20160630

Day 787

Fear sometimes comes from the unlikeliest of places like sweet shops in broad daylight or the sound of laughter coming from inside your pillow as you prepare to sleep. For her it began when she was a child, as these things often do. She used to play with her friends in a pile of abandoned tyres at the back of an old garage. The owner was an old man who only seemed to care when he found himself in need of a tyre from the pile he otherwise neglected to the point where grass grew between cracked tarmac and rotting rubber.

The children would dare each other to climb higher and higher, always trying to reach the famous white tyre on the top of the garage's roof and nearly always chickening out before they could even see over the roof. She wasn't the first to touch it but she was the first to actually get up onto the roof and look inside the pale rim.

Her friends from that time would talk forever more about how loudly she screamed and the wet crunch she made when she fell from the roof and hit the tarmac. They'll cry about how it's such a shame she never healed up right and how they never saw her after as her family moved to the other side of the country at the same time the garage closed.

They don't talk about what she said while she lay crying and bleeding on the floor before the ambulance arrived. How she kept saying there was a baby up there, how small it was and how it was all bones and needed their help. Nobody believed her at the time and her friends were forbidden from visiting the tyre pile for fear that they would end up like she did, injured and presumably unstable.

Years later a few of them would go back as a group, for old time's sake they would get a ladder and climb up the old garage wall where the tyres used to be and cut away the ivy that had grown over most of the old white tyre. They wouldn't talk about what they found but they would meet up to check the tyre regularly, bringing small amounts of food with them and never quite understanding what they were feeding or why.

20160629

Day 786

There's an alley in town that's full of single-window shops, the kind where you browse their chalk-scrawled menu and make a purchase based on whatever they've noted down (depending on how rainy it's been, reading becomes deciphering the remaining lines and vague outlines of old words).

Today's shop sells old TVs and CRT computer monitors. Cables carpeted the floor in a thick layer of black, red and green all knotted and seemingly writhing though the staff move about like nothing is wrong. Some customers suspect them of being just as mechanical as their surroundings, that they are merely extensions of some greater electronic being that lives deeper beneath the ground-level window that acts as the counter for their business.

Their stock, the old screens, show the buyers the hopefully impossible. They are bought by those who want comfort against their current situation, as reminders that things can always get worse. Faces flicker among the static, mouths consumed by layers of scar-tissue warped beyond repair and eyes so wide they are on the verge of falling out entirely, rolling around in dazed agony against unseen tormentors.

Yes, they cost a pretty penny but the relief they give their buyers is priceless. How bad can your life be when these people (some of whom are startlingly familiar) are so clearly worse off than you? How fortunate you are that your face and the faces of your loved ones haven't appeared on the screens yet and how fervently you pray it stays that way.

20160628

Day 785

He'd been so prepared for his death that he'd had a spot in the churchyard saved since he was eight years old. He'd paid for it  by working in the vicar's house doing odds and ends, fixing this and that until the old man finally said he could have that corner for himself, never asking why.

He never told his family about this, never made any notes until he wrote his will. The only sign that the space was already designated was the dirty hessian sheet that covered it up and remained roughly in place for the next ninety-one years.

Grandma always did wonder where he'd wander off to every night. Even before they got married he'd go for an "evening walk" that she'd never been able to follow him on but assumed he went through the woods by the church as he usually came out that end.

When it came to his passing, something didn't seem right. The nurses in his retirement home had called us to say he fell out of bed late at night and broken his neck but refused to let anyone see his body, saying it had to be autopsied and then they made excuse after excuse until we gave up and just asked for them to put his body into a coffin so he could be laid to rest.

It wasn't until a year after this, when we had the worst storms seen since the early 1900's that we found out why his death had seemed so sudden and so odd. The grounds around his grave had sagged and collapsed revealing the remains of a metal ladder and a trap door at the base of his coffin.

Seems that more than just the nurses were in on this, the gravediggers would have had to bury him with such precision  so that the trapdoor would open up right onto the ladder and the reinforced tunnel that lead down to a large metal container.

We opened it to find his body sitting on an old armchair, a can of beans in one hand and a fork loosely clutched in the other. By the looks of it the way that the ground had collapsed must have blocked up whatever air ventilation he'd set up and he died properly by suffocating in his sleep.

The rest of the container was full of books, cane of food, a radio and countless batteries. for some reason he'd decided to spend his final years in isolation under the ground, listening to the world above and reading himself to sleep every night.

20160627

Day 784

It's not uncommon to hear the sound of a train passing through the neighbourhood of Green Finchstead though the line's been unused for well over eighty years. At first glance the tracks blend in almost perfectly with the tarmac, their worn metal edge lining up perfectly with the curb along one side and awkwardly jutting out just shy of the lane centre. Nobody paid it much attention, only the occasional driver swearing as they misjudge their tyre placement and end up catching the trackside.

Still the sound of a speeding train can be clearly heard at exactly 19:09 and 23:37, passing along the length of the track from one end of the neighbourhood and through The Cobbler's Boat Inn that had been built over a fairly long section of the rails. It became a source of timekeeping for them and gained the colloquialism of "by the old train" meaning "to be out too late" (example, don't you go out by the old train tonight, you've got work in the morning).

The residents were almost fond of the sound, the roadkill it left behind or the wild tales told by newcomers to the area, less so. Nobody wants to scrape whatever's left of a cat flattened over several feet and practically embedded onto the old tracks first thing in the morning. Fewer wanted to hear the sounds that the creature's make in their final moments. It's not the sort of thing you can forget.

Now newcomers saw and heard a lot more then the residents who had grown tolerant of the sounds, smells and shaking that accompanied each nightly visit. It would take them months before they could begin to forget the early morning smell of crushed cat, fox or whatever else had gotten caught out by the train. Even the occasional pub-goer had come home with less limbs than they set out on but too liquored up to feel a damn thing.

As a result of all this a good deal of the houses in Green Finchstead were dirt cheap of crumbling in disuse. Nobody wanted to live in an area where the defining characteristic was the chance of being hit by an unseen train as they drove home from work. The residents were left to their own devices, their own ways and their train-set schedule. Much like other small neighbourhoods in rural England, time almost seemed to stand still for them, each day being the same as the last and always run around the train that nobody saw but everyone felt.

20160626

Day 783

The butterfly garden was designed to mimic a tropical climate and filled to the brim with as much natural foliage as the company could possibly afford. The pathways between areas were rough marble cobblestones, a stark contrast to the carefully crafted untamed wilderness but just enough of a clash to be aesthetically pleasing.

With a ceiling height of almost twenty feet and almost 240 feet squared altogether, it was one of the largest tropical climate simulators in the otherwise frigid country. It was also the only one to be split into distinct sections themed around the more notable traits of the warmer climates, most famously the rainforest area.

