20141031

Day 180

How long have you not been you?
When did the changes start?
Was it around the time everyone else started changing or have you always not been you?

As far as you knew it began when your mother came home with different hair.
She said it had always been like that.
All of the family photos agreed with this.
But you could swear this was new.

You began to notice other changes too.
Eye colour, size of nose - eventually your mother's face resembled a stranger.
Strangers began to look increasingly familiar somehow.

Eventually everyone had changed faces.
Their personalities didn't seem to change, nor did their bodies.
Just their faces.

Yours hadn't changed yet.
Everything was th - had that mole always been there?
Come to think of it, how long has it been since you dyed your hair?
Seems all the dye has run off and you've gone back to your natural colour.
You've always been brunette, right?

Right?


20141030

Day 179

There were emergency doors all over the town.
Huge, red, heavily reinforced and always bolted shut.
Nobody quite knew why they were there.

You couldn't access them from the buildings or
pavements they were built into.
The keys to them were only rumoured to exist.

Sometimes people in suits were escorted through an
emergency door.
You can guess they were never heard from again.

I heard that if you go to a certain door in the road
behind the town hall and listen for long enough
you can make out voices.

Apparently they talk about the town's water supply,
seems they've been putting something in it.
Of course, nobody quite believes this.

They don't call it a lie though.

The last person who tried to test the water went
down an emergency door soon after.

A friend of mine claims she saw one of the doors
left wide open.
It was one of the pavement ones.

She dropped a penny down and never heard it hit the bottom.
Shining her phone's torchlight in she saw a ladder.
The rungs were sticky and rusted so she couldn't go down.

As she turned away a voice from behind her clearly said
"whatever you do don't drink the water".
Nothing was behind her but the open door.

Needless to say we've stopped using the water.
Buying bottles online works out surprisingly cheap!

The only thing is,since we stopped, we've noticed more open doors.
Its getting to the point where as we walk down the street they will open.
Nobody else notices or believes us.

Just what is in the water?

20141029

Day 178

"Welcome to our room!

As we walk in you'll see why you had to give a blood sample beforehand.
Its where we store everything people need to find.
This aisle we're in is for lost children trying to find their families.
As you can see, its one of our larger aisles.

The aisle you're looking for is one of our lesser used ones - bodies.

Here you'll find her body.
What's left of it anyway.
I mean, its been five years now.

You really took your time didn't you?

Oh I see, you were waiting for the investigation to die out.
Well here she is.

Now remember, you have half an hour to note down the coordinates.
Don't wander about or you'll end up in our aisle of missing persons or worse.

Don't take anything else."

---

He thought about these terms as the attendant wandered off to tend to the next in line.
How did they know about - -he stopped that train of thought and focused on the
task at hand.

The remains of her body lay there in a metal box.
Just as he'd left her, only here somehow and not in the pit he'd dug and filled
with animal carcasses to throw off any sniffer dogs.
It had worked,or so he thought yet when he went back on the fifth anniversary of her
untimely demise the pit had been reopened and she was gone.

A week or so later he received a letter with the geographical coordinates to a place 
called UCL.
When he arrived a month later (this place was hard to find!) he found it stood for
the Universal Collective of the Lost.

As ridiculous as it sounded, they had the evidence of his crime and he needed that box.

He wondered what other damning evidence they had.

Peering around the corner or "his" aisle (full of miscellaneous items he'd lost like keys)
he saw someone very familiar.
He'd seen them on TV multiple times, they were quite the famous politician.
they were also clutching a folder, face white as a linen sheet.

If he could distract them and grab that folder, he could be rich!

Throwing an old pair of nail clippers he managed to frighten the already nervous person
and they fled, dropping the folder's contents in their haste.

The second he stepped into that aisle everything went black.

He awoke in a glass container, like a giant Barbie case.
Squinting through the front he saw countless other people, the number of cases seemed to
stretch on forever.

The attendant walked past him with a middle aged woman.
He caught the tail end of their conversation.

"...many people are lost and we're caring enough to bring them all to one safe place.
The one you're looking for sadly expired, they only last two weeks in these storage cells.
Oh don't cry, we can restore them... for a price."

What can you stand to lose?

20141028

Day 177

Traffic jams happen a lot around my area.
I liked to amuse myself by observing other people with
small cameras hidden all over the exterior of my car.

The controls were simple enough, I made an app for it.
So last Thursday when I was doing this everyone was doing
all kinds of weird stuff.

Like there was this middle aged woman left of me sharpening
knives in her front seat.
She had one of those rubber-looking blocks and was, almost
obsessively, filing the blades to a fine point.

To my right was a group of teens eating some kind of raw
meat with their bare hands.
The blood had drenched their faces and was running down
their arms in rivers.
I'd never seen anyone eat so aggressively.

In front of me was a family, the kids in the back seats were
waving frantically at me.
When they had my attention they reached into the boot of
their vehicle and dragged up a headless corpse.
They then dropped it and their family got out of the car and
headed for the gas station across the road.
The littlest girl was carrying a very full backpack.

