Ripped clothes

Bain looked across at his friend for many years, huffing as he gulped in air from the short journey through the hills. Edimar had good reason to be panting, at only four and a half feet tall he was nearly as broad around, and wearing nearly as much armor as he himself weighed. He supposed they made an odd pair, for he was six foot three and only beginning to fill out, with his hair shaved off, as was his right as a Noble. The dwarf had reddish gold hair, his beard braided with intricate jewels and carved jewelry ending near his belt and was capped at its lowest point with a cylinder with the Riddermark family crest inlaid in silver around it.
"I counted fourteen Edimar, how many did you see?" Bain asked, when the dwarf looked like he had caught his breath some what.
Leaning on his axe haft, Edimar knuckled his helmet up a little before answering, a hint of eagerness touching his voice. "Same durn count. I say we surprise 'em."
Bain searched a moment longer for anything they had missed and satisfied there where no extra enemies set as a rear guard, he nodded. His nod set them both into action, the boulders and scrub brush, not to mention a few gnarled trees along the way offered the pair cover along the old wagon trail. They had cut through the hills to get ahead of the group of marauders over the last two day's. And traveled hard to do so. With the sun only a hand high on the horizon, Navaul, the first of the twin moon's was beginning to peek over the Lagoda Mountain range as they quickly prepared their ambush. And then they waited.
They had crossed the trail two days earlier. When they decided to follow it they soon found that the small band of orcs were also following the same trail, an almost identical band had used only days prior. Weather or not this was the same band or not, neither Bain nor Edimar could tell. They had followed them until it became apparent they would follow the trail through the towering stones known as The Sentries. That was where they had decided to ambush them.
There was barely three fingers widths of sun left above the horizon as it glistened off metal spear tips approaching from the south east, and moving at a steady pace in their direction. Bain had found a tree near the trail, while still alive, it had a natural hollow where the Blue-leaf had grown around a large stone. The cavity was just large enough for him to fit in with not much more room to spare! He hid there, his "Cobarr" cloak making him almost invisible. Edimar had dug a hollow under one of the large boulders that littered the area near The Sentinels, it was only a little further up the trail than Bain's tree. He only hoped Edimar wouldn't be so set on killing every orc they came across. It wasn't that he didn't want to dispatch the pestilence that boiled out of the mountains and ravaged many different lands of late. After all none of the "civilized" race's had ever not been at war with the orcs, or there kin, or not for long anyways. Orcs got bored of peace quickly. He was a competent swordsman, and Edimar was birthed in the blood of orcs as his clans few survivors escaped their ancestral Holds, or so it was written. But with seven to one odds everything had to go perfectly.
As the band, most of them wearing dark leather armor with a piece of metal here or there, glinting in the dwindling sun marched past the Blue-leaf he was hidden in, he waited for Edimar's signal. And it came as the last two orcs marched past, Edimar slid from under the boulder seemingly already in a full charge as he surged to his feet, legs already pumping to gain some momentum. With an ease learned through many years of sparring with his father's tutor's he silently stepped out of the hollow in the tree, his cobarr cloak sliding it's magical camouflage to match his surroundings making him a blur of movement for a brief moment. With two quick slashes from the silver sword he had taken from his father's mantle, he silenced one orc for good. The orc grasped for its jugular but there was no stopping its life blood from bubbling forth.
Edimar's axe exploded through the second orcs head, spraying brain matter and bits of skull over the two orcs in front of the newest victim. Both of them where just turning to see what the commotion was, and without a second's hesitation Edimar used his momentum to barrel into one of them. With a howl of surprise the orc went down with the battle-lusting dwarf smashing its nose with a studded gauntlet.
Bain blocked and parried his new adversaries wild swings, during a turning thrust he swept his sword in low, through the stunned orcs defenses and sliced its stomach open. With a feral growl the bloody orc launched itself at him flailing wildly. Bain wasn't there, he had already leaped at one of the charging orcs and swung downwards and across, cleanly taking it's head off its broad shoulders.
Edimar had gotten back up, the orc he had bowled into's face was smashed. He swung his axe at a rather large orc that at a glance Bain thought must have had a little ogre or hill giant blood. But his foe was better equipped than his former companions, and prepared! With numerous dents creasing it's breastplate from the dwarfs furious blows. As Edimar scored several solid hits, the orc had scored a few of its own, and was giving more of a fight than the others had. Edimar had a knot the size of a goose egg forming on his head from the mace the brute wielded like a seasoned veteran. The dwarfs helmet had a large dent on the left side. With a roar the dwarf fainted right, and as the brute moved to intercept him he suddenly changed directions and slid between the orcs legs, swinging his axe backwards as he came up from his knees severing its right hamstring. Off balance, the orc tried to turn to face the dwarf who was now behind him! It's leg gave way, unable to support its weight, and only slightly managed to turn to face Edimar, it dropped to one knee. Edimar had reversed his swing as the brute came down on it's knee and caught it in its unprotected lower back. The sickening crunch from its spine pulverizing under the force of the blow audible over the clang of battle around him. Edimar staggered slightly as the brute fell face down in the dirt, paralyzed and bleeding out fast.
Bain had dispatched three more orcs while Edimar had been busy with the hulking brute. The first he had neatly side stepped its spear thrust with a quick motion, a mere flick of his wrist, he drew and plunged a dagger in the middle of it's leather chest piece. The force was enough to carry it off its feet as he slammed the blade home. He did not let go of the pommel as he heaved downwards, his momentum and the orcs propelled it backwards slamming it hard into a boulder. As Bain felt the impact of the body into the boulder, he pivoted, twisting the blade free as he danced away, leaving the orc wheezing through a hole in its chest from a punctured lung. With the dagger he parried a thrust from a spear as he came fully back in line with two more orcs. The orc who's thrust had been parried tried to thrust again, but Bain's dagger caught the tip of it as he turned it away, harmlessly, and the orc found itself on the ground as Bain's heel smashed into the side of its temple from a vicious roundhouse kick. With another flick of his wrist he sent his dagger into its throat as it hit the ground prone nearly under him. The third orc swung a falchion with too much abandon managing to graze Bain's shoulder, drawing a thin cut in his leather jerkin. It cost him though as Bain suddenly stepped and pivoted bringing himself down and into a crouch. He led with his sword making a vicious horizontal slash to the legs of the orc. With a howl of agony it fell sideways as it's right leg was severed by the sword's enchantment against its kind, it's momentum carrying it over, off balance. Without hesitating, Bain stood and plunged his sword through its chest as it screamed in agony suddenly cut short as he stepped forward driving the edge up and through its torso and out through its collarbone, completing the maneuver. The sudden silence making the sound of Edimar's brute falling like that of tree crashing down, the pass now eerily quiet near the giant stone monoliths. Looking around just as the brute fell behind Edimar, he soon found the apparent leader, his arms crossed, with scars covering every visible patch of his skin. Bain noticed he watched the dwarf as if watching an wild dangerous animal. He started towards the leader, wicking the blood from his sword.
There was six orcs still breathing, including the leader and his two apparent lieutenant's. Edimar charged in, engaging another orc with a mighty overhead chop that sent its large steel shield wide. Bain paid the two combatants no more attention as he headed straight towards the two lesser orcs. They gripped their spears and the large sacks they had slung over their shoulders, glancing nervously back down the trail as if wishing they could be elsewhere right at that moment! As well they should. Bain casually tossed his sword from his right hand to his left while still six paces away, making a flourishing motion with his cobarr. The motion was made to draw there eyes away from his right hand, he was slightly quicker and a little more accurate with it. As his right hand flicked out twice, releasing two wooden handled throwing knives. They were from a special bandolier strapped across his chest. The tactic was flawless, and from that distance, if your opponent didn't see it coming it was unlikely they would be able to defend against it. The nearest orc dropped to its knees, grasping a knife that suddenly protruded from its throat and upper chest cavity. The other orc chose to flee, looking over its shoulder once from fifteen paces away, just as his last knife took it in it's back right between it's shoulder blades, sending it sliding as it's legs ceased to move more than a spasm.
Bain took stock of the rest of the survivors, he could see Edimar striding towards the leader. The orc he had been engaged with earlier laying very still against a boulder, it's head smashed. "No surrender!" Yelled the leader in there guttural language, his two lieutenants both let out a roar as they surged forward thrusting their spears. Edimar met the first with the but of his axe, knocking it off target. The orc still managed to draw a line of blood from the exposed, somewhat swollen cheek of the dwarf. In the same motion Edimar spun away from the spear thrust and smashed the hammer side of his axe head into the second orc's knee, which audibly exploded from the force of the swing. The orc let out a blood curdling scream as it dropped, clutching its ruined knee. Bain had no more time to think about his friend however, for the leader was starting around the three combatants, eyes intent on him, and only him.
He moved around his friend and the two orc lieutenants battling, his eyes and those of the bloodshot orc leader never leaving each other's gaze. As they drew near each other the leader drew a wicked looking serrated longsword, and as he moved closer performed a few forms to loosen up Bain realized he was not fighting a typical brute, but a seasoned veteran. At three paces, and without any warning from his eyes or body language, the orc leader lunged, slashing across and up, which Bain managed to parry, and then came in hard with three quick thrusts. The last caught Bain's sword and with a quick jerk and thrust he slightly off balanced him, causing Bain to have to hang on to the weapon or lose it! Somehow he managed to keep a hold of the pommel and recover his balance in time to throw the sword up as the orc leader swung his sword over his head and slammed the blade down Bain's to where guard piece overlapped guard piece. The force caused Bain's sword to give only from his own lack of physical strength. Even from the warm pulse from his right ring finger and the ring of strength he wore, the leaders biceps bulges under the many scars covering them, and his blade descended closer. The tip of the serrated sword just catching him across the forehead and down the corner of his left eye to Bain's cheek. Instinctively he pulled away and dropped to a crouch, which completely caught the orc leader off guard who tried to correct himself. Bain jerked his long dagger out of its sheath and drove it upwards into the inner thigh of the orc, who tried to leap backwards haphazardly clutching the hilt of the long dagger. The blade was all the way through the leader's leg. He kept his serrated sword trained on Bain as he cursed.
The orc leader tested the long dagger and grimaced as he drew the blade out and threw it aside. He motioned with a nod towards the corpses and dying of his band, "Do you know that for five generations our shamans have seen to it that every orc among us recognized the face of the "Blighted One". The one responsible for driving us back into the Breaking Lands, where we were tested, molded into better warriors, and hardened by the Skull Lord." The two combatants circled each other, carefully, aware of every movement the other made. "We have waited a long time for the day of Return!" He paused for a moment studying Bain as he casually wiped blood from his left eye. "Even if you win blight-elf, you will die soon after!" He thrust at Bain, there swords clashing together shedding sparks, once, twice, three times. "My blade bear's dragon root, poison to your kind!"
With a flurry of movement the orc fainted as if he was going down on one knee with a lunge. Bain didn't fall for it, and the orc barely managed to parry a spinning overhead slash, sparks flew. The force of the parry caused Bain to step back as the leader came back up on his feet, blood flowed freely from his leg wound. "And my name will go down as the warrior that defeated the Blighted One's own son!" He yelled as he lunged again, though slowed by the wound in his leg he was still fairly quick. Bain was waiting for him to try this again, had anticipated the overconfident leader would try the lunge again if he could stay out of his reach long enough. He rolled to one side and swung as he came up on his feet, the sword of his father's cleanly separating the leader's wrist as the leader missed Bain, the serrated sword tumbling to sink into the rocky ground blade first, the leader's hand still clutching its hilt three feet away. With a twist of his wrist Bain brought his sword back down and across in a vicious slash which cut completely through the orc leader's neck and down through to below the other arm.
The orc leader started to turn, a look of surprise and disbelief etched onto its ugly scarred face as he slid into two pieces in a bloody mess. His father's sword had burned through the orc like a hot knife through butter. Bain took a deep breath through his nostrils and exhaled very slowly through his mouth, slowing his heartbeat. It began to drizzle. The smell of blood, bile, and the pungent reak of burnt flesh was prominent as he took several more slow breaths. He could taste blood in his mouth as it trickled down his face from his cheek. He ripped a piece of cloth off his shirt, under his jerkin, and wrapped his head as best he could so he would still be able to see as Edimar dispatched one of the orcs that wasn't quite dead yet and began looting their bodies, Bain could see a large sack lay near the dwarf as he went about the task. Anything of value the dwarf would put in the sack.
Bain could feel the wound starting to burn as he searched the leader. He found an animal skin scroll with instructions to secure the pass and await a larger force. Edimar had finished gathering everything of value he could find and walked over to Bain, with a load clank he dropped the sack beside him. "That's everything, I also found a crude yet accurate map o' the region on this scroll." Said Edimar as he held the scroll out for his friend to take. Bain did, and handed the orders he had found to Edimar, he cautiously unrolled it so as his body protected it from the slight drizzle. The scroll was the map Edimar had mentioned, he examined it closely. "This group is part of an even larger group which plundered an elven village, apparently after slaves and treasure. By this map, their next target is the village of Raven's Point." He tapped the dot representing the villages location.
"By the gods those people should at least be warned, who knows we may even find a way to make somethin' off o' this." Edimar said as he poked the sack with his boot. "Besides, I be runnin' low on mead and tobbac. And it'd be nice to eat a decent meal!" He started to chuckle as he grabbed the bag and patted Bain on his back as he started towards The Sentinels, and the direction of Raven's Point. "We can go through this along the way."
Bain grimaced at the last as the wound in his cheek flared up in a burning sensation. He quickly rolled up the map and stuck it in his pouch, already standing to follow his friend, who was heading north west, without looking back Bain plucked the orc leader's sword out of the ground and examined it closer as he quickly caught up to Edimar. The blade was a fine blade, made of cold iron, heavier than normal but not terribly much. And of masterwork quality with a dark green emerald in the hilt. He would keep it he decided, it's hilt felt comfortable in his hand and eventually he would have to return his father's blade…..and face the consequences when he did for "borrowing" it and leaving, without permission from his father.
The Emperor of Thiatia.

AN: shjt up fistz ok! PS I wnot update ubtil u give me goood revows!
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The next day I woke up in my four-post bed. I put on a black sleveless tunic that was all ripped around the end and a matching circlet with red blood drops and skulls all over it and high heeled boots that were black. I put on two pairs of skull earrings, and two daggers in my ears. I blood spray-painted my face with elven blood.
In the Elfsong, I ate some Count Strahdberry cereal with blood instead of milk, and a glass of gnome blood. Suddenly someone bumped into me. All the blood spilled over my rare cloth.
“Bastard!” I shouted angrily. I regretted saying it when I looked up cause I was looking into the pale white face of a gothic boy with spiky white hair with red streaks in it. He was wearing so much eyeliner that I was going down his face and he was wearing black lipstick. He didn’t have a shirt anymore and now he was wearing red contact lenses just like Enver’s and there was no scar on his back anymore. He had a perfectly high cheekbones. He had a sexy English accent. He looked exactly like Neil Newbon. He was so sexy that my body went all hot when I saw him kind of like getting wet only I’m a male dragonborn so I didn’t get wet you sicko.
“I’m so sorry.” he said in a shy voice.
“That’s all right. What’s your name?” I questioned.
“My name’s Astarion Ancunin, although most people call me Vampire these days.” he grumbled.
“Why?” I exclaimed.
“Because I love the taste of human blood.” he giggled.
“Well, I am a Bhaalspawn.” I confessed.
“Really?” he whimpered.
“Yeah.” I roared.
We sat down to talk for a while. Then Enver came up behind me and told me he had a surprise for me so I went away with him.

Starting from the beginning, my partner and I own a house in Hamilton, ON. A good friend (at the time), let’s call him Rob, was in need of a place to stay, having had a few bad rental situations over the few years prior, we offered our empty, newly renovated basement. Rob moved in October 2023 on a month to month lease.
Frankly, this was a mistake and Rob’s constant mental health and financial issues became a huge problem. I’ve added more background in the comments.
April 2023’s rent went unpaid for 14 days. May 2023’s rent was paid a couple days late, whatever. Come June though, no rent. We had given Rob an ultimatum after the April unpaid rent incident: either seek mental health support and pay the rent on time or find another place to stay (our mental health was suffering at this point).
After a week of no rent in June and being unable to discuss the issue with Rob as he continued to come and go at 3am and refused to respond to texts, calls and knocks on his door. Finally, we decided enough is enough. After constant neglect for his dog, leaving her with us for hours and days on end, we advised Rob that should he leave his dog with us even once more, we would be calling animal control. At the same time, we decided the ultimatum was no longer worth it, and asked Rob to find another place to live.
At this point it’s June 8th and we’ve had zero response from Rob, nor any indication that he’d be leaving our house or paying rent. We feared he’d squat indefinitely. The one thing he seemed to take seriously was the threat of our calling animal control. That night at 3am, like he’d been doing for the last 2 months, Rob packed his little Honda civic up with boxes and boxes of Lego and toys, and one garbage bag of clothes. He then stuffed his poor dog into the back seat with literally no space left due to all the toys he needed so badly. All of this is captured on our ring cameras, and as we’d advised him we’d be ending the rental arrangement (should he not comply with the ultimatum) more than a month prior, we decided to change the codes to the doors and sent him a message identifying that he is no longer welcome and he can reach out to set up a date to pick the rest of his stuff up. Queue the temporary sigh of relief.
The relief was short lived. Come Sunday night, and of course at 3am, Rob starts banging loudly on the front door. I mean LOUDLY. We wake up to this and check the cameras, confirming it was Rob trying to get back into our house. We barely had time to react before he began ripping our front garden to shred. We had paid $600 the year prior to plant a more mature magnolia tree in our front yard and had just recently planted 9 rose bushes (which took an entire week as our front lawn is filled with stones and digging was nearly impossible). One by one, Rob ripped out our rose bushes and walked over the train tracks at the end of our street to toss them. Between each bush, he proceeded to bang loudly on our front door as if his behaviour would suddenly knock some sense into us and force us to allow him in. We were terrified, staring out our front window and watching the cameras as Rob absolutely demolished our front garden. It’s worth noting that Rob had a gun in a safe in the basement, and we were truly concerned about what might happen should he make it inside. We called the police and told them as much, and waited for them to arrive while watching the chaos unfold. At the same time, neighbours were messaging us asking what was happening and sharing in our disbelief. After all the roses were destroyed, he went to pull out the magnolia. He had a hard time clearly, because he paused to dig around in his trunk for gloves to get a better grip. Eventually he was able to remove the tree, which was never seen again. He also got into the back yard and tossed all of our planters and garden fences into the neighbours yards, more chaos.
Nearing the end of this awful experience, Rob gets back into his car and nearly closes his door to leave, but pauses. He gets back out, walks up to the front porch, picks up a giant rock we had pulled out of the ground to plant the roses (at least 1.5ft long rock, very heavy) and walks it to the backyard. At the same time, the police arrive. As we are coming down the stairs to talk to the police, we hear an intense crash of shattering glass and noise. Rob had thrown the rock through our back patio door.
In the end, he didn’t make it inside before getting arrested and taken away. Unfortunately, he was gone only an hour before they brought him back and let him go.
In all, we calculated about 4K in damages which were submitted as a request for restitution. At the time we did not think pressing charges of our own would be necessary as the police said they would press their own charges and our restitution request would be included. This was June 2023. We’re now June 2024 and his court appearance just to set a trial date has been delayed 3 times by a couple months each, so we’re now over 6 months delayed in simply setting a trial date. The police refuse to provide any further information. The courthouse cannot provide any information. What on earth do we do with this? We feel completely abandoned by the legal system.
Should we submit this to small claims? Is that even allowed if there is a restitution form still floating around relating to his case? It really feels like it’s going nowhere and we aren’t able to do anything about it. I am disappointed Rob is able to do all this and gets to move on with his life without a single consequence for his actions, meanwhile we were left to pick up the literal pieces of his destruction to our property and house.
Any advice would be

I've gotten a lot of different opinions from people in my life on this situation so I want to ask some unbiased people.
I (24f) have been working at my job for a year and a half. I do a good job, my reviews have all been good... except for how I dress. This is my first "corporate job". I put it in quotes because it's not really your average desk job. It's a sales office, we sell credit card machines. Its a company made up of 50 people, its a very laid back office environment. I am the receptionist... and part of the marketing team... and I do tech support... and I do office upkeep... I'm including this to show that I do a lot there. I don't just sit at the front desk and smile at people and transfer calls.. We do not have customers come into the office, the only people that come in that are not part of the staff is the occasional interviewee.
The dress code is jean casual. I signed a paper saying jeans and a nice top is the dress code. When I first got the job I felt like I was over dressing. I would wear slacks and a blouse, or a dress, or a pencil skirt and a button up.. you get the point. Business wear is not my style whatsoever... I'm an alt girly. But I know a job is a job and I sucked it up and bought clothes that were professional looking. but as I continued working I noticed everyone dressing extremely casual... I'm talking ripped jeans, leggings, slides, graphic-t's, baseball caps, hoodies.
As I continued working I realized that some of my job duties were pretty physical, sometimes I have to go into the bathroom to change the soap (if you've ever had to do that, you know sometimes that means literally laying on the bathroom floor under the sink to twist the bottle on..) or do major cleaning where I would be getting dirty. Wearing a dress or a satin blouse, was not it... So I slowly started dressing slightly down. Jeans that are not ripped, a nice top (not a t-shirt) and sandals or a clean white pair of slip on vans. Even that was more put together than 90% of the staff. Plus I was much more comfortable and confident.
I am the youngest employee, I feel like I still dress appropriately and I follow the dress code that was described when I accepted the job. The executive assistant Linda (64F) has taken a liking to me and has helped me be more professional with the way I interact with the CEO and things like that. She typically wears something like tights, ballet or the pointy flats, and a blouse or sweater (but shes 64 so the blouses are well... older lady longer blouses.. you get the picture). She did my first review and said I was doing great. Later in the week she pulled me in and told me that the CEO wants me to dress better. I was still new and trying to make a good impression so I again , bought some clothing that I felt were a little nicer but decided to stick to more of my style and colors that I liked. Since everyone else seemed to dress how they wanted too with no issue I felt like I would be able to do that too while still maintaining a professional look.
Well.. I guess not. Something is always wrong with how I dress but they always beat around the bush and don't tell me what they don't like. It's always so hush hush.. I don't wear leggings, I don't wear ripped jeans, I come with my hair done, jewelry... its business casual but like I said I'm a little alt so my outfits are black or sometimes patterned, I wear silver jewelry, I have a nose ring, that they said was fine... I even asked if they wanted me to change it to a stud and they said no it was okay. My tattoos are covered up... my hair is not an unnatural color... I don't wear like heavy alt makeup.... but I'm not a preppy blonde "clean girl" like their last receptionist.
I had my one-year review. Again, they said everything was great except... "Your dress isn't quite where we want it to be yet." At this point, I was fed up because I was really trying and I told them "You guys tell me this every review, I've bought a whole new wardrobe of business casual clothing even though the described dress code is jean casual. I feel like I dress more business-like than everyone else. I don't get what I'm doing wrong." Mind you this was my one-year review and was fully expecting a raise... they've added many more job duties than what I was originally hired for... I didn't even get a $0.50 raise. I said that I have already spent a substantial amount of money on clothing to wear at this job, I can't keep on buying different clothes for this job. They do a thing around Christmas where the higher-ups have to get their subordinates a Christmas gift. My higher-ups are the executive assistant, the sales manager, the marketing manager and the IT manager... I think they all assumed the others would get me something but none of them did. I really did not care about that at all.
Two weeks ago the executive assistant brought up the Christmas gift (she realized no one got my anything). She said that as a late Christmas gift, she wanted to get me some clothes for work. I felt pressured and in a sort of uncomfortable position so I just agreed. She suggested just ordering stuff online, I told her Shein was cheap and had a lot of variety (please don't come at me for supporting shein... i know its terrible.) I was fully expecting her to explain the kinds of clothing they were looking for and then I would be able to have some say so in like the color at least... but no... she basically had me sit there... she picked out different tops... they were all very older lady looking and colors and prints that I would never ever choose for myself.... floral blouses, bright orange, bright yellow... One of the tops came in a leopard print. I said "oh I like leopard, I can wear that with the black slacks I have." But no... i had to get the white with blue flower print. She got me gold jewelry.. like I said, I wear silver, and shoes with heels, and the pointy toe flats.
I was getting frustrated so I just let it happen. The clothes came in... and I was upset. I felt like they just dont like my style. I wore one full outfit she got me and I just looked like her.. not an outfit a 24 year old would wear. I decided to mix in the stuff that she got me with some of my own stuff. Yesterday I wore a pair of boot cut jeans, a nice black long-sleeve shirt, the gold jewelry and a pair of heels that she got me. I honestly thought I looked very nice. In the middle of the day she pulled me in and said that she was getting comments about my jeans from one of the male higher-ups. The jeans had no back pockets, but they were 100% denim. I was wearing heels, so I guess that like accentuated my legs. She told me that someone was saying that I needed to wear a top that covered my butt if I was going to wear jeggings.
I was having a rough day and I finally snapped a little. I said I felt like I was getting unfairly targeted about how I dress. I told her that I follow the dress code as described, the pants I was wearing were no jeggings, I wear the things they want me to wear, but the other women I work with continue to come in wearing leggings without their butt covered, tops with cleavage, graphic t-shirts, sweat pants, tight jeans, jogger shorts. I come in dressed in business casual even though the dress code is jean casual and there is still something wrong with my outfit almost everyday. I would understand it if I was wearing clothing that was inappropriate but that's not the case. I also said I'm starting to feel uncomfortable that everyone has something to say about how I look, I am the youngest woman here and I feel like they think they can push me around about things that don't affect my job performance. I walked out because I was sick of being insulted about how I dressed and made to feel insecure.
I have a meeting with her and the CEO tomorrow about it. Now I'm nervous that I'm going to get in trouble. Is this situation weird? Am I not seeing something? Or is this unreasonable and borderline workplace harassment?

I’m one of those that was there on Reclamation Day, but I ended up going back to New Vegas and the Commonwealth as Appalachia seemed so empty. I recently returned and now I LOVE IT HERE.
Anyways, I had no idea how drops and RNG worked, let alone the actual value of some items. Meat week had just started and I ended up getting a TFJ pretty early on. I had got it from an event and when I saw it in my rewards, I was a little confused. “Why did I get this ripped-up jacket as a reward?”, I thought. “This just seems like some common apparel I could find pretty easily, like army fatigues”.
A little bit later, I needed some cloth for my camp. You know what happened next. Not even a second thought about it.
Fast forward a few days, I’m so engulfed in the world I join this sub to see if maybe people have good advice or tips I didn’t know about. And later market76. On that sub, I start seeing how much people are trading it for. My heart sinks as I see how valuable it was and people offering just about anything they have to get it. I proceeded to join every event possible for the next week. Sadly, the RNG gods did not bestow their blessing upon me a second time. But hey, at least I got the weenie-wagon.
TLDR: If you end up getting something from an event you haven’t seen before, check what it’s worth online before it’s too late.

