Author: UnsettlingStories

Funny, I never thought I’d be in a position where I could type something like that. Well, here I am! Actually – here we are. Me and my wife, Ingrid. Talk about an amazing vacation. It’s interesting, I’m going to be dead soon. I’ll be honest with you, though: I’m not even a little bit bothered. Hear me out.

When Ingrid and I stumbled upon that cave and did some impromptu spelunking, I was a little concerned we might get lost. Luckily, It became pretty obvious after the first few minutes that we wouldn’t. The cave was small. The interior, though, was unlike any cave I’d ever seen. It was absolutely brimming with mushrooms. All different kinds; some looked like portobellos, some were stringy and white and hanging from the ceiling like hair, and there were even some of those fat weird ones that smoked when you broke them open.

Ingrid and I are vegans and excellent chefs. On top of that, we love mushrooms. Ingrid’s good at picking out which of the ones in our yard are safe to eat, so I let her determine whether or not the ones in the cave were okay to bring home for dinner. To my surprise, she couldn’t tell! She’d never seen mushrooms like that before. Sure, there were lots of similar ones out there, but we didn’t want to chance it. I was disappointed; if we could’ve eaten those, we would’ve had a dinner for the record books.

Anyway, we kept walking. We got these great flashlights from my father-in-law for Christmas and they did an awesome job illuminating the path for us. As we went, the smoky mushrooms and the portobello ones started to appear less frequently. The stringy ones, though, were everywhere. They clung to the ceiling like white tendrils and we had to push them out of the way with every step we took. We didn’t know where we were going, but it felt like an adventure through an alien world.

Right when we thought the stringy mushrooms couldn’t get any thicker and we were tearing off handfuls just to keep moving forward, we came to a clearing. It was the rear of the cave. There was nothing there except one extremely large and extremely weird-looking fungus. I don’t know if it was a mushroom or what. It had a cap like one, but it was riddled with small, raised craters; they reminded me of the acne I had when I was a kid and how zits would look after I popped them.

Ingrid walked right up to it. She was totally fascinated. God this feels good to type. Every single key press with my raw fingers is like a tiny orgasm. Ingrid ran her hands over it. I told her to be careful; I didn’t know if there were rats or spiders in the thing. I didn’t have to worry. There weren’t any bugs or anything in the cave at all, from what we’d seen. She asked me to come feel it with her. I did. I must’ve poked too hard I can’t believe how good this feels and all this orange smoke came out. It was a little scary at first. But then, after we took a few, good breaths of the stuff, it wasn’t scary at all.

How does simple typing feel this good? We went back to the resort. People looked at us a little funny because we were covered in orange dust, but I didn’t mind. I could type forever and ever and ever. We got back to the room and took a shower. We were in such an incredible mood. The shower water against my skin created a feeling of pleasure that was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Ingrid, too. I don’t know how long we were in there together, just standing still and letting the water wash over us.

After we got out and toweled off (another incredible sensation just like typing), I had a little fall. There was a patch of water on the floor. I slipped and jammed my pinky and ring toes against the door. One toe went one way, the other went another. The area between split wide open maybe two inches up my foot. I expected to scream in pain because that’s what someone normally does when they get hurt, but something else happens. I screamed, but it was a scream of ecstasy. Intense, powerful ecstasy. My body shook with pleasure. The only thing I can equate it to would be sex, but it was beyond sex. Beyond such a small, localized feeling of delight.

My entire body hummed with physical joy. Once Ingrid realized I wasn’t in pain, she bent down to inspect my wound. With a shy tentativeness I’d recognized early in our relationship and had grown to love, she pressed her index finger against the bent and dislocated pinky toe. Again, fireworks of pleasure. She grinned at me and pulled the toe. We both heard it crack and pop as she wiggled it back and forth. Ingrid studied my face, enjoying what had to have been an expression of fervid elation.

Time went by while she pulled and twisted my broken toes while I stared at her beautiful face and relished the sensations. Then she did something I didn’t expect. Ingrid took her index finger and slid it inside the slit in the flesh. I could see it inside my foot, bulging under my skin. I whimpered. She was inside me. Her body inside mine. Without giving much thought, I pulled her down on top of me and bit her collarbone until a small hole formed. She mewled her assent. Like Ingrid had done to me, I slid my finger down into the new, pristine cavity and felt the warmth within.

