Striker woke, shivering in his sweat-soaked bed. It was the fifth of the month, and the first time since New Year’s day that he managed to sleep for more than a couple of hours. Outside, the clouds were overcast. His room was a dreary gray. He sat up and reached for the uncapped pint of whiskey on his desk, sniffing it before his first shot of the day. His face twisted as the swill hit his tongue. He tipped the bottle up once more before setting it beside the journal that mysteriously appeared on the first day of the new year. He anticipated its presence as— despite his shelving it— it was on his desk by morning, no matter where he’d put it the night before. He rose from bed and carried the journal to the bookcase where he’d slotted it every morning since the day it appeared.

  He stood in front of the bookcase, his fingers playing along the edges of the journal’s cover, curling around as though he dared to part it for the first time in days. He shelved it, with held breath.

  He stared at it over the kitchen counter as he waited for water to boil.

  As his coffee brewed in the French press.

  As he half-heartedly stirred the liquid in his cup, absent any cream, sugar, or other accoutrement.

  His eyes remained locked upon it as coffee dribbled down the side of his chin.

  Even though the journal remained shut, he was fixated, and his fixation carried consequences.

  Trash, empty whiskey bottles, various junk, and dirt cluttered the floor of his apartment. Food rotted on plates and in bowls where they sat. The two bookshelves in the living room were collecting dust, their tomes overtaken by neglected cans and bottles. He was unable to tear his attention away from Zoey’s journal since it came into his possession, yet unable to bring himself to open it again.

  He didn’t know what its existence implied, and that was disconcerting to him.

  He had no idea what the coded pages in Zoey’s handwriting said, or how some of the nonsensical drawings and doodles seemed to change each time he scrutinized them.

  He wasn’t sure which part of this new reality made him more uncomfortable.

  Still, as his eyes remained locked upon the journal on the shelf, he cleared the table. He didn’t know why his heart pounded as he stood, again, in front of the bookcase and pulled the journal from its place. Despite how gently he’d set it down, he heard a thud as he placed it on the table.

  He froze, staring at it for a moment. He jumped when he heard another. The final rap brought his eyes to the door. Carefully peering trough the peephole, he saw Case.

  He opened the door with a subdued, “Hey.”

  She hugged him and stepped inside, pausing before taking her sandals off as she usually would, when she saw the state of the apartment. She left them on.

  “It smells a bit stale in here,” she said, stepping over a pile of clothes. “Can I open a window?”

  “I can get it. Sorry it’s messy, I haven’t gotten around to cleaning yet.”

  Her expression said, ‘no shit’. “Is everything okay? I thought you were coming to my place so we could go to Dolores?”

  “Shit,” he muttered, “What time is it?”

  “Twelve forty. I texted you an hour ago.”

  “I think my phone’s dead. I can be ready to go in a few.”

  “I’ll wait,” she said, brushing crumbs off of the couch before seating herself. “Open a window, though?”

  He paused at the window. The sun was beginning to break through the fog, bathing the Potrero district in warm sunlight. After he opened the it, he was in and out of the shower as quick as he could be. He spent most of that time scrubbing a black line on the back of his left palm. He first noticed it on the second day of the year. It was faint, then. He thought it was sharpie or some other type of marker. It didn’t go away, no matter how hard he scrubbed or what soap or solvent he used. To his vexation, it grew darker every day since its arrival. When he emerged, Case had cleaned up the vicinity of the couch, clearly more comfortable on an island in a sea of filth.

  They were at Dolores Park by the bottom of the hour. There were a multitude of parkgoers on blankets— except for the area by the tennis court, where people threw frisbees and footballs to the chagrin of others stretching and holding yoga poses. The sun was shining in the Mission as clouds hung in the distance over the western end of the city. It was unseasonably warm, and soon would be unseasonably wet, driving the young people of the neighborhood to their local hangout, before they would be forced inside.

  The pair found a spot with enough room to lay out Case’s large blanket on the south side of the park, near 20th street. She lounged with a book and grapes, but hadn’t considered her replacement flip-phone would be useless for the wireless speaker she’d brought. Striker was less prepared, with only his cigarettes and a flask of whiskey he hadn’t bothered to fill to the top. He’d brought his phone, but hadn’t bothered to charge it.

  “Did you look at that book on the table while you were waiting for me?”

  Case looked over her book. “This?”

  “No, there was a journal of Zoey’s on my table. It was there when I went to shower.”

  She paused and her eyes wandered before she shook her head. “I’m pretty sure the table was clear. I left a cup of water on it when we left. Maybe the journal got knocked off or something?”

  Striker took a swig from his flask and lit a cigarette. “I guess,” he muttered, wondering whether he’d actually pulled it down from the bookcase at all.

  He laid on the blanket with his hands behind his head, staring at the sky. Case glanced over when she finished her chapter, and again after she finished the next. She poked his foot with her toe. He didn’t react, nor did he when she called his name. He snapped back to reality, finally, when she held the book over his face.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Did you ever see any of Zoey’s notebooks?”

  “Yeah? She had pretty handwriting, what about it?”

  “I mean…” he struggled for words, “her private writing,” he paused. “I guess that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Oh, you mean her whole writing system thing. She showed me some of it a long time ago. I don’t know how she remembered it all,” she scratched her chin as she popped a grape into her mouth, “I think she did have a big binder she collected a lot of it in?”

