The light in the Stardust building makes no sense. There are shadows where there shouldn’t be, and glints of light in random corners, and sometimes the whole place gets this dappled look like it’s underwater.

So Lety’s not too concerned when a shadow falls over her workspace, only to find there’s nothing behind her when she bothers to turn around. No, there’s just a shadow, cast by god-knows-what, long and thin. The longer she stares, the more it resolves into a shape. There’s a broadness near the top, like shoulders, and it tapers down, down, into something spidery…

That’s enough of that, she thinks. She turns her attention back to the spreadsheets full of claims and the glow of her screen. No shadow has ever darkened this old, reliable Dell. Lety sighs and keeps her eyes on her work. Blinders on.

 

~*~

 

It’s chilly inside the office building. The poured concrete floor and bare walls don’t hold heat in very well. There’s a blobby, semi-abstract poster on the wall in fiery colors, and sometimes she runs her hands longingly over it as if it could actually warm her freezing hands. The workspaces remind her of desks at an elementary school: no privacy.

Lety keeps her eyes rigidly fixed on her computer for the rest of the afternoon, and she can feel them getting dry and red. She closes them for a long minute, and hears her email ping with a few more assignments. It’s already past four in the afternoon, but sure! Why not heap on more work?

After rushing through her last assignments, she hurries out of the building and into her car. The car is a sanctuary. It’s the closest she can get to owning a home, at least for the moment. In some ways, the car is beyond a home, because it can carry her over hundreds of thousands of miles of American concrete. It’s black and speedy, if not slick. She can recognize it immediately in a parking lot from the checkerboard seat covers and fuzzy green dice hanging from the rearview mirror.

Speeding down the highway, buildings and clouds pass, the world unfolds before her and she can breathe again. It’s all out there, a whole world, always there even when she can’t see it or remember it.

The strangeness at work isn’t a constant thing, but there’s enough to make her wary. Out here, in the golden light behind the wheel of a solid machine designed to do her bidding, Lety feels safe from shadows and overwork.

 

~*~

 

There’s a sunset behind Lety, streaked with gold and pink and setting into cerulean water. The brushstrokes smear out of focus and form a convincing backdrop in all the selfies she takes with Jean resting a head on her shoulder.

She captions the photo, paradise regained.

Speakers pound out hyperpop and she has to shout for anyone else at the table to hear her. The windows by their little booth are all steamed up from the bowls of ramen they’re slurping down.

“I mean, I try not to be like this. I don’t want complaining about work to become my entire identity,” Lety says loudly, and her voice cracks in the middle of her sentence because she’s speaking at the top of her lungs, competing with Charlie XCX.

“What is your job again?” Reya asks. “What do they want from you?” The joke is that she knows every complaint Lety has about her work, even knows her boss’s name.

“Wellness,” she chirps.

Reya rolls her eyes, and pushes for an actual answer. “What kind of wellness?”

“Full-body wellness. Total, holistic wellness.” She’s grinning, trying not to laugh.

It’s a wellness app.

The original plan for it was an odd combination of mental health advice and horoscopes. It didn’t test very well; people didn’t like the combination of psychology and the metaphysical. They moved on to meal plans catered to your personality, dietary needs, and zodiac sign. You can even pay for deliveries of the ingredients needed to make those meals, if you want.

It’s a ridiculous company, but the kind of ridiculous that gives people something to look forward to.

The rest of the night passes by with very little talk of work, and a few failed attempts at seduction from passersby. Lety sends them all away with creative threats involving her fencing sabre, even the ones who aren’t after her.

“I have to get home to my babies,” Lety says at some point in the night after she’s tried three or four different ciders, and loudly admired a stranger’s manicure. There’s a series of clumsy hugs, and then she’s heading outside to take a car home and watching lights flash by from the back of a cab.

Her babies are a set of vintage silk scarves she’s planning to sell online. Selling gorgeous clothes is almost as fun as buying them, so she shuffles goods around between herself and other vintage fanatics, hoping to break even most of the time. She has to soak them in a mix of vinegar and water overnight.

After blearily filling a plastic tub with the scarves and the cleaning solution, Lety sinks into her bed and pulls the striped comforter over her head. She sleeps surrounded by trinkets on shelves and papercrafts strung up on the walls. The clutter is cozy, like a nest.

