The older man said he awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of heavy breathing and to the glare of something bright outside his bedroom door. He said he got up to walk to the bathroom and follow the sound and saw it coming from behind his roommate’s bedroom door. He didn’t not investigate, but went back to sleep and figured it was just the night playing tricks on him, or some old acid flashbacks from the 60s.

The old storyteller said he didn’t think anything of it until he couldn’t find his roommate the next day when he tried to wake him for his AA meeting, and when he walked around the house he found the front door wide open. Even more concerning, was a slimy trail of bright blue liquid he found leading away from his house.

I tracked down the older man as he walked to his truck and tried to pry as much information out of him as I could. I wasn’t that successful, he told me he was still shaken up by the night and his missing friend, but he had said all of the information he had about the night, the breathing sound, and the disappearance, and the story.

He did share with me one very interesting piece of information though. When I asked where he lived, he gave me a very familiar address. He lived in the house just next door to the one Calvin and I shared on the edge of town.