Day 636

They'd never seen the sun in their town - the mountains were too steep.

Days were a handful of hours long in the summer and winter brought night for months.

Fairly common for the uppermost northern communities.

The isolation, less so.

They never spoke, they'd never been taught how to.

Almost twelve generations had gone past since the last people spoke in their town.

Substitute language came and went in trends, varying between sign language and morse code.

The current trend was glow in the dark gloves to help them speak in the depths of winter.

Everyone understood why there would be no verbal speech - it was crucial to their survival.

It was taken to the point where vocal cords were removed in infants.

The only reason was their company.

In the depths of those mountains, far below the surface was a town to twin their own.

This town was, in some ways, an exact mirror of the one on the surface.

It had the same kind of shops though the stock was very different and subterranean based.

Same with the townsfolk that were so similar to humans but so very not.

They were what humans could have been if their ancestors were bats or moles, not ape-like.

They could hear everything the town above did without ever leaving the cave.

From their viewpoint the town above had vanished overnight to be replaced with wild animals.

The surface dwellers did everything they could to maintain this illusion.

Ever since the underground town had been discovered, their mirror-town had tried to remain hidden.

From the way they moved to the way they walked, everything was done to make the town vanish.

They didn't know if the people underground knew they were still a town or not.

Better to play it safe.

All the while never seeing the large black eyes that peered in at them from their windows in awe.

Day 635

The police taped off another street today with no explanation.

All the other streets that they'd closed were re-opened empty, all the homes for sale.

Nobody knows where the people go but we all know why they go.

It starts with a deep pressure behind the eyes, somewhere in the middle of the brain.

From there is moves to a deep ache all over.

And then they bloom.

You can tell that someone's starting to get it when they begin to stink of old meat.

Whatever they'll eventually call this disease we know that it rots you inside out.

Most of the time people don't even realise they've got it, sometimes not until they're dying.

By then of course the police would have closed the street until the sick died.

There's no cure just yet, no sign of it on the news either.

They're just leaving us and hoping that we'll be the start and end of it.

Day 634

There were so many things we didn't talk about, here in Broad Nettlebrook.
It was one of those mass unspoken "Leave This Topic Alone" deals.
Nobody would tell you to not talk about them, it was implied in the town-wide silence.
It would have stayed that way too if some outsider hadn't come along and ran his mouth about it all.

Nothing was sacred to that pest, no stone was left unturned.
With what happened after, we all agree he brought it upon himself.
Broke every unspoken rule we had to the point where the whole town shut down.
It was partially to avoid the outsider but mostly to avoid getting caught up in his consequences.

He started causing us grief before he set foot properly in town by fixing the scarecrow.
Put the wretch back on its pole and now the damned thing's been hopping around the town again.
Thanks to him we've lost three men and countless cats to the scarecrow's bloodthirst.
Damned thing doesn't even properly eat them - it just loves to chase, bite and leave.

It took us long enough to cripple it in the first place and now we have to start all over again.
Scarecrow aside he also refilled the bird bath round the back of the local Bed & Breakfast.
You don't refill something that's deliberately been left empty!
It's put the hostel gardens out of use until the summer sun dries it out again.

The whole garden is flooded and the water's doing that thing where it defies gravity again.
It likes to climb up the walls and throw the whole rear wall of the hostel into murky, watery night.
Doesn't do much more than that but it's such a pest to get rid of.
English weather is far too rainy for it to evaporate and nobody wants to go out to drain it.

It was honestly like this outsider was doing it all on purpose and trying to ruin us all.
Nobody felt it a shame when his body was found, though the circumstances were strange even for us.
From what we can tell he managed to anger the one creature that we thought couldn't be angered.
It tore his skin clean off,stuffed it full of sage leaves and let it gently burn.

Never knew it could do that, after all it doesn't exactly have hands unless it possesses someone.
Makes you wonder if it possessed the outsider and made him skin himself.
What a way to go, killed by the restless spirit that likes to live in our largest oak tree.
You aren't supposed to get too close to it but the outsider's skin was hanging from its branches.

Day 633

The hotel "Lit de Mort"was one of the most famous in the world. Tucked away on the mountainside town of Calderton and surrounded by redwood trees it was the very picture of picturesque with one of the largest graveyards in the country. There was truly nowhere else like it - nowhere dared to be like it.

Few people outside of the state even knew it existed but hotels all over the world envied and loathed it in equal measure. Where else can you spend the night in a mausoleum of your very own? The size varies of course, from single coffin to multi-level subterranean suites. For a price you can even have your family's name carved into a marble plaque as a souvenir.

The "Lit de Mort" was always expanding, renovating and removing their rooms and the alleged disappearances only served to fuel the fascination that kept them in business. Nobody really questioned it,too busy admiring their surroundings and the kitschy-morbid decór in their personalised deathbeds.

There are sometimes complaints from particularly religious visitors, claiming the whole thing is sacrilege and demanding a refund at the very least. Or those who come back saying they spent their night (or nights) in torment from unseen things that laugh and call their name. Or those who don't come back at all.

Of course the staff were suspects in many cases and their generally shifty demeanor didn't help (though for appearance's sake they were required to play the part of supernaturally-fearful-local). If word got out about a new disappearance, as it often did, it only led to more visitors. Some came just to stay in rooms where people had last been seen, where they had potentially spent their final hours alive.

A few suspected that the town was in on it but they couldn't begin to guess the extent. It was more than the town, it was a network of them. All joined by subterranean tunnels, some of which went right underneath the "Lit de Mort", linking every mausoleum to one gigantic chamber beneath the epicentre of this alliance.

The missing were always within arm's reach and the rest of the country was none the wiser. they became integral parts of the community, feeding plant and person alike in varying states of mulch and recomposition. The mountainous area was very well known for their rare type of pig.

As the tourism board says: There's no taste like it, there's no place like it.

Day 632

It was called Grandad's chair but for as long as I can remember he'd never sat in it.

Wasn't until I was eight that my mum finally explained to me why this was.

She began by saying that I was never allowed to sit there - that chair wasn't meant for the living.

It came from an old family story about a day when a man made of bones and tar came to the house.

He spoke in a deep booming voice that seemed to come from a foot or so above his head.

Didn't have any skin, so to speak, just stringy tar draped around his crumbling frame.

He asked for a chair to sit on every night, to rest his old bones.

My great something Grandad was the only person to agree to this.

We've had the chair ever since.

