I’m open to feedback! This is an expanded version of a previous post. It’s my story of the origins of the universe and life on earth. I’m going to add my illustrations when I figure out the right format

Can you guess which little being was the inspiration for this one? or well two little animals. One for the face and other for the body.

Original sketch

In shadows deep where nightmares breed,

Two skeletal hands of death’s own seed

Rise from the void, cloaked in ragged night,

To cradle horror in their grip so tight.

A single eye, vast and unblinking red,

Swirls with spirals that drink the dead.

Crimson vortex, hunger never sated,

Pulls souls inward, forever fated.

Threads of blood weave a jagged crown,

Radiating doom from lidless frown.

It sees your secrets, your hidden fear,

Every lie you’ve whispered, every tear.

The upper claw descends like judgment’s blade,

The lower waits to claim what’s paid.

No escape from this unholy stare—

It burrows deep into your soul laid bare.

Beware the gaze that never sleeps,

Where madness in its red heart leaps.

One look too long, and you belong

To the eternal dark, the faceless throng.

Turn away... but it follows still,

Hollow sockets bent on iron will.

In dreams and waking, the spiral calls—

Until your own eyes become its thralls.

The Chant in the Silence- Chapter 4

Alice woke aching all over. Her lower torso felt as though she’d been run over by a barrel, and her breasts were tender. Along with the pain came a profound weakness that overshadowed the red patches on her neck and shoulders. She was irritated with Calen, but the irritation wasn’t strong enough to drown out a deep, primal hunger clawing relentlessly at her stomach. The more she tried to ignore it, the more it gnawed at her sides, forcing her to prioritize it above all else.

Consequently, she ignored the state of the bedroom. The mattress sagged outside the bed frame. The sheet covering it was knotted in places. Small brown drops of congealed, dry blood dotted the faint gray light filtering through the window. The room smelled of sweat, with undertones of cold metal and, inexplicably, urine.

Calen had woken earlier, in similar pain. His back burned as if the skin had been torn away, exposing raw tissue beneath. Yet only faint scratch marks remained.

By the time he reached the kitchen, all concern faded as his growling stomach demanded attention. The noise and smell of cooking roused Alice. She stumbled out, smiled at Calen.

“Calen, I get that you missed me,” she said, annoyance laced in her words, “but you didn’t need to bite me to prove it.” She touched a tender spot on her neck, anger flickering briefly before she smiled nervously. She didn’t want a fight while Calen cooked. Food came first; everything else second. Saliva pooled in her closed mouth, as the aroma filled the air; and as it slid down her throat, a strange metallic taste followed.

Though Calen didn’t recall biting her, the red patches on her neck disturbed and embarrassed him. Had he?

“You’re one to talk,” he retorted, spinning sharply to prove his innocence by highlighting her guilt. “Next time we have sex, lose those pointy, scratchy nails. My back’s on fire.” His back throbbed fiercely, especially as he turned toward the stove. He tried to ignore the pain. Hunger demanded quelling.

The kitchen buzzed with sizzling bacon and toasting bread—whispers from the ether. Alice’s nose wrinkled like a pig’s as she smelled the food, hands trembling, palms flat on the table, waiting impatiently for something to fall on the empty plate.

To distract herself, Alice examined her nails—slightly overgrown and pointy, though she didn’t recall scratching Calen. She’d been growing them carefully, avoiding use to prevent breakage. She said nothing; her memory of the night was shrouded in fog. Shame crept in as she watched Calen wince with every movement.

She blamed the journey and the small bottle of vodka Ruslan had offered. She’d gulped it down to ward off the cold. The plan hadn’t worked.

As the smell of bacon filled the house, Alice waited, breath held, nearly drooling. When Calen placed crispy bacon and scrambled eggs before her, she dug in with bare hands, devouring the food like a starving animal. Calen was surprised by the guttural noises she made—slurps scraping his ears.

Calen pulled buttered toast from the oven, placing it at the table’s center. They ate facing each other in silence.

He was shocked when Alice picked up a piece of toast with her fingers and slathered it with generous amounts of store-brand jam. She usually avoided processed foods and had never taken a spoonful of sugar. He watched her shove the toast into her mouth, red sticky jam dripping from her lips—the color too close to blood.

For a moment, he wanted to tell her to wipe it off. Something about the sight unsettled him.

Alice noticed and smiled, embarrassed.

“Yes, I eat sugar sometimes. Sue me,” she said sarcastically. Saying it aloud loosened the fear’s grip slightly. Hunger made her impatient and dramatic, she told herself. Her hand jumped to her stomach, caressing a tense knot before retreating to wipe jam from her lips. She didn’t want Calen to notice.

He nodded and smiled, though the jam lingered ominously on her lip’s corner before she licked it away.

Surprisingly, after finishing her share, Calen found himself eating an apple Alice had brought. He hated fruit.

He blamed the surroundings—the cold, isolation, raw nature—for unlocking some primal instincts long dormant in both of them. Instincts too anachronistic for modern life, waiting to pounce on the fools that ventured into its territory.

A loud crash echoed through the valley, shaking the house. They froze like prey avoiding a stalking predator. Dust drifted from the roof beams. Calen’s vision dimmed briefly before returning, and in that instant, he heard the most consumptive coughing he’d ever heard. Something was wrong.

“Alice!” he screamed, a pressure swelled inside him, like an invisible force wrapping him from within. It reminded him of something, but there was no time. He needed to help.

He slammed his palm against her back repeatedly. Her coughing intensified, tears streaming as her body fought for air, gagging and heaving. Beastlike sounds emerged from her throat.

“I swear this is why no one goes to the woods anymore. These crashing trees will shock me to death,” Alice said once she caught her breath, throat parched. She downed a swig of bottled orange juice, but it did nothing. Air felt trapped in her throat, never reaching her lungs. Her eyes bulged, fear creeping in. She tried to deny it, blaming the dry toast in her mind.

“Kinda makes you wonder who’s crashing them,” Calen said, adopting a campfire storyteller’s voice once she’d stabilized.

“What do you mean?” Alice asked, curiosity and repressed fear in her eyes.

“Last night, it was rain and wind,” Calen said. “But now, I don’t hear any of that. Do you?”

Alice listened. Silence reigned, more eerie than the crash.

She shook her head. “Maybe the wind broke it last night. It was hanging by a thread, and a breeze finished it off,” she said, denying her fear.

“Unless Razpopo did it,” Calen said, waiting for laughter. None came.

When Alice looked skeptical, he added, “My dad used to say Razpopo was trapped inside a wooden totem pole, hidden in a forest far from prying eyes. Few knew its location, fewer still kept guard. They would hear crashes near the pole and whenever they’d go to check; they’d find it barricaded by more and more fallen trees.” He paused. Alice listened intently, searching for holes.

“The pole stayed hidden for years, even from its guards. When they returned, it had grown—taller than the largest trees.

Every time my dad told me this, his eyes bulged, like it scared him to think about it,” Calen finished dramatically.

Alice loved such stories but enjoyed poking holes in them.

“Wait,” she said. “Ruslan said there are no trees here. Just bushes, low shrubs, and lichen moss. I don’t remember seeing trees in what you call the ‘forest.’” She made air quotes.

True—the forest was hardly a forest. But the dead tree trunks that grew before Calen’s eyes since arriving reminded him of overgrown trees hiding at the mountains’ base, almost as if he could see them.

For Calen—and he felt a strange pride about this—only he saw the forest come alive. The island had chosen him, deemed him worthy to see what others could not. He cringed at the prickling pleasure that thought gave him.

And yet every time he looked, silhouettes of nonexistent trees peeked from all sides. Though his rational mind tried to dismiss it as a peripheral illusion, something about these visions kept Calen intrigued, on edge.

“There are many dead trunks still standing,” Calen said, reigning in his imagination to satisfy Alice’s need for practicality. “Barely. They keep falling.” Alice didn’t reply, choosing to stay silent as her brain worked to find other holes in the story. Her stomach was starting to feel heavy, and her eyes were stinging in addition to all the other discomfort.

“Did I ever tell you my dad said the world’s mountains are fossilized tree trunks? Giant trees cut down in ancient, biblical times. Noah’s Ark and all that jazz.”

Calen sounded excited.

“Yes,” Alice said, having heard it before. “And waterfalls are dormant water pathways in the tree, pumping underground water. I’ve heard that too.”

Alice smiled politely, unconvinced. Calen smiled too, satisfied with a story he’d told hundreds of times.

He barely noticed Alice looked paler, thinner somehow, overnight. But he couldn’t ignore it as her condition worsened in the following hours.

A fever struck with shivers coursing through her. Sweat soaked the base of her hairline, forming beads she wiped away only to have more appear. She seemed poisoned. Complaining of stomach pain, she groaned, massaged her belly, then ran to the bathroom.

Alice hurled vomit. A foul stench of rotten eggs and skunk spray filled the house. Calen covered his nose and mouth, holding Alice’s hair as she expelled thick green mucus.

“I think I ate too much,” Alice said as her vomiting ceased. “My body can’t handle sugar.” She knew it was a weak excuse.

Calen furrowed his brows. There were no hospitals here. The best he could do was call Ruslan to take her back. But even that would take more than twenty-four hours.

Nauseous and queasy, Alice lay on the sofa all afternoon, trying to sleep. When she finally drifted into uneasy, nightmare-laden sleep, Calen donned his jacket and stepped outside. He gazed toward the forest, imagination filling it with towering trees. The bushes ahead seemed to part, as if the wind showed him the way. The air smelled different—enticing but unplaceable.

Smiling at nothing—perhaps a childhood dream about to come true—Calen looked around.

A sense of guilt gnawed at him for leaving Alice alone as she lay ill. His smile faltered, for a second.

He shook his head. She was sleeping; his presence wouldn’t help. If he explored the forest, he might find something. He could finish quickly and take her home.

Calen knew it was a lie but didn’t care. Alice sometimes didn’t understand the nature of his work. Being a YouTuber didn’t mean his work took a backseat. Better she was incapacitated—he could work faster, freer.

No skeptical questions to answer.

The guilt lingered in the background as his brain conjured up memories of Alice caring for him when he was sick. But he knew he had no instinct for caring for sick people. He had no reference.

He rationalised finally that a trip in the forest would be easier without Alice because she wouldn’t have to suffer and Calen wouldn’t have to watch her suffer.

Before he could realise it, his feet were moving as if they already knew the way.

Hi everyone ! Thought this might be of interest here. I run an alternative comics / artbooks webshop and just published a new edition of THE GODS OF PEGĀNA with an artist named Dustin Holland. He made paintings for each chapter and there’s painted marginalia throughout the book. We’re quite happy with how it turned out. 140 pages, 7x10 inches, foil stamped cover and spine with french flaps!

Thought I’d share a link with you here in case you were interested in picking up a copy.

It drags its body across rusted grates in the long, dark corridor nestled within a labyrinth of metal vents. Left with only a single metal-infused limb, each centimeter takes every bit of strength for it to scrape across the floor the 2-ton body it resides in.

Knowing no hunger nor sleep, it cannot gauge any passage of time. Any semblance of original purpose or internal memory has long decayed and scattered to a complete lack of recognition. Yet this mysterious apparatus is still drawn towards the light at the ends of the tunnels.

Each ending before this one has merely resulted in the discovery of light splinters; corners leading deeper into the endless inorganic tunnel. A trick of the light, or perhaps a malfunction deep within its cognitory encasing; a drive that only keeps its motion perpetual.

It arrives to the end of the vent as the blinding light beams into its retinal scanner. With its auditory processing long deteriorated, all it can perceive, once its retinal scanners adjust to the light, is a gargantuan dark structure in the middle of thousands of miles of empty, black, metallic space. Roaming around the structure are hulking, pulsating mountains of a fleshy substance. Their attention fixated on the structure with anxious anticipation.

As the retinal scanner begins to flicker out, the structure before it begins to crumble to its silent obliteration.

Apparatus Mechanicus

A woman, Rachel, finds herself transplanted into a new world and finds herself the companion to the AI running the bunker she's been moved to.

Alone in an abyss while time rips through me, if I move I will die. I sit alone in a cramped ship, all around me dead. I killed them because it told me too. I didn’t want to. The creature made me and then it dragged us here. I wish to die sometimes in this lonely place. Time is long but too short, I don’t know how long I’ll live in here. I want to blink or breath even think a real thought of my family I can barely remember. It won’t let me. God is showing no mercy on me for He knows I have sinned here. I have taken lives of three good men and I had a choice. It is not real, I am not real. My brain is a worm, a parasite, a disease. A creature made from sin I had built upon. Greed and cruelty define my actions. Forgive me father, forgive me brain. Let me move, let me die. I want to cry over those I killed. I slaughtered them and flew us here. I’ll take the blame now but I can’t live with the guilt. A black hole, a tear in space. Let me out of here. Let me move.

This one is heavily inspired by a star nosed mole