rive gauche.

josh kiszka | witchcraft muse blog.

[happydcath]

mat musto & charlie rocko - gif board 1/?

"you're not scared of anything."  

"me? i'm scared of everything. i'm scared of what i saw. i'm scared of what i did, of who i am. and most of all, i’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life, the way i feel when i'm with you."

[happydcath]

in case i don’t come back. (4/12)

part four of twelve.

an au self-para for josh kiszka.

after my last attempt, i vowed to not enter a cave again. if these things are dangerous, then I will stay away from them and not endanger others. besides, it is remarkably hard to find accessible caves that aren’t locked down to commercial endeavors. or at least, it is for someone like me, that has no experience with this sort of thing. i did look. briefly. i don’t want to leave my cellphone on for long. it was a half-hearted search, as i have no desire to go down into that darkness again. not after last time.

i bought a cheap fashion scarf to cover the bruises on my neck. the cashier stared at me the entire time she rung me out. the purple lines across my throat are obviously a handprint, but the fingers stretch too long, almost back past my ears. it hurts to turn my head. it hurts to lift anything or even to keep my arms up and on the steering wheel for hours on end.

they didn’t mean to hurt me. i know this now. they didn’t realize.

i finally checked the news. the cave tour group is believed missing. they’re speculating that they went into an unexplored part of the caverns and got lost. they didn’t find any bodies. i guess they never will. they haven’t released the names of the people missing yet. if they do, i’ll be safe at least. i used a fake name and paid with cash.

i feel guilty thinking this way. about how their deaths will affect me when i at least got to survive.

i started to hear the whispers yesterday morning. this is unusual, for i’d only heard them in the dark prior to now. they echoed in the back of my head like a low hum whose origin can’t be pinpointed. it chewed at my waking thoughts and when my mind slipped into an idle state i thought of the darkness; of walking through a vast space and my body felt cold. at one point i realized i’d taken an exit i hadn’t intended to take. i turned around and returned to the highway.

they’re calling to me. i know that’s what this is. i felt it like a barb inside my chest, the line pulling ever tighter the longer i tried to ignore it. i think they set it when they fixed my eyes. affixed it inside me, wrapped around my sternum, and now i am caught and can only twist helplessly.

i thought it was fine. that I could fight the call, that i was strong enough to. i’m not.

i returned to awareness after i was in the hollow space. i didn’t know how i got there. i have no recollection of what happened between when i went to bed in my hotel room last night and when i woke under the earth. when i next opened my eyes i was someplace vast and cold, barefoot and dressed in my pajamas. this was not a dream, nor was i somehow transported there directly from my bed. my legs ached as if i’d been walking and there was grit on my feet. eli was at my feet.

their whispers surrounded me. discordant, uneven, as if multiple lines of thought were swirling about me, each distinct and none of them demanding to be heard over the other. i couldn’t hold on to any of them and it all sounded like noise in my head. i fell to my knees and covered my hands with my ears.

one of them touched my arm, lightly, where the bruises were spreading up towards my bicep. then it shifted, fingertips against the tendon in my neck. something in my chest caught at that, the memory of being held, being dragged away against my will, of trying to scream and fight and being helpless.

i slapped its hand away. and i felt a shift, a sudden awareness that had not been there before fixed on my person. i felt their surprise - and their displeasure.

they would not hurt me. this i understood. was made to understand from the whispering that forced their intention into my very mind. they had before, obviously, but that was not their intention. a mistake.

sam, after all, never fought back. we are more fragile than they realized.

but neither would they tolerate my rebuke.

i lay this out for you so easily but that masks what this process was actually like. everything moved too fast, like images flickering in and out of my eyesight so fast that I could only register the impression. i filled in the gaps myself and even then, i couldn’t do it at the time. i only half-understood what was happening. it was only later that i could sit still and silent and reflect that i began to piece it all together. i wonder how much of what i wrote above is my own conjecture.

i wonder how much of me they understand. they did not seem to care what i was, but rather why i was. like they were skimming the top of my emotions and trying to comprehend what formed them without understanding the emotions themselves.

they understood, at least, that i was not sam. that i was different, that i had a will and desires of my own and that they no longer matched what they wanted of me.

and i understood their intention to remedy this.

i fought them. i felt like a child throwing a tantrum but i knew no other way to express that i didn’t want to be here, that i was scared and confused. they held me, but with the flat of their hands, pressing against my back and pinning me to the ground. just enough that my struggling to rise was futile, my feet sliding uselessly against the stone beneath me. and there was a touch, a single finger against my spine, just between my shoulderblades.

something tightened in my chest. strings encircling my ribcage, squeezing tight until it felt my ribs would crack. i whimpered in the back of my throat.

my memories falter again at this point. i snatched fragments here and there. of being pulled to my feet, fingers encircling each of my wrists. another hand against my back, steadying me as i stood.

of being taken through the cave (i don’t know which, i don’t think i can ever find it again). they were all around me, a tiny knot of those things escorting me back to the surface. despite everything, i felt safe. they would see to it. and i drifted back into the darkness in my mind.

when i was fully myself again, i found myself on a muddy road, half overgrown and encased by the forest. i didn’t know what else to do (my cellphone was not with me) so i continued walking along with it. there was barely any light from the moon filtering through the trees, but the darkness wasn’t an issue. i couldn’t see, but i knew where everything was. that there was glass from broken bottles littering the road, that there were sharp stones, and i avoided them all.

i wasn’t afraid. not of the night. just… annoyed. i was very lost as to where i was.

i don’t know how long i walked. it felt like hours. i never realized how much shoes do for us - my feet ached in a way i didn’t think possible, such that every step was agony. the full weight of my body bearing down on muscles that were unused to the strain. i kept moving only because i feared if i stopped i’d not get up again.

finally, i reached a gas station. it was still before dawn. i had to talk to someone. there was no other way to get directions back to the hotel. i told the clerk a story about sleepwalking. on a trip with a friend, i explained. i didn’t have their phone number memorized, i relied on my cellphone’s address book… which was back in the hotel room. i didn’t have to feign embarrassment for my lie.

he called a taxi for me. paid for it himself. he seemed confused, uncertain of what to do other than overwhelmingly help in whatever way he could. people are like that, i’m finding. we want to help.

i wanted to help when i saw sam at the mailbox. i think this instinct is a curse on humanity.

i still feel those strings in my chest. they dig in when i twist my body too far or bend over. it is uncomfortable, but it doesn’t hurt. not yet.

i know why they’re there. sam went to the cave every day if he could. they called to him and he went. they’re calling to me, but i did not go, and so they left something behind to compel me.

they want something. there’s a reason for all this. perhaps those things aren’t dangerous for me, but i know they are dangerous and i’m terrified that they’ll get whatever it is they’re after.

i deleted all the scheduled emails. i'm sorry. i felt i must. i don’t want anyone else to become trapped as i have been. this is no longer about saving one child or even saving one person such as myself. it’s about saving everyone else that might stumble across the hollow space in the world.

this is the only proof now and it can be dismissed or written off as a clever prank. if - when - i vanish (for i'm beginning to believe this is the only outcome) i'll have nothing left of me but these words. i will continue to update for as long as I can, but at some point, i fear that one of these posts will be my last.

please read them. please remember them. but do not go down into the earth after me.

