#m59gar

[kitsure]

Night 20: Stuck by u/M59Gar

[redditnosleep]

Fuck Oranges

by M59Gar

We were at the bar for Connor's twenty-second birthday when the world first began to fall apart. It started with an absurdly small detail; I ordered two Blue Moons for us like always, but he picked the orange slice off the rim of his glass with a frown. I looked down at the one on my glass and asked, "Something wrong?"

His frown momentarily changed to a look of disgust. "I hate oranges."

That was odd, since it had been our ritual since his twenty-first birthday to always get that brand together when we were out at the bar because fruit's good for you! Therefore, this beer is healthy! But it was his birthday and he could do what he wanted, so I didn't ask about it. Rebecca, however, had already had a few. She cut past the group conversation to proclaim, "But isn't the orange the healthiest part?"

Connor shook his head. "No way. Oranges are gross."

Across the table, Dan said, "Oranges are great, man. They're nature's candy!"

Rebecca's older sister Shannon was with us that night; she countered, "No, beets are nature's candy." When we stared at her blankly, she asked, "Doug? You know, the Nickelodeon show Doug? With the dog, Porkchop? Best friend Skeeter? Everyone in that world loved beets?" When we only vaguely recalled the show she was talking about, she threw her hands out in defeat.

Near us, an older regular was watching a television above the bar. He sneered. "Man, I'll tell you what's wrong with this country. It's them." He pointed at the screen. "I hate 'em." Around him, fellow regulars cheered, and he grinned with pride. He held his hands up high and said, "Round of shots for the whole bar! On me!"

And that was all I really remembered of the first night things began to unravel. After that, my memories got blurry, and I woke up under a villainous beam of sunlight with overwhelming nausea and a killer headache. My first mighty act of willpower was to close the blinds and hide us from the monstrous Sun; Dan was on the floor of my room under my computer table, and Rebecca was in the hallway swaddled in every single blanket the house had to offer.

With relief, I saw that Connor was propped up on his bed by an array of pillows that kept him on his side. A trashcan below him was filled halfway up with vomit, and Shannon sat in the corner on her phone. Upon seeing me, she said, "Oh, does your head hurt? Good. He's all yours now. I'm going home and going to sleep."

I was left to take care of the birthday boy, which admittedly was much easier now that he was half-awake. The one thing I did ask him during his stupor was: "Do you really hate oranges?"

"Always have, man," he groaned.

And I was left feeling as if our roommate ritual for the entire last year had been some weird sort of lie that he'd grown tired of carrying on. I stewed on that feeling for the rest of the day. What if he didn't really consider me a friend? What if he was just humoring me because we were roommates? It felt as if my entire position in the group was in jeopardy, as if the way I thought of myself was under threat. It was a gnawing, lonely, and terrible feeling that kept me up all Sunday night.

On Monday, I downed coffee and sat morosely at my computer. This was my first job after graduation, and I was finding it unfulfilling. Did we even do any real work? While my coworkers spent most of the day huddled around a meeting room television watching the news, I could only think about the orange issue. By the end of the work day, I'd decided to cave.

I was the first one at the bar that evening, and Dan sat next to me about twenty minutes later. He looked at my stout and said, "No Blue Moon today?"

"I, uh, hate oranges," I lied with a grimace.

To my surprise, he said, "Me too."

That was weird. "Didn't you say they're nature's candy?"

"Not even close." He looked to be rather offended. "Oranges are the highest carrier of disease among all fruits and vegetables."

Mortified, I asked, "Seriously?"

He folded his arms. "Yup. Absolutely disgusting fruit."

That was a bold enough claim that I put down my stout and picked up my phone. After a few searches, I began to grow very confused. "Citrus greening, citrus canker, citrus black spot, gross. Sweet orange scab. How have I never heard of these diseases before?" The pictures were horrifying. "Oh, but wait, these only affect oranges and are not dangerous to humans."

Dan just shrugged. "Science says a lot of things are safe, then suddenly they find out they're not. I'm not eating anything that looks like that."

I didn't agree with him, but the images had still unsettled me. Maybe there was a reason to avoid oranges after all. The rest of the gang showed up soon after, but the disturbing images never truly left my awareness.

Later that night as we all spilled out of an Uber in front of my place, we were laughing and joking again as normal, and I was starting to feel a little better. I'd overblown the whole issue, really. There was nothing to worry about. These people didn't secretly hate me, and I did belong.

Across the street, one guy began yelling angrily at another. The Uber pulled away, removing the barrier between our group and the guys; we saw them push at each other, scream back and forth, and then begin trading punches. This was a nice college-age neighborhood where nothing of the sort had ever happened before. What were they thinking? We stared until they noticed us. Abruptly, they stalked off and returned to their separate houses—next to each other. They were neighbors.

"How ridiculous," Connor said with a laugh before leading us inside. "We'll have to make sure not to invite them over next time we have a party."

He didn't seem to be in any sort of deceptive or bad mood, so, once we were all sitting around the kitchen table drinking water, I took the opportunity to ask him about what had been bothering me.

"Yeah, I do hate oranges," he told me. "You'll never catch me eating the damn things. They're like, the biggest carrier of disease among all fruits and vegetables."

"Never?" I joked. "What about the last year of us getting Blue Moons?"

He tilted his head at that. "I never get that beer. It comes with an orange slice, and I hate oranges."

