I don’t go to church anymore. Today marks one year Bible-free after over sixty attending every Sunday like a good girl. Want to know why? It’s because the Lord doesn’t work in mysterious ways. He’s cruel and callous, dangling happiness in front of all of us just to snatch it away for his own sick kicks. Nothing damn mysterious about it - God’s a prick. He has to be, and I just can’t abide by that.
That’s the only reason I can think that he’d see fit to send Obie to me after already taking my Lionel barely a week into our marriage. I’d already suffered enough, hadn’t I? All those decades of lonely endless time while I tended wounds and healed the sick and dedicated myself to the unappreciative masses.
I thought Obie was all my prayers finally answered - my own personal little miracle. Some company for my final years, you know? Never thought he was just the set up for a big cosmic joke where I’m the punchline.
It was a dark and stormy night when I first him Obie. I remember it so vividly, almost as clear to me now as the day he left. I just wish the days in-between weren’t as faded as the bloodstains under the rug. That first one though, that one still feels as fresh as those stains were when I was scrubbing them out one year and… what was it, a month ago? Yeah, that’s right, because I went to church about three more times to be sure after Obie… which means it was three weeks.
Sorry, I’m getting sidetracked. My focus isn’t what it used to be. So, the first night I met Obie was sitting in my cozy little living room, sipping on a hot cup of tea, when I heard a knock on my door. I wasn’t expecting anyone - I don’t really know anyone TO expect these days - so I was a bit hesitant to answer. But something in my gut told me to open the door, and when I did, I was met with a sight that set me on a slippery slope to renouncing the steadfast faith which got me through losing Lionel all those years ago.
There stood a man, tall and thin, with blood dripping down his face and clothes torn to shreds. He was barely conscious, but managed to mutter the words “Help me” before he collapsed on my doorstep. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I had to act fast. I dragged him inside, and with all the medical knowledge I had, I did what I could to nurse him back to health.
He regained consciousness a few hours later, and we spoke long into the night. At first he was alarmed that I’d stripped him and bathed him, and seemed convinced I’d done something to him when stitching up the unexplained wounds in his chest and neck. Wounds that should have killed him, a fact he both acknowledged and at the same time didn’t have an explanation for. He also didn’t know why he was so paranoid and distrustful of me since - from his current perspective - I was literally the first person he’d ever met, and it was getting him to dwell on this contradiction that caused him to ease up a bit. Well, that and a stiff glass of Lionel’s old brandy for the pain.
The man on my doorstep didn’t remember anything beyond scraps and shreds. Not even his age, but given the greying of his hair and the depth of the wrinkles of his thin face he was a little older than myself. Any information about where he’d come from or how he’d found himself outside my flat was definitely out of the question. Eventually I got a name from him - he was called Obie. That’s all I really managed to learn when eventually I left him to rest on the sofa for the first of what would end up being only around ten nights he slept on it, but already I knew I’d fallen for him.
As I helped Obie recover from his injuries over the following months, putting all my skills as a former NHS nurse to good use, I couldn’t help but wonder about his past. He couldn’t remember anything about himself of course, not even his full name. “Obie” was just from a fragment of a memory of someone speaking to him, he didn’t know what it was short for or if it was even his real name. Never managed to remember how he’d dragged himself up to the top floor of our tower block that night of course, or how he’d received his injuries. Nothing of his life before the night we met remained. But occasionally, he would have these flashes of memories that would come to him in his sleep.
One night, he woke up screaming, covered in sweat. I was pulled from my snoring immediately, and he clutched onto me tightly. “I saw something,” he said, his voice trembling. “Something terrible.”
He described to me a laboratory, with strange machines and equipment unlike anything I could remotely picture when he described it to me. He kept rambling about pipes made of blue steel from a distant star halfway across the universe, about esoteric engines whose designs defied comprehension, powered by men and women bound to living masks suspended in vats of the blood of grotesque monstrosities. And, in the center of the room he’d always find himself in in his dreams, there was… something.
