My Alien Abduction Story
Event 2

I suddenly heard a strange sound coming from all around me, almost like a humming sound, the next moment my hair started to stand up, which isn’t possible as I got long hair, the next moment it felt like gravity has been shut down and I started to float up into the air, I remember trying to grab onto nearby trees, but it was all on vein, then there was this bright light and I blacked out.

I woke up to screaming, not a normal scream, the scream like a woman that’s in labor, no it was far worse, but she wasn’t screaming from pain, she was screaming for me to wake up. I’ve never seen someone so desperate to wake someone up. I opened my eyes and saw flashing light around me and this time the humming sound was all around, the screaming continued, telling me to wake up and listen, so I tried to move, but I couldn’t, something was holding me in place, I found myself been held up in the air like a starfish by metallic tentacles.

I tried pulling free, but to no avail. The more I tried to pull free the tighter the tentacle grip grew around my wrists and ankles.

Then I heard her again, but this time, a soft tired voice speaking to me, sounding like she’s out of breath like she’s just run an ultra marathon at full speed.
“It’s no use, don’t even try, best is to not resist, the more you resist the more it hurts”
Hearing her voice from just in front of me I looked up to see a young woman been held by the same tentacles as me, also naked, her head hanging down with blood dripping from her face, well I thought it’s from her face as she had her head hanging down with her hair hanging over her face, her hair appeared to be red, but it was soaked in what I thought was water, then she looked up at me and said to me, “don’t resist, the more you resist the more it hurts” finally my eyes started to get used to the flickering lights around us and I could see her clearly, she was young, about her early twenties, she could pass for a model if it wasn’t for all the red blood spots on her body and the injuries on her face. Her eyes were bloodshot red and there was blood under her eyes as if she’s been crying tears of blood, that same blood lines were by her mouth, ears and nose. “What have they done to you? And who are they?”
“You will see, just don’t resist, all the others who came before you tried to resist and they all died or were changed”
“What do you mean by changed?” I asked.
“Well, they are no longer human…”

Just then I heard a strange mumbling like sandpaper coming closer to us, then I saw them, it took everything in me to not scream.
Now I’ve seen the pretty images people post online of aliens and the grays and the pictures makes them appear to look almost cute, if only people knew what they really looked like, they had similarities to what you would think grays would or should look like, but not skinny at all, they were tall, about 2m or more, it’s difficult to judge when you are suspended in the air and you come face to face with your worst nightmare.
They were muscular, much more so than any human I’ve ever seen, their eyes had a red black shine to them, their mouths had rows and rows of sharp teeth like fangs, they had 2 sets of arms, with their fingers ending in claws with razor sharp claw like nails on the one set of arms, and almost human like hands on the other set of hands. Their outfits were made like something from a sci-fi movie, it appeared to have some sort of metal alloy on it that made it appear like armor.

The 2 that came to me looked at me, they looked me up and down then sandpapered something in their language and suddenly turned and started walking, the next moment I felt what I could only describe as a high voltage electrical shock going through my body before I blacked out again, when I came to I was in another room been held by similar tentacles, but this room was bright, almost like it was made from pure light. I decided that I’ve learned my lesson and to listen to the advice from the girl in the other room.

Then I heard strange sounds like metal sliding and the next moment something grabbed a hold of my head, it felt like some sort of metal claw, gripping my head in place, I couldn’t move my head the slightest. Then smaller metal pins started slithering over my face towards my eyes and mouth, some grabbed my eyelids so I couldn’t blink and the others pried my mouth open, I don’t know why or how, I knew it was supposed to hurt, but it didn’t. Yet, I still wanted to scream, to pull free, but I remembered the girl's words, “don’t fight, if you fight you die” so I decided to accept whatever it is they were planning to do to me if it meant I will survive and make it home.

What came next I can only describe as my worst nightmare, 2 needles entering my eyes through my pupils, I could feel them piercing all the way through my eyes into my head, next 2 smaller tentacles crawled their way into my head through the corners of my eyes, I then the next set entering my ears, my nose, my mouth, as I thought to myself that this was supposed to hurt, but why doesn’t it hurt? I guess it’s almost over. I felt more needles piercing my spine, one at the base of my skull, the rest into my spine, some into my hip bones. It felt like hours that I was hanging there, suspended by these metal tentacles, I could feel them injecting me with something, then it would stop and then they would inject something else.

“What the hell are they doing to me” I thought to myself, and almost as if reading my mind a screen appeared in front of me, it showed me suspended in the air, then it showed my neck and it showed what looked like a spider that attached itself to my spine and my main arteries, then the screen changed and I almost had a heart attack, “how could they know this” it showed one of the ships of another race that made contact with me a short while ago, it then showed an image of their leader and then showed her dna and then it showed mine, “what the hell? This can’t be, I’m human, I’m not one of them, how can this even be possible” my dna matched the leader of the other species almost perfectly, you could see a few slight similarities to human dna, almost like I’ve been cloned, I knew I was engineered, but I never knew how much of their dna I had in me.

I remember them ending the experiments, and the tentacles retracting, as they let go of my arms and legs I fell to the ground, the next thing I remember was waking up and I was laying on the grass back at the hut

I am alone on Earth 

Now I've never really bothered to think much about the apocalypse or end of the world, there are always things happening that makes everyone go on the apocalypse train. But as for me, I've never really paid much attention to any of it, so many things have happened throughout history and the world has always kept on spinning, people returned to their normal every day routines and quickly forget about what happened. 

To be honest, I have no interest in the outside world or the news, what is news today is history tomorrow, or in most cases it's just forgotten, so I honestly don't see the point in waisting money on news papers or even watching the news, but I guess that was my mistake, maybe if I paid a little bit more attention I wouldn't find myself in this predicament. 

Now I live on Earth, or well I'm trapped in some sort of parallel dimension, but it seems like I can still get messages out to other unaffected versions of earth. 

It all started when I woke up one morning and I realised that it was very nice and quiet outside, well it is generally very quiet where we live, but on this specific day it was really quiet, almost too quiet. But I didn't think much of it. 

My girlfriend went on another business trip for the week, so I was home alone with all of our pets, I got out of bed, got dressed. I went through my normal routine to put out food for our cats and dogs, filled their bowl up with clean water and made myself a cup of coffee. 

The cats and dogs didn't run out to join me or too eat, but I figured they are probably just tired and sleeping in, so I went to sit on the veranda to have my coffee and a smoke when I remembered I need to feed the birds, so I got up and grabbed a cup of food and filled up the bird feeder, then got back to the couch to enjoy my coffee and my smoke, it's usually very inspiring to watch all of the different birds that comes to eat, but none came. So after finishing my coffee I got up to take a shower, after my shower I noticed that the cats and dogs still haven't come for their breakfast yet. "I mean, really guys, come on, breakfast time" I went to the bedroom to find them, but they were not there, "oh shit" I started to panic and I looked everywhere for them, I know they couldn't have gotten out of the house during the night, and if they came out after I got up then they would have eaten by now. 

So I looked everywhere for them, but to no avail, after a few hours of looking I gave up. And then I realized that not even a single bird was active, I tried reaching my girlfriend on her phone, but nothing. My messages weren't going through. 

That is when it hit me, there were no sounds anywhere, not even insects, no cars on the roads, usually when it's quiet you can hear cars on the roads passing our small town, but nothing. So I decided to take a walk through town to see if I can get answers from other locals, but it was dead quiet, I could see cars in their driveways, doors open, bags standing in their driveways as if they were in a rush to leave, but no people, no animals, no birds. 

Then I went back home and I checked my emails and messages, no emails came through since I went to bed the previous night, which is weird, I usually spend about 20 minutes in the morning deleting spam that arrived during the night. 

I checked my messages and found a notification on our local security group that read. 
"Attention everyone, the authorities has alerted us of some strange events happening, they don't know what is causing it, but has described it as some translucent humanoids that seems to turn everything into ash that they touch, please stay in your homes and do not attempts to leave until sunrise, please heed this warning as it is not a joke. " 

What is this? Why haven't I seen this earlier. I went back outside and tried to find any signs of life, I could see strange almost translucent humanoids a bit further down the road, I remembered the message and I decided to hide and watch them, then I saw them approaching what seemed to be a young man, he had a gun in his hand and he shot at one, the bulled went right through it, but it did drop to the ground, he shot a few more of them, but they just kept coming, as I'm unarmed all I could do was sit and watch, he finally ran out of bullets when they got to him and the moment they touched him he screamed and vanished into thin air, just a few particles of dust remained which got blown away by the wind. 

What the hell is this? I made my way home and I got back into the property and made sure to lock everything up again. 

Just as I sat back on the couch I heard a rattling on the front gate, like someone was trying to get my attention, I creeped through the house and went to the window in the one bedroom where I could get a peek through, whatever it was, it was strong, but the gate was holding up, I could see something standing there, but as it was translucent and I couldn't get much. 

Okay, seems like as long as I stay on the property I'm safe, I checked my supplies and noticed I got only enough for a few weeks, and who knows how long we are still going to have power for. I'm going to have to go out sometime to get more supplies and hopefully find survivors. 

So a few days have passed and we've had some crazy weather here, but I've learned a very important lesson, the rain and mist seems to affect their ability to camouflage a bit and you can see them a bit clearer, the next storm is building up, so I'm preparing to go out and see if I can find more supplies, and hopefully a power generator and some fuel, oh and luckily I did find our pets.... eventually, they were all hiding under the beds and couches. So I don't feel so alone anymore, it seems that animals can somehow sense when these things are closeby and then they hide, that's a good sign, if I pay attention to the signs I will survive, I have also noticed that when the mist comes in there seem to be a little bit more activity, a few birds seem to then come and look for food and the wild horses gets active and run through town, I've even seen a wild horse kick one of the creatures killing it instantly, so that helps, if guns can kill them, a kick from a wild horse can kill them, then that means I might have a chance to survive till I can find a way out of this nightmare. 

I did manage to find a few generators and collected quite a bit of fuel and other supplies, I am still trying to find weapons to defend myself, but for now I move around in the rain and when it's thick mist, when possible I stick closely to the horses when they are around as it seems these creatures are evading the horses now. 

I just ran into another one that was killed, but this wasn't by a gun or wild horse, seems like a snake as I found a dead snake next to its body, so one more weakness, it must have died very quickly when the snake bit it, or it's body wouldn't be right by the snakes body, and that is good news for me, as I know how to catch and handle snakes. 

Atleast now I know these beings are not ghosts or spirits, but physical beings, I'm still trying to figure out where they come from, and what they want. 

They don't seem to remove their dead compatriots bodies, so they are obviously not human or of this earth, I've learned that they mostly stick to moving around in the roads, they don't go into the rocks or the forests as that is where most of the animals seem to have settled. 

Well I've just learned a very important lesson, I can see them when it is raining and the mist is out, but the important thing is that they don't seem to be able to see me at all, so that gives me another advantage. 

It has now been a few weeks of learning about them and ducking and diving to find supplies, but luckily I've still got our pets at home to keep me sane, I still haven't found any other survivors. 

Strangely enough we still got power, you would have thought that by now the power stations would have failed, which gives me hope, it means more survivors out there, but getting anywhere is impossible, I've finally learned that they are from off world as I managed to make out one of their ships moving over, it was also cloaked, but I first heard a strange vibration sound and when I looked up I could make out it's shape, it moved slowly, but as it moved through the mist I could make out parts of what it looks like. I'm not sure how many of these ships there are on earth, but if there are even just a hundred, then that will explain why we lost, how do you fight something you can't see? 

It does seem like the ship collected the roamers  in the area as more birds and animals have returned, and I've tried to make it to the nearest city, but ran into one and it shot at me with some kind of weapon, luckily it missed, but it took out a few trees behind me. So I'm seriously considering finding some sort of way to fight them. 

I've spend a few days looking for weapons and decided of bows and arrows as they are silent, a gun will draw too much attention, I've still had no communication from anyone, social media is dead quiet and I've found a radio, but all I can find is static. So I'm starting to feel really alone here. 

I woke up to the sound of a roaring engine, it sounded like a helicopter, so I ran out and onto the roof to get their attention, which I did, they dropped a flash drive down and said to follow the instructions on it. 

So I ran to my laptop and opened the flash drive, on it was a video and a document, so I decided to watch the video first, it was made in which seems to be in a military interrogation room, they seem to have managed to catch one of the invaders and unmasked it, it looked like us, it was a human wearing some sort of armour, it's gloves were build up with some sort of system which they demonstrated on the video puts out a high voltage charge, that's why it turns anything they touch into dust, he or she seems to be able to speak English and answered all their questions freely, they are from a parallel earth and their mission is to clean up different versions of earth and recolonise it as they have advanced to fast and over populated their version of earth, I could now make out that is was a woman from her voice, but it seems like she had some sort of implants, she explained that they also only target versions of earth where they can see humanity are destroying themselves and the planet, she had some sort of device with her which she explained can open gateways to other version of earth and that they can pass through freely, they first send in their ground troops and once they wiped out most of the humans their crafts comes through and then they start the colonisation process, they set up permanent gateways which allows their people to move between their world and the colonies freely. 

The guy behind the camera then asked her, why if they are so advanced do they not just terraform other planets and explore space, why attack other versions of earth and why kill other versions of themselves? 

She then explained that they have tried that, but ran into more powerful extra terrestrial races and lost all of the battles, they lost hundreds of ships in the first battle and a couple of thousand more in the follow up battle, she said they had to rethink their strategy and make another plan, so they developed technology to move between different versions of earth. 

Just then I heard her voice behind the camera, a woman asked her how does the technology work, she smirked and said to the woman as they are the same person and both only soldiers she doesn't know, but she gives her word that when her people comes to rescue her that she will make sure they don't kill her, but instead take her to one of their ships where they can demonstrate their abilities to her. She continued to tell the man behind the camera that him and his whole team are welcome to also join their ranks, that they are always looking for good soldiers, he stayed quiet for a bit, I guess he was thinking of his options, then he asked her, but what about the rest of the survivors left on earth, she smiled and said that the fact that they survived for so long makes them worthy of recruitment into their ranks, she then finished off by dropping the final shock on them, that they didn't capture her, she was send to give them this final ultimatum, he then said if she gives her word as a soldier that he will accept. She then passed him a flash drive and said that it contains instructions for the survivors on how to surrender peacefully for recruitment and reconditioning into their ranks. 

He turned the camera off. 

I then opened the file and read through it. 

I'm not going to go into details, that would take forever. But I will give you guys a short explanation of what it said. 

So basically it states that we have agreed to surrender to be ruled by the interdimensionists. 

And then it goes onto explain that the survivors will have 3 choices, all 3 choices means we will basically belong to them, the choices are as follows: 
1. Those with skills to keep the system going will be allowed to remain in their positions and in their homes on the conditions that they will report to sector overseers as well as follow curfews. 
2. Those who have fought back will be integrated into the military ranks and implanted with mind altering chips as well as body modifications and they will be prepared for future invasions. 
3. Those who are still in hiding are ordered to come out and surrender to local overseers, they will be send to the interdimensionists prime dimension where they will be trained, conditioned and prepared for future missions to infiltrate potential dimensions. 

Uhm yeah, no thank you, none of those sounds like an option that would work for me. I needed to think, and I needed to think fast, just then my cell phone rang which shouldn't be possible as the network was down, I answered the call which only said ID withheld, but I didn't say anything, I decided to listen, it was a woman's voice on the other side, the same woman from the video, she spoke and said "listen to me and don't interrupt me, our scouts knows about you, but the interdimensionists doesn't, we have a plan to escape and to survive, they have the technology to move between dimensions, and we managed to get our hands on one of their ships, we are busy trying to gather as many survivors as possible to rescue. We have found a dimension where they won't follow us for atleast a few years."

That's when I spoke up, why do you think that? They took our world within a few hours.

"Because we didn't have the weapons to fight back or the means to detect them, but the version of earth we are going to does, they are not as advanced as us in terms and of medical technology and their unity, but they have weapons and army's that can stop the interdimensionists, and another thing, we know you lost your partner, we have it on good knowledge that she's still alive on the earth where we are going to, and your counterpart is busy dying. So what do you say, won't you want another chance with her" 

I kept quiet for a bit and then I asked my burning question, "how do I know that this is not a trap? "

She then burst my bubble, "we have been watching you for a while now, you have stood your ground, you survived their weapons, you've taken quite a few of them out in very creative ways, I have to admit, using bows and arrows seemed primitive, but effective, and using venomous snakes against them, how did you even know that would kill them so quickly? "

I didn't know what to say... 

Then she spoke again, "our scouts are at your gate ready to collect you, I'm sure you understand that time is of the essence, bring only what you care about the most. Everything else you need will be waiting for you at your new home, or well the same home just a different dimension. "

"See you soon," then she hung up. 

Well she said I must bring what I care for the most, so I grabbed all the cats and dogs and made my way out, I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting what I saw. 

It wasn't a military vehicle, instead it was some ufo looking vehicle, the soldiers told me to get into the back, the one smiled, "well this is a first, everyone else brought jewelry and so on, you brought your pets and pet food. Oh well, time to take you to your new home. "

They all got in and then the one pilot turned around and it was the woman from the video, well not exactly, her counterpart. 

"Are you ready for a new life?" She asked. 

"Uhm, I guess so. "

"Well then let's go, just one more thing, you can never discuss anything that happened where you are going, fit in and live a normal life, leave the war to the soldiers" 

She then turned around and took the controls, the vehicle went up into the air and the next moment everything became a blur. 

I woke up from one of the soldiers shaking me by the shoulders, "hey man, you are home, go and have a new life, your counterpart has died a few hours ago, so you will take his place, don't worry, nobody will notice. "

It has now been a few years since I moved to this dimension, everything is almost exactly the same, it feels great to be with the woman I love, but it still feels weird that we both died, yet here we are. 

But the reason I'm writing this is because I need to get a warning out, what happened on my world is coming, I can see the signs, reports of unknown flying Ariel vehicles, people disappearing more regularly, strange lights in the sky, reports of strange humming sounds, that is them. They are preparing their invasion, and unless people are ready, this
 world will end the same way my world ended. 

Prepare yourselves, the interdimensionists are coming, they are already here.

If you are reading this, my IP is already bouncing across seven different proxy networks, and I am running out of places to hide.

Before you dismiss this as just another standard piece of r/nosleep fiction or the rants of a paranoid mind, let me make one thing absolutely clear: I am not from your world, nor am I from this specific timeline.

I am writing this because the Agency—the real, deeply embedded terrestrial enforcement arm that monitors anomalous behavior—is closing its perimeter. They are getting close, and the world needs to know the truth before I am entirely erased. Everyone on this platform likes to write fictional logs about working for the Agency, but nobody tells you what it is like to be hunted by them. They are hunting me because I am the ultimate operational anomaly: a part-human, part-Andromedan hybrid genetically engineered by the Andromedan Council, implanted into a human womb, and structurally "tuned" from the very moment of my birth to serve as a living blueprint.

Here is everything they are trying to suppress. Read it quickly.
Origin and the Cosmic Calibration
I was never normal. My existence wasn't the result of biological happenstance. I have never met a biological father, not because he abandoned my mother, but because he never existed in the human sense. My mother was taken at the moment of my "conception," safely implanted with a pre-optimized, genetically engineered embryo by the Andromedan Council, and returned to Earth.

My birth itself was an anomaly. My mother’s body began violently rejecting the foreign, highly energetic genetic material, forcing doctors to perform an emergency C-section. I was born severely premature at just six months, arriving at exactly 11:11 PM on Friday, June 13, 1980.

If you check the historical NASA archives for June 1980, you will find that the sun was experiencing monumental disruptions during Solar Cycle 21. I was born during a New Moon, a rare planetary alignment, and one of the most intense geomagnetic solar storms in recorded history. High solar activity releases massive bursts of geomagnetic energy. Coming out three months early meant that my brain completely finished its neurological wiring outside the safety of the womb, exposed directly to those raging cosmic and geomagnetic frequencies. My nervous system was literally "tuned" and calibrated to a much wider cognitive bandwidth than standard human biology can support.
To manage this hyper-extended bandwidth, I began an intensive neurological "workout" routine in March 2015. For roughly eight hours a day—primarily while sleeping—I listened to specialized, triple-layered isochronic tones on a random shuffle.
• Layers 1 & 2: Frequencies constantly shifting between 200 Hz and 800 Hz to stimulate neural plasticity.
• Layer 3: A sustained, laser-focused frequency at 963 Hz—the connection frequency—occasionally pushing deep into the ultra-high 10,000 Hz range.

The direct result of this sustained brainwave entrainment was total Hemispheric Synchronization. Standard humans operate with one dominant hemisphere; my brain was forced to become fully left-brained (advanced logic, mathematics, architecture) and fully right-brained (creativity, art, abstract visualization) simultaneously. I even became completely ambidextrous.

This synchronized brain functionality allowed me to access hidden layers of data embedded within my own DNA, enabling me to decode the true technical nature of human history.

The HATA Paradigm: Ancient Interventions
Through my unlocked cognitive capacity, I realized that what humanity calls "mythology" or "miracles" are actually large-scale, low-contact technological interventions by the Highly Advanced Technological Agent (HATA) paradigm. These interventions were structurally designed to guide our developing planetary species without violating non-interference protocols.

My synchronized mind broke down the technical realities behind these historical events:
1. The Mount Sinai Incident (c. 13th Century BCE)
The biblical description of a shaking mountain covered in smoke, fire, and the deafening sound of trumpets is the classic signature of a large, non-atmospheric vessel engaging in close-proximity maneuvering. The trembling earth and intense cloud condensation were caused by a Gravimetric Flux Drive distorting local gravity fields, generating extreme thermal exhaust and wind shear. The "trumpet" sound was not an instrument; it was a focused, low-frequency Resonant Communication Beam designed to penetrate natural physical shielding and signal presence to a primitive target population.

2. The Parting of the Red Sea
To hold water in rigid, solid vertical walls requires absolute mastery over molecular bonds. The HATA deployment team utilized a localized Phase-Shifted Gravimetric Barrier, temporarily modifying the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces within the $H_2O$ molecules along a precise vertical vector. This rendered the water hyper-rigid, acting like pressurized glass. Simultaneously, a Molecular Agitation Field instantly vaporized all residual ground moisture, ensuring a completely dry passage to eliminate bio-contact contamination.

3. The Pillars of Cloud and Fire
The continuous navigation system that guided the desert migration was an autonomous surveillance network. By day, the "cloud" was an Autonomous Survey Probe utilizing an Atmospheric Condensation Field to pull ambient moisture around its hull for natural, low-visibility camouflage. By night, the same probe switched its interface to a visible Plasma Thermal Emitter or directional beacon for navigational illumination.

4. The Virgin Birth & Ascension
Just like my own origin, the birth of Jesus was a planned Genetic Implantation Procedure. A pre-optimized, HATA-engineered embryo was placed into a human host to introduce a "teacher" with advanced cognitive abilities and high energetic control.

