Sam's alarm rings on his phone. But he's in deep sleep so he doesn't wake up until the church bells are ringing, ten minutes after. He looks at his phone.

"6 am! I'm going to be late."

He drives the kids to school and sees their suspicious gazes at him from the car mirror.

"What is it?"

Simon: Lindsay told me that you're doing evil stuff.

Lindsay: We think that you've been killing someone.

Sam starts to laugh.

"Is this a joke? I was just talking about my nightmares."

Simon looks at Sam with a straight face.

"You're lying."

"No, I'm not."

Lindsay: Where are you driving after you've driven us to school?

"To my work."

They go out of the car to their school and don't respond when Sam waves to them and says "goodbye". Sam looks himself in the car mirror, miserable.

"What have I done?"

Sam takes a deep breath. He gets a call from the man and answers.

"I hate you."

"Then, don't."

"You've ruined my life!  I'm losing my family and friends just because of the stupid deal! Tell me one good reason why I shouldn't hate you."

"You're going to get them back when the time comes."

"Really? And how can you prove that?"

"They'll know why you were forced to kill people. But they will never find the person behind it. Me."

"Have you ever been discovered by the police or anything like that?"

"No. Never."

"So... you're not real?

"I'm like the devil. Just like you wrote in your diary."

"How could you spy on me like that? Okay, spy on me all you want, just don't go near my girlfriend and our kids."

"I'm not going to do that. Unless you break the rules. If so, I have the right to destroy your life."

Sam frowns.

"You're crazy. How long does it take until this is over?"

"One year."

"What!?"

"Why are you so surprised? Did you think that you would obey me for just half a year ?"

Sam snorts.

"No time for jokes."

Sam turns off the call. He drives to his house and sprinkles animal feed to the chickens. They're walking around inside a big cage, outside of the house.

"Here you go, cute little chickens. Eat as much as you want."

The chickens gather around the food and starts to eat.

"You must have been starving."

Sam goes to the front door to the house and locks it up with the keys. When he walks in, a voice mail is playing on the telephone. The only word he can hear is the end of the voice mail, "advance". Sam puts the voice mail on replay.

Sam's boss: How long are you going to have your vacation? I need you to send me an email about it. If it's more than half a year, you will unfortunately not be able to work with us anymore. Sorry in advance..."

Sam sighs.

"I guess the only thing I've got nowadays is bad luck."

Sam goes to the kitchen and pours up a glass of wine from a wine bottle. Every time everything goes wrong for him, he drinks a glass of wine to comfort himself. The last time it happened was before he got his girlfriend, Riley. Sam only manages to take a sip of the wine before he starts to cry.

"Why did this happen? I shouldn't have listened to the stupid deal and I should have ran away from the mysterious man."

Sam takes another sip and tries to calm himself.

"But my girlfriend still loves me."

Sam hopes that Riley never will figure out that he is doing something mysterious. He sighs and drinks the whole glass in one gulp. Someone knocks at the window. He goes closer and gets a jump scare by the woman he'd killed the day before. She just appeared, with paler skin than before and worn-out clothes.

"Why do I get these hallucinations!?"

The woman answers, angrily.

"Its because you're a murderer, Sam. You are evil and selfish."

"I'm being forced."

"I don't believe you. You should feel guilty."

The woman disappears from the garden. Sam growls and smashes the glass to the wall.

"I'm tired of being the bad guy!"

His voice echoes through the neighborhood. Sam sighs.

"Now you've done it, Sam... Everybody here heard me."

Sam goes to the TV and swaps from the news to other channels. He finds a horror movie, "The Birds". It's the part where Melanie sits at a bench and listens to kids from a school while they're singing in a choir. The birds are coming, one at at a time. Sam starts to yawn.

"Exciting..."

Sam wants to watch the movie but he can't keep his eyes open. He falls to sleep and wakes up at a bench on a schoolyard. He looks around and sees his kids' school. Dozens of birds are sitting in a tree above him but he can't see them. One of the birds flies to the bench and sits beside him. Sam smiles to the bird.

"Hello, little bird. Yesterday, I saw a movie with birds looking exactly like you."

The bird looks up at the other birds in the tree and they fly to the ground.

"Is this a nightmare...?"

The birds nod and pick up weapons from the ground.

"Revenge!", they say in unison and start to shoot him. But he doesn't die. He's just getting hurt. Simon and Lindsay run to him.

Simon: If you keep killing people, things are going to end up very badly for you..."

Sam groans in pain.

"Tell them to stop!"

Lindsay looks at the birds.

"Stop..."

Sam wakes up, sweaty and scared. He turns the TV off and takes a deep breath, wondering what would happen if he stopped killing people. Would the mysterious man disappear? Or would he destroy Sam's life, just like he told him? Sam goes up from the sofa to the bedroom, and falls asleep immediately. The short day now felt like a long day, considering everything that's been happening to him. Sam wakes up by Riley, who's poking on him.

