Chapter 2: The Secret Face of the Universe

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Hall of Mirrors by Cesar Torres

CHAPTER 2: THE SECRET FACE OF THE UNIVERSE

Hall of Mirrors by Cesar Torres
Copyright @ 2022 Cesar Torres. All Rights Reserved.

NESTOR BUÑUEL

Otisville Federal Correction Institution, 70 miles from New York City

Goddamn it, was it hot in this fucking hallway, Nestor thought, as he approached the conference room where Puttock waited for him, under supervision of four guards. Nestor wiped his brow with the back of his hand and shook his head, and entered the room.

Steven Puttock sat at the outer edge off the conference room table. His hair had been sheared almost down to the skin, giving him a more severe look than his wild, white hair that Nestor remembered from when Puttock had been arrested in 2025. And even though his lean physique looked humble in his prison uniform, he carried himself like a king.

“You’ve cleaned up,”  Nestor said as he sat down at the conference table. Puttock ran a hand through his buzz cut and snickered, and let silence spread between him and Nestor. Puttock’s eyes revealed nothing but a flat expression, impenetrable, but one filled with inner knowledge..

The room was sparsely furnished, with a long table and humble office chairs. It was unmistakably a conference room. Many large prisons had conference rooms like this one, but this was definitely the nicest one Nestor had ever seen.

“Ironic, right?” Puttock said. “Our prisons are still overcrowded despite the crisis from the virus and politicians’ obsessions with jailing black men. And yet, they still insist on dumping resources into getting me such a nice board room. Bless.”

Nestor gave Puttock half of a smile, leaned back in his chair, and did something he never did in public. He ran his hands through his hair, which was now long enough to need pomades and a blow dryer.

“Your hair looks good,” Puttock said. The convicted murdered smiled, and stared at his own fingernails, playing a similar game of effected gestures. “Very 1970’s. But is that style what you really wanted?”

“Good to see you, too, Steven,” Nestor said. He ignored the comment about his hair. What Puttock wanted was to extract personal information and illicit emotion, and even if Nestor made up a lie about why he grew out his hair, Puttock could use it against him. The less he revealed, the better off Nestor would be.

“They let me read The New Yorker in here,” Puttock said, leafing through a copy of the magazine. “Can you believe Condé Nast still prints this thing?” he said, looking down at the pages, as if he and Nestor were eating breakfast together on a Sunday morning at a diner.

“I’ve heard you have a pretty decent library here in the prison,” Nestor said. 

“So the fine editors at the New Yorker titled this piece Among the Insurrectionsts, huh,” Puttock read out loud from the magazine. He clicked his tongue and cast the magazine aside. “What a headline! Neo-nazi fascists stormed the Capitol on January 6,  2021. And this is the Condé Nast article that made those MAGA men and women famous. Funny to think about what was then, and how how things are now, isn’t it?”

“How so?”

“The more technology we develop, the harder we seem to fall back on some of our most primal urges. We have the best medical tech, and more options than ever before to watch movies and TV shows at home. But the fact is, it’s people like the ones profiled in this article—people who have turned toward conspiracy theories, revisionism—people who have been radicalized by ideologies—that continue to dominate headlines this country. And that’s because they thirst. They want violence. They want blood.”

“Is that thirst something you admire?”

Puttock’s face turned solemn. “Don’t compare me to white trash, detective.”

“Got it. For your information, I’m retired now. You can just call me Mr. Buñuel.”

“So I heard. New era, huh? I only heard about your retirement recently. And once I did, I asked to see you. You and I can loosen up now that you’re not in the force.”

“Actually, I think you asked to see me after your cellmate committed suicide.”

“Oh that. Quite unfortunate.”

“Your cellmate’s name was Rodion Raska,” Nestor said. Saying the name of the victim out loud was important. Victims always deserved to be humanized. “He was just a kid.”

“The kid kept to himself. He was in here for two murders. But he was fish from the day he arrived here. At least three of the thugs in these halls set their sights on his ass. Eventually, he would have made a great girlfriend for one of the gangbangers here at Otisville.”

“How so?”

