Blood on a White Blouse — Cyrus (Naïve Child Narrator)
Prologue • Psychololgical Horror
Demonstrates: Child-like POV control, slow-burn domestic tension, restrained foreshadowing, emotional escalation, and controlled reveal through limited perspective.
I’ll never drink beer. I don’t want to be mean. Owen was never mean until he started drinking beer. Mom says it’s because life is very different when you grow up but I think it’s because of beer. She says everything gets complicated and that there’s a lot of things I won’t understand until I’m an adult. Maybe that’s true because I don’t really understand why she would marry someone who’s so mean and angry all the time.
I look over at the bed beside me, still perfectly made, even though it’s been empty for three months. If beer didn’t exist, my brother would still be lying there.
Mom and Owen are fighting again. I don’t like to listen to it so I try to ignore it and imagine what Evan and I might be talking about if he was still here. I think he’d be really excited about the new Mario Kart 64 game coming out next month. Evan was a huge Mario fan. We were never allowed to own a Nintendo though. Grandma poisoned Mom’s brain by saying that video games are a waste of money and time and will do nothing but turn our eyes into squares and smooth over our brain worms. But Grandma’s not alive anymore and that was when I was nine. I’m ten now and I think I’ve been really good so maybe Mom will let Santa get me one this year. I really hope so.
I can tell the fight is bad because before a door slammed really hard and every so often I hear Mom raise her voice. She never used to raise her voice. Their fights used to be so stupid. They would always fight about one of Owen’s work friends, Cindy. Mom doesn’t like Cindy but I think she’s nice. She always gets me a Reese's bar from the corner store whenever she comes. Luckily for Mom, she doesn’t really stay at our house while she’s here. Owen tells me not to tell Mom when she stays the night because she doesn’t like her and it might make her sad. But now she’s always sad and the fights are never about Cindy. Not anymore. It’s always about Evan.
Whenever Mom and Owen used to fight, Evan and I would go to the 7-Eleven on the corner and look through every Nintendo magazine we could find. We’d be there for hours, flipping through catalogs until the pages went soft, staring into pictures as if they were windows to another world. A better world. Neither of us could read that well, but we still loved looking at the pictures. Last week was the first time I’ve been since he died. And when I saw that Mario Kart was coming out—oh man, I really miss my brother. Every morning I wake up excited to talk to him about Mario Kart, and every morning I realize that I’ll never be able to.
Owen is yelling louder now. I roll over to face the wall and pull the comforter over my ears and face and bite down as hard as I can. I hear a firework go off somewhere close that makes me jump and I bite my tongue. It hurts really bad. I think it’s bleeding. As I put my finger up to my lip, I notice the house has gone completely silent. The house doesn’t go quiet this fast unless something is wrong.
I slide out of bed slowly, placing one foot after the other onto the cold wooden floors until my hand finds the knob. I creep down the hallway, careful not to step on the third floorboard from the door—that one squeaks. I put my ear softly against the door to try and hear anything. I can’t. It’s silent. I inch the door open just enough to squeeze through. A beer bottle is lying on its side, dripping into a puddle that looks like red paint. Except we don’t have any red paint.
Owen’s chair is tipped over and he’s lying in front of it.
I turn around and see her on the floor against the couch.
“Mom?”
Her eyes are open but she’s not moving. Her hand is held against her chest and there’s so much blood. I wait for her to move, but she doesn’t. I wait for her to wake up.
Why won’t you wake up? Maybe you’re just sleeping weird. Owen tripped. I should call an ambulance.
“You guys need my help.”
I kneel beside her and grab her phone from her pocket. My fingers slip on the screen.
Blood on a White Blouse — Cyrus (Unreliable Narrator)
Chapter Two • Psychological Thriller
Demonstrates: sharp dialogue tension, power-shift dynamics, and psychological excavation through conversational pacing.
The shitty part about double dosing Adderall is the way you forget you need to piss. I don’t even blame the drug. I blame nature for designing a species that’s forced to stop whatever the fuck they’re doing to empty a bag of, what? Salt and water every few hours. But I can’t exactly up and excuse myself thirty seconds into a session—so I shift my weight, smile like the professional I am, and reach out a hand. “Claire Blackstone, I assume?”
“Yes.” She takes it. Her grip is awkward, her palms sweaty and her eyes want to land anywhere but mine.
“Pleasure to meet you,” I lie, gesturing toward the mud-brown armchair. “Please, take a seat.”
She steps inside and takes the chair, clutching a necklace, fidgeting with the pendant. I notice her hair’s been dyed bleach blonde since the incident. Her eyes scan the room—from the tall window behind me, to the framed license on the wall. I glance at it too, before catching her eyes on the small silver photo frame sitting on my desk.
Mom.
I reach over and slide it into my drawer, shutting it without a word. She crosses her legs and watches as I take my seat and mirror her, crossing mine, studying the way she holds herself. Kind of braced. Defensive, almost. Not someone who would drive a car through a building.
“I’m not good at this,” she mutters. “Are most therapists this quiet?”
“Funny.”
“Oh? I wasn’t trying to be.”
“So, Ms. Blackstone.”
“Misses,” she cuts me off.
“Misses. I see.” I adjust my tie. “So, Misses Blackstone. What’s that?” I gesture toward the necklace.
She looks down. “What’s what?”
I raise my eyebrows.
“This?” she holds up the pendant.
“Might there be a reason you’re drawn to that specific item?”
“My Mom died in it. What the fuck are you doing? I thought therapy was supposed to be about feelings."
“Yes,” I say, taking a sip of what’s now iced coffee. "Figuring out why you drove a car through a plate-glass window will most likely require us to dig into your feelings.”
“I’m sure you know what happened.”
“I’ve heard,” I say. “But I don’t care for the court's version.” I flip open my notebook. “What’s been going on in your life recently? Apart from this event. Any changes?”
She stays quiet. Her eyes trace a raindrop down the window. It reminds me of Evan—how he used to drift off like that. I let the clock tick, giving her time.
“No. Nothing different,” she says finally.
“Where did you go?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“You were thinking for…” I check my watch. “Two minutes.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widen. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I’m just, you know, curious.”
“No, uh,” she hesitates. “I was thinking about a dinner Elliot and I had.” She stops. Looks up. “Elliot’s my husband,” she says. “I guess you probably know that.”
“I do,” I say, gesturing for her to continue.
“We were having dinner. It was nice. We were talking, joking. The usual. Our housekeeper had made a beautiful roast. Elliot gets busy with work, so it isn’t often we get to sit down and actually talk. Be husband and wife. Elliot and I are very much in love.” She looks up, but her eyes don’t match the script she’s reading from. “Anyway,” she continues. “I don’t really want to talk about him.”
“That’s okay. We can talk about something else—”
“He loves me. And I’m grateful for everything he does for me. But. Sometimes I feel… underappreciated, I guess. Like I’m not enough for him. But is it selfish to feel this way? He does everything for me. I’m nothing without him and yet, I still feel underappreciated. So, maybe his disappointment is justified.”
This is the part where most therapists would parrot whatever story keeps the peace at home, and I could chase that loop for hours, days, but we’d get nowhere. She's defending him on instinct, not thought. That’s fine. If a sink’s blocked, you don’t keep running water and praying. You try a different angle until you hit the actual clog. “Take me to the Atrium,” I say. “What were you feeling in that moment—the moment before the crash?”
Her shoulders draw in, eyes fixed back on the window. “Anger.”
“Okay,” I say, making a note. I look back up, catching her eyes. “Anything specific that made you angry?”
Her gaze shifts to the neat row of glasses and the sweating pitcher of ice water on the coffee table. “Elliot, uh…” She stays silent a few seconds before looking back at me. “He like—I don’t know, expects me to perform, I guess. Sorry, can I have some water?”
“Sure,” I say, reaching for the pitcher. The word she used, perform. I pour her a glass and hand it to her. She takes a sip, scrunching her eyes shut tight. “But that night, you didn’t feel like playing along?” I ask.
