11 Jun Self-Preservation

Part I

I never set out to make The Drunken Lantern my second home, but that’s exactly what it had become over the years. The place wasn’t much to look at—a squat, aging brick building wedged between a pawn shop and an abandoned hardware store on Monroe Street. The chipped neon sign above the door buzzed faintly, casting a sickly green glow onto the cracked sidewalk. On nights like this, with the wind howling down from the lake and rattling the loose gutter over the entrance, the bar had a way of feeling like both sanctuary and tomb.

Inside, the constant low hum of conversations blended with the muted clinking of glasses. The place had been around longer than I had, and most of the regulars looked like they had come with the furniture. Booths lined the far wall under dim yellow lights, each with its own battered little table scarred by decades of restless hands and spilled drinks. The bar itself was a slab of stained oak, polished nightly but never clean.

I slipped into my usual spot on the stool closest to the end, back to the door, as always. The stool wobbled slightly under my weight, but I barely noticed anymore.

Big Mike was behind the bar, drying a glass with a towel that looked as tired as I felt. He glanced up when he saw me, offering a nod that carried more understanding than any greeting could have. We’d danced this dance plenty of times.

“Evening, Calvin,” he said, setting the glass aside. “The usual?”

I managed a thin smile and nodded. “Yeah, Mike. The usual.”

He poured the first shot of bourbon without comment, placing it in front of me with a soft clink. The amber liquid swirled slightly as I picked up the glass, studying it for a moment before tossing it back. The burn spread down my throat and settled into the hollow that had grown in my gut these past few years.

Mike refilled the glass automatically. “How’s the job treating you?” he asked, the question more habit than genuine curiosity.

“Same as always,” I replied. “Lucky to have it, I guess. Keeps the lights on.”

The truth was less comforting. The factory cut hours every few months, and I was already behind on two credit cards. My health insurance barely covered the pills my doctor had prescribed for my blood pressure. That was assuming I even bothered filling the prescriptions, which I hadn’t in a while. My ex-wife Shelley had taken care of that kind of thing back when we were still together. Now it was all on me, and I wasn’t exactly the responsible type.

Mike said nothing, just nodded and wiped down a section of the bar that didn’t need wiping. We both understood the rhythm. Small talk was an unnecessary indulgence most nights.

I knocked back the second shot and tapped the glass lightly against the wood. Mike raised an eyebrow, hesitating just a beat before refilling it.

“You sure you want to keep up this pace tonight?” he asked.

I waved him off. “It’s fine. Been one of those days.”

Mike grunted and stepped away to serve another customer. He knew better than to push.

I sat there for a while, staring into the third shot. My hand hovered for a moment before I lifted it to my lips and swallowed it down. The third shot was always the pivot point, the place where my mind started to blur around the edges and everything softened just enough to make the world feel tolerable again.

That was when I saw her.

At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. The far corner booth, the one that usually sat empty this time of night, now had a single occupant. A woman. Pale, dark-haired, dressed in something that looked almost out of place, like she belonged to another era. The soft lighting barely reached her table, but I could see enough to know I hadn’t seen her here before.

She sat perfectly still, hands folded neatly on the table in front of her, eyes fixed in my direction.

I blinked and looked away, trying to reset my focus, but when my gaze returned, she was still there, motionless.

A faint chill crept up from the base of my spine, but I brushed it aside. The third shot always did that, muddled perception just enough to play games with shadows and shapes. The mind filled in gaps when the alcohol began softening its grip on reality.

Mike returned, catching the direction of my gaze. “You good, Calvin?” he asked.

I forced a chuckle, shaking my head. “Yeah, yeah. Just thought I saw someone I knew, that’s all.”

Mike glanced toward the booth, then back at me with a puzzled expression. “Booth’s empty, bud.”

I frowned, forcing my eyes back to the corner. She was still there, same posture, same calm expression, though Mike clearly didn’t see her.

I rubbed my temples and exhaled slowly, careful not to let the unease crawl too far. The third shot was kicking harder tonight than usual, that’s all. Nothing I hadn’t handled before. If I let my head get away from me now, it would only spiral. I turned my attention back to the bar, keeping my eyes forward, though I could still feel her gaze lingering.

Part II

The following evening, I found myself back at The Drunken Lantern. The cold evening air clung to my jacket as I pushed open the door and slipped once more into the world of yellowed lights and murmuring voices. The atmosphere felt the same as always, but I carried something new with me: the faint unease that had settled over me the night before, now everpresent.

Big Mike was behind the bar again, polishing another glass with slow, steady circles. His face lifted when he saw me enter, and he gave the same nod he always did upon my return.

“Evening, Calvin,” he said. “You want the usual?”

I pulled out the same stool, settling into its familiar creak. “Yeah, Mike. The usual.”

Without hesitation, he poured the first shot of bourbon, setting it gently in front of me. I reached for the glass and let the burn roll down my throat. The warmth spread through my chest, dulling the tightness that had built up over the day. The factory had been a drag, the machines louder than usual, the foreman more irritable, the hours longer than they had any right to be.

Mike refilled my glass, and I offered him a half-hearted smile. “How’s business tonight?”

He shrugged. “Same crowd, same complaints.” His voice held a dry amusement, though his eyes still carried the same cautious glance they always did when I sat down for another night of drinking.

I downed the second shot a little faster this time, eager to let its effects smooth out the edges. The rhythm was automatic now. It was only when Mike reached for the bottle again that I felt hesitation ripple briefly through me, though I didn’t let it show.

He raised his eyebrows slightly. “Going for three again?”

I nodded. “Might as well. Third one’s the charm, right?”

He said nothing, only poured the bourbon into the glass with the same practiced ease. It swirled lazily under the glow of the overhead bulbs. I lifted the glass slowly, pausing just long enough to glance toward the corner booth.

She was there again. The same pale complexion, the same dark hair cascading over her shoulders. Her hands rested on the table, fingers intertwined. The shadows pooled around her, framing her like some carefully staged photograph. And just like before, she was staring at me.

The chill crept back into my chest, coiling tighter this time. I let the third shot slide down my throat, though it did little to steady my nerves. The alcohol dulled plenty, but not her presence.

For a long moment, she remained still. Then, her lips parted. Her voice was quiet but carried across the room as though drawn directly to my ears.

“You’re dying, Calvin. You know that, don’t you?”

I blinked and glanced around quickly. None of the other patrons seemed to notice her. A pair of men at the far end of the bar were deep in conversation about last night’s football game, and Mike had turned his attention to washing another glass. If anyone else heard her speak, they gave no sign.

I looked back toward her, swallowing hard as I tried to steady my voice. “That so?”

She nodded. “It’s already begun. Your liver’s failing. Each night you return here, you hasten what’s coming.”

