whatever the hell other mechanisms Center uses to make things happen outside of the control of we mere mortals living in its coils.

I knew his deepest secrets. Leonatra told them—tells them—when no one else can, or should, listen. And that makes me something different, something no one really knows how to handle, including myself.

The Hand, the young woman who was just doing her job, said I was an uncontrolled, unsworn, and unbound point of access to the most sacred and protected man in Center.

It wasn’t about what I’d done. There wasn’t a thing I’d “done” to warrant her worries.

No, it was instead about the “what could bes” and “what ifs” and those are where the worst fears live.

I’m not sworn to the Pactwall. Not in this case, anyway. I’m not genetically bonded to the Crown, and I have no oath or bond to enforce my silence. I have no magical coils to keep me loyal.

Every single Hand has their loyalty etched into their bones from the moment they’re chosen at birth, and their lives are tied as a promise to the Pactwall, with loyalties visible to any who wish to see.

Me? I guess it’s nothing more than personal “affection,” and that, to a Hand, is the most exploitable substance in the world.

The woman said not that I will betray him. I just needed captured by someone who wants what I know.

The Whispers? The Gravetongues? Their leaders would wipe out entire families to get hold of what the King confessed to me. Hells, I could even name a faction or two within the Nobles who would be willing to do the same. And I’ve no “fail safe” or kill switch magicked into my essence, like a Hand or a mage in service. There’s nothing there to wipe my memories if I were ever compromised.

I’m a walking, and deeply unprotected, archive of the King’s deepest vulnerabilities, living in a tavern on Lanternmaker’s Lane with two imps and a half-orc bartender with a board for security, and that isn’t, to the Hand, even close to enough.

And as I stared at her, the rope around her neck and the Weepers, that dark little cult of the gallows pole, whispered their eulogies at her feet, already covered in tears and dust, I knew she was right.

She didn’t try to kill me because she thought me disloyal. She was trying to kill me because I was the single most dangerous unlocked door in the kingdom and no one—not even Leonatra himself—wanted to close it.

Even as Leonatra gave the order for the Hand to be executed for her attempt to destroy an asset—and, privately, his personal confessor—I knew she was right.

And as the floor gave way beneath her and the terrible dance took place, I still gave her my eyes, because she deserved me to watch, and I deserved to feel every moment of her loss.

See, I could tell myself all day I wouldn’t break if I were ever captured or taken. I could tout how I’m strong, and how I’m capable, and how I’m able to fight, even if I don’t like to...

But I’m also a woman who has lived hard, and seen harder, and I know everyone says those same words until the moment they break.

Because they always do.

They carted her body away, and the Weepers mourned and spoke their griefs, as they always do, and I stayed there near the Ironwood, staring at the sky, wondering how I could make sure she didn’t die in vain.

That’s the hell of it all. I know she was right. If it were anyone other than me, I’d probably stare at me the way the rest of the Hand still does to this day.

I didn’t know then, in those first moments after her life faded away, how to solve it.

I still don’t.

I may never.

What scares me, though, is what it all really taught me.

Every one of her fellows, even those I know still shadow me when they see fit, knows what happened. They know the cost of deciding I am a problem.

It’s changed things in other ways, though, too. Every conversation with Leonatra, every time I am called to the Holdfast and brought to his chambers, I know I am the reason someone walked the Gallows, and it makes the scars on my arm ache ever harder.

My service to the King is not free.

It has the price of lives and blood, and I don’t know how much of that knowledge I can really face.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

If you enjoyed today’s journey into Original Worlds, there are ways to keep the daily stories flowing:

🚨 Subscribe right now and I will instantly send you a FREE full-length horror novel! It doesn’t matter if you’re free or paid. EVERYONE gets this book!🚨

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☕ Drop a tip in the Ko-Fi Jar: Fuel the creative chaos! As a thank you, any tip automatically unlocks a 1-month VIP pass to my paid tier.

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👑Give Me Everything

Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

MORE TALES FROM CENTER:

If you were given the chance to live forever, would you take it? What if the offer came from an unlicensed Wizard?

Immortality is on the table, but the unlicensed wizard offering it definitely forgot to mention the catch. Dive into a full-length adventure of magic, machines, and deadly bargains in the sprawling metropolis of Center in Clockwork Heart.

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Not again.

Cheryl closed her eyes for a moment as the pulsing of the lights caromed another wave of dizziness through her head. They flared wide again as the wrack of thunder shook her house, so intense the knick-knacks on her shelves rattled with it.

She hated this time of year. The constant flow of storms running rampant grew worse with each passing day. How much longer would it last? A week? Two?

It was becoming a problem, and the older she got, the harder it seemed to be for her to get through it.

The damp and pressure in the air was painful enough, each vying for control of her arthritis. She used to be able to put a cold pack on her joints and have at least a little relief from the aching that came with the weather, but nowadays, even that did not do much good.

She sipped a mouthful of the brown whiskey and winced as its fire swept across her throat. She hated the stuff, but it did seem to help.

If Norman were still alive, he’d probably laugh at the expression on her face with each drink she took, knowing how alcohol did not get along with her, but the little pills the doctor saw fit to let her have were nothing compared to the gripping pain. Norman hadn’t been around for five years and blessedly never had to go through the pains of getting too old, himself. His heart gave out long before anything else, and he always had been an otherwise healthy man.

Cheryl missed him most on nights like this. He would take her to their room and lay with her while she trembled with the fury of the strikes of electricity, the booms of thunder shattering any other sense of comfort she could have.

He’d be there with his arms around her, holding her tight and caressing her hair until the next wave came.

But he was long gone from her now, moved into another world by an unseen hand clenching his heart until it stopped running, leaving her to be alone until her own breaths would cease.

Her life was a string of lonely days since that particular night, and when the season of storms ravaged the land, she wanted nothing more than to have him here with her once more, her beacon of fearless strength and calm.

Another flash of white, bright heat flares through the windows in the living room, and as the crash of thunder came, the small lamp flickered again. Once, twice, and then it faded to black.

Cheryl straightened her back in her easy chair, the stool in front of her scratching across the floor as the thoughts in her mind weakened with the light. She turned her head this way and that, seeking any source of illumination she could focus on, but found none. Even the socket above her stove, always lit, was gone.

Cold tendrils of panic ripped through her veins. “No!” she shouted into the void of darkness.

Scrapes of branches from the bushes outside fluttered across her window pane as the wind whipped up into a new frenzy and her eyes widened until another bright flash forced her to squint away.

She reached for her cane, gripping it tight as she slowly rose to her feet, taking careful steps toward the window.

Was it only hers? Or was the neighborhood out?

Her place was old, even more than herself, and was prone to having problems like this when the weather got really intense. Usually, it was the breaker, already barely able to handle the flow of power throughout the whole house. When nature decided to be this potent, it would trip the switches.

