I was leaning to one side of the bench, as usual, with a book open in one hand while I tried getting comfortable. As usual. My weather app, which had only steered me wrong about 10 times since I'd downloaded it, claimed that it would be a fairly chilly day, which I was okay with. It was time for my fall clothes to shine. And by "fall clothes," I meant one hoodie I liked particularly better than the others. A bunch of people, most of them couples, were rushing this time of day, cutting across the grass of the park as they made their daily commutes. Fine by me. At least I was being left alone.

Well, I was for about thirty minutes. Then somebody tapped me on the shoulder, a lot harder than one would ever need to.

"Hey."

I looked up from my book to see a lanky man dressed in all white, with fiery hair in a messy undercut and stubble growing wild on his chin. His face was already about three feet deep into my personal bubble, and he was pissed.

"Can I help you...?" I asked, shifting back towards the other side of the bench. He narrowed his eyes and grabbed one of my arms faster than I could blink, starting to drag me away towards one of the forest paths. I snapped my book shut and attempted to knock him over the head with it, but he caught my other wrist as well and moved both of my hands to one of his so he could properly shush me.

"How many times do I have to say, meet me at the park, but don't sit down?!" He began loudly, as if he were putting on a show. The anger on his face didn't fade, but he clearly hadn't mistaken me for someone else. And all this clearly wasn't about errors in rendezvous communication. I glared at him right back.

"You made me close my book! Now how am I gonna remember where I left—"

"You do this every time. Don't tell me I have to write it on your arm next!"

I looked around the square for help, but everyone had turned away with an expression of schadenfreude. Apparently, nobody wanted to get involved with what they could only assume was some couple's petty argument.

He kept dragging me into the forest, then down some remote pathway that looked relatively fake. A single bench, almost identical to the one that I'd been sitting on before, rested ten feet from where he decided to let go of one of my hands. I tried to break the other free, but he just held on tighter and looked at me through tired, sunken eyes as if this were the last thing he wanted to do today. Something about the angle of his nose, the eyelids that stretched just a little too wide, and his lean figure lit a spark in my brain. He pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.

"Okay, listen up here, because I'm getting really tired of explaining these things—"

"Do I know you? You seem familiar, I just can't remember where I could've met you before..."

"Of course you know me."

"Then why did you drag me to this secluded part of the woods?! Couldn't you have, oh, I don't know, said who you are back there and asked me if I had a couple of minutes to spare?"

"Nah. Crowded areas like that don't take kindly to a young lady screaming for help."

I flinched away from him at those words, though he still had an iron grip on my hand. Is this dude seriously threatening me?!

"W-why would I scream, if you don't mind telling me...?"

He sighed, though I could tell he was satisfied with himself for making me afraid. He waved a hand over his face, and suddenly it changed. Not completely, but his hair's redness washed out to a faded brown color, his skin was now chipped and dark gray, and his eyes...

"Oh. You," I said, not able to help feeling disappointed. Jack, for whatever reason, still took that as a win. He cracked a wry smile, the tar that usually dripped from his sockets having been wiped away. He does clean up nicely, for an undead hybrid cannibal.

"What's wrong? Not so smug now, are you?"

"Just cut the shit and tell me why you're here. Couldn't you have just ignored me? I was kind of busy, you probably were too, so..." My gaze dropped to the ground, and I kicked a leaf while shoving a hand into my sweater pocket. "And can you please let go?" I made one final attempt to rip my other arm away from him, to which he finally gave in. He scoffed and held both hands up in mock defeat. Were his teeth always that pointy?

"Fine. That would be fair, but first of all..." he held up one finger in front of my face. "...I still haven't gotten back at you for either of those two nights. You know, when you straight-up lied to me and hit me on the head with a ceramic tray?"

"I remember what happened, Jack, I'm the one who did it."

"Yeah! You are! And second, I hoped to never see you again—"

"I remember that, too."

"—but now I know that it won't be so easy just...avoiding you. Every time you come into my line of sight, even if I just think about you, I'm reminded that I let someone go. I've never once in my life met anybody who's caused as much trouble as you."

I frowned. "Oh, well, that can't be true. You've never met anyone else who tried to get away?"

"Of course people struggle, but you actually managed to..." he cussed under his breath and sighed. "You beat me. Technically. Under real weird circumstances, might I add, and besides, who sleeps with a knife under their pillow?!"

"Plenty of diligent, self-serving Americans."

"You're insufferable, you know that? Ugh, whatever. I didn't take you here to talk about this! I'm here to give you a choice. A warning." He reached into his pocket and drew a strange, jagged knife one might use for some sort of ritual. The blade was carved from what looked to be obsidian, and I took a step back as he held it to my chin.