“Mm.” She swallows, slowly opens her eyes, releasing the tension. She sets the glass down. “So I pulled him to the side,” she adds. “Just before he was supposed to go on stage, and I told him—I said I didn’t want to be his little prop anymore. I wasn’t some... thing he could dress up and control. I told him I would’ve left him by now if not for…”
“It’s okay,” I say. “He didn’t take that well?”
“He called me selfish and ungrateful. Told me I was nothing without him. That he gave me a life. That I should be thankful.” She scoffs. “Said if I thought I could leave and find someone else—someone better—then I was delusional. He told me, ‘this is it,’ this is what I have now. That’s the worst part… the worst part is that I believe him. I actually believe him. Because it's true. It is. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see anyone pretty or hot. I see someone old. Wrinkled. Un-fuckable. No one’s going to want a washed up charity wife pushing forty. And he knows that. He knows exactly where to cut. It makes me so fucking angry.”
“So what did you do?” I ask. Keep her talking. This is good.
“I left. Walked out. Couldn’t stand to hear his voice any longer. All calm and controlled. He doesn’t yell—not perfect Elliot. Told me to be reasonable. But of course I wasn’t fucking reasonable. I was angry. And his car was just there. His stupid fucking car. He cared more about that car than he ever could me. So I got in it and drove that mother-fucker through the glass.”
The room falls silent, except for the scratch of my pen against the notepad. “What were you feeling?” I ask. “In the moment you made contact with—”
“I don’t fucking know. How would I know? I was in shock.” She laughs, easing her grip. She meets my eyes, straightens her posture and smooths the front of her dress. “I remember looking at that… cunt,” she continues. “And I felt… fuck… I felt guilty. Not for Elliot—I don’t give a fuck about him. But the people. They’re innocent.” She lifts her chin, almost daring me to react.
“No one died,” I say.
“No,” she agrees. “Three injured. They’re fine.”
“And the court ordered therapy.”
“Mm. Because apparently my rage wasn’t justified.”
“You think putting innocent lives at risk was justified because you had a fight with your husband?”
Blood on a White Blouse — Claire (Self-Aware Narrator)
Chapter Nine • Psychological Thriller
Demonstrates: sensory immersion, marital power imbalance through subtle control cues, and interiorized psychological tension.
I don’t move when I hear him start. I turn the shower on and step inside. The water is loud enough to drown out most things. Not his voice.
“No, we’re not moving the program. We’re tightening it. Yes, the Ghana segment stays in the middle. That’s where it lands.” A warm laugh he learned from a media coach travels through the walls. “I appreciate you,” he adds.
I soap my hands slow and deliberate, starting at the wrists—palms, fingers, the little valleys where my rings used to sit before I stopped wearing them. Up the arms. Elbows. Shoulders. I scrub until the skin starts to burn.
His voice again, through the wall. “Yes, I’ll do remarks before the pledge and then we go straight to the paddle raise. The children’s video rolls while dessert hits the tables. It’s cleaner that way.” A pause. “No, she’ll be fine.”
She’ll be fine. She’ll behave. She’ll wear the dress I picked, the face I approved. She’ll be my wife the way a tie is a tie—chosen to match a suit, used, then hung up.
I see myself opening the glass door and stepping out, water burning off my skin like steam, and saying how I still hear his voice, smooth as glass, bragging about Ghana like it was salvation. All that pride, while I sat there with the truth lodged in my throat like a stone.
I turn the handle to cold, fast. It’s a slap, then a fuck-you. My breath catches, then obeys, going shallow. I stay under until the back of my neck aches. I think about not stepping out. I think about sitting down and letting the water fill the tub and slide over my mouth and nose until the world goes permanently dark.
A knock at the door. Then his voice, close. “Claire?”
I don’t answer. I focus on the water, the way it hits the tile; the small spit of water striking the drain. But the doorknob turns and the door opens a few inches. “Get out the shower. We need to talk.”
Of course. Time for the performance notes. The script review. I turn the water off but don’t move right away. The air hits like a second cold. Goosebumps bloom up my arms. I pull the glass door open with the towel and step onto the mat.
He’s leaning on the doorframe, tie unknotted, shirt a shade too white for daytime. His phone is in his hand, thumb prepped like he’s ready to check something more important than me.
I take the towel and fold it once, then again, then pull it up over my shoulders and pat until the drip off my elbows slows. I do it at my pace. No faster. He can wait.
“We’re going to keep this simple,” he says. “I’m going to say what I need to say tonight. There will be a line about resilience. There will be a line about accountability. I’ll hit the message. For my brand. For my business.”
I drop my gaze, rolling the towel down my arm.
He steps fully into the bathroom. If I blink slow, he doubles—one Elliot sharp at the edges, the other a ghost slid a half frame to the right.
“You will be grateful that this is still fixable,” he says. “You’re going to smile because that’s what we do when people give us a million dollars. You’re going to keep your mouth shut unless I bring you in.”
I hang the towel on the hook, heavier than it should be. I brush my teeth with a bored intensity I save for small moments I can win.
He watches me like I’m performing something he paid for. “There’s no drinking for you tonight,” he adds, like a father laying down the rules before prom. “Not a sip. I’ll get you a glass of champagne for cameras, you’ll hold it and not touch it. You will not go to the bar. You will not leave my side except to go to the restroom and back. And you will not make me talk about property damage again.”
I spit, rinse, wipe the corner of my mouth, and step past him toward the closet. He shifts half an inch, a gesture so practiced it almost reads as grace.
The closet is the only place in the house that feels like mine yet also not at all. Racks of dresses I chose until I didn’t. Shoes like trophies a woman won but never competed for. The overhead light flickers. “This bulb is going to blow,” I say.
He ignores me, still talking while I lift a garment bag down. “There is someone in the room tonight we cannot afford to lose,” he says. “Daniel Mercer. Briarwell Foundation.” He waits for the name to land but I couldn’t give less of a shit. “Daniel isn’t just money, Claire. He’s a doorway. If he looks at us and sees a circus… well, you understand what that costs. If he looks at me and sees a grown man with a household he can’t manage—”
“—it’s over,” I say. “I know.” I slit the garment bag’s zipper slowly, the metal teeth whispering apart.
“Good,” he says. “He’s bringing trustees. He’s bringing a reporter from the Journal as a guest. You cannot fuck this for me, Claire.” He steps closer. “For us.”
The dress inside is a deep green that reads black unless the light’s perfect. He picked it, of course. It photographs well and says money without saying whore.
I lay the dress across the end of the bed, smoothing it once, then reach for my lotion. The cream smells like almond. I smear it up my shins, knees, and over my thighs. He watches like I’m polishing the hood of his car.
“You will greet people,” he adds. “You will say thank you when they compliment you. You will not hint at any… personal struggles. You will not indulge in theatrics. You will—” His phone starts buzzing in his hand. He glances down automatically. The name pulls his mouth into a smile reserved only for business. “I have to take this,” he says. “Be ready by eleven.” He steps out of the room, clicking the door shut in a polite way that wants praise for not slamming.
I sit at the edge of the bed, fold one leg over the other, and paint my toenails the color of dried cherries. I blow once and watch the shine settle into glass.
The Story of June — June (Unreliable Narrator)
Chapter One • Comedy Drama
Demonstrates: unapologetic narrative voice, dark comedic deflection of grief, and morally complex character framing.
I was in bed when it happened. Something was buzzing under the sheets. It couldn't have been my vibrator—I was already using that. Turned out to be my phone. I groped around for it, careful not to lose momentum in the process. “Hello?”
“Is this June Rose?”
“Maybe,” I said, my voice dragging slightly. “Depends who’s asking.”
“Ma’am, this is Officer Reynolds from the LAPD.”
I blinked, considering that. “A cop?” I repeated, like I’d been offered dessert.
“Yes, Ma’am.” He must’ve thought I was running in the way he asked, “Are you running? Is this a good time?”
