Preface. I’ve used the “#” (hash/number sign) to indicate the end of one email draft and the beginning of another. Because email drafts are saved in order of composition, I initially read the last draft first and the first last, the reverse order of how they are assembled here (I reordered them to create a more accurate chronology). I should mention (it has occurred to me) that when one does any alteration to a draft, it is moved to the “front of the line.” So… if Ariel was to alter a draft out of chronological order, it would make any attempt at chronologizing almost impossible (barring context). That all aside, the thing now reads more or less sensical (from a time-narrative perspective, so to speak), so any errors that might have arisen from this maundering disclaimer are safely disregarded.

Where is Ariel? I love and miss her so, and am left with these drafts.

The police don’t seem to care anymore. If you know anything, the reward remains in place, no questions asked…

________

It’s important that I start writing these things down. I don’t feel safe. Do you know the feeling of not feeling safe? Of feeling threatened? I think it’s a feeling we, as a species, have done a good job getting rid of. It has, maybe, given a false sense of security. Apathetic to what exists beyond the scope of the known horizon because the unknown of a distant horizon no longer exists. We’ve collectively overturned every rock. There are no surprises left. Nothing to fear. But if fear can be described as the sensation of questioning one’s own safety, then the question is not why I feel so afraid, but what has led me to believe I am not safe.

#

These should stay in the draft folder. I deleted the emails-to-self. I’ll create a new account, and they should remain in the draft folder until I feel safe enough for them to live anywhere else. Safe enough to allow for the possibility that someone besides myself might read them. For that to happen, I must first make sense of what exactly happened – Of what is happening. It began with an intake visit. A consultation. No. It was before that. But… Let me find the notes from Greta & Nathan’s Intake…

#

Greta & Nathan –Intake –Notes [RAW]. Greta, 36, wants children; feeling like she’s running out of time – Very candid; “What will I do if we split up?” “Do I have time to date, get-to-know, wed, get pregnant, and have a baby before 40?” Is 40 an arbitrary number? If so, then why does it feel like it’s closing in on me, like the dumpster walls in the Star Wars compactor scene? “If Greta’s life is the compactor scene, then what is the thing that lives in the trash in this extended metaphor? Is it me?” —Nathan. Nathan, 33, thinks he’s funny, thinks he’s smart, self-assured but also self-deprecating. Self-loathing? Doesn’t want children. Hasn’t achieved his own “greatest potential” – “how do I have time to help someone else achieve their greatest potential if I haven’t achieved mine?” It’s not about that —Greta. Sex life: difficult getting up, but Greta caught Nathan masturbating. “So I must be the problem, then.” Nathan – bored, uninterested; only interested in work; start-up, Men’s Health social media; think Tumblr meets Men’s Journal; “What men do when they’re alone.” Business is called XY-Pro (look it up later). Fundamental belief: Men behave differently when they’re alone (not around women) —Nathan. Greta disputes this – “look at our friends!” Greta: Consultant. Very dry work. “But dry work with high-stakes can pay very well” —Nathan. Greta: Does Nathan actually care about what’s best for me? When does pragmatism become a stifling way to live?

#

Greta & Nathan –Post-Intake Assessment [RAW]. Greta (36) & Nathan (33) both have dry, sarcastic affects; it’s easy to see what they saw in each other on their first dates. They were introduced to each other by mutual friends. They were certainly attracted to their mutual cynical outlooks, but do cynics make bad partners? Time shall tell. Beyond their hardwired cynicism, the bigger question is if their issues are surmountable or if the cleavage is too great to be reconciled (as is often the case, no?). I believe this lies in their differing attitudes to their slightly divergent brands of cynicism. Nathan is a bit immature; thinks he has the world figured out; did well with the sale/acquisition of one product; flailing with the other but either arrogance or denial has led him to double down on his intellectual prowess. Greta is smarter, kinder, but her insecurity is insufferable. Her desire for children and her fear of “shriveling ovaries” have become like walls closing in (watch Star Wars, “compactor scene”). For Nathan, it’s hard to live around this; he finds it “uninspiring”. Greta seems to know on a deeper level that Nathan is a hopeless cause; fear, both Nathan’s gaslighting and her own “god-given” insecurities, lead her to continue on…fear leads her to my office. You’d think they were ten years apart in age by the way Greta discusses their “generational differences”. THEY ARE INCOMPATIBLE. Nathan seems less redeemable than Greta; less accessible to emotional growth.