I haven't seen the bone man yet but my mum assures me that I will eventually.

She first saw it when she was involved in a car accident back in 1975.

Came home and saw him hunched in Grandad's chair, breath rasping out like tin cans in a storm.

Most of my relatives can see him for one reason or another, usually an accident of some kind.

All my life they've talked to Grandad's chair and the bone man who rests there.

Sometimes I catch glimpses of him but he doesn't look anything like they describe.

See, my family have all agreed that he's bones and stringy ropes of tar holding him in one piece.

From the brief moments I've seen him he looks like lumps of leather poorly sewn together.

His head is always turned to face me apparently, my family say it's because he likes me.

Day 631

My parents finally told me where my phobia of water came from.
Turns out I'd tried to drown myself when I was five.
It's why we moved house to a neighbourhood with no swimming pools, lakes or rivers.

I would blame my imaginary friends - I had a house full of them.
They all had names and stories and strikingly individual appearances.
From what my parents said the only problem with this at the time was they lived underwater.

Their mansion was at the bottom of our old house's swimming pool.
They kept inviting me down there to stay with them.
I vaguely remember strange looking people pulling me into the water and how it burned my lungs.

My parents assumed I grew out of it when I hit twelve, I stopped talking about them all.
I didn't have the heart to say that they followed me from house to house until I turned nineteen.
Over the years they changed to the point where they just stopped being people anymore.

Last time I saw them they were elongated shadows with eyes the size of my fists.
They still wanted me to go to their home and stay, to drown and join them.
I still remember what it looked like.

The floor was either made of bones or so covered in them the floor wasn't visible at all.
Bloated bodies floated at the tops of the rooms,some still struggling to breathe.
Seems they had many other friends than me and most had joined them.

They were all my size too, such tiny little bodies and bones.
As I grew older my imaginary friends would bring bones to me as presents, calling them treasure.
They'd say it was made of silver and offer me riches enough to build my own castle.

I wonder how many thousands of children fell for that.
Or how many parents were too slow or didn't notice anything.
Or how many survived like me, only to see their distorted faces in every pool of water.

I can see that house in puddles, in heavy rain, in wet mirrors.
Always tinged a deep blue, with figures flitting all around and inside, carrying children with them.
I haven't seen any children come out so far, perhaps I'm the only one.

Day 630

It all began when an albino whale washed up on the beach during a storm that flooded half of Scotland. Poor thing wasn't found for days - nobody wanted to go out in the weather but eventually the stench reached nearby residents. Lacking the funds, means or time to crane the remains into the sea they just dumped sand onto it until it was buried enough that if it exploded it wouldn't damage anything else around it... hopefully.

Truth be told they should have done more to be rid of it. Whales have been washing up on a daily basis ever since. They seem to be gathering around the coast where that albino one died. I'm not sure if they're mourning it or if they're drawn to the shore by something. All attempts to ward them off have failed but what did they expect would happen? How are they even meant to shoo away humpbacks? The damn things are at least 40 tons.

At night when the winds blow the right way you can hear them all singing. Locals have been calling it "that poxy dirge" and all other annoyed expressions. They're all afraid of what it means, all these beachings and the ever-growing pod surrounding their shore.

When the sighting of the albino whale came again it was by a security guard coming home from his shift. Said it was in the sky, white as flour and solid as the ground he stood on. He reached out and touched it as it drifted overhead, brushing against the roofs of the nearby houses, breaking chimneys and antenna alike.

The damage was there to back it up leading from the beach where the whales waited, around the town in a great loop and ending up back at the shore.Sure enough later on footage came from mobile phones across the area where people had spotted or followed the albino whale as it moved further and further inland before heading back out. all the while the amount of whales that beached continued to grow to the point where their decaying corpses had begun to form piles along the shoreline.

They weren't following one whale though. There were too many sightings for it to be just that one albino whale that had started this whole drove of cetacean suicides. From police helicopters doing night patrols it was found that there were twenty six. The exact number that had died so far on that one beach. They were swarming the area and more were coming every night.

Always from the beach, over the town and back out to sea.

Back to the others who seemed to be waiting their turn.

All the while they continued to sing.

Day 629

I remember when I was a child we had one of those plastic pop-up tents that you could inflate.
It had four distinct sections - a boat, a shark, an octopus and a submarine.
Me and my brothers loved it, we'd chase eachother around those sections for hours on end.

We never went in it alone though.
It was a kind of unspoken agreement that whenever one of us went out, the others would too.
Nobody left behind.

My brothers don't remember why.
To them it was just a thing that we happened to do.
I remember though and the day we got rid of the damned thing was such a relief.

I probably should have warned my uncle what he was giving his children.
See, it wasn't just a kid's plaything- it had someone else inside it, always opposite you.
From one section you can't see the one opposite which is where they hide.

It's worse in the tunnels, from there it could be in one of two sections.
And you never know which it will be until you peer and see it peering right back.
Safest thing to do is get out and poke the sections to see if it pokes back.

That's why we always went in together, the three of us.
It meant that the thing could only be in one section and we could all see each other.
We'd chase it around, chase ourselves around trying to get it to leave.

No matter how many times we folded the playset up and stored it away, the thing was still there.
I wonder how my cousins fared against it.
After all, there's only two of them and they are so much younger than we were at the time.

Day 628

There's always been something off about car parks. Whether it's the iron bars on the windows, the faint stench of urine or the lift that looks to be forty years out of date there's always something that makes you wish you'd been able to park elsewhere.

For me it's definitely the lift. It has a tendency to do as it pleases and you'd be lucky to get off at any floor,let alone the one you wanted. There's a sign on the doors now saying it's due to faulty wiring but what kind of faulty wiring causes the lift to laugh at you?

A few weeks ago I went there for the last time, I haven't got the guts to go again after what happened. I mean, when you park opposite the lift late at night and the lift keeps opening and closing and the floor numbers keep going down and below to floors that shouldn't exist but somehow do, how are you supposed to just go back like nothing happened at all?

It just didn't feel right there, it's always been strange but seeing the floor numbers hit minus thirty in a three storey car park means something is very wrong. Either it really is faulty wiring or there's a whole lot more to the place than anybody's letting on. Especially when the lift itself only had buttons for floors 1, 2, 3 and the basement where larger vehicles park.

I know people have reported odd smells and noises and sudden changes in temperature ranging from hot enough to blister skin to cold enough that icicles form on the ceiling. I had a plan to put a camera in the corner to see what it was like on floor -30 but when I retrieved it those few weeks ago all I could see was a pair of bright red legs. Human legs, I should add, but the brightest red.

