20151231

Day 605

We are abandoned but you wouldn't remember it.
We are lost but you were with us once, a long time ago.
We are still looking for the way out where you stand on the other side.

It was such a nice day when we got lost, or rather when you tricked us.
You told us our mothers had mistaken us for runaways and gone looking for us.
We went deep into the woods, calling for them - all twelve of us.

Somehow it turned dark too quickly for us to find the way back.
Somehow you switched from leading us in, to sneaking away home.
Somehow we're all still alive.

We remember our deaths, none of our generation survived but you.
All of us woke up after a while and counted, all there but you.
Now we don't eat or sleep we're so much faster, so much closer to finding you.

20151230

Day 604

When the floods first came I was only nine. Don't remember much past sleeping in the community centre for a few nights and spending most of the days playing with other kids my age, trying not to worry about what the adults were doing or where they were going or why so few came back.

A lot of orphans were made in that flood.

When we had the second great flood I was thirteen. I'll never forget those terrified firefighters saying goodbye to their families and heading out find survivors. I didn't know where they were going but a few kids from my school said they were going to die just like the others.

When I got home I found human bones under my bed.

This year's flood was the first I've faced as an adult and the first year we talked about what we'd faced when we went to look for survivors. The next generation has to be prepared - we can't let them walk into death like we've seen so many already.

We'll spill blood and it won't be human this time.

20151229

Day 603

Things have always gone missing from my house, little things like leftover food and old clothes.
Mum used to say it was the Borrower and he was nothing like the cutesy little book people.
She said he'd come when we weren't looking and reach through the walls.
He took whatever he needed from us and in return he kept worse things at bay.

These "worse things" were what she called the near misses we faced almost daily.
Like the school flooded the day my coursework was due, the coursework that I'd lost the night before.
Or the time mum "lost" her keys just before a drunk driver slammed right into her car.
Times like that it definitely seemed like somebody was watching out for us, or controlling us.

After I left for university mum would say the house never felt empty.
She said she'd even caught glimpses of the Borrower, sent me a photo of his arm.
It was grey and covered in bleeding lumps with eight-knuckled fingers that ended in inch long nails.
She used to call me once a week with updates on what the Borrower had taken too.

The last call was a month ago.
She said he'd taken all the cutlery in the kitchen and left a note behind with a date.
I've been trying to get ahold of her ever since, called the police too.
They said they can't do anything without proof, called the photo a prank.

20151228

Day 602

High Lechlow's a funny place really.
The kind you move to but not from.
A place that sucks in young couples and refuses to spit them out alive.

The saying among the latest generation is "There's no lower than Lechlow save the grave".
They do have one of the largest graveyards in all of the south of England.
One of the highest death rates too, seemingly mostly from old age.

When you look closer most of their deaths occur around the winter Solstice and autumn Equinox.
The nine days before each are when the majority of the elder population pass.
Heart attacks, trips and falls, accidental overdoses on their medications, nothing suspicious.

And yet those same nine days are when the most tourists visit the local ruins.
The same group of travelers who go there to "take photos" and "paint" but never show their work.
Nor do they bring any art equipment with them.

They never stay past the nine days, never go into the town itself either.
Something about leylines connecting like a whirlpool, drawing life in and in and in.
But they don't stay still long enough to ever explain the rest.

20151227

Day 601

Today's story is comprised of Safe Work Tips to help you proceed through the otherwise menial labour you are required to do by your governing body of organisms.

Keep Work Topics to easy things like:
How has your day been thus far?
Are you successfully crushing all opposition in a Work Appropriate manner?

And the always well received:
How long do you have left? Are you as excited for the encroaching void as I am?

Another top Work Tip is to Work hard. Work impossibly hard and forsake all human needs until the bells toll and your shift has ended for the foreseeable time. Weep as you leave the Workplace - it shows commitment and fear which is the best thing a Worker can show their Employers.

Don't forget to Network. Spin those vast and intangible webs of Communication and Community that only the Management can see. Watch as CoWorkers and Visitors alike get caught in those Network webs and forever bound to your Workplace Camaraderie, unable to leave and unable to want to leave.

Remember, Teamwork is crucial in this so Network in a Pack.

Finally our Greatest Work tip is thus:
Remain calm.
Whatever task you are appointed with and whomever you kill to earn it, remain calm.
Remember that Management can see fear.
It floats above and beside you as a cloud of limacine-yellow haze.

They love your fear.

20151225

Day 600

Everything outside was dead and everyone inside would follow shortly.
The snow had fallen too thick and fast for anyone to have prepared.
Even the weather forecast had predicted thunderstorms, not countrywide snowstorms.

At first all it had been was the occasional bird or rodent found frozen solid.
Then it moved on to larger prey - stray cats, lost dogs and children playing among the danger.
Their tiny bodies were found, terror preserved perfectly in crystalline ice.

We'd all been warned to stay inside and keep as warm as possible but it was no good.
The cold seeped through every crack and crevice it could.
We froze slowly, never felt it neither.

One by one we found our loved ones alone and smothered in that deadly ice.
There's just me left now, no idea what's going on outside but all I hear is wind.
I moved my family to the dining room, while I wait in the bathroom.