But she did not want to have to deal with that if she did not have to.

She pulled the light curtain aside, giving herself the full view of the yard and the other houses around. While the street was small, they were closely packed together and she could almost always tell what was going on with her neighbors.

She had to squint again to see through the driving rain pounding against the glass, but it did look like everyone else still had power.

Great.

She toddled her way toward her chair but did not sit. She used the placement, instead, to make it easier to find the two small candles she kept on one of the shelves jutting from the walls. Had she left the pack of matches there, too? Or had she put them away after the last time?

Her eyes adjusted some to the darkness and, though there was barely any illumination, she managed to fumble her wrinkled fingers into the bigger of the two candles.

She let the cane lean against her hip as the other hand searched for the matches. A slight smile crossed her lips as she pulled the pack away from the shelf, as well.

Cheryl gently put the candle back on the shelf and struck one of the matches against the sandpaper on the side of the box.

She had to shut her eyes as the blaze of light made them hurt, but blinked a few times until they adjusted for her to ignite the candle. Before blowing out the match, she lit the other, as well.

She blew hard enough to put the small spark of fire out and replaced the box on the shelf.

It was not much, but as she glanced around the room, everything seemed in place. She picked up the bigger taper and leaned on the cane again to help her get to the kitchen.

She thought briefly about waiting until morning to fix the breaker, but that was still a long night away and the house was already chilling with the lack of the furnace running. If she were to wait, by the time the sunlight came again, she would be frigid and need days to recover.

No, better to just brace herself and get it done.

She took a deep breath and rested the cane against herself again as she pulled the handle on the basement door and swung it wide.

The candle did not give off light for her to see very far, but it would be enough to help her manage the stairs. The breaker was on the far side of the basement, embedded into one of the braces keeping the top floor upright. It would not be easy, but it was not the first time she had to do this.

Luckily, the stairs were wide and, though they were made of wood, they were still strong enough and secured in place so there was not even a creak as she took a step down. The railing was there, but she could not hold on to it, the candle, and the cane at the same time.

She placed the cane on the next, using it to support her weight as she shifted her body to match.

The candle slipped from her hand, as the rubber on the end of the rod skidded against the wood. It landed on the step as her torso teetered, gently at first, but within a heartbeat went through the final motion of the stumble and she tumbled.

One crash, then another, a spark of hurt turning into an agonizing jolt as her body bounced down. The candle blew out, leaving her in darkness as she fell into a heap at the bottom of the staircase. The last heave of breath came out in a shriek as the pain increased with the shattering of her hip and both legs below it.

Then there was nothing, as her consciousness faded into the black she was surrounded by.

She woke with another gasp, red embers of agony searing every part of her body.

Her back was against the basement wall, the cold stone scraping across her skin with the intake of air. Tears welled and drifted down her cheeks, each rasping inhale unbearable torture. The exhales faded with a whine.

She lay against the wall for a long time, unwilling to move any part of herself. Her hip was cracked, and that was bad enough, but the torment from her legs blinded her. The dark basement prevented her from looking at them, but the misery was far more than she could take.

The candle was gone, put out by the force of its landing, but the cold metal of the cane stretched out beneath her right hand. The rest of it was trapped by her body when she settled on it.

She relaxed her jaw, releasing the tight grind of her teeth she had unconsciously done as a way to deal with the pain. The passage of minutes did nothing to alleviate it.

It was, in fact, getting worse.

What could she do? There was no phone in the basement and, if there was, she would probably not be able to reach it. No flashlights were within range and, either way, with the condition she was in, she could not crawl to get one. Just taking a breath caused her more pain than she had ever felt before, even when giving birth.

“Oh, God, help me,” she muttered through her teeth. “Oh, God, please...”

She lapsed into silence once more, unable to do more through the laborious respirations.

A loud boom rattled the house above as another clap of thunder pierced the darkness. Her eyes rolled toward the staircase and the opened door beyond.

A dim, almost imperceptible, glow marked the doorway, the ambience of the small candle she left lit on the shelf in the living room the only light.

The door was only twenty feet away, but it may as well have been ten miles. She was not going to be able to climb those stairs any time soon.

More tears came, pouring out of her one after the other as pressure in her chest and throat made it hard to breathe. A few drifted into her mouth when she opened it to choke with the wracks of misery and the saltiness joined her tongue.

A metallic flavor tainted it, blood from a gash on her forehead joining the water.

She winced as another crack of thunder jolted everything, the storm raging right above her house. The wind outside railed against the basement windows, rattling them over and over again. The damp mustiness of the old stone and discarded boxes she knew were scattered all over wafted into her nostrils as she gagged a breath in.

The basement lit up with white as a flash of lightning sparked close by, and her eyes rolled up once more to the doorway above.

As she adapted once more to the dark, the aura around the opened portal glimmered.

It did not look like it did before.

She squinted, her pain-addled mind trying to search out what was different, but she could not think straight. The misery debilitated her senses, the only thing real to her the waves of agony cascading through her with every beat of her heart.

Her vision fluttered with blurriness, and she squeezed her lids shut, pushing so tightly that more tears squirted away, tracing down to mix with the rest.

When she opened them again, she realized what was different there.

The doorway was no longer wholly there, the squared shape it had was gone. Something was in-between, a dark form blocking off most of the light.

It was the silhouette of a person.

She gasped again, a whine accompanying it, as her head recoiled against the stone wall behind her.

Terror seized her, the blood coursing through her veins turning cold as her mind tried to vie against the pain and the fear someone was in her house.

Who was it? How had they gotten in?

“Who...” Her breath caught in her throat as the effort of speaking through everything happening to her overwhelmed her sense.

She stared wide-eyed at the figure but there was no movement, no sign of acknowledgment.

The more she glared into the dimness, the surer she was that someone really was there, but there was no motion to them.

After a minute of held breath and agonizing pain, she wondered if she was imagining it.

When another flash of lightning rammed through the house, she knew it was not in her mind.

It was only a split-second of time, but that was more than enough for the shadow of the man to be etched into her psyche.

Her scream came out as nothing more than a moan.

Cheryl’s body shifted, unconsciously trying to push herself away from the stranger in her house as the scream threaded through every fiber of her being. As she moved, though, the flare of agony blanked out her mind, and she wailed a banshee howl with the fire. She toppled sideways, her back dragging across the stone, until she was on her side. Cracks echoed into her deadened ears as the broken bones in her legs twisted, egging on more loud cries.

Her head hit the cement, unstopped by her seized muscles out of her control. Another bright flash of lightning glowed red through her closed eyelids.

She could not move, pain locking her in place, glued to the cold stone beneath her body which, with every passing second, sucked any sense of warmth she had. Her teeth began to chatter with the chill and fear, clacking together.

She put one of her hands to the ground and tried to push herself away but it only caused more agony to ransack her energy, her life force itself.

