About Mr. Smith

Born in Montana and raised in the Midwest of the good ol' US of A, Matthew Jon Smith is a 42-year-old web and applications programmer. But don't let the boring desk job and the immaculate veneer of his innocent face fool you.

Matthew is quite the notorious rascal, known for his homeless street kid shenanigans, including but not limited to: hitchhiking, bus crewing, and train hopping in highly altered states, screaming directly into the abyss on the corners of various western cities while assaulting a guitar, and narrowly avoiding death at every turn.

Matthew didn't avoid death because of any action on his part—quite the opposite, actually. It seemed as if at every possible opportunity, he would hurl himself in the direction of the persons, places, or things that would do him the most harm. He survived by the skin of his teeth (of which there are not many left), only through some unholy luck that seems to follow and curse him wherever he goes.

On October 25th, 2022, Matthew received a package on his doorstep with no return address. Inside were a series of numbered photographs, nine in total, and explicit instructions to translate them into the written word. Matthew did not know that this would change his life forever.

The first couple of pictures were of very real, normal-looking things. They looked old and mundane, like pictures from Matthew's childhood. They were pictures of a little dark-haired girl who appeared to be walking home from school. But who was that behind the abandoned restaurant?

The later pictures in the stack showed impossible things. Horrible things.

The instructions, which explicitly named Matthew and mentioned details of his very personal life, stated that more packages would come and they were all to be turned into written stories. Great riches were promised in return. The only rule was that no one could ever see the pictures but Matthew himself.

Being the ever unscrupulous scoundrel that he is, Matthew began the work at once. That first package became "Little Becky Baker," a story about a young girl who is afraid of the homeless man behind the abandoned diner in her neighborhood.

More packages came, and so did more stories.

But the packages didn't always contain photographs. Sometimes there was a videotape or a cassette in the package; maybe a doll. Sometimes it was something in a body bag wrapped in layers of black industrial-strength garbage bags.

Just like the first, the true contents of these packages were to never be revealed. It was made imperatively clear that the contents were for Matthew's eyes only and that it was the resulting stories that must be shared with the world.