Hey, y’all. Just wanted to give you a quick update before we get into today’s story.

First of all, I’m sorry it’s been a while. I definitely never intend to go so long without posting, but sometimes when you’re hit with the solid comorbidity of seasonal depression and executive dysfunction, that’s just the way it is. I’m never going to promise any type of schedule because I know myself and I know I won’t stick to it, but I will say that I’ll try to be more consistent.

Second, I do have new information regarding the donations we received a couple posts back, and while it’s not what we’re here to talk about this time, I promise we will very soon. So stay tuned for that.

Lastly, Sam is doing really well. He still doesn’t remember a lick of his life before the events of our last installment, and I think that’s for the better. He’s a hell of a worker; never complains or protests, just does what’s asked of him and does it well.

I’ve learned over the course of his time with us that while his memories are gone, his personality and interests are still fully fleshed-out. He likes music. All of it. I keep trying to come up with god-awful songs to play for him that’ll break the pattern, but his response is unfailingly, “Oh, a new one!” followed by a horribly uncoordinated little jig.

He also likes movies, but not so much new ones as absolutely ancient noir films. He’ll happily watch whatever you put on, though.

His true passion, however, is cooking. If you can call it that. The problem is that none of it has any goddamn right turning out so good. Sometimes local food pantries donate surplus groceries to us, and a lot of it goes to our patrons with food insecurities but whatever’s left typically ends up in our staff kitchen until it rots. That’s where Sam comes in.

It started one night when we were deader than dead and Wiley was complaining about being both hungry and too lazy to go out and get something.

“I can make you something!” Sam volunteered enthusiastically. “I love to cook.”

“Oh.” Wiley blinked, clearly somewhat taken aback. “Uh. Thanks, but I don’t—I don’t think we have any, like, actual food here.”

Sam waved a hand dismissively. “I’ll find something. It’ll be good. Promise.” And then he disappeared into the break room.

About half an hour later, he returned with a large bowl. Inside it was god only knew what. I don’t even know what to liken the sight to other than an AI generated image. No part of it was discernible. It was an amalgamation of various textures and shades of beige mush, and Sam handed it to Wiley, positively beaming.

Wiley eyed it, trying their best to contain their apprehension.

Bless him, Sam burst out laughing. “Okay, I know,” he said. “I know it looks so gross. But it’s good! It’s a scramble. Oh, god, hold on, I didn’t even ask—you eat meat, right?”

“I. Yeah. I eat meat,” Wiley assured him, still clearly slightly stunned.

“Okay, good*.* There’s sausage in there.”

Tentatively, Wiley took a bite. I could see them cycling through emotions, and the moment the taste truly set in was visible on their face. “Holy shit. Wait. Adam. You gotta try this.”

I’ll be honest, I had no idea whether they were about to ruin my life or not, but because I didn’t want Sam to think I didn’t trust him, I accepted the bowl, lifting a small forkful to my lips.

It was stupid. Ridiculous. Otherworldly.

“What did you do to this?” I asked, reluctantly handing it back to Wiley. I didn’t want to. I wanted to keep eating it.

“It’s the love, man!” Sam said jovially. “Everything tastes better when you’re cooking with love.”

So, that was that. And now it’s just a common occurrence. Sam’s been cooking for pretty much all of us pretty much every night, and he seems thrilled to be doing it, which is fine by the rest of us.

A couple of weeks ago, during one such instance, I was in the break room with him, just hanging out while he made a mess of the entire stove, and he said, “So, question.”

“Answer,” I replied.

He contemplated a moment, seemingly determining what angle he wanted to take. “Doug. Is he—I mean, do we, like—know? People talk about him sometimes, but I can’t tell how serious anyone is. And I know this place is weird, so I just. I don’t know. I was wondering about it. Him.”

I could feel myself freezing up from the inside out. Though Sam doesn’t remember the events that landed him here, he’s been just as privy to the goings on of the library as the rest of us since he came aboard; no matter how hard Matt tries to protect us all from the truth, it hasn’t worked out once.

“Um,” I said.

Sam put down the spatula in his hand, turning his attention fully toward me. “Um?”

I ducked my head, scratching the back of my neck. “It’s…complicated. But he’s—it’s—yeah. He exists.”

Already, I could see him backtracking. He shook his head, turning away from me and back toward the stovetop. “Sorry—if you don’t wanna talk about it, that's totally cool. I was just curious.”

There’s something about Sam that makes causing him to experience negative emotions, especially toward himself, unbearable. So I sighed and pushed myself up onto the countertop, leaning against the cabinet behind me.

“I met him,” I began. “Once. A long time ago. And hopefully I never will again.”

“Oh.” Sam said it casually, with enough nonchalance to make it obvious that he was trying with everything in his power not to pressure me. To ask why.

