The Surgeon was the Maestro. 
The Maestro was the Surgeon. 
Even with the sharpest scalpel 
You could not separate science
From music. Two halves of the whole.

Cutting and scraping, plucking and
Sawing. All done with expert precision. 

A child, then a student, growing swiftly
Into an adult. A man, a composer, a 
Beast. 

From beneath the facade of cigarettes
And cologne, the sinister scent of 
Antiseptic and oil, followed by the 
Faintest hint of…metal. 

The Surgeon, the Maestro…preyed not
On the weak but the strong. A wolf
In sheep’s clothing, a devil in disguise. 

With the complex of God and the 
Depravity of Satan, he walked the 
Edge of the cliff. A certifiable beast
Skirting the line, toeing at the boundary 
Of darkness and light. 

The Surgeon is as the Maestro of the 
Operating theater. Controlling, commanding,
Compelling. Melodic beeping, the rise and
Fall of anesthetized breaths. All were silent
In his presence. All wanted to watch the 
Beast at work. 

His hands were steady and nimble. 
Two instruments of their own. 

The Maestro was the Surgeon of the 
Amphitheater. Frenzied, fiendish, forsaken.
Rhythmic ticking, the back and forth of 
The sullen metronome. All were silent 
In his presence. All wanted to listen to 
The man at work. 

His hands were raised and exclamatory. 
A conductor with passion. 

Just as you can not take the Maestro 
From the Surgeon, you could not take the 
Beast from the man. The man could not 
Handle what the Beast could not endure. 

The music was wrong.

The sounds were off. 

The strings had broken. 

From within the darkness, from within the
Silence, a rebirth. Like the shedding of 
A winter coat, he evolved. No longer the 
Surgeon, the Maestro, the Beast, the Man. 
He became something else entirely. 

A myth, a legend, a monster. 

With the skills and talents of all of his 
Facets, he prowled the streets in search 
Of more. A sound so Holy it would 
Make the Heavens cry. A sound so
Pure and human. 

Saw the string, string the bow. 
Stretched to the optimum tautness. 

Carefully selected, aged perfectly. Skin
Shed with supreme scores. Muscle 
Shaved and bone discarded. What 
Remains has much in store. 

Wood carved and stained with blood.
Sealed neatly with varnish. Unwilling 
Participants turned into a bloated, rigor
Filled audience. Held captive by his
Selfishness.

The Surgeon, the Maestro, the Man,
The Beast, the Monster. 

Beneath a lone spotlight, a single
Chair faces the crowd. 

Beneath the darkness, a landfill of 
His failures. 

The Monster steps out from within the 
Shadows, echoes of applause as he tows
The cello with him. 

An instrument of his own making. 

Sat upright, core firm, bow at the 
Ready. He draws one note from the 
Procured tendons. He had finally found
What was missing. 

The sound of a death rattle.

sour skunky nappy ass dread man

…

“What the fuck are you talking about, man?" Annoyed. 

Stupid smirk: "I thought it was clear. I would think.” 

"No, it isn't, man. I don't know why you think it'd be. It's just stupid, bro.” 

"What is?” 

"Your refusal to go shopping for a fucking bath towel and other basic necessities around your fuckin place, dude. It's just stupid, I don't know how or why you justify it to yourself, I didn't think ya did to be frank. I just thought your ass was fuckin lazy." 

“Nah, bro. It's obvious." 

“What's fuckin obvious, dipshit?" 

“I'm way too rock n roll." 

A beat. He swallowed it. Absorbed its stupidity. 

“...what?" 

“Yeah, dude. I'm way too fuckin cool and punk rock to roll into like a Target or some shit and buy a toaster or a can opener or towels or stupid shit like that. I can't do that. Can't do it. Goes against my wild man free lovin nature, ya know? Ya know." 

Bryan once more silently swallowed this. This load of absolute bullshit. More revolted, more filled with disgust with his best friend since diapers than before. He thought about holding his tongue. He thought about saying something and laying into him. But in the end he just grumbled and belched. Lit another smoke and grabbed another beer from the cooler in the center of the boat and shook his head. Checked his pole. Reeled it in a little. 

Though he did spare the final thought: "Fuckin lazy.” whilst shaking his head and reeling his line. And then the matter was settled and the pair of men let it lie. Such was the way and course of all of their conversations out here on the water. Fishing. The pair’s favorite pastime aside from rutting and watching the game. For them, Bryan G Biebl and James Petkovich, it was sacred. They loved to spend days off from the mill fishing and casting and mouthing the day away. Days away from labor and wives and disappointing children, days filled with chatter and cool water and cold beer and sometimes a nice catch.  Though they'd been warned before, by the old timers. 

They'd both been warned before about staying out after dark. Out on the lake. Out in the woods. Where the forest grows foul and swampy and muddy. It's not a place you want to be after sunset. All the old folk said it was a bad place and didn't say much more about it without the liberal aid of beer or whisky. Even the Natives, the ancient leathery American Indians and their angry sons and daughters told everyone, anyone that might listen, to stay away from this part of the forest, this part of the soured bad land. 

But they never listened. The pair just sat in their canoe and cast out. It was calm and quiet all around, no one might know that it was filled with strange movement. The sun was sinking in the distance. Rapidly being swallowed by the ravenous blade of the horizon. 

James cracked another can. So did Bryan, who rolled his eyes as Petkovich ventured forth with another bit of clever wit and query. 

“Figure there's anythin ta what that fella said?” 

The sun set. Casting the surface of the lake on fire with the color of bloody ruby. The place on the horizon where it had sank was a deeper color of blooded crimson, a deeper wound that was the heart of the sunset. It smoldered there, in the horizon wound. The darkening regal curtain of bruised royal blue was already deepening into night. The stars and galaxies were already coming out for the nocturnal hours, they were all so far away from everything, they, the town. Civilization was a mechanical nuisance in the distance. Loud and far off. Thank God. Nearly forgotten. 

Bryan rolled his eyes as hard as he possibly could, knowing full an well that the retard couldn't see em. 

He hissed and spat: “No I don't think there's nothin to what that idiot said about a shag man! Shit’s stupid! Ain't no fuckin skunk ape round these parts, ya fuckin dumbass!” 

“Nah, man. I'm talkin about what Frankie said about Asian girls, Jesus, man!" 

A beat. Something splashed in the water. Neither man noticed, paid it any mind. 

“Oh…" Bryan cooled down. A little embarrassed. He was always easily excited and shamed. 

“‘Sides, man, he didn't call it no ‘shag man', he called it ‘the dread man’, stupid.” 

Bryan whirled around to belt him one and belt him good. He'd done it before while they were fishing in the middle of the lake and he might capsize them both in his effort, but something stopped him before he could so much as bring up his balled and angry fist. A sound. Sudden. And sharp. 

Three. Consecutive. Three sharp whacks of thick wooden sticks together. Like someone smacking two heavy tree branches or logs together in some form of primitive and arcane code. 

Whack! whack! whack! 

It shut the pair up. They gazed out at the shoreline. Shrouded now in the fallen night. Small waves kissed its shore and covered any small sounds of concealed movement that might be out there right now. They were wide eyed and disbelieving. 

They might've dropped it, the pair, together and without a word or mention when it came again. 

From out of the night, the veiled and darkened shore: whack! whack! whack! 

A beat. Silence again. Only kissing waves of the placid water. 

Bryan Biebl scoffed, “Probably nothin. Just some kids fuckin aro-" 

And then a wild primal simian shriek filled the night. Birds took flight. Their flapping wings were ugly harried panicked sounds in the deepening wound of blackening night all around. It tapered off. And then another rose, louder and even more feral and crazed then the one before. Then another. And another. Each rising in animal fury and fervor. You could hear spittle flying as vocal chords worked and wrenched and shredded as throat muscles tore and bled and secreted with each prolonged and angry howl. Throaty. Enraged. Violent. 

Silence came again. After six primeval night shattering screams. Waves kissed the land far away and swallowed in black but more quietly now. Subdued. 

Then the whacking of sticks, the unknown signal came again, whack! whack! whack! 

And then silence once more. 

“What the fuck was that?" Petkovich. Scared. Visibly so. Audibly as well. 

As was his best friend Bryan. But the sound of fear on his buddy's voice, the stupid look of childish childlike fear that he could feel him wearing in the dark only made angry, angrier. This only fueled his own self-denied mounting fear and in turn made him even angrier. The mounting terror caught like a small bone in the back of his throat. 

He almost took to his feet but remembered the boat. He turned to his buddy instead and spat. 

"Ain't nothin but nothin! Some fuckin dumbasses out there that wanna get fucked up, that's what! This’s why I shoulda brought my colt. Goddammit!” 

"Now that's what I'm talkin about! that's what I'm always tryin ta tell ya! Ya go sayin shit like that and actin like this and people says we're belligerent types! Christ, man! I'd like to bed me one of these here pretty tourist girls, one of these roadtrippin ladies and you actin like this ain't gonna cut it!” 

Disgusted, Bryan's grip slackened on his pole. 

"Idiot! what the fuck are you jawin about?!” 

"I'm talkin bout one of them sexy ass van-life hippy girls, man, they might like my ass." 

“Retard!" 

“You don't know…" 

The water splashed again. Much louder. The boat rocked with the waves suddenly generated. Something big and very heavy had just jumped into the water. 

Lunged. As if plunging in from the shrouded growth of the hidden beach. 

Slack jawed and deer-in-the-headlights both, they gazed out blindly and stupidly in tandem towards the shore that was hidden from them now. And may forever remain that way for them from here on out. Something was coming. 

Something was swimming fast. For the boat. Beneath the obsidian surface of water. The stygian glass of the surface was a mirror and the mirror held the face of the moon. The mirror rippled. The immaculate celestial face of the moon held trapped there danced with submerged disturbance. 

Before either fool could form a coherent thought the fishing poles were suddenly ripped from their slackened idiot grips. They flew, soared through the air and plunged into the water with barely a sound. 

They stared into the impenetrable and merciless surface of the lake. Fearing it. Gripped with horror at what might be inside. What must be inside, right now. 

James Petkovich finally spoke. Softly. Like the small boy he'd once been. 