#

My name is Dr. Ariel Sykes. I hold a Doctorate of Philosophy in Marital and Family Therapy. I am fluent in several therapeutic modalities of relational emotional trauma. I am aware of my reputation, as one does not forge a reputation without having some hand it. I’m a couples therapist for couples on their last legs. Couples come to me to either revitalize the spark or die. I am an arbiter of emotional connection. Couples come to me to work through their issues, and if those issues do not resolve, they expect of me my unfettered arbitration, my ruling on the prospects of their compatibility. Sometimes, the couple enters with both partners aware of the stakes. Other times, only one is aware; the other has no idea that this is a final straw, a Hail Mary. Of course, none of this is ever spoken aloud. It is discussed in coded terms; in euphemism. That is not to say that my ruling is always heeded. Sometimes I tell a couple they don’t stand a chance in my own coded language and they still try to make it work. They might suffer each other for the rest of their lives, but rest assured, my appraisals come resolute, unrestrained. Am I capable of making a wrong decision? Who isn’t?

#

On monogamy: I do believe it is the natural disposition of our species, or if not, then it is so hardwired into our cultural fiber that it cannot be satisfyingly expunged. Polyamorists are unlikely to agree with my outlook on human sexuality and, more importantly (at least to me), compatibility. Compatibility is my bread & butter. But I also believe in it. I believe that when compatibility between two people is at its best, sexually, romantically, or even on a merely cohabitational level – it is life’s greatest gift.

#

On INCOMPATIBILITY: I don’t believe we should remain in relationships if we aren’t happy. There could be children, grandchildren, pets, financial trusts – a host of complicated, interconnected issues that might spring from a relationship between any two people. But ultimately, happiness is the greatest metric. We are born once. We live once. We die once. In between, we should seek happiness. Not unrestrained hedonism, but peace, serenity, fearlessness. Love. Happiness… COMPATIBILITY.

#

I am a psychologist, a couples therapist. Several days ago, something happened.

#

I am a psychologist, a couples therapist. Several days ago, something happened: what some call déjà vu. But déjà vu is a misnomer – reductive. It was, more accurately, life repeating itself. The only illusory quality was the time it took me to remember where this repetition originated…

#

It came to me, on the drive home: It was Greta & Nathan a few days ago; it was Dean & Jessica a few years ago… Identical qualms. Quirks.  Concerns. Identical baggage, memories. Both couples arrived in my office with the same set of issues – same quibbles and mannerisms and strongly held beliefs about themselves and significant others. What else can I say to get my point across? They were the same people… Different names and different flesh and different faces, of course! But the same.

#

Well then, the question becomes: does my memory serve me? What if my memory is inaccurate? That would of course call into question any reliability in my feeling of déjà vu. How can life repeat itself if the repetition is sprung forth from an unreliable mind? Well then, it could be (1) some mental misfiring, something gone haywire, schizophrenia or whatever mental illness might cause the belief that something in my past is happening again, verbatim; or (2) a mere exaggeration of similar cases, cases that perhaps flirted with concentric emotions, scenarios, etc.—cases that arose in me, the therapist, analogous sensations, when in fact they, the clients, the couple, have only the facade of similarity…

#

Internet research has produced little on all of the involved parties. Greta & Nathan = there is a dearth of content; social media profiles are all private, some digital “public records” available if I pay X fee… But Dean & Jessica [REDACTED] = there is nothing. They don’t exist. Could I have dreamed them into existence? I haven’t considered that possibility yet: a dream.