They just stood there for (according to the time stamp) eight and a half hours which was from the moment the lift doors closed to when I got it the next morning. They didn't even appear there which is the worst part of it.

I had the camera recording from just before I set it down you see, and the footage clearly shows the lower half of a human standing there all bright red and severed brutally at the waist, little toes wiggling like a bored child's and all. I never saw anything when I put it down there though. But I'll admit it felt quite warm inside there.

Day 627

Mersea is only an island by technicality. Overall its population is divided between the two villages on either side and sparse houses between. East Mersea  by the River Colne and West Mersea by the River Blackwater. Beyond that is the North Sea and all the creatures within.

The road onto Mersea is said to flood twice a day, becoming lost to the sea's tide. Not that the residents mind it much - they've grown so used to it they could tell you when the next tide is due without a second thought. It's as stable a part of their lives as Sundays at church is.

Until the tide came in and didn't leave. Until they came to know what it means to be an island with limited resources and too many people to share them with. Until the tide fled five months later leaving the chaos it created behind.

It hasn't been the same since, anyone there'll tell you that. They used to catch fish and sell them - it was one of the main sources of income on the island and a staple of their residence. Now they'll only say that there's something in the water and it's corrupted the fish.

They said that anyone who tried to sail over the road or anywhere from Mersea to mainland was brought back by some reason or other, be it by harsh winds, rough tides or something that looked like an enormous webbed hand grasping the sides of their boat and gently but firmly pushing it back ashore.

When the tides eventually receded Mersea was found to have adapted all too eagerly to the sea-imposed routine. Their newly elected mayor, a charismatic local by the name of Keenan Blythegood, had quickly formed a new order of business practically reverting them all back to the middle ages. The elderly, sick or weak were locked up or killed so the food went to "good and honest workers" while going to the sea or anywhere near a boat was expressly forbidden.

From what they said whatever seemed to be lurking in the watery region around them wasn't exactly harmful, it was more like a sheepdog than monster. Sure it kept them all trapped on an island with no hope of sustaining them but it did provide them with viable food options. The fish was the first thing to be tested and found to be perfectly edible, higher levels of omega oils than was usual but it could have been down to a local mutation.

With no images of this alleged guiding hand, the entire thing was dismissed as a freak weather occurrence and Mersea was very much ignored from then on. It became a joke to the rest of England that the sea folk had just spent too much time among the fish and saw them everywhere.

Truth isn't too far from it, after all they don't use their boats any more.
The hand provides, as the saying goes.
Though none of them eat the fish they seem awfully keen to sell them.

Day 626

He noticed the fog as soon as he set foot outside his front door. It was so thick he could taste it in the air, that dampness that seemed to seep into every breath and make him cough wetly. All the house lights looked like they were floating in a sea of cotton, if it wasn't night time the whole scene might look pretty, romantic even. The scent of peppermint lingered in the air which he put down to his toothpaste, used mere minutes beforehand.

He almost didn't find his car in the street, it took several clicks of his key fob to find the flashing headlights among the dense mist that was quickly leeching his warmth. With his seatbelt firmly buckled, heater on full blast and windows crisply clear, he drove off to his awaiting night shift and the drab security patrol he did each night. He usually dreaded work but something about the minty scent that had followed him into the car made everything seem better somehow,more bearable.

And so he drove slowly downhill, barely able to see the road thanks to the fog that rendered the streetlights all but useless with its intensity. At first he thought the road was narrowing- the lights seemed to be gradually moving inwards.

Roadworks was his first assumption, despite nothing being in the local newspaper about them. Dismissing this he wondered if he was just imagining things but pulling the car to a gradual stop by the roundabout at the end of the hill, he saw what he had presumed to be streetlights slowly drifting towards him.

Grabbing his emergency flashlight from the glove compartment he shone it towards the closest light that was nearing the top left of his car and moving down to greet him. Something glinted behind it and the scent of peppermint grew stronger, chipping away at his fear and replacing it with a sleepy ease and pure contentment.

He'd never felt so at peace before and was quite enjoying it even as his flashlight reflected off of what appeared to be gigantic teeth. The fog began to clear around him and he found himself surrounded by gaping mouths packed with countless serrated teeth, all facing him and almost resembling deep sea anglerfish. The main difference (aside from the sheer size of them) was the colour, or lack of. They were mainly transparent, the remnants of their last meal (a cyclist judging by the neon clothing) sitting neatly, peacefully inside a stomach the size of a van.

He wasn't scared,if anything he felt this was the best thing to happen to him all week.

Taking a deep breath of the mint-scented air he switched the car off and opened his door to them.

Day 625

An infants bones are constantly growing and not always as they should.
Limbs can quite easily become deformed to the point where amputation is a necessity.
Mostly these situations are put down to a poor draw in the genetic lottery.
What if I told you that we are all vulnerable to this?

It isn't just one lone segment of DNA causing havoc within a few developing humans.
It's the entire human race - we all have that little strand within us that could destroy us.
A dozen extra limbs, no ribcage, no skull - it could be any one of us.
And what makes matters even worse it how easily this can be triggered.

They'll call it cancer and cut it out before anything untoward can occur but if left unchecked
over the course of several years (and a very high pain threshold) one can cease to be human at all.
We find them as corpses, always as corpses that are claimed to be "alien" or cattle.
Whichever is the biggest trend at the time.

So far only a small team of scientists know the exact trigger, to tell the world is to erase humanity.
Imagine if you could warp your neighbour's body with a single, irreversible thing.
When given something and told that it is dangerous, most humans will use it anyway.
Studies have shown this time and time again to the point where those who know are imprisoned.

It's been said they haven't seen sunlight since they made the breakthrough.
Every person who tried to escape was met with swift and cruel retaliation - the trigger.
Now even if they did get out, nobody would recognise them.
Not that they live beyond a week anyway.

Day 624

It was all a dare, just a stupid dare between idiot friends who didn't know any better and didn't think that anything would actually happen. The old hospital had been closed for thirty years, held up in the red tape bollocks that's kept the whole city constricted in all the wrong places while feeding the bloated wallets of the scum in charge.

I digress.

There were about five or six of us at first but Jamie and her girlfriend turned back when we decided to head further than the outpatients area. Said the place smelled too bad and in all fairness it absolutely stank but the rest of us stuck around for a better look.