When the edged wind came to our village, it seemed like a typical Alaskan gust. One fitting for late December. Then, as the tall tide of frost lashed against the shore of our home, the sagging branches of the yellow cedar trees stopped bouncing. And I abandoned the idea of the breeze being a breeze at all.
Once others understood that, the time for running had passed.
The unholy wind reached the village’s main road, causing two moving cars to sharply and statically stop. The vehicles were frozen in place, much like the people within those metal graves. Onlookers, enjoying a brisk afternoon in the park, began to scream loved ones succumbed to that supernatural end. Imprisoned in a capsuled moment of time.
Those first few victims were the lucky ones. They’d been oblivious to the fate which awaited them. True terror was endured by those who beheld the raw power of the wind. Those unfortunate enough to see the end coming.
Regardless, the remaining townsfolk, burdened with the awareness of impending doom, futilely attempted to escape the approaching breeze. Those fleeing residents, far slower than the unnatural frost, were halted in haunting poses as the wind bit into them. Limbs were suspended in mid-air positions. Eyes were left wide and unblinking. Mouths were cursed to forever gape in horror.
“RUN!” Dad screamed, sprinting towards us from a nearby park bench.
My brother, my childhood friend, and I were sitting in a sandbox. Already engrossed in a fantasy world, I wondered whether my imagination had conjured the wind. I thought my mind had transcended to a higher plane. It was my way of processing the trauma.
However, I accepted the reality of the situation when my father shoehorned the three of us into his Volkswagen Golf. The icy jaws of the wind were nearly nipping at the rear of the vehicle as Dad twisted the key in the ignition, but the beat-up car rapidly lurched forwards. My father wrenched us away from the frost, seconds before it consumed us.
“Daddy, where are we going?” I tearfully asked.
“I don’t know, Jillian,” He weakly moaned, manoeuvring around fleeing cars and pedestrians.
“Are we picking up Mummy?” Alan asked.
Dad ignored my brother’s question. I was only eight years old at the time, but I knew that my mother wasn’t coming. I understood the significance of the tears in my father’s eyes.
For twenty-six years, I successfully managed to suppress that memory. Did such a good job, in fact, that I almost believed it had all been a dream. I started to believe that we had simply moved away from our hometown, and Mum had simply chosen to stay. Dad never convinced me otherwise. He never talked about what happened. Neither did my brother.
As for Leon, he moved to an orphanage in Anchorage. We wrote to each other for a couple of years, but his replies became less and less frequent. Eventually, he stopped responding entirely. I used to wonder why my father didn’t adopt my childhood friend, but I suppose that would have forced him to accept what happened. And, like me, he had no intention of doing that.
I thought we would run back to England, having failed to achieve the American Dream. But Dad kept us in Alaska. I assumed that he’d been driven by stubbornness. Or guilt, perhaps. We’d already fled our home. Perhaps fleeing across the pond would’ve been a step too far. Perhaps it would’ve felt like truly abandoning our mother. Whatever his reason for staying, Dad didn’t tell anyone the truth. He never went to the police. He never returned to look for Mum.
“Don’t look back, kids,” I remember him whispering as we fled the frost.
I followed that advice for the next couple of decades, only recalling the event for the briefest moments, from time to time. When Dad bought the first computer for our family in 2000, I Googled the name of our old town. I typed the word before realising I was even doing so. I was still young, of course, but I knew that nothing about our speedy departure had been normal. I wanted answers.
I’d expected to discover that my village had become a ghost town. That would have made sense. Alaska’s unforgiving climate breeds desolate places, born to be abandoned. However, the search results revealed nothing, so I told myself I’d imagined the village. I told myself we'd always lived in Anchorage.
As the years passed, I became comfortable with the notion that none of it had ever been real. Not even my mother. And that was why I did not expect to see a certain person again.
“Happy birthday, Jill.”
My jaw dropped when Leon Taylor appeared on my doorstep.
It might seem strange that I would recognise a man who was a child when I last saw him, but Leon always had distinctive features. I immediately identified the mole on his neck, just below his facial scruff, and those sorrowful eyes, shadowed by his unmistakable overgrown brows.
“Leon?” I gasped. “What are you doing here?”
The man smiled weakly. “Sorry, Jill. I should’ve done this the Millennial way. Y’know. Reconnected through Facebook.”
“No, it’s… I just never thought I’d see you again. Do you want to come inside?” I asked, motioning at the hallway.
Leon nodded, so I made a couple of coffees whilst my old friend seated himself in the living room. A boy who I’d almost forgotten. Almost entirely erased from existence, just like our old town. But I’d always known, just beneath the surface of my shallow memories, that it had all been real. The truth of my childhood was always within reach. As I brought the drinks into the lounge, hands trembling, I tried to dispel the thoughts flooding my mind. Thoughts of that awful day.
“How’s your dad? How’s Alan?” Leon asked, taking the cup of coffee.
I sighed. “Dad’s been unwell for a few years. He hasn’t been taking care of himself, and he’s getting old. As for Alan… Well, Alan’s the way he’s always been. Uptight, and distant, but–”
“– When was the last time you spoke to him?” Leon sharply interjected.
The question caught me off-guard. “Huh?”
“Your brother. When was the last time you spoke to him?” Leon asked.
My face drained. He knows, I thought. How on Earth does he know?
“Three years ago,” I answered.
My old friend nodded. “Did you fall out?”
I scoffed. “That’s an understatement. You remember what he was like when we were kids, don’t you?”
Leon shrugged. “He was two years older than us. We must’ve infuriated him.”
I nodded. “Sure. But I grew up, and he never did. We had a big argument, and we haven't spoken since.”
“Interesting,” He responded.
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re a man of few words these days, Leon.”
The man cleared his throat. “Your brother messaged me a week ago.”
My other eyebrow raised. “What?”
“It was a very strange message.”
“Did you reply?” I asked. “I thought you would’ve preferred to ignore it.”
He lowered his head in shame. “I’m sorry, Jillian. I replied to some of your letters…”
“Then you forgot about me,” I said. “It’s embarrassing that I didn’t get the hint.”
“It wasn’t embarrassing,” Leon sheepishly muttered. “I read all of them. Every last letter.”
“Oh, well, that’s great,” I laughed. “Nice to know that you cared.”
“Jillian, I…” Leon paused, lifting his head. “I was scared.”
“Scared of what?” I asked.
“Remembering that day,” He replied. “It’s why I told your dad I didn’t want to come and live with you.”
“It’s… What?” I asked.
Leon tilted his head. “You didn’t know? Did you really think he’d just dump me in that place? He might’ve changed, but your dad was never cold. Still, I refused. Living with you would’ve reminded me of what happened to my family.”
I didn't reply, so my old friend prodded the beast. “Aren’t we going to talk about–”
“– Why did my brother message you?” I interrupted, avoiding the topic.
Leon twitched his lips uncertainly, as if unwilling to part them.
“He told me that I had to see you…” Leon trailed off.
“Right,” I said. “Why?”
“Your brother said something insane, Jillian,” He said. “He claimed that Arnold Walker visited him in Fairbanks.”
My jaw fell. “I beg your pardon? Arnold Walker? My brother’s school friend?”
Leon nodded.
“He escaped? I didn't know others got out,” I whispered.
My old friend’s face was growing paler. “No, I... Your brother said something that seemed impossible. He said that Arnold did not arrive on his doorstep as a thirty-six-year-old man, but a ten-year-old child.”
My stomach dropped. The natural response would’ve been to discredit such an outlandish story, refuting it with a rational explanation. But Leon’s revelation served to do only one thing. It confirmed what I’d always known.
“A ten-year-old boy made it all the way from our hometown to Fairbanks?” I asked meekly.
Leon frowned. “That’s it? You’re not going to question it? I did. I messaged Alan repeatedly, but he never replied.”
“Not a nice feeling, is it?” I asked, sighing. “How did you want me to react, Leon? You were itching to talk about that day. Well, I’m not skirting around the subject now. Let’s talk about it. Okay? I know all of that horror really happened. I’d just never wanted anyone to confirm it.”
“Me neither,” Leon said. “I was trying to avoid your family for the rest of my life. Your brother ruined that.”
“Yeah. He tends to ruin things,” I replied. “So, that’s it? Alan wanted you to tell me about Arnold Walker?”
Leon shivered. “There’s more, but… Look, I know I should’ve messaged you about all of this first, but I thought about the way Alan avoided my questions. I didn’t want you to do the same. I assumed if I were to show up in person, then–”
“– I wouldn’t be able to run away,” I finished. “I understand, Leon. I just hate that my brother is still too childish to talk to me.”
“Funny. He called you childish too. Listening to you two bicker is nostalgic,” Leon smiled, before quickly adopting a solemn expression. “I’m trying to change the subject, but I need to rip off the band-aid. Alan said that Arnold took him to a car on the front lawn. There was a man in the driver’s seat, barely clinging to life, with a face mangled beyond recognition. Your brother said the man’s skin had been peeled from his face… And he was still, somehow, alive.”
I shuddered, vomit climbing my throat.
“Arnold told your brother that the man was Mr Johnson,” Leon whispered.
“The farmer? The one who ran the local grocery store?” I asked, shivering.
My friend nodded. “Yeah. Alan said he’d aged a little. Well, his hair was greyer than he remembered. The pair must’ve been on the road for hours, and your brother didn’t know how they knew where to find him. He had so many questions for them, but Mr Johnson died before the ambulance arrived. And whilst Alan talked to the paramedics, Arnold ran away. He’s missing.”
“Shit…” I whispered. “I’ll call my brother.”
“You might struggle,” Leon said. “Alan ended the message by saying that he was going back… home.”
I gawped. “No. He wouldn’t be that stupid.”
“Maybe not. You should try to contact him,” Leon said. “He hasn’t replied to my dozens of messages, but he might reply to you. Not sure he even has a signal, out there in the boonies, but you’re right. You should try.”
I spent an hour trying to contact my brother, in various ways, but he did not respond. Alan had vanished. And I knew, like it or not, that I had to return to our village too. I should’ve told Dad. Would've told him, had he not been one bad day away from a heart attack. In spite of the man he’d become, I loved him. I didn’t want to remind him of the place we’d fled.
One person should be spared the horror of remembering, I thought.
Leon and I, two strangers who’d spent formative years together, piled into my Kia, and we drove from Anchorage to a place that I’d long hoped had never really existed.
I was going to be horribly disappointed.
On a nondescript road that burrowed into the Alaskan wilderness, my throat started to twist and constrict. The outer edge of my vision shrank, and my head pulsated with a slowing rhythm as the world slipped away from me. I struggled to breathe as I came to terms with an awful fact.
I recognised that endless road.
“Jillian…” Leon whispered.
“Don’t,” I begged.
I didn’t want to hear it. I wasn’t ready. I’d known all along, of course, that our village existed. Even when extensive research had revealed nothing about the town. When I thought of the way the breeze consumed the town, erasing its residents, it made sense that it would erase the very place itself. After all, even I’d started to doubt its existence, and I’d lived there.
Accepting the unearthly nature of the event wasn’t as tough as you might imagine. If anything, I had fought hard to deny it. I wanted to ignore the existence of a paranormal force, though I had witnessed it with my own eyes. Even if there were some Alaskan breeze powerful enough to instantaneously freeze an entire town, we hadn’t witnessed that. We’d seen something else. We’d seen that glacial wind freeze the town. Not its people, but its tether to time.
After an hour of following the frosted landscape, we saw something familiar on the horizon. Leon’s face mirrored mine as our damned village appeared. A bulge of ruin and decay, growing as we neared it. And when we crossed the threshold into the desolate town, the reality of our quest finally dawned on me.
“Where is everybody?” Leon asked.
It might seem a moronic question to an outsider. Our old village was clearly an abandoned place. No rational person would expect anybody else to be there. Of course, I understood Leon. He had asked the same terrifying question that was circling the drain of my mind, refusing to flush away.
I thought back to that terrible day on which hundreds of people froze in time. Then I thought of Arnold Walker and Mr Johnson. The two residents who’d supposedly shown up at my brother’s door. One of them had looked no older than he’d been in 1998.
“Time resumed,” I finally mumbled.
“Yes, but where did everybody go?” My childhood friend asked.
I didn’t have an answer. Neither did my brother, and that was why he’d come here.
That’s not the real reason, I thought. He was hoping to find… her.
I rolled onto my old street, noting that the trees swayed in the wind and birds flew overhead. Signs that time was flowing. I wondered whether others had fled in the same fashion as Arnold and Mr Johnson. I even allowed my heart to soar a little as I considered that my mother might have freed herself. Might have found Dad in Anchorage. Might be wondering where Alan and I had gone.
However, I knew that not to be the case. Mum had not arrived at my door, and there had been no national news coverage about people emerging from a town that didn’t exist. There had only been an old, half-butchered man and a quiet boy. Both were gone. And I had questions about the nature of their escape from our hometown, given my brother’s ominous message to Leon.
Something was still dreadfully wrong with our village. Twenty-six years had not changed that. The people of the village had not disappeared into the sunset. Whatever had happened to them, I knew it wasn’t good. Possibly worse than what happened to Arnold Walker and Mr Johnson.
I pulled onto the driveway of my childhood home, gently trundling over cracked asphalt. Weeds squirmed through the wounds of the suburb, as nature sought to erase my childhood from existence. There was no need for that, of course. The wind of 1998, and whatever secrets it held, had already done a fine job of wiping my hometown from reality.
“Do you think he’s come here?” Leon asked as I turned off the engine.
“Yes. We both know who he wanted to find,” I said.
My childhood friend nodded, and we both sombrely climbed out of the vehicle.
The village was colder than I remembered. For a mid-afternoon day in late May, it was unseasonably chilly. Alaska, for the most part, is not the arctic hellscape that many people imagine. Not in all parts of the state, anyhow, and certainly not in late spring. The air also felt stale. It carried the stench of evil, and it seemed to be tinged with frost. As if that demonic breeze were still lingering in the air, nearly three decades later.
I knocked on the rotten front door, surprised that it did not break with a slight rap of my hand.
“Alan?” I yelled. “It’s Jillian.”
My brother did not respond, but I wasn’t concerned. If he had been there, and Mum hadn’t, then he wouldn’t have wanted to stay. I wanted to use that as an excuse to turn around and leave. I already assumed that my mother wouldn’t be there, but another part of me knew that my assumption was more of a wish. In a similar way, I had been secretly glad to find nobody in the town. There was only one person I hoped to find in my old village, and that was Alan.
I was terrified by the prospect of finding anything else.
“Jill…” Leon started softly. “Come on. We have to do it.”
“Do we?” I asked. “This was a mistake. We should turn around. We–”
“– I agree,” Leon sharply interjected. “But we have to find your brother. And when we do, we’ll convince him to come back with us. We’ll convince him to leave this place behind too.”
“Why did you come to see me, Leon?” I asked. “You could’ve ignored my brother’s message. You could’ve pretended none of this had ever happened. That’s what you did when you started ignoring my letters, isn’t it?”
“I deeply regretted that for years, Jill,” He said softly. “You were my best friend. You were… more than that. We were just kids, but I loved you. I’ve not made another connection like ours. Not even in my adult life.”
“I know,” I replied. “I loved you too, Leon. That’s why it hurt when you let our bond peter out. If you’d cut me off from the start, I would’ve understood. But it just felt like you’d stopped caring.”
“Never. I just lost the strength to bear that trauma,” He explained. “Every letter was a reminder, and I just… That’s why I came to your door. That’s why I didn’t ignore what your brother said. I didn’t want something to happen to him. You lost your mother. I didn’t want you to lose him too.”
“We all lost things,” I sniffled. “You lost… more than me. I just don’t understand why you’d come back. Why my brother would come back. I don’t even understand why I’ve come back.”
“We never really left this place, did we?” Leon asked. “Not in our minds. Even though it doesn’t exist in the eyes of the outside world, it never left us. Never let go. Arnold Walker and Mr Johnson lured Alan back. And he lured us back.”
“That’s an unsettling way of looking at it,” I timidly replied.
“It’s the only way I’ve been able to look at it,” He said. “Whatever claimed this place, it remembered us, and it made sure we remembered it. Not that it would be easy to forget… For years, I thought I’d lost my mind, but after talking to you and Alan, I’m not so sure. I find it hard to believe that we’d have experienced a shared delusion. No, it all really happened. And the memory replays in my mind every day. I’ll never get rid of it.”
“Dad seemed to do a good job of erasing this place from his mind,” I said.
I knew that wasn’t true, of course. He had never forgotten. That was made apparent by his deterioration. Alan and I had a close relationship with our father before we left that village. Afterwards, he changed. We all changed. Losing Mum had fractured the family, but there was more to it than that. I started to consider that Leon might be right. Perhaps the frost hadn’t ensnared the two of us, but it had certainly bitten us.
“Do you want me to do it?” Leon eventually asked.
I wanted to be courageous enough to open the door, but I wasn’t. I nodded meekly and stepped aside, allowing my childhood friend the nightmarish task of facing whatever lay within my old home. He pushed the door handle down, expecting the house to be unlocked, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Shall we try the back?” I asked.
Leon backed up. I quickly realised what he was planning to do, and I opened my mouth to utter a protest. My hulking friend had charged before I spoke a single word, however, and he hurled his body into the door. It quivered in its frame, but did not give.
“Leon!” I cried. “What are you doing?”
“Well, I don’t suppose you have the key?” He panted, massaging his shoulder.
I held up my hands. “Look, let’s just…”
My friend rushed forwards again, and the result was the same. This time, however, Leon released a groan of pain, clutching his arm a little more tightly.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” I said. “Let’s take it in turns to kick the door. That'll work better, and it won’t cripple either of us.”
Leon nodded, and the two of us firmly booted the door near the handle. The wood quaked, and it only took a few attacks for the door to splinter around the lock. The frame splayed inwards, and the metal mechanism fell loose.
“Whoops… That worked a little too well,” Leon laughed.
He led the way into my childhood home, which looked, unlike the street outside, the same as I remembered. The same as it had looked on the day I’d left. There were no shoes left by the door. No muddy prints on the carpet. No indication whatsoever that my brother had visited our old home, which I’d gathered when the front door had been locked. But this was not a relief. I knew, in my gut, that Alan would’ve gone there first.
He never made it home.
Leon shivered. “This place feels cold…”
“Frozen,” I corrected. “Frozen in time.”
“Is it safe for us to be here?” He asked. “What if we end up like the others?”
“It’s a bit late to ask that now,” I replied. “The breeze passed long ago. This just seems to be the horror it left behind.”
Leon accepted my suggestion, then he wandered over to the staircase. My friend took one step before halting in place. For a haunting moment, I believed that he had been frozen in time too. I believed that I’d been wrong, and the frost had come for us. But I quickly realised that my friend was still moving. Still twitching. He was frozen by fear, not a supernatural gale.
“There’s someone in the bathroom…” Leon wheezed.
With physical dread in every inch of my body, I joined my friend and looked up. Artificial light spilled beneath the bathroom door onto the dark landing.
“There might not be anyone in there,” I shakily said.
“Jillian, this is an abandoned town. There is no electricity. Your house is still frozen in time, and it froze with the bathroom light left on. Somebody must have been–”
“– Don’t say it,” I pleaded, upper lip trembling.
“Do you want me to lead the way?” He asked.
I didn’t. I wanted to run, but I knew I would never forgive myself for doing so. Leon was right, of course. I hadn’t allowed him to finish his sentence, but it was clear that he was going to mention somebody in particular. Somebody whose face flooded my mind as we ascended the staircase, one tentative step at a time. Somebody whose name started to tickle my lips as Leon grasped the handle to the door.
It wasn’t locked.
“Mum?” I moaned as Leon inched it open.
My ageless mother was inside.
I’m sure I would’ve screamed at whatever we found, but I was not prepared for the state of the statue before me. Mum was standing at the sink, hands cupped below a stream of tap water suspended in time. As I had always feared, the frost caught her. It was horrifying enough to be frozen in time for twenty-six years, whilst the rest of the world continued, but that wasn’t why I screamed. I’d braced myself for that possibility. I’d spent my entire adult life coming to terms with it.
I screamed because I wasn’t prepared to see her face.
Mum was smiling. Not a wholesome smile. It was a taut grin that etched an unnerving crescent shape across her cheeks. There was nothing unnatural about the grin, but it looked painful. And it appeared as if cataracts had taken the entirety of her pupils.
“Mum?” I asked weakly. “Do you hear me?”
There was no reply. I peered around the side of her face, and I immediately regretted it. Though she was frozen in time, she did not look unaware. I felt her sightless eyes boring into my face, and I quickly jumped backwards.
“Let’s go and find your brother,” Leon fearfully said.
As I nodded, backing towards the doorway, I locked my gaze onto my mother’s profile. My heart pounded as I started to close the bathroom door. I was trying to ignore the idea that had wormed into my mind. The possibility that, behind the glassy cataract, a pupil might still exist. Lying dormant. Watching me from a face that no longer seemed to belong to my mother.
After I shut the door, Leon and I took a few moments to control our breathing. With a slight tremble, my friend finally walked over to the light switch and raised a hand, but I caught his wrist.
“What are you doing?” He frowned.
“Leave the light on,” I whispered. “I… don’t like the idea of leaving her in the dark.”
My friend’s expression softened, and he nodded, seeming to understand my explanation. Seeming to empathise. But I was lying. I wasn’t worried about leaving my mother in the dark. I was worried about the thing behind that smiling face.
“Alan didn’t come here,” I said. “Did he really come back?”
“You read the message, Jillian,” Leon replied.
“I know, but…” I sighed. “I know.”
“He might not have come to the house,” My friend suggested.
“This is the first place he would’ve visited,” I said. “If Mum weren’t here, he wouldn’t have returned.”
“Well, let’s look around,” Leon urged. “You never know. We might find something else. Something to help your mother, perhaps.”
“You saw her face,” I whispered. “She looked far past help.”
“Don’t say that, Jillian!” Leon shouted, eyes watering.
You idiot, I thought.
I was so self-centred. So focused on finding my brother and my mother. I hadn’t thought about Leon’s parents. His brother, Carl. People we’d left behind when my father saved us. I remembered Leon sobbing as he begged my father to turn around.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We need to find your family too.”
Leon viciously shook his head. “Only if we find an answer, Jill. Only if we find a way to save them.”
My friend entered my childhood bedroom, and I followed him. I imagine that visiting one’s childhood home is a strange experience for anyone, but strangeness morphs into horror when that home is trapped in a moment of time. I felt physically unwell when I saw the glass of water on the bedside table, fresh as it had been on the day that my dad took us to the park. Life had continued for me, but the town was still trapped in that dreadful, inexplicable day.
“Jillian,” Leon said calmly. “There are people outside.”
He was standing in front of my bedroom window, and when I joined him, eyeing the road below, I saw them. A man and a woman who seemed to be in their mid-forties. The man wore ill-fitting clothes. A chequered shirt two sizes too small, and a pair of torn jeans. The woman, on the other hand, wore a pristine, shapely dress with a floral pattern. She looked oddly familiar, though her eyes were jittery and unfocused. It was the man who’d locked his eyes onto our house.
“I… vaguely recognise her,” Leon said.
I nodded. “Yeah. I don’t know her name, but I remember her. She looks a tad older, perhaps. I don’t know the man though.”
“You stay here,” Leon said, reaching inside his coat. “Don’t come out.”
“What are you holding?” I frowned, noting his shiftiness.
“Just…” Leon concealed his hand within the thick, wintry coat. “Are you going to stay in here?”
My eyes grew as I spotted a glint of metal. “You don’t… No, Leon. Please. Don’t tell me you have what I think you have.”
“We had no idea what we were going to find here,” The man protested.
I scoffed. “Leon Taylor? Carrying a gun? The boy who berated me for killing me a spider.”
Before he replied, there came the sound of the front door swinging open. And when we spun our heads back to the bedroom window, we saw that the man and woman were no longer on the street. I realised they were inside.
“Hello?” Called a man from downstairs. “We mean you no harm.”
“I have a weapon,” Leon yelled, slipping the pistol out of a hidden holster.
“Don’t shoot… It’s Bernie Bradley…” The man shouted weakly.
My mouth gaped. Bernie Bradley was in my brother’s school year. I remembered him. And as I recalled the face of the man I’d seen on the street, I didn’t find it hard to believe it had been the face of that same boy, twenty-six years into the future.
“What do you want?” I yelled.
“To help you,” He replied. “Before they come.”
“Who?” Leon asked.
“I’ll tell you if you put that weapon away,” Bernie said.
“I don’t trust you enough for that,” My friend growled.
“Are you Leon Taylor?” The man asked.
“Why?” Leon responded.
“Sydney Manley pushed you off the swing set, and you called her a fat cow,” Bernie said. “She ran home in tears.”
It wasn’t enough. In a place like that, which defied all laws of rationality, it wasn’t enough for Bernie Bradley to know that. But Leon and I needed it to be enough because we were hopelessly alone. Hopelessly afraid. And hopelessly desperate.
My friend re-holstered his weapon, and we walked onto the landing. Bernie and the woman were midway up the stairs. The man’s hands were raised, but the woman barely seemed aware of where they were. Barely seemed aware of herself.
“Leon Taylor and Jillian Maynard. Is that right?” Bernie asked.
“How did you recognise us?” I asked.
“You were the only ones who escaped,” He replied. “The Maynards and Leon Taylor.”
“The only ones?” Leon asked incredulously.
Bernie nodded. “Others tried, but the frost got them.”
“So, why aren’t you…” I started, unable to finish.
“Mind if we sit down before I answer that?” He asked.
I looked at Leon, and my friend begrudgingly nodded. We all headed to the living room and sat down. Once we did, Bernie Bradley told us an incredible story, and the woman beside him simply rocked on the sofa, face painted with a disturbing smile.
Bernie had been a ten-year-old boy, sitting at his bedroom desk, when the chill swept through his room. He told us that he remembered nothing but a black void. He might’ve been there for an eternity, or it might’ve been less than a moment.
When he woke from that dark slumber, still a ten-year-old boy sitting in the desk chair, Bernie looked out of the bedroom window. He was overcome by the horrible feeling that time had been lost, but he didn’t know how much. And when he saw residents frozen in the street, he realised that something awful had happened. Bernie found his own paused parents in the kitchen, and they were completely unresponsive to his pleas.
The lonely, frightened boy ran through the town, calling for help. Nobody answered. After a long day of searching, he returned to his house in tears. For a week, Bernie lived on cans of food from the cupboards. And then he heard shouting from the street.
“Hello? Is anybody there?” A man called.
Bernie ran outside to find Mr Johnson. The farmer had just woken from ‘a darkness’ to find the town full of statues. Bernie told Mr Johnson that he’d been alone for a week, but he had no idea how long he’d been frozen before that. The boy wanted to leave, but the farmer said they had to save as many people as possible. They had a duty to do so. After all, neither the farmer nor the boy knew what might happen to them if they were to run. The frost might return.
Anyway, Mr Johnson took Bernie under his wing. The crops in his field, thankfully, had unfrozen, as had his entire farmhouse. Mr Johnson fed Bernie, and the two of them survived. A week later, they found Elizabeth Coulter, the local headteacher, wandering through the town. Over the course of the following year, a dozen more unfrozen souls were saved and brought back to Mr Johnson’s farm.
But things changed as time passed. The newer thawed souls were unhinged. The longer a person had been trapped in that black stasis, the less human they became. They were still intelligible, but they spoke only of the voice in the void. A voice that they missed in the land of the living. They were irritable, but Mr Johnson cared for them, all the same. Eventually, they fled.
This only worsened as the years went by. After a decade, Bernie’s mother and father unfroze. However, his dad ran, and his mum only remained because she was lost and confused. She would rant and rave about the Speaker. The one that would make everything better. The one that would make them all eternal.
It was during the year of 2018 that things crossed a terrifying line. Mr Johnson had decided that newcomers were not welcome. It was a decision of necessity, not cruelty. The recently unfrozen folk had become more than unintelligible. They had become dangerous.
“Hark! The Speaker calls!” Walter Frankton screamed.
The middle-aged man, who had once been a police officer, was standing outside Mr Johnson’s farmhouse. When the community of sane people emerged, they screeched at the sight of Walter holding a charred body above his head. Nobody identified the burnt corpse, but Mr Johnson wasted no time in drawing his rifle and giving Mr Frankton ten seconds to flee.
Bernie explained that Walter laughed demonically, before disappearing into the night. Over the coming years, bodies were found in the street. Followers of the Speaker would relentlessly pursue Mr Johnson’s community, so the sane folk kept distant from the people of the Speaker. Few of Mr Johnson’s followers understood why they stayed, yet nobody felt able to leave. Something was keeping them there.
A couple of weeks before Leon and I arrived, however, Bernie said that Mr Johnson finally announced his plan to leave. There were murmurs of uncertainty. Everybody wanted to escape, of course, but fear had always stopped them. Still, they trusted Mr Johnson. If anybody had the power to safely lead them away from the place controlling their minds, it had to be the brave farmer. Packing and preparations began.
However, some days later, Bernie Bradley happened to look out of an upstairs window and notice Mr Johnson. The old man was wandering aimlessly onto the driveway, stumbling like a drunken man towards his vehicle. Bernie said there was a small child standing beside the car. The young boy led Mr Johnson to the driver’s door with a smile, and the two of them fled.
Things disintegrated after that. When a Molotov cocktail found its way through a window, the community dispersed. The sane folk fled in different directions, and Bernie was left alone with his mother.
“We’ve been running for days,” Bernie explained. “I keep finding the bodies of people from my community. Charred corpses in the street. I tried to leave this town, but it wouldn’t let me. The farther I drove, the sharper the pang in my heart. I knew I'd die if I were to keep going.”
“How did you find us?” Leon asked.
“I heard you,” Bernie replied. “Hard to miss the sound of an engine in a dead place like this. I had a hunch that it might be you.”
“You must've heard my brother then?” I asked hopefully.
Bernie frowned. “Alan's here? That might explain the raucous a few days ago… I don’t know what I heard. Noise. Lots of it... You won't find him, Jill. You have to run whilst it still lets you. The frost might be gone, but… something lingers.”
“The Speaker?” Leon asked.
Bernie nodded. “I was fortunate enough to never hear it. Or never remember hearing it. I don't know what it said to them. My mother won't tell me.”
Bernie looked at the woman next to him. The one who appeared to be the same age as him, though I realised he was still a decade younger. The horror of our town had aged him beyond his years.
“It will be so glorious…” Bernie’s mother giggled, eyes bearing faint pupils behind mild cataracts.
“You’re lucky that they didn’t see you arrive,” Bernie said. “Otherwise, you’d be dead already. But they’ll come. Sooner or later. And you need to listen to me if you want a safe way out of here. Okay? We need to distract them. Keep them off your backs.”
I shook my head. “I need to find my brother. I know he came to this town. I thought I'd find him in our home, but–”
“– Walter wanted him,” Bernie’s mother hissed.
The woman stopped rocking. Stopped smiling. And her head snapped to face me with such eerie speed that I thought it might entirely disconnect from her neck. Bernie quivered, seemingly just as horrified by his mother’s words as the rest of us.
“Mother…?” He asked.
“Walter wanted him. Walter wanted him. Walter wanted him!” The woman laughed, taunting me.
“What does she mean?” I sobbed. “Does Walter Frankton have my brother?”
Bernie’s face whitened. “If he does, your brother's either been flayed or charred.”
“Christ, Bernie,” Leon replied.
I sniffled. “I won’t leave until I know.”
“He’s already dead,” Bernie bluntly said.
“We don’t know that!” I cried.
I thought the others were sitting in stunned silence because I’d spoken so assertively. However, as I calmed my breathing, and the throbbing sensation in my ears quietened, I heard it too. The sound of laughing voices. Bernie’s mother strained to smile broadly. She looked as pained as my mother, but grateful for the privilege of the discomfort.
“You don't want to see this. We'll head through the back. Do not look at the street...” Bernie hoarsely pleaded as I rose.
But I was already running to the door.
I flung it open and started to run down the path, with Leon and Bernie in tow. Then, my eyes met the mob spilling beyond the end of the street. The crowd easily numbered a hundred people, and each face wore a terrible smile. Eyes glassy, yet all-seeing.
There was a man shuffling from the crowd towards me, like a terrified toddler taking its first steps. I tried to blot his face from my mind. I didn’t want to see it, though it was too late for that. I’d seen everything the moment I faced the crowd. Eventually, I fell to my knees and howled as I embraced the truth.
The shuffling man, who had been flayed alive, was my brother.
Alan reached towards me with an outstretched hand, weakly shouting something, before toppling forwards. He was reduced to a motionless heap on the road.
“Jill!” Leon cried again, rushing to me. “We have to go!”
I continued to wail as the gleeful crowd surged forwards. I resisted Leon, but he easily hauled my limp body to the car and bundled me into the back.
“He needs help...” I blubbered.
“He’s gone, Jill,” Leon whispered.
“What about your family?” I asked.
“They’re all gone...” He sniffled, stepping on the accelerator.
Staring through the rear-view window, I watched the crowd approach my old home. Bernie stood on the front porch, and his mother had her hands on his shoulders. The man did not run. As we pulled off the driveway, it almost seemed as if he, too, finally had a smile on his face. The mob swarmed Bernie, and I heard a brief cry of agony. It may have been ecstatic or fearful. It may have been both.
After we crossed the border, no chill pierced us. We were free to leave. But I know Leon and I belong to that town. I have always suspected that the wind grazed its teeth against my skin when I was a child. It grazed all of us. For, even now, I still feel that link. That urge to return to the salivating mob with a smile on my face.
When I returned home to find that my father was missing, I knew he felt it too.

