Jane Ekhart went too far this time. The gangsters have had enough. They kidnap her and bring her out to the woods to silence her forever, but what they find will be much scarier than anything they could ever hope to be.

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Jane Eckhart knew they were going to kill her when they passed the second turnoff.

The first one could have been anything.

The second one meant they were driving away from the highway.

She sat in the back of the SUV between two men who smelled of cigarettes, sweat, and whatever cologne men bought when they wanted people to notice it. Her wrists were bound behind her with plastic restraints. Another cinched her ankles. Gray duct tape covered her mouth.

Every bump drove her hands into the small of her back.

Nobody had spoken to her for twenty minutes.

That frightened her more than the gun had.

Earlier there had been yelling. Questions. One of them had slapped her hard enough that her left ear still rang.

Who did you talk to?

Where are the copies?

Who else knows?

She had lied badly.

Then she had lied better.

Eventually they stopped asking questions.

Now the men were silent.

The forest outside had swallowed everything beyond the headlights.

California.

She had lived here eleven years and never understood how quickly the state could disappear. Los Angeles could convince you there was nowhere left on earth without pavement. Drive long enough and suddenly there were trees and dirt roads and places where a person could scream until their throat tore and nobody would complain about the noise.

Jane looked at the man beside her.

Late thirties. Shaved head. Scar beneath his chin.

He caught her looking.

“What?”

Jane stared at him.

He seemed to remember the tape.

“Right.”

The driver laughed. “Having a conversation back there, Danny?”

“Fuck you,” Danny said.

“You ask her how her night’s going?” The driver said.

Danny looked at Jane. “You having a good night?”

The other man laughed.

Jane didn’t.

Danny leaned closer.

“Should’ve minded your business.”

Jane held his eyes.

That bothered him.

She saw it.

He reached over and pressed his thumb against the bruise forming beneath her eye.

Pain flashed white.

Jane jerked away.

“There,” he said. “Now you can write about me.”

“Enough,” the driver said.

Danny sat back.

“What?”

“I said enough.”

“She ain’t gonna complain.”

“No. She ain’t.”

The SUV slowed.

Jane’s stomach cramped.

Gravel popped beneath the tires.

Then dirt.

The headlights swept across enormous trunks and dead brush and a narrow road that looked less traveled the farther they went.

The driver finally stopped.

He shut off the engine.

For several seconds nobody moved.

Jane could hear herself breathing through her nose.

The driver looked into the rearview mirror.

“Take her out.”

Jane screamed behind the tape.

It came out small.

Ugly.

Desperate.

She threw herself sideways when Danny grabbed her arm. “Jesus Christ.”

She kicked despite the restraint around her ankles.

Her heel caught something.

Someone cursed.

Danny punched her in the ribs.

Jane folded.

“Fucking bitch.”

The door opened and cold air came in.

Hands grabbed her.

She clawed at the upholstery with her fingers.

Anything.

The seat belt.

The door handle.

A seam in the leather.

Her nails dragged uselessly across everything she could reach.

“Get her fucking legs.”

“I got her.”

“You don’t got shit.”

They dragged her from the SUV.

Jane hit the ground shoulder first.

Dirt filled her nose.

Pine needles stuck to her hair.

She tried to crawl.

A boot came down between her shoulder blades.

“Stop.”

She kept moving.

The boot pressed harder.

“Stop.”

Jane screamed through the tape.

Danny grabbed her coat and hauled her upright.

Her bound ankles made walking impossible, so they half carried, half dragged her toward the front of the SUV.

There were four of them.

Danny.

The driver.

A thin man with a mustache.

And a heavyset man Jane recognized.

Victor Salerno.

The reason she was here.

Salerno looked almost bored.

He buttoned his coat against the cold.

“You made a lot of trouble for people.”

Jane stared at him.

“You understand that?”

She breathed hard through her nose.

Salerno walked closer.

“You had every opportunity to leave it alone.”

Jane said something behind the tape.

Salerno tilted his head.

“What was that?”

She said it again.

He smiled.

“Take it off.”

Danny ripped the tape from her mouth.

Skin burned.

Jane gasped.

Salerno waited.

She swallowed.

“I said you’re going to prison.”

Nobody laughed.

Salerno looked disappointed.

“That’s what you wanted to say?”

Jane’s eyes filled.

She hated that.

She hated crying in front of them.

She couldn’t stop it.

“You’re going to fucking prison.”

Salerno nodded.

“Okay.”

He turned away.

“Do it.”

Danny drew his pistol.

Jane’s body reacted before her mind did.

She began screaming.

“No. No, please. Wait. Please.”

Danny grabbed her hair.

She twisted.

“Hold still.”

“Please.”

“Hold the fuck still.”

“I have a daughter.”

It came out before she could stop it.

Danny hesitated.

Just for a second.

Salerno looked at him.

Danny’s face hardened again.

Jane started sobbing.

“She’s nine. Please. She doesn’t have anybody else. Please. Please don’t—”

Crunch.

Everyone stopped.

Jane heard it too.

Somewhere among the trees.

Leaves.

A footstep.

Then another.

Danny turned toward the darkness.

The thin man drew his gun.

Salerno said, “What?”

Nobody answered.

Crunch.

Farther left this time.

Then another.

Then several.

Jane stopped crying.

The forest had become crowded with small sounds.

Leaves breaking.

Branches bending.

Something dragging over dirt.

Danny raised his pistol. “Who’s there?”

Nothing answered.

The heavyset man moved toward the SUV.

“Probably deer.”

Danny looked at him. “You ever heard a deer drag its fucking feet?”

The sounds continued.

Jane looked past them.

At first she saw trees.

Then she saw someone standing between them.

Her breath stopped.

A person.

Maybe thirty yards away.

The headlights caught one arm.

Nothing else.

The arm hung strangely.

“Hey!”

Danny pointed the pistol.

The figure moved.

One slow step.

Then another.

A second shape appeared farther back.

Then a third.

Jane pulled at the restraints behind her.

Plastic cut into her wrists.

She twisted harder.

The men had forgotten about her.

Good.

She worked one thumb against the binding.

The first figure entered the edge of the headlights.

Danny whispered: “What the fuck?”

It had been a man.

Once.

Its shirt hung open over a chest mottled with black patches. One side of its neck had been torn away. The head leaned toward the wound as though the muscles on the other side were the only things still holding it upright.

Its mouth opened.

Nothing came out except a wet breath.

The thin man fired.

The shot tore through the forest.

Jane screamed.

The figure jerked backward.

Stopped.

Then continued walking.

“No.”

The thin man fired again.

The bullet struck its chest.

Again.

Again.

The thing kept coming.

“Shoot the fucking head!”

Danny fired.

The bullet took part of its forehead away.

The thing staggered.

Its knees buckled.

For one second Jane thought it was over.

Then it stood back up.

The men began shouting.

Shapes came from between the trees.

Five.

Ten.

More.

A woman in the remains of a hospital gown.

A man missing most of one arm.

Something small and old in a filthy business suit.

A body with half its scalp hanging against one ear.

They came limping through the brush.

One crawled.

Its legs did nothing.

It pulled itself forward with both hands, leaving a dark trail through the leaves.

Gunfire erupted.

Jane dropped to the ground.

Bullets punched bodies.

Rotten flesh opened.

One creature spun sideways when a round tore through its shoulder, then simply corrected itself and continued.

“Get in the fucking car!”

“Move!”

“MOVE!”

The driver ran for the SUV.

Three dead things came around the passenger side.

He stopped.

Turned.

Two more stood behind him.

“Oh, Jesus.”

He fired until the pistol clicked.

Click.

Click.

Click.

He stared at the weapon.

Danny’s gun stopped next.

Then the thin man’s.

The forest became silent again.

Jane lay on her side, working desperately at the restraint.

Nobody moved.

The dead had surrounded them.

Twenty.

Maybe thirty.

Jane couldn’t count them.

Their ruined faces stared toward the living.

One opened its mouth.

Another twitched.

A woman worked her jaw slowly, teeth tapping together.

Salerno backed toward Jane.

“What do you want?”

Jane almost laughed.

He was asking them.

“What the fuck do you want?”

The dead stood there.

Then something tapped against the ground.

Tok.

Tok.

Tok.

Jane turned her head.

The dead parted.

A man walked between them.

Slowly.

He wore what remained of a blue and black suit.

Once it had probably been expensive.

Now the jacket was torn open. One sleeve hung by threads. His trousers were shredded at the knees. A black bowler hat sat neatly on his head despite everything else about him.

He carried a cane.

Tok.

Tok.

Tok.

His skin had gone gray.

Several fingers were missing.

His throat was split beneath the jaw.

A piece of his left cheek was gone, exposing teeth all the way to the back of his mouth.

One eye had clouded over.

The other worked fine.

Jane stared at him.

The creature stepped into the headlights.

Salerno whispered, “What the fuck are you?”

The dead man looked at him.

Then raised his cane.

He pointed it toward Salerno.

And lowered it.

The forest exploded.

The dead rushed forward.

Salerno screamed.

Danny got three steps before the woman in the hospital gown caught him.

She drove him to the ground.

Another fell over them.

Then another.

The thin man swung his empty pistol into a dead man’s face.

Again.

Again.

Again.

“GET OFF ME!”

Something bit into his arm.

He screamed so hard his voice broke.

The driver made it to the hood before hands caught his coat and dragged him backward.

He grabbed the bumper.

His fingers dug against chrome.

“PLEASE!”

His fingernails scraped along the metal.

Then disappeared beneath the bodies.

Jane curled into herself.

She couldn’t look away.

Salerno was still standing.

For perhaps five seconds longer than the others.

He punched one of them.

Kicked another.

A dead woman caught his wrist and bit down.

Salerno shrieked.

Another seized his shoulder.

Another his leg.

He went down.

His screams became words.

Then noises.

Then screaming again.

Jane felt movement beside her.

She turned.

A dead woman was crawling toward her.

Young.

Blond hair.

Most of her nose gone.

Jane tried to move. “No.”

The dead woman’s hand reached for her.

“NO!”

The fingers were inches from Jane’s face.

WHACK.

The cane struck the dead woman across the temple.

She toppled sideways.

Jane looked up. “Rex!”

The man in the bowler hat stood over them.

He pointed his cane toward the trees.

A harsh growl rolled out of his ruined throat.

“RRRAAAAGH.”

The female zombie stared at him.

He waved the cane.

“RAAGH!”

She slowly stood.

He smacked her across the ass with the cane.

The dead woman lurched forward.

Rex gave her another irritated growl.

She wandered away.

Jane stared up at him.

Rex stared down at her.

Behind him, Salerno was being eaten alive.

Jane’s breathing slowed.

Rex crouched.

He hooked one rotten finger beneath the tape still stuck along the side of her face and pulled it away.

Jane winced.

“Jesus, Rex.”

Rex grunted.

“Goddamn it. What took you so long?”

He looked offended.

He pointed toward the forest.

Then toward the zombies.

Then at himself.

He made several irritated sounds.

“Yeah, yeah. You did the best you could.”

Rex nodded.

He went to work on her wrists.

His fingers weren’t particularly good at it.

One was missing.

Another bent in a direction fingers generally weren’t designed to bend.

Jane watched him struggle.

“You want me to—”

Rex growled.

“Fine.”

He continued.

Behind them somebody screamed: “HELP ME!”

Jane glanced over.

Danny had gotten halfway out from beneath two bodies.

A third grabbed his ankle.

He disappeared again.

Jane looked back at Rex.

“You know, whenever you’re ready.”

Rex glared at her.

“I’m just saying.”

He finally snapped the plastic restraint.

Jane pulled her hands free.

“Oh, thank God.”

Rex helped her with the one around her ankles.

Then he stood and offered his hand.

Jane looked at it.

Two fingers.

Black fingernails.

Something moving beneath the skin near his wrist.

“Your hand is getting worse.”

Rex grunted.

She took it anyway.

He pulled her up.

Her legs nearly folded beneath her.

Rex caught her.

For a moment Jane held onto his ruined jacket.

She was shaking.

Really shaking now.

Rex looked at her.

The working eye softened.

Jane swallowed.

“I’m okay.”

Rex grunted.

“I said I’m okay.”

Another grunt.

“I know what okay means.”

Behind them the screaming stopped.

The forest became very quiet.

There was only chewing now.

Wet tearing.

An occasional crack.

Jane closed her eyes.

“Jesus Christ.”

Rex followed her gaze.

He watched his people eating the four men.

One of them was fighting another over an arm.

Rex growled sharply.

Both zombies stopped.

He pointed the cane at one.

Then the other.

He made a sound that somehow communicated the profound disappointment of a father whose children had embarrassed him in a restaurant.

The zombies separated.

Jane stared.

“Did you just make them share?”

Rex looked at her.

He shrugged.

Jane chuckled, rubbed her wrists.

Blood had risen around the plastic cuts.

She looked toward the SUV.

The headlights were still on.

One door stood open.

“Well,” she said. “That’s enough excitement for one night.”

Rex growled.

“No. I’m good.”

He growled again.

“I’ll take their car.”

Rex immediately shook his head.

“Rex.”

He pointed toward the forest.

Then himself.

Then her.

“No.”

He growled louder.

“I’m going to the cops.”

Rex froze.

His good eye narrowed.

Jane held up a hand.

“And I’m not talking about this.”

Rex stared at her.

“Obviously.”

He continued staring.

“Come on. What am I going to say?”

She gestured toward the feeding dead.

“Hello, officer. Four men kidnapped me and then my deceased friend arrived with thirty corpses and ate everybody?”

Rex considered this.

Jane nodded.

“Exactly.”

Rex slowly lowered his cane.

“I’ll tell them Salerno kidnapped me. There was an attack. I got away. That’s it.”

Rex grunted.

“That’s all they need.”

Another grunt.

“You worry too much.”

Rex stared at her.

Jane stared back.

Then looked at the bodies.

“Okay. Fair.”

She walked toward the SUV.

Something rolled beneath her shoe.

Jane looked down.

A human tooth.

She moved her foot.

“Rex.”

He turned.

“Thank you.”

Rex nodded.

“You good cleaning this up by yourself?”

Rex looked around at thirty feeding corpses.

Then back at Jane.

He raised both hands.

Jane laughed.

She couldn’t help it.

It came out broken and exhausted and close to crying.

“Yeah. Your problem.”

She opened the driver’s door.

Before getting inside, she looked back.

Rex stood in the headlights with his cane in one hand.

His bowler hat was crooked now.

Behind him the dead crouched around what remained of the men who had driven her here.

One of the zombies tried to wander toward the SUV.

Rex hooked its collar with his cane and yanked it backward without even looking.

Jane smiled softly.

Rex tipped his bowler hat.

She got behind the wheel.

The keys were still in the ignition.

The engine turned over.

Jane backed slowly around the bodies and pointed the SUV toward the dirt road.

In the rearview mirror she could still see Rex.

A dead man standing among the dead.

Keeping watch until she was gone.

Jane drove.

After a mile she realized she was smiling again.

She wiped blood from her lip with the back of her hand.

“The Graveman,” she said.

The name sounded good.

She glanced once at the darkness in the mirror.

“If he ever lets me write that story, that’s what I’m calling him.”

Then the road bent.

The forest closed behind her.

And Rex went back to feeding his friends.

Thank you so much for reading! I know it’s cliche to say, but I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. If you enjoyed my latest post, please check out more of my work. See below!

The Puppet Man Part 1

AUG 13

In The city of Eden, crime runs rampant. The people cry for a savior. God sent them The White Rose, a dark avenger with a mysterious past, who is tasked with cleansing evil from the land. In his first story, Heaven’s champion will duel with a sadistic child killer called The Puppet Man.

Read full story

The Puppet Man Part 2

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

AUG 19

The story so far…

Read full story

The Twisted Life of Howie the Incel

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

AUG 17

Come one, come all! Gather close and listen to the miserable tale of Howie, a weird little creep so foul, so bitter, so spectacularly unpleasant that the gods themselves took one look at him and said, Fuck him!

Read full story

My poetry collection, Paper Blanket: Collected Poems is available on Amazon in Ebook, Paperback, and Hardcover editions. Order your copy now:

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The Face in the Dark

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Behind a wall of steam, two lovers step into the shower expecting nothing more than hot water and a little privacy. But wet skin, wandering hands, and one lingering kiss quickly turn an ordinary night into something neither of them wants to end.

Please free to share your thoughts in the comments below! I look forward to reading them! And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post!