“Please,” she said into the darkness, barely audible above the driving rain and wind against the basement windows. “Please...”

She could not think, could do nothing but breathe as more wracks of misery flowed through her.

Her eyes lolled to the stairs, seeking any sign of the man she knew had to be there still, but the doorway above looked normal once more. No shape was there to interrupt the lines, to show there had been anyone there at all.

But when another flare of lightning broke the darkness, the figure was only a few feet away, squatting down low to the ground, staring at her.

She moaned again, her cheek pressed hard to the floor. Bits of dust and small powdered pieces of cement filled her mouth as she inhaled to moan again, the taste mixing with the blood.

When the hand touched her shoulder, she tried to recoil again, but there was little left in her to do it. She only managed to scratch herself open more against the rasping floor.

She could hear him breathing now, his own inhales slow and deep. Each exhale wafted across her skin, washing her with more warmth than she thought possible.

His hand moved again, caressing her shoulder as it flowed toward her face. He pushed back some of her hair that had fallen on her forehead. Despite her horror, it was almost comforting in its gentleness.

She closed her eyes, and hoped whatever this man had planned for her, it would be quick.

A reddish glow behind her lids began to coalesce, and she forced them open once more, taking in the subtle aura of the man kneeling before her.

Her terror ceased instantly, shifting to confusion as the face of her husband looked into her own.

The glow surrounded him, formed from somewhere within, etching out his features. He seemed young, much more so than the day she lost him. His beautiful brown eyes, so gentle and sure, had none of the lines of age he had been proud to bear surrounding them any more.

How was this happening? How was he here?

She wanted to say his name but could not force her throat to form the word. Her fingers scraped across the floor, inching toward his figure.

“Shh...” came from him, a soft hiss through pursed lips, returning quickly to the small smile. “I’m here, my love.”

He bent down, his hand leaving her to support himself as he leaned over her body and touched her face with his lips. Supple heat flowed from him into her and she closed her weeping eyes at the touch. She breathed him in as deeply as she could, the scent of his old cologne filling her lungs.

It was him. Somehow, God love him, it was him.

She smiled as his radiance suffused her and she faded into the darkness.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

If you enjoyed today’s journey into Original Worlds, there are ways to keep the daily stories flowing:

🚨 Subscribe right now and I will instantly send you a FREE full-length horror novel! It doesn’t matter if you’re free or paid. EVERYONE gets this book!🚨

📖 Claim My Free Horror Novel

Want to dive deeper into Original Worlds? If you love these daily stories and want to unlock the full cinematic experience, here are two ways to support the madness:

☕ Drop a tip in the Ko-Fi Jar: Fuel the creative chaos! As a thank you, any tip automatically unlocks a 1-month VIP pass to my paid tier.

☕ Bribe the Voices in My Head

🌌 Upgrade to a Paid Subscription: Want to just live here? Get full, permanent access to Author Readings, Special Episodes, full-cast audio with music scores, deep lore, and my embarrassing gushing.

👑Give Me Everything

Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

Want art that’s actually art? Hand-painted, zero AI, made by a human who has been doing this a while. Profile pictures, story art, book covers—if you can imagine it, I can paint it. Drop a comment, DM, or email ira@originalworlds.com

My mom was always something of a priss.

It took little to offend her sensibilities, and she always thought of herself in much higher standards than she ever really deserved.

When growing up, I would sometimes take great pleasure in putting her off-balance, at least as much as I could get away with.

When I was around ten, my parents decided to go on vacation to another state and I, of course, got dragged along.

It was the onset of the eighties, with sounds of Carter on the airwaves and what most, growing up in that era, would consider the best of music playing on every dime-store jukebox you could find.

We lived in Indiana at the time and the plan was to go spend time with family at a campground in the middle of the wilds of Michigan. My ten-year-old brain couldn’t fathom the idea of Michigan being the center of tourist attractions or the height of wonderment.

Especially not when there were other, more wondrous things to behold further south. Disneyworld, anyone?

Alas, it was not to be. Off to the glorious fun-filled woods in the back country of, even in springtime, rather cold Michigan.

They filled the car with smoke as both my parents sat in the front seat taking in the sights. I did my best to breathe through it, trying to grasp even a modicum of air through the once-every-twenty-minute-argument my father and I would have over me cracking the window.

It was like he had some sort of aerodynamic sense, planning out every mile per gallon of the trip based on the fact that the windows had to remain closed and the air conditioner off.

The first hour of that was fun. The second hour of the drive less-so, as my stomach turned a little green with the second-hand fogging up what little vision I had at the time.

When dad finally pulled in to a truck stop, shouting to the rest of the car that he was hungry and we’d be stopping for a while, I dove through the door and gasped for air like it was something holy.

The place was one of those little dives you find in Americana, with a range of semis parked out front and people coming in and out, filtering through the weird French-doors-that-weren’t. A couple ran their hands across the dog sitting on the front steps, and it, in turn, barely raised its head at the attention.

Through the doors we talked, the sounds of traffic passing by on the four-lane highway a hundred feet away cut off by the din of conversation and music spreading through the building.

It smelled delicious, fried burgers and eggs already on a bunch of the tables lined along the walls. A gnawing hunger as my tongue danced in the saliva rapidly replaced the queasiness I’d been fighting for the past miles.

We were led to a small table toward the center of the place by a waitress who looked exhausted. She tossed a couple of menus down and walked away without giving us much of a second glance.

We looked through the menu and, when the waitress finally came back to the table with a couple of waters and a wan smile, we told her what we’d like. After a few minutes, I caught my mom whispering to dad that she had to go use the restroom.

Dad shrugged, as he usually did when it came to that sort of thing and mom got up without much other fanfare, making her way to the back of the restaurant and a long, darkened hallway.

After seeing a few other people filter in and out, I lost interest, passing the few minutes with one of those weird little wooden puzzles sitting on the table. Ever see those in these little dive eateries? They make a great distraction while your stomach is trying to call for attention.

The food arrived and mom still hadn’t come out, but dad and I thought little it. We dug in, the first bites of burger still in my mouth, when she finally came back to the table in a rush.

Without sitting, her breaths rapid, she hissed, “Ted, we have to go.”

My dad glanced at her, his own mouth full, and tried to mouth the question of why.

She shook her head, and I could see she was visibly upset, but it didn’t seem like she was hurt or anything.

She just whispered again, “We have to go.”

It was then two burly, bearded men walked past the table, and as they looked at mom they laughed aloud, one of them slapping the shoulder of the other.

My dad put his burger on his plate and asked, “Shirley, what did you do?”

“Just...” Mom’s voice halted, but she picked it back up again as she sat down in her chair. “Just forget it.”

Her face was red, and she couldn’t lift her eyes.

“What happened?” he pushed again, trying to get her to open up.

“I... I thought they made bathrooms different up here, okay?”

