The demon stirs, once again.

It dwells within my thoughts, always waiting for a chance to lash out. It'll take any that it's given, and desire more.

Doubt. Loneliness. Fear. Feelings of isolation. It thrives on these.

I don't wish to wake the demon purposely. I don't wish to enter its lair voluntarily.

But I've waited long enough. At this time, I feel as if I have no choice.

Confrontation is nearly certain. By nature, I'm not confrontational; I don't wish to fight. But I can't hold myself back any more. I'm tired of feeling alienated, isolated, shut-in.

I can't let you control my life any longer.

My fear, my doubts, my uncertainties... I shall turn them all to dust. Along with your feelings, if I have to. After all, you did the same to my heart. And now, you won't leave. You won't give me the space that I feel I need.

So I have no choice but to stand up, and fight.

Nobody will stand with me in this battle; the others won't take sides, in the interest of "fairness," and I have nobody else to rely on. I can only do this alone. So I will. Because I must.

I don't even know if I'm prepared for this. But it's not like I have a choice. It happens tomorrow, ready or not.

I'm scared...

...but I can only move forward.

Only one of them ever got away from me.

He thought he was so smart...I saw that look in his eyes, even while he ran as if his sad existence depended on it. Well, I guess it sort of did. Ha!

You figured me out, didn't you? You predicted the time when the wind would blow, and in what direction. What a bright and shiny bulb you are!

Pathetic worm.

Yes, raise up your confidence! Feel like you're the mightiest of the mighty, because you somehow barely managed to survive against me! Why don't you come back here and tell me to my face how smart you are, and how you figured me out with the ease of pushing a button?

What you don't realize, worm, is that I was toying with you. It's the same way that a cat plays with a mouse. A fun game! Stab it in the face, only a little bit... bite it, scratch it, but only slightly. Scare it half to death. Come back for the other half later! It's traumatic, in a beautiful sort of way, don't you think?

So I knocked you around a little. Made you think you were staring down the jaws of death. Well, okay, maybe you were, but only a little, right? The FUN jaws of death. Fun for me, anyway. Yeah.

But my point is, if I'd wanted to kill you right then and there, I could have easily done that. With one thought, I can snap your neck. With another, I can slice you in two, or launch you into a large rock, or instantly dig a grave right beneath where you stand...or, I can do all of those things at once.

So...why not stop by and say hello? You can witness my true abilities firsthand. And besides, don't you want to find out what happened to those who visited me after you? You had no problem sending them to their graves...which, believe me, look quite stunning. I made them myself~

First it was a scientist and a police officer. I did the same thing to them as I've been doing to everyone else, incliding you. At first the scientist seemed fascinated by it; he couldn't stop writing things down. Well, at least, until I smashed his face against his own gravestone. The officer was just terrified from start to finish. It was nice to see that his fear increased throughout, though. At one point, it really looked like he would rather die than endure the terror for even one more moment, so I granted his wish. That's my pleasure, after all.

I almost wonder what the scientist wrote in that book. Almost. Could it have solved some sort of mystery? Cured a horrible disease? I guess we'll never know, now. I buried the book along with its author, and that means it's off-limits, because it's a sin to disturb the dead. They're sleeping. Leave them alone...if I was asleep, I wouldn't want to be disturbed, either.

Then it was a whole squad. I don't know if they were police, a private security firm or what. It didn't matter. They came in here with guns. Guns? Ha! Guns don't do a thing against WIND. It's like you're threating a mother with a knife, only it's Mother Nature and she's laughing at you. So I laughed, too, as I decimated the entire squad in mere seconds. It's remarkable just how powerful the force of gravity is. Toss a human into the air, then watch what happens when they hit the ground. Do it again, and more stuff happens. Well, mostly just their insides fly out, but it's nonetheless fantastic!