Part of me wanted to dismiss her entirely, to chalk it up to the third shot playing tricks on me again. Still, the way she spoke—softly, calmly, and self-assured—made it hard to brush aside so easily.

“Who the hell are you?” I asked, my voice cracking at the edges.

She tilted her head slightly, as though studying me. “I’m someone who sees what you refuse to see. I know where this ends.”

My throat suddenly felt dry. I reached for my glass, realizing only as my fingers met the empty bottom that I had already finished it.

She continued, her voice steady. “You’ll lose your job first. The missed days will pile up as your body weakens. Then the bills will come due. Your savings won’t last long—what little there is. And Shelley… well, you know what burdens she already carries.”

The mention of Shelley raised my hackles. It wasn’t just the words themselves but the certainty with which she spoke them, as if she had already watched my future play out.

I laughed, though it came out thin and hollow. “You sound just like my doctor.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Your doctor sees only the surface. I see the full arc, Calvin. But it doesn’t have to happen that way.”

I squinted at her, wary. “And let me guess—you’ve got some way to fix it?”

She nodded once, the faintest curve of a smile touching her lips. “I can intervene. If you choose to stop drinking, I can give you the time you’re losing. I can keep you from falling apart. Your family won’t suffer for your mistakes. You won’t leave them destitute.”

The words hung in the air, wrapped in an almost tempting simplicity. It sounded easy—too easy—and that alone made my skin crawl.

I shook my head and laughed again, though the humor never reached my chest. “You know what you sound like? One of those self-help commercials on late-night TV. ‘Turn your life around. Make better choices.’” I leaned forward slightly, lowering my voice. “But you’re not real. You’re some kind of hallucination. Bourbon dreams.”

Her smile lingered, calm and unwavering. “Believe what you like. But you know the truth of your condition, even if you refuse to say it aloud.”

I rubbed my hands over my face. When I lowered my hands, she was still there, watching me with that same patient stare, as if she had all the time in the world.

I looked back toward the bar, suddenly aware of how heavy my head had become. Mike caught my eye from down the counter and gave a small nod, wordless but understanding.

I didn’t look back at the corner booth again that night.

Part III

Two days passed before I finally gave in to the nagging voice that had burrowed itself into the back of my skull. It wasn’t just the woman’s words from the bar that had worked their way under my skin, though they certainly lingered. It was the way my hands had begun to tremble in the mornings, how I woke drenched in sweat, the dull ache beneath my ribs growing harder to ignore with each passing week. Denial only works for so long before the cracks start to show.

The clinic sat two blocks off Main, wedged between an old insurance office and a laundromat that hadn’t seen a full row of functioning machines in years. The waiting room smelled faintly of antiseptic and tired carpeting, and the receptionist barely looked up as I checked in.

Dr. Monroe called me in after a short wait. He was a soft-spoken man in his early fifties with thinning hair and a face that looked permanently exhausted. We had known each other for a while, though most of our appointments over the years had been short and routine. This visit carried a different weight.

He glanced briefly at the chart before setting it aside. His chair creaked as he leaned forward slightly, folding his hands atop his knee.

“Calvin,” he said, his voice calm but measured, “why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

I hesitated before answering, though I already knew there was little sense in pretending. “I’ve been feeling off lately. Tired all the time. My stomach’s been acting up. And… well, I figured it was time I stopped ignoring it.”

He nodded, saying nothing for a moment as he studied my face. “Still drinking?”

I tried to meet his gaze, but my eyes drifted toward the floor. “Some. Not as much as I used to.”

That was a lie, of course. If anything, it had increased over the past few months. The third shot had become fourth, then fifth on certain nights. But I didn’t need him lecturing me yet—not until I knew exactly how bad it was.

Dr. Monroe sighed and reached for his clipboard. “All right. Let’s run some bloodwork. I want to check your liver enzymes, among other things. And I’d like to do an ultrasound, just to see where we’re at.”

The tests didn’t take long, but the waiting afterward felt endless. By the time he called me back in to review the results, my mouth had gone dry.

He sat across from me again, his expression carefully composed, though the gravity beneath it was clear enough.

“Calvin, I’m not going to sugarcoat this. Your liver function is severely compromised. The levels we’re seeing suggest you’re already in the early stages of cirrhosis.”

The words landed heavily, as though they carried a physical force. My ears rang for a moment, and I struggled to find my voice.

“That… that bad?” I stammered.

He nodded. “If you continue drinking, the damage will only accelerate. You could start developing complications within months. Fluid retention, bleeding, infections—things that don’t go away easily, and in some cases, may not go away at all.”

I swallowed hard, my throat tightening. “What do I do?” I asked quietly.

Dr. Monroe’s tone softened slightly. “You need to stop drinking, Calvin. Completely. Your liver can recover to a degree if you make changes now, but time is not on your side. Every day counts.”

The room felt smaller somehow, the walls closing in as I sat there, absorbing the reality I had worked so hard to avoid. I nodded numbly, offering the empty promise I knew he expected.

“I’ll work on it.”

He held my gaze for a moment longer, as if weighing whether to press further, but finally gave a small nod. “I can refer you to a program if you’re willing. It’s going to take commitment, but there’s still a chance you can still turn this around.”

I mumbled a thanks and gathered my jacket, though my legs felt unsteady beneath me. The fluorescent lights hummed softly overhead as I made my way back into the waiting room and out into the late afternoon chill.

As I walked back toward my apartment, the conversation played over in my mind, overlapping with another that had taken place nearly two years earlier.

I could still hear Shelley’s voice in our kitchen that night, her hands clenched into small, trembling fists as tears streamed down her face.

“I can’t keep doing this, Cal,” she had said, her voice breaking. “You promised me you’d stop. You promised more times than I can count, and every time I believe you, you find your way back to that damn bar.”

I had stood there, too numb or too proud to respond, unable to admit how far I had fallen. In the end, she had packed her things and left, taking our daughter with her. I hadn’t seen either of them since.

The guilt ate at me even now, its sharp edges dulled only by the bottle I kept returning to like some faithful, poisonous companion.

That evening, despite everything the doctor had told me, I found myself once again sitting at the bar inside The Drunken Lantern.

Big Mike looked at me with something resembling pity but said nothing as he poured the first shot. The bourbon burned on its way down, but this time the warmth offered no comfort.

I glanced toward the corner booth. The woman was not there tonight.

Somehow, that unsettled me even more.

Part IV

The days that followed passed beneath a kind of haze that never fully lifted, even in the moments I spent away from the bar. I tried to quit, or at least to cut back, telling myself that I had finally reached the edge of the cliff and could no longer afford to keep inching closer. Each morning began with some fragile promise of restraint, but as the hours wore on and the weight of my failures settled across my shoulders, the pull of the bottle became too strong to resist.

