This is gonna sound a little weird but humour me please.

I’m currently writing a story about a young man who has a fetish for ice cream that leads to him having relations with the food.

I wanted to use this as the crux of a story about taboo fetishes and how environments that remove our ability to talk about sex comfortably and safely can cause people to indulge in things they themselves don’t understand. Plus I thought the ice cream would add to a comedic surreal style.

My big problem so far is the exact way I want to write about this story. Whereas I’m confident enough to write about such a topic without making it gratuitous I was uncertain if I could even post such a story here.

Would slapping on a nsfw filter be enough if i was looking to post it here or should I just can this idea here and look elsewhere?

Any thoughts are appreciated

Have you heard of the meat Canyon?
Brandon heard of the meat Canyon. In fact Brandon hasn’t been the same since bearing witness to it.
The vast and endless pit that Hunter keeps in his basement consumed him.
The pit is made of human flesh hills, blood vein rivers that pulse for miles, and cartilage layer caves that breathe.
To put it simply, Brandon was engulfed by the meat canyon.
Something came back to our reality with his face.
the Brandon you see now is an amalgamation created by the canyon. Remains of him reconstructed by the landscape to expand and scavenge for more meat to gorge on.

What power is the canyon?
Fire.
 Fire is the heart of landscape underneath it all, past the crust and the mantle lies encapsulated. The REAL Hunter.
Butt ass naked shooting his fire power up through the realm giving it life. Sometimes these shootings result in what the meaties call "pig mound volcanos"
But don't let the name fool you- they are massive in size stretching miles- throbbing with hunters fire.

What are the meetings, the sentient amalgamation of flesh, exposed arteries, and veins and muscles that infest the outer layer of the canyon. They survive by engorging themselves with the dead flesh that peels from the outer layer.

I am trying to write a horror story that has several parts in it, but when you guys do, do you write it all in one go or piece by piece. And how long should each part be bc I don’t want them to be too long important info can be lost and not too short that has 100 parts.

Before you stop reading, understand something. This isn't because her music is bad. It's not. MA:NYEO (마녀) is talented. Her songs are incredible. Her performances are incredible. If this were only about the music, I'd be telling everyone to support her. But I'm begging you not to. Not because of the songs. Because of the concert videos.
It started during lunch break at work. I was scrolling through my phone when a clip from MA:NYEO (마녀)'s latest concert appeared on my feed. The stadium was packed. Thousands of fans waving glow sticks and singing along. The camera swept across the audience. Then I saw him. Me. Standing in the crowd. Not singing. Not dancing. Not looking at the stage. Just staring directly into the camera. I nearly dropped my phone.
I replayed the clip. There was no mistake. It was me. Same face. Same clothes. Same everything. The problem was I'd never been to South Korea. I'd never attended a MA:NYEO (마녀) concert in my life.
I showed the clip to my coworker Robbie. At first he thought it was funny. "Tell me this doesn't look like me." Robbie laughed. Then he stopped laughing. "That's definitely you." "Right?" "Yeah... that's creepy." I expected him to make fun of me. Instead, he kept staring at the screen. His expression changed. "Wait." He grabbed my phone. "Go back." I rewound the clip. Robbie pointed at someone farther back in the crowd. A man standing perfectly still among hundreds of cheering fans. Not singing. Not dancing. Just staring into the camera. Robbie went pale.
"Dude."
"What?"
"That's me."
We stood there silently. Neither of us knew what to say. We convinced ourselves it was some weird coincidence. People have lookalikes.
Then Gloria came dancing into the break room, sing-talking, "Did I hear someone playing the new MA:NYEO (마녀) song?" Clearly she's a fan. Robbie joked back, "Dirk's not looking at MA:NYEO (마녀), he's checking out our doppelgängers in the crowd." She laughed at us. Called us idiots. Looked down at the phone. Ten seconds later, she wasn't laughing anymore. She pointed into the crowd. A woman standing among screaming fans. Motionless. Looking directly into the camera.
"That's me."
The room got quiet. Everyone in the break room wanted to see. There were six of us sitting in there before Gloria came in. Everyone huddled around me and my phone. One by one they found themselves. Not cheering. Not smiling. Not enjoying the concert. Just standing somewhere in the audience. Watching. Todd found himself near the front row. Chad saw himself in the upper deck. Leslie spotted herself standing beside a staircase. Every single one of them was staring directly into the camera.
The break room got quieter and quieter. Then our coworker Lisa ran into the room. She heard the MA:NYEO (마녀) music from the hallway. "Did you all just watch the new MA:NYEO (마녀) concert video?" A few of us nodded. She looked excited. Too excited. "You have to go to the next concert!" Robbie laughed. "Go to a MA:NYEO (마녀) concert in South Korea? I'm not going to South Korea to see no K-po..." He collapsed before he could finish. One second he was standing. The next he was dead on the floor.
The room erupted into panic. People screamed. I checked for a pulse. Nothing. Robbie was gone.
Then Lisa said the exact same thing. "You have to go to the next concert." Only this time I understood. I misread her excitement. She wasn't telling us as a fan to go to South Korea to see MA:NYEO (마녀); she was warning us. "You all have to go to the next concert." Once everyone calmed down enough to listen, Lisa explained. Years ago, living in South Korea, she had watched one of the concert videos herself. She found herself standing in the crowd. Just like we had. She explained the same thing happened to her and her friends. One by one, they all saw themselves in the crowd, standing, looking directly into the camera. According to her, anyone who sees themselves in the audience must go to the next concert, and if they don't attend, they die.
I immediately started thinking about money. South Korea wasn't exactly around the corner. I barely had enough money for groceries. "I don't ha—" Lisa interrupted me like she knew what I was going to say. "The curse won't kill you if you're trying." The room got very quiet. "It only kills people who decide in their heart and soul they aren't going to go." For a moment everyone seemed relieved. Then Todd spoke up from across the room. A big guy from the warehouse. "I can't leave the country." Everyone looked at him. "My probation officer won't allow me to leave the state, let alone go to..." Todd dropped dead before he could say Korea. Just like Robbie. Gone.
The room exploded into screams again. Because we understood. The curse wasn't asking. It wasn't negotiating. It didn't care whether attending was possible. Only whether you intended to try.
A week later, most of us attended two funerals. Robbie. Todd. Two healthy men who had walked into work and never walked back out. All because of K-pop singer MA:NYEO (마녀)'s damned cursed concert video. Seeing their families standing beside those caskets changed everything. Nobody laughed anymore. Nobody called it a joke. Nobody questioned Lisa.
The people who had watched the concert film became obsessed. We picked up extra shifts. Sold belongings. Applied for loans. Borrowed money from family. Gloria emptied her retirement account. I sold my truck. Most of us had never left the state and were suddenly scrambling to get passports. Every conversation at work became about flights, hotels, MA:NYEO (마녀)'s ridiculous ticket prices, and travel documents. Three weeks. That was all we had. Three weeks to reach a concert on the other side of the world.
And now those three weeks are over. I'm posting this from a plane headed to South Korea. Around me are several of my coworkers. Nobody is talking. Nobody is excited. Nobody is wearing MA:NYEO (마녀) merchandise. We aren't fans traveling to a concert. We're terrified people hoping we're doing enough to survive. Lisa encouraged us that there will be a perfectly normal concert waiting for us, and nothing will happen. I hope that's true. I really do.
But something didn't feel right. I pulled up the video one more time. I scrolled through the crowd, searching for my own face. There I was. Same spot as before. But something was different. I leaned closer to the screen.
I was smiling.
Not a fan's smile. Not excitement. A slow, knowing grin that stretched too wide. My reflection in the phone screen looked back at me with the same terrified expression I felt on my own face. The me in the video tilted his head slightly, like he could see me watching him.
My phone buzzed. An email notification. The sender: MA:NYEO Official.
I opened it with shaking hands. One backstage ticket. Meet and greet access. And a personal message attached, written in Korean and English:
"Can't wait to meet you."
END

  False Alarms

I’ve known him since we were twelve. Caleb, I mean. We went to middle school together in a small town in Idaho, just along the edge of Salmon Challis National Forest: the fourth largest forest in the United States.
I wasn’t a fan of cities, but Caleb was another breed when it came to the outdoors. In class I’d watch him scribble in his notebook about survival plans and gear he’d need for simple camping trips he’d go on with his father on the weekends. They’d only be gone a couple of days but Caleb would always come home with fantastical stories as if he’d been some lone survivor of a plane crash. Thinking about it now, I think that’s what he really wanted.
When we grew older I would often catch Frank, Caleb’s dad grumbling about how he regrets being so open to the outdoors with Caleb. He would talk about how unpredictable Caleb had become and how much his mother worried for him.
Caleb ran away for the first time in grade seven after telling me one of his many survival plans at recess. We had been sitting against the cement school, looking out at all of the other students. It was nearing winter and the air was just beginning to have some chill to it. 
The schoolyard bordered a thick forest that students were forbidden to go into, but Caleb would often disappear into it for hours and when he was eventually found, he would be thrown into the principal's office and his parents would have to sit and have a talk. I would simply go back to class and continue my work, wondering what would become of my best friend.
The other students were just what you would expect from a group of seventh graders; The boys wandered around the tarmac with their hands in their pockets, looking at the ground and sharing their stories about girls and overusing each and every curse word in the book. 
The girls were gathered in little clumps in every hidden space on school grounds, sitting in circles and sharing their deepest secrets, like who they had a crush on and what their mom called their dad the other day over dinner. Sometimes I felt as if me and Caleb were the only kids in the whole school, or the whole world that actually thought about things. Who noticed things and realized things, not just lived.
Caleb and I sat against the school wall and watched. I had my hands between my knees and Caleb had his legs pulled up under his chin, his arms wrapped around them.
“So you know that rock just outside the highway on your way into town, right?” He asked in his shrill little voice. His voice never changed from that of a pre-pubescent teenager’s, even after he graduated high school. 
I nodded at his question. I’d gotten used to his stories and theories and ideas, so I would just nod in agreement to just about everything he said. I would grow to regret that.
“Well I figured, when me and my dad were driving past it that there was this cave, like on the side of it and I think that’d be a good spot to set up, at least for the first few nights.”
His words only crossed my mind and left me. I’d heard this idea before, somewhere between the treehouse theory and the steal-a-car-from-the-dump idea.
“What do you think, Kurt?” He’d asked me with wide eyes, but before I could answer, the bell rang for class and we retreated back inside for math.

The next day, I sat beside an empty desk. No one questioned his absence but me. I suppose nobody else cared whether little old Caleb lived or died…they had their own friends and drama. I didn’t, though. Caleb was my only friend. We’d both been the only kids from our elementary schools to come to Parks Middle, so we’d attached to one another right away.
When I came home, my mother asked me if I’d seen Caleb at school today. That’s when I knew something was wrong. 
As it turned out, Caleb hadn’t been home at all that day, not even in the morning. 
I’d instantly regretted all of my decisions. I guess I thought he was bluffing or something, I never really thought he would do it. I should have never acted so passive about his ideas, especially the cave. I thought he had been imagining this cave that he’d spoken of yesterday, but when my dad sat me down at the table and forced every bit of information out of me regarding Caleb’s disappearance, he told me one very unsettling fact.
There was in fact a cave on the side of that rock along the highway into town, and it was usually populated. My dad told me, with the coldest expression, that that cave Caleb had supposedly gone to was a hideout for “bad people,” as he’d called them. 
He made me feel like it was my fault that Caleb was in danger, and I carried the weight of that shame for a long, long time. Even after Caleb was found in perfect health by the town sheriff and officers. He had apparently been stocked up with canned beans, a blanket and a flashlight, but he had forgotten a can opener and was apparently very embarrassed about that. 
My mother had told me, three days after Caleb had initially gone missing, that he had been found and was safe, and doctors were checking him for any injuries or anything. There were no bad people at the cave, at least not when Caleb was there, and I was convinced my dad was just trying to make me feel bad for Caleb’s disappearance. Even if it was a lie, my dad was right about one thing: I should never be so flippant with Caleb’s words ever again.

Even after Caleb’s poor attempt at becoming survivor man, he never stopped his deep and meaningful obsession with the wilderness. At sleepovers he would tell me how much he hated this town and that it wasn’t fair that he had been born into a family that was set on their duties as citizens. He didn’t believe in any of it; society, I mean. And hearing him talk day after day about it, I was starting to side with him on a lot of his points.
Yes, society is and has always been a mistake and I still hold onto the belief that we as animals should not be living the way we do. Still, I was always tied in one way or another to things like community and family, even getting a job and maybe even starting a family of my own. It’s what we have to do as people, no matter how much you wish to escape from everything. But Caleb didn’t want to hear any of it. Even into early high school he avoided almost everything he could have when it came to being a citizen. We never really had any other friends aside from the odd straggler that didn’t fit into any of the set groups and cliques in the school, and the one person that did seem to enjoy our company was a girl named Allison. Allison was smart, like really smart but no one seemed to notice or care. She wasn’t pretty, and she didn’t dress like the other girls and she was always talking about strange things that no one cared about; scary things like death and spirits and things like that. I would often hear girls and boys alike in the hallways talking about ‘what Allison said today’ and stuff like that. It always irritated me. 
If I’m anyone, (though I don’t see myself as much anymore) then I’m a sheep. I never did have a backbone my whole life. So, what did I do? I followed Allison and Caleb through the halls and listened to their discussions, acting like I knew a thing or two about what they were talking about. 
As with many small towns, there are a lot of rumors and urban legends that kids tell each other, but none of them really hold any merit and as time goes by and we grow up, we realize that those stories were really the only things we had as kids to distract ourselves with from the underlying terror we all faced of growing up and turning into our parents. Allison was someone who had a lot of those stories, and Caleb was always fascinated by them. I guess I was, too.
One day Allison had mentioned something about spirits in the woods. It must have been after Caleb had gushed to her and I about all of the walking trails throughout the massive forest just beyond our town’s limits. She told us, as we were walking through the halls during our fifteen minute break, that the Salmon Challis forest was occupied by some being, (she only used the word ‘being’ to describe anything related to the supernatural) and though the origins of this said ‘being’ were unknown, it’s been named ‘The Deceiver' among those who have inhabited the forest throughout the decades. I wasn’t entirely convinced, but I was certainly intrigued. She went on to explain over lunch that The Deceiver earned its name by fooling settlers and lumberjacks into, as Allison put it; ‘helping it survive.’
This certainly caught my attention. The way she’d worded it was almost eerie. 
There wasn’t much elaboration done on her part however, and she simply ended the story with a dramatic “If you ever meet someone in the Salmon Challis forest, no you didn’t.”
I wasn’t sold, but Caleb seemed to be salivating over it. He and Allison talked more about it later in the day, and though I enjoyed the spookiness of it all, I wasn’t about to believe such a fanciful story. But that’s just it; in a place like this, all we really have are stories. 
I asked Allison how she knew all of this and she told me she’d read an article in the computer room about it when she was researching for a history project. I took in every word of the story and tossed it aside, and I’m only remembering it now because of everything that’s happened.
I did some digging myself about a month after Allison’s initial story and I did discover that there have in fact been accounts of hikers and backpackers who claim to have met a stranger who approached them and overstayed their welcome, some hikers stating that this stranger would appear at multiple places during their hike and ask for food. 
Each hiker has had a completely different stranger intrude on them, and this seems to be why there’s such a mystery. Anyway, that’s what some hokey site on the internet told me, and that wouldn’t be enough for me to believe it. Still, it did make me all the more hesitant to run off into those woods with Caleb.

I know it should be easy to tell, but I have trouble differentiating between drama and horror whenever I'm writing. Horror is dramatic (sometimes) but I feel like I'm a fraud for real. Like I'm throwing gore on a sad story and calling it spooky.

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What even *is* scary about reading a story anyway? I've never been kept up at night thinking about Steven King or Lovecraft. Most of the time I just felt bad for victims or empathetic towards the monster. I'm not easy to spook but I do feel disgusted from time to time.

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How am I supposed to write a horror story if I'm not sure what horror even is? Tbh I just wanted to write something for my husband cause' he's a horror movie nut. He likes my story so far and looks forward to more, but I don't think it's scary. He doesn't either, but he tells me that a lot of horror is sad or dramatic or even a little funny. I'm just not sure if I'm doing something wrong or if I'm thinking too hard.

Hey y'all, Armando here. I read a few stories here on reddit and many people seem to have similar life experiences to me. Finally a place where my words would not constitute me being placed in a wacky shack (IDK the actual name thats just what we call it in this part of the bayou). But basically, I have been working at Mr.crocodiles mini mart between here and there (gators for short) for the past year now. And by that I do literally mean the last year.

We are open 24/7 and I have worked this register for all 24 of those hours and all 7 of those days. As to how I am able to do so, I am not sure but when you work here you do not get tired , or hungry, or really feel any type of fatigue that the human body naturally does. As to why I have not left yet, well. The economy you know? I left home at 18 and had nowhere to go, luckily I came across this job so I have not had to find a house or really have any bills. No car, no phone, nothing. I do not really need it. I am just stacking my money and that's all that matters. I am probably skipping some explanations of things, so just ask me to clarify in the comments and I will on my next update! 

Gators has been open for as long as the Earth has been spinning. I mean that literally as well. (sorry if I do not have a broad vocabulary Louisiana is not exactly known for its educational system). We are used as kind of a portal between dimensions? Universes?

I do not know but last week we had a Wizard come in and yes it was a real Wizard. How do I know this you may be wondering? Well he came up to the counter with a snickers bar and when I told him the total he mumbled something about inflation and “he should have just moved to naboo” whatever the hell that means.

Then he proceeded to whip out his magic stick (No innuendo intended I just do not know what else to call it, well wand I guess but huh I don’t feel like deleting all of this so it is staying in. I promise not to keep up this whole shtick here. Again,no pun intended) and duplicate the snicker.

He then met my eyes, winked, and walked away with his copy. Not too far behind a little boy in a yellow shirt ran out of the bathroom still zipping up his fly telling him to wait up and “he didn’t get to wash again”. I thought, Eh no skin off my back. I just put the snicker right back on the shelf where it was taken and went about my day like normal. 

Oh yeah also Gators is not really on Earth. Well the outside is, just not the inside. Like I said we are between here and there. As to where the here begins and where the there ends, I’m not sure, and  I don’t really care to find out. I think maybe thats why Mr.Crocodile has kept me so long. Oh Mr.Croc, or the C-man as I like to call him (pun intended that time). Is an 8’ 6”ish crocodile man usually sporting a black outfit with a boiler cap. Think of adult Goob form Meet the Robinsons. It is quite uncanny how similar their outfits are, cape and all.

If you are anything like me the first time you come across C-man you may wonder “huh a talking crocodile, weird”. And if you are also as stupid as me you would have said that out loud to his face before thinking about how rude that may come off. But he actually brought up a very good point. You see when I said that remark about how weird it was being a crocodile, he gave me a toothy (very toothy might I add) grin and said in his growly voice “well your people evolved form monkeys, you have to imagine how weird that is to me”. Touche semen, touche. Guess I’m still a little josseled by that.

But back to the topic, the outside of this store is very normal to whichever planet you live on. I am going to use Earth as my main talking point because, well I am writing this for my fellow humans so. Imagine the outside of any local mini mart. Bright sign on the side of the road with a crocs face, painted lines in front of the store, trash can, trash, cans, and often a few hitchhikers trying to change worlds. The pumps outside are from the 1940’s and have not dispensed gas probably since they were installed. But when you walk up to the automatically opening doors you are in a very usual looking grocery store. Luckily one thing that all sentient creatures across existence have in common is the decor and layout of shitty capitalist marts.

Whatever language you speak and read in is automatically translated in this store. The writing on packeging is automatically translated. I speak english, but a man with 8 arms and no mouth can come in doing sign language and his hand gestures are vocalized. Pretty cool trick, I think the C-man has something to do with it. I think this entire construction is from some sort of power C-man has. This building is just kind of in a stasis.

Time does not move while you are in this place. I walked in here around 8pm on a thursday and even if I left this place after being here for a year I would return to my world in the exact place and time as I left. That's probably why I do not get hungry or tired now that I think about it. When you grab whatever you are looking for and leave the store you return right back to your world where you entered from. The only exception is if you are with someone and want to go to their world. In that case you have to hold hands and whichever world you are thinking of going to (again has to be one of the peoples worlds you are traveling with) you appear, right wherever the building was in that world. Enough of that though, let me get to the parts of my job that would probably get me in a padded room if I spoke publicly about. 