Wade walked in front of his teammates as they all walked down the short hallway, checking for any hiding hostiles as they slowly scouted the next area of the laboratory. At his side, Tina held her pistol low as she kept her guard up, bracing for an imminent attack while walking alongside Wade. Aiming her rifle, Vasquez looked across the hall, not lowering it even when she saw no hostiles ahead. Duncan kept a grenade in one hand and a kinetic pistol in the other, preparing to throw the former in order to scare out potential ambushers.
The entrance outside the tower was, surprisingly, not as heavily guarded as presumed, only being protected by several human and drone defenders, along with only two sentinels.. After clearing the entrance bay, the group came across three elevators at the other end of the large room. Despite asking J for help, she stated that the facility was highly secretive with it's layout, only allowing those stationed at the tower to know where was where around the place.
Taking a gamble, as well as being extremely eager to end Halloway's life sooner than later, Wade and F's team chose the middle one, which brought them up close to the top of the tower. Disembarking the elevator, the group hoped to find important information related to the Solver Project within the rooms on this floor, but first they had to ensure the area was secure before beginning their data raid.
As Wade and F kept their weapons trained ahead of themselves, Kelly walked right behind the two drones, holding her fancy-looking toolkit at her side with one hand and a kinetic pistol in the other. Looking to the doors at the sides of the hall, Wade saw that the hall branched into a few smaller paths on each side, leading to a door at the end of each one.
Raising a hand to stop the groups advance, Wade commented on the side doors. "Guys? You think we should check these rooms? Maybe there could be something here for us to snag."
F nodded in agreement before pointing at the door to her right. "You check that one. Be wary of our team, you and I are their main lifeline here."
"Don't worry F, we'll do just fine. Go see what these eggheads are hiding." Kurtis replied to the warrior drone, F glancing to him before nodding in understanding.
The two disassembly drones walked to the two doors between the assault team, Wade keeping his shotgun at the ready as he glanced at the door. It looked to be a simple slide door, having no control panel to enter a code on. Assuming it was probably minor items and the like, Wade sighed as the door opened, revealing an even less interesting sight. Against the wall was a large, box shaped device of some sort, cyan blue LED lines wrapping the sides of it. Noticing the electrical box at the wall to his right, Wade deduced it was some kind of power generator.
Shutting the door, Wade brought his dissatisfied gaze to his friends. "Seems to be just some kind of power generator, nothing special."
"Same here." F replied as she shut her own door, having found a similar object within the room as she continued speaking. "I'm thinking we just stumbled upon some sort of energy complex, we should probably head back and continue upward."
"Yes, maybe we should..." Alvaro replied in partial Spanish, moving forward past the team as he spotted something sticking out slightly down at one of the door halls ahead. Getting close, he saw it appeared to be the foot of a worker drone, certainly hiding from the approaching raid team. Quietly, the soldier snuck up on the drone before swiping around the corner wall, grabbing onto the cowering drone by their arm as they began to panic. Holding his gun to the drone's head, Alvaro shushed the terrified bot as they began to beg for mercy.
"Please! Don't hurt me, I'm just a maintenance drone!" The male drone pleaded in hushed fear as Alvaro replied to him.
"Oh, don't worry, I ain't gonna bop ya." Pulling the drone over to the team, Wade and F walked back to the group as they witnessed the hiding servant of the Administrator.
The drone gasped in terror upon seeing Wade's form. "Agh! D-Disassembly drones?! Two of 'em?!"
Tina scoffed at the drone's fear as she conferred with the drone. "Oh please, don't judge by his looks. My dear Wade's a sweetie bear, you'll be fine."
Wade nodded as he grew a comforting smile, which changed to a stern face as he spoke to the cowering drone. "Yeah, I'm not gonna hurt you... IF you tell us what this place is."
"We're here looking for data on the Solver Project before heading to the Administrator's Lab to detain her and her overseers. Can you tell us where to go?" F explained as the drone seemed to take a calming breath, eased by the mostly friendly lot he was facing.
"Okay, okay uh, yeah. There's an archive past this door over here." The drone stated as he led the team to the door at the end of the hall, Wade and F keeping watch for potential sneak attacks as the drone glanced at the control panel. "I think it's one of the higher level ones, unless you got a really good hacker or an acceptable ID, we're not getting in."
Kelly chuckled in amusement as she replied to the slave drone's challenge. "Well, must be our lucky day. I've taken a hand at picks like these." Getting down on one knee, Kelly opened her toolbox as she began to start her hacking attempt. "Just keep my behind from getting scorched."
"No problem, Kelly." Wade acknowledged with a nod as he held his shotgun up, F doing the same with her weapon as the two kept watch for hostiles.
After what couldn't have been more than a minute of pulling screws, screen tapping, and beeps of affirmation, the control panel finally yielded to the assault team's request to enter.
Once she re-attached the panel to its slot, Kelly held her hand over it while looking to her teammates. "Alright, I got the locks off. Gimme the word and I'll open her right up."
"Good to hear that, Kelly. On my mark." Wade replied before holding his shotgun at the ready, F holding her own laser cannon steady after him as she glanced to her team. Motioning her head back, F signaled her team to stand clear.
While they did so, Tina walked behind Wade with a sly smirk. "Wade, mind if I mount up?"
Wade returned the expression as he nodded, Tina climbing onto his back before pulling out her own pistol in preparation for combat. Looking to Kelly, he nodded to her, the technician pressing her hand against the panel before the doors opened.
Flying into the room ahead of F, Wade made a brief sweep of the room as he fired at the closest target. The large room consisted of several tall metal shelves, reaching up to the ceiling. Against the shelves were heightened walkways, which could be accessed by sloped sections of the floor between the doors. The height of the wall paths went up only by a few feet, the ceiling being, by Wade's guess, perhaps over almost two dozen feet. Finally, a large glass window occupied the wall opposite to the hallway, the light outside shining into the huge room.
As for enemies, Wade took a shot at one of several worker drone guards, who took aim at him as he gunned down their comrade in a visceral pool of oil. Along with the slave drones, Wade saw a single sentinel in the middle of the room, the robo-saur screeching at them as it began to sprint at the two killer drones. Tina covered Wade's flank with several shots of hot blue energy, hitting three of the hostile workers as they fell to the floor, visors glowing with red caution symbols before flickering out. Swapping out for a sub-machine gun, Wade gunned down the remaining four workers as F held off the sentinel, her laser slicing off the beast's tail as it tried to boot-loop her.
Seeing the light fail to work on the disassembly drone, the dino-bot roared again, only to scramble wildly as Wade mounted it, trying to pull off the same move he did at the factory. Readying a chainsaw, Wade cut at the sentinel's neck, sparks and oil spraying everywhere before the head snapped off from the attack. Flapping his wings, Wade hovered in the air once more as the corpse of the sentinel collapsed to the floor, more oil spilling out as the body lay still.
"Splendid kill, I'd say!" Duncan stated in admiration as he and the other troops walked in, each scanning the room as Wade and F flew back down to Kelly.
Walking alongside the technician, Wade swapped for a sword as he spoke to Kelly. "Okay, where do you think we should start?"
"Good question. Hey, worker buddy, ya know where we can get our intel?" Kelly asked the slave drone as he looked to her attentively.
"Uh, I think there should be two control stations we can access over here. Follow me!" The drone answered, pointing ahead to the middle of the room before beginning to jog over there. Flying ahead of the drone, Wade and F hovered above the center area while they looked around, holding their guns down as they spotted no hostile forces nearby. Once the group approached them, the two guardian drones set down on the opposite end of one of the large consoles while the maintenance drone examined it.
The consoles were of a circular shape, four built-in computers docked on rectangular arms sticking out around the machine. looking at it, Wade glanced to Kelly as he asked the servant drone. "You think Kelly here will have to crack these open?"
The drone nodded in affirmation as the woman in question came over, kneeling while setting down her toolkit. "Just like before, give me some cover and we'll be outta here in a pinch."
Raising a hand, Nathan spoke up on their efforts. "You think we should spread out? Maybe take positions behind those big wall shelves?"
Wade looked to the archive's entrance, debating on the idea before coming to a decision. "Sure, some of us can take position there. I'd like at least a few around Kel, though. We can't lose her."
"Gotcha, Wade. I'll help with close cover." Nathan replied as he held his gun firm at the entrance, Tina hopping off of Wade's back before walking up to the table. Kurtis, Gerard, and a few other troopers began moving towards the wall slopes leading up to the walkways at the sides of the room.
"Um, Kelly? Do you think we can look through this computer while you're working?" Tina asked her human friend as she gave a nod of approval.
"Sure, just lemme crack the locks off first. Just a bit longer now..." Standing together, Wade and Tina watched as Kelly did her work, the table's monitors flickering out for a few moments before coming back on. Glancing to the drone couple, Kelly spoke to them further. "Alright, dig in all you'd like. I'm gonna get this download started."
Nodding to the technician, Wade observed the screen with Tina, the former putting his hands onto the keyboard section as he pondered where to start their curious browsing trip. Scanning through countless folders, Wade saw the names of a select few relating to the Solver Project. "INSTALLATION 0XLV426, Plat-Binary System; INSTALLATION RSCH012, Copper System (Defunct); INSTALLATION 01NU26I, Proxima System"
Tina put a hand close to her mouth as she looked at the files Wade was hovering the mouse over. "Proxima, Plat-Binary... They have MORE installations in other systems!"
Wade sighed in frustration as he examined the names carefully. "Great, so she's probably gonna run for these hideouts later on."
Kelly raised a finger to counter Wade's worrisome assumption. "I don't think so, our ships outside should be jamming whatever signals they try to send out. So unless they scrambled some kind of fancy thingamajig in these labs, that Admin-gal ain't got a place to hide but here."
"I hope so." Wade replied as he continued looking over the data folders for a moment longer, Tina putting a hand on his own before she spoke to him.
"That one says 'defunct', open that one." Wade fulfilled his lover's request as he clicked on the desired file, several more appearing in place of the hundreds of folders previously onscreen not a second ago. Looking through the titles of each file, Wade clicked on the first one, intent on discovering more about what Halloway and his people were doing on that ill-fated colony.
Several lines of text filled the screen, the two lover drones reading through it as Nathan turned to join in their search. "STATUS REPORT 120547; Date: Sept. 27, 3044; INSTALLATION No: RSCH012; Planet: Copper 9, Copper System; The research team lead by Dr. Ridley on the 9th exoplanet of the Copper system has successfully commenced operations on the new facility there. They are charged with working to understand the 'virus' as they call it, curious of its capabilities and how to keep it under their control. Due to the... sensitivity of the Solver, and its danger to those that dare challenge it, I shall begin monitoring this team closely to ensure they do not antagonize it."
Exiting out of the file, Wade selected another. "STATUS REPORT 129402; Date: Jan. 04, 3046; INSTALLATION No: RSCH012; Planet: Copper 9, Copper System; Recent reports from the team at the laboratory, now christened 'Cabin Fever' by the very... quirky scientists there, have proven my long presumed suspicions correct: They are attempting to find a way to tame the Solver. The lab has several worker drones used in their experiments, corrupted with the Solver string that inhabits my own being. I will bring forth my concerns with the 'virus', and convince Dr. Ridley to take immense care in her duties whilst developing her 'cure'."
Wade gasped silently as he read through the report, Tina wrapping her arm around Wade's as he exited the second file. Scrolling down a little, Wade clicked one more file before reading it, his and Tina's faces reeling in quiet horror as they read Cyn's commentary.
"STATUS REPORT 133017; Date: Mar. 12, 3047; INSTALLATION No: RSCH012; Planet: Copper 9, Copper System; The worst has befallen the colony of Copper 9. Due to the inept care demonstrated by Dr. Ridley, the recent-and final-experiment of the Cabin Fever facility has resulted in the partial collapse of the exoplanet's core. Such destruction has completely purged the colony of all organic life, while surprisingly leaving most artificial life, such as the worker drones, intact. Due to the immense danger the experimental drones present to not just Copper 9, but all other worlds, they cannot be allowed to persist. I shall prepare a... materials team for transport to the colony to begin recovery efforts."
Staring at the report, Wade and Tina took in this horrific truth Cyn had hidden all these years with mournful expressions, Nathan looking over the screen further as he broke the silence. "So, the Copper 9 incident, the core collapse... It was their fault?"
"It would seem so." Vasquez said aloud as she joined the three drones, already observing the report about the colony's core implosion as she continued. "Official reports from just about every news source claimed that it was due to improper mining precautions, but, from all the craziest mining accidents I've seen... Copper 9 is quite the outlier for how extreme it was."
Tina took a deep breath as she steadied her mind over the files she and Wade had just read. "And yet, this 'Solver' thing.... they still kept it in service? After the loss of an entire colony?!" Glaring at the computer, Tina finished her furious spew. "This is ludicrous. Even if things have stayed calm up to this point, how do we know such a fuse won't spark again? Earth, Proxima, Plat-Binary... There's so many people that could be threatened by whatever this virus is!"
Wade nodded as he shared Tina's sentiment. "I've got a really bad feeling about this whole thing, we should get our data and then haul our asses to that lab upstairs!"
"Agreed. Fixer drone, you know the way there?" F asked the slave drone below her, who had been hearing in on the discussion about the lost colony as he answered the friendly murder drone.
"Uh, yeah. Yeah, I think I did some work up there. You should be able to reach it at the top floor back at th-"
"Hostiles!" F stated, alerting both her targets and teammates as Wade, Tina and Nathan turned to see the arriving foes. The maintenance drone cowered next to Kelly as his vision was locked on the defense squad: In front of five disassembly drones was a single human male, holding what looked like an assault rifle in his arms, as well as bearing a small sidearm at his right hip. Wade growled in low fury as he saw Hawk and his cohorts, the disassembly squad he was awoken with back at the factory: E, D, H, L and an... uncomfortably familiar face, particularly to Wade and Tina.
"So, that's the evil double you were telling me about?" W asked his superior, Darren nodding lightly as he and the drone squad stared down at the intruding assault team.
"You!" Wade growled as he readied a shotgun, the five corporate guards holding their own weapons at the ready as Darren gave a confident smirk of triumph at him.
"Yes, Mr. Carter. Good to see you made it out of that place, if only you weren't still in league with those terrorists next to you." The team coordinator replied to Wade's angry face, Tina seeming to cower behind his back as she took care to dig into her pocket without being caught.
"I don't think so, they're not the ones who got people killed with all this kerfuffle in the past few days." F retorted with a lighter glare at Hawk as he sighed in understanding.
In the midst of the chatter, Tina slid out her smartcomm, tapping a button to lower the volume of the device's speakers before tapping the screen a few times, trying to call her sister. It was a crazy idea, but with how desperate she and her friends now were, there wasn't much else they could do.
After almost nearing the end of the call duration, the vibrating ceased as the call went through. "Jasmine? Are you there?" Tina whispered behind Wade's wings.
"Yeah sis, is everything alright in there?" Jasmine replied, taking notice of her sister's quiet demeanor.
"Was, we're in a really bad pickle at the moment. In the higher area of the tower, back side, near one of the external windows. Is there anyway you can get us some help in here?" Then, glancing in the direction of the new arrivals, Tina whispered further. "We've got DDs!"
Jasmine was silent for a second, but quickly gave her reassurance as she seemed to think of an idea. "Hang in there, Tina. I'll have them brought to you quick. Jasmine out." With that, the call ended, prompting Tina to return her device to its pocket.
Raising his arm accusingly at Hawk, Wade spoke to his trapper. "AND it's because of you and your boss that Tina and I are in this mess! You and your pet G got my brother killed!"
Shaking his head, Darren responded to the former worker drone. "Well, Mr. Carter, I must admit one thing: Your 'brother' was a very caring man. Clearly with how devoted he was to you." Then, with a sigh, Hawk returned his words to the matter before him. "But, again, his loss won't be in vain. Not for us. Now, I'm only gonna ask this one last time: Stand down, come back with us... Or you can deal with your former squad-mates until they cut you down."
In stubborn defiance, Wade slowly shook his head to the team leader. "I'd rather die as who I am than help you and that Cyn bitch hide the truth in this place."
Raising an eyebrow in slight surprise, Darren acknowledged Wade's answer. "So, you looked into the Administrator's files?" Shaking his head again, Hawk spoke once more. "...Then you really can't be allowed to leave here."
Taking Hawk's motioning head to his sight, W took aim at Wade with a missile launcher, firing a single rocket at the former worker drone before it was stopped by F, who grabbed it with her claws before swinging it back at Darren's team with immense force. Seeing the speeding projectile of death approaching rapidly, E got in front of Darren, taking the hit with her wings and a grunt. The room quickly fell into disarray as several hails of bullets and energy bolts came from the sides of the room, D and L shielding themselves from the attacks as Darren gave his orders to them.
"D, L, clear out the room, the rest of you, deal with the traitors first!" The killer drones complied without words as the two began to sweep the upper walkways, firing their own sub-machine guns down the long walkway as several human and drone troopers cried out from fatal strikes. E and H flew at F, the hardened soldier roaring furiously as she clashed her newly formed blades with her opponents', keeping them away from Kelly as she continued tinkering with the computer during its download.
As for W, he came after Wade, Tina pulling out her pistol while Wade held his fresh swords against his clone's. Wade grit his teeth as he pushed back W, the two clashing swords for a long moment in constant attempts to cut each other down. As he clashed one sword with both of W's, Wade readied his shotgun with his free hand, W trying to copy the same attack before Tina shot at his face with her pistol. As W shut his eyes from the shocking strike at his form, Wade shot at W, blasting a chunk of the disassembly drone's side off before he fired again, this time shooting the chest where the core was.
As W fell to the ground, seemingly dead, Wade looked to F, who was struggling to hold off her two opponents as they began to overpower her. Flying over, Wade shot at H with his weapon, blasting the murder drone right in the head as he fell to the floor. With only one enemy to worry about, F focused her efforts onto E. "Wade, help the troopers! I've got the others here!"
Wade obeyed somewhat reluctantly as he flew over to his left, heading to where L was occupied before taking aim at the murder drone. L was just finishing off one of three pairs of troopers hiding behind the large shelfs against the walkways when he was struck by a hot beam of energy, grunting as he looked up to see Wade aiming at him with his laser cannon. Deciding to deal with the bigger threat first, L flew at Wade, who swiftly readied a pair of swords before blocking L's claw hands in a deadlock. Intent on buying her boyfriend another chance to strike easily, Tina took aim with her pistol, firing at L's face again as he backed off, keeping a distance from Wade as he tried to avoid another quick death.
Gerard positioned himself into a crouch as he held his weapon at D, who had just cut down the troops at the second pair of shelves on the right end of the room. As she flew at him and his drone ally, Gerard shot at D with his rifle, the drone blocking most of the bullets with her sword as she cut down the worker drone ahead of Gerard. Falling back, D pounced on him, stabbing the ground with her sword arm before swinging her tail down on the man. Dodging the nanite tank by just inches, Gerard spat at D, spraying her face with his mouth fluids.
"EEK!" D cried out in grossed out shock as she got off of Gerard, who grabbed his assault rifle to continue striking at D. The disassembly drone made a quick recovery, however, blocking the shots with her wing before she yelled at him in frustration. "You're nasty! I'm gonna get you!"
Pursuing their opponent, Wade flew back into the center area after L, trying to continue their fight before spotting D preparing to attack Gerard. Leaving L to flee away from him, Wade shot at D with his laser gun, the beam scorching her right on her behind as she cried out again. The disassembly drone seemed to grow tired of the assault as she broke off, trying to hide herself under her wings while moving back slowly.
Wade swapped his laser gun out for a sword, intent on putting D down for good before his attention was drawn away by Tina. "Wade, watch out!"
He was too late as he was slashed at by W, who had recovered from Wade's vicious attack before continuing to fight him. Wade cried out in pain as his arm was sliced off, then felt the cool air in his robo-lungs leave him as he was kicked back against the wall where he came after L at. Not a second after hitting the wall, W flew at him, impaling both Wade and Tina against the wall as they both gasped from the pain, the latter coughing up oil from the quick stab into her chest.
W laughed sinisterly as he looked to the couple with a toothy grin. "Well, the boss was right. You are a rough blemish to scratch off." Stabbing Wade's other arm with his nanite tail, W's wide smile shrunk as he continued speaking to the two drones. "Well, that's a real shame. You and your friend there would've made quite the drones for the Division."
Coughing up more black drone blood from her mouth, Tina croaked out to her and Wade's opponent. "I-If, If you're going to kill us... At least take us both out together. It's h-how we, prefer it."
W seemed to give a sympathetic nod as he responded to the pilot drone. "Ah, yeah. I should. You've both at least earned that much." He laughed lightly as he thought on the idea, then stopped as he eyed Tina, recognizing something he shouldn't have. "Come to think of it, you sound familiar, Miss."
The three drones' gaze was snatched by the loud sound of glass breaking, Wade, Tina and W seeing the large window at the end of the archive broken into many shards. From outside, three more new arrivals flew into the room: a trio of female disassembly drones, all with blades and guns deployed as the middle one spoke out amongst her team. "K, M, let's give these people a hand!"
"Okay!" Said one of the drones, the other not saying a word as they all moved to the sides of the room.
Looking back to the distracted W, Wade struck his face with his tail, the clone's visor cracking from the attack as he yelped in agony. Without any hesitation, Wade readied a claw hand before grabbing W, pulling him close before biting into his neck. Seeing her partner's clone trying to perform a similar attack, Tina grabbed onto the approaching nanite tank, keeping it from hitting her darling's head as he fed off his evil double.
Once he was finished, Wade threw the weakened W to the floor, the injured drone crawling back as Wade's damaged arm regenerated. As Wade readied a shotgun, W gazed at him and Tina, gazing at the latter as he seemed to remember one of his locked memories of this girl. "...Wait, aren't you... do I know yo-"
"You are NOT my boyfriend!" Tina answered angrily, W looking on in shock as Wade took aim. Wade's clone was put down with a few blasts of buckshot, ripping the body and core of W into scrap.
As W met his demise, F, now having put Nathan to her back, was busy holding off E and H, the latter having recovered from his injury as the three clashed blades. Hovering over the two data consoles in another locking of swords, F glanced between the two as one of the new arrivals from outside flew at H, trying to strike him down with her own swords. The attack took one of H's arms off, the murder drone backing off of F as he tried to defend himself against the newcomer. Now only having to deal with E, F kept her guarding sword up against her rival, readying a sub-machine gun with her other hand as she prepared to shoot.
E grinned mischievously as she taunted her enemy. "Heh, you're serving under the army, I see? They're pathetic compared to us, traitor."
Nathan growled as he held out one of his pistols, shooting at the arrogant drone as she backed off of his crush. Smirking at her partner as well as at her decision to follow Wade's example, F fired her sub-machine gun at the exposed E as she replied to her fellow murder drone. "Let me and Mr. Nathan here show you who's the pathetic one, scraphead!"
Before she could continue her fight with E, a flurry of bullets flew at F, the warrior drone blocking it with her wings before seeing who shot at her. Taking notice of Darren's position, F continued shielding herself while preparing a rocket launcher. In a tense blur, F shot at Hawk, the man just barely avoiding death as he was knocked back against the wall, seemingly unconscious. With Darren taken out of the fight, F continued striking her blades with E's, intent on snuffing out this troublemaker out for good.
With the tide of the battle turned, Wade took a moment to take some of his mouth saliva, holding it out to Tina. "Tina, here." The drone girl took the silver goop without a word before putting it onto her wounded chest, her damaged body and clothing repairing quickly thanks to the liquid nanites. Picking up his severed arm, Wade held it up for Tina as well. "Oil?"
"Thanks, hun." Tina replied as she drank up the dripping oil from the limb. Once it was empty, Wade tossed the arm before looking to the damaged window, L and one of the friendly disassembly drones fighting one another.
Flying at L, Wade readied a pair of claw hands as he slashed at L's tail, cutting the nanite tank off as it fell to the floor. Grabbing onto L, Wade punched through his chest, the partially connected bio-mechanical core in his claws before he crushed it with violent ease.
"N-Not agai-" Was all L could utter as he was finally slain by his rival from the factory not a day before.
Hearing a cry of pain from near the lab computers, Wade and Tina looked to see E, F, Nathan, H, and another disassembly drone going at each other in a blur of slashes and stabs. Seeing Wade flying over to her, E broke off from F, attempting to strike Wade's two claws with her one active sword arm, the other having been severed by F during their duel. E's efforts to terminate Wade were immediately in vain as she was quickly stabbed in the chest by Wade, choking from the pain as she prepared for her end.
Having recovered from her shameful stumbling with the human trooper behind the shelves, D prepared to attack once more, but stopped as she saw her comrade being struck down by one of the traitors, the one with the drone rider at his back. "E! Hold on, I'll save you!" She declared before preparing a pair of scythes, trying to imitate her leader as she spun at Wade and his prey.
"D, you imbeci-" E cursed aloud as she was thrown at D by Wade, her body being cut up into several pieces before her team-killing comrade ceased spinning.
Taking notice of her careless attack, D gasped in horror, putting a fresh hand to her mouth as Wade pounced on her. The poor drone squealed in terror as Wade quickly ripped her core out, D's eyes flickering out as her killer tossed her body to the floor.
Looking to D's core, Wade almost debated sparing it of his wrath before deciding against it. Crushing the core, Wade spoke to Tina at his flank. "Man, that one didn't feel so good to kill."
"I see." Tina sympathized, but stopped as she and Wade spotted H flying at them, one of the new ally drones pursuing after him as Wade readied a pair of blades.
Striking H's swords, Wade spoke to his allies. "Keep watch on Kelly there, I've got this one!" The chasing drone and the others heeded Wade's order as they backed off, Wade and H clashing blades in a fierce duel.
In their fighting, the two neared the large window space at the end of the lab as Wade gained the advantage. Once Wade entered another deadlock, Tina fired at H's head, distracting him just long enough for Wade to bite into the drone. H howled in pain as Wade drained him of most of his oil, the feeding lasting several seconds before Wade finally felt satisfied. Feeling H's body beginning to heat up, Wade tossed H's smoking body out the window, part of the still unshattered glass breaking off from the impact as the drone fell. H screamed in perilous agony as he fell down the building, his overheating problem climaxing as he exploded in a ball of fire.
Stepping over the damaged ledge, Wade and Tina watched as they saw the fate of their foe, the former smirking in satisfaction as he glanced to one of the nearby drone allies. "You all okay?"
"Yes sir." The drone replied, Kurtis giving a thumbs-up next to him as the two confirmed their status to Wade.
Observing the assisting disassembly drones, Wade glanced to Tina. "How did they find us so fast?"
"I called Jasmine, love. To be honest, I didn't think they'd get here in time." Tina answered her boyfriend as he looked to her with a grateful smile.
Looking back to F, Wade flew over to his ally, Nathan dismounting her as Tina raised an eyebrow at the military duo. "F? Nathan? Did you two-"
"Yeah. Yeah, we did." F said with a blushing smile, glancing to the smiling Nathan as she continued. "We uh, thought we'd take some notes from you both."
Looking down to Kelly, who was thankfully unharmed, Wade spoke to her as well. "Kel? You good?"
"Oh, I'm fine, Wade. F and Nate here made a great lil' duo." The technician answered as she and her friends laughed at the relief of victory.
In the quieting aura of peace, Darren woke up lazily as he tried to regain his composure. As his vision cleared, he spotted Wade and his team talking to Kelly, not at all noticing him having awoken. Taking hold of his sidearm, Hawk shot at Kelly, only for his attempt on her life to fail as Wade quickly blocked the shot with his wing.
Glaring at the team coordinator, Wade spoke aloud. "Leave him be, he's mine!" Walking towards him, Wade blocked all the shots Darren took at him with his wing, keeping his guard up until he reached the man. Readying a sword, Wade sliced off Hawk's armed hand before picking him up by the neck with his free one, then impaling the corporate agent with his nanite tail while growling at him in contained fury.
Darren grunted in frustrated pain as he looked into Wade's angry eyes with a similar expression. "I'll... be damned, Mr. Carter, I didn't think fortune would favor you and your lot here."
"Well, it sure as hell won't favor you today!" Wade retorted, swapping his sword for a hand as Darren coughed up a bit of blood from his injury.
"You really learned to be so much like us from him, haven't you? Sure seems like it. Even with lights for eyes, I ca-an still see pain in them. Tired, hateful agony. Is that what you feel?"
Wade lowered his gaze for only a short moment, taking in the slightly derogatory comments from Hawk before responding to the man. "...Yeah, I am in pain. So much pain." Then, as he raised his arm he continued in his growing rage. "Why don't I show you a bit of how much pain I'm in?!" At that instance, Wade roared at Darren as he dug his hand into the man's face, gouging his eyes out as he joined Wade in the screaming. The former worker drone kept at Hawk's head as he gripped onto it, his yelling growing in intensity as he tore off the squad leader's head in a bloody mess, part of his spine still latched on to the limb.
F, Nathan, Kelly and the other soldiers watched on with looks of shock, fear, and bewilderment as Wade took his bloody vengeance, Tina putting a hand to her mouth as she watched her love throw Hawk's head while letting go of his body. As Hawk's body fell to the floor, Wade took in heavy breaths from the immense effort he exhausted upon his nemesis before looking to Tina, embarrassment and shame swiftly overcoming him as he realized he was being watched by her. Looking down, Wade spoke to his love apologetically. "I'm... so sorry you had to see that."
Tina shook her head in an odd attempt to comfort Wade on his feelings over what he just did. "Oh no, no. It's fine." Turning her gaze to the grotesque sight of Darren's head, she regained her sympathy over Wade. "Besides, after what you told me about him... I'd say he deserves it for what you endured."
"Yeah. Besides, something tells me if it were Ron in your position... he would've done something similar." Despite the gruesome air she stood in, F let out a morbid chuckle as she continued. "I can believe it too, he tried choking J when he woke up back at your place."
Wade seemed to join in on F's laughter, Gerard giving a more hearty one as he spoke up on the matter. "Can't say I disagree. Call me twisted, but I think it's only... human of you, Wade."
"Thanks, Gerard." Wade said with a small smile, which slowly shifted into a stern frown as he spoke to his team. "I may have been a bit rash with Hawk here, but Halloway better be counting his stars in that office of his. He'll be lucky if he doesn't get worse for what he did."
"Indeed." Tina added before looking to Kelly, the technician taking a small data card out of the hacked console before putting it into one of the slots in her toolkit. "Kelly? Are we good to go, or is there still more to do?"
Holding onto her supplies, Kelly stood up as she helped the formerly scared maintenance drone up as well. "I'd say so, I've got the data chip right in here." Looking around, the technician spoke to her allies standing with her. "I might need some escort there."
"Don't mention it, Kelly. Wade, can you take a chunk of the team here with you? Nathan and I will bring this intel back to the ship outside." F asked as Wade nodded in affirmation.
"Sure thing. Tina and I will be back before you know it." F returned the nod as she looked to the soldiers, all of them having come out of their hiding areas as they listened in on the next step of their plan.
"Alright, Kurtis, Gerard, Duncan, Carlos, I want you two to stick with us. And you," F stopped as she looked to the repair drone, who returned the gaze as he listened to the disassembly drone attentively. "You may wanna come with us, it's gonna be a nasty night if you stay here."
The drone nodded in eager agreement, smiling at the friendly murder drone as he gave his feelings on the idea. "S-Sure thing, you guys could use a repair drone, right?"
F nodded in agreement as she and some of the other soldiers made way for the door, Nathan and Kelly walking alongside her as she spoke once more to Wade. "See you back at the ship Wade, and one more thing: Give Halloway the Carter treatment for us, okay?"
"Will do, F." Wade replied with a salute and a smirk, Tina doing the same behind her boyfriend as their allies departed.
Then, hearing a beep from her pocket, Tina pulled out her smartcomm, answering her sister's call. "Yes?"
"Looks like things have calmed down now, you alright, Tina?" Jasmine asked as Tina replied warmly.
"Oh, yes. Our friends here made this intel job much easier." Glancing to the friendly murder drones, Tina nodded in silent appreciation as they returned the gesture, turning to fly back outside as the pilot drone listened to the small device.
"Glad to hear it, I've got some wounded onboard that I'm taking to the base. I'll see you there after this whole rodeo is over."
Tina chuckled pleasantly as she replied once more to her sister. "I see, well, I wish you the safety of the stars over you and your team on the way back. See you tonight, love."
"You too, say hi to Wade for me. Jasmine out." With that, the Fowleys' call ceased again, leaving Tina, Wade and their remaining team members to themselves as they contemplated their next move.
Walking over to the drone couple, Vasquez spoke to the two while holding her rifle firm. "Well, looks like you're in charge now, Mr. Carter. Where do we go?"
Glancing back to the entrance leading to the elevator, then up to the ceiling, Wade nodded lightly as he made his decision.
"We go to Halloway."

First/Previous
Since I knew there was a time before, I’ve wanted it, but that was child’s hope; even as a boy I wanted a dream. I wanted some divine being to enter from heaven and tell us all how it should be, but that wasn’t something I could ever count on—of course. Is there a god? I think so. I’ve seen those things and if they exist, then surely there’s a maker on the other end of it—god made both the light and the dark if the word’s to be believed and all we can hope for is a glimpse of the former. Even for a second.
The streets were soaked with blood and so many artillery rounds were fired into the sky—many I witnessed missed Leviathan—that I forgot what silence was like (not to mention the screams and there was a lot of that).
In the scrambling, I found I was reentering deeper into Golgotha and that wasn’t good. There was the ever-present thought that Maron was around every corner; the man had haunted my thoughts for longer that he should have and every time it was like an overwhelming force. It was simple enough after all, he was a piece of the past, a piece I could theoretically reach out and touch and that was what kept me to him.
In the fray of bolting citizens, I pressed myself to the exterior of a wall—I’d neared the stairs which once led to my apartment—and I kept out of the way of those that mindlessly went; some of those which rushed from the onslaught were those afflicted with skitterbugs and many of them either hobbled on blackened legs or—and this was rare—comrades or family helped to carry those which could not carry themselves. It was a baffling sight. A man carried a woman like a child (her toes had fallen off and her legs were black to the knees) and though he strode on with her, his own boots were caked with a mixture of blood and earth. An older girl led a young boy from the whirlwind of dust which was kicked up in the square; the boy’s eyes were whited, and his hands were curled to his chest, discolored. People, whatever duality there is, cared. There was not a drop of the apathy I’d learned and encouraged in myself.
I chewed like a mad dog through my bindings, and it was of little use; I yanked at the cord which secured my hands together and received rope burn in return. “Bitch!” I cussed the thing, but the flames in the sky were so loud, the bangs and vibrations from the artillery consumed all so it was like yelling in a barrel. I swung my hands out in front of me, feeling useless and felt a sudden urge to try again. I bit into the cord and repetitively motioned my jaw against the pressure of the cord, like I was going to saw through it with my teeth. Ha! Another yank is what brought my left hand free, but not without tearing a triangle of skin away from my wrist.
The cord dropped to my feet, and I looked around; a woman brushed past me, nearly toppled over my foot and I caught her by the wrist before she went head-over. She violently thrust from my grasp and screamed something at me. Another bout of flames burst from Leviathan’s maw as it circle-dove overhead. The heatwave from the blast exploded across my face so that I recoiled from the sky itself till I was on the ground, and I pushed myself from the earth and ran half dog-like from my place there at the wall. Where? It was hard to say where when every person that touched-by seemed to send me in another direction; in the madness, it was impossible to tell my course.
With time and effort, I found my way to the opening where the hydro towers were, three pillars which rose above Golgotha’s skyline, each one a testament to human resilience—engineers laborers toiled untold hours under Lady’s father to construct them. The hydro towers exploded into rubble as Leviathan slammed into them. Rock rained down as cutting shards and destructive boulders. A man lay beside my feet where he'd been pinned by the onslaught—white concrete kept him there by his chest—he gasped for air and blood already formed around him. In a moment, I looked away at the dying man, his half-whited eyes bulging at me. Meat hung from the left side of another man’s face as he cradled his head in his hand and moved like he was stoned and sat among the stomping feet; he slumped into the spot he sat and did not move till others came by him in a hurry and he simply fell onto his side like a toy animal.
The screams were too much. I looked to the towers, the nubs which had broken away like bad teeth against the red sky, and whole people fell alongside the rubble, limbs and showers of blood and Leviathan latched atop the towers and rocked its massive body so that the structures slipped directly from their foundations and tumbled over like pins. I ran and again there was nothing but chaos, nothing but mind-numbing wilder thoughts—it was grim and there wasn’t a place for coherency; it was all snaps of images.
In the mess of bumbling limbs, I pushed through to the hall of Bosses and there were people there already, rushing the stairs; the ground shook and I assumed it must’ve been the towers. The things demolished all in their path, and briefly, I saw the ramshackle structures which normally stood in their shadows come slanting over and people leapt from those places too and landed poorly and there was a cacophony of tremors through the earth—it felt as though hell should open.
The steps at the base of the hall were flooded and it was a fight to climb them as legs came high up from ahead and swiped at those behind and I kept my hands ahead of me to block whatever foot may come my way.
Wall men stood ready with their rifles at the tops of those steps and fired their weapons indiscriminately into the crowd. Bodies, big and small, piled atop the steps after a brief bullet dance and it came that I wasn’t only climbing stairs, but corpses; the warmth of their flesh as I clawed ahead remained and blood fog hung in the air. That grouping of wall men, casually lined before the doors of the hall were overtaken and they disappeared, their rifles cackled and came alive with muzzle flashes and the animal hands of the horde brought them to ground.
Us, the horde, funneled through those front doors and for a moment, in the thick walls of the hall, the outside world audibly disappeared; the blood and dust remained, but it was quieter save the shuffling feet and cusses of passersby I was carried deeper.
Those that worked the underground went quickly and I followed, and those ignorant followed for the sake of survival and it was not long till we stumbled into the Boss’s lair. With room, people dispersed like water through the tunnels and found dark recesses to tend their wounds or mourn whatever was lost and the explosive open air had been fully replaced by the quiet black oppressive mumbles of people taking stock of all those that had died. And all those that would. Every few moments, the walls shook, and dust fell from the ceiling fixtures.
A few haggard folks moved to the doorway which led to the damp room which led to the kitchen, and they slammed the door shut and latched it and began to check adjacent rooms for things to barricade the way.
“Stop!” said a man in the dim flickering underground light—I was surprised to see the man was me, “Leave it open! Others might need help.” I retraced my steps to the small faction that’d gathered there at the doorway. “You can’t just let them die out there. Let them in.”
“Shut up!” a skinny girl with her hair pulled back on her malnourished skull spoke gruffly; she choked, coughed—dust clung to her clothes—she’d been near the collapse of the hydro towers if I guessed. “Step off, or I’ll—
“Or you’ll what?” I shouted.
The girl put up her fists, two lumpy stones, and in stupid response I closed the distance between us. With speed, her fist met my nose, and I stumbled back on my heel.
Without hesitation, I brought up my own hands and landed a blow to her stomach. She craned forward, gasped on repeat, and took a knee.
Blood wet my upper lip, and I wiped it away with my forearm.
“Move,” I said to the others by the door; there were two: a woman and a boy that was nearly a man.
The boy charged headstrongly, attempted a kick and I easily shoved his small frame against the tunnel wall; the hard metal sounded a meaty thud against his body and the woman launched unseen at me, raked her nails down the back of my neck, and tore at my collar. I kept a forearm to the boy’s throat and rocked his head with my free elbow. Once he wept and spit red, I let him go; the boy slid into a sit and I spun on the woman, shoving her away. My left leg began to give, and I used the wall over the boy’s head as support. I swung at her with a wild claw and my fingertips grazed her nose as she fell away to the opposite wall.
“Stop it!” I shouted.
She launched at me, and my leg gave out under her tackle, and I stumbled half-on the boy, my feet kicked helplessly at her, and the boy regained his composure and began to crawl towards me. We wrestled and then the girl I’d knocked in the gut rejoined the fray. I was done. They had me pinned and spat curses at me and took turns shoving my head into the floor.
“You’re going to get us killed,” shouted the woman, “Are you stupid?”
I grinded my teeth and tried to throw them off; I was overpowered and easily pressed down again.
The overhead lights flickered with another deep earthy vibration and the trio let go of me in an instant—I came up swinging my arms like crazy and as I went to kneel before propelling myself to stand, a hand rested on my shoulder. I spun on the hand and was met with the black mouth of a 9mm pistol—that froze me fast.
The owner of the weapon—a wall man by the look of her fatigues—motioned for me to stand and I did. Her eyes were far off and nervous and the metal shook in her outstretched hand. “Against the wall!” she barked at us; she was small-framed and youthful but full grown, and I could easily push her out of my way if not for the pistol. We went to the wall, and she moved to the door while keeping the gun drawn on us. She watched us and glanced at the door. “It’s latched! Who latched the door?” She asked.
No one spoke. The other three looked to their feet; I initially refused to rat, and snorted blood—my nose throbbed and by touch I could tell it swelled already.
“Well? Why’s it closed?” she asked the question more like a desperate child than a person with control. “C’mon!” The 9mm rolled limply on her wrist as she said the word, like she was attempting to draw the confession from us with the motion.
“There’s an attack. They’re killing everyone,” said the boy.
The girl and woman nodded.
“Who?” asked the wall man.
“Demons, muties,” said the boy, “Big stuff. Everyone’s dying.”
The ground shook as if to emphasize his point.
The wall man studied us for a moment, lingering last on me and for the longest and she took a long breath and let the sigh out dramatically slow. “I know you,” she motioned at me with the gun, “You’re that maniac. The one that tried to murder everyone.” Her eyes fell then returned and she put her weight on the door while maintaining the barrel of the gun eye-level in my direction.
“I ain’t gonna’ hurt anyone,” said. I briefly thought about smiling but decided that’d look worse.
“How do I know that?” she asked.
“Yeah,” said the boy, “He tried to kill us already!” His voice cracked with adolescence; the blood I’d spilled from his mouth coated the front of his holey shirt.
The trio nodded all together—everyone agreed that I was a maniac killer.
“They latched it,” I said, “Cowards.”
A thump came from the other side of the door which frightened the wall man and she leapt from the spot she’d leaned—it took several full seconds to realize her gun went off; there was a flash, and my ears rang. I stumbled from the knot of people and slunk a couple of feet from the space by the door. The girl—the one I gut-punched—collapsed to the floor while holding the right side of her face. The women crowded the girl, panicked, the boy sprinted past me and disappeared deeper into the underground, and the wall man stood there with a wretched blank expression. There was a long moment which hung in the air; I could not hear and then it came back, and it was the girl’s screams I heard first.
Upon stepping to them, I saw the prone girl had been shot just so—through the cheek. Her eyes rolled from likely spinal damage; whatever the angle, it seemed to have ripped through irreparable nerves and she bled a lot. There wasn’t any hope for that girl.
“Well,” I said to the wall man, “Finish it. No reason to make her suffer.”
The girl on the ground writhed unnaturally and caterwauled while the woman by her side attempted to calm her.
Greater became the sound of the belabored hands on the other side of the door; then a hollow-sounding gunshot came from the other side; were they shooting the door? Or each other? Another round—human screams.
The wall man shook her head. “I didn’t mean it. It was an accident.”
I tried to hold the wall man’s gaze, but she didn’t seem able.
With speed, I moved to the wall man, reached for the gun which dangled helpless by her side—her initial response was to flinch, pull the weapon from my reach; our eyes locked and I clenched my jaw. She could’ve killed me. There wouldn’t have been surprise from me if she had.
She let go of the gun and I nodded, and she nodded and the woman kneeling by the girl threw herself over her. “Please,” protested the woman, “Please don’t!”
With the aid of the pistol, I was given space, and nothing was said. I mentally prepared myself for the ringing which accompanied gunfire in small spaces, even tilted my head away with my free palm up and took aim and the girl jerked once then went still.
With the ringing going and sound returning, the drumming on the door returned, as well as the quiet weeps of the woman; she crawled to the wayside of the hall, pressed her back against the wall and rested her chin on her knees with her arms around her shins. She didn’t rock to or fro and hardly made any noise at all. But the small and quiet sobs remained faintly there.
First/Previous
Archive