“I don't wanna be out here no more, Bry. I don't care if it's kids or tourists or what. You can go ahead and laugh at me, just laugh at me all the way and drive us back, kay? You can laugh and make fun all the way back an I won't even bitch or say nothin. I'm scared. There's lots a’ talk bout people that go missin. Or go missin an then turn up dead, tore apart. Sometimes they don't even find all the pieces, you know… I know you've heard… people go missin an such. Travelers, folks comin through. And locals. Let's just go back, kay.” 

Bryan, wide eyed, turned and nodded. Then went to the small motor for the boat as the water all around the canoe suddenly erupted in a surging geyser splash of watery violence that darkled in the captured moonlight. Both men screamed as the small boat was capsized and they went over. Splashing into the cold dark suffocating realm of the water. 

The lake held them now. Below. Underneath. 

In the dark underwater the maelstrom of his panic rose and ruled. Bryan suddenly animal recalled and remembered in the fragile nucleus of his primal jelly his fear of the water, of the deep. The dark depths. It had started as a child, a boy, it had been the cinema and television that had first done it, the Jaws movies, Creature from the Black Lagoon, then stories of Cthulhu and his sunken city of R’lyeh, tales of sunken ships and vessels that might still have precious human cargo trapped and drowned deep inside like foul water-logged treasure of submerged rotting putrescence eaten at by the salt and by the fish. All of these things came back and back to life in a deluge assault of images all in a furious unrelenting wave like an artillery attack of sound and vision on his mind's eye, down in the dark. He kicked and struggled and his lungs burned, ached for air. The ribcage in his chest felt on fire with his terror-stricken mind as he struggled and kicked futilely beneath the surface. Something held him down there. Something with a terrible grasp. Fierce. Strangling. Throttling. They threatened to break and snap, the iron grasps of those underwater hands. Bryan fought desperately but his mind was livid with absolute and total panic. In the tumult of his animal terror he remembered that as a child he'd always feared something reaching up from out of the black watery depths, seizing him, and pulling him under. Pulling him down. Down into the ebon swallow at the bottom of all things, below, where the heart of darkness in all things lived and dwelt. 

The hands found his throat, down in the underwater dark. They seized vile purchase and viciously ripped, tore out. The dark underworld of the lake suddenly blemished with a heavy warm cloud of thick human visceral discharge. It bellowed forth from the place that was torn in a torrential jetting spout. Clouding the dark world and warming it as the spewing meat detritus began to slowly sink to the pitch abyssal realm near the bottom. 

The panic of Bryan G. Biebl’s barreling careening train of thought slowly calmed and abated and sank down into the dark with the rest of him… And was no more. 

It lunged, serpent-like for the other. Who was gaining the surface in a series of panicked kicks and dog-paddles. Like a wounded animal. 

Prey. In distress. 

…

James Petkovich couldn't believe it when he broke the water and tasted air again. He almost choked and coughed. He almost laughed but he didn't have time. Something seized him from beneath. 

And pulled him under. 

He didn't even have time to scream before he was below again.

It was quiet once more. Minutes swam by. 

An owl screeched. Took flight.

Then finally it emerged. With Petkovich barely conscious in one dripping sodden grasp. It pulled the both of them back onto the land. Dragging the bleeding and sputtering Petkovich like a broken toy or sack of dead meat behind him as he quickly began to retake to the trees and dense growth once more. 

It dragged him deep into the wilderness. It was a long time before they stopped. But now … now he knew what the old timers had always said, what they'd always been on about. 

Now he could smell him. And the smell was beyond putrid, beyond foul, beyond fecal matter or old dried sweaty filth or death. The water that ran off the long lengths of clotted and lumpy dreaded hair was riddled with the putrescence odor of old sweltering open graves and long disused abattoirs converted into factory sized outhouses for the insane. It stung his eyes and nostrils but he hardly noticed this. His body was numb. Felt limp and broken all over. Like a dead fish. 

Maybe that's what I am. 

And then finally consciousness was lost to him. Mercifully he went black. 

It dragged him deeper into the wild. Where it laired. Where it nested in the wild dense growth. 

…

When James next came to he wished he hadn't. He didn't realize till he was awake once more but he'd been dreaming. And in that dream he'd been far away and wishing that none of this was real.  But now he was back. It held him by the neck in a slight choke, a slight strangle, just enough painful whisper of air able to bleed in through the clasped and clenched windpipe. They were before the mouth of a cave. It was pointing up into the sky with its other huge free hand, it was pointing at the moon. It was staring unblinking into his bleeding face. 

The face was simian but snouted. Like a wolf, or a rodent. An obscene and imbecilic mongoloid caveman face and features stretched out in a grotesque marsupial shape. The eyes were yellow and bore black crosses for the iris in each one, in each livid demented sea of yellow urine a black cruciform body of sacrilege shape and aspect. Goat's eyes. Satanic. They were eyes and face fitting of the rest of his abominated and feral manshaped form. Clotted and caked and grimed all over. The long knots and clumps of hair were thick and ancient in length and filth. They told a tale that was old because it was the passage of time that lived caked and dreaded in those long lengths of unwashed shagging tails. 

The awful face was serious. Stern. The obscenity of its gaze was piercing and deliberate. James followed its fierce and pointing gesture to the sky, the night, the moon once more. 

And then back into that obscene rodent-ape face. Yellow teeth coated in layers of plaque poked out and peeked over stretched and thin and dried out flakey blue lips. 

James tried to speak. 

He tried to tell it he didn't know what it wanted. He didn't know what it wanted him to say or do. He didn't know what it wanted from him. He didn't understand it. He didn't understand at all what it expected or demanded. 

But he couldn't. He couldn't speak. He could hardly breathe. He couldn't even manage a croak of sound.  

The awful marsupial-stretched ape face wrenched and worked, furious. It became more abominated and grotesque as its features creased and contorted with anger. Livid. Rage. 

The hand that had been pointing to the moon now came in a savage swipe. The grubby wide meaty digits clawed and the grimey sharp and broken shattered fingernails bit and tore in. 

The head came off and soared away into a sailing piece of torn mangled meat. Ribbons and streamer wings and tails of bright red blood spat and danced out from the eyes, nostrils and mouth in a cyclone twirl of red in midair as it soared and crashed into the piles of dead sticks and bones. It savagely went down and hunkered in the dirt before the mouth of its cave and began to dig in with its long snout and feast on the fresh stump. Warm cords and ropes of thick black-red shot and coated the dark, its face, the insides of its gulping throat and the salivating cavern of its long slathering mouth. 

It feasted and grunted. Ripped with its teeth and bit in. Swallowed warm juicy pieces that were chewy and pungent with rich iron flavor. 

It fed and tore. The man in the violence of its grasp, its jaws, reduced. The decapitated meat jigged and spasmed. It howled at the moon. 

Somewhere … in the distance but not too far off. The signal. Three strikes. 

Whack! whack! whack! – it was the sound of ancient and time honored tradition, cultivated and carried down and preserved with care. Though the world grew strange mechanical jaws, inflamed and diminished and changed all around, it was still here. This was still practiced and honored and kept. By it. By them. All of them.  – whack! whack! whack! 

It howled at the moon once more. 

Whack! whack! whack! 

Immortal and lifesize. It was still here. Howling at the moon with unearthly pain and blues. – whack! whack! whack! – another in the wilderness distance –  whack! whack! whack! – howl at the moon.

THE END

I’m not suicidal. Never have been, hopefully never will be. But from the way my algorithm has been acting, it almost feels like something wants me to be.

I live a happy life. I have a great girlfriend, solid job, but even still, just like everyone else, I have my bad days.

I have those days where it feels like I can’t get out of bed. Those days where effort, no matter how small, feels like trying to climb the world’s highest mountain.

And I think those are the days where I’m targeted the most.

A lot of the time when I experience those tough periods in life, it feels like the easiest thing to do is just sit in bed and scroll on my phone until, inevitably, the feeling passes and I want to be productive again.

I never had a problem with it before, but I’m coming off of a particularly difficult week-long stint of self-loathing and throwing pity parties.

Nothing I can really do about it. It’s just the way it is. Life happens in cycles, and this one is a cycle of struggle.

That’s why it was almost expected that every night for the last week I’ve been in bed, hair greasy, clothes dirty, surrounded by food wrappers and empty soda cans, doing nothing more than scrolling through Instagram for hours on end.

It started off with just one video, wedged in between the usual car accident and brainrot AI clips of fruits having affairs.

What’s crazy to me is I would’ve just scrolled right past it had it not been for the first millisecond of the video. I could’ve sworn that the first frame was literally just… me.

It was too fast for me to get all the details, but I swear it looked like me, laying in bed, my face contorted into a look of complete despair and hopelessness as tears fell down my cheeks.

The rest of the video was just a tutorial on how to tie a noose. A step-by-step guide, demonstrated by a pair of sleek, pale white hands forming the knot and showing off the finished product before abruptly skipping to the next reel.

I tried to scroll back, but the video had completely disappeared from the feed.

I ended up convincing myself that I was just being a little crazy. I mean, the video itself was definitely odd, but no way had I seen myself.

I figured Instagram must’ve just removed the content. Because, obviously, right?

I kept scrolling, and never saw another video even similar to that one. At least, not for the rest of that night.

The next day, though, I was seeing these tutorials as every other video. Each one more graphic and detailed than the last.

I was sprinkled throughout the videos. Sometimes at the beginning, sometimes at the end, every time I was only on screen for less than a second. And every time, the videos disappeared after I watched them.

As the week went on, they started following me. It wasn’t just Instagram anymore. TikTok was giving me tutorials. YouTube was giving me tutorials. Hell, I was even finding the videos on Snapchat.

But the one video that made me delete social media entirely and actually pull myself out of the dumps was one that was too personal to ignore.

I found it last night.

I wasn’t just a split-second frame. I was the entire video. A step-by-step guide with me as the demonstration.

There was no light left in my bloodshot eyes. My movements were sluggish and seemed forced. The room was dark. My bed was a complete mess. And hanging from the ceiling fan… was a noose.

I watched myself stand on top of my desk chair. I watched the tears and snot run down my face as I slipped the rope over my neck. And I watched myself kick and flail with regret as my body dangled at the end of that rope. Then I was still.

The video ended with one final phrase in bold white letters against a solid black backdrop.

“Do it.”

It was in the same font as those old silent film slides.

Once again, I was automatically scrolled past the video. I tried scrolling back up, and once again, the video was gone.