No sooner than I'd just finished some remodeling in order to better showcase my newly-enlarged graveyard, more sheep showed up to the slaughter. Twelve in all, as I recall. They had some kind of heavy armor on, and it looked like several of them were toting recording equipment. Yeah, go ahead. Take as much video of me as you want! I'd have told them to share it with their friends, but piles of random organs and entrails generally don't have any friends, correct? I discovered brand new ways to use gravestones and gravity that night. A fun time was had by all!...well, okay, just me. But I suppose they had as much fun as one could while being torn apart by rocks!

Unsurprisingly, I didn't get too many more visitors after that. It went back to just being the occasional stray, who wandered off the path, took the wrong fork (the spoon?), and so on. But I know you're out there. You'll probably develop some sort of complex, and spout some nonsense like "I'm the only one who can destroy it...it is my destiny." That would be so funny, because your destiny is to wear your intestines as a blindfold as I slowly, artistically carve holes into you.

Don't worry, I'll show you my work before I let you die.

So...come on back. I'm waiting for you. I'll wait forever for you. Does that sound romantic? Even though it's a load of shit, seeing as how I may only live for three thousand years, and you'll only survive until you make it back here.

Come back here, and sleep. Your bed's all made...the best one I've got.

See you soon...

I work for a news organization...I should be able to research this. We should have some sort of records, right?

After asking a few co-workers, I was able to figure out that we supposedly have a room of archives in the basement. But nobody seemed to know exactly where it was, or what was in there, or what format anything would be in; I get the feeling that nobody's been there in ages.

"I don't even know if it exists, " Ryan said. /*note: he's the assistant editor*/ "I heard that basement gets kind of creepy...don't disappear down there, alright, Kate?"

He sent me down there with all six keys he couldn't identify, either because he'd never used them or couldn't remember what they were for.

The basement seemed well-maintained, at least at first. I was greeted with typical cement walls, old-yet-bright flourescent lighting and a clean floor. I passed by marked storage closets, where I assumed we kept cleaning supplies. None of my keys opened these, so I figured there was nothing in there worth investigating.

After turning a few corners, I felt as if I'd gone through some sort of portal into another dimension. My feet were tearing up the carpet of dust covering the floor. The lighting flickered, where it worked at all, and the doors I now saw were no longer marked. This was when I expected my new set of keys to start working, but none of them opened the first unmarked door.

Using my portable as a light, I moved further into the depths until I found a second door. Tried one key...then a second, then a third...

...the unmarked, old and generally sad-looking door opened easily.

It was pitch-dark inside. I figured that the switch by the door might have controlled lights in here at some point, but right now it didn't seem to do anything. Using my portable to look around the room, though, I didn't see any sort of light a switch would have turned on...except for the same kind of vintage lamp I'd only ever seen in pictures of the 20th and early 21st centuries. I did some reading on that stuff; I should be able to get it to work, right?

The lamp wasn't cordless, and the one cord I found had a plug on the end with two prongs. Two prongs? I'd seen a few old things with three-prong plugs, but never had I seen two. They looked exactly like two of the prongs on a three-prong plug, though. I wonder if they're compatible...and, I'm pretty sure we still have some three-prong adapters upstairs. Those used to be all over the place, although they're not so common any more. Nevertheless, I'd have to deal with my portable's light for now.

I'd thought that the carpet of dust on the floors outside was thick, but it was nothing compared to the blanket covering just about everything in here. Perhaps this room's only been visited by armies of dust bunnies over the last 50 years. Seeing no dust carrots, they simply decided to collect here by the millions and wait until the day they might magically appear...is that what's going on here? Ugh. They weren't going to stop me, though, despite my lack of gloves. I'll just wash my hands, later, I thought...

There was some equipment that I couldn't identify. The stuff was both heavy and bulky, so it's not like I could just drag it into the light...but since my portable's camera had a low-light mode, I snapped some pictures, at least. A rectangular-shaped box...wait, is that actually an old computer? I recognized the brand name, "hp," from some research I'd done for an old school report.