That was when it finally occurred to me that something was seriously wrong—either with my memory, or with the world. No longer smiling, I said, "We've been getting that beer every time we go out since your birthday last year when that hot girl that night thought your joke about it being healthy was hilarious."

His expression darkened. "That never happened. I don't drink Blue Moon."

"That's how I remember it," I insisted flatly.

"Then your memory's messed up," he retorted, growing strangely angry. He balled up a fist between us. "I never drink that shit. I never have. You stop saying that shit now. Oranges are disgusting."

Rebecca and Dan watched us in awkward silence. I figured I had one more back and forth within the bounds of politeness; I decided to make it count. "Dan, you remember us getting the orange slices with our beer, don't you?"

Dan stiffened in his chair. "Oh don't bring me into this. I hate oranges too, always have. I wouldn't hang out with people who didn't."

I stared at him. "What? What the hell does that mean? Since when is this such a big deal?" I turned to Rebecca. "You remember, don't you? That whole exchange with your sister about oranges versus beets on Saturday night?"

She kept her eyes on her water and did not reply.

Connor stood and approached me with menace. "Look man, you've been a good friend for a long time, but you're gonna have to cut this shit out if you wanna keep hanging with us."

Was he serious? How could he possibly be serious? I looked to Rebecca and Dan, but neither one met my confused gaze. "I was just joking," I finally told Connor. "You know, messing with you guys."

His face immediately lit up. "Oh, damn, you got me good!"

"Ahh, yeah," I laughed with him, secretly terrified.

Rebecca and Dan finally looked up, relieved, and the mood immediately went back to happy and carefree. I hung out and pretended to be normal until everyone finally went to bed—Rebecca in her room downstairs, and Dan and Connor in the hallway next to my room—before I finally had a chance to investigate. For the first time in months, I closed and locked my door. The wonderful atmosphere that our house full of friends had started with was now one of fear and suspicion. I sat in the dark in front of my computer and began to scour the Internet in search of answers.

I'd seen enough science fiction to hazard a few guesses. Was I in the wrong reality somehow? Was my timeline changing for some reason? I didn't know enough particulars about history to see if anything was different on Wikipedia. No. This was my room. My credit card worked, and my social security number was correct. If reality or time had changed in even the slightest way, those randomly-generated numbers would have been different. This was my world—just changing for some reason.

And because of that small and utterly inconsequential change, my home life and friends group were on the line. Was I going crazy? The only conclusion left was that I was the problem. Something was wrong with my memory or belief that had left me at odds with those I cared about.

Just then, as I sat in the dark, I heard my door knob turn—and fail to open, since I'd locked it.

Someone had just tried to come into my room.

And something told me it wasn't for cuddling. It had been a subtle and stealthy attempt. On a horrified hunch, I quickly and quietly opened my window and slid out into the night. Five houses down, I saw a roof ablaze—someone's house was on fire! What the hell was happening?—but I couldn't worry about that at that particular moment. Peering in another window, I saw a silhouette of darker darkness move near a gleam of metal.

Someone had just tried to come into my room—with a knife.

The silhouette disappeared into deeper shadow, leaving me with no identity beyond the fact that it had to have been one of my roommates. How in the ever-blazing Hell had a like or dislike of oranges come to such a point? This was not normal. This was not natural.

Crouched out there in the chilly night, illuminated only by the house-fire five lots distant, I was forced to face the only conclusion left: something supernatural was going on. As soon as I truly entertained that notion, the fire-lit darkness felt suddenly far less solitary. Were eyes upon me? Was something watching me even then? I found it hard to believe that hating oranges was the primary goal of whatever was happening—rather, just the side effect of a slowly creeping insanity or possession of some sort.

There was nothing to do about it at that particular moment. I didn't feel safe outside, but I didn't feel safe back in my room, either. I barricaded the door and windows and found only the least satisfying half-awake form of sleep. In that odd mix of dreaming and waking, images of diseased fruit tortured my awareness.

I didn't get a chance to catch Rebecca alone until Wednesday. She was the first to show up to the bar that evening, like Dan had been on Monday, but she seemed uncomfortable and apprehensive. After she looked over her shoulder for the third time at the entrance to the bar, I asked quietly, "Are you afraid, too?"

Her gaze spoke volumes; she bit her lip, looked at the door again, then told me, "Just stop screwing around with the oranges thing, alright?"

"What is the oranges thing?" I demanded in a whisper. "What is going on?"

Half-panicked at my questions, she insisted, "Just tell them you hate oranges, alright? Just freaking tell them you hate oranges! Stop asking about it, stop poking at it! I like my life! I like you guys! I like my house! Stop disrupting everything!"

I grabbed her hand as it lay on the table between us. "I just want to understand. Where did this hatred for oranges even come from? What is going on that is making our roommates act like this?"

She finally looked me in the eyes, and I saw bloodshot exhaustion there.

"Wait," I whispered. "Have you been sleeping poorly, too? Bad dreams?"

Her eyes opened a little wider; she went to speak, but she saw someone come in the back door of the bar and quickly pulled her hand away from mine. Connor fell upon me rather forcefully from behind, but only to wrap his arm around my shoulder and neck. "Ooh, what are you two lovebirds up to?"

He knew we weren't a thing anymore. What was his problem? Following the cue from Rebecca's masked terror, I said, "Just talking about how much we hate oranges, bro!"

Connor jerked his neck toward her. "Is that so, Rebecca?"

She didn't speak. She just forced a smile and nodded weakly.