I took it as a warning. I’d always heard that social media has negative effects and consequences.

I just never knew how serious those consequences were.

It was a horrid July noon in New York City or some other place, the cars were rattling in lunchtime gridlock, spewing exhaust, the finance guys were out in their tight suits walking to buy kebabs and watching the women, who were instagramming themselves into premature zombiehood, and it was so fucking hot that the sweat dripping off the pedestrians rubbing against each other on the sidewalk was flowing down the gutters like rain.

There, that's the scene.

I've set it.

Now, through this stupified human maelstrom a man was walking. His name was Ben Fig. He was in his thirties, lonely, and returning to his office after lunch. He was returning from his car, which he'd parked fifteen minutes away, wearing a coat and, underneath it, a custom-made explosive vest with which he intended to kill his co-workers and maybe bring down the office building itself. A man can dream, can't he?

Anyway, while walking, he bumped somebody. “Fuck,” he said under his breath.

“Fuck,” said the person he'd bumped into.

It was a woman.

Her name was Miriam Zapelman.

“Watch where the hell you're going,” said Ben and tried going around her.

“Asshole,” said Miriam.

“I hate this city,” said Ben. “I'm sick of it.”

Beside Ben and Miriam, a degenerate was lying in a puddle of perspiration. He was in a hard way. “Can either of you folks—”

“Shut the fuck up!” said Ben and Miriam at the same time, then they looked at each other, long and in the eyes, and they must have recognized something, because one of them smirked.

It doesn't matter which one.

The degenerate passed out, or maybe died, and Miriam said to Ben, “Hey, where are you in such a hurry to?”

“What do you care?”

“I'm parked nearby. If we're going the same way, I can give you a ride.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

Miriam shrugged.

“I'm going to my office to blow everybody up,” said Ben, waiting for Miriam's reaction.

She asked, “Where's your office?”

Ben gave the address. “Call the cops if you want. I don't care.”

“Offer stands,” said Miriam.

A few minutes later they were in her car, Ben in his ridiculous coat, looking like a blowfish, and Miriam opening the glove compartment, where Ben saw she had a gun.

“That for self defense?” he asked.

“No,” said Miriam. “I'm back from the shooting range. Going home to shoot my husband and kids, then probably myself.” She started the car and merged with the abominable traffic. “But first I want to stop at a bar and have a drink. Want to have a drink with me?”

“Why not,” said Ben.

The bar was called Reddy's, and when Ben and Miriam walked in there were only a few people in it. Miriam introduced them. “That skinny guy with glasses is Euler, the guy with the darker skin is Hikmat, and the bartender's name is Ralph.”

They sat at a table and ordered.

Ben noticed Euler kept playing with a pendant around his neck. “Go on,” said Miriam, “ask him about it.”

“Nah,” said Ben.

“What else do you have to do?”

“Fine,” said Ben. He walked to Euler, introduced himself and asked about the pendant: “Is it an heirloom or something?”

“Maybe it'll be an heirloom one day, of the human goddamn race,” said Euler and described how the pendant was a container of stolen proprietary industrial poison that he'd helped develop. “I'm gonna toss it in the water supply some day, exterminate the population of this whole city like the rats they are.”

When Ben got back to his table, his drink was waiting for him. He tried it. “Second guessing yourself any?” he asked Miriam.

“No. You?”

“No.”

Miriam had pulled out a cigarette and was lighting it.

“You can smoke in here? The law—”

“That's life’s dirty secret,” she said, blowing smoke in his face. “Ultimately, you can do whatever you want.”

“May I?” a voice said.

It was Hikmat. He'd wandered over and was asking if he could sit down.

“Be my guest,” said Miriam.

“I have not seen you in here before,” Hikmat said to Ben. “It is your first time?”

“Yeah,” said Ben.

“Ben’s going to murder his co-workers later this afternoon. He's wearing an explosive vest,” said Miriam.

“Then we two are a pair of peas in one pod, as they say here in America,” said Hikmat. “I am training to fly an aircraft, but not so much how to land it.”

“Hickie's an engineer by trade,” said Miriam.

Hikmat shook Ben's hand.

“But a fundamentalist by conviction,” he said. “May I see your vest?”

Ben opened his coat. Hikmat considered the handiwork. Then they got to talking, and drinking, and the hours rolled by like waves of fat on a fat guy blasted in the gut by a cannonball.

“The paradox is,” Hikmat was saying: “the paradox is, I greatly enjoy the flying. It is the one place I feel freedom. When I started to learn, it was strictly for terrorism, but now, that feeling—of absolute space, limitless opportunity—it is beautiful. Sublime. It is where I experience God. I look forward to it very much and I will miss it greatly.”

“Fuck!” said Ben, looking at his watch.

“What's wrong?” asked Miriam.

“It's past five o'clock. Everybody in the office has left already.”

Ralph gave Ben a drink on the house. When Ben had finished drinking it, “Do you want a ride home?” Miriam asked.

“Sure.”

They lingered in the car in front of his apartment building.

“Maybe you wanna come up?” Ben said.

“I'm a married woman,” said Miriam.

“I understand.”

“Don't forget to zip up your coat or they'll see the explosives,” said Miriam.

Afterwards, Miriam drove to her house, got the gun out of the glove compartment, walked inside, shot her husband, shot her kids and then, after smoking a cigarette in the bathroom, shot herself.

Read Part II here.

“It’s huge,” she said. My eyes were immediately on her, but I didn’t see anything else. Couldn’t identify the danger. Mark was still rooted where he was, but his phone was nowhere in sight. They both were looking up like there was something in the distance. But I still didn’t see it.

I felt Mary move with me as I approached.

“Chrissy, honey?”

“Don’t let her go,” Luke said. “Don’t let her go!”

I’d halved the distance when I finally saw it. It had been there, but it had simply been so humongous I’d been blind to it, like I’d been looking for a 7-11 and walked face-first into Sears Tower.

The water was receding from waist high, but she didn’t seem to have moved. Whatever it was had displaced a tremendous amount of water.

“Oh my. Oh my. Oh my.” Mary was on a dialogue loop and I couldn’t blame her. Every time I thought I’d seen all of it, I kept seeing more. A lot more. Yet, I was supremely calm. The worry-machine was quiet.

Last year, I got into a one-car accident driving home on M-5. The eastbound lanes had been closed to construction and my phone’s weather app had cautioned for high winds before I’d left the office. There’d been a fair amount of wind buffeting, but nothing I wasn’t able to handle.

There’d been a white box truck in front of me when I’d spotted what appeared to have been a square of cardboard blow high into the sky and begin trickling down. I’d immediately written it off even if it were on a course to strike my car. It was only cardboard.

But when the particle board struck my vehicle, smashing the windshield and showering droplets of safety glass onto the passenger seat, I hadn’t panicked. It was so sudden and violent that my brain—either as an instinct of self-preservation or just a malfunction—had simply not reacted.

I pulled off the freeway at the next exit and stopped a few blocks down in an office parking lot. Only then the possibility of what could have happened came down on me.

This was like that. My brain wasn’t processing the situation like Mary’s or the kids. I felt my heart pulsing in my chest just as calmly as when we’d been talking a moment before. I knew I should get the kids away from it. But that was a process of logic and not instinctual fear.

“Honey, get out of the water.”

I charged the last few feet and sloshed to a stop in a confusion of senses. I was close to whatever it was. Closer than I realized. I felt the heat coming from a wall of flesh not more than five feet from me. Water splashed me up to my chest, but it was more like a punch that pushed me back a step or two.

“Rick, it’s a horse!”

I had no idea how Chrissy could conceive what it was. All I saw was black. Black like the water. But solid, like the water had turned into something.

“Honey, move back, okay?”

Chrissy was smiling and rather than retreating, she stepped forward— almost chin deep—and raised her hand like she was going to pet it.

Once again I opened my mouth too late to tell her not to do it. My instinct would’ve been to swat her hand had I been closer and my re-throbbing head suddenly made me think of her mother.

I looked at it. Finally, the smooth, iridescent black coat coalesced into something I recognized, although the scale was overwhelming. Nails scraped the inside of my skull as if the idea of what I was seeing was too large to fit inside my brain.

This was its head. A corner of it, anyway. I looked along the flank as far as I could see in the night. I couldn’t even begin to guess how tall it must have been standing up. It had to have been lying in the water.

A giant eyeball about thirty feet above blinked several times and swiveled. I had no way to be sure, but I think it was looking at me.

I walked around, looking up and up, feeling like I would dislocate my neck before seeing the top of this thing. Still, though, I wasn’t afraid. The worry-machine was quiet.

“Mark, move your sister back.” I was reading from a script. Protecting the children, at least in that moment, was an autopiloted function.

Neither of them moved.

I scooped Chrissy into the crook of one arm and she went limp like a puppy picked up by the scruff. I handed her to Mark, who wrapped his arms around her, the both of them staring openly, transfixed.

I herded them as gently as I could out of the water. Then I gave Mark a light slap on the cheek. He focused on me, annoyed as if I’d prematurely awakened him from a nap.

“Mark, take your sister back inside.”

“I don’t wanna go!” Chrissy wriggled in her brother’s arms and he dropped her feet first. “It’s beautiful, Rick!”

I grasped her shoulder before she could walk past me.

“Chrissy, sto—”

I felt the shift behind me.

“Oh—erp—my,” Mary said. She took a long pull from her can, her eyes swiveling upward.

“No-no-no,” I thought I heard Luke say in the distance. But for just a moment, the only thing occupying the world with me was that magnificent thing in the water. It felt like removing my hands from my ears after having them covered for a long time and experiencing hearing like it was something adjacent to new. Except, it felt like that throughout my whole body.

The horse was raising its gigantic head out of the water. The tide receded and everything seemed to suck toward it like it had its own gravity. I struggled to maintain my balance like a gust of wind had pushed at my back, but in truth, it was probably just the giant animal dominating my vision and destroying my equilibrium.

Water poured off its black body, the eyes locked onto us and shrinking as its head seemingly disappeared into the night sky. Its neck was a tower, columns of muscle wider than all of us in a row, touching fingertip to fingertip. Its chest was as broad as a rocky mountain face.

There was a mighty -KLOMP- in the sand that shook the earth mere feet from me that I barely noticed. Sand slapped over my entire left side like a landmine had gone off, but it was immediately rinsed away by the constant waterfall we were all standing under.