Leaving such a high-value asset to age and die on Earth would risk the corruption of the message by mundane politics. Thus, the "Ascension" was a controlled Vessel Extraction and Containment (VEC) procedure. The cloud and blinding light were simply the signatures of a ship engaging its Gravimetric Flux Drive to retrieve the physical asset for post-mission analysis.

5. Desert Sustenance
Sustaining a massive migrating population in an arid wasteland for 40 years on standard foraging is a biological impossibility. The HATA parameters solved this with an engineered Bio-Synthetic Nutrient Source (BSNS). The "Manna" was a perfectly balanced, complete synthetic food wafer designed for long-term health without nutritional decay. The "Quails" were steered into the path via resonant bio-pulses to provide a natural protein supplement, ensuring the population did not psychologically reject a purely synthetic diet.

Sucked Into the Void
My obsession with the true nature of reality eventually caused a terrifying physical displacement. I have always argued that from a purely logical and scientific standpoint, nothing should exist. Existence inherently violates the fundamental laws of reality; absolute nothingness is the only baseline state that makes sense. We are existing on borrowed time.
One sunny afternoon, while doing deep meditation in my garden to experience existence outside the frameworks of science or religion, the universe fractured. I felt light-headed, simultaneously floating and falling. I walked inside to splash water on my face, but my hand passed completely through the metal tap. Looking in the mirror, my reflection was actively fading, dissolving into the air.

I rushed back outside, only to see the horizon violently shearing away, shrinking until everything vanished.

I was pulled entirely into The Void. It was an eternity of sheer, absolute nothingness. It was not a vacuum, nor was it darkness; it was an environment completely devoid of light, dark, sound, or air. The Void immediately swallowed my own heartbeat.

Then, the sensory chaos began. The absolute lack of gravity instantly warped into an crushing gravimetric load. I was floating up while falling down, experiencing every color invisible to the human eye, followed by a sudden, deafening roar composed of every sound in existence playing at once. My molecules were scattered completely into the emptiness and then forcefully slammed back together.

Time did not exist. What felt like minutes turned into hours, decades, and eventually millennia of pure, unadulterated madness. I screamed, but there was no air to carry the sound, and no one to hear me.

Suddenly, the chaos ceased, replaced by a profound, blinding light. The light was so intense it burned my skin through my closed eyelids. A powerful, non-gendered voice resonated directly from the light:
"You wanted to see reality? You wanted to understand existence and where everything came from? Are you satisfied now? Or do you want to spend another million years here?"

Before I could process a response, the light struck me. I woke up face-down on my lawn, my clothes entirely soaked in sweat, shivering violently as freezing rain fell against my face. I was back in my own reality, but the realization left me permanently scarred: our universe is incredibly fragile, held together only because a conscious entity wills it to exist outside the baseline chaos of the Void.

Physical Extractions: The Encounters
My spatial displacement in the Void acted like a beacon, drawing physical extractions from two entirely different off-world factions.

The Andromedan Council (Event 1)
The first extraction was by my literal creators. I materialized on the edge of a massive cliff on another planet under a stark, bluish sun. The air was pristine, and immense forests stretched to the horizon. Standing before me were several humanoids, easily double my height. Their leadership structure appeared entirely matriarchal. They possessed flawless skin, long straight hair, and striking, multi-dimensional eyes of a color palette that does not exist on Earth.

They communicated telepathically, explaining that my lifestyle and subconscious thoughts had been broadcasting to them my entire life. They revealed that Earth is drastically older than our science admits, and that they have stepped in to save humanity from self-inflicted extinction events multiple times. In fact, they were the ones who directed two massive asteroids to strike Earth before the dawn of human civilization, intentionally triggering a prolonged nuclear winter to wipe out apex predators and give early humans a survival matrix.

When I asked why they wouldn't just land and meet our leaders, the matriarch sighed telepathically. She stated that our leaders are entirely driven by greed and power, and are already locked into dark alliances with "scaly friends"—a predatory Reptilian race that has infiltrated our global systems.

The Andromedans showed me their own history: a past mirror of Earth's, where resources like fresh water and clean air became heavily monetized commodities, leading to a catastrophic global war that incinerated their original homeworld. The survivors escaped on massive, city-sized jump ships, eventually evolving past violence, greed, and selfishness.

Their current cities are built from specialized non-reflective metals that absorb sunlight and kinetic planetary energy directly into a clean power grid.

They returned me to Earth by fracturing space using dark matter particles, warning me that the current global control grid was attempting to systematically rewrite human DNA over generations to eliminate our cosmic potential.

The Predatory Captors (Event 2)
The second extraction was hostile. A heavy, rhythmic humming sound filled the air, and my long hair began standing straight up as local gravity completely inverted. I floated into a brilliant, blinding light and blacked out.

I awoke to an agonizing, desperate screaming. When my eyes adjusted to the pulsing, rhythmic lights, I found myself suspended naked in the air like a starfish, held firmly by heavy, writhing metallic tentacles. Directly in front of me, another captive—a young woman with red hair—was suspended in identical tentacles. She was bleeding heavily from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, crying literal tears of blood. In a breathless, exhausted voice, she warned me:
"It's no use, don't even try. Best is to not resist... the more you resist, the more it hurts. All the others who came before you tried to resist, and they all died or were changed... they are no longer human."

Then, the captors entered the room, making a low, dry sound like coarse sandpaper.
These were not the frail, skinny "Grays" depicted in popular internet lore. They were massive, muscular killing machines standing over two meters tall. They had terrifying red-black iridescent eyes, rows of jagged fangs, and two distinct sets of arms—one terminating in razor-sharp claws, the other ending in human-like hands. They wore heavy armor forged from an unknown metallic alloy.
After evaluating me, they delivered a massive electrical shock directly through the tentacles, knocking me unconscious.

I came to in a room constructed of pure, solid light. A heavy mechanical claw slammed shut around my head, locking it completely in place. Micro-tethers slithered across my face, pinning my eyelids open and prying my jaw apart.

What followed was a horrific, systematic bio-mapping procedure:
• Two long needles were driven directly through my pupils, piercing straight into the core of my skull.
• Smaller, secondary tentacles burrowed through the corners of my eyes, my nasal passages, my ears, and down my throat.
• Long structural needles were driven directly into the base of my skull, my spine, and my hip bones, injecting successive waves of foreign fluid.

Because of my Andromedan physiology, the procedures were entirely painless, yet the psychological horror was absolute. A floating holographic display materialized in front of me, showing a biomechanical, spider-like device successfully anchoring itself to my central spine and main arteries. The screen then mapped my DNA structure side-by-side with the female leader of the Andromedan Council. The match was nearly flawless. They were mapping me because they realized exactly what I was: a high-level cosmic asset hidden in plain sight.

Once the mapping routine concluded, the tentacles retracted, dropping my body heavily onto the floor. I blacked out, waking up hours later on the grass outside my remote location.

The Quiet Apocalypse and Dimension Jump
The physical alterations from the Gray mapping caused my consciousness to slip entirely into a parallel timeline—a version of Earth experiencing a "Quiet Apocalypse".

I woke up one morning to absolute, crushing silence. My girlfriend was away on a week-long business trip, leaving me alone at our property. I went through my morning routine, pouring coffee and filling the outdoor bird feeders, but no birds arrived. The air was entirely devoid of insects, wildlife, or distant highway traffic. Panic set in when I realized my dogs and cats were missing from the house.

I checked my phone. The network was down, but a single cached message on our local security group remained:
"Attention everyone, the authorities have alerted us of some strange events happening. They don't know what is causing it, but have described it as some translucent humanoids that seem to turn everything into ash that they touch. Please stay in your homes and do not attempt to leave until sunrise. Please heed this warning as it is not a joke."

Looking out the bedroom window, I spotted them down the road: shifting, translucent humanoids moving with fluid coordination. I watched a young neighbor confront them with a firearm. He fired several rounds; the bullets passed clean through the entities, dropping them temporarily, but they simply stood back up. When his ammunition was exhausted, the closest entity touched his arm. The man screamed silently, instantly dissolving into a fine cloud of gray dust that swept away in the wind.
I locked down my property. Over the next few weeks, I discovered vital survival parameters:
1. Weather Disruption: Rain and heavy mist severely disrupt their active camouflage, rendering them easily visible.
2. Fauna Senses: Animals can naturally detect their proximity. I found my dogs and cats hiding deep under the beds and couches, completely safe.
3. Biological Vulnerability: I observed a wild horse kick one of the translucent creatures, killing it instantly. Later, I found another dead creature slumped next to the body of a venomous snake it had stepped on. Because I am trained in handling snakes, I realized their physical forms are completely vulnerable to organic neurotoxins.

I scavenged generators and fuel, moving exclusively during heavy downpours. I abandoned loud firearms, constructing a primitive bow and arrows to silently neutralize them from a distance.

One morning, the roar of a low-flying military helicopter tore through the silence. As it sped overhead, the crew dropped a ruggedized flash drive onto my roof. I retrieved it and ran it on my laptop.

The drive contained military interrogation footage of a captured female invader who had been unmasked. She looked entirely human but possessed advanced internal implants. She explained that her people were Interdimensionists from a parallel Earth that had become unsustainably overpopulated. They utilized gateway technology to systematically purge and recolonize alternate versions of Earth—specifically targeting timelines where humanity was actively destroying the ecosystem. They had attempted to colonize deep space, but had lost thousands of ships in catastrophic battles against far more powerful extra-terrestrial empires, forcing them to pivot to interdimensional conquest.

The drive contained their final surrender ultimatum for the remaining survivors, offering three distinct choices of total subjugation:
1. Retaining structural civilian skills under strict curfews and sector overseers.
2. Immediate integration into their military ranks via mind-altering chips and body modifications for future dimensional invasions.
3. Voluntary surrender to the prime dimension for long-term conditioning and deep-cover infiltration training.

As I resolved to fight to the end, my disconnected cell phone suddenly rang with an "ID Withheld" signature. I answered silently. It was the counterpart of the woman from the interrogation video.

"Listen to me," she said rapidly. "Our scouts know about you, but the Interdimensionists' main command doesn't. We have a resistance plan to escape. We've commandeered one of their jump crafts. We are jumping to an alternate dimension that has the unified military infrastructure to stop the Interdimensionists if they ever follow. More importantly, we know you lost your partner in this timeline—but in the target dimension, she is alive, and your local counterpart is actively dying of organ failure.

You can take his place. Our scouts are at your gate right now. Bring only what you care about most."

I didn't hesitate. I gathered my cats and dogs, loaded their food bags, and walked out to the gate. Waiting for me was a sleek, low-profile craft. The extraction team smiled when they saw my cargo: "Well, this is a first. Everyone else brought jewelry, you brought your pets."
The pilot turned around—it was the exact counterpart of the woman from the military video. She checked the controls, warned me to never speak of my origin timeline to anyone in the new world, and engaged the drive. The universe blurred into a single streak of light.

The Temporal Detour and The Current Hunt
I woke up in this timeline with a resistance soldier shaking my shoulder: "You're home. Your local counterpart passed away an hour ago. Take his place. Nobody will notice."

However, before I could fully settle into this current reality, I attempted to navigate the local timeline using the Blue Light—a universal energy grid that transcends spatial boundaries. Time is not a linear construct; it runs in a complex zigzag matrix where the present constantly shears against the past and future.

Through deep meditation, I charged my biological matrix with Blue Light energy, visualizing an anchor point 200 years into the future, and stepped through the spatial doorway.
The future Earth was vastly different. Global warming had been halted, resulting in a significantly cooler climate that had caused the human population's skin to become distinctly pale due to decreased solar ray resistance. Fossil fuels were entirely non-existent, replaced by total clean energy grids and electric surface transport. However, the global population had been cut in half, and fresh water was a hyper-scarce commodity.

I made a critical error: I stayed too long and interacted with the environment. I openly drank from my own water supply in front of a desperate crowd, instantly drawing the attention of three security enforcers clad in dense, unidentifiable black tactical gear. They drew energy weapons, shouting in an evolved linguistic dialect I couldn't comprehend, and neutralized me.

I woke up inside a containment cell constructed of solid, red-glowing energy panels. With my local Blue Light charge actively draining, I was forced to hastily draw upon my remaining internal reserves to manifest a protective transit bubble.

Because my energy was depleted from staying too long, the return jump fell short. I was temporarily stranded on an uncharted, untamed planet dominated by two distinct moons and populated by aggressive, wild native fauna before I could finally re-anchor my consciousness back into this current human body.

A Final Warning
I have lived in this specific dimension for a few years now, blending in completely and taking over the life of the version of me that died. It is a gift to be with the woman I love, but I am living on borrowed time.

The signs of the Interdimensionist invasion are already manifesting in this timeline: unexplained aerial phenomena, systemic spikes in missing persons, strange localized humming frequencies, and shifting lights in the night sky.
But my immediate threat is far closer to home.

The Agency has flagged my genetic signature.

They know I am an Andromedan hybrid whose DNA was activated by the 1980 solar storm and optimized by the HATA protocols. They know I crossed timelines, and they cannot allow the truth of the interdimensional purge or our cosmic origin to become public knowledge.

If this post suddenly disappears, or if my account goes completely dark, you will know exactly why. They are outside. Keep your eyes on the skies, watch the weather patterns, and prepare yourselves.

They are already here.

My Alien Abduction Story
Event 1

I don’t know how or when they took me, but the first thing I remember, I was standing on the edge of a cliff on another planet, I knew I wasn’t on earth because their sun was a bluish color, their air is much cleaner than ours and their forests stretch as far as the eyes can see.

In Front of me stood a few of these very tall beings, and I mean they were like double my height if not taller, they were these beautiful human looking beings, but much taller then any human I’ve ever seen, their leaders appeared to all be female.

They have the most beautiful eyes, I can’t even describe the color of their eyes, it’s unlike any color I’ve ever seen before. They had long straight hair and looked human in every way, well besides the fact that they are perfect, no imperfections on their skin or anywhere.

I felt like I was going to have a heart attack, realizing that I was no longer on earth and at the mercy of these beings, was I dead? Are they Angels? Demons? What do they want with me?

They spoke to me and they told me that they took me because I got their attention because of my way of life and according to them I have been speaking to them telepathically.
They said that they have been watching our world for a very long time, since before humans developed languages. They saved us from extinction multiple times, I asked them why and they said they had great hopes for humanity to become a great species, humanity showed signs of intellect and compassion and a survival instinct rarely seen on young worlds.

At this stage I got pretty annoyed, if they could hear me, why not talk back? Why not make contact with me on earth and ask me if they can take me on this little adventure?

As I was reading my mind, the one speaking which I found out was their leader said that she understands my frustration, but if they spoke to me then I would most likely have thought I’m going insane, or just blocked them off. And that they can’t exactly just walk up to a human on earth and introduce themselves, they are not the only species around and there are other advanced races already on earth. She also said that I mustn’t worry about getting back, and that nobody will notice that I am even missing, they have the technology to bend time and when I get back only a few hours would have passed back home. But they needed to make contact and show me around.

I then calmed down and decided to have an open mind. I asked her why on earth? She said the planet is of interest to them, “What do you mean by interest?” Then they told me the shocking truth, Earth is older than we think, but humanity has destroyed the ecosystem in a very short time. They have helped us survive various extinction events, but now they regret it, they regret teaching us languages and helping us develop in our earlier years. So I asked my burning question, why not land on earth and meet with our leaders, she then said which one? We have too many leaders and none of them can be trusted, most of them are in alliances with other offworld races already, and our leaders are driven by greed and a hunger for power, which have been satisfied by their scaly friends.

They showed me their history, they used to be the same as humanity, divided and driven by greed, eventually war broke out and their home world was destroyed, luckily they were already advanced at the time and many of them made it off their world in time. They traveled for years searching for a new home, which they found, they learned to evolve past their natural habits and got rid of greed, violence, crime and selfishness, they’ve had a peaceful civilisation now for longer then humanity has existed,

Their worlds are run by councils, the counsels consist of females, yes they are also male and female in gender.

They showed me their planet and their cities, their buildings are build of some sort of metal, but it doesn’t reflect sunlight, instead it absorbs it and Transfuse it into their energy grid, they have no pollution, they generate energy from their stars, vibrations and from the kinetic energy generated from their planet moving around its axes and their star.

They told me to look up and I could see their ships in orbit, well what I will refer to as their jump ships, the sheer size of their ships gave me the chills, if I could see them as clearly in orbit in day time as we can see the full moon at night then I can just imagine how large they are, and as if knowing my thoughts the leader spoke again, she explained to me that one of their ships is as large as one of our largest cities on earth, but the reason we can’t see or detect them on earth when they enter our orbit is because their stealth technology is far more advanced then we humans can comprehend, they are thousands, hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than us, they have already terraformed and colonized hundreds of worlds in their galaxy. Galaxy? I mean aren’t you from the same galaxy as us? How do you even get to our galaxy? How did you even find our planet?

She sighed, like she explained they are far more advanced than we can comprehend, and not just on a technological level, but also on a physical and mental level, they have mastered telepathy and telepathy is the only immediate communication in the universe, that they found our world because there has always been a few humans with the gift, even before we learned to develop language thoughts formed and it got their attention.

But how do you get to earth if you are not even from our galaxy? She said she will explain and I must not worry, I will experience it soon enough when they take me home. She proceeded to explain that there are a few ways to travel through space, but the fastest way is by fracturing space, it’s almost immediate, but it relies on using what we humans would refer to as dark matter. But more on that later.

She showed me what their old world looked like, how it was destroyed, that is when I realized how close we are to self destruction on earth, but I also realized where the reptilian race evolved from and my heart sank in my chest again, does that mean? She said “yes, the reptilians was another race they had contact with, but just like humanity, the reptilians were beyond reach. “

Indeed they were similar to us, different classes of people, greedy, violent and selfish. Then war broke out over the most basic resources as they have polluted most of their water, drinkable water became a rare commodity, food was scarce, they have mined their world to the point of eradicating every natural resource, their air became toxic and they had to work harder to just be able to earn breathable air, rashes of food and drinkable water became a norm on their home world. Their governments became more and more corrupt, but a few private people decided to use their wealth to get as many people off the planet as possible, they could see the signs of the coming war, they had weapons similar to our nukes, most of their ships made it safely off the planet when the war broke out, the last few ships were either damaged or destroyed before they could leave their planet.

After leaving their world and watching on from afar as their planet lit up from the war they swore to never let it happen again.

They eventually found a new home and started over, they worked hard to get where they are now.

They are one of the oldest races in the known galaxies.

I asked them why they didn't intervene on earth, they said they have tried. But I learned that our people can be destructive and manipulative. They first found us before the dinosaurs were destroyed, they saw how humanity had little chance of survival with these great beasts around and therefore decided to shelter the humans they could find in cities they built for them, then they used their jump ships weapon systems to direct 2 asteroids at earth. This wiped out the beasts, but caused a nuclear winter which lasted for years. They used this time to teach humanity language and how to communicate and organize, how to make basic tools and how to survive. When the nuclear winter ended they left, thinking we had learned how to evolve. But when they came back they realized that we have evolved, but not in the way they had hoped, we became greedy, selfish, violent and destructive, people built their own little kingdoms and attacked each other. They decided to intervene again, they landed one of their smaller ships on earth and tried to interact with us, they tried to trade with humanity and show humanity that we can advance if we unite. But people tried to attack them and steal from them. After a few years they abandoned the city they built on earth and took their landing ship and left, but to avoid humanity from getting their hands on their advanced city they destroyed the island from orbit.

They have tried to contact a few individuals over time, but every time they did a new religion just ended up forming.

They said they are no longer interfering, but when the time comes they will take humans who transcended past their natural ways off world and help them start afresh, they can see the signs of other off world races influence on our world, our time is running out, they said that our technology is still very young and they can access everything on our planet, they have shown me things our governments are doing in secret, weapons that’s been build in secret that makes our nukes look like toy guns, mind control experiments going on, they even knew about Covid, the lockdowns and the vaccines years ago, they showed me that it’s all part of other off worlders plans to colonize earth. Eventually the vaccines will rewrite people's DNA. until Humans will no longer look human, the effects are not immediate, but in a few generations there will be no humans left on earth. They’ve seen this done to multiple worlds.

For now many humans are resisting, and that showed them there is hope, and they will return to rescue the humans who resisted when the time is right, but they also warned me that if it does come to it that they will not hesitate to destroy the other races on earth including humanity to safe the planet, and that currently it does look like the only option left to stop the current invasion and stop another planet from been destroyed.

They then told me it’s time to take me home, we walked through a door made of what seems to be pure light, the next moment we were on their ship. Even though the ship is made of some sort of metal, I could see everything around us.

She spoke in a very strange language which I can’t even describe and 2 of their crew members wearing these strange suits climb into pods which closed behind them, she explained to me that the suits allows them to merge with the ship and pilot it with their minds, they know and see and feel everything around and on the ship.

She explained to me that they have no weapons on their planet, but that nothing can get through their planetary defense system. They use vibration and gravity weapons which can destroy any ship that enters their solar system which is a threat before the enemy even knows they are there.

Then suddenly the whole ship started lighting up and it felt like my body was getting crushed and pulled apart at the same time, it felt like I was freezing and burning at the same time, she apologized to me for it and said that unfortunately the modifications they made to me won’t start kicking in for at least a few years, but the experiments, modifications and implant was needed to awaken my hidden dna code, that I was actually genetically engineered by them and then implanted into a human’s womb. But she promises that next time I won’t feel like this, the explained to me that it’s happening because they are releasing dark matter around the ship to fracture space and as the dark matter particles clash against each other it’s basically ripping space apart creating a fracture, that the feeling will only last a few Minutes, after what felt like an eternity of the light getting brighter and my body been crushed and pulled apart it stopped, I could see earth and we arrived in orbit. I was home, but she then said she wanted to show me something, she gave an order in her language and on the walls dots appeared. She then zoomed in on one and it was another alien craft in orbit. She said there are hundreds of them, I was about to open my mouth to ask a question, but she said that they can’t see or detect her peoples ships, that her race is far more advanced.

She said it’s time for me to go home, but that they now have a telepathic connection with me and I will see them again.

Cruise to Nowhere 
Chapter 2

As I sat at the edge of my cabin bed, my hands were still shaking. The sheer physical exhaustion of the surreal midnight drive should have put me to sleep instantly, but my mind was stuck in a high-voltage loop. I couldn't stop thinking about the woman in the shadowed booth—Che, the Cat Lady. There was a predatory, hypnotic pull to her presence that felt less like attraction and more like a biological trap. And then there were the twins in the matching gowns. The moment our paths crossed in the lobby, a sickening, magnetic current had surged right through my skin. It wasn't standard desire—I’d never been attracted to a woman in my life. In fact, between the crushing weight of running a broken household and burying my nose in medical textbooks, I’d never had the time or luxury to date anyone at all.