I will not dwell on the details of the hours that passed. I’ll merely give a highlight that still, even as I sit here with my body exposed – my real body, not that which was hidden by flesh – gives me impossible joy. It was the moment Ingrid and I were staring into each others’ eyes. We’d degloved our arms and legs and were sitting, cross-legged, in an embrace. As she stared, she ran her warm, red hand across the muscles of my cheek. Then, reverentially, she slid her index finger underneath the remains of my lower eyelid and drifted deeper, back behind my eye.

The sight of my beautiful wife blurred slightly, both from partial loss of vision as well as unfathomable pleasure. Diligently, but with obvious love, she slid the finger in and out, gradually applying more pressure from behind as she went. When I thought I would pass out from the feeling – when the joy was transcending my consciousness and I feared I might slip into heaven right there – there was a rush of relief and unwinding of tension as my eye tumbled from its socket. I felt it against my cheek, resting against the musculature. My vision was strange and lacked coherence, but it didn’t matter. My love moved her mouth to that which she’d freed and began to taste me. I saw a brief glimpse inside her before she closed her teeth against the optic nerve and incorporated that part of me into her own, radiant body.

It’s a few hours later. Ingrid passed away after she asked me to experience the feeling of her heart beating against my mouth. She was unable to reach her heart before she slipped away. I expected to feel horror and sadness, but there was only determination and excitement. I know in a few moments I’ll be with her again. Alive elsewhere. As I looked around our room at the stringy mushrooms growing from the splashes of blood and the bulbous smoky ones growing from our discarded flesh, I knew I had to tell the world about what we experienced. About what the world itself needs to experience. Imagine how life would be if we all felt this level of intimacy; this level of pleasure.

I managed to reach the switch for the bathroom fan and I popped the majority of the smoky mushrooms we’d grown. The beautiful, orange swirls of smoke drifted up into the vent. Now, as I type this, I’m praying it will reach those in most need. People need to feel this.

I’m going to go now and open my belly. I’m going to stretch out everything inside as far and wide as I possibly can. The more I am exposed, the more I will feel. Then I’m going to lay next to my love. My Ingrid. Her last words before she passed were, “run with me.” I can feel my legs fluttering in anticipation for our first run together, hand in hand, through the moist fields of heavenly mushrooms.

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I’ve been Beth’s closest friend since we were toddlers. All throughout elementary, middle, and high school, we were inseparable. It was only after we went to separate colleges that we spent any significant amount of time apart. For me, it was borderline devastating. It wasn’t the loneliness that bothered me most. It was how Beth, in the very week she began attending school, found a boyfriend who replaced me as the most important person in her life.

We still spoke on the phone with relative frequency during the first couple weeks of school. The frequency diminished, though, as Beth dedicated more and more of her side of the conversation to gush about her love for Luke, the boyfriend. Without ever meeting him, I knew he was using her. And I was right. After a month, Beth was tossed aside and Luke was never seen again. Gradually, the conversations between Beth and me resumed their pre-Luke frequency, but I could tell something was dreadfully wrong. It was only during our Christmas vacation that Beth confessed why she wouldn’t be returning to school the next semester.

Beth was pregnant. She insisted she was on the pill and Luke had worn a condom every time, but her claims didn’t matter much. The pregnancy tests were positive and a visit to Planned Parenthood confirmed what the tests already told her. Somehow, in a terrible move motivated by fear, Beth told her parents. They responded by revoking their promise to pay her tuition and insisted that she move back at the end of the semester or she’d never be welcome in their home again.

We’re both from a small town in Florida. Our families are religious, but Beth’s parents are fanatics. The idea of a pregnant daughter infuriated and terrified them. In their flailing and hysterical confusion, they determined the best course of action would be to send her to a religious order where she could have the baby, give it up for adoption, and devote her life to the church. If the whole situation were on a television show, I would have found it almost funny; a parody of the most exaggerated customs of the irredeemably religious. But this was real. And Beth was going to suffer because of them.

