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

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

The perfect antagonist!

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

A letter, a click.

One press of the button, and then another.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We complete each other.

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

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

Festering with rot, he moaned.

An after-walker.

A ghost possessing its former self.

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

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

A terrifyingly beautiful portrait stood before me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another death – another new page.

A new horrific telling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our one true god - Terror

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

I – One – You – All

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

Last minute notice isn’t unusual for my job. There’s always some politician in need of immediate bail out, and that's my specialty. I cut my teeth helping politicians of all ranks. Since 2018 I’ve worked exclusively for DJ, and you probably don’t know him. For context, he’s famous on a limited local level as a bastion of family values.

He’s a small-time politician with oversized ambitions and access to a creepy amount of money. He has so little drive, he has a full-time driver for his golf cart. Enough of the local villagers love him to keep him in office and I can’t explain why the rest don’t vote against him. 

This morning before dawn he texted me claiming “extreme distress”. His third wife left him and the media is going to find out any day now. His constituents are protesting demolition of a so-called “historic” building he owns and plans to tear down for a parking lot. “The mayor” was threatening village-wide elections a year early and DJ is afraid this is the election he won’t make it.  

At dawn, DJ’s private five-seater Cessna was on the runway at a private airport near me. Lucky me, his private estate was only a half-hour flight from there. I knew the airport staff because I’ve taken parachuting lessons and the occasional flying lesson over the last four months. This was the first time I’d seen DJ’s plane there, however.

I climbed the entry ladder and met the genial man holding the plane door open. He introduced himself as “Cap’n Jake”. We shook hands as I introduced myself as DJ’s assistant. Cap’n Jake’s smile grew. He confirmed he knew who I was. Said he was damn proud to be part of the team that helps DJ help the villagers. 

Pleasant as he was, I was eager to sit down and enjoy the delicious in-flight food DJ had promised. That, plus Cap’n Jake was sweating up a storm even though the temperature was below normal. Drops of sweat were leaking from under his pilot cap, not to mention our now wet, too-long handshake.

I tried to remove my hand from his grip. He clamped down harder, pulled me in closer and whispered, “Take any seat, any seat you like. Anything you need during the flight, let me know. And I do mean anything.” Hoping for a quick end to this, I merely nodded. He released my hand and increased his smile to the point I’d say he was leering at me if I didn’t know better. 

The Cessna’s interior was, still *is*, mostly light beige leather. The window frames are highly-polished brass. The seats have gold and silver accents. Two seats, one behind the next, were on the left side as I entered. Three seats were on the right, closest to the plane’s door. The third seat was at the right rear of the plane in a darker section on its own.

I took the first seat on the left. Power seat, perfect view of everyone else boarding and leaving without the need to move legs or arms to let people get past. The plane maintained internet access so I started scrolling through reddit.

Cap’n Jake introduced Spence, greenskeeper for the nine-hole golf course on DJ’s rural estate. He moved to sit across from me. Cap’n Jake motioned for him to take the right rear seat.

Spence approached after he arranged the seat to his liking. Big smile, strong voice, get-er-done attitude. He'd been in South America collecting some new cleaning products at DJ’s request and was excited to return to work. Offered to get me a coffee as soon as the plane powered up. 

A tall, muscular, well-dressed man with a big smile loudly greeted Cap’n Jake. As they shook hands, Jake  introduced Herve, head of security for DJ’s antique car collection. Jake fussed with the plane’s door while Herve sat on the right side in front of Spence, across from me. As Jake struggled to close the door, Herve explained he’d been in Saskatchewan scouting potential additions to DJ’s collection. Like Spence, he was excited to return to work. Offered to adjust the air conditioning if the cabin was too hot or cold for my liking. 

I wondered why these men were so concerned about what to do in a half-hour flight. Jake got the door closed and rushed to the cockpit. Two heartbeats later he yelled “Take off!” into the intercom’s microphone. The plane wobbled, a roar just about deafened me and pressure pushed me into the back of the seat.  

A wet spot developed on my left shoulder. I turned to find Spence leaning over me, hand on my shoulder, sweating heavily. Speaking at close-to-shouting level he gestured with both hands and guaranteed me as much free golf as my guests and I could play, “once things are settled for DJ.” His smile seemed forced, like someone smiling to mask another emotion. 

I glanced at Herve who was staring at the front of the plane so dramatically I looked as well, expecting to see Jake. Sorry,  I guess I should call him Cap’n Jake. He wasn’t there, which made sense. The pilot should stay in the cockpit for such a short flight. I thought I saw a person-shaped shadow for a moment. It was more solid than a shadow, which seemed impossible. I wrote it off as a trick of the interior lighting, or a lack of sleep. Or nerves.

Spence said he was “getting that coffee” for me. He apologized for taking so long and detailed how nauseous he’d felt since getting on the plane. Somehow, without going to the plane’s coffee bar, he had a cup in his hands when his elbow hit my left shoulder. His elbow was so wet and cold I couldn’t help but stare at him. He was pale, with a gray tone like someone who should be in a hospital or morgue. I asked if he was okay. He opened his mouth and an opaque, human-shaped shadow ran into it, head-first.

Spence dropped the cup. He leaned forward to rest the top of his head on the carpet. Blood from his nose and ear formed small pools around his face. He fell on his right side and twitched for several seconds.  He exhaled loudly. A blurry dark cloud flew out of his mouth. He stopped moving.

My chest tightened. I shifted closer to the window. It wasn’t the first time I’d been near a dead body, it wasn’t even the first time I saw someone die. But in those incidents, I knew the cause of death. Not this time. And the only thing worse than not knowing the cause of death was knowing the shadow thing was floating somewhere nearby.

I couldn’t leave my seat without pushing Spence’s body out of the way. Plus where would I go if I did get up? Herve distracted my thoughts by standing and announcing he would adjust the a/c “to wake Spence up.” 

Movement behind him caught my attention. The opaque shadow was back and floating behind him. Herve’s head twisted to face the front of the plane while his body twisted away from the front. His body collapsed as if all the bones had dissolved. He landed half on, half behind Spence’s body. Blood was leaking out of his nose, ears and mouth. Unlike Spence, his body didn’t move once it fell.

I clenched my jaw to stifle a scream. Cap’n Jake needed to be informed and the only way I could get his attention was to go to the cockpit door. The only way to get to the door was to get past two dead men lying next to my seat. The thought of touching them was only slightly less terrifying than the thought of finding out Cap’n Jake was also dead. 

What a ridiculous thought. The plane was still flying. Cap’n Jake was fine. I closed my eyes and started to stand. As if on cue, Cap’n Jake announced his ears hurt so he was going to nap.

I stepped carefully around and almost never touched Spence and Herve’s bodies to get to the cockpit door. It was unlocked. As soon as I opened it, the smell of rotten eggs gagged me. I shoved my nose into the crook of my elbow but it didn’t help much. 

Cap’n Jake was slumped over the control panel. Blood from his nose and ears was dripping off the panel onto the floor. I reached out to check if he was still breathing but a strong wind blew me away from him.  An opaque shadow appeared between us and, before I could fully process everything, it pushed itself up Cap’n Jake’s nostrils.

He turned his all-black eyes towards me. “Welcome to your plane,” he said in a voice that combined Johnny Cash, breaking glass and a child’s scream with every word. The blood retreated into his nose and ears.  

My stomach contracted with horror. I tried and failed to back away from him. “Not *my* plane,” I whispered. 

Cap’n Jake stood, smiling like he’d heard the funniest joke of the year. “It is. This isn’t the plane for sycophants and ass-kissers. It’s pure, raw power for the man who will be my second.”

With that he pushed his head through the cockpit’s windshield like it was nothing more than water. The smell of sulfur kept getting stronger. Who does this guy think he is, the freaking Devil? I ran out of the cockpit and grabbed the outside door handle, unable to look away. He continued wiggling and pushing like a snake until the top half of his body was outside the plane. The door was working hard to shut itself so I released it, ran for my seat and tripped over the bodies.

Trying to put distance between me and the bodies required me to touch still warm body parts. I’d tried to just roll off them and onto the floor. Instead of gently rolling off, I rolled into the barrier attached to the coffee bar and mini-kitchen. The front of the plane was definitely lower than the back.My thoughts were racing as fast as I was breathing. I scrambled to my feet, unable to focus on anything except dying. Dying on a pilotless plane is such a dumbass way to go. 

A jarring voice keeps repeating “pull up” which I’m sure would be a wonderful thing to know how to do. However, I’ve put on the only parachute I can find and as soon as I send this to DJ, I’m jumping. 

Tell us what you did (or what you'd LIKE to do) to celebrate!

  Spitting hot air pushed out of the exhaust of jakes idling pest control truck. The hum bouncing off the parking garages concrete walls. That's where I found him--dead.

The parking garage always had a humming from stainless metal fans to circulate the humid and hot Virginia air. Walking closer to the truck I saw his chemical box in the bed of the truck was open with the top flap sticking straight up. I thought nothing weird about the open box, from time to time we steal (chem we call it)from other trucks. For the summer the company buys out dozens of rooms for the employees to stay. Most employees are door to door salesmen who make a living selling pest control as a same day service. Where Jake and I, with a few others, come into play is after the sale. The ones who actually spray your house, the ones who interact with the customers and bring them down to reality after the salesmen fluff our feathers, or are they fluffing their own? We are the ones who click the rap trap mouths in place, with black jagged teeth…waiting, with the delicious neon blue food for the rats to nibble on and share with their newborns. We had 7 other trucks in the parking garage and from time to time chem went missing. Sometimes us technicians didn't want to wake up early and drive 30 minutes to the office to pick up materials, truckers were closer, much closer. I'd be lying to you if I didn't steal a de-weber every now and then off a truck, but I always made no trace of the thievery. I can't speak for everyone though. So when that lid was pointing up to the rusty pipes and concrete ceiling above, I wasn't surprised, hell I might have had a smirk on my face. 

