Out of Sight, Out of Mind

A short story by Tobias Malm

I received a text with the coordinates for the illegal rave my two friends and I had signed up for. The organizers always sent out the location at the last possible moment to avoid police interference. Most of these parties took place in abandoned factories or empty gymnasiums, but this one was different. Tonight’s venue was an uninhabited island in the archipelago, a few kilometers outside town.

A small motorboat came to collect us at the dock. Maja nearly slipped into the water as she climbed aboard, already a little unsteady from the beers she’d had. Jonathan caught her just in time. I flicked away my cigarette and stepped in after them. The evening felt suspended in calm. A thin mist drifted across the glassy surface of the sea. It was only a few days after Midsummer Eve, and the sun would linger until almost ten, reluctant to surrender the sky.

We heard the music long before the island came into view. The bass skimmed across the water and reached us in fractured pulses, a distant throb rolling through the otherwise untouched silence. Electronic beats echoing over open sea felt unreal, like stumbling onto a hidden signal from another world. The island itself was small—you could probably circle it in twenty minutes—but it was so densely overgrown that once you stood at its center, the surrounding water vanished behind walls of green. That was where the rave had taken root.

Plenty of people had already arrived, though fewer than usual; the remoteness kept the crowd selective. Still, most of my acquaintances were there. The setup was surprisingly ambitious. Massive speakers leaned against tree trunks, cables snaking through the underbrush, powered by solar panels rigged up in a clearing. And at the heart of it all stood a live DJ, head bent over the decks, feeding the island its pulse.

Everyone was already in high spirits, even though the night had only just begun. I wasn’t drunk enough to fully surrender to it yet, so I cracked open more of what we’d brought and let the warmth spread through me. As soon as it hit, I drifted toward the others beneath the old trees.

It was beautiful, even without molly. The music pulsed through the trunks and into the ground, rising back up through our bodies. Light from scattered LEDs flickered across bark and leaves, turning the forest into something enchanted. I ended up dancing with a girl in a glowing LED tutu and a pink bikini top. She held my gaze longer than most girls did, especially this early into meeting someone. We laughed, moved closer, and for a brief moment the rest of the island dissolved around us. We kissed—quick, reckless, tasting of sweat and summer—and then she slipped back into the crowd as suddenly as she’d appeared. It felt random, almost unreal, but I wasn’t about to question it.

After a few hours of dancing, our bodies began to fail before our minds did. We were still wired, still hungry for more, but our legs felt heavy and our breaths came short. That was when the craving set in. Something to pop, something to push the night further.

None of us had brought anything. We’d all been tied up celebrating Midsummer with our families and hadn’t managed to find anything reliable in time. Maja made a few rounds, asking quietly, but came back empty-handed. No one was in a generous mood. It was disappointing, but not enough to ruin the night. We shrugged it off and decided to take a short break before diving back in.

We wandered down toward the shoreline. From there, the party reduced itself to flashes of violent white light. The stroboscopes pulsed through the trees, turning them into jagged silhouettes against a blazing, artificial glow. The bass reached us dulled and distant, as if filtered through layers of earth and water.

“Hey,” Jonathan said, nodding toward the dark surface. “Is that boat heading this way?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, only half interested. “Looks like it.”

A rowboat was cutting slowly through the water, a single passenger working the oars with steady strokes. We stood and watched as it drifted closer, close enough for voices to carry. The man aboard wore a dark business suit and black Ray-Bans. He didn’t belong out here.

“Sorry about the noise!” I called out with a grin. “It’s just for tonight. Tomorrow everything goes back to normal.”

“Don’t apologize!” the man shouted back. He lifted the oars and let the boat glide the final stretch. “I didn’t come to complain. I was young once too. A long time ago, but I remember it clearly enough. Would you mind grabbing the boat?”

Maja made her way down the narrow path and steadied it as he stepped out with unhurried ease. His comment about youth being long past didn’t quite add up; he couldn’t have been much older than his mid-thirties.

He shook each of our hands firmly, his grip cool and deliberate, but offered no name.

“Are you here for the party?” Jonathan asked, unable to hide his surprise.

“No,” the man replied. “I’ve done my share of dancing.” A faint smile touched his lips. “But I came to give you something. And perhaps to show you something as well.”

“You live out here?” Maja asked. “I didn’t think anyone—”

“Not at all,” he cut in smoothly. “Quite the opposite, actually. But that’s not important right now. I don’t have much time.”

“What is it you want to give us?” I asked.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small, sealed plastic bag, holding it up between us.

