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Courteous readers, gather ’round, for what you have before you is a piece of pure, unadulterated humanity. It seems that life insists on throwing us into the absurd and comical. Sometimes, you find yourself chomping away at a piece of good sourdough, while other times, you might gnaw at something more akin to a rock, though I’m yet to determine which category two-day-old bagels fit into.

It could be worse, folks. You could, perhaps, be in a place devoid of the World Wide Wonder—a relic of a pre-digital era, where gigabytes roam free, and nothing interrupts your crucial work by buffering indefinitely. Perhaps the gods of connectivity have outsourced us, only to be dealt some tasteless irony.

Reckon then, you might call me a nobody. Yet we’ve opinions too, and now and again, even those opinions matter, especially when one is penning what may very well be their final dispatch to the ether. Why, change is about as agreeable as convincing a mule to wear a bonnet, but some changes are more palatable.

For instance, the sublime joy of a pup cup from the Virginia City Roasting House; now there’s an improvement we can all wag at. My four-legged companion, with aspirations as grand as any politician’s, desired a simple medium coffee, black—none of that caramel-mocha-hazelnut-four-shots ordeal.

And would you know it? The pooch’s visage graced the online sphere, a temporary icon in the middle of a sea of memes and cat pictures.

As I sat, composing what could only be described as an epitaph to my blog, the air buzzed with the tension so thick you could carve it with a butter knife. I know, with a writer’s intuition, this post could be my very last.

And then they burst in, those voices, like a band of surreal Avengers shouting demands and probably other things too unprintable. Frozen in that surreal moment, I pondered my fate, pitifully aware of the uncorrected typo glaring back at me—a blunder that’ll haunt my literate soul to the end of days.

The clock ticked, 2,000 words down, spellcheck be damned, and I knew it was time to hightail it out of there. Home called, and the promise of an amber-colored elixir awaited my return.

But lest we forget, my readers, while we are in our little absurdities, the City of Angels finds itself elegizing in flames, and the pervasive smell of hot feathers lingers—a pungent reminder that chaos has the last laugh.

So, without further ado, raise a glass to the madness and toast to the idiosyncrasies of existence.

Incline Village, where the icy stillness of Lake Tahoe mirrored the encroaching void of the heavens, an ancient, slumbering malevolence lays concealed beneath the endless white.

It was here that a team of researchers unwittingly ventured into an abyss. Dr. Margaret “Maggie” Bell, driven by an insatiable need to leave her mark on history, led the expedition with a resolve that bordered on recklessness.

Her companions were Bob Jenkins, a geologist who had spent his youth dreaming of unearthing secrets the Earth had long buried; Helen Shaw, a biologist whose meticulous nature masked a quiet yearning for discovery; and Walt Hughes, an engineer with the steadfast practicality of a man whose life was fixing the unfixable.

The drilling began, the machinery’s ceaseless screeches tearing into the ice and echoing across the lifeless expanse. By the third day, Walt’s triumphant shout pierced the frozen air: “We’re through! There’s a cavern below!”

The mountain groaned as if resenting their intrusion, and the team peered into the yawning darkness with awe and trepidation.

The descent was treacherous, their headlamps barely illuminating the alien beauty of the cavern below. Ice stalactites hung like malevolent spears, refracting an eerie, unnatural light that seemed to emanate from the very air.

Bob’s voice trembled as he pointed to strange carvings etched into the walls. “These aren’t random. Someone made these. Or… something did.”

Running her gloved fingers against the markings, Helen murmured, “This doesn’t feel like a language. It’s more like… a warning.”

Maggie, her voice resolute but tinged with unease, pressed forward. “Keep moving. We didn’t come all this way to turn back now.”

On the fifth day, they found the altar. It loomed at the cavern’s heart, not a relic of worship but a cruel enigma crowned by a pulsating, formless mass that defied all natural laws.

Its shifting hues twisted through dimensions never before perceived. To look upon it was to feel the gnawing pull of eternity—a presence vast and uncaring, older than time itself.

“Maggie, don’t!” Walt’s voice cracked with urgency as she stepped closer.

