MAYDAY 32

Chapter 1: The Day That Shouldn't Exist.

The day was like any other: Rain hugging my windows, smoke choking the city, and me, hunched over a glowing screen, doing what I do best.

Case File: Subject — Mark H. Carver, 23, Male, DoD: January 12, 2010: Official cause: house fire. A neat lie I would say. Burns everywhere, but his lungs barely touched by smoke, a living body would have choked long before it burned, and the exit, only seven feet away, close enough to reach. Yet he was dead before the flames. Murder, wrapped in fire.

Case File: Subject — Lisa Monroe, 18, Female. DoD: March 12, 2013. Ruling: Suicide. Motel, hanging. The Story says she broke after a six-year relationship and tied her own noose. But this woman was dressed to be seen, her hair done, nails painted. The kind of ritual women reserve for beginnings, not endings. The knot, too perfect, too professional. Her search history: gothic romance. Nothing about rope. Someone tied it for her, and the Bureau bought the story.

Case File: Subject — Isaac Kiprono, 29, Male. DoD: July 12, 2016. Cause of death: blunt trauma: “Drunk fall,” it reads. The photos agreed, no struggle, no marks of murder. Clean. Empty. Except for the numbers.

Three deaths. Each spaced exactly three years apart. Not weird enough when you see it like that, but then you line up the victims’ ages against their dates of death, and every path resolves to the same digit: Three. It's no coincidence it's a Ritual. An artist painting in blood, leaving a signature most eyes never see. The number three, sacred, eternal. Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. Creation. Destruction. Renewal. Three bodies. Three disguises. Three prayers to whatever god he serves. And then he stopped. Not from guilt, not from fear. From satisfaction. The cycle complete.

I log off the FBI site. The screen’s glow dies to black, leaving only the dull reflection of my face, faintly lit by the light behind me. My diary lies open on the desk, its leather cover worn thin from years of hidden confessions. I scrawl the latest tally: 92 cases solved. I flip the pages back, each one a cold case the FBI had entombed in bureaucracy, murders disguised as mishaps, suicides tied too neatly, patterns hidden in plain sight. Each one is a name, a life, a truth I’ve clawed from the shadows.

One day, they will have to see it. The patterns I’ve traced, the lies I’ve exposed, and when I do, when I place them before the FBI, before the world, and force them to reckon with what they ignored. That day, I won’t be invisible. That day the world will see the truths I’ve clawed from the dark, and the forgotten will have their justice through me.

I glance at the clock on my desk: 11:43 PM, May 31, the last night of summer vacation, the first whispers of the monsoon stirring the air. A neatly folded letter sits beside the clock, my mother’s note proclaiming she’s secured my seat at the “greatest university in the world.” that begins tomorrow. The thought sinks like lead in my stomach. “I don’t belong in echoing lecture halls,” I murmur, my voice barely a breath. Her wealth can buy a degree, but it can’t forge purpose. She clings to the illusion that structure will shape me into something “normal”, as if normal hasn’t always slipped through my fingers. I glance at her framed photo on the desk, her smile frozen, unyielding. Haven’t I always been your unraveling thread, Mother?

As a kid, silence raised me more than people, strangers houses. Foster homes. There, I honed the art of listening to the unspoken, discerning what others overlooked. That's my gift. My affliction: perceiving the invisible.

Yet I've always been desperate to fit somewhere. Desperate to make my parents proud.

I studied English, as my mother wished, but words, though plentiful, never found their way through my faltering voice. I buried myself in computers, chasing my father’s dream, but he was gone before his pride could reach me. I boxed, as my peers cheered, fists flashing, muscles ablaze, yet each punch was just another clash with the demons I couldn’t outrun.

Nothing endured. Nothing ignited a sense of significance. But infiltrating the FBI's database this summer? That was transformative.

Months of meticulous scheming. Four botched attempts. One serendipitous backdoor, overlooked by their guardians. In a heartbeat, I transcended anonymity. Accessing realms barred to all but the elite.

