![]() I was amazed to even discover I had limbs again. Hands grabbed me by the legs and began dragging me downward. If Death is all there is, then what is IT? What was waiting for me? The water pressed in around me and I couldn't speak, although I could still draw breath somehow. I knew I wouldn't understand, but that didn't stop me from feeling frustrated. I still felt tangled up with the figure, but we now existed as a beam of light boiling into the water. ![]() It took my scattered mind a long while to realize that I was the energy flowing into the lake. The still surface began to churn with the enigmatic energy. The light was taking a life of its own inside the water. My dad never did come back, and it was years before I found out the truth: he had killed himself that day. "He brought you home and then he had to go away." "Yes, darling," she said, although she didn’t look at me when she said it. I opened my eyes and saw my mom crying over me, but I didn’t see my dad. The world stopped spinning, but warm droplets of water still fell on my face. I started to feel a little sick, and I closed my eyes. The world began to shimmer and flow together like different shades of green and golden paint, spinning around faster and faster in circles. "Can I get under your wings with you?" I asked. "It’s starting to rain," he said, whooshing his wings up over his head. "Can you go to other dimensions, too?"īut the demon didn’t answer, he was looking up at the sky. "Sometimes when I’m bored or sad, my mind slips off to the third dimension, and I see people like you." "Sometimes it’s better to see what isn’t there instead of what is." "I can’t see the subway station anymore," I said. I looked around and saw the subway station had disappeared, replaced by flowing green meadows that were full of old trains. Cheerful kid’s music played the entire time. The Hulk man laughed and danced around him almost ritually. By the end of the short clip, the boy was shaking and nearly catatonic. Off-screen, another person hurled stuffed animals at the kid, hitting him in the head with them, and even once hitting the needle as it stuck into his arm, causing the kid to wail even louder. The boy screamed and cried as an adult man wearing a Hulk costume gave him three different injections with a long needle. His mask was pulled down, and his costume sleeve was pulled up. The boy sat in what looked like a child’s bedroom. When I clicked it, I saw a video of a real kid, probably four or five years old, dressed as Spiderman. Inside was a link to a Russian-language website. ![]() Only a few days later, when I returned to the office after a holiday weekend, there was another email waiting for me, titled, "Be brave, Spidey!" I was reluctant to open it, and now I wish I hadn’t. More than $20/hour? I guess my memory is for sale, because I quickly forgot about the video. He told me to ignore it and keep up the excellent work, and that my review would be coming up, with the possibility of a raise. I forwarded the email to my boss and asked him what the deal was, and he quickly responded that it was a joke from our partners overseas, and that I had been mistakenly added to the recipient list. I examined the recipients and sender of the email, and found that it had been sent from inside the company to several employees on a list. Whimsical vaudeville music played in the background. Behind her, on the bedpost, was a blue air freshener, much like the one next to me in my cubicle. It was clear that she was having a nightmare. She babbled in what I believe was Russian or Ukrainian, and occasionally fidgeted or brought her hands up defensively to protect her face. One day, when I checked my company email account for the weekly briefing/workload assignment, there was an email titled "Lullaby." Inside was a link to a short, low-resolution video of a young girl asleep in a bed. Things started to get really uncomfortable around the two-month-mark.
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