The Marionettist

 1

They had always liked to write. They were just drawn to it for some reason, ever since they were little kids. They would sit in their rooms, huddled under the blankets with old IBMs, and type out stories that any adult reader would call “cute” or “very creative” with a smile. But that’s not what they were to them. To them, they were epics that would fill bookstores one day, only to be ripped from the shelves by myriad ravenous readers. Of course, that never happened. The stories never went anywhere besides loose binders that would get lost around the house in a few years’ time. Still, they dreamed. Dreamed that one day their names would be plastered on bestselling novels. That people would recognize them in the street. That talk show hosts would scramble to interview them. At least, that was the dream. 

They still remembered the day it all changed. They were zipping their backpacks when the front door slammed open and their grandfather’s voice filled the halls. They and their siblings cascaded to the foyer and found their mother already locked in a tense exchange with him. They loved their grandpa, but they could tell the second they saw him that something was off that day. His skin hung limper than usual, like a wet towel clinging with its last few fibers to a beach chair. He looked just as sweaty as a used beach towel too, and no less disheveled. When he insisted on taking the grandkids on a little day trip, their mother refused. It was a school day after all. But something about his desperate tone (or maybe even the pleading in his eyes?) finally swayed her to let them go as long as he got them back in time for dinner. 

2

“We’re almost there. Don’t worry,” he told them as his eyes switched back and forth from rearview to side mirror like a metronome gone awry. The kids maintained the same silence they had entered the souped-up SUV with. They elected instead to stare outside at the road zooming by. They couldn’t tell where they were, but they knew they were far. Far away from their mom, and probably even farther away from the penthouse apartment Grandpa usually took them to. For a split second, they wondered if he was taking them to the lake, but an abrupt left turn slicing through two lanes of moving traffic jolted the possibility from their minds. 

Hearing the gasps from the backseat, their grandpa tossed them a bone of reassurance. “Almost there,” he said as they wound down a dirt, tree-covered tunnel of a road. Rickety cabins became sparse pockmarks along its sides. 

He kept looking out the windows, slamming the brakes with each new cabin they saw, only to accelerate again a moment later. He repeated the stunt a dozen times before he finally jerked them into a leaf-paved driveway belonging to a shoddy shack tucked deep off the main road, far from sight of any of the other cabins. It didn’t look like it could fit more than 4 people at a time, but the porch collapsing in on itself suggested it hadn’t hosted anyone in years.

Their grandfather didn’t use a key for the door like they had anticipated. Instead, he gave it a hearty thrust with his lowered shoulder. The door almost snapped, and the cabin along with it, but it put up just enough resistance that grandpa recoiled with a grimace.

Dubious entry tactics aside, the shack was far from grandpa’s typical lodging. About 8000 square feet too small, and decades too old on the lumber. “Grandpa, what’s going on? You’re starting to scare us.” The kids chuckled, more nervous than anything. 

He delivered a swift kick to the door. This time the force was enough to break it open. “Shh!” he hissed as if their question had been what caused the wood splintering tumult. Once they were in, he slammed the door and slid the nearest piece of dilapidated furniture in front of it. “Take a seat,” he instructed them as he shut the moth-chewed drapes over the only window. 

When they couldn’t find any chairs, they chose a mix of sitting and squatting over the dust-covered floor. “Grandpa, what’s going on?” they asked again. This time, the chuckles didn’t follow.

He paced what little space the cabin had to offer in silence, probing the boiling waters of his consciousness. A few times he opened his mouth as if to speak, but instead chose to swallow air. After a deep breath, he stopped his pace dead in the center of the room, turned 90-degrees to face the kids head on, shut his eyes, exhaled, and began. 

“I, um…well truthfully, I don’t know where to begin. For the first time, I’m without a script. But it’s good...” He trailed off into the distance as his eyes chased invisible, dancing stars. He resumed. “Your mother would never believe me. Neither would anyone else. But I just need someone to know. You’re all still young enough. You’ll believe me. Won’t you?”

“Believe  what, Grandpa? Why are we all the way out here?”

“I’ll explain everything. But to do so, I have to go back a long time.”

3

He trooped to the wall and peered outside through a slit between the boards. Evidently, it was large enough to see through since he stayed with his nose pressed against it and one eye shut for a while. When he broke from this trance, he returned to pacing.

