Subs We Work With

Nothing in the story I am about to tell is going to be supernatural or unexplainable. There is no great mystery to gleam out of my telling. There won’t be any surprises or revelations made here. I am merely making my way through the fog of amnesia. I am, literally speaking, retracing the steps I had lost many years ago.

I am writing this to the cold auditory landscape of Maníi’s In The Depths of Darkness album. If any of this comes out as more depressive, or colder than it should, I apologize in advance. For me, this process is a way to get rid of the intrusive thoughts that keep up at night. Strange mental pictures sneaking up on me in the quiet hours of the day from within the boundless darkness of the night. Bizarre images of the dead and the dying circling me in their uninterrupted, eternal rest.

This specific battle with unreasonable fears and anxiety started after a funeral. One of many such battles with an incurable enemy, but I’ll get to that later. My long-time friend, George. He passed away from cancer recently. It ate at him like a starved animal. He was gone almost in an instant. Between the time he told me about his diagnosis and his passing, five months had passed. In that timeframe, life had bled from out of his body. Five months is what it took for the malignancy to reduce him from a giant of a man to a mummified husk, barely able to keep his massive skeletal frame upright. George could’ve been a strongman if he wanted to. He certainly had the size for it. He was a gentle giant, though.

The last time we spoke, he asked me if I remember the films we used to make together as kids. I remembered something about it. Didn’t remember the details at all, however. He told me all about it, bringing back a flood of pleasant memories. When I was a kid, I wanted to get into cinematography. A bunch of friends of mine and I did. We all aspired to be a film-making crew together, so during our days in middle school in the early aughts, we made a bunch of short films and sketches. None of it panned out, as I’m sure is clear by now.  

George reminded me of the compact discs I was supposed to have with all these projects of ours. He said he watched a bunch of them recently and that it was a shame we never got to make anything professionally. I scoffed at the idea when we spoke, thinking we must’ve been incredibly amateurish about our craft.

Only after his passing did I find the will and the CDs to revisit this old passion of mine. One I had forgotten I even had. Upon a second viewing of the material, I can proudly say that we were too good for a bunch of teens doing amateur short films.

There were a bunch of sketches and movies there; ranging from slapstick comedy with toilet humor to action-style flicks riddled with parkour sequences. There’s also a hype video someone made of my swimming. I used to be a competitive swimmer in my youth, that is until an injury forced me out of the sport.

Then there was this one film whose title had an aura to it. The Rasp. For a reason I couldn’t understand back then, I couldn’t get myself to play the video for what seemed like an hour. Something about that thing felt off. Granted, there was nothing off about the film. It took me a moment, but I finally played the file. It took about fifteen seconds of the dry, labored breathing we used as the score at the beginning of the video to take me decades back. Pausing the video, I took a moment to soak in my returning memories.

The Rasp was supposed to be our big break. That’s what we saw it as, our so-called big break. The memories came back flooding. This was the first time we treated it like real cinematography. There were a bunch of kids from school and the neighborhood I didn’t even know involved in this thing. We had them as extras in the film. We made the whole thing with utmost realism in mind. It seemed as real as we could afford to make it on a non-budget.

A twelve-minute motion picture exploring the unmatched beauty of human mortality in all of its oppressive glory. I was playing the role of a dead person, along with dozens of other kids. We were all covered in grayish body paint to make ourselves look as close to real corpses as possible.

I started remembering how we covered the walls of the building we filmed in with drawings made by the elder sister of one of my friends, Kathrine Monserrate. She was one of the few cool adults around. We’re still in touch to this day. I remember she used to mix her dye with her blood. I know she’s making a living as an artist and an art teacher, but I’m not sure if she’s still doing the blood thing. When her brother, Mark, convinced her to work on the creepy art for our project, she ended up showing me her process. You’d never believe someone who is the epitome of sanity would just cut open their hand and then shove a paintbrush into the wound, but that’s how she did it. She’s the one who introduced all of us into “cool adult” music too. She kept saying that Nu Metal and Grunge, which were the mainstream heavy music, back then, were boring and for losers.

Ah, these were simpler times…

Anyway, once the euphoria of finding something I couldn’t find for so long finally subsided, I pressed play and let my eyes get lost in the gloomy atmosphere of George’s camera, slowly exploring a poorly lit concrete structure. The erratic breathing in the background seemed to crawl out of my speakers and into my room, almost engulfing me.

He panned the camera onto a series of purposefully poorly drawn images hanging on the wall, some hanging loosely on the wall. As he passed drawing after drawing, a clear picture emerged. It was a tale of great sorrow and pain boiling into pure hatred.

It was a story of a strange man and his little dog, much like the artist who drew that man’s life. The man was a painter. He kept painting his little four-legged friend over and over. He seemed happy in the first drawings shown. Deeper into the corridor there was a drawing hanging of the two walking down the street, the backdrop of the story growing increasingly dark.

As George went deeper into the corridor, the drawings turned darker; a group of hooded figures showed up from the darkness, first mocking the man and his dog, then pulling out bats and knives to attack the man. It was horrible, the awful breathing noise, the grimy drawing style. The camera slightly shook as George attempted the emotional weight of the story unfolding before my eyes.

A couple of feet deeper and the man is being beaten up, the next drawing has the little animal attempting to defend its owner.

In the next, it’s struck down.

Further, they’re both on the floor, beaten and bloodied.

The dog ends up gravely injured.

It doesn’t make it.

The following drawing is of the man weeping over his dog.

Followed by one where he is about to bury his deceased companion.

My heart was in shambles watching this, the breathing in the background slowly turned into heaving pounding in my ears as the drawings shifted from a depiction of a physical tragedy to the mental anguish of a man who had lost his everything.

If pain and anguish were monsters, Katie’s amorphous, shadowy demonic design crawling out of a defeated man’s shape would probably be an accurate depiction. When George passed the final drawing on the wall, I could feel the cold air of the recorded space tightening its grip on me. It was a grotesque, misshapen apparition of a man metamorphosed into an abyssal monstrosity.

The camera made a sharp turn to face a door with a peeling paint job. It was an old. Ancient, even. No one was in that building for years before we got there, I reckon. The heaving in the background has morphed into a throaty clicking noise that won’t stop trying to crack my skull open.

George’s hand pushed the door open. It creaked through the clicking noises, grating against my eardrums, and an imagined scent of dust assaulted my nostrils. I am completely immersed in the film. The silhouettes of people lying in neatly arrayed beds were visible from the edge of the room where George was filming.

A single lightbulb, barely working, hung overhead, swinging softly. It was hardly illuminating anything in that room. Producing just enough light to make out the details clearly, while adding to the sinister feeling of the film.

With slow and deliberate steps, he entered the room. My heart began racing as my mind was expecting some kind of catch. A jump scare, a loud shriek bouncing against the walls, something. Logic and experience told me something had to happen, but my memory wasn't complete yet to tell me what was supposed to happen. George approached the first bed, capturing a human silhouette covered with sheets. Cautiously placing his hand on the sheet, he slowly pulled it down, and I turned anxious watching him do that. I was expecting something, bloody, rats, a roar, a real monster lurking beneath the sheet, a head rolling onto the floor to scare the life out of the camera-carrying boy.

Instead, all I got is another kid, pale and motionless, his eyes closed, imitating death.

The revelation didn’t put me at ease. Instead, my anxiety kept getting worse with each passing second I was viewing the film.

George continued walking around the room, approaching every bed, removing each sheet, and allowing me to stare at the faux corpse beneath. Some of whom are familiar, while others are strangers.

And as that process unfolded, I kept thinking something’s got to happen.

Something had to happen.

Something would happen.

Someone would bite him with force.

Someone wouldn’t wake up after the camera stops rolling.

There would be a real dead body under one sheet.

A knife-swinging man was going to emerge from the darkness.

Nothing, nothing happened. It was a mock corpse after a mock corpse after a mock corpse. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was wrong. My appearance in the film didn’t make me feel any better. It made my dread worse. By the time George had reached the bed I was lying in, I completely forgot I was one of those corpses, too. When he finally pulled the sheet from my past self’s head, we both screamed at what awaited beneath. Me and film-George. A dead, empty stare. My dead, empty stare. I wore contact lenses to make it seem as if the fog of the moribund had completely veiled my open eyes. A perverted version of my past yet simultaneously future self stared at me from the screen. There was something disturbingly uncanny in the corpse-me, and while the movie continued with George continuing his documentation of the mock corpses, I couldn’t keep watching the film.

The visual of my mortality remained burned into my retinas, and for a few heart-wrenching moments, I saw it everywhere I turned my gaze.

A sudden feeling that I can only describe as a fire alarm without sound going off in my head forced me to pause the video. The floodgates of my subconsciousness broke down, allowing lost memories to resurface. Perhaps it wasn’t the loss of memory as much as it was the suppression of unpleasant memories. Staring at a poorly lit silhouette on a bed on my screen, I remember how a week after we finished working on this thing, Seth, an older friend of ours who already had a driver’s license, was driving us home after classes; Chris, George, and I. Someone flew from the opposite direction into our lane, slamming headfirst into us.

I found all of this in hindsight. My head and neck got messed up, the impact scrambled my brain, and I had lost recollection of a long timeframe. George ended up hospitalized too. He had a bunch of broken ribs and a ruptured lung, and Chris never made it.

Seth was virtually unharmed, barring a few scratches and bruises from the windshield shattering on top of him.

I sat there, staring at the screen. Film George was about to approach Chris. My insides twisted in knots and my head turned unbearably heavy. I felt sick with my vision shifting between the frozen picture on the screen and the memory of that day.

The screeching of wheels and a brief flash of burning pain coursing along my body before everything vanished… I felt ill. As if my body had developed a fever. Shaking, I turned the video off. There’s no way I’m going to watch that thing ever again. I don’t know what else I had forgotten, but I don’t even want to know at this point. I was so shaken by the sudden recollection that I ended up getting sick.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched The Rasp, but the images from the film are still lingering in my mind. I haven’t slept right since because of a relapsing insomnia. The visual of this morgue containing my childhood friends and acquaintances is trapping me inside my mind.

It’s as if something inside of me wants to see the film’s ending. My mental innards cling to the hope that there’s some catharsis at the end of it all, but there is none. I know how it ends. There is nothing there. Only different shades of death. A painful memory of an inevitable future.l

I ended up talking to Katie about the film. She said she remembers working on it fondly. She still has the original paintings somewhere in her collection. Out of morbid curiosity, I asked her how the film ends.

She said that George uncovers all the bodies in the building, and leaves the same way he came. However, instead of panning his camera on the right wall of the corridor, he pans it on the left one. Revealing a continuation of her story. In these drawings, the man has finally lost his sanity to hatred. He plans on killing those who killed his dog but always ends up finding them dead, murdered brutally. This continues, along with his spiral further into madness. Katie depicted his loss of humanity with purposefully inhumanly shaped screams and grimaces.

The story reaches its climax when he finally reaches the last person he set out to kill, but he ends up finding out what had killed them all. A vile dog monster that mauls its last victim in front of its eyes. The beast reveals itself to be the man’s old dog, turned into a vengeful spirit. There’s a rather heartwarming drawing of the beast wagging its tail at the sight of its previous owner. This is where Katie’s grim brilliance shines brightest. With the last five drawings, she snatches all hope away from the observer. The man doesn’t recognize the beast as his old friend and ends up running away in fear.

In the penultimate drawing shown in the film, the man is dying in a pool of his blood, after being run over in incoming traffic. The beast looks on dejected at its dying master as its form slowly disintegrates in the last picture of the film and the screen turns black.

Katie sent me scans of the drawings and hell; it looks far worse than it sounds. Features lose cohesion as the story progresses. Katie probably used a lot of blood to draw the final few scenes of that story. She made the last few drawings entirely rusty red.

I started feeling better again. Until today, when I received the news that Seth ended his life. He had never been the same after the accident; he became depressed and withdrawn. Even though it wasn’t his fault, he still blamed himself for Chris’s death and George’s and mine’s injuries. We drifted apart after the fact, but I never blamed him for any of this. Neither did George. As far as I know, the Moores, Chris’s family, never blamed him either.

As I was reading the text message about Seth’s death, the demons in my head twisted Katie’s voice into a low, hoarse drawl echoing against the wall of my skull.

“Seth Novak, remember him? He played the final dead guy in The Rasp. I gave him a nasty makeup contusion around the neck for his part in the film.” Boomed in the back of my mind.

Jesus Christ… Seth hanged himself.

I was 7 when I first saw it. Playing in my room with my sister’s dollhouse, I saw the giant, hairy beast in my mirror. I remember jumping away from the doll house when its deep, sunken eyes made my gaze. I screamed to my mom, and even though she checked every nook and cranny of the room, I knew it was still there, waiting for me to slip up.

As the years went on, the problem had only gotten worse. My mother finally got me in to see a therapist, thinking it was the product of an overactive imagination. Several rounds of medication later, and I could finally bear to look at myself in the mirror, knowing the vision of this beast was gone for good.

Twenty years later, I’ve made a name for myself. I have many followers online, which is why I am being careful in posting this. I can’t keep it inside forever. I just can’t. Yesterday, I saw it again for the first time in years. I had done my makeup for a little coffee date in the city, got my outfit together, and hit the town. In retrospect, I had forgotten to take my pills. It was a quick decision, but by the time I realized, I was already downtown. I could just take them when I got back.

The city felt overwhelming, but I had found that it was the kind of overwhelming I usually thrived in. Today, however, was different. I felt like someone was following me. In the city, you’re just a dot in the big painting, and odds are, nobody was following me, but I felt off nonetheless.

I walked in front of an old, abandoned department store. One of the victims of the pandemic, though still standing tall in all its unflinching isolation. The windows were still a bit reflective, and I saw it behind me. I jumped back, and the pedestrians looked for a moment, only to go back to their lives, their toil. The longer fur, the bigger demeanor, and the dripping fangs caught my gaze, and I ran, stumbling over my heels, but refusing to stop for anything or anyone. I knew it was all in my head. The doctors, the therapists, the psychiatrists had convinced me of that throughout the years.

I ran as fast as I could, until I was at the little coffee shop, barely able to catch my breath. My date was sitting there, and he was just.. Staring at me. I walked over, introduced myself. For this story, I’ll use Katy, though I have changed my name for anonymity. These kinds of breaks in reality were common, but if anyone in my life knew I was feeling it, I just know my whole life would fall apart. I caught my composure and began the date in earnest. He was nice. A career man finding time for love. He was a romantic, and I was definitely feeling it. I liked him. He made a couple odd glances at me, perhaps my mask falling momentarily, but overall it was a wonderful little date.

