“Frog Lake”

We were contacted by a company that worked with the government on a larger environmental project. The money for it had been earmarked for years, but for one reason or another, now they decided to pull the trigger. I guess they were afraid their funding would get cut before they got the chance to finish, so they pulled in every contractor in the area to help. And that’s where I come in.

Me and my crew had never worked an “environmental project” before. We didn’t even know what that really meant. They were offering good money though, so we figured we’d hear them out. My boss, Brogan, had a meeting with one of their reps. It took about thirty minutes. Then he just stepped out, gave us a nod, and stated;

“We’re doing this.”

We got set up in an apartment complex on the outskirts of a small Minnesota town called Tomskog. There was this little welcome sign with a blue sunflower on it. Strange place. Not as in outright hostile, but you see things that make you stop and think. Like how there’s always a guy waiting for the bus, or how there’s this one apartment that always keeps an open window. Little things like that.

Me and the crew were set up in small, fully furnished temp apartments. The project had a timeline of two months of intense work, so we had our jobs cut out for us. Our employer was a subsidiary of a larger company with a big hatchet for a logo, and they were pulling out all the stops. I saw trucks with the company logo rolling through town 24/7. My boss was nowhere near the top of the hierarchy; we’re talking a crew of well over 200 people pulled from all ends of the state. Mostly private contractors, but at least 40 or so were in-house company hires. You could tell by the color of their hard hats.

We were told the project was a conservation effort. The town and the nearby area had been riddled with various invasive species, and this was a last-ditch effort to keep it from spreading. It wasn’t clear what kind of invasive species we were talking about, but I figured it was frogs. The place was crawling with them. Big fat ones that looked like cow turds.

We got set up around a part of town called Frog Lake. A lot of locals weren’t too happy about it, so we had to put up fences. No one could get in or out. We had armed guards patrolling the perimeter. We had to block off a trail going all around the lake, which caused a bit of a stir. There was also the issue of restricting road access. A lot of residential houses were lined up around that lake, so we had to dig temporary roads to provide highway access. That was part of my immediate responsibilities; heavy machinery. Digging, mostly.

After the first week, they’d cornered off a specific part of the lake. We were working on building sand banks, allowing us to effectively separate a corner of the lake from the rest. I wasn’t clear on why exactly we were doing it, but being knowledgeable wasn’t part of the contract. I just had to drive the hardware and go where I was told. Then they brought in the pumps.

Four industrial-sized water pumps. They were gonna drain a corner of the lake. That’s why we separated it. I had no idea how this might help some kind of conservation effort, but there were far more educated people than me on-site that knew what they were doing. At least I think they did – they looked the part.

Day 10, the pumps got going. The trucks going in and out of town were replaced with water tanks. Once the water levels began to sank, I started seeing men in white hazmat suits going down into the banks with gas tanks on their backs. They were dousing the lake with a kind of chlorine gas; you could smell it all the way into town. They must’ve killed tens of thousands of frogs with that.

That didn’t help them much though. You know the water pumps? They got jammed constantly. You know how many frogs gotta swim into a water pump to bypass the pump filters and clog it? So many that you start to think it’s not an accident anymore. So many, in fact, that you start to think they want to die. The mechanics were working overtime. I mean, even more overtime than the rest of us.

But week two, that corner of the lake was drained. I was taken off heavy-duty work to check the infrastructure. Turns out, the bottom of the lake wasn’t quite as empty as one might’ve imagined. In fact, there was an entire building left down there on the very bottom.

It kind of looked like a church.

Brogan came up to me one day on my lunch break. He sat down next to me as we looked down at the drained lake. There were still guys in white pushing chlorine gas. We’d gotten used to the smell by then. Brogan offered me the bottom half of his sandwich.

“I told them no mayo,” he sighed. “It’s like this town has it out for us.”

“They’re not big fans,” I said. “There’s always a couple lined up around the fence.”