“I was about 20 when I first met…” he scanned the room for a word. “It. Everything started the night of my first movie premiere. I was nowhere near the lead role, but I wasn’t just an extra either. I walked home that night since I used to live in a tiny apartment close to the premiere.

I remember feeling ecstatic on the way back. Like my life was finally going somewhere. Like I was going to be everything I wanted to be. I felt so great that I wanted to spread some of my joy, so I handed out small chunks of cash to the homeless hanging just inside the mouth of every alley I passed. I used to do that often. That night, though, as I dropped some money at one guy’s feet, I heard a low “psst” coming from a bit deeper in. I jumped at first, but I realized there wasn’t anything to be afraid of as the most beautiful man I had ever seen came out of the alley. He was in a tux fancier than mine, and he had this sort of glow almost, especially around his smile. The pearliest whites and widest grin I had ever seen. Almost like he wasn’t just smiling at me, he was smiling for me. 

He introduced himself as Paul. Then, he looked me cold in the eyes and told me he had been at the premiere. He told me he was especially impressed with my performance. That the other actors paled in comparison. Stuff like that. Now like I said, I wasn’t an extra, but my role wasn’t anything big enough to deserve compliments like that either. 

Still, I ate it up. We went for a drink and talked all about my skills. He said he noticed the subtlety in my performance, the nuance in my expressions, how I could bring a tear out of one eye but not the other. Hell, he praised me for stuff I didn’t even know I had done. We kept talking for an hour. And then, just as naturally as the conversation began, it ended. He went his way, I went mine, and I figured I’d never see him again. But as I walked away, I remember feeling this quick, sharp pain in my back. It was hardly even noticeable, more like a tiny pinch than anything. But I know I felt it. 

4

I didn’t think about that man again until a few years later. I had an audition for this new film coming out and went in thinking I was going to be reading for some supporting role, maybe with ten whole minutes of screen time. Nothing big, barely worth writing home about at that point, but when I went into the audition room, I noticed a familiar face. It was that man again, the one I met in the alley. The first time we spoke I guess I had talked so much about myself that I never thought to ask who he was. But there he was. Some big Hollywood exec apparently. And he wasn’t just in the room, he was sitting at the table. Middle chair. Real head-honcho type of stuff. 

I was a little off-put. He looked a bit different. Younger almost, a little more boyish. I just figured, ‘hey, it’s Hollywood.’ Didn’t think twice about it. What I wasn’t sure of, though, was if I should spill that I met him. I figured he wouldn’t even remember me, but he did. First thing he said when I walked in the room was “Ah! George-y boy! I was hoping you’d come out for this role.” Or something like that. He even came up and gave me a hug. It really surprised me, that reaction.

Anyways. I sat down and read the lines, had a little back and forth with them. I thought I was doing alright. Not them, though. Oh no. They thought I was a star hotter than the sun. Even gave me a standing ovation…for an audition. I thanked them. Did a little bow and expected that to be it. But that man– Paul something or other– he sat down and rambled on for thirty minutes about how great I did. Then, he told me he didn’t just want me for that role. He wanted me for the lead role. He practically had them handing me the check right there. I was stunned. Couldn’t feel my pinky by the time I finished shaking his hand. 

I don’t remember much else about that audition, but as I headed out, I felt that little pinch again. Or maybe it was a big pinch that time? Regardless, it was enough that it made me look back to see if someone had done it. They were just smiling, though. Didn’t even seem to notice. And I wasn’t about to ask, “Who pinched  me?” and throw my big break away. I just smiled and took off, practically skipping all the way home. 

I remember a car catching my eye on the way back. This beautiful Pontiac. I didn’t even care much for cars at that time, but I got this vision in my head. Me cruising through the hills with one arm on my wheel and everyone staring as I drove by. I wasn’t sure if they would be staring at the car or at me, but I knew they’d be staring alright. 

5

Things got weird after that. I never saw Paul on the set of the movie he hired me for. Turned out, he really was just some big exec and had nothing to do with the production. That was strange enough, but it got weirder when no one else seemed to remember him. I mentioned him a few times, but people just kind of looked at me blankly like I was telling a joke that went over their heads. They had no idea who I was talking about. 

I kept seeing him, though. Felt like I saw him everywhere but on set. And he was always asking about the movie, acquainted with the intimate details of it. So, I never questioned it or brought up that no one else seemed to know him. I just rolled with it. 