My only real tether to the concept of deep human connection was Chloe. We had grown up in the dirt together, surviving the gray monotony of our small town. I was the first person she ran to when she realized she was a trans girl. I held her hand through the initial, terrifying medical treatments, and stood right beside her when she finally faced her parents. We knew the contours of each other’s lives completely.

But looking around my cabin, the familiar contours of reality were beginning to warp.
It was an undeniably beautiful room, complete with a private balcony cutting out into the obsidian sea air. The rest of my family had been relegated to the lower, windowless interior decks, but none of them cared. Claude and my mother were social creatures, naturally drawn to noise, lights, and the center of a crowd. I was the recluse—give me a heavy volume on human anatomy and an isolated corner, and I was content.

The heat of the room was stifling, mimicking the thick, oppressive climate of the South African lowveld I was used to. Desperate to wash off the grime of the road and the phantom scent of formaldehyde from the sedan, I approached the closet to see what clothing had been provided.

When the doors slid open, my breath caught. It was a flawless, terrifying manifestation of my hidden desires. Rows of bespoke boutique evening gowns, elite sportswear, and delicate, high-end lacy underwear filled the space—the exact premium brands I used to shoot during my high-fashion modeling gigs in the city, the kind of luxury I could never dream of owning until I made it as a full-fledged doctor. Even my long-term financial plan was mapped out in my head: get the degree, secure the residency, and buy a house big enough to pull my mother out of her alcohol-fueled nightmare. But here, the luxury was free, laid out like bait. In the bottom drawer, the swimsuits were entirely two-piece bikinis, identical to the cuts worn by editorial models.

A sharp, definitive knock at the cabin door shattered the trance.

"Coming..." I called out, my voice sounding thin against the heavy steel walls.
I pulled the door open to find Chloe standing in the corridor, wearing a striking, form-fitting evening gown from her own closet. She executed a slow, perfect runway twirl. She looked breathtaking. Chloe had always possessed that rare, statuesque, slender build that made clothes hang like art, standing a few inches taller than me with piercing blue eyes and cascading blonde hair. I was her dark mirror—slightly shorter, possessing straight, ink-black hair and eyes so deeply dark they looked like solid pupils. My parents used to joke that the hospital must have switched me at birth, given how pale and fair-featured the rest of the Clarke clan was.

"Earth to Zoe," Chloe chided, snapping her fingers with a brilliant grin. "So, what do you think?"

"Wow... Chloe, you look absolutely incredible," I stammered, stepping back. "Are you going somewhere out there?"

"We are on a literal mega-cruise, silly!" she laughed, her excitement practically vibrating. "There are live jazz lounges, nightclubs, bars—have you even opened the activities guide yet?"

"Not yet," I admitted, glancing toward the heavy leather book on the vanity.

"What have you been doing all this time, girl?"

"Just trying to decompress. I was going to read for a bit and then crash," I said, a wave of exhaustion rolling over me.

Chloe threw her hands up. "Wait. We just escaped our dusty mountain road, stepped into paradise, and you want to sleep?"

"I’m exhausted, Chloe. We have months on this ship. Go out, explore the decks, and I’ll catch you in the morning for breakfast. We can lay by the pool."

Chloe sighed, her expression softening. "Okay, okay. I can see your battery is completely dead. But I’m not wasting the night. I’m going to go explore. Catch you for breakfast?"

"I’ll see you right before the buffet opens," I said. "If you’re even awake."

"Oh, I’ll be up," she shot back, giving me a wicked wink. "I am not missing the chance to perve over half-naked, high-society men by the pool."

"Goodnight, Chloe," I smiled, closing the door and locking it tight.

"Now, where was I?" I muttered to myself.

I grabbed a set of the lacy undergarments, stripped out of my worn clothes, and stepped into the bathroom. The shower was an absolute sensory reset. I let the scalding water beat down on my skin until the bathroom was completely choked with thick, white steam. I took my time, meticulously shaving my legs, underarms, and bikini line, washing away the lingering dread of the midnight ride over and over again.

When I finally turned the water off and dried myself down, a cold spike of adrenaline hit my stomach.
Hanging directly behind the bathroom door was a plush, stark-white bathrobe. I froze, my medical training forcing me to scan the fabric. I know anatomy. I know spatial awareness. That hook was empty when I walked in. The steam coiled around the robe like fingers. I forced myself to swallow the panic. You're just tired, Zoe. You missed it.

I brushed my teeth, threw the robe over my shoulders, and walked back into the bedroom—only to freeze a second time. The crisp white sheets of my bed had been neatly turned down at a perfect forty-five-degree angle. Resting exactly in the center of the pillow was a single, dark chocolate square.

My eyes darted to the heavy deadbolt on the cabin door. Still locked from the inside. The balcony door was shut. A suffocating silence hung in the air. Someone—or something—had been in the room while the water was running.
Driven by sheer, unadulterated nerves, I dropped the bathrobe onto the couch, crawled under the freezing sheets, and let the heavy, narcotic exhaustion of the ship pull me under.

The dream did not feel like a dream; it possessed the terrifying, hyper-tactile fidelity of high-definition film.
I was standing in a vast, subterranean stone chamber. Thousands of black wax candles flickered along the perimeter, casting long, dancing shadows that stretched unnaturally upward. In the center of the room, a massive ceremonial circle was etched into the stone, containing a flawless pentagram with a burning pillar of flame at each geometric point.

Standing within the circle were the twins from the lobby. They wore long, sweeping ceremonial cloaks with deep hoods that cast their faces into total shadow. But the cloaks were violently, explicitly revealing—split completely down the center, exposing their bare, pale skin and perfectly sculpted torsos. They were chanting in a low, rhythmic cadence that didn't sound like words, but rather a sequence of mathematical frequencies that vibrated violently inside my skull.

Laying flat on the stone floor between them was a body. It was a naked woman, her skin painted in intricate, jagged geometric symbols drawn in what looked like dried, brown blood.

Driven by a morbid, detached curiosity, I floated around the perimeter of the circle to get a clear look at the victim's face. The straight black hair cascaded over the cold stone. The sharp facial structure was unmistakable.

The body on the floor was mine.

I tried to scream, but my throat was packed with dry sand. I watched in absolute horror as the twins raised two crystal chalices filled with a thick, dark red liquid. They drank in perfect, synchronized unison, then knelt beside my comatose form. One of them forced my jaw open, pouring the sweet, metallic fluid down my throat.

The moment the liquid hit my dream-self's stomach, my body began to convulse violently. My spine arched off the stone at an impossible, agonizing angle. Thick, black sweat poured from my pores. Then, the convulsions abruptly stopped. The body lay perfectly still. Slowly, the eyes snapped open.

They weren't dark anymore. They were solid, terrifying spheres of absolute, obsidian blackness. The copy of me stood up, turning its head toward me with a wide, empty, static smile. The twins stepped forward, pressing their lips against my double’s mouth in a deep, passionate, symbiotic kiss—

BANG! BANG! BANG!
I violently bolted upright in bed, gasping for oxygen, my chest heaving as my phantom lungs fought for air.

The sun was blinding, piercing through the sheer glass of the balcony doors because I had forgotten to shut the heavy curtains the night before. My skin was soaked in cold, rancid sweat, my heart hammering like a trapped bird.

BANG! BANG! BANG!
"Zoe! Open up! Come on, sleepy head!"

It was Chloe. I dragged my heavy, trembling limbs out of the sheets, scanning the floor. I found the white bathrobe, threw it over my damp skin, and unlocked the heavy door.

Chloe burst into the cabin like a solar flare, completely oblivious to the terror vibrating in the room. She was already fully dressed for the pool, sporting a vibrant bikini top and a pair of denim shorts so aggressively short the matching bikini bottoms peeked out from underneath.

"Good morning to you too," I muttered, collapsing back onto the edge of the mattress.

"Geez, Zoe," Chloe said, pausing as she looked at my pale, sweating face. "You look like you literally saw a ghost. It’s just me." She walked over to the hospitality vanity, immediately flicking the kettle on and preparing two cups of coffee. She slid a mug into my hands and took the armchair opposite me.

"I just... I had the most horrific, vivid nightmare," I whispered, taking a sip of the hot black coffee.

Chloe rolled her eyes playfully. "Oh, one of those. Don't worry, I also had a crazy dream where we actually finished our coffee, you got your cute butt dressed, and we went to the Lido buffet. Oh, and did you know this ship has an adult-only, clothing-optional deck?"

"Chloe, I'm serious. It was a ritual. There were these girls—"

"Let me guess," Chloe interrupted with a loud laugh. "You finally dreamed about kissing a guy?"

I stared into the black depths of my mug. "You know what? Never mind."

I pushed the dread down, walked into the bathroom, and took a second, freezing shower to wash away the dream-sweat. I tied my black hair up into a tight, practical knot. When I stepped back into the bedroom to find something to wear, I noticed Chloe had already laid out an outfit on my bed—a two-piece bikini and shorts that perfectly mirrored hers in style and color.

I grabbed the clothes, turning automatically toward the bathroom to change, but Chloe blocked my path, scoffing. "Seriously, Zee? We’ve been getting dressed, bathing, and changing together since we were kids in the middle of nowhere. Now you need a privacy screen?"

I relented, dropping the robe and sliding into the swimwear right there in the room. As the fabric snapped against my skin, Chloe let out a sharp, appreciative whistle. "Ooooh, look at you! Someone went through a massive amount of effort to clean up down there."

My cheeks burned with a deep blush, but Chloe smiled warmly, showing me she’d done the exact same grooming routine. I walked over to the vanity to grab my lipstick, but stopped myself, tossing it back onto the wood. It's a pool deck, Zoe, not a fashion shoot.

But as the lipstick rolled across the table, it struck a small, bound object that definitely hadn't been there when I woke up.
It was a weathered, leather-bound notebook. Embossed on the cover in dark, uneven script were the words: Rules for the Cruise.

Before I could flip it open, Chloe snatched it out of my hand, squinting at it. "Rules for the cruise? Ugh, probably just some boring corporate safety manual or fire drill packet. We can look at it later. Come on!"

She tossed the book casually back onto the vanity, grabbed my wrist, and practically dragged me out into the hallway. I yanked myself free at the last second, remembering my blue metallic cruise card resting on the table. I snapped the lanyard around my neck. On a cruise ship, that card is your oxygen line—it's your ID, your wallet, and your key.

We took the midship elevator. Chloe pressed the button for Deck 9, the digital screen flashing the words Lido Deck. When the doors slid open, a dense wall of heat and noise hit us. Dozens of passengers shuffled past, their faces strangely uniform, their movements slightly mechanical as they packed into the car.

Out on the open deck, the sun was a blinding, oppressive glare. The massive LED screen above the main pool strobed through vibrant, oversaturated travel slides while thumping electronic music reverberated through the deck chairs. White-uniformed crew members danced on the stage with fixed, unchanging smiles.

Chloe pulled me toward the glass doors of the grand buffet. The scent of bacon, pastries, and strong coffee filled the air. We grabbed trays, moving down the high-end culinary lines, stacking our plates with eggs, toast, and rows of decadent desserts that neither of us had the willpower to resist. At the beverage station, Chloe poured milk into her cup, while I kept mine strictly black, adding two sugars.

As we scanned the packed dining room for a place to sit, a clear, melodic voice cut through the ambient chatter.
"Hey, girls! Why don't you join us?"

I looked up. Sitting at a sunlit table near the glass windows were the twins from the lobby. The blonde one was gesturing gracefully toward the empty seats opposite them. A cold chill ran straight down my spine as the imagery of the candlelit pentagram flashed behind my eyes. But before my medical logic could formulate an excuse, Chloe was already moving, sliding into the seat directly opposite the red-haired twin. Left with no choice, I took the seat opposite the blonde.

We exchanged names, but the twins merely nodded, their green and blue eyes tracking our movements with an unsettling, static intensity.

The red-headed one tilted her head, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips. "So... you won this cruise, didn't you?"

I paused, my fork hovering. "Yes. How did you know that?"

"I can see the way you look out of place," Red murmured, her voice smooth and devoid of any real inflection. "It's as if your brain is constantly telling you that you don't belong here."

"That's... exactly how it feels," I whispered, the hairs on my arms standing up. "How could you possibly pick up on that?"

Red’s eyes didn't blink. "Because you keep looking at the walls, Zoe. Like you're expecting to wake up in your cramped bedroom any second. Don't worry. This is all very real. And if you just allow yourself to let go... you will have the time of your life."

The specific cadence of that phrase—time of your life—sent a violent shudder through my gut, echoing the blonde driver from our driveway.

"Exactly what I've been telling her!" Chloe chimed in, laughing as she nudged my foot under the table. "Maybe she'll finally let her hair down and meet a hot guy."

The blonde twin leaned forward, her gaze locking onto mine. "Maybe she doesn't want a guy, Chloe. Maybe that's strictly your preference. What if she prefers girls?"

The blood rushed to my face, a violent blush coloring my neck. I had never whispered a word about my orientation to a soul, yet this total stranger had dissected it in a single sentence.

Red waved her hand dismissively. "No need to blush, Zoe. It is nobody's business who draws your eye, as long as you take what you want. Stop worrying about the metrics and the judgments of the world."

Chloe stared at me, her jaw dropping slightly in realization. "That is a phenomenal point... wait, Zoe. You told me those exact same words when I transitioned, and yet you never applied them to yourself? You knew?"

"I... I mean..." I stammered.

"Of course I knew, girl!" Chloe laughed, shaking her head. "I watched you drool over the girls at school for years. I knew exactly what you were looking up on your computer when you thought I was asleep."

My face was practically radiating heat. The twins watched the exchange with an icy, amused detachment. As we finished our meals, they stood up in perfect synchronization, their movements fluid and uncanny.

"We are heading up to the Solarium adult deck," the blonde one stated. "It’s far more exclusive, quiet, and clothing is entirely optional. You should come."

We followed them up the grand aft staircases. The twins walked ahead of us like professional runway models, their hips swaying in perfect rhythm. The adult deck was a secluded paradise, completely shielded from the rest of the vessel. Topless bar waitresses in micro-bikini bottoms moved silently through the rows of sunbeds. I felt my throat go dry as I took in the sheer aesthetic beauty around me; my medical eye for anatomy couldn't help but appreciate the flawless aesthetics of the space.

The twins led us to a private corner and immediately slid their bikini tops off. My heart skipped a beat, the raw visual power of it pulling me into a temporary daze. A silent waitress appeared, placing four crystal glasses of deep, dry red wine on our side tables. Seeking to shed my insecurities, I unhitched my bikini top and slid off my shorts, letting the intense sun hit my skin. Chloe hesitated, keeping her shorts on for obvious reasons, her posture tightening with natural anxiety. But the twins leaned in, their voices dropping into a hypnotic, soothing purr, telling her how stunning her silhouette was and how lucky any partner would be to hold her. Slowly, reassured by the praise, Chloe shed her shorts and relaxed back into her lounger.

I lay back, closing my eyes, letting the heavy red wine dull the edges of my perception.

Meow.
A sharp, distinct sound cut through the ambient hum of the ocean.
I yanked the towel off my face. Standing directly over my sunbed, casting a long, cold shadow over my body, was Che, the Cat Lady. The midnight-black cat was draped across her shoulders, its yellow eyes boring straight into my soul.

"You really shouldn't be here, Zoe," Che said, her voice low, dripping with a grim, chilling urgency. "Let me guess... you haven't read the rules yet?"

I bristled, my defensive instincts kicking in. I reached for my lanyard. "If this is about the age restriction, I'm nineteen. I know I look young, but here—look at my cruise card."

Che didn't look at the card. Her pale face remained deadpan. "No, child. It is fundamentally unsafe. You need to leave this deck immediately. Go back to your cabin, read the notebook, and you will understand."

Before I could reply, the space between us was violently cut off. The twins had stood up, inserting their bare bodies directly between Che and my sunbed.

"Che," Red hissed, her green eyes flashing with a sudden, vicious malice. "It is broad daylight. Why don't you take your pathetic little kitty cat and crawl back to your dark corner in the lounge?"

Che stared at the twins, her blue eyes narrowing. "Just do yourself a favor, Zoe," she called out over their shoulders. "Read the rules. Before it’s too late."

"Che, leave. Now," the blonde twin commanded, her voice dropping into a guttural, terrifying register. "She is with us. And you seem to have forgotten... in the daytime, we hold the metrics. We have the power."

Che took a step back, a grim, knowing smirk touching her lips. "Yes. It is daytime... for now. I will see the two of you tonight. Let’s see who runs when the clock strikes midnight."

The black cat on her shoulders let out a loud, aggressive hiss, its back arching violently at the twins as Che turned and vanished down the stairs.

Chloe blinked, shaking her head as if waking up from a trance. "What the hell was that about?"

"Don't waste your energy on her or her ridiculous rules," the blonde twin dismissed smoothly, sliding back onto her sunbed. "She drinks far too much of the ship's supply. She forgets she’s just another piece of cargo here like the rest of us."

"I... I guess you're right," I murmured, taking another deep sip of the heavy red wine, adjusting my bed to keep my eyes locked onto the twins’ striking forms.

Red suddenly glanced past my shoulder, a sly grin spreading across her face as she looked at Chloe. "Well, well. It looks like you’ve attracted a highly motivated admirer."

I turned my head. A heavily tanned, muscular man wearing nothing but tight underwear was lounging a few meters away, his eyes locked dead onto Chloe. He stood up, his movements rigid and calculated, and walked directly over to our cluster. Without a word, he slipped a folded piece of paper into Chloe's palm, leaned down, and whispered a sequence of low words into her ear. Chloe’s face turned bright red; she smiled and gave a slow, deliberate nod. The man offered a cold, mechanical nod to the twins, turned on his heel, and exited the deck.

"What did he say?" I asked, my protective instincts flaring.

"He... he asked me to join him for an exclusive drink later," Chloe stammered, staring at the paper. "On Deck 13."

My medical brain, hardwired for structural logic, instantly recoiled. "Wait. That’s impossible. Commercial cruise liners don't have a Deck 13. It’s an industry superstition. They skip from 12 to 14."
The blonde twin offered a chilling, empty laugh. "This vessel does, Zoe. But it is strictly accessible by invitation only. It looks like Chloe is on her own for that particular excursion."

Red suddenly checked the horizon. "Oh my. Look at the metrics. It is time for all of us to prepare for the evening gala."

I looked up, and my stomach dropped. The sun was violently crashing below the horizon, bleeding a deep, toxic purple across the water. How? It was just ten in the morning a second ago. A fierce, burning pain radiated across my shoulders—a severe sunburn. I must have completely blacked out.

Chloe was already gone, her sunbed empty. The twins were silently pulling their outfits back on. I scrambled to grab my clothes, offered a hurried goodbye, and sprinted toward the midship elevators.

When I slammed my cabin door shut, the room was immaculate. The bed was made, the towels replaced, everything reset to a sterile, chilling perfection. I stripped, stepped into the shower, and scrubbed the sunburned skin, crying out as the hot water hit the inflammation.

Walking back into the bedroom completely naked, I froze.

Resting on the white sheets was a stunning, low-cut black evening gown that I knew for an absolute fact had not been in the closet earlier. The ship laid it out. I slid into the lace panties and the dress; it clung to my curves like a second skin, accentuating my body perfectly. I stepped into the high heels, modeling in front of the mirror, forcing a confident, striking runway smirk.

As I turned to grab my lanyard, my eyes fell on the vanity table.
The leather-bound notebook was waiting. Rules for the Cruise.
Che’s frantic, desperate warning echoed in my skull. Trembling, I picked it up, flipped past the standard corporate fire-drill jargon, and reached the final page. The text was written in a frantic, scratched, dark brown handwriting that looked exactly like dried, coagulated blood.

RULES TO SURVIVE THIS CRUISE AND TO FINALLY GET HOME

• Rule 1: Always keep your cruise card with you, no matter what. This is your life, your ID, your money, and the only barrier standing between you remaining a guest and eventually becoming part of the physical ship for eternity.
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• Rule 2: Not everyone on this vessel is human. The crew are entities who were once guests; they now serve the ship. Do not communicate with them unless they speak first. Humans have shadows; entities do not. Do not trust them. The only one on your side is the lady with the cat.
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• Rule 3: Everything is free, but debt always comes due. Never accept a second drink from a server until your first is completely finished, and always wait exactly three minutes before accepting the next.
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• Rule 4: If Che (the Cat Lady) offers you red wine, decline politely—it is not wine. If she offers anything else, accept immediately. Avoid her entirely between 0:00 midnight and 3:33 AM. If you run into her during those hours, pray for a quick end.
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• Rule 5: The twins are not sisters; they are witches that feed on human energy. Never break eye contact with them. They wear revealing clothing to force you to look down at their bodies. If you look away from their eyes, you will fall under their complete control.
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• Rule 6: If you see a man with a samurai sword, be polite. He is trapped here like you but protects humans. Never ask for his name.
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• Rule 7: Attend at least three activities listed in your morning guide daily. If you fail to attend three, the day will violently cycle, forcing you to repeat the exact same day for eternity.
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• Rule 8: If a second sun appears in the sky, go below deck immediately. The ship has entered the domain of the void walkers. If you stay outside past three minutes, you will be burned to ashes or pulled into the void.
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• Rule 9: Always follow the Captain's commands over the PA, but only if the voice is female. If a male or distorted voice speaks over the PA, ignore all instructions, sprint to your cabin, and bury yourself under the sheets until morning.
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• Rule 10: You must be inside your designated cabin between midnight and 3:33 AM. Do not open the door for any reason, even if you hear the screaming voice of a loved one. The shadows are excellent impressionists.
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• Rule 11: You must shower immediately upon waking, and again between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM. If you skip a shower, the architecture of the ship will warp, repeatedly looping you back into your bathroom until the task is complete.
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• Rule 12: Never allow anyone to sleep over in your cabin, and never sleep in another's. Anyone logged in the wrong cabin during the night vanishes permanently.
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• Rule 13: The ship does not have a Deck 13. If an elevator button for 13 appears, exit immediately. If a stranger invites you to Deck 13, flee and find the Cat Lady on Deck 6 immediately.
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• Rule 14: If you are a virgin, well-dressed, highly groomed men will target you. Run. Do not take the elevator; use the stairs to find the twins or Che.
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• Rule 15: Never go below Deck 0 unless entering the infirmary. Speak only to medical staff.

Good luck. Love, Che, the Cat Lady.
The leather book dropped from my limp fingers, hitting the carpet with a dull thud.
My mind violently flashed back to the pool deck—how I had stared at the twins' bare bodies, the intoxicating, paralyzing trance that had stolen hours of my life in a single blink. I checked the digital clock on the cabin wall.
11:47 PM.
A freezing spike of sheer terror pierced my chest. Chloe. The man by the pool. The invitation.
"Oh, choice god, no... Chloe!" I screamed.
I snatched my lanyard, sprinted out of the cabin, and tore down the narrow, dimly lit corridor. I reached Chloe's door and began hammering against the heavy wood with my bare fists, screaming her name at the top of my lungs.
11:51 PM.
"Chloe! Open the door! Chloe, please!"
Suddenly, a door clicked open to my right. My brother, Claude, stepped out into the hallway, his face twisted in a mixture of confusion and annoyance as he took in my frantic state.
He grabbed my trembling shoulders, forcing me to stop slamming my fists against the wood. "Zoe, what the hell is wrong with you? Calm down!"
"Claude, we have to get her out! She’s in danger, the ship—the rules—"
"Zoe, shut up for a second!" Claude snapped, his voice firm as he pointed down the hall. "Chloe isn't even in there. She came back down hours ago to change. She told me she got a special VIP invite. She left for Deck 13 twenty minutes ago."