By the time evening rolled around, I was once again pushing open the familiar door to The Drunken Lantern. The warmth inside offered a perverse sort of comfort, the buzz of conversation once again mingling with the quiet clink of glassware behind the bar.

Big Mike raised his eyes as I entered but did not speak. It was the silence of a man who had seen others fight—and lose—the same battle more times than he cared to count.

I sat at my usual stool, the cushion beneath me creaking under my weight. Mike poured my first shot without asking, and I drank it quickly, as though trying to silence the part of my mind that still whispered warnings.

The second shot followed, then the third, each one blurring the edges of my thoughts a little more. The familiar numbness spread through my chest and arms, though it failed to quell my anxiety.

As I lowered the empty third glass to the bar, I sensed her before I saw her. The air shifted slightly, or perhaps it was only my mind tricking itself again, but when I turned my head… she was there.

The woman sat in the corner booth as though she had never left, her pale features framed by the dim light. Her dark hair shimmered faintly, and her eyes locked onto mine the moment I looked in her direction.

“Do you feel it yet?” she asked, her voice steady and low, though it carried across the distance effortlessly. “Pulling at you from within?”

I swallowed hard, feeling my throat tighten. “You’re persistent, I’ll give you that.”

She offered a faint smile. “Persistence is required when time is slipping through your fingers.”

I shook my head, though the motion made the room tilt slightly. “I told you before—I’m not interested in whatever game you’re playing.”

Her eyes softened, and for a moment she looked mournful. “I am not your enemy, Calvin. I only want to spare you what is coming.”

Before I could respond, the room around me shifted. The bar dissolved into darkness, replaced by a cold, grey landscape. A small gathering of figures stood before a casket, their faces pale beneath a heavy sky. I recognized them instantly. Shelley stood near the front, her shoulders hunched beneath the weight of grief. Her hands clutched tightly at our daughter, who looked up at her mother with wide, pleading eyes.

The preacher’s voice was muffled, little more than a droning hum beneath the wind that cut across the cemetery. The few mourners present looked uncomfortable, eager for the ceremony to end. The coffin bore my name, etched into the polished wood. I tried to move, or to speak, but my body would not respond. I was locked in place, forced to watch as the scene unfolded before me.

Shelley’s face was hollow, her eyes red and swollen. Her lips moved as though she were whispering some small comfort to our daughter, but the words never reached me. The little girl—our daughter—clung to her mother’s coat, her small face buried against Shelley’s side as silent tears streamed down her cheeks.

The wind howled louder, and the vision shifted once more.

Now I stood inside Shelley’s modest apartment. The walls were thin, the furniture sparse. Unpaid bills sat piled on the kitchen counter, their bold red lettering screaming out warnings. Shelley sat at the table, her head buried in her hands, while our daughter colored quietly on a sheet of scrap paper nearby.

The girl looked thinner than I remembered, her clothes worn, the shoes on her feet scuffed and too small.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the vision snapped away, and I found myself back at the bar. My hands trembled slightly as I reached for the edge of the counter to steady myself.

The woman remained where she had been, her gaze never wavering.

“You see now,” she said gently. “This is the future waiting for you—for them—if you continue.”

I stared at her, my voice rough and low. “Why do you care? What’s in it for you?”

For the first time, she hesitated. Her smile remained, but something behind her eyes shifted. “Because your suffering has weight, Calvin. Choices ripple outward, touching others in ways you may never fully see. I can ease that burden—for you and for them.”

Her words dangled in the air, inviting yet unsettling. The promise of mercy mixed with something I could not yet name, and the ambiguity in her tone made my skin prickle.

I looked away, my head swimming with the afterimage of Shelley’s tears and my daughter’s angst-ridden face. The ache in my chest had grown sharper, but the drink remained in front of me, offering its familiar, poisonous comfort.

In the end, I raised my glass again, even as her eyes followed the motion with quiet, patient understanding.

Part V

The nights blended together after that. Each time I told myself I would not return, but each evening ended the same, seated beneath the dim lights of The Drunken Lantern, staring into the amber swirl of my third helping. The pull was no longer just the drink itself. Something heavier kept drawing me back, something far more persistent than thirst or habit.

She was always there now.

The woman sat in her corner booth like some permanent fixture, her dark hair cascading over her shoulders in the same effortless manner, her pale hands resting motionless on the tabletop. She watched me with an unsettling calm, as if waiting for me to finally understand what had been there all along.

That night, the silence between us broke sooner than usual. Her voice slipped through the space like silk, brushing against my ears with quiet intimacy.

“You have seen enough, Calvin. You know what is coming if nothing changes.”

I stared into my glass, unwilling to meet her gaze directly. My voice was flat when I answered. “I know what the doctor said. I know what you’ve shown me.”

She nodded, the motion slow, as though reinforcing what neither of us needed to say aloud.

“And still you come here,” she said softly. “Still you drink.”

My throat tightened as I forced down the familiar burn of the bourbon. “It’s not that simple.”

She offered a faint smile, one that carried neither judgment nor mockery. “No. It rarely is.”

For a long moment, bar ambiance filled the silence between us. The world outside our corner of the dive seemed distant, less real somehow. Then she spoke again, her voice lower now, as if inviting me closer.

“Would you like me to ease this burden?” she asked.

I let the words hang for a moment, my mind crawling along the edges of her meaning. “Ease it how?”

“I can intervene, as I’ve told you. Your family will not suffer. Your daughter will not go hungry. Shelley will not bear the weight of your passing. The threads unraveling around you can be gathered and secured.”

I met her eyes then, unable to mask the suspicion rising within me. “And in return? You’re not offering this out of kindness.”

The faintest flicker of amusement passed across her features. “No. Not out of kindness.”

“Then what?” My voice grew rougher, the frustration pressing closer to the surface. “What do you want from me?”

She sat straighter, her hands folding neatly together atop the table as though preparing to deliver a formal proposal. “Suffering, Calvin. That is my sustenance. Not the suffering of your family, nor the physical collapse of your body. Those bring me little. What nourishes me is the private, quiet torment that lives inside you. The guilt. The regret. The hollow ache you carry every day, whether you drink or not.”

A cold wave crawled beneath my skin. I stared at her, trying to steady my breathing as her words sank deeper.

“You mean you want me to live,” I said slowly, piecing it together, “but not to heal.”

She nodded once, her voice still gentle. “Precisely. You will live, longer than you would on your own, but you will carry your burden with you. The guilt will remain, as will the knowledge of what might have been. That pain is… sustaining.”

I clenched my jaw, my hand tightening around the glass. “So either I drink myself to death and leave them to suffer, or I live… like this.”

“There is no path free of consequence,” she replied. “Only choices.”

For a moment, the world outside the bar seemed to fade entirely. The dim light above the counter flickered softly, casting shadows along the bottles lined behind Big Mike. The other patrons’ conversations blurred into a distant murmur, as if I had been drawn into some separate chamber where only she and I existed.