Outpatients was a right mess, looked like we'd arrived to the scene about twenty odd years after everyone else judging by how much graffiti was about. One wall was just the word "next patient please" sprayed in green and blue. At least I think it said that, there was this thick layer of brownish goo or something that was leaking from the ceiling. We reckoned the gutters were clogged after all these years. If we'd've known what was actually causing it I would be doing this now, being interviewed like I'm some kind of killer when the thing that did it is still down there!

So as I said, we went further into the place. Past a gift shop, down a ward that Harry insisted had been called "Scarborough" for some reason. The rest of us didn't really care, we were too busy trying not to gag whenever the wind blew that stench down to us. It was like the bins behind a restaurant, with the addition of a broken toilet or ten.

We thought we were heading away from whatever stank, something like some dead birds or an old squat. didn't seem to matter which corridor we took though and we went down a lot of corridors. We wanted to find something cool but most of the rooms were empty.

It was my idea to head through the old courtyard but I was against going down to the cancer ward. It just didn't seem right to go to a terminal ward, you know? Like the regular wards were just where people stayed for a few nights, not somewhere they went out in a bodybag!

The courtyard looked pretty cool with the fish still being alive in the pond and everything. They were eating the same brown gunk that we'd been seeing on the walls all the way down. Biggest goldfish I'd ever seen too, about the length of my arm maybe and this weird iridescent kind of orange, really pale too. There were also benches left intact which we wrote our names on, what else were we going to do?

Then Harry started showing off, claiming the cancer ward was haunted and it'd be fun to go there and check it out. Like I said, that was one step too far for me but I got outvoted and the place was too creepy to walk back alone. that and we'd taken so many turns I had no idea where the exit was - I'm amazed we even found it when we ran back out.

See we weren't expecting anyone else to be there, let alone some freak in a nurse's uniform. She was covered in the brown gunk too and it just poured out of her mouth when she tried to speak. We thought it was Harry's idea of a prank, lure us all here and scare the crap out of us but no. He was just as terrified as we were, just as clueless and that woman just came out of nowhere.

We were just checking out the leftover beds that had way too many stains for anyone to want to go near but we still dared each other to try. Then she just came walking towards us from somewhere in the ward, teeth bared, brown muck pouring everywhere and then she charged at Harry and knocked him flat down. Jerry tried to pull her away but she nearly clawed his face off! He collapsed and started having a seizure or something and when she started back on Harry, tearing at his hair, me and Laurie ran.

That's all I know. I don't know how their bodies ended up in my back garden but it sure as hell wasn't me, if anything you should be locking me up to protect me cause that freak's out there and she knows where I live. She's probably been for Jerry already, have you seen her at all? Is she being questioned too? Where is she? Have you gone to her house yet? Don't tell me she's gone too!

Day 623

The lights can't see and so they never sleep. They never change either, whole streets of traffic lights have been disabled and remade only for the problem to persist. Traffic is either at a standstill or whizzing through with no inbetween save for the few areas where amber never changes.

Pedestrians are the ones who suffer most from this, being trapped at intersections for hours as cars refuse to stop for them - after all why stop when the light is green?

It goes beyond mere traffic signals, right to the very cores of our homes when lights take on a life of their own. Faint voices come from them, demanding to be kept on all the while they continue to grow hotter and hotter. It gets to the point where houses become unbearably bright and some are already known to have caught fire from the sheer levels of heat being output.

And then it spread to the streetlights and day became a 24 hour concept with temperatures that put midsummer to shame. We became unable to cope above the ground as did most life. Whole ecosystems either perished or moved with us, as if sensing that we had a plan for survival or perhaps already knowing that humans survive above most disasters.

The lights won't sleep and so we live in the dark now. Even simple lights such as glowsticks or small torches have proved to be fatal and have thus been abandoned in favour of our oldest companion - a gentle flame.

We have theories that the voices we hear are somehow familiar to us, a kind of ghost if you will. In fact, some have argued that they seem to be a form of magnetic energy trapped within the electrical circuits forever circling between the lights and reaching out to us, not wanting to perish.

Although we now suffer under our own creation, can we blame the lights for not wanting to rest when we ourselves fight so harshly against the same dark that they do?

Day 622

I saw something last night and I don't think I was supposed to.
All I saw was this dark figure - small looking and seemingly normal.
Admittedly I thought it was an old man at first from the way it was bent over and wheezing.
The figure stopped just before a large oak tree by the side of the path.
It looked left and right - not behind though - and began to reach up and up and endlessly up.
I saw its arms reach to the very top of the tree, legs sprouting up to match.

Even its head warped into some elongated imitation of a person, or was the person the imitation?
Soft clicks accompanied its every move as it began to climb into the overhanging branches.
The branches I would have to walk under to get through the street and back home.
I saw them flex and bow above my head as I walked under.
Those soft clicks sounded to my right, from the tree trunk, and the clicks drew closer and closer.
I ran the rest of the way, hoping it would lose interest but I can see its shadow outside my window.

Day 621

When we created transporters we didn't quite know who would arrive on the other side.

In the first trial, all that arrived was his scream.

In the second, her bones and meat separated.

Our last one was perfect, a whole human exactly as he'd walked in.

Just not the same person.

Not a person at all.

Day 620

They made speakers in the woods to "amplify the songbirds" as if they weren't screaming loud enough for us to hear at all hours on all days. These constructions stand twice as tall as a man and deer can often be found lying down, seemingly asleep at first until you go close enough to see the small pools of blood that leak from their ears and the fear in their half-open eyes as they remain paralysed in fear by nature's accidently weaponised cacophony.

You're meant to stand in front of the speakers and enjoy the music of nature, made loud enough for humans to hear more of it than ever before. Even the slightest rustle of a mouse is audible which isn't so bad but, as if expected, the less friendly aspects of nature are also amplified.

For instance, did you know rabbits could scream? Have you ever heard the sound of an owl tearing into a live mouse and feeding it piece-by-piece to its young? Or the death rattle of the deer who wander aimlessly into the speakers and become overwhelmed, gradually starving to death?

Of course we clean out any bodies found, deer or other. Our butchers never go without work. Of course tourists love it all, utterly ignorant about the impact this all has on the town but more than content to eat their "locally sourced" venison burgers or rabbit stew or "pork" in rarer instances.

We leave so many graves empty.

They don't suspect a thing.

Don't eat the pork.

Don't visit the woods.