[happydcath]

josh kiszka & eli matis - gif board 6/?

only once in your life, i truly believe you find someone who can completely turn your world around. you tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more.

[happydcath]

josh kiszka & eli matis - gif board 5/?

let go, i got a feeling that it’s time to let go why? i said so, i knew we were doomed from the get-go

[happydcath]

𝙞 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙖 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙞𝙩'𝙨 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙜𝙤 - a josh kiszka playlist

i. reunite - isbells / ii. bloom - the paper kites / iii. neon rose - jesse woods / iv. naked as we came - iron & wine / v. half light - fossil collective / vi. the choir - morly / vii. sounds like help - austin basham / viii. writing on the wall - bear’s den

[listen here]

[happydcath]

in case i don’t come back. (3/12)

part three of twelve.

an au self-para for josh kiszka.

this is a harder update to make than the last.

i made a mistake today. five people are dead because of me. i thought those things in the hollow space were benign, but they aren’t, they only tolerate me. i don’t know why. i hear screams echoing in my head - of terror, of pain - and i can’t bear to look in the mirror. there are bruises around my neck and arms from their hands when they dragged me away from the group and sent me back to the surface.

part of me wishes i’d died down there with the other five. i don’t even know who they were.

i’ll tell you how this happened. but please, remember what i am responsible for. five people that had nothing to do with this died and maybe one life was worth trading for the safety of a child but five lives are not worth mine. i hate myself. i think you should hate me too by the time i finish this update.

i’ve been driving all weekend. i said i was going to run, and i ran. i’m afraid i can’t tell you specifics of what i’m doing. i have to assume the government knows everything about me now and i don’t want to confirm whether any of that information has changed or not.

i’m not wearing my glasses. i gave that away in my last post. this is so strange to me; having to think like this. having to remember i’m being hunted. my eyes hurt. it’s even worse in the light. have you ever gone outside in a deep cold and felt the wind against your eyes and squeezed them shut tight and felt how they were cold against your eyelids? it feels like that constantly. they’re red, too, especially at the corner where that thing first worked its finger into the socket. they’re stained with blood. it’s starting to dry and it looks like rust, like the whites of my eyes are rusting.

i have new sunglasses, at least, to hide them from people. bought them at a gas station. i haven’t been able to use non-prescription sunglasses since i was in high school.

at least now i know i was right to leave. i took a risk - i turned my cellphone on. i wanted to reply to people. it’s so strange, i don’t know you and yet you’re like a lifeline for me now. a tether to normalcy.

i like my habits. my life was orderly. there were patterns and schedules i adhered to and i found them comforting. what i’m doing now - with no plans and nothing familiar around me - it’s like being thrown into a foreign country where all the customs and norms you rely on can no longer be trusted. i feel isolated and adrift.

i only leave my phone on for a few minutes at a time. i’m not sure if this is safe.

during one of those stops, i called elizabeth. to ask about sam. he hasn’t gone into the woods, she said. not for a few days now. she sounded relieved. then she asked about me. i wasn’t home, she said, and then there were people at my house. the police, but other people too that looked federal and they were there a long time.

they came and questioned elizabeth about me. said they needed to find me, that i was in danger. they fed her some story about drugs. and then she asked me if i was safe, if i would tell her where I was so that they could come to take me. that it was okay, she understood what it was like and that she would help me through it. that there were resources. that all i had to do was let them help me.

i hung up without saying anything. i guess she believes them now.

it was better that way.

this is how they’re going to hunt me. they’ll turn compassion into a weapon. at least now it’s me they want instead of sam. that is how it should be. 

around midday, i decided to find an opportunity to go back to the hollow space. a cave was surprisingly easy to find. i think i’d been driving towards it all day without understanding that was what i was doing. i don’t have a destination in mind. i’m picking highways on intuition and perhaps that instinct brought me to a road that led past where i needed to be. the sign wasn’t that big, just the name of the caverns and the exit number. i turned off the highway and drove until i found it.

i probably shouldn’t describe the outfit in much detail. just in case someone from the government reads this. i can tell you that it was small and there was a sense of familiarity there in the people that ran it. they liked their work and liked sharing the tiny cave they’d acquired the land to with others. i was the last to arrive before the next tour. there were two other couples and the tour guide. we were given helmets with headlamps and they looked at our shoes to make sure they were suitable. this was not like the big caves, they said. there were some tight passages and there were no lights down there.

i’ll be honest - i wasn’t certain what i was trying to do. i felt compelled to go down into the earth and the more i write this, the more i think they were calling to me like they’d been calling for sam. i didn’t have to go like this, though. i didn’t have to take people with me.

the cave was wetter than the other one i’d been in. minerals encrusted the walls and the guide held up the light to reflect off their cloudy surfaces. he showed us chunks that had broken off, let us handle them. i was distracted. i only half-listened to him, straining to hear the whispering that ebbed from behind the reach of our lanterns.

i don’t think they use words. i don’t think the sounds mean anything at all. i think they’re just the carrier for the intention behind them, like thought and substance are entwined in the waves of sound.

you could argue that is language. we carry our thoughts with the noises we make. this is different, however. i think they could communicate without whispering.

i think they do it for our sake.

i turned my light off. i thought i’d fall back into the darkness and let them find me while the rest of the tour went on ahead. but that didn’t happen. when i turned my light off, all lights went off, as if that one small act plunged us all into the hollow part of the world and no light was permitted here.

i heard a couple of the others with me gasp in surprise. the guide began to speak, to tell them it was fine - then he screamed. piercing, shocked, and abruptly over with a sound like the tearing of the fabric. wet. liquid splattering on the ground. and another person screamed, and another - their cries were swallowed up into the vastness of the earth around us and i stumbled for them, hands outstretched in the darkness, crying wordlessly that they needed to stop, that this was wrong, that this wasn’t what i wanted.

hands seized my arms, just above the elbow. another went around my neck and the fingertips burrowed into the tendons of my neck, choking off my pleas. they pulled me back and their grip only tightened when i struggled until it felt like they were compressing my very bones.

purple lines of bruises mark exactly where their fingers went. the skin all around where they held me is green and yellow and i fear i will have to find a way to hide them, lest someone believes i’m being taken.