"Awesome, awesome," he said with genuine relief. He let go of me and sat between us. "I knew you two would come around."

Dan arrived soon after, complaining of a vendor selling oranges he'd seen on the way over. "Grossest pile of disease you've ever seen." He shuddered.

I looked to Rebecca, but she silently warned me to just go with it.

And I did. For the next hour, I carefully observed Dan and Connor, trying to figure out what was going on with them. It wasn't until I went up the bar to get Rebecca and myself more drinks that I saw something that chilled my soul. A girl took a picture of three of her friends to my left; the angle was such that my table was in the background. While waiting for the drinks, I happened to glance at her phone.

My table was indeed in the background. There was Rebecca, there was Dan, there was Connor—

And someone else.

I only saw her phone for an instant before she turned away, but I was certain enough to surreptitiously turn around and pretend I was texting while I angled my camera up at my friends.

There, among the crowded patrons of the bar—and shown only in choppy frame-by-frame rendering—was the shadow of a person bent down near Connor's ear.

As I stared at my phone in paralyzed terror, that shadowy head tilted up, as if it was looking at me with concern. Rather than react and give myself away, I shouted to my friends, "Picture time!"

The silhouette turned a half-step and vanished as if a gust of wind had dissipated it in one fell swoop. My friends smiled and made faces; the flash irritated a few surrounding patrons, but I'd gotten away with it.

And there was something among us. Holy Christ, a literal shadow whispering in Connor's ear—murmuring insidious words of hatred, no doubt.

But why oranges?

That Wednesday night, at 8:42 PM EST, a runaway car crashed into the front of the bar, smashing all the windows and killing a woman. I know the exact time because the police forced us all to give statements before we could go. We'd been across the entire bar and had only seen the aftermath, really, but I was still pretty unhelpful. All I could think about was the shadow lurking among us.

As the Uber pulled onto our street that night, I absently studied the blackened shell of the house that had caught on fire five lots down. It was still smoldering, and it looked like nobody had come to put it out. In fact, it looked like nobody lived there at all. Looking left and right, I noticed that half of the houses on our street had no cars in their driveways. We weren't so fancy as to have garages.

Was the lurking shadow driving people away? Why hadn't anyone said anything? Were they even conscious of the shift in tone of our community? It had been the best time of my life until suddenly neighbors were getting in fistfights in broad daylight, my roommates had developed a random weird hatred, and houses were burning down without anyone calling the fire department.

We sat in silence around the kitchen table for at least ten minutes. Shaken by the car crash that had killed someone across the bar, Rebecca finally spoke. She murmured, "I hate oranges, too."

Dan and Connor moved to her and hugged her tight. "It's alright. You're one of us. We'll always be here for you." As they held her, they glanced at me a few times, and I joined the huddle to avoid starting another fight.

I wondered if the shadow was there with us, embracing us the way we were embracing Rebecca. I could even feel the issue clouding in my mind. Did I hate oranges, too? I mean, everyone else did. And those pictures of diseased oranges were disgusting. Had I really liked orange slices with my beer this whole last year? If I had, I might have just been horribly mistaken. Misled, even, by beer advertisements. Those ads never said anything about the diseases oranges could catch. That was odd, wasn't it? It was like they didn't want me to know. It would hurt their sales for me to know.

These thoughts plagued me that night and all the next day. At work on Thursday, while my coworkers randomly cried in their cubicles or had hushed discussions that broke up as soon as a manager neared, I sat on my computer and researched paranormal possessions and hauntings.

One of the things I learned was that demonic beings—that is, entities from a religious sphere of ideas—hated signs of God and good, and tried to get those they were trying to possess to destroy crosses and pour out holy water and the like.

That made sense.

But if the being haunting my friends, my house, and my street was not from the religious sphere, but perhaps a different space—what if oranges were a representation of the things that made it vulnerable? If this was some sort of anti-nature spirit, maybe it was pouring hatred of oranges into my community because oranges could drive it away.

But that was crazy. I actually laughed out loud in my cubicle as I internalized the idea, and one of my crying coworkers looked at me like I was a monster. "Oh, sorry!" I told her, grimacing awkwardly. "I was just thinking about something else." She glared and rotated away in her chair.

Thursday night wasn't one of our usual bar nights, so I was at home when Rebecca's older sister Shannon stopped by. It was for something trivial, but on the way out, I caught her on the porch. I needed reassurance. "Hey, Shannon, you remember that whole conversation about oranges versus beets last Saturday?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah. What about it?"

I gulped. "So that did happen?"

"Yeah..."

"And Connor and I have been joking about orange slices for the last year?"

Narrowing her eyes, she said, "Yes. Why?"

"I don't know," I told her truthfully. "I'm just starting to doubt my own reality. I had to be sure."

She scrolled through Facebook on her phone, then showed me a picture. "Look, it's the two of you on his twenty-first birthday last year, when I was designated driver as usual."

In the picture, we were both holding our beers forward, orange slices on full display. The hot girl who had sparked the entire tradition was sitting next to Connor, exactly like I remembered. "It's real." I looked up at her. "How do you feel about oranges?"

She grimaced, but not out of disgust. "What? Why? They taste alright I guess."

"Seriously. What's your opinion on oranges, beyond just whether you personally like their taste?"

"Neutral?" she replied. "I literally don't care. Why would anyone have an opinion on oranges unless they're like, a botanist or a farmer or something?"

