Wren takes a road trip. A divorcee spots an odd insect. Conway tries to shake a rock out of his shoe.

Featuring the voices of Nathan from Storage Papers (https://thestoragepapers.com), Jess Syratt from Nowhere, On Air (https://nowhereonairpodcast.weebly.com), and Rae Lundberg of The Night Post (https://nightpostpod.com/).

(CWs, mild spoilers: LOTS of insects, body horror, fire, car braking sound)

Transcript incoming, here's the rough script for now, which mostly follows the episode.

“Now let’s get to the weird stuff…”

WREN: We humans generally like stability. Predictability. We like to figure out patterns and stick with them. I think that’s why change can be so frightening for us. It throws the future--which once seemed so certain--into chaos. Anything could happen. We could be on the verge of destruction at any moment. But we could also be inches away from utopia. If you can learn to live with this change, this constantly revolting present, you just might make it out of the apocalypse with your sanity intact.

Or so that’s what I hoped. I had little else to count on. I tried to flow like water with the shifting tide. You can be the judge of how that all turned out. That’s why you’re here, right?

Pockets of shadows remained in the cave, about a dozen or so people, seemingly oblivious to the life outside. They toiled under The Boss’s directives, worked day and night for the Dead Letter Office. To what end, I couldn’t really say. Seemingly just to perpetuate the office itself. If I could show them the way out, maybe they would help me take on the Boss. One shadow, Liz, was receptive to my offer. She still had some kick left in her diminished form. Her girlfriend, though, was blind to the world, just a single atom in the bureaucratic monolith.

In Liz, I had someone on the inside. If she could go back and agitate from within the machine, we might stand a chance of turning a few more souls back to the light. It would be risky, though; if even one shade suspected outside forces were at work, they might alert the Boss. Even given all my experience with the paranormal and extranormal, I have no idea what would happen then. My gut feeling told me that facing the Boss prematurely would be...ill-advised.

If I wanted to find more of these shadows, I’d need to search through the dead mail, find the stories that might have caught Conway’s attention, and seek out their writers. The problem was that I had just walked out of my job, and I had a suspicion that if I showed back up unannounced, the Boss would take notice. Where, then, would I find these letters if not the office?

I’d need to find the place that Conway kept all of the clues. I’d need to find Aisling. I’d need to find the vault. Would anything be left in the old vault, or had the Boss already figured out my plan and purged it? Only one way to find out.

Yes, change can be terrifying. Yes, the future is in flux. But the scariest part is that the past can be made just as uncertain as the future. Memories fade, records burn, and witnesses pass on. Entire decades lost, cultures lost. Lessons unlearned. Mistakes repeated. If a place loses its history, how can its people know the present? Without a past, how can we make sense of the future? As a butterfly forgetting it was once a worm, who are we without who we were?

Driving through the clogged artery highways of the state was a challenge, given that time appeared to be at a standstill for most of the world.

If all the postcards and letters were to be believed, I was looking for a lakeside town. Somewhere along the Erie was a town full of shadows, a place haunted by its own history. And within that town was a lighthouse. This lighthouse was my metaphorical beacon. I kept the postcard printed with its image folded and tucked into my pocket. It was among the few items I took with me on this road trip: a cassette player with some of Conway’s old tapes and a furry little friend also jostled around in a cardboard box on the passenger seat. I couldn’t just leave the poor thing in the office after all we’d seen.

The morning air was silent and stiff, only the sound of my rumbling engine accompanied the pink rays glancing off rows of glass and steel. I turned the stereo’s knob, but the radio was entirely dead air. I loaded up one of the tapes to see if it would be of any help.

The enormous hand still hung overhead like the executioner’s ax. What was our crime, Conway? What did we let ourselves forget?

*on tape* OLD INTRO MUSIC

This is Conway, receiving clerk for the Dead Letter Office of Aisling, Ohio, processing the national dead mail backlog. The following audio recording will serve as an internal memo strictly for archival purposes and should be considered confidential. Need I remind anyone: public release of this or any confidential material from the DLO is a felony. Some names and places have been censored for the protection of the public.

Dead letter 11919. An SD card found in a condemned building. The house caught fire in fall of 2011, but card was mysteriously undamaged. The fire department contacted one of our carriers, who brought it back to the office for investigation. The contents of the SD card are as follows.

*off tape

A month after my divorce I took up photography. Call it a midlife crisis if you want. I needed something to keep my mind occupied now that I was perpetually alone again, and a camera is a hell of a lot cheaper than a sports car. Photography’s really for lonely hearts; you’re by yourself, but surrounded by people. You watch them through the lens, feed on their fleeting touches. I threw myself into it fully without thinking too much, like I do with just about everything. Like I did with her.

Three months after the divorce, I went to the butterfly house. To see things so wet and new enter the world, so hopeful, was healthier projecting my turmoil onto the world around me. The insects’ colorful wings rendered through the lens like stained glass, and there was so much variety. I started shooting at the conservatory whenever I could, and gleaned a lot about butterflies in the process.

Monarch butterflies, Danaus plexippus, migrate long distances, from the great lakes to the gulf, then come back again when the weather warms up. How they remember the path back home, no one’s quite sure. Almost romantic. On the other end of the spectrum, some moths only live for a week. Actias luna don’t eat anything during their brief week of existence, because they can’t: their mouths are vestigial. Instead, they rely on what they ate in their larval state to sustain them throughout their lives. They eat, change, mate, and die. Also kind of romantic. In a sense.

Six months after the divorce is when I saw it. The reason for this video.

I was kneeling in front of a coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, waiting for one of the little powdery things to alight on a petal. A kid running through the conservatory was scaring off most of my subjects, but I could be patient. What else did I have going on in my life? My friends were mostly married and mostly busy, my family...well, I’d rather not go there. So I waited. Crouched, holding the hefty camera, lens focused, my mind was sharp but my body was getting stiff. I was about to call the day a wash when something interesting came into view.

A large butterfly landed on the purple flower. Its folded wings were pure ashy black, and it looked sharper than the objects around it. This one had a sort of presence, a portentous aura, as if the events of the world waited on every flap of its wing.

In my time here, I’d never seen anything like it. It held my attention in a vice, like it wasn’t a bug at all, but a treacherous cinder in a pile of dry leaves. Like it demanded a watchful eye, else the ember might be stirred by a breeze to glow again and burn and burn.

I snapped a few photos of its dusky form. Then it turned, its back now facing the camera, and spread its wings. There smudged across its span were three bars of color: white over red over brown on black. Like three chalky rectangles floating in the void. The thing that worried me most about this creature was that it was somehow familiar, like somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind I had seen this before. But not on a butterfly, no, it had to be something else.

Six years ago, we drove up to canada in a cheap rental car. We threaded a trail up and east, across the Erie border, into the marigold hills of pennsylvania, through the vineyards and thin eastern pines of new york, up across the border.

We were spending a long weekend in Toronto, taking in the sights and sounds of a real city, a place where public transportation isn’t just a pipe dream. We bought fresh pears from a bodega in and took the metro across the river. We walked through the financial district and saw a seagull pick at fries in a discarded styrofoam container.

I say we. I can see the places in my mind, remember the sounds and smells, but she’s not really there in my memory anymore. My mind erased her from the picture, but the empty space she occupied is still there. Like a citation to a book that doesn’t exist, an overexposed blob on a film negative haunting every frame.

This was our last trip together, not that we knew that at the time. We were both worn out, a wordless static swelling between us. Radios tuned to different stations. We were growing apart, but neither of us wanted to admit it. That would be too brave. Easier to let it wither away until it’s a dry husk of what it once was. We had exhausted just about every other method of holding this thing together, so in a mocking reflection of our first date, we went to the Art Gallery of Ontario.

We casually wound through the hallways going through the motions, pointing out something interesting here, gently nodding there. In a dark room near the end, among the abstract expressionists, was that pattern I had seen before. A Rothko, white and red something, on display. It shook me more than I had anticipated that day. Something about the frankness of it. There was no obfuscation, no dalliance. It just was. I knew then that we had to split, come what may.

The camera fell from my eye as my arm went limp. This couldn’t possibly be the same pattern I’d seen six years ago. I must have been remembering the painting wrong. Or maybe some sicko had meticulously painted its wings. A cruel obsession. But the nausea welling inside me told me that I was flailing for a rational explanation for the irrational. That to know the thing was to unknow all else. That I was throwing darts at the tide. Putting a leash on an acorn. Crying over spooled milk.

I pulled myself from my stupor and shot a few pictures of its outstretched wings before it flew off. I showed the photos to the head of the butterfly house, almost just to reassure myself that I hadn’t imagined it. He had no idea where it had come from or what it was, but he did see the pattern, too. He guessed it was a rare genetic mutation occurring in a more common variety of butterfly. He went with me to look for it, but we didn’t find a trace of it in the conservatory.

Once I got home, I searched for the painting. There it was, Mark Rothko’s No.1, White and Red from 1962. It was identical to the pattern on the butterfly’s wings.There had to be some kind of connection between the bug and the painting, but even after hours of research, I just wasn’t seeing it. Eventually, like anything else, the novelty of that day wore off and I went back to my usual routines as if it had never happened.

One afternoon weeks later I stepped out of the humid greenhouse into the glaring september sun. The courtyard was hot and white. Sweat was dripping down my forehead, rolling into my eyes and stinging my vision. I squinted against the salt and light, and in my periphery saw a bird eating its dinner under an oak tree. A blackbird, large iridescent green-black, a white streak dripping down one wing. I rubbed my eyes to clear the sweat. The bird had something sticking out of its mouth: its poor prey hadn’t been completely devoured yet. Poking out of the black beak was a butterfly. It didn’t look like one from the conservatory, though. I took out my camera and zoomed in on the bird. The wing dangling from its mouth had a stunning pattern. Swirling blues and whites, tangerine globes and black spires. Before I could even register what I was seeing, the bird took off into the thick air.

That sickening deja vu hit me again, but this time I didn’t need to look it up to know what it was.

Eight years back on our trip to New York we explored the Museum of Modern Art. It was the first household-name-famous painting I’d seen in person. Not as big as I expected, but stunning nonetheless. Van Gogh. Starry Night.

I ran through the conservatory and out the door, tracking the blackbird as best I could. Jogging with my camera and bag wasn’t ideal. By the time the bird landed, I was red and puffing hard.

The shining bird with the dripping wing had landed on a branch next to a shuttered house. The surrounding houses were also condemned, and this one seemed to be in the worst condition of the bunch.

The white paint on the doorframe was peeling, revealing the wood grain underneath in stripes like the teeth of a great beast. The shutters were drooping eyelids, hanging crooked from their hinges. The windows were dusty and glazed over with cataract grime, those that weren’t shattered anyway. It was falling apart, a relic leftover from a more prosperous time, but it had an austere dignity that so many ancient and forgotten things do.

The tree next to the slouching old shack had crashed through the roof at one point. There the blackbird perched, inviting me into its home.

The door creaked open with a push, and the smell of wet wood and rotting fabric flushed out and spread over the brown lawn. Vines and mold reached in equal measure up the splotchy walls. Sunlight falling in through the hole in the ceiling stepped lightly down the stairs and caught dust in its place. An offwhite couch sat mouldering in one corner of the den, a table with a broken leg had years ago spilled its contents onto the floor. Green tendrils wrapped around lamp cords and stretched across rooms. A gentle drip in the stained kitchen sink rang out through the silent house.

And all across the ceiling through the house hung little crystalline pods. Hundreds of cocoons dangling from the stucco, from fan blades, from mounted pots and pans and light fixtures. A few butterflies were already emerging, casting aside their comfortable skin to face the new. These cocoons continued up the stairway and onto the ceiling of the second floor.

I crept up the uneven stairs, testing each one with a press of my foot just in case the whole thing was about to collapse. More chrysalis dotted the ceilings here, and so too did the pudgy little bugs that make them, inching their way across the abandoned home. Some bright and colorful, some drab and fuzzy, the caterpillars had moved into this space that people no longer wanted.

The hole in the ceiling up there had been worse than it looked from the outside. A section of the wall had been caved in as the tree grew through it. Its boughs outstretched along the broken wall as if cleaving it open, a large ovular hole in the trunk  nearby slack like a hungry maw. Living branches and leaves intertwined with the dead lumber planks and leaden drywall. Caterpillars nibbled at the corners of the vibrant green foliage fanning out across what was once a bedroom, crawled up and down the bedposts and nightstand. I shudder to think what might have been festering under the mildewy comforter. The tiny creatures here covered nearly every interior surface after the mold and water damage had taken their parcels. A faint hum reverberated from somewhere within its walls.

Now that I had taken in the place, I could start examining the insects themselves. The caterpillars were mostly typical: short, rotund, many brightly colored like little tubes of acrylic paint, but they were hardly exceptional. They went about their business with a casual disinterest in my presence in their reclaimed home.

The butterflies, on the other hand, were illogical, inconceivable, exquisite.

Every lepidoptera had painted wings. Gently fluttering clouds, each point engraved with some classic or another; a monet here, a frankenthaler there. My mind reeled at the implications that this suggested. Did we influence them somehow, affect them to grow with these patterns? Or were our artistic hands subtly moved by some unseen force to create these great works? That’s what a lot of the ancients thought. Certain gods and muses could be literal in their influence. Divine inspiration.

On the other hand, what if there was an outside force affecting us, but it wasn’t helping us? What if it was indifferent to us, like the rest of the universe? Or actively malevolent? What if it wanted to reclaim the land from us, like the insects had taken this home?

I knew that if I thought too much about the big questions of the universe I’d lose myself, forget I’m a person and feel that cosmic unreality in the pit of my stomach. It struck me as odd that other people could perceive me. Odd that I existed at all.

I knew I should go home, but I couldn’t leave for fear that it might vanish just as quickly as it had popped into my life. I briskly walked to the truckstop up the highway to grab snacks, drinks, and a travel blanket. I was going to stay and document what I saw for as long as I could.

The insects in this house behaved quite differently from the ones outside. For one, they rarely traveled beyond the yard. The overgrown lawns dotted with wildflowers and tall grasses surrounding the place provided all that they needed. They also seemed to function as a unit, like a school of fish: when one moved, many moved in a cascading wave.

The artwork on their backs spanned ages. I saw greek pottery imprinted on their wings, the birth of venus, carvaggio’s light and shadow. Many of the works I recognized, some I didn’t. Who knows how many photos I took of the butterfly with the Last Supper on its back.

It must have been weeks that I slept on the dusty floor with a thin blanket and my camera bag as a pillow. The excitement and wonder kept me in place. I subsisted on empty gas station calories and sugary soda. The wrappers and empty bottles started radiating around me in a ritualistic circle as time wore on beyond my knowledge. My skin grew pale and oily, my hair matted, but I hardly noticed. I ate, observed, and very rarely slept.

I was so enthralled I had hardly noticed the change. The recent hatchlings had been trending toward modern art: no longer DaVinci’s and Gentileschi’s, the butterflies flitted about with more post-industrial design on their wings, Mondrian’s squares, Picasso’s blue period. The hum within the house had grown as well, but I hardly took notice at the time.

Then came the seismic shift. I was feeling weak, lightheaded and nearly delirious, when I saw a horse and rider mid-gait painted on an eggshell white body. No, not painted, I realized after some inspection. Photographed. Days passed and more butterflies emerged with film on their backs: images of war, recreation, winston churchill and che guavara.

The hum was loud enough now that I couldn’t ignore it. My head was pulsing and the noise was only exacerbating it. I needed to get out for a minute of fresh air.

I walked the abandoned neighborhood, then beyond into the former arts district. The stars were crystals hanging in deep blue velvet overhead. The streets were empty and still. I crossed the old craft store and paused to look in the window. I felt an irresistible compulsion to paint. But I had no money left after abandoning my job for weeks. I tore a section of my greasy shirt and wrapped it around my fist. The window shattered more easily than I’d expected.

I absconded back to my hideaway with tubes of oil paints, turpentine, brushes and rags, canvas.

Wading through the trash filling up my own little cocoon, I began to paint. I started on the canvas, but soon found it confining. My paint spilled off the page and onto the walls, the floors, the ceilings, the trash. I couldn’t say how long I painted. I never grew tired or hungry. I didn’t need or want. I was in the flow. I simply was.

The house was only so large, though. Two floors entirely covered in paint, dirty rags scattered about and turpentine dripping down the stairs, and yet I wasn’t satisfied. I’d have to make something else my canvas.

I started on my free hand, red and purple spots along my fingers, then green up my arm. Black along the torso, white stripes near ribs. I stripped off my remaining clothes that got in the way of my brush. Blue around my eyes, yellow bands across my head.

Once I was entirely encased in paint, I felt my mind relax, deflating like air let out of a balloon. I grew aware of my surroundings again. The hum had grown so loud it was shaking the remaining furniture in the bedroom. I had been so preoccupied with the transformation of the creatures that I hadn’t even noticed where they were actually coming from: caterpillars were pouring out of the hole in the encroaching tree. Swaths of crawling, squirming bugs spilled from the crooked mouth of bark and writhed in the dark room.

On the wall opposite the tree, butterflies gathered. They stationed themselves in a square on the white paint. They flapped their wings and moved in unison. This patch of living color formed a pointilist image of her face. An image I had taken. My own photograph of my former wife. The insectoid screen undulated and shifted, forming new images in succession like a flipbook, each one displaying a moment from my past that I had captured. New York, Toronto, chopping vegetables, hiking through shale caves, the first snowfall of our last year together.

I could feel the change curling inside me. Was I destined to take these photos, to mirror the natural patterns of the world? Or were these insects somehow directed to grow in accordance with my life? The swirling thoughts surged forth in waves of vertigo. My brain was swelling, pushing up against my skull.

I smelled smoke from the stairway, acrid chemical flame and burning cloth. Flames of every color rose and licked at the blackened walls, dancing and fluttering. Thick smog was filling the room. I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled to the only place that seemed safe, into the buzzing tree. I nestled down into the bark as far as I could, only the top of my head peering out through the opening. I felt my new brethren creeping and slinking in the darkness all around me.

I set up my camera and recorded this testimony with the last of its battery.

Oh my stomach is pulsing, moving, as if something is crawling inside. I can feel it bubbling up like gold from deep within. My back is splitting with wet folded wings. The photographs on their wings flip faster and faster until it’s a moving image, a film, streaming through the striations of black smoke. I can’t stifle my laughter as I see my life playing out before me on the living screen. Loud full body spasms. How else can you react to the absurdity of life laid bare so bluntly before you?

If a caterpillar can become a butterfly, what might I look like after my metamorphosis? What glory might humanity ascend to in its next phase? I envy you, because if you’re watching this, you know.

We’re ready to reclaim what you have taken. I am hatching. I am ascending on painted wings ablaze. But I am not in pain. I am beautiful.

CONWAY ON TAPE:  Well, I...I’m gonna need a minute.

CLICK

***

CONWAY: Nothing stays the same, no matter how hard we try. Something somewhere is always changing, like the water to vapor. Hell, even electrons are always moving around, can’t quite pin ‘em down. The changes inside are the hardest to spot, though. And you’re usually the last one to notice you’ve changed. You’re you, after all.

As I slipped my influence into every corner of this state, I could barely recall most of my life, such as it was. Didn't miss my body all that much either, never really felt like I fit in it anyway. But for a moment, I felt a bit nostalgic for my old job.

This nostalgia is a warning sign that something isn’t what it once was, that some part of you is no longer there. I hadn’t seen the cracks forming yet. I was still intoxicated with my new position. There was a rock in my metaphorical shoe, though. A lingering thought I just couldn’t shake, even with all this.