I was pretty shaken by this point, tried to call the police but
my damned phone had no signal.
Stupid thing was always on the fritz when I needed it most.

As the family came back, they entered from behind my car.
I noticed the girl's backpack was now empty.
They turned around again when they got back into their seats.
They were laughing and pointing at me and the boot of their car.

I decided to ignore them and look in my rear camera via my phone.
The guy behind was reading the paper, he looked the most normal
out of everyone around me.

It was quite relieving until I saw the headline on his newspaper
change.

Everything vanished from the cover and end of the paper as a new,
large message appeared.

Check your reverse.

I assumed it meant my reverse camera so, while the handbrake
was still on, I switched the car into reverse.

There, in full view of the reverse cam, I saw the missing head.

On his face, in blood, was a child's handprint.

20141027

Day 176

We used to light nine candles once a week.
We've done it for as long as I can remember.
Even when I moved out I still light them.

Three weeks ago I decided to gradually stop, just to see what would happen.

The first week I only lit eight.
My mother phoned and said my great-aunt died.
For the rest of the week I saw at least one dead animal each day.
Eight in total.

At the time it was just a coincidence.

The next week I only lit seven.
I saw a co-worker in a horrific car crash just outside the office.
That week my neighbour's cat left me a dead bird each day, fresh and bloody.
Seven in total.

I was too shaken up my my co-worker's death to spot the link.

The third week - last week - I lit six candles.
My mother was found beheaded in her car.
That week a child was killed each day.
Beheaded.

I've gone back to lighting nine candles.
It hasn't stopped anything.

20141026

Day 175

There is nothing so worrying as the sight of a small child where no humans
should be able to survive.
And yet here she was.
Somehow she was alive and laughing.
At the bottom of the Mariana Trench...

We saw her clear as day on the drone-sub's camera feed.
We even followed her around as she played chase with some kind of deep sea
jellyfish (our original point of observation.

Checking our camera feed we found nothing wrong but we were seeing more
children joining the girl.

They all had the same symbol carved into their backs.

As they circled the sub we received strange static interference.
I swear it sounded like... like my mother.

We had no way to talk to the children, we could only watch and record them
for when we got back to the surface, if we couldn't bring them up with us.

--
---
--

So we got in touch with our base, turns out these kids have been appearing
everywhere they can't possibly be.
They've been in lakes, tree bark, outside the windows of the international space
station!

No-one knows what they are, they aren't human.

They can't be.

20141025

Day 174

They shouldn't have been buried.
It was too soon after they'd died, why weren't they burnt?
We've always burnt the dead.

It needs to be done.

We came back to open graves.
They were full at least.
But it wasn't the original bodies.

We aren't sure what it is.

It pulses at night and shrinks during the day.
It looks like flesh but feels like stone.

Where have our bodies gone?

20141024

Day 173

It's so cold outside.
You were on your way home after work and took your usual shortcut.
Somehow with the falling snow you had gotten lost, taken a wrong turn maybe?
Either way you weren't where you should be.

The street you had been walking along gave way to a field of white.
Turning back wasn't an option - the snow was falling too heavily to see anything.
Your only option was to keep warm and keep going, there must be a house nearby.

As evening set in you began to give up hope of finding anything in the stormy weather
you felt a kind of tug, a warmth drawing you left.
The further you walked the stronger the tugging sensation got.
You saw lights in the distance and ran towards them, eager to get out of the weather.

The house you approached looked to be the oldest you'd ever seen.
It wasn't standing so much as somehow not falling but it was shelter nonetheless.
The front door was slightly open so you reasoned that you could legally enter.
As your hand reaches towards the handle the door is flung wide open.

Your friend is standing there smiling.
They gesture for you to follow them, not responding to any of your questions.

The interior looks just as worn down as the exterior with no furniture in sight.
Your "friend" is inviting you down the stairs, towards the source of the warm pull.
Seems the stairs here aren't as decrepit as the rest of the house.

Something inside of you is afraid to go downstairs but your need for warmth is
overwhelming.

So you head down.
All the way down to the depths of the house with your "friend" leading you.

This house is old enough to have a boiler.
It's so warm.

You stand as close as you can get without stepping in.
Still not warm enough.
Must get closer.

Your "friend" opens the boiler's door and walks in.
They stick their head out, still smiling, and offer their hand.

It's so warm.

So very warm.

20141023

Day 172

When her grandmother died she inherited the doll house.
It was a bulky old thing that'd been in the family since the early 1900s.

Nobody was quite sure who the original owner was or how it had
survived this long but the whole family knew it had to be passed on.
There was this old legend that so long as the doll's house was fine,
the family would prosper which never quite happened.

Whichever family member was given the house would live to (and die
the day after) their one hundred and sixth birthday.
This had been the case for several generations and showed no signs
of being discontinued, it seemed more welcomed as her relatives
scrambled for her to name them as the next in line for the doll's home.