Moving myself back to my little loft apartment, I saw many reflections, the beast shifting in size and shape, but textured the same. The eyes moved towards me, and the beast smiled. Or at least I thought it smiled. The thing became more humanoid the more I saw it, its eyes settling, its mouth forming, and its teeth receding until it looked almost human, but not quite. The giant feet, hands, and wide stature forced itself into the corners of my vision, and as I got out of the bus taking me home, I ditched my heels and made a run for that. I pulled my blinds, turned off all the lights, and attempted to breathe for once. I had calmed myself down a bit.

After my long shower, I washed all the inlay sweat and dirt from the city until I felt clean. Mostly clean. As clean as I could reasonably be. As the steam washed over my bathroom mirror, I opened the door to let the cool air defog it a bit, so I could at least take my pills and do some minor skin care. I used a rag to wipe off a little square of my reflection, and began my work. Or at least I tried. I tried so hard, but my hands would not move, my body frozen, my feet planted firmly on the bath matt. I saw it, first out of the corner of my eye. The beast, oh the beast that had haunted my nightmares and taunted me on my sleepless nights. It stood behind me, embracing my shoulders and smiling. It was my height, just covered in matted fur and moisture.

The thing smiled at me, it DARED to smile at me. With the last remaining shred of energy, I reached for my pills, downed double my daily dose. I needed to get this thing out of my head. I was feeling good about myself, and this beast was not going to ruin that. As the pills hit my stomach, the beast faded, and I took a sigh of relief. I looked at myself, fully, in the mirror, and before I knew it, I had taken a long, hard look at myself. Before my very eyes, the reflection that looked back at me and shifted, slowly at first, barely noticeable, but by the time my face donned a full beard, I was freaking out. My figure had pushed itself out and up, from an hourglass to an upside down triangle. I had seen this figure before.

A crisis came over me, and I looked down at myself and saw the strings of fur growing. Was this some effect of a full moon? I didn’t know, but I saw clearer than day. I fell to the ground, screeching at the top of my lungs as the visual pain had suddenly become very real. Before I knew it, my upstairs neighbors were banging on my door. I donned a bath robe and a face wrap and put them at ease. To them, I had just taken a nasty fall but I was ok. I had to be ok. My phone began to ring, and I scrambled to get it. It was the man. Let’s call him David. I answered with a quick hello, but winced back when I heard the voice that came out, dark and gravely, far too masculine for the man on the other side. I coughed, tried to force my pitch back up, and talked to him for a moment. He grounded me. I told him I had an allergic reaction and apologized. He knew. Everyone knew.

I went back to the shower, shaved every part of my body over and over again until my skin was red with a rash, nicks and cuts all over from all the times my shivering hand slipped. I had used some bandages to patch myself up, but as I looked in the mirror, I felt better. I was red, but I was hairless yet again, and I felt the rage washing away. I realized I had forgotten my other pills. I downed the first two, and slipped a couple little blue pills underneath my tongue. Back to normal. Back to normal. Back to normal. My thoughts raced. I stared at the pile of fur on my bathroom floor, irrefutable proof that this wasn’t just a vision. Is this the new me, or is this the me I have always been but too dumb to notice. My mom always told me not to play with my sister’s doll house. I shouldn’t have been playing with it anyway.

A little boy should be playing with legos, not dolls. My mom always said that. Twenty years later, I was a girl in the city. A barrage of hormones and pills later, and I felt my body realigning with who I always was.

Not the beast I saw in the mirror.

The cold and merciless kiss of a hammer pounding against my skull. A ruthless expression of love from a malignant force. An act of violence I can’t recall or pinpoint. It left me diseased, broken, and injured.

Wave after wave of red flashes blasted the right side of my head. There was heat, and there was pressure and there was pain. The ache came and went like the waves of the ocean. An ocean of molten lava, that is.

Expanding and retracting.

I was in a void of pure darkness. My brain; the poor rattled thing, it begged me to stay asleep, but the repeated concussive blows traveling from underneath my eye wouldn’t let me stay asleep.

My entire body screamed at me to wake up, screamed at me to open my eyes and face the music. Every organ of mine cried out in pure agony, begging for me to shake off the Sandman’s dust from my eyes. My left arm cried the loudest.

My left arm was on fire, with every fiber of its slowly being reduced to nothing but soot. Necrosis born because of the buildup of a byproduct of flawed human design; lactic acid.

The aching of my form finally pried my eyes open…

Everything seemed so… dark and foreign… alien, almost… Strange features were dancing around my tunneled field of vision. The fabric of reality was melting right before my eyes. Different shades of gray and black flowed into each other.

A mixture of bizarre goo shaping my perception.

Without a warning, another flash of light exploded right behind my eyes. A volcanic eruption inside my head. The pain was unbearable. I could feel an icepick digging into the back of my skull. Everything started spinning to the sound of a million flies buzzing somewhere in the distance.

The digestive track began working backwards, and I felt the esophageal muscles spasming. My heart burned, my brain was falling part inside the cranium and everything else was torn to pieces.

In an attempt to ease the suffering, I shifted my head backwards.

My blood ran cold, the sensations of pins and needles traveling against my skin overtook every other feeling in that moment. The drumming of my heartbeat grew louder by the moment.

I was hanging by one hang from the window bars of a fourth store building…

My left hand was barely holding on anymore. It began shaking from the strain. Fear kept my other muscles locked in place. Fighting through it was harder than I could ever imagine. The mere act of pulling my right arm upward was excruciating. The bones were broken and covered in blood.

I didn’t want to die…

With every ounce of remaining strength, I pushed my mangled arm upward before grabbing onto the window bars. The cold breeze barely grazing my skin felt like smoldering knives were being shoved into my flesh.

Nearly lost my grip.

Swinging to the side, I slammed myself into the wall and thought I was going to die from the pain. Wasn’t much of an impact. Hand slipped from exhaustion.

Fear, mortal fear. Survival instincts took over and forced my abused form to claw at the window ledge with all of its might. I kept falling into those four stores in my head, over and over and over as my body pulled itself into an unfamiliar apartment.

Finding myself lying on steady ground didn’t make the imaginary cycle of demise leave my mind. Only made it worse, more graphic, more detailed. I wasn’t falling to my death anymore.

I was being ripped in half.

Beheaded.

Compressed into a pile of human waste matter.

Obliterated by projectiles.

Electrified into dust.

My throat slit.

My limbs cut off.

My face peeled off.

Bleeding out.

Skull caved in.

Crawling alone in an unfamiliar place. Crawling in a pool of blood. Surrounded by corpses.

Mutilated corpses, unidentifiable human remains, pieces of meat.

Riddled with bullets, cut open, bones exposed, organs harvested, hanging from entrails, splattered on a wall, spine extracted, bones mixed with the wood in the fireplace.

The stench of death was violating me as I crawled through the corridors of hell. It forced its way down my throat, threatening to choke me as I crossed a bodiless head with a heart in its mouth.

I screamed myself hoarse with fear.

A lightning bolt flashed outside.

Darkness…

Everything stood still…

Another lightning bolt flashed, illuminating the room.

A flayed figure was right next to me.

A bloody hand reached for my face.

There was a murmur…

Thunder cracked directly above me…

A muffled cry for help...

Raspy and low...

I could feel it grabbing me, its wet fingers digging into my leg…

A lightning bolt exploded right in front of my eyes… and silence…

Darkness

There was nothing but darkness…

An empty void…

The light came back on as suddenly as it vanished.

I was in a pristine apartment… Dizzy with stress and blood loss. My blood staining some fancy-looking rag. Everything was so slow and unfocused. My ears ringing, my body aching, my right arm barely hanging on by a thread of muscle. A layer of red covering my right eye. Breathing hurt. Everything hurt.

Death was near….

Death came as a high pitched cackling.

My gaze shifted, pushing through volley after volley of stingers coursing through my neck.

It just sat there…

Chewing on a piece of meat…

A Hyena-muzzled naked man…

The unnatural shape of this thing. A grotesque and malignant amalgamation of features. Impure, senseless and leprous design.

Nothing but pure invasive and unrelenting horror.

Every fiber in my body moved while my brain remained fixated on the indescribable picture burned into recollection.

I ran, I don’t know how I far I ran. I have no idea how I got out of there and I don’t know where I ended up collapsing. When I woke up, I was at the hospital.

My injuries were consistent with a bear mauling. I pretended to have lost my memory, not wanting to remember. I wish I couldn’t remember that thing. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing I seem to remember these days…

Every now and again, it invades my mind and everything else becomes blurry and distant.

Every now and again, I can see it standing right across the room from me.

Simply staring, and smiling its blood-stained smile.

Cackling that hideous high-pitched laughter.

Every time I see it, it’s getting closer….

I can already feel its fetid breath on the back of my neck…

What if I told you that within reach lies the promise of endless wealth, decades worth of life experience gained in mere moments, or the ability to peer into the future? Each of these coveted treasures can be obtained through a mysterious and unearthly journey-one that traverses the cryptic dimensions of the Sisters of The Vale. Let me guide you through this arcane path, intertwined with an ancient radio ritual, offering these alluring prizes but at a cost shrouded in enigmatic dread. Are you ready to venture into this realm?

To perform this Ritual, you'll need to start by acquiring an analogue radio. This aged device serves as your portal-a link to the hidden dimensions beyond our own. Its analogue frequency tuner is the key to unlocking the elusive pathways that lead to the mysterious realm of the Sisters of The Vale. Once you've obtained this historic instrument, make sure it's ready for the next crucial steps in the ritual.

To proceed, ensure the radio can tune down to 70.2 AM and has a headphone jack port. These features are crucial for your journey ahead. They play a vital role, allowing you to connect with the hidden signals that link our world to the mysterious domain of the Sisters of The Vale.

Once you have an analogue radio with the necessary features, your next step involves setting the stage for the ritual. Find a secluded spot where external disturbances are minimal. This must occur at precisely 2 am on ANY Friday the 13th of the year. This timing is crucial for the ritual's success, as it enhances your focus and connection with the ethereal frequencies awaiting your reception.

Now you must tune your radio to 70.2 AM and endure the dissonant static for a gruelling hour and 15 minutes without falling asleep or removing the headphones. This endurance is the threshold, the key to opening the door to the elusive realm of the Sisters of The Vale. If you persist through this prolonged duration amid the static's eerie cadence, you'll gradually perceive faint whispers emerging from the noise. This signifies the progression of the ritual, signalling your impending transition into the mysterious realm of the Sisters of The Vale.

Upon awakening within the vast chamber, an overwhelming sense of dread takes hold as the 70 Sisters of The Vale loom before you. These spectral entities exude an unmistakable malevolence, their very presence dripping with an aura of ominous intent. Each Sister's form is a grotesque blend of the spectral and the horrifying, their visages twisted into nightmarish masks of terror. Their piercing gazes, cold and unrelenting, bear down upon you, instilling a primal fear reminiscent of facing unspeakable horrors. As they motion toward the trio of doors, a bone-chilling realization sets in-this marks the commencement of a harrowing and perilous journey through this foreboding and malevolent realm.

Led by the foreboding Sisters of The Vale, you stand before three doors, each pulsating with an aura of its own. The first door appears unassuming, its surface devoid of any distinctive features, yet a palpable air of emotional turmoil emanates from beyond. The second door, weathered and ancient, exudes a chilling sensation, hinting at unseen horrors lingering within its confines. However, it's the third door that sends shivers down your spine-an infernal gateway emanating an aura of impending doom, its very presence foretelling unfathomable trials.

The Sisters, their malevolent presence looming, await your choice. The unassuming first door promises 70 years of condensed life experiences, an amalgamation of wisdom and insight beyond measure. The second door, weathered by time, grants a glimpse into your own future, allowing you to peer 70 years ahead, unveiling the secrets of your destiny. As for the ominous third door, it tempts with the allure of unparalleled fame and riches that exceed the boundaries of imagination-a wealth beyond measure, promising a life of fame and wealth that spans beyond 70 lifetimes.

With your decision imminent, the Sisters of The Vale stand silently, their haunting gazes fixed upon you as you prepare to step into the unknown, embarking on a journey that defies the bounds of sanity and fortitude.

Beyond the chosen door lies a seemingly infinite expanse, a room without walls, where the floor stretches into a perplexing void. At its centre stand two doorways, imposing and foreboding, each without handles, seemingly melded seamlessly into the floor.

The first door, crafted from a dark, pulsating flesh-like material, radiates an eerie warmth. At its base rests a beating human heart, suspended in an ethereal glow, throbbing in a hypnotic cadence, seemingly synchronised with the very rhythm of life.

Contrastingly, the second door bears a cold, metallic sheen, etched with arcane symbols that shimmer faintly in an iridescent glow. At its base lies a human brain, pulsating with an otherworldly luminescence, each rhythmic throb echoing in unsettling synchronisation with the heart nearby.

These doors pose a harrowing choice, transcending the ordinary-a choice between the emotional and vital essence represented by the heart, promising devastating emotional ruin, or the cerebral essence embodied by the brain, threatening to drive you beyond the brink of sanity.

Once you've made your fateful choice between the doors, take a decisive step forward and firmly stamp upon the chosen organ, symbolising the destruction of your own essence. As your foot connects with the pulsating flesh or brain, a chilling resonance echoes through the room, and the door you've selected begins to open.

Within the chosen door lies an infinite corridor, seemingly stretching into eternity, its walls seemingly composed of a flesh-like, shifting substance, a faint iridescence flickering along its edges. Rows of doors line the passage, a dim glow emanating from the numerals etched upon the them. Each numeral flickers akin to the wavering flame of a candle, casting a faint, intermittent illumination upon the corridor's eerie expanse. Strangely, progress here isn't measured by distance traversed but by the passage of time-one year precisely. It's a year of unending emotional or mental turmoil, an agonizing journey through amplified memories of the hurt inflicted upon and by those closest to you.

This desolate passage becomes your solitary abode for the year, an isolated trek through haunting echoes of past grievances. Each step forward signifies a relentless confrontation with emotional scars or mental trials, with only one of the Sisters of The Vale as your spectral companion. Their presence serves as a reminder, a haunting spectre that looms nearby, observing your struggles within this agonizing solitude.

As you traverse this desolate corridor, every step forward plunges you deeper into emotional torment or mental anguish. Along this lonely path, the Sister of The Vale, your spectral companion, becomes a harbinger of punishment, delivering retribution for each perceived misstep. Her unseen hands leave scratches upon your skin, traces of her ethereal presence etched in faint, ghostly patterns. At times, her presence manifests in chilling bites that seem to pierce the very fabric of your emotional well-being, or inflicts wounds upon your psyche.

With every stride forward, the corridor's atmosphere grows increasingly oppressive. The weight of your emotional or mental burden feels magnified, it is as if an unseen force anchors your feet, impeding your progress. The Sister's spectral influence extends further, her power seemingly stripping away one of your senses, leaving you disoriented and vulnerable within this haunting expanse. Each punishment inflicted serves as a relentless reminder of your isolation and the spectre's dominion over this realm of trials and tribulations.

