On the day of her thirty-fourth birthday, Penny Thompson would die.

She had known that for a while; she felt the tiredness in her bones, and she knew that it wasn’t her fate to live a long and happy life. It wouldn’t be an illness to take her out, however, nor would she do something stupid and take her own life only to end up regretting it.

On the day of her birthday, while the late November rain pattered on the windows, Penny simply wouldn’t wake up; and that would be the end of it.

Nobody knew, of course. Who could she tell without sounding like a crazy woman with suicidal tendencies? Surely she couldn’t tell her mother, who thought she would have a bright future, nor could she tell her best friend, who lived across the ocean and struggled every day to keep up with her appalling picture-perfect life.

Sometimes, when she was in the mood for a good laugh, Penny entertained the thought of how that conversation might go. What if she picked up the phone one day to say, “Hey, Scarlett? I think I’ll be dead by the end of the year.”

Just like that, as if it were nothing more than chit-chat about the weather or gossip about people they both knew once upon a time in school.

She always chuckled at the thought of Scarlett on the other end; that little hitch in her breath that preceded her surprised silence, and the confusion and embarrassment that would follow when they would eventually laugh about it together to break the tension. At some point, though, the laughter would fade out and Penny would turn serious again, and Scarlett would ask: “You’re kidding, right?”

And when Penny would say that no, she wasn’t kidding at all… well, that was where the problems would really begin.

Because if she told anyone that she was positive she would die, nobody would ever believe it was just a sense of foreboding and not a wish as well. The thing was that Penny Thompson had no desire to die; she simply knew that it would happen, because she felt it deep in her bones. It was stored in a part of her memory so ancient and primal, to be accessed only through meditation or deep slumber – both of which she engaged in rather often. It was never any more than that, however. No more than a vague idea of what was to come and that sense of dread, always followed by a kind of peace like no other Penny had ever known.

The first time it happened, in fact, she thought that the relief she felt was the kind of serenity that came from a particularly good dream – or in the afterglow of some amazing sex.
She still remembered it as if it were yesterday.
       
She had opened her eyes to find herself cocooned inside the soft afghan she had thrown over her body to ward off the chill that sometimes crept into her motionless limbs. Candles still burned around the room that had been plunged into darkness as the afternoon sun set outside. The incense smoke whirled in wisps around her head as she sat up languidly, feeling light and peaceful, and satisfied, for a change. But then, as she went to stand up and take note of her surroundings, the thought slipped into her mind like a worm-like epiphany.

I will die.

From that very moment, she was spiraling out of control.

The feeling of finally having a purpose in her life was intoxicating. Far from feeling disheartened, Penny discovered life as she neared the end of it. Now all she wanted was to make something for herself, to leave her mark on the world. She took risks, whereas before she had been playing it safe for as long as she could remember.

What was the worst that could happen anyway?

Would she die before her time?

At least, she could count on finding that sweet relief again at the end of the line.

It took no time for her mother to notice the change, “What’s gotten into you, honey? You haven’t looked this pretty in a long time.” Her remark was met with a wide smile and a trilling laugh that was as foreign on Penny’s lips as the bright red lipstick she was wearing.

“I’m just having a great time, Ma,” she shrugged, bright-eyed. “I’m getting published, and life is good, y’know? Life is… great.”

It was Monday, the last week of November. Soon enough, Penny would meet her family to celebrate Thanksgiving; she would tell them about how she’d turned her life around that year, about the premonitions and how they stopped once she actually started living, and she would rejoice the chance to have another great year with her loved ones and a new approach to life.
On Tuesday, Penny Thompson turned thirty-four. She woke up to the sound of the rain ticking against the window pane in the grey early morning sky, her phone pinging with notifications from people wishing her a happy birthday. And the realization hit her like a punch in the gut.

I am dead.

She rose from the bed, watching in horror as her body lay still under the feather duvet, deaf to the sound of nature and technology and to the scream that echoed from the depth of her chest as she ran to the mirror and saw nothing but empty space.

“Fuck, I’m dead.”

There was no Shangri-la, no Heaven waiting for her. Just an endless, drab existence stuck in that apartment that had been her haven and her prison for too long when she was alive.

“It’s a fucking horror story.” Her whisper was followed by a choked noise that rapidly turned into maniacal laughter, filling up the room while her corpse began to cool and stiffen.
​
“Hell, I wish I’d written it myself.”

Marzia La Barbera is an Italian fiction writer and academic researcher. She writes science fiction and horror with a little bit of romance and a whole lot of blood, and enjoys delving into the mysteries of the human monster. Her works appeared in magazines and anthologies in Italy, while her short story, Cold Cuts, was featured in the 2025 cold horror anthology Absolute Zero by Death’s Head Press.

When she’s not writing, she’s paying too much attention to pop culture phenomena and putting
together eclectic, vaguely anarchist reading lists.

She is currently based in Palermo, Italy, with her two dogs and misfit family.

Check out her Instagram @clairvoyantwriter and connect with her on X @marzia_writes.

