It’s around 4 AM when the group of cloaked figures wanders into the little backwoods gas station. There are around half a dozen of them, shrouded entirely by heaps of dark fabric, moving in near-perfect unison, and huddled so tightly that Mickey can’t quite get an exact headcount. She clears her throat as they pass by the counter, hoping to get her new co-worker-in-training’s attention. Sid looks up from the stool he has stationed just across from her, in the one corner of the store with decent phone signal, and Mickey nods in the general direction of the group—who, she now notices, are haloed by what looks like a dark haze of shifting fog (or maybe one of them is vaping. It’s honestly difficult to tell.) They seem to float along the ground rather than walk (that one’s a bit harder to justify.)

“What the fuck,” Sid mouths silently. As the figures turn down the snack cake aisle, he shuffles over to her side behind the counter.

“Who—what—the hell is that?” Sid whispers. Well, tries to whisper. He’s only been working there less than a week, but Mickey can tell the kid is jumpy even on a regular night, and now his voice is loud enough to alert the dead.

“Out-of-towners?” Mickey guesses.

Before they can discuss it further, the cloaked figures round the corner again and slowly creep towards the register. Sid ducks behind her, as if she will somehow be able to protect him from whatever horrors lurk underneath those cloaks.

Mickey looks closely at the figure that stands closest to her but can’t see anything like a face in the darkly draped hood. He (Or she? They?) extends a single hand, mottled grey skin stretched tight across a very visible bone structure. The figure, or maybe the whole group of them, makes a low hissing sound like the air is being let out of a tire.

Her husband decides to quit his job as an accountant to work at the group’s new soup kitchen full time. It’ll be fine, she tells herself. Her salary is enough to pay the bills, and he seems so much happier now. Who is she to take away his newfound sense of purpose?

Then, she starts finding the bank statements. Part of her is glad they never agreed to get joint accounts. All his savings start bleeding into the coffers of this group that calls itself “The New Era.” She knows what it is, but she can’t bring herself to say it.

Her husband says he still doesn’t believe in the religious stuff, but he starts to look at her like she’s a heretic. She calls around to see if there’s anything she can do, but everyone gives her the same response: “He’s a grown man; he can make his own decisions.” His mother tells her that she should be proud of all the good work he’s doing, dedicating his life to take care of the poor and elderly.

Before long some of the members of the group start talking about moving out to a compound in Arizona that The Father wants to build. Her husband says that he isn’t sure what that has to do with charity, but that he understands why everyone wants a place of their own. “People can be so judgmental nowadays,” he says.

Then one day, it happens: “Maybe there’s really something true about all the God stuff,” he says.

“I think you’re in a cult,” she tells him, and she can feel it crack the rift between them wide open. By the end of the month, they start signing the divorce papers.

She starts smoking again the day his mother calls, months later, begging her to stop him from moving out to the Arizona desert with a bunch of crazies. She tries to call him, but he’s blocked her number. She’s never considered herself a religious sort of person, but she prays for him. She prays for all of them.

When I get him home and haul his massive grey-and-dusty-brown striped body out of the carrier, I see death sparkling in his eyes. The bit of his tail that didn’t have to be amputated flicks manically. He sinks his teeth into my wrist and as I drop him I think to myself: Yeah, that’s fair. I, too, had been pretty pissed off when I was forced to go to a hospital against my will, and I could only be held for 72 hours. Technically, I could have left Hades there forever.

He swipes his claws against my lower calf, blood blooming up slowly in their wake, and now I’m a little irritated. Because I hadn’t left him there forever. I had picked him up and given him a ride home. That was more than anyone had ever done for me.

The irritation fades quickly as he scratches the front door to be let out. My landlord, an avid bird-watcher, hates when I let Hades roam the neighborhood. “That thing is a killing machine,” he told me once. I let him out anyway, figuring he’s been cooped up for long enough. Fuck birds, what have they ever done for me?

For half the night, I try to get him to come back inside. He’s nowhere to be found. I start to wonder if this has been the final straw, if the promise of a steady source of food and shelter is no longer enough for him to stick around.

Thankfully, there’s a dead mole on my doorstep the next morning. I’m not sure how I got to a point in my life where a motionless and slowly rotting rodent on my front porch would be considered a positive, but here we are. The mole isn’t torn to shreds like Hades’ prey usually is, so I nudge it a few times with a rolled-up newspaper to make sure it’s not just stunned. Hades hangs back, pacing like he’s waiting for my reaction. I figure it’s either meant to be a gift or a threat— ‘Take me to get stuck like a pincushion again, and you’re next,’ he might be saying. I lean down to pet him behind the ears, and he allows the touch without hesitation or bodily harm.

“A bloodless kill. That takes skill, man. Good job,” I tell him. He makes a low, rough noise that sounds almost like a growl. It takes me a moment to realize that he’s purring.