There Is No Way Out

© Andrew Zolt, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0067-1938-5

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

There is no Way Out

A Collection of Short Stories

by AndrewZolt

Just by Writing a Name

Cole had been trudging alone through the jungles of Cambodia for three days now, as if the devil himself were leading him through the suffocating greenery and the sweltering, humming buzz of insects.

The guide he had hired in Phnom Penh had fled in the night, leaving behind only an empty canteen and a crumpled, hastily scribbled note in Khmer. Cole didn’t know the language, but from the trembling lines and smudged ink, he understood: fear. Panic. Something had gone terribly wrong.

At dawn, when the mist still breathed cold over the canopy, he stumbled upon an ancient temple – one that existed on no map, mentioned by no local tongue. The temple seemed to have grown straight out of the earth, wrapped in moss and roots, hidden deep within the folds of time. Stone faces loomed over him – colossal, cracked, empty. They were everywhere: on walls, columns, even strewn across the ground. It was as if the jungle had sprouted through the hollow eyes of dead gods.

The walls were covered in symbols, a strange mixture of runes and scars.

Inside: a cool, dusty hall. The air was unnaturally still, as if any movement might disturb something that should never be woken.

At the center – an altar. And on it – a book.

Cole felt it immediately. It wasn’t just lying there. It was waiting.

The cover was made of leather, stretched and cracked like parched earth, with metal corners darkened by time. Symbols, alien and somehow alive, squirmed faintly across its surface.

He opened it.

Inside – portraits. Horrifyingly realistic. Not drawings. Not etchings. True faces: the wrinkles, the glint in tired eyes, the tiny details that spoke of a life lived. Men, women, children, the old and the young. As if someone had captured not just their appearance – but their very souls.

Some of the faces seemed to be looking right at him. One child, it even seemed, was smiling.

And then – blank pages. White as fresh canvas. Waiting.

Cole, who had survived dozens of expeditions and cursed ruins, felt a chill creep down his spine. He was no novice when it came to ancient relics. But he had never seen anything like this.

He flipped back to the first page. There – a line of text, written in Sanskrit.

Cole snapped a photo and ran it through a translator. The words slowly materialized on his phone screen, as if the book itself were speaking to him:

“The name inscribed into the fabric of the Book shall be woven into the depths of Oblivion. The image will be sealed. The body will vanish. The final page – a mystery. You will learn it in time.”

“The body will vanish…” he whispered.

And then he understood. Suddenly, sharply. As if someone had leaned over his shoulder and whispered directly into his ear.

“Oh damn! Could it be…?”

He pulled a pen from his pocket. For a long moment, he hesitated. But then the memories surfaced.

The office in Budapest. The grim, gray light. The smell of the burnt coffee and cheap air freshener. The boss’s words:

“You’re fired. No severance. We need people who don’t live in hospitals.”

His wife. The wheelchair. The silence. The way he had held her hand – back then, and now, in memory.

His grip tightened on the pen. He wrote the name. Just the name. His former boss.

At first – nothing. Then, it was as if the book exhaled. Slowly, a portrait began to surface on the page: Wrinkles, a narrow nose, squinting, calculating eyes.

The face he knew. Frozen. Motionless. Forever.

Cole smiled. For the first time in what felt like an eternity.

It wasn’t until the fifth day that Cole finally stumbled out of the jungle. Unshaven, dehydrated, his stomach twisted with cramps, fever burning behind his eyes – but the book was still in his backpack.

He called a friend.

“You heard the news?” the friend said. “The boss… he’s gone. Just vanished. Walked out of his house one morning and disappeared. No cameras, no witnesses. The police are baffled.”

“I see…” was all Cole said.

He didn’t feel guilt. Only satisfaction. And the heavy, solid weight of power settling into his palms.

The smugglers had charged him ten thousand dollars to get the book past customs. A cheap price for this kind of power. Cole knew – it would pay for itself many times over. People had always paid well for death. Only now, death was cleaner. Quieter. No bullets. No evidence. He only needed to write the name.

He found his first job quickly – a businessman he knew was swindled out of ten million by a fraudster. Two days later, the face of the swindler appeared on a new page.

The businessman paid generously – hundreds of thousands.

