Subs We Work With

I am Detective Samara Holt, and what you are about to read is everything I remember from the strangest case I’ve ever worked: the disappearances of Occoquan, Virginia.

Being a detective, I’ve always found an interest in true crime. Disappearances, murder mysteries, cold cases… all of it activates that part of my brain that desperately seeks out answers. But if there’s one case that’s always piqued my interest the most… it’s the case of Occoquan, Virginia. By all accounts, Occoquan was a normal little region. Not much happened there in terms of crime, and its main drawing point was the large Occoquan river that ran through the area. For years, Occoquan was a popular and peaceful place to live as houses were built on the riverfront and overviewed the gorgeous, lively water and lush forests. But that peacefulness and normality couldn’t last forever. 

The Crane family built their own mansion on the waterfront and owned acres of land in the 60s. They lived in their Victorian-style mansion for about five solid years… until their youngest daughter, Amy, went missing. She was last seen swimming in the river with her sister near the dock. The account from her sister, Carla, was that Amy was in the water and having fun, then she looked at the dock and her smile faded. Carla blinked… and Amy seemingly ceased to exist in that very moment. The Crane children (Carla and her two older brothers Jeremy and Hector) were said to have gone mad the year following Amy’s sudden disappearance, so much so that Johnathan and Elizabeth Crane were forced to seclude their children from the outside world. Eye witness accounts attest to seeing Carla run into the nearby woods in 1967 only to never return to the Crane household. Two years later, Elizabeth Crane died of mysterious causes and Johnathan Crane lived alone until 1971. In the wake of his death, there have been no signs of Jeremy or Hector Crane. Seemingly just gone, as if they never even existed.

For years, the Crane household stood over the edge of the Occoquan river… and that household is seemingly the harbinger of the region’s strange activity. My first job as detective was in ‘97, hired by the mother of Hugo Barnes. I even remember the strangeness of my first assigned job being a missing child report—shouldn’t that have gone to someone with more experience? But I still took the job with grace and speed. I was hopeful about the case and hauled my ass down to Hugo’s mother, Janice. As soon as I drove into Occoquan though, I realized why I was dumped with this assignment… the city was filled to the brim with missing child posters. It was simply another job from this place the others didn’t want to take up. It was practically a ghost town; there were buildings, businesses, and houses, but rarely ever a soul in sight. I drove down the road to Janice Barnes’ house, a practically deserted street that looked straight out of some horror film. The sky was a deep navy blue with the sun setting behind the trees in the distance, dense forests enveloping both sides of the route, and a single half-working streetlight down the road illuminating the low-hanging fog with a flickering blue-ish fluorescent light. The streetlight was covered in varying posters all pleading for help in finding some poor parents’ child. I swerved into Janice’s driveway and hopped out of my vehicle. The air was dense with the smell of damp leaves… and as still and quiet as a predator waiting to ambush.

I knocked on Janice’s door, and you could hear it echo for miles. As I waited for her to answer, I observed the surrounding area. But one particular thing was hard not to notice… up on the hillside, towering over everything else and seemingly illuminated by the now rising moon, overlooked the Crane Mansion. Its twisted and oblique, curving and jagged shapes pierced through the moonlight. Even then, I could feel just how evil that house was, its presence looming and oppressive. Not long after my knock, Janice creaked open her door and invited me in. She was a frail, middle-aged woman with the voice of a chain smoker. 

“Just in here,” she croaked as she guided me to Hugo’s room. “I need you to explain this to me.”

Inside his bedroom, she shivered in her robe and hair curlers. “He screamed… God, he screamed for me. But when I ran in here…” She then shoved Hugo’s bed away from the wall, and beneath it were claw marks dug into the hardwood floor. Starting from the foot of the bed… and ending at the corner of the wall. “Gone… just… gone. Where’d he go?” she cried out as a tear rolled down her powdered cheek. 

The case of Hugo Barnes was the first sign for me to investigate further in Occoquan. How can a child just disappear into nothingness from the safety of his own home like that? Luckily, my superiors felt the same and left me with all the missing child reports of Occoquan, Virginia. Case after case, I’d speak to mothers and/or fathers who recounted their children seemingly vanishing into thin air without a trace.

Marnie Hughes was the next major case I took. Her family moved to Occoquan in ‘98 just down the street from the Crane Mansion. Marnie was just a normal 15-year-old girl. She loved her family; she had plenty of friends at her relatively small school and did well in her classes. But out of nowhere, she developed some form of epilepsy halfway through her first semester. She began to suffer from what her doctors described as “unpredictable full-body seizures” that they blamed for the sudden onset of “unusual schizophrenia”. Marnie would suddenly fall into bouts of spasms and afterwards claimed that “the thing in the walls” was trying to ferry her away. She was seen by doctors who prescribed her antipsychotics for her hallucinations. Marnie suffered for weeks, and her parents mentally degraded along with her. CPS and the police were called to a horrifying scene on November 2nd, 1998. When entering the house, they found Marnie’s parents trying to cook her alive in the oven, claiming that ‘the devil’ wanted their daughter, so they tried to send her to God before the devil could take her. Needless to say, they were arrested on account of attempted first degree murder and Marnie was admitted into an institution for mentally troubled children. This institution is where I come into play… as only a week after her admittance, she escaped into the Occoquan woods. We spent weeks searching for her out in those woods, but we never found her. She was another child who vanished into thin air.

The events of that case will haunt me for as long as they rot inside my mind. The first thing I feel I need to speak on was ‘the tape’... a recording of Marnie’s first and only therapy session at the institution. I’ll do my best to transcribe what was said.

Dr. Burkes: “So, where do we feel comfortable beginning?”

Marnie: “... here… when I moved here.”

Dr. Burkes: “What about here? Was the move stressful? I can only imagine that it was.”

Marnie: “yeah… but… that wasn’t the problem.”

Dr. Burkes: “So, what is, Marnie? Was it kids at school or your par-”

Marnie: “It… it is the problem.”

Dr. Burkes: “... It?”

Marnie: “god… you can’t see it either. I’m fucking going crazy here! It’s been here the whole time!”

Dr. Burkes: “Marnie, you’ve got to work with me here or else we’ll never get anywhere. Are you seeing things again? Like hallucinations?”

Marnie: “You can call it a hallucination… you can call it whatever you want like my other doctors… but that’s not going to stop the fact that it’s in here... with us.”

Dr. Burkes: “You need to be taking your meds, Marnie. They are supposed to help with your symptoms.”

Marnie: “You… are… not listening to me.”

At this point in the tape, Marnie is audibly frustrated. She’s sobbing into her hands as if totally defeated. Her psychiatrist clicks her pen and lets out a sigh.

Dr. Burkes: “Okay… okay. Let’s discuss this then. If you’re taking your medication, and this isn’t a hallucination… reason with me. Talking through it will help us both understand what you’re dealing with. I truly do want to help you, Marnie. I’m sincerely sorry for not believing you, tell me everything.”

Marnie: “... I saw it… I saw it a few days after… we moved in. In the woods… by the river…”

Dr. Burkes: “It’s okay to cry, Marnie. No need to stop yourself.”

Marnie: “I didn’t pay it much mind; I thought it was one of the neighbors from the mansion. But… I learned no one lived there… and I still kept seeing it for weeks. It watched me from the woods. And then it called my name.”

Dr. Burkes: “... The Crane Mansion, right?”

Marnie: “It… knew my name. I couldn’t sleep… it was always watching… always. I could feel it peer in through my window… it never just observed… it wanted… it… desired.”

Dr. Burkes: “Don’t take me wrong, but… I feel as though what you’re experiencing… is a manifestation of your fear. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that what you’re experiencing isn’t real or isn’t tangible. But I’m saying that if we can address and figure out this fear, whatever you’re seeing may leave you alone.”

Marnie: “... Dr. Celine Burkes… maiden name Tilman.”

Dr. Burkes: “... How do you know that?”

Marnie: “You went to George Mason University and you lived in Virginia your whole life. You moved to Occoquan six years ago and you had a miscarriage when you were 19.”

Dr. Burkes: “Marnie! Marnie, stop!”

Marnie: “Your father died of cancer when you were seven and your mother raised you alone since. She’s currently in the hospital due to complications from smoking and you fear that you’re to blame for not getting her into rehab an-”

Dr. Burkes jumps from her chair at this point, knocking it over I presume.

Dr. Burkes: “Marnie! Stop this! How? How do you know this?”

Marnie: “It’s in the room… with us.”

Dr. Burkes presumably picks her chair up and sits back down. She laughs out loud to herself, most likely in disbelief at the situation.

Dr. Burkes: “What… is It, Marnie?”

Marnie: “Its name… is Sweet Tooth. It loves to eat sweet things.”

Dr. Burkes: “Where is it? Where in the room is it?”

Marnie: “... … …”

Dr. Burkes: “Marnie, where… is it?”

Marnie: “It’s… standing right next to you.”

At this point in the tape… everything goes quiet for a solid five seconds. Dr. Burkes then all of a sudden gasps but doesn’t move from her chair. The fear in her voice as she closed out the tape sent chills down my spine when I heard it.

Dr. Burkes: “... … … I can feel it breathing down my neck.”

The tape abruptly cuts after Burkes’ confession. Not long after this tape, Marnie was last seen running into the woods. Dr. Burkes also became catatonic and was institutionalized, believing that her imaginary friend named Sweet Tooth wanted her to die so they could be friends forever.

I joined in on the search parties that scoured the woods for Marnie Hughes, hoping to find her and the only lead I had to the disappearances of Occoquan’s children… Sweet Tooth. I had a group of other detectives working with me on this case, and the police force finally decided to look into this seriously for the first time in years since it’s the only time any suspect was even so much as mentioned. The first few days of the search were mostly uneventful. The most notable thing was the search dogs continuously leading us up barren and empty trees and to the river. More members of the police force joined in on the searches as some other children disappeared into the woods during our case, and quite a number of civilians helped us out as well. A part of this case that really stuck out to me was when I mapped where each missing child was last seen. Not only did all of them go missing in the woods (including Hugo Barnes whose house was sequestered in the forest), they formed a perfect triangle around the Crane Mansion.

But there was one notable early search. A few colleagues and I headed out in the woods by the Crane Mansion. It was pitch black, dense fog permeated every corner of the forest, and aside from us… there wasn’t a sound filling the air. No crickets, no frogs, not a single coo from an owl. Silence… intermingled with the occasional search dog and the brushing of dead leaves on the forest floor. Our flashlights barely helped as they seemingly never actually breached the fog for more than five inches in front of us. 

About an hour into the woods, I was startled by an officer yelling, “Hey! I think I finally got something!”. 

The rush over to him was filled with a fear that can only be described as bricks crushing my lungs. Was it Marnie? Was it… her corpse? Those questions filtered through my mind, leaving me with nothing but dread where my stomach should’ve been. All of that only to find a bundle of sticks, leaves and rocks. They were snapped and tied together in a strange formation that resembled some kind of rune. I’ll insert a quick drawing of what I remember it looking like, as the original pictures we took are tucked away in evidence. Rune

Right by it though, there were three piles of rocks that seemed to form some triangular formation around the make-shift figure. We took pictures for evidence, but we didn’t really find anything else that night. It seems so strange to me now how casual we were about finding the sticks and rocks… because from there on out they became a staple of every search. We were bound to find at least a handful of those sticks… all accompanied by rock piles forming a triangle around them. 

My next event of note was about three weeks after our first search. We trampled through the damp woods, this time during the evening. It was strange being out in those woods and actually being able to hear and see the wildlife. Crows called, moths parked on the bark of trees, and the occasional swan could be heard out on the nearby river. I remember having found a trail and following it with a few colleagues and a search dog. The trail was increasingly hard to follow and seemed to twist and turn through the forest at random. Eventually we stumbled upon a strange sight. Dolls… strewn throughout the trees. They were all clearly decaying, having been exposed to the forces of nature for who knows how long. We followed the rotting dolls until they led us into a nook in the path which took us up to a hidden area that was built within the Crane estate. What we found was unbelievably strange. Past the rusted gate of this area was a small gravesite. It didn’t belong to the city, and it was never documented as having been owned or made by the Cranes. Stranger still… the headstones listed people yet to die. It was right around this discovery when a colleague noted something… eerie. 

