Chapter 1: The Run

 

 

The swamp doesn’t give second chances. It takes what it’s owed, slow and deliberate, like roots drinking bone-deep. He ran anyway.

The convict’s breath came in ragged bursts as he pushed through the underbrush, prison stripes torn and mud-slicked. His bare feet tore against unseen things—thorns, jagged roots, and the unseen litter of long-forgotten tragedies—but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t. The dogs had lost his scent hours ago, but he didn’t trust silence. Not here. Not in this place.

Somewhere behind him, civilization ended in a chain-link fence and a warning shot. Ahead? Just the murmur of insects and water and something far more ancient than law.

 

A low branch slapped his cheek. Blood welled beneath the scrape. He welcomed the sting. At least it proved he was still himself, still flesh and breath and will. He crashed through cattails and reed beds, past trees so gnarled they looked like hunched old men whispering secrets.

 

Then his foot caught something—an exposed cypress root, thick and knotted. He fell hard, hands hitting muck, chest thudding into the soft rot of earth. A sharp stab ran through his heel. When he twisted to look, blood was already welling from a fresh gash. The edge of the root gleamed dark and wet.

 

He didn’t scream.

 

Instead, he stared. Not at the wound—but at what lay just beyond it. A wooden sign, half-submerged in the mire, tilted and rotted, its warning barely legible.

 

DO NOT FOLLOW THE WATER

 

He read it twice. Then a third time. The letters swam and faded under creeping moss. The convict narrowed his eyes, pushed himself up, and limped forward anyway.

 

Because what the hell else was left?

 

Behind him was the world that shackled him.

 

Ahead? Something worse. Or maybe… something final.

 

He followed the water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2: Crooked Trees Watch

 

 

The trees changed first.

 

They leaned in like eavesdroppers, crooked and twisted; their bark scarred with old burns and strange carvings. Symbols he didn’t recognize. Symbols no one should’ve carved. The air thickened, too—more than just humidity. It clung, clotted, like breath held too long. Even the frogs had gone quiet.

 

The convict limped on, every step a grim negotiation between pain and instinct. His foot throbbed, each pulse a warning, but he pressed forward through the waterline, following the meandering ribbon of black swamp that glinted faintly in the moonlight. Sometimes it whispered. Sometimes it hissed. Always, it led him on.

 

And the trees watched.

 

They seemed to shift when he wasn’t looking—roots rising where there had been none, branches low enough to brush his shoulders. He could feel the moss hanging heavy with more than age. Eyes. Or memory. Maybe both.

 

When he paused to rest against a leaning oak, the bark was warm.

Warm.

 

He recoiled. Something beneath the bark flexed—like a muscle twitch. He didn’t look back. Just kept moving.

 

He whispered now, under his breath, nonsense mostly. Old hymns turned inside out. Curses. A plea. Not to the law or to any god that men still feared—but to the swamp itself. To the thing that might be listening.

That’s when he saw it.

 

Just ahead, resting between two half-submerged roots, was a dragonfly. No—more than one. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. They hovered, silent, weightless. Their wings caught the moonlight like shards of stained glass. And they didn’t scatter. Didn’t flee when he approached. They pulsed in rhythm, like breathing.

 

Like waiting.

 

The convict slowed.

 

And the trees… they leaned in further.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 3: The Hollow Choir

 

The mist pressed closer.

 

He moved like a man half-remembered, each step into the cypress hollow stirring something ancient in the muck. The mark on his forehead still burned—a low thrum beneath the skin, like a tuning fork struck too hard.

Dragonflies hummed in spirals around him. Not swarming now—just keeping time.

 

Then the silence changed.

 

It wasn’t sound he heard, exactly. More like a resonance in his bones. It came not from around him, but within—a memory, maybe. Or a warning.

 

"You ever hear a swamp sing?"

The voice was his brother’s.

Long dead.

Long gone.

Still laughing.

 

He blinked.

 

The trees leaned in. Their shapes twisted subtly with each step he took. One cypress looked like a woman, face split in agony. Another like a preacher, mouth open, but no sermon left to give.

 

The water grew darker, and the reflections no longer mirrored his face. Instead, they showed pale faces—gaunt, wide-eyed, watching him from beneath the surface. Dozens. Hundreds. Some he recognized. Most he did not.

 

He passed a tree with rope scars around its branch.

 

The choir began.

 

Not with music, but with breath. Shallow, ragged, hundreds of them exhaling in unison. He dropped to one knee. His prison stripes were heavy, soaked to the bone. The mark pulsed.

 

“Don’t look back,” a whisper said—not in his ear, but from within his own jaw, as though someone else had borrowed it.

 

The faces in the water began to rise.