Cole bought a house – cozy, with a fireplace and thick carpet, nestled in a lakeside village.

The clients found him themselves. Sometimes they couldn’t even look him in the eye. They would simply speak the name and give a description. Cole would write, and wait.

Sometimes the portrait would appear within the hour. Sometimes not until midnight, when every lamp in the house had gone dark.

He had become a master. He wrote slowly, with a strange reverence, as if the way he shaped each letter decided the balance between life and death.

And then, one day… He opened the book. And froze. One blank page. The last one.

Only it wasn’t blank anymore. Line by line, his own face was materializing. The right cheekbone. A lock of hair. The chin. Only the left eye and the lips remained.

The book slipped from his hands. The dry paper seemed to pulse. It was alive.

He tried to tear the page out – it wouldn’t budge. He tried to burn it – the book refused to catch fire. He drowned it in the lake – it was back the next morning, dry as ever, lying neatly on his bedside table.

He knew. He understood.

At the bottom of the page, the writing appeared, clear and final: “He who inscribes others shall be the last inscribed.”

He closed the book. Slowly. And for the first time in ten years, Cole wept. He stared at the page where his face was almost complete. The final stroke appeared – a faint shadow under the left eyelid. He couldn’t move. His body filled with lead, like the strings controlling him had been cut.

Cole felt himself slipping away. But not the way people described it – no tunnel, no light, no peace. Only disintegration. His identity crumbling like a house of cards in a storm.

Was he in his body? The book? The shadow on the wall?

And then – the page stirred.

The portrait where his face now lay etched wrote itself. Ink rose from within the fibers like blood from a deep wound:

“Do you want to live? Add new pages. Kill someone. Every person is a new page. You filled a hundred. Now you have to add the same number of blank pages here. Each blank page is one person you killed. Kill. Or die.”

He read it again. And again. First in disbelief. Then in horror. Then in grim, silent acceptance.

Cole looked deep inside himself.

And realized – he wasn’t ready to die. He had suffered too much. Lost too much. Fought too long. Been beaten by life again and again. And only now had he found true power.

Why should he surrender?

He slammed the book shut.

His hand moved stiffly, but it moved. His body obeyed, like a machine sputtering back to life. The nerves returned, sluggish but steady, like water trickling back into a parched riverbed.

He stood. Dressed. Pulled on gloves, tucked a knife into his belt, grabbed a flashlight.

There was no rage in his eyes. No fear. Only resolve.

The first was the woman who had stood in line with him at the supermarket. A woman in her forties, laughing loudly into her phone. He followed her into a dark alley. One strike. Silent.

He trembled – but not from fear. From something else. Awareness.

The blood flowed slowly. There was something almost sacred in it.

When he returned home – the book was already waiting for him. Where his own face had been – now there was a new blank page. Just one. Fresh. Slightly damp, as if it had just been born. Thus began the new count.

He didn’t kill randomly. He chose. Weighed.

And each time, the book rewarded him with a new page. Each life taken gave him back a piece of himself.

He felt no joy. No triumph. Only duty. A vow. One hundred lives for his own.

The hundredth person was a girl. Almost random. He caught her near the station.

It was late. A light rain misted the streets.

She was walking fast, her eyes on her phone. He struck – swift, precise, as always. It was all as usual: A blow to the head with the hatchet.

He returned home. The house had long since turned into a tomb – a grey crypt where the air smelled of paper, blood, and fear.

The book was waiting. He opened it. The page began to fill: the outline of a face, a forehead, hair, lips, eyes.

And then he froze. He staggered back. Stepped forward again. Rubbed his eyes.

No! No, no, no!

The face on the page – Sophie.

He hadn’t seen her in six years. Not since the divorce. Since the horror with the paralysis. Since he had disappeared from his daughter’s life.

He hadn’t recognized her at the station. She had changed. Grown. Matured.

And he… he—

“No… It’s impossible… I would have known… I would have…”

He hurled the book against the wall.

It didn’t open. It simply lay there, closed – as if it had turned its back on him.

He wept. Truly. Tears poured from him like blood from a wound – with unbearable pain.

He stopped eating. He didn’t turn on the lights.

The book lay in the corner, almost alive, almost watching.

Sometimes at night he could hear it – pages rustling softly, all by themselves.

