Walls of dark surround me A sea of negativity Responsibility and obligation cloud happiness The world is filled with evil Greed, hate, lust Beaten down by reality I scream in silence My smile is a lie Fabricated to survive Every time to plead for help I’m met with empty apologies Only ever prescribed words, no treatment from friends or family Consume pills to numb myself from the world An empty bottle is my best friend I survived another day.

Blind dates, missed connections I’d given up on love or even friendship Then I meet you And my world changed Genuine conversation and care Positivity, a foreign concept, consumes me I fall asleep smiling as we say our good nights You are the warmth in an icy heart The Yang to my world of Yin You teach me to see beauty in the vast dark of the world Help me claw myself out of the grave I’ve dug myself into Ease the pain and hollowness

I vow myself to do the same for your Always To become your rock that weathers the storm Your ray of light in an overcast sky The person you can be vulnerable with Everything you’ve been for me

If I die tomorrow It will be a life well lived thanks to you You saved me Threw a Life preserver While I was drowning in my own self pity You saw me, flaws and all and accepted me Never tried to change me, simply taught me how to be a better version of myself

“Have you ever heard the story of the Blind Watcher?” Sally asks me with a playful yet menacing tone while we get our backpacks out of our lockers. “The Blind Watcher?” I reply confused but willing to play along with her little Halloween story. Sally smirks but tries to quickly hide it with a facade of seriousness. “Yes, you know they say he comes out the week before Halloween to pick his next list of victims. He stalks them in the shadows, or broad daylight. It doesn’t matter for only his chosen few will ever actually see him. Some say he’s a ghost, some say a demon, but what everyone that’s seen him agrees exactly how he looks. A tall figure, greyish blue in color. Almost as if he is a corpse risen from the morgue. His nose isn’t there, simply the hole of where it once sat. His eyes clouded over and grey, dead. He stands with a hunch and is a tall slender build. His toothy grin hidden by a wool scarf, his sunken features still clearly visible even with a heavy pitch dark overcoat, accented with an electric blue flower on the lapel. He’s said to stand outside his victim’s home in the pouring rain huddled under a large black umbrella, hands playfully clutching it as his blind, dead eyes stare towards the home.” I cut her off, “And how is a blind stalker supposed to be dangerous exactly?!” She does her best to hide her growing grin, clearly pleased that her story is getting under my skin. “Well he is a harbinger of death, his gaze causes untold amounts of rotten luck and accidents to start happening to the victims. Progressivly getting worse and more dangerous or painful. He causes horrible nightmares and hallucinations even. Until that unfortunate soul inevitably takes their own life.” I feel my skin shiver as goosebumps creep over my arms,”as if Sally! You’re just trying to scare me back after that Halloween prank I totally got you with last year!” I defensively spit out. “Just watch your back next week, he’ll be out there as Halloween approaches and his next lucky victim may just be…..YOU!” She yells that last word making me jump and fall back. “You jerk, I almost fell!” I say catching my balance. She finally loses all composure and busts up laughing, “God! You shoulda seen the look on your face!” She points and continues laughing. “You were about ready to piss yourself!” She continues. ‘Was not! I was just acting so you’d be all proud of your lame story!“ “Whatever you say you brave boy you” she teases. We finish getting our things together and start our walk home from school, stepping outside into the cool autumn air, leaves all shades of orange, red, brown and yellow. As we start our journey home down residential streets all decorated for Halloween Sally continues jabbing me with “Ooh I think I just saw him!” Or “What was that?!” And I can only playfully laugh at her, but for some reason I can’t shake the feeling we are actually being watched. The overcast sky slowly starts to darken with what could only be incoming rain and before we know it we are running the rest of the way home using our backpacks as shields from the rain. Laughing we run under the front patio roof of her home, “see you tomorrow!” She yells as I start walking down her driveway “Unless the blind watcher gets ya!”. Ignoring her joke I shout back “see you tomorrow!”. I start walking home from Sally’s, its only about five minutes away. Her and I have been best friends our entire lives, our parents were always good friends and we were practically raised together. As I head down the street, trying to use the trees as cover I notice a dark figure in the corner of my eye. As I turn to look across the street where I could have sworn I saw it, I’m greeted only to heavy rain on an empty sidewalk.

John is awoken by a hard scratching sound from the basement again. “Every night for a week straight, I swear this sound will drive me mad. It’s time to finally man up like Dad would say and ghost down there.” John speaks quietly under his breath as if psyching himself up, but trying to not wake his still sleeping wife. John blindly grabs the oil lantern and matches on the side table and leaves the bedroom before striking a match and lighting the light, making sure to keep the shutters mostly closed so as to be as stealth as possible. His footsteps are light and the only sound is the gentle scratch of his slippers on the hardwood floor, and his nervous breathing. After heading down the hallway, then the staircase, cold but comfortable, he pauses to listen. Scratch, scratch, scratch, he hears clear as day muffled only by distance down the stairs and the old basement door. “Now or never’ he whispers to himself as he descends the stairs towards the kitchen. He looks into the dark kitchen, signs of his wife’s cooking from dinner earlier still linger, he swears he can still smell the roast she surprised him with, briefly distracting him from the mission at hand. He slowly approaches the basement door after shaking his reminiscing of the warm and lovely night he had with her. He hesitates as he reaches for the basement doorknob. Slowly turning the brass knob he tries to avoided that blasted squeak the door always makes. “I really need to fix the squeaking” he thinks trying to distract himself further from his nerves. But he is quickly brought back to reality by the scratching, so loud he flinches. A sudden burst of bravery overtakes him as he swings the door open. The squeaking hinges barely audible over the relentless scratching. He opens the lantern shutters more to illuminate the dark basement stairs. A sudden wave of icy air greets him ,”I hate how cold it is down here” he can’t help but to think as he calls out, “Who is down here?! I’m armed so let yourself be known now!” He bluffs. The scratching suddenly stops and the silence can only unnerve him further. He begins down the stairs, more vigilant than he’s ever been in his life. Suddenly a massive figure runs to confront him at the bottom of the stairs. His beam of light reveals a massive rat nearly the size of a teenager, and John can’t help but to let out a blood curdling scream as the rat leaps to him with unbelievable speed. It’s yellowed teeth sink deep into his cowering arms and he can only think of the danger he’s just put himself and his family in.