After warding off their requests with vague considerations she finally
had the time to fully examine her inheritance.

It had three floors and an attic, all dustless and neatly arranged with
old fashioned furniture and tiny electric lights which she assumed had
been added at some later date.

One room that really caught her attention was the room with a miniature
ladder that lead to the attic.

It was the only room with no furniture, instead the walls were filled with
small photos of what looked to be young women.

Some were black and white but the last five or so were in colour.

She recognised the last two.
One was her grandmother.
The other was her.

She rummaged around on her desk to find the magnifying glass her
brother had given her last year, desperate to see her photo up close,
it might just look similar to her after all, or maybe her grandmother
had it commissioned in her final months.

After pulling it out of a back drawer she frantically rushed back to
the house to get a proper glimpse of her image.

It was definitely her.
It was recent too.

The photo was wearing the shirt she had purchased earlier in the morning,
that she had yet to wear.
There was no way her grandmother could have known she'd wear or even buy it.

What caught her eye next was even stranger.
The floor of that room was lined with cream coloured cardboard that she had
initially mistaken for patterned carpet.

The presumed pattern was, in fact,  writing.
It looked to have come from one of those old typewriters, like the kind her
parents used to have when she was young.

The words were all of the texts she had sent in the last twelve hours, including the
photos she'd texted her mother about this small room.

Then they began to change to things she would say after that.
How she would text photos of that tiny room to her mother begging for any
kind of answer only to be dismissed.

The writing went on to a texted conversation between her aunt and mother where
they discussed her decaying mental state and what kind of help they could get her.

As she frantically backed away from the fast-changing words a piece of newspaper
was dislodged from the ceiling of the room underneath the walls of photos.

Tentatively she picked it up.

It was dated two weeks from the current date and detailed the investigation into her death.

Arson or suicide?

The doll's house had apparently remained perfectly intact.

20141022

Day 171

Clearing up roadkill was the worst job but he was lucky to have one at all.
He was in one of the backroads, somewhere out in the countryside.
Not his usual area and not his usual creature.

The pay they offered was enough to counteract the initial worries he'd had.
I mean, its not every way you get to see a dead one, you know?
Especially one so big.

He reckoned it must have escaped from a zoo, probably a private one as he'd
not seen it in the news anywhere.
He guessed that's why they phoned just before closing hours, wanted it secret.

Pulling out his usual tools he went to cut it up - made for easier transport.
As the shears made contact with its arm it awoke with a shriek.
He wasn't equipped to deal with a live one!

Thinking quickly he closed the shears on its arm and pulled.
Its shrieking only increased but it was too distracted to notice him moving
his tool around the creature's neck.

Its neck was too thick for him to get it in one go.
The shrieking was replaced with gurgling as blood poured out of its throat
and mouth.

It died slowly.

Great, now he had even more to clean.

Ugh, why do humans have so much blood?

20141020

Day 170

The underground train came to a sudden halt.
This was not the passengers' destination.

The masculine voice came over the speakers
to reassure them all was well and they would
be leaving shortly.

And they were reassured... until the lights went out.
Murmurations filled the air as the people began
to frantically whisper and huddle together in fear.

The carriages were filled with frightened whispers,
far more whispers than the small amount of
passengers would account for.

Not that they noticed, too wrapped up in their worry.
The whispering began to increase.
The humans ceased their own mutterings to listen.

These Other whisperers spoke of safety in numbers.
Spoke of the dangers of staying there.
Gradually lured the passengers out of their carriages.

The voices were always just out of sight.
They sounded so sincere, so kind.
Who wouldn't follow them?

The voices drew them further down the line.
It was so dark, so cold.
Whispers just past their ears told them they were close.

The train tracks came to a sudden halt and the whispers ceased.
Their screams could be heard for miles around.

They had reached their destination.

Day 169

I'm sure I'm alone now.
There are no houses around for hundreds of miles.
Had to get away from the city, you see.
Its not safe there anymore.

By the time I'd left thousands had already gone.
Nobody quite knew where, only that it was underground.
Reporters and the like had gone down with ropes and either found nothing or didn't come back.

As far as we knew everyone who was gone was dead, we had no way to prove otherwise.
So we just stay put as far away from the ground as we could and tried our best to not be next.
I doubt news has gotten out about this, I wonder if the families of the missing even know they're gone.

It started in the pavements, you know.
There were rumours going around that some of the homeless had been dragged under the slabs by something.
Nobody ever seemed to know what the something was.

I saw it once.
Pigeon hopping near the bench I was on as normal until the slab underneath it flipped and just like that it was gone.
Didn't see what had grabbed it, only it was damn fast.

Should have left then, decided to stick around for another week.

That's when people were taken in broad daylight.
Anyone who tried to video it was taken soon after.

Then it spread.