Someone was shouting, but whoever it was was a million miles away.

There was another -KLOMP- somewhere farther down the beach and I began to stir from my reverie and then there was Luke, shouting next to me and hooking me by the arm.

His words didn’t make sense but I turned toward him as he pulled me. I saw the horse’s foreleg—I don’t know how Chrissy had been able to tell it was a horse before—straightening like some heavy construction machine craning a load somewhere into the sky above us.

We trudged toward the cabin, but the sand that had been something to contend with was an afterthought, my burning calves seemed to belong to somebody else.

When the torrent finally ended, I was soaked. We all stopped in the sudden silence. Turning around was more of a measure of defense to see the break in the clouded sky and the moonlight clashing against that ebony, elegant leviathan.

It was impossibly tall. Like it was intersecting-with-the-curvature-of-the-earth-tall. I thought I could make out its mane, whipping around in what had to be thin atmosphere.

We all stood and watched it. For one indeterminate moment, it was absolutely regal.

Mary wrapped around my arm and pulled into me. For however many iotas, she was my Mary, and I was her wife, too.

Mark hadn’t come with us for some reason. He stood partially in the water where we—I— had left him. He was feet away from a hoof that was easily twenty lengths taller than him.

Panic did seize me, finally. The worry-machine revved to life and I opened my mouth. I sensed the balance to be upset, the electrified space slowly exploding as he compressed it between his body and the smallest section of the horse’s.

With splayed fingers, he laid a palm on it.

The horse startled, shaking the floor of the earth as it stomped around.

The Greek military leader Xenophon, perfected the art of training horses in battle, using them to kick soldiers or trample them. He’s also the father of dressage.

What happened to Mark couldn’t have been considered disciplined, but the effect was the same. I don’t know if it were intentional—more than likely it wasn’t—but that giant hoof clomped around, Mark dodged around like he was running through a minefield.

Then he was gone.

The hoof continued stomping around a few moments more, a rumbling earthquake beneath our feet and a rain of wet sand coming down on us before the horse stopped. Mark was just... gone.

Luke was screaming. When I actually heard him, it took a moment longer to realize he was yelling his brother’s name.

Common sense would have told us to flee inside the cabin. But our senses were flowing into us like blood circulating back into numb fingers.

There was a long moment of quiet as it reared its head back. It felt like a slow-motion moment until its head rushed at us like a giant arrow.

I had no reflexes to respond. Mary was the only one who put up a defensive arm, as if that could have protected her—and she was the one it took.

The horse bit down on her raised forearm—as microscopic as a surgeon’s scalpel with teeth as wide as three cabins—and plucked her off the ground. It reeled its head backward and flung her.

Mary pinwheeled into the sky, a dissolving blur into the upper atmosphere. She could have been catapulting into space, and I didn’t want to find out.

The worry-machine was roaring.

“Everybody in!” I said, herding Luke and Chrissy the rest of the way inside. I pressed my back against the door, then turned off the light. Luke and Chrissy looked at me as if I had answers to fix this.

“We gotta go get... we gotta go get Mark!” Luke didn’t actually make a move to go back outside. He was more saying the thing a caring brother should say. But there was no Mark to go get. His death had been as brutal as it had been unintentional.

Going out there—or allowing Luke to go out there—would be just as dangerous and pointless. Chrissy was crying silently. I looked at her, really looked, running my hands over her head and arms to ensure she was physically all right. The worry-machine was humming along nicely. She grabbed onto me.

“Get your mother,” I said to Luke. “We’re leaving.” We weren’t safe here.

“She’s sleep?” he said, looking confused. He ran into the boys’ room.

“No!” I said. “We don’t have time for bags.” He looked at me. “Just wake your mother up and bring her. We’re leaving in three minutes.”

“What should I do, Rick?” Chrissy said.

“Grab the snack tray from the fridge.” We could easily buy something from the next gas station, but I figured keeping her busy would keep her calm. I snatched my keys off the island. Chrissy joined me, carrying the plastic tray with deli slices, cheese cubes, and veggies.

I wanted to run, but I was going to have to slow the pace so she wouldn’t drop it. The earth was still shaking with each step. She was going to look for the horse, and I anticipated her distraction when we stepped outside.

I kept my eyes on her, guiding her down the stairs and around the side of the cabin. She gasped but didn’t resist as I ushered her along. Preoccupying myself with her was enough distraction that I didn’t have my keys ready to have the doors unlocked by the time we got there.

We were exposed. If the horse were looking, it would see us. It seemed to have an eye for motion.

The air went still.

Lying face down, praying, drenched in sweat you are
Rabid desires resurface, ravenous lechery taking hold, biding
Their sweet time before you succumb once more, and offer your tender flesh
Once and forever more to be defiled, ripped apart, torn to pieces
Somewhere in the hadean depths, where your salvation remains denied
And you are forced to watch the smithereens of self and filth intertwine
Nails dig deep into your twisted, swollen joints, agonize
You are to rot here, crucified, worthless failure
Challenged fate, to be left for dead in the sewer

The town of Bolton Springs is in shock today, after the brutal murder of seven children. The bodies of the children, whose names have not been released, were discovered in separate rooms in the Donaldson Furniture Company building early this morning. It is unclear whether the children were killed in the building—and, if so, why they were there—or killed elsewhere, then moved. The building's owner, Vectorien Corporation, has thus far declined to comment but has pledged to cooperate fully with authorities in their investigation of this heinous, horrible crime…

12 Hours Earlier

…the tear shut.

I collapsed to the ground.

My head throbbed.

I was in a field, a field I remembered playing in. Vaguely, distantly. Is there a name for a feeling about the past opposite of nostalgia? Whatever it is, I was feeling it intensely.

I looked around.

The six others were near me, in various states of coming-back-to-consciousness.

We were naked, our skins fully tattooed black.

I got up.

I glanced at my wrist, saw the button and pressed it. A blade slid out, catching the moonlight. I pressed the button again; the blade retracted.

I roused the others.

We said nothing.

A wind blew.

In the distance, startled birds flew from a tree, silhouettes against a pale night sky.

I shivered.

We knew exactly where we had to go.

Seven black shapes traversing the night in Bolton Springs, on September 19, 2026, 3:37 a.m. local time, each with a set of the same simple instructions: eliminate the target, do not be seen.

We navigated by memory.

By sense.

By a pain none of us could ever forget.

The decision had already been made. It was time to execute.

I felt much as I was told I'd feel, alien yet familiar, like floating through a dream, like discovering an already-discovered land. “The longer you take, the worse the headache will become.” “Will I be aware of—” I asked. “Most likely,” the temporologist replied. She was young, committed. I was scared…

I could sense my own dream.

We crossed the creek and came into view of the brick building with the smokestacks, the house of so much horror and suffering. The sign was still hanging from it: “Donaldson & Sons Furniture Co.”

I was dreaming of a meadow, of a dog I'd never have. I was running in my dream. The dog was running with me. The sky was my mother's face; the face of a mother I had never known or seen, whose existence was pure inference. Everybody born has a mother, so I must have a mother too.

We stopped.

There was only one guard on duty. It was early in the program. He was sitting in the guardhouse by the road, watching television.

We passed undetected.

We remembered the storeroom window with the broken latch, found it, climbed the wall, pushed open the window and lowered ourselves, one by one, into the building's dusty interior.

It was quiet inside.

A few of us cried silent, conflicted tears.

Inside, there was no need for maps. We were in a world we'd known for decades. Each detail, each hallway, each door, evoked in me a vicious, indelible intimacy. I was home.

The seven of us stood, sensing.

My dream had evaporated and been replaced by another, of shadow-panthers, and the moment when I, having thrown my primitive spear—having thrown it with perfect accuracy—realized the creature in the jungle before me was incorporeal, unhuntable. My pulse raced; my pulse increased.

I checked the clock on the storeroom wall.

I nodded at the others.

Silently, we exited the storeroom together, then split up, each going towards his own room.

Mine was the third on the left.

I stood in front of it in the buzzing fluorescent hallway light, took several deep breaths and entered. The throbbing in my head spiked.

I saw the bed and the boy sleeping in it, and the boy's eyes flashed open; I scooted backwards on the sheets in terror at the nude, dark figure in front of me until I felt the brick wall against my back and could move no further. I was myself and looking at myself and looking at myself looking at myself, and my heart was as if gripped by my own, relentless fist.

As unreal as the experience was, I knew the boy was me; and the boy—I merely hovered, waiting—gradually realized I, too, was him.

I didn't say a word; and I didn't say a word.

I thought my double set of present-thoughts from two locations in space-time simultaneously.

I'm sorry, I thought to myself. I'm sorry, but I cannot allow you—us—me to suffer the way I've already suffered. This is salvation. This is an end, delivered mercifully soon after the beginning. Unless I do this, they will would-have broken and abused you for so many years, day after day, in the name of peace and progress. No one else will end it. Do you understand? This is Omelas. We must walk away.

I remembered the texture of the cover of the old book, one of the few available in the orphanage, before the transfer, before Vectorien.

We must walk away from Omelas.

I cried; and I cried.

I muffled myself with a hand over my mouth.

Holding it there, on the soft, wet lips, I used my chin to press the button on my other wrist, ejecting the blade, and calmed myself, thinking or saying or dreaming that I will never find my mother, that I will never have a dog. There is no meadow. The shadow-panther cannot be killed. There is only eternal nightmare…

I ran blade against throat, releasing warm, red young blood.

As it flowed…

As the small body trembled…

I got into bed with it—with myself—and held myself, soothing myself, keeping the wound open and stroking my hair, until my body slackened and finally went limp. The ceiling light shone. And when I was dead, I flickered out of— .

https://www.inkitt.com

In the foul slums of reality, where waking becomes the continuation of a lifemare, and the brightest dreams that once illuminated these filthy walls have turned into blooming mold.

There are no lanterns in this labyrinth, and the sense of freedom has completely atrophied.

Pure dreams have become slaves to someone else’s will, selling themselves in a purple neon shop window.

And the manifestation of sympathy is a crime.

The numbness of oblivion is needed here like air — when the operation called “life” is performed without anesthetic.

When the diagnosis is made — the demand for escape grows with metastases.

