[ Three towns over, a girl goes missing. Young, of course. A college girl. The photo they put up of her is from a recent family holiday in Colorado, surrounded by cold and snow, wearing puffer jackets. Around her are a sea of faces with the same, brown eyes. LAST SPOTTED, say the words. HELP US FIND OUR SISTER/DAUGHTER/FRIEND. $5000 USD REWARD. PLEASE CALL.
But girls go missing all the time. In the warp and weft of the world, some stories always come true. Some stories, you hope, never find you again.
It's December. A cold one, this year. Not many people need things moved, cabinets built, landscapes redone. He picks up a couple shifts slinging burgers at Cathy's diner, asks her son's best friend's sister if she needs any help at the bar, which she does. He calls and apologises, the way husbands do, when he's going to be home late — presses a kiss to her forehead when he comes in in the early hours, always after a shower, the damp ends of his hair brushing cold against her temple. A small wad of bills, rolled together as neat as a fist, set on the bedside table.
It's the kind of life that's small, but good. There's barely anyone left alive who knows much about the Work here. To any other man, he'd be content with it.
It's December, a day unlike any other. 11:39PM, he sends a text: ]
Gonna be late. Everything ok?
Edited (i change my own internal canon timeline for no reasons other than my own don't look at me.) 2026-01-10 21:13 (UTC)
[ Girls go missing all the time. This is a fact of the world, learned early on — earlier, if you live in the kind of place where people can go missing and the world doesn't shudder to a complete stop. Mandy tells herself it's nothing. It happens three towns over, and it's just one incident. Not enough to be a pattern. Not enough for her to pay attention to. (And five thousand dollars, she thinks, isn't high enough of an offer, not for a life.)
The temperature drops after Thanksgiving. She picks the turkey clean while snow first starts dusting the ground, puts the leftovers in sandwiches she packs for him when he picks up work. It's kind of silly that they do it at all, but what she says is that they can do it, when they have four walls around them and a roof over their heads, so she gets paper plates with decorative patterns on them, picks them up the same day she drops the last of her silverware off at the pawn shop.
Small, but good. She doesn't think about a bigger life. She stops thinking about the Work.
At 11:39, the ding of her phone wakes her out of sleep. Nothing strikes her as strange, not yet. The air only smells of cold, of the dark of night. ]
[ Not instant. Not immediate, the way things are when everything is fine. Thirty, forty minutes, before: ]
Bump in the road. Sorry.
[ Staring down at his phone, smearing away a bloody illuminated thumbprint over the screen, he thinks about calling her. Hearing her voice. Blowing it off like nothing happened, that everything is fine, and that well past midnight, he is exactly where he's supposed to be: heading home. On his way to her. To that small, mortal life.
Ethan exhales. Cold air, warm breath. He smokes down to the filter and crushes it under his boot. The cab of his truck squeaks as he gets into it. The tarp over the back flaps in the wind as he drives off.
He ends up calling her anyway. Murmurs, half-amused, voice a sleepless rumble, ]
[ After ten minutes — ten minutes of staring at her phone screen, thumbing through pages she doesn't really see as she waits for a response, any response except no response — she gets out of bed. Pours a glass of water from the filter pitcher they keep in the fridge. Sits at the little two-person table in their kitchen with her knees tucked up to her chest. (Wonders, in the way you wonder about the worst, if she should turn on the TV and check the news.)
Thirty minutes after that, her phone dings again.
In the dim blue light, she blinks away the last haze of sleep, her fingers automatically finding the crease in her brow as if smoothing it out might smooth out the wrinkles in the night, too. (As if bumps in the road take forty minutes to get over.) Still, she picks up after the first ring. ]
You think?
[ Endlessly fond, despite her best efforts, though the brightness in her tone — relief at hearing his voice, that he doesn't sound hurt — soon tempers itself, the way all flares do. ]
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no subject
[ Three towns over, a girl goes missing. Young, of course. A college girl. The photo they put up of her is from a recent family holiday in Colorado, surrounded by cold and snow, wearing puffer jackets. Around her are a sea of faces with the same, brown eyes. LAST SPOTTED, say the words. HELP US FIND OUR SISTER/DAUGHTER/FRIEND. $5000 USD REWARD. PLEASE CALL.
But girls go missing all the time. In the warp and weft of the world, some stories always come true. Some stories, you hope, never find you again.
It's December. A cold one, this year. Not many people need things moved, cabinets built, landscapes redone. He picks up a couple shifts slinging burgers at Cathy's diner, asks her son's best friend's sister if she needs any help at the bar, which she does. He calls and apologises, the way husbands do, when he's going to be home late — presses a kiss to her forehead when he comes in in the early hours, always after a shower, the damp ends of his hair brushing cold against her temple. A small wad of bills, rolled together as neat as a fist, set on the bedside table.
It's the kind of life that's small, but good. There's barely anyone left alive who knows much about the Work here. To any other man, he'd be content with it.
It's December, a day unlike any other. 11:39PM, he sends a text: ]
Gonna be late.
Everything ok?
no subject
The temperature drops after Thanksgiving. She picks the turkey clean while snow first starts dusting the ground, puts the leftovers in sandwiches she packs for him when he picks up work. It's kind of silly that they do it at all, but what she says is that they can do it, when they have four walls around them and a roof over their heads, so she gets paper plates with decorative patterns on them, picks them up the same day she drops the last of her silverware off at the pawn shop.
Small, but good. She doesn't think about a bigger life. She stops thinking about the Work.
At 11:39, the ding of her phone wakes her out of sleep. Nothing strikes her as strange, not yet. The air only smells of cold, of the dark of night. ]
everything ok.
[ Then, barely a second later: ]
r u ok?
no subject
Bump in the road. Sorry.
[ Staring down at his phone, smearing away a bloody illuminated thumbprint over the screen, he thinks about calling her. Hearing her voice. Blowing it off like nothing happened, that everything is fine, and that well past midnight, he is exactly where he's supposed to be: heading home. On his way to her. To that small, mortal life.
Ethan exhales. Cold air, warm breath. He smokes down to the filter and crushes it under his boot. The cab of his truck squeaks as he gets into it. The tarp over the back flaps in the wind as he drives off.
He ends up calling her anyway. Murmurs, half-amused, voice a sleepless rumble, ]
I wake you up, huh.
no subject
Thirty minutes after that, her phone dings again.
In the dim blue light, she blinks away the last haze of sleep, her fingers automatically finding the crease in her brow as if smoothing it out might smooth out the wrinkles in the night, too. (As if bumps in the road take forty minutes to get over.) Still, she picks up after the first ring. ]
You think?
[ Endlessly fond, despite her best efforts, though the brightness in her tone — relief at hearing his voice, that he doesn't sound hurt — soon tempers itself, the way all flares do. ]
Are you gonna be home soon?