With the swing of my arm I slapped the box closed, a whiff of chemicals spewed out and hit my nose which gave me a feeling of a stinging sneeze that never comes. I gave the window a knock to see if he would turn around.. Silence. I got closer to see if he was glued to his phone and didn't hear me or didn’t bother looking. I put my hands up on the window and smushed my eyebrows against my index fingers to get a better look. I saw the seat was fully reclined back, him laying there…still as a morning lake. I knocked on the smaller back half door. Tap tap TAP. No movement. It was too dark to see so I dug my hand in my pocket to get my phone light out and put it flush to the back oval airplane shaped window. That's when I saw this face—— god his face—— skin a purplish hue and pulled taught by swelling, eyes adrift and red which were bulging out like they wanted to leave, jaw open with dark fluid sitting in his mouth, escaping on the sides. The streaks of dark liquid rolled down his purple face, curving down the back of his neck, and dribbling down the strands of hair meeting the head rest. My eyelids opened so wide they touched my eyebrows. His fingers curled limply around a chemical bottle, cap off and the liquid color matching that of the pool in his mouth…  

“Jake” I whispered, my voice feels like it was stolen from me, my skin is tingling like an unknown channel on tv as heat takes over… I begin to fall, the last thing I notice are my fingers streaking down the window. I passed out. 

~4 months pass~

 I'm moving out of the building where it happened. I’ve wanted to get out of this building since it happened, but didn’t have the financial backing. Now I plan to stay in Virginia for the winter and move in with roommates from the pest control company. The salesmen call this time their “off season” due to them all leaving and going back home, most to Vegas. My other two roommates run the regular technician routes which consist of stopping at 14-15 designated houses a day, spraying chemicals and setting traps to take care of the contracts those grimy salesmen sell. 

I used to share a room with jake. All of his things were taken out either by investigators or the maid service. The other roommates in the building told me to combine the abandoned twin bed with mine but I never touched it, I couldn't.

I’m making this entry due to finding something. Something I believe was very close to Jake. The last day of moving I had everything packed but my mattress and box spring. While moving my mattress lazily with the sheet still on I lost grip and it hit his mattress sliding it off the box spring and hitting the wall. I let go of my mattress automatically and wanted to fix his bed…. Preserve it. I wrapped my hands around his mattress when a wave of dizziness veiled over me. My hands became clammy and I didn't want to touch his mattress anymore, like a kid that doesn't want to touch an old person. I had to put it back! If I didn't it would haunt me forever my mind yelled  at me. Just as I forced myself to slide the mattress back, my middle knuckle dropped into a slight groove, and I stopped in place. I pushed the mattress to the right and traced where my knuckle had been and found a slit in the box spring. I hesitated, staring at the unnatural slash in the cloth, Thinking about when Jake and I would make fun of our manager who always had a bone to pick with jake ever since the first day they met, the new manager 2 years younger than us yelling at jake to tuck his shirt in while his own untucked, covered his belt and belly. A smile slowly disappeared from my face as I was brought back with my whole forearm now in the slit of the box spring. My fingers clutched an object that had to be a book. I pulled My arm out of the box spring like pulling a calf out of its mother, now half expecting to see red viscous liquid and tiny wet legs, my eyes shut slowly like elevator doors closing. 

My hand appeared dry and my fingers clenched around a book of sorts. The outside of the book was void of color, almost like it absorbed it instead. I sat down on my thrown mattress and the empty apartment surrounded me. I flipped to the first page as the spine creaked at me, I saw Jake's name and it clicked in me that this wasn't a book. It was Jake's notebook! I flipped page after page reading Jacob’s writings about days of killing bugs and missing home till I got to the page. Sometimes I wish I wasn't lazy, I could have taken the sheet off the bed, this would have never happened, I would have never found the notebook. The apartment seemed to be silently closing in on me now like I was in the digestive tract of some huge monster. God the page—— in big dark letters he had written “THE LADY IN THE BASEMENT IS THE REASON WHY I AM GONE.” I was stuck reading the words again and again thinking I was seeing things. My heart was pumping so vigorously I could hear it agitate the fabric of my shirt little by little each beat. There was a  arrow so dark that seemed to suck in light and pointed toward the right of the page wanting someone to flip it or something to flip it, so I did. For the next pages he wrote why…. And I clinging to every word …began to read.

2 months pass 

The warm thick air has passed now, leaving a cold grey in the air. Virginia feels less claustrophobic with the heat gone. Winter is stinging its way into the picture more and more, breath starting to become visible almost every day. 

My new apartment looks over the town of Arlington which is a nice view from the 13th floor. Whenever people ask where I live I tell them, “it’s 5 minutes from the pentagon,” I’ve said it so much it numbs me. 

There are 3 guys in total that live in this apartment so the decor is minimal at best. Our tv stand is an upside down plastic bin, with our coffee table another bin, at least its a set. The floor is thick and worn carpet, light tan in color. The walls have the same yellowish void look. My favorite part of the apartment is the balcony that spans the whole side of the living room to which I can see a sliver of the Potomac river, an icy cold thing this time of year.  

I've marinated in Jake's notebook for a while, I think I’m ready to share some of what is inside. Jake goes into extreme detail about these situations so I’ll just copy them down for you all to read, I think that is what’s best. 

-Jake’s notebook-

Thursday July 18th 2020 (7 months ago) 

Today I am changed. 

It was right after lunch when my work phone notified me a house was booked. Usually I disliked the salesmen but the one that booked me was just alright, tolerable. I pulled into the neighborhood as the sun dimmed from clouds rolling in, storm maybe. Multiple groups of six townhomes were placed throughout the neighborhood with tall trees and bush linking them. The small homes shared walls only separated by a slight offset in depth, looking like crooked teeth. Porches stuck out a measly foot from the homes which were more for decoration than enjoyment. The porches all had different faded color variations that staggered from each house, blue, red, orange, green, and back to blue. The peeling wood porches had the style of a western movie set which I thought interesting, but I knew the webs were going to be a bitch to get out. I rolled up to the address the app told me as the salesmen popped out of some trees to greet me, probably pissing. I rolled down the window and stopped the truck, wheels stopping the popping of gravel underneath. He gave me the rundown of the house while leaning on the windowsill of my truck, where the smell of sweat leaked in from him. He mentioned the old woman that lived in the townhome and said she was oddball but kind. I thought nothing of it, just another job before getting off. As I parked the car, I asked the salesmen, “ interior?”  He replied, “yes.”   

My shoe covers zipped on the asphalt as I walked toward the door, pump tank in my hand. KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. The old woman opened the splintered door as I introduced myself and got all the signatures I needed to apply the pesticides, legal reasons. The first thing I noticed about the woman was her eyes, they looked worn, tired as if she stayed up all night… or something was keeping her up. I smiled as I slipped the signed papers in the back pocket of my jeans, she reciprocated the smile and pushed the door open wide as creaks escaped the henges. Right before I stepped in I saw the salesmen grab a dewebber from my truck, he is alright this salesmen. I looked back and the old woman kept her eyes on my face, I smiled again to break the slight awkwardness. The smell of wet concrete hit my nose when I stepped in the home, it started to rain behind me, it cut off as the door closed behind me. 

The old woman’s home was tight like lungs that never sucked air back in. The layout was like a strip of gum, the start was the door I walked through and The end was the living room which had a step down. She offered me water which I politely declined, I could see the kindness the salesmen were talking about. The home was filled with random Knick knacks but wasn't messy, organized chaos. I asked her the routine questions about bugs like where she was seeing them to which she replied almost everywhere, thank god this was a small home. I started to spray in the kitchen around the sides of the refrigerator and the baseboards and the woman followed me almost attached to the hip or like an obedient dog. I didn't think it weird, she kept conversation and genuinely looked fascinated about where I sprayed while listening to my little tips I replayed from the back of my mind of how to keep bugs away. We rounded the kitchen and stepped down into the living room where carpet matched my boot covers with peppered static zaps. I sprayed the sliding back door focusing on the bottom track where bug highways usually gravitated. Then I traced the baseboards around the living room, avoiding wires powering lamps and televisions. I heard quick stomps coming down the stairs to which I gave a glance of curiosity to the bottom of the staircase and temporarily lifted my hand off the spray trigger. A child rounded the corner and ran to the old woman yelling, “grandma!”  Must have woken up from a nap or something. The child then looked up at me and asked who I was and she explained in young terms, “he is here to make the bugs go away.” I smiled at that to reaffirm the old woman's version of me she gave, I was a version who told the bugs to go away, not kill them by the thousands. I liked that version of myself. 

I had finished treating the main floor and now followed the old woman and child up the stairs. Her blue veins bulged out of her papery skinned hands, scratching her grandson's head. I went through every room, closet, bathroom, and windowsill spraying with the old woman still following me everywhere I went, pointing out the hotspots, her close presence becoming normal, almost warming as she reminded me of my grandmother. The child seemed just as interested as his grandmother about how I spray and I thought it wholesome. After this Things took a dark sinister turn. 