 

Not bodies—just outlines. Just memories. One was the girl from the diner he’d robbed. Another, the guard who flinched as he ran. One of them had no eyes, just sockets that leaked light.

 

“You want to be hollow?” one hissed.

“You already are,” said another.

 

He stumbled back, fell into the shallows. The dragonflies rose like steam from the water.

 

But the swamp caught him. Not to drown. Not yet. The choir had just begun.

And in the distance—through the hanging moss and time-thick air—he saw a shape like Father Hollow, seated beneath a bent tree, waiting.

 

Smiling.

 

With teeth made of bone.

 

 

  

 

 

Chapter 4: Drowning Without Water

 

 

He woke gasping.

 

Only—he hadn’t fallen asleep.

 

The moment blinked past like a skipped page, and now he was kneeling in the mire, water up to his ribs. Not a splash on his skin. His lungs burned. Not from lack of air—but from too much of something else. Too much memory.

 

The choir had gone silent, as though they’d taken a breath and hadn’t exhaled. The water around him pulsed with a quiet rhythm—like a heartbeat trapped in mud.

 

He rose slowly. The cypress trees loomed like forgotten judges, their knotted limbs heavy with moss and memory.

 

A whisper slithered into his mind:

 

“You drown when the world forgets your name.”

 

His mouth opened to deny it, but no sound came. The mark on his forehead flared. His knees buckled, but he didn’t fall. The swamp held him now. Not out of kindness, but because it was watching.

 

He caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection.

 

Only it wasn’t him.

 

It was a version—hollow-eyed, slack-jawed, ribs like a broken cage. Something moved behind his mirrored self. Hands. Dozens of them. Reaching. Clawing. Beckoning.

 

“Let go,” said one.

“Sink,” begged another.

“Become,” whispered a third, in the voice of his mother.

 

He screamed—but only bubbles came.

 

No one ever warned him drowning didn’t always need water.

 

A shape emerged in the mire beside him. Human—barely. Swollen and bloated, dressed in tatters. A familiar face stretched across a skull that didn’t match. It grinned.

 

It was him. Or the husk he’d left behind.

 

He stumbled back, and the figure collapsed into the sludge like it had never been. But something passed through him as it did—cold, electric, like a soul brushing past.

 

The mark on his head faded.

 

And then—footsteps.

 

Not his. Not Father Hollow’s.

 

Someone—something—else was moving in the distance.

 

Through trees bent sideways, the outline of a cocoon glowed faintly.

 

Not his.

 

Another one.

 

The swamp wasn’t just watching. It was choosing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Chapter 5: Empty Husk

 

 

The husk stood tall among the reeds—taller than any man had right to be.

He circled it cautiously, his breath catching at the shimmer of dragonfly wings embedded in its surface. The cocoon looked woven—stitched from swamp mist and bone marrow, veined with vines that pulsed like arteries.

 

He didn't remember building it.

He didn’t remember becoming it.

 

But it was his. Somehow. A shell of everything he’d shed.

 

The mark on his brow dimmed to a quiet ember.

 

Inside the cocoon, something had once writhed. Now—it sagged. Empty. Drained.

 

He took a step closer. Mud sucked at his ankles. Roots clung like fingers. The swamp did not let go easily.

 

The husk cracked.

A hairline fracture that whispered like wet paper tearing.

A sound not meant for human ears.

 

He froze.

 

The fracture spread.

 

A light pulsed from within—green and cold. An unnatural glow, like the eyes of something that had seen too far and survived.

 

The cocoon broke open.

 

Steam hissed from the split, and out stepped a figure.

 

Not quite him.

Not quite other.

 

His skin glistened with mist and decay. His prison stripes were gone—shredded away in metamorphosis. In their place: mottled flesh, wrapped in something fungal and sacred. His hair hung in wet patches, and the sigil on his brow now burned golden like the sun trapped beneath still water.

 

He looked at his hands.

 

Not shackled. Not chained. Not innocent.

But chosen.

 

The dragonflies circled above, keeping low. He could feel them now, in his blood. In his lungs. Their wings beat to his pulse.

 

Then came the voice—

 

“You are not free.

But you are His now.”

 

Father Hollow’s.

Not aloud. Not spoken. Just there.

 

A choir sang again. But this time, from within him.

 

He turned toward the path where none had been before.

 

A corridor of crooked trees bowed at his passing.

 

 

   

 

 

 

Chapter 6: The Hollow Choir

 

 

The trees whispered his name now.

Not the one carved into the prison ledger.

The one older than bones.

The one the swamp remembered.

 

He walked barefoot—though he did not recall removing his shoes. The path welcomed him. Every step sank into soft moss, yet each print he left behind filled with water and closed over like a wound healing too quickly. No trace. No record.

