Did he consider himself special? No, it certainly wasn’t anything like that.

  He was just as intelligent as everyone else. At times he pushed through worries with ease. At others, he sunk below the depths of his insecurities. He often got nervous. He hid his vices from his mother, like smoking or masturbating. It took him only a smile to fall in love, and he didn’t apologize whenever he was in a hurry —indeed, he was no different from countless other souls with whom he shared this earth with.

  Then why? Why did he feel this way, so utterly devoid of purpose, a social scum that clung to the bottom of society? He had already stopped counting the days in which he had woken up with no real idea of what he was meant to do.

  He was merely another man, left undone in a sick world.

  A job or a career was all he lacked, unlike many others who were handed their lives without difficulty —was that a prerequisite for fulfillment?

  The yelling coming from outside his room made him stir under the covers, even when he wasn’t sleeping. It took him hours to gather the energy to get out of bed, and it was only the voice of his mother calling out that dinner was ready what usually roused him to do it. She was already well into her eighties now, and managed to cook more out of force of habit than any culinary competence —he didn’t want to waste her efforts, and besides, he did need to eat.

  Wading around his disheveled room always required some effort. He had to move aside tangled cables and controllers, kick away discarded plates and food trays alongside old DVD cases. The hardest part, however, was trying to shake away the feeling that he was nothing more than a hollow husk of a person, a weight that seemed to grow heavier with each step.

  Was this all his life amounted to? Was this it? Something this… Empty and meaningless? It was this desolation that haunted him constantly, or at least whenever he wasn’t dissociating his happiness inside the games or anime where he sought escape from the harsh realities of the world.

  He felt like a poor excuse for a human being. A thorough and complete failure.

  But no one ever wanted to help. No one cared.

  “Peter, honey... Can you please put on some clothes whenever you come to the kitchen?” His mother’s voice was like a background noise to him, a distant hum that barely registered. “And do something about that beard of yours, for heaven’s sake.”

  He didn’t even bother to look up at her as he took a seat at their small folding table.

  “It doesn’t matter, Mom. It’s just the two of us here.”

  >> “Like every time.”

  “Oh, but this is a special occasion dearie. I even made you chocolate cake for dessert. I remembered it’s your favorite, and all because...”

  >> “It’s your 20th birthday, you forgetful dummy!”

  Perhaps a long time ago, he would have corrected her. Tell her that his birthday had been last month, and that he was already in his forties. That there was no cake waiting in the oven either.

  But now, he knew better than to argue.

  His mother’s memory was getting worse and worse each year, and reasoning with her was a lost endeavor. What was the point of it all, when she'd forget everything about it in just a few hours?

  Dinner ended without anything worth mentioning. They exchanged the same mindless questions and answers they did every other day. He already knew the routine by heart.

  “How is work going?”

  “I promise I’ll find another one soon.”

  “What happened to this cute girl you were dating?”

  “You watched that in a movie, mom.”

  “When do you think your father will return from the war?”

  “He is... Not coming back.”

  At times, it felt like one big, fat lie. A sick joke orchestrated for laughs. His very own personal Truman Show, doomed to walk through the same senseless routine with no hope of escape.

  With a heavy sigh of defeat, he helped his mother clean up the table and loaded the dirty plates into a moldy dishwasher. All seemed to indicate that it was going to be another lonely night, dedicated in its entirety to just passing the hours in front of a monitor illuminating the lifeless darkness of his room.

  A quick double-check on their decades-old fridge told him that he was ill-prepared for such a venture. It was time to stock up on drinks and snacks, one of the few instances in which he left the house during the week.

  Telling his mother that he was going to be away for a while was a lost cause, she’d get worried in a matter of minutes after crossing the front door anyway. So he simply waited until she got tired to tuck her in bed, her usually low levels of energy taking a brief period longer than usual to deplete.

  With the intent of getting the chore over and done with as soon as possible, he slid on his pair of trusty flip-flops over the socks he had been wearing for days, put on a worn-down cap featuring a video game company to hide his eyes, and then grabbed the keys to the rickety and rusty old car passed down to him by his late father.

  Peter didn’t bother changing out of his stained and baggy gray sweatpants and faded black t-shirt, despite them being stained with food remnants and spills from previous nocturnal net-surfing sessions. These were the very same clothes he had been wearing for days, holding patches of dried sweat from his excessive sleep and a few small holes scattered around the fabrics —but why bother changing?

  He saw no reason to care about his appearance —it was all inconsequential. No one ever really looked in his direction anyway, there was no point in trying to impress anyone.