That was an incredible point, actually. "I wish I knew."

As she turned to leave, we began to hear a commotion at the end of the street closer to campus. We were only a few blocks away from campus, and still close enough that street vendors often passed this way. When I saw an older man pushing a cart of oranges being surrounded by a group of my peers shouting profanities, I knew exactly what was happening.

And I could see Dan and Connor among them.

Rebecca came out onto the porch at hearing the violent shouting, and the three of us stood staring as the mob began to push at the unfortunate cart owner. We started running toward the fray after Dan sent a wild punch—and the man fell. The mob was screaming with furious bloodlust and stomping en masse by the time we got there.

But the cart owner was fine, if shaken.

The mob was stomping his oranges.

It was some eerie otherworldly version of a group murder. Bits of orange peel flew this way and that with the force of the stomping below, and fruit juice splattered across clothes in every direction. The gore would have been vomit-inducing had it been human; as it was, I was still mortified by what was happening. These people, my friends and neighbors, had become rabid animals full of irrational hate.

Shannon looked at me in confused askance.

I shook my head. I had no idea.

But Rebecca, terrified as she was, chose to join in. Running forward, she started screaming profanities and stomping on the last of the oranges while the others began cheering. Soon, they would notice that we had not joined in.

"Shannon, you better go."

She took my advice immediately and began walking away toward her car.

Covered in the juice-blood of his victims, Connor glared at me with the eyes of a devil. "Why aren't you helping?"

"I got here too late," I lied lamely.

Dan, his gaze red with anger, fixated on me as well. "There's one left." He held his arms out. "Everybody leave that one." He pointed down. "Come on."

I needed to buy time for Shannon to escape, but I also knew I had to live with—and sleep near—these people. The thought of that silhouette with the knife promised no good end for anyone that defied the group. It might have been the shadow itself that had picked up the knife—but it also might not have been.

The cart owner looked at me in terror from down on the sidewalk as I approached his last orange. "Please, no, why you do this? Why you do this? I just sell orange. Please no!"

I closed my eyes and stomped.

The orange splattered under my shoe, and arms grasped me from every angle as my neighbors jeered and cheered. I opened my eyes and shook with shame as the cart owner got up and ran off. Dan lit a match and set the wooden cart on fire while the others began dancing. I had no choice but to dance with them. They wouldn't let go of me. They shook me and made me chant with them and tested me constantly to make sure I wasn't faking. To get through it, I had to temporarily convince myself they were right and that oranges were an abomination. To get through it, I had to give up part of myself, and, after, I returned to my room, locked the door, and sat crying under my computer table.

But then, I got angry.

I got mad.

I was not going to let my community be consumed by this madness. The entity whispering in our ears would pay.I was a man, goddamnit, no longer a boy, and I didn't have to grin and bear it. These people weren't my parents.

I got in my car and drove the way the cart owner had gone. I found him five blocks down, forlorn and sitting at a city bus stop. He began to panic as he saw me, but I held up my hands peacefully and asked him a question that immediately changed his mood.

I didn't make enough to save any money, but I had a credit card. I bought the entire rest of his inventory, and took it all home with me. When the crates didn't fit, I just plain dumped the oranges in my trunk and back seat. My car would smell like fruit for months, I was sure, but it had to be done.

When Dan got home that night, I caught him behind the front door and held a knife to his throat. "Sit down," I directed, tying him up on a chair in the kitchen.

He shouted when Connor got home, but it was too late. I put Connor in a chair, too, and tied him up. Then, I stuffed clean socks in their mouths so they wouldn't warn Rebecca.

I didn't grab her. I didn't tie her up. I simply held the knife and said, "Sit."

She nervously took the third chair.

I'd thrown the oranges from my car all about the kitchen. They were on the table, on the floor, and in the sink. I picked one at random, peeled the skin off, and held it in front of Connor. "Eat it."

"Why don't you make me?" he spat.

"I won't." I told him. "But I also won't let you out of this chair until you take a bite of a goddamn orange."

"They're disgusting!"

"We used to eat them all the time."

"That didn't happen!"

"It did." I showed him the picture on my phone of his birthday the year before.

He frowned. "Is that photoshopped?"

"It happened!" I screamed in his face. "Eat the orange!"

He pulled his head away. "They're the highest carriers of disease among all—"

"Yes, yes I know the sound bite," I yelled. "It's wrong! Those diseases aren't dangerous to humans, and this orange isn't diseased! Eat the orange!"

"But we hate oranges," Connor insisted, indignant. "Right guys?"

Dan bit down on the sock in his mouth. "Mm-hmm."

Connor looked to Rebecca.

About to cry, she hid her face and did not respond.

Connor seemed more shaken after that. After gulping down hesitation, he warily took a bite from the orange. He blinked. "Oh. It's... fine."

Dan seemed surprised, and Rebecca just cried harder.

I pulled the sock out of Dan's mouth and held the other side of the orange. "Try it. If you hate it, that's fine, I'll let you go either way. Just try it."

Seeing Connor break, Dan hesitantly tried a bite, and then pushed back in his chair. "That doesn't taste like I remember. I swear it used to have a horrible antiseptic taste."

"No," I told him. "Our heads are being messed with! We just attacked a street vendor and stomped on his oranges because we've been worked up in a frenzy of hate. Does that make any sense to you objectively?"

Blinking as if waking up from a dream, Dan began to look horrified. "Oh my God, we did do that, didn't we? What were we thinking?"