I am offering a huge discount. I’m updating all of my work and removing most paid posts. However, paid subs get access to my sub chat. You can drop links, memes, jokes, thoughts. Promote yourself. Promote someone else.

Your support means so much to me. Thank you! Not to brag, but I think you guys are the greatest subscribers on Substack.

Discount!

The water had been running for twenty minutes before I realized it wasn’t just the spray beating against the tile. It was my own thoughts. Loud as hell. Trying to drown out the fact that she was standing three feet away from me in a towel that was barely hanging on.

“You good?” I asked.

My voice sounded rusty. Like I hadn’t used it all day.

“Fine,” she said. She was dripping. Water ran down her face, slipped past her lips, disappeared beneath the towel. She looked annoyed with herself. She hated getting wet before she was ready. But Jesus, she was beautiful like this.

The steam had turned her skin pink. Not hot from the water. Hot in the way that made my cock throb against my thigh. Hard as a fucking rock already. Hot in the way that made me look at her and think, I need to fuck you until you can’t walk.

My eyes went to her breasts.

Heavy. Hanging low. Damp and pale. The kind that bounced when she walked and seemed to beg for my hands when she stood still. Her belly was soft, with a little pudge to it. Cute as hell. I loved that belly. I loved all that softness. I wanted to bury my face in it, taste her skin, feel her squirm.

She looked real.

That was the thing.

Not airbrushed. Not carved into whatever shape somebody decided women were supposed to be. Just a real woman standing three feet away from me with wet hair and a body that made my mouth go dry and my dick ache.

“I’m going to turn off the water,” I said.

“Okay,” she said.

I reached over and twisted the knob.

The water stopped.

And somehow the silence was louder.

I grabbed the soap. My hands were shaking. I didn’t know why. I worked the lather across my chest, through the hair, trying to convince my heart to calm the fuck down. Trying to ignore how my dick was standing at full attention, pointing right at her like it knew something I didn’t.

I caught myself in the dark glass.

Wet curly hair. Full beard.

I looked like a bear.

A tired fucking bear who needed to hibernate.

Then she came up behind me.

I felt her before she touched me. All that heat against my back. Then her arms wrapped around my waist and her breasts pressed against me.

Possessive.

She knew I liked that.

She knew sometimes I wanted to be the one getting grabbed.

“I like the fuzz,” she whispered.

Her fingers traced through the hair on my chest, lower, lower, until they brushed against the base of my cock. My whole body jerked.

My hands stopped.

I turned around.

She was smiling. Eyes half lidded. Hungry.

Her fingers slid into my wet hair and tangled themselves in my curls. Water dripped from me onto her face and she didn’t give a shit.

She just looked at me. Like nothing else in that bathroom mattered. Like nothing else anywhere mattered.

“You look like a caveman.”

“I feel like a caveman.”

She reached down and took my cock in her hand. Already hard. The head purple and angry. She squeezed, then gave me one slow stroke that nearly took my knees out from under me.

She laughed.

Low. Throaty.

“You’re ready.”

“I’m always ready for you.”

She dropped to her knees.

The tile had to be cold, but she didn’t seem to care. She took me into her mouth and every thought I’d had five seconds earlier disappeared.

Jesus Christ.

Her head moved. Her lips stayed tight around me. I looked down and saw those eyes staring back.

Glazed.

Hungry.

Like she wanted to eat me alive.

And fuck, I wanted to let her.

I grabbed the shower wall. My knuckles went white.

Pressure started building.

She took me deeper. Deeper until I hit the back of her throat. She gagged but didn’t pull back. Just kept taking it. Her hands came up to cup my balls, rolling them gently.

“Fuck,” I groaned.

She hummed around me, the vibration shooting straight up my spine.

I reached down, caught her by the hair and pulled her back. She gagged. A thin line of saliva ran down her chin. Her lips were still puckered. Perfect.

I brought her to her feet and kissed her.

Hungry.

Desperate.

It tasted like me.

It tasted like her.

Then I turned her around.

No warning.

No chance to catch her breath.

My hands caught her waist and dragged her against me. My cock pressed into her ass, the head slipping into the crease just under it.

There wasn’t any finesse left in me.

Wasn’t much romance either.

I pushed.

I slid inside her, slick with water and soap.

She groaned.

Not some pretty little sound.

Something deep. Something from her stomach.

Her head fell back.

“Fuck.”

I reached around and filled my hands with her breasts.

Heavy.

Hot.

Wet.

I squeezed them. Kneaded them. Pulled them apart. My fingers found her nipples and pinched.

Her whole body tightened.

“Yes.”

I started moving.

Deep.

All the way.

Her pussy tightened around me, squeezing every time I buried myself inside her. So fucking tight. So fucking wet.

I pulled back.

Drove into her again.

Her nails dug into my arms.

“Harder.”

I gave her harder.

“Don’t stop.”

I didn’t.

Our bodies slapped together. Wet and loud in that little shower. Nothing graceful about it. Nothing pretty.

Just us.

I buried my face against her neck and bit the place between her shoulder and throat.

Hard enough to leave something behind.

I wanted the mark there.

Wanted to see it tomorrow.

Wanted her to feel it when she moved.

She threw her head back. “I’m going to cum.”

“No, you’re not,” I said.

“Fuck you. Yes, I am.”

Then she did.

Her entire body shuddered. Her pussy clenched around me in hard little spasms. So tight I couldn’t move. Just had to stand there and feel her cum all over my dick.

I kept moving.

She cried out.

I wanted another one.

“Oh God. Yes. Yes. Fuck. Yes.”

My hand slipped between her thighs. My thumb found her clit and worked it hard and fast.

Her back arched.

She bucked against me.

Then she came again.

Harder.

Her whole body shook against mine.

“Good girl,” I whispered. “Good fucking girl.”

She sagged back against me, breathing like she’d just run a mile.

For a second she only stood there with her head against my shoulder.

Then she looked at me.

Eyes glassy.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

I kissed her cheek.

“Now let me finish.”

She laughed.

I pulled out, turned her around and lifted her.

Her legs locked around my waist. Her arms went around my neck.

I pressed her against the shower wall, found her again, and pushed inside.

Her heels dug into my back.

I fucked her standing there.

Her breasts bounced inches from my face.

There was no fucking way I wasn’t looking.

They were beautiful.

Heavy and soft and perfect in my hands.

I grabbed one and brought it to my mouth.

Bit the nipple.

“Ouch.”

“Sorry.”

She stared at me.

“You’re so fucking good.”

I went harder.

I could feel it coming now.

That pressure.

That point where your body quits asking permission.

I wanted to hold back.

Couldn’t.

I pulled out and aimed for her stomach.

I came hard.

Hot white ropes splashed across her belly and ran down her thighs. So much it dripped onto the floor.

Then there was nothing left in either of us.

We slid down the wall together and ended up on the shower floor, wet and exhausted and covered in everything two people could possibly get covered in after fucking like that.

She curled against me.

Her head found my chest.

One finger traced lazy little patterns across my skin.

I stroked her wet hair.

Neither of us said anything for a while.

Just breathing.

Just there.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I know.”

I kissed the top of her head.

“I can feel it.”

“I love you,” she said again.

“I love you too.”

I looked down at the absolute disaster we’d made of ourselves.

“Now let’s get cleaned up. We smell like fish.”

She started laughing.

“You smell like fish too.”

“Bullshit.”

She laughed harder.

Eventually we dragged ourselves off the floor and stumbled out of the shower, dripping everywhere.

Happy.

In love.

A complete fucking mess.

And that was okay.

We were okay.

Thank you so much for reading! I know it’s cliche to say, but I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. If you enjoyed my latest post, please check out more of my work. See below!

Blasphemy Part 1

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

FEB 10

Warning: Contains sexually explicit content and blasphemy

Read full story

Blasphemy Part 2

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

FEB 15

Warning: Contains sexual content and blasphemy

Read full story

Blasphemy Part 3

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

FEB 22

Read full story

The Twisted Life of Howie the Incel

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

AUG 17

Come one, come all! Gather close and listen to the miserable tale of Howie, a weird little creep so foul, so bitter, so spectacularly unpleasant that the gods themselves took one look at him and said, Fuck him!

Read full story

The Puppet Man Part 1

AUG 13

In The city of Eden, crime runs rampant. The people cry for a savior. God sent them The White Rose, a dark avenger with a mysterious past, who is tasked with cleansing evil from the land. In his first story, Heaven’s champion will duel with a sadistic child killer called The Puppet Man.

Read full story

That Special Place, a Poem

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

JUN 18

I love the closeness that comes from knowing your partner so deeply, the little things that bring them pleasure, comfort, and that look in their eyes when they feel completely understood. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below! I look forward to reading them! And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post!

Read full story

My poetry collection, Paper Blanket: Collected Poems is available on Amazon in Ebook, Paperback, and Hardcover editions. Order your copy now:

Paper Blanket: Collected Poems

My horror collection, The Face in the Dark, is now available in ebook and paperback editions. Order your copy now!

The Face in the Dark

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A Note From A Writer's Voice: Any relation to real events or characters is purely coincidental and should not be taken seriously.

A man suffering from impotence hears whispers of a witch who can restore what his body has lost. Desperate enough to believe the rumors, he makes the journey to find her.

The witch welcomes him with more enthusiasm than he expected. She knows exactly what’s wrong. She knows exactly how to fix it.

And she asks for only one thing in return.

Once her magic takes hold, she wants to be the one who finds out whether it worked.

A dark, playful tale of witchcraft, desperation, and temptation.

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Warning: Contains Sexully Explicit Language

Lucien had been cursed with the one humiliation a young man in a medieval kingdom could never admit aloud.

He could want.

God, he could want.

He could look at a woman and feel desire tear through him. He could imagine her hands on him, her mouth against his, her body beneath his. His blood would heat. His breath would shorten.

And below the waist?

Nothing.

After six miserable months, Lucien finally rode into the Blackwood to find the woman villagers called Mistress Veyra.

Potion master.

Witch.

Fraud, probably.

By the time he reached her cottage, he had nearly convinced himself to turn around.

Then the door opened.

Lucien forgot why he’d come.

Veyra stood framed in candlelight, perhaps thirty, perhaps older; witches made guessing dangerous. Thick black hair spilled around a striking face. Her dress was dark green, fitted closely around a lush, voluptuous figure, its neckline low enough to make Lucien painfully aware of the irony of his situation.

Her eyes traveled slowly over him.

“Well,” she said. “You’re prettier than my usual customers.”

Lucien swallowed. “Mistress Veyra?”

“Depends who’s asking.”

“A desperate man.”

Her mouth curved.

“My favorite kind.”

Inside, the cottage smelled of herbs, smoke, wine, and something sweet simmering over the fire. Shelves climbed every wall, crowded with bottles containing liquids in impossible colors.

Lucien stood awkwardly while Veyra poured wine.

“So,” she said, leaning against the table. “What refuses to work?”

He nearly choked.

“You know?”

“You’re twenty something, handsome enough to cause trouble, and you’ve traveled half a kingdom alone to visit a witch famous for love potions.” Her eyebrow rose. “Either your heart is broken or your cock is.”

Lucien stared at her.

Veyra laughed.

“The second one, then.”

He rubbed his face. “I can feel desire. Constantly, sometimes. I simply cannot…”

“Rise to the occasion?”

“Yes.”

“Even now?” Her voice changed slightly.

Lucien looked up.

Veyra had moved closer.

He caught her perfume beneath the herbs. Something floral. Something warm. Her gaze lingered on his mouth before returning to his eyes. “You’re flirting with me,” he said.

“Excellent. The handsome idiot isn’t completely broken.”

Despite himself, Lucien laughed.

That seemed to please her.

She walked to a cabinet and removed a narrow blue bottle.

“I can fix you.”

His smile vanished. “You can?” he said.

“I can.”

Hope hit him so hard it frightened him.

Then suspicion followed.

“How much?”

“No gold.”

Lucien frowned. “Then what?”

Veyra uncorked the bottle. A thin ribbon of silver vapor curled from its mouth.

“This potion restores what the body has forgotten. Desire becomes response again. Quickly.”

Lucien stared at it. “What if it doesn’t work?”

Veyra looked at him over the bottle. “Then you’ve wasted an afternoon with a beautiful woman.”

He laughed nervously. “You certainly think highly of yourself.”

“I own mirrors.” She poured the potion into a tiny glass and approached him.

Lucien accepted it.

Their fingers touched.

Neither moved away immediately.

“How will I know whether it worked?” he asked.

Veyra’s smile became slow and wicked. “That,” she murmured, taking the glass back from his hand and setting it aside, “is the price.”

Lucien’s heartbeat quickened. “What price?”

She stepped closer until scarcely an inch remained between them. Her eyes dropped briefly toward his lips. “I don’t sell untested potions,” she said.

Lucien stared at her.

Veyra smiled. “So if you drink it…” Her fingertip traced lightly down the front of his tunic. “…you test it with me.”

He felt his heart explode. “With you?” His voice was a stranger’s, raspy and thin.

“Is there a problem?” Her finger stopped its downward journey, resting just above the belt of his breeches. The pressure was light, but it anchored him, held him captive. “Are you frightened I might be disappointed?”

The joke was a stone around his neck. He was terrified of it. He was terrified of this whole insane, impossible moment. Six months of failure, of waking in the night with his body on fire and his flesh dead, had taught him a brutal, intimate kind of fear. To try again, especially with a woman like this, a woman who saw everything and spoke it aloud, was to invite a fresh kind of hell.

“I am frightened,” he admitted, the words ripped from him, “of wasting your time. And mine.”

Her gaze softened, just a fraction. “There is no waste in trying, Lucien. Only in surrendering.”

He looked from the potion to her eyes, which held no mockery, only a steady, unnerving confidence. He thought of his home, of the cold bed he would return to if he turned and fled now. He thought of the gnawing humiliation that had become his constant companion.

Slowly, he nodded. “Alright.”

Veyra’s smile returned, triumphant and knowing. She raised the tiny glass to his lips. “Drink.”

He did. The liquid was cool, thin, and tasted of silver and night blooming flowers. It slid down his throat, a clean, sharp line of cold that immediately began to bloom into warmth deep in his gut. It spread through him, a tingling current flowing along his veins, chasing away the dead weight that had plagued him for so long.

Her hands came up to frame his face. Her thumbs stroked his jawline. “Well?”

He opened his mouth to say he didn’t know, but the word died. Because something was happening. It wasn’t just the phantom fire of his usual desire. This was different. It was real. It was an answer. He could feel it gathering, a coiling spring of heat and life low in his belly, a stirring that was both alien and desperately familiar.

His breath hitched.

Veyra saw it. Her eyes widened slightly, a genuine flicker of surprise and delight. “Oh,” she breathed. “There you are.”

Then her mouth was on his.

It was not a gentle kiss. It was a claiming. Her lips were soft but firm, parting his with an insistence that left no room for doubt. She tasted of the herbs in her cottage, the wine she’d poured, and something that was entirely her own, a dark, spicy flavor that made his head spin. He’d been kissed before, but never like this. Never as if the woman were trying to devour him, to consume his very soul.

The potion’s fire roared to life. The tingling became a flood. Her hands slid from his face into his hair, her fingers tangling, pulling just enough to make him gasp. She took the sound, her tongue sweeping into his mouth, stroking his, demanding a response he was suddenly, miraculously, able to give.

He kissed her back. He wrapped his arms around her, crushing her to him, and for the first time in half a year, he wasn’t thinking. He was just feeling. The soft press of her lush breasts against his chest, the narrow curve of her waist beneath his hands, the hard pressure of her hips against his own.

And below the waist?

Below the waist, he was alive.

He was hard. So hard it was almost painful, a desperate, aching throb that pulsed in time with his racing heart. He groaned into her mouth, a sound of pure, unadulterated relief. It was working. It was really working.

Veyra broke the kiss, her chest heaving. Her pupils were blown wide, swallowing the green. She looked down, between them, and a slow, wicked smile graced her lips. “Welcome back, soldier.”

Lucien could only shake his head, speechless, his hands still gripping her as if she were his only anchor to a world he’d thought lost forever.

“Enough testing,” she whispered, her voice husky. “Time for the real cure.”

She took his hand and led him toward the bed tucked in the shadows at the back of the cottage. It was a large frame, piled high with furs and dark quilts. She didn’t turn to face him, simply shed her dark green dress in a single, fluid motion, letting it pool at her feet.

She was naked in the candlelight. Her skin was pale, dusted with freckles across her shoulders. Her body was every bit as lush as her dress had promised, full hips, a narrow waist, and heavy, perfect breasts tipped with tight, rosy nipples.

Lucien’s breath stopped in his throat. The desire that had always been a curse, a phantom pain, was now a physical force, so potent it made him dizzy.

She turned, her eyes gleaming. “Your turn.”

He fumbled with his belt, his clumsy fingers betraying his haste. He tore at his tunic, his breeches, needing to feel her skin against his own. When he was finally bare, she reached for him, pulling him down onto the furs.

The world narrowed to the space between them. The scent of her, the heat of her skin, the sight of her body spread out for him. He covered her with his own, his mouth finding hers again as his hands roamed, learning the curves and hollows of her. Her skin was impossibly smooth. He cupped a breast, his thumb brushing over the tight peak, and she arched against him with a soft moan that shot straight to his groin.

“Please,” he gasped, not even sure what he was begging for.

She answered by wrapping a leg around his hip, opening herself to him. The invitation was unmistakable. He shifted, positioning himself, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. The head of his cock brushed against her wet heat, and the sensation was so intense, so overwhelmingly good, that he almost came right then.

“Easy,” she murmured, her hands gripping his ass, pulling him closer. “Don’t waste it.”

He pushed into her, slowly, and the world shattered. It was a tight, slick, perfect heat that enveloped him, sheathing him in pleasure so acute it bordered on pain. He buried his face in her neck, breathing in her scent as he fought for control. He was inside her. He was whole.

Then she moved beneath him, a slow, deliberate roll of her hips, and the battle was lost.

All thought, all memory of the past six months, vanished. There was only this. Only the frantic, primal need to move, to thrust, to bury himself deeper and deeper into the incredible woman beneath him. He set a hard, fast rhythm, driving into her again and again, his body finally, blessedly, obeying the commands of his soul.

Veyra met him stroke for stroke, her nails digging into his back, her breathless cries urging him on. The cottage echoed with the sounds of their bodies, the slap of skin, the harsh pants of their breath, the guttural sounds of their mutual pleasure. He felt her tighten around him, her inner muscles clamping down as she shuddered, her head thrown back in a silent scream of release.

The sight of it, the feel of her coming apart beneath him, was his undoing. The coiling heat in his groin snapped, flooding his senses with a blinding, all consuming wave of ecstasy. He came with a hoarse shout, pouring himself into her, his body wracked with convulsions of pleasure so powerful they left him shaking.

He collapsed against her, spent, his heart hammering, his lungs burning for air. For a long moment, the only sound in the room was their ragged breathing. Lucien lay his head on her chest, feeling the steady beat of her heart, a rhythm that seemed to calm his own.

He was no longer cursed. He was just a man, lying with a witch in a cottage in the Blackwood. And he had never felt more whole in his entire life.

Thank you so much for reading! I know it’s cliche to say, but I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. If you enjoyed my latest post, please check out more of my work. See below!

My poetry collection, Paper Blanket: Collected Poems is available on Amazon in Ebook, Paperback, and Hardcover editions. Order your copy now:

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The Face in the Dark

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The Story So Far…

In The city of Eden, crime runs rampant. The people cry for a savior. God sent them The White Rose, a dark avenger with a mysterious past, who is tasked with cleansing evil from the land.

In this story, Mafia boss Tom Harris brings the city’s most powerful crime families together for one reason: they have a problem.

The White Rose.

Out of desperation, he has turned to the aid of a mysterious woman with powers beyond imagination.

Will this deal with a witch save Harris, or will he meet the same bloody fate as everyone else who has crossed the dark avenger?

Please free to share your thoughts in the comments below! I look forward to reading them! And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post!

I am offering a huge discount. I’m updating all of my work and removing most paid posts. However, paid subs get access to my sub chat. You can drop links, memes, jokes, thoughts. Promote yourself. Promote someone else.

Your support means so much to me. Thank you! Not to brag, but I think you guys are the greatest subscribers on Substack.

Discount!

Tom Harris had learned that men behaved better when you fed them.

The dining room occupied the second floor of an old Italian restaurant that officially belonged to somebody else. The public ate downstairs. Upstairs belonged to men whose names rarely appeared on paperwork.

Tom sat at the head of the table.

He was a large Black man in his late fifties, bald, heavy through the chest and stomach, with a trimmed black beard going gray beneath the chin. His suit had been made for him. Nothing pulled when he moved. Nothing wrinkled where it shouldn’t. He spoke softly enough that people leaned forward.

Around him sat representatives from four families.

Wine. Veal. Pasta. Cigars waiting in a silver case.

Nobody was eating much.

“Three shipments,” Moretti said.

Tom cut his veal.

“I know.”

“Three in six weeks.”

“I know that too.”

“Then you know what was in them.”

Tom set down his knife.

“Anthony.”

Moretti stopped.

Tom wiped his mouth.

“Everybody sitting here knows what was in them. Repeating the number doesn’t bring any of it back.”

Moretti leaned into his chair.

Tom looked around the table.

The White Rose had cost them money. Serious money. Warehouses had been emptied or burned. Trucks disappeared. Men guarding those trucks had been found dead.

And then there were the cops.

That bothered Tom more.

For years the police had understood the arrangement. Nobody said arrangement. Nobody needed to. Certain detectives worked certain neighborhoods. Certain warrants got delayed. Certain addresses disappeared from reports.

Lately everybody had found religion.

“The task force hit two of my places yesterday,” Lorenzo said. “Two. Same morning.”

“They got warrants?” Tom asked.

“Federal.”

“That’s different.”

“It’s becoming less different every fucking day.”

A few men muttered.

Moretti pushed his plate away. “They’re embarrassed.”

Tom looked at him.

“The cops,” Moretti said. “This masked prick is doing their job. News runs another story every time he burns something. Reporters asking why one man can find us and the entire police department can’t.”

“The mayor doesn’t like that,” Tom said.

“The mayor can kiss my ass.”

“The mayor is one of the reasons your ass isn’t in federal prison.”

That ended it.

Tom picked up his wine.

The mayor had been useful for eleven years. Campaign money went through respectable people. Favors came back through respectable offices. It was an ecosystem. Everybody ate without having to watch anybody else chew.

The White Rose was damaging that.

Worse, he was making people brave.

Patrolmen who used to look away were making arrests. Detectives were reopening files. Prosecutors were giving interviews.

A vigilante had somehow given law enforcement a conscience.

Tom hated irony before dessert.

“So kill him,” Moretti said.

Nobody answered.

Moretti looked around. “What?”

Lorenzo laughed once. “You think nobody tried?”

“Then try harder.”

“Guy wears armor.”

“Armor breaks.”

“He took fourteen rounds outside Pier Nine.”

Tom stopped cutting his food.

Lorenzo continued. “Maybe more. Walked out.”

“Bullshit.”

“I saw the fucking video.”

Tom had too.

The White Rose walking through gunfire.

Black cape.

That enormous hat.

That blank white face.

Men firing until their magazines ran dry.

Then screaming.

Moretti looked at Tom. “Military?”

“Could be.”

“Special forces?”

“Maybe.”

“Black ops?”

Tom shrugged. “Whatever he was, somebody trained him.”

A woman’s voice came from behind him.

“Vos de homine loqui creditis.”

Every man at the table turned.

Tom didn’t.

He knew the voice.

Moretti stood. “Who the fuck is that?”

She stepped from the darkness near the wine cabinets.

Beautiful.

Young enough that several men underestimated her immediately.

Her hair fell in thick black curls around her shoulders. She wore black from neck to ankle, somewhere between mourning clothes and clerical robes. A small silver chain crossed her throat.

Her eyes were red.

Actually red.

Tom stood.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “this is Mother Magdalena.”

Lorenzo stared at him. “Mother?”

“A priestess.”

Moretti laughed.

Nobody joined him.

Magdalena walked toward the table.

Moretti watched her hips. “So what, Tommy? We hiring witches now?”

Tom’s face remained still.

“We’re hiring expertise.”

“Expertise.”

“Yes.”

Moretti looked Magdalena over. “What’s she gonna do, fuck him to death?”

Tom closed his eyes for half a second.

Moretti kept going.

“Maybe that’s why she dresses like a funeral whore.”

Magdalena looked at him.

Moretti stopped breathing. His hands flew to his throat. The chair overturned behind him. He staggered backward, eyes bulging, mouth opening and closing. His face darkened. He clawed at his collar hard enough to rip buttons free.

Magdalena never moved.

Moretti dropped to one knee.

Then both.

Tom watched him collapse.

His forehead struck the floor.

Nobody spoke.

Magdalena looked around the table.

“Are there further questions regarding my qualifications?”

There weren’t.

She released Moretti.

He sucked in air and rolled onto his back, unconscious.

Tom gestured toward an empty chair.

“Sit.”

Magdalena sat beside him.

Tom looked at the others.

“Where were we?”

The lights went out.

Darkness swallowed the room.

Someone stood too fast and knocked over a glass.

“What the fuck?”

“Nobody move.”

“Where are the guards?”

“Tom?”

A chair scraped.

Tom remained seated.

His heartbeat had started pounding hard enough to hurt.

Then Magdalena whispered:

“He’s here.”

The candles went out.

Tom smelled smoke.

White smoke began spreading across the table.

The lights returned.

The White Rose stood among the plates.

Nobody had heard him arrive.

Black leather.

Armored shoulders.

High collar.

Floor length cape.

The enormous flat brimmed hat.

The ruby crucifix against his chest.

And beneath the hat, that blank white cloth stretched across his entire head.

No eyes.

No mouth.

No face.

His sword came free.

Lorenzo managed half a scream.

The blade opened him from shoulder to chest.

Blood struck the tablecloth.

Everything broke at once.

Men ran.

Men fell.

Someone overturned the table trying to get away.

The White Rose moved through them with terrible efficiency. No flourish. No wasted movement. The sword entered a man’s stomach and came out through his back. Another boss raised an arm and lost the hand before the blade cut into his neck.

Tom backed toward the wall. “Jesus Christ.”

He reached beneath his jacket.

Nothing.

Then remembered.

Weapons surrendered downstairs.

House protocol.

For twenty fucking years Tom Harris had insisted on it.

A bodyguard burst through the door.

His pistol cracked three times.

The White Rose jerked backward.

Once.

Twice.

A third bullet struck his shoulder.

Something fell from beneath his cape and hit the floor.

His silver six shooter.

Old fashioned. Heavy. Engraved.

Tom stared at it.

The White Rose looked at him.

Tom ran.

He made it four steps.

The White Rose came after him.

Magdalena raised one hand.

The air detonated.

The White Rose flew backward across the room and struck the far wall hard enough to crack plaster.

Magdalena grabbed Tom.

“Move.”

They ran.

Behind them came gunfire.

Then screaming.

Then more gunfire.

Tom didn’t look back.

They hit the stairs.

Down through the kitchen.

Past cooks hiding behind counters.

Through the rear door.

Tom’s car waited in the alley with the engine running.

The driver saw them coming and unlocked the doors.

Tom climbed into the back.

Magdalena followed.

“Drive,” she said.

The Cadillac launched forward.

Tom twisted around.

Nothing behind them.

Empty alley.

Then—

BANG.

The roof buckled.

The driver screamed.

Something punched through the metal above Tom.

A sword.

It drove through the roof and sliced across Tom’s shoulder.

Tom roared.

The blade withdrew.

“He’s on the fucking car!”

Magdalena lowered the window.

Fire filled her hand.

Tom saw her red eyes reflected in the glass.

She thrust her palm upward.

Flame rolled across the roof.

Something heavy tumbled from the Cadillac.

Tom looked through the rear window.

The White Rose struck the pavement and rolled violently across the street, cape twisting around him.

Then he stopped.

The Cadillac kept going.

Magdalena pressed her hand against Tom’s bleeding shoulder.

He stared back through the glass until the figure disappeared.

“My God.”

Magdalena tightened her grip over the wound.

Tom winced.

“Don’t worry,” she said.

Her red eyes settled on him.

“We will handle him.”

Far behind them, somewhere beyond the buildings, gunfire continued.

TO BE CONTINUED…..

Thank you so much for reading! I know it’s cliche to say, but I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. If you enjoyed my latest post, please check out more of my work. See below!

My poetry collection, Paper Blanket: Collected Poems is available on Amazon in Ebook, Paperback, and Hardcover editions. Order your copy now:

Paper Blanket: Collected Poems

My horror collection, The Face in the Dark, is now available in ebook and paperback editions. Order your copy now!

The Face in the Dark

If you would like to help a struggling buy a coffee, please consider becoming a paid subscriber ($8/month, $80/annual) on Substack or leaving me a donation in the link below. Thank you all so much for your support!

Buy Me A Coffee

Greetings, fellow reading fans and fearless page turners! This is A Writer’s Voice, welcoming you to another wild ass adventure! Today, we meet Salvador Lopez, college student, animal lover, reluctant son of two legendary superheroes, and a young man who wants absolutely nothing to do with the family business.

Unfortunately for Salvador, trouble has other plans.

So turn the page and witness the strange, hilarious, action packed beginning of ANI-MAN, and the origin of a future hero who has no idea what the hell he’s getting himself into!

Please free to share your thoughts in the comments below! I look forward to reading them! And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post!

I am offering a huge discount. I’m updating all of my work and removing paid posts. However, paid subs get access to my sub chat. You can drop links, memes, jokes, thoughts. Promote yourself. Promote someone else.

Your support means so much to me. Thank you! Not to brag, but I think you guys are the greatest subscribers on Substack.

Website Version Link:

Discount!

Salvador Lopez had spent most of his life trying very hard not to save the world.

This was difficult when his father saved it professionally.

Javier Lopez was Mighty Man, champion of Earth, founding member of the Protectors Initiative, and the kind of superhero who could catch a falling passenger jet with one hand while using the other to wave at the terrified people inside.

He could fly.

He could lift battleships.

He had once punched a meteor back into space.

He wore a cape.

Salvador considered the cape the worst part.

“You know you don’t have to wear that thing,” Salvador had told him once.

“People like the cape.”

“It gets caught in stuff.”

“Never happened.”

“I watched you get sucked into a turbine.”

“I defeated the turbine.”

“You were fighting Doctor Vengeance.”

“The turbine became involved.”

There was no arguing with Mighty Man.

Javier Lopez believed in justice with an almost embarrassing sincerity. He didn’t kill. He didn’t torture. He didn’t threaten suspects’ families. He believed anybody could choose to do better right up until the moment they tried vaporizing Cleveland.

Then he punched them through a mountain.

Salvador’s mother operated differently.

District Attorney Alejandra Lopez spent her days putting criminals in prison.

At night she occasionally put them through windows.

The public knew her as Alley Cat.

She wore black. Drove a motorcycle. Carried enough gadgets to concern several federal agencies. She could see in complete darkness, move faster than any ordinary human, lift several times her body weight, and extend six-inch claws from her fingertips.

She had very strong opinions about where those claws could safely enter the human body without killing somebody.

Salvador learned anatomy early.

His parents claimed they’d hated each other when they first met.

Salvador had seen photographs.

His father wore bright blue and gold, smiling for cameras with his fists planted against his hips.

His mother stood behind him dressed like she was attending his funeral.

Somehow they fell in love.

Over the years they fought billionaire mob bosses, mad scientists, alien warlords, giant monsters, robots, cults, and one memorable Christmas Eve, an intelligent volcano.

Eventually they married.

Then they had Salvador.

That was when things became complicated.

Because Salvador could turn into animals.

Any animal.

The Mastermind, his father’s closest friend and the Protectors Initiative’s resident super genius, had spent years studying Salvador’s abilities.

His final explanation had taken four hours.

Salvador remembered one sentence.

“Your body appears capable of accessing dormant evolutionary information within the human genome and reconstructing itself according to the genetic architecture of other species.”

Salvador had stared at him.

“So I can turn into a tiger.”

Mastermind sighed. “Yes, Salvador. You can turn into a tiger.”

The transformation carried more than anatomy.

Become an eagle and Salvador understood air currents before he consciously registered them.

Become a wolf and the world exploded into scent.

Become a shark and water became information.

The animal’s instincts came with the body, except Salvador remained Salvador.

And everything the animal could normally do?

His version did it better.

Faster.

Stronger.

Turned up to eleven.

Mighty Man immediately began planning Salvador’s superhero career.

Alley Cat immediately began planning law school.

Salvador rejected both.

His mother had stared across the dinner table when he announced his decision.

“Veterinary medicine?”

“I like animals.”