“If you’re looking for something to elevate the night,” he said calmly, “this will do the trick. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe.”

He shook a single black pill into his palm, placed it on his tongue, and swallowed.

“See? Nothing to fear.”

Jonathan frowned. “You rowed all the way out here to deal drugs?”

The man’s lips curved faintly. “Why yes. This is a party, isn’t it?”

“What does it do?” Maja asked, studying the bag. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“There isn’t anything like it,” he replied. “I made them myself. You could call me a chemist, I suppose—though I prefer mind rescuer.” He let out a quiet laugh. “I’m part of what I like to think of as a phenomenological rebellion.” We stared at him, unsure whether he was joking. “As for the effects,” he continued, lowering his voice, “let’s just say that once you’ve taken one, every other high will feel about as profound as watching paint dry. These pills won’t just intensify the party, they’ll reframe it. They may even alter how you see the world long after the effects have worn off.”

“So you’re saying it’s a psychedelic?” I asked. “Like shrooms or—”

“No,” the man cut in gently. “If anything, they’re anti-psychedelic.” He tilted his head. “Why not try one?”

He shook three pills into his palm and held them out to us.

“There’s no charge. All I ask in return is that you at least consider joining my little rebellion. I need all the help I can get.”

Maja took one and rolled it between her fingers, studying its matte black surface. “How long do they last?”

“A few hours,” he replied. “Long enough to give you a different perspective on the world around you.”

He extended the plastic bag toward us. “Take the rest as well. In case you feel like revisiting the experience tomorrow, once you’re home. There are three more inside.”

We exchanged glances and, without saying it outright, decided to go along with it. Why not? He had taken one himself, and he looked far more composed than most of the people I’d bought from before. If this was a scam, it was at least an elegant one. We each swallowed a pill and waited, curious, half-expecting the familiar rise of something chemical creeping through the bloodstream.

“How long before—” I started.

“It works instantaneously,” the man said.

“I don’t feel anything,” Maja frowned.

“Feel?” He raised an eyebrow. “Who said anything about feelings?”

“There’s no difference at all,” Jonathan said. “Though it did taste a bit like chocolate.”

The man slowly lifted a finger and pointed toward the sky. “Look. Do you see what I’m indicating?”

We followed his gesture.

“Woah,” Maja breathed. “What the hell is that?”

Hovering above the treetops, at roughly the height of a helicopter, drifted a vast, irregular black mass. It moved with unsettling slowness, as if suspended in thick, invisible liquid.

“Are you seeing that too?” I said, my pulse quickening. “It looks… alive.”

“Is it a hallucination?” Jonathan asked. “But if—”

“If it were,” the man cut in, “why would you all be seeing the same thing?” He watched the mass drift overhead, calm as ever. “No. You’ve simply stopped hallucinating for the first time in your lives. That—” he gestured lightly upward “—is what has always been there. Hidden behind the phenomenological filter that’s kept humanity from noticing them. For a few hours, that filter is gone.” A faint smile tugged at his mouth. “Wild, isn’t it?”

We stood frozen as the dark, organic sphere glided across the sky, its surface shifting in slow, almost breathing undulations.

“This can’t be real,” Maja said, letting out a shaky laugh. “We must be high as fuck.”

“You’ve never been soberer,” the man replied. “And try not to stare too much. It makes them… curious.”

“Wait,” I said, my throat suddenly dry. “Are you telling us they’re aliens?”

“Alien is a relative term,” he answered smoothly. “I prefer to call them uglies. Up close, they’re not pleasant to look at.”

“You’ve seen them up close?” Jonathan asked.

“Oh, you will too,” the man said. “They’re everywhere.”

Jonathan let out a nervous laugh. “You’re insane. Seriously though, how does it work?”

“Don’t you trust your own eyes?” the man said quietly. “Go back to your party. Look around. See if anything feels… different. Believe it or don’t—that part’s up to you. You don’t have to take it too seriously. Just experience it.”

The black mass drifted behind a bank of clouds and vanished from sight.

“Anyway,” he added briskly, “I should be going.”

He stepped back into the rowboat and pushed off from the shore.

“And remember, don’t let them know you can see them. It won’t end well.”

We stood there, stunned, watching him pull at the oars in steady strokes. He even gave us a small wave before disappearing behind a low, rocky islet.

“That was insane,” Maja said, breaking the silence. “What a complete freak. And what the hell was that thing in the sky? It couldn’t have been real… right?”

We started walking back toward the center of the island, the bass growing louder with every step.