Dad and I looked at each other strangely, confusion written on each of our faces.

When she finally spoke it, we broke out in laughter, trying to control ourselves with little effect.

My mother, in her infinite wisdom or some sort of twisted fate, ended up accidentally going into the men’s bathroom and, not realizing what she had done, hiked up her skirt and sat on one of the urinals to go.

And that’s when the truck drivers entered, finding this strange woman perched atop the one place someone shouldn’t sit.

When dad finally caught his breath from laughing, he asked her the big question.

“We’re a couple hundred miles from home. How different do you think bathrooms are going to be in Michigan?”

I don’t think the experience is one those truckers will ever forget.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

If you enjoyed today’s journey into Original Worlds, there are ways to keep the daily stories flowing:

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Want art that’s actually art? Hand-painted, zero AI, made by a human who has been doing this a while. Profile pictures, story art, book covers—if you can imagine it, I can paint it. Drop a comment, DM, or email ira@originalworlds.com

The rage built up in Tess once more, drowning out all but the man before her.

The small, darkly lit café, the people having their little talks with each other, the baby hollering for more food, all of these things disappeared, vaporized in an instant when she saw him walk through the door.

How many times had she thought, since she was a young girl, about the day she would see him again? How many times had the nightmare of her existence been interrupted solely by the thought that one day she would be able to see him again and crush him under the weight of her justice?

Too many. It had become almost an obsession.

People told her, time and time again, she should let him go. She should release her anger, let it turn to calm. She should just forgive and forget.

But how could she ever do such a thing? This man, the one standing mere feet from her, had done more harm to her than any dozen people could have.

He must pay. He must face the fire.

Tess would be the one to light it.

He was there, at the counter, talking to a girl dressed in black, the standard uniform of the café workers. He stood, with a smug expression on his face, as he placed his order for coffee to go.

Tess was already gathering her things together and placing them in her purse, readying herself to go when he did.

As he waited for his order, he turned and looked in her direction. Tess did not look away, would not look away. She willed him to stare into her eyes and see the rage which had become a part of her existence.

His gaze passed over her like a wave, without taking note of her.

It was as if he did not even recognize her, but how could that be? How could he have forgotten what he had done to her, even if it had been a long time ago?

He would soon be unable to ignore her, she knew; she would make sure of it.

His order finally arrived and he paid for it, giving the girl a smile.

This enraged Tess even more. How could the woman not see this monster for what he really was? How could she even stomach being as close to him as she was?

Had he cast some sort of spell on her? Had he hypnotized her, putting her mind at ease, somehow?

No matter. Tess would soon make sure the woman would always be protected from the creature.

He walked out of the doorway, heading to the street, and Tess jumped up to follow. She hurried through the exit and glanced around, looking for the direction the man went.

She saw him, twenty paces away, walking down the sidewalk. The cool breeze wending its way through the buildings surrounding them played with his hair, tousling it every which way.

She kept a distance from him, walking at the same rate he was doing, a shadow following behind in his wake. She would wait for the perfect moment; until then, she would remain unseen.

She could see him casually sipping from his cup as he walked slowly along the city streets. He did not seem to have a destination in mind. He was merely walking for the sake of itself. Though the rage within her bit at her consciousness, trying to break free from her control as a raging beast slavering for a piece of meat, she held it in check. There would be time for that, but only at her own choosing.

She had waited too long for any impatience to ruin her chance at the perfect strike.

Finally, he turned and rounded a corner, out of her sight, into an alleyway. It happened suddenly and she was not quite prepared for it. She hurried her own steps to catch up, not wanting to lose her target now that she was so close to having the one moment in her life she had ever looked forward to come to fruition.

As she turned the corner, herself, she heard a voice say, “I bet you didn’t think I knew you were there, didn’t you?”

His voice, deep and familiar to her as her own breath, echoed through the alley, coming into her ears with a sick, twisted tonality.

She said nothing back, looking for where he would no doubt be in wait for her. Her purse slid from her shoulder, landing on the ground with a soft clatter, as random items from within came scattering out.

She paid no attention to that, however. The only thing she could focus on was him, the dark form of her nightmares, standing a few yards away. He leaned against a wall, mostly in shadow, but she could see him as clear as if he was in the bright sunlight.

He might have been handsome, if Tess did not know his true nature. His smile, charming, to be sure, was more of a snarl to the girl he had harmed.

The sight of him, leaning casually there against the wall, caused her rage to finally break free, to run rampant throughout her being.

She ran forward, arms outstretched, slamming into him with her full weight. as she crashed into him, her fingers wrapped around his throat, pressing inward. She felt the bones there crack a little beneath her flesh and saw the shock in his eyes as the air was huffed out of him.

The breath smelled slightly of the coffee he had been drinking, and something else, as well. A sickness, hospital rooms and nursing homes, dark death and despair, all washing over her face as he heaved and bucked for another breath.

She turned her head slightly, taking in a breath of her own, then holding it again, while her fingers clenched tighter. Her teeth ground in her mouth, forcing a surge of adrenaline to spring from her guts, pushing her even harder.

Tess was slightly surprised by the confused look on the man’s face as the life slowly ebbed from him. She imagined, though, the gurgle coming from his throat was going to be yet another taunt, just like he had done so long ago. The way he would laugh as he spat one vile insult after another etched into her memory, burned there just as strongly as the brand he used on her back, marking her as his territory.

She hoped the scar would stop aching now that she was twisting the life from his despicable veins.

He slumped slowly to the ground, with her hands still clawed into his throat; her weight helped push him further into the abyss she knew he would soon find himself in. She hoped the hell he woke up to in the afterlife was an appropriate one for him. If she was doomed to enter into those pits herself, for taking her revenge on him, so much the better. She would rail at Satan himself to stoke the flames higher on them both, just so she could see him suffer more.

She smiled at that thought, as his eyes rolled into the back of his head and the lids slowly fluttered. Itr would be over in a moment, she knew, and then she could finally move on with her life.

The embers of her rage subsided somewhat as the life washed from his face. She could not help seeing him as almost angelic, even if he was a fallen one. Was that, perhaps, a small hint of relief on his lips? Regret in his cheeks?

No matter. The moment of her vengeance had come at last, and the gratitude in her heart made her soar.

The cartilage in his throat shifted slightly as her fingers released their grip. A small bit of air, still trapped in his lungs, escaped through his slightly opened mouth. Was blood mixed with the other fluids? Was his last moment, held in her hands, as torment-filled for him as he had put her through?

She stood, and stepped back slightly, staring at his lifeless body laying in the alley. She kicked his leg with her foot, then turned away from him and walked back to the opening to the street.

She was quick as she picked up everything which had fallen from her purse and walked away from her vengeance, glad to have it all finally come to an end.

Never again would he harm someone else. Never again would his eyes shine as he tortured his victims.