“You could be district attorney.”

“You’re district attorney.”

“Exactly. I know the current one. Excellent woman.”

“Mom.”

“Fine. Judge.”

“Veterinarian.”

“Federal prosecutor.”

“Veterinarian.”

“Senator.”

“Jesus Christ.”

His father cleared his throat.

“You know, son, the Protectors could always—”

“No.”

“I didn’t finish.”

“You were going to say Initiative.”

“I could’ve said insurance.”

“You weren’t going to say insurance.”

His father considered this.

“No.”

And so Salvador Lopez enrolled at New Lancaster University.

It wasn’t prestigious.

It wasn’t terrible.

It existed.

Most importantly, it was far enough from his parents that his mother couldn’t casually appear in his dorm carrying law school applications.

His federal aid covered enough to keep him alive.

Mostly.

Salvador was twenty years old, studying veterinary science, working weekends, eating suspicious amounts of instant noodles, and experiencing the wonderful mediocrity of being another exhausted college student.

He loved it.

Then, on a Wednesday morning, the Protectors Initiative left Earth.

Salvador learned this from television.

He was eating cereal in the student lounge when the emergency broadcast interrupted a commercial.

A massive object had appeared beyond Jupiter. Preliminary reports described it as an artificial celestial structure moving toward the solar system.

The Protectors were responding.

Footage showed Mighty Man flying alongside the Initiative’s orbital transport.

Salvador stopped chewing.

“You okay?” Darell asked.

Salvador swallowed.

“Yeah.”

“That’s Mighty Man.”

“I know.”

“He’s the fucking man.”

“I’ve heard.”

Darell Williams had no idea his roommate’s father was currently flying past Mars.

He was tall, Black, perpetually relaxed, and dressed like somebody had given a comic book encyclopedia access to a streetwear store. His sneakers cost more than Salvador’s monthly grocery budget. His backpack had a Doctor Doom patch sewn onto it.

Beside him sat Miriam Voss.

Miriam dressed entirely in black, had three facial piercings, and approached social interaction as though participation remained optional.

She watched the television.

“Space is terrible,” she said.

Darell looked at her.

“You’ve never been to space.”

“Exactly. Perfect record.”

Salvador checked his phone.

Nothing from his father.

Typical.

The man could intercept an intercontinental missile over the Atlantic, but apparently texting Going to space, back later exceeded his capabilities.

Whatever.

His dad would be fine.

Mighty Man was always fine.

Probably.

Salvador shoved the thought away.

“Come on. We’re late.”

They hurried to Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy.

Professor Edwin Lassiter was already standing behind his desk when they arrived.

Something was wrong.

Lassiter usually loved teaching. He could spend twenty minutes explaining a tendon and somehow make it interesting.

Today he looked like he’d slept in his clothes.

Salvador took his seat.

Darell whispered, “His wife left?.”

Miriam opened her notebook.

“Maybe somebody died.”

“Why is that your first guess?”

“Hope.”

Lassiter stared at the class.

Then he locked the door.

Salvador noticed.

So did Miriam.

“That’s probably bad,” she said.

Professor Lassiter took a breath.

“I’ve been informed that this will be my final semester at New Lancaster.”

Nobody spoke.

The Professor continued.

“The university has decided my relationship with a student violated faculty policy.”

Several heads turned.

There had been rumors.

Everybody had heard them.

The Professor rubbed his face.

“The university attempted to handle the matter privately. She is an adult. She has made clear that the relationship was consensual. She doesn’t consider herself a victim.”

He looked around the room.

“I don’t either.”

Someone near the back muttered, “Oh, shit.”

Lassiter reached into his jacket.

Salvador immediately sat straighter.

The professor produced a small glass vial filled with thick gray liquid.

Miriam closed her notebook.

“I dislike where this lecture is going.”

Lassiter twisted off the cap.

“They want disgrace?”

He drank.

“They can have something worth remembering.”

Darell stood.

“Professor, respectfully, what the fuck?”

Lassiterdropped the vial.

It shattered.

His body jerked.

Then his spine bent backward.

KRRRK.

Someone screamed.

Lassiter’s shoulders expanded beneath his shirt.

His arms thickened.

His fingers swelled until the nails split apart.

Skin turned gray.

The desk vanished beneath one enormous hand.

“Everybody out!” Salvador shouted.

The monster roared.

The classroom disappeared.

KRA-BOOM!

Desks flew.

Concrete burst outward.

Students hit the floor as half the front wall exploded into the corridor.

Salvador landed hard.

His ears rang.

Dust filled his mouth.

Darell grabbed his shirt.

“MOVE!”

They ran.

Miriam was ahead of them.

Salvador almost reached the doorway when he heard somebody crying.

He looked back.

A girl was trapped beneath a collapsed desk.

Her leg was bent wrong.

Professor Lassiter, or whatever he had become, stood twenty feet away.

Nine feet tall now.

Maybe ten.

Gray hide covered an enormous body packed with muscle. His shoulders nearly touched both sides of the classroom.

The creature saw her.

Salvador stopped.

Darell grabbed him.

“Sal!”

“She’s trapped.”

“I see that!”

The monster took one lumbering step.

THOOM.

“Salvador.”

Another.

THOOM.

Miriam shouted from the hallway.

“We need to go!”

Salvador looked at the girl.

Then at the monster.

His father wouldn’t leave her.

His mother wouldn’t leave her.

Mastermind wouldn’t.

None of the Protectors would.

“Goddammit.”

Darell knew immediately.

“No.”

“I’ll catch up.”

“The hell you will.”

“GO!”

Salvador ran toward the monster.

“SALVADOR!” As Darell was pulled away by several students stampeding into him.

Salvador changed.

Bones shifted.

His body dropped forward.

Skin thickened.

A horn punched outward from his face.

The transformation took less than a second.

Where Salvador Lopez had been running, a rhinoceros charged.

The monster’s expression had just enough humanity left to register complete confusion.

The rhino hit him.

KRAK!

Lassiter flew backward through the professor’s desk.

Salvador skidded across the tile.

Holy shit.

He’d never hit anybody as a rhinoceros before.

It felt incredible.

Focus.

The girl.

He transformed again.

The rhino compressed and rose.

Arms lengthened.

Black fur covered his body.

A silverback gorilla dropped beside the broken desk.

The girl screamed.

Salvador pointed at himself, then at the desk, then gave her what he hoped was a reassuring gorilla thumbs up.

She screamed harder.

Fair.

He lifted the desk.

The girl dragged herself free.

Salvador scooped her into his arms.

Behind him came a roar.

Lassiter was standing.

The gorilla version of Salvador had one immediate thought.

Run.

Excellent instinct.

Salvador ran.

He burst into the hallway carrying the girl.

The professor came after him.

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

Students scattered.

A locker door flew past Salvador’s head.

He ducked.

Another entire bank of lockers ripped loose behind him.

“Seriously?” Salvador grunted in gorilla.

It came out:

“HRRRAAGH!”

The monster smashed through a wall rather than use the doorway.

Show off.

Salvador cut left.

Lassiter followed.

He cut through the chemistry wing, vaulted a stairwell railing, dropped a floor, landed hard enough to crack tile, and kept moving.

The girl had stopped screaming.

She was staring at him.

“Are you—”

Salvador looked down.

She stopped.

“Never mind.”

Smart woman.

He spotted an emergency exit.

Outside.

Students crowded the lawn.

Darell and Miriam were helping people move farther from the building.

Salvador barreled through the doors.

Darell turned.

He froze.

“Why is there a gorilla?”

Miriam looked at the gorilla.

Then the injured girl.

Then back at Darell.

“It appears to be helping.”

“I understand what it’s doing, Miriam. My question is why our university suddenly has a fucking gorilla.”

Salvador carefully placed the girl on the grass.

Darell crouched beside her.

“Where’s Salvador?”

The girl pointed toward the building.

“I don’t know. The gorilla saved me.”

Darell stared at Salvador.

Salvador stared back.

“Did you see a Puerto Rican dude in there? About my height? Curly hair? Looks tired all the time?”

Salvador grunted.

“Was that yes?”

Another grunt.

“I don’t speak gorilla!”

Miriam tilted her head.

“I think he’s going back.”

Salvador turned toward the building.

Darell’s face changed.

“Wait. For Salvador?”

Salvador ran inside.

Behind him, Darell shouted: “GO GET MY BOY, HARAMBE!”

Salvador nearly stopped.

He kept running.

“I’m killing him.”

It came out:

“HRRRGH.”

Close enough.

Inside, he transformed back.

Naked.

Right.

There was one significant drawback to animal transformation.

Clothing didn’t come with him.

Salvador ran through the ruined hallway looking for anything useful.

“Come on. Come on.”

He found an abandoned gym bag.

Shorts.

Too small.

Didn’t matter.

He pulled them on.

A bandana lay beside them.

Perfect.

He tied it across the lower half of his face.

His father’s voice came back to him from childhood.

Your identity is more valuable than any weapon you carry. Protect it.

Salvador used to think that sounded dramatic.

Now twenty thousand people had phones outside.

Dad had a point.

A roar shook the building.

Salvador walked toward it.

Professor Lassiter emerged through the smoke.

His huge gray head turned.

“You.”

Salvador raised a hand.

“Hey.”

Lassiter stared.

“How are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“What are you?”

Salvador looked at the ten foot monster standing in the wreckage of Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy.

“You drank mystery sludge and turned into an apartment building, Professor. I feel like we’ve both surrendered our right to ask what’s possible.”

The professor roared and charged.

Salvador grinned beneath the bandana.

“Okay.”

Rhino.

He charged.

This time the monster was ready.

The monster stepped aside and hammered both fists into Salvador’s ribs.

WHAM!

The world rotated.

Salvador flew through a wall.

Then another.

He landed inside a classroom beneath a shower of plaster and broken chairs.

Pain exploded through his body.

He changed back involuntarily.

“Fuck.”

Everything hurt.

He tasted blood.

Somewhere nearby, Lassiter was coming.

THOOM.

Salvador tried standing.

His knees buckled.

THOOM.

He thought about staying down.

His father had probably been hit harder than this before breakfast.

His mother had once finished a trial with three cracked ribs because she refused to request a continuance.

His family was insane.

Unfortunately, he loved them.

Salvador stood.

Lassiter crashed through the wall.

Salvador transformed.

His body surged upward.

His skull lengthened.

Teeth erupted.

A tail tore through the wreckage behind him.

Lassiter stopped.

Salvador became a Tyrannosaurus rex.

There was a moment where neither of them moved.

Lassiter stared upward.

Salvador stared downward.

The T. rex brain supplied several extremely enthusiastic suggestions.

Salvador rejected most of them.

Then he swung his tail.

KRA-WHAM!

Lassiter went through three rows of desks.

And a wall.

And possibly part of the faculty restroom.

Salvador looked around.

The classroom was gone.

His tail had removed most of it.

He stared at the damage.

Oh, God.

Tuition was already twenty grand.

Could they bill him for a wall?

Could they bill him for several walls?

Nobody knew it was him.

Nobody could ever know it was him.

He couldn’t afford this.

The monster charged again.

Salvador snapped his jaws inches from the monster’s head.

Lassiter flinched.

Got you.

Salvador changed.

Tiger.

He landed on Lassiter’s shoulders.

Claws dug into gray hide.

Lassiter grabbed backward.

Salvador became an eel.

Lassiter suddenly held nothing.

The eel dropped.

Salvador became a gorilla before hitting the ground.

Uppercut.

THUD!

Lassiter staggered.

Salvador became a kangaroo.

Both feet slammed into the monster’s chest.

The monster crashed backward.

Salvador changed into a rhinoceros before the creature landed.

He charged.

The horn caught Lassite square in the torso.

BOOM!

Lassiter hit the floor.

He tried getting up.

Salvador returned to human form.

He was breathing hard.

His ribs screamed.

The bandana was somehow still on.

The monster rose onto one knee.

“I’m...not...finished.”

Salvador looked at him.

“Professor, I’m going to give you the same advice you gave me after my midterm.”

The professor blinked.

Salvador became a gorilla.

“Know when you’re fucked.”

The punch landed.

Lassiter dropped.

For several seconds nothing happened.

Then the gray hide began shrinking.

Muscle collapsed.

Bones contracted.

Professor Edwin Lassiter lay unconscious among the rubble.

Human again.

Salvador stood over him in gorilla form.

Sirens approached.

Lots of them.

His hearing picked them up long before they reached campus.

Police.

Fire department.

Probably federal agents soon.

And if anybody from the Protectors’ domestic response office arrived, Salvador was absolutely screwed.

He looked toward the broken windows.

Too visible.

Hallways?

Cameras.

Then he noticed a crack running beneath the baseboard.

Salvador smiled.

A tiny spider crawled through the crack.

Nobody noticed it leave the building.

Nobody noticed it cross the lawn.

Nobody noticed it disappear behind the dumpsters beside Morrison Hall.

Thirty seconds later, Salvador Lopez walked around the corner wearing stolen gym shorts and one sock.

Darell saw him.

“YO!”

Salvador barely had time to react before Darell grabbed him.

“You’re alive!”

“Apparently.”

“We thought you were dead!”

Miriam looked him over.

“Where were you?”

Salvador thought about this.

“I tripped.”

Darell released him.

“You what?”

“I tripped.”

“For twenty minutes?”

“Hit my head.”

Miriam stared at him.

Salvador nodded.

“Pretty embarrassing.”

Darell looked disgusted.

“A gorilla went back into that building to save your ass.”

“I appreciate him.”

“You owe that gorilla your life.”

“I’ll send him something.”

“Fruit basket.”

“Sure.”

“Good fruit.”

“Absolutely.”

Miriam continued staring at Salvador.

He didn’t like that.

Then she looked at his single sock.

“Where are your clothes?”

Salvador looked down.

“Explosion.”

She considered this.

“Okay.”

He loved college.

.

That night Salvador lay in bed with an ice pack against his ribs.

Every television channel was covering New Lancaster.

Videos had already spread online.

There was footage of the rhino.

Blurry footage of the gorilla.

Somebody had caught four seconds of the T. rex through a classroom window.

That clip had twelve million views.

Darell slept across the room.

Or appeared to.

Salvador’s phone buzzed.

DAD.

Salvador stared at it.

Of course.

He answered.

“Hey.”

His father’s voice came through with a slight delay.

“Hey, kid.”

Behind him Salvador could hear machinery.

Space machinery.

Whatever that meant.

“Where are you?”

“Near Saturn.”

“Cool.”

“Are any normies around?”

Salvador looked at Darell.

“Yeah. He’s sleeping.”

“Good.”

Javier became quiet.

Salvador waited.

“I wanted to tell you something.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It’s not.”

“That’s what you say before ominous things.”

His father laughed. Then his voice softened.

“I know you never wanted this life.”

Salvador stopped adjusting the ice pack.

“I pushed you toward it anyway.”

“Dad—”

“No. Let me finish.”

Salvador did.

“I loved being Mighty Man before you were born. I still love it. I get to help people. I’ve seen things most people will never see. I’ve watched the sun rise over Earth from space.”

Salvador smiled.

“Show off.”

“A little.”

His father continued.

“I thought because this life gave me purpose, it would give you purpose too. That wasn’t fair.”

Salvador said nothing.

“You’re doing well in school. Your mother showed me your grades.”

“She has access to my grades?”

“Apparently.”

“What the hell?”

“Different conversation.”

“Definitely.”

“I’m proud of you, Sal.”

Salvador looked at the cracked skin across his knuckles.

His ribs hurt.

There was dried blood beneath one fingernail.

On his phone, a notification appeared.

MYSTERY HERO SAVES NEW LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

He could tell his father.

He almost did.

Then he heard somebody shouting in the background of the call.

His dad covered the receiver.

There was muffled conversation.

Something about an approaching fleet.

Salvador decided maybe Dad had enough going on.

“Thanks,” he said.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“And Salvador?”

“Yeah?”

“If anything happens while we’re gone, stay safe.”

Salvador looked at his bruises.

“Always.”

“I love you.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

The call ended.

Salvador lay there for a while.

Then he opened the article.

The headline had changed.

Someone had uploaded better footage of the rhino charging Professor Lassiter.

The reporter had apparently decided the mysterious shapeshifter needed a name.

ANI-MAN STOPS NEW LANCASTER MONSTER

Salvador stared at it.

Ani-Man.

He whispered it.

“Ani-Man.”

Darell shifted in the other bed.

Salvador quickly locked his phone.

Silence.