It started with the phone call from the fisherman. “You’re not real.” What the hell was that all about? Of course I’m real. “I think therefore” and all that. I’m the Boss. I’ve got buildings full of people who listen to me. Doesn’t get much realer than that.

But there was that itch somewhere in the vast and ever expanding recesses of my consciousness I couldn’t quite scratch. I felt like I was forgetting something, or like I was about to remember something big.

“How’s Lucy?”

***

Outro--interrupted

*brakes screech*

I fell asleep at the wheel and woke up at the bottom of an off-ramp. With no one else around and nothing to distract me, I dozed off. Just for a second. I’m not proud of it, but it’s the truth. I caught myself quickly enough that I somehow managed to avoid smashing into any of the parked--well “parked”--cars on the highway. I was at a stop sign, and ahead of me was a one-lane country road. I couldn’t see anyone in either direction for as far as my eyesight allowed. But below the stop sign was a bright green plaque, emblazoned with a path to what I’d been looking for:

AISLING - FIVE MILES.

Conway, here I come.

***

LIZ: Is anyone here?

*muffled response*

LIZ: Hello? I know you’re around somewhere.

LIZ: Hey. Hey!...hmmm...hail and well met, shadow, I mean you no harm. *under her breath* “Hail and well met”? Jesus, what’s wrong with me.

SHADOW: *anxious* What was that?

LIZ: I’m Liz, who the hell are you?

SHADOW: *slowly, with effort* I...I don’t know. It’s hard to think. I’m...where am I? What am I?

LIZ: I know, I totally felt the same. Just take a minute. Relax. I’m a friend.

SHADOW: I can’t feel my...anything.

LIZ: Yup, that’ll happen. Corporeality’s kinda messed up here. So it goes. If you focus really hard, you might be able to keep yourself solid. See?

SHADOW: I’m dreaming. This isn’t real...I must still be asleep.

LIZ: Sure, you sort of are. Anyway, what do you say we get out of here? See your friends again.

SHADOW: But...wait, I remember something. I can’t go yet. The Head Office. The Board Room. There’s...there’s something there. It’s...oh god. The tower. We can’t just leave it there.

LIZ: Board Room? Can you show me?

SHADOW: I think I can lead us there. But...

LIZ, to WREN: Wren, this could be big. Could be a whole lot of shadows there for us to recruit. I’m going in. Good luck out there.

On the eve of Halloween, nine storytellers make their way to an abandoned asylum to share their terrifying truths about the darkness that exists around them. As the tales unfold, each more visceral than the last, the nine may just discover that it is not the waking world to fear, but the horrors that lay within.

 

Nine to Midnight is a collaborative storytelling event between nine podcasts:

 

Malevolent (https://www.malevolent.ca)

WOE.BEGONE (https://www.woebegonepod.com)

Wake of Corrosion (https://wakeofcorrosion.carrd.co)

The Dead Letter Office of Somewhere, Ohio (https://www.somewhereohio.com)

The Cellar Letters (https://www.thecellarletters.com)

The Storage Papers (https://www.thestoragepapers.com)

The Town Whispers (https://www.thetownwhispers.com)

Nowhere, On Air (https://nowhereonairpodcast.weebly.com)

Hell Gate City Companion (https://www.hellgatecity.com)

CREDITS & CONTENT WARNINGS

 

CW: General horror, swearing throughout

 

Produced by Harlan Guthrie

Master edit by Harlan Guthrie

 

'Nine to Midnight' written by Harlan Guthrie.

Performed by Harlan Guthrie, Dylan Griggs, Shaun Pellington, Rat Grimes, Jamie Petronis, Jeremy Enfinger, Nathan Lunsford, Cole Weavers, Jess Syratt, and Kevin Berrey. 

 

8:05 | 'Rare Book' written, performed, edited, and mixed by Harlan Guthrie of Malevolent.

 

16:50 | 'The Knocking' written, performed, edited, mixed, and music composed & performed by Dylan Griggs of WOE.BEGONE. 

 

27:05 | 'The Broken Man' written, performed, edited, and mixed by Shaun Pellington of Wake of Corrosion.

CW: Violence, injury

 

35:30 | 'The Pool' written, performed, edited, mixed, and music composed & performed by Rat Grimes of The Dead Letter Office of Somewhere, Ohio.

CW: Death, drowning

 

44:42 | 'The 1 to 5 Minute Man' written, performed, edited, and mixed by Jamie Petronis of The Cellar Letters.

 

52:24 | 'Ridgefield Manor' written, edited, and mixed by Nathan Lunsford.

Performed by Jeremy Enfinger and Nathan Lunsford of The Storage Papers.

Additional sounds from Zapsplat (https://www.zapsplat.com).

CW: Discussion of murder and suicide

 

1:02:45 | 'Public Access' written, performed, edited, and mixed by Cole Weavers of The Town Whispers.

 

1:12:34 | 'The Shortcut' written, performed, edited, and mixed by Jess Syratt of Nowhere, On Air. 

 

1:22:14 | 'Peepers Creepers' written, produced, performed, edited, and mixed by Kevin Berrey, Screaming Panda LLC of Hell Gate City Companion.

Music composed by Cheska Navarro (https://www.cheskanavarro.com).

Sounds from Zapsplat (https://www.zapsplat.com).

Additional sounds and effects licensed under CC BY 3.0: https://freesound.org/people/Garuda1982/sounds/570378/ by Garuda1982 https://freesound.org/people/cbakos/sounds/50646/ by cbakos https://freesound.org/people/trip_sound/sounds/190470/ by trip_sound https://freesound.org/people/Omar%20Alvarado/sounds/251538/ by Omar Alvarado

https://freesound.org/people/SLCBagpiper/sounds/337743/ by SLCBagpiper https://freesound.org/people/GM180259/sounds/491997/ by GM180259

As we’ve previously established, forward and backward are not necessarily stable concepts.

Conway makes a choice. Wren steels their nerves. A familiar face appears. This is the end.

(CWs: food, brief allusion to bullying, mild apocalyptic imagery, death)

Nathan of The Storage Papers as AGENT/DIRECTOR; Jess of Nowhere, On Air as Liz. Go listen to their shows!

https://nowhereonairpodcast.weebly.com/

thestoragepapers.com

Kiss Me Son of God originally by They Might Be Giants (John Flansburgh and John Linnell)

Quotes from Jean Baudrillard's Fatal Strategies and John Stuart Mill.

*Projector clicks, a dark smoky room filled with people*

 

AGENT: That brings us to the falling hand incident from a few years back, dead case 0069.

 

*sparse chuckles from audience members*

 

AGENT: *exasperated* Jesus, I’m running a daycare here. Now those of you who were with the office at the time will already know all this. You new guys won’t know anything about it. But that’s why we’re here, right? One of our field agents witnessed the whole thing, and gave their testimony during a thorough debriefing here in HQ. Pay attention to Wren’s account. I’m only going over it once.

 

*slide click*

*INTRO MUSIC*

 

WREN, on tape: Falling to earth from somewhere I chose not to think about was a left hand.

 

AGENT, on tape: So what did you do?

WREN: Well, I tried the one thing I hadn’t done yet. One last shot before the end of the world. I called Conway. 

 

CONWAY: Hard to explain how I got into that lighthouse. Can barely remember it myself through the fog of exhaustion. I was so damn tired. But get in I did. And at the top--or was it bottom?--was a dark, steamy room. An office of sorts, filled with smoke pouring out from some sort of awful machine in the corner. The engine’s shape was irregular, almost hard to look at, but it kept spewing its haze like humid breath. In the center of the office was a desk, set with--you guessed it--a phone, some stationary, a blank nameplate, a painting of an old lighthouse in a gold frame. I sat in the plush leather chair behind the desk. A highly welcome respite after the day I’d had. The woods, the mall, the deerhead priest, the lost fisherman. I needed a minute to put my feet up. I’d earned it.

 

I leaned back and looked at the empty notepad. “Welcome to the Deerland Mall” was printed at the top of each page. I had the materials to send a letter to the DLO, but what to actually write? “Hey, I’m in a weird lighthouse somewhere, come get me?” I didn’t see how that would work. Still, according to the fisherman, I had two paths in front of me: write home and go back to my life as it was, or answer the call and take the promotion.

 

And then it rang. No, not the offwhite rotary phone in front of me, it was my cell phone. Didn’t recognize the number. Probably somebody calling about my car’s warranty or a $50 walmart gift card. But at that point I was willing to take that risk just to hear someone who didn’t talk in metaphors again.

 

CONWAY, on the phone: Hello?

WREN, on the phone: Conway? Oh my god, is that you!?

CONWAY: Yeah, this is Conway. Hard to make out what you’re saying. Sorry, who is this?

WREN: Oh wow, I don’t know how I got through to you but listen: I’m coming to get you.

CONWAY: I don’t reckon that’s the smartest idea. I don’t even know wh--

WREN: I’ve followed your trail. I think I’m nearby now. But there’s something going on. Something you’re connected to. It’s bad. Lucy told me where to find you. I think she’s--

CONWAY: Now what is this about Lucy? You talked to her? Are you with the office? How...how is she?

WREN: I just got a postcard from her. But listen, something’s coming, and I don’t think it’s going to end well. I need you to come out of the cave now. I’ll be at the entrance waiting to take your hand.

CONWAY: Cave? THAT cave? I’m...wherever I am, I’m not in there.

WREN: Where are you? This may be it, Conway. The end.CONWAY: I’m in a lighthouse. The fisherman in the place that looks just like a blockbuster said...well you know what, that doesn’t make any sense saying out loud...I’m tired, you know? I don’t want to keep going. I want to sit down for a minute. At this desk. I don’t think that’s selfish.

WREN: Desk?CONWAY: Yeah there’s like a whole swanky office here. Guy said I could be the boss if I wanted to. Kenji didn’t have what it took, but I just might. I’m so damn tired of it all, you know? The grind. And there’s some kind of machine. I think I’ve heard of it before. Somebody called it the lucid engine. If I’m the dreamer, that means…

WREN: Conway I don’t think I follow. Boss? Just come back, okay? We need you.

CONWAY: Now you too, huh? Seems like everyone’s got something for me to do. More work. I don’t think I’ve got it in me. I need a break.

WREN, over static: Conway, you’re breaking up. Come back to me. I think you’re responsible for--

CONWAY: Can’t it wait 15 minutes?WREN: I can’t hear you--

CONWAY: Look, I’m not sure what you expect of me, but I have a feeling you’re gonna be disappointed, like everyone else. Like Lucy. Even myself...I shouldn’t be reading mail in a damn office. What am I doing? I studied art, I did radio. Poorly, I might add, but I put in the time. Now my dad worked the same job for 40 years, bought a house, got a pension, and retired. I’ve got nothing to show for my labors but a pile of debts and a sore back. Feel like I’m owed something after all this or it’s for nothing. Look, I want to go home, but home kind of blows. Just live to work, work to live...It ain’t human. If I have a chance to get out of that hamster wheel...well, sometimes when an opportunity comes along, you have to snatch it.

 

Take care of yourself, kid. See you on the other side.

WREN: The line went dead. I had no idea what he meant, and it sounded like he wasn’t too sure, either. I left my car parked in the grass. I managed to tear my focus away from the falling hand and ventured into the woods. 

 

I had plenty of time to myself to think as I stepped through the crackling branches and deep grass between the trees. Why was I even pursuing this? Was finding someone I’ve never met before worth losing my job over? What if he didn’t want to be found? Wanted to disappear? Here I was trudging through the buggy forest looking for a cave. What was in the cave? No idea. Why was I looking for it? No idea. Still, I went on with my little task despite everything. Maybe it was the last thing left I felt I had any control over. Maybe I was just stubborn. Maybe I wanted someone to praise me. Well that’s for my therapist to sort out now.

 

I came upon a creek by a shale ridge. I hopped across on the smooth black stones breaking through the water. One, two, and slipped on the third. I fell into the creek. Not deep enough to be dangerous, but it didn’t help my mood. I sat in the muck for a moment. The stream was clear and cool. Looking down at the rippling surface, dappled sunlight bounced along the contours of the tiny waves washing away from me. I watched the light dance on the water for a minute or a year, and then saw something reflected in the water. A break in the sheer stone beside me that I hadn’t noticed before, or couldn’t see before. A gaping wound in the rock. 

 

I slowly rose from the creek, water pouring out of the pockets and folds of my clothes. I kept my eyes on the reflection on the surface, and walked backward to where the cave should be. I saw myself in the water, glaring sun alight on the ripples, my back to the cave. Then I went in.

 

AGENT, on tape: So far I’m not seeing how all this connects.

WREN, on tape: I was only barely starting to then, as well. 

AGENT: All right, go on. What was in the cave?

WREN: Clarity. *music swells, then abruptly cuts out*

AGENT: Come on, really?

WREN: Yes, really, but more than that too, if you’d let me finish without interruption.

 

*Music continues*

 

WREN: I was surrounded by damp dark stone. My footsteps echoed with such resonance that the cave had to be massive. 

 

After minutes of stumbling through pure black, a dot of light appeared in the distance ahead. It was as good a waypoint as any other I had. So I continued toward it.

 

It may come as a shock to you, but I was a bit of a solitary child. No brothers or sisters. Parents kind, but busy. We rarely did anything as a family or even dined together, other than breakfast. Before they left for work and I went to school, we shared whatever bits of news we had, then parted ways. It may sound less than ideal, but I preferred it that way. I think I did. I’d spend the evenings looking up at the night sky, trying to tune in to astral signals I wasn’t supposed to know about. Surrounded by the hypnotic drone of cicadas and the polyrhythm of cricketsong, I found joy. For a time.

 

Flashbulb memories pulled forth by the cave. Ghostly afterimages and faroff scents. Birthdays, weekends, cardboard castles and polaroids. Enthusiastic child. A butterfly emerging from its chrysalis in a mason jar. Precocious. Singing, learning. Gentle. Someone playing soccer too rough, but only with me. Tackled, pinned, forfeit. Difference. The scratching of nails and humming of speakers. My first dance where I didn’t dance at all. Perfume. Laughter. Clothes that didn’t fit. Words that didn’t fit. Burnt scrambled eggs. Dark poetry and bad movies. Static. Carving sacred names into bedframes. Horizontal lines. Flowers emerging then shrinking. Summers smeared like watercolor into fall. Dripping paint. 

 

A college dropout. Destined for menial labor. A gear dislodged from the system. Quiet. Only a matter of time.

 

But the conjurers of tradition were wrong about me. I wasn’t meant to turn wheels. It took some time to unlearn these thought patterns I’d been forced into by school, work, and law. To undo the oppression of orthodoxy. Time and effort. A lot of pain. Mill said it’s better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. But look at the pig’s face, watch it frolic and splash, and then look at the prisons built for us: cubicles, luxury apartments, retail warehouses, slums, mass graves. If this is what it is to be human...you tell me.

 

At least I knew that as the curtain call approached, I was truly who I wanted to be. I was doing what I wanted to do. I wouldn’t die dissatisfied in a cage. I would die smiling in the mud.

 

Tiny points of starlight flicked into existence in the cave overhead, swirls of constellations and galaxy arms reaching. I heard crickets in the grass that was sprouting under my feet. The dot of light ahead grew into a blob, expanded in a luminescent rectangle a dozen feet over my head, then letters appeared. I smelled butter on the grill, cheap coffee. A beaming yellow sign in front of a yellow building. It was beacon for a wayward ship. Sitting alone at the end of the world, bathed in cosmic glow, was a waffle house.

 

 Of course it would be a waffle house. 

 

***

 

CONWAY: I’d have to be some kind of moron not to answer that call, wouldn’t I? How could I just go back to my life knowing all this? Knowing what I passed up? That’d be like handing back the winning lottery ticket. Though I’d heard stories about what happens to some lottery winners.

 

Of course I picked up the phone. There was no voice on the other end, only humming, crackling static. I felt electricity run from the receiver into my ear, down my shoulders and back, all through my limbs. A giddy bolt. I dropped the phone. Who knows if it hit the ground or disintegrated. I felt energy surge through my body. I was elated, unlimited. I suddenly knew that this is where I was supposed to be. I belonged to it, a missing limb returned.

 

My step was light, like walking on water, to the engine. I felt it calling to me, singing in smoke, waiting for my charged touch. This would be my deliverance and my deliverer. 

 

Lucy, I...Lucy, I couldn’t face you again. I wasn’t ready yet. I had to let that part go. I had to let go all the things that bound me to who I was, sever all ties if I were to succeed. My finger made contact with the holy motor and my body was no more. 

 

***

 

WREN: Buzzing lights flicked overhead inside the diner. I scanned the place for any signs of life, but no results. I took a seat at one of the sticky booths and picked at the duct taped upholstery. I tried to peer outside but all was dark. I could only see my face reflected in the glass. I looked tired. Lonely. Someone was standing behind me in the reflection. A waitress at my table. I couldn’t see her expression, but she silently held out a menu.

 

“Oh, no thank you. I’m just resting for a moment.”

 

Her arm remained outstretched, menu aloft.

 

“You’re the only one here. It’s late. I don’t want to be an imposition.”

 

She didn’t budge. 

 

“So be it. I’ll have two eggs--over easy but not too runny--two pieces of toast on white, a double side of hashbrowns--smothered, covered, and capped with ketchup on the side--and a cup of coffee--black if it’s fresh, a dash of milk if it’s been out a while.”

 

As if I needed a menu. She nodded and withdrew toward the kitchen. I heard eggs hit the griddle, sizzling and squeaking, crisping just so on the edges. My mind left my body for a moment. I floated above the restaurant in the void. I saw a family of possums digging through a dumpster out back. I wondered if I should have gotten a waffle. The clatter of a plate in front of me brought me back. A little smiley face of ketchup on the hashbrowns looked up at me.

 

Tell me, director, have you ever wept over breakfast? I have. There I sat, still wet from the creek and caked in mud, huge streams of tears running down my hot face as I dug into the greasy pile. Someone made this for me. Cared for me. Not in a familial or romantic sense, just in the way that people take care of other people. Nothing else in the world mattered beyond this plate, this place, for just a moment. It’s the little pleasures that keep us going even in the shadow of apocalypse. A waffle house left standing after a hurricane. 

 

Clarity. The odd letter, the directives from above, the fuzzy call. The pieces fell into place. Conway wasn’t coming back.

 

The waitress returned from...somewhere to take my empty plate. I thanked her, but she didn’t respond. Instead she turned to leave, which is when I realized that she was only using her right hand.

 

I tried to ask for her name, but she was gone. A receipt left stuck to the table made the answer clear: “Your server today was: Lucy” accompanied by a smiling face.

 

AGENT, on tape: Wait, Lucy’s real?

WREN, on tape: Real as you or I.

AGENT: But what happened to her? Where is she? WHO is she?

WREN: I’ll get to it eventually. Promise. First there’s the issue of the Boss.

 

****

 

CONWAY: My physical form dissipated in streaks of light, as did any lingering doubts I might have had. My fingers reached out across the beach, bending over the land. My feet were tree roots, ancient and intractable. My heart caught fire and burned eternally underground. Never again did I need to worry about hunger, pain. Money. I’d have people for that. Speaking of…

 

I became aware of all those under my domain. Offices like hives, honeycomb cubicles full of shadows. Warehouses of hollow shells sanded down to nothing throughout this great right-to work-state. Souls destroyed by the midwest burned in the lucid engine, now they were husks, but working husks. All at my command with a single impulse. And if I ever needed more workers, I could reach through the wires, touch some hearts, and set them aglow. I wouldn’t abuse that power, I thought. I’d make a fine boss. Great, even. Pay’s not bad for entry level work so they shouldn’t complain.

