Category: scary stories

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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It was getting harder and harder to get Pacific bluefin tuna. Yeah, I could get other varieties, but everyone knows Pacific bluefin is the best. Especially for sushi. I contacted supplier after supplier, and all of them told me the same thing: they were being pressured to phase out the product and the prices would continue to rise because the demand was higher than ever.

My customers are well off. They can afford the best, so they demand the best. If I can’t give them what they demand, they’ll go elsewhere. In this competitive restaurant environment, if that happens, I’m done for. You can imagine my growing panic as the prices for bluefin rose and the supplies dwindled. Sure, my customers would pay whatever I charged when I could get it in, but that was becoming less and less frequent. The bigger restaurants would get first dibs. Why sell one to me when you can sell three or four to the guy down the street, especially when he had enough cash on hand to outbid me?

I was getting ready to give up hope. My sales were at an all-time low as the customers sought a better, more high-end selection from my competitors. In my desperation, I realized I’d be willing to circumvent the law if it meant staying in business. Staying in business meant my girls could stay at Yale. It meant my wife could continue receiving top-quality nursing care in our home while her Alzheimer’s worsened. I wasn’t ready to take that all away from them.

Ten years ago, I met a man named Satoshi. He was the nephew of one of my suppliers. He’d gone into business for himself and got into quite a bit of trouble for poaching some endangered sharks to sell their fins to the Chinese market. I think he spent a couple months in jail and had to pay a pretty big fine, but rumor had it that he’d emerged a new man. He reformed his business and appeared to be extraordinarily successful. It was that extraordinary success which caused me to get in contact with him.

To me, it appeared Satoshi was too successful. His business was small compared to the other suppliers in the area, but he was living a life of luxury. He drove a Bentley when the other guys drove BMWs. He had three houses in the most expensive areas of the city when the other guys had one. That kind of thing. I had a feeling he was into something extra.

Within an hour of our meeting, Satoshi said he could get me Bluefin for 80% below market price. To say I was surprised was an understatement. In fact, I laughed in his face. He remained serious, though, and insisted he wasn’t making it up.

Apparently, there was an area off limits to fishermen where Bluefin congregated in massive numbers. They were attracted to the warm water or something. Satoshi’s connections were in the Japanese coast guard, and they’d been planning a pretty big scam where their patrol boats got rigged with fishing gear and they could haul up Bluefin at night and sell them off at dawn. All they needed was a buyer.

80% below market price. I didn’t ask any questions and just said yes. I was fairly sure the police would break in through the windows and arrest me as soon as I shook Satoshi’s hand, but they didn’t. Satoshi just smiled at me as I wrote him a check. He told me I should expect the first delivery in the morning.

True to his word, at 5am, an unmarked truck pulled up in front of my restaurant. Two men got out, opened the back of the truck, and pulled three gorgeous bluefin from the icy compartment. Two were flash-frozen, one was ready for preparation. They brought them into the kitchen, helped me put two in the freezer, and left without saying a word.

I broke down the unfrozen one. It was perfect. The meat was firm and succulent. The samples I tasted were as good as the expensive stuff. I say “good” despite the fact I’m not actually a huge fan of the fish. Go figure. But I could still tell when I was tasting the real deal, and this most certainly was the real deal. I went and drew a huge advertisement on our sidewalk chalkboard. I was going to sell the bluefin dishes for half what my competitors were asking for. Then I went into the kitchen, started to prepare the fish, and felt relieved for the first time in as long as I could remember.

Dinner service was the busiest in the history of my restaurant. Word spread on social media and the place was packed from open to close. People who’d never been able to afford bluefin showed up once they learned how low the price was. The night was spectacular. So was the following night. And the night after.

I was delighted to take home many, many bluefin dishes to Aiko. She’d been having a rare, multi-day stretch of lucidity, and it warmed my heart to see her eating her favorite food and relishing her time spent with me. If I could feed her the food she loved most and could actually afford to do it, I was going to. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her happy.

I received delivery after delivery from Satoshi’s guys and was making money hand over fist. I was tight-lipped about where I was getting my supply, and the competitors were scrambling to keep up. Aiko drifted in and out like those with Alzheimer’s do; but no matter how far gone she was on some nights, she always perked up when I served her the bluefin she adored.