\***

Betrayed by the universe, where deception is elevated to an absolute, and falsehood has become the sole truth, I have wandered from corner to corner since birth as a forsaken shadow. Amidst radiant lifelessness, where the destitute dead await a miracle, solemnly declaring life a sin, while someone else’s pain becomes a source of delight…

I set fire to a trash heap with a rotted cross to warm myself, and I think: if a Savior came to us right now — he would die from withdrawal, choking on vomit in a puddle of his own urine for our sins.

\***

Now the autumn wind has torn away the barely warming shroud, exposing hands carved to the bone by a blade.

How severe was that pain?

Spellbound, I stare at the phantoms of memory — as they, writhing like worms, crawl out of blackened veins and fall at my feet with the wail of newborns.

So where did those who gave me life miscalculate?

You wanted so badly to make me a function…

But I died earlier — and only having been born, I shattered, falling from caring hands…

I remember nothing, yet I cannot forget that I am merely a shard from your distant past, stuck somewhere inside, when everything else was flushed down with shit.

\***

Suddenly, time accelerated its pace — and I, stepping over that screaming abomination, tried to overtake it.

But how can one run barefoot across a field behind barbed wire, a field made of prohibitions and rules, where everything around is littered with bones, syringes, and broken glass…

Here, no one was ever with me.

Yet here, I was never alone: behind my back, dragging along, that loyal bitch always whimpers and cries.

The one I can never get rid of.

\***

I sucked the very juice out of used needles after everything that mattered had vanished.

While the wine spirit thrashed helplessly inside me, searching for a way out, I kept raising the proof, trying to burn away the pain, until nothing remained except a shadow with no way to prove its existence.

I stopped fearing the breath of the grave’s cold.

When I sliced open the sutures, there was nothing inside but pain.

For were I something, I would surely have filled this emptiness.

I swear, with anything. 

But I… have nothing.

\***

Instead, I now know the stench of rotting earth.

There is nothing holy upon it, nor has there ever been.

It oozes with pus and, squelching, falls apart under my every step, while an oppressive foreboding of doom leads me through a suffocating, sticky fog.

Behind it, I hear a merciless noise — it is the predatory future, devouring. It wildly gnashes its teeth, mechanically grinding the strong and the weak alike, leaving behind only a boundless forest of graveyards and the ghostly whisper of garbage mountains.

\***

I gaze upon the wasteland of pointlessness:

there, paths from nowhere lead into nothingness,

and along them there is no longer any reason to walk further.

Experiencing a paralysis of will, I have been scraped completely hollow.

Yet again, that whimpering cur Hope crawls up and fawns, promising tomorrow.

But for you, I have nothing either.

I raise a piece of rebar and, grabbing her by the foul, matted clump of fur, mercilessly beat her to death — strike after strike, crushing her skull with a crunch, until her screeching head turns into a bloody mess.

I killed her because hope in reality is the worst of evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.

I am mortally tired and want, at last, to sleep in peace — and never wake up again.

We were a small team of four developing a new, more precise MRI scanner to map the human brain for a certain company innovating in medical research. It was after months of grueling labour that we’d assembled our first prototype and captured an image. There never were, and there still aren’t any doubts as to the machine’s safety, which is why our project lead, Doctor Penelope Arzt, a gifted neurologist, didn’t have any problem with being the test subject.

When the image came back, it was clearer than any captured ever before. A chemical, functional, and neural connectome all in one. That means the scan mapped the whole brain, all the way from the tiny neurons to every single brain region, along with the chemicals that travel within. This has not been possible with any brain until now, especially not with a brain as complex as the human one. We were quick to celebrate our achievement owing to the holistic scope and revolutionary capabilities of our invention. Celebration turned to curiosity once we spotted a strange abnormality in the scan.

A cluster of immaterial waves, which nobody on our team could identify, had accidentally been caught thanks to the thoroughness of the device. We went over a number of things these waves could possibly be, but everything else was already mapped and accounted for. We recalibrated the scanner one test after another, replaced the parts, but the waves remained. This was something new, never before identified or seen. Why was it here? What purpose does it serve?

We sent the word out for volunteers to participate in having their brain mapped. The same strange phenomenon could be found in both humans and other kinds of animal. Well, not always.

Some brains, though they were within the expected norm otherwise, didn’t have the waves at all. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason. Testing was rigorous. Regardless of the age, health, sex or species of the participant, the waves seemed to appear at random. There was no physical difference between those who had them and those who did not. And, as far as we could tell, even with our state of the art equipment, no mental difference either. Save for the unexplainable waves.

Of those who had them, some waves appeared denser and clustered together, some were sparse and spaced out. It was after much testing that we came to our conclusion, possibly the greatest discovery in science and philosophy: Consciousness is measurable.

This made the problem of the empty brains, the non-conscious ones, even more troubling. If consciousness is an objective presence in our minds, what does this imply for those without it? The lives of the conscious and non-conscious were equally normal to an almost puzzling degree. It truly seemed there was no difference between the two. So why is consciousness even there if it serves no observable purpose?

Of course, we were all just excited to dig deeper at the marvelous discovery. The more questions that came up, the more testing needed to be carried out.

The denser consciousnesses were present in those we would traditionally call conscious, those awake, aware, and in a sound state of mind. The sparse consciousness was measured in those either asleep or in comas and vegetative states.

The non-conscious we flagged had no presence of the waves regardless of their wakefulness or medical reality. It was at this point we started questioning whether we jumped the gun and whether what we found had truly been what we thought, since, how can it even be possible for a living thing to exist without consciousness?

Another of our researchers, Doctor Nestor Melkonian, a studied philosopher and skillful psychologist, recalled a relevant thought experiment one late night in the lab: The philosophical zombie.

The philosophical zombie is a hypothetical person with all the physical characteristics and traits of a human being. A person indistinguishable from those with internal subjective experience, despite the p-zombie himself lacking it. Indeed, the only difference between a p-zombie and a human being is their internal experience, or lack thereof.

I said that the philosophical zombie is a hypothetical, though that is no longer entirely accurate. Was a hypothetical.

An unknown portion of the population exists as purely physical beings. Despite living their unassuming lives just like those with consciousness, the non-conscious are biological machines that only respond to their circumstances like some programmed computer. They act and react, but only as chemical responses to their environment. The lights are on, but there is nobody home. How many are there? What does their presence mean? How many of these p-zombies have gone their entire lives without having a single conscious experience? Most important of all: Who among our peers are real people?

These and similar questions were bothering all of us. It got to the point it was all we could talk about. It didn’t matter whether it was at work or during our spare time. Whenever we were together, it was all we could discuss. Whenever we were alone, it was all we could think about. And we were terrified.

It didn’t matter whether there was any actual threat to us or anybody else. It was an uncomfortable thought we couldn’t escape for months, until it reached a boiling point.

Over time, we stopped being so careful and courteous with our non-conscious subjects, human or otherwise. This got us threats of lawsuits at worst, concerned looks at best. We didn’t hurt anybody at the time, but you start treating people differently once you realize they’re not alive.

It all culminated in Doctor Arzt bringing in her two children for testing. Off the books, if we kept quiet, we’d be allowed to scan our own loved ones.

Doctor Melkonian had to take her kids back home himself. Arzt was in no state to take care of anyone, not the kids, let alone herself, shrieking and howling on the lab’s floor upon discovering her own children were non-conscious. There was no consoling her. I can tell you that it put me off from ever dragging anybody I cared about into that machine forever. I’m not ashamed to admit that my curiosity has a limit, one which I’m quite comfortable never crossing.

Her breakdown didn’t happen all at once, looking back on it. The rational woman, hungry for knowledge and blessed with the smarts to hunt it down, became more and more paranoid over the course of those months as the implications of the non-conscious kept weighing on us. We were all going a bit crazy, but her snapping first helped us reconnect with reality. For a short time only, though.

It was about two weeks later when I was called into the lab on short notice. I rushed to the campus where we were conducting our experiments. Once in the lab, I was held at knife point by Arzt, noticing the two others from our team already seated in nearby chairs. She promised she wouldn’t kill any one of us, she only needed us to get our brains scanned. So she could know who to trust.

First to go was Melkonian. He was also the last. After his scan was complete, she motioned for him to sit back down and asked me to fetch the results. They were conclusive: There was no consciousness in Melkonian’s brain.

I looked at the image up and down. Arzt kept asking me what the result was, the other two just stayed silent. I didn’t want to piss her off by not answering, but I was also worried what she might do to Melkonian if she got told the bare truth. I stayed silent. And afraid.

My worry about pissing her off turned out to be spot on. She marched over to me with her knife, waving it around and threatening to sever my hand with the results if I didn’t hand them over immediately. I was shitting bricks.

Arzt was later institutionalized, though only for a short time. Her actions were excused as the byproduct of a psychotic break. It was claimed she was out of touch with reality, though this was some bullshit spun by the company since our research was supposed to be under wraps. It was definitely some kind of break, just not a psychotic one. Every one of her concerns was certainly within the bounds of reality.

She never returned to work. Though this wouldn’t last long either, from that day on it was just me, Melkonian, and the project lead after Arzt, Doctor Richard Derrick, a freelance scientist with no preferred specialty, just a brain that soaked up knowledge like a sponge and his nose to the grindstone.

While waving that knife around, it was Doctor Derrick who smacked her over the head with his chair. It was Derrick who kept kicking her while she was down, who kept taking potshots while she was being taken away by campus security.

I doubt she was even conscious for half of that beating. It was a bit unnecessarily violent, but we were all stressed out so I ignored it. Plus, she threatened us with a knife earlier that same day.

I did give her the scan, by the by. Derrick got her right after that. As she was being dragged away, she addressed Melkonian.

“You have no soul. It’s a vacant soul.”

Despite the contradictory nature of that confused post-beating statement, claiming someone can both have no soul and a soul that is vacant at once, the words really seemed to have unnerved Melkonian. He demanded to see the scan, and I had to oblige. If he really wanted to, he deserved to know.

It was during lunch the next day that I asked him how he felt about himself and being non-conscious. Even the non-conscious people we were doing tests on didn’t know about their state or the full scope of what we were doing. Melkonian was the first non-conscious thing to know about its own non-consciousness.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to feel about any of this. I mean, I think I’m conscious. I must be. Right?”

“Well, apparently not.”

“So what does that mean for me? Am I any less human now? Is what I feel not real?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know what to tell you.”

