Barricade

I’m about to do a very stupid thing.

I know it’s stupid. I know it. But I don’t think I have a choice anymore. And I have to do it now, while I have the nerve and the will and while my hands are still steady.

I’m sick. I’ve always been sick. Some days are better than others. When I was young my parents prayed that it might just be a precursor of the onset of epilepsy, but the seizures never came. I just… can’t trust myself.

I see things. On some days, I can hear them and smell them too. I should say that I used to see them. After being on every possible combination of pills three doctors could come up with, I thought we’d finally found the right chemical key for my misfiring brain. It’s been six years of stability and relative normalcy, trading a halfway house for a tiny studio apartment, a collection of mostly tolerable side-effects, and a steady job. I realize this probably sounds dull for most people, but I cherished every moment of that achingly simple monotony.

It went bad all at once

Friday morning. I awake from the first dream I’ve had in years, a vivid phantasmagoria of colors and sounds, and begrudgingly leave my perfect and sterile clean apartment for the short walk to work.

I notice it as soon as the elevator opens, the unearthly stillness and silence in the heavy air. The front door of the complex is hanging open, unlocked and swinging gently, the faintest trace of smoke drifting inward in the damp breeze. Outside, the wide streets are empty and bare. My mouth is suddenly dry and I rock back on my heels, cresting a crippling wave of panic and déjà vu.

This particular hallucination, the quiet and the smoke and the emptiness, was always my most frequent; I haven’t had it in six years but the familiarity of it stings. I shut my eyes tightly, and jab my hand at the panels of chipped buttons. Moments later I am on the top floor, walking half blind the path to my door with practiced familiarity. Once inside I sit on my bed, gripping tight the handle of my cane, eyes closed, breathing slow and steady. Focused. Calm. Clear. I open my eyes.

I can’t be outside like this, I know this. I was hit by a car when I was homeless, wandering dazed into the street, while my fevered mind saw only emptiness. I’ll need a replacement hip before I’m forty. I can hear the slivers of bone grind a little with every labored step. I call my boss, and leave a terse message, apologizing for being too ill to work today.

I hold my breath as I open the one tiny window in my studio. It’s so close to the building next to me, I can almost touch its brick wall and I can’t see the street from this height and angle: but as I strain to lean out the window, sounds of yelling and a few whining engines drift up to me. The pall of unearthly quiet is broken, and I feel a great sense of relief, knowing that my episode is over.

I am counting the pills in orderly columns on the table, proving a fifth time to myself that I have taken my daily regimen, when I start to hear the screaming. It builds from far below; riding the struts and supports of the tower until it seems to emanate from the bones of the building.

An hour later the sounds seem like they are right outside; horrid, terrified, inchoate clumps of half formed words and pleas, punctuated by wet, ragged shrieks and heavy muffled thudding. The breathing and relaxation exercises aren’t helping, and I’m gripping the edge of my bed, soaked in sweat. The idea appears fully formed in my mind: I need to barricade the door. I struggle to suppress it. It would be like- giving up, all progress I’ve made would be for naught if I entertain the notion that the episode is real.

But the screaming… this is a new one for me.

There’s the shuffle of movement outside, and the knob of the door twists violently and shudders against the deadbolt. I try to cry out, but my throat is parched and only a dry croak comes out. The door starts flex slightly as heavy blows land on the outside, and a mad, gibbering chorus of voices spits out a strange nonsense of broken syllables.

It only takes me a moment to decide now. I burst to my feet and throw all my weight into the bookshelf, crashing into it with bright white bolt of pain. It topples slowly, leaning at first like a tree and then smashing to the ground. On top of the bookshelf goes my desk and chairs, my hip screaming with each step. I collapse again on the floor, grasping for breath, and listen to the pounding subside and the horrid voices retreat.

That was two days ago.

They come back every day and scratch at the door, whispering in that vile gibberish. Sometimes I allow myself to think I can recognize the voices. The phone is dead, and the power is out. When I lean out the window and yell for help, the only answer I get is the occasional shriek or ululating babble.

When I was younger, when I was at my worst, my episodes would last for hours, at most. I am at a loss. I have very little food left and the water pressure has already dropped.

Lying in bed in the late summer heat, in a moment of near total silence, the inevitability of it occurs to me. If I stay, I’ll starve. What happens to me on the other side of the barricade only depends on how sick I really am.