I'd seen pictures of old computers, but this one was huge! I needed both hands just to lift it. There were a bunch of different slots for who-knows-what in the front, and a ton of different ports on the back. One of them was a three-pronged power plug, I'm guessing. But computers back then needed screens to actually display any information, and the screen wasn't built into this one. I couldn't find a screen in the immediate area around the computer...

My first thought was that I should take the computer upstairs anyway, but then I wondered if anyone would mess with it. I decided to leave it with the dust bunnies for now, and continued to explore the room. An old, tall metal container, with...drawers? It was locked... another member of my mysterious key collection was able to open it. Wait, what's this...

...it's paper. And it says The Boston Globe on it. That's our organization...

On this paper are articles. And pictures! Is this...what our product used to look like? We put the news...on paper?

Wait a second. I know I've heard someone use the term "newspaper" before. Right...there was that crazy old woman we had as a consult when I first interned here, a few years back. She'd mostly complain about how society had changed into something she couldn't recognize, but never really elaborated on what that meant. And she'd use the term "newspaper," as if news belonged on paper. Like this was something that had actually existed.

And here I was, looking at it. "Newspaper" was, in fact, a term for something that indeed existed.

This... "newspaper" was dated November 6th, 2028, the day after Election Day that year. It talked about a landslide victory for the Moderate Party candidate for President; okay, so that means government must not have changed much in the last 170 years. But wait...it says they only won about a third of Congress, with the rest mostly split between two other parties I'd never heard of.

There was more than one political party back then?

Moreover, some of these election results appeared to be very close. And more perplexing: even after re-reading the entire article twice, I still couldn't picture what the government-provided abstract would have looked like. The article seemed more original than anything I'd ever seen from a news organization. Is it possible that there wasn't one at all? Did news organizations work without abstracts back then? Weird...

I looked further into the drawer, but all I found were more copies of the same paper...dated November 6th, 2028. There were probably about 20, in total. The other drawers were empty. It was as if this specific paper had been saved for a reason.

I had no way of knowing whether this was factual or not, but...I had a strong gut feeling that this was a clue. A clue telling me that the old woman, perhaps, wasn't as crazy as we'd thought, and that things weren't always like this. Another strong gut feeling told me that the government would frown upon my having found this.

I took a few pictures with my portable, and took one of the papers with me, but locked the rest back inside the drawer, and left everything else where I'd found it. This was going to be my little secret, for now. It was already an hour past the time I'd normally go home, so I locked up the room, went back upstairs, dropped the keys on Ryan's desk and then left for the night.



I was unusally exhausted after I got home, so I didn't look at my spoils any more than I already had back in the room. I'd passed out shortly afterwards. Slept really well, in fact. I must say, I felt really refreshed when I woke up the following morning. My findings from last night were leading me in a new, exciting direction, and I couldn't wait to put more time into the case.

Entering the office, I sensed a really odd vibe. Everyone seemed on edge about something, as if something had gone wrong.

As soon as anyone seemed to notice my arrival, Ryan called me into his office.

"What, uh, exactly did you find down there last night?"

"To be honest, I'm not quite sure."

The fact was, I still didn't quite know or understand exactly what I was dealing with. Just in case, I figured it'd be a good idea to investigate further before I told him anything.

"I found a lot of potentially interesting things last night," I continued, "but I figured I'd investigate them thoroughly, then give you a full report."

"Well, I'm sorry, kiddo, but you're not going to get a chance. The police were here early this morning..."

"What?!"

"They went down there, and I'm pretty sure they took everything. Feel free to see if I'm right."

I didn't wait for him to say another word. I ran full-speed to the back of the office, down the stairs, down the corridor, back through the carpet of dust...if the door to the room had been sad-looking before, this was even worse. It'd been ripped from its hinges and was lying against a nearby wall, practically cracked in half.

I glanced inside...yeah, it was just as Ryan had said. Dust bunnies remained but everything else--the computer, the cabinets, the old equipment that might have been used to create the papers locked inside the cabinets--all gone. What could the police have wanted with these? And, why now? Why did this happen right after I'd started this investigation? Something wasn't adding up. And, all of a sudden, I felt like I couldn't trust anyone around me.