We started to spend more time together. I met him for coffee once every now and then, and I ran into him on the street at least a few more times each week. Sometimes we even saw each other a few times a day. I really grew to like the guy. He was curious, listened well. Always asking about me. I loved him for that. 

Somewhere along the line, though, he started to change. Appearance-wise I mean. I saw him so frequently, and the changes happened so slowly, that it took me a while to notice. Then one day, I remember just looking at him and thinking he must be dying. It was weird. He kept looking younger, but in a sickly way. When I first met him, I pegged him for forty something. Now, he looked almost my age. I thought whatever he was taking to look younger wasn’t doing him any favors. He looked kind of sunken. Like the fat was being eaten away from beneath his skin. 

I remember asking him one day if he was okay. If he had any health issues going on. He said he was great. Had more energy than ever. He chalked the differences up to some new diet he was on. You know, I think that’s the same day I noticed his eyes. I wasn’t the most observant, but I could’ve sworn his eyes were brown. That day, however, his eyes were green. I couldn’t believe it. Us green eyed folk are a rare breed, so I felt sure I would’ve noticed if he had green eyes before. Still, I shrugged it off. 

What I couldn’t shrug off, though, were the pinches. It seemed every time I was around him I felt a pinching sensation at least once. For a brief period, I started to become real suspicious. Assumed he was the one pinching me. But I gave up on that theory when I started to notice the pinches happening when I was twenty feet away from him, or he was in the bathroom. There was no way it could’ve been him doing it, right? Still, they only happened when I was with him. I figured it must’ve been that awful cologne he always used to wear causing a chemical reaction in my brain or something. 

Eventually, I gave up on trying to figure out what the pinches were. They never hurt that much. Although, a few did feel less like a pinch and more like a staple shooting into my neck. But I liked the guy. I wasn’t going to stop seeing him over some mysterious pinching that, as far as I could tell, he had nothing to do with.”

Their grandfather stopped his pacing abruptly and looked both into their eyes and past them at the same time. “I want you to listen to me carefully,” he told them.  If you ever feel that pinch, run. Run till your legs fall off, and then drag yourself over whatever asphalt hell you have to until you’re as far as your body can take you from whatever caused that pinching feeling.”

6

George took a few silent moments to collect his thoughts. When he spoke again, the slight, fearful quiver had disappeared from his voice. “Once the movie was released, I was more famous than I ever thought I’d be. And I knew it. I bought that Pontiac I had dreamed of. Then, I bought a different car with a different color for whatever mood I might be in. I got the clothes, the jewelry, the houses. I even got a security team after a run in with an overzealous fan. But no matter how good my security was, it was of no use one unusually cold night in April. 

I remember there was an awful scent in the air that whole day. Like manure, but that didn’t make any sense. I paid enough to live in an area free of manure. Whatever it was, it spoiled my dinner. I figured the best way to be free of it was to head to bed early. I conked out pretty quick, but that stench woke me up an hour later. It was even stronger. Smelled like enough cows to supply a McDonalds for a year had gathered outside my door. 

I plugged my nose and crawled out of bed to get my sleeping pills. As I started to come to my senses, I realized that thick smell in the air wasn’t manure at all. It was more like something rotting. 

Have you ever woken up and just known something’s off? Something about that scent triggered that feeling for me. The rooms seemed darker, and my eyes refused to adjust. I couldn’t shake this sense that there was something lurking in each shadow. I got to the kitchen and fumbled through the cabinet, but this eerie fist was just squeezing around my heart, making it pulse two times faster until I couldn’t take it anymore. 

I abandoned my search and decided to just keep my eyes and nose shut the rest of the night. But as soon as I turned around, I noticed a figure moving in the reflection of a window. Against my better senses, I headed to the window to make sure all was right in the world. Outside, the night was calm, normal. Not so much as a moth was buzzing. But inside, someone was with me. 

“What’s wrong, George?” I whipped around so fast my back cracked. I saw nothing, but I knew that voice. It was my voice. I kept scanning the shadows with no luck. For a second I wondered if it was all in my head, maybe my subconscious exploring those weird bubbles of fear that only surface in the middle of the night. But then, from the midst of the darkness surfaced the most horrible apparition. Paul. But he wasn’t Paul. He was me. But he wasn’t me. He was…I don’t even know how to describe it. 