Hers was a perverse kind of mercy. My family would be spared, but at the price of carrying the very guilt that had brought me here in the first place. And somehow, I realized with a sick twist of clarity, part of me had been waiting for this—had wanted someone to offer me a way out that let me keep my failures while pretending they served some purpose.

She watched me closely, her head tilting slightly, as though reading my thoughts as they formed.

“You sought escape in the bottle, Calvin,” she said softly. “I offer a different kind of escape. A quieter one.”

I let out a long breath. The familiar burn of the bourbon was gone now, replaced by something colder and far more insidious.

For the first time, I understood her true nature.

Part VI

The following morning, the ache behind my eyes had dulled, though a familiar pressure remained behind my temples. My mouth tasted dry and metallic, but the worst of it had receded, leaving behind the remnants of something that had once been overwhelming.

I stared at the ceiling for a long while before rising. The apartment was quiet except for the faint hum of the refrigerator, the air heavy with the scent of stale coffee grounds and the lingering residue of old cigarette smoke. The bottles that once littered the kitchen counter were gone, swept into a garbage bag the night before. I had not allowed myself time to think as I filled it, moving mechanically, afraid that any pause might weaken my resolve.

The urge to return to The Drunken Lantern remained, though its pull had shifted. It was no longer the promise of release that called to me. A kind of gravity had settled in me, drawing me back to where all of this had begun.

That evening, as the sun dipped beneath the rooftops and shadows stretched across Monroe Street, I found myself once again pushing open the door to the bar. The familiar hum of conversation washed over me, mingling with the scent of old varnish and worn leather. The neon glow from the sign outside bled through the fogged windows, casting soft green hues along the floor.

Big Mike looked up from behind the bar. As I approached, he offered a small nod, more cautious than his usual greeting.

“You back for another round?” he asked, his voice careful.

I shook my head. “Just a club soda tonight.”

He raised his eyebrows but said nothing, retrieving a clean glass and filling it with ice before setting it gently in front of me. The soda fizzed softly as the carbonation danced to the surface. I wrapped my fingers around the glass, feeling the cool condensation against my skin.

I let the cold liquid settle in my mouth for a moment before swallowing. The absence of burn was jarring, a sharp reminder of the choice I had made. Or at least, of the choice I believed I had made.

Out of habit more than intention, my eyes drifted toward the corner booth.

She was there.

The woman sat in her usual place, hands folded neatly atop the table, her posture as still and graceful as ever. Her pale features caught the dim light, casting faint shadows beneath her high cheekbones. She did not speak this time. Instead, she watched me with a faint, knowing smile, as though observing a seed she had planted now beginning to take root.

The conversations around me continued, the other patrons oblivious to her presence, as they always had been. The clink of glasses and muffled din of idle chatter filled the space, but in that corner of the room, the silence between us remained unbroken.

I sipped from my glass again, the cool bitterness of the soda anchoring me in the moment. Yet even as I sat there, sober for the first time in longer than I cared to admit, I could feel her presence lingering like a shadow stitched to my spine.

This was not freedom. Not really.

The bargain had been struck, whether by my words or by my weakness, and now she waited. Not for my death, but for what would follow in the slow, steady absence of the drink. The guilt would remain, carefully tended and cultivated, its weight pressing inward as the days stretched ahead.

Her smile remained, quiet and patient, as though content to let time do its work.

I looked away, fixing my gaze on the rippling surface of the soda in my glass. The bubbles rose and burst softly, marking time in delicate, vanishing moments.

And still, from the corner of my vision, I could feel her watching.

Part VII

Six months had passed since I last touched a drop of liquor, and for the first time in years, my mornings no longer began with a pulsing ache behind my eyes or the sour taste of last night’s mistakes clinging to my tongue. The apartment, once cloaked in the stale scent of spilled bourbon and old smoke, smelled clean now, though faint traces of those years still clung to the corners.

The empties had long since been hauled away, the broken habits swept beneath the surface of something that resembled stability. My skin held color again, my weight had leveled out, and the tremors in my hands had long since subsided. Even my doctor, surprised by the bloodwork, offered a tight-lipped nod during my last visit, noting how “remarkable” my recovery was. He had no words to explain it fully, though his eyes betrayed a skepticism he would not voice aloud.

The factory had reinstated me full-time, and with steady hours came steady pay. My landlord, once growing impatient with my overdue rent, now greeted me politely when our paths crossed. The world around me seemed to reward my effort, as if finally acknowledging my repentance.

But beneath it all, I could feel her still.

The woman remained, though she had not spoken since that last exchange. I saw her whenever I visited The Drunken Lantern, which I still did some evenings out of habit, ordering nothing stronger than a soda. She sat in her corner booth, observing me, her expression placid, her posture composed. She had no need to speak. Her presence was enough to remind me of the arrangement we had made, the invisible contract binding us both.

Some nights, I wondered whether she was there at all, or if my mind conjured her as a warning, a marker of what I had become. Yet each time my eyes found that booth, she was there, waiting.

Still, I allowed myself hope. Cautiously, I had begun to reach back into the life I had abandoned.

It started with a phone call to Shelley. The first conversation was brief, her voice cautious, her words measured. She had heard of my sobriety from mutual acquaintances, though her disbelief was evident even as she offered polite congratulations. I did not press. I knew better than to demand trust where none had been earned.

Over time, though, she allowed more. A second call followed a few weeks later, then another. Eventually, she permitted me brief visits with our daughter—supervised at first, and always with an undercurrent of tension, but visits nonetheless.

The first time I saw my daughter again, I hardly recognized her. She had grown taller, her features maturing into an early version of the woman she would one day become. The last time I had held her hand, it had been small, the grip loose and childlike. Now, her fingers felt stronger and more assured, though they trembled slightly as she took my hand with hesitant curiosity.

We spent those visits at public parks, strolling beneath the bare branches as autumn bled into winter. I told her stories—some real, some invented—and she listened with wide, uncertain eyes, searching my face as though trying to reconcile the man standing before her with the man she remembered.

Shelley remained distant during these visits, her arms crossed, her eyes sharp, but even she allowed herself the smallest cracks of softness. A brief smile when our daughter laughed, a nod when I returned her safely and on time. The ice between us had not thawed, but fissures had formed.

In those moments, I almost believed I had beaten it—that whatever force the woman represented had lost interest, satisfied with the bargain we had struck. Yet each time I returned to The Drunken Lantern, she was there. And each time I met her gaze, her expression seemed almost amused, as if watching a performance whose ending she already knew.

Big Mike had noticed my change as well. On one particular evening, as I nursed my soda, he spoke softly while drying glasses behind the counter.

“You’re looking better these days, Calvin.”

“Trying to keep it that way,” I replied, my voice steady.