“They’re just curious,” he said, shrugging it off. “But yeah, I don’t suppose they’re eager to have us here.”

“I figured they would be. I mean, we’re dealing with a problem, right?”

Brogan didn’t answer. He just turned his attention back to the lake pit and took a swig of his Gatorade. I didn’t press the question.

He explained that I was going down there to help the construction crew. They were considering what to do with the church, and in the meantime, they needed some work done. Some stairs going into the lake, a rail to hold on to, and a couple of construction trailers for the on-site crew. They were already rolling in a crane, and they were flattening the ground into a ramp to allow trucks to go down. It was a massive undertaking.

I ended up working on the stairs for a couple of days until I heard a guy call out that they needed someone with interior safety experience. The guy had a blue hat, so he was a company man. I figured I might get a bonus, so I volunteered – I have more certifications than I care to recite, and he just needed someone to check the once-submerged church to see if it was safe to inspect.

So in a twist of fate, that was my new assignment.

This church was bigger than you think. The whole thing had been submerged in that lake for God knows how long. There was a bell tower, but the bell was long since gone. From a quick outside check, it looked sturdy enough. Almost like the water had preserved it. Whoever built it had done one hell of a job making sure the wood wouldn’t rot straight through.

When I finally made the call to go inside, I have to admit; I was frightened. The place was airtight, and there is so much algae buildup that all the light gets swallowed. All I had was a flashlight and the headlamps of a curious crew peering through the front doors.

I was surprised; the pews were still there. I could see the altar, and the cross. There were doors leading further in, but the walls were so covered in natural wear and tear that you could barely make them out from the rest of the wall. I figured I shouldn’t press my luck until I’d assessed the structural integrity.

It was a strange building. If you ignore the multitudes of frogs lurking under the pews, the ceiling itself had a couple of unusual details. It seemed that the entire building was built to withstand staying under water for prolonged periods of time. It was almost as if whoever made it had anticipated this thing would sink. Almost as if that was the intent all along.

I had to battle for space with a variety of frogs, but eventually, I made the call that the building was safe enough to traverse. Not so much that we could set up heavy machinery, but enough that we could have a couple of people move through it at any given time. I was charged with setting up some construction lights and a steel grated floor.

I thought I was going to work alone until the basic safety measures were put up, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. One morning when I entered the church, there was already someone there. She was around my age and wore a white hard hat, signaling government official rather than company big wig or private contractor. She wore bright clothes as a contrast to her darker skin but had these almost unnaturally bright eyes. You could tell she was a bit of a big deal though; she wasn’t covered in mud like the rest of us, and she had an iPad for a clipboard.

But more than anything else, she had a smile that could burn straight through a stone. The first time she looked at me, it felt like staring into the sun.

“Hi there!” she said. “I’m Eva.”

“Hey there,” I said, introducing myself. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to assess your work,” she said. “You know what it’s like. One man digs, three foremen check the shovel for damages. Two more sketch up insurance claims.”

“Don’t I know it. So you’re babysitting then?”

“For now. Just pretend like I’m not here.”

“Easier said than done.”

I hadn’t expected it to come off as flirty, but it did. She didn’t seem to mind though, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear without breaking eye contact. A man could fall in love with less.

Eva helped me a little when she was around. Mostly with setting up the grated floor. Without it, it felt like walking on black ice. One wrong step would send you to the ER with a displaced shoulder. As we worked, we’d make small talk about a little of everything. Previous jobs we’d worked, craziest client stories, the usual shtick. She seemed to be more of a desk jockey, not having all too many stories of her own. She enjoyed listening to mine though.

“I think it’s great we’re doing this,” she added. “I’ve wanted to see this place for a long time.”

“I thought we were here for the frogs,” I said. “Environmental project, right?”

“Right,” she agreed. “But I still wanted to see this place.”

“You know anything about it?”