I’d carefully brought up the idea of abortion. It was not a possibility. Beth was 17 at the time and Florida law required the consent of at least one parent to make the procedure legal. We knew her parents might react violently to even the suggestion of abortion, so we couldn’t approach them. On Christmas Eve, after we’d discussed her options for hours upon hours in hushed voices in my parents’ living room, Beth asked the question: “Do you think you can do it?”

I began shaking. As soon as I mentioned the abortion idea, I was terrified she’d ask me to conduct the procedure if all other options fell through. And the worst part was I knew I’d do it if she asked. I couldn’t let her be imprisoned by her parents’ church and be forced to devote herself to a group for whom she felt nothing but fear and contempt.

After we parted ways for the night, I locked myself in my bedroom and looked for videos of the procedure. I felt intense nausea and sympathetic pain as I watched all the necessary steps – the brutal things I’d have to do to my best friend. Gradual dilation. Violent evacuation. No anesthesia, no support. Nothing except the futile comfort I’d try to provide; comfort from the same person who was inflicting the pain. I hadn’t touched Beth yet and I already felt like a torturer.

I called her early the following week afternoon and tried to explain what I’d have to do. I was explicit as possible; part of me hoped the details would frighten her and she’d abandon the idea all together. But that wasn’t an option – not for either of us. She needed to be free from the situation that would condemn her to a life of pious imprisonment, and I couldn’t live with myself if I were to change her mind. I’d be just as bad as her parents.

At the end of the conversation, our plan was in place. It was less a plan than it was mutual resignation; two terrified and desperate people with minds made up to go through with something unavoidable. The next day, I’d collect the implements I’d need. The day after, we’d go through with it.

I purchased an assortment of smooth, wooden dowels of varying widths. I shuddered when I touched the widest one. Next, I went to the drugstore and bought a few packs of condoms. I recognized the cashier from high school and tried to ignore her stare of disgust and disapproval. At another store, I bought more innocuous-looking items: gauze, cotton, peroxide, and painkillers. The painkillers were purchased almost as a joke; I knew they’d be all but useless. I couldn’t stop thinking about the width of that last dowel.

The day after, I met Beth where we’d agreed would be the least likely spot where we’d be interrupted, and, most importantly, where she could feel free to yell if she felt the need. No one came to that part of the city anymore. It was an old industrial park that’d been abandoned decades ago. Not even the local teenagers or homeless bothered to venture into those warehouses anymore. Half of them had caved-in roofs and the other half were plagued by rats and other unpleasant conditions that made visits not worth anyone’s while. For Beth and me, though, it was the only conceivable spot. It was cold, filthy, and a little scary. These were the lengths to which we’d been driven.

We didn’t talk much in the time leading up to the procedure. There wasn’t really anything we could say. I prepared the makeshift tools to the best of my ability and Beth used her phone to watch the same, terrifying video I used a couple nights back to learn what I needed to do. She was shaking slightly. The trembling only increased when she removed her pants and wrapped a blanket around her waist.

When I was ready to start, I did my best to hide the feelings which threatened to pour out of me in a torrent of sobs and pathetic bleating. Beth needed me to stay in control. She wasn’t crying, and she was the one who’d have to endure this indignity. I admired her composure. As I was preparing to insert the first dowel, Beth’s phone rang.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, and jumped to her feet. Wrapping the blanket around her waist again, she paced back and forth while talking in a hushed voice. She was crying. I prayed it wasn’t her parents. They were so, so good at emotional manipulation.

Beth hung up and headed back to me. It wasn’t her parents. For the first time in months, it was Luke. He was on his way to Florida. He wanted to see her and take her away and they could raise their baby together. When Beth told me this past part, she whispered so quietly I needed her to repeat it. In a voice equally hushed but contained a haunted aspect I’ve never heard from her before, she said again: “I never told him I was pregnant.”

The chill I felt had nothing to do with the coldness of the dilapidated warehouse. Beth resumed her position and set her jaw. Her look of fear had changed to something wholly different. She was determined. “Do it,” she instructed. “Now.”