The roar of the cars passing by in the tunnel fills your head with static. You've never liked the tunnel, but today, it's unavoidable.

Ethan wants you there for his graduation party, so you'll be there. Cynthia be damned.

You scratch the back of your neck. Dried skin clogs your fingernails.

Red lights flare in your periphery. The cars in front of you slow to a crawl before coming to a stop.

"Shit," you mutter.

As if he can hear you, the driver of the car in front of you twists around in his seat. He stares. You stare back. He looks away.

Maybe you should’ve just taken the toll road. If you’d taken the toll road, you’d be there by now.

You don’t know when you’ll get there. It’s possible you’ll miss the entire event, and Ethan will never forgive you for it. God knows you’ve been absent enough as it is.

When he was a baby, you swore you’d be different from your father. You promised to spend time teaching Ethan to throw a ball, helping him with his homework, and discussing the birds and the bees. For the first few years of parenthood, you followed the plan without a hitch. You and Cynthia were happy. Ethan was happy.

Then came the bills and the time constraints and extra hours at the office that never seemed to end. You had to keep working to keep food on the table. Years ago, you listened to the song “Cat’s in the Cradle” and cried. The second time you heard it, after Ethan turned six, you were sitting in traffic like this on the way home from the office. Your white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel was the only thing holding you together as the tears poured down your face.

You are just like your father.

Now, Ethan will be eighteen in a week, and time is passing faster as if it wants to spite you. Although you served your family well as a provider, you can’t help wondering how different things might have been if you’d spent more time at home.

In the passenger seat, your cell phone rings. You keep your eyes on the tunnel.

“Shit,” you say again. In the quiet of the car, the curse is grounding.

Someone ahead of you honks. It feels like an hour has passed. Still, no one is moving. You can’t understand the cause of the traffic, and no matter how far you crane your neck or twist in your seat to get a better view, you don’t know what’s going on.

Your cell phone is still ringing. How do you even have service in here?

You reach over, grab the phone, and answer. “Hello?”

“Where the hell are you?” Cynthia asks. “You promised Ethan you’d be here. I don’t give a damn if you show up myself, but he wants you here.”

“I know he does. I’m trying—”

“Remember when promises meant something?”

You wrangle the urge to hang up on her. Cynthia never fights fair. You should’ve anticipated this.

“I’ll be there,” you say.

“You’d better be.”

She hangs up. Once again, you’re alone with the rumble of your engine and the engines all around you, and not even the breathing technique you learned from your therapist helps you.

It feels like the road is rumbling, too. Moving and trembling beneath you. With your foot on the brake, you feel the tremors come up through the car and into your body until you’re shaking, too.

You tell yourself you’re losing it. You need to get a grip.

The car at the front of the line disappears. Just like that, it’s gone. You can’t see what happened, but you feel it in your bones—something bad is coming.

The next car falls. You see it plummet into what looks like a hole in the ground, stretching wider to swallow every vehicle in the tunnel. If you don’t do something, your car will be next.

You turn in your seat and wave your arms at the driver behind you. She shoots you a glare, but doesn’t seem to be able to see the hole like you can.

“Back up!” you yell, knowing full well she can’t hear you.

You grip the steering wheel with both hands, debating your options.

Another car plummets. You’re running out of time.

“Fuck!” You slam the heel of your hand against the horn, which lets out an impotent blare. What are you going to do now?

The ground rumbles again. It feels much closer than before, and it reverberates through your chest. You take a deep breath.

You must do this for Ethan.

With all your strength, you turn the car off and wrench open the driver’s side door. You all but fall to the pavement in your scramble to exit the vehicle. Someone opens a door. He is shouting at you, but you don’t know what he’s saying.

“Ethan,” you murmur. “Ethan, I’m coming.”

The sinkhole devours the car in front of yours. You take off running toward the entrance of the tunnel, beholding the light like salvation.

Another rumble shakes the earth. The ceiling of the tunnel cracks and crumbles, crushing the cars as it caves in. You’re almost there. Almost.

Ethan will be so excited to see you. As you run, you picture his freckles and crooked smile. You love him then. You love him forever.
​
Until the sinkhole finds you. 

Come for the characters, stay for the scares. Briana’s writing combines her fascination with psychology and interest in the darker sides of life to create rich, compelling narratives. Her most recent work, The Reyes Incident, has sold more than 16,000 copies to date. Other books include Mouth Full of Ashes, The Tricker-Treater and Other Stories, Unboxed: A Play, and more. Briana is a proud member of the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and has a BA in English from Georgia College. When not writing, you can find her reading, traveling, playing video games, or spending time with her husband and cat.

Website: https://brianamorganbooks.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/brianamorganbooks
Threads: https://www.threads.com/@brianamorganbooks

Belinda dragged her walker down a back staircase at Sunset Gardens, cursing the metal contraption with each thump. Back home, she’d gotten around just fine with her twisted oak cane. Carved it herself, but the doctors claimed it wasn’t stable and took it away.

Belinda argued. They’d patted her hand and didn’t listen.