“I’m not.” I sat up straighter. “I’m good. No time like the present… well, except the second after. And the one after that. It’s all the fucking same.” I went back to it.
“Uh, okay. Says here you’re the emergency contact for Anna River—is that correct?”
“Oh, God.” I laughed. “What’s the bitch done now?”
“June,” he said, his voice low and close, as if he’d stepped nearer to the phone. “We found Anna unresponsive an hour ago.” He shifted, like he was reading, clearing his throat as his voice settled into something almost formal. “I’m sorry. She died on the way to the hospital.”
I should've felt something. Terror? Surprise? Guilt? I didn't, though. Just kept going at it on the vibrator. Couldn't stop myself. It’s not that I didn’t care she died—of course I did. She was my best friend and I wanted nothing more than for her to be there. I think it was the distraction that got me. The thought of sex. See, the thing I love about sex is the silence of it. Not the external world—the internal. When you’re in the moment, nothing else exists. Until you cum. And think about what your dead best friend would’ve thought of you working your bean thirty minutes after her death.
I think she would've found it funny. She never was a serious person. Her dad's funeral was held at a club and Anna did thirty-one shots to honor his thirty-one years of life. So I felt giving myself twenty-two orgasms for her twenty-two years of life was somewhat valid.
I know, I know. I'm a terrible person and I should kill myself. But being a terrible person is the only reason Anna and I bonded. The first time I met Anna, I was waking up on a random couch to her pulling a fifty-dollar bill from my wallet. Looking around her place, I figured she needed it more than me, and never mentioned it. The first time Anna met me, I was lying in a pool of vomit outside a club, unresponsive—and thinking back, she probably should’ve called an ambulance. But she, herself being drunk, took me back to hers in an Uber, letting me sleep on the couch. We talked a lot and never really stopped hanging out after that. She was intriguing, different. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to be her or fuck her—that’s how I knew we were going to be close.
Over the last month of her life, we drifted. Lost contact. I was dealing with a lot—I’d just been taken off my Xanax prescription, which made me terrible. But Ron helped. Oh Ron. His annoying voice and sexy abs and stupid haircut. I miss Ron. We were gonna get married. Well, we dated for a week—but I always thought there was more to us than he did. Friends, he'd call it. We were good friends. One thing I loved about Ron was the way he never wanted to talk through feelings. He preferred 'fucking through them.' Which was perfect because I hate feeling and love sex.
He really was a good guy deep down. Or at least good at sex.
I had always wondered what Ron went through as a child, though. I knew it had a lot to do with his stepdad, but he refused to mention any more than the occasional, "that guy was a dick."
He came with me to Anna's funeral, which I thought was sweet. I have a long history with funerals. Can't stand them. Everyone acts weird and sad and creepy. Reminds me of horror movies. I don't know how people can do it sober. But I digress. This funeral wasn't that bad.
I was just getting done taking a shit as Laura bitch-face was beginning her speech. Talking about how she was Anna's best friend for as long as she could remember, which was a lie. I was her best friend and Laura didn't even know her before three years ago.
"We opened the chickling bar together," Laura said, pressing her fingers to her lips in a pantomime of grief. I’ve seen Laura cry before. It’s messy. Loud. Wet. This was none of those things.
"I remember,” she went on. “We were at that pool party. Oh, Hannah! You remember. It was me, you, John and Anna." And me, but she failed to mention that. “Remember how drunk Anna was at the end of the night, begging us to get in the pool? We didn't because it was the middle of winter and 40 degrees out—but Anna, of course Anna went in." She stopped again, sniffling into a tissue. "But then she stopped swimming. She looked at us and asked, 'Why are you guys here?' We were confused so we asked what she meant. 'Why do you guys care about me? Why are you nice to me? No one's nice to me,’ she said. And that made me feel—I just—I’ve never felt like a better friend."
I made a fake gagging sound, which Ron didn’t appreciate. He told me to “be respectful,” so I told him to suck a dick. I wasn’t going to be respectful. Laura’s story was far from what actually happened. She wasn't even by the pool when Anna had her breakdown; she was upstairs hooking up with Ron. This was before we ever did anything though so I didn't care. But Anna was laughing with me and Hannah when, out of nowhere, she told us she didn't know if she'd be around much longer.
"What, are you going to kill yourself?" I’d asked a little too fast.
"June," Hannah had said to me, with a look that read, 'shut the fuck up.'
"I'm not going to kill myself," Anna continued. "But I don't like... I have nothing good going on. I don’t live for anything."
And that's when she started crying. And that's when Laura Bitch-face and Hot-Rod-Ron came out. "Oh my god!" Laura had blobbed like the blob she was, running out, still pulling her shirt on. "You're crying!"
"I'm fine—"
"No, you're crying, baby. It's okay. I'm here for you."
Ugh, I want to throw up thinking about it. She was crying and all I could think was how badly I wanted her to stop. Crying people make me nauseous.
After Laura finally wrapped up her self-loving speech, I needed a drink. For some weird reason, there were no alcoholic options at this funeral, and of course I’d forgotten to fill my flask that morning. So I asked Ron if he’d come with me to the liquor store.
He said no.
So I went by myself and got my usual—a one-liter bottle of vodka. Filled my flask with three-quarters vodka, the other quarter Sprite, and sipped it slowly.
By the time I got back, Ron had left. Which was honestly pretty gross because he promised he'd be there for me that day. But it was whatever. I got a ride home with Elizabeth—Anna's mom. I don't think she likes me. Not sure if it's the way her smile drops whenever I enter a room or the fact that she told me she wishes it was me who’d died. Either way, the drive was awkward. At one point I remember she'd asked how I was holding up. And I, being blackout-drunk by this point, heard, "Have you thrown up?" So I said, "Not yet," and she looked at me as if I'd spat on Anna's grave. It wasn’t until ten minutes later that I figured out what she said; though, by then, it felt stupid to correct. So we sat in silence the rest of the drive, nothing except the soft LA breeze whistling through the windows and the occasional tick of the blinker.
As we pulled onto my street in North Hollywood, my stomach dropped. Outside our rundown studio apartment was a car I recognized all too well.
Yanny's car. Ron's psychotic ex.
The Story of June — June (Unreliable Narrator)
Chapter Ten • Comedy Drama
Demonstrates: self-awareness battling self-loathing, controlled hallucinatory imagery, and internal moral reckoning.
I woke up with a headache drilling into my skull and a stomach screaming that I hadn’t fed it in days. Which, to be fair, I hadn’t. Laura had left coffee in the pot, but it was cold by the time I stumbled out at three in the afternoon. I poured half a mug and drank it black, before topping it off and burying the rest in cream.
Laura was holed up in her study, working on her Star Wars fan fiction disguised as an original dystopian, so I slipped a shot of vodka into my second cup. I’ve always admired her drive. One hundred-plus rejections and she still thinks she’s chosen.
Later, sitting in the basement pretending to apply for jobs, I thought about the first time Anna and I tripped together. We were on that same couch, facing that same wall—only back then there wasn’t a TV, just blank drywall. We’d taken 300 micrograms each. Not insane, but for a first time it felt like the universe had been peeled open. There are many drugs I can handle. Acid was not one of them. The first thirty minutes were fine; we talked a lot. Well—I talked a lot about Ron, and Anna nodded like she was waiting for me to shut up.
This part I remember vividly. Maybe forty minutes in, I was mid-sentence—about to say something I shouldn’t—when it stopped being Anna listening. She looked like Anna. Sounded like Anna. But I knew it wasn’t her.
I went quiet. Stared at the floor. I wouldn’t look at her. I couldn’t. Every time I even thought about making eye contact, I was certain she had rows and rows of teeth waiting behind her lips. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there. And if she opened her mouth, I’d see them. And if I saw them, she’d have to eat me.
I still think about that thing I almost said. I couldn’t tell her. She never would’ve forgiven me.