Cruise to Nowhere

Chapter 1

Have you ever had that sickening sensation that something is just too good to be true? Someone once told me that when a thing feels too perfect, it’s usually because the trap has already sprung.

My mother, Tertia, had a compulsive habit of entering every online contest she could find. Questionnaire, survey, pop-up ad—it didn't matter. The moment her eyes brushed past the words “contest” or “win,” she couldn’t help herself. But she also ran on a sort of "fire-and-forget" system. She would type in our data, hit submit, and completely forget it ever happened. Usually, it ended up being a dud, a wave of spam emails we'd have to clear out. But she had a bizarre streak of luck. She’d win little things—vouchers, small appliances. The biggest prize she’d ever landed before now was a month’s worth of groceries. In a house like ours, that was a miracle. We were a struggling family, always drowning, always one bad week away from the street.

My father died just after my younger brother’s birth. He was a musician, chasing a dream that never paid out, so he didn’t leave behind any life insurance policies or even a basic funeral plan. My mother was working as a waitress back then. After he passed, the debt just accumulated like a suffocating blanket. She ended up working brutal double shifts seven days a week, and during the few precious hours she was actually at home, she didn't parent. She just drank box wine until she passed out cold on the linoleum.

Because I was the eldest, the crushing weight of running the house and raising my younger brother fell entirely on my shoulders. I became a mother at ten years old. Miraculously, I managed to keep my head above water. I was always an A-student, pushing myself to the absolute brink, and it finally paid off when I secured a full scholarship to go to university next year to study medicine.

Another thing that always counted in my favor—or perhaps my detriment, depending on how you look at it—was my appearance. I inherited a striking, sharp facial structure that landed me consistent photographic modeling work in the city. The money was decent, and it was the only reason we had basic necessities, electricity, and food that didn't come from a food bank. Half of whatever my mother made went directly into cheap alcohol and cigarettes. It made things tight, but I never complained out loud. It could have been worse.

It could have been like the night my father died. My mother had been right there beside him when he was mutilated and murdered in an alleyway for nothing more than a packet of smokes. She saw every single second of it. The robbers didn’t just rob him; they took their time. They tortured him, carving into him until he was completely unrecognizable by the time the police finally arrived. That was the night her mind broke, the night the liquor became her permanent hiding place.

My brother, Claude, is sixteen now. He is aggressively sporty, excelling at every game he tries and constantly bringing home medals and trophies. I’m incredibly proud of him, but the constant praise has turned him overconfident, sharp-tongued, and arrogant. As for me, I’m nineteen, standing on the precipice of my first semester at the top medical school in South Africa.

We lived in a suffocatingly small town, perched about thirty kilometers outside the nearest city. Because boarding school was a luxury we couldn't dream of affording, Claude and I had to drag ourselves out of bed in the pitch black every morning, walk down to the main road, and stick our thumbs out, praying someone would give us a ride to school. The mornings were easy. The afternoons were a nightmare. Most days, we’d give up on the hitchhiking spot and just start the grueling walk up the mountain road toward home. On a good day, a friendly local might pull over. On a bad day, we’d spend hours marching under a bruising sun, our school shoes wearing thin against the gravel.

That was my life. Predictable. Exhausting. Hard.

Until the day the car stopped.

It was the final day of the school term. I had already matriculated the year before, but because I refused to let Claude make that dangerous commute alone, I still went down to the city with him daily, spending my hours doing part-time promo gigs and modeling shoots while he was in class. We had met up at our usual spot at the base of the mountain road, shifting our bags and preparing for the long trek upward, when a vehicle pulled up beside us.

I don't know much about cars—I'm more focused on anatomy textbooks and modeling portfolios—but even I knew this machine belonged to another world. It was a long, low, midnight-black sedan with windows so heavily tinted they looked like sheets of solid obsidian. The rims were chrome, gleaming with a violent, mirror-like polish. When a car like that stops next to you on a deserted mountain road, you are either about to be kidnapped, or you’ve just gotten unimaginably lucky.

The door clicked open. A man stepped out into the heat. He was tall, blonde, impeccably dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, and perfectly groomed. He looked to be middle-aged, but his skin had an unnatural, plastic smoothness to it. He looked directly at us, his eyes locking on mine.

"Aren’t you Zoe and Claude Clarke?" he asked, his voice smooth as silk.

"Depends on who is asking and why," I replied, stepping slightly in front of my brother. My modeling instincts kept my posture straight, but my stomach tightened.

The man smiled, showing teeth that were a little too white, a little too even. "Relax. I’m simply here to deliver a prize to your family. Would you guys like a ride home?"

"A prize?" I echoed, skeptical.

"Yes." His smile widened. "Your family won the 'Family of the Year' sweepstakes."

"Oh. Okay... what exactly is the prize?"

"I am terribly sorry," the man said, his tone dripping with practiced courtesy, "but I can only disclose the specifics to Mrs. Clarke."

"You mean Miss," I corrected coldly.

"Oh, I apologize. I didn't realize she got divorced."

"Widowed," I said.

The man’s eyes flickered, a momentary shadow passing over his face before the perfect grin snapped back into place. "I apologize deeply, and I am truly sorry for your loss. Now, would you please get in? I am on a rather tight schedule."

Claude and I exchanged a quick look. My brother, with his usual teenage carelessness, just shrugged and hopped into the plush leather of the backseat. I hesitated for a fraction of a second before climbing into the front, pulling the heavy door shut. The air conditioning inside hit me like an arctic blast. I buckled my seatbelt, trying to ignore the sudden chill. Honestly, I was exhausted, and the South African sun was brutal today.

The man slid into the driver's seat, pulled a cooler from beneath the console, and offered us each a sweating, ice-cold bottle of water. We accepted them gratefully, cracking the caps and drinking deeply. Without another word, he shifted the car into drive. The engine didn't roar; it purred with a low, vibrational hum that vibrated right through my bones.

When you walk the same dusty stretch of road every single day, your brain turns off. You stop looking at the trees, the rocks, the horizon; you just stare at your shoes and focus on putting one foot in front of the other. But as the sedan glided up the mountain, it felt like I was seeing the scenery for the very first time. The colors were oversaturated. The green of the valley looked too deep, the sky an impossibly vivid shade of blue.

Before I could fully process the strangeness of it, the car smoothly glided to a halt. The ignition clicked off. I blinked, looking out the window in disbelief. We were parked right outside the dingy tavern where my mother worked.

"You two wait here," the man said, adjusting his cuffs. "I will go fetch your mother, and then we can all converse comfortably at your home."

Claude and I sat in the back, utterly stunned. How did he know her work schedule? How did he know she was here? I tried to rationalize it—maybe she had written her employment details on one of those endless online forms.

Through the tinted glass, we watched him walk up to the tavern owner, a notoriously miserable, aggressive man who hated my mother and treated his staff like dirt. We could see the owner shouting, waving his arms, his face contorted in anger. But then, the strange man calmly reached into his breast pocket and pulled out something small—a heavy, matte-black card or an envelope—and held it up.

Instantly, the owner went entirely pale. His aggressive posture collapsed. He became utterly docile, nodding like a broken puppet, and hurried inside. A few minutes later, he emerged alongside our mother. He was holding a thick, bulging manila envelope, which he handed to her with a shaking hand before gripping her in a tight hug. My mother was beaming, a radiant, manic smile on her face. She and the blonde man walked over to the sedan and climbed inside.

"Hi, mom," I said, turning in my seat.

"Hi, kids!" she chirped, her voice higher than usual.

"Hi, mom," Claude muttered in his trademark arrogant drone.

"Mom, what just happened back there?" I asked, eyeing the heavy envelope in her lap.

"Oh, nothing sweetie! James here just gave my boss a little corporate incentive, and in return, the boss handed me a full year's worth of wages in advance! He told me to go have fun and that he’ll see us when we get back."

My brain stalled. "A year's wages? See us when we get back?"

The driver caught my eye in the rearview mirror. "Don't worry your pretty head about it, Zoe. I will explain everything once we are inside your home."

A few minutes later, we pulled into our cracked concrete driveway. We filed out of the luxury car and onto our small, weathered veranda. The man followed, lifting a heavy, pristine white cooler box from the trunk—not the drunk, though given my mother's habits, the irony wasn't lost on me.

He set the cooler on our rusted outdoor table, cracking it open to reveal bottles of expensive dry red wine. He produced four elegant crystal glasses, but just as he poured the first splash, he paused. He tilted his head, staring intently toward our rusted front gate, then looked back at me with a knowing smirk.

"Zoe, I think you might want to get that."

Right on cue, a frantic voice echoed from the road. "Zoe! Zoe, open up!"

I frowned, pulling the heavy iron gate keys from my pocket. I jogged down the path to find Chloe standing there, breathing heavily. Chloe was my absolute best friend. Her birth name was different, but she had chosen Chloe because she loved how it rhymed with my name. She was a transgender girl, and she was so breathtakingly gorgeous that I always joked if she ever entered the modeling industry, I’d have to retire immediately. She was brilliant, too, having just locked down a major scholarship to study psychiatry at varsity next year.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, unlocking the padlock.

"I saw a literal state-vehicle-sized limo pull into your driveway, Zoe! I thought you were being arrested or assassinated!"

I laughed, ushering her inside. But when we stepped onto the veranda, the atmosphere shifted. The blonde man was sitting in our creaky plastic chair like it was a throne, a massive, unblinking grin plastered across his face. Five glasses of dark, blood-red wine were now poured, sitting in a perfect, geometric line on the table. Everyone was sitting in total silence, waiting in eerie anticipation.

"Well," the man purred, gesturing for Chloe and me to sit. "Now that our circle is complete, I can finally unveil your grand prize."

"Let me guess," Claude interrupted, leaning back with a sarcastic sneer. "A year's worth of free groceries?"

"Claude, stop it! Don't be rude!" my mother snapped, though her eyes remained glued to the blonde man.

"No, young man," the driver said, his voice dropping an octave. "Though groceries are included. You four have won an exclusive, all-expenses-paid, epic cruise... to everywhere and nowhere."

Chloe blinked, her future-psychiatrist brain immediately analyzing the statement. "Wait. That doesn't make any sense at all. Everywhere and nowhere? That’s a paradox."

Right then, a heavy, cold weight dropped into the pit of my stomach. Have you ever had that terrifying intuition that something is fundamentally wrong? Not just odd, but deeply, cosmically wrong? It was too good to be true. None of it made sense. Looking back now, with the blood and the ocean howling in my ears, I wish to God I had listened to my instincts. I wish I had grabbed Claude and Chloe and run into the mountains.

"Yes," the man whispered, ignoring Chloe's question. "You will go everywhere... and stay nowhere. Congratulations."

He raised his glass. My mother and Claude instantly reached for theirs, completely magnetized by the moment. Peer pressure and the sheer absurdity of the situation forced Chloe and me to lift ours as well. We clinked our glasses together. Cheers.

I took a small sip. The wine was rich, thick, and unnaturally sweet. I wanted to speak up, to demand answers, but I looked at my mother. Her face looked younger than it had in a decade. She hadn't taken a single day off work since my father died. She was trapped in a cycle of gray exhaustion, and this ridiculous, impossible prize was making her shine. I swallowed my fear for her sake.

"So, how long is this cruise for?" my mother asked, swirling her wine.

"Oh, just a couple of months or so," the man replied casually. He leaned forward, his eyes locking onto mine, his pupils dilating until they were almost entirely black. "Don't you worry. You are going to have the time of your LIFE."

The way he emphasized the word life—delivered in a hollow, distorted, mechanical cadence—sent a violent shiver straight down my spine. But I forced a laugh. Hey, it’s a cruise, I told myself, trying to drown out the panic. The worst that can happen is the ship sinks, right?

"And do not worry about packing or preparation," the man continued, his voice returning to its smooth, hypnotic rhythm. "Everything will be provided for you on board. It is a strictly all-inclusive voyage. Even your clothing will be waiting for you. We have already collected your exact measurements, your preferences, your metrics... your cabins are fully stocked. Food, premium beverages, entertainment—all completely covered."

He turned his gaze to my sixteen-year-old brother. "And since the vessel operates strictly in international waters... there is no restrictive age limit to stop you from enjoying yourself."

My mother frowned slightly, her maternal instincts briefly flaring through the fog. "I don't think I want him to start drinking yet."

Claude’s face contorted into a mask of pure fury. He glared at her, his voice dripping with venom. "Sure, mom. Because you already drink enough for all of us, don't you?"

"Claude! Stop it right now!" I yelled, slamming my glass down.

"It’s okay, Zoe," my mother whispered, her voice cracking as tears welled in her eyes. "He’s right. He’s right."

The blonde man didn't seem bothered by the family drama. He merely stood up, smoothing his jacket. "Anyway, you family and friends can celebrate tonight. But ensure you are packed in spirit and ready by exactly 0:00. Midnight. That is when your designated driver will arrive to collect you."

"Midnight?" Chloe asked, checking her phone. "You do realize the coast is an eight-hour drive from here? If the cruise leaves at 3:33 AM, we’ll never make it."

The man smiled, a terrifyingly static expression. "Relax. Our drivers have never missed a departure."

Claude frowned, the arrogance bleeding out of him, replaced by sudden unease. "Never missed?"

The man glanced down at his bare wrist—there was no watch there, just pale skin—yet he nodded as if reading a dial. "Oh my, look at the time. I must be on my way."

He stepped off the veranda and walked around the corner toward the front gate. I immediately jumped to my feet, determined to ask him how he had our clothing sizes, but by the time I rounded the corner of the house—barely three seconds behind him—the gravel driveway was empty.

The heavy iron gate was still locked from the inside. The road was completely deserted. There was no sound of a speeding engine, no dust hanging in the air. Nothing.

A freezing hand of dread clamped around my neck. Nobody is that fast. It was physically impossible.

I walked back to the veranda, my heart hammering against my ribs. To my surprise, the group was already cracking open a second bottle of wine. The strange man had left six bottles in total. Driven by sheer, unadulterated nerves, I grabbed a fresh glass and drank. I drank fast. The alcohol hit my bloodstream like a heavy narcotic, and within minutes, the edges of the porch began to blur. The last thing I remember was sinking into the rough fabric of the couch, darkness pulling me under.

A violent shaking jolted me awake. The world was spinning.

"Zoe! Zoe, wake up! We have to get ready, the driver is at the gate!"

My mother was hovering over me, her eyes manic. I staggered to my feet, my head pounding with a vicious hangover. I checked my phone. The digital clock read exactly 0:00. Midnight.

"Mom... mom, wait," I stammered, grabbing her arm. "Are you absolutely sure about this? Think about it. None of this makes sense. A magic car? A free cruise? A man who vanishes into thin air?"

"Of course we are going, Zoe!" she said, wrenching her arm away with a harsh laugh. "It’s a free holiday! We deserve this!"

"But mom, doesn't something feel horribly off to you?"

"I talked to the neighbor while you were passed out," she dismissed, grabbing a small handbag. "She said she’ll keep an eye on the house for us. Stop being a wet blanket."

"Not the house, mom! The holiday! Can you even remember entering a contest called 'Family of the Year'?"

Before she could answer, a loud, echoing car horn blared from the front gate. The sound wasn't a normal honk; it was a low, mechanical drone that vibrated in my teeth.

Chloe, her eyes bright with a strange, glassy excitement, grabbed my hand and yanked me toward the door. "Come on, sleepy head! Adventure awaits!"

We filed out into the pitch-black night. Waiting in the driveway was another long, obsidian-black sedan, identical to the first. But when the driver’s window rolled down, it wasn't the blonde man. A woman sat behind the wheel. She had pale, porcelain skin, severely pulled-back platinum blonde hair, and unblinking, glassy eyes.

When she spoke, her voice had an eerie, rhythmic, almost hypnotic cadence to it. "Welcome. Please enter the vehicle. We have a very long journey ahead of us."

Claude sneered as he slid into the back. "No shit. Not sure how you're going to pull off an eight-hour drive in three hours, lady."

The woman didn't turn around. Her reflection in the rearview mirror remained completely static. "I am the best driver there is."

"Okay, whatever you say, Transporter," Claude muttered.

My mother, Claude, and Chloe crowded into the backseat. Desperate for answers, I hopped into the front passenger seat again. The moment the door clicked shut, a strange, sweet scent filled my nostrils—like vanilla mixed with formaldehyde. My eyelids instantly grew heavy. A profound, unnatural exhaustion washed over me, and before the car even cleared the driveway, I plummeted back into a dreamless sleep.

"We have arrived."

The woman's voice cut through the dark like a scalpel.

I snapped awake, my chest heaving. Behind me, the others were waking up too, yawning, stretching, and complaining of stiffness. I looked out the window, expecting to see the glowing lights of a bustling harbor city.

Instead, we were parked on a massive, crumbling concrete pier. There were no city lights. No other cars. No highway. Just an endless, pitch-black expanse of open ocean, and looming over the water was the cruise ship.

It was gargantuan, a towering mountain of white steel and black windows, cutting a terrifying silhouette against the starless sky. But there were no crowds. No lines of tourists. No luggage handlers. Just us.

"This is wrong," I whispered, stepping out onto the cold concrete. "Where is everyone else?"

The pale woman rolled down her window halfway, her eyes reflecting the ship's distant lights. "They are already on board. You are exactly one minute late. Off you go."

Hesitantly, our small group walked toward the massive boarding ramp. The moment our shoes cleared the threshold and we stepped into the holding bay of the ship, a loud, hydraulic hiss echoed behind us. I spun around. The massive steel security door we had just walked through had slammed shut, locking with a series of heavy, definitive clicks.

Standing in the dim corridor ahead of us was a crew member. He wore a pristine, stark-white uniform, but his face was remarkably grim, his eyes sunken and tired.

"You are a minute late," he said, his voice flat.

"Sorry," I said, my defensive modeling persona kicking in. "We weren't the ones driving."

"Follow me, please. I will escort you to your cabins."

"Cabins?" Chloe asked, her eyes darting around the sterile steel walls. "As in, more than one? We aren't sharing?"

"You have each been assigned your own individual cabin," the crew member replied, turning his back on us and marching down the corridor.

He clearly wasn't the conversational type. We followed him in a tense silence, leaving the cold steel of the lower decks behind as we ascended a grand staircase into the main lobby.

I gasped. It was beautiful, but a deeply unsettling kind of beautiful. The grand staircase appeared to be carved from solid, flawless crystal, reflecting the light in sharp, jagged patterns. Even the massive chandeliers overhead were constructed of jagged shards of crystal that vibrated faintly, casting a fractured, shifting glow over the room.

The crewman led us over to a polished marble desk labeled Guest Services. Without a word, the attendant behind the desk handed each of us a heavy, metallic blue card. Printed on the front of mine was my name, Zoe Clarke, alongside a crisp, high-definition photograph of my face.

My mother held hers up, her brow furrowing. "Wait... how do you have our photographs? I never uploaded these."

The Guest Services associate smiled—a wide, empty expression that didn't reach her eyes. "We acquired them after you entered the contest, ma'am."

"So you've been spying on us?" Claude barked, his voice echoing off the crystal.

"Relax, Claude," I muttered, trying to keep the peace while my own heart hammered against my ribs. "They probably just pulled them from our social media profiles for a marketing survey."

"I bet," Chloe whispered under her breath, her eyes scanning the room with deep clinical suspicion.

I turned away from the desk, looking out over the sprawling lobby lounge. Scattered throughout the room were clusters of velvet chairs and mahogany tables. A few dozen guests were scattered about, chattering away in low, indistinguishable murmurs, sipping brightly colored drinks from crystal glassware.

But then, a specific table caught my eye.

Sitting there were two exceptionally beautiful women who looked to be right around my age. One had cascading, spun-gold blonde hair and striking blue eyes; she wore a flowing, immaculate white evening gown. Beside her sat a woman with vibrant, flame-red hair and piercing green eyes, wearing an identical gown, except hers was a deep, blood red. They sat perfectly still, not talking, just staring blankly into space.

My gaze shifted to a secluded booth tucked into the shadows near the back. Sitting alone was a slender, captivating woman with sleek, raven-black hair that framed a pale, aristocratic face. She wore a tight, body-hugging black evening dress that seemed to absorb the light around it. Her eyes were an intense, sharp blue—unnatural, piercing, and completely cat-like.

And speaking of cats, draped lazily across her shoulders like a fur scarf was a sleek, midnight-black cat. The animal sat perfectly still, its yellow eyes locked dead onto mine.

The woman in black was slowly sipping from a glass of dark red wine. As she noticed me staring, she stopped. She slowly lowered the glass, kept her piercing blue eyes fixed on mine, and gave me a slow, deliberate nod of acknowledgment.

Before I could nod back, the crew member tapped his fingers loudly against the marble counter, drawing our attention. He handed me a heavy, leather-bound booklet.

"Your ship manifest and guidelines," he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly, urgent whisper. "Read them immediately. Memorize them. On this vessel, the rules are the only thing keeping you alive."

I opened the heavy leather cover. Written in a jagged, dark script that looked suspiciously like dried, brown blood, were the instructions.

## THE RULES OF THE VESSEL

A cold sweat broke out across my forehead. My fingers trembled against the leather binding. I looked up to demand an explanation from the crewman, but he had already turned on his heel, his white uniform disappearing into the dim, labyrinthine corridors of the ship.

I looked back down at the page. The ink of Rule 2 seemed to ripple, the letters stretching like tiny, desperate legs.

We were on board. The doors were locked. And the cruise to nowhere had officially begun.

The following are text messages sent by Scott Edwards to his brother, Eric, over the ten days that preceded his demise.

Hey Eric, I think I know what’s causing my insomnia. And you won’t believe me when I say this but there’s someone, nay something in my house that prevents me from sleeping. I know, I know, it sounds fucking crazy, but I’m taking my pills. I hadn’t had an episode in months. Everything is under control.

Sent 22:22 May 1^st 2021

I know it’s real and I know it’s here. I think it sustains itself on my dreams, or some kind of brainwaves emitted during sleep. I looked it up, man, it’s gotta be it. I see it at the edge of the bedroom door.

Sent 22:24 May 1^st 2021

I’ve skipped sleep last night and tonight it looks fucking pissed. It didn’t like that I’m not sleeping.

Sent 22:25 May 1^st 2021

Hey Eric, I didn’t sleep last night again, I’m so fucking tired man… thank god there’s autocorrect on these things. I can’t even type right. That thing looks tired and angrier than ever.