“Scandinavian settler church, early 19^th century. They were here long before the homestead act, so they were eager, to say the least.”

“It’s strange, right? How they built it to survive being submerged?”

“Many coastal communities prepared for flash flooding, they took that with them when they moved inland.”

I gave her a curious look as she rolled her eyes.

“So I like history. Sue me.”

“I don’t think that’s a criminal offense. Maybe civil.”

She snorted and shook her head.

As we secured more of the church over a couple of days, I started seeing less of Eva. I figured she had tons of people to keep in check and had used her time with me as a sort of break. It’s one thing to handle an entire team in need of management and oversight, and another thing to keep an eye on one stubborn man with a screwdriver. Still, I’d begun to look forward to seeing her there. If I’m honest, it was the best part of my day.

I’d done some more work reinforcing a couple of frames around the windows. I got word that they were gonna take them out entirely; just plop them out of the frame. Brogan wasn’t saying it outright, but it seemed they were either gonna demolish the whole building or dismantle it to a point where it’d be unrecognizable. It was a bit sad; this thing had been standing for well over a hundred years, and now it was going down without an explanation. I couldn’t imagine this was all because of the frogs. Hell, most of them were dead. You could hardly smell the chlorine anymore.

I noticed someone having broken down the doors to the back of the church. It was the one part I’d been asking for confirmation to do, so someone must’ve gotten to it before I did. Figuring I had the go-ahead to check, I did a bit of exploration on my own.

The back of the church had a storage area and a staircase leading up to the old bell tower. There was a small space for the priest to prepare sermons and keep records. It was incredible in a way. Although most of the furniture had rotted away, you could tell what was supposed to go where. There was a corner meant for a desk and a chair, and right next to it, there were bookshelves. Most of them were still intact. No books though.

I set up a couple more lights there, only to realize I wasn’t alone. I turned to see Eva standing at the entrance with a flashlight.

“Just so you know, we don’t have clearance to go in yet,” she said. “So this might get us in a bit of trouble.”

I looked at her, but she didn’t budge. She wasn’t about to move anytime soon.

“You don’t seem to mind,” I noted.

“Not yet,” she smiled. “I must admit, I’m curious about this place. I feel like it’s telling a story.”

“An old one, for sure.”

“For sure.”

We opened the door to the bell tower staircase. The stairs were absolutely demolished, but there was a path leading into a cellar. There was something bright down there, making me think someone had already been down to set up lights. Eva tapped me on the shoulder.

“You mind if I ask you something?” she said. “Is it true they’re planning to bring this place down?”

“That’s more your paygrade than mine,” I said. “I just go where I’m told.”

“I know, but I’m just being paid to double-check things. I’m not really in the loop.”

“Well, they’re taking down the windows,” I explained. “They’ve thought about dismantling the front rooms. The entrance and that, uh… mini-room.”

“The narthex,” she said. “It’s called the narthex.”

“Sounds like a Star Trek alien.”

She snorted again, almost choking on her spit.

After our talk, I did some digging. I talked to my boss and a couple of the heavy machinery guys, and they all had the impression that the church was about to go down. It was just gonna take a lot of work, and the ground wasn’t prepared for it yet. They couldn’t risk the place being flooded while housing multi-million-dollar industrial equipment.

I questioned the need to destroy an old church in a “preservation effort” for an “environmental project”, but by now it was a sort of known secret that we were doing something else entirely. I was just there to do a job, and all of it seemed to be perfectly legal, but it still didn’t feel right. It’s like having your tooth pulled – no matter how gentle the dentist, it’s still uncomfortable.

The next time I met Eva, she’d put on these thick white gloves and sorted through old wooden debris. I told her about the plans I’d heard, and how none of them seemed all that reliable. The only people who knew for sure were the higher-ups; I didn’t really have a timeline or action plan. But they were, indeed, bringing trucks down to do some heavy lifting. You didn’t do that for nothing.