Silence…

No more birds, no more insects, even the sounds of our feet on leaves seemed muffled. We took pictures and quickly left. We traveled back up the trail to meet with the other officers and detectives, but our search dog stopped in her tracks about halfway through. I remember her owner, Search and Rescue Officer Marks, tugging on her leash to get her to move, but no response. She stared out into the dense forest, alerted and entranced by something. We waited for her to ease up and come along but her tail was firmly tucked between her legs and the hair on her back was puffed up like a porcupine. Something we couldn’t see was spooking her. As Marks went to tug her away and up the path again, she let out the lowest and most bone chilling growl I’ve ever heard come out of a dog. Not wanting to fuck around and find out, I started up the path again. I must’ve scared the dog because she startled and snapped out of whatever state she was in and followed us.

The chills that ran throughout my body were enough to make me haul ass back up that trail, and as I looked back at my colleagues… I glimpsed something out in the woods. It looked like a flowy, stained, white dress meandering behind a tree. Instinct kicked in ignoring my previous fear and I booked it into the woods without a second thought. I rushed toward the tree where I swore I just saw a girl… and nothing. My colleagues ran up behind me with the exception of the dog and Marks, the dog standing alert and terrified at the edge of the path. Before I could say anything, an officer bent down and picked something off of the ground. A picture… a picture that will be seared into my memory until the day I die. A pale corpse… clearly waterlogged and rotting away… in a white, flowy dress… Marnie.

The following days were much the same as they had been… no new clues, no hints, only more disappearances. That was until the Jordan family case, which began to set a new precedent for things to come. The Jordans were a relatively average family who lived within the more urban parts of Occoquan. By all accounts, they were normal. So, no one had any suspicion to believe that they’d murder and cannibalize their own children, then ritualistically kill themselves by hanging in their front yard tree… swinging side by side with the strewn corpses of their half-eaten children Micah and Candice Jordan. This case is of interest because of one singular thing found at the crime scene… Micah’s diary… which detailed his parents meeting a ‘Neighbor’ named Sweet Tooth. This then became a trend, seemingly random couples in Occoquan dying in murder/suicides… and if they were unlucky enough to have children… cannibalization. 

It was a Friday when I had my own run-in with… this Sweet Tooth. My house had been silent that evening as I went over details of the crime scenes. Each one followed the same pattern… the couple would meet a new neighbor named Sweet Tooth. He’d integrate himself into the family and become acquainted with them. In all the diaries, phone texts, saved calls, notes etc. the couples seemed to be convinced of the unimportance of physical life. Each family brainwashed by this ‘Sweet Tooth’, convinced to give up their “mortal forms” and “free” their souls to some god in the afterlife. 

It must’ve been about an hour, as the sun began to set, the night washing over the woods around my house in a pitch, murky blackness. I finished combing over the diaries and notes and drawings and photos which really began to stick with me. This field of work truly does take its toll on you, especially after having to dive headfirst into cases like this… it just becomes overwhelming and emotionally exhausting. I needed to call my mother, reading about these kinds of incidents really fucked with me. Something came over me, the urge to tell her how much I loved her. I was on the call for all of five minutes when something caught my eye out in my backyard… a white, flowy dress. I apologized to my mother for leaving the call so quick and hung up. Bursting out of my house with my Magnum and flashlight, I wandered around my yard. Silence… pure and utter silence. Meandering in the darkness of my yard, I could feel the blood drain from my face. A giggle echoed through the eerily silent woods and I scanned the imposing tree line. Nothing looked out of place but that feeling of dread struck me deep in the chest until I felt like I simply just couldn’t breathe anymore.

I scanned through the tree line thoroughly, increasingly frustrated by whatever taunted me. A solid thirty seconds must’ve passed before I decided to give up my pathetic and terrified search and head back to my house, but something horrid stopped me in my tracks. Lurking there… at the window by my desk… was a young boy, maybe 12, with a brunette bowl cut and a garishly colored turtleneck… Hugo Barnes. I approached the window as he glided out of sight… and in the dark hallway, a tall figure left my room and headed out my front door. I busted inside and did a full military squad inspection of my house… not a soul in sight. I looked at my desk where Hugo was… and it took a solid minute for me to realize what I was seeing. My papers drawn across my desk with the names of the murder/suicide families written across my map… a triangular shape with the Crane Mansion waiting in the middle of the formation. Something lingered in the air, it was no longer my home but an unwelcoming conjuring of fear. An urge itched within my mind; I needed to investigate the remnants of the Crane Mansion. I went into my room to grab my coat, and that’s when I noticed the tape sitting in the middle of my bed. I picked it up and let curiosity indulge itself, sliding it into the player.

Dr. Burkes: “Marnie!”

Marnie: “It’s… speaking… it’s speaking to you.”

Dr. Burkes audibly jumped up from her chair, sending it crashing as Marnie yelped.

Dr. Burkes: “Marnie! What is it? What is it? Tell it to leave me alone! I can feel it breathing on me! Make it stop!”

Dr. Burkes was clearly in hysterics, she was screaming and crying, backing away from her tape recorder.

Dr. Burkes: “Make it leave me alone, Marnie! What the hell is it saying?”

Marnie: “It’s saying…”

Sweet Tooth: “You’re so sweet, Samara!”

The mention of my name felt like a fist pummeling my gut. I got in my car, and I don’t think I’ve speeded so fast in my life. Red lights didn’t matter to me. I needed to get down to the station and find this heathen. Me and quite a few officers made haste toward the Crane Mansion. The drive down the twisted roads felt like an unforgiving eternity, marked by posters taunting me. Pulling onto the decrepit street, here it stood, its jagged and vicious architecture peering down on all of Occoquan. The windows hauntingly appeared like malicious eyes enveloped in the blackness of the night. The mansion wasn’t locked, and its massive doors creaked open like the moaning souls of the damned. Walking in, the air felt so thick you could cut it, and the floorboards creaked as if in pain with every step. 

The house reeked with the stench of copper, rotting fish, and the odor of trash left out to sit in the hot sun for days. No one seemed to have moved in after the Cranes. All of their items and furniture sat in the house, rotting away like the forgotten relics they were. Me and two of the four officers headed down into the basement after clearing the first floor, the other two officers made their way upstairs. But it wasn’t long until me and my colleagues came across the waterlogged, decomposing corpse of Marnie Hughes in the basement. We tried contacting the two who went upstairs but our walkies hissed with a vicious static. One of my two officers went up to find them as me and the other officer searched the remaining basement. 

We found a cellar that was boarded up by the Cranes after they built the house. Despite the evident corpse, the cellar was where the stench seemed to really be emanating from. It was almost like burnt hair permeating every inch of my nostrils. My futile attempts to open the cellar ceased quickly as I found myself the only one working on it. My eyes fixed on the other officer; a short man called Perez. Even within the overpowering darkness, I could see that his eyes were wide, and his gun drawn… both in the direction of the corner of the basement. I caught on and glanced over. Standing in and facing the corner, enveloped by but significantly darker than the darkness itself, stood an almost indescribable figure. It must’ve been at least seven and a half feet in height, as its head was cocked to the side, too tall for the basement. The sound of dripping water now flooded my ears as my eyes adjusted to the amorphous *thing* standing before us. It shivered in the corner as a noise emanated from it. “Breathing” I guess is how I would describe the rustic sound it made. Yet as soon as I lifted my flashlight… nothing… what was once there now ceased to exist.

Just then, a commotion was heard upstairs. Perez and I ran past where the corpse of Marnie Hughes should’ve been lying but wasn’t anymore and trudged up the basement steps in a panic. The other three officers practically came tumbling down the second story. What we heard of their testaments, I still don’t want to believe. The older female officer, Matthews, opened a closet door in one of the childrens’ rooms. And following a stench coming from the crawlspace in the lower corner of the closet, she opened it. The Crane Mansion has since been gutted from the inside out… after Matthews uncovered the darkest secret of Occoquan. Inside the walls, floors, roofs, ceilings, and yards of that evil house… the bones and rotting remains of hundreds of missing children laid. The Crane household was demolished not long after, and the remains of those poor souls were put to rest at once. The only thing remaining of the mansion is the cellar… I don’t know whether they couldn’t open it, or merely didn’t wanna see what horrors it held, but it lays there… haunting the forest where the Crane Mansion once stood.

That brings me to today, I moved away from Occoquan in the year 2000. The knowledge that something incredibly dangerous was out there and I was directly putting myself in its way was overbearing. But the area’s mysteries have always been in the back of mind. What was inside the cellar that the Cranes felt the need to board up so tightly? What was Sweet Tooth? And what did it want with the children and families of Occoquan? But I still fear that whatever Sweet Tooth was, it’s still out there. The corpse of Marnie Hughes still remains unfound. There’s been an influx of missing children’s cases not only where I’m currently situated, but throughout all of the Mid-Atlantic USA. Be careful. 

I have a strange fear. You’ll probably laugh when I tell you what it is, but you might feel differently after I tell you why I have it.

I suffer from cucurbitophobia: the fear of pumpkins.

Fears as specific and irrational as that usually begin in childhood, and sometimes for no reason at all. But let me assure you, I have a very good reason to fear them.

I sit here now, typing this story as the living remainder of a set of twins. My name is Kalem, and I’ll tell you the tragic story of my brother, and the horror of what happened in the years since his untimely death.

It happened when we were young, only eleven years old. We were an odd pair to see - we had the misfortune of being born with curious cow’s licks of hair on top of our heads that would put Alfalfa from The Little Rascals to shame. Our mother (much to our chagrin) called us her “little pumpkins”, on account of our hair looking like little curled stalks. Our round little bellies didn’t exactly help either.

I was the calmer of us both, being reserved where my brother Kiefer was wild. He was the one who blurted out the answers in class and couldn’t sit still. The risk-taker, the stuntman, the show-off. It usually fell to me as the older and wiser sibling to watch out for him, though I was only a few minutes older.

We were walking home one blustery autumn evening, the trees ablaze with gold and orange as we huddled up from the chill of a cloudless dusk. Piles of leaves had been swept from the paths in the fear that they’d make an ice rink of the paths should it rain. The piles didn’t last long as kids kicked them about and jumped into them for fun.

Kiefer of course couldn’t resist, running headlong into the first pile he saw.

It happened so fast. Upsettingly fast, as death always does; without warning and without any power on my part to stop it. The swish of the leaves were punctuated with a crack, and autumns earthen gown was daubed in red.

A rock. Just a poorly-placed rock, probably put their as a joke by someone who didn’t realise that it would change someone’s life forever.

The leaves came to rest and I still hadn’t moved. A freezing breeze blew enough aside for me to see what remained of my twin’s head.

Pumpkin seeds.

It was a curious thought. I could only guess why the words popped into my head back then, but I know now that the smashed pumpkins on the doorsteps of that street seemed to mock my brother’s remains. How the skull fragments and loose brain matter did indeed seem to resemble the inside of a pumpkin.

I shook but not from the cold, and I suppose the sight of me collapsed and shivering got enough attention for an ambulance to be called.

I honestly don’t recall what followed. It was a whirlwind of tears, condolences, and the gnawing fear that I would be punished for failing to protect my little brother.

Punishment came in the form of never being called my mother’s little pumpkin again. I was glad of it; the word itself and the season it was associated with forever haunted me from that day on. But I never thought I would miss the affection of the nickname.

At some point I shaved my hair, all the better to get rid of that “stalk” of mine. I couldn’t bring myself to eat in the months after either, but that was okay. The thinner I got, the further away I could get from resembling my twin as he was when he passed, and further away from looking like the pumpkins that served as an annual reminder of that horrible day.