While the main focus was meant to be the 437 different species of butterfly that lived there, what really drew the crowds was the atmosphere, especially during the late night openings in summer when they'd do guided tours through the almost pitch black to see how the butterflies rested and check for new eggs. The torch beams would carve light rays into the thick humid mist that clung to everything and left you with a deep chill in your bones.

By day everything was draped elegantly in a vague haze of watery heat that shimmered over the water features and small wild birds that were also kept there, making everything seem just that little bit unreal. By night it felt like you were walking through a giant mouth and expecting to run into the teeth or down the throat at any moment.

What nobody asked for over thirty years was what the butterflies were being fed on. There were no fruit plates out and very few of the tropical plants were the fruit bearing kind. One species was known to have sap that certain species fed on but otherwise there was no food. The keepers made sure to tidy away their food long before opening hours and buried the remains with yet more plants.

Butterflies have been recorded to feed off of any fluid they can.
Sweat, tears, blood, urine.
They're always thirsty.

20160625

Day 782

There's a shop in town that is only open February 29th and for the 23 hours it's open hundreds of people try to cram themselves inside, only to never be seen or heard from again. Local authorities have tried everything they could to stop this from guarding the door and boarding it up with thick metal sheets (not knowing that there were a dozen or so entrances hidden throughout the town). They even went so far as to try and  obtain council permissions to demolish the building as a "public safety concern", all the while not realising that over half of the council had plans to visit the shop  the minute it opened.

Now the shop itself isn't anything unusual at first, just another dull green building with frosted glass windows and a sign outside reading "Leap" in large brown letters. There were no staff, no products to purchase or trade and most importantly - no refunds.

People went there for the experience, even if they came out so utterly changed that they were declared missing and presumed to have died alongside countless others before them. It would begin when you bypassed whatever security measures the police had set up or alternatively using one of the many hidden doors.

The one used for this example resides in the unused men's bathroom on the third floor of a multi-storey pub. You have to knock twice on the second cubicle before it opens to reveal an arched doorway with the shop's interior somehow on the other side. From there leaflets dotted around the room offer a multitude of things for you to experience but you can only choose one. With 23 hours and a constant crowd it's always tough for people to make any kind of decision, let alone the right one.

See there are "trip" leaflets, ones that lead to a sudden and painful death if you input their code onto one of the many mobile phones lying around the shop. Which brings me to another thing about Leap, bodies don't seem to stay there, they just sort of sink (often helped by the impatient feet of anyone else trying to get to a mobile or leaflet nearby). No remains are ever found.

Those who choose one of the right options are given exactly what the leaflet promises, be it a chance to kill with no negative repercussions, defacing ancient works of art or even a peek into the bases of top military authority and access to their classified information.

The way Leap charges for these services, these once in a life time opportunities isn't with cash - what would a shop do with cash when it has no staff and technically no existence? Leap takes whatever you were, however you looked, however you spoke and gives you the random features of whoever else attended that day. You lose yourself and become a hybrid of everyone else who, just like you, took the Leap and survived.

20160624

Day 781

When the Examining Days came, none were more prepared than the English students. They had devoted their semester to constant reviewal of the legislation of the Examining Days and found loopholes that they could exploit to their advantage such as the paragraph forbidding almost all weaponry. That slight turn of phrase on line 34 gave them all the reason they needed to begin preparing small bio weapons that would be triggered as the Exam Hall doors were shut.

Of course, while they were all in there it would be chaos anyway but the English students would have this small advantage, alongside their carefully concealed gas masks and whatever they could legally conceal in their Exam Approved Course Books (thankfully the Invigilators had been kind enough to allow them a particularly lengthy novel this year).

At precisely 08:30 the department leaders herded the students into the Hall, formerly the gymnasium giving the Physical Education department a slight lead in their home turf. All bags were hung from rotating hooks along the walls until every inch of wall space was covered in a variety of suitcases, rucksacks and even twenty plastic carrier bags sewn together and scrawled on with black pen.

Along the ceiling of the Hall was a series of platforms woven from the stringy tendons of any student caught cheating. This was where the Invigilators prowled after they had done their checks on each and every student in the room while the teachers searched every inch of the campus for those who refused to Attend.

Now at this point I should mention that a common Invigilator is around 8.5 feet tall exactly and in resemblance to a cross between three pigs, a bear and something aquatic. They are born to Inspect in all manner of environments, their many heads able to rotate 360 degrees to allow for optimum Inspection. This particular Examining Hall was lucky enough to host seven Invigilators who remembered more of the legislation than even the most practised of English students.

Once they had determined who was breaking the rules and sent them to the ladder leading to the walkways, they declared the Exams to have begun and sprung up to the walkways to mete out appropriate punishments. It was 09:15 and they had given the students exactly 45 minutes for the first round.

As the department leaders closed the doors, locking them from the outside and barricading them with large iron balls, the English student's plan was set into motion. The inconspicuous bottles were knocked into inconspicuous buckets as they chanted out the line which allowed for this, The Invigilators responded from their walkways with a chorus of acceptance and orders to continue.

Previously concealed gas masks were put on and torn off by more physically prepared students and the fighting broke out in proper as the first of many deaths occurred. Concealed weapons were pulled and assembled from anywhere and everywhere they could be kept away from the eyes of the Invigilators who swooped down to remove students using anything against regulation.

45 minutes later the students were ordered to put down their weapons and their victims and return to their departments to await their results.

20160623

Day 780

Not every ghost story is about Something Terrible ripping through the floorboards and shattering the bulbs late at night when those fragile lights are all that stand between you and the night's darkness that somehow distorts your home and renders you a vulnerable stranger inside it.

Some stories are just dead folks trying to come home again by whatever means they can and if it so happens to involve terrorising family after family until they move out so the deceased can still latch onto them and hitchhike back home on their fear and grief then so be it.

20160621

Day 779

The latest exhibitions in the former-aquarium-come-gallery were all tied to the theme of water and renewal. Out of five artists, the approach was taken in entirely different ways that all seemed to have accidentally joined each other further with the theme of oil spills.

Brittany McGribe did a daily preformative called "I Can't Stand To See You" that involved her and several plain-clothed actors diving into a large swimming pool of some oil-like liquid and emerging covered in seashells, screaming out the times of local tides. Some claimed that she never used actors and that they were just regular people who'd felt utterly compelled to partake in the scene.

