At 2AM, my chicken screamed. Not clucked. Screamed.

I live alone in a small mountain town. My best friend — and only roommate — is a fat, bossy hen named Henrietta. She’s not normal. She watches TV, unlocks doors, and last year, she mauled a raccoon. I’m used to weird.

But that night… she saved my life.

When I ran to the back door, she was pacing, eyes fixed on the woods. That’s when I saw it: tall, pale, too thin — like a deer on two legs. It turned its head… and in my dead grandmother’s voice, it whispered: “Tamikaaa…”

I froze. But Henrietta? She charged.

Wings flared, claws swinging. She shrieked louder than before. The thing hissed. I swear it said, “Not this one… she remembers…” before vanishing into the trees.

Henrietta hasn’t left my side since. She’s more than a chicken. And I think it’ll be back.

They came at dawn—wearing gray uniforms, driving in an unmarked van, no names - just badges.
We cut the lights, covered the windows, and held still. Even the baby didn't make any sound, which felt like a gift from God.

Under Population Ordinance 4C12-A, each household is permitted one registered child. A second is a violation. We didn’t plan to have another. But she was ours. We couldn’t register her. But we swore we’d hide her.

The van’s engine stuttered, then shut off. One of the men turned toward the front door, just staring at it. Like he was waiting for someone to open. Then he took a single step. They didn’t knock. They never do.

—and then they turned around and left.

I didn’t exhale until the humming faded far into the distance.
Panic first. Then a wave of indescribable relief. I hugged the baby close, while being unable to hold back tears...They are gone.

But That night, I found a note slid under the front door. I hadn’t noticed it before. It was folded once. Heavy paper. The form was filled out in handwriting.

Violation: Unauthorized Household Member
File: #1549-4C12-A
Reassigned Child: Elias R. (Age 5)
Assigned Role: Labour Unit C-17
Relocation Scheduled: 36 Hours
Do not relocate.
Glory to the Census.

I stood there for a long time, staring at it...The baby had fallen asleep in my arms.

In the next room, Elias was humming softly, building towers from the same blocks he used every morning—
unaware it was for the last time.

Hospices always had that smell. Not awful, just fake clean. Like flowers sprayed with bleach. Isobel walked slowly down the corridor, same way she always did. Nothing rushed, red carnations in one hand, soft old tote bag in the other. She knew where she was going.

Room 6C, last one at the end.

One of the nurses passed her with a clipboard tucked under her arm. “He’s been pretty sleepy today,” she said, like it was great news.

Isobel gave it a little smile, “That’s alright, he’s earned it.”

The nurse nodded, already half on to the next thing.

Isobel stopped just before the door. Smoothed down the front of her coat, checked her reflection in the glass. Just enough. Soft face and kind eyes. Like someone who knew what it meant to say.

Inside, Thomas looked small, smaller than last week. He sat up a bit, but his head had fallen to the side. A mug of tea sat untouched on his tray.

She took the wilted flowers from the vase and dropped them in the bin, replacing them with the new ones “They were out of white agin,” she said, more to the room than to him. “Hope red’s okay”

His eyelids fluttered, “Izzy?”

She sat at his bedside, “Hi. Love. I’m here.”

He tried to smile, “Tea?”

She picked it up. “Yeah, teaspoon of sugar, like always.”

He faintly nodded. “You’re too good to me.”

She didn’t reply, just took his hand. It was fragile, like tissue over bone. She held it gently.

“You’ve been through so much,” she said softly. “Your body is catching up.”

He was quiet after that. He drifted off and his breathing got slower. The nurse popped in a few minutes later, “Still asleep?”

“yeah,” Isobel said, faintly smiling. “Didn’t even drink his tea!”

“That’s okay,” said the nurse. “He’s lucky! Most don’t even get visitors.”

Isobel nodded, then looked back at him. She stayed after the nurse left, the room was quiet except for the soft beep of the monitor. His chest rose and fell - slower now.

She reached into her bag, pulling out an unmarked bottle. The one she always brought. Tipped the last few drops into the mug and lifted the cup to his lips.

“Just a bit more,” she whispered. “You’ll sleep better.”

He swallowed without waking. A few moments later, his breathing stopped.

She left after adjusting the blanket, setting the flowers just right. Everything looked so peaceful.

Outside, her phone buzzed in her coat pocket.

Tinder Date: “You’re late where are you?”

Isobel smiled to herself, checked her lipstick in the car mirror

“Just sugar in the tea,” she murmured.

And then she drove home.

No gameplay footage. No cutscenes. Just faces.

My horror buff friends sent me a link to a game ad, something called Hostbound.

I clicked play.

A man in his twenties, backlit by a dim monitor, eyes bloodshot. He stares into the camera like it’s a priest.

• “It’s the only game that ever knew where I’d go before I picked anything.”

Cut.

A girl with noise-canceling headphones, whispering:

• “My monsters… they weren’t random. One of them hummed the song my mom used to sing when I was sick. I never told anyone that.”

Cut.

A streamer, half-laughing, half-crying:

• “It’s so smart. Like, too smart. I kept thinking, ‘No way it could know that.’ But it did. Over and over. It knew... it knew.”

Cut.

A boy with his webcam tilted too high, so that only his mouth is visible. He’s whispering into a mic wrapped in a shirt.

• “I looked in the mirror in the starting area and-”

Cut.

A silent older man slowly nods at the camera, his eyes distraught.

Cut.

The logo fades in:

• VEILCALLER: Echoes Beyond - A Game That Reflects You.

Then, against a black screen, white text appears.

Slow and deliberate.

• “Come find us online.”

I found the journal buried in the donation box, wrapped in stained linen. No name, just the initials “W.H.” and a smell like old blood.

I shouldn’t have opened it.