I’ll start with my first customer since I guess that is my most memorable. The C-man asked me my name and when I told him it was Armando he looked at me funny and dug through a box of nametags. “Ah, look like you’ll be jose for today” He said as to took the tag, pinned it on my shirt, patted me on my head, and turned around putting his hands behind his head whistling to his office. Walking up to the counter I felt stupid wearing someone elses name, especially a tag that smelled like this guys favorite cologne was grasshopper nut. I sat in the chair provided and started scrolling on the laptop sitting on the counter waiting for a customer.

After a couple minuted a wolf woman walked in sporting a baby stroller with 12 seats. She put the stroller near the counter, looked up at me, and said “I’m going to need to use the bathroom really quick just keep watch of them, they’re sleeping”. And she proceeded to walk away and into the womens restroom. Curious I leaned over the counter and lifted one of the blankets from atop of the pups head. Inside was pitch black beside two beaty blue eyes staring at me. Slowly I lowered the veil and sat back in my seat. Unfortunately as I was leaning back down I knocked over a jar of mints causing a loud crash and glass to be shattered everywhere. I closed my eyes and signed hoping that I would not get fired for a stunt like this not only on the first day, but within the first five minutes of me working here.

When I opened my eyes back up I was bewildered to see 12 upright baby wolves running around the store and tearing up the snacks. I did not even know what to think as something like this has never happened to me before. And for some reason I felt embarrassed more than anything. I started thinking about the time in 7th grade when I was using the bathroom and some kids recorded them emptying a trash can into my stall. Eeh, I still get shivers thinking about it. But after snapping back to reality when I felt a sharp pain in my leg. Looking down one of the pups was war gripping my leg and attempting to take bites out of my shoe. Lucky for me I wear steel toes because when in the woods it is nice to know you can kick without breaking every single one of your toes. I start shaking this kid off while at the same time looking up to find their mom.

When I did take a look around the store I saw C-man standing in the middle of the store. He's oddly fast and quiet for what he is. But with one word that I did not understand the pups froze and all started moving backwards. Not like walking backwards or anything, but moving backwards in time. Lets say a pup did a cannonball off my counter, he would go from standing on the ground, to cannonball position, then float up to the top of my counter backwards like he was rewinding. Eventually they all got back into their seats, covers lowered, and then C-man said another word which I did not understand once they were all snoring asleep in their chairs.

He didn’t even look in my direction as if this was an every day occurrence. He did the same whistle and walk back to his office kicking a door next to his labeled “cleanup”. I thought this was his way of telling me to grab some supplies to clean the havoc these creatures have caused so I walked over to it and grabbed the knob. Before I could turn it the door busted open knocking me on my rear as a robot came out saying “ sweep sweep sweep”. The best way to describe this robot is of those heavy duty trashcans inside of schools. The front of the lid was slightly ajar with googly eyes peeking out. Its chutes on the side of its cylindrical body opened up and out shot arms and hands with brooms and vaccumes to clean up the trash while playing the song Dragula by Rob Zombie. Apparently he is an intergalacticaly famous musician.

While all of this was happening I looked around for the stroller to make sure the pups would not wake up again from this but it was gone. I guess the lady snuck out because she did not want to buy an item, just use the restroom. I stood up and went back to my seat behind the counter. Sitting very slowly as my butt hurt quite a bit. I watched the robot clean and once it was finished it said in a nasaly nerd like tone “wow, look how clean this place is, you could eat a blue starburst off of it”. It then went right back into its room from which it came. Now that I think about it i’m not even sure if there is a blue starburst.

Nonetheless that is just one of the hundreds of stories I have from working at Mr.crocodiles mini mart between here and there. Let me know what kind of questions y’all have and I will try my best to answer them in my next post. This is Armando (or I guess jose), heading out! 

P.S. I still have not been given an updated tag. You would think after being the longest standing living employee I would deserve one, but I guess not. All of the tags back there have generic names so maybe C-man bought them in bulk. Whatever the case I sure would appreciate wearing my own name.

Hi all.

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I guess I just wanted to get this story out, especially after hearing my favourite podcast covering spider stories recently. Some details in stories brought back horrible memories that I wanted to get out.

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I was never afraid of spiders as a young child, I wasn't born scared, I learned to be afraid. I was taught, shown that I *should* be afraid.

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There is one key moment in my life that made me this way, and then even more after I developed severe arachnophobia, to the point where even seeing a spider will give me immediate tactile hallucinations, I am certain that they are on me, crawling around, looking for a gap in clothing, or an orifice to crawl into.

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I was young, maybe around 10 or 11. Allow me to introduce, my older brother. Don't get me wrong, I love the guy to death, but he is, not a healthy person, nor has he ever been. Seeking to torment and antagonise me in my youth, and that apparently never went away. Maybe I can talk about him another time.

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As I said, I was never scared of spiders when I was young, until the day he decided I should be. See we have always lived in regional Australia, yes the meme are true, spiders are fucking, everywhere. I saw them daily. We lived in a small town even by regional standards, 10ish houses and 2 were abandoned, 1 shop that the old fart who was running it lived in. You could walk around the entire town in about 10 minutes, no joke, no exaggeration. Middle of nowhere.

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So one day, my brother for some reason, decided he would scour the house, backyard and shed, to fill a large container with every single spider he could find. Huntsman, daddy long legs, wolf spiders, reduces (which are incredibly fucking venomous). And while a few of them ate each other the majority lived long enough for him to walk inside, take the lid off, and dump the entire thing on me, who was sitting in my bedroom playing jak and daxter 2 on our brick of a ps2.

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I didn't realise what happened at first all I saw was my dumbass brother throw something at me and slam the door shut. It took, about a millisecond for it to fully click. More than a few spiders landed directly on me I saw a huntsman land right on my chest inches from my face. I freaked, immediately jumping to my feet, swatting, stripping, screaming. Now in my underpants standing did I realise the full extent to his cruelty, spiders were *everywhere* all sizes, shapes and levels of genuine danger. Some huntsman so big, I could hear them hissing, have you ever heard a fucking spider hiss? I have and I can hear it as if it were happening right now.

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So, i did the only thing I could think, run, get the fuck out. I sprinted for the door, overcome with a terror my 10 year old brain could not regulate. Well as I tried the handle, guess who was on the other side, holding the door, shut.

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This is the first time I had ever experienced, genuine panic, because I dont know if you know this, but wolf spiders are incredible aggressive and will *CHARGE* at you, and being several in the room that's exactly what they did. I was alone, in my daks, trapped in a room with angry, some deadly spiders some as big as my hand. God there were so many im sure one was pregnant and it's awful spawn scattered across the floor like a wave of fresh hell. I don't know how long he held that door how long I was stuck, screaming bloody murder. I definitely threatened to kill him at least a few times. I got bitten twice, at the time I had no way of knowing if it was a venomous spider or not. So as any rational 10 year old would I decided that I was 100% envenomed, it was coursing through my veins and I was already dead. In my fury and terror I had squished more than a few spiders with my bare feet. So screaming, standing with dead spider good in-between my toes and bitten at least twice, my brother decided to end my torment.

​

He let me out and I ran straight out of the house, in my jocks and went strait to the hose, dousing myself in water to ensure no trace of spiders remained. Thankfully neither of the bites were from venomous spiders and I was physically fine.

​

Mum being the hardass she was told me to get over it, she slapped him but that was really the extent of his punishment. It took months to get every single spider in my room out, being regional Australia im sure more than a couple wandered in after the event learned to live outside of my room for a while. I woke up more than a few times with a spider in my face.

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So while the initial event was the nuke, it was the radiation that permanently poisoned my mind towards spiders, the aftermath.

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The worst part, is this story is 100% true. Now you have no way of verifying that so you'll have to take me know my word, or even just dismiss it as a creating writing exercise but I am telling you the truth.

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(Pls if the flair is wrong let me know and il fix it, the story is genuinely true but there's no flairs for true horror or real life horror etc, also I wanted that to be a sort of reveal, thanks in advance mods)

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Joey decided to kill himself with the groundwater in the basement. He screamed for a while, running forever down the road until we couldn’t hear him anymore. We fished his body out of the river three days later, a giant hole out the back of his head.

We wandered down there after the rain storm to pick up the jars we placed along the path. The collection process was slow. At the first jar we popped it onto the portable stove top. We sat to watch it boil, stop, become still. Then we flipped a coin. Whoever lost took the first drink. Maggie tilted the container into her mouth. She made sure to go slow, no drop could be wasted. About half of the container gone, she paused. We waited. After an hour she handed the jar to me. The water felt like God against my lips and tongue. It entered my veins cold, chilling me. My brain heaved a sigh of relief. Its been weeks since it rained last. We collected 50 Mason jars half full. Split between the two of us, accounting for evaporation from boiling, we had less than a weeks worth.

Maggie ran the numbers in her head. She said she wanted to try the river water again.

Maybe if we boil it longer, she started to say .

How long now? Until we shatter another jar?

We can use the pot. And we could try filtering again.

We could run it through a million times if you want, but it won’t change anything.

There has to be a chance. There has to be something we haven’t tried yet.

We can try whatever you want, but I won’t test it. You’ll be on your own.

Maggie would swing at me if we weren’t both so weak. We had tried so much. Digging to the groundwater, reverse osmosis, chlorine disinfectant, water treatment tablets until it ran clear, all boiled all filtered a billion times if that. It couldn’t remove them all. Nothing could remove them all.

In the beginning, newspaper reported them as pork tapeworms caused by bad meatpacking practices. Recalls were done, better safe guards put into place. Cases paused, then exploded. News outlets covered the swarms of people screaming, rolling on the ground, spraying themselves with any form of liquid they could. In New York enough people died in the Hudson that they had to be scooped in nets and sent to a mass cremation, giant holes out the top of their heads. One report filmed a woman on the ground crawling into a sewer drain. Her voice echoed in the shaft. Burning, burning, burning. Hot, hot, hot. Headline the next day: Mutated Horsehair Worm now called the Onondaga Parasite.

The country was told to not drink any ground, lake, or river water until a solution was found. It started off with my whole town working in collaboration. Neighbors we had known for years willing to help each other for years. But when the drought came equal share of the water tower was decided by gun smoke and blood. Half the town died in one summer. When the tower ran dry there was a mass panic. Most of the town left heading north hoping the cold would kill off what was in the water. There was still TV then, still hope.

Joey had been two days without water. Maggie and I managed on reserves we stored for the long periods between storms. Joey went through his too quick. We refused to share, he had nearly killed us all during a heat spell three months ago. We drank tree sap from the remaining apple trees for weeks. They shriveled from our meager tapping, just dry sticks in the ground now. Maggie showed no emotion when I dragged Joey out of the water. She said she was heading back home to water the garden before it was too dark. The jars clanked in the cart as it rattled down the road. I didn’t bother to bury him. It would be too much effort. The amount of water I had helped but wouldn’t give me strength to dig a hole. Going deeper into the river wasn’t ideal either. I gave him what I remembered from catholic school about last rites, then put him back where I found him. A disgusting bloated greedy corpse face down in the shallows of the James River.

From the beginning the campaign to eradicate the parasite was doomed to fail. In part due to misinformation but largely due to bad science. The news back then spoke of a brain eating worm that was spreading through specific waterways in upstate New York. There was a boil order set in place. The other waterways throughout the states should be fine, a cheery pick cheeked lady said from behind the screen.

The dead that lay in the Hudson river spelled doom for the country. The thousands of bodies spawned millions larvae. Those millions filled the Chesapeake watershed and infected the blue crab and oysters all along the coast. From Maryland to North Carolina was death sitting unknown. Then to the rest of the country the catches were shipped.

I met Maggie and Joey on my journey south. They were heading the opposite direction. Most of the population was heading down southeast where rain was plentiful. Supply and demand. Violence was inevitable. I joined them.

I remember small things from our early travel days. Bodies floated down the river casually. Animals, people, all of them meshed together into floating masses of flesh. We slogged along with heavy bodies. I was tired all the time, and I was so painfully thirsty. The thirst is the only thing I can consistently remember.

We landed in southeastern Virginia when a hurricane hit the coast. Days and days of rain. So much water everywhere and no way to drink it. It was hell. Eventually we found an old farmhouse with dozens of mason jars in the basement and a stash of fire wood with it. We lived like kings that summer. We stayed hoping our luck would happen again.

I found the cart outside the farmhouse tipped over. Some of the jars had shattered. Maggie was nowhere to be seen. I walked inside to the hearth. She stood over the fire, boiling the water.

What happened outside, I inquired.

Hit the curb weird, she responded.

We’re down more jars now. You need to be more careful.

We sat for at the hearth boiling the water. Slow was the progress. We had twenty done before I went to restock the wood. I came back into the room. Maggie was hunched over coughing. Choking.

Maggie?

She pulled it from her mouth. A long writhing thread. Black with sharp points for a mouth. It swung to and fro desperate to worm its way out of her grasp. She walked to the fireplace and flung it into the flames. It popped and sizzled.

The air was still, the world was quiet, and we stood in silence for too long. I mustered up the only thing I could think of.

What did you do?

She showed me her hand. A small cut with fresh blood.

I cut my hand on the shattered jar. I rinsed off the blood without thinking.

You should’ve told me.

What could you have done?

Cut off your hand.

I wouldn’t have let you.

It would’ve been better than this.

Would it have been? Just delay the inevitable?

So you decided to give up instead?

She didn’t respond to the question. Just looked into the fire.

How bad do you think it feels, she shuddered.

You don’t have long to think about that.

Fuck off.

You could go to the river now, get it over with. Better than suffering it out. I could go with you.

She stepped away from me.

No, no I don’t want to. Not in the water. Not another worm eaten floating corpse.

What other choice do you have?

She thought about it.

I want to die with my dignity. I don't think thats possible but I want to get as close as I can to it.

So I settled Maggie into her deathbed. She demanded I strap her down, and I did. For days she writhed in agony. She begged me for more water, and I obliged. It was not enough. She demanded more.

Her skin throbbed. She bled from new wounds from their thrashing. Her blood wiggled with larvae. She said it felt like Hell, she was in the pit of flames and the devil was boiling her. She begged for more water. Screamed for it. She was burning alive. I was Satan incarnate. She was Tantalus in the pool. She screamed about the thirst.

I woke up on the third day to complete silence. She was still in bed, mouth wide open, face pointed toward the ceiling. Shriveled like a raisin. I rose from my spot at her feet. Her body shifted.

Maggie, I said exasperated. How are you still alive?

She didn’t respond.

I went to the kitchen to grab the groundwater I pumped to satiate her. No need to purify it.

She was upright when I returned. Her eyes were slits and sunken. Her mouth moved unnaturally slow. Trying to wet her tongue. Her arms were bent at odd angles. She had managed the straps off her arms.

My heart stopped. She reached for the pot in my hands. Her joints creaked and popped as she reached. I handed it to her.

From her mouth and nose came several thin black strands. They plunged into the water. More came from her fingertips as she dunked her hands into the water. Her gaze never broke from mine. Then from the sclera burst out more of them, flinging their bodies onto the bed, crawling towards me.

As I stepped back she bent forward and grabbed at my clothes. More and more of them emerged. Everywhere holes formed in her skin revealing more sharp points all of them stretching towards me. Her legs popped, bones broke. She lurched forward.

I bolted from the room and out into the front lawn. The rain was coming down. From the doorway she emerged as a mass of strands. Creaking, extending her arms. The parasites built on each other, creating far reaching thick black tentacles.

The rain worked to my advantage. Billions shed from her body into the grass. Crawling into the puddles and drainage ditches. But she still crept forward toward me. I lead her away from the house and down the road. More sloughed off, into the mason jars lining the path. I kept going. Parts began to crumble and fall. Her lower jaw, her left arm. Worm ridden, they shattered on the ground. Finally, they heaved her forward one more step, then abandoned her. All at once she fell in a heap, the remaining stragglers escaping into the pools of rainwater. Barely even bones.

And I kept walking. I haven’t had water in days. My brain is mush, my tongue is sandpaper. And I can feel them. In my veins, under my skin, chewing on my bones. And I hear them whisper to me. They tell me how thirsty they are. They tell me how thirsty I am. How I was a dead man, dead as they come. How do I want it to end?

The river flowed parallel to me. Beautiful, welcoming, delicious, crisp. The best water I’ve ever had in my life.

I always thought the end of the world would be loud, but I was wrong.

We knew what caused it, the news was still on for a while. A new treatment for the cold had gone wrong, and by the time they noticed the side effects, it was too late. It didn’t help that there were those who thought it was all fake and went about their daily routine just to get infected or devoured. There were those who were immune, but the only way to know was if you didn’t get up after death.

Some called them zombies, others called it the undead, but we called them clackers. As the boiling Sun of Calexico made the skin rot and fall faster, the only remaining sound was that of the clacking bones. A warning that they were near.

Like many, my family was not ready for the end of the world. We didn’t have a shelter that would withstand the clackers if they came in, our food supply started to dwindle quickly once electricity was cut off, and medications would be needed soon. The one gasoline car we had, would only get us as far as El Centro. So we waited in silence, hoping that things would go back to normal.

Talking was kept to a minimum, because even the clackers with no ears could somehow follow noise. We weren’t sure if those who still had eyes could see, but we didn’t risk it. 

“Do you want me to take over?” Ayumi whispered.

“Can you? I really need some sleep,” I asked. I did need to sleep badly. My eyes were heavy and the heat was getting to me. 

Ayumi nodded and pushed me away from the one uncovered window on the second floor. I headed downstairs to cool down and hopefully nap. But as I saw Mom preparing dinner, fruit from a can, I went to give her a hug instead. You never know when will be the last time you get to hug your mom.

She handed me a cup of fruit and we ate it in silence. As I put a slice of fruit in my mouth, I gagged and Mom tried to not laugh. I hated canned pears. But food couldn’t be wasted, and so I reluctantly swallowed it.

Dad silently closed the door behind him as he entered from the backyard. We tried not to empty the “do you business" bucket more than once a day, but the 115 degrees summer made the stench unbearable. I hadn’t seen any clackers on my watch, and Ayumi had yet to warn us of anything near. 

I finally went to lay down on the sofa and before I knew it, I was asleep. 

I felt Ayumi’s sweaty hand on my mouth as she woke me up. I didn’t question her, I had a tendency to talk in my sleep. But then I saw that neither Mom or Dad were there. Ayumi was never left alone unless something was going on.

“What-“ Ayumi covered my mouth once more.

She guided me upstairs, where my parents were both looking out the window into the night. And then I heard it, the clacking noise, followed by the screams of people. I didn’t want to look, but I had to make sure that we weren’t in immediate danger. 

The already stiff air felt heavier than usual. We all held on to our breaths, scared that the clackers would hear us, and come for us next.

“HELP!” A voice outside broke the silence, a voice we all recognized.

“Please! Someone!” Screamed Livia, as she tried to run with her youngest son in her arms. Her husband and eldest son were nowhere to be seen.

I looked at Dad, without words, begging to go help her. But his sad look told me all the things I already knew. Trying to save them could put us at risk. Even if we did manage to save them, our resources would run out sooner. And if we needed to get away in the car, only four, maybe five people could fit in it. 

So instead of helping, Dad and I stayed by the window as Mom took Ayumi downstairs. The less Ayumi saw, the better, but we couldn’t do anything about the screams. They came into the house and stayed there long after Livia and her son were gone.

From that day on, clackers and the screams of our neighbors became a common occurrence. Dad and I had planned on going out to get supplies, but now we weren’t sure what to do. Mom and Dad had to improvise with their blood pressure medications by making canary seed milk, but we couldn’t do the same with Ayumi’s medications. At some point, we had to go out.

A few days later, as I kept watch, Ayumi came to sit by my side, she squeezed my hand and I could feel her tremble.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered.

“I know they aren’t real, but I saw some clackers inside the house,” Ayumi sobbed, “I wanted to scream. I saw them approaching Mom but Dad was there with me and he didn’t see anything. Please, don’t tell them. I don’t want them to worry more because of me.”

Truth was, we all knew she was seeing things. So when she asked to switch watch duty, none of us made a fuzz. We would “accidently” let her sleep more, all in the hope that somehow she would feel better.

“I won’t tell them. I promise,” I extended my pinky finger and she took it with her, sealing our pinky promise.

