LADY IN THE PEW

I

Keith came to understand that not all nightmares play by the rules. Some don’t stay where you left them, curled up in the folds of sleep like dead spiders in the attic.  Some crawl out with you, sticky-legged and stubborn, and settle on your shoulders when the sun comes up. Those are the ones you can’t run from. They rot into your waking life, turning every reflection in a darkened window into a threat, every phone ring into a warning. And the worst part: You don’t always know if you ever woke up at all.

That was the difference between the sleeping horrors and the waking ones: you could jolt up from a dream with a gasp, fling yourself back into the safety of your own bedroom. But in reality? No escape hatch, save for the quiet room you walk into alone. The air doesn’t move in that room. Time doesn’t either. In there, you pass the sentence and deliver it, clean and without ceremony, the world outside none the wiser. For Keith, there was no blessed return to neutral. Just the steady, bone-deep tremor of knowing exactly what he’d done, exactly what he’d failed to do.

Now he was watching the morning sun again. Third day in a row. Sleep hadn’t come, not real sleep. Just these slow tidal surges of the same dream. Like tinnitus for the brain, it roared at times, battering the walls of his skull; other times it sank to a low hum, a tremor pulsing at the core of his mind. But it never left. Relentless. Terrible.

It came on him like a reverie, the kind that stole over him in daylight and felt more solid than memory. He was always holding the phone. The weight of it dragged at his arm, slick with the sweat from his own palm. On the other end—always the same—his brother’s girlfriend breathing into the silence as if going over her lines. 

“Where is he, Keith?” she’d ask. Her voice was always tight, always trembling at the edges. Wet, like she’d been crying but wouldn’t admit it. “He left hours ago. He said you were talking him into staying.”

“I was,” Keith heard himself say. “I tried.”

And she’d remain silent. That silence was a dagger, poised and waiting, as if some sick director from hell had reserved the moment just for him. 

You know your lines! Spit it out!

“He won't tell you where he is?” Keith forced himself to ask.

“Ever since the first call” she’d say. And Keith, under his breath recites with her, “he doesn't answer the phone.”

Then Keith would tell her he’d give it a try and then call her afterwards. And his brother—not by any means of surprise—answers on the first ring.

“Hey,” Keith said quickly, too quickly. “Joe, dear God, it’s good to hear your voice.” It was as clear as any other form of it could be. “You good? Where are you?” You know damn well where he is.

His brother’s voice came through, flat, like all the air had been sucked out of it—a deflated balloon that used to be something but now wasn’t.

“Yeah. Driving.”

“You should’ve been home by now.”

“I know.”

A silence that seemed to eat up the space between them. Keith’s face always felt painful at this moment, how it bunched in dreadful understanding.  

Line please!

“Where are you?” Keith asked. Something rose in his chest—not panic yet, but something colder, heavier. The kind of cold you only feel at funerals when the casket’s already in the ground and you realize the world didn’t stop spinning.

“I don’t know,” Joe said.

The words had the wrong weight to them. Like they’d been borrowed from someone else’s mouth. Like a rehearsal line from a play you didn’t want to be in.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just been… going. I should have been home by now.”

Keith’s eyes dropped to his own screen. And even though he’d gone through this a thousand times, he still reacted with the same urgency. As if it mattered now. That was the hell of a spiraling mind. “Listen, you likely blacked out.” But to blackout and still have driven for this long, this gracefully, what are the odds? “Put it in your GPS. Send me your location.”

No answer.

Then: “It’s not working.”

“What do you mean it’s not working?” At this point he’d give Denzel a run for his money. But all acting came from a real place hadn’t it?

“I don’t have service.”

The way he said it—so plain, so certain—made Keith’s stomach clench. Like it was just another immutable fact of the universe. Water’s wet. The sky’s blue. I don’t have service.

“I—”

The call cut out.

And then—

It was like being wrenched backward through a dream’s thin membrane, pulled out of a place where time had no weight and silence pressed like velvet. The moment bled away, fragment by fragment, until only the thin mist of it clung to his skin. The pressure in the room shifted, an invisible hand lifting from his chest, and the atmosphere seemed to reset, as though reality itself exhaled. Like a jet reaching a sonic boom, but in reverse.

The air held a stifling heat, dense and unmoving, thick enough to taste. His chest rose and fell in jagged bursts, lungs dragging at the stale weight of it. He felt as though he’d just broken the surface after being forced under too long, the burn of held breath still clawing at his ribs.

He sat there, palms clamped to his face. He hated his mind for dragging him through it again.

Not because it was just a dream—but because even when it had been real, it hadn’t felt real. That was the part that tore at him. That strange, floating sense that he wasn’t in his own body but watching it all from just above, powerless to change the ending. It came back in loops that didn’t break, only bent into new shapes.

For a man who sold houses—not that he’d moved much property lately—his own real estate was rotting from the inside out, a foreclosure of the mind with weeds breaking through the floorboards.

He wasn’t just mentally, but physically drained as if these weren’t just nightmares but vampiric in nature. He needed to act now, before the line between real life and the phantoms in his head blurred for good—before his brain finally snapped and the whole rotten mess came tumbling down. Three nights without more than a doze-and-jolt, each one worse than the last, each one filled with the same stuttery fragments of dream and the same cold understanding waiting for him when he woke. His thoughts had begun to rattle like dice in a cup. That was the truth of it. He was becoming a man who talked to himself in the bathroom mirror just to fill the quiet, a man who forgot why he’d opened the fridge and stood there, door hanging wide, letting the cold pour out on his bare feet until the toes went numb.

So he made the call. A real call.

The office was one of those modern glass-and-beige places tucked between a dental surgery and a title loan store, the sort of building you could drive by every day for a year without ever noticing. Inside, the air was warm enough to make his skin prickle. A little water feature bubbled against one wall, meant to be soothing but sounding more like someone pissing into a bucket. He sat in a too-soft chair that wanted to swallow him whole, stared at a stack of magazines no one in their right mind would read—Better Homes & Gardens from three Christmases ago, a Time cover about an election—democrats demoing their chances at victory—already gathering dust in history’s corner.

When the therapist finally ushered him in, she had that gentle face they must teach in school—the one that says I’m safe, you can tell me anything—but her eyes kept flicking, just a little, to the dark marks of sleeplessness under his eyes.

Keith sat down, sinking into the leather chair that was trying too hard to feel comforting—still a better job than the one in the lobby. The clock ticked loudly enough to make him wonder if it was part of some strategy. He kept his gaze on the bookshelf behind her, on the fake fern that hadn’t seen sunlight since the Obama administration, anywhere but her face.

"So," she began, flipping open her notepad, pen poised. "How have you been since our last talk? Especially… about your brother."

Keith shifted in his seat, jaw working. "Fine."

"Fine," she repeated, like she was tasting the word. "Can you tell me what fine looks like for you right now?"

He exhaled slowly through his nose. "Means I’m here, doesn’t it?"

She tilted her head slightly, that gentle, learned expression not breaking. "Last time, we touched on a lot of complicated feelings—guilt, responsibility, even some anger. Have those shifted at all since then?"

He scratched the back of his neck and stared at the patterned carpet. "Not really."

"Have you had any moments of relief? Any clarity since then?"

Keith’s lips pressed into a thin line. "I try not to think about it."

"But when you do?"

 "Look, Doc, I’m just here for the refill."

That stopped her for half a second, though she recovered quickly, putting on that trained softness again. "The medication can help, but if we don’t talk about what’s underneath—"

"I don’t wanna talk about what’s underneath," he said flatly. "Don’t see the point."

“In order to get what you need, I need you to give a little.” 

Another pause. The clock on the wall ticked louder than it should have.

He looked up at her finally, and for a second, she must’ve seen something in his face because her pen stopped moving. "When I do," he said quietly, "it’s like I’m right back there. Every time. So talking does nothing when I’ll see the same shit today, tomorrow and the days following."

She let that sit for a moment, then nodded slowly. "That sounds exhausting."

"It is."

"Do you talk to anyone else about this? Family? Friends?"

He almost laughed but caught it before it came out. "Don’t really have anyone lining up to hear me vent, Doc."

"That must be lonely."

Keith shrugged. 

She adjusted her glasses, likely taking notice of the dark patches under his eyes. "And the insomnia? Any better?"

He hesitated. This was the part where he could’ve told her everything—the way his brother’s voice still came to him, sharp and vivid, so real he couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or awake, couldn’t tell if the world around him was solid or just another echo bleeding through the fog inside his skull.

Instead, he leaned back and said, "That’s why I’m here. Feels like my brain doesn’t have an off switch."

She smiled faintly at that—as if these small confessions were sustenance—scribbling something in neat little blue loops. Then she tore a page from her pad and slid it across the coffee table.

"This is a mild prescription. A slight adjustment to what I previously prescribed. Just to help you get a few solid nights of sleep. We’ll reassess next time."

Keith glanced at it but didn’t touch it.

"You really think pills can shut this thing off for good?"