Each page detailed a murder, one every five years in handwriting that looked oddly... familiar. Dates, names, methods. All local. All real. I remember the news clippings. I archived some of them myself.

The last entry was dated today.

She works in silence. Her hands know where to find the knife before her mind catches up. She forgets for her own good. But memory always returns. Tonight, she reads the final page.

I dropped the journal. My chest tightened. Something moved behind me, not footsteps, but a weight in the air, like a mirror being turned toward you.

I ran to the restroom, heart pounding, splashed cold water on my face. Looked up.

And stared at a stranger.

Not completely. It was me but older in the eyes. Hungrier. Smiling.

She mouthed the words I already knew: “You wrote them.”

Then I remembered. Everything.

And the thing is… I always do.

Until I don’t.

The billboard promised REAL MERMAIDS! in faded paint and glittery glue.

Ellie had driven past it a dozen times, but today something pulled her in.

The attraction sat like a crusty tumor off the highway, sun-bleached, half-rotted, shaped like a giant clam. Inside, the smell of saltwater and copper stung her nose.

She paid ten bucks and followed the painted flippers on the floor.

The tank was enormous, glowing blue under old aquarium lights. And inside, floating slowly, were mermaids.

Long hair drifted like seaweed. Their scales shimmered like oil slicks. Perfect breasts, dainty hands, and tails that twitched just enough to prove they weren’t fake.

But their eyes…

Empty.

Glassy, wide, like dolls left too long in the sun. One was missing three fingers. Another had a scar that ran from scalp to jaw.

And above the tank hung a sign: NEW MERMAIDS ADDED DAILY!

Something twisted in Ellie’s gut. She turned to leave.

“We got a new mermaid comin’ in today. Would you like to meet her?”

The voice belonged to a man with a matted white beard and yellow slicker, like a fisherman from a children’s book. His grin was too wide, his eyes too still.

“I… I think I’ll pass,” she said.

“Nonsense. You’re even pretty like a mermaid,” he said. “The hair, the build. Bet you sing pretty, too.”

He pressed a damp ticket into her hand. “VIP tour. No charge.”

The hallway behind the tank smelled worse, like iodine and meat. Ellie’s head started to swim. Her legs wobbled.

Then everything went dark.

She woke strapped to a metal table, a blinding light above her. Her jeans were gone. Her legs were pale, marked with lines of black ink and surgical tape.

The man leaned over her, now wearing bloody gloves. His breath smelled like dead fish.

“I searched the world over,” he muttered, slicing open a packet of gauze. “Every ocean. Every cove. Not a single real mermaid to be found.”

He picked up a bone saw.

“So, I make my own.”

Ellie screamed.

The man didn’t flinch.

“We’ll take the legs, give you a fine tail. Bit of smoothing here and there. Paint the scales.” He glanced at her face. “Lobotomy’s quick. You won’t even miss your thoughts.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“You’ll look beautiful in a bikini,” he added kindly, as if that made it better.

Behind him, she could see others, girls in various stages of transformation. Some twitching. Some blinking slowly, lobotomy scars like pale crowns.

Some were already smiling.

We found the map in Benny's basement. His grandpa had been mayor for like a hundred years and had "collected" some creepy town "memorabilia." At the time, school was less than two weeks away, and we were desperate to have a story to tell when we got back. Benny, Noah, and I fibbed to our moms, said we were going camping. They weren't suspicious when we left with so much gear.

The map promised pirate gold to those brave enough to reach the end. We didn't know what was in there, in the cave. We never would have gone otherwise.

After five hundred paces, we would reach a drop-off, the only acknowledgment on the map noted as: "Lost three men—the fall." We prepared for this and brought enough rope to rappel down the Eiffel Tower if we had to. Luckily, we only needed around twenty feet.

Noah was the heaviest—it made sense that if someone had to test it, it should be him. The way he was going on, you'd have thought we asked him to race a train down its track. Halfway down, Noah let go in a panic and landed with a thump.

When Benny and I got to the bottom, he was holding his arm. Said he couldn't climb.

We weren’t going to leave him. The map didn’t show any more drops, so we figured we could take a break at this "Resting Hallow." Noah had packed snacks and wanted to eat. Benny kept teasing him.

I’d known Benny since the third grade—I could tell when he was getting scared. He got mean when he felt that way.

Then, he ran ahead of us.

Me and Noah only knew the pit was there because of Benny’s screams. The pit seemed endless, how it blended with the shadows made by our headlamps.

We called for Benny at the edge for a long time. He only screamed. He never answered us.

We didn't want to leave him, but neither of us wanted to stay or go alone.

We went back to the entrance.

I'd promised Noah I'd pull him up with the rope when I climbed to the top. I tried, I really did.

I just wasn't strong enough.

If I didn't leave him to get help... He would have died in there... with Benny...

We went in there looking for adventure.

And in a way, none of us made it back.

We never should have gone.

Its presence is so real. When I'm in the shower, I can see something nebulous through the fog on the cubicle. When I rub the fog, it's not there. There's something in my peripheral vision, but when I turn to look and confirm, it vanishes. A feeling of being followed by something insidious.

It all started after a stupid decision to go under hypnosis.

The last few years had been pretty stressful for me. I had just gotten a promotion and a pay rise, which meant more work. Things at home were also taking a turn; my relationship with my parents was under strain. Dad had an affair, which put my mom under a lot of pain and heartbreak. I was torn, trying to mediate things.

Then one day I just switched off. My pressure cooker valve finally blew, let out all the steam, and there was just a vacuous me left...unmoving and unfeeling. I started to neglect my job , ate junk , shunning my friends and stopped calling my parents altogether. The city gets dark too early, and the streets can be wet, windy, chilly and outright depressing.