On the third day, he found the strength – he opened it.

Her face was still there.

But now there was a line beneath it, just like always. Only now, the words were different:

“You killed to live. Now live with it. Or become a page.”

He grabbed a knife. Pressed it to his throat. His hand wouldn’t move.

“Why?.. Let me… Please!”

And he understood.

The book would not let him go. Not through death, not through repentance.

On the fourth night, Cole woke up to the sound of crying. Soft, distant – as if someone was weeping in another room.

But the house was empty.

He got up and walked barefoot down the hallway. Silence. Darkness.

Only the book lay on the table, as always – open.

He stepped closer.

And then he heard it. A daughter’s voice: familiar, beloved.

“Daddy… Daddy, please… stop. Don’t let it take more…”

He recoiled.

“Sophie?” he whispered. “Is that you?”

The book answered with a dry rustle. Its pages turned on their own.

A new page.

His brother’s face – the brother he hadn’t seen in twenty years. Then his childhood friend. Then an old teacher, the kind woman who had taught him to read.

He hadn’t held a pen in weeks. He hadn’t written a single name.

But the book was writing for him now, taking those he had once loved.

He 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 the bus – but outside. As if something was following them. Running behind. Or riding just out of sight.

Then the road began to climb – toward gray, black, brooding mountains.

Anabel smelled something strange. Dampness. Mold. Soil. Thick and choking, like the inside of a crypt.

And then – the bus braked hard. People screamed and tumbled to the floor. The doors – dead and silent until now – suddenly hissed and slammed open.

At first there was only blackness. Then, in the headlights, they saw a wide concrete platform. A metal gate ahead.

And tall figures in uniform, holding rifles across their chests. They stood in silence, waiting for those they were meant to receive. To receive like cargo, like disposable material.

Someone tried to run. A shot rang out. No warning. The man collapsed.

Screams. Chaos.

Everyone understood at once: there was no escape.

They were shoved out of the bus – rough hands, rifle butts, blows. Men were herded to one side. Women to another.

Anabel gripped Lucia’s hand with all her strength.

“Don’t let go,” she whispered.

But a gloved hand pulled them apart. The girls were dragged to opposite ends of the platform.

A minute later, the massive gate groaned open – like the mouth of some underground beast.

And they were forced into the corridor beyond. Into the dark.

Where something below was waiting.

They walked. Barefoot. Disoriented.

The corridor was narrow, with damp concrete walls that wept moisture. Somewhere deeper, a constant low hum vibrated through the floor – either machines or something alive, pulsing deep beneath the earth.

Anabel walked as if in a dream, her legs numb. She searched for Lucia’s face, but saw only strangers – wide-eyed, slick with sweat, full of silent dread. The guards in black uniforms drove them forward like cattle to the slaughter.

And every step pulled them farther from the life they had known.

At the end of the tunnel, light met them. But it wasn’t the light of salvation. It was cold, clinical – as if stepping into an autopsy theater. A massive tiled chamber, white and sterile.

Screens glowed along the walls, flashing incomprehensible diagrams and medical data. Figures in white coats moved among the instruments. Their faces were masked, eyes hidden behind protective visors. In the center of the room – metal tables, and strange capsule-like units, like refrigerated containers.

One of them stepped forward. An older man, maybe in his sixties – thin, silver-haired, with the gaze of a predator. His face held no emotion – only clinical detachment, like a surgeon inspecting a frog pinned to a tray.

“Welcome,” he said in cold, accentless Spanish. “Resisting will only make it worse.”

A wave of moans rippled through the group. Someone dropped to their knees. Anabel stood frozen.

Then the man smiled. And it was the worst smile she had ever seen in her life.

The sorting began.

They were examined – blood samples, vitals, scans. Those deemed “suitable” were marked and separated. Those with any sign of illness or weakness were quietly escorted through another door.

Anabel struggled when they took her arm, but gloved hands held her fast.

When her turn came, the silver-haired man studied the tablet in front of him.

“Excellent specimen. Young. Healthy. Prime candidate.”

She tried to scream, but no sound came out.

They strapped a bright red wristband to her arm. Red meant: living donor. Priority harvest.

Later, as they were marched down another corridor, Anabel saw it.

A sign painted above one of the steel doors: