The Job I never knew I Needed
I was supposed to follow one of the team members with my camera. We were exploring a haunted asylum, not that I believed that at the time. I was new and all, so I wasn't super familiar with the others. I followed the person I thought I was told to all night. We met back up at the end, and they asked where I had been all night. I was going to point out who I had been following, but they weren't there.
Confused, I told them they could check my footage, but I had been following someone. They all started chatting with excitement about what I must have captured. I was bewildered. Not knowing what had just happened, I answered their excited questions with mumbled "yeah, it was cool, I guess." and "I thought it was a person, so there was no reason to be scared." They told me to leave quickly, and make sure the footage wasn't wiped. Thereafter, we headed home.
I live(d) by myself, yet when I got to my place the door I had locked when I left was open. I searched frantically to see if there had been a burglary, but nothing was missing. It seemed there were some additional items like another toothbrush, toothpaste tube, pair of shoes, and so on. Exhausted, but not wanting to do the necessary steps to go to bed, I plopped on my couch. I eyed the kitchen, as my stomach was a bit rumbly, and nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw someone in it pouring milk into a bowl of cereal, before turning around and putting the carton away.
"We didn't mean to scare you." a wispy voice exclaimed in a soft tone. Burying my face in my hands, I tried to process what I was experiencing. I looked back up to see a bowl on my island with a spoon in it. I got up to check for the mysterious person. The bowl had a single Lucky Charms balloon marshmallow in it. I don't like Lucky Charms. Weirder still, there was no milk in the fridge. Figuring I was overtired, I headed to bed.
When I woke up, I headed to the kitchen, eyes glassy. The bowl from before was still there, but it was full of balloon marshmallows. I made the coffee I had come to the kitchen for, and checked my phone while I waited. The team chat was blown up over my footage. They couldn't believe I had captured such a thing at all, let alone my first time. They also had figured out the 'person’ I had followed was a late team member, who had the same name as a current member. Those who had known him had reminisced about their favorite memories with him.
He hadn't believed in ghosts when he joined the group, he just needed money, but no one knew at the time. His first day on location he had wandered off without a camera, when they found him, his face was sunken, and he was sputtering “I believe you!” over and over again. He never told anyone what happened that day, but after that he insisted on eating a bowl of Lucky Charms before going to a haunted location.
My jaw dropped as I read the last message,
“Oh yeah, and the balloons were his favorite. They were always the last thing he ate.” The smell of my coffee brought me back to my senses.
I continue to be unsure what I believe, but I know there’s something after death. Whenever I'm uncertain his presence is more noticeable. Every now and then I hear different voices whisper
“Do you believe?”
Scopaesthesia
there is no face in the window.
asylum.
a·sy·lum
/əˈsīləm/
noun
1. the protection granted by a nation to someone who has left their native country as a political refugee.
shelter or protection from danger.
2. an institution offering shelter and support to people who are mentally ill.
how confidently i announced
that ghosts were nothing more
than figments
of an imaginative (or perhaps deluded)
mind.
$2,000. help wanted.
i thought,
what the hell? why not?
the cameraman never dies.
it never crossed my mind
that the cameraman
could suffer a fate worse than death.
there is no face in the window.
they even provided me a camera;
some fancy gadget
they ordered off of amazon
that claimed to be able to record
the paranormal.
it was heavy. i figured if a ghost came at me,
i'd go down swinging 300 dollars
worth of equipment at their dead face.
we saw nothing.
honestly, as much of a skeptic as i was,
i've always hoped something
(or someone)
would prove me wrong.
as we walked through the hallways,
grainy, dim-lit footage marking our path,
i found myself hoping:
show me something, anything.
we marched along for hours,
with a kid four years younger than me
narrating the scene.
"12:34 p.m., eastern standard time...
no signs of any activity yet. my name is
kevin schumer, i'm here with my crew
and tonight we are joined by..."
he pauses.
"the cameraman," I finish,
which prompts a few uneasy giggles.
yep, that's me,
the eternal watcher.
i see and i record
for posterity.
there is no face in the window.
we were there until four a.m.
our eyelids had grown heavy.
our livestream had exactly one viewer.
perhaps that was why
i felt like i was being watched.
nothing had happened. no doors
had slammed, no windows broken.
we were alone.
yet i could not shake the feeling...
there is no face in the window.
i drove myself home.
headlights lit up the parking lot.
yellow lines. black asphalt.
then darkness again
as i made my way up
three flights of stairs
to my apartment.
my lights refused to turn on.
a power outage? or had my power
been cut?
i did not know. i was too tired to care.