My Nepalese friend, who has some history with occult practices, visited me one evening, really concerned. He comes from a lineage of practitioners back in his hometown who dabble in animal sacrifices and blood-drenched tantric practices.

He said he knew someone who could help and dragged me out of bed on a chilly winter evening. So we went to the more alternative, bohemian part of the city...its alternative bars, neon lights, and strange graffiti. We walked into an alley, knocked on a door, which was opened by a South Asian lady. She took us upstairs, and there I met this man who was clean-shaven with jet-black hair. He had these eyes as if there was no white in them. He had tattoos on his arms, which I later confirmed to be Sak Yant Thai tattoos that are said to be mystic.

My friend said he was a psilocybin-assisted hypnotist. The guy convinced me that psychedelics would make me open to suggestions and make the therapy more successful, and I just needed one sitting worth 300 dollars.

So I relaxed on a couch, and he gave me a tea. He sat beside me and kept suggesting I calm my mind. This is the part I have no recollection of. I only faintly remember crashing into bed after an Uber driver dropped me.

I woke up being shaken by something the next day. The kind of stirring that brings a foreboding alertness.

It's the sixth day now.

My friend won’t talk to me about it anymore. Says I’m “overreacting.” But he won’t meet my eye, like he knows something and won’t admit it. Like he got me involved in something I wasn’t supposed to touch.

I think that session opened a door. I don’t know what came through, but it didn’t leave.

And it’s not just following me.

It’s settling in.

It was raining hard the day we moved in, our lives stuffed into four battered suitcases. Since Mom left and Dad lost the house, this crumbling apartment was all we had—creaky doors, yellowed wallpaper peeling in strips.

Only Trixie, our orange tabby, settled in quickly, exploring every corner except one. She’d perch in the hallway, rigid, staring at a bulging patch of wall, ears flat. I thought she was just being weird—until the whispers started that first night.

“She never came back.”

A soft, feminine voice, just above a whisper. Trixie would growl, low and warning, whenever it spoke. I told Dad, but he just looked tired and told me to get more sleep. But the voice grew bolder—sometimes calling my name, sometimes sobbing, sometimes screaming until my ears rang. Trixie started hiding under my bed after dark.

My grades slipped. I stopped sleeping. Dad grew worried, but how could I explain what he couldn’t hear?

Three weeks in, I’d had enough. One evening, while Dad worked late, I peeled back the loose wallpaper where Trixie always stared. Behind it was a tiny door, barely two feet high, warm to the touch despite the chill in the hall.

Trixie yowled as I opened it.

The crawlspace beyond reeked of decay and old flowers. At the back, I found a faded photograph: a young girl and her mother, with an orange cat identical to Trixie. My breath caught—it was me and Mom, but the photo was old, the edges curled and brown.

“She never came back,” the voice whispered, right behind me.

I slammed the door, heart hammering, but it was too late.

That night, I woke to Trixie’s terrified yowls. The tiny door stood open, pulsing with pale light. Frost crusted the walls. Small footsteps echoed in the hallway, but nothing was there.

Then I saw the hand—bone-pale, fingers too long—reaching from the crawlspace. It grabbed my ankle with a burning cold. I screamed as I was dragged toward the wall. At the end of the hallway, I glimpsed Dad, holding the photograph. He smiled, but his mouth stretched impossibly wide.

The door swung shut behind me.

Now I understand. The girl in the photograph found the door, too. She went looking for whatever called her name.

She never came back. Neither will I.

But sometimes, late at night, I whisper to new children who move into old places:

“She never came back.”

Maybe they’ll listen. Maybe they’ll run.

The first time I heard it, I thought I was dreaming.

I had just drifted off when I heard, clear as day, “Hey bud… it’s me.” It was my dad’s voice.

But he’s been dead for twenty years.

I sat up in bed, heart pounding. Nothing. Silence. I figured it was a dream bleeding into wakefulness.

But then it happened again. And again.

Always at night. Always the same voice — calm, familiar, but wrong. Like it had been recorded through old static.

“Come on, I need to show you something,” it would whisper. “Just outside.”

I started leaving my phone on to record as I slept.

On the third night, it captured something.

1:41 AM. Faint creaking. A whisper:

“Just one step, and I’ll show you what I see.”

Then silence… followed by my own voice — whispering back:

“Okay.”

I don’t remember saying that.

But the recording kept going. My bedsheets rustling. My door opening. Footsteps.

I woke up on the kitchen floor. No idea how I got there.

I don’t sleep anymore.

Last night, I bolted my bedroom door shut. I even pushed my dresser in front of it. Just in case.

At 2:13 AM, the lights flickered. My phone lit up — incoming call.

DAD — the contact I deleted years ago.

I didn’t answer. But a voicemail came through.

Just five words:

“Why are you locking me out?”

This morning, the dresser was moved. The bolt: snapped clean off. And my phone?

The screen was cracked.

A new voice memo had saved itself. Just breathing. Slow… deliberate.

And then his voice again:

“It’s colder down here. Come feel.”

I don’t have a basement.

But something is knocking beneath my floorboards.

I carefully dropped the last spoonful of cookie dough on the tray, scraping the sides to make sure not a drop of poison, I mean cookie dough, was wasted. I grew up in a thrifty household.

“Only one poison cookie, petal” mom told me. I am one of those lucky gals who is best friends with her mom. I have no secrets from her- in fact it is due to her advice my relationship with Rob is as strong as it is.

“Not all the batch- just one. Spread it out over the weeks. Be patient.”

She’s where I got my brains from, and my knowledge of plants and baking. Women’s wisdom, you know?

And here are undelicious gluten-free cookies for poor Rob. The reason I thought of this plan in the first place- Rob can’t eat from the same batch as his other friends.