The sound began as a low murmur. A tremble. Not wind. Not beast.

 

A humming.

 

Like the dragonflies, but deeper. More human. Or once-human.

 

He came to the edge of the water again. But this was no place he’d crossed before. This part of the swamp was still and black as obsidian, glass-smooth but somehow bottomless.

 

Shapes moved beneath the surface.

 

Then the choir rose—ethereal voices from nowhere and everywhere.

 

Mournful. Beckoning.

Voices that might have been his own once, split apart and scattered by guilt and time.

Voices of those he’d forgotten. Those he’d tried not to remember.

He stepped forward.

 

And they rose.

 

The water erupted, not in waves, but in silhouettes—figures made of mist and memory. Men, women, children. Not ghosts, but echoes.

 

One of them looked like the boy he left behind in the cell.

One looked like his mother—though he'd sworn he forgot her face.

One wore a guard’s uniform.

And one—one he did not know, but felt deep in his marrow.

 

Their mouths opened, but no sound came now.

 

Just that eternal hum, vibrating his bones.

 

“These are the sins you don’t remember,” whispered a voice from the trees.

“These are the debts you never paid.”

 

His knees buckled. He knelt in the moss, not from reverence, but collapse.

 

The choir leaned closer, dripping water but never touching.

He reached for them, but his fingers passed through.

 

One of them—his own face—smiled.

 

“You’re not done, Hollow Son.”

 

The water fell still again.

 

But he was not alone.

 

In the mirror of the swamp, he no longer saw a prisoner.

He saw a vessel.

 

A man shaped by memory. And rot. And mercy.

 

Behind him, Father Hollow stood once more—silent, watching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 7: Drowning Without Water

 

 

He didn’t know how long he’d been kneeling.

The mist didn’t move.

 

The trees didn’t sway.

 Time had dropped its watch into the swamp and left it there to sink.

 

He tried to stand, but his body was no longer his own.

Heavy. Hollow.

Like something had been scooped out of him and replaced with mud and regret.

From the edge of his vision, the ripples began again—only this time, from within.

His reflection shimmered. Not on the surface… but under it.

 

He saw himself, submerged. Not fighting. Not gasping.

 

Just there.

 

Still.

 

Watching.

 

“I’m not drowning,” he whispered aloud, voice trembling.

“I’m already drowned.”

 

The realization came like a weight to the chest—not panic, but an understanding.

A surrender.

 

He wasn’t breathing. Hadn’t for a while.

 

Yet he wasn’t dead.

 

Not yet.

 

From the surface, roots reached toward him like veins, threading along his arms, up his neck, across his chest. They didn’t bind him. They became him. His skin darkened with moss. His fingertips tingled, brittle like bark. His reflection smiled.

 

Not with kindness.

 

With hunger.

 

“One of us has to let go,” it said from the water.

 

He looked over his shoulder. Father Hollow was gone.

No footsteps. No trace.

Only dragonflies in the distance, swirling like storm debris.

 

He felt his hands again—his real hands—shake.

 

He dug his fingers into the soft earth, trying to ground himself, to hold on to something that was still him.

 

But there was no him anymore. Just a shape the swamp was reshaping.

 

Then he screamed.

 

Not in pain.

 

In release.

 

A deep, guttural sound that echoed not from his throat, but from beneath his ribs—from the hollow that had been carved there by every choice, every betrayal, every lie he told himself in the dark.

 

And when the scream ended, he collapsed.

 

But the water caught him.

 

It rose to meet his face gently, like a mother’s hand.

 

And pulled him under.

 

Not to drown.

 

To wash him clean.

 

To prepare him.

 

 

 

Chapter 8: The Cocoon

 

 

There was no more sky.

 

No moon, no stars, no branches clawing the heavens above—just velvet dark pressing in like a burial shroud. He didn’t feel the cold anymore. He didn’t feel anything.

 

And yet…

 

He stirred.

 

Somewhere between breath and bone, movement curled within him—slow, syrup-thick. A heartbeat, but not his own.

 

He opened his eyes, or thought he did.

 

Everything was veiled.

 

Amber light trickled around him. Not from torches or sun, but from within the fibers of a shell—like stained glass wrapped in veins. Translucent. Trembling. Alive.

 

He was inside it.

 

A cocoon.

 

Not cloth. Not silk.

 

Flesh and root. Bark and bone. Dragonfly wings pressed against the inside like stained curtains. He was curled into its heart, arms folded over his chest, hair clinging to his brow like moss.

 

He tried to scream again, but the air had been traded for silence.

Not silence like peace.

Silence like judgment.