tomorrow, my check would hit
my account
and then i could solve the problem
of late rent.
i laid down,
in nothing but boxer shorts,
awaiting the release of sleep,
and found that
i could not hold my eyes shut.
a feeling was sinking into my spine
like a numbing injection
and i found myself tingling with
some unseen awareness.
i was being watched.
there is no face in the window.
it has been
three weeks
since i had looked outside
that night
to reassure myself
that i was alone.
there is no face in the window.
yet the feeling did not leave.
it only grew.
more and more, i believed
i was hunted. haunted.
there is no face in the window.
each night i check the door,
the closet, the bed, the window—
wait, the window—
tonight,
(one last desperate cry,
the moment before the mind
shatters)
THERE IS NO FACE IN THE WINDOW.
it has followed me home.
now i will follow it home.
to my sanctuary.
to my asylum.
i am the face in the window.
you will feel me watching,
just as i felt it.
when you look outside tonight,
do not trust your eyes. trust
your instincts.
there is a face in the window.
Need
Daisy knew that getting a job from Craigslist was a bad idea. She also knew that taking a job labeled, "Help us Prove Ghosts Exist,"was idiotic. But desperate times called for desperate measures. And Daisy, with only $10 in her checking account, was desperate. Maybe if she hadn't decided to drop out of business school to follow a dream of becoming a documentarian, things would be different. But she needed money, and applying to work as a videographer for a kooky Craigslist listing was the best she could do for now.
So she applied for the job, and got it. She found out that she would be left alone in an abandoned asylum for a night to capture video. The team member, Carl, who spoke to her in a video call, said that they wanted live footage of the hauntings. They wanted her to be there in order to make sure the footage wouldn't be tampered with by the ghosts.
Which is why she found herself alone in a pitch-black bedroom of the abandoned Anderson Asylum. Carl had told her this bedroom had the highest reading of paranormal activity. The only reading Daisy was getting was the creepy vibe of being left alone in the dark of an old building. Overall, though, this job was easy and she was going to be paid $500.
So she waited and endured three hours of nothing happening.
Then, at around 2 am, she heard a noise. It sounded like a squeak.
"Great, there are probably rats," Daisy thought to herself.
Then she heard a whine. Or maybe a sob. Nope, it had to be another squeak. Because Daisy knew no one else was here.
"Mum?"
Daisy froze. Nope, she didn't hear that. She knew she didn't.
"Mum?"
Nope, nope, nope. She had fallen asleep at this point. That was the explanation. She was not hearing a word coming out of nothing.
"Mum?"
Why did she feel a rush of cold go over her body? Because her temperature had dropped as the night went on. That's why.
"Mum?"
Daisy was not feeling something nudge her. She was asleep, and she had to wake up. She had to wake up.
"MUM!"
Daisy jumped when she heard the yell. And hit her head on the low ceiling. The resulting pain she felt was too real, and too obvious a sign, that she had never been asleep.
Daisy was done. With this weird assignment. With whatever paranoia was hitting her. It didn't matter anymore that she was desperate for money, she just wanted to get out of there. She grabbed her purse and sprinted out of the room, crashing into things as she went because she couldn't see anything. She didn't slow down until she had driven back home.
Carl didn't end up paying her the full $500. She did get $250 for still providing film footage from the night, as she had left her camera behind. She also got the camera back. And something else.
Every night, since the night at the asylum, Daisy had the same dream.
It was of a small girl, with curly blonde hair, who stared at her from two black voids where eyes should have been. She said one thing. Over and over.
"Mum?"
with a blue dress
"How will I explain this?"
"Why must you?"
He can't argue with her logic, not really. He is his own man, owing justifications to not a single soul.
"Yeah, okay, so you have a bit of a point, but we don't live in a vacuum."
She raises an eyebrow, but he ignores it and keeps on. "I have parents who will wonder who I'm dating."
"You haven't seen your mom in three months, your step-father doesn't care, and your dad lives in Iowa."
He rolls his eyes.
"I never told you those things."
She smiles, and his heart flutters. He shivers, but his heart turns cartwheels. She has shared his living space for quite a while now, and he still hasn't gotten used to the things she simply seems to know. It's infuriating, endearing, terrifying, and arousing.
Some of the things she knows are downright biblical in their sweet sinfulness.
She floats across the hardwood of the living room and runs a finger along his jawline. She leans in and whispers, "Let me show you other things I know."
He does, and forgets all about explaining his new girlfriend to the parents.
__
They met at work. He took a gig as a videographer for one of those idiotic reality shows that air on formerly respectable cable networks. This one specialized in sending in a handful of "regular people" to reportedly haunted places, where they had to spend a full 24 hours.