His face was entirely mine, his voice even. Still, there was just something off about him that told me he was Paul. Whatever he was, he looked terrible. Smelled worse. His flesh was marred, droopy, and pocked in sores. He was hunched too, and his bones pushed out in all the wrong places. 

I threw my front door open and sprinted out to the street, hoping to flag down a late night walker or taxi or something. The farther I ran, however, the more I felt like I was running through deep water. I slowed against my will into a complete stop until, like a fish on a line, I was yanked backwards into the house with such force it was like I had been caught wearing a parachute in a tornado.

I stumbled onto my back. That thing, Paul, crawled right on top of me. I screamed and screamed, but he just kept looking back at me with my own stolen face. Then, he grabbed my shoulder and flipped me onto my back like I was no heavier than a paperclip. He pinned me down with his knee, and it was all I could do to raise my head enough to see our reflection in the window. He continued to grin, but now he had a fish hook the size of an apple in his hand. I continued to struggle pointlessly as he raised his hand and plunged that hook into the skin at the base of my neck. Chills danced across my skin. I felt like vomiting from the pain. When I got my wits back, I caught our reflection in the window again. The hook was gone, but a glimmering string rose from the base of my skin where the hook had entered. In fact, for the first time, I noticed dozens of strings all rising from my back and extending as far as the skin of the monster on top of me, like I was some sort of morose marionette. 

Our reflections locked eyes in the mirror. He, I, would not stop smiling. That’s the last thing I remember before I passed out. Whether from shock or pain, I’m not sure. I woke up the next morning in bed. My hands instinctively shot to my back and scoured my skin. But they found nothing. I was as smooth as a lotioned dove. And I felt like one too. I rose with the greatest feeling of rest I had ever experienced. I thought about checking the house, maybe even calling the police or trying to find Paul out on the street, but I felt this strange…assurance over me. As if everything in my world was better than it ever could be in anyone else’s. 

7

I stopped running into Paul on the street after that, but those night visits became routine. Every few months he would appear to me. I started to notice it happening after some big development in my career or when I was feeling particularly good about myself. But then they started happening at random times. Run of the mill days I hardly remember. The first few times, I was terrified. We repeated our dance. Me running, those twinkling strings pulling me back. But I would always wake up afterwards in a state of euphoria, confused and unwilling to figure out if the night before was a nightmare or reality. 

I never went to the cops. I was famous enough by that point that news would get out. Me telling some silly story like that? Still, I wanted to know what was going on. So one day, I set up a video camera. Of course, nothing happened. But for months, I kept that video camera rolling all night long. Hours and hours of useless footage until one day, it wasn’t so useless anymore

I woke up in the middle of the night. That rotting scent filled the air again, but I just stayed in bed. Didn’t run. Didn’t hide. Didn’t nothing. I figured, if trouble was going to come, it was going to have to come to me. And so it did. After twenty minutes plugging my nose and staring at the door to my room, it creaked open. My own putrid face peered around the corner. By now that thing had really taken a turn for the worse. I could see small holes in its cheeks and puss leaking out. If the holes were any bigger, I would’ve seen teeth from an angle no one should ever have to.

Strangely, the rest of that thing had only become more powerful. It must have been 8 feet tall. At least at the pinnacle of its hunched back. The actual head and neck hung three feet lower just below its chest. And the muscles…you could see real, defined muscles on the thing. But not some bodybuilder physique. No, they were the type of muscles that come naturally. Real long and lean, but you just know they could snap you like a twig if they wanted. 

I didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. Then, that thing smiled at me as it began to speak.

“What are you doing, my friend?” It nodded to the camera on my desk. I swallowed my words. Its voice was still mine, but now raspy, gargled. Like it had eaten every cigarette smoked throughout the 50s. It hovered over to the camera and crumpled it with two fingers like it had been no more than a loose aluminum ball. Then, it sat on the edge of my bed, creating a crater under its weight.

 “I think you’d find the only people who would believe that footage is real would have quite the opposite reaction to what you’re looking for.” 

When I finally found the courage to speak, my words came out like I was blowing the smallest whistle in history. “What do you want with me?” I asked.

It smiled deeper as it answered. “The same thing you want with me.” 

I blew my whistle louder. “Leave me alone! I want nothing to do with you!” 