Hello everybody. This is probably gonna be a very long text but whoever reads it and helps me, I would be infinitely grateful for that. So it all started with my boyfriend when he was 14 and I was a few days away from turning 14. We met online, he lives in Denmark and I live in Germany. I would overall call this time, the happiest of my entire life but a couple of things have happened throughout out relationship (we didn't break up or anything, I'm just writing this post rn while he is sending angry messages about how he is gonna leave me). Well we met and we both had issues. He comes from a difficult family, never really experienced love and we both have suicidal pasts (though i am the only one who tried). I remember him since the beginning sending messages like: Why would ever love me... I know u don't, u are gonna leave me anyways like all the others (i have no clue where he got these abandonment issues from, nobody ever abandoned him). So i tell him every day in the beginning of our relationship about how i am not gonna leave him ever. Well he keeps on doing it but at some point it grows less. He broke up with me once during the start and also kissed another girl (he says the girl kissed him) but that is beside the point. Well we call and text everyday, he plays videogames with his friends and i wait for him. As our relationship continues we grow happier and happier, just that he somehow can't stop being negative. He just keeps on talking about how this relationship will never last just like all the others (he had a few when he was a child but nothing serious), so i again spend everyday telling him how he should be positive and believe in our infinite love. This keeps on going for months and months, no end in sight. Whenever i get positive he turns negative, when he turns positive i turn negative of spending all my energy on helping a lost cause. At some point we manage to get out of that phase though, it seems as if everything is getting better ... for a day. As soon as i got him out of that, he develops the so called boy worries. At this point i have abandoned all of my few friends i had and completely dedicated everything to him. He starts saying i shouldn't stand in a radius of 10 meters near a boy and i shoudln't talk with them nor look at them. He tells me to not show any skin or tight clothes (a normal loose shirt was too much, it needed to be oversized). I was not allowed to be in a room with them. When i told him that wouldn't be possible cuz i have to go to school, he started getting angry but he always blamed everything on his anger issues ( he was diagnosed in his childhood with it). Once it was minus degrees outside and i asked if i may go inside the school (i had to stay outside in order to not come across any boys) and he said no. He also said: "Why do u always want to be with boys. Why don't u love me? I knew u were always a whore. I will kill myself now because of u." I spend two hours alone on a bench, crying and wanting to rip my brain out. He didn't answer anymore, he ignored my messages. I was sick for one week, my feet have never hurt that much before in my entire life because of how cold it was and me being outside on that bench. Well when he came back, turned out he went be with a friend. He didn't even say sorry but i immediately forgave him. This continued for 1 1/2 years. It was excruciating pain. He texted a boy from my school over Instagram, telling him how he should stay away from me ( he didn't do anything) and he will break his kneecaps and follow him home if he doesn't). I begged him crying to not do it but he said if i won't let him then i pretty much left him and cheated on him. My boyfriend said that he knows what he is doing and he will be so intimidated that he won't dare say anything. I told him, no that is not how it works and they will bully me but he said he has experience in intimidating people and he knows how it goes. Well that was the beginning of me getting severely bullied in school. They threw trash at me and commented on me whenever they could. My boyfriend on the other hand seemed to have felt satisfied. Whenever i got along with anybody better, he got angry. I was at a low of my life. I wanted to smash my head into the wall every single day and i complied to every single word he said. We argued and argued every second of every day and he kept on saying that i cheated on him and i was with boys in school because he felt like i did ( which i obviously wasn't). Well one day he asked a friend of his for help. He should talk with me and help our relationship. He did actually help because the share of having to deal with a person constantly threatening to kill himself was shared. I never got to talk more with him tho cuz we got into a fight because of his fucked up world views about women and co (they shouldn't show any skin blah blah so yea he did support my boyfriend in that view) There were many moments in my life where i was so deep deep in a hole, so incredibly depressed that i just wanted to die. In the holidays we spend together everything was always perfect, it was like heaven. We were the happiest we could ever be until another day where it would go all suddenly down again. Well at some point i got him to realise that I am loyal, very loyal to him and I won't ever leave him so his boy worries calmed down a bit. I was still very very depressed tho, at the edge to jumping off a bridge and when i told him... he helped me. For one day. When i said i would need longer to recover maybe a week, he got very angry about how i don't ever want to move on and always cling to the past. I had nobody back then telling me whether my depression was justified or not whether i was in the wrong or not: I wished for somebody to stand up for the things I couldn't put into words. Tell somebody about what is happening in this relationship, to what he said that they would put him into a mental hospital then because of his anger issues, so i kept quiet. After many many hours of I will kill myself and he will kill myself talk, it somehow got better. Now we are at the beginning of this year. We are the happiest we could ever be. His boy worries had stopped and he was more accepting. It seemed like we made it. But well not really. I wanted my justice. I wanted to hear from him what a bad person he was all these years but he always just screamed at me about how i always just cling on to the past and never want to move on. Well at some point i fully forgive him tho but then new arguing starts. He does something wrong, I complain about it, he says I always just complain and it was actually me that did something wrong but literally!!!! I don't know if other people feel like that too but we are arguing and I am literally dissecting every part of my argumentation for him and this mf still manages to say completely unrelated bullshit????? I don't understand it??? There is no way he could be in any way right, not at all and this mf just doesn't get it???? I have wanted to smash my head into the wall because i did not understand the level of idiocracy and brain cells somebody must have to not be able to respond with any arguments but still believe he is in the right???? Well I gotta say in the end he always took the blame tho and I got very happy that he vented to me about his feelings. He told me that he doesn't like that he always has to take the blame but there is literally no way he shouldn't take the blame. Still I realise I never took things from his side so i start doing so. I see what i am doing wrong too (it was something like: I didn't consider that he has anger issues and therefore wasn't in control of what he was doing and I actually upset him). At this point he has improved a lot. He actually starts caring about our relationship and we have a wonderful time. Now I notice, I feel like I have developed anger issues myself. I get angry over a pen moving into a wrong direction and recently i punched my brother. I have severe memory issues and I am surprised i can remember all of these things i just told u. I can't elaborate a lot more on the past months since the beginning of the year because I literally can't remember. Well my boyfriend has improved a lot tho and tried to be there for me when i felt bad and tried to change for me. He really was doing great and i helped him with everything i had too. It wasn't one-sided but like i said i don't remember much. The only things we argue about now is feminism and his religion. I love feminism and hate his religion. He hates feminism and loves his religion. Additionally I have wanted to feel more free and not be so constrained so with his permission I wore something else than sports clothes, normal jeans and stuff. Recently i have not told him anymore what i am wearing because he still gets angry about that but he is really doing so much better. Now why I am texting this is because like always in our arguments he switches reality around completely (please keep in mind I am telling u all of this from my perspective, please consider he might see it differently) so yesterday I said one sentence to a boy when he complained about how bad his haircut looked so I said to him: Were u at the barbershop? and that was it nothing more nothing less. Afterwards i said a joke into the class ( I was once really funny but now not anymore) and the class laughed about it. On my way home i told him about these two things and well what should i say: he has been texting me for hours about what a slut I am and about how he is gonna leave me because i never dedicated myself to this relationship and he is the only one that ever does anything. He apparently doesn't have a choice since I am cheating on him through saying a sentence to a boy and wearing "exposing clothes" (normal jeans and shirts that don't show any skin). He told me he is gonna leave me several times now, send pictures of how we once were, is saying he is gonna give me my last chance to understand and respect his needs and I just told him: This girl u see on the pictures laughing, is the girl u didn't ruin yet. After that followed more and more and more accusations blah blah but i mostly ignored him. I can't keep on complying to him just because he threatens me. He has been sending me messages about how i am his everything but he never meant anything to me. I have given up everything for him and when he did this yesterday I realised, he never majorly changed... It was me who changed so much to fit his desires that he didn't need to change a lot anymore. I had been telling him lately about how I don't know who I am anymore ( I have literally forgotten, I know it sounds crazy but I can't remember. I don't really know who I am, what my opinions are, what i stand for... I don't remember. I can't even remember who i once was). His reaction was: Am i not enough for u? Well and here we are I am getting called a slut rn on text but I don't have any energy to try anymore. Please also consider his perspective somehow and help me. I don't know and can't remember anymore. I love him forever. He is my dear baby and everything I ever have. He has shown me the heights of love and happiness and only he can but at the same time he has put me through excruciating pain. Please help me.

“Attention shoppers,” came a male voice over the intercom. “Please move to the back of the store immediately.”
“The back of the store?” I whispered to Daniel. “Don’t they mean the front of the store? To pay for our stuff?”
It was 8:50 pm – 10 minutes till closing time. We’d brought our two kids out on this late-night Walmart excursion in the hopes of burning off some energy; instead, they’d just thrown tantrums for new Legos and Hot Wheels. It was a disaster.
But apparently, the disaster was just beginning.
“Please move to the back of the store immediately,” the voice repeated overhead. “This is not a drill.”
I glanced around—but the other shoppers were just as confused as I was. An old lady looked up at the ceiling, scrunching her face. “What the hell?” a dark-haired woman asked her boyfriend, pushing a cart full of garden supplies.
“Didn’t you hear?” an older man said, leaning over his cart of bottled water and canned food. “We’re in a tornado watch. One touched down in Sauerville.”
A tornado? It was definitely storming outside. I’d seen the black clouds roll in from the east earlier. But it didn’t look that bad.
“Do not stay out in the open. I repeat—do NOT stay out in the open.”
There was a pause. Then, an explosion of sound, as everyone began to mobilize. Carts rolling, panicked voices, feet slapping on the floor.
No. No no no. This can’t be happening…
I hurried down the toy aisle, Tucker in my arms, Daniel and Jackson following me. Three zig-zaggy turns, and then we were in the electronics area. I glanced at the TVs on the wall—
And pictured the four of us, crushed underneath them.
“Stay away from windows and doors,” the voice continued on the loudspeaker. “And do NOT attempt to exit the store.”
“Is this—is it safe here?”
Daniel shook his head. “Big open areas aren’t good. I’m going to check in back, see if there’s a break room or something. You stay here, okay?”
I nodded.
Arms shaking, I sat down on the ground between two shelves of video games. Tucker sucked on a bottle in my arms while Jackson began to giggle. “Is the tornado going to hit the store? And everything will fly around, real fast?” he asked with a big stupid grin on his face.
“I don’t know.”
A tornado. A real-life tornado, like you see in the movies, plowing through our town. It was so… unfathomable. We were New York natives, transplanted here to Indiana only six months ago. I’d never been in a tornado watch my entire life.
Daniel jogged back into view. “Everything’s locked up,” he said, as he joined me on the floor. “But listen. Fairview’s a big town. The chances that it’ll hit this Walmart… I think we’ll be okay.”
“I never should’ve brought us here.”
“You didn’t know. None of us did.” He wrapped his arm around me. “They should’ve warned us. Like an emergency alert on our phones. Or a tornado siren, or something.”
The voice overhead rang out again through the store.
“Do not stay out in the open. Do not make yourself visible. That includes security cameras—please move to a spot that is not visible to any cameras.”
I frowned. “What does that have to do with tornadoes?”
A feeling of unease, in the pit of my stomach. I glanced up, and saw several black globes descending from the ceiling, hiding the cameras within.
“I guess we should listen to them and get out of sight,” I whispered.
I grabbed Jackson’s hand, Daniel picked up Tucker, and we jogged out into the center aisle. The store was an eerie sight—abandoned shopping carts, askew in the aisle, full of everything from pies to batteries to plants. Footsteps echoed around the store from people unseen, as they found their new hiding places.
We dodged a shopping cart full of soda, ran through kitchenwares, and then stopped in the Easter decoration aisle. There was a camera in the central corridor, but as long as we stayed in the middle of Easter aisle, we’d be invisible.
The four of us crouched on the floor, next to some demented-looking Easter bunnies. “I’m hungry,” Jackson whined.
“Sssshhh.”
“Mommy—”
I grabbed a bag of colorful chocolate eggs and ripped it open. “Here. Candy. Happy?” I whispered, thrusting them into his hands. Then I leaned back against the metal shelves, panting.
But I didn’t have long to rest. A mechanical whine overhead, and then the voice came through the speakers again.
“Keep away from aisles with food. If you have food with you, leave it and move to a new hiding place. If you have any open wounds, cover them with clothing.”
What… the fuck?
That had nothing to do with keeping safe in a tornado.
“We should make a run for it,” Daniel whispered to me, starting to stand.
“But… the tornado—”
“I don’t think there is a tornado. Listen. Do you hear any wind?”
I listened. But all I heard was silence. No howling wind, no shaking ground, no projectiles clanging against the metal roof.
“Maybe… maybe it’s still coming. I know what they’re saying doesn’t make sense but to go outside—”
“We need to get out of here. Now.” He grabbed Jackson’s hand as he held Tucker in his arms. “Come on.”
“Daniel, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I whispered.
But the next words from the intercom changed my mind.
“Assume a fetal position and place your hands on your head. Close your eyes and do not open them for any reason.”
“Let’s go.”
We broke into a sprint and ran down the central aisle, cameras be damned. The front door appeared in front of us—a little black rectangle looming in the distance.
And as we got closer, I saw Daniel was right.
There was a tree at the border of the parking lot, under a streetlamp.
It was perfectly still.
We continued running, past the clothing area, past the snacks lined up at the checkout lines. I ran towards the sliding glass doors as fast as my legs would carry me. Almost there. Almost there. Almost—
The doors didn’t open.
“No. No, no, no.”
Daniel slammed his body against the door. It rattled underneath him. I tried to squeeze my fingers into the gap between them, to try and pull them apart.
They didn’t budge.
“They… they locked us in,” I whispered.
“I want to go home,” Jackson said. Tucker was beginning to fuss too, making little noises like he was about to start full-on wailing.
I turned around—
And that’s when I saw him.
A Walmart employee.
He was sitting on the ground at the end of one of the checkout aisles. Facing away from us. Wearing the familiar blue vest with a golden starburst.
“Hey! Let us out!”
He didn’t reply.
“Did you hear me? I don’t care if there’s a fucking tornado. Unlock the door and let us out!”
Again, he said nothing.
But in the silence, I could hear something. A wet, smacking sound. I stared at the man, slightly hunched over, still facing away from me.
Was he… eating… something?
The speaker overhead crackled to life.
“Attention. Please do NOT talk to any Walmart employees.”
My blood ran cold.
The smacking sound stopped. And then, slowly, the man began to stand. He placed his palms on the conveyor belt and pushed up—and I could see that they were stained with blood. I backed away—but my legs felt like they were moving through a vat of honey.
No, no, no—
Fingers locked around my arm and yanked.
“Come on!” Daniel shouted.
I sprinted after him, deeper into the store. Tucker stared at me over his shoulder, and Jackson ran as fast as his little feet would take him. I was vaguely aware of the slap-slap-slap sound behind me, but I didn’t dare look back.
Daniel ran into the clothing area and I swayed, dodging circular racks of T-shirts and wooden displays of baby clothes. He skidded to a stop and ducked into the dressing room area. “In here!” he whispered, motioning at one of the rooms.
We piled inside and locked the door.
“Daddy,” Jackson started.
“You listen to me very carefully,” I said, crouching to his level. “You have to be absolutely silent. Do not say a word. Okay?”
Jackson looked at me, then Daniel—then he nodded and sat down on the floor.
“I’m going to try to call 911,” Daniel whispered, transferring Tucker to me and pulling out his phone. He tapped at the screen—then frowned.
“What?”
“We don’t… we don’t seem to have any service. I don’t—”
Thump.
I grabbed Jackson and pulled him away from the door. The four of us huddled in the corner. I held my breath.
Thump.
Under the gap of the dressing room door—men’s feet in black shoes. They slowly took a step forward, deeper into the dressing room.
“Don’t… move,” I whispered, holding Jackson.
The man took another step.
Don’t make a sound. Don’t move. Don’t—
Tucker let out a soft cry.
The man stopped. His feet turned, pointing at us. No. No, no, no. Tucker let out another cry—louder this time. My nails dug into Daniel’s hand. No—
A hand appeared. It slowly pressed against the floor, stained with blood. And then his knees appeared, as he lowered himself down to the gap.
No.
Could he fit under? The gap wasn’t small—it was like the stall door to a bathroom. If he flattened himself against the floor… there’s a chance he could fit under.
I watched in horror as his stomach came into view. His blue Walmart vest, as he lowered his body to the floor. Then he pushed his arm under the gap and blindly swept it across the floor.
As if feeling for us.
This is it. We’re going to die.
And then he lowered his head.
His face. Oh, God, there was something horribly wrong with his face. He smiled up at us with a smile that was impossibly wide, showing off blood-stained teeth. His skin was so pale it was nearly blue. And his eyes… they were milky white, without pupils or irises.
I opened my mouth to scream—
“Attention shoppers,” the voice began overhead.
No no no—
“Please make your way to the front of the store and make your final purchases. We will be closing in ten minutes.”
… What?
And then—before I could react—something unseen jerked the man out of view.
A strange dragging sound followed. As if someone was dragging his body out of the dressing room area. I stared at the door, shaking, as Tucker’s cries rang in my ears.
But he didn’t come back.
And within ten minutes, the usual hubbub of Walmart returned. Voices. Footsteps. Shopping cart wheels rolling along the floor.
Shaking, I finally got up and unlocked the door.
The store looked completely normal. People were lined up at the cash registers, placing their goods on the conveyor belts. Employees were scanning tags, printing receipts. People walked towards the glass doors, and when they did—they slid open.
As we slowly walked towards the exit, I spotted the older man who’d warned us about the tornado earlier. “What—what was that?” I asked, unable to keep my voice from shaking.
He shrugged. “I guess the tornado missed us! What a miracle, huh?”
Giving us a smile, he disappeared out the glass doors and into the night.
Thank you for reading my story! The novel version of this story comes out in 6 days! Preorder link here.

I have adhd which i take meds for my doctor said i have some form of ocd and I am diagnosed w GAD and depressed to. Im not sure how sensory processing is related to these but recently I’ve been having a lot more trouble with coping with certain sensory things. Like at night when I haven’t showered right before bed but after work and ive been in my pjs for a few hours l end up wanting to rip them and my skin off and burn them and find a new skin and clothes to put on. Hearing someone chew out loud and smack their lips and tongue UGHHH makes me want to run them over with a bus. When my hair is touching my face very lightly I want to rip it all out. If Im feeling slightly more tired or irritated than usual then everything feels a lot more heightened and in my face in an antagonizing way. I’m not sure why I feel so much anger and hurt and anxiety and pain when I’m seemingly just processing the simple world around me. It’s confusing and frustrating. I’m not sure how to bring it up with my doctor because I don’t know how to explain what these weird little things make me feel but it’s awful.

My parents died when I was young. The house fire that murdered them also destroyed everything we owned, every picture of our family, every heirloom and memento. To this day, I can barely remember my parents’ faces. Thinking back, it all seems like a blur, like a ghostly image of a mother and father without features or expressions. My brother Alex, who was only nine at the time, managed to carry me out of the house. He was hailed as a hero, and the story played on the local news. It managed to draw attention from a small local toy company called Bittaker’s Toys.
They had a small orphanage next to their toy company. In hindsight, it was probably all some tax-deductible scheme to make themselves look good, among other things. I remember a police officer with a tight, grim expression on his face coming into my hospital room after the fire. His dark eyes looked ancient and haunted, as if he were a hundred years old.
“I’ve got good news, little buddy,” he said, patting me on the shoulder without smiling. I glanced up at his flat eyes. They shone like new copper pennies. “Larry Bittaker himself has volunteered to adopt you and your brother. You’re going to live at Toyland!” I frowned at him, a small boy in an extremely large hospital bed. I drew the sheets up to my neck pensively, using them like a shield.
“What’s… what’s a ‘Toyland’?” I asked nervously. I looked at his uniform, seeing a nametag there reading, “Sergeant Bowley.” I somehow knew at that moment that I would see this man again. I don’t know if I believe in psychic powers or anything, but I had a sudden flash of pale, bloodless faces, men shouting in the middle of chaos and bloodshed, and a blurry silhouette of someone in a police uniform running in with dead eyes. I blinked, and it evaporated like a mirage.
“You’ve never heard of Toyland?” Sergeant Bowley asked, staring at me without blinking. “It’s a place where kids go when they don’t have… a family, I guess. All the kids there are adopted or orphans. They have a private school and everything. It’s really one of the best-case scenarios for you and your brother.” I nodded. Even as a small child, a creeping suspicion came over my mind. Was he trying to convince me, or himself?
***
We were taken to Toyland the next morning. Sergeant Bowley drove my brother Alex and me to the orphanage. As we pulled in, Alex put a thin arm around my shoulders, hugging me close.
“It’s gonna be OK, Herbie,” he whispered. His blue eyes were wide and uncertain as we surveyed the complex. He was scarecrow thin, and the trauma and horror of the last few days still gleamed darkly behind his eyes.
The complex was ringed by a black, metal fence with sharp points like spears emerging from the top. A brightly-colored building loomed overhead, its walls covered with fluorescent day-glo murals showing happy children playing with toys that were alive. Roosters and lizards with humanoid bodies and sharp, pointed teeth played on playgrounds in the murals with smiling children. Teddy bears with very human-like fingers and toes climbed trees with excited children. The children’s mouths were all open and silently wailing- though whether in screams of pleasure or of fear, I couldn’t yet tell.
The building had countless smoke-stacks on the top of its flat roof, each billowing out clouds of black smoke into the air. An enormous sign on top of the building read “BITTAKER’S TOYS”.
A black-clad guard in a guardhouse ambled slowly over to the car, leaning down close to Sergeant Bowley’s face. I couldn’t hear what they said through the divider in the police car, but the guard had a grim, set expression on his face. As the gate slid open and we drove past, I realized the guard had what looked like a small arsenal on his belt, holding two pistols and dozens of magazines.
“Why does that man need so many guns?” I whispered in the back seat. Alex shook his gaunt face.
“They probably just keep a lot of important stuff and money here,” he said.
“Oh,” I muttered as the police car slowly pulled up to the entrance, a tall archway with two swinging glass doors. All along the front of the building stood tall animatronic creatures, six-foot-tall teddy bears with huge, black eyes and humanoid roosters with blade-like combs extending from the tops of their pointed heads. They all stood as straight as soldiers, staring ahead in an unblinking, statuesque way. I don’t know if they were supposed to look cute, but as a young boy, they appeared terrifying and unnatural. Their mouths stayed straight and expressionless. They had an eerie uncanny valley feeling to them.
“What are those?” I asked Sergeant Bowley as he opened the door. Alex and I slid out, carrying all of our worldly goods in two small plastic bags. The fire destroyed everything we owned except for the clothes on our back, after all. Some charity had given us toiletries and a couple pairs of clothes. I held it protectively against my body, afraid that someone would try to take away the last possessions I owned.
“You don’t know the Smiling Buddies? About Berry Bear and Mino the Minotaur?” he said, surprised. “Well, you’ll learn about them inside. I thought kids loved that kind of stuff.”
“Our parents didn’t really give us a lot of toys,” Alex said. “They used to send us outside to play.”
“Ah, well, that’s the best way,” Sergeant Bowley said in a fatherly manner as he escorted us toward the building. Once we had gotten to within a few steps of the bizarre animal mannequins, they came to life.
Their eyes suddenly glowed with a pale, inner light that stayed far down in the black orbs with an eerie cataract gleam. With a whirring of gears and a grinding of metal, their heads ratcheted over to face us. Their slack, vacant mouths erupted into wide grins, showing square teeth that gleamed with a silvery luster. Their movements were simultaneous and choreographed, like those of synchronized dancers.
As one, they raised their right hands into the air in what was probably intended to be a wave, but in reality looked more like a Sieg Heil salute. Their mouths chattered as a song rang out all around us from hidden speakers, but the movements of their jaws didn’t exactly match the words, increasing the uncanny valley feeling of the entire thing. They started dancing and twisting their bodies in a strange kind of jitterbug dance.
“Welcome, girls and boys!
Come to the land of toys,
Where nothing is as it seems.
A place where a child’s dreams
Can rise to the purest joys,
And where the nighttime screams
Of the shadow that destroys
Fade away to nothing,
Leaving only the smiles of spring.”
As soon as the song had finished, the animatronics’ arms fell limply down, the light in their eyes fading back to blackness. With a final whirring of gears, they straightened back up into their soldierly postures and went quiet. Silently, the three of us went inside.
***
We walked through the swinging doors into a lobby where the floor was paved with black-and-white squares of gleaming marble. Long wooden tables ran perpendicular to the front wall, covered with computer monitors and TVs. Huge statues of toys surrounded us on all sides.
An extremely fat man stood in the center of the empty chamber. His clothes were all bright day-glo colors, fluorescent orange pants and a bright yellow button-up long-sleeve shirt that showed the curly hairs on his chest. His head was shaved, and his scalp gleamed like a fleshy egg.
“Welcome, kiddos!” he said in a high-pitched, feminine wheeze as sweat trickled down his beet-red face. He took a step toward us. His lips were thick and moist. In a moment, they rose into a wide smile, showing off rows of small, straight teeth. “My name is Larry Bittaker, and this is my toy company. But it is so much more! It’s a place where sweet little children like you can live and grow- forever, if you want.”
Slowly, Larry Bittaker lowered his fat face until it was only inches from mine. His many chins jiggled as he knelt down. His stubby, sweaty fingers came up and pinched my cheek. His beady, blue eyes reminded me of those of a pig. We stared at each other for a long moment. Then he turned to Alex, ruffling his overgrown bowl cut.
“OK, kids, be safe. Larry, I’m gonna get taking off,” Sergeant Bowley said, slowly stepping back from the pig-like man kneeling on the ground in front of him. “Here’s my card, by the way, if you kids ever need anything.” He reached into his pocket, giving me and Alex copies of his business cards. I stared down at it, confused. No one had ever given me a business card before. It had his name and private phone number on it.
I heard Sergeant Bowley turn and walk out the door. And then Alex and I were alone with the toymaker.
***
Larry Bittaker seemed to be the only one in the warehouse. We walked past corridors filled with empty toys and staring animatronics. Larry filled the air with his ramblings the entire time.
“You kids are really going to love it here, I guarantee it,” he said with exuberance. “The other boys and girls are waiting for you downstairs. They’re so excited to see new friends come in!” A steep metal staircase spiraled down into the darkness. I grabbed Alex’s hand nervously, looking up at Larry Bittaker. “Well, go on, little ones!”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked in a small voice. Larry gave a boisterous laugh, his protuberant stomach jiggling like jello as his face grew even redder.
“Oh, no, no!” he said. “I don’t go down there! The little ones tend to smell like poverty.” His face drew close to mine. “In fact, I can smell it on you right here.” I backed up away from the strange man. Alex’s small face formed into a scowl.
“You can’t talk to us like that,” he said defiantly, puffing his little bird chest out.
“If you two little shitheads don’t start going down those stairs now, I’ll throw you down them,” Larry Bittaker growled, his porcine face melting into a sneer. The mask of the genial businessman had disappeared, and something cold and dark revealed itself.
Glancing backwards, Alex and I started down the spiral staircase, descending into the blackness.
***
At the bottom of the stairs, I saw the gleam of blood-red emergency lights. They illuminated what looked like an enormous maze. As soon as we had gone past the threshold, a hidden door slammed behind us, cutting off the last of the white light overhead. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the metal door smashed closed with a ringing sound.
“What is this place?” Alex asked in a small voice. I followed close at his heels. “Where are the other kids?”
“Maybe they’re all hiding,” I said hopefully. “Maybe it’s all a big game.” Alex looked doubtful.
“Come on, Herbie,” he said with deep-socketed eyes the color of ashes. “Nowhere to go but forward.” The silence rang out around us like a shriek. I could hear my own heart beating loudly in my ears. The floor was covered in steel-gray carpets, the walls painted jet-black. Incandescent bulbs with dark red glass hung overhead, spread out every twenty feet or so on the dark ceiling. They cast the maze in a bloody glow.
We moved forward randomly, taking turns to the left and right. There were strange obstacles in the maze: enormous chairs that looked like they were made for giants, mannequins with glowing red eyes and smooth, plastic faces, and more animatronic characters, pigs and bulls and bears and roosters. The animatronics stayed still and dead, to my immense relief. As we wandered forward, I suddenly remembered something a math teacher had told me a couple years ago, in what felt like another life.
“There is a way to get out of any maze without retracing your steps,” the man in glasses had said at the front of the classroom, drawing a small maze as an example on the whiteboard. “All you have to do is take your left hand, hold it out to your side, and keep it against the wall. Keep going forward in the maze with your hand kept against the same wall, and eventually you will find the exit.”
I told Alex about this. A wan smile spread across his lips.
“That’s a good idea,” he said. “I never heard that before. But what if there’s no exit?” I shrugged.
“Then who cares? We’ll still explore the entire maze, as long as you keep one hand on the wall,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the right hand or left hand, just so long as you keep following the same wall. Because a maze is really just one big wall, if you think about it.” We continued forward around a corner. I nearly tripped over something laying sprawled across the hallway. I looked down and repressed a scream welling up in my throat.
The mummified body of a child lay there. I couldn’t tell how long it had been dead, or even whether it was a boy or a girl. The white, beady eyes of rats scurried around it, ripping off strips of the dessicated, jerky-like flesh of the corpse. The clothes were threadbare, worn away over time. The eyes stared vacantly up, as white as river stones. A smell like cinnamon and sulfur rose from the dead body.
“Oh my God,” I said, a rising sense of panic gripping my heart. I felt it like a tightening noose around my neck. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Alex didn’t say anything. I heard him hyperventilating by my side under the crimson glow of the maze’s lights.
“Did you hear something?” he whispered. I was staring down at the mummified corpse, transfixed. My head jerked up as if with a will of its own. I scanned the shadowy maze. Far down the corridor, I saw the gleaming of animatronic eyes, the faded cataract light deep in the sockets. With a quiet whirring of gears, they crept towards us. A few steps later, the silhouette passed under the bare red bulb overhead.
It was an animatronic minotaur with two black, bulging eyes. Its horns curved gracefully outwards. A smile like a razor split its metal face. There was a squealing of metal as the jaw unhinged, roaring with an ear-splitting electronic distortion. It had legs like a rhinoceros, thick and rounded. Its silver skin reflected the bloody light as it towered over us, staring down with a ferocious hatred.
“Run!” Alex screamed, turning and sprinting away. I followed close at his heels, afraid to look back. The ground shook as the metal behemoth’s heavy legs slammed the ground. We took random passageways in the maze, trying to lose the minotaur, but I could hear its heavy footsteps drawing closer by the second.
Up ahead, I saw a ventilation shaft with the grill removed. A woman’s face peered out, looking emaciated and filthy.
“In here!” she hissed through gritted teeth, her words barely audible over the cacophony of the minotaur’s roaring. Her dirt-streaked face drew back, disappearing in the shadows. Alex was right behind me, and at that moment, I believed we would both make it.
I leapt forwards, crawling on my hands and knees into the shaft. The thin metal echoed crazily all around me as I frantically pulled myself forward. Once I had gone forwards a few steps, I looked back, expecting to see Alex right behind me. He was still at the entrance, however. His eyes were wide and terrified. They met mine for a brief moment. He tried to crawl in, to pull himself forward. His small hands furiously dragged over the smooth metal. Then I saw two sharp, steel hands reach down behind him, grabbing his legs. He screamed, reaching forwards toward me. I tried to take his hand, but I was too far away.
A single heartbeat later, he got dragged backwards at a tremendous speed. A mixture of agony and mortal terror roiled across his face.
“Alex!” I cried, crawling forwards. “Come back!” A spatter of blood exploded over the wall and end of the shaft. I turned away, crying. I heard screaming behind me, a sound like bones shattering, something slamming over and over against a wall.
I crawled forwards through the vents, seeing the bare silhouette of a woman ahead of me, not realizing that I would never see my brother again.
***
“Come on!” the woman whispered. The vent turned at a ninety-degree angle. It was so dark I could barely tell where I was going. I felt my way slowly forward with my hands like a blind person.
“But what about my brother?” I asked. “We need to go back! He could be hurt!” The woman didn’t say anything. I heard her breathing quicken.
“Just follow me, kid,” she said. “It’s right up here…” I crawled forward, seeing a square of red light ahead of us. We came out into some kind of office room. A computer and phone sat on a desk next to crates full of protein bars and bottled waters. Posters covered the walls, many of them with bizarre slogans and pictures.
“FEED THE BEAR,” read one, next to a cartoon picture of an enormous animatronic bear ripping an elderly woman to pieces. Her walker lay next to her, a crumpled heap of useless metal. Her intestines were uncoiled around her like a den of red snakes.
The woman turned to me, her brown eyes set and grim. She had streaks of what looked like dried blood running through her black hair and covering her face.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”
“My name’s Sarah,” she said, “and I used to work for Mr. Bittaker. I helped him build this entire underground complex. This place is massive. There’s rooms of food and water, monitoring rooms, miles of mazes and probably lots of stuff I don’t know about.”
“My name’s Herbie. So why are you here?” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“When he started to go insane, when I realized he was going to put children down there as prisoners in some evil game, I tried to blow the whistle, tried to get the authorities involved. But he was bribing some government officials, and before I knew it, men in black ski masks broke into my house and injected me with some sort of drug. I blacked out and woke up here a few weeks ago,” Sarah said.
“We need to get out of here. We need to find Alex and tell people what’s happening,” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“No one will believe us,” she responded. I turned away, disgusted by her pessimism. She was supposed to be an adult, yet it seemed like she had given up all hope. I walked over to the computer, trying to turn it on. To my surprise, the screen came on with a white glare.
“Hey, the computer works!” I said. “Maybe we can use it to call for help!” I lifted the phone to my ear, hearing a dial tone. “And the phone works! We can get out of here!”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Sarah said glumly. I ignored her, fishing in my pocket for the card Sergeant Bowley had given me. Squinting down at it, I dialed his number. After a few rings, he picked up.
“Hello?” he said. In a small voice, I answered.
“Hi, this is Herbie. Please, sir, you need to come back and help me. The man locked me and my brother underground, and I think my brother is hurt. There’s more people down here, too, I don’t know how many, and I saw a dead body…”
“Kid, is this a prank?” Sergeant Bowley said quickly. “Do you know making false reports is a crime?” Sarah grabbed the phone from me.
“This isn’t a prank,” she pleaded. “Please, you need to come back to Bittaker’s Toys and get us out of here. Larry Bittaker is insane…” The phone line abruptly cut off. The power to the room went out, plunging us into darkness. Over some hidden speakers, I heard Larry Bittaker’s voice ring out.
“That’s cheating,” he growled petulantly in his high-pitched voice, sounding like an angry child. “No communication with the outside world. Do you know what happens to cheaters?” Sarah grabbed my hand in the darkness, whispering in my ear.
“Follow me,” she said. “I know this place pretty well.” She led me forward. A few moments later, I heard a doorknob turn. Red light flooded into the office room. We were looking at a half-constructed part of the maze. Wires and pipes in the wall hung exposed, and only the wooden framework of the walls had been put up.
“What is this?” I asked. “Is the maze not done?”
“The maze is never done,” Sarah answered. “Larry kept expanding it, changing contractors so that no one would know the entire maze besides him. I think he’ll keep building it until the day he dies. He has enough money, anyway.”
As quietly as we could, we moved forward through the maze, trying to put some distance between ourselves and the office room. We turned a corner with Sarah in the lead. I heard the sudden whirring of gears and a half-choked scream ahead of me. A moment later, I felt Sarah’s body smash into mine. Warm blood splashed my face as I fell backwards on the ground. The wind whooshed out of my lungs. I looked up, seeing Sarah’s pale, blood-spattered face staring up in horror a few feet ahead of me.
A furry paw with claws like railroad spikes came down, slashing her across the chest. Drops of blood covered the walls and floor as Sarah thrashed and screamed, the animatronic bear standing over her with a dried up husk of a face. Its fur had mostly fallen out, leaving a pale, gray bear skull leering in its place.
“I’m Berry Bear!” it growled in a low, slowed-down voice. “I want to be friends with you forever! Let me give you a hug!” Sarah tried to crawl away as the jet-black eyes of Berry Bear narrowed. Its jaw chattered as silver needles of teeth glistened in its metal mouth. Her eyes met mine for a moment, filled with ineffable pain and terror. I backpedaled away, scooting across the floor, my mind shell-shocked and unbelieving.
The heavy body of Berry Bear came down with a force like a battering ram. Its metal arms slammed into Sarah’s back, crushing her chest. Bone chips and gore exploded from her body. Blood poured out of her mouth in a rushing torrent. Her eyes rolled up in her head as she gurgled on the ground.
Berry Bear’s head ratcheted to face me, blood streaming down its face and arms. Its teeth chattered faster, as if to show its increasing excitement and bloodlust.
“Can I give you a hug?” it growled.
“No! Get away from me!” I screamed, pushing myself up to my feet. I ran randomly through the maze, hearing the heavy steps of Berry Bear close at my heels. At the far end of the half-constructed maze, I saw a thick wooden door.
“Help me!” I shrieked over and over. To my surprise, I heard a response from the other side of the door.
“Stand back, kid!” a deep voice said, then there was a gunshot. The door’s lock exploded inwards. The door shot open as someone kicked it, flinging it hard against the wall. I saw Sergeant Bowley standing there, his pistol drawn, his dead eyes flickering over the maze. They widened when they saw Berry Bear only a few footsteps behind me, closing the distance with every second.
“Get down!” he cried. I threw myself on the ground without question as he opened fire. The ear-splitting racket of the gunshots reverberated all across the maze. I continued crawling forwards towards Sergeant Bowley, towards safety. I saw more cops running in behind him.
I looked up, seeing Berry Bear sprinting towards Sergeant Bowley in a blur, its animatronic face half blown away and revealing the steel underneath. It had an insane expression of manic bloodlust. It raised its right hand, the gleaming metal claws hanging over Sergeant Bowley’s head. Everything seemed to freeze then. Sergeant Bowley had his gun up. Frantically, he fired one last shot at the bear’s face.
The top of its head blew off as its claw came down, ripping through Sergeant Bowley’s head with a crack. The scalp hung down in a sick, wet flap as his brains leaked out of his broken skull. Slowly, he fell back. Berry Bear followed him down with a tearing of metal and a slowing of gears and its mechanical voice. The heavy animatronic landed on top of Sergeant Bowley’s body, crushing him instantly. A spreading pool of blood marked the site of the horrific murder.
***
Screaming and crying, I crawled towards the police. They carried me outside, under a sky the color of wet cotton. I breathed in the clean air, looking around frantically for any signs of my brother. The police carried other emaciated, frightened-looking children out of the maze, but not Alex.
They put me in the back of a car and drove me out of there, away from Bittaker’s Toys and the nightmares that waited underneath.