"I think they’ll give you a little room to breathe," she said softly. "And sometimes that’s all we need to start untangling the rest."

For a moment, he just sat there, staring at the slip of paper like it was heavier than it looked.

Finally, he tucked it into his pocket and stood.

"Same time next week?" she asked.

But he was out the door.

He took it straight to the pharmacy down the block, clinging to the idea that in twenty minutes he could be home with the little orange bottle, one glass of water away from the mercy of unconsciousness. But when the kid behind the counter punched it into the computer, his eyebrows drew together.

“Something’s… wrong with the insurance,” he said, and the way he said wrong had a sound to it, a heavy drop, like a brick being tossed into a well and thudding somewhere far below. Final. Dead in the water. 

“That’s impossible,” Keith said.

But even as the words left his mouth, doubt slid in behind them. Was it really that impossible to believe? With the stacks of unopened mail sagging on the counter, envelopes still sealed and yellowing at the edges, was it so hard to imagine one of them had been the renewal notice—ignored, buried, forgotten?

And the phone—hell, the people who may have called it because traditional letters didn’t do the job—he ignored on purpose. Because to him it was always his brother calling, that same ghost voice reaching across planes. And as far as the attendance roll in this school of life went, his brother wasn’t here anymore. Hadn’t been for a long time.

A dry heat crawled up his neck, ears burning. He could feel the line breathing behind him, the quiet shift of shoes, the wet cough of some old-timer waiting his turn. All those eyes boring holes in his back even if they weren’t really looking. He hated that feeling—that stage-fright humiliation of being caught out, caught small.

“We have to call and confirm,” he added, voice cracking a little as if he was patching over the hole he’d just torn open. “Could be a system glitch.”

Keith shifted from foot to foot. “How long?”

The kid shrugged in that way only the underpaid can. “Hour, maybe. Could be less. You can wait if you want.”

He didn’t want. He didn’t want to stand under the humming fluorescents, surrounded by endcaps of seasonal crap—Christmas in the middle of October, allergy meds promising relief that felt about as far-off as spring itself. He stepped out into the sunlight, blinking, the prescription slip folded and refolded in his pocket like a worry stone.

He thought about pacing the strip mall, maybe grabbing a coffee. Instead his eyes snagged on the building across the street.

A church.

Sudden clarity came over him—this was his old church. No wonder he hadn’t noticed, it looked more like a University now. Now it had grown glass wings and sprouted a halo of LED lights that shifted slow through the spectrum: cool blue to migraine purple to the red of fresh blood. A signboard out front flashed between a verse from Psalms and an announcement about an upcoming potluck, letters bright enough to burn afterimages on the eye.

The sight of it stirred something small and sour in him. He hadn’t set foot in a church in years. Had told himself it was about principle—that it wasn’t the building that connected you to God, it was the Word—but the truth was simpler: he’d let the connection rot. Whatever thin thread had tied him to the pews had frayed until it snapped, and once it was gone, it was gone. He could read the Bible all day and it would sit in his hands like a foreign manual for a machine he’d never owned.

He stood there a long moment, the sun hot on the back of his neck, prescription slip softening in his palm. He didn’t want to go in. The idea made his stomach twist. But the pharmacy clock was ticking, and the thought of another hour with nothing to do, nowhere to be but inside his own head, felt worse.

Reluctantly, almost in spite of himself, Keith stepped off the curb and started across.

He hadn’t set foot inside in over seven years.
The doors felt heavier than memory, as though the hinges themselves were protesting his return. 

The sanctuary air had that refrigerated hush, the kind that makes you want to rub your arms and check the vents for frost. It smelled faintly of furniture polish and something floral that wasn’t flowers—an aerosol lie pumped through the ducts to make the place smell holy. Two giant screens flanked the stage like unblinking eyes. Light rigs on black trusses hung above them, neat little rows of colored bulbs that could have done double duty at a county fair or an off-Broadway rock opera.

The gospel music was thumping like the sound system had been built for an arena, not a church. Subwoofers hidden in the walls made the floorboards tremble under his shoes. It wasn’t hymns drifting soft and holy—it was a blast of sound engineered to hit the body first, the spirit after. LED panels pulsed in time with the beat, flashing so bright he had to squint, and for a moment it felt less like worship and more like a Live Nation event—smoke machines only missing, hands raised high not in surrender to God but like they were waiting for the drop at a rap concert. The choir’s voices weren’t just singing; they were stacked and looped and wired through enough amps to feel like thunder bottled and sold.

Pews arranged in perfect lines like an audience corralled by ushers. The altar, once a wooden plank soaked in the breath and tears of old prayers, now gleamed under spotlights rigged into the rafters. It looked less like a sacred space and more like a podium at a convention, something you’d rent out for a sales pitch on miracle blenders or a seminar on getting rich without working too hard. The choir seats stood angled just right, ready for the cameras, waiting for the voices to swell on cue, and he could almost hear the old hymns dressed up with drum machines and synthesizers, hymns stitched into pop songs until you couldn’t tell whether you were praising God or Pepsi.

He remembered what he’d been told once, long ago, when his faith still felt like fire: that it wasn’t the church that brought you closer to God. The connection was the Word itself—your Bible, the pages dog-eared and thumbed, the ink trembling with promise if you let it. The rest of it, the sermons and the spectacles, were nothing more than a slick telemarketer’s pitch. Playing telephone with a man in a suit who promised you God’s love for the low price of loyalty and tithe. A pyramid scheme of salvation, selling you a place at the top that never came.

But he’d admit—quietly, if not aloud, because admitting it made his stomach turn—that he had let himself fall away. He had tried to hold onto the Bible, had tried to clutch at the words like driftwood in stormwater, but they never carried him far. He read them, yes. Page after page. But the words skittered across his brain without sinking in, nothing more than black ants crawling over a pale field. No comprehension. No understanding. And not because God had turned His back, but because he had locked the doors of his own mind. He hadn’t allowed himself to understand. He hadn’t dared.

Now, standing in this grand broadway theater, staring at the pulpit that glared back at him like a prop on an abandoned stage, he wondered if God still remembered him—or if God had moved on, leaving him in the dust of his own disbelief.

He slid into a seat that felt more AMC than pew—cushion swallowing him a little, armrest with a cupholder for coffee or communion juice. A girl about his age crossed the aisle and lowered herself onto the bench beside him. She wore a loose blouse with the sleeves tugged uneven at the wrists, as if she hadn’t cared enough to smooth them down. Her hair was pulled back in a way that looked more like necessity than style, the kind of half-done gesture you make after only a quick glance in the mirror.

“The lights can be intimidating,” she said, tilting her chin toward the stage. Her voice had that mix of shyness and curiosity that made you wonder if she actually wanted a conversation or was just testing the water. “It wasn’t always like this. This place barely had AC before.”

Keith huffed out something that might have been a laugh. “Looks like it has more AC than God now.”

That got her to smile, quick and lopsided. “Yeah. They say it’s to bring in a younger crowd. I think they just like the toys.”

“What happened between then and now?” Keith asked, looking at the trusses.

“Funding,” she said. “Government loan, maybe. Or someone with deep pockets trying to get right with the Lord.”

“PPP?” Keith said, and when her eyebrows lifted, he added, “Loans meant for small businesses, not megachurch laser light shows.”

She grinned at that. “Yeah. They say the pastor bought a new boat around the same time they upgraded the sound system.”

Keith smirked. “Bet it has a really good stereo.”

“Bluetooth,” she said, deadpan. “Plays Christian rock and Kirk Franklin. Sometimes at the same time.”

They both laughed quietly, but her eyes kept straying to his face, just for a second at a time. He wondered if she was trying to place him or if she noticed the darkening under his eyes reflected by the stage light.

“You from around here?” she asked after a beat.

“Used to be. Moved away.” He didn’t say why. “Just on the other side of the town limits.”

“You grew up in this church?” she asked.

“Not this church.” Keith said. “Some Sundays. My mom was the one who liked coming. My dad preferred… sleeping in.”

She nodded like she understood more than he’d told her. “Yeah. Mine too. They swore I was hanging around the wrong girls—the ones who wore damn near nothing, showing off most of themselves. And yeah, they weren’t completely wrong about them. She figured drilling the word into me might do some good.

Keith let that sit between them for a moment. “Did it?”

Her mouth tilted in a way that wasn’t quite a smile. “Not in the way she hoped.”

Onstage, a guitar chord rang out through the speakers, too loud, making a few older heads jerk up like startled deer. She leaned closer. “They’re gonna start any second. If you don’t like singing, just mouth the words. Nobody notices.”

He didn’t sing when the music swelled. Couldn’t. He sat there with his hands in his lap like they were contraband, watching the lights stagger through slow blues, sudden whites, deep purples that made everyone’s face look like they’d been holding their breath too long. He realized after the second chorus that he didn’t even know what to do with his hands anymore. Clap? Fold them? Raise them like the diehards in the first few rows? 

Well, all except one. 

There was an old woman sitting. She looked every bit as out of place as he felt. 

When it was over, the girl gave him a polite “Nice meeting you” as people began the post-service migration—shaking hands, swapping God-bless-yous, leaning in for half-hugs. Keith made for the front doors avoiding the booths setup for converting people to after service programs. His eyes locked on them like he could pull himself through with nothing but focus. But the crowd was a current, and the current didn’t care about his destination. It caught him—like Jonah at sea—and swept him sideways into the tide of old acquaintances and polite strangers.

Faces from years ago blurred past him. Some nodded, eyes already sliding away. Some gave him those tight-lipped smiles that said they remembered him but didn’t know how much, and weren’t sure if this was a homecoming or just a tourist’s stopover.

And then—she was there, materializing like the crowd had bent around her.

She shuffled toward him in a dress the color of midnight left too long in the sun—black, yes, but dulled to a lifeless charcoal, frayed at the seams where shadow clung deepest. Her wide-brimmed hat drooped just enough to make her seem smaller, more fragile, but the veil was a heavy black lace, the kind that swallows light instead of softening it. Beneath it, her face was a map of time and ruin: skin like dried-out corn husk, liver-spotted and thin, stretched too tight over cheekbones sharp enough to split bark. Her eyes were a cloudy gray, the color of dishwater that had seen too many plates, too much grease.

He told his feet to move, willed them with everything he had, but they stayed planted as if nailed into the earth. The old woman’s presence clung to him, invisible fingers wrapped around his ankles, up his calves, pulling him down, rooting him where he stood. It wasn’t just his body that fought against her hold—it was deeper, sharper. He could feel himself straining inside, pulling so hard that his soul itself seemed to fray, threads snapping one by one. Every nerve screamed for release, every instinct begged for flight, but no matter how he twisted and pushed against it, he couldn’t make a single step. She had him fast.

Her eyes, pale as worn glass, fixed on him. For a moment Keith thought she might look past him entirely—until she spoke, a voice worn ragged by age, like something dragged from a grave.
“Some folks step in carrying light,” she said, her voice a dry rasp. “Dim at times, but not…  extinguished.” She seemed fascinated, her eyes crawling over him as if peeling back layers. “But you drag something with you. Heavy. Stained. I can feel it clutching at you.”

The words weren’t accusation, not even curiosity. Just observation, delivered the way someone might note the weather. Still, Keith felt his stomach turn, as though she’d seen the exact shape of what he carried without him ever opening his mouth.

She reached for him with a trembling, claw-like hand, fingers draped in loose, papery skin that looked as if it might tear if you pulled too hard. Her eyes never left his, and in that moment he felt something small and black skitter down the back of his mind—a sliver of hopelessness that had nothing to do with her age.

Before he could step back, she pulled him in and kissed him on the cheek. Her lips were warm, strangely so. Damp. Not the wet of spit, not the dry of powder. Something in between. Like a sponge that had been soaking in dishwater. 

He wanted to wipe it off—God, he wanted to—but he didn’t. Not there, not then, not with the crowd still drifting around them like curious fish, their half-smiles and polite nods floating in his peripheral vision. Above everything, he feared she’d find it disrespectful. So he laughed it off, nodded awkwardly, and said something useless like, “You take care now,” before slipping past her and making a beeline for the door. 

As he walked to his car, the left side of his face—just above the line of the jaw—began to tingle.

A light itch. The kind you could ignore. The kind you tell yourself is nothing.

Crossing the parking lot with hurrying feet, he still felt it—her kiss, pressed like a brand. The heat of it. The wetness. The faint, cloying perfume that made him think of closets with no light and cedar blocks gone stale decades ago. It wasn’t just a spot on his cheek anymore; it was a presence. He could imagine it swirling on the surface of his skin, writhing like some pale grub, slick and sightless, curling into a warm pocket of flesh. It might as well have been acid—slow, patient acid—working its way down, layer by layer.

He got into his car like a man reaching the shore after a long swim in cold water—half-relieved, half-trembling. With something close to desperation, he yanked up the hem of his shirt and scrubbed it across his face, hard, grinding, like he was trying to erase himself right down to the bone. The cotton came away damp, streaked with sweat, dirt and dead skin, but he kept at it, rubbing as if friction alone might scour out the panic.

He tilted the rearview mirror down. The glass caught him square in the eyes, and for one dizzy instant, it wasn’t his own reflection he saw at all but her—standing there. Not behind him in the usual way. This was worse. She was behind his eyes, burned in like the afterimage you get from staring at the sun too long. Only this light didn’t fade.

A sharp rap at the driver’s-side window made him flinch so hard his knee banged the steering column. His first thought—absurd, insane—was she’s here, she’s come to finish the job.

But it was the girl from the pew.

She was leaning down, her hair now let down from the messy bun she had earlier. She smiled, not the quick little sideways smile she’d given him earlier, but something warmer. And he had—for one fleeting moment—thought she was beautiful. Angelic even. “Hey, I just wanted to say… you should consider coming back.” And he thought her voice was the kind a man could spend a lifetime listening to—seductive and warm. “Not everyone does, and that’s fine, but—” She hesitated, then held out a slip of paper with handwriting small and careful. “If not here, then call me sometime. Okay?”

He took the paper without thinking, the warmth of her fingers brushing his. A number written on it with the name Lori. She gave him a small nod, like she’d just handed off a secret, then walked away toward a rust-colored sedan at the far end of the lot.

“I’m Keith,” he called out. 

He watched her go, the folded scrap sweating in his palm, before tucking it into the console and starting the engine.

He looked into the rearview one last time. There was no lady in black and the only kiss he’d hoped to feel was from Lori. 

Back home, the air in Keith’s one-bedroom apartment was stale in a way you couldn’t fix with an open window. It was the kind of stillness that came from time, from days or weeks of nothing moving except dust and the occasional settling creak in the drywall. 

The blinds were pulled halfway shut, slanted crooked so the sun sliced in at odd angles, thin gold bars floating in the suspended dust. They looked almost solid—like he could run a finger through them and leave a trail. He hung his coat on the hook by the door and padded into the bathroom.

The light came on with a harsh flicker.

In the mirror, his left cheek—the exact place where her mouth had pressed, where the warmth had sunk in—looked a shade darker than the rest. Not enough to make a stranger notice. Maybe not enough for anyone but him. Still, it was off. Like the stain of a carpet, cleaned but left with discoloration of chemicals. A kind of wrongness the mind picks up before the eyes do. 

He leaned in, bracing his palms on the sink. Pressed a fingertip against it. The skin was warmer there than anywhere else on his face. Not fever-warm. Not the heat of a blush. This was a low, steady warmth, the way a living thing feels when you cup it in your hand. Beneath that… a tingle. Not pain. Not yet.

He grabbed a towel, ran it under the cold tap until it was dripping, and scrubbed the spot hard enough to pull at the skin. The fabric rasped against his stubble. Again, harder, until his jaw clenched and his reflection twisted like it was trying to get away from him. The towel came away thin around the edges, but when he leaned closer, the warmth was still there. The hum under the skin.

“Goddamn,” he muttered, the word sour in his mouth.

Immediately he hated himself for saying it. It felt like smashing a glass in a church—an ugly thing in a place that wasn’t meant for it.

He swallowed the sleeping pills, killed the light and tried to shake it off.

Tried.

The hum stayed.

He slept for forty-eight hours straight, the kind of sleep that wasn’t rest so much as surrender. No tossing, no dreamscapes flickering like broken film—just a heavy, black curtain pulled tight. When he finally clawed his way back to waking, it was with the strange, clean clarity of a man reborn. Muscles loose, nerves smoothed out, as if his body had gone into the shop and come back tuned, oiled, running on something finer than before.

The mark seemed to settle in, as if claiming its place, more a credit to his strange, almost brutal way of trying to scrub it out than to anything natural. It had a permanence about it now, stubborn as scar tissue. In a certain light it even echoed the one Monica Wright had worn years back—though hers carried the quiet dignity of accident, while his bore the raw, guilty stamp of being self-inflicted. Every decision carves its own scar, and you live with the shape of it long after the pain’s gone dull. 

Keith texted Lori, thumb hovering a beat longer than necessary over the screen before he finally hit send.
He half didn’t expect a reply. Not after being lights out to the world.

Different places in life, he told himself. She had her shit together—or at least she wore it like armor. He, on the other hand, had looked like the unmade bed of a man three days deep into an insomnia bender. But it was her who initiated contact, as deliberate as a spark striking dry wood. He’d caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror and had almost laughed. Hollowed-out eyes, pale skin that looked like it had been stretched too thin, and the start of a beard that wasn’t stylish so much as accidental.

So when her reply came through—Yeah. Drinks sound good—he stared at the words like they’d been meant for someone else. Then, against his better judgment, a dry chuckle leaked out of him.
Jesus. Even now. Even this far gone, with his brain cobwebbed from lack of sleep and his body humming with jittery caffeine, he could still line one up.