It looked back at me with the most grotesque, puppy-dog eyes you could imagine. Think Mr. Hyde’s interpretation of ‘cutesy.’ “Don’t you appreciate all that I’ve done for you, George?”

That line really confused me. At first I thought what the hell is this thing talking about? Then, I remembered myself before the premiere when I first met him. Struggling to make it. Living in an apartment I could hardly afford. Putting on a facade. Trying my best to propel myself into the world I wanted, all the while afraid that someone might realize I didn’t belong and toss me from the pearly gates of celebrity. But since I had met Paul, the imposter syndrome had vanished. People knew my name. People wanted to be me. And I wanted them to want to be me. 

“See, I haven’t been so bad, now have I?” The thing asked with a sycophantic smile.

I just yelled again. “What do you want?” 

I kid you not, the thing laughed. “Like I told you. The same thing you want,” it said. “Just keep letting me put these hooks in you,” I grimaced as it held up a nice shiny one, bigger than any I’d seen before, “and everything can continue like normal. Unless you prefer I stop. I’d never bother you again, but are you sure that’s what you want?”

I paused, but not long enough. I’m ashamed to say it, but I shook that bony hand that night. The last thing I remember before waking up in another euphoric state the next day was asking it, “What are you?”

It looked me straight in the eyes, smiled, and said,  “Your brightest daydream.” 

8

I continued to live my life with this secret. Awards came. The money came…I never knew someone could have so much money. I had your mother. She had you. And I continued on like that for decades. That is, until about 3 years ago. Until something happened that I’ll never forget. 

I was on my way to an award show. I hardly remember what I was nominated for, but I knew I was going to win. I had my tuxedo on, my hair gelled, and I thought it might be nice to walk for a change. I strolled around the city for about 30 minutes beforehand, being sure to stay clear of any filth that might scuff up my shoes. Of course the area was packed with fans. Made it near impossible to stay clean, but I finally found a few uninterrupted minutes as I got closer to the venue. The cameras came in sight, but they were all pointing at the carpet. Not one noticed me. That’s when I saw a man pass by them. Everyone was crooning to see the carpet and peer into each new limo arriving, but this man, he didn’t so much as turn his head to look. He wasn’t on his phone, he wasn’t distracted. He just didn’t care. 

He noticed me and gave a quick smile. I didn’t smile back, I figured he was a fan about to ask me for something, but all he said was,“Have a good one,” with the warmest tone you could possibly imagine and kept on walking. 

I genuinely believe he had no idea who I was. But it wasn’t his warmth that gave me pause. I’ve met kind strangers before. It’s what he did after. I followed him with my eyes, the clamor of clicking cameras behind me, as he turned into an alley. I just watched as he stooped low to a homeless man laying in his own filth, a few empty bottles around him along with plenty of other trash. A blanket completely covered the man. The only thing sticking out were his feet. Still, the stranger reached into his pocket, pulled out a handful of bills, and placed them by the man’s blanket so he’d see it when he woke up. Then, he just went on his way. 

I remember thinking to myself, “What an idiot,” as he disappeared. The cameras were pointing the other way. The homeless guy wasn’t even awake to thank the man. It just didn’t make sense. For some reason, seeing that put me in a real sour mood. I felt a strange indignation brewing, but I didn’t know why. 

I went on to win my award that night. I remember striding right up to the stage like I owned it. I made my way through a mental list I had compiled, thanking a dozen people and explaining how none of my success could have been possible without them. But I knew none of that was true. I knew I was the only one who deserved praise for my success, but the unwritten rules of courtesy compelled me to feign humility in front of the crowd.

They smiled at me. I smiled at them. But then, my hand shot to my back as a pinching sensation pulled at the skin under my jacket. I grimaced, but I didn’t care about the pain, although it was extreme. I  was mostly just angry that it had to happen in the middle of my speech. I closed my eyes and breathed deep to compose myself, hoping “a touching display of emotion” would be the crowd’s interpretation of my pause, but when I opened my eyes, what I saw scared me more than anything I had seen or felt yet. The air was thick with twinkling strings. Thousands of them all reaching towards the ceiling as if to the control bar of an invisible marionettist. Even more shocking, everyone had at least one string rising from them, from the most dazzling star to the most nondescript waiter. 