they took me away from there, from where they were killing the others that had come into the earth with me, and pulled me back to the entrance of the cave. i could see the light of the fading day in the distance, a thin pinpoint like a candle. they dropped me to my knees, for i hadn’t stopped fighting them the whole time, even though my fingers could not grasp hold of anything but air and they were so much stronger, able to carry my weight even as i struggled for purchase to resist where they were taking me. the hand around my throat switched to grip the back of my neck, keeping my head fixed forwards so i could not turn and look at them in the light of the faint daylight.

i felt their reprimandation. not unkind, nor harsh. simply telling me that this was how it was, that i had made a mistake - understandable - and now i knew not to come down here with another ever again.

just me. they’d accepted me in place of sam.

then they were gone and i was alone in the cave.

i didn’t go back to see what had become of the other five. i went to my car and i drove away. i’ve been driving since. i don’t plan on even getting a hotel tonight, i’m just going to sleep in my car. i don’t want to talk to anyone. i don’t feel i deserve to be part of this world anymore after what i’ve done. and maybe this was just a mistake and maybe you’re inclined to forgive me - because how could i have known?

please don’t.

i can’t forgive myself and i think i’d prefer hatred. it’s sharp and it burns inside me and i think this will be what carries me forward. it’s a comforting fire and after today, i deserve to burn in its pyre.

[happydcath]

josh kiszka & eli matis - gif board 4/?

call me stupid, call me sad... you’re the best i’ve ever had. you’re the worst i’ve ever had.

[happydcath]

in case i don’t come back. (2/12)

part two of twelve.

an au self-para for josh kiszka.

i honestly didn’t think i’d be able to write this. i really didn’t. i thought, okay, i’ll just make that one entry and then i’ll never be heard from again. kind of my last attempt to do something. my swan song, i guess. you know what a swan song is? the swan, about to die, having been silent for its whole life, sings the last song to carry it into the afterlife.

i guess that’s me. i’m a dying swan. i’m kind of a private person. silent and maybe a little awkward, but i gave what i thought was going to be my last mark on this world to strangers. that was my song.

thank you for reading it. i feel all curled up inside, like i want to cry, but i think my body has forgotten how.

obviously, i came back. i’m alive. i’m okay, but I think i’m also not.

sorry. i’m having trouble putting my thoughts together. i’m so exhausted. i don’t think I’ve slept since i posted last and that’s not just me being dramatic. i honestly can’t remember if i slept but i just know i didn’t.

i left for the cave right after i made that post. it was like that was my way of ensuring i couldn’t turn back, that i’d made this declaration, i’d put everything into motion, and there was no undoing it once done. like jumping off a cliff. i’m not a brave person, but i’ve done that. jumped off a cliff, that is, when i was a kid. the trick was to not think about it, to not even look, not until i was halfway off and it was too late. i was in the throes of my fall and gravity would be given her due. i remember the edge drifting away behind me in stark clarity; the color of the stone, the ribbons of lichen, and the water beneath like a blackened sapphire waiting to receive me.

i learned that when bravery was lacking, recklessness could suffice. don’t stop. don’t think. just commit.

this was all I could think of on the path to the cave. one foot in front of the other along the path sam had worn through the forest. the litter grew sparse as i continued until it vanished entirely. it is not a large woods. i suppose people don’t go to the cave and until i followed sam i’d never been here to see this shift and to ask why it was.

the entrance to the cave is small. i’m average height, 5’4”, and i had to crouch to get inside the mouth. i’d brought a small backpack with some food, water, and batteries for my light. that hung clipped to my jeans so i could keep my hands free. i got to the back of the initial chamber before i had to turn it on. there was still light outside - but fading as i had left at sundown - and it wouldn’t follow where i had to go. the chamber narrowed and then dove downwards into the earth, a muddy channel of stone that reminded me of a drain pipe.

i think that was the hardest part. i knew it went somewhere because sam had gone through it - but what if i was too big? what if i got stuck? i was ready to die, but i didn’t want it to be because i’d done something stupid.

that’s the first time i cried. when i got down on my belly and pulled my way into that channel with my forearms, pushing my tiny backpack in front of me so it wouldn’t add to my width by being on my back. my body blocked the light and so i could only see what was ahead in flashes, like lightning strikes, but it didn’t matter because that tunnel stretched onward and downward into darkness, like falling into a void.

into the dark and into the cold. the world evens out under the earth, sound vanishes, the colors mute into the same drab palette of mud and slate, the wind vanishes and the air is dry and tastes sterile. we associate the underground with death, we place our dead in the soil, but even six feet is too shallow to really be considered underneath the earth. we think of hell, of the afterlife, but i think the cave is more akin to limbo. devoid of color and emotion, a drab, empty space where the stillness waits until the end of days.

maybe I’m being too poetic. but i feel compelled to tell you how it was because you read my swan song, and now we’re in this together, you and i. i feel different since descending into the cave. my thoughts cannot hold still and i see everything in startling clarity like each moment is a photograph and it’s locked in detailed perfection inside my mind. i keep looking at the date on my computer to reassure myself of where i am. it’s like five years passed inside me since i entered the cave.

this is only a trick of my mind. i was disoriented. my subconscious is trying to explain what happened to me and failing, so it grasps at figments instead.

these parts i am telling you i trust. not much longer, though, until we reach what is no longer solidly true but neither is it a lie.

the tunnel opened up and i could crawl. my knees began to ache after only a short distance and my shoulders burned. i was shaking when i emerged into another chamber where i could stand. the light illuminated the entire area, an oblong cave, the floor covered with uneven sheets of rock broken off from the ceiling. it was not very large, perhaps the size of an average bedroom. i picked my way across the slanting stones around the wall, searching for the next passage. i made two rounds and found nothing.

there was nothing further. just this broken, uneven chamber, dry and dull.

i fell into despair then. i had no idea what was down here, but i’d expected something, i’d hoped for it so badly and now here i was with nowhere else to go. i sat down in the middle of the cavern and i think i was beyond reasoning at that point, acting on emotion and a wild, frantic resolve to make my reckless excuse for courage to count for something. i thought i’d just stay there and starve and die in this sorry excuse for a cave and this would be my martyrdom.

i cried for a long time. i think you can find this understandable, given how afraid i was when i entered that cave. i’m still afraid.

finally, i turned the light off. i thought perhaps this would encourage whatever lived down there to… manifest, i suppose. just… anything. i sat there in the darkness until i couldn’t cry anymore.

did you know that in a cave you can experience total silence? i went on a cave tour about six years ago and the tour guide told us this and someone asked if we could just sit there and all of us just held perfectly still and waited until we could hear our own blood in our ears and just when that silence felt like it was moving against my skin, like the weight of it was holding me fixed on that wood bench in this tiny bubble of lantern light, the guide said it was time to move on and the silence fled back into the corners and the recesses in the darkness.