It won't be long now, I can't feel my legs despite the hot water I'm sitting in.
I stabbed one with a kitchen knife just to test, couldn't even break the skin.
Strange though, I don't feel cold at all, I don't feel

Day 599

On the first day of Christmas, a stranger sent to me
a set of ribs in the shape of a tree

On the second day of Christmas, a stranger sent to me
two human-skin gloves
and a set of ribs in the shape of a tree

On the third day of Christmas, a stranger sent to me
three freshly pulled teeth
two human-skin gloves
and a set of ribs in the shape of a tree

On the fourth day of Christmas, a stranger sent to me
four collar bones
three freshly pulled teeth
two human-skin gloves
and a set of ribs in the shape of a tree

On the fifth day of Christmas, a stranger sent to me
five ring fingers, the nails painted gold
four collar bones
three freshly pulled teeth
two human-skin gloves
and a set of ribs in the shape of a tree

On the sixth day of Christmas, a stranger sent to me
six hands, tied in prayer
five ring fingers, the nails painted gold
four collar bones
three freshly pulled teeth
two human-skin gloves
and a set of ribs in the shape of a tree

On the seventh day of Christmas, a stranger sent to me
seven eyes swimming in bloodied water
six hands, tied in prayer
five ring fingers, the nails painted gold
four collar bones
three freshly pulled teeth
two human-skin gloves
and a set of ribs in the shape of a tree

On the eighth day of Christmas, a stranger sent to me
eight infant ears sewn together
seven eyes swimming in bloodied water
six hands, tied in prayer
five ring fingers, the nails painted gold
four collar bones
three freshly pulled teeth
two human-skin gloves
and a set of ribs in the shape of a tree

On the ninth day of Christmas, a stranger sent to me
nine ladies' faces, skinned and tanned
eight infant ears sewn together
seven eyes swimming in bloodied water
six hands, tied in prayer
five ring fingers, the nails painted gold
four collar bones
three freshly pulled teeth
two human-skin gloves
and a set of ribs in the shape of a tree

On the tenth day of Christmas, a stranger sent to me
ten lips painted silver
nine ladies' faces, skinned and tanned
eight infant ears sewn together
seven eyes swimming in bloodied water
six hands, tied in prayer
five ring fingers, the nails painted gold
four collar bones
three freshly pulled teeth
two human-skin gloves
and a set of ribs in the shape of a tree

On the eleventh day of Christmas, a stranger sent to me
eleven windpipes tied in music sheets
ten lips painted silver
nine ladies' faces, skinned and tanned
eight infant ears sewn together
seven eyes swimming in bloodied water
six hands, tied in prayer
five ring fingers, the nails painted gold
four collar bones
three freshly pulled teeth
two human-skin gloves
and a set of ribs in the shape of a tree

On the twelfth day of Christmas, a stranger sent to me
twelve policemen drumming on my door
eleven windpipes tied in music sheets
ten lips painted silver
nine ladies' faces, skinned and tanned
eight infant ears sewn together
seven eyes swimming in bloodied water
six hands, tied in prayer
five ring fingers, the nails painted gold
four collar bones
three freshly pulled teeth
two human-skin gloves
and a set of ribs in the shape of a tree

20151224

Day 598

The saltwater plains have been cordoned off for months and now they're building one of those eight foot tall fences. You know, the ones with barbed wire at the top and security cameras at regular intervals. There's never been any notices around the shore, only guards and signs saying "DO NOT TRESPASS".

The mayor won't answer any of our questions, resorting to the clichéd "Investigation In Progress" nonsense that got him into the office in the first place. We want answers but so far nobody's had the stones to go past the half-built fence and risk getting caught by the guards. Mean looking fellows that they are, absolute brutes who are either paid too much or not enough given their aggressive attitudes to the rest of us.

When the fence was fully built the town's curiosity only grew and meetings were had in private places to discuss what potential threats were lurking out there on the plains and why they were being kept in the dark.

Was it another sinkhole? They were becoming more and more common nowadays, what with all the electric cables being redone. Nothing's being done about the ones in town, small as most are for now some people swear they hear voices coming from beneath, music and conversations but not like anything they've ever heard before. Whole operas come out from some of the sinkholes!

What if the saltwater plains had collapsed into one gigantic sinkhole? And what if there was a city beneath if full of things like humans but eerily not quite. Like they'd have eyes too far up their heads or their arms would reach all the way to the floor but they'd be just like us in every other way.

Thoughts like these and more soon brought the town to a flurry of fear and paranoia, eventually spawning a rot that would lead to the destruction of the barely finished metal fence and the death of eighty-two percent of the town's population.

Whatever is in the saltwater plains is staying put so far but the sinkholes still sing.

20151223

Day 597

There are codes everywhere - society is bound by them no matter where we find ourselves.
Now, we don't always know these codes nor understand them but they are always there.

The code we examine today is one older than all the surrounding civilisations.
Something older than us all, something ingrained so deep within us we don't even realise it's there.
A code that tells us one thing, one simple thing.

Don't go into the woods alone.

From an evolutionary basis it's quite simple - strength and safety in numbers.
If we outnumber the predators, we become the predators.
Even today the code is drilled into our heads by unknowing parents in the form of nursery rhymes.
Few even mention the threat within the woods.

One children's tale calls it "bears" as if bears are a comparative threat.
I suppose it's as much of a threat as any urbanite can imagine, a large wild animal.
Those of us who tread a less defined path know that there is so much more to forests than bears.
Some of us have seen what crawls through the underbrush and slinks among the branches.

I've only ever seen glimpses and remnants, back from my teen days.
Boredom is dangerous in small towns, especially when combined with large unchecked wilderness.
It was winter when I first saw it, on the way to meet friends by the river.
Long black limbs writhed among the bare branches and followed me all the way.

I never saw the head, not even sure if there was one.
As soon as my friends noticed me,and then It above me they screamed and began to hurl stones.
It didn't follow me home but it stayed near us the whole time we were there.

The next time I saw it was spring and it had found my friend.
We never thought we'd die back then, we never thought the forest held any danger beyond foxes.
I'll never forget my friend's dead eyes, red and bloated face as the air was crushed from their lungs.
It was like a snake, it a snake was made of eight or nine feet long arms with inch long talons.