“Raska was born to be someone’s prison bitch. That kid’s homosexuality was more obvious to everyone but him. Typical queen mascarading under a tough-guy persona and muscles. He was the first to make derisive comments about faggots and queers. It’s no surprise he would hang himself with a bedsheet the way he did. He was too afraid of who he was inside.”

Nestor wanted to press Puttock about whether he suggested suicide to his roommate, but it was too soon. Puttock would need to lower his guard way more to give info about Rodion Raska up. So Nestor changed the subject.

“Why did you want to talk to me specifically?” Nestor said. “There were plenty of other detectives on the Grue case back in 2025.”

“Because I know that department politics isn’t the only reason you retired from the force. Even then I knew you were special, Mr. Buñuel. You saw the shadow that is moving toward us.”

Puttock’s words echoed in the conference room.

“I did?” Nestor said.

“You and I know the shadow I’m talking about. It’s unlike any other. It’s the shadow that exists on the other side of the sun. It’s the secret face of the universe.”

“Elaborate on that, please.”

“I like how you ask open ended questions without leading. Smart. Experienced. But when it comes to the secret side of the sun, I hardly think you have to ask. You know what I mean. You know it in here.” Puttock tapped hard on his chest, over his heart.

“Tell me more about the shadow, then,” Nestor said.

“It’s very big. Big enough to engulf our planet. It’s a tsunami of death.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“You survived the pandemic, didn’t you?”

“I suppose I did. I’m here talking to you after all.”

“Fifteen million people died. That’s a lot of corpses. I would call that a shadow, wouldn’t you?”

“I see what you’re saying.”

“And it’s only the beginning, detective.”

“Go on,” Nestor said. “But please, don’t call me detective.”

Puttock clicked his tongue, tossed the magazine in his hand off to the side, and crossed his arms. “Do me a favor, okay?” he said. “I know you want to capture my chat for posterity. But I see your one way mirror in the back of the room. And I know you’re recording me.”

“Surely you can’t be surprised we would record these proceedings. You consented in writing, in fact..”

“Then speak truthfully,” Puttock roared. “When I speak of the shadow, you know exactly what the fuck I mean, Nestor Buñuel. Let’s get real.”

Nestor kept his eyes neutral, impenetrable, but he nodded in agreement with Puttock.

Nestor did know that shadow. He knew it well.

 Two cameras filmed in 8K resolution. One was located in the upper corner of the conference room, small as a spider, and just as innocuous as one. The other one was set behind the large horizontal mirror on the back wall of the room. This larger camera had an audio feed coming from microphones placed in the center of the table. The mics were flat, round and black, waterproof stickers. Footage was displayed on monitors in a separate room that lay behind the one way mirror.

Nestor had to navigate this next part of the conversation carefully. He would get Puttock to give up information on the other murders he had committed, but in doing so, Nestor would have to sustain a conversation with Puttock about magic and the supernatural.

If only he could avoid the supernatural. But he could not.

What would come next was the stuff of dank YouTube channels dedicated to the Mothman and skinwalkers, conspiracy theories, crypts and urban legends. And Nestor had to be careful just how much he would reveal about himself during this session, but not because of what Puttock would learn. Nestor had to be careful to not ruin his reputation.

He couldn’t afford to be known as a superstitious nut. There was no dignity in the label.

But the fact was, Nestor knew exactly what Puttock had meant.

The planet did have a shadow. And Nestor knew that chaos, death were magnifying. Civilization was being scourged.

It was inevitable to look at today’s headlines and not be cognizant of how many people were dying. Millions in poverty infected by the virus; the human casualties in the war with Russia; the dead from the Indian-Pakistani water conflict; those who were perishing of hunger as temperatures obliterated crops;  and then there were the Laments—Americans, mostly men, who had lived through at least two decades of crisis, and who were taking their own lives by the thousands each year.

Certainly felt like a tsunami of death. And that in itself was shadow.

Nestor couldn’t see the shadow that fell over the world, but he felt it with all his heart. It was as if in the very center of the darkness, something reflected small particles of light. Almost as if the darkness were not empty.

It was as if there were things inside the shadow. There were creatures. Things with eyes, claws, wings and gills.