Sunset Gardens—an understaffed, government-run, eldercare institution—featured grounds consisting of a cracked sidewalk and a strip of weedy grass. Not even a bench to sit in the sun.

The nurses advised daily exercise and fresh air, but frowned on residents venturing into the neighbourhood.

Belinda didn’t have family to take her out, nor did she want any. Long ago, her mother and sisters had gone their own ways, as was proper. She’d done just fine on her own. Out of the way in her cabin. Not bothering anyone. Eating what she liked.

Sunset Garden’s kitchen refused her requests for her favourite raw eggs. At the care facility, the craving had grown until she could think of little else.

Back home, she’d kept chickens. For variety, she’d put out bird feeders and collected eggs from the wild nests.

In the weeks since they’d dumped her into this cinderblock anthill, she’d developed alarming symptoms. Swollen joints and patches of crawling, itchy hives. The change was upon her, but it had never been this bad back home.

“Autoimmune disease, common in older women,” the annoying male doctors intoned. What did they know about it?

They kept poking her, so she bit one.

“Dementia,” they’d said and prescribed pills.

Nonsense. She’d been fine before.

She hid the pills under her tongue to spit into the toilet later, but an iron-haired nurse who growled instead of speaking caught her. The nurse threatened to have her sedated. Belinda tried to bite her too, but the nurse was fast.

Belinda knew what she needed. She needed to eat, and no one there was going to help her.

At the bottom of the stairs, the emergency exit door almost foiled her plan. It refused to open.

So much lost strength. Belinda leaned against the door to catch her breath. Her stomach and wrists itched like crazy.

She’d loved sunbathing on the outcrop next to her cabin. No-one ever came out that way. Then a direction-challenged delivery guy glimpsed her soaking up the heat naked.

She’d yelled at him to get off her property, and the busy-body reported her to the authorities.

Two pushy, clipboard-toting women showed up the next week. They’d asked questions, poked around, and returned with an ambulance. Gentle, but not kind, they gave her no choice.

Her hands tightened around the handles of the walker and pain shot through her knuckles. Best to concentrate on something else.

Eggs.

Closing her eyes, Belinda imagined chalky shells and succulent slippery filling. Mmmm. She’d spotted the grocery store sign from the second-floor bedroom she shared with a vacant-eyed woman. A fifteen-minute walk at most.

From her roommate’s purse, she’d helped herself to a few dollars.

Taking a deep breath, she slammed into the exit door and it popped open. A flattened paper cup shoved into the doorjamb should keep it unlatched for her return. Not that she wanted to return, but in her weakened state she couldn’t find her way home.

Belinda shuffled up the street as quickly as she could manage. A young man whipped past on a bike, yelling at her to move over. A car swerved into a puddle and sprayed her with water. She scowled and shook a fist.

Standing in front of the dairy case at the grocery store, she admired the crates of eggs. Saliva pooled in her mouth. For the first time in weeks, she smiled.

A woman with a cart snorted an impatient noise, but Belinda ignored her. She carefully picked out two dozen brown eggs, size extra-large. There was just enough money in her pocket.

Back outside, she settled onto a bus stop bench, opened one carton, popped an egg into her mouth and crunched. Her entire body shivered in response to the wonderful taste.

“Eeww, gross.” Disgusted expressions and grunts.

Belinda glared, but kept chewing.

Popping another in her mouth, she tucked the remaining eggs into the basket of her walker and stumbled woozily toward the residence.

The skin at her neck tightened. Her joints burned; the itch was close to unbearable.

At long last, she slipped into Sunset Gardens through the back door, but the stairs proved too much. Gasping, she sank onto the bottom step and devoured the rest of the eggs. Licking her fingers, she sighed. Finally, some relief.

The skin around her wrists split. It felt good. She stripped off her clothing. Spent skin fell to the ground in puddles. Shuddering, she dropped to the floor and stretched. Her body lengthened.

Finally, the ability to return to her home. First, a snack to fuel the journey.

Belinda wound herself around the railing and slithered up the stairs. She stretched her jaws and went looking for the iron-hair nurse.

KT Wagner writes speculative fiction in the garden of her home on the west coast of Canada. She’s a collector of strange plants, weird trivia, and obscure tomes. KT graduated from Simon Fraser University’s Writers Studio in 2015 (Southbank 2013). She organizes writer events and works to create literary community. 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CitizenKatherineWagner/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ktwagner.bsky.social
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ktwagner_writer/
Website (under construction): ktwagner.com
​

Marissa clicks the heavy door of the classroom shut. She slides to the floor, clamping a hand over her mouth. She checks the window next to the door. 

It’s dark. Quiet. 

The classroom across the hall has a curtain pulled over its window, the hall to the left empty except for a bulletin board of posters and a statue hidden by the corner.

Marissa dares to breathe, exhaling a quiet, shaky puff of air. She crosses in front of the whiteboard, pressing herself into a tight corner, the walls decked with posters and a mostly-empty bulletin board. The blinds on the larger windows in the back are drawn, only pale shafts of moonlight peeking through the dark room. As long as she doesn’t make herself noticeable to the door, she’ll be fine. She takes another breath.