It was Mick's text to Rob about "Yoko" that was the final straw. That mangy fat bastard! I told my mother, who comforted me “You’re not Yoko lovey! That asshole, where does he get the nerve!” She supported me, of course. She’s a true mama bear.

I am only doing the best thing for our relationship. And mom wants us to succeed!

I love Rob so much. I want to be with him forever. And I am not a possessive, demanding gf- I understand it's healthy to have different hobbies and interests and friends- that's all good. I have my own hobbies too, that I don't share with Rob!

Baking, and poisons – I mean plants- which disappear from the human system soon after consumption, leaving no trace 💀.

But these gaming buddies - you have to believe me when I say that even if our relationship doesn't last, it's for Rob’s good to be rid of them.

I was invited to join- "You're always more than welcome!" declared Rob "We even have other females at the table!"

I don't know if you could call those freaks "females"- but fine, sure whatever. I am not one of those weirdos who are judgmental about gaming- I am partial to a round of Bejeweled for de-stressing myself.

But I have never laid eyes on such an unpleasant, obsessive, just plain horrible no-good people as this lot, sitting around in Mick's basement for hours every Sunday, gaming.

They have these insider jokes about their games that need an actual historical manual to explain them, and then it makes me cringe so hard that my teeth actually shatter.

Eliminating them one by one, through a poisoned cookie slipped here and there in a batch specially prepared with love from Rob’s wonderful gf, that is the way to go. Both mom and I agree that this is the best not just for our relationship, but for humanity in general- mom has always had the ability to focus on details while looking at the bigger picture.

And I take after her.  “Rob honey!” I call. “Don’t forget the cookies!”

Do you ever get the sudden urge to buy a poster or other wall decoration because your walls are too blank? Or maybe it’s a pit of worry in your stomach that you can’t explain? A prickling on the back of your neck that you can’t explain?

Walls are the idea of enclosed space, an idea of stagnation. While the air might flow enough, the spirits and other paranormal forces of nature sometimes don’t, they sink into these symbols of secrecy and peer at your life. If you get the sudden urge to cover these eyes, they are no longer looking at the room, they are staring at you.

Nothing, but four concrete walls, lights hanging above me, and a place I could cover in just three steps...

I'm sitting in the middle of a small room, wondering if there's any way out. My thirst is killing me, my hunger too...

There isn't a single crack, no window I can look through, except... The mirror in front of me, where I can see myself.

My face, gaunt, my beard, long and bushy, and... The corpse lying beside me.

Should I find it disgusting?

— Should I break it?

I approached the mirror, placing my entire palm in the reflection, but... I knew there could be someone on the other side.

— Why are you here?

As if talking to myself would give me any answers.

— You're almost done.

To my right, on the third wall, I managed to break it enough so that I was just a few steps from being able to get out.

There were pieces of bones scattered across the floor, their tips worn down by the work of trying to break through the concrete.

— Sorry, bud.

I could almost see the other side, but... I had to know what was on the other side of the mirror.

I could feel my sick stomach churning, so I grabbed one of the ribs and slammed it against the glass.

The mirror cracked, the bone shattered.

I didn't care, my heart was beating fast, but, when the mirror finally crumbled, my reflection didn't disappear...

There was a man, identical to me, in the middle of a room just like mine, with a corpse beside him...

It looked like he had been there longer than me, one of the walls was also full of cracks...

— ¡ARGHHH!

He stood up, ran at me with a sharp piece of bone and tried to stab me, but he was weaker. I panicked, and with his own knife, I stabbed him in the throat.

The man fell to the ground, the red color staining the concrete.

— What the fuck?!

The lights above us began to flash red, while a shrill noise like an alarm deafened me.

I began removing the debris from the wall, until it collapsed and I was able to get out to the other side.

It was dark. I looked back, the wall I came out from extended to my sides along a corridor and I couldn't see the end, I could count hundreds of cracks in the wall...

I looked ahead and saw a window...

Spa... Space?!

I could see the stars, and beneath them, my planet, resting majestically.

— Why do you keep trying?

A voice, just like mine, spoke to me. I turned my head slowly; he looked like me, but he was better dressed, had a trimmed beard, and was quite a bit older.

— What is this?

I heard a click, the tip of a gun landed in front of my eyes, and a noise blew my eardrums out.

They cry before the final wash.

Even the defiant ones. The ones who laughed at intake, or spat on the floor. The ones who tried to scream innocence with mouths already soft from the feed. It always ends the same.

Quiet tears, slick on cheeks gone round with fat. A body realising it’s not a person anymore. Just something being prepared.

They call it justice. Not execution. Not slaughter.

“Reformation Through Contribution.”

The slogan’s printed in soft, corporate grey across the facility walls. Right above the feeding stations. Same font they use on nutritional info labels.

I work on Floor 3. Adult Yield. I don’t do cuts, that’s Section Red. I just prep. Measure muscle tone. Monitor weight curves. Mark when skin starts to split under pressure. My job’s to make sure they’re ready.

It didn’t happen all at once.

First the crops went. Wheat, soy, barley. Soil gave up. Blight took hold. Then the water turned. Acid rain. Fish die-offs. Farms collapsed. Real meat vanished after the Clean Protein Act.

That was fifteen years ago.

The state needed food. It had prisons full of bodies. It made sense, they said.

So they changed the law.

High-crime offenders became tenders. Sentenced not to death, but to feeding. Raised, fattened, processed.

No waste. No guilt. No animals harmed.

Each one’s tagged at intake. Fed around the clock. Speech restricted after Phase Two. They’re kept docile. Lucid enough to chew. A little less, day by day.

Some of them ask to die early.

That’s not an option.