As you stand at this crucial juncture, the choice before you carries an ominous weight. Before the spectral table lies the flesh-like pill, an object that defies comprehension. It wriggles and pulsates, exuding an eerie darkness. The pill's surface, a twisted amalgamation of fleshy material, appears almost alive, its irregular contours undulating with an otherworldly rhythm. Within its pulsating mass, faint veins seem to flicker the strange darkness intermittently, casting an unsettling shadow upon the spectral table.

The pill's unsettling appearance sends shivers down your spine, an uncanny semblance that resonates with the realm's grotesque aesthetic. Its very essence seems to mirror the torment and trials you've faced, a physical manifestation of the anguish that permeates this eerie domain. This unnerving spectacle further complicates your choice, amplifying the tension as you weigh the consequences of ending your nightmare or delving deeper into the unknown horrors that lie beyond the next door.

Should you opt to consume this fleshy pill and end your ordeal, understand this: you won't wake up in your world, nor in any other. Your soul will cease to exist, departing this spectral realm and leaving behind your physical body in the real world-a mere empty vessel, devoid of its animating essence.

If you choose to continue, the path unfolds into another corridor, stretching endlessly before you. For another year, you navigate this desolate expanse, accompanied by a different Sister of The Vale than the last. The emotional or mental turmoil intensifies, inflicting upon you a torrent of amplified anguish and torment, surpassing the trials of your previous ordeal.

Each step forward feels heavier than the last, burdened by the weight of accumulated trials. The Sister's spectral presence looms, her demeanour reflecting an even more sinister and malevolent essence than her predecessor. Her influence seems to magnify the depths of your emotional scars or mental tribulations, rendering this leg of the journey even more harrowing and unforgiving than the last.

With the passage of time, the corridor stretches endlessly, marking another year of trials within this spectral domain. The Sister's spectral form becomes an ever-present tormenter, a haunting silhouette that embodies malevolence and unearthly terror. Her influence, more pervasive than before, seems to twist and distort the very fabric of your emotions and thoughts, plunging you deeper into an abyss of amplified suffering and despair.

In this relentless odyssey, the physical pain inflicted upon you by this sister, surpasses that of the previous trial. Each agonizing moment feels like an escalation of torment, an ever-mounting anguish that stretches the boundaries of endurance. The Sister's relentless presence adds a layer of excruciating physical torment to the already unbearable emotional and mental tribulations, pushing you to the brink of your physical and spiritual resilience within this tortuous realm.

And should you make it to the end of this corridor in a year's time, another daunting prospect awaits. At the corridor's conclusion, you'll be faced with yet another spectral table. Upon it rests another flesh-like pill, eerily reminiscent of the one encountered before, and a new door, an invitation to confront further unknown horrors.

This time-worn cycle of torment seems to persist, offering the option of either consuming the horrifying-looking pill, ending this ongoing nightmare, or venturing through the ominous threshold of the new door, delving into uncharted depths of emotional and mental tribulations that lie beyond.

This relentless cycle of torment, spanning across 70 agonizing years, seems to amplify with each passing corridor. The Sister of The Vale, an ever-ominous presence, stands as a sentinel of spectral agony, each iteration surpassing the previous in malevolence and despair. With every new door crossed, the trials grow darker, delving into abysses of suffering yet unseen, an unending cascade of escalating torment that relentlessly tests the boundaries of one's resilience and fortitude within this nightmare.

If you manage to endure and reach the end of this gruelling 70-year ordeal, the toll on your being will be immense-physically aged and emotionally or mentally shattered. Beyond the final door lies the outside world, but your journey is far from over. You're tasked with dragging your weathered and battered body across the desolate expanse of Raven's Rock island.

The island is besieged by relentless gale force winds and unyielding torrents of rain. Your path leads you through the perilous Whispering Woods, a foreboding place where even the bravest hesitate to linger. Legends tell of people vanishing in these woods at night, their fate swallowed by the eerie whispers and unknown terrors that haunt this cursed domain.

Your only chance at survival demands unwavering resolve-you must press onward without pause, for stopping means risking the same fate that has befallen others in these haunted woods. The journey ahead, through the relentless elements and haunting woods, is a treacherous gauntlet that demands sheer determination and an unyielding will to overcome the unknown perils that lie ahead.

After traversing the Whispering Woods and enduring the daunting journey through the island's hostile terrain, your path ascends to the towering summit of a mountain. At its pinnacle stands a solitary shack, weathered and worn by time. As you step inside, you find yourself in the island's radio station.

Here, amidst the relics of broadcast equipment, you're compelled to tune into the station's frequency-70.2 AM. As the analogue radio emits its familiar static, you sit and endure the white noise for an hour, enveloped in a haunting silence. Gradually, whispers permeate the static, a haunting echo that resonates through the air. The whispers grow louder and more distinct until they engulf your senses, lulling you into unconsciousness.

When you awaken, it's not within the spectral realm or the haunting island but back in the familiarity of your own home. Astonishingly, you find yourself 70 years younger, a physical embodiment of your former self, yet burdened with the weight of accumulated turmoil and trials endured within that spectral nightmare. You're granted a second chance at life, but the haunting memories and emotional scars of the harrowing journey remain etched within your being, a reminder of the unimaginable trials you braved within the spectral depths.

The reward you receive upon awakening from this harrowing ordeal hinges on the initial door you chose within that haunting realm. If you entered the first door, you'll gain 70 years' worth of life experience condensed into moments. Opting for the second door unveils a glimpse of your future for the next 70 years. Choosing the third door brings fame and unimaginable riches.

However, a grave warning lingers: should you attempt to re-enter this realm once more, dire consequences await. If the Sisters of The Vale recognize your return, you risk a fate beyond reckoning. Remembered by these enigmatic beings, you'll face a terrifying transformation, reduced to nothing more than a heart and a brain, sitting at the foot of a door.

Dear Santa,

I want my grandparents back for Christmas; it’s not Christmas without them. I can’t remember the last time I was happy. You ran my grandmother over last year! There were hoof and sleigh marks all over Grandma’s body; were you drinking eggnog? I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in months, but I’m sure you slept just fine. I hardly ate or bathed for months; bed sores and grime covered my body. I didn’t have the strength to get out of bed and face the world. I hated everyone and everything. You destroyed my family; you destroyed my life! Grandma was the glue that held us together; without her there were no holidays. My family doesn’t get along. My grandfather blamed himself for being too drunk to drive Grandma home. Grandpa got drunk everyday until he died.

Grandpa shot himself; he didn’t leave a note. After Grandpa died Dad started drinking heavily. Several nights I washed vomit off him and put him in the recovery position. Dad was always angry; he’d hit Mom and I every night. I dropped a glass in the kitchen and Dad broke my nose. The beatings stopped two weeks ago when Dad died; he shot himself just like my grandfather did. Mom found Dad’s headless corpse in the cellar; she hasn’t said a word since. Mom and I were the only family to attend the funeral. I can’t do this anymore! This is a suicide note, but after seeing my brains plastered to the ceiling you’ve probably gathered that by now. I’m sorry, Mom.

Caleb and I used to come to this place nearly every day. He loved running along the river’s shore when he was younger. When he got older, we’d walk on this bridge and he’d joyfully watch the waters flowing below us. Now I am watching the waters on my own. The last time I came here with him, he was resting peacefully beside me.

Just admitting this out loud makes my eyes well up, even now.

This is goodbye, my friend… Rest in peace buddy, I love you.

No, this isn’t goodbye yet... You’re still not resting easy…

God, I'm so sorry, boy, I'm so sorry…

Caleb never got to rest peacefully.

After he had passed away, I thought it would be only appropriate to send him off to dog heaven on the waters of the river he loved so much. I brought him here on a cloudy day, just like today, in the early hours of the morning. It’s usually dead silent here in the early hours of the morning, but that day a low hum and a tapping sound resembling a funeral march echoed somewhere below.

How fitting it seemed at that moment…

I carried him here wrapped in his favorite blanket and once we stood overlooking the waters below; I unwrapped his face to catch one last glimpse of his peaceful expression before saying my last goodbyes. With tears flowing down my face, I covered his face and released my hold on his body, watching as it gracefully fell into the water with a splash reminiscent of the ones he used to make when he was at the height of his life.

I watched his body float into the distance until the currents appeared to have rejected him and his body ended up on the shore.

At that moment, I didn’t pay it any mind.

Slowly making my way down the bridge, I strolled, lost in my memories. I didn’t even notice the strangely melancholic melody that accompanied me seemed to disintegrate into a deafening silence.

I took too long to get to him and by the time I reached the spot his body had drifted to; it was nowhere to be found. The disappearance of his remains drove me over the edge. Emotions overflowing, I broke down. I let myself lose balance and fall onto the ground before I began crying, and I wept as I hadn’t wept since I was a little kid.

The sound of soft splashing in the water made me think the river pulled him back in. I forced myself to look at the water. I wanted to watch Caleb drift away into the sunset. Instead, an overwhelming feeling of dread grasped my arm once I realized it wasn’t the water that had taken him.

A heartless pair of bulbous black eyes bulging out of a massive slimy head stared at me. A long bush of algae crowning the grotesque cranium spread in the middle, revealing an abyss of a maw laced with a sea of jagged teeth sucked in air. The pisciform demon was staring at me with malicious intent. Darkness from the deepest depths of the unexplored oceans danced in its eyes. A sinister intelligence lurked in the back of its gaze. It threatened to devour me whole if I dared get closer to the creature.

And by God, I wanted to get closer…

Had my sense of self-preservation not kept me at bay by chaining me to the damp sand with a chain made from pure fear, I would’ve.

A pair of eerily primate pallid gray hands held onto Caleb’s body.

The creature was taunting me, mocking… I could hear its chuckling-like rumbles as we stared at each other.

It lingered a while longer before finally submerging its disgusting form in its entirety and disappearing into the depths.

Caleb’s blanket was the only thing that remained above the surface, floating aimlessly into the distance as I watched it disappear, wiping the cold sweat from my brow while still wrestling with the crawling sensation of unease.

The horror might’ve all but disappeared, but the wounds it left still ache.

I doubt time will heal these wounds. That’s why I’ve been coming here nearly every day ever since. As much as it hurts to come here without Caleb. As much as it pains me to relive that awful morning in my mind again and again, I return to this same spot over and over.

I’ve seen these things lurking around here. There is more than one of those things hiding in these waters. Sometimes they’ll reach out of the water with their pallid gray hands to tap on the stones and hum; creating these ironically somber melodies. I’ll be returning until the day I can finally unload a bullet into what took my friend and hopefully leave one of its kind with a gaping hole in its chest like the one who took Caleb from me.

If these things even have a heart.

High-pitched screams pierced through my window, waking me up. The rude awakening pushed me into high alert as I peeled myself from my bed, anxiously facing the window. A small crowd was gathering around the source of the almost inhuman noise. At its center stood Jack Smith, screaming bloody murder.

His body; deeply sunburnt red, flailed about in a mad dance as he shrieked until his voice cracked. Flaps of clothing bloodied, fell from his body onto the ground with a sickening, wet slap.

A crowd around him stood paralyzed, gasping in simultaneous awe and disgust.

His body; deeply sunburnt red, flailed about in a mad dance as he shrieked until his voice cracked. Flaps of clothing bloodied, fell from his body onto the ground with a sickening, wet slap. a red thread from a crimson mask. Seeing poor Jack’s body dissolve into a pile of wailing mucus and flesh forced yesterday’s dinner upward.

I threw up all over the carpet, and while I was emptying my stomach, the screaming magnified, intensified, and multiplied…

Looking up again, I saw a crowd of bystanders consumed by the remains of Jack’s body. Clothes, skin, muscles, tendons, and bone – liquifying and slipping from downward into a soup of human matter.

A cacophony of agonized cries was the soundtrack to the scenery of inhuman body horror that forced me to hide under my blanket like a child once again. While waiting for the demise of the almost alien noises, I nearly pissed myself with fear.

Once it was quiet again, it was eerily silent all around. In that moment of dead silence, I dared peek my head from below the covers, drenched and on the cusp of hyperventilating with dread.

A dark red liquid stared at me from every inch of my room.

Its eyeless gaze - predatory and longing.

I pulled my blanket over my head again instinctually.

The moment I covered my head, a rain of fire fell on me.

A rain I couldn’t escape.

A rain of unrelenting pain.

The pain fried every neuron in my body, every cell, every atom.

Burning until there was nothing but a sea of heat, nothing but acidic phlegm in the throat of a fallen god.

The pain was so intense it turned into an orgasmic, out-of-body experience.

I had lost all sensation within my agony until I fell in love with it.

I lost myself in ego death to find my place in the universe; a piece of a carcinogenic mass.

Strangers, acquaintances, neighbors, friends, lovers, and relatives we are all together now.

United as one forever.

Without boundaries or barriers.

Entangled in an orgy of molten yet living humanity.

A singular living human fabric.

We are the flesh that loves, and soon we will flood the entire world.

I've been away from youtube for about 3 years now, in order to focus on my home and work life, after such a long break, I'm preparing to come back to youtube, starting with weekly stories, then either putting out multiple stories per week or starting up a second channel with a whole new theme (while still posting weekly to the original channel).

In the lead up to my coming back, I'm looking for some good horror stories and creepypasta to share with my audience, if you have a story you'd be happy for me to share, feel free to comment below with a link.

What kinds of stories am I looking for?

My main focus will always be Disney Horror Stories and Ritual Creepypasta, but I'm also looking for any true horror stories, scary/strange/paranormal experiences and anything creepypasta-sequel, but a lover of all things horror, I'm willing to read anything that falls within that genre.

Where will I share the stories?

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/NicoWonderdust

Growing up I heard many stories of demons and angels as I grew up in a very religious household. But that is not relevant to my first encounter with a demon. I am an uber driver so I often bring young kids home from the bar on a late friday night. This was like every other stop that I have had as an uber driver. I pulled up outside of a popular nightclub and my client opened the passenger side door. It was odd that he sat upfront. Most people just get in the back. His ride was a bit farther than the normal distance that I liked to travel but it was close to my home and it was almost 3AM so I was about done for the night. After he got in I started to head towards his destination roughly 31m away. I typically like to make small talk with my passengers and I looked in his direction and noticed that he was dressed very formally for your typical night club kid. He was probably around 27 and 6ft 3in. And his face seemed to be quite handsome. So in an attempt to start some small talk I asked him.

“So did you have a good night Kyle?” I got his name from Uber when I picked him up.