This is what I get for walking through campus at night, Marissa seethes. She knows better. Any type of night walking is dangerous, unfathomable stalker creature or not. It was extra dangerous with her phone battery dead. She can’t call 911 or have a friend come pick her up. All she has to do is wait this dude out, then run like Satan’s about to snatch her ankles to her car. She’ll drive to the police station to report what happened, then go back to her shared student apartment and sleep for 12 hours. Her professors would understand.

There’s an itch in the back of her brain, like she’s missed something. Marissa’s gaze darts around. Windows are closed, the door is shut, she’s well away from the window next to said door. She didn’t miss anything, she’s sure she’s safe.

Her eyes follow the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on the far wall, stacked with peeling, old children’s books. On one side of the shelf is the door to the room, and the other is a short beige closet with a little red wagon on top. Next to that is a bright red book cart holding messily-organized binders and textbooks, then a counter in front of the back windows. What is she not thinking of?

A small eek sounds from nearby. 

Marissa’s heart leaps to her throat. The beige closet, the small wagon on top is rocking back and forth on its wheels. Spindly fingers sharpened to points wrap around the door. That thing’s smile splits its face in half, long clip-like teeth bared, eyes rippling and stretched into long ovals. Too-long arms and too many joints crack as they pull themselves out of the tiny space. It looms like some sort of deranged animal, tattered clothes that look similar to a circus ringmaster’s suit hung off its boney frame. It has some approximations of humanity, like short blonde hair cut to just above its chin, but it’s a disturbing fake idea twisted onto something unreal.

Marissa scurries to the professor’s desk, tucking herself underneath in the gap for a desk chair. She muffles the air from her nose and pulls herself as small as she can. That shouldn’t have been possible, it can’t be possible! She lost it at the back entrance, how did it follow her!? This isn’t—it shouldn’t- 

She tucks her panic into a tight little ball in her chest. She needs to get out alive, first and foremost. Get past whatever that is and get out. There’s a soft, eerie laugh. It rattles around her skull, makes her head hurt. Something scrapes, like nails on a chalkboard, on the desk above her head. The computer monitor on top crunches as it hits the floor.

“I know you’re there.” Its voice is breathy, like a whisper. “I can hear your lungs.”

Fuck, fuck fuck fuck! What to do now!? Long, spindly fingers stretch over the edge, dangling in front of her eyes. It’s practically right on top of her!

Oh, duh. It’s practically right on top of her.

Marissa crouches and shoves. She throws all of her might into tipping the desk. The creature squeals like a pig as it’s caught under the weight. Marissa books it, throwing open the door and sprinting down the hallway. Except- no. This isn’t the same hallway. It opened up onto a student seating area before, with exit stairs on the right and a door to the upper part of campus on the left, but now the hall ends at a fork. She can’t afford to stop. She goes left.

The halls have spun themselves into a maze. She goes right, then left, then right again, or was it left? She can’t tell anymore. They whip and snarl and tie her up in knots. There’s too much noise and not enough, a vague stench of something sweet bleeding into her nose.

Marissa trips.

She slams to the floor, head spinning. Panting, she tries to get oxygen back into her body, ambling to her feet. Why her? She’s a good student; she volunteers at the local food pantry every other week. She’s good to her friends, her girlfriend. Why her? What sort of divine retribution is she enduring?

Spindly, sharp, cold spines prick at the back of her neck. She chokes. Cracking, too-long fingers wind their way around her throat, tilt her chin up almost like her mom would when trying to scold her. The thing, the motherfucker, the whatever-it-is grins down at her from the ceiling, ovular eyes stretching with delight.

“It is time.” Its fingers break the skin on her jugular. “For your final bow.”

​Kayd Johanson is a 21 year old Southern Utah University student set to graduate in Spring 2026 with a degree in English. When they're not drowning in schoolwork, they like to draw, write, play excessive amounts of Minecraft, and talk about their favorite cartoons. Their favorite piece of horror media is The Magnus Archives, and yes, they will talk about that too. They currently live in Cedar City, Utah, out of their grandparents' basement to cut down on college costs.

Harrow James has always been a believer, ever since she was a child. A believer not just in God, but in institutions. In elders. People who exist to protect her and those vulnerable like her from the dangers of the world.

Tonight is the first night that faith will be shaken.

Until the angel, she never once thought that what she for so long thought were shields could actually be cages. Until the angel, she never thought her belief might by influenced by the fact that she has never once ventured outside of her small town of Parthas, Nevada. And since marrying, barely even out of Columbia, the acreage she came to live after she was wed to her husband Paxton. Until the angel, Harrow never truly wondered what else is in the world outside her borders.

It comes to her—because that's how she comes to think of it, that it came to her, that it chose her—one night. Like the burning bush. Like the ophanim.

She is sleeping next to Paxton when she's awoken by the explosion. Looking outside, she sees the boys in the barracks, Columbia's faithful farmhands and protectorates, have already begun to move. The lights in the small church down the hill are on, so that means the sisters are awake. She can hear movement in the farmhouse all around them as people wake, rally. A lighter sleeper than her husband, Harrow has to wake him, shake his shoulder gently, then more fervently when she doesn't just hear the reverberations, but see flames over the hill.