#

Here is something stranger still: not only do Dean & Jessica not exist on the internet; they don’t exist in my digital records. Typically, I handle all in-session and post-session note taking in longhand, while I commit more formal, permanent records to the digital word processor. The hard copies are saved in bankers boxes; the digital are saved on my desktop and on a secondary cloud back-up. Dean & Jessica do not exist online and they do not exist in my digital archives. So then, there are two possibilities I see: (1) Dean & Jessica never existed and I am indeed ill, or (2) they’ve been deleted from my archives and expunged from the internet. The former, I’m afraid, by all chance and probability, seems more likely… Right? Who can so thoroughly remove one’s existence from the internet? Who could access my hardware and forever delete a sole couple from the many couples I have seen? It would require breaking & entering, great digital sophistication, a coordinated intrusion beyond comprehension.

#

The strangest possibility has become possible. I can confirm it. My obsessive-compulsive nature has become my vindication. Whoever deleted the digital files from my hardware and cloud (!) tried to retrieve the hard copies from the warehouse—but failed to breach security (!) Apparently the antiquated warehouse brimming with towers upon towers of bankers boxes filled with paperwork from businesses all across town was more successful at keeping this antagonist at bay than my own office security (assuming “Antagonist” breached said office security, broke into my office, hacked into my computer, etc.)—and more successful than the virtual security measures designed to keep out said antagonists. The box (April 2019) contains the folder labeled “Dean & Jessica”—and my handwritten [RAW] notes inside of it.

#

The notes are different, but there are recurring words, phrases, similarities… This can easily be attributed to different pieces of the sessions popping out at me. Like watching the same movie over again, and having different scenes resonate with you. Like re-reading the same page of a book, forgetting where you left off—a single turn of phrase clarifying, solidifying the repeat visitation. Let’s not beat around the bush and enumerate the similarities between my intake hardcopies. There are two details that are evidence enough: (1) the Star Wars compactor scene analogy (I knew it sounded familiar; still haven’t seen it), and (2) XY-Pro, the Tumblr meets Men’s Journal. For Dean’s intake in years’ past, I made note of his interest in travel, leisure, and the culinary arts as topics worthy of exploration in his new start-up venture—and even though these topics did not make my intake for Nathan, I can say now with confidence, with the luxury of recent memory, that Nathan did indeed have a parallel, identical fascination with these subjects. For both men, I am/was impressed with how these business fascinations reflected the root of their relationship failures, their hardwired incompatibility. Cast that aside. Let’s focus: Star Wars compactor…XY-Pro…Tumblr meets Men’s Journal. These things do not happen twice. As I’ve already asserted, déjà vu is a misnomer.

#

Dean & Jessica came and went…they are of the past…their cases are closed… Greta & Nathan? They are of the present, the now, their future unfurling in real time. The [RAW]. So then, I have the hardcopy/longhand notes of the Dean & Jessica Sessions. Might they be my crystal ball? My cheat sheet? My deus ex machina? I fear the Antagonist, and yet I have conducted every aspect of the Greta & Nathan Sessions with the appearance of status quo. I am a walking-talking unsuspecting Dr. Ariel Sykes, Relationship Psychologist. The Antagonist cannot know…did they see me at the file warehouse? I’ve made copies of copies and placed them in hidden locations arbitrarily, without a cipher. No one will find them unless I show them the way. I commit myself to my tea leaves, to read the future, if Dean & Jessica & Greta & Nathan are to remain on parallel tracks, as I suspect they will.

#

I’ve skipped to the end. I remember this part perfectly well, but it’s worth recording here, now. I told Jessica in my own copyrightable euphemistic coded language that she and Dean are/were doomed. What became of them? Who’s to say now? Their existence is…gone.

