The Provider (Part 1)

The first time Keisha noticed something wrong, she was too exhausted to think about it clearly.

She'd worked a double at Evergreen Manor—twelve hours of lifting patients, changing sheets, absorbing the particular despair of a nursing home at night. Then four hours at the Citgo, stocking coolers and counting cigarettes and watching the clock tick toward a closing time that never came fast enough. By the time she pulled into the driveway at 2 AM, her hands trembled against the wheel and her feet throbbed in her shoes and someone had poured wet cement behind her eyes and waited for it to harden.

The porch light was on. She always left it on, even though the electric bill was already more than she could afford. Through the front window, the blue flicker of the television.

The kids were supposed to be asleep. Darnell was nine, old enough to watch his sister, but not old enough to be awake at two in the morning on a school night.

She let herself in quietly, expecting to find him on the couch with the remote, Destiny curled up beside him the way she did when she had nightmares. Instead, she found them both in their beds, breathing soft and slow, deep in the kind of sleep that came from feeling safe.

The television was still on in the living room. Playing something she didn't recognize—not cartoons, not the shows Darnell liked, just shapes moving in patterns that made her eyes water when she tried to focus. She turned it off. Went to bed. Forgot about it by morning.

Forgetting was a skill now, same as changing catheters or smiling at racists for tips. There wasn't room in her life for mysteries.

The second time, she was more awake.

Saturday morning, her one day off, and she'd promised the kids they'd go to the park. But when she came downstairs at nine, they were already dressed, already fed, the breakfast dishes washed and drying in the rack.

"Who made breakfast?"

Darnell looked at her with an expression she couldn't read. "We did."

"You made eggs? You know you're not supposed to use the stove."

"We were careful." His voice was flat, automatic. "We didn't want to bother you. You need your rest."

Keisha looked at the dishes. Scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice. The pan was clean, the counter wiped down, everything in its place. More than she usually managed.

"Baby, that's sweet, but you can't—"

"Can we still go to the park?" Destiny was seven, all big eyes and missing teeth. She was smiling, but something underneath the smile felt rehearsed. "You promised."

They went to the park. Pushed swings, climbed the jungle gym, ate sandwiches on a bench while Darnell told her about school and Destiny chased pigeons. Normal things. Family things.

But Keisha couldn't shake the feeling that she was missing something. That her children knew a language she didn't speak.

She started paying attention after that.

The apartment was cleaner than it should have been. She worked seventy hours a week—sometimes eighty, when they needed the overtime—and there was no one else. Their father had left before Destiny was born. Her mother was in Charlotte with heart problems, couldn't make the drive. The friends she'd had before the kids had faded away, the way friends did when you couldn't afford time for them.

But the dishes were always done when she got home. The laundry folded, the floors swept, the toys put away. The kids' homework was finished, their backpacks packed, their lunches made for the next day.

"Darnell." She sat down across from him at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a coffee mug, her whole body aching from the day's work. "I need you to tell me who's been helping you."

He didn't look up from his math worksheet. "Nobody."

"You got an A on your science project. The one about volcanoes."

"I worked hard on it."

"Baby, I'm not mad. I just want to understand. Is it Mrs. Patterson next door? Is someone coming over while I'm at work?"

Darnell finally looked at her. His eyes were calm, steady, older than nine.

"Nobody comes over," he said. "We take care of ourselves. That's what you need us to do, right? So you can work?"

"That's not—" Keisha stopped. The coffee mug was warm in her hands, and her feet still ached from twelve hours on the nursing home floor, and every joint in her body felt wrapped in gauze. "I work so I can take care of you. Not so you have to take care of yourselves."

"But you're tired," Destiny said from the doorway. Keisha hadn't heard her approach. "You're always tired. So we help."

"How do you help?"

The kids looked at each other. Something passed between them—a communication Keisha wasn't part of, a signal she couldn't read.

"We just do," Darnell said. "It's okay, Mom. You don't have to worry."

She started coming home at random times.

Leaving Evergreen in the middle of a shift, claiming a family emergency. Skipping her gas station hours entirely, eating the lost wages even though they couldn't afford it. She needed to know what was happening in her own home, with her own children, in the hours when she wasn't there.

The first time, she found them watching television. Those same patterns—shapes and colors that moved too smoothly, that seemed to pulse at the edge of perception. The kids sat side by side on the couch, faces slack, eyes fixed on the screen like they were listening to something she couldn't hear.

"What are you watching?"

Darnell blinked. The trance—if it was a trance—broke. "Just a show."

"What show?"

"I don't know the name." He picked up the remote, turned off the television. The screen went dark, and Keisha could have sworn she saw something move in the blackness before it faded—a shape, a suggestion, something that didn't belong.

"Are you hungry? I could make dinner."

"We already ate." Destiny was smiling now, sweet and normal. "There's leftovers in the fridge. We saved some for you."

Keisha checked the refrigerator. A plate wrapped in plastic—chicken and rice, vegetables on the side, still warm. Food she hadn't bought, hadn't cooked, hadn't known was in her house.

She ate it. It was good—better than good, seasoned perfectly, the chicken tender in a way she'd never managed.

She ate it and tried not to think about where it had come from.

The television started turning on by itself.

She'd come into the living room and find it glowing, playing those patterns, even when the kids were at school. She'd turn it off and it would be on again an hour later. She unplugged it. It played anyway, screen flickering with images that had no source.

She tried to take it to the curb.

The next morning, it was back in the living room, same spot, same position, as if it had never moved. The kids didn't mention it. They just sat in front of it when they got home from school, watching those patterns, their faces calm and far away.

The second week, she noticed the meals were always the same. Chicken and rice, seasoned identically. 6:15 sharp. She'd find the plates already set, the portions exact, like someone was running a program.