It wasn't the secrets that enthralled me, no. It was the act of wresting them free. Molding truth to my will, as if it were mine by right.

For those stolen hours, I wasn't a faceless drone in a lecture hall. A mere entry on a roster. I embodied justice. I was the phantom figure whispered about in the dead of night. The myth woven into shadows.

Unfortunately tomorrow, It all ends.

Deadlines. Discourses. A trajectory that feels more like incarceration than existence.

I'm not fractured. I'm not reticent. I simply know the exhilaration of transcendence. And nothing else measures up.

I close the diary, and along with it my one dimensional rant. The leather cool against my skin. I recline in my chair, gazing at the fractured plaster ceiling.

"I wish tomorrow never came," I murmur. The words escape like vapor, intended for no one. Not a plea. Not an admission. Just a weary exhalation, dissipating into the ether.

...

I collapsed onto my bed, springs creaking under my weight, and exhaled a shaky sigh, eying the moon bathing in rain outside the window. A pang of loneliness tightened in my chest, yet there was something comforting in its quiet glow. I pulled the blanket tight, its warmth a shield against the cold, rainy night. It was sanctuary, soft, fragile, safe. I closed my eyes, clinging to that comfort, willing it to last.

A twitch beneath my lower back. My hand darted under the mattress, an insect? A spider? Nothing.

I sank back, but the sensation returned, something crawling, alive, under me. Irritated, . I yanked the covers off and smoothed the sheets with deliberate precision, muttering threats at any insect daring enough to disturb me, tugging the cotton taut until it was perfect. I wrapped it around myself completely, cocooning head to toe, every inch of my body hidden beneath its soft, confining warmth.

Then my bed shook gently, with a careful rhythm, like a mother singing a lullaby. For a moment, it felt comforting, almost natural, until I realized it shouldn’t. Tremors rattled the floor beneath me, spreading through the room as if the earth itself had split. The bed lurched violently. I clawed at the sheets, trying to throw them off, to understand what was happening, but they wouldn’t budge.

The fabric tightened, crushing me. I thrashed, screamed, but the sheets grew heavier, denser, fusing to my skin like iron. Panic surged. The mattress writhed beneath me, alive, pulsing, like the sheets were now flesh, clinging to my arms, my legs, my chest.

I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe.

With a desperate surge, I tore at the suffocating weight, raking upward until the cover split.

And then, darkness.

The room I was in had vanished. My bed, the diary, my computer, everything was gone. It wasn’t just darkness; there was no light, no ground. Only an abyss, immense, devouring, swallowing even my thoughts before I could hold onto them.

What! Where am I? Is this a dream? A nightmare? For a moment, everything is still.

Too still.

I groped through the void, straining to hear, but there was only silence, thick, suffocating, total. Then, from that endless nothingness, a sound appeared: low, wrong, and creeping, gnawing at my mind.

A faint, wet slithering, distant yet closing in. I held my breath. Listened. It was subtle at first, like something shifting, coiling in the dark. Then it grew... closer, louder, faster.

I froze. Heart hammering. Straining to hear. It winds through the dark, followed by a sharp, deliberate...

Click, click, CLICK.

Like teeth snapping shut. Something was crawling.

I tried to scream, to run, to fight, but my body’s a traitor, frozen, locked. The slithering quickens, circling me, unseen but certain.

A jagged whisper slices the dark. Not human. Not animal.

“Hello, Black.”

A chill shot down my spine. My breath hitched, trapped in my chest. The thing in the dark slithered closer.

“How… how do you know my name? Who are you?” I shouted, fear clawing at my voice.

Closer.

A deep, gurgling rasp filled the void, like air forcing through something that shouldn't be breathing. I strained to see. Nothing.

Then...

A brush against my skin. Cold. Slimy. Not a hand, not fingers but something else. It wrapped around my ankle. I gasped, tried to kick, to scream... but the grip tightened.

