“You sure you want to head in this way?” Dinah asked.
“Does it matter?” Marlon muttered. “Front or back, they know I’m coming. Hell, they probably voted before breakfast.”
“Don’t talk like that. You don’t know how this is going to go, so don’t just accept your fate.”
“I do know.” Marlon stopped walking. “You don’t see the way they look at me. You don’t hear the whispers when I pass by.”
“It’s not you they hate, it’s Duke. They already have him. They don’t need to get you, too. Besides, he gave me a tip.”
“Yeah?” Marlon scoffed. “And yet here I am. The sins of the father, right? Duke stole a couple of bills from the shop, and they fed him to Grey Jack without blinking. And he didn’t last long. Nowhere near long enough to satisfy them.”
Marlon walked as if he already had one foot in the grave. She wanted to shake him, scream at him, but what would that change? The vote was happening whether he sulked or sprinted. Looming ahead was the courtyard. People gathered around with smiles and glee. Dinah hated how ceremonial it felt, the way they were excited to send someone to endless torture. They dressed as if they were attending a festival.
The vote board stood tall in the center of the courtyard. On it were listed five names, each representing the highest voted and most unwanted people.
At number five stood Donovan McCalister, who had recently been caught having an affair. However, due to his work at the bank and his proclivity to give loans to those who needed them, he didn’t rank very high.
Number four was Dinah Belvins, who was this high simply via association with Duke and Marlon.
Third was Patty West, who was Donovan’s affair partner; unluckily for her, though, she wasn’t as popular with the townspeople as Donovan.
Second was Liam Iscariot, who had been very critical of the voting ritual and warned that Grey Jack wasn’t real, which caused people to fear that his words would cause Grey Jack to retaliate against the town.
And at the very top of the list was Marlon Queens.
“That’s about what I expected,” Marlon said, looking up at the board.
“Look, I know what it says, but I won’t let it come to that, OK? We still have time to fix this.”
A hush fell over the courtyard as a figure stepped forward from the crowd. Elder Chrome. His robes were deep grey, the color of ash and old stone. His face was unreadable, but his eyes gleamed with something colder than conviction.
“You speak of fixing,” he said, voice smooth as oil. “But you forget we are not broken.”
Dinah turned to face him. “You’re sending him to die,” she said, her voice cold.
“You know not what you speak, child,” Chrome retorted.
The top five went to stand near the board, half-exposed, half-protected by distance. Dinah and Marlon stood together; Elder Chrome waited like a judge. Liam slithered his way through the crowd and took a place between Dinah and the board.
Chrome began to speak in a commanding tone: “Citizens of Marrowick, the time has come once again to heal our community. To remove the weeds from our garden and appease the gracious Grey Jack. May those who are accused find solace in their sacrifice.”
“This whole ceremony is a sham,” Liam interjected. “How can you people not see? Sending our own people to die is sickening. We, as people, shouldn’t stand for this. How are we any better than the people we send off?”
The crowd was growing with clear anger at Liam’s disrespect toward Father Chrome.
“Your sorry rhetoric has grown quite tiresome, Mr. Iscariot. You dare accuse the people of being the same as these sinners? The good people of our town are no better than lying cheats or remorseless thieves?” Father Chrome retorted.
Before the last syllable could leave his mouth, Dinah jumped in, “Marlon and I are not thieves.”
“You may not have stolen personally. However, you protected and defended one who did. That makes you no better,” Chrome said, holding his gaze on the crowd as if he were giving a performance.
Chrome let the last word hang like incense, then tilted his head and smiled with the practiced softness of a man who knew how to herd his sheep.
“Protection,” he said, “is never simple. It places on us burdens we would rather not bear. It asks for clarity where there is only grief.” He spread his hands, palms up, as if offering the town absolution.
Liam’s mouth quivered for a split second. “Protection?! Protection should not look like this. It should not come from the death of innocents.” His eyes widened with conviction as his chest rose and fell. “Who are we even sacrificing people to? Grey Jack? We can’t let that THING terrorize us forever!”
A murmur rippled through the crowd. Some nodded, others recoiled in shock or fear. Chrome didn’t flinch. He turned slowly, his robes wisping against the stone, and faced Liam with the eased look of a man who’d already won.