She knew, through her own act of revenge, she had saved others. While she did not do it for them, she still understood that fact and was glad of it.

As she walked the streets, away from her past, she knew it was all finally over.

Tess stepped into a small shop on the corner, sitting down at a table with her purse beside her.

The small, darkly lit café vanished around her, the people at the tables having their little talks vaporized in an instant when she saw him walk through the door.

Rage filled Tess, wiping away everything else around her as she stared at the man who had hurt her so long ago.

Vengeance would be hers.

He must pay. He must face the fire.

Tess would be the one to light it.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

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Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

Want art that’s actually art? Hand-painted, zero AI, made by a human who has been doing this a while. Profile pictures, story art, book covers—if you can imagine it, I can paint it. Drop a comment, DM, or email ira@originalworlds.com

No one expected things would get as bad as they did, back when the war first started.

Like so many other things, it was quiet, the first gasps of a newborn child that became the dying breaths of an old man within the span of days.

I saw it all, though, with my eyes gleaming. I wept over our dying world, the arcs of magic passing overhead, as the storms raced across the sky. Some might even go so far as to say it was beautiful, but with each spark, another life was snuffed, cut short as the waves of dark magic crashed against a world unprepared.

We don’t know what started it all, even these many years after. We see our children born changed, altered in ways nature never intended them to be. Technology and magic blending even in the womb, the beings opening their eyes on this new world resting their gazes on a planet devastated by the releases of power which seemed to come from the earth itself.

Some speculated nature, Herself, rose up against the things we were doing to her, the science run amok until the point of no return was reached. Others claim it was God striking us down in a fit of rage and vengeance that no legend could match.

I can’t say one way or the other. I don’t think anyone ever could. It’s just the stories told in the late of night when the lights are out, and people are left with nothing to do but watch over the remains of a world once assured of another bright, new day.

No longer. Now each new sunrise falls upon an earth resembling nothing of the grandeur it once had.

That’s all gone, remembered only by those lucky enough to have been around before the destruction began.

No, the world has changed, and we, the living remnants of those heady days of the past, can only look back on them with the fondness that comes with eking out the next meal, or the next breath.

There are so few of us left, small handfuls of relics of a world that can never be again, no matter how much we try to remain teachers.

The children call us Elders, though the term no longer has any sense of the respect it might once have held. Now it’s said with derision, cast off of cold lips and hardened hearts, the faces of the beings who once could have been human beings, if they were born before the world moved forward, filled with mockery.

Had something like this happened before? Possibly. The mythos of civilizations past, for those of us who remember, held stories of creatures much like the bodies our children now wear. Fae creatures, they would call them, some beautiful, some twisted and unrecognizable as anything reminiscent of a human.

So much is different, now. The grand cities we once held on to with pride, are now charred and smoking ruins, abandoned and fading away to rust. New homes, places of power, and enclaves of “light” have, over the years, cropped up. Havens for those of like minds and similar bodies.

And so much hatred...

We few, we Elders, try to convince peace, to sway and soothe, to stave off the inevitable tide we see coming, filled with blood and bone.

Magic is still in the air, taken in with every passing breath, dark and insidious. It changes everything it touches.

Maybe what’s left of mankind will survive. Maybe everything will eventually die, torn asunder and left to rot away, like the remnants of the cities our ancestors once bled, sweat, and cried for.

I don’t know which would be better.

The enclave is not far away, now. Perhaps I can once again stem the tide of horrors I foresee with my blinded eyes.

I pray I can, to whatever God might still be casting its gaze upon our desolate little rock.

If not, I pray it all ends as swiftly as it came, and the world to come after is untouched by the dark magics that have devastated ours.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

If you enjoyed today’s journey into Original Worlds, there are ways to keep the daily stories flowing:

🚨 Subscribe right now and I will instantly send you a FREE full-length horror novel! It doesn’t matter if you’re free or paid. EVERYONE gets this book!🚨

📖 Claim My Free Horror Novel

Want to dive deeper into Original Worlds? If you love these daily stories and want to unlock the full cinematic experience, here are two ways to support the madness:

☕ Drop a tip in the Ko-Fi Jar: Fuel the creative chaos! As a thank you, any tip automatically unlocks a 1-month VIP pass to my paid tier.

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🌌 Upgrade to a Paid Subscription: Want to just live here? Get full, permanent access to Author Readings, Special Episodes, full-cast audio with music scores, deep lore, and my embarrassing gushing.

👑Give Me Everything

Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

Want art that’s actually art? Hand-painted, zero AI, made by a human who has been doing this a while. Profile pictures, story art, book covers—if you can imagine it, I can paint it. Drop a comment, DM, or email ira@originalworlds.com

When I was a younger entity, I cared about what people thought of me.

A lot.

It depleted my sanity. Thoughts swirled in my head constantly, worrying about whether this person liked me or what that person thought of me. I’d obsess over ways I could change.

If I did something “like this,” maybe they’ll think better of me. Oh, maybe I could dress “like that,” and it’ll make them think I’m cool.

I wasted hours of my time creating outlines for myself of what to say the next time I saw Cool Joe in the halls. Would he like me better if I said this to him? What about this?

You know what happened?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They still bullied me. They treated me like I was an outcast, or a piece of gum on their shoe.

I could not figure out, for the life of me, the “in” I would need to make a mark on those people.

It’s probably tied to the years of abuse at the hands of my whiskey-drunk of a father, combined with the same amount of days with a mother who ignored everything. Her idea of protecting me was “if-I-don’t-see-it-it’s-not-happening.”

Yeah. Big help there.

After years of that kind of thing, my mental health was on a decline, and the only thing I wanted to do was to fit in somewhere, somehow. The only people I knew were useless relatives and, perhaps, even more meaningless schoolmates. Neither was a great option.

Still, I needed something, some sort of beacon of hope in my life to hold on to.

I needed a change.

I eventually realized the only way that was going to happen was if I felt it inside myself. It would not come from any of those people.

Sure, I might have been able to trigger an action to get them to suddenly notice me, but they’d not be a support in any way. They couldn’t help me with the core problem.

That problem was my viewpoint of myself.

You see, I believed in the words my father spoke. He told me I was a useless piece of crap, and I believed him, because he was my father. Being raised in a religious environment, you learn quick the wages of the sin of not honoring your father and mother.

Fear of him, disdain of her, and terror at the idea of being cast into hell by a God who thought it would be a good idea to toss a child into a morass of crap I had to grow up in. That was the soup within which my mental health floated. Unfortunately, in a lot of ways, it’s still there, even forty years later.

I had to do something. There had to be a way for me to figure it out.

I’m not sure what triggered it. There wasn’t some guru on a stage I stared at. It wasn’t some pastor at the altar screaming fire and brimstone who made it happen for me. It wasn’t even caring and kind words of a mother who was otherwise neglectful.