Big things.

Like the thing whose presence he had felt just a day before in Chicago, hungover out of his mind, but still lucid. As darkness had flooded his office, he had clearly felt a presence with him, just inches away from where he sat.

But that was not the only creature Nestor had ever felt inside darkness.

Nestor had actually touched one of those beings, five years before. He had recoiled in disgust at the sight of it, a giant bird that defied all logic, its massive wings lined with eyes, and its body made not of flesh, but greenish-black smoke, and its four eyes burning embers that bore into his very soul.

That creature had emerged from the darkness, as if the cloak of night had given birth to a smoke owl.

Monster was the only word he could really think of the Nestor remembered the encounter. He and Felix had been invited to the estate of the late filmmaker Samuel Kahan as part of the investigation of the murder of Manhattan power attorney Marlene Grue. Samuel Kahan, the Oscar-winning director of Xenogenesis and Kino Ludovico had been dead for some time, but his spirit emanated through his former home in the Catskills in upstate New York. And because Puttock had murdered Marlene Grue during the screening of Kahan’s last theatrical release, Nestor had unraveled threads that perhaps he shouldn’t have.

The visit to the estate had been eerie and strange, like the waxy gray images of nightmares. But it had been so real. Hours spent together with Felix, digging through archives, snow and wind rattling the windows, and even a tryst with the keeper of the estate, Gregory Meyers. All of these memories glimmered with the patina of nightmares, the kind that linger in the mind hours after waking.

One evening during this excursion, Felix ran off  into the woods, with the intention of shooting himself dead with a handgun. But he never completed his objective. The smoke monster had interfered.

The bird had materialized as if it were made from the gossamer threads of a dream. Everything else about this avian monstrosity—its smell, its radiating energy with came off in small vibrations that resembled music—were not from this world, of perhaps not even from this dimension. The smoke owl scanned the environment with two pairs of eyes that gave off an alien energy and sense of awareness that gave Nestor the chills. The creature had touched Nestor in the chest, and in that moment, it had spoken directly to him without having to use words.

That owl creature, who had thousands of eyes folded beneath its wings, had identified himself as the son of gods.

Its parents, it had said, were Mictecacihuatl and Mictlantecuhtli, the goddess and god of death respectively. They were the lords of the underworld, rulers of every aspect of death.

In those brief, hallucinatory moments out in the Catskills, Nestor had believed the owl.

And the owl had many stories to tell.

The smoke owl had revealed knowledge to Nestor. According to the creature, the smoke owl was not the only one of its kind.

There were many other beings that came from his world.

All of these beings had names. Names that took almost a full 60 seconds to pronounce, made of polyphonic melodies and hard rhythms, like techno songs compressed into syllables. These monsters did not come from a book, a Netflix show, or a gene-editing experiment from Tesla. No, they came from the very darkness itself, as if the void of night could birth animals made of smoke and shadow.

The smoke owl had revealed his name as Tecolotl, son of Mictecacíhuatl and Mictlantecuhtli. Though gender did not apply to who he was, he allowed Nestor to use the pronouns he to refer to it in human speech.

Tecolotl, whose real name was endless, rhythmic, and unknowable to human speech. Tecolotl was the best word that could attempt to describe his true name, and according to Felix’s analysis years later, a linguistic approximation made by the ancient Aztec rulers and mystics.

Meeting Tecolotl up close like that had been a life changing experience, equal in magnitude only to the death of Nestor’s parents.

The event had changed his life forever, and not necessarily for the better. It had opened and closed many wounds. But Nestor knew that there was value in it, and indeed, Steven Puttock, convicted murderer, would surely love to know everything he could about the Tecolotl incident.

So what should Nestor do about Puttock? The man clearly wanted to talk about these uncanny happenings and these monsters made of shadow. And Nestor needed to fulfill his promise to Delia Douglas, and in the process, find justice for Marlene Grue, and the other victims of Puttock’s crimes.

But Nestor could not afford to have his secrets exposed to police and prosecutors, even if he was already retired.

But he also had to take his chances at getting Puttock to open up.