No ground was safe.
Benches replaced by paving stones, whole parks just gone in an instant.
Vehicles too.

Those of us who survived were airlifted out by the army.

That's when I took to the countryside, away from everything concrete.

Reason I'm telling you this is cause I spotted a brick path outside.

I reckon its gotten longer too.

By tomorrow it'll be at my front door.

20141019

Day 168

She'd only been dead for three months but it felt like forever.
The glimpses of her former life were pure torture.
To be able to see your loved ones in such pain when you are
utterly unable to help them is hell.

It got worse when she looked in on her wife and saw her
trying to reach out.
She was using a ouija board.

There was a slight tugging sensation all around her as her
partner began asking the usual questions like "are you there?",
"can you hear me?" etcetera.
The tugging grew stronger as she got closer to the board.
She was almost reaching through the mirror now, so close...

Suddenly she was yanked back through the mirror.
As she tried to re-orientate herself she heard a bloodcurdling
screech coming from the other side.

Her wife lay spasming on the floor, blood pouring from her
eyes and mouth.
After what seemed like an eternity she stopped and sat up.

Her eyes were the wrong colour.
She looked like something was wearing her skin.
Smirking the thing wearing her wife walked over to the mirror
and smashed it with her bare hand.

The weeks following that were the worst.
She could only watch as the thing using her love broke every
relationship she'd had with both of their families, their friends
and coworkers.

When she was done with that she began to bring people home.
They never left.

She gave up looking in on her former partner for many months
until she felt the tugging again.

It took her to a bathroom mirror where the thing wearing her wife stood.
They had been saying her name like a kid chanting Bloody Mary.

Grinning just like her wife used to they loaded a single bullet into a pistol.

They put the gun to her head.

Maybe I'll see her again?

20141018

Day 167

I have a lump... sort of...
I say sort of, no-one else can see it.
It doesn't even show up in photos no matter what I do.

As of ten minutes ago it was about four inches long and
swollen to maybe three inches.
Now the lump is six inches long and dipping in the middle.

I've seen others with these lumps.
The media is calling it a mass hallucination.
Telling everyone its not real, nobody's died, remain calm.

I don't buy it.

My lump feels real.

I've tried reaching out to others who've got it but they
don't believe me either.
They think that if they can't see your lump, you don't
have it.

Speaking of, the dip now runs the whole length of my lump.
Its not so much a dip now, more of a fold?

Its twitching.

I can feel something moving underneath.



My lump just opened.


Its looking at me.

20141017

Day 166

I didn't know what love was til I looked inside.
My mum always said you had to search for love
so I looked up some diagrams.

From what I've gathered it's in the heart.
Means the best way to find it is through the ribs.
I just need a person now.

Mum always said she loved me...maybe she'll help.

--

I think I found love.

It is red and pulsing but not for long.
Never for long.

It is the scent of metal and breaths that rattle and cease.

Everyone who's said they love me has all of these so
it must be love.

It must be.

20141016

Day 165

Rooms with multiple light sources are great places to hide.

Do you know what they are hiding?

I first noticed the hidden ones at a hairdressers.

They had those small ceiling lights all over, you know, the
ones that are never all working and rarely the same level
of light.

If the fire alarm hadn't have gone off I would still be ignorant
to them hiding in plain sight.

It was a busy hour - the place was near full of customers, it
made for quite a commotion when the alarm went.

Everyone was rushed outside and as we waited for the all clear
I noticed one of the hairdressers didn't have a shadow.

It wasn't that it was cloudy or dark out - it was broad daylight.
She literally had no shadow.

A few moments later I spotted a shadowy figure creeping along
the pavement towards me.

I tried to look like I hadn't seen it and was looking at my feet.

It moved right underneath me, I swear I felt it touch my own
shadow.

The woman next to me saw it and screamed.

What happened next was a blur but from what I remember she
collapsed and began writhing.

Dark spots were moving all over her - especially at her neck.

It was all over mere seconds later.

She was dead.

I stayed back while everyone else crowded around her, trying
in vain to help.

I saw her shadow being dragged away by the hairdressers' own.

20141015

Day 164

When I was a kid we'd visit my grandparents every month.
They lived in this old seaside house, one of the big ones.
Every time we went they'd tell us about the old stories, the
ones my parents didn't want us to know about in case we were
too scared or something.

We loved those stories - we lived for those visits just to sneak
downstairs and be terrified by whatever story they remembered.

Our favourite was about the red mist.
Its a local story, nobody outside of the town seems to know about it.

The red mist started the same way most stories do, a normal day.
Its always foggy in the morning around the sea so nobody noticed
anything different.

The weather forecast said the mist would stay all week.
Everyone was affected in some way or other, it was a fishing community
and with the mist as thick as it was nobody dared to go out.

After three days a few of the men decided it was worth the risk,
after all, they had families to support and they needed their income.

They set out at midday when the mist was at its thinnest though they
could still barely see three feet past their faces.
Armed with the brightest torches they could find, they left.