“Not terrible I got what I needed but hoped that I would receive more” He said in a deep but very reassuring voice. I don't know how to describe this but it felt very trustworthy. Similar to a fatherly like tone.

“How has your night been? Had any interesting encounters tonight?” He said.

“No not for me” I replied showing him my wedding ring “18 years happy and counting” I responded.

He waited for a moment and said “Is that really true? Did you not cheat on your wife Samantha 3 years ago after a fight that you had about money because she lost her job?”

I looked at the GPS and it said 26m. “I am not sure what you are talking about” I replied with a stern tone in my voice. I increased the volume of the music on my steering wheel. This was not possible. I must just be hearing things since it was so late, no one knows that I had an affair and it was a mistake. He must have just had a really good guess I thought.

“Would it cause you despair if she found out?” He said

“There would be nothing to find out because that didn't happen and we are happy.” I replied.

“True It wouldn't make much of a difference because she has been aware since early last year. Stephanie works at the new firm that she works at. I never understood how humans forgive each other for such betrayal a truly despicable quality”

We hit a stop light and I slammed on the breaks and exclaimed loudly.

“Who the fuck are you! What do you want from me!” Visibly angry at this time. Glancing at the GPS 18m Until arrival. The man took a moment to straighten himself in his seat after the sudden stop.

“Please refrain from outbursts of anger. I have no use for anger, what I am interested in is your sins.” He said almost sounding annoyed. Like he was supposed to be the one that was annoyed in this situation.

“So then what do you want, what do I have to give you to leave me and my family alone” I said.

He smiled a large smile “I do not want anything from you. I would much prefer to make a deal instead if you are interested?” He said.

“It doesn't feel like I have much choice. What kind of deal do you want.” I glanced at the time 11m until arrival.

“What I want is your sins” He said with a slur like a snake.

“You want my sins? What does that even mean? You want me to confess to you like some kind of priest?” I replied only getting angrier.

“Quite the opposite actually. I would like you to commit sins in my name and I will reward you equivalently to the sin that you have committed how does that sound”

I checked the time, 3m left. I just wanted this crazy man out of my car at this point and just wanted to keep him talking so that I could drop him off and head home.

“Uh, ya, sure can you give me the rest of the details and I will give you all of my sins” I said in an overly dramatic tone.

The man smiled ear to ear. “Great! This makes my night a good night sir. If you accept please take my card and keep it with you as you commit your sins. It would be even better if you say my name as it is printed on the card when you do it. I will visit you again next year at this time to collect. I should also mention If I return and I am not satisfied with what you have to offer me I will take something else as payment and never visit you again.

I then pulled up to the location that he requested to be dropped off at. It was just an old 24h diner just off the highway.

“Ya sure kyle were here so get out” I said

“Wonderful!” He said as he placed a card on my seat as he got out and I peeled out of there.

The next year was rather difficult for me. I hit a man with my car by accident, killing him. I then became quite the alcoholic and this affected my marriage. My wife and I had another fight and I ended up spending the night at a hotel with a lady of the night. I stepped outside the hotel for a smoke. Another bad habit that I had picked up along the way. I lit my cigarette and took a puff when I heard a familiar voice.

“Absolutely marvelous my new attendant of sin. I truly did not expect products such as this from you!” Kyle said in an almost overjoyed tone.

“Manslaughter, infidelity, addiction and neglect! I never imagined that you would produce such fruits! For such miraculous contributions to myself I will grant you 3 rewards. What can I do for you in return for such quality sins!”

I stumbled back, almost dropping my cigarette. What the hell? How? What?

“What, what, are you doing here! How did you find me! What are you talking about” I yelled.

“Why, whatever do you mean? It is 3:31AM on the same day as the last as I said I would return. I am here to collect and reward just as I promised. A demon never goes back on his word. Now tell me what it is that you wish for in reward as part of our deal.” He replied.

“Wait, you're a demon?” I said.

“Indeed I am, Specifically a demon that is in need of sins and you are going to give me some quite valuable sins. Now what would you like as your reward so that I may collect your sins”

“Wait hold up what do you mean? I never kept you card shit I almost completely forgot about you, Just leave me alone and get away from me.” I yelled at him

He then looked down at the ground and I felt very uneasy. Even though he was standing several parking spaces away from me I felt very unsafe.

“Do you remember what I told you would happen If you did not fulfill your end of our arrangement? And you did keep my card. It has been in your car this entire time you never got rid of it and that means that you accepted our deal. The very car that you committed these very sins. I will take from you the equivalent of what I am owed today if you do not agree.”

I started to speak but he began to walk towards me and cut me off.

“Have you ever heard the human saying do not write checks that you can not cash?”

He was standing right infront of me now and looked me in the eyes. I could see his eyes were pitch black consuming any light that was around them.

“I will ask you once more, do you wish to select your payment or would you rather I take mine!” He said this in a deep below that sent shivers down my spine. I stumbled back and almost pissed myself. He was very serious. I was terrified of him and I had no Idea what he was going to do. So I screamed.

“Yes! Yes! But I don't know what I want, please just leave me alone!”

Kyle then calmed a bit. Spoke in a much calmer tone.

“Well you do have great sins to offer but since you bear such fruit I can't exactly just let you go. The sins you will produce in the future are worth much more to me than that. I can also not influence your decision. You must make it and my patience is wearing thin.”

Thinking fast I just blurted out what came to my mind as I was terrified and just wanted him to leave his eyes, his eyes! I swear to you that they were the most unnatural thing that I had ever seen. Like he had black holes where his eyes should be.

So I just said the first three things that came to my mind. “Money! Safety! And Health! Now please just go!”

Kyle smiled and his eyes went back to normal.

“Very well. I will grant you money, safety and health in exchange for your sins. Please let this be easier next year.”

I then blinked and I woke up in my bed at home with my wife. The demon kept true to his words. No one remembered the sins that I committed that the demon had taken from me that night. Everyone forgot about the man that I hit with my car. I felt no need to drink or smoke. My Wife forgot all about the fight that we had the other night.

He also made true his “rewards” as he called them. That same day a bank account with $10 million in it was opened in my name. My body became athletic and I probably lost 65 lbs overnight. I was in sheer awe at everything that had happened. I fell down the stairs that morning because I was too bewildered to realize that I had missed a step. When I hit the bottom and got back up I felt no pain, not even a bruise.

Kyle or his real name that I came to learn later Kalsifer. Would visit me every year to collect my sins and make them as if they never happened, and would then reward me for it. It has been almost 55 years since I met Kalsifer in the passenger seat of my Uber. I have committed many sins in his name. I have yet to disappoint him yet and I do not want to find out what happens If I do. But the one thing that I know for sure. Once you make a deal with the devil there is no turning back; all of these deals are eternal. I have now lived over a hundred years. My wife died 8 years ago. I am getting old again and I will no longer request youth as a gift from Kalcifer. At first I thought this was a great deal I could do anything with no consequences. But year after year he continues to take my sins and slowly taken my emotions along with it. I will continue to fulfill my end of this deal until I die. I no longer wish to live. There is no point because without knowing Kalcifer took something that I didn't know I even had. The ability to make mistakes in my life is almost completely without consequence. I no longer even know what the difference between right and wrong is. There is no point to anything anymore.

Demons will take things you didn't even know that you had to lose. Never make a deal with a demon; you never know what they really take in return.

Doctor, I'd like to inform you that Operation Eternal Rest for Christ was a resounding success. Albeit with a high casualty rate, we have nonetheless put our old friend in the ground. Actually, no, most of him was scattered about in the explosion.

You need not worry however, I've got a piece of him with me, so you could study whatever made him into an amalgam of living necrosis. That wasn't any ol' regular zombie. Not at all, whatever had gotten into Christiansen made him into a cancerous ghoul hell-bent on ceaseless murder. Even so, he was undoubtedly alive at the moment of contact. He clearly wasn't too happy with hearing my voice calling out his name.

As for the ghouls, none of them made it out alive. I feel like I should have some sympathy for them because of how he basically made piñatas out of them but I can't bring myself to feel bad for the death of murderers, pedophiles, and all other manner of scum being torn to bits.

What's really interesting is the manner in which he tore through them, quite literally, I might add.

He came out of nowhere, after our guns for hire were convinced, his house was empty, and began beating the living fuck out of them with his own torn-off arm. Christiansen used his own arm like a club to batter and smash everything in his path.

Bullets didn't do shit to the thing he had become, and neither did knives. He ate all of it. To be quite honest, I wasn't even sure if there was anything left of him in his new body.

A monstrosity of a man, a gargantuan, fat-headed and like a mole as to the smallness of his eyes; disgusting with his short, broad, thick, and half hoary beard; disgraced by a neck faded under its titanic head; bald-headed with a few stray strands of hair sticking out crudely, barely hanging on to dear life. His skin colored the shade of rot; one whom it would not be pleasant to meet in the middle of the night even if he wasn't driven by a lecherous drive for bloodshed; with an extensive belly and a noticeably taller than I remember him.

After a few bloody moments, he reattached his appendage and punched one of the ghouls so hard his arm broke. Without even flinching he shoved the sharpened ends of the broken bone into the neck of another, tearing a new hole in it. He proceeded to hack through several men this way before kicking one so hard his knee shattered and then he decided to nail a couple of men into the floor with his exposed bone fragments, right before spewing acidic blood onto their faces – I can say so because I saw their heads melt off.

At this point, one of the sad excuses for hired guns pissed himself and blew his own brains out. Our colleague noticed it and didn't let a good body go to waste, he fixed his broken arm and shoved it into the corpses body before yanking out a handful of guts and then used the headless corpse like some medieval type morning star.

Oh, what a shame it took him about ninety seconds to get off thirty men. I was just starting to enjoy the carnage. Some of them died too quickly relative to their crimes, doc, but I digress.

Once he was done with those cretins, I leaped into action and called out his name. Wolfgang always hated it when I called him Wolfy. Hearing me calling him that made him squint his already barely visible blackened eye orbs he let out a sickening belching sound as acidic slime drooled down his face, melting some of the skin around his mouth.

Driven by the atavistic brain disorder he decided the best course of action was to tear his head off along with a segment of his spinal column and use it as a weapon against me.

The scariest part about this whole thing was just how accurate he was, hell, he even got me a few times. I don't know what kind of intergalactic prionic spaceworm got him into that state, but we have to prevent anyone else from going this far.

Perhaps afflicted by the same atavistic brain disorder that zombified our former pal; I shot the head. It didn't do shit… why I did this? I don't know!

Eventually, he got me, and pinned me to the floor with that living dead head skull of his screeching in my ear as his free hand was trying to pry my helm open; without any hope to throw the monstrosity off, I shoved a hand grenade into his neck hole. The moment my hand reached inside; I felt the fleshy hole clenching its walls around my arm.

I guess both Christianen and I had gone too far, but sometimes going too far is worth it, right?

I was prepared to die when the grenade went off, but by sheer dumb luck the amount of flesh on that abomination just absorbed all of the blast, leaving me covered in monster gore and clutching the fleshy skull mace I am currently on my way to deliver to you, Doc.

P.s I threw up a little in my helm and the smell is killing me right now, so don't worry if I pass out the moment we meet, I haven't been touched by his internal juices just like you instructed!

Yesterday, upon the stair there was nothing really there. I saw there was nothing there at three AM today, oh how I wish, I wish something would come my way.

When I was younger, I was living my life on the edge. Growing up with alcoholic and drug-addicted parents, I didn't know anything much about anything other than the pure joy of intoxication. I was hooked on the spirit by twelve. Every day, something went wrong. My eldest sister killed herself by accident. My brother was shot right in front of me over a botched drug deal. I watched Pa sell Ma to other men for money to buy more booze he'd drown me in. Things went wrong every single day, but at least it was something.

Then one day, I got clean; I got sick of being sick and tired and I got sick and tired of living on the edge so I got clean and I made something out of the nothing that I was. I turned my life around and made a career for myself, helping other people like myself. Eventually, I fell in love. At first it felt like I had made it, like I was on top of the world, but after we settled and got married and built a family, love did the worst thing imaginable.

It gave birth to absolutely nothing.

Gradually, then suddenly, I stopped finding any actual joys in life.

Everything grew more and more mechanical, monotonous, and cold.

Lifeless.

Meaningless.

Waking up every day felt the same until I stopped feeling anything altogether.

A chasm of emptiness opened up, following me everywhere I went, swallowing everything around me until there was nothing.

Waking every morning, I saw nothing of importance.

Kissing my wife, and her lips tasted like nothing, and so did her food.

Hearing my kids and their voices sounded like nothing.

As did my own voice.

Every day passed like nothing had happened because nothing ever did happen in my home town designed in accordance with the gloomy architecture of nothing.  

Every now and again, I would wake up drenched in cold sweat, fearing for some odd reason that something had happened. Nothing ever did, leaving me empty and distraught over the fact the Nothing was slowly and methodically squeezing the sanity out of me.

Even when Pa passed away, I felt nothing. At his funeral I stood there, completely submerged in the emotional void of nothing as they lowered him into the ground. My eyes watered, but I felt absolutely nothing.

Life just went on, as if nothing had happened, because nothing indeed ever happened.

Even now, coming from work to the site of a catastrophe…

To the pile of ashes that used to be my home…

To find the scattered bone fragments of my family…

After everything that was mine was reduced to nothing –

even after something had finally happened, only nothing remains.

When a police officer told me I should find some solace in the fact that the explosion killed them so fast they felt nothing, all I could say was;

"Neither do I."

Morgan’s chest rose and fell as she stared at the dull yellow light bulb swaying above her head. Each breath stung worse than the previous. The aftershocks of two suns colliding pounded against her ribcage, agitating the solar plexus.

The terrible flames liked her nervous system. Their pulsating dance syncing with the desperate screaming of her self-inflicted wounds. She couldn’t even think about moving a single muscle - fearful she might break into pieces if she did. Fearful of aggravating the violent chills. Dreading the chills turning into seizure-like spasms.

All she could do was imagine herself disappearing...

Morgan hated her life. She hated herself, and she hated what she had become...

Unintentionally, she shook her lower lip. The self-loathing had gotten the best of her, starting an avalanche of bone-breaking trembling. Morgan’s soft cries turned high-pitched and feral. She roared as her spine melted under the pathetic mass of her spread-out form.

Someone banged on the other side of the wall, yelling at Morgan to shut up.

The familiar nasal voice disgusted her, firing bile up her esophagus. The living black hole inside of her grew aroused, and the sensation disgusted her even more than the nauseating voice. Warm saliva escaped her parted lips, burning her chin. She howled as she pulled herself upward.

Burning hot nails dug into every inch of her skin.

Her neighbor shouted again, louder.

The appalling voice broke her out of her pained trance.

Forcing herself upright, drowning in lactic acid, Morgan finally understood it was the right thing to do.