 

So what would my first order of business be now that I was the Boss, Wren? Well, it would behoove me to make sure someone like me doesn’t find me and take over. I’d need a way to contain any traces of myself, this place, and its inhabitants. I’d need to prevent word from getting out to the public about...well, any of this. I would need people, not just my shadows here but real hands and feet employees, to do it. 

 

I’d need to form an organization, one dedicated to cataloging things out of place and setting them right. Or at least keeping the things that shouldn’t exist hidden from public view. A web of people all over the country, a low-profile surveillance network, a vault. I’d form The Dead Letter Office of Aisling, Ohio. 

 

It all lined up. All those piled up cliches, the missing person, the mysterious town, the odd letters. Of course they were all a ruse designed to grab my interest and not let go. It’d been me the whole time. I built this place, on the backs of those I used to work with. 

 

To quote a great philosopher, if I may: “Perfect is the event which assumes its own mode of disappearance...Imagine a good resplendent with all the power of Evil: this is God...creating the world on a dare and calling on it to destroy itself...”

 

Once I was gone, I needed to make sure no one went looking for me. I’d have to find some cog and keep them at my old desk to sort through the mess. A real beaurocrat. Tell them they’re looking for clues. Keep them on a track.

 

I’d need an intermediary to pass between me and the membrane of the real. Someone of the dream but outside it. It had to be Kenji. The second man, the son of god. My courrier, my herald. He brought me here--at my own behest I knew then--and he would keep me here.

 

Now all I had to do was sit back and let my word be known. Kenji, take dictation: 

 

There’s electricity in the margins on the page, an atom bomb’s worth. In the space between the words, there’s energy. The things we can’t see are made of that energy. They travel through the wires and hide in stoplights. We can’t see them because we’re not meant to see them. They come out at night and ride on the electrons in the air. We are made of electrons. When the twilight is gone, and no songbirds are singing, God comes through the lines and sits in the streetlights. He waves but you can’t see it (fades into The Boss voice)

 

AGENT, on tape: He told you all that, huh? But he’s gone.

WREN, on tape: In a manner of speaking, yes.

AGENT: Was he ever really there?

WREN: In a manner of speaking, no. He was a mask.

AGENT: What about you?

 

WREN: I walked back through the darkness of the cave satiated, but determined. The stars disappeared, the grass receded, and the balmy woods returned. I wandered back to my car and looked up into the clear blue. The hand above had closed into a fist, and it hung motionless in the air, waiting like the cocked hammer of a pistol. The insects in the woods had gone quiet. A hawk was frozen mid-strike. Everything was still and silent. The missing second that only comes along once in a million years.

 

If the world were a just place, it all would have ended there. The hand would have disappeared, the world would keep spinning, the birds would sing. But it’s not, and it didn’t. The only justice in the world is that which we make ourselves, by olive branch or blood. 

 

You must understand: this is the inevitable outcome when things are out of balance, when we submit to orthodoxy. When we try to drown out that strange frequency. When all is built on bad faith, entire structures in our brain designed to lie to ourselves. It all collapses eventually. It’s fatal. Slow death. 

 

I tried calling Conway again, but he didn’t answer. He made me care about him and then turned on me. Damn it all, I let myself get vulnerable. I couldn’t be afraid to get my hands dirty this time. I wouldn’t be the beetle, devoured by the hungry bird. I would be the wasp, stinging all the way down.

 

I slammed the car door and sped off in a cloud of gravel and dust.

 

It’s fatal, but it is preventable, this collapse. There’s a solution; we’re not yet at the end of history. If I couldn’t convince Conway--the Boss--to face what was coming nicely, I’d drag him out, kicking and screaming if necessary. I couldn’t do it alone, but I could find others. We had the numbers, we could do it. For me, for Lucy, for everyone.

 

By blood it is, Boss.

 

I built a little empire out of some crazy garbage

Called the blood of the exploited working class

But they've overcome their shyness

Now they're calling me Your Highness

And a world screams, "Kiss me, Son of God"

 

I destroyed a bond of friendship and respect

Between the only people left who'd even look me in the eye

Now I laugh and make a fortune

Off the same ones that I tortured

And a world screams, "Kiss me, Son of God"

 

I look like Jesus, so they say

But Mr. Jesus is very far away

Now you're the only one here who can tell me if it's true

That you love me and I love me

 

I built a little empire out of some crazy garbage

Called the blood of the exploited working class

But they've overcome their shyness

Now they're calling me Your Highness

And a world screams, "Kiss me, Son of God"

Yes the world screams, "Kiss me, Son of God"

 

AGENT, in projector room: So we’ve covered that Conway was the founder and Boss of the DLO, Wren tried to track him down, and we were all about to die. Any questions so far? No? Good. Now let’s get to the weird stuff.

 

END

 

LIZ, floating in the void: Where am I? All I remember is...fire...am I dead? If I’m dead, how come I’m still like...thinking. Suck it, Descartes.

 

Damn. Does that mean I wrong about the whole god thing?

 

WREN, from the shadows: Who might you be?

 

LIZ: I’m Liz, who the hell are you? Wait...you’re not…

 

WREN: No! No, I’m Wren. I’m looking for collaborators. Shadows with some bite left. 

 

LIZ: Uhh...

 

WREN: I understand this is all very confusing. But if you help me, I’ll return the favor.

 

LIZ: Just tell me this: how’s Priya? Is she okay?

 

WREN: Let me show you.

 

LIZ: Oh god...

 

WREN: I know who did this, and I’m coming for him. Are you in?

 

REAL END

 

OUT OF FICTION CREDITS:

 

Hey everyone, it’s your host here. Thank you for listening to the first two seasons of the show (assuming you didn’t just skip to this episode, that would be a bad idea). Now I’ll be taking a break from here on out to work on some season 3 ideas. I would like to thank my patrons, carriers Flo and Jessica, Receiving clerks Ezra, Elena, Jennifer, Patricia, Paul, Spicy Nigel, and Gadz. Thank you all for your support throughout season 2, and to everyone else sharing and supporting the show. If you’d like to get your name in the credits next season like these fine folk, sign up at Patreon.com/somewhereohio and select one of the tiers there. If you like the show, drop a rating or review on your podcast platform of choice. It’s free, if you do a rating you don’t even have to write anything and it helps the creators a lot (even though it seems like maybe it shouldn’t). Until next time.  

Wren recounts their first case. Conway watches some tapes and has a decision to make. Something is coming. Are you looking carefully at the ripples?

(CWs: mentions of death and sex, strong language)

Transcript coming soon.

A man finds strangely familiar movies outside his door, someone pushes a rock up a hill, a dog chases its tail, and Wren takes things into their own hands.

(CWs, minor spoilers: blood, death, brief mention of sex, some language, vomit, birds, dogs, derealization)

TRANSCRIPT:

WREN: The crowd at the Song Bird had vanished. The edges of the room faded into a misty gray. The woman I’d been talking to was gone. All that remained was the stage, awash in nightclub luminance. There was something standing on the stage. A kind of shapeless being. Its body was waving like a dead flag stirred by a subtle breeze. Harsh noise blared through the ashen bar. It seemed to be facing my direction despite its lack of features. I turned to run for the exit, but the door was no longer there: the back half of the dive bar now extended into an endless void. The jittering form reached out, and from its hand erupted streams of black ribbon. They curled around my feet with some force and bound my movement. I kicked and tore at them, but it was no use. They continued snaking up my legs.

The shape on the stage bellowed again, a horn from the lighthouse of the damned, and the ribbons tugged hard at my feet, knocking me down and pulling me toward the thing. The strands were halfway up my torso, and quickly began restricting my arms as I clawed at the checkered linoleum floor. I was pulled halfway up the stage, wrapped nearly to my throat in tight black bands. The closer I got to the umbral figure, the harder it became to breathe. My chest tightened, and each breath felt like I was gulping down burning air. I felt a hot jolt run through my body. I wriggled furiously and knocked over the microphone stand. Feedback screeched through the ethereal room.

Just as the ribbon was about to encroach on my lips and stifle my cries, something emerged from the gloom beyond the walls. It flew between the projector and lyrics splashed on the screen and for just an instant, it cast an avian silhouette against the wall: a huge feathered beast, wings flared and talons outstretched to strike. It slammed into the shadow on stage and tore through the strands confining me. No longer connected to my would-be abductor, they lost their mystic pull. I broke my arms free and tore through at the constraints around my feet. It wasn’t until later--hunched over my stained coffee table with a mug of green tea, draped in a blanket and shaking--that I realized what had been wrapping me: magnetic ribbon, the kind used in video tapes.

The giant raven stood on stage with its back to me, its foot on the slowly vanishing shadow monster. It struck me as odd that the thing had any form at all on which to step. But now was no time for wandering thoughts.

I tried to call out, but my voice was hoarse and dry. The bird didn’t move.

WREN: “You saved me from...whatever that was. Can I repay your kind favor somehow?”

The hulking corvid turned its head back to me. It had no beak, nor feathers on its face. Instead I saw pale skin, dark eyes, lips; upsettingly human.

AVERY: “You already have,” 

WREN: it replied in a voice that sounded uncannily like my own.

And then the bar was back, and I was standing alone and disheveled in the middle of a vibrant dance floor. No bird, no shadow, no ribbon. Just me, alone among the crowd.

I fled the bar and didn’t look back. Though looking back now, I think I forgot to pay my tab. I should probably return soon and hope for a better experience.

Now, let’s take a look at the penultimate letter in Conway’s backlog. It is addressed to a John Johnson at 123 Cool Street, Real City, Ohio. Right...seems like the only indication of where it came from is the stationary, labeled “Welcome to the Deerland Mall.” I don’t think I’ve heard of a Deerland, Ohio, nor its mall. Let’s see what this letter has to offer.

CONWAY: Let me tell you a story. An aspiring screenwriter and college dropout was working at an indie movie theater. Let’s call him John. He worked the late shift, usually slow now that the old college town was starting to lose most of its college students. He used his free time in the projection room to work on his scripts. He had a friend, we’ll say David, who said he was “in the biz,” whatever that means. About once a week, David sent over some weird reel he’d gotten a hold of. Once the manager was off for the day and the crowds had all but gone home, John would set up the projector and screen whatever wild stuff David had found. Exploitation flicks, experimental genre stuff, early short films by famous directors. It wasn’t always that exciting, though. Sometimes it was boring b-roll footage, or badly transferred home movies. Regardless, John would screen them and then he and David would talk about it the next day.

One evening, deep into the greasy salty night, John nodded off while waiting for a delivery. It was only for a minute, but when he woke up, a film canister was there at the door to the projection room. John looked the canister over. No shipping package, no label, no markings, just a clean metal disc. John loaded it up as usual. As the flickering quicksilver poured through the empty theater onto the screen, John was struck by something. He knew the star of this one. Not like in the way you “know” a celebrity, he really knew her. He couldn’t see her face right away but he knew it was her: an ex of his he hadn’t talked to in years. She wasn’t an actor, never showed an interest in it to his knowledge, but there she was. 

She was winding down the aisles of a brightly lit grocery store. She picked up a box of fruit loops and put it in her cart. Then she was outside shivering, looking up at the full winter moon through cloudy breath. The moon was a bowl of cereal she ate for breakfast, then click clack off to work along the rumbling subway tunnels, click clack keyboards and phone calls, the touch of fur under palm, and then the reel stopped. 

There was no dialogue, no real characters, no theme or meaning he could really get at. The backgrounds and settings were all vague, almost abstract. But it all seemed a little familiar to John. He felt a wave of deja vu wash over him, a memory tingling in some lost corner of his mind trying to get his attention.

The next day, John called David and asked him where he got the film. David had no idea what John was talking about. He didn’t send any reels that week. John told David to hold off with the movies for now, just to see if any more of these unsourced films showed up.

And show up they did. 

***

Saturday night somewhere in Pittsburgh. Interior of John’s apartment. He’s fast asleep in bed. We can hear his snoring as we pass through the open window. Tight shot of John’s face, then crossfade into the dream.

John is on a plane, middle seat surrounded by faceless strangers murmuring incomprehensible dialogue. “Watermelon, peas and carrots, lorem ipsum.” He looks around the flying tin and sucks in the stale air. The window shade is open, cloudless dawn or dusk or the dead of night shimmers out of view. The plane cruises through thick rivulets of puffy clouds. John is terribly thirsty. He tries to signal for a flight attendant but his arm won’t rise. He tries to talk but his voice comes out in a soft hiss. He screams, but his expletive barely moves past his lips before silently crashing to the floor. 

Then John is sitting in the terminal in Germany with a return flight in a week. But he’s forgotten to call off work. He tries to call his boss, but the line won’t connect. Wide shot of John’s bedroom, he bolts upright and looks out the window. A plane blinks in the sky over the city. Scene.

***

Sunday night came around and John was at the theater as usual. He was scribbling away in the moleskine notebook as the projector streamed a vision of another world on the screen. The click and whirr of the machine was a nice distraction, a good way to occupy the nagging part of his brain that always pulled at his attention.

Just as he had started writing some snappy dialogue, there was a clank outside the projection room. He peeked outside, and in front of the door was another blank canister, the deliverer nowhere to be seen. 

There was no one in the audience, so no one would mind a quick change of scenery, right? The projector buzzed and spun the new reel. Light filtered through the 35mm print, spitting its magnified contents across the room. When the first image appeared, John’s breath caught in his chest. He felt the creeping itch of panic in his throat like rising seawater. There was a plane, a crowd of people, an open window, a thirsty patron, a terminal. Exactly like John’s dream, or what he could remember of it. That’s when he realized why the first mysterious film was so familiar: it was a dream he’d had a few weeks back. Fragments of half-forgotten sights and sounds flashed in a jumbled collage in his mind.

“Holy shit, is that Emily?” David asked as the two sat in the audience for a private late night screening of the first mysterious film. “I had no idea she could act. This is pretty good!” John was less enthused. “Sorry. It’s so short though. Is that it?”

John said that had to be it because that’s all that was in his dream. 

“This is literally unbelievable. Like I don’t believe what you’re saying. Wait a week, and if another comes in, call me right away. We’ll watch it together and I’ll see if you’re just messing with me.”

John had fitful sleep the following week. He couldn’t focus on his writing. He was getting irritable and paranoid. Someone had to be watching him, right? How else would they know this stuff? Were they reading his journal?

John woke up that sunday groggy and distracted. He couldn’t remember his dream clearly, something about a street maybe. But come nightfall, another canister showed up at the projectionist’s door. John set the reel spinning and David watched.

In the film, David was in the middle of Hamburg, Germany, or rather what a young white guy in America who’s never been abroad might imagine Hamburg looks like. He was wandering through the streets and looking at the various buildings. He kept turning to the camera and saying something, but there was no sound. Then the screen went white.

“What the hell was that?” David accused more than asked this time. “Were you spying on me or something? Where was that? I don’t recognize it.” John reiterated the theory about his dreams. David was pale now, the reality of what was going on finally sinking in.

“This is sick. Bad sick. That means someone is watching this and putting it into to film. What if you have a messed up dream, or like a sex thing with somebody, or a nightmare. Are there other copies being sent to other theaters? I don’t want people seeing this.”

It was all too much for John, too intimate, too unsettling. We can’t control what we dream anymore than we can control our heartbeat or our appetites. It just is what it is. But what if what it is is really rotten? And what if someone else finds that rot at our core?

These were John’s thoughts as he looked over other jobs for the week. At least maybe if he got away from the theater, this would all stop. Made about as much sense as how it started. Why did David have to start bringing over bootleg reels anyway? He’s the one who got John into this and

Interior. Unknown time. John is standing in a stark white bathroom, the floor stained deep red in a growing pool. There’s David, his throat slit open, painting streaks of crimson on the wall as he flails and grips at his wound. In John’s hand is a straight razor, you know like the kind old barbers sharpened on that leather strip. Real Sweeney Todd stuff. David chokes and bubbles until his body slows and he slumps against the wall. John climbs in the shower behind him and closes the curtain. The blood rushing in his ears is the deafening sound of waves on the shore. He can still see the red smears through the plastic curtain in a smudged vignette, and the red on his hands drips into the tub. He sees a blur that used to be David in the corner. John’s vision shakes as the blur that was David rises. Circles of pulsing light shoot through John as the blur that was David comes closer, one unfocused hand reaching, gripping the shower curtain. It pulls, the cheap pvc sheet ripped from its hooks, and falls over John’s head. He tumbles backward against the shower wall. The blur that was David leans in, and

John was back at work screening some real junk for an audience of two. Probably teens there to make out. He was drawing little ink circles in his notebook. He hadn’t had any good ideas in weeks. All of his thoughts were occupied by his current...predicament.

He draws the circle bigger and bigger, until it expands beyond the borders of his notebook and paints black lines in the air. The ink begins filling the room. It threatens to absorb him into its eternal center. He tries to run but his legs are

John’s notebook hitting the ground stirred him. The projector was spinning dry and the only patrons departed. He must have dozed off. He stuffed his notebook in his bag and moved to leave when he saw the canister outside the door: a round tin streaked with red.

John’s heart fell through the floor. Metaphorically speaking, that is. Good stories should have metaphors, right? The last real dream he could really remember was...

There must be some kind of sickness in us, in humans. We know we shouldn’t but...well, we just can’t walk away, can we? This sickness, curiosity. A cruel prank by god, maybe. Or an evolutionary mechanism to get us to destroy ourselves. We stick our fingers in a dog’s mouth then act surprised when we get bit. We can’t turn our backs to the fire even as it melts our faces. We can’t leave well enough alone, we can’t just accept that some things aren’t meant to be seen, to be known. Yeah, even when we do know, we just have to see for ourselves to be sure, don’t we? Or maybe that’s just me, and I’m..ah, what’s the word…

John watched the movie, of course. The razor, the blood, the shower, the blur that was David, all there, all realer than real on that massive screen. He ripped the film from the projector, jamming and tangling the whole thing up. He called David. Tried to anyway, but David didn’t answer. He figured his friend had a late night or early night or whatever the hell kind of night it would take to make things okay. But John didn’t know that David would never answer a call again.

***

Interior, projection booth, midday. John is playing one of the summer’s box office hits for a packed audience. He pops in the second reel and gets ready for the switch. When the old reel runs out and the new one starts, the screen glows with morbid celluloid.

Razor, blood, shower, blur. John feels his body go cold from the inside out despite the heat. He sees every mistake he’s ever made, every regret he has, pass before him, and before the audience.

They watch as if nothing’s changed. John stands up and creeps toward the small glass porthole in the booth. He looks out over the patrons. He can’t quite make out any faces, but they’re all watching his worst fears intently. Then the bloody short ends and John appears on screen, standing in the projection booth, peering out the tiny window. John’s breaths are ragged, his mind racing through justifications for what’s happening, but there’s only one. He wipes the dripping sweat from his burning forehead and the John on the screen does too. He holds up his right hand and movie John follows. He trips backward, disoriented and sick to his core. John’s back slams into the projector as he stumbles. It falls, the film seizing up in its mechanism, and then shuts down. 

The audience erupts in applause. John sits against the broken projector. His stomach’s churning something fierce. He can feel it tickling the back of his throat again. From his mouth pours black tape, technicolor nightmare ribbon, in spools on the floor. He pulls and retches as the film exits his body. The audience cheers. Curtains. Scene.

***

Now what was the lesson here? Was all that oddness just a dream? That would seem a bit cheap, wouldn't it? Or is John himself just a dream? Or, maybe, you’re the dream, and John’s the dreamer.