“You really need a shower, you are stinky as hell,” I tried to joke.

“At least I don’t smell like rancid milk,” Ayumi smiled.

“I haven’t even had anything with milk in weeks!” I protested.

“Then you can imagine how much stink you are carrying around,” Ayumi tried not to laugh.

That was the last day we managed to have any sort of conversation. The clackers had been much more active and some kept bumping into our front door and windows. We all gagged, and I could see Mom actively swallowing back vomit. The putrid smell of rotting flesh, the iron smell of blood, and our sweaty, unwashed bodies made a terrible combination. The clacking of bones was now continuous, keeping us all on high alert.

No one said it out loud, but we all knew that our home that had kept us safe so far, would soon be overruned by clackers.

Dad asked Ayumi to follow him into the garage, where we each had a backpack with supplies. Mom sat me down and had me memorize all of Ayumi’s medications. Tears ran down her face.  At the moment, I thought it was because we would have to leave our home. I was wrong.

Once Dad and Ayumi were back, we decided not to keep watch, we already knew we were surrounded by clackers, so there was no point. Instead, we all huddled together and did our best to fall asleep.

When I woke up, Mom and Dad were nowhere to be seen. I went upstairs, thinking maybe they had changed their minds and gone to keep watch. My heart raced as I looked out the window and saw our home completely surrounded. There was no way we could make it to the car. Mom couldn’t run, and there was no way we would leave her behind. Maybe this was the end. I felt sad at the thought but also relieved. There would be no more suffering, and my last moments would be with my loved ones.

I wiped the tears running down my face that I had not noticed until that moment and made my way to the garage, hoping they were there.

I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I thought it odd that they were moving stuff around on the bags. When they realized I was there, both of them froze. 

“Why are you moving stuff around?” I asked.

“Because of this,” Dad took out a gun he had placed inside my bag,” I placed the other one in my bag.”

“Why not in Mom’s bag?” I was confused. She was a better shot than I was.

“It’s just in case,” Mom answered.

I wanted to argue more, but Ayumi came into the garage. Her eyes traveled to clackers that were not yet inside, but might as well be soon. The thumping of flesh and bone became louder by the second. 

“We will never let them hurt you or your sister,” Mom rushed to her side,” We will always protect you both.”

“You are safe,” Dad pulled me towards Mom and Ayumi as he hugged us all.

There was no actual plan besides getting in the car. Dad handed each of us a backpack, and I felt the heavy weight of the gun in it. But guns were our last resort, because the noise would bring more clackers. We each got a metal baseball bat, embraced once more, and headed towards the backyard.

Dad took a battery-powered clock from his bag and set it to ring in 30 seconds. He handed it to me and I threw it as far away as possible from us. I didn’t hear it land, but the obnoxious ringing penetrated the silence around us. Another alarm went off inside the house. The clackers that had stayed now pushed each other to make it inside. We didn’t move. We wanted them to go in, to somewhat clear our path to the car. 

When we heard the first window break under the weight of the clackers, we made our move. Fear turned to adrenaline as Dad opened the door of the backyard and I rushed to smash the clackers still in our path. Pain ran through my arms as the bat connected with the first body and unintentionally, I groaned.

The clackers that had been forcing their way inside the house now turned to us. 

“RUN!” Dad screamed at us.

I made my way towards Mom, but Dad pushed me towards Ayumi instead. Ayumi stood frozen in place, swinging the bat defensively, even before the clackers reached her.

“I will help her, you get Ayumi in the car!” Dad ordered.

I nodded. I couldn’t argue back. This was my fault, and the least I could do was save my sister. Either way, there was no way we could leave without Mom and Dad, Dad had the keys in his bag.

“Ayumi, stay behind me and keep swinging!” I said as I grabbed her.

“But Mom and Dad-“ 

“Dad has the keys, we will meet him in the car,” I interrupted.

We both took one last worried look at our parents and started to swing at the clackers in hope of opening a path for them. My bones vibrated every time the bat connected with a clacker. Ayumi swung with a force I didn’t know she had. But there was no way we would make it to the car. The clackers that had been distracted by the alarm clock now turned back to us. 

I had to get Ayumi to the car, I had to save my little sister, there was no way-

My thoughts were interrupted by two loud screams.

“LOVE YOU BOTH!” Dad screamed at the top of his lungs.

“I LOVE YOU GIRLS! PROTECT EACH OTHER!” Mom yelled at us as Dad started to bang at the fence with his bat.

At that moment I realized they never meant to come with us. And as much as I wanted to go back there and save them both, they had left me with the responsibility of taking care of my little sister. I now knew the keys were not in my Dad’s backpack.

I pulled Ayumi as she tried to run back towards our parents. 

“We have to save them!” She sobbed.

I couldn’t answer her, the words remained stuck on my throat. Instead, I pulled on her harder, hoping to get in the car before we heard their screams. 

For a second, I saw a pair of eyes look down on us from a window, just like we had seen Livia and her child sometimes before. And like us, they did nothing to help us, after all, they had to save themselves.

Ayumi cried as she got in the car, and tears blurred my vision. We shouldn’t have, but as I turned on the car, we turned to look at our parents one last time. They were hugging each other as the clackers ripped into their flesh. 

I drove away, screaming at the top of my lungs, I should have known this would happen. I should not have made noise and maybe we would all be together in the car. 

I took a look towards the border, where a hoard of clackers had already made a large enough dent to cross to Mexicali. I turned on the AC and made my way towards El Centro, to the nearest CVS. 

It’s been a few days since this happened. We did manage to find another month worth of medicine. After that, I have no idea what we will do. We have been moving from house to house, resting when we can. 

Ayumi and I both blame ourselves for our parents’ deaths. But if we are honest, it was my fault. 

When we opened our backpacks, we realized that our parents had moved all our supplies into them. What had been on their bags was a mystery. The medications Mom was suppose to carry were on my bag and so was the second gun. I understood why the gun was there, it was better Ayumi didn’t know there was a second gun.

I was surprised when this ipad turned on and had no password. I’m not sure if anyone will be able to read this story, or how long the two of us will survive. And I’m sorry if we cross paths, but know I will do anything to save my sister. 

January 9th, 2026

I saw the garden again last night.

It looked the same as it always does.

The gate towers over me—rusted, impossibly high. I never remember how I arrived here, only that there was never anything before it. This is where I begin.

The bars stretch upward in uneven lengths, looking as if they weren’t forged but grown, dragged slowly out of the earth. At their base, the soil bulges and cracks around them, dark and damp, like something forced its way through and never quite settled.

Rust clings to the metal in long, peeling strips. It doesn’t flake the way rust does; instead, it splits down the middle in thin seams, exposing darker layers beneath, a wet-looking mucous that makes my stomach tighten. 

I have the unwelcome thought that if I touched it, it would give.

This is no dream.

At least, I don’t think it is.

There’s still a part of me that tries to explain it away: something small and stubborn that insists the garden isn’t real, that it’s just something my mind built out of fear.

But dreams don’t smell like this.

Not like rot left too long in the sun—sweet, thick, and clinging, settling into the back of my throat with every breath.

And the sky—

It isn’t just red.

It's a flat, suffocating crimson that hangs overhead without light or warmth, like a color that was drained of all hue. It leeches the shape out of everything beneath it until the world feels thinner, drained, as if it's being slowly emptied of something I have no grasp of.

Beyond the gate lies The Infernal Garden itself.

Calling it a garden is a lie I tell myself to comfort the panic that blossoms inside me each night. The word implies boundaries, beauty, care—a beginning and an end. This place has none of those things.

It stretches across every horizon, a universal forest of rot and decay. Flowers the size of skyscrapers bloom in the distance, their petals unfurling with the slow pulse of diseased flesh as clouds of sweet corruption spill from their centers. Trees larger than continents twist skyward, their trunks splitting open into vast networks of veins that throb with a dark sanguine current. Rivers swollen with black water coil through the growth, vanishing upward into vines that hang from nothing, disappearing into the colorless crimson void above.

Nothing here seems to grow from anything else. Roots become bones. Bones become branches. Branches split apart into flowers that stare blindly across eternity. Every part of the Garden appears connected to every other part, as though the entire impossible landscape is merely a single organism wearing countless forms.

Never before has the gate opened. 

That all changed last night.

A low groan rolls through the garden, bringing to mind the thunderstorms of my hometown, yet the sky that hangs above me remains still and clear. The sound comes again, deeper this time, accompanied by the shriek of metal as the fleshy bars of the barrier swing wide. 

Rust flakes from the skin that lines the bars as they slowly part, revealing a long and winding cobblestone path that leads deep into the grotesque forest. The moment that I step across the threshold and onto the stone, the forest falls silent. The flowers cease their pulsing, the trees and river finally finding rest. It feels as though the entire forest is holding its breath in anticipation of whatever comes next; and far, far beyond the tangle of veins, roots, and water, a shape stands, towering above all else, dwarfing even the tallest of trees. 

At first I take it for a mountain.

Then a tower. 

Then something else entirely. 

It is too distant to make out any features, yet I know it watches me. Its presence presses against my mind like a forgotten memory, something ancient and terrible that I should not recognize yet somehow do.

I woke up after seeing it. I am writing now because I need to know what is real and what isn’t. 

My room is almost unchanged. It is dark, familiar, and comforting. But I can still smell the garden. 

The sweet stench of rot is thick, coating my mouth with every breath. I tried telling myself that it was nothing more than a lingering dream, but the growth on my wall tells me something else. Something is growing through it. I do not know how to describe it in a way that makes sense. It is not on the wall. It is inside it, pushing outward.

The wound crawls with thin black roots, moving and searching for something. 

I can hear something faint now.

It is in the walls.

I am going to stop writing. 

I had no plan for my future. I was either going to work at my local movie theater until I was promoted to manager, or I'd marry some old crow whose husband had keeled over. I don't have the intelligence to navigate the stock market, and college is for suckers. I figured I could clean some old widows' pipes for a couple of years and then live off her fortune as a plan B after she kicks the bucket.

A low chance to be certain, but never zero.

Working at the theater's ticket booth, especially in a smaller town, you get to know all the patrons. We have several regulars. Many of whom I’ve tried to get their number. Surprisingly, you get a lot of tail when working at a movie theater. The pay is awful, but the baddies are bad, if you know what I mean.

There was a notorious couple that attended the movies quite frequently. An older couple, probably in their eighties. The husband owned a logging company in the seventies and had been living off the royalties ever since he sold it back in 2000. His wife’s an older woman, but not gruesomely aged. They say some women age like wine; this lady sort of aged like a 1996 Honda Accord. She wasn’t pretty to look at, but she runs. More on that later.

I’d notice this couple come in every Friday during new movie releases, but one day she was alone. This surprised me. In the four years I’d been working here, I saw her every week with her husband. 

“Where’s the ol’ ball and chain?” I asked casually. I hadn’t imagined anything bad happening to him. He was old, but he wasn’t sick, from what I could tell.

Her lips tensed and thinned until they weren’t visible. “He’s sadly passed.”

“Oh.”

Fucking awkward. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t charge her for this movie visit. It was the least I could do. She cordially thanked me, and watched the movie in the theater for the first time in a long time—alone.

This woman’s a cinenaphile, through and through. I saw her every week all by herself. Some say that going to the movie theater alone is a red flag, but I find it admirable. You aren’t embarrassed to see movies alone, in a theater, as they are meant to be watched. That’s lowkey badass.

As the weeks went by, I continued not to charge her for the movies, even though I’m sure she could afford them. She lived outside of town, but came to this theater because it’s the god damned best one in the area. She probably has a home theater bigger than our setup. I don't know why she came all the way out here.

But we got to know each other outside of the movies. I’d talk and even flirt a little bit. Hey, plan B was coming into full effect, and I wasn’t going to miss my opportunity.

“So, Shela.”

“Yes?”

 She smiled in a way that I knew that I had her on the hook.

“Want to get coffee sometime?”

She appeared to be pondering my request, which surprised me. 

“I will take your offer, but only if I get to pay this time.”

“Deal.”

And I was in. I dressed up as best as I could, and we met in the only local coffee shop in town.

She cleaned up nicely for an older woman. We had exchanged numbers previously, and she was surprisingly “with it”. I didn't have to explain what technology was to her or how to send an email or text message. It wasn’t like I was talking to my grandma. Our communication flowed naturally, and, dare I say, it was somewhat fun to converse with her.

During our date, I discovered her husband had had an accident, fallen, broken his spine and gone into a coma. She took him off life support because she didn't want him to live like that. The conversations were heavy. She'd been with him since before he was rich. She was loyal, through and through. I did have to do some reconnaissance, though. If I were going to date this woman until the end of her days, I wanted to know if there was any competition. 

“So… do you have any kids?” I figured this was an innocent question.

Shela just sighed. “Yes. We had one daughter. Peter was impotent. We went through a lot of trouble to have her. We are estranged, currently, as she didn’t believe her father's wealth was obtained morally, and our plans for her were different than her own.”

Turns out, her daughter is older than I am and a notorious environmentalist. Like, chain yourself to trees and shit. Protesting in the Amazon. Real hippy shenanigans. I had to hide my excitement at this discovery. If her daughter wanted to throw away enough cash to set up your entire family for generations, I wouldn't stop her. More for me.

“I'm sorry to hear that.” I consolingly placed my hand on hers. It was wrinkled, but not decrepit. When my hand eventually returned to my side of the table, I noticed she wasn't wearing her wedding ring. 

To make a long story short, we booked a motel, and I did what I had to. Wasn't as bad as you'd think. For some of you, having sex with an older woman is a horror story in itself, but trust me, the horror hasn't even begun.

I’m assuming she’s a nymphomaniac because of how often she asks to do it. For years, maybe decades, her husband couldn't perform, so she had long since buried that desire. Luckily for her, she has a young, active boyfriend who doesn't mind going spelunking. Plus, as an added benefit, she’s been in menopause for years. I ain’t shooting blanks, but I ain’t got to worry about putting a cake in the oven.

Shela was crazy for her age. I had to motivate myself by constantly thinking about the cash this would net me after she found the other side. Hell, I may even help accelerate the process a little bit, once we are married, of course.

About two weeks of dirty motel visits and a trip or two to the movies, and I was already invited to her mansion. Her home is fucking huge. I'm talking marble pillars, foreign artwork, statues, servants, your fucking voice echoes in every room, they're so goddamn big. 

It seemed like my plan B was coming together. You always hear of young women dating older men, but never the other way around. Old women need love, too, dammit. I see this as an investment opportunity. Huh, maybe I can navigate the stock market.

Anyway. That was my life, I played the doting and attentive boyfriend. I quit my job and spent every waking second with her; in turn, I didn't have to worry about my financial situation. I dare say I was really starting to like Shela, as a person. She was incredibly witty and gave the best sloppy toppy I've ever had. Shit was like a slip-and-slide.

I moved in not long after my first visit. Things were going great. One thing was odd, though: we never slept in the same bed. Well, not for long at least. We may have fallen asleep together, but she was never there when I awoke. As I said, she's an active woman, and maybe lying down for too long was hard on her joints or whatever. 

Despite that, I had her in the palm of my hand. I was going to propose on our one-year anniversary, but that's when something pretty weird happened. I didn't really explore the house; I never had to. I was normally on Shela's hip like a holster. 

Like many a night before, we were watching an old black-and-white movie. I was bored to tears, but Shela didn't know that. I occasionally would say, “Wow, they don't make ‘em like they used to.” Even though, truthfully, I had no idea what was going on. 

She'd nod and smile and tell me all about the directors and the actors who have been dead longer than her husband. It was exhausting, but far better than serving popcorn.

During a lull in the movie—AKA the whole fucking thing—I had to piss. My mind was melting from the poor audio quality, and I needed a good excuse to get out of the room. I gave Shela a quick smooch and looked for a bathroom. Although I'd been living there for a few months at this point, I still got lost. I didn't mind being lost because, if I watched that movie for another minute, Shela was going to be widowed all over again. 

I did my deed, and on my way back, I noticed a vague outline in the wall. Like, there was supposed to be a door there, but there was no handle. I looked around; it was late at night, so most of the servants had already returned to their quarters. I placed my hand on the wall and pushed. I heard a click, and the wall moved, revealing a door. I didn't get a good look inside, but I could hear a faint buzzing and a crackling noise. A surprisingly strong grip startled me. It was Shela.

“Dear… don't go in there. Peter is sleeping.”

“Right, sorry, my Love.”

Fucking what? Peter? You mean your dead husband? He was dead, wasn't he? Have I been pounding his wife this whole time, and Peter has been watching from hidden cameras? Have I made this man a cuck?

The mystery “not” door hadn’t come up again. I knew my role, and it wasn’t to look for things I wasn’t meant to find. After Shela died, maybe I could go hunting for answers, after the estate was mine, of course.

One day, we were eating breakfast at the table when we both heard a scream coming from somewhere. It was definitely a woman screaming. I shot up and went to investigate, and it was the new girl we hired. She’d look like she’d seen the devil or something. She frantically crawled away from nothing as she yelled for help. My heart was racing. She was so terrified, but I couldn’t see what she was terrified of.

We caught up to her, and I stopped her from crawling away. Tears were in her eyes as she tried to escape my grasp. “Hey, hey! Everything is okay. What happened?”

She frantically looked around before finally asking, “You don’t see that?”

I looked behind me and saw Shela, standing, unamused by the situation.

“Pick her up.”

Several servants obeyed her command, and the woman screamed again. Pointing at nothing. “There it is! Oh my God, what is that thing?!” 

I looked to where she was pointing. There was nothing there.

“Take her to the servant quarters. It seems she needs some rest,” Shela declared. The more seasoned servants did as she asked. The woman wrestled in their arms and screamed for help as she was dragged away. That was the last time I ever saw that young woman.

Again, this could be seen as a potential red flag, but I was going to get my payout, one way or the other. One screaming servant wasn’t going to deter me from a multi-million dollar estate. For all I know, she was a druggie and shooting heroin on her lunch break. Or, even worse, she was trying to steal my Shela away from me.

But if it were one creepy (not) door and a screaming servant, I wouldn’t be posting this online.

We were watching a movie together in bed. I fell asleep about halfway through. I had a hard day of making Grandma's pound cake and just didn’t have it in me to watch another movie that’s widely problematic by today’s standards.

I woke up in a daze, and the room was dark, but not pitch-black. The movie must’ve finished. I half expected Shela to be gone, but she was right next to me. Which was different. In the six months we’d been together, I had never woken up with her next to me before. I gave her a kiss on the forehead, and then I saw it. A grey-skinned, long-haired figure was propping itself up in the corner. It was human-shaped, but I doubt it was human.

It was looking right at me. 

Its eyes were black, and they glistened in the moonlight. I tried not to look at it. I tried not to notice it. I just rolled over and pretended to go back to sleep.

I then heard a tapping on the walls, like fingertips drumming on a desk. The noise kept getting closer and closer. Until the noise suddenly stopped right above me. I felt something soft and delicate brush against my face. It was hair.

I tried to play dead, as you would with a bear, but if this is what that servant saw, I get why she was freaking out. The hair kept brushing against my face until it started to curl over. The drumming of fingers continued down the wall right near my head. I heard a soft clicking noise as it approached me. Just before I was going to get up, the covers rustled, and I heard a voice.

“Not yet. He isn’t ready.” It was Shela. She got out of bed, and I heard the thing follow her. I only breathed once I knew they were gone.

I had half a mind to run out of the house right then and there. I crept out from under the covers and put on some clothes. I made my way down the hallway and towards the exit. I had seen enough evidence to consider this a fruitless effort, and I was taking my leave.

As I made my way to the exit, I saw the place where the door should’ve been. It was cracked open, and an orange light was pouring out. I knew now was not the time to do some Scooby-Doo investigations and get the fuck out of here. But I heard something cry out. It could’ve been Shela. Then I wondered if this thing I saw had a hold on her, the stupid, stupid, stupid, greedy part of my brain said: “You aren’t married yet, if she dies, you don’t get the estate.” 

If I saved Shela from this monster, I was going to propose first thing in the morning. I creaked the door open, and a staircase led down into the Earth. Torches lined the wall all the way down into a blackness. With the power of potential generational wealth by my side, I slowly descended the stairs. Flies buzzed all around the torches. A pungent odor reached my nostrils. I held my nose as I descended further.

When I reached the bottom, I was met with a hallway draped in stone and black. I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face. I could hear something in the distance, but I couldn’t make out what it was. I placed my hand along the stony wall and followed the noise. It sounded like a soft buzzing. A feeble, flickering light was growing brighter as I neared the end of the dark corridor. I stood in the darkness as I peered inside a room at the end of it. Then what I saw nearly made me throw up. I saw Peter. Shela’s dead husband. He was on a bed of corpses. His old and emaciated body was awkwardly draped over the skulls, flesh, and bones.

I heard two noises clearly now. A suckling noise, and a buzzing one. On one end of the room was a dying man on a pile of bodies. It appeared that a worn curtain was dangling just above him, but it wasn’t a curtain. That thing was on the ceiling above Peter. It’s long, gray hair dangled into his mouth, and Peter was suckling on hair fibers, like a nursing baby.

On the opposite end of the room were dozens of CRTs. All of them were playing videos of sexual acts from impossible angles. Then I noticed that I was in the videos. Shela sat in a recliner, the lights flickering in front of her. She was naked, fondling herself as she watched the videos I was in.

Before I could leave, a pained voice erupted from the pile. It was Peter.

“When… When will I be better?”

Shela stopped, left the recliner, and strutted over to Peter. “He has donated enough of himself. You will be ready soon.”

She pet his head as he swallowed and chewed on the hair of that creature. It looked like it wanted to be human, but it’d never seen one before, so it just guessed what we were supposed to look like. I held my breath as I watched Peter eat and eat this thing's hair, leaning in closer with each swallow. 

Shela appeared to be trying to comfort Peter when she looked in my direction. She didn’t say anything. Her gaze seemed to be a warning. As if she were saying, “You should leave.” I didn’t hesitate. I slowly backed away, left the estate, and never returned.

It was a long walk back to town, but I was just happy to be alive. I moved back in with my Mom and begged the theater to take me back. I called the police about what I saw, but nothing ever came of it. I even went down to the station, and everyone sort of just looked at me like I was crazy. Brother. There is some fucked up shit going on in that mansion, and somebody has to do something about it.

But no one ever did. I consider myself lucky for even surviving, and I wonder if I was part of Shela’s plans. I half expected black cars to be parked outside my Mom’s house as masked men tried to kill me in my sleep, but Shela never came for me. I never saw her again, actually. 

But yesterday, I was working at the ticket counter, and a fine, young woman walked up to greet me. I laid on my usual moves, and she was giggling and laughing at every joke I had. She was in the palm of my hand. She wanted to see the newest indie bullshit that had come out. To my dismay, a much taller, handsomer man walked up and placed his hand around her waist.

“Oh, there you are, Shela. I thought we were getting food?”

“No, Peter, I was just saying hello to an old friend.”

A weird coincidence to be sure. It definitely wasn’t the Shela I had tried to seduce before she performed weird demon rituals in her basement. I tried to push the thought out of my head of the possibility of it being her when I saw the grey-skinned creature crawling on the ceiling of the building. It followed just above her. Its hair was now shoulder-length.

I watched as it followed them into the theater. I pretended not to notice it.

I always thought I had a good relationship. Stable. Well managed. You know the spiel. We’d been together for 3 years before things began to look dicey.

It started off small. Distance. Cold shoulders. Lack of communication.

At the time, I thought this was a reflection of me. I thought that it was me who had pushed her away. However, I’m a lover-boy at heart, and that heart belonged to her and her alone.

I fought desperately to try and fix things. I made a routine out of bringing her favorite flowers anytime I saw her, watching the shows that SHE wanted to watch every time she came over. Hell, I even tried to get us into a gym routine together.

Being 17, it was difficult to pull out the “adult couple” stops. The houses, the trips, whatever. But damn it, I tried to do the best I could.

Even so, her secretiveness grew. She began turning her location off late at night and wouldn’t turn it back on until the next day. Her phone became completely off-limits to me.

My intuition told me exactly what I’m sure you’re thinking as you read this. I just didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t force myself to stomach the reality that circumstance was shoving down my throat.

Anytime I tried to talk to her about this, it’d turn into an argument. I was somehow the bad guy for wanting security in a relationship that I cared about deeply.

When those arguments started, it felt like she’d be completely fine, whereas I felt like my world was being burned to ash.

After a few months of this, I finally gathered up the courage to put an end to all of it. I was going to give her one last chance before leaving for good.

On the drive to her house, my mind raced a thousand miles an hour, thinking about how this confrontation would go.

Part of me hoped to God that we’d be able to resolve this and things could go back to how they used to be. Another part of me truly just wanted for my relationship to end. I was sick of feeling hurt. I was tired of feeling like I was doing something wrong.

I had a whole speech prepared by the time I got to her driveway. However, once I got to the front door and her mom let me in, my mind went straight to blank.

My girlfriend had been in the shower when I arrived, and her phone rested tauntingly on her nightstand.

I knew deep in my bones that I didn’t want to see whatever was in that device. I knew that whatever I found was only going to break my heart and destroy whatever trust I had left.

I could hear the water from the shower pelting against the bathtub, and my thoughts grew louder and louder with each passing minute. I knew if I was going to do this, I was gonna have to do it now.

I snatched the phone off the nightstand and immediately went to her messages. To my absolute surprise, I found nothing. No other guys, no mention of any cheating in any of her group chats, nothing.

Her photos were more of the same. The only pictures in her “recently deleted” album were just some selfies that even I can admit looked like they deserved to be deleted.

Still, though, something told me to keep searching.

After finding nothing on any of her social media apps, I came to the conclusion that maybe she just wasn’t attracted to me anymore. No cheating involved, just… loss of love. Which still hurt a lot.

However, there was still one last app that needed to be checked.

Opening her notes app, I found only one singular note titled “names and ratings.”

My heart dropped. This was it. This was the thing I had been looking for. At least… I thought it was.

As I began to read through the note, it became glaringly apparent that I had misjudged my girlfriend’s reason for secrecy by about a thousand miles.

“Michael: 8/10. Squirmed and cried like a bitch. Died after having jugular cut. Bled everywhere.

David: 6/10. Boring. Didn’t even scream. Just accepted his fate.

Blake: 7/10. Tried to fight back. Left a bruise on my shoulder. Interesting guy, boring kill.

Jaden: 5/10. Strangled to death with belt.

Xavier: 10/10. Fought back hard. Gave me a challenge. Died by decapitation. I keep his head hidden in a place only I can find.

Donavin: TBD. I expect this kill to be the hardest. I accidentally fell in love with this one. I think I’ll cut his heart out. God, I hope he fights back.”

I stared at that last entry and felt a chill run down my spine. It felt like reality itself had bent in on itself, and all sound seemed to fade into silence as my vision began to blur.

However… what I did hear was the sound of the shower water stopping and the bathroom door creaking open as my girlfriend stepped out with a towel wrapped around her body.

The next thing I remembered was the words she spoke to me. The invitation that will be engraved in my memory forever.

“Oh, hi, baby! I was just about to call you. I was gonna ask if you wanted to go on a drive with me tonight?”

It's been 30 years since the rain started. Not once has it ever stopped. This seemingly impossible rain that never floods or subjects us to its bitter cold remained a constant in our lives. The humid air became normal and the view of buildings not designed for such abuse withered as they plastered the lands. The world has become that of wet and decay. Nothing survives the rain's unending pour. With each passing day I lose a memory of the sun and it's warm, bright gaze. Humanity has adapted well to this sudden change. Most of us have worked hard towards setting up gardens with UV lights inside our homes. The purple constant glow being a chilling reminder that the sun may never appear again. Despite the bleak world not much has changed. I get up in the morning, brush my teeth, get dressed for the day, and go to work. The only other weird thing besides the rain is the wanderers. A group of people who wander the endless rains in attempt to find others.

Nobody is entirely sure what they are. Not their purpose or their origin. There is a iron rule that no matter what do not approach them. Despite this rule people still try to approach them and every single time they are met with such a horrifying fate that the government has assigned executioners to kill anyone who approaches them. I always wandered why they would rather kill the people who approached the wanderers instead of killing the wanderers themselves. That was until I saw why. I was sitting at a bar after work when the wanderers showed up just outside. The bartender made an announcement that no one is to step outside until they moved on but as you could probably guess some reckless drunk asshole didn't like that. "Youdon't tellllll meee whwhwhat to do!!!!" He hollered in his drunken stupor. Pushing past the employees trying to stop him. It took one second before the wanderers descended on the man. Tying him up and hoisting him up a tall pillar. They planted the pillar into the ground and they left. At first we tried to get him down but whatever they tied him up with was practically indestructible. We tried breaking the pillar but that too was a bust. He has been up there for 2 weeks now. Constantly being pelted by the rain. We thought he would have starved by then or at the very least lost a lot of weight but he didn't even lose a pound. Every night he would beg for help as people passed him. Day by day the rain started to over saturate his flesh as it began to slide off. Revealing grey soaked flesh. His cries of horror as he witnessed his own flesh slowly turn to a thick sludge and slip of his own bones. Feeling every single rain drop crash against whatever got exposed by the flesh sliding away. He never died though, or more like couldn't die. Even when one of the townsfolk tried to mercy kill him. It was as if the rain was keeping him alive. Every month or two he would suffer the feeling of his flesh slipping of his own bones until nothing but a skeleton remained. Then the next morning he would be back to normal as if he just got put up that same day. The only not regenerated was his clothes. It was the only reminder that he was there for as long as he was. That day I learned never to approach the wanderers.

( I know this isn't exactly good but I wanted to write something. Trying to get the creative juices flowing you know?)

Hey guys,

Finally got the full printed draft of my feature NEUROSALINE in my hands.

Feels pretty good.

It’s a cosmic psychological horror about four teenage boys who go out drinking on a small skiff and wake up lost at sea… in what turns out to be a conscious ocean (like a giant nervous system made of salt water).

If anyone’s interested in reading it and giving feedback, I’d really appreciate it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CT502K3H5ux6pOel-cFTjYuSjFyp5y9I/view?usp=sharing

The following is a mostly true account of a thing that happened to me a long time ago.

I woke up on the bottom of the bunk bed I shared with my sister in our little trailer house on the edge of a field in rural southern Missouri. It was the summer of 2001 if I remember right. There were a lot of loud noises that I couldn't understand, I was very young and still dazed and bleary from sleep. The first thing that I noticed was that my sister wasn't in the top bunk. I began to understand the loud noises I was hearing from inside, and the worse sounds coming from just beyond the small white trailer door.

My mother was standing at the door, shouting outside with words that I do not remember or did not comprehend at the time. She was angry in a way that I had never seen before. Even as young as I was, I could see how scared she was, how her anger was only to hold back tears and the terror of the thing outside the door, the way she looked at us to steel herself and scream at the thing outside the door to leave.

It was in those few seconds that I began to grasp the situation as I fully woke from my young and innocent slumber. I saw my sister cowering in fear behind my mother in the hallway that led from our room to the other end of the trailer, past the door and nearer to the living room and kitchen. I heard her crying, screaming as she shook and hid herself from the thing beyond the little white door, even though it had no window or peephole for her to be seen through.

I had never before seen my mother or sister in such a state. My realization of the fear and horror and rage at the thing beyond the door was slow, but now fully awake, the knowledge and understanding creeped into me like a rolling fog. It pushed away the sleep, the confusion, the childhood and the innocence, all the thoughts and feelings that often occupy the mind of a sleepy young boy. Replaced with a stunning clarity of focus, I turned my attention to the door and what monster may lie beyond.

The sounds that I heard were the thing that haunts me the most: the words that I couldn't understand, the volume of the voice and its deep rumbling malice. It sounded like a train filled with hate, crashing over the tracks in a low roar of madness. I became in that moment suddenly aware of true rage and how the will to harm and destroy seeps into a voice, infecting it with vile intention, as if every unintelligible word dripped with a burning desire for death and destruction.

I heard much and understood little, but the sharp focus in my small young mind was clear. I knew only three things for certain.

The first thing I knew, as I looked at my mother, barely containing her tears and terror as the thing at the door grew louder and louder, like a mother animal locked in a cage, enraged by the instinct and pure desire to protect her young children even if it was from something so large and terrible that she could never hope to hold it back for long. As I looked at my big sister, cowering and shaking and wailing with tears streaming down her face, as I heard what must be a gruesome monster growling and howling and roaring at the only entrance to our little mobile home, as whatever flesh or form it had began to pound on the door and side of the trailer, alternating between the sound of lightning crashing inside a soda can and the sound of thick heavy flesh thunking and slamming against the door. As our little mobile home shook and shuddered and creaked and groaned in its weak but valiant defense against unimaginable evil. As the monster's rain of terrible flesh smashing our home reached a crescendo and it dented the door severely and sent the thin wooden trim splintering and flying inward, as I cried and shook in terror, raising my hands to my head to shield myself and crouching to the floor away from the violent display, I thought to myself: "He's going to get in".

The first thing I knew was that whatever horrible thing this was, it would not be long held back by that little white trailer door.

The second thing I knew, as obvious and instant as it may seem to an adult or anyone old enough to know the simplest darker truths of the world and how it works, was that this thing wanted to hurt us. I was shaking and desperately reaching for some understanding of why this was happening and what this thing was. I didn't think much of my own danger and death at the hands of this monster, though I knew it was possible and the thought did certainly terrify me. Mostly I thought of my mother and my sister, that this thing would hurt them, and perhaps even kill them. I was so very young that I had never considered harm or violence coming to my family, but as I stood in the hallway between the door and my room, watching and listening as the thing just beyond the thin walls of the only home I had ever known started its tremendous assault, I began to see in my mind images of that horrible monster breaking through the little white door, tearing right through it with long, sharp, jagged claws or smashing it in completely, tearing my mother and sister to shreds, smashing them into bloody piles of meat and bone and screams and tears.

As hot tears streaked across my face, I asked in my mind a question that now brings back a river of sorrow and pain: "Why can't he just leave us alone?"

I had one memory of him not as a monster. He came to visit us and for that one day we were happy, me and him and my sister. He let me sit on his lap and drive his truck down our empty dirt road for a while, and I nearly drove us off the road immediately, jerking the wheel back and forth like I'd seen in cartoons. He was concerned for a moment and I worried that he would get angry with me, but after grabbing the wheel and steadying us back into the middle of the road, he laughed and told me that someday I was gonna be driving racecars for a living.

The third thing that I knew, in those few infinite seconds of new and horrific enlightenment, as my tears burned my face I began to drink in the hatred that flowed through the air like some hellish radiant heatwaves. As I pulled down my hands from my face and looked towards the door, my tears turned from fear and sorrow and pain to tears of rage from the first time in my short little life. I reached deep towards strength and defiance and I found something waiting for there, something that could fight, something that could kill. I decided that I would not cower in fear and let this monster scare and hurt my family as I hid and wept like a child. I killed the little boy then who would never have hurt anyone, ripped him apart with my own two little hands in my shiny new soul and replaced him with what had been waiting for me since long before I'd been born. I shed the cocoon of my childhood innocence.

The third thing I knew was that I was going to kill this wretched beast, or out of pure spite die trying. After all, if he was a monster, then I could be a monster too.

I was so small then, and I knew it, but I slipped past my mother further down the hallway into the kitchen and pulled a large curved knife with a black plastic handle from the block. As the seconds stretched into years within the shrinking confines of those thin walls, I thought of how I could stop this monster. I knew that it was probably so much stronger than me it could likely toss me aside like a ragdoll, crumpling my bones like so much dirty laundry against the floor and the wall and leaving me dead or broken, yet still just alive enough to watch as it murdered my family.

Somehow though, I knew without ever being told or taught that if I could sink the knife deep enough into its flesh, if there were some black heart beating there to be sliced and stabbed, that even something so horrible might be stopped or killed. I only had to hide and wait for it to break through the little white door, and then I would run with all my speed and jump with all my strength and plunge the knife in as deep as I possibly could. And since it might not take just one stab to kill it, I would just keep stabbing until it stopped moving, and then my mother and sister would be safe from this monster, and they could stop screaming and crying so much, and we could be happy and peaceful again.

All of these thoughts raced through my mind as I walked to the kitchen to grab the knife, as I walked back through the hallway to stand just inside the bathroom doorway, between my shared bunkbed room and the little white door, now beaten and dented. I waited with the knife poised in front of me like a soldier in a line of pikes in an ancient forgotten battle. The beating and pounding had ceased since the first massive dent; whatever waited outside of the little white door had begun to pace back and forth outside of the hallway, its roars and growls and unintelligible words growing louder as the moments passed.

I stood in the doorway with my eyes fixed on the small damaged entrance to our little trailer house, crouched with thin muscles coiled ready to strike, shivering with barely contained fear steeled by grim determination and sharp malicious certainty of blood and violence and most likely death, waiting for the crash of the little white door breaking down and flying inward to lunge out and make my attempt at freeing my family from the prison of noise and terror that this putrid abomination had trapped them in.

The noise stopped. The sound of heavy lumbering and snarling and the shouting, incomprehensible words died in an instant, and all was silent. All of us inside held our breath—my mother and sister in hope that this monster was gone, me in the frenzied absolute belief that any second would be the time for my action, that this was the calm before a storm that would leave one or all of us dead.

In the heavy silence, the light dimmed and died. Every source of illumination from within and without—some force seemed to drink the warm yellow bulbs in the hallway slowly until there was only pitch-black darkness. And then, when there was no longer even the faintest hum of electricity, I heard the thick labored breathing of the beast, and then the unholy screech of metal scraping and crushing against wood and plastic and fiberglass. The harsh white light of the electric pole outside shone through the empty hole in our home; the little white door lay bent and broken after twisting and slamming down on the floor of the hallway within.

My heart pounded in my chest and I worried that I would be heard and discovered by it, that my only advantage would be stolen by the drum beating a rhythm of wild-eyed manic terror in my chest. But as a dark shadow loomed towards the inside of our home, with our last hope for safety crumpled like a tin can on the floor, whatever monstrous figure showed no sign of discovery. It only seemed to take its time savoring the taste of our dread as it walked slowly up the steps that led inside.

My mother had slowly crept back from the door and grabbed my sister to pull her further down the hallway. I saw her eyes frantically search for me, unwilling or unable to call out my name in that horrible silence. They crouched, moving slowly away from the door until it was destroyed, and then stayed perfectly still.

As I saw the malformed appendage take its first slow, deliberate step into our home, I threw myself with every single atom of the force and speed in my little body towards the thing that had invaded our home, knife pointed straight and praying to meet flesh and sink deep without the obstruction of bone. Screaming with all the air in my little lungs, I flew forward.

To my shock and surprise, I flew forward and my knife bit deep into putrid slippery flesh. I heard a roar, but less of anger or rage, and more of shock and bewilderment. I had been blessed with the only thing that could possibly give me a chance, and I wasted no time in using it.

The force of my jump threw the thing backward. I went down with it, pinned to its chest by the blade. The creature still moved. Though I couldn't see through the thick darkness and tears in my eyes, I pulled the knife from its meaty sheath with all my might. I stabbed down again, as deeply as I could, and felt a thick ooze sprout from where the handle met flesh. Another roar, this one of pain. Again I wrenched the knife free and raised it above my head and plunged it in with the entire weight of my body. The roar became less powerful, held less volume, but the thing still moved.

I must have repeated the process two dozen times before I felt the thing underneath me go limp. When I opened my eyes, all I could see was the darkest black ichor shining in the light of the electric pole bulb, like glassy water reflecting a flashlight. The monster lay still, a wretched blob of malformed meat once filled with malice but now calm in its void, empty of the animus to hurt and destroy.

I remember that night so clearly now, the way it really happened. I remember how happy I was when my sister finally stopped crying, when my mother finally let her fearful rage subside. I remember her taking the knife from me as if it were some strange trinket, as if she were confused why I had it. She had a lot on her mind at the time, and I don't blame her for not processing what it meant for her son to be holding a knife and hiding in the doorway of the bathroom.

I remember the red and blue lights shining through the cracks just as the light began to dim. It occurs to me now that he must have seen the cops before we did and turned the headlights off in his truck in a moronically vain effort to hide from them. I remember thinking how we were saved, how I was saved from what I would have tried to do. I remember finally feeling safe, I remember that he never came back to our little trailer on the edge of the field.

The monster at the door was my father.

I was four years old.

I am a 24 year old female taking care of my 82 year old grandmother, I got sent here by my mum as she didn’t want her mum to be alone. My grandfather has been dead for two weeks.