But the entity whispered to her, its tendrils of sound bypassing her ears and sinking into her mind. She reached out, her hand trembling as though her will had dissolved beneath its call. When her fingers brushed the surface, the cavern erupted in a deafening symphony of shrieks—a sound not of pain but of recognition, as though it had waited an eternity for this moment.

The shadows surged, no longer passive but living extensions of the entity’s will. They coiled and writhed, binding each researcher in frigid tendrils that drained their warmth and hope with equal cruelty. Helen’s scream became shallow as Bob’s defiance melted into pitiful gasps. Walt, his strength faltering, shouted one last command: “Run, Maggie! For God’s sake, run!”

But Maggie stood transfixed, her mind unraveling as the entity’s presence consumed her. Her consciousness fractured into shards, each one exposing her to impossible visions: stars devoured by all-consuming voids, empires crumbling into dust beneath the weight of forgotten truths, and titanic beings driven by madness. The cavern was not a discovery but a prison—one that lured its victims with promises of knowledge, only to devour them utterly.

Maggie grasped a final, terrible truth through the agony of her disintegration. The crypt beneath the ice was not a relic of the past but a wound upon the fabric of reality itself. It would wait patiently, as it always had, for the next unwitting heralds to awaken its malice.

“If… anyone hears this…” Her words escaped her lips like a dying breath. “Beware… the crypt…”

Her voice faded, and the cavern returned to its unnatural stillness. Above, the snow resumed its gentle fall, erasing all evidence of their intrusion.

Below, the entity pulsed faintly, its hunger momentarily sated, its dread patience infinite.

The two men moved through the rugged high desert of Nevada, their steps uncertain and breathing heavy. For two days, Jonah Williams and Eli Colton had been afoot, their horses torn apart in a night of terror.

They carried what they could salvage—their canteens, a Winchester, a Colt .45, and a growing desperation. The bristlecone pines, twisted and ancient, loomed around them, their gnarled branches like hands clawing at the sky.

Jonah glanced at Eli, who lagged, his steps faltering. “We need to find help soon, Eli,” he said, his voice rough with concern.

Eli wiped the sweat from his brow and gave a grim nod. “I know, Jonah. But there ain’t no help out here. Only rocks, trees, and death.”

They pressed on, climbing a ridge that overlooked a barren expanse. Below, scattered among a field of jagged stones, lay a figure.

At first, they thought it might be a corpse—a grim sight, but not unusual in the desert. Yet as they approached, they saw the man’s chest rise and fall faintly, though his clothes were bloody.

“Is he…alive?” Eli whispered, his voice trembling.

Jonah knelt beside the man, his fingers searching for a pulse. “Barely,” he said. “There’s not a mark on him, though. Not even a scratch.”

“Then where’s all the blood come from?” Eli asked.

“Don’t know,” answered Eli.

The two exchanged uneasy glances. Something about the man was wrong.

His face was pale, almost translucent in the fading light, and his eyes closed in unconsciousness, seemed to twitch as though trapped in a fevered dream. Jonah’s hand tightened on the grip of his Winchester.

“We can’t just leave him,” Eli said, though his voice quavered. “Man like that, out here alone? He won’t last the night.”

Reluctantly, Jonah agreed. They lifted the stranger onto their shoulders and took turns carrying him, their bodies straining under the weight.

Darkness fell, and they stumbled into a small hollow, where they laid the man down and built a fire from brittle pine branches. The flames cast long, flickering shadows across the rocks.

Back along the trail, another man—rough, grizzled, and armed to the teeth—was tracking them. Frank McGuffy had seen the carcasses of Jonah and Eli’s horses, their bodies mangled beyond recognition.

“The devil’s close,” Frank muttered to himself. His rifle rested easily in his calloused hands, and his eyes scanned the ground. He’d tracked the monster across half the territory and refused to let it slip away now.

As Frank followed the trail, the night grew colder. A full moon rose over the hills, bathing the landscape in an eerie silver light.

Jonah and Eli dozed fitfully beside the fire, their exhaustion overcoming the unease. The man they’d rescued, however, was not at peace.

His body twitched, his breathing grew ragged, and then, with a sudden, inhuman howl, he sat bolt upright. His eyes glowed with a feral light, and his teeth—sharp, elongated, and glinting in the firelight—bared in a snarl.

Jonah woke first, his hand reaching instinctively for his rifle. “Eli! Wake up!”