#

I’ve found it. <<< Dean & Jessica –9th Session –Notes [RAW]: Dean doesn’t like Jessica’s sister, Kayla – Kayla reminds Dean of the little woman at the end of “Don’t Look Now” – short, ghoulish… And personality, too: “kind of person who might stick you with a knife”. >>> It’s perfect. Should I approach it delicately? An offhand remark, a subtle innuendo… I could take this more subtle route or do something slightly more…provocative… Wait for Session 9—then…

#

Then, as the discussion approaches the sister, draw upon this comparison without context, beating the client to the punch. It goes like this: Greta brings up Nathan’s negative feelings about Greta’s sister, X à Nathan prepares to voice his feelings about X à before Nathan can proceed, I interject: “X sounds a lot like the little ghoulish woman from Don’t Look Now.” >>> It would of course come across bizarre—inappropriate. But the point would be exactly that: to jar Greta & Nathan with an unsubtle innuendo; to purport to read their minds. Well, at least if this is how the reference is received by Greta & Nathan in “Greta & Nathan –9th Session”, then I will be vindicated in all of my suspicions. If not? Then…the remark will be received as bizarre, out-of-place, inappropriate. No love lost.

#

In the meantime, replications compound: Dean called Jessica “paranoid” to Jessica’s chagrin, Nathan calls Greta “paranoid” to Greta’s chagrin; Greta thinks freezing her eggs is a worthwhile expenditure while Nathan insists he won’t do any of that freaky “extraction stuff”, Dean used the exact same language to describe Jessica’s desire to freeze her eggs… It goes on. While I await Session 9 (my Don’t Look Now Trap; my dynamite in the fish tank moment) I have perhaps employed a brash offensive: a fact-finding mission: I’ve hired a private investigator…I’ll call him “MMK” …to investigate Dean & Jessica.

#

There is NOTHING. Dean & Jessica don’t exist. MMK confirms it. I’ve assigned MMK a follow-up investigation: follow Greta & Nathan. Just for 1 night. I have their address from the intake paperwork.

#

The address does not exist.

#

Follow them post-session, then. MMK will lie in wait in my office’s garage and then tail them home……

#

I just got off with MMK. Four hours post-session, he is still stationed outside of the presumed home address of Greta & Nathan – a warehouse in Montebello. Innocuous facade, he says. He sends me a picture, too. Not a residential living space – but this is where the Mercedes E 350 brought them. He saw the car pull into the warehouse’s garage and there’s been no movement since. MMK asked if I’d like him to continue the stakeout. I couldn’t help myself. I asked him how long he’d be willing to stake out the warehouse. As long as I’m willing to put change in the meter, MMK told me. Stay the course, I decided. Now I’m paying MMK per hour to sit and watch and wait and call if anything noteworthy happens…

#

It’s been four days. MMK has found a place quite distant from the warehouse and uses a monocular to case the location. I asked him how he eats – he conceded he leaves to pick up food and use the restroom, but otherwise has remained glued to the job. No movement so far. In the interest of saving money, I devised the following course of action: retire MMK from his post, but send him back 3 hours before my next scheduled session with Greta & Nathan. I have a plan…

#

The Plan: MMK went to his post, staked out the warehouse… I had him message me as the Mercedes pulled out of the warehouse…which, in turn, confirmed (to the best of our knowledge) that Greta & Nathan had been inside the warehouse and hadn’t left the warehouse for an entire week, until the day of our session… Once I got the message from MMK, I called Greta & Nathan and told them that I regretfully needed to cancel at the last minute… Our next session would be on the house, but I was simply too ill to meet…sudden food poisoning… I then had MMK explain to me what he saw next from his post: the Mercedes did an about face, returned to the warehouse, pulled in and then…nothing. All quiet at the Montebello Warehouse…

#

Like shy creatures, retreating into their shell. Like an appliance unplugged or left charging. Like a creature hibernating, our sessions the creature’s spring.