Jason Bray created sculptures of children mixed with fish so that their facial features were distorted beyond recognition, not to mention any additional appendages like tentacles and dorsal fins. Each "Beach baby" as the exhibition was called, stood inside a large seaside diorama cast from bronze. Additionally he'd put pipes inside every sculpture so that their eyes, mouths and gills would pour with water that alternated between clear and black. Visitors have expressed concern with the animatronic side of the exhibit, claiming that the children's voices keep glitching but Mr. Bray swears they are only metal and water pipes, nothing about them could possibly produce speech.

Arnel Sarmiento used genuine frozen oil poured into the life-sized moulds of mythological sea creatures in a series he called "Mitolohiya at Alamat", or "Myth & Legend". It was partly preformative as he would begin each day by releasing the moulds and letting them hang in the otherwise empty aquarium as they melted over the course of the day. Again visitors would claim that the frozen creatures moved or blinked. Additionally the cleaners complained about the oily flipper marks outside of the tank and that each night of the show they would be found closer and closer to the main doors.

Alleah Levine used black hydrophobic paints on a 7x9 metre canvas that was raised and lowered into the old shark tank five minutes. It went down further and further with each dip until the final piece was revealed only to the visitors who used the glass tunnel beneath the tank. It was something like a shark's mouth poised inches away from a kill, scaled up to barely fit in the canvas and detailed enough to shock a visitor into giving birth right then and there (though debates are still on as to whether or not this was staged).

The fifth and final exhibitor was Felix Dustone who never showed up for the entirety of the exhibition. His work was a series of photos taken inside of a deep sea oil rig and depicted a strange mermaid-looking creature being slowly preserved alive in an oversized specimen jar. It's oil smothered scales and the solemn faces of the rig workers surrounding it gave the series a funeral-esque overtone that was further echoed by the glitched-out sounds of dolphins playing over speakers that hung inches above the visitors heads. That and the red tinged water that ran down the walls behind the images made it one of the more popular and mysterious images. Especially as the final photograph in the series seemed to be from the creature's perspective inside the jar as small human hands reached down through the yellowish fluid.

Day 778

From the surface of the ocean and the boat's limited view, it appeared that an entire pod of whales were doing tail stands, the tips of their fins bolt upright a couple of feet above the water and the rest of them still beneath.

Now one whale doing this for a short while wouldn't be anything too unusual, an entire pod is quite odd but doing so for nine days in a row with minimal movement and no signs that they'd come back up to breath was... well... unheard of and a little disturbing.

At first it was assumed that they were breaching when no attention was on them and that if humans strayed too close they'd interrupt this blatantly "unique behaviour" leading to some kind of catastrophe for the pod. And so the water around them (twenty miles out in all directions) was sectioned off as a "research area".

Five months into the Wavers, as the public had taken to calling them, and marine biologists took their first dives around the pod to explore the situation. They'd set up floating cameras and monitoring equipment all around them and found already that the whales were silent and utterly unmoving, never breaching and never feeding.

The dive team went down during midday when the waters were fairly calm and brightly lit. There had been some kind of reddish cloud developing around the whales, presumed to be faeces or a new species of krill. Nobody wanted to take the obvious, grim answer without witnessing it firsthand and witness, they did.

Past the mist that floated eerily in the water they saw a forest of white with more red - more blood - swirling around like silk scarves in the wind. The whales were dead and by the state of their floating bones they had been for quite some time.

Strangely though there was a great deal of meat around their spines still and their brains looked to be perfectly intact. The dive team came back with small electric prods, used to protect themselves against aggressive fish that got too close, and gently inserted one into the gaping eye socket of the closest adult whale.

It twitched violently, mouth opening and closing as it contorted to face the dive team, head darting forward to close its bristle-filled mouth around them. The current caused  by its movement swirled them into its rib cage, or rather, where the stomach would have been.

The researches floated as still as they could inside the whale's ribs, trying to work out if they had enough spinal tissue to connect to the brain and keep them in a state of suspended animation. After several tense minutes of wondering if they could move out, if their oxygen tanks would last until they got back to the boat or not, they made their move.

The ocean outside of the red, cloudy water was quieter, stiller than they'd ever seen before. The sunlight glinting cheerfully off countless trillions of tiny bones that littered the ocean floor beneath them as they debated how they would, or if they could, tell anyone that the ocean was dead.

20160620

Day 777

There were too many ghosts in Stony Croymoor. Every inch of the village was soaked in violent, bloody history dating from the old Viking crusaders to the spate of cow killings in the nearby fields that were never blamed on the foxes. What kind of fox can string up a full grown Red Poll let alone thirty of them within a month.

It took the entire community putting up surveillance on every house corner before they had even the faintest idea of what they were up against. They'd always known strange things to happen that they'd never be able to rationally explain like lights flickering on while the switch remains in the off position or shadows moving in ways that shadows weren't meant to move.

They could only bee seen through the cameras, those ghosts moving about mouthing out conversations to their imaginary (or further unseen) audience. The same group of five would be seen herding a single cow out to the intended killing spot before shredding right through it with the intensity of a wood mill at full speed. They were eventually identified as local witch hunters from the mid 17th century.

At first a strict curfew was imposed to keep people away from the ghosts before they collectively realised that the dead came and went as they please, giving no mind to the laws the living made or the fears they expressed or the pain they felt when a spectral figure floated straight through them.

To the dead, the living are the greatest inconvenience there is and they made sure we knew that.

There were too many ghosts in Stony Croymoor and they drove us all out before the year was up. Some people managed to empty their homes and get away safely while the stragglers and stubborn ones who left last left with the least. Nobody ever mentions how possessive the dead can be and when they think something is theirs they make damned sure it stays theirs - living be danmed if they get in the way.

20160619

Day 776

Lighthouses warn ships from rocks and other land-associated perils such as other humans, living things other than humans and of course the unspeakables that lurk barely within eyesight. Over the many years of lighthouses existences they've lost their original purpose, now becoming little more than memorials of our old fears.

While there are lists of working lighthouses, thanks to advanced nautical navigational technology they are all but obsolete, only being used when things by the shorelines are particularly rough. Not the seas mind you, those charge and swell too quickly for any one lighthouse to warn against, let alone constantly maintain a signal for.

No, now the lights come on to warn sailors of the conditions on land. Are there new diseases ravaging their home countries that they may fall prey to, having been at sea since before the illnesses began? Has a new government taken hold that would endanger them or their livelihood? Are the unspeakables now speakable?

The oddest part of this, that sailors will be sure to mention only to those they can trust, is that none of the lighthouses are officially manned and some are too worn down to be physically manned yet their lights shine out, blinking and signing away their codes to the trained eyes of their sea-sailing counterparts.

