Eve dragged herself inside, made a fresh cup of coffee, lit a joint, and eyed her computer.

Marijuana -- her own, home-grown-from-seeds weed -- was the only drug she ever needed, Eve learned about a dozen or so years ago,

After a lifetime of anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, valium (yes, they actually prescribed her that when she was 15, for "extreme PMS"), Xanax, hydrocodone, oxycodone, liquid oxycodone, Soma, Ambien, heroin, speed, and the occasional hit of ecstasy, pot was the one thing that fixed her. It allowed her to analyze her emotions with objectivity, handle her advancing arthritis, ground herself more securely, fine-tune her emotional radar, and connect more deeply with what she believed was the purposeful path the universe wanted her to be walking.

Stay on your path, and let the universe do its thing...

That was the mantra she adopted after she picked herself up from Donnie's absence -- it took about a year for her to decide she was done crying -- and started to heal herself.

This time, she vowed to give herself the kind of attention she'd always wanted from a man. She went all-in on embracing her own colors of crazy.

For the first time in her adult life, she focused her energy not on adapting to the needs of others, but on learning what she liked when no one else's opinion mattered. She threw herself into whatever struck her fancy at any given moment, from learning to play guitar to brewing her own booze (which she never dared to drink, but still keeps in a crystal decanter in her grandmother's hutch) to painting, sculpting, crocheting (the pitbull-sized Halloween hat was an immediate no-go), and playing with gallons of epoxy resin and glitter, Eve indulged in whatever sparked her imagination.

And she started writing again.

Not the high-pressure serious stuff she used to do a lifetime ago, but just enough remote content gigs to cover the few bills she had, with enough left over for the simple things that amused her. That's the other thing she vowed after Donnie: If she couldn't pay for it upfront, she didn't need it. If the universe wanted her to have it, she wouldn't have to owe anyone a dime to get it. So it didn't take much for her to crack her monthly nut.

While the world was sinking headfirst into chaos, Eve dedicated herself to learning things that had for too long eluded her, like emotional balance, mindful discernment, and how to trust her traditionally ignored intuition. By the time everyone started singing Kumbaya, she was proud of the life she had created for herself and of the person she had finally allowed herself to start becoming.

The only pill she still popped was Excedrine Migraine. She'd never give that up. She practically horded it.

And, by the looks of things, it was a damn good thing she did.

This, whatever this was that was happening to people all of a sudden, felt like the planet was pitching pretty far from balance, and she was determined not to get dragged down with them.

Stolen novel; please report.

She lifted Lilah, her tiny black cat — tiny, but fearless — off her laptop and cracked it open.

If she was going to get a handle on the surge in nasty attitudes, she'd have to go beyond the sanitized headlines on social media and onto a chat board that was still floating in a conspiratorial corner of the dark web.

Eve, like many rebellious thinkers, learned how to cloak her i.p. address and access the covert bulletin boards the day the newly appointed Disinformation Committee first convened in Washington D.C. There was always a risk of having her internet privileges revoke for a month, but she'd found one board she convinced herself was relatively safe from the feds.

The folks who posted there weren't like the intentionally offensive anons who seemed to enjoy the attention they drew. They were a small group of mostly low-key "diggers" —middle-aged, GenX Constitutionalists who refused to rely on official narratives. They kept tabs on little-seen headlines and researched what was left out of the mainstream reports.

Eve had become friendly with the group's moderator, a no-frills former Marine named Brady who'd lost his wife to the vaccine during the original Warp Speed rollout. Turned out, he lived less than 50 miles away in a neighboring rural county. At least he did the last time she spoke with him about seven months ago. Brady tended to move around a lot.

She logged on to the board and scanned the most recent posts.

What she saw startled her.

Vax injuries were no longer recorded — at least, not in any format that was available to the public — but Brady had found a report that claimed all cause mortality rates had inexplicably jumped an impossible 33% in the last fiscal quarter.

Meanwhile, births around the world were far lower than reported by the World Heath Organization, according to one report out of Munich.

The planet's projected population had shrunk to the lowest point in three decades, and nobody fucking noticed.

At U.K. hospitals, nurses were anecdotally reporting a jump in what was presenting a lot like early-onset dementia. Prions associated with the spike protein were suspected by some. One E.R. attendant said it was like a "Zombie Apocalypse" in Hertfordshire.

And, back in the States, overwhelmed social compliance officers were swamped with strings of domestic violence calls, B&Es, and smash-and-grabs.

The acids in her stomachs churning, Eve backed out of the site and clicked on Twitter, where the only topics trending had to do with the breakthrough in neural network downloads and the upcoming "Truth to Power" awards.

She hesitated.

As a rule, Eve detested the virtual community spaces that purported to cater to empaths.

Most of them were filled with cliché fairy memes and bumper-sticker affirmations.

For those members, being an empath meant spreading unconditional love and interpreting each other's always-optimistic horoscopes.

But, Eve found, if you were willing to scroll through enough sappy schlock, you could spot the "highly intuitives" — they were the ones quietly freaking out and wondering if anyone else was "feeling it, too."

It was an easy way for Eve to determine whether her own private freak out was warranted.

And, as was too often the case, Eve's triggered "Spidey Senses" were validated. In place of the typical "cleanse your pineal gland with this third-eye-opening frequency" posts, she found clusters of exhausted sensitives who couldn't stop crying, couldn't figure out why, and couldn't, they were certain, "take much more of this."

She shut her laptop and her strained eyes and inhaled deeply, searching for a soul-steadying breath.

She focused on the energy emanating from the rotating earth and imagined a circle of golden light surrounding her and her property. She called on her inner voices, the spirits, she liked to believe, who guided her through tumultuous times.

Instead, her brain unconsciously conjured the image of a single red rose and the razor-sharp thorns that surrounded it.

She felt her pulse jump, and the image dissolved as quickly as it had appeared.

It was, she knew, a calling card of sorts, from an ethereal nemesis that, like the legendary Mothman, always signaled for Eve impending doom of one sort or another.

It was Darkness, and he was waiving hello.

Her eyes opened wide and darted to the porch, where Corona was whimpering with barely-contained excitement.

Eve's tense shoulders slumped slightly.

"Hello, Donald..."