He might be very close right now. He might even be in your hou | Misterios Oscuros 💀

He might be very close right now. He might even be in your house. After all, there are so many excellent hiding places ¿aren't there? The back of a closet, behind the shower curtain, inside a cabinet…
But I'm getting ahead of myself. I promised you a good story. And perhaps we still have time for it.

Understand: This man is not from your time. Spare me your disbelief. There are things beyond your comprehension. "¿What? ¡Nah, I'm older enough for that!" And you think you know the universe. ¡Ha!
[Think twice]

Approximately twenty years from now, this man lives on the coast with his five-year-old daughter. Their house, a patchwork creation of driftwood and corrugated metal, clings to the side of a rocky cliff. When the tide crashes in, the salt spray splashes against the windows. The sky is the color of steel, and the water is foam-flecked black. Here, everything is cold, harsh, and wet—except for inside the house. Warm yellow light spills out from a window, and a steady finger of smoke curls up from a slanted chimney.

Inside, the man reads to his daughter. He sits in a faded orange armchair by the fire, and she lays on her stomach in front of him, alternating her focus on the flames and the pages turning in her father's hands.

–Daddy when you finish this story ¿can you read another?

He makes a show of looking at half the book that's still remaining and then looking back at her.
—¿Already tired of this one?—

She shakes her head. –No, I just don't want this one to be over. I don't want them to ever end.–

He smiles and agrees, even though he knows she'll be asleep long before he'll have to pick out a new book. He knows how she feels. He doesn't want any of this to be over. He wants to hold onto every second, close his fingers around them and keep them safe, keep them from marching on.

And it is at that moment that everything goes white «a blast of blinding light that disintegrates the scene into dust» and then fades.

When the man comes to, he is wedged into the cliff's face, soaked, hanging a few feet above the waves. Above him, the remains of his house: a couple stumpy wooden beams and one amputated orange limb of his armchair. Below him, inky black ocean.

His daughter is gone. He will search for her for a long, long time.

What he finally finds is not what he is looking for. He discovers a way to go back. [The "X" chamber] But innovation is never as neat as any of us would like.
He can only travel back a set number of years, way before his daughter is born.

So before he goes back, he does his homework. He researches. He spends hours in the archives of war museums, flipping through files, searching for someone new.

Searching for you.

And then he makes the leap, jumps back a few decades, emerges the same, if a little nauseous for a spell, into a world transformed. The colors seem brighter here, the smiles wider, flashing ferociously, the eyes emptier and hungrier.

But of course that's what he would see. Him, an interloper. Here, a brave old world.

On his third day back, he finds you, speaks to you. He asks you for the time. His hands are trembling; his eyes never leave yours. ¿Do you remember? It was a year or so ago.

Your paths keep crossing, but he gets more cautious, becomes a flickering shadow, in and out of the corners of your life. Waiting...
Watching.

«Continue tomorrow»


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@Moscuros