#

Divine Theory: a second chance. Angels sent to earth. Was I too hasty in my evaluation of Dean & Jessica? Are Greta & Nathan sent as a test by god? Heavenly creatures in human skin. Fresh start? Perhaps when we next meet, I should really, really listen. Just be present. Cast aside preconceived notions; throw out the pomposity that arises from my doctorate and years of experience. Be present & listen like a mindfulness activity. Determine their compatibility, or—disregard Compatibility! What if, say, my entire career is a farce…or worse…my entire career has brought about pain and suffering and all the pride I have in being an unbiased adjudicator is just Vanity in the Ecclesiastes sense. Vanity of vanities, all is Vanity. The sun also rises, and some couples, despite their seeming incompatibility, are actually better left unruffled to live out their days with a modicum of happy moments interspersed alongside a general stasis of unpleasantness. Might that be the case, and my entire MO, my reputation, has come under the scrutiny of an imperceptible godhead?

#

MMK is no longer answering my calls.

#

Session 9…Greta & Nathan entered my office innocuously enough…out of hibernation in their Montebello Warehouse of a shell, well-rested, fully charged batteries, ready to test me—but this day, I was going to test them. The subject arose, just as suspected…Greta began complaining about Nathan’s inappropriate comments re: “Debbie”, Greta’s older sister. I could see Nathan gearing up to say his piece, to lay into Debbie with some snark… I allowed him a brief foray into the conversation. “Have you ever seen that movie—” “Don’t Look Now?” I interrupted. “I know,” I said. “The short, ghoulish woman at the end of the film. That’s kind of like Debbie, huh? And she’d put a knife in you, too!” They both looked spooked, as if they had the reason, not I (!), to be disturbed. I sat silently, patiently. Greta said: “How did you know that’s how Nathan describes my sister?” I shrugged and said, “You can just tell, can’t you?” I sat patiently, determined to hand them the rope and let them do the rest… “You talk to our friends or something?” Nathan asked. “That’s kind’a fucking weird,” said Nathan. “Is that legal?” said Nathan. Nathan looked at Greta; Greta shrugged; I sat there. Finally, I couldn’t help myself and said: “What friends, Nathan? As far as I can tell, you never leave your house. Or should I say warehouse.” Well…I don’t know why I said that…but I did. Maybe I’d hung myself at that moment; grabbed my own rope and tied it tightly around my own neck. They just looked at me blankly— Inhumanly? Angelically? Animalistically? I don’t know. I’m growing tired of writing words that I might never share, should this turn out to be a bunch bullshit, should I be diagnosed as insane, or most improbable of all— should some logical explanation explain away everything (!) >>> I said in response to their blankness: “Do you know Dean & Jessica [REDACTED]?” They exchanged another disturbed look and then shook their heads “no”. “Who are they?” Nathan asked. “Are they the spies you have listening in on us? Is that how you knew the Don’t Look Now thing about Greta’s sister?”

#

Session 10…in absentia. I wonder…have I learned anything since Dean & Jessica? Have I grown? In what direction is there to grow? I found this piece of paper sandwiched between others, proximate to the Dean & Jessica files…so it must have been written then or around then…Longhand Notes circa the Dean & Jessica Sessions: <<< On Compatibility: What is Compatibility? Is it quantifiable? We need to consider the possibility that not every couple is meant for each other. Call me cynical, but there’s a chance that the person we’ve decided is the love of our life—the person we intend to spend the rest of our life with—we need to consider the possibility that we are in fact not meant for each other. We need to consider that, by paying a relationship psychologist two hundred dollars per session, we might actually be better served saving that money and spending it on a divorce lawyer. If you could, would you go back and undo all the memories made over overpriced dinners? Take that money and invest it in the stock market? Watch it compound and pay dividends…rather than light that money on fire to consume something that will inevitably travel through your digestive tract and end up in the same sewer as the lesser priced meals, while sitting across from a person you will loathe in due course. Of course I wasn’t always so cynical. I would be the first to say that there is nothing worse than an inexperienced cynic. Nobody has a right to be a killjoy if they haven’t done the time. I have. I’ve spoken to these people. They are all self-absorbed, ungracious narcissists. I am, I think, a boxing glove dressed up in a nice office with a professional outfit and pleasant affect. The decor is modern and soothing. The plants aren’t fake. The view is nice. I might wear a pencil skirt or an inoffensive sweater. My dog lies in a little bed by my feet beneath my desk; one of my intake questions asks if you’re allergic to dogs. I smile and nod and behave empathetically. If I wasn’t here, this would be a bare knuckle beat down—but I am, so it’s professional boxing and I am the boxing glove. The flourishes of elevated, well-thought, academically trained society give the impression of legitimacy. And what is legitimacy but a mutual, tacit agreement that something is as it should be. What is fraud but the feeling of shame felt when piercing the veneer of tacit legitimacy only to discover how paper-thin everything truly is. >>> I can barely relate to the narrator of this handwritten note; I pity her. Clearly, I am in a dark headspace. Cynical is a word for it. I want to erase these words; it would be easy enough to do. But here I am, doing the exact opposite: typing them, transcribing them, as if they are pulled from some biblical apocrypha. I feel a sensation of disloyalty in the mere thought of expunging them. No, I must return to them, to remind me of the sensation of darkness. To know how far I’ve come. There is a more debilitating lifeforce than depression called fear. I fear Greta & Nathan won’t return…and I equally fear they will.

