Episode 1: The Event

Ash watched the sun start to rise above the sugar gum tree––a bit worried that Jake wasn’t home yet. His car was outside, but he wasn’t in the house, and he wasn’t answering the phone.
She knew how easily she could get herself worked up. The last time this happened, Jake had gotten home just before dawn, took a walk to the café on the corner, and couldn’t answer his phone because he was juggling two cups of coffee and some bagels. And there she was trying to ruin the surprise. She suspected that might be the case again––but her mind always had to leap to the worst possible conclusions. Dark shit. Stuff you’d binge on TV––death, murder, horror, mayhem––the kind of shit she tried to avoid. But, no matter what she did, monsters populated her thoughts all too easily. She blamed her chronic night terrors for cluttering her brain with all sorts of creatures––she didn’t need any help making more of them. Her brain was a factory for the absurd and nightmarish.
The night terrors were always worse when she had to sleep in the house alone. The terrors gave way to sleepwalking––or maybe it was the other way around––but sometimes she’d find herself in the yard, undressed, screaming at the sky as if it owed her something. Thankfully, Jake had the patience to learn how to keep her safe during the episodes. There was no calming her down––all one could do was make sure she didn’t hurt herself. She could go weeks, sometimes even months, without waking up in the middle of the night kicking and screaming violently. When she was in the right spirits, she would joke about how she saw herself as something of a werewolf who had to chain herself up at night in order to save those she loves from her terrors––only difference was that at least werewolves knew full moons, and only full moons, would trigger the wolf. She, on the other hand, never knew when her night terrors would occur––they always seemed to be boiling up inside her, just below the surface, waiting to emerge at random.
She once explained the fear of not knowing when the terrors would happen to one of the many therapists who tried to help her, like this: Have you ever seen a bobbit worm? Those long, evil-looking, alien-like worms with a million legs? They are hungry, brainless exoskeletons that live at the ocean floor. They let their bodies wait patiently in the narrow hole they’ve dug in the sand to hide. Only their heads sit just above the ocean floor. Their heads, she had told the therapist, were kept wrenched wide-open, long fangs on either side, with a crown of sharp teeth at the center. These creatures blend right in with the rest of the ground matter––waiting for a fish, eel, anything. Then, like a landmine, the second some prey swims over their hell-mouth, they snap their fangs into their victim and pull them down below the sand. As their long body writhes below the surface, a cloud of dust rises from the ocean floor––the ground moves as if the ground itself was digesting. And then… nothing. It would be like it never happened. What’s even worse was––you could cut the things in half––and they’d grow another head. The bobbit worm, she had said, was exactly what it’s like to live with night terrors. Ever since she was young, the terrors felt like they came from an organism deep within her––as if she could, one day, cut herself open and pull out the parasite.
Even though there was nothing anyone could do to wake her from the terrors, it was at least easier to fall asleep in the house when Jake was there.
Her and Jake bought the little red house last April. It wasn’t her dream home, but it was close to the airport. Plus, it had a yard with a sugar gum tree, which she loved and planned to eventually put a raised flowerbed beneath. She imagined their future kids climbing it one day. The two-bedroom ranch house seemed small for a family, but it was fine for the time being. It did feel enormous whenever Jake was out of town. She was thankful he got promoted out of that bleak office space; it just meant he had to travel more.
She checked her phone to see if Jake texted back yet. Nothing. The last text came in last night––he sent one of those texts that seemed to come from the boredom of sitting on a plane… one of those long, overly poetic messages men like to send when they’ve been away for a long time. All those Xs and Os.
The sunlight felt warm coming in through the kitchen windows. She liked the way the sugar gum tree’s shadow shifted through the living room and into the kitchen like moving wallpaper. She kept looking out the windows for any sign of him. The little pink pig on the towel hanging from the stove seemed to grin at her––giving her the side-eye. Jake has said for weeks that they should get a pet to keep her company when he was out of town. She said she wanted some kind of gigantic dog, a wolfhound, or a mastiff––some massive beast to help her feel safe in the empty house. Jake would joke and say he’ll bring home one of the wild hogs they had running around in the woods down here.
“Well… fuck this,” she said––caving into the idea that she really was working herself up for no reason. She opened the fridge, and right as she reached for some orange juice, she recoiled from the sight of her own hands.
She fell back, the fridge door swinging closed as she let out a loud and sharp gasp. Her hands were covered in what looked like dry blood. One of her fingernails was missing. Scratches up and down her arms.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she said. She must’ve had a night terror. This kind of thing wasn’t rare. She once went to class back in college without realizing she’d written the word “goodbye” a few dozen times in sharpie all over her face.
She lifted up her pajama top and searched her stomach and sides––there were bruises… sore to the touch. It’s not like she hadn’t hit herself in the past during an episode.
Sometimes she thought that always thinking about how the night terrors were like an organism breeding within her might’ve convinced her sleep-self to actually take it out on her body––as if she would do the operation in her sleep to remove the terrors. The knives were kept in a drawer with a lock––something another therapist had advised years ago.
There was blood on her cheeks and face too.
She scrubbed her hands and arms and face, letting the pink water swirl down the bathroom drain. The phone rang. Finally, she thought. She ran to the landline on the nightstand.
“Hello?” she answered.
A rush of static warped through the phone so loud it hurt her teeth to hear it.
There was voice, but it was hard to make out.
“Hello?” she tried again.
It was a familiar voice on the other end of the bad connection. But she couldn’t make out the words.
“Jake? Is that you? Stop fucking around. Where are you?”
The static began to fade, and the voice became clear.
“There’s something evil in the house.”
It was Jake.
She dropped the phone. The dial tone rang out like a flat line.
Images from last night’s dream raced through her mind: A shovel. The sugar gum tree. Her hands. Her hands hurt. A blue tarp… Jake…
She ripped open the bedroom curtain and looked down in the yard. There was a blue tarp spread out in the backyard under the sugar gum tree. And it wasn’t there yesterday.