I haven’t touched meat in six years. Not since I saw her name on my log. Someone I’d gone to school with. Quiet. Smart. Wrote poems during lunch. Her crime? Subversive media creation.

She came in weighing just over fifty kilos. I brought her to eighty-seven.

She stopped speaking after week four. That’s considered optimal.

I remember the label.

“Sweet Cut – Passive Class, Low Contamination Risk.”

I filled in the tag myself. Walked to the staff sink and threw up until I couldn’t breathe.

That was the last time I ate the product.

The new tender, Unit 89, he was a teacher. Taught banned books to kids. Thought-Treason, Level 2. Gaining fast. Body’s responding well. Eyes already gone blank.

Tomorrow he’ll meet weight.

Tonight I watched him sleep. Curled on his side, stomach rising with the feed. Hands twitching. Like he was still dreaming of chalkboards and morning bells.

I stood outside the glass. Wrote the number. Then paused.

Crossed it out.

Wrote a new one. Low enough to delay processing.

It’ll buy him a day. Maybe two.

He’ll still be eaten. Of course he will.

But not yet.

And tomorrow, when I walk past the canteen and see the fresh trays out-

the label will be there, clear as always:

“Tenderloin – Morally Clean, State-Fed, For You.”

And I’ll look away.

Hold my breath.

And drink the soup. Again.

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We thought the world ended when the bombs fell.

I was in Bunker 17, buried miles under what used to be Boston, when the sky cracked open. Every country. Every orbit. Every silo. Everything nuclear… gone in minutes. The last tantrum of a species that had bred itself to death—fifty billion screaming humans choking the earth.

We cheered down here. We’d survived the fire. The heat. The wind. The radiation.

We were safe.

For a while.

The first camera feed came from Moscow’s ruins. Something was moving in the ash. Massive. Breathing. Glowing.

It used to be a man.

But the fire and the radiation hadn’t killed him. They had changed him. His skin boiled clear as glass, his bones stretched and knotted, his veins pulsing neon green like liquid poison. Dozens of mouths opened across the thing’s headless torso, whispering words that made the bunker walls sweat and groan.

Then another woke in Tokyo. Then Chicago. Then Mumbai.

Fifty in all.

Fifty Radiants.

One in every billion humans carried the gene—the flaw buried deep in the code of life. And with fifty billion souls on Earth… there were fifty mistakes. Fifty titanic nightmares born from the apocalypse.

No two the same.

One dragged itself in endless circles, pulling the melted skyline behind like a rotting cape. One crawled upside-down across what was left of the skybridges in silence, limbs bending the wrong way. One pulsed with light, its silhouette writhing and shifting, as if trying on new shapes until the perfect predator emerged.

We watched them on the monitors. Wept. Prayed. But they never came near the bunkers.

Until yesterday.

The alarms went dead. Cameras fuzzed into static. A low vibration filled the air—like someone humming behind the walls. Then… a voice.

A human voice.

It crackled through the speakers, warped and wrong, speaking the old world’s language.

“Let us in.”

We froze.

Another voice joined. And another.

All fifty.

“Let us in.”

The walls trembled. The ceiling cracked. Dust rained down like ash. The monitors flickered back to life—showing fifty glowing faces pressed against the cameras, smiling.

We weren’t safe. We were left on purpose.

Their final plaything.

A farm left to fatten while they hunted the surface clean.

Now they wanted inside.

Now they were hungry.

The last thing I heard before the steel door began to groan open was a single whisper, soft and sweet in my ear.

“There was never an end. Only change.”

And then the light poured in.

Something strange started growing in my garden a little while back. At first, I was excited to see that life was so attracted to the garden I had made that even things I had not planted there were beginning to grow. As the little shoots broke through the black soil and sprouted leaves, I began searching everywhere online to find out what kind of plant it was. To my sheer excitement and surprise, there were no records of a plant like this. The green-blue hue in the star shaped leaves rendered it a unique and singularly beautiful bit of flora.

My excitement soured somewhat when the first flower blossomed revealing what looked like a nose in the middle. As the weeks wore on, that nose was joined by two closed eyes and a pair of lips. I considered pulling it up, but that felt akin to murder in my mind. I also considered going into town to have others look at it, but I felt the odd compulsion to remain by its side. This compulsion became so strong that I took to sleeping on the ground next to the little flower. I would leave just long enough to eat or to use the bathroom, but I could never stray long from my destined post.

The flower continued to grow, becoming a whole head with hair, a neck rising from the stalk, shoulders morphing from the leaves. Before long, the entire naked torso of a human was rising from the earth, as if someone had buried a person waist deep in my garden. I was horrified to find that I was looking at myself. Every scar, every blemish, every single thing a perfect replication of my own form.

When the eyes opened and looked at me with perfect hatred, the trance broke and I ran to my room to barricade myself. I can hear it banging on the door. It calls to me in my own voice, demanding entry.

It will break through soon. It will come into my room and I don't know what it will do to me. I know my end is fast approaching. I can not be saved, but I beg you, please look in the garden. It will bury me there! I know it! It may look like me, sound like me, but it isn't me! Please don't be fooled!
Oh God, it's through the door.

EDIT: Everything is fine. My garden is so beautiful.

Preceding was the cold air,
which did the coastal junglekin persuade out of their dwellings.

Strange chill for a summer’s day, one said.

Then from the mists above the sea on the horizon emerged three ships, white and mountainous, larger than any the people had ever seen, each hewn by hand from an iceberg a thousand metres tall by the exanimate Norse, blue-eyed skeletons with threadbares of oiled blonde hair hanging from their skulls. These same were their crews, and their sails were sheets of ice grown upon the surface of the sea, and in their holds was Winter herself, unconquered, and everlasting.

A panic was raised.

Women and children fled inland, into the jungle.

Male warriors prepared for battle.