An hour went by as Beth exhibited a strength I never knew she had. She whimpered and winced, but not once did she cry out. I felt intense nausea as I inserted the progressively-wider dowels, having to stop more than once to look away from the bloody blanket underneath her and tried my best to disassociate from the situation for a minute or two. “This isn’t me,” I tried to convince myself. I wouldn’t do something like this. When the waves of nausea passed and I’d calmed down as best I could, I kept going.

The widest dowel was in place. Beth had removed the condom from of the previously-used dilators and had the wooden rod clenched between her teeth. I didn’t know if it was doing her any good, but she hadn’t cried out. Tears flowed from both of us as I removed the last one and took the thin forceps from the jar of rubbing alcohol where they’d been soaking. Before the instrument could touch Beth, a crash echoed through the cavernous warehouse. It was the door we’d been unable to unlock. We’d used the broken window to climb in. But it was undoubtedly the door we’d heard, and from across the football field-sized building, we saw a person striding toward us.

Beth again jumped to her feet, this time yelping when she moved. She scrambled to wrap the blanket around her as the figure moved toward us. “No,” sighed Beth, as she finally recognized who it was. “Luke,” she breathed at me. I’d already figured it out. The closer he came, the more frightened I grew. He was massive. At least 6’6”. And muscular. He moved with the heavy, effortless grace of a of a silverback gorilla. The sunlight coming in through the holes in the roof flashed off his pale skin as he got nearer.

I tried to stand in front of Beth as Luke barreled toward her, but I was pushed away and landed hard on the filthy floor. He reached Beth, who’d huddled against the wall. Luke grasped her shirt in his enormous right hand and lifted her from the ground. Beth flailed and landed weak, futile kicks on his body. Luke stared into her eyes for a moment, then he looked around at the bloodstained instruments on the towel next to where I’d sat.

“No,” Luke hissed into Beth’s face as she hung limply from his grasp, not bothering to fight him anymore. I tried rushing at him, but again he pushed me away and I fell hard on the floor.

“No,” he repeated. “You don’t get to do that. I need him.”

As the words left his mouth, something happened. Luke left arm, which had hung at his side, began to twitch. His hand deformed. Sharp cracks rang out as the shape changed. His fingers elongated and moved with a dextrous articulation I can only associate with tentacles or tendrils. When the fingers were nearly twice their original length, he moved his hand between her naked thighs.

“Give him to me,” Luke growled. For the first time, Beth screamed. I watched helplessly as she tried to clamp her legs together, only to have them wrenched apart by the impossibly strong thumb and pinky of Luke’s reshaped hand. The middle three digits pushed upward as Beth’s scream rose a full octave.

“Mine,” Luke whispered, as he slowly withdrew the fingers. Clasped delicately between them was a red lump no bigger than a lemon. It writhed his his grasp. Its shape was vaguely fetal with a distinct head and body, but the rest was alien. Tiny arms and legs split over and over, fanning out like progressively-thinner cilia. They gripped Luke’s fingers.

Luke dropped Beth to the floor. I heard her ankle snap when she landed and she cried out and grasped the injury as she stared up at the creatures in front of her.

The fetus-thing crawled up Luke’s hand and arm, leaving a trail of slime as it went. It nestled in the crook of his arm and remained there. I could’ve sworn I heard it coo with contentment.

Luke looked at both of us. “Tell whoever you want,” he said with bemusement. “Let them laugh at you.”

He turned, and as he walked away and I scrambled over to help Beth, he turned to face us again. “In a year, they’ll wish they took you seriously. Everyone will.”

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There’s a land line phone in the cabin where I’m staying to finish my novel. Cell service is practically nonexistent and God knows we won’t be seeing any major broadband providers stringing lines around here for another 50 years. I can get online using a 56k modem and connect to a shitty long-distance ISP, but I’ll be damned if I’m getting more than 14.4 speed whenever it’s windy out. It’s always windy out.

My plans for the days were pretty simple. I’d get up around 7, have breakfast, and start writing by 8. I’d make lunch around 1, call my wife at work during her own lunch break, then go back to writing until 6 or 7. Then dinner and bed.