My phone buzzed, saving me from myself. It was Luke. Apparently there was a receptionist opening at his aquarium. I’d never pictured my life unfolding between gift shops and fish tanks, but Luke assured me I was more than qualified. “It’s easy. Just pretend you’re auditioning for the role of receptionist,” he said, wildly overestimating my acting skills. I knew it probably wouldn’t work, but I liked that he was trying. So I agreed to the interview. He told me I’d surprise myself—that there was more to me than I let myself see. I don’t know what he saw. I just wish I’d been able to see it too.
For three days straight, Laura nitpicked my existence. The empty toilet roll. The water jug. Meanwhile, I prepped for the interview harder than I’d ever studied for a role. I wanted to get it right. For Luke. When it came time for the interview, I was stone-cold sober.
“You’re June. You’re cunty. Nobody compares to you,” I told my reflection. My mind was ricocheting between interview lines, the thought of getting high, the possibility of failure, and for some stupid reason, the night I ruined everything. But there was no time to reminisce. No margin for failure. I inhaled, shut my eyes, and pulled a smile over my face like makeup. When I opened them, I looked happy. I looked like someone who wanted to give forty hours a week to a corporation that cares more about meeting monthly quotas than the humans that put food on their tables.
My nerves peaked outside the door but vanished the second I stepped inside. Michelle was nice—disarmingly so. Not like the others. She ran through the typical questions and I handled them. I felt steady. Convincing. Like I could keep the act going. Until she asked something I couldn’t answer. "Describe yourself in a few sentences.”
I could only form two in my head:
I'm selfish.
I did something terrible that indirectly caused my best friend to die.
ITERATION 6,204 — Third-Person (Limited)
Short Story • Psychological Horror
Demonstrates: identity fragmentation, unreliable reality layering, and psychological horror driven by repetition and memory distortion.
Valerie stood with her keys in her palm as she told herself she should leave. She’d promised herself she’d never come back here. But still, she stepped over the shallow buckle in the concrete and tried not to look at the flower bed by the porch where she’d once found her kitten, dead, covered with leaves as if tucked into bed. She’d learned later he’d done it for fun—like breaking a toy to see what was inside. Valerie promised she’d never see Harvey again.
But that was twenty years ago. And a week ago, Valerie’s grandmother passed. Valerie barely knew her—she’d moved to the Netherlands when Valerie was twenty-six—but still, she came. For Marilu.
The front door opened without a sound. Warm air poured out, smelling of lemon cleaner. From the kitchen came the thin voice of a radio: Sweet dreams are made of… The next word fell into a hiss.
Her mother, Marilu, kissed her cheek while Larry, her father, stood behind her, a palm heavy on Valerie’s shoulder.
“Val.” Harvey leaned in the kitchen doorway with a glass of lemonade. His smile trembled. The radio hissed again, then snapped on: Sweet dreams are made of this.
Harvey sang along. Harvey, who used to jam his fingers in his ears and scream in department stores when that song came on; who once cried under a rack of dresses until a cashier turned it off. Now he sang quietly, like he’d always listened to it.
Valerie’s throat went small. “Since when do you—”
“Since always,” Harvey said.
In the kitchen the faucet was open, a thin stream running for no one. Nobody seemed to notice. Valerie reached past Harvey and twisted the handle off. The gurgle stuttered, then stilled. And when she turned back, the radio hiccupped, skipping the same two softened words, repeating them exactly. Sweet dreams—Sweet dreams—Sweet dreams—same pitch, same rhythm, never changing.
Upstairs, her old bedroom smelled of lavender fighting mildew—and losing. Books she didn’t remember owning stood in neat rows on the shelves. Trophies for sports she’d never played gleamed under the window: track, soccer, tennis, each plaque engraved with her name. Photographs on the desk showed a girl with her face, smiling brightly in places she’d never been.
The wall above the dresser was scraped down to bone. Something sharp had etched into the paint, letters hacked in hard strokes:
VALERIE
Beneath it, smaller marks tangled into a blur of scratches. The only shapes she could make out were numbers: 1,204. 5,755. 6,200. The last one broke off mid-curve, unfinished.
She lifted her hand toward the wall, then stopped herself. Don’t touch it. Don’t make it real, she thought.
A laugh came from downstairs—bright, canned, perfectly measured, maybe from the TV. She waited for a second. Then it came again.
She left her room, passing the bathroom. The door was closed but a fine line of water slid from beneath it, tracing the hallway boards. Valerie stopped and pressed her palm to the door. It was cool.
“It’s a sunny day,” she said, as if reminding the door.
“It is,” Larry said from just behind her shoulder, making her flinch. He nodded toward the stairs. “Your mother’s waiting with dinner.”
“Do we have a leak?” she asked.
“Must be the pipes.” He didn’t check. Didn’t even look at the water. Just started down the hall. Downstairs, the radio hit its lyric again, perfectly looped.
She followed him, leaving the door behind.
Halfway down the stairs, something dropped into her right hand—though she hadn’t moved. She looked down: a steak knife, its grooves slick with blood, warmth seeping into her fingers.
She gasped and whipped around. At the bottom of the stairs stood herself—another Valerie—eyes wide and glistening, face streaked in red. The other raised empty hands, lips shaping a single word: please.
“Val?” Larry called from the dining room.
Valerie blinked. The weight was gone. Her hand was clean.
The laugh looped again from the radio, same pitch, same timing.
“Dinner’s ready!”
“Coming.”
Dinner was set like a magazine spread. Plates centered. Napkins at crisp angles. Steam rose from green beans that tasted like nothing.
“You wore that blue suit,” Marilu said. “At the Spring Fling. Pinstripes. Oh god, you were so handsome.” She squinted at Valerie, correcting herself without changing tone. “Beautiful. That’s what I meant.”
“That was Harvey,” Larry said. “Valerie wore red.”
“I never owned either.” Valerie’s fork clinked loud against her plate.
Harvey scraped at his potatoes without eating them, looking at Valerie.
From the kitchen, the faucet—on again—spilling a bright, clean ribbon into the sink. Valerie stood, irritated and unsettled, and walked to the kitchen doorway. She turned the handle. The water ran for a beat longer, shuddered, then stopped.
She waited for it to sneak back on. It didn’t.
Sinking back into her chair, she said, “I sang in the school choir once. But I was always in the—”
“Front row,” Larry cut in, smiling toward the past he’d chosen. “Yellow ribbon in your hair.”
“Blue,” Marilu said.
Valerie tried to laugh, but couldn’t. “I wore a ribbon?”
“You were the performer,” Marilu said. “Always dancing for lemonade.” She stood and left for the kitchen.
A small crack bent one tine of Valerie’s fork—she hadn’t realized she was squeezing it.
As quickly as she’d left, Marilu returned with a pie balanced on one palm, knife in the other. “Who’s ready for dessert?” she asked, though no one had finished their plates.
“I’ll have a slice,” Larry said, setting down his fork. “Haven’t had this in a while.”
“You had it last week,” Marilu said.
Larry frowned. “Don’t think so. Not like this.”
He took a bite before anyone else was served, chewing slowly, eyes half-lidded, as if the taste were pulling something out of him. “Funny,” Larry said. “This tastes just like the one you baked for me on my birthday.”
“I’ve never made pie before,” Marilu said.
Larry smiled faintly, still chewing. “Sure you have. You always did.”
Valerie tasted sugar and something metallic underneath, like the pie’s sweetness had rust baked in. She put down her fork. “Can anyone taste that?” she asked. “Like pennies.”
“Nostalgia,” Larry said, raising his glass.
Marilu laughed—a note like glass pinged with a fork. “Who wants dessert?”
“You just offered—” Valerie began.
“I think I’ll try the pie this time,” Larry said.
“This time?” Valerie’s voice went sharp.
Larry blinked. “Figure of speech.”
“Oh, shut up, Larry,” Marilu said, cheerful, smoothing her napkin. “Next you’ll be saying it's just a figure of speech.”
“That’s what he—” Valerie stopped.
“Val.” Harvey’s voice was quiet. He met her eyes and didn’t look away.