20160618

Day 775

Excerpts from "Sign the Line"

The contract was a simple one - physical wealth for metaphorical wealth.
In this case he traded a lottery fortune for his memories and forgot where he'd left the winning card every time. It took three weeks before someone spotted this and used his traded ability to amass one of the world's largest fortunes.
With their spare change they kept him drugged and hooked up to a life support system, prolonging the inevitable for ninety-seven years til all that was left of him was a memorial done by his last remaining sibling and a skeletal sack of meat that could point to all the winning numbers on any lottery.
The contract wouldn't let him die until he had gained wealth himself and so, he could never die.


There is little more terrifying than seeing the screaming face of your closest loved one over a poorly filmed video stream than watching the view counter double and triple each minute.
For every body part they lose, one hundred followers are gained.
They'll keep going until the debt is paid by you or by view.

As her pen crossed the final 't' the silence of the room was broken by applause that grew from a polite tapping to thunderous congratulations. Half of them didn't even understand why they were there or what they were witnessing but they knew the document signed had the power to condemn hundreds of thousands.
They didn't realise that it would begin with them and the small wires underneath their seats and in the cushions, primed to release over 500 volts straight to the base of their spines.

20160617

Day 774

The wooden bridges that run throughout the woods are meant to keep people away from the more unsavoury areas but instead act as a voyeuristic platform for tourists to observe them. It brought in more money than the rest of the village so it was decided that guides would be placed along the bridges for safety and information.

It worked quite well for a while, the townies got to see a real police scene and watch the corpses be dragged out of the water drenched soil by the river and the villagers got to make more money than ever before. They even set up fake body-discoveries along the less popular areas to draw tourists further in. Eventually they gained the moniker of Bloodbrook instead of Rudbrook.

Of course it didn't take long before some media personality revealed them as a hoax, prompting a dramatic decrease in tourism and the worst financial crisis they'd ever seen in their little community. When money suddenly becomes short, people adjust poorly. they get desperate.

Within a month the forest became a dedicated (and official) bodyfarm. The guides promised tours walking "hand in hand with the dead" and the outsiders came flocking back in to experience real bodies once more. Their morbid little hearts eager to experience death inches from them.

As with all good plans it didn't quite go as expected, what with people not anticipating the stench of rotting flesh and lots of it. Bags of lavender and heavily scented masks were sold at the entrance, so very reminiscent of the plague doctor masks that the vendors began to dress up in suitable attire and act as though bubonic death was right past the first corner.

Aroma aside the tourists would always swear blind that some of the bodies moved, spoke and pleaded for help. With the guided groups being three guides and four tourists though, their claims were always passed off as just gas from the decomposition escaping through whatever it can or the freshly dead still having the odd electrical impulse.

Nobody ever seemed to look into where these bodies were coming from or why most of them were missing their faces, revealing bloodied muscles and bone instead of recognisable features.

If nobody questions it, then it never gets answered and the list of the missing continues to grow.

20160616

Day 773

My granddad used to say really cryptic things to me when he thought nobody else was listening. He'd generally mention the name Pelton, who was apparently a young lad who lived nearby. He never really had the chance to fully explain who Pelton was before someone would shush him or ask him something complicated enough to distract him.

He did manage to tell me where Pelton was and said that he'd tell the child about me whenever he went for a walk down by Copper Marsh South. I knew the route there from my house, past the roundabout near the garden centre and down the alley between two blocks of flats. From there it was a straight road by the river down to the marshlands and the small place where Pelton lived.

Apparently Pelton was eager to meet "someone of about his age, though he's a big lad. A good one but ruddy 'normous, I tells ya girly." as granddad said before aunty Jo asked what new plants he'd put in the hanging baskets by the front door which prompted him to get up and show her.

To think, I actually thought Pelton was real.

When I went to see him for myself I made sure to go during broad daylight during one of the local runs for charity that so often went right down the path to the marshlands. There was a cluster of people ahead of me and a few more stragglers behind - the perfect cover in case something went wrong.

Granddad said Pelton lived near the fork in the road, that there was a huge ditch leading from an underground lake and into the marsh itself and that's right in front of Pelton's house. When I got there I saw exactly what he meant but there was no house, just a large metal flap that presumably lead to the underground lake.

I tried calling out to Pelton, wondering if he was nearby and just lived down the field. I was answered by the metal flap lifting as a large dark green shape slipped through and swam downwards before beginning to surface. At least I managed to snap a quick image before legging it back to the main street, not even thinking about the people running right past there.

The newspaper claimed that three people vanished during the race, the last stragglers who haven't been found since. When granddad saw the photo he looked so happy, saying "that's him, that's my lad down there!".

I don't know what's down there but it sure as hell isn't a young lad.


20160615

Day 772

When All Hallows Church was bombed in the War they found a basement that didn't exist on the official floor plans, modern or eleventh century when the church was first built. At least according to the newspaper that came out the day after the bombing. That's the only mention of it.

There's no detail to the article, just a few paragraphs ending in "The local council are organising further research into this newfound historical site." and now that the church and graveyard are no longer in use or in modern memory the area's ripe for exploration.

That's what they tell themselves as they jump the fence and head up the crumbling concrete steps to the bordered up front door. The graveyard all around was isolated by a high, ornate brick wall that muffled the sounds of nearby traffic to a dull thrum barely heard past the ever present birdsong. There was nobody else around to see them and nobody to hear them.

While the door looked blocked at first, a gentle push had it swinging wide open. The scent of stale air and decaying foliage met them as they headed inside the dimly lit church, phone acting as a flashlight with 999 ready to be dialled just in case they weren't alone. From the closure of the front door they could assume they were the only one there or at least the most recent one there. Squatters chose the most peculiar of places sometimes and one could easily stumble across them like a rabbit hole in tall grass.

The main room they walked into had old pews stacked on either side, piled right up to the vaulted ceiling and covered in a thick layer of dust and webs. The ground was similarly coated with old autumn leaves in piles wherever the wind had dragged and dropped them. Towards the old baptismal font there were bookshelves and old shovels, both coated in wet dirt. No, not wet dirt, soaked dirt that seemed to be running down the shovels in thick brown rivulets to join the large dark puddle of it on the floor.

They trod carefully around this and to the small door that presumably lead to the vicar's office. In this case it lead to some of the office which had mostly been consumed by what could only be the opening to the basement. Light drifted through the poorly repaired ceiling, revealing the flooded interior. Such a shame, the clay-based soil of the area held water like a natural bucket. Whatever was down there wasn't about to be discovered by them - not today at least.

As they headed out to the main congregational area they noticed something that hadn't been there before. Large, wet footprints coming from the puddle by the shovels- shovel even, there were two there when they went inside. they held their phone close to their head, ready to dial for help and run at the first sight of another person.