She flexed her neck, almost relishing in the feeling of her bones roping into knots. She knew doing it would lessen her torment. It didn’t even matter at this point that he had a sick wife and four little kids to take care of. Morgan needed to take care of herself.

The furious pounding of a fist on her door sounded like music to her ears.

“Coming...” she cried, unhinging her drool-covered lower jaw.

Many years ago, I meditated on top of the cliffs overlooking the dead sea and ascended to the clifftops in the middle of the night in order to avoid heatstroke. After climbing to the highest spot I could reach, I basked in the beauty of the desert landscape overlooking the Asphalt Lake below for a moment. Soon after, I began my journey into enlightenment, as many young people do.

I sat down, crossing my legs and closing my eyes. Breathing in and out slowly, I let my mind empty itself of all unnecessary thoughts.

The consciousness drifted into the embrace of the primordial void.

Breathe in

Breathe out

Deeper and deeper into the darkness…

Breathe in

Breathe out

Each breath came with a hotter surge of air…

Breathe in

Breathe out

Dry desert winds invaded my nostrils…

Breathe in

Breathe out

Tasteless, odorless smoke filled my lungs.

Breathe in

Breathe out

The humid claws of stale atmosphere trapped in the valley of death caressed my skin

Breathe in

Breathe out

In sync with the trajectory of sweat cascading down my face,

Breathe in

Breathe out

The sensation of paper sand fills my throat

Breathe in

Breathe out

Pins and needles prick the insides of my nose

Breathe in

Breathe out

The atmosphere is getting thicker all around me

Breathe in

Breathe out

Its almost as if the sun is getting closer to me

Breathe in

Breathe out

Pins and needles prick all across my skin

Breathe in

Breathe out

The heat is slowly becoming unbearable

Breathe in

Breathe out

Something warm and salty is trickling across my lips

Breathe in

Breathe out

My head is spinning…

Breathe in

Breathe out

The heat begins closing in…

Breathe in

Breathe out

Embers fall into my trachea

Breathe in

Flames burst into my lungs as I fall down on my back, kicking and screaming, while hot salty tears stream down my face. I can only wither on the rocky ground as I helplessly watch the sun hurling its massive form at me at full speed.

There is no oxygen left to breathe…

The sky is rapidly turning red and I can feel my insides boiling under the presence of the celestial giant headed my way.

Time crawls to a halt mere moments before the celestial body reaches the point of no return and explodes.

Immense heat surges through me, nearly tearing me apart as I am sent flying across the desert sky.

The sheer pain threatens to pulverize my consciousness while I'm forced to watch the sea of death rise into the heavens before falling down to drown and eradicate an entire long-forgotten civilization.

The inhuman voices of the dead are filling the burning air all around me

Their melting hands and mouths grab onto my eyeballs as I inhale their dying moans…

Before long, the soot, salt, and dust begin to settle and I can finally breathe again.

Breathe in

The Fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Breathe out

The last thing I can remember before passing out is the whole congregation dancing. While these people were all unknown to me, I felt some kind of kinship with them. We were all dancing as part of our attempt to unite with God. I don’t remember how all of that ended. I remember the room twisting and turning; the loud, cheerful music. Limbs moved in all directions as bodies twisted and contorted under the influence of wine and divine flesh. The whole universe began spinning around me. No, I spun at its center; uncontrollably at the whim of sinister gravitational forces. The warmth I initially felt quickly dissipated, leaving a nauseating vertigo in its place.

Instead of ascending into the bosom of the Lord, I think I might’ve fallen into the ninth circle of the abyss. Colors and sounds began to lose their essence as everything turned so suddenly, so cold and black. There was no pain, no fear, no feeling at all - rather, a sudden and yet gradual disappearance of the world; of the self, my… self.

I woke up once the ground beneath started stirring my body up and down, irritating the fragile composition of this flesh prison. As soon as I opened my eyes, the vertigo threatened to cripple my still-intoxicated mind. I didn’t feel any fear as everything around me moved. The walls, the furniture, the floor. The danger of being in the epicenter of an earthquake hadn’t sunk in quite yet. As I was struggling to pull myself upright, I finally noticed the ground wasn’t really shaking. It was swaying back and forth, like waves in the ocean. Everything was swaying.

The outline of everything around me rippled and gently danced to an inconceivable rhythm. Only when I noticed my own skin ripple, in the same manner, did I finally register the full scope of the cataclysm I was caught up in.

The animal inside finally awoke, stumbling over the swaying floor and the limitations of the human body. I crawled as fast as I could out of there. The chorea of the world around me prevented me from making much progress at first as I fell face first in my first few attempts to reach open space.

After what seemed like an hour, I finally pulled myself outside, my vision obscured by the downpour of blood masking my busted-open visage.

The heat outside was unbearable. It felt like hell on earth. The iridescence and sound of the sun pounded across my already battered form mercilessly. Beating me down as I stumbled onward, trying to get further away from the epicenter of the strange disaster plaguing this place.

Each step felt like an arduous journey across mountain ranges as the light emanating from the firmament weight down on me growing infinitely heavier with each passing moment. Slowly grinding my consciousness into dust. Everything started turning dim again, dim and distant.

My clarity returned to me when the popping and clanking melody broke through the songs of Sol overhead. I wish I’d died then and there. I instinctively turned to the source of the sound and the scream of bloody murder erupted in my ears. My own scream, closing in on me, were the partially scorched bodies of my brothers and sisters. Locked in a manic dance that further broke and mutilated their already lifeless bodies.

I tried to run, but the treacherous Telus wouldn’t let me get far ahead before I fell down again.

Finally, overcome with fear and anxiety, I could simply stare at the sun as it moved back and forth; up and down and side to side in the sky. Singing in the highest and lowest of tones imaginable.

The surrounding heat increased. I could feel sweat rolling down my skin. Its salty composition scorched my open wounds. The air in my lungs became hotter and hotter; beginning to tear through the viscous fabric. I could feel the star above me slowly drawing near.

We were on a collision course - The star and I.

I was falling down into the ravenous maw of the sun.

A sacrifice to Molech, placed within his smoldering hot bowels by the hands of the fire-kissed skeletons those same bowels had birthed prior.

And yet, in those final moments of inescapable doom, I finally found peace.

In those brain-melting moments when I was dragged about into oblivion by the red-hot bones of the dead who had risen from within the void beyond their poisonous grave to tear me apart into tiny pieces to be fed to the Ignis Dei I finally felt at home, I finally felt loved…

The God of Fire decided to break my heart instead, however, as he rejected me. His kiss poisoned my body, but it wouldn’t take me to spend the rest of eternity to spend with him in the wonderful land hidden deep within the mushroom cloud.

A paralyzing thunderbolt burned through my spine, twisting and stretching it from the core of the earth and into the stratosphere, into the realm of the gods themselves. It left behind nothing but pain, terrifying and suffocating pain as it made me watch the dead slowly dance away into the mists of Abaddon, leaving me on my own.

Trapped within this body of mine, trapped within this skull.

My attempt to escape this false world had failed. Leaving me was once again faced with the ugly face of the false prophet as its oversized jaw filled with jagged teeth and bloodshot eyes shook from side to side in disapproval.

Once more, I woke up; undoubtedly alive. Alive and crucified to this feeble form that wouldn’t move nor let me breathe under the immense weight of the cancerous growth that continues to bloom inside my chest.

I lay in bed, paralyzed with fear and grief yet unable to scream due to the suffocating hand of apathy wrapped around my throat. All the while, the Great Pan screams violently and ever so gleefully into my ear, turning my blood cold as it pushes me to drown in ice-cold rivers of dread. At the same time, the insufferable rays of the sun crawl against my skin, torturing me mercilessly with the prospect of having to spend yet another day in the clutches of this sadistic reality.

In moments like this, I can only think about how nothing is more horrifying than the idea that without the pills on my nightstand, I am nothing more than a lost child trapped in the cold void of a dead body.

I used to be a colossal pervert—orgies were one of my favorites; come to think of it, I met my wife, Karissa, at an orgy in college. My favorite kink was sounding. Sounding is when a catheter or a metal rod is inserted into the urethra. Some people wonder what possessed me to penetrate my pisshole; the urethra is lined with sensitive nerve endings, which can be extremely pleasurable when stimulated. Also, sounding is another way to reach the G-spot. Sure, the same goal could be accomplished with anal sex, but I prefer to pitch than catch.

My ex-partners would dress up as a sexy nurse and sound me. When I first brought it up to Karissa, she was reluctant, but after some convincing, she agreed to indulge me. The day came, she knocked on our bedroom door. I opened the door to see Karissa on the other side; she wore a white latex nurse’s dress and hat. The costume showed off her curves perfectly, I elevated my gaze and admired her large breasts that were barely covered by the dress, her auburn hair cascaded down her back, and there was an amorous look in those vibrant blue eyes. She held a clipboard in her hand and a black bag slung around her shoulder.

“It’s a good thing you came; I haven’t been feeling well all day,” I said.

She kissed me hard on the lips. “I’ll be giving you your exam today.”

She laid me on the torn-up, sheetless mattress and pulled my dirt-covered jeans off. The air tasted like vanilla ice cream and strawberries. Karissa opened her bag and pulled out a catheter and bottle of lube. “I understand you’ve been having trouble urinating.”

Karissa climbed on top of me, her face smashed into mine with an explosion of passion. Her tongue wrenched my lips apart and slithered inside my mouth. She withdrew her tongue and slowly placed soft, tender kisses on my neck, chest, and stomach leaving sloppy lipstick marks behind. Getting closer to my throbbing Johnson. She opened her mouth wide and swallowed my pecker; warmth consumed the organ as it grew larger and larger inside Karissa’s mouth; saliva seeped out the corners of her mouth and rolled down her chin. Karissa stopped when I was about to orgasm; she stood up and wiped the spit off her mouth. Then, she squirted lube on the catheter and onto my package. Precum leaked onto her hand as she lifted my prick and inserted the device. An intense, exquisite ecstasy rushed from my dickhead and all the way to the base of my cock.

Karissa massaged my tip, helping to stimulate the nerve endings, adding to the pleasure. My eyes rolled into the back of my head as loud moans escaped my mouth. As the tool moved further, I felt a slight burning sensation; the burning did not hinder my desire for gratification. As the tube got closer and closer to my prostate, I felt resistance.

“Deeper,” I moaned.

“It’s not going to go any deeper,” Karissa said.

I snatched the catheter out of her hand. “I’ll do it myself!”

I gripped the catheter and pushed past the blockage; pleasure turned into pain in seconds. Agony spread throughout my dick; a pins and needles sensation assailed my urethra. Horrified, I watched blood rush through the hose and into the bag. Crimson spilled over the edges of my dickhead; blood erupted from my cock, gushing all around the catheter.

Karissa’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open. “Holy shit!”

“Pull it out!” I screamed.

Karissa hesitantly grabbed the catheter. “On the count of three, okay?”

I laid back and took a deep breath. “One… Tw—”

RIP!

Blood sprayed onto Karissa's dress and hat in one big arch. My body spasmed, blood pumped out of my mangled wang. Tears, sweat, and snot flowed down my face as I laid in a pool of gore. The room spun as my vision faded. The last thing I remember before passing out was Karissa frantically dialing nine-one-one.

I woke up in a hospital bed. Curious if I still had my lil buddy, I peeked under the covers to see bandages wrapped around my joystick. Surprisingly, I wasn’t worried if my dick would ever work again or not. Thanks to the painkillers—I was too high to care.

Wheel of Fortune played on the TV; Karissa sat by my bedside, eyes red and puffy, a balled-up tissue clenched in her tiny fist. Seeing I was awake, she scooted her chair closer to the bed and kissed me before stroking my head. I’d like to say worse things have happened to me, but honestly, that’d be a lie.

A cacophony of pained, anguished screams resounded down the hallway like some harmony of the damned. The screams were followed by fast, frantic footsteps squeaking on the scuffed linoleum floor; the rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor from the next room blared in my ears; the malodorous scent of disinfectant was so intense I could taste the iodoform in the air. I buzzed the nurse for a cup of water, hoping to wash the nasty taste out of my mouth.

She handed me my water. “How are you feeling?”

I shrugged. “Pretty good for a guy who almost got his dick ripped off.”

“Erik!” Karissa chided.

The nurse smiled. “He’s fine, don’t be afraid to buzz me if you need anything else.”

“Thanks,” I said.

As I sipped cold water from the styrofoam cup, I tried not to think about the big fat hospital bill with my name or the overtime I would have to pay it all off; no wonder people hate going to the hospital.

“Hey, honey?” I said.

“Yes?” Karissa answered.

“Next time, let’s play doctor.”

Isaac laid on the cold trailer floor in agonizing pain, surrounded by a sea of packages—loathing himself for his poor life choices and lack of ambition. Isaac’s back burned and throbbed; a lightning bolt of agony struck his spine with each movement. Boxes poured down the silly-slide-like shoot and filled the truck. Fear gripped Isaac as he stared at the machine gun turret mounted to the ceiling across the conveyor belt. Mom was right, he thought. If Isaac had stayed in college, maybe he’d be doing something that mattered.

The light attached to the machine gun flashed red. Isaac lifted his water bottle to his mouth and drank. The water tasted like bleach. The smell of cardboard, plastic, and disinfectant saturated the air. Isaac threw up every morning before work; everyone had a morning ritual. Isaac’s ritual was hurling his breakfast five minutes after eating. The water washed away the post-breakfast vomit. A surge of energy, euphoria, and bravado networked through his veins and drowned his brain in dopamine.

BRRRATATATA!

Wails echoed through the warehouse. Three trucks down, someone failed to keep the light off. Isaac arduously picked himself up and got to work building walls of boxes.

“Isaac, you need to pick up the pace!”

Isaac turned around to see Frank; Frank was clean-shaven, his eyes surrounded by dark purple rings, and he wore a garish orange Niles Express polo.

Isaac grabbed his back and winced. “I need to report an injury—every time I move, I feel like I’m being electrocuted.”

Frank gripped his baton and gnashed his yellow teeth; the veins in his forehead formed a ‘Y.’ “Did you get hit by a box?”

Isaac frowned. “No.”

Frank threw his bald head back and guffawed. “That’s not an injury—just wear and tear of the job.” He jabbed his club in Isaac’s chest. “I’ll motivate you!”

Isaac grinned wryly. “Motivation isn’t always a good thing—Timothy McVeigh was motivated—and look where that got him.

BASH!

Isaac’s head jerked to the right; he swallowed a mouthful of blood and teeth.

Frank rammed the tip of his club into Isaac’s gut. Isaac hunched over in pain. “The load rate is seven-hundred-twenty per hour!”

WHACK!

Frank brought the bludgeon down on Isaac’s back; Isaac collapsed face-first on the rollers.