“Nah,” I said, forcing a shrug. “Probably some elaborate prank. Maybe for a YouTube channel. That thing was most likely just a dressed-up balloon.”

“It looked way too real,” Maja muttered. “I don’t know… I’ve got a bad feeling.”

Jonathan joked that we were about to go viral, and moments later we stepped back into the seizure of strobe lights. At first, everything seemed normal. Then—without warning—Maja froze. The color drained from her face. Her lower lip quivered as she pointed into the crowd.

“W-what the hell is wrong with him?”

I followed her finger.

The man she indicated was dressed like everyone else—loud phat pants and a bright yellow hoodie—but his face… It was wrong. Not grotesque in any theatrical way. Just profoundly, biologically wrong. His skin had the dull sheen of candle wax. His features seemed compressed, unfinished. His mouth was so small it looked less like lips and more like a crease pressed into soft clay.

And no one reacted. People danced with him. Smiled at him. Leaned close as if drawn in.

“Is he wearing a mask?” I asked, though I already knew he wasn’t.

Jonathan rubbed his eyes hard, as if trying to reset his vision.

“T-the uglies,” Maja whispered, her voice breaking. “That man… he was right.”

“Jesus—” Jonathan muttered, pointing elsewhere. “What’s wrong with her? I feel sick just looking at her.”

It was the girl in the LED tutu. But she wasn’t the girl I remembered. Her entire body had shifted into something obscene. Like the man before her, her face was violently distorted, but where his mouth had been too small, hers stretched far too wide, splitting her features in a permanent, exaggerated grin.

The exposed parts of her body were worse. The skin looked melted, folded over itself in thick, sagging ridges. Her breasts bulged grotesquely from her bikini top, the flesh seeming to sag and trail downward in ways anatomy simply didn’t allow, almost as if they were tethered somewhere near her knees. It wasn’t just uncanny. It was nauseating.

“That’s the girl I made out with,” I croaked. “I’m going to throw up.”

“What’s she holding?” Maja whispered. “Is that a glow stick, or—”

“I don’t know,” Jonathan muttered. “Why is she pressing it against that guy’s forehead?”

The thing in her hand wasn’t glowing. It looked metallic. Deliberate. She held it to a man’s head as he danced, smiling vacantly, as though she were scanning him. Sampling him. She swayed with the rhythm, moving from one person to the next, casually touching the device to their skin. The music thundered on, indifferent. Then she stopped. She turned slowly. Two flat black dots stared out from where her eyes should have been. And she began walking toward us.

“Shit,” I muttered. “She’s coming. What do we do?”

“Remember what he said,” Maja whispered urgently. “Don’t let them know we can see them. Act normal.”

The woman—or whatever she truly was—stopped in front of us.

“Hey, guys,” she said. Her voice sounded almost the same as before, but there was a faint static underneath it, like interference bleeding through a radio signal.

The device in her hand looked disturbingly organic up close—veined, faintly pulsing—yet edged with metallic seams. She lifted it casually toward our faces.

“Having fun?” she asked, her oversized mouth stretching wider. “It’s a pretty wild party, right?”

I focused on a point just past her shoulder, doing everything I could not to look directly at her face or the thing in her hand.

“Uh… yeah,” I managed. “It’s great.”

“Y-yeah,” Jonathan added quickly. “Awesome night.”

She leaned closer.

I stopped breathing. My eyes fell shut on instinct. I felt the warmth of her presence, the proximity of those enormous lips near my ear.

Her voice dropped into a low, intimate murmur.

“There’s an old boathouse down by the shore,” she whispered. “Want to come there with me?”

I instinctively stepped back, panic flaring in my chest, but forced a smile before she could notice. A thin, nervous laugh slipped out as I scrambled for an excuse—anything that would get me out of this.

“Oh—uh—you know…” My mind was blank. “…I actually have a girlfriend.”

It was a lie, but it was the only refusal I could think of that wouldn’t seem suspicious.

“Really?” she said.

Despite the two black pinholes where her eyes should have been and that grotesquely oversized mouth, I could still read the expression forming there. Doubt.

“That didn’t seem to bother you earlier.”

“Kissing’s fine,” I said quickly. “We’re… pretty open about that kind of thing. But, yeah…”

“Suit yourself!” she chirped, letting out a light, almost innocent laugh as she continued passing the strange device in front of our faces.

Then she drifted back into the crowd.

The moment she was gone, I turned to Maja and Jonathan, my voice low and urgent.

“We need to get the fuck out of here.”