My parents died when I was young. The house fire that murdered them also destroyed everything we owned, every picture of our family, every heirloom and memento. To this day, I can barely remember my parents’ faces. Thinking back, it all seems like a blur, like a ghostly image of a mother and father without features or expressions. My brother Alex, who was only nine at the time, managed to carry me out of the house. He was hailed as a hero, and the story played on the local news. It managed to draw attention from a small local toy company called Bittaker’s Toys.
They had a small orphanage next to their toy company. In hindsight, it was probably all some tax-deductible scheme to make themselves look good, among other things. I remember a police officer with a tight, grim expression on his face coming into my hospital room after the fire. His dark eyes looked ancient and haunted, as if he were a hundred years old.
“I’ve got good news, little buddy,” he said, patting me on the shoulder without smiling. I glanced up at his flat eyes. They shone like new copper pennies. “Larry Bittaker himself has volunteered to adopt you and your brother. You’re going to live at Toyland!” I frowned at him, a small boy in an extremely large hospital bed. I drew the sheets up to my neck pensively, using them like a shield.
“What’s… what’s a ‘Toyland’?” I asked nervously. I looked at his uniform, seeing a nametag there reading, “Sergeant Bowley.” I somehow knew at that moment that I would see this man again. I don’t know if I believe in psychic powers or anything, but I had a sudden flash of pale, bloodless faces, men shouting in the middle of chaos and bloodshed, and a blurry silhouette of someone in a police uniform running in with dead eyes. I blinked, and it evaporated like a mirage.
“You’ve never heard of Toyland?” Sergeant Bowley asked, staring at me without blinking. “It’s a place where kids go when they don’t have… a family, I guess. All the kids there are adopted or orphans. They have a private school and everything. It’s really one of the best-case scenarios for you and your brother.” I nodded. Even as a small child, a creeping suspicion came over my mind. Was he trying to convince me, or himself?
***
We were taken to Toyland the next morning. Sergeant Bowley drove my brother Alex and me to the orphanage. As we pulled in, Alex put a thin arm around my shoulders, hugging me close.
“It’s gonna be OK, Herbie,” he whispered. His blue eyes were wide and uncertain as we surveyed the complex. He was scarecrow thin, and the trauma and horror of the last few days still gleamed darkly behind his eyes.
The complex was ringed by a black, metal fence with sharp points like spears emerging from the top. A brightly-colored building loomed overhead, its walls covered with fluorescent day-glo murals showing happy children playing with toys that were alive. Roosters and lizards with humanoid bodies and sharp, pointed teeth played on playgrounds in the murals with smiling children. Teddy bears with very human-like fingers and toes climbed trees with excited children. The children’s mouths were all open and silently wailing- though whether in screams of pleasure or of fear, I couldn’t yet tell.
The building had countless smoke-stacks on the top of its flat roof, each billowing out clouds of black smoke into the air. An enormous sign on top of the building read “BITTAKER’S TOYS”.
A black-clad guard in a guardhouse ambled slowly over to the car, leaning down close to Sergeant Bowley’s face. I couldn’t hear what they said through the divider in the police car, but the guard had a grim, set expression on his face. As the gate slid open and we drove past, I realized the guard had what looked like a small arsenal on his belt, holding two pistols and dozens of magazines.
“Why does that man need so many guns?” I whispered in the back seat. Alex shook his gaunt face.
“They probably just keep a lot of important stuff and money here,” he said.
“Oh,” I muttered as the police car slowly pulled up to the entrance, a tall archway with two swinging glass doors. All along the front of the building stood tall animatronic creatures, six-foot-tall teddy bears with huge, black eyes and humanoid roosters with blade-like combs extending from the tops of their pointed heads. They all stood as straight as soldiers, staring ahead in an unblinking, statuesque way. I don’t know if they were supposed to look cute, but as a young boy, they appeared terrifying and unnatural. Their mouths stayed straight and expressionless. They had an eerie uncanny valley feeling to them.
“What are those?” I asked Sergeant Bowley as he opened the door. Alex and I slid out, carrying all of our worldly goods in two small plastic bags. The fire destroyed everything we owned except for the clothes on our back, after all. Some charity had given us toiletries and a couple pairs of clothes. I held it protectively against my body, afraid that someone would try to take away the last possessions I owned.
“You don’t know the Smiling Buddies? About Berry Bear and Mino the Minotaur?” he said, surprised. “Well, you’ll learn about them inside. I thought kids loved that kind of stuff.”
“Our parents didn’t really give us a lot of toys,” Alex said. “They used to send us outside to play.”
“Ah, well, that’s the best way,” Sergeant Bowley said in a fatherly manner as he escorted us toward the building. Once we had gotten to within a few steps of the bizarre animal mannequins, they came to life.
Their eyes suddenly glowed with a pale, inner light that stayed far down in the black orbs with an eerie cataract gleam. With a whirring of gears and a grinding of metal, their heads ratcheted over to face us. Their slack, vacant mouths erupted into wide grins, showing square teeth that gleamed with a silvery luster. Their movements were simultaneous and choreographed, like those of synchronized dancers.
As one, they raised their right hands into the air in what was probably intended to be a wave, but in reality looked more like a Sieg Heil salute. Their mouths chattered as a song rang out all around us from hidden speakers, but the movements of their jaws didn’t exactly match the words, increasing the uncanny valley feeling of the entire thing. They started dancing and twisting their bodies in a strange kind of jitterbug dance.
“Welcome, girls and boys!
Come to the land of toys,
Where nothing is as it seems.
A place where a child’s dreams
Can rise to the purest joys,
And where the nighttime screams
Of the shadow that destroys
Fade away to nothing,
Leaving only the smiles of spring.”
As soon as the song had finished, the animatronics’ arms fell limply down, the light in their eyes fading back to blackness. With a final whirring of gears, they straightened back up into their soldierly postures and went quiet. Silently, the three of us went inside.
***
We walked through the swinging doors into a lobby where the floor was paved with black-and-white squares of gleaming marble. Long wooden tables ran perpendicular to the front wall, covered with computer monitors and TVs. Huge statues of toys surrounded us on all sides.
An extremely fat man stood in the center of the empty chamber. His clothes were all bright day-glo colors, fluorescent orange pants and a bright yellow button-up long-sleeve shirt that showed the curly hairs on his chest. His head was shaved, and his scalp gleamed like a fleshy egg.
“Welcome, kiddos!” he said in a high-pitched, feminine wheeze as sweat trickled down his beet-red face. He took a step toward us. His lips were thick and moist. In a moment, they rose into a wide smile, showing off rows of small, straight teeth. “My name is Larry Bittaker, and this is my toy company. But it is so much more! It’s a place where sweet little children like you can live and grow- forever, if you want.”
Slowly, Larry Bittaker lowered his fat face until it was only inches from mine. His many chins jiggled as he knelt down. His stubby, sweaty fingers came up and pinched my cheek. His beady, blue eyes reminded me of those of a pig. We stared at each other for a long moment. Then he turned to Alex, ruffling his overgrown bowl cut.
“OK, kids, be safe. Larry, I’m gonna get taking off,” Sergeant Bowley said, slowly stepping back from the pig-like man kneeling on the ground in front of him. “Here’s my card, by the way, if you kids ever need anything.” He reached into his pocket, giving me and Alex copies of his business cards. I stared down at it, confused. No one had ever given me a business card before. It had his name and private phone number on it.
I heard Sergeant Bowley turn and walk out the door. And then Alex and I were alone with the toymaker.
***
Larry Bittaker seemed to be the only one in the warehouse. We walked past corridors filled with empty toys and staring animatronics. Larry filled the air with his ramblings the entire time.
“You kids are really going to love it here, I guarantee it,” he said with exuberance. “The other boys and girls are waiting for you downstairs. They’re so excited to see new friends come in!” A steep metal staircase spiraled down into the darkness. I grabbed Alex’s hand nervously, looking up at Larry Bittaker. “Well, go on, little ones!”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked in a small voice. Larry gave a boisterous laugh, his protuberant stomach jiggling like jello as his face grew even redder.
“Oh, no, no!” he said. “I don’t go down there! The little ones tend to smell like poverty.” His face drew close to mine. “In fact, I can smell it on you right here.” I backed up away from the strange man. Alex’s small face formed into a scowl.
“You can’t talk to us like that,” he said defiantly, puffing his little bird chest out.
“If you two little shitheads don’t start going down those stairs now, I’ll throw you down them,” Larry Bittaker growled, his porcine face melting into a sneer. The mask of the genial businessman had disappeared, and something cold and dark revealed itself.
Glancing backwards, Alex and I started down the spiral staircase, descending into the blackness.
***
At the bottom of the stairs, I saw the gleam of blood-red emergency lights. They illuminated what looked like an enormous maze. As soon as we had gone past the threshold, a hidden door slammed behind us, cutting off the last of the white light overhead. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the metal door smashed closed with a ringing sound.
“What is this place?” Alex asked in a small voice. I followed close at his heels. “Where are the other kids?”
“Maybe they’re all hiding,” I said hopefully. “Maybe it’s all a big game.” Alex looked doubtful.
“Come on, Herbie,” he said with deep-socketed eyes the color of ashes. “Nowhere to go but forward.” The silence rang out around us like a shriek. I could hear my own heart beating loudly in my ears. The floor was covered in steel-gray carpets, the walls painted jet-black. Incandescent bulbs with dark red glass hung overhead, spread out every twenty feet or so on the dark ceiling. They cast the maze in a bloody glow.
We moved forward randomly, taking turns to the left and right. There were strange obstacles in the maze: enormous chairs that looked like they were made for giants, mannequins with glowing red eyes and smooth, plastic faces, and more animatronic characters, pigs and bulls and bears and roosters. The animatronics stayed still and dead, to my immense relief. As we wandered forward, I suddenly remembered something a math teacher had told me a couple years ago, in what felt like another life.
“There is a way to get out of any maze without retracing your steps,” the man in glasses had said at the front of the classroom, drawing a small maze as an example on the whiteboard. “All you have to do is take your left hand, hold it out to your side, and keep it against the wall. Keep going forward in the maze with your hand kept against the same wall, and eventually you will find the exit.”
I told Alex about this. A wan smile spread across his lips.
“That’s a good idea,” he said. “I never heard that before. But what if there’s no exit?” I shrugged.
“Then who cares? We’ll still explore the entire maze, as long as you keep one hand on the wall,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the right hand or left hand, just so long as you keep following the same wall. Because a maze is really just one big wall, if you think about it.” We continued forward around a corner. I nearly tripped over something laying sprawled across the hallway. I looked down and repressed a scream welling up in my throat.
The mummified body of a child lay there. I couldn’t tell how long it had been dead, or even whether it was a boy or a girl. The white, beady eyes of rats scurried around it, ripping off strips of the dessicated, jerky-like flesh of the corpse. The clothes were threadbare, worn away over time. The eyes stared vacantly up, as white as river stones. A smell like cinnamon and sulfur rose from the dead body.
“Oh my God,” I said, a rising sense of panic gripping my heart. I felt it like a tightening noose around my neck. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Alex didn’t say anything. I heard him hyperventilating by my side under the crimson glow of the maze’s lights.
“Did you hear something?” he whispered. I was staring down at the mummified corpse, transfixed. My head jerked up as if with a will of its own. I scanned the shadowy maze. Far down the corridor, I saw the gleaming of animatronic eyes, the faded cataract light deep in the sockets. With a quiet whirring of gears, they crept towards us. A few steps later, the silhouette passed under the bare red bulb overhead.
It was an animatronic minotaur with two black, bulging eyes. Its horns curved gracefully outwards. A smile like a razor split its metal face. There was a squealing of metal as the jaw unhinged, roaring with an ear-splitting electronic distortion. It had legs like a rhinoceros, thick and rounded. Its silver skin reflected the bloody light as it towered over us, staring down with a ferocious hatred.
“Run!” Alex screamed, turning and sprinting away. I followed close at his heels, afraid to look back. The ground shook as the metal behemoth’s heavy legs slammed the ground. We took random passageways in the maze, trying to lose the minotaur, but I could hear its heavy footsteps drawing closer by the second.
Up ahead, I saw a ventilation shaft with the grill removed. A woman’s face peered out, looking emaciated and filthy.
“In here!” she hissed through gritted teeth, her words barely audible over the cacophony of the minotaur’s roaring. Her dirt-streaked face drew back, disappearing in the shadows. Alex was right behind me, and at that moment, I believed we would both make it.
I leapt forwards, crawling on my hands and knees into the shaft. The thin metal echoed crazily all around me as I frantically pulled myself forward. Once I had gone forwards a few steps, I looked back, expecting to see Alex right behind me. He was still at the entrance, however. His eyes were wide and terrified. They met mine for a brief moment. He tried to crawl in, to pull himself forward. His small hands furiously dragged over the smooth metal. Then I saw two sharp, steel hands reach down behind him, grabbing his legs. He screamed, reaching forwards toward me. I tried to take his hand, but I was too far away.
A single heartbeat later, he got dragged backwards at a tremendous speed. A mixture of agony and mortal terror roiled across his face.
“Alex!” I cried, crawling forwards. “Come back!” A spatter of blood exploded over the wall and end of the shaft. I turned away, crying. I heard screaming behind me, a sound like bones shattering, something slamming over and over against a wall.
I crawled forwards through the vents, seeing the bare silhouette of a woman ahead of me, not realizing that I would never see my brother again.
***
“Come on!” the woman whispered. The vent turned at a ninety-degree angle. It was so dark I could barely tell where I was going. I felt my way slowly forward with my hands like a blind person.
“But what about my brother?” I asked. “We need to go back! He could be hurt!” The woman didn’t say anything. I heard her breathing quicken.
“Just follow me, kid,” she said. “It’s right up here…” I crawled forward, seeing a square of red light ahead of us. We came out into some kind of office room. A computer and phone sat on a desk next to crates full of protein bars and bottled waters. Posters covered the walls, many of them with bizarre slogans and pictures.
“FEED THE BEAR,” read one, next to a cartoon picture of an enormous animatronic bear ripping an elderly woman to pieces. Her walker lay next to her, a crumpled heap of useless metal. Her intestines were uncoiled around her like a den of red snakes.
The woman turned to me, her brown eyes set and grim. She had streaks of what looked like dried blood running through her black hair and covering her face.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”
“My name’s Sarah,” she said, “and I used to work for Mr. Bittaker. I helped him build this entire underground complex. This place is massive. There’s rooms of food and water, monitoring rooms, miles of mazes and probably lots of stuff I don’t know about.”
“My name’s Herbie. So why are you here?” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“When he started to go insane, when I realized he was going to put children down there as prisoners in some evil game, I tried to blow the whistle, tried to get the authorities involved. But he was bribing some government officials, and before I knew it, men in black ski masks broke into my house and injected me with some sort of drug. I blacked out and woke up here a few weeks ago,” Sarah said.
“We need to get out of here. We need to find Alex and tell people what’s happening,” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“No one will believe us,” she responded. I turned away, disgusted by her pessimism. She was supposed to be an adult, yet it seemed like she had given up all hope. I walked over to the computer, trying to turn it on. To my surprise, the screen came on with a white glare.
“Hey, the computer works!” I said. “Maybe we can use it to call for help!” I lifted the phone to my ear, hearing a dial tone. “And the phone works! We can get out of here!”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Sarah said glumly. I ignored her, fishing in my pocket for the card Sergeant Bowley had given me. Squinting down at it, I dialed his number. After a few rings, he picked up.
“Hello?” he said. In a small voice, I answered.
“Hi, this is Herbie. Please, sir, you need to come back and help me. The man locked me and my brother underground, and I think my brother is hurt. There’s more people down here, too, I don’t know how many, and I saw a dead body…”
“Kid, is this a prank?” Sergeant Bowley said quickly. “Do you know making false reports is a crime?” Sarah grabbed the phone from me.
“This isn’t a prank,” she pleaded. “Please, you need to come back to Bittaker’s Toys and get us out of here. Larry Bittaker is insane…” The phone line abruptly cut off. The power to the room went out, plunging us into darkness. Over some hidden speakers, I heard Larry Bittaker’s voice ring out.
“That’s cheating,” he growled petulantly in his high-pitched voice, sounding like an angry child. “No communication with the outside world. Do you know what happens to cheaters?” Sarah grabbed my hand in the darkness, whispering in my ear.
“Follow me,” she said. “I know this place pretty well.” She led me forward. A few moments later, I heard a doorknob turn. Red light flooded into the office room. We were looking at a half-constructed part of the maze. Wires and pipes in the wall hung exposed, and only the wooden framework of the walls had been put up.
“What is this?” I asked. “Is the maze not done?”
“The maze is never done,” Sarah answered. “Larry kept expanding it, changing contractors so that no one would know the entire maze besides him. I think he’ll keep building it until the day he dies. He has enough money, anyway.”
As quietly as we could, we moved forward through the maze, trying to put some distance between ourselves and the office room. We turned a corner with Sarah in the lead. I heard the sudden whirring of gears and a half-choked scream ahead of me. A moment later, I felt Sarah’s body smash into mine. Warm blood splashed my face as I fell backwards on the ground. The wind whooshed out of my lungs. I looked up, seeing Sarah’s pale, blood-spattered face staring up in horror a few feet ahead of me.
A furry paw with claws like railroad spikes came down, slashing her across the chest. Drops of blood covered the walls and floor as Sarah thrashed and screamed, the animatronic bear standing over her with a dried up husk of a face. Its fur had mostly fallen out, leaving a pale, gray bear skull leering in its place.
“I’m Berry Bear!” it growled in a low, slowed-down voice. “I want to be friends with you forever! Let me give you a hug!” Sarah tried to crawl away as the jet-black eyes of Berry Bear narrowed. Its jaw chattered as silver needles of teeth glistened in its metal mouth. Her eyes met mine for a moment, filled with ineffable pain and terror. I backpedaled away, scooting across the floor, my mind shell-shocked and unbelieving.
The heavy body of Berry Bear came down with a force like a battering ram. Its metal arms slammed into Sarah’s back, crushing her chest. Bone chips and gore exploded from her body. Blood poured out of her mouth in a rushing torrent. Her eyes rolled up in her head as she gurgled on the ground.
Berry Bear’s head ratcheted to face me, blood streaming down its face and arms. Its teeth chattered faster, as if to show its increasing excitement and bloodlust.
“Can I give you a hug?” it growled.
“No! Get away from me!” I screamed, pushing myself up to my feet. I ran randomly through the maze, hearing the heavy steps of Berry Bear close at my heels. At the far end of the half-constructed maze, I saw a thick wooden door.
“Help me!” I shrieked over and over. To my surprise, I heard a response from the other side of the door.
“Stand back, kid!” a deep voice said, then there was a gunshot. The door’s lock exploded inwards. The door shot open as someone kicked it, flinging it hard against the wall. I saw Sergeant Bowley standing there, his pistol drawn, his dead eyes flickering over the maze. They widened when they saw Berry Bear only a few footsteps behind me, closing the distance with every second.
“Get down!” he cried. I threw myself on the ground without question as he opened fire. The ear-splitting racket of the gunshots reverberated all across the maze. I continued crawling forwards towards Sergeant Bowley, towards safety. I saw more cops running in behind him.
I looked up, seeing Berry Bear sprinting towards Sergeant Bowley in a blur, its animatronic face half blown away and revealing the steel underneath. It had an insane expression of manic bloodlust. It raised its right hand, the gleaming metal claws hanging over Sergeant Bowley’s head. Everything seemed to freeze then. Sergeant Bowley had his gun up. Frantically, he fired one last shot at the bear’s face.
The top of its head blew off as its claw came down, ripping through Sergeant Bowley’s head with a crack. The scalp hung down in a sick, wet flap as his brains leaked out of his broken skull. Slowly, he fell back. Berry Bear followed him down with a tearing of metal and a slowing of gears and its mechanical voice. The heavy animatronic landed on top of Sergeant Bowley’s body, crushing him instantly. A spreading pool of blood marked the site of the horrific murder.
***
Screaming and crying, I crawled towards the police. They carried me outside, under a sky the color of wet cotton. I breathed in the clean air, looking around frantically for any signs of my brother. The police carried other emaciated, frightened-looking children out of the maze, but not Alex.
They put me in the back of a car and drove me out of there, away from Bittaker’s Toys and the nightmares that waited underneath.

My parents died when I was young. The house fire that murdered them also destroyed everything we owned, every picture of our family, every heirloom and memento. To this day, I can barely remember my parents’ faces. Thinking back, it all seems like a blur, like a ghostly image of a mother and father without features or expressions. My brother Alex, who was only nine at the time, managed to carry me out of the house. He was hailed as a hero, and the story played on the local news. It managed to draw attention from a small local toy company called Bittaker’s Toys.
They had a small orphanage next to their toy company. In hindsight, it was probably all some tax-deductible scheme to make themselves look good, among other things. I remember a police officer with a tight, grim expression on his face coming into my hospital room after the fire. His dark eyes looked ancient and haunted, as if he were a hundred years old.
“I’ve got good news, little buddy,” he said, patting me on the shoulder without smiling. I glanced up at his flat eyes. They shone like new copper pennies. “Larry Bittaker himself has volunteered to adopt you and your brother. You’re going to live at Toyland!” I frowned at him, a small boy in an extremely large hospital bed. I drew the sheets up to my neck pensively, using them like a shield.
“What’s… what’s a ‘Toyland’?” I asked nervously. I looked at his uniform, seeing a nametag there reading, “Sergeant Bowley.” I somehow knew at that moment that I would see this man again. I don’t know if I believe in psychic powers or anything, but I had a sudden flash of pale, bloodless faces, men shouting in the middle of chaos and bloodshed, and a blurry silhouette of someone in a police uniform running in with dead eyes. I blinked, and it evaporated like a mirage.
“You’ve never heard of Toyland?” Sergeant Bowley asked, staring at me without blinking. “It’s a place where kids go when they don’t have… a family, I guess. All the kids there are adopted or orphans. They have a private school and everything. It’s really one of the best-case scenarios for you and your brother.” I nodded. Even as a small child, a creeping suspicion came over my mind. Was he trying to convince me, or himself?
***
We were taken to Toyland the next morning. Sergeant Bowley drove my brother Alex and me to the orphanage. As we pulled in, Alex put a thin arm around my shoulders, hugging me close.
“It’s gonna be OK, Herbie,” he whispered. His blue eyes were wide and uncertain as we surveyed the complex. He was scarecrow thin, and the trauma and horror of the last few days still gleamed darkly behind his eyes.
The complex was ringed by a black, metal fence with sharp points like spears emerging from the top. A brightly-colored building loomed overhead, its walls covered with fluorescent day-glo murals showing happy children playing with toys that were alive. Roosters and lizards with humanoid bodies and sharp, pointed teeth played on playgrounds in the murals with smiling children. Teddy bears with very human-like fingers and toes climbed trees with excited children. The children’s mouths were all open and silently wailing- though whether in screams of pleasure or of fear, I couldn’t yet tell.
The building had countless smoke-stacks on the top of its flat roof, each billowing out clouds of black smoke into the air. An enormous sign on top of the building read “BITTAKER’S TOYS”.
A black-clad guard in a guardhouse ambled slowly over to the car, leaning down close to Sergeant Bowley’s face. I couldn’t hear what they said through the divider in the police car, but the guard had a grim, set expression on his face. As the gate slid open and we drove past, I realized the guard had what looked like a small arsenal on his belt, holding two pistols and dozens of magazines.
“Why does that man need so many guns?” I whispered in the back seat. Alex shook his gaunt face.
“They probably just keep a lot of important stuff and money here,” he said.
“Oh,” I muttered as the police car slowly pulled up to the entrance, a tall archway with two swinging glass doors. All along the front of the building stood tall animatronic creatures, six-foot-tall teddy bears with huge, black eyes and humanoid roosters with blade-like combs extending from the tops of their pointed heads. They all stood as straight as soldiers, staring ahead in an unblinking, statuesque way. I don’t know if they were supposed to look cute, but as a young boy, they appeared terrifying and unnatural. Their mouths stayed straight and expressionless. They had an eerie uncanny valley feeling to them.
“What are those?” I asked Sergeant Bowley as he opened the door. Alex and I slid out, carrying all of our worldly goods in two small plastic bags. The fire destroyed everything we owned except for the clothes on our back, after all. Some charity had given us toiletries and a couple pairs of clothes. I held it protectively against my body, afraid that someone would try to take away the last possessions I owned.
“You don’t know the Smiling Buddies? About Berry Bear and Mino the Minotaur?” he said, surprised. “Well, you’ll learn about them inside. I thought kids loved that kind of stuff.”
“Our parents didn’t really give us a lot of toys,” Alex said. “They used to send us outside to play.”
“Ah, well, that’s the best way,” Sergeant Bowley said in a fatherly manner as he escorted us toward the building. Once we had gotten to within a few steps of the bizarre animal mannequins, they came to life.
Their eyes suddenly glowed with a pale, inner light that stayed far down in the black orbs with an eerie cataract gleam. With a whirring of gears and a grinding of metal, their heads ratcheted over to face us. Their slack, vacant mouths erupted into wide grins, showing square teeth that gleamed with a silvery luster. Their movements were simultaneous and choreographed, like those of synchronized dancers.
As one, they raised their right hands into the air in what was probably intended to be a wave, but in reality looked more like a Sieg Heil salute. Their mouths chattered as a song rang out all around us from hidden speakers, but the movements of their jaws didn’t exactly match the words, increasing the uncanny valley feeling of the entire thing. They started dancing and twisting their bodies in a strange kind of jitterbug dance.
“Welcome, girls and boys!
Come to the land of toys,
Where nothing is as it seems.
A place where a child’s dreams
Can rise to the purest joys,
And where the nighttime screams
Of the shadow that destroys
Fade away to nothing,
Leaving only the smiles of spring.”
As soon as the song had finished, the animatronics’ arms fell limply down, the light in their eyes fading back to blackness. With a final whirring of gears, they straightened back up into their soldierly postures and went quiet. Silently, the three of us went inside.
***
We walked through the swinging doors into a lobby where the floor was paved with black-and-white squares of gleaming marble. Long wooden tables ran perpendicular to the front wall, covered with computer monitors and TVs. Huge statues of toys surrounded us on all sides.
An extremely fat man stood in the center of the empty chamber. His clothes were all bright day-glo colors, fluorescent orange pants and a bright yellow button-up long-sleeve shirt that showed the curly hairs on his chest. His head was shaved, and his scalp gleamed like a fleshy egg.
“Welcome, kiddos!” he said in a high-pitched, feminine wheeze as sweat trickled down his beet-red face. He took a step toward us. His lips were thick and moist. In a moment, they rose into a wide smile, showing off rows of small, straight teeth. “My name is Larry Bittaker, and this is my toy company. But it is so much more! It’s a place where sweet little children like you can live and grow- forever, if you want.”
Slowly, Larry Bittaker lowered his fat face until it was only inches from mine. His many chins jiggled as he knelt down. His stubby, sweaty fingers came up and pinched my cheek. His beady, blue eyes reminded me of those of a pig. We stared at each other for a long moment. Then he turned to Alex, ruffling his overgrown bowl cut.
“OK, kids, be safe. Larry, I’m gonna get taking off,” Sergeant Bowley said, slowly stepping back from the pig-like man kneeling on the ground in front of him. “Here’s my card, by the way, if you kids ever need anything.” He reached into his pocket, giving me and Alex copies of his business cards. I stared down at it, confused. No one had ever given me a business card before. It had his name and private phone number on it.
I heard Sergeant Bowley turn and walk out the door. And then Alex and I were alone with the toymaker.
***
Larry Bittaker seemed to be the only one in the warehouse. We walked past corridors filled with empty toys and staring animatronics. Larry filled the air with his ramblings the entire time.
“You kids are really going to love it here, I guarantee it,” he said with exuberance. “The other boys and girls are waiting for you downstairs. They’re so excited to see new friends come in!” A steep metal staircase spiraled down into the darkness. I grabbed Alex’s hand nervously, looking up at Larry Bittaker. “Well, go on, little ones!”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked in a small voice. Larry gave a boisterous laugh, his protuberant stomach jiggling like jello as his face grew even redder.
“Oh, no, no!” he said. “I don’t go down there! The little ones tend to smell like poverty.” His face drew close to mine. “In fact, I can smell it on you right here.” I backed up away from the strange man. Alex’s small face formed into a scowl.
“You can’t talk to us like that,” he said defiantly, puffing his little bird chest out.
“If you two little shitheads don’t start going down those stairs now, I’ll throw you down them,” Larry Bittaker growled, his porcine face melting into a sneer. The mask of the genial businessman had disappeared, and something cold and dark revealed itself.
Glancing backwards, Alex and I started down the spiral staircase, descending into the blackness.
***
At the bottom of the stairs, I saw the gleam of blood-red emergency lights. They illuminated what looked like an enormous maze. As soon as we had gone past the threshold, a hidden door slammed behind us, cutting off the last of the white light overhead. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the metal door smashed closed with a ringing sound.
“What is this place?” Alex asked in a small voice. I followed close at his heels. “Where are the other kids?”
“Maybe they’re all hiding,” I said hopefully. “Maybe it’s all a big game.” Alex looked doubtful.
“Come on, Herbie,” he said with deep-socketed eyes the color of ashes. “Nowhere to go but forward.” The silence rang out around us like a shriek. I could hear my own heart beating loudly in my ears. The floor was covered in steel-gray carpets, the walls painted jet-black. Incandescent bulbs with dark red glass hung overhead, spread out every twenty feet or so on the dark ceiling. They cast the maze in a bloody glow.
We moved forward randomly, taking turns to the left and right. There were strange obstacles in the maze: enormous chairs that looked like they were made for giants, mannequins with glowing red eyes and smooth, plastic faces, and more animatronic characters, pigs and bulls and bears and roosters. The animatronics stayed still and dead, to my immense relief. As we wandered forward, I suddenly remembered something a math teacher had told me a couple years ago, in what felt like another life.
“There is a way to get out of any maze without retracing your steps,” the man in glasses had said at the front of the classroom, drawing a small maze as an example on the whiteboard. “All you have to do is take your left hand, hold it out to your side, and keep it against the wall. Keep going forward in the maze with your hand kept against the same wall, and eventually you will find the exit.”
I told Alex about this. A wan smile spread across his lips.
“That’s a good idea,” he said. “I never heard that before. But what if there’s no exit?” I shrugged.
“Then who cares? We’ll still explore the entire maze, as long as you keep one hand on the wall,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the right hand or left hand, just so long as you keep following the same wall. Because a maze is really just one big wall, if you think about it.” We continued forward around a corner. I nearly tripped over something laying sprawled across the hallway. I looked down and repressed a scream welling up in my throat.
The mummified body of a child lay there. I couldn’t tell how long it had been dead, or even whether it was a boy or a girl. The white, beady eyes of rats scurried around it, ripping off strips of the dessicated, jerky-like flesh of the corpse. The clothes were threadbare, worn away over time. The eyes stared vacantly up, as white as river stones. A smell like cinnamon and sulfur rose from the dead body.
“Oh my God,” I said, a rising sense of panic gripping my heart. I felt it like a tightening noose around my neck. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Alex didn’t say anything. I heard him hyperventilating by my side under the crimson glow of the maze’s lights.
“Did you hear something?” he whispered. I was staring down at the mummified corpse, transfixed. My head jerked up as if with a will of its own. I scanned the shadowy maze. Far down the corridor, I saw the gleaming of animatronic eyes, the faded cataract light deep in the sockets. With a quiet whirring of gears, they crept towards us. A few steps later, the silhouette passed under the bare red bulb overhead.
It was an animatronic minotaur with two black, bulging eyes. Its horns curved gracefully outwards. A smile like a razor split its metal face. There was a squealing of metal as the jaw unhinged, roaring with an ear-splitting electronic distortion. It had legs like a rhinoceros, thick and rounded. Its silver skin reflected the bloody light as it towered over us, staring down with a ferocious hatred.
“Run!” Alex screamed, turning and sprinting away. I followed close at his heels, afraid to look back. The ground shook as the metal behemoth’s heavy legs slammed the ground. We took random passageways in the maze, trying to lose the minotaur, but I could hear its heavy footsteps drawing closer by the second.
Up ahead, I saw a ventilation shaft with the grill removed. A woman’s face peered out, looking emaciated and filthy.
“In here!” she hissed through gritted teeth, her words barely audible over the cacophony of the minotaur’s roaring. Her dirt-streaked face drew back, disappearing in the shadows. Alex was right behind me, and at that moment, I believed we would both make it.
I leapt forwards, crawling on my hands and knees into the shaft. The thin metal echoed crazily all around me as I frantically pulled myself forward. Once I had gone forwards a few steps, I looked back, expecting to see Alex right behind me. He was still at the entrance, however. His eyes were wide and terrified. They met mine for a brief moment. He tried to crawl in, to pull himself forward. His small hands furiously dragged over the smooth metal. Then I saw two sharp, steel hands reach down behind him, grabbing his legs. He screamed, reaching forwards toward me. I tried to take his hand, but I was too far away.
A single heartbeat later, he got dragged backwards at a tremendous speed. A mixture of agony and mortal terror roiled across his face.
“Alex!” I cried, crawling forwards. “Come back!” A spatter of blood exploded over the wall and end of the shaft. I turned away, crying. I heard screaming behind me, a sound like bones shattering, something slamming over and over against a wall.
I crawled forwards through the vents, seeing the bare silhouette of a woman ahead of me, not realizing that I would never see my brother again.
***
“Come on!” the woman whispered. The vent turned at a ninety-degree angle. It was so dark I could barely tell where I was going. I felt my way slowly forward with my hands like a blind person.
“But what about my brother?” I asked. “We need to go back! He could be hurt!” The woman didn’t say anything. I heard her breathing quicken.
“Just follow me, kid,” she said. “It’s right up here…” I crawled forward, seeing a square of red light ahead of us. We came out into some kind of office room. A computer and phone sat on a desk next to crates full of protein bars and bottled waters. Posters covered the walls, many of them with bizarre slogans and pictures.
“FEED THE BEAR,” read one, next to a cartoon picture of an enormous animatronic bear ripping an elderly woman to pieces. Her walker lay next to her, a crumpled heap of useless metal. Her intestines were uncoiled around her like a den of red snakes.
The woman turned to me, her brown eyes set and grim. She had streaks of what looked like dried blood running through her black hair and covering her face.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”
“My name’s Sarah,” she said, “and I used to work for Mr. Bittaker. I helped him build this entire underground complex. This place is massive. There’s rooms of food and water, monitoring rooms, miles of mazes and probably lots of stuff I don’t know about.”
“My name’s Herbie. So why are you here?” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“When he started to go insane, when I realized he was going to put children down there as prisoners in some evil game, I tried to blow the whistle, tried to get the authorities involved. But he was bribing some government officials, and before I knew it, men in black ski masks broke into my house and injected me with some sort of drug. I blacked out and woke up here a few weeks ago,” Sarah said.
“We need to get out of here. We need to find Alex and tell people what’s happening,” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“No one will believe us,” she responded. I turned away, disgusted by her pessimism. She was supposed to be an adult, yet it seemed like she had given up all hope. I walked over to the computer, trying to turn it on. To my surprise, the screen came on with a white glare.
“Hey, the computer works!” I said. “Maybe we can use it to call for help!” I lifted the phone to my ear, hearing a dial tone. “And the phone works! We can get out of here!”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Sarah said glumly. I ignored her, fishing in my pocket for the card Sergeant Bowley had given me. Squinting down at it, I dialed his number. After a few rings, he picked up.
“Hello?” he said. In a small voice, I answered.
“Hi, this is Herbie. Please, sir, you need to come back and help me. The man locked me and my brother underground, and I think my brother is hurt. There’s more people down here, too, I don’t know how many, and I saw a dead body…”
“Kid, is this a prank?” Sergeant Bowley said quickly. “Do you know making false reports is a crime?” Sarah grabbed the phone from me.
“This isn’t a prank,” she pleaded. “Please, you need to come back to Bittaker’s Toys and get us out of here. Larry Bittaker is insane…” The phone line abruptly cut off. The power to the room went out, plunging us into darkness. Over some hidden speakers, I heard Larry Bittaker’s voice ring out.
“That’s cheating,” he growled petulantly in his high-pitched voice, sounding like an angry child. “No communication with the outside world. Do you know what happens to cheaters?” Sarah grabbed my hand in the darkness, whispering in my ear.
“Follow me,” she said. “I know this place pretty well.” She led me forward. A few moments later, I heard a doorknob turn. Red light flooded into the office room. We were looking at a half-constructed part of the maze. Wires and pipes in the wall hung exposed, and only the wooden framework of the walls had been put up.
“What is this?” I asked. “Is the maze not done?”
“The maze is never done,” Sarah answered. “Larry kept expanding it, changing contractors so that no one would know the entire maze besides him. I think he’ll keep building it until the day he dies. He has enough money, anyway.”
As quietly as we could, we moved forward through the maze, trying to put some distance between ourselves and the office room. We turned a corner with Sarah in the lead. I heard the sudden whirring of gears and a half-choked scream ahead of me. A moment later, I felt Sarah’s body smash into mine. Warm blood splashed my face as I fell backwards on the ground. The wind whooshed out of my lungs. I looked up, seeing Sarah’s pale, blood-spattered face staring up in horror a few feet ahead of me.
A furry paw with claws like railroad spikes came down, slashing her across the chest. Drops of blood covered the walls and floor as Sarah thrashed and screamed, the animatronic bear standing over her with a dried up husk of a face. Its fur had mostly fallen out, leaving a pale, gray bear skull leering in its place.
“I’m Berry Bear!” it growled in a low, slowed-down voice. “I want to be friends with you forever! Let me give you a hug!” Sarah tried to crawl away as the jet-black eyes of Berry Bear narrowed. Its jaw chattered as silver needles of teeth glistened in its metal mouth. Her eyes met mine for a moment, filled with ineffable pain and terror. I backpedaled away, scooting across the floor, my mind shell-shocked and unbelieving.
The heavy body of Berry Bear came down with a force like a battering ram. Its metal arms slammed into Sarah’s back, crushing her chest. Bone chips and gore exploded from her body. Blood poured out of her mouth in a rushing torrent. Her eyes rolled up in her head as she gurgled on the ground.
Berry Bear’s head ratcheted to face me, blood streaming down its face and arms. Its teeth chattered faster, as if to show its increasing excitement and bloodlust.
“Can I give you a hug?” it growled.
“No! Get away from me!” I screamed, pushing myself up to my feet. I ran randomly through the maze, hearing the heavy steps of Berry Bear close at my heels. At the far end of the half-constructed maze, I saw a thick wooden door.
“Help me!” I shrieked over and over. To my surprise, I heard a response from the other side of the door.
“Stand back, kid!” a deep voice said, then there was a gunshot. The door’s lock exploded inwards. The door shot open as someone kicked it, flinging it hard against the wall. I saw Sergeant Bowley standing there, his pistol drawn, his dead eyes flickering over the maze. They widened when they saw Berry Bear only a few footsteps behind me, closing the distance with every second.
“Get down!” he cried. I threw myself on the ground without question as he opened fire. The ear-splitting racket of the gunshots reverberated all across the maze. I continued crawling forwards towards Sergeant Bowley, towards safety. I saw more cops running in behind him.
I looked up, seeing Berry Bear sprinting towards Sergeant Bowley in a blur, its animatronic face half blown away and revealing the steel underneath. It had an insane expression of manic bloodlust. It raised its right hand, the gleaming metal claws hanging over Sergeant Bowley’s head. Everything seemed to freeze then. Sergeant Bowley had his gun up. Frantically, he fired one last shot at the bear’s face.
The top of its head blew off as its claw came down, ripping through Sergeant Bowley’s head with a crack. The scalp hung down in a sick, wet flap as his brains leaked out of his broken skull. Slowly, he fell back. Berry Bear followed him down with a tearing of metal and a slowing of gears and its mechanical voice. The heavy animatronic landed on top of Sergeant Bowley’s body, crushing him instantly. A spreading pool of blood marked the site of the horrific murder.
***
Screaming and crying, I crawled towards the police. They carried me outside, under a sky the color of wet cotton. I breathed in the clean air, looking around frantically for any signs of my brother. The police carried other emaciated, frightened-looking children out of the maze, but not Alex.
They put me in the back of a car and drove me out of there, away from Bittaker’s Toys and the nightmares that waited underneath.