The strings  glimmered for only a second before disappearing. I returned to my seat, rubbing my chin the rest of the night. I knew the strings were surrounding me even then as I could not see them, and that many of them were connected to me. But I wasn’t thinking about the strings anymore. I was thinking about the man in the street. Truthfully, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. 

9

I don’t know exactly how to describe it. I don’t even know the thought processes that took place, but something changed in me after that day. All the money I had always hoarded for myself except for compulsory charity donations or guilt driven gifts, I finally decided to give away. I sold most of my extra houses. I decided that anyone who needed money could come to me, and I would listen and give generously if I thought they were sincere. I even started a charitable fund. 

Giving was like a new drug for me. I had seen myself as many positive things before: skilled, smart, powerful, handsome, hard-working, talented. With this new wave of giving, however, I felt like a genuinely good person for the first time in decades. The feeling was intoxicating. It brought me joy in ways I never knew I needed. One of the instigators behind this joy was the elimination of the infrequent pinches that had plagued me. I started to believe that monster was out of my life. Still, every now and then I would rub my hands across my shoulder blades just to assure myself that no hooks were there, and I never felt any. Life was great. I had conquered the monster, and as far as I could tell, I was a free man. 

That is, until last night. I was reading a text your mother sent me asking for something she’d never asked for before – money, to help support you all. I sat over my desk with nothing but the light of a candle and a blank check. I was debating how much to give, how much seemed right, and I felt pretty happy. Proud even. Proud that I had built a life where I was able to give like this to my daughter and grandkids.  I started to write, and that’s when that sensation I had almost forgotten about found me again. It was soft, but unmistakable: the pinch. 

This time it came from the back of my hand. I looked up and saw that  strange…glimmering. It hovered over my hand, following my every movement as I wrote the sum onto the check. But as I looked closer and kept writing, I realized the glimmer wasn’t following my hand at all. It preceded each of my movements by the tiniest fraction of a second. It was leading me. 

I dropped my pen and held my hand up to the candle. I can’t explain the heavy thud that struck my heart when a long, thin string started to illuminate. It was faint, but I could tell it wasn’t just one. I brushed the flame along my skin. All along my body, hints of strings glimmered, as numerous as the hairs on my arm. But there was something more. I looked closer and closer, and I realized the strings were moving. Or rather, some silvery, wispy substance was moving inside them. They weren’t just strings, they were tubes. Tubes leading that wispy substance perpetually out of me and into that…thing.

In that moment, while the tubes were still visible, I made a decision. A decision I was hardly even conscious I was making. I snatched a once decorative, double-edged sword off my wall and wielded it in a sweeping circle, slicing through every one of those tubes and brushing it along my skin to clear off the rest. As soon as I did, that putrid smell arose from right under my nose. I ran as fast as I could. This time, the monster had nothing to pull me back with. I continued to run, and drive, and run some more. But every time I found the slightest bit of rest, the putrid smell returned, growing stronger and stronger every second I stood still. 

I knew it wasn’t going away, so I decided I had one last thing to do. I drove, and I drove, and I drove to your mother’s house. I took you and left behind a check. And now here we are. But we’ve been sitting awhile, and I’m beginning to smell that putrid smell again. Do you smell it?” 

10

As he mentioned it, the grandkids did start to notice a smell. Grandpa rushed over to them and jostled their shoulders. “You must believe me!” The cabin started to shake. He kept looking back and forth between the grandkids and the lone, covered window. “Don’t make the same mistakes I did!”

Dust rumbled from the ceilings as great thuds approached them. The stench was so vile that it even caused their vision to blur. Their grandpa stood up and hollered something at the doorway. They couldn’t tell what he was saying. All noise disappeared soon after. As if caught in some animalistic stand-off, he tore his shirt away, revealing hundreds and hundreds of small red holes marring his droopy skin. As the thuds came closer, previously invisible fish hooks appeared with jagged, sliced tubes pouring out from them. Their grandpa looked like a rabid porcupine with translucent quills on its last legs after a valiant effort to crawl away from a car crash. But he couldn’t crawl away fully, and the inevitable traffic had come to finish the job. 