But the flames are wrong. They are colors not of this earth. Colors she doesn't have names for. Because they're not flames, not really. They're light.

Everything is quiet. Everything is still. Like Harrow, everyone is watching. It takes everything she has in her to be quiet. To not move.
​
"Paxton, honey," she says, "Something's happened. I'm afraid."

Pen slipped on the mask, pressing the temporary adhesive against her skin. She tied the silken strings around the back of her head, draping her wavy, black hair over them. She straightened her skirt and nudged the mask up. Her world narrowed as the mask crowded her peripheral vision.

“I can do this,” she told herself in her bright customer-service voice. Her masked face in the mirror reflected an unwavering grin.

Pen flung open the door, the gray light of early morning illuminating a perpetual flow of grinning people, people, people, shuffling along the sidewalk.

Some wore stiff masks like hers, their faces screwed up in a rictus of grinning lips and deep smile lines set against white, unmoving plastic. The Stiffs took meek steps, giving way to those with second skins. Their masks were so perfect as to be indiscernible from their true faces. The only tell was their strained grins or unlined foreheads.

Pen shuffled into the flow. The travelers barely gave an inch.

Five sweaty, uncomfortable blocks later, her chin tickled as the adhesive loosened. She darted and dodged into her office building and ducked into the bathroom. As she patted her skin dry with paper towels, she dug in her pocket for more adhesive. Popping the top, the slightly chlorinated smell of glue filled her nostrils.

She grimaced as she swiped the stuff onto her skin. She pressed her mask back into place and counted under her breath.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.”

She gave it a tug. The mask clung to her face, her skin stretching as the glue did its job. Pen tried to arrange her face beneath the mask to match her reflection. She fake-smiled. The skin beneath her mask pulled tighter.

She walked out of the bathroom and stepped into the elevator. Jammed shoulder to shoulder in a gray box, Pen avoided eye contact. When the elevator dinged for her floor, she stepped out, plodded across corporate-blue carpet, and slid into a gray cube.

The phone’s red call light blinked.

Blinked.

Blinked.

“Ready to get started, Penny?” her supervisor’s voice sliced through the air, cold and belittling.

“Yes,” murmured Pen.

The air around her grew colder as she felt her supervisor’s disappointment. Pen tried her reply again.

“Yes!” she exclaimed in her customer service voice. She didn’t look at her supervisor. Instead, Pen sat down in her gray chair and picked up her beige headset, jamming it over her ears.

Another thing pressing against her head.

Pain sliced through her skull.

She pushed the “Accept” button.

“Hello, thank you for calling Agnosty International. How may I help you today?”

The day wore on. A blur of falsetto tones. Her bright words decorated the gray air around her, filling it up until there was hardly any room to breathe.

The afternoon rolled around, and the words pressed against her mask, against her skin. Sweat puddled under her chin, loosening the adhesive. Her headache thumped against the hard shell. Her exoskeleton.

Pen’s voice faltered, drifting to a real, exhausted tone.

Her mask migrated across her face, sliding to the right. Her limited vision narrowed, drawing the wall of her cube in flat lines.

Pen’s racing heart sent shocks to her throat, narrowing it along with her vision.

“Why am I doing this?” she asked aloud. She knew the answers. Bills, expectations, obligation. Being a “good member of society.”

“But really, why?” she thought or said aloud; she wasn’t sure.

“Excuse me?” asked the muffled voice at the end of the line.

“Excuse me? Excuse me?” Pen murmured. “Is this a real person?” she wondered. “Who is real?”
The mask slipped again, covering both of her eyes.

The world blanked. The person still spoke, but she couldn’t hear their words.

“I have to go,” Pen’s voice echoed in her mask, jamming spikes into her head. She removed the headset.

Stillness filled her. The gray murmur of the other reps muffled by her wonky mask. Closing her eyes, she saw blue and red sparkles zipping across her lids. Her eyelashes scraped at the mask’s interior. She tried to sit completely still.

“Penny!” Her supervisor’s voice jostled her. Pen jolted up and adjusted her mask. The world came into focus, the gray walls.

The phone.

Her dangling headset.

She turned toward the voice. Her supervisor’s skintight mask heaved into view. Faint lines showed her where the mask ended and the supervisor’s hairline began.

Pen squinted at the woman, her headache clamping onto her forehead.

“What happened there, Penny?”

A smile gleamed from that face. Pen’s stomach churned. She could hear impatience bubbling up behind the false brightness.

“I’m sorry. I don’t feel well.”

“You’re sick?”

“I have a migraine.”

“Time to go home, then.”

“Right.”

“Here,” her supervisor handed her something. “For tomorrow.”

Penny looked down at the tube of superglue. Then, up to her supervisor. The smile didn’t falter. The eyes, glinting with impatience, crinkled in permanent pleasure. Penny pocketed the tube.

“See you tomorrow.”