My parents died when I was young. The house fire that murdered them also destroyed everything we owned, every picture of our family, every heirloom and memento. To this day, I can barely remember my parents’ faces. Thinking back, it all seems like a blur, like a ghostly image of a mother and father without features or expressions. My brother Alex, who was only nine at the time, managed to carry me out of the house. He was hailed as a hero, and the story played on the local news. It managed to draw attention from a small local toy company called Bittaker’s Toys.
They had a small orphanage next to their toy company. In hindsight, it was probably all some tax-deductible scheme to make themselves look good, among other things. I remember a police officer with a tight, grim expression on his face coming into my hospital room after the fire. His dark eyes looked ancient and haunted, as if he were a hundred years old.
“I’ve got good news, little buddy,” he said, patting me on the shoulder without smiling. I glanced up at his flat eyes. They shone like new copper pennies. “Larry Bittaker himself has volunteered to adopt you and your brother. You’re going to live at Toyland!” I frowned at him, a small boy in an extremely large hospital bed. I drew the sheets up to my neck pensively, using them like a shield.
“What’s… what’s a ‘Toyland’?” I asked nervously. I looked at his uniform, seeing a nametag there reading, “Sergeant Bowley.” I somehow knew at that moment that I would see this man again. I don’t know if I believe in psychic powers or anything, but I had a sudden flash of pale, bloodless faces, men shouting in the middle of chaos and bloodshed, and a blurry silhouette of someone in a police uniform running in with dead eyes. I blinked, and it evaporated like a mirage.
“You’ve never heard of Toyland?” Sergeant Bowley asked, staring at me without blinking. “It’s a place where kids go when they don’t have… a family, I guess. All the kids there are adopted or orphans. They have a private school and everything. It’s really one of the best-case scenarios for you and your brother.” I nodded. Even as a small child, a creeping suspicion came over my mind. Was he trying to convince me, or himself?
***
We were taken to Toyland the next morning. Sergeant Bowley drove my brother Alex and me to the orphanage. As we pulled in, Alex put a thin arm around my shoulders, hugging me close.
“It’s gonna be OK, Herbie,” he whispered. His blue eyes were wide and uncertain as we surveyed the complex. He was scarecrow thin, and the trauma and horror of the last few days still gleamed darkly behind his eyes.
The complex was ringed by a black, metal fence with sharp points like spears emerging from the top. A brightly-colored building loomed overhead, its walls covered with fluorescent day-glo murals showing happy children playing with toys that were alive. Roosters and lizards with humanoid bodies and sharp, pointed teeth played on playgrounds in the murals with smiling children. Teddy bears with very human-like fingers and toes climbed trees with excited children. The children’s mouths were all open and silently wailing- though whether in screams of pleasure or of fear, I couldn’t yet tell.
The building had countless smoke-stacks on the top of its flat roof, each billowing out clouds of black smoke into the air. An enormous sign on top of the building read “BITTAKER’S TOYS”.
A black-clad guard in a guardhouse ambled slowly over to the car, leaning down close to Sergeant Bowley’s face. I couldn’t hear what they said through the divider in the police car, but the guard had a grim, set expression on his face. As the gate slid open and we drove past, I realized the guard had what looked like a small arsenal on his belt, holding two pistols and dozens of magazines.
“Why does that man need so many guns?” I whispered in the back seat. Alex shook his gaunt face.
“They probably just keep a lot of important stuff and money here,” he said.
“Oh,” I muttered as the police car slowly pulled up to the entrance, a tall archway with two swinging glass doors. All along the front of the building stood tall animatronic creatures, six-foot-tall teddy bears with huge, black eyes and humanoid roosters with blade-like combs extending from the tops of their pointed heads. They all stood as straight as soldiers, staring ahead in an unblinking, statuesque way. I don’t know if they were supposed to look cute, but as a young boy, they appeared terrifying and unnatural. Their mouths stayed straight and expressionless. They had an eerie uncanny valley feeling to them.
“What are those?” I asked Sergeant Bowley as he opened the door. Alex and I slid out, carrying all of our worldly goods in two small plastic bags. The fire destroyed everything we owned except for the clothes on our back, after all. Some charity had given us toiletries and a couple pairs of clothes. I held it protectively against my body, afraid that someone would try to take away the last possessions I owned.
“You don’t know the Smiling Buddies? About Berry Bear and Mino the Minotaur?” he said, surprised. “Well, you’ll learn about them inside. I thought kids loved that kind of stuff.”
“Our parents didn’t really give us a lot of toys,” Alex said. “They used to send us outside to play.”
“Ah, well, that’s the best way,” Sergeant Bowley said in a fatherly manner as he escorted us toward the building. Once we had gotten to within a few steps of the bizarre animal mannequins, they came to life.
Their eyes suddenly glowed with a pale, inner light that stayed far down in the black orbs with an eerie cataract gleam. With a whirring of gears and a grinding of metal, their heads ratcheted over to face us. Their slack, vacant mouths erupted into wide grins, showing square teeth that gleamed with a silvery luster. Their movements were simultaneous and choreographed, like those of synchronized dancers.
As one, they raised their right hands into the air in what was probably intended to be a wave, but in reality looked more like a Sieg Heil salute. Their mouths chattered as a song rang out all around us from hidden speakers, but the movements of their jaws didn’t exactly match the words, increasing the uncanny valley feeling of the entire thing. They started dancing and twisting their bodies in a strange kind of jitterbug dance.
“Welcome, girls and boys!
Come to the land of toys,
Where nothing is as it seems.
A place where a child’s dreams
Can rise to the purest joys,
And where the nighttime screams
Of the shadow that destroys
Fade away to nothing,
Leaving only the smiles of spring.”
As soon as the song had finished, the animatronics’ arms fell limply down, the light in their eyes fading back to blackness. With a final whirring of gears, they straightened back up into their soldierly postures and went quiet. Silently, the three of us went inside.
***
We walked through the swinging doors into a lobby where the floor was paved with black-and-white squares of gleaming marble. Long wooden tables ran perpendicular to the front wall, covered with computer monitors and TVs. Huge statues of toys surrounded us on all sides.
An extremely fat man stood in the center of the empty chamber. His clothes were all bright day-glo colors, fluorescent orange pants and a bright yellow button-up long-sleeve shirt that showed the curly hairs on his chest. His head was shaved, and his scalp gleamed like a fleshy egg.
“Welcome, kiddos!” he said in a high-pitched, feminine wheeze as sweat trickled down his beet-red face. He took a step toward us. His lips were thick and moist. In a moment, they rose into a wide smile, showing off rows of small, straight teeth. “My name is Larry Bittaker, and this is my toy company. But it is so much more! It’s a place where sweet little children like you can live and grow- forever, if you want.”
Slowly, Larry Bittaker lowered his fat face until it was only inches from mine. His many chins jiggled as he knelt down. His stubby, sweaty fingers came up and pinched my cheek. His beady, blue eyes reminded me of those of a pig. We stared at each other for a long moment. Then he turned to Alex, ruffling his overgrown bowl cut.
“OK, kids, be safe. Larry, I’m gonna get taking off,” Sergeant Bowley said, slowly stepping back from the pig-like man kneeling on the ground in front of him. “Here’s my card, by the way, if you kids ever need anything.” He reached into his pocket, giving me and Alex copies of his business cards. I stared down at it, confused. No one had ever given me a business card before. It had his name and private phone number on it.
I heard Sergeant Bowley turn and walk out the door. And then Alex and I were alone with the toymaker.
***
Larry Bittaker seemed to be the only one in the warehouse. We walked past corridors filled with empty toys and staring animatronics. Larry filled the air with his ramblings the entire time.
“You kids are really going to love it here, I guarantee it,” he said with exuberance. “The other boys and girls are waiting for you downstairs. They’re so excited to see new friends come in!” A steep metal staircase spiraled down into the darkness. I grabbed Alex’s hand nervously, looking up at Larry Bittaker. “Well, go on, little ones!”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked in a small voice. Larry gave a boisterous laugh, his protuberant stomach jiggling like jello as his face grew even redder.
“Oh, no, no!” he said. “I don’t go down there! The little ones tend to smell like poverty.” His face drew close to mine. “In fact, I can smell it on you right here.” I backed up away from the strange man. Alex’s small face formed into a scowl.
“You can’t talk to us like that,” he said defiantly, puffing his little bird chest out.
“If you two little shitheads don’t start going down those stairs now, I’ll throw you down them,” Larry Bittaker growled, his porcine face melting into a sneer. The mask of the genial businessman had disappeared, and something cold and dark revealed itself.
Glancing backwards, Alex and I started down the spiral staircase, descending into the blackness.
***
At the bottom of the stairs, I saw the gleam of blood-red emergency lights. They illuminated what looked like an enormous maze. As soon as we had gone past the threshold, a hidden door slammed behind us, cutting off the last of the white light overhead. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the metal door smashed closed with a ringing sound.
“What is this place?” Alex asked in a small voice. I followed close at his heels. “Where are the other kids?”
“Maybe they’re all hiding,” I said hopefully. “Maybe it’s all a big game.” Alex looked doubtful.
“Come on, Herbie,” he said with deep-socketed eyes the color of ashes. “Nowhere to go but forward.” The silence rang out around us like a shriek. I could hear my own heart beating loudly in my ears. The floor was covered in steel-gray carpets, the walls painted jet-black. Incandescent bulbs with dark red glass hung overhead, spread out every twenty feet or so on the dark ceiling. They cast the maze in a bloody glow.
We moved forward randomly, taking turns to the left and right. There were strange obstacles in the maze: enormous chairs that looked like they were made for giants, mannequins with glowing red eyes and smooth, plastic faces, and more animatronic characters, pigs and bulls and bears and roosters. The animatronics stayed still and dead, to my immense relief. As we wandered forward, I suddenly remembered something a math teacher had told me a couple years ago, in what felt like another life.
“There is a way to get out of any maze without retracing your steps,” the man in glasses had said at the front of the classroom, drawing a small maze as an example on the whiteboard. “All you have to do is take your left hand, hold it out to your side, and keep it against the wall. Keep going forward in the maze with your hand kept against the same wall, and eventually you will find the exit.”
I told Alex about this. A wan smile spread across his lips.
“That’s a good idea,” he said. “I never heard that before. But what if there’s no exit?” I shrugged.
“Then who cares? We’ll still explore the entire maze, as long as you keep one hand on the wall,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the right hand or left hand, just so long as you keep following the same wall. Because a maze is really just one big wall, if you think about it.” We continued forward around a corner. I nearly tripped over something laying sprawled across the hallway. I looked down and repressed a scream welling up in my throat.
The mummified body of a child lay there. I couldn’t tell how long it had been dead, or even whether it was a boy or a girl. The white, beady eyes of rats scurried around it, ripping off strips of the dessicated, jerky-like flesh of the corpse. The clothes were threadbare, worn away over time. The eyes stared vacantly up, as white as river stones. A smell like cinnamon and sulfur rose from the dead body.
“Oh my God,” I said, a rising sense of panic gripping my heart. I felt it like a tightening noose around my neck. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Alex didn’t say anything. I heard him hyperventilating by my side under the crimson glow of the maze’s lights.
“Did you hear something?” he whispered. I was staring down at the mummified corpse, transfixed. My head jerked up as if with a will of its own. I scanned the shadowy maze. Far down the corridor, I saw the gleaming of animatronic eyes, the faded cataract light deep in the sockets. With a quiet whirring of gears, they crept towards us. A few steps later, the silhouette passed under the bare red bulb overhead.
It was an animatronic minotaur with two black, bulging eyes. Its horns curved gracefully outwards. A smile like a razor split its metal face. There was a squealing of metal as the jaw unhinged, roaring with an ear-splitting electronic distortion. It had legs like a rhinoceros, thick and rounded. Its silver skin reflected the bloody light as it towered over us, staring down with a ferocious hatred.
“Run!” Alex screamed, turning and sprinting away. I followed close at his heels, afraid to look back. The ground shook as the metal behemoth’s heavy legs slammed the ground. We took random passageways in the maze, trying to lose the minotaur, but I could hear its heavy footsteps drawing closer by the second.
Up ahead, I saw a ventilation shaft with the grill removed. A woman’s face peered out, looking emaciated and filthy.
“In here!” she hissed through gritted teeth, her words barely audible over the cacophony of the minotaur’s roaring. Her dirt-streaked face drew back, disappearing in the shadows. Alex was right behind me, and at that moment, I believed we would both make it.
I leapt forwards, crawling on my hands and knees into the shaft. The thin metal echoed crazily all around me as I frantically pulled myself forward. Once I had gone forwards a few steps, I looked back, expecting to see Alex right behind me. He was still at the entrance, however. His eyes were wide and terrified. They met mine for a brief moment. He tried to crawl in, to pull himself forward. His small hands furiously dragged over the smooth metal. Then I saw two sharp, steel hands reach down behind him, grabbing his legs. He screamed, reaching forwards toward me. I tried to take his hand, but I was too far away.
A single heartbeat later, he got dragged backwards at a tremendous speed. A mixture of agony and mortal terror roiled across his face.
“Alex!” I cried, crawling forwards. “Come back!” A spatter of blood exploded over the wall and end of the shaft. I turned away, crying. I heard screaming behind me, a sound like bones shattering, something slamming over and over against a wall.
I crawled forwards through the vents, seeing the bare silhouette of a woman ahead of me, not realizing that I would never see my brother again.
***
“Come on!” the woman whispered. The vent turned at a ninety-degree angle. It was so dark I could barely tell where I was going. I felt my way slowly forward with my hands like a blind person.
“But what about my brother?” I asked. “We need to go back! He could be hurt!” The woman didn’t say anything. I heard her breathing quicken.
“Just follow me, kid,” she said. “It’s right up here…” I crawled forward, seeing a square of red light ahead of us. We came out into some kind of office room. A computer and phone sat on a desk next to crates full of protein bars and bottled waters. Posters covered the walls, many of them with bizarre slogans and pictures.
“FEED THE BEAR,” read one, next to a cartoon picture of an enormous animatronic bear ripping an elderly woman to pieces. Her walker lay next to her, a crumpled heap of useless metal. Her intestines were uncoiled around her like a den of red snakes.
The woman turned to me, her brown eyes set and grim. She had streaks of what looked like dried blood running through her black hair and covering her face.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”
“My name’s Sarah,” she said, “and I used to work for Mr. Bittaker. I helped him build this entire underground complex. This place is massive. There’s rooms of food and water, monitoring rooms, miles of mazes and probably lots of stuff I don’t know about.”
“My name’s Herbie. So why are you here?” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“When he started to go insane, when I realized he was going to put children down there as prisoners in some evil game, I tried to blow the whistle, tried to get the authorities involved. But he was bribing some government officials, and before I knew it, men in black ski masks broke into my house and injected me with some sort of drug. I blacked out and woke up here a few weeks ago,” Sarah said.
“We need to get out of here. We need to find Alex and tell people what’s happening,” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“No one will believe us,” she responded. I turned away, disgusted by her pessimism. She was supposed to be an adult, yet it seemed like she had given up all hope. I walked over to the computer, trying to turn it on. To my surprise, the screen came on with a white glare.
“Hey, the computer works!” I said. “Maybe we can use it to call for help!” I lifted the phone to my ear, hearing a dial tone. “And the phone works! We can get out of here!”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Sarah said glumly. I ignored her, fishing in my pocket for the card Sergeant Bowley had given me. Squinting down at it, I dialed his number. After a few rings, he picked up.
“Hello?” he said. In a small voice, I answered.
“Hi, this is Herbie. Please, sir, you need to come back and help me. The man locked me and my brother underground, and I think my brother is hurt. There’s more people down here, too, I don’t know how many, and I saw a dead body…”
“Kid, is this a prank?” Sergeant Bowley said quickly. “Do you know making false reports is a crime?” Sarah grabbed the phone from me.
“This isn’t a prank,” she pleaded. “Please, you need to come back to Bittaker’s Toys and get us out of here. Larry Bittaker is insane…” The phone line abruptly cut off. The power to the room went out, plunging us into darkness. Over some hidden speakers, I heard Larry Bittaker’s voice ring out.
“That’s cheating,” he growled petulantly in his high-pitched voice, sounding like an angry child. “No communication with the outside world. Do you know what happens to cheaters?” Sarah grabbed my hand in the darkness, whispering in my ear.
“Follow me,” she said. “I know this place pretty well.” She led me forward. A few moments later, I heard a doorknob turn. Red light flooded into the office room. We were looking at a half-constructed part of the maze. Wires and pipes in the wall hung exposed, and only the wooden framework of the walls had been put up.
“What is this?” I asked. “Is the maze not done?”
“The maze is never done,” Sarah answered. “Larry kept expanding it, changing contractors so that no one would know the entire maze besides him. I think he’ll keep building it until the day he dies. He has enough money, anyway.”
As quietly as we could, we moved forward through the maze, trying to put some distance between ourselves and the office room. We turned a corner with Sarah in the lead. I heard the sudden whirring of gears and a half-choked scream ahead of me. A moment later, I felt Sarah’s body smash into mine. Warm blood splashed my face as I fell backwards on the ground. The wind whooshed out of my lungs. I looked up, seeing Sarah’s pale, blood-spattered face staring up in horror a few feet ahead of me.
A furry paw with claws like railroad spikes came down, slashing her across the chest. Drops of blood covered the walls and floor as Sarah thrashed and screamed, the animatronic bear standing over her with a dried up husk of a face. Its fur had mostly fallen out, leaving a pale, gray bear skull leering in its place.
“I’m Berry Bear!” it growled in a low, slowed-down voice. “I want to be friends with you forever! Let me give you a hug!” Sarah tried to crawl away as the jet-black eyes of Berry Bear narrowed. Its jaw chattered as silver needles of teeth glistened in its metal mouth. Her eyes met mine for a moment, filled with ineffable pain and terror. I backpedaled away, scooting across the floor, my mind shell-shocked and unbelieving.
The heavy body of Berry Bear came down with a force like a battering ram. Its metal arms slammed into Sarah’s back, crushing her chest. Bone chips and gore exploded from her body. Blood poured out of her mouth in a rushing torrent. Her eyes rolled up in her head as she gurgled on the ground.
Berry Bear’s head ratcheted to face me, blood streaming down its face and arms. Its teeth chattered faster, as if to show its increasing excitement and bloodlust.
“Can I give you a hug?” it growled.
“No! Get away from me!” I screamed, pushing myself up to my feet. I ran randomly through the maze, hearing the heavy steps of Berry Bear close at my heels. At the far end of the half-constructed maze, I saw a thick wooden door.
“Help me!” I shrieked over and over. To my surprise, I heard a response from the other side of the door.
“Stand back, kid!” a deep voice said, then there was a gunshot. The door’s lock exploded inwards. The door shot open as someone kicked it, flinging it hard against the wall. I saw Sergeant Bowley standing there, his pistol drawn, his dead eyes flickering over the maze. They widened when they saw Berry Bear only a few footsteps behind me, closing the distance with every second.
“Get down!” he cried. I threw myself on the ground without question as he opened fire. The ear-splitting racket of the gunshots reverberated all across the maze. I continued crawling forwards towards Sergeant Bowley, towards safety. I saw more cops running in behind him.
I looked up, seeing Berry Bear sprinting towards Sergeant Bowley in a blur, its animatronic face half blown away and revealing the steel underneath. It had an insane expression of manic bloodlust. It raised its right hand, the gleaming metal claws hanging over Sergeant Bowley’s head. Everything seemed to freeze then. Sergeant Bowley had his gun up. Frantically, he fired one last shot at the bear’s face.
The top of its head blew off as its claw came down, ripping through Sergeant Bowley’s head with a crack. The scalp hung down in a sick, wet flap as his brains leaked out of his broken skull. Slowly, he fell back. Berry Bear followed him down with a tearing of metal and a slowing of gears and its mechanical voice. The heavy animatronic landed on top of Sergeant Bowley’s body, crushing him instantly. A spreading pool of blood marked the site of the horrific murder.
***
Screaming and crying, I crawled towards the police. They carried me outside, under a sky the color of wet cotton. I breathed in the clean air, looking around frantically for any signs of my brother. The police carried other emaciated, frightened-looking children out of the maze, but not Alex.
They put me in the back of a car and drove me out of there, away from Bittaker’s Toys and the nightmares that waited underneath.