As I finished explaining, she walked up to me.

“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate the effort.”

She leaned in and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I was so surprised. I turned to her, not knowing what to say. As I did, I got another kiss; this time on the lips. I think it was accidental, but she didn’t seem to mind. She hurried off before I could get another one. She had this violet scented perfume that lingered on me long after she left, making my lips tingle. Or maybe that was my heart. Impossible to tell.

Going home that night, something didn’t feel right. My stomach kept churning, like my intestines were constantly moving. I kept burping as if someone had carbonated my insides. I could hear a rasping noise every time I exhaled. At first, I thought it was a fungal infection; you can get those around old buildings.

I didn’t get much sleep. I kept rushing to the bathroom, coughing up this salty black sludge that lingered at the back of my throat. I shone a light in my mouth through the bathroom mirror, and I could see these little dark spots on my tonsils. Even just standing there, tilting my head back, I could feel pressure on my throat; like my blood was thicker. A sort of growing pain. It’s hard to explain.

I knew I’d fucked up when I heard frogs croak outside. The sun was already rising. I was feeling better, but I was gonna have to take a sick day. You don’t do well on a construction site with less than two hours of sleep.

When I returned to the dig a day later, they’d already begun taking out the windows. It seems they’d abandoned the idea of picking them out of the frame and just gone straight to breaking them. There was a man with a steel pipe standing on a ladder, smashing panel after panel. I could hear the glass as it clattered to the ground inside, crashing against the grated steel floor.

“Feeling better?” Brogan asked.

I hadn’t noticed him approaching, so maybe I wasn’t all there yet. I still gave him a thumbs up.

“Good,” he continued. “Don’t need more people getting sick.”

“There are others?”

“You kidding me?” he chuckled. “Got two drivers with a fever and one who’s not answering his phone.”

“You need me to chip in?”

“Nah, I need you working the interior. Bring out the pews, all loose shit. Gotta clear it for the dozer.”

I spent most of the day waiting by the stairs, watching a couple of frogs struggle to get out of the mud. Weeks of chemical spraying, and there were still frogs around. Maybe there really was an invasive species problem.

When they called for a break, I went ahead and headed down. It was strange seeing the place in the light of day. Usually, all sunlight got stuck in the algae-covered windows. I brought a crowbar and got cracking on one of the back pews. I only managed to get one solid push in before there was a tap on my shoulder. Eva. I’d been so focused on my work that I hadn’t seen her come in. I could still smell that violet perfume on her.

“I wanna show you something,” she said, lowering her voice. “You gotta see this.”

Now, I’m not one to slack on the job, but we were ahead of schedule and Eva was, well, Eva. I couldn’t help but listen to her. She went for the basement, leading the way with a shoulder light. I was a bit hesitant about going downstairs, not wanting to slip and tumble down. I’d bowl her over like a pin, and then I’d have some explaining to do. It turned out fine though, the stairs were solid stone.

There was something bright down there, but there were no lamps. It was an ambient light coming from somewhere further in. I wasn’t sure about the whole thing, but Eva urged me on. She didn’t hesitate for a moment.

“I checked it out the other day,” she said. “You weren’t around, so I figured I’d keep busy.”

“You miss me?” I asked, half-jokingly.

“I think I did. A little.”

We came to the bottom of the stairs. It must’ve been a sort of storage cellar at one point, but most of it had eroded. I could barely make out anything in the debris. It smelled like dry seaweed and mud. And something else. Something flowery.

“Watch your step,” she said. “It’s right up ahead.”

There was a fissure. It stretched from the layered stone wall and into the ground. About eight feet long, three feet across. That’s where the light came from. A soft cyan light, shimmering with streaks of bright purple. It had this strange organic pattern, like the inside of a corn cob. It was mesmerizing.

I tried speaking three times, but I could just make noises. My throat throbbed a little. Finally, I formed the words carefully enough to let them out of my mouth.