~*~

 

Morning hits with the usual siren-sound of her alarm that signals a return to the working world. Lety has to show her face in a meeting that day, so she slips on a black blazer and pointed shoes and slicks her hair back from her face.

When she parks, she sees it as if for the first time: a weird little island of carefully trimmed grass. Nestled in the middle is her office building, a sleek reflective black glassy eyesore. It used to be a more conventional office, something like insurance or maybe an accounting firm.

Now, the interior is fully whitewashed, with cheery spots of color from well-placed planters and painted benches. There’s a mural at the front entrance, above the receptionist’s desk. It shows a galaxy of pastel planets circling around a bowl of salad. A pre-approved playlist tinkles softly in the background, the pop energy tempered by its low volume.

One of the first things Lety noticed after being hired is that taco trucks don’t stop anywhere near the unassuming industrial park where her work building is located. She’s worked at buildings like this before, and they all had a pretty robust system of food trucks of all kinds. The best part of leaving her house every day is getting to eat something delicious made by someone other than herself. Stardust has catered lunches some days, but most of the time Lety wants to take a look at the sky and breathe unfiltered air.

It took Lety a few weeks of aimless walks around the area, which is full of office buildings like her own, to find the food truck that regularly stops by. She visits them at least once a week.

Today she has to walk five blocks before she spots Tacos Oaxaqueños and the white truck covered in vivid color photos of their best dishes. Her shoes are cutting into the backs of her ankles by the time she gets there.

“Why don’t you ever stop by the Mercy Stone industrial park?” she asks in her faltering Spanish. “You know, the one with the big black obelisk in front.” Her ankles throb right in time as she asks the question.

“Oh, god,” Benny says to her, “Is that where you work? That place creeps me out.” He always talks a little slower for her, because he knows it’s hard for her to keep up sometimes. It’s very cute, and deeply embarrassing.

“That’s why you don’t ever go there?” she asks, trying not to sound too shrill.

“Yeah. That’s why. Plus, nobody ever buys our food there, and a bat hit our front window the last time we parked right there. In the middle of the damn day! Really bad vibes.” He tucks a lock of black hair behind his ear.

“Okay, fine. That’s a pretty good reason.” Lety has to ask, though. “A bat, really?”

Benny just says, “Wanna see the pictures?”

“God, no. Ugh.”

She drops a few dollars in the tip jar and wanders off to eat her lunch, thinking the entire time about what Benny said. Lety always thought she was being paranoid. Clearly, she’s not the only one who hates that building. She’s sick of having to go out of her way to get lunch, though.

 

~*~

 

In the lunchroom, Tom’s sitting on a table with his Converse planted on a bench. Everyone else is crammed onto the remaining lunch benches. When Lety walks in, a grin spreads over the lower half of his face.

He’s the kind of startup CEO who likes to pal around with his employees. He wants to seem friendly, but he makes everyone in the room nervous, all from the comfort of his Patagonia fleece.

“We’re just talking about everybody’s weekend plans,” he says pleasantly. “I’m going on a little fishing trip, and Irene was about to tell us about that new Netflix show. Great stuff.”

Irene shrugs. “I just leave it on in the background while I do other things. It’s not that great.”

Justin looks up from lunch and volunteers, “I’m going to do my taxes.” Tom nods approvingly.

“I bought three yards of antique lace last night,” Lety says, “and this weekend I’m gonna figure out what to do with it. Maybe a tailor can add it to a jacket or something. There’s a swap meet I wanna visit, too.”

As she speaks, Tom’s face fades to a careful blankness. Something about this interaction is disappointing to him, but Lety has no idea what.

“Where do you get all that energy, Lets?” he says, using his favorite nickname for her that he came up with himself. No one else calls her that, and she wouldn’t let anyone else do so. “And do you have any to spare? Anyway. Everyone, while we’re here– the next catered lunch will be this Friday. Kick off the weekend with a bang, y’know? And we can talk about anything, any comments, questions or concerns you might have.”

Lety has to pass by a series of other departments on the way back to her desk, including Nadia’s. When Lety first joined the Stardust accounting team, she could hardly stop from staring at Nadia, because she cut such a stylish and interesting figure.

Nadia has been working here almost since they opened, a good four years, and it shows. There’s something gray to her complexion, like she hasn’t seen the sun in months. It’s ridiculous because the sun is beaming insistently overhead, just like every day this week. She seems almost lifeless, sitting at her computer surrounded by notepads.