My parents died when I was young. The house fire that murdered them also destroyed everything we owned, every picture of our family, every heirloom and memento. To this day, I can barely remember my parents’ faces. Thinking back, it all seems like a blur, like a ghostly image of a mother and father without features or expressions. My brother Alex, who was only nine at the time, managed to carry me out of the house. He was hailed as a hero, and the story played on the local news. It managed to draw attention from a small local toy company called Bittaker’s Toys.
They had a small orphanage next to their toy company. In hindsight, it was probably all some tax-deductible scheme to make themselves look good, among other things. I remember a police officer with a tight, grim expression on his face coming into my hospital room after the fire. His dark eyes looked ancient and haunted, as if he were a hundred years old.
“I’ve got good news, little buddy,” he said, patting me on the shoulder without smiling. I glanced up at his flat eyes. They shone like new copper pennies. “Larry Bittaker himself has volunteered to adopt you and your brother. You’re going to live at Toyland!” I frowned at him, a small boy in an extremely large hospital bed. I drew the sheets up to my neck pensively, using them like a shield.
“What’s… what’s a ‘Toyland’?” I asked nervously. I looked at his uniform, seeing a nametag there reading, “Sergeant Bowley.” I somehow knew at that moment that I would see this man again. I don’t know if I believe in psychic powers or anything, but I had a sudden flash of pale, bloodless faces, men shouting in the middle of chaos and bloodshed, and a blurry silhouette of someone in a police uniform running in with dead eyes. I blinked, and it evaporated like a mirage.
“You’ve never heard of Toyland?” Sergeant Bowley asked, staring at me without blinking. “It’s a place where kids go when they don’t have… a family, I guess. All the kids there are adopted or orphans. They have a private school and everything. It’s really one of the best-case scenarios for you and your brother.” I nodded. Even as a small child, a creeping suspicion came over my mind. Was he trying to convince me, or himself?
***
We were taken to Toyland the next morning. Sergeant Bowley drove my brother Alex and me to the orphanage. As we pulled in, Alex put a thin arm around my shoulders, hugging me close.
“It’s gonna be OK, Herbie,” he whispered. His blue eyes were wide and uncertain as we surveyed the complex. He was scarecrow thin, and the trauma and horror of the last few days still gleamed darkly behind his eyes.
The complex was ringed by a black, metal fence with sharp points like spears emerging from the top. A brightly-colored building loomed overhead, its walls covered with fluorescent day-glo murals showing happy children playing with toys that were alive. Roosters and lizards with humanoid bodies and sharp, pointed teeth played on playgrounds in the murals with smiling children. Teddy bears with very human-like fingers and toes climbed trees with excited children. The children’s mouths were all open and silently wailing- though whether in screams of pleasure or of fear, I couldn’t yet tell.
The building had countless smoke-stacks on the top of its flat roof, each billowing out clouds of black smoke into the air. An enormous sign on top of the building read “BITTAKER’S TOYS”.
A black-clad guard in a guardhouse ambled slowly over to the car, leaning down close to Sergeant Bowley’s face. I couldn’t hear what they said through the divider in the police car, but the guard had a grim, set expression on his face. As the gate slid open and we drove past, I realized the guard had what looked like a small arsenal on his belt, holding two pistols and dozens of magazines.
“Why does that man need so many guns?” I whispered in the back seat. Alex shook his gaunt face.
“They probably just keep a lot of important stuff and money here,” he said.
“Oh,” I muttered as the police car slowly pulled up to the entrance, a tall archway with two swinging glass doors. All along the front of the building stood tall animatronic creatures, six-foot-tall teddy bears with huge, black eyes and humanoid roosters with blade-like combs extending from the tops of their pointed heads. They all stood as straight as soldiers, staring ahead in an unblinking, statuesque way. I don’t know if they were supposed to look cute, but as a young boy, they appeared terrifying and unnatural. Their mouths stayed straight and expressionless. They had an eerie uncanny valley feeling to them.
“What are those?” I asked Sergeant Bowley as he opened the door. Alex and I slid out, carrying all of our worldly goods in two small plastic bags. The fire destroyed everything we owned except for the clothes on our back, after all. Some charity had given us toiletries and a couple pairs of clothes. I held it protectively against my body, afraid that someone would try to take away the last possessions I owned.
“You don’t know the Smiling Buddies? About Berry Bear and Mino the Minotaur?” he said, surprised. “Well, you’ll learn about them inside. I thought kids loved that kind of stuff.”
“Our parents didn’t really give us a lot of toys,” Alex said. “They used to send us outside to play.”
“Ah, well, that’s the best way,” Sergeant Bowley said in a fatherly manner as he escorted us toward the building. Once we had gotten to within a few steps of the bizarre animal mannequins, they came to life.
Their eyes suddenly glowed with a pale, inner light that stayed far down in the black orbs with an eerie cataract gleam. With a whirring of gears and a grinding of metal, their heads ratcheted over to face us. Their slack, vacant mouths erupted into wide grins, showing square teeth that gleamed with a silvery luster. Their movements were simultaneous and choreographed, like those of synchronized dancers.
As one, they raised their right hands into the air in what was probably intended to be a wave, but in reality looked more like a Sieg Heil salute. Their mouths chattered as a song rang out all around us from hidden speakers, but the movements of their jaws didn’t exactly match the words, increasing the uncanny valley feeling of the entire thing. They started dancing and twisting their bodies in a strange kind of jitterbug dance.
“Welcome, girls and boys!
Come to the land of toys,
Where nothing is as it seems.
A place where a child’s dreams
Can rise to the purest joys,
And where the nighttime screams
Of the shadow that destroys
Fade away to nothing,
Leaving only the smiles of spring.”
As soon as the song had finished, the animatronics’ arms fell limply down, the light in their eyes fading back to blackness. With a final whirring of gears, they straightened back up into their soldierly postures and went quiet. Silently, the three of us went inside.
***
We walked through the swinging doors into a lobby where the floor was paved with black-and-white squares of gleaming marble. Long wooden tables ran perpendicular to the front wall, covered with computer monitors and TVs. Huge statues of toys surrounded us on all sides.
An extremely fat man stood in the center of the empty chamber. His clothes were all bright day-glo colors, fluorescent orange pants and a bright yellow button-up long-sleeve shirt that showed the curly hairs on his chest. His head was shaved, and his scalp gleamed like a fleshy egg.
“Welcome, kiddos!” he said in a high-pitched, feminine wheeze as sweat trickled down his beet-red face. He took a step toward us. His lips were thick and moist. In a moment, they rose into a wide smile, showing off rows of small, straight teeth. “My name is Larry Bittaker, and this is my toy company. But it is so much more! It’s a place where sweet little children like you can live and grow- forever, if you want.”
Slowly, Larry Bittaker lowered his fat face until it was only inches from mine. His many chins jiggled as he knelt down. His stubby, sweaty fingers came up and pinched my cheek. His beady, blue eyes reminded me of those of a pig. We stared at each other for a long moment. Then he turned to Alex, ruffling his overgrown bowl cut.
“OK, kids, be safe. Larry, I’m gonna get taking off,” Sergeant Bowley said, slowly stepping back from the pig-like man kneeling on the ground in front of him. “Here’s my card, by the way, if you kids ever need anything.” He reached into his pocket, giving me and Alex copies of his business cards. I stared down at it, confused. No one had ever given me a business card before. It had his name and private phone number on it.
I heard Sergeant Bowley turn and walk out the door. And then Alex and I were alone with the toymaker.
***
Larry Bittaker seemed to be the only one in the warehouse. We walked past corridors filled with empty toys and staring animatronics. Larry filled the air with his ramblings the entire time.
“You kids are really going to love it here, I guarantee it,” he said with exuberance. “The other boys and girls are waiting for you downstairs. They’re so excited to see new friends come in!” A steep metal staircase spiraled down into the darkness. I grabbed Alex’s hand nervously, looking up at Larry Bittaker. “Well, go on, little ones!”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked in a small voice. Larry gave a boisterous laugh, his protuberant stomach jiggling like jello as his face grew even redder.
“Oh, no, no!” he said. “I don’t go down there! The little ones tend to smell like poverty.” His face drew close to mine. “In fact, I can smell it on you right here.” I backed up away from the strange man. Alex’s small face formed into a scowl.
“You can’t talk to us like that,” he said defiantly, puffing his little bird chest out.
“If you two little shitheads don’t start going down those stairs now, I’ll throw you down them,” Larry Bittaker growled, his porcine face melting into a sneer. The mask of the genial businessman had disappeared, and something cold and dark revealed itself.
Glancing backwards, Alex and I started down the spiral staircase, descending into the blackness.
***
At the bottom of the stairs, I saw the gleam of blood-red emergency lights. They illuminated what looked like an enormous maze. As soon as we had gone past the threshold, a hidden door slammed behind us, cutting off the last of the white light overhead. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the metal door smashed closed with a ringing sound.
“What is this place?” Alex asked in a small voice. I followed close at his heels. “Where are the other kids?”
“Maybe they’re all hiding,” I said hopefully. “Maybe it’s all a big game.” Alex looked doubtful.
“Come on, Herbie,” he said with deep-socketed eyes the color of ashes. “Nowhere to go but forward.” The silence rang out around us like a shriek. I could hear my own heart beating loudly in my ears. The floor was covered in steel-gray carpets, the walls painted jet-black. Incandescent bulbs with dark red glass hung overhead, spread out every twenty feet or so on the dark ceiling. They cast the maze in a bloody glow.
We moved forward randomly, taking turns to the left and right. There were strange obstacles in the maze: enormous chairs that looked like they were made for giants, mannequins with glowing red eyes and smooth, plastic faces, and more animatronic characters, pigs and bulls and bears and roosters. The animatronics stayed still and dead, to my immense relief. As we wandered forward, I suddenly remembered something a math teacher had told me a couple years ago, in what felt like another life.
“There is a way to get out of any maze without retracing your steps,” the man in glasses had said at the front of the classroom, drawing a small maze as an example on the whiteboard. “All you have to do is take your left hand, hold it out to your side, and keep it against the wall. Keep going forward in the maze with your hand kept against the same wall, and eventually you will find the exit.”
I told Alex about this. A wan smile spread across his lips.
“That’s a good idea,” he said. “I never heard that before. But what if there’s no exit?” I shrugged.
“Then who cares? We’ll still explore the entire maze, as long as you keep one hand on the wall,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the right hand or left hand, just so long as you keep following the same wall. Because a maze is really just one big wall, if you think about it.” We continued forward around a corner. I nearly tripped over something laying sprawled across the hallway. I looked down and repressed a scream welling up in my throat.
The mummified body of a child lay there. I couldn’t tell how long it had been dead, or even whether it was a boy or a girl. The white, beady eyes of rats scurried around it, ripping off strips of the dessicated, jerky-like flesh of the corpse. The clothes were threadbare, worn away over time. The eyes stared vacantly up, as white as river stones. A smell like cinnamon and sulfur rose from the dead body.
“Oh my God,” I said, a rising sense of panic gripping my heart. I felt it like a tightening noose around my neck. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Alex didn’t say anything. I heard him hyperventilating by my side under the crimson glow of the maze’s lights.
“Did you hear something?” he whispered. I was staring down at the mummified corpse, transfixed. My head jerked up as if with a will of its own. I scanned the shadowy maze. Far down the corridor, I saw the gleaming of animatronic eyes, the faded cataract light deep in the sockets. With a quiet whirring of gears, they crept towards us. A few steps later, the silhouette passed under the bare red bulb overhead.
It was an animatronic minotaur with two black, bulging eyes. Its horns curved gracefully outwards. A smile like a razor split its metal face. There was a squealing of metal as the jaw unhinged, roaring with an ear-splitting electronic distortion. It had legs like a rhinoceros, thick and rounded. Its silver skin reflected the bloody light as it towered over us, staring down with a ferocious hatred.
“Run!” Alex screamed, turning and sprinting away. I followed close at his heels, afraid to look back. The ground shook as the metal behemoth’s heavy legs slammed the ground. We took random passageways in the maze, trying to lose the minotaur, but I could hear its heavy footsteps drawing closer by the second.
Up ahead, I saw a ventilation shaft with the grill removed. A woman’s face peered out, looking emaciated and filthy.
“In here!” she hissed through gritted teeth, her words barely audible over the cacophony of the minotaur’s roaring. Her dirt-streaked face drew back, disappearing in the shadows. Alex was right behind me, and at that moment, I believed we would both make it.
I leapt forwards, crawling on my hands and knees into the shaft. The thin metal echoed crazily all around me as I frantically pulled myself forward. Once I had gone forwards a few steps, I looked back, expecting to see Alex right behind me. He was still at the entrance, however. His eyes were wide and terrified. They met mine for a brief moment. He tried to crawl in, to pull himself forward. His small hands furiously dragged over the smooth metal. Then I saw two sharp, steel hands reach down behind him, grabbing his legs. He screamed, reaching forwards toward me. I tried to take his hand, but I was too far away.
A single heartbeat later, he got dragged backwards at a tremendous speed. A mixture of agony and mortal terror roiled across his face.
“Alex!” I cried, crawling forwards. “Come back!” A spatter of blood exploded over the wall and end of the shaft. I turned away, crying. I heard screaming behind me, a sound like bones shattering, something slamming over and over against a wall.
I crawled forwards through the vents, seeing the bare silhouette of a woman ahead of me, not realizing that I would never see my brother again.
***
“Come on!” the woman whispered. The vent turned at a ninety-degree angle. It was so dark I could barely tell where I was going. I felt my way slowly forward with my hands like a blind person.
“But what about my brother?” I asked. “We need to go back! He could be hurt!” The woman didn’t say anything. I heard her breathing quicken.
“Just follow me, kid,” she said. “It’s right up here…” I crawled forward, seeing a square of red light ahead of us. We came out into some kind of office room. A computer and phone sat on a desk next to crates full of protein bars and bottled waters. Posters covered the walls, many of them with bizarre slogans and pictures.
“FEED THE BEAR,” read one, next to a cartoon picture of an enormous animatronic bear ripping an elderly woman to pieces. Her walker lay next to her, a crumpled heap of useless metal. Her intestines were uncoiled around her like a den of red snakes.
The woman turned to me, her brown eyes set and grim. She had streaks of what looked like dried blood running through her black hair and covering her face.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”
“My name’s Sarah,” she said, “and I used to work for Mr. Bittaker. I helped him build this entire underground complex. This place is massive. There’s rooms of food and water, monitoring rooms, miles of mazes and probably lots of stuff I don’t know about.”
“My name’s Herbie. So why are you here?” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“When he started to go insane, when I realized he was going to put children down there as prisoners in some evil game, I tried to blow the whistle, tried to get the authorities involved. But he was bribing some government officials, and before I knew it, men in black ski masks broke into my house and injected me with some sort of drug. I blacked out and woke up here a few weeks ago,” Sarah said.
“We need to get out of here. We need to find Alex and tell people what’s happening,” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“No one will believe us,” she responded. I turned away, disgusted by her pessimism. She was supposed to be an adult, yet it seemed like she had given up all hope. I walked over to the computer, trying to turn it on. To my surprise, the screen came on with a white glare.
“Hey, the computer works!” I said. “Maybe we can use it to call for help!” I lifted the phone to my ear, hearing a dial tone. “And the phone works! We can get out of here!”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Sarah said glumly. I ignored her, fishing in my pocket for the card Sergeant Bowley had given me. Squinting down at it, I dialed his number. After a few rings, he picked up.
“Hello?” he said. In a small voice, I answered.
“Hi, this is Herbie. Please, sir, you need to come back and help me. The man locked me and my brother underground, and I think my brother is hurt. There’s more people down here, too, I don’t know how many, and I saw a dead body…”
“Kid, is this a prank?” Sergeant Bowley said quickly. “Do you know making false reports is a crime?” Sarah grabbed the phone from me.
“This isn’t a prank,” she pleaded. “Please, you need to come back to Bittaker’s Toys and get us out of here. Larry Bittaker is insane…” The phone line abruptly cut off. The power to the room went out, plunging us into darkness. Over some hidden speakers, I heard Larry Bittaker’s voice ring out.
“That’s cheating,” he growled petulantly in his high-pitched voice, sounding like an angry child. “No communication with the outside world. Do you know what happens to cheaters?” Sarah grabbed my hand in the darkness, whispering in my ear.
“Follow me,” she said. “I know this place pretty well.” She led me forward. A few moments later, I heard a doorknob turn. Red light flooded into the office room. We were looking at a half-constructed part of the maze. Wires and pipes in the wall hung exposed, and only the wooden framework of the walls had been put up.
“What is this?” I asked. “Is the maze not done?”
“The maze is never done,” Sarah answered. “Larry kept expanding it, changing contractors so that no one would know the entire maze besides him. I think he’ll keep building it until the day he dies. He has enough money, anyway.”
As quietly as we could, we moved forward through the maze, trying to put some distance between ourselves and the office room. We turned a corner with Sarah in the lead. I heard the sudden whirring of gears and a half-choked scream ahead of me. A moment later, I felt Sarah’s body smash into mine. Warm blood splashed my face as I fell backwards on the ground. The wind whooshed out of my lungs. I looked up, seeing Sarah’s pale, blood-spattered face staring up in horror a few feet ahead of me.
A furry paw with claws like railroad spikes came down, slashing her across the chest. Drops of blood covered the walls and floor as Sarah thrashed and screamed, the animatronic bear standing over her with a dried up husk of a face. Its fur had mostly fallen out, leaving a pale, gray bear skull leering in its place.
“I’m Berry Bear!” it growled in a low, slowed-down voice. “I want to be friends with you forever! Let me give you a hug!” Sarah tried to crawl away as the jet-black eyes of Berry Bear narrowed. Its jaw chattered as silver needles of teeth glistened in its metal mouth. Her eyes met mine for a moment, filled with ineffable pain and terror. I backpedaled away, scooting across the floor, my mind shell-shocked and unbelieving.
The heavy body of Berry Bear came down with a force like a battering ram. Its metal arms slammed into Sarah’s back, crushing her chest. Bone chips and gore exploded from her body. Blood poured out of her mouth in a rushing torrent. Her eyes rolled up in her head as she gurgled on the ground.
Berry Bear’s head ratcheted to face me, blood streaming down its face and arms. Its teeth chattered faster, as if to show its increasing excitement and bloodlust.
“Can I give you a hug?” it growled.
“No! Get away from me!” I screamed, pushing myself up to my feet. I ran randomly through the maze, hearing the heavy steps of Berry Bear close at my heels. At the far end of the half-constructed maze, I saw a thick wooden door.
“Help me!” I shrieked over and over. To my surprise, I heard a response from the other side of the door.
“Stand back, kid!” a deep voice said, then there was a gunshot. The door’s lock exploded inwards. The door shot open as someone kicked it, flinging it hard against the wall. I saw Sergeant Bowley standing there, his pistol drawn, his dead eyes flickering over the maze. They widened when they saw Berry Bear only a few footsteps behind me, closing the distance with every second.
“Get down!” he cried. I threw myself on the ground without question as he opened fire. The ear-splitting racket of the gunshots reverberated all across the maze. I continued crawling forwards towards Sergeant Bowley, towards safety. I saw more cops running in behind him.
I looked up, seeing Berry Bear sprinting towards Sergeant Bowley in a blur, its animatronic face half blown away and revealing the steel underneath. It had an insane expression of manic bloodlust. It raised its right hand, the gleaming metal claws hanging over Sergeant Bowley’s head. Everything seemed to freeze then. Sergeant Bowley had his gun up. Frantically, he fired one last shot at the bear’s face.
The top of its head blew off as its claw came down, ripping through Sergeant Bowley’s head with a crack. The scalp hung down in a sick, wet flap as his brains leaked out of his broken skull. Slowly, he fell back. Berry Bear followed him down with a tearing of metal and a slowing of gears and its mechanical voice. The heavy animatronic landed on top of Sergeant Bowley’s body, crushing him instantly. A spreading pool of blood marked the site of the horrific murder.
***
Screaming and crying, I crawled towards the police. They carried me outside, under a sky the color of wet cotton. I breathed in the clean air, looking around frantically for any signs of my brother. The police carried other emaciated, frightened-looking children out of the maze, but not Alex.
They put me in the back of a car and drove me out of there, away from Bittaker’s Toys and the nightmares that waited underneath.

My parents died when I was young. The house fire that murdered them also destroyed everything we owned, every picture of our family, every heirloom and memento. To this day, I can barely remember my parents’ faces. Thinking back, it all seems like a blur, like a ghostly image of a mother and father without features or expressions. My brother Alex, who was only nine at the time, managed to carry me out of the house. He was hailed as a hero, and the story played on the local news. It managed to draw attention from a small local toy company called Bittaker’s Toys.
They had a small orphanage next to their toy company. In hindsight, it was probably all some tax-deductible scheme to make themselves look good, among other things. I remember a police officer with a tight, grim expression on his face coming into my hospital room after the fire. His dark eyes looked ancient and haunted, as if he were a hundred years old.
“I’ve got good news, little buddy,” he said, patting me on the shoulder without smiling. I glanced up at his flat eyes. They shone like new copper pennies. “Larry Bittaker himself has volunteered to adopt you and your brother. You’re going to live at Toyland!” I frowned at him, a small boy in an extremely large hospital bed. I drew the sheets up to my neck pensively, using them like a shield.
“What’s… what’s a ‘Toyland’?” I asked nervously. I looked at his uniform, seeing a nametag there reading, “Sergeant Bowley.” I somehow knew at that moment that I would see this man again. I don’t know if I believe in psychic powers or anything, but I had a sudden flash of pale, bloodless faces, men shouting in the middle of chaos and bloodshed, and a blurry silhouette of someone in a police uniform running in with dead eyes. I blinked, and it evaporated like a mirage.
“You’ve never heard of Toyland?” Sergeant Bowley asked, staring at me without blinking. “It’s a place where kids go when they don’t have… a family, I guess. All the kids there are adopted or orphans. They have a private school and everything. It’s really one of the best-case scenarios for you and your brother.” I nodded. Even as a small child, a creeping suspicion came over my mind. Was he trying to convince me, or himself?
***
We were taken to Toyland the next morning. Sergeant Bowley drove my brother Alex and me to the orphanage. As we pulled in, Alex put a thin arm around my shoulders, hugging me close.
“It’s gonna be OK, Herbie,” he whispered. His blue eyes were wide and uncertain as we surveyed the complex. He was scarecrow thin, and the trauma and horror of the last few days still gleamed darkly behind his eyes.
The complex was ringed by a black, metal fence with sharp points like spears emerging from the top. A brightly-colored building loomed overhead, its walls covered with fluorescent day-glo murals showing happy children playing with toys that were alive. Roosters and lizards with humanoid bodies and sharp, pointed teeth played on playgrounds in the murals with smiling children. Teddy bears with very human-like fingers and toes climbed trees with excited children. The children’s mouths were all open and silently wailing- though whether in screams of pleasure or of fear, I couldn’t yet tell.
The building had countless smoke-stacks on the top of its flat roof, each billowing out clouds of black smoke into the air. An enormous sign on top of the building read “BITTAKER’S TOYS”.
A black-clad guard in a guardhouse ambled slowly over to the car, leaning down close to Sergeant Bowley’s face. I couldn’t hear what they said through the divider in the police car, but the guard had a grim, set expression on his face. As the gate slid open and we drove past, I realized the guard had what looked like a small arsenal on his belt, holding two pistols and dozens of magazines.
“Why does that man need so many guns?” I whispered in the back seat. Alex shook his gaunt face.
“They probably just keep a lot of important stuff and money here,” he said.
“Oh,” I muttered as the police car slowly pulled up to the entrance, a tall archway with two swinging glass doors. All along the front of the building stood tall animatronic creatures, six-foot-tall teddy bears with huge, black eyes and humanoid roosters with blade-like combs extending from the tops of their pointed heads. They all stood as straight as soldiers, staring ahead in an unblinking, statuesque way. I don’t know if they were supposed to look cute, but as a young boy, they appeared terrifying and unnatural. Their mouths stayed straight and expressionless. They had an eerie uncanny valley feeling to them.
“What are those?” I asked Sergeant Bowley as he opened the door. Alex and I slid out, carrying all of our worldly goods in two small plastic bags. The fire destroyed everything we owned except for the clothes on our back, after all. Some charity had given us toiletries and a couple pairs of clothes. I held it protectively against my body, afraid that someone would try to take away the last possessions I owned.
“You don’t know the Smiling Buddies? About Berry Bear and Mino the Minotaur?” he said, surprised. “Well, you’ll learn about them inside. I thought kids loved that kind of stuff.”
“Our parents didn’t really give us a lot of toys,” Alex said. “They used to send us outside to play.”
“Ah, well, that’s the best way,” Sergeant Bowley said in a fatherly manner as he escorted us toward the building. Once we had gotten to within a few steps of the bizarre animal mannequins, they came to life.
Their eyes suddenly glowed with a pale, inner light that stayed far down in the black orbs with an eerie cataract gleam. With a whirring of gears and a grinding of metal, their heads ratcheted over to face us. Their slack, vacant mouths erupted into wide grins, showing square teeth that gleamed with a silvery luster. Their movements were simultaneous and choreographed, like those of synchronized dancers.
As one, they raised their right hands into the air in what was probably intended to be a wave, but in reality looked more like a Sieg Heil salute. Their mouths chattered as a song rang out all around us from hidden speakers, but the movements of their jaws didn’t exactly match the words, increasing the uncanny valley feeling of the entire thing. They started dancing and twisting their bodies in a strange kind of jitterbug dance.
“Welcome, girls and boys!
Come to the land of toys,
Where nothing is as it seems.
A place where a child’s dreams
Can rise to the purest joys,
And where the nighttime screams
Of the shadow that destroys
Fade away to nothing,
Leaving only the smiles of spring.”
As soon as the song had finished, the animatronics’ arms fell limply down, the light in their eyes fading back to blackness. With a final whirring of gears, they straightened back up into their soldierly postures and went quiet. Silently, the three of us went inside.
***
We walked through the swinging doors into a lobby where the floor was paved with black-and-white squares of gleaming marble. Long wooden tables ran perpendicular to the front wall, covered with computer monitors and TVs. Huge statues of toys surrounded us on all sides.
An extremely fat man stood in the center of the empty chamber. His clothes were all bright day-glo colors, fluorescent orange pants and a bright yellow button-up long-sleeve shirt that showed the curly hairs on his chest. His head was shaved, and his scalp gleamed like a fleshy egg.
“Welcome, kiddos!” he said in a high-pitched, feminine wheeze as sweat trickled down his beet-red face. He took a step toward us. His lips were thick and moist. In a moment, they rose into a wide smile, showing off rows of small, straight teeth. “My name is Larry Bittaker, and this is my toy company. But it is so much more! It’s a place where sweet little children like you can live and grow- forever, if you want.”
Slowly, Larry Bittaker lowered his fat face until it was only inches from mine. His many chins jiggled as he knelt down. His stubby, sweaty fingers came up and pinched my cheek. His beady, blue eyes reminded me of those of a pig. We stared at each other for a long moment. Then he turned to Alex, ruffling his overgrown bowl cut.
“OK, kids, be safe. Larry, I’m gonna get taking off,” Sergeant Bowley said, slowly stepping back from the pig-like man kneeling on the ground in front of him. “Here’s my card, by the way, if you kids ever need anything.” He reached into his pocket, giving me and Alex copies of his business cards. I stared down at it, confused. No one had ever given me a business card before. It had his name and private phone number on it.
I heard Sergeant Bowley turn and walk out the door. And then Alex and I were alone with the toymaker.
***
Larry Bittaker seemed to be the only one in the warehouse. We walked past corridors filled with empty toys and staring animatronics. Larry filled the air with his ramblings the entire time.
“You kids are really going to love it here, I guarantee it,” he said with exuberance. “The other boys and girls are waiting for you downstairs. They’re so excited to see new friends come in!” A steep metal staircase spiraled down into the darkness. I grabbed Alex’s hand nervously, looking up at Larry Bittaker. “Well, go on, little ones!”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked in a small voice. Larry gave a boisterous laugh, his protuberant stomach jiggling like jello as his face grew even redder.
“Oh, no, no!” he said. “I don’t go down there! The little ones tend to smell like poverty.” His face drew close to mine. “In fact, I can smell it on you right here.” I backed up away from the strange man. Alex’s small face formed into a scowl.
“You can’t talk to us like that,” he said defiantly, puffing his little bird chest out.
“If you two little shitheads don’t start going down those stairs now, I’ll throw you down them,” Larry Bittaker growled, his porcine face melting into a sneer. The mask of the genial businessman had disappeared, and something cold and dark revealed itself.
Glancing backwards, Alex and I started down the spiral staircase, descending into the blackness.
***
At the bottom of the stairs, I saw the gleam of blood-red emergency lights. They illuminated what looked like an enormous maze. As soon as we had gone past the threshold, a hidden door slammed behind us, cutting off the last of the white light overhead. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the metal door smashed closed with a ringing sound.
“What is this place?” Alex asked in a small voice. I followed close at his heels. “Where are the other kids?”
“Maybe they’re all hiding,” I said hopefully. “Maybe it’s all a big game.” Alex looked doubtful.
“Come on, Herbie,” he said with deep-socketed eyes the color of ashes. “Nowhere to go but forward.” The silence rang out around us like a shriek. I could hear my own heart beating loudly in my ears. The floor was covered in steel-gray carpets, the walls painted jet-black. Incandescent bulbs with dark red glass hung overhead, spread out every twenty feet or so on the dark ceiling. They cast the maze in a bloody glow.
We moved forward randomly, taking turns to the left and right. There were strange obstacles in the maze: enormous chairs that looked like they were made for giants, mannequins with glowing red eyes and smooth, plastic faces, and more animatronic characters, pigs and bulls and bears and roosters. The animatronics stayed still and dead, to my immense relief. As we wandered forward, I suddenly remembered something a math teacher had told me a couple years ago, in what felt like another life.
“There is a way to get out of any maze without retracing your steps,” the man in glasses had said at the front of the classroom, drawing a small maze as an example on the whiteboard. “All you have to do is take your left hand, hold it out to your side, and keep it against the wall. Keep going forward in the maze with your hand kept against the same wall, and eventually you will find the exit.”
I told Alex about this. A wan smile spread across his lips.
“That’s a good idea,” he said. “I never heard that before. But what if there’s no exit?” I shrugged.
“Then who cares? We’ll still explore the entire maze, as long as you keep one hand on the wall,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the right hand or left hand, just so long as you keep following the same wall. Because a maze is really just one big wall, if you think about it.” We continued forward around a corner. I nearly tripped over something laying sprawled across the hallway. I looked down and repressed a scream welling up in my throat.
The mummified body of a child lay there. I couldn’t tell how long it had been dead, or even whether it was a boy or a girl. The white, beady eyes of rats scurried around it, ripping off strips of the dessicated, jerky-like flesh of the corpse. The clothes were threadbare, worn away over time. The eyes stared vacantly up, as white as river stones. A smell like cinnamon and sulfur rose from the dead body.
“Oh my God,” I said, a rising sense of panic gripping my heart. I felt it like a tightening noose around my neck. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Alex didn’t say anything. I heard him hyperventilating by my side under the crimson glow of the maze’s lights.
“Did you hear something?” he whispered. I was staring down at the mummified corpse, transfixed. My head jerked up as if with a will of its own. I scanned the shadowy maze. Far down the corridor, I saw the gleaming of animatronic eyes, the faded cataract light deep in the sockets. With a quiet whirring of gears, they crept towards us. A few steps later, the silhouette passed under the bare red bulb overhead.
It was an animatronic minotaur with two black, bulging eyes. Its horns curved gracefully outwards. A smile like a razor split its metal face. There was a squealing of metal as the jaw unhinged, roaring with an ear-splitting electronic distortion. It had legs like a rhinoceros, thick and rounded. Its silver skin reflected the bloody light as it towered over us, staring down with a ferocious hatred.
“Run!” Alex screamed, turning and sprinting away. I followed close at his heels, afraid to look back. The ground shook as the metal behemoth’s heavy legs slammed the ground. We took random passageways in the maze, trying to lose the minotaur, but I could hear its heavy footsteps drawing closer by the second.
Up ahead, I saw a ventilation shaft with the grill removed. A woman’s face peered out, looking emaciated and filthy.
“In here!” she hissed through gritted teeth, her words barely audible over the cacophony of the minotaur’s roaring. Her dirt-streaked face drew back, disappearing in the shadows. Alex was right behind me, and at that moment, I believed we would both make it.
I leapt forwards, crawling on my hands and knees into the shaft. The thin metal echoed crazily all around me as I frantically pulled myself forward. Once I had gone forwards a few steps, I looked back, expecting to see Alex right behind me. He was still at the entrance, however. His eyes were wide and terrified. They met mine for a brief moment. He tried to crawl in, to pull himself forward. His small hands furiously dragged over the smooth metal. Then I saw two sharp, steel hands reach down behind him, grabbing his legs. He screamed, reaching forwards toward me. I tried to take his hand, but I was too far away.
A single heartbeat later, he got dragged backwards at a tremendous speed. A mixture of agony and mortal terror roiled across his face.
“Alex!” I cried, crawling forwards. “Come back!” A spatter of blood exploded over the wall and end of the shaft. I turned away, crying. I heard screaming behind me, a sound like bones shattering, something slamming over and over against a wall.
I crawled forwards through the vents, seeing the bare silhouette of a woman ahead of me, not realizing that I would never see my brother again.
***
“Come on!” the woman whispered. The vent turned at a ninety-degree angle. It was so dark I could barely tell where I was going. I felt my way slowly forward with my hands like a blind person.
“But what about my brother?” I asked. “We need to go back! He could be hurt!” The woman didn’t say anything. I heard her breathing quicken.
“Just follow me, kid,” she said. “It’s right up here…” I crawled forward, seeing a square of red light ahead of us. We came out into some kind of office room. A computer and phone sat on a desk next to crates full of protein bars and bottled waters. Posters covered the walls, many of them with bizarre slogans and pictures.
“FEED THE BEAR,” read one, next to a cartoon picture of an enormous animatronic bear ripping an elderly woman to pieces. Her walker lay next to her, a crumpled heap of useless metal. Her intestines were uncoiled around her like a den of red snakes.
The woman turned to me, her brown eyes set and grim. She had streaks of what looked like dried blood running through her black hair and covering her face.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”
“My name’s Sarah,” she said, “and I used to work for Mr. Bittaker. I helped him build this entire underground complex. This place is massive. There’s rooms of food and water, monitoring rooms, miles of mazes and probably lots of stuff I don’t know about.”
“My name’s Herbie. So why are you here?” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“When he started to go insane, when I realized he was going to put children down there as prisoners in some evil game, I tried to blow the whistle, tried to get the authorities involved. But he was bribing some government officials, and before I knew it, men in black ski masks broke into my house and injected me with some sort of drug. I blacked out and woke up here a few weeks ago,” Sarah said.
“We need to get out of here. We need to find Alex and tell people what’s happening,” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“No one will believe us,” she responded. I turned away, disgusted by her pessimism. She was supposed to be an adult, yet it seemed like she had given up all hope. I walked over to the computer, trying to turn it on. To my surprise, the screen came on with a white glare.
“Hey, the computer works!” I said. “Maybe we can use it to call for help!” I lifted the phone to my ear, hearing a dial tone. “And the phone works! We can get out of here!”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Sarah said glumly. I ignored her, fishing in my pocket for the card Sergeant Bowley had given me. Squinting down at it, I dialed his number. After a few rings, he picked up.
“Hello?” he said. In a small voice, I answered.
“Hi, this is Herbie. Please, sir, you need to come back and help me. The man locked me and my brother underground, and I think my brother is hurt. There’s more people down here, too, I don’t know how many, and I saw a dead body…”
“Kid, is this a prank?” Sergeant Bowley said quickly. “Do you know making false reports is a crime?” Sarah grabbed the phone from me.
“This isn’t a prank,” she pleaded. “Please, you need to come back to Bittaker’s Toys and get us out of here. Larry Bittaker is insane…” The phone line abruptly cut off. The power to the room went out, plunging us into darkness. Over some hidden speakers, I heard Larry Bittaker’s voice ring out.
“That’s cheating,” he growled petulantly in his high-pitched voice, sounding like an angry child. “No communication with the outside world. Do you know what happens to cheaters?” Sarah grabbed my hand in the darkness, whispering in my ear.
“Follow me,” she said. “I know this place pretty well.” She led me forward. A few moments later, I heard a doorknob turn. Red light flooded into the office room. We were looking at a half-constructed part of the maze. Wires and pipes in the wall hung exposed, and only the wooden framework of the walls had been put up.
“What is this?” I asked. “Is the maze not done?”
“The maze is never done,” Sarah answered. “Larry kept expanding it, changing contractors so that no one would know the entire maze besides him. I think he’ll keep building it until the day he dies. He has enough money, anyway.”
As quietly as we could, we moved forward through the maze, trying to put some distance between ourselves and the office room. We turned a corner with Sarah in the lead. I heard the sudden whirring of gears and a half-choked scream ahead of me. A moment later, I felt Sarah’s body smash into mine. Warm blood splashed my face as I fell backwards on the ground. The wind whooshed out of my lungs. I looked up, seeing Sarah’s pale, blood-spattered face staring up in horror a few feet ahead of me.
A furry paw with claws like railroad spikes came down, slashing her across the chest. Drops of blood covered the walls and floor as Sarah thrashed and screamed, the animatronic bear standing over her with a dried up husk of a face. Its fur had mostly fallen out, leaving a pale, gray bear skull leering in its place.
“I’m Berry Bear!” it growled in a low, slowed-down voice. “I want to be friends with you forever! Let me give you a hug!” Sarah tried to crawl away as the jet-black eyes of Berry Bear narrowed. Its jaw chattered as silver needles of teeth glistened in its metal mouth. Her eyes met mine for a moment, filled with ineffable pain and terror. I backpedaled away, scooting across the floor, my mind shell-shocked and unbelieving.
The heavy body of Berry Bear came down with a force like a battering ram. Its metal arms slammed into Sarah’s back, crushing her chest. Bone chips and gore exploded from her body. Blood poured out of her mouth in a rushing torrent. Her eyes rolled up in her head as she gurgled on the ground.
Berry Bear’s head ratcheted to face me, blood streaming down its face and arms. Its teeth chattered faster, as if to show its increasing excitement and bloodlust.
“Can I give you a hug?” it growled.
“No! Get away from me!” I screamed, pushing myself up to my feet. I ran randomly through the maze, hearing the heavy steps of Berry Bear close at my heels. At the far end of the half-constructed maze, I saw a thick wooden door.
“Help me!” I shrieked over and over. To my surprise, I heard a response from the other side of the door.
“Stand back, kid!” a deep voice said, then there was a gunshot. The door’s lock exploded inwards. The door shot open as someone kicked it, flinging it hard against the wall. I saw Sergeant Bowley standing there, his pistol drawn, his dead eyes flickering over the maze. They widened when they saw Berry Bear only a few footsteps behind me, closing the distance with every second.
“Get down!” he cried. I threw myself on the ground without question as he opened fire. The ear-splitting racket of the gunshots reverberated all across the maze. I continued crawling forwards towards Sergeant Bowley, towards safety. I saw more cops running in behind him.
I looked up, seeing Berry Bear sprinting towards Sergeant Bowley in a blur, its animatronic face half blown away and revealing the steel underneath. It had an insane expression of manic bloodlust. It raised its right hand, the gleaming metal claws hanging over Sergeant Bowley’s head. Everything seemed to freeze then. Sergeant Bowley had his gun up. Frantically, he fired one last shot at the bear’s face.
The top of its head blew off as its claw came down, ripping through Sergeant Bowley’s head with a crack. The scalp hung down in a sick, wet flap as his brains leaked out of his broken skull. Slowly, he fell back. Berry Bear followed him down with a tearing of metal and a slowing of gears and its mechanical voice. The heavy animatronic landed on top of Sergeant Bowley’s body, crushing him instantly. A spreading pool of blood marked the site of the horrific murder.
***
Screaming and crying, I crawled towards the police. They carried me outside, under a sky the color of wet cotton. I breathed in the clean air, looking around frantically for any signs of my brother. The police carried other emaciated, frightened-looking children out of the maze, but not Alex.
They put me in the back of a car and drove me out of there, away from Bittaker’s Toys and the nightmares that waited underneath.