“What the hell is it?”

“It’s what they want to destroy,” Eva said.

“You mean ‘we’ want to destroy,” I added.

I looked at Eva, but she said nothing. Finally, she put a hand on my cheek.

“No,” she insisted. “They. Not we.”

She leaned in to kiss me. This time, it was no accident. Not even close. And as much as I loved her soft touch, something felt wrong. A tickle on my lips; like kissing a nettle.

“You’re not one of us,” I whispered. “Are you?”

“I’m not.”

“Are you from town? Did you make it over the fence?”

“I’m not from town.”

There was no more room for more questions. Just soft touches, kisses, and rationalizing. It’s amazing how many things you’re ready to tell yourself at the sight of a pretty face.

Over the next few days, it all sort of turned into a sort of routine. I would go to work, do my job at the church, and meet up with Eva during the slow hours. We’d hide away in the cellar and just spend time together. Sometimes cuddling, sometimes talking. She told me about her overprotective father and how he always kept an eye on her. She told me about a cousin of hers, who owned a vineyard in France. Little bits and pieces of a life that seemed long and arduous. Very different from her otherwise soft demeanor.

I’d have a bite to eat and go back to my company-assigned temp apartment. There, I’d either crash instantly or stay up, unable to sleep. Sometimes I’d be sick, sometimes I’d have my head swimming with pictures or thoughts. It’s not like insomnia; it was more like I forgot to be tired. I would end up being bored more than anything. And every time it happened, I wished Eva could be there. Everything felt better with her around.

But then one day, they went ahead with the demolition. I wasn’t informed. I just got to the site, and it was underway.

They’d been working on a ramp for a long time, and now they had it. They’d brought down a bulldozer and started working through the vestibule and the narthex. Despite standing for over a hundred years, the building was going down. There was no stopping it.

I could feel my pulse rise as I realized they had no idea that Eva might be down there. There was a crowd standing on the bank of the lake, but I couldn’t see Brogan anywhere. I didn’t know what got into me, but I pushed through the crowd and grabbed the first important-looking company man I could find.

“You gotta stop!” I said. “There’s someone in the basement!”

“What?”

“The basement!” I repeated. “There’s someone down there!”

“What basement?”

“The basement under the church! The cellar, it’s-“

Before I could continue, the bulldozer ploughed on. And as it did, I could hear an eerie sound. Something giving way as the floor cracked. The settlers had planned for a lot, but they hadn’t planned for a multi-ton steel machine to roll over their floors. In a matter of seconds, the bulldozer broke through and tipped forward, leaving only the back of it sticking out of the ground. The crowd gasped as men with colorful helmets hurried to help.

They managed to get the driver out, but the floor had collapsed. It was a mess; most of the front of the church was gone, and the bulldozer had gone too far too quickly. The walls were still sturdy, but they were gonna come down soon enough. They’d have to find a way to get the bulldozer out and go at it from another angle.

All the while, my heart kept pounding away, thinking about Eva being down there. She could be dead. Crushed. I tried to get through, but it was chaos. EMTs were on site to check out the driver, and people were being dispersed. They were calling full stop on all heavy-duty work in the lake for now as they reassessed the situation.

I waited for an opportunity to slip by. I skipped dinner, just standing there, waiting. It wasn’t until later in the evening when I finally saw an opening. We had armed guards patrolling the area but they were usually busier with looking for outside threats, especially during early rotation. As soon as they started to fan out, I slipped down to the church, right by the bulldozer, and down the stairs.

“Eva?” I called out. “Eva, you in here?”

It didn’t take long for me to spot her. Looking past the collapsed floor and bulldozer, she was sitting further in; right next to the fissure, letting her feet dangle into it. The light danced on her face, sending ripples across her skin. She didn’t seem to notice I was even there.

“We gotta go,” I said. “You can’t stay here. They’re bringing it down. All of it.”