Every time I saw pumpkins, even in the form of decorations, I would lose it. I would hyperventilate, feel so nauseous I could vomit, and I was flooded with adrenaline and an utterly implacable panic to do something to save my brother that I consciously knew had been gone for years.

People noticed, and laughed behind my back at my reactions. Word had inevitably spread of what happened, and I reckon that people’s pity was the only thing that saved me from the more mean-spirited pranks.

For years, I went on as that weird skinny bald kid that was afraid of pumpkins.

I began to go off the beaten path whenever I could in the run-up to autumn, taking long routes home in a bid to avoid any places where people might have hung up halloween decorations.

It was during one such walk that the true horror of my story takes place.

It was early June; nowhere near Halloween, but my walks through the back roads and wooded trails of my home town had become a habit, and a great sanctuary throughout the hardest years of my life.

It was a gray day, heavy and humid. Bugs clung to my sweat-covered skin, the dead heat brought me to panting as woods turned blue as dusk set in. Just as I was planning to make my way back to my car, I saw a light in the woods. Not other walkers; the lights flickered, and were lined up invitingly.

Was it some sort of gathering? Candles used in a ritual or campsite?

I moved closer, pushing my way through bramble and nettles as I moved away from the path. A final push through the branches brought me right in front of the lights, and my breath caught in my throat.

Pumpkins. Tiny green pumpkins, each with a little candle placed neatly inside. The faces on each one were expertly carved despite the small size, eerily child-like with large eyes and tiny teeth.

One, two, three…

I already knew how many. Somehow I knew. The number sickened me as I counted; four, five, six…

Don’t let it be true. Let this be some weird dream. Don’t let this be real as I’m standing here shivering in the middle of nowhere about to throw up with fear as I’m counting nine, ten… eleven pumpkins.

My sweat in the summer heat turned to ice as I counted a baby pumpkin for every year my brother lived for. A chill breeze that had no place blowing in summer whipped past me, instantly extinguishing the candles. I was left there, shivering and panting in the dim blue of dusk.

No one was around for miles. No one to make their way out here, placing each pumpkin, lovingly carving them and lighting each candle… the scene was simply wrong.

I felt watched despite the isolation. So when the bushes nearby rustled, my heart almost stopped dead. I barely mustered the will to turn my head enough to see. More rustling.

It has to be a badger, a fox, a roaming dog, it can’t be anything else.

But it was.

A spindly hand reached forth, fingers tiny but sharp as needles, clawing the rest of its sickening form forth from the bush. Nails encrusted with dirt, as if it dragged itself from the ground.

A bulbous head leered at me from the dark, smile visible only as a leering void in the murky white outline of the thing’s face. It was barely visible in what remained of dusk’s light, but I could see enough to send my heart pounding. Its head shook gently in a mockery of infantile tremors, and I could feel its eyes regard me with inhuman malice.

The candle flames erupted anew, casting the creature into light.

Its face was like a blank mask of skin, with eyes and a mouth carved into it with the same tools and skill as that of the pumpkins. Hairless and childlike, it crawled forward, smiling at me with fangs that were just a crude sheet of tooth, seemingly left in its gums as an afterthought by whatever it was had carved its face.

From its head protruded a bony spur, curved and twisting from an inflamed scalp like the stalk of a-

Pumpkin.

All reason left me as I sprinted from the woods. Blindly I ran through the dark, heedless of the thorns and nettles stinging at my skin.

The pumpkin-thing trailed after me somehow, crying one minute and giggling the next in a foul approximation of a baby’s voice. I didn’t dare look behind me to see how close it got to me, or what unsettling way its tiny body would have to move in order to keep up with me.

Gasping for air and half-mad with fear, I made it to my car and sped back to the lights of town. I hoped against hope that I could get away before it could make it to my car… hoped that it wouldn’t be clinging underneath or behind it…

It took me the better part of an hour to stop shaking enough to step out of the car.

Nothing ever clung to my car, and I never had any trouble as long as I remained away from those woods. But that was only the first chase.

The next would come months later, on none other than Halloween night.

I had, by some miracle, made some friends. I suppose that in a strange way, that experience in the woods had inoculated me to pumpkins in general. After all, how could your average Halloween decoration compare to that thing in the woods?

My new friends were chill, into the same things I was into, pretty much everything I could want from the friends I never had from my years spent isolating. I even opened up to them about what happened to me, and my not-so-irrational fear, which they understood without judgement and with boundless support.

And so when I was ultimately invited to a Halloween party, I felt brave enough to accept; with the promise of enough alcohol to loosen me up should the abundant decorations become a bit much for me.

On the night, it wasn't actually that bad. I was nervous, as much about the inevitable pumpkin decorations as I was about being out of my social comfort zone. As I got talking to my new friends, mingling with people and having some drinks, I began to have fun. I even got pretty drunk - I didn’t have enough experience with these settings to know my limits. I began to let loose and forget about everything.

Until I saw him.

I felt eyes on me through the crowds of costumed party-goers. Instinctively I looked, and almost dropped my drink.

A pale, smiling face. Dirt. Leering smile. Powdery green leaves growing from his head, crowning a sharp bony spur from a hairless scalp. A round head. A pumpkin head. With a hole in it.

It was coming towards me. Please let it be a costume. Please why can’t anyone see it isn’t? Why can’t anyone see the-

-hole in its head gnawed by slugs, juices leaking from it, seeds visible just like the brains and fragments of-

I ran before anyone could ask me what I was staring at.

I stumbled out the back door, into a dark lane between houses. I had to lean over a bin to throw up my drinks before I could gather the breath to run.

That’s when I saw the pumpkin.

Placed down behind the bin, where no one would see it. Immaculately carved, candle lit, a smile all for my eyes only. The door opened behind me, and I bolted before I could see if it was the pumpkin thing.

I don’t recall the rest of the night. I reckon my intoxication might be what saved me.

I awoke in a hospital, head pounding and mouth dry. I had been found passed out on a street corner nearby, having tripped while running and hitting my head on a doorstep. Any fear I felt from the night before was replaced with shame and guilt from how I acted in front of my friends, and from what my mother would think knowing I nearly shared the same fate as my brother.

After my second brush with death and the pumpkin thing, I decided to take some time to look after myself. I became a homebody, doing lots of self-care and getting to know my mind and body. I made peace with a lot of things in that time; my guilt, my fears, all that I had lost due to them.

My friends regularly came to visit, and for a time, things were looking up.

Until one evening, I heard a bang downstairs as I was heading to bed.

Gently I crept downstairs, wary of turning the lights on for fear of giving my position away to any intruders.

A warm light shone through the crack of the kitchen door. I hadn’t left any lights on.

I pushed the door open as silently as I could.

In that instant, all the fears of my past that I thought I had gained some mastery over flooded through me. My heart hammered in my chest, and my throat tightened so much that I couldn’t swallow what little spit was left in my now-dry mouth.

On my kitchen table, sat a pumpkin, rotten and sagging. Patches of white mould lined the stubborn smile that clung to it’s mushy mouth, and fat slugs oozed across what remained of its scalp. A candle burned inside, bright still but flickering as the flame sizzled the dripping mush of the pumpkins fetid flesh.

A footstep slapped against the floor behind me, preceded by the smell of decay - as I knew it surely would the moment I laid eyes upon the pumpkin.

This time, I was ready.

I turned in time to take the thing head on. A frail and rotten form fell onto me, feebly whipping fingers of root and bone at my face. I shielded myself, but the old nails and thorny roots that made up its hands bit deep despite how feeble the creature seemed.

Panting for breath as adrenaline flooded my blood, a stinking pile of the things flesh sloughed off, right into my gasping mouth. I coughed and retched, but it was too late - I had swallowed in my panic.

Rage gripped me, replacing my disgust as I prepared to my mount my own assault.

I could see glimpses of it between my arms - a rotten, shrunken thing, wrinkled by age and decay, barely able to see me at all. Halloween had long since passed, and soon it seemed, so would this thing.

I would see to that myself.

I seized it, struggling with the last reserves of its mad strength, and wrestled it to the ground.

I gripped the bony spur protruding from its scalp, and time seemed to stop.

I looked down upon the thing, upon this creature that had haunted me for months, this creature that stood for all that haunted me for my entire life. The guilt, the shame, the fear, lost time and lost experiences.

All that I had confronted since my brushes with death, came to stand before me and test me as I held the creatures life in my hands. I would not be found wanting.

With a roar of thoughtless emotion, I slammed the creatures head into the floor.

A sickening thud marked the first impact of many. Over and over again I slammed the rotten mess into the ground, releasing decades of bottled emotion. Catharsis with each crack, release with each repeated blow.

Soon only fetid juices, smashed slugs and pumpkin seeds were all that remained of the creature.

The sight did not upset me. It did not bring back haunting memories, did not bring back the guilt or the shame or the fear. They were just pumpkin seeds. Seeds from a smashed pumpkin.

The following June, I planted those same seeds. I felt they were symbolic; I would take something that had caused me so much anguish, and turn them into a force of creation. I would nurture my own pumpkins, in my own soil, where I could make peace with them and my past in my own space.

What grew from them were just ordinary pumpkins, thankfully.

I’ve attended a lot of therapy, and I’m making great progress. I’m even starting to enjoy Halloween now.

I even grew my hair out again, stupid little cow’s lick and all - it doesn’t look quite so stupid on my adult head, and I kept the weight off too which helps.

One morning however, I was combing my hair, keeping that tuft of hair in check. My comb caught on something.

I struggled to push the comb through, but the knot of hair was too thick. Frustrated, I wrangled the hair in the mirror to see what the obstruction was.

I parted my hair… and saw a bony spur jutting from my scalp, twisted and sharp.

My heart pounded, fear gripping me as my mind raced. How can this be? How can this be happening after everything was done with?

Then I remembered - the final attack. The chunk of rotting flesh that fell into my mouth… the chunk I swallowed.

The slugs… The seeds…

I was worried about the pumpkin patch, but I should have worried about my own body. Nausea overcame me as I thought of all these months having gone by, with whatever remained of that thing slowly gestating inside me in ways that made no sense at all.

I vomited as everything hit me, rendering all my growth and progress for naught.

Gasping, I stared in dumb shock at what lay in the sink.

Bright orange juices mixed with my own bile. Bright orange juices, bile… and pumpkin seeds.

Call it dumb superstition or paranoia but when I was a little girl my grandpa used to say “Evil must always be invited.” He loved to tell tall tales about the mountains where he grew up about the things that go bump in the night and how they can’t come inside your home without explicit permission, his favorite one was about how a crafty one almost tricked him by looking like a lawman. but anyway when he told me his stories it just kind of ingrained in my little child brain that I would never fall for a trick and since then I never once was the first person in a group to go through a doorway for fear of an involuntary inviting hand motion, much to the dismay of my parents, and obviously things like “Come on in!” Or “Be my guest.” Were erased from my vocabulary. Throughout high school I was routinely picked at by my friends for this behavior, but I couldn’t care less what they think, I only needed my subconscious habit to be useful once, it’s just unfortunate that when that one time came it slipped my mind.

For the last month I’ve been staying at my Grandparents house in the mountains, god rest their souls, as it was given to my Dad after my grandmother passed away and he wanted me to get used to living alone, or so he says, to be honest I don’t think my parents marriage is going that well and I doubt having an unemployed 22 year old refusing to leave the nest is helping. I spent the first week or so just laying around on old furniture, kind of enjoying the silence but mostly filling it with whatever YouTube drivel I could, Wendigoon and Nexpo mostly. But eventually laying around lost it’s luster, Truthfully I was running out of food I didn’t have to follow more than three steps to cook, so I decided to hop on my four wheeler and ride down into the nearby town to spend my allotted food allowance on Mac and Cheese and oven pizzas.