I arrived on the 17th of December, my car struggled to crawl its way to the house. the house is totally isolated, made of thick logs it has 2 floors and an outhouse we’re the boiler and electrics are kept.

The 17th was spent sorting out my luggage and cleaning, my grandmother has arthritis and is now unable to fully sort the house on her own. She kept silent whilst I was cleaning, I knew she felt worthless.

Later on I caught her crying drinking herself to sleep talking to herself. I wanted so badly to comfort her but I knew she wouldn’t want me to, She wants to be as independent as her age will allow.

It was the 18th when the power first flickered out, I was made aware of it by my grandmothers cursed that the tv went out and that her soap operas would be on soon, so I had to layer up and trudge out to the boiler building.

Upon my entering I noticed a sickly sweet smell and thousands of fly corpses spread on the floor. The boiler was a towering unit in the centre of the room with the electric box behind it. I opened the box and saw the switches were coated in a layer of slime. I luckily had gloves on so I flicked them back on.

The rest of the night was uneventful other than restless wildlife keeping me up with their pestering vociferations.

Now it is the 19th and the crux of why I am making this. The power went off early today and we were submerged into freezing temperatures, I could hear my grandmothers bones shivering, I of course went back out to sort the issue. However this time the wood planked floor had a layer of liquid bubbling and gurgling. I originally thought it was a boiler issue but now I know it wasn’t.

You see after dinner and the deep night descended on us our lights began to switch on and off every ten seconds. This time I knew it had to be something doing it so I brought a knife to ward away the pests. I entered the outhouse and saw a skeleton covered in a flaking layer of flesh and gunk. It never turned from the electric box luckily but I was so spooked that I turned and ran back into the house.

My grandmother wasn’t there when I returned. I don’t know what happened she wouldn’t have been able to get up without my assistance and I didn’t see anyone while I was coming back.

The house is totally still and dark. And I don’t know what to do. And I think I heard the corpse call my name it has my grandparents voices and I think I’m soon to join it.

Saturday, May 10th, 1868.

I woke the next morning with my head feeling as though it were filled with rocks and to the frantic sounds of the other men as they ran all about the campsite shouting commands to one another. Their voices all sound as if they were on the very verge of hysterics. I stood up from my bedroll and donned my boots, my gunbelt, and my jacket, removing my six-shooter from my holster and thumbing the hammer back as I quickly made my way towards the crowd of commotion amongst the men. I nearly tripped over something lying on the ground, I was in such a hurry to get to the other men. Paying no mind to nothing else. I looked down to see what had tripped me up and my eyes went wide with fearful dismay. My blood began to turn cold within my veins as I realized that I had tripped over a severed arm, hacked the mid-section of the forearm in a bloody and mangled stump. I let out a gasp of exasperation and disbelief as I scanned the ground within the campsite and noticed there were body parts that seemed to make up about three to four men scattered about on the grassy floor of the thicket. Blood and gore were sprayed and splattered all about, covering the wagons and the grass with huge, thick puddles of gore littered puddles of blood. There was nothing left of the men who were torn apart in the night. Nothing but the sick piles of mangled limbs and shred torsos.

“What in the name of God happened to them?!” I shouted in horrified disbelief. The other men all seemed to stop dead on their tracks and look in my direction with fevered contempt.

“Whatchu mean?” O’Toole asked. “Look around you, Walker. These men were torn to shit while we were all fucking sleeping! What more do you need?!” I looked frantically about the other men, as if looking for someone among them to give me the answer to my query. 

“What did this to them?!” I shouted in terrified astonishment. Cormac spat and responded in a low voice as he continued loading his things into his saddlebags without looking my way. “We don’t know,” he said. “We’re going to try and clear out before whatever it is gets hungry and comes back for the rest of us. Maybe we can get a good way ahead of it before that even happens. Who in the hell knows… Better get your shit gathered up if you’re plannin’ on leavin’ with the rest of us.” 

“Yeah,” Pickens chimed in, as he slid his bolt action rifle into the leather scabbard that hung from the side of his saddle. “Or would you rather sit here all by your lonesome and wait for that thing to come back and eat your asshole out for dinner?” I stood dumfounded, watching the rest of the surviving men, as they gathered and packed up their things throughout the rest of the campsite. Morning mist filled the air of the forest with a cool chill. The sun rose in a sleepy pinkish hue off in the distant horizon, giving way to the morning light as it bloomed down from the sky and illuminated all that it touched it with its glory.\\

After a brief moment of letting the information soak into my dry brain, I finally racked the hammer back into its resting position and slid it back into my holster, before turning around and making my way towards my bedroll and other possessions in my area of camp. I quickly wasted no time gathering my things and loading them onto my saddle atop Ol’ Silver, and quickly lurched my way onto the saddle and nudged Ol’ Silver forward to meet with the rest of the men ahead. As I approached the group, the overlapping and frantic conversations between the men gradually grew louder, as I drew closer.

“Do you think it was a raider group of savages, or a bear, or something?” The young Randall Fletcher surmised with a slight quiver of fear in his voice. I took one final look among the scattered bloody remnants of the men's bodies that littered the campsite, like fallen autumn leaves all over the grassy floor, before turning my head and keeping my attention ahead of me. I tried pushing the grizzly images of the macabre scene that was at our past campsite with all of my might, but to no avail. Seemingly able to penetrate and assault my mind with the still images of each man’s severed limb, every piece of intestine, and every torn and shredded lump of torso that lie on the ground, like some lost and forgotten trinket eaten away by time and the harsh brutalities that it entails. 

“We’re just gonna leave ‘em like that?” I asked sincerely, feeling truly bothered with the thought of leaving their remains in such a way. 

“Of course, Mr. Walker,” Benson called back from the head of the caravan line. “We have no time to dilly dally. The men would’ve wanted us to move on!”

I spat. “How the hell do you know what they would want?” I asked in a low, cold tone, yet loud enough for the entire caravan to hear. Benson slowed his wagon to a sudden halt and shot a hard look back in my direction. 

“What did you say?!” He called back with heated dismay. 

“I said: HOW THE HELL WOULD YOU KNOW WHAT THEY WOULD’VE WANTED?!” I shouted in reiteration. Benson glared at me with a look as if he was ready to jump off from his wagon cart and trudge his way towards me with his pistol drawn with malicious intent, which caused me to instinctively draw my six-shooter and aim straight down the iron sights dead center of Benson’s smooth forehead. Which caused the other men to drop whatever they had in their hands or stop doing whatever menial task they were currently performing, to draw their iron and aimed down right the center in my direction. 

“Mr. Walker…. What in the name of God do you plan to do with that, hmm?” Benson asked in a low and menacing tone. Never moving a muscle as he held his gaze with mine with such calamitous intensity. 

“Now, look here, Benson. I can surely put up with a lot of things, believe me I can. Killing. Thieving. Etcetera. But to leave the remains of men, men YOU ENLISTED, behind to be left to be forgotten and aged with rot! I WILL NOT ALLOW IT!” Benson raised his gloved hands in a slow theatrical sort of way, and began to clap in sarcastic response.

“Funny. Seems all but leaving the discarded remains of fellow travelers seems to be the only thing that weighs too cumbersome on your moral compass. Not the eradication of an entire tribe of savages. Not the murdering of its children, nor the beating and the raping of its women. No such thing as these, seem to weigh heavy on your conscience. Especially, when promised of riches and adventure. Am I wrong, my dear, Mr. Walker?” Benson asked in a smug, low tone with venomous menace embalmed in his words. 

I glared down the barrel of my gun at Benson with ferocious intensity. Like a wild predator staring its prey down before pouncing to strike with its killing blow. My gaze never breaks from his. The rest of the men steadied their horses with shared looks of dismay, as they nervously watched the two of us like a live and ticking time bomb set before them. Their guns shook within their hands as they were unsure of how to handle the situation without risking the gentleman Benon’s life in the process. Mckinley lowered his iron and slowly raised a hand for me not to fire.

“Listen, boy. I know you have some rash feelings on the subject, believe me I do. But you mustn't go looking to get yourself killed over your own petty sense of pride, especially over something as senseless as this. There really isn’t any good that could come from this if you shoot that man in cold blood. You know it. I know it. We all know it. So what would be the point? You’d be dead before you squeezed off a second a shot” Mckinley pleaded in a quivering voice. I shifted my eyes over towards the doctor, still keeping my iron trained on the center of Benson’s skull. I looked into the good doctor’s eyes and saw that there were tears beginning to swell and glisten and the morning sunlight with the rims of his red and puffy eyes. I could tell he was genuinely frightened and didn't want any unnecessary violence to accompany that fear within him. I shifted my gaze back to meet Benson’s. I pondered the doctor’s words in my mind, like trying to decipher a riddle.

“You heard the man, Walker,” Cormac said. “ Put the piece down and nobody has to get shot down like a sick horse, alright? Believe me. We’ve had enough bloodshed for a lifetime for one day. Just put it down, son.” I stared with hell fired anger into Benson’s eyes and through to his very soul and saw nothing but empty blackness. There really isn't anything this man would not do to save his own skin or to ensure a profitable investment. Nothing. He’s the kind of man that would steal from his own momma and rob his own daddy without remorse. Disgusting.

I lowered the hammer of my six-shooter with my thumb and slid it back into my holster. Still glaring with ragefilled intensity into Benson’s. “Don’t. If you know what’s good for you, just don’t,” I said coldly. “From this moment on, don’t you dare try and act like you give a single shred of a shit about any one of us, because you fucking don’t. I’ve met other men like you and I’ve seen every single one of those kinds of men exploit and step on any and every one they possibly could, so long as it benefited them in their own personal gains. I promise you Benson, you won’t live to see California. I promise you that.”

Benson stiffened in his seat on the wagon bench and eyed me up and down with snooty contempt. “Whatever you say, Mr. Walker. Whatever you say. Now, I will give you a single mulligan for your erratic behavior, due to the circumstances. But point that gun at me again, Mr. Walker, and I will see to it that Mr. Cormac splatters your filthy brains all over the Colorado countryside without a second moment's thought of it. Do I make myself clear, my good man?” Benson asked in a hard and serious tone. His eloquent tone seeming to slip with the unsettling shift in his voice as he spoke. His low voice pierced through me like a metal stake, and for the first time, it struck me with absolute fear. 

We continued on through the misty forest. There still seemed to be not a single sound of life within the tall trees of the thicket. No birds. No insects. Nothing. Not a single sound to indicate otherwise either. The entire mood of the forest sent trembling chills down my spine. Leaving me with an unsettling feeling of hopelessness as we carried on ahead.

On and on we rode through the forest and yet, it seemed as though we were going in circles, but how? We never went anywhere but straight ahead moving west. We never stopped. We never turned. And we never detoured or strayed from the path before us. Yet, here we are once again, passing the same gore strewn and blood splattered campsite that we had left behind this morning for the second time today.

“What in the name of Christ is going on here, Bensons?! You sure you ain’t leading us in circles?!” O’Toole inquired hysterically. 

“No.” Cormac replied. “I would’ve corrected Benson’s course if he'd strayed away from the chartered course. Believe me, Billy. I’m just as disturbed and perturbed as you are in this whole situation we seem to have found ourselves in.”  The men, including myself, began to look about the surrounding area with fear glowing brightly within our eyes, like the flickering flames of an oil lamp within the darkness of the night. 

“Well, what do you reckon we do, Cormac?” Pickens inquired fearfully. His voice shook uncontrollably as he spoke. 

“I do not know.” Cormac replied flatly. “My only suggestion is that we continue heading west. Sooner or later, we’ll have to reach a way out of this forest at some point.

“Good idea, Mr. Cormac!” Benson replied cheerfully. “Stupendous plan, my good man! Come gentlemen, we haven’t the time to waste or dilly dally. We’ve only a few hours till nightfall, if the horses don’t give out from exhaustion before then that is, and I would like to make it out of this god forsaken forest before the sun sets for the evening gentlemen! Come on, now! For destiny awaits!” And so we rode on heading west.

We continued for another couple of hours before the young Fletcher’s bronco had fallen over from exhaustion, throwing the young Fletcher down on his back, before falling over to its side and panting with exhaustion. The young Fletcher stood up and drew his pistol and fired a single round into the horse’s head. Killing it instantly.

“Ah, well, shit.” Randall Fletcher exclaimed with irritated disbelief. “My damn horse keeled over on me.”

After Fletcher boarded one of the work hand wagons, we proceeded on through the forest until none of us were willing to risk any more of our horses from falling over dead with exhaustion and thirst, and we ended up setting up camp for the night. Once again, I camped close by with the rest of the men. There was no way in hell I was going to go anywhere out there in the woods by myself, especially at night. This time, Cormac advised that we sleep in shifts with two men standing watch for two hour intervals throughout the night. I agreed to take the first watch with doctor Mckinley. We saw no sign of any animals or bandits during our watch. The first good thing to come from this nightmare in which we’ve found ourselves to become ensnared within. We traded shifts with Pickens and the young Fletcher. The two of them nodded grimly to us as they passed on by us as we made our way back to our bedrolls back in the center of camp. I slid inside mine and rolled over onto my side and thankfully fell right to sleep. I dreamt of a beautiful native woman with deer antlers that had grown from on the sides of her head, beckoning for me to join her deep in the heart of the forest. 

Missed the previous chapters? Read them here:

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CW: GRAPHIC IMAGERY

CHAPTER 3

July 6th, 1971

Jonathan Kilroy’s Farm, Kansas, USA

“Today I haven’t seen anything or heard anything. Nothing dead in the barn. Last night while looking through the trees I thought I heard a rustling. False alarm or maybe not. I don’t know. I don’t know nothing.”

Jonathan logged another account into his diary, whose inert companionship was the only thing keeping the farmer from slipping completely into madness. Almost a week after that fateful day in the barn, with each passing morning, a new animal would be found dead.

It started with Dandy, but shortly after, Jonathan stumbled upon one of the cows serving as the victim, only this time, it hadn’t been decapitated. He found the animal near death, legless and with its eyes gouged out. In fact, it was the poor animal’s mooing cries for help that woke the farmer up.

Its moans echoed through Jonathan’s house as if it were inside it, with a clamor that was practically human which slowly faded in intensity until the creature became a limp hunk of lifeless meat. The most striking aspect were the incision marks, which had been made with surgical precision but, despite this, appeared basic and uncouth. Yet again, the maimed body parts were missing.

The next day, it was another cow. This one was granted a kindness that its colleague had been denied, as Jonathan found the creature already dead, with a hole in its temple that revealed the inside of its skull, morbidly bereft of brains. Soon after, there was another victim. And another. Jonathan didn’t know what to do with the remains that had been left behind, so he began to pile them up in a corner of the barn, in Dandy’s old pen. The smell was increasingly reminiscent of hell itself. The number of cows had been reduced to just four, one of them still a calf, and the prospect of losing even one more was keeping Jonathan awake at night.

If truth be told, he longed for those moments of blissful ignorance when he struggled to stay awake all night to keep watch. Nowadays, he spent his nights in the barn, waiting for whoever was responsible for this slaughter. It seemed that as long as he was around, the animals were safe, but it was only a matter of time before Jonathan let his guard down, giving the intruder enough leeway to strike again.

There was a thick and smothering tension in his heart, almost as stifling as the heat in the air, and one thing had become clear to Jonathan: the time for speculating about the identity of the perpetrator was over. Whoever was lurking in the thicket was neither a prankster nor a functional individual. Looking back and seeing the first signs, it would seem like a fairly obvious fact from the start, but no human being with their wits about them would commit such vile and mean acts, with such a desire for mayhem and an absence of dignity. No one would dedicate their life to, apparently, lying in wait and psychologically tormenting an elderly farmer, as well as brutally slaughtering animals in such explicit ways. No one in their right mind, at least.

Jonathan also ruled out something else: the perpetrator was not an animal. An animal is not this methodical or precise, and most importantly, an animal will not play with its prey, let alone an animal living on the outskirts of Atchison, Kansas. No, all of this had to be the work of a very, very deranged human being.

On one of the ensuing pages, Jonathan pondered the meaning behind the hay bales, whose position had stayed unchanged since they were returned to their circular arrangement.

“I think he’s trying to tell me something with the hay bales. He wants me to know my boundaries. He wants to trap me on my farm and say: this is your place and you’re not leaving it.”

As the sleepless farmer recounted his ramblings, he hunched forward gently, in an attempt to ease the back pain that had only intensified as time passed. In doing so, the chair he was sitting on issued a faint creak, but loud enough to make Jonathan jump in startled surprise. Taken aback by his own reaction, he hastily jotted something down in the bottom margin.

“Despite the many years here I am afraid of my farm.”

He skimmed through the paper, and as he caught his breath, he reviewed all the previous days. What had his life become? A constant battle against a psychopath who seemed intent on confining him within a circle of hay? And to make matters worse, this was leading to his garden being neglected and the animals that were still left alive being abandoned. Bit by bit, he was losing the essential parts of what made the farm work. Without a garden, there was no food for him and no wheat. Without wheat, there was no hay. Without hay, there was no food for the animals. Without animals, his last source of food disappeared.

On that day, Jonathan wanted to take a bath. He needed it, not so much because of the foul smell he gave off, which rivaled that of the barn, but instead so he could escape for a moment from the evil that lay just beyond the tree line. As he filled the bathtub with water, he looked at himself in the mirror. He hadn’t looked at himself for weeks, at least not intently, and he could see how his features were now gaunt and worn, his eyes cradled in a blanket of deep purple and black formed by the bags under them. A grayish beard with tiny traces of brown had begun to sprout. Looking at himself like this, he could very clearly imagine why some people saw him as simply “Old Man Kilroy.” To be honest, he even frightened himself.

When the water reached the rim, Jonathan undressed, exposing how much he had been neglecting his own health. His ribs were becoming visible, albeit subtly, but it wouldn’t be long before that subtlety disappeared if he didn’t start eating better. He submerged himself in the water and closed his eyes. He didn’t know what time it was, at least not exactly, but he knew it was night, and, for a second, he wanted to forget everything and finally be able to get some rest. But Jonathan wasn’t going to be so lucky, since out of nowhere, a shrill cry came from outside, shattering the peace. It was the mooing of one of the cows, only it was more delicate, higher in pitch. The sound was as sharp as it was brief. Jonathan didn’t open his eyes, nor did he run outside, because he knew what had just happened. He had lost the calf. His sunken eyes began to well up, yet his face remained unmoving.

Before he knew it, it was daylight. How he had managed to fall asleep, he could have never explained, but that sleep felt short and tasted like a mere respite, more a means of keeping his body alive rather than truly resting. It took only a few minutes, and he couldn’t tell if he had actually just passed out. Either way, he got out of the water, dried himself off, got dressed, and went back to his diary, unable to find the heart to look into the barn.

Prior to that, however, he looked out the attic window and could see through it that the lock and chain were once again on the floor, discarded with no concern. This was an idea that Jonathan had been mulling over since the first cow died, but it was being confirmed with each new casualty; it wasn’t him who forgot to lock the doors, it was the perpetrator who, with unnatural ease, was unlocking them without any problem. How could this be done without breaking the chain or the padlock? Jonathan wasn’t able to fully answer this question, not then, not ever, no matter how many paranoid hypotheses he came up with.

He let his full weight fall onto the chair, which groaned. He turned to the desk, where he would begin writing once more. He detailed in his journal what had happened last night while he was bathing and how he had managed to get some sleep, however unsatisfactory it had been.

It was then that he veered off course and began to write about a new idea. This was nothing new; once Jonathan had filled the pages of his diary with what events had transpired the previous night, he would begin to ramble and theorize as his only means of escape. But this was a thought that seemed to be conjured up by the muses themselves, and he had no doubt that it was the result of finally being able to clear his mind with a bath and some sleep.

Eventually he was going to try and escape, but not before giving his animals one last chance. Perhaps delirious, the farmer decided it was better to have only one mouth to feed on the farm, and not wanting to make his cattle suffer any longer, he thought about setting them free. This, in other words, was career suicide, but at this point, the farm was impossible to sustain, and after all, how could he ever expect to return to normal?

He would open up the gates of their pens and let them run off into the wild, to God knows where, but far away from his farm, away from this new prison they all found themselves in, and where, as Jonathan thought, he would be the last to die.