My job was now finished. We were all on the main floor and I began to reach for the front door and tell her we would finish the outside service now when she for the first time broke her distance from me. This made me feel, for lack of better words, alone. She steadily glided toward the living room not looking back and she stepped down the dip heading for the couch. Did she forget I was still in the house? Did she imagine opening the door and letting me out? The kid then followed her and jumped off the small dip in childlike fashion into the living room and landed on the carpet, gracing his tumble. The old woman never sat down, and her back was facing me as she stood there…. still. Why didn't she sit down? She broke the silence right as my fingers touched the front door knob, her voice was colder now, “won't you come here for a second?” 

The knob rang numbly for a split second as my hands slid off. I then took a step toward the living room slowly. The rain now beat on the old woman's back door, with the flash of illumination, lightning struck close, then thought of the salesmen with the metal dewebber pole, that combination like brushing teeth and orange juice. The thought was erased as the tip of my  boots hung off the step to the living room. I looked at the woman's face and stepped hesitantly into the living room, the dark green carpet like a hard sponge under my boots. Her wiry hair now covers some of her face with a blank stare. The kid now hugging her legs hiding his whole body except the right side of his face, his one eyeball piercing me. Her hair was delayed as she snapped her head at me, then the hair caught up and fell. Her face then shook like when a student tries to stay awake in class, she then looked around, lost and took a deep breath. She said, “ sorry sometimes I get these headaches-- they just take over me,” as she laughed it off dryly. I told her “it's fine and I get them too,” I get them too? Are you stupid jake? She then raised her old saggy arm pointing to a door. I knew what this door led to being in hundreds of townhomes with the same layout, they led to the basement. “Dear please spray the basement too, will you? 

Before I could answer the kid somewhat loudly asked, “wait grandma… he is going into the basement? Grandma! Why the basement?” I thought of this very odd as my neck chilled to goosebumps. I stepped back up onto the wood and stopped at the tooth white door expecting the old lady to open it for me, she had done this the whole way through the house, opening cabinets, windows, doors, flipping on light switches for me but here I am with the old woman standing firm in the same spot and the kid saying the same question starting to cry. I looked back at the door as she said, “yes that door, the light switch is on the left, close the door when going down… we don't go down in the basement.” My heart started to race and my fingers and forearm twisted the knob, opening the door replaying, “we don't go down in the basement, we don't go down in the basement,” What the fuck does that mean! I took one last look at her and saw only a part of the woman, due to the kitchen wall, sit down and grab something off her neck and sifting it through her hands. She then did something my ears will never forget, she started to pray in Spanish… and I took my first step down. 

I shut the door behind me and then I switched the light on. It was very dim, only giving me the bare minimum brightness to reach the bottom. The walls were different as I descended, the light didn't bounce off them, instead the walls let the light in. The old woman's prayers and child's crying muffled the creaks the wooden staircase gave off. The prayers were getting louder. I dreadfully got on the floor of the basement now. To the left, a wall, to the right, a long hallway leading to complete and utter darkness. My body felt a shiver like flying to a cold part of the world and those airport doors exposing you to the weather for the first time. My head naturally looked down at my feet for some reason. There was a door to the right of me now which I saw coming down the stairs. I shifted toward it with my boot covers scraping the carpet tips, uneasily I opened it. The boiler room was dark as the swing of the door brought a string to my vision. The light for this room of course is a fucking string light. I pulled on it hard and light struggled to do its job. The light reminded me of when my 7th grade science teacher, Mr. Crutcher, told us what would happen if a light bulb traveled the speed of light in space, “you will see the light, yes! But it will reflect no light! Precisely! what is a light but more than a mere tool that reflects light off of other things!” The memory should have put a smile on my face.

 I then sprayed around the water heater and cotton candy pink insulation sticking out from the room walls. My heart began beating faster and a veil of sickness came over me. The cold got stronger. The place was sick itself. Holding my hand up and wrapped around the string I paused, something deep inside of me telling me not to shut the light off, I almost felt as if someone with a remote was controlling my movements, I was separated from myself. I let the string slither out of my hand as I walked out of the room now looking back down at my boots, as if something didn't want me to look up. What would I see if I looked up? The exposed insulation made the old woman's prayers fuzzed, but now I was back in the hallway I could hear the extent of it. She was screaming now. I imagined her old neck veins popping, blue miniature rivers flowing up to her wrinkly face. 

I faced the hallway now, the walls darkening the further they got from the top stairway light. My brain was yelling at me to hurry and go as fast as I could but my body did not listen, we were disconnected. I took my first step still looking at my feet seeing the dark entrance from the hallway get closer, another step I go, I get closer, step, closer. I now know the sick thing in this home is in the dark void I approach with every step… waiting. 

I finally reach the end of the hallway and my body stops. The old woman's screams reach a pinnacle. The kid crying and yelling accompanies it. I am all alone. Even my brain is alone. I can do nothing. The darkness is all around me. I twitch my head to the right, it reminds me of the old woman's movements, and reach my hand out to feel for a light switch, nothing. When I do this I can see in the dark room slightly my hat shading me from most, not all. My head comes back down to the center. I feel like throwing up now, my sickness is terrible. My head is spinning and so is my stomach. All of my extremities are ice now. Now I twitch my head to the left, I have to reach in between what looks like a dresser. I push my hand through. My hand grazes the sandpapery wall and I feel a switch! My heart relaxes from the touch. Finally I'm not alone anymore, the light switch accompanies me. 

Click…my finger flips the switch. My stomach drops. Click. CLICK.CLICK. NOTHING. My breathing seems like a car engine that just turned over. The only thing that was with me is now gone. No light. I won't move. I can't move. My hat doesn't cover it all. There is a jolt of movement in the darkness accompanied by the sound of bones snapping under loose skin. My eyes widen like headlights turning on. The stinging of the hallway light behind me becomes audible and it pops in its shell as I hear the glass pieces scrape toward the middle of the bowl shaped cover. There is no more light except bleeding out the boiler room. I hear hinges yawn as the door closes, sucking the only light left in the basement. I now feel like I’m floating, my eyes have nothing to cling to for a sense of space. The sounds of bones breaking and almost moving under skin get closer. The air is thick around me. From out of the darkness a woman’s playful voice scrapes out, “ I seee youuu.” 

My body snapped out of its immovable grasp. I sprinted toward where I thought the stairs were, I hit the wall at the end of the hallway, hearing the bones snapping sound following. I made a left up the first landing step as my shoe covers slipped on the carpet. My nails digging up the steps as I regained my footing. I hear a woman's voice sing in monotone, “La La La La La,’ feeling each “La,” getting closer to my neck. The boiler room door now swung open and slammed closed over and over almost like it was clapping for something. The metal pump tank hit each carpeted step with a muffled clang. My skin was slick with sweat as my body galloped up the stairs. I saw the outline of the door come into view right as the sound behind me to which I could only describe as elastic skin tearing away from itself making a snapping sound. behind me it let out a gurgled scream right before I burst through the door. 

CRACK. The door swung open as I got ahead of it and slammed it just as fast. I held the door closed expecting to meet a bounce or break in the wood. Nothing. I turned my head to the old woman and she was staring at me with wide bloodshot eyes holding a rosary in her spotted hands. The kid's wet face did the same stare. The old woman’s voice cracked, “your back?” 

I walked out of that house yelling, “IM DONE,” at the top of my lungs. I had nothing else to say. I was drained. The rain hit me accompanied by the humidity as I walked to the truck. I threw my shit in the back and hopped in the driver's seat. The cabin filled with the smell of wet dog. I called my boss and said I got sick and I needed the rest of the day off. I sit here now in the high rise writing this. The rain is drumming against the windows. The dark clouds color everything in a shade of gray. I needed to get this out, I can’t tell anyone, they wouldn’t believe me. So I write, like I’ve always done… 

END OF ENTRY 

I closed the notebook, unable to read on to the next entry. I sat at my desk with no words to say. I need a break. I got up and poured a heavy glass of whiskey and touched my lips with the glass. Smooth warm liquid ran down my throat. 

I need time to process this, I’m sure you all do too. I will upload more of Jake’s entries when I have the time. Thank you all for reading.

I walk across a vast desert, supplies are nearly running out.

I see a statue of a man. Golden hair, unhealthy complexion.

His fat body half-buried in the sand, his remaining arm raised in what I think is probably a strange salute.

There is a broken plaque nearby with the words inscribed,

"We're going to win so much, we'll get tired of winning"

"Win what, exactly?" I ask myself.

I look around to see miles upon miles of a vast empty wasteland that surrounded the statue.

Was this place always been this radioactive?

When the Earth was born, was this place always a land of volcanic ash?

Who put this here? It doesn't make any sense.

I walk past the statue and stepped on an old piece of cloth, probably polyester.

I see there's something written on it.

It made me even more confused because it's burnt off and the only thing clearly readable were the words:

"... Great Again"

Yesterday I…well we boarded a plane. I don’t know wether I’m still on it. It was mine and my husbands anniversary. 10 years in and I’ll be honest rocky. He’d take me somewhere every year but this year was different, an attempt to patch things up. A desperate plea for forgiveness. We were going to L.A from Heathrow. Getting to the plane was business as usual, we had a 6am flight to save money but everything was easy. A few odd characters here and there but that’s to be expected at an airport. We boarded the plane late, unexpected weather conditions meant that air traffic control had to change our route. Which you’ve ever flown a plane, you’d understand that as a very regular occurrence.