The footprints seemed to be leading to one side of the room,right between two stacks of pews. They tried to peer through the cobwebs but saw only the wall. Heart pounding loudly they headed swiftly to the front door, not quite hearing the sound of metal scraping stone following closely behind them or the faint slapping of wet feet keeping in perfect pace with them.

After several tense moments they made it to the front door and to the sunlit cemetery that was still utterly deserted. They turned around to close the door and found themselves face to face with what could only be described as a drenched, mud covered corpse. Her eyes were bulbous and cloudy, a rigor mortis stiff grin stretched over her face and a shovel poised to strike over her head.

With a throaty chuckle she took slow, careful steps back into the gloom of the old church, eyes never leaving theirs until she stepped into the old office. A loud splash indicated that she went back to where she presumably came from. For now.

20160614

Day 771

The windows and door have been boarded up, the nails and hammer sit beside him as he tries to keep his eyes open. A small torch illuminates the far side of the room where the balcony door is, locked and barricaded by an ornate dresser. It's the most likely place for his visitors to come from.

Months of moving from empty house to empty house have left him utterly exhausted but the second he starts to sleep, they start to move in. It's how the got everyone else - they gave in to sleep and never woke up again, at least not on this world. He still had no idea where they got taken too, any notebooks or pieces of research he found all ended in sleep-deprived nonsense before cutting off entirely.

The adrenaline syringes he found in the local hospital lay in the small box on his lap alongside energy drinks, caffeine pills and ice cold water to splash on his face. It worked well enough but the brief naps he managed were more than enough for the visitors to find him and start breaking into wherever he'd holed up in for the night.

Over the past month he'd survived on an hour of sleep per night spread out over several short naps followed by desperate attempts to reinforce his barricades against the persistent thumping from the other side. Sometimes he'd hear them speak to each other, quietly testing out different vocal pitches and accents as they tried to sound like someone he knew. It was smart but he was smarter, too used to them and their tricks by now.

Tonight would be harder than the rest, that much he knew for a fact. He'd been going for too long on too little and was stretched too thin to hang on for much longer. The first shot of adrenaline made his pulse race and his limbs twitch, ready to run but too fatigued to do more than that. The energy drinks only made it worsen to the point where his chest and head ached by dawn, his eyelids felt like concrete shutters ready to seal themselves for good at any moment.

Gradually, as his eyes began to droop, he noticed little things changing around him. The boards on the windows were slowly being pushed off, nails being gently forced out until they fell to the floor with delicate pings, rolling by his feet. He knew he should get up and fix his barricade but his limbs felt like air - too light and hazy to move.

The door handle for the balcony was slowly twisting, so slowly that he didn't notice until the dresser began to scrape against the hard carpet as it was pushed forward. He wanted to fix this so badly but his body was past the point of being able to. It would only be a matter of minutes, he reckoned.

A loud clattering behind him meant that they'd removed the nails holding the hallway door closed and could finally reach him. After all these months it had come down to this last stand. He felt something heavy and soft wrap around him - a blanket with cartoons winding around it as guttural voices began to shush him to his last sleep.

20160613

Day 770

A bell that hadn't existed for the past thirty seven years rung out at 08:30AM sharp.
The sounds of slamming doors and gurgling groans fill the chic, modern hallways.
Class begins in thirty minutes and the teachers rise to greet the day.

Normal students and the unnatural offspring of unimaginable aberrations meet in the playground.
They swap stories of their holidays in a mixture of human chattering and guttural screeches of dead gods.
Parents of all shapes sizes and species linger at the edges of the colourful tarmac, waiting for the next bell.

As it rings they hurry away, muttering frantic goodbyes and reminders to the young who forget instantly.
The children line up by year group and height (alphabet proved too difficult for mortal tongues).
The teachers slithered up from the ground, wings unfurling as they float gracefully to circle their class.

Every student is counted and ushered to their respective first lesson, clutching wards and charms against the lingering tutors who wait to devour the unfaithful learners, the squanders of knowledge.
What decent education doesn't come with a price?

20160612

Day 769

I found a mermaid once in the marshlands over my neighbour's fields when I was younger. There'd been rumours for a while that there were fish underneath the thick scummy weeds that clogged most of the water where the bulrushes hadn't reached yet. Someone even took a shaky photo of this white thing that looked more like damp paper than the fin that they claimed it to be.

They look nothing like the stories, at least this one didn't - there wasn't much human about it really,save for the eyes. It had eyes like a person but the rest of its face was like a flattened shark. It could still smile though but I really wish it hadn't, nothing prepares you for the sight of so many teeth in so little mouth space or for how wide the mouth can stretch when it spoke.

It's size in general must have been well over twelve feet from top to tail and just like the photo it was albino with large pinkish eyes and sickly light green frog-like skin. Enormous gills ran down both sides of its torso and fluttered gently, half in the water as it leaned on the more solid side of the marshlands.

But the day I saw the mermaid was the day they found eight cows from the fields slaughtered and half eaten with another one missing entirely. Of course I didn't know that at the time and continued to have a very nervous  one-sided conversation with a being who had more teeth than I had hairs on my head (or so it seemed at the time).

I tried to get away as quickly and politely as possible - not even thinking to take a photo but more concerned with getting inland where I thought it couldn't go. That following morning I was called downstairs by my parents who stood by the back door looking confused and worried. They asked if I'd been near the marshes and if I'd met any strangers there. I didn't count the mermaid as a stranger, I half thought I'd made it up until they showed me a basket made from bulrush with a little note inside it saying:

To a little human girl with good manners.
Farm house with two cats.
Troon, Scotland.

Inside the basket was a necklace made from cow's teeth and, if my sums are right, it contained the full sets from six of the nine deceased cows. My parents told me to hang it above the front door and decorate it with the reeds from the basket, even now they still have it hung up greeting everyone who comes in.

They say that ever since I put that there the cows in the area had been safe and thriving more than ever. Something about the threefold law and faefolk that I never quite listened to until I went back to the marshlands and saw that mermaid again. It had spent all of these years doing us, doing me a kindness by leaving our cattle alone and alive and now it's my turn to pay that back.

Threefold.

20160611

Day 768

The street is sealed off at either end by large iron gates, trapping a dozen or so pedestrians as several large paving slabs lift up and humanoid beings are unleashed, sprinting for the nearby cars. The taxi drivers swarm around their vehicles, clogging the street around them and threatening to gouge the eyes out of anyone who comes too close before they are plugged in to charge.

While they may move more sluggishly the longer they spend away from their taxi ports, their strength remains at a consistent level. Once they are plugged in, their eyes lit up and vocal systems primed to ask their set rota of questions (Where to? Had a nice time today? Lovely weather, isn't it?). It is at this point where the doors are lifted, medical teams come to see to anyone who was too close when the drivers were set loose for the day and after the clean-up, the day begins.