But it was too late. The man leaped with impossible speed, his hands—now claws—tearing into Jonah before he could fire.

Eli screamed and emptied his .45 into the creature, but the bullets only seemed to enrage it. Blood sprayed across the rocks as the beast turned on Eli, its jaws closing around his throat in a single, savage motion.

Frank heard the commotion as he crested the ridge. Below, he saw the camp in chaos—the two men’s bodies lifeless on the ground, the fire guttering, and the werewolf crouched over its kills.

Raising his Winchester, Frank aimed and fired. The bullet struck the beast between the shoulders, and it reared back with a deafening roar.

“Come on, you devil,” Frank muttered, chambering another round.

The werewolf charged, its glowing eyes locked on him. Frank fired again and again, but the creature barely slowed.

When it was nearly upon him, he dropped the empty rifle and drew his revolver, firing five shots in rapid succession. Each shot hit its mark, but the beast kept coming.

Frank backed against a boulder, his breath ragged. He had one bullet left.

The werewolf lunged, its claws outstretched, and Frank made his choice. Placing the barrel of the revolver under his chin, he whispered, “Not tonight, you bastard.”

The shot rang out, echoing across the empty hills.

The werewolf paused, its head cocked as though puzzled. Then, with a low growl, it turned and loped off into the darkness as the fire burned low, casting a faint glow over the carnage, and the desert night grew still once more.

Life had planned an eventful chapter for me on that crisp winter day. A chapter that would test my nerves, my faith, and my sense of humor in ways I could not have imagined.

Now, if you ain’t ever had the peculiar experience of being marked for death and forced to dig your own grave, you might not fully understand the thoughts that whirl through the mind. But I had my shovel in hand and was well into the task when I decided to voice my concern to the Almighty.

“Lord,” I said, my voice low and steady, “I believe You can deliver me from this.”

I had hoped for something dramatic—perhaps a heavenly fireball to scare the vigilantes off or wings to carry me away from all that dirt and doom. But, as it turns out, God had a much finer sense of humor than I gave Him credit for.

As I dug, one of my would-be killers picked up my Bible, his rough fingers tracing the markings inside.

“What do all these underlines mean?” the cowboy asked, holding the book like it might bite him.

“Those are my favorite verses,” I said, not missing a stroke with the shovel.

To my surprise, the man sat down, cracked open the book, and started to read.

“You sure you’ve read all of these?” he asked, his voice curious instead of hostile.

“Yes,” I said, giving him a sharp look over my shoulder.

He turned to the others, his voice lowering as though he were afraid to speak too loud. “I know we’re gonna kill him, but let me help with the digging.”

The leader, a hard-eyed fellow, nodded reluctantly, and before I knew it, the cowboy was standing beside me with a spade of his own.

I looked up, wiping sweat from my brow despite the cold, and whispered to the heavens, “Lord, this grave’s gonna be finished quicker now. What’s Your next move?”

It’s funny, isn’t it, that often we think we know what God should do, as though we could map out His plan for Him? But, He’s got a way of doing things that no man, no matter how wise, can.

Once done digging, the man who’d taken up the spade turned to the others.

“Why should we bury this man here?” the cowboy asked. “We don’t even know him. Let him go dig another grave further down the trail. This is our field. Why waste it?”

After some low murmurs of agreement, the committee decided to move the body of George, a man they knew well, into the hole meant for me. Irony had a way of creeping in when you’d least expect it, and I was about to witness something that would’ve been the punchline of the strangest joke I’d ever heard.

Another cowboy, without a hint of hesitation, suggested, “Before we bury George, why don’t we say a prayer for him?”

I watched in disbelief as they all gathered around the body, removed their hats, lifting their voices to the heavens, murmuring, “Mary, mother of Jesus, receive him,” before rolling the stiffened form into what had once been my grave.

My world shifted in an instant.

“Lord,” I said, my heart pounding with the strange awareness of my fate, “Don’t let me be separated from these men before I have a chance to tell them who You are.”

As we neared the old trail, I was preparing to start digging another grave when the cowboy with my Bible turned to me.

“Can I keep this?” he asked, holding the book like something precious.

I nodded, but the others objected, their voices rising in protest. The Holy Spirit had already touched his heart, and I could see it in his eyes.