On Saturday, when I picked up the phone to call Tasha during her lunch, the dial tone sounded off. It was pitched differently. You know how all the land line phones in the US have the same tone and you get used to hearing it every time? Well, it wasn’t that tone. It was pitched higher. It was as if the normal tone is an A note on a piano and the strange one Saturday was A#. The difference wasn’t big, but it was definitely noticeable. At first, I was fairly certain it meant there was a problem with the line. But when I called Tasha, the call went through without any problem at all. The sound quality was no different, either.

I forgot about the dial tone until last night when I went to call Tasha before bed. Again, the pitch was off. It wasn’t merely the difference between A and A#, though. It modulated slowly, as if sliding up and back from A to A#. The tone wasn’t as pure, either. There was static in the background. The wind outside had picked up, so I assumed it was affecting the ancient copper lines that crisscrossed the woodland county. The static waxed and waned with the modulating tone. I pressed my ear to the receiver, suddenly intrigued. There were voices in the static. I couldn’t make out what they were saying over the interference and the tone, but they were unmistakably voices. There must have been some wire crosstalk over at the switching facility.

I dialed Tasha and we talked for a little while. While we spoke, the wind outside intensified. Earlier, when I’d gone into town to get some groceries, the locals told me we were in for some snow. I assumed it was starting. Tasha and I were saying our goodnights when the power cut out. The room was utterly pitch black.

We finished up and I fumbled in the dark to hang the phone up. With a sinking feeling, I remembered I’d forgotten to get new batteries for the two flashlights I kept in the kitchen. I carefully walked over to the desk and opened my laptop. Weak, pale light filled the room and cast bizarre shadows against the walls. Despite being 42 years old, I felt scared. I wanted to make a fire in the fireplace, but I’d neglected to bring any wood inside. It’s rare that I make a fire; I’m always paranoid about accidentally burning the place down. Still, it was a risk I was willing to take in the face of the impending stygian blackness of the cabin once my laptop died.

I bundled up and went outside. It was somewhat brighter out there than in the cabin, and I could see snow was beginning to fall. There wasn’t much, but with all the wind it still looked and felt like a blizzard. I grabbed an arm full of wood from under the awning on the side of the cabin and headed back inside. As soon as I opened the door, I heard it.

The phone had fallen from its cradle and the receiver was emitting extremely loud, dissonant tones. This time, the sounds were entirely unlike anything I’d heard from a telephone. The tones swept through octaves like a damaged siren, frequently punctuated by bursts of static and, beneath it all, the unmistakable timbre of human voices. The hair on the back of my neck stood erect and my skin’s topography was reconstructed by gooseflesh. Buried inside the wailing of the dial tone and the blasts of white noise, I could make out individual words:

“DECLENSION.” “NEW.” “LUNATION.” “NEURULATION.” “GOD.”

The light from my laptop faded into nothingness. I gasped and dropped the wood I’d been carrying. I rushed forward to hang up the phone, but I stumbled and fell, landing heavily on the floor with my head inches from the screaming receiver. The wailing and static stopped. Wind buffeted the wooden exterior of the cabin. Terrified and not knowing what to do, I reached for the receiver to hang it up. When my hand touched the plastic, an enormous crash rattled all sides of the cabin at once, knocking dishes from the cabinets and causing them to shatter on the kitchen floor. I screamed.

The phone began making noise again. It started with a normal dial tone, but quickly warbled and warped into a shrill cacophony of sirens, static, and voices. Somehow, I was impelled to put the shrieking receiver to my ear. I fought the impulse with all my strength, even pushing my left arm against my right to stop it from moving. It was futile. The receiver touched my ear and the sounds were replaced by a single, hideously loud voice:

“YOUR HOURS.” “YOU ARE HOURS.” “YOU ARE OURS. “YOU ARE OURS.”

A needle of indescribably cold pain pushed through my ear. I felt its frigid length puncture the eardrum with a horrible “snip” sound, changing the the blaring voice to a distorted buzz. Still, I felt the pressure of the intense volume against the destroyed membrane as the pain traveled deeper and deeper into my head. Everything went white.

