There Is No Way Out. Andrew Zolt

fought back. Tried to burn it. Tried to dissolve it in acid. To bury it. Seal it in concrete.

      It always came back. Untouched. Waiting for new death.

      And then, it started to whisper. Not with voices. Hunger. A thirst for slaughter. A lust for “balance.”

      And then, Sophie came again. Dressed in white. Barefoot. Her face – serene, untouched by suffering. A dream.

      “Daddy, she won’t stop. She’ll kill everyone you love. You gave her your soul. Now she wants your body. You have to stop her. Only you can.”

      “How? I’ve tried everything…”

      “You must kill her vessel. Yourself.”

      He looked at her. He wanted to argue. To ask for forgiveness. To embrace her.

      But she was already fading, dissolving into the air like mist.

      Cole flew back to Cambodia. He carried the book back to the temple – back to the jungle where it had all begun.

      He walked on foot. No food. No sleep. As if in a dream. He carried it as if carrying a coffin.

      The temple stood unchanged. The faces of stone gods watched silently. Even the moss seemed untouched.

      He opened the book. Wrote his own name: “Cole West.”

      He set down the pen. Sat on a stone. And very calmly, very deliberately, plunged the knife into his own chest.

      When his blood soaked the stone, the book closed. Without a sound.

      An instant later, it lay on the altar – as if it had never left. Dusty. Silent. Waiting.

      Maybe even for you.

      To the Final Stop

      Mexico City melted in the golden haze of the evening sun, like a vast bronze bowl filled with smoke and music.

      Saturday. A celebration of life. Crowds streamed through the streets: street musicians strummed guitars, vendors shouted out deals, and laughter drifted through the city parks.

      On the outskirts of the city, near an old produce market, two friends stood waiting at a bus stop – Anabel and Lucia. They were both nineteen. Each beautiful in her own way: Anabel – slender, dark-eyed, with a wild mane of curls; Lucia – fiery-haired, bold, sun-kissed. They were both looking forward to a night of fun.

      A new club had just opened in the suburbs – Luz del Fuego. Live music, dancing, a mad crowd – everything a night should be.

      “I told you we should’ve taken a cab,” Lucia grumbled, tapping her heel impatiently on the asphalt.

      “Oh, come on,” Anabel smiled. “The bus is cheaper. And more romantic. Like in old movies.”

      Finally, a bus appeared from around the corner. But it looked… strange. Dull silver body, hazy matte windows, and the route number on the side nearly rubbed off. Still, the digital display showed the right destination: Centro Norte – La Montaña.

      “That’s ours!” Anabel chirped.

      The bus hissed to a stop. The doors slid open.

      Inside, it was empty. Not a single passenger. But more than twenty people had already gathered at the stop – some with shopping bags, some holding flowers, others dressed for a night out like the girls. They boarded without hesitation, quickly filling the aisle with voices and laughter.

      Anabel and Lucia settled in the middle of the bus by the window. The doors closed. The engine purred. The vehicle merged into traffic with practiced ease.

      At first, everything seemed normal. They passed a few blocks, a supermarket, a shopping mall. Through the windows flashed neon signs, kissing couples in alleyways, a city glowing like a stage.

      Then came the first strange moment.

      At the old cinema, the bus should’ve stopped – people were waiting, waving their arms. Instead, it sped up.

      “Hey!” a man in a trench coat shouted, running toward the front. “That’s my stop!”

      He banged his fist against the glass separating the driver’s cabin. The glass reflected only his trembling shadow.

      The driver didn’t respond. Didn’t turn his head. Didn’t slow down.

      The bus surged forward – smooth, steady, like a launched missile.

      “What the hell…?” Lucia muttered, gripping her purse strap tighter.

      Voices rose around them.

      “Stop the bus!” “Hey! Are you deaf?”

      A man started pounding on the driver’s glass partition.

      And then – like an answer – something terrifying happened.

      With a metallic screech, the windows slammed shut behind heavy steel shades – thick and seamless, like the lid of a tin can.

      The doors snapped shut with a mechanical click. The cabin sank into dense, suffocating twilight. And in the heavy silence that followed, the driver’s voice echoed – raspy, expressionless, as if it came not from a man, but from the bus itself:

      “This bus runs to the final stop. No interruptions.”

      A pause.

      Then – an explosion of shouting.

      Women screamed. Men cursed, demanding the ride be stopped. Someone tried to smash a window, but the metal shutters were stronger than they looked. No signal. No contact. Phones displayed No Service in cold white letters. The bus sped forward.

      Where to? And why?

      The bus devoured the road.

      Beyond the tightly sealed windows lay the lights of the city, streets where real people lived, where life continued. But inside, something else had begun.

      Some passengers still clung to hope, to the illusion that this was a mistake. That the driver had lost his mind but would soon be stopped.

      “Maybe it’s a prank,” someone mumbled.

      “Has anyone called the police?” sobbed a girl with pink hair, clutching a phone that still blinked zero bars.

      But Anabel already felt it in her skin – no. This was not a prank. This was a trap.

      The bus didn’t stop at intersections. Didn’t slow down. It shot through the outskirts, past weeds and abandoned fences, past the border where the city dissolved into scrubland.

      Half an hour passed.

      By then, even the most stubborn of the passengers understood: no one was coming to let them out.

      And then the crowd began to break.

      One man – tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a denim jacket – grabbed an iron rod from beneath a seat and slammed it against the door. Useless. The steel didn’t even dent.

      Another man pulled a pocketknife from his backpack and stabbed it at the lock with frantic desperation. The blade snapped.

      People pounded on the floor, on the walls. They shouted. They begged. Others simply sank to the ground and buried their faces in their hands.

      Panic, thick and black, spilled into the aisle like rising floodwater.

      Only Anabel and Lucia remained seated – backs pressed to their chairs, frozen. Their eyes were wide with terror, but they held on. They knew: as long as they stayed clear-headed, they had a chance.

      Another thirty minutes passed.

      The bus roared through a deserted highway between hills. Now and then, flickers of strange light flashed beyond the shutters – campfires? Or something else, something wrong, like silent lightning trapped under the earth.

      There were sounds, too. Not from inside