Not a date, though. Definitely not that.
Just… a friendly follow-up to a friendly encounter. That’s what he kept telling himself on the drive over.

She was already there when he walked into the bar. Low light, the faint smell of old varnish and fried onions lingering like a ghost. She waved him over, and for a moment he wondered if she could see what a wreck he was.

"Hey, stranger," she said, a smile curling her lips like she already knew something he didn’t.

"Hey yourself." He slid into the booth across from her, trying not to fidget with his phone, his keys, anything.

"Thought you weren’t gonna text," she said, fingers circling the rim of her glass.

"Thought you weren’t gonna answer."

That got him another smile, this one thinner, more knowing.

"Guess we’re both full of surprises."

The waitress came and went. Keith ordered a whiskey he shouldn’t be drinking when his reality was impaired enough as it is. When the glass hit the table, she raised hers—a pale gold gin and tonic—and they clinked.

"Cheers," she said.

"Cheers," he echoed, and took a swallow that burned down like liquid punishment.

For a while they talked about nothing—the weather, work, some half-funny story about her neighbor’s cat. But eventually, she leaned back, crossed one leg over the other, and said, almost casually:

"You know, I wasn’t sure about this."

He blinked. "This?"

"Meeting up." She shrugged. "I’m in the church, you know. People make assumptions."

Keith raised an eyebrow. "Assumptions like… you don’t drink?"

"Exactly. Not having a good time." She picked up her glass, held it between them like evidence. "But here I am."

"So what’s the verdict, then?" he asked. "Strike one? Going straight to hell?"

She laughed, soft but genuine. "Nah. Pretty sure God can handle a gin and tonic."

"You sound confident."

"That’s faith, Keith." She tipped the glass toward him again before taking a slow sip. "Faith means I don’t think He’s keeping score on whether I unwind after Bible study."

Keith chuckled low, shaking his head. "Guess I’ve been doing it wrong, then. Haven’t set foot in a church since…" He trailed off, swirling the whiskey in his glass like it might tell him the year if he stared hard enough. "Seven years? Eight?"

"Long time," she said. Not judging. Just… stating it.

"Yeah, well," he said. "The roof’d probably cave in if I tried now."

She tilted her head, studied him like she was trying to see what was underneath the scruff and shadows under his eyes. "You always joke like that?"

"Only when it’s true," he said.

The silence after that was different. Not awkward, exactly. He could feel the air between them thickening, like fog before a storm. Keith watched her over the rim of his glass, wondering—not for the first time tonight—what the hell he thought he was doing there.

Keith couldn’t remember how. Somewhere between the second whiskey and her third gin and tonic, the edges blurred and softened, like chalk smudged by the side of a palm. By the time they stumbled out into the cool night air, the hum in Keith’s chest wasn’t just the liquor—it was something else. Something electric.

His house wasn’t much to look at these days. Three bedrooms, two baths, pitched roof that needed a good power wash—but the place carried the sag of neglect. Not filth, not yet, but the slow creep of things left undone. Dishes stacked in the sink like a crooked skyline. The carpet held footprints of nights spent pacing, sleepless, wearing trenches into the pile. Even the air inside seemed stale, heavy with the musk of a man too tired to care. It wasn’t the kind of home he sold to clients—those polished things staged with flowers and bright throw pillows. This was a house stripped down to the bones of living, where insomnia had moved in and refused to pay rent.

Still, she followed him in without hesitation.

"You live like a monk," she teased, toeing off her shoes by the door.

"Yeah, well," Keith said, tossing his keys into the bowl by the counter. "Monks don’t drink this much."

“You’d be surprised,” She laughed. 

They poured a nightcap—whiskey for him, a splash of wine for her—and settled on the couch. She looked around the place like she was taking inventory, and when her eyes came back to him, there was a glint there.

"Bible study," she said suddenly, her lips curling into a half-smile.

He blinked. "What?"

"That’s what we should call this," she said, swirling the wine in her glass. "Bible study. Sounds innocent."

Keith huffed out something between a laugh and a grunt. "Pretty sure there’s nothing innocent about it no matter how you twist it."

"Maybe." She leaned closer, close enough that he could smell her perfume over the faint must of old carpet. "But if we call it Bible study, we can at least pretend it’s holy."

He could feel the heat radiating off her now. The kind of heat you don’t fight when you’ve had four drinks, no sleep, and a house that hasn’t seen company in months.

And then she pulled back just slightly, her gaze flicking away from him.

"Before we… you know." Her voice had changed. Softer, heavier somehow. "I need to tell you something."

Keith’s stomach gave a small, unexpected twist. "Okay," he said carefully.

She stared at the wine in her hand as if the confession were hiding somewhere at the bottom of the glass.

"I wasn’t always…" She hesitated. "I wasn’t always this person. The church, the Bible study groups, the choir on Sundays—none of that was me before. I was…" She laughed once, sharp and self-deprecating. "Hell, I was the opposite."

He waited.

"I used to… do things. Be… with people. A lot of people." Her voice cracked just a little, but she didn’t shy away from it. "I was an escort. Before I found the church."

Keith didn’t say anything at first. Not because he was shocked, but because he wasn’t sure what reaction she was hoping for—judgment? Pity? Salvation? He found himself more impressed than disgusted. In any other situation this would have been the moment to balance her confession with his own, to level the scales of shame by finally speaking his brother’s name out loud. The thought was there—heavy, tempting—but it was never going to happen. The words stopped at the back of his throat like stones too jagged to swallow. And he wondered, with a slow sinking in his gut, if because of that silence this thing between them was already over before it even began.

Finally, he leaned back against the couch, exhaled through his nose, and stared at the ceiling.

"Okay," he said, as evenly as he could.

She frowned slightly. "Okay?"

"Yeah," he said. It’s not like I’ve got a line waiting outside my door.

Her expression softened—relief, maybe. Or something like it. "You don’t think… less of me?"

Keith looked at her then, really looked, taking in the edge of tension still in her shoulders, the faint tremor of the glass in her hand.

"I think," he said slowly, "we’re both just people trying to figure our shit out. And I think… I don’t really care who you were yesterday."

Something unspoken passed between them then, as palpable as the hum of the streetlights outside. Her breath hitched; his heart thudded harder, louder, until it drowned out everything else.

The kiss happened like a reflex. A hand on her cheek, her fingers tangled in his shirt, their bodies screaming to be one.

Clothes blurred into shadows on the floor.

It wasn’t love, and they both knew it. It was need and hunger, exhaustion and escape. A collision, not a connection—but sometimes a collision of two broken souls are the only thing that makes you feel something.

After, they lay tangled on the couch, breathing hard, the ceiling fan spinning slow lazy circles above them.

Keith stared up into the dark, one arm draped across his forehead, the faint throb of his pulse still hammering in his ears. Somewhere in his gut, guilt began to stir—not because of her, not because of God, but because he knew he was using her to fill something bottomless inside himself.

But for tonight, he let it be enough.

Keith cracked open one bloodshot eye and immediately regretted it. The light spilling through the blinds cut across the room in hard bars, striping everything like a jail cell. His head throbbed behind his temples, a steady, mean little pulse. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was.

Then he sat up and remembered. The couch. The clothes scattered on the floor like they’d been shed mid-fall. Her wine glass tipped over on the carpet, a sticky maroon halo beneath it. And now beyond the doorway, the sizzle of something frying.

He rubbed a hand across his face—the spot just above the jawline still tingling. She had kissed him there, tender the way a mother might kiss her child. And that seemed to replace the idea of it being a stain, as if the mark had rewritten itself into something else entirely.

She was in the kitchen, barefoot on the linoleum, wearing nothing but one of his T-shirts, loose and soft, the hem stopping just short of hiding the warm curve of her thighs. The sight hit him in two places at once: below the belt and somewhere higher, where memory sits heavy.

She hummed while she moved. Not a tune he recognized, just low and tuneless, like someone keeping time with their thoughts. She had her hair pulled up messily, and in the pale morning light, he could see the faint constellation of freckles along her neck.

On the stove, two pans fought for dominance: one filled with bacon that popped and curled like angry tongues judging in the language of the righteous, the other with scrambled eggs that were on the verge of turning the wrong shade of brown.

"Morning," he croaked.

She turned, spatula in hand, smiling like they’d done this a hundred times.

"Morning," she echoed. "I thought you could use something greasy to soak up all that poison."

Keith leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, taking her in. "You raid my fridge?"

"You didn’t exactly have much to raid." She pointed the spatula at him. "Half a carton of eggs, bacon that’s one expiration date away from becoming science, and orange juice that… we should probably pray over before drinking."

He smirked despite himself, rubbing the heel of his hand into his temple. "Guess I’ve been meaning to hit the store."

"Guess so," she said, turning back to the pan.

“So, real estate,” she said, nodding toward the mantle. “The awards. I don’t think I much noticed last night.”

“Oh, yea,” Keith said. He rubbed the back of his neck, almost embarrassed. “Haven’t really earned those lately. Just… a lot going on. Hoping I redeem myself at this next open house.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Redeem? That makes it sound like you’ve been losing.”

