Page 5 of Silent Shadows

And yet…

“How long do you think I could have, Miss Producer?” I ask.

She can’t hide her satisfied smile. “A few weeks, maybe a month. You’ve got a backlog of content. And we can bring back flashback Friday episodes for a little while to tide us over.”

“A month,” I repeat.

“Max.”

I chew on the inside of my cheek. “And how do I find a crew?”

“I’m on it.”

“Of course you are,” I echo. Marissa doesn’t pitch half-baked ideas. She pitches fully formed, terrifying ones.

“Let’s take the night to think about it. Sleep on it, okay?” she suggests.

“Deal,” I say, standing to tuck my laptop into my bag. We shut down the studio and say our goodbyes.

By the time I get home, LA feels quieter than it should. Or maybe that’s just me—everything dialed down after a day spent pretending to be on. My heels come off somewhere between the front door and the kitchen, abandoned like evidence of a version of myself I’m not sure I want to keep playing. I toss my bag onto the counter, stare at it for a second as if it might have answers, then keep moving. Wine feels like the obvious choice, but I skip it. That feels cliché. Instead, I grab a cherry ginger kombucha, twist the cap, and let the fizz fill the silence.

I don’t turn on any lights beyond the soft glow over the stove as I head to my bedroom. The apartment is all clean lines and neutral tones—very grown woman who has her life together. Which is funny, because right now I feel like I’m standing in the middle of it with absolutely no idea what the next move is supposed to be.

Before I landed on this podcast persona, I loved pulling people into conspiracy-theory rabbit holes with me. And then I hid that part of me. So I can’t deny there’s a buzz of excitement under my skin, but that has to be just nerves because this is ridiculous to even think about. I mean, Bigfoot hunting?

I let out a quiet laugh, shaking my head as I strip off my jeans and put on sweatpants. “You’ve officially lost it, babe,” I murmur to myself.

But instead of dismissing it, my brain does the annoying thing of lingering. It replays Marissa’s voice. You’re too good at what you do to coast.

I sigh, padding into the living room. My couch practically swallows me whole when I drop onto it, curling into the corner like I’ve done a thousand times after a long day. Remote in hand, I scroll through shows without thinking—half watching thumbnails blur together, half still stuck in that conversation.

Then I see it. A new Bigfoot documentary.

I pause.

There’s no world where I should be watching this. I know that. This is how it starts: ironic viewing evolves into Googling “credible Sasquatch evidence” at two in the morning, like someone who has fully unraveled.

“Absolutely not,” I say, already pressing play.

The theme music kicks in—dramatic, campy, intense—and I sink further into the couch, pulling a blanket over my legs like I’m settling in for the long haul. The camera cuts to a group of people in stained hiking gear and camo standing in the woods, whispering about “possible structures” and “tree breaks.”

“This is so stupid,” I whisper through a smile.

But I don’t turn it off, and I don’t stop smiling.

Five minutes in, I’m analyzing them like I would any other cast of over-the-top characters. The leader—the intense one who speaks like everything is life or death, with a deep country twang and a stained tank top. The skeptic. The overly enthusiastic believer. The quiet one who probably knows more than they let on. It’s not that different from any group dynamic I’ve ever dissected on the podcast. Just with more trees, and significantly less eyeliner.

Ten minutes in, I’m talking to the TV. "That's a setup. No way those branches could twist without human intervention." I frown, leaning forward. “Also, why are they acting like that noise couldn’t be, I don’t know, literally anything else?”

Fifteen minutes in, I’ve stopped pretending I’m above it.

By the time they start doing a nighttime call session—actual grown adults howling into the dark and waiting for something to answer—I should be out. That should be my limit.

Instead, I pull the blanket tighter.

The woods on screen are pitch black, the kind of darkness that feels heavy. The kind that makes you hyperaware of every sound, every shift in the air. One of them calls out again, their long, echoing whoop that disappears into the trees.

And then—a crack in the distance.