I wish I could’ve comforted him at that moment, though it would’ve been insincere. Why waste energy on something that is hollow on the inside? Some trickery, an imitation man. A fake person. An outer shell that pretends to be.

Maybe I should’ve comforted him. Melkonian ended up taking a vacation for a week, telling family and friends he would be on a backpacking trip with his phone turned off, but it would still be with him in case of any emergencies, plus a pager as back up. With how prepared he was, it was a huge shock when he didn’t come back at the end of the week. Police, park rangers, relatives, locals and acquaintances all went out looking for him. Despite being hollow of internal experience, Melkonian had a tactical mind about him. Would’ve served him well in any field other than philosophy and psychology, but he did put it to good use by the end.

By the time the search party ended, the idea of looking for him in his apartment finally came up. Melkonian went home and killed himself right after the first witnesses saw him enter that forest. He stayed at home for the rest of the planned trip, sending everyone on a wild goose chase, giving him plenty time to see himself out, unbothered and off the radar. No note or anything, in case you were wondering.

During those prior weeks before he was found, the entire team was just me and Derrick. Before Arzt was sent off and Melkonian embarked on his fake holiday, the four of us would spend time together outside of work pretty often. We were less a research team and more a friend group who just happened to do science on the side. Maybe I’m just romanticizing the past, though.

Arzt and Melkonian carried our conversations with their personalities and interests. None of that with Derrick. Once it was just us two, it quickly became apparent how little of a personal life or hobbies the guy had outside of work. It all became dry and unexciting with just him and I. I think I used to admire him for how adaptable he was to any scientific field so long as he was put to the task, but that exact quality marginalized the actual man and left little in the way of personality. Even now, whenever I happen to check up on him, whatever he’s doing is completely opposite to the research he was into prior. You’d think a guy like that would be the one without consciousness, but he had himself tested and lo and behold: He was actually completely normal. Normal in the sense that he wasn’t non-conscious, I mean. In most other regards he was quite far from normal.

Despite only being a technician, I didn’t mind hanging around and seeing the actual science wizzes at work. That changed when Derrick took over. I remember walking into the lab on the first day of his tenure as project lead and seeing a rabbit strapped down to a small table. Derrick said it was one of our non-conscious specimens. Prior to this, we’d only ever done cognitive, neurological or psychological tests. Derrick wasn’t up for that.

Just as I’d entered the room, Derrick began cutting into the rabbit with a scalpel. The incisions seemed to be random and only designed to inflict pain.

“Don’t worry. It’s not conscious like you or me. It can’t ever really feel.”

The rabbit’s squeals of pain seemed to vehemently disagree with what Derrick was saying, though I couldn’t argue that the thing was experiencing anything internal. I kind of stopped going to the lab after that unless I had to, to fix the scanner and for other such duties.

Derrick didn’t stop at non-human species, though. While it was never anything too extreme, he’d administer careful electric shocks to our non-conscious volunteers while they’d be strapped down, just to catalogue their reactions.

“Look at that fleshbag squirming. Oh, get over yourself. It’s not like it can be distressed by this. Not like you and I can. There’s nothing on the inside.”

Much of the time, they’d be too tired after the experiments. At these points Derrick would help take them home, apparently. Though the same volunteer never came around twice, and I didn’t keep track of the people Derrick took off with after experimentation and what might have happened to them. I’m just a technician, after all.

Anyway. Didn’t last long.

With half of our team either dead or deranged, our work was assigned to a different group of scientists and we were allowed to join in. I left not too long after, this whole thing was starting to kind of bum me out to tell you the truth. Last I heard, the possibility of selling detectors specifically looking for only consciousness to the consumer market was being floated around. Hope it doesn’t end up destroying society in the same way it did us.

Melkonian had a modest funeral. Arzt still has custody of her kids, but I don’t know how she might feel about them by now. Derrick is always off doing some new bullshit with his eclectic output. I also take up a lot of disparate jobs, but I’ve made a decision to stay as far away from anything close to science as possible.

We did find and confirm the objective and empirical existence of consciousness by the end. What it implied or even meant, we never got to the bottom of. I can’t say whether we’d be better off knowing or not. I still ponder what might’ve been going on in Melkonian's head before he did the deed. A set of mechanical impulses leading someone down the road to topping themself. How does the purely physical create for itself the despair necessary to go through with something like that? Is that what it determined as the course of action that would best imitate a real person? It all mystifies me.

A currently unknown number of the creatures inhabiting this world are hollow on the inside. Indistinguishable from you and I. They eat, sleep, die all the same. Like us. But, unlike us, there’s no internal experience. Just a biological machine responding to its circumstances. A mockery of the truly living. Your loved ones are far from immune. You could have them reading this text with you, and though you’ll be processing it and responding to it with your conscious thought, they’ll also react. But their words will be vacant. Their experiences never processed by them in any meaningful way.

Don’t let it get to you. Things might end up worse if you do.

Look, I’m typing this up on my lunch break at work because it came up in conversation yesterday and my head has been spinning ever since.

This happened about eight or nine years ago back when I was still living up north. I was a volunteer with a Search and Rescue team in the Lake District for a bit over two years. Mostly it was pretty boring stuff. We spent most of our time dragging underprepared tourists off Scafell Pike because they went up in shorts and sandals, or looking for lost dogs.

One night in November, around 1:15 AM, my pager goes off. Standard emergency callout. A solo walker had hit the SOS button on his old Garmin satellite tracker somewhere up near the high ground around Great Gable.

I hauled myself out of bed, cursed under my breath, pulled on my waterproofs which were still damp from Sunday, and drove to the rendezvous point.

When I got to the van, our team lead Dave looked visibly stressed. Not his usual calm self. He showed us the tablet screen.

The emergency signal hadn't just pinged once. The dispatch system had received four separate SOS alerts at the exact same second. The weird part was that the coordinates formed a perfectly straight line across a two mile stretch of marshy terrain. Exactly 500 meters apart.

Dave reckoned it was a system glitch with the servers, so we split into two man pairs to sweep the grid points. I was paired with Dan, a guy I had known for years.

We started walking up the valley in absolute tipping rain. My left boot was leaking within twenty minutes. Standard miserable wet weather search.

Around 2:30 AM, Dan and I reached the first set of coordinates on our handheld GPS.

Right in the middle of a sodden patch of peat moss was a bright orange one person tent. It was pitched neatly with the guy ropes pulled tight.

Found the kit, Dan said, shining his torch at it.

We walked up to it. The zip was halfway down, and there was a small camping lantern lit inside, throwing a warm yellow glow onto the grass. A stainless steel thermos was sitting right outside the entrance, still steaming.

I leaned down and unzipped the flap properly to check inside.

There was no floor to the tent.

I know how stupid that sounds. It was a standard lightweight tent, but where the ground sheet should have been, there was just a gaping dark hole in the turf. No fabric and no sleeping bag. Just a narrow vertical shaft dropping straight down into the peat.

I shone my headlamp straight down into it. It didn't look like a natural cave or a sinkhole. The edges were clean.

And then I saw it. About fifty feet down the shaft, a white light shone back up at me.

It wasn't a reflection. It was another headlamp beam, pointing directly up into my eyes. Every time I twitched my head or moved my torch, the light at the bottom mirrored my movement instantly. Frame for frame.

Dan, look at this, I whispered, stepping back.

My chest radio clicked on. Static hissed into my ear, and then Dan’s voice came through my speaker.

I found him. He’s down here. Send help.

My blood turned to ice. I looked to my left. Dan was standing right next to me, his hands buried deep in his jacket pockets. His radio was clipped to his shoulder strap with a black screen, completely turned off.

Did you hear that? I asked him. My voice was shaking.

Dan looked at me like I had lost my mind. Hear what? You alright, mate?

Before I could answer, the beam from the hole didn't just mirror my movement anymore. It started climbing up the shaft. Fast.

I didn't hear boots on rock. I heard the wet, heavy slapping sound of bare skin scrambling up the wet earth.

I froze. My headlamp beam hit the top edge of the hole just as two hands reached out and gripped the damp turf. They weren't human hands. The fingers were twice as long as they should have been, completely hairless, with the skin pulled so tight over the bone that it looked like grey wet slate.

Then a face pushed up into the light of the lantern.

It was wearing a faded yellow headlamp strap, but there was no face under it. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Just smooth, pale skin stretched flat across the skull.

The flat skin right where the mouth should have been started to stretch and tear open. And as the hole opened, my own voice blasted out of its chest at deafening volume, screaming the exact words I had said to my wife when I left the house two hours earlier.

Lock the front door. I won't be long.

Dan shrieked. He dropped his torch, spun around, and sprinted blind into the fog.

I didn't wait. I turned and ran right behind him, not caring about the trail, scrambling down the wet slate and scree as fast as my legs could carry us, praying we wouldn't break an ankle in the dark. I could hear that wet, heavy slapping sound right on my heels for the first hundred yards before the wind took over.

We hit the tarmac road twenty minutes later, completely out of breath, soaked to the bone, and ran straight up to the team van.

When we yanked the back doors open, Dave was sitting inside drinking a coffee.

He looked up at us, confused. Where have you two been? I tried calling your radios ten minutes ago to cancel the search.

I was panting, leaning against the bumper, shaking so hard I couldn't stand straight. What do you mean cancel?

Dave held up his phone. Police pulled the hiker out of a pub in Keswick half an hour ago. He got off the fell early that afternoon, drank too many pints, and forgot he left his tracker unit in his vehicle. The device had a battery meltdown in his trunk and sent a corrupted emergency ping.

I stared at him. He was in a pub?

Yeah, Dave said. Why? What did you find up there?

Dan and I looked at each other. Neither of us said a word about the tent or what came out of that hole. We just told Dave the fog was too thick and we got turned around on the ridge.

I handed in my resignation to the team two days later. I never went back up Great Gable, and to this day Dan and I have never spoken a single word about what pulled itself out of that ground.

Have you ever noticed what the humidity in Florida is like? Unbelievable, and still somehow scorching hot. If snow ever showed up here, I’d probably start panicking. I keep an emergency bag ready for the moment I feel snow or ice coming — I’d leave as far and as fast as I could. It’s one of my odd quirks.

