Hollowed Be Thy Name

Ephesians 6:12 (KJV)

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Day One. Hillwood City-8:35 A.M.

The city did what cities do best. It breathed.

Smog-kissed morning light broke between aging tenements and glass towers as buses hissed to curbs and trains howled in the distance like mechanical wolves. The scent of burnt toast and exhaust curled through alleyways, fighting for space with cinnamon rolls and coffee steam drifting from café windows. Horns honked, people cursed, and somewhere on the east side, a saxophone played from a fourth-floor balcony like it had every morning since 2002.

Mothers and fathers were in their usual synchronized panic—one shoe on, one child screaming, the other chewing a frozen waffle like a wooden plank. Strollers squeaked across sidewalks. Leashes tangled. Coffee orders were either perfect or completely ruined, depending on who you asked. Some sipped quietly, grateful. Others stared through plastic lids like they’d been handed betrayal in a cardboard cup.

Everywhere, people moved with purpose or irritation.

Late arrivals cursed traffic gods.

Early birds tapped badges with pride.

Security guards offered half-hearted waves.

Nurses lit cigarettes, some two at a time.

And in the midst of it all, life pushed forward, blind to the coming rupture.

The Good Samaritans Medical Center

It stood tall against the skyline, a beige-and-glass monument to mercy. The hospital’s faded red letters—THE GOOD SAMARITANS MEDICAL CENTER—blinked lazily in the morning haze. A nonprofit, overworked and overbooked, yet whispered about for the miracles it sometimes pulled off. They took the discarded, the uninsured, the dying... and tried. That was all anyone could ask of a place like this.

Inside, the scent was sterile and sharp—alcohol wipes, floor polish, and the undercurrent of human decay.

A tall man stepped through the sliding doors with a grace too fluid for the environment. Jasper Coldwater. Pale skin, black hair, long-legged stride like a dancer in mourning. His boots barely made a sound on the polished linoleum. His voice, when he spoke, had the softness of a faucet left barely running—always low, always gentle, like he was trying not to wake a sleeping world.

He moved with ritual through the front lobby, already half-lost in thought. The security guard recognized him—he always did—but today, the usual quip or fist bump wasn’t offered.

“Nice seeing you, kid,” the guard said quietly. “Take care of yourself.”

Jasper paused. That landed heavier than it should have. “Thanks,” he murmured.

The visitor badge stuck to his shirt like a funeral tag. Jasper Coldwater. Relationship: Nephew.

He pressed the silver elevator button. It chimed like it had a secret. The doors opened to a crowd—nurses, a patient in a wheelchair, and two interns eating protein bars. The ride was long, claustrophobic, a crawl through time. Floor by floor, it stopped. Opened. Closed. Breathed in more bodies. Jasper’s breath slowed as his anxiety bloomed behind his eyes.

Sixth floor. Palliative Wing.

Second to last stop. Always was.

The nurse’s desk was manned by a young woman in fitted green scrubs. Her badge said Nurse Stasher. She smiled too tightly.

“Oh. The nephew. Jasper, right? We were expecting you. Your uncle’s in his room.” She hesitated. “Would you… like to sit with him? I’ll page the doctor. See who’s coming in.”

He only nodded. “Thank you, Nurse Stasher.”

Room 617 was cold, but the kind of cold that came from the absence of life, not the thermostat. The first thing he noticed was the beeping—rhythmic, robotic, dispassionate. The second was the man in the bed—his uncle—reduced to skin, bone, and wires. Tubes like invasive vines snaked into his body. Fluids dripped. Machines blinked. And somewhere in the middle of it all was Victor Coldwater, a man who once split firewood with his bare hands and taught Jasper how to tie a tie.

Now, he could barely open one eye.

“Hey, Unc,” Jasper said softly, patting his foot. “How’s it going?”

Victor’s eyelid fluttered, then closed again. But there was something in that movement—recognition? Resignation?

Jasper pulled the chair close and sat. The words were already choking him.

“They said... they said today’s the day,” he whispered, trying not to fall apart. “Just like you wanted. If they couldn’t figure it out in a year and a half...”

He blinked hard. His voice cracked.

“They stopped the treatment weeks ago. They waited ’til last week to tell me it spread. It’s in your bones, Unc. In your blood. There’s a fungal infection now, too. They say... nothing’s working. No options left that won’t...You know... leave you brain-dead or worse.”