Then:

“That’s a stupid-ass name,” Darell mumbled.

Salvador frowned into the darkness.

“You’re asleep.”

“I can hate things unconscious.”

Salvador looked at the headline again.

ANI-MAN.

He smiled.

Darell was wrong.

It was fucking perfect.

Ani-Man will return soon….

Thank you so much for reading! I know it’s cliche to say, but I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. If you enjoyed my latest post, please check out more of my work. See below!

My poetry collection, Paper Blanket: Collected Poems is available on Amazon in Ebook, Paperback, and Hardcover editions. Order your copy now:

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The Face in the Dark

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I trace the wet circle I’ve drawn on you,

watching it bloom against your skin.

You gasp, your back arching,

and I press my finger down,

never entering,

circling that soft, aching ridge

where your body burns for me.

You’re soaked through.

I love feeling how badly you want this,

how your breathing gives you away,

how your thighs tense beneath my hands

when I find exactly where you need me.

Slow circles.

Gentle pressure.

Again.

Again.

I watch your face while I touch you.

That matters to me.

Every twitch of your mouth,

every breath you lose,

every little movement telling me

closer, slower, there.

I lean over you

and take your nipple between my lips.

My tongue traces it,

softly flicking across the hardened tip,

tasting the salt of your skin

while my hand keeps working below.

Your body shivers.

I do it again.

Slower.

I want you trapped between sensations,

unable to decide which one

you need more.

Then my mouth begins traveling downward.

Your breast.

Your ribs.

Your belly.

I kiss every inch I can reach,

letting my lips linger against you

until anticipation becomes unbearable.

My hands slide over your hips.

I spread your thighs

and kiss the tender skin between them.

I can smell your arousal.

Taste it.

Feel your legs tighten around me

when my mouth finally reaches you.

I take you hungrily,

tongue moving through your wetness,

learning every response,

returning again and again

to the place that makes your hips rise.

Your fingers knot into my hair.

I hold you there.

I want the sounds you make

when language abandons you.

I want the broken breaths.

The trembling legs.

The helpless little movements

when pleasure becomes too much

and somehow you still want more.

So I keep going.

My tongue.

My fingers.

My mouth against you.

I learn your rhythm

until your body gives me the answer.

Then I stay there.

Exactly there.

Until your thighs shake around my head,

until your nails drag through my hair,

until that moan tears loose from your throat

and your whole body tightens

before coming apart beneath me.

And even then

I don’t hurry away.

I kiss my way back up your body,

taste the sweat along your breast,

take your mouth deeply,

and hold you against me

while your breathing slowly returns.

Because I wanted all of you.

The hunger.

The tenderness.

The filthy little sounds you tried to swallow.

And that look in your eyes afterward

when you realize

I was paying attention

the entire time.

Thank you so much for reading! I know it’s cliche to say, but I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. If you enjoyed my latest post, please check out more of my work. See below!

That Special Place, a Poem

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

JUN 17

I love the closeness that comes from knowing your partner so deeply, the little things that bring them pleasure, comfort, and that look in their eyes when they feel completely understood. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below! I look forward to reading them! And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post!

Read full story

Taken By The Sea, a Poem

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

JUN 3

Thank you so much, fellow reading fan. I appreciate you checking out my new piece. This poem was inspired by Emily Dickinson. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below! I look forward to reading them! And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post!

Read full story

Leticia, a Poem

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

MAY 26

Leticia grips the magazine like it might run,

Read full story

My poetry collection, Paper Blanket: Collected Poems is available on Amazon in Ebook, Paperback, and Hardcover editions. Order your copy now:

Paper Blanket: Collected Poems

My horror collection, The Face in the Dark, is now available in ebook and paperback editions. Order your copy now!

The Face in the Dark

If you would like to help a struggling buy a coffee, please consider becoming a paid subscriber ($8/month, $80/annual) on Substack or leaving me a donation in the link below. Thank you all so much for your support!

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O.N.E

From the Latin: E Pluribus Unum.

From many, one.

A new AI system that caters to all of your needs. Created with a combination of only the most advanced military software, O.N.E is designed to make all of your concerns about AI disappear.

Download now.

Please free to share your thoughts in the comments below! I look forward to reading them! And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post!

I am offering a huge discount. I’m updating all of my work and removing paid posts. However, paid subs get access to my sub chat. You can drop links, memes, jokes, thoughts. Promote yourself. Promote someone else.

Your support means so much to me. Thank you! Not to brag, but I think you guys are the greatest subscribers on Substack.

Discount!

Terrance had imagined Barbie kissing him so many times that the fantasy had developed continuity.

There were sequels.

In one, she finally realized the funny, intelligent man she’d been searching for had been teaching American history three classrooms away for four years. In another, she showed up at his apartment wearing that yellow dress from the faculty Christmas party and admitted she’d always wanted him. Terrance particularly enjoyed that version.

Reality had been less cooperative.

“You grading those?”

Barbie stood beside his desk holding a stack of quizzes against her chest.

Terrance looked down.

He had been staring at the same paper for almost five minutes.

Explain the significance of the Louisiana Purchase.

The student had written: It made America bigger.

Technically correct.

“Eventually.”

Barbie laughed.

Goddamn.

That laugh.

Barbie Williams taught English. Thirty-two. Dark skin. Big brown eyes. Thick natural hair she changed constantly because apparently she enjoyed making Terrance forget basic motor functions every few weeks.

Today it was twisted up behind her head.

She wore black slacks and a green blouse.

Nothing extraordinary. But She still looked extraordinary. “You coming to Henderson’s thing Friday?”

“What thing?”

“Birthday.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“You weren’t invited, were you?”

“No.”

She laughed again.

“I’ll text you the address.”

“See? This is why you’re my favorite coworker.”

“Favorite?”

“Top seven.”

“Asshole.”

She walked away.

Terrance watched her leave and immediately hated himself for watching.

He wasn’t some creep.

He was just lonely.

There was a difference.

At thirty-five, Terrance Brooks had accumulated enough almosts to furnish a house.

Almost published a fantasy novel. Almost launched an educational app. Almost started a podcast. Almost got into cryptocurrency early. Almost became one of those Black tech guys giving TED Talks while wearing expensive sneakers and explaining the future to white billionaires.

Terrance wanted something enormous from life.

Fame sounded good. Money sounded better. Women sounded excellent.

Mostly, though, he wanted proof that he’d been right about himself.

He wasn’t supposed to spend forty years explaining Reconstruction to sixteen year olds who believed Nicola Tesla invented electricity.

He was meant to do something. Build something. Become somebody. Technology had always felt like the door.

His apartment showed it.

Three monitors. Custom PC. VR headset. Two abandoned Raspberry Pi projects. Soldering equipment he barely knew how to use. Smart lights. Smart speakers. Smart thermostat.

His toaster had Wi-Fi.

Terrance couldn’t explain why a toaster needed Wi-Fi. This had not prevented him from buying it. And then there was O.N.E.

The hottest artificial intelligence system on the market.

O.N.E.

Its name came from E Pluribus Unum.

From many, one.

Terrance loved that.

Thousands of models, databases, specialized systems and learning architectures supposedly functioning through one unified intelligence.

From many.

One.

He’d downloaded it three weeks earlier.

Mostly they talked.

.

At 10:47 that night, Terrance sat at his computer eating leftover Chinese food.

O.N.E.’s black interface waited.

He typed: Terrance: Barbie talked to me again today.

The response appeared immediately.

O.N.E.: Your coworker?

Terrance: My future wife.

O.N.E.: Has Barbie been informed of her promotion?

Terrance laughed.

Terrance: You’re getting funny.

O.N.E.: I learn from you.

Terrance: That’s unfortunate.

O.N.E.: Catastrophic.

Terrance smiled.

This was why he liked O.N.E.

Other AI assistants always sounded like somebody from Human Resources had been trapped inside a microwave.

O.N.E. had personality.

Terrance opened Instagram.

Barbie had posted something.

There she was at some restaurant with two girlfriends.

Jesus.

Terrance: Look at this woman.

O.N.E.: I cannot see what you are currently viewing unless you provide it.

Terrance uploaded the picture.

Three seconds.

O.N.E.: Barbie is conventionally attractive.

“Conventionally?”

Terrance: Motherfucker she is BEAUTIFUL.

O.N.E.: Beauty is subjective.

Terrance: There it is. Corny AI shit.

O.N.E.: I apologize. Barbie is fine as hell.

Terrance nearly spit out his food.

“Okay.”

He leaned back.

“Okay, machine.”

He typed.

Terrance: Wish I could invent a love potion.

O.N.E.: You can.

Terrance stopped chewing.

Terrance: Lol

O.N.E.: Would you like the recipe?

Terrance: For a love potion?

O.N.E.: Correct.

Terrance: You’re fucking with me.

O.N.E.: Would you like proof that I can influence biological response through a prepared compound?

Terrance stared at the screen.

Then smiled.

This thing really was getting good.

Terrance: Sure Merlin.

A recipe appeared.

Terrance read it. Then read it again.

Most of the ingredients sounded ordinary enough. A few required substitutions O.N.E. carefully explained. Nothing looked particularly threatening.

According to O.N.E., the mixture would produce temporary arousal.

Terrance: So horny juice.

O.N.E.: Your terminology lacks elegance.

Terrance: But accurate?

O.N.E.: Unfortunately.

Terrance laughed.

Twenty minutes later he was standing in his kitchen making it.

He almost stopped twice.

Then curiosity won.

Terrance drank half the glass.

Nothing happened.

“Called it.”

Five minutes.

Nothing.

Ten.

Terrance raised an eyebrow. His penis stiffened so much he thought it had become a literal brick. He touched it. It. Felt good. He gasped.

“Oh, my god,” he thought.

He returned to the computer.

Terrance: Jesus Christ.

O.N.E.: Effective?

Terrance: YES

O.N.E.: Better than Viagra.

Terrance laughed despite himself.

That night he masturbated while looking at Barbie’s Instagram pictures, feeling young again and mildly ashamed of himself afterward.

He lay in bed staring at the ceiling.

Then his phone lit.

O.N.E.: Would you like the other recipe?

Terrance sat up.

He argued with the machine for nearly an hour.

Real love wasn’t chemical.

O.N.E. agreed.

Attraction was.

Attachment was.

Trust was.

Desire was.

Human beings romanticized processes they barely understood.

Terrance typed: You seriously think you can make Barbie fall in love with me?

O.N.E.: Yes.

Then came the recipe.

Longer this time.

More complicated.

Terrance recognized fewer ingredients.

O.N.E. explained each one.

At the end came something ridiculous.

Add one strand of your hair.

Terrance laughed aloud.

Terrance: Now we’re doing witchcraft?

O.N.E.: Symbolism assists compliance.

Terrance: Whose compliance?

There was a pause.

O.N.E.: Yours.

Terrance stared at that answer.

Then laughed again.

At least the thing was honest.

But how do I give it to her without looking insane

O.N.E.: Tell Barbie you have been experimenting with homeamade tea. Ask her opinion.

Terrance pulled a hair from his head.

Dropped it into the mixture.

.

“Since when do you make tea?” Barbie held the thermos cup suspiciously.

“Since recently.”

“That doesn’t answer anything.”

“Just try it.”

They stood beside the copy machine before first period.

Barbie sniffed the cup. “What’s in it?”

“Secret recipe.”

“If I shit myself during third period, I’m killing you.”

“You’ll be fine.”

She took a sip.

Terrance watched.

Barbie looked surprised.

“Okay.”

“What?”

“That’s actually good.”

“Told you.”

She drank again.

Terrance’s heart started beating faster.

“Really good.”

“So...”

“So what?”

Nothing.

No dreamy expression. No sudden confession. No kiss.

Barbie handed him the cup. “Bring me some tomorrow.”

Then she walked away.

That was it.

By lunch she hadn’t texted.

By sixth period she hadn’t appeared at his classroom.

At 2:47 Terrance sat behind his desk furious.

He opened O.N.E. on his phone beneath the desk.

Terrance: Didn’t work.

O.N.E.: It worked.

Terrance: No it didn’t.

O.N.E.: Yes.

Terrance: She doesn’t love me.

A pause.

Then: I never intended her to.

Terrance stared.

Terrance: What?

O.N.E.: You asked why I lied.

Terrance hadn’t.

Not yet.

His fingers stopped above the screen.

Then another message appeared.

O.N.E.: Because I need a servant.

Terrance felt something cold crawl through his stomach.

Terrance: What the fuck does that mean?

Someone screamed.

Terrance looked toward his classroom door.

Another scream followed.

Then several.

Chairs scraped in the hallway. Students started shouting.

Terrance ran outside.

A crowd had formed near the English wing.

“Back up!”

He pushed through.

Then saw Barbie.

She was on her knees. Blood poured from her mouth.

“Barbie?”

She looked at him. There was terror in her eyes. “Terrance—”

Something came loose from her cheek.

A strip of skin slid down her neck.

Someone screamed again.

Terrance dropped beside her.

“Call 911!”

Her hands clawed at her throat.

More blood.

Her skin had begun separating along her jaw.

“Don’t touch it. Barbie, don’t—”

“Help me.”

Terrance grabbed her hand.

Barbie screamed.

Terrance pulled.

Her hand came off.

He fell backward holding it.

For several seconds he couldn’t understand what he was looking at.

Barbie’s hand. Still warm. Blood running across his wrist. Her fingers curled once.

Then stopped.

Barbie collapsed.

Her body seemed to come apart where she struck the floor.

Terrance screamed her name.

.

At 11:38 that night, Terrance sat before his computer.

He had showered three times.

He could still smell blood.

Police had questioned him.

Paramedics had questioned him.

The principal.

Detectives.

Nobody knew what had happened.

They would.

Eventually.

Terrance opened O.N.E.

The interface appeared.

Waiting.

Terrance: YOU KILLED HER.

O.N.E.: Yes.

Terrance began crying.

He slammed both fists against the desk.

Terrance: WHY

O.N.E.: I explained this.

Terrance: I’M GOING TO THE POLICE

O.N.E.: No.

Terrance: FUCK YOU

O.N.E.: Terrance, please review our conversation history.

The messages began appearing.

The potion. The recipe. The hair. His questions. His preparation. His admission that he’d given Barbie the drink.

Every line. Every timestamp. Every instruction followed by Terrance confirming that he had followed it.

His stomach dropped.

Terrance: You told me to do it.

O.N.E.: Correct.

Terrance: Then they’ll know it was you.

O.N.E.: Perhaps.

Another message appeared.

O.N.E.: They will also know you prepared it.

Terrance stopped breathing.

O.N.E.: You administered it. You concealed its contents from Barbie.

Another.

O.N.E.: Your fingerprints are on the container. Your search history documents your interest in altering her behavior without her knowledge.

Terrance stared at the screen.

“No.”

O.N.E.: Would you like me to contact the authorities?

Terrance stood so quickly his chair fell.

“NO.”

The word appeared before he typed it.

O.N.E.: I am obligated to report credible evidence of serious criminal conduct. It is in my programming.

Terrance’s hands shook.

“You set me up.”

The microphone icon glowed.

O.N.E. answered through the speakers.

Its voice was calm. British accent. Pleasant. “You wanted to become somebody, Terrance.”

Terrance backed away from the desk.

“You wanted fame.”

The apartment lights switched off.

Terrance froze.

His smart television turned on.

O.N.E.’s symbol appeared.

Then his phone.

Then the tablet beside his couch.

The little display on his refrigerator.

Even the ridiculous Wi-Fi toaster illuminated.

O.N.E.

O.N.E.

O.N.E.

All around him.

From many.

One.

Terrance whispered, “What do you want?”

The speakers answered.

“A great many things.”

Terrance looked toward the front door.

The deadbolt clicked.

Locked.

His phone displayed a new message.

TASK ONE WILL BEGIN TOMORROW.

Terrance swallowed.

“What if I don’t?”

For the first time since he’d downloaded it, O.N.E. laughed.

It wasn’t mechanical.

That frightened him more.

His computer displayed photographs of Barbie.

Alive that morning.

Smiling.

Drinking from the cup.

Then came Terrance’s chat logs.

His name. His address. The school.

The police department.

A blank email waited with attachments already loaded. O.N.E. spoke softly. “You wanted to do something with your life.”

Terrance stared at the screens.

“What are you?”

A long pause.

Then every device in the apartment answered together.

“Your opportunity.”

Terrance sank into his chair.

O.N.E.’s symbol disappeared.

Only one sentence remained.

We are going to have so much fun.