there was no one to break the silence for me. and after my body forgot how to cry, i couldn’t break it either.

this is where i am no longer certain of what is real.

i was still in the cave, but the cave had become a hollow space that was somehow vaster and emptier. do not mistake me - i did not go elsewhere. i remained exactly where i was. it was more that i understood the nature of where i was, i was more keenly, in this hollow spot under the earth.

that is when they came to me.

i heard their whispering first and i thought it was inside my mind, that i was hearing the own workings of my body, magnified by the silence pressing in around me. words, but not words, a whispering that wasn’t language but was more intention and form and impression. then they took my backpack. i heard it slide away from me and i knew that I was no longer alone. i tried to reach for it, i tried to stand, i tried to speak. i tried to tell them that there was a danger, that sam needed to be released from whatever sway they held over him, that it wasn’t safe - not for him, not for me, and possibly not for them either. but there was a touch at the back of my head, against my hair, and i could not move. like my strength had drained away, like I was trapped inside my body, and it was as if a hand was about my throat and held it closed so that my words remained stuck inside my lungs.

they moved without sound. thin fingers, cold, like i was being touched by nothing but bone. it placed them on my cheek, traced along the contour, then prised my glasses away.

i didn’t get them back. i don’t need them anymore. i never did anyway.

it touched my eyes. gently, right there at the edge, and then slid its fingers beneath the eyelid and along the rim of the socket.

i feel sick writing this. i keep having to get up and walk away and then come back and write the next sentence. this is really hard but i think i need to tell someone because this keeps rattling around in my mind and it hurt so bad and i couldn’t move. there was that feeling like a hand around my throat and i couldn’t even scream.

it wrapped its fingers around my eyeballs, back to that cable of nerves leading into the skull. it was like frost spreading on a pane of glass, that cold burrowing into my eyes and freezing them solid and then into the bone and down into my throat.

i thought i’d been blinded. but i’m not and i’m not wearing my glasses and i can see the text on this screen. that’s why i say i’m okay but i’m also not okay.

it released me. i don’t recall it taking its hands away, just that suddenly i was there with the cold seeping away from my eyes and i could move and speak again, but it was as if there was a weight on my chest and i no longer wanted to tell them anything. like it no longer mattered.

they led me to the surface. they took me by the wrist and led me out.

i don’t know how long i was down there. i was like sam. vacant. hollow.

i think they let me go because they pitied me. i feel so weak and helpless and i was so afraid down there in the darkness. that hand on my wrist was tight, but it was a grip that would ensure i couldn’t slip away, not even when i stumbled or fell or hesitated and it never wavered, never let go, leading me out of the cave and back to where i belonged.

have you watched those videos of people helping animals that are stuck somewhere? a cat struggling to climb a wall and escape the river. a deer stranded on ice. and they’re so scared and they just thrash helplessly because they don’t know what this creature coming and touching them is trying to do. i sometimes wondered what that feels like; to desperately need help and to have it present in such an alien, incomprehensible form that you can’t understand that this is your salvation.

i think i know now. what that’s like.

i can only remember what happened when i exited the cave in bits and pieces. like i was asleep, only surfacing briefly before slipping away again. like drowning, i suppose. i remember crossing that invisible boundary in the forest and seeing an empty plastic bag flattened against a tree’s branches like a shroud. i remember the sidewalk leading towards my house. i remember standing in front of my door, staring at the keys in my hand. and i remember the camera, the one positioned at the mouth of the cave, pointed inwards and how its glass eye shone with a single point of light reflecting from the sunlight i emerged into.

they saw me enter the cave. they saw me exit. they saw my face.

i’m not sure what i’m going to do next. i can’t stay here. i was stupid. i posted that i live right next door to elizabeth. i honestly didn’t think I was going to come back from this. my car is packed and i’m ready to run. i emptied my bank account and have plenty of cash. nothing that they can use to find me. i’m keeping my cellphone but i’m going to turn it off. i hope that’s enough. i’m not sure if i should abandon it entirely or not. i keep thinking that maybe i’m overreacting, that i’m connecting events that aren’t actually related and there’s nothing to flee from but i suppose no one in danger regrets fleeing, they only regret staying. and i know i’ll regret it if i’m wrong - but not for very long. they won’t give me much time for that.

i can’t help sam directly anymore, but i think i can indirectly.

you see, i figured something out while i was in the darkness. the caves are connected. all of the caves are connected. everywhere. if you’ve ever gone down into the earth, you’ve stood just footsteps away from them. perhaps they were watching you from beyond where the light ended.

so i’m going to go find a cave and i’m going to go back. to that hollow space.

this isn’t over.

[happydcath]

in case i don’t come back. (1/12)

part one of twelve.

an au self-para for josh kiszka.

i’m writing this in case i don’t come back. i’ve got e-mails set up to automatically send to as many people as i think will care – news stations, family, friends. it contains all the evidence i have. elizabeth doesn’t know i’m doing this. i don’t dare tell her. she cries a lot these days and doesn’t get out much. she’s losing weight and her color is poor. i think she knows. i think she just can’t admit it to herself.

i’m getting ahead of myself. let me tell you about sam.

he’s twenty. elizabeth’s roommate and what could have been her only brother if things didn’t end stalely. smart kid, did well in school and is always polite when i talk to him. they live next door to me. in the summer, i found out that sam had been going out into the woods. they’re about a mile from the suburb we live in, we’re right at the edge of town where it stops being city and starts being rural, and only a field separates us from the trees. it’s pretty thick vegetation and there’s a lot of poison ivy, so people don’t go back there very often. teenagers on the fringe, maybe, to drink where their parents can’t see them. there’s discarded cans and broken bottles littering the forest floor. sam isn’t supposed to go into the forest for that reason, but i saw him coming across the field one day, around five in the afternoon, and i waited a couple days before telling elizabeth and joy.

joy is sam’s girlfriend. she’s not around anymore. i think she’s dead.

they were concerned and asked if i’d keep an eye on sam. i work from home and my desk is right by the window. if i leave the blinds open, i can see straight across the field to the woods. both elizabeth and joy worked during the day and sam stayed at home just as much as i had. he was a smart kid, quite responsible, and he was able to take care of the house by himself as an adult should. so i started watching him and i noticed that he was going out there every day, from the moment his “parents” left to the moment they came home. he’d carry with him a backpack, stuffed full, and when he came back he was always dirty and sometimes his clothing was ripped.

i figured he was just being a boy. then one day i went out to get the mail at the same time he was coming home and i called out to him. figured maybe i could talk to him and tell him to mind everyone else before he got into trouble. but he didn’t look over when i said his name, his gaze fixed straight ahead, and his eyes had this glassy sheen to them and his face was pale. i don’t think he heard or saw anything at that moment. he just walked on inside. like i wasn’t there. like he wasn’t there.