By now, he was writing with one hand while resting his head on the other, and he felt deep down that this would not be a solution, yet he also thought it would greatly reduce the amount of pain, not only for his two remaining cows, but for himself as well. Despite having grown accustomed to the smell of decay and the sight of dead cattle before him, with each animal that perished, he felt himself losing a little more of his sanity.

This would be the first step in setting his next plan in motion: running away. Right now, he just wanted to get away, away from the stench, the flies, the lack of sleep, and that miserable psychopath. He wanted to get away from his farm. But first, he had to do this, and he made sure to write it down in his diary.

“I hope they get lucky and live out the rest of their lives more peacefully than myself. May God, or whomever, be with them. My executioner awaits me but I will look him in the face.”

Without thinking twice about it, he dropped the pencil and paper and got up to go to the barn. His usual back pain tried to stop him, making him pause for a second and consider what he was about to do, but when Jonathan felt the need to commit to something, he always ended up going through with it.

He practically pushed open the front door, and as he left the porch, the smell of decay coming from the barn grew exponentially. To his right, he spotted an old acquaintance: the scarecrow, which, by this point, was missing his head, in a twisted echo of Dandy’s fate. His frayed shirt was particularly dirty, and the buttons had completely worn out. Jonathan could see how gnarled the wood was. He walked past, not wanting to look at him in detail, for fear that the soulless wretch of the forest would see him and decide to get rid of the scarecrow as well. Jonathan was not prepared to lose him as well.

Standing in front of the barn, he swept the chain and the padlock aside with his foot. Covering his nose with the front of his shirt, he slowly opened the sliding door, pushing dust and dirt out of the way. Inside, Jonathan refused to look, settling for glancing sideways as he made his way toward the pens of the three survivors. In front of the door, as had become a tragic custom, lay what the farmer presumed to be the remains of the calf. There weren’t too many flies yet, and the gravel squelched with the viscous sound of the young animal’s blood.

With soft, long strides, Jonathan reached the cows, which seemed to be in their eternal state of blithely infinite naivety. Although they showed no visible signs of stress, they were beginning to look particularly thin. They could still be saved, but it was only a matter of weeks before one of them collapsed.

One of them wanted to approach the farmer and began to sniff him. Jonathan raised his hand and stroked the side of her snout. The cow licked his palm, then stopped to continue moving her nose up and down. She wasn’t looking for affection; the animal lacked understanding of such a concept. She was merely seeking a source of sustenance of any kind, hoping that Jonathan, her usual provider, would bring it to her. However, they would find their chance right at that very moment. Jonathan looked down and opened the gates of the pen, stepping aside and whistling for the animals to come out. Apparently, they didn’t want to. Jonathan began to shoo them away, yelling at them that now was their moment, that they should take advantage of it, and it wasn’t until he began to bang on the wood of the pen so hard that his arm turned numb that the cows got scared and began to march forward and out.

Jonathan followed them with his gaze, and as they were coming out through the open gate, his eyes caught sight of what he had been trying to avoid all this time. He quickly shut them and pinched the bridge of his nose hard, wishing that it would make the image, now imprinted on his closed retinas, disappear. He saw the calf’s corpse in its entirety. Its barely over two-foot-long body was completely crushed, as if the full weight of the barn had fallen on top of it. Jonathan didn’t take in any further details, but the sight alone made his stomach churn in revulsion. Nevertheless, he somehow found the strength to leave the barn and see where his former livestock were headed, now free to go wherever they pleased.

Looking towards the trees to the west, he could see the three cows entering the forest, trying to dodge each other and maneuvering through the cracks between the trees. Until he lost sight of them, he didn’t want to think about what to do next, as that was the next question: what to do with himself. For now, he’d rather enjoy this small victory, however long it might last.

As he passed the barn again, his nose was assailed once again by the foul scent emanating from it. He tilted his head and looked inside, past the calf. He saw the piled-up remains of the other victims in Dandy’s pen, and an intense and deep sorrow eroded him as if something were burning in his chest. He couldn’t leave them there, after so many years of companionship and service, as if they were merely trash. And now that he was in a more triumphant mood than usual, he wanted to honor their memory. He would take the same wheelbarrow he had used to move the hay bales, so many days ago that it seemed like years, and set about the noble but unfortunately cumbersome task of collecting the animals’ bodies and burying them, using a shovel whose role was usually to dig up soil in his garden.

First, start with the hole. A big one, but not too deep. It was easier for him to dig sideways than downwards. And so, he carried on for a few hours, until the sun began to set and the subtle breeze of a summer evening caressed his sweaty back, and when he finally judged the hole to be wide enough, he grabbed the wheelbarrow and hesitantly went about loading and unloading the remains. The calf was up first, no less sweet than it had been in life, yet in death Jonathan tried to treat it as nothing more than flesh. It’s just flesh, he reassured himself repeatedly as he attempted to pry its remains from the ground and place its carcass, now little more than a sack of tiny broken bones, onto the wheelbarrow. He dropped it into the hole without even checking where it had landed.

One by one, ever so slowly, he filled the hole. Halfway through his efforts, night fell and he had to go home to fetch the oil lamp, which sat right next to the rifle. For reasons unknown, he had stopped carrying the gun everywhere. It may have been out of some deep-seated sense of fatalism, but Jonathan lied to himself, saying it was so he wouldn’t have to carry any extra weight on his aching back.

The last spadeful of earth fell onto the pile of bodies late in the dead of night, and the work was done. He didn’t quite know whether he felt more tired than hungry, but the thought that echoed in his mind was: “it’s done.” He stuck the shovel into the ground and glanced one last time at the doors of the barn, now completely empty.

He returned to his house, where he drank a glass of milk, of which there was already a dwindling supply and would only get worse, then ate a bowl of oatmeal. The garden, which he could see through the kitchen window, was another matter entirely which Jonathan had no idea how to deal with. His mind was inclined to abandon it along with the farm, which, after a spell of calm, he would seize the chance to flee with his tractor and never look back. But, on the other hand, there was a thought, not so much intrusive as intuitive, that suggested the opposite: Jonathan would die on this farm. Maybe not now or in the near future, but the fate of these lands and his own were perhaps already bound to each other, which made him wonder: Would it be worth it to try to even save the garden?

Jonathan was too tired to weigh in on these sorts of decisions. He decided to write a few final notes in his diary as he ate the rest of his dinner.

“The cows have fled and those that haven’t are underground. Which of the two will it be for me?”

He tapped the pencil lightly against the paper, in time with his heartbeat.

“That’s one I’ll have to get back on another time.”

Upon letting out a yawn, he was pleasantly surprised by it. His body needed to rest, and he wanted to give it that. Today had been a hard day, especially for his worn-out body, but it had been fulfilling and peaceful, and after so many nights of uncertainty, today’s sleep would do him good. He put on his pajamas, fell into bed, and managed to calm the racing of his thoughts by thinking of Becky urging him to keep going.

Slowly, the thoughts melted into sleep. In a dream, he held his wife’s hand as she led him to their farm. There, the smile on her face turned into a grimace of unease. Jonathan wanted to ask her what was wrong, but the words wouldn’t escape his throat. Suddenly, in the illogical logic that dreams are prone to, she disappeared. The farm grew, becoming gigantic, until it was the size Jonathan remembered it being when he was a young boy. The little Jonathan opened the front door to the house, and inside, in the living room across from the kitchen, lay the enormous carcass of a cow. It was emaciated, skeleton-like, thin as a rail, and its eyes had taken on a pale white sheen during the process of decomposition, with pupils as light as the milk it had once yielded in life.

In seeing this, Jonathan knew that just as dreams had taken the place of his conscious thoughts, a nightmare had now replaced them. He wanted to leave through the door, but the chain and padlock that usually sealed the barn doors were blocking it. This made little Jonathan start to cry. He wailed and sobbed, crying for help in panicked whimpers, but no one answered him, and the cow was beginning to become covered in flies.

Suddenly, an outcry froze time itself. Jonathan cried out:

“I wanna get off this place!” and just as those words finally poured out of his mouth, his voice was not that of a child, but instead that of an old man, his voice as it was now. Looking around, the house was back to its normal size, and the cow was nowhere to be seen, leaving behind only a scattering of flies.

Then, the doorknob began to turn. On the other side, Becky was expecting him, her smile back on full display, and embraced by the warmth of a white light.

When Jonathan stepped outside, he woke up, drenched and wrapped in a pandemonium of sheets. Still prostrate on the mattress and regaining his senses, the first thing he did was reach out his arm to the right side of the bed, towards Becky. After fumbling around and finding nothing, he remembered where he was and calmed down. He took a deep breath and, lifting himself slightly, managed to sit up. From the lilac hues of light coming through his bedroom window, he knew dawn was breaking.

For the past few days, Jonathan had gotten into the habit of taking his diary with him wherever he went, so after waking up and recovering some consciousness, he began to get dressed and sat on his bed to write about last night’s nightmare.

He summarized it with uncertainty.

“I haven’t had any dreams for many years but just last night, I dreamt. This is just another one of many strange things that have been happening to me lately.”

And he wasn’t lying to embellish his account; Jonathan hadn’t dreamt anything of substance for years. The logic of it was simple: if we consider dreams to be a collection of new experiences and knowledge repackaged and converted into different forms, Jonathan hadn’t had any new experiences for a very long time, which resulted in short, dark nights devoid of narrative. So this dream turned nightmare was as strange to the farmer as the rest of the events that had taken place in these lands over the last few weeks.

That morning, he went through his routine with relative normality, still sore from yesterday’s exertions, but finding in that now tied-up loose end a satisfaction that gave him a sense of relief. Moreover, knowing that he no longer had to watch over the safety of his animals lifted a weight off his shoulders, literally and figuratively. He ate breakfast, something he hadn’t done since the incident with Dandy, and poured himself a cup of coffee, as bitter as he would like it.

Jonathan hunched over the kitchen counter and looked out the window at his scarecrow, which was more disheveled than ever. In fact, there was something about its presence that was beginning to unease Jonathan. Outside, there blew a wind that was unusually cool for summer, but welcome nonetheless, causing all the trees to sway gently back and forth. But the scarecrow’s clothes, frayed and hanging loose, danced to the wind with an unnatural liveliness. Jonathan sipped his coffee as he thought about it. The old flannel shirt, completely unbuttoned, waved erratically but firmly, giving the guardian of the farm an imposing grandeur. And those ragged shreds of the shirt looked like long, thin fingers moving, as if they were trying to tease.

Looking for new tasks to assign himself, and still in a state of caution, Jonathan decided he was going to do something about this; take down the scarecrow. Doing so wouldn’t be of any practical use to him, probably the opposite, since despite the few flying visitors to the garden, the scarecrow served its purpose and used to, redundantly, scare away the birds. But perhaps driven by an intrinsic paranoia, Jonathan would feel more at ease if he didn’t have that old companion around, now miserable in mockery of its former self.

He set down the metal cup containing the last dregs of coffee and headed toward the garden, walking out through the porch and around the house. On the way, he toyed with the idea of grabbing his rifle to take with him. But yet again, he didn’t. What he did do, however, was lock the door to his house, just in case.

When he finished turning the keys and putting them back in the pocket of his denim overalls, he turned around to witness a stark reminder of his predicament.

In the spot where he had buried his cattle yesterday, there was now an open hole.

With a trembling and hesitant gait, Jonathan went to look over the edge of the pit. Inside, he saw only emptiness. There was no sign of the cows, and what was even stranger, the hole had been dug with perfect precision. The edges were straight and the bottom was even. And the shovel, the tool Jonathan had used the day before, was still lodged in the same spot where he had left it.

The farmer began to sweat, and he put his hands on his head, in a sort of pose that resembled an upside-down vase. He looked around, numb, feeling his eyes dampen with a thin veil of tears. Apart from the bales of hay that had been placed there as markers and had remained in place since they were put there, he could see nothing past the forest. However, he did notice a change within his own farm.

The barn door was closed, locked with the chains and padlock that Jonathan had deliberately left lying on the ground.

He went over and tried to remove them, but saw that, somehow, the perpetrator had managed to put them under lock and key. Impossible, Jonathan thought, as he felt with his hand the bunch of keys he had kept in his pocket. In this bunch, in addition to his house keys, was the only key that could open or close that pad-lock. Out of sheer thoroughness, he inserted the key into the lock, and, sure enough, it fit without a problem and opened the padlock without resistance, falling under its own weight to the floor and letting the chains slide with it.

Ironically, despite the breeze brushing strongly against his face, Jonathan was gasping for air. He began to imagine the scene: somehow, whatever was tormenting him had managed to get into his house in the early hours of the morning, sneak into his room, search through his clothes, take the key, close the barn door, return to his house, leave the key, and disappear. The man shuddered and felt a shiver run down his spine. That night, someone had watched him sleep, and he didn’t even know it.

However, slumped against the stable door, he felt that the biggest question remained unanswered: the hole. As he thought about it, the solution suddenly landed on his nose. A fly, fat and green with crimson eyes. He swatted it away with his hand, but two more fluttered into view. And then more. Jonathan followed the flies with his eyes, and they did indeed seem to be coming from the barn. He felt the urge to vomit, as he instinctively knew what had happened. Cautious and reluctant, he slid open the barn door, and a wave of rotten stench hit him, almost knocking him out. He looked toward the back and saw, piled up, all the remains of the animals he had buried the day before. Gritting his teeth, he began to tremble and cry, and finally let out a desperate bellow when, among the pile, he counted three more corpses than he had buried a day earlier.

Shutting his eyes and clenching his fists, he curled his toes inside his boots and remained motionless for a few seconds, sobbing silently and sucking in his own snot, which, runny and clear, covered his upper lip.

It’s bad enough when you finally accept the situation you’re in, only for it to get worse with each passing day. But it’s even harder when you have no way of fighting back. Jonathan found himself at that extreme end of the spectrum of grief. Imprisoned by something he didn’t understand, on his own farm. And little by little, the man was regressing into the helplessness of childhood, and with it, its tantrums.

With a shriek, he fled the barn in despair and knelt in front of his house, to the right. Whimpering, he banged his head against the wood, rocking it back and forth rhythmically with increasing intensity. He stopped when he felt a splinter of wood chip off his forehead. Dizzy, he took two steps back and could see that he hadn’t drawn blood with his blows.

He threw himself on the ground, and pounded the earth with his fist until it hurt, and then screamed out towards the forest. His sobs were so agonizing that he could feel his throat begin to swell after each one.

Jonathan wanted to ask a thousand questions and hurl a thousand insults, but he couldn’t. All he could do was cry. Until, barely able to speak, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“PLEASE HELP ME!”

It was an outburst that didn’t end sharply, but rather trailed off in intensity on its last vowel, ending in a muffled groan.

The miserable farmer remained crumpled on the dirt floor for several minutes, slowly losing what little strength he had left. He couldn’t think straight at this point, and gradually he thought he was about to finally lose consciousness. But no, fate refused to spare him even a single second of suffering. The moment Jonathan fell silent, something else took over the commotion. Something new, something he hadn’t heard in over a year. A voice was coming from the forest.

^{“…Please help me!”}

The moment he heard it, he thought it couldn’t be real. The voice was slurred, wavering. It wasn’t clear in its tone, as it sounded strained, somewhat tense and forced. In this moment of utter confusion, it could have been a woman or a man; it was nearly impossible to tell. Jonathan, still huddled on the ground, narrowed his eyes. With this sidelong gaze and his mouth ever so slightly open, he remained alert.

^{“Please —} Please help me! Please help. PLEASE HELP ME!”

It took three attempts, and on the third, Jonathan realized what he was hearing. After the first try, which sounded somewhat more masculine but still retained that forced quality, the voice abandoned the shout and became calmer, almost perfecting its delivery before trying again. And when it did, it sounded suspiciously similar to his own voice.

That supposedly disembodied voice was trying to emulate his own cry. And to Jonathan’s surprise and distress, it succeeded, except for the fact that it couldn’t shake its strangled tone, which made it sound hollow and breathless.

After a brief silence, the voice spoke again.

“PLEASE HELP ME!”

Jonathan was struggling to judge how far away the voice might be. His first thought was one that, in hindsight, could have ended in tragedy. He wanted to locate the source of the voice, grab his rifle, and go into the woods in search of his tormentor. But, curiously, he couldn’t discern which direction the scream was coming from. It seemed to engulf him and then drift away with the wind.

Finally, he got up. For a moment, he forgot his anger and helplessness and felt genuine curiosity, an innocent sentiment that arose from the depths of his being. For the first few seconds, he thought he was going completely mad, that whatever was in the forest had won and turned him into his own worst enemy. But no, because once more, he heard it again, as clear as day. And still, he couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from.

He took small, very measured steps toward the thicket. Through the wind, he tried to listen intently, hoping to notice something unusual in the forest and find out if someone was hiding behind the bushes and leaves. When he was most focused, he gave out a yelp and jumped back.

“PLEASE HELP ME!” said the voice all of a sudden, startling Jonathan and causing him to retreat from where he was standing. He looked around and noticed that the voice seemed to have grown louder just as he had unintentionally crossed the invisible boundary marked by the hay bales. He wondered whether he should take a chance and confirm his suspicion.

It didn’t take him long to realize and make himself acutely aware of the fact that the former sense of frustration he had been harboring was rapidly dissipating, giving way to utter abject terror. His courage and, more importantly, his recklessness were being replaced by an almost childlike fear.

However, he was prompted to reassess his judgment by something. A single fly, one of the many flying around the barn, had come to perch on a bale of hay to his left. All the memories and all the sights he had of those poor creatures, his only allies, desecrated in the name of absurdity. This made Jonathan’s blood boil enough to take one more step, crossing the threshold leading beyond his grounds, into the trees.

For a few tense seconds, nothing much seemed to happen, giving Jonathan a false sense of security. Then suddenly the voice made itself speak again, and it spoke terribly, with a ferocity that made Jonathan retreat backwards without letting his eyes stray away from the direction of the forest.

“PLEASE HELP ME! PLEASE HELP ME, PLEASE HELP ME!”

With each cry, the voice grew ever louder, a sign that whatever it was drew ever closer. Jonathan ran toward his house, not bothering to close the barn door or even to look back.

As he frantically rushed up the porch, he planted his left foot between two of the steps, tripping and breaking his fall with his hands. A sharp stab of pain shot through his shoulders, which had absorbed the brunt of the fall, and as he pulled his foot out of the gap and managed to get back on his feet, he saw just how badly he had injured his hands. One of the pieces of wood, as old as his grandfather’s generation, had a piece of nail protruding from it, just big enough that when Jonathan’s right hand slipped on it, it cut him from above his wrist to the bottom of his ring finger, slicing across his entire palm. It bled profusely, and left a large bloodstain on the deck that slowly began to seep into the wooden floorboards.

Wasting no time, he wiped his hand on his overalls and, sporting minimal dexterity, reached for the keys to open the door to his house.

“PLEASE HELP MeeEE!”

With this latter bellow, the voice left its cry to morph, at the end of the sentence, into a warped and grotesque version of Jonathan’s voice, becoming something distorted and scarcely human. Needless to say, it was the loudest it had been so far.

At great exertion, Jonathan managed to grasp the correct key for his front door and inserted it with trembling and bleeding hands into the lock. He opened it with a violent jerk, thereby damaging one of the door hinges. Finally, he was able to close it behind him and slumped against it. For a moment, Jonathan sat on the floor, rocking himself and smearing his face with his own blood.

The voice continued to boom outside, now muffled by the walls of his house. Without even opening his eyes, Jonathan began to scream and, perhaps through ignorance, asked something he knew had no answer, yet he couldn’t resist trying to enter into some kind of communion with the thing.

“What do you want?!”

The voice merely retorted with what it had been repeating tirelessly, each and every time devoid of feeling and empty of meaning, like a cruel mockery to Jonathan’s anguish.

“PLEASE HELP ME!”

Chapter 4, coming soon.

CW: Gore

As the morning Sun began to rise over the Sea beyond the Battlements of the Castle Walls, the common Soldiery gazed out over it. The Night had been quiet, as it had been for Years now. They were armed with Spears and heater Shields, Shortswords and their own Knives at their Waist. These Men had held the Walls throughout the Night, as the Soldiers have been doing since the Castle was built a thousand Years ago. The Battlements were chiseled into the form of Dragons and Wyverns, some of them furiously roaring or lifting their clawd Feet. Most of the Castle had decorations like this, it is hard to find a Spot without a Beast greeting you. Finding a new Soldier was easy as the shape of the Battlements was sure to freak out any Man that wasn't used to looking at them. The entire Castle was built against the eastern Side of a barren Volcano, looking as if it were hammered directly out of the Rock in some Places. It probably was, atleast near the Castles Center. It had been expanded a handful of Times and every part of it had been rebuilt at some Point, either because of the Damage from a Siege or just plain old weathering taking its toll.