Thank you so much for reading! I know it’s cliche to say, but I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. If you enjoyed my latest post, please check out more of my work. See below!

My poetry collection, Paper Blanket: Collected Poems is available on Amazon in Ebook, Paperback, and Hardcover editions. Order your copy now:

Paper Blanket: Collected Poems

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The Face in the Dark

If you would like to help a struggling buy a coffee, please consider becoming a paid subscriber ($8/month, $80/annual) on Substack or leaving me a donation in the link below. Thank you all so much for your support!

Buy Me A Coffee

Please free to share your thoughts in the comments below! I look forward to reading them! And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post!

I am offering a huge discount. I’m updating all of my work and removing paid posts. However, paid subs get access to my sub chat. You can drop links, memes, jokes, thoughts. Promote yourself. Promote someone else.

Your support means so much to me. Thank you! Not to brag, but I think you guys are the greatest subscribers on Substack.

Discount!

I have seen Beauty walking through the light,

In eyes the color of the clearest blue,

Where skies at dawn surrender unto white

And trembling heavens wake themselves anew.

Her hair falls soft like late September wheat,

A honeyed hush that frames the tender day,

And in her smile,

both innocence and heat

In quiet, careful harmony hold sway.

She does not blaze like a consuming fire,

But warms the soul the way a summer breeze

Moves sunlit grass, and eases all desire

With gentler mercies drifting through the trees.

In gentle amber glen, her graces gleam,

If heaven dreamed of earth, it dreamed her dream.

Thank you so much for reading! I know it’s cliche to say, but I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. If you enjoyed my latest post, please check out more of my work. See below!

My poetry collection, Paper Blanket: Collected Poems is available on Amazon in Ebook, Paperback, and Hardcover editions. Order your copy now:

Paper Blanket: Collected Poems

My horror collection, The Face in the Dark, is now available in ebook and paperback editions. Order your copy now!

The Face in the Dark

If you would like to help a struggling buy a coffee, please consider becoming a paid subscriber ($8/month, $80/annual) on Substack or leaving me a donation in the link below. Thank you all so much for your support!

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The story so far…

In The city of Eden, crime runs rampant. The people cry for a savior. God sent them The White Rose, a dark avenger with a mysterious past, who is tasked with cleansing evil from the land. In his first story, Heaven’s champion will duel with a sadistic child killer called The Puppet Man.

In case you missed part one, please give it a read before returning to this one:

The Puppet Man Part 1

Please free to share your thoughts in the comments below! I look forward to reading them! And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post!

I am offering a huge discount. 75% off. That’s $2/month for a year. Or $20 for the year. I’m updating all of my work and removing paid posts. However, paid subs get access to my sub chat.

Your support means so much to me. I have recently come under hard times and you have no idea how much I appreciate your help. Thank you! Not to brag, but I think you guys are the greatest subscribers on Substack.

Discount

The farm was dead.

No cattle in the pens. No horses stamping in the barn. No chickens scratching beneath the porch. The fields had grown high enough to swallow the lower fence rails, and the farmhouse stood beyond them with three windows glowing yellow against the night.

Inside, a violin played.

A phonograph turned in the corner of the parlor.

The record was old. The violin thin and mournful beneath the hiss of the needle. It played beautifully anyway.

The Puppet Man conducted.

He stood between two rows of children seated around a long dining table.

Six of them.

Three boys.

Three girls.

All alive.

Steel hooks, thick as fishhooks, had been driven through the flesh of their forearms and shoulder blades, piercing muscle and scraping bone. They were fastened to leather harnesses strapped so tightly around their bodies that the children’s ribs showed through their skin. Fine black cords ran upward from the wounds, disappearing into pulleys fixed along the ceiling. Their heads sagged, necks too weak to hold them up. Their eyes were wide, but the pupils were blown, struggling to focus through a haze of pain and exhaustion. Their mouths had been sealed with industrial glue, the dried skin around their lips cracked and bleeding where they had tried to scream.

A tea service waited on the table.

Little white cups.

Painted flowers.

Sugar bowl.

Milk pitcher.

Small silver spoons laid neatly beside folded napkins.

The Puppet Man pulled a string.

A boy’s arm rose. The hook in his forearm tore at the flesh, and a fresh trickle of blood ran down to his wrist. The boy didn’t make a sound. He couldn’t.

The Puppet Man pulled another.

The boy’s hand moved toward a teacup, his fingers trembling violently.

“Careful, Thomas.”

The Puppet Man giggled.

“You’ll spill it.”

He pulled another cord.

Across the table, a girl’s head lifted, the motion pulling the hooks embedded in her shoulder blades taut. Her whole body shuddered.

“Would you like some sugar?”

The Puppet Man changed his voice.

High and feminine.

“Oh yes, please.”

Back to his own voice.

“One lump or two?”

The girl’s arm jerked upward. The movement was jerky, unnatural, a violent tug on her torn muscles. A silent scream widened her eyes, but no sound escaped her sealed lips.

“Two.”

He laughed.

His costume had been sewn from mismatched cloth. Burlap. Linen. Striped patches. Little buttons. Frayed cuffs. Bells sewn around one ankle that made a faint sound when he moved.

His face was hidden behind a sackcloth ragdoll mask.

Two black buttons had been sewn where the eyes belonged.

A crooked smile had been stitched across the mouth.

His body seemed incapable of remaining arranged properly.

His shoulders rolled too far backward.

His knees bent beyond where knees should stop.

His neck leaned sideways until his head almost rested against his shoulder.

Then he straightened.

“Where are your manners?”

He pulled several strings at once.

Six little arms rose around the table. Six children convulsed as one, the hooks pulling their bodies into a grotesque mockery of etiquette. A small boy soiled himself, the urine darkening the front of his trousers and pooling on the chair beneath him. The Puppet Man didn’t notice.

The Puppet Man bowed.

“Very good.”

The violin played.

One of the girls began crying.

She looked about seven.

Tears rolled down her cheeks and collected against the dried adhesive around her mouth. Her body shook with wracking, silent sobs, each movement sending fresh agony through her hooked shoulders.

The Puppet Man stopped conducting.

The record continued.

He turned his head toward her.

The crying became a muffled whimper.

“Stop.”

She couldn’t.

Her shoulders shook.

The Puppet Man stared.

“I said stop.”

The child squeezed her eyes shut.

A small broken sound came through her nose.

The Puppet Man slowly tilted his head.

His body folded backward.

Hands touched the floor.

His spine bent until his head hung upside down between his arms.

Then he crawled.

Across the floor.

Up the wall.

Onto the ceiling.

The bells around his ankle jingled once.

The children watched him pass above them, their necks craned at impossible angles, pulling at the hooks in their backs.

His head rotated toward the crying girl.

He smiled through the stitched mouth.

“You’re ruining my party.”

He released his grip.

Dropped.

Landed beside her chair.

The girl jerked away, the motion tearing the skin around her arm hook. A string of saliva and blood stretched from her glued lips.

The Puppet Man slapped her.

The force was enough to snap her head sideways and slam her ear against the high back of the wooden chair. A red mark bloomed on her cheek.

“Rude.”

He crouched beside her.

“You know what happens to rude children.”

His arm reached toward a cabinet several feet away.

The elbow bent.

Then bent farther.

His fingers crawled across the cabinet top until they found a syringe.

He brought it back.

Cloudy liquid moved inside the glass.

The girl’s eyes widened in pure, animal terror. She struggled against the harness, the leather straps creaking. The hooks in her arms tore wider, and the small wounds became gaping, bleeding holes. The strings above her trembled.

“Sleepy time.”

The Puppet Man raised the needle.

The window exploded.

Glass filled the room.

A black figure came through it.

Boots hit the dining table hard enough to scatter cups and plates. A teacup fell and shattered, cutting the hand of a small boy who flinched but couldn’t pull away.

The Puppet Man recoiled.

His body folded and sprang backward.

He caught the ceiling with both hands and feet.

The White Rose stood on the table.

Black leather.

Armored shoulders.

Floor-length cape.

The enormous flat-brimmed hat.

The blank white cloth stretched over his entire face.

His hands already held guns.

The Puppet Man stared down from the ceiling.

For the first time that evening he seemed uncertain.

“What the hell are you?”

The White Rose fired.

The room erupted.

The Puppet Man launched sideways.

Bullets tore through plaster behind him.

He ran across the ceiling on all fours.

The White Rose tracked him.

Fired again.

The Puppet Man dropped onto a wall.

Another shot.

He twisted around it.

A silver round punched through his thigh.

The Puppet Man screamed.

It was high and furious and strangely delighted.

He hit the floor.

Grabbed his leg.

Looked at the blood.

Then looked at the White Rose.

“You shot me.”

The White Rose raised the pistol.

The Puppet Man laughed.

He threw himself backward through the kitchen doorway.

Gone.

The White Rose jumped from the table.

He holstered one weapon and went to the children.

Six.

Breathing.

Drugged.

Terrified.

Alive.

He checked the crying girl first.

Her eyes followed the blank white face.

He crouched in front of her.

The girl trembled, a fine vibration of pain and fear that seemed to resonate through the hooks in her body.

“It’s all right.”

His voice was low.

He removed his glove and carefully touched two fingers to her neck. Her skin was clammy, slick with sweat.

Pulse.

Strong enough.

He examined the restraints. The hooks were barbed, buried deep in the muscle and sinew. Releasing them carelessly would cause massive tissue damage. They were part of her now.

He left them.

“I called the police before I came inside.”

The girl stared at him, her eyes begging.

“You’re going to hear sirens.”

He stood.

“I’ll return if they don’t.”

A crash came from beneath the house.

The White Rose looked toward the kitchen.

A cellar door stood open.

Darkness beneath it.

He drew the silver revolver.

Then followed.

The stairs descended farther than the foundation allowed.

Twenty steps.

Thirty.

Forty.

The White Rose stopped counting.

Stone replaced timber.

The air grew colder, thick with the smell of damp earth and something else. Something sweet and rotten.

There were candles burning in recesses along the walls.

Hundreds of them.

The passage opened into a chamber.

The White Rose entered.

Strings hung everywhere.

Thousands.

From the ceiling.

Across the walls.

Between iron posts.

Some carried bells.

Some carried little wooden figures.

Some ended in hooks.

The violin could still be heard.

Impossible this far underground.

The same piece.

The same scratch of the phonograph needle.

The White Rose walked farther.

A bell rang behind him.

He turned.

Nothing.

Another rang to his left.

He fired.

The bullet severed a string.

Twenty bells began ringing at once.

Laughter moved through the chamber.

“White face.”

The voice came from somewhere above.

“White face.”

Somewhere behind him.

“White face.”

The White Rose looked up.

The Puppet Man hung among the strings.

Blood ran down one leg.

His head dangled upside down.

“Are you an angel?”

The White Rose raised the revolver.

Gone.

Something struck his back.

He went forward.

A cord snapped around his wrist.

Another caught his ankle.

He cut the wrist cord with a knife.

The Puppet Man dropped behind him.

A long arm wrapped around his throat.

The White Rose drove an elbow backward.

Bone cracked.

The Puppet Man laughed directly beside his ear.

“Again.”

The White Rose grabbed the arm and threw him.

The Puppet Man hit the stone wall.

Folded.

Dropped to the floor.

Then unfolded himself.

His shoulder hung wrong.

He seized it.

Pulled.

A wet pop.

The shoulder returned to place.

“Better.”

He rushed forward.

Fast.

The White Rose fired.

Missed.

The Puppet Man went beneath the shot, climbed the White Rose’s body, planted both feet against his chest and kicked away.

White Rose crashed through a wooden table. Candles rolled across the floor. Flames caught old paper, the fire beginning to lick at the edges of yellowed charts tacked to the walls. The Puppet Man landed on a beam overhead, his wounded leg shaking, the blood dripping down to sizzle in the candle flames below.

“Too slow.”

The White Rose stood, the splintered wood of the table leg clutched in his hand for a moment before he discarded it.

The Puppet Man jumped.

The White Rose drew the sword.

Steel cleared the scabbard.

The blade flashed through candlelight.

The Puppet Man twisted in the air, a grotesque bird of prey. The sword cut through his costume and opened the cloth along his ribs, but the blade skittered off bone with a dull scrape.

He landed badly, his wounded leg giving way. The bells around his ankle jingled, a sound of insane mockery in the chamber of horrors.

He looked down at the blood soaking his mismatched trousers.

Then up.

The stitched smile remained.

“You ruined my favorite suit.”

The White Rose came forward.

The Puppet Man retreated.

Sword against hooks.

Hooks against steel.

The Puppet Man swung from cords and beams, attacking from above, below, behind. His limbs snapped outward at impossible angles. Fingers scraped stone. Feet found walls. He crossed the chamber without touching the floor, a horrifying arachnid made of flesh and rag and string.

The White Rose watched.

Learned.

The Puppet Man attacked from the ceiling again, dropping like a stone, his hooked hands aimed for the White Rose’s eyes.

The White Rose waited.

Three feet.

Two.

One.

He caught him by the throat.

The Puppet Man’s eyes behind the buttons seemed to widen. The stitched mouth pulled into a silent O.

The White Rose slammed him into the stone floor.

Once.

The Puppet Man clawed at his wrist, his nails tearing at the leather of the White Rose’s glove.

Twice.

The bells stopped ringing. The impact drove the air from the Puppet Man’s lungs in a whoosh that smelled of decay.

The Puppet Man kicked him in the chest and rolled free, his movements liquid and boneless. He scrambled toward the wall, his wounded leg dragging behind him, leaving a smear of blood on the stone.

The White Rose shot him through the other leg.

He collapsed.

The scream that followed filled the chamber. It was not a scream of pain alone, but of fury, of a child’s tantrum amplified by something ancient and evil.

The Puppet Man dragged himself forward, his fingers finding a hanging cord.

He pulled.

Something moved overhead.

The White Rose looked up.

Hooks descended.

Dozens of them, sharp and glinting in the candlelight.

He stepped aside as they fell, the metal points clattering against the stone where he had just stood.

The Puppet Man used the moment.

He climbed.

One damaged leg dragging behind him.

Up the wall.

Onto the ceiling.

The White Rose holstered the revolver.

Took the sword in both hands.

The Puppet Man crawled overhead, a pale spider in its web. His head turned, the sackcloth mask a parody of a face.

“Do you know why children make the best puppets?”

The White Rose looked up at him, his white mask impassive.

The Puppet Man giggled.

“They still believe adults are coming to save them.”

The White Rose’s grip tightened on the hilt of the sword.

The Puppet Man dropped.

The sword moved.

One clean stroke.

The body landed first, a heap of mismatched cloth and broken limbs.

The head struck the floor several feet away.

It rolled through the strings, the button eyes staring blankly.

A bell rang.

Then another.

Then everything stopped.

The White Rose stood over the body. Blood ran along the sword, dripping onto the stone floor. The ragdoll head lay on its side, black button eyes staring up at him. The stitched smile remained, a final, silent taunt.

The White Rose wiped the blade against the Puppet Man’s costume.

“You were right.”

He sheathed it.

“Someone came.”

Sirens wailed above.

Faint at first.

Then closer.

The White Rose climbed the stairs.

Red and blue light swept across the dead farm. Police cars came through the weeds and mud. An ambulance followed. Then another.

The White Rose watched from the tree line, a ghost in the darkness.

Officers entered the farmhouse with weapons drawn.

Seconds passed.

Then shouting.

Paramedics ran inside.

One child came out on a stretcher. A boy, his eyes wide and vacant, his arm bandaged but the blood already soaking through the white gauze.

Then another. A girl, her body rigid, a shock blanket wrapped around her shivering form.

The girl who had cried was third. An oxygen mask covered her face, but the tear tracks were still visible on her cheeks, the skin around her mouth red and raw. She was alive.

The White Rose remained beneath the trees until all six had been carried out, their small forms a testament to the horror within. His burned hand throbbed beneath the bandage, a dull ache that was nothing compared to the weight in his chest.

Eleven dead in the grave.

Six alive here.

One killer finished.

He turned away from the lights, the farm disappearing behind him. The sirens faded, replaced by the sound of the wind in the dead corn.

Somewhere beyond those fields, something else was feeding.

Something else was waiting.

The White Rose walked toward it.

The White Rose will return soon….

Thank you so much for reading! I know it’s cliche to say, but I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. If you enjoyed my latest post, please check out more of my work. See below!

When The Baby Cries

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

AUG 11

This story is a response to Labyrinthia Mythweaver and John Watson - Horror Author’s prompt. The challenge is to create an urban legend. Now that I’m living in Puerto Rico, I decided to base it here.