I chalk it up as a miracle of sorts, because once I began to internalize these words, my life altered.

“If you don’t like me for who and what I am, screw you. There are 7 billion other people in the world who just might. You’re not worth the time.”

They gleamed in my mind and I latched on to them as a drowning man in a storm. I wrote them down in every notebook I owned.

I wrote that phrase over and over and put it under my pillow so it’d sink in while I slept.

The change didn’t happen overnight. It took some time before I could really start believing it. But as the days passed, and I kept saying it in my head to each person I passed by, I realized my sense of yearning to belong started to subside.

Somehow, that mantra quelled the loneliness. It took the burden of needing to fit in off of me and put it on those I was around. I didn’t need them. If they didn’t care about me, screw it.

I’ve held those words to my chest ever since. I’ve taught them to my children, and find they benefit from it, as well.

It is my hope, my dear friend, that it works for you too.

If they don’t like you, appreciate you, need you for who and what you are, screw them. They aren’t worth your time.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

If you enjoyed today’s journey into Original Worlds, there are ways to keep the daily stories flowing:

🚨 Subscribe right now and I will instantly send you a FREE full-length horror novel! It doesn’t matter if you’re free or paid. EVERYONE gets this book!🚨

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☕ Drop a tip in the Ko-Fi Jar: Fuel the creative chaos! As a thank you, any tip automatically unlocks a 1-month VIP pass to my paid tier.

☕ Bribe the Voices in My Head

🌌 Upgrade to a Paid Subscription: Want to just live here? Get full, permanent access to Author Readings, Special Episodes, full-cast audio with music scores, deep lore, and my embarrassing gushing.

👑Give Me Everything

Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

Want art that’s actually art? Hand-painted, made by a human who has been doing this a while. Profile pictures, story art, book covers—if you can imagine it, I can probably paint it. Drop a comment, DM, or email ira@originalworlds.com

My hand reached out for another napkin, frustrated as I wiped even harder.

I’d been at it so long my fingers felt bruised, and I swear I didn’t know if it was ever going to end.

So much blood. Even when I had seen someone giving birth so many years ago I did not see as much as there seemed to be there on the floor.

It’s hard to believe just how much is in a human body, but I was sure finding out.

Tossing the napkin in the trashcan I had moved into the garage, I reached out for another, but the roll was running empty.

God, how many more rolls would I need? I’d already been through ten.

The plan had been so simple. Bring her home, kill her, and cut the body into small enough parts to store easily in the freezer. Simple, right? Just a matter of getting things done.

Execution always blows away the perfect plans, though.

Getting the girl there was not hard. I’m an older guy, with a friendly enough face and a nice personality. Flow enough drinks from the bar into a girl and she gets pretty pliable.

Convincing her to get to the house from the bar just took a little kissing and a little more persuasion of the liquid kind.

She was nice, the kind of girl who came from a rural area, maybe, moving to a bigger town to take a chance with better job options. Pretty, but not really enough to turn heads. Not the girl-next-door sort of face I preferred. Still, not unpleasant to stare at and make the appropriate googly-eyes over, and my attention seemed to win her over.

I stayed there with her until the bar was nearly empty, sinking one drink after another into her while I, of course, played my part of drunken partner. Unlike her own heavily weighted drinks, mine were soda only.

Home was, thankfully not far away, and I drove us there quickly, leaving her own car behind in the parking lot. With as much of a dive as that place was, someone’s car there would probably not be noted for a day or two, and there was, thankfully, not a camera in sight.

That’d go against the kind of clientele the place catered to.

I’m lucky to have a sort of every-man face. For some reason, even while young, people had a hard time pinning down in descriptions what I looked like. Tall, brown hair, average nose.

Yep. Average. That’s the best way to describe me. Just another guy in another bar looking to hook up with yet another drunken girl.

Get her in the house, make it to the garage. So easy, so simple even a child could do it, but she was so drunk it took a while to accomplish the deed. Finally, making up that I had an awesome car I’d love to show her the back of, she complied, taking the first steps inside before me, laughing in a shrill sort of way.

The blow to the back of her head with a hammer took her down at once, my shot perfectly timed with her bending over to fix the shoe which had come undone a bit.

She landed, face first, on the concrete floor, and I swear I heard something snap.

I wasted no time, taking the hammer down on the back of her head once more, creating a gash this time. The blood flowed at a rapid pace and she moaned, though I was sure she was, by that time, unconscious. She didn’t try to move and was already barely breathing.

One more time, the hammer blasted into her skull, and there was an audible pop as something inside of her neck broke. Probably one of the pieces of cartilage or something smaller.

Now, you might think I was angry, the flood of emotions flowing through me a tide of fury or hate, but there was nothing. No ire, no abhorrence.

Just peace, a calmness I’d rarely felt in my life before. It was almost like this killing was the hundredth time I had done such a thing, but she was my first.

My virgin sacrifice, if you will.

I wondered in those moments if there was something wrong with me, some part of me, perhaps, that had never really grown to care, but I really can’t pinpoint any time I had felt such a strange nothingness.

Or such... peace.

I bent down, the fingers of my free hand reaching for her neck to test her pulse.

There was none. Good, it had been quick. I didn’t want to torture her. I wanted it to be over for her without much pain.

I’m not a monster, after all.

Now the rest of the plan came into play and, I suppose, where fate had slightly different options in mind for me.

See, I had readied a tarp, thinking there would be blood, but by the time I was done with the saw, the pools of red were everywhere. Every crack and crevasse I could see had some spotting in it.

Damn it. I should have put the tarps on the walls and windows, too.

It’s the little things one doesn’t think about, I suppose. The devil’s in the details, so to speak.

Anyhow, by the time the cutting and hacking was over, I was a mess, my garage was even worse, and I was left with more bits and pieces than I had anticipated. Not that I’m not okay with that. I can handle the excess, but still, for such a small girl, she made a lot of mess.

I opened the lid of my brand-spanking new Whirlpool chest freezer. The sales guy assured me it would have enough space a family of five could live like kings for a month, and I could not believe the luck of the deal I was given for it.

It even had extra space for me to put her head along the side, facing up in such a way I could see her still-surprised look whenever I wanted to see her.

That’s nice, isn’t it? One should always be able to see those they care about.

The rest of her fit nicely, the bits and bobs put in Zip-lock bags and I stacked them so I could easily get them out when I needed them.

All of her went in. It really is a nice freezer. I’ll have to call the sales guy and compliment him on his recommendation. Hell, I might even send him a nice box of chocolates or something, just so he knows he’s got a customer for life.

The cleanup is going to take a while, I am sure. I need to get it all, miss nothing, just in case someone shows up looking for the lady. What was her name again? I’m afraid I don’t remember at this point.

Not that it really matters. She’s a means to an end, and if it wasn’t her it would have been another.