I made it in and out of the grocery store without taking to anyone, thank god for self checkout, but on my way back to my four wheeler someone called out to me and it made me freeze in place,

“Nice Jacket!”

I turned around to spit out one of my prerecorded polite responses but when I saw her my brain stalled, she was a beautiful woman my age, he pink dyed hair hung only a little past her chin, her lips were painted a shiny black , the only noticeable makeup on her face, she was a lot taller than me, must’ve been 6 foot 4, wearing a pumpkin orange sweater and black jeans. I caught myself staring and blurred out the first thing that came to mind “Oh! Oh thank you! It was my grandpa’s!” This was true, it was my grandfather’s favorite jacket, a denim vest with light gray arms and a hood, we ended up talking for a few minutes, or more accurately she talked at me while I stared at her, about how she hadn’t seen me around before and how excited she was for Halloween but she cut it off by pointing at my now dripping plastic bag, “Oh whoops! Looks like your stuff is thawing, you Bert get that home! It’s been really nice talking to you! Do you have a number?”

I told her I did and gave it to her, while she entered it as a contact she stopped and looked back up at me,”Sorry I forgot to even ask your name.” She said sounding disappointed in herself, “It’s Reagan!” I responded with embarrassing enthusiasm, “Nox.” She shot back and smiled, she finished setting up the contact and called me so I would have her number too, I’d rather not put to word just how embarrassing it was to have Megolovania rise from my pocket.

Anyway, it was 2 days before I actually got a call from Nox, I was in the middle of making myself some breakfast when my phone started ringing, “Hello?” I said as I stepped away from the near boiling water, “Hey Reagan! Are you busy?” I took a glance at the pot on the stove, “Nope.” I responded, “Great! I’m jonesing for some company, do you know where Storn park is?” I was a stomach turning blend of nervous and excited about the prospect of friendship but chose to lean on the excitement, “I do!” I turned the stove off and dumped the water out as she responded “Yippee, see you there!” After she hung up it was seconds before my ass hit the seat of my four wheeler.

When I made it there she was laying on a bench under the gazebo in the center of the park, she began yapping on about how pretty the leaves were last week before they fell while we walked around the park, but broke the topic by asking “So what’s got you in town anyway?” I sat down on the small brick wall to keep people off the garden, “I’m not really in town, I’m up in the mountains at my Grandpa’s old house, just watching it for my Dad.” Her face lit up, “Is it that big one? The one with the red roof, I used to live next door! I’ve always wanted to see inside!” It was in fact the biggest house on the mountain, just the one she described, “Oh would you like a tour? I can take you up there if you want!” She gripped her sleeves, “Yes please!” She responded with enthusiasm.

We hopped on my four wheeler and started up the dirt road, she gripped my stomach tight, I assumed she was scared, I considered swerving a lot to see if she would grip tighter but ultimately decided against it. When we got there she stared up at the roof as I lead her to the front door, I was so excited to show her around that I forgot completely about my door rule for the first time ever. I caught myself halfway through the doorframe, I turned around on impulse and she was standing frozen halfway up the porch step, she looked like all the color had drained from her, well everything. “Something wrong?” Her voice was flat and monotone, unlike her bubbly demeanor from before, my breathing became hard and I nearly swallowed my tongue.

“Why aren’t you moving?” I asked through dry lips, she tilted her head and her eyes widened, she looked uncanny, I took a step back the rest of the way inside, she looked furious for a moment but then looked confused “Can I come in?” She sounded just as flat as before, it was then that I noticed just how hard she was gripping the porches wood bars, her nails made dents in the wood and they bled from the quick, I thought back to my Grandpa’s stories, and tried to it to panic, I took a deep breath and said calmly “You are not welcome.” She huffed and stood up straight, unnaturally tall, she calmly turned around and walked casually into the woods.

It’s been about a week since then, I haven’t left the house, I called my dad to come pick me up but he’s out of town on business until day after tomorrow, so for now I’m still stranded, As terrified as I am, I find myself feeling at least a little vindicated, I’m never going to forget again. I will never be the first through a door.

This is the story of a particularly slimy worm named Ducate Corinthian. A pitiful creature who sells dreams to the hopeless. Satyr in man’s clothing. A false prophet preaching modesty and moderation while chasing skirts in online dating apps. The antithesis of a philosopher proclaiming to be the Diogenes of our day.

“Make do with less,” he says. “Finances are a means to an end,” he scoffs while stealing from the poor to feed his boundless greed. “Materia is the Devil’s work!” he howled while bowing to the Lion Serpent Sun from Attica.

The perfect antagonist!

He met his match in her. She was a mysterious enchantress who captured his attention with her modest virtual voyeurism. Something in her ice-cold eyes called out to him. A man of his stature could not deny himself this prize! She was, after all, an angel, of sorts.

A letter, a click.

One press of the button, and then another.

One thing led to another, and before long, she had lured him into meeting her. She laid out his address before him and told him to be sharp when she arrived. He was far too caught up in her sorcery to notice the glaring issue hidden between the lines. He failed to read the details of their arrangement and thus sold his poor soul to the mother-Iblis.

When she finally showed up, waiting for him behind the closed doors of his house, dressed in a silly Pikachu onesie, he couldn’t help but foam at the mouth. A sly smile formed on her childishly innocent face while her hand clasped the zipper of her outfit. The mother of all demons slowly undid her mortal disguise.

Corinthian stood there, salivating like a starving dog at the prospect of seeing the secrets of man’s downfall.

His heart fluttered at the sight of a woman’s skin shining diamonds to the drumbeat of his overexerted heart. The joyful pains of release came quickly, soiling tight leather trousers before a thunderclap shook the castle of the Duke of Corinth. Crimson rivers broke through their dams, causing the vessel to rupture. A stiff body lay on the floor – its life leaking out of every orifice.

“You’ve gone soft, my love,” she said, pressing a dagger against my throat and placing her free hand on mine.

She, my dear friend Morgane Kraka, is an author just like me. Often inserts herself into my stories to add the flavors of suspense, torturous thrill, and heart-wrenching anxiety to them. In the same way, I insert myself into her fairytale to give it a sense of loss and a taste of agonizing longing.

We complete each other.

Intertwining our fingers and manipulating my hand, Morgane gave Ducate another life. With the use of her blood magic, she painted a new picture depicting the last day in the life of our plaything. With the red shades of the blood flowing in my veins, she drew an ultimate act worthy of the attention of Countess Elizabeth Bathory herself.

In it, my beloved Morgane stood with a golden chalice in one hand, clad in a dress befitting an empress. Her other hand clutching a gun aimed at the neck of the Corinthian. His naked form kneeling covered in bite marks and all manner of wounds.

Festering with rot, he moaned.

An after-walker.

A ghost possessing its former self.

My blood princess brought the chalice close to the fallen duke’s neck before shooting him in it with her gun. The bullet impregnates his body with its metallic load before he gives birth to the children of flies.

Once the red language was overflowing from the edges of the chalice, Morgane sipped from it with the elegance of Carmilla and then grinned toothily. Her bloody smile at me directed at me.

A terrifyingly beautiful portrait stood before me.

Something in that sickness woke me up from a long slumber I didn’t even notice myself slipping into.

She blew me a kiss, and with it, took away any semblance of decency I had left. She left nothing but a rabid animal. With a simple movement of her hand, she stripped me naked and turned me inside out.

Whatever was dormant for long years inside of me was crawling out. The transformation was slow and painful. I screamed all throughout, my frustrated cries waking up the dead Corinthian and my monstrous bride to-never-be. Soon enough, the duke was the one screaming as I tore into him with canine teeth and claws.

And when he was dead, we both feasted on his broken remains.

Then, with a swift motion, she turned the page again, and the ritual began anew;

As I watched, Morgane slowly pulled out Ducate’s intestines from deep within his abdomen before wrapping them around my neck like pearls.

Another death – another new page.

A new horrific telling.

Facing each other, we sat and got lost in each other’s eyes, while the horses we had mounted raced in opposite directions.

The Corinthian between us was slowly parted into two, taking the shape of two lovers whom fate forced to spend eternity apart.

Many such tales, countless massacred lives, had passed as we continued pouring out our shared sadistic intentions on pieces of paper that ended up discarded on the floor.

Many such dead dukes and many butchered Corinthians lay scattered across the ballroom floor while we were dancing beneath our masterpiece.

He swayed upside down from his blackened entrails. I spread his lungs and rib cage out like the six wings of the seraphim. What still remained of his skin received the kiss of the fires of hell. He wore the crown of bones on his head and his spine was severed to be placed at the center of his chest like the beacon of hope. The scorching fires of salvation bleed down the torch lodged into the hole where his human core used to be. His eyes were gone, for he had lusted through his eyes. His tongue was gone, for he had sinned with his mouth.

There was no more humanity left in the Duke of Corinth, nor there was any humanity left in Morage or I. That is exactly why he held three hearts, his own, which I tore out, Morgane’s which he tore out and mine, which she tore out.

A spitting image of the arch-watchers: Semyaza, Arteqoph, Shahaqiel. The ones trapped in the desert of oblivion until the end of times. Bound to remain wide awake and aware of the one true divinity we swore to worship and venerate for eons and eons to come.

Our one true god - Terror

For only Lord Phobos holds the keys to Nirvana. Only delirious, dreadful paranoia paves the path to the ecstasy concealed within wisdom.

I – One – You – All

We dance to the grotesque melody of tortured souls suffering ceaselessly, uncaring and unmoved by their ache. The product of a flawed DNA design manipulated into a chimeric disaster by outer races. They are born to live, suffer, and die – to experience the worst fates imaginable to mankind. They exist just so we, both authors and audience, could satisfy the sadistic urge to create and to relieve one more bloody tale.

Following the loss of my husband to complications with a brain tumor I found myself becoming what I viewed as a worse father, I was too deep in my grief to attend to the grief and needs of my daughters. I thought it best to take a weekend to myself to tackle my own problems so I can be more present, so I called my older brother Oscar and his wife Lilian and nearly begged them to watch the girls for a few days, they obviously were happy to. They picked them up later that day and I got to my process of healing (getting very drunk and staying in bed mostly).

When Monday came I got my shit together as best I could and waited for my brother to drop them off, I was prepared to help them work through whatever they needed. as the hours ticked by without them showing I began to worry, I called my brother's phone probably 50 times, his stupid voicemail message became the soundtrack to my panic. "You've reached Oscar Fordeat, leave a message after the Forbeep!" played out into the echoing walls of my house as I paced the halls. When the sun went down and I began to dial the police a knock on my front door made me nearly jump out of skin, It was Lily, she looked very distraught, what I'm sure was mirrored thought she had upon seeing me.

"Dean..."

She looked me up and down, "He didn't show up did he..?" we filed a missing persons report for Oscar and the girls before the night was over, they weren't found. I obviously could not accept that the police stopped looking after a few months so I began searching on my own, often but not always with Lily's help, in a few weeks I had combed the woods around the school the girls attended and Oscar's house leaving no stone unturned. by this point the people in my town that I had know my whole life had moved on with their lives and stopped dropping by to check on me so I spent most days alone. one night as I sat awake on my bed far too late to be awake something struck my mind that baffled me as to why I hadn't thought of it already, My brother's last worksite! He did freelance construction and was assembling a modular home out in the woods, the police had briefly looked over the place but what about the woods surrounding it!

Against my better judgment I began to get dressed and look for my car keys, I should have waited until morning but I was so determined to find anything, even a mild clue as to where they had went. I called Lily and asked her for the address and she groggily gave it to me and I was on the way. when I arrived I used the flashlight on my phone to get a look around, part of the modular was collapsed at the back but I wasn't concerned with that, the police had probably checked that out already, I was more concerned with the woods. I made my way to the tree line, I could see from a distance there was a steep drop off just beyond it, as I got closer I could feel my ankle roll on top of loose dirt and I fell forward and down the drop off. I don't remember a lot after that, I remember unbearable pain, I remember waking up in the hospital the next day with Lily at my side.