“Hey, Nadia,” Lety says. Nadia nods, her blue bob swinging into her face. She doesn’t bother to swipe the hair away from her face. She just sits there with blue strands all in her eyes.

If Lety had any friends at work, she would have complained about the workload, or about Tom’s coldness towards her. Instead, she smiles widely at Nadia in the hopes of making her uncomfortable. She has no idea why Nadia hates her.

The next three hours pass quickly, in a haze of number crunching and slight paranoia. Today’s another day of refusing to look over her shoulder. Something about her peripheral vision invites the worst tricks of the light.

As soon as she’s in her car, Lety tries to shake the place off: she switches out her sensible flats for a pair of flashy sneakers or leather boots. Today, it’s gold leather sneakers with rainbow laces. Startups may have a rep for being casual but she’ll die before she lets anyone accuse her of a lack of professionalism.

~*~

 

Lety puts her jacket back in her closet and glances at the fencing gear piled in a tub in the corner of the room. She’s really fallen off in her practice lately. It was her main thing in high school, but since then it’s only gotten harder and harder to dedicate the hours to getting dressed, driving to the fencing club, getting to know the people there, and finding someone to fight who won’t take it all too seriously.

Alone in her room, she picks up her fencing sabre and arranges her body into position. She does a basic advance and jabs out with the sabre, but it’s not a real move. She’s definitely not wearing the right gear. She moves around the room, careful to move her feet in the right order. Fencing has always reminded her of dancing, and the elegant white outfits make her feel like some avenging angel. By herself, she can bridge the gap between fencing and dancing more easily.

 

~*~

 

The lunch with Tom on Friday is deeply awkward, as usual. He shares details from his personal life, like dreams about his sister-in-law and how he feels his long hours at work are giving him insomnia. There’s a lull in the conversation after he finishes up his latest fishing story. No one else feels up to the same level of public introspection, and it’s starting to piss him off.

“Seriously, bring up anything at all you feel might be affecting you at work. Anybody? Lets, you always have something to say. Be the voice for your more timid coworkers.”

“Well, I’ve had tons of assignments this week. It’s almost more than I can keep up with. In fact, I’m going to head back to work now.” She smiles.

Lety’s actually kind of proud of her exit. She contributed to the conversation, she used Tom’s words against him, and she got herself out of another thirty minutes of uncomfortable conversation.

They’ve done it again, and assigned Lety twelve hours of work for an eight-hour workday, each email signed with the business world’s equivalent of Finish this today or I will end you. The rest of the motion-detection lights on her floor have shut off, but she gets up and does jumping jacks every half-hour to stop from being plunged into complete darkness.

At least now that she’s alone, she can slump over the keyboard and make faces at the computer.

Lety has just sat back down to take some despondent bites of an organic snack pack from the admittedly great vending machine when she hears it. There’s a huge, scary grinding noise coming from somewhere nearby.

It sounds mechanical. Normally, Lety wouldn’t rush out of her seat to go investigate strange sounds. It’s not smart to follow weird sounds, is it? They always lead to weird happenings.

But it’s dark, and she’s alone in the building. It might be worse not to know than to sit silently listening to the threat of whatever is making those noises. It could be a break-in, or some issue with the elevator, or a wall crumbling, or, or, or…

Lety’s desperate for a break, so she’s going to follow them anyway. It could be something bad for the building. The halls are totally empty; no human threats here, which is a relief.

It’s on one of the lower floors, she can tell. She takes the stairs, not the elevator. They rumble beneath her feet, like there’s a semi-truck rolling by on the highway. It makes her nervous, but Lety figures she’ll feel better once she finds the source. It’s probably nothing. It has to be.

She draws her fluffy rainbow cardigan around herself and heads down the hall when she gets to the basement floor. The noise is everywhere, bouncing off the bare floors and walls.

 

~*~

 

It takes some dashing around in empty hallways before she sees it: the concrete floor and cute minimalist wall decals fading into a cavern. Rock walls, floor and ceiling.

It definitely wasn’t there this morning. She’s never seen this before, even though she walks past this exact stretch of wall pretty regularly, to grab extra printer paper or plastic cups from the supply closet.

It’s an answer to her first question, but it raises a thousand more. Like, what is this, why is this, why is it here, and why am I seeing it? What’s going on?

It has no right to be here, but Lety can’t stop from admiring the rock formations around the entrance.