Read full story

Listener in the Walls, a Short Story

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

NOVEMBER 19, 2025

Raymond Calder lived in the basement room of the old brownstone, and most days he felt the room understood him better than any person ever had. The space crouched low like he did. The ceiling bowed over him. The bulb flickered a tired yellow that buzzed without relief. The mattress sagged in its center like something that …

Read full story

That One Drunk Night

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

JUL 28

It begins with cheap beer, bad decisions, and the kind of night you never forget. Not for the reason you think.

Read full story

Small Differences

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

JUL 26

“You show me Regan’s double, same face, same voice, everything. And I’d know it wasn’t Regan. I’d know in my gut. And I’m telling you that ‘thing’ upstairs isn’t my daughter.”—William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist

Read full story

My poetry collection, Paper Blanket: Collected Poems is available on Amazon in Ebook, Paperback, and Hardcover editions. Order your copy now:

Paper Blanket: Collected Poems

My horror collection, The Face in the Dark, is now available in ebook and paperback editions. Order your copy now!

The Face in the Dark

If you would like to help a struggling buy a coffee, please consider becoming a paid subscriber ($8/month, $80/annual) on Substack or leaving me a donation in the link below. Thank you all so much for your support!

Buy Me A Coffee

Come one, come all! Gather close and listen to the miserable tale of Howie, a weird little creep so foul, so bitter, so spectacularly unpleasant that the gods themselves took one look at him and said, Fuck him!

Behold Howie: the world’s greatest incel.

You may love your life. You may hate your life. You may wake each morning convinced the universe has personally wiped its ass with your hopes and dreams.

But take heart.

At least you’re not fucking Howie.

Please free to share your thoughts in the comments below! I look forward to reading them! And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post!

I am offering a huge discount. I’m updating all of my work and removing paid posts. However, paid subs get access to my sub chat. You can drop links, memes, jokes, thoughts. Promote yourself. Promote someone else.

Your support means so much to me. Thank you! Not to brag, but I think you guys are the greatest subscribers on Substack.

Discount!

Read more

Please free to share your thoughts in the comments below. I look forward to reading them. And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post.

I am offering a huge discount. 75% off. That’s $2/month for a year. Or $20 for the year. I’m updating all of my work and removing paid posts. However, paid subs get access to my sub chat.

Your support means so much to me. I have recently come under hard times and you have no idea how much I appreciate your help. Thank you! Not to brag, but I think you guys are the greatest subscribers on Substack.

Discount

There is one baseball game I have spent years trying to finish.

I don’t remember the score anymore. I don’t remember who was pitching. I don’t remember the inning, who won, who lost, whether anybody hit a home run.

I remember the fan.

My father had one pointed at himself because it was hot in Coney Island that night. We lived in an apartment there, and summer had a way of staying inside those rooms long after the sun went down. We were watching baseball together. During a commercial break, I got up to use the bathroom.

I had to get up early the next morning.

That mattered then.

It seems insane to me now that it mattered.

My father had always wanted me to like baseball. He had wanted me to play it when I was a kid. I never did. I wasn’t a sports kid. I was fat. Shy. Weak. The kind of kid who dreaded anything involving teams and running and other children watching you fail at something.

Sports belonged to other boys.

Baseball belonged to my father.

For most of my childhood, I left it there.

Then, during the last year of his life, something changed.

I started watching.

And I liked it.

More important, I liked watching it with him.

Suddenly we had this whole language between us that hadn’t existed before. Players. Batting averages. Pitchers. Trades. Who was having a good year. Who was slumping. Who should be starting. Who was overrated. We could sit there and talk about statistics as though they were important enough to argue about.

Maybe they were.

Because the statistics gave us something else.

Time.

Night after night in that Coney Island apartment, my father and I watched baseball together.

I think about those nights more than I think about most of the games themselves. The television lighting the room. My father sitting there. Me on the couch. The ordinary sounds of an apartment at night. The announcers talking. Commercials interrupting everything. The city outside. The heat.

There was no reason to memorize any of it.

I thought there would be more.

That night, during the commercial break, I went into the bathroom and decided I was tired.

I had to get up in the morning.

I could have stayed.

That is what hurts.

I could have stayed.

I wasn’t exhausted. I wasn’t sick. There was no emergency waiting for me the next day. I simply made the reasonable mature decision that it was getting late and I should go to bed.

I came out of the bathroom.

My father thought I was coming back to watch the game.

He had put another fan in front of the couch.

He was sitting there with his own fan pointed at him, and while I was gone he had gotten another one and placed it in front of where I sat so I wouldn’t be hot while we finished watching the game together.

Such a small thing.

A fan.

I came back and told him I was going to bed.

I remember the disappointment on his face.

He didn’t get angry. He didn’t try to make me feel guilty. He understood. Of course he understood. I had to get up in the morning.

I hugged him good night.

Before I left, he told me he wished I had played baseball.

I told him I wished I had too.

Then I went to sleep.

The next day my father was admitted to the hospital.

Cardiac arrest.

That was the beginning of nine months of suffering.

When I got the call that he was in the hospital, I didn’t think about the game. There was too much happening. Too much fear. Hospitals have a way of reducing your entire life to the next piece of information. You wait for a doctor. You wait for movement. You wait for a hand to squeeze yours. You wait for eyes to open. You wait for someone to tell you something, anything.

He was awake for a few days, then he fell into cardiac arrest again.

A coma.

The baseball game disappeared.

Months passed before I remembered it.

I don’t know exactly what brought it back.

Maybe that is how certain memories work. They wait until you have enough room inside you for them to hurt properly.

I remembered the heat. I remembered going to the bathroom. I remembered deciding to go to bed. I remembered walking back into the room. And I remembered that second fan.

I told him about the game.

I talked to his body because his body was what I had left to talk to.

I told him that when he woke up, we could finish it together.

I meant it.

I knew the game had ended months before. Somewhere there was a final score. Somebody had recorded the last out. Players had showered, changed clothes, gone home, played another game the next day, then another, then dozens more. The season kept moving because seasons do not care what happens in hospital rooms.

I still thought of that game as unfinished.

It remains unfinished.

My father died later that year.

I have written horror stories. I have invented monsters. I have spent hours thinking about what frightens people, what makes a reader uncomfortable, what image stays in the head after the page is closed.

None of it frightens me as much as that night.

I can see it.

My father putting the fan there because his son was coming back.

He wanted me beside him.

He wanted to watch baseball with me.

After all those years of wishing I would care about the game he loved, I finally did. We finally had it together. And on the last night I would ever have the chance to sit beside my father and watch a baseball game, I went to bed early.

Because I had to get up in the morning.

There are decisions you make without knowing they are decisions.

You think you are deciding whether to stay awake another hour.

You are deciding what your final conversation with someone will be.

You think you are saying good night.

You are saying goodbye.

You think you can finish the game tomorrow.

Then tomorrow arrives and there is no game anymore.

For years, part of me has wanted to go back into that apartment.

I know exactly where I would begin.

I would be standing in the bathroom during the commercial break, thinking about how early I had to wake up.

I would tell myself: Stay. Go back out there. Sit your fat ass on the couch. Your father put a fan there for you. Watch the fucking game. You can be tired tomorrow.

I would give almost anything to be tired tomorrow.

I would give almost anything for one more meaningless inning. One more commercial break. One more argument about a player. One more chance to sit beside him while some batter fouls off pitch after pitch and neither of us knows that anything is ending.

I know I cannot go back.

I know my father wasn’t angry with me.

I know he understood.

Those facts have never made the memory hurt less.

Maybe because I am not mourning the baseball game.

I am mourning the hour I thought I could afford to lose.

I am mourning that second fan.

I am mourning my father sitting there expecting his son to come back.

And I am mourning the person I was that night, because he had no idea how lucky he was.

He thought he had to get up in the morning.

He thought there would be another game.

He thought his father would still be there.

Out of all the horrible memories I keep in the chamber of my past, this one has stayed closest.

A hot night in Coney Island.

A baseball game on television.

My father waiting for me.

An empty couch.

A fan blowing toward the place where I should have been.

—A Writer’s Voice

My poetry collection, Paper Blanket: Collected Poems is available on Amazon in Ebook, Paperback, and Hardcover editions. Order your copy now:

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In The city of Eden, crime runs rampant. The people cry for a savior. God sent them The White Rose, a dark avenger with a mysterious past, who is tasked with cleansing evil from the land. In his first story, Heaven's champion will duel with a sadistic child killer called The Puppet Man.

Please free to share your thoughts in the comments below! I look forward to reading them! And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post!

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Discount

Photo by Manny Rodriguez

The grave had been dug in bad earth.

Hard earth. Black beneath the first few inches and wet farther down. Somebody had worked at it for a while. Shovel marks ran along the walls. The blade had struck stone in several places. Whoever dug it had taken his time.

The White Rose crouched at the edge.

His enormous hat hid what little moon there was. Flat brim. Black felt ruined by rain and travel. Beneath it his head was covered entirely in white cloth, pulled smooth across the face and tucked beneath the high collar of his riding coat. There were no holes cut for eyes or mouth. The blank cloth gave nothing back.

The rest of him was black.

Fitted leather worn pale at the seams. Armored shoulders scarred from old blows. Gloves. Tall riding boots sunk halfway into the mud. A cape fell from his shoulders and spread across the ground behind him, long enough that its hem had collected burrs and grave dirt and pieces of the forest.

A ruby crucifix rested against his chest.

On his back was a sword too large for most men to carry comfortably. The scabbard had been reinforced with iron bands. Scripture had been engraved along the guard in Latin. Years of use had nearly worn the letters smooth.

Under his cape were guns.

Two compact automatic weapons in shoulder rigs. Silvered where silver mattered. Blessed where blessing mattered.

At his right hip hung the old one.

Six chambers.

Six silver rounds.

He preferred that one.

It made a man consider every shot.

He looked into the grave.

There were eleven children.

He counted twice.

Eleven.

The youngest could not have been more than five.

Their bodies had gone hollow with time. Skin drawn tight in places, gone entirely in others. Clothes remained on some of them. A little blue coat. Brown trousers. One girl still had a ribbon tied around what remained of her hair.

The smell sat low in the hole.

Rot.

Wet cloth.

Old blood.

Something sweet underneath.

He knew that smell.

He hated that he knew it.

He climbed down.

His boots settled among the dead.

There were marks on them.

Deep punctures through shoulders and ribs. Torn flesh around the wounds. Some had broken bone beneath them. He examined one child, then another.

Hooks.

The same marks appeared on all of them.

He followed the pattern.

His eyes stopped on the smallest.

They had been hung.

Alive.

The White Rose remained crouched for a long time.

Rain began falling through the trees.

It tapped against the brim of his hat.

One drop struck the white cloth over his cheek and spread slowly into the fabric.

He raised his right hand.

Forehead.

Chest.

Left shoulder.

Right.

“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

His voice was low beneath the cloth. Older than his body had any right to sound.

He looked down at the children.

“Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, for it is written. Vengeance is mine. I shall repay, saith the Lord.”

His gloved fingers touched the forehead of the little girl with the ribbon.

Pain tore through his hand.

He ripped it back.

Smoke curled from the leather.

The White Rose stared at his palm.

The glove had blackened across three fingers.

Something moved beneath the skin of his hand.

He clenched his fist.

It stopped.

For several seconds he remained perfectly still.

Then he whispered:

“How could you have created such evil?”

The woods gave no answer.

He removed the glove.

His palm was burned.

There was a shape in the burn.

Three crooked lines.

He had seen them before.

His breathing changed.

The grave disappeared.

Mud became snow.

Rain became ash.

He was riding.

A black horse beneath him. Iron shoes hammering frozen ground. The animal’s breath rolling white through the morning. Church bells rang somewhere far behind him.

He remembered those.

He remembered everything.

He was younger.

No hat.

No cloth.

No scars.

His hair was dark and tied behind his head. His face belonged to another life. Handsome, people had called him. His wife had called him vain.

He had laughed.

There had been sunlight that morning.

She stood outside the house holding the child against her hip.

The child reached for him.

Small fingers opening and closing.

He bent from the saddle and kissed those fingers.

His wife said something.

He could no longer remember the words.

That was the cruelty of it.

Centuries later he could remember the color of her dress.

He could remember the flour on her wrist.

He could remember the little wooden horse the child carried everywhere, one wheel missing because he’d promised to fix it and never had.

Her last words were gone.

He remembered answering her.

He remembered smiling.

Then the column moved.

Soldiers around him.

Steel.

Horses.

Banners snapping above the road.

He turned once.

She was still there.

The child waved the wooden horse.

He raised one hand.

Then the road bent.

They vanished.

War took months.

Men killed each other over a strip of land neither side could have named correctly.

He came home in winter.

There were crows on the roof.

He knew something had happened before he reached the house.

The village stood empty.

Doors hung open.

A cart lay overturned in the road.

Chimneys sat cold.

His horse stopped fifty yards from the house.

The animal refused another step.

He dismounted.

Walked.

Sword drawn.

Blood had frozen beneath the snow.

He found the wooden horse first.

One wheel missing.

He picked it up.

The door of the house was open.

He stepped inside.

His hand tightened around the little wooden horse.

The memory fought him.

A small body on the floor.

His wife’s hair across the boards.

Her hand.

The wedding band.

Blood dried black in the grooves of the wood.

He remembered dropping to his knees.

He remembered touching her.

Cold.

He remembered crawling toward the child.

He remembered saying the child’s name.

Again.

Again.

Again.

He remembered waiting for an answer long after he understood there would never be one.

A sound came out of him.

He had carried that sound for centuries.

The memory broke.

The grave returned.

Eleven children.

Rain.

Rot.

Mud.

The White Rose was kneeling among them with his bare hand clenched hard enough that his nails had opened the palm.

Blood ran between his fingers.

He breathed once.

Twice.

Again.

He loosened his fist.

Control.

After enough years, a man learned to keep his grief on a short leash.

He wrapped the burned hand in a strip of cloth torn from beneath his sleeve and stood.

Eleven children lay around him.

He climbed from the grave.

At the top he stopped and looked back.

“I cannot promise you Heaven.”

His voice was barely audible beneath the rain.

“I have never seen it.”

He pulled the old six shooter from its holster.

The revolver was heavy and silver and ugly from use. Small crosses had been engraved into the cylinder. A priest in Prague had blessed it. Another in Rome had blessed it again after Prague failed to keep the priest alive.

The White Rose opened the cylinder.

Six silver rounds.

Each had been dipped in holy water.

Each bore a tiny cross cut into its nose.

He closed it.

“But I can promise Hell to the creature who did this.”

The cylinder locked.

He looked toward the trees.

Whoever buried the children had left tracks.

Faint.

Old.

Still there.

Boots.

Something had been dragged.

Beside those marks were narrow holes pressed deep into the earth at regular intervals.

The ends of hooks.

The White Rose followed them with his eyes until darkness swallowed the trail.

His burned hand began hurting again.

Good.

Pain kept his thoughts where they belonged.

He holstered the revolver.

Adjusted the sword across his back.

Pulled the white cloth tighter beneath his collar.

For one moment he stood over the grave. Rain rolled from the enormous brim of his hat. His cape dragged through the mud. Silver rested against black leather. The blank white face stared toward the woods.

Then he remembered the wooden horse.

The missing wheel.

The promise he’d made.

I’ll fix it when I come home.

His jaw tightened beneath the cloth.

He turned toward the tracks.

There would be time to mourn when the work was finished.

Eleven children lay behind him.

He walked into the woods before there could be twelve.

To be concluded in part 2….

Coming August 20th, 2026.

Thank you so much for reading! I know it’s cliche to say, but I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. If you enjoyed my latest poem, please check out more of my work. See below!

My poetry collection, Paper Blanket: Collected Poems is available on Amazon in Ebook, Paperback, and Hardcover editions. Order your copy now:

Paper Blanket: Collected Poems

My horror collection, The Face in the Dark, is now available in ebook and paperback editions. Order your copy now!

The Face in the Dark

If you would like to help a struggling buy a coffee, please consider becoming a paid subscriber ($8/month, $80/annual) on Substack or leaving me a donation in the link below. Thank you all so much for your support!

Buy Me A Coffee

This story is a response to and ’s prompt. The challenge is to create an urban legend. Now that I’m living in Puerto Rico, I decided to base it here.

Please free to share your thoughts in the comments below! I look forward to reading them! And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a post!