I woke up on the floor this morning with a splitting headache and pool of dried blood in my right ear. The events of the previous night flooded back and I scrambling to my feet in terror. The wreckage of the kitchen was strewn across the floor. Framed pictures of Tasha and me had fallen off the walls and shattered on the hardwood. Desperate for fresh air, I hurled myself toward the door and opened it. Surrounding the cabin, contrasting against the sunny snowscape, were thousands of dead birds. Each one had its head smashed with such force that its eyes had burst and its beak was splintered into unrecognizable fragments. Vertiginous nausea caused me to sway and nearly fall into the carcasses. I stumbled backward into the house and slammed the door.

I looked over at the phone. It was neatly placed on its cradle and looking as innocuous as any telephone in any house. I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up and dial 911. Not after what happened. I pored through the fallen debris and found my keys. The legs of a drunkard carried me through the bird corpses to my truck. I pulled away from the cabin and somehow made it to the hospital without crashing.

Right now, I’m writing this with a borrowed laptop from a bed in the hospital. My right eardrum is ruined. They told me I’d experience vertigo for quite a while, but I was given medication to make the sensation less nauseating. The injury to my ear was not enough to keep me hospitalized. In fact, it was hardly enough for the ER staff to take seriously and they seemed irritated by my presence. That changed when they asked me how it happened. I explained it to them as best I could, but all I could see in their faces was bewilderment. Over and over they asked me to repeat myself, but after a while, I started to get frustrated.

One of them handed me a pen and paper and I simply wrote, “What is so hard for you to understand?” A young nurse asked me to tell them again what happened. She held her phone out in front of her and I saw she was recording a video. Again, I explained. They listened intently as I spoke, then the nurse stopped the recording. I shrugged my shoulders, wondering if recording me somehow got my story through their thick skulls. The nurse turned the phone toward me and I pressed play. I watched for a few seconds and started sobbing. On screen, when I opened my mouth to speak, all that came out was the shrill siren of the warped dial tone.

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Things turned sour between my wife and me before we were married. Before our marriage was even recognized by our state, in fact. There was too much mistrust; too many incidents from our respective pasts had bubbled up to demand our attention. But we soldiered on. The gesture of our marriage, we agreed, was more important than the fraying of our bond.

As the months dragged on, we worked to rekindle the essential elements of our relationship. For the most part, we were successful. Janelle’s sharp edges, honed by the coarseness of our interactions over our most difficult times, began to dull. Mine, too, softened. For a while, things felt good. Comforting. Familiar.

Familiarity, though, would beget slothfulness. It’s what I’d worried would happen. Every night, when we were curled up together in our bed, Janelle would snore and I’d be plagued by fear. It was the fear of inevitability. No matter how well things were going, once we got our wheels back in the familiar rut of our old routines, I knew our foundation would resume its inexorable deterioration. There was only so much damage it could endure before everything we’d worked to build would topple.

We both felt pangs of stress before either of us articulated our concerns. Janelle started drinking again. She wouldn’t stumble around drunkenly, but not a day went by when I didn’t smell it on her breath. She made no attempt to hide it. I, too, regressed. I was overeating – just like how I’d done before we met, when food was the only way I could escape the reality of my depression. When Janelle and I started our relationship, I was elated. My self-loathing melted away, taking 25lbs with it. But each time our connection felt like it was weakening, the first thing I turned to for comfort was junk food. Now I down a pint of ice cream every night while she polishes off a bottle of wine.

If it wasn’t for our sex life, I think our relationship would have ended after our first fight. But I freely admit – we’re hedonists. We escape reality through physical gratification, whether it’s food for me, alcohol for her, or sex for us both. The pleasure we give one another has always purged the most toxic of the venom from our respective battle wounds. We both knew it was escapism. Neither of us cared. We needed to feel good and we had the ability to provoke that feeling in one another.

This morning, we were sitting at the breakfast table and drinking our coffee. As I’d always expected but never anticipated, Janelle announced her intention to leave me. I didn’t say anything. I just stared into my coffee; the black liquid and the white mug defocusing and hazing as tears filled my eyes. I asked her if she’d finally chosen Alana over me. She nodded and began to sob. We didn’t talk much after that.