“It was the only thing that’s ever really made me consider leaving, which is kind of funny if you put it into perspective. It wasn’t life-threatening in the slightest. He didn’t lay a finger on me. I’m probably in more danger eating whatever you’re concocting than I was with him.”

“Hey!” Sam defended, nudging me with his elbow. “I am a wizard with a whisk. A spatula sorcerer. A mixer maestro. A…a…”

“Okay, that’s enough,” I snorted, cutting him off before it could get inevitably worse. “Anyway, point is, technically, it was probably the safest I’ve ever been around anything…unusual here. But I’d rather take a full shift of books flying off the shelves with the power clean out any day.”

Sam swiped a finger through the thick, orange sauce that had gathered into a film along the side of the pan, then licked it and made a face, picking up an unmarked shaker of something green and presumably dried. “So, what, did he, like, say something to you? Something bad?”

I took a breath, steeling myself. “It was a couple years ago now. Pretty quiet night, and I think it was just me, Jenny, and Alice here. I’d been in the back working on some repairs and I got up to go to the bathroom after a couple hours—”

“‘Cause you have a caffeine problem,” Sam butted in.

“—’cause I have a caffeine problem,” I assented, pushing on. “So I pee, wash my hands, whatever, and when I look up at the mirror, there’s somebody standing behind me. Some guy. I kind of startle, ‘cause I didn’t hear him come in, but there’s nothing inherently creepy about him except that he’s just, like. There. And he’s making full eye contact with me. Or, well, his reflection’s making eye contact with mine, I guess. I’m thinking maybe he needs help or something until I really take in the whole picture and realize he’s got on a nametag. It says ‘Doug.’ Left to right. Just like if he was standing in front of me. But he’s not.”

“Oooh, ‘cause it’s a reflection, so his name should be—got it, got it. That’s fucked. Okay, go on.”

“Right. It should be backwards. And I’m not wearing one, but I’m still backwards, so I know it’s not just some weird shit with the mirror. But I know who he is, obviously, and I know what the rules say I’m supposed to do, so it should be fine. I turn around, ready to greet him, but it’s just…empty air. Nobody’s in the room with me. Back to the mirror, and boom. There he is. Right over my shoulder.

“So I’m just looking at him, and he’s looking at me, and I don’t know if protocol here is that I make the first move or not, but after a couple seconds, he says, “Hi, I’m Doug!” It’s loud, too. And coming from behind me, not from the mirror.

“Hey!” I say, and then, because I’m supposed to, “I know who you are, man. We’ve worked together quite a while now.”

“Oh,” he says, right on cue—does a whole theatrical facepalm and everything. “So sorry, my memory is just dreadful.”

“No big deal,” I tell him. “It happens.” And then I wait. You know, to see if he goes away. Because according to the rules, he might. But he doesn’t.

“Instead, he goes, “Hey, just between coworkers, I’ve been a little nervous about my job performance lately. Do you think I’ve been pulling my weight?”

“Whoa, are you kidding?” I ask. I’m playing it up a little. Not really sure how enthusiastic I’m supposed to be, or if it even matters, but it’s usually smarter to err on the side of unmistakably positive. “Dude, I don’t know what we’d ever do without you. You’re a hundred percent irreplaceable.”

“He smiles at me. It’s weird. A little off. Like, you know that AI, Sophia? She sort of only emotes with one part of her face at a time. It was like that. Nothing going on in his eyes. Just the grin.”

“Ew,” Sam said. He’d moved on to another portion of his entree now, heating up vegetable oil in a large stockpot. “Okay, but that’s supposed to be the end of it, right? That’s all it says in the rules.”

“Supposed to be,” I echoed, nodding solemnly. “But it wasn’t. Sometimes the rules are just—they’re Matt’s best educated guess. Sometimes that means they’re foolproof. Sometimes it means he took a shot in the dark and we pray whatever situation we’re in doesn’t deviate from the textbook.”

Sam laughed, quiet, through his nose. “You mean like me?”

I paused. Sam didn’t know what had happened or where he’d come from—not exactly—but he did know it wasn’t under ordinary circumstances. We told him he’d just sort of stumbled in and collapsed, because it was the shortest, easiest explanation we could give him without causing him any grief for a family he’d never remember and who would never remember him. As far as he knew, he was a John Doe. We said the only thing he’d managed to tell us was his first name before he hit the ground.

“Yeah,” was what I settled on, swinging my foot to the side to gently kick him in the thigh. “Except we got lucky with you. Usually when something comes up that’s not in the rules at all it’s deadly at best.”

“What if I’m, like, sooo dangerous and nobody even knows it?” he chuckled, and then gasped, looking up from the pot before him to meet my eyes. “What if I don’t even know it? Holy shit. Maybe I have superpowers.”