I started to grow a bit concerned, though, because it looked like Aiko had developed a skin condition. She’d bruise very easily and her skin was so delicate. Her nurse would have to be extremely careful when brushing her teeth because her gums would bleed badly. I was told it was a nutritional deficiency. Aiko was given some injections to help bring her levels back to normal.

The customers kept coming to the restaurant but Aiko got worse every day. Her nurse said if she didn’t start to show signs of improvement soon, she’d have to bring her to the hospital. When I stroked my wife’s hair, I was dismayed to see that some came out in my hand.

On a busy Saturday night, the nurse called me in a panic. Aiko had developed terrible, bloody diarrhea and was vomiting blood. She’d been rushed to the hospital and was in intensive care. I told the restaurant manager to take over and I sped to the hospital as quickly as possible.

Aiko was in a room by herself. She was stuffed with tubes and plugged with wires. Monitors displayed countless readouts that meant nothing to me. I stared at her from behind the glass and told the doctors I needed to go in and sit with her. They refused. I protested and fought, but I couldn’t get through the door. It was locked. Behind the glass, a torrent of blood erupted from Aiko’s mouth. It filled the tube and poured out over the sides of her face. A door on the other side of the room opened and doctors wearing yellow suits and masks ran in. They closed the curtains and I was left with Aiko’s nurse. We cried together.

My cell phone rang. Satoshi. I don’t know why I answered, but I did. He was beside himself with what sounded like terror. I barely could make out what he was saying, but in his panicky outbursts, I realized he was telling me something was wrong with the fish he’d been selling me.

I demanded that he calm down and speak clearly. “What about the fish, Satoshi?”

“You have to stop using it,” he choked out, panic still tainting his voice.

“Why?,” I asked, as pinpricks of dread rose along my back and neck. All I heard on his end was weeping. “Satoshi!,” I yelled, causing the nurse to jump.

His voice trembled. “I didn’t know they were getting it from there.”

“Oh no,” I breathed. I closed my eyes. “Satoshi…where are they getting the bluefin?”

An eternity passed as I listened to the man sob weakly into the phone.

I screamed his name with such violence I felt something in my throat tear.

In a tiny, almost childlike tone, Satoshi answered me.

“Fukushima Bay.”

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Allow me to wax poetic about these tiny newborn birds. Never before have I felt such softness. As I reach for them, gentle prickles of static electricity cause strands of their avian gossamer to stand at attention before my fingertips trace whispers through their feathery down. My ears fill with the cooing of birds; two angels with wings outstretched. Two beacons of my newfound tranquility.

I sat, terrified, as they hatched the night before. Each one fought so hard to enter the world and battled to escape the confines of their once nurturing, but now worthless, container. But the fight went well for them. At the end of the battle, two strong, white doves met this world. Two porcelain baby birds. I watched, spellbound, as their mother expressed her thoughtless, impelled teleology to feed them before they could start to cry. And as the last bits of nourishment trickled down their throats, the warm body of their mother kept them protected against the dangers of night.

When I woke up this morning, the two baby doves greeted me with stares of admiration and love. I felt how hot the room was and noticed the dampness of sweat in my armpits and crotch. I shrugged away the discomfort. The little white doves needed warmth more than I needed clean, dry clothing.

The mother cared for the needs of her two white babies as I gazed at them with satisfaction. I brushed the belly of one with the back of my knuckle. Its down ruffled against my touch and stuck straight up as I traveled against its grain. Time passed and I stroked each of the tiny white babies for hours, savoring the sensation of their delicate fluff against my sensitive skin.

With each stroke, though, dull panic began an inexorable metastasis within my chest. These baby birds were growing. Even though part of me knew it was impossible to notice growth after only a day, its very prospect was abhorrent. No longer would they be soft, delicate, and tiny. They would be coarse. Thick. Bulky.

I buried my face in my hands and sobbed. I cried for so long I expected the two white babies to have grown up and flown away by the time I stopped. When I opened my swollen eyes, though, there they were – soft and tiny as ever. But their mother was gone.

I placed my tear-soaked hands over the faces of the tiny, white birds. I could hear their muffled coos of protest through my palms, but I remained resolute. My eyes closed and I imagined the quiet beauty of bluebirds; the birds of happiness. Minutes passed. Then hours. And then I knew I could let go.

The wide eyes of two bluebirds gazed adoringly at their mother, who had finally returned to care for them. I put their legs together and stretched their arms wide, as if they were perfect, angelic wings. Wings that would always be small, delicate, and soft. Glowing cheerfully in the nurturing warmth of the room, I stroked the downy lanugo dusting their tiny blue faces, chests, and bellies.