“Please,” I asked, “Can I have the Bible and say something before I dig anymore?”

The man who’d asked for the Bible agreed eagerly, but the others started shouting, “No! He’s a thief! He ain’t got nothing to say.”

A full-blown argument broke out among the men, some shouting that I should be allowed to speak, others determined to shut me down before I had a chance. And just when it seemed the group might split apart, an older cowboy stepped forward.

“Why fight over a man you don’t even know?” he asked, his voice thick with experience. “Those who want to listen, let ‘em sit and listen. The rest, sit and shut your ears. When he’s done, we’ll hang him.”

And just like that, they all sat down. A few seemed genuinely curious, while the others sat in sullen silence.

I stood tall, holding the Bible, and began to speak.

“Thank you,” I said, my voice steady despite the oddness of the situation, “for praying for somebody you’ve already killed.”

The men shifted uncomfortably, but I pressed on, determined to make my words count.

“However, there’s something you should know,” I said. “The man, you’re about to bury, the one whose body lies in the grave, is ain’t as dead as you think. He is alive in Christ. And so are we all, if we but seek His mercy.”

It was a strange thing, standing there with killers sitting at my feet, but I spoke, and I spoke with the full weight of what I believed. And I had no idea, at least not then, how those words would change everything.

Time will tell, as it always does, but I knew God has a hand in everything, and I’d be damned if I didn’t trust Him to see me through, and because of that, I’m here to share my testimony today.

With the weather in a peculiar phase of warmth for a winter’s day, I decided to try out a suggestion that would lend energy to my body and be a salve for my soul. Now, this modern marvel is called Earthing.

The instructions were delightfully simple: remove shoes and socks and plant oneself firmly upon the ground, whether dirt, sand, rocks, or—heaven help us in Nevada—green grass. Even my esteemed faculties could follow these steps to the letter.

So, I let our dog, Buddy, frolic about the front yard as I prepared to unearth my inner Hippy. Given my penchant for a certain unsteadiness on my feet, I grasped the end piling that keeps the porch roof from sagging and gingerly stepped down.

Suddenly, I realized I either overlooked a step in the instructions, or it didn’t exist, as I found myself stepping on something soft and squishy. Before my mind could deduce the nature of this unwelcome tactile sensation, a foul stench assaulted my nostrils, causing a reflexive gag.

A dog log.

In a manner befitting a man under duress, I scraped my right foot—the offending foot—vigorously across the grass, muttering a few choice words about the entirety of the situation. Observing my distress and dragging leg, Buddy trotted over to investigate.

His judgment was swift, final, and entirely characteristic. He lifted his left leg and relieved himself upon the goo I had trodden upon, then with a flourish, he kicked grass over the spot and followed me into the house.

Once inside, I hobbled with my heel lifted from the floor to the bathtub, where I thoroughly washed the offending foot. After extensive drying, I returned my socks to their rightful place and shod both feet in shoes, vowing never again to tempt fate with such modern contrivances.

As a reward for his swift judgment, I gave Buddy some steak. To salve my wounded pride, I poured myself a generous cup of coffee, resolving then and there never to succumb to another new-age gimmick, no matter how ancient the action may be.

Should I require a boost of energy, I shall henceforth rely on the twin elixirs of coffee and prayer to soothe my soul.

You may find this account peculiar, perhaps even trifling, until you have read it to its conclusion. It concerns the small but disconcerting occurrences that have beset our household since the passing of Christmas—a time when, as you know, the spirit of cheer can so easily give way to unease once the lights are extinguished and the decorations stowed away.

My wife, ever the industrious soul, adheres firmly to the adage that tasks deferred are tasks undone. On Boxing Day, she resolved to banish every trace of the holiday from our home.

Among the decorations slated for their annual confinement in the attic were two wooden nutcrackers garbed in military regalia. One, a drum major with a baton, stood tall and imperious. The other—a drummer, diminutive in comparison—seemed almost plaintive in aspect.

It was as she prepared to pack them away that she noticed something amiss: the drummer’s drum was nowhere to be seen. We spent searching the room for the errant piece.

We dragged the furniture aside, lifted carpets, and inspected nooks that had not seen the light of day in weeks. Yet the drum remained elusive, as if spirited away.