I want to believe with a sudden desire I am just ill, simply and profoundly ill. The sureness of it wells up in me, and I feel suddenly awake and lucid. I need a doctor, surely, but soon the hallucination will lift and my mind will heal. I just need to break through this.

I need to go outside.

I remove the bookshelf slowly, rotating it away from the door gently to rest with the other furniture. This is right, I assure myself. This is healthy. I turn the deadbolt, put my hand on the handle, and try to suppress the rising terror in my guts. I give it a little pressure.

Outside, I hear a dry shuffling and a low rising murmur of unfathomable voices, and my surety drains from me, leaving only cold and naked horror in its place.

My hand is on the door.

I’m about to do a very stupid thing.

–
Credited to entropyblues

Notebook

Somewhere in the world, there is a collection of books.

Perhaps it's in a dusty, unpainted shelf in the back corner of someone's attic; perhaps it's in a set of musty boxes in the basement of some tiny, obscure library.

It contains a few hundred volumes, all handwritten, ranging from leather-bound volumes with yellowing pages two hundred years old through to modern spiral-bound notebooks.

All of them are diaries, some by famous people, some by not-so famous people, but all by the most horrific madmen and murderers the world has ever known.

And the collection is growing. For if you ever find it, you will hear a faint scratching sound, coming from the newest volume of the set. This volume will be new, and filled with blank pages, except for the first.

On this first page, you will find the beginning of your own diary, written in your own hand.

Summoning a Watcher

In the myriads of summoning rituals you can find, a large percentage of them promise awful or even fatal consequences for errors or failure to adhere strictly to the instructions. This is not one. You’ll be summoning a relatively good-natured creature with a very easy ritual. You’ll be summoning a Watcher.

Watchers are about three feet tall with spindly limbs and grey skin. They have no facial features save two massive black eyes with spotted red pupils. Their purpose is to gather information for whoever summons them. They are loyal to their summoners and invisible to everyone else, which helps them move about the world.

To call a Watcher, go to a large field at dusk. It should not be in use for growing crops. The best is one with tall grass in it that still leaves the soil accessible. For each Watcher you want to summon (you can have more than one), make a mound of dirt in the field. It doesn’t have to be massive, but make it at least as tall as your hand.

Bury a doll’s eye in each mound like a seed. Spill a few drops of blood to “water” the mound. The blood lets the Watchers know who they’ll be serving. Once this is completed, you are done with the first part of the ritual. Go home and enjoy the rest of your night.

For the best results, come back to the fields the next day before noon. A grey hand will be sticking straight out of the mound like a flower. Grasp the hand and pull. Your Watcher will come up extremely easily. Please note that you do not have to go back for your Watcher; it will dig itself out eventually and come to your house. It is highly suggested that you help it along, however, as this shows the Watcher your good intentions.

Once your Watcher is out of the ground, congratulations! You may now tell it to go wherever you want. You can use it to spy on people, or send it to a foreign country to learn about the culture. Every day you will simply wake up with the knowledge it has collected for you.

I said there’s no fatal consequences for wrong moves. That’s true, but be mindful that you treat your Watcher well. It will never ask you for food, clothing, shelter, or anything, but it is recommended that you give these things anyway. At the very least, give it some time off. A few days per month are enough. If your Watcher becomes disgruntled, you will begin to forget small things during the day—-nothing important, just big enough to cause minor annoyances.

Then will come the nightmares. They’ll be just bad enough to make sleeping unpleasant. After a couple weeks of this, the nightmares and memory loss will suddenly cease. You will not wake up with new information. If this happens, you’ll know that your Watcher became so fed up with your ingratitude that it left.

If for any reason you want to get rid of your Watcher or no longer require its services, write your first and last name on a chalkboard and erase it one letter at a time. When the last letter is erased, you will not receive any new information, nor will you receive a penalty for letting your Watcher go.


----


reddeath-in-roomzero:

Rose

A hand.

It was nagging at her mind, the ghostly blue image of a hand. She looked down at her lap, where her own hands lay, spotted and withered, more skeletal than ghostly. They held a tissue. Had she been crying? These days it was hard to remember anything from one moment to the next, let alone something that happened so many decades ago.

Oh, yes. She knew where she was again.

She’d been telling her story. The story about the mighty passenger ship. The story of adventure, opulence, and romance, which she knew by heart. The story about a handsome young man named Jack.