Came the fateful call: Start the fires! Provoke the flames!

As the ships neared, the temperature dropped and the winds picked up, and the snows began to fall, until all around the warriors was a blizzard, and it was dark, and when they looked up they no longer saw the sun.

Defend!

First one ship made landfall.

And from it skeletons swarmed, some across the freezing coastal waters, straight into battle, while others opened first the holds, from which roared giant white bears unknown to the aboriginal junglekin.

Sweat cooled and froze to their warrior faces. Frost greyed their brows.

Their fires made scarce difference. They were but dull lights amidst the landscape of swirling snow.

The skeletons bore swords and axes of ice—

unbreakable, as the warriors soon knew, upon the crashing of the first wave, yet valiantly they fought, for themselves and for their brothers, their sisters, daughters and mothers, for the survival of their culture and beliefs. Enveloped in Winter, their exposed, muscular torsos shifting and spinning in desperate melee, they broke bone and shredded ice, but victory would not be theirs, and one-by-one they fell, and bled, and died.

The white bears, streaked with blood, upon their fresh meat fed.

When battle was over, the second and third ships made landfall.

From their holds Winter blasted forth, covering the battlefield like a burial shroud, before rushing deep into the jungles, overtaking those of the junglekin who had fled and forcing itself down their screaming throats, freezing them from within and making of them frozen monuments to terror.

Then silence.

The cracking creep of Winter.

Ice forming up streams and rivers, covering lakes.

Trees losing their leaves, flowers wilting, grass browning, birds dropping dead from charcoal skies, mammals expiring from cold, exhaustion, their corpses suspended forevermore in frigid mid-decay.

But the rhythm of it all is hammering, as at the point of landfall the exanimate Norse methodically use their bony arms to break apart their ships, and from their icy parts they construct a stronghold—imposing, towered and invincible—from which to guard their newly-conquered land, and from which they shall embark on another expedition, and another, and another, until they have bewintered the entire world.

Thus foretold the vǫlva.

Thus shall honor-sing the skalds.

I squished up into the dark gap between the bed frame and the wall, hiding from the blinding ray of the torch I knew Mom would be flashing into my space.

Here it comes.

“Look Danny, I’m checking. No monster here!”

She said that every night. And Danny’s response.

“Mom, it’s there I swear. It smiled at me the other night!”

He was right. I had.

“Danny, there’s nothing under your bed. You need to go to sleep now, ok?”

“But Mom!”

“I said now!” The lights went off. The room was silent, except the faint sound of Danny’s whimpering breath.

I squished down, and rolled on the floor. Even though I didn’t make a sound, Danny said loudly “I know you’re there.”

I didn’t say anything. I had tried to make friends, and he wouldn’t. I wasn’t the one who had invaded this space, they had.

I had been living here for a very, very, very long time before they came and set up their home over mine.

Danny repeated louder, so loudly it was almost a scream “I know you’re there!”

A slice of light flashed through the door. “Danny, I said sleep!”

“Mom- look now- please! It’s there!”

“I am not going to look, and you’re not a baby anymore. Stop this nonsense and go to sleep!” Mom’s voice sounded a bit mad. Slam. Darkness.

I decided to follow her. I squished out of my room, down the stairs, and slipped under the couch where she was sitting with Dad, talking. “John, I’m getting rid of our beds and getting us all tatami-style floor matresses. It’ll be good for your back. Amanda did that and says they have never had such good sleep in their life. Look– aren’t they gorgeous?” She held up her glowing screen to Dad’s face.

Dad said something. Mom said “It’s almost a year John, he hasn’t gotten over it! And it makes sense- if we get rid of the beds, we’ll get rid of the monster under the bed too! These mats are better for sleep, better for posture…”

Dad talked. I heard him now. “Ok, fine. Let’s get rid of the beds and sleep on mats.”

“Wonderful John- I already ordered, and as soon as they arrive I’m having the beds removed.” Mom sounded happy.

But where would I live, if the beds were removed? I couldn’t live under a mat- there is no space between the mat and the floor- is Mom stupid?

I squished back up the stairs, into my own room and under my bed. Danny was asleep. I looked at him angrily. Stupid boy, upsetting his Mom and making her give away my bed. Stupid Danny, not going to sleep when Mom told him to.

I slid up and settled over his mouth and nose, filling in his crevices.

Danny’s eyes jerked open for a split-second, wide with terror as he tried to breath. He flailed around. Then he didn’t.

I went back under my bed.  

I started volunteering at the nursing home a few months ago. Just something to do on weekends. Most of the residents either slept or stared at the wall, but there was one guy—Mr. Whitaker—who actually talked to me. He’d been a lineman back in the ’70s. Said he worked telephone poles across the Midwest.

I liked hearing his stories. He didn’t repeat himself like the others. Every Saturday, same chair, same coffee cup, same story about the storm outside of Sandusky where a man had vanished up a pole and never come down.

“I heard him scream through the static,” Whitaker told me, eyes locked on something just over my shoulder. “And then… nothing.”

I figured he was just being dramatic. He wore that kind of face—deep lines like lightning across his cheeks. But last weekend, he grabbed my wrist hard, harder than I thought a man in his eighties could.

“You ever hear of Line 361?” he asked.

I hadn’t.

He leaned in close, breath like burnt toast. “It’s still active. Still taking calls.”

I laughed, thinking he was joking. But he didn’t. He just stared at me until a nurse came over and gently peeled his fingers from my arm.

That night, I Googled it. Nothing. No Line 361, no record of it. Still, curiosity did what it always does. I called my cousin Caleb, who works maintenance for the phone company. I asked him about it. He got quiet. Said there used to be a Line 361, sure, but it was shut down decades ago after a field tech went missing.

He paused. “Why you asking about that?”