The crew isn't supposed to interact with the "talent," but the lady now in his house started flirting with him around three in the morning on the job. One thing lead to another, the shoot wrapped, and here they are.
He didn't find the "haunted" asylum particularly frightening. Honestly, he thought it was boring, except for the minor dramas that unfolded between the two efinitely not actors competing for who could behave like the biggest scared toolbag. He played along when he needed to, running down hallways and giving the producers plenty of shaky-cam footage to edit and play up. Every chance he got, he put his now-girlfriend on film, since she was easy on the eyes and didn't behave like an imbecile.
__
His phone rings and it's the director from that stupid ghost show. He steps out of the bedroom so he doesn't wake her.
"Hello?"
"No, I did."
"No, I changed memory cards several times. I turned them all in."
"Uh huh."
"Nope, nope, I did, didn't you see?"
"What do you mean?"
"That's not possible."
"Gimme a break, man. I was there. It's all on tape."
"You have the tapes. Well, cards, whatever. The recordings."
"Bullshit, I shot all night."
"The girl in the blue dress, yeah, on my recordings."
"What?"
"I don't understand."
"How did you not see? We had conversations. Yeah, I know I'm not supposed to talk, but what am I supposed to do when I'm asked direct questions, man? I'm not a robot, and hell, you hired her. She's hot."
"Explain that."
"Well who hired her?"
"Never mind, that doesn't matter. No, look again, I don't know what to tell you. It's all recorded, I did my job."
He turns around, and she's standing right next to him, smiling that smile that does things to him.
"Listen man, I gotta go. I'd love to work for you again, but I'm not feeling the accusations. I specifically recorded the girl in blue most of the night, and she's standing right here with me now."
He hangs up, she kisses him, and he forgets all about the director saying there was no actress in a blue dress at the asylum.
He has never heard the word succubus and he never will.
Ever and Auric
“State your purpose, girl!” The massive lion roared at Dani and snarled his snow-white teeth as he growled his demand. Dani shrank and cowered in his presence and wished she hadn’t sent away the Caiman and refused his offer to help her. “How did you get into the Garden? What are you doing here?”
The lion’s baritone timbre rumbled with suspicion and urgency like deafening thunder. Dani trembled as the golden maned behemoth leapt close enough to rip out her throat in one bite. She pressed back and leaned into the Garden’s stone wall, and willed herself not to scream or cry.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. The Silverback told me I had to enter the Garden if I want to get home. The Caiman helped me get in.” Dani’s voice quivered with fear, but her words were honest and the lion’s countenance softened.
“You’ve met the Vitruvians? They helped you? What’s your name, girl?”
“Dani. My name is Dani. I don’t know how I ended up in this world, but I want to go home. Please, can you help me too? The Silverback told me about you. He said your name is Auric. You and Ever rule over the Garden of Monsters, and you know how to find the Garden’s exit. I just want to go back home. Please.”
The great beast softened his tone and stepped back from Dani as he studied her face and fragile human body.
“I believe you, but I don’t have time to help you. Letum and his demons are planning to revolt at sunset tonight. I have to get a message to Ever at the Leaning Tower. Letum wants to kill the Raven and take over Sacros. Ever is the only one who can warn the Raven in time.”
“I can go with you. I can help you.” Dani pleaded and her mind raced in naive desperation.
“You can’t help me. You wouldn’t last an hour in the Garden of Monsters.”
Dani released her death grip on the stone wall behind her and straightened her posture in defiance. Emboldened by the Auric’s insult, Dani raised her voice and found a confidence that contradicted her small stature.
“I already made it through the forest, and I faced Tawa and Saanvi alone. They told me you can’t see Ever or you’ll both die. Is that true? How do you expect to get a message to her if you can’t talk to her?”
Auric looked Dani up and down as he continued to size her up. His gaze shifted into the distance and back to Dani’s eyes again.
“Fine. You’re tougher than I’d expect for a little lost living girl. But you’re right. I can’t physically be in the same place as Ever. It was a choice we made when Jah asked us to join him in Sacros as Vitruvians.”
“Why would you agree to that? Aren’t you and Ever in love?”
“Yes, we're in very powerful kind of love. But we’re also star-crossed souls. In the living world, we were fated to live out endless reincarnations of our doomed love story. No matter how many times we died together in the living world, we were reborn again to play out the same tormented destiny. We found each other in every life. We fell in love every time. And every time we were on the brink of happiness...Ever would die. It was excruciating for me. I could never save her. And every time I watched my lover die in pain, powerless to help her, I would die too. Then we’d be born again, find each other, fall in love, and die together again in agony.”