And that was only one of the dangers that I found going into the woods alone.

20151222

Day 596

When she went to sleep, things would sprout from her head.
Her parents called it her imagination.
The doctor called it spontaneous benign tumours and was always so perplexed.
He'd ask her all these questions about her diet, her environment and her parent's jobs.

She didn't really know what they did but she knew their work number Just In Case.
There were a lot of things she was told to do Just In Case.
Like make a Will (whatever that was, she had a vague idea that it was about her leaving home).
She'd also gotten a special dress for her "Big Day".

Her parents were always sad when they talked about her Big Day.
When she asked they always said it was Nothing but she knew it was about her imagination.
Her ever growing imagination that made it hard for her to hold her head up sometimes.
It made her eyes go fuzzy and everything taste like licking a penny too.

When she looked in a mirror she could barely see her little face under all the imaginatings she had.
She'd named the largest and talked to it at night when her body ached too much to sleep.
Sometimes it even talked back and its voice came from right at the top of her head.
Last night she'd asked it what she'd always wanted to know.

She asked if it had a face of its own and if not, how did it talk?
Her favourite imaginating replied that its face was underneath hers, just beneath her skin.
It had always lived with her, even before she was born when they were growing together.
Somewhere when they were growing they bumped into each other and became her instead of them.

It had been inside her all her life and now it wanted Out.
She wanted it out too, it wasn't fair to keep it stuck to her - it was like being grounded permanently!
Late at night, after grabbing one of daddy's favourite kitchen knives she began freeing it.
They found her in the morning, all tumours gone, a gaping hole where her brain had been.

Strangely later on, after the panic and grief had gone down somewhat they noticed something.
A thin trail of blood leading from where her body had been out the open door.
It led back to her room and to her bed where a lump shivered under the quilt, laughing quietly.
The fabric around it was soaked with blood.

20151221

Day 595

The receptionist greets you with confusion as you stare at the small grey pot full of ash. The floorboard that covered it was left off when your mother hurried away in another fit of tears. That woman was forever crying these days, every time you saw her she was red eyed and slightly drunk judging by the way she swayed about.

You don't quite understand why the receptionist is confused, she didn't see you come in so surely she should understand you're...? She must be new here, she continues to greet you and ask if you're okay and who you're here to see. She understand where you are but not what you are. Probably only seen the customers before, never the residents.

How can you work in one of London's biggest Necropolis and not know a resident on sight? You've seen them train the newer employees, you've seen them train this receptionist yet she doesn't seem to recognise your state of being, or rather your lack thereof. After a few moments of her trying out British and American sign language and three other verbal languages she just politely bows a bit and scuttles off to attend to the actual patrons.

She had no idea what she was talking to. How very peculiar of such a place. An older resident laughs silently and moves towards you at a seasoned and graceful pace. You exchange looks of bewilderment and fondness at her inexperienced dealings with everyone around her.

After a short time she seemed to finally realise why you were out in the first place and hurries over apologising profusely as she gently slides the floorboard over the urn containing your earthly remains and you slip back into the dark nothing with all the other souls, awaiting your mother's next visit.

20151220

Day 594

Ever notice how kids always seem to have an extraordinary amount of stuffed things? Their parents never really say who gave them what or if they were even gifted in the first place. It's just assumed and assumed wrongly. Well... partially wrongly.

See kids are given things from the strangest of places and haven't developed the sense to know when something is off or someone is dangerous. At this fragile age they just accept things as they are, taking any answer they are given to be the absolute truth.

As they grow older they forget where they acquired things, they find old possessions, old toys just at the right moment to give to their own offspring and the cycle continues until their child screams at night and they remember. They remember too late.

There has always been something in their closet, lurking in unseen doorways beyond the far wall and it speaks to them when their family is all asleep. It gives them a stuffed thing that looks just like it to show other creatures that it got there first. That the child in that room has already been claimed for prey.

They don't just pick any child, they follow families for hundreds of generations, giving their token to each child in the hopes of removing that bloodline from the world for good. The more successful ones lace their tokens with toxins that young bodies are utterly incapable of resisting. Others resort to cheaper tactics like poisoning their minds with little suggestions.

It's always little suggestions. A few words here and there at night and the parents do all the work for them. This is frowned upon in the creature's society of course, either do it yourself or find another line and let someone better take over for you.

Adults like to block the memories of these creatures, calling them teddy bears and stuffed bunnies and other harmless things. They make their own decoys, their own tokens and give them to children at birth, perhaps unconsciously hoping to trick the creatures into thinking the bloodline has been taken over and sparing their child the constant fear at night that if they make one wrong move the will die.

So far the creatures seem to fall for this, we flood the rooms of children with as many different creations as we can to confuse them, leaving them to search each and every token to see if they recognise a face among their own kind.

For the most part it works, they spend their nights questioning children about what things visit their rooms and who gave them what token. When the children answer with sense, spouting gibberish in place of actual names the monsters leave to investigate in their own community.When the children answer with truth, another small life is snuffed out and a family line is one step closer to extinction.

20151218

Day 593

Of all the things we expected to turn against us, we never thought it'd be our own children.
At least they were our children - nobody knows what they are anymore.
They are changing beyond our comprehension and they can't be stopped.
Believe me, we've tried.

Our coastal home has been evacuated and, minus our kids, the town is all safely out at sea.
The marines are nice enough to let us their telescopes to see how the children are doing.
Sometimes we can hear their plaintive little cries echoing over the wind, calling their parents.
Other times they build rudimentary rafts and send us the remains of the animals they find.