Well, I’ll leave it to you to figure out.

Did I say a story? I lied: I’ve got three. See, three's a good round number. 

You know the myth of Sisyphus? Imagine you were cursed to push a boulder up a hill all day. When you get to the top, it rolls back down the hill and you have to start over again. Now repeat that forever. Imagine you had to grind away day after day, working yourself to dust for most of your waking hours. You had to toil and strain all your life for nothing. Just bearing the weight of that rock. The labors never cease. Camus imagined the absurdity of it all, figured sisyphus happy. I think based on experience, that's a load shit.

Now imagine someone came along and told you they’d let you switch places with the rock. You could finally relax, you could finally be on top. You could let someone else carry that weight for a while. I mean, someone’s gotta do it, right?

Do you think Sisyphus would take that offer? Would you?

All right, one more story. Last one, I promise.

There’s a dog all alone out in a field of broken corn stalks. He’s supposed to be hunting. But he sees something move behind him out of the corner of his eye. He spins around to catch it, but it’s gone. Then another flash of movement. He turns back and there’s still nothing there. He’s getting nervous now, his mouth hanging open, tongue lolling with each anxious pant. He stamps his feet into the dark earth and shakes. The movement comes back, but this time he waits. He’ll surely get it this time if he’s patient. His anticipation for the catch grows, his ears perk up. The thing behind him reveals itself. He spins in a tight circle and clamps down. Not quite as strong as the wolf, but there’s enough of the primal, ancient grit in him to kill. But what’s this? Whatever he’s caught is attached to him, coming directly from his hind quarters. He pulls, and feels the tug on his own back. It’s furry, and it smells familiar. He stands for a moment in that shattered field, tail in teeth. He’s forgotten what his purpose is. He tries to think of something all the way back, some instinct that runs in the blood of those who hunted mammoths and survived glacial flow, the fear of every human huddled in caves, huts, cabins. This isn’t what he’s supposed to be doing. There’s something else. But that thought is beyond him now. So he lets go his tail. Now he’s really gonna do what he’s told, what he’s trained to do.

Then the swish of something swaying behind him, a blur of gray or brown in his periphery, and it starts again.

Don’t go chasing your tail on a hunch or you’ll end up getting hurt. Stick to what you’re supposed to do. Some birds are just bigger than others, you know? Of course the big birds at the top of the feeder get their fill, but what they leave behind rains down on the sparrows and wrens below, and trickles down to even the lowest of birdkind. They all benefit if they stay in their places. Or so I've been told.

So which are you gonna be? The dog or the wren?

***

WREN: And with that, there’s only one piece of mail left in Conway’s inbox: the last letter on his to-do list the day he vanished. I suppose the backlog all recorded and archived, they’ll be sending me back to my original office next week. Or maybe they’ll keep me here a while to continue doing this. It’s hard not to wonder what happened, though. So many loose ends. I’m fighting nearly every instinct I have to look deeper, but I’ve been explicitly instructed not to do so--some might say threatened.

This has come to an inauspicious end, hasn’t it? Let’s see what this last letter has in store for us before we part.

It looks like a postcard, a little worn and discolored. On the front is a white lighthouse. The script below indicates it’s in Aisling, Ohio. And on the back is just one sentence. It reads:

 

Little Songbird,

That’s not your tail moving behind you. Bite, and don’t let go.

-Lucy

 

*off mic, shuffling, footsteps and a door closes* 

WREN, muffled: Hey, Martinez, when did this one come in? 

*unclear dialogue from a second person*

WREN: Are you certain? 

*unclear dialogue*

WREN: Who flagged it? 

*unclear dialogue*

WREN: No, no! Don’t get The Boss. This isn’t work-related, it’s...personal curiosity. 

*unclear dialogue*

WREN: Actually could you let them know I’m done with Conway’s pile here. And I think I’m going to take a vacation. Thank you!

*sounds of sitting back at the desk*

WREN: I’ll find out what happened to you, Conway, directives be damned.

Now where the hell is Aisling, Ohio?

*out of fiction credits*

Hey everyone, it’s your host here. Just want to give a shoutout to all the lovely patrons that help make this show possible. So thank you to carriers Flo and Jessica, and to receiving clerks Gadz, Paul, Spicy Nigel, and Patricia and to everyone else sharing and supporting the show. 

If you’d like to support the show and get your name in the credits like these fine folk, head on over to patreon.com/somewhereohio and sign up for one of the tiers there. Thank you again, and happy belated birthday, Nigel!

Wren reads a letter about a man tormented by a song. Conway finds some answers, but they're about as useful as you might expect. Wren goes out.   (CWs, minor spoilers, seriously this one gets kind of gross: worms, snakes, ear trauma, body horror, space, paranoia, slime, blood, vomit, derealization)    Also, check out Wake of Corrosion at wakeofcorrosion.buzzsprout.com   Transcript available in the episode notes at somewhereohio.com

A letter writer reminisces about his strange childhood pet. Conway explores the guts of an abandoned mall and finds someone he wasn't looking for. Wren gets chewed out for something they can't control.

(CWs: body horror, brief mention of violence and death, alcohol, dead animal, whispering, some strong language)

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, this is Wren, claims adjuster for the Dead Letter Office of *******, Ohio. The following audio recording will serve as evidence for Conway’s case. Public release of this or any other evidence is strictly prohibited. Some names and facts have been censored for the protection of the office. 

As we’ve previously established, forward and backward are not necessarily stable concepts. So let’s begin today by looking at the next letter in Conway’s backlog, which may give me insight into what happened to him.

Dead letter 14417, a long note written on several folded pieces of printer paper, sent by a Stephen ***** to his mother in late 2016. The letter reads as follows. 

NARRATOR STEPHEN: Hey mom.

Did I ever have a pet growing up? I know dad never wanted one and then Dave was allergic. It’s getting harder to remember if this actually happened or if it’s a vivid dream that’s stuck with me through the years.

Before high school hit me like a semi truck, you’d let me bike up to the arcade at the Deerland Mall on the weekends. 

LOUDSPEAKER: “WELCOME TO THE DEERLAND MALL, YOU’LL GO BUCK WILD FOR THESE DEALS! Our store hours are: 9am to 7pm” *slowly fades out*

NARRATOR: I remember the huge globe of stale gumballs loitering in the foyer. I’d chew on them even though I knew they were rock hard and would probably cut my gums up. Sorry about the quarters missing from your purse. Then I’d stop by the candy store and get a big bag of sweaty gummies that had been sitting in the foggy display case for god knows how long and a tall cherry coke from the concession stand. 

The light gun shooters and fighting game cabinets there were cool enough, but my favorite was the racing game. It had a whole mock driver’s seat that moved side to side as you steered. It was also more expensive to play than the others, so I’m sorry about the missing dollar bills. Whatever change I had leftover after a few laps of hairpin turns went into the vending machine full of capsule toys. Since I couldn’t get a dog, I was desperate for one of those new Tamagotchi toys. But where was I gonna get a whole twenty dollars? Coincidentally, the top prize advertised on the machine was a bright blue Tamagotchi. I was old enough to know there was probably only one in there, if any at all. I knew I’d probably end up spending more than twenty dollars trying to get it, yet here I was pouring money down the slot anyway instead of saving it up to buy one.

On a particular lazy afternoon, the arcade was empty: not too uncommon for a summer weekday. I put two quarters in the slot on the capsule machine, twisted the tough old crank, and out dropped a peculiar toy. The capsule itself was identical to the others: a translucent plastic casing, a bubble with a colorful top that popped off. Almost like an acorn fallen from a petroleum tree. But what was inside the case gave me pause then, and still makes me uneasy today.

I cracked it open under the flickering lights of the arcade. Inside wasn’t a Tamagotchi, but rather an egg: bigger than a robin’s egg but about the same color with a few white spots, and surprisingly heavy for a toy its size. What’s a thirteen-year-old boy want with a plastic egg? Waste of 50 cents, I thought. I put it in its case and set it on top of the claw machine so I could go play a game about shooting aliens in area 51. I was winding down a blocky corridor when I heard something behind me. I had thought I was the only one in there. I froze, and a bead of prickly sweat rolled down my neck. I turned my head to the entrance of the arcade. Nobody there. I scanned the stained carpet for anything out of place. Spilled on the ground near the rusty change machine was the capsule I’d just won, split up as a cracked egg. The toy that was inside sat upright among the wreckage. I took a step closer, still gripping the orange gun tethered to the cabinet. The egg on the ground shook. A tiny wobble. I shut my eyes hard for a few seconds, inducing those familiar mental fireworks, then looked again. Another teeter.

I pointed the light gun at it and fired. Kid logic would state that if this toy came to life, it could similarly be brought down by a toy gun. By then my connection to kid logic was hanging on by a single synapse, constantly threatening to disappear from my thought patterns forever, on the precipice of the bigger, darker realizations that the adult world foists upon the unsuspecting teen.

Well, sometimes kid logic doesn’t hold up to real world testing anyway. But now this blue egg had my interest: it was a curiosity, an oddity, and nothing sparks the young imagination quite like oddity. I picked it up gingerly and put it under my baseball cap. Under the blinding sun outside I hopped on my bike and rode home.

Back at the house, I breezed past you and Dave without a word and stomped up the stairs. Looking at my prize in the familiar light of my room, it didn’t seem to be moving at all. Once again in the mundane, away from the caffeine surges and sugar crashes and flashing numbers, it was just a plastic egg. Maybe it had actually moved, or maybe I just really hoped it would. I set it on my bedside table and forgot about it for the rest of the day.

I woke up in the middle of the night to something scurrying around my room. I didn’t see it at first. Too dark, too small, too quick. I only heard the chattering and scuffling. I stood up on the bed and surveyed my room. There was something moving in the pile of dirty laundry in the corner. I crept over to the clothes and peered into the moving sleeve of my sweater.

Inside was a tiny, fleshy thing. No bigger than the palm of my hand, barely more than a tan blob with black eyes and a wide mouth. It had glommed onto a green army man I used to play with all the time, some years ago forgotten in the halting dust of my adolescent closet. It was gnawing on the soldier’s helmet, content with its prey. I reached in to gently pull the toy away, but it was hanging on with thin, fingerless limbs. Under its round body were small nubs planted firmly to the floor. When I managed to wrestle the toy away, it let out an odd chirp, like a strained baby bird.

The little guy was probably hungry. If it sounded like a bird and came from an egg like a bird, maybe it would eat like a bird. So I gathered some seeds and nuts from the pantry and scattered them in front of it. The thing poked around a bit with its probing mouth, but it didn’t seem that interested. Then it hit me: momma birds chew up the food for them when they’re young. I mashed a handful of peanuts around in my mouth and leaned over the blob to spit.

I’ll tell you it didn’t go well. I tiptoed to the darkened kitchen for some paper towels to clean the thing off.

When I returned to the pile of dirty laundry, the creature had found another favorite childhood possession: a blue gameboy game. I’d spent dozens of hours playing it to collect all the monsters, but I hadn’t touched in a while. The creature had the corner of the plastic cartridge in its mouth. I figured it probably couldn’t do much to damage the game, seeing as it didn’t have any teeth, so I let it gum on for while. Big mistake. It closed its mouth around the cartridge, and I heard a muffled snap. It set down the game, the corner roughly broken off and missing. The creature swallowed the chunk and chittered with joy. Arcade bird eats arcade games. Made sense at the time.

I brought it another game, a game I wouldn’t mind losing. The tiny blob ignored it and wandered over to my binder full of baseball cards. It ducked its head under the cover and started nibbling on the corner of my Ken Griffey Jr rookie card. I rushed over and pulled it away. Never have I been more thankful for a thin plastic sleeve.

So what did this thing want if not games? Well, after an hour or so of testing its palette, I had some promising results. My favorite gameboy game? Yes. My pillowcase? No. Baseball card? Yes. The small tv in my room? No. My lucky hat? Yes. 

I slowly put together over that early morning that this creature only wanted to eat things I had an attachment to. It could sense my emotional connection to certain objects, and sought those out. I let it finish the game cartridge it had started eating since it was functionally useless now anyway. It seemed satisfied, and passed out in the laundry basket.

A few days went by. The creature wasn’t just a blob anymore: it had a bigger torso, longer front limbs, and extended legs. It looked more animal now and less like a ball of skin. I started calling it Creech, short for creature. Real original, right? Hey, I was thirteen, cut me some slack. 

You remember the “imaginary friend” I would hang out with? That was Creech. We grew together for a time, though it much faster than me. It got taller, longer. Its head rounded out. Creech started standing mostly upright and used its fingerless arms to manipulate objects and simple tools. It would respond to my calls, and chatter back in a manner a parrot newly learning to speak might.

As its body grew, so did its hunger. There were only so many old toys and games around my room that it would eat, and only a few left that I was willing to part with. I couldn’t buy it food or sneak scraps from the kitchen, it wouldn’t touch them.

Lucky for us, late summer is garage sale season around here. So every muggy August morning, Creech and I hopped on my bike, the little guy barely concealed under my yellowing cap, and rode the neighborhoods searching for pieces of other people’s pasts. Yeah, you guessed it: sorry for the missing 20s.

A faded picture of a deceased husband. A ratty teddy bear from a relationship gone stale. Worn kid’s shoes. These things seemed to have an aura, some weight to them that Creech could sense, and it pointed me to the most potent objects: dated comics, grimy games, scratched records, vessels for fond memories ready to be consumed again. 

We played together in the park, had pizza in the mall food court, won rigged games at the county fair. Creech was my secret pet, my friend. We spent the whole hot summer together, enjoying my last long days before high school started.

While Creech consumed these bittersweet artifacts that boiling summer, it started looking distinctly more humanoid. It grew rudimentary fingers, long toes. Creech stayed pretty hairless, and its eyes still stared endlessly, round and black. Its long mouth hung open, and took up the lower half of its face, sans nose. It was cute, in the way a pug’s cute. As the last days of August crawled sweatily on, Creech needed more to feed on, stronger emotions, objects loaded with more joy, or more pain. And it was almost up to my knee by then.

I felt the scratching of a bad idea at the back of my mind. An echo deep within a cave, or a fuzzy radio signal you can almost make out if you tune it right. A violent movie you can nearly see through the garbled static of a channel you’re not supposed to get. I looked at that screen for a moment, anxious but deeply curious. Could it feed on more than old toys and trinkets people used to love? Could it feed on a connection a little more...potent? Something a little more...living? But that signal was too garbled, too big for my mind at the time. 

As the season’s credits started to roll, I reflected on my own past, on the people and things I used to care about so deeply. Why did I shove my stuffed animals in the closet? Why couldn’t I feel the same way watching Power Rangers that I used to? Somewhere deep inside, I felt my first blustery wave of nostalgia. I was about to transition to high school, another unskippable cutscene, another click up the rollercoaster, leading to the inevitable drop into adulthood. Into game over. I wanted to get off, to stop for a minute and really take in what I had--what I was--before then, but I was already past the platform. No getting off now, no slowing down. When you’re young, every moment is always ahead of you: the myriad loves, disappointments, triumphs, and failures are further up the track. It’s not until something’s behind you that you can anticipate how sweet it was, and how sweet it must stay.

Or maybe that’s how I see it now that I’m old, my perception of time stretching out and compressing. So many things I’ll never get back. How sweet it all seems now. 

Mom, if I told you about Creech, I knew I’d be grounded, but I couldn’t keep feeding it alone. I didn’t see my teachers during summer break, and I thought the cops might kill it, or take it in for military study if I showed them. I couldn’t keep hiding it and hoping no one would get suspicious of a 13 year old boy constantly rifling through antique shops. It wasn’t fair to either of us. It was time to let go.

So Creech happily climbed into my backpack that simmering day like any other, one leg at a time, hungry and eager. It barely fit in there by then, even curled up, and it was getting heavy to carry around. We peddled out of town for a while, way out past where the asphalt veins break down into gravel arteries that wind around brutalist cornstalk ribs. Into the limitless moony analog heartland. Past where Old Lady Carruthers fed the stray cats that howled at her window every morning. Where the Baldridge brothers--who grew up good christian boys like their small town bigshot daddy--beat a guy half to death on Cottonwood Road cause he looked a bit funny. They ended up at Case Western. Where the adults turned to stone and the kids either left or drank and drank until their guts fell out and they fossilized too, because what else is there to do when the horizon ahead of you is so damn flat. Where I’d learned how to swim when I was 6, had my first real crush at 12, crashed my car into a pole at 17, left for a better life at 24 and came back at 30. Out where Creech had no clue that after today, we wouldn’t see each other again for 16 years. 

We crossed Holcomb road and slowed beside the gray picket trees. I figured it’d be safe out here, no predators and plenty of space to roam and get big. I opened the backpack and let Creech out in the tall grass. It looked at me, then around at the rising branches and leaves. It hadn’t been this far out of town before, probably had no idea that trees got this tall or this plenty. 

I pointed into the still gloamy woods, streaks of bloody sunset banding across our faces.

“Go on, bud. I can’t take care of you anymore.”

Creech simply stared at me. It saw the tears welling in my eyes, but didn’t know what they meant.

“Go!”

It winced, and said what was almost name, in the best way that its toothless mouth could. Sparse clouds painted contusions overhead in thick pink blocks. I wanted to stay here with it forever, to remember this for all time. I wanted to carve my initials into the support beam. But if I stayed much longer, I’d never leave, and we might get spotted. I pulled my hat low against the burning punctured yolk of sun dripping yellow across the field. I straddled my bike and sped off in a cloud of dusty stone, leaving Creech alone and unmoored in Holcomb Woods.

Mom, I have to confess something. I’m not just writing to check up on you or jaw on endlessly about my childhood. See Creech came back today. I saw it out behind the Green’s house, eyeing their precious terrier through the screen door. Then it saw me. Creech got big. Real big. It looks different from before, too. When it was treated well and eating our stuff, it started looking like us: human. But its eyes are harder, its posture more hunched and bestial. 

I had hoped that writing this out would imbue the letter with enough feeling to pack a real punch for it. But Creech isn’t buying it. Creech wants something more. Now that I’m done, I’m actually having a hard time remembering what I wrote. Guess I wore myself out getting flowery near the end, huh. Seeing Creech brought up so many memories, but it’s hard to think. What was I saying?

Well anyway, I’ve got a last ditch, hail mary idea. Something that might have enough ambient nostalgia to sate it: the Deerland Mall. With its shuttered storefronts, empty theaters, and abandoned junk, there ought to be enough memory impressions and lingering ghosts of the past for it to stay full for years.

Now it’s hungry, mom. Real hungry. I don’t think it’ll hurt me, it remembers me. But I’m not sure it’ll have the same courtesy for others. That reminds me...

Wait. What was I thinking of? Keeps happening today. Brain zaps. I’m remembering something then Creech is there and it’s gone. Ah, nevermind. 

All my love,

Stephen

 

WREN: While I can’t intuit a direct line from the content of this letter to Conway’s disappearance, I have to wonder if the theme of this story is relevant here. A thing once fondly recalled has been twisted and offered for consumption. Something dark within revealed. I believe I have some insight into Conway’s headspace the day he left. He was remembering something. But memory can be treacherous. If you bring the wrong thing back from the past, you can alter your life forever.

I suppose we’ll keep this letter in our vault for the time be--

*old phone rings*

WREN: Oh. 

*Wren answers the phone*

WREN: H-hello? 

*Static on the other line* 

WREN: Is anyone there? *whispered* Conway? 

*phone hangs up*

WREN: I guess it was a wrong number.