Auric sat back on his haunches, curling his long tail around his fawn paws, and lowered his head. His heartbreak was palpable. Dani felt her own heart break and wondered what it’d be like to love someone so much that she’d die of a broken heart without them for mere moments. She wondered how many times Auric died with Ever in his arms. She wondered how painful it was for them. Dani wanted to comfort Auric. She wanted to stroke his glistening golden fur. But she could only ask him how he and Ever finally stopped the cycle of reincarnated love and death.
“Is that how you became a Vitruvian? You were given the choice to stay here instead of watching Ever die over and over again?”
“Yes, Jah finally answered our prayers. The last time Ever and I died in the living world we begged and prayed to the Universe to make us a deal. We asked the World to grant us grace. We said we’d be willing to never see each other again in exchange for our eternal servitude to the Universe. We came to the Garden of Monsters for the first time together as passing souls, and Jah offered us release from our repeating torment and heartbreak. He said we could live together forever in the Garden as Vitruvians and Protectors if we agreed to never speak or touch each other ever again. We could be in love forever, and we could exist in the same world as one another. It was the easiest choice Ever and I ever made. I protect the Garden’s entrance here, and Ever protects the Leaning Tower at the Garden’s exit.”
“That doesn’t sound like an easy decision. It sounds more like a painful sacrifice.”
Dani wondered how anyone could sacrifice seeing their soulmate and falling in love countless times in lieu of unrequited love for all eternity.
“Sacrifice defines true love. It's a painful decision, but it's an easy one to make."
The grand Vitruvian lion rose to all fours and his majesty took the breath from the young living girl who was lost in a world of monsters and nightmares.
“If you want to help me – if you want to help Sacros – find Ever at the Leaning Tower and tell her Letum is planning to kill the Raven at sunset. Bring her my message.”
“How will I know the way?”
“You’ll have to start at the beginning. Listen to the flowers, quiet your thoughts, follow your intuition. Avoid monsters and watch out for demons. Most importantly, be quick about it. All Hell breaks loose when the sun sets, and if Letum kills the Raven…the sun will never rise again. And tell Ever I love her.
Nope, Didn’t See a Thing
"Ey, moron I'm home," Shibuya called having taken off his shoes at the stoop of their apartment like a normal person. No second pair of boots or the respectable shined shoes he wore for tax purposes. Fucking heathen.
"Yo where are you? Is dinner on this time?"
Sure it happened to be his own turn but that was hardly the point. "Hey come on answer at least. You said I could expect you home tonight. No more trouble."
Flinging his bag on the couch Shibuya set to work on finding that deadbeat older brother of his.
Peeking in one hall, all dark. The doors still locked. Else they would be spread ajar in rapid succession. Turned into an impromptu office and negotiator party.
And to the right was another hall, this one shorter and with a wall connected set of stairs leading to the upper atrium.
Here was just one door. Made of steel and with a wheel to turn it open rather than a knob. Better yet, the probe was red indicating much like a porta potty that grisly business was going on.
Shibuya was more concerned with having katsudon after a soul smashing day at high school with annoying sheep and uptight moralizing freaks.
Grinding open the room had been transformed, each and every dirty skeleton out to see. Stolen jewels and oddity necklaces and brooches, counterfits of artwork or were the ones in the Mass Swiss museum the fake ones? And better yet the torture slab all nice and pretty with a hero tied to it.
A hero with dazzling silvery eyes wide and begging for rescue. Or, just to not be seen.
"Shio!" his brother squawked, making a frightfully ridiculous deep, raked coals of a voice. "What-- what are," clearing off the pretense, "you doing?"
"Its five, school is out and I have no social life."
Was said pointedly. To no one in particular. Really.
"Oh right, right," he replied, "mmm okay I can leave this for--"
"Forget it. I bet you forgot groceries anyway or made the dumb decision to go out in that cosplay you call a "villain suit," and now this poor kid had to work extra hours before his keepers let him go home," he scoffed, "honestly. Besides, you never make the katsudon right."
Not to mention the big bad Walking Death had awkward conversations with the stove.
"Hot as fuck for you Takada?" Shibuya asked.
"Of course. You're an angel you know that?"
"Yeah, yeah, oh and I'll crack open that awful mac and cheese for the guest."
"What the-- no!" he finally spoke. And here Shibuya had been led to believe constant villain attacks had left him brain dead. "Help me out of here! He's the one wrong here and can't even bother to greet you each day which wow--"
"Tired now. Goodbye. Oh and no desert for either of you."
And Takada crumpled.
Shibuya simply closed the door.