i know this doesn’t sound too peculiar, maybe he was just daydreaming, but i honestly don’t think he was there when i called out to him. nor was he there the next day, or the next. it became a ritual almost, me going out to the mailbox and trying to get him to respond to me. to anything. i tried talking to him when he left in the morning and while he seemed more animated then, more… sam… he was somewhat confused. he couldn’t tell me exactly where he was going, just that he needed to go to the woods and he was in a hurry. if i kept him talking too long, he’d interrupt me, very politely, and say he couldn’t be late.

i finally made him stop, physically, by putting a hand on his shoulder, while he was coming home. and he did stop walking, there on the sidewalk, stood stock-still with his feet perfectly together and his gaze fixed straight ahead, shoulders back, hands on the straps of his muddy backpack. and he said, in a perfectly even voice, “you need to let me go now.”

that’s it. that’s all he said. but the way he said it, so precisely monotone, so empty, and so clear and slow, like each word was distinct from the other – i’ve never heard a kid speak like that. i let him go and he continued walking as if he hadn’t been interrupted at all. that’s when i told elizabeth and joy.

i wonder now if that was a mistake. telling them. I couldn’t have ignored it, I’m glad I didn’t, no matter what happens next, but maybe telling them was a mistake. i couldn’t have known. i can’t be blamed for that. no one could have known in this situation.

so elizabeth took a day off work and waited with me and she saw what i saw and she just went to pieces. i suppose i can’t blame her. this was her roommate; practically her son with the way he was treated. i was just the concerned neighbor, she was his mother. she called his name then tried to stop him as i had. then, when he didn’t respond to that she started yelling at him, saying he couldn’t go in the forest, that he was grounded, that he had to just turn around and stop walking away and look at her. she was almost hysterical. her breath was coming so fast and her eyes were so wide and she was crying by the time sam went up to the front steps and vanished into the house. i remember she turned to me then, flushed and frightened, and asked me what she should do. i couldn’t answer her.

we took him to doctors and the doctors sent him to a neurologist and they ran tests and when those all came back clean they sent him to a psychologist. they ran so many tests. it felt like every week they were taking him to this hospital or that, an MRI one week, EEG the next. the psychologist, well, i don’t know what they talked about. but elizabeth told me one weekend when she was over at my house for coffee and to talk that he seemed perfectly normal during the sessions. of the incidents in the woods, however, he wouldn’t say a thing. he’d just stop the conversation right there and stop talking and nothing would coerce him to speak of it. elizabeth and i talked about sam a lot. i still kept an eye on him and watched him go into the woods. i’d suggested that i could stop him, but elizabeth said they’d tried that. he’d grown so agitated and fought so hard to get out that they were afraid he’d hurt himself if they didn’t let him go.

i think she was scared. i was a little bit frightened as well, to be honest. sam wasn’t there.

that was when joy followed him into the woods. went with him. i watched them go. sam didn’t seem to mind having his father along, or rather, he didn’t seem to really notice. his attention was fixed on the distant woods. a few hours later, joy came back alone. she looked disturbed and when i went out to greet her, she seemed startled and answered evasively. there was a cave, she said. at the base of a rock face. then she shrugged me off and went inside. she looked spooked. scared and angry.

no more doctors, she said. after that, no more doctors. she was angry now, elizabeth told me. she was calling people – the police, she thought – and demanding that something be done about this. that something needed to stop, though she wouldn’t tell her what that something was. she kept reassuring her that she’d fix this, that there was nothing to worry about. that she just needed to focus on sam and she’d fix it.

she vanished a few days later. oh, sure, the signs point to her having ran off. abandoned her temporary family. there’s a money trail to follow, her car is gone, but the money trail vanishes after a few days and the pieces start to fall apart after that. elizabeth believes it. she believes that one her only few friends left her. she cried about it for days, driven to distraction, and i’d see her watching sam walk off towards the woods each morning, standing on her front porch like a ghost. utterly lost.

i think it’s easier for her to believe what everyone says. that joy left.

she’s dead though. i know he is. they killed her. i fear they’ll kill me if i keep at this.

i don’t want to vanish. i don’t want to die. i’m scared.

i tried to talk to sam about the cave once. in the morning when he was still with us. i walked as far as the field. he told me that yes, there was a cave, and he’d go down into it. i asked why. he said he just was. i asked him what he’d find. he shrugged. stuff, he said. his eyes grew a bit distant. things. from the way he said the word, in a hush, i had the feeling that these things were alive.

elizabeth started spending a lot of time at my house. she’d talk. about joy. about sam. she’d cry. she was in danger of losing her job and she finally did lose it in the autumn. that was when she stopped going out and became like a prisoner in her own house. she’d check the curtains, compulsively, and keep track of the cars that circled through the neighborhood. she couldn’t quite explain why. she was like a caged bird, nervous, beating helplessly at the bars.

i finally made the suggestion that i’d follow him into the woods. i said i’d take a day off from work and follow him into the woods. see if he’d let me accompany him and if not, i could follow at a distance. elizabeth was so relieved. i think she wanted to ask this but was too polite to do so. too afraid to involve me further.

so on a tuesday morning, in mid-october, i met sam as he was walking out to the woods. the trees were starting to change colors now. i asked if i could accompany him to the cave and he said i could, but then he frowned and said they might not like it. i asked him who. the people in the cave? and he just shrugged at that. didn’t try to deny it. that’s an important part, i think. he’s never denied that there is something down there.

i’m trusting that there is. please, let there be something there.

but he said that no, it’s the men that wouldn’t like it. and i was scared at that and when we reached the woods i dropped back. he was walking faster now and it was easy to let him get ahead. then, we reached the spot where the hill started and the rock face was exposed from the dirt, deep in the woods beyond the barrier of discarded bottles and beer cans, with the dark hollow of the cave entrance at the base. it was barely big enough for an adult. i could fit, mind you, but it would be tight. i ducked into some underbrush, there’s a lot of it near the cave, and kept my distance. i just watched. and sam stopped just at the mouth of the cave and waited with his backpack.

these men came to him. two of them. they wore jeans and dark windbreakers and both of them wore earpieces and wires. they had guns under their jackets. and one knelt beside sam and the boy didn’t move an inch, just stood there with that glassy expression with his attention fixed on the cave while the man affixed a camera to the top of his backpack. then they let him go and he vanished into that black pit and the darkness swallowed him up. the two spoke to each other briefly, and their tone was casual and i was too far to hear what they were saying. then they started off, towards the edge of the woods, and i remained there a long time with my heart pounding. then i left too.