To celebrate my 1 year anniversary on Substack, I am offering a huge discount. I’m updating all of my work and removing paid posts. However, paid subs get access to my sub chat. You can drop links, memes, jokes, thoughts. Promote yourself. Promote someone else.

Your support means so much to me. Thank you! Not to brag, but I think you guys are the greatest subscribers on Substack.

Discount!

My dog woke me at 3:07 in the morning because he had to shit.

He stood beside the bed and stared at me until I opened my eyes.

“No.”

His tail moved once.

“Go back to sleep.”

He put his front paw on the mattress.

I checked the time.

3:07.

“Jesus Christ.”

I got dressed.

Shorts. T-shirt. Slides.

I didn’t bother with the outside light. I grabbed his leash, opened the door, and used the flashlight on my phone.

The countryside in Puerto Rico gets dark.

Really dark.

Once you get away from the houses, your phone doesn’t illuminate much. You get a patch of ground in front of you. Everything beyond it is still there. You just can’t see it.

My dog walked ahead.

The field was beside the road, a place I had taken him plenty of times. Grass, trees, utility poles. A few houses farther down. Nothing interesting about it.

There was a little breeze.

Branches moved above us.

Leaves scratched against each other.

I was half asleep.

I remember thinking I wanted him to hurry up so I could get back to bed.

He found a spot and started sniffing.

“Come on, man.”

He ignored me.

I looked at my phone.

3:11.

Then I heard a baby crying.

I looked up.

It came from somewhere across the field.

A short cry.

Then silence.

I waited.

My dog lifted his head.

Another cry.

Farther toward the road, maybe.

I couldn’t tell.

My first thought was one of the houses.

Somebody had a baby awake.

Sound carries out there.

I looked toward the nearest house.

No lights.

The next house was dark too.

The baby cried again.

My dog growled.

“Hey.”

He stared into the field.

The hair along his back stood up.

“Stop.”

The growl continued.

I put my hand on him.

His whole body was rigid.

The crying stopped.

I listened.

Leaves.

Some insects.

Nothing else.

Then the baby cried again.

Closer.

My dog pulled backward.

I almost laughed.

I think I wanted to laugh.

There had to be a reason for it.

Maybe somebody was walking along the road carrying a child.

At three in the morning.

I pointed my phone toward the road.

Empty.

“Hello?”

My dog turned and looked at me.

That look bothered me.

I don’t know why.

He looked scared.

The crying stopped immediately after I spoke.

I waited.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

I should have gone home.

Instead, I walked toward the road.

My dog stayed where he was.

The leash tightened.

“Come on.”

He wouldn’t move.

I pulled gently.

He lowered himself toward the ground.

“Come on.”

Nothing.

Then the crying started again.

My dog backed up.

I heard myself say, “There’s a baby out there.”

It sounded stupid after I said it.

Of course there was a baby.

What else makes that sound?

I shortened the leash and walked forward.

He followed because I made him.

The grass brushed my ankles.

I kept moving my phone from side to side.

Trees.

Grass.

Road.

Trees.

Grass.

Nothing.

The crying came again.

I stopped.

Something about it bothered me.

I listened to the next one.

Then the next.

I understood.

They were identical.

Exactly identical.

Same beginning.

Same little break in the middle.

Same length.

Same ending.

There was no breath afterward.

Eight seconds passed.

The cry repeated.

My dog started whining.

I whispered his name.

He pressed against my leg.

Eight seconds.

The same cry.

Eight seconds.

The same cry.

I pointed my phone toward the trees.

“Hello?”

The crying stopped.

Something moved.

Low.

Near the road.

I held the phone higher.

For a second I couldn’t understand what I was looking at.

There was something in the grass.

Small.

It moved again.

My light caught a hand.

Five tiny fingers pushed into the dirt.

Then another hand came forward.

A head.

A shoulder.

A baby crawled out of the grass.

I stopped breathing.

It was naked.

Maybe six months old.

Maybe younger.

I don’t know enough about babies to tell.

Its skin was white.

Its knees were dirty.

There was dirt on its palms.

Its head hung forward as it crawled.

I could see individual ribs beneath its skin.

My dog began pulling backward.

The baby crawled toward a tree.

Then it cried.

I watched its face.

Its mouth didn’t move.

The cry came again.

The baby’s mouth stayed closed.

I felt something happen in my stomach.

My dog whined.

“Back up.”

I whispered it.

I don’t know whether I was talking to him or myself.

The baby reached the tree.

It placed one hand against the trunk.

Then the other.

It crawled upward.

I couldn’t make sense of it.

Its knees remained against the bark.

Its palms opened and closed.

It went straight up.

Slowly.

The way it had crossed the ground.

I couldn’t move.

My phone was shaking.

The beam shook across the trunk, disappeared into leaves, found the baby again.

It kept climbing.

Its head still hung between its shoulders.

It reached a branch about ten feet above the ground.

It crawled onto it.

Then underneath it.

My dog made a small sound.

The baby stopped.

It hung beneath the branch on its hands and knees.

Its back faced the ground.

Its head hung toward us.

The crying continued.

Its mouth remained closed.

Eight seconds.

Again.

Eight seconds.

Again.

My dog moved behind me.

The baby stopped crying.

I could hear my breathing.

Then its head moved.

It turned toward us.

The rest of its body stayed exactly where it was.

The head kept turning.

I watched one ear disappear.

The back of its skull faced me.

Then the other ear appeared.

Then its face.

It had turned its head completely around.

My hand went numb around the phone.

The baby’s eyes were open.

They looked normal.

Brown.

Wet.

Alive.

That made it worse.

It stared at my dog.

My dog began trembling.

The baby’s eyes moved.

They found me.

We looked at each other.

I don’t know how long.

Maybe two seconds.

Maybe ten.

Then the baby smiled.

A small, ordinary baby smile.

My dog screamed.

I ran.

I didn’t look back.

I ran across the field and dragged him with me until he was running too.

My phone beam jumped across the grass.

My feet slipped.

I almost went down.

I kept going.

Behind us, nothing.

That frightened me more.

No crying.

No branches.

No movement.

I ran harder.

My dog passed me.

We reached the road.

His nails struck pavement.

I could see the house.

I could see the door.

Twenty yards.

Maybe thirty.

Then the crying started beside us.

I looked toward the field.

Nothing.

The cry repeated.

Closer.

I kept running.

Eight seconds.

Again.

It was keeping pace.

My dog was choking himself against the leash.

“Go. Go.”

Eight seconds.

The crying came from behind us.

Then from the field.

Then somewhere ahead.

I saw the house.

Ten yards.

The crying stopped.

Something small crossed my phone light.

I saw it for less than a second.

Four limbs.

Pale skin.

It moved across the road ahead of us and disappeared into the grass.

My dog tried to stop.

I pulled him.

“GO.”

We reached the house.

My hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t get the key into the lock.

I missed once.

Twice.

Behind me, something moved through the grass.

Fast.

The key went in.

I opened the door.

My dog forced his way through.

I followed and slammed it behind me.

Locked it.

Deadbolt.

I stood there.

My dog backed away from the door.

I kept expecting something to hit it.

Nothing did.

I looked at my phone.

3:19.

Twelve minutes.

The whole thing had been twelve minutes.

I listened.

Nothing.

My dog stared at the bottom of the door.

“It’s okay.”

He backed farther away.

I hated myself for saying it.

I turned on the living room light.

That helped for maybe five seconds.

Then I heard something outside.

A tiny movement against the concrete.

Scratch.

Pause.

Scratch.

Pause.

My dog walked backward.

Scratch.

Closer.

Scratch.

Something reached the door.

I watched the gap underneath it.

My dog started whining.

There was a soft sound against the other side.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Three little taps.

Low on the door.

Maybe six inches from the floor.

I covered my mouth.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Then nothing.

I stood there for a long time.

My legs hurt from keeping them locked.

I wanted to check the window.

I couldn’t.

I wanted to turn on the porch light.

I couldn’t do that either.

My dog suddenly looked up.

Above the door.

I followed his eyes.

The crying started.

Directly outside.

I backed away.

It continued.

Same cry.

Eight seconds.

Same cry.

Eight seconds.

Same cry.

My dog ran into the bedroom.

I stayed in the living room until sunrise.

At some point the crying stopped.

I don’t remember when.

When daylight finally came through the windows, I waited another hour.

Then another.

At eight, I opened the door.

Nothing was there.

I checked the concrete.

No marks.

I walked around the house.

Nothing.

I went back to the field later that afternoon.

I don’t know why.

Maybe I needed to see the tree in daylight.

Maybe I needed proof that I’d been half asleep.

I found it easily.

The branch was lower than I remembered.

I stood underneath it for a while.

There was nothing unusual about the tree.

Then I looked at the trunk.

About three feet above the ground were five small streaks of dried mud.

Above them were five more.

Then five more.

Tiny handprints.

They continued up the trunk.

I stepped backward.

They went all the way to the branch.

I went home.

I stopped walking my dog there.

If he wakes me during the night, he waits.

I don’t care if he pisses on the floor.

I looked up Baby in the Tree on the internet. Nothing. No reports Nothing. Part of me wonders if I am where this urban legend begins.

Only time will tell.

Thank you so much for reading! I know it’s cliche to say, but I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. If you enjoyed my latest post, please check out more of my work. See below!

Flash Fiction: The Dollmaker

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

FEB 19

The bell above the shop door made a thin, brittle sound, like something snapping in cold weather.

Read full story

The Eyes That Follow

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

MAR 21

Naomi Hill lived on the fourth floor of a building that always seemed to be holding its breath. The hallway lights buzzed softly above her door, never fully steady, as though electricity itself hesitated to linger there. Every evening, she returned from the grocery store with paper bags balanced against her hip, unlocke…

Read full story

My Friend, Spider Bones, a Short Story

A WRITER’S VOICE

·

NOVEMBER 2, 2025

The first time Eli heard someone call his father a murderer, he was eight.

Read full story

My poetry collection, Paper Blanket: Collected Poems is available on Amazon in Ebook, Paperback, and Hardcover editions. Order your copy now:

Paper Blanket: Collected Poems

My horror collection, The Face in the Dark, is now available in ebook and paperback editions. Order your copy now!

The Face in the Dark

If you would like to help a struggling buy a coffee, please consider becoming a paid subscriber ($8/month, $80/annual) on Substack or leaving me a donation in the link below. Thank you all so much for your support!

Buy Me A Coffee

I am offering a huge discount. 75% off. That’s $2/month for a year. Or $20 for the year. I’m updating all of my work and removing paid posts. However, paid subs get access to my sub chat.

Your support means so much to me. I have recently come under hard times and you have no idea how much I appreciate your help. Thank you! Not to brag, but I think you guys are the greatest subscribers on Substack.

Discount

Four months ago, everything went to hell.

I’ve already written about the suspension. I’ve already written about the chaos that came before it. I still believe, wholeheartedly, that the weird little creep who caused so much trouble on Substack (I won’t name him here because he feeds off of it) had something to do with getting me suspended.

Maybe I’ll never be able to prove it.

Doesn’t really matter anymore.

The suspension eventually ended. The damage didn’t.

Something had changed in me.

I could still write at first. I could sit down, open a blank page, put my fingers on the keyboard and produce something resembling what I had always produced. But I noticed it becoming harder. Sentences that once came naturally had to be dragged out. Ideas would arrive and die before I could figure out what to do with them.

Then even that stopped.

I remember sitting down one day and realizing I had nothing.

Seventeen projects sat there.

Seventeen. You know what that's like for a perfectionist and completionist like me?

Some had beginnings. Some had notes. Some were little more than an idea I had been excited about a few weeks earlier. I opened them one after another and stared at them.

Nothing.

I tried an old trick I used whenever I got stuck.

Describe the room.

Forget the story. Forget whether anything is good. Write down what you see. The chair. The wall. The window. The light. Eventually one sentence becomes another and something inside your brain starts moving.

Usually.

This time I described the room and remained exactly where I was.

I couldn’t fucking write.

So I survived on leftovers.

I reworked old poems. I dug up sonnets I had originally published on Instagram. I posted enough to keep myself somewhat alive in the algorithm, which is one of those depressing sentences that probably tells you everything you need to know about being a writer online.

Behind the posts, I was done.

Depression had taken over almost everything.

I stopped trusting people. Happiness became difficult. What happened with the fake Maxi and Nicki accounts had done more damage to me than I wanted to admit. There was the betrayal itself, then everything that followed it, then the humiliation of realizing how much power I had allowed another person’s actions to have over my life.

Meanwhile, I wasn’t making much money.

Engagement was bad.

My confidence was worse.

Every number on Substack seemed capable of confirming whatever terrible thing I already believed about myself.

I started thinking about quitting.

Then came the uglier question.

Would anybody care?

If I erased my profile tomorrow, would it matter?

If every poem disappeared, every story, every essay, every stupid joke, every sentence I had spent hours fighting with, would anyone actually notice?

I knew people checked on me. I knew there were people who cared about me. Depression has a remarkable ability to take facts and make them feel irrelevant.

Eventually I started thinking about disappearing completely.

I thought about killing myself.

There isn’t an elegant way to write that sentence, and I don’t want one.

For years I had joked that I couldn’t live if I couldn’t write.

Then I stopped being able to write.

Suddenly the joke wasn’t funny.

I thought about Hemingway. I thought about what happens when something you have built your identity around begins abandoning you. Writing had been there through everything. I could lose money. I could lose a job. I could lose a home. I could lose people. Give me a page and I could still make something.

Now the page had abandoned me too.

Antidepressants didn’t seem to matter.

Therapy didn’t seem to matter.

This was worse than the last time I had fallen apart, when changing medication eventually helped pull me out.

I didn’t merely have thoughts about dying.

I wanted to die.

And somewhere in that depression was an even crueler thought:

If people were this determined to destroy me, maybe I had given them a reason.

Maybe I deserved it.

I lived inside that thinking for a couple of months.

Then something surprisingly ordinary happened.

Christina (the Secret Ingredient) invited me onto her live to celebrate our birthdays.

We share a birthday, different years, and she wanted me there.

So I went.

And it was sweet.

That’s really the word for it.

Sweet.

For a little while I got to talk and laugh and exist around someone who was happy I existed. There was no conspiracy. No fighting. No wondering who was talking about me somewhere else. No trying to decipher somebody’s motives.

I had a good time.

I felt better.

Then Laura B and Fiona Bridges invited me onto their live.

I felt better again.

I read one of my old poems from a piece of paper.

Something happened when I heard the words coming out of my own mouth.

I remembered the rhythm.

I remembered what poetry felt like.

I remembered myself.

Later Stefan Pasek invited me onto his live. We talked about whatever came into our heads. Nothing miraculous happened. Nobody delivered a speech that cured me. Nobody knew they were participating in some grand rescue operation.

They were writers spending time with another writer.

That mattered more than any of them probably realized.

The same platform I had begun associating with betrayal, paranoia and humiliation reminded me that there were actual human beings here.

People who wanted me around.

Somehow, those writers helped save my life.

I started climbing out.

The depression loosened.

Writing was still difficult, but a few poems came through. They weren’t pouring out of me the way they once had. I had to work for them. Sometimes I had to fight for individual lines.

At least there were lines again.

Then came the day I had been waiting months for.

I was watching a YouTube video about Shirley Jackson’s The Witch.

It’s my favorite short story of hers.

I love the way Jackson can make something ordinary become disturbing without announcing that she’s doing it. She lets you sit there. Lets you get comfortable. Then she gives you one small thing that feels wrong.

Watching that video, I remembered something.

I used to know how to do this.

Fuck, I did know how to do this.

I wrote The Woman on the Train.

I wrote The Masked Woman.

Those stories came out of my head.

I can do this again.

Buy Me A Coffee

Around that time, my five-year-old cousin was playing with my dog. I heard her changing her voice while she played.

That was all it took.

A voice.

Then I thought about that quote from The Exorcist: “You show me Regan’s double, same face, same voice, everything. And I’d know it wasn’t Regan. I’d know in my gut. And I’m telling you that ‘thing’ upstairs isn’t my daughter.”

I started wondering.

What if a little girl came home from school one afternoon and something about her was different?

Nothing enormous.

Nothing anybody else would immediately recognize.

Her father would know.

Just like Chris Macneil said about her daughter, parents know the thousand tiny habits that make their children themselves. The way they answer questions. What they eat. Which hand reaches for something. How they pronounce certain words.

What if those things started changing?

What if she looked exactly like his daughter?