 

CONWAY: 

I arrived at the dilapidated shopping center thirsty and weary. Lettering on the facade indicated that this was the Deerland Mall, though most of the letters in Deerland had been busted or stolen by wayward youth, leaving only “the D E A D Mall.” The glass doors were rusty at the hinges, covered in reaching fingers of ivy. The signs plastered to the glass had been bleached almost white by the sun. About as good a natural “do not enter here” signal as it gets.

The doors weren’t locked but they did take a bit of doing to open. The place wasn’t in much better shape on the inside either. Most of the lights overhead were burnt out. The foyer--or is it foy-ay?--was gently illuminated by some waning daylight peeking in through the glass ceiling. Something crackled over the speakers.

*Mall greeting from earlier plays, but glitched out*

CONWAY: A huge gumball machine sat in the center of the open area, still half full of candy. The treats had lost a lot of their luster, but to their credit they still looked edible. Lord knows what chemicals made that possible. In front of the machine was a coin operated carousel of shabby horses. The steed in front had an anguished look on its face, you know the kind of wild expression horses get sometimes, where their lips curl up in a grimace. It’s gaze was aimed backward, desperately trying to look behind it. As if it was being...pursued. I poked my head around and looked at the other horses on the ride; all of them were similarly horrified by something behind them. But they went in a circle. So. Huh. 

A sign on the coin repository read: “Money changer in the game room.” Below that someone had crudely written in sharpie “game changer in the money room.” Okay, Banksy, calm down.

Beyond this pale circle of light near the entrance, the abandoned corridors were pitch black besides an occasional flicker from whatever animating force remained in the few viable bulbs. 

I fished out my phone. No reception, but I could at least use its flashlight and maybe see where I was going. I pulled the map out of my back pocket and shone my phone’s light on its faded surface. Down the central strut, past an arcade and a shuttered JC Penny was the mall security office. I hoped there’d be some tools there to get this briefcase off my wrist, and if nothing else it was a decent place to hole up for the night. I led with the LED light and crept down the dark, damp corridor. The tiles overhead were blackened in large circles with water damage and mold. No doubt loaded with enough asbestos to shred my lungs just by looking at ‘em. You’ll go buck wild for these deals, indeed. 

I walked by a play place on my left that blinked with dim light. “Come play in Bucky’s World” the dingy sign said in three different fonts. A reeking odor from the place gut punched me and halted my breath. Fetid water stood covering the cheap linoleum flooring, and grime oozed up the legs of kid’s chairs and slides. The stars and stripes dangled limply in the stillness of the scene. Salty choking stench spilled from the playroom as flies buzzed around a deer’s head decomposing in the middle of the puddle. Come play. 

Being in this place called to mind my own, very different experiences of my local mall. Went almost every weekend to see movies with friends once I was old enough to drive. But unless you were looking for dated clothes or illegal firearms and shady sports memorabilia, there wasn’t much there anymore. I can still remember the smell, though. The way voices echoed off the high ceilings. The scratchy fabric of the theater seats. The gaudy carpeting, somehow always sticky with something. My first kiss in the parking lot after a matinee. It was all flooding back at once, stronger than usual, one image, one scent connecting to another. Packs of japanese pokemon cards, uncomfortable slacks, greasy pepperoni pizza. These vivid memories here cracked open and rotting like a black tooth.

And that’s when I heard something moving in a vacant storefront. A weird slapping and squeaking, close to bare skin dragging on tile. I had hoped maybe it was an old couple on their usual morning mall walk, I guess barefoot, amazing what the mind will conceive to paper over reality. I turned the direction of the noise and shone the flashlight into the room. 

It was an old arcade. Most of the machines missing, leaving a brighter spot on the wall where they stood. A claw machine sat crumpled near the entrance. Through the cracked glass case, I could see a few mildew-covered plushes laying face-down like waterlogged corpses in a lake. The floor was littered with these empty plastic capsules. In the rear was a storage room. The door was hanging open. I pointed the light that way and saw a broken face. It was yellow, missing a rounded ear, with cracks up its face and under its black eyes. It was reaching into a jar of something. Was it...honey? This was a busted winnie the pooh ride that must have been shoved into storage before the mall closed. Something else was on the edge. A long fleshy hand gripping onto the plastic exterior. From inside the ride rose a thin, reedy thing. Half-human, with spindly limbs, a bulbous head. Its toothless mouth was dangling impossibly low. It stood probably twice my height, and stretched a leg over the rim. I didn’t stay long enough to see the rest of it. A guttural screech echoed through the mall. It almost sounded like language, but I couldn’t understand it. I turned tail and ran.

Something boomed over the loudspeaker.

MAN OVER THE LOUDSPEAKER: “When the twilight is gone, and no songbirds are singing, God comes through the lines and sits in the streetlights. He waves but you can’t see it. Should we all be so lucky as to be touched by the waving man in the light.”

CONWAY: The fluorescent bulbs in the play place across the hall flashed. Now the deer head rose from the rancid pool, hanging skin and nylon flag draped like vestments across the bone, exposed teeth stark dealership white. In its wake were shadowy figments, jittering out of the bulbs overhead in bursts of sickening light. Their forms were sketchy, vibrating lines. One reached a palm my way and buzzed like a guitar plugged in wrong. Come play in Bucky’s World. I could feel my chest aching as it drew closer, a lightning bolt salvation. Come play. 

I was sprinting now, holding tight to the damn empty briefcase as it flopped and bounced at my side with each step. I was heading straight for the security office. Are mall cops allowed to have guns? For the first time in my life I hoped they did.

I wound down a narrow side path, avoiding the public restrooms and pay phone covered in stickers, the buzzing and wheezing following close behind. At the end was an office. I struggled with the sweaty doorknob for a minute, then slammed my shoulder into the door and stumbled into the room.

Gone was the miasma of mildew and lucid nightmare. The gentle two-tone mint and white walls invited me in. The door shut behind me with a click, and the commotion outside ceased. The office was small and tidy. In the center was a wooden desk accompanied by a lacquered chair. A pristine rotary phone sat atop the table, warping the spacetime around and drawing menacing attention like a gravity well. A corkboard sat centered behind the desk, with a couple old flyers and a key ring pinned to it. I moved to the desk and slid open the side drawers. No guns, but I did find a lockpick and got to work on the cuffs. Not 5 minutes and they were off, and the briefcase dropped to the carpet. 

I rubbed my sore wrist and looked around the office again. That damn phone, inescapable, ringing in my head. A barn on fire on a moonless night. I kicked around a thought. Maybe if a phone got me into this, another could get me out. I picked up the sleek mint receiver and dialed the number I had called before, my old phone number, with a trembling hand. I waited and waited and listened. Nothing. Hm. Maybe in a better story it would have worked.

What about my office number? Maybe someone was filling in for me today. I gave it a shot, but all I heard was some static. Then the line cut out.

While this little office seemed relatively safe, I couldn’t just hang out in here forever. Especially if those things were still outside. I pored over the old map again and planned out my best route to the exit from here. It was going to be a close one.

I crept out through the door and toward the end of this narrow hallway. Didn’t see any sign of the things that were pursuing me earlier. Of course that’s always what they say right before they get got, huh. 

A screech rang out from the stinking guts of the gangrenous mall. More volleys of low droning from the other way, the dissonant warning bell of place already dead, that doesn’t know it’s dead yet. An air raid siren from a collapsed empire.

I took off in the direction of my planned route. But you know what they say about god and plans. The sinewy flesh giant was already nearly on me by the time I crossed the peeling wildlife mural in the kid’s food court. In a desperate attempt at distraction, I threw the old magazine I’d been navigating by into what used to be a pretzel store, if the tattered twisty signage was anything to go by. The creature suddenly turned and leapt over the high counter with its long limbs to gnaw on the coupons and photos inside.

I still had yet to contend with the shaking shadows and the offal deerhead priest. I was puffing and winded. I rounded the last corner on my route and felt my stomach sink. Rather than a door out of there, I found a closed gate. They must have built an addition to the mall since that magazine came out. Nothing can ever just stay the same here, can it? Gotta always be growing, always making more, and more than more. Or maybe the mall did this itself, continued to slink and slither through the clogged arteries of the midwest even after everyone left. 

The hairs on my neck stood cornstalk straight and goosebumps sprouted across my arms. My chest tightened from the electric pull of the visions behind me. There was a sharp hot pain in my core, as if my heart was about to catch fire and burn hollow. A barn ablaze deep in the indigo dusk.

The decaying godhead wreathed in stars stretched its exposed tendons as if to speak.

*incomprehensible whispers*

That’s when the gate in front of me rose, with the clanking, grinding brash of machinery that’s sat dormant too long. I was baptized by a deluge of corporate light. Blue and yellow franchise lettering plastered the walls, below which hung shelves lined with black tapes. A man sat behind a counter, surrounded by rows of rainbow candy boxes and expired popcorn on sale. A video store. He motioned for me with a fishing rod in hand.

“Come on in, Conway, and come quick. I’ve got something that might interest you.”

WREN: Now that I’m done cataloguing my findings for the day, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the people who make all this possible. Thank you to our brave carrier Flo, and to our wonderful receiving clerks Jessica and Gadz. For the Dead Letter Office of ******* Ohio, this is claims adjuster Wren signing off.

*click*

*off mic*

WREN: Oh, hi. I didn’t see you come in. 

*static from The Boss* 

WREN: No, I’m done.

*dissonant static*

WREN: No, look, it’s fine, the light’s off. Hey, I got a call earlier that might--

*static*

WREN: Did I do something wrong? I get the feeling that you--

*intense static*

WREN: Right. Well if anything like that happens again, I’ll--I’ll report it to you right away. Okay. I’ll just...keep reading the old mail then.

*long static*

WREN: See you then.

WREN: Might as well not even have me here if this is all I’m allowed to do. How am I supposed to do my job if I just sit here and read all day and get yelled at for answering a phone? I could use a drink. Maybe I’ll head to the Song B--

Oh shit. The mic’s still h--. 

*CLICK*

Previously...

Receiving Clerk Conway was asked to look into an angel statue and a missing mail carrier named Kenji on behalf of the Dead Letter Office. During the investigation, Conway encountered a strange lost fisherman and some odd postcards with unsettling connections to his past. After finding Kenji's body holding a phone, Conway called the phone number on one of the postcard and received some disturbing information: he couldn't recall his own last name, and realized he was being set up. And what did the lost fisherman mean when he said Conway isn't real? At least not yet?

Now, a new face has arrived at the DLO to sort through the mess Conway left behind: claims adjuster Wren is on the case. On their first day at the office, karaoke night at a dive bar turns weird and Conway finds himself somewhere he shouldn't be.

Some lyrics from Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads

"Fool" originally by Frankie Cosmos

(CWs--mild spoilers: birds, bugs, brief blood, alcohol, smoking, brief harassment, very mild body horror, some strong language, romance?)

TRANSCRIPT: 

CONWAY ON TAPE:...gonna pick up the phone and dial this number.

WREN: Now you’ve heard everything I have. Conway’s vanished, leaving only a trail of disconnected audio memos for me to follow. His last known location was here, at the Dead Letter Office of ******* Ohio. He was supposedly asked to investigate a large package in some other post office, but the DLO has no record of this request, and no idea where he went.

Hello, I’m--wait, am I supposed to introduce myself, or is this more of a formal...Okay.

Then let’s start at the beginning, where I come in. I want to be as thorough as possible. No loose ends.

I had just hung up a bird feeder on the front porch. I like watching all the little birds stop by. The robins, the jays, the sparrows, their colorful plumage and vibrant songs. They take turns plucking seeds out of the holes in the cylinder and sing their small hearts out. 

It was an afternoon, still a little chilly. Summer hadn’t quite hit full swing. A couple of Carolina Finches were pecking at the small bugs and shells left by their brethren on the concrete. The birds weren’t aware of the hawk landing in the tree behind them. They’re not aware of the movements of empires, the fluctuations of markets that destroy their homes. They only see what’s in front of them: the sky to the ground, the egg to the dirt, is now. A moment later and the raptor descended on the surprised prey in a flurry of chirps and flaps. The small birds scattered in a panic, one slammed into the window then took off and the other found itself tangled in the freshly torn mesh on my screen door. Having missed its chance, the hawk turned, soaring far out over the houses down the block. None of these birds would be lunch that day.

This was a relief. I didn’t want to see my visitors get eaten. I mean, I eat chicken already, it’s not all that different, but I still feel bad for the little birds. I figure if I were an animal, I’d be like them, picking at seeds and singing my little song. Noteworthy to those paying attention, but a background detail--a bit player in the grand scene--to others. Realistically, though, I could just as easily be a hawk. Hungry, waiting patiently on the sidelines for my chance, disliked by most. Reaching out and missing. Chronic bad luck. 

I heard my phone buzz on the coffee table, but I had to get this finch out of my screen first. I opened the heavy door and found the thing flapping and screeching, its foot caught in the screen. I gently unwrapped the fabric from its leg, despite its vociferous protestations, and it burst free, tearing through the air to join its friends on the telephone wire.

I went back in and answered the call. It was the DLO. I was being transferred to some nowhere post in Ohio. Supposedly a temporary assignment, though I guess they all are in the long run. There was a case there that needed an expert’s opinion. They always manage to have the worst timing. 

Yes, if I were an animal, I’d probably be the scrappy songbird. Or maybe the hawk. Or maybe I’m just the beetle lodged in the finch’s beak, surrounded by a vast unknowable world, an ocean of interconnected things and events totally beyond my comprehension, then summarily devoured without a second thought.

*Intro music*

WREN: Hello, I’m Wren, claims adjuster for the Dead Letter Office. I’m here to determine if Conway disappeared on the job, and to judge if the DLO is required to make an insurance payout to his next of kin. I’ll be examining his audio memos and the dead mail backlog in his inbox for any clues as to his whereabouts. 

The following audio recording will serve as evidence for his case. Public release of this or any other evidence is strictly prohibited. Some names and facts have been censored for the protection of the office. 

Now in cases like this, it’s important to take in more than just the events. I need a feel for the atmosphere, the scene, the anxieties. I need to understand not only where Conway is but how he is. And how he got there. What was ahead of him in his work pile may have influenced what was in front of him: the past outlines the future, and the future colors the past.

So with this simple understanding that what’s to come is sometimes the driver of what was in mind, let’s begin with the next piece in Conway’s backlog. Dead Letter 17216. This was found on a review website, written by a civilian named Mel. An unconventional entry to be sure, fitting for an unconventional case. She wrote the following:

MEL: "And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. And you may ask yourself, "Well... how did I get here?"

Friday night, dive bar on the north side of town. Easy to miss from the outside, unmistakable inside. 

Like nearly every friday, I pushed through the swinging door and was enveloped in neon light and pulsating music. I was cleansed of my stress by giving in to song, to cheering along and dancing arm in arm, to reunions and meetups. Friday is karaoke night at the Song Bird, the premier queer dive and diy venue in town. Stickers for a thousand defunct bands with names like “Two Dog Folly” and “Slumgrinder” cover the walls and pillars. Even if all they did was play a couple house shows in the fall of 2013 before disbanding, their legacy will live on here, until it’s composted in the churn of revolving vinyl and covered by hopeful new names and faces sprouting forth from the paper loam. Local artists hang their weird paintings up for sale, and greasy food simmers in the kitchen in the back. On karaoke night at the Bird, I’m alive. It’s the one time each week I get to pretend there’s something more to my boring life, more to me, than the usual routine. To reach out for something, anything beyond ordinary. Or to drop the poetic language for a while, I like to blow off steam after work by singing really loud at strangers. 

I came in that friday, and a woman I’d seen a few times before was sitting in the last booth. She had been coming to the Bird for a few weeks, but never met up with anyone, never sang, never even said hello as far as I could tell. She would quietly watch people sing and pick at the duct tape on the peeling plastic booth before leaving without a word.

What was her deal? She had jet black hair, the kind that’s almost blue or green in this light or that. Big dark eyes. Always wearing a black choker with a little pendant on it. I assumed the whole mysterious silent thing was intentional, part of her vibe. So on this sweltering august evening, I was going to find out exactly what her deal was, and maybe finally have something interesting in my life.

It was slow at the Song Bird that night despite the weather. The bar was only half-full by 11. I had just finished my second song, and saw the woman in black head out the back door where the smokers congregate to shoot shit and blow smoke. I stepped off stage and went out for a smoke, too.

And there she was, looking up at the moon and taking in the hot summer air. Someone else was under the awning, letting out a plume of vapor into the sky. The woman in black turned my way. Her hair shimmered under the tangerine light as she moved. I locked eyes with her, but her gaze was intense, her eyes absorbing all light and thought. I hesitated. Her attention was almost too much.

MEL: “Smoke?” I managed to spit out as I fished for the gold pack in my bag. She gently nodded. 

I told her I’d seen her a few weeks in a row now, but I never heard her sing. She pursed her lips, and spoke softly. 

AVERY: “I don’t really like being on stage like that. I’m just here to listen.”

I had an eerie feeling I’d heard her voice before, but I couldn’t place it. Did I actually know her and I just couldn’t remember it? Because God, that would be embarrassing.

MEL: “You sound so familiar. Do you know Jackie, maybe?”She said she gets that a lot, and the corner of her mouth inched upward into a slight smile. I finally grabbed hold of my pack. I pulled out a cigarette and lit it, inhaling deeply. I grabbed another and held it between my fingers, offering it out in her direction. A lock of her hair fell onto her cheek as she leaned forward. She swept the dark strand back behind her ear, where it hung just partway down her neck below dangling silver earrings. Her parted lips touched the cigarette. I was about to let go and offer the lighter when her teeth clamped down, snapping the cigarette neatly in half. She tilted her head back, half of the thing still in her mouth, her form illuminated by the incandescent glow above. She swallowed it, then looked back at me. The half-eaten cigarette fell from my limp hand. My mouth was hanging open, my own cigarette stuck to my lip and smouldering. I gawked at her for a moment, just totally stunned. The woman behind me tucked her vape into her pocket and hurried inside. A section of ash that had been building up fell, and I realized I’d been holding my breath. I let it all out at once with a cough. I held the pack out to her with a shaky hand.

MEL: “Okay, uhhm do you want another?” I wasn’t sure if I was joking. 

She held up her hand politely and shook her head, as if she was declining an hors d'oeuvre, and not like she had just eaten a cigarette out of my hand. I took another drag, and then stomped it out under my boot.

I was feeling a little light headed. She was a little bit taller than me, in a black skirt with matching tights and collared shirt. I asked her name. She said Avery. I opened the door for us to head back in.

MEL: “Well, Avery, I’m Mel. I’d love to hear you sing some time.” 

I smiled and gave her the awkward finger guns I do when I’m nervous, then turned to go back inside. The dizzy purple stage lights and sneering guitars dazed me as I entered, and also conveniently masked the look on my red face. I heard a rush of air, peered back through the closing door, and she was gone. 

Next week a group of friends and I walked to the Song Bird. I was fidgeting with my lighter in my jacket pocket the whole way. I was secretly hoping to see Avery there again, despite what had happened last time. It was a strange first impression, sure, but a strong one. When we got there, she was in her usual spot, cool and collected. I tried to play it cool, too. I nodded and waved as we walked by, my lighter tucked between my thumb and palm. Her eyes intently followed the shining metal as it moved. Then she blinked hard a few times and gave a brief wave back. I asked her if she was going to sing tonight. She looked down at the table and tucked her hair behind her ear. She ran a fingertip along her neck and gave some noncommittal answer. I told her she could join us any time, if she wanted to.