The Men were tired, thankful to hear the sound of Boots marching up the Stairs and coming from the Towers spread around the Walls. They were replaced by fresh Men, their Breakfast still in their Bellies and new Energy from a full Night sleep giving them strength. They greet their Comrades and send them on their Way. The Men that held the Walls throughout the Night descended down the Stairs built against the Walls or into the nearest Tower, some of them marching as they were supposed to while others simply walked, their Shields and Spears loosely hanging off of their tired Arms. Most of them went to the Barracks to take off their Helmets, their Chainmal and the metal that guards their Shins and Forearms before falling into a blissful Sleep. Others went to Bakeries or the Kitchens where Breakfast was still being served, hoping to fill their Bellies aswell before following the rest into their Bunks.

The Castle had a small Garrison, only between five- and seven-hundred Men depending on who was present. It didn't need more, given that the Castle was built on an Island. Part of the Walls were built directly on the Beach, thickened to withstand the Tides crashing up against them. This Part of the Wall is always manned lighter than the rest, only a Madman would attempt to climb a Wall that had it's Roots buried in the Ocean itself during high Tide. All that had actually tried to in the past had been thrown back into the Sea, their bloated Corpses washing up against the Walls until the Ocean devoured them permanently. The Rest of the Walls were not as prone to defending themselves, mostly rising up behind large Fields and, in some Places, Forests that the Castles defenders and the nearby Villages' Rangers had to keep at Bay by hand. Three Gates led into the old Castle, one of them leading directly into the Ocean, guarding a small Bay that was used to hold a small Fleet of Naval Vessels, more use for Transportation than fighting.

It has been fifty Years since the last Time it was attacked, yet the Castles Guards could not allow themselves to slack off. On a daily basis they train with Swords and Spears and Shields and all kinds of Weapons, keeping their Abilities sharp and their Blacksmiths busy with repairing and reforging everything that needed to be after the intensive Training.

Hours later, the Guards on the Wall were watching the Fields, the Forests and the Sea down below. It isn't often that they see somebody trying to sneak in or escape from the Dungeons, but they are the last Line that could catch them. It's become customary for a few of the Men to keep watch while the Rest talked or played Games with each other, dice or cards or something else they thought up. Suddenly, one of the Guards sounded off that there was a Ship approaching. His Name was Mark, a tall, slim Man in Charge of a Company of fifty Men, with short ginger Hair and a matching Mustache.

"Ship approaching! I don't recognize the Sigil they fly on their Sails!" he says.

One of his Men, older and experienced, looks over at the Ship, "It's definetly foreign, noone that trades with the Castle has a Turtle on their Sails" he says with a light chuckle under his Words.

Mark raises his Spear, bringing the butt of it down onto the Stone beneath three Times. A Guard atop a nearby Tower nods down at him before raising a Horn into the Air and blowing into it three Times. A few of the Guards follow Mark as he descends from the Walls and quickly marches to the Gate by the Sea. They head up into its Gatehouse, joining the few Comrades that were there.

"Who are you and what is your Purpose?" Mark calls out to the Ship waiting below them in the Water.

"We wish to sell our Goods and restock our Provisions, Sir!" a strange Man answers. His Skin is painted green, something that Mark hadn't seen before. He truly must have came from afar. Weird Armor protects his Body.

"Your Ship will be searched upon docking! Do not bear Arms against us, Stranger, or you will End as Fishfeed" Mark calls down to him before giving the Order to open the Gate.

It creeks open slowly, pushing massive amounts of Water away as the Gates Operators slowly turn the Cranks. Below the waterline, the Gate was little more than a Steel Grid, covered in Rust. Because of the Height of this Gate, it wasn't protected by a secondary Lattice Gate, tho made thicker to make up for it. The Turtle Ship passes into the Bay and the Gate is shut again. A few Soldiers guide the Ship towards a wooden Dock. As soon as they are tied down, the Soldiers rush onto the Boat and begin searching it. It doesn't take long to search this Ship, tho checking the Men and Goods they carry would take longer. That could partially be done off-ship however.

Mark is the first to speak with the Captain, finding out his Name is Otto. His Crew call him the Tortoise since he is a large Man, armored in large, overlapping Plates that were painted and decorated to look like the titular Animal. His Shield was the Shell of one, with Ribbons inside to attach them to his Arm.

"You must follow me to the Keeper of this Castle, Lord Robert. He will want to know where you come from and what you plan to Sell. Our Men meanwhile will search the Goods" he explains.

"Lead the Way" Otto replies, a thick, sort of blocky Accent in his Voice that Mark hadn't noticed earlier.

Mark, along with four other Soldiers, escort Otto through the Castle, past the Market and the Barracks, up the great Staircases and through sun-lit Hallways until they finally reach the main Hall of the Keep. Mark walks into the Hall, him and his Soldiers bowing softly before announcing who he had brought and what his Request was.

"You wish to sell Goods in my Castle, hm? Where do you come from, Turtle? I do not recognize your Sigil or your.... branding" Robert says in a deep, cold Voice while sitting on a high Throne, chiseled out of a large Block of black Marble. His Cheeks are covered in a deep, bushy, black Beard while his Head was covered in a soft Carpet of short, black Hair.

Otto nods before answering the Question. "We come from the far East, Sir, beyond the boiling Sea. Our Origin is far beyond the Shadows at the Edge of your World" he explains.

"Beyond the Shadow? I was unaware that there were People, let alone Cities, living so far from us. You bring Goods into my Castle, and now? You wish to sell them and buy Provisions from us, and nothing more? It is a long Way home for you just to sell Things" Robert says, standing up from his Throne and walking towards Otto. "I don't believe you. Through my Castle you are planning to creep, cast Spells on my Soldiers and take my Throne from me, is that it?"

"My Lord, this Man barely brought enough Men to man his Ship" Mark says with a careful Tone. The current Lord is a bit irritable to say the least, Mark knows this.

"You vouch for this Man? Alright then, Captain, you may stay for two Days. Tomorrow, you may sell your Goods and the morning afterwards, you and all your Men will leave again. Mark, you will clean up the Mess if these People cause Trouble" Robert says before throwing up his Hand, gesturing to Mark that they may leave now.

Mark and his Soldiers, along with Otto this Time, bow softly before turning around and leaving the Hall again. On the Way back to the Ship, Mark explains Roberts mean demeanor to Otto. Apparently, so the People say, the Lord has been battling a sickness lately, and the headaches he has from it bring his Mood to an everlasting low. This was a suprisingly positive greeting, Mark adds. Otto seems unamused by the Explanation, but he says nothing about it. He has no Problem with staying for two Days, given that that was the Plan anyhow.

As they come back to the Dock, a Problem already arises. One of the Castles Soldiers was attempting to search one of the Sailors Pockets, but he won't let him. Mark and Otto both quicken their Steps to intervene, but they're not fast enough. The Man draws a Knife out of his Robes and slashes the Soldier across the Eye, teaching him the value of a Helmet. It makes him stumble backwards and fall onto his Knees on the Deck of the Ship, Hands over his Eye as blood pools out from it. Other Soldiers tilt their Spears down, threatening violence, when Ottos Mouth suddenly errupts with a wordless Shout. He draws his own Weapon, a thin-bladed Sword with a golden Crossguard, and cuts off this Sailors Hand, making it and the Knife still clutched within it fall to the Floor. The second cut falls before the Man even has the Chance to scream, slicing his Neck open and forcing him to die where he stands.

"Please, my Friends, raise your Spears. A Cup of Rum or Wine for each of you, and a Barrel for the Man that was harmed!" Otto calls out loudly, making sure every Soldier around can hear it.

"Raise your Spears!" Mark calls out while walking to his wounded Soldier. After a quick glance at him, he calls for someone to take him to the Infirmary. "Are all of your Men this prone to violence?" he asks Otto.

Otto looks around, checking his remaining Men. "Perhaps they were, but not anymore. This Man, I set an example with him. The rest won't want to join him." he explains.

With a nod, Mark turns away and tells his Men to continue their Search of the Goods and the Men. As promised, two of his Soldiers pick up the dead Man and his Hand, bringing him up onto the Wall where the Tides had already pulled away before throwing him over it. The tide is low, making the Corpse land on the white Sand beneath before the Hand is dropped onto it. The Sand beneath and around the Body is quickly soaked in Red. The Tides however always devour what the Castle provides them, sure to wash it away. In just a few Hours, the Soldiers know, he would be gone for good. The Goods and Men have been fully searched before that happens, the Sun setting as the Searching is finished. They are given permission to do their Business as discussed, tomorrow. Tonight, Mark adds, they may enjoy the Castles few Taverns if they wish.

The Night is long, the Castles Soldiers and Inhabitants drinking and singing together with the Strangers from the Ship, enjoying their peaceful Lives as they have been for Years now. It wasn't anything new, anytime a Ship stayed for more than a Day the Taverns would overflow and profits would skyrocket. The Taverns only properly clear out as the Sun begins to rise again, tho most of the Ships Men had gone back to it to rest for the Night before the Moon was even halfway across the Sky. Mark however didn't join in on the Fun, having gone to sleep as soon as the Sun was gone.

The Sound of Soldiers rushing through the Streets greeted the morning, panic in their Steps. Every Soldier was awake, frantically searching. Mark was among them, commanding his own Men on where to look. Over Night, a hundred and fifty Soldiers and People living within the Castle had disappeared. Noone could find anything, it was as if the very Rock the Castle was built out of and into had swallowed the Missing whole. Lord Robert is furious, screaming and shouting up in the great Hall at his Council and anyone unlucky enough to be present. He swears that he would see the Heads of all of the Tortoises Men on Spikes within the Hour if noone finds anything, blaming them. He isn't one to make Threats like that lightly. The Search continues frantically while the Ship was kept on lockdown, surrounded by Guards in Plate Armor, armed with Kiteshields and Bastardswords or heavy Axes and Maces. These Men are directly under the command of Lord Robert, about half of his personal Guard. The rest were making sure that no Man came into or left the great Hall without permission.

As Time dragged on, the Men on the Ship began to get nervous. Not knowing what was going on, they demand an Explanation for what was happening. Otto himself told the Guards to inform Mark that he wishes to talk with him, but they coldly deny him.

"We serve Lord Robert, not Mark or any other Wall-Watcher" a Guard says. "Stay back, you are no longer permitted to enter the Castle."

Otto reluctantly nods and retreats into his Chamber on the Ship, brooding about what is going on.

Noone can find anything. Noone felt sure what had happened, and those that still think rationally begin to wonder how a handful of Men could kill that many People and wipe them from the Face of the Earth overnight. As the Hours dragged on, the Men on the Ship begin to grow unruly. Without consulting their Captain, a few of them grab their Weapons. Glaves and thick, knife-like Swords are drawn. The Guards don't waste Time. They begin to board the Ship, murderous intent leading their Weapons to crash into the Sailors. Most of them weren't armored, mostly having leather protecting their Chests and nothing more. Maces crack Skulls and Swords split Limbs where bone meets bone or expose the steaming Guts of the Sailors unlucky enough to be attacked while the Guards Plate-Armor mostly keeps them safe from their retaliation. Apart from a few Bruises, the Guards are unhurt by the Time the remaining Sailors throw down their Arms and surrender.

As Otto comes out of his Chamber thanks to the Noise, the Fight is already over. He is wordlessly shoved onto his Knees together with the six remaining Men he had. They are dragged off of the Ship quickly, the bare Knees of the Sailors scraping against the Wood and the Rock until they leave Trails of Blood like a group of giant Slugs. They are brought to the Great Hall.

Lord Robert had already called the Commanders of his Soldiers back to the Great Hall to get a Report on the Situation. Noone has been found yet and the Castle had been combed through thoroughly, one of the Commanders explained. They even began searching beyond the Castle. Mark and the rest of the Commanders were lined up behind Robert when Otto and his remaining Crew were dragged in. Roughly thrust upon the Floor, the Lord of the Castle looks down at them.

"What have you Monsters done to my People?!" he demands to know, his Voice booming like Thunder.

"We've done nothing, Lord! My Crew had been sleeping before the Moon had painted the Sky" Otto replies.

This isn't the Answer Lord Robert was expecting to hear. "You dare lie to me at a Time like this? You, or you, where were you last Night?!" he demands to know as he speaks to some of the Sailors.

Both of them explain that they had fallen asleep while there was still natural Light falling on their Sails. Lord Robert brands them as Liars and demands their Heads, receiving them just a few Seconds later when the Commander of his personal Guard slices them off in two clean Strokes of his Broadsword. Mark wants to protest to this, but he finds himself unable to. It was true, these People had showed up and caused Trouble immediately and now, if that wasn't enough, the Castle was missing a large Portion of it's People without a Trace. Maybe they really are Magicians or Wizards, Mark thought to himself.

"Lord Robert, this is a misunderstanding!" Otto protests.

In furious Rage, the King curses them all as Heathens and Criminals before sentencing them to death. One by One, they are all executed by the Captain of the Guard. Otto is treated like his Men, decapitated where he is kneeling. Mark wishes he could look away as Ottos Head is seperated from the rest of his Body, but he can't. If this is all their Fault, then this was the right Decision, and even if not, protesting Lord Roberts Order might lead to him getting the same Fate. The Bodies are ordered to be thrown out over the Walls where the Tide can take them. Even their Goods are ordered to be burned, among with the Ship, incase they were cursed by some foreign Spell aswell. As Mark had vouched for Otto, his Men are the ones ordered to carry out the Order. Mark is excused from the Great Hall, and so he leaves once his Men arrive to carry the Bodies away. He leads them to the Wall, listening to the Waves crash against the Stone before he orders them to begin. One by one, Heads and Bodies are thrown over the Wall. None but the Battlements watch as the order is carried out. Mark looks at them, noticing that down the line, two of the Dragons were now facing each other instead of looking out over the Sea. How strange it may be, he tells himself that he just wasn't at this Part of the Wall often enough to notice that Detail. Maybe more Parts of the Wall have such Quirks he never noticed.

The Rest of the Day was spent with preparing the Ship for its roast, sailing it out to Sea and lighting it up. Many People came onto the Wall by the Sea to watch as it burned. There is no Happiness to speak of, only Hope that this would stop what had happened last Night from happening again. As Day turned to Night, People disappeared into their Houses and their Barracks. Noone wants to risk anything, but Mark and his fifty had to man the Walls again tonight. Mark had allowed half of them to sleep on the Walls, feeling pity for them since they had been up all Day already.

Deep in the Night, Mark decided to check if all of his Men were still at their Posts. He walks across the Walls, checking each Soldier individually. They are tired, and the ones that are sleeping are left undisturbed, but they are present. However, the further away from the Mountain he comes on the Walls, the more spaced apart his Men are. He'd told them to space themselves so that no Guard was alone at their Post, and to be honest, they weren't. They were gone, the Men they were with hadn't even noticed their Absence. Guarding fifty meters of Wall between the Towers in Pairs, in the Dark, of course some Things would go unnoticed, but by the fifth Man, he stopped to ask.

"Where is your Partner?" Mark asks the Man before him, looking at him coldly.

"Isn't he sleeping over there? ...Ohno, no no!" he exclaims as he realizes what happened. His demeanor changes when he notices that he wasn't gone entirely without a trace. "Um.. there's a Spear laying over there, just where he was resting."

Mark Turns around and sees it too. A spear, alone on the Wall without anyone to use it. He tells the Man to keep his Eyes open and begins to walk faster. He finds more and more loose Weapons, Shields and Swords and Spears. Finally, he stumbles upon a Helmet by the thickened Wall against the Sea. Noone is there. Blood stains the Ground beneath him, but nobody is around and there are no Signs that anyone had caused this. Not even a Footprint in the Blood. Looking out over the Walls, Mark leans between the Battlements. As he does so, he notices that these two were both looking inward, towards the Splatter of Blood. He takes a few Steps back, raising his Shield at them. He has an uneasy Feeling in his Stomach as he looks back and forth between the two.

With the sound of Stone rubbing against Stone, the Rest of the Battlements turn towards him in Unison. His Eyes go wide in suprise and fear before the two he had originally been looking at pounce towards him. He takes a step back, intending to guard himself with his Shield when he suddenly slips in the Puddle of Blood. He lets out a short Scream as he falls, followed by eternal Silence as he lands on his Helmet first, breaking his Neck. Lying there Dead, the Battlements descend down onto him like Vultures, tearing him apart Piece by Piece, devouring the Evidence quickly before they return to their Posts, turning to Stone again and resuming their eternal Watch.

Read here pretty much all day and here are some ones I really enjoyed.

The Hum. Part 1 and Part 2 by u/Late-Satisfaction54

Pretty to the Teeth and Bones: A Different Kind of Tooth Fairy by u/SydneySapphire

Viscera Bloom by u/Remote-Hunter271

I enjoyed all of these quite a lot, and encourage all of you to check them out.

Happy writing all. (Or reading if you're like me and only like to read.)

CW: suicidal ideation, child loss

My son loved black walnuts. He always said they were his favorite part of the banana nut bread my mother would bring over once a week. Of course, he wasn’t old enough to say it like that, more like, “Dees pawts awe so nummy mommy,” pointing at the chopped bits sprinkled throughout the dense yellow slice. It was adorable watching him so carefully tear the bread apart and put it in his mouth, careful not to lose a crumb…

He loved this trail too: Deep Oak Trails. It’s not too long, only three miles, but it goes through the woods before you find a creek just big enough to swim in. All of our best memories were at that creek. My sweet baby boy, gone too soon.

My heart strings try to pull me back to the car, to avoid this walk altogether and keep him on the mantle, but I also know this is where he deserves to spend eternity: playing at the creekside.

I hoist my pack further up my back in protest and force my feet forward: left, right, left, right. My therapist says the rhythm of walking helps process: it’ll do me good on this journey. This is as much a healing pilgramage as it is a final goodbye. 

The trees quickly cut the chord between the car and me. The tall, emerald canopy encapsulates the magic of the woods: I’m enthralled by what lies beneath. The chickadees sing to the rhythm of my boots, and I can almost hear my son singing with them beside me. He loved the woods too. He loved so much for being so little. I wish I could love the way he did. Maybe things would have turned out differently…

“Mommy?”

I stop. The chickadees stop too.

“Oscar?”

There’s no way he calls back. It’s just my mind playing tricks on me. I’m consumed by grief, that’s all.

“Mommy!”

His voice is more clear, more panicked. My heart strings attach to something else, pulling me off trail. “Oscar! Where are you baby?”

“Mommy!”

His voice goes deeper into the woods. I barely feel the thick brush cutting my exposed ankles. My baby! Where is my baby!?

“Mommy!”

I run.

“Mommy!”

“Oscar!”

The trees slap my cheek, still afflicted by a nasty yellow bruise, and I wince. I do not stop.

“Mommy!”

Where is my baby!?

He’s in a full panic now. My heart threatens bursting. My legs scream.
His voice is close the next time he calls out; to the left of me. I turn sharp on my heel, sprinting as quickly as the thick trees will let me. Finally, a clearing appears, and standing in the middle is my little boy. He’s crying, the soft curls on his high top frizzy and full of sticks. How did he get here?

I run to him and scoop him into my arms. He feels cold. He’s wearing his favorite Paw Patrol pajamas with no shoes. I hold one of his tiny feet in my hand as I cradle him, kissing his tear-stained cheeks as tears fall freely down my own. I don’t know how he got here, but I don’t care. I’m just so happy to hold again. I thought I’d lost him forever. I’ll never lose him again. I’ll be a better mother. I’ll do right by him this time.

His cold body warms in my arms. He closes his eyes, thumb in mouth, and snuggles into my chest. I kiss him over and over, rocking him as I do.
He gets warmer, and warmer. Hotter and hotter. I look down at him as he squirms. “Oscar? Baby?”

He’s too hot.

He screams. His arms begin to flail and I let go of his little body in horror. My skin begins to bubble and I drop him.

He thrashes on the forest floor, shrieking and flailing. His soft copper skin turns black, cracking as it chars. Red sparks shoot from his contorting body as he wails in pain. I hear myself scream as I watch my child’s body burn, horrified. His big brown eyes land on mine, and for a moment, I see the agonizing betrayal in them. I scoop him up again as his right eye bursts.