Connor looked up at me with the same guilt. "Oh man, I—" He cut off as his eyes jumped to something behind me.

That warning gave me just enough time to shift to the side. The knife went into my left shoulder, and I slipped on rolling oranges and fell to the floor on top of a splatter of my own blood. Above me, I could see a knife dripping with red—and the shadow of a man beyond it. Its hollow eyes were red.

Dan and Connor began screaming and fighting their bonds as the shadow stepped near, but I'd tied them in too well. The shadow's red eyes moved from me to their squirming bodies, as if it was deciding which of us to kill first.

"What do you want?" I screamed at it. "What the fuck do you want?"

Those red eyes swung to me and seemed to bore into my soul. A sinister chill raked across my senses as it whispered, "Buy lemons."

I stared. "Buy lemons?" I hesitated. "Why would you even care about that?"

"I don't," it rasped, bringing the knife nearer. "It is simply what my master wishes."

It couldn't be so absurd as that, could it? Had some lemon-farming company hired a demon-worshipper and summoned an entity from beyond our world just for profit? Had they brought the incarnation of Hate among us just to make money?

But it was that simple. It had always been that simple. Why else would anyone do anything?

It moved to stab me—but Rebecca leapt against it, and a piece of the shadow tore out where she passed. It screamed in pain, dropped the bloody knife, and grasped at the hole she'd made. Darkness sifted out of its wounds like black sand falling from a sideways hourglass; it flared its red eyes, hissed venom, and vanished.

It had gone.

The demon that had been among us and whispering in our ears all week had gone.

We all remained frozen in shock for thirty seconds before Dan snapped out of it and said loudly, "Would someone please untie me already?!"

We did, and then we patched up my arm.

As a group, we didn't know what else to do, so we went and sat at our regular table at the bar. It was early on a Thursday, so few other people were there. We didn't get Blue Moons, but not because we hated oranges—no, our house was full of hundreds of the fruit, and would smell forever.

"I can't believe it almost got us to go from loving oranges to hating them in less than a week," Connor murmured sadly, crouched over his drink.

I shook my head. "I even doubted myself there for a minute. Did things I'm not proud of."

Dan looked up at us. "What even hurt it? Why did a being made of Hate get wounded by Rebecca just moving through it?"

She looked at me; I looked at her. We both looked back down at our beers. She'd hadn't just moved through it. She'd jumped at it because of me. We both knew the answer, but that was private.

Near us, an older regular was watching a television above the bar. He sneered. "Man, I'll tell you what's wrong with this country. I hate—"

The four of us shouted in unison. He jumped in his chair and looked over at us.

"Don't," I told him calmly and sadly. "Please. Just don't."

He watched us for a moment, then, subtly embarrassed, he gave a slow haunted nod and turned back to his drink.

[bloody-maiden]

Stuck

(Source)

When I first saw him standing out there on the sidewalk, I thought nothing of it. I certainly didn't think he'd still be out there come September. I lingered at the window for just a moment, decided that the night-bound silhouette across the street was just some guy out for a walk, and went to my room and hit the hay.

As I stood blearily over the coffee maker the next morning, my eyes strayed up to the window over the sink, and a little shock of adrenaline removed the need for caffeine. He was still there, and still standing on the opposite sidewalk looking at my house. My roommates had all gone to work long ago, so I waited for my coffee, got dressed, and then approached the front door and peered through the peephole.

He was still there.

I took a deep breath, readied myself for whatever nonsense this was going to entail, and opened the door.

His gaze shifted to me as soon as I stepped out onto the porch, and he watched me as I walked across the grass. He tensed when I stepped onto my sidewalk, but then looked relieved when I crossed it and reached the curb. Stopping there, I kept the pavement between us. I didn't know exactly how to ask him what the hell he was doing. "Hey, uh, what's up?"

He looked a little bit nervous. "Nothing. Just hanging out."

From where I was standing, he didn't appear to be homeless or crazy. He was a man of about forty dressed in a dark blue robe, and I vaguely recognized him. "Don't you live in that house?" I pointed up the driveway behind him.

He nodded. "Yep, that's mine. Just came out to get the newspaper."

I glanced down at his hand, where he held an orange bag with the newspaper rolled up inside it. "Well, looks like you got it." I paused. Another orange bag was lying further up the driveway, as if the one he was holding was actually yesterday's.

He didn't say anything. He just stood there with a masked nervous expression.

"Did I see you out here last night, too?" I asked.

"Yep, that was me."

I looked down further, and saw that his feet were bare. "You weren't out here all night, were you?"

I expected him to laugh off the idea, but instead he replied, "I was."

"You've been out here all night in bare feet?"

Panic was oozing out from under his mask of calm politeness in a dozen different ways. "Yes."

Now I was starting to feel more than a little weird. "Are you going to stand out here all day, too?"

"I—" He strained to speak, but then seemed to change his reply. "I might. It's beautiful weather out."

Well, that much was true. It was a warm summer day, bright and beautiful. "Well, could you at least not stare at my house then?"

He began to give an apologetic shrug, but stopped halfway through the motion and tried to turn. His bare feet never lifted from the sidewalk; the attempted turn was more of a twist from the thighs up. That, too, stopped rather quickly, and then he said, "Um." His gaze moved in a circle before he finally looked directly at me. "Your house is nice. I like looking at it."