He never called it a creature or a monster or even an entity or anything. He’d just call it the thing in his dreams when he spoke about it, which was often. Obie described it to me as a light - a furious light that was somehow blue and orange simultaneously, one that was trapped and raging, self-aware and sinister. The way he’d talk about it was like it was pure hate, and there was always a loathing in Obie’s own voice when he’d describe it to me, like he was disgusted by it on a subconscious level. Obie couldn’t remember anything else, but the memory, the fact he was somehow connected to those machines and that living hateful light, had left him shaken to the core.
Over the blissful months we had together before he left, more memories came back to Obie in bits and pieces. He described experiments being performed on him, or him performing them - he wasn’t quite sure which it was, or if it could even have been both. He’d get flashes of being in the presence of strange eldritch monstrosities, have vivid recollections of them being studied and dissected before his eyes while he took notes. He described being strapped to a table, and having needles injected into his veins.
Stranger still, he’d get hazy memories, ones he’d describe as feeling, in his own words, “older than anyone’s rememberings should be pulled from”. Recollections of life in a simpler but harsher time, of homesteads and the wilds and plagues and struggling.
It’s fair to say that, the more Obie recalled who he was, the more confused and unsure if he wanted to continue his journey of self discovery he became.
I listened to him carefully, trying to piece together any information that could help him remember who he was. But the more he talked, the more I realized that the things he was describing were beyond anything I had ever heard of. It was as if he had been part of some secret government experiment, something beyond the realm of human understanding - but how could I have possibly explained that to him?
For my part, I didn’t care. The fact he had no history was, to me, a sign from God. He was my Obie, and he’d been sent as a reward for my decades of steadfast faith in the wake of losing Lionel and living my best days as a widow without complaining. I deserved Obie by my reckoning, and no amount of devil-driven unexplained memories would change how I felt about him.
Despite the horrors that he had seen, Obie remained kind and gentle. He never lost his sense of humor or his love for life. But as the pandemic raged on, and the world around us became more chaotic, I began to worry about what would happen to him if the authorities found out about him.
I knew I had to keep him safe, at any cost. I forged documents and created a fake identity for him, all to keep him hidden from the government. It wasn’t easy, but I did it because I loved him, and I knew that he deserved a chance at a normal life, regardless of wherever he’d come from before he’d found his way to me.
But as we settled into our new life together, I couldn’t help but wonder about the things he had seen, and the experiments that had been performed on him, or - and this was worse - that he’d performed. It was a terrifying thought, but Obie was a kind man, with a heart of gold. I couldn’t help but love him no matter how twisted and harrowing the memories he dredged up became.
However, as time went on, I realized that I had a more immediate, much more practical problem - keeping him here with me was going to be a challenge.
The pandemic had hit London hard, and the government was cracking down on illegal immigrants. I knew that if they found out about Obie, they would take him away from me. So I did something I never thought I would do - I broke the law. Me, Ethel Fisher! I committed fraud. I created fake documents and forged his identity and everything, all to keep him safe and with me.
For a while, it worked. We lived together, happy and content. But then, in 2022, everything changed.
That’s when he showed up.
It was a day like any other when Obadiah arrived at our flat. I remember hearing the sound of the doorbell, and when I opened the door, I was met with a sight that froze me in my tracks.
There stood a man, tall and thin, with features I instantly recognized because I’d last seen them sat at the kitchen table eating a plate full of roast pork - they were Obies. Obie stood there in front of me, glaring at me with a menace I’d never seem before. Except it wasn’t Obie, and after my initial yelp of shock I knew straight away that, whatever was happening here, my Obie was still sat in the kitchen where I’d left him.
This man, this demon, might have been wearing my Obie’s face, but there was no way he was my Obie. There was too much different about him. I loved Obie because of how calmly he’d float through life despite his predicament, how softly and warmly the lullaby of his voice was. The man in my doorway with Obie’s face was nothing like that. He walked with purpose, and spoke with a coldness that chilled me to the bone.