We made it back to town just as dawn began to thin the sky. On the way, we saw more of them. Shapes drifting above rooftops and treetops. Some wholly organic, pulsing and asymmetrical, others fused with cold metallic structures that gleamed faintly in the growing light. Jonathan swore he spotted one with long, dangling tentacles trailing from its underside, but when I followed his shaking finger, I couldn’t make out what he was seeing. Then, gradually, they began to fade. One by one, the forms dissolved into nothing, as if erased from the air itself. Within the hour, the sky was empty. The drug was wearing off.

Relief washed over me, but only partially. A thin, stubborn anxiety remained lodged in my chest. If the man had been telling the truth—and by now it seemed he had—then the nightmare hadn’t ended. It had only slipped back behind the curtain. We sank down onto a bench in the center of town, pale and exhausted as early commuters moved around us, blissfully unaware.

“That was the worst trip of my life,” Maja muttered. “Those things were disgusting.”

Jonathan shook his head slowly. “I don’t think that was a trip.” He looked up at the perfectly ordinary sky. “I think this is the trip. Our perception—normally—it’s being altered. Filtered. So they can live among us without being seen. That’s what he meant. The phenomenological rebellion.” He swallowed. “It actually makes sense now.” He turned to us, eyes hollow. “But how do you fight something you can’t see? Where would you even begin?”

“This is way beyond us,” I said. “What are we even supposed to do?”

“And he didn’t leave us any way to contact him,” Maja added. “Isn’t that weird?”

“Keep your voices down,” Jonathan muttered, glancing around. “We can’t see them anymore. For all we know, one could be standing right next to us.”

A chill crept up my spine.

“Let’s take another one,” I said suddenly. “I need to see how—”

“Are you insane?” Maja snapped. “I am not going through that again.”

“Just listen,” I said, lowering my voice. “This time we’ll be prepared. We won’t panic. I just… I need to understand how bad it is.” They stared at me. “We can’t pretend we didn’t see what we saw,” I continued. “If they’re really everywhere, we need to know. How much of the town is affected? How many people?” I looked around at the ordinary morning. Cars passing, a woman walking her dog, a cyclist waiting at a red light. Everything looked painfully normal. “Right now we can’t trust anyone,” I said quietly. “Not even people we’ve known our whole lives. But if we take the pill and they still look normal… then we’ll know for sure.”

Jonathan pulled the plastic bag from his pocket and studied it for a moment before turning to Maja.

“He’s right. We need to know who we can trust.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Maja groaned. “Fine. But I’m not moving from this bench.”

“Good,” I said. “This is the busiest spot in town.” I gestured toward the square and the surrounding buildings. “We’ve got the market, the shops, the bank… In a few hours this place will be packed.”

“Exactly,” Jonathan nodded. “We’ll see plenty from here while the pills are working.”

He handed us the last three.

I studied the one resting in my palm. It was perfectly black. No markings, no shine, no texture. Like a fragment of absence.

“On three,” I said.

We counted together.

At three, we swallowed.

My pulse spiked, hammering in my ears—whether from chemistry or sheer dread, I couldn’t tell. The air seemed to thicken. The light shifted, subtly at first, like a lens being adjusted over reality itself. Then the world began to change.

“Holy shit,” Maja breathed. “It’s worse than I thought… Look at the bank.”

The bank was no longer just a building.

Its facade oozed with a thick layer of black, tar-like slime that clung to the walls and windows. A bloated, organic spacecraft sprawled across the roof, its surface slick and faintly pulsating, as if breathing. Flanking the entrance stood two towering figures that resembled leafless grey trees, except their branches writhed like tentacles, swaying slowly though there was no wind.

“Is that their headquarters?” Jonathan whispered. “It looks like some kind of base, doesn’t it?”

The glass doors slid open.

Something stepped out.

It wore ordinary clothes—a jacket, jeans—but where its face should have been there was only smooth grey flesh, featureless and matte. It moved with eerie composure toward a homeless man who had shown up in town a few weeks ago. They appeared to exchange a few words. Then both of them walked back inside the bank. Minutes later, the doors opened again. A creature with two heads emerged, dressed in the homeless man’s worn jacket and filthy trousers. The heads moved independently, scanning the square before the thing shuffled over to the pile of sleeping bags near the fountain and lowered itself into them, curling up exactly where the man used to lie.

“Oh my God,” I breathed. “They replaced him. Did you see that? They replaced him!”

“Uh…” Maja’s voice trembled. “Y-yeah. What the hell is happening?”