  It wasn’t like he resented going out, for as much as he’d prefer to stay inside the safe comfort of his room. While it was still warm on the streets, the sensation of a gentle nocturnal breeze reaching his face was a pleasant one —a much-needed breath of fresh air away from all the grease and clutter that pervaded his house.

  Making his way to the discount store, driving slowly through the bustling streets, Peter wondered what the future might hold for him. His mother was the only person he had left in the world, and he knew that she wouldn’t be around forever.

  He yearned for something more, anything that gave his life meaning or purpose.

  For now, however, he was stuck browsing store aisles, basket in hand, selecting his favorite off-brand energy drinks and salty snacks to last him until the following week. For as much as the menial task helped distract him from his existential surrender, his top priority was still getting in and out of there quickly.

  Waiting in line was akin to a miniature limbo, perpetuating his growing sense of detachment from the world. No one bothered to notice him, not even when took a moment to observe his fellow shoppers.

  Like he was a ghost drifting through without leaving a single trace.

  Invisibility that might have been preferable when an unforeseen encounter forced him to engage another living person.

  As Peter returned to his car after paying for his items, he collided with a man who somehow managed to escape his spatial awareness —perhaps due to a momentary lapse in attention as he checked his phone for an excessive amount of game notifications.

  Determined to not let the man simply brush him off, Peter adjusted the paper bag tucked under his arm and prepared to scowl and yell at the stranger, but when he finally looked up at him, his expression faltered.

  Standing before him was a shady old guy who now similarly turned in his direction to face him. He wore jet-black glasses that obscured his gaze, while deep wrinkles creased his face. Despite his age, his expression remained firm and serious, causing a bead of sweat to form on Peter’s brow. His raven hair streaked with white, was combed back and shone with an oily luster.

  But what truly unnerved Peter were the things the man was holding. A baby in one hand, gripped by the neck as if it were a worthless doll. The other, keeping a tight hold of a screwdriver stained with dried, dark red marks that his mind refused to contemplate the origin of.

  In that unsettling standoff, the two of them remained locked in a tense silence that lasted longer than Peter’s already frayed nerves could withstand. His heart pounded inside his chest in an uneven rhythm, eventually finding enough courage to speak up.

  “Wh… What the fuck do you want from me?” He tried to sound confident, but his voice cracked under the pressure. “You don’t intimidate me, you worthless scum.”

  >> “Don’t you dare mess with me…” Peter forced himself to continue, the words tumbling out in a rushed manner. “Because… I’m pretty sure the police would love to hear about that baby you’re holding.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Threatening instead of running away immediately was a choice Peter would come to regret sooner rather than later.

  “You have miserable eyes.” The old man’s voice was slurry, in a deep and coarse tone that sounded like a strain in his vocal cords. "Are you also bored of this world?”

  Peter’s legs felt like jelly as he tried to take a step back into his car waiting in the distance; yearning to escape from the inexplicably oppressive energy emanating from the strange man before him —yet his body refused to cooperate, leaving him rooted to the spot as fear began to take hold.

  “Want to find out…” The phrases were spoken with flat, disjointed and monotone inflections, sending shivers down Peter’s spine as they chillingly contrasted the nature of his question. “That which lurks beyond?”

  With a sudden jerk of his neck, the man lowered his dark glasses allowing them to truly cross eyes for the first time. Peter had expected them to be hollow and hazy, lost under the murky waters of substance abuse —but they were anything but that.

  The stare behind the glasses was piercing and fierce, holding an unnerving intensity as it burned through his own. He focused on Peter’s eyes as if seeking to leave an imprint on his mind, to crawl and build a nest under his skin.

  As the man continued to stare at him, Peter felt a cold sweat break out on his entire back like a monster’s breath, and he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being swallowed into a void of darkness. The man's voice seemed to echo in his mind, repeating the same chilling words over and over.

  And then, the man's eyes multiplied. With a revolting motion, the pupils at the center his sclera shifted to brand new positions as a second set peeked from the corners of his pupils. A third group joined soon after, grotesquely off-center yet still somehow appearing like they stared Peter down.

  That marked the limit of what he was willing to endure.

  Peter's pride wasn’t bloated enough to make protecting it worth the torment. His feet finally felt like moving once again, freed from their curse as he sprinted towards his car, clumsily clutching the paper bag filled with the supplies that had initially led him out into the awful outside.