Though frustrated, we thought no more of it at the time. After all, such trifles turn up when least expected.

It was a few nights later—perhaps three or four—when the first incident occurred. My wife and I had retired for the evening, the house settling into its usual nocturnal quiet.

At some point past midnight, I was roused by a sound faint yet insistent: the steady tattoo of a drum, coming, as best I could judge, from beneath the floorboards of the back portion of the house.

At first, I took it for some trick of the imagination, a product of half-sleep. But as the nights wore on, the sound persisted, growing no louder but no less distinct. Each time it began, the pattern was the same: a slow, deliberate roll, followed by an irregular staccato as if struck by hands not altogether steady.

By the fourth night, curiosity and unease drove me to investigate. Beneath our home is a crawl space—not unpleasant to navigate so long as one remains crouched.

Armed with a lantern, I descended into the area just after the sound had commenced. The space was well-lit, and I took care to examine every corner, every joist and beam.

Yet there was nothing to see, no drum, no source for the noise, only the oppressive quiet of the space and the faint scent of damp earth.

I emerged none the wiser. But that night, I could have sworn the drumming grew louder as if it resented my intrusion.

My wife, less susceptible to fancy and hard of hearing, confessed that she found the sound disturbing.

“It is not the noise itself,” she said one morning, her face drawn. “It is the persistence of it, as if someone—or something—is determined to make itself heard.”

I do not care to prolong this narrative unnecessarily, for it is not in the recounting of each nightly disturbance that the true horror lies but in the culmination. A week after the drumming began, I was woken not by sound but by the distinct impression that I was not alone.

The room was cold—unnaturally so—and the air carried a faint tang of woodsmoke, though there had been no fire in the hearth that evening. As I sat up, my eyes came to the foot of my bed.

Silhouetted against the pale light of the moon stood the nutcracker. It was the figure my wife had packed away, and there on the leather bandolier swung the missing drum.

Peace doesn’t always arrive in the form of a soft bed or a perfect setting. Sometimes, it’s found in the most unassuming places—an empty room, a handful of blankets, and the quiet surrender of laying down, letting the world pause around you.

In that moment, the absence of luxury feels irrelevant. Bare and silent, the walls hold no judgment; the floor beneath you offers humble support. It’s a reminder that peace doesn’t ask for much. It doesn’t demand a grand gesture or ornate surroundings. It simply requires space—a small corner in the world where you can breathe and rest.

There’s something sacred about that simplicity. The chaos of life gets reduced to nothing more than the rhythm of your breath and the weight of your body against the earth. For a few hours, the burden of the day dissipates, and the past and future no longer matter. You exist solely in the present, wrapped in whatever comfort you’ve managed to gather, however modest it might be.

It’s a humbling experience, too. It strips away the excess and forces you to confront what truly matters. Lacking distraction, you get the bare essence of being. And in that stillness, there’s a kind of clarity—a recognition that peace isn’t something external to chase but something internal to cultivate.

Throwing down a few blankets on the floor and calling it a night might seem like a small act, but it holds profound meaning. It’s a declaration: this is enough. I am enough. And in that declaration, you reclaim something vital—a sense of wholeness that no amount of luxury could ever provide.

Sometimes, peace is quiet defiance, the ability to find comfort in the uncomfortable, to create rest where there seems to be none. And in doing so, you remind yourself that peace isn’t something to wait for. It’s something to make, even in the simplest ways.

The first stirrings of the storm came courtesy of a capricious little breeze that had graduated with honors from the School of Mischief. The Zephyr, tumbling down Sun Mountain like a drunken miner after payday, took to snapping shop signs along C Street. It whipped them about so violently that respectable citizens took to the ignominy of stepping into the street, where they mingled—Heaven help us—with automobiles and other contraptions of modern recklessness.

By mid-afternoon, the breeze had thrown in its lot with a gale, and together, they ushered in an unwelcome delegation of snow. The infernal substance did not fall so much as launch itself horizontally, aiming its icy barrage at any exposed bit of human dignity. Before long, the streets grew deserted save for Storey County’s gallant snowplow operators, who seemed determined to carve paths to nowhere.