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“My name isn’t information you need,” he responded, his words devoid of any emotion. “I’m looking for my property.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was still in shock from seeing someone who looked so much like the man I loved. But before I could process anything, Obadiah pushed past me and walked into the flat. I wanted to stop him, to grab him, but a piercing sort of mental heat seemed to be radiating from the intruder, keeping me pinned in place by more than just my fear.
“Where is he?” he demanded, his voice growing more agitated.
I tried to explain that I didn’t know who he was talking about, but he wasn’t listening. He stalked his way through the flat, searching every room, until he found Obie.
Obie was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping on a cup of tea. His knife and fork were folded on his plate, and he turned toward us wearing his warm smile when he heard the kitchen door creak open. It was the last time I’d ever see that smile, and it lasted all of half a second. The instant Obie saw Obadiah, his eyes widened with recognition. “You,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Obadiah, wait, I’m just trying to have a normal-“
Obadiah didn’t respond. He simply walked over to Obie, grabbed him by the hair, and slammed his head onto the table. Blood spattered everywhere, and I couldn’t do anything in the eerie near-silence that followed except blink blood from my eyes. Then it happened again.
Thud.
The noise rang through the flat. Obie had been too stunned to react in time to fight Obadiah’s grip on the back of his head, to resist the first time the man who looked like him drove his face into the ceramic countertop table. The concussion from that first blow was the reason he couldn’t resist the second. Or the third, or fourth…
I’d found by voice by the time Obadiah broke Obie’s nose on the fifth thud, the gravy-soaked china plate finally cracking from the impact. I screamed for him to stop, trying with no success to break whatever hold the demon Obadiah, this man with my beloved’s face, had on me.
But he didn’t stop. He continued to smash Obie’s head onto the table, over and over with that sickening unrelenting rhythm, until nothing but fragments of Obies lower skull and his flattened jaw remained. And then, as abruptly as he’d arrived, Obadiah wiped his hands clean, gave the twitching more-or-less headless corpse a cursory glance, and walked out the door. He didn’t say a word to me as he left. Didn’t even look in my direction.
I was left there, alone, with damn near headless body of the man I loved. I didn’t know what to do. I was terrified and distraught. Who was this Obadiah? And why did he kill Obie? As I sat there, in shock, I realized that the man I had cared for was gone. And in his place was a bloody mess, a victim of something beyond my understanding. It was a terrifying thought, and one that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
I couldn’t bear to call the police, even though I knew I should. I had forged documents for Obie when he first showed up at my flat with no memories. He had no past, no identity, and no one knew he existed. If I exposed myself for fraud, I’d be imprisoned. So I did the only thing I could do. I cleaned up the mess and disposed of what remained of Obie’s body - a task that was remarkably easy.
Remember how I said I thought Obie arriving had been a little miracle just for me? Well, there is one miracle in this story, though I don’t think it came from up high. I never had to figure how I was going to get rid of the corpse. Nevermind coming up owth a reason for having a dead body in my flat if I was caught with it, my main concern was how I’d get it down the ten flights of stairs to the ground floor of the tower block.
It was probably the shock, but my first thought when his flesh started bubbling and melting until all that remained was a sticky dark puddle on the floor was “Thank God for that”. The irony, right?
I should have been panicking, wailing, howling. I was already sobbing and in greater hysterics than I’d care to admit, but that was mainly due to the mix of grief from losing Obie and sanity-breaking levels of confusion trying to comprehend anything about Obadiah and his intrusion into our happiness. I actually laughed when Obie’s body began to melt. Instead of being perturbed by the near-Satanic turn of events, I just remember thinking how much I couldn’t believe my luck because I didn’t have to worry about disposing of Obie’s body anymore.
It was a slow process, but within an hour of his death, his body dissolved into a bloody mess on my kitchen floor. That’s what made the stains under the rug, you remember those faded ones I mentioned? I lift the rug up to peep at them sometimes, when I really miss him. It was a strange and unsettling experience, one that I couldn’t explain. But it saved me from having to deal with the gruesome aftermath of his murder. And no, I don’t think it means Obie wasn’t human, and I’m not even going to entertain that notion.