He nodded, his eyes flicking briefly toward the corner booth before returning to me. “Good. Keep at it.”

The implication hung in the air, unspoken but understood. Whether or not Mike saw her, he sensed something lingering in that booth, something neither of us dared name.

Despite everything, a fragile optimism took root. My hands no longer trembled. My steps no longer staggered. I was rebuilding, brick by careful brick. But beneath the steady rhythm of my new life, beneath the repaired relationships and regained trust, a slow, quiet current coiled in the dark, waiting.

And she watched. Forever and always, she watched.

Part VIII

For a time, it seemed as though the pieces might hold together. The rhythm of my days settled into something steady, almost fragile in its simplicity. I worked my shifts at the factory, exchanged brief but pleasant conversations with Shelley, and cherished every limited hour I was allowed with my daughter. I clung to the thought that perhaps the worst was behind me, that my willingness to change had shifted the tide.

But as winter gave way to spring, the seams began to fray.

It started with Alan.

He had been one of the few friends who had not entirely written me off during my worst years. Though our contact had grown sporadic while I spiraled, he was one of the first to answer when I reached out again. We met for coffee on a quiet Sunday morning, and for the first time in years, we spoke easily, as though no time had passed at all. He offered to help, to reconnect me with some of the people I had lost along the way, to rebuild the bridges I had so thoroughly burned.

Less than a week later, Alan’s car was struck head-on by a delivery truck whose driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. The crash killed him instantly.

I attended the funeral, standing apart from the clusters of mourners who had gathered beneath a low, overcast sky. The priest’s voice droned softly over the heads of the grieving, but the words were distant, hollow against the storm brewing inside me.

The woman stood near the edge of the cemetery beneath a black umbrella, her figure faint beneath the veil of mist. She did not move, nor did she approach. She simply watched, her eyes fixed on me. I saw it then—not satisfaction exactly, but a kind of deep, quiet nourishment. The moment I felt my chest tighten, when I had to look away from Alan’s casket just to keep standing, her posture straightened ever so slightly. Her skin looked smoother, almost luminous beneath the gray sky.

That was the first time I understood what she was doing. She wasn’t punishing me. She wasn’t reaping misfortune at random. She was harvesting me.

Other fractures followed.

Shelley’s boyfriend, a man named Marcus who had treated both her and my daughter well, called one evening to say he had lost his job. The company was downsizing, and his department had been cut without warning. His voice over the phone was full of confidence, but the fear behind his words was unmistakable, and familiar.

In the weeks that followed, I saw the toll the loss of Marcus’s job took on Shelley. The tension in her face grew sharper each time we spoke. The stress of finances returned, the old burdens weighing her down. Though she never said it directly, I could feel the resentment simmering beneath her polite words when I visited my daughter.

Each time she looked at me with that buried anger—each time I saw the weight I had once laid on her begin to return—I felt it again, the shame curling in the pit of my stomach. And each time, in the back of my mind, I could feel the woman’s attention sharpening, as though feeding on the helplessness that festered inside me.

Then came the accident at school.

I was at work when Shelley called, her voice panicked. My daughter had fallen from the monkey bars during recess. Her arm was broken, though the doctors said she was lucky it had not been worse. Shelley’s voice cracked as she spoke, the sharp edge of her anxiety slicing through every syllable.

I rushed to the hospital, finding my daughter pale, groggy, and sedated beneath a thin blanket, lying there in anticipation of surgery. She smiled weakly when she saw me, but I saw the sheen of pain in her eyes. I held her hand gently, afraid to squeeze too hard.

The helplessness I felt in that room was unlike anything I had known in sobriety. My mind raced with questions I had no answers for. I cursed the teachers, the playground equipment, the school nurse, the timing of the call—everything I could think of that wasn’t me. But the guilt came anyway, and she felt it.

That evening, I returned to the bar, not for a drink—just to breathe. The weight had grown too much to bear in the silence of my apartment. The familiar creak of the door, the warm glow of the low lights, and the soft hum of conversation greeted me as they always did. Big Mike offered a nod but said nothing, sensing the storm beneath my calm exterior.

I took my usual seat, my hands resting flat against the bar, fingers splayed to steady myself. The soda glass sat untouched before me, its ice slowly melting.

She was there.

The woman sat in her booth, her posture perfect, her hands folded neatly atop the table. She watched me with that same unwavering gaze. But now, something had changed. Her skin had color it hadn’t before. Her features had grown subtly sharper. Her hair shimmered as if brushed by light no one else could see.

She was full. Or, at least, fuller than before.

I rose slowly from my stool and crossed the space between us. The other patrons continued their conversations, oblivious or perhaps incapable of seeing the transaction about to unfold. As I reached the edge of her booth, she inclined her head slightly, inviting but offering no words.

I stood there, my voice low but trembling. “You’re feeding off this.”

Her gaze did not waver. “I told you I draw sustenance from suffering. You carry it with you, and you spread it.”

I clenched my teeth. “Alan’s death. Marcus losing his job. My daughter—” My voice cracked. “You did this.”

Her voice was soft but unyielding. “I did not cause it. I merely remain near. These things unfold around you. I harvest what arises from your grief. That was the agreement.”

I shook my head. “That wasn’t the deal.”

“You misunderstand what was offered,” she said, tilting her head slightly. “You asked for time. You asked that your family be spared your absence. I granted that. You live. They live. But there is no protection from life itself, Calvin. Only from death. And I am not its keeper.”

I looked at her, at the gleam behind her eyes, the subtle flush of vitality in her cheeks, the faint glow beneath her skin—and I knew. Every pang of guilt, every sleepless night, every moment I had stood helpless in the face of my own failure had gone into her. She didn’t just feed on suffering. She grew from it. She refined it, polishing it into sustenance, and wore it like jewelry beneath her skin.

I turned away, the room tilting under the realization of the true scope of my predicament. The soda had grown flat, the last fragments of ice drifting lazily.

All the while, she watched, stronger than ever.

Part IX

The days that followed brought no relief, only the steady accumulation of dread. My thoughts were increasingly incoherent. They circled endlessly, tightening like a snare as I watched her grow in power while the world around me unraveled.

The helplessness had curdled into something bitter. I could feel it burning beneath my ribs, a restless ache that grew with each new misfortune. And with it, I saw the shimmer behind the woman’s eyes grow brighter.

One evening, as the factory whistle blew and my shift ended, a sudden urge seized me.

I walked past my apartment without stopping, my hands trembling in my pockets. The air was cold, but I felt none of it. My feet carried me straight to The Drunken Lantern as though guided by instinct.

The bar’s familiar creak and the low murmur of conversation washed over me as I entered. Big Mike glanced up from behind the counter, his eyes narrowing slightly as I approached.

I did not hesitate. Sliding onto my usual stool, I fixed my gaze on him. My voice came out steady, but it felt foreign in my mouth. “Pour me one.”