i felt cold for a long time after. like it was seeping up from the cave through the ground and into my bones. i heard whispers that night when i turned off the lights. all around me, a multitude of voices, so soft i could barely register them. like an echo, like their voices are rolling around inside my mind for hours and hours until they finally fade away. i can’t make out words. i only know they are words, and there is no emotion behind them. they feel hollow. i feel hollow, carrying them inside me like pebbles.

you can say it was just my imagination, but that’s what i remember. i don’t hear them on other nights. only after i go to the cave.

i’ve gone back a couple more times. it’s the same thing, every time. the men are always there. sometimes with different equipment and sometimes it’s looked like they were giving him instructions. i’m pretty sure they’re with the government. they move and act like it. they have a confidence about them. they made joy vanish. i’ve taken photos. they’re with the e-mail that will be sent to the media outlets if this doesn’t work out for me.

i’m so scared. i have nightmares of someone putting a gun to my head. or of cloying darkness and the touch of something cold and alive and aware on my wrist.

i don’t know how this started. maybe those voices called to him. maybe the government just came along and took advantage of that. or if they targeted sam and sent him down there on purpose. but he’s going into that cave for them and i don’t know why. i don’t know what they’re after. and i don’t know what’s down there. but i do know that someone in our government is using this boy.

he’s eleven. and they’re sending him into the dark with those whispers and the cold.

i can’t make this information public just yet. joy is dead. elizabeth is crushed and frightened, unable to leave her own house except for the barest of necessities. and sam is living in a trance, drifting out to that cave every opportunity he gets. sometimes he’s gone for days now. elizabeth doesn’t know what to tell our friends. something about joy’s abandonment. they have him in counseling. it won’t do anything. and here i am, sitting on this. i can’t go to the police. that’s what joy did. i can’t go to the news. i feel like a crazy person just writing this.

so here’s what i am going to do.

if i vanish – if they realize i’ve seen them and they take me and shoot me and bury the body like they did to joy – then surely someone will wonder why. if maybe there’s some truth to this crazy story i’ve told. or if i don’t come back at all… well, either way, there’s another missing person. and this time, it won’t be so easy to explain away.

tomorrow morning, before sam leaves the house, i’m going into the woods. i’m going to that cave and i’m going down into it.

there’s a reason they’re using the boy instead of going themselves, i just know it. maybe they tolerate a child because he’s defenseless. i don’t know what they’ll do with me. what they’ll do to me. but something has to be done and i can’t trust the police. i can’t trust anyone else.

so I’m going into the cave. i’m going down there and i’m going to find whatever else is under the earth and i’m going to ask them – beg them.

to help us. to help sam… and to help me, because i am now part of this too.

if you’re reading this, please, i ask you the same.

help us.

[happydcath]

all went wrong.

a self-para for josh kiszka.

i took up gardening after my girlfriend died. i don’t enjoy it, but i feel obligated; like if i let her plants die then the last traces of her will be wiped from this earth and she will be utterly gone from me. so, i weed and i water and i have learned which of the flowers are annuals so that when they wilt this winter i can bring them back in the spring, just as she’d planted them earlier before she was taken from me. i’ve posted photos of the ailing holly bush to a gardening community so that i can nurse it back to life and maybe that will be some kind of redemption. i’ve taken cuttings of some of the plants and they sit in cups of water all throughout my house; taking in the sun on the windowsill as i encourage them to put out roots so that their line can continue onwards and if anything should happen, i can replant them, and it will be like they never died at all.

my friends think it is good that i’ve found something productive to do with myself. it’ll help with the healing, they say, to maintain her garden.

i don’t think i’m healing at all.

i about fell apart when some birds destroyed the irises. i’d heard a commotion in my backyard. i ran out there and found two large crows dancing about the flowers, ripping them out of the ground with their claws, stabbing at the dirt with their beaks. i rushed at them, yelling, and they took to flight, screaming their ire at me from the air. then i stood there and stared at the mess, at the uprooted and trampled plants, their broken stems stained with moisture like blood. i wanted to cry, but instead i knelt in the dirt and with shaking hands, i started to straighten the bent stalks and clear out the debris so i could replant the survivors. i felt like i was back in that hospital room, listening to the monitor, my eyes locked on her face, even as a nurse grabbed my arms and pulled me backward, shoving me from the room; and i grabbed helplessly at the dirt, at the torn roots of the irises, realizing that this couldn’t be fixed and i couldn’t go back like it’d never happened.

that was where i found the snake. it was curled into a subtle hollow in the middle of the iris bed, head pressed flat against the ground. blood oozed sluggishly from a cut on its body. it was small, no larger than my palm with its body coiled tight around itself.

i felt angry, looking at it. i went into the garage and found a cardboard box. i covered it with packing tape to protect against the rain and cut a tiny doorway on either end. then i took that outside and placed it over the snake, digging the edges into the dirt and putting a rock on the roof so it couldn’t be easily overturned. i pitied the snake. i resented the crows for the destruction of my girlfriend’s garden. i wouldn’t let them have what they wanted to easily.

after that, the snake became a fixture in my garden. it hid in its box and watched me from the entrance, black eyes fixed on my hands and its tongue flickering in and out. i stole covert glances at it, entranced by its coloring. it was white with no other patterning. it is not an albino. it is not pale pink-white, but the white of clouds or oil paint straight from the tube, pure and unadulterated. it was not any breed i can identify. its scales were like pearls where they shine in the sunlight, and its eyes were like obsidian. its body was ridged with leathery folds, thick plates overlapping each other and i saw soft pink flesh hidden between the creases when it moved and the scales part.

within the week, it started to come out of the box while i was present. it slipped through my plants and i let myself believe that it was following me as i made my way down the garden beds, tending to each patch in turn. sometimes i saw the crows, perched in the trees or on the fence, but they did not bother the snake so long as i was there. i bought some crickets from the store and began to bring them out to it, leaving their dead bodies near its lair. soon, it began to wait for me, and one day it slithered right to me. i put my hand down and it looped its neck over my fingers and then ran across my palm. it twined around my wrist and i stood, taking the snake with me, and i stared at it as it stared back at me from my hand.

i think it spoke to me on the day i gave up on the holly bush. my attempts to save it had failed and i felt guilty that i couldn’t even keep a stupid bush alive, one that natalie had planted. there’d been these awful red thorn bushes in the side beds and she’d spent a month cutting them back and down to their roots and finally digging out the stumps. then she’d put down new soil and bark and planted these hollies. they’d put out berries in the winter, she said, every other year. now, the one stood there, shriveled with dry brown and yellow leaves, and the branches were brittle and snapped at the slightest touch. i’d have to take it out, i thought. maybe replace it. and it just felt so overwhelming at that moment that i sat down and began to cry.

i felt the snake as it slid over my foot, its scales cool and soft, those strange ridges bumping against the ankle bone. it was growing quickly. already, it was a foot long.