  His fingers initially fumbled with the car door handle, but in a matter of seconds, he already had deftly ignited the engine, causing it to rumble back to life. Forcefully stepping down on the pedal, he accelerated away from the parking lot; not daring to spare a backward glance, terrified from the possibility of the old man still watching from a distance —or even worse, somehow chasing him.

  It took him speeding through several blocks for his heart to finally begin settling down, taking multiple turns off his route before he was sure that there wasn’t any car tailing his. He found himself driving through quiet residential streets, the sort of place where the only traffic came from the occasional passing of a lone car or two.

  Despite his best efforts to employ logic, to convince himself that it had been just a simple old guy that posed no real threat to him, Peter couldn’t quite shake away the sensation that he narrowly avoided something truly sinister.

  The irony was not completely lost on him, making Peter nervously smile at his reflection in the rearview mirror. Just a while ago he had been brooding over how uneventful his life was, wishing for something to break up the tedium. Now his body ached with adrenaline, and all he wanted was the safety of his bedroom walls, where the only thrills were safely contained behind a screen.

  ‘That which lurks beyond.’ Those words continued to gnaw at the back of his mind, even more than the sight of those disgusting eyes. Under normal circumstances, he would have dismissed them as nothing more than a stilted threat, ramblings of a confused old man. But something about the phrase sounded off, even now that it was all behind him.

  What could he have possibly meant by that?

  Peter shrugged with triumphing relief. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter anymore. All he had to do was make it home, and the nightmare would be over. Another week of confinement inside his room didn’t sound too bad in comparison to that disturbing encounter.

  As fate would have it, things were not meant to play out that way.

  Moving on their own accord, his hands wrenched the steering wheel in a violent spasm, It was a reflex so automatic it felt as if his body were no longer his own —a wholly uncontrollable impulse that froze his heart in place.

  He tried to regain control, to steer the car back onto the road, but it was too late. There was no changing the direction his life was now heading towards.

  The rubber tires screeched as the car swerved off the asphalt, hurtling towards a tree ominously waiting at the end of the street. According to the many action movies he had watched, time was supposed to crawl at an agonizingly slow speed, yet Peter's eyes widened in terror as only brief images passed before them in a flash.

  He saw a woman walking with her young daughter, their faces illuminated faintly by the dim streetlights. He could see the car crumpling around him, metal twisting and glass shattering. He witnessed the blood pooling beneath him, crimson red against the drab gray of the concrete.

  And then, all was replaced by complete, utter darkness.

  Slowly, Peter’s consciousness emerged from the primordial depths, teased into awakening by the sound of machine humming, a chorus of beeps echoing through an otherwise completely silent room. A flutter of his eyelids, then a deep and dry exhalation. Hesitantly, his eyes opened from the cocoons of slumber, blinking against the harsh glare of fluorescent lights.

  It took him a moment for his surroundings to come into focus, but gradually, the white-washed walls of a hospital room became clearer, as did the tubes and wires snaking their way across his upper body —marred by a kaleidoscope of unpleasant sensations, overwhelming compared to the relief of unconsciousness.

  This wasn’t the first time Peter had regained his awareness, but each time without fail, he had quickly faded back into the sweet embrace of obscurity. Those brief moments he had experienced in the unclear past now came back to him in the shape of faint memories, luring his rational thoughts to make sense of the scattered pieces.

  A gentle voice that spoke to him whenever its owner trusted he wasn’t listening, tender touches of soft fingertips against his skin, and the blinding face of an angel. They had once been the only lifeline offered to him like an echo of divine grace —what fueled a stubborn resilience to grasp once again the confines of his mortal coil.

  But this time, neither that beacon of light nor a surrender to the blankets of sleep would be able to save him from the wreckage he had become.

  The recollections of the car accident that shattered his life came flooding back, resented in his core like a suffocating vice grip. Tears began to stream down his face as the weight of guilt threatened suffocation.

  Somehow, he was still there, now lying motionless in a hospital room as an even more broken man than before —but at what cost?

  Two lives had been affected, and most likely extinguished as the price for his survival. The possibility of having become a murderer during that horrible night was something his already weary heart couldn’t possibly bear.

  For even when Peter’s life was haunted by the phantasm of self-loathing, he had never wished harm upon anyone. It was unfair… Why did he have the right to still draw breath, after having caused so much pain?

  Yet cracking through the walls of his numbed-down skull like a chisel, Peter heard the sounds of a beckoning voice, echoing inside his mind like the enchanting tunes of a bewitching lullaby.