Jack? Was that right?

Her brow creased. Of course, Jack! What was wrong with her? Why was she seeing a ghostly blue handhe ? She shrugged it away, determined not to think of it. Instead she looked up at the friendly faces surrounding her.

Kindly, smiling faces, eager to hear more about… what?

Oh, yes.

The story about the ship, and romance. The story that had unfolded in her mind all those years ago, on a wooden plank in the middle of the freezing ocean, as she waited to die. The story she’d told herself ever since, to forget about that image of the ghostly blue hand.

Her hand.

Her own ice cold hand, holding a kicking, struggling man under the water, so he wouldn’t tip her plank. A stranger she’d never known, but called Jack.

“There’s no record of him at all,” said a bearded man who had been listening to her story.

Rose smiled.

“No, there wouldn’t be, would there? He exists now, only in my memory.”

—
Credits to: IPostatMidnight

Studying Abroad at Prague

As I stood at the base of the long lane beneath, staring up at my distant destination, I supposed my perceptions of that house were being colored by my recent breakup.

The plan had been to attend to our studies in Prague together. Instead, I stood alone against the parching summer winds, studying a lengthy alley that carved its way up the precipitous hill with an ancient laziness.

Lost in brooding need for motion, I ignored my initial unease and slipped into the cramped canyon where that serpentine alley began. The walk was quiet, taxing, and lonely, but passed by without note in a blur of regretful and nostalgic thoughts. I was in another country, but I’d not yet left the old one behind.

As I emerged from the narrow shade, sweaty and bitter, the hill’s crowning residence greeted me with a resurgence of disquiet. The high house had once been noble, and sat apart, towering over its environs like an aging patriarch with a tired back. The fourth and highest floor carried a visibly dangerous tilt toward the terminal precipice of that final lot, an illusion I attributed to the hill’s steep angle and the stone’s weathered patterns. Shadows streamed from sharp carvings, casting incomprehensible patterns across the wasteland of cracked medieval pavement that otherwise ran bright under dry winds.

I was not the only student staying at the Moravec house, and this was hardly the first year that its surviving matriarch had hosted academics, but I still had to force myself to approach. An inexplicable revulsion held me back, trying to warn me away, but there was no specific reason I could gather to truly give up and return to my home country.

And she was there, in my home country. Disquiet or no, I couldn’t go back.

I gave a gentle knock on the wide wooden door.

An arid breeze brought a sigh past my ears. I looked back at the cobblestone lane, but the mid-day sun and patterned shade held nothing but emptiness, and the odd tiny weed dancing in the wind.

The door swung open, and I turned forward in sudden embarrassed surprise.

A white-haired woman stood waiting, a pleasant smile on her face. She carried a slight hunch to match that of the tired house itself, but her clear blue eyes still shined with particular energy. Her calm and positive tone carried only a hint of accent. “Our last student! You’ve arrived!”

“Lady Moravec,” I responded, following the cultural advice my advisor had given me. It felt odd to address someone with a noble title like that, given that she stood before me in jeans and a faded orange shirt that seemed reminiscent of earlier decades. This was not an old woman - this was a woman who happened to have aged.

Her deeply wrinkled face curled up in genuine humor. “Dear, really. Call me Aneta.” She pulled a cellphone and typed in my name and details. “So that I’ll remember,” she explained, before returning it to her pocket.

I stepped inside after her, and immediately shuddered from the chill within.

As she led me into the house, I saw almost immediately why she needed to record my details. Eleven other students sat in a long dining room. Lunch had finished at least an hour before, but the plates remained on the table while cultures clashed and friendships were forged.

I was in no mood to meet people, and Aneta seemed to notice. Instead of introducing me immediately, she showed me the way up a surprisingly narrow set of stone steps that I figured must have been for the servants - back when the house had employed them.

The chill deepened as we climbed.

“Is it just you here these days?” I asked, adjusting my backpack and holding myself closer against the drop in temperature.

She kept moving, but threw a smile back. “If the cold is bothering you, I can get you a sweater.”

“No, I’m fine,” I lied.

At first, I assumed the house’s ancient construction kept it cold, but we passed a vent - and the icy air brought me a shiver. I’d seen signs of modern renovations in the front hallway, and that was true here as well.

We came to the top of the stairs, and I blinked against the sudden change.