I swear none of them have so much as looked at a vegetable this entire time.
They always looked over to us though but we could never quite see their expressions.
Some of us couldn't handle it and stole several lifeboats to go back to their children.
I was one of the few who didn't so much as spare the coast a glance.

I'd already seen what the little creatures were capable of and I wanted nothing to do with them.
They tore my partner in half and smeared his blood all along the walls.
But then again he always did encourage them to make a mess.
When I came in to see them doing this I could see it in their faces - I was next.

I've been out at sea ever since, almost twenty years now adrift in a stolen boat from the docks.
All this time I thought I was safe until I saved a young man from drowning.
After I'd dragged him onboard and caught my breath I asked if his parents ever taught him to swim.
He said no, you never got around to it.

Day 592

There was an old saying my father loved to tell when gardening.
One to rot, one to grow, one to vermin, one to crow.
He lived by that rule, always planting four times more than normal people did.

I once asked him what a vermin was, being four at the time I hadn't a clue.
He said it was the noises at night that creaked up and down the stairs.
Mum overheard and told him to shut up and quit scaring me.

Nothing more on vermin was said though I still wondered what one looked like.
I remember peering over the bannisters late at night trying to spot them running.
Now I'm not sure what I saw but it was nothing like the rodents that everyone else says are vermin.

It happened in the summer of 1975, when dad got too sick to do the garden.
Mum did it instead, planting nowhere near as much as him.
It was too expensive, she said, to keep buying so many seeds that never even made it to flower.

I repeated dad's rhyme but she said the only rot was in that bloody superstition.
She looked angry and afraid, it was the first time I'd ever heard her swear.
Later that week my routine stair-gazing finally paid off.

They weren't rodents, no, these were bigger than rats and stood on long arm-like limbs.
They were about the same size as me and I was five or so at the time so maybe 3 foot tall.
Their heads rolled around their shoulders like a toy train on a circle shaped track.

Constantly rotating and observing but only around them and thankfully never up.
As they trod loudly up the first few steps I could see that their skin was blue, deep blue and muddy.
One of them held the empty seed packet my mum had tossed into the bin.

I hid behind my door just before they got up the stairs, heard them tread into my parent's room.
Mum never made a sound - I had no idea what they'd done until morning.
Her eyes were wide open and unseeing, the seed packet had been placed in her hand.

20151217

Day 591

Mermaids are thought to be something like part human and part fish, much in the way that werewolves are part-time human and part-time wolf. As we should all know a werewolf is about as human as a dog (with instincts to match). You can see it in their eyes, that vague disdain for the personoid skinsuit they are forced to inhabit until the full moon and let's not even mention how the older ones lose control over their form and walk around with half reconstructed bodies, mouths a permanent snarl and lumbering on all fours. Not a pretty sight.

Mermaids are interesting in their own right. They mimic humans pretty well... from a distance and several meters underwater. Up close they're between twelve and thirty-two feet in length though rare sightings of much larger ones have been found from deep-sea cameras. Aside from their somewhat human facial features (after all they lack hair, a nose and, more often than not, a chin) they tend to exhibit human characteristics. Now whether these are learned from observation or passed down from parent to offspring or even purely coincidental, they are like us in manner.

Strange as it is to observe, stranger it is to find oneself parroting their gestures as humans are wont to do in social situations. The smaller ones are more prone to wild gesticulations of both arms and tail, often creating small whirlpools and rapids with their boisterous movements. The larger ones stickmore to nodding their heads (or in cases where the head isn't pivotal, their entire torso). They even have jokes of sorts though most pertain to the faces we make when drowning. As I'm sure you're aware by now, the younger ones are very fond of displaying this with no malicious intent, however the older mermaids are far more versed in these facial expressions and use them as more of a lazy threat, if such a thing exists.

Though their language is little more than clicks and whale-like moans they have still managed to develop their own kind of philosophies and religions. They worship what is translated (by them) as the Deepest Ones, those giants we occasionally capture on film. It would seem that as they grow larger they grow too heavy to maintain buoyancy and so sink until they are crushed by their own weight in the abysses of the oceans. According to the mermaids that have learnt human speech this is the greatest way to die, the only way for their life to reach the "endless oceans of the sky" - their nirvana.

20151216

Day 590

Our teacher says the cavern had once been full of trees and the great waterfall ran freely. She says that where the chimney stacks are now, there was once a huge hole where birds flew in and out and made nests in all the trees. There were deer and horses and foxes too and they lived wherever they wanted, no zoos or traps or pens to keep them in.

But I don't believe her.

Do you think she's ever seen how the rocks are eating the houses?

Amelia G. Briggs, Aged 7

I keep telling them we need new pavements, proper ones too. Those old cobblestones just aren't cutting it anymore- the carts have worn right through to dirt on most paths! And don't even get me started on the alleys. Bloody things are full of rubbish and all sorts of filth I daren't mention in polite company. The old Blues-And-Twos found a kid down there last week. Poor mite was naught but leathery skin and bones by then.

God above only knows how long he'd been down there.

Judging by the smell of the place I dare say there are many more.

Mr P. Jameson, Aged 45

The air has been getting bluer, have you noticed that too? Everything has this azure tinge to it, even our clothes, even our skin and teeth. Your sweat's blue too but the lights are orange. It wasn't always like this and now it's getting worse.

We're not human now, you hear me, we're not human!

The late Mrs Swarthington, Aged 95


Entry Log Seventy-Two. This town built deep within a complex system of natural tunnels and caves is by far the most unusual of all the lesser-known citadels. They all seem to be convinced it's still the late 1800s and Victoria I was reigning over England though their dwelling is deep within the Pyrenees. It certainly resembles a picturesque Dickensian city for the most part, towards the centre of this strange place is some sort of sinkhole where they deposit their dead, their leftover and a vast array of unusual items like crystals and ornate lightbulbs.