I had hit my back just right during the fall to paralyze myself from the waist down, but I honestly didn't care, not like I had much to live for anymore anyway. Instead my mind stayed focused on that loose dirt, I couldn't explain why I was so fixated on it, it just felt important. with the new limitations of my wheelchair I could hardly make it past my front yard let alone to the site, not on my town's dirt roads. after a week or 2 of pestering I finally convinced Lily to go search the area, it was raining hard that day, of course it was. all the ground would be soft and muddy, just as I expected she came back with nothing, I thanked her anyway and it continued to eat away at me for days, which became weeks, then months and years. by the 3 year mark I was basically just doing what was required to survive, I would eat, I would sit for hours, then sleep to start over. Lily had all but stopped talking to me by this point, my fixation was 'stunting her grieving process' so I respected her boundaries and lost her number.

I had boosted myself out of chair and into bed same as any other night, just as I had began to dream I heard a soft sobbing beside my bed, I opened my eyes to see a silhouette, hunched over crying into it's hands. I quickly flicked on my bedside lamp and the figure shot it's head up as it was bathed in the light, it's mouth hung open and it's eyes open wide as if staring into the eyes of god. It was my brother, he looked different, his thick but short trimmed neat blond hair and well groomed Walrus mustache had been replaced with a dirty raggedy mop of shoulder length hair and similarly filthy full beard, his tattered clothes were covered in blood as was most of his face. "Oscar..?" I muttered,

"I- I'm... so sorry.."

His voice was rough and rashly as if those were the first words he'd spoken in a long time. before I could process anything he lunged at me, wrestling me to the other side of my queen, his fingernails dug into my throat like an animals claws as he choked me, I mustered all my strength to punch him in the jaw with crack. I pushed him off of me and the bed as he clutched his face and groaned, I crawled as quickly as I could, tracking blood on my sheets to the other side of the bed and off to the ground beside my chair, I struggled with the footrest of my chair, pulling it off it's hinge and wielding it like a small bat. he cam barreling clumsily across the bed and towards me, right when he got close enough I cracked the footrest hard against his temple and he fell limp on top of me. I pushed him off with much effort and this rage boiled up inside me, this unbearable hot anger in my chest, I bashed the footrest into his face again, and another time, "WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN?!!" I screamed as I hit him again and again in the face and chest. after I caught myself and stopped battering him I threw the footrest and crawled to my nightstand, I called the police.

When the police arrived they told me to my surprise, that I hadn't killed him, and they took him in. 2 days later an officer arrived at my house and told me that Oscar had confessed to what I'm going to tell you now: 3 years ago, on the Monday that Oscar was suppose to return my daughters, he picked them up from school and took them to his worksite to give me a few extra hours. the modular collapsed on the 3 of them, Oscar was mostly unharmed, but the girls.... they were crushed and contorted, Delilah was still half alive, writhing when he pulled them out of the wreckage, he panicked, and decided to put her out of her misery, terrified to face Lily and I after what he had done, he buried them by the tree line and fled a few states away. after 3 years of his mind stewing in it's own guilt made him paranoid and unstable, he returned to tie up loose ends. he killed Lily in her sleep and then came to my house to do the same to me.

 Alice and Delilah, my beautiful girls, rest easy, and please forgive me. Forgive me for not being there for you how I should have, forgive me for leaving you with him. Your bodies were unearthed and moved to the same cemetery as your father, I visit you every day. And Lilian, you were my closest friend, even if you distanced yourself from me, I wish I could trade my life for yours.

Oscar was always the black sheep of the family, a white blond baby born to an all black family, my father always said my mother had cheated, though she never admitted it, but treated him the same as me or our sisters. I have so many pleasant memories with him, playing N64 with him in the basement turned his bedroom when he was a teen, him driving my sisters and I to the lake to swim when we were teens, but I don't think about that when his name is uttered anymore. all I can think of is how I'm going to get into the prison next town over where he's serving life, and kill him.

(nosleep removed this for 'Unacceptable Horror' bc the mods all suck cheese covered toes)

Welcome to Sarcoville, said the sign at the entrance to my small once-hometown. I moved there when I turned eighteen to get away from my family's financial troubles. I wanted a fresh start and a job opportunity at a local meat farm presented itself. Sarcoville was a tiny community, and the locals were incredibly welcoming. The rent was dirt cheap and my flat had a bomb shelter! Never thought I'd need to use it though, being basically in the middle of Nowhere, America.

Everything was going swimmingly until one morning a high-pitched scream 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 bloodied 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.

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 in the sea of agony until I began to fall in love with it.

I was losing myself in ego death. My being began finding its place in the universe. My purpose laid bare before me, as a piece of a carcinogenic mass.

In a singular moment, however, as soon as it came, so it had stopped. The pain, the heat, the joy…

Everything had vanished, only to be replaced with a primal fear. The sarcophagal mass must've been distracted by someone else leaving me with nothing but a sense of all-consuming terror.

My instincts forced me to run to the bomb shelter. As I ran, I could hear the neighbor's newborn daughter crying.

By the time I locked myself in the bomb shelter, the crying died out and before I could even catch my breath, the amalgam of predatory humanity was already pounding with full force across against the door.

Occasionally crying in a myriad of distorted voices.

beckoning me to join strangers, acquaintances, neighbors, friends, lovers, and relatives.

Calling me to find unity in them and be as one forever.

Promising a life without boundaries or barriers.

A part of me wanted to give in and become entangled in this orgy of molten yet living humanity.

I had to resist the urge to join this singular living human fabric.

I was about to break after hours of relentless psychological torment, but then it just stopped and the world fell dead silent again. It took me a few long minutes before I dared open the door ever so slightly. Creating only a tiny opening while being almost paralyzed by dread. The whole time I was worried sick this thing would be smart enough to fool me with a momentary silence.

At that moment it seemed like there was nothing there. Too exhausted to think rationally at this point, and armed with a sense of false security, I shoved the door open. My heart nearly went to a cardiac arrest as I fell on my ass.

A disgusting formation of sinew and muscle tissue stood towering over me. Numerous tentacles and appendages shot out in all directions. Tentacles and faces jutting out of every conceivable corner of this thing. It just stood there, looming, unmoving, statuesque.

Even after I screamed my lungs out in fear, the horror remained stationary, not moving an inch of its gargantuan form.

Thankfully, my legs thought faster than my brain and I ran. I ran as fast as I could toward my car. From there, I drove away without looking back. I drove like a maniac until I was back at my parents. To explain my return, I made up a story about a murderer on the loose. I guess being dressed in my pajamas and showing up as pale as a ghost helped my case.

Sometime later, I moved away again, this time, to a less secluded place, and the years had gone by. It took me a long time to forget about Sarcoville, but eventually; I did. At first, I couldn't even handle the sound of toddlers crying without being drawn back to that awful place. Nor could I look at raw meat the same. I still can't. I have been vegan for the last decade. Time does, however, heal some wounds, it seems, and eventually, I was able to move on.

One night, not too long ago, while I was driving, to visit relatives on the West Coast. I passed by some inauspicious town that seemed abandoned at first glance. Other than the ghastly emptiness and the unusually bumpy roads, the town seemed pretty standard for a lifeless desert ghost town. I've passed a few of those that evening and thought nothing of it.

Cursing under my breath, I kept on driving as my car almost bounced about on top of the dilapidated road, until I caught a glimpse of a sign that said "You are leaving Sarcoville."

My heart sank.

Mental floodgates broke down.

Visions from that day flashed before my eyes.

Memories.

Nightmares.

The car nearly flipped over.

Losing control, I swerved before bringing the car to a screeching halt.

An indescribable force dug into my brain, forcing me to get out of the car and take in the scenery all around me.

No matter how hard I tried to resist, I couldn't. My body moved of its own accord. My arms wouldn't stop, my legs wouldn't stop, my eyes wouldn’t close.

I was a flesh puppet forced to witness the conglomeration of carnage infesting the town I called home for a brief time. Every single inch, infected with the frozen parasitic cancerous growth.

A poor imitation of the human form stood around in different poses, looking eyelessly in different directions.

The structures, the buildings, the trees, a flesh cat or a dog or some other sort of animal just stood there too.

Even the road… The concrete and the earth below it… Every last thing in there was but an adhesive string in a monolithic parasitic spider web of molten hominid matter.

I just stood there, slowly devouring the dread that this evil infection inspired in me. Its invisible claws penetrated deep into my psyche, into me. It took hold of me, almost as if to tell me that even though I was the sole survivor of its onslaught in Sarcoville, it could still do with me as it pleased.

Even when immobilized by the night, it still managed to pull me into its grasp.

To leave a gruesome reminder of its place in my life.

To torment me as it pleased.

And once it was satisfied with the pain it had inflicted upon me, it just tossed me to the side of the road, like a road kill.

A rotten piece of meat.

With its spell on me broken as suddenly as it was cast, I was able to drive away from Sarcoville. That said, the disease has embedded itself deep within my mind. I haven't slept right for the last month.

Every time I close my eyes, a labyrinthine construct of pulsating viscera envelops my dreams.

The pulp withers, expanding and contracting in on itself as it keeps calling my name…

An acapella of longing echoes beckon me to return home… To return to Sarcoville.

Each day, the urge grows stronger, and I'm not sure I'll be able to resist for much longer...

To err is to be human, and so, after a long and winding journey down a road paved with one too many mistakes, I ended up being where I needed to be all along.

The green-blue skies hung clear over the sprawling concrete carcass of Sacroville. They were hanging like a kind of burial sheet over the corpse of the freshly deceased. The stench of suffocating monotony stood in the air, entrenching itself in every street and alley, in every structure, in every brick. Life lazily crawled about the city without a single coherent thought.

Here it is nothing but a mindless collective simply floating without aim or purpose, like a colony of siphonophores drifting through the endless oceans of existence.

And in the middle of it all, there I was.

Finally, succumbing to the urge to return to this horrible place that had once attempted to take away my individuality. In my futile attempts to maintain the illusion of freedom I had cultivated, I ended up an exile in the fields of solitude. Growing weary and depressed, I finally accepted the gift the loving shadow from my past had once offered me.

Alas, my change of heart had come too little too late.

The residents of Sarcoville no longer cared for my company.

Every attempt to come into contact with the sprawling, pulsating, and impossibly vast concentration of life at every turn was met with rejection.

Recoiling in disgust, they wanted to do with me. They were the ones sick of me now, heartlessly mirroring my actions and feelings when they had first offered me their wonderful gift.

Abandoned.

Alone.

I sank into a deep pit of despair, into which no light could penetrate.

Falling to my knees, I begged, and I wept.

I refused to accept the rejection.

Clawing into the dirt and hitting my head against the unforgiving ground.

I cried and demanded my acceptance into the fold.

I cried, and I bled, and I pleaded, and I prayed.

Wishing to be accepted back into humanity or to see it eradicated from the face of this earth.

And God, he heard my prayers. He answered my prayers.

With a thundering explosion, an angel clad in shining white steel appeared in the heavens above. Pure, without blemish. The image of perfection.

Its metallic wings glistened, filling me with amazement and a newfound sense of hope. As it hovered motionlessly in the sky above, his faceless expression of disappointment was unbearably pleasing to behold.

I fixed my gaze on the holy emissary and so did everyone else.

The entirety of life stopped its meaningless meandering and turned its blind and deaf stare toward the inhumanly beautiful angel.

Humanity’s hour of judgment has finally come!

Without a warning, the angel opened its eyes.

Thousands of millions of colorful eyes.

Unbelievably colorful eyes.

Impossibly colorful eyes.

A swarm of piercingly striking eyes all over its wings.

Angelic wings whose circumference wrapped itself around the entirety of Sarcoville.

