It draws itself up into the air before gliding down to the ground, condensing and contracting into a humanoid form, gathering into something resembling the silhouette of a petite woman with big, wavy hair and two eyes glowing from the darkness. She takes a step closer, then another, then another.

want to make this place feel more like home. I want it to be less cold, less empty, less … Less lonely. And I want, if I leave and someone sometime in the future comes across this godforsaken place, for it to be welcoming.

think I’m getting in my head too much. The radio crackles on my desk—I’ve kept it turned on from lunchtime to just before bed so I don’t miss Lota when her entry starts—and it almost seems to taunt me.

This time, the sensation that overcame me was not pain. It was something equally uncomfortable, but there was no real discomfort, physical or mental. The best way I could describe it would be my brain getting rearranged—yeah, brain, limbs, all that jazz.

approaches the motorcycle. Her whole visage is fading, bits of darkness peeling away from her body and vanishing in the wind. She wraps her arms around my neck and holds me close, squeezing my shoulder into the place where her face would be, and then she is gone. Gone for good.

I’ve seen those creatures from afar almost my whole life. I can’t remember when they came, but I know that for a long time, they lurked on the edge of the horizon—enormous figures with no legs and arms that dangled all the way to the ground.

and it doesn’t come after me just yet.

Would they even be a serial killer if they were one of two people on Earth?

“Lota?” I manage. “It’s—it’s me. Rachel. I—I made it.”