By then I was getting rather annoyed. "What's your name?"

"Russ."

"Russ? Nice to meet you." I shook my head. I'd never had to do this before. "If you don't stop being weird and staring at our house, I'm going to call the police."

His eyes lit up. "Yes, please do that."

That was a weird enough reaction that I actually got out my phone. I'd been raised to never involve the police for any reason, but this was abnormal enough that I felt I had to. I told the dispatcher we had a strange man standing outside our house and that he'd been there literally all night—yes, all night. She said two officers would be with us shortly.

Russ and I didn't talk much while waiting for them. He just stood there looking at me at random times and around the neighborhood otherwise. Ours was a quiet street populated by nice people who kept mostly to themselves; we'd never even had cause to really meet each other. If we had, I might have known more about Russ, but as things were he was just some man acting strangely. Although—his aura of masked nervousness calmed as a squad car turned down the lane and approached us.

Two uniformed officers climbed out and approached us with tired stances. One asked dismissively, "What seems to be the issue, gentlemen?"

Russ looked to me hopefully.

I told them, "This guy has been standing out here staring at our house all night long."

The second cop rolled his eyes, but he did ask Russ, "That true, sir?"

Russ gulped and stated, "Yes."

Both cops straightened at the unexpected answer. The first one asked, "Seriously?"

Russ nodded.

The second cop looked at each of us for a moment and then said, "Well, move it along then."

Russ tensed and stood a little taller. "No."

"What?"

"I said no." As the pair began walking toward him, he added, "Sir."

As one got out handcuffs, the other sneered and said, "Listen, asshole—"

But he stopped about two feet from Russ. His partner froze as well.

"Come on," Russ urged them. "What are you waiting for? Come on!"

The two men looked at each other with haunted expressions, then began to back away. The handcuffs were returned to their belt.

"No!" Russ shouted at them. "Do it, you pricks! You pigs! Ugly bastards! Come on, beat me up! Teach me a lesson! Knock me down!"

The first cop's face was pale. "You're fine, sir. You're absolutely right, we're pigs. Just do what you like; stand there as long as you want. You're on your property, technically, so this is none of our business." The second glanced at me with apologetic terror; both jumped in their car and peeled away.

Russ screamed incoherently after them, but did not move from his spot on the sidewalk.

I called the station a second time to ask what had happened, but after taking my address the dispatcher told me never to call again and hung up. The anger faded out of Russ as he saw me lower the phone, and I stood there awkwardly as the grown man across the street began to outright cry.

I'd never seen a forty-year-old man blubber from sheer hopeless terror. "Russ, what's going on?"

He couldn't answer past his tears.

Looking left and right first, I finally stepped onto the street and got near him. I had the strangest notion, but I couldn't articulate it. The words simply wouldn't come to mind. An instinctual awareness was the most I could manage.

I did reach the opposite curb right in front of him, and I was intent on pushing him back off of his spot on the sidewalk, but I changed my mind about two feet away from him. It would have been weird to touch a crying grown man.

I stepped back to the street. Confused, I tried a second time. At two feet away from him—literally within arm's reach—I changed my mind again. He could do what he liked; who was I to interfere if he wanted to stand outside on a beautiful day?

Each time I got close and then changed my mind, his tears and terror deepened.

I remember murmuring, "Alright, screw this," and I backed up to the middle of the street to get space for a running start. I couldn't articulate what I was doing, but I guessed that a leaping tackle might work. I braced myself and then launched forward, ready to spring up at the proper distance.

But as I went to jump at him, I changed my mind. There was nothing wrong and I was being silly. Who cared about any of this? I slowed and curved away.

His sobbing became a river.

Despite an overwhelming sense that something was very wrong, I turned and slowly went back inside. I could still see him through the kitchen window, and I began going about the business of my day with a muted horror that I could not acknowledge gnawing at my heart. Each time I looked, I would hope against hope that he had moved—but he was always still there, shaking, crying, and looking around for help.

That was June.

A pall hung over our neighborhood. Where once my roommates and I had held board game parties and had a dozen people over, now we ate meager meals in silence. Whenever one of us would think to talk about something that had happened at work or perhaps an event we were looking forward to, we would get out half a sentence and then be overwhelmed by a sense of hollowness. Who could care about a concert or a trip to a water park at a time like this? We would stop our sentence midway through and glance out the kitchen window as a group.

Always, always, Russ was still standing there.

He successfully avoided dangerous sunburns by lifting his robe over his head during the brightest hours, and he had a few nearby trees to shade him at other times. His bare feet took the worst of it, and were red and boiled over after a week.

During that second week, we gathered daily as a neighborhood. It was impossible not to have noticed him standing out there by then, and all the various residents of our street wandered out to speak to him and to one another about various polite topics with strained undertones.

"Terrible weather," a neighbor would say, her eyes fearful.

The weather was gorgeous and beautiful.

"Absolutely terrible weather," another of us would say. "Horrifying in fact. What the hell is happening with the weather?"

I remember the oldest of us, a woman who had lived through the Great Depression and was normally tough as nails, then cried openly and sobbed, "Why is the weather doing this?"

Russ stood through all of this, visibly hopeful and terrified.

The old woman screamed at him, "Why don't you just go inside?"

He could only shrug and shakily tell her, "I don't want to go inside. I like sunburns on my feet."

She approached with both hands up to throttle him, but changed her mind as she came within reach. "You're a man, you can take it. I shouldn't interrupt your enjoyment of nature." She hobbled away in tears, trembling violently.