One has to eat, after all. Even those of us who have strange tastes have certain needs, and it’s not really something we can help.

I’m not a monster. Not by any means. Just someone who had an urge to fulfill.

Next time, I’ll be more careful. Minimize the mess just for the sake of propriety.

I won’t have to worry about that for a while, though. She will last well into the future.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

If you enjoyed today’s journey into Original Worlds, there are ways to keep the daily stories flowing:

🚨 Subscribe right now and I will instantly send you a FREE full-length horror novel! It doesn’t matter if you’re free or paid. EVERYONE gets this book!🚨

📖 Claim My Free Horror Novel

Want to dive deeper into Original Worlds? If you love these daily stories and want to unlock the full cinematic experience, here are two ways to support the madness:

☕ Drop a tip in the Ko-Fi Jar: Fuel the creative chaos! As a thank you, any tip automatically unlocks a 1-month VIP pass to my paid tier.

☕ Bribe the Voices in My Head

🌌 Upgrade to a Paid Subscription: Want to just live here? Get full, permanent access to Author Readings, Special Episodes, full-cast audio with music scores, deep lore, and my embarrassing gushing.

👑Give Me Everything

Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

Getting a text from an unknown number can go a couple of ways.

Could be an irritation, especially with all the spammers there are out there. You know the ones. They love to bug you for the latest deals on insurance, or to tell you that a free trip to Timbuktu is waiting for you and all you need to do is give up your Social Security number and your first-born child.

Those are easy to ignore. Just delete the text, maybe block the number, though they’ll just hit you with another spam message later from a different one, or get pissed off about it, rant and rave for a while only to block the number and ignore it.

Sometimes, random texts will lead to a funny conversation or, on an extremely rare occasion, bring a potential new friend into your life.

But the texts I got just a little while ago did neither of those.

They have set my heart in a terror I have never felt before.

The first few texts had no words attached, only images. They were of me, and not just some creepy stalker sending me pictures of myself from a distance.

No. They were of me, tied up, bound and gagged, with bruises on my face and blood all over my face.

I don’t remember ever being in any kind of position to have such a thing happen.

When the first one came in, I dropped my phone, hitting the tile floor of my kitchen almost hard enough to break the glass. I stared at it for a long while, the face I am familiar enough from the mirror with to recognize immediately, even through the blood.

The phone sat there long enough for the screen to go dark, and I still didn’t move.

What the hell?

I could not understand how something like that was possible. My mind spun. When had I ever been bound like that? Where even was I in the picture?

Then I remembered my missing time, and my stomach dropped.

See, two years ago, something happened to me. The doctors chalked it up to some kind of amnesia, the result of an accident, perhaps. They could give no definitive answer because I had been missing for over three months, and by the time they saw me, whatever had occurred to start the whole thing was no longer showing on my body.

I didn’t have any answers for them. Still don’t,. Nothing of that time is there for me, a blank page in an otherwise full book.

I had simply lived a life, disappeared for months, then reappeared at the hospital with no memory of where I had been or what happened.

They kept me for a few days, helped me clear some of the haze away, and then, knowing nothing else to do, sent me home to recover as best I could.

I had no family, nothing really to my name except the apartment I lived in before I disappeared. I did go back to it, surprised to find it was still there with my stuff. I had to make up for a lot of lost time, and a ton of back-logged bills, but everything was intact.

The cleanup of the rotting food and stuff in my fridge sucked, but I was determined to move on and try to put the pieces back together.

Therapy helped, but not much. Everything was just... gone. It was as if for those few months I did not exist, moving from one reality to another.

Seeing that image of my blood-laden face, bound and gagged, on the text message was more than scary. It was horrifying in a way I cannot put into words.

The tinkling bell sound notifying me another message arrive jolted me, and I screamed, ripped from the state of panic I had been locked into since the image hit my eyes.

I should have left the phone on the floor. I knew better. But something primal in me grasped it and tapped the power button on the side, bringing the original image back to life, the almost deadened eyes of my own self staring back at me.

I scrolled, my thumb trembling, to see another one pop up. This one was of me from a slightly further distance, though the position of my head seemed the same. Maybe it was taken moments before or after the previous. I don’t know.

Either way, it was me again, in clothes I did not recognize. What the fuck? I mean, what the ever living fuck is this shit?

My heart wanted to leap from my chest, slamming so hard against my ribs I felt faint, but I held the phone in a vise-grip, fingers whitening with the strain.

Another notification. Another message.

“Are you having fun?”

My eyes blurred, wetness slathering over my lids as I squeezed them shut.

Finally, my fingers did lose their grip and the phone once more smacked against the floor. I bent sideways, bile rushing through my chest and out of my mouth, barely making it into the sink beside me.

I couldn’t stop throwing up. The pictures caromed through my mind, flashing at me over and over, the words echoing around in a jumble.

Who did this? Who tied me up and hurt me? Where had I been?

I tried to breathe, to calm myself down, to bring myself to some kind of rational thought, but it took a long time.

My mind screamed at me to run, but where was I supposed to go? I was in my apartment, safe, and it was nothing more than a couple of texts.

Grab rationale. Think logically. Stop the fear. I argued back to myself, my brain locked between two spheres I could not get out of.

My legs wobbled, and I sank to the floor, the grip of fear so intense I could do nothing more than that simple act.

Who sent the texts? How had they gotten my number, captured the tortured look in my eyes? Spinning, reeling, I circled around and around in my head but only whimpers came from my throat in answer.

Another ding as the notification came up, telling me another message was inbound.

Don’t click. Don’t acknowledge. Don’t give any of this validity.

I yelled the words at myself but my fingers did not listen. They tapped the screen against my own volition, automatic and somehow unshaking.

“Are you having fun yet?”

Another image followed the words.

This time, it was again of myself, but the look on my face, in spite of the blood, was what I could only describe as ecstatic. A smile wrapped my lips, swollen as they were from whatever forces had smashed hem.

Unlike the other images, though, I could see this one was taken, apparently, by my own hand. The camera - maybe maybe the very phone sending the images - captured my arm holding it at length so the perfect picture could be caught.

What in the hell was going on? How was this happening?

What the shit did I do during the time I could not remember?

While the first images seemed to show me in a way I was there against my will, this newest one made it appear I was not only enjoying things, but, perhaps, a completely willing participant in whatever was happening.

But it made no sense. None at all. Never would I do such a thing. Pain is something to avoid, not seek out, and yet there I was, in all ways I could tell tortured, beaten, bloodied.

And smiling.

That smile was genuine. That smile was familiar, something I understood from the mirror, welted up and all.

Another notification, and I cringed at the new words plastered on the screen.

“Are you having fun, yet? See you next week.”

THANK YOU FOR READING!

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THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!