“You and I both know there are beings far grander than all of us out there in the cosmos,”  Nestor said. “You and I spoke about them last time we met,” Nestor said.

“That we did. But five years is a long time ago” Puttock said. “I thought by now you would have forgotten about that chat back in Manhattan.”

“How could I? Those creatures are hard to forget.”

“Beings, huh,” Puttock said. “You don’t even have the balls to actually say what they are. They are gods, Nestor. Gods.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Nestor bluffed.

“Just cut the shit, you meathead,” Puttock spat. “You want me to cut this interview short? Because I have a pretty decent room here in this prison. I don’t have to waste my time with hacks like you.”

Nestor squeezed a fist under the table as his stomach fluttered with anxiety. 

“Okay, yeah, I’ve seen the owl you speak of,” Nestor said.

“Describe it, then,” Puttock said, with a smile. His eyes danced and glittered. He enjoyed exposing Buñuel’s secret, humiliating him. It was like doxxing, but worse, because Nestor was the one exposing himself by choice. 

But fuck it. He was damn good at extracting leads and confessions from suspects, and he wasn’t scared easily. Nestor coughed into his hand and made sure to keep eye contact with Puttock.

“The creature came to me in a vision,” Nestor said. “He was least six feet tall, and made of greenish black smoke. It had four eyes instead of two, and its name sounded like a long piece of music.”

“Yes, yes!” Puttock hissed. "That owl is one of the children of Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl. He’s one of the denizens.”

“What do you mean, a denizen?”

“A denizen of a vast place. A realm of death..”

The room filled with silence, and the air thickened.

“What can you tell me about that place?” Nestor said.

“I can’t tell you the real name of it. Not here. Not with all these cameras and mics watching and listening to us.”

Nestor kept a straight face, but he delighted internally at the morsel he had just tossed Puttock’s way.

Nestor knew that Puttock made a good point about surveillance. The whole world was infused with cameras in 2030: smartphones, drones, medical devices and even toys. And of course, interrogation rooms like this one. But somehow, he still felt a chill creep up his spine.

Perhaps Puttock was talking symbolically. Perhaps he was talking about eyes that resembled cameras, but belonged to someone, or something else.

“I get it. We have to tape these things, Puttock. But that place you’re telling me about, can you tell me more about it?”

“It’s where everything goes to die,” Puttock said. “It’s called The Coil.”

“And you think the owl came from The Coil?”

“I don’t just think so. I know it,” Puttock said. “It was Lord Xipe Totec who gave me the name of that dark place in a visionary dream.”

Xipe Totec, the Red Tezcatlipoca, was the Aztec god to whom Puttock had dedicated the ritual killing of attorney Marlene Grue. Xipe had been worshipped by the Mexica as the god of Spring, renewal and fertility, but also the god who chose to wear the skins of flayed human victims as a bodysuit.

Nestor felt his chest twist and tighten, and sweat broke out on his palms. But he stayed still.

“I like how you cross your arms and keep your composure, Buñuel. But you have a weak poker face, sweetie.”

Nestor glanced at the mirror. Delia was sitting there behind it, probably shaking her damn head, or worse, laughing.

“Owl got your tongue?” Puttock said.

Nestor stayed silent.

“It’s okay to admit that I make you a little nervous,” Puttock said.

“You have seen this owl with your own yes, then?” Nestor said, moving the conversation forward.

“No, I learned about Tecolotl in a book” Puttock said. His smile split his face ear to ear. “Have you ever read 9 Lords of Night?”

“It’s a rare novel, with very few copies in circulation,” Nestor said. “Written centuries ago by a friar in Mexico City. Carmona was his name.”

“That’s the one. That book, it opens the gates to dark worlds. Worlds that lift men to the brink of insanity.”

Nestor pressed his lips shut. He knew about the novel 9 Lords of Night, but he pretended he didn’t.

He had first learned about the context of the Tecolotl creature through Felix Calvo, who had redirected his talents as an anthropology scholar toward the Samuel Kahan film 9 Lords of Night, and the novel of the same name. Over the years, Felix had become a teacher to Nestor, showing him the history and customs  of their mutual ancestors—the Olmec, the Maya, and in particular the Aztecs.