Another of our neighbors stepped forward. "At least take these clothes." He held a folded shirt and a pair of jeans forward, but turned away before getting close enough to hand them over. "Eh, you probably don't want my old hand-me-downs."

"Right," Russ replied hopelessly. "I'm fine. Thanks though."

It was the rainy season in our parts, and it began to drizzle on our heads, so we retreated to our homes to gaze out the window and watch Russ thirstily hold open his mouth to the sky. Once the torrent was heavy enough, he could also lean down and scoop water from the flow running along the curb. That gave us an idea.

As a neighborhood, we began to wash our cars more often. The runoff from the hoses would flow past Russ, allowing him to drink and stay alive, but only for as long as was normal for washing one's car. None of us mentioned it to one another—we just saw others doing it, so we did it too.

The rainy season also brought worms up out of the ground, which he ate, and he learned to stand still long enough for birds to come near. He would grab them and eat them whole. The sidewalk near him became foul with waste until each new rain washed it clean.

One of the men on the street began building a long wood and metal contraption. For the first time in a month, we had something else to see outside our windows, and we watched him for nearly a week before getting a sense of what he was doing: it was a massively long Rube Goldberg machine full of levers, swinging hammers, rolling balls, and other assorted nonsense. From the two-by-fours he'd laid out, he'd planned for it to extend all the way down the street, around the corner, and out of sight.

My roommates and I took a few days off work and wordlessly began helping. The older women in the neighborhood brought out drinks and food for us; Russ looked on while we ate and drank, but he watched especially carefully while we worked. I'd never been one for tools, but I muddled through figuring out how to saw and nail things effectively, and the other men in the neighborhood joined us without a word when they saw how serious we were.

It took six days, but we finally finished the contraption on the eve of a big storm. As the sky was growing dark, we gathered around the corner out of sight of Russ and stared at the button that would activate the machine. If all the levers and hammers and contraptions worked, Russ would be knocked over by a battering-ram mechanism at the very end.

We stared at the button.

A jogger approached, and we stared at her.

She slowed and looked worried that thirty-odd people were watching her.

We backed up and glanced at the button repeatedly.

"You want me to push this?" she asked, cautious but concerned. "Is this for some sort of prank video?"

We looked at each other, and the old woman who had survived the Great Depression shrugged and nodded.

The jogger moved close and hovered her hand over the button—before backing up. "Nah, I'd rather not participate in a prank video." Her expression was fearful and pained; she jogged on as we stood in despair.

The storm came and destroyed most of the mechanisms; the man who'd started it took it down in grief-stricken silence over the course of the next week.

Russ watched that process with despondent eyes.

A moving truck pulled up one morning, and we gathered on the street to watch his wife begin packing things.

"Russ lost his job because he stopped showing up," she explained. "And now we can't afford the place anymore." She looked over at him with narrowed eyes and said hatefully, "I don't understand why he's doing this, but I'm not staying with an unemployed loser who would rather stand around all day than do some honest work."

"This is honest work," he called over, crying despite his words. "It's tough standing here without rest. I do get tired, but someone has to do it."

We watched her put Russ' son in the passenger seat and then drive off with most of the contents of his house.

We looked to Russ.

He gulped, wiped his tears away, and gave the flimsiest reasoning I'd yet heard: "It's more important that I stand here than go after my family. I didn't value them anyway."

He seemed to give up after that, letting the sun sear his flesh day after day and not even bothering to eat the worms that followed each storm.

That was July.

The first party our street had seen in months nearly sparked a riot. Our place was one of two on the street designated as off-campus housing, and the other house kicked off a kegger at about seven o'clock one night.

Outrage and anger flowed with us into the foyer of that house. The college guys therein turned down the music and had their friends hang back a second as the entire neighborhood crowded in.

The old woman asked, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Having a party," one of the guys responded. "What's the problem? We're not being loud."

I was actually the one who spoke next. I remember my righteous anger vividly. "How can you have a party while things are the way they are?"

One of other guys who lived there protested, "So what? We're supposed to just stop everything and not live our lives because of the way things are?"

The guests looked at us in confusion.

The most painful part about that argument was that the guys were right: we couldn't just stop our lives because of what was happening on our street. The shouts and yells from each side were more about how we felt than any logical debate, and a fistfight broke out just long enough to knock over the keg and break two glasses.

We held each other back and retreated as a neighborhood, leaving the college guys to their party.

I was bitter, so bitter, and we all felt that bitterness together—until another neighbor had a party two nights later. A week after that, one of my roommates had our friends over for a board game night, and I had to admit that it felt like such a relief to return to normalcy. At the end of the night, I walked the last of our friends out, had one last joke and a laugh, and then waved after them.

Russ was just a silhouette in the darkness; always there, but no longer on our minds all the time.

Of course, the next morning the guilt hit me like a load of bricks as I stood over my coffee maker and studied the boil-covered red scarecrow across the street. His blue robes were growing tattered after months outside, and he looked like a burned corpse. Unfortunately, I had a stressful day ahead, and I couldn't afford to process my guilt at that moment.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I was the one who did it: I closed the blinds over the kitchen window. It was supposed to have been just for that day—just so I could get through the big project at hand—but the blinds never came back up after that. As a house, as a group, we stopped looking out the window.