It was a dire situation I found myself in, stranded and seeking refuge with my esteemed acquaintances, Leggs and Mr. Leggs. They were a curious couple—one possessed of a literary fervor that bordered on the evangelical, the other possessed of patience that bordered on sainthood. Over glasses fortified with questionable spirits, Leggs proposed an expedition to Lake Tahoe, where she claimed the Spirit of Mark Twain awaited.

Now, Leggs has a knack for persuasion, which she employed by reading aloud from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:

“When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high, rocky bluffs on both sides. By and by says I, ‘Hello, Jim, looky yonder!’ It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock… Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn’t. He’d call it an adventure—that’s what he’d call it…”

It was a compelling argument, made all the more so by Leggs reading it with the fervor of a revival preacher promising salvation. Mr. Leggs and I exchanged glances, recognizing we had lost to the most fantastical argument ever.

Just then, providence—or perhaps prudence masquerading as providence—intervened. The Spirit of Mark Twain, speaking through the miracle of modern telegraphy (a smartphone, if you must know), sent word: “It appears to be snowing more than first noted.. exercise caution and defer judgment.”

And so, with the Spirit’s blessing, we abandoned Tahoe for a closer adventure: dinner at the newly opened Sawdust Corner Steakhouse.

The establishment was as grand as its name was unassuming. The sommelier discoursed on wine with the air of a man auditioning for the role of Bacchus. The waitstaff moved with the synchronized precision of the Russian ballet, though their expressions suggested they might be considering unionization.

Never have I seen a player piano of such elegant proportions, and never had it not been an upright player, that Mr. Mesmer himself could have better held my fleeting attention— I dare say, had I offered him two-bits in jingling walking-around change, he might’ve tried. The contraption stood there, all polished mahogany and gleaming brass, puffing itself up like a rooster at dawn, ready to charm the room with melodies it hadn’t learned but somehow knew.

It rolled out its tunes with all the precision of a schoolmaster’s ruler, though with none of the violence, and yet I found myself utterly enchanted by the mechanical confidence of it all. It was, I dare say, the finest substitute for human talent ever to be bolted together, and though I didn’t part with my money, I did tip my hat to it as if it had earned it fair and square.

Should the proprietor of this elegant establishment wish, he could turn a tidy living by levying a ten-cent per person ransom upon tourists and professional wanderers alike, offering them a singular privilege of craning their necks skyward to marvel at the stunning copper ceiling work. A sight so magnificent, it could make even the most hardened vagabond forget his aching feet and dubious prospects.

The attraction, mind you, was not merely the hammered artistry nor the gleam that caught the light just so but the rare assurance that nary a bullet hole is among the intricate patterns—a boast most ceilings in these parts would have struggled to make without a smirk and a wince.

Dinner was a spectacle. The prime rib arrived so colossal it could have been mistaken for a geological feature, accompanied by a baked potato of Herculean proportions. The meal came lubricated by an abundance of adult beverages, which flowed freely and loosened tongues, good manners, and perhaps the odd belt buckle.

Alas, my evening of gastronomic delight ended in calamity. Despite a well-documented allergy to oysters—a discovery made years ago in a similarly ill-advised moment—I succumbed to the persuasive powers of Mr. Leggs, who assured me his preparation would be “transformative.”

And transformative it was: I spent the remainder of the evening resembling an elderly patriarch beset by gout and disrepute.

As I lay in my afflicted state, I reflected that while the Spirit of Mark Twain may have been absent in Lake Tahoe, his essence was alive and well at Sawdust Corner, in the mischief of the storm, the folly of our ambitions, and the splendid absurdity of a life lived in defiance of common sense.

Writing for a living is a profession fraught with hazards, almost invisible to the naked eye, and perilous to domestic tranquility.

The uninitiated might imagine these hazards as writer’s block, a scathing review, or a paper cut. But let me assure you that the gravest dangers lurk not in the critics’ pages or spilled blood but in one’s household.

Case in point: I recently embarked on the ambitious endeavor of writing a song—a task that requires–as all musicians know–first crafting a poem. A poem needs structure, rhyme, and the vague air of something you will regret sharing with the world later. I had dutifully scribbled my fledgling lyrics on a scrap of paper, one of those indiscriminate squares torn from an unpaid bill, and set it aside for further contemplation.