#

It almost seemed staged the way the news arrived before me, as if purposefully placed in my line of sight. The newspaper might as well have been slid under my office door. But the Antagonist wasn’t that obvious. The Antagonist was subtler, but just obvious enough to torture me with wonder. It was on the front cover of the Los Angeles Times, which lay open and abandoned on the counter of the Starbucks I visit every morning before work. Maybe my routine has become my downfall. The front cover has a photograph of my patients, Greta & Nathan, looking perfectly content, despite the headline that reads DOUBLE MURDER. Double Murder: Greta & Nathan: Dead: Found Dead in their Home. Their home! It’s almost comical! Do they know, these news reporters, that their HOME is in fact a mere SHELL which they only crawl out of when they are coming to see ME, their COUPLES COUNSELOR? I’ll admit my first thought was that this is a ruse; they couldn’t be dead; the joke was only getting more involved, more elaborate, more sophisticated…and I was somehow the butt of it… My job then is to find out who is telling the joke and for what audience.

#

I thought the cops would want to speak with me. I waited a few days. After a week, I reached out myself. I volunteered my consultation. You know what they told me? They told me thanks but no thanks. The news reports haven’t told me anything I don’t already know: disparate generic details I know from my sessions with Greta & Nathan plus some regurgitated facts concerning their death, their homicide. No culprits, murder-suicide (?)—doesn’t appear to be—a culprit still at-large (?)—motives remain unknown.

#

It’s taken a surprising amount of work digging on the internet to find the time and place for the memorial of Greta & Nathan. But it is perhaps more surprising that there is a memorial at all. What will I walk into? I imagine cardboard cutouts standing around appetizers with a recording playing from the PA in lieu of real conversation, to give the effect of the cutouts chatting amongst themselves in mourning, discussing the dead’s’ virtues. My eulogy: “Nathan was a brave man with a bold vision for the future: Tumblr meets Men’s Journal, a website where men could be men without the shadow of women. And Greta? Well, who’s to say she wouldn’t have made a great mother? She’s dead now so the jury is out.” You see, Antagonist? I can be funny, too.

#

The Memorial – different than I imagined… Whispers…disquietude…tears – it all felt real. Are Dean & Jessica dead, too? Maybe I missed their memorial (assuming life is repeating itself). I looked deeply into the pupils of the congregants; I made a concerted effort to remember their faces; I felt an urge to pinch them and ask if they felt my touch. Call it Confirmations of Reality. I spoke to a few attendees, mourners, while trying to remain respectful – a cousin, a work colleague of Greta’s, someone who went to college with Nathan… They asked who I was; I told them I was a friend; “terrible what happened”, generic comments about tragedy… Hard to find non-cliched language in describing a double murder; cliche provides familiarity, the comfortable feeling of business as usual. I cannot help but feel. Feel… Wonder…if I had never mentioned Dean & Jessica to Greta & Nathan—would Greta & Nathan still be alive?