As I stood there processing what had happened, I heard a cough behind me. It was Ryan.

"Are you ready to tell me what you found?"

"Ryan, did...did you already know about what was in here?"

"No...I didn't have any idea what was in here, and I still don't. I wasn't even allowed to come near it while they were cleaning it out. You, on the other hand, were IN here last night. You must have found something...why else would the police take a sudden interest?"

"Even if I did find something, how would the police have known? Wouldn't somebody have had to tip them off?"

"Oh, come on, Kate. You should know as well as anybody that this place is lined with cameras. Is there actually one in this room? I don't know. But they're everywhere else, at the least. You didn't actually remove anything from this room, did you?"

Uh, oh.

"I can see it written on your face...you did, didn't you? It's entirely possible that the cameras picked whatever it is up, and the police didn't like what they saw. So what was it, anyway?"

My internal debate over whether to tell him or not had already been interrupted by the realization that my only piece of evidence was in danger. My stomach didn't have time to sink; I was already halfway out of the building, running full-speed.

I was at my apartment within minutes. I threw open the door and...

...sure enough, I'd left it right out in the open, on the table in my kitchen. It was gone. That wasn't a surprise, I suppose, after what had happened at the office, but...more surprising was the fact that my door and windows were undamaged, there were no other signs of forced entry, and if not for the fact that the paper was missing, I wouldn't have been able to tell that anyone had visited at all.

What did this mean?

My investigation, obviously, was far from over. But I had just one lead now: the police. This was both exciting and frightening at the same time. After all, I felt too excited about my search for truth to back out now. The simple fact, though, is that news organizations don't ever ask the police for information...so I couldn't just knock on the door and say, "Hi, can I ask you some questions?" Whatever way I try to figure this out is going to be totally illegal. So this will require some ingenuity.

Fortunately, I'm the best reporter we've got.

"I bury my angst into this glade... this place known as the Deepwood Shade."

It must have been so long ago that the memory is quite hazy...but I'm pretty sure that at some point, this used to be...a happier place. If I dig deep enough, I feel like I can remember...children's laughter. Seeing...young families, enjoying picnics. Enjoying each other. I remember smiling.

I haven't seen a smile, or heard laughter, in a very, very long time. Instead, I feel like those memories have been replaced...replaced by pain.

I also remember being surrounded by others like me. But my earliest memory is that of the buzzing--that awful sound--followed by the disappearance of my brothers, until I was the last of my kind.

I don't know why I was cursed with this ability...with this...thing, that perhaps some might consider a gift...but you see, one day, someone confided in me. Their pain. Their suffering. She approached and placed her hand upon me, and relayed to me her story.

The man that she loved and trusted...had betrayed her. She felt used, distraught. She didn't know how to move forward. She had just given birth to their child four months prior, and now, she was at a loss as to what to do next.

I felt this story seep into me...and, something stirred. Something began to wake within me that I'd never noticed before. Something...terrible.

Weeks later, a young man placed his hand upon me, and he, too, injected his pain...right into me. He'd been sexually abused...by his own grandfather. He felt confused...lost...damaged. This had already happened so many times that he couldn't remember a time that he didn't feel damaged. He was in pain. He was depressed. He considered suicide...especially after his grandfather had moved in with the rest of his family. I was shocked at just how pained he felt...and, by how much of his pain I felt. I could feel that something terrible stirring within me once more.

I don't know why people take it upon themselves to confide their pain in the trees...the grass...the land. But, for whatever reason, this happened. A mother having to bury her own daughter...a young man who'd found love he'd never before imagined, only to watch it disappear as she cast him aside for a person he thought had been his friend...a woman whose brother used all sorts of means--including legal--to try to take away everything he owned, over something most people would have written off as trivial...a young girl, ridiculed and harassed, cast out after she'd revealed to her friends that she was a lesbian, now feeling that she had nowhere to turn.