Jonathan pointed toward the market stalls. “Look at the fruit.”

The display had changed.

Where watermelons should have been stacked in neat pyramids, there now sat massive, glistening meat-like spheres. Greasy, fibrous, faintly twitching beneath a thin membrane. A young woman stood at the stand, smiling politely as she handed over money for one, completely unaware of what she was actually holding.

More townspeople drifted into the square as the sun climbed higher. At first glance, many appeared normal. But not all.

Some were unmistakably altered. Others—who looked entirely human—had spindly, insectoid creatures clinging to their backs and shoulders. The parasites crawled along their necks and into their hair, unnoticed. It was as if half the population carried invisible passengers.

Jonathan rose abruptly and grabbed a discarded newspaper from the pavement.

“Look at this,” he said, unfolding it with trembling hands. “It’s not just here.”

The headline read: National Association of Police Organizations Endorses Trump. Beneath it was a photo of Donald Trump at a podium.

“That’s just Trump,” Maja said. “He’s supposed to look like that.”

“I know,” Jonathan replied. “Look behind him.”

In the background, several members of his staff stood slightly out of focus. Their suits were ordinary. Their faces were not.

Even blurred by the print, their features bore the same wrongness we’d seen at the rave.

“This is global,” I said, my mouth dry. “They’re everywhere. Government, banks, media… They’ve infiltrated everything.”

“Wait,” Maja said. “This drug works on pictures too?”

Her hands trembled as she pulled out her phone and opened Facebook. “Let’s check our friends.”

She began scrolling. Her breathing grew uneven.

“Oh no… no…” Tears welled in her eyes. “M-my boyfriend. Look.”

She turned the screen toward us. His profile picture had changed. The face I remembered—symmetrical, confident, familiar—was gone. In its place was a flat grey square of flesh, packed with hundreds of tiny openings.

“Those eyes…” I whispered. “Jesus. I’m so sorry.”

“What are you talking about?” Jonathan said, leaning closer. “Those aren’t eyes. They’re mouths.”

“Whatever they are,” I muttered, nausea rising in my throat, “they’re horrifying.”

We kept scrolling. Friend after friend. Some normal. Some not. We committed the altered ones to memory. The replaced, the infected, the infiltrators. Maja was sobbing openly now. When she vomited onto the pavement, drawing startled looks from passersby, we decided that was enough. We couldn’t risk staying exposed in the open. We hurried to my apartment to let the drug wear off somewhere safe. Jonathan entered my kitchen first. He screamed. I was right behind him, still slipping off my shoes. The sound made every hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

“What’s wrong, Jonathan?” my mom called from the stove. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Her voice was warm. Familiar. I forced myself to move, stepping up beside Jonathan. She stood there in one of her usual summer dresses, stirring something in a pan. But it wasn’t her. The body was hers. The posture was hers. The head was not. Where my mother’s face should have been, there was a thin, skin-covered stalk rising from her shoulders. At the top of it sat a single, glossy eye. It blinked when it noticed me.

“Hey,” it said in my mother’s voice. “How was the party? Did you have fun?”

The stalk tilted slightly, just like she used to tilt her head when she asked a question.

Something inside me snapped. I couldn’t pretend. Not here. Not with this. They had replaced my own mother.

“What did you do to her?” I shouted. “Where the fuck is she?”

“Excuse me?” the thing replied, the eye narrowing. “Have you completely lost—”

“My mom,” I choked, tears burning behind my eyes. “Where is she? Did you take her to the bank? Like that homeless guy?” My voice broke into a raw scream. “That’s right. We can fucking see you now!”

My friends stood frozen, horror written across their faces, unsure whether to intervene or run.

“See who?” the creature said, its voice trembling. “You’re scaring me.”

It moved toward me.

Jonathan and Maja instinctively stepped aside. I grabbed a kitchen knife from the table, my hand slick with sweat, and backed away slowly.

“Don’t come any closer,” I warned. “Just tell me what you did to my mom.”

“I’m right here!” A thick, black tear slid from the single eye atop the stalk. “Please… you’re frightening me.”

It turned toward my friends. “What happened to him?”

“We know,” Maja said, her voice shaking. “We can see what you really are.”

The thing let out a broken sob and stepped closer, arms opening—whether to touch my face or pull me into an embrace, I couldn’t tell. Panic detonated inside me. I swung the knife. The blade sliced cleanly through the stalk. The head toppled sideways, and a torrent of viscous black fluid burst from the wound, splattering the floor and cabinets. The creature shrieked in my mother’s voice—a raw, agonized sound—clutching at its severed neck as it collapsed to its knees. Jonathan grabbed a chair and brought it down with all his strength. The crack of wood against flesh echoed through the kitchen.