She takes a step inside, tapping her foot gingerly against the stone. It’s solid, and it holds her weight easily. She takes one more step, and another, feeling a rush of cold wind hit her. The first few yards are smooth and easy to walk down, but it gets narrower and Lety has to clamber over damp rocks to get further in.

It’s peaceful in there. It’s nothing but an ordinary cave, and she’s always loved those. The dripping, eerie structures inside, and the rounded walls, and the way noise misbehaves in such an oddly shaped enclosure. Architects can’t ever really replicate the organic flowing shapes of a cave.

All Lety can hear is the rhythmic dripping of water onto rock. The rubber soles of her sneakers are mostly silent.

 

~*~

 

The path downward gets steeper and rockier for several minutes, but as she’s scrambling down one more slope, Lety sees a clearing ahead, an open room. There’s a shallow pool on the ground.

It’s not just a clearing.

There’s red mood lighting here, and a work setup. A desk topped with a camping lantern and a stack of paper. Tom is standing behind the desk, looking out of place with his shoulder-length blond hair and checkered shirt.

There’s a pile of wood and drywall and tiling at the edge of the room, but Lety can’t imagine anything actually being built in here.

It’s not just the lighting that’s wrong. There’s something coming, something slick accompanied by a droning noise. It sounds slick as it moves and bumps against the cave walls, like a manifestation of everything she’s ever seen out of the corner of her eye since she started working here.

Lety feels that sense of dread that comes up when she knows she’s gone too far: the first dip of a roller coaster, missing a step, the hubris of gulping down still-boiling coffee. The follow-up is always uncomfortable.

Surely she’s seen enough. It’s enough to know that there’s a cave passageway hidden in the basement floor of the Stardust office, and that Tom comes down here to do strange things. There’s no reason to stick around and watch this, whatever it is. It won’t make her a better person, it definitely won’t make work any easier, and Lety has never been nosy; she can live without knowing every secret in the world.

As she’s deliberating, the noise becomes louder, buzzes into her bones and her eardrums and her heart beats in time with it.

The something she’s been wondering about for the past hour or so bursts out from the darkness. It’s two somethings. Hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

They’re dark but translucent. Their bodies are fluid as smoke, or maybe muddy water. There’s a cloud around them, like they’re shedding matter as they move and reshape. Lety thinks of hagfish and the way they can turn a bucket of water into a bucket of slime.

Tom walks up to them, holding a paper in his hands. And then he starts to talk. Lety can’t focus on his words, but he’s pointing at the paper, gesturing like they’re just some particularly eccentric clients. Like they’re going to care and understand about profit margins or supply chains or hosting fees. They’re not going to let him live after this, are they?

The eels come closer and Lety’s muscles all tense up. She doesn’t want to see this, but she can’t look away. On some level, she’s not all that surprised about Tom meeting a violent end because of his rudeness.

Then, the creatures pull back. Their heads move up and down slowly. Tom makes the same movement back, the very normal human gesture of a nod.

He’s communicating with them, somehow. In a way that shouldn’t be possible.

On her way out, Lety scrapes her hands and tears the hem of her pants.

Lety sits in her car, shaking, for five minutes. That’s the time limit she’s allowed herself, but almost immediately after she sets the alarm, the annoying little jingle that is her alarm starts to play.

Fine.

She closes her eyes and breathes out slowly. The drive home is slower than usual. Other cars honk at her more than once, but they can go fuck themselves, because Lety will drive as slowly as she pleases.

 

~*~

 

Safe on her couch, she scrolls through vintage listings online for two hours until she finds a silk turquoise suit secondhand. It would go great with the glass of wine she’s currently holding.

She can’t stop her thoughts from circling around this one unpleasant reality: There’s no one at work to talk to about this. Maybe no one anywhere to talk to about this. Her dreams are full of wriggling nests full of unpleasant pale creatures, and sharp stones, and leeches.

 

~*~

 

Lety is good at keeping her mouth shut and going with the flow at work. She has a solid handshake and a full catalogue of workplace-friendly facial expressions that work almost all of the time. That’s the only reason she even bothers showing up to work the next day.

At lunch, Benny actually notices her shaky hands and spaciness.

“It’s just some weirdness at work.”

Benny scowls impressively down at her from behind the counter. “I’ll kick their asses.” Then he says, “You can come work for me.”

“My Spanish isn’t good enough.”