A few drinks and a few songs in, the bar was pretty packed. I pushed my way through the crowd at the counter to get a refresher when I saw two men near Avery in my periphs. One was resting against the table and pointing at her necklace. She looked uncomfortable. I took a sip of my new drink, slammed a few dollars on the bar, and jostled through the dancing throng in her direction. The guy pressed one hand on the table and leaned over her. He reached for the black ribbon around her neck with his other hand. She physically recoiled, but he didn’t move. I shoved my way through the crowd and yelled over the tone-deaf crooner on stage.

MEL: “Leave her the fuck alone!” 

The men looked up with a start, then chuckled when they saw me, small, alone. I glanced toward the bartender. He understood. He slowly made his way out from behind the bar and toward the table. The guy hassling Avery held his hands up. The two of them scoffed and slurred under their breath as they left through the swinging door. 

MEL: “God, Sorry Avery,” I spoke loudly over the woozy atmosphere. I asked her to sit with us. She didn’t seem to be listening. Instead, she furrowed her brow and her eyes lit up. She rose, then swung the door open and stepped out. I could see the two jerks loitering under the chalky streetlight. The door swung back, and I could see her approaching them. A shorter swing outward and they had some kind of twisted up look on their faces, but I could only see the back of Avery’s head. As the door did its final bow and closed, they were running, screaming. I swore I saw streaks of red running down their faces. But again, a few drinks in and a few songs in, so...

Then in stepped Avery, calmly adjusting her choker and dusting off her skirt. She gave me a nod and followed me to where my friends were sitting. I introduced her to the crew. When she spoke, one of my karaoke pal--Sam--gave me a weird side-eye. I shrugged it off. Avery’s chill, I thought, they’ll figure it out. She’s a little eccentric, maybe, but cool. She’s got her own thing going. Kind of jealous, honestly. I don’t think I have a really distinct vibe or unique look, but Avery certainly did. I wanted to be like that, to be like her. Or was it be with her. I don’t know.

Samantha was looking at me as I stared off into the projector. They thought I’d said something, swore they heard my voice.

Sam asked Avery what she does. Sam, you angel, you knew I was desperate to learn more about our mystery woman. 

AVERY: “Oh I uh...collect things. I fly pretty often, too.” 

Ah, a trust fund kid. I should have known. You don’t usually stay that effortlessly hot working the graveyard at Wendy’s.

Before I could learn much more, it was my turn at the mic. Avery stopped me for a second. As I stood up, her nimble fingers pulled some unseen fuzz out of my hair. I tried to thank her but my throat went dry for some reason.

And then I was up on stage, yelling about yearning or anarchy depending on the night, and my friends were on their feet, mingling and swaying. Avery was still sitting among the empty chairs. She was watching me, bathed in swirling dots of light, now pink, now blue. Her lips were moving slightly along with the lyrics. I shut my eyes and belted out a chorus. When I looked into the crowd again, Avery was gone. Afterwards, my friends said she had to go. Early morning. Bummer.

Next week, the booth at the back was empty. I gotta be honest, I was disappointed, but not too surprised. Nothing interesting ever happens to me. She was too good for me, anyway. She’s probably out doing something cool, maybe with a boyfriend. Another work week slurry slipped by, and we checked into the Song Bird again. 

I hit the notes, but my heart wasn’t really in it. When you’re doing karaoke, heart’s what matters. No one’s here for a concert, they want to sing along to the fun songs they know. If you get up and do some jokey track or esoteric stuff, everyone’s gonna think you’re a jackass. You have to be sincere. And wow did I turn achingly sincere when I saw Avery filter through the crowd mid-Blondie song.

She stood and hopped back and forth among the rippling crowd and vivid afterglow. I pointed to Avery as I recited the lyrics, and she beamed and turned a little red. It didn’t last, though. She winced, and her fingertips felt for the ribbon on her neck. She darted out back. I pulled Jackie on stage and handed off the mic.

I trailed after her. I didn’t want her to slip away again. I pushed through the back door. The air was heavy and hot on my skin. I asked if she was okay.

She was facing away from me under the awning. Around us, the city was busy with late summer reverie. I heard firecrackers somewhere a couple blocks away, and sickly houses lining the road overflowed with rancid frat energy. 

AVERY: “I just...I don’t know why I came back. I shouldn’t be here. YOU shouldn’t be here, with me.”

I started to ask why, but she didn’t look like she wanted to answer. She just studied the gravel under feet and her hand went instinctively to her neck.

MEL: “Whatever it is, it’s fine. I just shouted bad french at a room full of strangers. Do I look like I have shame? It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a bunch of dirty money or a boyfriend or whatever, I’m not here for that.”

I gently took her arm. Her skin was a little clammy despite the heat, but she didn’t withdraw.

MEL: “Let’s go. I think it’s just about your turn...if you’re comfortable.” I didn’t want to pressure her, but I figured it may do her some good, help her break out of her shell.

She sighed. Her shoulders sank. She kicked a few pebbles near her feet.

AVERY: “Okay, one song.”

I led her by the arm back into the bar. I gave her a small card and pen in case she really did want to request a song. We sat together quietly for a while, me throwing back my fizzy drink and her slowly dipping her head down to take tiny sips at her dark concoction. Eventually, I saw her covertly write something on the card and sneak off to deliver it to the host.

Samantha whispered something to me when Avery was out of ear shot. Sam had apparently just figured something out. They saw Avery at Queen of Cups a couple months ago and thought she sounded just like this other girl. Some asshole who always did like 7 minute songs there. Hadn’t seen her in a while though. Then they said something that made me uneasy.

They said that Avery sounded just like me now, but...quieter. I didn’t quite understand, or didn’t want to. I thought she sounded weirdly familiar, but really? Me? No way. Jackie leaned over Sam’s shoulder, and confirmed it.

I stared at the small glass in my hand, or rather through the glass, through the smudged tile floor, through the concrete foundation laid sometime in 1996, through the dirt and the fossilized skeletons of extinct things slowly rotting into fuel for our own extinction, through the earth’s burning anxious core, and stopped just short of actual introspection.

They shut up when Avery made her way back and drank the dregs of her cocktail. I bought her next drink.

The hazy dayglo hands of time crawled on drunk toward the inevitable cursed sunrise, until I heard the host announce the next singer. It was Avery. She looked like she didn’t expect to actually have to sing. I told her I’d do it for her if she felt like backing out, but instead, she asked me to hold her drink and hopped on stage. 

Avery stood awkwardly behind the microphone. The drum machine kicked in, the speakers rattling the bottles around the bar with every quaking bass and twinkling cymbal. She held onto the mic stand, her feet close together. Then came the seismic synth, bubbling up from some deep unknown. She swayed gently along to the music, her black skirt sweeping site to side.

The lyrics came up on the backdrop. She took a deep breath on the last rest and pulled the mic close to her mouth. Too close. It bumped into her chin, and feedback squealed through the bar. Surprised by the sudden shriek, she shoved the mic away. But the pendant on her silk choker was caught on the microphone. The ribbon tore from her neck and fell to the stage floor. I saw the small charm glint in the stage light. It was a silver feather. She reached for it so fast I could hardly register what was happening. But something was already in her hand. Something dark. 

No, not in her hand. Coming FROM her hand. A black feather. Then several more. They sprouted from her skin, ran up her arm and rose above the collar of her shirt. They burst forth and covered her body almost entirely in downy black, slowing in a ring along the edge of her neck where the choker once was. Her black shoes split open, revealing four sharp talons. She screamed and backed away. The music thrummed and wobbled in the background. I looked sharply to my left and right, maybe for help or maybe just for confirmation that I wasn’t losing my mind. But the patrons were no longer around us, and the rest of the bar beyond the stage seemed to vanish entirely before me. It was just Avery, the microphone, and me under the spiraling multicolor spotlights and crashing cymbals. She hid her face in her newly formed wing and shouted.

AVERY: “GO!”

I didn’t budge.

AVERY: “Well? Are you not afraid? Is this not when you call me a monster? I told you you shouldn’t be near me! And you were concerned about wealth. I...I only watched you sing so I could take your pretty voice. Every month, I must roam the city, seeking tongues to add to my collection or else be silenced. I stole your song! Don’t you get it? I’m a beast, a thing that shouldn’t exist, cursed to sing a thousand songs in a thousand voices but never my own. So run now, while you can, and never speak of me, never think of me again.” 

She was towering above me now, her voice--I guess my voice?--echoed through the room.

AVERY: “Fine, if you won’t go on your own, Mel, then I’ll make you.” 

She stepped toward me, her claws smashing into the stage and sending splinters flying. She spread her wings, easily twice my height. She was angry, but she was shaking. There was something more there, wasn’t there? This wasn’t just about stealing my voice or whatever. She was afraid.

I moved toward the stage. I reached up and took the tip of her soft wing in my hand. Time to call her bluff.

MEL: “Avery...you have to understand...this just makes you even cooler. Have you ever heard of Howl’s Moving Castle?”

She tilted her head. She didn’t know what to say. So I climbed onto the stage beside her. Tears streamed down her face in lines of streaky black eyeliner and trickled into the down where her shoulders used to be.

MEL: “Nevermind, come on, let’s finish the song. I’ll do it with you.” I started moving to the music, clapping and faking my way through the lyrics to a song I didn’t know very well.

She locked eyes with me again, and there was her deadly gaze. It made my knees feel weak. Made me feel like I was the only person in existence. Then she let out a bitter laugh. She sidled close as we shared the mic and closed out the track, shoulder to wing.

As the last of the twinkling keys faded out, I picked up her choker and held it out to her. She motioned with her head at her wings and looked apologetic. Ah, no hands. Right. I wrapped the smooth black silk around her. My heart jumped into my throat. My mouth was dry. She looked down at me and spoke softly.

AVERY: “And I don’t have a boyfriend.”

As I finished tying the ribbon, I pulled her close and kissed her.

As the black band closed around her neck, the talons receded, the feathers disappeared in a whirlwind and she was once more the mysterious girl in black. The bar materialized before us, and my friends cheered in the audience. They apparently hadn’t seen any of what just happened. I pulled away from her lips, feeling a little on the spot now. I stepped off the stage and helped Avery down. We got back to our chairs and sat in the pulsing silence.

She looked terribly exhausted but I was humming with adrenaline. She rested her head on my shoulder. Her dark hair unspooled from behind her ears in circles, like minutes dripping ever onward into pools of dusky hours on that buzzing summer night.

That was a year ago, and we’ve been dating since. Sure, cleaning up the feathers can be a pain. Yeah, sometimes she’ll mimic my friends or enemies to get a rise out of me. And it can be hard to pull her away from the mirror when I need it in the morning. Yes, she loves to preen. I file her talons and she paints my nails. Never a dull moment. 

Mom is pretty chill about it, dad doesn’t really get it. You know, usual relationship stuff. 

And I’ve never been happier.

Anyway, 4 / 5 stars for the Song Bird, would recommend, just wish the bathroom wasn’t missing ceiling tiles.

Melody’s review on Ye**

 

WREN: Nothing to be found here relating to the disappearance, unfortunately, but I think I do have a deeper understanding of this office itself. It’s lively, unpredictable. Prone to kick or bite. An unsteady bridge over a raging river. Why did you stick your hand in the current, Conway?

I believe the higher ups will also want to take a look at this. I’ve scrubbed all information surrounding this review from the site. I will forward a printout to the appropriate parties for further investigation by the DLO. As a side note, I have also bookmarked the Song Bird’s address for...independent study later.

OUTRO

CONWAY: The winged creature stood before me, wreathed in smoke. It didn’t speak, but my mind was nevertheless flooded with images and sounds: a small town, waves breaking on the shore, an old mall, a video store, a lighthouse turned upside down, a hand reaching through the dark, a busy signal, a cave.

After the smoke cleared, I shook my head, and the thing was gone. I coughed and went to cover my mouth, but found more resistance on my arm than expected. I looked down and saw a briefcase handcuffed to my right wrist. Old battered tan leather, heavy as all hell, with one of those little three number locks. I spun the dials around a few times, trying all the obvious numbers and then the funny ones (I’ll leave which those were to your imagination). I was hoping through sheer luck it would pop open, but no dice. The woods were dark, and I could hear the crickets singing in the tall grass around me. The foliage overhead was too thick to see the stars, and I had no phone or compass on me. I couldn’t just stay there, so I heaved the briefcase up and started walking in...some direction. 

My mind still felt a little hazy, and the chilly air nipped at the raw skin under the cuff. I wandered around the woods for some time, no trails and no end to be found. Eventually I came upon a clearing, and in the center of that clearing was a red leather chair. Little cuts and dirt scattered its surface, some various grasses and vines growing up its legs. It looked like it had been out here a while. On the seat was a puffy little bird. It was tearing long strands of paper out of some old magazine. I approached slowly, and the bird didn’t seem to scare. It took one of the long shreds of paper up into a nearby tree. I reached for the magazine. A cheap local publication, now soiled and sun-bleached, advertising all of the amazing stores and products on offer at a new mall. A grand opening. The date on the cover was 1980-something. I flipped through the remaining pages, crinkled and stiff as they were from being soaked and dried over time. Pretty typical stuff inside: an arcade, a theater, a Sears. The last page caught my attention, though. It was a blown out photocopy of one of those mall maps. You know, a little star saying “you are here” and everything. But the star wasn’t in the mall like usual, it was outside, among some clip art trees. I was getting mighty thirsty by then, and had no real clue where I was going. This map was my best bet, so I rolled it up and stuck it in my back pocket. 

 I surveyed the path ahead of me in what was hopefully the direction the map intended. More tall grass, snagging branches, and thick woodland. By this point the weight of the case had worn on me, and my wrist was irritated from the handcuff. What the hell was in this thing? What exactly had I gotten myself into? I trudged forward, wearing on into the night for what seemed like hours. Dark foliage still expanded in every direction, stretching as far as I could see. My right shoulder was sore, that arm sagging with the heavy case. I swiped some thorny branches out of the way with my free hand, but the branch swung back, catching me in the abdomen. The thorns tore through my shirt and left a gash on my stomach. Blood slowly trickled down and soaked into my shirt. Certainly nowhere near life-threatening but it sure stung like hell.

I tried heaving the briefcase in front of me with both hands to give my poor right arm a break. I held it close to me, closed my eyes, and took a step forward in my best estimate of the mall’s direction. That’s when I felt the air change around me, a breeze hit my face and soft dirt crumbled under my shoe. I opened my eyes and looked around. I had just stepped out of a corn field, the rich dark earth exposed from the season’s plowing. I dropped to my knees. I was so happy to be out of those woods I didn’t notice the three figures in front of me at first.

I looked up with a start, and saw three people in dark robes standing about 5 yards away from me in the middle of the field. The morning sun had just started peeking over the flat horizon, and the dark figures stood out in sharp contrast to reaching stalks of corn. They had animal masks on, dark things with long beaks. Like those plague doctors wore in the middle ages. Each one was holding some kind of paper.

CONWAY: “Did you do this? What do you want from me?”

They didn’t respond.

CONWAY: “All I did was call a phone number. I was just looking for a coworker who’d gone missing, I wasn’t looking for trouble.”

But apparently trouble’d I indeed found. The three birds stepped closer to me in unison, then flipped the torn papers they’d been holding. They were pages ripped from the magazine, each one with one big number on it. I pulled the briefcase in front of me and spun the dials to those numbers. The lock clicked open. Finally I could see what was in there that was so damn important it had to be handcuffed to my wrist and dragged around the woods. I lifted the lid and it was rocks.

Just rocks, of various colors and sizes  Regular, usual stones. You know, sometimes you have to laugh because well...you could finish that one. I dumped the rocks out into the field. I still couldn’t get my wrist free, but at least the case was lighter. When I rose to my feet again, the bird people were gone. And in the distance, I saw a building, surrounded by a vast gray sea of empty parking spaces and rusted street lights. A tall sign at the entrance used to show all the stores inside, but now it was just empty scaffolding.

It looked like I’d found the dead mall.

WREN: Now before I sign off, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the people doing all the work in our field. So thank you to intrepid carrier Flo, and to our lovely receiving clerks Jessica and Gadz. You are what make the DLO function. For the Dead Letter Office of ******* Ohio, this claims adjuster Wren signing off.

*WREN, slightly off mic*: Okay. *indecipherable noise* What? No, no, it’s off. You can see the little red light’s not on anymore. So! How was my first record here? *indecipherable noise* Not bad, I hope. Not used to being directly on mic, I’m more of a behind the scenes kind of thing, you know. *indecipherable noise* Yes, he did sound strange in his early recordings. I wonder if he was worried about his accent coming off a little too folksy so he kind of toned it down. *indecipherable noise* Yes, okay, I will do that. Just the, just the backlog, okay, yes.  I can do that. See you tomorrow.

A freighter on Lake Erie experiences heavy storms. A salvage goes wrong. Conway reminisces about his past, and has a revelation about his present.

(CWs: death, dead animal, brief gore, blood, body horror, insects, alcohol, derealization, deep water)

Lyrics to "Farewell Song" originally published by Dick Burnett

 

TRANSCRIPT:

CONWAY ON THE PHONE: Omens always come in threes. The dead rat on the porch should have been number one with a bullet. I put some water on the range for a pot of coffee yesterday morning. I was looking out the back window at the leftover frost glittering in the pink ribbons of early sunlight. I saw it lying there on the cement and couldn’t let it just decay. I went out the back door and looked over the scene. Pretty big thing. Probably lived a nice long life eating from my garbage, all things said and done. It had a serious bite on its leg and its stomach was uh...well you know how sometimes your imagination is worse than anything you actually see? This wasn’t one of those times. The kettle bubbled in the kitchen, letting off a trail of steam, and a fly buzzed around overhead.

I fixed to move the poor deceased critter. Scooping it up with a shovel seemed awful undignified, though. I rummaged through the kitchen drawers and cabinets. I waffled between a paper bag and a shoe box. The kettle screeched and plumed on the stove behind me. I couldn’t just dump the little guy in the trash, so I grabbed my garden trowel and made a small hole in the backyard. I laid the box in the grave, then covered its fur in soft earth. In time, it’ll be earth itself once more, and plants will grow from its back that new rats eat. Needless to say, I’m out a pair of tongs and a shoebox now.

Yeah, omens always come in threes, but not because of any natural or supernatural law. Humans are real good at pattern seeking, sometimes to our own detriment. It’s just that it takes three strokes of bad luck for us to really pay attention; one bad thing--well, it is what it is. Two bad things? That’s a coincidence. But three, and now you’ve a pattern. A chain of events. A story. 

By then, Kenji’d been missing two weeks, and the angel was still in storage. It'd been a hell of a month. A missing person, an small town, mysterious letters and unexplained occurrences. It all felt a little...familiar. Almost cliche. But I’d been doing this gig for 6 years now and I wasn’t about to give up my healthcare over that. Besides they pay me to read, not to think. And so I did read, one last time, for the Dead Letter Office of Somewhere, Ohio.

*New introduction music*

CONWAY: This is Conway, receiving clerk for the Dead Letter Office of ******* Ohio, processing the national dead mail backlog. The following audio recording will serve as an internal memo strictly for archival purposes and should be considered confidential. Need I remind anyone: public release of this or any confidential material from the DLO is a felony. Some names and places have been censored for the protection of the public. 

Dead Letter 315, a weathered diary sent to the wife of a ship’s engineer. It details the fate of a lost cargo ship called the Oneiros, slated to make a quick trip across Lake Erie in 1913. The entries that contain no pertinent information will be excised from the record. The remaining relevant passages read as follows.