A kaleidoscopic shadow blanketing every single centimeter of every one of us as we stared in utter wonder at the reckoning unfold.

A flash of light.

Followed by another one.

And another and another...

A legion of murderously uncompromising fireflies emanating from the swarm of judgementally cruel yet beautiful eyes in every direction.

Growing brighter and brighter until there was nothing but pure white silence.

Until there was nothing but invisible fire.

A second baptism in excruciatingly blissful heat.

In it, a symphony of agonized screams arose from the infinite void. A mere imitation of the angelic choir around God’s throne echoed the thousand-day process of purification by photonic holy rain. A process meant to cleanse the creation of the parasitic invasive thing that spread its malignant tentacles all over, threatening to rape Eden.

A process meant to bring the universe to a new beginning.

A new world was to grow out of the ashes, a phoenix reborn anew was to rise from whatever remained.

In these moments, when every trace of humanity was being eradicated from the face of the earth, I finally felt accepted again. When every ounce of flesh and bone, every memory of our presence, disappeared inside a cauldron of every kind of conceivable and inconceivable sublevel of suicide-inducing agony from which we could never hope to escape, I felt at home.

Again.

I was one of many, yet one of a whole.

A drop in the deluge of unending suffering expressed through soul-crushing howling and moaning.

When my torment was finally over and the last vestiges of my once mistakenly human form were slowly disintegrating like ashes carried into the horizon, I was finally at peace. Finally, overcome by the indescribable feeling of joy that comes with true freedom.

A sense of freedom that only comes when one is sailing on a burning ship into the sunset.

And so, the ceaseless murder of the world at the hands of the cancerous strain known as humankind ended…

Then all that remained of his atrocious existence to remind the eons to come was a mosaic of shadows trapped under a layer of radioactive glass in the middle of the desert. A mosaic of shadows depicting one last struggle in the face of the long defeat. A scene carved neatly and with the utmost care into the glass.

An image so perfect, no words can ever describe its beauty.

I had just finished flicking the last smashed ant into the sink when I first saw it. Down in the bottom near the drain opening was a jumping spider.

It had the usual features of a jumping spider. Small beady eyes, hairy legs, and a tint of orange on its abdomen. It was actually quite beautiful, and I took a few more seconds to study it further. It moved away from the drain opening in a jerky, nervous manner. I eyed the handle for the faucet to wash the dead ants away but stopped knowing I'd probably kill the spider then too. And I didn’t want to do that because I like spiders. Always have.

I turned and started to walk away when I heard a voice call out. From behind me.

"Thank you."

It was strong yet not intimidating at all. I said hello out loud not really knowing what to expect.

"Down here." The voice sounded like it came from right in front of me.

I looked around a bit until I saw movement from the counter in front of me. There sitting near the edge was the same jumping spider, tall tale orange spot and all.

"Here."

It was at that moment the reality of what was happening hit me. This tiny spider was speaking to me. It sat there in place, watching me with its even tinier black eyes. I did the only thing that made sense at the time.

"You can speak to me?"

It took a few seconds for it to respond.

"I have the ability yes. And it's because of what you did. You showed me kindness and spared my life."

"Well, I do like spiders. Always have."

"And since you spared me from the same fate as those ants I now owe you a debt."

This was nuts. But I just kept going with it.

"A debt?"

The spider said that for a time he would help me with my carpenter ant problem. Now those little bastards I hate. Every summer they get into my house. The spider told me to go to bed and in the morning he'd show me.

The next day I came downstairs and started to walk into the kitchen when I felt something on the bottom of my barefoot. I looked and saw what looked like pieces of ground up black pepper. I wiped them off and then I noticed the tile floor. Hundreds more of them all over the place.

I got my magnifying glass out and took a look. They were dead ants. Or more like pieces of dead ants. Heads, thoraxes, and legs scattered about like bodies on a battlefield.

"Do you approve master?"

I told the spider I did. It was pure carnage and I did approve. Fuck those ants.

As I was sweeping the pieces up I asked the spider if it could take on a bigger job. I've got this really annoying neighbor.

The spider said tomorrow morning he'd show me.

“Hey, Dad! It’s funny you called just now. I was going to call you.”

“I’m good, I’m good. How are you?”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Anna and the kids are great. We’ll probably drop by on the weekend. I’ve got to talk to you about something, anyway.”

“I’ll tell you everything when we come over.”

“Nah, everything’s fine. Don’t worry.”

“It’s uh, how do I properly put it? I guess important family stuff I’d like to talk to you about. Anyway, you wouldn’t believe where I’ve been today…”

It is kind of funny that my dad called me at that moment when I was lying in a pile of rubble and dust. Everything hurt as I lay, exhausted in the last place I expected myself to end up. In the basement of my childhood home. My parents never allowed me to go there as a child. That was the excuse they had. Years later, I found out that my grandfather lost the keys decades ago and since they had nothing of importance down there, they never bothered breaking the door down. My mum would come up with many ghost stories about the basement to keep my brother and me at bay.

Then one day, she and Liam vanished. That’s all I can remember. The two years between their disappearance and my dad’s second marriage, I can’t remember them. I’m clueless about what happened during these two years. To this day, the old man gets upset if I bring the topic up. We moved pretty soon after my dad started dating again.

Something terrible had to have happened to them because every time I tried to work my way around my memory, a great sadness washed over me. A painful sadness that prevents me from digging any further. I’ve seen therapists in my earlier years, and my brain seems to repress some kind of traumatic memory. Whatever happened was probably awful.

Life didn’t stop there, however, not for my father or me, thankfully. He remarried and thus I had a new mother and a sister, Emma. I was a bit of an asshole to both at the start of my dad’s relationship with my stepmother. It’s weird to refer to my mom as a stepmother today. But yeah, I was a troublesome fourteen-year-old when they wed. I hated everything and everyone. Over time, I, too, moved on and I’m glad I did.

I love both Mom and Emma to death, even if my sister is a little hard to deal with sometimes because she has schizophrenia. It’s a fun thing finding out your little sister is being chased by imaginary vampiric voices just when you outgrow teenage angst and start your adult life. I find the positive symptoms far easier to deal with than the negative ones. Because she gets depressed, withdrawn, and incapable of holding a coherent conversation, and even all those years later and with her treatments, she’s still dealing with a lifelong incurable condition that leaves her miserable and it just hurts to see.

I mean, yeah, we’re adults and we’ve our own families now, but still. We grew up close, and we remained close. Family’s all there is to this life, I think. I was never religious, so if it isn’t for the people I care about and love, there’s not much to be around for.

Now, all of those things are important to explain just what happened to me.

One night, actually, on Emma’s twenty-eighth birthday, we were all hammered out of our minds, including my sister who shouldn’t drink but… The night went without issue. She came up to me, barely able to keep herself upright, and asked me if I believed in the supernatural.

I didn’t.

She started giggling and my first thought she was hallucinating again.

Drunk out of my ass, without thinking, I asked if she was hearing Space Chupacabra or something and she just shoved me and slurred out how she had a great idea.

I asked her what it was, and she said it was the funniest thing.

She said I should make an online post about being a paranormal investigator just to see if anyone might bite on the idea. Like in that movie, 1408. At the moment, I thought it was the most hilarious thing. So I did just as she suggested. The next morning, I made a post on Facebook about being a paranormal investigator. Yes, back then people still used Facebook. At first, it yielded no results, but over time came out asking for advice and even inviting me to investigate.

I thought it was silly, I still think so, but I decided after enough requests to look into these things. The absolute majority of cases would end with me being invited to some place where absolutely nothing of the ordinary ever happens, and I’d just make up something as I went to convince the person how I had dealt with the horror.

It became a semi-regular thing, on top of my regular job. Anna came along a few times. We always found it funny how people were so serious about nothing. Ghosts, demons, monsters, you name it, I’ve had people approaching me with everything possible and impossible. Most of it ended with me coming up with some story because there was nothing. There was nothing there, and I just made up a good story. On one occasion, some good came off it. I ended up helping solve a murder case. A woman claimed she was being visited by a specter. After some shuffling around and nosing about, we ended up finding her son’s remains. His hastily buried half-decomposed body.

I’ll concede that maybe some of this stuff is real. That time, the female intuition led us to look in the right places during this one case. The woman wanted an exorcism and ended up finding out something else entirely. She found her son was the victim of a murder. It was hard seeing her break down like that upon finding her kid was gone. Being a father, myself, I could understand her. No one wants to lose their children, ever.

This was the first time something of a note happened during my hunts for paranormal activity.

I love both Mom and Emma to death, even if my sister is a little hard to deal with sometimes because she has schizophrenia. It’s a fun thing finding out your little sister is being chased by imaginary vampiric voices just when you outgrow teenage angst and start your adult life. I find the positive symptoms far easier to deal with than the negative ones. Because she gets depressed, withdrawn, and incapable of holding a coherent conversation, and even all those years later and with her treatments, she’s still dealing with a lifelong incurable condition that leaves her miserable and it just hurts to see.

I mean, yeah, we’re adults and we’ve our own families now, but still. We grew up close, and we remained close. Family’s all there is to this life, I think. I was never religious, so if it isn’t for the people I care about and love, there’s not much to be around for.

Now, all of those things are important to explain just what happened to me.

One night, actually, on Emma’s twenty-eighth birthday, we were all hammered out of our minds, including my sister who shouldn’t drink but… The night went without issue. She came up to me, barely able to keep herself upright, and asked me if I believed in the supernatural.

I didn’t.

She started giggling and my first thought she was hallucinating again.

Drunk out of my ass, without thinking, I asked if she was hearing Space Chupacabra or something and she just shoved me and slurred out how she had a great idea.

I asked her what it was, and she said it was the funniest thing.

She said I should make an online post about being a paranormal investigator just to see if anyone might bite take the bait. I could be like that paranormal investigator guy in that one movie, 1408. At the moment, I thought it was the most hilarious thing. So I did just as she suggested. The next morning, I made a post on Facebook about being a paranormal investigator. Yes, back then people still used Facebook. At first, it yielded no results, but over time, people came out asking for advice and even inviting me to investigate.

I thought it was silly, I still think so, but I decided after enough requests to look into these things. The absolute majority of cases would end with me being invited to some place where absolutely nothing of the ordinary ever happens, and I’d just make up something as I went to convince the person how I had dealt with the horror.

It became a semi-regular thing, on top of my regular job. Anna came along a few times. We always found it funny how people were so serious about nothing. Ghosts, demons, monsters, you name it, I’ve had people approaching me with everything possible and impossible. Most of it ended with me coming up with some story because there was nothing. There was nothing there, and I just made up a good story. On one occasion, some good came off it. I ended up helping solve a murder case. A woman claimed she was being visited by a specter. After some shuffling around and nosing about, we ended up finding her son’s remains. His hastily buried half-decomposed body.

I’ll concede that maybe some of this stuff is real. That time, the female intuition led us to look in the right places during this one case. The woman wanted an exorcism and ended up finding out something else entirely. She found her son was the victim of a murder. It was hard seeing her break down like that upon finding her kid was gone. Being a father, myself, I could understand her. No one wants to lose their children, ever.

This was the first time something of a note happened during my hunts for paranormal activity.

Until this point, I didn’t know that fear could weigh as much as a black hole. I knew somewhere deep inside that it was just sleep paralysis, but it all felt so real. The hairless, deformed, dog-like thing sitting on my legs with its jaw threatening to tear me apart seemed too real. The stench of its breath, the glint in its red eyes everything seemed real.

Finally, my brain awoke my body, and I jolted upwards with a scream.

The silence soon took over once more, and there was only silence and the sound of my heart attempting to escape my ribcage. I got out of bed and went outside for a smoke. I had to calm down before trying to fall asleep again, lest the stress lead me to another paralyzing nightmare scenario. Once I put out my cigarette, I was about to head back inside when I felt an icy hand touch my shoulder. I turned my head and there was nothing there. Dread washed over me once more. With my head turned, I heard a whisper.