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It was my rapist’s birthday the other day. Seven years ago, on that day, I endured the horror of having my autonomy stolen. Afterward, as the years dragged by, I grew to associate all birthdays with his. It took away a lot of the fun one might associate with the events. Especially the parties.

I’d been unwilling to break my silence about the experience. The people around me knew something must’ve happened. To them, there had to be some explanation why I changed from an ebullient extrovert into a person whose very essence screams, “stay away.” I didn’t say anything, though. I just remained cold and as detached as I could manage without being overly hostile. The masses of friends I had seven years ago evaporated into a few professional acquaintances. They didn’t need me, so I didn’t need them. I could manage alone.

So why am I writing this? Because I’m starting to make a change. Seven years of my life spent circling the drain wasn’t something I was ready to continue at 26 years old. Perhaps enough time had passed for me to start healing. The few books I’d read about trauma suggested that might be the case. The incident feels no less raw, though. The physical sensations haven’t dulled. Essential, daily bodily functions force the memory of his violence into every occasion. Every twitch of muscle. I have to sit there and think of him and how his atrocious legacy still dominates my body. The same body in which he planted his flag and claimed as his own. His body, rented by me.

But, as I said, I’d begun to change. Despite the hideousness of the prior seven years, I’d been able to hold down a good job. It’s basic web design stuff; nothing too glamorous. But the customers kept rolling in and the pay was good, so that small bit of positive reinforcement kept my finances afloat. More than afloat, really. Since I’d withdrawn so far away from all the fun and excitement I used to have, all I’d done was save money. Over those years, I was able to accumulate quite a bit in my savings account. Thanks to that, I was able to leave the city and rent a small cottage on a sprawling farm in rural Washington. The new scenery helped more than I’d expected.

The couple from whom I rent the cottage, Karen and Jessica, are in their 60s. You couldn’t tell by looking at them. Decades of hard work kept their bodies conditioned and strong. It wasn’t until they invited me to celebrate Karen’s 61st, which induced an involuntary shiver I was able to mask as a cough, that I had any idea they were so much older. I would’ve assumed mid-40s. They had no problem with my polite refusal of their invitation. On the day they interviewed me as a potential tenant, I told them I was private and, in an understatement that almost made me laugh, a homebody.

I spent my first month in Washington setting up the cottage. I arranged and rearranged the furniture, cleaned every surface I could reach, and even started a small garden in the back. I’m pretty proud of the garden. As we all know, Washington gets a ton of rain. That, in combination with the excellent soil quality, yielded the speedy growth of the basil, parsley, and rosemary I’d planted.

That month was the first time in seven years I didn’t feel the constant weight of my abuser on my back. Yes, I still remembered him many times each day. I still felt, with excruciating, perverse nostalgia, how much I cared for him even after he’d used me. But the terrible clarity of it all had begun to fog. Edges were blunted. I had three nights of amazing, dreamless sleep. Not once during those three nights did I feel his hot breath in my ear as he sobbed, “I’m sorry” with each devastating thrust. Things were quiet; as quiet as the dead I’d so often admired.

The next two months saw the gradual lifting of my mood. I became a frequent visitor to Karen and Jessica’s home. We would drink wine and talk. Sometimes we’d play Scrabble, which they eventually stopped suggesting because I knew all the 2-letter words and annihilated them every game. For a few brief moments, things felt, I’m cautious to say, like they did before the rape. I was laughing and talking with ease; my foul-mouthed sense of humor causing gasps of surprise and tears of laughter from the two women who’d made me feel like their daughter.

As the golden sunshine of summer transmuted into the leaden gray of winter, the relationship I’d developed with the couple, especially Karen, allowed me to do something I couldn’t believe. Late in December, a few days after Christmas, I revealed the assault to them. With a level of clinical dispassion of which I never imagined myself capable, I told them everything.

They were crying by the time I’d finished. When the last word of the story left my mouth, I felt invigorated. Proud, too. Proud of myself for having the courage to finally tell the story of why my life had changed for the worse so abruptly. Proud of the fact I’d found friends who could help me emerge from my shell and who genuinely cared about what had grown inside for those seven years. I loved them.