“Immersion is the best way to learn, right? Isn’t that why you’re talking to me right now?”

“Hey. Not the only reason.” She laughs.

 

~*~

 

Tom calls her into his office after lunch and Lety considers walking straight out the front doors without a word, driving home, moving all her belongings into a storage unit, and staying at a hotel.

In real life, Lety doesn’t back down from challenges. This job isn’t real life, though, not anymore.

People tend to be very defensive of their businesses, and business practices, and Lety’s now a witness to some bizarre contract between the company head and giant, writhing creatures.

She could let him know that she didn’t understand anything about what she saw. Could she say? Would it get him off her back, or does it sound too weak? She’s never been that good at office politics. Her aunt gave her a book for Christmas, once, with the annoying title If You Have to Cry, Go Outside. Maybe she should have read it instead of regifting it through a White Elephant.

“People are going to start thinking we’re having an affair,” Lety blurts when she walks in and Tom goes to close the door behind her. She’s not sure why she even says it, but the look on his face is worth it.

There’s a big painting of a marlin hanging on the wall above him. It’s jumping out of the sea, still glistening with water. She meets its pale, watery eyes and mentally asks it for strength.

“Don’t say that, Lety.” He shakes his head. “Look, I just wanted to talk to you. About yesterday. I know you were working late. There’s some building maintenance going on. Did it disturb you?”

Here it comes.

“I was a little curious what the noise was,” she says. “But no, I didn’t see anything.”

Tom’s face settles into a smile. “Good. I know the place was a huge mess, and there was a lot of dust, and I think it’s even illegal for you to be down there.” He laughs. “I know, a real Legal Eagle moment. But it’s important for me to care about boring stuff like that.”

“Of course.”

“Yeah. So, if we’re done here, you can get back to your work. I know there are some super important accounts today.”

“I’m dying to get back to them,” she responds, and that’s that.

 

~*~

 

The wall where the cave should be has been seamless every day since she saw it gaping open.

Since then, she has stopped by every day to search for hidden buttons or switches, hours after everyone else has left. Lety has never been this obsessed with a mystery, but then, her sanity has never been at stake before. She has this burning need to understand things so she can move on with her life and not live in fear every day.

She moves a lot of potted plants around and slaps her hands against the walls. She feels like a fool a lot, too. The walls do sound hollow, and that proof is comforting enough for her to continue the search.

Lety tears off a strip of skin by her thumb as she’s staring up at the ceiling, thinking about ladders and how likely it is that she needs to go to a maintenance closet and fool around with the ceiling tiles. A drop of blood beads up.

“Shit,” she says, squeezing her thumb, and the droplet swells and falls to the ground.

That grinding noise starts up again, something like large moving parts and scraping. It leaves her free to walk through the cave again.

Lety crouches in the rocks to think about her life, and her job, and why she’s crazy enough to explore dangerous, supernatural caves.

The eels are already out when she gets to the clearing from the other day. The terror isn’t as overwhelming. From her hidden spot in the rocks and stalagmites, she can observe them without being observed. How smart can these featureless, smooth creatures even be? They don’t have any obvious eyes. She really does want to learn more about them: what are they made of, where do they come from. Do they have teeth? The important questions.

While she’s watching, they don’t do anything extraordinary. They move around a bit, and eventually tangle themselves together. When they’re curled up, they look for a moment almost like dogs. Soon it’s hard to tell them apart, with the cloud of blurriness surrounding them. It looks very close to a peaceful sleep, but she has no idea what they could be up to.

Lety crawls carefully back to the exit. She tries to leave no trace, so Tom won’t be able to tell she’s been down there.

~*~

 

Tom is able to tell.

He pokes his head into the room she works in, with the other accountants.

“Hey, Lety? A word, please?”

He always uses his stupid nickname for her, so its absence is a bucket of cold water.

“Lety.” His somber tone contrasts with the chill art and goofy ergonomic chairs on both sides of his desk. They’re sitting like fools, hoping for better posture. “Don’t go back in there.”

Lety swallows. “Am I fired?”

Tom laughs. “No, it’s not that. I think you know what I mean. They’re mine, so stay away. Don’t talk to them, don’t bring them treats. Definitely don’t do that blood thing again.”

The blood thing.

Lety’s definitely not going to listen to that advice.

“Understood, Tom,” she says, with a little mock salute as she strolls out the door.