“In a way, I guess I have.” He chuckled, but it didn’t carry far. “Market cooled down. People sniff around, nobody bites. Feels like I’m walking them through a stage set sometimes—perfect lighting, fresh flowers, the smell of cookies in the oven—and still, nothing. Empty sign-in sheets. Silence. Not to mention, I think I’m just losing it.”

“The economy’s been tight,” she said. “People are scared to buy.”

“That’s the excuse I keep hearing,” Keith said, tapping his fingers on his knee. “The one I keep telling myself. But I can’t help wondering if it’s me.”

She leaned forward a little. “That’s harsh.”

He shrugged. “I’ve seen guys half my age move houses like they’re made of gold. I tell myself I’ve still got it, but…” He glanced back at the awards. “Those are just dust collectors now. Props. Like maybe I peaked.”

She studied him. “You don’t strike me as someone who peaked. You sound like someone who’s waiting for the right turn.”

Keith gave her a look—half grateful, half doubtful. “Maybe. But waiting doesn’t pay bills. Doesn’t keep your name alive in the papers. In this business, you fade fast if you’re not closing deals. People forget you.”

“And the open house?” she asked softly.

His shoulders lifted with a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “That’s the shot. If I can land it, maybe I get back in the rhythm. If not…” He let it trail off, shaking his head.

She let the silence stretch, then said, “Then you figure out another way.”

Keith gave a small, crooked smile. “Yeah. Guess we’ll see.”

“Romans 12:2,” she said. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Keith sat at the kitchen table watching her move around his kitchen like she’d been here before, like she belonged. And something about that made his chest tight in a way he didn’t have the words for.

Maybe it was the confession from last night still rattling around in his skull. Maybe it was the fact that this—her, here, spatula in hand, humming softly—felt dangerously close to something like normal.

She slid a plate in front of him, bacon piled high, eggs scrambled unevenly, toast browned to one step before black.

"There," she said, sitting across from him with her own plate. "Fuel."

Keith picked up his fork, stabbed at a chunk of eggs, and hesitated. "You always cook breakfast after Bible study?"

She smirked without looking up. "Only when the sermon’s good."

That got him laughing—really laughing, the sound scraping his throat on the way out. For a moment, the heaviness lifted.

He forced down the eggs. The bacon tasted like salt and oil and maybe a little bit of something burnt, but he chewed anyway.

Keith tilted his head, studying her. “You managed to overlook how people saw you… but how’d you manage to overlook yourself?”

Her eyes dropped to the glass in her hand, fingers circling the rim slow. “It took time. More than I thought it would. I lost friends—some by choice, some because they couldn’t see me as anything but who I was before. I left that life behind, and anything tied to it, but it wasn’t easy at first.”

As she spoke, the itch along his jaw flared, irritation crawling under his skin until he had to fight the urge to scratch, as though the skin itself rejected her ease.

She gave a thin smile that wavered at the edges. “The church helped. It gave me somewhere to put it all. Doesn’t mean it’s gone, though. It still takes work. You can see that.” She glanced up at him, eyes steady now. “But it’s worth it to try. Even if you mess up.”

He almost told her then. Almost. But the words sat in his chest like a stone. And in that silence, he realized the mark would outlive whatever chance they had.

For a moment, Keith thought about what she’d said last night—that she wasn’t always this person. That she’d been other things, for other people, in other beds.

And here she was now, barefoot in his kitchen, eating breakfast like they were anything but what they were.

The thought should have made him feel something. It didn’t.

Or maybe it did, and he just didn’t want to admit what.

By the time noon rolled in, the itch was no longer a background noise. It was the headline. The kind of itch that didn’t just want to be scratched—it demanded it, crawling under the skin like ants in a sugar jar.

Keith showed up to the open house still riding the tail end of last night’s whiskey, sunglasses hiding eyes that looked like they’d been rubbed with sandpaper. The properties all looked 3D-printed, stamped out of some soulless mold. Not a porch swing, not a paint job, not a crooked shingle to set one apart. They stood there like cloned teeth, lined up in a jaw that never smiled. No character. No pulse. Just another reminder of the way of the world now—where identity was shaved off clean, and if you dared to hang on to any scrap of it, they’d take it from you. Or worse, stone you for the crime of trying.

The spot on his cheek looked worse. Black. Slightly raised, hardening into a scab. He dabbed a little more concealer over it—a trick he’d picked up from an ex who swore by “blurring imperfections.” He could still feel it underneath. Hot. Tight.

He set out the sign-in sheet and the complimentary bottles of water, the whole time aware of the throb under his skin. People came in twos and threes, doing that polite real estate dance where they pretended to care about crown molding and you pretended you weren’t imagining them calculating the price-per-square-foot against their savings account.

A young couple came in first, late twenties, probably just married. The wife kept looking at his cheek when she thought he wasn’t noticing, her eyes darting there like ball bearings to a magnet. Her husband was worse—not subtle at all. At one point, while Keith was talking about the HOA fees, the man’s gaze stuck to the spot like a thumbprint on glass.

He felt the itch flare in response. Not just the urge to scratch—the urge to dig.

“Lots of natural light in the living room,” Keith said, forcing cheer into his voice.

By the time they left, Keith’s smile felt like something stapled on.

The next wave was a mother with two kids, the kind who couldn’t keep their hands off anything shiny. They ran ahead of her, leaving fingerprints on the sliding glass doors, pawing the granite countertops like raccoons. The boy—maybe eight—came back into the kitchen and planted himself right in front of Keith.

“What’s wrong with your face?” he asked, pointing dead-on at the mark.

His mother hissed his name and yanked him back, muttering apologies, but the damage was done. The words seemed to hang in the air, sticky and loud. Keith managed a laugh that sounded like a chair leg scraping the floor.

“Kids,” he said. “Honest little guys, huh?”

He ducked off into the hall bathroom. The concealer had worn off in patches, leaving the mark raw and ugly in the fluorescent light. It looked angrier now, the edges feathering out in a faint rash.

He rummaged under the sink, and came up with a half-used tube of hydrocortisone. He rubbed it in until the skin glistened, but the relief—if you could even call it that—lasted seconds.

Keith shut the last window with a grunt and drew the blinds, the click of the cord loud in the emptiness. The open house was dead now—no more fake cheer of sunlight, no more forced air of welcome. Just a hollow shell, echoing with his own breath. He checked the lock twice, then turned to the hallway mirror.

His face looked wrong there. Too pale, as if the glass had leached some color from his skin. The lines carved around his mouth seemed deeper, his eyes set farther back. He leaned closer, half expecting to see the glass fog with his breath, some proof he was still alive. It didn’t. Not right away. He pulled back quick, unsettled by his own reflection, the stranger in his skin.

Then came a sound, soft, almost polite, from somewhere in the house—a shuffle, a scrape, the sigh of weight dragging across old wood. He froze, head cocked, listening hard. Nothing. But his heart was already hammering, and in the corner of his vision something moved. A smudge darker than the shadows, there and gone in a blink.

He swallowed. The taste in his mouth was coppery, metallic. The shape—whatever it was, or wasn’t—slid away before he could focus on it, but it left him thinking of her. The old woman, eyes pale as frostbitten glass, voice like dry leaves.

He rubbed his arms as if cold had passed through him, and the house felt smaller now, tighter, as if it wanted him gone.

That night, lying in bed, Keith tried to keep his hands still, but they had their own ideas. His fingers kept creeping up to his cheek, nails scratching before his brain could stop them.

And somewhere, in the itchy dark, he thought—just for a moment—he heard someone whisper.

 “Some folks step in carrying light. But you drag something with you. Heavy. Stained. I can feel it clutching at you.” 

And now so could he.

II

Eventually, Keith made the appointment. By that point he wasn’t entirely sure whether he needed a dermatologist or a demonologist, but his insurance didn’t cover the latter.

The dermatologist’s office was a place staged with poster-sized prints of people grinned down from the walls, every face poreless, teeth too white, eyes caught in that staged moment of permanent happiness. The air carried a faint tang, like overripe citrus cut with alcohol, the smell of cleansers and something that reminded him of Proactiv. 

They called him in, and Dr. Phelps turned out to be younger than Keith expected—too young, maybe. Skin like porcelain, eyes sharp but detached, voice set at that bland, professionally reassuring pitch you get from people who know the script by heart. But under it, Keith caught something else. Interest. And not the good kind. It was the sort of interest a kid might have peeking through their fingers at a car wreck—half thrilled, half disgusted, unable to look away even while hoping to.

Keith sat on the exam table, the paper sheet beneath him crinkling and sticking to the backs of his legs. “It itches constantly,” he said. “It’s warm. Swells sometimes. It moves.”

Phelps paused with the clipboard halfway up. “Moves?”

“Under the skin,” Keith said, lowering his voice like maybe if he spoke too loud it would hear him. “It feels like something’s just…there.”