They didn't come back.
But their boats did.
Blood-soaked and stripped bare.

Nobody dared go out fishing after that.
They all hung around the village like ghosts until another death happened.
Well its assumed to be a death, no body was found.

A woman by the name of Mrs McKinnely, who'd always left her front
door open for anyone to visit, just vanished.
Her home, like the boats had a thick layer of blood along most of the
surfaces (far too much blood for just one body, especially a woman so
thin as she was).
Her home, again much like the boats, was stripped bare of all its contents.

This was all by day five.

The mist lasted a further five days.
In the aftermath twenty people were found to have vanished.

Its still pretty misty around the area.

People still vanish but not as often.

Nobody leaves their homes much.

Send help.

20141014

Day 163

Visiting a new city was bound to come with risks,
he just didn't realise what those risks would be.

Of course he'd been to the city before, not at this
time of year though and not to this exact area but
he'd been.

He reckoned he could get by just fine, I mean there
are subway stations all over to act as guide points.

Apparently the night life in this new area was to die for,
especially at this time of year, he just had to check it out.
Every street was decorated to match the autumnal season,
pumpkins and ghosts on every corner.

By the time he'd had his fill of wandering it was near three AM,
stumbling back to his hotel room proved to be easier than he
expected.

His room was on the eighth floor out of twelve - he was far
past the point of using that many stairs and vaguely remembered
the elevator not being in working order.

Luckily it seemed he was wrong as he caught it just before the
doors began to close.

The stranger in the elevator was an average looking woman
though she seemed nervous.
He asked what floor she was heading to as he pushed for his
floor.

She said thirteenth which didn't exist yet somehow there was a
button for it.

He didn't much care for this sudden change, only wanting to sleep.

The elevator had a voice which certainly threw him off - it
sounded just like his grandmother.
He laughed and told the woman who didn't seem to hear him.

She must be tired too, he reasoned, and waited for his floor to come.

He must have dozed off waiting as he startled to find himself falling
out of the elevator door.
He caught a glimpse of the strange woman running towards one end
of the floor's corridor.

All of the rooms started with 13 which meant he had definitely dozed
past his floor.
He turned to get back into the elevator only to find it gone and a wall
in its former place.

Maybe he'd stumbled further than he thought?
Yet when he looked left and right he only saw doors, endless doors.
Was the hotel always this wide?

One of the doors was open, room 13M.
Maybe they'd let him sleep on their sofa for the night?
He was falling asleep in the corridor!

Calling out he gently pushed the door wider and cautiously stepped inside.
Maybe he could sneak a few hours there and be gone before they woke up?

Well there wasn't anyone there though they'd left their luggage and an
awful smell.
Seemed to be coming from their suitcase which was half unzipped.
He figured that if they'd left everything open it must be okay to have a look.

He didn't get a proper look but as he opened the case something black and wet
leapt out, ran past him and out of the door, clawing his cheek in the process.

Dazed he sat on the bed, nursing his wounded face, was it a cat?
No, far too big for a cat.
Kid in a costume?
No, too pointy and agile.

As he sat wondering the strange woman from the elevator came running in.
By the looks of it she'd encountered the creature too and come out of it worse
than him.

She was white as a sheet and clutching her stomach.
He stumbled over to her and touched her shoulder, asking if she was alright.
Hands falling away from her stomach, her internal organs came spilling out
of the gaping hole in her torso and she collapsed.

Panicking he fled the room into the bloodsoaked hallway.
Every door had been torn from its hinges and bloodied handprints lined the walls
as if unseen bodies had been mutilated and dragged... upwards?

He slowly gazed up, following the trail of handprints.

They were all on the ceiling, suspended by some kind of webbing.

He recognised a few people, his siblings and mother were up there, eyes glazed
and bodies shredded beyond any hope of survival.

He heard his grandmother's laughter at the end of the hallway.

He turned and she was not there.

20141013

Day 162

Certain scents remind us of people we know.
For instance, lavender might remind you of your grandmother
or leather and cigarettes might remind you of your first love.

For me, the most memorable scent is freshly spilt blood.
It reminds me of my mother.
She would always come back from work smelling like it.
I never knew why but I guess it wasn't legal, social services
took me away when I was eight and I haven't seen of heard
from my mother ever since.

That changed recently.
She sent me a letter.
I don't know how she got my address but through these letters
we arranged to meet in our old house.

Everything was exactly as I remembered it and I mean exactly.
My old room hadn't changed since the day I left.
The scent hadn't changed either but now I was old enough to
be told.

Our house had always had a lot of photos hanging about and the
walls seemed perpetually sticky.
Had they always been such a dark shade of red?
Was the wallpaper always so shiny and metallic?

While I was wondering this my mother lifted up a large photo of
dancing skeletons.

There was a hole behind the image.

It was full.

It was dripping.

It was fresh.

It explained everything.