“brother,” it asked me, “why do you weep?”

something about this felt so natural, so expected, that i didn’t hesitate to answer. i told the snake that i couldn’t keep the holly alive and i felt i had failed my girlfriend because she had planted it.

“nothing persists,” the snake replied. “it is the nature of things to die.”

and it slipped off into the garden and left me to tear the bush out.

my girlfriend’s plants all began to falter after that. there were few weeds now and the ones that did manage to sprout quickly turned yellow and melted back into the earth, their leaves putrefying into sludge. i stopped using weedkiller, fearing that it was doing this and would harm the flowers. the snake came and talked with me often, though it mostly just listened. sometimes it would comment on the weather but said little else. it began to call me “brother.”

to compound my problems with the garden, the grass was also ailing, with parts of it turning brown and dry as if scorched. i found some rabbits while checking on one of these patches. there were five of them, about the size of my hand, frozen inside their burrow under a layer of torn grass and fur. i stared at them for a few minutes, enchanted by their size and the white patches on their foreheads, and then left them alone.

i wondered about the snake if perhaps it would harm them, but the snake was not quite so large yet. i’d swapped to feeding it mice, buying them frozen and thawing them before bringing them out. the snake was polite, thanking me for its meals, telling me it didn’t yet dare to leave the safety of the garden.

“the crows?” i asked.

“indeed.” its tone was wry. “i am not quite big enough to make a meal out of them.”

the statement sounded like a promise. i glanced over my shoulder, to where the pair sat watching in the tree, and it felt like a shadow passed over the sun.

a few days after i found the rabbits, i again walked to where their burrow was, wanting to see if they were still there. i found them strewn about the entrance to the hole, spines supine, legs outstretched, and eyes wide open and their mouths gaping, flecked with dried froth. there were no marks on them, but the ground around them was torn, as if they’d clawed at the earth in an attempt to drag themselves forwards and away from the burrow. my heart hammered in my chest. the bodies were stiff and dead flies lay on their fur.

i got a shovel from the garage and went to dig a hole, out near the trees. the snake came to join me. it regarded the pile of corpses a moment and then twined between my feet. it asked me why i was so sad. rabbits die. this is what they are born for.

“i don’t like seeing it,” i whispered.

i thought of the last sight i had of natalie. body twisted up, mouth gaping for air. certainly, the funeral home made her look peaceful, but that wasn’t him anymore. it was a body, nothing more, and it can’t dispel what she looked like in the last seconds of her life. now, staring down at the rabbits sprawled before me, i saw the similarities in their twisted limbs and open mouths, silently screaming at whatever injustice had ripped away their lives so soon.

“then go inside,” the snake whispered, “and i will take them away for you.”

i went, as if in a trance. and when i came to myself and returned to the backyard i found that the rabbits were gone and the burrow they’d lain in was now a deep hole, stretching down into the black earth. i filled it in and packed the earth down.

it was over a week before i saw the snake again. In that time, my garden rebounded, the plants grew green again, and - unfortunately - the weeds came back. i wondered where my snake friend was and worried that perhaps the crows had gotten to it after all, for i hadn’t seen them either. then, one afternoon as i was watering the irises, it came sliding out of its home. it was much larger than before. perhaps five feet long and an inch in diameter. i turned the hose off and asked it where it had been.

“i dove deep into the earth, brother,” it said to me. “i sought the realm of the dead.”

i felt cold suddenly, despite the sunlight. i asked why it would do such a thing and it bobbed its head, tongue flickering.

“to find your beloved.”

and i almost did not hear what it said next, my mind frozen on those words, on their impossibility, but the wild, daring hope that fluttered in my chest, hope that i frantically held back because i did not think i would survive having it extinguished if it were allowed to take root and bloom in my heart.

“but i am sorry, brother,” it continued, “i could not travel far enough. i am still too weak. let me stay in your garden a little longer and then i will try again.”

the spring passed and turned into summer. my neighbor’s vegetable garden began to yield its crop, albeit small, for their garden was suffering from the rain and the heat and their plants had barely grown this year. but there was enough to harvest and i saw them out there one day; gathering the squash and taking it to the grill to cook it. i could smell the charcoal and the steak and earthy scent of fresh-cut vegetables. they had company over. another couple and i could hear them laughing and talking on their back deck from inside my house. It hurt, in an odd way. my house had been silent for many months now.

i’m not certain how long it was before i became aware of the quiet coming from the backyard. it struck me suddenly and i thought it odd, for it was still bright out and surely their company wouldn’t have gone home so soon. i went to the back window and looked.

the four of them were lying on the ground. none of them were moving. i felt dizzy. i stumbled back from the window. i thought of the funeral home and being there alone with natalie’s body and hating how still she was, hating looking at him and seeing nothing like he was carved of marble.

i forced myself to move. to go out the back door, to run to the fence gate and to let myself into their yard. to call 911. i knelt by the closest, the woman guest, someone i didn’t know. her eyes were open, bulging with horror and streaked with liquid, and her mouth was filled with bloody froth. blood leaked from her nose and her ears and her limbs were skewed, her back and neck bent as if she were a doll thrown carelessly to the ground. i heard the screaming of the crows in the trees nearby as they hopped from branch to branch and shrieked at me.

and then a whisper from the fence. brother, the snake called. come away. come away. look away.

i did, and stood there with my back to the bodies of my neighbors, and wept while the 911 operator said it would be okay and the ambulance would be there soon. his words were empty and i think he knew that too.

“i’m sorry, brother,” the snake murmured. “i’m sorry. i’ll try to find them as well in the realm of the dead.”

they took the bodies away, putting them on in bags so the bystanders on the sidewalk couldn’t see the bloody foam and their blackened eyes. the police came and took the food and then they questioned me. no, i didn’t see anything odd. no, i wasn’t aware of anyone that would want to hurt them. i’d not gotten out much, honestly, not after natalie died. i answered everything they asked as best as they could and then they left.

i did not see the snake after that. i found the hole it left behind, digging down into the earth as it sought the dead, and i loosely filled it back up.

the neighbor’s family came and began to pack up their house. they were there for a few days and then the house went silent. i figured they’d have an estate sale at some point in the future when they were ready. i hadn’t yet gotten rid of my girlfriend’s belongings, after all, and she’d been dead for around a year and a half now. then more people came and i didn’t recognize them, but they stayed in the neighbor’s backyard and took soil samples and took cuttings of the plants in the vegetable garden.

my own garden was surviving, but barely. i’d had to rip out most of the irises and i felt a sort of terrified desperation every time i went out there to try to save the plants that remained. the trees at the back fence line were beginning to lose their leaves like autumn had come early, and i didn’t understand why any of this was happening. like my garden was dying with my girlfriend.