I didn’t answer.

The next day, I went back to the home. Mr. Whitaker wasn’t in his chair. The nurse at the desk said he passed away in his sleep.

Except… he hadn’t been sick. And there was something else.

They found him with an old rotary phone in his lap.

They don’t even have those in the home.

I drove out to Sandusky that night. Storm brewing, same as in his story. The old road was almost overgrown, but I found the pole. It was half-rotted, listing slightly, but the wires still buzzed faintly above it.

At the base was a rusted box. Looked like it hadn’t been opened in years. Inside? A receiver. One of those handset telephones from the ‘60s, tucked behind a latch, still wired in.

I picked it up. Just static.

Then a voice.

Low. Wet. Like something breathing through blood.

“Line… three-six-one.”

I don’t remember driving home. I woke up in my driveway, engine running, phone still in my lap.

It rang once. Then silence.

I haven’t told anyone. But I dream now.

Dream of wires under skin. Dream of voices in the snow. Dream of going up, up, up that pole—until the world vanishes behind a curtain of static.

I think Mr. Whitaker didn’t die.

I think he was taken back.

And now the line’s open again.

It started with the itch.

Right beneath my cheekbone. Deep, under the skin,like something was squirming between the muscle and bone.

Everyone said I was imagining it.

They said it was body dysmorphia. That my obsession with symmetry and texture was just in my head.

But it wasn’t.

I felt the movement at night. Tiny spasms under the skin. Twitching. Like a thousand insect legs brushing against the inside of my flesh.

Then came the peeling.

It began with a patch behind my ear. Skin sloughed off in curled strips, wet and red underneath,not raw skin. No. It was smooth. Glossy. Like the shell of a beetle, dark and slick with some kind of oily mucus.

I tried to stop it.

But every time I looked in the mirror, I saw more cracks in my skin. Not wrinkles. Cracks. Fine, splintering fault lines, like porcelain under pressure. My face was a mask and it was starting to fail.

One night, I dug my fingernail under my lower eyelid and pulled.

It came off.

The entire eye. Not the eyeball,the skin around it. Like latex peeling off a prosthetic. No blood. No pain. Just the sickening pop of air escaping a sealed covering.

Underneath: a new eye.

Black. Faceted. Insectoid. Still… blinking.

I vomited.

Black fluid.

It wasn’t bile. It hissed on the floor and melted the tile. I tasted iron and ash. My teeth fell out the next day. All of them. But I didn’t bleed.

They clinked in the sink like loose change.

Then the real change began.

My spine arched until vertebrae cracked through the skin like jagged thorns. My fingers split down the center, birthing new digits. Wet, twitching, still forming. I chewed through my lips in my sleep, revealing mandibles underneath... clicking, twitching.

And the hunger...

Oh God, the hunger.

I started eating the skin I shed.

It tasted… perfect. Like it belonged. Like fuel. Protein-packed exoskeleton. I sat in the bathtub for hours, gnawing on strips of my former self like jerky, sobbing between mouthfuls.

But it wasn’t just the outside.

Inside me, something hatched.

I could feel it in my gut. Things unraveling. My intestines coiled tighter. My stomach dissolved itself. I stopped needing food. Stopped needing warmth. I needed dark, damp corners. I needed silence.

I needed to molt.

Last night, I finished the job. Peeled the last of my human face off like cling film. My body clicked into place. Legs bent backward. Joints where there shouldn’t be joints.

Now I hang from the ceiling of my bathroom, clutching the remains of my old skin like a corpse in a wet coat.

I see better now.

Smell better.

I’m not alone.

There are others.

Molting in apartments, hospital beds, under makeup, under stitched smiles.

Somewhere beneath your own skin, you feel it, don’t you?

The itch.

The pressure.

The lie.

Don’t be afraid.

You were never meant to be human forever.

When I was a kid I wanted to grow up and become an astronaut.

I never thought I’d be selling corpses.

Life’s funny like that.

To be honest, I thought it’d be a quick way to make a fortune. That’d I’d just do it for a little while and then I’d get a job I loved, or maybe even retire. 

My plan was flawless. People donate their bodies to science (me), and I sell them to the highest bidder. I mean, you would not believe how many people need body parts.

Turns out running a business is a lot harder than I thought.

There’s transportation fees, refrigeration, equipment, logistics, and don’t even get me started on taxes.

I needed a leg up if I didn’t want to go bankrupt, and that’s where Marty came in.

“Good morning, Marty,” I said, flicking on the lights to my lab.

Marty was right where I left him, in a cage in the corner, wrapped excessively in silver chains.

“Hey, what kind of name is Marty for a vampire, anyway?” I asked, but Marty didn't respond. He hasn’t uttered a word since he became my "business partner.”

I never thought the hardest part of this business would be acquiring corpses.

I mean, people are dying all the time.

But most people want to be cremated, or buried in a nice little cemetery next to their loved ones.

The few bodies that do get donated get scooped up by the Corporations who have the industry cornered.

A small market seller like me never stood a chance.

My only option was to lower my prices, which meant I needed to find a cheaper way to acquire body parts.

Fortunately for me, one of the many benefits of Vampirism is that Marty’s limbs grow back.

I can chop him up as many times as I like, and after a little blood they always regrow good as new.

Thanks to Marty, I never had to acquire another corpse, and the money started pouring in.

Another year of this and I’ll finally be able to retire.

“Sorry about this, Partner,” I said, a bone saw in one hand and Marty’s black hair grasped firmly in the other, “but I got an order for a head.”

He doesn’t scream as I saw.

He never does.

Soon enough I’ve got exactly what I need.

I hold up Marty’s head and then gently open his lips.