None of them are quite certain how the dwelling was first created or even if it was created by human hands. Some of them doubted they were human at all, the thick smog from their crooked chimney system seems to stain everything, giving even the food a faintly sulphuric taste.

I shall endeavour to continue my studies on this place and, one day, this book shall be complete.

Doctor Ludmilla, Aged Unknown

20151215

Day 589

The leaves haven't stopped falling yet though it's almost January.
We haven't seen clear blue skies since late March.
The memory of sunlight on your skin fades quickly.
Now there are only brief periods where the skies are deep grey instead of pitch black.

Everyone else seems to be carrying on their lives just fine.
The leaves continue to fall, piling up like an autumnal snowstorm.
Large nets are attached to the trees with hopes that they'll catch the leaves.
It isn't more than three days before they break and the streets become flooded with debris.

No amount of sweeping or raking can clear the pathways and roads.
The entire city is soon stranded, buried beneath densely packed leaves.
Your flat on the 2nd floor has been in the dark for just about a week.
Leaves cover the windows, rustling to an unheard breeze.

The air around you feels stiff and stale but so does everywhere else in the apartment block.
Sometimes you open the windows a crack to catch even the faintest whiff of fresh air.
You are met only by the leaves and their musty scent.
Still they rustle outside, like they are being moved.

Some days you wonder if people have made it outside and are swimming through the foliage.
You would gladly join them, just for that cold clean air outside.
Last night somebody tapped on door, or so you thought.
You found their lifeless grey corpse pressed against your window, mouth and eyes full of leaves.

They seemed to twitch, face contorting and forcing out a spray of debris against your window.
Their hand jerked back and slammed into the glass with enough force to crack it.
Fleeing without a second thought you begged a night's stay with a neighbour on floor five.
You thought you were safe too, until something hit their door with enough force to splinter it.

20151214

Day 588

We make our graves look like the dead.
They are stacked in stone houses on a small island arranged in groups of families.
Over the years we've had to move some around, mix the groups and create new ones.
It seems that even the dead have their preferences.

Almost all of them are accompanied by at least four others except one.
In life he was called Tuomas and owned a small farmstead on the mountainside.
In death he chases any living one he sees and detests the company of the dead.
We reckon he wants to come back to the land of the living.

Ever since his passing we've learnt to listen out for the sound of stone scraping grass as he moves.
He doesn't even care for the laws of the dead that state he can't move then the living are near.
The sea between the island and mainland is the only thing that keeps him there.
Even in death he's scared of it.

Tuomas has become something of a folklore among us now.
We told our children that he'll trap them inside his coffin and eat them if they don't behave.
It worked surprisingly well until we began to find small body parts and pools of blood.
Yesterday we saw a boat made of stone sailing from the beach to the island of the dead.

20151213

Day 587

There are surprisingly few people in the train carriage, though it is rush hour.
They gaze vacantly out the window with the same contentedness of cows.
Those people are closer than they seem.
Their breath mingles with yours, moist and cloyingly sweet.
They brush shoulders with you, gentle at first and fast becoming violent.
There is no voice over the tannoy, calling the train to a stop.

20151211

Day 586

There is a birdcage in my grandmother's attic large enough to sit inside.
I never really thought much of it, she used to be an actress so I assumed it was an old prop.
It had all these scratches on the floor, possibly from whatever shows it had been in?
She never talked about it and I never asked until she passed away and I inherited it.

I inherited a lot of her more unusual things, mostly stage props but the occasional souvenir too.
We'd bonded over our fondness for the strange, you see.
Ever since I moved that cage into my own attic I've been hearing things.
Little snippets of conversations, laughter and a woman whispering my grandmother's name.

Lucille... Lucille... Lucille Anne Mayhews where are you? You're on in 5...
I decided to post a photo of it online to see what show it was from.
The main answer seems to be a one-time showing of a play called "Our Mother's Café".
My grandmother had the leading role of the café owner's daughter who ended up dying.

It was a horror and much like plays of the time, the violence happened off stage to save on effects.
Seems the bird cage was meant to hold someone's body, held up like a marionette.
According to the forum I found myself on, the play only showed once due to an accident.
The double for my grandmother ended up choking on the strings.

My grandmother was the one meant to be in that cage but she never showed up.
No wonder she never talked about it but still, why keep the damn thing?
Last night I talked to the whispering voice, told it Lucille Anne Mayhews was dead.
I haven't heard it call her since, now it applauds at 7:15 sharp, when the play was set to end.

Day 585

I've never walked by the river before yesterday and I won't again. Before yesterday I'd always had some reason or another why I couldn't join someone down there. It was always things I couldn't control like poor weather, work calling me in to cover somebody, illness or family issues. There had never been any time to go down there, not even when I was a child.

The first thing I noticed after I went down the narrow concrete steps to the main path was just how narrow the walkway was. A poorly paved poor excuse of a path that showed how few people used it yet all of my friends had, at some point or other, invited me to join them in the skatepark about halfway along it. The place I was heading to for just such an invitation. They said it was past a memorial to a guy called Dave who'd been found face down along the concrete flood barriers missing his left foot but holding his left shoe and sock.

Way before that I saw the first thing that made me hesitate to carry on. There are signs like this all over town, always missing parts of with  something added on.They're meant to be tourist maps and information boards but they've become something of a local mystery. Generally these signs are just harmless jokes but a few make you pause and wonder just what is going on in that area. This was one of those signs.


