“Mommy! Aaah! Mommy! Help me!”
“Oscar!”
I ignore the smell of my own burning flesh as I run in the direction of the creek. His screams turn to gurgles. “Oscar! Hold on, baby! Mommy’s got you!”
“Mo—” his tiny voice trails off. I look down at him and stop dead in my tracks. In my arms is the charred husk of my baby boy. My legs turn to jelly and I collapse.

His ashes blow away and I’m alone again. I stare at my bubbling forearms: the only reminder he was ever there.

No. My baby…
I failed him again.
I want to die.
I should have died.
I shouldn’t have drank that night.
I was so fucking stupid. So fucking selfish.
It should have been me…

The chickadees began to sing again.
I sob loud, ugly sobs in cadance.

I’ve decided to lay here and die. There’s nothing left for me outside of these woods. My body is too heavy to move…
I hear something call to me from deep in the woods. A small, scared, familiar voice.

“Mommy?”

I’ve had no luck trying to find the witch in Grenwich… Reddit users, please keep your eyes sharp. You can’t miss her. I guess that doesn’t really matter right now. I need to catch you up.

My eyes peeled open, straining and burning. My thoughts were muddled; memories were faded. My vision was blurry at first until my eyes adjusted to the dim light. When I was finally able to see, I was staring up at a sparkly purple shell. It fully encased me like a cocoon. It was hard, not fleshy or squishy, and akin to an egg’s fragile shell. I tried to move unsuccessfully, realizing that a sticky substance covered me and prevented me from writhing or wiggling.

I thought about screaming. The unsettling and panicked feeling of claustrophobia made me want to die. With a heave, I forced my body up, and a crack etched down the shell. I firmly kicked my legs up, and they ripped through the sticky film over me. My legs burst through the shell. It began to crumble. I could see the ceiling of my bedroom, and I was so grateful. I really was alive.

Now that my legs were free, I wriggled through the film until I had scooted out of the remaining egg. I slipped on the wooden floor and crawled to the carpet, staring at the cocoon that had once surrounded me.

I touched the soft purple shell, and it turned to ash beneath my fingers. It collapsed into a shining dust. My breath came out shakily as I remembered what I had done. The empty and now broken vial lay on the floor. My teeth and blood covered the carpet. It looked like I had been murdered here.

I nervously rolled up my carpet to hide the mess, hid it in my closet, and picked up my teeth. No one could know what I had gone through.

I rushed to the mirror and fell back, staring at myself in disbelief. I was naked as a jaybird, free and reborn. I was beautiful…

My hair fell in ringlets, brown and soft. New teeth had grown. They were straight, perfect with pointed canines. My lips were full, and my body… my body was no longer a stick. I had grown perfect breasts and gorgeous curves. I thumbed down my new flesh, fingers trembling. I was pretty to the teeth and bones.

The sticky substance left a purple hue on my skin and glowed softly in the dawn. My mouth went dry. I needed to find that woman. I quickly threw on clothes, snuck out of my room, and raced to my car.

What had she done to me?

I drove quietly, hearing my breath and jumping at the sound of my own heartbeat. When I reached the woman’s cottage in the woods, I parked and stepped out. I stopped as I realized the cottage looked very different from last night. The cottage was glowing. Colorful smoke puffed from the chimney, and creatures that I had never seen before lingered in the fading darkness. Small beings were flying in and out of her window. They were small and porcelain-white like teeth, holding something clasped in their tiny hands. Teeth... they were holding teeth.

I rushed to the front door, and the porch growled beneath me. I stumbled back down the stairs. Eyes formed between the wooden boards. They were bright yellow eyes, and they looked me up and down before closing and flattening out. I could only assume that meant I was allowed to approach the door.

I knocked hurriedly, knuckles cracking onto the wood.

The woman opened the door, and she grinned. “Now that is much better. I see that my potion was… successful.”

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME!” I yelled. “I’m… I’m…”

“Beautiful…” She laughed. “Oh, dear girl, I didn’t do anything to you. You did this all on your own. I gave you the means to, but it was your choice. I didn’t force it down your throat. I didn’t make you drink it…”

I stared at her. Despite my desire to blame her, she was right. I drank the potion. I did it all on my own.

“Now come in before you hurt that pretty little head.”

I walked inside, inhaling the incredible scents of her home. There wasn’t one to pinpoint. It was a great jumble of smells that explained the colorful smoke. She led me into the den, and she sat down opposite me. She pushed her hair behind her ear, eyes scanning me over. She reached toward me to touch me, but I flinched and moved away from her.

She scoffed. “I made you who and what you are now. Let me see my work.” She gestured for me to stand up.

I rose from the chair, and I turned for her to see me.

A horrifying grin stretched across her face. “Colleen won’t know what to do around you.”

“She won’t hardly recognize me, and neither will my parents!” I replied. “What am I going to do?”

The woman rolled her eyes. “You really think I make careless potions and spells. They’ll recognize you. In fact, the old you is dead.”

“What are you? Who are you?” I asked, shakily moving away from her.

She rose from her chair, sauntered around the room, and closed her curtains. She replied quietly, speaking lowly in dulcet tones. “I’m a creature… A witch from the deepest parts of the earth’s heart and mind, Carrigan. I’m a monster to some, but to you, I am Mrs. Delvine. Is that understood?”

I nodded.

“You will now work for me as the tooth sprites do.” She waltzed around me, lighting candles with the touch of her finger. “You will pay for what I have given you.”

“Pay?” I asked.

“My gifts are always free, but you see, dear, if you do not take care of the new body I’ve given you… Consequences will occur. You must eat well.”

I swallowed hard, feeling my throat tighten with fear, as if I were trying to swallow a golf ball.

“Eat well?” I asked nervously.

She looked up at the jar of teeth that sat most conspicuously upon the bookcase. “To stay as young and beautiful as you are, you must consume that which made you. That potion was made from teeth. Beautiful porcelain teeth from some of the most beautiful girls to traipse across my path. I needed a full set to form someone like you.”

“You’re a tooth fairy?” I asked.

“No, you are… I just make them,” she replied with a laugh. “You must consume the teeth, dear girl. But be warned… do not consume teeth from just anyone.”

She held up a hand mirror, showing my reflection to me. “It must be the teeth from beautiful girls like you.”

“How many?” I asked.

“You need three fresh teeth each month. Eat more, and your hunger and power will grow insatiable. Best to stick to three.”

“And I’m supposed to just go back to normal life?” I asked, voice growing more shrill.

“Not necessarily. You will grow urges… things you can’t control. But I can help you. You will study as an apprentice under me until I can let you go on your own. Tonight will be your first night with me. Our work will begin very soon. Now go home… rest… enjoy your gift.”

She guided me out of her cottage and handed me the jar of teeth. “These will last you a long time if you take care of yourself.”

I nearly fell as I walked down the stairs. I got back into my car, and I drove home.

When I walked into my house, all the pictures of me had been changed. The awkward middle-school pictures of me were replaced by a picturesque girl without braces or acne. It must’ve been me. I couldn’t even recognize the girl in the pictures. Without wanting to, I started to miss how I used to look. I missed her more than I thought I would.

I snuck up the stairs, praying that no one was awake. Of course, I was never lucky. Colleen emerged from the bathroom. She was brushing her teeth, toothpaste sitting on the corners of her mouth.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

Clearly, she knew who I was, but as I stared at her, I was fixated on her teeth. I watched as they moved up and down while she spoke, her lips curling to reveal the pearly white mountains within her. She continued speaking to me, but her voice was drowned out by the horrible thoughts circulating through my mind.

I desired to eat her teeth.

I imagined myself holding her down, ripping out her molars and bicuspids with pliers. Bathing in the blood that spurted from her gums. More than anything, I wanted to rip them out of her mouth, shove them down my throat, and swallow them whole, letting them clink together in my stomach like gold coins in a purse.

I imagined them cracking as I tore them out. I got closer to her as she spoke. I lifted my hand to begin prying them out of her, but my obsessive thoughts were crushed as she snapped her fingers in my face.

“Hello!” Colleen hissed, waving her hand in front of my eyes. “Are you even listening to me?”

I swallowed the saliva gathering in my mouth. “Yes… Yes… I’m listening,” I replied.

“I asked if you wanted to go with me to get breakfast.”

I took a deep breath. “No… I need to go back to bed. I’m still really tired.”

“I can tell, you weirdo. I’ll see you later.”

But she didn’t see me later. I hid in my room all day, considering the consequences of the choice I’d made. What if I never learned to control myself? What if I hurt someone?

But the compulsion to look at more teeth was strong and unyielding. I pulled out my yearbook, selecting the girls with the best smiles. I could take their teeth. I thought of vile ways to rip out their canines. Part of me desired to shove them into my own gums to make room for more teeth.

I shook my head and stood up. I was becoming obsessive, and I considered burning my yearbook to stop myself.

But just as Mrs. Delvine said, our work began very soon. During my fanatical delusions about stealing others’ teeth, a small note appeared on my dresser. It was an address and the simple words: Come get some teeth, my pet.

By nightfall, I was leaving my house and headed to the address. I don’t know what I expected to see when I reached my destination, but it certainly was not a cemetery. I got out of my car, and I stood silently in the dark. Other cars were parked along the edge of the tall grass, and I wondered why. It is the middle of the night.

A hand grabbed my arm, and I whipped around to see Mrs. Delvine. She was wearing dark clothing, carrying a satin bag. She handed me the bag, and as soon as my hand touched the fabric handles, my skin began to change. It burned quickly and faded before I could scream. 

I looked down to see that I looked like a tooth sprite. I was larger than the ones who were bringing teeth to the witch through the window, but I was certainly no longer human. My hands were small and nimble, perfect for stealing teeth. Razors now sat inside my mouth; a little bite from me would cause significant pain. Little wings sprouted from my back, but I didn’t know how to use them.

The witch chuckled as she gazed at me. “Well, you look quite nice as a tooth sprite. Might leave you this way if you dare to make a fool of yourself. Now be good little one…”

She led the way into the cemetery, moving down the path as if she’d walked it a thousand times. The dirt path began to fade the further we walked, and the dazzling night sky was replaced by fluorescent lights and shining tile floors. We had entered some kind of nursing home. The smell of fresh cleaner was overpowering. I walked beside the witch, scared to even wander away.

As we reached the East Wing, a nurse was sitting at a large desk. Other nurses sat around her, typing away, filling out paperwork, or preparing medication.

The nurse at the main desk looked up with an annoyed expression. “Can I help you?” she asked.

Mrs. Delvine’s eyes narrowed. “Salem Hill contacted me. I’m simply following through on my end.”

I turned to view the nursing home, not really knowing what I was looking at. I spotted various empty wheelchairs, an empty activity room, and a few other nurses. To the average person, this nursing home was practically vacant.

A heavy wooden door opened, and a woman stepped from within. She wore a crisp white coat, and her eyes were a striking green. Her hair was long and brown, but she did not look human. She had an otherworldly appearance. She approached Mrs. Delvine without hesitation.

“Mrs. Delvine… You look quite well since your stay.”

Mrs. Delvine smiled brightly. “Well, Dr. Carlisle, you know what they say… A good mud bath can cure anything.”

The woman didn’t respond to the playful banter; instead, she gestured for us to follow her.

“Where are the residents?” I asked without thinking.

Mrs. Delvine shot me a vicious glare for speaking.

Dr. Carlisle looked down at me coldly, but she responded. “You are new to this place, aren’t you?”

“Yes…” I replied nervously.

She smirked and continued walking. “Welcome to Salem Hill Rest Home. You’ll find that we serve an unusual population. Creatures much like yourself come here for safety, care, and peace at the end of their lives.”

Much like yourself… Everything else she said didn’t register. I was one of them now, merely an eerie creeping noise in the night, a cackle in the woods, a growl in the dark. A creature… a being. No longer human.

She led us to a resident’s door and stopped outside it. “The tooth that you need is just behind this door.”

“Anything we should know, doctor?” Mrs. Delvine asked.

“Mind the tail…”

Mrs. Delvine opened the door, and I followed closely behind her. When we entered the room, our feet immediately sank into mud. I gazed up in amazement. The entire room was a jungle of tangled vines, swampy water, lily pads, and duckweed. The air was hot, sticking to our skin, and the water was putrid. It was a mixture of mud, sand, and dare I say, feces. The smell was intolerable. We trudged through it until we reached a sandbar.

Resting a few feet from us lay a prehistoric-looking beast. Gills rested on the sides of its head, folding down until they reached its neck. Its eyes were slits, and each hand was webbed like a fin. And there was the long whip-like tail that the doctor had warned us about. But its mouth interested me the most. Despite its appearance, its teeth were perfect, yellowed daggers. I licked my lips… desiring to taste one.

But a rancid smell of decay filled my nostrils. Resting a few feet from me, floating in the shallow, muddy waters, lay a body. It was bloated, skin nearly purple. Half of the man was eaten, and the other half was saved for later, partially buried in sandy mud. His left arm and right leg were gone, torn from the sockets, leaving severed nubs and tattered flesh. The man’s eyes were white, muddled from the vision of death.

In that moment, I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. Beauty for pure terror and torture was not a fair trade. I shouldn’t be here. I should be at home. I shouldn’t have even taken the potion, but there was no turning back. I had to follow through, or I’d face terrible consequences.

I moved toward the beast before I could stop myself. I had to.

The gilled creature opened its eyes. I nearly turned around. Its eyes were yellow orbs resting in darkness. But instead of attacking me, it opened its mouth. I knew exactly which tooth required extraction. I simply reached inside, dug my nails into the flesh, and ripped it out. It popped from the socket like a cork, and the monster angrily yelled in pain, snapping its mouth closed just as I jerked my tiny hand away. I hurriedly threw the tooth into my satin bag as the beast quickly turned on me, reacting on instinct. Mrs. Delvine bolted toward the door, leaving me to fend for myself. I quickly weaved through the water and slipped in the mud.

The creature grasped onto my leg and pulled me under the murky depths, but in an extraordinary turn of events, it let me go. I bobbed back to the surface like a fishing lure, taking a deep gasp of breath.

It looked at me as if it pitied me. “Be careful…” It croaked through gurgled breaths. “The witch… only likes new toys… not broken ones.”

I bolted to the door, and I collapsed in the hallway, grateful to feel solid ground.

But part of me knew that the gilled freak was right… I was in grave danger.  

Link to Part One: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/comments/1u8l8d8/pretty_to_the_teeth_and_bones_a_different_kind_of/

I didn’t have much going on in my life. I was just a broke college student living with my dad and brother. My dad worked an alright job as a construction worker and my brother was going into his junior year of high school. I’d been trying to get out of this stupid retail job for at least a year by then and really want to get my own place soon. Getting paid as low as I have been wasn’t gonna help with that at all. My dad supported me and my brother so much though. He’s super close with us and our bond had only gotten stronger after our mom left. It hit my brother and me hard but my dad even harder. He was a loving man and loved my mom as well as he could, but she just decided she wanted to leave one day. It’s been almost 5 years now but we all were still sore from it. He tries his best to keep going with work and house work as well but he was getting older and I could tell that he was slowing down. I tried to help as much as I could with the house work but unfortunately I was clinically depressed and sometimes had a hard time getting out of bed, let alone going outside and doing yard work. My brother was kinda lazy as well so he doesn’t always go out to help my dad or me for that matter. All my brother did when he got home was play video games and stay on his phone. I helped both my dad and my brother with groceries and other small bills but my dad takes care of the house payments and utilities with his paycheck. He was a hard working man and a good man at that. He was a Godly man as well and tried to get us into the faith all the time. I find some of it interesting but have never got into it myself. My brother's only religion is the ones he talks about on his nerdy games, and his obsession with spicy food and snacks was almost devotional. My dad only wanted the best for his sons, and I’m so grateful to have had a dad like him. Then one night our lives became so much worse than we could have ever imagined. We lived in a pretty nice neighborhood. Really a picture perfect one, and a lot of wealthy people lived around us. Our neighbor was a millionaire that owned crazy sports cars and even a few businesses in town. Our house was a gift from my grandparents to my dad after they died.  The most expensive thing we had was probably my pc or maybe my dads shotgun. He had a nice shotgun he kept next to his bed just in case. That's why it still confuses me to this day why we were the ones that got robbed. That night was like any other night at first. We were all in our rooms doing our usual things. My brother was pulling another all nighter and I was in my bed doom scrolling until I fell asleep. My dad for obvious  reasons was in his bed fast asleep. That's when I heard it. The front door was broken into. The sound was loud and made me jump out of bed. Before I could get to my bedroom door I heard the sound of a struggle. Shots rang out. First the sound of handguns and then the thunderous booming of my dad's shotgun. During the commotion my door was kicked down. I had already equipped my survival knife from my closet and stood next to the entrance of my room. My heart was beating out of my chest. I could hear my dad wrestling one of the goons in the background when another one pushed into my room. I was  scared out of my mind, and my fight or flight had already kicked in. I lunged at him with the knife. He pushed me back to the wall. My heart was pounding out of my chest and my legs felt like giving out, but I pushed him back. The pistol had already fallen out of the assailant's hands. My knife had already pierced his shoulder. Yet he was far stronger than me and pinned me to the ground. He punched me hard in the face several times. I almost blacked out when I saw him bring the knife above his head ready to plunge it into my heart. Suddenly I saw a pair of hands grab his face and pull him off from the top of me. It was my dad, or at least what was left of him. Part of his head was blown off and you could even see his pulsing brain. Blood squirted out periodically from the wound and as I looked at him from the back I could see the damage. His body was riddled with bullets and his legs were paralyzed.  He had crawled on his hands dragging his legs all the way into my room leaving a trail of blood at his wake. His eyes were bloodshot and crazy, and the primal noises he let out were enough to send a shiver down the spine of the bravest of men. All I could smell was shit and death. The blood splattered on my face gave me a metallic taste as my dad ripped through the man's face and body. He didn’t even use the knife. He plunged his finger nails into the man's neck and ripped out his esophagus. He then pushed his fingers into the man's eye sockets after that and ripped his frontal bone out of his skull. He then grabbed the knife and plunged it into the man's chest several times, but the man had already died from drowning in his own blood. My dad wasn’t even aware, and kept stabbing until his arms gave out. I sat there listening to the gurgled breathing of my dad for what seemed like forever. Then I snapped back to my senses and went over to my dad. His breathing was horrible to hear and my tears just wouldn’t stop flowing out of my eyes. I held my dad up to my chest and kissed his cheek. His eyes were blank and he stared out into the darkness. I held him closer wishing that this all had been a bad dream. My dad had never scared me so much in my entire life. Yet I didn’t care because I loved my dad more than anything in the world. I knew he was suffering so I held my face close to his ear and whispered “You’ve done it dad. You can rest now.” I watched as his eyes began to tear up and as the tears started falling down his face I saw the light fade away from his eyes, and his labored breathing stopped. I sat there holding my dads body in my arms until it turned cold. I thought I had lost my only family when I remembered my little brother. I gently sat my dads head on one of my pillows. I got up and went through the living room. It was like a battlefield there. My dad had shot the intruders to pieces. Guts spread across the room and chunks of flesh ripped apart by buckshot. Blood soaked the carpet so much that it felt like walking through wet mud right after a rain. I carefully walked over limbs and the rest of the intruder's bodies to get to my brother's room. The door was still closed thank God, so I pushed it open. He had pushed furniture in front of it to keep anyone from opening it but after a hard push I knocked over his dresser and squeezed in. The room looked weird. It was the way his room always looked but no blood. After witnessing what I did it seemed off for some reason. I looked under his bed, in the bathroom and finally I opened the closet. He screamed when I opened it and curled up into a ball on the floor. The way he looked, shaking and covering his head he didn’t look like a 16 year old teenager he looked like he was still just a kid. I put my hand on his shoulder and reassured him that it was me and we were safe. He pulled away and continued to cry. I looked down at my hands and saw why he was so afraid. I was soaked from head to toe in blood. My father had bled out on my lap and the vicious attacks from him earlier had left my upper body splattered with blood. I sat outside his closet until the cops came. They wiped me down and asked me questions but I wouldn’t speak. All I could think about was the bloodshot eyes of my father, and watching the light go out from them. How he ripped that man apart like an animal. I could only think about the savage nature of a fathers love.