#

If I never asked Greta & Nathan about Dean & Jessica…

#

I went to the Montebello Warehouse.

#

I went to the Montebello Warehouse. I went inside. Just to look. The front gate was easy to breach; the front-facing garage door was liftable. Inside was junk. But I heard noise beyond the junk, in some deeper chamber. I went there, quietly, as quietly as possible. I heard the scampering movements of life, existing… I went there without making a sound and looked. Beyond the junk (kitchenware, plastic-wrapped furniture, boxed electronics) – there was a place to live. Industrial by design but with a cot, a sink and single burner for a kitchen, a toilet. The scampering – the sounds of life – came from somewhere deeper, beyond this sterile habitation… I moved closer, quietly, and peered into the next chamber. There was what looked like a doctor’s office waiting room with chairs and a closed door to a subsequent chamber—and seated in two of the chairs were Greta & Nathan. They were slouched, not dead exactly—but not alive. Blank, no signs of life, but no signs of death/murder. I heard movement approaching the door to the next chamber, the unlocking and opening of that door, and ducked…I waited, hearing the scampering sounds, and dared to look, to peer…and I saw a man dragging Greta while Nathan remained slouched—dragging Greta into the next chamber, the door closed behind—Nathan remained slouched—the man returned and grabbed Nathan, dragging him with him. Still, Greta & Nathan showed no signs of life, no signs of death, no signs of rigor mortis, no signs of protest, carted away like rubbish. The man: I recognized him instantly: I saw him from afar—at the memorial. I’d made a mental note of him as much as I’d mentally noted anyone/everyone at that memorial, that hoax. He is the joke-teller, the comedian, the Antagonist, then! (!!!) Overweight, pudgy, completely forgettable, large face, large nose, bald, maybe early 40s? When he returned from that interior chamber, having left Greta & Nathan behind, I ran. Did he hear my footsteps? How could he not have? Would returning to the Montebello Warehouse be a death sentence?

#

How could I not return?

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THE INTERIOR CHAMBER: DARK, ROWS OF SEATS, EACH SEAT FILLED WITH A DEAD-EYED PERSON – LIKE GRETA & NATHAN AS DESCRIBED PREVIOUSLY – <<< NOT ALIVE, NOT DEAD >>> THEY SIT THERE – I SEE THEM – I RECOGNIZE THEM – EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM, SLOUCHED, DEAD-EYED: JON & GRACE & TANNER & JOE & MARIELLE & GRETA & NATHAN & PARKER & CHRIS & LILLIAN & SOPHIE & BRAD & TONY & MARK & CASEY & DAPHNE &

#

TO THE LEFT OF THE ROWS OF SEATS WHERE MY OLD PATIENTS SIT, I CAN SEE THERE IS A DEEP, DEEP PIT IN THE HEART OF THE CHAMBER – I LOOKED INSIDE THE PIT – INSIDE THE PIT THERE ARE APPENDAGES: ARMS, LEGS, HANDS, FINGERS, HEADS, SCALPS, EYES, TORSOS, TOES,

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THE APPENDAGES ARE PILED ON TOP OF EACH OTHER, WAITING TO BE ASSEMBLED by the Antagonist.

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If you fear something, trust your fear. Fear was given to us by GOD for our own survival.

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On Compatibility: 10 Lessons for Love & Happiness by Dr. Ariel Sykes, PhD

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Harris Kauffman is a writer and producer whose work spans film and literature. He is the founder and editor of DEVOUR, a digital journal of cinematic speculative fiction. His short story, “Garbage Juice,” appeared in C.M. Muller’s Chthonic Matter, and his short story “A Hot October Day” took second place in the 2025 Moment-Karma Fiction Contest. In film, he spearheads development at Storyboard Entertainment and is a Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow and Film Independent Fast Track Fellow. Raised in California’s San Joaquin Valley, he studied English and Creative Writing at UC Berkeley. He is currently at work on his first novel and a collection of short stories.