Day 619

The Comm Tower stood colossal among the rest of the city, dwarfing everything else by a mile. Near every inch of the top was smothered in satellite dishes and antenna, precariously hung on by whoever was desperate enough climb the bloody thing.

The numbers have been gradually increasing over the years, what with the new laws brought in by the government that aimed to reduce the amount of electricity used. Like most of their schemes it backfired.

What did they expect would happen by raising the costs of household electricity to the point where climbing an 1,800 foot tower and attaching their home's receiver was a more viable alternative to paying the bill?

They did try to section off the tower from the rest of the city with concrete walls, barbed wire and security. Shame the security forces weren't paid enough to care who went through, went up, went all the way down with a sickening crunch at the end.

Putting an ambulance base nearby was the best thing the local council ever did. It was the only response they made to the deaths, that and the regulation that body-bags were to be used a minimum of three times consecutively before they were allowed to be disposed of. It saved money.

Seeing people fall became so commonplace that soon the tower was renamed to "Heaven's Back Door" - churning out falling angels like mince from the slaughterhouses. Some people even wore wings when they climbed the rickety frame in the hopes that they'd slow the fall enough that they might survive. They weren't anything like the depicted angel's wings, these were great faux leather contraptions with all manner of parachutes, rubbish sacks and bedsheets that always seemed to fail.

It wasn't until someone began to take pictures of the "falling angels" that anyone noticed what was wrong. There was someone with them when they fell, every time. They seemed to be sabotaging the wings, cutting holes, tearing straps and breaking necks.

So there was something besides cables up there and it didn't want intruders. It kept the satellite dishes up there though. Through the camera lens it could be seen that their nimble hands secured them tightly, forming some kind of barrier between the inner workings of the tower and the camera's view.

Day 618

There's something slightly creepy about empty roads late at night.
Not sure if it's the lack of normal activity or the long limbed things that scuttle between streets.
They sit always in the corners of my eyes and wait by the roadside when I drive past.
It makes the night shift worse when you constantly see them outside the windows.

Some of them seem to have set routines, going from house to house in the same pattern each night.
I still don't know what it is they do in these houses and believe me they go right inside.
They mutter to each other too, sometimes using English but mostly a kind of skreeing sound.
It varies in pitch and tone, somehow meaning everything.

I do wonder though, if they use English when humans who notice them are around.
It's just that the words they say always relate to something in my house or someone I know.
Just the occasional string of words like "pink plate in sink" or "hidden in the blue sofa cushion".
I'd confront them about it but honestly they're a lot bigger than me up close.

Some of the ones near my house sit comfortably in the eight to nine feet tall range.
I do wonder if they go in my house when I'm not there or not aware.
Lately they've been skittering about the carpark I always use, lurking in the shaded areas.
I think they know that I know that they're there.

Have I accidentally made eye contact too many times?
Are they going to keep coming closer to me until they're standing right next to me?
I can see one from the elevator but I don't want to go out the door now.
It's one of the biggest I've seen and it's staring right at me.

Day 617

The museum's model village had been set up perfectly - a place for everything and everything in its place. It's main marvel was the thousands of tiny 00 Gauge Figures painted with precise, minute details and arranged in all manner of conversations and everyday occurrences.

It mimicked one of the neighbouring villages perfectly, the figures almost seeming to match the events there but one day behind. So if you ever wanted to know who did what yesterday you'd only have to check the model railway in the natural history museum. Lives have been saved this way - nobody can ever go missing in the area when their tiny duplicate is on the model and doing just what they were.

Murders have even been solved this way - it's now police procedure to check the diorama before commencing any kind of investigation. The diorama is classed as eyewitness testimony and indisputable proof. Nobody questions it.

Lately though, it's been less behind local events. Sometimes you can even see the people moving about ever so slowly but just as the people they represent move.

Some reckon they're eventually going to show us the future, show us who will die and when and by whom. They think a disaster is coming and want to burn the whole museum down. Of course there's an opposing side who want to see their futures, see who they'll marry and how many children they'll have. They're starting to worship the damned thing.

Just last week the tension between these groups came to a climax when the Anti-Burners (as they call themselves) built a chain fence around the museum and tied themselves to it. The Pro-Burners tried to get the police involved only to find the chief was chained there as well - of his own free will of course.

And as for me and where I fit into this?

I'm the one that's been moving the figures all these years.

Seeing everything and showing them all. Hiding underneath the museum floorboards when anyone comes in - I have trapdoors all over the place, leading deep into the countryside and three neighbouring towns. The second they turn their backs I move my little friends about with tiny magnets and motors and now that I've caught up to the present I can make them do whatever I want.

I have a village full of puppets too busy fighting each other to look down.

Day 616

When the great fire spread my family took refuge in the sewers.
See smoke goes up so if you go down it doesn't get you.
We weren't the only ones to think of it sure but it was better than roasting on the streets.
People were chucking all sorts onto the flames, feeding and fighting it in equal measure.
When they started throwing the unwanted and homeless like us, we knew we had to escape.

Dad always said that if you walked enough you'd find something better.
That's why he sent us out so early on in life, just me and my three brothers alone in London.
We were supposed to find something better down there - not sure if it's better but it's something.
It's like a labyrinth down those sewers, twists and turns and dead ends aplenty.
I don't know how long we were down there but the air cooled eventually and the screaming stopped.

Every sound stopped but the dripping of water and faint moans from others who'd had our idea.
We waded through London's filth and struggled to keep our heads above it in some places.
Lost Timothy to it right near the start.
He was either too tired to move any more or he got pulled back out and burnt.
Everything after entering the sewers until leaving them is hazy.

I remember several rooms - big ones - where the water and filth just dropped down into endless pits.
They seemed too big to fit under the city and were more like cities of their own.
There were even people moving and living in those rooms, past the pits, on large platforms.
Everyone seemed so happy but not quite right.
It was something about the way they moved, like those shadowbox puppets - all jerks and snaps.

We lost James to one of those rooms, or rather to the pits around it.
He wanted to be a part of those happy scenes so much he just leapt... or was he pushed?
As I said it's all hazy but after a few flights of stairs we came to another room like the ones above.
James was waving at us from one of the platforms - or was someone moving him like a puppet?
There were definitely people on either side of him, all three smiling together.

By the time we found an exit it was just me, Edward and the smouldering remains of Eastcheap.
Ever since then there's been something different about Edward.
All he talks about is those tunnels and the cities and how happy the family will be when we return.
I know he's been digging in one of the burnt-down buildings, in the cellars.
He wants the people to come out again almost as much as they want to be out again.