They are mostly tame when driving, hearts beating in sync with the engine's steady vibrations and behaviours set to rotate from happy to annoyed depending on the flow of traffic. This has proven to be somewhat of an issue in busier towns or areas of moderate to severe roadworks, where the flow stops and the driver's emotions get stuck in a loop.

Sometimes it's not so bad and they're cheerful the whole time but the incidents of them becoming perpetually stuck in an emotional loop of annoyance (progressing into sheer rage over the course of a week if the traffic issues remain a constant). Cases of drivers locking passengers in their vehicles overnight or dragging them down to the driver's pens are increasing, as is the presumed death toll but a great deal of missing persons bodies have yet to be recovered.

It is well documented that the anatomy of a taxi driver is only vaguely similar to a standard human, going past their enlarged hippocampus which is behind their highly advanced mental mapping capability. Their ability to unhinge their jaw to mid-chest is another part of their unique structure, that alongside their elasticated esophagus and stomach acid strong enough to melt through nine inches of steel is perhaps the reason why no bodies are ever found.

20160610

Day 767

While Euro Cirque only comes once a year its reputation lasts until its next appearance, refreshed by stories and trinkets that people brought back from their experiences there. Nobody goes there to have a regular family day out, they go there to change and to see the impossible, implausible and downright unbearable - depending on the ride.

Everyone knows that the shoot-a-duck kiosk hands you eggs if you win, sometimes they hatch into regular birds like ducks or hens and sometimes they hatch out a puppy. One time my cousin's managed to hatch theirs only to find a human newborn inside, granted it was only three inches long but it was breathing and crying. Poor thing died an hour or so later but it made for one hell of a tale for them and that's all that matters to most people who go to the circus.

Another well established effect of the Cirque is that the dodgem ride breaks bones, not necessarily yours but whoever you think of most when you're hitting the other carts. They shut it down early last time after one particularly voracious rider had his neck broken by an unnamed third party who was also on that ride and may have been banned since. Nobody knows for sure so that ride will probably be less popular this year. Just in case. I men, it's normal for odd cases of spontaneous broken fingers and toes during the circus' stay but that was the first fatality from this ride.

One of the most dangerous rides Euro Cirque has is the spinning tea-cups. Everyone who goes on there comes out saying they saw people walking in between the  cups as they spun (which is 100% against the employee rules). Now the "people" in question aren't technically there, not as such, but they are very much visible if you're spinning fast enough. They look like wispy human-ish blobs with impossibly elongated limbs that seem to ripple in the breeze made by the spinning cups.

At first it was only once or twice that someone had gotten too close to one of these figures and come away from it with third degree burns all along the touched area. Last year there were twelve deaths, even after people were forewarned that the shadow-folk were drawing closer and closer to the carts and were now quite visible from the queue before the ride.

Nothing deters people in the Euro Cirque. Not the burning shadows, not the broken bones, nor the many limbed clown that is trapped in the chamber of mirrors and constantly seeking an exit that the ride-goers have to seal and remake so as to keep it in and away from them.

Everyone wants a story at the end of it and that's what they get if they live through it.

Even if the live this time, there's always next year.

20160609

Day 766

My Uncle Avid liked to hoard the strangest things, always claiming they kept him safe. I was five when he was moved out of his four storey catastrophe of a house and into residential care indefinitely. He used to tell me the same thing every time I visited him, he'd say "Keep it busy in there, keep it confused and keep it inside!" but never specified what, only managing to squeeze that phrase in when everyone else was busy or just leaving.

When I "helped" (was roped into cleaning because hiring help is expensive and your kids will work for free) into sorting out his place to be made ready for him moving back in or selling it altogether, I found a few unusual things that all pointed to some kind of dog living with him. That or a second person, or something in between  - it was hard to tell at the time.

Things like the table being left clear in two places, two sets of everything from glasses to clothes to towels and toothbrushes, it was all tied up in pairs. A while after this discovery they tried to get Uncle Avid tested for OCD but it came back as inconclusive as any other test they did on him.

There was also the scuttling noises that happened during the evenings my family and I spent cleaning there, the ones that grew louder the more clutter we cleared away. By the last few weeks, once most of the rooms were showroom spotless all we could hear was this loud clacking sound always coming from somewhere above us. Pest control sealed off the house for investigation and fumigation, finding nothing but scratches on the floor and the return of the noises the following day.

As Uncle Avid grew worse we chose to sell the house and pay for him to stay in care, he seemed to be doing better there. Less paranoid about "keeping it in" and beginning to act like his old self once more.At least until my aunt carelessly showed him photos of the clean house and he went into a fit of hysteria, screaming that it was out and loose and it would latch onto someone else.

He never quite recovered from that, rarely leaving his room and trying to barricade the doors at night "for their safety" against whatever he felt threatened him. Meanwhile I was twelve and hearing odd noises coming from downstairs that sounded kind of like the cats that fought and hissed at each other outside every night. Some times it sounded like it was saying "Avid" over and over again, moving about and looking for him.

I remember using a mirror on string down the stairs to try and see what the cat looked like. It was a poorly conceived plan I'll admit but it was the best I could do at the time. The hallway looked empty but I could still hear it calling for my uncle over and over again, moving down the hall towards the mirror. The sounds of claws scratching wood picked up in pace as something ran for the mirror, grabbing it and yanking it out if my hands with surprising strength.

I think I know what he meant now and how he got into hoarding. Objects keep it amused and keep it quiet, keep its claws away from everyone else. Yes, his strategy was good but I've found a much simpler way to keep it away from me. I keep wind chimes downstairs, forty seven at my last count and growing. It bats them about all night long while I sleep with earplugs in. I had to start this collection. It began calling my name instead.

20160608

Day 765

The ship had once boasted the largest ballroom of any ship around. Back in its heyday it was never empty, circling around Lake Craywood endlessly and forever slowly cycling through passengers who were able to enter and exit on the regular docks every half hour.

Unfortunately hard times came and it became financially unsound. Four weeks afterwards the countrywide credit drop the ship's captain announced bankruptcy and called for the last voyage to be held to go beyond the lake for the first time since the ship was sailed into its home.

The plan was to head north and eventually dock in an industrial site with the facilities to break the ship down to its more valuable components and the sailing went perfectly smoothly until they hit the north/south border. It wasn't usually an issue but the large shapes under the water that rarely surfaced in clear weather began to circle the boat, heads almost breaching the surface to smell the passenger's fear.

Needless to say the ship never made it up north. The captain, crew and passengers were neither seen nor heard from again but the ship was found several hundred miles away, as it beached itself somehow on the coast of Denmark fully stocked with fresh fruit and vegetables but utterly void of all two hundred and seven seafarers.