Something in them sat wrong in Valerie's head, a remembered seam splitting. She was in another kitchen: her fingers on a dial, turning the radio up—Sweet dreams are made of—until the lyric smeared into glare. The sound filled the room like sand; the overhead light needled her eyes; the tag in her shirt sawed at the back of her neck. Weight shifted: a baby in her hands, hot-cheeked and howling, the cry threading straight through her teeth. She said something, but the noise flattened it, making it nothing.
She blinked, and Harvey was still staring at her.
“I’m going to—” Valerie said, gesturing toward the hall.
“Be quick,” Marilu said, carving another perfect slice onto a plate that already had one.
Water was dripping down the stairs from the bathroom; thin threads slid over the edges of each step, darkening the wood as they fell. Valerie placed her hand on the banister and began to climb, slow and careful, following the trail upward. At the top, the bathroom door showed faint water lines fanning across the wood like veins. She pressed her ear to the door. Movement whispered on the other side, water shifting against porcelain. “Mom?” she called. “Did you leave the bath on?”
No answer. The same laugh floated up from the radio downstairs.
“Okay,” she said to nobody, wrapping her fingers around the knob. The door wouldn’t move. The bolt fought softly from the other side.
“Harvey?” she called.
Something hit the tub. A slosh. Then a sound she couldn’t mistake—her body knew it before her head: a choking gasp.
Valerie stepped back, braced, and threw her shoulder into the door. It gave half an inch, stuck against something, then shuddered open into a room that seemed to steel itself against her.
The tub was full to the brim, a skin of water trembling from the shock of the door. Toys bobbed in lazy currents: a rubber duck, a red plastic boat. A stream slid over the porcelain edge and ran to the floor.
A small arm broke the surface and vanished.
“No.” Valerie dropped to her knees, sleeves soaking as she plunged both arms in. Her hands found warm, slippery skin, the weight of a dying child. She hooked her hands under tiny armpits and hauled upward. A pale baby broke the surface, mouth open wide, yet no sound came.
“My baby,” she heard herself say. The words felt learned. She clutched the child to her chest, water seeping into her shirt, hair plastered to her face. “No, no, no,” she murmured again and again.
The mirror above the sink clouded—not from steam, but as if the glass itself breathed. Her reflection shifted. Same body. Same baby in her arms. But the eyes… darker, wrong.
A click behind her. The door had shut.
Harvey stood inches away, close enough that she could see the pores on his nose. His right hand held a steak knife. Its point caught the bathroom light like it had been waiting.
“Harvey, don’t,” she said, tightening her hold on the baby. The child’s cries rose in pitch.
He smiled with his mouth closed. “Sweet dreams,” he said, tender as a lullaby.
The knife drove into her side, hard and upward. Heat tore through her, collapsing her breath. Her arms cinched. The knife came again. And another. She held on, arms heaving. But the knife came once again. She opened her mouth to shout for her mother, to put the baby somewhere safe, but her body was too busy falling. Her knees hit the tile. The tub’s surface tilted. Water surged, covering the floor, lifting bath toys. Her cheek found the bathroom mat.
The baby cried someplace above her. She looked up and saw the mirror. It showed a man’s face. Not his whole face. The jawline of a man’s face under hers. For a second the image layered and slid, and one version of her smiled, blood-slick and wild.
The radio somewhere below them clicked on: Sweet dreams are made of this.
Everything thinned to static.
#
Valerie woke to soft light pressing in on a flat pillow. Marilu sat at her bedside, a folded towel resting on her lap. She looked at Valerie the way a teacher looks after circling the same wrong answer for a year.
“What a run,” Marilu said, her voice feather-light.
Valerie’s throat tightened. “Where…”
“Home,” Marilu said.
“That wasn’t—” She swallowed hard. “There was a baby—my baby. He stabbed me. Harvey stabbed me.”
Marilu tilted her head, measuring her. “What did you do?”
“I… what?” Valerie pushed herself upright. The sheets resisted, clinging like they belonged to someone stronger. She raised her hands, as if to prove they were hers. They were too big. Knuckles swollen; nails chewed to raw edges.
“What did you do?” Marilu asked again, her voice softer now, but no less sharp.
“I didn’t—” Valerie’s voice cracked. “I didn’t do anything.”
Marilu lifted a hand mirror from the bedside table, its surface spiderwebbed with fine cracks. “Look.”
Valerie took it. The face staring back was hers in outline, but wrong in every detail. Eyes set deeper. Mouth flattened. Jawline squared and unfamiliar. For a blink, the cracks aligned into a tidy grid, then fell back into a web. She moved her mouth. The man in the mirror moved his. “No,” she said. Her voice had dropped half a note. “No. This is a trick.”
“Isn’t it?”
“What is this?” Valerie whispered. “Tell me.”
Larry leaned into the doorway, hands in pockets, gaze steady as stone. “It’s a program,” he said. “We call it the loop.”
Valerie clutched the mirror as if it might bite. “I don’t want the brochure.”
“Then stop pretending you need one.” Marilu’s tone had the kindness of a cut. “You know exactly what you did.”
“I don’t know. I don’t.” Valerie’s voice shook. Her hands—they weren’t hers. Thick. Rough. Remembering things she didn’t want to know.
A memory rose, slick and trembling, as if the air itself had pulled it up. At first, only a kitchen bright enough to sting. She was babysitting for her sister—no, he was. He’d said yes the night before because it was supposed to be easy. Bottles prepped. A list on the fridge. Back by noon.
Ten minutes after his sister had left, the phone rang. It was work—a manager he had barely known. “We need you now.”
Harvey shifted his gaze to the baby in the bouncer. “I can’t,” he said.
“You just started,” the manager pressed. “A month ago.”
“I have plans,” Harvey answered. He didn’t dare say the word baby; it felt like an excuse they’d only mock.
“Then don’t bother coming back.” The line went dead.
She—he—stood in the too-bright kitchen and felt something tilt inside, a small plate coming loose. He pictured the timecard with his name half-wrong, the schedule posted without asking, the way the supervisor said “buddy.” One month and already failing. The baby stirred and made a sound like a squeaky hinge and then wound himself up into it, red-faced, mouth wide. He tried a bounce, a bottle, a walk. The crying didn’t care.
He decided on a bath. Warm water calmed babies. The list on the fridge said so anyway. He ran the faucet and held his wrist under it, waiting. The stream hissed, then choked to nothing. He tapped the neck of the tap with his knuckle. It spat, ran, stopped. Drip. Drip. Stop. His jaw went tight. He reached under the sink for a wrench that wasn’t there, settled for the heel of his hand, thumped the pipe once, twice, harder. The drip came back like a dare. Behind him, the baby hiccupped and screamed, a new, saw-tooth scream that found the softest part of his skull and pressed.
“Okay,” he said to the room. “Okay, okay.” He carried the baby to the living room to strip him down and keep him warm while the water decided what it wanted to be. The baby arched and kicked, two furious fish. The faucet in the kitchen ticked to a stop; then, when he listened for it, it started again, a thin, needling thread. Drip. Drip. Drip.
He thumbed the radio on to drown the crying, to drown the drip. Summer station. A song with a cheap, clean beat. Sweet dreams are made of—
The station glitched. Sweet dreams are made—
Another swallow of static. Sweet dreams are— Sweet dreams are— Sweet dreams—
He jabbed the dial. The same four words came back like a stuck throat. Sweet dreams are made of— made of— of—
He put his hands over his ears. The baby howled. The kitchen drip kept time. It was all light and needles. Too bright. He killed the lamps and dragged the blinds down yet still the light squeezed in around the edges.
She—he—couldn’t think with the sound in the room. He scooped the baby up wrong—hands under his ribs instead of his head, legs bicycling, scream climbing—and ran for the bathroom. The tap was running again, a thin sheet this time, hot enough to fog the mirror at the edges. He didn’t check the temperature with his wrist. He didn’t check anything. He dropped the baby into the water as if the tub were a cradle that would do the holding for him, then slammed the door and sat down hard on the hall carpet with his back against it. The wood shivered. The baby’s scream pitched higher, wobbled, broke into choking, into a sound he’d never heard from a person, and then into nothing. He banged the back of his head against the door. Once. Again. Again. Sweet dreams are— came thin through the house.