“Grey Jack is the consequence of forgetting our place. He does not kill. He keeps. And to keep him at bay, we need to offer to him. Who else to offer but the weeds of our communities, the ones who put themselves over the greater good? That is the truth. The truth of our salvation,” Chrome proclaimed.
“This is not punishment,” he went on. “This is pruning. We do not cast stones. We remove what endangers the root. And the one who endangers it the most is the child of a thief and the one who protects him.”
The crowd fell silent, nodding and clapping in agreement. All the while, Marlon stood there with the same somber look on his face, seemingly accepting his fate.
“You know what you must do: People, cast your final ballots and protect your community.”
The crowd moved as one. Ballots were cast. Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, one by one. And in the end, the name at the top remained the same. Marlon Queens.
That moment, Marlon was taken away.
“THIS ISN’T RIGHT! HOW COULD YOU PEOPLE DO THIS?” Dinah screamed.
But her desperate wails fell on deaf ears.
All the while, Marlon seemed to have accepted his own grizzly fate.
They rushed Marlon into the dark bowels of the church, and before Dinah could even get another word, the doors slammed shut.
Dinah sank to her knees. Her hands trembled. Her voice was gone. She tried to scream out for her friend, but her voice fell flat.
It was as if the weight of the world collapsed onto her throat at that moment.
Somewhere beneath the church was Grey Jack, and Marlon had gone to meet him.
As Dinah laid in her pit of despair, she wondered how anyone could let it come to this.
Personalities gone, erased, and for what? Because the town decided that they were too scared to stand up for themselves. So scared of the hell that awaits them, they subject themselves to another hell. One where they are the monster they fear. The thoughts circled in Dinah’s head on a loop.
Two days later, the town had returned to normal. Banners were folded. Children played near the vote board as if it hadn’t had Marlon’s name plastered over it.
Dinah’s leg bounced in Liam’s dining room as he handed her a cup of water. She hadn’t slept.
“I just don’t know how I could’ve stopped him,” Dinah muttered. “Marlon didn’t deserve any of this.”
“It’s a shame,” Liam said. “I really liked the guy.”
Dinah’s eyes began to water. “It’s not fair!” she cried. “There has to be something we can do to stop this!”
Liam leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. “I get that. Elder Chrome is a very corrupt leader. Hell, I bet he has something in his house.”
Dinah sat up from her seat with wet eyes. “Holy… cow, you’re right!” she said before taking a sip from her water and going outside. Liam sat there confused as he watched.
She moved like a shadow through Marrowick, eyes hollow, voice gone. The grief hadn’t dulled, it had sharpened. And beneath it, something else had begun to bloom under the anger… suspicion.
She waited until midnight to break into Elder Chrome’s home. The house was eerily quiet. No creaks, no wind, almost impossibly quiet. Chrome was out but would be returning soon.
Using Duke’s tip, Dinah found Chrome’s secret entrance to sneak in the house without making a sound. Then she searched high and low for anything she could use to bring Chrome down.
“Come on, there has to be something here. I refuse to accept that there isn’t.” She thought to herself, the fruitless search boiling her ever increasing anger. Then she recalled something vague that Duke had explained when he was describing the job.
“He leaves an odd amount of books on one specific shelf,” He had said. Dinah and Marlon had no idea what to make of it at the time, but then her body jolted as her mind connected it.
“It has to be a false wall,” She thought as she rushed to the bookshelves in the main study of the house. Every shelf was filled but one directly in the center had books scattered in what seemed to be a pattern, with empty spaces between.
She hurriedly pulled books off the shelf being reckless with her leaving evidence behind. And sure enough, the tug of a novel activated a contraption that moved the entire shelf completely.
A much older, more rugged study revealed itself to her. It had weird symbols and paintings on the walls and in the middle, a large desk that suspiciously void of dust.
As she frantically searched through the drawers, she found a small, out of place floorboard underneath the desk. As she pried it open, she found a journal. Not Chrome’s… but Duke Queens’.
Marlon’s father. The last name Queens was engraved in gold lettering on the cover.