  “Wait— What binder? Do you remember what it looks like?”

  She pursed her lips and shrugged. “Big thick binder? Like the binders we used in college? Um… white? I think she had to get an even bigger one to keep it all in one place anyway, but that was before she moved in with you. I just remember it was huge. I said she should publish it, but you know Zoey. She likes her secret stuff.”

  Striker took another swig of his whiskey as his brain began turning over the possibilities. He couldn’t recall any binders in his apartment since Zoey moved in with him from Case’s, next door.

  “Earth to Striker…?” she said, after he’d fallen silent again.

  “Do you think Zoey would hide serious shit from us?”

  Case sat up. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know… Like, she owed someone a lot money, or saw something she shouldn’t have or—”

  “She wouldn’t keep that from us. She trusted you and me with everything.”

  “What if it was something weird? Like, something she thought we wouldn’t believe?”

  “Weird like what?”

  “Weird like, ‘occult weird’?”

  Case shook her head. “She’s too grounded for that. I mean, except for when we first met and she was into ‘manifesting her fortunes’ or whatever. She was pretty skeptical by the time we moved in next to you. Funny thing is we’d have these drunken... I don’t know, hypothetical conversations about stuff like magic, but not quite magic. If that makes sense.”

  “Really? She always trashed anything she thought was too ‘woo woo’.”

  “It wasn’t like that— it was more like ‘If you could make your apartment the perfect temperature, but you couldn’t use your electricity at the same time, would you?,’ and shit like that. Weird hypotheticals.”

  “Like the lever problem?”

  Case tilted her head. “Are you talking about the Trolley Problem?”

  Striker shrugged.

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t about moral dilemmas or anything, just... ‘What if you could do this or that?’ Do you mind, by the way?” she asked, pointing at his flask.

  Striker nodded and passed it over. “I’m going to get a six pack,” he said as he rose from the blanket.

  Case took a drink and handed the flask back. “Sounds good,” she said, laying back down, returning her attention to her book.

  Striker let the journal and strange events go in the meantime, enjoying what he could of the day. The two lazed through the afternoon until the sun began to set over the hills. Clouds advanced as wind built over the park. Case went for the bus home shortly after the sun disappeared under Sutro Tower. Striker, meanwhile, made his way to North Beach.

  Before Zoey disappeared, he spent most of his days at the North Beach Art Gallery. After a stint in the SF College of the Arts, he did several odd jobs that turned into a regular cleaning gig. That earned him some space to practice his art when he wasn’t cleaning or preparing the gallery for exhibits. After one of their resident artist’s vacations turned into a wedding, followed by a cross-country move with his new husband, Striker was invited to keep his space warm. After his art began bringing in new clients and more money for the gallery, the spot became his. It became a home away from home.

  North Beach was frigid, but the gallery was warm when he stepped in. It was brightly lit with framed paintings and art of various media lining the walls. Sculptures near the center of the floor created islands in the sea of white tile. It was meticulously clean; sterile almost, between the work Striker and the recent new hire had done. At the back, there was a set of iron stairs that ascended to a wooden loft with metal railing. Working on a laptop at a table by the rail was Sheryl, the gallery’s owner. He gave her a nod when they caught eyes, before taking the door to the studio, just to the right of the stairs.

  His eyes watered when he entered. He almost sneezed, but several false alarms left him unsatisfied. He flicked the switch by the door and the overhead fan rumbled to life. He took a few steps in darkness before the light above slowly illuminated the space. To an outsider, the studio would look like a disorganized clusterfuck. It was small, with barely enough room for two people’s supplies. It was too tight to work with anyone else in the room, so Striker always came in late or early. His space was the one closer to the back. He had a large canvas rigged up with a matte black wash and some strokes of white that resembled nothing, yet. He still had no idea what they would become as he stared at it. His specialty was graphite, but Zoey had been pushing him to experiment with paint before she disappeared.

  “Devin?” asked Sheryl, as she poked her head in the door. She always did that before walking in. She paid the rent for the gallery and studio, but treated the latter as though it belonged more to the artists than herself. “I didn’t expect you in. How are you doing?” Her southern dialect slipped through, despite her attempt at restraint.

  “Alright. Went to the park. I figured I’d try to make some progress on this before the exhibit.”

  “No pressure. I know you’re going through a lot right now.”

  “Thanks, Sher. I need to get something in. I wanted to have this done a month ago, but I don’t even remember what I was going for when I started it.”

  “Your life changed. A lot. If it were me, I’d have thrown that out or put it anywhere else but front of me. I never could come back to a piece I didn’t finish when there was a major change, you know? I’ve seen a lot of people go through it— not being sure what to do after some big change in their life, this thing or that— and a lot just throw up their hands. Did whatever arbitrary thing they thought would finish the piece. Makes for shitty art, between you and me,” she said with a chuckle, “Gotta cut your losses if you need to, even if your heart’s deep in it.”

  “I think this is salvageable. I’m just… not sure how I want to fill the space yet.”

  “That’s not a bad thing,” she said, “I like that about you, though. You use your head. Even if you do it a bit too much.”

  “Thanks, Sheryl.”

  “I mean it,” she said, turning to leave. She stopped abruptly in the doorway, “Right, I almost forgot: A couple of young ladies were looking for you.”