Day 615

They'd found their way into the ship quite by mistake.
Checking the gate at the end of the boardwalk they found it was unlocked.
A few jaunty dares later found them all on deck, giggling and shushing each other.

They began to grow bored as they found the cabin door locked and the deck empty.
One found stairs leading below deck and the others pushed him to go.
He was fine for the first few steps but soon slipped with a cry.

The others watched him tumble into the darkness of the lower deck.
His cry cut off abruptly with a loud splash.
Then silence.

The remaining trio looked at each other, silently assigning blame and daring someone else to go.
After a few tense moments a second moved to the steps, stopping after two.
He pulled out his phone and switched on the flashlight, illuminating the mess on the stairs.

They all leapt back at the sight of their friend's mangled corpse in a pool of others.
The stairs were drenched in the blood of countless people before them.
At the very end there was so much blood they couldn't see any floor, just floating bodies.

Their friend's face gazed up at them, twitching faintly and struggling to stay awake.
All around him other bodies began to float closer, arms slowly outstretching.
Without so much as a gasp they grabbed at his limbs, pulling him under and out of sight.

Of course the trio tried to run at this, stopping as they saw the boardwalk was no longer there.
Nor was the pier, nor the warehouses or any of the familiar shore.
How long had they been staring down there and why was the water slowly turning red?

Day 614

If you ask me the whole thing seemed creepy right from the start.
They turned the old hospital into a hotel... a themed hotel.
Fancy a stay in a renovated deathbed?
I hear some of the patients didn't leave despite the hotel's reported "exorcisms".

They hang around their old rooms you see.
Sometimes where their old beds were - where the new beds are.
Yes people have woken up to gaunt faces right beside them, calling them "nurse".
At least that's all they do, they're just tired old souls looking for their carer.

Others are less kind - there are rooms that are only accessible for the night if you sign a waiver.
The most well known is in the maternity ward- Room 347A.
People wake up covered in bite marks (most of them do at least, 4 deaths and counting).
Her baby is hungry.

Another is the stock room of the Morgue Bar and Lounge.
They use the sliding metal trolleys to chill most drinks.
All except one which is still very much in use, the staff reckon he doesn't know he's dead.
He likes to come and go as he pleases, leaving the doors wide open.

His trolley is labelled as Mr. Tom's Room and left well alone.
The last person to try and climb in there was flung to the opposite wall, both legs just snapped.
Nobody's tried since and old Mr. Tom continues to roam about the bar and reception area.
Quite the tourist attraction until a freshly killed child was found in his room.

Day 613

Hidden in an alleyway in a carpark by the docks.
Take a left turn on the bridge and head past the building that was a warehouse back in the day.
You'll see it down there.

The place where half a building collapsed.
Where they left the remains of whatever caused it.
I mean, people heard the crash but nobody came to check it out, nobody believed it was a real thing.

The newspapers ran a few articles over the course of a week asking for sources.
I don't know if they found any, doubt they even knew where it happened.
Luckily the storage area was due for demolishing anyway.

Lucky me, I saw the creature half buried under the rubble.
My flat is just across the street from there.I saw that it came from under the ground, broke its way up and through the old storage area.

I don't think it didn't mean to cause any damage, I think it just wanted out.
Either way it looked like nothing from any story book, movie or picture I'd ever seen.
With its bulbous head surrounded by a circlet of neon red eyes, some pierced by sharp debris.

Even its skin had this weird looking texture almost like it was constantly rippling like water.
It kept trying to lift its head up - to the sky or to face me or just instinct, I don't know.
The body is still there, rotting away even now.

Nobody's going to come for it but someone keeps leaving flowers there - white lilac mostly.
It's some kind of code I know, somebody knows what that creature was and where it came from.
Maybe they even called it up here and feel guilty that it died.

I can't help but wonder if it came alone or if its corpse has paved the way for others like it.
Can you imagine, thousands of them erupting from the ground all over the world.
All to just try and stare at the sky.

Day 612

There's a strange sound been heard all about the town.
Something like a wail and a whale, this long anguished moan from something.
At first people put it down to the wind through the new apartment towers.
They were still being built at that point, little more than concrete shells.
It made sense.

What didn't make sense was how it continued long after they'd been built and occupied.
Residents denied hearing the sound any louder than the rest of us but we knew they were lying.
See, some of us set up microphones at different levels of the tower.
From this we guessed the noise to be coming from below the building.
Namely in the loading bay for the ground floor shop.

It took months for someone to go anywhere near there, too freaked out by how loud it got.
The police were called a few times for local noise complaints, apparently checked the bay too.
Funny though, no reports were made, they never talked about it either.
All they'd say was that the loading bay was clear and ordinary, if a little musty.
The residents were ordered to clean it thoroughly and that was all.

I was just as frustrated as everyone else by this lack of information until a vacancy came up.
About four months ago I received an email about an apartment on the floor just above the shop.
It was cheap, good view and clean -just what I wanted really.
I never told anybody about it at first, they'd only use it as an excuse to hang around and listen.
Strangely enough when word got out that I was there nobody batted an eyelid.

A guy approached me on the street, gave no name and said he wished me all the luck in the world.
Gave me some kind of good luck charm and said to keep it in my left shoe at all times.
Of course I did it, even wore the damn thing in a sock on my left foot at night.
Anything to make the noise die down again and make the walls stop rattling when it cries.
As a resident I'm allowed everywhere around - I admit I've stood by the loading doors for hours.

The noise, whoever or whatever it may be, is definitely coming from there.
I have yet to actually see anything but I swear there's something moving in the vents at night.
The noise happens at random, there's no pattern or rhythm just that cry...
I can feel the door rattle when it happens and the pigeons that roost there scream with it.
Didn't think they could shriek like that... didn't think...

Day 611

Briony and Lorna had never really done much outside of the bus trips to the local sixth form, the city and back to their middle-of-nowhere home. As they planned to follow these newfound tracks they never bothered to do any background research on it, such as the young often are.

With some forethought they brought rucksacks full of "provisions" like a small torch each, chocolate, water bottles and (for some reason) a can opener allegedly in place of the penknives they were too young to obtain.