A few hours ago, as Janelle was packing, she came over to where I sitting and hugged me. She held me for a long time. I sat, motionless, doing my best not to bawl. But she wouldn’t let go. I hated her. She kissed my cheek. My ear. My jawline. I felt warmth between my thighs. I hated my body. I turned and met her kisses. After less than a minute, we were undressed. Her tongue explored me and I writhed beneath her ministrations, despising her cowardice and antipathy toward our relationship while I clutched her head and ground against her mouth. I shuddered and saw flashes of our earlier life together as I came; my pleasure decaying into oversensitivity as I pulled her by the hair to stop her rough tongue from scraping over any more of me.

Janelle’s face wore a rictus of self-satisfaction and wanton lust. I could smell her arousal and knew it would be my only opportunity to finally give her what she needed. My final opportunity to get what I craved. I wasn’t gentle with her. It was what she’d always asked for but I’d refused to provide. This last time, though, she could have it all. I scratched. Bit. Pulled her hair. She arched her back and mewled in mindless pleasure which only infuriated and further-motivated me. Mewls became moans. Moans became screams. And screams became gasps as her muscles tensed and she collapsed on the sofa, wide-eyed and sweating. She lay on her back, splayed, dripping, and utterly exposed. I kissed her forehead and watched, transfixed, as warmth drooled from her inviting slit. Throat.

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If you do a Google search for “Charles Robert Olevsky,” nothing will come up. Well, maybe by the time you read this they’ll have indexed this particular content, but aside from that, my name has been absent from the Internet. I lead a dull life. I’m a daytrader. Upper-middle class. No family, few friends. To be honest, I’m a homebody. Life’s just easier that way.

Last night, on a whim provoked by boredom, I did a Google search for my full name. I expected the usual nothing. But that’s not what I encountered. There were hundreds of thousands of results: news articles, Wikipedia entries, social media mentions – even pictures. But they weren’t pictures I could ever remember taking part in. And I looked much older; at least 20 years. I was surrounded by uniformed men carrying weapons. In a confused and moderately terrified frenzy, I clicked the top article. My blood ran cold.

“Charles Robert Olevsky, founder and leader of the New White Dawn Militia, announced today the successful completion of his campaign to eliminate the ‘immigrant threat’ from the Southern United States. This was the largest of the NWDM campaigns, resulting in the deaths of 250,000 immigrants or perceived immigrants. Following the overwhelming successes of the most recent NWDM actions and the lack of intervention by the US government, it is believed Charles Robert Olevsky will continue pushing south into Mexico.”

With trembling hands, I zoomed in on the photograph of me. On my wrist was the same watch I always wear. The one given to me by my father. Minutes ticked by and I read more and more about the atrocities I’d been accused of committing. Mass murder. Systematic rapes as terror tactics. Torture. Every victim was innocent.

There were videos of me from the early days of the NWDM. Propaganda videos. Someone recorded while I walked down the street with an assault rifle slung on my back, intimidating and beating everyone who looked like they didn’t belong in that particular area. Each video featured me committing different acts of violence. I performed the acts with a calm demeanor and spoke to the victim like a patronizing father explaining to his child why he had to be beaten. As the videos went on, I began killing them. When the families ran to the corpses of their loved ones, I shot them, too.

Before I could finish the video, my Internet connection died. I felt unbearably nauseous and dizzy. Guilty, too. That man couldn’t be me. When my connection reestablished, I tried to resume the video. It wouldn’t go. I closed the browser and tried again. When I typed in “Charles Robert Olevsky,” nothing came up. All Google showed me were other people who had either “Charles” or “Robert” or “Olevsky” in their names. Nothing mentioned me.

I opened my browser’s history and clicked the links from the last half hour. Each one was a 404. There was nothing. I started to think I was losing my mind. But then I remembered the pictures of me wearing the exact same watch I’ve worn for the last 30 years. The videos, though, were what shook me to my core. Nothing about my actions in them was anything like who I am as a person. I glanced over at the side of the desk where my printer stood. The package housing Rosetta Stone’s “Learn Spanish” sat on top. I thought about the scenes of those hideous videos. I started to cry. Every time I talked to one of the people I brutalized – every time I mocked them as they bled out, I spoke in perfect Spanish.

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