The torn out section was where the Cathedral was and covered the grounds exactly. Tourists loved the idea of a riverside place of worship, especially one so large and ornate, every inch of it a reflection of the water and the creatures within. Where else can you hear choirs sing on a glass stall that has lights built in to reflect the water underneath onto their pallid skin, giving them the appearance of drowned ghosts.

Something about that place has never felt right to me, never been able to place what until I read the words written on the edges of the torn out section. I don't know if I've got the order right or if there even is an order but they make this couplet:

RIVERS AFLOWING AND THEY ALL LET GO, SOULS HEADED DOWN DEEP DEEP DOWN

THE LAKE UNDER GOD THE GOD UNDER LAKE THE LAKE UNDER GOD UNDER LAKE


I turned back after noting this down, texting my friends that I'd gotten a call from my aunt saying she needed someone to babysit while she visited her mother in hospital. They sent me an image of them looking sad and whatever filter they'd applied made it look like they were underwater. It was the same kind of image they always sent but with the sign's message fresh in my mind I realised that they'd never used a filter. They weren't even in a skatepark - they were under the church.

There was a new sign right by the steps that led back onto the bridge.
I know it hadn't been there before but it looked as old and ragged as all the others.


20151210

Day 584

I stumbled upon a new church accidentally.
That is to say I'd never been there before, the church itself looked ancient.
The roof had once been thatched but was now coated in moss, daisies and bird droppings.
Everything about the largish building screamed very old, even the bricks were old Roman Red.
Probably taken from one of the temples that used to be around back in their heyday.

It was surrounded by large middle-class homes, all pastel colours and three stories tall.
They clashed badly with the fairytale-esque parish in all its moss-strewn perfection.
After further inspection of the grounds, ignoring the tacky homes outside, I found something... odd.
Every grave had the death date as December 8th 1648.
Now that I've looked it up I know that it's 300 years exactly from England's first cases of the Plague.

Strange though, how it seems an entire community within our own had been wiped out in one day.
I counted sixty-two graves, people of all ages and classes (judging by the size of the memorials).
Nothing existed in the history books to suggest a spontaneous series of deaths.
Perhaps the Plague had come back and these people were slaughtered all at once as a precaution?
Someone was responsible for erasing this event and these people from history, but why?

I've been trying to go back to there and speak with the local Vicar but I can't find it now.
No matter how many times I retrace my footsteps I come to dead ends and looped roads.
It's almost like I dreamt the whole thing but for the photos I took of graves and the parish itself.
Even those are dead ends - none of them have any living descendants that I can trace at all.
I find myself at an end with this, I have nothing more to find but perhaps... you do?

20151209

Day 583

It is December and the Carolers are out early and in force.
They sing under your windows, bringing tidings of their Lord and all His Grace.
Their unseeing clouded eyes peer through curtains and glass doors all throughout the night.
Always they leave before dawn and we have yet to figure out where they go to.

They never leave without attaining a new member, by whatever means they deem necessary.
So far this year's death count is only 3 though the new member count is 20 already.
Seems they have a new tactic - children.
Who can resist the angelic notes of a child, who isn't rendered helpless as their child's life is in peril?

Most folk are starting to evacuate their children... the usual barricades aren't working anymore.
The Carolers pale blue fingers, stiff with rigor mortis are easily able to tear down the planks.
It wasn't always like this - they used to genuinely bring us good news about deceased loved ones.
Now they take whoever they want to join in their songs.

I spoke to one last night, as unusual as it is to see them alone I've known this one all my life.
They always come to my kitchen window and sing as I make dinner for myself.
I even offered them food but I've been told they are sustained by their Lord... however that works...
This one talks in the pauses between songs, much unlike the others.

I've come to regard them as a companion though I know they will take me like so many others.
At this point it's almost a comforting thought, to join in songs with a lifelong presence.
That day is coming soon, I fear.
All I hear at night is the sound of their claws scratching the glass, weakening it so I can join them.

20151208

Day 582

Even an island as small as the United Kingdom can still hide ghost towns, ghost kingdoms too.
Their rulers never adhering to current legislation, almost stuck in a distortion of the past.
One such place is called Cairnlochan and lies somewhere between Orkney and the Shetland isles.
Rarely visited by their neighbouring islands, they remained self-sufficient and almost unmodernised.

Sure they had a few modernish advancements but those are mostly medically based.
Their homes are sturdy stone carved from the cliffs and thatched by straw coated from the tar pit.
Even the wildlife seems frozen with horses almost twice the height of an average man.
The streets are dirt coated in a mixture of straw and horse manure.

Nobody lives there now, as was recently discovered by a boat that spotted them by pure chance.
All five villages were utterly abandoned, the farms left to turn back to nature and the crops to rot.
It was hard to say exactly what happened to them until someone thought to test the water.
Few had noticed how many Datura flowers there were about the island, much less by the rivers.

Strange behaviour had been noted in the livestock but it was put down to skittishness.
You see Datura, more commonly known as Angel's Trumpet, is a potent hallucinogen.
Every well tested held toxic amounts of the plant's chemicals, enough to drive an island mad.
With this revelation the United Kingdom's largest manhunt was organised.

The first three months were spent looking for survivors, the next five looking for remains.
Nothing was found, no traces that humans had inhabited the villages, not even hair or skin cells.
Even the surrounding sea held no clues, no remnants of ships or people.
It was almost like the whole island was a museum dedicated to the Celts and in some ways it was.

The search teams that voluntarily camped overnight reported hearing strange splashing sounds.
Some even said they heard laughter on the beaches in voices that sounded like lungs full of water.
Photos emerged of footprints that looked like a duck's, with a human foot for scale beside them.
The prints were almost five times bigger and their source somewhere in the depths of the North Sea.