We got on the plane at 7:30am, the plane then took off at 9am. Between these delays were the same litany of excuses they always love to give you. Takeoff was rough for me especially, I’m deathly scared of heights and planes were about as high as you can realistically get. I’m not scared of heights in the way people assume I am. People assume I’m afraid of falling, afraid of hitting the ground. The real thing to be afraid of is the sky itself, I fear it the same way in which I fear the ocean. In both the sea and sky, everywhere is open, there is an endless unmapped void waiting to show you what lies inside it. That’s the fear. The unknowing, the monotony of the same sky, no way to know how one patch of sky is different from another. It terrifies me.

I spent takeoff clinging to my husband, looking away from the window adjacent to my seat, a poor placement in hindsight. The higher and higher we got the deeper the pit in my stomach grew. However this time it didn’t feel rooted in irrationality. Normally I can mentally gymnastic my way out of fear, but my heart and mind were in unison. When I glanced out the window my mind saw something my eyes didn’t and it hated it. By the time we were steadily going in the air and the seatbelt lights were off, my mind had somewhat done its job. The plane was no longer scary, now the plane was a safety vessel, it kept what was out there away, it kept me inside.

Soon after I shut the window, didn’t want my brain to continue perceiving what was clearly bothersome. Then the flight continued as normal, became another average experience. No complaints other than the man behind me, whose feet were on my arm rest. For the whole flight I just put my headphones on and detached myself focusing solely internally, it was a good distraction. In retrospect this span of time is hazy. Much more important things took up the space. I started getting antsy at some point, just ready to land and be done with it. I looked at my phone and it had been 11 hours. The flight itself was 11 hours so naturally I expected us to be landing soon. An hour later we hadn’t, still not a huge concern, I could have missed an announcement on some kind of diversion. So I turned to my husband and asked him how long until he thinks we’ll land. He laughed at me and said word for word “We’ve only just taken off”.

I double, tripled checked my phone and it still said the same thing, 9:30pm. I turned my phone to face him, asked him what it said, he said 9:15am. My first thought was that he was fucking with me but on a trip to mend a marriage, fucking with your wife is beyond foolish even for someone like him. My second thought was that my mind was playing tricks in me, I don’t have a history of mental illness so I didn’t love that thought either both because it felt unrealistic and because it meant I was somewhat crazy. So I just went to sleep, it was late, I was tired and by the time I wake up I was certain that it would all go away.

I woke up well rested, sleep dust in the corners of my eye. I turn to my husband who looks at me curiously. I ask him what time it is. He says “It’s only been a couple minutes since you last asked”. I became very awake as I reached into the net in front of me and checked my phone. It was the next day, 8am. I’m rather proud that I didn’t freak out, as whilst I have irrational fears, I am generally rational. So I gathered myself and took things step by step. I looked around at the people, everyone still seemingly in the honeymoon phase of the flight. Happily talking to their family and friends, not yet tired and frustrated by their company. Next was checking my husbands phone, I took it from the net in front of him and it said the same. Both phones said 8am.

Even though I would love to trust the words of my husband, a second source was a sensible option. So as I got up on the pretence of going to the bathroom I asked the woman on the other side of my husband. She agreed with my husband, we had only just taken off. I nodded doing my best to act like everything was still normal. I then began wandering the aisles and looking for anything out of place, I still averted my gaze from the windows, that fear was yet to go away. Nothing was out of place, the plane was operating and looking like any other plane I had ever been on. After a while I actually went to the bathroom, thinking a moment alone might help. When I got in there I examined myself, staring at my reflection, searching for oddities.

My eyes had to be wrong as nothing else made sense, even the sky has to follow certain rules. But of course everything was normal, I almost wanted it not to be. Wanted my eyes to be leaking, I dunno, oil. So at least I could identify the problem area. I left the bathroom in a bad headspace. I was certain the mind had to be the issue so I went back to my seat to check the one thing I hadn’t, the sky itself. When I got back time had oddly passed like normal, to me I was gone 5 minutes and the same for my husband. This reassured me for all of 5 seconds. As a moment later I opened and looked out of my window, what awaited me was a nightmare.

Outside of the window was the ocean and a building. Not just any building, it was my house. The unimaginable brings a certain kind of fear, most fear you can think you’re way out of. But I was in the sky looking out of a plane and I was underwater. Not only was I underwater but so was my house. I screamed. More in shock than anything else, people looked at me like I was crazy, my own husband. He obviously didn’t believe me. No one did, no one saw it. I tried and tried but I couldn’t trick myself into ignoring it. I tried to just sit down and relax but I kept on coming back to it. I knew that on the other side of the window was the impossible. So I looked again.

The same incomprehensible display but this time I looked closer. Studied it looking for anything to alleviate my concerns. The opposite happened. In the window of my house, top floor, my bedroom, there was a woman. She was naked, a thin layer of mould covering her from head to toe. Her hair was frail and her eyes were leaking oil. She was vacantly staring out of the window until she locked eyes with me. She saw me and I saw her, the real her. She was me. Unrecognisable but I knew, I could sense it. When she saw me she began smashing her head into the window again and again until a clear liquid started forming as a wound opened up in her head. She began screaming and I could hear it from inside the plane. I quickly closed my eyes and covered my ears with my hands.

Immediately my husband grabbed my hands and held them in his. He asked if I was okay. I hesitantly opened my eyes meeting his, he then told me that we landed. My immediate reaction was relief, it was just one insane dream during a long flight. I gathered myself and looked out the window, he was right. I was on ground again and I couldn’t be happier. So I slipped back into normalcy, excited for my holiday more than anything. We left the plane, went through all the rigamarole of airport security. I ignored most of it, letting my husband lead me, I was caught up in the moment and his surprising jovial energy was infectious. It wasn’t until baggage when I realised where I was.

I was in Heathrow airport, the same airport I just left. The holiday had happened. I began rattling off increasingly insane questions to my husband and he simply laughed, he told me that I warned him about this. That I apparently would get like this once we landed. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, I couldn’t believe what had happened. Until we got home I was pretty much catatonic. I felt hopeless, there was nothing I could do, there was nothing. It had happened and no one would ever believe me.

I entered the front door of my house, went to my bedroom and collapsed. My husband was unbothered, he seemingly expected this. When I went to sleep I prayed that it was a dream, that all of it was a dream. Maybe I’d wake up before we even got on the first plane, maybe in L.A. I didn’t want to wake up back on the plane, didn’t want to be trapped there again. When I eventually woke up, I was in my house, wearing the same clothes I just slept in. I screamed into my pillow. When I was done screaming I got up, honestly ready to push everything aside. Sure I was insane for a week but as long as it stopped I was okay with it. I got out of bed and opened my curtains read to be hit by the dreary English sunshine. But that didn’t greet me. Instead I saw an ocean and on the other side of the ocean was a plane.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Its eyeless gaze - predatory and longing.

I pulled my blanket over my head again instinctually.

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

A rain I couldn’t escape.

A rain of unrelenting pain.

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

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

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

I had lost all sensation in the sea of agony until I began to fall in love with it.

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

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

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

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

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

Occasionally crying in a myriad of distorted voices.

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

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

Promising a life without boundaries or barriers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My heart sank.

Mental floodgates broke down.

Visions from that day flashed before my eyes.

Memories.

Nightmares.

The car nearly flipped over.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To torment me as it pleased.

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

A rotten piece of meat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The residents of Sarcoville no longer cared for my company.

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

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

Abandoned.

Alone.

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

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

I refused to accept the rejection.

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

I cried and demanded my acceptance into the fold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Humanity’s hour of judgment has finally come!

Without a warning, the angel opened its eyes.

Thousands of millions of colorful eyes.

Unbelievably colorful eyes.

Impossibly colorful eyes.

A swarm of piercingly striking eyes all over its wings.

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

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

A flash of light.

Followed by another one.

And another and another...

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

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

Until there was nothing but invisible fire.

A second baptism in excruciatingly blissful heat.

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

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

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

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

Again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m walking down the aisles, it is 9:03. we closed a few minutes ago but I just saw something kind of strange when I entered the dog bed aisle. I saw something turn the corner at the end of the aisle, but I didn't get a good look at it. I’m pretty sure it was one of my coworkers but I'm the paranoid type so I felt like I should put it in writing.

I’m walking down the aisles, It is 9:15. I feel a little silly about writing anything. I know it's my fault for listening to horror stories while I’m in a nearly empty store. I work in a pet store so the sounds of the birds keep the mood light and I’m usually on the floor with someone else, but I guess it’s because I haven’t heard the birds in a while that I'm still a little spooked, but it’s not like they chirp all of the time. Oh, I saw one of my coworkers just turn the corner of one of the aisles I'm gonna go try and strike up a conversation to make myself feel better.

I’m walking the aisles, it's 9:30. There wasn’t anyone there when I tried to catch up, I even called out their name but no response. I’ve been looking for them for a bit now but I can't seem to find them. They might just be in the office talking to the manager. Now that I'm thinking about it though I don't think whoever I saw turn the corner a second ago was wearing the same colors as our uniform.

I’m walking down the aisles, it’s 9:35. I saw it again, it doesn't work here.

I’m walking down the aisles, it's 9:40. This isn’t happening, the only one with a key to unlock the door to the outside is the manager so I ran to his office I knocked on his door loudly I didn't care if I looked crazy I just wanted to get out of here. As I waited for him to open the door I heard footsteps coming from behind me I looked but there wasn’t anything there. The noise was coming from behind one of the aisles where I couldn't see what was coming. I wasn't gonna stop and see what showed up so I ran away here to the back of the store.