 

~*~

 

The history of land ownership is a good place to look for hideous secrets.

Lety has found several surprising connections in the city records over just a few hours of looking. What she’s really looking for is the history of the Stardust building, because it’s very hard to imagine a huge hollow space going unnoticed for the past fifty years since they put a building over it. Before she can find that, it’s a good chunk of time sifting through other local history.

She never knew, for example, that the city was originally founded around several freshwater fisheries. They certainly aren’t around anymore, and the rivers are mostly dried up, leaving just a sad trickle of water over concrete.

The history of her office building starts around the same place; Tom’s family has owned this plot of land for about a century, long before he ever wanted to host a business there. They owned and managed the building from afar for decades, until the mid-2000s.

The records she finds even include a few pictures of the cave, to meet safety protocol. If Lety can find these in the span of just a few hours, there’s probably nothing Tom doesn’t know about it.

There’s no information about large, eel-like creatures in those files, or Tom’s business ethics. Nothing as useful as visiting the place in person.

 

~*~

 

The next time Lety stops by to check out the resident monsters, Tom is waiting for her. He’s behind his desk, like he’s waiting for her to turn in a report. There should be some sense of veils falling away, of really seeing each other, but the desk between them just makes it feel like another day at the office.

“Hi, Lety,” Tom says, and he’s up and walking toward her, more vibrant than she’s ever seen him, his dark eyes like black holes in his face. She edges away, but soon enough her back is up against the rock ledge that leads up to the rest of the cave and the exit. Corned like that, all she can think to do is climb back out. Lety’s not fast enough, though, and the feel of Tom’s hands around her knees is maybe the most terrifying thing she’s felt. He uses his grip to drag her back down. The three-foot fall hurts more than she thought it would, and knocks the wind right out of her. Something sharp on the ground has cut into her shoulder.

He’s knocked her right into a corner of the cave, though, right near a pile of potentially dangerous building materials. Lety only has to roll over and drag herself forward a few inches to lay hands on a thick plank of wood.

 She’s sorely out of practice holding anything heavier than a computer mouse, but she clutches it to her and jabs it back where Tom’s looming behind her. A dull thud and his hiss of pain let her know that the wood has met its target.

Lety scrambles into a sitting position, then uses the wood to haul to haul herself up. It makes a useful cane, she finds.

“What the fuck are you doing with those creatures?” she asks as she edges forward, and even as he rubs his shin, Tom looks at her like she’s no more a threat than a child.

“I’m not going to ask again,” she says, brandishing the plank of wood. His head is within swinging range. Maybe he notices that, too, or maybe he’s just excited to have a captive audience to listen to him.

“Fine. You win, Lets.” His smile is just as relaxed as the ones he gives from behind a podium, or at the head of the conference room.

“It’s the emotional energy. Our app has a check-in feature, remember? You can track your moods and customize your meal plan according to how intense of a recipe you’re willing to cook.”

Lety rolls her eyes, because she doesn’t need a basic breakdown of the company she’s spent the past year and a half working for.

“Mood tracking, Lety. That’s the most valuable information in the world. I can make so much money from it– but my creatures can do a lot more than that. They’re helpful that way.”

“Like what?”

“Like feast upon it. They’re not trapped in these caves, Lets. They can travel. To whoever looks the most delicious at a given point in time.”

“What looks delicious?”

“Anguish and uncertainty. Those are the big ones. Misery begets misery, you know? I was skeptical at first, but my little friends really are good for business.”

“How did you find out?”

“Take a wild guess.” For the first time, his expression falters. “I found them in my teenage years.”

“I need more than that,” Lety says, and shifts the wood in her hands meaningfully.

“So when I got tired of lying motionless on the floor while they played a highlight reel of my least favorite memories, I gave them blood instead. It turned out to be a good idea. They like blood a lot more, but they can’t take it unless you give it. And afterward, they feel like they owe you.”

Lety thinks back to the way she has to open the door.

“I can see the wheels turning,” Tom says. “What are you thinking about?”

“How did you bring them out?”

Tom says, “You think I called them here? No, they called me. I’m the fucking devil they created, not the other way around. They can’t even touch you, you know? Not without me. Brainless as jellyfish.”

“Why don’t they feast on me?”

The cave is filled with the sound the creatures make, like something out of a doom metal song. It’s heavy and the cave vibrates around it.