20141012

Day 161

I was looking at old photos of my childhood house.
We rented it out when we moved and after several years
we decided it was time to sort out the attic.

We'd never actually tidied it before, everything in there was
at least nine years old with some things coming from my
great grandparents!

The only constant was the box of "important family photos"
that my great grandfather had apparently insisted on having.

That's the album I found after about two hours of cleaning.
I remember some of these photos being taken.
It was always the same every year - put on your best suit, go to
the "sun room" as we called it and smile, then head outside and
do the exact same thing.

I'd never actually seen the photos we took, the adults at the time
had always whisked them away to the book and refused to talk
about them.

I finally understood why.

You see, the book was divided into two halves, the outside and the sun room.
From the outside in every photo you can clearly see colourless figures
peering through every window and when I say colourless I mean they
looked like an old timey photo -even in the recent pictures!

The inside, however, was different.

I hadn't realised how close they were.

How close they are.

It's so crowded.

The air is so thin I can'

20141011

Day 160

The downpour outside drowned out the sound of his laboured breathing.
It felt like hours since he had seen his friends, though his phone's clock
said only ten minutes has passed.

They'd decided to hang around this old playground that was roughly
somewhere in the middle of their respective houses.
After about an hour it began to rain so their solution had been to buy
alcohol.
Being the only broke one, he didn't want to go along.

The driest place turned out to be in a slide, one of those tunnel ones with
little see-through plastic circles along the sides.
So he sat about halfway down it and waited.

Through the plastic he could just about make out the rest of the park light
up faintly by the nearby street lights.
He heard what sounded like his friends coming back, but he was still a tad
cautious - being alone at night can do that to you.
He peered over the top of the slide, just above the lip and saw who was there.

They looked like someone dressed up as his friends, in a morphsuit made
of their skin and clothes.
They sounded like his friend's voices recorded and played back half the speed.
They are looking around for him, crooning his name and laughing.
They began to spread out, still searching.

This leaves us at the present.

He is waiting in the slide.

20141010

Day 159

Every time we shift our vision from one object to another we are temporarily blind.
This is due to our eyes blurring (known as a saccade).
Over the course of an average lifespan we spend we would have spent 2.1 years like this.
Each day we lose around 40 minutes to this as our brains remove this brief blur
from our memories, essentially forgetting the saccade.

How much do we forget?

What are we forgetting?

What are you forgetting?

20141009

Day 158

We saw them through the curtains.
We could only see them through the curtains.
The scrunched fabrics and detailed lace allowed
us to briefly glimpse them.

You've seen them too, those shapes that are almost human.
The ones that look too stretched to be real and
vanish before you can move the curtain aside, daring your
eyes to be deceiving you.

They've always been here, some say longer than we have.
Always at the windows, always just a glimpse.
From the outlines I've seen, I don't reckon I'd want to
see one of them in plain sight.

We used to think they were omens of death, back before
we knew what caused disease though maybe it was them
all along.
We can't prove they aren't the source of all sickness, can we?

But if we could, if we could say for certain that these half-
seen beings, these veiled things were the origin of malady
what would we do?
Would we rush to kill them and eliminate disease at its roots?

Or would they strike first?
I doubt we'd survive that.
We barely survived the first time, way back in 1348.

20141008

Day 157

Have you ever had the urge to grind your teeth?

The near overwhelming need to strain them?

The ache that can only be sated by brushing over and over and over again?

The sheer desperation driving you to dig your nails into your raw gums til they pour blood?

Have you ever felt the yearning for a pure mouth devoid of imperfections
devoid of teeth, of gums, of that imperfect tongue?

D̼͇̦̻̻͓R̼̖͚I̛͚̖͇͔̤̩V̳E̺͍̮͍̱͍ ̘̺̤̗̯ͅṬ̼HÈ͉̤M̞͓͇̠̪ͅ ̸͈̺͎̠O̮̪͚̗̦U̻͔̲̻͢T̡͎̯̜

͍̰̲̗̀D̫̺E͉̯̬̻̺̜̱S̛͔̤̞̠̝͎͓T̬͞R̪̭̳͈̫O̢̥Y̥̠͍̪͉ ҉͓̯̥̬T̻̣H̬̱͚͔̦͡E ̡I͏̤̙͈̖̪M͉͉̳̤̬̤P̪̺E̦͜R͕͕̹̲̖̮FE̫̻͇C̝T̥
̷̤̫̜̪̭
T̼̤E̙͔̖͍͖̪͠A̻͓Ṛͅ ͎͈̭̱̰͢A̻̘̞W̫͙͕̘̱̜ͅA̮̜̝̖̠̫͖Y̰͖͍̥͉͔͖ TH̰̣̣͇͚̟̥E͕͎͇̱͇͚ ̝̰͖̻̯̳̖́F̪̯̰L͓͔̰̼̕A̫̝͍̞W̪̘̤̹̰E͎̮͡D͢
̟̳̙͙̼̠̼͢
̜B̗͕E̦̥̮̝̞̼C҉̭̱̲O̘͞ͅM҉͔E̖̮̠̫͡