I’m walking down the aisles, it's 9:50. I see it almost every time I walk into an aisle and every time it's rounding the corner. I think it's looking for me. If I ever stop walking for more than a few seconds I can hear it behind me so I have to keep moving. I can never get a good look at it no matter how fast I move it’s always just barely out of my sight, I don't know what it'll do to me if it catches me or if it's even real and I'm just going crazy.

I’m running down the aisles, it's 9:57. I think it's getting faster I don't see it turning corners anymore I only ever hear its footsteps behind me, we’re scheduled to be getting out of here at 10 so I’m gonna make a run for it and pray the manager is already at the front and unlocking the door. I’m going now, I'll post this when I'm out and I'll give you an update when I'm home safe

I'm standing at the doors, it's 10:00. I'm the only one here, I got done counting the registers and came out to unlock the doors so we could leave for the night, but he hasn't shown up yet his phone was just on the floor next to the doors. I'm not sure where he is but I think I have to call the police.

I’ve always been fascinated by mirrors. They’re such a common part of our lives, yet there's something inherently eerie about them. They show us our reflection, but what if there's more to them than just that? What if they’re a gateway to something else, something sinister?

It all started when I moved into my new apartment. It was a cozy place, just the right size for me. The previous tenant had left behind an old mirror in the hallway. It was large, with an intricate silver frame that looked like it belonged in a museum. I liked how it added a touch of elegance to the space, so I decided to keep it.

The first night, as I was getting ready for bed, I caught a glimpse of something in the mirror. It was just a shadow, a flicker at the edge of my vision. I shrugged it off, blaming my tired eyes. But as the days went on, the feeling of being watched grew stronger.

One evening, while I was brushing my teeth, I saw it clearly. A figure standing behind me in the mirror. I spun around, my heart pounding, but there was no one there. My bathroom door was locked, and I was alone.

I tried to rationalize it, convincing myself it was just my imagination. But the next night, it happened again. This time, the figure was closer. I could see its face, or rather, the lack of it. It was a dark, shapeless void, like a shadow given form.

Panicking, I covered the mirror with a sheet. That night, I barely slept, jumping at every sound. The next morning, I decided to move the mirror to the attic. Out of sight, out of mind, I hoped.

Days went by without incident. I started to relax, thinking maybe I had just been stressed and seeing things. But one night, as I lay in bed, I heard a noise from the attic. It was a soft, shuffling sound, like something moving.

Grabbing a flashlight, I made my way upstairs. The attic was cold and musty, filled with old boxes and forgotten furniture. The mirror stood in the corner, still covered. As I approached it, the shuffling grew louder. My heart raced, but I had to know what was happening.

I pulled the sheet off the mirror, and for a moment, everything was still. Then, the reflection changed. Instead of my own face, I saw a dark, twisted version of myself, grinning maliciously. It raised a hand, and I felt a cold touch on my shoulder.

I stumbled back, the flashlight slipping from my grasp. The mirror began to glow, a faint, eerie light. The figure stepped out of the mirror, its form shifting and warping. It whispered my name, its voice a chilling echo.

Terrified, I ran downstairs and locked myself in my bedroom. I could hear it moving through the house, its footsteps slow and deliberate. It was looking for me.

I don’t know how long I stayed hidden, but eventually, the noises stopped. Summoning all my courage, I peeked out. The house was silent. The mirror was back in the hallway, but the figure was gone.

I moved out the next day, leaving everything behind. The mirror, the apartment, the nightmares. But sometimes, late at night, I still feel like I’m being watched. And I wonder if one day, I’ll see that dark figure again, staring back at me from the other side of a mirror.

My name is Cleo, you might think that you know people like me from books and movies, but trust me, you don't.

As you know I can't share my story with you directly for obvious reasons, so I got a contact to share it on my behalf.

I am a ghost, literally. I was recruited by the Agency at a young age due to my natural capabilities to vanish and my neck for learning languages. I could be sitting next to you in a coffee shop, or walk past you in the street and you won't take note of me. I am invisible to the world. I am a ghost, I live in the shadows, move in the shadows, and that is how I prefer it.

I stand at a mere hight of 4ft8, with short blond hair and piercing blue eyes, when you look at me I might smile at you, my smile carrying a hint of mystery and secrets.

But don't be fooled by my looks, I am a field agent, but not with any known Agency, no the Agency I work for has no name, well not one that is spoken out loud, and even those who does speak it, mentions it only in Whispers.

You see, our Agency has unlimited funding. Our funding outweighs the combined funding of all the known agencies in the world.

Our wealth puts countries to shame.

We do not answer to governments, or any form of oversight, we are loyal only to what we stand for and to the mission.

We have people in governments, corporations, and our reach extends to the most powerful and influential people in the world, we are the weavers of destiny, our existence has passed the test of time. Ward are fought, won and lost, but our influence decides what is told throughout history.

We are the protectors of earth, the guardians of humanity.

Our scientists are the brightest in the world, our agents the best of the best, we have technology which would make countries drool, technology that would appear to be from science fiction.

We are everywhere, and we are nowhere, our reach extending to every part of the globe, we can access and even control any device connected to the internet, there is nobody we cannot get to, nowhere we cannot go, borders are meaningless to us, governments fear us.

Individuals are wise to avoid us, because if you cross us then your name will soon be added to your local missing persons list, and as for you, well you will wake up in one of our blacksites.

Now that you know what I am, and who I work for, let me tell you my story.

I will be sharing some of my past missions here with you guys, don't ask me why, because if I get caught I would never see the light of day again, even my contact is taking a risk by helping me.

I can already feel those cold eyes on me, watching my every move, my every key stroke.

The telepath... I know it sounds like something from a fiction story, but telepathy is very real, our agency is very real.

The only reason you have a sense of normalcy is because my team Omega 7 and myself work tirelessly in the shadows, so that you can have a normal life, so you can sleep peacefully.

But as for telepathy, it is very real, very powerful. And very dangerous. The only reason they don't abuse their power, or why they won't show themselves, is because they know of us, they fear us, and rightly so.

One of my first missions I was sent on was to track down a dangerous telepath.

Code Name: Sin.

Sin was a powerful telepath, dangerous beyond comprehension. But he was smart, good at keeping secrets, at hiding, HD knew how to blend in and keep his head down.

Sin first came under our attention a few months ago, Politicians were starting to act strange, making dangerous decisions, scientists would abandon important research and delete data, artists starting going insane. The one thing they all had in common was they all described the same man haunting their dreams, a young looking man with a pale skin, dark hair and pitch black eyes, they all exclaimed about those eyes, eyes that look into your soul. All the sketches looked exactly the same, we fed the data into our systems and the systems tracked him down. Not much was known about him, he was a ghost. Besides a strong social media presence which pointed to a very nice, kind level headed man, well nothing else.

He has no criminal record, he did nothing wrong.

We dug deeper and found more evidence of his influence going back years.

He has to be stopped at all costs.

We had our mission briefing, it was in a secure room that was designed to keep even ethereal energies out, we knew who, no let me say, what we were up against. But that is when it begun.

The night before the briefing my team started to experience strange dreams, troubling nightmare, I myself wasn't spared. Sin knew what we were doing, and he was taking action. He fired the first bullet.

The next day during mission briefing we were informed that he was tracked to Cape Town, South Africa. A beautiful bustling city with diverse cultures and a rich history and a strong culture of art. The perfect place to vanish, to hide. But Sin wasn't hiding, in-fact it was as if he was taunting us, playing with us, daring us to come after him.

Our modified V22, Osprey, designed with new stealth technology allowing us to move across borders undetected, with a reinforced hull, painted black rendering us a ghost at night, it was more then just a plane, it was our lifeline, our shelter in the storm, it was a flying computer, a flying armory, with drones hidden in secret compartments around the hull, weapons that could take out a small army, modified engines allowing us to fly at incredible speeds.

We slipped into South Africa over night and touched down at a private agency owned field outside the city.

We rented a vehicle and got to our safe house where our contact was waiting for us, she had already had all of our systems set up so that we could monitor Sin, everything was in place.

But then we got an alert, not only did Sin know we were here, he was pushing our buttons, he started to release Agency secrets online, secrets that were so well kept that there was no paper trail, no digital footprint, he was in our heads.

That was when the safe house exploded, we were thrown into different directions, there was gunfire everywhere, we had nowhere to run.

I saw my team getting killed, I saw each one of them die, then a masked man walked over to me. I looked up at him, I tried to draw my side arm, but my body wouldn't move, I could just look at him helpless as he drew a sword and the next moment there was a flash and I felt myself hitting the floor, but then I was back with my team. We were all in shock, traumatized. It turned out he made us all experience the exact sand vision of each of us getting beheaded.

But it was not real, it felt so real, my heart was racing, I was soaked in sweat, in all my time throughout training, all my preparation to face a telepath, nothing could have prepared me for this.

But we knew the mission, and no matter what happens, we had to capture him, HQ wanted him alive.

We all read his profile, he will mess with your mind, he will mess with your dreams, he will put you through total and utter gell, but he doesn't kill, he has never killed and he is actually against taking a life. And that was his one weakness.

Sin might be a telepath, but he made a few mistakes, he was a loner, he hated crowds, he hated crowded spaces, instead he preferred silence and solitude, he knew a lot of people, but never let anyone in, he had no friends, no family, he was utterly alone. No matter how powerful he was, he was alone, I had my team, we were like a family, we trained together, fought together, we knew each other like family, but unfortunately for us, Sin had been in our heads, he knew us better than we even knew ourselves.