“You should stack one package every five seconds!”

CRUNCH!

Isaac’s nose flattened beneath Frank’s club. Crimson spilled from Isaac’s mouth and nose; tears bled from his eyes; Frank raised his club above his head. His chest heaved, and his teeth clenched in a sick grimace.

“I WILL TEACH YOU ABOUT PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFICIENCY!”

Isaac raised his hands defensively. “Ssshelp!” he mumbled through a broken jaw.

SMASH!

Isaac’s fingers turned in the opposite direction and broke, bones burst through purple flesh; he clutched his destroyed hand to his chest and rived on the ground.

Frank raised the club again. “YOU WILL BE EFFICIENT!”

WHUDD!

Frank’s nuts ruptured underneath Isaac’s steel toe. Blood rolled down his legs. The old man dropped to his knees and cupped his groin. The club clattered to the ground. His face twisted in an expression of agony. The light turned red.

RATATATATA!

Bullets punched through Frank’s chest and stomach. Jets of blood sprayed the stainless steel ceiling and walls. Frank looked like a bloody slice of Swiss cheese. His bloody lips quivered, and a tear rolled down his cheek; Frank’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and dropped forward. The bell rang, signifying the end of the day. Isaac’s jaw swelled to the size of a baseball. He rolled out of the truck, punched out, and ambled home.

“Maybe you just didn’t get over Basil’s passing as much as you’d like to think you did.” Once my therapist said those words, I immediately regretted seeing him again. Basil was my cat. He passed away nearly a year ago from kidney failure. He was an old cat, and it hurt to lose him, but it wasn’t something unexpected; his health was noticeably declining for a while before I finally put him to rest.

I was at peace with Basil’s passing. Not that it didn’t hurt. It did, of course. He was a part of the family. It still hurts thinking about him. The same way that it hurts thinking about the people I’ve lost throughout my life. I doubt someone would tell me I’m still grieving over the passing of my grandpa who passed away eighteen years ago. Nor Helena, who was my best friend, who passed away seven years ago from IPF. I still think about her a lot. That doesn’t mean I’m still actively grieving.

Mentioning that I mistake random noises for Basil’s presence was a bad idea. I guess. That’s probably what made the doctor think I was still not over his passing. God forbid my mind misinterprets something a sound or a flash of light for my dead cat. I know he’s gone, and I no longer have his litter box or bowl, but sometimes my imagination acts out. On some days, when I’m completely drained, I can hear a sound that sounds remarkably similar to what he sounded like when he was digging in his litter or when he ate. I even have moments when I catch a false visual cue of his form jumping or walking about. It’s just common sense, I think. My brain conjures up images and sounds that had been a constant in my life for over a decade, to very similar stimuli.

Even more so when I’m drained and right now, that’s pretty much all I am. Burnt out even.

That said, having to deal with Basil’s ghost would’ve been far more pleasant than that thing. Even if he came back to haunt me because of some arcane antihumanitarian diabolical cat magic pact.

Speaking of that thing, I don’t know what the fuck it was. I don’t want to know what it was, but it looked like a cat. A gigantic cat. A gargantuan house cat of sorts and I’m not talking a thirty-pound Maine Coon big, I’m talking lion-sized big. Though, it wasn’t a lion… It was a cat… At least that’s what it looked like. In certain moments.

This whole thing is hazy, just like Basil’s imaginary phantom. I was having a hard time falling asleep, as often happens with people dealing with insomnia. Nothing seemed to help me get a good night’s sleep. Nothing short of pills, which I refuse to take because it seems like they’re letting you sleep without letting you properly rest. I might be wrong, but that’s beside the point.

Anyway, thinking about not thinking, or thinking about nothing, isn’t an option. Counting sheep and whatnot doesn’t work either. These things make me think and therefore keep me alert enough to not fall asleep. Same with breathing exercises. My mind has a hard time shutting off, but it eventually grows tired of running around and lets me rest, insufficiently most days, but that’s something too.

That night, I couldn’t fall asleep, and I was getting frustrated with my restlessness. Instead of tossing and turning in bed, I got out of bed and dragged my aching joints for a walk around the city.

No later than ten minutes into my stroll, I began hearing this beautiful melody in the distance. Something inside told me to follow the melody, and so I did. Before long, all I could think about was finding the source of this wonderful song echoing ever louder in my ears. I was so enamored by this song that I didn’t even notice where I had gone.

This magnificent song completely enchanted me. An ethereal keening performed with an angelic voice filled with a sorrowful, droning hum and pained delivery. So much so that I ended up dumbfounded on the other edge of the city when the stench of decaying trash finally returned me to my senses. I was standing at the edge of the landfill, not sure how I got there, but it was eerily quiet. The hauntingly terrific melody was gone.

Not that I had the time to be dumbfounded. As soon as I realized what happened, a shadow flew over my head and my body moved on instinct, flinching at the sight of the oncoming object. A dark mass landed not too far from me as the unfortunate circumstances of my military experience came into effect once again.

The mass shifted quickly, revealing a pair of jaws filled with serrated teeth.

My brain shifted gears and forced my legs to run without direction. I just had to get as far away as I could from that thing. As I ran, it hissed like a threatened cobra. I could hear its weight pressing against the ground behind me. It was a heavy thing. I just ran, trying my best to ignore the panicking internal dialogue raging inside my head.

After a couple of minutes, the noise behind me faded out, and I slowed down, now walking with intent, trying to make sense of what had happened to me as I made my way home. I walked for a few more minutes in the dark streets until I heard the single most terrifyingly uncanny sound.

A sudden and unexpected meow that just echoed straight into my ears out of nowhere. In that moment, this simple meow sent chills down my spine, forcing me to stop and turn. I couldn’t see much in the dark. The street lamps in this part of town are old and far too few to provide any kind of sufficient illumination.

A second meow glided across the nothingness as I saw a sliver of a shadow darker than the darkness itself slithering its way through the street. My body moved on its own. Forcing me to run again.

The meowing followed, occasionally growing deeper, too deep. With each successive call, I ran faster. As I ran, I looked back every now and again to see if I had lost whatever the hell was following me. Each time, I heard yet another uncanny meow.

By the time I had gotten to a properly illuminated neighborhood, I could see the shadow snaking around behind me from time to time. The meowing had gotten more erratic, more desperate, more sinister even. At one point resembling the sound of a man badly mimicking the sounds of a cat. These strange vocalizations made me feel even worse, and I was slowing down as my body was finally succumbing to exhaustion.

My lungs were on fire and my heart bouncing into my throat, my body was begging me to slow down and once the meowing had gone silent; I figured I could stop for a moment. By this point, I wasn’t too far from my home too. Shouldn’t have done that. Immediately, I saw two orbs floating in the darkness before the craziest puma growl ever exploded right in front of me, freezing me in place.

The beast pounced on me. I could see its mass flying straight at me and I don’t know what happened, but I just stumbled over my feet, thinking I’m just going to die. By sheer dumb luck, the beast overshot me and I heard it slamming onto the ground with a loud thud. It hissed at me and, fueled by a new wave of adrenaline; I just bolted out of there. As fast as my body would allow me to run. I sprinted full force, completely ignoring the fact my shins and knees screaming in pain and my lungs drowning in fire. I couldn’t stop as long as that thing was right behind me. It was making these really breathy noises, almost as if it was laughing at me.

I had a one-track mind at that moment, lose the damn thing at all costs. No matter how far I pushed, though, the thing seemed hell-bent on getting to me. I could almost feel its rancid hot breath across the back of my throat at points.

I was lucky there weren’t many late-night drivers around that night because I would’ve probably ended up dead, running across the road as I did. Never stopping to check whether there was any oncoming traffic. Fear is a powerful motivator sometimes and at that moment there was nothing I was more afraid of than the ghastly predator hot on my trail.

I didn’t know how much longer I could run at that pace. The morbid realization that this beast refused to conform to the laws of nature was absolutely terrifying. On the one hand, the fear provided me with additional fuel, and on the other, I was growing exhausted by the second. And that thing just ran at a high speed for longer than any goddamned cat should be able to.

The only reason I could even keep the distance between us was because I kept zigzagging and crisscrossing between buildings and roads as I ran.

Finally, as I began feeling that this was the end, a tidal wave of light behind me forced to beast to come to a halt. The deafening sound of a car horn blaring forced me to stop and turn. At that moment I saw the beast that was trying to hunt me. The flood of light completely demystified the creature, leaving it naked before my eyes.

It was a massive gray cat; far bigger than any cat I’d ever seen before, covered in a striped gray and brown fur. It contorted its face in rage as it hissed, baring its teeth at the approaching vehicle. The sound the beast made jolted me once last time before it turned around and ran off into the darkness. Blending perfectly into the shadows as the car sped away between us.

I didn’t sleep that night, nor the one after it… I don’t sleep much lately, in fact. I have a hard time around cats now, and it seems like they’re everywhere nowadays. Maybe I’m just losing my mind. It might just be the lack of sleep finally getting to. Still, I just can’t shake the feeling of being stalked by a horde of cats. Every time I hear a cat outside, I’m reminded of that awful scowl. They just keep meowing and hissing all the God damned time. It’s like they’re following me. I can’t help but feel like they’re waiting for the perfect moment to strike. I know it sounds crazy, but I swear, there weren’t that many cats around here before.

What’s worse is that every one of those cats looks at me. My entire body seizes up because all I can see is the terrible scowl and blood-red eyes. Evil eyes serving as a gateway from which the void is gazing with a palpable lust for blood.

Lately, even the phantom flashes of Basil I get seem more ghastly and, at the same time, more tangible. There’s an air of cold malevolence to them. These lapses in perception are no longer a bittersweet reminder of a beautiful past, but a sign of a predatory presence toying with its food.

It scares me to say this, but I’m having a hard time telling what is imaginary and what’s not.

Another one has fallen victim to the charms of the wonderfully terrible monster plaguing this old city for as long as it stood. Oh, how he reminds me of myself when I was this young. I wish I could’ve warned him about the war being a cruel lover. All I can do now is provide him with some comfort as his body grows cold.

I was sixteen when I went off to the war, young and mindless - seeking the thrill of adventure I went to fight in a war that has been raging for eternity. A war where heroes are made, but none are ever born.

I’ve fought and I’ve brawled, and I’ve whored myself shamelessly to the mercurial empress of all glories. I’ve killed sons, brothers, fathers and I’ve lost. Lost so much… I’ve lost friends, brothers… and my sanity and eventually my life.

Barely a year on the line I ended up stepping on a mine and in a single instant I’ve lost everything but the ability to feel an overwhelming and all-consuming pain.

Infernal agony

… tore through what had remained of me as I clutched my exposed guts while coughing up blood and crying for my mother to come and carry me home. She never came, and I never left this place.

Wheels of Samsara

… turn in on themselves with enough force to create a karmic black hole that has kept me in the periphery of this never-ending war, locked in a staring battle with the heavens.

The sun infected my still warm corpse

… With the spores of life, as soon as the man in me had died, crows and other scavengers devoured my dermis and musculature while maggots and other microfauna had nestled inside my motionless tissue anchoring it to the soil with their vibrant dance of blooming decay.

In a matter of moments, nothing of my previous-self remained intact but the seed of a new life had already sustained itself by consuming my blood and rooted itself within my caramelized ribcage, beating with purpose as my heart once beat.

Before long, the seedling flowered into an entire tree, obliterating what skeletal remains of my previous life had clung onto this world.

And now, here I stand, the resting place of a man who had repeated all of my mistakes.

I stand as a monolithic reminder that life always marches on…

Forever mindlessly courting its lecherous mistress named Death…

I am but one of its countless victims.

We were all

… This entire forest

We were all once men madly in love with life -

Men whose lust for life had bloomed into a forest where a single moment in time stands still forever…

And now I

… We all long for the permanent comfort named Death.

A sudden headache struck the old goatherder. The pain was so sharp he blacked out for a second. Returning to his sense, he was sitting on the grassy shores of the great sea. Red dots and lines danced in his field of vision as electric shocks traveled across his skull and neck. The old man looked up.

The last thing he saw was a fiery sphere hurling towards him from the sky. The same star he grew up watching grow in size and proximity in the sky with each passing day.

The old man didn’t feel pain upon impact. In fact, he felt nothing at all.

The falling star crashed into the great sea with such heat it had evaporated. The force of the impact had pushed vast quantities of salt buried beneath its waters into the air. In the minutes after the crash, skies rained flames and salt in the shape of a poisonous snowstorm that ate the fabric of the world as it cascaded onto the earth.

The blast generated by the impact was so great it had set the entire world on fire; dismantling the continents and stripping the earth of its surface before the solar system followed suit; crumbling into dust. Followed by the demise of the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy in a display of colorful cosmic fireworks going off as the stars imploded on themselves one by one leaving behind nothing but a trail of pure darkness until the entire universe collapsed in on itself in a supermassive explosion that unraveled the entirety of creation revealing the threads that held it all together.

A spiderweb of threads colored in impossible hues intertwined endlessly in impossible shapes and knots.

The threads refused to be torn apart by the blast, instead pulling the dried-up skeletal remains of the universe back together into place. Reforming a grotesque skeleton devoid of life with such a force that an impossibly massive array of colors, sounds, and immeasurable heat arose from the core of the titanic bone formation leading to the inevitable birth of particles.

Particles so small and elusive, yet so magnetically charged they immediately pull each other closer and closer. Slowly they merge to give birth to atoms that further metastasized into elemental molecules. Ones that give birth to the building blocks of the flesh of the universe.

Before long, muscles and tendons shaped like stars and nebulae began taking shape all across the barren skeleton of the cosmos. In no time, the threads of the universe, the fabric of fates drove the universal evolution to a point where the entirety of creation had regrown its organs in the likeness of luminous stars and quasars, the light devouring black holes and the planets upon which the amorphous divinities breathed life.

Life gave rise to consciousness, and consciousness gave rise to awareness, which eventually birthed mindfulness from which came the imitation of the divine and the cosmic. Miniature godheads who manipulate and cultivate other lifeforms attempting to tame their planets end up constructing cities and establishing civilizations before they set sail across the vast expanses of the universe, always building, always growing - forever evolving, without control, without limit.

In due time, the evolution of creation has gotten out of hand, turning malignant, tumorous - cancerous. It stretched the body of the universe to its absolute limit and beyond. Rapid expansion through an ever-increasing acceleration. Expanding velocity of formation that leads to the overstretching of the ligaments and tendons of reality slowly tearing it at the seams without ever stopping until it all burst.

And the cycle of collapse and rebirth began anew.

Tenfold. Hundredfold. Thousandfold.