Felix had taught Nestor the myths and legends of the creation of the universe, the earth, the sky, and of men. It was Felix who had taught him about the eldest gods, Ometeorl and Omecihuatl, and their many children, like the omni-present reptilian goddess Coatlicue, or the four Tezcatlipocas, four male deities forever bound as brothers. Felix had taught Nestor things that his own parents should have taught him but never could. Or perhaps a better way to to put it is that Felix taught him the history of his ancestors despite Nestor never having had the time to let his parents teach him fully.

And surely enough, the book 9 Lords of Night had been part of that teaching. Though neither Felix nor Nestor had ever read it in its entirety, they were able to piece a few things together using online scholar databases. In the novel, an indigenous husband and wife attempted to murder the rulers of the capital of New Spain, in an attempt to avenge their fellow Mexicas from the colonization by the Spanish crown. The heroes failed, of course.

The baroque thriller took strange twists and turns, and in the depths of its labyrinthine prose, nine god-like birds emerged as part of the story. Each bird was a protector and familiar of the 9 Lords of Night, a roundtable of the gods who governed over the shadow aspect of the universe. Those gods were: Tlaloc, the rain god; Chalchiutlicue, the goddess of water; Tepeyollotl, Mountain Heart; Piltzintecuhtli, the Prince Lord; Tlazolteotl, the goddess of filth purification and adultery; Centeotl, the maize god; Mictlantecuhtli, who indeed was the lord of death; Xiuhtecuhtli, the god of old age and fire; and finally, Tezcatlipoca, the mighty ruler of night, transformation, and obsidian.

Each guardian bird was fierce and uncannily large, ranging from a quail to an eagle, macaws, a ravens, 2 kids of owls, and even a butterfly, which Nestor knew was not a bird, but which the Mexica lumped together into a volatile category as one in one of their codexes. Though 9 Lords of Night  had been written in the 17th century, its language slithered, crawled and dissolved, thanks to strange passages that were both surreal and expressionistic, according to sources who had read it. This was a book so obscure, even most Mexican nationals had never heard of it. The lore surrounding the book was as mysterious as the book itself.

But Puttock didn’t know how Felix was, and Nestor was not about to play any cards he didn’t have to.

“I visited the estate of Samuel Kahan once,” Nestor said. “I found some some papers there that mentioned that book.”

“But you didn’t get your hands on the physical object itself?”

“Nope.”

“The obsessive Samuel Kahan didn’t bother to obtain multiple copies of the very novel he adapted into his famous film to keep in his house? I smell bullshit.”

Puttock licked his lips. The convicted killer looked tired, a bit haggard, and the skin on his arms clung to his meager flesh. But his eyes were alive, healthy, bright as stars, and very hungry. He licked his lips a second time, as if he were evaluating Nestor as prey.

“I would like for you to retrieve 9 Lords of Night for me, Buñuel.”

“Takes a lot of balls to summon me here to do you a favor.”

“It’s important to me. And you know, if you get me that book…”

“I get it. You want to bargain. In that case, I’ll name my price.”

“Oh,” Puttock said. He looked honestly surprised at Nestor’s chess move.

“If I get you the book,” Nestor continued, “I want the first and last names of all your victims. And details of every one of their  murders.”

Puttock’s face grayed out, and his eyes became flat, emotionless. He blinked a couple of times, cocked his head and stared Nestor right in the eyes.

“Rosana Murphy, Toledo, Ohio, 2020. I buried her near Point Place. I removed her hands and feet before burying her in a backyard. Strawberry mole on the left thigh. She wore a red sweater. Pig faced.”

Nestor pulled away from the table as his mouth filled up with a bitter taste and his stomach turned. There was a precision and confidence in the information that Puttock had just shared that left him shell shocked. He didn’t know if the info checked out, but then again, it was very detailed. The team behind the mirror would be looking her up at this very moment to verify authenticity.

“Norbert Logsdon, 2017, West Virginia border. He lived alone, as a hoarder. The house was stacked high with books and furniture, and about 40 cats living in shit. I used an extension cord on the neck until I got the desired result. Then I lit a match. The house burned down, and all the cats became ash. He struggled a lot, you know? Hands flailing while I choked his obese neck.”