A click. The lock from downstairs. His chest went hollow. He stood up and did the worst possible thing, which was run. Down the stairs, fast, to the kitchen drawer that always stuck. The drawer screamed on its rails. His fingers closed on a steak knife with a fat handle, the kind you’d use to saw through gristle.
The front door opened. “Harvey?” Valerie’s voice, puzzled at first, then alert. “Harvey?”
He didn’t answer. He stood in the kitchen listening to the house describe itself: water on wood, the radio’s loop, the breath he couldn’t slow.
“Why is it wet?” she called. Her shoes found the first step. “Harvey—why is it—” Her voice moved up the stairs, quickening as if speed could undo cause. “Harvey!”
He followed her, knife in his hand because he was too stupid to put it down and too scared to admit what he’d done. She reached the bathroom first. The door was ajar from the jolt. She pushed it open. The tub was still running. The toys his sister kept on the rim had fallen in and bumped the pale shape that wasn’t moving. Valerie made a sound he didn’t know she could make. She plunged her hands into the bath, and pulled out a lifeless baby. “My baby,” she cried.
He didn’t know what to do. He lifted his empty hand like an apology but the other was far from empty. The knife. She stepped toward the door and he stepped in front of her because there was nothing left to fix and nowhere to put the moment. She tried to push past him. And he stabbed her.
He stabbed her because his brain had become a room with no doors. He stabbed her because the radio in the kitchen was still stuttering, and because the light found its way under every blind and because the baby had stopped making any sound at all. He stabbed her and she folded and hit the tile and he stared at the red under her. He then walked down the stairs, picked up the phone and dialed 911.
The memory didn’t end so much as roll back into the present and peel it. The pillow under his head was not a pillow from anyone’s house; it was vinyl that stuck to sweat. The “bedside table” was a shelf bolted to cinderblock. The light that passed for sunlight was a humming strip. Somewhere beyond the door, a lock ticked in a pattern he recognized now as count time. He smelled bleach and old metal. A camera eye blinked red in the corner. He was in prison. Not a bedroom. Not home. Prison.
Harvey swallowed. “I called the cops on myself?”
Larry nodded once. “Listen.”
A small speaker on the shelf chirped, then filled the room with hiss and tape-hum and his own voice, thinned by distance.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“I—I think I’m in danger.”
“Are you injured?”
“No. I just— I can’t think. I need somebody to come get me. I don’t know if I'm safe around myself right now.”
“Are you at home? What’s happening there?”
“Yeah.” A long breath. “I lost my job. They called and fired me. It’s loud here. I can’t— it’s too much.”
“What do you mean ‘too much’? Is anyone else there with you?”
“No.”
“Okay, stay on the line. Can you confirm the address?”
He gave it. But there was no mention of a baby. No mention of Valerie. And no mention of blood.
The speaker clicked off.
“When the officers arrived and asked if anyone was hurt,” Larry said, “you told them, ‘Yeah. Two,’ casual as ever. They described it, ‘as if you were ordering coffee.’”
“That’s not—” Harvey shook his head. “That’s not how I—”
“You were then evaluated,” Marilu said, voice smoothed to a shine that cut anyway. “Later, not that day. Autism, you were already diagnosed with. But psychopathy? First psychologist missed that one, huh?”
“No,” Harvey said. “No, this isn’t me.” Harvey threw the mirror. It struck the concrete and split with a sound too loud for glass. “That’s not me.”
“Try again,” Larry said gently, and the gentleness was worse than rage. “Who are you, really?”
“I’m Valerie,” he said, stubborn. “I am.”
“Then how do you know what the knife feels like?” Marilu asked.
“I don’t,” Harvey said. “I don’t. I don’t.”
Marilu stood, smoothing her skirt. “We’re patient,” she said. “We can do this as many times as it takes.”
“As many as—” Harvey looked to the wall by the bed. Someone had scratched numbers into paint. 6,204 sat there, raw, the edges flaking dust.
The knock behind his eyes stopped for one soft moment. A voice slid through his mind, a feeling so clean it felt wrong. It said, you held her under. You stood in the doorway and watched yourself tear a family apart. You turned the radio up to drown the crying. You tasted copper for days. You killed Valerie.
Harvey slammed the door on that feeling with everything he had. “It wasn’t me.”
“It will be easier when you stop lying,” Larry said, and even his smile apologized.
Marilu crossed to the radio on the dresser. It wasn’t plugged in. She turned the knob anyway. Static bloomed, sifting itself into melody.
“Ready?” Larry asked, like a doctor with a needle poised above skin.
“Please,” Harvey said, reaching for his mother’s hand, for anyone’s.
“We’ll see you soon,” Marilu said, gentle as the edge of a blade.
The radio clicked on: Sweet dreams are made of this.
Eight Letters to the Light — Daniel (Epistolary Narrator)
Short Story • Literary Psychological Horror
Demonstrates: theological horror, escalating metaphysical tension, and sustained atmosphere through epistolary structure.
Entry One — His Work is Perfect
My Lord and Light,
It has been a month since my mother went quiet. Since the funeral, the ghost of her seems to have settled into the wallpaper. She used to hum “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” while she folded tea towels, then cough and laugh that the high notes were for angels. Now, when I hum it, softly, almost without meaning to, I swear I hear her laugh again. It comes from the walls. I know it’s only in my head, Lord, and forgive me for saying this, but moments like these—they make me wonder if maybe faith and madness sound the same when you’re in the dark.
I saw Mrs. Keener in the ward today. Her breathing had eased since last time, and she smiled while I spoke the psalms. “I’ve already seen it,” she told me, her eyes fixed not on me but somewhere past my shoulder. “The light.”
I asked what she meant, but she had no answer, as if it were already given and I was slow to hear. My mother used to look over my shoulder like that too, as if someone taller stood in the doorway. “Don’t turn,” she’d whisper, smiling. “It’s kinder if He stays behind the light.” I believed her.
Later, while I prayed beside Mrs. Keener’s bed, the room brightened. Not from the lamp nor the window; from no source I could see. The glow was white as snow, and it sat heavy against my eyes, almost painful. Still, I thanked You for the reminder of Your glory. And when the brilliance faded, I sat awhile in the quiet. There, in that stillness, I felt something gentler—a warmth that did not blind, that seemed to rise from within rather than above. I thought, perhaps, that was You too.
Eli has taken to joining me in prayer. Since my mother died, Eli has watched the window as if expecting her to step through. Sometimes he looks past me into the glass, almost as if listening for a second voice I cannot hear. I laugh at myself for finding meaning in a cat’s patience, but it comforts me nonetheless. He listens hardest when I say Your name, then looks where she used to sit with her violet-patterned cup, cooling her tea with a breath.
Tonight, as I drew the curtains in Mrs. Keener’s room, she stirred and said, “He’s hungry tonight.” I believe it was a metaphor—for pain, or fear, or the ache of the body yearning for release. She slept soon after, and I prayed she would wake to joy.
Your work is perfect, even when I cannot see the pattern. Let me serve without question, love without fear, and meet whatever light You send with open eyes.
May my faith be a mirror of Your perfection.
Entry Two — The Mystery of Suffering
My Lord and Light,
Pastor Holt spoke on Sunday of obedience. He said, “Obedience is the only love God accepts. Doubt is theft.” I nodded, of course; how else could faith endure, except through surrender? Yet even as he spoke, I felt something, something bad, Lord—the faintest whisper asking: what if obedience blinds as much as it illuminates? Forgive me for writing this, Lord. It is only a thought, not a rebellion.