The cabin walls were torn in two as easy as one peels a banana. Their Grandpa hollered into the sky at something they could not see. The next second, they watched as an invisible entity raised him ten stories in the air and contorted his body in ways not even an olympic gymnast could ever hope to survive. The thuds resumed, but they marched in the opposite direction, carrying the hovering, unrecognizable mass that was their grandfather with them. And then, he was gone. The stench vanished, and all that remained were the grandkids, the car, and fragments of a cabin that looked like it had spawned an EF5 tornado. 

11

That was the last they ever saw of their grandfather. It was the last anyone saw of him, at least outside of the body of films that carried his name. He had been right. No one believed the story he had told the kids. At least, no one admitted to believing it. Instead, they swept it under the carpet as just a crazy tale young kids had created to buffer from the trauma of whatever had actually transpired the day George took them on a ride and disappeared. The grandkids didn’t push back on the disbelief either. They were keen to forget, to move on from something they knew they’d never fully understand. 

And move on they did. Years later, David became an RN. Delilah went into marketing. They led as normal lives as they could. The others went into law, but they never fully settled. Something bubbled inside them. They still wanted to write. 

Lounge chairs at coffee shops became their preferred destinations whenever they weren’t at work. They always had music in one ear and the inspiring bustle of everyday life in the other as their fingers danced across sticky keyboards. One day, that inspiring bustle said, “Hello.” 

They looked and saw a short woman sunken into the leather chair next to them. She had an open journal with a clicked pen in it accompanying a half eaten croissant on her table. They hadn’t noticed her until now. “Hey, what’s up?” They answered, removing the headphones from their right ears as she looked at them. 

“It’s good.” She told them. When they crinkled their brows, she clarified. “Your writing.” She caught their hands as they angled their computer screens away from her. “Don’t do that,” she told them. “I already read most of it. Can I read the rest?”

They stroked their earlobes. “You really want to?”

“Really.” She took their computers and began reading before they could protest. 

They had never shared their writings with a stranger before. They traced her expressions, their hearts jumping and sinking with every twitch in her forehead. The longest 13 minutes of their lives elapsed before she arrived at the last pages. 

“Wow,” was the first word to leave her lips. “That was…just wow.”

“‘Wow’ good or ‘wow’ bad?” They asked.

“Wow good!” She answered, quick. “Honestly! I’m not usually a fast reader, but I flew through this.” 

They blushed. “Thank you.”

“Are you going to publish this in a journal or something?”

“Publish? Oh, we don’t know if this could ever get published,” they answered. 

“Well you should. Who knows, maybe it could even make you famous. I certainly think it could.”

Their minds flashed back to those childhood dreams that had never fully materialized.  Their names plastered on bestselling novels, people recognizing them in the street, talk show hosts scrambling to interview them. “You really think so?” They asked.

“Definitely.” 

They tugged their earlobes for a second then answered, “You know what? Maybe we will try and publish it.”

 She patted them on the backs and returned the computers. They continued typing for a while. She remained by their sides, nibbling every few minutes on her croissant. When an hour passed and their minds had run out of good things to put on paper, they nodded to her and headed towards the exit. 

But as they got to the door, their feet froze in place and their hands snapped to their backs. A sharp pinch had stung their spines. At the nexus of the pain, their fingers found tiny fish hooks dug into their skin. Their heads turned slowly to see the woman still nibbling. She noticed them staring and waved a smiley ‘goodbye.’ 

If they had not been looking for them, they would not have seen them. But they were, and they did. Just beyond the realm of typical perception, they saw glittering tubes hanging between the woman and them. They hesitated, their fingers dancing around the hooks as they imagined two totally distinct lives diverging from that one instant. Just as the strings began to disappear and the hooks started fading in their fingers, they made their decisions. They yanked the hooks from their skin. The woman leapt to her feet and chased them.

12

They took their grandfather’s advice that day. They ran until their legs gave out. Then, they crawled. And when their arms just about fell off, they rolled, and rolled, and eventually rolled to a stop that all the willpower in the world could not rock them out of. They waited, unwillingly, for the monster to find them and dig its hooks back into them, but it never did find them. The truth is, it was not looking for them. 

As time passed, their strength returned. Eventually, they were able to stand again and return to the world, but they knew that, although the monster was not looking for them then, it would have occasion to hunt them again one day. What it left them with was time. Time to rest. Time to think. Time to prepare. Prepare so that the next time it began to prowl, it would not find them the same. Prepare so that, the next time, it would not find them at all, but only an entity of what they had become: naimless.