Setting out on Lorna's scooter, they headed up the dirt path by one of the old farmsteads that never seemed to have anything going on but still stank of animal faeces. The track ran right through the woods - they almost made it entirely through but the mud on the far side was too hazardous for them to continue any longer by vehicle. Chaining it to a tree the two girls headed further away from their homes and onwards to the tracks that they hoped would lead them onto some great discovery.

Much to Briony's delight the tracks were still there - she hadn't imagined them! They were rusted to pieces in places and overgrown in others but they totally counted as an exciting find. Lorna wasn't quite as pleased with the "find", preferring to think about what could be on the other end of the tracks and whatever treasures they could get to. Maybe there was one of those old-timey trains, full of people's leftover things!

After briefly bickering they chose to head away from the city and deeper into the moors. The further they went the higher up the tracks rose until they levelled off about eight feet from the ground. This was confusing to the girls, after all, how could this possible support a full train and why did it need to be so far from the ground when the grass below looked perf.... looked to be about three foot high, judging by the height of the tracks and moving strangely.

Pausing briefly to look around for whatever the source of the movements was (birds maybe, or a stray cat?) they felt the quiet breeze around them die off sharply. Holding their breath they glanced about nervously, squinting at the grass like it held all the answers. Upon seeing nothing they carried on, trying to be as quiet as they could but not really knowing why.

The tracks continued to rise, as did the grass below, until the girls trod precariously at twelve feet above ground. Their nerves were getting the better of them at this point and they whispered to each other, wondering if they should go home and head back some other time until Lorna spotted something in the distance, around the tops of the trees, right where the tracks seemed to be heading.

The girl's pace picked up as they continued to climb upwards and ever upwards to the fairly large wooden building that stood on the same kind of framework that the train tracks did. It was in pretty good condition, considering they assumed this place had been abandoned for Lord knows how long and Lord knows why it was even made in the first place.

The first thing they noticed was that the doors were wide open. The next was that an old man was waiting inside, holding a box and looking impatient. He looked over, spotted them and smiled widely, inviting them to come inside and not gawk about like lemons. As they cautiously approached he asked which train they were getting - Ash Ragwood or Narrow Barkmoor.

The girls had never heard of either of those places, weren't even sure if they existed or if the old man had lost his mind and build some crazy treehouse place. Still they politely said they hadn't decided yet, wondering where this was going. The old man advised them to come back later, when they'd made their choice. After all, the trains will always be there.

Laughing nervously they went to make a hasty retreat but before they could the old man stopped them, saying that if they were taking the tracks back down they needed a Hawsey Stone. From the box he brought out what looked to be two brown stones, shiny and full of little holes. He told them to put the stone to their left eye and trust that what they were seeing had always been there.

As soon as they did so, squinting through the holes and glancing about them, they saw that the old man wasn't old at all - he wasn't even a man. Eight curved horns protruded from his head, his face a mass of lumps with tiny black eyes peering out. His body was much the same, one giant pile of lumps stuffed into a coat with large portions leaking out and throbbing slightly. He called himself a fae and  told them to never leave the tracks until they firmly touched the ground.

The next moment he was gone and they were left in a room that was suddenly full of beetle-like people, chittering and scuttling towards the counter. They fled for the tracks, stumbling down and down and further down to the ground. Stopping back at the point where the grass moved strangely they put the Hawsey Stones to their eyes once more and saw exactly what made the grass move so.

They were just heads on sticks, or possibly stick-like bodies. Their eyes, mouths and noses were gaping holes with a dark green fluid oozing out. They were staring at the girls, ducking in and out of the grass, following them all the way until the grass grew too short

It's hard to say what happened faster, the girls running for the moped or the creatures running for deeper grass.

It's possible they never met afterwards, then again it's possible they met one final time.

Day 610

It had happened for the fifth time that week. A child, or something presumed to have once been a child, found swimming in the lake. Their limbs become distended so much so they look nothing human.

It's well documented that the cases further up North tend to lean more towards the liquidated end state whereas the Southern cases calcify and end up resembling geodes. I remember one case I checked into several years back (one of the worst yet) where the boy in question looked more like a loose pile of flesh than anything, far beyond any curable stage and well into the terminal side of the spectrum. He was the first I'd ever seen that bad, his parents had tried some new and untested cure that turned out to be quite the catalyst.

You never forget the look on what remains of their faces. Their eyes just seem so resigned and old, no matter the state of the rest of them. Even if the case is mild they have that same look. It's almost like they know what they could turn into and accept it as certainty. No matter how many times you tell them they're going to be cured they just look at you like they're the adult and you're a child who's promised to not make a mess with paint.

They just don't believe it,not even after they're cured. We've had reports of self-induced relapses popping up all over the country. They either go back to wherever it was they contracted the illness or they find another who has it. All of them, even the barely infected, know where other infected children are and they can hone in on them within days of contracting it.

You have no idea how many clusters of these kids we've had to disband and return to their homes, only for them to run right back as soon as they can. There's been talk of just letting them do this and observing the outcome but their parents won't hear of it. They'd rather have little Timothy home so they can smother him and then turn their back a week later to let him get worse than let him be where his instincts are telling him to be and letting trained professionals observe and treat them.

In my patch they all try to get to Farhurston Lake. Just dive right in and liquify to the point where they look something like beige jellyfish with an old man's eyes. Honestly I'd be fine leaving them there to do their thing but again they have to be dragged out to slowly die on land because their parents never read the leaflets they were given that clearly state the following:

Once in the latent (commonly known as "terminal") stages, the body loses it's ability to self sustain on land and much like a whale the equal pressure displacement on the body allows them to survive beyond any surface treatments.

Patients have been observed ten to twelve years post diagnosis in such states, living far beyond hospital expectations.

However when attempting recovery on these patients death follows in approximately eight to nine hours.

The cause? Asphyxiation induced by their own weight, again, much in the way of a beached whale.

In the latent stages the body loses all rigidity and relies on the buoyancy of water to keep their lungs open.

Of course they wash up sometimes, huge sacks of flesh where a seven-year-old once was, spread over nine or more feet.

I know there are calcifying cases, seen a few of the photos and kept a diagnostic list on my tablet just in case one stumbles this far down but they don't seem to be able to make it in warmer climates. From what the studies have concluded they rely on the cold to keep a certain amount of pressure on their spines, keep the area around there almost as hard as a diamond and prevent the stony growths from piercing and severing the nerves there.

The further down South they wander, the softer they become, like walking piles of mould. At least until the interior growths hit the nerves and cause paralysis in most cases, sometimes severe seizures but always resulting in death. there are too many replicas of scans going around, showing their little heads riddles with razor sharp calcified tumours.