  Striker felt butterflies in his stomach that petrified and nearly came out of the other end, when he remembered Ada and Elsie from New Year's Eve. “Who?”

  “I don’t know, a couple of girls, looked about your age. They said they found a sketchbook of yours. Smelled like they’d been rolling in grass. I told them they could drop it off, but they insisted on doing it in person. I tried to talk them into bringing it by, but,” she shrugged.

  “Did you tell them anything? About me?”

  “Oh goodness, no. You know I’m not going to share personal information about my artists.”

  He sighed, his tense muscles relaxing from their subconscious guard. “Did they say anything about coming back?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll let you know if they do.” She began to shut the door.

  “Wait, Sheryl— Do you remember if one of them was wearing a purple hair clip? With a skull on it?”

  “Mhmm,” she nodded, “Reminded me of that one your girlfriend wore. Err.. Wears. I guess things are still up in the air right now?”

  Striker shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “I hope she’s okay out there,” said Sheryl. She pursed her lips as her eyes swept over Striker, assessing him like a mother who’d been told something bad happened to her child. Still, she flashed a smile and stepped out, shutting the door behind her.

  Striker stood in front of the painting. He took off his coat and laid it on a chair. He used white to paint the contours and edges of the GetUp patio. The angle was low, looking upward. The center remained a black void with a humanoid shape. Several hours, cigarettes, and most of a pint of whiskey later, he stood back from the unfinished painting, satisfied for the moment. The edges of it feathered in a blur as detail became sharper toward the center. He gave the black-void figure a cartoonish toothy maw in fine strokes where the mouth should be. Its eyes, detailed in wisps of white, were devoid of emotion or love. On the figure’s head, he painted an iconic skull that served as a hair clip, in deep purple. Around its neck was an off-white chain with a golden gear in its center.

  He packed up his studio supplies and looked at the clock. It was one-thirteen in morning. He decided to take a cab rather than a long multi-bus MUNI excursion. His phone was still dead, and the land line was in Sheryl’s office, which only she had the key to. He had to hunt for a charger, and found a cable sticking out from under a bunch of paintings in his space. He looked over them after plugging in his phone.

  He didn’t plan to exhibit anything in the pile. Most of it was destined for the trash, while some would eventually make its way to his home. It was the last piece that caught his attention: A collaboration he made with Zoey, with no particular intention aside from it going on their wall. It was dated less than two weeks before her disappearance.

  The border was painted by her and featured her cipher— the same as she used in the journal— in her hand, although brushed and far more inconsistent than her handwriting. Striker had painted a clock in the center, with hands of different lengths extending in every direction. She painted the numbers on its face in her code. He took it with him when the cab arrived.

  When he arrived home, the journal was on his living room table, exactly where he left it. A cup of water with Case’s lipstick on the rim sat just to its left. He sat and thumbed through the journal. Some pages changed every time he looked at them, while others were static pages covered in code. It defied logic, and he still found himself unable to come up with an explanation for the journal’s odd behavior. Striker pushed aside the enigma of its properties and focused instead on the cipher.

  The glyphs on the clock face were the first clue. With the numbers one through twelve, along some puzzling over formatting, he figured out which lines in the journal were dates. The first entry was January 16th, 2011. The last entry was October 15th, 2012. He flipped over the painting. It was dated September 12th. She disappeared on October 27th. He bookmarked the page with a scrap of paper from the floor and flipped to those around it. He could see patterns in the glyphs, but their meaning eluded him. He did notice, however, a certain recurrence of the number two, and a pair of mystery glyphs that appeared in the border of the painting— the first like a circle, the second an X with a zigzag through it.

  He remembered she chose that round glyph because it had something to do with time, but she didn’t explain much more beyond that. He focused on the pages closest to her disappearance, hunting for any context clues or something else that would bring more understanding. It was well after five in the morning when he closed the book, without much progress. He slunk into bed, somehow managing to fall asleep.

  When he opened his eyes, his room was bright and warm. The sun was shining through his window. He smelled coffee and found himself at the kitchen counter. He poured himself a cup and looked out of the window, overlooking waves lapping against the shore of Ocean Beach. He took a long sip and placed the cup on the living room table. With a spin on his heel he let himself roll onto the couch. He closed his eyes, wondering for a moment why he didn’t remember staggering from his bed to the kitchen. Or when he made coffee. Or when he actually walked to the couch. His eyes fluttered open as familiarity caressed the side of his face. Zoey smiled, her eyes locked with his, as she lay over him on the couch. She was dressed in pajamas and her purple bathrobe.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

  Striker stared into her eyes, the same fog preventing him from remembering how coffee was made also prevented him from remembering why he felt sadness when he gazed at her so closely. “I don’t know,” he said. “I feel like I miss you.”

  She kissed him on the forehead. “I love you too. How’s the coffee?”

  “Perfect,” he said, reaching for the cup on the table. Zoey handed it to him as they sat up.

  “I was thinking we could spend a lazy day in together,” she said. “We haven’t done that in a while.”

  He nodded as he sipped the drink in his hands. The two sat in a brief silence, nestled together on the couch. “You’re quiet,” he said after a moments.

  She shook her head, but smiled, “There’s a lot on my mind. We really don’t need to worry about it right now, though. We haven’t had much real quality time in a while.”

  Striker’s gaze settled on the table as he pulled Zoey close. A journal of her’s sat on it— purple and plastered with stickers. It filled him with a sudden sense of dread he couldn’t place.