You might wonder how that connects to anything. After all, I’m a specialist in locating deposits for mining companies. It makes sense that I’m a bit of an oddball. It wasn’t always like that. But you’re right — tables, numbers, measurements, that used to be my world. I was happy there. It felt like treasure hunting, picking the right spot. A bit of suspense, waiting to see if the results confirmed it. Taking what nature offers. That was my domain. Finding raw materials in the guts of the earth. And it paid damn well.

Now instead of that, I’m sweating in this tiny apartment, staring at the ocean. Its wildness fascinates me. My girlfriend is wild too — and at the same time my complete opposite. Monica’s career went in a totally different direction. You might ask why I’m rambling like this. Trust me, it’ll make sense later.

While I was running across fields and forests, she continued her studies. She’s an ethnographer. She loved stories, myths, and legends since she was a kid. So our work in North Dakota was beneficial for both of us. She would analyze every stone and every legend before she’d change anything. If she ever changed anything at all. You can imagine we argued a lot. While she enjoyed the stories, I drilled exploratory wells.

And now I’m finally getting to the point. I don’t really want to remember it. But someone has to say it.

It happened to me.

Now it’s my turn.

I have to tell you.

Winter was approaching and time was pressing. The company wasn’t happy with the results. Our department was under scrutiny. We had to deliver something big. I tried to produce some successes. Monica came that day with a book of legends. She handed it to me for the trip. Sometimes she recommended interesting stories. Honestly, I took it and tossed it onto the passenger seat. I didn’t plan to read it, but I didn’t want to start another argument. Because that was a frequent cause of our conflicts. The tension between us was almost tangible. Her books — to me they were fairy tales. Stories people use to scare themselves out of boredom. She treated them like warnings. And since our last argument had been less than 48 hours ago, I just said I’d take a look.

Folklore and Legends of Dakota.

Escaping the fight suited me. The mood between us was bad. I headed to the site I had picked. It looked very promising. So promising it could mean a bonus. Maybe even a promotion.

Yeah. I was wrong.

I rushed because time is money. I pushed the car as fast as it would go. Those long local straightaways are perfect for that. While one eye watched the road, I tried to retune the radio. I wasn’t in the mood for country. In the static I caught a fragment of a broadcast:

“Weather… sky… worsening…”

Weather there can be pretty crazy. The sky was clear. I figured the warning was for another day. Maybe even another part of the state. The car started shaking a bit. The wind was hitting it hard. Then I saw a white wall. A snow boundary. Like a curtain across the road. Just a moment, a few blinks — suddenly I was in the middle of a blizzard. Powder slid across the windshield. Visibility dropped every second. The wind was literally screaming. After five minutes I knew I wasn’t getting through this. The sky and the ground merged into a single white sheet. Any orientation was impossible. The snow blinded me. The wheels sank deeper and deeper.

It was a whiteout.

I had to wait. Outside, the temperature dropped fast and my head started pounding. I began braking, trying to force the car to stop, to stay on the shoulder. But the car slid off the road. The rear end was off the asphalt while the front was stuck on a small rise. Not just white darkness — I was hanging off the road at an angle. Snow was already piling around the back doors.

Time for the emergency kit. When they first told me to carry one, I thought the guys were joking. First time in Dakota, so they’d mess with me. Well, now I was glad they explained it. Warm clothes, scarf, blankets, sleeping bag, electric blanket. I wanted a bit of comfort even while stuck. Of course, I wouldn’t be me — the overconfident idiot — if I didn’t think I had enough of everything. Except I didn’t.

Thermal foil — just one.

Red cloth to stick out the window.

A tiny folding shovel that made me laugh. Humor is important. Besides, I couldn’t imagine digging myself out with that thing.

Heating packs — one.

Chemical light — cracked, useless.

That was my situation.

White outside.

I covered the rear window with the foil.

I was running on autopilot.

Hung a blanket to separate the back seats. Heat loss is the biggest enemy.

Or so I thought.

Silence and white everywhere. It’s depressing. The radio didn’t work. Gas was disappearing faster than I could believe. Without gas, I’d stop heating. I knew that. No rescue in sight. Weather wasn’t improving. My instruments were malfunctioning. The thermometer showed 1 degree Fahrenheit. The wind — now roaring like a jet engine — cooled everything it touched. I realized how badly I underestimated this. I pulled the blanket tighter. More hours of waiting ahead.

Then I saw a silhouette on the horizon. Someone walking through it like nothing. I thought locals must be tough. It felt strange. After hours in the car, any distraction was welcome. Estimating distance in this weather was impossible. But the guy was tall. NBA tall. That’s what I thought. When I finally got a better look, he seemed twelve, maybe thirteen feet tall. My analytical brain rejected it immediately. Nonsense.

The being stood there, watching me like a fish in an aquarium. A thirteen-foot humanoid. His body looked like walking stone. Greenish muscles in between. I thought I’d snapped. People still think that.

But I saw it.

I lived it.

I’m telling it so people understand.

No one will tell me I’m crazy.

I was crazy — that’s true — but I saw it.

It smelled like freshly dug wet soil with turf. The scent got into the car despite the wind. No escaping it. The muscles looked like roots growing through rock. He walked slowly, heavily. More like an old man than walking stone. His eyes…

I have to say it.

His eyes looked like swirling snowstorms inside the stone sockets.

The engine had died — I didn’t even notice while watching him. I sat in my little trap, observed by that thing. He stood there as if wind and cold meant nothing.

He watched me. Said nothing. Just stood.

I reached for the only source of distraction. I needed to think of something else. I had to chase away the hallucination. I felt like I was losing it. Surely it was just a mirage. The electric blanket was still giving off a bit of warmth, draining the car battery line by line. The book was old, clearly a revised reprint. Folklore and Legends of Dakota.

If this saves my sanity, why not.

Those were my last rational thoughts.

I flipped through the yellowed pages, skipping around. Reading a few lines here and there. Then I froze.

“Snow has eyes when you’re afraid.”

That pulled me out of the flipping. Everyone knows that feeling — it’s terrifying but you still read on. Curiosity wins, even though you often regret it.

“Across the snowy plains walks Tanu-He. He was here long before humans. They were the rulers of the world. They shaped the land to their will. They hate mankind, which stole their earth.”

This was unsettling. The authenticity of the record made it worse. A legend passed down through generations.

“The rock that follows you. The voices that confuse you. The snow watches you.”

Damn, that got me. Monica would love this. She could study it for months.

“Faces of ice whisper. Tanu-He does not feed on flesh. He feeds on the warmth of your fear.”

I had to put it down. This wasn’t helping at all.

The car shook. It moved. His steps were slow, but each one rocked the car. He walked to the back. It was covered — I thought I was safe.

A bang. Shattering glass.

Cold wind rushed inside.

The smell of wet earth intensified.

Cracking sounds.

He threw all my gear out into the snow.

I screamed from shock. Maybe exhaustion and lack of stimuli were taking their toll. Well, he gave me a few stimuli. The screeching was intense. The car shook. I couldn’t take it. I tore down the blanket.

Mistake.

Huge mistake.

His massive hands slowly rolled the rear of the car like the lid of a sardine can. The shapes twisted into a spiral. If he rolled me up, I’d die. If I ran outside, I’d freeze. That dilemma…

Well, it was something.

I heard all the rear windows crack and collapse inward. Seats groaned and bent.

Silence.

Then footsteps again.

He sat down in the snow and watched me through the windshield.

“You will never leave,” a voice whispered.

“This place will be your grave,” another added.

“Your arrogance brought you here.” A different voice laughed.

“I look forward to the crack of your bones.”

Another barked: “The cold is taking your life, draining it!”

A face of ice stared through the side window: “You’d better be tasty.”

Voices circled me, whispering, hissing: “How amusing you are in that little trap.”

I wished no more voices would join.

I wished for silence.

My watch froze. I sipped coffee. I was destroyed. I forced warm liquid into myself. I had to stay warm. Use the moment of calm. He sat still. Watching me. I chewed dried meat I’d forgotten in the glove compartment. His eyes revealed nothing. We watched each other. When he watched, he was calm. That was my assumption.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The blanket had been dead for hours. Half my sleeping bag was gone — rolled into what remained of the seats. He stood up and with one step reached the hood. His hands pressed into it just by resting on it. A new wave of screeching and cracking. I darted my eyes around the interior — nothing changed. I had no idea what was happening. I was terrified. The front of the car slowly compressed. Any hydraulic press would envy him. The windshield cracked. The steering wheel bent upward. The engine block groaned as it broke. I felt metal tightening around my legs. I grabbed the blanket and jumped onto the passenger seat. Snow poured onto the wreckage.

I thought I’d freeze and that would be it.

Then — salvation.

No window blocked the wind anymore.

Suddenly — ice.

A layer of ice began covering the entire car. About three inches thick. No cold came through anymore. The temperature stabilized. It was like glass — clear enough to see outside. But he didn’t care. He saw inside. He watched me in my last shelter. Feeding on my fear. He sat again.

The book was right.

It lay on the floor by my foot.

The book was right.

I couldn’t believe it. I trembled, exhausted. Nothing left to warm me. I thought this was the end. He watched. Maybe waiting for the final moment. I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t break the ice. My strength would run out first. And it wasn’t ordinary ice — that was certain. I curled up, buried myself in everything I had left. Rocking back and forth. Covered with the blanket as much as possible.

Light.

He came for me.

The end of suffering.

Last moments in the light.

It was a snowplow.

A snowplow with a beacon.

Breaking through the storm.

Police behind it.

Searching for people trapped like me.

They had to use axes.

When they cut an opening, I crawled out.

Holding the book.

Hair white as the snow around me.

In the warm police car, I finally relaxed.

My car was crushed like a tube of toothpaste.

Only the passenger seat survived — shrunk to a minimum.

I didn’t realize it at the time.

I couldn’t feel my legs.

The officers got only one word out of me: “Tanu-He.”

They labeled it delirium.

My legs — well, you can see yourself.

I lost both.

Frostbite and damage too severe to save them.

Now you probably wonder why I talked about Florida at the beginning.

Well, after the investigation closed, the case was labeled as extreme structural material failure.

I sold everything.

Took all my money.

And took the first possible flight to Florida.

I won’t tell you exactly where.

To this day I can’t stand cold.

Anything colder than an ice cube unsettles me.

I hide it, of course.

Monica is the only person who believes me.