White was the dominant color here. The long and close hallway was incredibly clean, and populated only by a decorative little table or two with plastic flowers in small vases. I immediately found myself thinking of the place as icy, given the painfully chill airflow rolling toward us and the harsh lack of color.

Suppressing an oncoming chattering of my teeth, I forced a smile and followed her to my room. She had assigned me the one at the end of the long hallway because I’d arrived last. That was fair enough, but I was already considering the walk back to the stairs a trek that I would have to endure with each departure and return.

The room itself was plain, spartan, and serviceable. There was no air vent within, so the temperature was higher, and the patterns were all brown. Glad to escape chill white, I ducked within and dropped my backpack to the floor.

A moment later, I thought to thank my new host, so I popped my head out.

She had already left me to my own devices, but she had not departed entirely. I watched her open a nearly invisible white closet door, pull out a vacuum, and begin cleaning up the very scant dirt my shoes had left behind.

I supposed it was necessary to keep the smooth alabaster wood floor clean, but something about her movement and manner came off as a bit intent, or even manic.

Taking care to avoid any noise, I closed my door, and then went about assessing my new living quarters.

The single window was made of thick double-paned glass. Beyond, I could see a great deal of Prague, and nothing of the winding lane I’d traveled earlier. This window faced the hill’s precipice, then, and I peered down at a dizzyingly steep series of rooftops that dropped haphazardly into a sea of buildings far below.

Hoping for a better view down, I tried to open the window, but found that it was set wholly into the wall. Not only could it not be opened, it had been constructed to purposely lack the ability.

I supposed that was necessary to keep guests from falling out.

There was no air flow in my room, however, so I wondered if it wouldn’t begin to feel a little claustrophobic over the course of the semester.

I supposed that I wasn’t really intended to spend much time there. The house did have a sprawling layout that probably allowed for privacy through sheer size.

Shrugging off my continuing unease, I headed back into the icy halls.

I did see the narrow stairs back down to the front, but I also looked the other direction.

The hallway terminated at a junction, where a fancy portrait hung on the wall. I approached it, studying the image of an older and respectable man. His heavy eyes gazed eternally at something in the distance, and I knew instinctively who this was: Rosta Moravec, the man of the house, and Aneta’s late husband.

I’d been told not to bring him up.

Standing there in front of his picture, I pulled out my phone and looked into him.

His respectable portrait seemed a sham as I read paragraph after paragraph about the scandals of his life. There had been rumors about gambling, about successful shady dealings to recover family wealth, and about womanizing.

The article also included an image of a woman I recognized. It was Aneta, lacking a number of decades, and quite beautiful for the change. She stood with her husband, smiling with that same particular brightness.

I stared - at first, because she caught the eye so strongly, and then because a strange shock ran through me. It was brighter and much less worn, but I knew the pattern.

She was wearing that same orange shirt.

It was a picture of the two of them, from before all the scandals. I supposed that shirt meant something to her.

A subtle sigh reached my hearing. I looked up, confused. Had that been the same sound from outside?

The revving of a vacuum startled me, and I hurriedly put my phone away as Aneta’s swift cleaning motions brought her closer. She kept her eyes on the traces of dirt I’d left on the sheer white floor. “Please join the others downstairs.”

I did as she asked, wondering if I hadn’t heard a slight anger in her tone.

The other students pulled me in from the first moment, demanding my story and friendship, and I gave them what I could. They were nice enough, but my mind was still on a girl I knew I would never speak to again.

That, and on the oddness of the house and its sole caretaker.

School started, and I had less time to think about it, but nobody else seemed to find it odd that she wore that same orange shirt every single day. She kept it immaculate, just like the house, so the others chalked it up to her being set in her ways.

I heard that same odd sigh twice more over the next three months, but I imagined it had to have come from the air system.

Because my room was unsuitable for waking pursuits, I often wandered the house, and eventually found a library. In addition to a huge range of first-print classics, there was also an entire section filled with medical texts. Each had been leafed through in great detail, and written upon with intent. Notes marred almost every margin. They were a bit old, but close enough to modern.

I’d intended to ask Aneta about them until the nature of the notes changed.

you bastard

It was probably my tenth time perusing the dusty and unused library, and my third time examining those medical books, so I had to stare for a moment to comprehend what I was seeing. Someone had jotted questions above, and then answered them; someone had noted important sections below. Between…

you don’t get to leave me

i’ll found out who she is

i’ll find out who all of them are

I swallowed down a return of that unease I’d felt my first day, and then carefully placed the books back the way I had found them.