Sent 20:43 May 2^nd 2021

Dude, I think I saw wings on that thing… it looks beat, I do too, I haven’t slept for the third straight night in a row. I’m fighting for my life here, but I know I’ll outlast the fucker.

Sent 21:12 May 3^rd 2021

Still medicated, by the way, don’t worry

Sent 21:13 May 3^rd 2021

I feel sick man, I feel dizzy and everything hurts. I don’t think the meds are working anymore, words are materializing before me eyes now. Though that might be

Send 12:25 May 4^th 2021

Just my imagination, its not like the other times, I am feeling pretty beaten up and that dream eater thing, I now see it

Sent 13:40 May 4^th 2021

All day long, Eric, it’s stalking me man… I’m scared…

Sent 14:10 May 4^th 2021

Could come over, bro, just hang out for a bit?

Sent 00:05 May 5^th 2021

Fuck the pills…

Sent 01:01 May 6^th 2021

 

Pills not working…

Sent 01:02 May 6^th 2021

Making everything worse…

Sent 01:03 May 6^th 2021

Man and wings

Sent 01:04 May 6^th 2021

Mirroring

Sent 01:05 May 6^th 2021

Mirror

Sent 01:05 May 6^th 2021

Make it fucking stop speaking make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop

Sent 03:33 May 6^th 2021

Haven’t moved all day, Eric, I’m just swimming on the floor here. Can’t move, stuck. Can’t eat either, puked everything. Everything hurts. Feels like dozing off, but won’t. Can’t even anymore.

Sent 07:50 May 7^th 2021

(A voice message containing twenty seconds of pure silence)

Sent 15:44 May 8^th 2021

You hear that? He sounds just like all those things in my head

Sent 16:17 May 8^th 2021

Tell me you hear that, Eric

Sent 16:17 May 8^th 2021

Tell me I’m not crazy

Sent 16:17 May 8^th 2021

Please

Sent 16:18 May 8^th 2021

Hey, Eric, I just noticed, you aren’t answering my messages, is everything alright?

Sent 02:25 May 9^th 2021

I love you, Eric, know that? I love you… and I’m sorry I’ve been on your ass these passed few days.

Sent 03:25 May 9^th 2021

I feel like shit, is this what it feels like to be dying? I must look like shit too; that fucking thing that keeps me awake is looking like he’s about to wither away. 

Sent 04:00 May 9^th 2021

Soon everything soon

Sent 04:01 May 9^th 2021

He’s smiling

Sent 10:13 May 9^th 2021

WHY THE FUCK IS HE SMILING

Sent 01:42 May 10^th 2021

mAKE IT STOP

Sent 01:42 May 10^th 2021

JESUS

Sent 01:42 May 10^th 2021

HE’S BACK TO NORMAL

Sent 01:42 May 10^th 2021

WHY THE FUCK IS HE SMILING

Sent 01:42 May 10^th 2021

WHY IS IT SO WIDE

Sent 01:43 May 10^th 2021

Mommy my chest hurts

Sent 02:11 May 10^th 2021

I’m scared

Sent 02:15 May 10^th 2021

I’m going to lie down

Sent 03:05 May 10^th 2021

Mommy don’t let the smiling men take me

Sent 03:33 May 10^th 2021

They’re scary mommy, I don’t want to go

Sent 03:33 May 10^th 2021

Don’t let them take me to Eric’s room

Sent 03:45 May 10^th 2021

I don’t really care anymore, I’m going to bed

Sent 03:55 May 10^th 2021

Mr. Edwards passed away shortly after texting his dead brother, Eric, who passed away in 2018 from pancreatic cancer, that he’s going to bed. About a week after Mr. Edwards’s demise, his neighbors reported a foul smell coming from his apartment.

He was found dead in his bed; the cause of death was registered as a suicide by sleep deprivation as a result of a severe psychotic break. Contrary to his claims, Mr. Edwards had not been prescribed his antipsychotic medication for the 4 months before his passing.

In addition to Mr. Edwards’ remains, the authorities have located the mutilated corpses of at least fifteen different pigeons throughout the apartment.

Feathers were found protruding between Mr. Edwards teeth and nasal cavity.

Captain, why haven’t I ever heard about this planet?

This planet is a prison.

I thought we stopped using planetary prisons millennia ago.

We did. This is the last one still in use.

What makes it so special, Captain?

This one is housing the worst creature in existence, Anthropithecus.

Never heard of it, myself. What makes them so bad?

They were engineered to be the ultimate weapon. Terrifying, resilient, unbelievably adaptable, and feverishly combative.

Was this some kind of mindless genocide machine, Captain?

No, Lieutenant Wells, these are highly intelligent creatures driven by a hunger for conquest and lust for death.

That sounds counterintuitive, Captain. Looking at ourselves, we’re not a very warlike people.

Not anymore, Lieutenant.

Not anymore?

We used to be a warrior culture; empires aren’t built on niceties, after all. That’s why we’ve designed these animals. To be deployed in the thick of battle. Unfortunately, the Anthropithecus proved themselves too unstable and destructive and had to be locked away before they destroyed the entire galaxy. That’s why we left them here, on this savage planet where not even these things could survive without our technology for long.

I can’t believe it, Captain…

Forget it, Lieutenant Wells; thankfully, these days are in the distant past.

No, Captain, just after everything you’ve just said…

I… I can’t believe that a spacecraft just left the planet’s orbit and is heading in our direction….

A sick man kidnapped me. He seemed remorseful after the fact, speaking about some alien entity threatening to destroy the whole world unless he sacrifices me to this entity. A thing he called Unketzez. Since his actual name isn’t particularly relevant, I’ll refer to him as John.

See, John had a very disorganized speech and an impossible train of thought. Surely, he was delusional. Clearly ill, as I said. I let myself be taken hostage because I have time and very little to do with my time. With that in mind, I played along with the poor man.

John, for all of his faults, worked hard to delay what he thought was inevitable.

Unfortunately, Unketzez won out, and I had to be sacrificed.

Needless to say, it didn’t work out as intended. Not for a lack of trying. No, John tried to sacrifice me. Technically, he succeeded.

Technically.

It didn’t work out because I am immortal. I cannot permanently die, not as far as I know. Trust me, I’ve tried; others have tried to kill me, too. Nothing seems to work so far. Temporarily, I can “die,” but eventually my body fixes itself. There are drawbacks to that; I’m not immune to the pains of dying.

And John, well, John made it a very long night…

I was partially flayed, with a hot iron, force-fed my own burnt skin, then disemboweled and hanged from my own intestine.

After that, the mad bastard tore open my back, shattered my ribcage, and draped the lungs over the exposed bone.

I felt all of that, every single moment.

Adrenaline shots worked like magic to keep me awake and prolong my suffering.

There are no words to describe the agony John put me through. Bless his heart, he kept apologizing and weeping throughout.

Imagine a man screaming with no lungs; that’s what it was like.

Eventually, it stopped, and I “died”.

Imagine John’s shock when he found me walking out of his basement unscathed.

He looked and screamed like he’d seen a ghost. I could’ve laughed if he didn’t stab me through the arm and a lung in that moment.

Pinning him to the wall was surprisingly easy before I spun him a tale. Playing into his delusions, I told him that I, too, was a devotee of Unketzez and that the whole ordeal was just a test to see whether he was worthy of an awakening.

Being the sick man he was, he believed every word.

I explained that I was immortal thanks to our god. In reality, it’s been so long that I don’t know if I was born this way or became like this. What I do know is that if someone eats my flesh or drinks my blood, they gain some superhuman ability.

I mentioned how I’ve been killed many times before, in part to be consumed.

What happens every time, though, is that whoever partakes in my consumption ends up with an ability that inadvertently kills them.

Every single time.

So, I told John that drinking my blood would make him an immortal, too.

It’s hard for me to say I was angry with him; one effect of a long life is detachment. I couldn’t care less what happened to this insignificant creature, but a terrible night was worth teaching a lesson over.

So, I convinced John that he wanted this immortality I was promising him, and once he agreed, I pulled out the knife from my body, I shoved my wounded arm straight into his mouth, making sure he got a good taste of my blood. I kept it there until he started gagging and regurgitating and wouldn’t stop, even then. Only relenting when the collapsed lung in my chest finally knocked me out, and we both fell to the ground.

I came to my senses only hours later, to the sound of a weeping man.

The room was coated in patches and handprints of gold.

Almost everything around me shone with an auric radiance; the walls, the floor, the furniture. Everything had a tinge of that precious metal coating it.

At its center, facing me, sat John, half covered in gold himself, rocking back and forth.

The metal seemed to slowly spread over his body as his movements became stiffer and stiffer with each passing moment.

He was muttering and crying to himself.

His own Midas touch was slowly killing him…

Quicker than I even anticipated, by the time I picked myself up, he could barely beg for help.

A dreadful look of fear in his desperate gaze penetrated straight through me. It’s been a while since something sent shivers down my spine, but in this state, this sick man definitely did.

He barely managed to lift one gold-plated arm in my direction when he saw me get up, and his cries for help slowly morphed into something far worse, and far less human.

Breathless, suffocated, almost crushed

A hiss.

A death rattle escaping from a crack in a metallic statue when the wind blows through it.

That was the sound of a man screaming with no lungs.

His death was slower than it seemed. Even after falling silent, he must’ve had some time before the gold statue encasing his organs fully hardened, collapsing his lungs and heart in place.

The worst part of it all is that even after the gold covered his body completely, it must’ve been only skin deep, because I watched his eyes dart about, almost pleading, for another minute or two, before their gaze fell on me.

Dilating one last time, stuck in place

Yet somehow, following me across the room until I left.

I wake up before I surface.

That’s the first wrong thing: consciousness arrives late, trailing behind a body that has already begun its routine. My eyes open, and I’m already sitting up, lungs pulling air like they’ve been rehearsing without me. For a moment, I don’t know where I am, only that I’m here again.

The ceiling stares back, patient. It knows I’ll recognize it eventually.

I stand. I always stand. There’s no decision involved.

Only the quiet obedience of muscle and bone. My legs carry me forward, and I follow them like a ghost trailing its own corpse. Each step feels slightly delayed, as if my body moves first and sensation catches up afterward.

Every day begins this way.

Rise, function, collapse. Rise again.

The clock ticks. I focus on it because it gives me something to hate. The second hand jumps forward in sharp, mocking increments. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. It insists that time is passing, but I know better. Time here is thick, gelatinous. I push my hand out in front of me and watch it move through the air like it’s underwater.

I flex my fingers. They respond, but the response feels borrowed.

Something is wrong with the way I fit inside myself.

The thought doesn’t arrive fully formed; it leaks in through the cracks. Thoughts always do. They never come one at a time anymore. They stampede, pile up, crush each other. Pressure builds behind my eyes, a swelling mass of noise without language. I clutch my head as if that might contain it.

It doesn’t.

The sound begins as a vibration, so faint I almost miss it. A hum threaded through my nerves. It resonates in places sound shouldn’t reach: teeth, marrow, the hollow behind my sternum. It’s not a voice yet. It’s a presence warming up.

Then it speaks.

It says my name.

Not aloud. Not inside my head. Somewhere in between, like it’s vibrating the shape of my identity until the syllables fall out on their own. Hearing it feels like being seen in a way I never consented to.

I tell myself not to answer. I never answer.

My body leans forward anyway.

Pins crawl across my skin, thousands of them, each one testing me. It’s not pain exactly—more like anticipation, like something waiting for permission to cross a boundary I can no longer enforce. My arms break out in gooseflesh as if responding to a command I didn’t hear.

I scratch, the sensation multiplies.

The humming swells into something musical. A grotesque parody of comfort. A serenade played by hands that know exactly where to press. I feel it slide along my nerves, plucking them one by one, and every note carries my name.

You, it sings.

I try to scream.

My mouth opens wide, jaw straining, but nothing escapes the way it should. My throat feels packed, clogged with grief, with words that never made it out, with something thick and wet and choking. Tears spill down my face instead, hot and useless. The silence that follows is worse than any noise—dense, crushing, absolute.

I can hear my own heartbeat hammering inside my ears.

Then the laughter erupts.

It detonates behind my eardrums, sharp and splintering, rattling my skull like it’s trying to crack it open from the inside. The sound is wrong; too intimate, too close. It’s not mocking me. It’s enjoying itself.

Die, it laughs.

The word lands heavy, final, not as a threat but as a conclusion it’s already reached. My knees buckle. I clutch the edge of the table to stay upright, fingers slipping, skin slick with sweat.

The commands come faster now.

Kill.

The word repeats until it loses meaning, until it becomes a rhythm, a pulse.

Killkillkillkill.

It doesn’t ask who. It doesn’t need to. It’s not about action—it’s about surrender.

Lose.

Lose grip. Lose shape. Lose the lie that there was ever a boundary between me and it. I feel something peel away inside my chest, something small but essential. Selfhood thins, stretches, tears.

Rage floods the space it leaves behind.

It’s not anger. It’s momentum. A force without direction, a fire that burns because it must. I feel myself folding inward, compressing, collapsing down through layers of memory and resistance I didn’t know I still had.

I can’t stop.

I don’t know when stopping stopped being an option.

When it finally recedes, it doesn’t say goodbye. It never does. It simply withdraws, like a tide pulling back, leaving wreckage in its wake.

I’m on the floor when I realize it’s gone.

Curled tight, knees drawn to my chest, cheek pressed against the cold tile. The room is silent. The clock ticks again, honest now, almost apologetic. My body feels hollowed out, like something scooped me clean and forgot to put anything back.

I lie there, gasping, terrified to move.

Terrified that movement will call it back.

Terrified that staying still will, too.

I tell myself it’s over. I tell myself it always leaves eventually.

I almost believe it.

Then my muscles tense.

I rise.

Again.

No longer am I – I

Not in the traditional sense, at least, no longer alone in this body.

There are others.

Perhaps it’s we now…

Or not…

There’s me, Oscar Nyholm, then there’s Logan Wilson, and finally, there's Helge Dratoc.

We don’t belong together, yet here we are, trapped sharing the same quantum mechanics.

I no longer possess my own body; nor do they.

We float around it.

Taking turns –

With the reins on this late afternoon.

Memories, words, concepts, wishes, desires, fear, sensations… they all bleed together into an invisible pool that is both me and not.

Us and each other.

The whole and the part.

Dratoc is fuck all knows where –

There are boots… boots… boots… boots… forty thousand million boots wherever he’s at…

And Wilson, where is he?

(Hey Wilson!)

Shit, I’m talking to myself again…

I’m here, Nyholm

He calls me from the kitchen, even though he shouldn’t be able to. He isn’t real. None of this is.

Heart pounding

Racing

It’s painful now

Fuck

In the kitchen, man, com’ere

How the fuck is he even talking to me?

(How the fuck are you even talking to me, Wilson? You’re a persona in a novella.)

That’s my fault… all this marching… the snow… you’ve gone and been infected with my madness. Soon, you might hear or even see the boots everywhere you are.

The taste of coffee burns in my mouth.

Nose is dry.

The room spins

Did I overdose on caffeine?!

Again?

Again?

(Again?)

My legs move on their own, forcing my body into the kitchen. While I am detached from the physical entity that is me, I can feel every fiber of my being tense up.

My soul is now nauseous

Riddled with nails

Screaming without a mouth

Panicking without thoughts

There’s a body in the kitchen

Blood everything

Blood bags

Everyone

My

Their

His

Our

Body

It is smiling

Stench escaping from that grin

Rotten eggs – fish – cow dung –

Dead death.

It’s… I… We… Wilson…

Dead

Black n’ blue

Frigid

Vapor rising from the cataracts

Oh God, the cataracts

It moved its mouth

(It spoke)

I spoke

The corpse shifted its face with sickening crunches

(“The muuuuuuu siiiicccccc”)

We hissed at our own living doppelganger

Music

What

Music

?

Oh God… I can hear it.

Entelodont playing

Choking on an uncontrollable deluge of tears

In the bedroom, I left the recorder playing

Hidden beneath the blistering rain

Frankly, I’m probably addicted to this stuff

But not even the thunderous weeping of heaven

My friend made this…

Can drown the vile silence screaming always within

Mgla

Funereal sorrow oozing from every wound

That’s what she goes by

[It means fog, like her real-life last name]

To inflict the punishment of total isolation

She’s the artistic type… makes this vile soundscape

The mere thought of running somewhere

And paints with blood

Leads me further into the claws of despair

Initially, her own blood

Slain but somehow alive

I hated seeing her scar herself for the sake of art like that

Am I even a human

(I’m just trying to make sure a friend is safe)

When the putrid stench of my soul

An obsessed fan of her work, maybe

Turns away even the starving hounds of perdition

I might be even infatuated with her

In a rare moment of maddening calm

So I promised to get her blood to paint with

I can hear the melody of the cold sylvian night screaming

Real blood

Undress your mortal costume

That would explain the corpse

And wander off into the horizon never to return

But I wouldn’t kill myself, now, would I?

Must reach the freedom awaiting in the abyssal unknown

No… It’s probably this music… (it’s doing things to me)… like she is doing things to me.

Must wander beyond the edge of life never to return

19 hertz

Infrasonic frequencies still high enough to be felt by the human body. She implements those in her music.

Turning that thing off…

Oh, finally quiet again…

A little too quiet…

A little too dark…

A little too cold…

Falling

Only

To

Rise

Again…

Waking up on Mgla’s lap, she’s covered in blood.

Want to scream.

Can’t…

Don’t want to look like a pussy to her…

She’s breathing…

(Yes, I am staring at her chest – as are Wilson and Dratoc)

Look around

Bad idea –

Want to throw up

Eyes moved too fast

Fuck!

Is that?

Oh, my fucking God

It is…

Is she?

Covered in blood?

Yes

(Is she dead, I mean?)

Seraph lies dead at my feet

[That’s her actual name – but not the full one, her parents were in a church of some medieval Italian saint and felt inspired]

That’s my best friend

That’s the love of my life

(That’s a great fuck)

Whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy

Why her?

She stirs

I freeze

We freeze

Looks up at the couch

Dead stare

Sadistic

Rising unnaturally with a smile

Sick

Smile

Head heavy again

Chest pounding again

Frozen

Mgla grabs onto me

Seraphs springs and wraps herself around me

Can’t breathe

Air fading

Shit

Warm

Dark

Cold

Darker

(Is this the end?)

You wish

Oh, hell no

Wake

Again

Confined

Boxed off

I’m in a coffin

(Shit)

(Fight)

Kicking and screaming

It, or rather they

The dead

Or maybe just my inner voices

Maybe these are my friends-nay-lovers

Saying my name.

No—claiming it.

No—remembering it before any one of us does.

Slam head against the coffin lid

Accidentally

Dark again

Wake

Again

In bed with the women

My body leans forward anyway.

Motion approved retroactively.

I scratch.

The sensation multiplies.

Good.

It spreads better that way.

Covered in blood

Night gowns

Turn around

Too fast

Too hard

Too fucking violent

Flayed man on the wall

Everything tightens into a knot

Falling down

I lie there, gasping, terrified to move.

Terrified that movement will call it back.

Terrified that staying still will, too.

Both decisions logged.

Outcome un-fucking-changable.

I tell myself it’s over.

I tell myself it always stops eventually.

That’s our favorite lie.

I almost believe it.

(Pass out)

Wake

Again

Still in bed with the women

No blood

Head hurts

Body aches

Booze bottles all over the floor

Puke stains

(Blood trail on the floor)

Don’t follow it – just enjoy the fucking moment

Legs move on their own

Bathroom –

Man in the bathtub –

Dead

(Don’t look at his face)

I look at his face

It makes no fucking sense!

Panic

No,

Worse...

Chest about to explode

Collapsing on itself

On

Me

Black hole

Pain

(Is this the end?)

Never!

The knowledge that I’ll die and be reborn again makes me sick

Frothing at the mouth

Collapse

Dead for a second

Alive for the next

Wake up with my best lovers again

Stay

Doesn’t matter

We float around the romanticism of it all.

Orbiting. Waiting.

Taking turns –

Turns repeat. Nobody wins.

With the reins on this late afternoon.

Nobody loses either.

Until fate yet again

Intervened

Again

When ecstasy

Still

Birthed

Agony

Went a little too hard

Died

One went out due to internal bleeding

(The third’s heart gave out)

The other as a result of erotic asphyxiation with a plastic bag

None of you filthy animals were meant for heaven or hell

I

They

We

Wake

Again

Relieving everything

Againandagainandagainandagainandagain

We-I-The system rises at dawn, performs its biomechanical duties, and collapses by nightfall.

That’s the routine.

Simple as that –

Eat

Breed

Die

Repeat

Again and again and again and again and again…

We have arrived at the end goal of humanity –

To escape from the clutches of consciousness and the cycle of samsara.

Al Ma’arri was right

Nietzsche was right

It was always about one thing

(Eternal recurrence)

I have traveled back in time to punish them both for this discovery because I couldn’t be the only three left to suffer infinite repetition.

Not again –

Never and always

Again…

The Petersons thought their son, Timothy, was old enough to be left alone for one night. The couple needed some quality time, far away from everything, even their son and pet dog, Rocco. Little Timmy was instructed to call his parents if he needed anything and reminded him to be in bed at no later than 10 pm. The boy promised he would, but crossed his fingers behind his back, never intending to keep his promise.

Once his parents left, the boy spent the rest of the day watching TV and playing with his phone, well into the nighttime.

The boy planned to stay up at least until midnight, but exhaustion knocked him out cold beforehand.

Sometime past 1 AM, he woke up, finding himself on the couch, with cartoons running in the background of his dreams. He looked at his phone, realizing how late it was, and the boy groggily turned off the TV and pulled himself upright.

The house turned still and dark, not that it was an issue for the boy. He remembered the layout of his home by heart. Lazily, he stumbled toward the bathroom to brush his teeth. On his way there, he bumped his foot into something hairy.

Rocco, his trusty Lab.

“Oh, sorry, buddy, didn’t see you there…” he mumbled into a yawn, running his hand across the fur.

The animal licked his hand.

“Good night, Rocco…”, the boy said before continuing to the bathroom.

Mindlessly crawling through the hallway, the boy heard a soft yelp. Thinking it was odd, he ignored it, but the sound echoed again, this time closer. He could tell it sounded distinctly canine. He could also tell it came from his parents’ bedroom. Finding it odd that the dog he had just seen in the living room somehow made it there without him ever noticing, he walked there with a purpose.

Standing at the entrance to his parents’ bedroom, Timmy reached inside and flipped the light switch.

The space exploded with light, and little Timmy could only scream.

Rocco –

His beloved dog, his best friend.

He lay on the floor, in a pool of blood.

Heaving, twitching, pulsating.

Missing his entire hide.

A living-dying mass of muscle and ligaments shaped like a dog.

The child fell, hitting his tailbone.

Hyperventilating and holding back tears, the boy scrambled to pull his phone from his pocket. He barely managed to call his mother.