In the days that followed, I tried to make sense of what had happened. Even if I had gone to the police, they wouldn’t have believed me when I told them that Obie’s body had dissolved - especially since there’s no real legal proof Obie actually existed. “Who’s this Obie,” they’d say, “Mrs. Fisher, your husband was a mechanic named Lionel, and he died in 1981.” They’d have thought I was crazy, that Alzheimer’s had got me, and I couldn’t really blame them to be honest. I’d deserve the nursing home they’d put me in, the one run by Southwark Council for barmy old biddies with no next of kin. It was a bizarre and unbelievable thing that happened to me, and the fact it was the truth don’t change that a damn bit.
But the horror of that day has stayed with me for the past year, and I think it’ll hang around for however many I’ve got left. For the first few months it felt like I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t think. The memory of Obadiah, the man who looked exactly like Obie and brutally murdered him in front of me, was etched into my mind. And the worst part was that I couldn’t comprehend why God would be so cruel as to bring Obie into my life, only to have him taken away so violently.
In the days that followed, I found myself losing faith in everything I believed in. I had been a devout Christian for most of my life, but the events of that day shattered my belief in a benevolent God. How could a loving God permit such horrors to occur? It was a difficult realization, but one that I had to come to terms with.
Today, I am a shell of my former self. I live alone with my thoughts, haunted by the memory of what happened to Obie. I still get flashbacks, nightmares, intrusive thoughts, you name it. The worst of them aren’t the sights, either. I was a nurse in the NHS for 40 years, many of them in A&E. I’ve seen my fair share of horrific injuries. You ever pulled a steering wheel from between somebody’s ribs while hoping to hell the fluid doesn’t drain so fast when you do that their other lung collapsed, because I have. The brain’s inside Obie’s skull weren’t the first I’d seen, watching his eyes pop out their sockets was only unfamiliar because usually I was watching them be re-inserted.
No. What’s really stuck with me hasn’t been the sights, but the sounds. The slow thud… thud… thud… as Obadiah slammed Obie’s head into the table without a shred of restraint. Not like he was angry, but like he was… like he was stapling documents. Firm, rehearsed, slow, and indifferent. It was the way each successive cluster of thud… thud… thud… would get duller and duller, lower and lower, wetter and wetter as the mechanically rhythmic blows exposed more and more of the inside of Obie’s cranium.
Thud… thud… thud…
I know that I’ll never be able to forget that sound, no matter how hard I try. The sounds that came with it were just as bad - my own wailing as I stood paralyzed with fear in the kitchen doorway, the rasping protests from Obie that crumbled into wet gargles before become silent, the almost-inaudible grunts of Obadiah, the bastard next door banging on the wall telling us to shut the fuck up…
I’m hoping that by sharing what happened I’ll maybe get a bit of closure. I’ve not got anyone else to talk to - I’m an old crone living at the top of her tower. The only people I’d see were at church, and I can’t bring myself to go back there again. I want to. It’s lonely, I’m lonely, I miss the friends who don’t even know they’re my friends, the ones I’ve always been too proud and aloof to swap contact details with lest I let them into my life and they see how little of one I actually lead.
I’m coming to you people, you strangers here on the computer, for a bit of solace. I need someone to know why I lost faith, and who Obie was, just so what happened doesn’t die with me when I finally go.
I’m not good with computers, so I’ve not researched Obadiah or done any digging. I’m not sure I want to know. What could I do about him anyway? The only questioning I’ve done is how a just God could bring me someone as kind and sweet and loving as Obie only to take him away. Obadiah can hang for all I care, him and whatever freak science that made him. Anyone reading, if you have any way you can reconcile this bullshit with a kind loving God that works in mysterious ways, I’d love to hear it, because until I do I don’t think I can ever go back to church.