Growth and decay - Divine procreation leads to the birth of universal infancy, which grows and renews itself rapidly until the universal telomeres begin to erode and collapse under the weight of cosmic renewal. Thus, driving to an acceleration in the divisions of cells, allowing for genetic-coding mistakes, leading to the perfect conditions in which cells become cancerous. The malignant clusters overwhelmed the healthy organs and eventually, the entire body rots away, leaving behind nothing skeletal remains to be used as fertilizer by the forces beyond in their recreation of everything from beyond the void.

Birth and failure and renewal and demise

– Ad infinitum

A single second outstretched beyond the limits of elasticity into a loop twisted seamlessly around a dreamlike eternity within the rapidly deteriorating in a decline geared towards an irreversible collapse. Innumerable eternities compressed into a single instant inside the mind of a rather featureless and dim entity, no longer displaying any signs of vitality. As its mind drowns in infinite possibilities and outcomes, the entity remains perched motionlessly on a brightly shining throne within a room flooded with pure white light.

Smaller entities not too dissimilar to an ocean of fireflies congregate in a nearby room. Swarming about in an eerie silence until one dares break the deafening tension in the room with a terrifying cry that sounds the crowd of sentient flames into a frenzy;

“ELOH MT…”

(God has died…)

The following is a transcript of a video recording found on the mobile phone of Mateusz Kowalczyk. The man in question was a part of a missing group of backpackers all of whom are now presumed dead. Their remains are yet to have been found. M. Kowalczyk's remains were found in the Tarty national park, not far from Poland's border with Slovakia. His body was bisected and the two halves were found some five meters apart. The recording contains graphic language.

***

M. Kowalczyk is pacing back and front in front of the camera in a dimly lit space. His heaving is audible. M. Kowalczyk appears to be in distress. He wraps his hands around his abdomen and collapses to his knees. Vomiting. He gasps and coughs as he finally sits up in front of his camera, visibly shaken.

I'm recording this just in case whatever the fuck is out there catches up to me too. I think I lost it, but I'm not sure. I don't know what the fuck this is but it's not human. It's some kind of… Monster…

Fucking… Monster…

M. Kowalczyk begins heaving audibly again, running his hands across his face as his body visibly trembles for a few seconds before his manages to steady himself.

Ah-it, this thing killed everyone, it killed all the others. Tore them apart, with its bare hands.

M. Kowalczyk pauses for a moment, shifting his gaze downward and swallowing loudly before returning his gaze to the camera.

Some kind of lizard-man, I don't know what the fuck that was. I don't… I… ugh… Shit… Fuck… I don't… Oh fuck… Relax Maciek, relax… you're fine… you're alright… you're safe… Ugh… Gah…

We were just camping before… we're just camping with this group of people from all over Europe. Just camping. I went for a little walk. I walked for a maybe ten minutes minutes before I needed to take a leak and… and everything was quiet… everything was quiet… then the sound of Dany's rifle went off. He was the only one with a gun. He brought it with him from Lwow to hunt. It was so loud, so loud against the night's silence. It startled me and I franticly zipped my pants… I ran back to camp…

M. Kowalczyk pauses staring at the camera for about thirty seconds.

All I could hear were screams, huh-huh-huh-huh… Screaming, the screaming haaah.. huh… I didn't know what was going on at first… huh-huh-huh-huh… I saw Dany shooting his rifle again… huh-huh-huh… More screaming… Everything was so loud… huh-huh-huh…

I saw it, I saw, I saw…

Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh…

It had Klaudia its hands… Huuuuuuuuuuuahhuhuh She was, she was she was she was… huuuh-huuh-huuuuh… Broken… Broken… Broken… Scales… it had scales… Like Armadillo… Tall… White… Pales all over… huh-huh-huh Klaudia was dead…

Dany shot it… huh-huh-huh-huh-huh.

It tossed her… She didn't move, I saw her face… ughhh

M. Kowalczyk is visibly struggling to speak coherently

I saw its head, it had no features huh-huh-huh-huh-n-n-huh-huh-nothing-just scales.

It tossed her, it tossed Klaudia at Dany…

I saw others… Dawid… Janusz… Marek… Kasia… Anna… Jag… dead… broken…. blood… guts… bones… huh-huh-huh-huh-huh

Dany fell, struggling to push Klaudia away… huh-huh-huh-huh-huh

It just jumped at him and-and-and-and t-t-t-t-t-t-tore ahaaaaaaaah

M. Kowalczyk begins crying audibly

It tore his leg ooooooooagh

M. Kowalczyk begins weeping uncontrollably, he proceeds to weep for about forty seconds before attempting to speak again.

That sound… that scream… aaah aaaah aaaah

I-I-I-I couldn't do anything Ah-ah-ah-ah I couldn't move… aaaaghhhh

It just-just-just began…. It beat

It was beaaaaahaaah Dany aaaaaaaaagha with aaaaghhaaa his leggggg

So muuuuuaghch blooodgh tshhh

I jus-jus-jus-ran

I jus-ran… Ah raan

M. Kowalczyk resumes weeping uncontrollably again. The crying continues for a while until a low muffled growl is audible in the distance. M. Kowalczyk's crying stops immediately and he stares for a couple of seconds at the camera, wild eyed and growing noticeably paler. He begins muttering unintelligibly before grabbing his mobile frantically and ending the recording abruptly.

***

M. Kowalczyk's remains were found three days after the aforementioned recording. The area in which his remains were found is now under the investigation of the local authorities.

Even with the ugly scars beautifying the left side of my face, I don’t really have a tragic story to tell. No devils are hiding under the demonic appearance, either. There was never any angst or darkness or anything like that. Even though there is some mental pain stemming from the nightmares. As far as I was concerned for most of my life, the scars were there because of a fight I had with another kid who shoved me into a glass pane that exploded, lacerating me all over. A childish miscalculation that had cost the kid who did this a lot.

Even with the scars, I have led a decent life; I got the degree I wanted and I work in my dream job. Made the best friends in the world. I married the love of my life, and I have got a kid on the way. Even with the nightmares and agitation and hyper-alertness, life is good. I am not a violent man. I have a lot of unexplainable anger, but I usually just curse it out.

Not too long ago, I couldn’t remember shit before the age of ten. A blank period in my mind. Completely gone. Not that it mattered. Life was good. My parents were the best anyone could hope for, and the kids at school were supportive. Even with my scrambled egg of a brain, thanks to my supportive environment, my confidence was always fine. I was never conscious of my appearance.

Even when the wounds healed faster than expected, I was in a lot of pain. Sleep used to be a fucking nightmare. Literally, night after night, for I don’t remember how long I’d see these fucking terrifying visions in my sleep.

They were all the same, always the same.

Every time, I’m lying on the ground surrounded by shadowy figures. Sore and exhausted, with everything burning and my inside screaming. Tears running down my face, snot and mucus abstracting my breathing. The fear of death washing all over me like pins and needles running across my skin as one figure draws closer and closer before it is actually standing over me. My chest feels as if it’s about to collapse under the weight of the world, and everything fades for a single moment.

The feeling of flames bursting from under the skin of my face forces my eyes to open again. I can only watch in horror, immobilized by it, as one of those ominous figures is digging its talons into my skull.

The pain wakes me up every time, screaming bloody murder. It feels so real; it felt so real. Every single time, the sensation of my flesh being torn open with a methodical precision pulsates violently through my head. I could only compare it to experiencing a botched lobotomy wide awake.

My therapist, at the time, kept insisting that the nightmares were just my mind rationalizing the accident, as we called it. I had gotten into a fight with another kid, and he didn’t think about the ramification of shoving my face into a glass pane hellbent on smashing both to bits.

Therapy didn’t do shit for me. It didn’t help with the nightmares, and neither did the meds. What helped me was music, though, the darker and more uncomfortable the better. It helped me get all my negative feelings and thoughts out. It helped burn out the tension formed through the nightmares. The auditory hell I subjected myself to was a shining light that illuminated my path through my own internal hell.

That’s how I ended up listening to the Devil’s Record. Forty-something minutes of the display of the worst humanity straight out of Halmstad. The epitome of all negativity compressed and packed into a neat little auditory package under the wraps of fine musicianship. What a fucking record, an absolute masterpiece. My sister-in-law recommended this one to me, and I’m glad I took up the offer, even if it wasn’t my usual cup of tea.

It took me a while to actually listen to it, partially because of the hype she had built around the damned thing. I refused to believe this thing was as good as she said, but when I finally got to listening to the record. All I heard was the truth and nothing but the truth.

The record starts with a corruption of the first stanza of Hughes Mearns “Antigonish”; “As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. I saw him there again today. I wish; I wish he’d go away”.

Oh, how this stanza resonates with me; that night, I was hiking with a beer bottle in hand while listening to the Devil’s Record. The music completely submerged me in a sea of darkness conjured by the charm of violins and the frantic humming of cellos breaking distant sheets of glass when a barely human creature popped up from out of nowhere, almost. He tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned, I couldn’t help but notice the pitiful state of this guy. Tattered clothes loosely hanging onto a thin, skeletal frame, sores all over his face, and a smile revealing lots of missing teeth.

I pulled out one of my headphones once his lips moved. He was asking for some change. Something about his face wasn’t right. It was making me anxious. And not because it was a meth-head. I’ve seen plenty of those before. It was something else. I told him I had nothing to give him.

Guess he didn’t want to take a no for an answer. Guess he needed another hit, so as I turned to walk away, he grabbed my arm. Maybe he wanted to rob me, maybe he was just off his rock, I don’t know. I don’t care. All I can say is that it was a grave mistake on his part. He pulled me closer to him and, as I spun; I saw his eyes.

Those fucking eyes, I’ll never forget those eyes, they’re burned into my memory. It all came back when I saw those fucking inhumane eyes of his. Six kids piled up on me. Beat the ever-loving shit out of me. Fuck knows for what reason. Some kid bully shit. A scream roared in my headphone, turning into a rolling howl, as the memory of me being pinned down on the grass by two fucks while a third one sat on my chest with a shard of glass in hand. The left side of my head came on fire as the memory of one of those fucks carving up my face finally resurfaced. Three other shits were watching the carnage, cheering on their friend to maim me.

Fear crawled up my throat, and as it reached my mouth, it turned into venomous anger. The creature holding onto me was barking unintelligible noises at me. I tightly clasped my hand around his coat. He was the one who held my legs when my face was being carved.

Pain, terrible pain overwrote any semblance of sense in my mind finally pushed me over the edge. As the sound of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata echoed in my ear, I began smashing the bottle onto the man’s face. With each stroke of the glass shard in my mind, I landed a matching blow to his face.

Fortunately for me, after a few blows, my hand must’ve slipped, and I ended up breaking the bottle across his head. The sound of broken glass returned me to my senses, and I let go of the bloodied man.

He fell to the ground, muttering something. Blood poured down his face and into his eyes. They were the eyes of a man afraid for his life. Once I saw the fear in his eyes, my anger turned to terror. My vision began spinning, and I started trembling. Chills ran down my spine as I stared at what I had done.

There was only one thing I could do, and that’s what I always did. I did my best to act as if I wasn’t feeling anything. I just spat on the ground and walked away. The whole time, the haunting images of that god-awful day bounced around inside my skull. Slowly but surely chipping away through my usual act.

Once I was sure no one was around to see me, I finally broke down. I collapsed into a fetal position and began crying.

And I cried until my head fucking spun from the tension. The pain I felt that night was… I don’t even have the words to describe it. It was the most immense and overwhelming feeling I’ve ever had. Pure suffering in its most complete and utter form.

And even though now I know what happened to me, my pain remains constant and sharp. There is no catharsis. I gain no real deeper knowledge of myself, and I know I am quoting American Psycho here, which is kinda funny because, unlike Patrick Bateman, punishment did not elude the six sick fucks that scarred my face. No… They all spent a while in juvey and besides that…

Four of them are dead, as far as I know. One was caught diddling kids and was locked up, and didn’t make it long behind bars. Another had a bit of an identity crisis and ended up on a rope. The sadist who carved my face pushed his girlfriend too far and ended up with six bullets in his head and chest. The fourth died from some aggressive cancer.

The two still living don’t have much time left either, one’s homeless meth head who probably has a faceful of gangrene, and the sixth one is the one who told me about all of this… Turns out the result of what they had done to me weighed a little too heavy on his poor soul and he turned to the bottle to handle the guilt. He fucked up his liver and is now in urgent need of a transplant.

I found this out completely by accident on a trip with my wife to the hospital. What’s more, I’m a compatible donor, and he was very apologetic, but I’m afraid he isn’t as remorseful as he claimed to be. I think he just fears for his life, now that his mistakes have caught up to him.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t wait until I unintentionally ran into him on his deathbed to fucking apologize.

They always came at night. The terrible and inhumane things that had haunted me for years and years. I can’t even call them creatures because I never knew if they were physical beings or not. These horrors came only after the sunset, and the darkness of the night had blanketed the world with its false serenity. Nothing was serene about the nights when these malicious apparitions came to me.

I can only speculate where they came from and what they are. In my mind, they seemed like a product of prayer, a healing prayer meant to improve the health of my grandmother in her childhood days.

She’s told me about a time when she was an orphan in Western Ukraine after the Great Patriotic War when her legs started atrophying for no apparent reason and no doctor could actually help her. She spent months losing the function of her legs until an elderly woman came to visit the orphanage and found my grandma with her decaying legs. And grandma said she can vaguely recall seeing this woman standing over her, chanting; praying. After that, grandma’s legs miraculously healed.

I don’t rule out the possibility of some extraordinary thing happening there. Maybe this woman was a faith healer, maybe she was a witch doctor of some sort, and maybe she was handling forces that were far beyond her control. We’ll never know for sure. Maybe because grandma regained her legs, something had to be taken as payment. My health and my sanity.

Judging by my family’s history; it’s probably not just me. An uncle of mine became increasingly volatile before having a huge argument with the family and leaving the house. He ended up involved in the 90s Russian oligarch-gang affairs and had his life cut short. Another aunt died relatively young due to “alcoholism” even though she was by all means nothing like what one would imagine an alcoholic to be. My cousin is having weird health issues that cause her to feint every now and again, without a detectable cause.

And I, well, I, I was being visited by grotesque fiends for years at night, starting out maybe when I was five… As long as I remember myself, they’d show up at night. Horrible and inhuman; ugly, disgusting, and visually torturous. There were insectoid things, there were just ghastly amorphous shadows and there were humanoid things too. A pale, thin thing without a face and absurdly long arms with almost cartoonishly long claws. There was also a reflection of myself with its mouth sewn shut, with mouths gaping on its palms filled with Piranha-like teeth. There was an ostrich-like monstrosity with four hooves and an elongated human face. Some of those things looked like mutated animals, others like completely alien things.