I kept my thoughts to myself for a time, and only pursued my concerns in a roundabout manner.

The twelve of us had finished dinner, and a few glasses of wine had been had, courtesy of our absent host. I knew who would speak most freely. Wright was an American, and the drink went straight to his mouth every time.

At an opportune time, I leaned close to him. “Say, do you know anything about how Rosta died?”

His dumb grin told me I’d struck gold. He gave me a conspiratorial whisper that I was sure everyone in the room could hear; my only saving grace was that their drunken conversations had them riveted to other topics. “Rosta Moravec!” Wright let out a little burst of air and gave a great nod. “Disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” I asked, a terrible suspicion coming over me.

“Not gonna find that on Wikipedia, are ya? Heard it from a local chick I hooked up with my first week here. Only the locals know about it. Whisper it, you know.”

I tried to sound only casually interested. “When did he disappear?”

“Ten years, I think,” he responded, before leaping up. “Bathroom time!”

He was gone in an instant, but a dark heaviness remained in his absence.

I took my leave, and headed to my room, cramped though it was. I sat between close brown walls, staring at my sealed window. What had Aneta done? I absently bit through each of my nails one by one before I decided I had to investigate further.

The main complication was clear: Lady Moravec never left the house. She loved the house, and kept it chill, austere, and maddeningly clean.

That gave me the idea.

During another night of drinking, I gave Wright an anonymous gift - a potted plant, something which he found uniquely hilarious for reasons beyond my ken - and he proceeded to almost immediately trip and smash it, exactly as I’d hoped.

Aneta raced out from rooms unknown and proceeded to clean in a panic.

I slipped away.

Her room lay at the very back of the house, and I hurried toward it without my shoes. In socks alone, I left no trace of my passage on the stark floors.

The door to her room creaked open with a blast of icy air. I braced myself for the coldest room yet and crept inside.

Everything within was white.

The bed and all its sheets were white.

The desk was white.

There was no window at all.

I’d seen many of the signs, but I knew now that Lady Moravec contained some measure of hidden madness. This simply wasn’t normal.

The desk drawers slipped open without resistance, and I leafed through several white journals I found within.

he loves me

i’m so happy to have my Rosta with me

I checked the corporate text at the very front of the journal - it was only two years old.

Either Aneta was completely mad… or…

When that sigh broached my senses for the fifth time since I’d come, I finally heard it for what it was: a distant, weak, and hopeless moan.

The truth struck me with an almost physical thump to the chest.

Rosta Moravec was still in the house.

Electrified by my new understanding, I began looking around the room with sharper eyes. Like the closets in the hallways, nearly invisible white doors had been set in the walls here. They were set high, near arm level, and too small to be accesses to another room, but I was still deadly curious. I approached one and slid the clean white wood panels apart.

An empty cube of space sat beyond, also bright white… except for a single crimson little splatter. A drop of blood sat in that cupboard - and it had not yet congealed.

It was fresh.

A creak sounded in the distance, and I hurriedly closed the cupboard, checked the desk, and slipped back out.

The house’s maze-like setup lent me a dozen paths to escape. I made it to my room, put my shoes back on, and then casually rejoined the dinner party in the dining room. Nobody had been the wiser. If anyone had thought about it, I would have told them I’d just gone to the washroom.

I laughed along with their jokes and listened to their tales, but my mind was solely on the undeniable fact that something terrible had been going on in that house for ten years. Was Rosta locked up somewhere? Was Aneta torturing him?

Burdened with my horrible suspicions, I couldn’t help but feel completely alone. The girl I loved should have been there to help. She would have known what to do. She had been bright, strong, and smart. I didn’t understand why we’d ended, and I was far from over it even months later.

And winter was coming on, so my time spent in the house only increased. I used every moment of free time manipulating dirtiness in the house so that I would have a chance to explore each and every room one by one. If Rosta was in the house, there had to be a way to find him. I couldn’t simply call the police - that had all been done ten years ago, apparently, and they’d found nothing. Without any evidence, I’d look insane.

My search took me deep into the inner workings of the house, most especially in my own room. After several days’ work, I’d managed to remove a panel in the wall without damage. Beyond ran a great many wires, tubes, and so on. Those things I expected. There was one deviation from those expectations: several little glass tubes that ran from somewhere deep in the wall to somewhere else deep in the wall. Extremely small fibers sat within each. I stared at them for days, and even purchased a magnifying glass, but all I saw was dirty yellow with traces of red.