Harrison, Timothy please head to the next stage of the examination, a stoic agent says not looking up from her clipboard. He gets out of his seat with his first test in hand, “Where should I turn this one in?” He asks nerves on full blast. “You can leave it with me, but don’t keep the board waiting this is your practical exam.” She says extending a hand still refusing to look up from her clipboard. Timothy quickly hands in test and heads through the heavy wooden door, before him is a table with various bloody instruments, clearly makeshift weapons of common household items. A single stage light focuses all attention to the table and a bound man with a bag over his face, clearly unconscious. From somewhere over a loud speaker he hears a booming and powerful voice ,”choose whatever tools you’d like on that table or around the room, demonstrate your abilities to incapacitate and eliminate your target, a buzzer sounds as the metal restraints unlock from the man as he quickly tears his hood off his face. He blindly charges Tim and all Tim can think before acting on pure instinct is how this is his opportunity to solidify his position as an agent. Grabbing what could only be a table leg Tim swings wildly at the mans head, but is met with a swift duck and a hard punch to the jaw. Spun by the attack Tim realizes this won’t be such an easy task.

The sound of the speed boats combing the lake rattled me back to my senses. Five bodies so far have been discovered at the bottom of the lake, all with signs of recent decomposition. “I got another two bodies down here!” Shouts one of the diving team. Seven fucking bodies now, what kind of a monster came to this little town?! I stand with the coroner while he examines the first two bodies we brought up from the depths, “Can you tell COD yet?” I ask almost impatiently. I hate this part, standing around waiting for evidence to cling to and start following any lead the evidence unearths. “I won’t know what actually killed them until we get back to the lab, but it absolutely was foul play, you can see obvious signs of bludgeoning and stab wounds hidden under the clothes. The state of decomp unfortunately makes time of death rather recent, can’t determine exactly when until later, but if they are all in this state, the was a mass killing, one after the other likely”. “Jesus, seven vicious murders all under our noses and zero leads so far, no witnesses except that one hobbiest diver that discovered the first two bodies”.

I approach the diver knowing he doesn’t know a damn thing about this but protocol and hope guide me. I need some small bite to hook into and follow. “Mr. Evans? I’m Detective Green, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” “I suppose so, but I don’t know anything, and I already told the other officers everything I know.” Mr. Evans says trying to keep himself calm and collected. “Thank you Mr.Evans” I start. “Please just call me Jeff.” “Of course Jeff, so can you tell me how you came across the first bodies?” I ask as I pull out my notebook, reviewing his response to the report he already submitted. “As I told the other officer, I came to do some amature treasure hunting, you know, looking for stuff people lose off their boats or whatever. You can pawn some of that stuff for a pretty penny sometimes, usually I just find some trash and I try to clean it up as I can while I’m down there ya know?” “Do you do this often?” I ask not looking up from my notes. “The occasional weekend I’ll come out here and dive and fish, just escape for a bit, I got a family and sometimes a man just needs a break, ya know?” He replies with sincerity. “I get that Jeff, got a wife and newborn myself. But could you be a bit more specific? How many times a month would you estimate you come here?” I look up from the notes to show my understanding of his explaimntion. “Probably once a month, twice if I can manage.” He quickly replies with an honest politeness, “I’m sorry, I wish I could be more helpful, but I didn’t see anything strange at all, drove up here early, sun was up by the time I parked just up the road at the dock. Got right in the water and after finding a knock off Rolex I realized it was attached to a wrist, a human fucking wrist!” He exclaims progressively getting more worked up as I’m certain he’s reliving that trauma of finding not one but two human corpses. “Thank you Jeff, that’s really helpful” I interrupt and put a hand on his shoulder, “its okay, you don’t need to continue. You left your context info with the other officers so we will reach out if we need anything else. Thank you again Jeff” I shake his hand and turn to head back to the coroner. “Wait!” Jeff yells and runs to catch up to me. “Yes, what is it Jeff?” “I just remembered something, there was a boat docked, I thought nothing of it, I mean people leave their boats docked here all the time, I do even. But” he points up towards the dock, “it isn’t there anymore, and I haven’t left anywhere besides going underwater.”. “can you describe this boat?” I ask feeling the first bit of real hope in this case begin to flood over me. “It was pretty unremarkable, grey or faded black maybe, white stripes. Looked pretty beat up and old, not really cared for a whole lot. That’s really all I can remember about it” Jeff says alm,ost rushed so as to not lose the mental picture. “Thank you Jeff, this is a bigger help than you know” I say shaking his hand with much more vigor.