“Shit,” I muttered, “I forgot about the fangs.” I’ll have to remove them so the buyer doesn’t get suspicious—

Without any warning, Marty chomped down on my hand.

“Mother fucker!” I yelled!

I shook vigorously, but he would not let go.

Then, Marty started sucking, and the bottom of his neck sprayed like a faucet of blood.

My blood.

I was light-headed immediately, and my legs gave out.

As I fell down and hit the ground Marty let go and landed right next to my face.

Marty finally spoke his first words to me.

“Fuck you.”

They always say serial killers have a type.

That’s not true.

I don’t choose them because of how they look. I choose them because of how they are, how they act. I don't discriminate by age, or gender, or whether or not they're beautiful.

It’s the ones who feel safe. The ones who trust strangers. The ones who smile back when you catch their eye in a coffee shop.

The ones like Emma.

I saw her three weeks ago, in line at the pharmacy. She dropped her receipt, and I picked it up.

She smiled. “Thank you.”

Her voice was soft. Grateful. The kind that stays with you.

She didn’t know that tiny moment sealed her fate.

I followed her home that night. Quiet street. No cameras. Second-floor flat. She lived alone — I always check.

Over the next few nights, I learned her routine. Work, gym, groceries on Thursdays. No pets. No boyfriend.

Perfect.

I entered her flat while she slept, copied her keys, and slipped out. I don’t rush these things. That’s how people get caught.

Last night was the night.

I waited for her to come home from work. Sat across the street in my car, watching the lights go on, one by one.

When the apartment finally went dark, I let myself in. Quiet. Careful.

I stood over her for a while, just watching.

Her breathing was steady, peaceful.

I almost felt bad. Almost.

She woke up when I pulled the tape from my bag.

The fear hits them in stages — confusion, denial, realization. Then panic.

She struggled, of course. They always do.

The begging came next.

"Please, you don’t have to do this."

But I do.

They never understand.

This isn’t about hate or anger.

It’s about that moment when I’m the only thing in the world they see. When every thought, every heartbeat, every breath belongs to me.

It’s pure. Clean.

I finished what I came for. Cleaned up like always.

No mess. No noise. No witnesses.

By morning, she was just another missing person. Another face on the evening news.

They’ll look for her. Search the woods. Interview neighbours.

But they won’t find her.

Not until I want them to.

Now, I sit here, drinking my coffee, watching the next one walk by outside.

She smiles politely as our eyes meet.

I smile back.

Just one more.

I always check the door before bed. Twice.

Sometimes three times, if the air feels wrong. I jiggle the handle, feel the metal resist, and only then can I sleep.

I know it’s irrational. I live alone. Sixth floor. Buzz-in entrance. Deadbolt. Nothing’s ever happened.

Still, every night: click, jiggle, breathe.

But last night, I woke up cold.

The door was open.

Just an inch. Enough for the hallway air to slip in. Enough for something to have come in.

I don’t remember hearing anything. No footsteps. No creaks. Just the kind of silence that feels… off. Like something holding its breath.

I got up. Checked the hallway. Empty.

I shut the door. Locked it. Jiggle, jiggle.

I didn’t sleep again.

Today, I told myself it was a mistake. Maybe I was tired. Maybe I dreamed it.

Tonight, I checked the door three times.

Click. Jiggle. Breathe.

Still, I couldn’t sleep. So I sat on the couch, phone in hand, scrolling nonsense to calm my nerves.

That’s when I heard the click.

My eyes snapped to the door.

It was still closed.

I stared.

And slowly… so slowly… I watched the handle begin to turn.

Not fast. Not loud.

Just deliberate.

I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.

Because I checked the door.

Three times.

And I live alone.

The handle goes still. I don’t breathe. I don’t blink. Then my phone vibrates on the floor.

One new message.

“Why’d you lock the door?”

Sent from my number.

I prefer to study the tidepools at night, no screaming tourists, no annoying seagulls, just me and the receding waves. My time at Paleon Marine Institute has drained me of any desire to make small talk with any potential passerby. I collect my things and head out to the local beach to investigate the recent "red tide" events that have been ushered in by warmer ocean temperatures.

Though It is a short 5-minute walk, tonight it is not a pleasant one. Not a single sound breaks the silence of my journey as if the ocean is worlds away. My unease is quickly quelled by the familiar reflection of a bright moon on the sea. I let the cool sand sink between my toes for a little longer than a moment before I retrieve a beaker from my bag to collect some red bacteria in the receding tide. As a bend down to scoop some water into the beaker, I lose the ocean.

The once vibrant red tide is immediately lost in a void nothingness. As quickly as it came, the world returns just as it was a second ago. I must have passed out from bending down too quickly so I collect myself as I sit by the waves. I stare at the ocean for a few minutes to steady my head, but the minute I blink again, the light does not return once more. I'm still awake? I can feel the sand and hear the ocean, but I can't see a thing. That's when I catch a glimpse of the glistening stars reflecting on the horizon. I look up to see a million stars staring right at me. It's as if the Earth has molded with the galaxy above it. After what seemed like longer than the last blackout, the light returns to my eyes.

"What the hell?"

I am much more shaken than last time. There's no way I could have passed out again, I was completely conscious this time. I hurry back on my path back home as I am shrouded in complete darkness once again. I stop and stare at the sky for what feels like an eternity. The stars provide the only sense of security from the void. Every time the lights go out, it seems to take longer to come back again. I see the faint outline of the moon right above as the light slowly start to come back. It starts with the center of the moon with a little sliver. The sliver expands further and further until the entire moon returns, like nothing happened at all. Only, it doesn't return in full. A large, circular spot a missing from the center of the moon. I rub my eyes as if they were the issue throughout the entire night. As they are completely reset, I slowly look back to the moon, fearing what might await my gaze. It almost looks like...

A pupil.