20151207

Day 581

There's always a patch of haze in the conservatory.
It's been there since Grandma was a child, back when her grandfather was Lord of the estate.
Not once has it moved from the conservatory though it sometimes follows the servants around.
I'd say it's almost playful sometimes, jerking forwards to make them jump and scream.

We'd all laugh at our ghostie, our misty friend who watches over us.
Ever since Grandma passed away it's been getting less hazy.
Where a patch of mist-like aether used to float, now we can see something human.
It seems to be dangling from a rope.

The clearer it becomes, the less it moves from one spot.
It's like it freezes when it knows someone can see it, just sways in one spot until you turn around.
Of course as soon as you face away it moves right behind you and stares.
It will lower or raise itself to make eye contact with whoever is there.

We've since bolted the conservatory doors and begun constructing a new conservatory.
It's not the same of course, some of those plants were almost two hundred years old.
From time to time we peer into the old conservatory to see if our ghostie it still there.
Every time all we see is its large black eyes, far larger than any human's could ever be.

20151206

Day 580

The rear alley wall doesn't lead to anything, it's just a dead end most days.
About twice a year or so it grows a tunnel.
Everyone in the street goes down it at some point but we don't really talk about it.
The things you find down there aren't meant for decent conversation.

All manner of strange folk wait down there for us.
They have orders for us to collect and deliver on the grounds that we never ask about the contents.
No matter what the size is or how it leaks oil so profusely.
No matter what writhing thing in a bird cage calls our names in our mother's voices.

Our payment is in years and in luck - you'd never know that most of us are over a hundred by now!
The oldest is Mrs O'Murray who's almost four hundred and eighty though she still looks thirty three.
She's been delivering for so long she knows all the alley dwellers by first name.
She's the only one who knows any of them by first name, the sounds incomprehensible to us others.


20151204

Day 579

They keep washing up, sometimes in their tens and sometimes in the hundreds.
No family claims the bodies we find and no government claims the boats.
There are never traces of these people's identities, the boats are shoddily built and almost empty.
Void of food, beds and even engines they drift around our shores and settle in the mud.

The bodies themselves are interesting- none of them are complete.
Sometimes we only find their hands resting as if in prayer, caught in fishing nets.
Out of all the ships that washed up in the past thirty years, only one person was found whole.
Twenty six years down the line and they haven't been identified.

They haven't decomposed yet either, their corpse remains as fresh as a living person.
No sign of cellular deterioration or growth, just some kind of stasis.
The media are calling him "The Living Ghost" and "Mr Nobody".
Last week the lab that keeps him reported finding a pulse.

Day 578

Pill boxes had once been scattered about the english coastline, lying in wait for invasion.
They were the last resort, manned by whatever men were left behind when the useful went to war.
After all was said and won these concrete rooms were left to rot with all inside.

Of course it had to be this way, couldn't have everyone know where these little outposts were.
Just in case.
Their entrances were sealed, left exactly as they had been manned the day the war was declared over.

Of course people lamented the loss of their loved ones in some kind of top secret war project.
Their names went on the memorials while they hammered at concrete with bloodied fists for weeks.
They stopped once concrete was poured into the windows.

Some still tried to claw their way out but their hands stuck within the slurry.
The terror of being trapped was only outweighed by the agony of losing their hands.
There couldn't be any outward signs of life after all.

What few had sense to stay away from the panicking ones managed get to the centres of the boxes.
In those hollow spaces they waited, breathing shallow as their friends died slowly around them.
It gave them a food source for a while and by carving away at the trapped limbs they had air holes.

Some lasted for months in those concrete tombs, others didn't last the night.
Eventually people forgot about pill boxes and lost relatives and the faint screams along the shoreline.
And then the cliffs began to erode, bringing the boxes down with them.

With the first bodies came a wave of questions and hastily smothered investigations.
Skeletons trapped with concrete? Scratches on the walls spelling names and the truth?
Covered up with pranks, false truths and comedy.

With the masses appeased a government division was created to take care of the rest.
The boxes were destroyed at first until reports of living people came back.
Seventy years trapped with only their friends to survive on left them utterly inhuman.

Eyes a yellowish white, pupils rotted to nothing, skin and teeth much the same.
Speech reduced to incoherent sobbed apologies while their hands scratched and tore at the air.
They were silenced soon enough, bodies burnt and ashes left in landfills.


20151202

Day 577

The City of Sunshine was closed to all but a few select outsiders. Its walls made of the thickest iron and blackened with tar on a daily basis to ensnare and immolate intruders before they could set foot anywhere near the sanctum that was Sunshine City.

Reports and rumours floated about the rest of the continent, all speculations and sensationalisms. The sort of writing that was lapped up by the public and gave hope to the thousands of unwanted, unclean and undesirable that were forced to lurk at societies' outermost points.

They said Sunshine City was so well protected so that the rest of the world wouldn't corrupt its purity and ruin the utopia within those impenetrable walls. The streets were spotless and everyone had a huge house to live in with a garden and everything. Even the gutters had the most beautiful fish swimming in them.

The few who came in and out of Sunshine City did so by a large steel elevator, heavily guarded and moving too fast for anyone to just hop onto without getting themselves hurt or worse. It didn't stop people from trying of course, especially when their heads were filled with thoughts of paradise.

Nobody who'd been to the city ever spoke about it beyond the usual "It's such a unique culture" or "The people are so reserved and polite". They said what they could without putting themselves in danger.

If the truth ever got out they knew they would all suffer for it, disregarding any culprit in favour of sending a message to the rest of the world...or so they'd been told as the elevator ascended past countless bones and fresher corpses.