“I got nowhere else to go,” she said.

She didn’t look up. I noticed she was leaning a little too far ahead. Was she about to jump into the fissure?

“You can come with me. Come on.”

I offered her a hand. She took it, looking up at me.

“You sure?” she asked.

“Of course. Let’s go.”

I pulled her up. She had this hopeful smile that reminded me of the sun peeking through storm clouds.

We made it all the way up the stairs and out the front, ducking under the crumbling church entrance. Eva couldn’t bring herself to look at the chaos, so she kept her head down. We made it all the way out to the open sky before we had to stop. There were people up ahead. The guards were back on rotation, and one of them had spotted us emerging from the rubble. He was maybe 40 feet away, but the site was quieter without all the machines running. He could probably hear us long before he saw us.

“You’re not supposed to be down there!” he called out. “What the hell are you doing?!”

“She was someone stuck in the basement!” I called back. “It’s not safe!”

He clicked his flashlight and shone a light on us. It was blinding, and I couldn’t see his face. But I could hear something in his tone shift. It went from confident and authoritative to trembling in an instant. Something happened. And in the next moment, he called out for help on his walkie-talkie.

I turned to Eva as spotlights flared. One by one they went up, covering the entire site in a pale industrial glow. But there were no commands, just… panicked voices. Screams. Someone calling out a code, someone calling out confirmation. Eva looked at me in disbelief, struggling to find the right words.

“Do something!” one of the guards called out. “Fucking do something!”

Then, gunshots.

My eyes were on Eva when the first bullet hit. I saw it enter right above her heart.

And as I blinked, something changed.

Eva wasn’t standing there any longer.

I was looking at something else. Something large, maybe six feet wide, eight feet tall. A dozen tendril-like legs sprawled in all directions. A single vaguely humanoid arm unfurled into an unreal five-jointed mess of a limb. A body of contracting and expanding rubber-like sacs, lined with pulsing blue veins; like a bowl of noodles held together by fishing wire.

And on the side, the decayed head of a long-dead woman. Hanging to the side like an afterthought, a thin sliver of hair hanging from the remains of a scalp. All of it breathing like a dying balloon.

Another gunshot, then another. I blinked with every blast and watched her change in front of me. In one moment, I saw her as I knew her. In the next, I saw that unworldly thing. She fell to her knees, screaming for help. In the next breath I’d hear this awful croaking, like a bullfrog in an undulating tunnel.

But the image I remember the most was that of the Eva I knew. This soft, beautiful person, being riddled with gunshots. Reaching for me. And when I didn’t reach back, the betrayal was painted on her face just as true as the bullet holes in her chest. She spoke. And when she did, there was no pain in her voice. And no matter how she looked, the voice stayed the same from one breath to another.

“This was your plan, wasn’t it?” she said. “To get me outside. Make me vulnerable.”

I covered my head. They were calling for help. Someone was bringing a rifle. I could hear an engine in the distance. Eva looked up. In another form, her skull rotated upwards, looking at the sky.

“Father!” she cried. “Father!”

I crawled backwards, slipping in the mud. One person was firing a large caliber rifle, stopping only to reload. It didn’t phase her in the slightest. I couldn’t make out where everything was coming from, I could just see the many lights and the blinking gunfire. My ears rang, but I could barely hear it over my own pulse.

It’d been cloudy all day. I hadn’t thought about it, but as Eva looked up, so did I. And up there, in the clouds, I could see something move. A swirl, as if something stirred.

And in a moment that stopped my breath, I saw the dark clouds part. An eye looked down. An impossibly large, ceaseless, alien eye.

It’s impossible to describe that sensation. It’s not just the scale, it’s the unrealness of it. You can’t make sense of what you’re seeing. No matter how many monster movies you see, or how many books you read, imagination can only get you so far. But to lay there with dirt on your hands and feeling the rush of the wind as the sky itself changes, as it breaks the rules, is something else entirely. You know your life won’t be the same after that. You are reminded that you being alive is nothing but chance and happenstance. And in that moment, I’ve never felt more human.