  “It’s a lie…”

  The words repeated time and time again, in a hauntingly feminine reverberation the likes he had never heard before in real life, dancing in the shadows of sanity. Was it an illusion? A figment of his wild imagination, conjured like a desperate coping mechanism? All that he was certain of, was that it was growing louder and more defined with each passing minute, seeping through the gaps of his fragile psyche.

  “All those bad feelings… All a lie…”

  >> “The nice words… Only those are true.”

  The melody of respite from suffering was seductive, as the voice whispered sweet nothings into his ear. Compelled to seek its origin, his eyes darted around the room in a frenzied daze… Until they finally locked onto the figure staring down at him behind the upper cradle bars of his hospital bed, leaning on his line of sight with a bone-chilling smile.

  Peter’s heart momentarily stopped in place as he took in the sight of that… Thing.

  It could only be described as an unsettling oversized rag marionette with uneven and grimy dark blue yarn-like hair —easily towering over him even at standing height. Her body was composed of tattered, soot-stained fabric patched together roughly and crudely. She had long elongated limbs beyond human proportions, with articulations and hands constructed from half-translucent doll-like plastic, revealing behind it an intricate network of black, thread-like veins and sinew within.

  Asymmetrical, mismatched eyes rested on her face —one composed of a poorly threaded matte pink button, the other more akin to a stuffed plushy plastic one; with a large, irregular pupil that glimmered with an unnerving purple hue. It reflected Peter’s terrified expression back at him, yet it was void and lifeless, as if it could hungrily swallow light itself.

  A wide slit ran across where her mouth should be, adorned by crude stitches that appeared more like an attempt to silence her than anything else —a handiwork that separated itself from any natural configuration by how raw and unnatural it was. It contorted into the shape of a smile, making Peter realize that it was no mere mannequin placed there as a morbid prank.

  That thing… She... Was alive.

  His voice distorted into a loud, bloodcurdling scream, tearing the silence of the hospital halls like a knife through cloth. Its sound blared in Peter’s eardrums as he jolted in horror, his entire being aching to escape the creature before him.

  But as soon as he attempted to step away from the confines of his hospital bed, his weakened legs crumbled beneath his weight, sending him violently down to the cold, sterile floor. In his reduced position, his breathing became ragged gasps, forcing his eyes to look away from the creature’s grotesque visage.

  From the corner of his vision, he could see her sway slightly towards him, as if savoring the sound of his cries, and its unnatural smile widened further into a grin that sent a fresh wave of terror through Peter’s veins. She wasn’t trying to hunt him, simply satisfied with relishing in his fear.

  All of his instincts demanded that he curl up into a ball on the floor and hide, yet his mind raced with desperation attempting to come up with something to build distance from the monster that had invaded his refuge.

  Helplessly shifting from his crawling position to stretch his hands towards the closed door, yet before he managed to reach salvation, the sound of hurried footsteps echoed through as a pair of hospital workers rushed in instead —their voices laced with urgency as they helped him back up, despite his incoherent babbling and flailing limbs.

  Settling him on the opposite side of the room from the terrifying specter, the doctor and nurse finally addressed him, informing Peter that he had sustained severe injuries as a result of the car accident, most severe of them all being a cranial fracture. He had been unconscious for nearly two months.

  They proceeded to discuss of the surgeries he had undergone, of the lengthy recovery process he now had to look forward to, and the extensive rehabilitation treatment plan that lay ahead. However, most of these details slipped through the cracks of Peter's distracted mind, his gaze fixated on the barely moving, yet vividly tangible creature waiting behind his hospital bed.

  Neither of the hospital staff members appeared willing to acknowledge her presence, leaving Peter to question whether the alleged skull fracture might have had an irreversible impact on his very sanity.

  It was as he tried to draw their attention to the monster lurking in the corners that he suddenly recognized the face of the young nurse, who was now looking at him with a worried expression. She was the one… The single, immaculate being that had been his bastion of hope amidst the throes of unconsciousness.

  Desperate for comfort, he reached out and grabbed the nurse's hand with trembling fingers, squeezing it tightly and closing his eyes due to his inability to keep bearing the agony of his new reality.

  Then, he felt it once more —the softness of her palm against his, and the warmth that seeped through his skin, soothing his tormented soul.

  When he finally gathered the strength to open his eyes and read her nametag, Peter was struck with a newfound appreciation that diminished everything he had ever felt before.

  She was the most beautiful creature that ever graced his worthless existence. Her name… It was Callista Nilsson.