"I've had my fill of moving around, being forced out of home, always worrying about something on my tail. Now it's your turn. I'm not planning on going anywhere, so I'll give you three days to leave this place for good. Either that, or..." Another one of those smiles I already hated grew on his face, and a single black tear became visible on the edge of his socket when he squinted. "Well, I could always trap you somewhere. No food, no water, no sunlight for days until your body finally caves in on itself. Your insides might not taste as nice as they would have if you'd just stayed still that first night, but beggars can't be choosers, now can they. So what'll it be?"

After a moment, I gently pushed the tip of the knife away from my face and took another few steps back. "I didn't call the police on you when you broke in," I tried to reason. He laughed, almost like a little kid, and a shiver travelled down my spine.

"This isn't about the police anymore, you blue-belt little shit. Didn't I just say that I can't even look at you without feeling like a screw up?! If upper management finds out about any of this, I'm done for. And you won't be getting out alive, either."

Upper management?!

"...this is kind of tacky, isn't it? Threatening people with their lives in the middle of a park. What, do you think I won't cry out for help if you try killing me again?" I folded my arms in an attempt to look indifferent, but couldn't get rid of the shakiness of my voice. Somehow, now that he'd taken this whole mess outside of my house, I was even more unsure of what to do. If he tried anything now, I wouldn't have much to fend him off with. I was royally fucked.

"And now why would you do that? I thought you could defend yourself," he said with an innocent tilt of the head. I clenched my jaw, trying to plan an escape route in my head while also keeping him distracted.

"Yeah, I can. But when push comes to shove, you know? Besides, why would you want to attack me here, of all places? You could get caught, I could file a report against you, since I'd know you won't be bothering me about it anymore."

"You're a smart one, aren't you? In that case, why don't you take my advice and get out of here while you still can."

At this point, he was practically looming over me, even though we were the same height last time I checked. Did that disguise make him taller...?

"Now." He grabbed the collar of my sweater, almost ripping through it with his nails. I was starting to fear that one of his black tears would drip down from his face and burn me again, he was so close. I was at a loss for action; the most I could do, short of physical assault, was wait until he decided to let me go. Or maybe just take my sweater off and run—but he could grab my arm if I tried. The only thing I knew in that moment was that he was beyond reasoning.

Eventually, he sighed and loosened his grip. "Jesus. Either you're frozen in fear, or just completely out of it."

"Frozen in fear, thank you very much," I said, kicking him in the shin and stepping back once he let go. "What's your problem, anyway? Is it really that hard to just avoid me?! I'm probably outside for a total of 15 minutes a day, at most!"

"My problem is that someone's going to find out about this."

"Who?! Who cares that you let someone go, who is 'upper management,' or whatever you said?"

"Just drop it, won't you?!"

"Not until you do."

He narrowed his eyelids in thought, and slowly but surely tucked his knife back into a pocket. It disappeared without a trace, not even a vague outline showing through the fabric. It was almost like he'd put it through a tiny portal somewhere, or maybe it disintegrated. His jaw moved the tiniest bit from side to side as he seemed to consider something. Something stupid, or drastic.

"How good of a liar are you?"

For some reason, that made me practically seethe. "If you want me to do you a favor, it is way too late for that. Be a little less murderous next time."

"Will you listen?! This involves you too, it's not like either of us walks away and you go back to having a normal life. If you let even the tiniest detail slip to anyone, he's going to notice."

"Who is he?!"

Jack seemed to grapple with the consequences of telling me, and eventually settled with the "continue to be an asshat" path.

"Can't say. But I can tell you that once he does notice, it's over. No questions asked, he just ends it all. He ends you, ends me, maybe even a few other people just because he feels like it." He started coming over all twitchy, and the nervous kind, too. That somehow made me feel even worse. Ugh, can't he just go back to being mad?

"Look, I know I haven't given you any reason to trust me. At all. But can you be compliant this one time?" A hot second passed and he sighed, curling his hands into fists like this was the most humiliated he'd ever been.

"Please?"

This is a stupid game he's playing.

I folded my arms and hoped it would come off as me being completely done with him, rather than me making sure he didn't try to touch me again. There was already a cluster of wrinkles on both my sleeves from his "you're not going anywhere" bullshit.

"Okay. I'll say this once; if I could help you, I would. If I feared for my life because of anything other than you, I might go along with all this. But I just don't buy it." I began walking towards the nearest bench, remembering I had my book in hand and could sit here to continue reading.

"So if you want to keep me captive here until I change my mind, we're going to be here a while. Feel free to make another choice," I said as I took a seat.

"Oh, that bench isn't real."

Before I could process his words, I had fallen straight through and landed on the ground.

"What the—?!"

"And neither is that tree, this path, that lamp..."