̧̨̗̮͓̖͚̲̘͘B҉̝̬̪̤E̷͚͕̝͉͘C͙̹̺͚̪͡O͏̭̱͉̖̦̞̕Ḿ͝҉̣̭̹̦͇̲͈E̼͕̝͕͈͍̘͕͠




̶̧̙̺̟͈̜̩͇̮̜̦͕̹̼͕̘̣̰̱͚̆̾͂̄̈ͩ̔B̡̛͉̹͎͖͌ͭ̈́̊̉ͭͦ̿ͯ̍̔̒̉̊ͣ̈́̅͐̕͞E̢̩̘̪̯̝̞̙̬̲̠͍̼͎̣̠̞̼̅̈́͑͂̀ͣ̅͗̓ͪͮ̑͋̉͗̆͐̚͘Ç̸̭̝͎̹͚̖̲̣̳ͣͫ̋ͬͮͬ̎ͦ̌̈́̑ͩ̚͝O̵̵̱̠̦̮̘̬̫͕ͯ͐̏͂̒̊ͥ̐̾̆̈̇ͥ̈̎̓͂̚M̨̨̬̳͚̪͕̗̖͔̠̗̮̫̪̞̺͕̭̥̽͆ͦͥ̓̄͊͗̍̊̔̆̈́͑̚̚͠E̅̄ͤ̾̃̈́̿͗͗̃҉̴̰̯̺̭̮̥̖ͅĖ̛̬̟̳͕̱̱ͨ̏̐̓ͭ͝͠Ê̊̇̊̐͊ͥ̚͘͏̰͇̟͇̥̖̺̺͚͖̯͕̪͞͠E̶̷͐̏ͪ͐͗͏̰̮̬͔͚̮̭̥̣̹͎͎̩̮̞̩͕̯̀͝ͅ

20141007

Day 156

There's always something off about Staff Only rooms.

I'm not sure if its the whole "fear of the unknown" thing or the smell of burnt hair and blood that lingers around these doors, slinking down the halls and dissipating before it hits the unsuspecting masses.

The doors are locked with a code that new staff members don't actually know yet they always punch in the right numbers, the older ones (veterans, if you will) have it tattooed underneath their left index finger so it is in perfect view at all times, changing weekly as all staff codes do.

To the average consumer the codes aren't even there, nor is the smell, nor are the shrieks of terror as the Staff Only doors swing open to reveal a seemingly ordinary room full of hardback plastic chairs, one grey coffee table and several eggshell coloured cupboards.

The reality is swiftly different as I found upon joining a large corporate retail brand and memorising the algorithm that set the code for the Staffroom door every month (for personal safety reasons I can't disclose names or numbers, I'm sure you'd understand if you had seen what I've seen behind those doors).

My first break was the hardest, the algorithm tore through my mind and before I could even comprehend it I had already unlocked and opened the door which lead to a room nothing like the one I'd seen on the interview.

The hardback plastic chairs were already occupied by corpses in varying states of mutilation and decay, each with a sign around their neck detailing the reason for their death (which varied from "writing down the algorithm with intent to share" to "poisoning the café food").

It's hard to know what to feel when confronted with a room of (the remains of) people who probably didn't deserve the torture they had been through let alone having their bodies on display in the break room as an example to all other employees.

I would quit but the consequences for that are almost as severe as the ones that led to those corpses in the break room so I've had to ask for a transfer, claimed it was easier on my family and the retailer had my undying loyalty - the usual spiel.

I don't know if they accepted it exactly, I've been transferred but the other staff members act a lot colder to me than my previous team - I think they suspect that I plan on writing this and sharing it before I leave the country for good.

Let's hope they don't find me.
I don't want to end up in the break room.
Not like the others.

20141006

Day 155

My bag won't stay closed.
I'll admit I was in a rush so I had to stuff as much as I could inside.
Some got stuck in the zipper, some bits had to be torn off altogether.
Good thing I kept the knife with me!
If I got caught I'd be in deep trouble, you see.
I know I should have been more careful but there just wasn't enough time.
Well, there would have been more time if he hadn't run so fast.

My bag's starting to drip now...
Everyone's staring...

20141005

Day 154

How alive are you?
Is your pulse steady?
Are your veins filled with blood?
Is it your blood?

From the moment we are born we slowly die.
The majority of your cells have died and been replaced twice over.
Are you the same person who was born or are you something new?

Do your cells make you who you are?

Of course, your cerebral cortex neurons are neither added to or replaced
so surely those prove you are the same being?

Surely, right?

20141004

Day 153

NASA has recently discovered large bodies floating in the asteroid belt.
These bodies are humanoid in shape and number of limbs.

We are unsure if they are alive.