He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled.

“You said if it came to this... you’d go out on your own terms. Well, Unc... It’s come.”

The monitors beeped. The machines pulsed. And Victor Coldwater—the man who’d been more of a father than anyone ever had the right to be—didn’t speak. Didn’t flinch.

When Jasper left the hospital, the world felt smaller.

The city still moved around him—cars sped through yellow lights, children dragged backpacks twice their size, dogs barked from second-story balconies—but it all passed by in a muffled haze. Like someone had taken his life and turned the volume down. Everything blurred. Everything ached.

He didn’t cry again. He just walked.

By the time he reached the apartment, the sun had dipped low behind the skyline, turning buildings into jagged silhouettes. The keys shook in his hand. The lock stuck for a moment. Everything did.

Inside, the place was dim, quiet, and hollow. A worn futon. A sink full of unwashed mugs. Boxes half-packed. The kind of mess that says someone tried... then gave up halfway through.

He dropped his bag, kicked off his shoes, and did the only thing that made sense.

The console booted up with a familiar chime.

He didn’t even pick a new game—just loaded the save file he and his uncle had been playing together before everything fell apart. A zombie survival RPG, ironically enough. His uncle had always liked games with base-building and strategy. Said it helped keep his mind sharp when the chemo tried to steal his focus.

Jasper barely played. Just walked his character in circles while the world spun out.

For him, it was already over.

He didn’t know the nightmare hadn’t started yet.

For another, just starting their life in the building, one nightmare, however, has at least ended. As they found themselves trying to enter an apartment a floor above his own.

(POV CARLY)

It took both hands and a knee to get the door open.

The rusted frame groaned as Carly Beth McCullough shoved her weight against it, forcing it wide with a final metallic clang. A neighbor’s dog barked down the hallway—somewhere behind a door labeled 2 B. The air smelled like boiled rice, cheap bleach, and the slow death of a building no one loved.

Her new apartment was a shoebox compared to the gilded cage she’d left behind.

No chandeliers. No walk-in closets. No silk sheets.

Just peeling paint, flickering lights, and a leaky radiator that groaned like it was mourning its own existence.

But to Carly?

It was perfect.

She dragged in a deflated air mattress, two overstuffed duffels, and a small rolling suitcase with a broken wheel. That was all she owned now. Everything else—her jewelry, her designer coats, the photos on the walls—was left behind in a house full of lies.

The door shut with a shuddering clunk behind her, and she locked it.

Once.

Twice.

Deadbolt.

She slumped against it and slid to the floor, her breath catching. Not from exertion, but from the sudden, disorienting silence.

She’d waited so long to hear nothing.

With shaking hands, she pulled out her phone and tapped open a message thread labeled:

BESTIE LATRICE

Carly:

“Thanks again for renting everything in your name.”

The reply came fast, like always:

Latrice:

“No problem, dear. I love you.

Lie low for a while and stay safe.

Your folks have been blowing up my phone trying to find you.

But I’m not telling them a damn thing.

Hold it down, baby girl.”

Carly smiled—a real one this time. Brief. Fragile. But real.

She tapped over to her mother’s texts.

Her finger hovered for a long moment.

Then she opened them.

MOM:

“Carly Beth, answer your phone now.”

“You can’t keep running from this.”

“You have the entire family worried sick about you.”

“Please. He just wants to talk.”

“You owe him that much. You owe us that much.”

Each message tightened her chest like a slow fist.

She scrolled up and reread the old ones she’d memorized.

“He just made a mistake.”

“Men cheat, honey. That doesn’t mean you throw away your marriage.”

“You need to think about what you’re doing to all of us.”

“He pays your brother’s rent.”

“He covered my dental implants.”

“Don’t be selfish.”

Carly locked her phone and set it face down on the counter.

She wasn’t running.

She was escaping.

Her marriage had been a slow suffocation beneath marble countertops and fake smiles.

Her ex-husband, Tom McCullough, was rich, charming, abusive, and manipulative—a master at painting himself as the victim. He didn’t just buy her family’s affection. He rented their silence.

When she’d caught him with his mistress, he hadn’t denied it. He just told her she was being dramatic. Called her ungrateful. Accused her of “ruining everything.”

The moment she left was the moment he turned the whole family against her.

She stood in the empty living room and stared at nothing.