Day 609

It was at the bottom of the valley, by the brook where the mists never left.
Where the people never left.

The villages around it were the epitome of picturesque with their delicately thatched roofs and well worn horse-driven carriages. The largest and oldest well in the whole of Scotland was surprisingly less popular than its surroundings despite having a circumference to rival the average family home.

Still the occasional tour group wandered through ooh-ing and aah-ing at its densely mossy walls and pitch black descent. With the recently added iron frame above it they could even walk across. The only rules around it were one at a time to cross and never drop anything down there.

Things dropped down there had a funny way of coming back to you,often leading to your arrest. I heard one guy dropped a handful of pebbles down there and was found a month later in his garden back in America. Stone cold dead, pardon the pun, with a handful of limestone pebbles deeply embedded in his forehead and covered by soaking wet moss.

There's no way to prove it was the well but word spread so fast around the village it was added to the list they kept locked away in one of the chapels.

A while after that someone dropped a coin down there, a ten pence piece or so the story goes. Not two days later they were found in a hotel room in one of the villages having asphyxiated on a ten pence piece. In their right hand was a clump of moss.

No foul play found. Just another name for the list.

There's been talk of sealing the well shut for good after the latest. They aren't even sure what they'd thrown down the well but their remains were found scattered about their house like grotesque confetti. Again like all the others there was moss found, stuffed inside the heart, aortas tied like a turkey at christmas. It was the first case to have an actual arrest result.

Shame he was found dead the morning after with a smile on his face and moss where his eyes were.

Day 608

It's been months since you've seen your face and longer since you went outside the room.
Your only light is coming from a candle and you write the timeline down with pencil and paper.
Nothing reflective is in the room.
If you can't see yourself then you can't become any worse, right?

Your reflection changed slowly, starting with the smallest of reflective objects.
In glass bottles your face seemed so much lumpier and no matter their colour your skin was green.
It soon moved onto door handles where your hands had too many digits and left faint red stains.
Even cutlery reflected something that was both you and someone else.

The glass windows you walk past showed it the clearest.
It walked half slumped, like it was being propped up b a stick and dragged along.
No matter what surface it was reflected on it was always looking at you with glassy yellow eyes.
It was heading closer to you.

The last time you saw it was in your bathroom mirror, pressed tightly against the glass.
Every breath it took fogged up the surface around it's slack, toothless mouth.
After that you hid away, tossed anything remotely reflective into the back garden.
Smashed all the windows for safe measure and nailed sheets of canvas to keep the cold out.

When the wind doesn't blow you can hear the broken, shiny objects outside shift about.
Like something is shifting them.
Peering past a canvas window-cover you caught a glimpse of a figure made of glass shards.
It was walking to the gaping hole where your glass back door was, glassy eyes fixed on you still.

Day 607

It was supposed to be just a small boat ride, one of those theme park jobbies with the plastic animatronic fairytales or what-have-you's. This one wasn't one I'd ever been to before and haven't been able to find again since.

This is going on for about twenty years or so ago, back when my Abbie was only 5. She used to love those boat rides - it was the only part of the theme parks she'd go on without fuss. Anything else was always full of issues for her like "the rollercoaster is too fast/high/slow" or "It'll make me feel sick" but somehow among all these little niggling things the boat rides were just right for her.

It turned out to be our last trip you know. Found this little carnival place near a roundabout on the way up to my parent's house in Inverness. I'd never heard of it before and I can't really remember the name of it now. You'd think with all that happened after and how Abbie... went, I'd remember such simple details like the name of the bloody place but no. That part's blank.

Maybe it's a mercy, not knowing quite where it is anymore. Less chance of me finding it again with Robbie, he's only seven and he's at that age where circus things are so very, very exciting. It's hard to deal with that after everything but he hasn't even been told that he'd had a big sister yet.

How can you tell a seven year old that he had a sister and the thing he loves is what helped kill her when she was barely older than he is now? We'll figure out how to let him know as soon as we can understand how she died in the first place.

It's still an open investigation you know, even though they never found her entire body and the place in question had apparently been "thoroughly investigated". It was all a shambles I say. Our liaison officer kept changing with no prior warning to us and every time they went to "meetings" with the park's manager they'd go off sick for a month or two and come back for maybe a week before retiring altogether!

The local media didn't run the story at all. We'd asked for publicity so we could at least find the rest of our little girl but nothing ever came of it. Last time I'd checked the newspaper company in that area had gone bust and withdrawn completely.

I know it's something about that little theme park but I can't remember it's name or exactly which roundabout it was near. I've gone to the area to hunt for it once a month every month ever since she disappeared.

I remember, we we'd been in the park for a good hour or so. I was so tired from having driven almost eight hours to get there so I closed my eyes for a few minutes. Next thing I know me and Abbie are on one of those boat rides based on local monsters. There were whole swarms of animatronic Puckwudgies that swooped over our heads laughing and looking so very real. There was even a large lagoon area where we saw a Kelpie rise out of the water, streaming red behind it only to turn into a black dog and run away.

I swear it never touched us, never saw it come back to the boat, never saw the black shapes below the water that looked like children caught in water-weeds.

I think I saw them reach out to her with tiny arms caked in mud and painfully thin. She looked so happy, calling them mermaids and reaching right back.

All the police found after a month of searching was her little hand.

Not much to bury and not nearly enough to keep the guilt away.

She was there though, at the end of the ride... but it wasn't quite her. Sure they had the same face but the way they used it wasn't like my Abbie. anyway, she ran off into the crowds before I could stop her and we haven't seen her ever since.

Day 606

Let's talk about Pacts.

Let's end the year on this warning.

Every year millions if not billions of us make a specific Pact without even realising it. These simplistic contracts are formed even by children, costing the lives of countless people for the sake of alleged "self improvement" and peer acceptance.

Our Resolutions are killing us.

Literally.

The tradition of Resolutions harkens back to ancient times when technology was based around building a better fence to keep the wolves at bay from your cattle. They originally had dual intent as well - fortune for the self by removing it from others.

Not just removing luck.

Removing life.

What's a few more years for you at the cost of your father, your sister, your beloved grandmother? In all fairness this has probably already occurred to you. As the bells chime new year's day the Pacts are made and sealed without you even realising it.

What is your resolution?

How many have died for you already, despite each resolution ending in failure?