A soft, barely audible whisper at first.

The basement…

The sudden vocalization jolted me. I snapped my neck in the other direction only to face nothing.

The whispering persisted.

The basement…

Follow me into the basement…

For a moment, I thought I was losing my mind.

Follow me…

The voice sounded so familiar, even so hushed. It felt like a voice I had heard before.

The basement…

Follow…

I glimpsed a shadowy mass moving around the house…

To the basement…

It was my mum’s voice.

As if entranced by the fear and the familiarity of the ghastly vocalizations. My body moved, following the black ether crawling towards the basement door. Silent screams of protest echoed inside my skull, but they fell on deaf ears. I was already there. The gates into the abyss were open, ajar.

I was staring into the void, and it was staring back at me.

A scream bellowed out of the chthonic nothingness. A heart-wrenching scream. My brothers…

Without a moment’s thought, I raced into the basement, nearly killing myself on the steppes that led into the belly of perdition.

Only once the dead, empty silence wrapped its ethereal arms around my throat, threatening to crush it, had I realized how stupid I was rushing in like that. I was shaking, cold sweat traveled down my forehead. I felt trapped, lost, at the mercy of some kind of great and terrible cosmic power that threatened to swallow me then and there.

There was a lighter in my pocket, but I had a hard time grabbing it. Something was wrong with me; something was wrong with the entire situation. The stench of spoiled milk and eggs penetrated my nostrils, disorientating me.

I was so terrified by the darkness that I could barely pull out the lighter. I heard the distinct sound of heavy breathing at the exact moment I produced a flame.

Two conjoined screams erupted in my face; one low and animalistic and the other high-pitched with utter despair. Both voices escaped from the same toothy maw attached to the vaguely human face, staring at me with starving malice.

The one singular moment I could see the goddamn thing with clarity felt as if I had been staring death itself in the eye. A massive head, completely black. Deathly black, hairless, and completely blind.

I didn’t even have the time to react to the monster. It just grabbed me and tossed me to the floor with an inhuman display of strength. I probably landed on my neck because for a moment everything went numb, my shoulders were on fire, and the jaws of the beast were painfully close to my face. I could feel its saliva dripping onto my skin.

Everything happened so fast. I closed my eyes, hoping for a quick death, but that wouldn’t come. The beast began shrieking and wailing. Opening my eyes, I saw a human-sized flame withering as the beast inside cried in agony. Everything it touched caught fire. Soon enough, a blazing inferno engulfed me. The feeling returned to my extremities once I resigned to my fate. A ray of light penetrated from above. A beautiful, otherworldly glow. From within the light, echoed the voice of my mother, my actual mother, my beloved mother. It beckoned me to get up and save myself.

Pushing myself off the floor felt like I was being tortured, but I had to move forward. The flame was closing in on me. It was threatening to block the staircase. Pushing through the sensation of rods embedded in my extremities, I dragged my feet out of the basement, brushing my face on some kind of rope hanging from the basement ceiling. Thankfully, I made it outside of the house. I heard the beast shrieking and roaring behind me one last time before my body finally gave in and I collapsed.

When I regained consciousness, I was in the hospital. My entire family was sitting around me. For the first time in a long time, I was truly happy to be alive. I don’t know if I could live with myself if I had left my family like that. I broke my neck and my arm is burnt, but I’m going to get surgery and I’ll be as good as new in about a year. Anna and the kids were crying with joy. Emma was crying, too. I wish I could hug them all tighter, but my arms are still killing me. It was a beautiful moment. It’s a shame these are so far and few in between.

The strangest thing happened once Anna and Emma left the room; I overheard their conversation.

“Jon hasn’t been the same since Amelia passed away. On top of being overwhelmed with his grief, he’s withdrawn and sounds completely unhinged sometimes. “

“Yeah, I’ve noticed too. I’m pretty sure he’s convinced I’m his step-sister…”

“Oh… He was talking about all these ghost stories to me a while ago, out of the blue. “

“Shit… I think he’s like Uncle Bill. He’s got the family curse…”

“He mentioned your side of the family has had a history of mental illness years ago.”

“Oh yeah, we thought it was behind us, because neither of us had it, nor any of our cousins. Mum was fine, too. She was fine until the cancer. Say, Annie, what are the odds he might’ve tried to…”

I couldn’t hear the rest of it, but those silly birds had to be wrong. I wasn’t the one attended by the dearly departed royal servants of Ozymandias. That was Emma… right, mummy?

What’s the most traumatising experience you’ve ever went through?

Finally, I had him where I wanted him. My hands wrapped around the collar of his shirt. His bohemian grin infuriated me to no end.

“You! You're going to fix everything,” I barked, my right letting go of his shirt and curling into a fist raised to his face.

He laughed, just laughed. His laughter seemed to seep away from my confidence.

“I did as I promised.” He mocked.

“You son of a b…” my voice and body shook.

He cut me off. “I made all of your wildest dreams come true.”

And with those words, the man who once introduced himself to me as William Golding took away all my remaining strength. Before him, I was nothing but a shadow with a needle sticking out of my arm. One waiting for a chance encounter with his maker on the side of the road once more.

The man before me made all of my wildest dreams come true. After our first encounter, my life turned on its head. In no time, I could make a decent living selling my paintings. Before long, I became a world-renowned painter.

But success isn’t as glamorous as it first seems.

With each success came a tragedy.

First, they were small and personal, but as my projects became more ambitious, the tragedies grew worse.

My projects turned more ambitious, forecasting greater disasters.

“I make your dreams into reality,” he sneered.

Catastrophes I imagined and translated into canvas became international news.

“You wished to reshape the universe,” his words cut me like blades, “I gave you that power.”

Lightning flashed across the night sky, and thunder followed swiftly, turning my blood cold.

Golding’s eyes lit up like funeral pyres. “The Deluge,” he quipped, “I’ve always loved your biblically inspired works!” he mocked, effortlessly breaking out of my ever-weakening grip. Peering into my soul, he asked, “Do you remember what I told you after our first-ever meeting?”

My inspiration is my recurring nightmares.

Every god-damned nightmare becomes a painting.

At this point, I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to.

Every bad dream, a work of art to be swallowed by the masses -

Something to die for.

Something they die for…

Every dream -

Each painting -

A prophecy of doom.

Lightning set the skies ablaze once more.

The Lord of the Flies vanished. Disappearing in a flash, he left me in the middle of a sea of writhing maggots dancing mindlessly around a gallery filled with my works. Socialites and other such vampiric creatures swarmed to witness the dismal monotony of my imagination brought to the surface of this mortal plain.

A woman approached me, congratulating me on the success of my most recent exhibition.

“You are like a modern-day Caravaggio, Mr. Benhosea.” She complimented.

“I fancy myself more of a Munch, Missus.”

"Oh, no. The color scheme, the details. He could never compare. You make Edvard Munch look like a Philistine, darling," she rebuffed me.

I faked a smile and bowed in gratitude, watching her disappear into the grumble again.

Golding’s last words still rang in my ears, drowning out the world-ending thunderstorm outside –

“The Devil is always in the details.”

Standing over the lifeless body of his dead wife, Eric mused about how meaningless his life had been. He didn’t deserve to live anymore. There was no point in living without her. He finally understood the unbearable pain she must’ve felt when their only child was stillborn.

Holding the pistol to his temple, he closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.

To his horror, a burning dull pain lingered in the left half of his skull as he floated in the darkest darkness Eric had ever experienced. The sensation wouldn’t go away, it only kept getting worse as time passed. He tried screaming, but no sound came out. Trying to feel his way around yielded nothing but further terror.

Trapped, hurting, and alone.

He floated in the void, lighter than air.

Until a light flashed briefly beside him, bringing with it a dull, burning pain.

Another one followed, and another, and another, and another.

Eric was screaming at the top of his lungs, writhing in agony as he sank deeper and deeper into a sea of aches he couldn’t escape.

He spent what must’ve felt like millennia sinking into a tunnel of explosive irritation before being deprived of any remaining shred of insanity.

By the time he fell into the crimson skies, he could no longer recognize anything other than the cruel violence his exposed nerve endings had inflicted on him. With his mind shattered, he couldn’t even comprehend. He was falling back first into a web of bony thorns.

Even upon impact, when dozens of splinters had penetrated what was once skin and muscle tissue, he failed to feel anything other than the deep-seated pain he was intimate with for countless lifetimes.

Only the sight of worming legions of others brought him back into the malignant embrace of fear.

Once the realization he wasn’t alone finally sank in, Eric experienced a rebirth in the arms of despair. The sight of countless others like him. All naked, pale, gaunt, trapped in a web of splintered bones awoke him from his agonal stupor. His newfound vitality had brought nothing but suffering.

The sensation of innumerable stab wounds quickly enveloped him in new kinds of anguish.

He felt his face contort into the shape of a scream, just like all those others around him. The silence remained, however; his constant screaming eons ago had destroyed his vocal cords.

The eerie quiet finally broke under the weight of paralyzing sirens blaring in the distance.

Growing louder by the moment.

The claws of fear dug themselves into Eric’s eyes with the appearance of the harbinger of doom above him. Its grotesque shadow eclipsed all else as its oppressive presence drew nearer.

The airborne abomination took the shape of a winged humanoid colossus with an equine muzzle. Its sickly green hide cast the odor of death. The monstrosity unhinged its jaws above Eric’s convulsing carcass as its evil eye stared into the remaining pieces of his soul.

A nauseating sound of choking blended into the sonic ocean of danger hanging in the putrid air.

A thunderclap.

A monolith of suffocating pain collapsed on top of Eric, threatening to bisect him as he felt himself flying into the burning heavens.

He was lighter than air.

Crushing into the brackish ice sheets below, his ears rung and his entire being spun around itself on an invisible axis. The pain that had plagued him for so long was finally subsiding.

Bliss wrapped its hands around his broken shell.

Bringing joyous apathy.

The smoldering cold dug into Eric’s wounds ruthlessly, but he could barely feel it anymore. Whatever vestige of feeling was left clinging to his form was quickly fading away. His soul was finally free.

Finally…

Death has finally come to collect…

It came undetected, concealed by the infantile wailing of a monstrous foetal titan. The ravenous cyclopean beast lifted Eric’s cadaver from bloodstained ice by its exposed viscera. Driven by an insatiable lust to consume.

With his world slowly turning upside down, Eric stared apathetically at the abominable thing holding his body aloft. The cancerous serpentine tumor growing out of the thing’s lower half seemed to stretch into infinity as it pulled him closer to its toothless maw.

Untainted by the horrors of terminal pains, Eric closed his eyes.

The light sensation of pressure building up around his skull slowly pushed him back into the void.

The filthy claws of fear dug into his heart once again, when a burning dull pain dug into the back of his skull. He was floating in the darkest darkness he had ever experienced. The sensation wouldn’t go away, it only kept getting worse as time passed.

He tried screaming, but no sound came out. Trying to feel his way around yielded nothing but further terror.

Trapped, hurting, and alone.

He floated in the void, lighter than air.

Until a light flashed briefly beside him, bringing with it a dull, burning pain.

Another one followed, and another, and another, and another.

Lost in the tight embrace of ecstasy, drenched in the blood of this wannabe tough guy. He never saw it coming, did he? He never saw the sickness in your eyes. The man you left lying in his own viscera. That warm corpse you had just fucked with inhuman hatred. You were so lost in all of that pain you just caused; That’s why you failed to notice me wrapping my hand around your still erect cock. You don’t feel any pleasure anymore. The one thing you still feel is pain. That’s why you noticed me only when I tore out a chunk of your throat with my teeth.

Oh, the sounds you’ve made while choking on your blood. It was almost as orgasmic as the death rattle of a child soldier whose innards a high-caliber projectile had blown out.

You, my dear, sought pain.

I only seek to gift it to the likes of you.