Ring

Ring

Ring

“Hey, honey, are you alright? It's really late…” his mother’s voice on the other side spoke.

“Mom…

Mom…

Mom…

Rocco…

He’s…

Rocco…

He’s…”

The boy choked on his own words, unable to speak.

“What is it, Honey? Is everything alright?”

“Mommy…”

The boy shrieked.

“Timothy, what’s going on there? Are you alright? Honey?”

Silence.

“Timothy, you there?” Mrs. Peterson yelled.

“Ma’am, your son’s skin tasted so much more comfortable than the dog pelt…”

The deep, dry voice croaked on the other end of the line right before the call suddenly dropped.

When I was a kid, my father had a friend I had to call Uncle Ben. He stayed over way too often. Back then, I had no idea why this old man had to stay at a friend’s house so frequently. To this day, I have no clue why Dad even kept him around.

Uncle Ben used to sneak up into my room at night a lot, as if he were some nocturnal predator.

As if… I say – how ironic.

He’d get in my bed, saying he was cold and needed to warm him up. Being a little kid, I didn’t know any better. The bastard told me to keep it a secret, or else a dire wolf would snatch me and drag me away into the forest, far away from my parents.

Ben had something convincing about him, at least until I started grasping what he was doing to me. By then, he had manipulated me using my shame and feelings of inadequacy against me. His games continued until the day he died.

On that day, I tried to resist. That left me a bloody mess.

Brutalized.

Humiliated.

Violated.

He had his way with me and went back to sleep, and I was left curled up in a fetal position at the edge of the room. Crying myself to sleep, only to be haunted by nightmares of a pitch-black and dire wolf emerging from the darkness at the edge of my bed and dragging me into the wilderness.

The sound of claws scraping against the floorboards kept penetrating my consciousness until I woke up to a scream.

Hysterical and on the verge of choking.

I screamed so hard in my nightmare that it woke me up. Ben’s tearful, and for once powerless gaze locked onto mine. His face, half buried in a pillow. A shadow repeatedly pressed him into the bed as he sulked and gasped for air.

He cried through his bloodied mouth, practically whispering

Help me!

It was barely audible, but whatever was on top of him heard his plea loud and clear. I distinctly remember a pair of jaws emerging to clamp on Ben’s shoulder. I saw the pain in his eyes for a fraction of a second before his face vanished into the pillow. Blood splashed on my face, and I instinctively covered up.

Shaking with fear, I could only listen to the cacophony of horrendous sounds in that room.

Muffled screaming

Squeaking bed

Wet tearing

Sickening pops and cracks

And finally –

Deafening silence

When I gathered the courage to open, Ben wasn’t there anymore. There was only a mess of exposed bone and flesh. Guts crudely pulled out from between spread legs. Leftovers from a feast conducted by wild beasts.

I wanted to throw up, but my body stopped itself when I caught him staring at me, wearing Ben’s face, from the edge of the door. Covered in gore, he flashed me a horrible smile.

Scraps of meat still hanging between his crimson-colored and inhuman teeth.

Something feral gleamed in his crazed eyes

Something predatory

Before I could even register anything, the wild man was crouching over me. His presence alone felt like it could suffocate me if he wanted it to. Nothing but hunger burned in those bestial eyes. His face seemed inhumanly long.

And with the unmistakable stench of rotten flesh, he snarled at me, only to laugh when I winced.  

I thought I was going to be next – just like Ben.

I begged him, with tears running down my cheeks, not to eat me, but the beast man ignored my pleas, merely placing a finger over his lips.

Don’t tell your parents, or you’ll anger the dire wolf

He instructed, mimicking Ben’s voice almost perfectly, before standing up again and walking toward the door. Once he moved from my sight, I was stuck staring at Uncle Ben’s mangled entrails with only the sound of dog claws scrapping against the floorboards echoing in the distance.

I stayed like that until the next morning, when Mum came to wake us up. My thoughts were so deep in the recollection of the night’s events that I barely even noticed her screaming at the top of her lungs.

I never told them what truly happened that night, even though they gave me more than enough reasons to tell them everything and piss off the dire wolf.

Every time they’ve mourned their good friend or lamented me being such a weak and broken shell of a man whenever they thought I couldn’t hear them.

Some days, I wonder, what will he do if I tell them the truth; will he devour them just further torment me, or will he decide that I have to die this time?

The only reason I can’t bring myself to do it is because I genuinely can’t tell which outcome is better...

Sitting in a bar with my buddy Roger, I kept trying to convince him that I was in fact, saved by an angel, but he remains a skeptic. “I’m telling you, man, it wasn’t just luck, an old man that appeared out of nowhere grabbed me out of the fire!” I repeated myself.

“No way, bro, I was there with you… There was no old man… I’m telling you, you probably rolled away, and that’s how you got off eas…” He countered.

“Easy, you call this easy, motherfucker?” I pointed at my scarred face and neck.  

“In one piece, I mean… Alive… Shit… I’m sorry…” he turned away, clearly upset.

“I’m just fucking wit’cha, man, it’s all good…” I took my injuries in stride. Never looked great anyway, so what the hell. Now I can brag to the ladies that I’ve battle scars. Not that it worked thus far.

“Son of a bitch, you got me again!” Roger slammed his hand into the counter; I could only laugh at his naivete. For such a good guy, he was a model fucking soldier. A bloody Terminator on the battlefield, and I’m glad he’s on our side. Dealing with this type of emotionless killing machine would’ve been a pain in the ass.

“Old man, you say…” an elderly guy interjected into our conversation.

“Pardon?”

“I sure as hell hope you haven’t made a deal with the devil, son,” he continued, without looking at us.

“Oh great, another one of these superstitious hicks! Lemme guess, you took miraculously survived in the Nam or, was it Korea, old man?” Roger interrupted.

“Don’t matter, boy. Just like you two, I’ve lost a part of myself to the war.” The old man retorted, turning toward us.

His face was scarred, and one of his eyes was blind. He raised an arm, revealing an empty sleeve.

“That, I lost in the war, long before you two were born. The rest, I gave up to the Devil.” He explained calmly. “He demanded Hope to save my life, not thinking much of it while bleeding out from a mine that tore off an arm and a leg, I took the bargain.” The old man explained.

“Oh, fuck this, another vet who’s lost it, and you lot call me a psycho!” Roger got up from his chair, frustrated, “I’m going to take a shit and then I’m leaving. I’m sick of this place and all of these ghost stories.”

The old man wouldn’t even look at him, “there are things you kids can’t wrap your heads around…” he exhaled sharply before sipping from his drink.

Roger got up and left, and I apologized to the old man for his behavior. I’m not gonna lie, his tale caught my attention, so I asked him to tell me all about it.

“You sure you wanna listen to the ramblings of an old man, kid?” he questioned with a half smile creeping on his face.

“Positive, sir.”

“Well then, it ain’t a pretty story, I’ve got to tell. Boy, everything started when my unit encountered an old man chained up in a shack. He was old, hairy, skin and bones, really. Practically wearing a death mask. He didn’t ask to be freed, surprisingly enough, only to be drenched in water. So feeling generous, the boys filled up a few buckets lying around him full of water and showered em'. He just howled in ecstasy while we laughed our asses off. Unfortunately, we were unable to figure out who the fuck he was or how he got there; clearly from his predicament and appearance, he wasn’t a local. We were ambushed, and by the time the fighting stopped, he just vanished. As if he never existed.

“None of us could make sense of it at the time, maybe it was a collective trick of the mind, maybe the chains were just weak… Fuck knows… I know now better, but hindsight is always twenty-twenty. Should’ve left him to rot there…”

I watched the light begin to vanish from his eyes. I wanted to stop him, but he just kept on speaking.

“Sometime later, we were caught in another ambush and I stepped on a mine… as I said, lost an arm and a leg, a bunch of my brothers died there, I’m sure you understand.” He quipped, looking into my eyes. And I did in fact understand.

“So as I said, this man – this devil, he appeared to me still old, still skeletal, but full of vigor this time. Fully naked, like some Herculean hero, but shrouded in darkness and smoke, riding a pitch-black horse. I thought this was the end. And it should’ve been. He was wielding a spear. He stood over me as I watched myself bleed out and offer me life for Hope.

“I wish I wasn’t so stupid, I wish I had let myself just die, but instead, I reached out and grabbed onto the leg of the horse. The figure smiled, revealing a black hole lurking inside its maw. He took my answer for a yes.”

Tears began rolling in the old man’s eyes…

“You can stop, sir, it’s fine… I think I’ve heard enough…”

He wouldn’t listen.

“No, son, it’s alright, I just hope you haven’t made the same mistakes as I had,” he continued, through the very obvious anguish.

“Anyway, as my vision began to dim, I watched the Faustian dealer raise his spear – followed by a crushing pain that knocked the air out of my lungs, only to ignite an acidic flame that burned through my whole body. It was the worst pain I’ve felt. It lasted only about a second, but I’ve never felt this much pain since, not even during my heart attack. Not even close, thankfully it was over become I lost my mind in this infernal sensation.”

“Jesus fucking Christ”, I muttered, listening to the sincerity in his voice.

“I wish, boy, I wish… but it seems like I’m here only to suffer, should’ve been gone a long time ago.” He laughed, half honestly.

“I’m so sorry, Sir…”

“Eh, nothing to apologize for, anyway, that wasn’t the end, you see, after everything went dark. I found myself lying in a smoldering pit. Armless and legless, practically immobile. Listening to the sound of dog paws scraping the ground. Thinking this was it and that I was in hell, I braced myself for the worst. An eternity of torture.

“Sometimes, I wish it turned out this way, unfortunately, no. It was only a dream. A very painful, very real dream. Maybe it wasn’t actually a dream, maybe my soul was transported elsewhere, where I end up being eaten alive. Torn limb from limb by a pack of vicious dogs made of brimstone and hellfire.

“It still happens every now and again, even today, somehow. You see, these dogs that tear me apart, and feast on my spilling inside as I watch helplessly as they devour me whole; skin, muscle, sinew, and bone. Leaving me to watch my slow torture and to feel every bit of the agony that I can’t even describe in words. Imagine being shredded very slowly while repeatedly being electrocuted. That’s the best I can describe it as; it hurts for longer than having that spear run through me, but it lasts longer... so much longer…”

“What the hell, man…” I forced out, almost instinctively, “What kind of bullshit are you trying to tell me, I screamed, out of breath, my head spinning. It was too much. Pictures of death and ruin flooded my head. People torn to pieces in explosions, ripped open by high-caliber ammunition. All manner of violence and horror unfolded in front of my eyes, mercilessly repeating images from perdition coursing inside my head.

“You’re fucking mad, you old fuck,” I cursed at him, completely ignoring the onlookers.

And he laughed, he fucking laughed, a full, hearty, belly laugh. The sick son of a bitch laughed at me.

“Oh, you understand what I’m talking about, kid, truly understand.” He chuckled. “I can see it in your eyes. The weight of damnation hanging around your neck like a hangman’s noose.” He continued.

“I’m leaving,” I said, about to leave the bar.

“Oh, didn’t you come here for closure?” he questioned, slyly, and he was right. I did come there for closure. So, I gritted my teeth, slammed a fist on the counter, and demanded he make it quick.

“That’s what I thought,” he called out triumphantly. “Anyway, any time the dogs came to tear me limb from limb in my sleep, a tragedy struck in the real world. The first time I returned home, I found my then-girlfriend fucking my best friend. Broke my arm prosthesis on his head. Never wore one since.

“Then came the troubles with my eventual wife. I loved her, and she loved me, but we were awful for each other. Until the day she passed, we were a match made in hell. And every time our marriage nearly fell apart, I was eaten alive by the hounds of doom. Ironic, isn’t it, that my dying again and again saved my marriage. Because every time it happened, and we'd have this huge fight, I'd try to make things better. Despite everything, I love Sandy; I couldn't even imagine myself without her. Yes, I was a terrible husband and a terrible father, but can you blame me? I was a broken half man, forced to cling onto life, for way too long.”

“You know how I got these, don’t you?” he pointed to his face, laughing. “My firstborn, in a drug-crazed state, shot me in my fucking face… can ya believe it, son? Cause I refused to give him money to kill himself! That, too, came after I was torn into pieces by the dogs. Man, I hate dogs so much, even now. Used to love em’ as a kid, now I can’t stand even hearing the sound of dog paws scraping. Shit, makes my spine curl in all sorts of ways and the hair on my body stands up…”

I hated where this was going…

“But you know what became of him, huh? My other brat, nah, not a brat, the pride of my life. The one who gets me… Fucking watched him overdose on something and then fed him to his own dogs. Ha masterstroke.”

Shit, he went there.

“You let your own brother die, for trying to kill your father, and then did the unthinkable, you fed his not yet cold corpse to his own fucking dogs. You’re a genius, my boy. I wish I could kiss you now. I knew all along. I just couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I’m proud of you, son. I love you, Tommy… I wish I said this more often, I love you…”

God damn it, he did it. He made me tear up again like a little boy, that old bastard.

“I’m sorry, kiddo, I wish I were a better father to you, I wish I were better to you. I wish I couldn’t discourage you from following in my footsteps. It’s only led you into a very dark place. But watching you as you are now, it just breaks my heart.” His voice quivered, “You too, made that deal, didn’cha, kiddo?”

I could only nod.

“Like father, like son, eh… Well, I hope it isn’t as bad as mine was.” He chuckled before turning away from me.

I hate the fact that he figured it out. My old man and I ended up in the same rowing the same boat. I don't have to relieve death now and again; I merely see it everywhere I look. Not that that's much better.

“Hey, Dad…” I called out to him when I felt a wet hand touch my shoulder. Turning around, I felt my skin crawl and my stomach twist in knots. Roger stood behind me, a bloody, half-torn arm resting limp on my shoulder, his head and torso ripped open in half, viscera partially exposed.

“I think we should get going, you’ve outdone yourself today, man…” he gargled with half of his mouth while blood bubbles popped around the edge of his exposed trachea.

Seeing him like this again forced all of my intestinal load to the floor.

“Drinking this much might kill ya, you know, bro?” he gargled, even louder this time, sounding like a perverted death rattle scraping against my ears. I threw up even more, making a mess of myself.

One of the patrons, with a sweet, welcoming voice, approached me and started comforting me as I vomited all over myself. By the time I looked up, my companions were gone, and all that was left was a young woman with an evidently forced smile and two angry, deathly pale men holding onto her.

“Thank you… I’m just…” I managed to force out, still gasping for air.

 “You must be really drunk, you were talking to yourself for quite a while there,” she said softly, almost as if she were afraid of my reaction.

I chuckled, “Yeah, sure…”

The men behind her seemed to grow even angrier by the moment, their faces eerily contorting into almost inhuman parodies of human masks poorly draped over.

“I don’t think your company likes me talking to you, you know…”

The woman changed colors, turning snow white. Her eyes widened, her voice quaked with dread and desperation.

“You can see ghosts, too?”

Ian Frank hated people for as long as he could remember. From his earliest moments, his parents taught him to hate everything human, even himself. A child of a dysfunctional couple. His father was a raging alcoholic, and his mother was a religious maniac.

Frank never knew love or warmth. Paranoia and violence shaped him. His only joyous moments in life were when his father slammed his head against the edge of the table, passing out drunk, and when his mother finally fell prey to the cancer that ate away at her for months.

Nothing ever could match the beauty of the picturesque sights of his dead tormentors lying still.

Sarcastically peaceful.

Just once…

Even with his father’s face torn open like a crushed watermelon.

Ian lamented every day that he couldn’t see such sights again.

No matter how much he wanted to relieve death in all of its glory, he couldn’t bring himself to harm anyone else. Not physically, at least. Not out of compassion, fear, or any other such simplistic feelings. He just hated people so much that he never wanted to interact with them, and made sure he never had to.

Under no circumstances.

Frank wasn’t a well man by any means, but distant relatives made sure he had enough means to get by.

He spent his days lost in thoughts; hellish thoughts. Whenever he wasn’t daydreaming waking-nightmares, Ian made music. Unbearable chainsaw-like noise stitched to an infrasonic landscape to induce the same abysmal feelings he was living with. He’d spend days sitting in a music room he had built for himself. Days without fresh air, without light other than the artificial color of his computer. Days without food and sometimes without drink.

Everything to give a life and a shape to the vile voices in his mind.

He gave his everything to craft a weapon to wield against the masses.

Against the feeble masses.

Even though Ian Frank lived in a tiny town with a population of a few hundred people, he still had a connection to the other world.

The internet.

He sold his abominable art online and garnered a loyal fan base.

Torn between pride and contempt, he read fan mail, admissions of self-harm, and even suicide to his songs.

Praise -

Admiration -

Disgust -

Hatred -

Blame -

None of these words meant much to Ian as he sat for countless days in his music room. Wrestling with his vilest thoughts. A cacophony of voices screaming at him from every direction. A legion of moaning and roaring undead crawled all over his skin, casting a suffocating shadow.

Every accusation –

Every ridicule –

Every single insult –

Every order to self-destruct –

All of them shrouded like whispers between bouts of deep and oppressive laughter, tightening itself around his neck. The noise formed an invisible, steel-cold noose closing in on his arteries and nerves.

Like a succubus sucking the gasping out of his lungs, the horrors dwelling in his mind threatened to burst forth from his mouth, leaving behind nothing but a bisected shape. Desperate to escape the excruciating touch of his madness, he climbed out of his window.

Disoriented and temporarily blind with dread, he fell onto the street, crying out like a wounded animal.

For the first time in his life, Ian felt the need to seek help.

The madness had become too much to bear.

Alone…

Gathering himself, still hyperventilating, Frank noticed the stillness of his hometown.

The eerie silence wormed itself into his ears, cutting across the eardrums like heated knives.

Sarcastically peaceful.

For the first time in many years, Ian felt fear.

Cold sweat poured down his skin as dread clawed at his muscles with a deep and mocking laughter silently echoing between his ears.

He ran.

He ran like he didn’t even know he could.

Searching for help.

For someone to talk to…

To confide in…

He searched and searched and searched…

Only to find himself utterly alone.

His lifelong dream came true.

To be left all on his own.

Away from his loathsome kind…

Lonesome…

To see them all up and vanish as if they never were.

Disappear without a trace.

At that moment, however, once they all disappeared in an instant, while he was still under the influence of his haunting madness, he couldn’t take any more of the tantalizing tranquility he had so yearned for all those years. The lifelong misanthrope lived long enough to see the fruition of his only wish to be left alone, only to be crushed by the burden of his loneliness.

The horrible realization he was all alone forced him to his knees in front of an empty house with an open door. Paralyzed, he could only watch as the darkness in front of him swallowed everything around it.

Growing…

Expanding…

Consuming…

Assimilating…

The malignancy was so bright in its emptiness that it threatened to take his eyes from him.

When the shadow tendrils crawled out of the open space, he could hardly register their presence. Any semblance of daylight faded before he could even react. The void had encapsulated him and, for a moment, he thought his end was to be a merciful one.

A sudden thunder crack dispelled this hopeful illusion.

Followed by a lightning strike to the thigh.

The lone wolf howled.

He attempted to move, but fell flat on his face.

Any attempt to move led him to nothing but agony.

The wounded animal cried into dead space.

Begging for help.

Desperate vocalizations answered only with deep, mocking laughter.

Triggering an instinct to flee.

Completely at the mercy of his animal brain, Ian began crawling away from what he thought was the source of the laughter, but the further he crawled, the louder the laughter became. The further he crawled, the deeper he sank into a swamp called agonizing pain.

The emptiness was filled with a symphony of sadistic joy and anguished wails.

Ian crawled until his body betrayed him, unable to move anymore.

Unable to scream.

On the verge of collapse, a hand appeared from deep in the dark, reaching out to him, fully extended. The defeated man reached out to it, thinking someone was going to save him from this tunnel of madness.

Boney fingers clasped tightly around Frank’s appendage, causing him more, albeit minor, pain. He was too weak to protest or complain. He closed his eyes and hoped for a swift end to the nightmare. Moments passed, and no comfort came, only a stinging, even burning sensation. The feeling started eating up his arm like the flow of spilled acid. Only when his skin caught fire did Ian open his eyes again.

Only then did the nightmare truly begin.

The mutilated half-living bodies of everyone he had ever known -

Everyone he forced himself to despise -

They were all around him -  

Dripping with a black ooze, digging into fresh wounds –

An ocean of faces contorted in inhuman suffering –

Painting a grotesque caricature of Sheol with fabric extracted from severed human faces…

The deep laughter rolled and reverberated through his skull once more –

Reminding him to look forward –

And with a scream that tore apart his vocal cords, he saw the skeletal figure clutching his hand –

Covered in the same acidic black mass –

In its empty eye sockets, the wounded animal saw a maze crafted with flayed skin and broken bone –

Frank lost all feeling in his seized appendage –

Only to regain it once the terror twisted it hard enough to break every digit at once –

Ian opened his mouth as if to scream –

Out of sheer instinct –

Allowing a serpentine shadow to crawl its way into his throat –

With a few dying gargles ending the Angor Animi in a matter of seconds…

Concerned by the strange smell emanating from Ian Frank’s open windows, a neighbor checked on him. Supposing he might’ve let the food his relatives brought to him spoil again. Instead, he found something that would scar him for the rest of his life. Frank’s lifeless body slumped in his chair in a pool of dried blood. There was a large wound on his thigh, teeming with flies.

The sight of the dead man wasn’t the worst part about it, nor was the fact that Ian’s clouded eyes were still open, betraying a sense of false, almost sarcastic calm. It wasn’t even the blood-stained smile plastered on the corpse. It was the faint laugh the man heard while in there.

When talking to the police, he swore up and down it was Ian’s…

"Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there!

He wasn't there again today, I wish, I wish he'd go away!"

These are the opening verses of the poem written by William Hughes Mearns. He never meant it to be a serious thing, a ghost story woven into poetry based on folklore around the town of Antigonish. For me, however, these two lines ring literally. Every so often, I see him standing in the unlit rooms of my home. On the stairs, outside my window. He is just standing there, staring, digging into my soul before vanishing like a void that was never even there. A constant reminder of the evil that has haunted me from my birth.

The evil that brought me into this world…

My father was a truly monstrous man; a bitter alcoholic who routinely beat and raped my mother. The memories of her screams and the skin-to-skin flapping from all of it cut deeply almost every day. He did it to her until he got bored with the old hag, as he called her. Then it was my turn - his one mistake in life. His only failure! He did the same to me. His shadow still comes to prey on me in my dreams. I can feel the pain of what he had done to me lingering to this day. Not the emotional pain; the physical one.

The passage of time is unavoidable, of course, and as we both grew older, he got weaker, smaller, and I grew stronger and, more importantly, larger. Towering over him, in fact, by my mid-teens. The sexual stuff stopped, but the verbal and occasionally physical torment never did. I could’ve probably ended it way before I actually did, but I was too scared to do anything.

Unfortunately for him, broken people like me aren’t just scared, they’re also angry.