The doctor didn’t answer right away. He stepped in close, the scent of his soap mixing with the latex and antiseptic, and began poking and prodding. Gloved fingers pressed into the cheek, the jawline, under the eye. He tilted Keith’s head to one side, then the other, lifting the chin until Keith could feel his own neck strain.

Phelps brought out a small handheld scope with a light that hit Keith’s skin like a miniature sun. He clicked a few pictures, close enough that Keith could hear the lens mechanism snap. He murmured something to the nurse—too soft for Keith to make out—and at least twice he stopped long enough that Keith felt seen. Not in the way doctors usually see you, but in a way that suggested for a flicker of a second Phelps thought What the hell is that? Then the man’s eyes shuttered and it was gone, blinked away like swatting a fly.

“Well,” Phelps said at last, snapping off the gloves with little rubbery pops. “It’s irritated, sure. Likely from scratching. I don’t see anything abnormal otherwise. I’ll prescribe a topical steroid—”

“No.” Keith’s voice came out sharper than he meant, but he didn’t care. “You’re not listening. It’s not just irritation. Something’s wrong. I want a biopsy.”

Phelps blinked slowly. “It’s unnecessary—”

“I don’t give a shit if it’s unnecessary,” Keith snapped. “Take the fucking sample.”

The nurse shifted her weight, but Phelps just sighed through his nose and nodded. “Fine. We’ll take a sample.”

They did. The little pinch of the needle, the pressure of the tool, the way the spot seemed to flinch under the blade—all of it made Keith grip the sides of the table hard enough to wrinkle the paper like an angry tide.

It didn’t take long for a voicemail to come through. All the calls were instantly forwarded now, every unknown number strangled off at the gate. That had started the day his brother’s calls stopped coming in with a name attached, the familiar flash of it on the screen. After that they came as Unknown, like the phone itself had forgotten him. Like the world had.

“Hi Keith, this is Dr. Phelps’ office. We got the biopsy results back. There’s no infection, no foreign material, no sign of any condition—just mild dermal inflammation consistent with self-inflicted irritation. The topical is your best bet.”

He didn’t call back.

Because he knew they were wrong. He knew it the way a man knows the shape of his own bones, the way a drunk knows the taste of his first swallow in the morning. They could dress it up in medical terms, neat little Latin bows—dermal inflammation, self-inflicted irritation—but that wasn’t what this was. Not by a long shot. He’d hoped for something small, manageable, something you could smear a cream on and forget. But hope is just another kind of lie, and lies rot quick.

It wasn’t infection. It wasn’t irritation. It was something else, something they couldn’t see under their bright lights and clean gloves, but he could feel it under the skin, alive and waiting.

And that was the part that hollowed him out most: not that they didn’t know, but that he did.

Still there was some truth to it. It was on the surface of his face. He went to the pharmacy and bought everything with the word relief or healing on the label. Hydrocortisone. Antifungal. Calamine. Eczema cream. Scar gel. He kept them all in a small lunch cooler in his bathroom like some people kept tools in a tackle box. The order mattered—the thin ointment first, the thick cream after—and he treated it like a ritual. As if precision might undo what faithlessness had caused.

That night, after the fourth round of application, he caught sight of himself in the mirror—not just the mark, but the whole face—and something in it made him feel suddenly, violently wrong. His elbow moved without him meaning to, smashing into the glass with a sound like a gunshot in the small room.

The mirror spidered into a hundred sharp fragments.

Keith stared at the broken web, his own fractured reflection staring back from a dozen jagged panes. He thought this had to be a sick dream, the kind that leaves you wrung out and smelling of your own sweat when you wake.

He tilted the plastic pill bottle, the rattle sharp in the quiet, and dropped two of the chalky bastards into his palm. They looked harmless. Like they’d been designed by people who’d never had to swallow one themselves. He chased them with a gulp of tap water that tasted faintly of copper and dust, thinking about how these were supposed to help. Help him sleep. Help him quiet the noise. Help him feel like himself again—if there was even a “himself” to get back to.

And while he stood there with the aftertaste clinging to his tongue, he thought about how strange the world was wired.

How he could go years without setting foot in a church and the one day he does, this happens. Not a quiet prayer, not a sermon to make him feel small in a good way, not a moment of peace.

Instead, a kiss from some diseased and decrepit woman and a scar that wouldn’t stop burning.

If there was a plan, it was a bad one. And if there was a God behind it, He had a sick sense of humor.

Keith lay in bed, his sheets twisted around him like the coils of a rope left too long in saltwater, damp and stinking. Sweat glued the fabric to his skin in patches. The room around him was fogged, shapes bleeding into shadows, corners pulled subtly wrong—familiar but not right, as if the world had been redrawn by someone with a good memory and bad hands. His chest rose and fell in jerks, breath struggling through the sour thickness of air that tasted like mothballs and mold, a flavor that made him think of the hall closets in houses no one had opened in decades.

At first, he couldn’t move. Not a finger, not a toe. Sleep paralysis, maybe. But this was no vague half-sleep freeze—this was locked. His muscles had gone to lead, his jaw cinched tight enough to ache.

And under that?

Something moved.

It started just beneath his left cheek—that spot, the one that had been burning for days. A twitch. Then another. Then a lazy, deliberate wriggle that was wrong in every possible way. It slithered under the skin, curling along his jawline like it was mapping him from the inside, brushing the hard shelf of his cheekbone in a slow, investigative stroke.

He tried to scream. His lips stayed sealed. His throat felt soldered shut.

The thing crawled higher.

A slick pressure behind his left eye made his vision pulse. He could feel it there, brushing the socket like it was looking for a way out.

Keith bolted upright, gasping, sheets snarled around his legs like vines. His mouth opened with a dry crack. He gagged. His hands flew to his face, nails scraping hard, desperate—and found nothing.

Nothing but the itch.

Still there. Still humming.

When he pulled his fingers away, four jagged red trails marked his cheek, torn deep enough to bead blood. Tiny scabs from days of scratching had split open again, and now the taste of copper spread across his tongue.

He stumbled to the bathroom, flicked the light on.

The face in the mirror wasn’t entirely his.

The swelling, the scabs, the way his mouth had gone tight in a shape that didn’t belong to him—it was like looking at a stranger with his haircut. His eyes roamed the reflection, searching for something familiar to anchor to.

And in the corner—just a flicker—she was there.

Hat. Veil. Smiling.

He spun so hard the world lurched, his heart pounding against his ribs until they felt bruised.

Nothing.

Just the wheeze of the bathroom fan and his own breath sawing in and out.

He stayed like that for a long time, watching the empty corner, waiting to hear the tap of her cane.

It didn’t come.

Neither did sleep. Not after that.

By dawn he was on his phone, searching: woman in the pew local church veil. The results were useless—wedding vendors, ads for hat shops, Pinterest boards for “vintage Sunday outfits.” Just one odd result buried in the second page: a forgotten forum thread from years back.

If she sits with you, you’ve already been chosen.

Keith hovered in that sickly place between sleep and wakefulness, where thoughts don’t line up right and the mind goes where it shouldn’t. The glow of his laptop screen leaked into the dark like a drug drip, the search bar still filled with her name: the lady in the pew. He scrolled, eyes burning, every link another half-dead rumor, another photograph so grainy it might as well have been smoke.

That was when it started again—the spot.

The more he read, the deeper he dug into her story the more the skin came alive under his fingers. It wasn’t just an itch anymore. It writhed.

He swiped at it. Once. Twice. A hard rub of the heel of his palm, enough to redden the flesh, but it only worsened. The thing beneath—nerve, blood, something else—seemed to shift away from his touch like a worm escaping light.

A sound escaped him, half groan, half curse. He tried to stop, but the pressure built like something hatching inside his face, something that wanted out. His nails raked across the spot, first tentative, then harder, savage. Skin gave. He felt it under the nails, the sting sharp enough to light his brain white. But even then—even then—the writhing wouldn’t quit. It was as if the closer he came to her, to the truth of the woman in the pew, the more she rooted herself under his skin. Literally.

By the time he realized he was clawing in earnest, blood slicking the tips of his fingers, his face was a battlefield of gouges and torn lines. And still the itch pulsed, deep, unreachable, as if she were smiling at him from inside the wound.

Keith caught his reflection in the pharmacy’s front window before he went inside, and the sight almost made him turn around. His cheek looked chewed raw, the angry welts still red from where his nails had dug in. He kept telling himself he hadn’t meant to claw at it—that it was the itching, the crawling sensation under the skin—but that was a lie, wasn’t it? He had meant it. A punishment of sorts. Like if he dug deep enough, maybe he could scrape out what was festering inside.

The fluorescent lights inside hummed, a mosquito-whine that dug into his skull. He shuffled past shelves of cough syrup and baby powder until he found the bandages. Gauze. Tape. A tube of ointment. He grabbed them in clumsy hands, keeping his head low, hoping the cashier wouldn’t look too hard at his face. Transaction, bag, receipt. Done.