Like something was watching from the inside-out.

 

This is what you are now.

 

A voice?

A thought?

 

No. A knowing.

 

The cocoon pulsed. The light flickered, dimmed, returned. It was breathing. And he was being remade with every inhale.

 

His prison stripes dissolved in strands—unwoven, then consumed by the walls around him. In their place, skin grew pale and iridescent. The veins glowed faint blue. Dragonfly symbols etched across his arms and back like they’d always been there.

 

One of his hands twitched. The nails had darkened. Hardened. Elongated.

 

He reached for his face, but stopped.

 

Something wet slid down his scalp.

 

His hair.

It was falling away in clumps.

 

His mouth opened in horror, but the cocoon didn’t let sound escape.

Instead, it absorbed the scream.

 

And hummed back a lullaby.

 

A thousand insects whispering at once. A song older than language.

 

The swamp was singing.

 

Singing him.

 

Not of who he was.

But of who he would become.

 

And then, without ceremony or warning…

 

The cocoon cracked.

 

A single fissure. A thin, jagged line from crown to chest. The light bled out like a dying star. The dragonflies that clung to the surface lifted in unison—one last beat of reverence—and scattered.

 

From within, a hand reached toward the world. Not desperate.

Invited.

 

And still, he did not know if he had been chosen…

 

Or claimed.

 

 

 

 

  

  

Chapter 9: The New Man Walks

 

 

The swamp held its breath.

 

Moss curled back from the cocoon’s base. Water, still as black glass, rippled in concentric rings that never reached shore. Even the wind, which never truly left the bayou, quieted into nothing. The frogs did not sing. The trees did not moan. Only the slow hiss of splitting bark filled the hollow.

 

The cocoon was opening.

 

A long fracture cleaved its front like the seam of a coffin, and through it spilled golden mist—the last breath of what had been.

 

Then, movement.

 

A gaunt hand, no longer bound in prison stripes, stretched outward, slick with amber. The skin shimmered faintly, shot through with veins that pulsed blue. Fingernails sharp as thorns scraped against the root-slick ground. Another hand followed. Then a head.

 

He emerged, slowly, as if waking from centuries beneath the mire.

 

Hair once tangled and dark now fell away in thinning wisps. Patches of scalp gleamed pale under the faint light—marked with geometric sigils like scars etched by stars. His eyes, no longer the eyes of a man, reflected nothing. They absorbed.

 

Behind him, the remnants of the cocoon slumped inward, steaming, collapsing in on itself like a husk burned from within.

 

He stood, trembling not from weakness, but from something deeper—something ancient reasserting itself through his form. Moss clung to his shoulders like robes. Wing-like ridges, faint and translucent, shimmered on his back in the shape of dragonflies poised for flight.

 

He didn’t look at the trees. He didn’t look to the sky.

He looked down.

 

To the water.

 

It mirrored not the man who had run into the swamp—but the one who had never left.

 

There was no panic. No laughter. No prayer. Only the rhythm of breath… and the hollow thump of a heart realigned to something that pulsed beneath the soil.

He took a step.

 

The muck did not resist him. The swamp had already claimed him. He belonged to it now—remade in its image. A vessel. A voice.

 

Father Hollow did not speak.

But the swamp did.

 

And the new man listened.

 

 

  

 

Epilogue: What the Swamp Remembers

 

 

They say the trees lean a little farther in, down by the Hollow.

That the air is always wet, even when the sky is bone-dry.

And that sometimes—if you’re too loud or too lost—you’ll feel it.

 

A stillness that isn’t peace.

A silence that listens back.

 

No one goes to the swamp after dark anymore. Not even the hunters. Not even the hollow-eyed drunks with nothing left to fear. The old paths are overgrown. The bayou edge rots slow and black. And the dragonflies—they’re the only ones brave enough to dance across that water.

 

Some folks claim to have seen him—

A figure standing where no man could stand, cloaked in moss and shadow.

Eyes like dried-up wells.

Wings made of light and bone.

 

He doesn’t speak. But sometimes you’ll hear his voice—
in the creak of the cypress,
in the sigh of the fog,
in the distant hum that settles just behind your thoughts.

 

They call him Father Hollow, now.

 

But some of the elders, the ones with memories older than their scars,
say he was once a man.

A broken one. A hunted one.

And that the swamp didn’t kill him.

 

It gave him purpose.

 

It marked him, changed him—
and now he waits for others.

Others who sin too loud.
Others who run too far.
Others who need to be… hollowed out.

 

So tread lightly, stranger.

And never whistle near the Hollow.

Because if he hears you,

you won’t hear anything ever again.

 

Only stillness.

Only silence.

Only… below.