The cracked drywall. The uneven floors. The rickety radiator.

This was freedom.

She inflated the air mattress until it sagged less. Unzipped her bag. Hung her only jacket on a nail on the wall. Then lay back on the mattress with a sigh that bordered on a sob.

The pipes creaked. Somewhere below her, a TV murmured through the floor—likely the quiet man’s unit below, though she didn’t know his name yet.

For now, he was just “the quiet guy downstairs with the sad eyes.”

She’d seen him briefly earlier that afternoon in the elevator, standing like a ghost among the noise. He didn’t look at anyone. Didn’t speak. Just hit his floor and stared straight ahead. There was something fragile about him, as if you said the wrong thing, he might dissolve into memory.

Carly hadn’t spoken a word to him.

But somehow, she understood.

That night, she slept curled on the air mattress with one blanket, no pillows, and a steak knife under her pillow. She didn’t dream.

She woke up before sunrise.

Pulled on leggings and a hoodie.

Slipped on sneakers with a rip in the sole.

She walked two blocks to the corner gas station and bought burnt coffee in a styrofoam cup. The clerk didn’t speak. The lights buzzed overhead like wasps.

The gas station freezer doors let out a breath of frost as they opened.

arly Beth McCullough stood there, unmoving, as the cold air spilled across her bare knees. She wasn’t really looking at the shelves—not at first. Her eyes were distant, staring through the rows of melted popsicles and freezer-burned pints like she was expecting one of them to apologize for the last five years of her life.

The pint of cookies and cream wasn’t even her favorite.

But it was the one she always dreamed of eating without consequence.

She grabbed it. Then paused.

Her hand reached again—this time for a crumpled white donut box, the kind with sugary glaze stuck to the corners of the plastic wrap. Twelve of them, warm under the heat lamp. Unapologetically unhealthy.

Her chest fluttered.

Tom would’ve said something.

If he were still around, her husband would’ve made a snide joke about “blowing up like your mother” or would’ve asked if she planned to do squats after.

“You know how fast weight shows on short girls.”

“You’re lucky you’re cute. But don’t push it.”

“You don’t want me to stop being attracted to you, right?”

The words echoed like a curse in the fluorescent-lit store.

She could still remember the ache of starvation in her stomach during the first two years of their marriage—nights spent sipping water and chewing ice just to trick herself into fullness. Lying about eating lunch. Faking a cold so she wouldn’t have to face dinner.

The day she fainted in the shower, he told her to “take better care of herself.”

And now? Now he was gone.

She was in a broken-down gas station at sunrise, hair a mess, hoodie wrinkled, mascara smudged—but free. And starving.

She picked up a spoon from the wire bin near the register and walked to the counter, her arms full of rebellion.

“Just these,” she whispered.

The cashier barely looked at her. He rang her up in silence, chewing his own donut like it owed him money. That was fine. She didn’t need smiles. She needed this.

Back on the sidewalk, Carly sat on the crumbling stoop in front of her new apartment complex—the kind of place with cracked bricks, rusted mailboxes, and a front light that never worked. She was one floor up from the quiet guy downstairs. Jasper, she thought his name was, or so the mail she saw said. The man who walked like grief was stitched into his bones.

She hadn’t spoken to him yet. But she noticed him.

Everyone noticed people like them—the quiet ones who didn’t look up.

The newspaper sat rolled in her lap, a habit she couldn’t shake from her old life. It still smelled like ink and damp paper. Her fingers turned the page as she shoved a donut into her mouth, tears prickling behind her eyes for no reason at all.

LOCAL NEWS: West Angel Hospital and New Grove Medical report second wave of neurological infections. “Unresponsive but aggressive,” sources say. The mayor will address the water crisis and trash delays at 11:00.

She swallowed thickly. Not the donut—her guilt.

Even now, part of her still heard her mother’s voice.

“You didn’t leave for freedom, Carly Beth. You left because you’re selfish.”

“You broke up a whole family over a little cheating?”

“He took care of all of us. What are we supposed to do now?”

She licked icing from her fingers and sniffled.

Her thighs touched.

Her stomach felt full for the first time in weeks.

And her soon-to-be ex-husband could go to hell.

Because right now? She had donuts, cheap ice cream, and a floor to herself.

No one was yelling.

No one was demanding she shrink or sit there and take it.