Back outside, the air was cooler, carrying the faintest whiff of old wood and incense from the church across the street. He told himself he wouldn’t look at it, wouldn’t even glance—because the church was the last place he needed to be—but his eyes snagged there anyway. That’s when he saw her.

The old woman stood just outside the church steps, as though the place had coughed her out. Her dress was black, the fabric dulled to charcoal at the seams, and it clung to her like a shadow made flesh. She wasn’t moving much, just shifting her weight slow, the way a tree creaks in the wind, but her eyes—those pale, almost milked-over eyes—locked on him the second he stepped out.

He froze. The plastic bag crinkled in his hand. For a long moment he stared. She hadn’t moved and he almost prayed it would stay that way. The silence stretched, his pulse hammering in his ears, and then, from the far side of the parking lot, a girl’s voice cut through.

“Keith?”

She hesitated, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear like it gave her cover. “Did I… did I push you away? Telling you about my life before the church?” Her eyes flicked up at him, quick and nervous, then back down. “I know I was vague. Ambiguous. I thought maybe you didn’t want someone with that kind of… past.”

Keith turned his left side away. The thought came cold and bitter—that he was growing into one of those Batman-style origin stories, the kind that left a man split in two. One side passable, the other side grotesque. He didn’t want her seeing the difference.

Keith felt the answer before he said it. That dull, reflexive ache in his gut—the recognition that anyone might’ve thought the same thing in her shoes. Hell, he would have. Had more times than he cared to admit. He was no better. Not by a long stretch. Still, he said, “No. That’s not it.”

Her shoulders dropped in relief, but only a little. “Then why have you been ignoring me?” She caught the way he kept turning from her, shrinking back like a man carrying shame on his shoulders. She leaned, trying to catch his eyes, and for a second she managed. The light hit just right and she saw the left side of his face. Her breath caught. “What happened to your face?”

He tried for a smile, but it came out more like a grimace. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

“You should try me,” she said. “I trusted you with my past. Doesn’t that earn me something back?”

That made him pause. The air seemed heavier between them now. He swallowed, felt his throat click. “You ever hear anything about the old woman? In the church?”

Her expression flickered—surprise, then almost laughter. “The old woman? People talk about ghosts, sure. The Holy Ghost, mostly. But that one?” She shook her head. “That’s just childish antics. A joke, that’s all. They tried it on me when I first came here.” She smiled faintly, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’ve never seen anything. Never heard anything.”

Her voice softened then, grew strange with honesty. “But I carried my guilt easily. I never pretended it wasn’t there. Never had shame in it.” She said it like a confession, but not one she regretted.

There was a pause, long enough for the room to breathe around them. She leaned closer. “You’re not telling me someone scared you with that story, are you?”

Keith looked past her shoulder, into the dim corner where shadows pooled like water, and felt his chest tighten. “What if it isn’t just a story?”

Her laugh was quick, nervous. “It has to be. Things like that, in a church—it just doesn’t seem right.”

He met her eyes then, his voice lower, heavier, almost daring her to argue. “There are things that come for us. Who’s to say how or when?”

The words hung between them, sour and metallic, and for a moment Keith could almost see the old woman standing there in the corner, watching.

“What are you not telling me?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” Keith said, already turning from her. He walked away, and a minute later she was nothing but a shape in the rearview.

The itch had stopped being an itch. It had evolved. Shifted. Turned into something that was no longer a sensation but an entity. Not a tingle. Not a rash. Not even pain. It was a presence now—a living, breathing roommate lodged in his flesh, webbing black veins throughout his face. It moved where it wanted, when it wanted, the way a parasite navigates a host it’s already claimed.

He could feel it threading through the soft meat beneath his eye, dragging itself like a blind thing over cartilage, slinking behind his nose. Curling upward, across the bridge, toward the other side of his face. Not in a rush. Never frantic. This was patient work—methodical, mapping, tendrils and feelers charting their new territory. A creeping infestation that didn’t need to hurry because there was nowhere for him to run.

Sometimes it pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Other times it breathed on its own.

Every mirror in the apartment was gone now, shattered in quiet moments when the sight of himself became too much to bear. Not anger. Not shame. Just the knowledge that looking was worse than not knowing—because when he closed his eyes, he could already see it.

A network of gray, worm-thin roots, running under the surface of his skin like a diseased plant, blooming across his skull in sick little bursts. A colony. His face was no longer his own; it was soil.

The steroid cream that once dulled the itch now seemed to feed it, like sprinkling Miracle-Gro on something you should have burned. Some nights he could smell it—a faint, sour reek rising from his pores, part burnt plastic, part wet pennies. And on those nights, the heat on his skin didn’t just radiate. It throbbed, a heartbeat that wasn’t his.

That night, it was unbearable. Nothing worked. He’d tried everything short of taking an ice cream scoop to his own skin and digging the bad part out. In the end there was only one thing left. He tried to pray, but the words wouldn’t come. The lines were gone, scattered somewhere he couldn’t reach. All he managed was “I’m sorry,” over and over, like a man stuck at the blackboard, chalk in hand, writing the same sentence until his arm went numb.

Then his face began to crawl. Every millimeter of skin trembled—muscles fluttering like trapped moths. Tiny bristled legs skittered beneath the surface, tiptoeing along nerves, curling at the roots of his teeth. Wetness pooled where there should be none. Something peeled. Something burrowed.

His jaw locked. Tears spilled out of his eyes.
“Please,” he whispered. “Please, God. I’ll go back. I’ll go back to church. Just get it out. Get it out.”

And in that bright, brutal instant he understood: that was all he had to do.

The bandage on his face looked old already, like it had been there longer than the flesh beneath it. His coat hung off him in folds, the way clothes hang on scarecrows or the dead. He didn’t knock. Just opened the heavy oak door to the pastor’s office and stood there, a shadow that had somehow found its owner.

Pastor Greeley glanced up from behind a desk strewn with paper—half pious sermon drafts, half the kind of ledgers you’d squint at and call laundering. When he saw Keith, his mouth loosened, the skin sagging just enough for the tremor to show in his hand. He set the cup down with a deliberate care, the way you set down a bomb you aren’t sure is live.

“I need to talk,” Keith said.

Greeley nodded, slow. “Come in, son.” All while securing those papers in the drawer of the desk.

“Where can I find her?” Keith asked. His voice was hoarse. “The old woman. The one with the veil.”

Pastor Greeley froze. Then blinked away what might have been a heart attack.

“...You’ve seen her?” His voice was smaller now.

“She kissed me,” Keith said. 

Something moved in the pastor’s face. Not pity. Not shock. Something tight.

“She’s dead,” he said. “Been dead five years.”

Keith’s jaw twitched under the bandage. “No. She was here. I saw her at the service. I know what I saw.”

“You saw no such thing. I told you, she’s dead. There’s nothing more to speak on. Now if you will, I have a sermon to finish.”

Keith was done being used. He wasn’t asking anymore—he was demanding answers. Greeley knew more than he was saying, and Keith wasn’t leaving without the truth. His gaze fell on the cross standing on the desk, polished and sharp. A letter opener. He grabbed it, the metal cold in his grip, and leveled it between them. 

And Greeley, a man who wasn’t foreign to desperation, saw in Keith’s eyes that he was serious. The room felt smaller. Tighter. Like it was closing in on the both of them. He swallowed hard, because he knew what kind of man stands with nothing left to lose.

“Talk,” Keith said, voice raw. 

“I don’t speak her name,” Greeley said, quick now. “Not anymore. But yes… she was one of mine. Her and her husband, Horace. Came every Sunday. Before the cancer.”

He rubbed his temple, skin thin and yellowed like the pages of an old Bible.

The pastor leaned forward, elbows planted on his knees, hands clasped like he was afraid of what they’d do if he let them loose. His eyes weren’t on Keith. They drifted past him, to some place years back, and stayed there.

“Her husband was sick,” he said. “The kind of sickness that eats a man piece by piece. She thought she could fight it the way she fought everything—by giving. You understand? Every Sunday she came with her tithe, and not just ten percent. Heaps. Envelopes fat as bricks. I knew it didn’t work that way. God doesn’t trade dollars for miracles. But I thought about the church, about the red ink stacked up in ledgers, the bills, the creditors breathing down our necks. And against the cloth, against my conscience, I let her keep giving.”

His jaw clenched, knuckles whitening. “At first, it made sense. The debts began to clear, and I told myself it was God’s will—her generosity saving His house. But debt turned into surplus. Surplus turned into ambition. New carpet. Stained-glass repairs. State of the art sound system. She saw all that, and she believed. She thought her money was multiplying into blessings, like bread and fish passed through holy hands.”

He took a shaky breath, and now his voice dropped low. “But her husband still died. Just slipped away one night, as if God had never heard a single word. And when he did, she looked at me with those hollow eyes and she realized the truth—that I hadn’t been saving her, I’d been bleeding her. Feeding on her grief like a parasite. She gave it all because she believed it meant something.”