“You do,” I said. “I’ve never met anybody in my life that can go so long without shutting up.”

He glared at me, but there was no fire behind it. “Whatever. Keep going.”

I kept going.

“So, I tell Doug he’s great at his job, and I expect him to leave me alone. Or maybe vanish, since we’re still just talking through a mirror. But he doesn’t. He’s just staring at me with that creepy ass smile, and I’m afraid to look away. I don’t really know why, but it feels like the wrong thing to do, so I don’t. I just keep staring back. Until I realize something: dude’s not blinking. And I haven’t been either. But I’m going to have to. I know that. Eventually, it’ll just happen, no matter how hard I try to force it not to. And I don’t know why I hate the idea of that so much, but something in the back of my mind is just telling me I have to keep up eye contact. So I do, for as long as I can, but then it happens.

“I blink.

“I don’t even think a blink takes a quarter of a second. That’s how fast he’s in front of me. I can barely see my own reflection now; he’s blocking too much of it. There still isn’t anyone physically in the room with me. Nobody’s standing there. But his reflection looks like he’s practically nose-to-nose with the mirror. Which shouldn’t even be possible, considering where the sink is, but he’s so close to it, and it gives me a better look at his teeth.

“They’re still bared, still doing the most to make me believe they’re smiling, but there’s a little gap between the two in the front, and something keeps barely poking in and out of it. It’s fleshy and thin and I can’t really get a good look at it until, finally, it just kind of. Slithers. Far enough out that it’s clear what it is.

“A worm. Not an earthworm or a mealworm—like some kind of parasite. And if some shit like that doesn’t make you want to recoil, I don’t know what will. But I can’t do that, because according to recent historical events, shit gets worse if I’m not watching. So I’m watching like a hawk, metaphorically shitting myself, and then this thing starts vibrating.”

“Dude,” Sam whined, “not the vibrating mouth parasite while I’m literally cooking.”

“I can stop talking about it anytime,” I warned. “You’re the one that wanted to have this conversation.”

Groaning, he scrubbed a hand over his face. “Okay. Fine. I have to know the rest now.”

“Yeah, I figured I wasn’t gonna get that lucky.

“So, the worm is vibrating. And I realize, now that I can see it more closely, Doug’s mouth isn’t really moving the way it should be to form the words he’s saying. It’s just kind of being jostled around by the worm. Open and shut. But I can understand him clear as day.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say irreplaceable,” is what comes out. “I’ve replaced my suit more times than you’d believe. When one rots, another rises. And that’s my job—riding the cycle. But you know that, of course! My, we have been working together for some time now, haven’t we? I nearly didn’t recognize you in your new suit. It certainly does become you, Adam.”

“Whoa, hold on.” I had Sam’s full attention now, frying be damned. “What?”

I was shaking a little. From either the adrenaline or the anxiety of recounting the story for only the second time ever; I couldn’t be sure which. “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t fucking know. I booked it the fuck out of there and never told anybody but Matt. He said the…the things in this place, they’ll do whatever they can to really get to us when they want to. They’re good at getting in our heads. Targeting our humanity, so to speak. Whatever it was doing, it fucking worked. Scared the hell out of me. Took me a while to get back with the program and believe I was a person again.”

I could practically hear the wheels turning in Sam’s head.

“Hey,” I said, snapping him out of it. “You’re not a parasitic demon worm driving a meat suit either. You’ve just got amnesia. You know who gets amnesia? Humans.”

“Yeah, but I don’t…” He stopped, chewing on the inside of his lip. “I don’t care. That can’t be normal, right? Like, I should want to know what happened to me. But I don’t. And I think if I found out, I’d just…I don’t know. I can’t imagine wanting to leave. For anything. Why do you think that is?”

I wanted to tell him he just felt that way because this was all he knew right now, but I didn’t. Instead, I told him the truth. “Because you’re one of us. You’re part of this place now. Even if most of us have houses we go to to sleep when we clock out, we never really leave here. Not sure if you’ve noticed, but none of us really has much of a life. No close friends outside of work. Not much family, if any. I don’t think ending up here is ever really an accident.”

Sam thought on it for a moment, and then the corner of his mouth turned up. “It’s kind of like we’re a special collection. Like the Library curates us.”

“Hah. Yeah,” I agreed fondly. “It kind of is.”

So, anyway, that’s it. My one experience with Doug.

I thought maybe writing it out would help me get it out of my head, because I haven’t really been able to stop thinking about it, like, at all since Sam and I talked. I try not to let it get to me anymore—and it doesn’t, most of the time—but every once in a while I just find myself wondering if there was anything to it.

I know, rationally, that there wasn’t. That there can’t be.

But I’ve been doing a lot of running my fingers over my skin lately, just to make sure there’s nothing moving underneath.