He froze for a moment, unsure if he had heard me correctly. “You sure about that?”

“Yes.” I kept my voice flat, fighting the tremor building behind my teeth. “One.”

Mike hesitated, but eventually turned and pulled the familiar bottle from the shelf. The bourbon caught the light as he poured it into the glass, setting it down before me with careful precision.

I stared at it, my mouth filling with the memory of its effects, practically salivating in anticipation. For a moment, I allowed myself to believe that maybe this would be the release I needed, that perhaps surrendering would give me back some piece of myself she had hollowed out.

I raised the glass to my lips and drank.

The bourbon hit my tongue, strong and familiar—but the sensation shattered the moment it reached my throat. A violent surge ripped through my chest and stomach. My vision narrowed as my body convulsed.

The glass slipped from my hand and shattered against the floor as I fell to my knees beside the stool, retching uncontrollably. A bitter, sour flood burst from my stomach, splashing onto the wood beneath me. My throat seized, and my chest spasmed as wave after wave brought me to my knees.

Big Mike moved around the bar, gripping my shoulder as I heaved. His voice hovered above me, concerned but distant. “Jesus, Calvin! What the hell’s happening?”

I couldn’t muster an answer. My body refused to allow even that small act of control.

When the retching finally subsided, I slumped back against the stool, wiping my mouth with the back of my sleeve. My breath rasped through my teeth, but the nausea still coiled in my gut, waiting to strike again.

Mike crouched beside me. “You sick? Food poisoning or something?”

I shook my head, unable to find the words. Then, through the blur of my tears and the haze of dizziness, I saw her again.

The woman sat in her booth, unfazed by the disruption around. Her face glowed faintly beneath the dim lights, her eyes locked on mine with a quiet, fixed authority. She said nothing, but I understood.

The moment I could stand, I staggered to the bathroom and cleaned myself up as best I could, though the shaking in my hands refused to settle. My skin was clammy, my stomach still twisting beneath the surface.

But something deeper had shifted.

It was not only alcohol. I discovered that in the days that followed.

When I tried to calm myself with cigarettes, the smoke sent me into violent coughing fits, my lungs seizing after only a few drags. When I reached for greasy takeout in a moment of weakness, my stomach rejected it before I could finish half the meal. When I tried to dull my mind with over-the-counter sleep aids, I spent the entire night pacing, my limbs restless, my skin crawling with invisible needles.

It did not matter what method I chose. My body repelled them all.

I was being preserved.

The woman allowed me no poisons, no vices, no means of sabotage. My health remained intact, my flesh unwilling to rot from the inside. I could not escape into sickness. She would not allow it.

One night, after yet another failed attempt, I returned to The Drunken Lantern. The stool beneath me creaked as I sat, staring into the empty glass in front of me. The soda was untouched, the ice long since melted.

She waited in her usual place, as she always had.

This time, she spoke.

“You are mine, Calvin,” she said, her voice carrying easily through the air, as though the noise of the bar bent around her words. “You cannot unmake what has been done.”

Her voice was neither cruel nor mocking. It carried the finality of a lock closing into place.

I looked at her, and for the first time, I saw the prison for what it was. Not bars. Not chains. Something far more suffocating.

It was the life I had fought to reclaim.

And she had made certain I would live it.

Part X

In the weeks that followed, my desperation curdled into something colder and far more dangerous. I understood now that there would be no peace waiting for me at the bottom of a bottle or in the creeping corrosion of my health. She had locked every door that led inward. But there were still other exits.

I began to plan.

The first attempt was almost impulsive, though the thought had nested in my head for days beforehand. I drove out to the lake after my shift ended, parking near the old pier where the water ran deep and dark. The shoreline was empty, the sky heavy with low clouds that strangled the moonlight. The wind tore across the surface, rattling the wooden planks beneath my feet as I stepped to the edge.

The cold bit through my skin as I waded out, pushing forward until the lake swallowed my waist, then my chest, and finally my throat. My breath came faster as the icy water pulled at my ribs, urging me downward. I let myself sink beneath the surface, eyes squeezed shut, lungs burning as the darkness pressed in.

But something seized my legs.

Not a hand or a force I could see, but a convulsion that twisted my muscles sharply, snapping my body into motion against my will. My head broke the surface before I could stop it, and air rushed into my chest with a ragged gasp. My limbs flailed toward the shore, propelling me forward with a strength I did not summon. Each time I tried to stop swimming, my arms betrayed me, pulling me closer to the beach until my knees struck the shallows.

I collapsed on the gravel, heaving, shivering, unable to fully comprehend whether I had saved myself or been pushed. My body lay spent beneath the whispering wind, but my eyes found her almost immediately.

The woman stood near the edge of the pier, her figure outlined against the shifting gray of the clouds. She said nothing, but her posture radiated something close to irritation—as if my disobedience had mildly inconvenienced her.

I tried again.

A week later, I made my way to the old railway crossing near the industrial park. The trains still ran heavy there, screaming through town as they carried freight eastbound. I stood at the edge of the tracks, watching the distant headlights approach, the twin beams growing brighter against the black.

The timing had to be perfect. If I jumped too early, the train would stop. If I hesitated too long, there would be nothing left.

I waited, measuring each beat of my pulse. As the horn wailed and the rails vibrated beneath my feet, I lunged forward.

The ground betrayed me.

A loose patch of gravel slid under my shoes, sending me sprawling backward instead of forward. My legs collapsed, and I fell hard onto my side as the train roared past, its steel bulk screaming inches from my face. The force of the wind it carried knocked me further into the embankment, pressing me into the dirt as though the earth itself wanted me out of its way.

When the train was gone, I lay there in the silence, my heart racing. The woman appeared again beyond the tracks, as if she had simply stepped from the air itself. Her expression was unchanged, but her eyes gleamed faintly beneath the pale spill of the streetlights.

The message was clear.

She was watching.

She was always watching.

The following days became a blur of rehearsed accidents. I veered my car toward oncoming traffic, but tires screeched and swerved away before impact. I tried tampering with the wiring in my apartment, but the breaker tripped harmlessly every time. I even stood beneath a construction crane during an unscheduled visit to a job site, praying for equipment failure or falling debris. But the machinery held steady, the hooks never slipped, the cables never snapped.

Every attempt unraveled just as it began, as though the world itself conspired to keep me upright.

And always, she was there.

Each failure left me more erratic, my mind fraying as the futility of my efforts gnawed at the edges of my sanity. The helplessness no longer sat quietly beneath my ribs. It stalked me through every waking hour, whispering, tightening.

It was after the sixth attempt—when a ruptured gas line miraculously sealed itself before my lighter could spark—that she finally approached directly.