The only hint as to what happened between the large circling shapes and the appearance at Denmark was the tanned remains of a large shark-like creature. It's scales the size of soup bowls and sharper than steel along the edges. Trace amounts of human skin were found between them, as fresh as the fruit on board.

20160607

Day 764

The house was dead and had been for a very long time. It's walls sagged, leaking pus and flies into the stale air of hallways and corridors whose floors had tried to withstand the decay and failed. Wallpaper had peeled in countless tiny flakes that littered the mould-ridden floorboards like the first moments of a snowstorm and gathered in high piles in the corners of every room.

From the outside it was barely recognisable as a house at all, the upper floors having sunk and collapsed under the weight of too many storms and whatever foliage had tried to take root on the roof. Now it resembled something like a block of clay after a toddler's fist has tried to make it into a bowl.

The air around the house was permeated with the scent of rotting meat and flies swarmed about like dogs on patrol, driven mad by the smell but finding no food alongside it. Whatever was leaking from inside the house (call it pus, call it stagnant water, call it whatever as it stained everything it came into contact with) seemed to be the source, catching the flies and sucking them in before propelling itself further outwards and closer to the front door.

20160606

Day 763

No matter what went on in the library you stayed quiet, especially since the librarians made it mandatory for customers and visitors alike to wear small sensor gauges on wrists and their neck to measure how much sound they made as well as their ambient noise.

There was some leniency given to children and the general "+/- 10% of the enforced decibel level" rule for the general populace. Heaven forbid you went so much as a single digit over their 25 decibel limit. A bird in flight measures in at 30 decibels so the noise level in the library was quieter than a morgue at midnight.

The near silence was heavily enforced in a near medieval way with punishments ranging from a week long ban to the Sound Room.It may not seem like anything frightening but everyone who has gone in there comes out bleeding profusely from their eyes, nose and ears, vomit coating their fronts and shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. If they come back (which is quite rare) they are found to be wearing hearing aids and a walking aid of some sort.

The librarians figure that if you can't be trusted to know when you are being too loud then they'll give you the quiet they want indefinitely. The councils approve of this, of course, and have campaigned for higher library use under the guise of better literacy.

Vans full of librarians visit local schools, bringing their sound monitors and challenging the kids to be as quiet as possible, rewarding the quietest with £80. They also bring a smaller,lesser version of the Sound Room, leaving the loudest four children with migraines that will last anywhere from four hours to indefinitely over their lifetime.

All in the name of silence. All to keep the books asleep and the shelves content enough to permit themselves to be used and studied by humanity in the hopes that we too will learn their ability to remain without showing any signs of ageing.

20160605

Day 762

We thought we'd been around the world and seen it in its entirety. We thought the photos and videos that came from space were of our little world and that they were real but they were missing so much. Of course everyone's heard of the odd patch here and there on those internet maps that are blurred out and those areas of the ocean that are the exact squares copied and pasted to look like nothing's there but sea and sky.

What if I said there were far more things out there than we are allowed to be aware of? And if those things could cure any illness, delay death by hundreds of years and allow us to exist in the inhospitable areas of the world without impeding us. And if those things are guarded so heavily their existence on this lonely page wouldn't mean a thing to anyone other than a few minutes spent reading.

For example near the small island of Hirta near Scotland there exists a cave under the sea with a metal door right at the very base, around four hundred and fifty metres below the surface. It looks newly fitted and has done for about a hundred and seventy years or so. The corridors behind it are paved in small stone eyes that blink periodically out of time with each other and range in size from a millimetre to nineteen feet in height.

Nobody has been able to make it to the end of the first passage before, not without coming back with an extra set of eyes embedded into their skin somewhere. Though the are easy enough to remove they seem to grow back in mere minutes, always a different colour to the hosts eyes too.

Another place lies in the heart of the Australian outback, where only a handful of outsiders have been able to get to alive and return in such conditions that they are able to tell the tale once again. Surrounded by a carefully crafted wall of saltbush and littered with the remains of whatever creatures had tried to get in without asking first.

The people inside only seem to be visible around noon, any other time and they blend right into the sand. They say that their children have all left to go to the big cities but never say which ones. Nobody inside is under the age of forty six and everyone has a child who lives in The City, You Know The One. It Has Great Roads And Plenty Of Job Opportunities. Their Children Write Often And Say Such Wonderful Things.

The third place is somewhere within Prague, down some alley somewhere by a shop that sells mediocre coffee at an unusually low price for the area. A neighbourhood exists within a church whose elaborate exterior blends in perfectly with its surroundings to the point where nobody knows exactly where it is but they all think they do when you ask them. The inside is split into small houses with large walkways between them and several layers of basement reaching deep, deep down and extending so far out that one of the walls borders the catacombs.

People move into this church, lovely normal little people, and they never seem to leave. They mill about the place looking interested in the world but they never go beyond a certain point. Their excuses are that they just popped out for a bit of fresh air, they always pop out for a bit of fresh air. The air inside is stifling and suffocatingly thin from all the people crammed into there but they can't lave, they have to squeeze past that one person to get to their friend or family member and then they'll discuss moving out some time soon maybe. They'll say the same story with a different name every time.

20160604

Day 761

Nowhere in town was open, not for another hour or so.It was the worst time of day to get there, not to mention the most dangerous but when a bus comes you take it or risk it not coming back for another 3 hours. That's just how the buses work, through rain and snow and a suspected alternate dimension they come as and when and if they are able.

When walking through town early in the morning you must keep quiet, say nothing to anyone even if you recognise them - it's probably not them. god knows how many daft souls have fallen prey to the morning illusions thinking they're old friends or teachers when in actuality they're just the brain's electrical signals getting caught up in spider webs spun the previous night and not yet  cleared away by the council workers.

It doesn't matter if they reply or how long they hold a conversation for with unusually perfect civility, at some point they will try to shake your hand or offer a high five and you'll just get caught in their web and dragged up to the balconies where they nest.

If you can manage to remain silent past the spun illusions you might glimpse the shop keepers and sales assistants waking up from behind their counters as they begin to wash the remains of their dinner from the otherwise pristine floors. They are unsurprisingly adept at removing blood stains and picking tiny fragments of bone from carpet and uniform fibres alike but this early on the faint scent of blood and faeces still lingers around the older shops whose grounds tend to cling to those familiar things.

Some shops are open as early as 06:30, very few see the carnage behind their wide awake and expressive faces, perhaps a little too expressive as they check up on you every ten minutes or so, just in case they can catch you off guard. They are more cunning then their mid morning counterparts, still not entirely human but too similar for the tired shopper to really notice or care. Enough for them to have a quick snack before the day really begins and they must be on their most humanly kind behaviour.