  “I meant to put that away,” said Zoey, as she snatched it from the table, carrying it to their bedroom. Thinking little more of it, Striker closed his eyes. When he opened them, a warm feeling washed over him, as he looked at the downtown skyline, seated on his balcony. The sun and moon were high overhead, and a distant structure pierced the clouds. Zoey poured herself a cup of chardonnay. Her namesake brand. Striker felt yet more unease as he stared at the label.

  “You’ve got that look again,” she said, as she set the bottle down.

  “Something about the bottle,” he said. “Not that particular one— you know— nevermind.” His eyes wandered to the side table between them. The bottle of Zoey chardonnay and a bottle of unlabeled whiskey sat side-by-side. On Striker’s end of the table was a double shot. “There was a girl from Marin who ordered that at the Norton,” he continued, furrowing his brow, before pausing. “I don’t know why that crossed my mind, honestly.”

  Zoey giggled. “Not many people go to the Norton for wine. Was she cute?”

  He shrugged. “We just talked for a few minutes… Not that I can remember what about.”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “It must not have been than important, then? Cheers?” She held up her cup. He obliged and downed the contents of the shot glass. Silence settled between them again.

  “What did we do yesterday?” asked Striker.

  Zoey shifted in her seat, shaking her head with a puzzled look on her face. “The usual?”

  “I can’t remember it. I feel like I can’t remember anything right now.”

  She looked into his eyes, “Like I said— does it matter? We’re here together.”

  “I get that… Something feels off, though. Like, I don’t know, you’re not feeling okay or… something. You’re just way quieter than usual. And I still can’t get rid of this weird feeling that I miss you for some reason?”

  Zoey rounded the table and sat in his lap. “Baby, I’m here right now.”

  “I know that. I just also want to know what’s going on so I can try to help you feel better, if I can. Or at least help with whatever’s going on?”

  “It’s not something you can fix. You really shouldn’t worry about it.” She sighed and embraced him, pulling his head into her chest as he closed his eyes. They remained locked together for a few moments before she pulled away. When he opened his eyes, they were on the couch again, Zoey now laying atop him as she often would when they watched a movie on her laptop.

  “Why are you keep dodging my questions?”

  She grimaced. “Sometimes I have to.”

  Striker grimaced as well. He wanted to respond, but nothing of substance came to mind. Instead, his eyes wandered around the room. On the table, again, was Zoey’s journal. This time, without hesitation, he picked it up. With it in hand, he felt memories untangle.

  “You sent me this,” he said, beginning to crack the journal open.

  She stopped him, clapping her hands over his. “No— Don’t ever open that here.” Her eyes were wide and serious in a way he’d never seen before.

  He stared back at her, as he set the journal back on the table. “Where did you go?”

  She shook her head slowly. “I’m here. In front of you, right now. That’s what matters— That’s what’s real right now.” She paused, seeming to debate her next few words. “You said I sent that to you, right?”

  “I found it on my desk a few days ago. On the first.”

  “…Of the month?”

  “Yeah, but the year, technically. It’s January. You know that, right?”

  She fell silent again, her pupils dancing between his eyes. “You haven’t met Molly yet, have you?”

  He shook his head.

  “You need to find her. I need you to focus on this right now.” She was speaking faster. Uncharacteristically urgent.

  “Why do I need to find her? Where did you go?”

  “It doesn’t matter where I went or where I go, you need to find her and take my journal to her.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I really need you to listen to me, Striker. I don’t even know if you’re going to remember this when you need to.”

  “Why are you being so vague?”

  “I have to be.”

  “Does she know how to translate it?”

  She shook her head with a simple, “No.”

  “Then, I’ll figure it out.”

  “No,” she said, “Not yet. You can’t yet. You have to take it to Molly. People will kill you for that journal. You mentioned you talked to a woman at the Norton. Was that on New Year’s Eve, too?”

  Striker nodded.

  “Was she alone?”

  “She had a friend. I think their names were Elsie and Ada. Or that’s what they told me at least.”

  “The short one— she didn’t talk, did she?”

  Striker shook his head.

  “I— They shou— f-f-f-f,” as she stuttered, her entire presence seemed to shudder, like a glitch in reality, until her labored breathing calmed. Striker reached for her shoulder, but froze when she said, “You need to go. Anywhere. It doesn’t matter. You have to leave this apartment.”

  “Case got into a fight with ‘em and came out with dirt in her eyes. I’ll be fine.”

  “You need to leave Case out of this. Both of you need to stop. Just leave—” she paused, and looked at the door, “no, find Molly.”

  “I could be figuring out what’s happening with you. Or whatever happened to you.”

  “That’s— Striker, I love you, but that’s a really stupid idea.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re stronger than you. They’re faster than you. Whatever happened with Case, she got lucky.” Zoey paused. “I’m glad she’s still alive. And I want you to be safe. You have to find Molly and pass off my journal if that’s going to happen.”

  Striker wanted to protest. The situation was spiraling, and however Zoey happened to be in front of him now, he had a distinct feeling the encounter would be shorter than he hoped. Her instructions only deepened his growing dread. “How do I even do that? Can you tell me her last name or something?”

  “Shit,” muttered Zoey. “I don’t know. We don’t really share names like that. I only know her first name because we’re kinda close.”

  “You just know her first name because you’re ‘so’ close?”