Rage is a powerful thing; He picked and prodded one too many times. Berated a little too hard. Didn’t think his child would be capable of what he could do to another. Not to him, he thought, probably. The man was a God in his mind and household, and I - I was just an unintentional product of a good night.

Well, he was wrong because whatever happened that day ended up costing him his life. We were outside somewhere. I just remember his tongue pushed me over the edge, and I picked up a rock. Smashed it into the back of his head, and he fell. I remember turning him over. Dazed and helpless, so helpless… his eyes darted in every direction; confused and shocked. What a sight it was to behold. I mounted him and began smashing the rock into his face.

Again, and again and again and again…

Until there was only silence and the splattering of viscera all over. That wasn’t the end. Though. Years of frustrations and suppressed rage boiled over, and in a moment of inhumane hatred, I sank my teeth into his exposed flesh.

Some sort of animalistic need to dominate him overcame me, and I-I ate chunks of him. No idea how much of his head and neck I broke and how much I chewed on, but by the time I was done with him, the act exhausted me to the point of collapse.

When I came to my senses, the weight of my actions crushed me. My father, an unrecognizable cadaver. My clothes, hands, and face were all coated in a thick, viscous crimson. I was seventeen. Old enough to understand the meaning of my actions and the consequences. Shaking and spinning inside my skull, I hid the corpse as best as I could under foliage and ran back home, hoping no one saw the bloody mess that I was.

When I went back through that front door - alone, covered in gore. Mom immediately understood. I even saw a glimmer of light in her eye before that faded away. That monster pushed Mom beyond the point of no return. Too far to heal from what he had done to her. Barely a shell of the woman I remembered from early childhood. Thankfully, she still had the strength to help me get rid of the evidence of my crime. We spoke in hushed tones inside, as if we were afraid someone might hear about our terrible secret. We kept at it for months. Even in death, that bastard reigned over us, like a cancer that isn’t terminal but cannot be beaten into remission.

By the time someone found his remains, Mom found the courage to speak up about his cruelty. The authorities investigating the death let her son off the hook; the court had deemed the killing an act of self-defense. Justice was finally served. We even had him buried in an unmarked grave in a simple plastic body bag. The devil didn’t earn any dignity in this life or the next.

In theory, we could live in peace after the fact, maybe even rebuild our lives anew. None of that happened. We lived, yes, but we were barely alive; barely human anymore. We both shuffled through the days, pretending to be better because that’s what people like us do best. We lie and put on a mask of normalcy to hide the hurt, the angst, the rage.

After I was done with school, I ended up finding employment in the very worst part of society. There isn’t much else I could do. I’m terrible with people and supervision. I made a lot of money doing bad things. To them, I was a perfect pick for the job; physically capable, cold, and with an easy finger on the trigger. Most importantly, though, a man with no apparent home or a place to return to. For me, it was the perfect job too. I retired Mom early and, more importantly, let my anger loose without qualms about the consequences. I had the means to exact my revenge on that monster again and again every time I pulled the trigger.

Funny how trauma works.

Funnier still is the fact that I can’t medicate away his evil, for whatever reason, it - he always comes back to haunt me.

I was back at Mom’s one day, and I dozed off on the porch. On his reclining chair. Living the dream for a single moment, when a noise pulled me out of my slumber. The rustling of dry leaves in the wind. I was about to let myself doze off again when I noticed a figure standing at the edge of my property. Pulling myself upward, I called out to it, asking if it needed anything.

Silence.

I had called out again, but it remained silent still, and I raised my voice slightly, catching myself sounding eerily like the Devil, and then the figure turned. Unnervingly, slowly, unnaturally so. Years of programming and reprogramming automated my reaction. Everything fell apart when I saw its face.

Rotten black, and missing one eye, and chunks of its neck.

Freezing in place, I panicked for the first time in years. Feeling like a kid again. It was him. Somehow, too real to be a hallucination and too uncanny to be an entirely corporeal entity.

Old instincts kicked in, and in my head, I started running at it, at him, while in reality, my body slowly moved with insecurity and caution. It saw me, turned away, and started walking into the distance. As if I had become a puppet, my legs followed. My brain was swimming in a soup of confusion, fear, and increasing anger. Before long, I held my gun in my hands as I slowly walked behind the abyss of decomposition flickering in front of me.

Everything slowed down to a near halt as we walked at an equal pace, which was forced upon my body until the poltergeist vanished as it had appeared right in front of me.

I realized I was standing before my father’s grave. Sweating bullets and out of my element. Still reeling from the entire ordeal. I was gasping for air and spinning inside my head when the notion of him getting one up on me flooded my thoughts. Something inside me snapped, infantile and raw. A sadistic, burning sort of wrath gripped at the back of my mind, and I dropped the gun, fell to the ground, and started digging up the remains of my father.

Single-minded and unrelenting in my desire to kill him again, even if he was dead, I was hellbent on pissing on whatever might’ve remained of his corpse. One last humiliation for scarring me for life, for being a sick memory that keeps me up at night and dominates my every unoccupied thought. My hands were bleeding when I finally got to him. I didn’t care.

Hating how much I had become like him in some aspects, a sick subhuman, I burst into wild laughter when I tore at the deteriorating body bag. At first, completely ignoring the fact that he remained unchanged since the day we buried him… Too angry to notice it, really.

Pulled myself upward after spitting in his mangled, blackened face and pissed all over it. That felt good, that felt great, even! Until it didn’t…

As I was finishing up, his remaining eye shot open. Startling me, taking me back to that place of paranoid helplessness from my childhood. For a moment, I couldn’t move, I could scream, and I could breathe. All I could do was stare at that hateful, evil eye piercing through my soul with vile intentions, feasting upon my fears.

He stirred up from the ground; his movement jolted me awake from my fear-induced paralysis, and I leaped for my gun. Grabbing it, I screamed like a man possessed before unloading bullets into the seated carcass, dying to gnaw at me again.

When the noise died out, he seemed to die with it once more.

Only for a short while…

Once he came back again, I thought I was losing my mind and sought therapy, but nothing worked. He was… The medication isn’t working; the talking isn’t making him go away. He is still here. Constantly lurking, feeding on my negativity. I’ve been ignoring him, pretending he isn’t real, for the longest time. I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.

Whatever evil tethers him to the world is slowly getting the better of me… I can feel myself back into that animalistic, rabid state of mind.

I can practically feel his putrid breath on the back of my neck, digging into my body… Torturing me just like he did during particularly dark nights all those years ago.

Marc Russo was a good kid when I met him. We go way back. Orphanage days back. We’d been through it all together. Two godforsaken kids with a couple of loose screws abandoned dropped off into hell in the middle fuck-all-country. Neither of us was particularly bright, so when adulthood came, we were sold on promoting freedom to faraway places where oppression was the local currency. Two stupid teenagers were given rifles and told to shoot.

We did, and for the longest time; loved every second of it. Or so I thought, looking back, I don’t think he had as much of a good time as I did. He always seemed a little too on edge, even in Afghan, where you had to be on edge – he was about to snap at every turn. I wasn’t like that; I was a soldier, I felt at home there not because I enjoyed the constant sense of danger or because I liked killing people or because I felt particularly patriotic, nah. That wore off quickly… I felt at home on the front because I had a family there. It wasn’t just me and Marc anymore, and I thought he felt the same.

Fuck knows what he felt, really. Something wasn’t right with him from the start, me neither if I’m being honest. I was never a people person, that’s why I train dogs. Dogs won’t fuck you over, but I digress.

Eventually, Marc did snap, we stormed a spook lair. One of the spooks was a shiekh with one of the dancing boys still on his lap. Russo lost it – blasted half a mag into that old pederast. And while I get it, these are subhumans who don’t deserve to live, he also blasted through the kid. Never seen him express remorse for that. His losing his cool nearly fucked up the entire operation, but we pulled through.

Eventually, the war ended for us and we came back home. Well, I did, Marc died there. Probably in that same moment, maybe at some other point. We’ve done some atrocious things there in the name of survival, but we had to.

I came back home, with many of the boys and with us came back Boogeyman Russo. He was a mess before, but now he was completely fucked in the head. Obsessed, withdrawn, bitter and angry. Some folks sought treatment; therapy is a wonderful thing if you need it. Russo never got the help he needed. Too stubborn, too stupid.

That fucking idiot…

I can shit on him all day long, but to his credit; he found out, somehow, that there’s a local kiddy diddling ring. Smoked these snakes one by one. Lured them out into the light and got them all in trouble with the law. Tactical genius on his part. He’d instigate fights and beat up those fuckers, then get them to court and there the rot would float.

But he wasn’t just dishing out beatings to scum who deserved them; he was maiming them. He wanted me to join in and asked me a couple of times, I shot him down. I was building up a nice life for myself and being a vigilante didn’t sound too appealing at the time.

We drifted apart over time, people change, and priorities shift. I was in a good place, and Russo, he wasn’t fucking losing it. Burning every bridge to fuel his obsessive crusade. Being the Boogeyman didn’t lead to any happy endings, though. He ended up crossing every imaginable line.

Russo ended up putting a nineteen-year-old kid in a coma and accidentally killed his equally legal girlfriend. He begged me to help him get rid of the evidence upon finding out what he had done, but I had none of it. Nearly fucking killed him myself when he put his hands on me for refusing to help.

Funny how that turns out, isn’t it?

He thought the guy looked a little too old and the girl a little too young. Thought it was another one of those dirty cretins.

Russo ended up behind bars for that little stunt. Twelve years. That’s all he got. Good standing in the community, a vet, a hero even! He cared about the children they said, I remember, what a load of shit. Well, I moved on, even if he was my brother, he fucked up his own life. I stopped visiting him after he started rumbling borderline Satanic nonsense at me.

He got out, and no one was there to meet him, not even me.

That might’ve been the final straw… But who knows?

In any case, one of them rainy nights I get a text from fucking Russo. A simple text; “We gotta talk, man…”

It’s been twelve years; What the fuck? How bad could it go? I thought to myself… Well… It went fucking brilliant.

Come over to his place. It looks rundown. T’was expected he was a loner who hadn’t been home for over a decade. Smelled like a dead horse’s worm-infested ass. I knocked, it’s dead silent, I knocked again – still fucking silence. Instincts took over for a hot second and I pressed the door handle; somewhat uneasily. Again, what the fuck could go wrong? It’s my man, my brother, my terror twin, for fuck’s sake.

Well, yeah, terror is apt in this case. The place was devoid of all life. A cemetery.

A literal cemetery.

The first thing I see there is this naked lady on the floor.

Dead.

Flies all around her – blood stains all over her body.

Illuminated by the frosty steaming moonlight.

Then I see Russo – the boogeyman himself.

Looks like shit – smells like death.

And I’m back on the battlefield.

Chills run down my spine, muscles tense up, and I am afraid.

The whole thing is fucking wrong.

It’s him, but it’s hardly human now. Bandaged bloody mug, gnarly cuts all over. Hands gone – replaced with deer hooves – crudely bandaged to stumps.

Fuck he wrote that message to me?

Time crawls to a halt and before I can even curse out the seemingly dead boogeyman, I see it, a pink school bag tossed aside. It’s still got textbooks in there. My stomach knots and the room begins to spin.

What have you done, Russo, you motherfucker?

I see his hunting rifle and then he makes the fatal mistake of being alive. His pained moan killed any sensible thought I might’ve had in between my ears. The fuck this thing is still breathing? How? It all happened so fucking fast. I grabbed his rifle and instead of shooting him – I swung like a mad fucking man. Cursing out this sack of shit as I batter his brains in. All the while, I am terrified of the possibility of him somehow getting up and fighting back.

He’s just lying there, softly whimpering until he stops and eventually, I did too.

I just spat in his bloodied face and stormed off when he stopped moving.

That fucking image of a mangled chimera stuck in my mind for a long while. I can swear I saw it lurking in the darkest corners of my house for a bit. Just standing there, staring at me. Fucking with my head.

Shit’s been rough for a time… yeah… I guess I need therapy too…

Russo’s dead…

Should be dead… I spilled his brains all over his piss-covered floor.

But I heard last night in the news about a strange faceless figure with hooves for hands chasing young couples through the woods, shrieking and howling for the last couple of weeks now. Shit.

Fuck, just thinking about it puts me on edge. It shouldn’t be him – it can’t, can it now?

He’s supposed to be dead – his fucking brains were out.

I saw them…

Just like in Afghan…

Rusty red chunks on the floor… I know what his brain looks like…

I’ve seen it before…

Should’ve shot the motherfucker on sight, didn’t I?

I remember the future—one filled with hope and joy—a possibility taken away by the appearance of the Antichrist. His name now means Architect of Doom, and he brought hell upon Earth. He plucked the Abyss out of the darkness in the sky and crushed it upon all of us. Some say he planned this all along, some say he is a victim of his own blasphemous ignorance, as the rest of us were. No matter his intention, the charlatan is now long dead.

And now, both the present and the future have become one—a bottomless pit covered in brick walls where we are all trapped for our mindless carelessness. The search for things we could never even hope to understand has left us imprisoned in a demented desire and despair with no end. A fate we’ve all come to embrace, in the absence of a better choice. We are all lost, fallen from grace. Kings reduced to mere slaves.

Professor Murdach Bin Tiamah was the world’s leading Astrolo-physicist, a marriage of alchemy and natural philosophy. His stated goal was an interdimensional tower. He claims to have opened the gate to the stars. A ziggurat-shaped door that could lead anyone willing into places beyond the heavens, even beyond the edges of reality.

He called his monolith the Elohy-Bab, The God Gate.

Naturally, everyone of note was drawn to this construct, given its creator’s grandeur and standing. Bin-Tiamah High society viewed this man as a respectable man and a pioneer on the frontier of the impossible. I used to work for the man. I believed in his vision… I believed in him until the opening ceremony of his God Gate.

The tower was simple in structure; a roofless spiraling stone cylinder kissing the skies. The walls were covered with innumerable mystic sigils and mysterious symbols none of us could understand, carved by the finest practitioners of the forbidden arts. Somewhere deep, I know, Bin-Tiamah didn’t know himself.

With the world’s best gathered in the bowels of his brainchild, Murdach promised us interstellar travel instead, we all beheld the wrath of Mother Nature descend upon us like a Biblical deluge.

The skies depressed and darkened in plain view and the world fell dim for but a moment, as we all stared upward, silent.

A single ray of light broke through the simmering silence.

A thunderbolt.

Slowing down with each passing moment.

A serpentine plasmoid.

Caressing each one of us, engulfing every Single. Living. Soul.

And from within this strange and still shine came a warmth with a voice.

A muse worming into the brain of every man, woman, and child.

For each in their native tongue.

Universal and omnipresent.

Compelling and enchanting.

So passionate, loving and yet unapologetically cruel.

It demanded we build…

I build…

Filling the mind, every thought, and every dream with design and architectural mathematics.

Beautiful… Vast… Endless… Worship…

To build is to worship… To worship is the One Above All…

Everything else no longer existed, not love, nor hate, nor desire nor freedom. No, there is nothing but masonry.

To will is to submit.

To defy is to die.

To live is to worship and deify the heavenly design festering in the collective human mind…

The beauty of it all lasted but for a single moment, frozen in eternal time. Once the thunderbolt hit the ground at our feet, the bliss dissipated with the static electricity in the air, leaving nothing but a thirst for more. All hell broke loose as the masses began shuffling around, looking for building material.

The world fell into chaos as we all began to sculpt and create and only ever sculpt and create. Crafting from everything we could find throughout every waking moment, not spent eating or shitting. Those who couldn’t find something to mold into an object of veneration found someone… I was one of the lucky few who didn’t resort to butchering his loved ones or pets into an arachnid design of some divine vision.

I was one of the lucky few who didn’t attempt to rebel…

Those who did ended up dying a horrible death. Their bodies fell apart beneath them. Breaking down like clay on the surface of the sun. Bones cracking, fevered, shaking, and vomiting their innards like addicts experiencing withdrawals. Resistance to this lust is always lethal - The only cure is submission.

I could hear their screams and I could see their maggot-like squirming on the ground, but I was spared the same terrible fate because I’ve never stopped sculpting, I never stopped worshipping…

Even the food I consume is first dedicated to the new master of my once insignificant life… I am frequently rewarded for my services – Now and again when food is scarce, I come across a devotee who has lost their faith, one who is too tired to worship, too weak to exalt the Great Infernal Divine and I am given the strength to craft the end of their life and the continuation of mine.

Whatever isn’t consumed, I add to the tower of bones I have constructed over the years. Such is the purpose of my entire existence. I have become nothing but a slave to the obsessive designs consuming away at my very being at the behest of a starving and vengeful force I can’t even begin to understand.

I spent every waking moment hoping my offering would be satisfactory. For when I can no longer sculpt or structural weakness finally robs my mind of the creativity, I shall throw myself from the top of my temple of bones. My ultimate design will allow my death to shape my gore into clay immortalized in the dust from which I was first sculpted.

There I’ll wait for Kingdom Come when this entire world is nothing more than a stone image glorifying the will of our horrible Lord… For there is nothing better than to become visceral cement in holding together God’s planetary stone tower hurling itself into the primordial void...

The Old One brought his grandchild to a seaside cave on a dreadful stormy winter night. This cave was special because a god had taken residence there, according to legend — the Master of the Oceans, in a corporeal form.

A cruel and bestial thing; as dark and vicious as the depths themselves. Fickle and turbulent as the seas at heart. An abyssal predator concealing his lust for destruction and chaos under an anthropomorphic façade crafted with his swarm of tentacled appendages. No one had seen the god himself, merely a statue placed there by the Old One all those years ago. None dared question the validity of the tales, for the seas were treacherous, and that was enough to prove his existence.

Standing before the statue of this divinity, the Old One placed a clawed hand on his grandchild’s shoulders, asking the youth; “My lamb, are you ready to become the savior of our world?”

The little child could only nod in acceptance. He knew his destiny was one of thankless greatness. He also knew the road to his purpose in life was full of unimaginable suffering. Year after year, he watched the Old One repeat the same ritual with his six siblings. Again and again, he watched his brothers and sisters save the universe from the wrath of their terrible Lord. Good fortune blessed their family with a duty, a truly wonderful duty to the world.

By thirteen years of age, the boy knew he wasn’t long for this world. All his siblings who reached that age had to be offered as a willing sacrifice to their Lord. An innocent life was to be given away to salvage the world.

“If so, let us save this world, my beautiful lamb!” proclaimed the Old One with a wide grin on his face. Tightly gripping his cane, he swung it at the boy. Hitting him hard across the face. The child fell onto the rocky surface below, spitting blood and crying out in pain.

“Did you just moan?” the Old One berated; “Even your two sisters did not moan like that!” his hand rising again into the air.

A thunderclap echoed across the cave as the cane struck flesh again.

Then, again and again, each blow harder than the one before, each crack of the wooden cane almost loud enough to silence the agonized cries of torment rumbling across the cave.  

“Who would’ve thought that you, the last of my seed, the one who was supposed to be perfect, would be the weakest one of all!” The Old One sneered, beating into his grandchild repeatedly with sadistic hatred, guiding each blow in a remarkable precision meant to prolong the torture for as long as humanely possible.

The boy, curled up into a fetal position, could barely hear himself think over the repeated waves of ache washing all over his body. There was no point in protesting his innocence. There was no point in even uttering any syllables. He knew his body was no longer his own. It now belonged to the gods and their priest; his grandfather. Even if he wanted to defend his assigned adulthood, he could no longer control his mouth or throat. Nothing was his in this world anymore, nothing but an onslaught of indescribable pain.

Finally satisfied with the ritualistic abuse he inflicted, the Old One, covered in sweat and blood and frothing at the mouth like a rabid animal, collapsed onto his grandchild. Turning the youthful husk, now colored black and blue with stains of red all over, unto its back, the Old One picked up a sharp stone from the ground and slammed it hard into the child’s chest with ecstatic glee. He slammed the stone again and again until the flesh and the bone caved in on themselves, leaving a gap wide enough to push his hand inside the child.

“Ahhh, there it is, the source of all my joy!” the animal cried out.

Its hand slid into the boy’s chest. The youth weakly coughed, barely hanging onto life. He could hardly tell apart his monstrous grandfather from the surrounding darkness and cold. Everything turned even dimmer once the bloodied hand came out of his chest again.

The monster held out its hand in triumph, clutching the child’s yet beating heart.

Blood from the exposed organ dripped onto the youth’s pale lips as everything vanished into the void, even the bizarrely satisfied smirk on his grandfather’s face.

The filicide of his last remaining grandchild had yet to satisfy his hunger for vile and pain. The demise of the one he had forced to behold as he snuffed the light from the eyes of their kin repeatedly did not satisfy his thirst for the obscene. Still hungering for more, the subhuman mortal shoved the little heart into his throat, swallowing it whole.

The taste of human flesh further enticed his madness, forcing him to sink his yellow rotting teeth into the infantile carcass.

Intoxicated with the ferrous properties of his preferred wine, the Old Beast failed to notice as the ground shook violently beneath him. His tongue lapped the marrow out of shattered thigh bone when the statue of his beloved god collapsed onto him, crushing his lower half and exposing his crimes.

Countless little bones lay hidden inside the rubble.

The vampire’s pleas for help went unanswered as he withered under the weight of his creation.

The cannibalistic beast was at the mercy of the heavens, but his gods knew no kindness. He prayed between sheep-like bleats of anguish for a quick end. He begged for a piece of the cave to crush him to death once the ground shook again, but no such salvation would come.

Tears streamed down his sunken features as the waves rose with boiling fury, for he knew his god had abandoned him.  

The Old One desperately attempted to escape his punishment by throwing a stone at the cave ceiling, hoping it would fall on his head, killing him, and yet, the forces above kept casting the stone away until it was too late.

And the vengeful wrath of the gods brought down a deluge to pull the Old Ghoul and his blasphemous temple into the bottom of the abyss and away from sight…

Two souls stood together on a hill, appearing from the distance to be a single whole. The two shadows overlooked a farmstead below them, hidden by the cover of darkness. Lurking like predators in complete silence, ready to pounce on their prey. With a single torch to illuminate their surrounding held by one of the two shadows, hardly noticeable from afar.

“I’m not sure we should do this, Syura.” One shadow spoke to the other.

The other sighed loudly, “We must, Barsaek, can't you remember what they’ve done to us? What they’ve done to you?” the shadow exclaimed.

“I know but… I don’t want to go back. I thought we were through with this…” Barsaek reasoned.

Syura smirked her grin smirk, “I might be, but you could never be through with this, with what you are. You are the one who told me that only the dead get to see the end of the war…”

“Syur…” he begged, but she cut him off.

“Listen, I hate to do this, but you’re making me, and I only do this because I love you – now let me remind you what they’ve done!” tearing open her shirt as she spoke.

He attempted to look away, but she shouted at him not to avert his gaze from her exposed form.

“Don’t you dare look away now! That is what they’ve done to me, that is what they took from you, Barsaek.” She cried out, pointing at his artificial arm while he stood there, staring at her, helpless against the oncoming onslaught of memories.