Tom gazes adoringly at the tunnel they always come from, and Lety seizes the opportunity.

She swings at his delicate ankles and knocks his feet out from under him. Annie Wilkes and Misery flashes in her head and she winces even though she’s the one doling out the pain. Make it stay that way, she thinks.

Tom grabs at her feet from his position on the floor, and she stomps on his hands.

“Don’t kill them,” he says, panting.

Lety looks at him. “Do you want to take their place?” She wishes she knew how to kill them. Should have asked for an anatomy lesson on the slimy things.

“There’s nothing wrong with them.”

“You just told me all about how they’re parasites.”

“You can feel it too,” he says. “I know you can. That’s why you kept coming back. I was so fucking scared you’d take them from me.”

“Feel what?”

“They like you. Like your blood more than mine.” Tom’s rolling around on the ground again. At first, Lety thinks it’s just another expression of pain. That’s fine with her.

But then, a flash of metal.

“I’ll prove it,” he says, and the hook is so sharp it takes Lety a second to realize he’s stabbed her hand. It’s the most accessible part of her, dangling low near his face. When she jerks it back, she remembers how hooks work.

“Fuck,” she says. Tom’s holding the fishing line, and it leads to the hook embedded in the web between her thumb and forefinger.

She can’t focus on trying to pull the thing out, because the twin figures have appeared.

“You want me not to kill them?” Lety asks, and dashes over to them.

“Lety.” Tom’s trying to sound stern, and it’s funny. There’s nothing he can do to stop her, except crawl.

Lety is running on very little sleep and a lot of frustration, and it makes her want to test her luck. She can at least injure them, right? Tom seems very nervous about the welfare of his pets, and he wouldn’t be if they were impervious.

This plank of wood is turning out to be her best friend.

When the wood hits, the thing bursts open like a water balloon. It pours out onto the floor, and Lety’s soaked in something greasy and black. There’s no skin or shell left behind: the creature is spilled out on the floor in a spreading gray pool.

Lety hasn’t ever killed anything this way before, except insects. Now she’s drenched in death. Her right hand is dripping blood, but the hook is gone. Even the open wound is soaked in the black liquid.

Tom’s making some noise in the background, but Lety’s not interested.

When she turns her attention back to the tunnel, the other creature is gone. Lety thinks, how far can it go? She can walk through a cave. This might be her only chance to finish the job.

Her first steps inside are manageable, if slippery. Then the mud thickens, squelching around her shoes. The further in she gets, the wetter and deeper the mud is, and the harder it becomes to pull each foot out of it.

Lety gets up to her knees in it when she realizes there’s no trace of the faint slime the creatures tend to leave behind. She’s lost its trail. She stumbles back a few feet so she can fall to her knees without ending up nose-deep in mud. It got away, because it’s powerful and mysterious, and she still doesn’t really understand what it is.

The mud slows her down even more on the way back out. The black stain on the ground is still there, but Tom isn’t.

 

~*~

 

The car is a complete mess by the time she gets home, full of mud and thick slime and a little bit of blood from the cut on her hand.

She lies down in a hot bath for a while until all traces of mud and slime fall away from her body, and leaves the lights on all night while she stares at the ceiling. When someone in an apartment to her left plays music late into the night, she can’t even summon up the energy to be angry about it.

Lety wakes up with a few cuts sticking to the sheet. She peels herself off, and dresses in long sleeves and long black pants and a thick motorcycle jacket.

Lety is sore and so tired but determined to show up to work the next day. It’s the best way to carry on here. She slathers on the foundation someone gave her for Christmas last year. She hasn’t used it since she got it, and it makes her complexion look a little weird and waxy, but it hides the bruise on her cheekbone.

Soon after she gets to work, she notices the parking lot is empty except for her. Across the street is packed as usual, so it’s not a weekend or holiday. Where is everyone?

She walks up to the front doors.

There’s a big red sign and all she can read from here is CONDEMNED. In smaller text: Unsafe for occupancy. Do not enter. No other information is posted.

Fuck it, she thinks. I’m already here. Instead of going home, Lety stops by Tacos Oaxaqueños for one last trio of tacos al pastor. She asks Benny for two extra salsas, and he gives them to her.

“So, did the work thing turn out okay?” Benny asks.

“Hell, no,” Lety says. “I’m okay, though.”

“Okay,” he says. He looks confused. She sees him eyeing her bandaged hand.