As Jack kept talking, various things around me seemed to phase out of existence. The very path we'd been standing on glitched away and left nothing but dirt and leaves. This area itself had been an illusion. We were really just in the middle of the forest. He'd led me here while it was disguised as some nice little detour, fully intending to...

I stood up, brushed myself off, and narrowed my eyes. "Of all the things I thought Eyeless Jack to be capable of, reality-defying, matrix-level illusion wasn't one of them. Who are you working with?"

"That, Sawyer Rafael, is none of your business. Besides, I'm not really the type to work with other people."

"Yeah, I can see that," I scoffed, grazing a nearby tree with my hand to make sure it wasn't just a hologram. "You've been having a real hard time working with me so far."

"Hey, I'm trying here! All you have to do is when some supernatural force comes knocking, act like you have no idea who I am and block any thoughts of me out of your mind before they see them. It's simple, really!"

"How am I supposed to just not think about something? That's literally the hardest thing to do! Here, for the next five minutes, don't think about turtles choking on plastic water bottles." Before he could even open his mouth to respond, I held out a hand as if to prove my point. "See, not so easy, is it? Now leave me alone. If you die, you die, and that's not my problem."

I started on my way, already squinting at the trees ahead to see which real path would take me back to the park's center. He rushed forward and grabbed my arm again.

"Which part of 'you'll die too' don't you understand?!"

"I understand perfectly. I just think—no, I know you're lying! You said yourself that you weren't thinking when you came to my house. You didn't plan this out, you were never 'assigned' to me or anything, why should I believe that some petty eldritch force wants me dead because you failed?!"

"I didn't fail," he said, his voice a quiet but dangerous growl. His grip on my arm tightened. "Say that again. I dare you."

"You couldn't beat me in my own house, so you decided to take things out here and get even. And you still haven't worked up the guts to hurt me. You failed." I was surprised myself at how harsh the words came out, but it served him right. He looked like he wanted nothing more than to sock me in the face right now, but kept his anger down and his head up.

"If you won't even try to come to a compromise with me, I guess I'll just go back to plan B," he said, for once without any smugness or malice that I could detect. I furrowed by eyebrows, trying to figure out what in hell he could have been referring to.

"What are—"

He pulled a pair of steel handcuffs out of nowhere and, before I could react in any helpful way, had me locked onto the armrest of another bench that unfortunately didn't seem to be fake. I reached out to grab him by the hood as he smiled and began walking away, but I could only go so far from my tether.

"What did—hey—get back—no! Ugh." All my futile attempts to stop him left me with nothing to do but flop back onto the bench and wait this all out. What "this all" could ever be was beyond me. The path had reappeared without me noticing, and I swallowed my pride as a couple of strangers walked past me, looking concerned, to say the least.

"Uh, hey," I said with a bashful smile. "My friend cuffed me here as a prank, and now I can't seem to get out—um, could either one of you...?"

Before I could continue with my lame explanation, the woman turned to me for a moment, smiled, and her face split open like a blooming flower—except a blooming flower looks a lot more pleasant than whatever the hell was happening to her. I cupped a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming, and the man walking next to her tilted his head as his eyes went blood red. Iris, whites, everything.

Where the everliving fuck did he take me?!

Just as I was about to say something (though I have no idea what I could have even said to that), both strangers' faces went back to normal and they walked away, snickering to themselves and each other. One of them mimicked a horrified scream and they laughed even harder, disappearing into the thin shadows of the trees. The path was starting to glitch again, and I balled my hands into fists.

"You're an asshole, Jack!" I yelled into the air, beyond caring if anybody could hear. "You hear me?! Asshole!"

"Well, then I'm glad we have at least one thing in common."

I jumped and turned around to see him leaning over me, elbows on the bench's back. He wore an irritating grin as he watched me struggle with my bonds—or, really, bond.

"Uncuff me. And let me go home. Right. Now," I said through my teeth, letting silence pierce the space between each word. He frowned, grabbed a lock of my hair, and tugged upwards.

"Ow!"

"You're not going to cause anymore trouble for me, are you?"

"Since when have I—no! I won't! I promise. Jesus..." I muttered when he finally let go, rubbing my head and throwing my deadliest of glares in his direction. He pulled a bobby pin out of thin air and unlocked the handcuffs, gesturing to the very real main path that led out of the woods with a flourish as if he were a magician. "There. You're free. For now," he added under his breath, clearly under the impression that I wouldn't hear him. I held the cuffed wrist close to my chest as I stormed away, not looking back.

"...hey! Aren't you forgetting your book?" Jack called from the bench as I turned to the park square. I scowled.

"Keep it."

"Hm, oh well. I guess you'll just have to come back for it later."

That man is insane if he thinks I'm going anywhere near this place again.