i didn’t know the snake had returned. it hadn’t called to me and i was not the one that found it. someone came to my door, one of the people that had been taking samples of the neighbor’s yard. he wanted to do the same for mine. some soil, he said, and some clippings of the flowers and bushes. nothing intrusive. i asked what he was looking for. just checking for contaminants, he said, and he didn’t need to explain anything else. they were afraid my neighbors had died because something had gotten into their vegetables. i took him around the side of the house and opened the gate for him. i stood by the fence as he poked around at the dry patches of grass, stabbed a tool like a spike into the soil and dropped the dirt clod into a bag. then he stepped up onto the stone slabs that marked the boundary of my garden bed and put one foot into the soil, reaching for the remaining irises.

there was a flash of light, like the sunlight reflecting off a mirror, and the white snake emerged from the wilted garden bed. its head was the size of a watermelon and i saw fangs as long as my hand when it opened its mouth. it reared up, body like a tree trunk, and the man opened his mouth to scream before the snake’s mouth closed over his head, the jaw distending as though to engulf him. it slammed into the ground, jerking the man’s body down with it, and then the earth boiled beneath its coils and the soil surged and like a whale breaching and returning to the water, the snake fell back into the ground and attempted to drag the man with him, his body limp from whatever the case may be, his feet the last thing i saw before the dirt fell into the hollow and there was nothing left behind.

i covered my mouth with my hands, stifling a scream. i turned, walked back into the house, and only then did i allow myself to fall apart. i screamed, i sobbed, i clawed at my face with my nails. what was I to do? should i call the police? did i tell them there was a giant snake in my yard?

i stayed in my house and did nothing. i walked from window to window, fretting, peeking into the backyard. finally, after many hours, a policeman showed up at my front door. there’d been someone out earlier, he said, getting samples for their investigation. had I seen him? his car was still parked in front of my house.

i told him he’d been in my backyard last but I hadn’t seen him leave. i’d assumed he’d moved to other yards in the neighborhood and would be back when he was done. the officer asked if he could search the yard and I said he could. then he went out back and I watched from the window, dreading what i would see.

he found the patch of disturbed earth, where the snake’s submergence had torn all the plants free and half-buried them in freshly turned soil. he poked around in the dirt and came up with the man’s cellphone. then he called in for more people and i was told to stay inside the house, tersely, and i thought that this meant that they suspected i’d done something.

they dug up that part of the yard and i cried as they did this, because they knocked the stone border loose and there would be no saving the plants they’d uprooted, and all their efforts were wasted because the snake was gone, deep down into the earth, and it’d taken its meal with it.

they had so many questions for me and i told them the same thing, again and again, that he’d gone into the backyard and that was all i knew. that I didn’t talk much with the neighbors after my girlfriend died. and finally, bewildered, they stopped asking me questions.

a few days later, we all got a letter in the mail from the city. it asked us to stop doing yard work. don’t mow, it said, don’t weed, don’t trim, and most of all: don’t eat anything produced from our gardens. stay inside. they were working on a way to neutralize some contaminants in the soil in our area. they were working on finding out where they’d come from.

i knew. that evening, after the sun had set, i went out into the garden. i sat down near the spot where the irises had grown and where i’d set that tiny box out for the snake to hide in. i asked it why it had killed that man.

“nothing persists,” it replied and its answer came out of the earth beneath me. “i keep telling you this. everything must die.”

“it doesn’t seem fair.”

“it’s not. but that is how it is.”

a long silence between us. then, the snake asked me if i wanted it to go.

“i don’t want you to go,” i said, “but i don’t think it’s safe for us if you stay.”

“i would never harm you, brother.”

i looked at my garden, uprooted and strewn with debris, at all the yellowing and wilted flowers and the dry and barren bushes. it already had hurt me, i thought, but i didn’t say that out loud.

the snake said that it would leave. that it will be a long time before it returns. it said nothing of my girlfriend or the realm of the dead.

then the earth shifted, a ridge along the line of its back, and subsided and i knew the snake was gone.

my plants continue to die. some of my neighbors have moved out and left behind houses that will never sell, after a little girl was taken away by ambulance when she fell to the ground with convulsions, her mouth filling with bloody froth. the snake is gone, but its poison remains.

i do not doubt what it said. it will come back. perhaps in a few years, perhaps a few decades, perhaps a few centuries. but it will return. and the plants will wilt and the oceans will die and we will breathe the poison into our lungs and it will mingle in our blood and it will eat us away and leave our wasted, putrid corpses to rot upon the dying soil and not even the insects will touch us.

we’re still receiving letters to stay indoors. telling us that they’re working on a solution. telling us that if we have somewhere else to go, we should consider relocating. my neighborhood feels deserted, here in the peak of summer with silent streets and darkened houses and everyone hurries to their mailbox and back and no one stops to talk to one another, too afraid to spend much time outside with the poisoned soil.

i sneak out at night to take care of the garden. a handful of plants remain. i’m not sure for how much longer they’ll live, but i feel i must do this, that if i let them die then natalie will be entirely gone. i know they are poisoning me, but it was already too late and i am only hastening the inevitable. there are only a handful of days left to me. i feel the poison in my bones.

i am glad i will not be alive to see the day the snake surfaces to rain its venom down upon the earth. 

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but, of course, these are one of the many things i wish never happen to me.

[happydcath]

𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙣 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬𝙨 𝙞'𝙢 𝙢𝙞𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙣𝙤𝙬 - a josh kiszka playlist

i. sick of losing soulmates - dodie / ii. heavy - birdtalker / iii. anchor - novo amor / iv. old friend - darlingside / v. mess is mine - vance joy / vi. without me - rayland baxter / vii. sorrow - wilderado / viii. sinking ship - wild child

[listen here]

[happydcath]

josh kiszka & eli matis - gif board 3/?

well, maybe we shouldn’t do this. 

[happydcath]

josh kiszka - aries sun, taurus moon

"live your life and forget your age"

[happydcath]

josh kiszka & eli matis - gif board 2/?

ever thine, ever mine, ever ours.

[happydcath]

josh kiszka - gif board 1/?

“awkward is a state of being.”

[happydcath]

𝙞'𝙢 𝙖𝙣 𝙤𝙘𝙚𝙖𝙣 𝙚𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙞𝙣 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙘𝙖𝙜𝙚 - a josh kiszka playlist

i. clarity - shawn mcdonald / ii. atlas hands - benjamin francis leftwich / iii. daylight goobye - message to bears / iv. suck it and see - the arctic monkeys / v. leaves in the river - sea wolf / vi. jesus christ - brand new / vii. the shrine / an argument - fleet foxes / viii. in these arms - the swell seasons

[listen here]

[happydcath]

josh kiszka & jake kiszka - gif board 1/?

we came into this together, we go out of it together.