The worst one of all was a vaguely anthropomorphic entity walking on all fours, almost like an ape but with an awkward gait. Its joints clicked and cracked as it crawled towards me, emanating a terrible stench of pus mixed with wet dirt as it stalked. The thing was almost completely nude, aside from the occasional tuft of hair jutting out of its muscular frame. Its most uncanny feature was its face; the thing was reversed upside down. Its mouth was on its forehead, a hairy set of lips containing a single bloodshot, soul-piercing eye and its eyelids were above its crooked chin; perpetually closed until was about to feed, revealing needle-like teeth under each eyelid and long, prehensible forked tongues.

Every time these things came to me, they came to feed on something inside of me. As a little boy, I would freeze up at the sight of something shifting and maneuvering in the dark until it revealed its horrific face to me. I thought the fear paralyzed me, but in actuality, it was something else. Something I figured out when I was a teenager. These things are like vampiric parasites; they would latch onto me with their feeding organ and fill me with a paralyzing agent to keep me still as they fed on me. Every single time they’d suck this something out of me, leaving me exhausted and in pain the morning after. Specifically leaving my bones aching and riddling my skin with the feeling of pins and needles at the site of the bite, without leaving physical marks behind.

Seems like these things leave nothing physical behind, nothing that can be seen under the light of the sun.

Naturally, I tried telling my parents about the things that haunted me at night, but they reassured me these were just nightmares or night terrors. I wish they were nightmares, but they weren’t because on many nights during which I wasn’t being attacked, I suffered from nightmares about these hellish things.

We talked about sleep paralysis too, but it wasn’t it, and when I tried to protest, they dismissed it as a wild imagination. I didn’t know that vivid imagination and sleep paralysis left behind traces of brain-melting bone aches in a child.

By the time my pain noticeably crippled me, I guess it was too late. Inflammation was burning its way through my spine. It turned out. The spinal column was already in an early stage of fusing and contorting itself. I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis. That didn’t explain the pain in my arms and legs, nor did it explain the awful nightly battles I was having time and time again. Either with these tormenting beings or with my own body.

Many nights I had cried myself to sleep from the unbearable pain. It had gotten so bad that even taking a deep breath was becoming painful and something inside of me seemed to have snapped overnight.

The childlike existential dread of these things had turned into a burning, passionate hatred fueled by the vicious joy bringing relief of adrenaline carried on the wings of my stress-induced agitation turning into outright boiling anger.

Some time after my diagnosis, I had decided enough was enough at the same time the concept of evening was being stretched into later and later hours of the day. I had started seeing these things before I was in bed. I could see them lurking at the periphery of my vision. Stalking the unlit rooms of the house. Salivating their neurotoxin as they waited for me to head to bed.

Figuring I had to at least try to defend myself from these things or else I might end up dead or worse, a vegetable, that’s why I finally chose to fight back. Throwing fists proved effective against one or two of these night stalkers, but they’ve adapted as well. Those that usually came alone stopped coming alone. Instead, they started arriving in packs, consistently. At that point, punching and kicking didn’t suffice, and I ended up getting overwhelmed with my body becoming the banquet of alien hyena-like swarms. The mornings after were pure arthritic agony.

It ruined my sleep, and my awful mood sapped the strength out of me and the will to live a normal active life, making my condition even worse as the days wore on and I found myself in a deeper abyss of bone-breaking pain.

At the time I hit my lowest point. I was becoming increasingly anxious about everything and slowly turning agoraphobic. The stress was killing me, and my internal fury was reverting to its original state. I was becoming afraid of those things again. I was becoming afraid of every movement and noise and sensation gliding across my skin. My entirety was being consumed by my fear. At some point, I began feeling as if each move I make, physically and metaphorically resulted in a burning hot nail being inserted into my skin. And that led to my mind turning in on itself. Dysthymia came first, followed by a full-blown depression. Suicide ideation came about later. I didn’t really plan to kill myself. I just kept romanticizing the idea of dying to escape all of my pain, in my head over and over.

Eating became an issue, moving became an issue, and leaving the house became an issue. Everything was falling apart around me and only the night stalkers remained. I’ve gained a new friend in the form of the occasional bowel inflammation.

These things destroyed everything for a large chunk of my life, but then, in a strange twist of fate, they were also the key to fixing most of my problems. They were winning battle after battle, but this led to my victory in our war.

One evening, as I was making coffee in the kitchen while my parents were out of town, there was a power outage. The house went immediately dark, and my mind went dark with it. Instead of freezing, probably because of my horrible sleep schedule and the constant mental strain of the never-ending stress and pain, my brain just went into an overload. An eerie cold sensation washed over me as the pain disappeared into the void of the darkness. Clarity graced me for the first time in a long time, right before I felt something touching the back of my neck.

With a swiftness I couldn’t even imagine myself having, I turned and swung my mug wildly. I hit something solid. The sound of shattered ceramic tore through the silence, followed by a terrible shriek that rocked the entire house. Somehow, I don’t even know how, as if one of the same horrors haunting me possessed my body, I kept swinging the jagged shard still connected to the handle of my now destroyed mug. The sound of soft thumps sounded almost melodic to me at that moment. Eventually, whatever I was hitting fell down.

Before I knew it, the fluorescent light had washed the kitchen anew in a white shimmer, revealing my handiwork. A bloodied chimera of avian and serpentine features was prone beneath my feet. Unmoving, still, dead.

Pulsating waves of blood raced through my body, leaving a strange after-feeling all over my body. Before long, the pain returned, followed by the realization of what had just happened. I had just killed one of those monstrosities.

Dread mixed with excitement swirled in my mind as I understood the ramifications of my actions. Both because I could finally prove the beings were real and because I killed a presumably living creature and left its corpse in my parents’ kitchen. None of that mattered come morning.

Unfortunately, or maybe, fortunately, nothing remained of the thing by the time dawn arrived. It evaporated as if it had never existed, leaving nothing behind. A pile of ceramic shards on the floor and a coffee stain. No blood, no flesh, no corpse, nothing. Only pain, lots of pain. My body was beyond sore that morning. My body was in shambles, but at least I knew, I knew I could stop these things from hurting me further. I could finally end their reign of terror over my life.

And so, I’ve finally fought back, now properly armed. Keeping a knife under my pillow, just in case.

For years, I’ve fought these things off, killing many of them. I’ve ended up knee elbow-deep in monster blood and yet they still kept coming, again and again. Somehow, even those I’ve butchered and dismembered returned. They were almost taunting me as they came back after each time I killed them to do it again and again, as if trying to prove the point that my efforts were futile. Even if it seemed so, they weren’t really futile. My condition had gotten better because these things could no longer feed on me anymore, and fighting so frequently had improved my overall feeling. The depression was gone, and I found a new joy in life. Each morning proved to be a new challenge, a new mountain of incorporeal corpses to overcome.

I fell in love with my violent routine, even though it made things with people rather complicated sometimes. It’s off-putting to have a knife under your bed, especially when you live in a decent and quiet part of town. I’ve never really bothered telling anyone about the fiends. It’s not like most people would believe me, anyway. And it’s not like my joy would last forever. Life is a struggle, after all. It is pain. And it is agony.

One day, they just stopped coming, just like that. The hordes of parasitic ghouls were nowhere in sight. Gradually, then suddenly, they just faded out of existence. Maybe they never even. Maybe I was just imagining them after all. There is no proof of their existence, and there was never any proof of their existence anywhere. My condition is an actual disease, fully diagnosable and somewhat manageable. Not to mention that my awful mental state is the way it is because of my disease.

I am a deeply disturbed man who is the son of an anxious and ridiculously superstitious, to the point of mild supernatural paranoia mother who has a medical issue that we have no real concrete explanation for. That said, I doubt these things weren’t real. They had to be. I could see them. I could feel them, I could fear them. And now they’re gone. I never imagined I’d miss the torment, but here I am, clearly losing my mind over the fact that I am not suffocating on a mouthful of dread. I am losing sleep because there is nothing lurking in the shadows and over the fact that I am completely and utterly alone. Unbothered and undisturbed. Stressing over the ghastly silence and the oppressive emotional void that comes from a not-so-sudden lack of constant stimulation.

Hemingway has this classic moment in “The Sun Also Rises” when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt. All he can say is, “Gradually, then suddenly.”. That’s how the silence drives you insane, especially after living years and years inside a storm of noise and chaos. You wake up one day, and it’s silent. It’s weird, but it’s a welcome change, and then you wake up the next day and it’s still silent and on the third day it’s silent still by the end of the week you are suspicious because it is still silent, and it’s never been silent and you’re thinking all these thoughts, “is this for real? Is this a trap?” but it remains silent.

Before long, before you even realize it, you’re resentful of the silence and then you become afraid of the silence and you can do nothing to end it.

I just want something to go wrong for one night, but nothing ever does, and it hurts, it really fucking hurts because I’ve destroyed my life, my brain, I’ve destroyed everything to get over the pain and the chaos and now that’s gone but the mental agony still pulsates in my spine crippling me for days on end and there’s nothing I can do about these mental wounds. Nothing I can do to make them stop stinging and bleeding now that nothing but the cold gray silence remains.

Dear Mayor Thompson,

You'll probably stop reading, crumple up this letter, and throw it in the trash, but I implore you to keep reading. Founded in 1970, Theater Ten revived downtown, and provided a safe, fun place for the people of Burningham to enjoy. Unfortunately, over the years, the theater has transformed into a source of anguish. The disappearance of movie-goers of Theater Ten is still fresh in everyone's mind. My sister, Joan is among the twenty-three missing; she attended the screening of Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors with her boyfriend. After Joan disappeared, I couldn't eat or sleep for days. There's a hole in my heart that can't be filled; it's been five years, but it still doesn't feel real. I feel like I’ll get a phone call from Joan, or she’ll pull into my driveway with her beat-up blue station wagon and take me hiking; I miss her every day.

I understand this theater is a historic landmark, and you don't want to demolish it. You either don't understand or don't care that people feel unsafe visiting or working at the theater. Lest we forget about what happened after Theater Ten closed? Several people have survived incidents at Theater Ten, and fortunately, I’ve been able to track down several of them, including a few who were willing to report what they’ve witnessed.

1975: A customer complained the butter dispenser dispensed pus into his popcorn.

1978: A young married couple visited the theater to watch Halloween. The wife got up in the middle of the movie to use the bathroom; she was gone for an hour, and the husband got worried and searched for her. On the way to the bathroom, he brushed past a paunchy woman with swollen, crusted eyes and cheeks stained with yellow vomit. He found his wife in the bathroom

dead—Facedown in a pile of yellow bile.

1979: An employee discovered human fingers in the popcorn machine.

1980: During a sudden blackout, a little girl disappeared from the arcade. Staff discovered her locked inside one of the arcade cabinets, insisting she was sucked into the game.

1982: Several customers complained about bombastic patrons covered in bruises, scabs, and rashes, ruining their movie experience by talking during the film, chucking popcorn at them, and kicking the back of their seats. When asked to stop their obnoxious behavior, they responded by coughing on or scratching them.

1983: An employee went on their smoke break behind the theater and was found headless, cigarette in her hand still lit, body leaning against the brick wall behind her. Even stranger, guests of Theater Ten claimed Cujo cut out, and footage from behind the building played on screen. The footage was a young woman smoking, then two hands emerged from behind her and tore her head off.

1988: A group of teens broke into Theater Ten. According to the witness, this is what happened: “The auditorium smelled like stale vomit. Sores and blisters covered the other patrons. Coughing and sniffling bounced off the walls, and the audience guffawed at the static on the screen. My friends sat down, and the seats snapped shut on them as a Venus flytrap closes on a fly. I felt like I’d pass out, and I couldn’t breathe. The patrons sprang up from their seats and chased me from the theater.”

1989: Two brothers broke into Theater Ten to steal movie posters; while exploring the building, a man in a torn black usher uniform accosted them. According to the witness, this is what the usher looked like: “Yellow ooze leaked from lesions on his cheeks and sores on his lips, blood spilled down from boils on his forehead, black carbuncles were behind his ears.” The usher scratched the other brother during their escape, and he died a few days later.

The disturbing nature of these incidents proves something very wrong is happening, and Theater Ten is not safe for the general public! I’m aware that I’m not the first person to write to you concerning the theater. It’s a source of pain for so many people. Others may not have been as tactful as me. I’m sure you’ve had several letters cross your desk accusing you of accepting bribes or certain favors in exchange for reopening Theater Ten. For everybody’s sake, including your own, this theater must be destroyed!

-Anonymous

You are torn from the magnificent realm of dreams by a familiar yet alien cacophony of sounds that travel at the photonic speed tearing through the obsidian hued fabric blanketing the night's sky. As soon as your eyes open, the silver heavenly oculus casts its ferrous stare down upon you. A great fear arises within the depths of your heart for the impossibly foreign sounds are violating the silence once more and they are getting closer. The pale white dread forces you into an upright position as the melody of perdition echoes again, stronger, closer, inching nearer and nearer with each movement of a forgotten fallen abominable deity's movement. This orchestra of otherworldly frenzy can only mean one thing and while your mind drifts to a distant place and in a different time where you once more endure the sight of your relative being dismantled, dissolved and devoured until there is nothing left - no flesh, no blood, no sinew nor bone; your legs begin running.

As you run an ocean of living panic takes center stage. Your sisters and brothers, your mother and father, everyone you've called family scatter. You are left behind as the hecatoncheirean poetry draws painfully close to you. Instinctively, you turn back and your heart almost skips a beat. Behind you; a grotesque amalgamation of muscle arrayed in strange mounds supported on ever stranger shapes, hairy manes and teeth. An arachnid formation of eyes glisten at you - they hunger. The thing behind you is a legion and a singular organism both at once. It is so structured and yet amorphous both in the same. It is a singular ravenous maw and many hungering mouths. It is the swarm, the host, the angel of death itself and there is no escaping its murderous lust.

Its moans and shrieks and coughing and whooping laughter and draining the life right from inside your form. You run and run and run, but one of your legs gives out – for a fraction of a second and a sharp pain, unmatched by anything other than the nauseating noise all around you tears through your pelvis. You fall the ground, dust creeping into your facial orifices as you try to get back up, but the pain only gets worse. It burns through abdomen and you feel something snapping and falling out.

One Lernaean Myrmidonhead clasp its jaw around your organs and the others followed suit. You try to fight, but there is no point. Kicking and screaming seems only to arouse the beast, encouraging it to sink itself deeper and deeper into your body. The pain slowly takes over everything, overriding every sensation into a storm of agonizing, anginic and hypovolemic convulsions and stupor that slowly envelops your entire being in its cold and interstellar pulse as your sensations, thoughts, memories slowly bleed into a tunnel shaped temple where your mind will drown in everlasting darkness of the sentient black hole that grinds your cadaver into dust.