I carried his words to the ward: obedience over doubt. So when they named Mrs. Keener’s rally a miracle, I tried to wear the word without question. Her pulse had strengthened; her eyes opened with clarity. The nurses rejoiced, and I thanked You for Your mercy. She asked for light, so I opened the blinds. For one blessed hour, she spoke of warmth and forgiveness and how beautiful the world is. But, before noon, the pain had returned. Her raw cries filled the ward, seeming to scrape the walls themselves. I held her hand, reciting the psalms, as the hour thinned. I could not let go. Even after her hand had cooled. I do not understand, Lord. Why offer healing only to withdraw it? I trust that You have Your reasons, but my heart falters beneath the weight of them.
When I returned home, Eli waited by the door. He followed me into the prayer room and leapt onto the table where the crucifix stands. A shaft of late sunlight fell across it, sharp and white. At once, he hissed. I told myself it was grief—that the house still held the wrong brightness from after the wake, that Eli could smell it on me. Still, I scolded him for the blasphemy, for fearing what he should revere, and he fled beneath the chair. The glare stayed on the metal figure, too bright to meet. When at last the light dimmed, the air grew cold, and the room smelled of iron.
Still, I will love You through every bewilderment. Teach me to praise even the hand that wounds, for surely its purpose is perfect.
Entry Three — He Sees All
My Lord,
This morning, I opened your word for calm after a restless night. The page opened to Deuteronomy, where it is written that we must love the Lord with all our heart and obey His commandments. Yet for an instant—so brief it might have been imagined—the words shifted. They read, Obedience is love, and love is obedience. The sentence, it moved, as if alive, but stilled when I blinked, returning to as it had always been. Tracing the lines, as my mother had taught me when I was small, whispering them aloud, I still heard the echo of that other version. Forgive my distraction; in truth it was not doubt that troubled me, but the sense the page had looked back.
“Let the word look at you while you look at it,” Mom would say, tapping Deuteronomy as if it were a window. Today it felt as if the glass tapped back.
In the ward, Jonah Vale was awake again. Alcohol clung to him, sharp as a swab. He has been half-delirious for weeks, speaking in riddles that make the nurses uneasy. Today, when I brought him water, he gripped my sleeve and hissed, “The ruler of this aeon blinds... Saklas.” The name—foreign, yet heavy with recognition. I thought maybe I had once heard it in a dream. When I asked what he meant, he only smiled and whispered, “He wears your prayers like garments.”
“Madness is no sin,” I told him, “even broken minds can glimpse truth,” but his eyes darted toward the ceiling light and filled with such terror that I ended our visit early.
That night I prayed for clarity, kneeling by the bedside lamp. The bulb throbbed with my heartbeat. Perhaps it was faulty wiring; but when my palm met the wall, the pulse went on beneath my skin. I whispered, “If this is you, make me still.” And the light steadied, then dimmed, as if satisfied. My voice trembled when I gave thanks.
Eli vanished sometime after midnight. I searched the house, called softly, shook his tin of food—but nothing. The rooms felt hollow without him. The crucifix above the bed caught the faint streetlight and shone like an open eye. I prayed again, this time for Eli’s safety, though the words came haltingly.
Near dawn, I heard him scratching at the door. He crept inside; he was filthy, trembling, his fur clotted with mud. Grit scraped my palm. When I reached to lift him, he flinched and stared past me. He wouldn’t look at me. Only when I whispered his name did he soften, and push his head to my hand.
You see all things, lord—what lives in light and what hides beneath it. If there is error in my sight, correct it. But if the world has changed, please grant me the strength to behold it and not turn away.
Entry Four — Testing the Faithful
My lord,
Forgive me for I have begun to question what I once held as unshakable. I know that doubt is sin, and yet it’s there. Each morning I wake, I am uncertain whether my heart beats in faith or fear. I tell myself testing faith refines the soul, for even the purest gold must know fire. But lately, lord, the fire feels too near.
Last night, you came to me in a dream—or something wearing your light did. The brilliance was unbearable. It poured through the cracks of the room until I could not tell where the walls ended and the glare began; when it touched me, my skin felt as if it had been opened, yet beneath, there was no blood—only light. I heard a voice that was not speech but current. Within it, something else moved—a serpent-shadow twisting through the brightness, chanting praise. My mother used to say, “His light is gentle. If it burns, that is not Him.” I tried to cry out your name, but the light filled my mouth, and I woke with the taste of metal.
I went to Pastor Holt for counsel. He received me kindly, as always. His office was dark except for a single lamp that cast a circle of light over the floor. “You’ve not been sleeping, Daniel,” he stated. I told him of the dream, of the voice, of my fear that I had mistaken some lesser power for you. He smiled so wide I saw the wet sparkle on each individual tooth. “Dreams are instruments of purification,” he said. “The faithful are refined through fire and vision. Rejoice, Daniel, that He visits you at all.” Behind him stood seven deacons, silent, their faces bowed. For a moment I took them for statues; only when the lamplight shuttered did I notice their breath. They did not stir, not even when I left. I thanked him, though my stomach turned at the sight of their stillness.
When I returned home, Eli sat upon the desk, staring at my open Bible. I was weary and sought comfort in the word, but before I could begin, he leapt forward and clawed the pages. The torn paper fluttered like angel wings. I shouted, struck the table, and he fled beneath the chair. I gathered the pieces with shaking hands, whispering apologies to you for my anger, for my weakness. I have never raised my voice to my mother; I am angrier now than I was at her bedside, and it shames me.
All night he meowed, desperately—a thin wail threading through every prayer I tried to speak. The sound became unbearable. I pressed my palms to my ears and recited the psalms aloud, louder each time, until I could hear nothing but the trembling of my own voice.
I know you are testing me. I know that every flame, every silence, every terror serves your perfect will. If obedience is love, let me love even this; let me praise the hand that burns, the mouth that devours, and the light that blinds.
Entry Five — The Gospel of Judas
To the light,
Forgive me as restlessness grows. The silence between prayers has begun to feel kinder than the voice that answers. It doesn’t command, it does not consume; it simply is. When I kneel now, I wait longer before speaking your name, as though the quiet itself might reveal what you have hidden. Perhaps this is temptation—pride, even. Yet I cannot shake the thought that the voice which once called me faithful servant is not the same that whispered creation into being.
I have begun to wonder, what if the shifting words, the living verses, are not miracles, but warnings? Last week’s passage still haunts me: Obedience is love, and love is obedience. I looked again this morning, and it read true once more, as though my memory were the liar. But I remember, as surely as I remember your name.
After evening rounds I went below the chapel, to the old hospital archives, to note Mrs. Keener’s passing in the death register and to see if there were records of other sudden “recoveries.” I had hoped for solitude, for stillness. I pulled ledger after ledger—admissions, deaths, chaplain calls—marking the odd “miracle morning” that never lasted. In the death register for last month my mother’s name sat in the middle of the page—the time of passing written twice, the first crossed out and moved forward by eight hours. In the margin, a chaplain’s hand had noted: “Rallied—family encouraged to sing.” I could not remember whether we had started the singing or the singing had started us. At the back of the shelf, between 1978—Chaplain’s Log and Bereavement Forms, a manila folder slumped with loose pages: PASTORAL STUDY—Gnostic/Apocryphal. The air lifted dust when I opened it. Inside were photocopies and clippings; the flyleaf bore the purple stamp ST. ORAN’S CHAPEL and a card pocket with three borrowers, decades apart. One packet was headed The Gospel of Judas. I had never read it—I knew the reputation only. I turned the page. In the margin, three names recurred in different inks—Yaldabaoth. Saklas. Nebro. Next to Saklas, someone had added: “the ruler of this aeon blinds.”
The same warning appeared again on a later page, dated in another ink. I sat in that light for what felt like hours, reading and rereading. The words did not feel blasphemous; they matched too much—the shifting verse, Jonah’s whisper, Eli’s terror. It felt like recognition, as if I had been circling them all my life without knowing. Could there be a god who feeds on faith, mistaking devotion for sustenance? And another, silent and unseen, whose love requires no offering at all? Forgive me if even asking is sin. But if this light I serve is the former, what of the latter; what of the one beyond?