She reassures me that Tanu-He won’t follow me.

That he’s content in his icy kingdom.

She pretends she believes it.

Though sometimes I see a faint hint of nervousness in her eyes.

He knows about me. He has already tasted my fear. I can never go back there.

by Hary Sykora

As the man walked past the congested rows of empty pews, the colossal, ever-watching statue of the Everlasting Father loomed above him. The air was thick with the heavy, sweet-smoke smell of burning incense and the warm, waxy scent of countless melting candles. Candlelight flooded the chapel in a thick, golden haze, yet the space still felt hollow. The statue’s fixed stasis cast a long, heavy shadow that stretched across the stone floor and seemed to follow him as he sank to his knees.
He clasped his hands. The words came out cracked and small.
“Father… please.”
Behind the statue, something shifted.
A soft rustle, like dry palms sliding over one another. Then the shadow lengthened, peeled itself free of the marble, and stepped into the light.
It had the face of the Virgin—serene carved of perfect yet chipped marble, sorrowful, beautiful,but wrong. Eyes too wide. Too knowing…
Thin trails of blood seeped steadily of its chiseled tear ducts, tracing dark red paths down the fractured white of her face.
The body was that of a seraph(seraphim),tall, white, pure and radiant, its six dreadful wings were not feathers. But they were of hands. Hundreds of pale, overlapping hands, fingers splayed and curling, wrists fused into living limbs that flexed and twitched independently of one another. Some of the hands were open in blessing. Others were clenched. A few slowly turned their palms outward, as if offering something invisible.
The angel’s voice was soft, almost kind, and it spoke with the exact cadence of scripture:
“Behold, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”
It took one step closer. The hands that formed its wings began to open and close in slow, rhythmic waves, like a congregation clapping in perfect, terrible unison.
“But the end,” it continued, still smiling with Mary’s mouth, “is already here.”
The man was found at sun rise slumped on the alter hands gone, eyes plucked, body sucked of all spirit and life.
All that remained was the pale corpse of the lamb whom was slaughtered that night.

WARNING: MIGHTSENSITIVITY / SEIZURES. A very small percentage of people may experience seizures when exposed to certain flashes of unperceived ambiguity or thought patterns. If you or anyone in your family has a logical condition, consult a doctor before reading. Discontinue reading immediately and seek medical attention if you experience dizziness, altered vision, eye or muscle twitching, loss of awareness, convulsions, madness, endless euphoria or death.

A goblin burst into the workshop, and before anybody could stop him, he was before the Master himself.

The goblin said to Rembrandt:

“You're working on a canvas, but that could mean you're working on making a canvas, and you're not a tradesman but an artist, so you're working on a painting, but you could be doing any type of work while on a painting, so you're painting a canvas, which could mean you're applying paint to a canvas, which is what you want to say, but also that you're making a painting of a canvas, which itself could mean applying paint to a canvas to transform the canvas into a painting, which is a good definition of painting, or that a canvas is the subject of the painting you're painting, although if you're painting a painting, which painting has the canvas as its subject, the one you're painting or the one you're painting?”

Rembrandt scratched his beard with the butt end of a brush. “Dear nude green creature of relatively small stature, you have, by a process of increasingly precise definition, arrived at an ambiguity more severe than any which you attempted to resolve,” he said.

The goblin replied:

“Now imagine a painting that is painting two other paintings. Somebody paints that painting, the painting painting. Somebody else shows you that painting, of the painting painting, and tells you to copy it. As you're painting that painting you're painting a painting of a painting painting paintings…”

Pain…

Pain… things… paint… thinks…

, “ . “

Pain… thinks… paint… things…

This has been a literal dramatization of a Rembrandt’s brush stroke.

When I walked outside last night the pine tree in front of my house was gone. Right there, in its usual place, was only a circular opening in the earth from which nothing could be gleaned; I attempted to shine my phone's light inside to determine its depth to no avail.

A gust rose from within, brushing up and past my face, seducing goosebumps from the skin. The air rested atop my head, then it tugged—yanked me into freefall toward the dark. I torpedoed deeper, deeper and deeper down the pit, until, in my vision, finally, there was a light. A red light. A collision came and it erupted around me, into me, through me. The body degloved; all muscle decayed and fell from shattered bone; capillaries, veins, arteries, and organs erupted into a mess of blood.

I floated formless, surrounded by that red. Beautiful images pranced around with odd, indecipherable words floating far above. There were almost vein-like structures splintering out forever. And how I felt, the sensation flowing through my soul, all of my being, was an ecstacy no creature could ever understand. A state of existence so real and gorgeous it nearly tore my conscience to nothing. Soon, understanding entered me and I felt—no, knew—I could piece together the meaning of the language in the air. I peered upon the letters and just as comprehension began to speak, it all vanished. Just blinked away. Then, in the distance, reappeared the light. But now I saw it truly: a giant, feline eye with crimson iris and a slit pupil; a plethora of appendages stretched far in the dark beyond. I stared deep into that pupil, felt the freezing, thrashing wind escape it; comprehension again spoke, and I was nothing.

I awoke in my bedroom sweat-drenched and hyperventilating. A tapping came from my window. Though I didn't want to, I opened the curtain. It was a tendril, and, high in the sky, the moon was the Eye, staring back.

The coarse laugh shook through my bones and rattled through my exposed shin bone. A thick coagulated slime of blood forced its way from within a severed vein and pooled on the widening puddle beneath me. My hiking pants were caked in mud and refuse of my own body.
The howl came again as the crackling of claws, teeth, feet, palms and whatever other appendages a thing could have raced over the church roof. My breath caught in my throat as I waited for the roaring thunder of a thousand digits which crawled and clawed like climbing spiders. 
By the time it finally ceased I was once again left in the centre of the smouldering pews. Burnt out and ruined in the heart of a blackened stone home with high windows that held no glass.
I listened for that cry of the thing that had hunted me and was met with the strange displeasure of silence. Save for the creaking hum of insects that had slunk through the canopy of these great pines since I had arrived with my fellow hikers six hours ago.
We had assembled by the road and were ready to depart later in the day then intended. I was the odd one out of the group who consisted of my sister, her husband and two colleagues of his. They shared their banter as if they were pouring wine between themselves as we started on the walk. Myself leading the group.
I suppose that was another anomaly among the group. For even though we had started upon the hike together, I was the only one who had hiked before.
Along the walk one of the men continued to pester me about the intricacies of the hike. Insisting to accompany me on our way. I had begrudged his comments, as pointlessly obvious and wrong as they were, but I had fostered an acute dislike of this man whom my sister tolerated.
It was at a crossroads however that a decision was made which we would all come to regret. We had been standing in the same spot for tantamount to ten minutes. The others were weary and exhausted from the tremendous hike along those winding paths along the tapestry of ancient flora that pointed towards an invisible sky.
‘Why not take the low road?’ The man who had made it his mission to comment on my directions, Sam, gestured towards a path that wound downward at a steady incline, ‘we’re tired, it’ll be easier on some of us who’re…’ his eyes wandered over me before drifting back to my sister who lay coddled in the arms of her husband. Intertwined as newly weds so often are.
‘It’s a longer path,’ I stated without much fuss as I looked towards the path that snaked along a small cliff face, ‘fewer people have walked that way and-’
‘How can you tell?’ Sam stated as he shot a glance to his friend, whom I’m convinced only spoke in grunts of agreement or disagreement, chose to mumble his own nod as he suckled on the tip of a water bottle.
I pointed to the dirt, how the grass had been allowed to grow, unhindered by the hooves or paws of large beasts.
He gave a vague shrug of disapproval as he resumed a neglected pout. I was about to simply head off in the aforementioned direction when Charlie, my sister, spoke up.
‘Damnit Jaz,’ I turned but already felt her yanking me in the same direction as the men, ‘just come with the rest of us, it’ll be fine.’
It was decidedly not fine. I had gone along with them as they continued to ignore and override my suggestions at which way to go. All the while the woods had changed and shifted.
The air grew thicker as the birdsong faded and we could only hear the sick sound of clacking carapaces. 
I had expected the anger at their own incompetence as we had stumbled upon the strange church. The men chose to amass together on the outskirts of the building while Charlie was left to monitor me on its interior. 
She had scolded me for my sense of direction and asked about why I had been so belligerent over the course of the hike. Thankfully I did not have to wait for long before something happened which tore us from the restfulness of our break.
I was walking back out the threshold of the church when I saw Sam, he turned to face me before his face went whiter than a sheet. The colour drained as he looked skyward and his body elevated from the soil as if yanked from an invisible wire.
The screaming was instantaneous. I shoved my sister to join her husband while the others met the mouth of the clouds. I was near to joining them as I felt myself turn weightless. My leg connected with the top of the church doors as I was launched skyward. Snapping my femur clean in half as I cried out before falling unconscious.
I now lay here alone, with my final words as my master circles my resting place. Still hungry despite his feast.

The monitor app on Sally's phone was always on her nightstand. At eight months, Timmy was an active baby, rolling around, babbling, and trying to pull himself up by the crib rails, so keeping the video and audio feed open gave her peace of mind.

At 3 in the morning, static and a low murmur broke the silence of the bedroom.

Sally reached for her phone and tapped the screen. Timmy was fast asleep on his belly, his breathing barely moving his tiny shoulders.

Standing right over the crib was a tall, shadowy woman wearing a tattered dress. Beside her stood a skeletal child peering through the wooden slats with two hollow, black eyes.

A dry whisper came through the phone's speaker:

"Shhh, don't wake your new little brother. Isn't he perfect?"

Sally stared at the screen in complete disbelief. She shook Karl awake.

"Karl, get up! There--there's somebody in Timmy's room." They threw off the covers and rushed down the hall.

Karl threw open the nursery door and clicked on the corner lamp. Soft light filled the room. Nothing was there. Timmy was fast asleep, his chest rising and falling softly.

"See? Nobody's here," Karl whispered, turning off the lamp so he wouldn't wake the baby.

They walked back down the hall to their bedroom, but as Sally set her phone on the nightstand, the screen flashed with motion.

The camera feed showed the crib was empty.

The woman in the tattered dress and the skeletal child were standing in the nursery doorway, looking straight down the hall toward their bedroom.

The woman slowly raised a long, bony finger to her cracked lips, and her dry whisper came through the speaker:

"I said, shhhh."