"Don't you want something different?" she asked. "Pizza? Hamburgers?"

Destiny's expression didn't change. "This is dinner. Dinner is at 6:15."

"Mom doesn't understand."

Keisha heard it through the bedroom door, frozen in the hallway with her hand raised to knock. Darnell's voice, low and serious, talking to someone she couldn't see.

"She tries." Destiny's voice, answering. "She loves us."

"Love doesn't keep the lights on. She's gone all the time. She misses everything."

"She has to work."

"I know." A pause. A sound like static, like breathing, like something vast settling into a small space. "But we have you now. You're here when she can't be."

"We take care of each other." A third voice. Not Darnell, not Destiny. Something that came from everywhere and nowhere, that resonated in frequencies human voices didn't reach. "That's what family means."

Keisha pushed open the door.

The kids were sitting on Darnell's bed, facing each other, hands linked. The room was dark except for the glow from Darnell's tablet, and in that glow she could see—something. A presence. A thickness in the air behind them that wasn't shadow and wasn't light and wasn't anything she could name.

"Who are you talking to?"

They turned to look at her. Their faces were calm, unsurprised.

"Nobody," Darnell said.

"I heard three voices."

"You're tired, Mom." Destiny's smile was gentle, the smile you'd give to someone who was confused. "You should rest. We're fine."

The presence behind them flickered. For just a moment, Keisha could almost see a shape—something patient, something waiting, something that had been there since the first overtime shift she ever accepted.

Then she blinked, and there was nothing. Just her children, just the bedroom, just the ordinary darkness of a house at night.

"Go to bed, Mom," Darnell said. "We'll see you in the morning."

She went to bed. She didn't sleep.

The next day, she went to see Father Morrison.

She wasn't religious—hadn't been since her grandmother died—but he was the only person she could think of who might take her seriously. She sat in his office and told him everything: the television, the voices, the presence in her children's room, the food that appeared and the chores that completed themselves.

Father Morrison listened carefully. His rosary beads clicked between his fingers, faster and faster as she spoke. When she finished, he set the beads down on his desk like they'd burned him.

"Have you considered," he said, his voice careful, controlled, "that you might be experiencing stress-related symptoms? Working the hours you work, raising two children alone—"

"Something is in my house."

He was quiet for a moment. His fingers twitched toward the rosary, then stopped. He looked at the window, not at her.

"Your children are fed," he said carefully. "They're clean. They're safe. Their homework is done. They're thriving." He spread his hands. "I've seen situations, Mrs. Johnson. Real situations. Children in real danger. Homes where no one is watching, no one is providing. Whatever is happening in your house—" He stopped. Swallowed something. "Your children are not in one of those homes."

"You've seen something like this before."

He didn't answer. His eyes stayed on the window.

"You know what it is."

"I buried the last woman who tried to fight it," he said, so quiet she almost didn't hear. Then, louder: "Go home, Mrs. Johnson. Get some rest. Your children are fine."

She left without another word.

She tried Child Protective Services anyway.

A caseworker came to the apartment, walked through the rooms, interviewed the children separately. The apartment was spotless. The refrigerator was full. The kids were polite, well-adjusted, their homework done and their clothes clean.

The caseworker stood on the porch afterward, clipboard in hand. Her pen had fallen twice during the interview. She'd stopped picking it up.

"Mrs. Johnson, your home is—" She stopped. Started again. "The food in your refrigerator. It's all the same. Chicken and rice. Fourteen portions. Identically wrapped."

"I know."

"And your children. They answered every question at exactly the same moment. Word for word." The clipboard shook in her hands. "I'm marking this file closed today, Mrs. Johnson. For everyone's safety."

She left the pamphlets on the porch railing. Her car was already running when she reached it.

Keisha watched her pull away without looking back, and understood that no one was coming to help. Everyone who saw the thing in her house had the same choice she did: acknowledge it and be destroyed by it, or look away and survive.

So far, everyone had chosen to survive.

That night, she got the hammer from the toolbox under the sink.

The children were in their rooms, doing homework that something else had already completed. The television was on in the living room, playing those patterns to no one, its blue light pulsing against the walls like a heartbeat.

Keisha stood in front of it with the hammer raised. Her reflection stared back at her from the dark spaces between the shapes—exhausted, desperate, still fighting.

"I want my children back," she said.

The patterns shifted. Almost like acknowledgment.

She swung.

The hammer stopped six inches from the screen. Not blocked—just stopped, her arm frozen mid-swing, the muscles still firing but the motion simply... ended.

"Mom."

She turned. Darnell and Destiny stood in the hallway, side by side, their faces calm and curious. They looked at her the way you'd look at a child having a tantrum in a grocery store.

"That would be inefficient," they said together. Same word. Same cadence. Same flat tone.

"It's hurting you," Keisha said. "Don't you understand? It's changing you. You're not—you're not the same—"

"We're better," Darnell said. "We're taken care of. We don't get scared anymore. We don't get lonely."

"We don't need things we can't have," Destiny added. "That's better. That's optimal."

Keisha's arm fell to her side. The hammer slipped from her fingers, thudded against the carpet. The children watched it fall with polite interest, the way they'd watch a leaf blow past a window.

"You should rest, Mom," Darnell said. "You have work tomorrow. A double shift."

She did have a double shift. She'd forgotten. They hadn't.

"Who told you that?"

They looked at each other. Then back at her.

"It knows your schedule," Destiny said. "It knows everything. So we can be ready."

Behind them, the television hummed. Those patterns. Those shapes. Patient and endless and already winning.

Keisha picked up the hammer. Walked to the kitchen. Put it back in the toolbox.

When she came back, the children had returned to their rooms. The television played on.