NARRATOR: Morning November 6, 1913. Embarking on a short voyage across the Erie, carrying a heavy load of cargo. Some twenty of us boarded the steamer Oneiros, a handsome ship, one of the finest freighters I’ve seen on the Great Lakes. Most aboard are able-bodied seamen, seasoned hands for the weather ‘sides one of the young cargo loaders, a Patrick, or Phillipe I think. USDA weather bureau noted a brisk easterly front, spots of rain for the upper lakes, calmer waters south. Crew seems in fine spirits despite the chill, the 3000 some gross tonnes of cargo, presumably coal and timber, secured below deck. I’m to look after the engine and its various components.

Captain Ludic’s a little daffy, assertively old-fashioned. Barking orders like he’s a pirate king and we’re his swabbies. Could have stepped right from the pages of Treasure Island, beard and all but for his soot black buttoned coat and hat. Seems no quack, though, and certainly knows his way round the ship. He’s very particular about his cargo, and ordered that none of us enter the cargo hold unless he gives us his explicit permission. Should be no longer than a day’s trip, then two days more before I see you again. It’s lonely out here, I can only imagine how dire it is stuck at home alone. I pray that upon my safe return, this log of my activities and thoughts of you more than makes for the time apart. And perhaps then we shall marry. I will be thinking of you fervently.

Evening the 6th of November, 1913. I’ve settled into my berth for the night after we’ve supped. How I wish you could join me. Captain Ludic took his meal on the deck, and I saw fit to join him. Conversation wasn’t exactly enlightening. We took our meat and bread quietly, until a cold drizzle started pattering his old cap. He looked out at the overcast horizon, then he fixed his glazed eyes on me. His hard roll fell from his lap and bobbled across the deck unevenly for a yard before toppling.

CAPTAIN LUDIC: “The Witch of Autumn, she’s coming for us, lad.”

NARRATOR: He spoke softly, and his crooked mouth hung open long after his last syllable. A bit of chicken hung from his scruff.

CAPTAIN LUDIC: “The boys in the papers said t'would be calmer southward, but these old bones feel it coming. When my knuckles swell, when my teeth ache, and the heavens themselves break open, the winds carrying droplets of death, the witch will crest the white waves. She’ll take us all if we’re not vigilant. You mark my words, boy: beware the Witch of the White Squall, and those who would invite her with their careless yearnings. I fear there’s one such man aboard now. You keep your heart hard and your eyes open, all 5 of 'em.”

NARRATOR: He was panting after this warning. His lone gold incisor glittering among the row of stained teeth as his shoulders rose and fell. Then he burst out in laughter, a wheezing squeal that cut through the wind. He slapped me hard on the back. I spit out my whiskey at the impact and forced a chuckle.

Needless to say I won’t be spending my dining hours with that walking stereotype again unless I’m yearning for a fairy tale. I figure myself lucky I’ll only be in his company for a short time. I can now hear the cold rain impacting the deck above my wool-wrapped womb. And something below in the cargo hold, though I can’t tell its origin or purpose. Creaking, maybe footsteps. Perhaps something’s come loose and Patrick or Phillipe is checking on it. I’ll try not to fret over it. Until I see you again in the flesh, Caroline, I will continue our rendezvous in my dreams.

Morning 7th of November 1913. I took breakfast below deck with Phillipe. The rain’s still coming down and the wind blows cold, but Phillipe thinks it should clear by afternoon, and by then we’ll have gone ashore. Like a bad fever, he says. Just have to wait for the break. The boy’s from Montreal, took the rail down, then rode the canal before hauling lumber across the lake. He seems affable and handy enough. He’s as wary of the captain as I, and he had some troubling news about our cargo. He’s been loading lumber for about 10 months now, certainly not a master of his trade, but he says something was off about our freight. The tonnage is accurate, but one crate in particular severely outweighed the rest. Given the volume of the thing, he’s convinced it can’t be lumber, or even coal.

He asked me if I knew any more about our voyage: who’s paying us, where the lumber’s going, but I had little to tell him. I’m not one for accounting. He seems concerned that we may be harboring something dangerous, and the captain won’t tell us. I’d be inclined to agree. Though I’m not entirely convinced Ludic even knows what's down there himself.

Whatever the cargo, we should be seeing the beacon from the lighthouse cutting through the fog any moment now, and I’ll just be glad to be off this ship and in your arms. I do grow so melancholy on these trips without you.

Evening the 7th of November 1913. We lost Terrence this afternoon. The storm has shown no signs of abating, despite the predictions of the men in the papers. Terry’d gone up top the pilothouse to help the captain navigate, as its windows were awash with rain. The lake was growing angry, waves breaking high as 10 feet. The boat was churning in the drip, swaying to and fro, threatening to take on water. Terrence was calling down directions to the captain when a wave suddenly rose double the height of the others. The ship lurched, and poor Terrence--with naught to hold onto--he was launched backward, slamming his head into the pole behind him. The crew rushed to the pilothouse but another swing of the freighter tossed him overboard. We scoured the waters for some time, until Captain Ludic ended the efforts and sent us to bed like a disappointed father. 

Still no sign of land. We should have come ashore in Ohio by now, even at our slowed pace. At night, I imagine the two of us together once more, holding hands by the lake. It's only a drean, but...until then.

Afternoon 8th of November 1913.

CAPTAIN LUDIC: “I think we’ve got a rat problem aboard this vessel!”

NARRATOR: The captain shouted over Neptune’s angry bluster. He’d gathered the 19 of us that remained on the darkened deck in the freezing downpour.

CAPTAIN LUDIC: “I know one of you’s been below deck. Couple of the crates been pried open.”

NARRATOR: He had us standing side by side, and walked the line up and down, hunched and frantic, his breath visible in large puffs.

CAPTAIN LUDIC: “Who among ye disobeyed yer captain’s orders?” 

NARRATOR: He narrowed his bright eyes.

CAPTAIN LUDIC: “Or so bereft were you of a woman’s touch that you consorted with the witch? Ye accepted the company of the devil herself onto this freighter? Have ye no sense, lad? Must ye look death in her viscous eye and spit in it? Aye the witch draws near, and she’ll scarce be satisfied with you, now she wants the whole crew, and all that we carry. Your base lust has pinned us all to Satan’s dartboard.”

NARRATOR: He had me and Phillipe take our boots off. He inspected the soles. We were the newest members of his crew, and apparently the least worthy of his trust. Rainwater poured down the front of his cap and trickled off his nose. The engine chugged and the steamer groaned against the bracing waves. He threw my boots back at me, squarely impacting my chest. I stumbled backward on the slippery wood. He stood upright in front of Phillipe and drew a long blade.

CAPTAIN LUDIC: “Aye, that’s about the size of it. Yes we’ve got a rat problem aboard this vessel and I aim to remedy it. Do you know what’s down there, lad? Do you have any idea what that is we’re hauling?”

NARRATOR: Phillipe was shaking, shivering. His dark hair was matted, wet and stuck flat to his skull. 

CAPTAIN LUDIC: “I’ll not see it sink to the lake floor. Our cargo is more precious than any coin, or any of you scoundrels and lowlifes with your lascivious thoughts.” 

NARRATOR: I propped myself up on my elbow, none too eager to draw Ludic’s ire.

CAPTAIN LUDIC: “White witch, take the boy! Let the thousand tongues of the deep rise and writhe! Let Neptune’s breath whip the tide into knives, all cutting wind and choking froth. Come, come on your pelagic locusts, black as the moonless crusted tide. Take him to the sunless fathoms, entombed in barnacles. Stuff his mouth with algae and feed his eye jellies to the worms. Let your nautical insects drink his ichor and sup on his hair. Drag him down, drag him below the surf, where his soul will fester and rust among the reeds, forgotten in the scrap of a hundred ships, a thousand lives, hallowed out and timeless, unmoving as cold pitch. Take the boy who called to you and leave the Oneiros be.”

NARRATOR: Spittle dotted his beard. He panted for several tense moments as freezing rain pelted the ship. The engine burbled and the stack belched black fire into the twilight. Then the captain thrust the knife forward, straight into Phillipe’s core. I shot upright and charged the captain, but three other crewmen held me back: the captain had a pistol at his side, revealed as his thick coat swung open. Ludic slid the blade upward, gutting the poor lad from neck to navel. He burst like a beached whale onto the deck. The captain roared for someone to tie brick to the corpse and toss it overboard, where it sank unceremoniously out of view.

I dreamt of you last night. You came to visit me in the bunk. You leaned over me and gently pressed your sweet lips against mine. I felt a jolt through my system and woke up. I shall hardly sleep this evening, and I shall hardly feel a more forceful loneliness in all my days.

Afternoon November 9 1913. Mutiny. Of course mutiny was on the lips of half the crewman on this cursed freighter, myself included. The cold rain gave way to thick globs of snow overnight, now stinging in the hurricane winds. The ship is barely remaining upright among the massive waves. Everyone’s freezing, hungry, furious. I gathered a few similar-minded seamen and huddled below deck as we planned our next move. The captain has his pistol, but we have numbers on our side. And a few blunt instruments could certainly bash some sense into him if our pretty words can't. This is for Phillipe, for Terrence, and for our miserable woebegone souls.

Morning November 10th 1913. I could scarcely see my hands in front of me, nor the plank of lumber I was wielding. I and four others approached the pilothouse, now almost entirely coated in frost and long, sharp icicles. I pounded on the door and demanded to see Ludic. No response. I wrapped the door several more times. Nothing.

The men and I shouldered the door open, only to find the wheel jammed the pilothouse empty. We’d been left rudderless by a craven fool. Then the winds fell silent, the snow diminished. The waves began to sink back into the lake. Several of the men aboard took to the lifeboats. They liked their chances better in a vessel they could actually steer now that the storm was clearing.

JONATHAN: “It’s a sucker’s hole.”

NARRATOR: One man, Jonathan, confided in me.

JONATHAN: "Those buffoons are going to capsize and freeze out there as soon as the wind picks up again.”

NARRATOR: I looked around at the frozen steamer. Ice hung from every surface. A westerly wind blew over us. I went below deck to check on the engine.

While in the dark of the hold, I heard sleet impact the deck once more. The wind began howling, and the storm proceeded at such a force I could imagine the boat cleaving in twain. Unless we find a way to maneuver or god forbid find any sign of the captain, I’m doubtful we’ll make it to shore. I shall be thinking of you even as I draw my final breaths and pray you visit my nighttime musings again.

Evening November 11th 1913. I can hardly believe what I’m about to write myself, Caroline, but to the best of my storm-battered and hungry mind, it’s true: Captain Ludic was right! The witch came for the Oneiros.

I awoke to the sounds of heavy footfalls on deck. My head was hot and I felt a deep chill. Someone was shouting. I shook my hazy head and rose from my berth, coughing. A scream rang out. I crept along the hallway and neared the ladder. A wet, slurping slither, dragging along the ground. I hesitantly peered above. There was a sight I shan’t forget for the rest of my life, for as long as that may be. Some manner of creature was on deck, a massive wingless insect with long, segmented legs. It had a small, pointed head and enormous round body, like an monstrous tick.

One of the men on board, Jonathan I think, had found a harpoon and launched it at the beast, but it couldn’t penetrate the thing’s thick hide. It turned the man’s direction, and a long, thin tongue unspooled from its head. The pink tendril slithered and writhed on the deck with frightening speed, extending dozens of feet and ensnaring the man. This slimy appendage wrapped around the crewman, tearing his flesh and exposing deep red blood. The beast rushed him, seemingly drawn by the blood. He was screaming, but he couldn’t move. The tongue coiled around him, cutting him badly at every point of contact, opening his skin like a rotten orange peel. The giant thing squirmed and lapped at the blood spilling from the poor crewman, whose cries became weaker, quieter now, blending with the fury of the storm until they ceased completely. It pulled Jonathan’s head to its mouth and began feasting on the damp strands of his dark hair.

From the other end of the steamer, another insectoid rose, its legs clattering over the metal and wood as it climbed onto the deck. It joined its kin, its whip-like tongue probing the air for others to feed on. That’s when I saw the pile of bodies behind them, all shredded and drained of their essence, scalps bald and raw. The bloodbugs began patrolling the freighter for stragglers, and it seemed I was the only one left. 

I fled down the hallway, toward the cargo hold. Whatever the captain had said be damned. I hoped that the strong odor of the pine and coal would mask my own reek. I heard one of the things’ legs trying the stairs. I frantically panned the room for somewhere to hide. I spotted a huge crate with a few planks pried off. I wormed my way through the opening and held my breath in the box. I heard the tongues slithering down hall in my wake. I clasped my hands and silently prayed to god with the fervor of a hundred choirs that I’d see you again once more. But my prayer was interrupted by a sound behind me. In the crate I could see a looming shape. 

*Crackling and rumbling noises, same as in the Lighthouse*

A sort of metallic invention, like a massive steam engine. It was smooth, dark, containing strange protrusions and angles unlike anything I’d seen before. It was quietly humming, with an occasional clang or thump. There was something else, too.

A fleshy hand reached out into the light filtering in through the missing slats. A hand robed in a dark wool coat. A neck stretched out behind it, attached to a crooked bearded head. It smiled, and a gold incisor flashed in the dim light. I could see that it was Ludic, or part of him anyway. His hands and neck were elongated and stretched beyond man’s limitation. His flesh gray and malleable, like putty. My gaze followed his distended arm down to where his shoulder should be, but all I found was iron. He had somehow...melted into the engine, or soldered himself to it. Metal and flesh twisted and fused, stringy skin hanging between folds of steel. I think he tried to speak, but all that came forth was a buzz, an electrical chattering like a broken telegraph. I felt sick, and ran from the crate.

I sprinted past the sleeping quarters and up toward the deck. I was hit full force with the blistering might of the storm as I went topside. My eyelashes froze, my nervous sweat crystalized. I could barely see the bloodbugs at the other end of the deck through the blizzard. My vision went completely white as I dropped to my knees, violently ill and nearly frozen solid.

Then through the pale wall she stepped, the Autumn Witch, the Woman of the White Squall. She bade her pests retreat, and stood before me. Her skin was glistening, and she wore not a single scrap of clothing to defend against the chill. Her hair shimmered and waved as if she was underwater. Her feet never touch the ground. She brushed her hand against my cheek, and an icy jolt shivered down my back.

I looked into her eyes and saw wild, radiant love. A love conjured by a lonely sailor, now requited. A fevered love so bold it would kill. She leaned down close, and I could smell the salt breeze on her breath. She pressed her blue lips to my forehead, and I blacked out. 

I woke up 12 hours later in the dark, soaking on my back in the falling rain, adrift in the infinite waters of Hades.

Morning November 12, 1913. I awoke to a distant horn. I thought it at first a dream, a hopeful hallucination. Then the horn sounded again a second time. I sat upright, shivering and soaked through. I saw a beam of light cut through the rain: the lighthouse! I yelped, a sound as much of agony as celebration, and stood. I laughed, dry and bitter wheezing. The ship was drifting toward the shore after 6 long days in hell. I ran down to gather my things and wrap myself in something dry. Then I ducked into the pilothouse and stared out at the light. A smile dared cross my lips. I could make it after all. 

Then came a horrible rending, a piercing shriek of metal on rock. The ship lurched, and I tumbled forward in the cabin. I was so enthralled by the beacon of the lighthouse that I’d missed the sharp rocks in the shallows. Now she was sinking, taking on icy water. Metal groaned and beams bent and snapped. The stack chugged and spit wet smoke over the scene. The rear of the freighter began sinking. Among the rocks I saw a lifeboat, the very same from the Oneiros, filled with skeletons picked clean and bleached by the sun. I laughed again, a wailing peal like the whinny of Death’s very steed. 

There may yet be time for rescue, but the frigid waters or the phlegm in my lungs will likely take me before the sailors do. And so I bid you adieu, Caroline. Just one more sob story for another sailor’s widow. As trite as Ludic himself. If the intrepid rescuers do happen to find these scrawlings and wish to know my fate, I’ve gone to join the Captain.

CONWAY: Records at the time indicate that several other ships went down in this storm, including several hundred crew, but the Oneiros and its men were never found. Given its contents and its age, the DLO has deemed this diary, DL-315, undeliverable. It will be stored safely in our vault. 

CONWAY ON THE PHONE: I’ve been thinking a lot about the past lately. Old friends, old regrets. I suppose it’s my approaching middle age catching up onme. 

My time with the office has been uh...illuminating. All those wild things I saw as a kid? The things my parents sent me to see serious adults about? Well maybe some of them weren’t so wild. You know how I started working here? I used to be in public radio, the local affiliate down in Cincy. I studied art when I was in college, but well, that didn’t pan out like so many other things. I worked a bunch of odd jobs, making 6 dollars an hour slinging coffee or double that if I was willing to break my back. I eventually got lucky and I guess somebody liked my cadence. I’m sure it helped that the station was underfunded and I was willing to work late and cheap.

One day about 6 years ago, two suspicious gentlemen in suits dropped by my little studio on my lunch break. They asked if I wanted a job with the post office. They sure as hell didn’t look like mail carriers, looked like stone-cold feds to me. I politely declined, praying the cuffs didn’t come out. They just handed me a card. I told them if I was ever out of a job, I’d give them a call. After they left, I looked over the card. No names, no phone number, just three letters: DLO. 

Next morning, I get a call. Boss says the studio caught fire last night after everybody left. Electrical malfunction. Whole place up in smoke. Not enough money to rebuild or move studios. Just gonna shut down the affiliate station. What a coincidence. I looked at the card again and thought of Lucy. Then I got a call. One more chance to reconsider the offer.

Yeah, Lucy and I did almost everything together when we were kids. We were pretty much inseparable, at least until the cave incident. I haven’t heard from her in a long, long time. I don’t know why I haven’t reached out. I guess I was afraid too much time got between us. That I wouldn’t know what to say. We might even hate each other now. My memory from that time is a little fuzzy, too, just bits and pieces, blurry impressions. It’s funny, I sometimes wonder if I made her up, y’know, like an imaginary friend. Those early memories feel about as real a dream most days. Like something that happened to someone else. Like scenes from a worn out VHS tape. But look at me, I’m rambling again. Back to the story.

The teeth should have been the second omen. An unmarked box showed up at the office the same morning as the sailor’s journal. I picked up the small parcel and shook it like a kid at Christmas, though my approach was rather more apprehensive. Lifting the folds revealed a jewelry box. I flipped the lid open with a creek of its rusty hinges. Underneath was a mirror long ago marred by the grit and grime of age. The plush interior of the box was covered in dark stains, and it smelled like a wet basement. Sitting in one of the compartments were about a dozen human teeth, dark and worn. One reflected light underneath the others: a crude golden incisor.

CONWAY: Dead Letter 18316, an application for worker’s comp from ******. The applicant’s name has been redacted. Looks like he suffered a leg injury during a salvage job. Included with the application is a photo of the injury and testimony from the worker. His testimony reads as follows:

WORKER: I hereby swear upon penalty of perjury that the following statement is true to the best of my knowledge. We were supposed to pull up some cargo from a ship that recently went down in the area. Apparently whatever was in there could leak, causing some serious trouble to the watershed. The algae’s bad enough, we don’t need some oil spill or toxic waste leak or you know anything like that. We were given permission by the state, and were funded by some tech startup to help clean up the lake. 

I boarded the boat around 6:50am. I got out to the marked location around 8. I put on my wetsuit, grabbed the hook, and hopped in. I swam down and found the boat we were looking for. I was about to check the cargo hold when something grabbed hold of me. Something bit my leg and pulled me really hard. Must have been some fish. Maybe even a shark. I’ve heard some bull sharks can live in fresh water for a while. I paddled and kicked, but my leg wouldn’t break free. It dragged me some distance, and then let me go. I saw a different ship ahead of me underwater. Much older, covered in rust.

I broke the surface and signaled for help. The boys pulled me aboard and the EMT got to work on my leg. Someone else went down to secure the cargo. I tried to tell them it was a different ship but I’m not sure I was making sense. I was in searing pain and losing a good deal of blood. I was looking up past the hanging cables and into the clear sky. Then the wires started moving, waving on their own and spiraling above me. I weakly lifted my hand to point, but the medic just placed it back down and told me to relax. The wires weaved and twisted into form: an angel. Not just like a lady with wings, it was all fingers and eyes and mouths. It told me I needed to find it. That it was in some museum somewhere south of here and needed to be freed. I know it sounds real loopy, but that’s what I saw. Someone shouted that they got the cargo up, but it wasn’t what we were looking for. I was close to passing out by then of course, so not sure what it was. Then I woke up in the emergency room with a bunch of stitches. 

CONWAY: Inspecting the photo here, it’s a serious injury of the left calf. It’s certainly no fish bite. I’m no biologist, but if I had to guess, I’d say the bite is primate in origin. Likely human. Multiple bites overall, very deep punctures and a few tears. I’m gonna send the photo and this box over to the boys in the lab. Maybe they can work out a match. In the meantime, I’ll have the higher ups approve his application and send him a nice check, on the condition that he doesn’t mention the incident again. We’ll be keeping the application letter and associated paraphernalia in our vault. 

CONWAY ON PHONE: The Midwest is so big, it’s sometimes hard to imagine there’s anything outside of it. Like I see pictures of the ocean, and that might as well be a continent away at this point. You drive for hours and somehow you’re still surrounded by cornfields and flat land. You take an old country route and pass the same intersecting road 3 times. It’s like a magic trick. Every time I try to leave, something keeps me here. It’s a curse, or maybe that’s how I justify it to myself. Believing some paranormal interference is the reason I’m stuck in a rut makes it a little easier to swallow than the reality: the reality that there’s a pit at the center of the state, a gravity well that pulls you in and keeps you here. The fire burning forever underground. You can fight it, but you’ll always be pulled like the snap of a rubber band back home. There’s like a vampiric presence here, a specter of collapsed industry and apathy, poverty and vast distance, that haunts the condemned buildings and provincial small towns of Ohio. There are good people here. Solid folk of all kinds. And there are stories to be told here. But who’s listening? And who’s allowed to talk?

Anyway that’s when the last postcard showed up. Just like the ones sent in by the Lost Fisherman from the nonexistent town. The name on the card read Lucy. What a coincidence. But the number beside the name’s what shook me, gave me that tingling feeling in my brain that sometimes comes as a corollary to dread. Like twisted deja vu. It was my home phone number from when I was a kid. They disconnected that line ages ago. I thought about calling it, but the DLO was sending me out for one more field trip. A package too unwieldy, too fragile to be shipped out of the tiny post office that was storing it. Of course it was my job once again to drive out to some location and stick my snoot into whatever nonsense they’d cooked up. Of course it was 2 hours away.

But I’m nothing if not dedicated to the job, so I tucked the postcard into my shirt pocket, took a swig of cold coffee, and got in the car.

CONWAY ON TAPE: --down to a small post office, to check out a very large crate. Apparently it was a little too fragile and a little too um...unwieldy to ship out of that small post office given its resources. Now any time they send me out somewhere like this I’m a little suspicious, so let’s find out what I’m about to get my nose in.

*click*

--the back room here, and it is a fairly large crate, I’ll give them that.

I’ve got a crowbar here, let’s see if I can get this thing open. *Wood snaps* All right. *Conway coughs* Dear god, it’s a body. Oh dear got that is a body. That...that’s Kenji’s body. That’s Kenji. Oh my god. Oh god. And if I...His leg, oh my god. Well, that’s those bite marks. Oof. Oh god Kenji, what did you get into. Okay. And he’s holding something, he--Kenji’s got a hold of a-an all white rotary phone. Old spin dial, you know you gotta twist the numbers around before you can input the number. Oh god Kenji. Based on the decomposition of the body, I would estimate he’s been dead for quite some time, though the preservation is uh impressive. Perhaps the sea air or perhaps a mummification process was used on him. But god, lord if it don’t stink.

Now...gonna pick up that phone and dial this number.

*click*

CONWAY ON PHONE: Well anyway, that’s when I called you.

LOST FISHERMAN: “Jeez, that’s all fascinating. You’ve had a quite a ride today. But do you mind if I ask you one thing? I want you to think real hard about this one, don’t just blurt out an answer. What’s your last name, Conway?”

CONWAY: I uhh I don’t see what uh...Now wait, now don’t you do this. I know who you are, don’t you do this.

LOST FISHERMAN “I know it’s rough, your mind wants to reject it, but I promise it’s all gonna make sense.

CONWAY: Oh, Ken and Lucy, very clever. You knew I’d tie it together eventually. Now don’t you do this. Let me stay here. Let me--

LOST FISHERMAN: “You’re not real, not yet anyway.”

CONWAY: Let me stay.

LOST FISHERMAN: Now I want you to look at your cellular telephone. What time is it?”

CONWAY: I can’t…I can’t make it--

*Dial tone*

CRACKLING VOICE ON THE RADIO: If you make the margins big enough, you can see him in the dots and waves. He comes through the wires. He’s a frequency, an atom bomb’s worth of electricity.

ANTONY: She said they’re not real, they’re just fictional characters.

CONWAY: It all felt a little...familiar. Almost cliche. What happens in that missing second every million years?

LOST FISHERMAN: We’ll be waiting for you at the top of the lighthouse.

*Overlapping voices say “this is Conway”*

*Scratchy, old folk song, singing the following:*

I am a man of constant sorrow,

I’ve seen trouble all of my days;

I’ll bid farewell to Cincinnati,

The place where I was born and raised.

 

For six long years, I’ve been in trouble

No pleasure here on this earth I’ve found,

For in this world I’m born to ramble,

I have no friends to help me now.

 

Oh, fare ye well my native country,

The place that I loved and loathed so well,

Fo--

*record scratching, forest ambience, crickets chirping*

Then I was somewhere else. A place I’d heard of but never been. Surrounded by fireflies underneath the canopy of red oak boughs. There was something in the trees ahead. Two glowing spots like headlights in foliage. They were moving, attached to something about a foot taller than me, coming my way through the dark. It strode on long, thin legs bending backwards, like a hulking stork. Powdery wings spread from its back and there was a...skunky smell on the air. And he had something to show me.

*lighter flicks several times, drums kick in, jam begins*

*forest ambience fading out*

Conway sorts through some old--and possibly haunted--video games. The office receives a letter from someone with a peculiar ghost problem.

Happy (late) April Fools! I certainly hope no major video game publishers listen to this show!

(CWs: alcohol, brief blood, implied death)

 

TRANSCRIPT:

CONWAY: This is Conway, receiving clerk for the Dead Letter Office of ***** Ohio, processing the national dead mail backlog. The following audio recording will serve as an internal memo strictly for archival purposes and should be considered confidential. Need I remind anyone: public release of this or any confidential material from the DLO is a felony. Some names and places have been censored for the protection of the public. 

Dead Object 2513, a box of old video game cartridges. Let’s see what we’ve got. The label appears to have been weathered off on this first one, and someone’s written a name on the front in permanent marker. The games arrived with some other belongings, the leftovers from an estate sale that just couldn’t find a buyer. I’ve got an old system set up, paid for out of pocket of course, just on a lark. The interior of this cartridge looks pretty corroded, so I guess we'll see if it even plays.

All right, looks like the logo’s coming up. There's the title. Select a file. We’ve got one file with a person’s name, probably the old owner, and another file. Let’s choose that second one.

Okay, on the screen we’ve got the main character, all in green, lying all twisted up in some kind of dark atmosphere. I can’t move him, and can't really do much else on this screen. There’s an eerie looking gentleman with a large backpack nearby smiling at me. Seems he’s got some masks on his bag. Oh, we’ve got some text coming up at the bottom now. It reads as follows: “You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?”

Nah, I’ve seen this one before. Not interested. 

Let’s try this one.

OLD-FASHIONED NARRATOR: You are about to travel to another place, a place not only of truth but of allegory. Beyond this title screen, you will see a nightmare, a reflection, a fiction more real than any photograph. 

You’re looking at a nondescript bar in the middle of a town in the heart of America. The exact location of this town is not important, for it’s not the place you must consider, but its people. A people in dire need of change to stave off collapse. Unfortunately for the people of this place, there will be no drastic change from those at the top, only distraction, diversion, entertainment.

STORYTELLER: Condensation covers the windows as heat from the patrons inside cools on the chilly glass. A tall man in a green hat sits by himself at the bar, looking forlorn over his thick mustache into his nearly-empty glass. The noises of the night--murmurs, clinking glasses, cars passing outside--melt into a gauzy hum behind him. He drains the remainder and wipes his mouth with a white-gloved hand. He fishes into his pocket for his wallet and gives a sharp sniff to stop his bulbous nose from running. He’s out of cash. He puts the glass down in front of him, wobbles in his stool for a moment, and then wraps his knuckles on the counter for another drink. The bartender turns to face him.

The man behind the bar tips back his green hat and tugs on his suspenders as he looks the patron over. The bartender shakes his head and twists his mouth up under his full twirled mustache. The man at the bar doesn’t like this answer. His eyebrows furrow and his mustache twitches. He slams his hand on the counter. This catches the attention of the rest of the patrons sitting at tables around the bar. They all turn toward him. Everyone’s on edge tonight. Despite the chilly weather, the patrons are similarly dressed in blue overalls with brass buttons, green shirts, green lettered caps, and white gloves. All tall, all mustaches. A football game plays on the television in the background, lines of mustaches in shoulder pads facing off. The angry patron at the bar, feeling the eyes of the others, hangs his head. He shrugs and makes a remorseful gesture with his hands. He slides his hat off his head and holds it to his chest as he slinks out of the bar’s side door. 

Outside, gentle snowflakes drift and fall onto the chartreuse hats of two figures kissing in the alley beside the bar. A cart darts by in the road, a blur of emerald as its roar cuts the still winter air. The drunk man from the bar stumbles through the side door into the alley, and the two lovebirds freeze and look anxiously his way. After he passes them by, they embrace again, giggling. One shushes the other playfully with a gloved white finger to his lips through visible breath. 

Then another noise disrupts the alley pair, this time deeper in the freezing darkness ahead. Something is rustling in the dumpster. They nervously peer ahead, with shortened breaths puffing and disappearing, goosebumps pricking on their skin. Something wholly different suddenly bursts from the cans, someone clad in purple with a ruddy nose and thin pointed mustache. His dark eyes dart wildly below the brim of his indigo cap. One of the men in green points and gasps, his blue eyes wide in shock. The other screams to alert the patrons of the bar.

From among the ripe trash and fetid wastewater the lithe purple man rises. He scans his surroundings, trying to figure out where, exactly, he is. One man in green takes a step forward, putting himself in between this sudden antagonist and his sweetheart. He doesn’t see the fear in the purple man’s expression: he sees only the beady eyes, the gangly form, the difference. One of the pair rushes to the mouth of the alley and peeks into the street, looking around for any help. Sensing the cruel intent of these olive adversaries, the man in purple takes this moment to flee from the trash cans. He bursts upright, taller than any other, and sprints past the lovers. He knocks over a few trash cans in the city and disappears into an adjacent alley, discarded food and wrappers flying in his wake. The two in green outside the bar open the front door and call to the others. The patrons rise and murmur excitedly. Several take out phones to make calls or record the event for posterity. The television in the empty bar interrupts the game to announce the breaking news: the purple man is loose. The hunt begins.

This lone stranger, this shadow of man, is propelled by nervous, nauseous adrenaline. He’s not sure if it’s the cold or the fear making his teeth chatter. The streetlights cast the snowy sidewalks in a sickly pallor. He sprints through the empty streets, taking to the darkness when he can, peering around building corners to spot trouble before it spots him. He passes stores, ads, billboards, all green, all alike but him. He slows his pace for just a moment as he takes in the situation. The purple man pauses in front of a display window for a clothing store. He stands in front of a pale mustachioed mannequin, his reflection mismatched against its form. He compares his dark overalls to the ones in the window. He presses his hand gloved against the cold glass. He himself is a reflection. He is shaken from this contemplation by a pine line forming across the street in hot pursuit.

The purple man alights again, pushing through occasional pockets of green that eventually join the growing crowd following him. He cuts through alleys and across an empty campus. The bright lamp posts illuminate the sidewalks but also cast deep shadows on his path. There are flyers that he doesn’t understand attached to poles around the school grounds. He tries the doors of several buildings--a dining hall, a large auditorium--but they’re locked. Near the edge of campus, he frantically tries another door. It begins to give, but a mustache appears from the shadows inside and slams the door shut. There will be no help for him here on the night of the hunt.

Past campus, the man in purple sneaks into a quiet residential area of the city. He uses his long limbs to clamber up a fire escape near an empty playground. This time he is in luck: the door at the top of the stairs swings open as he pushes the bar. He sneaks into the apartment building, quietly walking through the halls, looking for a stairwell or closet to hide in for the night. 

Then he hears a sharp *psst* behind him. One of the handlebar-ed men has a door propped open. He lets the purple man into the apartment, his eyes roving nervously for trouble and then closing the door. The smell of simmering vegetables fills the air as two children play on the floor with toys that look just like their father, who’s wearing a white t-shirt and sweatpants. The man with the inverted letter sits down on crossed legs. The kids are excited to have company this time. The television flashes with color and noise, a cartoon of two men in green battle suits fighting a giant purple monster.

The father brings out a steaming bowl of soup and breaks off a piece of bread for the man in purple. He’s so excited for real food he starts shoveling the soup into his mouth. The father moves to caution him, but it’s too late. The soup is too hot. The purple man lets out a pained “WA!” and then covers his mouth, spilling soup all over the carpet and the father’s shoes. All are tense and silent, staring at him. 

Next door, a large television is playing a dramatic report about the purple man and what danger he poses. A phone number streaks on the screen: a reward for any reports of the man in purple. The man in overalls watching sits its up in his recliner when he hears the shout from across the hall. He doffs his green cap, picks up his phone, and starts dialing the number on the television.

The thin man with the pointed mustache grabs a cloth from the counter and wets it. He kneels down and begins wiping the soup off of the floor, and cleaning the father’s shoes. The father peers out the window behind his guest and sees the green tide coming, gathered with flashlights outside the playground. He darts to the room farthest from the park and quietly slides up the window. He motions for his guest to come into the room. The purple man looks down--it’s a bit of a drop, but he doesn’t have much choice. The front door of the building bursts open as light and sound pour in like a hull breach. The father looks back one more time to the odd man in odd colors and heads to the door. The purple man jumps out the window and lands awkwardly on his leg, his ankle twisting. He grimaces and muffles his pained groan with his white glove to his mouth. A few eager figures in the mob reach the helpful man’s door. They kick it down and filter in uninvited, searching the apartment and overturning furniture. One happens to notice the open window. They knock down the father and back rush outside. The cartoon glows silently on the television as their silhouettes exit, and children cry in the bedroom. 

Only half-running now, pain coming in waves as he puffs with each cold step, the purple man tips over trash cans behind him to slow the wave of blue overalls. He must keep going. The green contingency continues to grow as bystanders join the group.

The man in purple lumbers toward the only haven available to him: the stadium downtown. He ducks around the corner, seemingly far enough ahead of the pack, and enters a side door. The man in purple is even slower now, wading into the pitch-dark building and dragging his broken ankle behind his good one. He sighs as he hears the voices and footsteps rush past the side door he entered. He tilts back his hat and wipes the anxious sweat from his forehead.

Then blinding light explodes into view from above, flooding the arena. The man in purple is standing in the middle of a basketball court, and the seats are half full of men in green hats, more filing in every second. Lime lines of mustachioed men stretch out to block the door that he came in from. In a panic, he lunges for the main entrance, barely able to breathe through the stress and pain. The scoreboard is alight with platitudes about sportsmanship. He takes a step, but crumbles from the agony in his ankle. 

Television cameras set up around the court zoom in, broadcasting his pain live. Screens in homes, bars, shops, phones glow with video. Some channels have identical men in green L hats discussing the merits of the hunt. They ultimately decide: who can say? Who can say something’s bad when it’s so good for business? Who can say there’s another way? Who can say what violence hides in the hearts of others? Some viewers sadly shake their heads from their couches, some cheer. But the hunt goes on.

The green cloud of men in the stadium move on the man in purple, carrying bats, chairs, chains. He raises his hands to protect his face from these implements of violence. The crowd cheers as his blood spills into the cracks in the wood. The scoreboard blares the national anthem. It is still and silent outside of the stadium. Tiny pools of light glow in the trees as fireflies circle the leaves in the dark. The purple man replays these events in his head, a repeating nightmare. His last nightmare.

OLD-FASHIONED NARRATOR: It is near dusk again, a month after the preceding incident. In a metropark in a town in the heart of this nation, two older gentlemen in slouching green hats are playing chess. One takes a pawn, the other considers his next move. A purple hat drops down from the tree behind them. The two in overalls lock eyes and stand up slowly with grins under their mustaches. They’ve forgotten life before all this. That better things are possible. Who has the time anymore? Besides, he’s not like them. The game is afoot.

CONWAY: Now that’s a bit more interesting. I suppose in my spare time I’ll go through a few more of these cartridges and see what all this box has in store. For now though, Dead Object 2513 will be stores safely in our vault.

CONWAY: Dead letter 14114, a letter addressed to...well let’s just dive in and you’ll see how it plays out.

ANTONY, NARRATOR: I need help and I figured you’d be the one to ask. For the last year, I’ve been haunted by a mischievous spirit. I’ll be sitting in bed and hear a crash downstairs. I go down there and there’s dishes broken all over the floor. I see his spectral body float through the window and he goes,

“Did I do that?”

You see I’m haunted by the ghost of Steve Urkel. Not the actor, he’s still alive. It’s Urkel. It’s Urkel! It's Urkel. Or I go to the bathroom and hear him shout “whoa mama!” then there’s green slime all over my friggin walls! And it’s not just him either, he’s just the worst of it. Sometimes Frasier drinks my booze when I’m out. It's not cheap hooch, either. When I put my car in reverse in the garage, the Toolman grunts and steps on the accelerator.

Now, I already talked to a psychic, but she thought I was pulling a prank. She said they’re not real, they’re just fictional characters. But I sure sure as hell see a lot of them for not being real. If they ain’t real, how come they’re on tv, on t-shirts? How come I can buy a poster, or a dvd? Why do we talk about em if they ain’t real?

Now this may sound a little funny, but I tried binding them with a circle of their dvds of their shows, but it’s no use. Maybe I need the blu-ray or the 4k steelbook. These retired characters have made my house hell on earth, but I’m the one being punished. It’s taken everything I've got not to scream and burn it down. You've got to do something about this. Get an exorcist, get the army--hell, get a producer friend of yours to get their show started again, just get them the hell out of here. They’re going to put me in an early grave. 

Thank you for your time, Mr. President.

A loyal voter,

Antony ******

CONWAY: Well, considering that the president addressed in the letter is no longer in office, I think the DLO will hold onto this one. Dead Letter 14114 is therefore deemed undeliverable and will be stored in our vault.

For the Dead Letter Office of Somewhere, Ohio, this is Conway, signing o--

*Outro music interrupts him*

*Ahem* This is Conway, signing--

*Outro music interrupts him again*

What the hell is this? Is this another postcard? This is the lighthouse again...and I know that number...

*Real outro plays*