The next morning, Pen slipped the mask on, pressing the adhesive against her skin. She tied the silken strings around the back of her head, draping her wavy, black hair over them. She straightened her skirt and nudged the mask up. The superglue tightened.

She watched her reflection in the mirror through the delighted eyeholes. The smile lines along her face stretched picture-perfect and would remain in place for days. Her skin prickled with sweat. A headache loomed in the back of her skull.

Her grinning mask bobbed in a river of smiles. Someone stepped on Pen’s foot as she pushed her way down the busy sidewalk. Another mask elbowed her as it pushed off the sidewalk and into a large, beige building. Her smile never faltered, even when she tripped and scraped her hands bloody. She pushed herself back to her feet, grins swimming past. Pen’s unchanged face smiled back, her steps taking her bloody hands and bruised knees into her office building.
​
Pen’s grinning head bobbed to the beat of red drops dripping against foyer tile. 

Immortality is far from a silent thing.

Your mother tongue babbled around you in your youth—voices in chirped and croaking tones and babies whose first words spoke of the sun and the stones. Mothers who crooned of the cold sand and the fire that could warm the meat of the beasts you hunted.

Of the creatures in the dark.

Your tribe did not know what exactly the creatures did or how they came to be in the dark, but you all knew they were there.

They found you first. The bite felt like a thousand stinging nettles. A hushed voice asked you if you wanted to live forever.
Yes.

You thought you said the word. Eternity flooded your veins. It was over for them. For you, it was just beginning.

Back then, you huddled with the masses and fed on them when they slept. Their pained cries were drowned out through layers of furs and found later in the piles of bodies struggling to keep warm as winter arrived.

It was so cold. They didn't have time to silence you.

Eventually it was Kang, the leader’s boy, who stood up to you. Called you what you were.

Monster. The word was more complex. It doesn't translate well.

Banishment tasted more sour than the blood of the beasts of the forest.

But, immortality meant that all things turned to dust eventually. The tribe would die. The rocks would weather. The ice would melt. The chirps and croaks would make way for a smooth, ancient Germanic language.

You would learn it, of course. Perfectly rolling off your tongue in cool, clear tones like a viola played to perfection. In this era, you did not have to huddle in tiny caves; you could pull in a bar wench and talk to her. Seduce her. She would coo and she would cry against your ear as you purred against her throat.

But in your head, you thought only in your native tongue. In the language that was dust, along with the cave and the tribe. The occasional time you would run into another like yourself, you might hear the language, but the Ancient Ones were getting rarer. Too much sunlight. Too many accidents.

The word for what you were was different then, too.

Vampyre.

By the time you reach the age of technology, you stop thinking in your native tongue. When you think about the fact that your back hurts, it is easier to just think that it hurts in English, rather than to translate.

You press your thumb against the button on the frame to your door. Another long day at the university with the shades drawn. Late nights. You're so knowledgeable about history, so many languages known. So charismatic. They think you need the additional security to keep the obsessed students from clamoring through your doors.

In a way, yes.

The door opens, and you step into the empty building. No furniture. No tables. One lone leather chair in front of a flat screen television, a wine rack, and a coffin. Your patent leather shoes click against the concrete floor as you step over to pour yourself a glass of wine.

Professor of linguistics.

What a hock of crap.

You've forgotten more languages than your department head ever knew. You've written more books than are in that college library. You've been more than those students will ever be.
You flip on the TV and lower the blinds on your floor-to-ceiling windows.

A sunrise starts on the screen, playing from the camera positioned outside your home.

That.

That is what they have that you do not.

The envy you feel is palpable. Vicious. It swirls inside of you like the red wine in your glass and it makes you want to vomit. Your anger is more real than the image on the screen.

You had no choice back in the cave.

With the vampire.

You had no words for what was happening to you.

Words for what it was didn't exist. The bite. The Turning. They came later, when you left the Stone Age.

Back then, you were but a victim.

Choosing to change was like breathing. You breathed. And now, now they breathe--

But look at your accomplishments. And they haven't caught you yet.

It should be worth it.

A notification interrupts the sunrise. News. You flip away from the things you want and cannot have to the things you deal with that are part of the world you live in instead.

“And now we have the latest candidate to jump in the Senate race, dark horse candidate, Kris Kartsoris. Kris, do you have anything to say?”

You follow politics. You follow what the world is up to. After all, you're going to be here a long time.

However, the person who steps on screen, standing under a dark umbrella is known to you. The dark hair, the tawny skin, the black eyes. He smiles a broken-toothed smile that has all the charm of a man who has led more people under harder, more dire circumstances.

It's Kang.

“This city is hurting. Every day, we see violence to the youth of our city at night, and we don't know why. I'm going to start campaigning to clean up our universities and find out what's been happening to the children of our state.”

Prick.

The mobile phone on your chair rings. You step towards it and look down. It is from an unknown number. The tinny noise reverberates across the empty room like a baby's cry in a cave.

You answer.

“It has been a long time, Monster.”

A language with one is dead.

A language with two is alive.