Just like washing our cars, just like working on that Rube Goldberg machine, and just like our reaction to the party, my neighbors took that as a cue. Within five days, all the blinds on all the windows on the entire street were lowered.

That first night that Russ was completely alone outside in the dark—with all the blinds closed, an absolute guarantee that nobody was looking out for him or at him—I laid in my bed staring at the ceiling and crying quietly. This was not like the other pains on this street, not like the ones that couldn't be articulated. I knew exactly what I'd done this time, and I could think and say the words since it was my issue and my guilt alone: I was the first one to close the blinds.

I wanted to be the first to raise them again, to look out upon our neighborhood problem and force everyone else to open their eyes and unite again, but I didn't have the courage. I needed to work; I needed to pay rent. I couldn't be the one, because raising my blinds would mean acknowledging the problem and I couldn't afford to be wracked by guilt and confusion and pain any longer. Each night, I prayed that someone else would be the first to raise their blinds. Surely someone would do it! It was the only conscientious path, and someone would definitely feel compelled to do the right thing. Then, we could all do it together.

I'd put the issue out of my thoughts for so long that I was actually startled when I saw Russ healthier than before. With nobody mowing his lawn or trimming his trees, and with an abnormally rainy season, the greenery around him had grown to shade him nearly the entire day. His skin was back to a decent color where crinkled parchment had peeled off, and a large number of crickets and other bugs had taken up residence in his waist-high lawn. On these, he fed, reaching down to grab insects at random and eat them when the urge struck him.

I'd looked because a car had pulled up, and I watched as a real estate lady got out and began pestering him.

"Hey!" I shouted from across the way, defensive over our issue. "You leave Russ alone!"

"This is ridiculous," she called back. "I need to sell this property, and I'm never going to get a buyer interested in a property with a weathered homeless man standing outside of it."

"He's not homeless!" I shouted at her. "That's his home."

"Not anymore. His wife got it in the divorce because he failed to show up to the hearings."

I don't know why I said it. "I meant the sidewalk!"

Somehow, at some unknown point, I'd accepted it as simply the way things were. The real estate lady glared at me and then at Russ—and then she got in her car and left. I knew what would happen next, and my roommates and I harassed the landscaping crew she sent until they got fed up and left too. If they mowed the lawn and pruned the trees, Russ would be in serious trouble.

We congratulated ourselves for a job well done and went back into our house for board game night.

That was August.

The derisive talk began earlier this month. As the first chill of autumn hit the air, I think people instinctively knew that the worst was yet to come for him. Whenever we happened to glance his way, someone would spit and call him an idiot for standing there like that.

"Why doesn't he just go inside?" someone would ask.

"Yeah, what a dumbass," someone else would say.

I just stared at them when they said things like that. I did wish it would stop, that he would stop, but—I don't know. I just don't know.

I was prompted to write this and share our situation because I saw it in myself. I saw my feelings turning toward blame and hatred. I asked the same questions: why was he doing this? Why wouldn't he just go inside?

But that strange dread notion that I could not articulate drove me to go outside and do something no one else had done in weeks: talk to him.

"Hey Russ," I said by way of opening, since I had no idea what else to say.

His hair was a mane and his beard was wild, but there was still a man under there. He coughed to clear his throat and then managed to say, "Hey."

There was really no beating around the bush. "You gave up for a little while there, didn't you?"

He nodded weakly.

"What changed your mind? Why are you eating and drinking again? Why do you fight so hard to survive?" I asked him, my heart full of compassion. I felt like I was such a great person for caring when nobody else did.

I will never forget his bemused angry laugh. He tilted his head and said, "To stick it to you assholes."

That was the one answer I'd never expected. We'd done so much for him, gone through so much guilt and angst and effort—but I guess I'd never thought about what it was like on the other side of the blinds, standing there night after night knowing the entire neighborhood was avoiding looking at you.

I don't have an answer. I don't have any answers. I wanted to tell him good luck, but it would have just sounded hollow. I nodded and went inside; this time, I raised the blinds and stood by the kitchen window. As the first flakes of snow for the season began to fall, I accepted his angry gaze. Would the heat of his hate be enough to keep him warm through the winter? Summer seems impossibly far away, especially without so much as a blanket.

And yet all the people who come over—all my friends and roommates and acquaintances—all just keep asking idly, "Why doesn't he just go inside?"

If only it were that simple...

[kitsure]

Night 2:

The Black Square by  u/M59Gar

[bloody-maiden]

Portal in the Forest: u/M59Gar Masterpost (Updated)

“We stood in silence as the last of the waters drained away from under us, leaving only a pathetic wasteland of mud and filth bare to the noonday sun.

We stood in silence, because there was nothing to say, and nothing to do.

Life would go on… for awhile.”

The Fountain of Youth (Start here...)

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |

The House Beyond the Edge (or here...)

| Part 1: The House | Part 2: The Gorge | Part 3: The School |

| Part 4: The Detour | Part 5: The Right Turn |

The Portal in the Forest (or at the very least, here.)

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |

It Watched Us Play

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | 

Judging by the message I found, someone, somewhere, is lonelier than I am...

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | 

Am I the only one that sees that the moon is on fire?

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | 

I think I may have somehow missed the end of the world...

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |

I was told everyone I served in the military with died...

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 3.1 | Part 3.2 | Part 4 (Upcoming) |

Older Post Series

|The Angel Without a Face|The Demon Without a Name|The Living Murdered|

|Nostophobia|The Body Scanners|

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