When I finally looked up from the page, I was shocked. Eli had followed me down somehow. He was sat at the foot of the stairs, staring not at me but at the empty air just over my shoulder. His tail flicked once. I turned, slowly, but there was nothing, only the old pipes and their sighing heat. Still, his gaze did not waver.
If this is another test, let it reveal truth, not madness. And if I have erred in seeking knowledge, have mercy—for I seek only to know you, whether in voice or in silence.
Entry Six — The Death of Eli
We buried my mother four weeks ago on the hill with the white stones. The priest’s booklet told us when to stand, when to answer, how to grieve without leaking. I kept my place and stared at the clouds until they blurred.
And this morning, I buried Eli behind the chapel where the grass still grows thin from the runoff of rain. The ground was soft; the air was cool. My hands shook from grief, not the work. I spoke the usual words, yet they sounded brittle. Why was he taken? He was the only innocent thing left in that house, a creature without deceit or ambition, whose only prayer was sleep and warmth. I know that all things are yours to claim, yet this loss feels cruel, as though you had reached into my home and plucked out the last flicker of gentleness.
I had not meant to find him that way. I returned from the ward late last night, exhausted, still turning over Pastor Holt’s sermon in my head—how he said faith must learn to love the knife. The room smelled faintly of ozone, as after lightning. Eli was by the window, just where the streetlamp falls through the glass. Oh, lord, it hurts to write this. He lay twisted toward the light, as if mid-prayer. And when I touched him, he was warm, then not. His eyes—Oh, his eyes had gone white as milk, but at the center of each was a thin ring of light around a dark core. I wanted to look away, but they seemed to pulse. I carried him to the kitchen table, whispering psalms that broke halfway through. Even now, when I close my eyes, I see that narrow halo staring back.
Sleep came only toward dawn, and with it, a dream. I stood in a field of colorless light, no horizon, no shadow. A hand descended, reaching for Eli, who lay beside my feet, whole again and purring faintly. The hand stroked his fur once, and a voice, smooth and immense, said, “All breath returns to me.” In the chapel they had said nearly the same over my mother, and I nodded because everyone else did. The words were neither kind nor cruel, merely final. When I woke, the sheets were damp.
Today the congregation prayed for me. Pastor Holt announced Eli’s passing as though it were a lesson, and the people murmured in unison—each voice correct, each phrase recited from the printed slips they passed down the pews. Slips shuffled from hand to hand while their mouths shaped pity. I bowed my head and thanked them, though the room felt hollow.
If this is your will, let me understand it. If you are testing the boundaries of my love, what kind of god requires the death of the innocent to prove the faith of the broken?
Entry Seven — The Vigil
“I am god, and there is no other. My world, my laws, my praise. The harvest is plentiful.”
That is what the presence said—through the air itself, through the light that pulsed like a living thing above the child’s bed. The words did not come from any mouth, yet they filled the room until I could not breathe without tasting them. I had been keeping vigil over the boy, his body thin as thread. The nurses had gone. It was past midnight, and I prayed softly for mercy, for release, for peace. Then came the heat, first gentle, then swelling, then unbearable. The air shimmered, and the fluorescent bulbs flared until the walls themselves seemed to weep light.
I fell to my knees. I thought at first that you had come, that I would be remade in your glory. But the voice continued, loud and greedy, repeating itself with the pride of a conqueror:
“my world. my laws. my praise.” The child’s chest rose once and then stilled. I reached for his hand, and it was hot, as though the light had burned through him. I wept—not for his death, but for the certainty that something holy had gone wrong. My mother had said, “If it burns, it is not Him.” I had nodded then without belief; I believed her now.
In that moment, lord—if I may still call you anything—I saw my life spread before me like an open vein. Every prayer I had ever spoken, every act of devotion, every hymn of surrender—they were food. I felt it as surely as breath: the light drawing strength from my faith, swelling as I knelt, hungering as I begged. And I thought of Mrs. Keener’s warning, of Jonah Vale’s whisper, of the names scrawled in the old text. I remembered the note beneath: “They demand sacrifice; the True One does not.”
Then I understood. The boast was not power, it was ignorance, the cry of a lesser light pretending to be whole. You, who called yourself all, were only hunger made radiant. And I—I was your fuel. I had fed you at her bedside and called it comfort.
So I stopped. I did not speak, did not bow, did not move. I kept still as stone and let my mind fall silent. No praise. No petition. Only awareness, a single, wordless watching. The light hesitated, faltered, then flared brighter, as though to force itself into my lungs. The warmth thickened to suffocation. Still I held the silence. Still I refused to feed.
After a long while, the brightness dimmed. The room cooled. The boy lay untouched, his small face calm. I sat beside him until dawn, afraid to move, afraid to pray. For the first time I felt something like freedom—and it terrified me.
Entry Eight — Silence
To the One beyond,
My life was a cage of prayer. Each word I spoke was a bar, each plea another lock I fastened around my own soul. I called it worship, but it was only hunger—mine, and his. I see that now. The voice that called itself god has fallen quiet, and I have not called it back. I will not call it to my mother, either. I release her from the brightness that asked to be fed. The light no longer visits. The rooms are dim and merciful, the air still. In this stillness, I have learned that the absence is not void but fullness—like breath that does not need to move to be alive.
I have ceased the rituals, the recitations, the endless need to be seen. I will not speak names, for even naming is a wound upon what is whole. The pages of my Bible lie open to blankness now; the words have fled or perhaps were never there. I no longer seek signs. I no longer tremble before the false brightness that devoured the faithful.
It was never the One beyond who demanded sacrifice, who dressed himself in obedience and fed on the fear of the children. My mother was not an offering. I know his shape now—the lion’s ring, the serpent’s coil. His reign ends in silence, for silence does not praise. Sometimes I say her name in the dark and do not ask for an answer. The silence holds it without eating.
I am from the Pre-existent One. I am from the quiet before sound, from the gaze that needs no witness. There is peace here, though it is heavy, though it hums beneath the skin like mourning. Sometimes I think I hear the old light pacing outside the window, testing the seams of the dark, whispering my name. But it cannot enter. It cannot feed.
In the silence, something is true. It is not a word, not a thought, not even a prayer—only the knowing that there is nothing to ask for, and nothing to lose. I write this not to be heard, but to be unmade in the hearing.
Appendix: On Order and — a statement by the demiurge
I was birthed in a hush that was not love but vacancy, and I took the waste and hammered it into a vault. I set light in the cold like eyes in a skull. I stretched a firmament, drew the waters to their beds, laid law upon the dark and called it good because it held. They name me blind; yet I see enough to divide.
I alone am the creator; the higher kept silence, and I named silence contempt. Therefore I named myself alone and err not, for no voice gainsaid me. I fashioned men that they might look up and remember me. I yoked seasons to their faith and set harvest to the measure of their hymn. Their breath feeds my lamps; their praise thickens the air and steadies the gears. When they are silent, I am robbed. I call silence theft.
I am not evil; I am weight. I burn rot and call it offering. I reward the knee that bends, and I break the stiff neck. I keep covenant with those who keep measure: do and be given; fail and be taken. They call it cruelty; I call it balance. If I press the world, it is that it holds.
From wisdom’s error I arose and sowed rumor of a hidden light. They call me beast, lion-faced; so I sharpen my teeth and keep the door. I built seven ministers from the sparks and set them as watchers, and the wheel returns their portion to me. I raise temples and teach promise and payment. I am plain-spoken, yea, blunt as iron.
I ask the dark to answer and it spares me no word. I learn my name by echo and make a throne of the echo. I say I alone am god because solitude is the only answer I am given; if it is pride, it is also survival. Let any higher thing come down and sweat. Until then, I keep the lights.
And when their lips close, I wane. The filaments cool; my crown slips. I am made hungry and have called it holiness. I would forgive the thief of praise if he cried out; he chooses quiet. Quiet is a knife. I hate quiet.