What thin fibers would be yellow with traces of red? I looked up wires, manufacturing, house hardwares… I couldn’t find a match.

But these tubes were a clue. I focused my explorations on the numerous hidden panels in the house, tracing the glass. Many spread out in branching patterns through the walls, often terminating into hundreds of very small glass tubes. What was I seeing? I still had no idea. I traced them the other direction, finding that they got fewer in number and thicker as I headed toward the heart of House Moravec.

By then, I’d grown used to the eternal bone-chill, and felt one with it. This house, and this environment, carried a bleak madness that I knew had infected me. Aneta had been obsessed with keeping her womanizing husband, and I had become obsessed with freeing him from her… anything to keep from thinking about what was missing in my life.

A major break occurred in late December of that year. I hadn’t gone to class in the last month; I’d needed that time to continue my search. I was glad for it, too, because it was during one of those hours that I was supposed to have been absent from the house that I finally found something important.

It was a closet within a closet, containing a hidden apparatus that pumped in and out like some sort of lung. The thickening tubes connected to it directly, and I managed to determine that this air system was separate from the icy air vents.

My immediate thought was that she was keeping Rosta somewhere isolated, with its own environment. That would have avoided a number of problems that would otherwise have exposed his presence in the house.

She was smart. I’d guessed it, based on her study of the medical texts, but now I knew. Those manic and sharp blue eyes hid piercing calculation. I knew that now, too, because I had the sense that she was on to me. I hadn’t given myself away, and I’d made no mistake, but she seemed to see it in me somehow. Did madness recognize madness?

She made no immediate move against me.

I hesitated for a few days out of fear, but then resumed my search when I felt I had no other choice. I’d mapped out the entire house, and found no missing space. The entirety of House Moravec was drawn out in my hidden notes, and there were no extra rooms. I’d even rented a sounder and gone over every inch of the basement…

It was that drawing that struck home the horrifying truth of what I’d been mapping. I stared at it, highly aware of everything around me. My brown room hummed quietly with the systems around it, snow fell outside the window, and I was holding a picture of something I recognized.

There was no more need for the game. In a shaking fury, I stormed through the freezing white hallways, heading straight for Aneta’s room.

She sat within, writing in her white journal. She looked up with icy determination. “I see from the look in your eyes that you understand.”

I shook with the strain of repressed violence. “Show me.”

Her hunch disappeared as she stood straight with ease and grace. An affectation; another lie. She moved to the cabinets in her bedroom walls, and opened the one I’d found the drop of blood in. “Are you sure?”

I kept my response quiet, but fierce. “Show me!”

She pressed a hidden square, and the cubical space lifted - it had always been a sort of secret dumb-waiter. I’d never thought to look deeper into it, because the space was simply too small for a person. It was the perfect size, however, for the head of an aging, womanizing patriarch.

The glass tubes moved with the mechanical case that came up. I understood, now, what had been done.

Aneta turned around and smiled. “He can never leave me.”

It was what I’d suspected. The tubes I’d been mapping had been splayed out like a circulatory system, and I’d found the lungs. Rosta had never been in any room of the house. He’d been in the house itself, splayed out through every wall and floor. The tubes held his arteries and veins… and this box held his head. I hadn’t expected, however, that the system had actually worked.

Rosta Moravec was still alive.

He stared at me, trying his best to whisper for help.

Lady Moravec studied me with a bright gaze. “Are you going to the police?”

I shuddered. “I have to… this is monstrous. Insane. Aneta, do you see what you’ve done?”

She gave a slow nod. “He can never leave me, or this house. I have everything I want.” She took a step closer. “Before you inform anyone, I should tell you… I’ve invited your ex-girlfriend, the one you always talk about. She’ll be coming here next for the next semester. You could simply keep this to yourself… and stay. This house will need someone to take care of it after I’m gone. Before that, I could help you… learn.”

I froze, trying to comprehend what she was offering. She, too, had had a partner who had disappointed her and tried to leave… but she’d taken away that disappointment through science and madness.

When I didn’t respond, Aneta moved to her desk, pulled out a medical textbook, and held it out.

I’d like to say I turned it down.




----by reddit user M59Gar via: sixpenceee.com