“I probably won’t be back here as often.”

“Oh. Jesus, Lety, I’m sorry.”

Lety pats his arm, which is clad in some white chef-like garment. “I’ll be okay.”

 

~*~

 

Lety’s lying on her couch scrolling on her phone when she gets the email notification.

An email about how the company has dissolved, as of that morning. It’s the most bizarre thing she’s ever read. It can’t be legal. The severance package covers three weeks of pay, which means Lety should probably start thinking about how to get the money for next month’s rent.

Tom has disappeared, as far as anyone from work is concerned. Normally, he’d answer texts and emails within twelve hours. His social media is gone, and his phone number is disconnected.

But rich tech guys are weird and mercurial. Everyone in the Newly Unemployed group chat seems to think he has probably retired to some island in the Bahamas owned by his family. Someone checks to see if the Newcomb family owns property there, and it turns out to be a resort, not an island.

 

~*~

 

Lety really does her best to pick up the pieces. She attends a job fair, prepared to tell some white lies about the reason she left her last job. This one is even located outdoors, in the quad of some college campus, so she doesn’t have to worry about her claustrophobia.

Things feel almost normal for a moment, in that crowded courtyard. She has a reason to wear smart black clothes, and even breaks out a pair of heels for the occasion. Lety is prepared with a fresh notebook and a folder full of resumes. Her makeup is neutral enough for the office, but a dusting of orange eyeshadow hints at her personality.

Just when she has a company representative at a software booth nodding and smiling along with her, Nadia-from-Stardust stalks over. She looks Lety up and down, with this furious glare very unlike her usual placid demeanor. Lety stops mid-sentence. The representative turns the same smile on Nadia, ready to say hello. That’s the moment Nadia chooses to swipe the folder and notebook out of Lety’s hands so they scatter across the ground.

“You ruined a good thing for the rest of us,” she says flatly.

Lety looks around her, with panic-wide eyes, and makes the decision to leave without scraping her papers off the concrete. Nadia must have been much closer to Tom than she thought.

 

~*~

 

After some more introspection, Lety starts to think she doesn’t want to work in an office again. Her first several job interviews are all in offices, and the fluorescent light and desks and handshakes leave her shaken. They’re wrong for her.

One weekend, with her severance pay dwindling, she makes a dozen listings in her online store, all vintage accessories and clothing. People are hungry for old, quality garments, and it only takes about a week for her to sell out and make enough to cover basic expenses. At that point, it hits Lety that some people do this for a living, not just a hobby.

After that, she decides to try out the flea markets and swap meets she used to shop at. Those events let her work outdoors, where she can see the sky, and that’s the most important thing.

A few people try to slink away with things from her table, and there’s a teenage boy who tries to bully Lety into giving him her phone number. These things just make her laugh, though, and something in her eyes and the edge of her grin is more effective than her toughest voice at setting people straight.

At the flea market and the swap meet, she doesn’t have to answer to anyone but city laws. The other vendors are an incredible cast of characters, and it’s dawning on Lety she might be one, too.

The job requires a certain persistence and toughness. People make unreasonable offers constantly, and she gets the pleasure of shutting them down. She doesn’t have to report to anyone or check in to make sure her response reflects company policy. She is company policy.

The drawbacks to her job are obvious: the lack of benefits and a 401k and catered lunches. The improvements are harder to categorize, because Lety can’t tally them up in the same way. Getting to smell fresh air, or even air mixed with exhaust and stale cooking oil, and see the sun for hours each day is the change she didn’t know she needed.

Her third week at the swap meet, Lety sees a familiar white truck parked among the food options.

“Benny!” she yells, not even sure if he’ll be there. He and his cousins own it together, and maybe he’s taking a rare day off.

Benny pokes his head out and waves, though.

She hurries over to talk to him, even though she’s already had lunch.

“Hey! It’s been a while, huh?”

Lety laughs, says, “God, you have no idea how long this month has been for me.”

Benny smiles at her, and this part is new: he says, “Wanna compare it to mine? Ray’s gonna take over for the lunch rush,” and nudges someone else in the truck.

She agrees. She isn’t expecting it, but she’s about to learn that she’s not the only one with monster problems. Benny has been around the block, too.

Lety rubs the scar on the web between her thumb and forefinger. It’s a thick, curved line that will keep her company for the rest of her life. It looks almost like a smile, one that’s jagged and imperfect.