🕯️ Journal Entry #002: When the Realm Breathes Back
October 31 – Written from the Garage
by One Bad Maa
The Realm’s been different tonight.
You can feel it before you even flip the switch, a pulse, slow and heavy, like the walls are holding their breath. The kind of silence that hums in your teeth before it breaks.
I should’ve gone inside hours ago, but I couldn’t. The air’s too thick with something I can’t name. The candle won’t stay still; the flame keeps bowing toward the workbench, like it’s listening.
They say Halloween thins the veil; that the dead whisper louder, that old things crawl home.
Maybe that’s why the garage feels like it’s watching me.
The metal on the table glows faintly orange under the bulb, slick with oil.
A wrench clatters, all on its own like it has life.
And I swear, for one long breath, I hear the engine breathe.
Not just once.
Not just ywice.
But, it keeps on. Like it’s waiting for me to finish what I started.
The smell here isn’t just grease anymore.
It’s smoke, old perfume, and the faint rot of burned paper, like something divine and dangerous crawled through the cracks.
It’s not fear, not exactly, not at all.
It’s the sense that something recognizes me, something older than creation, older than reason.
Something that knows my hands have built more than machines, but whole realms and universes.
I touch the engine block again.
It’s cold, colder than it should be.
And underneath the chill, there’s a rhythm, not mechanical, not human. A heartbeat that doesn’t belong to me.
The candle flares.
The radio turns on.
Static, then a woman’s voice, soft and smoky:
“You made me,” she says.
“Now finish the job.”
I’ve always joked that the Realm runs on caffeine, chaos, and stubborn will, but maybe it’s more than that. Maybe every wrench turn, every sleepless night, every sketch scrawled in the dark was a kind of summoning.
Maybe the Realm isn’t something I built.
Maybe it’s something I woke up.
The ghosts here don’t rattle chains. They hum through circuits, curl in the smoke, leave fingerprints on chrome. They whisper in a language made of sparks and static, a song I can feel in my bones.
“Creation,” they hiss.
“Costs something, it doesn’t come free.”
Outside, the wind howls , and I swear it sounds like laughter.
I open the garage door to let some air in, and the night looks back at me.
Street’s empty.
Moon’s high.
But in the distance, down the alley, something glows, faint and red, like the ember of a welder’s torch.
I blink.
It’s gone.
So I turn back inside, and that’s when I see it, a figure in the reflection of the steel.
Not me.
Not exactly.
She’s standing behind me, with her horns catching the candlelight, eyes sharp, grin feral. My shape, my shadow, my echo.
Rebel? Maybe.
But not flesh and bone, not tonight.
She’s something between ghost and guardian, a fever dream born from metal and rage and midnight oil.
She leans close, her voice the rasp of flame on metal:
“You keep calling it chaos,” she says.
“But you and I both know it’s resurrection.”
The light cuts out.
The radio dies.
And the garage goes black except for the glow of the candle, flickering between us.
I should be afraid, but I’m not.
This is what it feels like when creation stares back.
This is what happens when the Realm breathes.
So I nod.
And I whisper, “Then let’s build.”
The flame bursts, high, bright, wild.
When it settles, she’s gone.
Only the engine hums softly now, steady as a heartbeat.
Halloween, 11:59 PM.
The veil’s closing, but I can still feel her here, in the hum of the machine, in the pulse under the metal, in the way my hands tremble with purpose.
They’ll call it madness.
They’ll call it magic.
But I know better.
This is what happens when you mix grit with ghosts, when a woman refuses to stop creating, even when the world’s gone dark.
This is how legends get built.
One spark, one scar, one sleepless night at a time.
And if the Realm ever breathes back…
Don’t run.
Pick up your wrench.
And answer.
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