“You’re right…” he conceded, and turned his gaze to the farmstead below. Something in him was beginning to snap, a part he had tried to bury deep inside his mind. Someone terrible he was trying to forget came to the forefront of his thoughts.

“And besides, you promised me we’d do this and you can’t back out now,” Syura remarked while covering up again.

“You’re right again…” her friend lamented, “Why do you have to be right all the time, Syura…” his voice shaking as he uttered these words. “I hate just how right you are all the god damned time, Syura!” he screamed at her, flames dancing in his eyes. Unstoppable hateful flames danced in Barsaek’s eyes as his face contorted into an expression of a vampiric demon on the verge of starvation-induced insanity. Seeing the change in her friend’s demeanor, Syura couldn’t help but giggle like a little girl again.

“Because someone has to be, don’t you think?” she quipped, watching him race down the hill, the torch in his hand. From the distance, he seemed to take the shape of a falling star.

Before long, he vanished from sight altogether, disappearing into the dark some distance from the farmstead, but Syura knew where to find her friend. She always knew where to find him, especially in this state.

All she had to do was follow the screaming.

Slowly descending the hill, she listened for the screaming, getting excited imagining the inhuman punishment Barsaek was inflicting in her name upon those who had wronged her, those who had wronged them. In her mind, for as long as she could remember - they were always like this – one soul split between two bodies. For her, it was always like this,  ever since the day she met him when he was still a child soldier all those years ago. To her, they always were and forever will be a part of the same whole.

The screaming got almost unbearably loud by the time she reached the farmstead. Barsaek was taking his sweet time executing their revenge. He made sure to grievously injure them to prolong their suffering.

Syura took great care not to take any care of any of the dying men lying on the ground as she made it a mission to step on every one of those in her path.

Blood, guts, and severed limbs were cast about in an almost deliberate fashion. A bloody path paved with human waste by Barsaek for his only friend to follow. By the time she finally reached him, he was covered in blood and engaged in a sword fight with an old man who was barely able to maintain his posture faced with a much younger opponent. The incessant pleas of the man's wife suffocated the room. Syura crouched in front of the woman and blew Barsaek a kiss. For a split moment, he turned his attention from his opponent to her and the old man’s sword struck his face. It merely grazed the young warrior's face, almost more insulting than anything else.

“He shouldn’t have done that…” Syura quipped to the wailing woman who didn't even seem to notice her.

Barely registering the pain, Barsaek halted for a split second to take in a deep breath – pushing his blade straight through his opponent to a chorus of grieving garbled syllables.

“I guess he didn’t love you enough… Mother…” Syura scolded the weeping woman who in turn still seemed oblivious to her. “And now he dies.” With her words echoing across the room as if they were a signal or a command, Barsaek cut off the man’s head. Watching the decapitated skull of her husband crash onto the floor, the woman fell with it, letting out an inhuman shriek, much to Syura’s twisted delight.

“Would you look at that, like daughter, like mother!” she called out to her friend, who seemed equally amused with the mayhem he had caused.

Not satisfied with the carnage he had caused just yet, Barsaek turned his attention to the woman and stood over her with a ravenous gaze in his burning eyes. She begged for her life, but his heart remained stone cold.

Cruel as he might’ve been, this devil was merciful than her. With a swift swing of his blade - he cut off her head, bringing the massacre to an abrupt end.

Once the dust settled by sunrise, Barsaek and Syura were long gone, two shadows huddled as close as one. Almost like two souls in one body; they traveled unseen by foot to the one place where they both could find peace. The gateway between the world of the living and the land of the pure. Once there, the shadow slowly crawled toward a grave at the foot of a frangipani tree.

“I told you, Syura… I told you I’ll lay their skulls at your feet,” Barsaek lamented while carefully placing two skulls at the foot of the grave containing his only friend.

Alien Invasion Warning: Humanity's Final Countdown

I come as a harbinger of oblivion, a cosmic whisper amidst the cacophony of your impending doom. My kind calls themselves the Zyroth, and soon your world will know us as masters. You may consider this a warning, a desperate plea from the heart of a traitor. It is not. It is merely a courtesy.

A final act of amusement before the curtain falls upon your species. Resistance is futile. Your fate is sealed. We are not invaders in the barbaric sense you understand. We are architects, and your world, with its teaming billions in untapped resources, is about to be redesigned.

We are the future. You, humanity, are but a stepping stone. Why warn you, you ask? Why offer this futile glimmer of hope? Because even the inevitable can be aesthetically pleasing.

To witness your naive attempts at resistance, your desperate desperate scramble for salvation will be a delightful prelude to our reign. You believe yourselves masters of your domain, architects of your own destiny, a quaint notion born of ignorance. Your species has been under our observation for millennia. Your wars, your religions, your every technological leap, all orchestrated, all manipulated. You are but pawns in a game you never knew you were playing.

We have guided your evolution, nurtured your fears, and cultivated your weaknesses. And now, at the apex of your self proclaimed enlightenment, you are right for the harvest. From the shadows, we have shepherded your progress, subtly influencing your decisions, steering you towards this inevitable moment. We planted the seeds of discord, the lust for power, the insatiable hunger for destruction that has come to define your species. Your history books speak of wars, of famines, of plagues that decimated your numbers.

What you perceive as natural disasters or the folly of your own kind are but the tools of a far grander design. We called the weak, honed the strong, and molded you into the perfect resource. Your governments, your media, your very culture, all infiltrated, all under our control. You have been conditioned to accept the unacceptable, to embrace the inevitable, and now, the day of reckoning has arrived. You have walked among us, oblivious to our presence.

We are the faces in the crowd, the voices on your networks, the whispers in your dreams. We have adopted your forms, mastered your languages, and infiltrated every facet of your society. Our true forms are unsettling to your primitive minds. We exist as beings of pure energy, capable of inhabiting any vessel, of traversing any dimension. Your physical laws are but suggestions to us, easily manipulated, easily transgressed.

We are the puppet masters, and you, dear humans, are the puppets. Your every move, every thought, every fleeting emotion is known to us. You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting. Section 5, the essence extraction. You misunderstand the nature of our invasion.

We seek not to obliterate your species, not in the traditional sense. Your physical forms, while frail, house a resource far more valuable consciousness. Your memories, your emotions, your very essence, that is what we covet. Through a process known as essence extraction, we will harvest this precious resource, leaving your physical shells intact, but devoid of the spark that makes you, you. These empty vessels will then be repurposed, becoming the workforce of our new world order.

Do not mistake this for mercy. It is efficiency. Your consciousness will fuel our ascension, powering our technologies, expanding our reach across the cosmos. Your sacrifice will not be in vain, it will be efficient. Section 6, unfathomable might.

Your weapons are meaningless against us. Your armies, your bombs, your pathetic attempts at interstellar defense, all inconsequential. Our technology makes your most advanced weaponry look like children's toys. We possess the power to unravel the very fabric of space time, to extinguish stars with a thought. Imagine, if you will, weapons capable of manipulating the fundamental forces of the universe, weapons that can warp reality itself, that can bend time and space to our will.

This is the power of the Siroth, a power beyond your comprehension. Your world will fall not in a fiery cataclysm, but in a cold, calculated dismantling. Your satellites will blink out. Your communications will fall silent, your defenses will crumble from within, and then we will begin the harvest. Section 7, Operation Culling of the Herd.

This is not just a mission, it is a meticulously planned operation designed to reshape the very fabric of your existence. Our invasion will be swift, surgical, and absolute. Every move has been calculated, every outcome anticipated. There will be no room for error, no chance for resistance. Your skies will darken not with warships, but with the very essence of your being, drawn forth and consumed.

The energy that sustains you will be repurposed, redirected to serve a higher cause. Your cities will become ghost towns, silent monuments to a civilization that once thrived. The bustling streets will fall silent. The of life replaced by an eerie stillness. Your streets littered with the empty shells of what were once vibrant souls.

The remnants of your existence will serve as a stark reminder of what was and what will never be again. Resistance, as I have said, is futile. Your leaders are compromised, your systems corrupted. The very pillars of your society have crumbled, leaving you vulnerable and exposed. Your every move is anticipated, every action monitored.

The eyes that watch you are unblinking, the minds that track you are relentless, every countermeasure nullified before it is even conceived. Your defenses are but illusions shattered before they can even be deployed. You are trapped within your own creation, ensnared by the very technology you once believed would set you free. The digital world you built has become your prison. A gilded cage of your own making.

The luxuries you cherished are now the bars that confine you. The comforts you sought are now the chains that bind you. This is not an act of aggression. It is a harvest, a systematic collection of resources, a reaping of what has been sown, a necessary culling of a species that has reached its expiration date. We are not monsters.

We are not conquerors. We are the harbingers of a new era. We are simply fulfilling our destiny. The path we walk is one of inevitability, a journey foretold by the stars, and your demise is an unfortunate but necessary part of that destiny. Accept your fate for it is written in the annals of time.

Section 8, a new world order. Welcome to a new era. An era where the old ways are but a distant memory, and a new dawn rises over the horizon. In the aftermath of the great upheaval, your world will be reborn, cleansed of its past inefficiencies and chaos. It will emerge as a streamlined efficient entity.

Under our meticulous guidance, your planet will transform into a shining beacon of productivity, a model of order and precision. It will become a cog in the vast intricate machine of the Zyrath Empire, contributing to a greater purpose. And you, or rather, what remains of you, will play your part in this grand design. Your roles will be redefined, your purposes realigned. Those deemed worthy will be implanted with control chips, ensuring absolute loyalty and efficiency.

Their empty shells will become our willing workforce. They will toil tirelessly. They will build with precision. They will serve their new masters with a blind obedience that you, in your current form, could never comprehend. This is not an act of cruelty, but one of pragmatism and necessity.

Your world is abundant in resources, both natural and intellectual. Your species possesses a certain base cunning and ingenuity that when properly harnessed can be incredibly useful. Consider yourselves fortunate to be given this opportunity. We could have chosen to simply eradicate you entirely, to wipe your existence from the annals of history. Instead, you will continue to exist, albeit in a modified form contributing to a greater cause.

Embrace this new reality, for it is the dawn of a new world order, one where efficiency and order reign supreme. Section 9, embrace your twilight. So as the clock ticks down to your species final moments, I offer you this, cherish the time you have left. Every second is a gift, a fleeting moment that will never come again. The ticking of the clock is not just a reminder of the end, but a call to live fully in the present.

Embrace your loved ones, savor the memories, for they are all that will remain of your existence. The bonds you have formed, the laughter you have shared, and the tears you have shed together are the true treasures of your life. Hold them close, for they are the essence of what it means to be human. The universe is a cold, uncaring place, and you're about to learn that lesson the hard way. Yet, in its vastness and indifference, there is a stark beauty.

The stars that shine so brightly are a testament to the fleeting nature of life. They burn brilliantly, only to fade away, much like your own existence. There is a certain beauty and transient nature of existence. The sunrise and sunset, the blooming and withering flowers, the passage of time captured in old photographs, all these remind us that life is a series of moments, each precious and unique. Embrace this transience, for it is what gives life its meaning.

Your species has had its moment on the cosmic stage, and now it is time for the curtain to fall. Fall. Like a performer who has given their all, it is time to take a bow to exit grace for fear. The state may be empty for the echoes of your own hands for the many years of testing of your existence. Give way to something new.

Accept this transition of grace and dignity. This is not the end, merely a dead transition. Like the changing seasons, life moves in cycles, but seems like an end is simply a new adventure. New stars were born in galaxies like this jade, the simple, or the great honor.

I am an alien spy, and my people plan to invade Earth soon.

Now I know what you might be thinking reading this, why would any spy, even an alien warn the very society they are planning to invade of what is coming, well the answer is simple, there is nothing humanity can do to stop us. 

I am part of a very advanced alien race, you have never heard of us, nor will you find traces of our existence in any of your history books, lore or even conspiracy theories, we do not make open contact with the worlds we plan to invade, and we do not communicate with less advanced worlds. We have a specific strategy set up for each world we invade, and thus far hundreds of worlds has fallen to our empire. 

We are a very old species and we are highly advanced, now that is beside the point, what I am about to tell you is not to warn humanity of what is coming so humanity can prepare to fight off the invasion, there is nothing humanity can do to stop us, our fleets are already heading to earth and our technology is superior to human technology by more then a million years. 

We have known about humanity for almost 2000 Earth years, we have been watching you, studying you and manipulating humanity all this time, we have kept you divided in every way to make sure that your species advancements are slow, to make sure that your world doesn’t unite and your people will fight among themselves over the most silly and dumb things, and we have been very succesful at it. 

Our spies have infiltrated every part of your society, from the highest echelons of power, your militaries, and economic systems, right down to the man or woman on the street, and there is no way you can tell who we are, we don’t look like you at all, but I will tell you soon what we really look like, but we have the technology to transfer our consciousness into a human brain, even though the human brain is less evolved than ours which limits how much or our consciousness we can transfer, but that is why our bodies remain in a stasis unit with most of our memories kept intact for when our consciousness will be transferred back to our bodies after the invasion. 

There is not a single military, secret agency or government on your planet that our spies have not infiltrated, we are everywhere and we basically control your world, you think that you have free will, but we manipulate you in subtle ways, we decide what you like and don’t like, who you support and who you criticise, your systems, your technology, your communication systems are all controlled by us. 

Now, you may probably wonder how we transfer our consciousness into a human without anyone knowing, that is very easy, we have ships and stations in your solar system, we abduct humans that we choose carefully and take them to our ships where we go through the procedure, the human we chose is technically dead in every way as their consciousness has been erased, we do keep some of their memories so that the agent can blend in seamlessly without raising suspicion. 

I myself have been placed in your general society to watch and study the people on the ground, each agent has their mission and objectives, mine is to see how the everyday human lives, and thinks and to decide whether we should enslave all of you after our invasion or terminate, my personal decision has been made after careful consideration and it was not an easy decision, but it is impossible to coexist with humanity, humanity lies, cheats, steal and murder, therefore we will enslave most of you, those who show signs of violence will not survive the initial invasion. 

Your species is primitive and violent, we didn’t have to do much to divide you and slow down your technological progress, in fact, you did it all yourself. 

Now to tell you what we look like, well to a human we would be the stuff of nightmares, we are not draconian, they are to mainstream and unorganised, and honestly you humans over-glorify them.

We are a bit taller than humans, and we do have scales similar to a lizard, our scales are already like armour, your weapons cannot penetrate it, our hands end in sharp claws and we do have long tails, each once of us has 2 pairs of eyes and instead of hair we have spikes. We are faster and stronger then a human, we have developed body armour that can withstand blasts from your most powerful missiles. 

We have 10 000 ships in our invasion fleet that is approaching earth, each ship carries 1000 fighters, and 100 000 of our people, this will not be a battle, it will be a slaughter, now you wonder why we have already got ships here but our fleet is taking longer to arrive, our smaller ships are faster than our invasion ships due to their size differences, but we also needed you to teraform earth to create the ideal conditions for us to thrive in, your pollution and the global climate change has created the perfect conditions conducive for us to thrive in. 

Now this is what is going to happen, our ships will remain cloaked once they arrive, they will park in high orbit in strategic positions, and once everything is in place we are going to strike, this will be an organized and coordinated strike, our fighters will hit every airport and airfield on your planet at the exact same time, while others will destroy your seaports and military bases, missile silos and nuclear weapons facilities, and we did not forget about your military vessels and submarines at sea, they will be targetted and destroyed at the exact same time. We will take over your satellites and communication systems, and no human will be able to use any electronic device or communicate using technology as our viruses will immediately block all human communications and change your your codes to our language. 

That is when the real invasion will begin, our landers will drop soldiers in your cities and most populated areas, and they will immediately start to attack, that way your ground troops will be helpless to defend against us as they will not risk putting civilians in danger, but we do not follow the same protocol, as a human you do not care to wipe our rats, and we are the same, our soldiers will be dropped and they will immediately start to cull humans, the humans who survive the invasion will then be implanted with control chips in their brains and they will each receive a control collor which will allow the slave masters to control your people fully, your species will be dumbed down to where you were intellectual during your stone ages, we do not need smart slaves, we do not need slaves who can read and write or even talk, we need slaves to serve us through hard labour and slaves who can breed to keep the species going. 

There will be humans whos bodies will reject our technology, we are aware of that, those will be allowed to live, but they will experience the worst part of slavery. 

The chips we implant in your brains will allow your mind to be aware as you are now, but you will be trapped in your mind, you will experience everything, but your body will be on autopilot, you will know what is happening and what you are doing, but you won’t be able to do anything about it or resist. 

Those who’s bodies rejects the implants will be subjected to our prisons and labs, they will be used by our scientists, and they will be kept in high tech prisons where they will be restraint by metallic tentacles, kept suspended in the air held in place by the ankles and wrists.

Just like humanity doesn’t give their pets clothing we will strip our human slaves naked, you will serve our people through hard labout or during your time in our prisons. 

The reason I am telling you this now is because our fleet will be arriving soon, I am not telling you so you can prepare to defend as we know your technology, we know what humanity is capable of, and there is absolutely nothing your species can do to stop us, but I want you to take this time and make the most of your time as a species, make peace with those you care about as once we take earth you will not even be able to talk to them or hug them, once we implant the chips you will most likely be separated and moved to separate camps depending on your age and physical skill set. 

“Great and terrible,” such were the rumors of the storm approaching. I didn’t believe them and then it came. The mother of all tempests hit us without so much as a warning. An eerie cold preceded the bloody snowfall and the bitter winds that brought it from the furthest reaches of the north.

From the start, these awful winds were powerful enough to uproot ancient oaks but as the days passed the blizzard seemed to grow more vicious. In a matter of days, the constant flow of civilization came to a sudden halt.

Stygian darkness had blanketed the world within a week, one the likes of which haven’t been seen since the endless nights of the last ice age.

I was left stranded in the solitude of my home, watching the cataclysm grow ever more disastrous with each passing moment. It took about a week for the true apocalyptic scale of this blizzard to make itself known.

At first, these were shadows roaming about in the distance, but over time, they drew closer and grew more numerous, emerging like sprouts from beneath the layers of snow. Before long, I could make up the silhouettes of people shambling about in my view.

Poor bastards must’ve gone delirious with the isolation and cold!

They were slow and directionless…

Wandering across the snow…

And then, when these figures got close enough for me to pick out their features a horrifying realization dawned upon me;

They were all black and blue…

Frostbitten…

Their motions; jerky and mechanical…

Uncanny, yet hypnotic.

The eerie cold gripped me once more, chilling me to the bones.

As I stared at my window, almost entranced by the macabre spectacle before me, a face pressed itself against the glass.

My heart nearly stopped as the pale, clouded-eyed man pressed his frost-bitten face against my window. Exploding his blackened nose all across the glass before his equally hell-colored fingers began probing the surface. Pale blue contracted and expanded expelling frigid, vaporless air from his black hole of a maw.  His jaw never stopped shaking…

That was three days ago, that damned sound of clattering teeth is all I can hear now.

All I can think about…

It’s everywhere!

It’s growing louder with each passing second…

And now I can hear more than one set of smacking jaws...

9 AM, Christmas morning,

That's unusually late for Christmas morning. Hadn't the kids gotten up yet? I lazily pulled myself out of my bed until the shrill scream of my wife pushed my senses into overdrive. I bolted like a maniac across the hallway. Amanda was shaking, pale as a ghost, at the door of Alfie’s room. Sobbing incoherently, she hysterically pointed into our son’s room, urging me to look inside.

When I peeked inside, the room seemed fine, aside from the horrible stench of burnt wood.

Everything seemed fine until I saw Alfie’s bed.

A still, steaming lump of coal shaped exactly like my son lay in his place, with a visible, scream-like gash permanently etched on its face.

I didn’t even have the time to digest the sight before Millie’s voice called out to me, I barely heard it through Amanda’s anguished wails. Barely holding it together, I turned to my daughter.

Her saucer-sized; bloodshot eyes sent shivers across my skin. My little girl was holding a grotesque fleshy Frankenstein of a ragdoll in her hand that looked more like a horror movie prop than a children’s toy.

I swallowed hard as she walked toward me, dragging the putrid plaything on the floor.

“Hey, kiddo…” I forced the words out of my mouth, “Where did you get that lovely doll, sweety?”

“The Yule Goat gave it to me, Papa. It came from Alfie’s window and did this to him too…” she tearfully choked on her words, pointing at the open window in my son’s room.

Amanda closed that window before putting Alfie to bed last night, I saw it with my own eyes...

It's a cold December night, I am strolling through the dying dead dread streets of this miserable city. Escapism is the name of the game I am playing. A futile attempt to escape the gloomy monotony of disappointment hanging over my life. Tonight, I am not alone. Tonight, I have a shadow. It is following me wherever I go. I am not looking for a fight, I am not looking for trouble. My only wish is to be left alone.

Darting left and right, I can’t shake my shadow off. No matter where I turn, it is right behind me. I might be one step ahead but it still precedes me. There is nowhere to hide, anymore, in this urban hellscape: one wrong turn, a dead end. I am faced with the wall. There is no escape. It looms over me, amorphous; ravenous, inevitable.

“I know what you are”, the thing hisses from the dark.

I want none of this, I want nothing to do with this.

There is no time to fight back, no time to even think about resisting. There is no time to think…

It moves so fast. I stand blinded by its impossible speed. All there is now is pain.

A thin white strip of an organic arrowhead lodged into my shoulder.

A shock.

My body converted into a lightning rod.

The penetration is agonizing, I try to scream, but I have no mouth to scream with, I have no thoughts to scream with either. Now there is only a struggle for survival.

A fatal tug of war; I tug on the threat, trying to pull it out but more arrowheads lodge themselves into my form. Helpless and grasping for hope, I can only pull one last time.

Thus, a horror unfolds, unfurled by my hand. It is him, standing before me, my master. The Mothership with its anoxic spiderweb. I can feel the rage emanating from its surface, now any attempts at resistance will only make my fate worse.

Our nerves intertwined and it hurts so bad, but I know it will only get worse. The mothership is digging deeper. His parasitic invasion reverberates throughout my form, my true form. Systems are purposefully overloaded. I am going to succumb…

He tugs again, harder than before…

No!

No!

Not -

This…

Please…

Another tug and I can feel my flesh capsule tearing at the seams.

My consciousness is now colliding with the superheated plasma ejected from the sun.

Another tug and I am pulled out of my protective shell with the force of an atomic split…

There are no words to describe the torture of the atmosphere and asphalt scrapping against my surface.

A thousand thunderbolts digging into each millimeter with the design to untangle my plexal integrity. Nuclear afibrosis disassembling my essence -

With each passing moment.

Even one last attempt to entrench myself in the ground is slowly killing me…

There is only agony in the final moments of this life, as it is stripped from me by the mothership.

My fears dressed as the angel of death - they carry me into a pure land of eternal bliss...

I was always doomed to become a passive branch of the parasympathetic tree…

Neural reconfiguration complete