I made it out of the drained lake as the first drops of rain started to fall. They were backing up with a truck, preparing to do some kind of last-ditch maneuver. Maybe run her over. The eye in the sky slowly turned, looking at something to my right-hand side. There was a feeling in the air, like a sudden warmth washing over us.

Then I saw a man come undone.

One of our on-site guards. His body broke like a cheap gas station wrap as frogs spilled out of him, climbing over one another and dropping haplessly to the ground. Another man next to him followed suit, leaving behind only patches of skin and entrail-stained clothes.

Some people started running. The eye turned, silencing another voice. The man driving the truck threw himself out of the driver’s seat and ran for the front gates, screaming at the top of his lungs. A cold, panicked shriek. Humans aren’t meant to sound like that.

Then the eye turned to me.

I could feel something expanding in my chest. My lungs refused to exhale. I was swelling from the inside out. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t think at all. I couldn’t even scream. And as I stared into that impossible thing, I didn’t know what to say or do. I could just flail my arms and roll around in the dirt. I was completely, fundamentally, powerless.

Then, it stopped. It turned its attention downward, to Eva. She said something, but all I could hear was my heart. Moments later, the eye closed.

The site was abandoned. There was an alarm blaring in the distance. But for a moment, it was just me and Eva on opposite sides. Me up above, her down below. And for a final time, I saw her as she wanted to be seen; a bullet-ridden woman, slipping back into the basement of the church and disappearing into the fissure below. Not a word spoken.

The rain whipped into a downpour. The lake was flooded, putting what remained of the building back underwater. Our spotlights couldn’t pierce the murky surface, making it look impossibly deep. I sat there watching the hundreds, maybe thousands of frogs diving back into the waters and retreating into the dark below. The rain soaked me, washing the dirt from my hands.

I must’ve been there for hours before the armed guards pulled me away. They handcuffed me and put me in the back of a black car. They spent the next days asking me a lot of uncomfortable questions, and I answered them truthfully. By the end of it, they gave me an ultimatum. To go home and shut up, or to stay in the dark and talk as much as I wanted. They made no promises except that I’d be doing myself a lifelong disservice if I didn’t comply.

So I made a deal.

It wasn’t that long ago, I suppose. The days tend to meld together when you can’t figure out your sleep. I haven’t told the company about how I’ve been feeling lately. At night, things have gotten worse. The swelling in my throat, the strange insomnia. I’ve noticed a sort of horizontal slit in my eyes. I got this blind spot that I can’t explain, like my eyes are drifting to the side of my head. And sometimes I wake at night hearing frogs croaking; but it’s not coming from outside.

I look different in the mirror. I feel different. I’ve felt different ever since that first kiss. And I know I should feel disgusted, or angry, or scared, but I feel nothing but warmth thinking about Eva and our time together. Yes, even now. I can’t help it.

As of writing this, my fingers are secreting a mild adhesive, making the keys break loose from the keyboard. I have a softness forming around my neck, like a pouch or a sac. I think I know what’s happening, and in some strange way, I think I’m okay with it.

The lake is still fenced off. Brogan and the crew still work there. From what I understand, they’re exploring different options, but they’re still hell-bent on breaking that building and taking control of the site. I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems to be a priority worth dying for. There are still trucks running through that little town.

I’ve been moved far away. I get a small check in the mail every week, and as long as I keep quiet, I suspect I’ll get more. But I’m afraid I’m at a point where I can’t show myself in public anymore. I can’t recognize myself in the mirror. I can barely understand my own voice.

And to this day, there’s a part of me that wants to go back.

I want to dive into the deep waters. To kick my legs out and just indulge.

I want to see Eva for who she is. I want to hold her, and be held.

And then, only then, will everything be okay.

Everything.