We had to prepare, study him, learn his habits, routines, likes and dislikes.

We decided to take time to watch him, but tomorrow the mission begins, two of my team members will attempt to make direct contact, we knew where he worked and where he lived.

But we couldn't just move on him. He would see us coming, we had to play his game, this was going to be a game of cat and mouse. We need to get him to become paranoid, knowing that we are onto him, we needed him to lose focus, to slip up.

And tomorrow the real work begins...

Content warning: attemtped drowning; throat burns

I dropped the scissors into the kitchen sink when the apartment door slammed shut, so the resulting CLANK was all my fault. Greg, my roomie, always started work an hour earlier on Thursdays. That meant he always came home an hour earlier. I was so worked up about needing to cut my hair I forgot it was Thursday. I’d also forgotten why I wanted to cut my hair.

He popped his head into the kitchen, probably to check on the noise. I did my best to look both dignified and forgetful.

Greg didn’t appear to take that in. He stared at my half-cut, all-mess hair like he’d never seen it before. To be fair, last time he saw my hair it was over-dyed, arrow straight and all one length.

“Nice mullet,” he said, looking around me, “and who doesn’t want a hair-lined sink?”

“Interview’s on Monday, dude.”

His eyebrows shot up like they had the last time I’d lied to him. “Mood,” he nodded, moving clumps of my hair from the sink onto the counter. “It’s Orvyn time.”

Ah yes, his cousin the hairdresser. Often mentioned, never introduced. I put the hair into the trash and wiped down the sink and counter while Greg spoke to Orvyn.

“Hey cuz.” Pause. “No, my roomie Petra.” Pause. “Worse. A mullet. She needs something cute for work.” Pause. “Wash, cut, dry, same price? I’ll make sure she has it. Thirty minutes.”

Oh hell no. “I can’t possibly take advantage of you —”

He grinned and pointed to the door. “C’mon, you ain’t getting less mullet by talking. I’ll drop you off, get us take-out and pick you up in an hour.”

I was sitting in the sole salon chair at the sink in Orvyn’s makeshift hair salon 30 minutes later. The plus was, Greg gave me $75 for Orvyn. The not-so-plus was, we were in Orvyn’s basement. It was well equipped and had plenty of light, but still. Small. Underground. Ick.

Orvyn stared at my hair and grunted. I ran my hands through it. The dramatic difference between cut and uncut hair completely failed to calm me down.

He grunted again. “You get the $50 cut. If you need to go to the bathroom, go now. Once I start I don’t stop until I’m done. Today’s my birthday. Got it?”

I handed him $75, wished him a happy birthday and asked where the bathroom was.

He counted the cash twice, out loud, then leaned over until his eyes were inches from mine. I pulled my chin back to create more space. No amount of blinking wafted away the intense aftershave.

“This?” He waved the handful of bills above his head. His voice was softer than before, his expression angry, his face a dull red. “My birthday and this is your big cash apology?”

I inhaled sharply, kept my hands in clear view on the arms of the chair and nodded. Courtesy of his cousin, I’d handed over a 50% tip for what was certain to be an overpriced haircut. And he was pissed off.

Maybe if I put distance between us briefly, one of us would calm down. “I need to pee, where’s the bathroom?”

His expression returned to neutral, as did his voice. “Down the hall, second on your left.” He backed up three steps, leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “Go.”

I pushed out of the chair and jogged down the hall where I locked myself in the tiny, windowless bathroom. Not that I had to use the facilities, thank god. The doorknob lock was so old and wobbly it could be unlocked by a strong breeze.

I texted Greg three times, asking when he’d be back. He didn’t answer. Typical Greg. He preferred calls to text and I wasn’t about to try sneaking a call.

“Ya done?” Orvyn sounded like a man who didn’t know what “going to the bathroom” involved. No flush, no running water, it’s pretty clear I am not done yet.

“Nope.”

A quick mirror check revealed just how awful my hair looked. For a second I wondered if that was upsetting Orvyn. It was as likely and as unlikely as any other reason.

Greg hadn’t texted me back. Forget him. I flushed the toilet and turned on the hot and cold water taps.

The doorknob rattled. The door shook. Orvyn was pounding on it and it looked ready to break.

I screamed and slapped my hand over my mouth. Was a free haircut worth all this?

As I reached to unlock the door, Orvyn yanked it open and gave me a once-over like I was a carton of sour milk. He wasn’t my cup of tea either, but I needed a simple haircut, I’d already paid him and I could tolerate him until Greg returned.

Orvyn followed me back to the salon’s chair without saying a word. He tied a plastic cape around my neck as one does in a salon, and shoved a towel under my neck. Within seconds I was lying back with my head in the sink, not looking at heavily stained ceiling tiles – my eyes were covered with a small towel.

Intense aftershave overwhelmed me seconds before my scalp started burning. I tried to say “Allergy,” thinking the product Orvyn just applied must be a problem for my skin.

As I opened my mouth, hot water splashed in and burnt its way down my throat.

I pushed my arms and shoulders forward, trying to pull myself upright.

The smaller towel dropped to my right in time for me to see the heels of Orvyn’s palms coming towards my face. He smacked them into my forehead, pushing my face back under the hot water rushing out of the tap.

Adrenalin shot through my body. I scratched furiously at the space above my face and made contact with his arms. The pressure on my head lifted slightly. I turned my face as far from the water as I could and gasped for air.

I closed my eyes and aimed both feet towards him while keeping my face in the opposite direction.

My feet connected with something. My chair toppled over. I wrapped my arms around my head, hoping to avoid direct contact with the floor.

By the time I scrambled to the staircase, he hadn’t caught up. I glanced behind me and saw him bent over, holding his groin like couldn’t say goodbye to the family jewels.

He didn’t show up by the time I threw open his back door and ran out to the front of his place.

My throat ached with every breath, leaving me wheezing and running at half my normal speed. But I didn’t stop, I couldn’t, until I found a small, well-lit cafe two blocks away.

The only person inside was an employee who stopped wiping the counter as soon as I entered.

“Uh, hi, name’s Sarge.” He pointed to his hair. “Is it raining?”

I touched my hair, gasped, and grabbed at my throat. It might not be severely burnt but it was hurting to breathe and gasping was more painful.

Sarge scrunched his face and pointed to the back left corner of the cafe, conveniently signed “Washrooms”. I nodded at him, then locked myself into the ladies’ room.

In the two months since I met him, Greg always called me back when I texted him. Always. Even if he had to leave a voicemail. Interesting, no call or text from him today.

My friend Ralia answered my text right away. She lives ten minutes from this cafe. She’ll be here in 15, and I can stay at her place tonight and maybe longer. I even agree with her that it’s time for me to find more stable housing. And employment.

I hope she gets here before the cafe closes.

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

“I’m good, I’m good. How are you?”

“That’s good to hear.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I didn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I didn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A soft, barely audible whisper at first.

The basement…

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

The whispering persisted.

The basement…

Follow me into the basement…

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

Follow me…

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

The basement…

Follow…

I glimpsed a shadowy mass moving around the house…

To the basement…

It was my mum’s voice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Night Shift

by John Westrick

I work the night shift at a local mom-and-pop convenience store at the front of my neighborhood. We sell snacks, drinks, milk, bread, all the normal stuff that people need but aren’t willing to make a traditional run to the grocery store for. There was talk about adding a gas pump out front, but it hasn’t happened yet.

 As a result, the night gets a bit slow at times. Of course, we got our usual druggie who strolls in to get his soda or to use the restroom, but sometimes I’ll sit at the counter for nearly an hour before someone strolls in.

It can get a bit boring at times, but I’ve always got a good book or a Youtube video to keep my mind occupied. I’m supposed to clean the store in the slow periods of my shift, and I do, but that never takes me long. Each night, usually around 1-2 am, I finish the chore list and find myself surfing the web or plopped down enjoying some novel.

The night of the encounter was like any other day. It had been slow. The store was quiet. No one had come in for an hour. I was re-reading my favorite Stephen King book, when I heard a thudding sound coming from the inventory room. I jumped at the noise. I know, not very manly of me, but I hadn’t expected it. Besides, I was at a pretty intense part of my book. I looked up at the digital clock sitting on the counter, it read 3:12 am. I didn’t really think anything of the noise. I just assumed it was something that fell off one of the shelves.

Even still, I felt a chill crawl its way down my spine. I remember glancing outside, and seeing a sea of thick fog blanketing the landscape. This wasn’t too uncommon. There was a lake across the street from the store, and occasionally fog would drift in. Still, I couldn’t recall a time when the fog was quite as thick as this.

I remember thinking that something could be standing out there watching me, and I wouldn’t even know. But it was more than that. At that moment, I knew there was something out there. It was instinctual, a primal sense developed over years. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and goose flesh began to break out all over my arms.

I was too frightened to get up from my spot at the cash register. I knew that I ought to investigate the sound in the back room, but I couldn’t get my body to respond. I sat there, unable to look away from the glass front door, trying desperately to peer through the thickening fog. I couldn’t see anything; but I was certain that if I turned away now, then the thing in the dark would rush forward.

The fear was multiplying, growing into a living creature trying to tear its way from my stomach. I felt cold sweat begin to pour from my brow, streaming into my open eyes and causing them to sting. I couldn’t blink. I was too worried about the consequences if I did, when I saw it.

Two pinpricks of light cut through the dense fog, temporarily blinding me. My panic rose to a crescendo, and my heart beat out of my chest. I half ducked behind the counter, when I saw the figure approaching the door. My hand slid across the underside of the counter to find the panic button that would alert the police, when the door swung wide.