  “This really isn’t the time, Striker.” She stood up and began pacing. He looked at the journal on the table, then back up at her. She was staring back at him, with her arms crossed. “You’re not going to give this up,” she said, moreso speaking the fact out loud than asking a question, perhaps to solidify its meaning in her own mind.

  “Probably not,” replied Striker.

  “Okay,” she said. Her posture changed, and her voice shifted into clinical monotone, “You need to understand what you’re getting yourself into.”

  Striker furrowed his brow, “What does that mean?”

  Without a word, she walked to the light switch and flicked it on. In the next moment, the room was bathed in absolute darkness. Striker felt weightless, like he was floating, with no frame of reference in a vast expanse.

  In a sudden brilliant flash, he felt solid ground beneath him. He faced a door framed with light leaking through. Behind him were stairs that went down, with a waist-height metal handrail.

  The space was impossibly lit. There were no lights in the stairway. What should have been dark corners had no shadows. He felt suddenly in a foreign space, but knew at the same time that where he stood was not far from where he had been sitting moments before, like space itself had shifted around him. He was, for the first time, completely aware that he was not awake. He realized, looking down at himself, his body was feminine, and he was wearing a dress he didn’t recognize.

  “I’m dreaming,” he said, out loud. “I was just in my fucking living room,” he continued louder, before yelling, “and everything better change back right now!”

  Nothing changed. He held his nose, shut his mouth, and tried to breathe. He was unable. Despite his newfound awareness, he had no power in a space he believed to be wholly his own. He looked over the edge of the railing when he heard something below. There were a dizzying number of spiraling flights below him. They were rectangular and uniform, like those in a skyscraper.

  He caught sight of two figures— both pitch black, ascending the stairs at inhuman speed. His left hand burned. The black line on the back of his palm seemed to vibrate, almost dancing. He rubbed it and shook his hand before he looked back over the rail again. The figures were already ascending the final set of stairs, to his floor. The short one leapt from the landing below, planting itself directly in front of Striker.

  The way it moved shifted between animal and human. It tilted its ‘head’, as if interested in him, descending into a crouch. The tall one’s movements were more deliberate and slow now, as it walked up the stairs. Its head brushed the ceiling as it reached top, standing still, swaying like a massive tree in a breeze. It was less animate than the short one, who had fully settled back, wiggling its rear. Striker thought of a cat, and what felines do before they pounce.

  He turned to run toward the door. The small one leapt, bounding off of the wall next to Striker, landing between him and door. It pounced, and Striker’s face felt cold as his back hit the ground. His vision was blurred and red. His face was wet with viscous liquid. Mounted upon him, the small void-figure tore into his chest, and he felt and heard bone crack as he saw viscera fly into the air, against walls, and onto his face, further obscuring his ability to see. He was paralyzed. The world slowly became darker. Too slowly, as the small one continued to rip and tear at what was left of him on the floor.

  Before the darkness had completely set in, he saw Zoey standing over him. She choked down the concern on her face, staring into his eyes. She said only, “Run.”

  The word sounded almost cruel. Like she chose to tell him what to do long after it was too late.

  He didn’t remember ever closing his eyes, but the sound of house music jolted them open as he sat in a booth, just to the side of an unfamiliar dance floor. His body was masculine and toned now, with painted nails, tight skinny jeans, and a mesh shirt. The club was thick with people, in a fever pitch of intoxication from various substances. He pulled out his phone. The time was 55:55. He had a single notification: a text from Zoey.

  “Run.”

  Striker jumped to his feet, feeling a rush of chemical-induced euphoria mixed with anxiety. It was sudden and nauseating. Striker vomited a stream of maggots onto the floor in front of himself as soon as he caught his breath. No one took notice or cared as he wiped his face with his arm. Their faces were distorted caricatures of human visages that melted and reformed into overjoyed expressions of disconcerting glee.

  His left hand burned yet again. He spotted an exit sign, toward which he maneuvered and let himself out into a short walkway between two apartment buildings. At the far end was an open door. Between himself and was a short, young main, with rippling muscles and buzzed hair. When they locked eyes, his vision began to vibrate, making the world a blur, just as it had when he into Elsie’s at the GetUp.

  Hastily, he returned inside and pushed his way through the crowd toward another exit sign at the opposite end of the dance floor. Striker knew the other one— the tall one— had to be among the crowd, searching for him. All of the bodies in the space made it difficult to see very far in any direction. All of the figures around him were at least taller than he was. Navigating through them toward the other exit was a task in and of itself. No matter how much he pushed, the intoxicated party goers remained planted and transfixed in their revelry, paying Striker no attention whatsoever.

  Over their heads, he could at least see the exit sign, closer with each hurried step, remaining just careful enough not to fall over one of the partygoers. They remained so firmly rooted to the space itself that he could climb over people. And he did.

  He didn’t exist to them.

  Except for the one that was just a bit taller than the rest, with long bangs like Ada’s from New Year's Eve. He avoided looking at her face, feeling twinges of that uncomfortable vibration he’d felt a moment before. He quickened his pace, using the partygoer’s unusual stability to keep his balance, using some to vault himself forward.

  The lights were becoming more dazzling, and the tactile sensations he felt from the people he touched varied in levels of discomfort. They didn’t feel like people as much as they did things. As he reached the edge of the crowd near a bar, he could see Zoey standing in the doorway, beneath the exit sign. Her expression remained as clinical as it had in that last moment before his vision faded, after he was torn to shreds in the stairwell.