What did I know of suicide, or someone considering it? These thoughts...accumulated. They piled on. Dozens of people, then hundreds. All on the verge of giving up. Depressed. Forlorn. Full of emotions. Why did they choose to pour them into me?

I had brought happiness to so many...through my branches, my flowers, and the gentle breezes it seemed I could control. Why was I deserving of so much pain? Was this my fault? Was it fate? Karma? Had I done something terrible in a previous existence?

Finally, I felt...that I couldn't listen any more.

Another one came to deliver a shot of pain. I could tell from a distance...her eyes had already welled up with tears. She was heading straight for me. I didn't want any more pain. I'd taken on all that I could.

No...no more...no more pain...make it stop...stop it...STOP IT!!

...and then, nothing.

I noticed that the woman was lying flat on her back, several feet away. Did I...knock her backwards? She had a look of shock in her eyes that I'd never seen before; it was as if the only soul she trusted had suddenly betrayed her.

And...

...this felt wonderful to me.

What... was this feeling?

Like an enormous weight had been lifted off of my shoulders...like I'd been trapped in a maze and finally found my way out. I felt liberated. I felt that I was in full control of myself. This was the moment that separated my past from my future...starting now, I resolved not to suffer any more.

These people should work on picking themselves up. After all, nobody's here for me, right? I've been alone ever since my brothers were cut down. Everything I've accomplished during my life happened because of me...I've never relied on anyone. This brings me a sort of satisfaction that one wouldn't have, had they only relied on others. My shelter and shade exist because of me. The fruit on my branches was the result of my work. So what if something miserable happened to you? I lost all of my brothers; I'd had no way to protect them, no way to avenge them and no way to give up on myself, either. Is that not upsetting? But I picked myself up, because I had to. And yet, eighty years later, the inability of hundreds of others to do the same has turned me into a dumping ground for human misery.

I'm done being dumped on.

The woman was still dazed, but had begun to lift herself to a sitting position.

I've heard it said that we can only truly lift ourselves once we hit the very bottom. Perhaps I should speed up the process, then, I thought. Now that I knew it was possible...

...I knocked the woman right back down again, using a gust of wind she never could have expected...and that I never believed I could actually control.

She quickly rose to her feet, screaming, and ran away at full speed. Within mere moments, she was gone. And, she took the pain with her. I'd been saved. I felt the greatest sense of relief that I'd felt in a long time.

That was how it started. From that point forward, I pushed away anyone who would impart that pain on me.

I was approached by a lost-looking girl who looked like she had a story to tell. Uninterested, I pushed her backwards.

A young boy who appeared to be alone...not just physically, but in every respect possible. Welcome to my world; you'll get no sympathy from me...you'll have to look for someone else, I thought. I sent a chilling wind down his spine, so that he'd be properly deterred.

An old man who'd been abandoned by everyone left in his life. Surely something led to this; perhaps, you should have thought about some of your actions before you committed to them? But I wasn't going to learn the details. I shoved him with a strong wind, as I would have shoved anyone in his position. How was I to know that his body wasn't strong enough to handle it? A snapping sound filled the air in the clearing... his now-broken body sank to the ground.

Yes, I made an example out of him, I suppose. There were only a couple of witnesses; I know for sure that THEY wanted nothing to do with me, after that. But what to do about the corpse?

That was when I began building the graveyard.

It's amazing what can be done with a bit of wind. Graves can be dug relatively easily. Stones can even be chiseled, if you try hard enough. Using the force of the wind to push one stone upon another makes short work of this task.

I'd had so much contact with those humans that I began to understand them fairly well. This understanding never went away; I was able to fully harness it to see into their minds, even before they shot their pain into me. I'll never forget the look on that first face... when I showed them their grave, before I'd buried them alive. Now that was especially satisfying.