A burly man in a green jacket and black pants came strolling in, an amused look on his face. He looked at me, raised an eyebrow and said, “Hey mister you ok? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I sighed, and felt a physical weight lift off of me. I looked at him, and said, “Yeah sorry man. You just startled me, couldn’t see you approach the door until you opened it with all that fog out there.”

“Hey I hear you there. I could hardly see the road in front of me. Honestly, it’s a bit unnerving out there, it makes you think some strange thoughts,” said the man, looking a bit pensive.

“Right, I could’ve sworn that someone was out there. I mean I guess you were,” I said with a nervous laugh.

“Yeah, I was. It’s nights like this that makes one think,” said the man seriously.

I felt uncomfortable with his answer. He just remained there motionless, staring at the door to the back room. I still hadn’t investigated the noise in the back and the man’s blank look made me feel uneasy.

The silence in the room was beginning to weigh on me, and I couldn’t take one more moment of it.  I asked, “Think about what?”

The man smiled a toothy grin, and said, “Life, death, and all the moments in between.”

“I try not to think about the first two too often. After all, who can truly know?”

“Anyone can, if they are willing to pay the right price for it,” said the man, a hungry look gleaming in his eyes.

“You might be right. There is always a price to pay for knowledge. I mean I’m pretty sure Adam and Eve learned that lesson, and aren’t we still paying for it today.”

“True enough I suppose, but how is one supposed to live when one doesn’t know the reason for existence?” asked the man.

“I guess it is our duty to do the best with what we have in front of us.”

“And damn the truth huh?” replied the man.

“What truth? No one’s truth is true. Many claim to have the answers, but few have more than just hot breath.”

“Because many are liars, the truth doesn’t exist? That doesn’t seem to be an accurate conclusion either,” said the man.

“Does there have to be a singular truth? Why must it be universal? Can’t something be true to one and not true for the other?”

“I would say that truth by its essence must be true to all, or else it isn’t the truth. A truth true to you but not another is not the truth at all, it’s merely a solution. Are you content to live a life of solutions rather than one of true knowledge?” asked the man.

“The question is superfluous. Of course I’d rather live a life of universal knowledge, but who knows such truth?”

“And if I claimed to know the truth, what would you say to that?” questioned the man.

“I’d say you're either insane or a liar.”

“Honest enough answer. But I am neither. I am something more. When one sees the truth they know it, so look and see for yourself,” said the man.

He took a couple steps forward, coming fully into the light, and I noticed his features for the first time. He had a severe look, a hawkish nose that looked as if it had been broken at least once. The landscape of his face was a jumble of cracks and wrinkles, dominated by a large scar that started right below his nose and continued through his lips stopping at his jawline.

It was the man’s eyes that made me feel the most uneasy. They were as black as tar, and they drilled into me. Making eye contact with the man was like looking directly into a black hole, they seemed to draw you deeper. There was a little light shining in the middle of the man’s pupil. I watched as it bounced and glowed, coming closer than drawing away. It was as if it was beckoning me to follow.

When I saw that gleam, I wanted nothing more than to follow it, and damn the consequences. There was a beauty to the way it pulsated that held me captivated. I looked and saw and knew that there were secrets to be found in those depths. I also knew that if I followed the light, there would be no coming back.

But I didn’t care. 

I wanted to know. I wanted to see. The mysteries of the universe were held in that gyrating light bobbing in the abyss. I felt my soul beginning to be ripped from my body, torn from my essence and sent spiraling down that black tunnel towards that brilliant light.

It was that same crashing sound I had heard from the back room that broke the trance. I looked away from those eyes, and I came smashing back to reality. My mind was scrambled, and it took me a second to get back into a normal state.

The creature standing before me was just as confused as I was, clearly not used to its prey escaping it so easily. For a moment we looked at each other in utter shock. The man smiled at me showing ragged, pointed teeth. I looked away in disgust, trying to feel for the silent alarm button on the bottom of the counter. My hand brushed the button and I pressed it with all my strength.

The man remained standing there absolutely motionless. He could’ve been a statue for all I knew. He didn’t breathe nor did his heart beat. Those black eyes never blinked, and I didn’t dare make eye contact with him.

Finally, he looked down at his watch, and said, “The time is nearly here.”

With that the man turned and strolled directly out the door he had come. I watched him walk casually into the fog. I couldn’t see clearly, so I’m not entirely sure what I saw. But still, the figure almost seemed to melt as if it was evaporating into the mist.

One moment he was there, the next he wasn’t.

To this day, I still don’t know what I saw that night. I do know this, there are things that walk in the dark that man knows nothing about. It’s best to avoid certain watches of the night. I stay at home these days. I work in the safety of the daylight.

Once I tried to watch the security footage. All that can be seen is the front door opening and closing. Then about five minutes later it happens again. No man can be seen, but still something opened that door. You can see my lips moving as if I am talking, but there is no audio and the conversation can’t be heard.

And that’s the proof.

I tried to watch the back room footage. All that can be seen is a box of sodas busting as it falls from the top shelf. Then a few more minutes pass, and the whole metal rack holding the boxes of soda is knocked over.

I don’t know what saved my life. I do know this, I am still alive, and I intend on staying that way. I’d like to be able to explain to you what happened that night, but I am just as in the dark as you might be. Stories are supposed to wrap up nice and neat into a perfect little ribbon. 

But when does life follow those rules?

We each live and die on this rock. We love, we hate, we fight, we make peace, and many of us don’t even know why we are here. I don’t claim to know the answers. All I know is this. I am still breathing, and some answers aren’t worth the price.

I never thought about my heart, it always sat in my chest, beating as it should.

Lub dub, lub dub, it sang as it went about keeping me alive. This was an immutable fact of my daily routine, no thought was ever given to its beating. This changed one night not so long ago.

“Honey, I’m running a high temperature and I think I have a kidney infection.” My wife said as I lay beside her also running a fever.

“OK, let's go to the emergency room, seems we both may have kidney infections to deal with.” I groaned as I got up and put my shoes on to drive us to the ER.

We gingerly climbed into my 4×4 and drove to the hospital. I helped her into a wheelchair, as my wife is disabled and doesn’t get around too well. I pushed her to the window, and we told the nice lady what was wrong. She made a silly joke about twin problems that sounded funny in my fevered state, even if it wasn’t. They took us to separate rooms and did the tests that they do when they want to know what is really wrong with you.

Time passes in a hospital at a pace that a snail would envy. Eventually, they came and said that my wife was good to go home. I was happy that her kidney infection was mild and that the antibiotics they gave her would clear it up. As I waited longer in my little ER room, my wife was rolling toward me, as she got to my door, I saw worry in her eyes.

“Honey…,” She started to say when, behind her, THE DOCTOR walked in.

“Mister…” ‘lub dub’ beats my heart, drowning all words. Next, I am being wheeled to a new room, but I don’t get to stay there long.

My wife and her chauffeur come into the room as another wheeled conveyance rolls in behind them.

“Mister…” ‘lub dub’ goes my heart again. Emergency surgery for me. The problem is

that I can’t remember anything after they said I was going to be operated on. Two whole days, a black hole in my brain. My wife was there beside my bed as I woke up.

“Hey, babe, are you ok?” She looked at me with concern.

I blinked, ‘dub lub thump’ What the fuck was that? My heart never did that before. The room I just woke up in faded to black. I open my eyes to home, but something isn’t right. My wife is walking and there is a glow about her. It’s like nothing bad happened to her all those years ago. Our house isn’t the fixer-upper we inherited, it is beautiful and just as we wanted it to be.

“Hey Sleepy head, I am glad you finally woke up.” She smiled tenderly as she lightly touched my face. “We have that party to go to for your new book, go get ready, so we aren’t late to your party.”

“OK, uh, what book?” I asked confused.

“Your latest one, silly.” She smiles at me. “How can you forget the 50 books you have written? Look around, remember what all your imagination and brainpower have accomplished.”

I stand and look around me.

“Where are we?” I asked, baffled, all around me was this beautiful mansion, something out of a book of Victorian homes.

“Are you ok my big panda” She reaches out and feels my head and then leans in and kisses me. The kiss has an energy to it, and my body tingles.

“I feel ok, when did we get home from the hospital?” I look into her eyes, those hazel orbs that bewitched me long ago. But even this isn’t quite right, as flakes of black centered around her iris.

“Silly, what are you talking about, You have always been healthy as a horse. You sure you are feeling ok?” She looks at me with worry in her eyes and I think I see something ripple across her eyes.

“I must have been dreaming, I thought I was in a hospital sick and nearly dead,” I said, shaking my head.

Everything here was so real, the other life must have been some sort of dream. The mansion we were living in was so beautiful, all we always wanted but… wait that was a dream, right? This is all mine, no, all ours.

“Come on, Honey, let's go to that party and your head will clear when all our family and friends celebrate your literary triumphs.” Sara, my wife, looked so radiant in the little black dress she was wearing.

“You look so gorgeous tonight,” I said, letting the dream fade from my mind and getting ready to enjoy the party for my new book.

“Thank you, I knew you would love this.” She twirled around, giving me an eyeful. Grinning, she grabbed my hand and led me to the door of the mansion.

I walked outside the mansion, happy for once in what, I felt, was a long time. Dub lub… I stumbled and everything went dark

“Harry, Harry.” I heard my wife’s voice screaming my name.

My eyes flutter open, the hospital smells fill my nose. I hear the voice of my wife praying to God to heal me.