  He looked behind himself and accidentally locked eyes with the tall woman, who was directly behind him, leaning down with her face inches away from his. His eyes turned, violently, in opposite directions to avoid her’s, seemingly of their own volition. She placed her hands on his rib cage and grasped. Her fingers effortlessly pierced his skin, using his bones like handles as she lifted him into the air. Screams erupted around the tall woman as she threw him toward the center of the dance floor. As he landed, he saw a torso and blood arcing in the air from its bottom end as it sailed above the crowd. The crowd was running toward the front door now, and Striker couldn’t get to his feet amid the pain and panic. One— or perhaps a couple of them— exerted all of their force as they stepped on one of his legs, breaking it with an accentuated snap. He curled into a ball on the ground until the stragglers of the crowd had passed him. He was left alone with the tall woman who walked toward him, a line a gore behind her on the dance floor.

  Striker turned and crawled toward the back exit, before something cleaved his back, severing his ability to use his legs entirely. His back was wet, and felt only more so as he lay on his stomach. His arms were weak. He dragged himself forward, just a few feet, until he was yanked back and flipped over. The tall woman plunged one of her hands, like a knife, into Striker’s chest.

  She pulled out whatever she’d grasped within.

  Viscera again.

  It covered Striker’s eyes and made the world a red blur.

  He wanted it to be over sooner.

  When darkness fully overtook him again, he thought— he hoped— he might open his eyes in his bed.

  He opened them after being jostled, sitting up at a Muni bus stop on Market street. The Powell streetcar turnaround was behind him and people of all types were milling about. Like the club, their faces were caricatures, missing the finer details of what makes people unique. Even without them, Striker could tell who was going to work, who was a tourist, and who was going home from a wild night that had spilled into the next day. He was in business-casual attire now, with a pale blue button-up shirt, jeans held by a leather belt, and a gray blazer.

  He immediately jumped to his feet and began walking up the road, toward the Ferry Building. He didn’t know what his destination was, only that he needed to move. Like the stairwell, the City’s light and shadow played in uncanny ways that he wouldn’t otherwise notice, were it not for how he made his living. He noticed, also, that there was nothing but skyscrapers, even where he remembered buildings of more modest size for downtown. His left hand began to itch furiously.

  He saw a group of suited men, one of whom stood nearly a head over the rest of them. Despite the sunglasses he wore, Striker knew the man’s eyes were locked on him. He abandoned his plan and sprinted toward the BART station. He reached into his back pocket as he scrambled down the stairs, pulling out a wallet that contained cards he couldn’t make out, except for a Clipper card. He’d only used Zoey’s a handful of times and used cash for his other transportation endeavors. He couldn’t figure out what the do with the damned thing. Casting a glance around the station, he caught sight of someone who’s face was too clearly-defined to be one of the dream-masses.

  It was an old man whose smile was uncannily wide, and uncannily fast for an elderly man with a walker.

  Striker hopped the gate and sprinted down the stairs to the platform, unsure of what he would do next. He was briefly relieved to find a BART train preparing to leave the platform as he reached it. He ran aboard and held his breath until the doors closed and neither of his apparent tails were in the train car.

  Zoey was in front of him when he turned toward the head of the train. Her expression remained as it had been.

  “Okay,” he said, catching his breath. “I ran.”

  “So did Mike.”

  Striker’s anxiety rose at her deadpan response and spiked when he heard, “Next stop, Oakland.”

  He looked toward the back of the train, through the windows of the double-doors that joined cars. He was barely able to make out the figures of the suited man in sunglasses and the old man, now without the walker. Striker looked back to the frontward-door, past Zoey.

  “You won’t make it,” she said.

  He looked toward the back again as the short one threw the doors open. The pair were in his car, now. Zoey was gone when he looked back, but her absence made running toward the other end an easier task. He reached the doors and pulled the first set open before the tall one grabbed hold of his blazer and threw him toward the center of the car.

  He was surrounded.

  He knew the train wouldn’t be reaching Oakland for another few minutes.

  He knew he couldn’t get past either of them.

  He knew running was no longer an option.

  Instead, he rose to his feet and charged the short one. As he dove for a tackle, the old man jumped, clinging to the grab bar on the ceiling of the car, upside down, staring at Striker as he tumbled to the floor. Before he was able to get to his feet, he was pulled up into the air by his coat. The tall one carried him toward the side doors of the train. The short one ripped them open as the tall one held him in the space between the wall of the Transbay tube and the door of the BART car, before pushing Striker’s body into the wall as the train continued to move at highway speed. Chunks of his head ripped away as it ground into the wall, bringing the all-too-familiar darkness much more quickly than before.

  Time meant nothing, so he wasn’t sure when he opened his eyes. When he did, however, he was laying on his living room floor. The detail was vivid and he felt again as though the space he occupied was his. Zoey stood over him, her expression sick and empathetic, in stark contrast to the void of emotion she’d clad herself with moments before. She sat down on the floor next to him.

  “Do you get why you need to find Molly now? And get rid of that journal?”

  Striker remained silent, staring at the ceiling.

  “I don’t know how much time we have left together. Are you going to find Molly?”

  “Can they really do all that?” Striker’s gaze remained fixed, upward. “Or is that just coming from me dreaming?”