He turned his face away then, shoulders sagging under a weight Keith could almost see. “But it didn’t. Not one bit. And I told myself it was the church she was saving, not me. That it was holy work. But between you and me—” His voice faltered, rasping at the edges. “I knew better. Always did.”

“Not long after, she passed away,” the pastor said. His voice didn’t crack—it hollowed. “You’d think I was relieved. I wasn’t. Relief never came. What came was guilt—My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. Psalms 38:4. Not the ordinary kind you can make peace with, the kind you can apologize for, work off like a debt or even pray off. This was the kind that’s carved into you. Permanent. A brand on the inside of the skin. The worst kind, because there’s no fixing it. She was gone, and I couldn’t make it right. Ever.”

He rubbed at his temples with thick fingers, his nails digging in as if he wanted to press the memory back inside his skull. “I’d stand up there in the pulpit, preaching my sermons, and it would hit me—like something slamming into my chest. The guilt, heavier than the Bible in my hand, heavier than the roof above me. And one Sunday, it got so heavy I had to look down. Couldn’t help it. My eyes dropped to the front pew.”

His face tightened, the corners of his mouth trembling. “And she was there.”

Keith’s stomach went cold.

“She couldn’t have been there. I knew that. Dead and buried. But there she sat, like she always had, hands folded in her lap, those watery eyes on me. And I tell you, son, I didn’t know in what form she came—ghost, spirit, demon, or just my mind cracking under the strain—but I knew what it meant. I knew the consequence was mine. And it was inevitable.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing like it hurt. “So I made sure to never look down at that first pew again. Not once. If I did, I knew I’d see her sitting there, waiting.” 

“This,” Keith spat, one stiff finger directed at his face, was meant for you. You preyed on that woman. For your own greed.”

Greeley’s cheek twitched. “For the good of the church. Don’t stand there and act clean. You wouldn’t see her if you were. She’s found something rotten in you.”

Keith felt it hit him all at once, like a bell tolling inside his chest. The itch, the raw burn of his clawed face—he’d been thinking of it as punishment, as some curse the old woman had pressed into him. But now, sitting there with the pastor’s words dripping into the silence, he understood.

What spread across his cheek wasn’t just broken skin, wasn’t just scabs or scratches—it was a scarlet letter carved in flesh. A brand of guilt, yes, but not his. The weight belonged to the man across from him, the shepherd who had bled a lamb dry. The pastor should have been the one marked for it, not him.

And the thought made Keith’s heart pound harder, because here—here of all places, in this vaulted room where sin was meant to be confessed and burdens were meant to be laid bare—there was no better time to set it down. 

The space demanded it.

This was the place where men told the truth, where masks cracked, where God was supposed to hear the raw, ugly thing underneath.

And Keith realized that if he didn’t speak now—if he didn’t let it bleed out—it would rot in him, just like it had rotted in the man across from him.

Keith looked at the pastor, really looked, and the words formed on his tongue before he could stop them. “I had a party,” he said finally. The words came thick, like forcing pus from a boil. “Beer. Food. Music. My brother was there. Joe.”

The name cracked in his throat.

“By the end of the night he was passed out on my couch. I should’ve taken his keys. But he woke up around midnight, shook it off, said he was fine to drive. I laughed. Because you see, he wasn’t. Not by a long shot.”

Keith’s eyes went far away. “We always fought as kids. Typical brother stuff. Always in my room when I’m not there. He could do no wrong in my Mother’s eyes. But we grew up. His life didn’t turn out the way he expected it to and it was just a few years ago when we had the worst fight we’d ever had. Words that couldn’t be taken back. One that should have broken us for good. ​​

We didn’t have our father. For most of our lives, I guess I was the closest thing he had to one. But I never asked for that. Maybe because his life didn’t turn out the way he wanted, he decided I had something to do with it. Like I owed him a better story than the one we got. I understood the mess he was in. Still, you can’t live someone else’s life for them. You’ll lose grip of your own. 

Two a.m., his girlfriend called. Said, ‘Where is he? He left hours ago. He told me you were trying to talk him into staying.’ I said I tried—And I did. But all he wanted was round two from that night years ago.”

Greeley didn’t move.

“Then I called and he answered. I asked where he was. He said, ‘I don’t know. I’ve just been… going.’”

Keith’s voice dropped. “I told him to send me his location. He said the GPS wasn’t working. Said he didn’t have service. Said it like you’d say, ‘The sun went down.’”

He swallowed. “I think he was already gone. That I was talking to something that had already crossed over. I keep telling myself it wasn’t my fault. That he would’ve left anyway. But I let him go because it was easier than making him stay. I let him die because I didn’t want the fight.”

His fingers touched the scar under the bandage. The flesh jumped. “She didn’t come just because of you. She came because I was already hers.”

The pastor stood, gripping the desk as though it might float away without him. His voice was barely a breath. “I’ll pray for you.”

Keith felt it in the scar first—the heat. Sharp and immediate, like a match pressed into the skin. Then the pulse. Once. Twice. Then again, harder. Slow and heavy, the beat of a war drum deep in his skull.

His curse. His compass. His smoke alarm.

And right now, it was blaring.

She was here.

He turned his head and didn’t need to blink. Didn’t need to second guess.

There.

Front pew.

Black veil.

Hands clasped.

Waiting.

Keith grabbed the pastor by the arm.

“What are you—”

Keith didn’t give him the chance to finish. He yanked him down the aisle with the force of a man pulling someone out of a burning car—violent, necessary, final. The old man stumbled, tried to resist, but his shoes only squealed and scraped across the tile, rubber screaming against polished stone.

“No—Keith, stop—”

“She’s here,” Keith said, voice shaking but hard. “You need to look.”

He shoved the pastor down into the front row and forced his head forward—his palm pressing against the crown of the old man’s skull, fingers curled deep, almost reverent if reverence could be twisted into punishment.

“Look!”

Greeley did.

And something in him broke.

His body went rigid. His spine locked into a rod of terror. A sound—wet, half-formed—caught in his throat before it finally ripped free as a scream. Not the raw, sharp cry of sudden fear. This was thicker, heavier. The scream of a man recognizing his own sin in flesh. Recognition wrapped in guilt, boiling over like bile, scalding on the way up.

“Jesus—Jesus Christ—” he sobbed, the words breaking like glass underfoot.

The old woman sat in her Sunday best, veil draped over her face like cobwebs left on a grave. Still. Quiet. Heavy with something that made the air sag. It was the kind of presence you felt in the black corners of your own house at night—where you don’t look because you already know something’s there. Sacred. Sick.

Only now her hands weren’t folded.

They were open.

Welcoming.

Keith felt the pastor begin to shake in earnest, his teeth chattering so violently they sounded like they might crack. Then came the smell—a sudden, sour musk—and Keith realized Greeley had pissed himself.

The woman rose. Slowly. Soundlessly. Her head lifted just enough for the veil to shift, for Keith to see the face beneath. Hollow skin stretched too tight. Cheeks caved in. Eyes that gleamed not with light but with the dull, wet silver of something that had been dead too long to care.

Greeley, still screaming, hands clawed at his stomach like something inside was gnawing its way out.

Keith took a step back. Then another. Watching.

His face burned—no, seared—hotter than it ever had, heat blooming out in slow, deliberate pulses. His lips trembled. His eyes filled. But he didn’t turn away.

He needed to see it. Needed to watch the old bastard be taken.

Greeley pitched forward, body jerking. Foam and spit and bright threads of blood bubbled from his mouth. His eyes locked on her the entire time, even as the muscles in his face stiffened into a frozen, rictus scream.

Then Keith heard himself say

Now we’re even.

The pew was empty.

The air was still.

Greeley was slumped over, his face frozen in a contorted, tear-streaked scream.

Keith stood there, alone in the front of the church. Scarred. Hollow. Silent.

And the itch—

The itch was gone.

He was tired, the kind that drags at your bones. The kind that feels like the marrow itself has been scraped out and replaced with lead. Whatever pawn he had been in whatever game she was playing, she had spent him completely. And in return—she had unburdened him.

He could sleep. Finally—blessedly—sleep. It came on him like the tide, slow at first, then all at once, pulling him under. The fight drained out of his limbs, the buzzing in his head dulled, and the dark wrapped him up like a heavy quilt that smelled faintly of mold and copper.

And when he did, he dreamed.

The same dream. Always the same one, as if his mind had been nailed down to a single reel of film that played on repeat. But this time—something shifted.

The phone buzzed in his palm like a trapped hornet, screen lighting his face in ghostly blue. Last time—every last damn time before this—he let it ring, his thumb hovering, paralyzed. But not tonight. Tonight he flipped the phone over, no hesitation, no second thoughts.

He navigated the call of the girlfriend like automated directories. Finally passing those, his brother's voice came. But this time he hadn’t allowed that guilt to trap him. “You don’t need GPS,” Keith said. “Just go where the road takes you. One day I’ll be on that road too. One day I’ll see you again. I have faith in that.”