My parents died when I was young. The house fire that murdered them also destroyed everything we owned, every picture of our family, every heirloom and memento. To this day, I can barely remember my parents’ faces. Thinking back, it all seems like a blur, like a ghostly image of a mother and father without features or expressions. My brother Alex, who was only nine at the time, managed to carry me out of the house. He was hailed as a hero, and the story played on the local news. It managed to draw attention from a small local toy company called Bittaker’s Toys.
They had a small orphanage next to their toy company. In hindsight, it was probably all some tax-deductible scheme to make themselves look good, among other things. I remember a police officer with a tight, grim expression on his face coming into my hospital room after the fire. His dark eyes looked ancient and haunted, as if he were a hundred years old.
“I’ve got good news, little buddy,” he said, patting me on the shoulder without smiling. I glanced up at his flat eyes. They shone like new copper pennies. “Larry Bittaker himself has volunteered to adopt you and your brother. You’re going to live at Toyland!” I frowned at him, a small boy in an extremely large hospital bed. I drew the sheets up to my neck pensively, using them like a shield.
“What’s… what’s a ‘Toyland’?” I asked nervously. I looked at his uniform, seeing a nametag there reading, “Sergeant Bowley.” I somehow knew at that moment that I would see this man again. I don’t know if I believe in psychic powers or anything, but I had a sudden flash of pale, bloodless faces, men shouting in the middle of chaos and bloodshed, and a blurry silhouette of someone in a police uniform running in with dead eyes. I blinked, and it evaporated like a mirage.
“You’ve never heard of Toyland?” Sergeant Bowley asked, staring at me without blinking. “It’s a place where kids go when they don’t have… a family, I guess. All the kids there are adopted or orphans. They have a private school and everything. It’s really one of the best-case scenarios for you and your brother.” I nodded. Even as a small child, a creeping suspicion came over my mind. Was he trying to convince me, or himself?
***
We were taken to Toyland the next morning. Sergeant Bowley drove my brother Alex and me to the orphanage. As we pulled in, Alex put a thin arm around my shoulders, hugging me close.
“It’s gonna be OK, Herbie,” he whispered. His blue eyes were wide and uncertain as we surveyed the complex. He was scarecrow thin, and the trauma and horror of the last few days still gleamed darkly behind his eyes.
The complex was ringed by a black, metal fence with sharp points like spears emerging from the top. A brightly-colored building loomed overhead, its walls covered with fluorescent day-glo murals showing happy children playing with toys that were alive. Roosters and lizards with humanoid bodies and sharp, pointed teeth played on playgrounds in the murals with smiling children. Teddy bears with very human-like fingers and toes climbed trees with excited children. The children’s mouths were all open and silently wailing- though whether in screams of pleasure or of fear, I couldn’t yet tell.
The building had countless smoke-stacks on the top of its flat roof, each billowing out clouds of black smoke into the air. An enormous sign on top of the building read “BITTAKER’S TOYS”.
A black-clad guard in a guardhouse ambled slowly over to the car, leaning down close to Sergeant Bowley’s face. I couldn’t hear what they said through the divider in the police car, but the guard had a grim, set expression on his face. As the gate slid open and we drove past, I realized the guard had what looked like a small arsenal on his belt, holding two pistols and dozens of magazines.
“Why does that man need so many guns?” I whispered in the back seat. Alex shook his gaunt face.
“They probably just keep a lot of important stuff and money here,” he said.
“Oh,” I muttered as the police car slowly pulled up to the entrance, a tall archway with two swinging glass doors. All along the front of the building stood tall animatronic creatures, six-foot-tall teddy bears with huge, black eyes and humanoid roosters with blade-like combs extending from the tops of their pointed heads. They all stood as straight as soldiers, staring ahead in an unblinking, statuesque way. I don’t know if they were supposed to look cute, but as a young boy, they appeared terrifying and unnatural. Their mouths stayed straight and expressionless. They had an eerie uncanny valley feeling to them.
“What are those?” I asked Sergeant Bowley as he opened the door. Alex and I slid out, carrying all of our worldly goods in two small plastic bags. The fire destroyed everything we owned except for the clothes on our back, after all. Some charity had given us toiletries and a couple pairs of clothes. I held it protectively against my body, afraid that someone would try to take away the last possessions I owned.
“You don’t know the Smiling Buddies? About Berry Bear and Mino the Minotaur?” he said, surprised. “Well, you’ll learn about them inside. I thought kids loved that kind of stuff.”
“Our parents didn’t really give us a lot of toys,” Alex said. “They used to send us outside to play.”
“Ah, well, that’s the best way,” Sergeant Bowley said in a fatherly manner as he escorted us toward the building. Once we had gotten to within a few steps of the bizarre animal mannequins, they came to life.
Their eyes suddenly glowed with a pale, inner light that stayed far down in the black orbs with an eerie cataract gleam. With a whirring of gears and a grinding of metal, their heads ratcheted over to face us. Their slack, vacant mouths erupted into wide grins, showing square teeth that gleamed with a silvery luster. Their movements were simultaneous and choreographed, like those of synchronized dancers.
As one, they raised their right hands into the air in what was probably intended to be a wave, but in reality looked more like a Sieg Heil salute. Their mouths chattered as a song rang out all around us from hidden speakers, but the movements of their jaws didn’t exactly match the words, increasing the uncanny valley feeling of the entire thing. They started dancing and twisting their bodies in a strange kind of jitterbug dance.
“Welcome, girls and boys!
Come to the land of toys,
Where nothing is as it seems.
A place where a child’s dreams
Can rise to the purest joys,
And where the nighttime screams
Of the shadow that destroys
Fade away to nothing,
Leaving only the smiles of spring.”
As soon as the song had finished, the animatronics’ arms fell limply down, the light in their eyes fading back to blackness. With a final whirring of gears, they straightened back up into their soldierly postures and went quiet. Silently, the three of us went inside.
***
We walked through the swinging doors into a lobby where the floor was paved with black-and-white squares of gleaming marble. Long wooden tables ran perpendicular to the front wall, covered with computer monitors and TVs. Huge statues of toys surrounded us on all sides.
An extremely fat man stood in the center of the empty chamber. His clothes were all bright day-glo colors, fluorescent orange pants and a bright yellow button-up long-sleeve shirt that showed the curly hairs on his chest. His head was shaved, and his scalp gleamed like a fleshy egg.
“Welcome, kiddos!” he said in a high-pitched, feminine wheeze as sweat trickled down his beet-red face. He took a step toward us. His lips were thick and moist. In a moment, they rose into a wide smile, showing off rows of small, straight teeth. “My name is Larry Bittaker, and this is my toy company. But it is so much more! It’s a place where sweet little children like you can live and grow- forever, if you want.”
Slowly, Larry Bittaker lowered his fat face until it was only inches from mine. His many chins jiggled as he knelt down. His stubby, sweaty fingers came up and pinched my cheek. His beady, blue eyes reminded me of those of a pig. We stared at each other for a long moment. Then he turned to Alex, ruffling his overgrown bowl cut.
“OK, kids, be safe. Larry, I’m gonna get taking off,” Sergeant Bowley said, slowly stepping back from the pig-like man kneeling on the ground in front of him. “Here’s my card, by the way, if you kids ever need anything.” He reached into his pocket, giving me and Alex copies of his business cards. I stared down at it, confused. No one had ever given me a business card before. It had his name and private phone number on it.
I heard Sergeant Bowley turn and walk out the door. And then Alex and I were alone with the toymaker.
***
Larry Bittaker seemed to be the only one in the warehouse. We walked past corridors filled with empty toys and staring animatronics. Larry filled the air with his ramblings the entire time.
“You kids are really going to love it here, I guarantee it,” he said with exuberance. “The other boys and girls are waiting for you downstairs. They’re so excited to see new friends come in!” A steep metal staircase spiraled down into the darkness. I grabbed Alex’s hand nervously, looking up at Larry Bittaker. “Well, go on, little ones!”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked in a small voice. Larry gave a boisterous laugh, his protuberant stomach jiggling like jello as his face grew even redder.
“Oh, no, no!” he said. “I don’t go down there! The little ones tend to smell like poverty.” His face drew close to mine. “In fact, I can smell it on you right here.” I backed up away from the strange man. Alex’s small face formed into a scowl.
“You can’t talk to us like that,” he said defiantly, puffing his little bird chest out.
“If you two little shitheads don’t start going down those stairs now, I’ll throw you down them,” Larry Bittaker growled, his porcine face melting into a sneer. The mask of the genial businessman had disappeared, and something cold and dark revealed itself.
Glancing backwards, Alex and I started down the spiral staircase, descending into the blackness.
***
At the bottom of the stairs, I saw the gleam of blood-red emergency lights. They illuminated what looked like an enormous maze. As soon as we had gone past the threshold, a hidden door slammed behind us, cutting off the last of the white light overhead. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the metal door smashed closed with a ringing sound.
“What is this place?” Alex asked in a small voice. I followed close at his heels. “Where are the other kids?”
“Maybe they’re all hiding,” I said hopefully. “Maybe it’s all a big game.” Alex looked doubtful.
“Come on, Herbie,” he said with deep-socketed eyes the color of ashes. “Nowhere to go but forward.” The silence rang out around us like a shriek. I could hear my own heart beating loudly in my ears. The floor was covered in steel-gray carpets, the walls painted jet-black. Incandescent bulbs with dark red glass hung overhead, spread out every twenty feet or so on the dark ceiling. They cast the maze in a bloody glow.
We moved forward randomly, taking turns to the left and right. There were strange obstacles in the maze: enormous chairs that looked like they were made for giants, mannequins with glowing red eyes and smooth, plastic faces, and more animatronic characters, pigs and bulls and bears and roosters. The animatronics stayed still and dead, to my immense relief. As we wandered forward, I suddenly remembered something a math teacher had told me a couple years ago, in what felt like another life.
“There is a way to get out of any maze without retracing your steps,” the man in glasses had said at the front of the classroom, drawing a small maze as an example on the whiteboard. “All you have to do is take your left hand, hold it out to your side, and keep it against the wall. Keep going forward in the maze with your hand kept against the same wall, and eventually you will find the exit.”
I told Alex about this. A wan smile spread across his lips.
“That’s a good idea,” he said. “I never heard that before. But what if there’s no exit?” I shrugged.
“Then who cares? We’ll still explore the entire maze, as long as you keep one hand on the wall,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the right hand or left hand, just so long as you keep following the same wall. Because a maze is really just one big wall, if you think about it.” We continued forward around a corner. I nearly tripped over something laying sprawled across the hallway. I looked down and repressed a scream welling up in my throat.
The mummified body of a child lay there. I couldn’t tell how long it had been dead, or even whether it was a boy or a girl. The white, beady eyes of rats scurried around it, ripping off strips of the dessicated, jerky-like flesh of the corpse. The clothes were threadbare, worn away over time. The eyes stared vacantly up, as white as river stones. A smell like cinnamon and sulfur rose from the dead body.
“Oh my God,” I said, a rising sense of panic gripping my heart. I felt it like a tightening noose around my neck. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Alex didn’t say anything. I heard him hyperventilating by my side under the crimson glow of the maze’s lights.
“Did you hear something?” he whispered. I was staring down at the mummified corpse, transfixed. My head jerked up as if with a will of its own. I scanned the shadowy maze. Far down the corridor, I saw the gleaming of animatronic eyes, the faded cataract light deep in the sockets. With a quiet whirring of gears, they crept towards us. A few steps later, the silhouette passed under the bare red bulb overhead.
It was an animatronic minotaur with two black, bulging eyes. Its horns curved gracefully outwards. A smile like a razor split its metal face. There was a squealing of metal as the jaw unhinged, roaring with an ear-splitting electronic distortion. It had legs like a rhinoceros, thick and rounded. Its silver skin reflected the bloody light as it towered over us, staring down with a ferocious hatred.
“Run!” Alex screamed, turning and sprinting away. I followed close at his heels, afraid to look back. The ground shook as the metal behemoth’s heavy legs slammed the ground. We took random passageways in the maze, trying to lose the minotaur, but I could hear its heavy footsteps drawing closer by the second.
Up ahead, I saw a ventilation shaft with the grill removed. A woman’s face peered out, looking emaciated and filthy.
“In here!” she hissed through gritted teeth, her words barely audible over the cacophony of the minotaur’s roaring. Her dirt-streaked face drew back, disappearing in the shadows. Alex was right behind me, and at that moment, I believed we would both make it.
I leapt forwards, crawling on my hands and knees into the shaft. The thin metal echoed crazily all around me as I frantically pulled myself forward. Once I had gone forwards a few steps, I looked back, expecting to see Alex right behind me. He was still at the entrance, however. His eyes were wide and terrified. They met mine for a brief moment. He tried to crawl in, to pull himself forward. His small hands furiously dragged over the smooth metal. Then I saw two sharp, steel hands reach down behind him, grabbing his legs. He screamed, reaching forwards toward me. I tried to take his hand, but I was too far away.
A single heartbeat later, he got dragged backwards at a tremendous speed. A mixture of agony and mortal terror roiled across his face.
“Alex!” I cried, crawling forwards. “Come back!” A spatter of blood exploded over the wall and end of the shaft. I turned away, crying. I heard screaming behind me, a sound like bones shattering, something slamming over and over against a wall.
I crawled forwards through the vents, seeing the bare silhouette of a woman ahead of me, not realizing that I would never see my brother again.
***
“Come on!” the woman whispered. The vent turned at a ninety-degree angle. It was so dark I could barely tell where I was going. I felt my way slowly forward with my hands like a blind person.
“But what about my brother?” I asked. “We need to go back! He could be hurt!” The woman didn’t say anything. I heard her breathing quicken.
“Just follow me, kid,” she said. “It’s right up here…” I crawled forward, seeing a square of red light ahead of us. We came out into some kind of office room. A computer and phone sat on a desk next to crates full of protein bars and bottled waters. Posters covered the walls, many of them with bizarre slogans and pictures.
“FEED THE BEAR,” read one, next to a cartoon picture of an enormous animatronic bear ripping an elderly woman to pieces. Her walker lay next to her, a crumpled heap of useless metal. Her intestines were uncoiled around her like a den of red snakes.
The woman turned to me, her brown eyes set and grim. She had streaks of what looked like dried blood running through her black hair and covering her face.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”
“My name’s Sarah,” she said, “and I used to work for Mr. Bittaker. I helped him build this entire underground complex. This place is massive. There’s rooms of food and water, monitoring rooms, miles of mazes and probably lots of stuff I don’t know about.”
“My name’s Herbie. So why are you here?” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“When he started to go insane, when I realized he was going to put children down there as prisoners in some evil game, I tried to blow the whistle, tried to get the authorities involved. But he was bribing some government officials, and before I knew it, men in black ski masks broke into my house and injected me with some sort of drug. I blacked out and woke up here a few weeks ago,” Sarah said.
“We need to get out of here. We need to find Alex and tell people what’s happening,” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“No one will believe us,” she responded. I turned away, disgusted by her pessimism. She was supposed to be an adult, yet it seemed like she had given up all hope. I walked over to the computer, trying to turn it on. To my surprise, the screen came on with a white glare.
“Hey, the computer works!” I said. “Maybe we can use it to call for help!” I lifted the phone to my ear, hearing a dial tone. “And the phone works! We can get out of here!”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Sarah said glumly. I ignored her, fishing in my pocket for the card Sergeant Bowley had given me. Squinting down at it, I dialed his number. After a few rings, he picked up.
“Hello?” he said. In a small voice, I answered.
“Hi, this is Herbie. Please, sir, you need to come back and help me. The man locked me and my brother underground, and I think my brother is hurt. There’s more people down here, too, I don’t know how many, and I saw a dead body…”
“Kid, is this a prank?” Sergeant Bowley said quickly. “Do you know making false reports is a crime?” Sarah grabbed the phone from me.
“This isn’t a prank,” she pleaded. “Please, you need to come back to Bittaker’s Toys and get us out of here. Larry Bittaker is insane…” The phone line abruptly cut off. The power to the room went out, plunging us into darkness. Over some hidden speakers, I heard Larry Bittaker’s voice ring out.
“That’s cheating,” he growled petulantly in his high-pitched voice, sounding like an angry child. “No communication with the outside world. Do you know what happens to cheaters?” Sarah grabbed my hand in the darkness, whispering in my ear.
“Follow me,” she said. “I know this place pretty well.” She led me forward. A few moments later, I heard a doorknob turn. Red light flooded into the office room. We were looking at a half-constructed part of the maze. Wires and pipes in the wall hung exposed, and only the wooden framework of the walls had been put up.
“What is this?” I asked. “Is the maze not done?”
“The maze is never done,” Sarah answered. “Larry kept expanding it, changing contractors so that no one would know the entire maze besides him. I think he’ll keep building it until the day he dies. He has enough money, anyway.”
As quietly as we could, we moved forward through the maze, trying to put some distance between ourselves and the office room. We turned a corner with Sarah in the lead. I heard the sudden whirring of gears and a half-choked scream ahead of me. A moment later, I felt Sarah’s body smash into mine. Warm blood splashed my face as I fell backwards on the ground. The wind whooshed out of my lungs. I looked up, seeing Sarah’s pale, blood-spattered face staring up in horror a few feet ahead of me.
A furry paw with claws like railroad spikes came down, slashing her across the chest. Drops of blood covered the walls and floor as Sarah thrashed and screamed, the animatronic bear standing over her with a dried up husk of a face. Its fur had mostly fallen out, leaving a pale, gray bear skull leering in its place.
“I’m Berry Bear!” it growled in a low, slowed-down voice. “I want to be friends with you forever! Let me give you a hug!” Sarah tried to crawl away as the jet-black eyes of Berry Bear narrowed. Its jaw chattered as silver needles of teeth glistened in its metal mouth. Her eyes met mine for a moment, filled with ineffable pain and terror. I backpedaled away, scooting across the floor, my mind shell-shocked and unbelieving.
The heavy body of Berry Bear came down with a force like a battering ram. Its metal arms slammed into Sarah’s back, crushing her chest. Bone chips and gore exploded from her body. Blood poured out of her mouth in a rushing torrent. Her eyes rolled up in her head as she gurgled on the ground.
Berry Bear’s head ratcheted to face me, blood streaming down its face and arms. Its teeth chattered faster, as if to show its increasing excitement and bloodlust.
“Can I give you a hug?” it growled.
“No! Get away from me!” I screamed, pushing myself up to my feet. I ran randomly through the maze, hearing the heavy steps of Berry Bear close at my heels. At the far end of the half-constructed maze, I saw a thick wooden door.
“Help me!” I shrieked over and over. To my surprise, I heard a response from the other side of the door.
“Stand back, kid!” a deep voice said, then there was a gunshot. The door’s lock exploded inwards. The door shot open as someone kicked it, flinging it hard against the wall. I saw Sergeant Bowley standing there, his pistol drawn, his dead eyes flickering over the maze. They widened when they saw Berry Bear only a few footsteps behind me, closing the distance with every second.
“Get down!” he cried. I threw myself on the ground without question as he opened fire. The ear-splitting racket of the gunshots reverberated all across the maze. I continued crawling forwards towards Sergeant Bowley, towards safety. I saw more cops running in behind him.
I looked up, seeing Berry Bear sprinting towards Sergeant Bowley in a blur, its animatronic face half blown away and revealing the steel underneath. It had an insane expression of manic bloodlust. It raised its right hand, the gleaming metal claws hanging over Sergeant Bowley’s head. Everything seemed to freeze then. Sergeant Bowley had his gun up. Frantically, he fired one last shot at the bear’s face.
The top of its head blew off as its claw came down, ripping through Sergeant Bowley’s head with a crack. The scalp hung down in a sick, wet flap as his brains leaked out of his broken skull. Slowly, he fell back. Berry Bear followed him down with a tearing of metal and a slowing of gears and its mechanical voice. The heavy animatronic landed on top of Sergeant Bowley’s body, crushing him instantly. A spreading pool of blood marked the site of the horrific murder.
***
Screaming and crying, I crawled towards the police. They carried me outside, under a sky the color of wet cotton. I breathed in the clean air, looking around frantically for any signs of my brother. The police carried other emaciated, frightened-looking children out of the maze, but not Alex.
They put me in the back of a car and drove me out of there, away from Bittaker’s Toys and the nightmares that waited underneath.

My parents died when I was young. The house fire that murdered them also destroyed everything we owned, every picture of our family, every heirloom and memento. To this day, I can barely remember my parents’ faces. Thinking back, it all seems like a blur, like a ghostly image of a mother and father without features or expressions. My brother Alex, who was only nine at the time, managed to carry me out of the house. He was hailed as a hero, and the story played on the local news. It managed to draw attention from a small local toy company called Bittaker’s Toys.
They had a small orphanage next to their toy company. In hindsight, it was probably all some tax-deductible scheme to make themselves look good, among other things. I remember a police officer with a tight, grim expression on his face coming into my hospital room after the fire. His dark eyes looked ancient and haunted, as if he were a hundred years old.
“I’ve got good news, little buddy,” he said, patting me on the shoulder without smiling. I glanced up at his flat eyes. They shone like new copper pennies. “Larry Bittaker himself has volunteered to adopt you and your brother. You’re going to live at Toyland!” I frowned at him, a small boy in an extremely large hospital bed. I drew the sheets up to my neck pensively, using them like a shield.
“What’s… what’s a ‘Toyland’?” I asked nervously. I looked at his uniform, seeing a nametag there reading, “Sergeant Bowley.” I somehow knew at that moment that I would see this man again. I don’t know if I believe in psychic powers or anything, but I had a sudden flash of pale, bloodless faces, men shouting in the middle of chaos and bloodshed, and a blurry silhouette of someone in a police uniform running in with dead eyes. I blinked, and it evaporated like a mirage.
“You’ve never heard of Toyland?” Sergeant Bowley asked, staring at me without blinking. “It’s a place where kids go when they don’t have… a family, I guess. All the kids there are adopted or orphans. They have a private school and everything. It’s really one of the best-case scenarios for you and your brother.” I nodded. Even as a small child, a creeping suspicion came over my mind. Was he trying to convince me, or himself?
***
We were taken to Toyland the next morning. Sergeant Bowley drove my brother Alex and me to the orphanage. As we pulled in, Alex put a thin arm around my shoulders, hugging me close.
“It’s gonna be OK, Herbie,” he whispered. His blue eyes were wide and uncertain as we surveyed the complex. He was scarecrow thin, and the trauma and horror of the last few days still gleamed darkly behind his eyes.
The complex was ringed by a black, metal fence with sharp points like spears emerging from the top. A brightly-colored building loomed overhead, its walls covered with fluorescent day-glo murals showing happy children playing with toys that were alive. Roosters and lizards with humanoid bodies and sharp, pointed teeth played on playgrounds in the murals with smiling children. Teddy bears with very human-like fingers and toes climbed trees with excited children. The children’s mouths were all open and silently wailing- though whether in screams of pleasure or of fear, I couldn’t yet tell.
The building had countless smoke-stacks on the top of its flat roof, each billowing out clouds of black smoke into the air. An enormous sign on top of the building read “BITTAKER’S TOYS”.
A black-clad guard in a guardhouse ambled slowly over to the car, leaning down close to Sergeant Bowley’s face. I couldn’t hear what they said through the divider in the police car, but the guard had a grim, set expression on his face. As the gate slid open and we drove past, I realized the guard had what looked like a small arsenal on his belt, holding two pistols and dozens of magazines.
“Why does that man need so many guns?” I whispered in the back seat. Alex shook his gaunt face.
“They probably just keep a lot of important stuff and money here,” he said.
“Oh,” I muttered as the police car slowly pulled up to the entrance, a tall archway with two swinging glass doors. All along the front of the building stood tall animatronic creatures, six-foot-tall teddy bears with huge, black eyes and humanoid roosters with blade-like combs extending from the tops of their pointed heads. They all stood as straight as soldiers, staring ahead in an unblinking, statuesque way. I don’t know if they were supposed to look cute, but as a young boy, they appeared terrifying and unnatural. Their mouths stayed straight and expressionless. They had an eerie uncanny valley feeling to them.
“What are those?” I asked Sergeant Bowley as he opened the door. Alex and I slid out, carrying all of our worldly goods in two small plastic bags. The fire destroyed everything we owned except for the clothes on our back, after all. Some charity had given us toiletries and a couple pairs of clothes. I held it protectively against my body, afraid that someone would try to take away the last possessions I owned.
“You don’t know the Smiling Buddies? About Berry Bear and Mino the Minotaur?” he said, surprised. “Well, you’ll learn about them inside. I thought kids loved that kind of stuff.”
“Our parents didn’t really give us a lot of toys,” Alex said. “They used to send us outside to play.”
“Ah, well, that’s the best way,” Sergeant Bowley said in a fatherly manner as he escorted us toward the building. Once we had gotten to within a few steps of the bizarre animal mannequins, they came to life.
Their eyes suddenly glowed with a pale, inner light that stayed far down in the black orbs with an eerie cataract gleam. With a whirring of gears and a grinding of metal, their heads ratcheted over to face us. Their slack, vacant mouths erupted into wide grins, showing square teeth that gleamed with a silvery luster. Their movements were simultaneous and choreographed, like those of synchronized dancers.
As one, they raised their right hands into the air in what was probably intended to be a wave, but in reality looked more like a Sieg Heil salute. Their mouths chattered as a song rang out all around us from hidden speakers, but the movements of their jaws didn’t exactly match the words, increasing the uncanny valley feeling of the entire thing. They started dancing and twisting their bodies in a strange kind of jitterbug dance.
“Welcome, girls and boys!
Come to the land of toys,
Where nothing is as it seems.
A place where a child’s dreams
Can rise to the purest joys,
And where the nighttime screams
Of the shadow that destroys
Fade away to nothing,
Leaving only the smiles of spring.”
As soon as the song had finished, the animatronics’ arms fell limply down, the light in their eyes fading back to blackness. With a final whirring of gears, they straightened back up into their soldierly postures and went quiet. Silently, the three of us went inside.
***
We walked through the swinging doors into a lobby where the floor was paved with black-and-white squares of gleaming marble. Long wooden tables ran perpendicular to the front wall, covered with computer monitors and TVs. Huge statues of toys surrounded us on all sides.
An extremely fat man stood in the center of the empty chamber. His clothes were all bright day-glo colors, fluorescent orange pants and a bright yellow button-up long-sleeve shirt that showed the curly hairs on his chest. His head was shaved, and his scalp gleamed like a fleshy egg.
“Welcome, kiddos!” he said in a high-pitched, feminine wheeze as sweat trickled down his beet-red face. He took a step toward us. His lips were thick and moist. In a moment, they rose into a wide smile, showing off rows of small, straight teeth. “My name is Larry Bittaker, and this is my toy company. But it is so much more! It’s a place where sweet little children like you can live and grow- forever, if you want.”
Slowly, Larry Bittaker lowered his fat face until it was only inches from mine. His many chins jiggled as he knelt down. His stubby, sweaty fingers came up and pinched my cheek. His beady, blue eyes reminded me of those of a pig. We stared at each other for a long moment. Then he turned to Alex, ruffling his overgrown bowl cut.
“OK, kids, be safe. Larry, I’m gonna get taking off,” Sergeant Bowley said, slowly stepping back from the pig-like man kneeling on the ground in front of him. “Here’s my card, by the way, if you kids ever need anything.” He reached into his pocket, giving me and Alex copies of his business cards. I stared down at it, confused. No one had ever given me a business card before. It had his name and private phone number on it.
I heard Sergeant Bowley turn and walk out the door. And then Alex and I were alone with the toymaker.
***
Larry Bittaker seemed to be the only one in the warehouse. We walked past corridors filled with empty toys and staring animatronics. Larry filled the air with his ramblings the entire time.
“You kids are really going to love it here, I guarantee it,” he said with exuberance. “The other boys and girls are waiting for you downstairs. They’re so excited to see new friends come in!” A steep metal staircase spiraled down into the darkness. I grabbed Alex’s hand nervously, looking up at Larry Bittaker. “Well, go on, little ones!”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked in a small voice. Larry gave a boisterous laugh, his protuberant stomach jiggling like jello as his face grew even redder.
“Oh, no, no!” he said. “I don’t go down there! The little ones tend to smell like poverty.” His face drew close to mine. “In fact, I can smell it on you right here.” I backed up away from the strange man. Alex’s small face formed into a scowl.
“You can’t talk to us like that,” he said defiantly, puffing his little bird chest out.
“If you two little shitheads don’t start going down those stairs now, I’ll throw you down them,” Larry Bittaker growled, his porcine face melting into a sneer. The mask of the genial businessman had disappeared, and something cold and dark revealed itself.
Glancing backwards, Alex and I started down the spiral staircase, descending into the blackness.
***
At the bottom of the stairs, I saw the gleam of blood-red emergency lights. They illuminated what looked like an enormous maze. As soon as we had gone past the threshold, a hidden door slammed behind us, cutting off the last of the white light overhead. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the metal door smashed closed with a ringing sound.
“What is this place?” Alex asked in a small voice. I followed close at his heels. “Where are the other kids?”
“Maybe they’re all hiding,” I said hopefully. “Maybe it’s all a big game.” Alex looked doubtful.
“Come on, Herbie,” he said with deep-socketed eyes the color of ashes. “Nowhere to go but forward.” The silence rang out around us like a shriek. I could hear my own heart beating loudly in my ears. The floor was covered in steel-gray carpets, the walls painted jet-black. Incandescent bulbs with dark red glass hung overhead, spread out every twenty feet or so on the dark ceiling. They cast the maze in a bloody glow.
We moved forward randomly, taking turns to the left and right. There were strange obstacles in the maze: enormous chairs that looked like they were made for giants, mannequins with glowing red eyes and smooth, plastic faces, and more animatronic characters, pigs and bulls and bears and roosters. The animatronics stayed still and dead, to my immense relief. As we wandered forward, I suddenly remembered something a math teacher had told me a couple years ago, in what felt like another life.
“There is a way to get out of any maze without retracing your steps,” the man in glasses had said at the front of the classroom, drawing a small maze as an example on the whiteboard. “All you have to do is take your left hand, hold it out to your side, and keep it against the wall. Keep going forward in the maze with your hand kept against the same wall, and eventually you will find the exit.”
I told Alex about this. A wan smile spread across his lips.
“That’s a good idea,” he said. “I never heard that before. But what if there’s no exit?” I shrugged.
“Then who cares? We’ll still explore the entire maze, as long as you keep one hand on the wall,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the right hand or left hand, just so long as you keep following the same wall. Because a maze is really just one big wall, if you think about it.” We continued forward around a corner. I nearly tripped over something laying sprawled across the hallway. I looked down and repressed a scream welling up in my throat.
The mummified body of a child lay there. I couldn’t tell how long it had been dead, or even whether it was a boy or a girl. The white, beady eyes of rats scurried around it, ripping off strips of the dessicated, jerky-like flesh of the corpse. The clothes were threadbare, worn away over time. The eyes stared vacantly up, as white as river stones. A smell like cinnamon and sulfur rose from the dead body.
“Oh my God,” I said, a rising sense of panic gripping my heart. I felt it like a tightening noose around my neck. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Alex didn’t say anything. I heard him hyperventilating by my side under the crimson glow of the maze’s lights.
“Did you hear something?” he whispered. I was staring down at the mummified corpse, transfixed. My head jerked up as if with a will of its own. I scanned the shadowy maze. Far down the corridor, I saw the gleaming of animatronic eyes, the faded cataract light deep in the sockets. With a quiet whirring of gears, they crept towards us. A few steps later, the silhouette passed under the bare red bulb overhead.
It was an animatronic minotaur with two black, bulging eyes. Its horns curved gracefully outwards. A smile like a razor split its metal face. There was a squealing of metal as the jaw unhinged, roaring with an ear-splitting electronic distortion. It had legs like a rhinoceros, thick and rounded. Its silver skin reflected the bloody light as it towered over us, staring down with a ferocious hatred.
“Run!” Alex screamed, turning and sprinting away. I followed close at his heels, afraid to look back. The ground shook as the metal behemoth’s heavy legs slammed the ground. We took random passageways in the maze, trying to lose the minotaur, but I could hear its heavy footsteps drawing closer by the second.
Up ahead, I saw a ventilation shaft with the grill removed. A woman’s face peered out, looking emaciated and filthy.
“In here!” she hissed through gritted teeth, her words barely audible over the cacophony of the minotaur’s roaring. Her dirt-streaked face drew back, disappearing in the shadows. Alex was right behind me, and at that moment, I believed we would both make it.
I leapt forwards, crawling on my hands and knees into the shaft. The thin metal echoed crazily all around me as I frantically pulled myself forward. Once I had gone forwards a few steps, I looked back, expecting to see Alex right behind me. He was still at the entrance, however. His eyes were wide and terrified. They met mine for a brief moment. He tried to crawl in, to pull himself forward. His small hands furiously dragged over the smooth metal. Then I saw two sharp, steel hands reach down behind him, grabbing his legs. He screamed, reaching forwards toward me. I tried to take his hand, but I was too far away.
A single heartbeat later, he got dragged backwards at a tremendous speed. A mixture of agony and mortal terror roiled across his face.
“Alex!” I cried, crawling forwards. “Come back!” A spatter of blood exploded over the wall and end of the shaft. I turned away, crying. I heard screaming behind me, a sound like bones shattering, something slamming over and over against a wall.
I crawled forwards through the vents, seeing the bare silhouette of a woman ahead of me, not realizing that I would never see my brother again.
***
“Come on!” the woman whispered. The vent turned at a ninety-degree angle. It was so dark I could barely tell where I was going. I felt my way slowly forward with my hands like a blind person.
“But what about my brother?” I asked. “We need to go back! He could be hurt!” The woman didn’t say anything. I heard her breathing quicken.
“Just follow me, kid,” she said. “It’s right up here…” I crawled forward, seeing a square of red light ahead of us. We came out into some kind of office room. A computer and phone sat on a desk next to crates full of protein bars and bottled waters. Posters covered the walls, many of them with bizarre slogans and pictures.
“FEED THE BEAR,” read one, next to a cartoon picture of an enormous animatronic bear ripping an elderly woman to pieces. Her walker lay next to her, a crumpled heap of useless metal. Her intestines were uncoiled around her like a den of red snakes.
The woman turned to me, her brown eyes set and grim. She had streaks of what looked like dried blood running through her black hair and covering her face.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”
“My name’s Sarah,” she said, “and I used to work for Mr. Bittaker. I helped him build this entire underground complex. This place is massive. There’s rooms of food and water, monitoring rooms, miles of mazes and probably lots of stuff I don’t know about.”
“My name’s Herbie. So why are you here?” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“When he started to go insane, when I realized he was going to put children down there as prisoners in some evil game, I tried to blow the whistle, tried to get the authorities involved. But he was bribing some government officials, and before I knew it, men in black ski masks broke into my house and injected me with some sort of drug. I blacked out and woke up here a few weeks ago,” Sarah said.
“We need to get out of here. We need to find Alex and tell people what’s happening,” I said. She shook her head sadly.
“No one will believe us,” she responded. I turned away, disgusted by her pessimism. She was supposed to be an adult, yet it seemed like she had given up all hope. I walked over to the computer, trying to turn it on. To my surprise, the screen came on with a white glare.
“Hey, the computer works!” I said. “Maybe we can use it to call for help!” I lifted the phone to my ear, hearing a dial tone. “And the phone works! We can get out of here!”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Sarah said glumly. I ignored her, fishing in my pocket for the card Sergeant Bowley had given me. Squinting down at it, I dialed his number. After a few rings, he picked up.
“Hello?” he said. In a small voice, I answered.
“Hi, this is Herbie. Please, sir, you need to come back and help me. The man locked me and my brother underground, and I think my brother is hurt. There’s more people down here, too, I don’t know how many, and I saw a dead body…”
“Kid, is this a prank?” Sergeant Bowley said quickly. “Do you know making false reports is a crime?” Sarah grabbed the phone from me.
“This isn’t a prank,” she pleaded. “Please, you need to come back to Bittaker’s Toys and get us out of here. Larry Bittaker is insane…” The phone line abruptly cut off. The power to the room went out, plunging us into darkness. Over some hidden speakers, I heard Larry Bittaker’s voice ring out.
“That’s cheating,” he growled petulantly in his high-pitched voice, sounding like an angry child. “No communication with the outside world. Do you know what happens to cheaters?” Sarah grabbed my hand in the darkness, whispering in my ear.
“Follow me,” she said. “I know this place pretty well.” She led me forward. A few moments later, I heard a doorknob turn. Red light flooded into the office room. We were looking at a half-constructed part of the maze. Wires and pipes in the wall hung exposed, and only the wooden framework of the walls had been put up.
“What is this?” I asked. “Is the maze not done?”
“The maze is never done,” Sarah answered. “Larry kept expanding it, changing contractors so that no one would know the entire maze besides him. I think he’ll keep building it until the day he dies. He has enough money, anyway.”
As quietly as we could, we moved forward through the maze, trying to put some distance between ourselves and the office room. We turned a corner with Sarah in the lead. I heard the sudden whirring of gears and a half-choked scream ahead of me. A moment later, I felt Sarah’s body smash into mine. Warm blood splashed my face as I fell backwards on the ground. The wind whooshed out of my lungs. I looked up, seeing Sarah’s pale, blood-spattered face staring up in horror a few feet ahead of me.
A furry paw with claws like railroad spikes came down, slashing her across the chest. Drops of blood covered the walls and floor as Sarah thrashed and screamed, the animatronic bear standing over her with a dried up husk of a face. Its fur had mostly fallen out, leaving a pale, gray bear skull leering in its place.
“I’m Berry Bear!” it growled in a low, slowed-down voice. “I want to be friends with you forever! Let me give you a hug!” Sarah tried to crawl away as the jet-black eyes of Berry Bear narrowed. Its jaw chattered as silver needles of teeth glistened in its metal mouth. Her eyes met mine for a moment, filled with ineffable pain and terror. I backpedaled away, scooting across the floor, my mind shell-shocked and unbelieving.
The heavy body of Berry Bear came down with a force like a battering ram. Its metal arms slammed into Sarah’s back, crushing her chest. Bone chips and gore exploded from her body. Blood poured out of her mouth in a rushing torrent. Her eyes rolled up in her head as she gurgled on the ground.
Berry Bear’s head ratcheted to face me, blood streaming down its face and arms. Its teeth chattered faster, as if to show its increasing excitement and bloodlust.
“Can I give you a hug?” it growled.
“No! Get away from me!” I screamed, pushing myself up to my feet. I ran randomly through the maze, hearing the heavy steps of Berry Bear close at my heels. At the far end of the half-constructed maze, I saw a thick wooden door.
“Help me!” I shrieked over and over. To my surprise, I heard a response from the other side of the door.
“Stand back, kid!” a deep voice said, then there was a gunshot. The door’s lock exploded inwards. The door shot open as someone kicked it, flinging it hard against the wall. I saw Sergeant Bowley standing there, his pistol drawn, his dead eyes flickering over the maze. They widened when they saw Berry Bear only a few footsteps behind me, closing the distance with every second.
“Get down!” he cried. I threw myself on the ground without question as he opened fire. The ear-splitting racket of the gunshots reverberated all across the maze. I continued crawling forwards towards Sergeant Bowley, towards safety. I saw more cops running in behind him.
I looked up, seeing Berry Bear sprinting towards Sergeant Bowley in a blur, its animatronic face half blown away and revealing the steel underneath. It had an insane expression of manic bloodlust. It raised its right hand, the gleaming metal claws hanging over Sergeant Bowley’s head. Everything seemed to freeze then. Sergeant Bowley had his gun up. Frantically, he fired one last shot at the bear’s face.
The top of its head blew off as its claw came down, ripping through Sergeant Bowley’s head with a crack. The scalp hung down in a sick, wet flap as his brains leaked out of his broken skull. Slowly, he fell back. Berry Bear followed him down with a tearing of metal and a slowing of gears and its mechanical voice. The heavy animatronic landed on top of Sergeant Bowley’s body, crushing him instantly. A spreading pool of blood marked the site of the horrific murder.
***
Screaming and crying, I crawled towards the police. They carried me outside, under a sky the color of wet cotton. I breathed in the clean air, looking around frantically for any signs of my brother. The police carried other emaciated, frightened-looking children out of the maze, but not Alex.
They put me in the back of a car and drove me out of there, away from Bittaker’s Toys and the nightmares that waited underneath.