The night I wandered back to my cottage, tipsy from the bottles of local wine we’d shared, I collapsed into bed and fell asleep. He met me in my dreams. The rasping humidity of his sobbing apologies in my ear, the impossibly-heavy weight of his body on my back, and the incomprehensible indignation of having my autonomy stolen all coalesced into an interminable nightmare. When I awoke, sweating and shaking, it was still pitch dark. A glance at the bedside clock told me I’d only been sleeping for an hour. My sweat-soaked clothing clung uncomfortably to my skin, and I rolled off the bed to take a shower.

I stood up in the darkness, took a step toward the bathroom, and bumped into something. Someone. I gasped and reached out to push the person away. Strong, heavy arms wrapped around me. I shrieked and squirmed in a futile attempt to free myself. Putrid, wet breath filled my nostrils and changed my scream into throat-shredding retches. The arms gripped me tighter and my fingers dug into the assailant’s body. I couldn’t see anything, but I could tell he was naked. No clothing shielded his flesh from the assault of my fingernails, and I raked them over him, hoping the pain would make him release me.

My fingernails slid into his flesh far more easily than they should. I felt my first, then second knuckles disappear into his body. When I dragged them over his flesh, I felt the skin slough off and hang from my fingers. A smell, somehow even worse than his breath, filled the room. I choked and vomited against his chest. A thick, rasping voice choked out the words, “I’m sorry.” The pressure of his grip disappeared. The smell evaporated. He was gone.

Still in a panic, I ran across the room and flipped the switch for the main lights. The bulbs illuminated the puddle of bordeaux vomit on the floor. My fingernails, which I’d expected to be coated in foul slime, were clean. Confused and beyond terrified, I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and went through the tiny cottage. It was obvious no one was there. The door was still locked and deadbolted from the inside. No windows had been disturbed, either. But something had been in there. I went into the bathroom, placed the knife on the sink, and went to wash myself.

I showered with the curtain open, soaking the floor, so I could see everything. The knife was perched on the side of the tub and in easy reach if whatever it was came back. It didn’t. Nothing did. I towelled off and put on fresh clothes. As I cleaned my puke from the hardwood, I worried I had either consumed far, far too much wine that evening or I was going completely nuts. The knots of terror in my chest gradually untied as exhaustion took its toll on my consciousness. When I finally had the confidence to go back to bed, with every light in the cottage still blazing, I slept immediately.

The next morning, I told Karen and Jessica about my nightmare. They hugged me and made me breakfast and told me not to worry. I decided to wait to tell them about the purple stain on the hardwood until I tried another couple times to get it out. We ate our breakfast and the two of them griped about the inordinately cold temperatures which would make the next growing season a major pain for them.

After we ate, Karen and I chatted while Jessica went to organize their office. An hour later, she came back apologizing profusely. She handed me a piece of mail that had arrived a week after I’d moved into the cottage. It had been forwarded from my old address. Jessica told me it must’ve gotten mixed in with their bills and that she’d be much more careful in the future. I laughed and told her it was okay.

I tore open the envelope and read the short letter inside. My head began to spin. I asked if I could use the phone to make a quick long-distance call. “Of course,” Jessica replied. I dialed the number at the bottom of the letter. A woman answered. I asked to speak to Ryan. There was a pause, and in a voice much sadder than the cheerful “hello” I received when she picked up the phone, she answered me. Then she hung up.

I shook as I handed Karen the letter, which she read aloud to Jessica.

“Marie, I am finally doing what I should’ve done seven years ago. No, eight years ago. Before we ever met. Before I could hurt you. I don’t deserve to continue living. I’ve always wanted to say how sorry I am, but I destroyed those words for you when I did that unspeakable thing. Still, in my darkest moments, it’s something I need to say. And I know that need will go unmet as long as I’m alive, since I can’t bear the thought of making you endure the sight of me again. Once I’ve mailed this letter, I will do the only thing I can to adequately express my sorrow. If you need to know I’m serious about this, please call this number and ask for me.”

The number I called was written below the body of his message, followed by his scrawled signature. I thought of the embrace from the night before and the words that were drooled into my ear. My knees gave out and I fell to the floor, screaming as I cried. Karen and Jessica could only hold me as years of incomprehensible feelings flooded out in painful, wracking sobs. Over and over, they told me it was going to be okay. And, as is customary, peppered within their sincere assurances that things would get better were liberal declarations of, “I’m sorry.”

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