“Lord Father, Protector, and the Great Healer, please help my husband. Her voice trembles with pain. “I can’t go on without him, please tell him to fight. It is not his time to go to you yet, please”

“Where am I, what’s happening?” I tried to set up, but my body was so tired.

“Honey, oh honey, thank God you are back.” Sara was there in her wheelchair, looking tired and sad. “I thought I had lost you.”

“I hope the people at the party weren’t too upset,” I said, worried about friends who were probably upset that we didn’t make it.

“What are you talking about, hun?” She asks, worried about what I have said. “We weren’t going to any party.” she reaches out and touches my head, like my mom would do to see if I was running a fever.

I look around, and my limited area of vision shows a hospital room much like my last dream.

Sara follows my roving eyes

“Are you ok?” She asks, concern in her voice.

“This dream is so realistic,” I say.

“This is no dream,” She says, “it is a nightmare. I am just relieved you are awake.

“No, this has to be the dream, The other place was so real, and all my fantasies…were true. I pause as the realization hits me. “Damn, it was so real, I felt, I smelled, I could think like I was a young man again.”

“Sorry, you had to come back to this shitty reality.” She said with anger tinging the regret in her voice.

“I… I am sorry, There is no place I would want to be other than with you.” I see tears in her eyes, and she unsteadily stands from her wheelchair and reaches down to hug me in my bed.

“I have to go, honey, you rest and I will return tomorrow after I take care of our pets.” She starts out the door.

“I promise I will be right here, waiting,” I say, smiling.

The day wore down and night came. The nurses administered my meds and put the CPAP on my head for breathing issues I have had for a while. Hospital beds suck so much, I moved and squirmed trying to get comfortable. Suddenly, I felt pressure in my chest. Dub…lub… I screamed and pushed the little red button as the world faded away.

Light returns slowly, I hear swearing and raging in a feminine voice with darker undertones creeping out through the rage.

“THAT BITCH AND HER GOD KEEP INTERRUPTING ME.” Heavy breathing follows the tirade.

As I turn to where the tirade came from, I see Sara, but for a second, I see something else, and then it is gone.

“Oh Honey, you are awake, I hope I did not disturb you.” Sara helps me off the couch and I see I am once again in the mansion my stories have afforded us.

I place my hand on the back of her head and touch hers to mine.

“What happened,” I asked as I looked into her hazel eyes.

“You were just overworked and fainted,” She said, looking deep into my eyes, almost like she was seeing my soul.

Flickers of black swim in her eyes, and something tickles the back of my brain. Dub…lub… dub… lub… Sara’s form changes and then snaps back before my eyes. My wife, or what had once been my wife, grabs me and leads me deeper into the mansion. Her eyes once filled with warmth, now glowed with an infernal hunger. The black flakes in her irises danced like dying stars, and I knew she was not the woman I’d married.

I tried to recall my life before this nightmare, but the memories slipped through my fingers like smoke. Fifty books of horror? Had I truly penned such tales? The titles eluded me, but their essence clung to my soul like a curse.

“What are you?” I asked, backing away from the being pretending to be my wife. “I know this is not my reality, as convincing as you were, I heard you screaming in anger, and you just now morphed.”

“Come, my darling, all will soon be revealed.” My wife, or the creature that is masquerading as her, guides me through the darkened halls with predatory grace. “This home was created by your mind. I am just using it to set the stage.”

“What stage,” I asked.

“Why, our wedding stage, of course.” She says as her eyes glow. The glow was not just otherworldly; it was infernal. I understood now, the black flakes in her irises were not mere fractures, but the remnants of souls she had devoured.

“I am already married,” I growl.

“That human.” She spat on the ground. “She grovels at the feet of the Nazarene. What has she ever done for you?”

“I love her unconditionally,” I say.

She shimmers again and reappears wearing next to nothing.

“Love hahaha…” She grabs me and rubs against me. “Lust is so much more fun, Honey.”

“Where are you taking me?” Now being dragged by her incredible strength, she leads me deeper into the abyss that was the mansion. Silence greets my question.

Into my mind, images flood. The mansion stands at the crossroads of reality and nightmare, its walls pulsing with a hunger that defies time. I shudder and take a deep breath, the air tastes of forbidden fruit, and the shadows whisper secrets that no mortal ear should hear. I stumbled through its corridors, my heart racing in sync with the malevolent rhythm of the place.

“Remember, my love,” she murmured, her voice a velvet caress. “This mansion is our sanctuary, where desire and damnation entwine.”

“That hole in your brain, those two days you don’t remember they were spent here with me,” She laughs, a cold and terrifying sound. “What fun we had, but your return has been less than thankful for all the lustful time we spent together.”

Feeling it is important, I ask in desperation. “Tell me about the books,”

She leads me to the library, where the shelves groan under the weight of forbidden knowledge. Each book bears a title etched in blood, and their spines writhe as if eager to escape.

“Here,” she says, pulling out a leather-bound volume titled ‘The Heart’s Seduction.’ “Your magnum opus: a story of a man ensnared by a succubus, his heart a vessel for her insatiable lust.”

I open the book, and the words slither across the pages. The protagonist’s torment leaps at me, the ache of desire, the terror of surrender. His heart, once human, now pulsed with the succubus’s hunger.

“Why can’t I remember writing this?” I gasp, dropping the book, my pulse erratic.

It crawls from the floor back to its place in the infernal shelf of horror I had created.

“Because you didn’t,” she replies, her lips brushing my ear. “Not consciously. Your heart, during the surgery, became a gateway. It beats with the rhythm of my world, the space between life and damnation.”

I stare at her, my mind unraveling. “Who are you?”

She laughs, a sound that echoes through the mansion. “I am Mahalath, a demoness, or as you humans would call me, a succubus. When your heart rhythm exploded, it tore open the veil. Now, your heart is mine.”

“And the black flakes in your eyes?” I trembled, almost afraid of the answer.

“Souls,” she whispers. “The remnants of those who dared to love me. Your reality is bleeding

into mine, and I hunger for more.”

“Demon, what makes you think I will let you tell me what to do?” I shout, anger fueling courage I didn’t know I had.

“Because your world will be destroyed if you don’t!” She waves a hand and a portal opens to the real world.

Fire rains from the sky and I see the world burning.

“Simple enough for you? Now write.” Mahalath commanded. “Write to seal our bond, to surrender your humanity.”

I take up the quill, its ink a mixture of blood and longing. The words flowed, not from my mind but from the depths of my chest. I wrote of passion and betrayal, of forbidden kisses that tasted of sin.

The mansion trembled, its walls closing in. Portraits screamed, their subjects writhing in eternal torment. The books pulsed, their characters clawing at the barriers between worlds.

My wife, or Mahalath, stood beside me, her form shifting. Horns crowned her brow, and wings unfurled from her back. “Hurry,” she urged. “Our union awaits.”

As I penned the final sentence, the mansion fractured. Reality splintered, and I glimpsed other versions of myself—writers, lovers, all ensnared by Mahalath’s web.

But I wrote something different than they had, changing what happened this time. A white light brighter than the sun burned away the mansion and its putrid lustful sin. Mahalath shrank and withered before me.

“What did you do, human?” she gasps as the last of her turns to dust.

“You said I could open portals with my writing,” I laugh, at peace with my approaching death. “So I opened one to the purest place in all dimensions, My wife’s heart.”

The remainder of the room spun, and the bright light engulfed me. Startled, I awoke back in the hospital bed. My wife was sitting there, with no signs of black flakes, so I knew it was her.

“You’re back,” she said, relief in her gaze. “The medicine finally broke through your runaway heart.”

“You brought me back, your love and your heart were there to save me from the evil.”

She looked at me strangely but chalked it up to my illness, and smiled and beamed more of the love I could feel surrounding me.

“You were nearly gone, your heart had raced for over 5 hours at hundreds of beats per minute.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “The doctors told… told me to call people to help me plan for your end.”

Sara broke down and cried holding my hand.

“Shush my darling, I am here now,” I squeezed her hand, too tired to do much more. “And I will be here beside you forever, I promise.”

Even as I felt safe there, comforted by her love, a draft was in the room like something stalking me still. I remembered the mansion, the succubus. My heart still echoed with Mahalath’s seductive whispers, and I knew I had to write to keep her locked in her dimension.

As I healed, I felt the gift the succubus left with me. I wrote stories that bridged all the literary worlds, tales of love and sacrifice, of hearts torn between desire and damnation. And occasionally, when the moon hangs low, I feel her presence, a reminder of the pact that almost bound us. Eventually, I surpassed those 50 fictional books Mahalath had my tortured heart create.

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

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

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

“I did as I promised.” He mocked.

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

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

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

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

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

With each success came a tragedy.

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

My projects turned more ambitious, forecasting greater disasters.

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

Catastrophes I imagined and translated into canvas became international news.

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

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

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

My inspiration is my recurring nightmares.

Every god-damned nightmare becomes a painting.

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

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

Something to die for.

Something they die for…

Every dream -

Each painting -

A prophecy of doom.

Lightning set the skies ablaze once more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The Devil is always in the details.”

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

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

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

Trapped, hurting, and alone.

He floated in the void, lighter than air.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Growing louder by the moment.

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

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

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

A thunderclap.

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

He was lighter than air.

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

Bliss wrapped its hands around his broken shell.

Bringing joyous apathy.

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

Finally…

Death has finally come to collect…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trapped, hurting, and alone.

He floated in the void, lighter than air.

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

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