"Sam, wake up."

Sam doesn't respond.

"Wake up!"

Sam wakes up, shocked because she almost yelled right into his ear.

"What!? You scared me half to death!"

"You're late!"

"Oh no... Aren't you late, then?"

Riley shakes her head.

"You know that I work later than you."

Sam gets reminded of his break from the work. He doesn't want to tell his family about it because if he did, the kids would suspect him even more. And his girlfriend, Riley, would probably be suspicious too.

"Okay, I'll walk up from the bed to drive to work."

"Would you mind driving me to my work? I've already given the kids a ride to school and then I came here to wake you up but you-"

"- I'll drive you."

"Thanks."

"No problem, Riley. That's what couples do for each other."

Riley smiles.

"Yeah."

They walk into the car and Sam drives Riley to her work at the restaurant. Riley looks out through the window while tapping her fingertips to the music on the radio. It's a 2000's pop song. She waves her window down and sings to the song. Sam starts to sing too. When they arrive, the restaurant owner has just changed the sign "closed" to "open". Riley walks out of the car and she and Sam wave goodbye to each other. Sam drives away from the restaurant, having his bag with the mask in the back seat.

"I  think I know where the man who gave me the mask wants me to go. Somewhere I can face a stranger alone."

Sam drives to a pet shop and goes to the cashier. He smiles to him, perkily.

"What can I help you with?"

"Ehh... Can... we speak in private?"

"Sure! Come with me so that you can choose a pet for you."

"That wasn't what I meant."

Sam looks around at the other people and remembers how the mask could freeze people's moves. He takes the mask out of his bag and puts it on. The people in the store gets paralyzed and the cashier stares at them, shocked.

"What are you going to do...?"

Sam wolf-whistles. Every pet in the store comes to the cashier and attacks him. He screams loudly but the animals are like hypnotized. Sam smiles sinister. The cashier dies and Sam runs away from the store to the outside of the car. When he takes his mask off, the people in the store are moving again. When they see the dead cashier, they get chaotic. Sam goes into the car and drives away from the pet shop.

"That was close... Too close. I could have been caught. What about when it really happens? My crimes will be all over the news."

Sam takes a deep breath and drives to his house. Since no one else is there, he can pretend that he's at work. He sends an email to his boss, on his phone.

"Hello, Carl. I'm going to be unavailable for a year. I'm feeling very ill so unfortunately, I can't work at the office anymore.

Best regards,
Sam Jones"

Sam looks at the blank TV in front of him, thinking about his lie. Not even the TV can cheer him up, even if he would turn it on. If he doesn't get money from the work, the family will know that he doesn't work there anymore.

Simon and Lindsay look at the news on their phones. Lindsay sees an article; "Three deaths in three days". She clicks at it and looks at the time when it happened.

"None of this happened when we were at home."

Simon looks at Lindsay's phone.

"But... how do you know it's him?"

"We don't have any proof... yet."

Sam looks at the view from the window, sitting in the sofa. Suddenly, the cashier breaks the window and walks in through it. Sam looks shocked and starts to shiver.

"Help!"

The cashier throws a piece of glass at Sam's leg. Sam screams in despair. Then, he throws another, bigger piece of glass at the TV. The glass breaks and falls to the floor.

"You wanted to kill me."

"No. It's not true. I was forced!"

"Yes, it is..."

Sam closes his eyes in two seconds to get rid of the hallucination. When he opens them, the cashier is gone. Sam breathes a deep sigh of relief, hoping that closing his eyes will work next time too.

The window is full of glass shatter and the TV is destroyed. How will his girlfriend and their kids take it? What if they think that he did it and Riley tells him to move from the house? Sam can tell them a lie about thieves. He doesn't want them to think that he's crazy, and they would, if he told them that he'd seen a ghost.

Someone knocks at the door. Riley has keys to the house so it can't be her. So who could it possibly be? Sam goes to the door and opens. It's Carl. He holds yellow roses and a goodbye card and hands them over to Sam.

"Here. It's a goodbye gift. Me and everyone at the work has written name signatures on the card."

"Wow... Thank you, Carl. It was really nice of you."

"You're welcome."

"Come in!"

Carl walks into the house.

"Nice house."

He walks into the living room and his face turns neutral. He stares at the window and the TV.

"What happened?"

"Thieves. They tried to take the TV but I stopped them. Therefore, they smashed the windows and the TV..."

Carl looks shocked at Sam.

"Oh no..."

Sam nods.

"I guess we have to buy a new TV now."

"I can pay the money for the TV and the window."

"No, you don't have to-"

"-Really. You have enough bad luck as it is."

"Thank you so much, Carl."