Actually, it's fascinating, knowing just how simple the human brain really is. It controls everything in their pathetic little bodies, after all...from those awful, painful emotions, to just the physical movement of their limbs. You just alter one small thing in that little mass, sit back, and watch the fireworks. Once I figured out how to flip the switches, playtime began. The first experiment resulted in a man so drunk with giddiness that he lost all concept of reality...to the point where bashing his head against a rock seemed like great fun to him. I was thoroughly pleased that he'd enjoyed himself. Next I found the buttons to push to make a person think that they're glued to the ground beneath them. Mind over matter, indeed. The screams of terror that came out of that woman were shrill at first, but I tweaked those too, until they sounded like music. I always did enjoy music, after all.

But then I found my favorite parlor trick of all. Flip a few switches all at once, and the caged bird loses all concept of horizontal movement. They just physically aren't capable of it any more. The look of confusion, then the look of frustration and the way it transforms into terror...is splendid. Absolutely splendid!

I don't remember when the sky started turning grey, but I'd stopped paying much attention to it by then, so I also don't remember how quickly the transition occurred. Now, it's just grey here all the time. Fine by me...I don't need something as bizarre as color to do what I do. What is color, anyway? I have no control over it, so why does it matter?

At some point, I began receiving fewer visitors. The number slowed to a trickle... but it never completely stopped. I don't suppose it ever will. That's fine by me...

Bring me your pain, your suffering. Bring me your misery. I'll merely transform your thoughts and emotions into the physical manifestation--death--that you seemed to want anyway, as far as I can tell.

Yes, what was that name they gave me? I've grown quite fond of it.

Come to the Deepwood Shade. After all, it's quite a nice place to sleep.

Sleep.

Forever...

Nobody ever said this sort of life was easy.

But here I am.

Right now, my occupant is a fellow by the name of Mr. Height. Although it might be more accurate to say that I'm occupying him, at the moment. This is...unpleasant, to say the least.

You see, Mr. Height is...wide. Big-boned, some people call it? I feel like I'm being sucked in; his bottom is practically surrounding and engulfing me. I'd wager to say that at least a quarter of it is hanging off each side of me. I bet that some might enjoy this...warm embrace, of sorts. But in this position, I smell something that I'd rather not. It ain't Earl Grey tea, at the least.

Why was this guy's family name not "width?"

There are others much more suited for this sort of abuse. I actually came from a factory that turned out the sort that works in an office...cushy leather, plenty of room, adjustable height, arm rests...you name it. But me? I was built for school children. I've got four metal legs and a piece of molded plastic, and that's about it. Certainly not enough room for this gigantic Ass of Destruction.

Never mind the fact that I'm in the wrong place to begin with. This is a HIGH SCHOOL. I'm the perfect size for elementary students, maybe middle-schoolers. Do I look like I can accommodate adults? Especially those whose asses are approximately the size of Rhode Island?

This is even worse than what happened last week. I feel like a haircut happened right on top of me, but I guess it was just shedding season, or something. When this girl was done with me, I was practically covered in hair. But it wasn't just any hair; I think she soaked it in oil first. I felt like I gained 12 pounds just by touching it...but that still would leave me hundreds of pounds behind the Ass of Destruction. I'll have to try harder...

In this room, the only things about as old as me are the computers. Mr. Height is typing away at some sort of document...I'd tell you what it was, but I can't see through the Destruction Dome. Usually I have at least a few inches worth of viewing area, especially if the person is some skinny-as-a-rail sort of girl...we have several of those, of course, because we have a football team, after all. But he can't be working on anything *that* great. Let me put it this way; we upgraded these from Apple IIe machines only recently. They're less old now, but that's like saying that instead of them being older than dirt, they're just days younger than dirt. Usually, being around such old computers would mean that I don't get too many occupants...but quality over quantity, right? This is some quality ass right here. Lowest. Quality. Ass.

One of these days...I'm going to get tired of just being sat on all the time. It'll be time to stand up for myself. Except that I'm already standing, and I can't rise up any taller. Damn it. Damn it all.