I'm from a place where men—no matter how grown they looked—still behaved like little boys. Silly? Yeah. Pathetic? Maybe. But that's how it was.
My hometown was a small patch of humanity. Everyone knew everyone.
I mean personally, intimately. Too intimately sometimes. Which could be good, but usually just stirred up conflict. The older folks held grudges like medals of honor.
And we, the younger ones, always heard the same warnings:
"Don't go near the Godwins. They don't eat their veggies."
Like that was a reason to start a generational war.
This town had a way of swallowing individuality.
You did as you were told. You listened. You obeyed.
No one questioned anything.
Neither did I.
But a few weeks ago, I found something.
Something dangerous.
A book.
It wasn't important how I got it. I saw a chance—and I took it.
I sipped my tea quietly in the back seat of the diner. My stepdad owned the place, and sometimes I worked there. Not for money—just to de-stress.
It was a tiny joint, nothing fancy. Locals who were too lazy to cook breakfast came here.
The diner was named after my stepdad: Godwin.
Some regulars made jokes like, "God wins our breakfast!"—a pun I never understood. After a while, it just became something people said, even though it was dumb as hell.
I was always told to smile when they said it, but I never could.
Anyway—back to the book.
It was in my possession. A gift, if you could call it that.
That morning, a man had been sitting in the corner of the diner, sipping tea. He'd been there for hours. And I was running late for school.
He was my last order.
My stepdad yelled from the kitchen, "Go check if he needs anything!"
Of course, he could've done it himself. But he preferred yelling at me like some overlord.
And why even stay in the kitchen when Mom did all the cooking?
"He's a piece of shit," I muttered under my breath.
"One day, you'll leave all this behind," I whispered to myself.
"You'll have a life so far from him, he'll feel like a bad dream."
I walked over to the man's table.
He wore all black. A hat—like something out of a 1960s noir film.
A cane rested against the table, carved with what looked like a gargoyle or maybe a demon.
It was… unsettling.
There was an awkward pause.
He slowly raised his head and asked in a voice barely above a whisper:
"What do you want… child?"
I could barely hear him.
"I just wanted to know if you'd like anything else," I said carefully.
He didn't reply.
I only noticed then—he wore a trench coat… with snow on the back.
Snow.
In the middle of summer.
Not a flake in sight outside.
I turned to leave.
Then he said, "Could you take this book away? It's… making me quite uncomfortable."
I looked back.
There was a book on the table.
It hadn't been there before.
I could tell immediately—it wasn't ordinary.
Everything about it felt wrong.
I did the only thing I'd learned to do at the diner: smile and take it away.
But when I touched it…
It was cold.
Icy cold.
Like a block of frozen death. Almost glued to the table.
I yanked it loose and carried it into the kitchen.
And then I saw him.
Godwin.
Holding Mom by the waist while she cut veggies.
I hated that sight. Always had. Still wasn't used to it.
I knocked on the metal door leading into the kitchen.
"Did he want anything?" Godwin asked, voice flat.
"No," I replied.
"He just wanted me to throw this in the trash."
"How old are you again?" he asked.
"Seventeen."
"A seventeen-year-old working in this diner since your eleventh birthday… and you still don't know we don't take trash from town folk?"
Mom sighed. "She's gonna get rid of it," she said softly, trying to have my back.
"I don't want it in my bin," Godwin growled.
As I left through the back door, I heard them bring up that one time—
The woman who dropped off a stillbirth baby in our trash.
The cops showed up the next day.
We didn't know anything.
Well… they didn't.
I did.
I told Mom eventually. She snapped at Godwin.
Ever since, we've been paranoid about what goes in our trash.
I walked out back, loosened the chain on my bike, and rode to school.
Somewhere along the way, I forgot I was still holding the book.
Not until I reached class did I realize it was still in my hands.
Still ice cold.
The book's cover looked like it was made to scare the hell out of people.
Rough. Scaly. Like iguana skin.
At lunch, I showed the guys. We tried to open it—it wouldn't budge.
It was sealed shut.
The rest of the day went by in a blur.
I went home unsure what to do with it.
That night, I woke up to chills.
Violent, bone-deep chills.
I was panting, like I'd just run sprints.
My eyes burned.
Icicles.
Frozen tears.
I couldn't move.
I couldn't scream.
It was like my voice had left me.
Gone.
Ever thought death was coming for you?
That's
what it felt like.
The air smelled like sulfur and ash. Like burning paper.
Charcoal.
Burnt brownies.
Suffocating.
It smelled like…
Dead Grandma.