If you enjoyed today’s journey into Original Worlds, there are ways to keep the daily stories flowing:

🚨 Subscribe right now and I will instantly send you a FREE full-length horror novel! It doesn’t matter if you’re free or paid. EVERYONE gets this book!🚨

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Want to dive deeper into Original Worlds? If you love these daily stories and want to unlock the full cinematic experience, here are two ways to support the madness:

☕ Drop a tip in the Ko-Fi Jar: Fuel the creative chaos! As a thank you, any tip automatically unlocks a 1-month VIP pass to my paid tier.

☕ Bribe the Voices in My Head

🌌 Upgrade to a Paid Subscription: Want to just live here? Get full, permanent access to Author Readings, Special Episodes, full-cast audio with music scores, deep lore, and my embarrassing gushing.

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Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

Want me to read your stories or create music for your recordings? Send me a message and I’ll be happy to help.

Easter cold drifted across the lands, as and went live. Everyone speaking, everyone sharing, wonderful moments of poetry and self-healing…

And then I came on and ruined it all!

I read a few of my poems / lyrics for everyone, and was asked to share them within a post for people to enjoy—or avoid—later.

So! Ready? Let’s begin…

Sharp Obsessions

Get out of my mind
Please leave me be
Shut the voice in my head
And please set me free

This obsession’s too hard
I’m so lost inside
Its as if you’re now me
And the real me has died

You’re there all the time
You’re there every day
Your voice speaks strong
And mine cannot say

Cannot say let me go
Cannot say what to do
Cannot say who I am
For I am only you

This obsession’s too hard
I’m so lost inside
Its as if you’re now me
And the real me has died

This obsession’s too hard
It’s killing me slow
But I cannot decide
If I want to let go

Yeah.

I can’t let go.

For I am in too deeply
And I know this for sure
But you are a disease
And there isn’t a cure

This obsession’s too hard
I’m so lost inside
Its as if you’re now me
And the real me has died

This obsession’s too hard
And I’m unable to see
The line where you end
And where I can see me

I say please let me go
I ask what can I do
Please tell who I am
Right now I’m only you

God.

I’m only you.

No me.

Just you.

Love Like a Human

You hold me down
You bring me pain
You hold me down
You will again

Every word you say
Every time you speak
Everything you do
My soul gets weak

I want to go away
I want to be free
I want to find someone
Who will hold me

Not down, like you...

But someone who can see
I’m a human.

You haunt my dreams
With your twisted ways
You haunt my dreams
With your cold gaze

Every night I pray
For release from this hell
Every night I beg
For a different spell

I want to escape
I want to break free
I want to find someone
Who will love me

Not hurt me, like you...

But someone who can see
I’m a human.

Your grip tightens
Around my soul
Your grip tightens
Taking its toll

Every breath I take
Feels like a fight
Every step I make
In the dead of night

I want to be whole
I want to be alive
I want to find someone
Who’ll let me survive

Not destroy me, like you...

But someone
who can see
I’m a human.

But the darkness creeps in
And I can’t find the light
You won’t stop bidding
And I can’t win this fight.

I’m a human.

I need a life.

I’m a human.

Your love...

is a knife.

Unaware

I believed in your words
When you told me that you care
I opened myself to you
And then you took me unaware

Unknowing your dark past
Unseeing your two faced lies
Undoing my whole being
Now you’ve cut the ties

The bonds between us broken
Severed before I could think
Torn from me without a word
Everything gone within a blink

And so here I sit with tears on my face
You go ahead, and walk out the door
After all is said and done right here
I can’t afford to feel you more

Unknowing your dark past
Unseeing your two faced lies
Undoing my whole being
Now you’ve cut the ties

I hate you.
I love you.
I wish you were near
This shit I cant bear

I wish you were near.

I wish you were near.

I wish you were here.

I opened myself to you
And then you took me unaware

This shit I cant bear

The Ring

You think you know me.
You say you know my ways.
But blind you are, cannot see
That I’ve been here many days

You laugh at me, a happy clam.
But cannot look me in my eye.
Your life is too much a sham.
You don’t bother to ask why.

I see you all.
You come and go.
You really want.
to watch the show.
Laugh at the clown.
I don’t mind.
My own happiness
I can never find.

My heart’s filled with memories
Of the times past, ancient days
Yet I’m on stage, eager to please
I ever do as ringmaster says

He bids me to smile and bend
Until the coins come fly his way
I really want this torment’s end
I will not, cannot, go another day

I see you all.
You come and go.
You really want.
to watch the show.
Laugh at the clown.
I don’t mind.
My own happiness
I can never find.

I’ll sit here in the lights
Under a haze for all to see
I know there are many more nights
Before I end this reality

For I’m locked, my spirit lost
I’m broken, bent, out of control
Many nights I’ve paid the cost
And I wish I could own my soul

I see you all.
You come and go.
You really want.
to watch the show.
Laugh at the clown.
I don’t mind.
My own happiness
I can never find.

It goes on, ending never
This play I work on my stage.
Caught in this loop forever.
Before I go to my cage.

I see you all,
you come and go
You really wanted to watch my show
Laugh at this clown, and my misery
The ringmaster.

cannot.

release.

me.

I hope these have been worthy for you. Thank you for being here, and make sure to follow and . They are absolutely worth spending time with.

Flying High in Appalachia

The Disaster Lounge with Laura B and Fiona

Thank you imi, Margaret Williams, MS, ACC, Elijah Westin, Mack Devlin, Ma.LA, The Secret Ingredient, and many others for tuning into my live video with Original Worlds (Ira Robinson), Sean M Hines, Kristina Ray, and Laura B Writing in the Shadows! Join me for my next live video in the app…

Listen now

2 months ago · 12 likes · 17 comments · Fiona Bridges, Laura B Writing in the Shadows, Sean M Hines, Original Worlds (Ira Robinson), and Kristina Ray

THANK YOU FOR READING!

If you enjoyed today’s journey into Original Worlds, there are ways to keep the daily stories flowing:

🚨 Subscribe right now and I will instantly send you a FREE full-length horror novel! It doesn’t matter if you’re free or paid. EVERYONE gets this book!🚨

📖 Claim My Free Horror Novel

Want to dive deeper into Original Worlds? If you love these daily stories and want to unlock the full cinematic experience, here are two ways to support the madness:

☕ Drop a tip in the Ko-Fi Jar: Fuel the creative chaos! As a thank you, any tip automatically unlocks a 1-month VIP pass to my paid tier.

☕ Bribe the Voices in My Head

🌌 Upgrade to a Paid Subscription: Want to just live here? Get full, permanent access to Author Readings, Special Episodes, full-cast audio with music scores, deep lore, and my embarrassing gushing.

👑Give Me Everything

Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

Want art that’s actually art? Hand-painted, zero AI, made by a human who has been doing this a while. Profile pictures, story art, book covers—if you can imagine it, I can paint it. Drop a comment, DM, or email ira@originalworlds.com