The pages were brittle, the ink faded, but the words were clear enough: Grey Jack can be sent away. The elders know. They always knew. The vote is not for safety but control. The ritual feeds Jack, but it also binds him. If the town ever stopped voting, he would lose his power. They fear that more than they fear him. Alongside these maps were letters, maps, rituals, every step on how to permanently remove Grey Jack from the town.
Dinah’s hands trembled. She tore the pages loose, stuffed it into her coat, and fled. She didn’t know who to trust or what to believe. Two days ago she would have taken this to Marlon. But that wasn’t a choice anymore. She remembered how Liam also stood against Father Chrome.
It was not long before she was at Liam’s doorstep. She pounded on his door like her life was dependent on it.
“Dinah? You’re back?” Liam asked as he opened the door.
“I have something I need to show you,” Dinah said solemnly.
“It better be important with you pounding on my door like you own the place.”
“It is!” Dinah pushed past Liam and sped into his dining room.
She laid out everything. The letter, the rituals, the maps.
“I broke into Chrome’s house and found this. Chrome isn’t holding these sacrifices to protect the town. You were right, it’s for power. If he wanted, this hell we live in could have been over long ago.”
Liam stood there taking it all in. Then he began to grin. A grin that made Dinah feel uneasy all over.
“We need to get these to the people right away. Here, let me take these. I’ll gather all the people who would support our cause. I need you to stay here.”
“Why do you need me to stay?” Dinah asked.
“What if someone saw you leaving Chrome’s house? They will be looking for you; they won’t think twice about me.”
Liam left in a suspicious hurry, leaving Dinah in the dining room in a daze.
Dinah waited. And waited. But Liam didn’t return.
Eventually her anxiety got the better of her, so she went out looking.
She found him in the woods near the church standing over a roaring fire, tossing pages into it, feeding the flames with each page.
“What are you doing?” she shouted.
Liam turned slowly. His face was calm.
“Protecting the town,” he said, lunging at her with a feral look.
Dinah leaped to the side to avoid his pounce, and without a moment to register his betrayal, her survival instinct kicked in as her stomach filled with terror. She ran with all her might as Liam regained his stance. She dipped through the trees, ducking under branches, the sound of Liam’s steps gaining on her. As she made a sharp turn, a slick set of leaves took out her balance completely.
Liam dived onto her as the sounds of firm, heavy boots crunching leaves marched towards them.
The struggle was brief. He didn’t hurt her. He didn’t need to. He whispered something she couldn’t hear, and the attendants came.
By morning, the town was gathered again. No vote. No ceremony. Just a quiet announcement from Elder Chrome.
“A breach of sacred trust has occurred. For the safety of Marrowick, we must act swiftly,” he proclaimed.
Dinah was taken without resistance.
She didn’t know where she was when she awoke. It was dark, cold and wet. All too quickly, she realized where she was. Then she looked up and there he was.
She saw a decaying old man’s grin, stretched too wide, skin peeling like paper. His eyes were pits, but they watched. Dinah felt completely exposed, like the thing in front of her was seeing past everything. Her clothes, her skin, her mind and into her soul.
Dinah ran, but the hallway twisted and looped, never ending.
Grey Jack didn’t chase. He shifted. He would appear and disappear in places that defied logic, would twist his body into unholy gangly proportions to fit into impossible places. The walls pulsed. The ceiling dropped. She ran for what seemed like hours, days. And time had lost its meaning. She would scream and hear her own wails before she ever opened her mouth.
All the while, it felt like Jack’s eyes never lost sight, slowly peeling back deeper and deeper layers of her soul. His eyes peeled her open, layer by layer, revealing every trauma, every bad day, every bit of indecency.
All her insecurities and fears played in her head on a loop. The deepest pits of her soul were open for viewing. And Jack watched on repeat.
Then it began. Jack began to slowly skin Dinah alive. With each layer of skin, it felt like a part of her soul came away. The pain was unbearable, yet it was like she couldn’t go numb to it. Or he wouldn’t let her.
It would grow back, but never the same. Jack would twist and break her limbs into unbearable positions. But it would always fix.
This was not death.
This was her eternity.
Velocity 
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