  “All of those things happened to people.”

  “Am I really dreaming? Are you really here?”

  “Yes… and as much as I can be. If things really are like you say, I’m losing my sense of time. I fucked up.”

  “Where exactly are you?”

  “That doesn’t matter. What matters is you do what I told you. Bring my journal to Molly and let her handle the rest. And don’t open it at home. Ever. Even if you’re not dreaming.” She settled into silence.

  “What’s wrong now?”

  “On top of everything else? I don’t think you’re going to remember this. I can’t really send you reminders.” She paused again. “I— can we watch the sunrise on the balcony?”

  “Sure,” said Striker, absently. “I just want to know, what was the point of making me go through all that?”

  She took his hand and lifted him up. “Like I said, everything you experienced happened to someone already. There are way too many bodies piling up over this. I don’t want you to be one of them. If they know you have that journal—”

  “—I get it,” he said with a heavy sigh.

  “Are you still planning to figure this out yourself?”

  He shook his head. “Not with these stakes.”

  She sighed. “I hope you remember that when you wake up.”

  They made their way onto the balcony, where only the two chairs remained. They pushed them together and sat hand-in-hand.

  Over the eastern horizon, a wild spectrum of colors erupted as a massive sun began to crest the hills of the East Bay. It was a mesmerizing entity, radiating soft warmth that bathed the pair in morning heat. The two remained silent as the orb continued to rise above the hills, growing larger and hotter.

  “What happens I can’t find Molly? Like— what if they do get the journal?” asked Striker.

  “You really shouldn’t think about that right now. Remember where you are. Your whims are too material.”

  “I just got ripped apart, what, three times? If that’s what they’ll do for it, what would they do with it?”

  Zoey paused on the thought before responding, “I don’t want to scare you. Especially not right now, but it would be bad. I’m not going to lie. There’s a reason people have died over this already.”

  “How are those… not bigger stories?”

  “Because it’s not hard to make one thing look like something else. And people are better than you think at fooling themselves for comfort.”

  Striker stared at the sun entity hanging in the air, dwarfing the impossible skyscrapers of downtown. The fog and clouds had burned off. The warm tones of the sunrise were slowly supplanted by nuclear luminescence.

  “They already know I go to the Norton.”

  “I really hope that’s all they know. If they do find out where we live, the safest place to be is inside. Breathe,” said, Zoey. “But don’t close your eyes.”

  It was too late for that.

  He had, while trying to digest what she meant by ‘the safest place to be’.

  He no longer felt her hand.

  His chair began to rattle violently. Zoey’s empty chair jostled in place as well. He was alone. Even the sun was gone, though its nuclear radiance and heat remained.

  He stood, looking over the balcony. The sidewalk and street below trembled, as though a powerful quake tore through the City. The chairs on the balcony levitated into the sky, as did anything not tied or bolted down.

  As he looked back out over the Potrero district, the shaking had radiated outward. The impossible downtown skyscrapers swayed like bamboo. The black mark on Striker’s left hand was searing— now, a wholly different sensation than he’d yet experienced.

  He felt something else he wasn’t sure how to process, some foreign instinct, that directed his attention upward.

  Above him was an open book. It wasn’t Zoey’s journal, but it felt like it. Before he could think about what it might be, its pages exploded out, in inconceivable quantities and all directions. He shielded his face with his arms, expecting another grisly end and yet more darkness, but instead he felt his weight shift upward. He too, now, was levitating.

  When he peeked through his forearms, he could see chunks of the building, rebar, soil, and liquids he didn’t want to ponder ascending into the sky. All matter Striker could observe was being disintegrated in slivers of pages. He alone remained unscathed as all around him was obliterated. A jolting tone filled his ears, making him his clasp his hands over them to no effect.

  It was grating.

  Like something synthesized, yet natural, yet distorted, yet perfect.

  Before him was downtown, its buildings no longer spires, but shapes like architected lightning strikes. Or perhaps mycelium roots. Shapes only possible because dust and glass was all that remained in strange fractal branches.

  The sky darkened into familiar Bay Area fog.

  Everything went silent.

  Everything fell.

  Striker woke up.

  He laid in his bed, staring at the ceiling. His blankets were on the floor, having been cast aside at some point in the night. He felt no hint of rest. He could recall only brief flashes of Zoey. The journal. Drinks on his balcony. Fragmented, split-second scenes, unfamiliar to him. They slipped away, faster as he tried to recall them.

  It was foggy outside. His room was a bleak gray. The line on the back of his hand was completely black now. He stared at it for a moment, rubbing it with his thumb, before resigning himself to another fifteen minutes of what he called rest.

  He forced himself out of bed and took a shower, then sat on the couch to go through the journal again. He went back to that recurring set of symbols.

  The coded number two.

  The round one that he figured represented time.

  The final symbol that looked like an ‘X’ with a zigzag over it.

  A knock at the door interrupted him. It was Case. He shut the journal and opened the door.

  “I tried to call, but your phone’s dead. Busy?” she asked when he opened it. He looked back at the journal for a moment before letting her in.

  Her brow furrowed as they locked eyes. She was trying to read him, but unsatisfied with her inability to do so. “Do you want to hang out,” she paused, looking at the state of his apartment, “and maybe clean a bit?”