There’s no use in trying to escape the pile of corpses you’ve left behind. They all want you, my dear. They all want to take a piece of you for what you did to them. Only the dead will show someone like you the love you deserve. Only here and now you will lose yourself in the pleasure of being dismembered and devoured by pure and everlasting agony.

There is no use in resisting, my love. Just let the countless men and women you’ve sent to hell fuck you to death.

It doesn’t even matter what you do, they will hold on to you, and keep fucking you until there is nothing left but a puddle of blood and semen.

Sounds like you’re already enjoying yourself…

If you keep this up, you’ll entice me into joining in on the fun…

Oh, yeah… Oh… yeah…

That’s the stuff…

Oh, yeah… yeah… yeah…

Don’t stop just yet…

I can’t get enough of those screams…

Here comes…

What’s with that look in your eyes? Are you afraid of the centaur and his bone-solid horse’s cock? Don’t worry, you’ll love it… You’ll love it as much as you loved shoving your prick into his sliced throat when he was but a man.

Oh, don’t start begging now. That’s a turnoff.

I told you, there is no use in resisting.

I’m actually jealous, you know; I’d love to be in your place. Really, I’d love to be the one taking him, but he doesn’t want me. None of them do. They all want you. Lucky you, though, because it’s extremely hot.

Seeing a big, burly killer of a man like you. Naked, fearful; on all fours. Awaiting Daddy’s cock to punish you again.

I’m gonna have some fun with you… Consider me your cuckquean. Go on, my love, show me how to service a stallion properly!

Yes, scream for me, scream louder princess, I love it; I love it!

I love…

Oh, you’re awake finally! Mmm, I missed you. Oh, come on, it’s too early to renew our sacred vows just yet. Though I’ll admit this much, watching you getting impaled on that demon’s rod gave me one hell of an orgasm.

It took you a while, but I see you’ve finally noticed what I’m doing. I hope you like it, my dear.

What’s with the face? Don’t you like having your own intestines being used as a flashlight?

Be honest, this feels fucking great, doesn’t it? I can feel you throbbing under that layer of skin. You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?

Don’t lie to me. I heard you moan there. You love it.

Not only do you look like a billion bucks, but you also taste wonderful, babe. Here, try some of yourself.

Tastes great, doesn’t it? I can tell you appreciate the taste of a well-groomed package.

Do not give me that look. I know everything about you. I know what your father and uncle did to you. The way they educated you. I know why you ended up doing what you do. This isn’t about revenge. This isn’t out of deep-seated anger. You aren’t a psychopath. You’re not like me, either - no. All you are is a hurt little girl in a man’s body trying to die. You are attempting suicide every day, and every day you end up on top. That’s why you fuck them. It’s not because you’re into man, and it’s not that you’re mad at the men who had fucked your chocolate starfish raw. No, no. You are mad that no one can deprive you of your suffering. The anguish that haunts your memories.

You are a pathetic little masochist.

You told me all of that. Have you forgotten already? I’ll never forget how you fell to your knees, weeping, sputum flying through your lips as you slurred the words to me.

Are those tears in your eyes? Are you going to cry now? Awww, you’re almost cute again, but now, I prefer it when you scream, baby.

Fuck me? Oh please, right here, right now! I’ll fuck you out of your skin, hotshot!

I’m going to flay your pitiful ass and then fuck whatever remains until your cock rots off. How does that sound?

Now do me a favor, and promise me you won’t destroy your vocal cords screaming while I undress you from this useless leather. You know I love the way you sound when you whine and whimper, but I’d love to hear more of that when we’re having some more intimate fun.

This will sting just a little, but I pinky swear I’ll fuck your guts out as an apology.

Pun is very much intended.

Hey, you’re awake!

So, how does it feel, being completely naked and wrapped in my arms? The whole time you were sleeping, I was having fun with your body. You sound so cute when you moan and whimper in your sleep. I bet you felt every inch of me all over you.

I know the overstimulation of trillions of nerves must’ve fried your brain, but your body runs on an autopilot. The mere touch of air against your exposed organs must be blindingly painful. My voice must feel beyond torturous at this point. I bet the feeling of pins and needles crawling all over your body nonstop while you both burn and freeze simultaneously must be exhilarating. A part of me wonders if your mind is wandering in the bowels of a sentient sandstorm of glass shards hellbent on tearing you apart. I can’t help but smile at seeing you in this state. You look like you’re trapped in a vortex of uncontrollable and mind-meltingly painful orgasms that just won’t end. All thanks to me!

Just wait until I finally crucify you from your spine. That’s when you’ll truly feel you’re standing at the pearly gates.

You’ve always wondered what dying feels like, my love.

Feels like you drowning in your own saliva and blood, just like I had all those years ago when you had skull-fucked the bullet hole you left in the back of my head. You’ll be feeling this way every single fucking day for the rest of eternity.

Welcome to hell, baby.

Just two more weeks? Are you kidding me?

Come on, what are two more weeks after six months?

Do you know how long these last six months have been?

I do… They've been…

No! you don't have a clue. You're too busy with your job.

Very long for me too. Actually, I miss you, my love.

Right, obviously you love your work more than you love. I'm so sick of this – I'm so sick of being alone all the time. Why did I even get married if my husband is always away somewhere?

I'll be home for nearly a year in two weeks, no job; no nothing. Only you and me.

Right, and then what, vanish again for two or maybe three years?

No… I don't know… but no…

Right, right… You always put your job before me… You know I want kids but…

Well, maybe we should work on that when I'm back home, honey?

To what end? So your child ends up growing up without a father? You're never here.

Well, this job is how we managed to fulfill most of your dreams so far and we're going to work on your next one in a couple of weeks.

Oh yeah? Fuck the job, fuck the dreams, fuck the money… I just want my husband by my side… The last time you were here, you bought this stupid antique gun. What are we even supposed to do with that thing? It just collects dust on the shelf.

I'll be there soon enough, but I gotta go now. Love, there's some stuff I need to take care of urgently.

Oh, fuck you and your job…

Love you… can't wait to see you!

***

Oh, so you haven't told her you're coming home tonight?

Nah, I wanted it to be a surprise.

I hope she doesn't try to kill you the moment you pass that door, Cap, cause she doesn't sound like the most patient woman.

Yeah, I'm sorry you had to hear that

Eh, it's fine. I was dealing with the same problem until we had children, and then I got transferred to the transportation unit. I get to be home every few weeks. It's lovely…

Well, that's nice for you. I guess I might end up like you next time I come back to work.

Oh, no, no, Captain. You are not going to be a chauffeur. You're no longer an ordinary man. You're the Afterman… You're a pioneer, a hero…

Afterman, is that what they're calling me now?

Yeah, you're the first person to have reached the point of…

I was just doing my job, Miles.

What you did was arguably greater than any explorer or scientist had ever done before you, Captain Rayleigh.

God damn it, I'm gonna tear up if you keep this up.

It's unlike you, Cap…

Yeah, well, they said it be a little weird for the next few days for me, considering my brain got scrambled by gravity, pretty much.

Oh, I didn't know you were hurt… That makes your contribution so much greater, sir.

Stop it Miles, it's just a bit of cosmic jet lag. I'll be fine in no time. I just need to adjust to normal time and space. That's all. Anyway, that's my home right there.

It's been an honor to drive you back home, Captain Rayleigh.

It's been an honor to have you as my chauffeur, Miles. Also, Ed would suffice. We've known each other for a long enough time. I'll be seeing you. Thanks for the ride!

See you, Cap… I mean, Ed, stay safe…

***

Honey, I'm home…

What the fuck?!

Oh! My! God! Eddie… this isn't… this isn't…

What? Tell me what this is?

It's not what you think…

Woah, what the fuck, Mary, you said he wouldn't be back for weeks!

Fuck

Fuck

Fuck

Eddie, please… this isn't what you think… He's just…

What, Marianne, what isn't this? You mean to tell me you were naked in our bed with this fucking bum and you weren't fucking him? Huh? Is that what you're going to say?

Eddie… I'm…

Who'd you call a bum?

No… No… please no… God…

You son of a bitch, you think you could just come here, fuck my wife and get away with it, huh? And you? You ungrateful shit… Look at what you've done.

Honey, I'm…

What the fuck?!

Be careful, he's got a gu…

***

Captain Rayleigh, status report?

Ugh…

Captain Rayleigh, do you copy?

Ugh…

Captain Rayleigh, do you copy? What is your status report?

My face – It melted off and became the gates to hell through which I have repeatedly passed into the center of this unexplainable vortex of impossible colors and shapes I cannot even describe.

He's rambling…

Captain, are you alright, what do you see?

Words can't describe the things I am surrounded by,

I am a part of

I am made of

What is going on Captain, Rayleigh?

Beyond the Event Horizon, there is nothing but pure, impenetrable darkness. A void without end, without source, without…

Captain Rayleigh? Edward, what's going on?

But then I saw something, a strange pulse, I felt it. It vibrated throughout my entire being.

I was unraveled, and everything came apart.

I could feel the tissues of my body turning into a spaghettified plasmonic puzzle slowly spreading out across the infinite color scheme of colors my eyes could not decipher.

Get him out of there.

Get him out of the black hole.

The darkness and the iridescence are made up of infinite microscopic and yet universe-sized strings. Infinite and yet so temporary, in of immobilized time. Everything moves without truly moving. We are all frozen in a singular point where the whole of every imaginable possibility is condensed into a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a moment.

Get him out of there immediately!

Pull him out!

I am disintegrating like the plaster world all around my sense…

I am nothing but the blood-stained flap of detached cloth that was once my body… It too disintegrates into the strings dissolving into further strings which thereupon collapse in on themselves like infinite supernovae chain reaction inside an invisible bottle inside the lightning driving the gravitational conscience of a most miniscule particle.

Get him the fuck out before we lose him there!

I am softly condensed into a miniature supernova…

The womb of the stellarvore…

https://preview.redd.it/oi1l2vitqpvc1.jpg?width=320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a19cd74edb75816aa2808c316294eb88fe2c9950

***

n… Oh my god… What the fuck have you done, Ed, what the fuck… This is too far… Too far…

Shut up Mary…

What have you done, Ed? What have…

Shut up…

You made me do this…

You… put that thing down…

No… Look at me… You chose this…

Eddie, what are yo…

Shut the fuck up!

Ed…

I said shut the fuck up!

Now look at what you made me do… You made me stain our carpet with your useless brain matter.

***

Good morning, gentlemen. Always a pleasure to see you, Miles. How could I help you?

Mrs. Rayleigh, we offer our condolences.

Oh God…

Unfortunately, we're here to inform you of your husband's passing…

Not again…

Mrs. I'm afraid that this time it's irreversible… Here's what remains of your late husband.

Ugh… how, how did this happen?

He was experimenting with a black hole and…

Wait, that's his brain, you've managed to fix him from similar incidents pr…

Ma'am, we've tried our best but this time around, we couldn't do anything. While there is some activity in it, there just wasn't enough to actually recreate the man he once was.

Do we at least know what's going on in there?

We're sorry, but no, we weren't able to figure it out, there was just too little left of him there.

I understand… Thank you, boys… Thank you for everything. At least he got to see his great grandchildren, you know… many others in his line of work never do…

Ma'am if I may? We could recreate the body…

I know… I was the one who made the breakthrough on that. It wouldn't be the same without my Eddie's mind, son. Thank you for your concern though…

I'm sorry Ma'am…

You're alright, soldier.

We offer our condolences again, Mrs. Rayleigh, but we must leave now… If you need anything, you should have all the contacts by now.

Thank you for your kindness, boys. You have a tough job. It means the world to me.

We're so sorry…

Thank you, now stay safe you two.

***

Dude, did we have to lie to her? Her husband just became space jelly!

Yes, you don't want a grieving wife knowing her late husband is stuck in a loop of murdering her over an imaginary affair.

How do you even know it's imaginary?!

Everyone and their mother know he was the unfaithful one…

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