If it wasn't for the council appointed cleaners, these towns could have been abandoned within hours of the day's start. Rubbish sacks of bones and innards would be piled up high on the sides of roads and shops, full to bursting and smelling like a fresh kill. The council cleaners race around during the ungodly early hours making sure the shop staff have been fed and are sated enough to work the day without any snacking incidents.

Before the cleaners were assigned their tasks and paid enough to keep them quiet, the shop floors would always be freshly washed wood or damp deep red carpets. The alleys between buildings and the underground maintenance chambers would slowly accumulate filth and bodily remains until the stench became overwhelming when the wind blew just right. Missing posters were plastered over every inch of anything that stood still enough to have papers stapled to it and the towns lived in despair, hunger and rot.

Now the councils have hired enough people to hide this all away, to move the bodies and leave notes with their loved ones saying that they'd taken a spontaneous vacation or gone out to the shops. The bodies would be fond eventually, after being altered enough that everyone would take it for a natural death.

20160603

Day 760

Nobody talks about my arm any more, they stopped asking how I lost it a year or so back. I'm not sure if it's the new prosthetic I have or if people are becoming more polite but I'm not going to kick up a scene about it. It wasn't particularly traumatic for me anyway, I was too young to properly remember anything other than the shiny white hospital and a nurse who called me "sweetie" with every sentence.

Apparently I was lucky it was only my arm and a couple of toes, meningitis has been known to kill kids who are as young as I was at the time. If anything I gained a permanent friend after all was said and done. I don't remember exactly when it started, I just know that when things get tough for me, a tiny cold hand holds where my left arm should be and stays with me until things get better.

Sometimes it's only a little squeeze of my fingers, other times the small hand holds mine and writes letters to me. Over the years I've gotten quite good at reading them and even replying using my own phantom limb until the little hand says goodnight or holds my wrist as their way of saying "I'm tired, let's talk later, okay?" and that's fine by me.

They've never told me their name, only that they saw me in the hospital when I was recovering from the amputation. Well, they saw my severed arm at least. Apparently the dead can only see other dead things, otherwise they just walk along nothingness. The small person (who still hasn't confirmed if they're a child or not) can only see my arm and says it's quite worrying but they know they'll recognise me when I go and "lead me out safely". Whatever that means.

I know it doesn't mean they want me dead, on the contrary they've saved me a couple of times now. Once from a drunk driver who swerved off the road and onto the pavement - the small hand yanked me back to safety. The other time I was being held at knife point by a mugger who had a "heart attack" right in front of me. The small hand said they'd "lead him out early" to protect me. From what they described it was something akin to the way they pull my hand but they pulled a lot harder that time.

For a while I started deliberately making things worse for myself so the small hand would come and I could find out more about them but they caught on quickly. They grabbed where my phantom left wrist and gripped it so tightly I heard a loud crack and felt nothing but agony from that side for almost 2 months. They apologised every day, saying that they wanted to pull me out of the bad spiral I was getting into. I don't know if I should feel grateful for their "help" or worried that they can hurt me this much.

20160602

Day 759

They sit in a circle, desks piled high around the walls-far too many to have fit comfortably in the room but this isn't about comfort. It's about art. Specifically non-traditional sculpture and how the use of mixed methods will be the Next Big thing once they're through with their training.

Every day begins and ends with the circle, in spite of their liberal nature they thrive on these little moments of order in their self imposed chaos. It reminds them to keep being human, to transcend themselves but not fully. Not yet anyway. Not until their canvas is ready.

Among all the categories of Student, the art kind are the least stable. It's how they choose to hunt and it's what makes them the most successful. Even the Staff crouch in the shadows as the art pack roams the courtyards between their department and the sensory gardens, some frantically scribbling notes on their strategies and the system of superiority in their pack.

Come morning the grounds near the Staff room are littered with crumpled sheets of paper, full of detailed diagrams showing hunting formations and guesses as to which Student is the leader. They have no idea, the artists work in flurries of rapid movement before settling into gradual stalking and elaborate traps to contain and torment their prey.

They seem to thrive on suffering, be it theirs or whoever gets in their way, Staff and Student alike. Nobody is ever quite safe from them, not even when they retreat to their own department with fresh kills and painting supplies. There is always the chance that a Solo Artist is waiting in some obscure corner or seemingly impossible hiding place just itching for someone to come near enough to strike.

Their art can be found not just in their department but in all of the other Student territories, showing no discernible preference or intention other than to mark that they had been there. Some images show clear signs that another Student has tried to cover up or remove the art only for it to be redone, deeper and harder to remove, bigger then before and smothered in warning sigils designed to kill the next person to touch it.

20160601

Day 758

The recent downpour (a month's worth of rain in the space of a morning commute) had blocked most of the drains and flooded the roads down by the river. The fire department were called out to try and pump as much of it back into the river as possible but with the seemingly ceaseless rainfall it was the very definition of pointless. Still, they insisted it was helping but they never specified who it helped.

It was certainly no good the the people living on that road, what with those bright red engines blocking it off at both ends and the smaller side roads it linked to. They stranded the people more than the flooding had and called it progress. They almost flooded a local houseboat with their carelessness and blamed it on the boatman trying to sabotage their alleged kindness.

Almost three days later and countless late mornings, delayed buses and general chaos all around, they reopened the road. The first thing anyone noticed was that it was bone dry, unlike the surroundings roads, still damp from the storm that had just barely passed. The second thing noticed, and reported over to whatever radio station would listen, was the amount of black weeds clustered around every drain.

According to those who'd been caught in traffic along that road, they didn't smell at all but they did seem to move on their own. Most rationalised it as being the movements of the drain water underneath as it slowly sank down but others squinted past the primary layer to see tiny hands brushing the slimy leaves aside to get a glimpse at their new surroundings.

Over the next few days reports of tiny black footprints leading all over the street, up to people's front doors, copious amounts of mud that looked more like tar jammed into their letterboxes as the footprints continued all over their homes. It would have been easy co call it an invasion of rats but the foot prints were too human looking and about six inches long from heel to toe. When compared to the half an inch long average rat's foot there was no way they could be mistaken for anything less than, well, human.

Rather than consider the possibilities of what the flood waters had brought in and why it took the fire brigade three days to drain one short road, it was put down to a prank. A group of people even came forward to claim that it was their way of bringing environmental issues to their local community by getting the public involved in a "carbon foot print challenge" and they were sorry it had been taken so far.

Most of the residents went along with it, said they knew about it the whole time and it was an act while their eyes darted about to the still weed-smothered drains that seemed to move to a wind that wasn't strong enough to cause that amount of movement.