The City itself is far larger than the walls make it out to be as the denizens have dug down to make skyscrapers that barely reach past ground level. The criss-crossing pathways make the place look like some kind of spider's web with countless ants running along its strands.

Everyone wore the same uniform in neon red with that cartoonish Sunshine mascot emblazoned on both the back and the front pocket. What so few people realised was that the name wasn't a reference to any kind of warm joyish feeling but to enormous floodlights that provided the deep-dwellers with their much needed Ultraviolet light.

Every other part of the City was just as you'd expect for a subterranean "paradise". The food was a combination of nutritious fungal sludge and some pinkish meat that they called beef but tasted more akin to pork.

Strange cuisine aside the City was still utterly spectacular, combining a rustic mountainous kind of architecture with modern furnishings. Somehow the duality of stone-carved towers with lichen-based terraces scattered like frogspawn against the monochrome interiors meshed together to make Sunshine a truly unique place.

Newcomers that were trusted enough to be invited to stay weren't told the full extent of Sunshine's laws until they'd signed their allegiance away to the council. There was no freedom inside of the walls, only fast paced labour.

The slow were taken to the processing plants and their families were sent a notice congratulating them on knowing such a successful business person who was now in the safe hands of a team of food production workers and would serve their City well.

It was sick if you think about it. They never made any attempts to hide what they were doing to their people, they just worded it in a plausibly deniable way as they sent the "unproductive" to be slaughtered.

From time to time there were especially difficult people who were sent to the Department of Concerns instead of processing plants. Their deaths happened in secrecy with their families only being notified when they received three parcels - two dripping with blood and one that rattled.

Day 576

For as long as humans have been alive, we have been watched. Not from above as we all fear to be, but from below. Right from the very thing that sustains us. From what we have worked so hard to tame and what has thwarted us at every turn.

We've always been within its gaze - especially so when we began to create machines. The ground watched what we were doing, what we were becoming and found itself wanting. It had never wanted before and wasn't sure what exactly it wanted but it knew that it needed something from us.

It began to learn from us.Watching what we did with its precious stones and heavy materials. It saw us build weapons, crudely at first but then refining them over hundreds of years. It found itself giving us more and more materials to work with just so that it had more to see, more to explore and learn. It needed more from us and we gave it everything without even knowing.

No matter how much it gave or how much we did it still wanted more, it wanted to become more. A test was done in a small, fresh settlement in America. with the ground barely rinsed of the spilled blood it began to observe the railways we made to move across it faster.

 It took the first thing we had taught it - how to hurt - and used that to create its first attempts at becoming. In an open area where we had yet to venture the dirt opened and bled, scabbing over in iron lines, cross crossed with rough wooden planks. Overnight it continued to cut and make, cut and make until it joined itself crudely to the partially build railroad, forming a curved line that gradually straightened to form fresh tracks leading deep into its woodlands.

The settlers were both amazed at how much work had been done and enraged at how shoddy it was compared to their polished metal and sanded wood. These new planks had flowers sprouting in places and the metal was full of lumps. A few men gathered to follow where the tracks led, hoping to find whatever group was responsible for this new mess that would take hours to clear and set their schedule back by weeks.

With their hand cranked cart they set off, not knowing how far in the tracks went and too full of anger to care. Meanwhile deep within the forest the earth had torn itself wide open, magma-warm pus bubbled up and solidified, slowly forming itself into one of the many things it had seen the humans build that it found to be perfect for itself - a station. It even named itself. the humans would surely be pleased that it wanted to become more like them, that it wanted to learn more from them.

In recent years there had been so much bloodshed that its learning had grown in leaps and bounds from remembering fire and recreating it within the thicker parts of the forests to reading and writing and even a few words. Now its voice was still a work in progress but with the railroad tracks and the station it called "First Stop" it could learn so much faster.

The men found the station and froze. they'd never see anything like it, with timber framing made from living trees and benches covered in crystals and moss. It looked like something out of a fairy tale yet the stench of musty air and damp earth made them think of graves and trenches and other deep pits they worked hard to avoid. Still they were curious and slowly walked up the stone stairs to the platform, leaving the cart behind on the tracks, their end clearly in sight.

Inside of the station, past the somehow-dirt-platform and the strange benches, they found a set of stairs, wide and deep as any hellish tunnel they could ever imagine complete with faint reddish glow at the bottom. The smallest man (with the most to prove) walked briskly down the stairs, halting at the bottom to scream at the others to join him. They found themselves standing before a lake of lava that swirled around like a lazy tornado. The walls around them were covered with diamonds, reflecting the lava's light and brightening the entire chamber.

None of them had noticed that the light behind them had gone and the stairs with it. They were too busy contemplating what they could do with their riches. The earth learnt from them quickly with a surge of magma, engulfing them and letting their blood flow into it wherein it learnt what it was to feel greed. Not the wanting it had felt before but to have the desire to act upon its wants in a way that disregarded the lives it sustained.

Now it actively wanted to end those lives above it in order to learn faster and faster and become more and more and more. It began a slow process of killing the green, killing the uninteresting things like fish and birds. Kill the food, kill the feeders and learn, learn, learn. It took the humans far too long to realise that their food was dying and even longer to realise that they couldn't stop it.

By then the ground had learnt enough to make itself bodies that looked just like us. Gave them names and sent itself out into our world to live on our streets. It waits in the shady corners, chokes us with dirt when we're at our most vulnerable and learns from our blood. We've called it so many names - Jack the Ripper, Manson and Dahmer to name a few. It has learnt so very much from us but what it remembers most is the greed, is that first blood it took.