An unmanned shuttle was dispatched last year and was scheduled to arrive
back any day now.
The only downside is that we lost contact with the shuttle as it began entering
the asteroid belt which was about... 2 months ago.

Our frantic attempts to reconnect with the craft were met with nothing.
Like it stopped existing, or something was blocking our signals to it.

We should find out what happened within the week... I hope.

---
----
---

So... we found the shuttle, it crash landed in the Pacific.
Wasn't too badly damaged but there words carved into it and nobody's quite
sure how they got there, I mean it was clean when it went up.

Doesn't leave much in the way of explanations.

The footage we recovered was even worse.

The first half was what we expected, asteroids, space and more asteroids.
As the SpaceBods (as we unofficially called them) coordinates drew closer on screen
the footage got more distorted.
We caught glimpses of what we assume to be the "head" end of one of the things.

I swore it had a human face.
No-one got a decent look, the footage was so corrupted it was scientifically worthless.

That was the first half at least.

The second half was footage of the team.
Footage from our childhood family videos, from our webcam conversations, from unsees
cameras set up in our homes.
We have no idea how it got there.

The audio was far worse.
It was this strange voice that was human but... not.
It sounded the same as a bird taught to speak human.

One of the team swore it sounded like his dead grandmother.

The voice just kept saying in a reassuring tone:

"We know, we're almost there. We know, we're almost there. We know, we're almost there."

20141003

Day 152

I saw my face pressed against the mirror from across the room.
They were smiling and laughing and clawing at the glass.
I could hear their - my - nails raking down over and over again.
I wasn't sure, at first, if they were trying to get out or writing a message.

It was getting late.
I'd been staring at my mirror-self for hours, too scared to turn away.
I wondered what would happen when the sun went down, the light in
this room needed replacing and I never quite got round to it.
That was a mistake I never made again.

As it got darker the sound of scratching got louder.
Closer.
I could just about make out my reflection (if that's what it even was).

It wasn't in the mirror anymore.

It was in front of me.

It touched my face, frowned and vanished.

I still don't know what happened that night, I mean I don't feel any different.

I don't have a reflection though.

20141002

Day 151

When I was younger my parents convinced me to join a girl's only youth group.
It was this church based thing for anyone under 18, like scouts but more prayer.
The leaders seemed nice but there was always something a bit off about them.
Whenever they gave us something to do they'd group together and mutter.

Eventually their annual sleepover came about and as I was officially a member
I was invited along with the other girls my age.
It was normal at first - we played some sports, discussed a Bible verse, had some
food and then got sent to a large room on the upper floor of the church (where the
older girls had their discussions away from the little kids).

We got told off a few times for the usual amount of noise, as you'd expect from a
bunch of barely-teen girls.
It settled down around 9 and everyone dozed off.

I had the strangest dream that night...
I dreamt the leaders woke me up really early.
They gave me a red dress and a candle and told me to go with them.
We went to the churches' organ where they pressed the levers in a pattern I can't remember.
It swung out gently like it was on hinges and we descended the staircase behind.

I remember it was cold and I felt worried.
I had no idea where I was going or if the other girls were there.
Eventually we came to a large door at the base of the stairs which the elder leader opened
with her rosary beads.

This part I remember the clearest.
The room we stepped into was huge - way bigger than the main church hall!
And everyone was there, all of the girls, even the young ones.
They were standing in a circle around a raised platform where the youngest girl (I
think her name was Chloe) stood in the centre of some weird drawings.

The elder leader said that if I wanted to be a full member of the group I had to prove
my loyalty to the church and their cause.
I had to burn Chloe.
And I did.

I woke up the next morning in my pyjamas and all alone.
Seems they let me sleep in later which was nice of them.
I tried to find Chloe just to prove my dream wasn't real but she was nowhere to be found.
The leaders said she got sick during the night and was taken home.

I almost believed them until I saw that my feet were soot black underneath
from walking on Chloe's ashes.

20141001

Day 150

Extract of audio tape found approx. 8 miles from city limits.

Let's stay at a distance.
Remember, they can smell skin.
Who knows what happened to theirs.
Some say they tore it off, others say it was taken.
Either way they're out for it.
His, mine - any'll do.

Maybe not mine or his... maybe yours.
Yes, yours is so much better.
So much cleaner.
So veRY CLEAN AND NICE.
YES, YOUR SKIN IS SUPERIOR TO MINE.

-Pipe down you idiot, they're right there!-

HER SKIN IS FLAWLESS.
PERFECT, JUST RIPE FOR THE TAKING.

-What's wrong with you, they'll hear us!-

BETTER YOU THAN ME.
THE PERSON BESIDE ME IS WILLING.
TAKE THEIR SKIN
TAKE ALL OF THEIR SKIN - THEY DON'T NEED IT.

-Oh god, run dammit RUN!-

TAKE THEM!
TAKE THEM!
TAKE THAAA-

End of audio extract.

Bodies found: approx 3.
Survivors: none.
Plague status: active.
End of log.