I first noticed the difference in Bobby while watching him in the garden one morning through the kitchen window. The routine for hills for potato eyes or using the hoe for making the mounds for the eyes was the same. Bobby never took time off like sitting down to relax or anything else but that morning I looked out and he was smelling dirt in his hand. I thought, okay, I might have just missed that, no big deal, like he’s into it and likes being out there in the plot and growing us food. But then he put a pinch in his mouth and began chewing, swishing it around in his mouth like he did with the champaign we got after buying this old farm. I said, what the fuck out loud, got a chair, sat down with the binoculars that we used to watch the fires and watched up close. He then spit it out and picked up the hoe and went on like usual.

  I shrugged like, oh well, I’ll ask him about it sometime but certainly not enough to number as a mystery. I figured if I started to look for them everywhere, I’d become obsessed like he did with the weird footprints in the plot. Like I said, I had no idea he was writing down things during that time because he did it at night in the barn instead of taking a late night walk the way he told me. So, this is what he wrote shortly after my observation.

  ‘It’s getting harder to hide from Jen. I don’t want to worry her any and have decided to keep whatever the fuck is going on till I know what it is or goes away but damn if I don’t think its linked to that woman! It’s been almost three months since she planted that kiss and for the last one, things have started to happen. That wasn’t normal, any of it and to my way of thinking, she did something to me. There has been folk tales around here of witch covens in the mountains away from prying eyes but surely if true they’re all gone now. Nothing here but charred forest and a few remainders from the effects of Meltdown and the tripledemic. This is for her or anyone if anything happens. I’m not bad at writing cause I liked it in school. Whatever it is, I can’t say it’s all bad or maybe even at all bad but a lot of words I can think of that all boil down to strange. Deep down I know I’m changing into something else, hopefully not a vampire or werewolf. I just laughed but, you know! I can smell out game like a dog now, hear Jens heavy breathing inside when I’m out and see deer on the other side of the field and further on the edge of the burned-out forest, sticking their noses out of low growing shrubs.’

  ‘The not so nice parts that are hard to hide are the tiny blackouts, eyes blank out for a few seconds, sudden moments when all the senses combine to tell me something that I wasn’t paying attention to and the dreams that are like watching a movie with all the detail and waking up panting and sweating, sometimes grabbing Jen with eyes wide open.’

  ‘So, here’s what I think I know now, that my senses are growing or like we used to upgrade the software of the schools computer, a better version. But how far will this go, and will I ever pose a threat to Jen? Also my muscles seem to becoming denser and more pronounced. In fact, I should just stop the workouts because Jen will notice. One of these days she’s gonna figure out something is afoot, so I’ve been concocting excuses for when that happens. A sixth sense is coming in that seems to pick up her nonverbal cues and translates what she’s thinking. I tried it this morning by getting up and bringing her breakfast in bed.'

  This is what I think after flipping out for a while or maybe what I wanted to believe. I think he was writing a sci-fi story for me because he knew that I liked that, for my next birthday. We both like weird stuff and look where I am now! So nothing to do with why he left and that kiss thing was fiction, but I’ll continue to post some of the stuff that he wrote because it’s actually good.

  But here’s the thing which is why it took so dang long to think that. He followed up by acting out some of what he was writing like the weird blank eye stares and the chewing soil. As time went on the weirdness become weirder like telling me about things he dreamed as though he was reading a book or right out of the blue started talking about stuff that had nothing to do with anything and spending way too much time outside, not wanting to come in.

  So maybe it was a cover for when he did leave. But how could he possibly believe that I would swallow the story you’ll read here in the following entries to my journal! Anyway, I’ll try to give as clear an account as I can remember at the time, he did weird stuff.

  It took a better part of a week to sort through all the stuff he wrote I found up in the loft. While I sorted according to date that he always put on the top right hand corner, I couldn’t help read some parts but after a few, a voice told me to not do that but only when they were in order because nothing made sense. I spent a day sitting on the weight bench in the barn reading all of it. I like the openness of the barn and the smell of the old hay. It reminds me of all the times we were together working out, laughing and in the hay together.

  I found a yellow highlighter and made notes. There were single sheets with just a few words or one and pages I couldn’t read because it looked as tho he tried to write without light and pages with lines through them, with hearts drawn over them, drawings of the bear that used to raid our compost pile and birds, lots of normal and weird birds.

  I keep remembering stuff when we had band width. The so called rumor mill was smoking with real and made up stories, sometimes hard to figure which was which. Because things were all haywire after the huge planet walkout of scientists until they stopped pumping oil and women not having sex until men got their shit together, with countries realigning with each other for protection and resources, the military putting bases on top of mountains and kicking everyone out and stories of the scientists and techies joining to try and stop the end of the world from coming, it seemed like every man and woman to themselves. We never stopped having sex and laughed about the pictures of hybrid animals being released from dark labs. Old man Weeder, that’s what everybody called him, the owner of the Broken Wheel, said he saw a pterodactyl with a tiny human head but like his name suggests, probably not. We all got mad at him for throwing out bullshit that scared some customers away.

  Anyway, since all that stuff he wrote I think was meant to be put into a story for me, something else happened to take him away. And I knew that he had to have left clues, that is if he wasn’t taken forcefully. So, I started cleaning out audrey last night, what we called the spare room full of crap that eats stuff cluttering up the place and found an old coffee tin with an envelope inside with six tiny memory chips to something which I hope goes to a recorder that Bobby might have hid. Will continue to search audrey and the house. Next time I see the kid I’ll ask if he has anything I can use.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.