Nope, didn't see a damn thing.
Immortal Promise
“Til death do us part” they promised. A promise made among immortals, to whom a promise was an unbreakable vow, lest they lose their immortality. A promise that had thus far been faithful and dutifully carried out. Now a divide has come between the two and neither wishes to try and bridge the gap. They unite now only in trying to figure out how to forever be rid of the other.
They had learned some lessons from others. One was violence against the other was not enough to end either the promise or the intended target. Guns had been fired, drinks poisoned, brake lines tampered with. For one immortal couple this had actually rekindled their love, but they were the exceptions.
Another lesson learned was they could not just be separated from each other. If they did then over the course of their never-ending existence, they could never be with anyone else, or that would be cheating, and seen as breaking their marriage vow. This would result in lost immortality for the cheater, something neither one of them wanted to part with. Many attempts to convince other people to seduce their partners were made though. Several immortal couples had ended this way.
The most successful way to get out of the marriage promise though was to make more promises, unreasonable promises that were nearly impossible to keep. When a couple was in love they did their best to avoid asking their partners these kinds of promises or else an accidental break could end everything. Now that they wanted to end everything these requests became an everyday occurrence. “Do you promise to never…” or “Promise to always…” became part of common conversation. To have the other agree to something, but not yourself was the real issue. Many immortals had managed to convince their partners into impossible promises only for themselves to be equal bound, resulting in both losing their immortality.
And so, everyday the two wordsmiths fought back and forth, trying to get the other one to slip. Occasionally a knife would be thrown or boa constrictor left in the bed out of frustration, but it always came back to wordplay. The smarts and wit of why they fell in love had become the bane of why they were unable to separate. They are the longest lasting marriage of the immortals and it does not look like it will be ending any time soon.
HOLY OMNIPOTENCE: The Most Powerful Superpower
I can't see through walls. I can't fly. I can't play a superhero or supervillain. I can't bend space-time or invoke magic. I can't run mercurially; I'm no speedster, scarlet or otherwise.
Speeding bullets would easily catch me. I can't leap over even traffic cones, let alone tall buildings, let alone in single bounds. I can't afford to erect a fortress of solitude or its heating bill.
Evil can easily escape my sight, my lantern's light. Bizarros don't seem bizarre to me. I'm no crusader, caped or otherwise. I will never be dynamic, in a duo or otherwise. I am in no league; I don't avenge; I'm not fantastic. When I look for the Bifröst, I only see a rainbow. My only X is on my chromosomes.
I was born under a yellow sun. I am ridiculously vulnerable, ordinary, and have no behavioral escape from my mild mannered ways.
My superpower is my humility, and I'm in love.
Violet
INT. WAITING ROOM. DAY-
A grey haired woman sits on a couch facing the camera talking head style (When Harry Met Sally inspired).
Violet
When people ask, and they don't as much anymore, I usually say I'd imagine life is a lot slower for me. A lot simpler. I go grocery shopping, I knit, I have time to have my routines. I honestly feel a little bad for these spandex-ed freaks. I say that with love of course, if anyone's the freak, it's me.
CUT TO:
INT. GROCERY STORE. DAY-
Violet at the grocery store. She drops a cucumber and before it can touch the ground, twelve masked superheroes super speed to catch it, accidentally running into each other and crushing the cucumber.
Violet nearly falls over before they all catch her.
Violet (VO)
Yeah, it can get a little annoying sometimes. Since all these weirdos were born with immortality, I'm pretty much a God to them. They all stayed 22 years old while I grew up. I think the group created to protect me has gotten a little out of hand, however.
CUT TO:
EXT. BURNED DOWN CHURCH. DAY-
Hordes of spandex-ed superheroes wearing the letters "HPV"shout and scream at a group of other spandex-ed superheroes wearing the letters "HIV".
Violet (VO)
I don't understand why the Help Protect Violet group can't convince the Help Insurrect Violet group to stop burning down churches. I'm Jewish for Christ sakes.
CUT TO:
INT. WAITING ROOM. DAY-
Violet looks down at her hands.
Violet
I've always seen myself as the lucky one. Everyone else has this idiotic need to prove themselves and I'm just Violet. Always have been always will be.
All the things I’d do
A bullet to my head
though it would never work
tell humans I'm a demon
though what would that do?
Or maybe change my face
so I'm not attractive
fake my death!
wait that's something no one would believe
read all the divorce papers
that you could disappear
the family will all scoff at me
and my "humanity"
maybe I will eat you
like Zeus! from long ago
but that would never do
for you can't turn that small
I could destroy my brain
with all of this thinking
oh all the things i'd do
just for me to leave