  He shrugged and didn’t protest. Case sat on the couch before she unloaded the usual items— phone, cigarettes, and lighter— onto the table. She placed each item bordering the journal, but never on it. Her expression as she sat them down was something between confusion and unease.

  “Can I try something?” he asked, as he sat beside her.

  “If it’s nothing either of us will regret.”

  Striker looked at the journal and back at Case.

  “Did I do something to the table?”

  “No. Do you see anything weird or special on it?”

  She shook her head.

  “You don’t see anything at all aside from your stuff?”

  “No. Is this like some kind of magic trick or something?”

  “...Yeah,” said Striker. He put a finger on one of the journal’s pages. “Put your finger right next to mine.”

  “Are you going to smack my hand or something?”

  “No, just… trust me.”

  Case shrugged and dropped her finger on the table, off to the left of the book, far away from his. She tried again, missing by a wide margin. She looked at Striker and made another attempt. Her finger landed near where it had the first time. “Are you going to stop moving your finger?”

  “I’m not,” he paused. “Let me see your hand.”

  “Okay, but this is getting weird.”

  Striker took her hand and guided it toward the journal. When he placed her hand down, it landed around, but never on it. He could feel her redirecting it. “Are you moving your hand?” He asked.

  “Nope.”

  He picked up the journal and placed it on her lap.

  She leapt up, as though he’d poured boiling water onto her. The journal tumbled to the floor. She ran her hands along her thighs and looked around herself, her face flushing red as she sat back down.

  “Are you okay?” asked Striker.

  “I thought you,” she trailed off, “Was that part of the trick or something? Because I don’t like this trick.”

  “No,” said Striker, “I think I fucked it up or something— Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, I think I just,” she took a deep breath, “Last night was a long shift. I’m probably just still wound up. How about we get started on this?”

  The two split the work. Striker cleaned his bathroom and hallway while Case worked on the living room. A magic show played on her laptop to break up the monotony, alternating silence, and rustling of trash.

  “Oh, wow,” she said, as she came across the clock painting. “Is this why you were asking about Zoey’s code?”

  “Kind of. Do you know what any of that means?”

  “This,” she said pointing to the circular symbol, “means like five things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Ummm,” she thought for a moment before proceeding slowly, “time, and clock, and watch? But I think she said those were just the literal definitions? The context changes what the words mean. Like, watch can mean a watch on your wrist, but it’s the same for watching tv, like English. Ya know?”

  “Shit,” he said, “Do you remember any other symbols?”

  “Me?”

  “You’re the only person here…?”

  “No, like ‘Me’ in a sentence. In Zoey’s language. Or was it I? I think it pretty much means both.”

  “Can you write it? If you remember it?”

  She got a pencil and paper and drew the symbol— The X with the zig zag over it. The proportions were off, but it was basically the same thing. That was about as much as she knew. She had had to leave early when she was called in for work.

  Striker sat on the couch with the book open, staring at those three symbols.

  ‘Two watching me.’

  That was the only translation that made sense. He sank back into the couch, thinking about the attack on New Year’s Eve. He thought about the strange women, Ada and Elsie, and their tussle with Case. They still had his sketchbook, as far as he knew.

  He flipped to one of the ‘impossible’ pages of the journal. There was a large sigil in the center that danced and distorted on the cheap media. Striker tried recreating it in pen but found his copies to be incorrect when he referenced the journal again. Each attempt was as though he were copying a different form. He put his finger on the book and yanked it back to scratch the furious itch that erupted along the black line on it. A memory slipped through his fingers as he did. Or perhaps it was feeling. He couldn’t tell which. He stared at the foreign line. Case still hadn’t mentioned it and she would have been furious if he’d gotten a tattoo without her. Zoey, Case, and himself had made an agreement to get their first together. At the least, she would have asked him why he had a strange black line on his hand.

  He accepted that it wasn’t going away.

  He put the journal on his lap and took a breath before putting his palm on the page. It felt like a swarm of insects crawled over his hand. Swallowing the feeling, he pushed his palm down harder, refusing to draw it back. He could see the sigil underneath— through— his palm.

  He blacked out.

  The early morning sun was beaming on him when he woke up. The coffee table was pushed up against the bookshelves, the couch was pushed into a corner. Every loose piece of junk on his floor was shoved up against the walls outward from where he sat. He was on the floor. It felt like time just skipped with nothing in between. The journal was on the floor beside him. He picked it up on the way to his room and placed it on his desk, before launching himself into his bed. Beyond the desk, in the corner, he saw a slim purple bookshelf.

  A bookshelf he had never seen in his bedroom before.

  “Fuck me,” he muttered as he got to his feet. He stared at it for nearly twenty minutes, checking his phone obsessively, to confirm to himself he was indeed awake. He touched the bookshelf, half-expecting it to disappear.

  It did not.

  It was short, about three feet tall and two feet wide. The top of the two shelves housed a tin box, some money, and an empty pistol magazine. The bottom shelf had a few books, including a binder that caught his attention. He opened it.

  Someone— he figured Zoey— had taken a permanent marker to most of the pages, redacting the majority of what could be read. It had to be the legend he was looking for, but less than a hundred of likely thousands of symbols that were written in those pages remained legible.

  It was better than nothing.

  The sun was up.

  Striker set the two documents side-by-side on the table in front of him, along with a sheet of paper.

  And a flask of whiskey.

  He had work to do.