I was sitting alone in my apartment, the stench of gas still lingering faintly in the air, the lighter still clutched in my shaking hand. The room felt smaller than it had ever been, its walls closing in with a pressure I could no longer ignore.

Then she appeared.

The woman materialized across the room without fanfare, her presence as steady as always, though her features seemed sharper now, her skin radiant with the fullness of everything she had drawn from me. She looked not angry, but tired of the game.

“We made an agreement,” she said softly, her voice as smooth as the night air. “You are not permitted to undo it.”

I glared at her, my voice cracked and raw. “You’re feeding on me.”

Her expression held no denial. “I have sustained you. You are alive, as promised. But your struggle—your grief—nourishes me. And it will continue to do so.”

I stood, my hands trembling. “I can’t do this.”

“You will,” she replied. “Or others will suffer in your place. I have allowed much. Do not force me to collect elsewhere.”

The chill behind her words settled into my bones. For the first time, the threat was spoken aloud. The cost of further resistance would not fall solely on me.

She stepped back into the corner of the room, fading from sight as if swallowed by the air itself, leaving me alone once again in the silence that followed.

But the message remained, heavy and unmovable.

I had tried to bargain. I had tried to surrender. Now I saw the prison in full.

And still, she watched.

Part XI

The warnings had done nothing to soften my resolve. If anything, they had clarified it.

There was no life for me here. No bargain that could be honored. The longer I remained within her reach, the more the weight of my failure would gather around those I loved. I had seen it too many times now—her feeding, her growth, her quiet, parasitic satisfaction. And I knew the only way to sever the tether was to disappear entirely, to break the threads before she could weave them tighter.

I devised the plan carefully.

I chose a weekend when Shelley, wearied by my recent stretch of apparent stability, allowed me an overnight visit with my daughter. She had grown more comfortable letting us have time together, though I could still see the careful reserve behind her eyes each time she handed over the little overnight bag. This time, I took the bag, nodded my thanks, and promised we would return Sunday afternoon.

We would not.

I had packed what I could in secret. Cash. Food. Spare clothes. A burner phone. The truck’s tank was full. I planned a route that would take us north, into the back roads that crawled toward the state border where I could lose whatever faint trail might follow. There would be no goodbyes, no explanations. Only escape.

My daughter sat in the passenger seat beside me, her small frame bundled in a puffy jacket, her eyes bright with the excitement of a trip she did not understand. She asked where we were going, but I smiled and told her it was a surprise. I couldn’t bring myself to say more.

The sky darkened as we drove, the long stretch of highway ahead lit only by the occasional flicker of roadside lamps and the endless sweep of the headlights cutting through the early winter fog. The radio hummed softly beneath our voices, and for a brief moment, some part of me dared to believe that this might work, that I had finally found a seam in the prison walls.

But the world has a way of closing in.

Somewhere just past mile marker 212, where the highway curved sharply along the edge of an embankment, a set of headlights appeared too suddenly ahead, weaving wildly across the divider line. The oncoming sedan jerked erratically as its driver fought for control, the distance between us evaporating in seconds.

I gripped the wheel and swerved hard to the right, tires screaming as we veered off the pavement. The truck skidded across the loose gravel shoulder. I tried to correct, to guide us back onto the road, but the rear wheels lost traction entirely.

The world spun sideways.

There was a sickening lurch as the truck’s frame twisted beneath us, metal groaning under the strain. The embankment gave way beneath the weight, and the vehicle tumbled, rolling end over end down the steep incline. Glass shattered around us, shards catching the faint light as they scattered into the darkness.

When the truck came to rest, it did so on its roof, its weight creaking against the twisted guardrail and the crushed remains of an old tree.

For several seconds, there was no sound but the gentle hiss of leaking fluids and the faint ticking of the cooling engine.

I hung upside down by the seatbelt, the wind knocked from my chest, my vision swimming. My hands fumbled numbly with the latch until it gave way, dropping me heavily onto the roof of the cab.

Panic surged as I turned toward the passenger seat.

Her small frame hung still, too still, the belt cutting sharply into her tiny chest. Her face was pale, streaked with blood that ran in narrow rivulets from a gash along her temple. Her eyes were closed.

I scrambled toward her, my hands shaking violently as I struggled to release the buckle. When it finally gave, she slumped into my arms, limp and cold.

I called her name. Once, twice, a dozen times. My voice broke with each repetition, cracking under the weight of what I refused to accept. I pressed my ear against her chest, praying for breath, for the faintest flutter beneath her ribs.

There was nothing.

Somewhere above, distant sirens wailed, their echo weaving through the hills as first responders closed in. The flashing red and blue lights painted the trees in violent colors, strobing across my daughter’s lifeless face.

I held her there, cradling her against my chest, rocking gently as if motion alone could summon life back into her. My tears soaked into her jacket, my breath hissing through clenched teeth as the numbness consumed me.

Then I saw her.

The woman stood at the edge of the clearing, her figure illuminated by the rotating beams of the rescue trucks as they maneuvered down the embankment. She looked different now—fuller, radiant in a way that was almost obscene beneath the gravity of what had just unfolded.

Her skin seemed to hum beneath the lights, her eyes gleaming with a richness I had not seen before. The sharpness of her features had softened into something regal, as though she had been elevated by the meal I had unwittingly prepared.

Her gaze met mine, steady, unflinching, and utterly saturated with satisfaction.

The grief inside me cracked wide, splitting apart whatever fragments I had held together for so long. The howl that tore from my chest was not one of rage, but of something deeper, something that emptied me entirely.

I could feel her feeding.

The raw agony of that moment poured into her like blood drawn from an open wound, her posture straightening as the fullness of it soaked into her core.

And I was powerless to stop it.

I stayed like that until the paramedics pried my daughter from my arms, until they wrapped her in the pale cloth and lifted her onto the gurney that would carry her away.

The woman remained through it all, silent, watching, her radiance growing brighter beneath the pulse of my devastation.

Part XII

The days that followed bled together into a grey, shapeless current. The funeral came and went like a hollow ritual, its weight staggering not for its ceremony, but for what it could not undo. Faces drifted past me—friends, family, strangers—all offering their words of comfort as though any arrangement of syllables could soften what had been carved into me.

Shelley stood at a distance throughout the service, her grief folding inward while mine spilled out unchecked. She did not speak to me beyond what necessity required. In her eyes, I saw only the confirmation of every fear she had once held, now realized in the worst possible way.

The reporters, the detectives, the endless questioning afterward—all of it passed through me without leaving marks. The accident was ruled as such: a tragic confluence of mechanical failure and misfortune. No charges. No arrests. Only the unrelenting echo of absence.

And through all of it, the woman did not appear.

Not immediately.

Her absence was a presence of its own, more suffocating than her gaze had ever been. For the first time since our bargain was struck, I could not feel her watching. The hunger that had once hovered so near seemed finally quieted. But that silence carried its own kind of dread.