Fate, however, had other plans.

Enter Mary, my dear wife, whose cleaning zeal is matched only by her suspicion of anything resembling a secret. She appeared before me suddenly, a tempest in human form, brandishing my lyrical scrap as though it were Exhibit A in a trial where I was both defendant and jury.

“Do I have to worry about this?” she demanded, her tone suggesting that I had already been convicted and sentenced to a night on the couch. I took the offending scrap from her hand and read it with the gravity of a man reviewing his last will.

The note, in my cursed handwriting, read:

“I know you’re married and don’t like me.
You know that I’m married, and that makes us even.
I’m living at the corner of Mercy and Highball Street.”

Now, let us pause here for a moment. To a writer, this is the skeletal framework of a verse—rough, unpolished, and reeking of potential. To my wife, however, it was something altogether different: a confession, a declaration, and an invitation rolled into one.

I met her eyes with the sincerity of a man pleading for his life. “It’s just a bit of a song lyric I’m working on,” I said. “You’ve saved it from certain oblivion. Thank you.”

Mary, God bless her, let out a sound that could only be the bastard child of a sigh and a growl. Then, with a shake of her head that conveyed both exasperation and cautious relief, she retreated to the garage to resume her battle with the vacuum cleaner.

As for me, I now regard that scrap of paper as though it were a loaded pistol. It sits on my desk, mocking me with its potential to spark another marital misunderstanding or, worse, an actual conversation about my creative process. I dare not keep it, yet I cannot burn it. Instead, I do what all writers do in times of crisis: procrastinate and hope the problem resolves itself.

Such is the danger of the written word—not the writing itself, but the treacherous moments when it falls into the wrong hands. In this case, those wrong hands belong to a woman who angry-vacuums her car with all the fervor of a cat suddenly mad about getting a belly rub.

And so, I cautiously proceed, knowing that the line between poet and suspect is thinner than I would like.

“I never really cared for my facial features until I saw them from my coffin,” he said, teeth so white they seemed to glow.

His words hung in the air, heavy and cold, as if the heater in the all-night coffee shop had suddenly failed. His smile was dazzling, almost unnatural, the kind that made you forget to blink.

I stared at him, trying to process the strange statement.

His face was ordinary–almost too– like a face sketched by an artist who hadn’t yet added the details. The teeth, though, were different, impossibly perfect, and brighter than any human teeth had a right to be.

I glanced around the diner.

The waitress behind the counter was scribbling something on her order pad. The short-order cook stood at the grill, his back to us. Apart from the faint hiss of grease and the soft scratch of the waitress’s pen, the place was silent.

The man sat perfectly still, his unnerving smile frozen on his face. I noticed how his hands rested on the counter—motionless, pale, with fingers that seemed just a bit too long.

“What… what did you mean by that?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he stood, his movements smooth but somehow disjointed, like a puppet with invisible strings. He adjusted his jacket, tipped an imaginary hat, and walked toward the door.

As he reached it, I called out, “Wait.”

He turned his head just enough for me to catch his profile. His lips curled into an even wider grin, revealing teeth so white they looked carved from moonlight.

The doorbell jingled as he stepped outside and disappeared into the night. I bolted to the window, peering into the street, but there was no sign of him.

No footsteps in the thin layer of snow on the sidewalk, no shadow receding into the dark. Just the empty glow of a streetlamp casting its pale light on the pavement.

I returned to the counter, my coffee now lukewarm, and wrapped my hands around the mug, trying to steady my nerves. Something wasn’t right—something about the movements–the voice sounding like it came from a place deep, not its throat.

The rest of the night passed in a strange haze. The waitress never approached my table again, and the short-order cook stayed glued to the grill as though they’d both forgotten I was there.

When the first light of dawn crept into the diner, I finally left, my head buzzing with questions. As I stepped onto the sidewalk, I looked back at the coffee shop. The neon sign in the window flickered–“OPEN 24 HOURS”–sputtering in bursts of red.

That’s when I saw it–a reflection–grinning at me from the glass. I spun around, my heart pounding, but the place was empty. The coffee shop door clicked shut behind me, the bell ringing out one last eerie chime.

Somewhere, far off, I swear I heard the sound of laughter.