He has come to find you and to stop you. For him, you will be his Monster.
​
Your mother tongue was immortal after all.

You never should have followed her down that alley, but you did.

She moved like she knew you, like she had been waiting for you. Her bare feet made no sound against the damp pavement. The streetlights buzzed overhead, casting flickering shadows that seemed to stretch and twist as she passed. The alleyway smelled of clove cigarettes and something rancid-something sweet and spoiled, like fruit left too long in the heat. No one else saw her. Or if they did, they refused to acknowledge her. But you…

You were curious. Or maybe it was something deeper than curiosity. Maybe it was something pulling you forward.

The alley was narrow, the walls slick with moss, bricks pressing close like the ribcage of something ancient and dying. You stepped forward, ignoring the way the light behind you dimmed, ignoring the way the night swallowed sound, until there was nothing but your own breathing, your own heartbeat, the wet drip, drip, drip from somewhere unseen.
She never turned back, never slowed, until-

Until she did.

Her head turned first, slow and unnatural, and the rest of her body followed. Her skin, pale, too pale, like something pulled from the bottom of a river. Her lips, peeling and cracked, stretched into a grin too wide, too full of teeth. And her eyes:

Empty. Hollow. Waiting.

Your stomach clenched. The air pressed thick against your skin, and you wanted to run. But before you could move, something beneath your foot gave way with a sickening, wet squelch. The scent of iron filled your nose. Not garbage. Not some dead animal.

Meat.

Human.

A hand. You could see the fingers now, half-buried in the grime, skin darkened, nails torn. And when you looked back up, she was already there, too close, too wrong, her grin stretching, splitting, revealing layer upon layer of needle-thin teeth.

And then--

Darkness.
 
You wake to silence.

The room around you is white, too white, the kind of white that makes your head ache. A table. A chair. A mirror. But it isn’t a mirror. You know it isn’t a mirror.

A voice crackles from the other side of the glass. Calm. Controlled. Clinical.

“You’re doing good,” it says. “Try again. Tell us what happened next.”

Your mouth is dry. Your tongue feels thick, wrong. You swallow, but it doesn’t help.

“I-” The words catch. Your teeth ache.

The voice continues. Papers rustle.

“We found you in that alley. Do you remember that?”

Yes. Maybe. No.

“We found the others, too. Or what was left of them.”

Something cold coils in your stomach. You don’t want to ask. You don’t want to know.

“Tell us what you saw.”

The woman. The alley. The shifting walls. The thing wearing human skin.

Or-

Or was it you?

You don’t remember biting down. You don’t remember the taste of copper flooding your mouth, don’t remember the way your fingers dug in, pulling, tearing-

But your teeth hurt. Your jaw throbs. And when you open your mouth to answer, the voice on the other side gasps.

Because there, beneath your tongue, another row of teeth is growing.

And you know.

You never left that alley.
 
You try to sleep, but the dreams won’t let you.

They are wet, sticky things, full of whispers and laughter and teeth. The taste of raw meat lingers on your tongue, even when you wake gasping, even when you shove your knuckles into your mouth to stop the sound from escaping.

The door opens. A different voice this time, lower, softer.

“How are we feeling today?”

You don’t answer. You stare at the walls, at the too-bright lights, at the tray of untouched food beside you. You are not hungry.

Or maybe you are, but not for that.

The voice sighs. A chair scrapes against the floor.

“You were found in a bad state,” they continue. “Alone. In that alley.” A pause. “There was blood.”

Your hands clench.

“You kept saying the same thing over and over when they brought you in.”

You don’t ask. You don’t want to know.

But they tell you anyway.

“Not mine.”

Silence hums between you. The air is too thick, pressing against your ribs, pressing against your skin. The voice shifts, uneasy.

“Do you remember?”

You do.

You remember the alley. The woman. The shifting walls. The taste of something you should not have tasted. The hunger curling, twisting, growing-

You shake your head.

“No,” you say.

They sigh again, pushing a paper across the table.

“This is for evaluation purposes only,” they say. “We need a sample. Just—open your mouth.”
​
Your pulse pounds. Your teeth ache.

Slowly, you obey.

The voice on the other side goes still. The scrape of chair legs. The sharp, sharp inhale.

You close your mouth. Too late. You already saw it in their eyes.

They know.

They see.

They know you were not alone in that alley.

And they know-

You brought something back with you.

Eli had lived in his grandmother’s old farmhouse for three months when he first noticed the mirror. It wasn’t there when he moved in—of that, he was sure. But now, an ancient, dust-fogged thing leaned against the far wall of the upstairs hallway.
 
He hadn’t hung it there. No one had. And yet, there it was.
 
The first time he looked into it, he barely recognized himself. His reflection was… off. The smile that curled at the edge of its lips wasn’t his. Its head tilted a fraction too far to the side. Its eyes seemed darker. Hungrier.
 
He didn’t look in the mirror again. But it didn’t matter.
 
Each dusk, as the house sighed into night and the orange sky bled into bruised purple, he would hear it; a faint, rhythmic tapping. Like fingers drumming against glass.
 
Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
 
One evening, just as the last light drained from the sky, Eli walked past the mirror on his way downstairs.
 
His reflection didn’t move.
 
It stayed behind, grinning. Watching.
 
That night, he dragged an old sheet from the closet and threw it over the glass. He didn’t sleep, but at least he didn’t have to see it. At least, not until the sheet slid off the mirror on its own.
 
He found it crumpled in the middle of the hallway floor the next morning. The mirror was bare.
 
Eli stopped passing by after that. He stayed downstairs. He blocked the door leading upstairs with an old dresser. He didn’t go up—not anymore.
 
But the tapping didn’t stop.
 
Days passed. Weeks. He avoided mirrors entirely. Windows, too. Anything reflective.
 
But they found him anyway.
 
One evening, as dusk bled into night, the tapping started again—this time from the living room window. But when Eli approached, there was nothing outside. Only his own reflection in the glass.
 
Then it smiled.
 
And it knocked. 

The upside-down, rippling face peers over the rim, gazing down at me without knowing I’m there.

“Wishing well?” says a voice, warped and muffled by the stagnant water. “I wish…I wish that I could have a different life.”

Her tears hit the surface and turn to pearls as they sink into my waiting hands. Close behind them comes a single quarter, spinning and winking, landing tails-up.

“Ugh, this is stupid,” the woman says, wiping her eyes. “It’s not like anybody’s listening.”

Moments later, she’s gone. Clutching my new treasures, I turn upside down and kick free of the gravity of this particular wishing well, out into my own watery domain. Other wishing wells open up all around me—left, right, above, below—but nobody is looking into them, so I continue on to my nest. Centuries-worth of pennies, greenish in hue, encrust the walls. Since today’s coin is a quarter, I take it inside and add it to the chandelier I’ve been painstakingly constructing.

The pearls I place in my jewelry box, for they are the rarest and most precious gifts I receive through the wells.

Well, almost the most precious.

But that one coveted gift has eluded me.

As if the bountiful universe has heard my thoughts, a distorted scream disrupts the water, and I turn toward it. I don’t want to get my hopes up; I’ve been disappointed before. Cautiously, I swim to the opening of my nest and search for the source of the scream, finally spotting the churning water in one of the wells.

I propel myself forward. At first, it’s difficult to see through the furious froth being kicked up, but there is indeed a child in the well.

The boy, maybe eight years old, writhes and screams, choking as water floods his mouth and lungs. My limitations don’t allow me to really do anything until he’s dead, but I push those limits, reaching up and removing one of the boy’s blue tennis shoes and stroking the sole of his foot. His screams become of a different kind. Now he is trying to see what’s beneath him, and in his thrashing, he’s tiring himself out.

I’m with him the whole time as we wait for an adult to appear with a flashlight and a rope, but nobody comes. As the child weakens and slips out of consciousness, I’m able to grab his ankle, pulling him through the bottom of the well and into my world.

Gently, of course. Much more gently than I was treated.

When he awakens, the boy is confused. He looks at the bed of time-softened nickels and moves his hand slowly in front of his face, then he gasps as if expecting to inhale water.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “There’s no death down here.”

Trust me, I’ve tried.

“Who are you?” he asks. It’s the one question I cannot answer.

“I’m lonely,” I say. “I’m liminal.”

“What are all those tunnels?”

“Wishing wells, like the one you came through.”

“But if they’re sticking out all over the place, which way is up?”

“There’s no up here, or down. There’s only me and my treasures.”

I run my fingers through his short, blonde hair, this precious boy, this rarest of gifts. But I must control myself.

I tell him all about my life and how sad I am here alone, only catching glimpses of the human world. While he sleeps, I return to his well and listen to his family’s fruitless search and learn that his name is Charlie. Once or twice, one of them takes a look into the well, as if hoping that Charlie will magically appear. I grin up at them, unseen.

I begin to fear that my own silent wish will never be granted, but then it happens.

“I wish for my son to come back,” says Charlie’s mother. Her quarter lands heads-up in my palm.

Charlie has grown quite fond of me, and he holds my hand as I guide him back toward the wishing well. When he sees his mother's face, he starts to wail. My grip on him tightens. This is exactly the way it happened between me and my predecessor.

“This coin,” I say, holding it up for him to see, “is your ticket home. Or at least it’s a ticket home. Do you want to go home?”

He nods, pearlescent tears rolling up into his beautiful hair.

“Remember this moment,” I say, closing the coin in my fist, heads-up. “It’ll be your only way out someday.”

I swim as close to the surface as I’m normally able to, and then I push through it, gulping in sweet, nighttime, human air. Above me, Charlie’s mother screams as I begin to climb. There’s no telling what I look like after all these years, with only coins and pearls to show me snatches of my reflection.

Dark water streams from my body and patters into the pool at the bottom of the well. Down there, beneath the surface, little Charlie is thinking it looks like being underwater in a swimming pool when it’s raining, and he doesn’t understand yet. I didn’t understand either, not for ages.
​
But now, I am free. My wish has come true.