“What did you do to my mom?” I screamed, dropping to my knees and driving the knife down again and again. “What did you do to her?”

Black fluid splashed across my hands, across the tiles, across my clothes. The body convulsed once, then went still.

“It’s dead,” Maja whispered. “I—I think we killed it.”

“We didn’t have a choice,” Jonathan said hoarsely. “If we hadn’t… it would’ve reported us.”

The word hung in the air. Reported. We shut the kitchen door, sealing the carnage behind it, and stumbled into my room. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I could still hear the echo of my mother’s voice screaming.

“What the fuck are we going to do?” I asked, pacing. “They took my mom.”

“They took my boyfriend too,” Maja sobbed. “This is a nightmare. I wish we’d never met that man.”

“You’d rather stay ignorant?” Jonathan shot back. “At least now we know. And if we know, we might have a chance to save them.”

“W-what are you suggesting?” I asked, my pulse still racing.

“They’re bringing people to the bank,” Jonathan said. “We saw it. Maybe they’re holding them there. Or maybe there’s something inside, some clue about where they’re sending them.” He met my eyes. “We start there.”

We spent the rest of the day planning our next move. After midnight—long after the drug had worn off—we slipped out of my room. To get my mom’s car keys, we had to pass through the kitchen again. She was still there, lying in a dark pool of blood, looking like herself once more. Her throat had been cut. I nearly threw up when I saw her.

“It isn’t really her,” Maja said. “It’s just a hallucination.”

I snatched the keys and bolted out of the house. Jonathan stormed into the garage, hauled out four cans of gasoline, and tossed them into the trunk. We drove to Maja’s place and mixed a couple of Molotov cocktails in tight, efficient silence. When we were finished, Maja disappeared into her room and came back gripping her hockey stick. Then we headed for the square.

At this hour it lay deserted, hollow and still. The bank looked ordinary again—windows dark, façade calm—but we knew better. Whether we could see them or not didn’t matter. Knowing where they were was enough. Time was slipping through our fingers. Every step had to happen almost at the same second.

Maja took the Molotov cocktails and strode toward the bank without looking back. I wedged the hockey stick against the gas pedal while Jonathan doused the inside of the car with gasoline, the fumes biting at our throats. The moment Maja started hurling the bottles onto the roof—setting the invisible ship ablaze—I turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared. Jonathan flicked a lit match into the back seat and leapt away as the car lurched forward, surging toward the entrance. By the time it slammed into the doors, it was already swallowed by fire. The alarm began to scream. We had minutes at most. The police would be on their way. We smashed the storefront window and climbed through. Flames clawed at the walls, heat pressing in from every side as the bank burned around us.

“See if you can find the stairs to the roof!” I shouted to Jonathan. “Maja, check for any hidden rooms behind the reception! Mom! We’re here to save you!”

The smoke swallowed the bank with terrifying speed. Within minutes it was almost impossible to breathe. I hadn’t understood it would happen this fast. My eyes burned; I could barely see a thing. The heat wrapped around my body, suffocating and close.

“Mom!” I screamed. “Can you hear me?”

“I found the stairs!” Jonathan’s voice cut through the chaos. “We can’t stay here!”

I staggered forward, coughing so hard it felt like my lungs would tear apart, and finally reached him through the haze.

“Where’s Maja?” he shouted.

“I—I don’t know!” I gasped. “We have to get out!”

We stumbled up onto the burning roof, where the air was marginally clearer, though sparks drifted past us in the dark.

“Did Maja make it out?” Jonathan asked.

In the distance, sirens wailed, growing louder by the second.

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice shaking. “She was at the back of the building…”

I’m convinced there was more inside that bank than we could see. It’s the only explanation for how fast the fire spread. We must have destroyed many of them. A fire truck lifted us down from the roof. The police were waiting. They put us in handcuffs on the spot.

Now—some time after everything fell apart—we’re waiting for trial. We’re charged with murdering my mother and carrying out what they describe as a potential terrorist attack. And we have no way of proving we’re innocent. No way of showing anyone what’s really happening behind the phenomenological filters forced upon our entire species.

Please—if you’re reading this—join the phenomenological rebellion. Fight back. If you ever get the chance, take the black pill and see for yourself what’s really happening. It will frighten you. It should. But the truth has to come out. No matter the cost.

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