Then, with a violent YANK, it pulled me downward. A force like nothing I had ever felt, like my entire body was unraveling, being ripped from reality itself. Pain exploded in every nerve. My vision swam with bursts of red. I opened my mouth. Finally, a scream. But no sound came out.

And then...

Everything shattered

...

I bolt upright, gasping, air clawing my lungs. My heart pounds, uneven, frantic. Sweat clings to my skin, my body aching like it’s been broken and remade. A nightmare. Just a nightmare, but the pain laughs in my chest, sharp and insistent, refusing to let go. It whispers, You felt me. I’m real..

Morning light seeps through the curtains. My phone buzzes, insistent. I glance around the room. Nothing out of place. No cracks, no fallen books, no glass trembling on the shelves. Yet I swear I felt it, the walls, the bed, the whole room shuddering, rattling like an earthquake.

With a shaky breath, I turn to the table clock and check the time.

May 32nd, 7:00 AM.

Something in my stomach twisted.I blinked. Rubbed my eyes. The screen doesn't change. A glitch? A prank? I checked my laptop, my wall calendar, my alarm clock. All said the same thing.

May 32.

I turned on the TV, hands trembling. The news anchor’s voice was cheerful, oblivious. “Good morning! Today is May 32nd, and we’ve got breaking news,” The remote hit the floor with a hard clatter. My breath stopped cold.

May 32.

This wasn’t a mistake. This was impossible. I grabbed my phone, scrolling through social media, news sites, forums. Nothing. No one mentioned the date. No one questioned it. The world kept moving, blind to the fracture.

The loneliness hit harder than ever. Was I the only one who had seen it? I snatched my diary, my pen trembling between yesterday’s notes. I opened it, May 31, yesterday's notes.

My hands shook as I flipped to the next page. If this was a prank, it would prove it.

But the page wasn’t right.

May 32.

And beneath it, scrawled like a whisper from nowhere, a single message:

YOU WANTED THIS.

The words burned into my mind. My stomach twisted. The diary, my own hand, had betrayed me.

My breath hitched. My fingers turned cold. No. I slammed the diary shut. My pulse thundered, drowning out thought. Had I done this? Had my careless wish, broken the world?

Then pain, sudden and savage, tore across my hand. Like something unseen had sliced me open. I looked down. Something was carving into my skin, letter by letter, slow and deliberate.

Y,

A sharp sting flared.

U,

The pain rippled through my nerves like lightning. I screamed. Twisted. But whatever force held the blade... didn't stop.

N,

A.

Each stroke etched deeper than the last, as if the name itself was burning its way into me. By the time it was done, my hand was slick with blood. The letters pulsed... raw, alien.

Yuna.

A name I didn’t recognize. Yuna. My mind raced through every case file I’d read, every victim, every witness, every alias, everyone I knew, but no one by that name. Nothing made sense anymore. I had to move, had to run, had to escape, anywhere but here.

But the world twisted.

The walls shimmered, melting into something warped and unreal, like a corrupted VHS tape skipping through broken frames.

“This isn’t real,” I whispered, my tongue trembling. “This has to be another nightmare… why am I stuck in nightmares?”

“Wake up!” I slapped myself, hard, clawing at my hair.

“Wake up. Wake up!”

Across the room, the television glowed. The news anchor kept speaking, but her words made no sense. Her voice glitched, skipping tenses like a scratched record. “Waywords, richest man, Ignites. Ignited global warfare. Scale of destruction clear. Cleared. Military coalition armed. Arming.” She kept talking, her mouth moving out of sync, lips dragging behind the sound. Her face flickered with static, glitching between expressions too fast to track, too wrong to name.

I lunged at the screen, desperation burning in my chest and slammed my head into the glass. Screaming for the one last time,

“WAKE UP!”

....

I shot up gasping for hope, but the world had already moved on. And whatever I was now… didn’t belong in it.