Eventually, as the weight of empty hours pulled me back toward familiar patterns, I returned to The Drunken Lantern.

The bar was nearly empty that evening, its usual low hum reduced to the quiet scrape of Mike’s rag along the counter and the occasional soft clink of glassware. The air smelled of old varnish and the faint metallic bite of the soda I sipped out of habit more than desire.

Mike glanced at me briefly as I took my usual seat but offered no words. There was nothing left between us that words could reach.

I sat there, feeling the brittle edges of the world pressing in around me, when I sensed her.

She was standing behind me, though I had not heard her enter. The air shifted faintly, the temperature bending just enough for my skin to recognize the shape of her presence before my eyes followed.

I turned slowly.

The woman stood there, unchanged in posture but transformed in bearing. Her radiance had grown to something almost ethereal, her features smoothed and sharpened in equal measure. Where once her beauty had been unsettling, it now carried the quiet authority of something fully fed, fully satisfied.

Her eyes held mine without effort, and for a moment, I could no longer muster the strength to feel anything at all.

She spoke softly, her voice threading through the emptiness of the bar like silk against skin.

“It is complete.”

The words did not require explanation. The hollow inside me trembled under their weight.

“I have fed, and I am satisfied,” she continued. “Your suffering has nourished me as I knew it would. And as promised, you have been spared.”

I swallowed against the dryness in my throat, my voice barely finding its way into the air. “Spared?”

She inclined her head slightly, as though granting an audience rather than offering comfort. “You will experience a long life, Calvin. Devoid of physical pain. Your body will not decay as others do. Your health will endure.”

The pause that followed was deliberate. She allowed the words to settle fully before continuing.

“It is my reward to you.”

The sickness that welled inside me was not from her promise but from the truth behind it. There would be no more accidents, no more escapes. I would live. Fully. For as long as my mind could bear it.

She studied me for a moment longer, as though weighing whether any final lesson remained to be taught. Finding none, she offered a faint smile—neither cruel nor warm, but simply final.

Then she was gone.

No flicker. No vanishing into mist. No parting flourish of supernatural display. She simply ceased to occupy the space where she had stood, as though the world had quietly sealed the door behind her.

And with her departure came the most unbearable silence of all.

For the first time since she had entered my life, I sat alone.

Truly, utterly alone.

Part XIII

The years folded over themselves, stacking one atop the next with an unnatural smoothness, as if time itself had been ironed flat beneath an invisible weight. The seasons changed; the world moved on. But my body, bound to the shape it had taken when she left me, refused to follow.

In the first few years after her departure, I waited for the damage to begin, for the slow decay that should have crept into my joints, for the weight of time to announce itself through weakness, illness, or pain. But each morning, I woke the same as I had been the morning before.

Shelley remarried once, briefly. The man she chose was kind enough, though I saw in her eyes that she never fully returned to who she had been before the accident. The second marriage dissolved quietly, and after that, she never married again. She grew older, her hair silvering, her posture softening. She aged with the grace of someone who had already lost more than time could threaten.

When she passed, I stood at the back of the service, much as I had for Alan years before. The mourners whispered politely about my appearance, about how I had “held up” over the years. None dared to say aloud what each of them saw: that I had not aged. Not in any meaningful way.

Her grave joined our daughter’s beneath the old maple tree at Fairview Cemetery. I visited them both often, sometimes in the early hours before the groundskeeper arrived, sometimes late at night, when the world quieted enough for the weight inside me to settle fully against my ribs.

Friends fell away in steady succession. Some slipped quietly into their final beds; others fought fiercely against the illnesses that crept upon them in their last years. I attended their funerals, each one carving out a little more space inside me where grief gathered like a slow flood rising against unyielding stone.

Eventually, the world outside began to take notice. The first doctor to study me grew increasingly puzzled as bloodwork after bloodwork returned within perfect ranges. Scans, tests, evaluations—all normal. Healthy, stable, unchanged.

When word spread, the researchers came. They ran their batteries of examinations with quiet fascination, their white coats rustling like paper as they moved from machine to machine, their faces lit by the soft glow of monitor screens. They whispered phrases like “biological anomaly” and “age-resistant physiology,” careful to keep their tones clinical while their eyes betrayed their wonder.

The press followed soon after. Journalists labeled me everything from miracle to mystery. Segments ran on local and national stations for a time. The attention burned hot, briefly, before the world’s appetite for novelty moved elsewhere. I declined the book deals, the speaking offers, the invitations to become some grotesque public curiosity. I had no desire to explain what could never be understood.

After a while, the world stopped asking.

The decades stacked higher.

My reflection remained unaltered, though the eyes that stared back from the glass had hollowed in ways no photograph could capture. The body preserved itself. The mind did not.

I moved through apartments, then smaller apartments, and finally to a single-room flat above an old tailor shop downtown. The city changed beneath me, buildings rising and falling, streets redrawn, neighborhoods gentrified or left to rot.

I returned to The Drunken Lantern less frequently as the years wore on. Big Mike had passed not long after Shelley. The bar changed hands twice, though the sign remained, its soft neon buzz now dimmer than I remembered. New bartenders came and went, each younger than the one before, each casting uncertain glances my way as they poured me my habitual glass of soda.

They never asked my age. They did not need to. The unease behind their eyes answered the question before it was spoken.

Sometimes, as I sat beneath the low amber lights, I would glance toward the corner booth.

It remained empty.

The woman never returned. She had no need to. Her absence was as deliberate as her presence had once been.

And still, I remained.

I visited the graves even as moss overtook the stones, even as the cemetery’s newer sections pushed further into the wooded edges beyond. The names of my family etched into marble stood as one of the few unchanging markers in a world that no longer recognized me.

The scientists who had once studied me had long since retired or died. Their successors showed only passing interest, their wonder dulled by time and by the steady accretion of new, more fashionable fascinations. My anomaly had grown old while I had not.

I passed through each year with a numb familiarity, the weight of what I carried never easing, only dulling into something that no longer allowed full grief, only the echo of it. Like standing beneath the surface of deep water, unable to drown but still feeling the crushing cold of the depths.

The worst of it was not the solitude. Not even the grief. It was the knowledge that she had told the truth.

I had been spared.

And I would remain so for a very long time.

On the rare nights I still visited The Drunken Lantern, the newer patrons paid me little mind. They did not know my name. They did not ask. I was a fixture—quiet, still, and untouched by the years that had wrapped themselves around everyone else.

I sat in my usual seat at the bar, the soda glass before me half-melted with ice, the low murmur of strangers filling the room. The buzz of the sign outside hummed faintly, flickering now and again as though struggling to maintain its grip.

And though she no longer watched me from the corner booth, I could still feel her in the hollow spaces she had left behind.

She had fed.

She was satisfied.

And I remained.