The buzzing sound in the room grew thicker, and Nestor’s gut twisted, as nausea rose in his throat. He was sweating under his jacket so much that his t-shirt was sticking to the blazer. Temperatures outside were dipping down to just 5 degrees Fahrenheit, but inside the prison, the heat became suffocating.

Puttock burst into laughter.

“I see right into you. You can’t hide anything from me.” His smile had vanished. All that remained was the flat expression, his gray eyes, and an eerie stillness in his body, the way a predator bunches its muscles before springing into action.

“We’ll take a short break now,” Nestor said. “Do you need to use the restroom?”

Puttock didn’t bother to answer. He picked at his teeth and leaned back in his chair, ignoring him.

Nestor motioned to the officer standing behind the glass door of the conference room. The officer took Puttock by the wrists and placed cuffs on him. Before Delia Douglas could intercept his journey, he vomited his breakfast promptly into a stall. He walked back to the control room, which lay behind the mirrored glass. Delia was biting her nails when he walked in. He had never seen her do that before.

“Do you need me to stop the interview?” she said. “You got us two names, and we are matching them to missing persons records and other crimes in the database. My team tells me these are indeed the names of murder victims in those locations and dates. You’ve done enough, if you feel like you need to go home.”

“You know me better than that, Douglas. I’m gonna get you all the names.”

“I know. But you don’t have to prove anything here. I don’t know how to tel you this, but you looked a lot better today before the interview started. Right now you don’t. You’re pale as a ghost. You look like you just became very ill.”

“It’s just a bad McMuffin.”

Delia smiled, nodded and checked her smartphone for a second. Nestor knew that she could sense part of what he was really going through, but she kept her mouth shut and refrained from pressing the issue.

Suddenly Nestor remembered how much he missed his friendship with this woman. She was a great person, and he hadn’t had a moment together with her for more than five years, when they had investigated Puttock’s murders in the streets of Manhattan.

He wanted to tell Delia that the monsters were real, and that the shadow was real.

The team of corrections officers stepped out of the control room for a moment to take orders from another  supervisor, and suddenly Nestor was alone with Delia. She pocketed her smartphone and pulled a chair out for him. She placed a paper cup of coffee on the table for him.

“Come on, let’s chat.”

The words were on the very edge of his lips. Those creatures he spoke about are real, is what he was going to say, but Delia put a finger up in the air before he could speak.

“About that spooky shit that Puttock’s been talking about: I’m taking notes, but I don’t want to discuss it much inside this building. Got it?”

“Come again?”

“I was raised by a very superstitious mother, and a father who came from a long line of ministers. I also attended Catholic school as a kid. And I don’t want Puttock to talk about that stuff any more than you do. It kind of scares me. And what I want are the names of victims. I’m not really feeling all this spooky shit. It’s not relevant to the case, in my opinion, and it can harm the criminal proceedings once he’s charged.”

“Understood.”

“But let me tell you—your help is invaluable. I just got a quick confirmation, the two names he gave us are real murders, matching those methods of killing. Murphy and Logson. Both of them were previously unsolved murders. This has legs, Nestor.”

“Don’t let his superstitious streak psyche you out, Delia. Puttock just wants you to believe those killings are urban legends.”

“There’s something really, really wrong with Puttock. Something rotten.  I have never met anyone so cold and calculated in my life. His voice gives me the shivers.”

Nestor felt alone, suddenly. He had too much knowledge about Puttock welled up inside him. And he shouldn’t be feeling so alone. After all, Felix in Chicago was his partner in all things related to The Coil and the creatures that sprang from its darkness. He wasn’t really alone. 

But then he realized why he felt so melancholy, so empty, so close to tears. He didn’t need Delia Douglas to believe any of his experiences with the Tecolotl. What Nestor missed was the companionship of his fellow cops. He missed this life. He missed all of it: The interrogations, the weak prison coffee, the sickening pleasure of McDonald’s breakfast in his gut, the precious adrenaline rush inside police departments during crises, and even these grim labyrinths of concrete  inside prisons. Police work was the moment when Nestor had felt most alive, and it was a memory, an era that had closed five year ago. It was no longer his life.

But now, with just a few sentences, Delia had turned Nestor’s eyes into pools of tears that he worked hard to bite back.

Nestor knew why he had become a cop. He wanted dignity for all victims of violent crimes. It was that way when he enrolled in the academy, and it was the same way now that he was retired. And he remembered that this reason was good enough to keep going and not give up.

“We have two more days of this set of interviews,” Nestor said. “I think I’ll take you up on your offer. I’m good for today. Puttock is primed for giving up more info tomorrow.”

“Okay, work this out for me. So how are you gonna play this with Puttock?”

“Puttock will see the way I handled myself today in the interrogation room as a sign of my own weakness. And cutting the day short will only make him see me as weaker. He wants to make me nervous, and admittedly, it happened a couple of times. This gives us an opening.”

“What’s his leverage?” Delia said.

“He wants to see me vulnerable. He thinks I’m scared to talk about the supernatural stuff, those giant birds he’s obsessed with. If the interview is cut short today but we continue tomorrow, he will have a perfect situation he can exploit to try to get into my head. He’ll try to bully me tomorrow for being too today. He fits a classic psychopath profile that way.”

“You ain’t lying about that,” Delia said.

“Then let’s do it. We send him back to his cell, resume the interview tomorrow, when I can get you more names of his victims, so we can press charges and get this fucker more life sentences..”

“I’m good with that,” Delia Douglas said. “And hopefully they can fix the heating system tonight. The thermostat on the wall back there reads 103 degrees.”

Nestor dabbed his forehead with a napkin.

“Thought it was me, actually,” he said.

“No. The whole prison is on a level three alert. The maintenance crews are trying to fix the issue before the heat starts affecting inmates with morbidities and other health problems. One just passed out from heat stroke a moment ago.”

From the Journal of Felix Calvo, October 24, 2030

With the house all to myself and Nestor gone overnight in New York, I treated myself to a hookup last night.

The sex itself was kind of shitty: a bit awkward, uninspired. But afterward, we cuddled, and what do you know, I liked the cuddles even more than the sex. We woke up in each other’s arms.

His name is Austin.

When we got up, he asked if he could take a shower because he had to take the CTA back to Logan Square. I said of course. As he toweled off and got dressed, he tossed his long hair back and pulled out his phone.

“What’s your number, sexy? We don’t have keep using DMs in the dating app.”

“Just a sec, my phone is being an ass,” I said.

“Take your time.”

In that moment, with the smell of shampoo drenching the room, and my trick’s hot pecs supple and just inches away from my face, something went wrong. As I was speaking to him, a veil closed over my vision, and I forgot my trick’s name.

I squinted at my smartphone’s screen. All I could see was a glowing blob and no text.  There really was a problem.

I couldn’t see shit.

My vision got very blurry at the center of my field of vision, and out in the periphery, gray bands floated like translucent semicircles.

I looked up, and even my hookup had transformed into a shapeless smear that blended in with the blue paint of the wall behind him.

“This sounds so old school, but can you jot your info down on this post-it?” I lied, extending a pen in the air like a lifeline. My hands started to shake. “The landlord is going to show the apartment in a half hour and I have to clean. So you gotta go.”

“Sure,” he said. He scribbled, and he pulled on his jeans, sweater and jacket. He was out the door within minutes.

I took a seat on the couch and took a moment to rub my eyes, to blink as many times as I could.

Each time I opened them, all I saw was a seeping shadow, faint and gray, but ever growing.

As my vision worsened, I could have sworn I heard sounds that were coming from inside the walls of the apartment. The sounds of giant bird wings like harsh whispers that grazed my ears; slow pulsing beats, like low-resonance drumming, and interestingly, a sound like a hiss, razor sharp and extremely pervasive.

I tried not to panic. I tried to collect myself by rubbing my hands on my face. Yes, still there. Indeed, I was not dreaming. I was losing my sight, exactly at the same time that the noises inside the apartment became deafeningly loud.

I thought about crying, but my heart was too numb to attempt the feat.

I was blind.

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